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 "It looks like very, very early in December up in Sweden we'll see both the Houthi rebel side and the UN-recognized-President Hadi's government will be up there," Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon. "The Saudis and the Emiratis are fully on board," the Pentagon chief added. Currently, the Saudi-backed Yemeni government and Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels both declared a temporary halt of fighting to pave the way for the peace talks, which will seek to end the Yemeni civil war that has killed thousands of people and brought the impoverished Arab country to its knees. UN Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths told the Security Council on November 16 that he intends to convene the new round of peace talks between the warring factions "shortly" in Sweden in a bid to end the military conflict in Yemen. The fighting for the control of the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah erupted following the collapse of the peacemaking efforts by the UN in Geneva on September 8, as the Houthi rebels refused to attend. The military conflict in Yemen began with the 2014 takeover of the capital of Sanaa by the Houthis, which forced Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi into exile. The Saudi-led coalition allied with the government has been fighting the Houthis since 2015. Society of Ieodo Research President Koh Choong-suk, front row sixth from left, poses for a group photo during the sixth Ieodo International Seminar on Jeju Island, Thursday. / Korea Times photo by Park Ji-won By Park Ji-won JEJU ISLAND Global maritime experts on sea disputes gathered on Jeju Island to discuss how to resolve territorial conflicts in the East Asian region. They said at the sixth international seminar on Ieodo, a rock near Jeju, that related countries, especially China, need to cooperate and uphold the rule of international law. Tensions have been intensifying there following China's efforts to expand its territory in the region in a battle with the United States for supremacy. Under the theme "Beyond East Asian Maritime Conflict," the two-day forum ran through Friday where experts from the U.S., China, Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines gathered to share their knowledge to seek peaceful cooperation regarding the disputed island and territories among the East Asian countries. The seminar was divided into three sessions two were held on Thursday and the remaining one on Friday. Each session was followed by a discussion, which included a Q&A period. The Society of Ieodo Research, a Jeju Island-based think tank, was hosting the event while The Korea Times, Hankyoreh Media Group and the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries were co-sponsors. Seen is the Ieodo Ocean Research Station run by the South Korean government near Ieodo, a submerged rock situated 149 kilometers southwest of the country's southwestern Marado, in December 2013. / Korea Times file Korea-Romania FM talks: Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha, right, shakes hands with Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu during their talks in Seoul, Friday. Melescanu is on a three-day visit to South Korea until Saturday on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the two countries' strategic partnership. Kang asked Romania to play a key role in supporting the Korean Peninsula peace process, pointing out the country will hold the European Union's rotating presidency next year. / Yonhap President Moon Jae-in arrives for an International Monetary Fund (IMF) informal dialogue session at APEC Haus in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, last week. AP-Yonhap By Kim Yoo-chul President Moon Jae-in is prepared to hold a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump next week at the G20 Leaders Summit in Buenos Aires, a senior Cheong Wa Dae official said, Friday. "Working-level discussions are underway for a face-to-face meeting between Moon and Trump during the G20 session," the official said in a media briefing at Cheong Wa Dae. "If the summit happens, Moon will pass South Korea's expectations and hope for an upcoming summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un." Regarding the main topics to be discussed at the Moon-Trump meeting, the official added, "When the presidential office gets confirmation from Washington for a summit, then we will announce it." "As far as we know, U.S. President Trump's schedule is packed during the G20 session. Seoul is working hard with Washington to make that in-person meeting actually happen," said the official, who is directly involved with the issue. The Moon-Trump meeting, if it happens, is expected to provide fresh impetus to advance the stalled denuclearization talks. North Korea is demanding the United States offer sanctions relief in exchange for the regime's initial measures to dismantle some of its nuclear facilities. But the U.S.' stern efforts to sustain and intensify its original "maximum pressure" campaign on North Korea were blamed as the central reason the nuclear negotiations have reached an impasse. Negotiations with Pyongyang are entering a perilous phase as a potential breakdown in diplomacy raises the possibility its longtime ally China would ease its enforcement of international sanctions. The Cheong Wa Dae official confirmed Moon will have a summit with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. "As the Netherlands chairs the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) committee monitoring sanctions against North Korea, the Moon-Rutte will cover issues on how to move forward with plans to break a deadlock in the nuclear negotiation process," the official said. The UNSC recently adopted new adjustments to try to speed the delivery of humanitarian aid to North Korea, where the U.N. says some 10 million people need food and other types of assistance and about 20 percent of children's growth has been stunted because of malnutrition. While Moon's earlier efforts to spread his ambitious "sanctions-easing" pitch apparently fell flat during his recent trip to European capitals after French President Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May remained cool regarding Moon's request, Moon plans to use the G20 as an opportunity to keep the momentum of the denuclearization talks alive. The official added Moon will present his support to help the World Trade Organization (WTO) enhance its function by giving more to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). "Trade protectionism isn't that helpful for all in the international community. South Korea is prepared to develop discussions to tackle the rising tide of trade protectionism and ready to raise Seoul's quota in the IMF," the Cheong Wa Dae official said. Quota subscriptions are a critical source to the IMF's financial resources and a country which has more quotas has more voting power in the organization. Moon plans to help South Korea's bid to win contracts to build nuclear reactors in the Czech Republic during his separate meeting with his counterpart in the central European country. Summits with the state heads of South Africa, Argentina, the United Kingdom and Germany have also been confirmed, the official said. Four middle school students who allegedly lynched a peer to death on an apartment rooftop in Yeonsu-gu District in Incheon leave Incheon Namdong Police Station for questioning at Incheon District Court on Nov. 16. Yonhap By Ko Dong-hwan Russians in Korea are upset and bitter after a gang of teenagers allegedly lynched to death an Incheon boy, 14, whose mother was Russian and father Korean. The outrage was evident in online communities frequented by Russian residents here, according to a Russian friend of the victim's mother on a Korean morning radio show on Nov. 20. Some Russians lamented that under Korean juvenile laws, the three male and one female middle school students who allegedly took the victim's life cannot be jailed. "All the Russian parents from our communities are enraged that because the suspects are 14 years old they cannot go to jail," said Maria, who said she had known the victim since he was a boy, on CBS. She said, "The tallest one among the suspects was particularly close to the victim when they were children" because they used to spend time eating and playing at the victim's home. "How can this happen?" she asked. But she said the victim had been like an outcast among his peers and that he was frequently ostracized and victimized. One peer used to demand something from the victim, such as a pizza, in exchange for spending time with him "like a fox" in front of a rabbit. "To us, he was being ditched by the others," Maria said. "But he wanted to treat them as his family members, friends. That's why he did all that." The victim's Russian mother claimed that one suspect, above, was wearing a windbreaker that belonged to her son. Yonhap Former Supreme Court Justice Park Byong-dae walks into the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office in southern Seoul, Monday, for questioning about his alleged involvement in abuse of judicial power. Members of the minor Minjung Party held a protest there to call for stern punishment for Park and others involved in the scandal, including former Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae. / Korea Times photo by Koh Young-kwon By Kim Jae-heun The prosecution summoned former Supreme Court Justice Park Byong-dae, Monday, to question him over his alleged involvement in a judicial power abuse scandal that was led by then-Supreme Court Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae. Park is the first former justice at the top court to be questioned openly about the scandal. The prosecution had a closed questioning of another former justice, Cha Han-sung, earlier this month. "I fully dedicated myself to my job as a judge and I worked selflessly when I was serving at the National Court Administration (NCA)," Park said upon his arrival at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office in southern Seoul. "Regardless of the matter, I am heart-stricken and regretful that other judges may have suffered as a result of this investigation. I hope this case will get solved and the judiciary will regain the trust of the people." Park refused to answer any questions from the press and only repeated that he remained impartial. He served as the chief of the court's administrative affairs body from 2014 to 2016, working with Lim Jong-hun, an NCA deputy head from 2015 to 2017 who was arrested in October for his role in the scandal. Lim was accused of abuse of power as the key man in Yang's scheme to use verdicts as bargaining chips in dealing with the presidential office during former President Park Geun-hye's administration. Yang's long-cherished wish was to establish a de facto second supreme court, which needed presidential approval. Park was named as an accomplice at Lim's arraignment. Yang allegedly ordered his officials, including Park and Lim, to rule in favor of the conservative government on important trials that would have a political impact. He also applied pressure on subordinate judges to give verdicts in favor of the administration. One of the trials Yang is suspected to have interfered with is the compensation suit filed by Korean victims of Japan's wartime forced labor. The trial had been held up in the top court for five years, and prosecutors believe Lim and Park were involved in postponing the Korean victims' damages suit against a Japanese company. It helped the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to buy time when President Park's foreign policy toward Japan was friendly. Park is also accused of helping Yang raise a slush fund with money that was supposed to be allocated to other courts. Prosecutors are likely to summon Park several more times over his connections to dozens of allegations. After interrogations, the prosecution will decide whether to seek an arrest warrant for him. They will also summon another former justice, Ko Young-han, who took charge of the NCA after Park. As prosecutors suspect Park colluded with Yang, the latter is expected to be summoned in the near future. Judges from local district courts across the country had a rare meeting and concluded that their senior peers who were involved in the scandal should be impeached. "We recognized that NCA officials involved in such unconstitutional acts, such as discussing the direction of certain trials with government officials or giving advice on politically sensitive trials, should be subject to impeachment," they said in a statement. According to the Constitution, no judge shall be removed from office except by impeachment and a prison sentence a measure to secure the independence of the judiciary. By Oh Young-jin Korea's "drug king," identified by his surname, Yoon, 62, has been arrested, police said Friday. Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said that Yoon, allegedly leader of Korea's biggest drug ring, was suspected of "wholesaling" 22 kilograms in three installments of methamphetamine known as meth or speed worth 73 billion won ($66 million). Police said Yoon bought the drugs from a Taiwanese cartel that brought into Korea 112 kilograms, the largest single shipment and enough for 3 million people to use at the same time. The remaining 90 kilograms were seized. Yoon's courier was also arrested, police said. Police believe the dealers left the drugs in such places as cafe restrooms and gave details of the locations to clients via chat applications. The cases against Yoon and he courier will be sent to prosecutors next week and police will try to retrieve the 22 kilograms already being circulated. Last month, a Taiwanese and six local drug dealers were arrested for allegedly trafficking the drugs. Donga Ilbo, a Korean vernacular newspaper, reported that the arrests were the result of a seven-month investigation by police in Korea, Taiwan and Japan. The arrested kingpin has 15 drug-related prior convictions. He was arrested at a Busan motel where he had hidden after a weeklong stakeout after his location was traced through his mobile calls. The 7th Korea Multicultural Youth Awards has been held at the Korea Press Center where ten outstanding students were awarded for setting a great example for their peers from diverse cultural backgrounds. Nigerian-Korean model Han Hyun-min who was named one of the 30 most influential teens of 2017 by Time magazine was there to encourage biracial students to pursue their dreams. By Arthur I. Cyr Bad vibrations, as hip types used to say way back in the 1960s. The President of the United States travels to Texas to try to mitigate Democratic Party factional strife, and on Nov. 22, 1963 is gunned down on a Dallas street. Two days later, local hustler and gangster Jack Ruby shoots alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. JFK's majestic Nov. 25 funeral, planned in detail by wife Jacqueline, provides no closure. The American government has been fundamentally shaken. Oswald's televised murder precludes a trial, and fuels conspiracy theories. In 2013, there were floods of books, articles and commentaries marking the half-century since his death. By contrast, this year is more muted. Kennedy's legacy is complex. Contemporary CBS commentator Eric Sevareid noted the principal legacy might be "an attitude," a spirit that all things are possible for Americans. In fact, JFK had major achievements. Nonetheless, Sevareid was perceptive in emphasizing the emotional dimensions of political leadership. The disastrous failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs led to a massive U.S. effort to kill leader Fidel Castro, and encouraged Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to deploy nuclear missiles on the island. This led to the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. Kennedy, a World War II combat veteran, resisted powerful pressure to invade Cuba. The missiles were removed following a blockade and overt invasion preparations, combined with a secret Cuba-Turkey missile trade. Kennedy's restraint and imagination are extremely impressive. In the aftermath of the missile crisis, Kennedy and Khrushchev achieved a treaty banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, a breakthrough. The Senate ratified the treaty with a bipartisan vote of 80-19. JFK had other successes with Congress, including negotiation authority key to important multilateral trade agreements. Two prominent domestic issues were civil rights and organized crime, the latter an obsession of driven Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. JFK was cautious on race relations, addressing the subject actively only when pressed by a massive march on Washington. RFK was relentless in pursuit of the mafia, while simultaneously gangsters and mercenaries were recruited to kill Castro. Dallas ended both efforts. Regarding organized crime, six years passed before the Nixon administration re-energized prosecution. People around Robert Kennedy were puzzled by his marked disinterest in possible assassination conspiracy. In hindsight, RFK no doubt avoided that dark tangled path because he might come face to face with himself. Senator John Kennedy's book "Profiles in Courage," about U.S. senators who put principle above political expediency, received the Pulitzer Prize. While critics cracked President Kennedy should show less profile and more courage, he actually demonstrated considerable personal strength. Historian Herbert Parmet has documented extraordinary health problems that plagued JFK from birth. He nearly died in infancy, and received Catholic last rites at least three times. Yet he managed to enlist in the U.S. Navy, then volunteered for hazardous PT boat duty, where he demonstrated truly exceptional courage. Eric Sevareid's observation applies tangibly to the American space program. The commitment to a manned moon landing achieved success in 1969. Associated technological innovations include electronics miniaturization, essential in today's computers and cell phones. Sevareid was also alluding to intangible dimensions. Jacqueline and John Kennedy emphasized the arts, symbolized today by the Kennedy Center in Washington. If Kennedy's friend Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AR) were the 1964 Republican presidential nominee, they agreed to have policy debates around the country. That public style contrasts with today's extreme political crudeness, and denigration of public service. Too bad. Arthur I. Cyr ( ) is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College and author of the book "After the Cold War." By Alex Gratzek Recently, Canada joined Uruguay in becoming the second nation in the world to legalize marijuana. It is time for Korea to re-examine its relationship with hemp and marijuana since the 1976 Marijuana Control Act was put into effect under the leadership of then dictator Park Chung-hee. This act effectively outlawed the possession and smoking of marijuana while creating strict regulations governing the cultivation of hemp. Within Korea, the cultivation of hemp goes back before the common era. Fabric found in Korea dating back to 3,000 BCE contained hemp. Sambe was traditionally used in more recent times for Korean clothing. Although there is no evidence that can prove or disprove consumption of marijuana through smoking it, it is highly likely that ancient practitioners of Korean Shamanism partook in its ritualized consumption. During the Japanese occupation of Korea, hemp was grown commercially throughout the Korean Peninsula. Despite the long history of hemp cultivation within Korea and possessing a significant role within society, the plant was only outlawed in recent times. The illegalization of hemp and marijuana came in two phases coinciding with the increase of American influence within South Korea. In 1957 President Syngman Rhee outlawed "Indian marijuana" largely due to the influx of American troops who were permanently stationed in Korea following the ending of the Korean War. The cultivation of "Korean marijuana" continued on until 1976 when it was outlawed under then President Park. The consumption of marijuana had become more prevalent during the 1960s and early 1970s. The increased consumption could be traced back to American influence in the form of the counterculture and hippies which emanated from American Army bases. President Richard Nixon, in an effort to demonize his political opponents, launched a "war on drugs" in an attempt to disrupt the hippies and counter-culturalists who were opposed to his administration. Likewise, President Park saw the increasing usa of marijuana among the youth of South Korea as an opportunity. Students and young people had been the traditional opponents of the military dictatorship so it made sense for him to take a page from Nixon's playbook in an effort to hobble the opponents of his regime. The result was the outlawing of marijuana and hemp and its portrayal as a threat to the fabric of society. Many musicians were made examples of in order to cow their followers into submission. Within America, attitudes toward Marijuana are shifting in favor of its decriminalization, allowance for medicinal purposes or even outright legalization and regulation as in Colorado. As the winds shift in America on the topic and the rest of the world, it is natural for Korea to re-examine its own relationship. With the legalization of marijuana in Canada, South Korea holds that any citizens who use marijuana abroad will be subject to punishment in Korea. This is a dangerous road which should not be trodden without careful deliberation. In Thailand, if one is robbed and posts on social media about the incident, then that person can be subject to punishment for the besmirchment of Thailand. Koreans would be livid at the treatment of Koreans in such circumstances as it goes against what an open society should stand for. The same should apply to Koreans who are punished for doing something which is legal in their circumstances. Dr. Kwon Yong-hyun, head of the Korean Cannabinoid Association, advocates for the use of medical cannabis to further the care of patients in pain. "There are some types of diseases that can only be cured with medical marijuana, and it also helps in easing some symptoms, and treatments," Kwon said. He continued by pointing out that tens of thousands of studies and medical procedures over the years have found medical marijuana to be effective in treating numerous diseases including epilepsy, atopic dermatitis, dementia and Parkinson's disease. One of the most prominent issues in Korean society today is the economy and the lack of economic opportunities for today's youth. An estimated one in 10 youths aged between 15 and 29 are out of work. A radical approach to the issue would see the outright legalization of marijuana. It would immediately create a new industry overnight and would drive job creation via the new industry and the accompanying increased demand for services it would create. It has been estimated that 18,000 jobs were created in Colorado due to the legalization of marijuana. Colorado has a population of just over 5 million. Currently, many tourists go to places like the Netherlands, Canada, Colorado or other places where marijuana is tolerated if not strictly legal. The legalization of marijuana in Korea would create a new destination for tourists in Northeast Asia. Neither Japan nor China currently allows marijuana to be consumed legally. Korea would hold a monopoly for marijuana tourists in the region. As the world opinion on marijuana and hemp changes, it is natural for Korea to re-examine its relationship with the plant and drug. At a minimum, those who use marijuana abroad in legal settings should not be subjected to punishment. A middle road would be to allow for the use of medicinal cannabis and the easing of regulations governing the growing of hemp which holds a wide range of industrial uses and a THC count so low as to not produce a high effect if smoked. A radical approach would be for the regulation and legalization of marijuana. Alex Gratzek (ajgratzek@gmail.com) is an American who has lived, studied and worked in South Korea. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not represent the editorial direction of The Korea Times. Time to strengthen occupational safety to protect workers An 11-year dispute over fatal occupational diseases at Samsung Electronics has virtually ended as victims' families, the company and a mediation committee signed an agreement on how to settle the issue. On Friday, the three parties signed the agreement drafted by the third-party arbitration panel. The signing happened about four months after Samsung decided to accept the arbitration proposal unconditionally in July. The case carries significance because it set a new example of resolving a drawn-out dispute through negotiations. Particularly it shows how important a role the mediation committee has played. It is still hard for any parties with conflicting interests to narrow their differences when a dispute takes place. Especially in industrial disasters, workers may face an uphill battle because any company can tenaciously refuse to take responsibility and acknowledge a lack of safety measures. The Samsung case was one of the most tragic episodes. It surfaced in 2007 when Hwang Yu-mi, a former Samsung semiconductor worker, died of leukemia at 22. It prompted the bereaved families of Hwang and other victims of occupational diseases to stage a time-consuming legal battle to prove their deaths were closely linked to the harmful working environment. The families had to file a suit with the Seoul Administrative Court because the Korea Workers' Compensation & Welfare Service rejected their compensation request in 2009. Finally they won the court battle in 2014. And 29 of 95 deceased workers were officially recognized as victims of occupational illnesses. Now Samsung has apologized belatedly. President and CEO Kim Ki-nam expressed deep regret on behalf of the company to the victims and their families following the signing of the agreement. According to the mediation committee, Samsung is expected to offer up to 150 million won ($133,000) compensation for each death. However, many issues still need to be tackled to resolve the dispute completely. Most of all, Samsung should admit the relationship between the illnesses and the hazardous work environment. The company then needs to take all legal responsibility for its inability to safeguard employees from potential industrial disasters and workplace illnesses. In addition, the company must pay heed to Hwang Sang-ki, who lost his daughter, as he claimed the work-related illnesses were not limited to Samsung Electronics' chip and LCD production lines. He pointed out there were ailing workers at other Samsung Group affiliates such as Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Samsung SDS and Samsung SDI. Samsung should not try to shirk its legal responsibility by promising to donate 500 billion won to the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency to help improve workers' safety. The government is not free from its responsibility for supervising workplaces to prevent occupational illnesses and industrial disasters. It is time to tighten safety regulations and step up on-site inspections to avoid a repetition of the Samsung tragedy. Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Kazakh Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 22, 2018. (Xinhua/Yao Dawei) BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping on Thursday met with Kazakh Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev in Beijing, and suggested that both sides focus on policy synergizing and well implement the alignment of China-proposed Silk Road Economic Belt and Kazakhstan's Nurly Zhol (Bright Path) economic program. Xi asked Sagintayev to give his cordial greetings to Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan. With contact, Xi said his important consensus with Nazarbayev on many issues had guided the development of bilateral ties. "The consensus is being implemented by solid steps with the two sides' concerted efforts," he said. "As a friendly neighbour and comprehensive strategic partner, China places high importance on developing ties with Kazakhstan." He voiced his appreciation of Kazakhstan's people-centric development principle, and stressed that China firmly supported the Kazakh people in following a development path suited to national conditions. This year marks the fifth anniversary of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative. "Over the past five years, cooperation under the initiative has delivered tangible benefits to the people along the route, and injected new impetus to the world economy," Xi said. "China appreciates Kazakhstan's firm support and active participation in the Belt and Road cooperation. The two countries enjoy a solid basis and promising prospect for jointly building the Belt and Road." Looking into future cooperation, Xi called on both sides to step up policy coordination, further synergize the Silk Road Economic Belt construction with Kazakhstan's Bright Path economic policy, and map out exchanges in various fields. Sagintayev conveyed Nazarbayev's cordial greetings to Xi. Calling China a friendly neighbor, friend and strategic partner of Kazakhstan, Sagintayev said his country highly valued the Silk Road Economic Belt Initiative proposed by Xi in Kazakhstan five years ago. "The initiative is of great significance to strengthening regional connectivity, combating global challenges, maintaining world security and stability, and promoting common growth and prosperity," he said. The Kazakh prime minister recalled Xi's keynote speech delivered at the opening ceremony of the first China International Import Expo earlier this month, when he compared the Chinese economy to the ocean. "Kazakhstan hopes the ship of Kazakhstan-China cooperation will keep sailing in the ocean of China's economy," Sagintayev said. People walk past a sign board of Huawei at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) Asia 2018 in Shanghai, China, June 14. Reuters The U.S. government is trying to persuade wireless and internet providers in allied countries to avoid telecommunications equipment from China's Huawei Technologies , the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. U.S. officials have reached out to their government counterparts and telecom executives in friendly countries where Huawei equipment is already in wide use about what they see as cybersecurity risks, according to the WSJ report which cited unnamed people familiar with the situation. Huawei has come under scrutiny in the United States recently. 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. Washington has been considering increasing financial aid for telecommunications development in countries that shun Chinese-made equipment, the WSJ reported. One of the government's concerns is based on the use of Chinese telecom equipment in countries that host U.S. military bases, such as Germany, Italy and Japan, the report added. Huawei did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. (Reuters) Kim Ki-nam, left, CEO of Samsung Electronics device solutions division, and Hwang Sang-ki, right, head of the Supporters for the Health and Rights of People in the Semiconductor Industry, pose for a photo after signing an agreement on providing compensation for work-related diseases at the Korea Press Center in downtown Seoul, Friday. At center is lawyer Kim Ji-hyung of the mediation committee. / Yonhap By Jun Ji-hye Samsung Electronics made an official apology, Friday, to patients of work-related leukemia who worked at the firm's semiconductor and display factories, ending disputes with victims and their families that lasted for 11 years. Kim Ki-nam, CEO of Samsung Electronics device solutions division, said, "We have not fully managed potential health risks at our semiconductor and LCD production lines. We apologize from the bottom of our hearts to workers who suffered from the illnesses and their families." Kim made the remarks at the Korea Press Center in central Seoul, signing an agreement with the Supporters for the Health and Rights of People in the Semiconductor Industry (SHARPS), which represents the victims, to implement plans on settlement and compensation as prepared by a mediation committee. "Samsung Electronics has not made sufficient efforts to resolve the issue promptly, though beloved colleagues and their families suffered for a long time," Kim said, vowing to make every effort to comply with the compensation plans. A third party, law firm Jipyong, will carry out the compensation work as agreed by Samsung and SHARPS. The law firm said it will open an executive office in early December and begin providing compensation within the year. The settlement plan includes compensation of up to 150 million won ($133,000) for leukemia and up to 135 million won for brain tumors and multiple myeloma. The plan covers former and incumbent Samsung employees who worked at the firm's semiconductor and LCD production lines for more than a year since May 17, 1984, when the construction of its first production line at its Yongin plant was completed. The deadline for compensation is Oct. 31, 2028, though it can be extended depending on circumstances. The dispute between the tech giant and its former employees suffering from work-related illnesses began in March 2007 when Hwang Yu-mi who had worked at the firm's Yongin plant died of leukemia. The death provoked controversy over whether the employees' illnesses including leukemia were connected to the manufacture of semiconductors and LCD panels. In March 2008, SHARPS was launched, intensifying the conflict, with victims claiming Samsung Electronics should acknowledge its responsibility and provide compensation. Samsung and SHARPS have engaged in dialogues several times, but failed to narrow their differences. In November 2014, the mediation committee led by lawyer Kim Ji-hyung was launched and began the settlement process to resolve the dispute. In July this year, the mediation committee sent its final settlement plan to each party as it confirmed Samsung's willingness to reach the agreement with SHARPS. At the time, Samsung said it would accept any decision made by the mediation committee unconditionally, and SHARPS agreed. "Samsung's apology was not sufficient, but we will accept it," said Hwang Sang-ki, head of SHARPS and father of Hwang Yu-mi. Owen Renault, category intelligence engineer at Dyson, introduces the company's Pure Hot & Cool air purifier during a press conference at CGV Cheongdam Cine City in Seoul, Nov. 15. / Yonhap By Park Jae-hyuk Dyson has been selling its products for higher prices in Korea than in other countries, according to industry officials, Friday. Industry officials say the company's discriminatory pricing policy has caused a growing number of consumers here to turn away from the U.K. home appliances maker, which has maintained the lead in Korea's cordless vacuum cleaner market. On Nov. 15, Dyson began selling Pure Hot & Cool air purifier in Korea for 998,000 won ($882). The product costs 84,000 yen ($743) in Japan and 5,490 yuan ($791) in China. The air purifier is not the only Dyson product that costs more in Korea. Its V10 Fluffy cleaner is priced at 948,000 won ($837) here, while the product costs 64,584 yen ($571) in Japan. Data compiled by the Korea Consumer Agency showed Dyson's V8 Animal cordless stick vacuum cleaner costs 185,000 won more in Korea than in the United States. Amid the growing controversy over the high price, Dyson offered discounts on its vacuum cleaners in August. Back then, the company said consumers could get up to 200,000 won in discounts. For example, a Dyson store in Seoul sold the V10 Absolute cordless vacuum cleaner for 898,000 won, which had originally been priced at 1,090,000 won in Korea. However, the product was sold for $699 in the U.S. even without any discounts. The U.S. price was 100,000 won lower than the Korean price. In the U.K., the price of the V10 Absolute is 449 pound ($578), about 250,000 won lower than the Korean price. What is worse, Dyson suddenly raised prices of consumables in August, citing distribution costs and personnel expenses. After the decision, the price of Dyson's soft roller rose to 105,000 won from 76,000 won. The company has cited exchange rates and distribution costs as reasons for the price difference. However, other foreign home appliances makers, such as Smeg and DeLonghi, sell their products for lower prices in Korea than in the U.S. Against this backdrop, Dyson's market share in the Korean market has continued to decline. Its share in the country's cordless vacuum cleaner market dropped to 40 percent, after the release of LG Electronics' CordZero 9 series. In addition, Samsung Electronics' PowerGun wireless vacuum cleaner and the Chinese copycat, which is dubbed "Chyson," are also posing threats to Dyson's supremacy. Hillary Clinton / AFP By Jung Min-ho European leaders must send a much stronger message that they will not continue to offer "refuge and support," or face ever-growing right-wing populism, Hillary Clinton warned in an interview published Thursday. The former Democratic presidential candidate praised leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for their compassion toward immigrants. But she said immigration had been inflaming voters and emboldening populist politicians. "I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame," she told The Guardian. "I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message 'we are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support' because if we don't deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic." Clinton's remarks, which contrast with her previous criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump for his rhetoric toward immigration, are expected to spark controversy in her country as well as Europe. Clinton also noted she was still "dumbfounded" by her defeat in the 2016 election and said populist politicians know how to speak to people's emotions. "(But) the use of immigrants as a political device and as a symbol of government gone wrong, of attacks on one's heritage, one's identity, one's national unity has been very much exploited by the current administration here," she said. "There are solutions to migration that do not require clamping down on the press, on your political opponents and trying to suborn the judiciary, or seeking financial and political help from Russia to support your political parties and movements." Freely accessible local news is vital. Please power our reporters and help keep us independent with a donation today. Start your day with LAist Sign up for the Morning Brief, delivered weekdays. Subscribe The epiphany came, as many do, in traffic. It was the summer of 2008, and Sonja Rasula was shopping for gifts for her best friend. The then-32-year-old was painstakingly making her way, by car, from Venice to Eagle Rock in search of the ideal present, when she realized there might be a way to consolidate the boutique shopping journey on which she had unwittingly embarked. "I thought there could be a new retail experience where you park your car and get everything... like a mall, but not; like a flea market, but not," she says. "My gut told me that there were other people that would feel the same way." Rasula had a background in corporate management and, after letting the idea sit for a few months, she hit the ground running. She set up social media accounts, created a website and plotted out what would soon become Unique Markets, a curated, pop-up event that brings together local artisans to sell their products. The inaugural bazaar, held in the California Market Center in downtown L.A., was an immediate success. "The very first market was 225 sellers," says Rasula, "and I actually made a couple thousand dollars in the end." Her gut feeling had been correct. Rasula wasn't always on track to become a hand-crafted goods maven. After growing up in L.A.'s Echo Park, she moved to Canada to study journalism at Ryerson University. Before graduating, she made a brief and bizarre foray into the music business. "I answered a full-page ad in the newspaper which was, 'Do you want to be the next Spice Girl?'" she says. "Obviously, I was like, 'Yes.'" Rasula went to the audition, survived the next few rounds of cuts and soon found herself in an apartment in New York City with a group of other girls, recording an album and on track to becoming world-renowned superstars. After the album, she waited for success but nothing happened. "I thought I would be famous, but that did not work out," she says, laughing. Instead, Rasula left college early after being offered a job at Much Music, which she describes as "Canada's MTV," and worked in the corporate world for nearly a decade. She wasn't even 30 before she found herself approaching corporate burn-out, so she turned her sights back to the city she had left behind. "I was like, I gotta move to LA," she says. Once here, Rasula landed a job as a cast member on TLC's Trading Spaces but was fired before the show aired. She decided to take a step back and re-evaluate. "I had a decision to make," she says, "which was, look for another job, or volunteer. I was lucky enough to have savings...so I looked at my bank account and thought, this is probably the only time I life that I could not work for a while." Rasula began volunteering with a get-out-the-vote nonprofit organization, and the freedom of not being tied down to a job and having the space to think creatively about her next venture led to her traffic epiphany. "I knew it was time [for me to] to start my own business," she says. Looking at the Unique Markets aesthetic now, it's tempting to say that Rasula was one step ahead of curating a look that has since become ubiquitous and might be described as Instagram-chic. Her markets are clean and modern,airy and bright with white walls and backdrops, sparse with pops of color. Vendors selling succulents and letterpressed cards abound, as do makers of homemade jewelry, clothing, decor and art. "I've always liked modern, minimal design, and I've always loved typography," she says. Since opening in 2008, Rasula says she receives hundreds of applications from vendors who want to sell their products on the Unique Market floor. For the first time this year, the event will travel to eight cities. In the past, it has attracted 50,000 visitors annually. As Unique Markets continues to grow, Rasula -- who lives in Echo Park with her husband and their two dogs -- hopes that her brainchild will foster an appreciation for design and respect for how much effort goes into making even the simplest item. "I want people to understand the value that goes into design, and for all the designers and artists and makers who are there," she says. "I want people to see that there is passion and struggle and heart that goes into all of their products. I am trying to get people to see that things that are made locally and independently have so much more value than mass-produced stuff, and I think you have show people the way sometimes." Unique LA will be held on December 1 & 2 at the California Market Center and on Dec. 15 & 16 at the Santa Monica Pier. If you can't make it and still want to celebrate small businesses, here are some other markets and craft fairs happening this holiday season: Patchwork Show Nov. 25 Artist Village: 2nd & Sycamore, Santa Ana Echo Park Craft Fair December 9 & 10 Mack Sennett Studios: 1215 Bates Ave., Echo Park. Renegade Craft Fair December 8 & 9 Los Angeles State Historic Park: 1245 N. Spring St., Chinatown. Artists and Fleas Every Saturday 1010 Abbott Kinney. You made it! Congrats, you read the entire story, you gorgeous human. This story was made possible by generous people like you. Independent, local journalism costs $$$$$. And now that LAist is part of KPCC, we rely on that support. So if you aren't already, be one of us! Help us help you live your best life in Southern California. Donate now. Taking a chance on a new venue and a new time, the Pacific Beach Town Councils (PBTC) annual wine-tasting fundraiser for general operations lost none of its appeal with preliminary totals surpassing the $6,800 raised last year. The event drew about 120 people to the rooftop bar at the Firehouse American Eatery & Lounge on Oct. 13. The wine was paired with a silent auction of 50 items, including stays at the high-end Tower 23 hotel and the timeless Beach Cottages. Held for years in June at the PB Womans Club, the event was moved to October to avoid fundraiser fatigue arising from the numerous other benefits held in June, according to PBTC president Brian White. Food was donated by area vendors, including a cheese table from Gelsons, pizzas from Surfrider, and square pizzas and health foods from Freshii. In addition, wine was on tap from LJ Crafted Wines, a local eco-friendly vintner named after owner Lowell Jooste, not necessarily its location on La Jolla Boulevard. The Olive Baking Co., an outgrowth of Olive Cafe, donated baked cinnamon rolls and cookies. Owner Sarah Mattinson, a member of the Mission Beach Town Council, pointed out that her company donates to more than 40 organizations annually. Brandon Shank provided artisan breads for the occasion. Shank is working to open an Italian bakery, and although he lives in Normal Heights, he has plenty of reasons to prefer Pacific Beach: Great people. Great vibe. Everyone is so gracious. Its kind of different from (other parts of) San Diego where people are usually stand-offish. Added resident Jim Pratt of the gathering: Its a lot of action. Good people, good food, good wine. The only thing missing is more (of it). BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The number of permanent residents in Beijing decreased for the first time in two decades, official data showed Thursday. In 2017, the number of Beijing's permanent residents was 21.707 million, 22,000 fewer than in 2016, according to the Standing Committee of Beijing Municipal People's Congress. According to a report reviewed by the committee, the number of permanent residents in the city's six urban districts continues to decrease. In 2016 and 2017, Beijing saw a total decline of 740,000 permanent residents in the six districts, down 3 percent year-on-year. Beijing plans to cap its population as it seeks to address "big city diseases" such as traffic congestion and pollution. For the Korean American community, in recent years things have started to become better, Hyepin Im told me from her Wilshire Boulevard office in Koreatown. But we still have a ways to go. Im, whose career in community service was inspired by the experience of living through the 1992 Los Angeles riots, is describing the long, complicated journey for the Korean American community from the outsidership of first-generation immigrants to acceptance. Im is one of the scores of advocates, entrepreneurs and established business leaders who populate a new book about the history and challenges of one of Southern Californias most vibrant ethnic communities. The Korean-American Dream, published last month by the University of Nevada Press, is the latest work by James Flanigan, who was the Los Angeles Times business columnist for 20 years of his more than half-century career as a business journalist. The Korean Americans who really make it in America dont see America as a foreign land. Jihee Huh, Pacific American Fish Co. Advertisement Flanigan came to this topic naturally. As followers of his writings in The Times for 20 years will recognize, he always showed a deep interest in immigrants and entrepreneurs and their impact on Southern Californias society and economy. In the ethnic fabric of this region, South Koreans stood out on several counts, including the turbulent history of their country of origin. Though less numerous than other Asian immigrant groups such as those from China or India, Flanigan writes, Koreans have shown uncommon eagerness to secure what they call a seat at the table in the American community. Flanigan traces the rise of the Korean American community through the achievements of some of its preeminent business leaders. Theres David Lee, a Korean immigrant with a medical degree from Northwestern University who joined with eight other Korean doctors and dentists to buy a Wilshire Boulevard office building for $6 million in 1995, during a real estate slump. Within a few years, with the recovery, it was worth $20 million, Flanigan told me. Now Lees Jamison Services ranks among the largest property owners in Los Angeles, with more than $3 billion in holdings. The source of the original capital was quintessentially Asian a financial pool known as a keh, which consists of the resources of a dozen or so members of a group. And Yang Ho Cho, chairman of Korean Air, whose dream to build a landmark edifice as an icon of the Korean community in Los Angeles was fulfilled last year with the opening of the $1.35-billion Wilshire Grand Center, an office and hotel skyscraper that is the tallest building in the U.S. west of the Mississippi. The Korean Americans who really make it in America dont see America as a foreign land, says Jihee Huh, who came to the U.S. with her family at age 7 and now serves as president of new business development at Pacific American Fish Co., a Vernon seafood import-export firm that was founded by her father-in-law in 1977 as a one-person operation and now has 300 workers under the leadership of her husband, Peter, and his brother, Paul. My mom raised us to think that this was our homeland. Thats the consensus of my friends, who feel very blessed to be here. As Flanigan reports, it has not always been clear to the Korean Americans that their devotion to the U.S. is fully reciprocated. The defining event for the community, even more than a quarter-century later, is the 1992 Los Angeles riots. With the riots, the Korean community woke up, Flanigan says. They saw the local government and the police, and realized they werent any part of that. The riots cost 63 lives, among them 18-year-old Edward Song Lee, who was attempting to protect shops in Koreatown when he was shot by fellow Korean Americans who mistook him for a looter. Of the estimated $1 billion in property damage sustained in the nearly weeklong riots, more than 45% was suffered by Koreans (more than 60%, by some Korean estimates), in part because Korean-owned shops were targeted by rioters and looters. The riots told us that greater self-reliance was needed, says Koreatown attorney Grace Yoo, former executive director of the Korean American Coalition, which advocates for the civic and civil rights interests of the community. The LAPD did not come to our rescue. I remember Radio Korea broadcasting where people were trapped in their buildings and needed help. Civilians would go in and try to rescue them. Among Koreans, the riots are known by the term Saigu, for 4-2-9, signifying April 29, the day the riots began. Even though we had incurred all that damage, instead of being treated as victims, we were and still are depicted as perpetrators, says Hyepin Im, who was in her mid-20s at the time of the riots. The friction between Korean store owners and their largely African American customer base reflected a phenomenon well known to sociologists and business analysts: the problem of middleman minorities, or groups that serve members of a different ethnic group than their own, often members of another oppressed community, as UC sociologists Ivan Light and Edna Bonacich put it in a 1991 study of Koreans in Los Angeles. The middleman minority structure, they wrote, easily becomes a node of social conflict. Korean entrepreneurs came to occupy the small merchant sector in the black community largely because larger retailers shunned those neighborhoods. But as Light and Bonacich predicted, tensions between shop owners and their customers ran high reaching a fever pitch after March 1991, when 15-year-old Latasha Harlins was shot and killed by a Korean shop owner who took her for a shoplifter. The store owner was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to probation and community service, but no jail time. A state appeals court upheld the sentence just days before the riots erupted one of the sparks that lit a long, consuming fire, Flanigan writes. The riots helped steer Im toward a career in community organizing, and to her founding in 2001 of Korean Churches for Community Development, now known as Faith and Community Empowerment, which brings together resources from Korean churches and other institutions for programs to address homelessness, build up homeownership and offer leadership training for young Korean Americans. Ims model was the FAME Renaissance Capital nonprofit founded by the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles, where she worked part time while studying toward her MBA at USC business school. They were not only able to leverage resources, but their partners now had a vested interest in their success. The riots were not all that awakened the Korean American community to the need for better political representation. More recently, President Trumps attack on immigration, including legal immigration, has become a pressure point. Trumps campaign includes his efforts to end or undermine the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. DACA was launched by President Obama in 2012 to protect individuals brought into the U.S. illegally as children, by deferring deportations and opening their path to a work permit. South Koreans make up the largest group of DACA recipients, or Dreamers, from Asia, ahead of immigrants from the Philippines and India; the more than 7,300 DACA recipients born in South Korea are the sixth-largest group by country of origin (though far behind Mexicos roughly 550,000). Trumps policies represent a sharp reversal from the liberalized immigration system created by the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which encouraged family unification and openness to those with skills. Flanigan labels the act the law that made Asian America: The law helped expand the Asian population of the U.S. to more than 20 million today from 980,000 in 1960. Largely as a result of the law, Flanigan reports, the Korean community in the U.S. has swelled to nearly 2 million (as of 2016) from 69,000 in 1970. Among other attacks on immigration policies that have become ingrained in American law and policy, Trump has expressed opposition to family unification, which he denigrates as chain migration. Despite these incentives for activism, the Korean American political awakening is still a work in progress. A record six Korean Americans ran for Congress this year, but only one prevailed Democrat Andy Kim of New Jersey, who became the first Korean American to serve in Congress since Republican Jay Kim represented a Southern California district in the 1990s. Of the other five, three lost in their party primaries and two in the general election this month. The latter included Young Kim, a Republican who lost her race to succeed the retiring Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton). In Los Angeles, Korean Americans celebrated the election of David Ryu to the City Council in 2015 as the councils first member of the community. His election was a triumph, but not entirely an unalloyed one. As Flanigan observed, Ryu doesnt represent a predominantly Korean American or even Asian American district. Koreatown itself still lacks a council member from its community, the consequence of a 2012 redistricting that diluted its political voice by situating it in two council districts. Grace Yoo, who ran to represent Council District 10, which includes part of Koreatown, lost lopsidedly in 2015 to incumbent Herb Wesson. We have physical differences, so were perpetual foreigners, Huh says. Thats sometimes quite evident and sometimes disheartening, but it wont stop me from engaging with the mainstream and making sure that we dont get marginalized. The Korean American experience resembles that of many other ethnic groups that have become part of the American fabric, including a devotion to education and to moving further up with each generation into professional career echelons. But there are differences. Hostility to Asian immigration has a long history in the U.S. Chinese people came to Gold Mountain in the 1850s only to see immigration of Chinese laborers curtailed by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Flanigan writes. (It wasnt repealed until 1943.) Japanese-born immigrants could not be naturalized; even their U.S.-born children, who were citizens, were shamefully sent to internment camps during World War II. But Korean immigrants, for all their rude awakening in the 1992 riots, have been able to educate their children and attain recognition and welcome. The Korean community, he concludes, is both a piece of the American fabric and a light shining toward Americas future. Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com. Return to Michael Hiltziks blog. The Italian luxury brand Dolce & Gabbana apologized Friday for racist-tinged insults that touched off a growing boycott in China and left the company struggling to return its products to store shelves and e-commerce sites. But it was unclear whether the contrition will be enough to stem the punishment and backlash doled out across China over the past week. Some Dolce & Gabbana stores in Beijing were temporarily shut, and Chinese students in Italy held a small protest in front of the flagship store in Milan, according to Chinese reports. Earlier this week, a lavish Shanghai fashion show, which had been months in the making, was canceled after a leaked online conversation showed co-founder Stefano Gabbana using several feces emoji and disparaging language to describe China the worlds largest market for luxury items. Advertisement In a span of five days, the Milan fashion house swung from preparing a historic Shanghai extravaganza billed as a no-expense-spared tribute to Chinese culture and the biggest runway event in label history to pleading for forgiveness, its reputation shredded in a country that accounts for more than a third of luxury spending worldwide. Our families have always taught us to respect the various cultures in all the world, and thats why we want to ask for your forgiveness, co-founder Domenico Dolce said in a video apology on Friday with his partner, Gabbana. We will never forget this experience and lesson, and this sort of thing will never happen again. The mea culpa capped a topsy-turvy week that started with the company promoting its Great Show in Shanghai, an hourlong event with more than 300 looks, 100 models and 1,500 guests, with an ill-considered video featuring a Chinese model struggling to eat spaghetti and a large pastry with chopsticks. After the video was widely criticized in China as insulting, a well-known fashion blogger leaked an Instagram conversation with Gabbana in which the designer fumed about the criticism, referred to China using several poo emoji and then blurted out: China Ignorant Dirty Smelling Mafia. (Gabbana later claimed he was hacked.) With models, event staff and celebrity guests pulling out hours before the event and calling for a boycott, the labels Great Show was in tatters before it started on Wednesday. By Friday, so was the brands reputation. Numerous e-commerce sites including Alibaba and JD.com, the countrys two biggest platforms, removed the brands products. As did Lane Crawford, a leading luxury department store in China, at least one duty-free shop and the U.S.-based e-commerce site Net-a-Porter. We believe that brands need to be aware of the cultural implications of their actions and understand the potential backlash when customers feel their values have been disrespected, Lane Crawford President Andrew Keith said in a statement Friday. Customers have been returning Dolce & Gabbana products to our stores. With respect to our customers, we have taken the decision to remove the brand from all stores in mainland China, online and in Hong Kong. China is no stranger to boycotts. Japanese and South Korean companies have been targeted in government-stoked campaigns during periods of geopolitical tension between Beijing and its neighbors. But Dolce & Gabbanas troubles this week felt different more profound as organic grass-roots anger roiled Chinese social media all week, said Jerry Clode, head of digital and social insight at Resonance, a Shanghai agency that advises luxury brands. There wasnt a national political context. This was grass-roots anger that snowballed into a real catastrophe, Clode said. Now, its unclear how or when Dolce & Gabbana will recover in its most crucial market. But if history is any indication, it will bounce back. Gabbana has previously lashed out at gay parents, openly mocked female celebrities as ugly, derided fat people and reveled in his ability to catch flak by designing ironic "#Boycott Dolce & Gabbana white tees. Theyre available for $295. He recently was criticized for denying the existence of sexual harassment in Italy, for dismissing the #MeToo movement and for voicing support for First Lady Melania Trump in a fashion industry largely opposed to her husband. And through it all, his label has emerged unscathed and stronger than ever, recording record sales of 1.3 billion euros in 2017. In a May interview with the Washington Post, Gabbana was unapologetic about his penchant for stirring controversy, saying he was merely unshackled from political correctness. I love to be free, he said. Free, free, free, free, free. I love to say what I think. Shih writes for the Washington Post. Kelly Olynyks time as a Celtic has concluded, and now the big man is hoping to finish up his business in Boston. His wharf-side townhouse in the Charlestown Navy Yard is on the market for $1.599 million. He bought the home three years ago for $1.35 million while still on his rookie contract, real estate records show. Outfitted with surround sound and hardwood floors in every room, the multi-level floor plan holds three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms in 2,522 square feet. There are two living rooms; both boast fireplaces and take in views of the passing boats through floor-to-ceiling windows. 1 / 14 Kelly Olynyks Boston townhouse (Douglas Elliman ) 2 / 14 Kelly Olynyks Boston townhouse (Douglas Elliman ) 3 / 14 Kelly Olynyks Boston townhouse (Douglas Elliman ) 4 / 14 Kelly Olynyks Boston townhouse (Douglas Elliman ) 5 / 14 Kelly Olynyks Boston townhouse (Douglas Elliman ) 6 / 14 Kelly Olynyks Boston townhouse (Douglas Elliman ) 7 / 14 Kelly Olynyks Boston townhouse (Douglas Elliman ) 8 / 14 Kelly Olynyks Boston townhouse (Douglas Elliman ) 9 / 14 Kelly Olynyks Boston townhouse (Douglas Elliman ) 10 / 14 Kelly Olynyks Boston townhouse (Douglas Elliman ) 11 / 14 Kelly Olynyks Boston townhouse (Douglas Elliman ) 12 / 14 Kelly Olynyks Boston townhouse (Douglas Elliman ) 13 / 14 Kelly Olynyks Boston townhouse (Douglas Elliman ) 14 / 14 Kelly Olynyks Boston townhouse (Douglas Elliman ) Advertisement In addition, theres a formal dining room and an updated kitchen with a center island. Up above, the master suite is lined with windows and built-ins. A pair of private decks, as well as a covered parking spot, round out the property. The Sarkis Team at Douglas Elliman holds the listing. A native of Canada, Olynyk played his college ball at Gonzaga, where he won the WCC Player of the Year award in 2013. Following four years with the Celtics, he signed with the Miami Heat on a four-year deal worth $50 million. jack.flemming@latimes.com | Twitter: @jflem94 Black Panther redefined superhero movies. Can it do the same thing for the Oscars? Welcome to the Gold Standard, the newsletter from the Los Angeles Times that helps guide you through the ins and outs of the awards season leading up to the Oscars. Im Glenn Whipp, The Times awards columnist and your newsletter host. Black Panther aiming for best picture nomination Advertisement Theres never been anything ordinary about Black Panther, the Marvel blockbuster that became the third-highest-grossing movie ever in the U.S. and brought in $1.35 billion worldwide. It had the fun and fighting and things blowing up, but it also told truths about father-son relationships, about a fatherless child, about young, independent, strong, brilliant women and their place in the world with them standing in their truths and in their purpose, cast member Angela Bassett told me for this weeks Envelope cover story. And, Bassett continued, think of when [Michael B. Jordans character] Killmonger says, Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors because freedom is more desirable than bondage. If youre black in America and have read history, you unpack that. Its more than one sentence. Its a whole history lesson. Black Panther is aiming to make more history of its own and become the first superhero movie to earn an Oscar nomination for best picture. Right now, Id say its right on track. Academy voters have been far more willing to consider all kinds of movies for best picture in recent years. (Think Get Out.) The worthy Black Panther should continue that trend. Actress Cicely Tyson accepts her Oscar at the 10th Governors Awards. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times) Everyones a fan at the Governors Awards Dreamlike encounters are part and parcel of the Governors Awards, an untelevised event that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences established in 2009 as an evening to bestow its honorary Oscars. This years recipients included actress Cicely Tyson, producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, composer Lalo Schifrin and publicist Marvin Levy. I covered the event for The Times on Sunday night, spending part of the evening with Elsie Fisher, the 15-year-old star of the excellent Eighth Grade. Her highlight? Meeting Lin-Manuel Miranda, who was geeking out that she, like him, had been a guest on the comedy advice podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me. Forget all the EGOTs who may be in this room, Miranda told Fisher. Theres, like, six people who have been guest experts on that show. That is the exclusive club. Constance Wu and Henry Golding in Crazy Rich Asians. (Sanja Bucko / Warner Bros. Pictures) An early look at what might be nominated at the Golden Globes With separate categories for drama and comedy/musical, the Golden Globes cast a wide net, meaning that cast members from popular films like Crazy Rich Asians can party with the filmmakers from serious dramas like Roma and If Beale Street Could Talk. (Look for Black Panther to be a force here too.) I ran through the main categories, offering predictions for both movies and television. Also on the Globes front, I spoke to Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. President Meher Tatna about the groups financial support for journalism advocacy groups. The HFPA donated $1 million to both the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists this year. CPJ executive director Joel Simon said the donation came at a critical juncture when more journalists worldwide are imprisoned than at any other time in history. The grant enabled the CPJ to, among other things, bolster its emergencies program, which helps evacuate threatened reporters and supports their families when theyre jailed. Press freedom is declining around the world, and the United States, which was a key ally in defense of press freedom around the world, is no longer playing that role, so we have a lot of work to do, Simon said. And that donation and the visibility that came with it was a huge boost. Feedback? Id love to hear from you. Email me at glenn.whipp@latimes.com. Cant get enough about awards season? Follow me at @glennwhipp on Twitter. glenn.whipp@latimes.com Twitter: @glennwhipp Kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers, Nobel Prize winners and Medal of Freedom recipients. When its time to throw a real-life story into the awards season race, you may as well go big or go home. Think 2010s The Kings Speech, 2012s Lincoln, 2014s The Theory of Everything about Stephen Hawking and Selma about Martin Luther King Jr., and 2017s Winston Churchill film Darkest Hour. Now take a look at 2018s lineup of award season subjects. Sure, there are stories of heroes: First Man looks at Neil Armstrong and On the Basis of Sex tells us about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But theres something else going on this season in the telling of real-life stories. Consider the elderly bank robber (Forrest Tucker, The Old Man & the Gun), a scandalized senator (Gary Hart, The Front Runner), a forger (Lee Israel, Can You Ever Forgive Me?), a groundbreaking writer (Colette), a painter with mental health issues (Vincent van Gogh, At Eternitys Gate) and arguably the nations most powerful vice president (Dick Cheney, Vice). Of course, none of the filmmakers behind these entrants collaborated to bring us this particular rogues gallery, but the collection as a whole does present an interesting look at where our cinematic curiosity lies this year with iconoclasts, rule-breakers, outsiders and runners-up of history. These are the stories were drawn to, says Jay Carson, who wrote Front Runner with Matt Bai. The huge person that everyones focused on, and that 6,000 books have been written about no thank you. If you say to us, Heres a little thing you thought you knew and you didnt, and its really relevant for today and no one knows the story you got me. Advertisement Forrest Tucker is a minor character in history who saw himself as bigger than he was, says Old Man director David Lowery. Theres something beautiful and tragic about that, these characters who want to be legends but never manage to pull it off. Robert Redford in the film The Old Man & The Gun. (Eric Zachanowich / Twentieth Century Fox) Not only are these characters refreshingly not required to be upright paragons of history, often these are the stories we havent heard told and retold. They didnt lead countries through a world war or civil war, but they can still have an impact on humankind that lasts centuries, says At Eternitys Gate producer Jon Kilik. Some of these outsider subjects are trailblazers ahead of their time, like the writer Colette, whose husband used his name to market her works. Their discovery arc can make a story straight-up inspiring. Its about a woman breaking free, a woman challenging societal norms, says director Wash Westmoreland. People throughout history live ahead of their times, and you have to wait for the times to catch up with them. Colette is like that. But other characters require some finessing to make them palatable. Director Marielle Heller front-loaded her Can You Ever Forgive Me? story of Israel with an opening scene in which she raises a middle finger to the strait-laced annoying bosses after swigging whiskey at work. Almost every director hates the term likable, because youre hoping that youre not having to worry about that with your characters, she says, noting colorfully that Lee doesnt care what people think. She moves through the world with an attitude that is so different than most people and I found her refreshing. And once you know her life and her experience, you think, I might do the same. Christian Bale as Dick Cheney in Vice. (Greig Fraser / Annapurna Pictures) As for Vice, making the controversial Cheney a relevant figure required digging into his background, says director Adam McKay. Were told that all the pieces of this history are boring, but they just needed to be assembled, he says. We found this epic American story that tracks with the American dream of a kid from nowhere who starts to climb and have remarkable success. His story tracks with the arc of America in the last 50 or 60 years, and how that dream twisted and turned tragically, he says. Its nice to see people light up as the movie goes on, and they see a story that probably should have been a big story all along and wasnt. And thats one of the key features in any story about an outsider: If they arent regarded as historically important what makes them worthy of a two-hour (or more) movie now? A big part of it, say filmmakers, is that their lives have specific meaning in the here and now. They reflect the rest of us, says Front Runner director Jason Reitman. Their heroics and their tragedy reflect us in this moment as we try to figure out how to navigate 2018. These characters say more about us than they say about themselves. Adds star Hugh Jackman, Sometimes we want to understand the major figures in history and remind us of their character but sometimes we want to actually question ourselves as to why some people were not bigger in history. Films can really look at our world, and not just at the heroes and villains but who we ignore and forget. Lowery feels similarly. We see the best of ourselves when we go to see Lincoln or Darkest Hour. We see the ideals to which we strive. David Lowery (Andreas Rentz / Getty Images) But when we go to see outsiders and iconoclasts, he adds, its a very different story. Then its about their darker sides and ours. When we watch someone on the margins or who makes the wrong choices, he says, we see precisely what we might become. It goes both ways. calendar@latimes.com With three Oscar nominations between them, the collaboration of screenwriter David Magee (Life of Pi, Finding Neverland) and Rob Marshall (Chicago) could have been a clash of egos. Instead, when the pair came together (with co-screenwriter-producer John DeLuca, Marshalls working and personal partner of 36 years) to bring Mary Poppins Returns to the big screen, they shared complete harmony. The Envelope joined Marshall and Magee for a chat in New Yorks Beekman Hotel to talk about what made their pairing, and Poppins, take flight. Why did you two click so quickly? Marshall: His humanity, who he is. I liked David right away; I liked his heart, I liked his vulnerability. Advertisement Magee: When you have those first conversations, you can tell quickly whether or not youre speaking the same language. But you know very quickly, if youre finishing each others sentences. Marshall: With anybody I work with, including actors, ego has got to be checked at the door. And the best idea in the room has to win. The goal was to find collaborators who had this in their blood. Writer and director Rob Marshall, in suit jacket, is seen with co-writer David Mcgee at the Beekman Hotel Manhattan, NY. (Jennifer S. Altman / For The Times) Youre two 50-something guys from the American Midwest, though, and there you are tackling this beloved British childrens classic. Was there any cognitive dissonance going on? Magee: Well, Ive been writing British films for years. When I got to write Finding Neverland years ago, it was a fluke someone was looking for a writer and I happened to be sitting there and I raised my hand. The people assumed I was British because I had written it and then I started getting offers for British films. Marshall: Its something you have an innate instinct for, for whatever reason. I lived in London for a year as a kid when I was 11, my father was an English professor and we were there on sabbatical. Its like a second home for me, and John [DeLuca] worked on the West End as a performer. Mary Poppins Returns star Emily Blunt and director Rob Marshall pose for a portrait in New York, N.Y., on Oct. 17, 2018. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) Mary Poppins came out in 1964, which when we look back was a time of great cultural upheaval that led to social upheaval. Its interesting that Returns is coming out when it is. Do you think theres a connection? Marshall: Yes, we all feel it. I do feel our movies are an escape, but its an emotional film that deals with deeper issues I think people will connect with now. When I asked Meryl Streep to do it, she was like, In a fragile time, I want to be a part of sending this message out into the world. I also understand youve left a little personal Easter egg in the film the youngster Georgies giraffe is named Gillie, after Rob and Johns dog, correct? Marshall: We knew she didnt have much time she was already 15 years old, and she passed away at the age of 18. Tibetan terriers are supposed to live between 12 and 15 years, so we were treasuring every moment. Because John and I dont have children, she was like our child. So we gave her name to the giraffe and then theres a scene at the end where everyone is going up in balloons and our assistant Caroline is holding the dog. So shes in the film, too. Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins in the official Poster Art. (Walt Disney Pictures / TNS) How did the different elements of the script come together? Were you sitting alongside composers Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman to figure out where to fit the songs in? Marshall: We would meet for a couple of times a week, just talking about what might happen. I would type up a synopsis of what wed describe and write, But I dont know what happens here. Then wed read our notes and pick up the conversation from there. Magee: It was a fascinating process because Ive never written a musical before. I would write a scene knowing a song was coming, but not exactly knowing where. I would talk my way into the song, then share it and say, Somewhere in here the song takes over and sometimes I would write the button on the scene, knowing the very next thing was the song. Musicals in general have really made a comeback from a dry period in the 80s and 90s. Why did they ever go away? Marshall: I have a funny feeling that genres are never dead. Its how they get approached, how theyre done. Magee: Something like Game of Thrones its not about the dragons, its about the characters. Its the same with musicals; they have to be about people, and then music is allowed in the world. You have to respect that. As you knew it would, Bravos TV version of the podcast Dirty John, starring Connie Britton and Eric Bana, doubles nicely as a Very Special Episode(s) of its The Real Housewives of Orange County franchise: Affluent suburban businesswoman falls for dangerous con man (insert presidential-election voter demographics joke here). Glossy and well-acted, its transfer from your daily commutes most suspenseful listening stretch ever to serviceable wine-and-laundry-folding companion show feels, all in all, a smooth one. Its also potboiler-friendly enough to make you forget it started as investigative journalism, a six-part true-crime roller coaster brought to you last year by this newspaper, and whose audio version was met with the kind of download numbers destined to catch the eye of television executives. In the wake of Dirty John and Amazons adaptation of Homecoming, podcasts are the new source niche, unearthing or creating stories that lodge nicely into the increasingly popular event-series maw that episodic television wants to feed. (Now in the works, apparently: a TV adaptation of the medical horror podcast Dr. Death.) Of the three episodes out of eight made available for review, the series, which starts Sunday, so far hews closely to the reported details. But it also wouldnt feel entirely out of place in the sun-kissed noir of a Ross Macdonald novel about family secrets. Interior designer Debra Newell (Britton), unlucky in love after four marriages, meets anesthesiologist John Meehan (Bana) via online dating, and sparks fly. Debras perma-sneering grown daughter Veronica (Juno Temple), however, hardly considers this shorts-and-sneakers suitor boyfriend material. To her mom, Johns charming attentiveness and riveting backstory of being a combat medic in Iraq wins out over his limited wardrobe. But Veronicas first impression, as she relates to her and Debras family counselor, is, Whos the homeless frat guy? Advertisement (Veronicas a name change from Jacquelyn, in case you listeners were wondering.) Things move fast for Debra and John, but the suspicions of Veronica and her younger sister Terra (Julia Garner), who openly despise moms new squeeze, move just as quickly and spur them to check his background. Caught between basking in the glow of being in a committed romance again and aggravating daughters shes never had the best relationship with, Debra tries her best to be Switzerland as tensions mount. But when the work of a private investigator, and Debras own snooping, reveals a scarier picture of Johns background and possible motives, circling the wagons seems the only option. To the unfamiliar, Dirty John the series, as shepherded by showrunner Alexandra Cunningham (Desperate Housewives, Chance), may come off as one more Lifetime-adjacent women-in-peril story albeit elegantly scissored from the headlines. But fans of the podcast will surely be looking to see how closely the performances synch with their first clenched experience hearing it from an omniscient host reporter with the recollections of the subjects themselves. In that respect, the cast chosen to be this iterations dramatic avatars was shrewdly assembled. Britton effortlessly conveys the vulnerable romantic inside the capable, put-together exterior of a successful woman. Bana, whose star power has always suggested something mysteriously closed off, does his part selling the rascally appeal and, of course, the escalating creep factor. But its Britton who does the heavy lifting of semi-willful obliviousness, and shes great. Her best scenes are when, as the evidence mounts against John, denial begins to color her measured words and freeze her expression, like the faintest hint of a captive fragrance. RELATED: It hooked readers and podcast listeners but can Dirty John seduce TV viewers? As Debras daughters, Temple looks to be mining a well-trod Southern California materialistic stereotype for flashes of tart humor and sneaky intelligence, while Ozark regular Garner vocal fry intact, big eyes ever expressive, but blond frizz straightened effectively renders the sensitivity and fear in someone who believes in a coming zombie apocalypse but may need to briefly supplant that concern with her doubts about mothers new dude. Theres also the reliably sturdy presence of Jean Smart as Debras soft-spoken mother, who adores John and supports Debra, but maybe not in the way thats most emotionally healthy. During a quiet heart-to-heart when Debra expresses worry about her kids hating John, the message subtly conveyed is to make the relationship work when Smart casually sighs about her romantic prospects, I think this is it for you. Mom! Dirty John is solidly pulpy, but so far, no more. There are lies big and little, and there will be an object that is sharp, but hardly anything to threaten HBOs serialized drama cache. If the first two episodes suffer from anything, its the weight of expectation, the knowledge that menace is around the corner, but rudimentary scene-setting is whats immediately in view. Episode three, however, effectively splits the action between present dread and past sins just as the original podcast did with the unveiling of Johns background and amounts to an old-fashioned nail-biter with some effectively chilling moments. You might not get everything from the dryer squared away during that one. Dirty John Where: Bravo When: 10 p.m. Sunday Rated: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14) ALSO Read the original investigative series by Christopher Goffard: Dirty John See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour As of Thanksgiving Day, the devastation logged by the Camp fire in Northern California was nearly 14,000 homes, more than 150,000 acres and at least 83 lives. Some of the thousands displaced by the fire, mostly from the town of Paradise, said they nonetheless counted themselves among the lucky and found things to be grateful for this Thanksgiving. Here are their stories. Steve Weathington, 67, and his girlfriend, Irene Schwab, 65, are pretty sure their little green house in the forest is no more but they made it out with their two trucks and four pets. (Corina Knoll / Los Angeles Times) For the kindness of strangers, and the capacity to start over Advertisement They called it their little green house in the forest. A two-bedroom mobile home with a birdbath out front on Skyway where deer and bobcats roamed. It is probably gone, they think, because they have seen a map of the burn area a cloud of red over where they lived for four years. Steve Weathington, 67, and his girlfriend, Irene Schwab, 65, now lay their heads on green cots in an exhibit hall at the Yuba-Sutter Fairgrounds. Their possessions are few, but they made it out with their two trucks, two dogs and two cats. A fortune compared to what others escaped with, they know. The morning the fire broke out, the couple had sat down to waffles and eggs when they noticed the sky was a smoky orange. Schwab went outside to settle a patio umbrella that was thrashing in the wind. A manager of their mobile home park started driving around honking. Grabbing clothes, toiletries, medicine and the animals, Weathington hopped into his truck. Schwab followed behind in hers. It was burning on both sides of the road you could feel the heat from the flames, Schwab recalled. It took them more than three hours to get to Chico, usually a 25-minute drive. They are grateful to be alive, to have had insurance on their home, to be capable and willing to start somewhere new. They may stay and find a place in Yuba City, a community theyve grown to appreciate. When they venture out of the shelter, an act of kindness is usually bestowed upon them. Waitresses have bought them dinner, a barber refused money for a haircut. They have picked out clothes for free and marveled over the donations that file in daily. We get a little teary-eyed because its really emotional, said Weathington, a retired commercial painter and veteran of the U.S. Marines, his eyes growing red. Still, the timing of everything is hard to take. The couple used to host Thanksgiving dinner for family with a spread of traditional fare, including pumpkin cheesecake and homemade biscuits. The holiday rings a bit hollow now, eliciting memories of what they once had. Patrick Sweeney, 60, lost his Paradise home to the Camp fire but was feeling grateful for an RV offered to him by a stranger, a new home found for him by his brother and a fresh start. (Laura Newberry / Los Angeles Times) For a temporary roof and bright green Chuck Taylors On the day before Thanksgiving, Patrick Sweeney sat beneath an awning at Bidwell Junior High School in Chico and watched the rain fall. Sweeney had been at the temporary shelter for Camp fire evacuees for five days. This was his last. Like so many others, he lost his home in Paradise, a condominium next to the high school; hed lived there for two years after retiring from his job as a computer drafter. The 60-year-old was alone at the shelter. His pug-chihuahua mix, whom he shared the condo with, was being taken care of at the Chico airport. He buys books at the Goodwill down the street and tears through them. It keeps his mind busy. Sweeney insisted he felt lucky, despite it all. A benevolent woman offered her RV to him, no questions asked, after connecting with him on a website made for evacuees in search of housing. Thats where he will stay until he moves into a condo in Chico in January. His brother, a well-connected money manager, found the place for him. It hadnt even been put on the market yet. Gazing down at a pair of bright green Chuck Taylors he got for free at the Goodwill, Sweeney said he was grateful for the food and water and clothes given to him by the Red Cross. Hes grateful for a fresh start, even though he was not prepared for one. I feel like a different person. Part of me is lost up there, he said of Paradise, and part of me is found down here. This sense of peace has not come easy. Sweeney has been talking to a minister at the shelter to work through his trauma. He is often overwhelmed by confusion. Many years sober, hes had an urge to drink over the last two weeks. But he hasnt given in yet. He is proud of that. I dont want to go backwards. I want to go forward, he said. I want to feel and understand and maybe even help people along the way. Victoria Gray watches her mother, Tamra, try on shoes she bought for her. The family lost their Paradise home of 20 years and three dogs in the Camp fire. (Laura Newberry / Los Angeles Times) For family to support her through it all Tamra Grays Facebook friends have started posting photos of their newly decorated Christmas trees. When she stumbles upon the images of normalcy, she can barely hold it together. Its hard to think about the holidays right now, she said as she sat at a table in the Chico Mall food court, where she and her husband were discussing their options with a home insurance company representative. I dont have a home to put a tree in right now. Gray and her husband, Scott, lived in their Paradise home on Oak Way for 20 years. What she will miss the most are the pine trees in her backyard and the cool shade they provided, a simple pleasure she could count on even when the mercury hit 100. At 10 a.m. the day of the fire, Grays 19-year-old son, Dylan, came running down the street. He had gotten stuck in gridlock traffic on Wagstaff Road. Seeing the plumes of black smoke ahead of him, he ditched his car in the closest parking lot and darted home, the only one hes ever known. Theres a fire, we gotta get out, he shouted. They had not received an evacuation alert. Gray did not think the house would burn. They lived a block from a fire station. Before leaving, she touched a redwood keepsake box that contained her childrens first teeth. If I take this to a shelter, it could get stolen, she thought. She left it. The family also left three dogs behind, taking several others with them in separate cars. Grays thinking was this: If there was looting, the big dogs would protect the home. Gray found the dogs remains when she returned to Paradise last week. She is consumed by guilt. Gray, and her family four adults and two kids are staying in an RV as they search for a rental. Her 29-year-old daughter, Shannon, also lost her home in Magalia. I feel lost. I just feel so homesick and I cant seem to get past that yet, Gray said, tearing up. Its hard for me to think about where I want to be in the future. Just as she was being asked what she is grateful for on the eve of Thanksgiving, Grays teenage daughter, Victoria, bounded up to her in the food court smiling as she held several shopping bags. I got you shoes, Victoria said, pulling out a pair of gray Champion slip-ons. They were on sale. Gray pulled off one of the brown Ugg boots she got at a shelter. She tried on a sneaker. Im grateful that my family made it out alive, Gray said, returning to the question. Its easy to answer that when its staring me right in the face. Its when Im alone that I go into a dark place. John Owens lost his home and car, but has his wife, dog and part-time manufacturing job keeping him going. (Ruben Vives / Los Angeles Times) That his time on Earth isnt over John Owens, 57, lost his home and car in the fire. He said he was clinging to what he had left: his wife, dog and a part-time manufacturing job. Wearing a reddish hooded rain poncho, Owens shivered in the tent city erected in Chico for fire refugees. Owens said he hadnt left because transportation to his job was best from where he was now. He said he had to commute between Chico and Yuba City, about 45 miles. This stinks, he said. I told my boss I cant hang here for too long. If its going to be like this, I wont last long. Ill have to quit my job and go to the shelter. He and his wife are sharing a tent together. They planned to have Thanksgiving with their daughter. Owens didnt want to stay with her because he didnt want to be a burden. Despite the losses and having to endure the cold, wet weather, Owens said hes grateful to be alive. You only got a short period of time on this place, he said, referring to Earth. You gotta have a good time. Duane DAmico in Chico after fleeing flames in Paradise, Calif. (Ruben Vives / Los Angeles Times) For his dog, Zero, and cat, Monkeys Duane DAmico and his dog, Zero, walked back and forth on a grassy knoll next to a Burger King in Chico as the rain poured. Wearing a torn, smoke-stained Santa Claus hat, DAmico, 60, said he lost his home in Paradise as he was trying to help save a neighbors home. He and his dog narrowly escaped the flames. As the fire began to move into the town, DAmicos cat woke him up. He ran to his neighbors homes, kicking doors down at times to make sure they evacuated. My toes are black from all the kicking, he said, adding that he didnt feel the pain until now. He said he saw some trailers blow up and assumed the explosions were from gas pipes and propane tanks left on. Amid the chaos, he said his cat, Monkeys, jumped out of his gray Ford truck as he was packing to leave. When he and his dog fled, the town was burning. Since escaping, he has been sleeping in his truck. He doesnt want to go to a shelter, noting that a norovirus outbreak was reported at one Chico evacuation center. He has family in Los Angeles who will bring him a trailer. Theyve invited him to stay with them. He has declined. He prefers to be close to his adult daughter, who lives nearby. He doesnt want to stay with her and be a burden, he said. The rain got heavier, and DAmico stopped walking Zero and opened the drivers side door of his truck. The dog hopped in. Things will be OK, he said. He is alive. Zero is alive. As for Monkeys? They found him 13 miles away with burned paws, he said. Hes grateful for the help hes been getting. But as for enjoying a traditional Thanksgiving, he said, There is none. Theres no Christmas either. But things will be alright. Times staff writer Victoria Kim contributed to this report. Insulters should pay the price, but prudence, calm urged amid rising patriotism Italian fashion house Dolce and Gabbana (D&G) is facing a large-scale backlash not only from Chinese e-commerce platforms and consumers but also from Chinese working and studying in Italy, after the brand was accused of racism in its promotions for a fashion show in Shanghai. The spread of D&G's controversial videos, as well as the insults allegedly made by one of its senior executives, have triggered outrage among Chinese consumers. Hashtags such as "D&G, get out of China" and "D&G insulting China" gained over 2 billion page views as of press time, with users calling for a boycott of the brand and Chinese celebrities terminating their contracts with the fashion brand. When asked to comment, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang told an Italian reporter at the daily press briefing on Thursday that the nature of the D&G controversy is not a diplomatic one, nor does China intend to upgrade the issue to a diplomatic matter. Geng also noted that instead of asking him, the reporter should ask Chinese people about how they view this issue. D&G products could not be located on China's major e-commerce websites on Thursday. Searches of "Dolce&Gabbana" in jd.com and the Alibaba-operated Tmall online shopping platform yielded no results. Another e-commerce platform, xiaohongshu.com, has also removed all D&G products, saying that "interests of the motherland should not be infringed" and that "all forms of cooperation are based on respect," according to a statement it sent to the Global Times. About a dozen of Chinese citizens, including students and fashion buyers, protested in front of D&G's flagship store in Milan Wednesday evening, a witness surnamed Ding said. Ding holds up a leaflet handed to him by a number of Chinese people protesting in front of D&G's flagship store in Milan on Wednesday. The leaflet reads "Not Me," the words Gabbana pasted over images of the alleged comments on his personal Instagram account. Photo: Courtesy of Ding Ding, who is also a Chinese daigou (someone who purchases goods on behalf of their customers) who lives in Milan, told the Global Times on Thursday that he received four refund requests for D&G products on Wednesday. "One customer, though not seeking a refund, said that after he receives the D&G T-shirt he would cut out the logo and wear it as pajamas," said Ding, adding that D&G products usually sell quite well in the lucrative Chinese market. Ireland-based newspaper Irish Sun reported Wednesday that the Asia-Pacific region makes up around 30 percent of D&G sales. D&G has more than 50 stores in China, including those in Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai. Some Chinese who used to be fond of the brand told the Global Times on Thursday that they won't buy D&G products in the future. "The unfriendly attitude is rooted in the spirit and bones of the brand," a Shanghai-based consumer told the Global Times on Thursday on condition of anonymity. The strong reaction from Chinese consumers stems from several videos the brand posted on Twitter and Instagram over the weekend showing a Chinese woman being told how to use chopsticks to eat Western food. The films were designed to promote a fashion show scheduled to be held at Wednesday night. The show was canceled Wednesday afternoon following the eruption of the controversy. Mixed mood Wang Sixin, a professor at the Beijing-based Communication University of China, said he felt offended by the "condescending" and "disrespectful" depiction of Chinese culture in the videos. "I don't feel very comfortable after watching those films," he told the Global Times. Media reported that an Instagram user added fuel to the fire by posting screenshots of an alleged conversation between D&G design director Stefano Gabbana and another fashion designer on Instagram. The chat record appears to show Gabbana using a string of emojis to suggest that "the country of shit is China." D&G issued a statement on Wednesday, claiming the Instagram account had been hacked. It apologized to Chinese consumers on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo in Chinese Wednesday. In a separate Wednesday statement, the company said "What happened today was very unfortunate not only for us, but also for all the people who worked day and night to bring this event to life." Zhi Zhenfeng, a legal expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that the video can be considered cultural misunderstanding but Stefano Gabbana's comments are "surely racist." Wang stressed that as China becomes an increasingly important global market, it is important that citizens should respond to such incidents with prudence and calm. The protests are individual actions, said Wang, noting that "the incident should not escalate into a social campaign overtaken by patriotic or nationalistic feelings." "Insulting China is serious, and foreign brands should pay the price if they do. But we should also be mindful that misunderstandings caused by differences in ideology, culture and politics should not be exaggerated, and that patriotism should be manifested in a calm way," he said. Los Angeles County Sheriffs Deputy Anna Stebbins pulled up to the Walmart in Palmdale on Thursday night and came upon a pre-Black Friday scene she had heard about before, but had never experienced at the megastore: Hordes of shoppers were shouting in each others faces in the parking lot, and a crowd of more than 100 people gathered around them with their phones fixed on the confrontation. Stebbins and about seven other deputies the Palmdale stations entire Thanksgiving evening shift, by her estimate stepped out of their patrol cars and tried to break up the fracas. It was a really crazy scene, she said. Advertisement She spoke with employees working the doorbuster event, who told her they didnt know whether the warring factions were yelling over a specific item, or if the fight was about something else. Though no injuries were reported, the Palmdale scene was the latest chapter from the darker side of Americas Thanksgiving tradition. At least 11 people have died due to Black Friday-related injuries throughout the U.S. since 2006, including a Long Island Walmart employee who was trampled by a mob of shoppers in 2008. The chaos has become so common during the sales that even the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued safety guidelines for stores to protect employees. The scuffle at the Palmdale Walmart began inside the store around 6:30 p.m., authorities said. Store employees told deputies they initially thought theyd calmed the melee, but that it only moved outside. One of the people in the fight was said to have had a gun, Stebbins said, but deputies found no weapon at the scene. No arrests were made, she said. Emotions were high last night, she said. But they didnt tell us what started it. They were just way too angry. Stebbins said it seemed like the fight was between two families who kept calling reinforcements to join them in the lot. Ive been to Walmart on Black Friday. I know they set the store up a certain way, they move things around, she said. They put certain items that are doorbusters like a TV in a grocery area. They try to make it as calm as possible. Authorities temporarily closed one entrance to the Walmart, but the store remained open, Stebbins said. In California, several people have died and many others have been injured during or following Black Friday sales. Two women came to blows at a Palm Desert Toys R Us store in 2008, prompting the men they were with to also start arguing. The younger of the two lifted up his shirt and flashed a handgun, pulling the grip from his baggy pants pocket. The other man yanked out his own handgun and started chasing him down the aisle and firing, witnesses said. Both men were killed. A man from San Bruno was charged with two counts of vehicular manslaughter in 2013 after a Black Friday rollover crash killed two of his daughters and injured a CHP officer. Authorities said he had been driving on three hours sleep. Retailers strive to maintain order on some of the years busiest days, and Walmart is no stranger to such chaos. In 2011, a woman at a Porter Ranch store pepper-sprayed several customers in what authorities described as a shopping rage incident. In recent years, Walmart has worked with crowd management experts to develop Black Friday plans on the store level. Each location has spaced out its special sale products to smooth traffic flow. Walmart also has a mobile app that lets shoppers see a stores layout to help them navigate. Youve got families that go out in packs to go shop, Stebbins, the deputy, said. Something happens and the whole family jumps in, and thats what happened last night ... that was quite the scene to see. sarah.parvini@latimes.com For more California news follow me on Twitter: @sarahparvini UPDATES: 2:45 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details. This article was originally published at 9:10 a.m. Anna Longacre booked her flight home months ago. Back then, the 26-year-old Army sergeant imagined the comforts that awaited her Thanksgiving week, the things that never change no matter how far away from Paradise the military takes her: The old cast-iron stove that warmed the entire house during winter. The small stone-fruit orchard that ran along the side and back. Her dads breakfast hash browns. Annas family had lived on their 3-acre lot in the Sierra Nevada foothills for 20 years. She moved away at 18 and has been stationed in Afghanistan, South Korea and Kansas. Advertisement But her heart stayed in Paradise. Instead of being home Thanksgiving morning, she found herself in a cavernous auditorium at Chico State, where turkey and fixings had been prepared for evacuees of Californias deadliest and most destructive wildfire. She dragged her dad, Bruce, with her. She wanted to get him out of her grandmas house in Chico, where theyd been staying with her mom and dogs. And she had heard celebrity chefs Guy Fieri and Jose Andres were making the food. It couldnt hurt to try and have a little fun, she thought, despite everything. The father and daughter were greeted by volunteers in plush turkey hats and handed sanitary wipes at the door. The Thanksgiving meal, served in waves throughout the day and sponsored by Andres organization, World Central Kitchen, and Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., was expected to feed 15,000 evacuees and first responders. Volunteers served the Longacres dollops of mashed potatoes and stuffing and slices of pumpkin pie from a banquet-style buffet. The father and daughter sat across from each other at the the end of a long, empty table and began to dig in. Just as Anna was about to sample some cranberry sauce, she spotted Ms. Partain, her former English teacher from Paradise High School, and waved her over. I actually drove right past your house when I was evacuating with my cats, Virginia Partain, who was volunteering at the event, told them. I lost everything. We did too, Bruce Longacre, 61, said. We are phoenixes, Partain said. She hugged Anna. Seeing Partain beckoned memories of Annas high school days. Remember when you were Gold Nugget Queen? her dad asked. Haha, oh, cmon Dad, Anna said, a little embarrassed. As a teen, she had won the Miss Gold Nugget Pageant, a decades-long tradition that honored the hamlets prospecting past. Local retired women made the salmon-pink, 1800s-era hoop dress she wore on a float during the town parade, roses cradled in her right arm as she did the prom wave with her left. Thats Paradise roots right there, Bruce said. His eyes glistened. The parade would creep down Paradises main thoroughfare, Skyway. On Nov. 8, that road was choked with people trying to escape a fire that has killed at least 83 people. Anna is lucky enough, so far, to not know anyone who died. But what it means to be lucky is relative in times like these. Her mom, Doris Longacre, was home alone when the fire hit town. Doris 94-year-old mom was in the guest house on the property. Bruce was 30 miles west cutting almond wood to heat the house. When Doris texted him that she was evacuating, he didnt think it was a big deal. Growing up in California, you hear about fires all the time. Meanwhile, Anna was in the Bay Area city of Dublin for a week of Army training. She logged on to Facebook during a break. The whole town is being evacuated, one friend posted. Her body went numb. Her mom called. She was leaving with Grandma, she said. Anna heard a piercing frenzy in her moms voice. Doris escaped with her mom, three dogs and a picture of her own dad. That was it. They didnt have room in their Buick LeSabre for the two lovebirds, the cockatiel or the family photo albums. The family learned just three days ago through fire officials photographs that their home was among the more than 18,000 structures destroyed. Bruce, who supervised a cold storage warehouse before his partial retirement, is determined to rebuild in the same spot. Patches of the orchard with its plums, peaches and cherries made it, he pointed out. So did his baby-blue Ford tractor. They could even live in a modular home on the property while they rebuild. We can make ugly pretty again, Bruce said. He has stayed surprisingly positive through all of this, Anna observes as she takes a bite of pumpkin pie. Bruce shrugs. Theres nothing I could do about it, he said. Im a Christian, and it says in the Bible that without God youre nothing. Being burned out, I see what that really means. Anna is less accepting of this new reality. Thanksgiving is one thing, she said. Later, they will have dinner at her grandmas house with her mom and a few others. It is Christmas at home she will miss the most. Thats when her brother and sister come up from the Bay Area with their kids. Doris takes out her many nutcrackers her holiday obsession, Anna says and scatters them around the house. In the morning, Bruce makes his hash browns, browned and salted to perfection. In the afternoon, they ride four-wheelers as the dogs chase them through the orchard. At night, they sit outside on the covered deck softly lit by string lights. Unwilling to lose those traditions, Anna picked up an aluminum grater from Ikea before arriving in Butte County. She knew her dad would no longer have the tool required to make his potatoes. A volunteer stopped by the table, breaking Anna from her nostalgic reverie. This is for you, the volunteer said, placing a $100 Safeway gift card next to their now-empty paper plates. Bruce looked at the card, his expression relaying a measure of disbelief. Thank you, he whispered. This is perhaps the most unsettling part for Anna seeing her parents in need. She has become accustomed to their unrelenting generosity over the course of a lifetime, how they would insist on paying for every little thing when she was in town, well into her adulthood. Now it is her turn to take care of them. laura.newberry@latimes.com Twitter: @lauramnewberry For the last 10 years, the sound of police scanners has served as Thomas Gordens preferred soundtrack. He doesnt pay attention to every bit of information broadcast from the handful of devices he owns. But there are certain words and conversations hes learned to key in on. On Nov. 7, a call went out that someone had been shot outside Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks. Then another. Gorden listened to the drone of 911 calls picking up in the background. He realized there was nothing typical about this shooting. When [officers] went inside and said theyre going to need a lot of ambulances, thats when I realized this was a mass shooting, said Gorden, 22. Advertisement Gorden tweeted from @VCScanner his Twitter account that has amassed a following of thousands alerting many in the area to the shooting, including the first Los Angeles Times reporter on the scene. Jess Weihe had just been about to close her laptop when she saw Gordens all-caps tweet about the shooting. She stayed awake for several hours, anxiously refreshing her feed for more updates. Many in Thousand Oaks shared a similar story of a sleepless night after seeing the tweet that rattled their community. Early on, the not knowing is the scariest part, said Weihe, who lives in Newbury Park. Within 24 hours, another disaster hit Ventura County. First one fire, then a second. Gorden heard the call for the Hill fire in Ventura County. As that blaze grew, the Woolsey fire started to burn in Ventura and Los Angeles counties. As it headed toward Oak Park, Gorden began tweeting. At one point, he worked for 48 hours straight without sleep. He didnt slow down until this weekend. A lot of people are saying that they found my information more helpful than what officials were putting out, he said, or were able to evacuate earlier than other people who evacuated Oak Park after all the gridlock. Gorden, who lives with his parents in Simi Valley, got his first scanner 10 years ago and started the @VCScanner account in 2011. His most recent job was installing chair lifts along residential staircases, but he left his job in August due to chronic pain. Sometimes, he heads out to a crime or fire scene and shoots video, which he sells to news television stations. Video he shot after the Borderline shooting made it onto CNN, he said. At home, the scanners are always on. The first wildfire he actively covered was 2013s Springs fire in Ventura County. But it was last year, during the Thomas fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, that people started paying more attention. I learned a lot from that one, he said. People need to leave before theres an evacuation order. You cant rely on authorities to always get you out on time. In the case of the fires in Ventura County, Gorden said he heard from people who saw his tweets about 30 to 45 minutes before the official evacuation orders. Many said they relied on the account when they could smell smoke or see a fire but hadnt yet received an emergency alert. Cal Lutheran University senior Annabelle Worrall was in shock from the shooting, which took the life of Justin Meek, who graduated from the school in May. She was sitting across from her roommate at a table when she got a Twitter notification from @VCScanner about a wildfire. They couldnt believe it. Everyone was still freaked out from that day, said Worrall, 21. Worrall went to her house in Westlake Village, and a few hours later, she had to evacuate again. She eventually ended up in Pasadena. Were just exhausted. Im exhausted, she said. Police scanners arent foolproof methods for learning about emergencies, and authorities caution against reporting on whats overheard. There are rules Gorden abides by when it comes to sharing information. Tactics that could compromise the safety of police officers, for example, are something he never touches. Certain things shouldnt be tweeted, he said. Gordens @VCScanner account following grew from 6,000 to 26,000 after the Thomas fire and has doubled to 55,000 since this months back-to-back episodes. colleen.shalby@latimes.com Twitter: @cshalby soumya.karlamangla@latimes.com Twitter: @skarlamangla Conservative writer and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi is in plea negotiations with special counsel Robert Mueller, according to a person with knowledge of the talks. The talks with Corsi an associate of both President Trump and GOP operative Roger Stone could bring Muellers team closer to determining whether Trump or his advisers were linked to WikiLeaks release of hacked Democratic emails in 2016, a key part of his long-running inquiry. Corsi provided research on Democratic figures during the campaign to Stone, a longtime Trump adviser. For months, the special counsel has been scrutinizing Stones activities in an effort to determine whether he coordinated with WikiLeaks. Stone and WikiLeaks have repeatedly denied any such coordination. Stone has said that Corsi also has a relationship with Trump, built on their shared interest in the falsehood that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Advertisement David Gray, an attorney for Corsi, declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Mueller. Stone declined to comment on Corsis plea negotiations. An attorney for Trump declined to comment. The deal is not yet complete and could still be derailed. Last week, Corsi said his efforts to cooperate with prosecutors had broken down and that he expected to be indicted for allegedly lying. He described feeling under enormous pressure from Mueller and assured his supporters that he remained supportive of the president. In a webcast and a series of interviews, Corsi said he had spoken to prosecutors for 40 hours and feared he could spend much of the remainder of his life in prison. After two months of interviews, Corsi, 72, said he felt his brain was mush. Trying to explain yourself to these people is impossible, he added. I guess I couldnt tell the special prosecutor what he wanted to hear. At that time, he gave no indication that he intended to plead guilty, instead casting himself as an unfairly targeted victim of a Mueller campaign against Trump. Then, Corsi abruptly fell silent, canceling a scheduled Nov. 13 interview with NBC. Gray, his attorney, told NBC he had just spoken to the special counsels office and had advised Corsi to cancel. Since then, Corsi has resumed talks with Muellers team about a possible deal that could result in him agreeing to plead guilty in exchange for leniency, according to the person familiar with the situation. It is not clear what information Corsi could leverage to get a deal with prosecutors. However, he told the Daily Caller last week that prosecutors were focused on whether he had developed a source with inside information about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assanges plans. Corsi said he did not have a direct source to the group. Instead, he said he developed a theory that Assange had access to hacked emails belonging to Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and that WikiLeaks would release them in October 2016. He told the Daily Caller that he shared his prediction with many people, including Stone. If Mueller could prove that Corsi learned about Podestas emails from Assange or another person in contact with him, he could try to link WikiLeaks releases to Stone or others in Trumps world. Stone told the publication that Corsi never relayed such information. He never told me that he had figured out or believed that John Podestas emails had been stolen, Stone said. On Aug. 21, 2016, Stone tweeted: it will soon the Podestas time in the barrel. He has insisted his tweet had nothing to do with any plan by WikiLeaks and that it was based on research Corsi had provided to him about work Podesta and his lobbyist brother Tony had done involving Russia. He simply told me of their Russian business deals in banking gas and uranium, Stone said in a text message this week to the Washington Post. There was NO WikiLeaks context. Stone told the House Intelligence Committee in September 2017 that his Podesta tweet was based on a comprehensive, early August opposition research briefing provided to me by investigative journalist, Dr. Jerome Corsi, which I then asked him to memorialize in a memo that he sent me on August 31st, all of which was culled from public records. There was no need to have John Podestas email to learn that he and his presidential candidate were in bed with the clique around Putin. Stone has since said that the information in the Aug. 31 memo which he received 10 days after his now-infamous tweet was similar to information that Corsi had relayed to him verbally before the tweet. The prediction that Corsi said he made that Assange would publish Podestas emails was correct: On Oct. 7, 2016, WikiLeaks began publishing 50,000 emails stolen from Podestas account, releasing them in batches of a few thousand at a time each day leading up to the November election. Corsi told the Daily Caller that he based his prediction on public sources of information, including the fact that Podesta was not among the Democrats whose emails had been published by WikiLeaks when the group released Democratic National Committee correspondence in July. He said he concluded that WikiLeaks must be holding back Podestas correspondence to make a bigger splash later in the campaign. Podesta did not work for the DNC and the emails were stolen from his private Gmail account, not an address linked to the Democratic Party. Corsi told the Daily Caller that Muellers prosecutors did not believe his explanation and pressed him to name his WikiLeaks source. They were especially interested, he said, in a trip he took to Italy with his wife that he said coincided with his realization about the Podesta emails. They said they wanted me to tell the truth, Corsi said, but when I did tell the truth they told me it was preposterous, and they wouldnt accept it. Stone is under scrutiny because he made a series of comments during the campaign that suggested he was in contact with Assange and knew of WikiLeaks plans. Since then, Stone has vigorously contended that his comments were exaggerations based on public information, as well as tips from New York radio host and comedian Randy Credico. Stone has also told the Post that Corsi had a relationship with Trump and spoke directly with the Republican candidate during the campaign. Stone said the two men became friendly after Corsi published a book in 2011 advancing the false theory that Obama was not qualified to hold office because he was not born in the United States. Trump became a leading proponent of that falsehood. Earlier this month, two inmates on San Quentins death row were found dead but their lives did not end the way the state had intended them to. One was found in his cell and the other in a special unit for inmates with behavioral problems. If an investigation confirms initial suspicions that they took their own lives, they will be the 26th and 27th condemned California prisoners to have beaten the executioner to the punch by committing suicide since California reinstated capital punishment 40 years ago. Over that same time span, another 79 condemned inmates have died of natural causes mostly of old age and illnesses after decades of incarceration. The fact is, California has found it nearly impossible to carry out executions for decades, despite the law calling for it. Of the 971 California death sentences recorded by the Death Penalty Information Center since 1978, only 13 condemned inmates have been executed here, while Californians have paid more than $5 billion to maintain the system. That isnt much bang for the bureaucratic buck; one report estimated the state would save $170 million each year by converting all death sentences to life without parole. The death penalty is impracticable and unusable. But its also unfair and immoral. Advertisement So the death penalty is impracticable and unusable. But its also unfair and immoral. Death sentences disproportionately fall on minorities and the poor, and whether a murder merits the death penalty generally hinges on a decision by the local district attorney, which means that what might be considered a capital offense in one county isnt necessarily so in the neighboring county. Its hard to get more arbitrary than that. Further, there is credible evidence that innocent people have been executed, often as a result of convictions gained through prosecutorial misconduct or perjury. One study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences conservatively estimates that at least 4% a minimum of 100 people of the more than 2,700 people on death row nationwide are innocent of the murders for which they have been condemned. Since 1973, 164 condemned prisoners nationwide, including five in California, have been freed from death row after they were found to have been wrongfully convicted. When an innocent person is executed, thats not an error that can be remedied. It is a moral transgression that we, as a body politic, allow to happen in our names. Gov. Jerry Brown knows all this. So does Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom. Both oppose capital punishment, though Brown has chosen not to fight for this position during his current two terms as governor. Instead, he oversaw the drafting of a new single-drug lethal-injection protocol currently under legal challenge and sat out the 2016 initiative fight in which voters rejected ending the death penalty and voted instead to speed up the appeal process. Brown was wrong to stay silent. He should have spoken up on principle, and used his popularity to sway voters away from the injustice of Proposition 66. He can try to make up for some of his reticence now, but the calendar is running out. This would be a good issue on which to spend some of the healthy stash of political capital he has built up before he bows out in two months. Newsom, for his part, has long opposed the death penalty and was a vocal proponent of propositions in 2012 and 2016 to end it. He doesnt really need fact-finding on this issue. Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion Brown and Newsom ought to work together in the coming weeks to revive the abolition movement here in California. As an act of grace before he leaves office in addition to taking whatever executive actions he can to help Kevin Cooper and others on death row who may have been wrongly convicted Brown should make a forceful statement that reflects what he has said is in his heart: The death penalty is wrong. Brown, who has generally been generous with commutations, can take further steps as well; he could, for instance, begin the process of commuting the death sentences of people whose crimes were committed when they were young, before their brains, their judgment and their impulse control were fully developed. When Newsom takes office he should work with the new Democratic supermajority in the state Legislature to place a fresh anti-death penalty initiative on a future ballot, then use his bully pulpit to persuade Californians that it is not only fiscally but morally necessary to abandon the barbaric system. American public opinion already is shifting in that direction. While a small majority of people tell pollsters they still support capital punishment, that percentage is at its lowest since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the practice in 1976. (No California polls have been conducted since Proposition 66s passage.) And fewer juries are imposing death sentences even as states that still rely on capital punishment are executing fewer and fewer people. Our national evolving standard of decency is moving away from the brutal and immoral practice of killing people for their crimes. California should evolve as well. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook Its hard out there for an environmentally responsible but thirsty Angeleno someone who wants to grow a couple organic tomatoes in the backyard, take more than an occasional shower and still have enough money to repair the rain barrel after paying the various water bills, fees and taxes. Measure W, which voters passed on Nov. 6, will help. But it wont put an end to our water problems. The principal challenge is no longer growth, at least not here in Southern California. L.A. is pretty efficient: Total residential water use here has held steady through the last couple of decades despite a growing population. We use less per flush, and although there are still an imponderably large number of sponge-damp, emerald green lawns sucking up too many acre-feet of imported water, more residents and businesses have come to appreciate the handsome palettes and textures of agaves and native California sages and buckwheats. No, the problem now is climate change, a factor unseen and unknown when the states ambitious water distribution system was developed in the 20th century. Its hitting our supply in three places, the first of which is right here at home. Of the many nasty names that L.A. has been called by our snooty friends and neighbors, the nastiest is desert. Our exasperated and honest response has always been that no, we are not a desert. We have a Mediterranean climate. Check the rainfall totals. Average annual precipitation in Los Angeles is around 15 inches, well above the 10-inch cutoff that is a common definition of desert. Advertisement Cities can thrive in the desert. Look at Cairo, with virtually no rainfall, but a ready supply of water from the Nile. But on a warming planet, the climate zones shift. L.A. was not built in the desert, but the desert may be coming to us. Weve had a worrisome number of dry winters. The desiccated ground beneath us was an important factor in the deadly Malibu and Woolsey fires. Still, cities can thrive in the desert. Look at Cairo, with virtually no rainfall, but a ready supply of water from the Nile. We have our rivers too, artificially extended though they may be. But that brings us to the second location where climate change is cutting our water supply. The upper and lower Colorado River basins have been in a drought for close to two decades; Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam is only 38% full, and its unlikely to fill again. The lake is fed from upstream by Lake Powell, which is similarly depleted. Under a drought contingency plan negotiated with other Southwest states, California will take less Colorado River water than it gets now. Third, the sources of the water we import from both sides of the Sierra are being dried up by climate change and overuse. Environmentally oriented water thinkers have argued for years that the answer to L.A.'s threatened water supply is to reuse what we already have to sanitize and purify what we flush, and to capture and clean what we currently let slip away down the storm drain. Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion Measure W is an important, but tiny, step in that direction. Parcel tax proceeds will pay for projects to clean up the urban drool that runs off of lawns and driveways during the dry season, and the stormwater that otherwise would rush down concrete channels to the ocean after heavy rains. The primary objective is to put the region in compliance with clean water laws. But the amount of actual usable water we recoup from those projects is speculative. L.A. is on the right track, but it will have to move faster and even more purposefully if it is to avoid running out of water. Residents ought to keep a keen eye on Measure W project proposals, and should be prepared to ask of each, How much water will we get out of this? Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook If you believe recent reports, the Library Foundation of Los Angeles ALOUD program, where literati come to see important authors interviewed about their works, is doomed. These reports have prompted dire appeals at public meetings, angry opinion pieces and a petition protesting the reported demise of a program that has been at the heart of a small sector of the writing community. Id be outraged, too, if ALOUD were going away. But it isnt. The truth is we at the Library Foundation are changing ALOUD, and were changing it because we must. Advertisement The ALOUD literary series was created 16 years ago, and it has failed to keep up with the profound social and demographic changes that are reshaping the city and its cultural life. Our data show that it serves a very dedicated, niche audience that is increasingly unrepresentative of the patrons in the library systems 470-square-mile service area. As downtown L.A. explodes with new life, ALOUD isnt attracting new audience members. The foundation has known this for some time. Since 2014, a number of outside consultants have warned that ALOUD was beginning to stagnate. Its one-on-one interview format, once cutting-edge, was no longer unique. Its weeknight schedule of free programs anchored at the Central Librarys Taper Auditorium has rendered the series all but inaccessible to much of the public. As downtown L.A. explodes with new life, ALOUD isnt attracting new audience members from the dynamic mix of people filling lofts, art galleries and cafes surrounding the library. ALOUD has on average 50 empty seats per event. Meanwhile, ALOUD is facing competitive pressure. Book lovers and civic-minded residents are turning to bigger venues such as the ACE Hotel on Broadway, where they can also hear marquee authors and nationally recognized thought-leaders speak. ALOUD experimented over the last few years by holding a number of its own off-site events featuring authors, leading artists and prominent public figures such as Patti Smith, David Axelrod and Judy Blume. In May, ALOUD sold out the Aratani Theatre in Little Tokyo for an evening with former FBI Director James Comey discussing the Trump administration and the 2016 presidential election. It attracted 800 people from throughout the Los Angeles area who bought 665 books, compared to an average of 47 books sold at ALOUDs usual events. Major off-site programs generate essential revenue that can help support the rest of ALOUDs programming. But doing only one or two off-sites does not offset the increasing expenses for a series such as ALOUD. I wanted ALOUD managers to augment their regular schedule at the Taper with off-site events each year. This would widen the appeal of the program, raise its public profile and make ALOUD financially self-sufficient. I also hired additional staff in 2015 to help ALOUD with this new mandate. However, the program never consistently scheduled the number of off-sites that I requested. Unfortunately, based on my interactions with the former managers, who had been involved in all of our deliberations, I concluded that our visions were not aligned. Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion As a result, I decided to restructure the program and fold ALOUD into a bigger portfolio under a newly created management position for public programming. I regret that the Library Foundation hasnt been more forthcoming about the reasons for changing ALOUD. We kept silent out of respect for the former ALOUD managers, whose valuable work created a signature program. To those who have protested the changes, I promise that ALOUDs core programming will continue. You can expect to spend many nights each year at the Taper Auditorium listening to compelling authors discuss their works for free. But we cant stand still while the city around us is transformed and other programs lure away writers and commentators who once were exclusively ours. ALOUD must change. Building on its strong tradition, we will expand this series to reach a larger section of L.A.s cultural life. And we will do it by diversifying its events, its audience and its venues to engage with all of Los Angeles. Kenneth Brecher is president of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, a private nonprofit organization that provides philanthropic support for the Los Angeles Public Library. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook. The law school at UC Berkeley, after a yearlong review, has formally asked the chancellor to take the name Boalt off its building. The question remains, though, why John Henry Boalts name was ever affixed to University of California property in the first place. A lawyer in late 19th century Oakland, Boalts primary legacy was a virulently racist essay that launched the campaign for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned immigration of Chinese laborers to the U.S. for more than 60 years. In The Chinese Question, Boalt allowed that the Chinese might be smarter than some native tribes and preferable to the African Negro, but the Chinaman has brought to us and planted within our border all the vicious practices and evil tendencies of his home . He wrote that the Caucasian and Mongolian races were separated by a remarkable divergence in intellectual character and disposition. In Boalts view, the Chinese could not assimilate and the races should not associate with one another. By contrast, UC Berkeley and its law school in particular were ahead of the curve on welcoming diversity. From its inception, Berkeley Law, unlike many law schools of the period, was open to all qualified applicants, regardless of their gender, religion, or ethnicity, brags the law schools website. The trustees built a hall of law and named it in honor of this renowned bigot. Why? Advertisement I know its true. The universitys policies and practices helped students skirt the Chinese Exclusion Act that Boalt championed. My grandfather was one of them. In 1903 (the year of the law schools first graduating class, which included a Japanese citizen), my grandfather Liu Chengyu arrived in San Francisco from Shanghai. Hed been sent by Sun Yatsen, now known as the Father of Modern China, who was then fomenting a revolution against Chinas centuries-old imperial government. My grandfathers assignment was to edit a pro-democracy daily in Chinatown and generate support for the rebellion back home. But the only way for him to get around the Chinese Exclusion Act was a student visa. A scholarship to UC Berkeley secured his entry into the U.S. Then he needed an English tutor, which was how he met my grandmother. This Kansas-born daughter of pioneers was living alone in San Francisco, teaching English to foreign students to support herself. According to Boalt, my grandparents should have repelled each other. Americans, he wrote, viewed the Chinese with an unconquerable repulsion which must ever prevent any intimate association or miscegenation of the races. Anti-miscegenation was a cornerstone of his insistence that the Chinese should either be enslaved or exterminated. Since the recent Civil War had diminished the nations appetite for slaughter and led to the prohibition of slavery, exclusion became Boalts last resort. My grandparents never got the memo. My grandfather was no heathen criminal or cruel misogynist. He was a poet and a scholar, son of a Chinese viceroy a political idealist who championed democracy. And when the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 left my grandmother homeless and penniless, my grandfather was the one person in that devastated city who protected her. When my grandparents decided to marry, they had to travel across four states before they found a justice of the peace who would join them, most western justices being of Boalts mind-set. But once wed they returned to San Francisco and embarked on a marriage that would last the next 30 years and produce four children. So, I owe my existence, in part, to UC Berkeleys openness to Chinese students. Coincidentally, the same disaster that brought my grandparents closer together nearly spared the university from its association with Boalt. Just six weeks earlier, his widow had donated two properties in San Francisco to pay for the law building, but both burned in the great fire. Only one was salable, and the proceeds came nowhere near covering the construction costs. The UC trustees at the time surely knew that the brand of lawmaking Boalt had championed contravened the universitys inclusive policies. Hed had no personal relationship with the university, never taught or studied there. Nor had he made any financial or scholarly contributions. Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion Nevertheless, the trustees built a hall of law and named it in honor of this renowned bigot. Why? Because, when the trustees invited Elizabeth Boalt to preside over the 1912 dedication of the law building, they were securing a primary position in her will. By the time Mrs. Boalt died five years later, shed also endowed the John H. Boalt professorship and one in her own name. A charitable term for the sacrifice of values in exchange for funding is compromise. A less charitable term might be hypocrisy. Either way, the Boalt name will never square with the law schools inclusive traditions. And yet, this disgraceful saga still isnt over. Because of the terms of the bequest, de-naming the Boalt professorships would require approval of the state attorney general, and to date no one officially has requested such a change. As for Boalt Hall, the campus Building Name Review Committee must now complete its own review before UC Chancellor Carol Christ and President Janet Napolitano will weigh in. The process could go on for months. According to Charles Cannon, who chaired the law schools review committee, We are not talking about stripping the Boalt name out of existence but rather putting it in the proper historical context. What possible historical context could justify even another days delay? Aimee Liu teaches in the graduate creative writing program at Goddard College. Her novel Cloud Mountain is based on her grandparents cross-cultural marriage. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook When a party wins a majority in the House, its leader usually becomes speaker. But the process is not automatic. The party caucus nominates its candidate for speaker, who then goes up for election by the full House. Some Democrats are trying to stop the nomination and election of current party leader Nancy Pelosi. Their reasons are understandable, but not persuasive. It would be a mistake to reject her. The Democrats who want to block Pelosi from the promised land of the speakers rostrum, point to her poll numbers. She has high unfavorable ratings with the general public Real Clear Politics averages it at 28.5%. Her party critics fret that she could be a drag on Democratic candidates, in the way that then-House-Speaker Newt Gingrich was for Republicans in the mid-1990s. As Gingrich did for the Democrats, Pelosi provides the GOP with a handy foil. The mere mention of her name in a fundraising email prompts thousands of Republicans to click the donate link. In part, her unpopularity stems from her issue positions. Conservatives think shes too progressive. Some among her caucus think shes not progressive enough. And although she is not nearly as gaffe-prone as Gingrich, she has sometimes given rhetorical gifts to her opponents, such as her famously cringeworthy comment on Obamacare: We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it. It is easy to appreciate why her poll numbers are cause for concern, but they are hardly disqualifying. After all, nearly everything about Congress is unpopular. The institution has a 21% approval rating, while Republicans, Democrats, Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) are all way underwater in the public opinion surveys. Which not only puts Pelosis rating into context, but also raises a pertinent question: How much more popular would another Democrat be? Advertisement It is easy to appreciate why her poll numbers are cause for concern, but they are hardly disqualifying. In fact, a new Democratic speaker could easily get off to a bad start. Whoever holds the job is the public face of the Democratic Party, which isnt easy. She or he will have to answer questions about a vast array of issues, and do so with knowledge and political skill. Any speakers public comments are subject to close inspection by journalists and political opponents, and very few lawmakers are ready for that level of scrutiny. Thats especially true for those who have spent years in the minority, where media attention is scarce. Gingrich wrote of his own rough launch in the speakership: If you are seldom covered by the press you have a lot of leeway to make mistakes. But when you are in peoples living rooms every evening, your mistakes are magnified. If Pelosis rivals think that they are immune from such mistakes, they should think again. Any stray awkward phrase, especially if taken out of context, can become a weapon in the hands of GOP opposition researchers. I used to be one of those oppo guys, so you can trust me on that. Despite her occasional stumbles, the Democrats have plenty of evidence that Pelosi is up to the task of leadership. Notice that she just led her party to massive gains in the midterm elections. Thwarted ambition is another source of House Democratic grumbling about Pelosi. She and the two other senior party leaders are in their late 70s and theyve been in power for a long time. Many younger members have been eager to move up in the ranks, but found no room at the top. Some left the Hill. For example, Xavier Becerra, a 12-term congressman from Los Angeles, gave up the chair of the House Democratic Caucus to become California attorney general. Majority status will provide a remedy. Next year, dozens of Democrats will have a chance to chair a committee or subcommittee. For the first time in eight long years, they will be able to shape the legislative agenda and hold hearings that gain attention for their favorite causes and for themselves. If Pelosi becomes speaker, she should help them along. In recent years, there has been a flow of staff resources away from committees and toward the leadership offices. By reversing the flow, she could go a long way toward building goodwill and developing talent in the ranks. Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion Once that talent has matured, others may be ready for the speakership, and Pelosi can step aside. In the meantime, she is the Democrat best equipped to handle the institutions main job, the crafting of laws. The Affordable Care Act is the prime example. Pelosi shepherded it to passage when many thought that it was dead. Whoever takes the gavel in January will need that kind of skill. The presidency and the Senate are in the hands of the opposite party. Negotiating with Senate Majority Leader McConnell will be a particularly daunting challenge. He may be unpopular, but he is formidable: An inexperienced newcomer would be at risk of being eaten alive. House Democrats have to ask themselves whether they want to vent their anxieties and frustrations, and pick a fight with one another, or pick a leader who can actually run things and get on with it. If its the latter, they have only one choice, and her name is Nancy Pelosi. John J. Pitney Jr. was a House Republican staffer and opposition researcher at the Republican National Committee. He is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook. (Photo: Xinhua) China released its annual Ocean Economic Development Index (OEDI) on Nov. 22 at a national marine economy expo held in Zhanjiang, south Chinas Guangdong province, announcing a 6.9-percent rise of gross oceanic product in 2017 over the previous year. The report indicated a steady progress of Chinas marine economy from 2010 to 2017 during which OEDI grew at an annual rate of 3.8 percent on average. The latest 2017 figure stood at 129.8, up 4.5 percent than that of the previous year. In 2017, Chinas total output value of marine produce contributed 9.7 percent to the national economic growth. Chinas trade volume with countries along the Marine Silk Road totaled $1 trillion for the whole year, a rise of 14.8 percent from the previous year after seeing a two-year decline. Furthermore, enterprises in marine sectors saw a surge in productivity benefits in 2017, and also a 5 percent decrease of costs compared to last year. Marine industries employed a total of 36.57 million workers, accounting for 4.7 percent of the national employment figures. To the editor: I am appalled by the Nov. 20 article on the militias at the U.S.-Mexico border. The neutral representation of racially motivated groups of armed men illegally hunting human beings reflects how far toward complacency with fascism this country has moved. The fact that one of the leaders in Arizona is a member of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement is mentioned as if he were a member of the local Lions Club. In reality, the men in this article are dangerous, armed fascists operating outside the law. That the invasion threat they are ostensibly responding to is a group of unarmed refugees fleeing violence goes virtually unmentioned. While the article noted that the militias are not funded by the Department of Defense, the fact that all official law enforcement bodies oppose such unlawful activity is not included. Yet, militiamen Weasel and Little Dog get ample play. Giving voice to the lunatic fringe is a terrible idea. Advertisement Shannon Speed, Topanga .. To the editor: Your article on unauthorized militias patrolling the border read like a celebration of militia member Robert Crooks, telling us about his patriotism and offering no critical examination of what it means for a citizen to take it upon himself to hunt Mexicans and Central Americans at the border. While it is true that American history is filled with Indian hunters and slave patrols, it is not a history to be proud of. White settlers secured the land for themselves, exterminating indigenous peoples, enslaving Africans, engaging in imperial wars and today propping up dictators and enabling genocides. Many of those attempting to cross the border flee the conditions that such racially inspired terror and violence produce. Shame on the L.A. Times for contributing to racial terror. Sherene H. Razack, Los Angeles Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook To the editor: Setting aside Interior Secretary Ryan Zinkes naked hypocrisy (Its not time for finger-pointing, Zinke said, before immediately pointing a finger: These radical environmentalists that want nature to take its course. You know what? This is on them), he is wrong on the substance as well. Environmentalists such as those at the Wilderness Society after years of study and scientific analysis have recommended policies such as removing fuel in wildland-urban interface areas, allowing selective forest thinning and permitting lightning-caused fires to burn in areas where public safety is not at risk. Along with real steps to reverse or limit climate change, this is the type of forest management that is needed not the unfettered logging that Zinke and President Trump euphemistically call forest management. Carl Siechert, Pasadena Advertisement .. To the editor: Zinke and Trump are, unfortunately for the rest of us, their own experts. When I was in graduate school, my favorite professor said to me, Dont fall in love with your own ideas. I miss him. Michael D. Mauer, Los Angeles .. To the editor: Would someone please urge our ignorant deciders Zinke and Trump to read the well-written op-ed article by Anu Partanen on the factual explanation of what, why and how the fires of California relate to matters of climate, forests and human intervention? Hint: Partanen, who is Finnish, says it does not have anything to do with raking leaves. Sylvia Lewis Gunning, Thousand Oaks Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook I invented an addition to my name, the Greatness of Green, to annoy my classmates in high school in England but, though theyve long forgotten it, it has stuck with me as a private joke. I think of it, for example, when on a mountain hike weary legs are crying Enough already and I say to myself, Come on, come on, this is time for the Greatness, keep moving. Or rushing to meet a deadline for the paper I worked for in London while standing in a telephone booth, reading from my notebook in the half-light and wrestling with a few words that wouldnt fit into the story, Get on with it, Greatness, Id say half jokingly but only half. Its amazing to me how well having that jeering voice in the ear works. As Shakespeares Henry V says, rallying his troops before battle, it stiffens the sinews. But, mostly, for a personality that has always tried to stuff too much in the time available, it has been applied to getting to appointments, conferences, tutorials, births, weddings and funerals on time. My apprenticeship in this painful process came when, after college, I took a job very near the bottom of the food (and drink) chain in the docks in Manchester where, armed only with a dockers hook, I pulled wooden crates taller than me, filled with tobacco and weighing three-quarters of a ton, onto a hand truck and trundled them to a place where there was an open space in the wall a window without the glass where they were lowered by a primitive crane onto a flatbed truck four stories below bound for the cigarette makers and thence to future lung transplant candidates. The Greatness came in then because I had to get up earlier than anyone else in my suburban neighborhood on icy, sodden, pitch-black northern mornings, grab something to eat, race to the local train station and clock into work on time, even a few minutes late, earning the derision of the other workers who knew Id been to college and thought I was a bit of a milksop. (They referred to me as the Mayor of Casterbridge after the Thomas Hardy novel that half of Britain listened to on BBC Radio. What else was there to do at 9 oclock on Sunday night if you were short of money?) From the moment the alarm clock went off the name itself captures the panic it provokes the race was on and the rule was not to make the slightest unnecessary move: clothes in a heap by the bed in strict order of donning, milk poured on the cereal in exactly the right amount to avoid a second pour or waste time throwing away any leftovers, the cup of tea picked up the second it was not too scalding to drink, cutting diagonally across roads, instead of going the intersection, at an angle Pythagoras himself couldnt have faulted. All this came back to me on Thursday last week when instead of waking at around 5:30 in time for the usual early hike, I was shocked to see it was 5:57. This was serious. Thursday is one of the two days when three or four cyclists puff their way past me on the forest road and at whom I hurl ribald comments whenever they fall behind schedule. Being late myself was to invite a barrage of scorn. My fingers flew socks on without looking to see if they matched (they didnt) all niceties discarded as yesterdays shirt lying at hand was quickly pulled on. Water presented a series of problems: for washing, Id no time for it to warm up. For drinking, the bottle in the fridge was too much of a detour. The time it took to find a cup to drink from the tap was agony. I normally squeeze an orange. But do you know how many seconds finding, cutting, pressing and drinking take? No? I dont either, but it was out of the question. Then, every sinew stiffened, the 1.3 mile drive to the trailhead. And, oh joy, no other car was there. I looked at my watch for the first time that morning (no unnecessary movements until then, remember). It was 6:15. Good going. Wake to walk in 18 minutes. Now, if you object, Im willing to grant the Greatness of Green may be a little too grand for this. But I hope you will at least accept the Rapidity of Reg. Reg Greens book, The Nicholas Effect, is available at authorhouse.com. Taiwanese will vote Saturday in midterm local elections that are seen as a test for the ruling party and a referendum on the islands chilly relations with China, which has ramped up pressure on Taiwan to abandon any thought of independence. Should President Tsai Ing-wens Democratic Progressive Party lose two or three major races, it would sound a warning to her to expect a difficult reelection bid in 2020, analysts say. Gains would give the president whose public approval ratings have sagged a boost. If the Democratic Progressive Party wins most of the elections, then that would jack up the reputation or the status of Tsai Ing-wen, said Shane Lee, political scientist at Chang Jung Christian University in Taiwan. Tsais party won 13 legislative seats in the 2014 midterms, leaving the rival Nationalists with six and independents with the other three. Tsai won the presidency by a landslide in 2016 over the then-ruling Nationalist Party, which had angered many voters with its cozy relations with China. Advertisement Under Nationalist President Ma Ying-jeous eight-year tenure, Beijing and Taipei set aside their political differences and signed more than 20 agreements on trade, transit and investment. Tsai instead has snubbed Beijing and pushed back against its insistence that Taiwan and China are a single country. China has reacted with provocation to Tsais stance sending an aircraft carrier fleet into nearby waters, paring back Taiwan-bound group tourism and pressuring countries that recognize Taipei diplomatically to switch their allegiance to China. In February, Beijing announced 31 incentives that were meant to win over Taiwanese by making it easier for them to work and invest in China, whose economy is larger and growing faster. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen waves to naval officers from the frigate Ming Chuan at a naval base in Kaohsiung. (Taiwan Military News Agency) China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s, when Nationalists lost to the Communists and rebased in Taipei. Government survey show more than 70% of Taiwanese now oppose Beijings goal of eventual unification. But some in Taiwan want Tsai to rekindle relations with Beijing or, conversely, take an even tougher stand against China. China is just bullying us, but each side is a separate country, Taiwanese businessman Liu Ming-chen, 60, said at an October rally to protest Beijing and scout for sympathetic local election candidates. The Democratic Progressive Party is a little bit better than the Nationalists, but they havent met our expectations. Voters will choose from among 20,863 candidates for 11,047 offices, mostly at the lowest levels of government, such as urban boroughs with just a few thousand residents. The bellwether races are for 22 mayoral and county magistrate seats. Voters will also decide the fate of 10 ballot measures Saturday, among them five that touch on the legality of same-sex marriage and whether LGBTQ issues should be taught in schools. Strong opposition would complicate last years court order for legalization of same-sex marriage, a milestone that LGBTQ activists said would be a first for Asia. Activists are mobilizing first-time voters for the gay marriage rights measures because a lot of younger people understand the idea of gender equality, said Chang Ming-hsu, project manager with the Taipei-based advocacy group Gender Equity Education Coalition. Religious groups here oppose same-sex marriage. Taiwans 19.1 million voters will pick candidates based largely on perceptions of who can improve local economies or build better public infrastructure, campaign officials say. Of course regarding the partys reforms, whether theyre good or bad, fast or slow, people have different opinions, so local elections will test whether people are satisfied or not with the party in power, said Hung Lee-chi, spokesman for the ruling partys Taipei mayoral candidate Yao Wen-chih. Tsai received a 31.2% approval rating in August, her lowest since taking office, the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation said. But many Taiwanese cheered her cuts to public employee pensions in mid-2018 and an earlier push for laws giving common workers more time off. Her government also is championing a set of regulations aimed at making it easiker for small businesses in Taiwan to thrive. The $572-billion economy is on track to extend last years growth and unemployment was below average at 3.68% in June. China has not taken a stand in the elections, but the Taiwanese governments Mainland Affairs Council nonetheless has accused Beijing of making statements that were disturbing Taiwan society before the vote. Jennings is a special correspondent. British Prime Minister Theresa May faced wide-ranging criticism from skeptical lawmakers Thursday as she sought to portray a draft agreement on a post-Brexit relationship with the European Union as a good deal for our country. Addressing the House of Commons after the publication of a 26-page draft political declaration with the EU on post-Brexit relations, May said the agreement would ensure a smooth and orderly British departure from the European Union. Britain officially leaves the 28-nation EU the first country to ever do so on March 29. The draft text that we have agreed with the [European] Commission is a good deal for our country and for our partners in the EU, May said. She is due to travel to Brussels on Saturday for further Brexit meetings, including with Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, a day before a summit of the EUs 27 other leaders at which both the political declaration on post-Brexit relations as well as the separation agreement, which alone has legal status, are expected to be formally signed off. Advertisement The withdrawal agreement needs to be sealed soon to leave enough time for the European Parliament and the British Parliament to endorse it. May told lawmakers that the outlines for the future help protect jobs, end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the U.K., give British fishermen more control and avoid the return of a hard border between EU member Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. She also said the agreement paves the way for a free trade agreement with the bloc as well as allowing Britain to forge new trade deals around the world. But her rosy predictions met with resistance on many fronts in Parliament, which is expected to vote on the Brexit plan next month. At the moment, it looks precarious for the prime minister given the number of lawmakers who have expressed discontent with the proposals, notably the 585-page legal treaty that deals with the terms of Britains departure, including what the country owes the EU. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britains main opposition Labor Party, poured scorn on the agreement on future relations, describing it a 26 pages of waffle that represented a failure of the Conservative Party and May during two years of negotiations. Corbyn said that the agreement represents the worst of all worlds and that Britain will have no say over EU rules that will continue to apply in Britain. This is the blindfold Brexit we all feared, he said. A leap into the dark. May is likely to need some Labor lawmakers to back her plan if she has realistic hopes of winning approval, given that her Conservative Party does not enjoy a majority in the House of Commons. May also faced criticism from hard-line Brexit supporters in her Conservative Party, notably Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, as well as from others who pressed her to back a second referendum on the entire Brexit proposition. If May fails to get a majority in Parliament, its unclear what would then happen. Some lawmakers argue that the country would end up crashing out of the EU on Brexit day with no deal, a scenario that could see tariffs slapped on exports and restrictions imposed on workers. Others hope Parliament could back a second referendum in the hope the public would call the whole thing off. The political declaration was agreed upon at a technical level by negotiators and endorsed Thursday by the European Commission, the EUs executive arm, which is overseeing Brexit negotiations. This declaration establishes the parameters of an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security and defense and wider areas of cooperation, according to the document. It also talks about the close ties that have been cemented after 45 years of Britains EU membership and notes that the parties envisage having a trading relationship on goods that is as close as possible, with a view to facilitating the ease of legitimate trade. In a speech in Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel underlined that Britain should remain a partner, remain a friend, but she emphasized the difficulties that may arise in any attempt to keep services seamless. We have to say honestly that, in the services sector, we dont have a great deal of experience with international free trade agreements, she said. But we want to see that as a future relationship. One stumbling block relates to Gibraltar, the tiny territory at the tip of the Iberian peninsula that was ceded to Britain in 1713 but is still claimed by Spain. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said this week that his government cannot accept Gibraltars future being determined by negotiations at the EU level. May said Thursday that she has spoken with Sanchez and that she is confident there will be a resolution Sunday that delivers for the whole U.K. family, including Gibraltar. The Japanese city of Osaka will host the World Expo in 2025, after beating out cities in Russia and Azerbaijan in the race to host an event expected to draw millions of visitors and showcase the local economy and culture. Shouts of joy in Japanese erupted in the Paris auditorium when the 170 member states of the Bureau International des Expositions voted Friday in favor of Osakas bid. Dark-suited officials hugged and jumped up and down, and Japans economy and trade minister, Hiroshige Seko, said he felt excellent! Im excited! I also feel a heavy responsibility to make Expo 2025 successful. Back in Tokyo, Japans prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said in a statement the country would make the utmost effort to achieve a magnificent expo in Osaka that would give dreams and surprises to everyone in the world. Hosting a world expo in Japan, Abe sasid, would be a golden opportunity to promote fascinating charms of Japan to the rest of the world. Past worlds fairs introduced such wonders as the Eiffel Tower, the Ferris Wheel and Seattles Space Needle. Todays version is aimed at finding solutions to challenges facing humanity. Advertisement Osaka proposed an expo on a man-made island on the theme of Society 5.0" and how to leverage robotics and artificial intelligence for the public good. World Expos, which are held every five years, can last up to six months and cost millions of dollars to host, but they can help put a city on the global map by bringing in international visitors and attention. Milan hosted the last one in 2015, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is set to host the next one in 2020. No U.S. city has hosted a worlds fair since the 1980s. The Russian city of Yekaterinburg was runner-up the second loss this week for Russia at an international organization, after the Russian candidate to be president of global police agency Interpol lost out to a South Korean rival. The capital of the oil-rich former Soviet country of Azerbaijan, Baku, came in third in Fridays expo vote. Osaka pitched itself as the safe, reliable choice notably because it already held the 1970 Expo, while the other cities are lesser known and would have been first-time hosts. Leaders in Osaka, Japans third-largest city and the largest in western Japan, are hoping the expo will revitalize a city that has lost much of its luster to Tokyo, the nations political and economic capital. They have plans to transform the site into a casino resort after the expo, though there is opposition from residents to bringing casino gambling to town. Russian President Vladimir Putin had backed the Yekaterinburg bid via video message, and a Russian singer tried to rev up the crowd with song and dance. The Russian city, on the boundary between Europe and Asia in Russias Ural Mountains, was one of several Russian sites that hosted World Cup matches this year. The Russian reaction to the loss was muted. Alexander Chernov, who led Yekaterinburgs bid, told Russian news agencies on Friday that it showed that in some areas we didnt work hard enough. Asked if Russia may have been voted down because of the current political climate, Chernov said he didnt notice any political overtones during his talks with delegates. Baku lost despite a lavish bid including a proposed venue designed to evoke the geometry of Azerbaijani carpets. The Caspian Sea city of 2.2 million has recently hosted a series of international events, including the Eurovision Song Contest and F1 Grand Prix. It is set to host some UEFA Euro 2020 matches. UPDATES: 10:15 a.m.: This article was updated with additional information about the winning and runner-up cities and reactions from Russian and Japanese leadership. This article was originally published at 9:15 a.m. For months, Turkish officials have been leaking gruesome details surrounding Jamal Khashoggis death as a counter to President Trumps moves to absolve Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the Trump ally thought to be behind the Saudi journalists slaying. But Ankara took a more direct approach on Friday, with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu slamming Trump for turning a blind eye in Khashoggis death, and accusing him of putting money above human values. Trumps statements in support of the prince mean that the president is saying, in essence, Whatever happens, I will turn a blind eye, Cavusoglo said in an interview Friday with CNNs Turkish affiliate, CNN Turk. This is not the right approach. Money is not everything. ... We shouldnt abandon our humanitarian values. Cavusoglus rebuke echoes those from other Turkish officials, who have described as comical an exclamation-point-filled message from the president concerning reports that the prince ordered Khashoggis slaying. . Advertisement Maybe he did, maybe he didnt, Trump wrote on Tuesday in a rambling 633-word message, later adding in any case, our relationship is with Saudi Arabia. He also thanked the kingdom for its support against Iran and keeping oil prices at reasonable levels. Very simply it is called America First! concluded Trumps message. Khashoggi, a onetime Saudi government insider who left the kingdom last year and became a U.S. resident and Washington Post columnist, disappeared after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on Oct. 2. It soon emerged that the journalist had been ambushed by a 15-man hit team dispatched from Riyadh, who killed and then dismembered Khashoggi before covering up his death. Meanwhile, Saudi officials version of the events has changed from shrill denial to insistence that the slaying was a rogue operation, a rendition gone wrong that happened without the princes authorization. But skeptics, including some of Trumps top allies in the U.S., say attacking such a high-profile figure could not have happened without the crown princes permission. Cavusoglus comments come a day after Trump again came to the princes defense, dismissing a CIA assessment that the de facto Saudi leader had been involved in Khashoggis death as feelings. No, they didnt conclude. They did not come to a conclusion. They have feelings certain ways, Trump said in a meeting with reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Thursday. He also doubled down on the idea that it didnt matter to the U.S.-Saudi relationship, repeating his now routine assertion that defense contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake. As I said, maybe he did, maybe he didnt. But I will say very strongly that its a very important ally, and if we go by a certain standard, we wont be able to have allies with almost any country, Trump said. Do people really want me to give up hundreds of thousands of jobs? Trumps dismissal is likely to embolden other leaders attending the G-20 summit in Argentina next week and where the prince is scheduled to make an appearance. Cavusoglu said Turkish President Recep Tayyep Erdogan would accept a meeting with the prince if the latter requested it. Of course, theres no reason not to meet Bin Salman. Of course, it is up to our president, Cavusoglu said. Twitter: @nabihbulos Our Back Pages Issue #169 Issue Date: Winter 2009 Editor: John Barton Pages: 128 Number of contributors: 26 Buy Issue 169: Print Edition There is something about the way the world is revealed in winter by its lightweak, delicate, mutedthat compels us to reveal ourselves. The starkness of a landscape under snow is an invitation to introspection. Trees without leaves, earth without grass, and air without warmth: winter is a time for waiting. Winter is a time for writing. In this issues Creative Nonfiction Prize-winning, Where Sea Meets Sky, Judy Copeland takes us through the transition from fall to winter in postwar Fukuoka, where she spent her childhood and where the snow always melted before it hit the ground. The drama of her childhood is the discovery of both the limitations of personhood and the limitlessness of otherness, of wanting to hold infinity in my hands like an empty room. Her story is that of a desire to be in the distance. In the dullness of winter days, writers may also be compelled to exchange their own livestheir own dullnessfor the lives of others. Anna Smith imagines the sexual exploits of Billy Bishop, WWI flying ace; Susan Steudel reframes Captain James Cooks quest for the Northwest Passage; George Elliott Clarke invokes Charles Mingus to tell his own life story. In her poem The Burning House, Kelly Norah Drukker speaks as American writer Paul Monette and his long-time partner Roger Horwitz. In a letter between the two men, another time and another weather is remembered: By the monuments of Greece, with the sun-chain wrapping around us / We looked into the eyes of the sun at Knossos. Saw none of this. Even during the blue season, a lover (a writer) can make Crete appear. Other lovers in other stories endure their own private winters. Against the landscape of Lubbock, Texasa place the narrator describes as bring[ing] to mind the incinerating wind that accompanies nuclear detonationthe couple in Brett Josef Grubisics The Contender struggles to de-ice their marriage. In Bill Gastons story Petterick, a hot shower remedies the protagonists isolation. Poet Daryl Hine, who died in August 2012, reminds us in an excerpt from his serial poem &: Times business is passing. Winter does not last forever; crocuses are the first evidence of this. Renewal is winters bookend. Looking out her west-facing window, the speaker in Jan Zwickys Autobiography laments her commitment to dying, to death: Such injustice. When every morning its spring again. Every morning the light melts the snow before books, before desks, before windows, before pain, before amazement. Weakly, delicately, mutely; winter light leaves us to bring us spring. The Malahat would also like to acknowledge the passing of poet Kildare Dobbs in April 2013, whose poem It appeared in this issue. Alana Friend Lettner Visitors line up for the ANUFOOD event in Beijing (Photo/Morag Hobbs) International sellers were out in force at this years ANUFOOD China, held from Nov. 21 to 23 at the China National Convention Center in Beijing, with many sellers commenting that China is the next big market for the organic and health food industry. The event brought sellers from countries all over the world such as Germany, Australia and South Korea to Beijing to sell goods including meat, dairy, fruit, oils and organic products. Many stalls enticed buyers with natural oils, nuts, smoothies and tea, hoping to stake out a share in the burgeoning health-food industry. Earlier this year, Global Times reported that China had become the world's fourth-largest organic food consumer, according to industry statistics. However, organic food as a percentage of the nation's entire food market only stands at about 1.5 percent, indicating great untapped opportunities. Its this gap in the market that many health food companies at ANUFOOD were determined to fill. Majid Rooygar Haghroo, from Rahmani Group, a food unit which produces and sells a variety of healthy foods such as nuts, herbal teas and organic honey is one of them, and he explains that he is optimistic about selling his products in China, despite the fact that the country is already a production powerhouse. In China, you can find everything; they have honey, they have nuts, and are, of course, famous for herbal tea. However, the feedback has been very good, we found customers and clients that are eager to work with us, and we are now very optimistic about our business opportunities in China. A number of stalls displayed organic products, like this Italian brand Ladolea (Photo/Morag Hobbs) Market surveys show that Chinese consumers are already spending more on fine foods, and are increasingly willing to pay more for organic. Sahin Guzel, from Oya, a German company which produces organic smoothies, said that the reaction to his smoothies had been positive during the ANUFOOD event, but the country is only just starting out when it comes to its health food industry. China is at the beginning. In Germany, it started with the fitness trend - supplements, weight protein and so on, and now its changed to natural, healthy living and finding the correct balance of nutrients your body needs. In the future, it will become a huge market here, too. Haghroo agrees that in general, people around the world are following a similar trend. If you look at healthy food, the trend is going up; people are looking for pleasure combined with healthy foods, which you can find in our products. Rahmani Group is one of many international companies that are combining healthy, organic foods with Chinese marketing methods to make the transition into China easier. We have a jar of honey which has a QR code, if you scan the QR code it will show you the identification and specification of the honey, to prove the originality. It isnt just international sellers that are breaking into the organic Chinese market, either. Yao Huifeng, from Yifeng county, Jiangxi Province now sells organic rice for 10 yuan ($1.45) per kilogram, three times higher than the average price. Despite this, his rice business is going from strength to strength. Last year, his success drew more than 70 local farmers to join his rice cooperative. "Ninety percent of the local fields have switched to organic rice, and the economic output in our cooperative has exceeded four million yuan," Yao said in an interview with China Daily. It seems that as the middle class in China grows, so does its expectation for quality, fine foods which are healthy and organic. China is a very big market, if we can penetrate just one percent of that market, that would be enough, adds Haghroo. Thiruvananthapuram : Nearly two months after the tragic accident of violinist Balabaskhar, his father has demanded a probe into the accident by a special investigation team. As per the reports, in a complaint filed to Chief Minister and DGP, his father CK Unni demanded a probe into the accident citing the contrary in the statements by their driver Arjun and Balabaskhar's wife Lakshmi. In statement given to the police, Arjun had claimed that Balabaskhar drove the vehicle but later Lakhsmi revealed that Arjun was the one behind the wheels, since Balu was not comfortable with long-hour drives. Thiruvananthapuram : Water Resource Minister Mathew T Thomas has decided to step down from the Pinarayi lead LDF government. Chittoor MLA and JDS State President K Krishnankutty will be replacing the minister. A letter regarding the issue will be handed over to the Chief Minister immediately. With the Pinarayi Government completing two-and-a-half years, the Krishnankutty faction in the party has raised the demand Thomas should be replaced by Krishnankutty. After the tussle over the ministership increased, Janata Dal , Party National President HD Deve Gowda has summoned the party's three MLA, to Bengaluru on Thursday. Reports also suggested that there was pact between the leaders, regarding the ministership after 2 and a half years. Child, two others killed in crossfire in Zambo clash posted November 23, 2018 at 10:03 pm by Francisco Tuyay November 23, 2018 at 10:03 pm An Abu Sayyaf bandit and two civilians, including a seven-year-old child, were killed and three minors were wounded after fighting broke out between security forces and a group of terrorists in Zamboanga City Friday morning, an official said. Lt. Col. Gerry Besana, spokesman of the Western Mindanao Command, initially reported the death of Abu Nibras, a Basilan-based Abu Sayyaf fighter, in an encounter with Marines in Sitio Logon in Limaong village around 5:30 am. Besana said Abu Nibras was a trusted follower of the late Abu Sayyaf chieftain Isnilon Hapilon and the Basilan-based sub-leader Abdullah Indanan. Abu Nibras was killed after residents of Limaong reported the presence of an armed group in the village. That prompted troopers from the Marine Battalion Landing Team 11 under the Joint Task Force Zamboanga to go after the group, and a firefight followed.I commend the troops of the MBLT11 under the Joint Task Force Zamboanga, led by Colonel Leonel Nicolas, for being vigilant and valiant, said Lieutenant General Arnel B. dela Vega, commander of the Western Mindanao Command. A child and a woman were found dead after the firefight. Nicolas, commander of Task Force Zamboanga, said the civilian fatalities and the three minors had been caught in the crossfire. COMMENT DISCLAIMER: Reader comments posted on this Web site are not in any way endorsed by Manila Standard. Comments are views by manilastandard.net readers who exercise their right to free expression and they do not necessarily represent or reflect the position or viewpoint of manilastandard.net. While reserving this publications right to delete comments that are deemed offensive, indecent or inconsistent with Manila Standard editorial standards, Manila Standard may not be held liable for any false information posted by readers in this comments section. RedSpottedHanky.com Unreliable Train Travel Evouchers Bookings for Tesco Club Card Customers Unfortunately it's not just Britain's network rail services that are proving unreliable for Britain's long suffering train passengers, now even booking agents such as Red Spotted Hanky are letting down travelers, leaving them in the lurch for those who use their evouchers system such as Tesco Club Card customers, many of whom had come to rely on this service as a means of utilising their tesco club card points. The evouchers system is supposed to be straight forward. Tesco clubcard customers select the amount of club card vouchers they want to convert into tokens that RedSpottedHanky.com then automatically convert into evouchers onto the accounts of customers, all done and dusted within 72 hours. Unfortunately that is not the current experience of Tesco Club Card customers, who literally are being left hanging as the 72 hour limit passes without any response from RSH or evouchers showing up in customer accounts. Worse still Red Spotted Hanky is not replying to customer queries so the 3 days turns into 4, 5, 6.... leaving customers getting desperate to get their trains booked as their travel dates approach and ticket prices rise, eventually abandoning the wait and booking rail travel services elsewhere. Whilst Red Spotted Hanky is currently unresponsive to customer queries of non receipt of evouchers (personal experience), Tesco is giving the following reply to customers : "There ongoing issue at the moment with red spotted hanky and cannot give an updated when you will be credited and the other option we can arrange to refund your Clubcard points if you would prefer that." The bottom line is Red Spotted Hanky Evouchers service is currently unreliable for at least Tesco Club Card customers, so travelers should not waste valuable time waiting as their travel dates approach but instead go ahead and book with a more reliable rail ticket service provider, especially as Tesco is unable to state when the issue will be resolved. Whilst those currently waiting for Red Spotted Hanky evouchers to materialise should immediately request a refund of their Club Card vouchers from Tesco and book rail travel elsewhere. Nadeem Walayat http://www.marketoracle.co.uk Copyright 2005-2018 Marketoracle.co.uk (Market Oracle Ltd). All rights reserved. Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any trading losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors before engaging in any trading activities. Nadeem Walayat Archive 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. 50,000 members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) have been on rotating strike since 22 October. The Trudeau Liberal government has tabled so-called back-to-work legislation, that will make this work stoppage illegal. Increasingly, the right to strike in Canada is not worth the paper it is written on. As soon as a strike becomes effective, it is declared illegal. However, the postal workers are angry and there is a real opportunity that they will defy the legislation. Solidarity is urgently needed to let the CUPW workers know they are not alone, and that workers in Canada and internationally support their fight. The main issues of this strike are pay equity for underpaid rural mail carriers who are predominantly female, and an injury crisis fuelled by overburdening and forced overtime. This has led Canada Post to have the highest injury rate in the sector, with 1 in 4 workers suffering injury every year. The workers are literally sick and tired of these issues being ignored by management, and have decided to put their foot down to solve them once and for all through this round of negotiations. The degree of understaffing is revealed by the fact that even the limited action of rotating strikes and an overtime ban has led to gridlock at sorting plants and to Canada Post losing hundreds of millions of dollars. 'Back-to-work': a scourge on freedom to strike Canada Post is a publicly owned corporation that is supposed to be independent, but in reality the government has a huge influence. Business lobby groups have been howling for the government to act heading into the Black Friday sales weekend ahead of the Christmas retail period. The strike has significantly depressed online sales from Amazon and other retailers who rely on parcel shipping from Canada Post. The Trudeau Liberals have now brought the hammer down on the workers, showing they follow the dictats of their corporate paymasters. This is despite the fact that Trudeau has presented himself as a friend of workers, and opposed the Harper Conservatives when they last used legislation against CUPW in 2011. Ironically, just one day before the federal Liberals said that the cupboard was bare for the postal workers, they announced $16-billion of tax breaks for big business. This stark contrast should send a resounding message to all those in the labour movement who have given support to the Liberals in recent years. Back-to-work legislation is a scourge that has increasingly afflicted collective bargaining in Canada. Public sector bosses have no incentive to bargain and just sit back and wait for the government to declare a strike illegal. This weapon to smash workers is now even being used in the private sector when a strike is deemed to have too much impact. In fact, such legislation does not shorten the length of strikes. Instead, the use of anti-democratic legislation has greatly increased the frustration of workers. Strike votes of 80 percent, 90 percent, even 100 percent are now common as the workers issues remain unresolved. CUPW received a 95 percent strike mandate in the current dispute and this discontent cannot just be legislated away. The question is whether the just issues of the workers will be resolved now, or will they be left to fester and prepare for a new explosion a few years down the road. Unfortunately, up until now the leadership of Canadas unions have let down their workers. Despite the anger of the membership they have failed to give the lead and defy back-to-work legislation. This has led us to the present situation where the right to strike is violated in a routine fashion. Conditions are steadily eroded while management lords over the workers. This will continue to occur until one union has the courage to stand up to the state and defy. The top bureaucrats always say that now is not the time, or that the workers are not ready. They hide their cowardice by blaming their members. But in the Canada Post strike all accounts point to a desire to fight in the rank and file. Spontaneous plant occupations and unsanctioned walkouts have been bursting forward. The question arises, If not now, then when? If not CUPW, then who? This is the strike to draw a line in the sand and stand up for the right of all workers to withdraw their labour. This is the strike to say that women workers will not be undervalued for doing the same labour as male workers. This is the strike to say that workers will not sacrifice their bodies at the altar of corporate profit. Repeatedly, unions have won in the courts, arguing that back-to-work legislation is a violation of Canadas Charter right to freedom of association. This was even the case when the 2011 legislation against CUPW was challenged. But that is not a reason to obey such legislation while waiting for a court decision precisely the opposite. When unions have obeyed these illegal laws, the harm still occurs and the years-later court victory solves nothing. The union would not be breaking the law by continuing the strike - it is the government that is breaking the law by passing the legislation. In the 19th century all unions were illegal in Canada. Union members were arrested for joining a conspiracy to raise wages. If workers hadnt defied such laws there would be no unions today. The lesson is clear. Solidarity with CUPW workers! In a previous article we explained how CUPW has an amazing history of struggle: From 1974 to 1976, CUPW led a number of illegal strikes, one of which resulted in fair wages being won for women stuck in low-pay positions. In 1978, after months of failed negotiations under Trudeau Sr., another legal strike was held that resulted in back-to-work legislation being issued that very same day. Rather than submit, workers chose to defy the law, an act for which CUPW leader Jean-Claude Parrot was sentenced to three months in prison. In 1981, CUPW went on strike yet again, this time for paid maternity leave. Fearing the resistance these workers might poseindividuals who were clearly not afraid of breaking the lawmanagement caved in to their demands, leading to CUPW becoming the first union in Canada to win paid maternity leave for its members. If any union can be said to carry defiance in its DNA, it is CUPW. This also explains why Trudeau is so eager to crush their current strike. His hope is that by defeating one of Canadas most historically militant unions, other workers will be dissuaded from following in their footsteps. In addition to this inspiring history, and the desire of the workers to fight, there is a possibility that the present leadership of the union may buck the depressing trend at the top of Canadas unions. In his youth, CUPW president Mike Palecek was a regular writer for Fightback, the IMTs paper in Canada, where he frequently defended the position that unions should defy back-to-work legislation. It is vital that we support those inside CUPW who do not want to capitulate to the anti-democratic attack of the Trudeau government. The entire CUPW executive must hold strong and not sell out their members. Now is the time to turn the tide of the corporate onslaught. An injury to one is an injury to all, and CUPW is fighting for every workers right to strike / Image: CUPW It is also essential that the broader labour movement not leave CUPW to fight alone. The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) must do its duty and organize mass protests and solidarity strikes in support. Unions who have previously had their rights violated should obviously be on the front line. The Trudeau government can be forced to back down by a large enough movement. They have no mandate for an anti-union offensive, and are attempting to maintain a fake-left facade heading into the 2019 election year. The CLC needs to set up a fund to help CUPW with the inevitable fines and injunctions from illegal strikes. Solidarity committees should be struck in every local to support the postal workers, and CUPW members should actively send delegations to local workplaces to bring them into the struggle. An injury to one is an injury to all, and CUPW is fighting for every workers right to strike. This is not just a national strike, but an international movement. Across the globe, postal services are facing privatisation and cutbacks. Workers are facing austerity and the right to strike is being eroded. If the right to strike is removed in a so-called democratic country like Canada, this lowers the bar for all workers. Canada Post has just stopped receiving international mail due to the strike, but we should not halt international solidarity! We call on our supporters, as individuals, or via their union locals (branches), youth groups, or party associations, to send messages of solidarity to Canada Post workers. Please say: We support your struggle for equal pay for women workers and an end to the injury crisis. The right to strike is the most important right for the working class. We support the defiance of anti-democratic back-to-work legislation. You are not alone, we will do anything we can to help, an injury to one is an injury to all! Please send these messages to: CUPW: Feedback@cupw-sttp.org Mike Palecek: MPalecek@cupw-sttp.org Labour Fightback: fightback@marxist.ca We will publish a selection of messages to deliver to the workers on the picket lines. What are your initial impressions of the brand, a few months after arriving? Following on from some necessary strategy adjustments, the direction weve taken is based on the brands strong points, as revealed by an in-depth look at our history and distinctive characteristics. The art of Restoration allows us to anchor all our innovations and activities in the discoveries and knowledge acquired by master watchmakers throughout history. Toric Hemispheres Retrograde Parmigiani Fleurier What is more, the support of our Watchmaking Center, which safeguards all the expertise of the watchmaking trade, is what makes us stand out in a highly competitive environment. These elements are at the foundation of the direction were taking the brand to ensure a promising future. What are your sources of leverage for growth? Weve identified a major opportunity on the Asian market one that hasnt been properly exploited so far so weve decided to scale back our investments in Europe and increase them in Asia, the USA, and the Middle East. New boutique in Shanghai Parmigiani Fleurier Weve just opened a new Boutique in the heart of Shanghai, in the prestigious Nanjing Road the pedestrian artery of the city and one of the busiest shopping streets in the world. This outlet is a showcase for the brands most important timepieces, as well as a service center. Weve also had an excellent meeting in Macau, gathering all the retailers and resellers from China, Taiwan, Macau, and Hong Kong. Sneak peek of the boutique in Shanghai Parmigiani Fleurier In a related development, after 10 years of flying high in European skies, a new adventure is now dawning for Parmigiani Fleuriers hot air balloon: Time is Flying is off to Asia, where it will be taking the Brands colors aloft above the skyscrapers of Hong Kong. Sneak peek of the boutique in Shanghai Parmigiani Fleurier And to conclude, weve just opened new offices in Coral Gables, Florida in the USA. Our German subsidiary is growing substantially, too, and has become the center of operations for our European logistics. Broadly speaking, how do you intend to move forward now? Well be pursuing the development of our three main pillars: Toric, Kalpa, and Tonda. Well also be developing a unique restoration offer via major events tied in with museums and retailers. The most beautiful Swiss watchmaking pieces of the twentieth century were produced for China; the restoration of these pieces reflects our calling to nurture our watchmaking heritage. Toric Chronometre in white gold Parmigiani Fleurier In addition, social media especially in China is now playing a major role in Parmigiani Fleuriers digital ecosystem. The Friends of the Brand help us reach specific targets in our strategic markets. Each Friend of the Brand covers a distinct communication territory relating to the interests of our customers. These include music, sports, technology, and good eating (with Ryan Leslie, Jessica Korda, Akrame, and so on). What about the products themselves? The Toric and the Kalpa remain iconic for the brand, and are still very much in the spotlight. At the same time, were looking forward to unveiling the guiding principles of the renewal thats underway one that will introduce you to new releases that are more Parmigiani Fleurier than ever! Kalpa Hebdomadaire Parmigiani Fleurier Whats your take on the watchmaking market; is its recovery a reality or a fantasy? The watchmaking market is healthy today; its moved on since 2015. Weve seen a general economic slowdown since July, especially in Asia, although we ourselves are very satisfied with our growth in Hong Kong. There are of course major challenges ahead, but we remain confident that a brand like ours, with its strong roots, can face the future with assurance. What can you say about your upcoming SIHH your first? Its an important event for us an extraordinary opportunity to mix with others in the sector. I personally look forward to discovering the SIHH after having been at Baselworld in recent years. On Monday, dozens of young people and workers assembled in the auditorium of the Leon Trotsky House Museum to listen to a speech by Alan Woods, leader of the International Marxist Tendency. The event was about the ideas of Karl Marx, 200 years since his birth. The day (November 20), could not be more appropriate, as it also marked the anniversary of the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. In attendance were students from the main universities of the country such as UNAM, IPN and UAM. In addition, there were trade unionists, scientists, academics and activists of Morena, as well Gabriela Perez, director of the Leon Trotsky House Museum; and Esteban Volkov, grandson of the Russian revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky. There was great interest in Alan's talk on the relevance of Marxism / Image: La Izquierda Socialista The bourgeoisie and its defenders were euphoric when the USSR fell, Alan explained. He asked if there was a history student in the room. He said that they had nothing left to do, because one of the ideologues of the bourgeoisie, Francis Fukuyama, declared that, from that time, Marxism had failed and we had reached the end of history. Alan went on to explain how this same character, a few weeks ago, sang a very different song and said that it was time for socialism to return. This admission, after 25 years, is no accident and is not an isolated example. The most serious ideologues of capital, in many cases, have had to give credence to Marx's ideas. The magazine of the great Swiss bank, UBS, published an article entitled "Let's give Marx the opportunity to save the economy". Similar acknowledgements have appeared in the mainstream media of the imperialist bourgeoisie. Youth, workers and activists all attended the event / Image: La Izquierda Socialista Marx was right! The theme of the talk was the validity of Marxism, and Alan said that the Communist Manifesto is the only book of its time that remains relevant today. For instance, consider its brilliant prediction of the concentration of capital, and now we see how most of the economy today is concentrated in 200 monopolies. Marxism is a science, but not an exact one: it can make predictions in a similar way that a geologist can know that there will be an earthquake, but not exactly when. Alan, (author of Reason and Revolt: Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science), recalled that Marxism was born as a philosophy and began to give examples of dialectics in nature and society. Just as a living being is born, lives through its prime and then decays and dies, the same thing happens with social systems. Capitalism today resembles the Roman Empire in its period of decline. It is true that the decline of that empire lasted 400 years, but now is not precisely the same situation. If you look at the history, you can see how, from the Palaeolithic period onwards, the line of progress in human civilisation was initially very slow, to the point that things remained practically unchanged for hundreds of years. But that line of progress tended to accelerate, and it was Marx who explained that the real driving force in society is nothing less than the development of the productive forces. Capitalism has developed science, technology, and the overall productive forces in a very accelerated way in the last 200 years. Esteban Volkov, the grandson of Leon Trotsky, was in attendance / Image: La Izquierda Socialista Alan denied the ridiculous idea that Marx reduced everything to economics, although he said that ultimately, and only in the last analysis, the viability of an economic system depends on its capacity to develop the productive forces. Capitalism has reached a point, despite its advances in the past, where it is now unable to develop the productive forces. When a system enters a stage of decline it affects everything: thought, art, culture, philosophy. What do we have now in the realm of ideas? Postmodernism, which tells us that all ideologies must be cast out. In its heyday, when the bourgeoisie confronted feudalism, it had great thinkers amongst its ranks, but in its time of decline we see these absurd notions emerge. Alan stated that philosophy was born in Greece, when men began to explain how things worked without the need for gods. One of those early philosophers was Heraclitus, the father of dialectical philosophy, who created brilliant aphorisms like: a man cannot step twice into the same stream because the river is and is not, it flows. In the same way that Newton's physics promised to explain everything, but its contradictions gave way to quantum mechanics, formal logic has limits, and that is why dialectics is necessary. Alan explained how Marxs friend and collaborator, Engels, analysed the science of his day and produced brilliant texts such as The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, which has been validated by modern science, to the extent that the acclaimed evolutionary biologist, Stephen Jay Gould, recognised the great contributions of Engels. The audience was very attentive as Alan led them on a whistle-stop tour of economics, evolutionary theory and history. Throughout, he showed the validity of the ideas of Marx and Engels in many areas, in addition to demonstrating the decay of the current capitalist system, and the viability of socialism. He recalled Engels' definition of socialism: it is humanity's leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of genuine freedom. This is more than merely the beginning of the new form of civilization, because what we have today cannot be called civilization. Alan concluded by saying that we are here to fight for a sacred cause: the emancipation of the working class in Mexico, in the Americas and the entire world, leading human civilization to a level never before seen in history. There were many important questions raised by the audience / Image: La Izquierda Socialista Preparing for the battles ahead The attendees enthusiastically applauded the end of the speech. A whole series of questions were asked, reflecting a keen interest in current political events and class struggle in Mexico and internationally. Woods said that there was no doubt that a political earthquake had occurred in Mexico, referring to Lopez Obrador's electoral victory, and that the masses are seeking real change. AMLO may be a good person with good intentions, (although we do not know him personally) but in the end, he has only two options: side with the workers consistently and fight for socialism, or yield to the pressures of the bourgeoisie (which will be great) and betray the masses. But Alan said that we should not hesitate, and this is the beginning of the revolutionary process. The working class does not learn from books, it learns from experience, and this will be a rather hard experience. We Marxists must help them understand these experiences by participating in the living moment of the masses with our own ideas. In response to another question, he explained the viability of socialism with the example of the Russian Revolution, which in the early years resulted in a democratic state and showed concretely that you can have economic growth without bankers or capitalists. The collapse of the USSR can be explained, but Alan said it was the subject of another discussion. He said that there was an element of demagogy from certain sectors of the Latin American left, because the working class must unite, and not splinter into a thousand separate interest groups for women, homosexuals, indigenous people, etc. He said: I do not see women or black people or homosexuals here, I see soldiers of the working class. Someone asked about which country was closest to the socialist revolution. Alan said many would be surprised by his answer, because it is the USA. It is possible, he added, there may be many difficulties in seizing power in the US further along the line, but it will be the simplest place to carry out socialism. The Trump government has just released a document against socialism that begins by saying that, 200 years after the birth of Karl Marx, socialism was beginning to resurface. Alan also cited his own country, saying that Britain was once very stable and now it is the opposite. In the case of France, Spain and Greece, who knows? He also added Mexico to the list, pointing out the countrys enormous revolutionary traditions and saying that the result of the election must show us something, that the people are looking in the same direction as us. Alan said that we are in the most convulsive period of history and Mexico will see more political earthquakes, meaning we must be prepared for the unexpected, because abrupt and sudden changes are implicit in the current situation. The terrain is fertile for a resurgence of the great Mexican revolution at a higher level, but if we are to succeed it depends on us. We must each take personal responsibility for preparing for the battles ahead. If we work seriously with Marx's ideas in our arsenal, we will surely win. "We have had issues staffing the stores since the day we got them," Gauthier said. This seems to be an issue with every job in the service industry, he said. TYLER MANNING [email protected] https://helenair.com/news/local/helena-employers-say-lack-of-affordable-housing-contributes-to-worker/article_6f3ce886-0f43-56c5-934d-24358d658b37.html#tracking-source=home-top-story 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. The story begins not in the year 1773 appended to the Urban Jurgensen logo, which marks the 245th anniversary of the company, but in 1745 with the birth of Jrgen Jrgensen, the son of a servant from Adelgade. From humble beginnings, one of the most significant watchmaking dynasties in history was born. Jrgen Jrgensen learned the art of watchmaking over the course of a seven-year apprenticeship. Back then, the culmination of an apprenticeship involved becoming a journeyman, in other words travelling on an extended journey to undertake further training and acquire professional experience. This extended study trip was responsible for shaping the companies that would henceforth bear the family name. Having travelled primarily to German-speaking countries, he decided to Germanicise his name and henceforth called himself Jurgen Jurgensen. The current company bears the name of Jurgen Jurgensens eldest son, Urban Bruun, who was born on 5th August 1776 in Copenhagen. Like his father, Urban Jurgensen undertook an extensive period of travelling throughout Europe to improve his skills, spending time in Le Locle, Switzerland, with the renowned Frederic Houriet and in Paris, where he studied under two legendary watchmakers, Abraham-Louis Breguet and Ferdinand Berthoud. But London had the strongest draw for him as far as the perfection of chronometer construction was concerned. Getting there, however, was much more difficult: he travelled there at the turn of the 18th century, during the Napoleonic wars, when England had imposed a blockade on ships in French ports. He therefore had to spend 20 days in Calais before reaching Dover. He spent several months in London before returning to Paris, then moving on to Geneva and Le Locle, where he married his fiancee Sophie Henriette, on 12th May 1801. By the end of the year, the family had returned to Denmark, where Urban set about developing the national watch industry. It was a thankless task in difficult working conditions. Unlike the Swiss valleys, with their fresh air and ample light, Urban worked in cramped conditions in narrow streets, where there was little sunlight an important requirement for watchmakers. Another trip to Le Locle ensued in 1807, where Urban Jurgensen stayed for a couple more years. Some important events in his life happened during this period, such as the award of the silver cross of the Danebrog Order, the birth of Urbans son Jules Frederik and the major breakthrough of learning how to pierce rubies and sapphires in Geneva. Returning to Denmark in 1809, Urban Jurgensen took full control of the family company, but when his father died on 16th April 1811 he decided to establish his own company. With his own company, Urban Jurgensen was able to concentrate on his goal of practicing precision horology and thus producing marine chronometers and observatory regulators. On 8th December 1815, Urban Jurgensen was elected as a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences quite an unusual honour for someone of Jurgensens standing. However, this gave him access to the upper echelons of society and allowed him to make proposals to the national government for producing marine chronometers for hire by the merchant navy, pointing out that his chronometers were cheaper than those of John Arnold and, more importantly, avoided dependence on a foreign country for supply. Urban Jurgensen marine chronometer, circa 1820 Sadly, the pinnacle of Urban Jurgensens career coincided with a deterioration in his health that came at a time when he was working on things like improving Earnshaws chronometer escapement. He also started writing a book on precision horology in 1829 but died less than a year later, on 14th May 1830. The book was subsequently completed and published by Urban Jurgensens son Louis Urban and it was only after his death that the Danish nation realized the significance of Urban Jurgensens work. They included an off-road vehicle, a mobile phone charger powered by the user's own movement, and an unmanned catamaran The fifth edition of the Cairo International Exhibition of Innovation took place on 8 and 9 November. The exhibition is an initiative of Egypts Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT), which aimed at creating an annual innovation market where innovators, technology companies, and young people meet to share their innovative products or projects. The ASRT will give financial prizes at the end of the exhibition for the best innovations, media counselor and official spokesman of the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT) in Cairo, Sherine Sabri, told Ahram Online. Also, it will sign contracts with innovators within one month after the end of the exhibition. The innovations have to be new. It can be applied to any industry and economic profit, she added This year, the exhibition saw more than 5,000 visitors and 670 innovations and exhibits. There was a wide range of innovations in different fields. Among them were two outstanding inventions which won first place as the best innovations in the student projects category at the end of the exhibition. The first was a four-wheel lightweight ground vehicle with one seat. Its engine is 305 CC, 10 horsepower and its speed level from 60 to 70km/h (kilometres per hour). It was designed and manufactured by 20 engineering students (third, fourth and fifth year) from the automobile engineering department at Military Technical College in Egypt. 1 The students designed the vehicle to participate in international automotive design racing competition Baja SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) in the USA in April 2019. It is annual design competition for engineering students from universities all over the world to design and build a small off-road vehicle. During the competition each team's vehicle is judged on a series of static and dynamic events. The static events include cost and design presentations as well as vehicle inspection. This vehicle can be driven on different road conditions including desert, rough terrain, rocky terrain, muddy terrain, sandy terrain, forests and unpaved ground. It also can be used in towing. Its towing capacity was from 1-11/2 ton. Its price is EGP110,000. All vehicle parts were Egyptian-made except the brake calipers, the engine and the shock absorber, which were imported. The second invention was an electric vehicle called Viride (from the Latin word for green). It was also designed by students from the automobile engineering department at Military Technical College in Egypt. 2 The Viride vehicles components were made in Egypt. It had won first prize in the innovation competition over nine other teams at the first Electric Vehicle Rally, held in Egypts new administrative capital last year. The one-seater is powered by an electric motor instead of a gasoline engine, using a rechargeable battery installed inside the car that needs to be recharged periodically via any outlet using a long cable with adapter plug into a regular household socket. It needs only three hours to be fully charged. It had a driving range of 65 kilometres. It also features a seat belt and a six-point harness, and two emergency (e-stop) buttons inside and outside the car that require just one touch to turn off the engine. Afnan Osama, a 17-year-old inventor from Aswan governorate, was at the exhibition showing off his invention, a shoe charger. The device converts the heat generated by the human body when a person moves into electric energy. It is lightweight and small and can be placed in a trouser pocket. It is used to charge a mobile phone battery, MP3 player or other simple electrical device. The shoe charger device is connected to mobile through Bluetooth, Osama explained. Then, the mobile begins to charge. The amount of time to charge a phone depends varying on the model of the phone, she said. It can generate 220 volts, to provide the entire home needs for electricity, she added. It is a great source of renewable energy. Her colleague Omar Zakariya has added a sensor to the shoe charger to aid old or visually impaired people. This motion of the sensor would send an alert through frequencies or vibration to his or her sole, to warn the wearer if they are facing any objects or solid body obstacles such as trees, bricks pavements, etc. Four students from the ship and submarine engineering department at the Military Technical College, a department which was established only four years ago, made an unmanned catamaran with a unique design, which can move at high speeds and is more stable, and less likely to keel over. It reduces drag by making use of a very thin pointed hull design. The catamaran has multiple uses, such as coastal monitoring and surveillance of suspicious objects. It could also measure salinity and water pollution and secure marine fisheries and fish farms projects, by using sonar to map the sea floor. It is also capable of detecting landmines and can travel long distances without human intervention. Search Keywords: Short link: The volume of traffic via Russias northernmost territorial waters has significantly increased in recent years. In November, the flow of cargo shipments reached 15 million tons, according to Russias Transport Ministry. Earlier, volume of shipments totaled just 5-7 million tons, said Deputy Transport Ministry Jury Tsvetkov. Now the volume is 15 million tons, which includes 500,000 tons of transit cargos. The Russian official, who also heads the Federal Agency of Sea and River Transport, added that most of the shipments are operated by Russias largest independent natural gas producer, Novatek. Read more Last month, the Northern Sea Route Administration reported that cargo shipping via the route increased by more than four times since 2013, reaching 13 million tons. The office expects 17 million tons of shipping by the end of the year. The Northern Sea Route is currently the shortest maritime route linking the European part of Russia with its easternmost territories. The passage goes through five seas of the Arctic Ocean, including the Barents Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, East Siberian Sea, Chukchi Sea, and partially through the Bering Sea in the Pacific Ocean. The Arctic route is expected to challenge Egypts Suez Canal as one of the key global shipping arteries connecting Asia to Europe. The sea route may reduce shipping times by up to two weeks. However, sailing through Arctic waters is still unfeasible without using an icebreaker. The Northern Sea Route is operated within Russias Exclusive Economic Zone. Earlier this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the country is planning to significantly increase cargo traffic to 80 million tons a year. Currently, ships mainly transport liquefied natural gas (LNG), oil, and coal. For more stories on economy & finance visit RT's business section 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. A European court on Thursday upheld a freeze of the assets of former Egyptian president Hosni M Mubarak, his family and other regime officials, imposed after his 2011 ouster. The Luxembourg-based General Court of the European Union upheld the Council of the EUs March 2011 decision to freeze the assets, including those of Mubaraks wife, and his sons, his sons wives, and others in his inner circle. The move followed a Cairo criminal court initial ruling to freeze the assets of Mubarak and his family in March 2011. Mubarak, who resigned on 11 February 2011 following weeks of protests, was later charged in several corruption cases. He was acquitted in almost all of them. In September 2018, Egypt's Court of Cassation rejected a request by Mubaraks lawyer Farid El-Deeb to reinstate his and his sons political rights, which they were stripped of after their conviction in a corruption case in 2015. They had each received three-year jail sentences and hefty monetary fines after being charged with embezzling EGP 125 million from public funds for the maintenance of presidential palaces to use for their private residences. The European court said that the individuals whose assets were frozen had asked for it to be annulled arguing that there is no legal basis for them, that the judicial proceedings in Egypt do not respect the right to an effective remedy, and the presumption of innocence protected by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and that the Council infringed the criteria laid down by the decision, the rights of the defence and the principle of proportionality, according to the court statement. Search Keywords: Short link: SOUDERTON Stopping to help others takes longer, but the riders in the annual Scooter's Cranksgiving Bike Ride/Food Drive don't mind. "This is not a race. If you came here to win the Cranksgiving, you officially are a loser," said Brian Goshow, one of the ride organizers, while giving instructions as about 175 bicyclists were getting ready to leave from... Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi met with Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat on Thursday to discuss the latest updates in implementing the digital government strategy and the establishment and development of the digital system in the new administrative capital, El-Sisi's spokesman said. At the meeting, the communications minister presented the vision for transforming to digital government, which includes the new administrative capital. The digital government plan is expected to provide a shared information network between different ministries, institutions and state bodies. It will also allow the implementation of a government-performance monitoring system. Talaat also reviewed the mechanisms for training human resources through a number of initiatives that will be implemented during the coming period, aiming to develop the digital skills of youth from different categories in the field of information and communications technology (ICT). During the meeting, officials discussed the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology's plan of action for programmes and projects, particularly the establishment and development of the digital system in the new administrative capital, the development of human resources in the field of ICT, and the project of establishing a portal for cultural content. The president stressed that the ICT sector is a high priority in the country's plans and strategies because of its vital role in the economic and social development process. According to El-Sisis spokesman Bassam Rady, Talaat presented the latest preparations for hosting the Cairo International Telecom Conference and Exhibition to be held from 25 to 28 November under the auspices of the president. Search Keywords: Short link: We have done far better with ... SOUTHINGTON A deli, bakery and coffee shop is the latest addition to dining options in the southwestern part of town. Avventura Bakery & Deli opened at 30 Knotter Drive. Its owned by Rami Macari, who started his own location after working at the original Avventura location in Waterbury, now closed. Macari said many of the customers of that deli, originally Cavallos Deli in the 1960s, have moved to Southington. We heard a lot of people tell us they needed something like this, a good deli bakery, he said Wednesday. They all told us they miss it and they need something similar. Eggplant parmesan, chicken parmesan, and meatball are among the delis most popular sandwiches. In addition to Italian flair deli offerings, Avventura has pastries, coffee, cappuccino, and espresso. Theres a lot of people who come for a dessert and a coffee, Macari said. Avventura also does off-site catering and after-hours events on-site. Macari spent several months readying the restaurant to open. Hes the first storefront in a commercial building on Knotter Drive that was recently completed. If approved by the state, the building could also host a medical marijuana facility. The restaurant is open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sundays. Taylor Crofton, executive director of the Greater Southington Chamber of Commerce, attended a grand opening over the weekend. They had 50 or 60 people there who were friends and family. It was a really nice showing, she said. The bakery itself is beautiful; they have a delightful display. The location increases options for residents and highway travelers in Southington as well as nearby Cheshire. Its definitely the only bakery in that corner, Crofton said. Theyll be able to cater to both Southington and Cheshire. jbuchanan@record-journal.com 203-317-2230 Twitter: @JBuchananRJ By Express News Service MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court has dismissed liquor baron Vijay Mallyas petition seeking to untag him from the Enforcement Directorates (ED) fugitive economic offender list, ED tweeted on Thursday. The ED said the High Court dismissed Mallyas appeal for a stay on proceedings under the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, on the pretext that ATFE had ordered a status quo in the attachments under PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) case filed by the State Bank of India. The agency that probes economic offences had sought the fugitive offender tag for Mallya so that it has the power to confiscate his properties under the PMLA. A Special Court had earlier rejected Mallyas plea to stay the hearing on EDs petition till November 26, when the Appellate Tribunal for PMLA is slated to hear the plea filed by the consortium of banks to claim their dues. Mallya had moved the HC after this and now, this petition stands dismissed as well. We are also anxious to clear the dues and to see to it that the creditors get their dues back. We only do not want the properties to be seized by the Enforcement Directorate, which would then hamper the process of clearance of dues, Mallyas lawyer Amit Desai told the High Court division bench, PTI reported. Desai told the court that his pleas should not be misunderstood as a ploy to run away from the proceedings. However, High Court dismissed Mallyas petition saying it has been filed at a premature stage when the lower court is hearing the prosecuting agencys request to declare him a fugitive economic offender. The bench said the lower court shall hear the petition filed by the ED on merits. India has also sought extradition of Mallya from Britain, where he has been residing since he left the country. UBS to take liquor barons London home The High Court in London on Thursday ruled in favour of Swiss banking giant UBS Investment Bank to take possession of Vijay Mallyas Central London house, ANI reported. The judicature had issued an order asking Mallya to pay 88,000 euros to UBS, which had issued 20.4 million euros in the mortgage loan for the property. By PTI BENGALURU: A non-cognisable case was filed against a woman on a complaint by Flipkart Co-founder Binny Bansal, who recently quit as the Group CEO over allegations of "serious personal misconduct", but was later closed after a brief probe, a senior police official said Friday. Bansal had alleged in his complaint that the woman was sending threatening emails to him, the official told PTI on condition of anonymity. The firm owner Walmart Inc had announced on Tuesday last that Bansal had resigned as the Group Chief Executive Officer after an independent probe into allegations of "serious personal misconduct". Repudiating the charges, Binny, 37, had said that he was "stunned" by the allegations and added that he would, however, continue to remain a large shareholder and Board member of the company that he had co-founded 11 years ago. "The Koramangala police had filed a non-cognisable case against a woman. Bansal had alleged that the woman was sending threatening mails to him," the officer said. ALSO READ | Shocked by misconduct charges, will continue to be board member of Flipkart: Binny Bansal The complaint, after a few days of investigation, was closed, the officer said but declined to disclose further details. Non-cognisable offence refers to an offence in which the police has no authority to apprehend a person for crime on their own. Under this law, the police require a warrant to arrest an accused and a court's prior approval to begin an investigation. Bansal's exit came just months after Flipkart was acquired by Walmart. He was serving as Group CEO after Walmart's mega USD 16 Billion investment in the Bengaluru-based company. Walmart, in its statement, had said Binny's decision to step down followed an independent investigation done on behalf of Flipkart and Walmart, even though the probe "did not find evidence to corroborate the complainant's assertions" against him. The company, however, did not provide details of the nature of misconduct or the findings of the probe for which it had engaged a global law firm. The probe that began in July did not involve an employee of Flipkart, according to sources which had indicated that the complainant was associated with the firm a few years ago, but was now running her own venture. The matter is in "personal realm," they added. This, however, could not be independently ascertained. Binny had co-founded Flipkart with his IIT-Delhi batchmate Sachin Bansal in 2007. Sachin Bansal (not related) left the company, selling his entire 5.5 per cent stake to Walmart, as part of the mega USD 16-billion deal with the US retail behemoth in May. By PTI NEW DELHI: Travel time between Chennai and Mysore will be cut down by more than five hours by 2030 if the Railway Board approves a plan for a high-speed rail network between the two cities proposed by the German government. The feasibility study for the 435 km route was submitted to Railway Board chairman Ashwani Lohani by German Ambassador Martin Ney on Thursday. The report envisages covering the 435 km distance with a maximum speed of around 320 kmph resulting in an overall reduction in time between Chennai and Mysore from the present seven hours to two hour and twenty minutes. "The study was both commissioned and financed by the German government. The route was found to be not only extremely viable, but also prove to be the most effective solution to manage traffic growth," Ney said. The report states that the estimated infrastructure cost of the project to be around Rs 1 lakh crore and an additional cost of Rs 150 crore for rolling stock. According to the German report, the route - Chennai-Arakkonam-Bangalore-Mysore - will be 85 per cent elevated and have 11 per cent tunnels. It will reduce travel time between Chennai and Bengaluru by 100 minutes and between Bangalore and Mysore by 40 minutes. While the report has suggested that India integrate its existing conventional railway line with the high-speed line instead of a dedicated high-speed corridor in order to not only reduce costs but also minimise land acquisition issues, the Railway Board rejected the plan stating that India's present network was too over-saturated and complicated for this. "The proposal is an exciting one and we are reviewing it at the moment. The Germans studied both mixed modes and dedicated mode and we decided that a detailed study of dedicated mode was more viable. "We are expecting that we will be able to ground some passengers from airlines when they see that the travel time has been reduced so drastically. Unless one lives near to the airport, trains will be faster than airlines once this kind of high speed rail network is introduced," Lohani said. While none of the officials wanted to come on record on the fare structure of the proposed high-speed train to be introduced on the line, sources say that a journey between Chennai to Mysore will be comparable to airfares on that route. The report has stated that after a planning period of three years and a construction period of nine years, the route will be operational by 2030. Other routes on which feasibility studies are being conducted include New Delhi-Mumbai, Mumbai-Chennai, Delhi-Kolkata, Delhi-Nagpur and Mumbai-Nagpur. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi toured the new administrative capital on Friday morning, as well as tunnels under-construction on the Suez Canal. El-Sisi was inspecting the latest updates at both sites, according to a brief statement by his spokesman Bassam Rady. At the new capital, El-Sisi also toured at the El-Fattah El-Alim Mosque and the Nativity of Christ Cathedral. The under-construction capital, announced in March 2015, is part of the governments plan to expand urban areas to deal with the country's rapid population growth rate and improve the nation's infrastructure. Located some 40km east of Cairo, the new city is intended to draw a population of 7 million people in its first phase. In December 2017 El-Sisi inaugurated several development projects in the East Suez Canal development zone in northern Ismailia, including tunnels to facilitate commercial and civilian access to Sinai and the East Suez Canal Development Zone. Sisi The East Suez Canal development project, which is part of the larger Suez Canal development plan, was launched in 2015. The project aims to develop major residential and industrial centres in the governorate of Ismailia. sisi Sisi Sisi Search Keywords: Short link: By Express News Service NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Thursday issued a notice to the city government, the police and then Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash after it admitted a plea by CM Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia challenging a trial courts order in the assault case.Prakash was allegedly assaulted during a meeting at Kejriwals official residence on February 19, triggering a tussle between the AAP government and bureaucrats. Recently, the senior bureaucrat was transferred. He will now be the Additional Secretary in the telecom department. Kejriwal and Sisodia have challenged the trial courts order that prosecution be conducted by an officer of the Delhi Police not below the rank of Addl. Commissioner of Police.During the hearing, lawyers appearing for the AAP government and the Delhi Police had a verbal spat over who appears for the police force in the case. While the Delhi governments standing counsel Rahul Mehra said he only has the right to appear in the case before the high court, Additional Solicitor General Aman Lekhi and Centres standing counsel Anil Soni contended that they were authorised by the Deputy Secretary (Home), Delhi to represent the state. Objecting to Lekhis appearance, Mehra said he was duly appointed through a notification to represent the Delhi Police. No one, including even the Attorney General of India, can appear in a matter when the standing counsel is present there, he asserted.Justice Najmi Waziri slated the hearing for January 17. Kejriwal and Sisodia have challenged the order permitting two other advocates to conduct the prosecution on behalf of a Delhi Police officer, instead of a regular public prosecutor. An angry mob in Dwarka locality of Delhi on Thursday attacked four Tanzanian women and two Nigerian men after rumours went viral that they were cannibals and had kidnapped a boy, a Hindustan Times report said. Police investigated the case after they received calls against the Africans being cannibals. However, they found that the boy, who was believed to have been abducted, was present at his home and were told that he had never gone missing. Several people had also gathered outside the house of the victims. However, they were rescued after police reached the spot. "At one place, we found a crowd had gathered outside a house where some Africans lived. The mob had gathered on hearing rumours that the Africans were cannibals. We dispersed the crowd and rescued four Africans from there and took them to the local police station, a senior officer was quoted as saying in the report. Police also got a call from a person in the victims' neighbourhood saying two Africans were locked in their flat from outside. In a similar incident in 2017, six African nationals were attacked in south Delhis Mehrauli area. A Congolese national MK Olivier was also killed in south Delhis Vasant Kunj in the same year. Deena Theresa By Express News Service KOCHI: ... Buses with pilgrims hurtle past You squint at a boy pedalling his cycle rickshaw Close, far too close, drops of mud splatter us both. You lean sideways, touch my cheek Lets live in Kochi by the sea Find a house with a white balcony, I think the angels will call on me. And so did the angels call. On November 21, Meena Alexander, poet, essayist, and scholar left for the heavens in New York. The above lines from the poem, Kochi By The Sea, written as an elegy for her sister is a testimony to the poet she was - descriptive and touching the very essence of ones heart, chasing a distinct nostalgia. Author of the novels Nampally Road (1991) and Manhattan Music (1997), Meena won the PEN Open Book Award for her poetry collection Illiterate Heart (2002). Her autobiographical memoir Fault Lines, originally published in 1993 and revised in 2003, had received worldwide acclaim. A diasporic poet, Meena grew up in Kerala, Sudan and eventually settling down in New York with her husband and children, her poems have the staggering, unmistakable presence of identity, home, and memoirs. Home was always a little bit beyond reach, a place both real and imagined, longed for, yet marked perpetually as an elsewhere, brightly lit, vanishing. Perhaps she found home in language, having attained literacy in her mother tongue of Malayalam, Hindi, French, Arabic and English. The polyglot had her first poems published in the Khartoum Daily, during her childhood in Sudan. Since then, poetry had become her way of life. Her friend of over 30 years, Jancy James, the first VC of the Central University of Kerala, says that the poet lived her life like a poem. She saw reality through the eyes of a poet. She constantly urged herself to write poems, every moment of her life, Jancy reminisces. Despite having left the country several winters ago, Meena Alexander visited Kerala frequently. She loved being in Kerala. The primary reason was her mother at home in Thiruvalla. Apart from it, the culture, mythology, customs and traditions of Kerala were something she imbibed and desperately wanted to transcribe into poetry, Jancy says. Having worked as a professor in English and Womens Studies at the New York University, Meena lived two lives, that of an academician and a creative writer. Nevertheless, she couldnt segregate these lives. Her lectures reminded one of a poetic discourse, Jancy says. In the wake of her death, poets and writers have expressed condolences on the great poet Meena was. Sri Lankan American fiction writer, essayist, and journalist V V Ganeshananthan tweeted a memory, I met Meena Alexander years ago when we did an event together in New York. Some of the event logistics went askew, and she rose to the occasion to do more than her part, with extraordinary kindness and graciousness,. Indian writer Amitav Ghosh added that the late poet was an exceptional person in every way, as a poet and a human being and that he would miss her.In her words, she wrote, What was close to the heart and the bone. Dileep V Kumar By Express News Service THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Health Departments plan to eradicate malaria from the state by 2020 is likely to miss its target due to the absence of an exhaustive study into the effectiveness of insecticides in controlling the mosquito population. It was in April the department announced its Malaria Prevention Campaign with a deadline of 2020 for its eradication. The absence of such a study is also said to have its impact on reducing dengue-related mortality and morbidity in the state. When it comes to malaria control and elimination, there exists the challenges of insecticide resistance, gene deletions and parasite drug resistance, an officer with the Health Department told Express. But the state is yet to conduct a study on any of these challenges. Thus putting a big question mark on the effectiveness of mosquito prevention mechanisms in practice. Meanwhile, Dr V Meenakshi, state programme officer, National Vector Borne Disease Control, said a decreasing trend of malaria cases is there in the state and mostly it is dealing with imported malaria cases. Indigenous malaria cases are almost rare in the state. But there are imported malaria cases, thanks to the influx of the migrant population, said Meenakshi. When asked about the probability of the existence of mosquitoes resistant to insecticides, she said the ongoing mosquito reduction mechanisms like fogging and spraying have so far turned to be effective in the state. She further said, The Health Department had conducted a study on vector control in 2016. But it is not a foolproof one. Though we have plans to update the study the unavailability of insecticide resistance kits provided by the World Health Organization (WHO) is an impediment. At the same time, Dr Anish T S, associate professor, Department of Community Medicine, Thiruvananthapuram Government Medical College, said as part of the dengue collaborative study with the WHO, chances are there to study insecticide resistance, gene deletions and parasite drug resistance among mosquitoes. Earlier, WHO in its World Malaria Report 2018 highlighted the emergence of parasite resistance to antimalarial medicines and mosquito resistance to insecticides and inadequate performance of health systems were a cause for worry in malaria control. As per the statistics available with the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme, the state has recorded a total of 771 malaria cases this year of which 755 were imported cases and the rest falls under the category of indigenous cases. As per data with the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme, the state has recorded a total of 771 malaria cases this year Of these, 755 were imported cases and the rest falls under the category of indigenous cases. Anuraag Singh By Express News Service BHOPAL: Congress national president Rahul Gandhi claimed on Friday that former union minister and Congress candidate Arun Yadav will defeat chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan from Budhni seat of Sehore district of Madhya Pradesh in the coming assembly polls. Addressing a poll rally in Nasrullaganj which forms part of the MP CM's hometown and assembly constituency Budhni in Sehore district, Rahul said "the November 28 contest in Budhni will be a historic battle between the CM who is equipped with entire government machinery, including police and intelligence, besides money and other resources and the young leader of tomorrow Arun Yadav." "Some days back Arun came to see me in Delhi, where I told him you've to fight against the CM in Budhni. He quickly accepted the offer after which I tested him by asking will you lose or win. Within split second came Arun's reply I'll return victorious in the contest between experience and youth," the AICC president said. "Arun is the new leader in making, but I've already told him that as you are a Congress candidate and not a candidate chosen by the RSS, hence you'll win against the CM with utmost respect and love and not through hatred," said Rahul. The Budhni seat which during the past 15 elections and by-elections since 1957 has been won by BJP seven times, Congress five times, independents twice and Janta Party once, has seen Shivraj Singh Chouhan emerge victor four times, including 1990, 2006, 2008 and 2013. In the 2013 polls, Chouhan won by a massive 84,000-plus vote. The last time Congress won the seat was in 1998, when its candidate was Dev Kumar Patel. The present candidate Arun Yadav is a former union minister and the son of former deputy CM of MP Late Subhash Yadav. Arun Yadav was the state Congress chief before Kamal Nath took over the charge earlier this year. Slamming the CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the AICC chief said a few weeks back I mistakenly stated at a public rally that the name of MP CM's son was there in Panama Papers. Within a short while, the CM tweeted that "he'll file a defamation suit against me." "But why doesn't he say the same words, when I raise the issue of multitude of other scams, including Vyapam, E-Tendering, Mid Day Meal and rampant sand mining in the state by sand mafia, the answer can only be given by Chouhan and his family, whose names have been regularly linked to all these scams," said Rahul Gandhi. While continuing to attack the PM Narendra Modi over the Rafale deal, he said, "one chowkidar (PM) has brought disrepute to all other chowkidars in the country, as the entire nation is no longer chanting Achche Din Aayenge, but instead shouting Chowkidar chor hai." Besides, addressing the poll rally in Nasrullaganj (Sehore), the Congress president also addressed rallies in Ganj Basoda (Vidisha) and Bhojpur in Raisen district. In Bhojpur, there is an intriguing battle between former union minister and Congress candidate Suresh Pachouri and sitting BJP MLA and MP minister Surendra Patwa (the nephew of ex-CM Sunderlal Patwa). By PTI JAIPUR: Both the BJP and the Congress kept the caste arithmetic in mind while announcing their candidates for the Rajasthan assembly polls, fielding same-caste nominees against each other in at least 31 constituencies. The two parties have fielded 33 candidates each belonging to the Jat community for the December 7 polls. The ruling BJP has fielded 26 Rajputs and the Congress 15 from the community. Altogether, over 60 candidates from the Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste categories are in the fray. Besides giving prominence to Brahmin, Vaishya, Other Backward Classes and SC/STs, the opposition Congress has fielded 15 Muslim candidates against only one by the Bharatiya Janata Party for the 200-seat House. On the 31 seats where both the Congress and the BJP have fielded candidates belonging to the same caste, there is a direct contest between 15 candidates belonging to the Jat community. Brahmins are pitted against Brahmins on seven seats, Rajputs fight each other on four, and Gurjars and Yadavs on two seats each. Parties in Rajasthan have always kept the caste factor in mind while distributing tickets, observers said. For example, for years, the BJP enjoyed support of the Rajputs. But observers said even a slight swing in loyalties this time can change the outcome, they said. The Congress, in any case, will benefit if anti-incumbency comes into play, it is felt. In last assembly polls, the BJP vote share was 46.05 per cent against the 33.7 per cent polled by the Congress. In the 2008 assembly election, the BJP vote share was 34.27 per cent against the 36. 82 per cent of the Congress, according to the Election Commission data. Among the prominent Jat leaders, Ram Pratap Kasnia of the BJP is pitted against Hanuman Meel of the Congress in Suratgarh, Ram Pratap of BJP against Vinod Chaudhary of the Congress in Hanumangarh and Ram Singh Kaswan of the BJP against Krishna Punia of the Congress in Sadulpur. Among the Brahmin contestants, BJP's Gopal Joshi has been fielded against B D Kalla of the Congress in Bikaner West and Abhinesh Mehrishi of the BJP against Bhanwarlal of the Congress in Ratangarh. By IANS NEW DELHI: The Congress on Friday distanced itself from senior leader C.P. Joshi's statement that "only Brahmins know and can talk about Hinduism" with party President Rahul Gandhi saying his remarks were against the ideology of the party and he should apologise for it. He also warned party leaders to refrain from making any statements which may hurt sentiments of any section of the society. "C.P. Joshi's statement is against the ideals of the Congress party. Party leaders should refrain from making any statement which may hurt any section of the society," Gandhi said in a tweet in Hindi. "Respecting the principles of the party and sentiments of its workers, Joshiji would definitely realise his mistake. He should express remorse for his statement." Gandhi's remarks came after a video of Joshi surfaced on Thursday in which he is heard saying that only pandits and brahmins knew about Hinduism and were learned enough to speak about it. "Does anyone know what is the caste of Uma Bharti? What is the caste of Sadhvi Ritambhara? In this country, if anyone knows about religion, it is the pandits and the Brahmins," Joshi is heard saying in the video. Amit Agnihotri By Express News Service NEW DELHI: The Congress has seen red and urged the Election Commission to withdraw 9 lakh pink ballot papers in Telangana as it can help the TRS.You are undoubtedly aware of the fact pink is the official colour of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti a political party contesting the present elections. The banners, party flag, manifesto are all pink. The colour is synonymous with the party, the Congress memorandum submitted to the poll panel on Thursday said. The usage of pink coloured ballots, without doubt, will give the TRS an undue advantage over other contesting parties. The Congress further pointed out that in the recently concluded Greater Hyderabad Municipal Elections, there was a proposal that voting machines use a pink button to designate the NOTA or None of the Above option, prompting the TRS to lodge a protest with the poll panel saying their voters would be confused with the button. The Congress told the EC that its state unit has already challenged the state government order to print pink ballot papers but no action has been taken so far. By Express News Service HYDERABAD: TRS defeat is Telanganas loss, cautions TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao during his electioneering on Thursday. Addressing campaign meetings at Khanapur, Ichoda, Nirmal, Mudhole and Armoor, he asked the people to vote for TRS, only if there was a truth in whatever he said. Speaking at Khanapur, Rao said: If the TRS is defeated there is nothing much I lose personally. If you elect TRS, I will work hard further. Otherwise, I will take a rest at my farmhouse or do farming. But, the defeat of TRS will be a loss to Telangana State and its people, he asserted. The TRS chief, who has been critical of TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu, asked people whether Telangana still needs Naidu who is opposed to irrigation projects in the state. Naidu is anti-Telangana. He cannot pay attention to Telangana if Grand Alliance comes to power, he said. He also targeted the Congress party for delay in carving out Telangana State. In the first Telangana movement, Congress was responsible for the death of 400 people. In the next phase of the movement, Congress though in power did not deliver Telangana for 14 years. Finally, the party carved out the State in an inevitable situation, he said. If I go to Maharashtra and do politics there, will they allow me to stay there. They will chase me away. I chased away Naidu to AP. But, the Congress is bringing him back, Rao lamented. At all the five places, Rao spoke in Urdu for some time to identify himself with the local Muslim population. Speaking at Nirmal, he referred to AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisis allegation that a Congress nominee offered Rs 25 lakh to his party to cancel a rally proposed to be addressed by him and said Asaduddin Owaisi would not be sold, not for Rs 25 lakh but even for Rs 25 crore. Rao also touched the Hindu sentiment by explaining development plans of Basara temple and the successful conduct of Krishna and Godavari Pushkarams by Endowments Minister A Indra Karan Reddy, now TRS candidate from Nirmal. Observing the huge crowds at each Assembly segment-wise meetings, an elated Rao remarked: Some Congress leaders stated that there is a silent revolution (nissabda viplavam) against TRS. I can say that there is a noisy revolution (sabda viplam). Federal Front will form govt at Centre Rao said that his party would win 16 Lok Sabha seats and MIM would win one Lok Sabha seat in the next Lok Sabha elections. The Federal Front will form a non-BJP and non-Congress government at the Centre, he declared. Stating that he could not travel the State extensively in the last four years, Rao assured that once the TRS forms the government he, along with senior officials, would spend one day in each Assembly segment to resolve the local issues. KCR PROMISES TO INCREASE Retirement age of STATE govt EMPLOYEES At a public meeting at Armoor, Chandrasekhar Rao promised to increase the retirement age of State government employees to 60 or 61 years after TRS comes to power. Employees from various organisations submitted a representation to TRS Election Manifesto Committee chairman K Keshava Rao in Hyderabad on Thursday, with a set of demands seeking their inclusion in the party manifesto. Following requests from the employee's unions, the TRS Party Election Manifesto Committee is examining the feasibility and will propose the revised age of retirement in its manifesto shortly, he said. The TRS has always been an employee-friendly party. PRC and other issues will be settled soon, Rao said. We are giving pensions to 4.5 lakh beedi workers. The cut-off date will be fixed as 2018 and provide pensions to 40,000 more beedi workers, he said. Ridiculing the Congress promise of waiving farm loans of Rs 2 lakh at one go, Rao asked: How many of you have Rs 2 lakh crop loan dues? The maximum crop loan would be Rs 1 lakh only and the TRS would write it off, he said. By IANS HYDERABAD: United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Friday said the Congress carved out Telangana state, though it had to pay a political price for it. On her first visit to Telangana, after it came into being as a separate state in 2014, the former Congress president said the Congress accorded statehood though it had to pay a price for it. ALSO READ | Modi has 'disease', sees Hindu-Muslim divide in everything: KCR She was apparently referring to the drubbing Congress faced in Andhra Pradesh in Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in 2014. Sonia Gandi was addressing a massive public meeting at Medchal near Hyderabad to formally kick off the campaign of People's Front headed by the Congress for the next month's elections to Telangana Assembly. Gandhi projected herself as the 'mother of Telangana' by stating that she is feeling happy to be in Telangana in the same manner as a mother would feel happy to see her child after many days. "Every mother wants to see her children prosper, but I am pained to see the condition of the new state," she said castigating the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government for failing to fulfill the promises at the time of formation of their state. "You know if a newborn is not properly taken care of in the initial years, he has to face many problems in future. Unfortunately, the responsibility of looking after the child was entrusted to those who only looked after themselves and left the child to fend for itself," said Sonia Gandhi. Stating that elections are an opportunity for people to get rid of this difficult situation, she appealed to people to use the power of the vote to teach TRS a lesson and bring Congress and its allies to power with a huge majority. "I remember what difficulties we had to face in taking a decision to form Telangana state. It was not an easy task," said Sonia Gandhi recalling the passage of the bill in Parliament by Congress-led UPA government for bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh. "We kept the interests of both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana before us but your emotions and aspirations gave Dr Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi and others the strength, enabling us to take this big decision," she told a huge gathering amid loud cheers. The Congress leader said they felt the pain of Andhra Pradesh and that was why they announced special schemes and promised special category status to that state. She assured people of Andhra Pradesh that the Congress stands by the commitment it made including the special category status. Recalling that Telangana was achieved on the slogan of "water, funds and jobs", she alleged that TRS failed to live up to the expectations of people. She said people had hoped that the new state would bring about change in their lives but it did so in the lives of those in power and their near and dear ones. Stating that farmers were yet to get water for irrigation, she said their suicides were continuing. Gandhi said the youth were still waiting for jobs. Telugu Desam Party's Telangana unit president L. Ramna, Telangana Jana Samithi's M. Kodandaram and Communist Party of India's state secretary Chada Venkatreddy shared the dais with Sonia Gandhi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi. Rahul Gandhi said the TRS rule was about to come to an end. Without naming TRS president and Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao, the Congress president said during last five years, one person ran the state at his whims and fancies for the benefit of his family. Rahul Gandhi assured the people that the alliance would fulfill their dreams which Chandrashekhar Rao failed to do. "The government of the alliance will not work for one person but for all the people of the state. It will work to address the problems of farmers, provide employment to youth and carry all sections people with it." The meeting was held the first show of strength by four-party People's Front ahead of December 7 elections to 119-member Assembly. Libyas sovereign wealth fund will appoint auditors within weeks and conclude a wide-ranging examination of its assets by 2019 as part of its efforts to get billions of dollars of assets unfrozen, the funds head told Reuters. Ali Mahmoud Hassan Mohamed, the chairman and chief executive of the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), said financial auditing and consulting company PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was one of the firms the fund was considering. About 70 percent of the LIAs $67 billion worth of assets have been frozen under United Nations sanctions since the toppling of veteran ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 pushed the country into turmoil. UN diplomats say they want to see a stable government in Libya before relaxing the sanctions. Search Keywords: Short link: By Express News Service HYDERABAD: UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi will return to Telangana on Friday along with her son and Congress president Rahul Gandhi after a gap of five years to make her presence felt in the ensuing elections. The State Congress unit has already gone into a huddle to ensure preparations are complete and the ground is set. Grand alliance partners T-TDP and TJS persidents L Ramana and Professor Kodandaram will also share the stage with Gandhi; so will BC rights activists Manda Krishna Madiga and R Krishnaiah. ALSO READ: Grand alliance breathes easy as rebel leaders withdraw nominations on last day Their presence, pollsters say, is likely to cool down the mounting anger from leaders of the BC communities who were denied tickets. Sonia, having also played a role in the formation of Telangana State, is likely to take on TRS supremo K Chandrasekhar Rao for failing to fulfil the promises made to people of the State. Soniamma, as she is known among the cadre in the State, has gotten her local loyalists enthused. For, Telangana will be the first of the five states going to polls where she will campaign. This indicates that Congress has high hopes in the Telugu State. She is also expected to unveil the Congress manifesto that will see promises of sorts, impacting people of all corners. MP Konda Vishveshwar Reddy who has recently resigned from the TRS is expected to formally join into the Congress fold in the presence of Sonia Gandhi. Reddys departure from TRS came as a shock to the partys leadership. AICC treasurer Ahmed Patel, AICC spokesperson Jaipal Reddy, MP Jairam Ramesh and MP Veerapa Moily are already camping in the State. Arunkumar Sekhar By Express News Service Director: Matthew Heineman Cast: Rosamund Pike, Jamie Dornan, Tom Hollander, Stanley Tucci Rating: 4.5 stars Well into the second half of A Private War, Marie Colvin asks, In covering war, can we really make a difference? For a hard-as-nails no-nonsense foreign correspondent, who has single-mindedly pursued stories inside some of the worlds famous war zones for more than a couple of decades, this is not just a philosophical question. It is a reality check of the worth of her life and career. She is a two-time winner of the British Foreign Correspondent of the Year award, so it isnt really recognition that she craves or uses as a measuring stick. To her, why she covers the war is as important as how she covers it. When the film opens with her in the Tamil Tigers camp, the commander asks her to write about the people suffering at the hands of the Sri Lankan soldiers. She gives a half-nod, then proceeds to point out that a major part of that suffering is because of corruption within their own ranks. But as years pass by, and she sees systemic corruption across countries, governments and rebels, you can see her perspective and her moral compass slowly, but surely, shifting to the vagaries of human suffering, the innocents, who are always the victims of all wars. As Marie Colvin, Rosamund Pike gives a career-defining performance (sorry, Gone Girl!) that shows you a woman who is afraid to not just grow old but also die young. She wears an eye patch like a pirate, sails the perilous seas of war, going where no man (or woman) dares to go, and comes back with treasured stories. But the cost rises with each assignment, with her fighting a war in her mind every time she comes back. It is physically and emotionally taxing and a quarter vat of vodka doesnt always solve the problem. She wants an emotional substitute, but love, sex, wine, and even the perennial cigarette does not satiate her as much as the stories she wants to tell, the stories she is compelled to tell. In a seminal scene, just when she is about to give it all up, she tells her editor Sean Ryan (a stellar Tom Hollander), I go to these places so that you dont have to. I want to ensure that the suffering is part of the record, to which Tom replies that no one in their right mind would do what she does and If you lose your conviction, what hope do the rest of us have? Marie Colvin felt that somewhere there is a war and nobody knows its happening and it made her crazy. With the aid of three-time Oscar winning cinematographer Robert Richardson, who is the silent hero of the film (he captures the war zones of Sri Lanka, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria in great detail that visually tell a story by themselves), Matthew Heineman has made Marie Colvins private war, public. Ramananda Sengupta and Kumar Vikram By Express News Service NEW DELHI: Despite frosty relations, the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib at Kartarpur on Thursday created an opportunity for peace as both India and Pakistan confirmed the opening of a corridor on either side of the border to let Sikh pilgrims visit the shrine. Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi confirmed his country would open the Kartarpur Corridor on the occasion of Guru Nanaks 550th birth anniversary next year. ALSO READ | Linking India's decision on Kartarpura corridor to Pakistan proposal hurtful for Sikhs: Government sources Darbar Sahib is the first gurdwara built by Guru Nanak, who reportedly died in Kartarpur on the banks of the Ravi river. His remarks came hours after the Indian Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi cleared a proposal to build a 4-km corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Punjabs Gurdaspur district to the International Border, some 5 km from the Kartarpur gurdwara across the border. Although Guru Nanaks 550th birthday is in November this year according to the Roman calendar, the Sikh community will celebrate the occasion according to the Nanak Shahi calendar in November 2019. Pakistan has conveyed to India its decision to open Kartarpur Corridor for Baba Guru Nanaks 550th birth anniversary. PM Imran Khan will do break ground at Kartarpur facilities on 28th November, Qureshi tweeted. Earlier, the MEA in a statement said, We have approached and urged the Pakistan government to recognize the sentiments of Sikh community and build a corridor with suitable facilities in their territory to facilitate easy and smooth visits of pilgrims from India to Kartarpur Sahib throughout the year. The government of India has already decided to build the corridor from Dera Baba Nanak to the International Border with all modern amenities. Pakistans Information and Broadcasting Minister Chaudhry Fawad Hussain said, Indian Cabinet endorsement of Pakistans proposition on #Kartar- PurBorderOpening is victory of peace lobby in both countries, its a step towards the right direction and we hope such steps will encourage voices of reason and tranquillity on both sides of the border. Bristling at the assertion India was endorsing Pakistans proposal, a source said, It may be remembered that the proposal is a long-standing demand from the Indian side for more than 20 years. It is Pakistan that has refused to acknowledge the request. Pointing out that the Cabinet passed the resolution on the Kartarpur Corridor project after many weeks of internal consultations and preparation within the government, he said: The Cabinet usually meets on Wednesday, but due to the national holiday on account of Milad-un Nabi, the Cabinet met today and approved the resolution. The resolution is a comprehensive document that contains detailed information on the plans for the celebration of 550th Birth Anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev, not just on the corridor. Any suggestion that the corridor or the celebrations are being planned as a response to a Pakistani proposal is not only preposterous, but hurtful to the sentiments of the Sikh community." According to him, " Our intention is that the corridor must be a full fledged one that allows for maximum movement. It should be open not just on special occasions but throughout the year. The main points of the Indian proposal are: It should be open 365 days, and 24 hours; There must be no restrictions on the number of pilgrims that are travelling across the border; and there must be free and readily available consular access for Indian citizens on the Pakistani side." "Despite the harassment that pilgrims face on the Pakistani side, with the display of Khalistani posters or through the lack of access to consular officials, Sikh pilgrims continue to make the difficult journey. Our proposal is so that the burden of pilgrims can be eased significantly," he said. By Express News Service NEW DELHI: If proof was needed that the Bharatiya Janata Party is flush with funds, here it is: the Broadcast Audience Research Council India (BARC)s latest data shows that the BJP was the top advertising brand in television in the 46th week of 2018. With 22,099 advertisement insertions during the week November 10-16, the BJP was at number one, beating Netflix with 12,951 and Trivago at 12,795 insertions. Santoor Sandal and Turmeric with 11,222 insertions and Dettol Liquid Soap with 9,487 occupied the fourth and fifth slots. Amazon Prime Video was in the ninth slot with 8,031 insertions. The other advertisers which featured in the top 10 are Wipe, Colgate dental cream, Dettol toilet soaps and Roop Mantra Ayur face cream. The BARC comes out with a list of 10 advertisers, brands and channels on a weekly basis. The BJPs coffers have been swelling ever since the party came to power at the Centre. According to an Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) report released earlier this year, the BJP declared the highest total income of Rs 1034.27 crore during 2016-17. The Congress was a distant second, with a declared income of Rs 225.36 crore, the ADR said. Reacting to the BARC report, the BJP tweeted from its official handle: Media peddles fake news about BJP becoming the top advertiser on television (sic). A senior party functionary said the BJP is the largest political outfit in the world, leading the country of a billion plus. The Congress has been reduced to the status of a regional political outfit thus theres no national political party with which the BJP could be compared on advertisement spending, the senior party leader added. Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said, They need to find out what this means in monetary terms, how much money has the BJP been spending on advertising in these elections. The Election Commission must take cognisance of its impact on probity and integrity of the elections. By PTI JAMMU: The Indian and Pakistan armies Friday held a brigade commander level meeting at a border crossing in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch sector to adhere to ceasefire, a defence official said. The flag meeting comes in the wake of several ceasefire violations by the Pakistan army in the past over one month, during which five Indian security personnel were killed and seven others injured. The Indian delegation was led by Brigadier V S Sekhon and Brigadier Qaiser led the Pakistani side. They met at the Poonch-Rawlakote Crossing Point on the Line of Control (LoC), Public Relation Officer (PRO), Defence, Jammu, Lieutenant Colonel Devender Anand, said. The delegation had discussions on augmenting confidence building measures, maintaining peace along the LoC and preventing infiltration from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, he said. The meeting came on a day when security forces shot dead six Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militants during an encounter in a forested area in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district. "The brigade commander level flag meeting was held between the Indian Army and the Pakistan Army at 1100 hours at the Poonch-Rawlakote Crossing Point," Anand said. The meeting was held in a cordial and friendly atmosphere, and ended with both sides assuring to adhere to norms of the 2003 Ceasefire agreement and the Director-General of Military Operations (DGMO) level talks of May 29, he said. The armies also decided to work towards improving the situation along the LoC, the PRO said. By PTI MUMBAI: Issues of unequal distribution, lack of planning, political interference and the growing demand for water were giving rise to disputes among the different regions of Maharashtra, according to experts on the subject. Maharashtra received inadequate rainfall this monsoon and the government recently declared drought in 151 out of the 353 talukas in the state. Citing lack of a state-level policy for water distribution and storage, Sanjay Lakhe Patil, president of the Marathwada Backlog Removal and Development Forum, blamed politicians. "They have always invested heavily in their own areas. Maximum dams have been constructed per hectare area, resulting in water imbalance and conflicts between different regions, talukas and districts," he said. "Our water policy has always remained flawed. Needs of the region were never considered while sanctioning irrigation projects. Political leaders only thought about regions of their influence," Lakhe Patil claimed. Giving an example, Lakhe Patil said the huge expenditure on Krishna Valley irrigation projects resulted in water disparity in western Maharashtra. While Baramati, Kolhapur, parts of Satara, Sangli and Pune benefited, other areas like Sangola, Maan, parts of Satara, Sangli, Pune, Solapur and Atpadi remained without water, he said. Lakhe Patil said the Tembhu-Takari irrigation project in Sangole in western Maharashtra, a perennially drought-prone area, is incomplete due to lack of funds. Similarly, additional water storage capacity dams were built in the upper catchment areas of Jayakwadi Dam which, he said, went against irrigation rules. "Additional storage capacity breaks the catchment water which is meant for Jayakwadi in Marathwada. The conflict started because Jayakwadi does not get enough water," he claimed. In 2016, the Bombay High Court passed a historical judgement regarding equitable distribution of water and held that water is owned by the state and not any particular district, region, person or personality, he said. The Mendhegiri Committee set up by the state government laid down a formula on distribution of water from the upper catchment area dams in Ahmednagar and Nashik districts as and when Jayakwadi Dam faced scarcity, he added. The Vithalrao Vikhe Patil Sugar Factory and Mula Sugar Factory moved the Supreme Court against the release of water from these dams to Jayakwadi Dam but their plea was rejected by the apex court, said Lakhe Patil. Following the SC order, Nashik authorities released water earlier this month into Jayakwadi Dam. Lakhe Patil added that 90 thousand million cubic feet of water from west-flowing rivers like Damanganga, Aurangiya, Ambika, Nar, Par goes into the Arabian Sea and no efforts had been made to store this water. He added that Mahrashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority, with its chairperson being a retired Indian Administrative Officer with rank equivalent to the state Chief Secretary or a high court justice, had enough powers to tackle water conflicts. Ratnakar Mahajan, former vice chairman of the Maharashtra Planning Commission said the previous Congress-NCP government formulated a uniform water policy for the state through which it set up the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority. But, he said, the authority could not function independently while taking decisions on water distribution for drinking and agricultural purposes due to political interference. Apart from the water conflict related to Jayakwadi Dam, there are other ones too that are coming to the fore in the state. Farmers in Sangola, a perennially drought-prone taluka in Solapur district, are demanding that water be released from the Tembhu lift irrigation project on the Krishna river. They have alleged that water is not being released to them from upstream regions of Sangli and Satara due to political pressure. In Nashik district's Dindori taluka, farmers claim the quantity of their produce has declined as water from the east-flowing rivers in the district's western talukas is getting over before the crops gained strength. Farmers fromKalwan taluka in Nashik don't want water from the Chankapur dam, across the Girna river, to be released to Malegaon and Chandwad, the eastern talukas of Nashik and, further, to Marathwada. Officials said despite the general belief that there was plenty of water in the upper parts of the Godavari Basin, drinking water needs had grown tremendously due to rapid urbanisation among other aspects. There are 23 dams in the Godavari and Tapi basins, but put together, their capacity is less than 50 per cent of that of Jayakwadi, these officials noted. Economist H M Desarda attributed the present situation to what he claimed was a plunder of groundwater levels. "The groundwater bank is in negative balance and depleted due to excessive pumping. There is a needfor holistic programme for rainwater harvesting. Rainwater needs to be conserved and impounded immediately, and replenished in the soil and vegetation," he said. Desarda also called for water literacy among policy makers and society. Harpreet Bajwa By Express News Service CHANDIGARH: The demand for building a corridor to Kartarpur Sahib was first raised 24 years ago. Sixty-seven-year-old Bhabishan Singh Goraya from Awawalpur village in Dera Baba Nanak, who formed Sangat Langhan Kartarpur, says, I first visited Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan in 2015. Earlier, I had gone with a Sikh jatha (group of devotees) to pilgrimage in Pakistan in 1994 and told a minister concerned and officials about the shrine which was in a shambles. Once I returned I made it into a movement. ALSO READ: Government plans telescope in India to view Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan I have been holding ardaas (prayer) at this point (from where the gurdwara can be seen) each month with a hope that the wish of lakhs of Sikhs will be fulfilled someday... now it has happened, he says. Goraya claimed he was even harassed by intelligence officials for crusading for this cause. His elder brother Raghbir Singh is also fighting for the cause and has his own association, Kartarpur Corridor Corporation. Akali leader Kuldeep Singh Wadala, who died recently, had led more than 150 delegations of devotees to perform ardaas at Dera Baba Nanak border for the opening of the corridor. Now his son and Nakodar MLA Gurpartap Singh Wadala had taken up the cause. My father would be happy if he were alive today, he says. By PTI VIENTIANE: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday met her Laotian counterpart Saleumxay Kommasith and held wide-ranging talks to enhance cooperation in key areas like defence, trade, energy and agriculture. Swaraj, who is in Laos on a two-day visit, co-chaired the 9th Joint Commission Meeting with Kommasith as the two leaders laid out the roadmap for cooperation and partnership. The ministers held wide-ranging discussions covering cooperation in agriculture, trade and investment, defence, education, culture, Information Technology, energy and mining, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said. Swaraj and Kommasith had constructive discussions during the meeting, he said in a tweet. "Swaraj offered to share India's expertise and experience towards supporting developmental needs of Laos, taking the total offer of grant and line of credit proposal to USD 250 million," Kumar said. On Thursday, she attended an Indian community event here and interacted with participants. During her two-day visit, Swaraj will also call on Laos Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith. By PTI AHMEDABAD: The Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad Friday nabbed a "hardcore naxal" who was involved in the killing 10 CRPF commandos in Aurangabad district of Bihar in 2016 and was now working as a factory labourer in Valsad district by concealing his identity, police said. The 33-year-old Rajesh Ravidas, who was declared 'wanted' by the Bihar government, was arrested from Vapi town in Valsad district, the Gujarat ATS said. Among other crimes, Ravidas, a key member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) outfit, was involved in the killing of 10 commandos of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in a Naxal ambush in the Aurangabad forests in 2016, the anti-terror squad said in a statement. Based on a specific tip-off, an ATS team nabbed him from the industrial town of Vapi in South Gujarat, where he was working as a labourer in a factory by concealing his real identity, said police officials. According to the ATS, Ravidas, also known as Uttamji, is a "hardcore naxal" involved in over 50 crimes, including attacks on security forces, and the Bihar government had declared a reward of Rs 50,000 for information on him. Ravidas was considered the 'right hand' for Pradyuman Sharma, the head of 'special area committee' of the CPI (Maoist), Bihar and Jharkhand, the agency said. The ATS claimed Sharma had appointed Ravidas as the 'Zonal Commander' of Rajgir area of Bihar. Ravidas, a native of Bahorma village in Gaya district of Bihar, fled to Gujarat earlier this year, said the statement. As per the ATS, Ravidas came in contact with Naxals at the age of 17 in 2002 following a land dispute among his family members. After resolving the land row with the help of Naxals, he became an active member of the banned outfit and started engaging in anti-national activities, the statement said. In March 2017, Ravidas was injured in a retaliatory fire by CRPF commandos in the forests of Gaya district. In that operation, four Maoists were gunned down. However, he managed to flee with injuries, the ATS said. He changed is name to 'Gopal Prasad' and started working as a security guard at a factory in the Union Territory of Daman near Gujarat in the beginning of 2018. Later, he came to Vapi, which is close to Daman, and started working at a factory, the statement said. Before handing him over to the Bihar police, the ATS is questioning him to find out more about his works in Gujarat and whether he was in contact with Sharma during his stay in the state, it added. Fayaz Wani By Express News Service SRI NAGAR: A day after he dissolved the state Assembly amid hectic efforts by two groups to form a new government, J&K Governor Satya Pal Malik on Thursday justified his decision citing extensive horse-trading of MLAs to muster the numbers. However, former CM and National Conference leader Omar Abdullah with whom PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti had forged a grand alliance asked Malik to produce proof of horse trading. BJP leader Ram Madhav, who saw Pak hand behind the NC-PDP alliance withdrew the allegation after Omar asked him to prove it. It was impossible to form a stable government by parties with opposing political ideologies, including some who were demanding dissolution of the Assembly, Malik told the media in Jammu. ALSO READ: J-K Governor should have given PDP-led alliance chance to prove majority: Legal experts He claimed he had been receiving reports of horse trading for the past 20 days. If the Governor has information that MLAs were being bought, he should make them public, Omar retorted. Malik said all parties were free to go to court to challenge his decision. But that was up to the PDP to decide, Omar said. If the challenge has to be mounted, it has to be on behalf of Mehboobas letter to Governor staking her claim, he said. Omar said the grand alliance was restricted to government formation. Nobody suggested we should contest polls together. This arrangement was only for government formation, he clarified. ALSO READ | PDP hasn't decided yet whether to challenge decision to dissolve assembly in court, Party leader MINUTES after Mehboobas letter, which could not be received by Governor as the fax was not received by Raj Bhawan, BJP ally and separatist-turnedmainstream politician also wrote a letter to Governor to stake claim for government formation with support of BJP and other 18 legislators. He had WhatsApped the letter to PA of Governor. Sajjads Peoples Conference had two MLAs while BJP had 25 MLAs. Referring to grand alliance, Governor said it was an attempt by those forces, who were again polls and boycotted the recently held ULB and panchayat polls in the State. There was likelihood that they could have nullified or cancelled the polls, which is meant to take democracy to grass root level. The security situation has improved in last two months. The stone pelting has come down, militant recruitment has dried up and over 60 militants have been killed. This situation could have been altered if the government of opportunistic alliance would have taken over, Malik said. He said none of the political party leaders visited him to inform him about government formation. Nobody gave me evidence and none paraded MLAs before me. There has been 5 months of Governor rule and they did not make any attempt to form government and were calling for dissolution of Assembly. And now all of sudden they decided to join hands and form government, he said. ALSO READ | We backed PDP to save Jammu and Kashmir from current mess: NC leader Omar Abdullah Malik said he did not entertain claim of the two sides and instead acted in the interest of the State by dissolving the Assembly. I did this within the constitution of J&K. The J&K constitution gives me the power to dissolve the Assembly without consulting central government added Malik. He said the parties are free to go to court to challenge his decision. However, former Chief Minister and NC working president Omar Abdullah in a press conference in Srinagar at the same time rebuffed the Governor and asked him to prove his allegations of horse trading. If Governor has admitted that MLAs were being bought over and money was changing hands, he should inform people about it. If Governor has such reports, he should make them public, he said. Omar said since Governor has levelled the accusations, they want to know where did the money come from and on whose behest this money was being given and who was being bought. He said NC-PDP-Congress alliance cannot be accused of horse trading as they were not independents but three parties were coming tighter. The Governor is referring to another letter (Sajad Gani Lone), which had also staked claim to form government. On allegations by Ram Madhav and BJP leaders that the grand alliance was formed at Pakistans behest, Omar asked Madhav to produce evidence to prove his charge or apologise. If Madhav has the courage, he should bring the proof of the accusation to the public domain. It is an open challenge to him and his government, he said. I dare Madhav to prove your allegation. You have RAW, NIA & IB at your command (CBI too is your parrot) so have the guts to place evidence in the public domain. Either prove this or be man enough to apologise. Dont practice shoot and scoot politics, Omar had earlier tweeted. Asked whether formation of grand alliance was an opportunistic alliance as claimed by the Governor, he said, It was not an unholy alliance. It was formed to defend the special status of the State and take J&K out of present mess. He, however, made it clear that grand alliance was restricted to government formation and not beyond them. Nobody suggested that we should contest the elections together. This arrangement was only for government formation. The United Nations is ready to play a supervisory role in managing Yemens Red Sea port of Hodeidah, U.N. spokesman Rheal LeBlanc said. LeBlancs statement, made at a briefing with reporters in Geneva, came as the U.N. special envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, arrived in Hodeidah, the focus of the war between the Iran-aligned Houthi group, which controls the city, and pro-government forces backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The U.N. envoy met with the management of Hodeidah port, an important supply line to the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa, witnesses said. Search Keywords: Short link: By Online Desk India strongly protested as the Indian High Commission in Islamabad was denied access to the Gurdwara Nankana Sahib. The envoy was prevented from visiting the Indian pilgrims who were given travel permission to visit the Gurdwara. In a press release, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said: "We have shared our grave concern that this is the third consecutive visit of the Indian Sikh pilgrims when Pakistan has prevented the Indian High Commission officials from meeting the visiting Indian nationals on the pretext of security in order to deflect attention from Pakistans violation of the international legal instruments and conventions like the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961 and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963. "This is also in breach of the letter and spirit of the 1974 Bilateral Protocol on visit to religious shrines and the Code of Conduct for the treatment of diplomatic/consular personnel in India and Pakistan, 1992. Pakistan has been reminded that this is in contrast to the treatment met out to their High Commissioner and the Consular officials in New Delhi who have been provided full access to meet the Pakistani pilgrims who are currently in India on pilgrimage to Kalyar Sharif ." The press release also added, "We have also expressed grave concern at the reports of attempts being made during the ongoing visit of the Indian pilgrims to Pakistan, to incite communal disharmony and intolerance and promote secessionist tendencies with the objective of undermining Indias sovereignty and territorial integrity. Pakistan has been called upon to take all measures to not allow its territory to be used for any hostile propaganda and support for secessionist tendencies against India in keeping with the commitments made under the Simla Agreement, 1972 and endorsed in the Lahore Declaration, 1999." "Pakistan has been reminded that such actions are not in consonance with the stated intentions of Pakistan to facilitate the visits of Indian Sikh pilgrims, espeially as we commemorate the 550th Birth Anniversary of Guru Nanak Devji," it said. Ramananda Sengupta By Express News Service NEW DELHI: National Security Adviser Ajit Doval will meet Chinas state councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Chengdu for the 21st Special Representative talks on the border. The talks come ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinpings meeting on the sidelines of G20 on November 30-December 1, and just after the 9th India-China Annual Defence and Security Dialogue in Beijing on November 13. This is the first time Wang will represent China for the talks, after replacing Yang Jiechi as foreign minister. Yang had visited Delhi for the talks in December last year soon after the Doklam standoff. Beijing put an upbeat spin to the talks, saying bilateral relations maintained sound growth with ever deepening exchanges and cooperation in all areas, after the Wuhan Summit between Modi and Jinping in April. Sources in Delhi, however, seemed resigned to the fact the talks would be mostly around border management, and not the resolution of the dispute. But given that the dispute is unlikely to be resolved until India forsakes its claims to Aksai Chin in Kashmir and China forsakes its claim to Arunachal Pradesh, these talks are better than fighting over the border, said an Indian expert. By Express News Service NEW DELHI: The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) administration on Thursday refuted a media report that it has drastically curtailed funds meant for libraries.The University has been allocating to the library every year only an amount of Rs 1.70 crore for the books and journals from its grant received annually from the University Grants Commission (UGC). However, in 2012, the UGC gave a one-time, bulk grant to JNU under the 12th Plan for five years from which an extra amount was allocated for the next five years. Now that the 12th Plan has ended, the library is running with its annual grant. However, JNU has already made a request to the UGC to release additional funds to meet increasing requirements of the library, read a statement issued by the office of JNU finance officer. The reports of the library budget cuts are a fabrication of facts. The JNU administrations statement came a day after the media report stated that the university has reduced Dr B R Ambedkar (Central) Librarys annual budget from Rs 8 crore to Rs 1.70 crore. In response, the JNU Students Union (JNUSU) polls claimed the amount which the UGC released for five years was around Rs 20 crore, which the financial officer was hiding. Both UGC and JNU knew the Planning Commission ended and the Niti Aayog has come. If plan grant was ending, why wasnt sufficient planning done on part of both UGC and admin regarding funds? it said. Laying blame on the UGC is half-truth as MHRD officials told JNUSU that regular grant for the library was sent to the Commission and there is no cut, the union said. Now either the MHRD or the UGC hasnt made provision for the loss of 12th Year Plan which itself shows how anti-education Modi Sarkar is, it added. By PTI NEW DELHI: Classical music stalwart Ustad Imrat Khan, who dedicated his life to propagating the sitar and the surbahar worldwide, has died in the US after a brief illness, his son said Friday. He was 83. He breathed his last on Thursday in a hospital in St Louis, Missouri, his home for over two decades, after a stroke, his son Nishat Khan told PTI. Imrat Khan, the younger brother of legendary sitarist Ustad Vilayat Khan, had developed pneumonia and was in hospital for a week. "He had a stroke last night. He had not been keeping well for the last few months," Nishat, a sitarist of repute himself, said before leaving for the US. The funeral will take place on Saturday, he said. Imrat Khan, who famously turned down the Padma Shri last year saying the recognition had come too late and diminished his achievements, belonged to the illustrious Etawa gharana, or the Imdadkhani Gharana, named after his grandfather Ustad Imdad Khan. The gharana, one of the oldest in India with a musical legacy of over 400 years, traces its roots to Agra. The family later moved to Etawa before finally settling down in Kolkata with Ustad Inayat Khan, Imrat Khan's father. The family is credited with developing the musical instrument surbahar, a stringed instrument that is sometimes called the "bass sitar". Imrat Khan toured the world with his music and performed at the Cannes Film Festival in 1970 for a Merchant-Ivory partnership. He was also a regular at various music festivals in India. Calling his father one of the greatest surbarhar players of his time, Nishat said his father carried forward the country and the family's heritage till the very end. "He was my guru, mentor, teacher and father. He was a great philosopher, an evangelist for music. He really carried forward the heritage of Indian classical music all over the world to the very end of his life," Nishat said. One of the big disappointments of his life was not being recognised for his musical contributions by the government even when his students and juniors were given the Padma awards. Refusing the Padma Shri was not a matter of self-aggrandisement but "an issue of propriety", he told PTI in an interview in February last year. Having performed with stalwarts like his brother as well as Ustad Bismillah Khan, Ustad Amedjan Thirakwa Khan and Pandit V G Jog, Imrat Khan said he did not want to compromise this legacy by accepting the award. "My music has been the centre-stage of my life and I have put it on the highest pedestal with a lifetime of devotion to its art, refusing any form of corruption to its form and essence. I do not expect at this moment in my life that my devotion and contributions be diminished to a level lower than my followers, students and sons - by age or reputation," he had told PTI. He said he had never compromised in his life. "Why should I compromise now when this award presented to me is not parallel to my worldwide reputation and contributions in the name of the pure arts and culture of India?" Nishat said his father was "heartbroken" when his name was announced as a Padma Shri winner. "He was so disappointed that the award was being given to him when even my juniors were awarded with the Padma Shri. He was really sad and heartbroken about it. "It's an 'anyay (injustice) that the government could not see his contribution to Indian classical music," Nishat said. By IANS CHANDIGARH: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Friday said that he and President Ram Nath Kovind will jointly lay the foundation stone of the Kartarpur corridor project in Dera Baba Nanak area of Gurdaspur district on November 26. "Happy to share that I'll be joining President Ram Nath Kovind ji in laying foundation stone for Kartarpur Corridor to International Border at Dera Baba Nanak, Gurdaspur, on November 26. It will be a great moment indeed for all devotees of Sri Guru Nanak Dev," the Chief Minister tweeted. Happy to share that Ill be joining President Ram Nath Kovind ji in laying foundation stone for Kartarpur Corridor to International Border at Dera Baba Nanak, Gurdaspur, on November 26. It will be a great moment indeed for all devotees of Sri Guru Nanak Dev ji. @rashtrapatibhvn Capt.Amarinder Singh (@capt_amarinder) November 22, 2018 READ | India, Pakistan to open Kartarpur corridor to help Sikh pilgrims The Union Cabinet on Thursday decided to develop the corridor from Gurdaspur in Punjab to the International Border (IB) to facilitate the passage of pilgrims to the Kartarpur Sahib gurudwara in Pakistan as part of the 550th birth annversary celebrations of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev, next year. However, the Centre clarified that India's decision was not in response to any proposal from Pakistan. The resolution was passed after many weeks of internal consultations and preparations within the government. The gurdwara is significant for the Sikh community since Guru Nanak Dev spent 18 years of his life in Kartarpur till he died in 1539. It is located around 2 km from the IB between both countries and can be seen from the Indian side. Harpreet Bajwa By Express News Service CHANDIGARH: With the Lok Sabha election just a few months away, the NDA government has tried to please the Sikh community by announcing a corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Punjab to the International Border to facilitate pilgrims visiting Gurudwara Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan. Both the Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP alliance and the ruling Congress are trying to take credit for this. Welcoming the Union Cabinet resolution, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh said it was in response to the various letters and submissions he had made to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on this issue.Earlier, the state Assembly had unanimously passed a resolution urging the Centre to take up the opening of the Kartarpur Sahib corridor during the 550th birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Nanak Dev with Pakistan. Also, Amarinder wrote a demi-official letter requesting External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to take up the matter with Pakistan. ALSO READ: Linking India's decision on Kartarpura corridor to Pakistan proposal hurtful for Sikhs The BJP state unit credited the BJP-led Central government. The partys senior state leader Rajinder Mohan Singh Chhina said the NDA government had fulfilled the long-pending demand of the Sikhs. Arun Jaitley had himself visited Dera Baba Nanak when he held the defence portfolio and took stock of the situation then. Jaitley knew the importance of such a corridor and how Sikh devotees had been demanding the same for the last three decades, he said. The decision also provided a breather to SAD, which has been on the backfoot in its core Panthic constituency over the incidents of sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib and police firing at anti-sacrilege protesters at Kotkapura and Behbal Kalan in 2015. ALSO READ: Demand for Kartarpur corridor raised 24 years ago Former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal recalled that it was in 1999, when he accompanied then prime minister AB Vajpayee to Lahore, that the latter had acceded to his governments request to start the process of fulfilling the daily Sikh prayer for Khullle Darshan Didar of historic shrines all over the world.SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal, flanked by his wife and Union Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal said thanked the Modi government for the historic decision and said, The 70-year-old demand has been finally fulfilled. He said the SAD and the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee will take a delegation to Kartarpur Sahib during Guru Nanak Devs 550th birth anniversary celebrations. The leader of Opposition in the Punjab Assembly and Aam Aadmi Party leader Harpal Singh Cheema, too, weldomed the Cabinet decision saying it had fulfilled the wish of the Sikhs. Sidhu and his hug This issue was raised by Punjab Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu when he visited Pakistan early this year to attend the swearing-in of Imran Khan as PM. Sidhus hug to Pakistan Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa during the visit was flayed by many. Since then Sidhu has been claiming that he hugged Bajwa after being offered a corridor for Kartarpur Sahib. By ANI ANANTNAG: At least six terrorists have been killed in an ongoing encounter between terrorists and security forces in Sekipora area of Bijbhera in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district on Friday. Indian Army's 3 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) and Jammu and Kashmir Police are jointly conducting the ongoing operation, which started in the wee hours. Security forces have recovered arms and ammunition from the encounter site. More details are currently awaited. The Valley has been witnessing a spurt in terror activities for the past few months. On Tuesday, One Army jawan was killed in action and four terrorists were killed in an encounter at Nadigam village in Shopian district. By Express News Service NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking the use of ballot papers instead of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) during the upcoming Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi did not accept the contention of NGO Nyay Bhoomi that EVMs are capable of being misused and they should not be used in the polls to ensure free and fair elections and said, Every system and machine is capable for use and misuse. Doubts will be everywhere. The petitioners had contended that the ballot system is more transparent, while the EVMs can be tampered with. At present, all state and general elections are held with EVMs. Many opposition parties including the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) have expressed doubt over the reliability these machines and have alleged that they are not tamper-proof. Several issued had cropped up in EVMs during the recently concluded Assembly polls in Chhattisgarh. However, the states electoral authorities had said after voting had ended that the machines were replaced to ensure that voting was restarted as soon as possible. During the polls, the Congress had also raised allegations that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had tampered with the machines at several places. Opposition to EVMs Several political parties have alleged that the electronic voting machines can be tampered with and that the BJP has indulged in such practices in several elections. They favour a ballot system, which they say is transparent. Fayaz Wani By Express News Service SRINAGAR: In a major setback to Lashkar-e-Toiba and Hizbul Mujahideen, six militants of two groups including one involved in the killing of senior journalist Shujaat Bukhari in June this year were killed in a fierce gunfight with security forces in Bijbehara area of south Kashmir's Anantnag district on Friday. A police official said based on specific input about the presence of militants, a search operation was launched jointly by police, CRPF and army men inside a forest area of Sekipora at Bijbehara in Anantnag district in the early hours today. "As the searches were going on, militants fired on the search party. The fire was retaliated by troops, triggering an encounter," he said. The official said in the ensuing gunfight, which lasted for five hours, six militants of Lashkar and Hizb were killed. He identified the deceased militants as Azad Ahmad Malik, Unais Shafi, Basit Ishtiyaq, Atif Najar, Firdous Ahmad and Shahid Bashir, all locals. "It was a combined group of Hizb and LeT. Unais and Basit were Hizb militants while the four others belonged to Lashkar," he said. ALSO READ | LeT hatched plot to kill journalist Shujaat Bukhari's in Pakistan, conspiracy hatched in Pakistan: Jammu and Kashmir police According to an official, Unais was the district commander of Hizb and Firdous and Azad district commanders of Lashkar. He said Azad Ahmad Malik alias Azad Dada had escaped from an encounter site at Khudwani Kulgam in April this year along with another associate. "Azad was a close associate of Pakistani militant Naveed Jatt, who escaped from police custody from a Srinagar hospital early this year," the official said. He said Azad's name had also figured during an investigation into the assassination of senior journalist and Rising Kashmir editor Shujaat Bukhari and his two security guards. The official said a hue and cry notice was issued against Azad and three others on the basis of material evidence collected against them. Shujaat along with two of his security guards was killed by militants outside his office at Press Enclave in city centre Lal Chowk during the holy month of Ramadan on June 14. Terming killing of six militants in today's encounter as a major jolt to LeT and Hizb, the police official said 4 AK 47 rifles and an Insas rifle were recovered from the encounter site. He said the operation was "clean" as there was no collateral damage during the encounter. Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was in the United Arab Emirates on Friday, on his first tour abroad since the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdoms consulate in Istanbul. The prince, who arrived in Abu Dhabi late on Thursday, is also due to visit other Mideast countries, where he will be warmly received by Arab leaders who have stood firmly by his side amid international outrage over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The crown prince will round off his tour with a two-day stop in Argentina where hell come face-to-face with world leaders on Nov. 30 for the two-day Group of 20 summit. Among those expected to attend that summit are President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has kept international pressure mounting on the kingdom in the wake of Khashoggis killing. His tour abroad underscores the strong support the crown prince continues to have from his 82-year-old father, King Salman, and signals that he faces no immediate threats to his grip on power at home. His tour abroad underscores the strong support the crown prince continues to have from his 82-year-old father, King Salman, and signals that he faces no immediate threats to his grip on power at home. Upon arrival to the UAE, Prince Mohammed was warmly embraced by Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. The two crown princes who also command their countries armed forces are known to be close, with the more experienced Abu Dhabi crown prince reportedly offering his insights to the 33-year-old Saudi prince on past occasions. The UAEs state-run news agency, WAM, reported Friday that the two discussed brotherly and strategic ties in their talks, which were attended by a wide-range of Emirati officials, as well as a number of senior Saudi officials, including the head of general intelligence, the interior minister and key advisers. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, at war in Yemen against Shiite Houthi rebels there since 2015, are also expected to take part in U.N.-led peace talks in Sweden next month. The two sides likely discussed Yemen, with the WAM news agency reporting that among those present for the bilateral talks was an Emirati official in charge of liaising with families of UAE soldiers killed in battle. Prince Mohammed is scheduled to visit Bahrain and Egypt next on his tour. *The story was edited by Ahram Online. Search Keywords: Short link: By PTI NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday hoped the Kartarpur corridor would act as a bridge between the peoples of India and Pakistan that might lead to a better future as he referred to the fall of the Berlin Wall to underline the importance of people-to-people contact. On the occasion of the birth anniversary of first Sikh Guru Nanak Dev, the prime minister referred to the Partition and said, "What has happened in 1947 has happened." He said the issues between the governments and the armies would continue and only time will show the way out. Underlining the strength of people-to-people contact, the prime minister said, "Had anyone ever thought that the Berlin Wall would fall. May be with the blessings of Guru Nanak Devji, this Kartarpur corridor will not just remain a corridor, but act as a bridge between the peoples of the two countries." Modi was speaking at a function to mark the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev at the residence of Union Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal here. He was felicitated with a 'saropa' and turban by Shiromani Akali Dal president and former deputy chief minister of Punjab Sukhbir Singh Badal and president of Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) Manjit Singh GK at the function. A long-pending demand of the Sikh community to build a religious corridor linking India's border district of Gurdaspur with a historic gurudwara in Pakistan may finally be fulfilled with both the countries announcing that stretches would be developed in their respective areas. In a significant decision, the Union Cabinet Thursday cleared a proposal to develop a corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Punjab's Gurdaspur district to the International Border to facilitate Indian pilgrims to visit Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur in Pakistan. Santwana Bhattacharya By Amazing how things can take on a life of their own. Currently, from Srinagar to Chennai, a fax machine has become famous as a villain or victim, depending on whos peddling the narrative. The intriguing role of this old-style communication tool, or its refusal to be communicative, is helping lighten the toxic air. Governor Satya Pal Malik may or may not be a footnote in Kashmirs thorn-filled history, but his unresponsive fax machine would be remembered in the anecdotes of Indian politics. For the present, it has certainly brought together two arch-rivals of state politicsthe National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Partyover a few choice words of repartee on a rather partisan machine. Their attempt to cobble up a grand alliance along with the Congress may have been aborted. But PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti and NCs Omar Abdullah have been united in angst, potentially auguring future camaraderie. Whenever elections happenthe date becomes a pertinent question after December 19, when Governors rule endsone thing is sure: another unusual alliance has been forged. Two possibilities loom ahead. Either J&K has elections, or Article 356 beckons. Even so, Lok Sabha polls cant be avoided in Kashmirregardless of whether Assembly polls are timed with it or not. So the mainstream political template in Kashmir is going to come into play sooner or later. The newly minted grand alliance of J&K already created enough panic in New Delhi that it got the Assembly dissolved. That in fact might have been the intention, as a tweet by former CM Mehbooba Mufti implied. Why then blame the poor fax machine? Well, everybody has heard about the comedy of errors. It was Eid, so the fax was off. Mehbooba had to resort to Twitter to stake claim. And the pro-Centre Sajjad Lone sent his letter via WhatsApp. Two hours later, magically, the machine whirred into life to announce the dissolution of the House! Governor Pal cited security concerns as the reason for not inviting an unstable grouping to have a go at government formation. Anyway, the Centres discomfort in having normal democracy play out in the state became apparent, an unspoken policy that breaks the old consensus among national parties that put primacy on having a popular government installed in the state to show Pakistan down on the international stage. The knee-jerk dissolving of an Assembly that had 25 BJP MLAs for the first time may not just have been a self-goal, it has ensured the PDP and the NC have achieved a comfort level. Ram Madhav, the BJPs political pointsman for the state, may have backtracked after Omar Abdullahs offensive on being called puppets of Pakistan, but a BJP alliance with either of the two big Kashmir parties now looks remote. Even the lone Ladakh MP left the BJP fold a week ago. If Jammu is secured in the process, it would not suffice to have a footprint over the entire state, even in the company of Sajjad Lone. If theres any positive outcome here, its that suddenly the irrelevance of the two big parties there is reduced, and J&K politics looks integrated with the Indian mainstream. With both the PDP and NC playing victim and projecting their alliance as the only way to safeguard the special identity of the state, as a legal-political fight for Article 35A plays out, they could very well be on a revival path. Its almost as if a heavy political hand from New Delhi accomplished the opposite of what it intended. This is not unique. Not so long ago, a hyperactive Governors office brought the opposition together in reaction, again in an unusual alliance, in Karnataka. The idea of Deve Gowdas JD(S) aligning with the Congress was till then just as unbelievable as the new PDP-NC entente. People may have had to pinch themselves seeing Siddaramaiah and H D Kumaraswamy fighting elections on the same side. The BJP may well try to ratchet up a farmers agitation against the HDK regime to wrest back some space, but that wont avert a chain of unusual alliances against Modi-Shah in Karnataka and elsewhere for 2019. Again, had it not been his suspicion, rightly or wrongly, that Governor E S L Narasimhan was plotting to topple his government, Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu would not have taken it upon himself to craft an anti-BJP alliance in state after state. He seems to have streamlined one between the DMK, Congress, CPI and Vaikos party in Tamil Nadu, and it wont be surprising if he attempts to pull off the next unthinkable tie-up, a TMC-CPM-Congress one in West Bengal. Unless Didi decides to prioritise her own ambition of securing maximum seats in her state. Or the CPM politburo thinks standing on prestige is more important than playing for survival. The only thing that could come in the way of all this is the Congresss current propensity to flaunt its new Hindu-Shaivite identity too enthusiastically, like in Kerala. That would ensure the BJP goes even more aggressively rightward, building up Yogi Adityanath as Lord Rams divine representative in UP, going for broke in Ayodhya and perhaps even in Kashi-Varanasi. But again, that would make it impossible for Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati not to align. Unusual alliances, therefore, are likely to be par for the course in 2019. By Express News Service BENGALURU: Under pressure from the opposition as well as protesting farmers, Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy on Thursday accused the media of being biased and misrepresenting facts. He said he will never address press conferences in the future and will only speak at public functions. Let the media write what they want to, an irate CM said after launching a scheme to provide interest-free loans to street vendors. The way they are portraying me, I am scared to say anything. Looks like I should constitute an expert committee which will give me suggestions in the morning about what to talk and how to give my speeches. I am in that state now, the CM said. About the opposition party, he said there is a section of people who try to find mistakes in whatever welfare work he tries to do. The sugarcane price problem did not start in my term. It was there for long. I just made an attempt to solve it. The fair and remunerative price is fixed by the Centre and the state government should help farmers get the price from sugarcane factories. But some sugarcane farmers and factory owners have tied up for more sugarcane without bringing it to the governments notice. In January, sugar prices came down and factory owners did not pay the growers. Was it my fault? he asked. Talking about the oppositions attack on his loan waiver scheme, he said, They are spreading rumours that the loan waiver is bogus. If I do not implement it, I cannot go to farmers. We need not learn from them (BJP). Kumaraswamy also attacked the BJP for their taunt that he had become the chief minister with just 38 MLAs. They might have forgotten that in our (JD(S)-BJP) alliance in 2006, we had less number of seats. They (BJP) have used us in those 20 months. I am aware of what they have done how they used to send in chits through their personal secretaries and bring pressure on me. We are not here to loot like them, he said. He said there was no need for him to learn from Yeddyurappa. I am not at anyones mercy. I will be the CM till I have their (Congress) support. I am not permanent here. There have been 22 CMs in Karnataka, he said. On onion prices, he said BJP was blaming him again. Over 20,000 onion growers are marching towards Mumbai where BJP is in power. Are they (Karnataka BJP) blind? Someone from Bagalkot has tweeted to the Prime Minister about the dip in onion prices. Will he (PM) credit the money to the farmers account through a tweet? I have seen how much money the PM has credited through Jan Dhan scheme, he added. Amit Agnihotri By Express News Service BENGALURU: The meeting called between sugar factory owners and Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy on Thursday failed to elicit any concrete results except the hope of an amicable solution. Even as he insisted that the interests of cane farmers should be protected, Kumaraswamy had to settle for the suggestions of talks between factory owners and concerned farmers to draw the curtains on the ongoing sugarcane arrears crisis. With the talks remaining inconclusive, farmers have decided to continue their agitation until the time government provides a clear picture on payment of arrears. While factory owners have agreed to pay Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) for this year, many are unwilling to fulfil their commitment made to farmers on ex-field informal agreements between farmers and sugar factories promising higher rates above the FRP running into Rs 450 crore. Farmers are adamant that ex-field price be paid. Owners have now sought 15 days time to hold talks with farmers to settle the matter amicably. The CM refused to brief the media about the closed-door discussion. However, his office released a statement. It will be difficult for the farmers to sustain if a proper price is not given to the crop they grow. As Government is committed to protect the interests of the farmers, Chief Minister directed them (factory owners) to pay the price they had agreed for, the statement said. The owners have made no such promise. Instead, they have chosen to talk to their farmers directly, essentially meaning that their talks with CM were inconclusive and non-binding. All factory owners should come together to hold talks with farmers. Farmers need factories and we need them too. This can only be solved amicably and we hope to resolve the matter in 15 days, said Balachandra Jarkiholi, MLA (BJP), who was present at the meeting as a sugar factory owner. Sources from the meeting suggested that while the government seems helpless this time around essentially in the absence of a formal agreement between farmers and factory owners that spells out the agreed-upon prices, the Chief Minister has insisted on a formal agreement between parties starting next year. To avoid confusion over pricing, the government has directed all factory owners to not just pay FRP prices but also enter into a mutual agreement with each farmer according to the guidelines issued by the government and later abide by the revenue-sharing formula decided by the Cane Control Board. The CM has also pushed for transparency in weighing and fixing recovery rate to the farmers. The owners are yet to agree to the terms put forth by the government. In the absence of a clear stand on whether their dues will be paid or not, farmers have decided to continue their protests. Owners of 31 sugar factories, including S R Patil, Satish Jarkiholi, Murugesh Nirani, Umesh Katti, Balachandra Jarkiholi and chairman of South Indian Federation of Sugar Factory Owners were present. Ramesh Jarkiholi who attended the meeting said that he was representing the government and not factory owners. Raitha Sangha members stage protest Hubballi: Members of Uttara Karnataka Raitha Sangha took out a protest march on Thursday, demanding the state government fix a fair price for sugarcane. They have also threatened to disrupt winter session scheduled to be held in Belagavi Suvarna Soudha next month. North Karnataka district farmers started a march from Siddaroodh Mutt and reached Rani Chennamma Circle after passing through the main roads and raised slogans against Chief Minister Kumaraswamy. Cane growers seek CMs official word on price Belagavi: An unrelenting group of sugarcane growers who are on an indefinite agitation for the last two days in Belagavi continued their protest despite Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy holding a meeting with sugar factory owners. Contending that the Chief Minister did not take any decision officially on the stand-off, the agitators decided to go ahead with their stir until a concrete decision is taken by Kumaraswamy to break the deadlock. By Express News Service TIRUVALLA: Kerala Water Resources Minister Mathew T Thomas said he will resign from his post on Saturday as per the directions of the central committee of the Janata Dal (Secular). The party has decided to replace Thomas with senior MLA K Krishnankutty. "As a worker of the Janata Dal party, I have a commitment to obey the direction of the higher authorities of the party. The time for submitting my resignation letter will be decided after discussing with the chief minister," he said, adding that he had also resigned from the post of minister during the previous LDF ministry. Thomas also added that some propaganda against him and his family, calling for him to be removed from the post, had hurt him and said this type of attitude was not good for left politics. Thomas has represented Tiruvalla assembly constituency for the last three terms. When contacted, a JD(S) spokesperson said the decision to direct Thomas to resign was taken as the party felt that there were many other senior MLAs who should be given an opportunity. "Since Thomas has been the MLA in his constituency for quite some time, the party felt that its other MLAs should also be given a chance," said the spokesperson, on condition of anonymity. CM: JD(S) decision will indeed be accepted THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The decision was taken at the meeting called by the national president. A letter in this regard will be given to the Chief Minister and LDF leadership. The other matters, including the date of swearing-in will be decided later, minister-designate K Krishnankutty told Express. Responding to questions, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan made clear that the decision by the JD(S) would be accepted. Being a government run by the political front, the decision regarding ministership should be taken by each party, he said. With trouble brewing within the party over ministership, Deve Gowda had summoned the partys three MLAs - Water Resources Minister Mathew T Thomas, K Krishnankutty and C K Nanu - to Bengaluru on Thursday night for a consensus meeting. The party central leadership discussed the demands from one faction to replace Mathew T Thomas. With the Pinarayi government completing two and a half years, the Krishnankutty faction in the party raised the demanded that Mathew T Thomas should be replaced with Krishnankutty. A letter in this regard was given to the national president. However, with Deve Gowda out of station for long, the decision remained pending. Sources said the national leadership has asked Mathew T Thomas not to make his protest public. According to one section, there was an understanding that the ministership would be shared between Mathew Thomas and Krishnankutty. We did not raise the demand till recently as the government was busy with flood relief Now, the issue has been taken up with the central leadership, said a senior leader. (With inputs from Online Desk and PTI) By Online Desk The son and son-in-law of National Secular Conference MLA PTA Rahim have been arrested in Saudi Arabia in connection with a hawala deal. The Saudi foreign ministry has officially alerted the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) of the arrest, Malayalam media report. Rahim's son PT Shabeer and his daughter's husband Vayoli Muhammed Shabeer were among the 19 arrested 10 days ago for illegal money transfer for gold, according to reports. MLA Rahim, who denied the reports, told Express,I spoke to them barely two days ago. My son-in-law runs a multinational firm based in Saudi where my my son also works. They said money transferred to the companys Bahrain branch exceeded the maximum transaction limit under Saudi rules. Other reports are baseless. Rahim, representing the Kunnamangalam constituency of Kozhikode district contested as a left independent and supports he ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) in the house. (With ENS inputs) By Express News Service KOZHIKODE: Muslim Youth League has come out with fresh evidence against K T Jaleel to disprove the ministers claim that his relative - who was appointed the General Manager in a PSU under his ministry - was paid a much lesser salary than his previous pay. Youth League general secretary P K Firos also accused the ministers office of holding on to crucial files that reveal the ministers alleged involvement in the appointment of his relative. This, he said, was done to prevent the files from being accessed or perused through Right to Information (RTI) query. ALSO READ | K T Jaleel issue: Youth League, MSF protest turns violent at Kozhikode Addressing a press conference here on Thursday, Firos produced the salary slip of K T Adeeb, the ministers close relative from the private bank where he was employed before his appointment in the Kerala State Minorities Development Finance Corporation on deputation basis.The minister has often claimed his relative settled for a lower salary from the Corporation than what he was drawing from the bank. Jaleel said his relative left a job that paid him `1.1 lakh per month. However, the salary slip shows he was drawing a gross salary of just `85,664, he added. The Youth League leader also produced a letter written by Adeeb to the Corporation demanding more allowances and also an annual bonus of `2.5 lakh.Firos also claimed that Adeeb resigned from his post in the private bank after his appointment in the Corporation. He said the resignation letter was in the possession of higher authorities of the bank. The resignation goes on to prove that Adeebs temporary post in the Corporation was all set to be made permanent, he alleged. Firos accused Jaleel of creating a part file and proceeding with the move to appoint Adeeb even though consent from the Finance Department was awaited.When we demanded access to the relevant files via RTI, the departments of Minority Welfare and Finance passed the buck. On pursuing the e-file records, we came to know that the files that contain the incriminating details are in the possession of the Ministers office, the Youth League leader said. ALSO READ | Youth Congress levels fresh nepotism allegation against Kerala minister K T Jaleel Even though everyone is aware of Jaleels wrongdoings, the Chief Minister who is his godfather is still ignorant of it. A Vigilance probe should be immediately ordered so that the minister does not tamper with or destroy the files pertaining to the appointment, he demanded. Firos said the Muslim Youth League would take legal recourse once the files which reveal the ministers involvement, are accessed through RTI. By PTI NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday set aside the Madras High Court order awarding 196 grace marks to the NEET-UG 2018 aspirants who had opted to write the test in Tamil language on account of error in translation. The top court directed that from year 2019-20, NEET-UG examination will be held by the newly constituted National Testing Agency instead of the CBSE. A bench of justices S A Bobde and L Nageswara Rao said that "the method adopted by the Madurai bench of Madras High Court is manifestly arbitrary and unjustified and cannot be sustained". "For these reasons, we set aside the impugned judgment of the High Court of Madras dated July 10, 2018. We direct that from the year 2019-20 onwards the NEET-UG Examination will be conducted by the National Testing Agency and the bilingual examination will be conducted after the question paper is translated," the bench said. It noted that the list of students who opted to give the NEET-UG, 2018 Examination in Tamil after the addition of 196 marks is "startling". Referring to the list, the bench said that a student who got 260 marks has been awarded a total of 456 marks and a student with 137 marks becomes entitled to 333 marks and the student who got 92 marks becomes entitled to 288 marks. "Even students who have 21 marks been entitled to 217 marks.It is clear that the High Court lost sight of the primary duty of Court in such matter that is to avoid arbitrary results," the bench said. The bench further said that the High Court has made no attempt to see whether the students have in fact attempted answers to the questions, which were claimed to be imperfectly translated and has proceeded to award the full marks for 49 questions to all candidates who had opted to write the examination in Tamil. "We see no attempt in the impugned judgement to have the marks evaluated by an independent expert body instead the High Court resorted to blind allocation of full marks for each of the questions," the bench said. The total number of students that appeared in the NEET-UG, 2018 was 13,23,672 and approximately 10.5 lakh took the test in English language while about 1.5 lakh opted for regional languages and of them nearly 24,000 candidates had taken it in Tamil language. "Because of a mistake in translation which could have been detected and avoided by the students, we find it unjust that all the students across the board who took the examination in Tamil have been awarded four marks for all the 49 questions without any reference to the answer of those questions," the bench said. It said that the consequence is "equally unjust" and "unacceptable" as the students who gave the examination in Tamil were "unduly benefited" only because they opted to give examination in Tamil. Noting that there were some students who might have otherwise failed but for the addition of marks by the High Court most of the students who opted Tamil language have scored higher than those who gave the examination in English and other regional languages. "This was mainly due to the blind allocation of 196 marks to every student who gave the exam in Tamil," the bench said. On July 20, the apex court had stayed an order of the high court awarding 196 grace marks. It had then said that prima facie it appears that after the judgment of the high court, the students who had opted for the Tamil language are in an advantageous position over others. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) which conducted the examination has challenged the high court order and contended that 24,000 students who had opted Tamil language will now be getting around 750 marks out of 720 marks in total. The Madras High Court had on July 10 ordered the CBSE to grant 196 marks -- 4 marks each for 49 erroneously translated questions -- in the Tamil version of this year's NEET-UG examination to the students who took the exam in the regional language. The high court had directed the CBSE to consequently revise the list of eligible candidates and publish it afresh. The petitioner, senior CPI(M) leader and Rajya Sabha MP T K Rangarajan, had moved the high court seeking full marks for the 49 questions, saying keywords in Tamil questions were wrongly translated from English and this caused confusion among the students. There were 180 questions with a total mark of 720 in the NEET. The high court had said that the students who took the NEET for admission to medical and dental colleges in Tamil should be suitably compensated to provide a level-playing ground. The CBSE conducted the NEET on May 6 in 136 cities in 11 languages, the results of which were announced on June 4. By Online Desk It's not hard to say how much banyan trees mean to Indians. The love for the trees is so visible that one can spot them almost everywhere in the country, especially in suburbs and rural areas, as well as places of worship. Indeed, the banyan is the national tree of India. Banyan trees are significant enough in India to be an integral part of our culture. There's even a Tamil saying that goes 'Aalum velum pallukuruthi; naalum rendum sollukuruthi,' meaning just as the twigs of banyan and neem trees make the teeth stronger, learning Tamil literary works 'Naaladiyar' and 'Thirukkural' will make one's vocabulary stronger. In villages, there's a tradition of holding panchayat meetings under the banyan tree, proof -- check out 90s Indian movies. This tradition is still followed by people in the countryside. North Indians even observe a festival called 'Vat Purnima,' where the married women in the house tie a ceremonial thread around a banyan tree and pray for the longevity of their husbands. The tree which is celebrated by most Indians has many tearful stories to tell. Trees are the first victims in any natural disaster and it's a heart-wrenching sight for any nature lover to see them get reduced to a skeleton during such unfortunate events. One such story is the destruction of a 200-year-old banyan tree in Tamil Nadu's Kovilpathu village. The state was battered in the recent Cyclone Gaja, which left a trail of destruction in many villages. Residents of Kovilpathu had to endure the loss of their beloved more than 200-year-old banyan tree. The monumental tree was the landmark of this otherwise ordinary coastal village in Nagapattinam district. It was the guiding point for fishermen, which helped them locate the shore and reach it safely. The villagers didn't just love their precious tree, they worshipped it. It meant so much to them that it is quite impossible to express their devotion towards the tree in just words. Speaking to the News Minute, one of the villagers said, This tree has seen so much of our happiness. Why did I have to live to see this loss? I couldve gone along with the tree. People are also upset that no government official has paid them a visit since the disastrous incident and a lot of daily wage labourers have lost their livelihoods in the cyclone. The villagers' attachment to the tree was summed up by a woman who said, "Our children may not feed us but the trees weve planted do. A village called Puthur en route to Tamil Nadu's Coimbatore underwent a similar trauma a little earlier. The villagers who lost their 300-year-old banyan tree during the southwest monsoon conducted a funeral for the tree. The tree which was planted and watered by their ancestors was given a touching farewell, with residents sticking obituary posters all over the village. We might not believe in life after death but it was true in the case of this banyan tree in Tiruvannamalai. A video by 'My Nation' shows how a 30-year-old banyan tree hit by Cyclone Vardah bounced back to life in no time. The villagers call it a miracle and credited it to Lord Muniswaran's divine force. In the past, when Telangana's famous tourist attraction 'Pillalamarri,' a 700-year-old banyan tree, was about to crash down, officials worked overtime to save it. In a moving incident, they even tied saline drips to the tree. Officials termed it a man-made disaster as the problem started when the place was turned into a tourist spot. India shares a long, never-ending history with banyan trees. We hope that next time you spot one, you remember these stories and acknowledge the country's devotion to it. By PTI CHENNAI: Actor-politician Kamal Haasan Friday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit the cyclone-ravaged districts of Tamil Nadu, saying it would make the government machinery work faster to address people's issues. The ongoing relief activities should not be a mere "fire-fighting exercise" but should be a long drawn one, he said and appealed to the people of the state to help those in the affected areas. "The Prime Minister should immediately visit the affected areas. If the PM visits, the government machinery will work faster," Haasan, founder-president of the Makkal Needhi Maiam, told reporters here. Tamil Nadu was an important part of the country and it should not be 'ignored,' he added. Cyclone Gaja had crossed the Tamil Nadu coast between Nagapattinam and Vedaranyam on November 16, claiming 63 lives and leaving behind a trail of destruction, severely affecting the farming, fishing and power sectors. Nagapattinam, Thanjavur, Tiruvarur and Pudukottai districts had suffered the worst damage. The affected areas should be declared as an a "Smart Integrated Agricultural Zone," with a view to protecting farmers, he said. Haasan sought more medical aid in the affected areas to prevent outbreak of any possible epidemics. Related Blast at market in northwestern Pakistan kills at least eight people All staff working in Chinas consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi are safe, Chinas foreign ministry said on Friday, after three suicide bombers attacked it. The attackers did not enter the consulate compound, ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a daily news briefing. Search Keywords: Short link: By PTI KARACHI: A fearless woman officer of Karachi Police, who was once abandoned by relatives in her village for joining a private school, on Friday saved the lives of many Chinese diplomatic staff when heavily-armed terrorists stormed the mission in the Pakistani city. Senior Superintendent Police Suhai Aziz Talpur led the security operation that foiled the brazen attack by members of the Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, in Karachi. She ensured the terrorists, armed with nine hand-grenades, assault rifles, magazines and explosives, did not reach the diplomatic staff inside the consulate building. Police said the terrorists were carrying food supplies and medicines, suggesting they had planned to take hostages. But as as soon as they reached the gates of the consulate, the police team took positions and retaliated. Two police officials were killed in the gunfight in which all the attackers were also neutralised. Suhai hails from a lower middle-class family of Bhai Khan Talpur village in Tando Muhammad Khan district of Sindh province. ALSO READ | Pakistan will provide 'robust security' to Chinese, Foreign Minister Mahmood Qureshi assures China She joined the police force after clearing elite Central Superior Services exam in 2013, The Express Tribune reported. "When my parents decided to enrol me at a school, most of our relatives started taunting my family. So much so, that my family had to leave our village and move to a nearby town," she told the daily. Her father Aziz Talpur, a political activist and writer, always dreamt big for his daughter. "My relatives cut off ties with me because I wanted Suhai to study as they were only in favour of religious education," Aziz told the daily. "But I vowed to provide my daughter quality education." Suhai started her primary education at a private school in Tando Muhammad Khan and joined Bahria Foundation for her intermediate studies. Her educational path then led her to pursue B.Com from the Zubaida Girls College, Hyderabad in Sindh province. "My family wanted me to become a chartered accountant but I found the job to be very dull as it had no social value," she said. "That is when I appeared for CSS and cleared it in the first attempt." She credited her success to hard work and her upbringing. "My parents are nationalists. As a child, they used to emphasise that I memorise Sindhi poetry. This developed my interest in literature and history, leading me to secure top marks in both the subjects in the CSS (Central Superior Services) exams." By Associated Press WASHINGTON: Whatever happened to trying to impeach President Donald Trump? As House Democrats begin laying out the vision for their new majority, that item is noticeably missing from the to-do list and firmly on the margins. The agenda for now includes spending on public works projects, lowering health care costs and increasing oversight of the administration. It's the balance that Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi is trying to strike in the new Congress between those on her party's left flank who are eager to confront the president, and her instinct to prioritize the kitchen-table promises that Democrats made to voters who elected them to office. "We shouldn't impeach the president for political reasons and we shouldn't not impeach the president for political reasons," Pelosi recently told The Associated Press. ALSO READ | US midterm elections: Democrat Nancy Pelosi to reclaim House Speaker's mantle The California lawmaker, who hopes to lead Democrats as House speaker come January, calls impeachment a "divisive activity" that needs to be approached with bipartisanship. "If the case is there, then that should be self-evident to Democrats and Republicans," she said. Those pressing for impeachment acknowledge they don't expect action on Day One of the new majority, but they do want to see Democrats start laying the groundwork for proceedings. "We're for impeachment. We're not for get-sworn-in-on-Jan.-1-and-start-taking-votes," said Kevin Mack, the lead strategist for billionaire Tom Steyer's Need to Impeach campaign. "Our argument is the Constitution outlines a process to remove a lawless president." In a new ad, Steyer says Democrats "just need the will" to act. He says he's calling on Americans to join the 6 million who have already signed on to his group to "give Congress the courage to act." "The American people are tired of being told to wait," Mack said. "Our argument to Congress is you are a co-equal branch of government. It's time to do what is morally correct." Twice over the past two years since Trump was elected, Democrats have tried to force votes on impeachment proceedings, winning a high-water mark of more than 60 supporters, far from the 218 needed. Republicans are counting on, and possibly even hoping for, impeachment fervor to overtake Democrats, leading them astray from campaign promises or dealmaking with Trump. "We know the Democrats have a plan: They want to disrupt, they want to try to impeach," said GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California after winning the GOP's internal election to serve as minority leader in the new Congress. He warned that Democrats were laying the groundwork to impeach Trump. ALSO READ | First Black Democratic nominee for Florida governor gives up race Pelosi has made it clear the new majority will not engage in what she calls a "scattershot" approach to investigate the administration. Instead, the incoming Democratic leaders of House committees will conduct oversight of the president's business and White House dealings. Democrats are also trying to ensure special counsel Robert Mueller completes his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. They may try to add legislation to protect that probe to the must-pass spending bill in December to help fund the government. They want Mueller's findings made public. "You have to be very reluctant to do an impeachment," Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said recently on ABC. Nadler, who served on the committee during President Bill Clinton's impeachment, cited "the trauma of an impeachment process." Democratic leaders also know that moving quickly on impeachment would not sit well with their newly elected members, who helped the party win a House majority in the recent midterms. Many come from swing districts where impeachment could prove unpopular. "I didn't work 18 months listening to people in my district to get involved in a political back and forth for the next 18 months," said Rep.-elect Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. "People want to talk about health care. It's not a coincidence that most of us who won in tough districts, we won because we talked about issues, not because we talked about internal Washington stuff." ALSO READ | 'Maybe he did, maybe he didn't': Donald Trump says CIA has not found Saudi prince culpable in Khashoggi murder For now, outside liberal groups are largely standing by Pelosi's approach, putting their emphasis on pushing Democrats to chart a bold agenda on the domestic pocketbook concerns that won over voters. Pelosi has some experience with impeachment, serving as a newer lawmaker when Republicans led impeachment proceedings against Clinton. When she became House speaker in 2007 she resisted pressure from her liberal flank to launch impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush over the Iraq War. Pelosi believes that if Democrats had tried to impeach Bush when she was speaker, voters may never have elected Barack Obama as president in 2008. Politically, Democrats may be right. In 1974, Americans only came to agree that President Richard Nixon should be removed from office on the eve of his resignation, according to Pew research. Voters responded to Clinton's impeachment by electing more Democrats to the House. "If we had gone down that path, I doubt we would have won the White House," she said. "People have to see we're working there for them." By PTI ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has confirmed the death sentences of 11 hardcore terrorists, who were involved in heinous offences, the army announced on a day when the country witnessed two major terror attacks that killed nearly 40 people. The convicts were accused of attacking armed forces/ law enforcement agencies of Pakistan, killing of an innocent civilian and destruction of an educational institution, the Inter-Services Public Relations, the media wing of the military, said. "On the whole, they were involved in killing of 26 persons including a civilian and 25 Armed Forces/Frontier Constabulary/ Police Officials and injuring 22 others," the ISPR press release said. Arms and explosives were also recovered from their possession, it said. The convicts were tried by special military courts. Besides, the 11 terrorists given the death sentence, 22 others have also been setenced to various jail terms, the release said. On Friday, three terrorists belonging to the Balochistan Liberation Army attacked the Chinese consulate in Karachi, killing four people, including two security personnel. The three terrorists were also killed. In the second incident, a suicide bomber triggered a powerful bomb at a Friday market in the country's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing at least 32 people and injuring over 40. By PTI ISLAMABAD: Pakistan assured China on Friday of "robust security" to Chinese nationals in the country and thoroughly probe the terror attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi that killed four people. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi telephoned Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi to apprise him of the prompt action taken by the security forces to thwart the attack and the death of two policemen in the security operation, according to the Foreign Office. I salute the brave men of Sindh Police who attained martyrdom in todays attack on the Chinese Consulate in Karachi & pray for the Orakzai Agency attack martyrs. These are dastardly attacks aimed at spreading fear and chaos but we are a resilient nation & will not be deterred. Shah Mahmood Qureshi (@SMQureshiPTI) November 23, 2018 "Pakistan is fully committed to taking all necessary measures to provide robust security to all Chinese nationals in Pakistan," Qureshi said. Three terrorists affiliated to the Baloch Liberation Army attacked the consulate in Karachi, the port city in southern Pakistan's Sindh province. After a gunfight with security forces, the three were killed. ALSO READ | Brave Pakistan lady police officer prevented terrorists from reaching Chinese consulate staff Qureshi also assured the Chinese state councilor that a thorough investigation will be done to arrest the financiers, planners and facilitators behind the attack. He said Pakistan and China will continue to cooperate to thwart the designs of hostile forces against their "time-tested" friendship. Wang strongly condemned the terrorist attack against Chinese consulate and appreciated the quick and effective action of Pakistan security and law enforcement forces. He said the terrorist attack was an attempt to impact Pakistan-China relations and to harm the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. He stressed the ties between Pakistan and China are clad in iron and such cowardly attacks could not affect it. By PTI KARACHI: Three heavily-armed suicide bombers on Friday stormed the Chinese consulate in Pakistan's largest city of Karachi, killing four people including two policemen before being shot dead by security forces which foiled the daring attack in the high-security zone, police said. The attack was soon claimed by the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) which said it would not tolerate "any Chinese military expansionist endeavours on Baloch soil". Resource-rich Balochistan is at the heart of ambitious China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Three suspected suicide bombers were killed by security forces before they could enter the consulate, located in the posh Clifton area, Karachi Police Chief Amir Shaikh said. Nine hand grenades, Kalashnikov assault rifles, magazines and explosives were recovered from the possession of the terrorists, Geo News reported. "Food supplies and medicines were also recovered from their possession," officials said. Chinese Embassy in Pakistan strongly condemns the terrorist attack against Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi on November 23. Any attempt to undermine China-Pakistan relationship is doomed to fail. @ForeignOfficePk @PakPMO @CathayPak @OfficialDGISPR @pid_gov @PTVNewsOfficial pic.twitter.com/V0PZYiyIrL Lijian Zhao (@zlj517) November 23, 2018 "We have received two dead bodies of policemen and an injured Chinese security guard who is under treatment," said Seemi Jamali, the executive director at the Jinnah Hospital. Two civilians, a father and his son were also killed, officials said. The Sindh government and the Pakistan Army confirmed that three terrorists were killed in the operation. The heavily-guarded E-Street neighbourhood, which is considered a red zone, is home to a number of upscale restaurants, diplomatic missions and schools. The Bilawal House of Pakistan People's Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is also in the area. Schools and eateries have been locked down. Residents said they first heard firing and explosions around 9.30 AM (local time). Pakistani security personnel stand next to burned out vehicles in front of the Chinese consulate after an attack in Karachi on November 23, 2018 (Photo | AFP) "The terrorists first attacked the checkpost outside the consulate and detonated a hand grenade in the area," Shaikh said. Shaikh said the attackers had parked their vehicle at some distance from the consulate before moving towards it. Defence analyst and security contractor Ikram Sehgal, whose company's guards have been posted at the consulate, said that the attackers had first engaged in an exchange of fire with policemen. After the policemen and civilians were killed, he said, the attackers proceeded towards the gate of the consulate. However, the guards were quick to usher civilians with consular business into the building and shut the gates behind them. The paramilitary rangers then reached the spot and engaged the attackers, he said. Sheikh said that all Chinese staffers "are safe and secure". The separatist group BLA shared the photographs of the three attackers. Pakistani ambulance volunteers transport a dead body in front of the Chinese consulate after an attack in Karachi on November 23, 2018. (Photo | AFP) "Karachi: Fidayeen of BLA attacked the Chinese embassy in Karachi," it said in a tweet. The BLA has been designated as a terrorist entity by Pakistan. The USD 60 billion CPEC is a string of huge infrastructure investments by China in Pakistan which will link its western Xinjiang province with the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar in Balochistan. Over the years, construction projects and Chinese workers in Balochistan have been repeatedly targeted by militants but this is one of the most prominent such attacks to date. The Foreign Office spokesman said that Islamabad is "in touch with the relevant agencies and will react quickly" to ascertain the facts. Prime Minister Imran Khan took to Twitter to condemn the attack. "Strongly condemn the terrorist attacks against Chinese Consulate in Karachi & in Orakzai tribal area. My prayers go to the victims & their families. Salute the brave security/police personnel who gave their lives & denied success to terrorists in the mission against Chinese Consulate," he said. "The failed attack against the Chinese Consulate was clearly a reaction to the unprecedented trade agreements that resulted from our trip to China. The attack was intended to scare Chinese investors and undermine CPEC. These terrorists will not succeed," Khan said. Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah contacted the Chinese consul general and assured him that the situation will be taken under control. Governor of Sindh Imran Ismail has sought a report on the attack from the Sindh inspector general of police. In Beijing, the China's foreign ministry strongly condemned the attack on its consulate and urged its all-weather ally to take "practical measures" to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens in the country, mostly on projects linked to the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Hundreds of Chinese nationals are presently working in Pakistan specially in Karachi and the restive Balochistan province on projects of the CPEC and on other business ventures. A bomb disposal squad member checks a bag belonging to an attacker outside the Chinese consulate after the attack in Karachi on November 23, 2018 (Photo | AFP) Chinese nationals in Karachi generally consider it a safe city to move around, carrying out their day-to-day business. In February, a senior Chinese shipping executive was killed when unknown assailants opened fire on his vehicle near Zamzama park also in the Clifton area. Sindh police chief Kaleem Imam said that security has been beefed up for the Chinese nationals and a comprehensive security plan would be drawn up to ensure they are under a security cover round the clock. It is the first major terror strike in Karachi since March, 2016 when 45 Ismaili Muslims were killed in a targeted attack. Since then, there had been calm in the country's financial hub as police and the paramilitary Rangers have kept up a constant operation against militants, killing dozens of them in different parts of Karachi. Friday's attack will leave the government and security forces concerned as the Chinese mission is located in a densely populated area. By PTI PESHAWAR: At least 32 people, including three Pakistani-Sikhs, were killed and more than 40 others injured on Friday when a suicide bomber triggered a powerful bomb blast at a busy market outside a religious seminary in the country's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, police said. According to initial investigation, an improvised explosive device was planted in a bike that was used for transporting vegetables to the popular Friday Market (Juma Bazar) near an imambargah, a Shia religious place, in Orakzai tribal district's Kalaya area, bordering Afghanistan. "This is a Friday bazaar, where hundreds of people had gathered for groceries," Deputy Commissioner Khalid Iqbal said. "The ground is then used for Friday prayers as well," he added. ALSO READ | Over 3,000 Sikh pilgrims reach Pakistan for Guru Nanak Jayanti At least 32 people were killed while more than 40 others injured, Dawn news quoted district administration officials as saying. "Three Sikh traders and three children were also among the dead in the Orakzai blast," Iqbal told PTI. The minority Sikh community in the area was previously displaced by the Taliban that controlled the region prior to the military operation in 2010, Samaa TV reported. Officials said that most of the victims were minority Shia Muslims, who in the past were also targeted in the area. "Three children were among those killed. The remote-controlled bomb was attached to a motorcycle," officials said. "I was buying vegetables at a distance from bomb site," Karam Khan, who accompanied an injured person to the hospital in Kohat, said. "There was a huge explosion and I woke up with blood splashed all over the place and there were body parts everywhere," he said about the gory scene. ALSO READ | Pakistan issues over 3800 visas to Sikh pilgrims for Guru Nanak's birth anniversary The area has been cordoned off and investigation into the incident is underway. An emergency has been declared in the region's hospitals to handle the situation. The explosion in lower Orakzai is the second terror attack in Pakistan on Friday. Earlier this morning, an attack targeting the Chinese consulate in Karachi's Clifton area was foiled by security forces. Four people, including two security personnel and two civilians, were killed in the attack. Three terrorists were also gunned down. Prime Minister Imran Khan strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Orakzai tribal area and said: "My prayers go to the victims & their families". "Let there be no doubt in anyone's mind that we will crush the terrorists, whatever it takes," he said in a tweet. Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari blamed the US failure in Afghanistan for the attack and warned Pakistan to be prepared for more such incidents. She condemned the horrific terror attack. ALSO READ | India, Pakistan to open Kartarpur corridor to help Sikh pilgrims "As the US fails in Afghanistan, Pakistan should be prepared for fallout and we must ensure greater security for our tribal areas especially protection of our people," she tweeted. No group claimed responsibility of the attack so far but the Taliban militants often carry out such attacks. "Our enemies are not happy with peace in the province," provincial Chief Minister Mehmood Khan said while condemning the attack. In 2011, 30 people including 10 cops, were killed and over 50 injured when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden van into the building of the Communication and Works Department. Orakzai, a terror hotbed, is one of the seven semi-autonomous tribal regions of Pakistan which has a porus border with Afghanistan. By Associated Press KARACHI: Armed separatists stormed the Chinese Consulate in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi on Friday, triggering an intense hour-long shootout during which two Pakistani civilians, two police officers and all three assailants were killed, Pakistani officials said. The killed Pakistani civilians were a father and a son had come to the consulate to pick up their visas to China, police said. The brazen assault, claimed by a militant group from the southwestern province of Baluchistan, reflected the separatists' attempt to strike at the heart of Pakistan's close ties with major ally China, which has invested heavily into road and transportation projects in the country, including in Baluchistan. Police is inside the Chinese Consulate in Karachi right now - earlier 2 policemen were killed by the attackers pic.twitter.com/RTTz6QsZa6 omar r quraishi (@omar_quraishi) November 23, 2018 He also ordered an investigation and vowed that such incidents would never be able to undermine relations with China, which are "mightier than the Himalayas and deeper than the Arabian Sea." The attackers stormed the consulate shortly after 9 a.m., during business hours. They first opened fire at consulate guards and hurled grenades, then managed to breach the main gate and enter the building, said Mohammad Ashfaq, a local police chief. Pakistani security forces quickly surrounded the area. Local TV broadcast images showing smoke rising from the building, which also serves as the residence of Chinese diplomats and other staff. Multiple blasts were heard soon afterward but Sheikh could not say what they were. The shootout lasted for about an hour. "Because of a quick response of the guards and police, the terrorists could not" reach the diplomats, Sheikh said after the fighting ended. "We have completed the operation." He added that one of the attackers was wearing a suicide vest and that authorities would try and identify the assailants through fingerprints. Dr Seemi Jamali, a spokeswoman at the Jinnah Hospital, said a consulate guards was also wounded in the attack and was being treated at the hospital. Geng, the Chinese spokesman, said the attackers hadn't managed to get into the consulate itself, and that the exchange of fire took place outside the building. The discrepancy with the Pakistani officials' reports could not be immediately reconciled. Elsewhere in Pakistan on Friday, a powerful bomb at an open-air food market in the Orakzai region of the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan, killed 25 people and wounded dozens of others, said police official Tahir Ali. Most of the victims in the attack in the town of Klaya were minority Shiite Muslims. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing. Orakzai has been the scene of several militant attacks in recent years, mostly by Pakistani Sunni militants, who revile Shiites as apostates. In its claim of responsibility for the Karachi attack, the Baluch Liberation Army said it was fighting "Chinese occupation" and released photos of the three attackers. This was the second attack this year by Baluch separatists in Pakistan. Karachi, the capital of Sindh province, which borders Baluchistan, has a presence of several militant groups, including Baluch separatists. In August, a suicide bomber rammed into a bus ferrying Chinese workers to the Saindak mining project in southwestern Baluchistan, wounding five workers. The project is controlled by the Chinese state-owned Metallurgical Corporation of China. And in May, gunmen opened fire on two Chinese nationals in Karachi, killing one and wounding the other. Friday's attack was an uptick in the level of violence perpetrated by the Baluch separatist, said Amir Rana, executive director of the independent Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies. So far this year, the Baluch Liberation Army has claimed responsibility for 12 attacks against security personnel guarding projects linked to the so-called Chinese Pakistan Economic Corridor as well as to the infrastructure. In a letter dated Aug. 15, the group released a letter warning China against the "exploitation of Baluchistan's mineral wealth and occupation of Baluch territory." The letter was addressed to China's ambassador to Pakistan. But, Rana said, both China and Pakistan have calculated the security risks, which include the threats from the Baluch separatist. "I don't see that this will have any impact on the Chinese projects in Pakistan. These threats were already on Pakistan and China's threat radar," he said. The attack will compel China to step-up security around its people in Pakistan and increase cooperation with the local authorities, said Zhao Gancheng of the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Studies. But he said that would not sway China's government and Chinese firms from expanding their footprint abroad, even while they take additional precautions. "As more and more Chinese people go abroad, and more and more Chinese investment goes overseas, the security situation of the destination countries has become a very important element for consideration," Zhao told The Associated Press. China is a longtime ally and has invested heavily in transport projects in Pakistan. The two countries have strengthened ties in recent years and China is currently building a network of roads and power plants under a project known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC. The Baluchistan separatists have for years fought a low level insurgency in Pakistan, demanding a greater share of the province's wealth and natural resources In a rare statement about attacks in Pakistan, neighboring India condemned the assault on the Chinese Consulate, saying that "there can be no justification whatsoever for any act of terrorism." New Delhi also said "perpetrators of this heinous attack should be brought to justice expeditiously." Pakistan has long accused India of supporting Baluch separatists. The two countries have a history of bitter relations and have fought two of their three wars over the disputed region of Kashmir since gaining independence from Britain in 1947. Armed separatists stormed the Chinese Consulate in Pakistans southern port city of Karachi on Friday, triggering an intense hour-long shootout during which two police officers and all three assailants were killed, Pakistani officials said. The brazen assault, claimed by a militant group from the southwestern province of Baluchistan, reflected the separatists attempt to strike at the heart of Pakistans close ties with major ally China, which has invested heavily into road and transportation projects in the country, including in Baluchistan. All the Chinese diplomats and staff at the consulate were safe and were not harmed during the attack or the shootout, senior police official Ameer Ahmad Sheikh said. Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the attack, describing it as part of a conspiracy against Pakistan and Chinas economic and strategic cooperation. Khan lauded the Karachi police and the paramilitary rangers, saying they showed exceptional courage in defending the consulate and that the nation salutes the martyrs. He ordered an investigation and vowed that such incidents would never be able to undermine relations with China, which are mightier than the Himalayas and deeper than the Arabian Sea. The attackers stormed the consulate shortly after 9 a.m., during business hours. They first opened fire at consulate guards and hurled grenades, then managed to breach the main gate and enter the building, said Mohammad Ashfaq, a local police chief. Pakistani security forces quickly surrounded the area. Local TV broadcast images showing smoke rising from the building, which also serves as the residence of Chinese diplomats and other staff. Multiple blasts were heard soon afterward but Sheikh could not say what they were. The shootout lasted for about an hour. Because of a quick response of the guards and police, the terrorists could not reach the diplomats, Sheikh said after the fighting ended. We have completed the operation, and a search is still underway to trace and capture all suspects. He added that one of the attackers was wearing a suicide vest and that authorities would try and identify the assailants through fingerprints. Dr Seemi Jamali, a spokeswoman at the Jinnah Hospital, said the bodies of two police officers were brought to the hospital morgue while one of the consulate guards who was wounded, is under treatment. Search Keywords: Short link: One of the four aircraft bought by government from Malaysia has reportedly been sold to Jet Midwest, a US-based leading global aviation parts provider, due to non-payment by Zimbabwe. Government had all along claimed it bought four Boeing 777 aircraft from Malaysia and an Embraer plane, with the planes set to be leased to a new local airline Zim Airways until national carrier Air Zimbabwe returned to profitability. Zim Airways has been linked to the family of former president Robert Mugabe, and government has been planning to merge it with Air Zimbabwe (AirZim). This comes as Air Zimbabwe saddled with a $300 million debt has been put under reconstruction after government appointed Harare-based chartered accountant Reggie Saruchera as the loss-making airlines administrator to raise money in any way without the authority of shareholders for the purposes of the reconstruction to revive its flagging fortunes. Zimbabwe earlier this year took delivery of one of the Zim Airways new planes a Boeing 777 jetliner but it has already been sent back to the Asian country for repairs before it has made a single commercial flight. The Daily News can reveal that one of the Zim Airways 777 registered 9M-MRL was spotted last weekend at the Jet Midwest Kansas airport base, with the Z from Zimbabwe and the WE rubbed off the livery, something done on aircraft that have been bought by another carrier so as not to identify with the previous owner. Energy minister Joram Gumbo, who was the Transport minister during the facilitation of the Zim Airways deal, declined to go into detail about the present status of the aircraft. We purchased four Boeing 777 aircraft from Malaysia Airways and an Embraer 145 regional jet from the USA and know one of the 777s is in America but cannot comment on the reasons why. Contact the ministry of Transport, Gumbo told the Daily News. Frantic efforts to get comment from Transport minister Joe Biggie Matiza were futile, as he did not respond to calls from the Daily News and questions sent to his mobile. His deputy Fortune Chasi told the Daily News he had no idea about the issue and referred questions to Matiza, who was said to be in Beijing on business and reportedly returned home last weekend. Jet Midwest is in the business of buying used aircraft from airlines and selling them for spares, leasing them or selling them off to other players. Most recently, Jet Midwest acquired Kenya Airways Boeing 777-300 ER and an El AL Israeli Airlines Boeing 767-300 ER. The Daily News can report that only two of the three planes have been paid for in full, with the third still awaiting the fulfilment of payment. The Malay have decided to sell the aircraft, a decision reportedly taken by Price Waterhouse Coopers which has placed the airline under curatorship as it spearheads its restructuring after persistent loss of revenue following the devastating impact of two jetliner disasters. The Malaysia Airways restructuring follows wrenching tragedies for the airline following the unexplained disappearance of Flight MH370 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March and the shooting down of Flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014. The aircraft bought by Zim Airways were retired by Malaysia Airways due to age as well as their questionable safety record which had raised a lot of questions. Malaysia Airways has now purchased the ultra-modern Boeing 787s to replace its 777s fleet. There have been swirling concern about Zim Airways decision to purchase these condemned aircraft that are over 20 years old. It now turns out one of the four Boeing 777-200 ER (Extended Range) has been sold to Jet Midwest an American full service commercial aircraft, engine and spare parts trading company, possibly to be cannibalised for spares. As it is, none of the aircraft bought by government are in Zimbabwe. The aircraft that was delivered to Harare and returned back to Kuala Lumpur was emblazoned with the tail number Z-RGM after the deal was brokered by Simba Chikore the son-in-law of Mugabe who was the chief operations officer of Air Zimbabwe. Chikore was part of the delegation that travelled to Malaysia to take delivery of the aircraft. Since the time the plane was taken back to Malaysia for routine maintenance, a service required by civil aviation law to be performed periodically after a number of hours of cycles of flight, it is yet to return. While the plane was said to have been sent back for A-Check maintenance, its unclear why it required this service when the 777 never flew since its arrival. According to experts, A-Check maintenance refers to checks that are carried out on an aeroplane every eight to 10 weeks where filters will be changed, key systems (like hydraulics in the control surfaces that steer the aircraft) will be lubricated and a detailed inspection of all the emergency equipment (like inflatable slides) is completed. Government had said it was due to receive the remaining two wide-bodied aircraft from Malaysia Airlines, which were to be used by the new airline whose ownership has prompted more questions than answers although the government, which initially distanced itself from the secretive carrier, now says it owns it. Daily News MDC members of Parliament did not stand up when the illegitimate Emmerson Mnangagwa entered the chambers leading to the Speaker of Parliament ordering MDC MPs to walk out of the house, which they refused. Police officers were called in to disperse the MDC MPS from the chambers, and they did so violently, assaulting members of parliament. There posits our problem. Emmerson Mnangagwa is not the elected President of Zimbabwe. ZEC and Zanu PF stole the peoples vote therefore, he does not deserve our respect. There is no rule that says when a President is entering Parliament, MPs must rise up. Regalia is not allowed in Parliament, therefore, Mr Mnangagwa disrespected the house when he entered the August House putting on a Zanu PF scarf. Police, the CIO and military are not supposed to get into parliament, let alone violently evict duly elected MPs. The MDC is disturbed by the continued use of force by this government - a clear failure to break from their violent past. We insist that this illegitimate government will kill just to maintain the grip of power, but as the MDC, we will keep the pressure until they give in to the will of the people. We continue to pursue every democratic right to ensure the peoples hope is not destroyed. A clean, caring and respectful government is what the people of Zimbabwe deserve. Prosper Chapfiwa Mutseyami MDC Chief Whip FIVE people, three from Finland and two Zimbabweans, died on the spot and their bodies were mangled beyond recognition when a private plane they were travelling in crashed in Masvingo yesterday morning. The plane which was enroute to Victoria Falls from Buffalo Range Aerodrome in Chiredzi crashed at Chamanjirenji Hills near Tokwane-Ngundu area close to Renco Mine. By yesterday afternoon police had secured the wreckage while waiting for a Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe (CAAZ) team to determine the cause of the crash. CAAZ public relations and communications manager, Mrs Anna Julia Hungwe, confirmed the plane crash yesterday but could not give finer details. I can only confirm that a plane crashed near Renco Mine in Masvingo at about 7.30AM. Our inspectors have gone to do investigations at the crash scene and theyre yet to come back to me with details of what transpired, said Mrs Hungwe. Masvingo Civil Protection Unit chairman who is also the district administrator for Masvingo rural, Mr Roy Hove, said five identity cards and passports, one from Finland, were found in the wreck. I can confirm that five people have died in a plane crash which occurred at Chamanjirenji Hills, Tokwane-Ngundu near Renco Mine in Chief Nyajena area in Masvingo rural. It was a private plane belonging to a white man in Chiredzi and the bodies were decapitated and mangled beyond recognition, said Mr Hove. He said when police arrived at the scene they found body parts strewn all over and they had to join limbs to bodies to ascertain the number of passengers who were on board. Investigations are still in progress and more details are expected. We are still waiting for CAAZ experts to establish what exactly caused the crash. However, I want to assure the families of the deceased that their property has been secured by the police, he said. In a statement, national police spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi said three passengers died in the accident. The Zimbabwe Republic Police confirms the death of three people in a crash that occurred at Chamanjirenji Hill, Chief Nyajena on November 23, 20118 at 7:40AM. The aircraft (Cessna S206) crashed into Chamanjirenji Hill killing all passengers on the spot. Investigations are in progress to identify the deceased who are believed to have been all passengers on the plane. ZRP is working with relevant authorities to establish the cause of the accident. More information will be released soon, said Asst Comm Nyathi. Herald At least 631 African migrants have died trying to reach Spain so far this year, nearly three times more than in all of 2017, and the situation has become alarming, the U.N. migration agency said on Friday. More than 120 migrants, from North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, have arrived in Spain each day during November, following a record month in October with over 350 per day, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. This is usually a time of slowing down on these routes, that is not happening in Spain, IOM spokesman Joel Millman told a news briefing. Migrants are using smaller and less seaworthy boats, he said. About two dozen migrants drowned off the coast of Cadiz in November, he said. The sole survivor of another shipwreck, a teenage boy from Guinea now in hospital with severe hypothermia, told rescuers that he was traveling with nine others including his brother in an inflatable row boat from Tangiers, Morocco. The arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants into Europe has fueled the rise of far-right parties across the continent in recent years, although numbers have fallen over the past three years. Many thousands of people, mostly from Africa and the Middle East, have drowned at sea. So far this year 104,506 migrants have arrived by sea in Europe and 2,075 have perished, according to the IOMs latest figures. Both figures are about two-thirds of last years totals and around a quarter of the totals from 2016. Search Keywords: Short link: A MAN believed to be from Bulawayos Entumbane suburb was shot dead in South Africa in a botched robbery, an incident that was captured on camera. The incident occurred on Monday at about 10AM while the man identified only as Crymore was with accomplices who fled in a getaway Toyota Corolla. Sources who identified the deceased said he is from Entumbane suburb. However, there has been no one at a house said to be his family home, since Wednesday. In a 10 second video that has been widely circulated on social media platforms, Crymore is seen running towards a car which was reversing to fetch him with a gun-wielding man hot on his heels. Crymore, clutching a small black bag that he is said to have snatched from his pursuer, almost makes it into the getaway car. The gunman shoots him in the head when he has one foot in the vehicle and his partners in crime speed off, leaving him dead. The man who allegedly shot Crymore was filmed in two separate videos narrating that he had been robbed by the same gang more than once. He said the deceased wanted to steal his navigators describing them as very expensive. Last year they took it, now they wanted to take it again. I parked my car there, after parking my car I went to the ATM booth then I saw him opening the door. The same thing happened on the 6th of September last year, narrated the shooter. My bag with navigators and a lot of money was stolen. I cried like a baby when they went away in a white Corolla. Today I saw him when he took the bag, so I said to myself last year I didnt have bullets and I bought them and vowed to myself that this cannot happen again. NASA Rocket Is Now On Its Way to Dimorphos (Newser) When Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz were found guilty of the 1982 rape and murder of Debbie Sue Carter, her devastated family found a small degree of solace in the idea that justice had been served. The Oklahoma 21-year-old had just moved into her first apartment when she was raped and killed, and her family was never the same. Unfortunately, the family was rocked yet again in 1999, when they found out DNA evidence had exonerated Williamson and Fritz and implicated a different man, Glen Gore, in Debbie's murder; he was convicted years later. In an extensive look at the case for Politico, Lara Bazelon explores how wrongful conviction affects a victim's family, mostly via interviews with Debbie's cousin Christy, who was 8 years old when Debbie was murdered. Bazelon looks at "her reckoning, her rage, her forgiveness, and her transformation into a crusader for a different vision of justice." story continues below Christy felt "true hatred" while watching Williamson and Fritz stand trial, but when she sat in the courtroom watching Gore's trial, there was none of that. "If there is one thing Ive learned, its that I would never be stupid enough to say that I was 100% sure about anything," she says. Not only was the exoneration an "earthquake" for Williamson and Fritz (Williamson died of cirrhosis in 2004), but for Debbie's family. Victims' families are "forced to relive the worst experience of their lives with the knowledge that the actual perpetrator was never caught, or caught far too late, after victimizing more people," and while dealing with all the upheaval, they often feel "cast aside, because the exoneration process is not concerned with their suffering," Bazelon writes. In Christy's case, she ended up working through her pain to reach high levels of anti-death penalty activism. The full story is worth a read. (Read more Longform stories.) (Newser) Former Guatemalan special forces soldier Santos Lopez Alonzo has been sentenced to 5,160 years in prison30 years for each of the 171 people whose killings he participated in during a 1982 massacre, and another 30 for the killing of a girl who originally survived the slaughter, the BBC reports. The sentence was symbolic, the New York Times reports: The maximum anybody can serve in prison in Guatemala is 50 years, though that will make little difference to the 66-year-old Alonzo's fate. According to prosecutors, Alonzo was part of a unit called the Kaibiles that massacred more than 200 men, women, and children in a raid on the hamlet of Dos Erres that began on Dec. 6, 1982. story continues below The soldiers were seeking weapons taken after an ambush by leftist guerrillas in the region that killed around 20 troops. When they failed to find them, they began raping and murdering the villagers in a days-long spasm of violence considered one of the most sickening atrocities of the country's 36-year civil war. Years later, investigators found the remains of 171 people in a well. Most had been killed with sledgehammers. Alonzo, one of several soldiers involved in the massacre who ended up in the US, was deported back to Guatemala in 2016. One of the few survivors was a 3-year-old boy whose story was told in the 2017 documentary Finding Oscar. Sky reports that Alonzo kidnapped and adopted another survivor, a 5-year-old boy who ended up testifying against him. (Read more Guatemala stories.) (Newser) New Jersey man Paul Caneiro didn't try to set his own house on fire with his wife and children inside, his lawyer saysand he is also innocent of "any other charge," which would include the murders of his brother and his family. Lawyer Robert Honecker Jr. says Caneiro was at home when his brother was shot and his Colts Neck mansion was set ablaze, the New York Times reports. "He loved him," Honecker says. "And he would not do his brother any harm." Caneiro, 51, has been charged with aggravated arson in the predawn fire at his own home Tuesday, but has not been charged or named as a suspect in his brother's case. Police say Keith Caneiro, 50, his wife, Jennifer, and their two children were the victims of "homicidal violence." story continues below Paul Caneiro is accused of using gasoline to start fires at his own home, where firefighters put out blazes at the back of the home and on a garage door. A neighbor tells the Asbury Park Press that he last saw Caneiro at noon Tuesday, around 30 minutes before the Colts Neck fire broke out around 10 miles away. The Press estimates that the drive between the two homes would take 20 minutes. "They were great neighbors, very friendly. This is unexpected news," the neighbor says. The brothers managed several businesses together, including the Square One technology firm, NJ.com reports. (Read more on the case here.) (Newser) A white man who allegedly pulled a gun on a group of black teenagers in McDonald's has been arrested. Police say Lloyd Edward Johnson, 55, was arrested on suspicion of second-degree assault, the Star Tribune reports. Video posted online shows the man in a confrontation with a group of mostly Somali-American teens. The group suddenly scatters, with one of them shouting, "He has a gun!" A manager screams at the teens to get out until a customer intervenes, telling her she should call the police instead of sending the teens into danger. One of the teens, 17-year-old Jihan Abdullahi, says the incident began after she and a friend tried to use Apple Pay to pay for an order of Cinnamon Melts. story continues below Abdullahi, who says the Eden Prairie restaurant is her group's usual hangout, tells the New York Times that the man was behind them in line and complained about the delay when the payment system didn't work. She says the man told them they were probably trying to use electronic welfare benefits to pay for the orderand when she asked if he had said that because they were black, he said yes. She says an argument between her friends and the man escalated until he "told everybody to back up." The teen says she saw the man waving a black handgun. Paul Ostergaard, the owner of the McDonald's, says the restaurant is cooperating with police, CBS Minnesota reports. "Nothing is more important than the safety and security of our customers and employees," he says. (This Florida man told two Muslim McDonald's customers that they "didn't deserve American food.") (Newser) It wasn't just a police officer's health that suffered after he came into contact with Novichok left on the door handle of the home of a former Russian spy living in England. "We lost everything," Det. Sgt. Nick Bailey tells the BBC in his first interview since the March 4 attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter. After working the scene at Skripal's home in Salisbury, the 38-year-old father of two returned to his own home, unknowingly contaminating it with nerve agent that had somehow bypassed his protective suit and gloves. "We lost all of our possessions," even "the cars," he says, noting the family has been unable to return home. All these months later, the pain still feels fresh. "I was petrified," Bailey says of learning of the Novichok contamination. story continues below The police officer had begun to feel ill within hours. "My whole body was dripping with sweat" and "everything was juddering, I was very unsteady on my feet," Bailey says, per the Telegraph. "It was painful at the beginning I had lots of injections," he adds of his two and a half weeks at Salisbury Hospital, for which he was "conscious throughout." His mental health wasn't as quick to bounce back. "I describe it as emotional battering." Still, Bailey considers himself lucky and says he often thinks of Dawn Sturgess, the 44-year-old woman who died after spraying her wrists with a perfume bottle containing Novichok. Per the Guardian, an investigator says there was enough nerve agent in the bottle to kill people "possibly into the thousands." (A suspect in the poisonings reportedly received Russia's highest award.) (Newser) It took about five minutes, without an attorney present, for the UK's Matthew Hedges to learn his fate Wednesday in the United Arab Emirates: He's been sentenced to life in prison on spying charges. Per the New York Times, UAE Attorney General Hamad Al Shamsi accused Hedges of "spying for a foreign country, jeopardizing the military, political, and economic security of the state." It revolved around Hedges' postdoctoral work for Durham University: The 31-year-old meant to shed more light on how the Mideast's 2011 Arab Spring uprisings affected the UAE, but the UAE may have "construed [it] as crossing a red line," a fellow academic says. Prosecutors say Hedges confessed to spying after being presented with "compelling evidence," though Hedges has said he's innocent, the BBC reports. A UAE life sentence includes a maximum of 25 years behind bars, per the National. story continues below Hedges' family says during the early part of his detention he didn't have access to the British Consulate, was kept in solitary and fed a "cocktail of medication" by guards, and signed a "confession" written in Arabic, which Hedges doesn't speak or read, per CNN. The ruling appears to have caught the UK off guard, as it has long considered the Emirates a close ally. "Today's verdict is not what we expect from a friend and trusted partner," British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt says, with the BBC noting Hunt had been "given assurances" just over a week ago from the Emirates' crown prince that this wasn't how things would turn out. Hedges is now "absolutely terrified" and "not well," suffering from panic attacks, his wife, Daniela Tejada, tells the BBC. Hedges has already filed an appeal, and the UAE's ambassador to the UK says they're mulling clemency, per the Guardian. (A US student in Iran was also accused of spying.) (Newser) A northwest Louisiana farmhand has been sentenced to 105 years after being convicted of planting a pipe bomb under the bed of the man and wife he worked for in retaliation for the man's failure to save his horse. "I'm going to remove you from normal society," news outlets quoted Bossier Parish Judge Parker Self as telling Douglas Holley. Holley, 56, represented himself after firing a court-appointed attorney, and he'd refused a plea deal of 40 years in prison, per the AP. He was convicted in August of attempted first-degree murder, making or possessing a bomb, and aggravated arson in connection to the bomb planted on Dec. 19, 2015. Holly Hill Equestrian Center co-owner Tracy Hewlett says she, husband Robert, their three small dogs, and a cat on the bed with them all escaped unharmed when the bomb went off, leaving shrapnel in the ceiling. story continues below Hewlett says she and her husband were trying to sleep when they heard the boom. "There was a big flash of light, and both of us went flying," she said. Sheets, blankets, quilts, and pets also flew. The couple's thick mattress helped dissipate the bomb's force, an investigator told the Shreveport Times. The heavy farmhouse floors also helped. Hewlett said the only problem they could recall with Holley was that her husband, a veterinarian, had been unable to save Holley's horse from colic during the summer. The horse's death "triggered something from which you never recovered," KTBS quoted Self as saying to Holley. Hewlett said at the time that she and her husband thought Holley must be mentally ill and, while horrified by the bombing, felt sorry for him. "He's just ruined his life," she said then. (Read more Louisiana stories.) Conservation work at Ipet temple in Karnak is at full swing to meet the deadline for its opening, the ministry of antiquities has said. The temple is located on the southern axis of the Amun Re temple at the Karnak temple complex in Luxor, and has never been opened to the public before. It is scheduled to be opened in 2019. Antiquities Minister Khaled El-Enany toured the temple on Friday to inspect the latest work. Ipet Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, explained that the conservation work included the conservation and archaeological cleaning of the temples walls and the consolidation of the colours of its scenes. IPET 2 All bird deposits were removed and wooden ramps were put in place to facilitate the visitors route around the temple. Ipet 3 The temple is located in the area where Ipet, the goddess of food and protection, was said to have rested before giving birth to her son Osiris. El-Enany also inspected the open courtyard of Ramses II at Luxor temple, to check the conservation work being undertaken to restore the heads of the colossal statues of the king that decorates the temple court. The mission has so far restored and re-installed the heads of three colossi, each weighing up to 250 kilograms. Search Keywords: Short link: (Newser) Maybe someone figured that a washing machine would be the last literal place that cops would check when sussing out a money-laundering scheme, but that someone may have placed the wrong bet. The AP and CNN report a 24-year-old man has been arrested in the Netherlands after police descended on an address in western Amsterdam during a raid seeking out unregistered residents. Inside this particular home, which municipal records showed was uninhabited, authorities found nearly $400,000, in primarily 20- and 50-euro notes, stuffed into the washing machine. story continues below The resident check was part of a probe into "housing fraud, money laundering, and other [signs] of crime," a police news release said, via CNN. Also found on site: a few cellphones, a money-counting device, and a firearm. And also the suspect, who hasn't yet been identified. (Authorities in Massachusetts found $20 millionyes, $20 millionin cash under a mattress.) (Newser) Samsung Electronics apologized Friday for illnesses and deaths of some of its workers, saying it failed to create a safe working environment at its computer chip and display factories. The announcement by the South Korean tech giant came weeks after the company and a group representing ailing Samsung workers agreed to accept compensation terms suggested by a mediator and end a highly publicized standoff that went on for more than a decade. The company's apology was part of the settlement, per the AP. Kinam Kim, president of Samsung's device solutions division, said the company failed to "sufficiently manage health threats" at its semiconductor and LCD manufacturing lines. "We offer our sincere apology to our workers who have suffered with illnesses and their families," Kim said during a news conference in Seoul. story continues below Dozens of Samsung employees have experienced grave illnesses such as leukemia and brain tumors. The standoff began in 2007 when Hwang Sang-gi refused to accept a settlement after his 23-year-old daughter died of leukemia after working at a Samsung factory. His efforts to clarify the cause of her death and hold Samsung responsible galvanized a broader movement to hold businesses and the government accountable for safety lapses in the chip and display industries, which use huge amounts of chemicals. Samsung will compensate for various illnesses of employees, including as much as $132,000 for leukemia. The compensation also covers miscarriages and congenital illnesses of workers' children. Samsung has yet to fully acknowledge its workplace environment as the direct cause of the illnesses, however. (Read more Samsung stories.) 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United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe As Bahrain heads to polls Saturday, authorities here have directed government entities and public institutions to give employees a one hour time off to cast their ballots. The circular issued direct government entities and public institutions to allow employees to cast their ballots on November 24 and in case of run-offs on December 1. Announcing the decision, Shaikh Khalid Bin Abdulla Al Khalifa, Deputy Prime Minister and Vice-President of the Civil Service Council said the move is aimed at enabling government employees who are on duty on election and re-election days to practice their constitutional rights to vote. The deputy prime minister called upon government entities to regulate the leave of employees to cast their ballots without affecting the steady flow of work. The interior minister, in a statement, said on Wednesday that authorities had taken all required steps to make sure the vote passes off safely. His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa in September urged voters to take part in the vote, in which officials said that 293 people are running for parliament. A municipal poll coincides with the parliamentary vote. The 40-seat lower house has the authority to examine and pass legislation, while the upper chamber, or Consultative Council, will review and endorse the legislation passed by the lower house. Which means, as per the 2002 constitution, 40 citizens will be elected to the Council of Representatives and they will be joined by 40 royal appointees to the Consultative Council. As per the statistics released by the Executive Committee of the 2018 elections, a total of 365467 citizens have been confirmed eligible to vote in the upcoming elections. This is as per the voters lists confirmed by the High Civil Court of Appeals. The committee said that there are 81892 eligible voters in the 10-constituency Capital Governorate, 79213 in the 8-constituency Muharraq Governorate, 125870 in the 12-constituency Northern Governorate and 78492 in the 10-constituency Southern Governorate. According to experts, one of the most prominent issues that are being talked across the governorates during this election is the topic of Value Added Tax (VAT) and its effects on the general public. Bahrain is now the third country in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to implement the agreement on goods and Services at a rate of 5 per cent, effective from January 1 next year. In February, Minister of Finance Shaikh Ahmad Bin Mohammad Al Khalifa said that Bahrain would introduce a VAT and would have everything set up by the end of 2018 VAT, health Insurance and housing are the top priority for voters at the moment in all areas in Bahrain. I would say it is a very crucial time that calls for experienced and well-educated professionals when it comes to candidates, Faten al-Haddad, a Bahraini lawyer who will be voting in the Capitals fifth district, told Al Arabiya. In addition to the VAT, one another and also the most prominent characteristics of this upcoming election will be the presence of a record number of women candidates. According to Al Arabia, at least 41 women candidates are contesting this years parliamentary election, while eight have filed their candidacy in municipality election. In the last election of 2014, 22 women contested. Candidates from all walks of life and professions are taking part in the election including professionals, celebrities as well as Olympic and Asian games gold medalist, reports say. An awareness workshop will be held today to tackle the growing rate of suicide among workers. ICRF is conducting the Mental Wellbeing training workshop today at 5 pm at Ashrafs auditorium, 2nd floor in Hoora. Mehru Vesuvala General Secretary, Indian Community Relief Fund (ICRF) said, The workshop sponsored by Mona Yousuf Almoayyed will be conducted by Dr Anisha Abraham, who is a clinical psychologist at the American Mission Hospital. Dr Babu Ramachandran, the Head of American Mission Hospital (Amwaj Branch) and Head of Indian Medical Association, Bahrain, and Vice Chairman of the Indian Community Relief Fund (ICRF) told Tribune that creating awareness is a must as it is really hard to find out suicidal tendencies, despite strenuous efforts. We have dealt with cases where individuals have tried to end their lives but were able to help them. They moved on to live normal lives and actually started doing better in their careers too, Dr Babu said adding that this workshop comes as a part of a move to help and reach out to more individuals more effectively. EU foreign ministers have endorsed a French government decision to sanction Iranian nationals accused of a bomb plot in France, potentially allowing the measures to take effect across the bloc, three diplomats said. The ministers said technical work could now start on an EU-wide asset freeze on two Iranians and the Iranian intelligence service over a failed plot to carry out a bomb attack at a rally near Paris organised by an exiled Iranian opposition group. Denmark, which in October said it suspected an Iranian government intelligence service had tried to carry out an assassination plot on its soil, also pushed for support for similar EU-wide sanctions once its investigation is complete, the diplomats told Reuters. Though largely symbolic, the EUs readiness to target Iranians marks a shift after months of division within the bloc over how to punish Iranians accused of destabilising activities in Europe and the Middle East. In an effort to balance their Iran policy, ministers also discussed setting up a special mechanism to trade with Iran that would be under EU, not national, law. They believe this formula could shield individual member states from being hit by US sanctions that have been reimposed on trade with Iran after Washingtons pullout from the nuclear deal. LIC (International) yesterday announced financial results for its third quarter reporting investment Income of USD 73.35 million showing a positive growth rate of 3.91 per cent. As per the results as of 30 September 2018, the company has underwritten Premium of USD 128.7 Million. The results were revealed during its Board meeting held on 22 November 2018 in Bahrain. The meeting was held in the presence of Hemant Bhargava, Managing Director of LIC of India, Thomas Mathew, Member, Abdul Rahman Ali Alwazzan, Director, Intercol and Rajesh Kandwal, CEO and Managing Director, LIC (International). The board welcomed Hemant Bhargava, Managing Director, LIC of India as Member of the Board, and SK Thakur, the newly designated CEO and Managing Director of LIC (International). The company said it is in the process of introducing Fortune Plus (a Unit Linked Plan), Immediate Annuity and Deferred Annuity Pension Plans in the market to strengthen and diversify the product portfolio in New Business. LIC is providing Insurance coverage to 146,987 individuals in four GCC countries. The Senate Committee on Gas has directed the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and the Central Bank of Nigeria to submit within one week, the schedules of the 45 withdrawals made from the account of the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas from 1999 till date.The senate panel, which is probing the alleged mismanagement of the NLNG dividends accounts, asked the two federal agencies to specifically include the 22 schedules of dividend payments and withdrawals from May 2015 without the National Assembly approval.The Chairman of the committee, Senator Bassey Akpan instructed the representatives of the two major institutions to include the process for the withdrawals and the authorising institutions in their submissions.Akpan said, We want the NNPC to supply all the withdrawals on the NLNG accounts and all the supporting documents.The account belongs to Nigerians but you are running it in trust for the nation. We want details of the 22 withdrawals made which amounted to $3.12bn as well as other withdrawals which are 45 in all from 1999 till date.The CBN should also include in its submission, details of other individuals and institutions who also gave orders for withdrawals apart from the NNPC.Both the Chief Financial Officer of the NNPC, Isiaka Abdulrazaq and the acting Director, Banking Services department of the CBN, Christopher Olomukoro, told the senate panel that the Minister of Finance also gave directives for withdrawals from the account. The senator representing Kogi west district at the National Assembly, Dino Melaye, has reportedly clashed with the minister of transport, Rotimi Amaechi, over the re-election bid of President Muhammadu Buhari.While Melaye does not want Buharis return to the seat of power in Aso Rock, Abuja with the argument that he is not physically equipped to govern Nigeria, Amaechi has expounded some reasons why the president should return in 2019.While speaking at The Osasu symposium in Abuja on Thursday, November 22, Melaye is quoted as absolving the National Assembly of any blame over delays in the passage of budgets in the country.The senator claimed the blame should go to the executive arm of government.Earlier, Amaechi reportedly said Buhari signs laws in the interest of Nigerians. He also argued that any law the president rejects is in the interest of the country.In response, Melaye said Nigerians know that Buhari should not return in 2019.I know Honourable Rotimi Amaechi very well, and he is my brother, he is my friend. Normally, he is more eloquent than this, normally, he would speak with precision than this.But you know when you are not saying the truth, it will never flow. The issue of the budget as raised by Honourable Rotimi Amaechi, I am happy that he was a legislator, and he was a presiding officer at the state house of assembly.The truth will remain the truth. At what point did you bring the budget? If you will all recall that the president of the senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives, had to write Mr President, accusing leaders of MDAs for refusing to come and defend their budget.The president had to order his ministers to go to the national assembly and defend their budgets before they came.The truth is, all political appointees, including Rotimi Amaechi must become born again, if we want to move this country forward.On whether the president reads these laws or not, all Nigerians, we know ourselves; you cannot give what you dont have. President Muhammadu Buhari is not intellectually, emotionally, physically, mentally, equipped to govern this country, Melaye said.It had earlier been reported that Senator Ali Ndume recently said that the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, would be a walkover for Muhammadu Buhari in the 2019 general elections. The Abia state chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Hon. Donatus Nwankpa, has taken a swipe at the Peoples Democratic Party, ... The Abia state chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Hon. Donatus Nwankpa, has taken a swipe at the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakars promise to create jobs if he emerges as Nigeria President in the 2019 general election. Atiku had on Monday via Facebook and Twitter unveiled his campaign manifesto/policy document entitled, The Atiku Plan which promotes restructuring, privatization, Job creation, infrastructure development and poverty eradication. Reacting to the agenda in an interview with newsmen on Friday in Umuahia, Nwankpa said, All these are mere propaganda, mere celebration of falsehood and hypocrisy from the PDP. Why did I called it a hypocrisy? PDP had been in government since 1999, they wanted to create jobs. How many did there created then? PDP has governed Abia state since 1999, what can Abia boast of? The presidential candidate of the PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar was a former Vice President, who was not just a Vice President, he was the chairman of Commercialization and Privatization of industries, federal agencies and parastatal in this country. Before he talks about what he can do, let him give us the record of what he did when he headed that privatization committee? I dont know why we should be celebrating failed people. The APC chairman added that, Atiku is no threat to the personality, image, integrity and corresponding quality of President Muhammadu Buhari. Buhari when he visits any African countries or America, you will know Nigeria has come of age. The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, on Thursday warned the President Muhammadu Buhari gove... The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, on Thursday warned the President Muhammadu Buhari government, to review its policy of releasing so-called repentant terrorists. In a statement made available to journalists in Abuja on Thursday, Atiku bemoaned the level of insecurity in the country. According to the former vice-president, both Muslim and Christian clerics now officiate funerals more than marriages and child dedication. Atiku called on the Federal Government to take bold steps to end unnecessary deaths, because he was tired of issuing condolences on such deaths. He said, I have been travelling all over Nigeria and I meet with both Muslim and Christian clerics who tell me that in the North East and Middle Belt, they now officiate over more funerals than they do marriages and child dedications. This is heartbreaking and we must do something immediately to change the situation. Apart from funding, I advise the Federal Government to review its policy of releasing so-called repentant terrorists. To think that the government can de-radicalise these individuals in so short a time is wishful thinking. Many people, myself included, think that the upsurge in terror activities coming after the release of such detainees is not coincidental. Finally, I urge the National Assembly to suo moto, take action to appropriate funds for our military on a fast-track basis. These are desperate times for Nigeria and desperate times call for dedication to duty of all concerned. Alhaji Bello Dantani, a lawmaker representing Argungu/Augie in Kebbi state at the House of Representatives, says President Muhammadu Buh... Alhaji Bello Dantani, a lawmaker representing Argungu/Augie in Kebbi state at the House of Representatives, says President Muhammadu Buhari deserves a second term following his numerous achievements in office. Dantani made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), in Birni-Kebbi, on Friday. The lawmaker, who earlier had a closed door meeting with Gov. Atiku Bagudu, said the improved security situation in the state is one of the Buharis main achievements in office. The lawmaker, who earlier had a closed door meeting with Gov. Atiku Bagudu, said the improved security situation in the state is one of the Buharis main achievements in office. I can vividly recall in 2014 when Boko Haram insurgents unleashed mayhem in my constituency in Argungu Local Government Area (LGA) of the state. I can vividly recall in 2014 when Boko Haram insurgents unleashed mayhem in my constituency in Argungu Local Government Area (LGA) of the state. A relative of mine died in the attack, which I had never imagined the security situation then could deteriorate to. A relative of mine died in the attack, which I had never imagined the security situation then could deteriorate to. The insurgency had spilled off from Borno state to Kebbi state, Dantani said. The insurgency had spilled off from Borno state to Kebbi state, Dantani said. According to him, the APC- led government has now nipped the security situation in the bud, not only in the state but in many states in the Northern part of the country. According to him, the APC- led government has now nipped the security situation in the bud, not only in the state but in many states in the Northern part of the country. Dantani refuted allegation from opposition parties that the security situation had not improved in the state in particular and the country in general. Dantani refuted allegation from opposition parties that the security situation had not improved in the state in particular and the country in general. Many of us have not forgotten when insurgency attacks reached Kano, Sokoto, Niger states, among others. Many of us have not forgotten when insurgency attacks reached Kano, Sokoto, Niger states, among others. We dont have such attacks now. Isnt that an improvement in the security situation? We dont have such attacks now. Isnt that an improvement in the security situation? We should also not be unmindful of the fact that the agricultural revolution of Buhari, has helped our teeming unemployed youths and made our state, a leading rice producer in the country. We should also not be unmindful of the fact that the agricultural revolution of Buhari, has helped our teeming unemployed youths and made our state, a leading rice producer in the country. All these are courtesy of Buharis administration, he said. All these are courtesy of Buharis administration, he said. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has said it cannot probe Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, who is accused of... The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has said it cannot probe Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, who is accused of receiving millions of dollars in bribe because he enjoys constitutional immunity from criminal proceedings. The governor is still serving and constitutionally is covered by immunity. Being that as it may, the matter is in the instance sub judice, the EFCC posted from its Twitter handle Thursday, during a tweet meet organised by Tap Nitiative for Citizens Development, a public accountability think-tank. When Tap Nitiative demanded further explanation because the EFCC moved against Ayo Fayose while he was the Governor of Ekiti State, the anti-graft agency said it does not usually give out information on investigations. Investigation of anyone for an alleged fraud remains a covert process, the EFCC added. Ganduje has been the subject of several videos, which appeared to show him engaging in contract racketeering. At least six of such videos have been published since the first clip was released on October 11. The governor could be seen receiving wads of US dollars from persons believed to be public works contractors. The Federal Government on Thursday announced that arrangements had been completed for the issuance of its second green bond in December 2018 to facilitate the funding of climate change projects across the country.The Minister of State for Environment, Ibrahim Jibril, announced the governments readiness to issue the second green bond at a two-day national stakeholders retreat organised by the Federal Ministry of Environment ahead of the planned issuance.The government had in 2017 issued a maiden N10.69bn green bond with a five-year tenor to fund projects for the development of renewable energy.Jibril, who spoke through his Senior Technical Assistance, Ishiyaku Mohammed, said the retreat was designed to sensitise and galvanise the active participation of stakeholders in the issuance process.He said the event was equally meant to review the grey areas from the first insurance with a view to consolidating and strengthening the process towards a hitch-free second phase.According to him, the issuance of green bonds was one of the ways that the country had adopted to meet its obligations to the Paris Agreement as well as fast-track the reduction of emissions in line with the Paris Treaty.With the successful first issuance in 2017, Nigeria became the first country in Africa to take such initiative.In July 2018, Jibril stated that the capital market could see issues of around N208bn this year to fund projects in order to reduce carbon emissions.The FME had explained that the total figure was not fixed and would depend on an evaluation of the projects that need funding.It also stated that a bond programme for environmental projects was part of the governments aim to align with a global objective of expanding the market for finance in efforts to fight climate change. The Chairman, South-East Governors Forum and Governor of Ebonyi State, David Umahi, has said the Tuesday meeting of some governors of the region with President Muhammadu Buhari in Aso Villa was not to campaign for his reelection, but to seek 50 per cent release of the contract sum to the firm handling the Second Niger Bridge.He explained that the request was to ensure speedy completion of the project.There had been speculations that Umahi, along with his counterparts in Enugu and Abia states Ifeanyi Igwuanyi and Okezie Ikpeazu were scheming to support Buharis reelection in order to secure second terms.But Umahi said the speculation was far from the truth, saying that they also discussed appointment of a service chief from the region.He spoke to journalists at the project site of the ongoing modern Ecumenical centre on Thursday in Abakaliki, which is costing the state government over a billion naira.Umahi said, South-East would not say because the region is predominantly PDP, it will shy away from policies that affect the development of the region.To me, that is stupidity; we are not campaigning for anybody but we want to say that the problem of the South-East is beyond partisan politics.Any party that wants to take the South-East must be very serious with the South-East.He noted that the forum wouldnt have met with the President if not for the release of N7bn mobilisation fund to the contractor for the project, which was less than 15 per cent of the total cost.So we went to say, Look Mr. President, N7bn mobilisation is not enough. We want 50 per cent mobilisation to Julius Berger and another 50 per cent committed to bond. Reno Omokri, the former aide to Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan has fired back at the presidency over statement countering claims of co... Reno Omokri, the former aide to Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan has fired back at the presidency over statement countering claims of corruption in President Muhammadu Buharis government. Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity on Thursday denied allegation made by Jonathan in his book My Transition Hours that the present administration was more corrupt that previous ones. The Presidency said the allegation lacked empirical evidence to back the claims and that the 16 years of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was a waste, especially on infrastructural development, despite the humongous money available to the government through oil. But, reacting, Omokri countered Garba Shehu, saying achievements under Buharis administration were questionable and full of lies. On his Twitter page, he wrote: Garba Shehu you are a LIAR and a disgrace to anyone who was ever a Presidential spokesman. Iwealas book says she warned the Governors but APC Governors led by Chibuike Amaechi refused to save. Respect your old age and stop LYING it is not Goodluck Jonathan who said theres more corruption, it was Transparency International. According to @anticorruption, Nigeria made her worst retrogression in corruption under Buhari moving 12 steps backward from 136 in 2014 to 144 this year Garba Shehu respect your old age. Stop lying. The only federal university in Buharis state was built by Jonathan. He built 165 almajiri schools, Abuja-Kad railway, 4 power stations, 4 hospitals. What has your boss built? No project finished in 4 years. Garba Shehu leave Jonathan and face your lying government. Tunde Fashola tells Yorubas to vote Buhari and SW will get the Presidency in 2023. Boss Mustapha, tells Igbos to vote Buhari and get Presidency in 2023. You cant even harmonize your LIES Tell Nigerians how your boss, President Buhari went to Paris and praised @GovUmarGanduje, a man caught on camera hiding dollar bribes in his #BabanrigaMobileBanking. Your government has no credibility. Shehu you lie without shame. For 16 years, PDP only borrowed 7 trillion. In just 3 years, Buhari has borrowed 13 trillion. Tell Nigerians the truth. Leave lies for Lai Mohammed and Keyamo. You speak for the President. Stop LYING. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has reacted to reports in the media that he held a meeting with Vice President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo at... Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has reacted to reports in the media that he held a meeting with Vice President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo at his Ota Farm, Ogun State, on Wednesday. Reports circulated during the week of a meeting between Obasanjo, Osinbajo, and the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi. But in a statement signed by his media aide, Kehinde Akinyemi, on Friday, the former President said the report was false. It is a fact that severally, the former president has dissociated himself from owning any social media account. Therefore, it is highly disappointing that such sensitive Twitter post would be allowed to go on air without verification by the African Independent Television (AIT), the statement stated. Obasanjo further urged the media to always be professional in discharging their duties and to refrain from creating unnecessary confusion and heating up the polity. He added, There was no meeting with the Vice President anywhere. I was at the airport and was informed that he was around in the lounge and out of courtesy; I felt I should go and greet him. We met, greeted and exchanged pleasantries and I left. That was all. The station should have been very professional and not causing confusion and heating up the polity. That I am not operating any social media account should not be strange to a station like AIT, and for that embarrassment, the Vice President and I deserve an apology, Mr Obasanjo said. Legendary musician, 2face Idibia could not hide his disappointment about the deplorable state of Nigerian airports after he landed at th... Legendary musician, 2face Idibia could not hide his disappointment about the deplorable state of Nigerian airports after he landed at the new Accra International airport in Ghana. 2baba as his popularly called, asked people to see the level of beauty and professionalism in display while mocking the Nigerian Government by saying shame no dey catch some people for that side. His manager, Efe Omorogbe shared the video on Instagram. Unai Emery has revealed that his major worry before interviewing for the Arsenal job was his ability to speak English.The former PSG and Sevilla manager was part of an eight-man shortlist drawn up by former Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis and eventually won the race to replace Arsene Wenger, after impressing the Gunners hierarchy during the interview process.But Emery admits he thought his limited ability to speak English would go against him when discussing his ideas with Gazidis.In the past, teams had already approached me with their decision made: Paris Saint-Germain, Sevilla, Valencia, Spartak Moscow, Almeria I wasnt used to being another candidate and putting my arguments across.I prepared for the meeting with my staff. I went into it with the doubts about my English, but they always said that this wouldnt be a problem.And I spoke to them very naturally that day, he told Marca.Asked if he spoke to Wenger before taking over, Emery said: Not about the team. I ran into him once and not many more times.I respect him a lot, but no matter how much information he gave me, I had to change things.I told the players we are starting at ground zero.Even now, four months later, I still say we are just at the beginning! Bashir Ahmad, Personal Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on new media has condemned former president, Goodluck Jonathans new book... Bashir Ahmad, Personal Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on new media has condemned former president, Goodluck Jonathans new book, My Transition Hours. Ahmad said he regretted reading the book, describing it as full of hate speeches. Ahmad in a post on his official Twitter page expressed disappointment over the content of the book, stressing that he expected Jonathan as a former president to strengthen Nigerias unity rather insulting a particular part of the country in the book. According to him: I regretted reading some pages of the book, as a former President, we only expected him to write something that will strengthen our unity, but in that book, H.E Goodluck Jonathan wrote otherwise. The book is full of hate speech. A former Kaduna state chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Yaro Makama Rigachikun, has explained why the north did no... A former Kaduna state chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Yaro Makama Rigachikun, has explained why the north did not vote for former President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 presidential election. Rigachikun, while speaking in Kaduna Thursday during a solidarity visit by Sanga PDP Stakeholders Forum to the state PDP gubernatorial candidate, Isa Ashiru, explained that the former President took oath of office twice. He further explained, He was sworn in when late Umaru Yaradua died. He was again sworn-in in 2011 when he won that years presidential election. To the Northern establishment, he was sworn in twice, which was in tandem with the constitution. To allow the former leader to be sworn in for the third time was against the spirit of the constitution and the Northern establishment would not take that. Alhaji Yaro Makama Rigachikun observed that the second reason was the issue of suspicious and distrust because the Northern establishment suspected that the former leader had a hand in Boko Haram. Reacting to the recent book released by the former President, Goodluck Jonathan, the PDP chieftain said there was the need to tell the world the real reasons the north dumped Jonathan in 2015. He explained that events later proved that the former leader was not behind the insurgency, adding that the people later realised that Jonathans hands was never in Boko Haram. We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. Hillary Clinton's Populism Interview Shows That She Has Learned Nothing. If She Runs in 2020 We Are Doomed By Petr Knava | Think Pieces | November 23, 2018 | The Guardian is still seen by many to be a paper of the left. A force for good with its finger on the pulse of the international progressive movement, and a solid, hefty counterweight to the forces of regression that wait ever-patiently on the sidelines, eager to disrupt our fragile civilisation with hate. In reality it is a steadfastly capitalist, establishment-friendly institution, quite right-wing by any real-world standards of political alignment. It is a paper eager to set subtle but hard limits on how far left any discussion of politics can go by positioning itself as a voice of the sensible left and painting by contrast anything further than it as too radical. It is an entity with a good number of skilled people in its employ but it is withering away in the face of its own inability to understand the world around it and for its refusal to see beyond its narrow ideological framework. If The Guardian was a politician it would be Tony Blair: Occasionally saying the right things to appease the socially progressive left, but firmly believing in the dogma of the free market, managerial democracy, and benign Western military intervention. It is, in other words, a neoliberal institution, holding fast to the tenets of the orthodoxy that dominated the world for four decades but which since the great crash of 2008 has begun an irrevocable slide towards demise. How fitting then that for its latest set of features The Guardian has corralled a trio of figures who in many ways represent so well that dying zeitgeist: Tony Blair, ex-PM of Italy Matteo Renzi, and Hillary Clinton. In a series of pieces on the shadowy demon stalking the nightmares of all good liberals, populism, The Guardian has been trying strenuously to understand this strange, unknowable phenomenon sweeping the globe. One tragically hilarious thing about The Guardians series on populism is nobody there seems to actually understand, or agree on, what the term populism means. One of their features is a quiz designed to gauge how populist a leader a reader might beand in what political direction. You answer a series of policy-based questions and it places you on a plot of populism, with the y-axis denoting the level of populism your answers reflect and the x-axis showing how your answers align you with the left and right wings of international politics. There are some world leaders on the plot as reference points. Pablo Iglesias of Podemos. Angela Merkel. Hungarys fascist Orban. To understand The Guardians dizzy viewpoint all you need to know is that the plot has Barack Obama to the left of Evo Morales of Bolivia. Barack Drone Strike Happy, Bank Bailout Friendly Obama to the left of Evo Second Most Prominent Leader Of Latin Americas Leftist Pink Tide Of The 2000s Morales. Populism can be a rather hazy term. There is a great Jacobin piece which details its etymology, historical roots, and its differing meanings around the world, but the sum of The Guardians pieces reveals a truly confused, bitter, and nigh-on meaningless use of the word. According to The Guardians view of the world, anyone who isnt Emmanuel Smash The Unions, Subjugate The Workers Macron is basically a foam-flecked raving populist. In fact The Guardians use of the word reveals a lot about their attitude to democracy overall. In their reportingand this is a thing that has been replicated across the mainstream press around the globeanyone who challenges the status quo is a populist, regardless of their actual political stance, or methods. Its how you get shockingly ignorant think pieces and headlines comparing lifelong democrats and social justice campaigners like Britains Jeremy Corbyn to billionaire white supremacist demagogues like Donald Trump. It is a facile comparison born of desperation. The professional pundit classincluding commentators, polling agencies, and other establishment figureswere so dumbfounded by the quick succession of political upsets that was Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the rise of Corbyn that in their scrabbling for a lens through which to understand things they have revealed themselves to be shallow thinkers and analysts capable of operating only within a narrow centrist framework, judging only neoliberal orthodoxies to be legitimate grown up political movements and everything elseespecially leftist democratic insurgenciesas a symptom of a panicked herd of commoners, lashing out against the system and making rash decisions. There is an element of truth to that last point when it comes to right wing authoritarians but we will get to that later. Like a confused granddad trying to piece together what the kids might mean by meme economy, something being lit, or the existence of fidget spinners in general, The Guardians articles on populism have been, for the most part, laughable. Occasionally, thanks to some aberrantly insightful writers there, a vein of truth has been struck. Mostly, however, weve gotten gibberish. Perhaps the worst of the bunch has been an interview with Hillary Clintona piece which it is easy to imagine The Guardian preening with pride over, yet the results of which look like this: In order to defeat the far right, we must accomplish all of the far rights goals for them! Twitter, predictably, was not pleased with that headline. Yes Hillary Clinton we really need your advice telling us to cave in to xenophobia and racism. Thanks but no thanks https://t.co/pgoikjlw8k Faiza Shaheen (@faizashaheen) November 22, 2018 The common enemy is racism and xenophobia. Hillary Clinton is suggesting we capitulate to it in the interest of preserving a neoliberal consensus which has already disintegrated. https://t.co/n4TiOEm0BV Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) November 22, 2018 Anat Shenker-Osario fought and won in Minnesota using a narrative that exposed the real enemies of the people: elites attempting to sow division amongst the US diverse working class population.@HillaryClinton this is the only way forward for the lefthttps://t.co/itOaleJJyV Grace Blakeley (@graceblakeley) November 22, 2018 Indeed the headline, with its apparent kowtowing to racist rhetoric and far right appeasement, looks appalling. The piece is even worse. The more times I read it the more convinced I am that it is the worst possible take on this issue, revealing a quite terrifying depth of privileged ignoranceespecially if it is, as some suspect, all a part of the long prelude to Clinton announcing her Presidential campaign for 2020. As per the piece: I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame, Clinton said, speaking as part of a series of interviews with senior centrist political figures about the rise of populists, particularly on the right, in Europe and the Americas. I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message we are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support because if we dont deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic. By all accounts, Hillary Clinton is a very smart person. She is certainly a very strong person, who has managed to deal with decades of horrific misogynistic abuse that would make a stone wither. But her statement there is nonsense. Actively offensive, racist nonsense. One could argue that she is trying to make a pragmatic point to aid in the battle against the rise of the racist far right, but there is an incredibly thin, fine line between saying This is what the far right is using as a weapon, we must push back against that rhetoric in this way, and This is what the far right is pushing for. If we do it first, we deprive them of support. Do the latter, and who cares why you did ityou still accomplished a far-right goal. Clintons statement is on the bad side of that line. Because: Migration is absolutely not what lit the flame of populist insurgencies. A crumbling and politically bankrupt and corrupt neoliberal orthodoxy that has disenfranchised the vast majority of people around the world while enriching a select few more and more is what lit the bloody flame. The mass movement of refugees that the world has seen over the last few years is two things: 1) A direct consequence of Western, US-led imperialist wars of aggression against places like Libya and Syriaa policy framework which Clinton is a fiercely devoted champion of, and 2) A scapegoat used by the far right in their efforts at gaining support and turning millions of desperate people whose lives have been blighted by decades of neoliberal economicsa worldview championed by, again, Hillary Clintonagainst an even more desperate group of people. Historyin some cases depressingly recent historyshows us again and again that in times of dire economic straits, people are easily manipulated to blame The Other. Jewish people, refugees, gypsieswhoever happens to be the most convenient target at the time. Refugees didnt light the flame, Hillary. Establishment politicians in the pocket of big business did. By virtue of your place in the neoliberal ruling class it is, I imagine, difficult to see that. And then theres this: It is fair to say Europe has done its part via GIPHY via GIPHY Unless thats referring to the amount of bombs that Europe has dropped on the Middle East, or the number of corpses or ruined neighbourhoods left behind by those bombs, then that is one of the most offensive, far-right appeasing statements that has left the mouth of a mainstream politician in some time, and it shows just how eager they are, so desperate for power, that they will abandon any notion of principle if potential votes might be hadwho cares if theyre racist votes. A good reminder to anyone who thinks Europe has done its part for refugees: the vast majority (84%) of refugees are housed in developing countries, not in fortress Europe, which lets babies drown in the sea trying to reach its shores. Of the 7 million people displaced by the war in Syria by the end of 2016, 5 million of them were registered in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. Over 3 million of those were in Turkey alone. This is Camp Zaatari in Jordan, currently the largest Syrian refugee camp in the world, with 83,000 inhabitants: Clintons interview doesnt just show how shockingly ready she is to absorb the rhetoric of the demagogue who defeated her in the election and to allow that movement to move the Overton Window, it also shows a complete misunderstanding of why people might be upset with the status quo that they have been forced to live under for decades. The Guardian piece goes on to say: Clinton said rightwing populists in the west met a psychological as much as political yearning to be told what to do, and where to go, and how to live and have their press basically stifled and so be given one version of reality. The whole American system was designed so that you would eliminate the threat from a strong, authoritarian king or other leader and maybe people are just tired of it. They dont want that much responsibility and freedom. They want to be told what to do and where to go and how to live and only given one version of reality. I dont know why at this moment that is so attractive to people, but its a serious threat to our freedom and our democratic institutions, and it goes very deep and very far and weve got to do a better job of shining a light on it and trying to combat it. People are not voting for right-wing despots because they are hungry to be told how to live and what to do, Hillary. Whatre you, Loki of Asgard? Theyre voting for them out of desperation. This desperation can be channeled negativelyas in the rise of Trump or the xenophobic elements of the Brexit campaignor, if given a real alternative, positivelyas in the rise of Corbyn. Crucially, given the lack of a viable alternative, desperate people will sooner or later kick against the status quo. I dont know why at this moment that is so attractive to people. Because the cross-party neoliberal orthodoxy championed by exactly the type of politician that you are has left the populace a hollowed-out husk subsisting on ever-shrinking wages, living under the shadow of a looming climate apocalypse, and having long lost the hope that anyone in the halls of power gives even the tiniest fuck about them! Yes, there are racists and other despicable people ecstatic that their strongmen suddenly have a chance and a voice and are being elected. But those strongmen do not get that chance in a vacuum. The Establishment gave the world Trump and Orban and Bolsonaro. They didnt come from nowhere. They sprouted from the ground that the Establishment made toxic. Hillary Clintons apparent inability to see this is terrifying, though somewhat expected. Her capitulation to far right rhetoric is even worse. The idea that kowtowing to racist demands will win over far-right votes is fantasy. Between 2016 and 2018, the ruling party of Italy, Renzis PD, desperate for votes, capitulated in a similar fashion. It cut the number of people arriving from Africa on Italys shores [] dramatically, from more than 180,000 in 2016 to fewer than 120,000 in 2017, and under 6000 so far this year [March 2018]. How did this affect the partys vote share? The PDs electoral dividend from this moral capitulation was nil (at best). People obsessed with immigration didnt vote for the PD; they voted for the [far right] Lega. You dont stem the tide of fascism by appeasing it or by adopting its rhetoric. You do it by providing a viable, hopeful alternative. The fact that Hillary Clinton seems to have learned the exact opposite lesson to this should horrify anyone who thinks she might give the presidency another run in 2020. Thank god for a younger, more radical generation of Democrat outsiders now rising through the ranks. How I, As a European, Imagine Every Thanksgiving | 'The Front Runner': What Happened to Donna Rice after the Gary Hart Scandal? Petr is a staff contributor. You can follow him on Twitter. Image sources (in order of posting): The Guardian, Wikipedia Ten years ago, emojis were introduced to the world, ushering in an entirely new era of communication for the digital age. Written word had already been reduced to typed word first in emails then in texts and emojis simplified communication even further, distilling complex thoughts into a keyboard of graphic icons designed to be universal. For Michigan-bred welder Nick Moss, this switch was somewhat disturbing, and inspired him to create a series of steel emojis to capture a moment in time. Part of his fascination and criticism stems from growing up in a much simpler environment than today's fast-paced culture of ever-evolving technology. Moss was raised in small town Metamora, Michigan on an intensive crop farm, surrounded by industrial steel machinery. There, he began learning the ropes of welding, and in 2008, joined Traeger Wood Pellet Grills, where he was given chief control of engineering all steel grills and smokers. Related | Meet the Young British Artist Harry Styles Collects When he sold the company at 28 years old, Moss decided to become a full-time artist, choosing steel as his medium and shifting from grills to large-scale sculptures (or as he calls them, "steel paintings"). He and his girlfriend moved to quiet Carmel, New York (in Moby's old home, nonetheless), where Moss now welds his pieces in a studio surrounded by sprawling forest and scenery that looks like an IRL Thomas Kinkade painting. Replicating the precise curves and exact shapes of an emoji isn't easy; Moss is an expert in his field, having learned to control the heat and direction of a flame through the small window of a torch mask (welding without one causes eye damage, adding a layer of danger to Moss' craft). The artist compares his welding torch to a paintbrush. When he ignites the flame, his process looks dramatic and uncontrollable, but the result is somehow a perfect line. Applying various patinas to Moss' sculptures introduces a touch of spontaneity to his practice; some are colored to mimic the original emoji, with silver steel appearing underneath a sheet of golden yellow, while others have a more natural, marbled look that maintains the metal's original quality. Lined up together at at his first solo exhibition in New York City's Leila Heller Gallery, Moss' emojis are all unique their shapes are consistent, but the coloring is different from sculpture to sculpture. A decade after the release of emojis in 2008, Moss seems to be spotlighting, and in many ways dramatizing, what he views as the decline of communication. While the emoji may seem everyday, right now and especially in the context of fine art Moss' work is something future generations can look back on in the same way we examine Egyptian hieroglyphics. What did the side-eye emoji really mean? And how in hell was the eggplant emoji used? Nick Moss: Rigorous Perception is on view now at Leila Heller Gallery through December 20, 2018. Second Peaceful Teachers' Strike in Iran Met With Arrests, Summons and Threats 11/23/18 Source: Center for Human Rights in Iran Iranian security and judicial authorities responded to the second round of peaceful teachers' rights strikes by arresting and summoning alleged participants in several cities across the nation. The Teachers' Trade Organizations' Coordination Council (TTOCC) reported that following the strike on November 12-14, 2018, at least 13 protesters were arrested, more than 30 were summoned for questioning and 50 others were threatened by security agencies over the phone. According to the TTOCC, the following people were taken into custody: Ali Koroushati, Pirouz Nami, Mohammad Reza Ramezanzadeh, Saeed Haghparast, Ali Foroutan, Hamid Reza Rajaie, Hossein Ramezanpour, Hassan Jowhari, Mohammad Robati, Mohammad Ali Zahmatkesh, Mohammad Kord, Fatemeh Bahmani and a person only identified by the last name of Vaezi. "Pirouz Nami, the secretary general of the Iranian Teachers' Trade Association [ITTA] in Khuzestan Province and his deputy Ali Koroushati were arrested at 2:30 in the morning [November 13] at their home after holding talks with a member of Parliament from Ahvaz on Monday night [November 12]," a teachers' rights advocate told the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) on November 18. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Intelligence Organization had demanded that Nami and Koroushati withdraw their call for the protests and had them arrested after they refused, according to the TTOCC. The TTOCC's protest call, issued November 7, demanded higher wages, reforms to Iran's educational system and the release of teachers who have been imprisoned for their peaceful trade union activities. "We welcome any positive step but the authorities keep telling us that our demands are a financial burden," said the statement. "To show your goodwill, we propose that you free imprisoned teachers and stop persecuting activists." "We believe that the teachers' demands are practical and lawful and we declare that if the present trend continues, the protests will continue at all costs in the coming months," added the statement. Iran is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which mandates in Articles 21 and 22 freedom of association and guarantees the right to form trade unions, and to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which guarantees in Article 8 the right of workers to form or join trade unions and protects the right of workers to strike. But labor activism in Iran is seen as a national security offense; independent labor unions are not allowed to function, strikers are often fired and risk arrest, and labor leaders are consistently prosecuted under catchall national security charges and sentenced to long prison terms. The rights' activist who spoke to CHRI anonymously to protect their personal security noted that the striking teachers are also opposed to the government's professional ranking plan for favoring some teachers over others based on an arbitrary performance grading system. "The plan is supposed to solve the problem of teachers' low salaries," said the source. "But first of all, the proposed increase is insignificant.. and secondly, it only helps some teachers. What about the rest? What are they supposed to do?" Teachers were also arrested during the first round of strikes that took place last month from October 13-14. The following four prominent teachers' rights activists are currently in jail in Iran: Esmail Abdi: A high school teacher and former ITTA secretary general, Abdi has been serving a six-year prison sentence since November 2016 in Evin Prison in Tehran for the charges of "propaganda against the state" and "collusion against national security." Mahmoud Beheshti-Langroudi: A former ITTA spokesman, Beheshti-Langroudi's most recent imprisonment began in September 2017. He is serving multiple sentences for his peaceful trade union activities in Evin Prison. Rouhollah Mardani: In June 2018, Mardani, a graduate student in Persian literature at the University of Tehran who had also worked as a teacher in the city of Nourabad in Lorestan Province, was sentenced by a preliminary court to six years in prison. He was also banned for two years from political and social activities and prohibited from leaving the country for two years. Mardani was imprisoned for taking part in peaceful protests on campus in late January 2018; the charges he was convicted of are unclear. He is in Evin Prison. Mohammad Habibi: Arrested for peacefully advocating teachers' rights, Habibi was sentenced by a preliminary court in August 2018 to seven years in prison and 74 lashes. He was also banned for two years from political and social activities and prohibited from leaving the country for two years. Habibi was convicted of the following charges: "assembly and collusion against national security," "propaganda against the state" and "disturbing public order." He is in the Great Tehran Penitentiary. UN Watchdog IAEA Says Iran Sticking To Nuclear Deal Amid U.S. Sanctions 11/23/18 Source: RFE/RL Iran is implementing its part of a landmark nuclear deal with world powers, the UN atomic watchdog monitoring the pact reaffirmed on November 22, two weeks after the United States reimposed sanctions against Tehran. IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano delivers statement at Board of Governors meeting. Remarks on #JCPOA, North Korea, nuclear safety and more: https://t.co/zeI5dVCaj0 pic.twitter.com/ZJG9Bd6CAg IAEA (@iaeaorg) November 22, 2018 President Donald Trump said in May he was pulling the United States out of the 2015 nuclear agreement, and reimposed the sanctions on November 5. Iran has warned it could renounce the deal if signatories France, Britain, and Germany, and their allies fail to preserve the economic benefits promised by its terms. Under the 2015 deal, most international sanctions against Tehran were lifted in exchange for strict limits being placed on Iran's nuclear activities. "Iran is implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Yukiya Amano told a quarterly meeting of his agency's 35-nation Board of Governors. IAEA members slam US withdrawal from Iran nuclear deal - https://t.co/9Fn2wPKIM6 pic.twitter.com/yeBbRBQHIP Business Recorder (@brecordernews) November 23, 2018 The JCPOA is the official name of the 2015 nuclear accord reached by Iran with the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Russia, and China. "It is essential that Iran continues to fully implement those commitments," Amano added, confirming the conclusions of a confidential report to IAEA member states last week. Based on reporting by Reuters Government will enforce tax compliance measures to enable it to achieve revenue targets for 2019, the Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, has assured. Speaking at a budget forum organised by Pwc Ghana, an accounting, tax and audit consultancy firm, Mr Ofori-Atta said all efforts would be made to enforce the measures to ensure that individuals and businesses fulfilled their tax obligations to the State. Government has set a target of GH58.9 billion in the 2019 budget, which is about 25.9 per cent higher than the GH46.8 billion estimated in the 2018 budget, to meet its social and development obligations. Companies and individuals must pay their taxes so we want them to pay. They should not wait for us to come at them before they pay. It is an obligation they must fulfil and we will not relent in ensuring that they do what is expected of them, he said. Mr Ofori-Atta said the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) would be working very actively with the Auditor General and the Special Prosecutor to enforce compliance. Mr Ofori-Atta said enforcing tax compliance alone would help the government achieve its domestic revenue estimates of GH57.8 billion. Of the amount, non-oil tax revenue was expected to rake in about GH42.9 billion, reflecting the impact of expected improvement in tax compliance and reforms in revenue administration. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The newly established STAR Ghana Foundation is already getting busy engaging members of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) and others in local business community to build support for its mission to promote active citizenship in Ghana. The STAR Ghana Foundation will explore funding opportunities from Ghanaian philanthropy and the private sector to support the work of civil society organisations across the country and to aid development. Representatives from the AGI, Social Impact Africa and Western Regional Coastal Foundation met with the STAR Ghana Foundation to celebrate its recent launch and pledge their support. During a panel discussion on the theme The bridging role of the Foundation, active citizenship and engagement with the private sector; harnessing business leadership for active citizenship, the business community agreed that Ghana is ready to fund its own development instead of solely depending on overseas donors. Mr Seth Twum-Akwaboah, CEO of the AGI, said what STAR Ghana Foundation was seeking to do was a first in Africa since we must not continue to depend on charity as a country. The Foundation must also present its case very well in order to attract organisations that have money to spend on corporate social responsibility activities, he added. He said the Foundation must be careful not to use money alone as a yardstick, but also look to draw on the skills of various groups of people to sustain it. Social Impact Africas Anatu Ben Lawal explained that STAR Ghana Foundations relationship with the AGI, especially small and medium sized enterprises, would be very important. A lot of projects have been done in charity but not through strategic partnerships like STAR Ghana Foundation, he said. He added that an agenda on philanthropy must be strongly driven by bringing together all stakeholders to scale up the project. AGI member Rockson Dogbegah said the Foundations activities must be targeted to the right audience and aggressively advertised to achieve its aims. Amidu Ibrahim-Tanko, programmes director of STAR-Ghana, explained that since 2010 its impact had been unmatched and asserted that the Foundation would now work assiduously with civil society for the Ghanaian people. We want to ensure that all voices in Ghana are heard by decision makers both at the local and national levels, he said. Mr Tanko added that US$70 million (GHS348 million) had been earmarked for various initiatives across Ghana, focusing on gender and social inclusion, inclusive governance, media and the right to information. Other areas included accountable service delivery and anti-corruption, active citizenship, civil society and sustainable philanthropy. Source: Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video On Thursday, the Ooni of Ife, Enitan Ogunwusi hosted the immediate past President of Ghana, John Mahama and his team at the palace in Ile -Ife, Osun State. During the visit, he said, before the advent of the Western civilization, there were no boundaries between the African nations and communities, we are one big family. It gladdens my heart that with committed individuals like President Mahama, we have remained that united big family working together for the progress of the African continent. The Ooni also praised the former Ghanaian leader for exhibiting what he described as a humility and simplicity. According to him, Mahama personally received him in Ghana while in office two years ago and served him. When I was in Ghana to honour Mr President two years ago, he was in power, to the glory of God, he displayed humility and simplicity. He didnt even wait for an aide to do anything for me. He did it by himself. He made tea and offered me by himself. There is no difference between when he was in power and when he was not. Thats humility and simplicity. Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video he Vice President of the Republic, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has commended the officers, men and women of the Ghanaian battalion currently attached to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), GHANBATT 85, for proudly flying the Ghana flag in the discharge of their duties. Addressing a durbar of all ranks of the contingent at their operational headquarters at Al-Qawzah, Lebanon on Wednesday 21st November, 2018, Vice President Bawumia urged members of the contingent not to rest on their oars but continue to maintain the high standards of discipline which has earned them commendation from all stakeholders. Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia was in Lebanon to witness the award of United Nations Medals to Ghanas contingent attached to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). This is the first time in history that a President or Vice President has visited Ghanaian troops in Lebanon, although Ghana has supported UNIFIL with troops since the inception of the mission 40 years ago. The 850 Officers and men of the GHANBATT 85, under the direct command of Lt Col Fiifi Deegbe, have been deployed with UNIFIL for the past 5 months, and have been engaged in promoting peace and security in the troubled Middle Eastern country, especially on its southern border with Israel. I congratulate the Commanding Officer, Officers, Men and Women of UNIFIL GHANBATT 85 for the impressive performance over the period. Your performance is a true reflection of the high standard of professionalism, diligence and discipline of all Ghanaian soldiers, Vice President Bawumia stated. From the briefings we have been given, I am pleased to note that your effective and continuous domination of GHANBATT 85 Area of Responsibility as well as timely reaction to incidents have been highly commended by key stakeholders, notable among them, the Sector West Commander and indeed the UNIFIL Force Commander. Well done for the zeal and seriousness you attached to your duties at keeping the flags of Ghana and United Nations high. Special commendation to the Contingent Commander, Colonel Robert Ayi who is also the Chief Military Personnel Officer (CMPO) at the UNIFIL Headquarters for the guidance to the battalion. I urge you to display the same professionalism and commitment. Vice President Bawumia assured that Government on its part, will continue to provide logistical and other support to troops, not just in Lebanon, but in other peace keeping theatres as well as the entire Ghana Armed Forces. I wish to emphasize that Ghana as a nation must give our Contingent the best support we can, in return for the sacrifices that they make on a daily basis in all international peacekeeping operations. In this regard, the Government of His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will ensure that you have the resources to match your commitments, Vice President Bawumia pledged. In a related development, the Sector West Commander of UNIFIL, Major General Stefano Del Col, assisted by Vice President Bawumia, on Thursday 22nd November, 2018 pinned medals on the troops of GHANBATT 85 at a colourful ceremony at the battalion headquarters at Al-Qawzah, Lebanon on the occasion of the UNIFIL Medal Day. Source: Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Immediate past National Organizer for the opposition National Democratic Congress [NDC], Kofi Adams says members of the NDC cannot replace former President Mahama for any other candidate. According to him, likewise, Ghanaians cannot leave him for any other presidential candidate in its next election in 2020. To Kofi Adams, former President John Mahama has the credentials, experience and expertise to solve the countless problems facing the nation and take Ghana to the Promised Land. Former President Mahama has already built a foundation for his second coming, therefore the party need not look for a different candidate who will have to start all over again . . . this has a greater advantage of preventing the party from winning the upcoming election, he said. Mahama is so visible that we cannot change him for anyone. I will continue to recommend former President John Dramani Mahama as Ghanas next President to get the nation on track, he added. Kofi Adams admitted in an interview with UTVs Adekye Nsroma programme that his party has realized its mistakes made before, during and after the 2016 elections and has put up proper mechanisms to check all those faults. We have realized all our faults in the previous years, especially during the 2016 elections and will better every mistake made to achieve our key responsibility, which is to win the 2020 elections, he told UTV. Source: Elizabeth Semiheva Bedi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Ambros Witowski, 91, flashes his famous smile as he pulls a fresh batch of cinnamon buns from the oven. Members of the Penticton Seniors Drop-In Centre line-up every Thursday morning at 10 a.m. for a cinnamon bun garnished with a maraschino cherry that Witowski begins making at 4:30 a.m. Tulip recorded further heavy losses in 2017/18 and is dragging down parent company Danish Crowns results, prompting an ongoing cost-cutting exercise at the UK pork processor. More than 150 jobs have been lost at the company over the past few months and further cuts to remove more than 20m in costs within the company will be implemented over the next year or so. Danish Crowns total profits fell by 151 million DKK to 1.361bn DKK (about 161 million) in 2018, according to the latest financial statement from the Danish meat giant. This was partly due to revenue falls on the back of declining pork and beef prices across its global companies. But Danish Crown pinned most of the blame squarely on Tulip. While much of the Danish parent companys business is performing well, continued losses in its UK pork processing company have forced it to postpone its strategic target by two years. It is primarily Tulip Ltd that is dragging down the results, Danish Crown said. Tulip actually returned a profit on ordinary operations for the first quarter of the fiscal year, but, overall, a net operating loss of 260m DKK (31m) has been posted for the year against a loss of 231m DKK (27.4m) last year. Danish Crown CEO Jais Valeur said a detailed review and analysis of Tulip Ltd has revealed that it has been unable to fully optimise our UK supply chain, while operating costs are far too high. We have therefore launched a comprehensive cost-cutting plan, and in the past two months we had to say goodbye to more than 150 salaried employees in the UK business. Altogether, we expect to reduce costs by more than 200m DKK (24m) from the 2018/19 financial year, he said. Danish Crown recently announced that Andrew Cracknell had been appointed as CEO of Tulip, replacing Danish Crown CEO Jais Valeur in the role. It said Mr Cracknell, who spent much of his career at meat giant ABP before joining Noble Foods in 2015 had been chosen to manage the on-going transformation of Tulip. Danish Crown said it was doing all it can to bolster earnings for the benefit of the groups owners the Danish farmers. However, ongoing problems at Tulip are impacting Danish Crowns earnings to such an extent that it will now take an extra two years to realise its strategic target of raising the settlement price paid to cooperative members by 0.60 DKK per kg. Were definitely not happy with the financial statements, Mr Valeur said. Were still badly affected by the problems in our UK business. At the same time, a combination of turbulence on the world market, generally low world market prices for pork and a strong euro has significantly undermined our profit in the past year. Contrary to expectations, we have therefore not managed to improve our overall performance but have instead gone into reverse. This is not good enough, and more than anything it is frustrating, because in most other respects our strategy is succeeding. Results summary Due to declining pork and beef prices meant Danish Crowns revenue declined slightly to 61 billion DKK (7.2bn) in 2017/18, despite of acquisitions in the period. But gross profit is up 146m DKK (17m) at 8bn DKK (950m) following the acquisition of DK-Foods in Denmark, Gzella in Poland and the Dutch company Baconspecialist Zandbergen. The profit from primary operations is reduced by 181m DKK (21.5m) to 1,742bn DKK (207m). The group has posted a total profit for the year of 1.361bn DKK (161m). This represents a decrease of 151m DKK (18m) on 2016/17, when adjusted for special items. The company said that after this summers drought, in the last three months of the financial year it has deliberately paid higher pig and cattle prices than warranted by the market, which hit its bottom line. Meanwhile, other processing companies have posted better results than last year. Polish company Sokoows earnings are up 26% and Tulip Food Company in Denmark posted growth of 29%, following a year of improved sales of bacon in Europe and growth in exports of canned meat. In Denmark, the company has increased the supply of pigs through its abattoirs by 4% and cattle by 2%, boosting jobs numbers in Denmark by 236 and winning significantly more market share. Our growth in Denmark is explained by our unswerving focus on quality and the Danish origin of the animals, Mr Valeur said. Key figures for Danish Crown* mDKK 2017/18 2016/17 Revenue 60,892 62,024 Operating profit before special items 1.742 1.923 Operating profit 1.758 2.449 Net profit for the year 1.361 2.022 Total assets 27,980 24,433 Equity 7.540 7.611 Cash flow from operating activities 1.666 2.530 Cash flow from investing activities -3.086 -593 Supplies from members, million kilo 1.276 1.229 No. of Employees 27,921 25,956 * Consolidated figures including Leverandrselskabet Danish Crown AmbA Get Our E-Newsletter - Pig World's best stories in your in-box twice a week See e-newsletter example Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy A Border Patrol agent charged with manslaughter in the 2012 shooting of a Mexican teenager16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguezhas been acquitted by a jury in Arizona. Jurors in Tucson found Agent Lonnie Swartz not guilty of involuntary manslaughter but didn't come to a decision on voluntary manslaughter, according to the Houston Chronicle. The verdict comes months after Swartz was acquitted of second-degree murder by another jury that had deadlocked on manslaughter charges, allowing prosecutors to pursue the case again. Swartz had said throughout the proceedings that Rodriguez was one of several young men who threw rocks at him. According to Las Vegas Now, the attraction allows people to participate in a simulated vehicle pursuit just a few miles from the Las Vegas Strip. Image courtesy of Police Chase Las Vegas / Facebook. Anything is possible in Las Vegas, apparently. Visitors can now engage in "mock" police pursuits at a new attraction being promoted by the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. According to Las Vegas Now, the attraction allows people to participate in a simulated vehicle pursuit just a few miles from the Las Vegas Strip. Damian Sheets, co-founder of Police Chase Las Vegas, describes it as an adrenaline rush of a lifetime. The driving instructors for the attraction are reportedly retired police officers. Visitors can choose from one of about two dozen patrol vehicles as they learn how to perform a PIT maneuver, among other police driving skills. Dearborn will mark the holiday season Dec. 3, with the citys annual Tree Lighting Ceremony and sing-along at the Ford Community & Performing Arts Center. The free event, a longstanding Dearborn tradition, gets underway at 6 p.m. with a performance by the Dearborn Youth Symphony String Quartet in the lobby of the Michael A. Guido Theater. At 6:40 p.m., the festivities will move outside the theaters west entrance for the ceremonial lighting of the city Christmas tree by Mayor John B. OReilly, Jr., assisted by six-year-old Abdullah Mohamed from Nowlin Elementary School. Everyone is then invited into the Michael A Guido Theater for holiday performances by the Dearborn Community Concert Band and the Dearborn Public Schools Elementary & Secondary Honors Choirs. The in-theater portion of the evening will conclude with Mayor John OReilly leading an audience sing-along, featuring some of the best known songs of the holiday season. Following the sing-along, cookies, coffee and hot chocolate will be available in the lobby, and Santa Clause will welcome young children in Studio A. The annual tree lighting and sing-along are hosted by the Dearborn Recreation & Parks Department and made possible, in part, by generous support from Park Place Catering and the Dearborn Lions Club. For further information, call 313-943-2350. Source: City of Dearborn MUMBAI, November 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The ASCENT Conclave is the flagship event of the ASCENT Foundation, bringing together a confluence of thought leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs ASCENT Foundation, a not-for-profit, peer-to-peer learning platform for entrepreneurs, hosted its 3rd edition of the ASCENT Conclave, on Thursday, November 22, 2018, at St. Regis, Mumbai. The full-day event brought together some of India's most inspiring and recognized leaders who shared their entrepreneurial journey over the years, failure and success stories. Themed 'Beyond the Conversation', the Conclave hosted several insightful discussions that addressed the growing need for entrepreneurs to focus not on only on the business aspects, but also on the emphasizing the importance of physical and mental well-being aspects. The event commenced with a welcome note by Harsh Mariwala (Founder, ASCENT Foundation and Chairman, Marico Ltd.). Rajiv Bajaj (Managing Director, Bajaj Auto) was the keynote speaker. Mr. Bajaj through his inspiring discussions, delved on the how can entrepreneurs keep reinventing themselves by keeping them constantly motivated and inspired. He also elucidated on his lessons learnt from past business challenges and how being mentally and physically fit has helped him build a world-class organisation. PC Musthafa (iD Fresh Food Pvt. Ltd.) engaged in a compelling discussion moderated by Govindraj Ethiraj (BOOM and IndiaSpend) on the opportunities and pitfalls in the perishable mass-food products sector and PC Musthafa's journey as an entrepreneur. The Conclave also hosted a highly riveting exchange of thoughts and ideologies by Kishore Biyani (CEO - Future Group and Managing Director - Pantaloon Retail) and Falguni Nayar (Founder & CEO - Nykaa) on the future of the Retail Sector with the advent of newer multi-dimensional avenues. This session was moderated by Menaka Doshi (Managing Editor - BloombergQuint). The Conclave hosted two unique panel discussions, the first being on the importance of employee re-branding with the changing employee value proposition. This session was moderated by Prabir Jha (President and Global Chief People Officer - Cipla Inc.) and had Lavanya Nalli (Vice-Chairperson - Nalli Silk Sarees Pvt. Ltd.), Nicolas Dumoulin (Managing Director - Michael Page India) and Sunit Sinha (Accenture Solutions) share their approaches towards employee and talent management. The second panel discussion shared 4 distinct stories of 4 trailblazers from different walks of life and how each story highlights a strong quality which drives them. Hosted by Tanvi Dubey (Editor, YourStory), the panel saw the participation of Gauri Sawant (Director, Sakshi Char Chowghi), Harshwardhan Zala (CEO, Aerobotics 7), Gauranga Das (Director, Govardhan Ecovillage) and Milind Soman (Director, Maximus MICE & Media Solutions) with each speaker inspiring takeaways based on their journeys. Audiences were left inspired by the entrepreneurial growth stories of Gauri Devidayal (Food Matters India Pvt. Ltd.) and Pankit Desai (CEO, Sequretek), both members of ASCENT Foundation. Gauri discussed on how collaborating with competition could prove to be advantageous for business growth, while Pankit elaborated on how companies can overcome digital and cyber security related challenges. Sangita Reddy (Joint Managing Director - Apollo Hospitals Group) gave the closing address and shared her views on approaches that can help 'Bridge the Innovation Gap' in Healthcare in India. IIFL Wealth Management Ltd. has collaborated with ASCENT Foundation as the Lead Partner for ASCENT Conclave 2018. Harsh Mariwala, Founder, ASCENT Foundation and Chairman, Marico Ltd. Commented, "I am thrilled to share that the ASCENT Conclave 2018 has been able to achieve the goal that we had set for ourselves - to constantly improve the learning opportunities for growth-ready entrepreneurs. The Conclave provides a lot of take-home value for entrepreneurs that can help their businesses scale further. My thanks and appreciation to all the speakers and our partners who have helped make the ASCENT Conclave a one-of-its-kind experiential learning platform." About ASCENT Foundation: ASCENT Foundation is a not-for-profit expression of Harsh Mariwala (Founder, ASCENT Foundation and Chairman, Marico Ltd.) and his passion to identify high-potential growth-ready entrepreneurs and enable them to grow their enterprise. Launched in 2012, ASCENT is designed as a unique, powerful peer-to-peer platform that leverages the 'power of collective' through self-facilitated Trust Groups and enables entrepreneurs to share and exchange experiences, ideas, insights and create a healthy ecosystem to learn from each other. Additionally, ASCENT provides peripheral access to relevant growth enablers like service providers, investors and banks, industry role models and domain experts. ASCENT is 400 member entrepreneur ecosystem strong and present in Mumbai and Chennai. For more details please visit: http://www.ascentfoundation.in/ Media Contacts: Bhakti Dalal BDCC +91-9819118807 [email protected] Shivani Divecha [email protected] +91-9921879331 Manager - ASCENT Foundation SOURCE ASCENT Foundation PUNE, India, November 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Excellent medical team, clinical outcomes, affordable price range makes this possible Sahyadri Hospitals added another feather in its cap by conducting 100th liver transplant at its Deccan Unit. The liver transplant was conducted on a 48-year-old male from Atpadi, Sangli who was suffering from end stage liver cirrhosis. Hepatobilliary and Liver Transplant Surgeons Dr. Bipin Vibhute, Dr. Dinesh Zirpe, Dr. Shailesh Sable; Transplant Anaesthetist - Dr. Dinesh Babu, Dr. Manish Phatak; Chief Consultant Liver ICU Dr. Chetan Pandey, Coordinators - Mr. Arun Ashokan, Mr. Aman and Mr. Rahul Tambe and Medical Social Worker Ms. Sharmila Padhye were the team who made this possible. (Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/591161/1463896_Sahyadri_Logo.jpg ) Dr. Sunil Rao said, "This is an extremely proud moment for us as we celebrate 100 lives with liver transplants in span of just 2.5 years. We are happy that we not only achieved this milestone, but we have been able to transform the lives." He further said, "Availability of well-trained medical team under the leadership of Dr. Vibhute, excellent clinical outcomes and affordable price points & availability of service helped us. We have made liver transplant service available not only in Pune but also in Nashik and Aurangabad, and have extended Liver OPDs at tier 2 & 3 cities like Satara, Karad, Kolhapur, Sangli, Baramati, Ahmednagar and Indapur." Dr. Sunil Rao added that while saluting the donors and their families, we congratulate our team of doctors, staff members and also ZTCC and Traffic Police who have played a key role in achieving this significant milestone. Dr. Bipin Vibhute, Hepatobilliary and Liver Transplant Surgeon Sahyadri Hospitals, said, "We are proud to have serviced so many patients with 89%* success rates in such a small period. During this journey, apart from challenging Liver Transplants, we have also been able to do some rare surgeries like Kidney-Pancreas Transplants, maximum number of Paediatric Liver Transplants in Maharashtra and simultaneous Liver, Kidney and Pancreas Transplant and donor Liver retrieval from a 84-year-old man, which was first case reported in the state." Continuing further on medical milestones, Dr. Vibhute said, "We have also achieved some striking milestones like Liver harvesting and successful transplantation from a dengue positive donor; it was reported as the first such case in Asia, besides, for the first time in India, Sahyadri retrieved Liver from a brain dead Kidney Transplant recipient." Dr. Manish Pathak, Transplant Anaesthetist, said, "This has been possible because of the state-of-the-art Infrastructure, dedicated team of doctors like Dr. Bipin Vibhute, Dr. Dinesh Babu, Dr. Dinesh Zirpe, Dr. Shailesh Sable, Dr. Sandeep Kulkarni and trained staff members and comprehensive medical care to the patients across the entire spectrum of liver disorders. In addition, a dedicated Liver ICU consists of 5 bedded ICU with expert team exclusively for liver transplants, a dedicated rehab team to ensure quicker and better post-surgery recovery for the liver transplant patient, which will help us cutting down the extra expense post-surgery." Dr. Ketan Apte, Head Sahyadri Hospitals Deccan, Hadapsar and Nagar Road, said, "I want to congratulate the team of doctors who not only did the transplants successfully but focused on fast track recovery and discharge of the patient. Having achieved this major milestone, our journey forward will be more ambitious as we step up organ donation awareness activities. We salute all those donors and their families who have made this possible with their noble deed. As a part of our organ donation awareness program, we recently conducted World's Largest Organ Donation Drive, in association with Rotary District 3131, which also got registered into Guinness World Records for achieving Maximum Online Organ Donation pledges in 8 hours. We are happy that we were a part of the resounding success." About Sahyadri Hospitals: Sahyadri Hospitals is the largest chain of hospitals in Maharashtra with 8 hospitals across three cities of Pune, Nashik and Karad. The hospital chain has over 900 beds, 1200 clinicians and 2300 support staff providing round the clock healthcare. To know more: http://sahyadrihospital.com/ For more info, please contact: Javed Mirajkar [email protected] +91-7768003753 Sahyadri Super Speciality Hospital Deccan Media Contact: Rajani Iyer, [email protected] +91-9673580011 Senior Executive - PR & Marketing Sahyadri Hospitals Limited SOURCE Sahyadri Hospitals Limited Iran Circumvents U.S. Sanctions with Cryptocurrencies FinCEN came up with new recommendations. The document contains interesting points, including the thing that Iran abuses cryptocurrencies, thereby jeopardizing the entire global financial system. In particular, the document claims that Iranian citizens make BTC transactions to the amount of around 4 million dollars, yet those transactions are are claimed to be indented for criminal purposes. At the same time, FinCEN claims that Iran uses digital currencies to circumvent Western sanctions. The regulator recommends American businesses, including crypto platforms, to investigate into their block-chain registries to spot the activity coming form Iran. the thing is that, according to FinCEN, even though the Central Bank of Iran has been desperately trying to prevent local businesses and individuals from accessing cryptocurrencies, they still have unlimited access to American p2p online exchanges. That's why the regulator reminds American businesses about the importance of intensifying security measures for the sake of observing the sanction requirements. In July 2018, the Iranian authorities announced their plans to launch their own national cryptocurrency. According to their plans, the coin will let them circumvent the Western sanctions initiated by the United States. But on the other hand, China has enough resources to ruin Iran's plans. According to expert estimates, China is really capable of influencing or even destorying Bitcoin. If that's the case, this will spoil the image of cryptocurrencies as promising assets to invest in. While those threats are potential, crypto miners keep on making money. They say that over the first 6 months of 2018, international miners made almost 5 billion dollars, even despite the increasing rivalry and decreasing profitability of mining. In the meantime, the cryptomarket has been undermined by various news and rumors. For instance, not so long ago, several big-scale financial institutions from Europe were suspected in some shady schemes regarding cryptocurrencies. In particular, the Lithuanian agency that fights financial crimes got curious about some big-scale crypto transactions taking place over the last few years. Some of the clients made big-scale transactions worth millions of dollars. Now they will have to explain the origin of the money as well as the purpose of those financial transactions. Those individuals are reported to be Lithuanian citizens. They are clients of such banks as SEB, Swedbank, Luminor, Danske Bank, Citadele, Pervesk, and Mister Tango. You are free to discuss this article here: forum for traders and investors If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here We are excited to welcome Michael to the New Fed team with the opportunity to open new branches" Michael comes to New Fed Mortgage with over 20 years of mortgage lending expertise. He most recently was at Salem Five which recently acquired Sage Bank where he worked as a sales manager over the past 7 years. Prior to Sage Bank, Michael was at Omega Mortgage as a branch manager for 13 years. Michael takes great pride on providing exceptional customer service structuring loan programs specific to their individual needs. He works to ensure his borrowers are comfortable and knowledgeable about the loan process and in the end he knows he has done his job to their satisfaction. Michaels experience also with managing and mentoring a branch has consistently led his sales team to success. Michael received his undergraduate degree from Wentworth Tech and lives on his farm in Pelham, New Hampshire with his wife Kim along with his stepson Connor. President and CEO Brian DAmico commented We are excited to welcome Michael to the New Fed team with the opportunity to open new branches. Michael is an accomplished mortgage industry professional that is truly dedicated to his craft. His expertise in mortgage lending and managing a sales team will complement our mortgage origination efforts in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire. New Fed Mortgage, locally based in Massachusetts has specialized in residential mortgage lending since 2001. Licensed in seven states, New Fed offers a multitude of mortgage programs, including Conventional, FHA, VA, USDA, Mass Housing, New Hampshire Housing along with access to a wide array of specialty portfolio programs. To contact Mike Romano he can be reached at mromano(at)newfed.com or at 978-490-0473 or visiting at the New Fed Mortgage website http://www.newfed.com NEWSALERT-GERMANY-LEADERS-DEAL German center-left leader Olaf Scholz says 3 parties have reached a deal to form new government that will end Merkel era. (AP)German center-left leader Olaf Scholz says 3 parties have reached a deal to form new government that will end Merkel era. (AP) Rantoul, IL (61866) Today Windy and becoming cloudy during the afternoon. High 54F. Winds SSW at 20 to 30 mph.. Tonight Cloudy with rain developing after midnight. Low 39F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Major banks are joining the new proposed blockchain association by the European Commission, the EU's executive body. Spanish banking giant BBVA in a statement said it is one of the first five banks invited to join the blockchain forum organized in Brussels due to its interest and experience in the use of blockchain and distributed ledger . As per reports, Santander is also among the joining banks. The banks will subsequently join the launch of the International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications or IATBA, a European platform to promote the use of blockchain. The association is expected to be set up as early as first quarter of 2019. The IATBA, a publicly promoted initiative, will have representatives from both public and private sectors. It aims to garner support from blockchain and DLT experts to contribute to outline the EU's strategy regarding these technologies. The decision for the forum was made at the EC conference, entitled 'Uniting EU Industries to lead blockchain technologies.' In April 2018, the EC started working on rolling out the European Blockchain Partnership or EBP, which has already been signed by 27 countries, including Spain. The purpose of this partnership is to develop a trusted, secure and resilient European Blockchain Services Infrastructure. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Technology News Colorado's Securities watchdog issued Cease and Desist Orders against four companies promoting unregistered and potentially fraudulent securities in the state in the form of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). Colorado Securities Commissioner Gerald Rome said he has signed orders to stop 18 initial coin offerings in the state of Colorado, saying that they violate the Colorado Securities Act. Two more orders are pending. The orders are the result of investigations conducted by an "ICO Task Force" in the Colorado Division of Securities in May targeting fraudulent activities to attract potential investors in the cryptocurrency market. Cease and Desist Orders were issued to Global Pay Net, Credits LLC, CrowdShare Mining, and CyberSmart Coin Invest. Global Pay Net is a company marketing an ICO via a web site to sell "GLPN Coins," which it claims to be are "full-value assets that represent one's share in the " and that "investors receive 80 percent of the company's profits." The site also lists multiple cryptocurrency professionals as being involved in the ICO, but the Colorado Division of Securities said two of them have denied it. The securities watchdog said it could not verify the company's claim of a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission's database because the phone number listed for the 2011 filing was disconnected, and no business filing is registered in Washington, where the company is supposedly located. Credits LLC allegedly promotes "Crypto with a mobile mining app that supports green energy," and is soliciting for an ICO on currency known as "Cred (CX)" through a web site. CrowdShare Mining promotes an ICO for a cryptocurrency coin named "CrowdShare Mining (CSM)." Its web site claims to mine cryptocurrency through renewable energy sources, and promises investors 50 percent of the mining profit in the form of dividends. The website for CyberSmart Coin Invest offers a cryptocurrency titled "CyberSmart Coin (CBST)". It claims to use robots to trade on Bitmex.com and other crypto exchanges, and also claims to have "secret" methods of profit gaining. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News President Donald Trump has threatened to close the U.S.-Mexico border and suspend trade with Mexico as hundreds of U.S.-bound Central American migrants are impatiently waiting in the Mexican border city of Tijuana to cross the border hoping for a new life. "If we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control," Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. "The whole border. I mean the whole border. Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the United States where they make so many cars," he added. Claiming that at least 500 criminals are among the migrants trying to enter the U.S., Trump said he has authorized troops to use lethal force to thwart their attempts. Thousands of Latin American migrants, who started their grueling journey on foot from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, are at the border fence that separates Mexico from California. Authorities in Tijuana set up a job fair in an attempt to recruit skilled workers amongst the migrants, while Mexico's migration agency has offered them temporary residency papers. But the migrants, who are mostly fleeing poverty, violence and persecution in Central America's "Northern Triangle," are determined to reach the U.S., hoping to build a better future for their families. Tension has been reported at a makeshift shelter housing around 3,500 migrants, which include many women and children. Calling them invaders, Trump vowed to prevent them from crossing into the United States and has deployed some 5,900 troops to the border. U.S. officials have warned that anyone found entering the country illegally will face arrest, prosecution and deportation. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Political News Editors Pick Pharmacy chain operators CVS Health Corp., Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. and Walmart Inc. are responsible for fueling the opioid epidemic in two Ohio counties, according to a federal jury in Cleveland, Ohio. The verdict reportedly marks the first from a jury in an opioid case in the United States, where thousands of lawsuits are pending regarding the opioid overdose and related deaths. Pomona, California-based Chi Hsin Impex Inc., d/b/a Impex Fitness is recalling certain Olympic dumbbell handles due to impact injury hazard, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said. The recall involves about 77,200 units of OBB-20 Fitness Gear Olympic Dumbbell Handle with locking collars. Consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble Co. or P&G is recalling specific Old Spice and Secret Aerosol Sprays citing the possible presence of benzene, a human carcinogen, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said. The recall involves certain Old Spice and Secret aerosol spray antiperspirants and Old Spice Below Deck aerosol spray products. With a potential government shutdown looming, President Donald Trump has called on Republican and Democratic lawmakers to come together to approve a "major Border Security package." Trump said in a post on Twitter on Friday that the border security package must include funding for his proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. "Republicans and Democrats MUST come together, finally, with a major Border Security package, which will include funding for the Wall," Trump tweeted. "After 40 years of talk, it is finally time for action. Fix the Border, for once and for all, NOW!" The tweet comes after Trump told reporters on Thursday there could be a government shutdown in December over the issue of his controversial wall. "Could happen, yeah. Over border security," Trump said when asked if there will be a shutdown next month. "The wall is just a part of border security a very important part. Probably the most important part." "But could there be a shutdown? There certainly could," he added. "And it will be about border security, of which the wall is a part." Democrats have generally opposed providing full funding for the border wall, which Trump claimed throughout his presidential campaign would be paid for by Mexico. The president has backed down from previous threats to shut down the government over border wall funding, although lawmakers only have two weeks to reach a spending agreement and prevent a shutdown. (Photo: Gage Skidmore) For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News A collection of the popular stories from the cryptocurrency and blockchain space this week. Colorado Issues Cease-and-Desist Order Against 18 ICOs Colorado's Securities watchdog issued Cease and Desist Orders against four companies promoting unregistered and potentially fraudulent securities in the state in the form of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). Colorado Securities Commissioner Gerald Rome said he has signed orders to stop 18 initial coin offerings in the state of Colorado, saying that they violate the Colorado Securities Act. Two more orders are pending. Bitcoin Drops Below $5,000 Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, touched a new low in more than a year on Tuesday, reaching around $4,500. Other major cryptocurrencies, including ethereum and XRP, were also continuing their downfall, which started last week. bitcoin's ongoing sell-off was due to technical levels and stop orders in the market. The uncertainty surrounding bitcoin cash's hard fork also added to the fall. UK Regulator Considering Ban On Sale Of Cryptocurrency Derivatives The Financial Conduct Authority or FCA, the U.K.'s finance regulator, is likely to ban the sale of cryptocurrency derivatives such as futures. At The Regulation of Cryptocurrencies event in London, FCA executive director of strategy and competition Christopher Woolard expressed concern that retail consumers are being sold complex, volatile and often leveraged derivatives products based on exchange tokens with underlying market integrity issues. North Korea To Host International Blockchain And Crypto Conference Next Year North Korea announced its plan to host the country's first international blockchain and cryptocurrency conference next year. The conference will be conducted in the Pyongyang Science and Technology Complex from April 18 to 25, 2019. North Korea invites any interested person from all countries, except from South Korea, Japan and Israel. Journalists are also not allowed to attend. Norway Withdraws Electricity Subsidies For Bitcoin Miners The move comes as sharp decline in the price of Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, is forcing many btcoin mining operations to close down as they may no longer be profitable. Like other power-intensive industries, larger mining firms receive the same electricity tax discount, and until now paid a low rate of 0.48 Norwegian oyra, per kilowatt. As of January 2019, this would increase to 16.58 oyra per kilowatt. BBVA And Other Banks To Join EU's Planned Blockchain Association Major banks are joining the new proposed blockchain association by the European Commission, the EU's executive body. The banks will subsequently join the launch of the International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications or IATBA, a European platform to promote the use of blockchain. The association is expected to be set up as early as first quarter of 2019. Binance Labs Invests $3 Mln In US OTC Crypto Trading Desk Koi Trading Binance Labs announced a $3 million investment in US over-the-counter or OTC crypto trading desk Koi Trading. The collaboration between Binance Labs and Koi Trading is likely to help rectify OTC trading difficulties globally. OTC trading, which began in China, is now booming outside the country as well. Crypto-focused Silvergate Bank Files For $50 Mln IPO Silvergate Capital, the parent of Silvergate Bank with a focus on digital currency industry, filed for an initial public offering, aiming to raise up to $50 million. In a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the La Jolla, California -based emerging growth company said it plans to list on the NYSE under the symbol "SI.". Silvergate Capital reportedly filed confidentially on August 3, 2018. SIX Swiss Exchange To List Multi-crypto-based ETP SIX Swiss Exchange, Switzerland's prominent stock exchange, will list a cryptocurrency exchange-traded product or ETP next week even as the crypto market is plummeting each day. It is touted as the world's first ETP tracking multiple cryptocurrencies. Current Prices As of this writing, Bitcoin is down 3.87 percent or $172.20 at $4295.81 . Ethereum is declining 7.51 percent or $9.75 at $120.73 on Coinbase. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Forex News CBY' s General Assembly approves the budget for 2017 [23/November/2018] SANAA, Nov. 23 (Saba) - The General Assembly of the Central Bank of Yemen (CBY) on Thursday approved the balance sheet and the profit and loss account for the year ended 31 December 2017. The General Assembly of the bank, at its 55th meeting in Sana'a under the chairmanship of the Chairman of the Board of Directors Hussein Harrhh, in the presence of shareholders and representatives of government agencies, approved the distribution of profits as proposed by the Board of Directors of the Bank and the discharge of the Chairman and members of the Board from all related to their administration for the said year. The meeting also approved allowing the Board of Directors of the Bank to donate within the limits stipulated by law. The meeting approved the reports of the Board of Directors and the Independent Auditor, as well as the report of the Shariah Board of the Islamic Branch. According to the general budget report, the bank achieved a net profit of YR 2 billion and 675 million at the end of 20101 after deducting all expenses, charges, provisions, taxes on commercial profits and Zakat. The report pointed out that the bank's assets amounted to 201 billion riyals, while deposit balances amounted to 168 billion and 316 million riyals by the end of 2017. The members of the Board of Directors were elected at the meeting instead of the outgoing members. AA Saba Having a Samoan as a work colleague has its benefits and that is why Brisbane-based Fatima Bare flew into Samoa on Monday. She is a nurse and has a colleague who is Samoanwho despite living close to 4000 km away from homenever stops talking about the motherland. I call her mama Annie, she always talks about Samoa, her home and I finally decided Id visit. She was supposed to come with me but was unable to, Fatima told Dear Tourist. Since her arrival in Samoa early in the week, she has been to Savaii and did a tour of the big island, enjoyed the crystal blue waters and the beaches, and stayed at the Manase beach fales (huts). You feel like youre at home because of the culture, she added. On Upolu Fatima has visited the waterfalls, the To Sua Oceanic trench and the local markets. Its quite safe. My first night I went for a walk and I met some of the children and they were friendly, she said, though she wished she could have said the same for the pestering dogs. But I felt safe, she added. What does she think about Samoan culture? She said the culture and religion is very rich in Samoa. The culture and religion is very rich in both here and Savaii. I was having a beer on the street when I got told off. But I respected that. And her first few days in Samoa have not been without its challenges too, when she was greeted by a swarm of mosquitoes. Laughing off the experience, she said staff at the hotel told her: Mosquitoes like foreigners blood! Other than that people are helpful and easy to engage with. While her Samoan work colleague Mama Annie was not able to join her on this trip, Fatima said she will return with her boyfriend, hopefully next year after her engagement. The temperature would have dipped below 15 degrees when 18-year-old Melbourne resident Ellie Kleins flew out of Australia on Wednesday. And the change in scenery, the jetlag and not to mention the tropical weather, did not stop Ellie from checking out the Cultural Center in Apiaa must-see for first-time visitors to Samoawhen she got into the country. Speaking to Dear Tourist, Ellie said she has found the people accommodating since she arrived and has already gone swimming and snorkeling at Palolo Deep. I was snorkeling last night and everyone people there were so helpful, I had learnt a lot. When I walk down the street people say hi and thats very different from Melbourne, whereas everyone is in their own bubble. I really liked the services, just so welcoming, she said. But Ellie is not your normal touristshe travelled to Samoa to take on a volunteering role for a monthas a teachers aide at the Saint Peter Chanel Primary School. She said she is looking forward to starting at the school today, and to get to know more of Samoa. But why Samoa of all islands in the Pacific? She said she has been to Fiji and choose Samoa, as she is of the view that they are similar and can be conveniently accessed. I am really glad I had chosen Samoa because it has been a positive experience for me. Also it is a lot closer to Australia. To be able to form relationships with the school and families makes it easier to come back here, she added. Currently she is staying with a host family in Toomatagi. Her biggest concern, prior to her arrival, was accepting Samoan culture and adjusting to the humidity. But she is willing to learn, and the experience thus far has been great. I dont want to be disrespectful in any way so the culture was a major concern for me, but am willing to learn. Also it is definitely hotter and more humid here than anywhere in Australia, but it has been a really good experience so far, she added. With Christmas coming Ellie hopes to extend her stay in Samoaif not, she promised to fly back for holidays. Today marks exactly 20 years since Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi was sworn in as Samoas sixth Prime Minister when his predecessor Tofilau Eti Alesana stood down due to ill health. Our reporter Soli Wilson talked to members of the public yesterday to get their views on the performance of the P.M. to date. Joyce Ainea, 21, Vaitele Fou I personally think that the Prime Minister has been doing a good job since being in office, for 20 years now. He is the reason why weve developed so much as a country over the years. If it wasnt for him, we wouldnt have a new hospital, new airport plus all the projects in progress right now. These are all great signs that he is doing a lot for Samoa as our leader. Taupau Rosa Latulipe, 55, Lalovaea From the moment Tuilaepa was appointed as Prime Minister, our country went through many big changes good changes. So much has improved, in terms of infrastructure, businesses, education and the peoples standard of living. He gets blamed for so many bad things by so many people across the globe, but not from me. I would like to thank our Prime Minister for all his good works he has done for Samoa and its people. Don Mitchell, 42, Vaiala From my point of view, I think the Prime Minister and his political people look down on those with lower status than them. Otherwise, hes probably just doing his job. In terms of the corruption issue; there is corruption everywhere in the world, so there is no surprise theres a lot of it here too. This is a result of all the changes and the influences coming into our country. Yes change is inevitable but thats what mostly attracts the tourists the original Samoa. Faleusuia Laufiso, 22, Tuanaimato I have not been in our country for long so I do not fully know anything about Tuilaepa. I have heard people who judge, criticize, say negative things and are against the things he does but Ive also heard a lot of people say that he is a great leader doing a great job for our country. Personally, I believe he is a very good leader, because he cares for our people. Temukisa Satoa, 20, Siusega This man has been serving our country for 20 years now, and although so many people hate and criticize him for what he does and how he does his work, I personally think that hes done a lot of good for Samoa. Because in truth, if he was such a bad leader, there wouldnt be any significant improvements nor would there be peace and security in our country. Yes, we have problems but we are happy. Our Prime Minister Tuilaepa still has my full support. TOKYO (AP) Nissan Motor Co. fired Carlos Ghosn as chairman Thursday, curtailing the powerful executive's nearly two-decade reign at the Japanese automaker after his arrest for alleged financial improprieties. In an hourslong meeting, the company's board of directors voted unanimously to dismiss Ghosn as chairman and as a representative director, Nissan said in a statement. It said its own internal investigation, prompted by a whistleblower, found serious misconduct including under-reporting of his income and misuse of company assets. It was a stunning downfall for one of the biggest figures in the auto industry. Ghosn had helped drive turnarounds at both France's Renault SA and at Nissan and then managed an alliance between them that sold 10.6 million cars last year, besting its rivals. Renault is still reeling from Ghosn's Monday arrest, and its share price has yet to recover. Its acting chief, Deputy CEO Thierry Bollore, spoke publicly Thursday night for the first time since Ghosn was sidelined, and sought to soothe markets, car buyers and his employees by promising continuity. In a video released by Renault, Bollore said the carmaker still plans to release several new models next year. Acknowledging the "particular situation" the company is in, he pledged his "full commitment" to Renault's 180,000 workers and its partners and customers. Renault's board decided not to fire Ghosn, instead installing temporary leadership. The French government, which owns 15 percent of Renault, is also worried. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Thursday that France has yet to receive information from Japan about what Ghosn is accused of and insisted on "respect for the presumption of innocence." Speaking to The Associated Press, Le Maire said "this turbulence shouldn't weaken" the Renault-Nissan alliance or its hundreds of thousands of jobs. Nissan said in a statement filed to the Tokyo Stock Exchange that its investigation uncovered misuse of company investment funds and expense money for personal gain. The Wall Street Journal, citing an anonymous source close to Nissan's investigation, reported that Ghosn used company funds to buy personal residences and enrich his sister. Another Nissan executive, Greg Kelly, was arrested in Japan on suspicion of collaborating in the wrongdoing and also will be dismissed as a representative director, Nissan said. Their replacements will be decided later, it said. Ghosn, 64, is suspected of under-reporting $44.6 million in income from 2011 to 2015, according to Tokyo prosecutors. Nissan's board consists of nine members, including Ghosn and Greg Kelly. The seven other board members voted at the meeting, including two members from Nissan and two from Renault. Ghosn and Kelly will remain on Nissan's board for now as that decision will be up to shareholders. No date has been set yet for a shareholders meeting. Ghosn is also chairman at Mitsubishi Motors Corp., a smaller Japanese automaker that's partnering with the Renault-Nissan alliance and plans to hold a board meeting next week. He has been held since his arrest Monday at a Tokyo detention center, under the same Spartan conditions as other detainees, Tokyo deputy prosecutor Shin Kukimoto told reporters Thursday. He gave few details about the case. Under Japanese law, suspects can be held for 20 days per possible charge without an official indictment. Additional charges can be tagged on, resulting in longer detentions. Neither has been charged so far. The maximum penalty upon conviction for violating finance and exchange laws is 10 years in prison, a 10 million yen ($89,000) fine, or both. A French citizen born in Brazil, Ghosn became something of a corporate superstar in Japan as he led Nissan's revival from near bankruptcy after Renault sent him to help in 1999. Ghosn served as Nissan's chief executive from 2001 until last year. He became chief executive of Renault in 2005, leading the two automakers simultaneously. In 2016, he also became chairman of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. after Nissan took it into the alliance. Kelly, 62, joined Nissan, maker of the Leaf electric car and Infiniti luxury models, in the U.S. in 1988. He became a board member in 2012. His background is in human resources and alliance management. Analysts say the future of Nissan's alliance with Renault may be at stake, though Nissan's statement Thursday said the company's leadership was determined to minimize the impact from Ghosn's case on the partnership. Renault owns 43 percent of Nissan, and Nissan owns 15 percent of Renault. The economy ministers of Japan and France met in Paris on Thursday to discuss the issue and released a statement saying both sides are committed to supporting the alliance. Nissan said its board will study setting up a third-party committee to beef up governance in management and compensation at Nissan. Janet Lewis, managing director and head of industrial research, Asia, at Macquarie Capital Securities in Tokyo, said in an interview that an adjustment was needed to give Nissan more say in the alliance with Renault. The partnership remains crucial for both companies, she said, since apart from financial ties the companies share technology and parts. The automakers need to be more like roommates than a married couple, she said. "So they have to find a way to share their house and share all of their expertise because it's very necessary in terms of new automotive technology, new platform development," Lewis said. "They need to figure out how they can continue this and still live happily together in the same house." Papalii Momoe Malietoa von Reiche is the overall winner of the 2018 Samoa Observer Tusitala Short Story Competition. The Artist, Poet, and now Author, won two main prizes last night, the Samoa Category and the Overall Category, claiming US$2,000 in prize money. The announcement was made during the prize giving hosted by the Samoa Observer News Group at the Sheraton Samoa Aggie Greys Hotel. The occasion marked the launch of two publications from the competition. The first was the translation of the 2016 Samoa Observer Tusitala Short story competition book, Only the Word Survives in Chinese mandarin by Chinas Ambassador to Samoa Wang Xuefeng and his wife, Madam Tong Xin. The book of stories from the 2017 Competition called the Pacific is Rising was also launched. Papaliis story is titled Avea-Taken and talks of traditional Samoan beliefs about the spirit world and the dream like child experience, involved in being taken by evil spirits, which form the intriguing thread of the fascinating story. I thought it was not worth a story because it was too short, she said. But I feel that it is something that we really have to acknowledge living in these times, that we do have our ancestors and our belief in own selves and our spirits and in our family. I feel that we need to remember that whoever went before us have left a lot of legacies that we live by. She thanked the organisers and encouraged writers out there to come forward and write for the sake of the children. I started off as a poet and I didnt know I can write a story. Im a poet, and Im very proud to be acknowledged at least as a writer. Ambassador Wang Xuefeng, who delivered the keynote address, presented the award. He acknowledged the Samoa Observers Editor-in Chief, Gatoaitele Savea Sano Malifa, who started the Pacific wide competition in 2015. Mr. Wang also thanked organisers of the competition and the participating authors for channeling people to their roots through the publications. Other speakers on the night included the Chief Executive Officer of Digicel, Farid Mohammad, who launched the Pacific is Rising and Chief competition Judge, Professor Silafau Sina Vaai. See tomorrows edition for more reports and photos. THE WINNERS: Regional winners, who also received US$1,000 each, are: Australia New Zealand category Home by Caroline Hunt Rest of the Pacific category Her Glittering Act by Lusiana Mulo Samoa Category Avea Taken by Papalii Momoe Malietoa von Reiche Overall winner US$1,000 Avea Taken by Papalii Momoe Malietoa von Reiche Eight church Ministers of the Congregational Christian Church of Samoa (C.C.C.S.) have been charged for not filing their tax returns. Confirmed by the Minister of Revenue, Tialavea Tionisio Hunt, more Church Ministers could be charged in the coming weeks. As of Wednesday this week, we have charged eight Church Ministers from the C.C.C.S, Tialavea said. We intend to charge another eight next week. Tialavea said the Government is not taking a backward step in implementing the law requiring Church Ministers to pay taxes on their alofa (love offerings they receive). Due to the Courts busy schedule we cannot charge a whole lot so we have to limit it down to eight Church Ministers per week. Asked what the charges are, he said: They are charged with not filing their tax returns. The pressing of charges is the latest chapter in the battle between Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaois Government and the Congregational Christian Church in Samoa over taxes. The law was passed in January 2018 and all the church denominations have complied except the C.C.C.S, Tialavea said. The law applies to everyone. The law does not wait until it is accepted by a certain group. We have given church ministers eleven months and those who continue to defy the law will face the consequences." It saddens me it has come to this, but the law is there and we everyone follows the law. The Minister added that the Government has been sounding the warning for the Churches since January. It appears that for the C.C.C.S., the warning has fallen on deaf ears. The Minister also conceded that filing charges against Church Ministers is the hardest thing the Ministry has had to do. This is not an easy task for me, but as Minister, who has sworn an oath to serve the Government and my people, I cannot deviate from my responsibility, said the Minister. Last month, the Government moved to seize funds from Church Ministers personal accounts. The salary assessment conducted by the Revenue Officers of church ministers alofa resulted in the $5,000 taxes due for the last six monthsJanuary to March." The seizure of funds is for each and every church minister, who has not filed their monthly taxes, yet some church ministers I understand are making less than the $15,000 threshold." Unless you file your taxes, we cannot determine which one makes less than the threshold. However, once the Church Ministers has filed their taxes and its less, we will refund them. It was not possible to get a comment from the C.C.C.S. yesterday. Hard work pays off. These were the words of Letisia Malu as her son, Aquinas Hori Malu, was named the dux at Marist Primary School for 2018. The prize giving ceremony was held at the school compound in Mulivai yesterday, and was well attended by families and supporters of the school. Aquinas has been one of the top three students over the years at the school. He either took second, first and sometimes third place but we pushed him, we know he is able to do better and this years result is not without difficulties, said Mrs. Malu. Aquinas has always been a bright student and as a kid he should be allowed some time to play after all hes a child. But because of the hardship of life and the fact that if he does not succeed in education he will not succeed in life; I make sure that he spends time delving into books rather than playing. Mrs. Malu said it is fortunate that because of Aquinas academic results, his school fees were paid by sponsors. And this year we want to thank the Bank of the South Pacific for offering this incentive to assist students. However, before the sponsorships, paying school fees was our top priority. In this life, as Samoans we have family and church obligations, but my husband and I made sure that school fees were paid for all my children, said the mother. I am proud of his achievement and like any parent, this is what we want for our children, but this is not the end, rather the beginning of a new chapter, said Mrs. Malu. Whats next for Aquinas? He will attend St. Josephs College. He wants to become a Civil Engineer. On the 20th year of Tuilaepa Dr. Sailele Malielegaoi as Samoas Prime Minister, a 25-year-old Fine Arts teacher, Opapo Arona from Faleula with assistance from some of his students, have created an artwork of him using newspapers. The work is among the pieces displayed during the E.F.K.S. School of Fine Arts and Museum exhibition at the Malua Museum. From all the colorful paintings and exquisite artworks, the artwork of Tuilaepa has to be one of the best ones, according to the Principal, Liufau Pelenato Ioane. We had a lot of people during the exhibit and they gave us positive comments, Liufau said. Opapo was a former student of Leulumoega College and has worked as an art teacher at Malua for three years. He was assisted by three of his students, Matagiese Peteru, Taeao Mafua and Avealalo Siitaga, in creating the artwork. This artwork was dedicated to the Samoa Observer, Liufau said. It was a group work effort presenting how the media told the Prime Ministers story both the good and bad, and they named this piece Talking Walls. The project also instilled in the participants the importance of using recyclable materials. Two bundles of Samoa Observer newspaper were used in making the wall art. Liufau said it was the first for their artwork to be created using newspapers, and he has seen how the project has broadened a lot of students vision in making art. The reason they chose the Prime Minister to be the focus of their artwork, Opapo said, was: Because he was the most featured person in the media. For whatever reason, the Prime Minister was always on TV and the newspaper. Twenty-one-year-old Matagiese from Fasitoo Uta said: I really enjoyed working on the artwork of the Prime Minister because the technique was new to me. I have never done art aside from painting and carving, but working on this project has really helped me think more creatively. Avealalo said the project was challenging in terms of formatting the newspapers colour scheme to the wanted outcome. He said it took time but he was amazed with the outcome. The colleges youngest student, Taeao Mafua, who transferred from Tafuna High School, said: I moved here to pursue my passion as an artist because American Samoa does not have high school that offers art classes. I have learnt so much since I have arrived and everyone here work well together. There are so many talented artists in this school. The school will host their graduation at the Tanoa Tusitala Hotel on Wednesday, December 5, 2018 at 5pm. CONGRATULATIONS: The Ministry of the Prime Minister and Cabinet celebrated Tuilaepa Dr. Sailele Malielegaois 20th anniversary as the Prime Minister yesterday. The Ministrys Chief Executive Officer, Agafili Shem Leo, congratulated the Prime Minister, thanking him for his service and commitment to Samoa. He also wished him Gods blessing for the future. The Prime Minister was then presented with a plaque from the Ministry before a cake was lit and candles blown out by the Prime Minister himself. Photos: Savali Newspaper. People take part in a ceremony to mark the centennial anniversary of the end of World War I in the Forest of Compiegne in France on November 10, 2018. (Photo by Zheng Huansong) A century after World War I (WWI) ended, the development of human society today has once again reached a critical crossroad. At this crucial moment, lessons learned from WWI should not be forgotten so easily. On November 11, 2018, the French government held a ceremony in front of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. Leaders of many countries were invited to attend it. The reason why France came forward to organize this event is that WWI ended in France. Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Commander-in-Chief of Allied Powers (Britain, France, and Russia) during the First World War, and Matthias Erzberger, an authorized representative of the German government, signed an armistice agreement in one of the rail carriages of Foch's private train in Rethondes in the Forest of Compiegne, northeastern France, at 5 a.m. on November 11, 1918. WWI ended in the failure of the Germany-led Central Powers. Unlike the anti-fascist nature of the Second World War (WWII), participants in WWI mainly fought over colonies and spheres of influence, without much moral merit. During the conflict, the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy fought against the Allied Powers consisting of Britain, France, and Russia. It lasted for 4 years and 3 months, and swept three continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, involving 34 countries and regions as well as about 65 million people. For the first time in history, humans used weapons of mass destruction. They used machine guns, artilleries, tanks, aircraft, submarines, as well as chemical and biological weapons, which ultimately killed 10 million people, injured 20 million others, and affected more than 1.5 billion people approximately accounting for 75.5% of the worlds total population at that time, with total economic losses reaching about $170 billion. In the end, the countries that had sharpened their swords ahead of the war did not benefit much from this enormously consumptive and ferocious conflict. Germany, Austria-Hungary, Tsarist Russia, and the Ottoman Turks empires all collapsed. Although Britain and France eventually won, they were seriously crippled. Its no doubt that this was a war with extremely low cost effectiveness and not worthy of the efforts. It was a tragedy, pure and simple. The end of WWI signaled the start of WWII However, no one had foreseen this ending before WWI. In 1914, the war was considered not only inevitable, but also positive and beneficial. More importantly, all countries believed that the war would end soon and that they would win as a result. The declaration of Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, Chief of the German General Staff, was very representative of the spirit at the time, saying: We are ready. We are expecting the war, the sooner the better. This can be seen from these clues that the war was named the Great War with positive meaning at that time, instead of a more neutral World War, as it was later renamed. In retrospect, people are always expecting to sum up lessons to warn future generations to avoid tragedies. French President Emmanuel Macron called on in his speech at the commemorative ceremony on November 11 that all countries should remember the painful lessons of the war and always put peace at the forefront to avoid the recurrence of historical tragedies. However, just as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a German philosopher, said: the only lesson that human beings have ever learned from history is that they never learn from history. The cruelty of WWI could not stop people from launching another war again. The end of WWI soon marked the beginning of WWII. In the Paris Peace Conference, a meeting to set post-WWI order, French Prime Minister Georges Benjamin Clemenceau thought only to take revenge on Germany for Frances defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. Therefore, as to when and where to hold the meeting and how to deal with defeated Germany, the major consideration was to vent anger and humiliate Germany. In 1870, France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War. Tens of thousands of people, including the French Emperor, marshals, and generals, became captives of Prussia. The Second French Empire collapsed, while Prussia achieved reunification of Germany through this war. On January 18, 1871, William I (full name William Frederick Louis of Hohenzollern), the King of Prussia, was proclaimed Emperor of the Second Deutsches Reich in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, France. Thus, Clemenceau insisted on holding the opening ceremony in the Palace of Versailles on January 18, 1919, where he slammed Germany in his opening speech as being born in injustice and dead of shame, strongly advocated weakening and shattering German industry, and vowed to rout Germany back to 1870. On the contrary, Britain and the United States opposed the French plan for maintaining the balance of power in the European continent. In the end, after five months of bargaining, the well-known Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, with provisions proving humiliating for Germany. Germany lost 13.5% of its territory and 10% of its population in the European continent; its overseas colonies were carved up; its military strength was cut back to a minimum level. Besides, war reparations of 132 billion gold Mark were imposed on Germany. Meanwhile, Germanys sound industrial system before the war was basically preserved under the insistence of Britain and the United States. In addition, due to the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Czarist Russian Empire, as well as the emphasis on the right to national self-determination in the peace conference, a large number of new and small countries emerged in Central and Eastern Europe overnight, objectively forming a power vacuum that was conducive to Germany reestablishing its influence. WWII finally enlightened mankind Therefore, although the Paris Peace Conference deeply humiliated Germany in spirit, it objectively reserved and provided favorable conditions for the future rise of Germany. Germany lost face, but saved its critical resurrection power. Two people had foreseen these dangerous consequences. One was Marshal Ferdinand Foch, a member of the French delegation, who believed that the peace treaty did not completely destroy Germanys capability to launch wars, but only humiliated Germany, which would push shamed Germans to find opportunities for revenge in the future on the basis of their strong industrial system. The other was the economist John Maynard Keynes, who attended the Paris Peace Conference as the chief representative of the UK Treasury and advisor to the UK Prime Minister David Lloyd George. He opposed the amount of reparations that were set in the meeting because Germany could not afford it economically. However, no one listened to his opinion. Keynes chose to resign and wrote the book The Economic Consequences of the Peace after his return to the United Kingdom, which clearly stated that the huge amount of reparations imposed on Germany could not be achieved, and in turn would trigger strong thirst for revenge among the German people. Unfortunately, history proved they were right. On June 28, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, and France fulfilled its purpose of revenge. But only 20 years later, Germany attacked Poland in a Blitzkrieg and WWII broke out on September 1, 1939. Its obvious that the end of WWI brought no peace, but only a truce of just 20 years between the two world wars. France fell in June 1940. The chance of revenge for the Germans came! Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germanys Nazi Party, ordered that Marshal Ferdinand Fochs railway carriage parked in the museum be pulled out and be parked in the Forest of Compiegne. The French-German Armistice Agreement was once again signed in the same carriage, but this time the winner and the loser changed places, marking a replay of history. After that, the German military transported the Foch carriage to Germany for a public exhibition in the downtown area of Berlin. During the late part of WWII, the carriage was blown up by the Allies in their air raids. Some also say that Hitler was worried that Germany would once again be forced to surrender in this very same carriage under the situation of Germany dooming to fail, and so ordered the bombing of the carriage to avoid such humiliation. Mankind was forced to go through the more costly WWII to review what they did not learn in WWI. This time, mankind finally got enlightened: war is fierce and should never be launched so easily. Hence, although there was a cold war after WWII, there have never been hot wars in which many powers attack each other brutally. When voice of nationalism intensifies calling for fight and attack, there must be corresponding counterbalances and introspection. As a result, anti-war has become the mainstream value of Western society. The victorious countries must restrain their intent of revenge, and achieve peace through international mechanisms and cooperation rather than humiliation. The United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) thus emerged. It is worth mentioning that the French event on November 11 was not to celebrate the victory of WWI, but to commemorate the end of it, behind which are the unremitting efforts of reconciliation and jointly building the EU between France and Germany. One hundred years later, the rise of populism and grass-root classs deep sense of desperation brought about by the continued widening gap between the rich and the poor indicate that the development of human society has once again reached a critical crossroad. At this crucial moment, the lessons of WWI should not be forgotten so easily. Disclaimer: The author is Zhao Lingmin. The article is published on infzm.com. It is translated from Chinese into English and edited by China Military online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn. Chinamil.com.cn does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same. If the article carries photographs or images, we do not vouch for their authenticity. With the alarming increase in sexually transmitted infections (S.T.Is), opinions among parents are divided over whether sex education should be incorporated into the school curriculum. While some parents say that there has never been a better time to integrate sex education in Samoas school curriculum, others are not so sure. They pointed to the sensitivities of Samoan customs and culture. Taupau Rosa Latulipe from Lalovaea said sex education is a great way to prepare the younger generation for adulthood. I agree that it is a very good idea to educate our children concerning these topics so they can be aware of all the risks and consequences of all their choices concerning their sexuality and sexual relations, she said. In terms of technology advances and fast internet, parents are never sure of what the children are watching or doing, but at least with sex education in schools we know that they are aware of what should be done. Tahere Siisiialafia, who is a Lecturer at the National University of Samoa, says its important to note that biology class is not considered as sex education. Its important to note that biology is different from comprehensive sex education, its important for the students to understand their bodies, their cycles and their reproductive health to make informed choices, she said. There are many studies that show low rates of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in countries that have sex education in their schools, compared to countries that dont, like us. But another parent, Don Mitchell, from Vaiala doubts the qualification of teachers to teach the topic. I dont think the teachers have enough knowledge of sexual education to thoroughly deliver the subject and they need to look into that firsthand, he said. Another parent expressed concerns about the space that the subject maybe communicated in. In overseas countries, they dont mind teaching all the students together, but for us, we may need to separate the students, Lagolago Teo said. There may be a boy and a girl in class who are siblings or related, so they should have two different sessions for the boys and girls to avoid any uncomfortable situations. Comprehensive sex education consist of important topics including changes of the body (puberty), menstruation, HIV & AIDS, STIs, family planning (contraception), sexual reproductive rights and teenage pregnancy. Attempts to get a response from the Ministry of Education on whether there are plans to integrate the subject into the curriculum were unsuccessful. Think a minuteThe former U.S. president, Harry Truman, had a reputation for being an honest and loyal friend no matter what the cost. One of Trumans friends, Tom Pendergast, helped Truman win his first election to public office as a county judge. However, Truman did not always agree with his friends crooked way of doing business. One time a group of dishonest businessmen wanted Pendergast to influence his friend Judge Truman, but Pendergast replied: Truman always stays true to his honest character and principles. There is nothing I can do to tempt or make Truman cheat or do anything dishonest. Eventually Pendergast was put in jail for the crime of tax evasion. Years later when Truman was vice-president of the U.S., Pendergast died. Yet Truman still flew across America for the funeral. He said: Even though we disagreed, we were still friends. True friendship is not based on what a friend does for you, but on what he means to you, even if you disagree with him and disapprove of his ways. True friends say whats trueeven if it hurts, because they care about what is right and best for your life. A true friend gets in your way, if youre going down the wrong road. A proverb says: Faithful are the wounds from a friend.Just like a doctor sometimes must cut you to heal and save your life. True friends stab you in the frontbecause they want to save you from worse problems and pain. Love does not lie, because Truths that are kept silent become poison. We all have things in our character we need to change, so sooner or later confrontation is necessary. A close, strong relationship only grows out of deep trust built on honest communication with each other. My friend needs to know I will always accept him, even if I do not approve of what he is doing. But friendship is a two-way street and the truth cuts both ways. So we need to be willing to listen when a friend cares enough to confront us about something wrong in our life. One of the most important reasons God gave us friends is to help us grow and become more like Him in our character. Jesus is the best friend you will ever have. Wont you ask Him to forgive you for your wrong ways of living, and to take full charge of your character and way of life? That is when He can start rebuilding you into the man or woman He made you to be. Just think a minute KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) Armed separatists stormed the Chinese Consulate in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi on Friday, triggering an intense hour-long shootout during which two Pakistani civilians, two police officers and all three assailants were killed, including one who was wearing a suicide vest, Pakistani officials said. The brazen assault, claimed by a militant group from the southwestern province of Baluchistan, reflected the separatists' attempt to strike at the heart of Pakistan's close ties with major ally China, which has invested heavily into road and transportation projects in the country, including in Baluchistan. The Baluch Liberation Army said it was fighting "Chinese occupation" and released photos of the three attackers. In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China would not waver in its latest big project in Pakistan the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and expressed confidence that Pakistan could ensure safety. Still, China asked Pakistan to beef up security at the mission. Authorities said the dead civilians were a father and a son who were picking up their visas for China. The consulate's diplomats and staff were unhurt and were evacuated to a safe place, senior police official Ameer Ahmad Sheikh said. A spokeswoman at the Jinnah Hospital said a consulate guard was wounded and was being treated there. The attack began shortly after 9 a.m. when the consulate was open for business. The militants fired at consulate guards and hurled grenades, breaching the main gate and entering the building, said Mohammad Ashfaq, a local police chief. Pakistani security forces quickly surrounded the area. Local TV stations broadcast images showing smoke rising from the building, which also serves as the residence of Chinese diplomats and other staff. Multiple blasts were heard soon afterward but Sheikh could not say what they were. The shootout lasted for about an hour. "Because of a quick response of the guards and police, the terrorists could not" reach the diplomats, Sheikh said after the fighting ended. "We have completed the operation." He added that authorities would try to identify the assailants through fingerprints. Geng, the Chinese spokesman, said the attackers did not get into the consulate itself, and that the exchange of fire took place outside the building. The discrepancy with the Pakistani officials' reports could not be immediately reconciled. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi spoke to his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi by phone and assured him that a "thorough investigation will be carried out to apprehend the perpetrators their financiers, planners and facilitators" linked to the attack on consulate, according to a foreign ministry statement. It quoted Yi as saying that the attack was an attempt to impact Pakistan China relations and to harm the two countries' economic pact. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the attack and praised the Karachi police and the paramilitary rangers for their courage. He ordered an investigation and vowed that such incidents would never be able to undermine relations with China, which are "mightier than the Himalayas and deeper than the Arabian Sea." So far this year, the Baluch Liberation Army has claimed responsibility for 12 attacks against security personnel guarding projects linked to the Chinese Pakistan Economic Corridor and its infrastructure. In a letter dated Aug. 15, the group released a letter warning China against the "exploitation of Baluchistan's mineral wealth and occupation of Baluch territory." The letter was addressed to China's ambassador to Pakistan. Amir Rana, executive director of the independent Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, said he didn't think Friday's attack would have much of an impact on Chinese projects in Pakistan, as both countries have calculated the security risks. "These threats were already on Pakistan and China's threat radar," Rana said. Still, the attack will compel China to step-up security in Pakistan and increase cooperation with local authorities, said Zhao Gancheng of the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Studies. "As more and more Chinese people go abroad, and more and more Chinese investment goes overseas, the security situation of the destination countries has become a very important element for consideration," Zhao told The Associated Press. The Baluchistan separatists have for years fought a low-level insurgency in Pakistan, demanding a greater share of the province's wealth and natural resources. Karachi, the capital of Sindh province, borders Baluchistan and is home to several militant groups, including the Baluch separatists. In a rare statement about attacks in Pakistan, neighboring India condemned the assault on the Chinese Consulate, saying that "there can be no justification whatsoever for any act of terrorism." New Delhi also said "perpetrators of this heinous attack should be brought to justice expeditiously." Pakistan has long accused India of supporting Baluch separatists. The two countries have a history of bitter relations and have fought two of their three wars over the disputed region of Kashmir since gaining independence from Britain in 1947. Elsewhere in Pakistan on Friday, a powerful bomb at an open-air food market in a province that borders Afghanistan killed 35 people and wounded dozens, said police official Tahir Ali. Most of the victims in the attack in the town of Klaya in the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province were minority Shiite Muslims. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing. Orakzai has been the scene of several militant attacks in recent years, mostly by Pakistani Sunni militants, who revile Shiites as apostates. At least 31 people were killed and 40 others wounded when a bomb ripped through an open-air market in northwest Pakistan on Friday. The attack came just hours after two police officers and two civilians were killed when gunmen attempted to storm the Chinese Consulate in the coastal city of Karachi. The attacks at opposite ends of Pakistan more than 600 miles apart did not appear to be related but illustrated the wide range of militant violence that threatens Pakistans economic ambitions and religious minorities. The attack at the market in Orakzai, a rugged tribal district southwest of the provincial capital of Peshawar, targeted a shopping area frequented by minority Shiite Muslims. Residents said large numbers of shoppers had filled the market just before Friday afternoon prayers when a loud explosion was heard in the center of the bazaar. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but Pakistani Taliban militants have often struck at Shiites, whom they view as apostates. One local official interviewed by phone said more than 17 pounds of explosives had been packed inside a motorcycle that blew up near a Shiite seminary in the bazaar. Advertisement Fazal Rehman, medical officer at the main hospital in Kohat, a town east of the tribal district, said nearly 30 wounded people had been brought to his facility, a three-hour car ride away. Several who were severely wounded died on the way or at the Kohat hospital, while some serious cases were transferred to Peshawar, Rehman and others said. An injured man receives medical treatment at a hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, after a bombing in the Orakzai tribal region. (Arshad Arbab / EPA/Shutterstock) Orakzai has remained a hotbed of anti-government militancy despite a years-long Pakistani military campaign in the tribal belt, which borders Afghanistan. Thousands of families have fled the military operations, and some parts of Orakzai are still not considered safe for residents to return. The militants who attacked in Karachi were affiliated not with the Pakistani Taliban but with a separatist insurgent group based in the neighboring province of Baluchistan, where Chinese-financed infrastructure projects have upset impoverished local residents. The three gunmen all of whom were also killed were members of the Baluchistan Liberation Army, an ethnic insurgent group that says it opposes Chinese involvement in the province, according to a statement by the group. China is building a port at Gwadar as part of its massive Belt and Road Initiative, an infrastructure program spanning dozens of countries. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan called the attack part of a conspiracy to undermine Pakistani-Chinese economic and strategic cooperation. I am absolutely clear both these attacks are part of a planned campaign to create unrest in the country by those who do not want Pakistan to prosper, Khan wrote on Twitter. Let there be no doubt in anyones mind that we will crush the terrorists, whatever it takes. I am absolutely clear both these attacks are part of a planned campaign to create unrest in the country by those who do not want Pakistan to prosper. Let there be no doubt in anyone's mind that we will crush the terrorists, whatever it takes. https://t.co/AhPpjsUGEq Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) November 23, 2018 The consulate is situated in a neighborhood housing diplomatic missions and upmarket restaurants, where security officers routinely operate checkpoints. A journalist at the scene said the assailants attacked the consulate from two sides, with two firing on security officers guarding an entrance while another detonated a suicide vest outside another gate, killing the two police officers. Private security guards fired on the attackers, killing both before they could enter the building, said Karachi police chief Amir Ahmed Shaikh. The security forces resisted the attackers, Shaikh said. They entered the premises of the consulate but failed to enter the rooms. Pakistans foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, said all 21 Chinese and local officials working at the consulate were unharmed and had been shifted to a secure location. The attack renewed concerns about Pakistans ability to provide security for Chinese personnel and others working on building ports, roads, energy installations and transportation systems, some of which traverse remote parts of the country where the state holds limited control. Fazal ur Rahman, executive director of the Pakistan Council on China, an Islamabad-based think tank, said the attack would make it harder for the Pakistani government to persuade private investors to pour money into special economic zones being created under the infrastructure program. Although the Baluch insurgent group has opposed the Chinese program for years, this was the first time it attempted to carry out a significant attack outside the province, Rahman said. China does understand the security landscape of Pakistan, Rahman said, but still it would have a negative impact on the image of a more safe and secure Pakistan. The Pakistani government is increasingly torn over the Chinese investment in their country, a $60-billion package of loans and grants dubbed the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the single largest component of the Belt and Road Initiative. The Chinese loans are widely believed to have contributed to a financial crisis in Pakistan, which is seeking a bailout from the International Monetary Fund to shore up its economy. Khan, who won a sweeping election victory this summer, has called for a rebalancing of Chinese investment to focus less on infrastructure and more on social programs. China has denied allegations that its loans in Pakistan and other Asian countries such as the Maldives and Sri Lanka have fueled rising debt. In a statement, the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad condemned the attack and praised Pakistani security forces for their response. We believe that the Pakistani side is able to ensure the safety of Chinese institutions and personnel in Pakistan, the statement said. Any attempt to undermine the China-Pakistan relationship is doomed to fail. Armed men attacked the well-guarded Chinese consulate in Karachi - it's a well-guarded location with streets around it barricaded - they are trying to break into the Consulate - heavy gunfire reported pic.twitter.com/MtqmDr4vfu omar r quraishi (@omar_quraishi) November 23, 2018 Special correspondents Ali and Sahi reported from Peshawar and Islamabad, Pakistan, respectively. Times staff writer Shashank Bengali contributed to this report from Singapore. shashank.bengali@latimes.com Follow @SBengali on Twitter for more news from southern Asia UPDATES: 6:30 a.m.: Updated throughout with staff reporting, and to raise the death toll in market bombing to 31. 2:05 a.m.: Updated to raise the consulate-attack death toll to seven. 12:20 a.m.: Updated to raise the market-bombing death toll from 12 to 25. 11:40 p.m.: Updated with the market bombing in Klaya. 10:35 p.m.: Updated with the three attackers dead. This article was first published at 9:55 p.m. Sweaters are swell and gadgets are grand, but how about a gift that gets your favorite elf off the shelf and into the adventure zone? Make the holidays memorable with an experience they wont forget. Make it a plus-one to reward yourself for being the best giver ever. Indoor skydiving Give the real thrill of faux flight with a gift card to iFLY, where one minute in the indoor flight tunnel feels like the daredevil achievement of a lifetime. Dont forget your commemorative video! In Mission Valley and Oceanside. Starting at $79.95 for two flights. iflyworld.com San Diego Zoo VIP experiences From special big-cat encounters to the chance to be a zoo keeper for a day, the San Diego Zoos VIP packages will make your favorite human happier than a panda at nap time. Except, you know, awake. From $29 to $800-plus per person, not including admission. zoo.sandiegozoo.org Cooking with zest Sushi? Sure! Spanikopita? Certainly! Big knives? Bring em on! Whether its dim sum or pasta, a gift certificate to a Hipcooks San Diego cooking class can turn anyone into a no-sweat chef, even when mole is on the menu. From $75. hipcooks.com Advertisement Balboa Park adventures It is the countrys largest urban park, so why settle for a drop-in visit when a Balboa Park Explorer Pass can grant your giftee admission to many of its museums and cultural centers for a whole year? Tell them to save time for special pass-holder events and discounted classes and shows. Starting at $99. explorer.balboapark.org Books and beyond Lure your favorite bookworm out of the house with an event from Adventures by the Book, an innovative San Diego company that pairs author appearances with tea parties, wine tastings and the occasional trip to Patagonia. Prices vary. adventuresbythebook.com Twitter: @karla_peterson karla.peterson@sduniontribune.com Its the most multitasking time of the year, so why not embrace the madness by giving gifts that do double duty? In addition to spreading warmth and good cheer, these goodies benefit local charities in San Diego and abroad. Give the present, keep the karma. Living livestock Goats and heifers. Sheep and chicks. Clean water and tree seedlings. A gift card from Heifer International allows your big-hearted friends to choose life-changing items that will help struggling families around the world. Its all tax-deductible, too. Starting at $10. heifer.org Tacos for good There is nothing ordinary about a Tacos Libertad taco, and not just because the fillings include avocado tempura, pork belly and duck confit. One hundred percent of the profits from this Hillcrest restaurant go to a different local charity each month. Feels good, tastes even better. Cohn Restaurant Group gift cards in any amount. cohnrestaurants.com Bountiful bags For the fierce females in your life, a tote that speaks volumes. This Woman on a Mission canvas bag from the FEED organization can carry the weight of their busy lives while also providing 10 school meals to children in need. $28. feedprojects.com Advertisement Love for the holidays Is there a better gift than unconditional love? Not when it comes in the form of a furry, feathered or scaly friend. Pets of all kinds are available at the San Diego Humane Society, where an adoption gift card buys you the chance to make the world a little brighter, one hug at a time. You can also sponsor a pet adoption, which lets a future pet parent adopt without paying the adoption fee. Adoption sponsorships and gift cards are available at the San Diego Humane Societys San Diego, Oceanside and Escondido locations. Gift cards start at $5. Adoption fees vary. sdhumane.org Park sparks The candles featured in the new Parks collection from the Paddywax company smell like a little piece of al fresco heaven, feature cherry wood dust covers and crackle like a real campfire. And as a heartwarming bonus, the company is supporting the National Park Foundation with a minimum donation of $25,000. $28. paddwax.com Beads of hope The gemstone bead bracelets from Solana Beach-based designer Brett Lauren have a Zen-like simplicity and a lovely backstory. They are assembled by women from local residential homeless shelters, so you will be giving the gift of beauty and self-sufficiency in one small package. $36 and up. brettlauren.com Twitter: @karla_peterson karla.peterson@sduniontribune.com For many of us, indulging in food, drink and dessert is a pleasurable prerogative of the holidays. But what about the others, for whom quality consumption is a year- round passion and pursuit? For those foodie and wine and spirits lovers on your holiday list, here are some creme de la creme gift ideas from both San Diego-based and national companies. With any luck, youll be invited to share in the deliciousness. Vosges Haut-Chocolats elegant 17-piece Enchanted Chocolate collection. (Erika Dufour photo) Chocolates galore As exquisitely stylish as they are delicious, the holiday collection from Vosges Haut-Chocolat includes the 17-piece Enchanted Chocolate Collection ($58), a 7-piece Holiday Cracker ($10) and the Aztec and La Parisienne drinking chocolates ($17 each). vosgeschocolate.com Advertisement Pop open some holiday cheer with You & Yours Distilling Co.'s canned gin and tonic. (Courtesy photo) Holiday spirits Get into the holiday spirits with gifts from two San Diego distilleries. Cute cans of gin and tonic from You & Yours Distilling Co. are made with Y&Ys gorgeously floral Sunday Gin (4-pack for $14.99), while the spiced rum ($29.99) and bourbon ($59.99) from Malahat Spirits Co. are packed with flavor and nuance. youandyours.com (East Village), malahatspirits.com (Miramar) Spirit-forward cocktails call for flavor-forward spirits like the spiced rum and bourbon from San Diegos Malahat Spirits Co. Serve neat, on ice or as a hand-crafted mixed drink. (Courtesy photo) Say Cheese! Fromage fans will love Venissimos monthly Cheese Lover Club, which comes with three selections plus an edible accouterment or accessory. $40 for local pick-up; $65 shipped. venissimo.com (Del Mar, Liberty Public Market, Mission Hills and North Park) Local company Baker & Olive makes high-quality balsamic vinegars and olive oils. Beside salads, they can be used for marinades, glazes, dessert toppers and overall flavor enhancers. (Courtesy photo) Going gourmet Mix it up this holiday season with gourmet olive oil and balsamic vinegar from Baker & Olive, like the blood orange EVOO and espresso balsamic tossed into a spinach salad with feta, dried cherries and pistachios. $17.99 each. bakerandolive.com (Encinitas, Carmel Valley and Liberty Public Market) Everybody loves a little sparkle and with the Chandon California Holiday Collection you get double the bling: sparkling wine and a special edition shooting star BaubleBar necklace. (Courtesy photo) Festive toast What could be more festive than a bottle of sparkling wine and a sparkling necklace? The limited edition Chandon California Holiday Collection features Napas Chandon Brut and Chandon Rose ($26 each) and a BaubleBar shooting star necklace ($48) inspired by the bubblys bottle. chandon.com/baublebar michele.parente@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @sdeditgirl November 23, 1953 The San Diego Union The San Diego Union-Tribune will mark its 150th anniversary in 2018 by presenting a significant front page from the archives each day throughout the year. Monday, November 23, 1953 In 1953 an air show celebrating the 50th anniversary of powered flight drew as many as 300,000 spectators to Miramar Naval Air Station. At least 250 planes participated in the first show, billed as the largest military air show in the West. When the Marines took over the base in 1997, they continued the annual event. Here are the first few paragraphs of the story: NAVY AIR SHOW THRILLS 300,000 Event Is Largest Ever Presented in Western U.S. 500 Men, 250 Planes Take Part In Display Of Nations Aerial Might By W.D. Johnston A pageant of air power which ranged from the lumbering World War I Jenny trainer to the modern day supersonic jet fighter was unfolded at Miramar Naval Air Station yesterday before the largest crowd in the history of San Diego. The Navy officially estimated the crowd at 300,000 persons. Police on duty said more than 250,000 watched the show. In two hours 106,000 persons were counted entering only two of the air stations five gates. The crowd overflowed the grandstand and lined the concrete aprons and runways. Thousands of other spectators watched the aerial display from cars which were parked for several miles along Highway 395 outside the base. Despite the fact that more than 250 of Americas latest and fastest military aircraft were involved with more than 500 men, there were no mishaps. The three-hour show was carried out with precision. It was the biggest and most impressive display of air power ever seen west of the Mississippi River. Highlight of the show was the performances of the Navys Blue Angels, a precision aerobatics team which roared through intricate maneuvers at more than 600 miles per hour in Panther Jets, and the Air Forces Thunderbirds who flew Thunderjets. The displays drew roars of approval from the crowd and won kisses for each of the pilots from Dorothy Patrick, Hollywood motion picture actress who was Miss Air Power. ANNIVERSARY CLIMAX The show climaxed San Diegos observance of the 50th anniversary of powered flight. The year-long observance commemorated the first airplane flight by Wilbur and Orville Wright at Kitty Hawk, N.C., in 1903. The thousands of spectators were treated also to a view of the Navys new F4D Skyray, holder of the world speed record for level flight. The plane, which had flown at more than 750 miles per hour, flashed across the Miramar runways at supersonic speed less than 200 feet off the ground. View anniversary front pages online at sandiegouniontribune.com/150-years. For more from the Union-Tribune digital archives, go to newslibrary.com/sites/sdub. Searching is free, with registration. A fee is required to view full stories. Residents of Los Angeles and Ventura counties reeling from the 100,000-acre Woolsey fire can breathe easy for now the first post-fire rainfall came and went without significant mudslides or debris flow from fire-scarred hillsides. The Southland received a quarter of an inch to an inch of rain overnight. Authorities and emergency officials had braced for the possibility that the rainfall could trigger mudslides and flooding in burn areas, particularly in the steep canyons of Malibu. A flood advisory issued by the National Weather Service overnight remained in effect until 3 a.m. We were on alert, and we are still on alert for mudslides. At this point we havent received any news regarding mudslides, said Deputy Armando Viera of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department information bureau. Its good news for the people in Malibu. Theyve been through a lot. Advertisement Bonnie Bartling, a weather specialist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard, said no more rainfall was expected in the region over the weekend. Were pretty much done with it, she said. Its just going to dry out, warm up for the weekend. Experts have cautioned that residents will have to remain on alert for storms in the coming months that could send mud and debris coursing down the newly burned areas of the Santa Monica Mountains. The fear is that there could be a repeat of the sort of disaster that hit Montecito after last Decembers Thomas fire. In January, a devastating mudslide in the community killed at least 21 people and wrecked more than 100 homes. Fire-ravaged areas in Northern California affected by the Camp fire, which has burned through more than 150,000 acres, remain on edge. A winter storm warning and flash flood watch are in effect there through Friday, according to the National Weather Service in Sacramento. With 870 residents still unaccounted for in the fire that has already claimed at least 83 lives, authorities there were rushing to recover as many remains as possible before the storms. WAU, SOUTH SUDAN, Nov. 23 (ChinaMil) -- A main supply route project undertaken by the 9th Chinese peacekeeping engineer contingent to South Sudan started construction on November 19, 2018. According to Angelo Taban Biajo, Governor of Wau State, the start of the supply route construction marks a major step in achieving the interconnection of transportation infrastructure in South Sudan. He expressed sincere gratitude to Chinese peacekeeping forces for their decisive support for the state construction and social development of South Sudan. This supply route is known to run across South Sudans southern and northern parts. It is called the aorta for the government to develop economy and South Sudanese people to make a living, as well as the lifeline for the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) to carry out humanitarian assistance. Due to war damage, poor maintenance, and rain erosion, some roads in South Sudan were cut by ravines and gullies. Therefore, it is difficult for vehicles to travel on the current road, leading to a negative severe impact on normal supply transportation. Zha Yongli, commander of the 9th Chinese peacekeeping engineer contingent to South Sudan, said that while carrying out peacekeeping missions, Chinese peacekeepers also help improve living conditions and production methods of local people, manifesting Chinas international undertaking and style as a great power. Joel Anderson was a man on the move. In recent years, the state senator was in the hunt for a handful of other offices: county supervisor, Board of Equalization, maybe even Congress. Soon he wont occupy any. The East County Republicans political ambitions were stunted by one of the biggest surprises in this years local elections: his loss in the Board of Equalization race to Democrat Mike Schaefer, an 80-year-old former San Diego City Council member with a controversial past. Advertisement Anderson, no stranger to controversy himself, will vacate his Senate seat in a couple of weeks because of term limits. His plan, which has shifted more than once, was to get elected to the state panel and line himself up to run for an open seat on the county Board of Supervisors in 2020. Along the way, Anderson was frequently mentioned as a potential top candidate for Congress, should indicted Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, have to step down from his 50th district seat. Hunter and his wife, Margaret, have been brought up on federal charges of misusing campaign funds. Both have pleaded not guilty. Andersons loss doesnt necessarily derail his political future, but it certainly raises doubts. This clearly has dimmed his rising star, said consultant John Dadian, a Republican who lives in East County. Andersons loss may have resulted from a number of things. He was the clear favorite going in. He nearly doubled Schaefers vote total in the seven-candidate primary. Anderson had spent more than $300,000 from Jan. 1 through Oct. 20, according to the California Secretary of States Office. Schaefer estimates he spent about $25,000. Schaefer, who was as surprised as anybody that he won, attributed his good fortune largely to his designation as a Democrat, and the voter surge that elevated so many of the partys candidates to victory at all levels of government. It has to be that, he said in a recent interview. Its a blue year. Anderson was unavailable for comment, according to a spokeswoman. In addition to facing the Democratic blue wave, Anderson, 58, no doubt suffered politically when he was publicly reprimanded in late September by the state Senate. He was accused of using coarse language with a female lobbyist that she considered threatening, according to an investigation. Schaefer, a perennial candidate, is mostly known for being indicted in a bribery scandal while serving on the City Council in 1970 (he was acquitted), and for being ordered by a Los Angeles jury to pay $1.83 million in 1986 because of the deplorable conditions of apartments he owned. Meanwhile, as an attorney, he had some little-known but significant election-law victories in court. The Board of Equalization had many of its powers stripped away by the Legislature last year, but still oversees certain tax collections, including property taxes. Schaefer and Anderson were competing to serve in the boards District 4, which covers San Diego, Imperial, Orange and Riverside counties and a portion of San Bernardino County. While Anderson seemed to be on an upward trajectory to this point, it hasnt always been a smooth one. He was elected to the Assembly in 2006 on a platform that called for reducing taxes, stopping illegal immigration and fighting government waste. He barely won the GOP primary, which set him up for an easier win in the fall in the Republican district. He gained positive national media attention by writing legislation that required Californias public pension funds to divest from certain companies doing business in Iran. He has also championed legislation to improve transportation and help veterans. A conservative by reputation, Anderson has co-authored bipartisan legislation to, among other things, protect individual privacy rights even when it has put him at odds with law enforcement groups that typically support him. As he geared up to run for the state Senate in 2010, Anderson was involved in a campaign-financing strategy that allowed him to circumvent individual contribution limits, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. Some of his backers made large contributions to Republican Party committees in other counties, which in turn donated like amounts to Anderson. There were no limits on party contributions. He eventually returned more than $100,000 of the questionable campaign contributions and was fined $20,000 by the Fair Political Practices Commission. Nevertheless, he went on to win the Senate seat with relative ease. Several years later Anderson became embroiled in another controversy, one of a political, not legal, nature. He pulled papers to run against longtime incumbent county Supervisor Dianne Jacob in 2016. Republicans were split over the emerging campaign. The local GOP not only endorsed Anderson, but contributed $200,000 to his effort. Jacob had the backing of other high-profile Republicans, including fellow supervisors, Sheriff Bill Gore and then-District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis. As the political maneuvering proceeded, it seemed that Andersons intent was to raise enough money to scare Jacob out of running for re-election for what would be her final four years under term limits. Jacob stood her ground and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. Instead, it was Anderson who withdrew months before the primary. Its unclear what Andersons next move will be. As of mid-October, state records show he still had more than $290,000 in the Anderson for Supervisor 2020 committee fund. Many immigrants entering the U.S. legally and illegally claim asylum. Advocates for greater limits on immigration, particularly chain migration based on family relationships rather than employment skills, have tried to restrict asylum seekers. This month, President Trump issued a proclamation preventing immigrants from claiming asylum if they crossed the border illegally. On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco blocked that asylum ban. But the judges ruling did not address another U.S. policy thats forcing asylum seekers to wait on the Mexican side of border bridges, adding their names to growing waiting lists maintained by Mexican officials. On Thursday, a small group of Central American migrants marched peacefully to a border crossing in Tijuana to demand better conditions and push to enter the U.S. We talked to migrants waiting to cross the border legally at a shelter and border bridge in Matamoros, Mexico, and those who had crossed illegally and were released by U.S. immigration officials in neighboring Brownsville, Texas, last week with notices to appear in immigration court about why and how they were seeking asylum. Why cross legally at a border bridge or illegally via the Rio Grande? Advertisement Most asylum seekers at the Matamoros bridge said they understood that by law, it was legal to enter the U.S. via the bridge. Some were aware of Trumps edict and feared that if they crossed the Rio Grande illegally, they could hurt their chances of being granted asylum. But with the Mexican list having grown last week to 80 names, they also worried about how long they would have to wait to cross. Some had already waited more than a month. Many of the migrants had been granted temporary visas in Mexico that had expired or were due to expire by months end, and they worried they could be deported. I came here because I thought it would be faster, said Cuban asylum seeker Ronald Padron, 37, who had waited 26 days at the Matamoros bridge. Ronald Padron, third from left, of Artemisa, Cuba, is seeking political asylum. I came here because I thought it would be faster, said the 37-year-old, who had waited 26 days at the Matamoros bridge in Mexicos Tamaulipas state. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) Among migrants released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the bus station in Brownsville, most said they had crossed the Rio Grande illegally about 60 miles west near Reynosa, a Gulf cartel stronghold. They had been released after Trumps announcement because it was still up to asylum officers and immigration judges to decide the validity of their asylum claims. Many said they were unaware that there was a border bridge in Reynosa, or that it was possible to cross the bridge legally. Some who had seen the bridge said they were afraid to approach, because it was surrounded by Mexican drug cartel lookouts. They told me they would kidnap me if I went to the bridge its very difficult to decide how to cross the border, said Honduran migrant Wilmer Gamez, 37, who crossed the river near Reynosa. Other migrants said they crossed the river on foot or rafts because it was the most direct or cheapest route. They said they paid smugglers $1,000 to $2,400. Daimaris Gonzalez, 30, who is pregnant, and Jason, 22, center, both of Cienfuegos, Cuba, at the Gateway International Bridge, as they await being taken into custody by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to seek political asylum. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) Honduran migrant Jessica Morillo, 26, paid $2,400 to cross the river near Reynosa. She didnt know about Trumps action or that she could cross a nearby border bridge. She said she fled her home country because a drug trafficker had raped her, then threatened her with a gun. When she told her father she was pregnant in September, he threw her out, and she had been staying with a cousin. She hoped to join her sister in New Orleans. Do most asylum seekers have relatives in the U.S.? Almost all of the Central American asylum seekers at the bridge in Matamoros and at the bus station in Brownsville said they had relatives in the U.S. Most of the relatives, they said, were parents, siblings, uncles or cousins spread across the country, from Los Angeles to Miami, New York and Washington. Some at the bus station were seeking to join family working in rural areas of Nebraska and Mississippi. Most African migrants at the bridge said they did not have relatives in the U.S. and hoped to join friends instead. Tsenay Bogale, 48, of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, came with her aunt hoping to join friends in Washington. What did asylum seekers do for work in their home countries? Many of the Central American immigrants said they were farmers and store clerks. There was also a mechanic, nurse and teacher. All said they hoped to work in the U.S. None had advanced degrees. A few were elderly, joining younger relatives or friends. In the U.S., political asylum is provided to those fleeing persecution what are they fleeing? Some of the asylum seekers were unfamiliar with U.S. law, which holds that asylum seekers must have a credible fear of being persecuted in their home countries based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. In the past, that included victims of domestic and gang violence; this year, then-Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions issued a ruling saying such victims dont qualify. Norma Torres and her husband said they fled Nicaragua with their three children five weeks ago after they were threatened by soldiers for protesting and working with Catholic groups challenging the ruling government. No one can say anything against the government, she said. The couple knew it was illegal to cross between border bridges, had seen reports about Trumps asylum ban and chose to wait at the Matamoros shelter instead of crossing the river. Mexican officials had yet to issue them a number on the waiting list last week. No one is helping us, said Torres, 35. Rene Hormaza, 28, who ran a cafeteria in Cuba, said he fled with his wife and two children after being threatened by police in August. If you dont shut your mouth, they disappear you, he said of Cuban authorities as he waited at the border bridge. I have the hope that the U.S. will help us Cubans. Cuban asylum seeker Jessica Zamora, 18, of Havana, who is pregnant, eats a meal outside Mexicos National Institute of Migration office at the Gateway International Bridge in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) Migrants from Guatemala in Matamoros and at the bus station said they fled a combination of economic and political hardships. Some from urban areas said they were unable to find work. Farmers said their coffee crops had suffered blight. At the same time, they said they had trouble moving or finding work because of political corruption and nepotism. It would be up to a U.S. asylum officer and immigration judge to decide if they qualified for asylum. African migrants in Matamoros described being threatened and attacked for speaking out and protesting against oppressive governments. Lynda Fotso, 24, a stock clerk from Cameroon, said she was detained for protesting against the government in 2015. An only child, she doesnt have friends or family in neighboring countries. She first fled to Nigeria, but didnt apply for asylum there because she knew the government had returned other migrants from Cameroon. She speaks French and some English but no Spanish, so once she landed in South America, she headed for the U.S., which she and other migrants from Cameroon called a bastion of human rights. I just want safety, Fotso said in French as she sat waiting in the dark with other asylum seekers at the foot of the border bridge. I can better adapt in the U.S. Farmer Collins Fondong, 33, also left Cameroon after being threatened by police for criticizing the government. He has lymphatic filariasis, a tropical disease, and ran out of medication after he arrived in Mexico in September. He was No. 29 on the list of asylum seekers waiting to cross at Matamoros last week. I pray it works, he said of the list. When youre running away from death, you will do anything. He was eventually allowed to cross and volunteers said he received treatment at a local hospital. Why didnt they seek asylum in Mexico, or one of the countries they crossed en route to Mexico? Advocates for greater limits on immigration have pushed for a safe third country agreement between the U.S. and Mexico, similar to the one the U.S. has with Canada, that would force migrants who arrive in Mexico to first seek asylum there. Immigrant advocates argue Mexico is too dangerous, its asylum processing too rudimentary, to be considered a safe refuge. Asylum seekers in Matamoros, including Fotso, said they feared for their safety in Mexico and did not consider seeking asylum there. Central American and Cuban migrants said their goal was to join relatives in the U.S. African migrants said they didnt speak Spanish and had a better chance of finding work and building new lives in the U.S. rather than in Mexico. Migrants from Cameroon mostly fled through Nigeria, flying to Ecuador, then traveling by bus and on foot through the perilous jungles of Central America. They had read reports of fellow migrants being detained and deported in Nigeria, and so didnt consider seeking asylum there. Michael Randy, 30, of Cameroon, is seeking political asylum. He camps outside Mexicos National Institute of Migration office at the Gateway International Bridge in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) Michael Randy, 30, a businessman from Cameroon, said he fled to the U.S. because it was the only country in the world he trusted to respect human rights. He had read reports about fellow members of Cameroons Anglophone minority who fled to Nigeria and were returned by the government to Cameroonian authorities. Massacres are happening in my country, genocide. Just the fact that you speak English in my country is a problem, said Randy. I have to be somewhere I feel safe. molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com @mollyhf A Moroccan woman confessed she killed and cooked her boyfriend and fed his remains to workers after authorities found his tooth inside her blender. She called the act a moment of insanity after her boyfriend of seven years told her he was going to marry another woman from Morocco, BBC reported. She has reportedly been sent to a hospital for a mental health evaluation. Prosecutors said the suspect who is in her 30s mixed his remains into a traditional rice and meat dish to give to Pakistani workers near her home in in the city of Al Ain. Authorities only learned of the slaying months later, after the victims brother discovered the mans tooth in the suspects blender. He went to the home in search of his brother but made the gruesome discovery instead, The National reported. Advertisement He reported his brother missing to Al Ain Police, and DNA tests later confirmed the tooth belonged to his brother. The woman was arrested and told police she kicked her boyfriend out of the house but initially denied the murder. She later however, confessed to killing and cooking him up in the traditional dish, called machboos. Details of how the woman killed her boyfriend have not been revealed by authorities, but she did admit to using the blender to mince his flesh. The womans friend admitted she helped her clean up after the crime and saw blood stains, but did not witness the killing. The woman will go to court after the investigation is complete, prosecutors said. Nearby residents say a 20-story apartment building proposed for Bankers Hill is too tall, would damage neighborhood character and cast shadows on a prime part of Balboa Park. Supporters say the 223-foot, 204-unit building would help solve San Diegos housing crisis and help the city meet goals for reducing greenhouse gases because the project is near transit, bike lanes and job centers in downtown and Hillcrest. The residents call the proposal a rogue project that would be an anomaly because of its height. They also worry it could set a precedent for additional buildings in Bankers Hill of the same height or even taller. Neighborhoods battling against high-rise projects is increasingly common in San Diego, as city officials seek to add housing in existing neighborhoods to avoid the traffic congestion and pollution that come with sprawl. Advertisement The Planning Commission approved the project in a 4-0 vote on Nov. 8. But opponents are expected to appeal the approval to the City Council, and theyve also threatened to sue on environmental grounds. The apartment tower is proposed next to iconic St. Pauls Cathedral at the corner of Olive Street and Sixth Avenue, just west of the park and a few blocks north of the El Prado entrance at Laurel Street. The tower would feature ground floor commercial space that would become home to the administrative offices for St. Pauls, which is selling part of its property to a developer to strengthen the finances of the 149-year-old church. The project would include a five-level, underground parking garage, a rooftop terrace with a pool and other amenities. It would also include 18 units reserved for people who earn less than 50 percent of the areas median income: $34,100 for a family of one, $38,950 for a family of two and $43,800 for a family of three. Business and environmental groups praised the project during the Nov. 8 hearing. We believe this is a very positive project that will add housing stock, help achieve our climate action plan goals and include new affordable units in a city that desperately needs them, said Stefanie Benvenuto, a policy analyst for the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce. Matthew Vasilakis of the nonprofit Climate Action Campaign said the project is as close to perfect as his organization has seen. We must do everything we can to support more homes in the right places for the right people, he said. Colin Parent, executive director of transit advocacy group Circulate San Diego, said state and city density bonus laws create incentives for developers to include income-restricted units by allowing them to build more overall units when they do. Youre seeing the market respond and this is a great example of that response, said Parent, suggesting city approval of the 20-story tower would encourage more developers to propose similar projects. Omar Rawi, a senior official for developer Greystar, said the neighborhood concerns about height are overblown. Height can be interesting, height can be beautiful and height serves a purpose, he said. The Rev. Penny Bridges of St. Pauls said she empathizes with residents about the height, but said the project should be viewed as a compromise. I know that the planned height of the building is somewhat controversial, but it is our conviction that the benefit of additional rental housing, especially affordable housing, is a worthwhile trade-off, she said. Leo Wilson, a longtime community leader speaking on behalf of residents in Bankers Hill and the adjacent Park West neighborhood, said allowing such a tall building would be a dangerous precedent. If its 225 feet, what about 250 or 300, he said. He also complained that the building would cast dark shadows on Balboa Park, contending that would damage the experience of the millions who visit the park each year. When do we look at Balboa Park and say the interests of the million people there dont apply, he said. The residents would like a building no taller than 170 feet, with either a wider base so there could be the same number of units, or smaller units that would have lower rents because they would have less square footage. They also said the project wouldnt do much to solve the local housing crisis because all of the units except the 18 with income restrictions would be luxury units because Bankers Hill is a relatively expensive neighborhood. Planning Commissioners said the taller building would make the skyline along the west side of the park more interesting, potentially marking the border of the park in a striking way like Central Park in New York City. They also downplayed the concerns about height. I dont care about height if its done right, Commissioner James Whalen said. Opponents have until Monday to file an appeal to the City Council. david.garrick@sduniontribune.com (619) 269-8906 Twitter:@UTDavidGarrick A former prison inmate whose nearly two-decade-long battle to get a lawsuit against a prison doctor heard in court resulted in a landmark state Supreme Court ruling in July, won again this week when an appeals court again ruled in his favor. A unanimous three-judge panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal in San Diego reversed a lower court ruling that dismissed the suit because it had taken too long to get to trial. The ruling sends the case back to the Superior Court, and continues a remarkable string of victories by the plainitff, Barry Jameson. Jameson sued Dr. Tadesse Desta in 2002, while Jameson was incarcerated at Richard J. Donovan state prison in Otay Mesa, for not properly treating the inmates Hepatitis C. The lawsuit bounced back and forth between the Superior Court in San Diego and the appeals court over the next decade with Jameson doggedly representing himself all the while. The suit was thrown out before trial three times. But each time Jameson appealed and won three reversals. Advertisement Finally in 2014, the case made it to trial. But right after the attorneys gave their opening statements, the judge again granted a motion by Destas lawyers to dismiss the case, ruling Jameson had not shown he would be able to produce the kind of evidence needed to prove his allegations, and that the suit took more than five years to get to trial in violation of a state law. This time, when Jameson went to the appeals court he lost but the seeds of a larger victory were planted. As an indigent plaintiff, Jameson could not afford to hire a certified court reporter for the trial. Appeals courts require a transcript to review and ultimately rule on an appeal. With no transcript, there was no appeal for Jameson. Jameson had been caught in a bind that San Diego and other courts created in the wake of the severe state budget crisis stemming from the 2008 recession. The court had adopted a rule in 2012 that it would no longer provide court reporters in civil cases for free, leaving it to either side in a case to go out and hire a reporter at their own cost. Undaunted, Jameson appealed to the state Supreme Court this time getting assistance from a lawyer in Los Angeles who had read the appeals court ruling and took the case pro bono. In a unanimous ruling in July, the high court struck down San Diegos rule, saying that it violated state laws guaranteeing equal justice to everyone. That ruling applies to all courts across the state and was hailed by equal justice advocates as a significant victory. But there was still one piece of Jamesons case unresolved: the five-year rule that the court had also cited to dismiss the case. The appeals court had not ruled on that issue when it dismissed the appeal because there was no transcript. The case went back to the appeals court this summer. Jameson argued that the rule did not apply, because at a previous proceeding in 2011 three years before the fateful start of the trial the judge had granted a summary judgment motion in Destas favor. Because such a motion considers whether there is a triable issue of material fact, that constituted a trial under the law and meant there had been no unlawful delay. On Monday the appeals court agreed, and for the fourth time sent the case back to the trial courts, keeping Jamesons case alive for now. Its unknown what will happen next. Lawyers for Desta and Jameson did not respond to a request for comment. Twitter: @gregmoran greg.moran@sduniontribune.com A fire burn down an abandoned house in Ocean Beach early Friday morning. Firefighters arrived on the scene around 4:40 a.m. and extinguished the blaze within minutes.However, the craftsman-style home at 4927 Voltaire St. had already been badly burned. A tall retaining wall prevented the fire from spreading to a nearby apartment complex. The San Diego Fire-Rescue and San Diego Police departments had been investigating the incident. Authorities said there was no indication of criminal activity. Advertisement Twitter: @jemersmith Phone: (619) 293-2234 Email: joshua.smith@sduniontribune.com Saudis are using, not respecting, Donald Trump Re Steve Breens cartoon So thankful Trump is giving me a pass (Nov. 21): If only the caption had added the word, infidel after the name Trump, that would have added some heavy meaning, in that the Saudis dont really respect Trump, but are only interested in using him if they can get away with it. I have now read more about the financial support of the 9/11 terrorists and realize this regime might be waiting for a time to convert the rest of the world or kill its infidels. Gerald Lance Johannsen Advertisement Carlsbad With head bowed, eyes shut and hands together in prayer, the picture depicts Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman giving thanks to Allah. The caption reads, So thankful Trump is giving me a pass. That would be for ordering the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi. That can hardly be the case. I seriously doubt the Saudis, especially the Crown Prince, is grateful for Trumps total lack of belief in our countrys intelligence agencies. Its more likely the Saudis have direct evidence of Trumps business deals with them, past and present, that would compromise his presidency. Breen shouldve drawn a smirking Salman with the caption, Let him just try to blame Khashoggis murder on me. Well let the world know all about Trump. The truth is the last thing Trump wants anyone to know about him. Neil Proffitt Oceanside Forgiving Saudis sends a terrible message Re Trump stands with Saudis on Khashoggi (Nov. 21): So Donald Trump has stated that weapon sales to Saudi Arabia is more important than human life. This is the same Saudi Arabia that has created one of the most horrific humanitarian crises the world has ever seen in Yemen. Busloads of children and hospitals being bombed. Is this why Saudi Arabia needs our weapons? America needs to see what the crown prince has offered Trump and/or his businesses for him to so blatantly go against American values and morals. America first? Baloney. It is more like Trump first. Michele Rose Oceanside Dont let Trump start a war of distraction Donald Trump wants to be re-elected in 2020. Back in 2010 amid the Birther foolishness, Trump provocatively warned that Barack Obama would start a war in order to be re-elected. That did not happen, but it reveals the Trump strategy for re-election. I believe Trump will initiate a war against Iran in 2020 to ensure his re-election. His pulling out of the Iran treaty was essential for moving toward this goal. American fighting soldiers will die in this conflict and no one can predict its bitter outcome. Trump needs Saudi cooperation to both instigate a conflict and pursue the war. This scheme for future war helps explain part of Trumps current protection of the Saudi monarchy. We need to be aware of his bad intentions and thwart him. David Amstutz Poway Letters and commentary policy The U-T welcomes and encourages community dialogue on important public matters. Please visit this page for more details on our letters and commentaries policy. You can email letters@sduniontribune.com or leave a comment below. Follow @UTLetters on Twitter and UTOpinion on Facebook. Once-admired auto executive Carlos Ghosn's fall from grace deepened Thursday when directors of Nissan Motor Co. voted unanimously to fire the recently jailed businessman from his post as board chairman. Dismissed along with Ghosn was another director, Greg Kelly, whom the board accused of working with Ghosn to understate their incomes on formal declarations and use company assets for personal purposes. An internal investigation presented to the board found that Kelly had "been determined to be the mastermind of this matter, together with" Ghosn, the company said in a statement. The board also said that Nissan's longstanding partnership with the French automaker Renault "remains unchanged." While he has been fired as chairman, the company said, it will require a vote of shareholders to remove Ghosn from the board altogether. The financial world was stunned on Monday when it was announced that Ghosn had been detained by Japanese authorities on suspicion of having failed to report millions of dollars in income. He could face up to 10 years in prison. Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are a bit alike, and that presents a danger to the global order. The American and Chinese leaders are both impetuous, authoritarian and overconfident nationalists, and each appears to underestimate the other sides capacity to inflict pain. This dangerous symmetry leaves the two sides hurtling toward each other. The 10 percent tariffs already imposed in the trade war are scheduled to rise to 25 percent in January, but theres also a broader confrontation emerging. Trump and Xi may well be able to reach a cease-fire in their trade war when they meet for the Group of 20 in two weeks. Even if a deal is reached, though, it may be only a temporary respite that doesnt alter the dynamic of two great nations increasingly on a collision course. Advertisement Each side miscalculates by seeing the other as likely to give in. China perceives a wild man in the White House who talks big but who ultimately climbed down off his high horse on trade with Europe. Beijing doesnt seem to realize that Trumps challenge to China arises from core beliefs and reflects a broad disillusionment with China in the United States. Im an example of that. I studied Chinese and lived for five years in China; my wife and I wrote a largely upbeat book about the countrys prospects called China Wakes. But Xi has damaged Chinas brand just as Trump has damaged Americas, and today its hard to find either Democrats or Republicans eager to speak up for China. For its part, Washington misjudges as well. It sees Chinas economy as vulnerable and doesnt appreciate that China can wage a trade war with weapons other than tariffs. It can play a nationalism card so that it becomes unpatriotic for Chinese citizens to buy McDonalds burgers, drink Coke or wear Nike shoes. Safety inspections can close American hotels; tax investigations can tie American firms in knots; and customs delays can hold up parts and idle American-owned factories. Chinese tourism to the U.S. can slow, students can be directed to Australian universities over American ones and rare earth minerals needed by American companies may develop shortages. China can further ease sanctions on North Korea, buy more oil from Iran or become more aggressive in the South China Sea. It can cancel Chinese trademarks owned by Ivanka Trump that might get the presidents attention and it can dump U.S. Treasury bonds. Trump is right (I cant believe I just wrote those three words!) that China has not played fair. The best response would have been to work with allies to pressure China simultaneously from all sides; instead, Trump antagonized allies so that we are fighting this battle alone. Why have I and so many others soured on China? This is larger than Trump and Xi. Chinas admission to the World Trade Organization in 2001 was meant to integrate the country into the global trading system as an increasingly responsible world power. But after moving mostly in the right direction under Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, China stalled under Hu Jintao and has moved backward under Xi. China has stolen technology and intellectual property even as it has become more aggressive militarily in the South China Sea and curbed freedom at home. Xi offends global values by detaining more than 1 million Muslims in the Xinjiang region, arresting lawyers and Christians, and steadily squeezing out space for free thought. I used to report from China each year but now find the limits on a journalist visa so onerous that its not worthwhile. And Im supposed to be the lao pengyou, or old friend, of China. There are other grounds for American concern about Chinas irresponsibility that havent received much attention: I estimate that around 20,000 Americans die each year from overdoses of drugs originating from traffickers in China. In particular, two-thirds or more of Americas fentanyl, a synthetic opioid far more lethal than heroin, appears to come from China. In fairness, China has made some efforts to crack down on the drug trade, but this hasnt been a priority so long as the traffickers mostly export their fentanyl rather than sell it at home. If the Chinese government pursued drug smugglers the way it crushes dissident Christians, labor activists, lawyers or feminists, those drug exports would end. Americas business executives used to be strong supporters of a pro-China policy, but they, too, have cooled. Hank Paulson, the former Treasury secretary, has long been a vigorous advocate of close ties with China, so I was struck by a sober warning he gave to the Asia Society in New York the other day. Economic tensions are reaching a breaking point, Paulson cautioned in his speech. He concluded, and I think hes right, that if the U.S. and China dont resolve their problems, the world will face a systemic risk of monumental proportions. Kristof is on Twitter, @NickKristof. It is holiday season at theme parks in Southern California, with family-friendly fun at SeaWorld, the San Diego Zoo and Knotts Berry Farm. SeaWorlds Christmas Celebration is running through Jan. 6 and includes a spoof of a holiday television special from sea lions Clyde and Seamore, the Dolphin Island Christmas Show, a live nativity musical, a visit from Santa and more. New for 2018 is Rudolphs Movie Experience, which is performed daily, and special performances of The 3 Kings Procession, which will be available between Jan. 1 and 6. Rudolphs Movie Experience, presented daily in the Mission Bay Theater, includes special effects like falling snow and the smell of hot chocolate. In Rudolphs Christmastown, visitors can meet and take photos with Rudolph and his friends Clarice, Bumble and Yukon Cornelius. There is also a nightly tree-lighting ceremony and sing-a-long. SeaWorld is open year-round, including holidays and is located on SeaWorld Drive, off of I-5 in San Diego. Admission is $91.99 for ages 10 and older, $86.99 for ages 3 to 9. For tickets and more information, visit SeaWorldSanDiego.com or call 619-222-4732. Looking to talk a walk on the wild side this holiday season? The San Diego Zoos Jungle Bells celebration begins on Dec. 8 and runs through Jan. 1. The zoo transforms into a wild winter wonderland, complete with twinkling lights, festive food and performances. Santa will visit the zoo to meet with young visitors and his elves will perform on a trampoline in The Toy Shop Hop. There are also two 4-D Santa-themed experiences, The Polar Express and Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas. There will also be a Dr. Zoolittle animal-themed performance of Twas the Night Before Christmas, caroling and more. The zoo closes at 5 p.m. Christmas Eve and is closed Christmas Day. Tickets begin at $54 for adults and $44 for children ages 3 to 11. Tickets are available at sandiegozoo.org. Knotts Berry Farm becomes Knotts Merry Farm now through Jan. 6, with family-friendly performances, holiday shopping and more. In Ghost Towns historic Bird Cage Theatre, Knotts melodrama company presents Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol and O. Henrys A Gift of the Magi on select dates. The Camp Snoopy Theatre presents the show A Peanuts Guide to Christmas, featuring the Peanuts gang presenting a primer designed to help everyone survive the holidays. Visitors can meet the Peanuts during a meet and greet following the show. Ghost Town becomes the Christmas Crafts Village, featuring dozens of local artisans selling their wares, as well as artist demonstrations of chainsaw wood carving and glass blowing. Admission to Christmas Crafts Village is free from Monday, Nov. 26 to Thursday, Nov. 29 and Monday, Dec. 3 to Thursday, Dec. 6 (otherwise, requires park admission). Visitors can meet with Santa at Santas Christmas Cabin. Take a picture with Santa, enjoy seasonal treats and even something for the adults, like seasonal craft beers and hot spiced holiday wine. Admission for Knotts Merry Farm starts at $50 and is available at knotts.com. Email: entertainment@pomeradonews.com San Diego dancers are busy tying up pointe shoes, tuning in to Tchaikovsky and preparing to take part in The Nutcracker, the spectacular and family-friendly holiday ballet. San Diego Academy of Ballet and Ballet Institute of San Diego Award-winning dancers from the ballet school perform the roles of Spanish Chocolate, Arabian Coffee, Chinese Tea and Candy Cane Ribbons in this festive show. Nov. 23-24. Salvation Army Kroc Center, 6845 University Ave., San Diego. (858) 284-0561. tututix.com/client/sandiegoacademyofballet/ New West Ballet Claras dreams come true in this annual production that features dancing candies and prancing reindeer. Nov. 23-25. Poway Center for the Performing Arts, 15498 Espola Road, Poway. (858) 748-0505. powaycenter.com Encinitas Ballet Katelyn Conrad stars as the Sugar Plum Fairy in this North County presentation. Glittering costumes and impressive choreography tell the story of a nutcracker that becomes a prince. Dec. 2. Moonlight Amphitheatre, 1200 Vale Terrace Drive, Vista. (760) 724-2110. encinitasballet.com Advertisement City Ballet The story of young Claras magical journey into the land of Christmas is danced to the City Ballet Orchestra in this renowned annual show. Members of the cast will be in the lobby to greet audience members and pose for photos after each matinee performance. Dec. 7-23. Spreckels Theatre, 121 Broadway, downtown (858) 272-8663. cityballet.org 4S Dance Academy All ages can join Clara on her magical journey to the Land of the Sweets. This inaugural production brings together professionally choreographed dancers, guest artists and performers in a beloved tale. Dec. 8. California Center for the Arts, Escondido, Center Theater, 340 N. Escondido Blvd., Escondido. (800) 988-4253. artcenter.org San Diego Civic Youth Ballet Join Clara and the Nutcracker Prince as they journey to the Land of Sweets in this traditional Balboa Park production that features the enchanted land of falling snow, waltzing flowers and toy soldiers. Dec. 12-23. Casa del Prado Theatre, 1800 Village Place, Balboa Park. (619) 233-3060. sdcyb.org California Ballet More than 150 dancers perform the holiday favorite to a live orchestra playing Tchaikovskys extravagant score. Red-carpet photo opportunities occur one hour before performances and theres a meet-and-greet with the dancers in the Grande Salon after all full-length matinee and early evening performances. (A one-hour toddler-friendly production with recorded music is staged at 2 p.m. Dec. 14 and 21.) Dec. 14-23. San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Third Ave., downtown. (858) 560-6741. californiaballet.org Pacific Arts Dance Center The full-length production in Concert Hall features children, teens and professional dancers who bring beloved characters, snowflakes and flowers to life. Dec. 15-16. California Center for the Arts, Escondido, 340 N. Escondido Blvd., Escondido. (800) 988-4253. artcenter.org Southern California Ballet Designed to delight all ages, the show is presented with more than 100 talented performers from SCBs company, academy and the community. Professional guest artists star in the principal roles. Dec. 15-16. Poway Center for the Performing Arts, 15498 Espola Road, Poway. (858) 748-0505. powaycenter.com West Coast Ballet Theatre The semi-professional company performs with stunning costumes, clever sets with snow effects, pyrotechnics and more in this Concert Hall production. A live orchestral performance by the San Diego Civic Youth Orchestra accompanies nearly 200 cast members. Dec. 22-23. California Center for the Arts, Escondido, 340 N. Escondido Blvd., Escondido. (800) 988-4253. artcenter.org San Diego Ballet Snowflakes swirl across the stage when Javier Velasco and San Diego Ballet present the companys holiday fantasy with professional dancers and teams of young students that make up the Gummybears, the Gingersnaps and the Garland Girls. Dec. 29-30. Copley Symphony Hall at Jacobs Music Center, 750 B St., downtown. (619) 235-0804. sandiegoballet.org Moscow Ballet The Great Russian Nutracker returns to San Diego with award-winning principal dancers and local ballet students. In the Russian version, Masha and her Nutcracker Prince arrive in the Land of Peace and Harmony (traditionally called the Land of Sweets) and pay tribute to the great heritages of the world. Dec. 20. Copley Symphony Hall at Jacobs Music Center, 750 B St., downtown. (619) 235-0804. nutcracker.com Hanging around the neck of trainer Ray Bell were the long, wieldy binoculars that seem old-school enough to have been used by the patrons at Del Mar in the days of Seabiscuit. Bell peered through those lenses on Thanksgiving Thursday at the racetrack and couldnt believe what he was seeing. Jockey Tyler Baze and Bells horse, India Mantuana, built a stunning eight-length lead on the backstretch in the $100,000 Grade III Red Carpet Handicap for fillies and mares. Over 1 3/8 miles on turf, could Bells 4-year-old filly steal one at 18-1 odds and dethrone Escape Clause, the Canadian-bred whod placed first in nine straight races? Advertisement She kept getting farther and farther in front, Bell said. Everyone decided to take back, thank God. I was waiting for the wire to come up. It didnt come up soon enough. Actually, it did. Barely. India Mantuana, paying $39.60, held off Siberian Iris, who was second by a half-length, and Escape Clause and Vexatious, who finished in a dead heat for third. That wasnt the plan. It just happened, Baze said of getting that far out front, though it had been Bells desire to have her not get softened up in the early going by a challenger. I just wanted to ride her like I did this summer; not fight her; let her do her thing. She was just going easy out there. Sometimes it isnt how fast theyre running, its how theyre doing it. She was doing it the right way today. Baze was aboard India Mantuana at Del Mar in August when she won a $40,000 optional claiming race for trainer Phil DAmato and was claimed by Bell and Oklahoma owner Richard Bell (no relation). She had since tried 1 mile on the turf at Santa Anita for Bell and finished fourth. Tyler said she needs more ground, Bell said. She doesnt have acceleration, but shes a real staying type of filly. Shes got one pace and she keeps going. She doesnt give up. A longtime trainer in Southern California, Bell doesnt have a large string of horses and hadnt had an entry in the fall meet until the Red Carpet. He said the owner had never won a graded stakes race. India Mantuana now has six victories in 24 career starts, and the $60,000 check brought her earnings to $222,047. Of making the original claim, Bell said, I thought (the horse) was maybe something we could have some fun with. Now were having all the fun in the world. A graded stakes-winning mare is a valuable asset. There was measured disappointment, of course, for the barn of Escape Clause. The 4-year-old who had raced 25 times, mostly at small tracks in Canada, was running in her first graded stakes. She scored a big triumph on Del Mars fall opening day when Excellent Sunset was disqualified and Escape Clause was moved up to first. These are graded stakes mares, and she is right there with them. Shes got a big heart, said Ruben Fuentes, Escape Clauses jockey. Notable Thanksgiving attendance was announced at 4,273. There were no perfect Pick Six tickets, so the carryover for Friday will be $52,114. The 0.14 inches of rain Del Mar received overnight had no impact on the turf course, and all four races scheduled for the grass were run on it. A racing ownership, including U-T handicapper Jon Lindo, won the fourth, a $62,500 allowance/claiming race at 1 3/8 miles on turf, with Unapologetic ($12.20). The 5-year-old gelding, trained by Bill Spawr and ridden by Geovanni Franco, won for the third time this year and sixth time in 27 career starts. On Saturday between races, Del Mar will honor Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens, who announced this week that he is retiring for a third time. The 55-year-old said he has been diagnosed with a spinal injury that doctors have told him could worsen if he continues to ride. Stevens has 635 career victories at Del Mar, including three Pacific Classics. He has three wins in each of the Triple Crown races and 10 in the Breeders Cup. He finished with 5,187 career victories. We hate to see him retire, but hes had a brilliant career and hes always been there for us, Del Mar CEO Joe Harper said. Hes always shed a good light on our sport. Jockey Flavien Prat became a father for the first time on Tuesday when his wife, Manon Lemaire Prat, gave birth to a daughter, Elana. Prat had mounts in six of the eight races on Thanksgiving, winning the first race on trainer Peter Millers El Huerfano ($2.80). Fly to Mars, a 4-year-old colt trained by Miller, was to be among the favorites in Saturdays Seabiscuit Handicap, but had to be scratched due to an ankle injury. Fly to Mars won the California Dreamin Stakes and was second in the Grade II Del Mar Mile over the summer. Sports Videos tod.leonard@sduniontribune.com; Twitter: @sdutleonard 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. Britain says it reached agreement during overnight talks with the European Commission on the draft text of a political declaration laying out the terms for Britain's "smooth and orderly" exit from the European Union. Prime Minister Theresa May announced the agreement, which must be approved by EU leaders Sunday, in front of her No. 10 Downing Street residence early Thursday. She said the deal "delivers" on the will of the British people as expressed in a divisive Brexit referendum in June 2016. "It brings back control of our borders, our money and our laws, and it does so by protecting our jobs, protecting our security and protecting the integrity of the United Kingdom." Addressing parliament later in the day, May said the British people "want Brexit to be settled. They want a good deal that sets us on a course for a brighter future. The deal that will enable us to do this is now within our grasp. In these crucial 72 hours ahead, I will do everything possible to deliver it for the British people." The overnight talks followed a meeting Tuesday between May and Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission. May said the two instructed their negotiating teams to work through the night if necessary to reach an agreement. The deal must still be approved by the leaders of the individual EU states at a special EU Council meeting on Sunday. May also faces a challenge in getting the Brexit agreement through her own parliament, where many members feel it does not go far enough to break ties with the continent. Santa Fe grocery shoppers are an altogether different animal from residents of Albuquerque and Gallup, or even the rest of the country, according to Jennifer Knapp, produce buyer for La Montanita Co-op. They are more educated, more inquisitive, and more careful about what they put in their carts. This Thanksgiving weekend, we asked a few hard questions about the way we eat. Denmark has suspended future approvals of weapons and military equipment exports to Saudi Arabia in response to the killing of a dissident Saudi journalist and the kingdom's role in the conflict in Yemen, the Danish Foreign Ministry said Thursday. Germany has suspended issuing future weapons export licenses and has moved to halt all arms sales, while France said Monday it will decide soon on sanctions over Khashoggi's killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last month. Saudi Arabia is one of the world's biggest weapons importers. It heads a military coalition fighting in a civil war in Yemen in which tens of thousands of people have died and caused a major humanitarian catastrophe. Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/22/2018 -- The home health care market includes a wide range of medical devices and services that are used by patients to treat, diagnose, and monitor a variety of chronic diseases. These devices and services play an important role in providing cost-effective health care to the patients. The home health care market offers lucrative business opportunities in Canada due to increased acceptance of home health care, technological advancements, and cost-effective alternatives compared to other modalities (i.e. hospital visits). Factors such as aging population and increasing number of people diagnosed with chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiac disorders, and respiratory diseases are driving the growth of the home health care market in Canada. The Public Health Agency of Canada estimated that three individuals out of five in Canada (aged 20 years and above) suffer from chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, mental illness, and cardiovascular diseases, and four out of five are at risk of developing chronic conditions. Moreover, several organizations, such as the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities Canada, offer accreditation programs to the home care service providers to improve their home care business operation and quality of patient care, which in turn would contribute to the growth of the market. Other factors fueling the growth of the home health care market are aging population, rising government spending on home care services, and cost effectiveness However, the high cost of professional health care services and home medical devices is likely to restrain market growth. Request A Sample Copy @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=4898 This report encompasses a detailed study of various home medical devices and home health care services in Canada. Home health care devices have been segmented into diagnostic and monitoring devices, therapeutic devices, home mobility assist devices, and medical supplies. The diagnostic and monitoring devices segment includes blood glucose monitors, blood pressure monitors, sleep apnea monitors, pregnancy test kits, pulse oximeters, heart rate monitors, temperature monitors, pedometers, and coagulation monitors. The therapeutic devices segment comprises insulin delivery devices, nebulizers, ventilators and CPAP devices, IV equipment, and dialysis equipment. The home mobility assist devices segment has been further categorized into wheelchairs, cranes and crutches, and other mobility assist devices. The market size and forecast for each device type has been provided for the period from 2012 to 2020, considering 2013 as the base year. The report also provides the compound annual growth rate (% CAGR) for the forecast period from 2014 to 2020 for each segment. Based on services, the home health care market has been segmented into rehabilitation services, respiratory therapy services, tele-health and telemedicine services, infusion therapy services, and unskilled home health care services. The market size and forecast in terms of USD million for each service has been provided for the period from 2012 to 2020, considering 2013 as the base year. The report also provides the compound annual growth rate (% CAGR) for the forecast period from 2014 to 2020 for each segment. Request Brochure @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=4898 The home health care market in Canada has been segmented into four major regions: Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, and Rest of Canada. The market size and forecast for each province has been estimated for the period from 2012 to 2020 in terms of revenue (USD million), considering 2013 as the base year. The report also provides the compound annual growth rate (CAGR %) during the forecast period from 2014 to 2020 for all the provinces mentioned above. The market overview section of the report discusses the market dynamics with respect to the market drivers, restraints, and opportunities. This section also covers market attractiveness analysis of the home health care market in Canada. A list of recommendations for new players planning to enter the market and for existing players to enhance their market shares is also presented in the report. The report concludes with company profiles of key players operating across various segments of the market. Each company profile includes business overview, financial overview, product portfolio, business strategies, and recent developments. Some of the prominent players in the home health care market in Canada that have been profiled in the report include 3M Health Care, Abbott Laboratories, Inc., Cardinal Health, Inc., Johnson & Johnson, GE Company, Invacare Corporation, and Medtronic, Inc. About Transparency Market Research Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge. Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMR's syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement. Contact 90 State Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207 Tel: +1-518-618-1030 USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453 Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com Website: https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/23/2018 -- Owing to the geographical location of Canada, it has been prey to natural disasters. Property insurance accounted for the largest segment with respect to gross written premium. General insurance in Canada has less volatile underwriting results vis-a-vis the U.S. which can be attributed to the less threatening catastrophic experience and competitive dynamics. Nevertheless, the regulatory ambience in Canada plays an invaluable role in the stability of the market. This can be attributed to good corporate governance, sound ERM (Enterprise Risk Management) practice and prudent capital. These insights are according to the report titled "Strategic Market Intelligence General Insurance In Canada Key Trends And Opportunities To 2022,"which has been recently added to the repository of Market Research Hub. Bush fire in May 2016 resulted in irreplaceable loss which accounted for CAD 3.8 billion. As reinsurer bore major portion of the loss, insurer capital strength was not impacted. The surge in the growth of general insurance can be attributed to the increase in the demand for property insurance. This was mainly due to the repercussions of catastrophe, the awareness of property insurance and the exponential growth of housing market. Request For Sample Report: https://www.marketresearchhub.com/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1931628 The advent of technology has had the impact on general insurance in Canada as the distribution channel is gradually shifting towards e-commerce. The other distribution channel are direct bancassuracne, agencies, direct marketing, and brokers, to name a few. General Insurance in Canada: Key Trends and Opportunities to 2022: Report Content The perusal of this report furnishes a thorough assessment on general insurance in Canada. Further, the report furnishes an in-depth analysis with regards to market size. Essentially, the report peruses major drivers, restraints, trends, predominant players in the market and product categories along with market estimation. The report also shows the value for major performance indicators such as incurred loss, written premium, commissions and expenses, total investment income, net earned premium during the review period and assessment period, combined ratio and total assets. Besides, report also gives an exhaustive overview of the Canadian economy and gives thorough information on competitive landscape in Canada. Moreover, the report also incorporates details of government regulations and changes in the regulatory structure, FDI, investment opportunities, government initiatives and enterprise structure. Browse Full Report with TOC- https://www.marketresearchhub.com/report/strategic-market-intelligence-general-insurance-in-canada-key-trends-and-opportunities-to-2022-report.html The report begins with the executive summary which illustrates regulatory structure, taxation regime, government initiatives and overall Canadian insurance industry. Besides, a comprehensive analysis of the competitive landscape highlights profiles of eminent players in the global market space. Moreover, the report also assesses the strategic moves, areas of interest, and developments undertaken by major players in the market. General Insurance in Canada: Key Trends and Opportunities to 2022: Research Methodology A robust research methodology has been adopted with respect to providing a research approach incorporating of secondary and primary research. The insights in the report is the result of an in-depth secondary research, primary interviews and in-house reviews by panel of experts. The secondary research incorporates SEC filings, company websites and presentations by investors, industry white paper and statistical database. Besides, the primary research embodies face to face interviews, phonic interviews and e-mail interaction coupled with honest reviews of the shelf label market regardless of geographies. To provide the readers with authentic report, a panel of expert peruses and examines the data collected from various sources. Enquire about this Report- https://www.marketresearchhub.com/enquiry.php?type=enquiry&repid=1931628 About Market Research Hub Market Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports and analysis. MRH's expansive collection of market research reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps. MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients. Contact Us 90 State Street, Albany, NY 12207, United States Toll Free : 800-998-4852 (US-Canada) Email : press@marketresearchhub.com Website : https://www.marketresearchhub.com/ Read Industry News at - https://www.industrynewsanalysis.com/ Maharashtra, India -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/22/2018 -- Whole Life Insurance Market Overview An in depth Whole Life Insurance market research report has been released by Reports Monitor to provide accurate information about the Whole Life Insurance market Inspection Sales Segment. The Report scrutinizes an accurate analysis of the various segments of the Industry by providing meaningful insights. The Report also presents error-free and structured information to all the executives and leaders regarding the upcoming market movement. It also uses a number of monographs, pie-charts and other diagrams to present useful data which can give clear insights about the much trending market phenomena. All these are available for major countries -such as APAC, EMEA and United States. Whole Life Insurance is a life insurance policy which is guaranteed to remain in force for theinsured's entire lifetime, provided required premiums are paid, or to the maturity date. Speak to our industry expert and ask for request sample @ https://www.reportsmonitor.com/request_sample/187449 The Whole Life Insurance market research study has given abundant weightage to numbers, statistical data, and graphs, all of which lead to a clear market definition, allowing the user to make strategic decisions. Latest development trends, diversification in product offerings, new product launches, and data related to the M&A activity provide a holistic view of the Whole Life Insurance market. Hence, the user is equipped with all the required tools to develop strategies that fortify their competitive position in the global market. For your understanding and application wise distribution, the consumption figures are also given. With the important data of supply and consumption the gap between both the parameters is explained in detail. It also provides a detailed overview of the competitive landscape and also analysis the gross market landscape. It also studies the sales, production revenue market price also the import and export value and the trending section of the Whole Life Insurance market report. The research covers the current market size of the Global Whole Life Insurance Market. This market can be split based on Major Players, product types and major applications. Top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players including such as Allianz, AXA, Generali, Ping An Insurance, China Life Insurance, Prudential PLC, Munich Re, Zurich Insurance, Nippon Life Insurance, Japan Post Holdings, Berkshire Hathaway, Metlife, Manulife Financial, CPIC, Chubb, AIG, Aviva, Allstate, Swiss RE, Prudential Financial, Travelers, AIA, Aflac, Legal & General. Whole Life Insurance Market On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into Non-participating Whole Life, Participating Whole Life, Other. Whole Life Insurance market On the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate for each application, including Agency, Brokers, Bancassurance, Digital & Direct Channels. Grab Your Report at an Amazing Discount ! Please click Here @ https://www.reportsmonitor.com/check_discount/187449 All aspects of the Whole Life Insurance industry report are quantitatively as well as qualitatively assessed to study the Global as well as regional market comparatively. The basic information such as the definition, prevalent chain and the government regulations pertaining to the Whole Life Insurance market are also discussed in the report. We provide the customized separate regional or country-level reports, for the following regions-: United States, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India, Central & South America and Other Regions. Table of Contents 1 Report Overview 1.1 Study Scope 1.2 Key Market Segments 1.3 Players Covered 1.4 Market Analysis by Type 2 Global Growth Trends 2.1 Whole Life Insurance Market Size 2.2 Whole Life Insurance Growth Trends by Regions 2.2.1 Whole Life Insurance Market Size by Regions (2013-2025) 2.2.2 Whole Life Insurance Market Share by Regions (2013-2018) 2.3 Industry Trends 2.3.1 Market Top Trends 2.3.2 Market Drivers 2.3.3 Market Opportunities 3 Market Share by Key Players 3.1 Whole Life Insurance Market Size by Manufacturers 3.1.1 Global Whole Life Insurance Revenue by Manufacturers (2013-2018) 3.1.2 Global Whole Life Insurance Revenue Market Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018) 3.1.3 Global Whole Life Insurance Market Concentration Ratio (CR5 and HHI) 3.2 Whole Life Insurance Key Players Head office and Area Served Continued Download Exclusive Summary of Whole Life Insurance Market @ https://www.reportsmonitor.com/report/187449/Whole-Life-Insurance-Market Key questions answered in the report include: What will be the market size and the growth rate by the end of the forecast period? What are the key factors driving the growth of the global Whole Life Insurance market? What are the key market trends impacting the growth of the market? What are the challenges to the market growth? Who are the leading competitors operating in the global Whole Life Insurance market? What are the latest products launched by the leading competitors in the market? Thanks for reading this article; you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like Asia, United States, Europe. About Reports Monitor Reports Monitor is a market research and consulting company that provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries including Healthcare, Technology, Chemicals, Materials, and Energy. With an intrinsic understanding of many business environments, Reports Monitor provides strategic objective insights. Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/22/2018 -- Unemployment is a persistent hindrance in Armenia, adversely affecting Armenian insurance industry and economy at large. Some of the major roadblocks identified in Armenian insurance industry are characterized by insufficient life insurance policies, lack of product variety, and in adequate knowledge. However, with considerable rise in foreign investments in the insurance industry of Armenia, it is expected that the insurance industry in Armenia will rebound in the coming years. Market Research Hub (MRH) in its recently released business intelligence report titled, 'The Insurance Industry in Armenia: Key Trends and Opportunities to 2022' delves deep in understanding ongoing developments and trends shaping the growth trajectory of Armenian insurance industry. Armenia is expected to witness revolutionary disruptions in the insurance industry with relevant foreign investments and several indigenous insurance programs underway. Such developments are expected to offset sluggish economic growth in the country, which has over the years experienced severe political and social unrest. Request For Sample Report: https://www.marketresearchhub.com/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1931652 OPIC Affirms Investments in Armenia to Elevate Financial and Insurance Sectors One of the US government agencies, Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC),that supports American investments in developing economies is optimistic about its upcoming venture in Armenia aimed to ensure holistic growth of Armenian economy encompassing a myriad fields including insurance, tourism and other financial services. Agro-based Pilot Insurance Program to Favor Growth in Armenian Insurance Industry An agro-based Armenian economy is expected to reflect substantially on the insurance industry in Armenia. A recent report affirmed that agricultural ministry of Armenia is soon to pave way for a novel pilot insurance project expected to commence in 2019, and will be executed by indigenous insurance entities in Armenia. This ten million project will initially be launched in three major regions in Armenia, consisting of Ararat, Shirak, and Armavir. The program will meticulously consider major triggers such as unforeseen calamities affecting orchards, vineyards, potato farms, and grains, thus negatively impacting Armenian agricultural sector and the economy at large. The project will support the launch of insurance policies that can offer optimum coverage for aforementioned damages, and is therefore expected to bring in sweeping changes in Armenian economy and unwinding growth avenues for the insurance industry in Armenia. Thorough research elements included in the report allow readers to gauge various segments and factors prevailing in the insurance industry in Armenia and their reciprocal implications on overall market growth. The report primarily aims to enlighten readers' understanding and thus encourage well-informed investment decisions and business models in Armenian insurance industry on the part of significant market players. To present a comprehensive outlook of Armenian insurance industry, this section of the report identifies type of insurance as the solo dominant segment in Armenian insurance industry, based on which the industry is classified into life insurance, property insurance, motor insurance, liability insurance, marine, aviation, and transit insurance, personal accident and health insurance, and compulsory insurance. Browse Full Report with TOC- https://www.marketresearchhub.com/report/the-insurance-industry-in-armenia-key-trends-and-opportunities-to-2022-report.html Competitive Landscape: Armenian Insurance Industry Based on elaborate research postulates elaborated in the report, readers can attain a comprehensive understanding on potential players in Armenian insurance industry, complete with an assessment of winning business strategies adopted by leading players and their corresponding implications on consumer response such as their preferences and eventual adoption. The report also allows readers to evaluate the efficacy of marketing tactics and tools in anchoring holistic growth in Armenian insurance industry. Some of the prominent players identified in the report include, Ingo Armenia Insurance CJSC, Nairi Insurance LLC, Armenia Insurance Ltd. and Reso Insurance CJSC amongst others. Enquire about this Report- https://www.marketresearchhub.com/enquiry.php?type=enquiry&repid=1931652 About Market Research Hub Market Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports and analysis. MRH's expansive collection of market research reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps. MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients. Contact Us 90 State Street, Albany, NY 12207, United States Toll Free : 800-998-4852 (US-Canada) Email : press@marketresearchhub.com Website : https://www.marketresearchhub.com/ Read Industry News at - https://www.industrynewsanalysis.com/ Korean and Japanese maritime police faced off for two hours in the East Sea on Tuesday as bilateral relations soured over historical grievances. According to Japan's Foreign Ministry on Thursday, a Korean maritime police patrol ship tried to stop Japanese trawlers fishing outside Japan's exclusive economic zone on Tuesday morning. A Japanese patrol boat approached and said fishing is allowed in the area under a bilateral pact, and the two sides sat facing each other for about two hours and 20 minutes at a distance of 740 m until the Korean patrol ship steamed away. Meanwhile, Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party adopted a resolution Thursday urging the Japanese government to demand that Korea halt the dismantlement of a foundation set up under an agreement with Japan to compensate victims of wartime sexual slavery. Some party members proposed recalling Ambassador Yasumasa Nagamine as a sign of protest. Japan's five major daily newspapers also published editorials strongly critical of the Korean government's decision. Asked what to do with the 1 billion yen received from the Japanese government under the agreement, which was struck in murky circumstances by the Park Geun-hye administration, Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-hwa said, "We are considering various options." Nonetheless the foundation has already used some 400 million yen to compensate 34 surviving victims and families of dead victims, but 11 other survivors rejected the offer. Since Moon Jae-in became Korea's president last year, the foundation has effectively been on ice, and most of its board resigned at the end of last year. The government plans to use its own money to compensate the victims instead, while tricky negotiations continue with Japan. Some 40,000 taxi drivers rallied in front of the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul on Thursday to protest against the launch of Kakao's new carpooling app. They blocked the road in front of the parliament for two hours, calling for a ban on commercial carpooling services in a revised transport bill, which lawmakers started deliberating that day. Maritime London had a stand at the Asian Maritime and Logistics Conference (ALMC) the flagship event of the Hong Kong's Maritime Week and Lord Jeffrey Mountevans also spoke at the well-attended Mare Forum conference on the Wednesday, with some candid and pointed remarks, which unfortunately we cannot report as he was very clear that he was speaking under Chatham House rules. Thursday saw a joint seminar with Hong Kong Maritime & Port Board with Hong Kong London Maritime Day which stressed the natural business partnership between the two cities in the maritime businesses. Almost inevitably Brexit was a topic of conversation indeed with panelist Nigel Anton, head of shipping for Standard Chartered Bank, saying it was the word he currently most associated with the UK. However, while Britain's exit from the European Union looks a near certainty the message was London was still very much the place for international shipping and maritime to do business. Harry Theochari, vice chairman of Maritime London said: We at Maritime London truly believe Hong Kong is our natural partner. He stressed that London was open for business and urged shipping companies to look to the city for their capital requirements. In the evening on the same day a reception was held by Maritiem London at the British Consulate in Hong Kong. Political and economic ties between New Zealand and China will remain close despite concerns about alleged political interference by China, according to the macro research arm of Fitch Ratings. Although concerns have mounted since October over a political donation made to New Zealands opposition National Party by a Chinese businessman believed to possess close ties to the Communist Party of China, we expect New Zealand and China to maintain friendly relations over the longer term, Fitch Solutions Macro Research says in a statement. We believe the New Zealand government will likely tighten laws concerning political donations in response, it says. That said, the government is likely to prioritise maintaining close ties with China since China occupies a significant position in New Zealands trade and tourism sectors. Fitch Solutions cites Statistics New Zealand data showing China was New Zealands largest export destination with exports totalling $13.2 billion in the year ended September 23.1 percent of total exports and up from $2.2 billion in the year ended September 2008. In addition, two-way trade came in at an all-time high of $25.1 billion in the year ended September 2018 and we expect trade between the two countries to continue growing over the coming years due to increased consumption of dairy products by Chinas growing middle class, Fitch says. Potential ratification of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership free trade agreement, of which both China and New Zealand are members, should also increase trade. Milk powder accounts for 41.3 percent of New Zealands exports to China with butter and dairy spreads accounting for another 5.3 percent. New Zealand supplies 90 percent of Chinas milk powder imports. Tourists from China are now the second highest source of visitor arrivals after Australia, rising to 499,000 people in 2018, 11.9 percent of total arrivals, compared with 105,000 eight years ago. In addition, China continues to be New Zealands largest education market with over 40,000 student visas granted to Chinese students in 2017." Fitch says China has an interest in maintaining close ties with New Zealand because it has strategic importance to China for two key reasons. First, the New Zealand government is responsible for the foreign affairs and defence departments of three other territories in the South Pacific, the Cook Islands (if requested), Niue and Tokelau, it says. This potentially would provide four votes for China at international organisations, which is important due to Chinas growing South Pacific interests. Second, China possesses a long-term strategic agenda in Antarctica in conjunction with its larger goal of expanding its maritime interests and defence capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region and will require the co-operation of established Antarctic claimant states such as New Zealand as it seeks to continue engaging in minerals exploration and other research activities in the continent. New Zealand will likely tighten the regulation of political donations in the wake of the Jami-Lee Ross scandal, Fitch says. Fears of Chinese interference were also raised during the 2017 controversy over National Party MP Jian Yang who was revealed to have worked 15 years for Chinas military intelligence academies and had been a Communist Party member before moving to New Zealand. Both incidents were covered extensively in the media and the government is likely to want to boost transparency and impartiality of the policy-making process. Such reforms would reduce political lobbying and prevent special interest groups from possessing undue influence over the New Zealand political landscape, Fitch says. The strong denials of foreign influence in New Zealand politics in the aftermath of these incidents, including from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, suggests the government would likely opt to take a low-key approach in raising the matter with China, if it even chooses to do so. This suggests to us that New Zealand is prioritising its close and growing economic relationship with China." Fitch Solutions says although it is part of the Fitch group, its comments dont come from Fitch Ratings. Any comments or data included in the report are solely derived from Fitch Solutions and independent sources. Fitch Ratings analysts do not share data or information with Fitch Solutions. (BusinessDesk) Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: The a2 Milk Company Limited (NZX: ATM) to Defend Second Class Action 24th November 2021 Morning Report Serko Limited (NZX: SKO) launches NZ$85 million capital raise Serko Limited (NZX: SKO) FY21 Half-Year Results Announcement Tower Limited (NZX: TWR) FY21 Results Announcement to Market & Capital Return ArborGen Holdings Limited (NZX: ARB) Announces Interim Result Rua Bioscience Limited (NZX: RUA) Awarded Callaghan Innovation Funding Arvida Group Limited (NZX: ARV) Reports Steady First Half Progress 23rd November 2021 Morning Report Argosy Property Limited (NZX: ARG) FY22 Interim Result market release A squeeze on housing credit in Australia as a result of its royal commission into financial services is likely to continue weighing on a wide swathe of share prices, according to Craigs Investment Partners. The share prices of banks, building materials companies such as Fletcher Building and retailers are all in the firing line as the wealth effect of rising house prices evaporates, say analysts Roy Davidson and Mohandeep Singh. Escalating house prices were already the target of regulatory action even before the royal commission was announced in December 2017. But during the past year residential property prices have fallen 7.4 percent in Sydney, 4.7 percent in Melbourne and are down 4.9 percent on average across Australias five main state capitals. Growth in credit for houses overall in Australia has dropped from 7.5 percent in 2015 to 5.2 percent. Credit to investors has shown a more dramatic drop from 10.8 percent growth in 2015 to 1.4 percent. A key finding of the royal commission has been that banks have been relying on a rule-of-thumb household expenditure measure to gauge borrowers living costs but that has systematically underestimated actual living costs. As a result banks had underestimated the riskiness of their lending Banks are now taking additional steps to verify actual expenditure levels and income in order to meet responsible lending requirements, the Craigs analysts say. In sum, credit availability has diminished and household borrowing capacity has fallen by around a quarter. While investor lending has been weak over the past few years the main target of macro-prudential measures the fact that we are now seeing owner-occupied lending soften at the same time is resulting in growth in total housing lending declining more sharply. The analysts expect Australian house prices have further to fall, citing national auction clearance rates falling from more than 70 percent to about 40 percent in Sydney. Auction clearance rates are an interesting statistic to watch as it can show a mismatch between the prices sellers expect to receive and what buyers are willing and able to pay and therefore which way house prices are likely to trend, they say. The big four Australian banks own New Zealands four largest banks and the Reserve Bank has also been taking measures to curb investor and other higher-risk lending. It has pushed annual credit growth in this country down from more than 9 percent to about 5 percent. This has undoubtedly impacted house prices, particularly in Auckland, where prices are flat to slightly down. But credit growth seems to have stabilised and the central bank is starting to lift its macro-prudential lending restrictions. This means the environment for the banks New Zealand subsidiaries has been more favourable than in Australia, which has been reflected in the banks recent profit reports, the analysts say. All in all, while not seemingly facing the same pressures as Australia, the environment in New Zealand is more challenged than it has been in recent years and we remain cautious on companies exposed to the property market, they say. Factors such as the foreign buyer ban, slowing migration, tax changes and incremental supply should also prove to be headwinds for house prices. That means the analysts are cautious about building materials companies and those in the construction sector, as well as retailers such as The Warehouse Group. The retail sector typically benefits from the wealth effect from higher house prices; as house prices rise, people feel wealthier and are likely to borrow more to spend a greater amount on consumer goods, renovations, a new car, etcetera, they say. While retail spending has held up reasonably well to date, we expect that this wealth effect will diminish in the coming years. In Australia, households have essentially funded higher consumption levels by borrowing, taking Australias household-debt-to-income ratio to just below 200 percent New Zealands is slightly lower at 166 percent. The slowing housing market will also present headwinds to the retirement village sector, the analysts say. While we are attracted to the sectors proven business model, we expect retirement village/aged care developers will face headwinds from a softer property market, they say. Our preferred exposure is Ryman Healthcare which is the industry standard operator with a continuum of care model. Ryman has just reported a near 13 percent increase in first-half net profit. It is forecasting a 10-17 percent annual increase and says it doesnt expect its profitability will be affected by any foreseeable housing market downturn. The analysts say Metlifecare is their least preferred stock in the sector, given its high weighting towards lifestyle-type villages and because of its high weighting towards Auckland. (BusinessDesk) Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: The a2 Milk Company Limited (NZX: ATM) to Defend Second Class Action 24th November 2021 Morning Report Serko Limited (NZX: SKO) launches NZ$85 million capital raise Serko Limited (NZX: SKO) FY21 Half-Year Results Announcement Tower Limited (NZX: TWR) FY21 Results Announcement to Market & Capital Return ArborGen Holdings Limited (NZX: ARB) Announces Interim Result Rua Bioscience Limited (NZX: RUA) Awarded Callaghan Innovation Funding Arvida Group Limited (NZX: ARV) Reports Steady First Half Progress 23rd November 2021 Morning Report Argosy Property Limited (NZX: ARG) FY22 Interim Result market release New Zealand shares were mixed, as strong sales buoyed Kathmandu while slowing property markets were seen weighing on Ryman Healthcare. Fletcher Building bounced back from a 14-year low. The S&P/NZX 50 index decreased 1.78 points, or 0.02 percent, to 8,701.38. Within the index, 22 stocks fell, 22 gained and six were unchanged. Turnover was $166 million, of which Fletcher accounted for $70.5 million. Kathmandu rose 12 percent to $2.78 on larger volumes than usual. The outdoor equipment chain beat expectations reporting an 8.3 percent increase in sales from its Kathmandu branded stores and benefiting from a strong performance from its recently acquired US footwear unit, Oboz. Peter McIntyre, an investment adviser at Craigs Investment Partners, said investors have largely been pessimistic about the fortunes for retailers due to the threat from online rivals. However, Kathmandu had managed its inventory well and maintained margin to deliver strong sales in the quarter. "That was a really good result and potentially surprised the market a little bit," he said. Ryman slipped 0.2 percent to $11.48 after reporting a 14 percent increase in underlying first-half earnings. McIntyre said the results noted a weaker building rate in coming years, with concerns about slowing property markets in Auckland and Melbourne. Chief executive Gordon McLeod downplayed the impact of slowing property markets, pointing to its experience during the GFC downturn. Rival Metlifecare fell 1.8 percent to $5.52 on light volumes, the biggest decline on the day. Fletcher gained 2 percent to $4.69 on volumes of 15.3 million shares, compared to its 1.5 million 90-day average. McIntyre said building companies have been re-rated, which raised questions about how much Fletcher might get for its international Formica business which is up for sale. The lack of a defined dividend policy at this week's annual meeting compounded the grim outlook for the Australian building market, he said. Other companies to have come under selling pressure in the past three months gained today. Pushpay Holdings rose 2.7 percent to $3.07, Heartland Group increased 2.1 percent to $1.47 and Synlait Milk advanced 1.8 percent to $8.70. A2 Milk increased 0.3 percent to $10.53 on volumes of 3.3 million, while Spark New Zealand declined 1.6 percent to $4.075 on average volume of 2.8 million. Among other companies on volumes of more than one million shares, Meridian Energy slipped 0.2 percent to $3.185 on average volumes. Infratil gained 0.4 percent to $3.545 on a volume of 1.4 million compared to a 90-day average of 357,000. Vital Healthcare Property Trust decreased 0.5 percent to $2.11 after manager NorthWest said it won't exercise rights to terminate directors or raise its management fee above current levels until it reviews the fees in the first quarter of next year. Outside the benchmark index, Warehouse gained 1 percent to $2.11. Chair Joan Withers told shareholders today that 2019 is a critical year for the turnaround plan and acknowledged that investors want proof before supporting a higher share price. (BusinessDesk) Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: The a2 Milk Company Limited (NZX: ATM) to Defend Second Class Action 24th November 2021 Morning Report Serko Limited (NZX: SKO) launches NZ$85 million capital raise Serko Limited (NZX: SKO) FY21 Half-Year Results Announcement Tower Limited (NZX: TWR) FY21 Results Announcement to Market & Capital Return ArborGen Holdings Limited (NZX: ARB) Announces Interim Result Rua Bioscience Limited (NZX: RUA) Awarded Callaghan Innovation Funding Arvida Group Limited (NZX: ARV) Reports Steady First Half Progress 23rd November 2021 Morning Report Argosy Property Limited (NZX: ARG) FY22 Interim Result market release Ryman Healthcare doesnt expect housing market downturns in Melbourne and possibly Auckland will affect it. Residential property prices in Melbourne have dropped 4.7 percent in the past year while Auckland prices have been flat to slightly down. Chief executive Gordon McLeod says prices in the two cities would have to drop 20-30 percent before there would be any affordability issues for people buying an independent-living townhouse in one of Rymans retirement villages. Independent-living units account for about half Rymans portfolio with about 30 percent of the other half being serviced apartments and the rest being hospital or dementia care beds. For a potential resident looking at buying a serviced apartment, usually because of some adverse life event such as worsening health, the cost is about 50-60 percent of the house theyre selling. Those people tend to be 85 or older while those buying independent units tend to be 78-79. Its really only with half our portfolio that the housing market is at all relevant, McLeod says. Most residents have had some event in their lives and those sorts of events dont change just because the property market changes. For the majority of residents, the most important factor is that Ryman offers a continuum of care and so they will never have to move out of the village they buy into, he says. Rymans history bears out what McLeod is saying. During the GFC, transactions in the New Zealand housing market dropped by two-thirds and house prices fell 10 percent but the stuff of life continued and Rymans profitability continued to increase. The company has just reported a near 14 percent rise in first-half net profit to $97.1 million, excluding property valuations, and is forecasting a full-year result 10-17 percent higher than last year. McLeod told analysts the actual annual result will depend on sales of new units and re-sales of existing ones. In the six months just gone, Ryman re-sold 405 existing units, up from 394 in the same six months last year, and 168 new units compared with 157 in the year-earlier period. Ryman currently has a pipeline of 16 new villages, nine in New Zealand and seven in Victoria, and has committed to having five villages open in the wider Melbourne area by 2020. Analysts noted that it took from 2014 when Ryman opened its first village in Melbourne, Weary Dunlop, until August this year before the first residents moved into its second village in that city, Nellie Melba. McLeod says while the process of building the second village at Brandon Park was frustrating for both his company and its investors, Ryman has learned a lot in the process. The company has construction about to start at two more villages in Melbourne and a number of development applications in the pipeline and is building momentum to achieving its target, although he joked that might stretch to New Years Eve in 2020. Ryman shares are trading at $11.69, up 19 cents and have gained 10 percent year-to-date compared with the benchmark NZX 50 Indexs 3.9 percent gain, although they down from their record high at $14.09 on Aug. 31. (BusinessDesk) Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: The a2 Milk Company Limited (NZX: ATM) to Defend Second Class Action 24th November 2021 Morning Report Serko Limited (NZX: SKO) launches NZ$85 million capital raise Serko Limited (NZX: SKO) FY21 Half-Year Results Announcement Tower Limited (NZX: TWR) FY21 Results Announcement to Market & Capital Return ArborGen Holdings Limited (NZX: ARB) Announces Interim Result Rua Bioscience Limited (NZX: RUA) Awarded Callaghan Innovation Funding Arvida Group Limited (NZX: ARV) Reports Steady First Half Progress 23rd November 2021 Morning Report Argosy Property Limited (NZX: ARG) FY22 Interim Result market release Shares in Kathmandu Holdings jumped 13 percent after the outdoor clothing and equipment retailer said a good performance from its recently acquired US footwear business will deliver a strong improvement in first-half earnings. Montana-based Oboz Footwear delivered sales of $15.7 million in the three months ended October, at a gross margin of 39.8 percent, Kathmandu said in a trading update today. Oboz remains on track to achieve the US$7.1 million of operating earnings for the 2018 calendar that will trigger an additional earn-out payment, Kathmandu said. Excluding Oboz, the groups sales in the 15 weeks to Nov. 11 were 8.4 percent higher on a constant exchange rate basis. Same-store sales rose 6.3 percent. The firm's shares jumped 13 percent to $2.81, taking their gain this year to 16 percent. Christchurch-based Kathmandu bought Oboz in April for US$60 million to diversify its product range and expand its geographic spread. The group got about two-thirds of its sales in Australia in the year through July, with Oboz also contributing $15.9 million to the group total of $497.4 million. The group had 167 Kathmandu stores in Australia, New Zealand and the UK at that date. The business will pay a further US$15 million if Oboz meets its 2018 earnings target. Chief executive Xavier Simonet said the company is pleased with the integration of Oboz into the wider group and demand the firm is still seeing for its core Kathmandu products. We have achieved good sales growth leading into the key Christmas trading period, and we expect first-half profit to be strongly above last year, he said in a statement. As always, our first half-year result is highly dependent on the success of our summer sale. Kathmandu noted that same-store sales in Australia were up 7.1 percent, and were 5.2 percent higher in New Zealand. (BusinessDesk) Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: The a2 Milk Company Limited (NZX: ATM) to Defend Second Class Action 24th November 2021 Morning Report Serko Limited (NZX: SKO) launches NZ$85 million capital raise Serko Limited (NZX: SKO) FY21 Half-Year Results Announcement Tower Limited (NZX: TWR) FY21 Results Announcement to Market & Capital Return ArborGen Holdings Limited (NZX: ARB) Announces Interim Result Rua Bioscience Limited (NZX: RUA) Awarded Callaghan Innovation Funding Arvida Group Limited (NZX: ARV) Reports Steady First Half Progress 23rd November 2021 Morning Report Argosy Property Limited (NZX: ARG) FY22 Interim Result market release Lim Ki-tack, the head of the International Maritime Organization, was appointed for a second term on Thursday. An IMO board meeting in London unanimously agreed to grant Lim another four-year term. He became head of the IMO in 2016. The UN body oversees the safety and security of shipping as well as vessel-related pollution. A head can serve two four-year terms. The co-founders of Dolce & Gabbana apologized Friday in a video on Chinese social media after promotional videos seen as racist and subsequent Instagram messages stoked a furor in one of the world's largest markets for luxury goods. Domenico Dolce and Steffano Gabbana appeared in a nearly 1.5-minute video posted on Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter, saying they hope to be forgiven and will do their best to better understand and respect Chinese culture. "We have always been in love with China," said Dolce. "We love your culture and we certainly have much to learn. That is why we are sorry if we made mistakes in the way we expressed ourselves." The Italian fashion house has been in hot water for the videos and subsequent insulting remarks made by the Instagram accounts of both the company and Gabbana. It blamed hackers for the Instagram comments. The three promotional videos, which have been deleted from the company's Weibo account, feature a Chinese woman using chopsticks to eat pizza and other Italian food. Many Chinese social media users called the videos racist and full of outdated stereotypes. "The Jammu and Kashmir assembly polls must be held on the first occasion before May ... it could be held before parliament elections also," Chief Election Commissioner O P Rawat said. New Delhi : The Election Commission on Thursday said fresh elections in Jammu and Kashmir would be held within the next six months even as it did not rule out the possibility of holding polls there before the Lok Sabha polls due next year. He said as per the Supreme Court, the outer limit for holding fresh polls after dissolution of a house is six months, that is May, 2019. At the same time, he made it clear that the Commission will decide on poll dates after 'considering all aspects'. He said, SC verdict, an outcome of Presidential reference, also said polls will have to be held on the first occasion which means even before six months. He said the same principle was applied in Telangana where the assembly was dissolved prematurely. Earlier, the Bharatiya Janata Party said that the assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir should be conducted along with the 2019 general election. BJP's Jammu and Kashmir president Ravinder Raina said that the party has called for a meeting on Thursday with all of its MLAs to discuss the future course of action. "The Bharatiya Janata Party has called for an important meeting with all its MLAs today and we will decide the future course of action. We wish that the assembly elections in J&K should be conducted along with the Parliament elections," Raina told ANI. The BJP on Wednesday said on Twitter, soon after Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik dissolved the assembly amid claims by rival formations on forming a government, that the border state cannot afford horse-trading and instability keeping its security scenario in mind. 'The proposed alliance between the Congress and the PDP broke up even before it was formed. They have taken contradictory positions on dissolution. One supports it and the other opposes it,' the BJP said. 'The best option in such a scenario is to go in for a fresh election at the earliest. This assembly cannot produce a stable government,' it added. Jammu and Kashmir needs a firm administration to deal with terrorism and not a combination of terror-friendly parties, it added. Kathmandu, November 23 Australian Ambassador to Nepal, Peter Budd bid farewell to recipients of the Australia Awards Scholarships for 2019, amid a programe in Kathmandu on Thursday. Altogether 29 scholars, including 13 government officials, will travel to Australia to commence their post-graduate level study in Australian universities. This years scholarships recipients include 17 women and 12 men. Three of the recipients are persons with disability, the Embassy of Australia stated in a press release. It is stated that the scholars will be studying a variety of courses under six priority sectors. Three will be enrolled in education, seven in economic development, two in gender inclusion and disability, eight in governance, six in health and three in water resource management. For 2019, the Australian Government offered 3,186 Australia Awards scholarships, fellowships and short courses to individuals from over 55 developing countries with an aim to transfer high-quality knowledge, skills and best-practice methodologies to equip them to directly contribute to both their workplaces and to the future development of their countries. Addressing the ceremony, Foreign Secretary Shanker Das Bairagi noted that six decades of partnerships between the government of Nepal and Australia has been fruitful. He stated that Australia has been a reliable development partner in the field of energy, education, livestock and forest management. Ambassador Budd congratulated the Australia Awards recipients and reminded them that they were selected to participate in Australia Awards for their potential to make significant contributions to the development of Nepal. China president to visit Panama after Taiwan snub Panama City, Nov 23 (AFP) Nov 23, 2018 China's President Xi Jinping will in December make his first visit to Panama since the Central American country switched diplomatic ties last year from Taiwan. President Juan Carlos Varela said on Twitter that his government has received official confirmation from Beijing about Xi's visit. Xi is to meet Varela on December 3, and the two leaders will witness the signing of about 20 agreements in a range of sectors from science to infrastructure, the statement said. Varela already met Xi in Beijing late last year after the change in diplomatic recognition. In August, El Salvador also switched diplomatic allegiance to Taiwan, as did the Dominican Republic in May under a campaign by Beijing to split democratic Taiwan from its few remaining diplomatic allies. China and Taiwan have been governed separately since the end of a civil war on the mainland in 1949, but Beijing sees the island as part of its territory to be brought back into the fold. Beijing has tried to depict the changes in diplomatic allegiance as economic and not motivated by any desire to undermine Taiwan. Only 17 countries remain in Taiwan's diplomatic circle as the island struggles to fend off Beijing's growing influence around the globe. Central America has been a bastion for Taiwan, with Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua still recognizing Taipei rather than Beijing, which has used its economic muscle and promises of investment to entice governments. China is the second major user of the Panama Canal behind the United States. China 'strongly condemns' Pakistan consular attack Beijing, Nov 23 (AFP) Nov 23, 2018 China on Friday condemned an attack on its consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi that killed two policemen and urged its ally to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said all consular staff and their families were safe following the shooting, which was claimed by a separatist group. "China strongly condemns any violent attacks against diplomatic agencies and requests that Pakistan takes practical measures to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens and institutions in the country," Geng said at a regular press briefing. Three gunmen stormed the Chinese consulate on Friday morning and exchanged gunfire with security forces who shot them down. Geng said the gunmen did not enter the consulate and the exchange of fire took place outside the facility. "We highly appreciate the efforts of the Pakistani side," he said when asked about Pakistan's response to the attack. The attack was claimed by a separatist militant group from Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan, which is at the centre of a major Chinese investment project in the country. The spokesman of the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) branded Beijing "an oppressor" along with Pakistani forces, adding that they were "destroying the future of Balochistan". The incident is the latest in a series of assaults on Chinese nationals, including workers involved in the multi-billion dollar infrastructure project. Geng said the attack would not affect Beijing's commitment to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which seeks to connect its western province Xinjiang with the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar, in Balochistan. "China and Pakistan are all-weather strategic partners," the spokesman said. "With the broad support of the two peoples, it (CPEC) is proceeding in an orderly manner. China will continue to work with Pakistan to firmly move forward with the construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor," he said. For Pakistan, participating in the project presents an enormous challenge in a country plagued by weak institutions, endemic corruption and a range of insurgencies in areas slated to host the corridor. The subject of economic dividends from CPEC is extremely sensitive in some of the areas the corridor will run through -- particularly in Balochistan. Since the beginning of the project militants have repeatedly attacked construction sites, blowing up numerous gas pipelines and trains, and targeted Chinese workers. In August this year three Chinese nationals were among six wounded in a suicide attack on a bus transporting Chinese engineers working on a mining project in Balochistan, in an attack that was also claimed by the BLA. "We highly appreciate the great efforts made by Pakistan to safeguard the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and the security of Chinese citizens and organisations in Pakistan," Geng said. "We also believe that Pakistan will continue to take effective measures to ensure the safe and smooth development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor," he added. Page Content During the Press Briefing of November 21st, Prime Minister Leona Romeo Marlin announced her visit to Washington DC to participate in the joint IMF-World Bank-IDB High Level Conference on Building Resilience to Disasters and Climate Change in the Caribbean at the IMF Headquarters on November 26th 2018. During the conference Prime Minister Romeo Marlin will present on the topic furthering existing and developing new instruments to transfer risk in the context of Financial Solutions for Disaster Risk Management. As the responsible Minister for the cooperation between Sint Maarten and the World Bank, I would like to update you on the recovery projects that are being financed by the Trust Fund. As of today, the Netherlands has made 134.4 million US dollars available to the Sint Maarten Trust Fund. The Parliament of the Netherlands has recently also approved a second tranche of 175.5 million US dollars. This tranche will bring the amount of available funding in the Trust Fund to 310 million US dollars. In total, the Netherlands has pledged to donate 470 million Euros to the Trust Fund, which is approximately 580 million dollars. This funding will be used in the next seven years to build Sint Maarten back better! said Prime Minister Romeo Marlin during the Press Briefing Three large projects are being implemented currently, Emergency Recovery Project I, the Emergency Income Support and Training Project and the Hospital Resilience project. The Emergency Recovery Project I repairs existing public shelters, supports the repairs of severely damaged houses and strengthens the emergency response capacities of our fire department and other first responders. The project also supports the Sint Maarten Housing Development Foundation and NV GEBE, and repairs a number of critical public buildings, including the Police Stations, the Fire Department and a number of damaged public schools. Over the past months, the Interim Recovery Committee, the World Bank and the Ministries within Government have been working very hard to prepare the technical documents for the first tenders of this project. The Prime Minister also stated, I already reported the publication of the tender for the urgently needed repairs of the Police Stations in Philipsburg and Simpson Bay. Im happy to announce today that the IRC has also published the tender for the first phase of the roof repair program that will be financed by the Trust Fund. This program will support the repairs of severely damaged houses of low income families and supplements the existing roof repair programs of the Sint Maarten Development Foundation, VROMI and UNDP. More tenders are expected to be launched by the IRC in the coming weeks. I would again like to encourage all interested parties to keep a close eye on the announcements of tenders. The necessary information can be found on the Governments website under the National Recovery tab and on the Facebook page of the National Recovery Program Bureau. Tenders are also published on the Governments Information page in the Daily Herald. The Government of Sint Maarten and the Sint Maarten Training Foundation are implementing the Emergency Income Support and Training Project, which serves to help hospitality, construction, and maritime workers who are unemployed or underemployed. Through the Training program, participants are provided with certification opportunities, income support and health insurance. More than 800 people are now enrolled in the program and recently 78 new students started with their training. Interested persons can still register for the program by contacting the Sint Maarten Training Foundation by sending an email to info@hospitalityfirst.sx or by calling (721) 520-7574. Do you know someone who might want to join this program, please tell them to contact the Training Foundation or the Labor Office of the Government of Sint Maarten! Let me repeat the main contact information, interested persons should send an email to info@hospitalityfirst.sx or call at (721) 520-7574. In addition to the projects that are being implemented right now, the Steering Committee of the Trust Fund has approved the preparation of four other projects in the areas of Emergency Debris Management, Enterprise Recovery, Solid Waste and airport reconstruction. On the Reconstruction of the airport, there has been a lot of rumors in the past week because of unsubstantiated reports by some media outlets. As Prime Minister, I cannot respond to fake news and false accusations. What I would like to stress is that this Government treats the reconstruction of the airport as a matter of the highest importance for the country and the region. In the coming period, the Minister TEATT, the airport company and myself will continue to work with the World Bank and the European Investment Bank to secure the necessary funding for the full recovery and strengthening of the airport said Prime Minister Leona Romeo Marlin. During the last meeting of the Steering Committee two weeks ago, the Netherlands, Sint Maarten and the World Bank agreed to move forward on the preparation of the Airport Reconstruction Project for an amount of 50 million US dollars. Co-financing for another 50 million US dollars is expected to come from the European Investment Bank. The Steering Committee also endorsed an assessment by the World Bank of the airports corporate governance, which is expected to generate recommendations on the strengthening of the governance of the airport. Prime Minister Romeo Marlin concluded the Press Briefing by saying, Our goal has and will continue to be that the airport is fully up and running as soon as possible. This Government remains focused and determined to work with the World Bank in searching for ways to speed up the projects that are financed by the Trust Fund, as the Trust Fund is and will continue to be our main source of funding for the recovery process. System error error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. context: ... 21: 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: 28: 29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25 /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951 /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17 /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149 Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fdfc412f8)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdf6f41a0)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fdfc412f8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdf6f41a0)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fdfc381a8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdf6f41a0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdf6f41a0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdf6f4710)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fdf6f3c90)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fdf6f3c90)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 System error error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. context: ... 21: 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: 28:
29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25 /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951 /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17 /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149 Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fe000ffa8)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe0090298)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fe000ffa8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe0090298)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fe001e4a0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe0090298)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe0090298)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdf6f49a8)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fe00fc3f0)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fe00fc3f0)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 System error error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. context: ... 21: 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: 28:
29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25 /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951 /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17 /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149 Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fdfc54528)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdfc44298)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fdfc54528)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdfc44298)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fdfc56680)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdfc44298)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdfc44298)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdf6f3b40)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fdf6ef888)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fdf6ef888)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 System error error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. context: ... 21: 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: 28:
29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25 /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951 /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17 /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149 Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fdffc00d8)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe00118e0)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fdffc00d8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe00118e0)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fe0011af0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe00118e0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe00118e0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fdf6f48a0)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fdfff0948)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fdfff0948)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 Almost all newspapers published in Kathmandu on Friday have given priority to reports related to the Supreme Courts decision on razing of unauthorised infrastructure on the banks of the Fewa lake in Pokhara. According to the newspapers, the Supreme Court has not made the text of the final verdict of the case, paving the way for authorities to take action. Heres a summary of important, ignored and interesting stories that made it to the front pages on Friday. Important 16 dead in Dadeldhura bus accident At least 16 people have died in bus accident in Dadelhdura on Thursday night. According to Annapurna Post, more than 30 people have also been injured. The report says that the bus belonging Peace Zone School in Doti was returning to Doti after passengers, most of them schoolchildren, after observing the local Ugra Tara fair. The report says that the bus, fell off the road near Raduwa, along the KI Singh Highway in far-western Nepal. Ignored Apex court orders Fewa banks cleared within six months The Supreme Court has ordered the government to remove within six months all structure build within 65m from the banks of the Fewa in Pokhara. The Himalayan Times says that the court has also ordered the government to build check dam within three years on the Harpan river and other rivers that flow into the lake. Republica reports that with the publication of the full text of the apex court ruling over a writ petition filed by advocated Khagendra Subedi on January 24, 2011, the government must also acquire private land outside the 65 m radius of the lake if it is deemed necessary to conserve the lake. Kantipur, meanwhile, reports that the Supreme Court verdict closes the lid on a proposed project to build a cable car system on the lake. Ignored Hospital illegally brought migrant workers in coma in Qatar in Kathmand Kantipur reports that a Nepali hospital illegally brought a Nepali migrant worker, who was in a coma in Qatar, to Kathmandu without the consent of the family concerned. The paper alleges that the Om Samaj Hospital in Kathmandu arranged the transportation of Lalit Bahadur Budha, who was admitted to the Hamad Hospital in Qatar after being injured in a workplace accident, for monetary gains. The paper says that a team of doctors from Hamad brought Budha to Kathmandu recently. The report also says that Qatar had been pressing Nepals embassy in Doha to make arrangements to send Budha home. Interesting Chinese-Nepali consortium to build Upper Marshyangdi The Kathmandu Post reports that a consortium of Chinese and Nepali companies has bought shares of the 600 MW Upper Marsyangdi hydropower project. Indian company GMR had been holding the license of the project for the last 11 years. The paper reports that the Chinese firms SCIG International, Xingcheng International Investment and QYEC International and Nepali firm Butwal Power Company have bought the shares of the company from GMR for around Rs 3 billion. The Indian firm has applied to the central bank to repatriate the amount. Kathmandu, November 23 Nepali Congress General Secretary Shasank Koirala says whether Nepal is to remain secular or revert to the Hindu state status is a decision that needs to be taken by a referendum. Koirala, who is the son of Nepali Congress doyen BP, said the referendum will have to be organised in the future. We are not saying we want a referendum immediately, but we need to hold a referendum after there is political stability in the country, added Koirala. This is not the first time that Koirala, an ophthalmologist, has made such a remark. Ever since he kicked off his campaign for party general secretary in 2016, he has been saying that the issue should be put to vote. Shasanks critics say that he has risen meteorically in the party just because he is BPs son, and in reality does not have what it takes to lead the party in the future. They also say that he still lives in the past, and has accepted the ground reality of the country. During an interview with the BBC just ahead of the partys convention, he said that Nepali Congress should revise its stance on key issues such as monarchy and federalism. Kathmandu, November 23 Asian Development Bank, one of the major development partners of the Nepal government, has called on the government to improve project implementation performance if it wants to further tap investment opportunities available from its donors. Improving the performance is the key to Nepal getting more funds for development, ADB Deputy Director General for South Asia, Diwesh Sharan, told government officials in Kathmandu on Friday. ADB has increased the annual lending level to Nepal from about $254 million a year on average during 20142016 to an annual average of $551 million in 20172018, he said during the annual tripartite portfolio review of ADB operations in Nepal, Improved portfolio performance will help the country to sustain and further tap opportunities of increased lending space provided by ADB. According to the ADB, Nepals overall project performance is lagging behind this year though it recorded the highest disbursement and contract awards in 2016 and 2017. Of the net available funding amount of $2.8 billion spread over 36 investment projects (31 loans and 5 grants), 44% is still to be contracted and 64% is still to be disbursed, an ADB statement reads. Meanwhile, the government expressed its commitment to formulating a realistic action plan to remove key constraints could accelerate the project implementation performance of the projects. Speaking at the meeting, the Ministry of Finances International Economic Cooperation Coordination Division chief Shree Krishna Nepal said, The ongoing federalism implementation process has posed some challenges along with the current inadequate fiduciary, technical, and project supervision capacity. Brazil's diplomacy at risk of rupture with Araujo appointment Brasilia, Nov 23 (AFP) Nov 23, 2018 Brazilian diplomacy is set to perform an abrupt 180-degree turn under new Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo, chosen by far-right president-elect Jair Bolsonaro for his views favoring the US while turning away from China as part of a fierce opposition to multilateralism. A little-known career diplomat who's never even held an ambassadorial role, the 51-year-old Araujo shares his new boss's passion for anti-China vitriol and skepticism over climate change. "The ideas he professes display a massive break" with diplomacy, said Fernanda Magnotta, a specialist in international relations at FAAP, one of the top higher education institutions in Sao Paulo. Once his surprise appointment was announced last week, analysts gorged on Araujo's Metapolitica 17 blog that raged "against globalization." Lauded as "a brilliant intellectual" by Bolsonaro, Araujo has been bold in his radical stances: chauvinism allied to the virulent rejection of multilateralism and "cultural Marxism" that has "influenced the scientific dogma of global warming." Brazil has "given up being a great power" due to its "obedience to the world order," Araujo says on his blog. "The ultimate aim of globalization is to break the link between God and man." - 'Trump can save the West' - Just like Bolsonaro, Araujo is a fervent admirer of US President Donald Trump, whom he believes can "save the West." He's even gone so far as to adapt Trump's "America First" slogan into "Brazil First." Such close ties between the two countries would allow Washington to further isolate its socialist foes Cuba and Venezuela, which enjoyed better relationships under Brazil's 13-year reign of the Workers Party (PT) or "Project Totalitarianism" as Araujo renamed it. And the closer ties to China that were encouraged under the PT's iconic but now-jailed leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will likely be reeled in unceremoniously. Araujo believes Brazil must resist a China "that will dominate the world." Bolsonaro had already alienated China by accusing the world's second biggest economy of "buying Brazil," and then turning his attentions to Taiwan, which he visited in February. Beijing considers Taiwan a renegade province. By burning bridges built under the Lula government, "we're going to see a very close alignment with the American regime," said Monica Herz, a professor of international relations at Rio de Janeiro's PUC Catholic university. "The relationships with Latin America could suffer. The biggest worry is China but also Europe," which Araujo has branded as "culturally empty." Bolsonaro, advised by Araujo, will be playing a dangerous game. "To ignore the importance of China or the Arab world could be devastating not just in diplomatic terms but also for the Brazilian economy," said Magnotta. Brazil is the largest exporter of halal meat and the pledged transfer of its Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is a deeply unpopular move -- one already taken by Trump -- amongst majority-Muslim Arab countries. Likewise, China's importance to Brazil's production industry is unquestionable. "In 2017, China was the first market for Brazilian exports with $47 billion in revenue, from soy to iron," said Magnotta. Alienating China would likely be an unpopular move in Brazil's Congress. Bolsonaro's controversial measures could face "strong resistance, in particular from his economic team and the agrobusiness lobby" whose support in Congress he needs to be able to govern. Similarly Araujo's own views face "strong opposition" in the foreign office where there is a "tradition based on the principles of multilateralism." - 'Criminalizing everything' - Araujo is unlikely to promote bilateral domestic political harmony either, as his hatred of the PT is rivaled only by Bolsonaro's. On his blog, he has accused the PT of "criminalizing everything that is good and pure: family, private property, heterosexual sex, belief in God and patriotism... even red meat, air conditioning, oil and all efficient and cheap energy" in the name of global warming. Bolsonaro, who pledged to quit the Paris Climate Accord, now has a powerful fellow global warming skeptic at his side. For Herz, Araujo was picked because he "clearly expresses the world vision" that Bolsonaro espouses. "They were looking for someone who speaks to their foundation, with ultra-conservative values and strong interaction between religion and politics." According to Herz, Araujo's presence in the Bolsonaro government will only serve to ensure that Brazil's "relationships with many parties around the world will suffer." Iran says no trust in Trump's US for new nuclear talks Rome, Nov 22 (AFP) Nov 22, 2018 Iran sees no point in fresh nuclear talks with the US without guarantees it will not renege on any deal made, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Thursday. US President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May, branding the deal to restrict Iran's nuclear work a "disaster". Iran continues to stick to the terms of the deal, and European nations also continue to support it and engage with Iran. But Zarif said that without guarantees, Trump's US could not be trusted for any further talks. "If we are to make an agreement with the United States, what is the guarantee that the agreement will last after the flight? You remember Canada?" he said, referring to Trump's withdrawal of his signature from a G7 summit closing statement in June after his plane left host Canada. "How are we to be confident that the signature stays on the paper?" Zarif told the MED Dialogues conference in Rome. Sweeping new American sanctions against Iran, which came into effect on November 5, have raised fears about whether the deal can survive. Iran has said the future of the JCPOA would be called into question if it no longer received the economic benefits of the deal. The deal envisaged sanctions on Iran being lifted in return for it accepting IAEA inspections and limits on its nuclear activities. "We spent two-and-a-half years, this is not a two-page document, this is not a picture opportunity. This is a 150-page document," Zarif said of the deal, suggesting that Trump's objection was based on his "hatred" for former president Barack Obama. "Why should we resume another talk just because somebody doesn't like it, just because somebody hates his predecessor? That's not the reason you engage in diplomacy, diplomacy is a serious game and we are ready for a serious game." The remaining five signatories to the JCPOA -- Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia -- have backed an EU effort to set up a special payment system in an attempt to continue trade and business ties with Iran. However, some European companies have already pulled out of Iran. Earlier this month senior EU officials admitted that the mechanism was proving difficult to set up. Trump hints could make first visit to troops in Afghanistan Palm Beach, United States, Nov 22 (AFP) Nov 22, 2018 US President Donald Trump hinted on Thursday he might soon visit American troops in Afghanistan for the first time. Addressing servicemembers in a Thanksgiving telephone conference, the president told one colonel deployed to the country: "I'll see you back when you're in the United States or maybe I'll see you over there." Questioned later by journalists on whether he would make the trip, the president simply said: "At the appropriate time, we'll be doing some very interesting thing." While 14,000 US military personnel remain deployed in Afghanistan 17 years after the war began in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Republican president has yet to make a visit after nearly two years in office. Presidential trips to conflict zones are usually kept secret until the last minute. Trump also said the US is currently in "very, very strong negotiations" regarding Afghanistan. "We are talking about peace," he said, without explicitly confirming if those talks were directly with the Taliban. "If something happens, that would be a great thing. I would be very happy about that," he added. The Taliban say they have had at least three meetings with US officials in Qatar in recent months, but the US has neither confirmed nor denied these direct talks. The US special adviser to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, said recently he was cautiously optimistic about the possibility of a peace agreement ahead of the country's election on April 20. Finland halts arms sales to Saudi, UAE over Yemen crisis Helsinki, Nov 23 (AFP) Nov 23, 2018 Finland announced late on Thursday it will block new arms export licences to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, citing the murder of a Saudi journalist and the countries' role in Yemen's humanitarian crisis. The suspension mirrors earlier decisions by Denmark, Norway and Germany to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia for the time being over the killing and over the kingdom's part in Yemen's war which has left 14 million people facing starvation, according to the UN. "The situation in Yemen was behind this decision, but of course (the murder of Khashoggi) was part of the overall rationale," Prime Minister Juha Sipila told state broadcaster Yle. A Saudi and Emirati-led coalition has been conducting air strikes on Yemen since 2015. UN investigators have accused the regimes of possible war crimes, including killing thousands of civilians, torturing detainees and recruiting child soldiers. In September the website News Now Finland uncovered video evidence that Finnish-made armoured vehicles, some fitted with Russian heavy weapons, were being used by Emirati forces in western Yemen, the scene of some of the war's fiercest fighting. Finland had claimed that all weapons exports to the region were in line with EU rules. Finnish arms exports to Saudi Arabia totalled 5.3 million euros in 2017, down considerably from 51.4m of sales in 2014, according to the think tank SaferGlobe. On Thursday Sipila described the situation in Yemen as "catastrophic". "Any existing licences (in the region) are old, and in these circumstances we would absolutely not be able to grant any new ones," he said. Unlike Finland, Germany's suspension -- announced in October -- includes revoking existing arms licences to Saudi Arabia. At the time, Berlin called for EU countries to follow its lead, prompting a dismissive response from French President Emmanuel Macron. On Monday, Germany decided to bar 18 Saudis from entering its territory and Europe's Schengen passport-free zone over their alleged links to the murder of the US-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi, who wrote for The Washington Post and had been critical of Prince Mohammed, was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, killed and reportedly dismembered. After lengthy denials, Saudi authorities admitted responsibility and said 21 people had been taken into custody. However, a CIA analysis leaked to the US media went further, reportedly pointing the finger at the crown prince. Kathmandu, November 23 Members of the Nepal Telecom Workers Union have accused the government of leading the company into its biggest crisis in history The union members, who submitted a memo to the Ministry of Information and Communication, said that the government needs to appoint an executive director immediately. The company has been running without a chief executive for the last eight months. The union has accused the government of blatantly interfering in the appointment of the companys managing director even as regulations say that the post needs to be filled through open competition. The government has tried to limit the autonomy of the company. The board of directors should get to run the company autonomously, they said in the memo. The union has threatened to resort to stringent protests if the government does not heed its demands soon. Interview with Suspected 9/11 Recruiter 'I Didn't Know Anything, With God As My Witness.' German national Mohammed Haydar Zammar has known them all: Osama bin Laden, the Hamburg terror cell that perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and members of Islamic State. In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, he speaks for the first time with journalists inside a Kurdish prison. Kathmandu, November 23 The International Relations and Labour Committee in the House of Representatives has formed a subpanel to investigate into suspected irregularities in the purchase of two wide body aircraft for Nepal Airlines Corporation, the countrys national flag carrier. A meeting of the Committee held in Kathmandu on Friday formed the three member committee. Main opposition Nepali Congress lawmaker Prakash Man Singh leads the team, which includes ruling Nepal Communist Partys Narad Muni Rana and Federal Socialist Forum Nepals Renuka Gurung as members. The team has been mandated to submit its report to the Committee within next one month. Earlier, the Committee had discussed the issue with Civil Aviation Minister Rabindra Adhikari and NAC General Manager Sugat Ratna Kansakar among other officials. Minister Adhikari has expressed his commitment to extending needful support to the probe. Brussels, November 23, 2018 (SPS) - The European Parliaments Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) affirmed that its vote, in Wednesdays meeting, on the proposal of the Councils decision relating to the conclusion of an agreement in the form of exchanging letters between the European Union (EU) and Morocco, concerning the modification of protocol 1 and 4 of the Euro-Mediterranean association agreement between EU and Morocco, doesnt mean at all the recognition of Moroccos sovereignty over the territory of Western Sahara, said Sahrawi Deputy Minister for Europe . Western Sahara is a self-governing territory subject to the United Nations resolutions in terms of decolonization, said Sidati. While commenting this decision, the Sahrawi official said that despite the forcing of the European Commission and some member States like France and Spain, AFET noted that this doesnt mean at all the recognition of Moroccos sovereignty over the territory of Western Sahara, underlining that it is a self-governing territory subject to the United Nations resolutions in terms of decolonization which involve the inalienable right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination. It insisted on the fact that EUs position still consists in ensuring its full support to the United Nations efforts to reach a fair and lasting solution enabling the Sahrawi people to exercise their right to self-determination, in accordance with the international law, the United Nations Charter and its relevant resolutions, said Sidati. AFET Committee expressed its full support to the personal envoy of the United Nations Secretary General for Western Sahara Horst Kohler, in his willingness to bring the parties to negotiations without pre-conditions and in good faith, he added. (SPS) 062/SPS/APS Brussels, November 23, 2018 (SPS) - The European Parliament hosted a conference on the effects of EU-Morocco agreement on the United Nations settlement process of the conflict in Western Sahara, in which the decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Parliament (CJEU) and the relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council were underlined. The participants in this conference, organized Thursday at the headquarters of the European Parliament, highlighted CJEUs decisions affirming that Morocco and Western Sahara are two separate territories and that any agreement between EU and Morocco involving Western Sahara and its natural resources, without the Sahrawi peoples consent, is null and void and constitutes a blatant violation of the international law. In this regard, the participants broached the European Commissions attempts to circumvent these decisions, notably by designating some Moroccan associations as representatives of the Sahrawi people, which is inconsistent with CJEUs decisions, affirming that any agreement involving Western Sahara must obtain the consent of the Sahrawi people and their legitimate and only representative, the Polisario Front, in accordance with the resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly of 1979 and 1980. They also examined the legal status of Western Sahara and UN relevant decision, including the last decision of the Security Council 2440 which reiterates the support to the approaches of UN envoy Horst Kohler, in order to reach a peaceful solution to Western Saharas conflict, enabling the Sahrawi people to exercise their right to self-determination, in accordance with UN principles and objectives. This conference, which is led by the Polisario Fronts lawyer Gilles Devers, vice-president of the European parliament and member of trade commission, the head of group for peace in Western Sahara at the European Parliament as well as Sahrawi activist Mahfoud Bechraya, takes place at a moment when the European companies attend a major debate on the effects of the agreements concluded between Morocco and the Polisario Front on the settlement process, backed by UN in Western Sahara. (SPS) 062/SPS/APS Nick Pyke from The Foundation for Arable Research (FAR) in New Zealand gave delegates a refreshing and salutary picture of changes in the countrys agricultural production and environment after the UK joined the EU back in 1973. The phasing out of subsidies, and the need to increase profitability focusing on $/ha/day earned immediately challenged the agricultural industry. Nicks recommendation to the UK was to be prepared for transformational change from Brexit and not to waste a good crisis. Ludovic Bonin from ARVALIS delivered clear messages about the impact of Frances political decision to ban glyphosate by 2020. He emphasised that glyphosate is an essential tool for facilitating crop rotations, with all the benefits that they bring. Alternatives to this herbicide are both ineffective and unworkable. A ban will cost the French economy 1Billion Euros and drive a huge increase on CO2 emissions. Henry Dieudonne-Demaria of the Natural Capital Committee outlined elements in the forthcoming Environment Bill designed to deliver a Green Brexit, with Defras commitments to transform the rural environment, improve nature and the rural landscape, to educate and improve health and life chances. As part of the 25 Year Environment Plan, Defra is launching a 2019 - Year of Green Action campaign to engage young people with the environment. The Bill will contain the objective to protect crops, whilst reducing the environmental impact of pesticides and of course this raised the question of how adequate protection will be delivered and measured - and how proposed environmental actions will be balanced with food production. Dave Bench of HSE gave valuable insights on how agrochemical regulation might look in both Deal and No Deal scenarios. With any Deal, common rules and EU law will initially continue to apply to the UK. A Future Economic Partnership would then be established, including alignment with the EU regulations on goods, including agri-food inputs and outputs. Like many others, breeders and users of the all-purpose North of England Mule gimmer lamb, which remains Britains most prolific sheep breed in terms of numbers and also the countrys most popular commercial sheep, were particularly hard hit. High profile annual ewe lamb sales at northern auctions marts this autumn failed to reach the heady heights seen in 2017 in terms of both numbers sold and overall selling averages. The feedback from these marts is very similar and tells its own story of a tough and challenging season. BENTHAM A total of 13,691 gimmer lambs were sold at the two Bentham Auction Mart fixtures this year, compared to 15,378 in 2017, down 10% on the year. NEMSA lambs at the first sale averaged 76.79, a fall of 23.97 on the previous years admittedly very strong sale, and 66.42 at the second sale, down by 16.39. Auctioneer Stephen Dennis said: The bumper prices recorded for prime hoggetts during March-May, 2018, caused many farmers to presume that gimmer shearlings would be in short supply and, consequently, a big trade was anticipated, following which it was naturally presumed that gimmer lambs would be dearer, particularly bearing in mind a reduced supply due to a poorer lamb crop. Personally, I neither saw, nor heard of many Mule gimmer hoggs being slaughtered in the Spring, so shearlings were as plentiful as ever. When canvassing potential shearling buyers, it soon became apparent that the wet autumn, winter and spring, coupled with The Beast from the East, had already made up their minds to reduce flock numbers. When the summer drought started to bite, the shearling trade set off at Thame on a flat note and gradually capitulated. As gimmer lamb buyers were contacted, the response of cant sell our shearlings. no grass wont be coming was repeated over and over. The rest is history. BARNARD CASTLE/ST JOHNS CHAPEL Barnard Castle & Teesdale Farmers Auction Market Co reported that breeding sheep sales in Teesdale and Weardale got off to a better than expected start with the Mule shearlings fixture at Barnard Castle Mart and while the sale average of 126.90 was 17.22 down on the year stronger sheep were a marvellous trade. Next on the agenda was the Barnard Castle Mule gimmer lamb sale, where an entry of 4,500 head averaged 90.27. While down 13.53 on 2017, this would be one of the best averages achieved this season, said to be due to the consistency in quality. The Weardale sale at St Johns Chapel Mart for slightly later born lambs from very high farms saw an overall average for the 2,100 Mule gimmer lambs on parade of 81.26, only 3 down on 2017. Managing director and auctioneer Libby Bell commented: Autumn 2018 has been a difficult season. The dry summer and lack of grass resulted in Mule shearlings being difficult to place, particularly at the earlier sales, and the anticipation of winter costs and lack of fodder have certainly knocked confidence, resulting in the drop in prices for the breeding sheep. However, our two Dales marts have achieved very satisfactory sales and I feel this is down to a number of factors - the stockmanship and quality of the animals presented, which is a credit to all the vendors, and the support of the buyers both regular and new. A tremendous atmosphere has prevailed at all the sales and this is down to the enthusiasm and goodwill of all concerned. Auction marts are the backbone of the livestock Industry. Dont forget - use us or loose us. CARLISLE /LAZONBY/ KIRKBY STEPHEN/MIDDLETON-IN-TEESDALE There was a similar story from Harrison & Hetherington in relation to its NEMSA gimmer lamb sales at Carlisle, Lazonby, Kirkby Stephen and Middleton-in-Teesdale. At Carlisle, 2,094 lambs were sold at an average of 97.74, down 4.94 on the year, compared to 2,248 head in 2017 at 102.68. The first Lazonby Alston Moor sale saw 7,786 lambs sold at an average of 80.94, down 14 on the year, compared to 9,039 head in 2017, with the third Lazonby sale seeing 3,799 NEMSA lambs go under the hammer at an overall average of 61.13, compared to the previous years 3,130 head and average of 77.51, representing a fall of 16.38. Auctioneer James Little said: Top end tupping lambs met a strong local and national trade similar to last years rates. However, due to the poor demand for shearlings in the south, smaller running lambs were much more difficult to sell. The total number of NEMSA gimmer lambs sold at Kirkby Stephen and Middleton this year was 11,677, a fall of 12% on the year, with the vast majority, namely 9,419 head compared to 10.498 in 2017, sold at Kirkby at an average of 86.44, down 17.38 on the year. The overall average for both sales together was 84.85, a fall of 16% on the year. Mark Richardson, livestock manager and auctioneer at Kirkby Stephen, commented: A major contributing factor to this was the extreme drought through summer, particularly in the southern regions, which meant many producers down there had either poor or no trade for their shearlings, which had a direct effect on demand for gimmer lambs. Also, many were still dry and actually short of grass to buy lambs, even when the lamb sales came around. In addition, Im sure we still suffered from the extreme bad winter/spring weather conditions, especially in lambing time 2018, which I feel made many sheep farmers think twice about keeping more sheep, with many opting to not replace as many ewes and even cut back on their flock size. CCM SKIPTON Skipton Auction Marts first Mule gimmer lamb sale saw the 6,064 head forward average 91.21 overall , down 6.87 on the previous year, with the 7,628 on offer at the second sale trading to an overall average of 71.72 (-20.20). At Skiptons third, fourth fifth sales, a further 6,600 Mule gimmer lambs sold at averages of 59 to 63. CCMs livestock sales manager Ted Ogden noted: Its fair to say that the run up to the first sale this year was probably one of the most uncertain for many years, with several external factors, mainly weather related, having a downward effect on the breeding sheep trade countrywide. The average was down on the year, but by no means as much as most would have expected" It was the following sales which took the largest hits on average prices, as the deepening drought conditions took their toll on potential buyers across the south and midland counties. Strong tupping lambs and smart well-bred lambs generally held their prices better than a second quality running lamb did and maybe this reflected some purchasers desire to have Mule lambs, even in the face of adversity, so long as the quality was right. The Mule sheep still retains her status as the best ewe for finishing a set of twin Down or Continental-cross lambs off grass by early summer on a cost-effective system, and she still remains the ewe of choice for many lowland farmers. However, when breeding and promoting the North of England Mule we must remember her roots and a main purpose as a commercial prime lamb producer. COCKERMOUTH At Cockermouth, Mitchells Auction Marts great annual show and sale of Mule gimmer lambs attracted 7,560 NEMSA entries, which averaged 77.07, compared to 7,800 the previous year at an average of 90.91. ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Wednesday showed keen interest in greater collaboration with Malaysia in its high-tech industry. It also decided to learn from Malaysias experience in fighting corruption and ways to achieve economic success, as their leaders discussed trade imbalance and agreed on holding regular talks to strengthen bilateral relations. Prime Minister Imran Khan and his Malaysian counterpart Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad who met at the Perdana Square, Prime Minister Office, Putrajaya after a round of bilateral discussions in a statement made to the press expressed satisfaction over their talks that covered a wide range of bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual interests. Imran Khan said he was particularly keen to meet Dr Mahathir to learn from his experiences in building up his countrys economy, the way he turned it around and raised its GDP. He said both their governments got a mandate from their people to fight corruption and said Pakistan would like to learn from Malaysias experiences and accomplishments. He said Pakistan would also like to learn from Malaysia how it coped with its debt crisis and how to optimally exploit its untapped tourism potential. Dr Mahathir said his country would also take up Pakistans desire for a dialogue partner in the ASEAN Forum. Prime Minister Mahathir recalled the traditional friendship between Pakistan and Malaysia and said they discussed ways to further boost their bilateral ties in all areas. He said Imran Khan was the first world leader to have visited Malaysia, since he took his office. He said they talked about ties in finance, investment, tourism, halal food industry. Mahathir said he has also accepted an invitation to visit Pakistan and attend the 23rd March Pakistan Day parade. Imran Khan was on a two-day official visit to Malaysia at the invitation of Tun Mahathir Mohamad. He was earlier accorded a warm reception when he arrived at the Prime Minister Office. He reviewed a guard of honour and was introduced to the members of Cabinet by Dr Mahathir Mohamad. A joint statement issued here from the Foreign Office said both leaders held fruitful and in-depth discussions, in a warm and cordial atmosphere. Both the leaders welcomed continued efforts to intensify cooperation between Malaysia and Pakistan and underpinned their shared desire to strengthen bilateral economic ties. They also agreed to expand trade and investment, create favourable conditions for commerce and business in both countries, particularly in palm oil, agri products, food retail, halal products, automotive parts, energy, science and technology, and telecommunication. While the sole electric provider company in Malaysia, Tenaga Nasional Berhad was also open to business opportunities with Pakistan including in renewable energy. The two leaders welcomed the establishment of Bilateral Consultation between the senior officials of both Ministries of Foreign Affairs to intensify engagements between both sides. The first Bilateral Consultation in this regard will be held in Islamabad next year. Dr Mahathir Mohamad reiterated Malaysias commitment to assist Pakistan in addressing its energy shortfall in view of the Inter-Governmental Agreement on Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) between Malaysia and Pakistan signed in November 2017. Imran Khan welcomed Malaysias cooperation in LNG and other energy sectors including hydroelectric and renewable resources. Recognising Malaysias success in the high-tech industry hub in the northern state of Penang, Pakistan highlighted its intention to explore greater collaboration between high-tech industries in Malaysia and Pakistan. Malaysia invited Pakistani companies to invest in Malaysia in both manufacturing and services sectors where the companies were able to leverage Malaysias strategic location in expanding their investments into ASEAN and the Asia Pacific regions. Pakistan invited potential Malaysian companies to explore the possibility of investing in Special Economic Zones to take advantage of Pakistans strategic location at the crossroads of Central, South and West Asia. Malaysia also took note of the massive counter terrorism efforts that Pakistan has successfully undertaken in an effort to eliminate terrorism, the joint statement said. Referring to the Malaysia-Pakistan Closer Economic Partnership Agreement (MPCEPA) signed on November 8, 2007 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Pakistan recognised the importance of regular discussions to strengthen the trade relationship in key sectors and addressing bilateral trade imbalance. Imran Khan and Tun Mahathir Mohamad welcomed continuing efforts to further enhance bilateral economic relations and underscored importance of these efforts in advancing cooperation between Malaysia and Pakistan.They said look forward to a possible MPCEPA Joint Committee Meeting in the near future with the intention to enhance further economic partnership. Both leaders reaffirmed the importance of the Memorandum of Understanding on Defence Cooperation and said they looked forward to the 13th Joint Committee on Defence Cooperation (JCDC) which will be convened in 2019 in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia invited Pakistan to participate in the upcoming Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace Exhibition (LIMA) in 2019. Pakistan also welcomed Malaysias participation in the upcoming Defence Expo IDEAS- 2018.In this regard, Prime Minister Imran Khan welcomed Malaysias cooperation in LNG and other energy sectors including hydroelectric and renewable resources. The two leaders agreed on the need to enhance educational ties between Malaysia and Pakistan and agreed that close cooperation on education and training are critical elements of the next phase of the relationship. Both sides acknowledged the importance of the tourism industry and youth exchanges in promoting greater people-to-people contacts, sustainable socio-economic growth, and in fostering mutual understanding between the two countries. The two sides also reaffirmed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the Recruitment of Pakistan Workers signed in Islamabad, Pakistan on October 20, 2003. Dr Mahathir Mohamad conveyed Malaysias readiness to share its experience and expertise in the halal industry. Both leaders agreed to share information and best practices in this endeavour, while noting the momentum building up worldwide for better quality products and services as consumers gain confidence in the halal process. The two leaders agreed to increase their collaborative efforts to uphold the true values of Islam in international fora while strengthening the solidarity of the Muslim Ummah. They reaffirmed their commitment to collaborate more closely on issues affecting the Muslim world including taking joint efforts in underscoring Muslim sensitivities in attacking Muslim holy personalities and religious belief. Both stressed that terrorism cannot be associated with any religion or belief. Imran and Dr Mahathir also exchanged views on the situation in Palestine and Rakhine State, Myanmar involving Rohingya Muslims. On the Palestinian issue, both countries agreed to contribute positively in other forums, especially in the OIC Committee of Six on Palestine, of which Malaysia and Pakistan are members. Imran briefed Mahathir on the grave human rights situation in Indian occupied Kashmir and in this regard referred to the Reports of UNOHCHR, Amnesty International, International Peoples Tribunal and All Parties Parliamentary Kashmir Group, the UK. He also discussed the role of OIC Contact Group on Kashmir to highlight the issue, the statement said. He congratulated Mahathir on his electoral victory and commended the smooth and peaceful transition of power from the previous government. Mahathir also congratulated Imran Khan on his recent resounding election as the new Prime Minister of Pakistan and wished Pakistan greater progress in its national development under the new government. Both leaders acknowledged the long history of close cooperation between both countries since Malaysias independence. The Malaysian side recalled the contribution by Justice Abdul Hameed of Pakistan, member of the Reid Commission, in the drafting of the Malaysian constitution. Both Leaders reaffirmed the commitment to strengthen the partnership which meets the interests of both countries. In setting the tone and future direction of bilateral relations between the two countries, both leaders stressed the importance of exchanges of visits at all levels, with a view to further expand the depth of bilateral relations. Imran expressed deep appreciation and sincere gratitude to Mahathir and the people of Malaysia for their warm welcome and generous hospitality extended to him and his delegation during their stay in Malaysia. Later the leaders witnessed the signing of the Partial Visa Abolishment Agreement (PVAA) to reinforce the positive momentum in the bilateral relationship by broadening contact at the officials level between the two countries.APP 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. The life-saving actions of a quick-thinking American man during a visit to Stratford, have seen him honoured with a special award from Warwickshire Police. Washington State resident Mitch Mellott administered life-saving first aid to a 32-year-old Kineton man on Bridge Street on 5 July, after the victim was assaulted. Mitch ensured the injured mans airways were kept clear while he waited for the emergency services arrived. Mr Mellott was nominated for a Chief Superintendent's Commendation which was presented to him at his local police department in Federal Way by Chief of Police Andy Hwang. Chief Superintendent Ben Smith of Warwickshire Police said: "Mitch's quick thinking helped to save the man's life. He then stayed with him until paramedics arrived. "We're extremely grateful for the care he provided and the support he gave to police officers when they arrived. The final quarter of 2021 is on its way and theres so much positivity about the rapid growth of the... RECORDER REPORT ISLAMABAD: The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet has allowed import of cotton from Afghanistan/ Central Asian states via land route through Torkham border with the objective to bridge demand and supply gap of local textile sector. Sources said that ECC meeting presided over by Finance Minister Asad Umar was informed about the new revenue slabs created for special commercial (Roti Tandoor etc) consumers. Sourced added that according to a summary to this effect submitted by the Ministry of Energy, the slab structure for domestic sector was also made applicable for special commercial (Roti Tandoor) consumers consuming up to 400 cubic metre of gas per month while for consumer having consumption of over 400 cubic metre of gas in any month and gas sale price for normal commercial consumers has been made applicable for entire volume. With regard to applicability of revised gas sale price to special commercial consumers (Roti Tandoor etc), the ministry was directed to create a new revenue slab. The meeting was informed that there are a total of 417 special commercial consumers using up-to 400 cubic metre of gas with total volume being consumed by them is 6,691 mmbtu. The ministry stated that previous revenue for up to 400 cubic meter of gas consumers was Rs 1.3 million while revised revenue is Rs 1.5 million, reflecting an increase of Rs 0.2 million. Those special commercial consumers using above 400 cubic meter of gas are 2,792 consumers and gas consumption by them is 456,994 mmbtu. Total revenue from them previously was Rs 319.9 million while revised revenue is Rs 447.8 million, showing an increase of Rs 127.9 million. The meeting was informed that above revision in the sale price will generate incremental revenue for the Sui companies whereas the Special Roti Tandoors consuming gas up to 400 cubic meters will have minimum impact on sale price. The ECC also approved a proposal of Ministry of Commerce and Textile seeking import of cotton from Torkham border contingent to that all sanitary and phytosanitary regulations shall be abided. The ECC also directed the relevant ministries to engage with the industry for establishment of a permanent quarantine facility for cotton imported through land route. The ministry stated that a delegation of All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) and Pakistan Textile Exporters Association (PTEA) met with the Advisor to the Prime Minister on Commerce, Textile Industry & Production and Investment on November 12, 2018 and raised the issue of import of cotton from Central Asian Republic and Afghanistan through land. Due to sensitivity of the issue, the advisor to the prime minister called an inter-ministerial meeting on November 15, 2018 to deliberate upon the issue. The Ministry of National Food Security and Research was of the view that cotton is a sensitive crop. It attracts variety of pests and requires a pest scouting from the importing country and for that a fumigation process is a must to counter such threats. Further, for majority of cotton, Afghanistan is only a transit route and for that purpose pest scouting of Central Asian States would also be required otherwise there would be a great threat of new pests harming domestic cotton. Last year, a special dispensation was given on political / commercial basis during a meeting between secretary commerce Pakistan and deputy minister commerce Afghanistan It was highlighted by secretary food security during the meeting that for sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS), a lot of efforts were done by the Plant Protection Department last year. The said facility is also not available at Torkham and even Afghanistan did not arrange the pest scouting visit of Plant Protection Department of Pakistan to cotton growing areas of Afghanistan and couldnt develop an English-based template. The APTMA was of the view that under the Quarantine Rules, only American cotton is subject to quarantine process therefore such regulations are not applicable on Afghanistan and Central Asian States cotton; however; officials of Ministry of National Food Security and Research were of the view that origin of such cotton is also America. The APTMA was of the view that American cotton is defined on area basis not on genetics. Further, the APTMA offered to undertake fumigation process at Torkham and build such facilities at Torkham either by their resources or from funds of the Export Development Fund (EDF). The ECC while considering a proposal of Ministry of Industries and Production approved a grant of Rs 1,066.078 million for payment of outstanding dues (provident fund, gratuity and payroll dues) to families of deceased employees of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM), allowed sale of 200,000 tonnes of wheat from the surplus stocks available with PASSCO to Poultry Association of Pakistan (PPA). Secretary Ministry of National Food Security shared with the meeting a report on value chain of sugar. The ECC took note of the issue of pending payments to sugarcane growers as well as difficulties faced by the millers in view of surplus stocks, possibility of their export and redressal of liquidity issues. The committee directed minister of national food security and adviser industries to hold meeting with the Pakistan Sugar Mills Association (PSMA) and resolve these issues. The ECC also held deliberations on the proposed plan of Ministry of Energy for gas load management during winter season and decided to have further discussions in the matter at the next meeting to finalise the plan. As part of the events organised to mark its second anniversary last week, the 'Casa de la Memoria La Sauceda' in Jimena de la Frontera, which is a Civil War information and research centre, paid tribute to the people of Gibraltar for the help and support given to Spanish refugees during the Civil War. Gibraltar saved the lives of more than 5,000 refugees by taking them in at the very start of the war, and many of them were housed in a makeshift camp on the site which later became the airport. Some Gibraltarians risked their own lives by setting off by boat at night to rescue people from the Spanish shore and then housed them in their own homes, sometimes 20 or 30 at a time. At the time the population of Gibraltar was around 18,000, so this was a considerable strain on resources. Although most refugees moved on to other countries or to safer parts of Spain, about 400 remained permanently in Gibraltar. The event at the Casa de la Memoria on Wednesday 14 November included a presentation of awards to different people from the Gibraltar of today. In the absence of the Chief Minister, who was away taking part in the Brexit negotiations, Gibraltar's Minister for Culture, Steven Linares, was there to receive the distinction on behalf of the people of Gibraltar. Another distinction was presented to the Unite union, whose members in the Gibraltar shipyard rebuilt a republican ship, the Jose Luis Diez, in their own time and without payment, after it took refuge in the port after being attacked by the Franco fleet as it passed through the Strait of Gibraltar in 1938. A distinction was also presented to Aida Barea, whose 16-year-old brother was among those killed during a protest in La Linea, and whose family took refuge in Gibraltar in 1936 because they feared that her father would also be a target. Tito Benady, an 89-year-old Gibraltarian historian who still remembers very clearly how hundreds of people from La Linea suddenly arrived on the beach in Gibraltar where he and his mother were enjoying a peaceful day, was also presented with an award. There was also a distinction (collected by his sons Michael and Jaime) for Jose Netto, managing historian at the Gibraltar union, who says he learned a great deal from Spanish union representatives and refugees from the Campo de Gibraltar area. The event concluded with the screening of the documentary 'Gibraltar 1936'. Fabian Picardo, Gibraltar's chief minister, warned a few weeks ago that there would be a period of "peaks and troughs" ahead before the withdrawal agreement between the UK and EU over Brexit was sealed. This week his words have proven to be almost prophetic; in fact, the term 'rollercoaster' almost seems more apt. There was positive news very recently when Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez announced that Gibraltar was not going to be a problem in the negotiations because agreement had been reached over the Gibraltar Protocol which has to be attached to the UK/EU withdrawal agreement. The Gibraltar government, which has been negotiating Brexit directly with Spain and with the UK, also explained that work was continuing on several Memoranda of Understanding and these had almost been agreed, but pointed out that, in any case, they are separate from the withdrawal agreement and neither depended on the other. Meanwhile, Theresa May appeared to have backing for the UK's withdrawal agreement, and it was expected to be ratified at a special European Council meeting on Sunday. Gibraltar wording Spanish foreign minister Josep Borrell said earlier this week, however, that Spain wanted the wording to be changed, because it was not happy about Article 184. This states that "the EU and the United Kingdom shall make every effort, in good faith and with full respect for their respective legal systems, to adopt the measures necessary to negotiate rapidly the agreements governing their future relationship." Claiming that this had been sneaked into the text by EU negotiators without Spain's knowledge, Borrell insisted that "future negotiations on Gibraltar are separate negotiations" and demanded that the text be amended to specify that Gibraltar's future relationship with the EU be decided bilaterally between the UK and Spain, similar to Clause 24 in the EU negotiating guidelines. The UK government replied that it would not exclude Gibraltar from negotiations on the final relationship, whereupon Pedro Sanchez said that unless the withdrawal agreement and political declaration included the clause, he would not ratify them. In itself, this is not that important for the UK or Gibraltar. The draft withdrawal agreement does not need unanimous approval, just a simple majority in the EU Parliament and 20 out of 27 member states, representing 65 per cent of the population of EU27, in the European Council. However, other EU states were also indicating that there were things in the agreement that they were not happy with either. On Wednesday evening Theresa May said she had spoken with the Spanish prime minister and was confident that by Sunday a deal could be reached that delivered for "the whole UK family including Gibraltar". On Thursday it was announced that the political declaration, which gives a rough outline of how UK-EU trade, security and other issues will work after Brexit, had been "agreed in principle". It is not legally binding. However, it does not mention Gibraltar and it appears that the draft withdrawal agreement has not been changed as Spain had requested. In Gibraltar, the chief minister seemed equally confident. Addressing parliament on Thursday afternoon he explained that the Memoranda of Understanding had now been finalised subject to last-minute legal checks, and said that "desite the threats, Gibraltar will be part of any withdrawal agreement and transitional arrangement if there is one". So now, it is really down to Theresa May. She returns to Brussels on Saturday for further talks with EU Commission president Jean Claude Juncker, and if the European Council ratifies the deal and political declaration on Sunday she has to try to persuade British MPs to back it. If they do, which is not at all certain, it goes to the European Parliament to be ratified, and the UK and Gibraltar leave the EU on 29 March next year, and start negotiating over the future. If not, watch this space. His favourite number is seven, but perhaps from now on it will be eight, for 2018 and the number of years Dani Garcia has had to wait to make history. He did that on Wednesday by becoming the first chef in Malaga with three Michelin stars, after being awarded the third for the restaurant which bears his name at the Puente Romano. He was emotional when presented with the award at the gala at the Carlos Lopes pavilion in Lisbon. "I'm so happy," he said, to resounding applause from his colleagues. "I can't wait to get back to Marbella and celebrate with my family and my team. The fact that two of us in Andalucia now have three stars says a great deal. Today we can party, and tomorrow we have to reflect upon what we have done so far, and think about how to continue working in future". The Michelin Guide inspectors awarded Dani Garcia a third star for his "unique way of reformulating Andalusian cuisine in contemporary fashion, so that each dish tells a different story based on a product strongly linked with local tradition". This was the biggest news in the 2019 edition of the Michelin Guide for Spain and Portugal, but Malaga province is well represented, thanks to Jose Carlos Garcia (who has the only Michelin star in Malaga city); El Lago, Messina and Skina, in Marbella; Sollo (Fuengirola); Bardal (Ronda); and Kabuki Raw (Casares). They all retained their stars, but one is especially happy: Marcos Granda, of Skina, who has also achieved his first star in Madrid for Clos, the restaurant he opened there barely a year ago. Jose Carlos Garcia, recommended in the Bib Gourmand (good food for under 35 euros) category for the renovated Cafe de Paris, which his parents ran for nearly 40 years, was also delighted. "It is fantastic news for the whole family," he said. Michelin Guide international director, Gwendal Poullenec, presents Dani Garcia with his third star. / SUR New stars for Andalucia The new Guide has awarded two new stars in Andalucia, one to Baga in Jaen for its traditional and contemporary cuisine based on local products, and the other to Lu Cocina y Alma in Jerez, "where diners are transported into the world of Alice in Wonderland with an original fusion of French and Andalusian gastronomy". In total, Andalucia now boasts 22 Michelin stars (ten in Malaga province) and 39 Bib Gourmand recommendations (six in Malaga), with Aponiente and Dani Garcia Restaurante the only triple star holders. In Spain as a whole there are 1,447 Michelin stars compared with 1,627 in last year's edition of the Guide. It was November 1811 and Spain's parliamentarians were holed up in Cadiz, under siege, while the rest of the country was in the hands of Napoleon, who had put his brother, Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne. As the Spanish War of Independence (also known as the Peninsular War) raged, the Cortes de Cadiz (which was Spain's first national assembly) continued to legislate, refusing to accept the rule of "Rey Jose I". The most famous result of the Cortes' legislation was the Cadiz Constitution, also known as 'La Pepa', which, declared in 1812, was one of the earliest constitutions in the world and the most liberal of its time. Before this, though, the members of this parliament had voted to introduce a state moneymaking tool that still exists to this day. On 23 November 1811 the members of the Cortes voted unanimously in favour of bringing in a new lottery to raise funds to boost resistance against the Napoleonic troops. The idea came from Ciriaco Gonzalez Carvajal, minister of the Council of the Indies, who proposed copying a system used in Nueva Espana, now Mexico. A lottery did already exist in Spain at the time, however, a numbers system imported by King Carlos III from Naples in 1763. This became (and still is) known as "La Primitiva", while Gonzalez Carvajal's new ticket scheme was known as the Loteria Moderna and the Loteria Nacional. The first draw of the new lottery took place on 4 March 1812, just two weeks before La Pepa was declared. At first, tickets were only available in Cadiz and San Fernando, but as the Napoleonic troops withdrew, it expanded to Ceuta and the rest of Andalucia, and eventually the rest of Spain. The last prize draw to be held in Cadiz was on 27 January 1814. After that it was moved to Madrid where the first draw there took place on 28 February 1814. The Cadiz Constitution was short-lived, abolished after King Fernando VII returned to the throne in 1814. The Loteria Nacional however, survived and draws still take place on Thursdays and Saturdays as well as the special draw for Christmas (with its famous Gordo prize) on 22 December and for Epiphany (El Nino) on 6 January. The old N-340 coast road between Nerja and Torrox will be closed to traffic for the next month after a large rock broke away from the hillside alongside and fell onto the carriageway below on Tuesday afternoon. No one was hurt in the incident which occurred in the municipality of Torrox, not far from the municipal border with Nerja and near La Restinga beach bar. It appears that the net fitted to the rockface to prevent rockfalls had broken. Earth and smaller rocks also fell onto the road. Although one of the lanes was initially still open to traffic, the mayor of Torrox, Oscar Medina, ordered the total closure of the road. The rock, weighing more than five tonnes, was removed the same night after a hydraulic breaker was first used to divide it into smaller pieces. Technicians then inspected the state of the carriageway and confirmed that damage had been caused to the road surface. Medina initially ordered the closure for a week to allow for the rock face to be secured, but having consulted the engineering company which designed the road 40 years ago, decided to prolong the closure to deal with the "complicated nature" of the landscape. The road will remain closed between km 287.1 and 288.7, with road users advised to take the A-7 to get to Torrox and Nerja. Heavy rain blamed Medina blamed the heavy rain in the area over the previous few days which also left its mark on the A-7206 between Algarrobo and Competa on Wednesday night. Rocks fell onto the road which was eventually reopened at midday on Thursday. Technicians from the Junta de Andalucia have inspected the area and put up barriers to prevent further disruption but warn that netting will need to be installed. Violent crime returned once more to the Costa del Sol on Tuesday night, with another murder with the hallmarks of a settling of scores. A 58-year-old man with French nationality received a hail of bullets after he entered the garage of his home in the Nagueles area of Marbella. The first calls to the emergency services came in at around 8.20pm, informing of gunshots being fired on Calle Pizarra and an individual fleeing the scene on a moped, said sources close to the investigation. After receiving the alert, both Local and National Police sent patrols to attend the scene and to set up a perimeter to try to catch the attacker. On arriving at the scene, officers found the victim in a pool of blood with several bullet wounds. Nothing could be done to save his life. Given the nature of the crime, it was immediately referred to the Uydco-Costa del Sol unit which specialises in organised crime. The initial hypothesis, given the profile of the victim who was known to police for drug and arms trafficking offences, is that this was a settling of scores. It appears that the perpetrator had followed the victim home on a moped, going unnoticed as it was a quiet street with next to no lighting. Upon his arrival, he was taken by surprise in his garage as he got out of his car and was shot multiple times. The post-mortem showed that he received 20 bullets in his head and upper body from an AK-47 machine gun which was later found in a rubbish container. This latest incident is yet another example of organised violent crime in Malaga province which so far this year alone has reached around 20 incidents, among which are kidnappings, murders, shoot-outs and the planting of bombs. As was inevitable, Spain's proposed 2019 budget has failed its first major test with EU officials. Despite the Socialist government's belief that the spending plan's more relaxed deficit-reduction targets didn't pose a problem, the EU Commission said this week that they flout Brussels' fiscal rules - something that Spain is has done repeatedly over the last few years. A welcome consequence of this latest EU reprimand, though, is that prime minister Pedro Sanchez is finally considering early elections. Cooked-up in collaboration with leftist Podemos, the Socialists' projected spending plan contains expensive welfare policies, funded by increased taxes and altered deficit-reduction goals. As such, it's been a source of concern for EU officials ever since they received the draft budget last month; indeed, towards the end of October, the Sanchez administration received a warning letter in which the Commission said that its proposals showed "a risk of deviation from the required [fiscal] effort". EU officials are particularly worried about the deficit reduction goal for next year. Under the previous Conservative administration of Mariano Rajoy - whose budget Sanchez will have to fall back on if he can't get his own passed - the agreed target was 1.3%. The Socialists initially proposed altering this to 1.8%, but after reviewing the draft 2019 budget, the EU is concerned that the actual figure for 2019 will be around 2.1%. Brussels has also criticised the PSOE-Podemos proposals for deviation from targets set by the Growth and Stability Pact, which aims to regulate EU members' public finances and economic policies. Sanchez has budget-related problems closer to home, too. Even if the EU had no objections to the proposed 2019 spending plan, the Socialists still need to secure its approval in congress - and with just 84 seats in the 350-seat lower chamber, that's not going to be easy. As foreign minister Josep Borrell said in a conference this week, "the big problem with Spain's budget doesn't come from Brussels, it comes from the opposition". Borrell was referring to the Socialists' arch enemy, the Conservative Popular Party (PP), which holds 134 seats in congress and is firmly opposed to increased public spending. Possessing such a weak hold on power was always the main reason for Sanchez to call elections before his term expires in 2020, especially as his party is riding high in opinion polls. The recent budgetary run-in with the EU seems to have finally convinced him that this is the way to go: Sanchez said that this week that if he can't get the 2019 spending plan approved, his "call to govern to the end of the term will be cut short". Given that such approval is unlikely, either from the EU or the PP, it's time he put his administration to a national vote. Brokerage and financial technology company, BGC Partners, has completed the acquisition of Poten & Partners Group. Under the terms of the agreement, BGC acquired 100% of Poten, which included operations in New York, London, Singapore, Houston, Athens, Guangzhou and Perth. Shaun Lynn, BGC Partners president, said: We are excited about this strategic acquisition, which is very complementary to our current commodities offering. The addition of physical LNG, LPG and tanker brokerage, and energy consulting capabilities will allow BGC to expand its operations in the oil, gas and shipping sectors. Potens access to market intelligence and its highly regarded price reporting and analytical products, including LNG, LPG and asphalt will also add to our existing energy and commodities suite of market data solutions under Fenics Market Data, he said. Poten generated revenues of around $60 mill in the financial year ended 31st December, 2017. In addition to brokerage, Poten provides value-added services, including commercial advisory, technical consulting, project due diligence and multi-client reports. Steven Garten, Poten & Partners CEO, said: We are very excited to be part of BGC and feel BGC is uniquely positioned to support us in our next stage of growth. The combination of BGC and Poten will enable us to accelerate this, both organically and through targeted acquisitions. Michael Tusiani, Chairman Emeritus of Poten & Partners, commented: This relationship will provide us with an exceptional platform for continued growth in our core business areas and the ability for further expansion. I am happy for our company, employees and clients because of the exciting opportunities it will present. Poten will join BGCs energy and commodities business. Ceyhan exports to rise On 16th November 2018, the Iraqi Government restarted exports of Kirkuk crude oil through the Iraq/Turkey pipeline to the Ceyhan Terminal loading facility in the eastern Mediterranean. Initial volumes flowing through the pipeline averaged 50,000 barrels per day. The target is to achieve 100,000 barrels per day in the coming weeks with the potential for significantly more in the future, Poten & Partners recently said in a report. The resumption of exports is the result of a tentative agreement between Iraq and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The 50-100,000 barrels will be in addition to the 300-350,000 barrels per day of Iraqi crude that is already exported through Ceyhan. Most Iraqi barrels are destined for Mediterranean countries. Israel, Italy, Greece and Croatia are some of the largest recipients. If we assume that the new barrels will target countries in the Mediterranean, the extra volumes will mostly benefit Aframax and Suezmax tankers, Poten said. The Kirkuk oil fields still have the capacity to produce up to 1 mill barrels per day. In recent years, the fields have changed hands several times. The Kurds took control of Kirkuk in 2014 when Islamic State swept into Northern Iraq and federal troops fled the area. Because the Iraqi part of the pipeline had suffered substantial damage after years of conflicts, the KRG and its international partners needed to build an alternative export-oriented pipeline to link up with the Turkey pipeline to Ceyhan. Using this pipeline which was sold to Russias Rosneft last year the Kurds boosted exports of Iraqi crude out of Ceyhan to well over 500,000 barrels per day. However, in September, 2017, when the Kurds held an independence referendum, Iraqs army decided to retake the fields from Kurdish forces. As a result, Ceyhan exports of (KRG controlled) Iraqi crude dropped to around 300,000 barrels per day. This situation lasted for about a year. During this period, the KRG and Rosneft upgraded the pipeline and raised its capacity to 1 million barrels per day. Today, the pipeline has the capacity to accommodate the volumes from both the fields operated by the KRG, as well as the fields controlled by the Iraqi government. It is probably no coincidence that the Kurds and Iraqis reached a deal shortly after the US sanctions against Iran became effective, Poten said. After the Iraqi forces seized the Kirkuk fields, they were unable to sell any meaningful quantities of crude to Iran because the Kurds controlled the export pipeline. Instead, Iraq started to sell small quantities (around 30,000 barrels per day) of crude to Iran, delivered by oil trucks. At the moment, Iraqi exports from Ceyhan are relatively small in comparison to the volumes being shipped out of Iraqs Al Basrah terminal in the Arabian Gulf. In 2018 to date (mid November), Iraqi exports out of Basrah average 3.57 mill barrels per day, compared to 330,000 barrels per day from Ceyhan. Basrah exports are close to capacity and are unlikely to grow much without significant additional infrastructure investments. Ceyhan exports, on the other hand, could easily double potentially going even higher if the Iraqi government and the KRG continue to co-operate. The one thing that could derail the Iraqi export growth, at least in the short term, is a decision by OPEC to curtail production. Although Iraq did not fully adhere to the previous production cuts, there could be more pressure on them to comply during the next round. How Iraqi production and export cuts will impact the tanker market will depend to a large extent on whether they decide to cut flows to Ceyhan or to Basrah or split it between the two terminals. As mentioned earlier, Ceyhan flows mostly impact short-haul trips in the Mediterranean on Aframaxes and Suezmaxes, while exports from Basrah tend to be longer-haul voyages, predominantly on VLCCs, Poten pointed out. Chemikalien snaps up Rigel Hamburg-based shipping company Chemikalien Seetransport (CST) has taken over 100% of the shares of the Bremen-based shipping company Rigel Schiffahrts. Rigel will continue to operate as an independent company. Christian Kramer, CST chairman, said: We are pleased to be able to expand our tanker fleet with the acquisition of Rigel. Rigel has an excellent reputation for the technical management of product and chemical tankers, complementing our group very well. After the takeover, CST with its subsidiaries will expand its market position as one of the leading German tanker shipping companies with a combined fleet of 33 tankers and bulk carriers. CST is part of the Kramer Group, which also includes the engineering and consultancy firm Marine Service that was founded in 1958 by Dr Karl-Heinz Kramer. The Hamburg company was formed in 1969 and has managed crude oil tankers, product tankers, chemical tankers, LNG and LPG vessels, plus bulk carriers. Today, the fleet includes 18 product tankers, three chemical tankers and one bulk carrier. Rigel was formed in 1990 and is a Bremen-based shipping company that specialises in the technical management of product and chemical tankers. Currently, Rigels fleet comprises eight chemical tankers and three product tankers. Minimum AB wage raised Following two days of negotiations, the minimum wage for an able seafarer was raised by $27 over the next three years. The new wages will provide an overall increase of 4.5% on the current rate of $614, with an increase of $4 as of 1st July, 2019, followed by an increase of $7 as of 1st January, 2020 and a final increase of $16 on 1st January 2021. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the meeting between the social partners, namely the ITF and the ICS, The social partners, namely the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) and the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), had been re-scheduled from June, 2018. The social partners, with the support of the ILO office were presented with the current consumer price changes indices and the impact of the fluctuation of the US dollar in the countries, and agreed this would represent the basis for a formula for the calculation of the recommended the minimum wage for an AB. The meeting was held in Geneva by the Joint Maritime Commission (JMC) sub-committee on seafarers wages to review the ILO minimum wage for an Able Seafarer (AB) provided for in Code B of the Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 (as amended). It was noted that during the period taken into account for the calculation, the $614, which is the current ILO minimum wage rate for an AB, was below the purchasing power stated in the ILO report prepared for the meeting. The social partners provided reasoned arguments and economic forecasts to support their respective positions, including the volatility of the shipping industry, and the necessity to recognise the seafarers commitment and the need to agree fair and sustainable conditions. This was a difficult negotiation with two very different assessments about what the future holds for shipping and seafarers, admitted Mark Dickinson, spokesperson for the seafarers group. We started slowly but gained momentum as the parties exchanged opinions and provided arguments to support their positions. There was strong opposition from the shipowners side for a significant increase. However, I am pleased that at the end pragmatism and common sense prevailed and the social partners worked their way forward to recognise the fundamental role seafarers play within the industry. The principles of social dialogue, which is the basis of a more efficient, fair and progressive industry, were once again demonstrated by the unity of the maritime industry in securing an outcome, which was acceptable by all parties. It is an example the social partners should be pleased with. We will continue to work together to find ways to ensure that the ILO formula used as the basis for these negotiations is fair and reflects the reality for seafarers, but the impact of this session of the JMC negotiation on the global seafaring community is undoubtedly a good and equitable result, he concluded. Max Johns, the shipowners group spokesperson, explained; Following active discussions on the current difficult challenges facing our industry, and the importance of preserving future employment for seafarers, I am very pleased to advise that we were able to work together to come to an acceptable result for both parties. SCF back in the black Sovcomflot (SCF Group) has reported a turnaround in its fortunes during the third quarter of this year, as the company reported a net profit of $300,000, compared with a net loss of $22 mill in 3Q17. EBITDA came in some 17.1% stronger at $146.9 mill, compared to $125.4 mill for the same period in the previous year. Gross revenue was 13.1% higher at $396.4 mill in 3Q18, compared to $350.5 mill in 3Q17. For the first nine months of this year, SCF suffered a loss of $57.5 mill, compared to a loss of $6.5 mill in the 2017 period. EBITDA for the first nine months was $414.6 mill, compared to $408.3 mill in 2017 and gross revenue rose by 4.3% to $1.11 bill, compared to $1.06 bill in 2017. During the reporting period, the tanker freight markets remained in a depressed state, as vessel supply continued to outstrip vessel demand, SCF said. Signs of a better balance have emerged more recently following longer term oil price recovery and worldwide fleet removals over 2H17 and 1H18. These factors partly led to the start of a recovery in freight levels in the conventional tanker fleet towards the end of 3Q18, in particular with the large crude vessel segments. This improvement has continued into 4Q18 and has resulted in a healthy increase in earnings across the Groups crude carrying vessels, an improvement that is forecast to hold steady in the near term and into 1Q19. Subsequent to 3Q18, in October, Lomonosov Prospect, SCFs second Green Funnel Aframax completed her maiden voyage along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) carrying clean petroleum products. During the voyage, the crew successfully tested the operation of the ships engines and fuel system controls using LNG, as well as the operation of navigation equipment and machinery in ice conditions at sub-zero temperatures. Commenting on the Groups results Sergey Frank, SCF president & CEO, said: The Group returned to positive numbers in 3Q18, with continued growth in SCFs industrial, fixed income businesses. The Offshore and Gas divisional performances remain at the core of the Groups profitability and earnings performance, contributing now around 60% of the Groups net revenues. The green shoots of recovery in the conventional tanker market and in the larger crude sector in particular, are encouraging for 4Q18 and may bring a welcome earnings boost on top of that provided by the Gas and Offshore divisions. Of particular note, we achieved a key milestone in our drive to innovate within the tanker industry with the delivery and the first LNG fuelling of Gagarin Prospect in partnership with Shell, and the project is an excellent example of SCF partnering its client to harness technological innovation to provide cleaner, safer and more efficient maritime transportation services, he said. Nikolai Kolesnikov, SCFs senior executive officer & CFO, said: During the nine month period, the Group completed financing and refinancing transactions amounting to $424 mill in total, including a $106 mill long-term facility with Sberbank, to finance an Arctic shuttle tanker and a $252 mill long-term facility with international banks to finance six Green Funnel Aframax tankers. SCFs long-term offshore and gas businesses increased their TCE revenues by 17.7% and 14.5%, respectively in the nine month period, compared with the first nine months of 2017. The company continues to enjoy an exceptionally strong pipeline of future contracted revenues amounting to a total of $7.7 bill, he concluded. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ruth Shapiro (The Jakarta Post) Hong Kong Fri, November 23, 2018 At the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group held in Bali last month, President Joko Jokowi Widodo encouraged innovative financing schemes such as blended finance to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Blended finance refers to deploying private sector capital alongside governments support to achieve social outcomes. He emphasized the need for shared responsibility. Todays social problems are multifaceted and Jokowi is absolutely correct that we need to forge new collaborations and work across traditional sector demarcations to craft new and innovative solutions to our shared concerns. The government, the private sector and community organizations each have roles to play in creating better communities and countries and thus forging a brighter future together. Given this, the government has a duty to enable other actors to take up their roles and responsibilities in the most effective ways possible. Government regulations and policies are powerful tools that can align incentives and enable social investment, or act as formidable impediments instead. Earlier this year, the Center for Asian Philanthropy and Society, where I am chief executive, released the inaugural Doing Good Index. This index looks at the factors which enable or impede private social investment in 15 Asian economies (13 countries plus Hong Kong and Taiwan). We gathered data on four sets of factors. Three of these, regulations, tax and fiscal policies, and procurement, relate to the government. The fourth set called ecosystem looks at the societal support for social investment. Despite there being more than 3,000 NGOs in Indonesia, the existence of numerous aid agencies and foundations, and a tradition of zakat, Indonesia performs poorly on our index. There are several key reasons for this outcome. Regulations are important. They make it possible for community and other social sector organizations to incorporate legally, and they can require reporting which when done right aids in the social sectors accountability and transparency. In Indonesia, some critically important pieces of the puzzle are missing, the most important of which is the confusing and differing sets of regulations for NGOs as well as the tendency not to adhere to them in any case. While the law on foundations tried to strengthen incorporation requirements, there are still several sets of national and local laws. Also, since non-profits do not receive any tax exemption, there are few incentives to go through the bureaucratic process of registering regardless of which set of requirements one picks. Without a clear and consistent set of incorporation requirements and without tax exemption, the state is in effect encouraging them to go under cover, be less accountable and less transparent. Tax policy is also very important for two reasons: first of course, money is money and although there are many altruistic reasons to be philanthropic, it doesnt hurt to also receive a subsidy as an incentive for doing more. We believe, however, that in Indonesia and Asia broadly, tax policies signal government intent and this messaging motivates donors to give or not to give. When a government puts in place meaningful tax policies, it signals to the people and to companies that social investment is supported and valued. In Indonesia, individuals receive no subsidy and there much confusion about how much and in which circumstances companies do. Indonesia ranks high when it comes to reliance of foreign support. Sixty-six percent of those organizations who filled out our survey receive foreign funding compared to the Asia average of 45 percent. Of those receiving foreign funding, it comprises 40 percent of the total budget compared to 22 percent in other Asian economies including emerging economies with per capita income less than Indonesias. If Indonesia wants to diminish the need for foreign support, it needs to align incentives for domestic giving. Surprisingly, we found there is no correlation between level of economic development and enabling tax policies. Vietnam and Thailand have more conducive tax policies then do South Korea and Hong Kong. Local donors are more likely to fund programs and goals aligned with their own government. For example, for some time now, a tax rebate of 200 percent has been on the table for supporting vocational education in Indonesia. Incentivizing social investment for education aligns national and private sector interests. Increasing tax subsidies for supporting vocational education is a worthwhile first step toward addressing a key educational and economic need. The most promising set of factors for Indonesia was in ecosystem, which examines how people, companies and organizations are engaged in addressing social needs. People are volunteering, companies have corporate social responsibility programs, universities are teaching classes on non-profit management and social entrepreneurship. There are hundreds of social enterprises and start-ups. This means that people are out ahead of government. Thus the government can and should make it easier for individuals, organizations and companies to effectively and transparently participate. There is more wealth in Indonesia than ever before with people, organizations and companies addressing shared challenges. With the right policies in place, social investment can flow even more and collaboration can be easier to put in place. If the 15 economies in our study could increase philanthropy to 2 percent of gross domestic product, the amount given in the United States, it would be US$504 billion annually. This amount is 11 times the amount of foreign aid flowing into the region and one third of the annual costs in attaining the SDGs. Many of the pieces are in place and with the right policies, enormous good can be done. *** The writer is the chief executive of Hong Kong based Center for Asian Philanthropy and Society. 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 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 Inforial (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta, Indonesia Fri, November 23, 2018 00:01 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d672fc 4 Inforial Free Trade Minister Enggartiasto Enggar Lukita is leading a business delegation from Nov. 20 to 22 to expand trade to non-traditional market Algeria, in line with President Joko Jokowi Widodos recent direction to expand Indonesian trade to the African market. We need to create trade cooperation with non-traditional markets such as Algeria. One of our missions in Algeria is to sound out the possibilities of market expansion to the country, which is geographically far but has great opportunities, said Minister Enggar. The delegations Algerian agenda includes business forums, one-on-one business matching, and corporate visits. In addition, the minister will meet with several Algerian ministers and the chairman of the Algerian chamber of commerce to discuss possible steps to enhancing bilateral trade. One possible measure for achieving this is to establish a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) between Indonesia and Algeria. Through this visit, we hope to discuss with them directly about various opportunities for economic cooperation with Algeria. This would help resolve various issues and increase our exports to Africa, Enggar said. The Indonesian delegation to Algeria consists of 13 leading businesses from several sectors, including: palm oil and derivative products, tires, coffee products, ginger candy, instant chocolate beverages, pearls, educational toys, instant noodles, home decoration, herbs and spices, coconut products, spa products, export financing and trade facilities, education, legal services, construction and infrastructure, lubricants and furniture. . (Courtesy of Ministry of Trade/.) The ministrys export development director general, Arlinda, who accompanied the Trade Minister on the visit, said that the delegations members would all meet with potential buyers in Algeria, which would create an even greater opportunity for bigger transactions. We expect the potential buyers to be invited by the Indonesian Embassy in Algeria. This trade mission is an initial step for the two countries leading businesses to meet face-to-face and open possibilities for cooperation that will lead to increased exports to Algeria, she said. Arlinda added that Indonesias trade mission indicated the governments serious stance on increasing economic, trade and investment cooperation with the Algerian government and its business players. The visit is expected to be a stepping-stone toward increased cooperation between the two countries. Total trade between Indonesia and Algeria reached US$519.77 million in 2017, compared to $515.92 million in 2016. In January-August 2018, bilateral trade reached $376.80 million, compared to $304.52 million during the same period last year. Indonesian exports to Algeria in January-August 2018 totaled $142.06 million, with $142.06 million in non-oil and gas exports. Indonesias top exports to Algeria were palm oil, vegetable oils, coffee, fish products, wooden boards, coolers and yarn. Indonesias imports from Algeria include fuel, ammonia, fruits, wooden boards, cereals, printing machines, electronic spare parts and machinery. Non-oil and gas imports reached $2.83 million alone this year. (*) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Inforial (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta, Indonesia Sat, November 24, 2018 00:01 1096 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d90e01 4 Inforial Free The year-end is fast approaching and so is the holiday season for Christmas and the new year. During the festive season, air travel can be expensive and uncomfortable, but there are other alternatives. PT Kereta Api Indonesia KA Bima runs from Jakarta to Malang, East Java, with a number of stops in other popular destinations and hometowns, such as Surabaya, Cirebon, Surakarta and Yogyakarta. KA Bima by PT KAI is an executive class train departing from Jakartas Gambir Station with a final stop at Malangs Kota Baru Station. The train boasts extensive facilities for your traveling comfort: nice seats, blankets, travel pillows and electric outlets for passengers to stay connected. Interestingly, from KA Bima's stop in Surabayas Gubeng, passengers are able to reach Bali. They can continue the journey using the Mutiara Timur train to Banyuwangi, followed with a ride in a state-owned DAMRI bus to Denpasar, Bali. Apart from Bali and Yogyakarta, Malang has made it into the list of top domestic destinations as an affordable gateway to East Javas most iconic attractions. From the magnificent Bromo Mountain to the savannah of Baluran and the pristine beach of Banyuwangi, it is not hard to see why the area has become so popular. Family-friendly destination Traveling in style: A member of the Railfans Indonesia +444 Malang community (right) gives a balloon to a passenger (left) on a train on the anniversary of the community at Kota Baru Station in Malang, East Java. (JP/Aman Rochman) A sleepy old town surrounded by volcanoes, mountains and a glorious national park, the historic city of Malang is a popular choice for family getaways. This picturesque city in the shadow of Batu Mountain offers cooler temperatures and many child-friendly destinations. One of the popular activities in Malang for children includes spending a day in the Museum Angkut (Transportation Museum). The Museum Angkut showcases transportation history and development, not only in Indonesia but around the world. It emphasizes how transportation has become an important aspect of the nation's economic and trade development. The museum is 3.8 hectares in size and divided into different exhibitions based on different regions or countries. It is a museum-cum-theme park with performances like the Gangster Town or American Cowboy shows. The education zone provides information on the history and backgrounds of different transportation modes. Another child-friendly attraction that has just recently become popular is the Jodipan Colorful village, a riverfront slum that was transformed into a bright and cheery village. The colorfully painted houses in this village are a result of the efforts of eight university students, who worked together with a paint company as a part of the companys corporate social responsibility (CSR) program. The Jodipan village is often considered to be the Indonesian version of Gamcheon Culture Village in Busan, South Korea. For the adventurous soul Caring staff: A train official (left) assists an elderly passenger (center) to his seat on the KA Bima, which travels from Malang, East Java, to Jakarta at Kota Baru Station in Malang. (JP/Aman Rochman) Ultimately, though, it will be the mountains and volcanoes that draw ones attention, as the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park makes for a perfect nature escape. A protected nature reserve since 1919, the mountain sits in a sea of sand. The national park is a one-of-a-kind beauty where a black sand desert is surrounded by lush greenery watered by rivers from the top. From Cemoro Lawang village, visitors can easily hike up and walk for about 50 minutes. Although beginner-friendly, the hike is not necessarily an easy task, but the view from the top is worth every pant and ache in your legs. For a relaxing day on the beach, head to Malangs Pantai Tiga Warna, about 150 kilometers from the city. The name is literally translated as the three-colored beach, which refers to the beautiful layers of pink, green, and blue hues caused by the different water depths. Pantai Tiga Warna is protected by the local government as an important conservation area for mangroves and coral reefs. These are just a few of many attractions to explore in Malang and East Java. If you have not made your mind up for where to go this Christmas just yet, why not take a scenic train ride on KA Bima to the east? A KA Bima ticket costs from Rp 265,000 to Rp 570,000 depending on the distance of travel, sitting arrangements and class of choice. Passengers are able to book tickets from 90-days prior to departure. Book your ticket easily on the go by using the Traveloka App or the official website. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Umberto Bacchi (Reuters) London Fri, November 23, 2018 06:02 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d5e473 2 Lifestyle fashion,#fashion,Europe,clothes,high-street-fashion,environment,eco-friendly Free Shoppers in western Europe care how clothes are made and want to be kind to workers and the environment when they update their wardrobe, according to a survey released on Wednesday that shows public pressure on fashion to clean up its act. Yet, the shoppers faced no questions about the cost of their conscience, with manufacturers caught in a tug of war between the allure of throwaway fashion versus the expense of ethics. Brands tell us you cant trust consumers because they say one thing but then behave differently, said Rachel Wilshaw, ethical trade manager at British charity Oxfam. People will continue to be very price sensitive but if brands can find a way to offer a good product at a good price - and be transparent - I feel sure that that is going to matter more in the future, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Less than 40 percent of respondents to the survey said they thought of an items impact on society and environment before buying - but more than 70 percent wanted information on what producers were doing to protect workers and the planet. People have an urgent, emotional desire to know more about how their clothes are made, said Sarah Ditty, policy director at Fashion Revolution, an advocacy group that commissioned the survey. Companies are facing growing scrutiny to clean up their supply chains as campaigners estimate some 25 million people are trapped in forced labour worldwide. Fast-changing trends and cheap apparel mean big sales but critics say rising demand is fueling labor exploitation, too. Read also: Nike, H&M and Burberry join forces for sustainable fashion Show and tell The poll, conducted online by Ipsos MORI in October, asked 5,000 people in Britain, Germany, Italy, France and Spain what they thought of transparency and sustainability in fashion. Eighty percent of respondents said brands should publish the names of all factories they use to make clothing and 77 percent said suppliers should also be listed. One in three said it was important for companies to share details about wages and working conditions in their supply chains; 72 percent said firms should be required to by law. Increasingly, consumers want to know that the workers making their clothes are getting a good deal as well, said Martin Buttle, strategic lead at the Ethical Trading Initiative, a global network of firms, unions and labour rights groups. The global fashion industry has come under pressure since more than 1,100 garment workers were killed in the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh five years ago. Yet big brands have been criticized for failing to improve conditions in often complex supply chains - from fields to factories - and turning a blind eye to worker abuse. A study in April showed that while big fashion houses were slowly committing to revealing more about their supply chains, most still scored poorly on transparency. "For those brands that recognize its importance, transparency is an opportunity to build trust," Buttle told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Niamey, Niger Fri, November 23, 2018 09:07 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d62ebc 2 Environment Nigeria,tourism,animals,wildlife,giraffe Free Part of a group of a rare giraffes that has become a Niger tourist attraction is to be moved to a reserve 600 kilometers away owing to encroaching desert, farmland and increasing instances of them being struck by vehicles, officials said Wednesday. "It's to give the species better protection," Environment Minister Almoustapha Garba told a media conference. He explained that initially seven females and three males would be taken from a herd living in the southwest Koure region south of the capital Niamey and relocated in the Gadabedji Reserve in the centre of Niger, on the edge of the Sahara Desert. The animals, known by the classification Giraffa camelopardalis peralta or more commonly the West African giraffe or Niger giraffe, has light-colored spots and the herd in Niger is the last self-producing tower left in the world. Under the supervision of animal protection associations, the number of West African giraffes in Koure grew from 50 in 1996 to an estimated 612 in 2017, according to environment ministry figures. Read also: Conservationists fight to save animals as mass extinction looms The animals are regularly seen crossing roads in the Koure region, to the delight of tourists but at a cost of some becoming roadkill when struck by trucks or buses. Their shrinking habitat has forced them to venture hundreds of kilometers to forage, Omer Dovi of the Niger Giraffes Rescue Association. "Some giraffes have gone as far as the border with Mali where they have been killed by poachers," he said. The relocation program is to be carried out jointly by the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, the Sahara Conservation Fund and the UN Development Programme. The cost of the operation was not given. Experts were to monitor how the first 10 West African giraffes adapt to their new surroundings before deciding whether to transfer the rest of the group. The pilot herd were to be fitted with microchips to help geolocate them. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Kerry Sheridan (Agence France-Presse) Tampa, United States Fri, November 23, 2018 07:04 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d5e9ff 2 Health united-states,Canada,probiotics,flu,stomach-flu,research,children Free Probiotics are a multibillion dollar international industry, but new research Wednesday showed they don't help children recover from stomach flu any better than a placebo. The results of two randomized clinical trials -- which came to the same conclusions -- were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. "Probiotics had no effect on the children," said co-author Phillip Tarr, a professor of pediatrics at Washington University in St. Louis, adding that the findings were "not ambiguous." "Parents are better off saving their money and using it to buy more fresh fruits and vegetables for their children." Probiotics are surging in popularity, with the global market predicted to expand from $37 billion in 2015 to $64 billion by 2023, according to the report. Five of 12 leading medical groups worldwide currently endorse their use, as a way to promote gut health by restoring intestinal flora, building up so-called "good bacteria" in children's bodies. Those recommending probiotics include the European Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology Hepatology and Nutrition, the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. For one study in the United States, researchers tested a popular brand of probiotic, sold under the name Culturelle. A total of 971 children between three months and four years old were enrolled in the study. All sought emergency room care for gastroenteritis, an intestinal condition that can be caused by a virus or a bacterial infection -- with symptoms including vomiting and diarrhea. The children were randomly assigned to either receive a five-day course of a placebo or Culturelle, which contains the bacterium Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG. A pack of 30, promoted as a "number one pediatrician-recommended daily probiotic," costs around $20. But researchers found that kids who took the probiotic showed no difference in the length of illness or the severity of symptoms, compared to kids given a sugar pill. Read also: This is probably why your child gets sick too often - A 'clear message ' - The second study, carried out in Canada, used a product called Lacidofil Strong, containing Lactobacillus rhamnosus R0011 and L. helveticus R0052. More than 800 children were randomized to receive either a five-day course or a placebo. The difference was so slight, researchers said it was not statistically significant. "Moderate-to-severe gastroenteritis within 14 days after enrollment occurred in 108 of 414 participants (26.1 percent) who were assigned to probiotics and 102 of 413 participants (24.7 percent) who were assigned to placebo," said the report. The group that received probiotics did not experience less vomiting or diarrhea, shorter length of illness, fewer follow up visits to doctors or any fewer complications. The latest findings are in line with at least one smaller, earlier study, although most studies to date have been generally favorable to probiotics. Co-author Stephen Freedman, pediatric emergency medicine physician with Alberta Health Services, said that is because most of these studies have been small and industry funded. The new duo of randomized clinical trials, "taken together, are very powerful," he said. "The findings show that children treated with probiotics have the exact same outcomes across a large range of symptoms, as those given placebo," he added. "The results deliver a clear message that we need to question the role and benefits of probiotics for other health applications using large, patient oriented, rigorous clinical trials." According to Sophia Jan, chief of pediatrics at Cohen Children's Medical Center, until now "the evidence was not very clear," and there was a fair amount of debate in the medical community about the usefulness of over-the-counter probiotics to treat childhood gastroenteritis. Jan, who was not involved in either study, described them as "landmark," and said they offer "the best quality science that would convince pediatric providers that probiotics really dont help all that much." Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Patrick Galey (Agence France-Presse) Paris Fri, November 23, 2018 12:06 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d74ea5 2 Health antidepressants,Brexit,health,#health Free Antidepressant use in England rose significantly compared to other prescription drugs in the wake of Britain's decision in 2016 to exit the European Union, according to new research released on Wednesday. Debate over the merits of Brexit has dominated Britain's political discourse for more than two years, split families and communities and prompted panicked contingency plans from businesses in the event of a "no deal" with Brussels. But relatively little attention has been paid to the impact Brexit -- and the long-running uncertainty that's dogged the process -- has had on the population's mental health. Researchers at King's College London looked at official monthly prescribing data for antidepressants for all 326 voting districts in England, comparing it with other classes of drugs in the run up to the June 23, 2016 referendum and the weeks that followed. Given that the Brexit result came as a surprise that ushered in "considerable uncertainty" over its effect on Britain's economy and society, the study authors wanted to see if that translated to greater antidepressant use. After calculating a "defined daily dose" to ensure they could compare different types of drugs fairly, they found that after the vote the volume of antidepressants prescribed increased 13.4 percent relative to the other medicines studied. "This shows that relative antidepressant prescribing increased in England after the Brexit referendum, compared with other drug classes that were used as a control group," Sotiris Vandoros, senior lecturer in health economics at King's College London and adjunct professor at Harvard University, told AFP. Although it was difficult to definitively tie the vote result to the rise in antidepressant use, Vandoros said the fact that the increase was relative to other forms of prescription drug was significant. "A growing body of literature suggests that economic uncertainty can have negative effects on mental health," he said. "Job insecurity and worries about one's future finances are associated with poorer health outcomes. Any event that triggers uncertainty and worries can have a negative effect." Read also: Some antidepressants may be linked to dementia: Study Antidepressants up generally Given that antidepressants aren't prescribed to everyone, the study's authors said the results couldn't be taken to mean that the national mood as a whole worsened after the Brexit vote. Indeed, ardent supporters of Britain's voluntary rupture with its single largest trading partner may have noticed their mood improve in the wake of the referendum. But Vandoros said that, all else being equal, the shock vote result and the tumult that followed was the "likely explanation" behind the relative rise in antidepressant use. The paper, which was published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, argued that governments should do more to offer mental health advice and support during periods of political and economic uncertainty. Allan Young, professor at King's Institute of Psychiatry Psychology & Neuroscience, who wasn't involved in the study, said its findings should be treated with "great caution". "Antidepressant prescriptions have risen in England consistently over recent years and these data may simply reflect that rather than one single event," he said. "Nevertheless, the call to support mental health issues should be heeded." With Prime Minister Theresa May facing a number of hurdles to get her final Brexit deal over the line by the time Britain leaves the bloc in March, Britons' may at least soon get some clarity over the future of their country -- for better or worse. "When the UK leaves the EU, we will start to see reality unfolding with regards to the anticipated events," said Vandoros. "So uncertainty will be replaced with certain outcomes, whether positive or negative." Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Lim Jeong-yeo (The Korea Herald/Asia News Network) Fri, November 23, 2018 19:04 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d8dcf8 2 Entertainment Zico,K-pop,music,South-Korea,rapper Free Rapper Zico is leaving Block B after his five-year contract with the groups label recently expired. Seven Seasons, which represents Block B, announced in a statement on Friday that Zico and the agency had agreed not to renew. We thank Zico for (all the efforts he put in) as the leader and producer of Block B, Seven Seasons said in its statement. We wish Zico luck on his new beginning. We will always support him. The remaining six band members have extended their contracts, Seven Seasons said. However, due to (their approaching deadlines for) Army enlistment, and the slight differences in the timing of their enlistment, Block Bs activities will mostly be (solo or subunit performances) for the time being, the agency added. Most able-bodied men in South Korea have to enlist in the military before 30 and serve a mandatory term of about two years. None of Block Bs members -- Zico, Taeil, Jaehyo, B-Bomb, P.O, Park Kyung or U-Kwon -- has done so yet. Read also: K-pop stars Zico, Ailee in Pyongyang to attend inter-Korean summit B-Bomb, Jaehyo and Taeil will be the first to go as they all turn 30 in 2020. Park Kyung and U-Kwons deadline is in 2022 and P.Os is in 2023. Block B debuted in 2011 with the single album Do U Wanna B? and launched its last album with all seven members, Re:MONTAGE, in January. There is no news yet on whether a new agency deal is on the horizon for Zico. Zico made headlines in September for traveling to Pyongyang as part of the presidential troupe alongside a select group of South Korean celebrities who accompanied President Moon Jae-in on the occasion of his historic summit with the leader of North Korea. Zico staged a hip-hop performance in front of Kim Jong-un and other North Korean officials. Topics : This article appeared on The Korea Herald newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Peter Hutchison (Agence France-Presse) Mumbai, India Sat, November 24, 2018 05:02 1096 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d92476 2 Entertainment bollywood,YouTube,PewDiePie,Internet,India Free A Bollywood music giant is on course to overtake controversial Swedish vlogger PewDiePie at the top of the YouTube channel subscribers chart in the coming days in a new landmark for India's digital rise. T-Series will become the first non-English-language channel to hold top spot on the world's most popular video platform as smartphone ownership soars in the country of 1.25 billion people. "We're very excited, for the organisation and for India. An Indian channel becoming number one is a big compliment for the entire country," T-Series chairman Bhushan Kumar told AFP. Few outside the Indian diaspora will know T-Series' typically upbeat song and dance videos, but they are already the most-watched on YouTube. They have been seen more than 53 billion times, again beating PewDiePie -- whose videos have notched just over 19 billion views -- as well as Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift. The Swede, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, has had the highest number of subscribers for five years during which he has regularly been in hot water over his videos. In September last year he apologized after he was heard using a racial slur in an expletive-laden rant against an opponent while playing a live-streamed computer game. Earlier in 2017 he lost contracts with YouTube and Disney over anti-Semitic comments. He was temporarily blocked from Twitter in 2016 after joking he had joined the Islamic State group. Read also: Popular YouTuber PewDiePie uses racial slur during live stream - 'World recognition' - With T-Series rapidly closing in, fans of the Swedish gamer have rallied to push up his subscriber numbers in recent days but that will likely only delay the inevitable. On Thursday both had over 71 million subscribers. PewDiePie was ahead by around 150,000 with T-Series expected to overtake it in coming days. "It will give us recognition all over the globe," chairman Kumar said. The company, one of India's biggest record labels, operates 29 channels in Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi and other languages. It also airs health fitness videos and children's cartoons. T-Series was founded by Kumar's father, Gulshan Kumar, in 1983. He was a fruit juice seller who started selling Bollywood music cassettes and became a legendary Hindi film music producer, enjoying massive success with the soundtrack to the 1990 film Aashiqui (Romance). He was murdered by Mumbai mafia members in 1997. As well as producing music videos, T-Series also buys film soundtracks and collaborates with artists around India, providing a platform for their content. Its most-watched music video is Guru Randhawa's "Lahore", which was uploaded in December last year and has been viewed almost 620 million times. Kumar refused to say how much money T-Series makes from YouTube but Bloomberg News reported recently that the site accounts for around a quarter of its annual sales, which are about $100 million. Read also: Hello Kitty debuts as vlogger on YouTube - 'Sky's the limit' - T-Series started posting videos on YouTube in 2011. By October 2016 it had around 12 million subscribers and total hits of 11 billion, according to Social Blade, a website that tracks YouTube viewership. That month India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, rolled out a new 4G network called Reliance Jio. He offered bargain-basement data plans, sending shockwaves through India's telecoms market. T-Series' views rose quickly before skyrocketing this year. In January, subscribers were at 31 million while its views reached 29 billion before soaring to 71 million and 53 billion respectively now. "People say it's a successful channel because data is more or less free. It's not that. There are so many channels in India but we are becoming number one because of great content," said Kumar. Mobile internet users in India have increased from around 306 million in October 2015 to 478 million in June 2018, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India. And with millions more Indians still to buy their first smartphones the country's YouTube channels are going to keep hitting new heights. "It's increasing day by day. The sky is the limit," said Kumar. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (China Daily) Fri, November 23, 2018 15:17 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d80057 2 Lifestyle Dolce-and-Gabbana,China,apology,fashion,Italy,race,luxury-brand Free Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, designers and founders of Italian luxury brand Dolce & Gabbana, made an apology in a short video posted on its official Sina Weibo account regarding recent outrage over a racist ad and subsequent remarks. The duo expressed hope that China could forgive them for their poor understanding of culture. The apology was made in Italian, and the pair said "sorry" in Chinese, duibuqi, together at the end. The founders of the Italian fashion brand D&G issue the apology statement video. pic.twitter.com/dIYYVYKvO9 China Daily (@ChinaDaily) November 23, 2018 Here is the full transcript: Dolce: Over the past few days we have thought long and hard with great sadness about everything that has happened and what we have caused in your country and we are very sorry. Our families have always taught us to respect the various cultures in all the world and this is why we want to ask for your forgiveness if we have made mistakes in interpreting yours. Gabbana: We also want to apologize to all of the many Chinese people throughout the world. We take this apology very seriously as well as this message. Dolce: We have always been in love with China. We've visited it and seen many of its cities. We love your culture and we certainly have much to learn. That is why we are sorry if we made mistakes in the way we expressed ourselves. Gabbana: We will never forget this experience and it will certainly never happen again. In fact we will work to do things better. We will respect the Chinese culture in every way possible. From the bottom of our hearts, we ask for forgiveness. Together: Duibuqi (Sorry). Read also: Dolce & Gabbana cancels China show after racial row As of 3:30 pm Beijing time, the apology video has not yet been posted on the official Instagram and Twitter accounts of Dolce and Gabbana. The controversial clip, originally posted by D&G on its Instagram and Sina Weibo accounts, shows a female Asian model in a glitzy red Dolce & Gabbana dress using chopsticks to eat pizza and other Italian foods. It was intended to promote the Shanghai show, but sparked outcry in China for its insensitivity, in part because of the model awkwardly attempting to eat Western food with chopsticks. Early Wednesday morning, in a chat on Instagram between a netizen named "michaelatranova" and someone using the personal account of Gabbana, the latter appeared to make insulting references toward China and Chinese people. The huge contrast of the designer's sayings makes the apology unconvincing. (Weibo.com/China Daily/File) Dolce & Gabbana posted an announcement on its Weibo account saying: "Our Instagram account has been hacked. So has the account of Stefano Gabbana. Our legal office is urgently investigating. We are sorry for any distress caused by these unauthorized posts. We have nothing but respect for China and the people of China." Indignation arose among Chinese netizens, with many calling on Wednesday for the show to be canceled. A-list celebrities such as Chen Kun, Huang Xiaoming and Li Bingbing said they would not attend. Dolce & Gabbana canceled "The Great Show", originally scheduled to be held last night in Shanghai, hours before it was scheduled to begin. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Jossa Lukman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, November 23, 2018 09:29 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d67aa4 1 Art & Culture erasmus-huis,renovation,library,Dutch,cultural-diplomacy,cultural-center,The-Netherlands Free After temporarily closing for renovations in May, Dutch cultural center Erasmus Huis in Jakarta has reopened its doors to the public with an all-new concept. The official reopening of Erasmus Huis took place on Nov. 22, featuring performances from pianist Ananda Sukarlan and Gigi Art of Dance for VIP guests. It was scheduled to reopen for the public the day after. Dutch Ambassador to Indonesia Rob Swartbol said the impetus behind the renovation project was the change in diplomacy and society, which translated to a need to modernize the embassy and Erasmus Huis. We started with a small group discussing how wed do it; whats our vision, mission, what are our core values. We want to create an atmosphere where we show energy, transparency, openness and the venues [the embassy and Erasmus Huis] should show those core values, Swartbol said. The Erasmus Huis renovation process, which is also part of a wider plan that includes the Dutch Embassy, features an extensive remodeling of the library, auditorium and gallery. Frequent visitors of the old Erasmus Huis will immediately notice the gallerys vastly larger space once they step into it. The gallery now also has several windows, making the room feel even more open than it used to be. Erasmus Huis director Michael Rauner said there was less flexibility with the previous exhibition room as it was darker and had no windows. Sometimes, we had to split up [the exhibitions] downstairs and upstairs. Its not light, inviting, so the challenge was to make this room a little bit more open. We decided to demolish the wall and the offices behind so that you have an open space, Rauner explained during a press tour of the building. Going up the stairs to the auditorium, visitors can see a wall mural depicting the places that the namesake of the building, philosopher Desiderius Erasmus, had lived in, from his birthplace of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to where he died in Basel, Switzerland. The second floor is home to the revamped auditorium, which now can seat 350 guests. As the auditoriums acoustics have been improved, musical performances will benefit greatly from the renovation, as exemplified by Ananda Sukarlans performance during the reception. As the main gallery space on the ground floor is dedicated to exhibitions, the second floor foyer is now a multifunctional room that has been updated with a fresh coat of paint on every surface, making it much lighter and in tune with the rest of the rooms. Perhaps the most noticeable difference in the new Erasmus Huis building is the library, which has been modernized to a high degree. Gone is the staid, dark wooden decor, which has been replaced with a more contemporary design that feels much more open and in line with the design of the building. Stepping out into the smoking area outside the library, visitors can purchase food from organic plant-based eatery Burgreens, which has been selected as Erasmus Huis new food and beverage partner. This particular branch has been modified to include Dutch dishes. Erasmus Huis manager Joyce Nijssen said the interior of the building was designed by a Dutch interior designer, heavily featuring Dutch design products to promote the countrys design scene. Along with revamped spaces, Erasmus Huis will also turn its focus to programs to attract younger visitors. Upcoming events at Erasmus Huis include The New Dutch classical music performance on Nov. 27, dance company De Stiltes Flying Cow for children aged 4 years and up on Jan. 12 and the Droog Design Exhibition, which ends on Feb. 21. Nijssen said the focus at Erasmus Huis for the younger generation was to be able to promote the Netherlands, as opposed to the older generation, which might be more familiar with Dutch culture. He added that part of the plan to attract a younger audience was to invite younger artists for their programs. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Washington Fri, November 23, 2018 18:06 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d89300 2 Science & Tech Twitter,Canada,America,people,citizens,netizens,social-media Free It's a tired cliche but on Twitter, it rings true: Canadians are more polite than Americans, saying words like "great" and "thank you" more often, a scientific study said Wednesday. The report in the journal PLOS ONE, led by three researchers at McMaster University, analyzed 37 million tweets from 2015-16. Canadians were more likely to use words like "great, thanks, good, amazing, happy," said the findings. Americans, on the other hand, tended to commonly write words like "hate, love, miss, mad, feel, swear, tired." Americans were also far more likely to use emojis than Canadians, like the laughing-while-crying one and the hearts-for-eyes face, and to resort to internet acronyms like lol and idk. Other word preferences showed a "clear prevalence of negative outputs in American tweets over Canadians," said the report. "American lexical choices show a clear relative preference for taboo words, including swear words, expletives, and racial slurs." Read also: Dating website matches Canadians to Americans escaping Trump horror The findings came as a surprise to researchers, who noted that other sociological research over the years has shown that Canadians really are not nicer than Americans, despite the commonly cited stereotype. "The Twitter behavior we observe doesn't actually reflect the real underlying personality profile of an average American or Canadian," said Daniel Schmidtke, co-author of the study and a post-doctoral researcher at McMaster. What may be happening, linguists argue, is what they call an "identity construction strategy." In other words, Canadians and Americans may create and even reinforce their national character stereotypes with the words they type on Twitter. It's a hypothesis that remains to be proven. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Kristen V. Brown (Bloomberg) Sat, November 24, 2018 03:06 1096 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d91f51 2 Health DNA,scientists,research,study,genetics Free A group of medical researchers have a counterintuitive proposal for shielding peoples most intimate personal data from prying eyes. Share more of it, they say. A lot more of it. In a new paper published in the journal Science on Thursday, researchers suggest that the best way to protect genetic information might be for all Americans to deposit their data in a universal, nationwide DNA database. The paper is being published by Vanderbilt University Medical Centers Center for Genetic Privacy and Identity in Community Settings, a major center for the study of genetic privacy. Concerns about who can gain access to genetic information gathered by consumer genetic-testing websites has been on the climb since April, when police made an arrest in a decades-old serial-murder case in California. To ensnare the alleged Golden State Killer, investigators trawled an open-source database popular with genealogy hobbyists to search for relatives of possible suspects. Police found matches, and then got their man. If enhancing privacy by creating a giant database of peoples DNA sounds counterintuitive, the groups point is that its already too late to prevent mass exposure. The California case made clear that consumers have little control over where their genetic information -- and by extension, that of their family members -- can wind up, a potential privacy nightmare. Read also: US craze for DNA 'heritage' tests may bolster racism, critics warn Currently, law enforcement already has potential access to millions of peoples data, said James Hazel, a researcher at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and the lead author of the paper. A universal system would be much easier to regulate. Hazel, who studies genetic privacy issues, said that the idea isnt as radical as it sounds. In the U.S., state and federal databases hold the genetic data of more than 16.5 million people who have been arrested or convicted of a crime. Other public and private databases could grant access to the genetic details of millions more with court permission. The genetic information of many more people could be indirectly exposed. A recent study concluded that only 2 percent of the population needs to have done a DNA test for virtually everyones genetic makeup to be exposed. Hazel and his co-authors also say that data collected from law-enforcement sources disproportionately exposes people of color. Hazel said having a more complete repository would offer better privacy protections. Such a database could hold a more limited set of genetic information than the data that can now be culled from consumer-testing reports. And access could be regulated and controlled. Police can currently peer into open-source databases without a judges permission. This is a very provocative proposal, Hazel said, But it all comes down to spurring a debate about the current system. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Port Blair, India Fri, November 23, 2018 14:03 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d7ca14 2 Art & Culture Sentinelese,tribes,India,island Free The death of an American missionary on a remote Indian island has cast a rare spotlight on the Sentinelese, one of the world's most reclusive hunter-gatherer tribes. John Allen Chau, 27, was killed with arrows as he illegally set foot on North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean after paddling there in a kayak last week. Here is a factbox on the tribe: Extreme isolation The sole inhabitants of North Sentinel Island, around the size of Manhattan, guard their territory fiercely. They rely on forest produce and sea resources for survival. They are the most isolated among the native tribal groups that inhabit the Andaman islands and are protected by Indian laws which ban any contact with the indigenous people. Their number was estimated to be some 8,000 when the British first made attempts to colonise these islands in the late 18th century. The tribe's extreme isolation makes them very vulnerable to diseases to which they have no immunity. Their current population is believed to be 150, although a national census based on photos taken from afar put their numbers as low as 15. 'Proud, strong and healthy' Most of what is known about the Sentinelese has been gathered by viewing them from boats moored at a safe distance from the shore. They are near-naked, with the women wearing fibre strings tied around their waists, necks and heads, and the men also wearing necklaces and headbands. Some have their faces painted. Rare photos show them carrying spears, bows and arrows. In his journal reportedly written hours before his death, Chau said the men were about 5 feet-5 inches tall (1.65 metres) with yellow paste on their faces. Survival International, a tribal rights advocacy group, says the Sentinelese "look proud, strong and healthy" and that observers have noted "many children and pregnant women." Read also: Dead American told island tribe 'Jesus loves you' 'Eyes on, hands off' Brief visits have been paid to the island but the Sentinelese remain untouched by modern civilisation. Starting in the 1960s, anthropologists succeeded in exchanging gifts and conducting field visits but abandoned their efforts some 25 years ago in the face of renewed hostility. An Indian Coast Guard helicopter which flew over the island after the 2004 Asian Tsunami was attacked with arrows. The authorities then declared that no further attempts would be made to contact the Sentinelese. They do make periodic checks, albeit from a safe distance, to ensure the tribe's well-being, following a strict "eyes on, hands off" policy. Veteran anthropologist T. N. Pandit who visited North Sentinel 50 years ago believes there should be no rush to make contact with the Sentinelese. "Of the four Andaman tribal communities, we have seen that those in close contact with the outside world have suffered the most. They have declined demographically and culturally," he told Down To Earth magazine in a recent interview. The Sentinelese "are a highly vulnerable population and would disappear in an epidemic," he added. "The government's responsibility should be to keep a watch over them in the sense (that) no unauthorised people reach them and exploit them. Otherwise, just leave them alone." 'Human safari tours' The nearby Jarawas were the earliest tribe in the Andamans to be contacted by the British. The 2011 census estimated their population to be around 400. They fiercely resisted contact with outsiders before opening up gradually in the 1970s. Some travel companies were accused of organising "human safari tours" so that tourists could catch a glimpse. Some say the younger generation has even learnt bits of the Hindi language from frequent interaction with tourists. Some have taken up drinking and smoking. In 2012, a video of a naked Jarawa woman dancing for tourists set alarm bells ringing and led to tightening of rules and enforcement. In 2016 there were reports of a fair-skinned baby, assumed to have been fathered by an outsider, being killed by Jarawa men according to a custom of the tribe. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Medan Fri, November 23, 2018 07:34 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d5f3be 2 National drug-trafficking,#DrugSmuggling,Medan,#Medan,aceh,#Aceh,death-penaly,#DeathSentence Free The Medan District Court in North Sumatra sentenced to death on Thursday two drivers from neighboring Aceh for smuggling 14.5 kilograms of crystal meth and more than 70,000 ecstasy pills. The court found the two drivers, Zulkifli Ismail and Dedi Syahputra, guilty of violating the 2009 law on narcotics in two separate trials on Thursday. Judge Domingus Silaban, who was among the judges handling both cases, said that Zulkifli and Dedi smuggled the illicit drugs from Aceh to Medan in February following an order from a man named Amrizal. Authorities arrested the two defendants after they gave the car key to an accomplice named Amiruddin upon arrival in Medan. Authorities found the illicit drugs they had hidden in two backpacks inside the minivan. Amrizal was shot dead in another raid about two days later, while Amiruddin was sent to lifetime imprisonment on Wednesday. Last month, the Medan District Court sentenced two men to death for smuggling 100 kilograms of methamphetamine from Penang, Malaysia, to Medan. The two are Medan residents Edy Suryadi and Arman of Aceh, who were arrested in Medan last year. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, November 23, 2018 09:02 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d62764 1 City Depok,minimum-wage Free The West Java administration has set the 2019 minimum wage for Depok (UMK) at Rp 3.8 million (US$261) per month, as stipulated in Gubernatorial Decree No. 561/2018 signed on Wednesday. Depok Manpower Agency head Diah Sadiah said most regions in West Java increased their minimum wages by about 8.03 percent. The UMK in Depok for 2018 is Rp 3.58 million. "Business owners shall comply with the regulation and pay the minimum salary of Rp 3.8 million according to the gubernatorial decree," Diah said on Thursday as quoted by kompas.com. The determined UMK is lower than the workers associations' expectations. The head of the Depok chapter of the Indonesian Metal Workers Federation (FSPMI), Wido Pratikno, said workers expected an increased UMK of Rp 4.4 million to improve their purchasing power. (cal) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, November 23, 2018 08:34 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d606c5 1 City Depok,puskesmas,parents,malnutrition Free In an attempt to rid the area of child malnutrition, the Depok administration is encouraging its residents to take their kids to community health centers (Puskesmas) by covering travel expenses of Rp 50,000 (US$3.43). There were 38 reported cases of child malnutrition in Depok from January to October this year. The head of the family health and nutrition unit at the Depok Health Agency, Eti Rohati, said some residents were reluctant to treat their malnourished children as they did not have enough money to take them to a Puskesmas. Were facing difficulty in encouraging parents to take their children to a Puskesmas because of the economic issue [] They finally agreed to take their kids to Puskesmas after we bore the cost of trips, Eti said on Wednesday as quoted by kompas.com. Eti added that the agency actively monitored the recovery of malnourished children by visiting their houses every week. (cal) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Jim Mannion (Agence France-Presse) Washington, United States Fri, November 23, 2018 08:08 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d5fd6c 2 World #USA,#politics,DonaldTrump,criticism,SupremeCourt Free US President Donald Trump renewed his attacks on the judiciary on Thanksgiving Day Thursday, accusing judges of making the country unsafe as he fanned a bitter row over asylum seekers on the US-Mexico border. In a teleconference with US troops, comments to reporters at his Florida estate and early morning tweets, Trump resumed a fight begun Wednesday after Chief Justice John Roberts defended the independence of federal judges. Trump threatened to close the border with Mexico if the situation gets out of control, claiming that criminals and "bad people" were in a migrant caravan trying to gain entry as candidates for asylum. In another matter that has set off rule-of-law alarms, Trump also doubled down on his decision to accept Saudi Arabia's denial that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the October 2 assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi -- and insisted that contrary to reports the CIA has not concluded otherwise. "We have a very strong ally in Saudi Arabia. We have an ally that said they did not commit at the top level the crown prince, the king, they did not commit this atrocity," he said. The president had issued a proclamation earlier in the week ordering that only people entering the country at designated border points be permitted to apply for asylum, a rule that would automatically reject anyone caught trying to cross elsewhere. But a federal judge in San Francisco, Jon Tigar, temporarily blocked the measure, raising Trump's ire who denounced him as an "Obama judge." That triggered an extraordinary rebuke on Wednesday from Roberts, the high court's conservative chief justice. "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges," Roberts said in a statement to the Associated Press on Wednesday. "What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them," he said. The issue clearly was uppermost on Trump's mind during a Thanksgiving teleconference with US servicemembers around the world. It was the kind of forum that previous presidents would have reserved to thank troops for their service, steering well clear of politics. But Trump lost little time in raising the border. "It's a terrible thing when judges take over your protective services, when they tell you how to protect your border. It's a disgrace," he told the troops, denouncing the San Francisco appellate court that oversees Tigar as "a big thorn in our side." He praised the deployment of US troops in the border area, and compared his administration's border battles to US military operations against Islamic militants overseas. - Border tensions - "We took an old broken wall and we wrapped it with barb wire plus. I guess you could really call it barb wire plus. This is the ultimate. Nobody is getting through these walls," he told the troops. Later, in comments to reporters, Trump said troops on the border were authorized to use lethal force if necessary. "If they have to, they have to use lethal force. I hope they don't have to, but you're dealing with a minimum of 500 serious criminals. So I'm not going to let the military be taken advantage of," he said. US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said earlier this week the troops would be armed only with batons. More than 4,300 migrants -- most of them from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala -- have massed in Tijuana, Mexico across the border from San Diego, California after a weeks-long trek from Central America. Mexican police say 57 Central Americans have been detained and tensions have been growing between the local authorities and the new arrivals. "If we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control," Trump said. "The whole border. I mean the whole border. Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the united states where they make so many cars," he said. - Chief justice - Over the course of the day, Trump alluded several times to Roberts, the chief justice. "Justice Roberts can say what he wants, but the 9th Circuit is a complete & total disaster. It is out of control, has a horrible reputation, is overturned more than any Circuit in the Country," he said in his opening Twitter salvo of the day. "Judges must not Legislate Security ... and Safety at the Border, or anywhere else," Trump tweeted. "They know nothing about it and are making our Country unsafe." The latest figures show the 9th Circuit had the fourth highest reversal rate during the October 2017 term. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, November 23, 2018 10:10 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d6db0c 4 Business APINDO,negative-investment-list,cancellation Free The Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) has called on the government to cancel its revision of the negative investment list (DNI), which is part of the 16th economic policy package announced on Monday. It would be better to review the DNI policy because there is no urgency. If we dont need it, it is should be withdrawn, Apindo chairman Haryadi Sukamdani said on Thursday as quoted by kontan.co.id. The 16th economic policy package excludes 54 business units from the DNI to attract more investors. Under the policy, the government would allow foreign investors to have full ownership in 25 business units. Previously, the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) called on the government to delay implementing the new policy. Haryadi said foreign investors were not interested in running business units that were removed from the DNI because those businesses had been implemented by local businesspeople. He also expressed his disappointment that the government would not cancel the new DNI. He said it indicated that the government did not want to listen to businesspeoples aspiration. He further argued that in 2016, the government had removed 67 percent of the business units on the negative investment list. I think this policy is enough, he added. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Suherdjoko (The Jakarta Post) Pekalongan Fri, November 23, 2018 16:35 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d83ace 1 Politics NahdlatulUlama,GP-Ansor,Banser,Joko-Widodo Free President Joko Jokowi Widodo has urged GP Ansor, the youth wing of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia's largest Islamic organization, to be brave and to be on the front line in safeguarding the state ideology of Pancasila and national motto Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity). The President also said that he expected GP Ansor to protect the state from terrorist threats and separatism. GP Ansor has shown that our countrys heritage is the spirit of warriors and the sincerity of heroes. GP Ansor cant be easily threatened, and thats our spirit as a nation, Jokowi told thousands of GP Ansor members at a commemoration of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, known in Islam as Maulid Nabi, in Pekalongan, Central Java, on Thursday evening. GP Ansor was recently in the spotlight after a division in the group, Barisan Ansor Serbaguna (Banser), was involved in the burning of a black flag bearing the Islamic creed written in Arabic. The incident occurred during National Santri Day celebrations in Garut, West Java, on Oct. 22, and led to several rallies in various cities accusing Banser of insulting Islam. Ansor said the Banser members burned the flag because they thought it was the flag of outlawed group Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI). Jokowi said GP Ansor should insist that Pancasila could not be replaced by any other ideology and its members should be patient in facing all problems and challenges, and put the interests of the nation first. I want all GP Ansor members to safeguard and maintain our unity and brotherhood as the country with the largest Muslim population. Our biggest asset is us our unity and harmony. We should keep our Ukhuwah Islamiyah [Islamic brotherhood] and Ukhuwah Wathaniyah [brotherhood of the nation], Jokowi said. (foy) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Nurul Fitri Ramadhani and Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, November 23, 2018 09:29 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d6878c 1 National Supreme-Court,child-marriage,children-development,marriage Free A Supreme Court justice and spokesman has said the court could not prohibit people from getting married, including minors who wish to be exempted from the national regulation regarding the minimum age of marriage. The 1974 Marriage Law sets the marriageable age for women at 16 and for men at 19, even though the 2002 Child Protection Law defines children as anyone under the age of 18. Religious courts, however, have been granting minors as young as 15 years old dispensation to be legally married, especially in regions where child marriage is considered the norm. The courts discretion to give dispensation is stipulated in Article 7 of the Marriage Law. Each individual has the right to get married. Thats a human right. We cant prohibit them as long as they are not violating any laws, Supreme Court justice and spokesman Suhadi told The Jakarta Post on Thursday. If the children wish [to marry] then you cant prohibit them. Concerns about child marriage have been raised once again after a girl in Indramayu, West Java, who got married at 15, died about two years into her marriage allegedly as a result of domestic abuse. Read also: 'She could have been saved': Indramayu child bride dead after alleged abuse The girl was legally married to her husband, then 16, at a local religious court. Their families decided to marry them off out of concern they might have premarital sex, so they requested that the Indramayu religious court grant their children a marriage dispensation. Secretary-general of the Indonesian Women Coalitions (KPI) West Java chapter Dariwinih criticized Suhadis statement, saying that children could not be legally held responsible for their choices. The dispensation request is made by the parents. Children are prohibited from getting married, as their reproductive organs, particularly girls, are not ready. We recommend that the government abolish the policy of legalizing child marriages, she said. While activists have been fighting campaigns against child marriage, religious courts have been permissive in giving marriage permits to minors. In 2016, the Indonesian Coalition to End Child Marriage (Koalisi 18+) conducted a study on marriage permits at religious courts in the three regencies with the highest number of child marriages: Mamuju in West Sulawesi, Tuban in East Java and Bogor in West Java. The study found that the judges approved 97.6 percent of a total 377 marriage permit requests filed at the courts. UNICEF data from 2017 ranked Indonesia as having the second most cases of child marriage of all ASEAN countries. Data from Statistics Indonesia (BPS) in 2016 showed that 17 percent of Indonesians got married before 18 years old, 1.12 percent of whom were under 15 when they tied the knot. A researcher from the University of Indonesias Judicial Watch Society (MaPPI), Dio Ashar Wicaksana, said judges should have gender perspective when reviewing marriage permit requests. [Child marriages] can also happen when the girls are forced to get married. Most of the time, our patriarchal culture leaves women with no choice. The judges must also consider that. Suhadi acknowledged that the court had released a circular advising justices to consider the psychological and physical impacts of their rulings on women, but justices usually cite cultural norms when considering marriage permit requests. There are still many regions that tolerate early marriages. That can be one of the considerations of the judges in giving approval, Suhadi said. This article was originally published in The Jakarta Post's print edition on Nov. 23, 2018, with the title "Children have right to marry: Court". Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, November 23, 2018 16:17 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d825f2 1 City diarrhea,school,children,Depok Free Parents of children at the Pondok Duta Integrated Islamic Elementary School in Depok, West Java, are pushing the local health agency to release the results of lab tests on the schools water supply. Previously, hundreds of students contracted diarrhea after using water at the school for ablutions and other cleaning purposes. Following the incident, the Depok Health Agency took a sample of the water to the Bogor Agricultural Institute (IPB) laboratory for analysis and promised the parents the results would be released by Oct. 25, 14 days after the incident. However, it has been 46 days and there has yet to be an official announcement about the results, which could guarantee the safety of the schools water, Viny, a parent, said on Thursday as quoted by kompas.com. At first, the parents thought the water was contaminated with fecal liquid. However, Viny said, the schools investigation proved that this was not the case, leaving her and many other parents questioning what really caused their childrens sickness. Another parent, Lina, said she and hundreds of other parents were still worried about their children using the schools water because of the lack of information from the agency despite the schools management saying that the water was safe to use. However, Lina questioned the schools statement as she could smell an unpleasant odor from the water from some distance. If the water is safe, why did almost all the students contract diarrhea at the same time? What really happened? she asked. (ris) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, November 23, 2018 11:41 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d743d8 4 Business tax-holiday,expansion,finance-ministry Free The government plans to announce a revision to its tax holiday policy next week that will expand eligibility for the fiscal incentive. The revised regulation will include industries with investment value of less than Rp 100 billion. With the expanded policy, well integrate incentives for all pioneer industries, said the Office of the Coordinating Economic Ministers macroeconomic and finance coordination undersecretary, Iskandar Simorangkir, in Jakarta on Thursday. The incentive is in the form of a 50 percent income tax cut for at least five years. The mini tax holiday is also open to those who invest in 169 business units listed under the Indonesian Standard of Industrial Classification (KBLI). He said the expanded tax holiday would also be accompanied by improvements in the online single submission (OSS) system. With the OSS system businesspeople who get a 100 percent tax holiday will be informed soon after their document is approved, Iskandar added as quoted by kontan.co.id. He said since the regulation had taken effect in April, total new investment had reached Rp 164 trillion, with the biggest investment value of light and stainless steel manufacturing reaching Rp 34 trillion. With the current performance, we are optimistic that all 169 goods listed on the KBLI will get produced in Indonesia. Their products could replace 46 percent of current imports, he added. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Orleans, France Fri, November 23, 2018 08:43 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d6131d 2 Sports #France,#CatholicChurch,Priest,bishop,jailed,paedophile Free A French priest from the town of Orleans was handed a two-year jail term on Thursday and a bishop was convicted for failing to report him in rare prosecutions that have shaken the French Catholic church. Pierre de Castelet, 69, was sentenced to two years in prison, with another year suspended, after abusing children during a summer camp in 1993 where he touched them while pretending to carry out medical examinations. His superior, the former bishop of Orleans Andre Fort, 83, was given a suspended prison sentence of eight months for failing to notify French police when he was made aware of the abuse allegations in 2008. Both men are expected to avoid serving time behind bars, however, under French law that allows a convict to apply for a non-custodial punishment in cases involving short jail sentences. Prosecutions of bishops are extremely rare in France, with the last case dating back to 2001 when a bishop in the town of Bayeux-Lisieux was given a three-month suspended jail term for failing to report abuse. After the judgements in the court in Orleans in central France, one of de Castelet's victims, Olivier Savignac, said he was satisfied with the outcome. "We were heard. I am happy with my country," he told reporters. Savignac and other victims of sexual abuse in the French church were invited to a meeting of French bishops in the religious town of Lourdes in November to testify about their experiences. The move was seen as a symbolic acknowledgement of the church's responsibility amid a mounting number of scandals, which have hit the Catholic faith in other countries from Ireland, the United States to Australia. The Bishops' Conference of France (CEF) said in early November they were setting up an "independent" commission to "shed light on the sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic church since 1950". The most senior French Catholic cleric to be caught up in the abuse scandal is Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who is to go on trial in January for allegedly covering up for a priest accused of abusing boy scouts in the Lyon area in the 1980s. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Stefanno Reinard Sulaiman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, November 23, 2018 12:42 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d76e42 1 Business Premium-fuel,price,discussion,ArcandraTahar Free The government has started its first meeting with state-owned energy holding company Pertamina to discuss a formula that will determine the price of Premium, Indonesias subsidized and cheapest type of gasoline. Deputy Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Arcandra Tahar said the new formula to determine the price would consider the cost structure. Once the discussion in our ministry is completed, we will send a letter to the Finance Ministry, Arcandra said in Jakarta on Thursday. The price of Premium is a sensitive issue ahead of the April presidential and legislative elections. Last month, President Joko Jokowi Widodo canceled a price increase less than an hour after it was announced by Energy and Mineral Minister Ignasius Jonan. Pertamina sold Premium gasoline at Rp 6,550 (45 US cents) per liter in Java, Madura and Bali, and Rp 6,450 per liter in other regions. The government has told Pertamina to maintain the current price until 2019, even though the market price is higher at Rp 7,250 per liter. The meeting was held amid a global oil price plunge this week. The price of global benchmark Brent crude dropped to $63.28 per barrel on Thursday due to concerns about rising global supplies and growing fears of an economic slowdown. Previously, Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry oil and gas director general Djoko Siswanto said all fuel companies in the country, including Pertamina, would be summoned to discuss the issue. (bbn) Pertamina would be summoned to discuss the issue. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, November 23 2018 The rainy season has caused prices of vegetables to increase in markets. At Cisalak Market in Depok, West Java, the price of cauliflower, cucumbers, carrots, long beans, broccoli, pumpkins and several other vegetables have increased. Its been a week since prices have doubled, a merchant named Anis said on Wednesday as quoted by kompas.com. According to Anis, 1 kilogram of cauliflower had increase from Rp 6,000 (41 US cents) to Rp 12,000, while 1 kg of carrots had increased from Rp 7,000 to Rp 15,000. 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 Ruth Shapiro (The Jakarta Post) Hong Kong Fri, November 23 2018 At the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group held in Bali last month, President Joko Jokowi Widodo encouraged innovative financing schemes such as blended finance to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Blended finance refers to deploying private sector capital alongside governments support to achieve social outcomes. He emphasized the need for shared responsibility. Todays social problems are multifaceted and Jokowi is absolutely correct that we need to forge new collaborations and work across traditional sector demarcations to craft new and innovative solutions to our shared concerns. 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, November 23, 2018 18:30 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d8a025 1 City seawall-project,Jakarta-Bay,land-subsidence,flood Free The development of phase A of the Jakarta seawall in Pasar Ikan and Kali Blencong has reached 90 percent completion. The seawall is being built by the central government and the Jakarta administration as part of the National Capital Integrated Coastal Development (NCICD) in anticipation of land subsidence in the capital. Head of the Jakarta Water Management Agency Teguh Hendarwan said the development in Pasar Ikan would be finished in late 2018 while the construction in Kali Blencong would be completed in 2019. Meanwhile, the progress on construction in Kamal Muara continues to lag, reaching only 40 percent completion. "Progress in Kamal Muara has been slow because some residents still disagree with the project," Teguh said on Thursday as quoted by kompas.com. Teguh added that the seawall in Kamal Muara was expected to be finished in 2020. Previously, Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan said the city administration and central government had taken measures to prevent Jakarta from sinking. His comments were made in response to presidential candidate Prabowo Subiantos prediction that sea water from the citys northern coast would reach the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle by 2025. Prabowo's Gerindra Party backed Anies during the Jakarta gubernatorial election in 2017. (cal) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ahikam Seri (Agence France-Presse) Adei Ad, Palestinian Territories Fri, November 23, 2018 15:00 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d7ea56 2 News West-Bank,Airbnb,Booking-com,travel,Accommodation Free Rights activists on Tuesday urged Booking.com to follow the example of Airbnb and withdraw listings for rentals in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, even as Israel called the move "disgusting" and threatened legal action. Airbnb said Monday it will remove such listings, just ahead of the release of a Human Rights Watch report criticising the inclusion of settlements. Israel strongly denounced Airbnb's decision and threatened legal action against the company, while Palestinian officials welcomed it. The US-based rights group HRW issued its report on Tuesday and called on Booking.com to follow Airbnb's "positive step". "By ending its brokering of rentals in illegal settlements on land off-limits to Palestinians, Airbnb has taken a stand against discrimination and land confiscation and theft," Omar Shakir, HRW's director for Israel and the Palestinian territories, told AFP. "It is an important and welcome step and we encourage other companies like Booking.com to follow their lead and stop listing in settlements." HRW issued the report on the online reservations firms, entitled "Bed and Breakfast on Stolen Land," along with Israeli NGO Kerem Navot. It says Airbnb, based in the United States, listed at least 139 properties in West Bank settlements between March and July. "Israelis and foreigners may rent properties in settlements, but Palestinian ID holders are effectively barred," HRW said. That is "the only example in the world the organisations found in which Airbnb hosts have no choice but to discriminate against guests based on national or ethnic origin," it said. According to HRW, Booking.com, based in the Netherlands, had 26 properties in West Bank settlements as of July, 17 which were on land Israel acknowledges is privately owned by Palestinians. Booking.com did not indicate it would be changing its policy, telling AFP it permits "all accommodation providers worldwide to list on our platform as long as they are in compliance with applicable laws." "Everything we do in terms of how we display information is always in accordance with local laws to provide transparency to anybody looking for accommodation on our site," a statement from Booking.com said. Read also: West Bank visitors attracted to hotel adorned by Banksy art 'Defy peace' Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Levin on Tuesday threatened legal action against Airbnb in the United States and Israel over its move, branding it "hypocritical and disgusting". In contrast, senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat has welcomed Airbnb's decision as "an initial positive step". "Israeli settlements are not just an obstacle to peace, but defy the very definition of peace," he said in a statement. Moria Shapira, an Israeli settler who had been offering an apartment for rent through Airbnb, said she was "in shock" over the company's move. Shapira lives in the Adei Ad wildcat settlement outpost deep in the West Bank. She said she did not understand why nearby Palestinian communities could post rentals on Airbnb but she could not. "Part of the surprise was that here next to us, in Ramallah and in Rawabi, there are advertised Airbnb apartments and it is fine," she told AFP at her hilltop home. Israeli settlements are considered illegal under international law and major roadblocks to peace, as they are built on land Palestinians see as part of their future state. Around 400,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, which range in size from tiny hamlets to large towns. A further 200,000 live in settlements in occupied east Jerusalem. Nati Rom, a resident of the Esh Kodesh wildcat settlement and a lawyer with the Lev Ha'Olam organisation which fights boycott campaigns against Israel, protested over what he termed "anti-Semitic pressures". "Its regretful to see Israeli organisations that harm us, and it's more regretful to see Airbnb surrendering to these pressures -- anti-Semitic pressures that harm the Jewish sector," he said, referring to the group that worked with HRW. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Karamjit Kaur (The Straits Times/Asia News Network) Singapore Fri, November 23, 2018 11:33 1097 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877d7409d 2 News Singapore,Airlines,Firefly,flight,travel,Malaysia-Airlines Free Malaysian airline Firefly will suspend all flights to Singapore with effect from Dec 1, the day it was scheduled to transfer its operations from Changi to Seletar Airport. In a notice on its website, the airline said it would resume services once the relevant authorities can sort out regulatory issues with regard to its move to Seletar. Firefly, a full subsidiary of Malaysia Airlines, did not elaborate further on its decision to suspend flights, but The Straits Times understands that it is in discussion with its country's regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia. A spokesman for Changi Airport Group (CAG), which runs Seletar Airport, told The Straits Times it has been working with Firefly since 2014 to prepare for the move. "Singapore has made all preparations and approved all applications by Firefly to conduct scheduled turboprop operations at Seletar Airport from Dec 1, 2018." The airline said in its notice: "Firefly confirms it has had to suspend flights into Singapore effective Dec 1, 2018, until the relevant authorities have cleared remaining matters in relation to the Singapore authority's plans to move turboprop operations from Changi ... to Seletar." The plan was for Firefly to move to a new passenger terminal that opened on Monday for scheduled commercial flights, chartered business flights and private jets. CAG, which announced its opening, said all turboprop operations at Changi would move to the new Seletar Airport terminal from Dec. 1. Read also: AirAsia, Firefly uniforms too revealing: KL lawmakers Seletar Airport will also handle all scheduled turboprop flights in Singapore from that day, CAG said. Currently, only Firefly operates such turboprop flights to Changi. It offers 20 daily flights, to and from Subang, Ipoh and Kuantan. In its notice, the airline said: "Firefly has not been provided any definitive timeline by the authorities for the delay. Upon final approval from the authorities, Firefly will then resume its flights into Singapore. "In the meantime, arrangements are being made for all affected passengers. We apologize to passengers for the inconvenience caused." It is believed that at least 12,000 people have confirmed bookings on Firefly flights from Dec 1. A Firefly spokesman had told The Straits Times on Monday: "We will move to Seletar Airport for sure. As to when that will happen, we are still in the midst of settling some issues internally and with CAG." Seletar Airport's 10,000 sq m new terminal is designed to handle up to 700,000 passengers a year. It was built to provide more space for Singapore's private and business jet traffic to grow, and free up capacity at Changi for larger planes. CAG noted that the old Seletar Airport terminal building had not undergone any major refurbishments in the past 40 years, and was due for an infrastructural upgrade. CAG has been in discussion with other airlines which have expressed interest to operate scheduled services to Seletar Airport, it added. Topics : This article appeared on The Straits Times newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post A beautiful day full of beautiful people. We demand action on climate change. #ExtinctionRebellion #WestminsterBridge pic.twitter.com/gJwImkhecD Extinction Rebellion (@ExtinctionR) November 17, 2018 University of Sheffield students Gerrard English and Eve Merrall were among the thousands who took part in the coordinated movement known as "Rebellion Day".After setting off from Sheffield at 5.30am, they joined the Extinction Rebellion (XR) protest on Waterloo Bridge at 10am. Traffic had already come to a standstill, and protestors were sitting, singing and making speeches. Extinction Rebellion is a peaceful movement designed to put pressure on the government to reduce carbon emissions. It also demands the creation of a Citizens Assembly to oversee proposed changes and greater transparency in environmental policy. Gerrard, who studies a Research Masters in Ecology and Environment, said: 'I was there because I like studying biology and I spend all my time hearing about how much of a terrible state the environment is in, and how humans are driving countless species to extinction. Nothing really gets done about it. Theres enough science to know this is all happening, but its just not translated into any sort of policy. 'We want some meaningful policy decisions, to reduce fossil fuel consumption in this country, to put more protection on wildlife, and more investment into renewable energy, because theyve scrapped the subsidies that used to be on solar power, and theyre investing in fracking, which seems like the complete opposite.' Eve, who studies a Masters in Zoology, said: 'I went because climate change is the most important issue of our time. It will affect everyone, and our government is doing next to nothing to fight it. Civil disobedience might be the only way to make them listen. Unlike many of the people who will be worst affected by this catastrophe, I am privileged to have the time, resources and agency to take action and protest without fear, so I have to.'She added: 'The change that XR are asking for is that the government commit to being zero carbon by 2025, which would be amazing, but the figure isnt that important, the point is that we need to be doing everything we possibly can to be zero carbon as soon as we possibly can, and this isnt happening. As major players on the world stage, its our governments responsibility to fight for global change, not just meet our own targets.' Backing for Extinction Rebellion and its movement was officially launched on 31st October 2018, when 94 signatories, primarily academics, scientists, and MPs declared their support. According to The Guardian , the declaration read: 'When a government wilfully abrogates its responsibility to protect its citizens from harm and to secure the future for generations to come, it has failed in its most essential duty of stewardship. The "social contract" has been broken, and it is therefore not only our right, but our moral duty to bypass the governments inaction and flagrant dereliction of duty, and to rebel to defend life itself.' An assembly of protestors including Caroline Lucas and George Monbiot gathered in Parliament Square on the same day. Campaigners occupied roads in front of the Houses of Parliament, and 15 were arrested for continuing the sit-in. Gerrard explained that people are prepared to be arrested because it triggers greater exposure for the cause. He said: 'If they want to arrest people for sitting there peacefully protesting, I think Id be happy to get arrested for it. It gives quite a strong message. 'We want media coverage, showing that there is momentum, and this is what people care about. The more media coverage we get the more chance there is that people get involved and itll seem more normalised, rather than just a load of weird hippies that care about the environment.' XR has made national headlines every day since 12th November when the protests began, and protestors will take to the streets again this Saturday. It is held that someone like Steve Bannon does not engage in logic the way civilized people do. Unfortunately for us, Steve Bannon does use logic. While he does reach conclusions that are absurd and potentially harmful, he cannot be treated as outside the bounds of rationality; politics is never that easy. Instead what needs to be considered are either his premises or his conclusions, which on the face of them are quite easy to rebut. Steve Bannon. Image Credit: Elekes Andor people, its leveled debate directly You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close 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. By Trend The OSCE Minsk Group (MG) lacks decisiveness in the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijani Ambassador to Minsk Latif Gandilov said in an interview with RIA Novosti. He was answering a question about Azerbaijans dissatisfaction with the actions of OSCE MG mediators. He said that the principles of international law are the invariability of borders, territorial integrity. The ambassador said that Baku is waiting for the settlement of the Karabakh issue on the basis of the four resolutions of the UN Security Council and on the basis of international law. There is no clear understanding of security principles in the world, international law doesnt work, we see this clearly in the Karabakh issue, Gandilov added. Answering the question about the need for reforming the OSCE MG in this case, the diplomat noted that looking for new formats means starting all over again, it will take another 25 years to resolve the issue. Negotiations cannot be endless, there can be no negotiations for the sake of negotiations, he concluded. The Azerbaijani people demand a solution of the issue. 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. By Trend Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev has already visited Belarus for the fifth time, which indicates a high level of the Azerbaijan-Belarus relations, Elshad Mirbashiroglu, a political analyst, PhD in political science, associate professor, told Trend Nov. 22. He said the high level of the Azerbaijan-Belarus relations and mutual ties are conditioned primarily by sincere friendly relations of the two presidents. Just like at all meetings, during the last meeting, the heads of state also stressed the availability of opportunities for further development of the Azerbaijan-Belarus relations, Mirbashiroglu said. Nine important documents were signed between the parties, and the most importing thing was the joint statement by the presidents. Mirbashiroglu noted that this statement once again demonstrates that the Azerbaijan-Belarus relations are of strategic nature and both states sincerely and seriously support each other on international arena as well. The joint statement of the presidents contains aspects of strategic importance for both countries, he added. It should be noted that the sixth paragraph of the statement clearly talks about the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict within the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, UN Security Council resolutions and international law. Mirbashiroglu also said the seventh paragraph of the statement says that the OSCE Minsk Group should increase its efforts to resolve the conflict. The political analyst reminded that during the visit, a memorandum of cooperation in the military-technical sphere was signed, and said all this indicates that the Azerbaijan-Belarus relations are an example for other states. I have SAMSUNG tv connected to a sound bar via Bluetooth. Every time I turn the TV on, the tv asks if I want to pair to the Bluetooth soundbar and then asks if I want to send audio via Bluetooth. Is there anyway to make this automatic? I want It to start playing audio via bluetooth straight away without having to request it. Introduced to Greek consumers in 2015, with mainly electronics stores entering the bandwagon, three years later it has turned to an event for most retailers in the country Black Friday hype has engulfed Greek consumers eager to take advantage of the sales offered by retailers, greekreporter.com notes in the following article. Introduced to Greek consumers in 2015, with mainly electronics stores entering the bandwagon, three years later it has turned to an event for most retailers in the country. This year, coffee bars, souvlaki restaurants, a solicitors practice, and a funeral service offer discounts. Funeral service Boukouras, based in Thessaloniki, continues for a second year its participation Black Friday promising up to 80% discount on selected coffins. Its slogan for 2018 is Prices come down to earth! 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: Dimorsitanos License: CC-BY-SA Lycabettus theatre will be restored and ready to reopen its gates by next fall, it was announced on Thursday, at a press conference organized by the Region of Attica and Public Properties Company, the two entities in charge of the restoration, ANA reports. Further to reopening the theater on the highest hill of Athens, a competition will be held inviting architects to propose ideas for the currently neglected area surrounding the theatre, it was also announced. The total budget for the project, which the Region of Attica will fund exclusively, is 2,234,000 euros. Once completed, the theatre will be placed under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture and Sports. 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: A.Savin License: CC-BY-SA Left to right: Eirini Vourlakou, Danae Roussou, Prof. Ioannis Mylonopoulos, Rena Kyprioti, Consul General of Greece in New York Konstantinos Koutras, and Vana Giannoula. (Photo by Yanna Katsageorgis) NEW YORK My Mothers Sin, the psychological confessional masterpiece by Georgios Vizyenos, a prominent Greek writer and poet, was considered a play that could never be performed in English. That is why, until now, no one ever dared to even think of linking this poetic, rhythmic narrative of Greek 19th century ethology with the light of a language that cannot satisfy the absolute expression of Greek dramaturgy. On November 17, director Danae Roussou and actor Rena Kyprioti, with a small group of remarkable collaborators, transferred the spirit of Vizyenos to Columbia University for the very first time in English. After an extremely laborious effort to impart the rhythm and authenticity of the literary text to a foreign language, they succeeded in an excellent and unobtrusive way, which surprised the audience immersing them in the kingdom of experiences and feelings of the original composer. Danae Roussou left the text flowing without periods of silence, as it was originally written, allowing the viewers to become lost in the performance. This allowed them to enjoy the plays style, history, and rhythm but also to experience the tragic life of Vizyenos. The depiction of Vizyenos mother, who unwittingly kills her first infant child, Anna, while breastfeeding and the guilt she subsequently feels, is feverishly and perfectly communicated by Kyprioti. With limited movement and the minimalist decor of a whitewashed wall, Kyprioti transforms herself from child to mother and vice versa, and transports the audience back in time through her eyes, her arms, and her imposing, dynamic voice. Kypriotis body, adorned with a multi-faceted white dress created by the costume designer Vana Giannoula, coupled with the impressive lighting of Roussou, strengthens the actress ability to alternate her profile, from the purity of a child to the spasmodic guilt of a mother. The talented actress manages to translate drama through the integrity of her speech without crying, while still emphasizing the immense power of rigid guilt associated with an unintentional, yet perpetually punishable, offense. The music of Nikos Kypourgos faithfully follows the construction of the image and adds to the interpretation of Kypriotis feelings with his own special sound, which breaks the standstill and the monologue, contributing to the understanding of Vizyenos multifaceted personality. English interpretation of the great literary work This glorious English interpretation of the great literary work unexpectedly impressed the audience. In my opinion, it is a teaching of literary reason and philosophical reflection: Is there a way out of guilt or does self-pity hold someone captive forever? After its immense success at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, the show will continue its tour in Florida on November 29th and then in Chicago at the University of Illinois. The show was attended by the Consul General of Greece in New York Konstantinos Koutras, Evelyn Kanellea Public Relations Officer of the Consulate, Dora Trogadi Press Officer in New York, Professor Ioannis Mylonopoulos Director of the Program in Hellenic Studies at Columbia University, Ioanna Messina-Skordas, program coordinator for the Hellenic Studies at Columbia, as well as an enthusiastic audience who embraced the project and performance. The main character of the story is Anna, a loving little girl around whom the whole plot is woven. The audience follows the course of the girls illness and her mothers futile efforts to save her in order to be forgiven for secret sin. Fixated on herself and her illness, the mother seems as though she forgets that she has three other children. After the death of her daughter, she goes on to successive adoptions of young girls, generating reactions from her other children. In the play, the audience monitors the mothers sense of guilt and the effect it had on the narrators psyche. Her guilt sprang from a deeply hidden secret from her past. The work is based on the translation of William F. Witt, adapted and interpreted by Rena Kyprioti and directed by Danae Roussou, with assistant director Eirini Vourlakou, music Nikos Kipourgos, costumes Vana Giannoula, graphic design Paris Mexis, and production coordinator Ilectra Kalaitzaki. Read more at thenationalherald.com RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report Photo Source: thenationalherald.com Based on provisional data by the Bank of Greece, the balance of travel services in September 2018 showed a surplus of 2,277 million, compared with a surplus of 2,260 million in September 2017. More specifically, travel receipts in September 2018 rose by 0.3% to 2,441 million, from 2,434 million in September 2017, whereas travel payments decreased by 6.1% (September 2018: 164 million, September 2017: 174 million). The rise in travel receipts was due to a 4.9% increase in inbound traveller flows, as average expenditure per trip fell by 22 or 4.3%. Net receipts from travel services accounted for 81.0% of total net receipts from services and more than offset (110.0%) the goods deficit. In January-September 2018, the balance of travel services showed a surplus of 12,625 million, up from a surplus of 11,571 million in the same period of 2017. This development is attributed to an increase, by 9.1% or 1,184 million, in travel receipts, which were only partly offset by travel payments, up by 9.0% or 131 million. The rise in travel receipts reflected a 10.3% increase in inbound traveller flows, as average expenditure per trip fell slightly, by 5 or 0.9%. Net receipts from travel services accounted for 76.4% of total net receipts from services and offset 76.2% of the goods deficit. Travel receipts In September 2018, as mentioned previously, travel receipts rose by 0.3% year-on-year. In more detail, receipts from residents of the EU28 increased by 2.9% to 1,725 million, while receipts from outside the EU28 fell by 5.7% (September 2018: 650 million, September 2017: 689 million). The higher receipts from within the EU28 were due to increases in receipts from euro area residents by 2.7% to 1,055 million and in receipts from residents of non-euro area EU28 countries by 3.2% to 669 million (September 2017: 648 million). Among major countries of origin, receipts from Germany rose by 8.1% to 494 million, whereas receipts from France fell by 15.4% to 113 million. Receipts from the United Kingdom decreased by 17.4% to 301 million. Turning to non-EU28 countries, receipts from Russia rose by 4.1% to 50 million, whereas receipts from the United States dropped by 16.0% to 136 million. In January-September 2018, travel receipts totalled 14,205 million, up 9.1% relative to the same period of 2017. This development was driven by a 12.2% increase in receipts from residents of the EU28, which came to 9,900 million, and by a 2.7% rise in receipts from residents outside the EU28 to 3,951 million. In particular, receipts from euro area residents increased by 12.3% year-on-year to 6,270 million, while receipts from residents of non-euro area EU28 countries rose by 12.0% to 3,629 million. Specifically, receipts from Germany rose by 16.9% to 2,513 million, while receipts from France dropped by 9.3% to 845 million. Receipts from the United Kingdom also decreased by 6.8% to 1,750 million. Turning to non-EU28 countries, receipts from Russia decreased by 19.7% to 311 million, while receipts from the United States increased by 17.4% to 812 million. Inbound traveller flows The number of inbound visitors in September 2018 rose by 4.9% year-on-year to 4,869 thousand. Specifically, visitor flows through airports increased by 11.5%, whereas visitor flows through road border-crossing points declined by 5.7%. This increase in flows was due to higher visitor flows from within the EU28 (up 12.3%), as visitor flows from outside the EU28 declined by 12.0%. In greater detail, the number of visitors from within the euro area increased by 12.2% to 1,799 thousand, while visitors from the non-euro area EU28 countries also rose, by 12.3% (September 2018: 1,834 thousand, September 2017: 1,633 thousand). Specifically, the number of visitors from Germany increased by 20.3% to 740 thousand, while visitors from France fell by 0.6% to 218 thousand. The number of visitors from the United Kingdom also decreased by 2.2% to 528 thousand. Turning to non-EU28 countries, the number of visitors from Russia fell by 0.4% to 75 thousand and the number of visitors from the United States dropped by 15.7% to 142 thousand. In January-September 2018, the number of inbound visitors rose by 10.3% to 25,957 thousand (January-September 2017: 23,535 thousand). Specifically, visitor flows through airports increased by 13.6%, while visitor flows through road border-crossing points increased by 5.0%. In the period under review, the number of visitors from within the EU28 rose by 16.1% year-on-year to 18,631 thousand, while visitors from outside the EU28 fell by 2.2% to 7,326 thousand. Visitors from within the euro area rose by 16.8%, while visitors from the non-euro area EU28 countries increased by 15.4%. Specifically, the number of visitors from Germany increased by 25.1% to 3,647 thousand, as did the number of visitors from France, by 2.9% to 1,327 thousand. The number of visitors from the United Kingdom decreased slightly, by 0.5% to 2,612 thousand. Finally, turning to non-EU28 countries, the number of visitors from Russia fell by 15.5% to 449 thousand, whereas the number of visitors from the United States rose by 19.0% to 851 thousand. 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 Australia's interest to invest in Greece is increasing, said Australia's Ambassador to Greece Kate Logan at a meeting on Thursday with the government's vice president and economy minister Yiannis Dragasakis, according to ANA. Of particular interest are the sectors of tourism, logistics and real estate, she clarified. Dragasakis pointed out that the Greek government is currently implementing a strong reform programme, as set in the Comprehensive Strategic Growth programme, with modern reforms designed to boost growth, simplify and improve that business environment, modernise the public administration and limit bureaucracy and accelerate the judicial process. Both agreed that the successful result of the ongoing negotiations between EU and Australia for an agreement on free trade will contribute in the lifting of the existing hurdles and the upgrading of the trade relations between Greece and Australia, especially on the prospect of invigorating the Greek exports and penetration of the Greek products in the Australian market. 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: Chris Phutully License: CC-BY-SA Greeces Health Tourism prospects and opportunities will be presented at a conference that will be held at the LSE in London on Friday, organized by Greeces International Health Tourism Center and the Hellenic Medical Society of UK . The conference is held under the auspices of the Hellenic Ministry of Tourism, Athens Medical Association, the Central Union of Municipalities of Greece, the Hellenic Medical Tourism Council and the World Institute of Greek Doctors. Experts of the scientific and academic community of Greece and the United Kingdom have been invited to attend the event, as well as specialists of the fields of Business, Health and Tourism. Presidents and representatives of Greek communities, Greek Medical Associations, and health and tourism professionals are also invited to participate at the conference, that will present the latest updates, the comparative advantages and the prospects of Greeces initiative for the development of Health Tourism, and its contribution to the national economy on the post-memorandum era of the austerity- hit country. The conference will be held on November 23, 2018 , 18.00, at the London School of Economics in London . G. Patoulis, President of the Central Union of Municipalities of Greece ( KEDE) President of Athens Medical Association(ISA), President of National Council Health Tourism of Greece, President and founder of the International Health Tourism Center(IHTC) as well as of the Global Institute of Greek Doctors , stated : Taking into account the rapid development of the Health Tourism worldwide, due to the advancement of medical science, medical technologies and the prolongation of the travelers life expectancy , we believe that it is an opportunity to dynamically present the comparative advantages of Greece, aiming to make the country a top Health Tourism Destination for the international Wellness and Health Tourists. Greece, the mother of Modern Medicine, possesses great advantages on the fields of Medical Excellence, Infrastructures, Safety , Cost and Recovery, that can place our country in a competitive position in the global Health Tourism market. Our goal is to join forces and work together systematically to promote the competitive advantages of our country and to highlight the prospects and investment opportunities of Health Tourism. The Hellenic Medical Society of the United Kingdom (HMS UK) is a charity organization that was founded in London in 1985 and for more than 30 years has been promoting knowledge in the field of Medical Sciences. A number of high profile Medical Doctors of Greek origins have contributed over the years towards this purpose. The President HMS UK Miltiadis Krokidis MD, PhD, EBIR, FCIRSE, FRCR, FSIR, Consultant Vascular and Interventional Radiologist underlined that purpose of the International Health Tourism Center and the Hellenic Medical Society interaction is to exchange views on how Medical Tourism can be best developed in Greece using the expertise from the UK in developing high standard healthcare services and in offering innovative, minimal invasive, cutting-edge treatment for international patients. Greece, the country where the Hippocratic idea was born, appears as the ideal destination for the development of Medical Tourism not only because offers a number of high profile specialist who may provide top healthcare services to a variety of conditions but also because Greece is an extremely popular holiday destination and patients may enjoy access to healthcare facilities during their vacation time. As current president of the Hellenic Medical Society UK it is a great honor and pleasure to co-organize this event in conjunction with the International Health Tourism Center, stated Mr. Krokkidis. 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: Umezo KAMATA License: CC-BY-SA The new satellite will be launched from French Guyana and will be controlled by the Hellas Sat offices in Koropi and Nicosia Commercial satellite Hellas Sat 4 will be launched on January 23, 2019, as announced the Hellenic Space Agency Chairman and executive director of Hellas Sat, Christodoulos Protopapas to the Minister of Digital Policy, Telecommunications and Information Nikos Pappas, when the latter visited Cyprus ground space satellite station, ANA reports. Furthermore, the Minister of Digital Policy visited the Limassol-based Technological University of Cyprus, where the cooperation agreement between the university and the Hellenic Space Agency was signed by the rector of the University, Andreas Anagiotos and Mr. Protopapas. Mr. Pappas expressed his joy at visiting the university and said that the space sector is particularly important as a public policy and research area. He also underlined that a very concerted effort is under way between Greece and Cyprus, to put environmental issues on the agenda of the tripartite meetings between Greece, Cyprus and Israel. 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: NASA License: CC-BY-SA President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov held talks in Ashgabat with President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, who arrived in Turkmenistan on an official visit. The one-on-one meeting between the heads of state was followed by the talks in an enlarged format with participation of the two delegations. The sides discussed issues related to increasing interaction in the political, trade and economic, energy, and transport, cultural and humanitarian spheres. The sides held a detailed discussion of issues related to the Caspian Sea. The sides also exchanged views on the current regional and international issues of mutual interest. The talks concluded with the ceremony of signing bilateral documents. The sides signed agreements on transport and transit issues, on exchanging preliminary information on goods and vehicles moving between the two countries, on simplification of the visa regime for international traffic participants in the territories of the two countries, on development of maritime commercial shipping, on automated information exchange between the sea ports of Turkmenbashi and Baku, on increasing cargo transshipment between the sea ports of Turkmenbashi and Baku, on development of international maritime transport passing through the ports of the two countries, on development of international road transport, on cooperation in the field of industry, on long-term trade and economic cooperation, on promotion and mutual protection of investments, on elimination of double taxation, on establishment of the Turkmen-Azerbaijani joint commission on transport, transit and logistics. The sides also signed the Memorandum of Understanding between the Institute of International Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan and the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, the Program of Cooperation in Transport for 2019-2022, the Program of Trade and Economic Cooperation for 2019-2021 and other documents. To the applause of the ceremony participants, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov and President Ilham Aliyev signed a Joint Statement. Then, the heads of state made statements for press. Later, the President of Turkmenistan hosted an official reception in honor of the distinguished guest, at which the heads of states exchanged speeches. Upon completion of the program of his official visit to Turkmenistan, the President of Azerbaijan left home from the Ashgabat International Airport. TURKMENISTAN.RU, 2021 The rise of the #MeToo movement has seen a renewed energy to tackle issues of sexual violence, harassment and structural inequities that contribute to the pervasiveness of gender-based violence. For many of us it has also awakened memories of sexual violence or harassment and has revealed a surprising truth: even when bodies heal, the mental health toll often endures. More than a third of women worldwide have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, which has a dramatic impact on health. Violence results in physical injuries which can be life-threatening, an increased risk of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, and for pregnant women who are sadly more likely to face intimate partner violence a heightened risk of miscarriage and low-birthweight. The mental health impacts are as devastating. There is an exponential rise in mental illness including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and suicidal ideation for women who have experienced violence and abuse. The reverse relationship is also true: women living with severe mental illness are significantly more likely to fall victims to violence. In fact, they are six times more likely to experience sexual violence during their life. Yet, so often, mental health services are not available for survivors of violence, and, where available, they are rarely integrated into the primary health care system. Providing women with comprehensive and gender-sensitive mental health services can allow them to take back control of their bodies, sexuality, and lives. UNDP works with national partners to strengthen programming to address gender-based violence in an effort to achieve gender justice. Our work, rooted in the belief that comprehensive health and legal services are foundational to the achievement of womens rights, includes partnering with civil society, and local advocates, to increase womens access to services. Along with UN-Women, UNFPA, WHO, and UNODC, and with funding from the Governments of Australia and Spain, UNDP has helped create guidelines for essential services and actions to be taken by different sectors to address the needs of survivors of gender-based violence. These include mental health assessments in the health sector, crisis counselling as part of social services, and guidance for a rights-based and gender-sensitive justice and policing response. In South Sudan, UNDP partnered with the government, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the International Organization for Migration to address gender-based violence as part of mental health and psychosocial support programs. By running support groups for women living with HIV, providing counseling and giving referrals for specialist support, women are getting the care they need. We can learn from successful interventions to integrate mental health services with other critical components of health care. These include hospital-based support for survivors of gender-based violence, which provide social and psychological support along medical care, while also facilitating access to shelters and legal aid agencies, as well as community-based initiatives. As we join others in the #HearMeToo movement to help build a community that stands with survivors and charts a path forward for justice, lets make sure to listen to the voices of all women, including those living with mental illness. While it can be haunting to unearth so much shared pain, its simultaneously reassuring to witness the resilience of women and girls coming together as a powerful force for change. 174 illegal migrants voluntarily deported from Libya to Nigeria TRIPOLI, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) The International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Thursday said that 174 illegal Nigerian migrants have been voluntarily deported from Libya to Nigeria. "Today, 174 migrants returned home to Nigeria via IOM's Voluntary Humanitarian Return and Reintegration Assistance Program," the IOM said in a statement on Thursday. "So far this year, more than 15,000 migrants were able to return home to 32 countries across Africa and Asia, with support from the European Union Trust Fund," the statement said. Moscow, Nov 23 (UNI) At least 12 Afghan servicemen were killed and 33 others injured in an explosion that rocked an army mosque in southeastern Khost province on Friday, media reported, citing a local governor. Captain Abdullah, a spokesman for the Afghan National Army said the explosion happened during Friday prayers when attendance is higher than usual. The Afghan news channel Tolo said those killed were all from the 2nd Regiment of Afghan National Army in Mandozai district. Eyewitnesses and sources from Khost said the casualties are higher than expressed by army officials. Denmark no longer approves arms exports to Saudi Arabia amid Riyadh policies - Ministry STOCKHOLM, Nov 22 (Sputnik) The Danish Foreign Ministry has taken a decision to terminate approval of arms and military equipment exports to Saudi Arabia amid ongoing Riyadh's role in Yemeni conflict, links to the killing of opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi and amid recent discussions at EU ministerial level. "The Foreign Ministry suspends approval for arms exports to Saudi Arabia," the ministry said in a statement on Thursday. The ministry noted that the decision covers not only weapons, but also dual-use products, "which can be used in violation of human rights." Finland refrains from arms export to Saudi Arabia, UAE Helsinki, Nov 23 (Xinhua) Finland has decided to stop issuing new export permits for weapons deliveries to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, but does not stop shipments based on earlier permits. The decision is linked with the recent death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and role of Saudi Arabia in the Yemen war. The Finnish decision followed similar moves by Norway and Denmark, national broadcaster Yle reported on Thursday. Huge consignments of liquor seized in 'dry' Bihar Patna, Nov 23 (UNI) Stepping up their drive against smuggling of liquor into dry Bihar, police today seized huge consignments of foreign and country liquor in Gopalganj and Jamui districts. According to a report from Gopalganj, police seized 21 cartons of foreign liquor from railway over bridge near Thawe Bazar in the district. Police said that 1008 bottles of foreign liquor packed in 21 cartons were seized from a mini truck under Thawe police station area on the basis of specific intelligence input. Sources said that driver made good his escape by abandoning his vehicle on the spot. Lebanon's airspace violations escalated by Israel , says UN United Nations , Nov 23 (UNI) The United Nations peace keeping force has published a report blaming Israel for violating Lebanese airspace. The report also quoted that Israeli forces has increased the violations. UN Chief Antonio Guterres cited a report by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which the Security Council debated behind closed doors on Thursday. The report said " The Israeli military has carried out 550 air violations, totalling 2,057 overflight hours. There is also a significant increase in the breach by 35 per cent from July to October 24, Press TV reported. Putin regularly meets with Kiev's envoy in Humanitarian Subgroup on Donbas Moscow, Nov 23 (Sputnik) Russian President Vladimir Putin holds regular meetings with Viktor Medvedchuk, Kiev's representative in the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group for the Donbas settlement, but details of what they discuss are unknown, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. "I do not know how often, but such meetings [between Putin and Medvedchuk] do take place. I am not aware of a detailed agenda of these meetings but I know that in this case Medvedchuk acts as the head of the group on humanitarian issues," Peskov told reporters after being asked about the meetings and their frequency. The Kremlin spokesman also praised Medvedchuk's efforts in arranging the exchange of prisoners between Kiev and Donbas. Russia registers 3 truce breaches in Syria over past 24 Hours Moscow, Nov 23 (Sputnik) The Russian side of the Russian-Turkish commission monitoring the implementation of the Syrian ceasefire has registered a total of three ceasefire violations in the country over the past 24 hours, while the Turkish side has recorded seven truce breaches, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday. "Over the last 24 hours, the Russian party of the Russia-Turkey Commission on violations of the Joint Agreement has registered 3 cases of firing in the provinces of Latakia (1), Aleppo (1) and Hama (1). The Turkish side has registered 7 cases of ceasefire violations in the provinces of Aleppo (1), Idlib (3) and Hama (3)," the ministry said in its daily bulletin. According to the bulletin, the reconciliation center carried out one humanitarian action in the Homs province, distributing 450 food sets weighing 1.95 tonnes. US military airstrikes kill 6 al-Shabab fighters in Somalia MOGADISHU, Nov 22 (Xinhua) The US military said Thursday it conducted two airstrikes in central Somalia on Wednesday, killing six al-Shabab terrorists and also destroyed a weapons cache. The US Africa Command (Africom) said the drone strikes which were carried out in coordination with Somalia government was conducted in the vicinity of Haradhere in central Somalia. "We currently assess the first airstrike killed six al-Shabab militants and the second airstrike destroyed a weapons cache," Africom said in a statement. Social media, a challenging new platform for judges around the world 16 November 2018 - While the pace of developments in technology continues to accelerate to the great pleasure of many, it does present challenges to certain categories of professional disciplines whose nature does not lend itself well to much flexibility; with the preservation of judicial integrity at the helm of their principles, many judges may have difficulty embracing rapid innovation. Judges must comply with legal and ethical ramifications which other professions may not face when using technology. This is particularly the case when considering social media platforms, which have become ubiquitous in the last few years; inserting themselves into people's mundane activities, they allow instant communication with family, friends and total strangers, the sharing of holiday photos and funny memes, and the ability of commenting on news stories. While these seemingly ordinary actions hold no repercussions for most people, so long as they adhere to a modicum of social etiquette, there could be unintended consequences for judges. Most judges understand well the positive aspects social media platforms can bring, such as openness, closeness to society, and the potential to spread the reach of their expertise and increase the public's understanding of the law. On the other hand, negative aspects stem from both what judges decide to post and from what judges may be subjected to on a specific medium, such as misrepresentation or misinterpretation of their posts, or even cyber bullying and threats to privacy and safety. In order to close this gap, there is a need for education, training and recommendations on how social media can affect its users. This was the starting consensus of 25 judges and judicial experts from five continents, gathered in UNODC's Vienna headquarters in early-November by the Global Judicial Integrity Network, an initiative of the Judicial Integrity component of the Global Programme for the Implementation of the Doha Declaration. Weekend read Do you think that judges should use social media or could it could bring unintended consequences for them such as misinterpretation or even threats to privacy and safety? Learn more: https://t.co/6T5ASVkAxo pic.twitter.com/kV9zAHyBJ0 Doha Declaration (@DohaDeclaration) 24 November 2018 Over three days of in-depth discussions to determine how to best guide judges as they begin using or increase their presence on new platforms, it was agreed from the start that social media posed both challenges and opportunities and that these should be fully understood by judges; indeed, the question was not whether judges should use social media, but rather how they should do so within the parameters of judicial ethics and integrity already available. "If we are moving forward, it is obvious that guidance and training are required in order to avoid the pitfalls. The Bangalore Principles may have been developed before social media, but whatever is seen to be unbecoming conduct can still be interpreted in the world of social media. We are not going to invent new standards; they are the same standards, now digitized," said Judge Kashim Zannah, Chief Judge of the Borno State, Nigeria, and Member of the Advisory Board of the Global Judicial Integrity Network. The Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct, endorsed by the United Nations Economic and Social Council in 2006, have already established the values which judges must uphold, namely independence, impartiality, integrity, propriety, equality, competence and diligence. For most judicial experts, this already covers any judge's rules of engagement. The problem foreseen by some, however, was not so much a judge's conscious flouting of these elements, but rather an unintentional slip on various issues in unchartered virtual territory. One of these issues is whether judges should identify themselves as such on social media, whether they should use their real names, whether they should have personal or professional profiles (or both), and whether they should interact (through friending, commenting, liking, sharing) on these platforms. For Lord Jonathan Mance, Deputy President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and member of the Judicial Integrity Group which penned the Bangalore Principles, it would be wise to err on the side of caution with regards to aliases which could give a false sense of security: "I think using pseudonyms is an extremely dangerous way for judges to disclose material. It gives you a feeling of impunity, but it won't survive." Interaction with people who are not personal acquaintances was also discussed, as was the distinction between personal and professional accounts. Judge Cristi Danilet, Appeals Court in Romania, who has over 60,000 followers on his Facebook account, believes that it is acceptable to communicate with a wider circle, as long as judges followed the same criteria. "Citizens want to see more professional aspects when they look for a judge online. They are not interested in my family, but in me as an expert on law. It's good to have a code of conduct, but at the same time we should respect all the rules we already have offline." The immediacy of social media was a point some judges touched upon, as it encouraged people to think quickly, which could be dangerous for judges. "Social media has something to do with emotions, and judges could be affected. People are driven left and right by social media, and judges should be shielded," warned Omar Ganim Mohamed, Director of International Cooperation Unit, Office of the Chief Justice of Qatar. On all these points, there is agreement that only adequate, personalized training could help judges navigate the new mediatic environment. Judge Virginia Kendall, United States District Court, is both a strong proponent of training and an active trainer herself of judges and judicial staff: "It is not intuitive, and you need to train judges on their own code of conduct. The insidious nature of social media includes that it stays forever." She advises demonstrating to judges how to use various actual social platforms (for example, showing how to tweet, how to like, or how to comment), in addition to how posts can be copied, altered or reposted. Such trainings, deemed necessary by all judges, should be given by professionals who understand both the technical side and the jargon of social media technology, and who understand the general requirements of the judicial profession. Judge Barry Clarke, Leadership Judge, Employment Tribunal of England and Wales, summed it up: "There is a recognition that social media is complex and evolving, and that judicial staff need to be trained. The level of knowledge is so varied that even a commentary saying that training is important will help jurisdictions make the case that something needs to be done." Judge Lynne Leitch, Justice at the Superior Court of Justice of Canada, and member of the Advisory Board of the Global Judicial Integrity Network, stressed the need to be at the forefront of all new technology, for judges to understand what was coming next: "Perhaps we need a commentary to reveal that you can unwittingly breach the code of conduct through new channels of social media. It is important for new judges to appreciate that it is becoming more difficult, that your conduct is able to be viewed 24/7 and permanently by what and by how you are communicating in this digital world." Conclusions on the guidelines and opportunities in judges' use of social media will be finalized by the experts and disseminated through the Global Judicial Integrity Network's website for further consultations. A final draft of the guidelines is expected to be presented at the next High-Level Meeting of the Network, planned to take place in November 2019 in Doha, Qatar. Additional information: Advisory Board of the Global Judicial Integrity Network Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct Global Judicial Integrity Network Judicial Integrity Group GLO.ACT supports annual conference of judges in Kyrgyz Republic Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic - 23 November 2018 - UNODC, under the framework of the Global Action against Trafficking in Persons and the Smuggling of Migrants ( GLO.ACT) organized, from 12 to14 October 2018, the IV annual conference of judges. Central to the conference was the presentation of findings and results of the Trafficking in Persons case law analysis, recently developed by the Kyrgyz Association of Women Judges and the Supreme Court of the Kyrgyz Republic in partnership with UNODC. In terms of the context, this case law analysis of TIP related crimes has been initiated in the Kyrgyz Republic for the first time. The aim was to better understand existing judicial practice and identify common challenges faced by judges in adjudicating TIP crimes. The methodology used for this analysis included a detailed study of 254 cases of TIP related crimes considered by all courts throughout the country, covering the period from 2014 to 2017. It is important to note that the analysis covered not only the article on TIP of the criminal code but also other related articles of the criminal code that criminalize other forms of TIP such as forced marriages, crimes committed towards underage person, bride kidnapping, TIP for the purpose of sexual exploitation and removal of organs. Additionally, the study included interviews with criminal justice practitioners (police officers, prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges) as well as representatives of crisis centers and civil society organizations that provide assistance to victims of human trafficking. The preliminary findings of the analysis showed that: (1) Most of the TIP cases were taken to the courts in Bishkek and Osh; (2) No cases on TIP for the purpose of organ removal and child sexual exploitation were brought before the courts within reporting period; (3) 412 persons (254 male and 158 female) were convicted out of 254 cases; (4) 15 cases out of 254 presided over by the courts related to TIP Article of the criminal code, and 14 cases out of 15 were child trafficking cases. The summary of the analysis will be prepared based on recommendations provided by conference participants and will be published at official websites of the Supreme Court and Kyrgyz Association of Women Judges. "One of the main recommendations of the analysis is to strengthen the capacity of criminal justice practitioners to conduct intelligence-led investigations, legal and evidential issues relevant for the prosecution of TIP cases, such as consent, coercion and exploitation. Judges require relevant trainings on issues related to witness protection during trials, including on-camera testimony, witness concealment and protection of privacy; best practices of court considerations in sentencing, including relevant mitigating and aggravating circumstances in TIP cases; as well as victims' rights and compensation issues" noted Ms. Duishenbekova Gulnara, ex-judge, expert of the Kyrgyz Association of Women Judges, in her speech on findings and recommendations of the analysis. GLO.ACT significantly contributed to the conference of judges by providing detailed information on relevant UNODC online products such as UNODC Human Trafficking Knowledge Portal "CASE LAW DATABASE" and the recently published UNODC Case Digest: Evidential issues in Trafficking in Persons cases. All participants expressed their interest to actively use these online tools going forward and saw them as an important source of information to share with other colleagues in their respective countries. Over 90 judges of the Supreme Court and local courts attended the conference of judges as well as over 30 criminal justice practitioners, including police officers, prosecutors, defense lawyers and representatives from crisis centers and civil society organizations. High-level officials including the chair of the Supreme Court, the Ombudsman of the Kyrgyz Republic, the Governor of the Chui region, representatives of EU Delegation to the Kyrgyz Republic and the U.S. Embassy in the Kyrgyz Republic provided welcoming remarks. The Global Action to Prevent and Address Trafficking in Persons and the Smuggling of Migrants (GLO.ACT) is a four-year (2015-2019), 11 million joint initiative by the European Union (EU) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The project is being implemented in partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). GLO.ACT aims to provide assistance to governmental authorities and civil society organizations across 13 strategically selected countries: Belarus, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Kyrgyz Republic, Lao PDR, Mali, Morocco, Nepal, Niger, Pakistan, South Africa, Ukraine. GLO.ACT works with the 13 countries to plan and implement strategic national counter-trafficking and counter smuggling efforts through a prevention, protection, prosecution, and partnerships approach. It supports the development of more effective responses to trafficking and smuggling, including providing assistance to victims of trafficking and vulnerable migrants through the strengthening of identification, referral, and direct support mechanisms. For more information, please contact: Madina Sarieva madina.sarieva@un.org www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/glo-act/ Email: glo.act@un.org Twitter: @glo_act . 0:2 "F" . , - 60-70 , . " - . , . , ... Funding for two scholarships to the Macomb Community College Public Service Institutes police academy was recently approved by the Richmond City Council. The scholarships will include $6,200 in tuition for each student. The city will also pay each candidate an hourly wage for attending the program. The wages will be the current minimum wage per hour or $8,762 per pupil for the course. In total, $29,924 from the citys general fund was approved for the scholarships, said City Manager Jon Moore. Moore explained the plan at a Nov. 19 council meeting, noting that during a recent quarterly workshop, officials discussed ways to increase the number of certified part-time officers for the citys police department. The Public Service Institute at the college has created an academy with classes offered at night and on weekends to accommodate those already working in another field. Despite the unique approach to the program, all of the officers graduating would be certified as if they went through normal academy. It will just take a bit longer to finish, Moore said. In the past, the city has seen reserve officers step up to attend the academy and become full-time officers for the city. We thought this may be a good way to entice some of those reserves with the city to go through the academy, Moore said. At the end, we would require them to stay three years with the city of Richmond as a part-time officer to pay us back for sponsoring them through the academy. Mayor Tim Rix asked what will happen if the city does not have two reserve officers who can meet the criteria for attending the academy. Police Chief David Teske said the college, not the academy, wants people from all walks of life to take part in the program, such as someone who took another path and may be employed in another area, but always wanted to try out that line of work. If they took a fork in the road and became a steel worker or a carpenter or whatever, but now their life is kind of lined up where they can do this and kind of realize a dream that they thought they had before its not just for current police officers, Teske said. Rix said his concern with the motion before the council was that it only allowed for reserve officers to attend the academy, which would mean the city could not go outside for students. He wondered if Teske would consider someone from outside. Absolutely, Teske said. We are looking for somebody to make a commitment to us. There are good people out there that arent necessarily reserve officers and they are looking for a break, so Im open to it. In the past, he said he had about a half-dozen reserve officers who were interested, but it will depend on their current work commitments and the schedule of classes at the academy. Its not going to be a cakewalk, so obviously we have to make sure they are committed, Teske added. Police departments across the country are experiencing a shortage of officers due to a variety of factors, including retirements, college officials said in a news release. The standard Macomb police academy does a great job for those who are able to walk away from a job and spend 40 hours per week for 18 weeks of training, Sterling Heights Police Chief Dale Dwojakowski, an instructor at the Public Service Institute, said in the release. But were probably ignoring a third of the population who might want to get involved in this profession but havent had the chance. So this academy will bring in a whole host of a new type of applicants. Moore said he and Rix had discussed the issue before the meeting, and while the reserves and city employees would get first dibs on the scholarships, the motion can be altered to include outside applicants, as well, after those avenues have been looked into. There may be even a mayor that has some spare time on his hands, Teske said. Oh, no; the mayor is too old for that now, laughed Rix, who retired earlier this year. I dont think Id pass the agility course as I might have a few years ago. Officials modified the motion for academy candidates to include reserves, city employees, and if necessary, someone from the public. The council unanimously approved it. Teske said applications have been open since Nov. 6. Moore said applicants have until Dec. 14 to formally apply to the academy. Barb Pert Templeton is a freelance reporter. She can be contacted at barbperttempleton.reporter@yahoo.com. In 2015 the United Arab Emirates created Sawab (an organization fighting against violent ideologies including that of the Muslim Brotherhood); in 2016 it established a Ministry for Tolerance; in 2017 a Global Institute of Tolerance and in 2018 a Global Summit of Tolerance, the first session of which took place on 16 November, the date which also celebrates the UN Day for Tolerance. The Emirates wants to showcase its traditional culture. Historically, the Emirates was a nation of fishermen and merchants in contact with the cultures of the Indian Ocean. During the British colonization, it was incorporated into the Indian Empire. In contrast, Saudi Arabia is a nation established in the desert without external contacts. In the sixties, Saudi Arabia exported its model of intolerance through Wahhabism, and its support for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the Order of the Turkish Naqchbandis (two organizations with which it has broken contact today). All reference or religious practice apart from Islam is prohibited in the Kingdom, a prohibition backed up by jail time or the death sentence. Where Islam is concerned, the Emirates is now competing with its Saudi ally. Distinguishing the cultural sphere from the political, the Emirates has stressed that when the Saudis commenced to finance the expansion of Wahhabism, the founder of their Modern State Sheikh Zayed, had set up a Muslim state protecting equally its Muslim and non Muslim nationals. In the Emirates, positions of hate have been taken up in relation to other religions (including Hinduism) which are repressed. On 8 November just past, the US Ambassador for Syria was received in Moscow. Following this, when they met in Paris on 11 November to commemorate the end of the First World War, Russian President Vladamir Putin had brief interviews with his US partner, Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Russia proposed mediation with a view to loosening the tight grip the US sanctions regime was holding on the Iranian economy. In exchange, Irans military would retreat from Syria. Several questions are raised. In particular, we need to ascertain if Washington is ready to leave Russia alone in Syria and if Iran has sufficient authority over Hezbollah as the US and Israel claims it has in order to compel it to withdraw. When it comes to water, Jordan is the fifth poorest country in the world. During recent years, its consumption has increased by 40% whilst its supply continues to decrease. While this is going on, Israel has had to deal with an evaporating volume of water from River Jordan (the volume has reduced by half since 1950) and the drying up of the Dead Sea. On 19 November 2018, King Abdallah II, King of Jordan, sent a Jordanian delegation to Israel, to present the proposals of Kingdom. The project dates back to 2013 and consists of the following stages: 1. pumping water from the Red Sea to Jordan; 2. in Jordan, extracting the salt from it; 3. distributing the de-ionized water in the region 4. discarding the residual saline solutions via a pipeline into the Dead Sea. This project would provide a temporary solution to the problem of water in Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. While this plan is ambitious, it is less so than the plan for a canal, properly called, between the two seas. In 2015, an agreement was probably signed with Israel, the Palestine Authority and the World Bank. Its budget has been estimated at 900 million dollars. The United States and Japan promised to contribute 120 million dollars. France, Italy, Spain, the European Union and the European Investment Bank are ready to lend 140 million dollars at an attractive rate. However nothing has been done. Jordan also proposes to better divide the existing resources: Israel would be authorized to extract water from the common phreatic planes in the South in exchange for water in the North of the country. In the context of the European Security and Common Defense Policy (ESCP) the EU has a small intelligence service accountable to the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, for the time being Federica Mogherini. This unit would probably be limited to producing summaries based satellite data and would not be empowered to carry out espionage Going forward, the Union would have an a la carte programme of the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO). Although provision for the latter was made in the Treaty of Lisbon, it only entered into force in 2017. Its scope is to create pooled capabilities while no European army exists. PESC does not operate on a consensus basis but on a complex system of qualified majority which gives a power of veto to the French-German couple. Its in this context that on 19 November 2018, all member states except for Denmark, Malta and the United Kingdom, resolved to establish a school for espionage based in Cyprus and under Greek leadership. This initiative takes place just as the United Kingdom is making preparations to leave the Union. Until now, London had blocked this project to save to its intelligence agencies in the context of the Five Eyes (Australia, Canada, the United States, New Zealand and United Kingdom) instead of those of the European Union. This means that the different Member States will have to surmount the national cultures to pool their methods. This process will be all the more difficult as certain states consider that if a school is based in Cyprus, it will be easier for the United Kingdom, Turkey, Israel and Russia to carry out surveillance of it. The Russian Federation is seriously concerned about Ukraines continued attempts to aggravate the situation in the Sea of Azov. The latest act of fomenting tensions between Russia and Ukraine is hindering the restoration of bilateral relations and contradicts regional and international security interests. Russia regrets that Kievs confrontational policy of destabilising Russian-Ukrainian relations has been supported by some countries, including EU members. Russia roundly rejects any accusations of aggressive or illegal actions in the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait. Since their reunification with Russia, the Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol have been an integral part of the Russian Federation, which exercises its sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction in the maritime areas adjoining the Crimean Peninsula in accordance with international law. Russias actions over there are consistent with international law, intended to protect its national security, and proportionate to the extremist threats to Russia, including the threats from Ukraine. The Sea of Azov is the internal waters of Russia and Ukraine, where only Russian and Ukrainian vessels enjoy the freedom of navigation. The Kerch Strait is not and has never been an international waterway as per the spirit of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982), and therefore any claims concerning the right of transit or innocent passage for foreign vessels are inapplicable in the strait. The inspections of vessels conducted by the Coast Guard of the FSB Border Service in the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait are legitimate and justified. The increase in the number of these inspections since April 2018 is due to the need to tighten security in the Kerch Strait following the opening of the first stage of the Crimean Bridge, rather than to the desire to put political or economic pressure to bear on Ukraine, as per an interpretation presented by Kiev, Washington and Brussels. The Russian Coast Guards actions are not discriminatory: 48 percent of the vessels they inspected between April and October 2018, or 720 out of 1,492 vessels, were transiting to or from Russian ports. Contrary to what Ukraine says, the Russian Coast Guard also inspects ships flying the Russian flag. The overwhelming majority of inspections 93 percent are conducted at the anchoring grounds located near the entrance to the Kerch Strait from the Black Sea or the Sea of Azov at the time, when sea convoys are formed for transiting the Kerch-Yenikale Canal (KYC). As a rule, these inspections do not exceed three hours. Any possible loss of time is due to the specific procedure for sailing via the Kerch-Yenikale Canal, its size and complicated hydrometeorological and navigation conditions. Vessels are rarely stopped for inspection in the Sea of Azov and then only for compelling reasons. Contrary to statements made in Kiev and Brussels, Russia is not building up its military presence in the Sea of Azov. Russian armed forces deployed there are mostly used to guard the Crimean Bridge. Meanwhile, the actions taken by Ukraine, which has announced a decision to set up a naval base in Berdyansk and systematically closes off some areas in the Sea of Azov for artillery live fire exercises, are leading to the militarisation of the Sea of Azov. The Russian Federation is open to a constructive dialogue on the situation in the Sea of Azov and would like to warn Ukraine against any attempts, in violation of international law, to revise the current status of the Sea of Azov as the internal waters of Russia and Ukraine. In this connection, we urge Kiev to refrain from any reckless actions to unilaterally delineate a new state border in the Sea of Azov, which Russia will not recognise. The Russian Federation is warning everyone that the responsibility for possible further aggravation of the situation in the Azov Sea-Kerch water area lies with Ukraine and the states that support its provocative actions. Russian Myth: We gave the Americans fully detailed information about when and at what distance tests of this missile had been conducted. Fact: Russia has repeatedly changed its cover story regarding its violating missile, and this claim represents only the latest iteration. For over four years Russia denied the existence of the missile and provided no information about it, despite the United States providing Russia the location of the tests and the names of the companies involved in the development and production of the missile. Only after we publicly announced the missile systems Russian designator did Russia admit that the missile exists, and has since changed its story by claiming that the missile is incapable of ranges beyond 500 kilometers. Russia claims that it is not obligated to provide the United States any more information about the missile, its capability, or its testing history to support Russias contention that the missile is Treaty-compliant. Despite such obfuscation, Russia claims that it wants to preserve the Treaty. Russian Myth: Just a week ago, a couple of days ahead of the announcement of the (U.S.) aim to leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, Americans via their embassy in Moscow sent the Russian foreign ministry an extensive list of questions which are a concern to them. (Quote from Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov on October 28, 2018) Fact: This is incorrect. Most recently the United States presented Russia with questions about its violating missile at a meeting of bilateral experts in June, which went unanswered. In October, the United States provided answers to questions Russia had posed at the same meeting. The United States has presented Russia many sets of questions over the last five years always addressing the same set of facts regarding their ongoing violation that Russia refuses to discuss. Russia has refused to answer key U.S. questions about its violating missile. First, the Russians claimed they could not identify the missile of concern to the United States, despite the United States having provided extensive information about its characteristics and testing history. Only later, when the United States forced Russia to acknowledge the existence of the missile by publicly releasing its Russian designator, did the Russians claim the missile was not captured under the INF Treaty because its range did not exceed 500km. Russia now claims it is not obligated to provide any additional information about this missile. Russian Myth: The United States wants to start an arms race. Fact: The facts are that the Russian Federation is producing and fielding a new offensive capability that is prohibited by the INF Treaty. The United States is not. The current situation is not the preference or creation of the United States. The onus clearly falls on Russia. Furthermore, it is Russias President Vladimir Putin who has prioritized a massive military rearmament program, who regularly brandishes the value of Russias nuclear weapons, and who openly threatens to attack Europe with Russian missiles. Russian Myth: The United States is cheating, not Russia. Fact: The United States is in compliance with its obligations under the INF Treaty, and Allies affirmed this most recently in the NATO Summit declaration in July 2018. Russia is not in compliance and has ignored calls for transparency from the United States and Europe. In contrast to Russias refusal to answer substantively key U.S. questions about the SSC-8/9M729, the United States has provided Russia with detailed information explaining why the United States is in compliance with the INF Treaty. The United States has even presented some of this information publicly, including in a factsheet on the State Department webpage. Russian Myth: The United States is undermining European security. Fact: Russia is undermining European security with its INF-violating missile that was developed specifically to destroy key European military and economic targets and coerce NATO governments. As NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg has said: The problem is the deployment of new Russian missiles. There are no new U.S. missiles in Europe, but there are more Russian missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and those missiles put the INF treaty in jeopardy. Russias willingness to erode European security and reject international norms by violating a principal arms control agreement should not be a surprise. The INF Treaty violation follows a disturbing pattern of Russian threatening activity that includes its purported annexation of Crimea, a coup attempt in Montenegro, multiple cyber hacks and attacks, interference in Western elections, and the attempted assassination of Sergey and Yulia Skripal with a military-grade nerve agent on the territory of a NATO ally. Russian Myth: Russia is interested in dialogue about the Treaty, while the United States is not. Fact: The United States has convened five meetings of technical experts to discuss Russias INF Treaty violation since 2014. This included two meetings of the Special Verification Commission, the Treaty body responsible for addressing compliance concerns, in November 2016 and December 2017, and three bilateral U.S.-Russia meetings of technical experts, in September 2014, April 2015, and June 2018. At each of these meetings the United States pressed Russia on its violating missile, urged it to come back into compliance, and highlighted the critical nature of our concerns, but were met with obfuscation, falsehoods, and denials. In contrast, Russia has initiated zero meetings with the United States regarding INF Treaty compliance during this time period and has not engaged in a substantive manner regarding the U.S. concerns. Russian Myth: The United States is abandoning arms control. Fact: As described in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, the United States is committed to arms control efforts that advance U.S., allied, and partner security; are verifiable and enforceable; and include partners that comply responsibly with their obligations. An arms control treaty that restrains only one side, while the other violates it with impunity, is not effective in making us safer. Rather, it undermines the very idea of arms control as a tool to enhance our collective security. The United States is acting to preserve the role of arms control in reducing the risk of war and avoiding unnecessary and destabilizing military competition. Russian Myth: The United States is manufacturing its allegations against Russia as an excuse to exit the Treaty. Fact: The Russian Federation is producing and fielding a new offensive capability prohibited by the INF Treaty. The Russian Federation created this problem, not the United States. The United States has long maintained that an INF Treaty that all parties comply with contributes to global security and stability. NATO Allies have concurred that in the absence of any credible explanation from Russia on this new missile, the most plausible assessment would be that Russia is in violation of the Treaty. The United States has discussed this violation with Russia for over five years in an effort to convince Russia to return to compliance with the Treaty. We also have long stated that the status quo is untenable and our patience is not unlimited. Unfortunately, Russia has taken no significant steps toward resolving this problem. Moderator: Greetings to everyone from the U.S. Department of States Dubai Regional Media Hub. I would like to welcome our callers who have dialed in from across the region. Today we are joined by the Secretarys Special Representative for Syrian Engagement, Ambassador James Jeffrey. Ambassador Jeffrey is a senior diplomat with experience in political, security and energy issues in the Middle East, Turkey, Germany and the Balkans. He has held several senior assignments in Washington, D.C., and abroad, including as Deputy National Security Advisor, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and U.S. Ambassador to Albania. I will now open the floor for Ambassador Jeffrey to give brief remarks. Ambassador Jeffrey, please go ahead. Ambassador Jeffrey: Thank you, Nathan. Thank you for giving me this opportunity today. I realize how important the Syrian conflict is to media representatives that you have assembled here today and to their readers and listeners. It is also very important to President Trump and to the entire U.S. government. We see the Syrian conflict as one of the core disasters of the last decade in the Middle East and an extremely dangerous situation that brings together several very, very problematic elements. These include a terribly dictatorial and vicious regime under President Bashar Al-Assad. These include Iranian expansion into Arab states, notably in Syria, but we see this elsewhere as well. And finally, the rise of new terrorist movements such as Daesh that have taken on some of the aura, some of the mystique of the Al-Qaeda movement. These are all threatening to the entire region. President Trumps policy is clear. We want to deescalate the conflict. We thus welcomed the ceasefire in Idlib between Turkish-supported forces in the regime and the Russians back in September. We also want to revitalize the political process under the UN. There is a UN Security Council Resolution 2254 that lays out a political process forward that would allow the half of the Syrian population, 12 million people, to return to their homes because these people have either fled abroad or they fled to other areas of Syria. That is critical to bringing this conflict to an end. It is critical to preserving security in the region. All of the neighbors, Turkey, Syria itself, Jordan and Israel are very much involved in this conflict, and the possibilities of a larger conflict are always there if we do not act together to end the fighting and to find a political solution. I will stop there. Moderator: Thank you very much, Ambassador Jeffrey. For those asking questions today, please state your name and affiliation and limit yourself to one question related to the topic of todays briefing. We will take questions first from the English line and then from the Arabic line. If you wish to join the question queue, please dial 01. I will now turn the floor to the English line. Operator, please give the floor to the first journalist. Operator: Thank you. Our first question comes from Mohamed Ataya, masrawy.com. Please go ahead. Question: Hi, sir. I am Mohamed Ataya from masrawy.com. My first question is does American existence in Syria depends on the ISIS existence or Iran existence? My second question is will the U.S. participate in the rebuilding Syria? Thank you. Ambassador Jeffrey: First, the specific military combat mission of our forces in Syria today is the enduring defeat of ISIS or Daesh. More broadly, our overall presence in Syria thats a presence that has economic, diplomatic, military aspects. It involves our partners on the ground. It involves our allies throughout the Middle East. All of that is focused on the enduring defeat of Daesh, the removal of all Iranian forces from Syria and the revitalization of an irreversible political process. So you have to look at what we are doing as a whole, not simply what our military is doing today or what our allies are doing tomorrow. As a whole, those are our three objectives in Syria. Moderator: Thank you very much. Operator Ambassador Jeffrey: In terms of the reconstruction, we, the United States does not believe that the Assad regime should receive reconstruction funds from anyone until it shows its willingness to participate in the UN Security Council mandated political reform process. It has not demonstrated that yet. Moderator: Thank you very much. Operator, we will take the next question from the English line and callers, I would just remind you to please limit yourself to one question, so that we can get to as many journalists as possible, thank you. Operator, next question please. Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Lamiaa Yousry, El-zman newspaper. Please go ahead. Question: Hello. Why the U.S. refused to participate in the Astana Conference? Thank you. Ambassador Jeffrey: At times, the U.S. has had observers at Astana, but basically Astana is a political, military de-confliction mechanism between Turkey, Iran, and Russia, all of whom are supporting forces in the internal conflict. The U.S. was not involved in the creation of that, and we think it has a very limited utility. Ill notice that the Idlib ceasefire was put together in September not by the Astana group, but by Russia and Turkey independently. Thats an example of why we dont think Astana is all of that effective. We certainly dont think that Astana has been so far particularly effective in advancing the political process. Moderator: Thank you very much. Operator, can we take the next question on the English line? Operator: Our next question comes from Omar Shariff, Gulf News. Please go ahead. Question: Yes, thank you. My name is Omar Shariff. I am the Deputy Middle East Editor at Gulf News. My question is this Ambassador, the U.S. recently denied involvement in attacks that kill civilians in eastern Syria and at the same time, it said that there were other forces that might have operated in that area. Now my question is this, are Syrian regime groups and the U.S. coordinating actions against ISIS and Daesh in eastern Syria? Ambassador Jeffrey: We dont discuss our military operations in public in any detail. We do de-conflict our military operations with Russia. I will leave it at that. Moderator: Okay, very good. Operator, can we take the next question from the English line? Operator: Our following question comes from Joselito Joey Aguilar, Gulf/Middle East. Please go ahead. Question: Hello, good afternoon. Sir, I just want to ask what will you say about the efforts of Qatar and its contribution in the fight against terrorism in Syria and in the Middle East? Ambassador Jeffrey: As with many other states in the Gulf, Qatar has concerns about Irans expansion. Qatar has participated in operations in Yemen. It has participated in various ways in the internal conflict in Syria, and we have communication with Qatar involving Syria and other issues quite frequently. There are members of the opposition who reside in Qatar. I have had contact with people in Qatar. It is one of the players that we pay attention to in this conflict. Thank you. Moderator: Thank you very much. We will take the next question from the English line. Operator: Our next question comes from Akram Kharief, Middle East Eye. Please go ahead. Question: Hello sir. How do you explain that Daesh and ISIS are still within the eastern part of Syria please? Thank you. Ambassador Jeffrey: Well, first of all, the United States and the coalition that the U.S. leads have played an extraordinarily central role in the defeat of Daeshs essentially state and military force in much of Iraq and northeastern Syria. That job is almost finished in terms of defeating the conventional forces of Daesh and we are confident that in the months ahead, we will be successful along the Euphrates. There is a longer-term issue that is important both in Syria and Iraq and we call it the enduring defeat of ISIS, which is to develop the security, economic, and governance structures among our local partners that will ensure that Daesh does not regenerate and does not return as it did in 2013, 2014. Moderator: Thank you very much. We will take the final question from the English line. Operator, please open the line. Operator: We have a question from Ariel Kahana, Israel Hayom. Please go ahead. Question: Hello, Ambassador. My question is regard what you said at the beginning that a conflict might escalate, and it includes Jordan and Israel. You said that both countries are very involved. If you can give some more details about this. Thank you. Ambassador Jeffrey: Well, for the moment, Jordans major concern, as Jordanian officials talk to us, is both Irans movement into regions close to Jordan and of course the remnants of terrorist forces along the Jordanian border. Jordan has suffered terribly from terrorist attacks and we are committed to its security. In terms of Israel, it is even more dramatic because of the deployment of long-range Iranian weapon systems into Syria and they are used over Israeli territory twice in this past year and the Israeli response to that that led to the set of events culminating in the shoot down of a Russian plane by Syrian missiles and this is the kind of perhaps accidental, perhaps deliberate escalation that we are working night and day to prevent by trying to again de-escalate the conflict and revitalize the political process. Moderator: Thank you very much. We will now switch over to the Arabic line to take questions from journalists listening in Arabic. Operator, can you please take the first question from the Arabic line? Question: Thank you. Hello. You said, Ambassador, that the U.S. presence in Syria helps to force the Iranian commanded forces to depart from Syria. Can we know how can this be achieved, especially that you repeated over and over that there is no military plan to fight Iran in a military way in Syria? Ambassador Jeffrey: First of all military, as our military commanders have also noted, our presence indicates our commitment to security in Syria, be it security against Daesh which is the focus of our military operations or more broadly and diplomatically focus against Irans very bad behavior that helped create Daesh in Syria and also in Iraq. We again see a political process leading to a reformed Syrian government and the removal of not just Syrian, but all foreign troops who came since 2011. That does not include the Russians who were there before, but all of the other forces we believe would be ready to leave if the Iranians left and if there was a political solution. So that is what we are working on. Moderator: Thank you very much. Operator, can we please take the next question on the Arabic line. Question: A question from Majed Al Khatib. Greetings everyone. I am from Syria 24 website. The majority in the Congress, what is happening, this majority will lead to more, to freezing a lot of the action. So what about the different sanctions, how they will impact Iran, how will they impact in Syria and otherwise? Ambassador Jeffrey: We will have to wait until the new Congress comes into session in January. I am optimistic that our basic policy in Syria has broad domestic support in the United States. Moderator: Thank you very much. Operator, can we please take the next question from the Arabic line? Question: Ahmad Zakariya, Radio Al Kul. Hello, Mr. Jeffrey, Ambassador. Do you want to push to the formation, of the constitutional committee by the end of the year. You said that what was achieved in the summit would not have been achievable without the effects of the U.S.? Thank you. Ambassador Jeffrey: Yes, the U.S. worked closely with all four basically, with the Turkish, French, German and Russian governments to try to ensure that the Istanbul summit would reinforce our position of revitalizing the political process and deescalating the conflict and thats exactly what the Istanbul summit did by calling for a lasting ceasefire in Idlib and for the formation of the constitutional committee by the end of the year. So the U.S. was pleased with and welcomed that communique. Moderator: Thank you very much. Operator, can we please take the next question on the Arabic line? Question: Ahmed Gomaa, Al Youm 7. Hello, and thank you for taking my question. Ambassador, you said that there is a newer strategy for Syria. Do you have a framework and a timeframe to implement this strategy, and are you working on stopping any activities by the Kurdish forces in eastern Syria? Ambassador Jeffrey: We are working with all of our partners towards first of all the enduring defeat of Daesh, and thats what we are doing in the East of the country right now with our military and with the Syrian Democratic Forces. More generally we do not put a timeline on the Syrian conflict. It is going on obviously far too long. We want to see it end as soon as possible, but we dont set any timeline for our involvement because if we did, then people would just wait until we stopped our involvement. Therefore, we are engaged across the board diplomatically in other ways to achieve our three goals in Syria because we think these three goals are absolutely essential to peace and security and progress in the entire Middle East. Moderator: Thank you very much. We will take the next caller from the Arabic line. Question: Next call by Dima Al Sayyed. Hello, John Bolton said that the international community will not discuss the rebuilding of Syria before everything has ended. So what are the, how well do you pressure Moscow in order to push the process forward? Thank you. Ambassador Jeffrey: We are trying to make clear to Russia two things. First, Russias key interests in Syria having a friendly government, an alliance with that state and having military bases is something that we do not challenge. We also stressed to Russia that it is not in its advantage to have as a partner and the Syrian state that has lost half its population, almost half its territory, that cannot receive international support for its reconstruction because of its terrible behavior. Therefore, Russia should do everything in its power to change that behavior. Thats the sum of our conversation with the Russians. Moderator: Thank you very much. Operator, please take the next question from the Arabic line. Question: Abde Slam Sekia from Al Shorouq daily. Question from Mohamed Amer, Al Watan Daily. Hello, welcome, everyone. I am from Al Watan, my question is the following: there are some agreements of ceasefire and other things in Syria, but they did not achieve a lot of results. What about the coordination between the U.S. and Egypt concerning Syria? Ambassador Jeffrey: Egypt is an important member of what we call the small group along with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, United Kingdom and the U.S. We coordinate on almost a daily basis with our Egyptian colleagues. They are important strategic players in the entire Middle East and we are glad that we have their support in our overall goals, all three of our goals in Syria. Moderator: Thank you very much. Operator, please take the next question from the Arabic line. Question: Question from Al Ayam newspaper. Tamam Abu Safi from the Bahrain newspaper Al Tama. I have a question concerning what you mentioned Ambassador saying that there is a quasi-coordination with the Russians, for de-confliction but what about the Iranian presence or the Iranian-led militias in Syria. Whats your position when we speak about the thousands of Shia combatants that are led by Iran and are in Syria if Russia once continuous strategic benefits and interests, are they against the departure of such militias from Syria? Ambassador Jeffrey: First of all, we dont define them as Shia or any other religion, we define them as Iranian commandants. Thats our concern, not their religion. Secondly, we tried to make clear to Russia that these forces are not just in Syria to support the Assad regime, but to carry out their own long-term regional hegemonial program and to in some respects subvert the authority of the Syrian state just like they have done in Lebanon, just like they have done in Yemen, just like theyve attempted to do in Iraq. Moderator: Okay, that concludes todays call. With that, Ambassador Jeffrey, do you have any final words before we end? Ambassador Jeffrey: No, thank you. Please follow the developments in Syria very closely because it affects war and peace and progress in the entire Middle East. It is very, very important issue and has been since 2011. Moderator: Thank you very much. That concludes todays call. I want to thank Ambassador Jeffrey for joining us and to thank all of our callers for participating. If you have questions about todays call, please contact the Dubai Regional Media Hub at dubaimediahub@state.gov. Thank you very much. That concludes the call. Ambassador Jeffrey: Thank you. Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is designating nine targets in an international network through which the Iranian regime, working with Russian companies, provides millions of barrels of oil to the Syrian government. The Assad regime, in turn, facilitates the movement of hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars (USD) to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) for onward transfer to HAMAS and Hizballah. U.S. sanctions prohibit material support to the Government of Syria, including shipments of oil to Syrian government-controlled ports, as well as material support to designated terrorist groups. Today we are acting against a complex scheme Iran and Russia have used to bolster the Assad regime and generate funds for Iranian malign activity, said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Central Bank of Iran officials continue to exploit the international financial system, and in this case even used a company whose name suggests a trade in humanitarian goods as a tool to facilitate financial transfers supporting this oil scheme. We are issuing an Advisory today identifying the grave risks to the maritime community if they participate in shipping oil to the Government of Syria. The United States is committed to imposing a financial toll on Iran, Russia, and others for their efforts to solidify Assads authoritarian rule, as well as disrupt the Iranian regimes funding of terrorist organizations. Todays designations target critical actors in this scheme, including Syrian national Mohammad Amer Alchwiki (Alchwiki) and his Russia-based company, Global Vision Group. Alchwiki and his company are central to (1) the delivery of oil from Iran to Syria, and (2) the transfer of funds to the IRGC-QFs lethal proxies. Todays designations also highlight the important role that Central Bank of Iran (CBI) officials play in facilitating this scheme. Throughout the Syrian Civil War, the Iranian regime has continued to provide military and financial support to the Assad regime, enabling it to commit mass atrocities against the Syrian people. The Iranian regime also continues to fund terrorism, providing hundreds of millions of dollars to its regional proxies and U.S.-designated terrorist organizations, HAMAS, and Lebanese Hizballah (Hizballah), further destabilizing the region. All the while, Iranian citizens suffer from their governments neglect and corruption, including through a lack of stable food and water supplies, electricity, and other essential needs. The Iranian regime continues to prioritize spending money on fomenting terror over supporting its own people, said Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Sigal Mandelker. This is yet another example of the regime using the proceeds of millions of barrels of its oil to fund terrorists and the murderous Assad regime to the detriment of its own people. The United States will aggressively seek to impose sanctions against any party involved in shipping oil to Syria, or seeking to evade our sanctions on Iranian oil. Shipping companies, insurers, vessel owners, managers, and operators should all be aware of the grave consequences of engaging in sanctionable conduct involving Iranian oil shipments. U.S. sanctions prohibit material support to the Assad regime and U.S.-designated terrorist groups, including the IRGC-QF, HAMAS, and Hizballah. All assets subject to U.S. jurisdiction of the individuals and entities added to the Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN List), and of any other entities blocked by operation of law as a result of their ownership by a sanctioned party, are frozen, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from dealings with them. Russian and Iranian Governments Facilitation of Oil Shipments to Assad Using an array of mechanisms designed to obfuscate their activities, Alchwikis Russia-based Global Vision Group coordinates with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) to remit payment for oil being shipped to Syria. Global Vision Group does this by working with state-owned Russian company Promsyrioimport, a subsidiary of the Russian Ministry of Energy (Minenergo), to facilitate shipments of Iranian oil from NIOC to Syria. To deliver the oil from Iran to the Syrian regime, Global Vision Group uses a number of vessels, many of which have been insured by European companies. Since at least 2014, vessels carrying Iranian oil have switched off the Automatic Identification System (AIS) onboard before delivering oil to Syria, as a means of concealing the true destination and recipient of this Iranian oil. Today, OFAC is issuing an Advisory to the maritime community regarding the sanctions risks of shipping oil to the Government of Syria, including a non-exhaustive list of vessels that have delivered oil to Syria since 2016. To assist Syria in paying Russia for this oil, Iran sends funds to Russia through Alchwiki and Global Vision Group. To conceal its involvement in these transactions, the CBI makes these payments to Mir Business Bank using Iran-based Tadbir Kish Medical and Pharmaceutical Company (Tadbir Kish). Despite the reference to humanitarian goods in Tadbir Kishs name, the company has repeatedly been used to facilitate illicit transfers in support of this oil scheme. Following the CBIs transfer of funds from Tadbir Kish to Global Vision Group in Russia, Global Vision Group transfers payment to Russia state-owned Promsyrioimport to pay for the oil. Mir Business Bank was designated on November 5, 2018, pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Irans Bank Melli, which was designated for acting as conduit for payments to IRGC-QF. CBI senior officials play a critical role in this arrangement. Rasul Sajjad, CBIs International Department Director, and Hossein Yaghoobi, CBIs Vice Governor for International Affairs, have both assisted in facilitating Alchwikis transfers. Andrey Dogaev, First Deputy Director of Promsyrioimport, has worked closely with Yaghoobi to coordinate the sale of Iranian crude to the Government of Syria. Through this scheme, Promsyrioimport, working with Global Vision Group, has exported millions of barrels of Iranian oil into Syria. This scheme has also funneled millions of dollars between the CBI and Alchwikis Mir Business Bank account in Russia. Alchwiki Working in Tandem with IRGC-OF to Provide Funds to Hizballah and HAMAS In addition to the scheme above, Alchwiki also acts as a critical conduit for the transfer of hundreds of millions of USD banknotes to Iranian proxies in the Levant, including U.S. designated foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorist groups Hizballah and HAMAS. Using the Central Bank of Syria, Alchwiki coordinates the transfers with Hizballah official Muhammad Qasir, who heads the Hizballah unit responsible for facilitating the transfer of weapons, technology, and other support from Syria to Lebanon. OFAC designated Qasir on May 15, 2018, for acting for or on behalf of Hizballah. Senior CBI officials played a key role in this scheme, working with their counterparts in Syria and Alchwiki to facilitate transfer of foreign currency to Hizballah, and together have coordinated the transfer of millions of dollars through this network. Specifically, CBI Official, Hossein Yaghoobi, who also has a history of working with Hizballah in Lebanon, has coordinated financial transfers intended for Hizballah with the IRGC-QF and Hizballah personnel. Muhammad Qasim al-Bazzal, a Hizballah member and associate of Qasir, is being designated for his support to Hizballah. Designation Bases and Authorities Mohamed Amer Alchwiki is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13582 for (1) having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services in support of the Central Bank of Syria, an entity identified as meeting the definition of the Government of Syria, which is blocked under E.O. 13582 and (2) having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of Global Vision Group. Alchwiki is also being designated pursuant to E.O. 13224 for assisting in, sponsoring, or providing financial, material, or technological support for, or financial or other services to or in support of Hizballah and IRGC-QF. Global Vision Group is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13582 for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services in support of, Syrias Banias Refinery Company and the Central Bank of Syria, entities identified as meeting the definition of the Government of Syria. Global Vision Group is also being designated pursuant to E.O. 13224. Promsyrioimport is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13582 for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services in support of the Syrian Company for Oil Transport (SCOT), an entity identified as meeting the definition of the Government of Syria, which is blocked under E.O. 13582. Andrey Dogaev is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13582 for having acted or purported to act, for or on behalf of directly or indirectly, Promsyrioimport. Mir Business Bank is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13582 for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services in support of Global Vision Group. Tadbir Kish Medical and Pharmaceutical Company is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13582 for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services in support of Global Vision Group. Rasul Sajjad and Hossein Yaghoobi are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13224 for assisting in, sponsoring, or providing financial, material, or technological support for, or financial or other services to or in support of the IRGC-QF. Muhammad Qasim al-Bazzal is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13224 for acting for or on behalf of Hizballah. President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan (retranslated): Mr President of the Russian Federation, my friend Vladimir Putin. Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you from the bottom of my heart, with love and respect. First of all, I would like to address the President of the Russian Federation, Mr Vladimir Putin, and thank him for his visit to the wonderful city of Istanbul, to our country. Welcome to you and your delegation. Relations between Turkey and Russia have reached their peak. This is reflected in our energy cooperation. We are now witnessing yet another step in this direction the TurkStream gas pipeline. It reaching the coast of the Turkish Republic today is very important to us, and we are very happy about it. The first step was taken in 2014. In 2016 the intergovernmental agreement already described the projects concrete framework and now we have reached the last stage the completion of the project. Together with our Russian friends, we have invested a lot of effort in this project of historical significance, both bilaterally between our countries and geopolitically among the countries of the region. Ceremony marking the completion of TurkStream gas pipelines offshore section. Ceremony marking the completion of TurkStream gas pipelines offshore section. The land and the sea area of the Russian Federation and of Turkey will be ready for the operation of the TurkStream gas pipeline in 2019 after tests are carried out. The projects offshore section was completed today. Two pipes are being laid in parallel. Their total length is 930 km. They are laid at the depth of over two kilometres beneath the surface of the water. Kykoy is the place where the construction of a gas receiving terminal is being carried out at a very rapid pace. The pipe is expected to transport 31 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year. This project has many benefits not only for our people and our country but also for our neighbours and the region as a whole. We plan to send to the European Union at least half of the natural gas that will be transported via this pipeline. As for our country, Istanbul, Bursa, Kocaeli and Izmir are vital centres for its production and export and their growth will get a boost as a result. This is why Turkey will be able to meet its own natural gas needs and those of the EU without subjecting itself to transit risks. In cooperation with our Russian friends we have reliably carried out a very technically demanding project that meets high security standards. We also raised its already high resilience standards to an even higher level. Friends, if we look at global energy markets, natural gas is becoming more important, as is the balance between demand and supply. In this sense, the economic potential of energy projects is very important taking into consideration the countries conditions on how natural gas will be supplied and consumed. Of course we should respect these decisions. Situations where countries sovereign rights are violated and where pressure is applied will be of no use to anyone. For us, Russia is an old and reliable friend as well as an important supplier of natural gas, as these projects demonstrate. Turkey has already purchased 387 billion cubic metres of natural gas since 1987. This is a very significant number. It shows our relations in the sphere of energy and other cooperation areas, and proves that our relations have already been through all kinds of tests. The friendship between Russia and Turkey has grown stronger over the years, resulting in various mutually beneficial projects. We have never made our bilateral relations dependent on pressure from third countries. We have always made every effort to continue to develop long-term relations with Russia at the regional and global levels. We support justice, peace and stability to promote relations. We have always worked with our Russian friends toward this end. Our common position has already born fruit, especially regarding the humanitarian crisis in Syria. Dear guests, our cooperation with Russia is developing in a wide range of areas. In early April we also began work on the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant project. We are implementing this nuclear energy project together with Russia. Our countries complementary economies give us another opportunity. We can use this to our advantage to develop our bilateral trade. Last year it grew 30 percent. We aim to increase it to $100 billion. Mutual investment, in addition to the Akkuyu project, accounts for more than $10 billion from each side. Speaking about tourism, in the first nine months of this year Turkey received 5.1 million Russian tourists. This is a new record. Next year will be the Year of Tourism in both countries, with events designed to help our countries get to know each other better. In conclusion, I would like to thank you, my friend, Your Excellency, Mr Vladimir Putin, and your delegation. Mr Putin, of course, I am sure that cooperation with you will result in new projects and new results. I am very glad to welcome you all here once again, with great fondness and respect. I wish you all the best. President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr President, my dear friend. Ladies and gentlemen, To begin with, I would like to thank Mr Erdogan for inviting us to attend the ceremony marking the completion of TurkStream gas pipelines offshore section. Before getting down to business I may have to repeat some things or provide some more detailed information, which will be a pleasure for me I would like to say that the trade turnover Mr President has just mentioned, $100 billion, will be actually Russias bilateral trade with China this year. But then, why should Russias trade with Turkey be smaller? I have no doubt that we can and will attain the same target in our relations with Turkey. Now to the project at hand. We are taking part in a truly signal event that testifies to the effectiveness of our countries partner-like cooperation in accomplishing the most difficult and ambitious projects. I would like to remind you that the agreement on building TurkStream was signed here, in Istanbul, on October 10, 2016. I think you know I certainly do who suggested naming the project TurkStream. Today, barely two years after the start of this large-scale venture, we have completed its most difficult part. It was really a very serious and challenging job to build the deep-water part of the new gas pipeline. Friends, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to note that extracting and transporting gas is no easy job as someone may think; it is not simply drilling a hole in the ground and then pumping. This is difficult work involving high technology, both for extraction and transport. Let me remind you that this is the most environment-friendly and the most popular type of primary energy in the world today. It has already been said here, but I should correct my colleague that 1,800 kilometres of pipelines have been laid on the bottom of the Black Sea at a depth of 2,000 metres and more. The first of the two pipelines will pump Russian gas to western Turkey and the second will pump it to the countries of Southern and Southeastern Europe by transit. Of course, this transforms Turkey into a serious European hub, which, without a doubt, will reflect on Turkeys role in the geopolitics. The next stage is laying the ground part of TurkStream. We believe that this work will also be carried out at an accelerated pace so that we will be able to launch the pipeline by the end of 2019, as planned. I want to stress that the cutting-edge technological solutions and the most advanced equipment are used in the construction; the strictest environmental standards and norms are observed. Let me point out that Russia and Turkey have been successfully developing cooperation in energy for a long time, as Mr President said. In this context, let me also say that 13 years ago Mr Erdogan and I launched the first trans-Black Sea gas pipeline, Blue Stream, which directly connected Russia and eastern Turkey. Today more than half of all the Russian gas purchased for the Turkish markets goes through it. The long and stable exploitation of this pipeline, including during the difficult winter months, has proven that Russia is a reliable supplier of natural gas and has provided the Turkish economy with an environment-friendly and efficient type of fuel. It goes without saying that the launching of Turk-Stream will allow our countries to drastically expand cooperation in the gas sector, will have great significance for Turkeys economic development, and will also become an important factor in maintaining common European energy security. I would like to use this opportunity and to thank the participants in this complicated project, including the experts and workers and those who have financed it. I would like to thank President of the Republic of Turkey Mr Erdogan for displaying political will and courage. Why? Because it is impossible to implement projects like this in conditions of growing competition without these traits. The trust, mentioned by my Turkish colleague five minutes ago, hinges on this. And again, projects like this cannot be carried out without such trust. But I would also like to thank many of our Turkish colleagues, including the former Minister of Economics who helped launch this project, and everyone who promptly authorised the issuance of the necessary permits and licenses. I would like to thank the members of parliament of the Turkish Republic for their support. All this has allowed the builders to meet the deadlines and to even work faster than planned. I am confident that Turk-Stream, just like our other joint strategic project, Turkeys first Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, will become an outstanding symbol of the progressive development of the Russian-Turkish diverse partnership and a pledge of friendship between our nations. I wish successes to all of you and all of us in the future. Thank you. <> President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan (retranslated): Congratulations! Godspeed! Vladimir Putin: Mr President, friends, Such projects, including this project, are not directed against anyones interests. These projects are solely constructive. They aim to expand relations between states, to create stable conditions for economic development and to improve the well-being of our countries citizens in this way. The implementation of this kind of projects, including this one, is an outstanding and positive example of the ability to defend ones national interests because Turk-Stream completely meets the national economic interests of the Republic of Turkey. I congratulate you on completing the most important stage of its implementation. Thank you, Mr President. Email To : Multiple e-mail addresses must be separated with a comma character(maximum 200 characters) Email To is required. Your Full Name: (optional) Your Email Address: Your Email Address is required. By WestKyStar & MSU Staff Nov. 21, 2018 | 09:18 PM | PADUCAH Murray State's Paducah Regional Campus is located in a state-of-the-art facility just off I-24 that features a full-service staff to advise and assist students as well as expert faculty members who teach in a variety of disciplines. The campus includes offerings of Murray State's nationally ranked programs and provides access to quality educational opportunities in the Paducah area. "We provide flexible course delivery methods that meet the needs of the adult student who may have many responsibilities other than those required in their role as a student," said Jennifer Frazier, director of the Paducah Regional Campus. "Courses are offered during the day, evening and on weekends when needed, allowing students to follow their dreams while staying close to home." Integrated studies, in particular, serves as a degree completion program at the Paducah Regional Campus that is designed with returning adult students in mind: offering a flexible curriculum schedule, possible credit for professional experiences and a wide variety of fields of study tailored to students' interests. The Paducah Regional Campus also features 2+2 programs for students attending West Kentucky Community and Technical College (WKCTC) and seeking to earn a bachelor's degree. Additionally, a number of hybrid and online bachelor's, master's, certificate and doctoral programs are available. "Murray State University recognizes the importance of serving adult and non-traditional students throughout our region," said Dan Lavit, executive director of the Center for Adult and Regional Education. "Many students desire to pursue higher education but cannot put aspects of their life on hold while doing so. Murray State's Paducah Regional Campus is proud to serve adult and non-traditional students with flexible and convenient program offerings." Several new degree offerings are now available at the Paducah Regional Campus, too, including a master's degree in occupational therapy and an accelerated master's degree in mass communications with a public relations concentration. New undergraduate offerings include a bachelor's degree in organizational communication and a bachelor's degree in logistics and supply chain management. "We're always looking to better serve Paducah and the surrounding region by expanding our offerings with the types of programs that best suit local needs," Lavit said. "Our partnership with WKCTC enhances our ability to provide a workforce that is prepared to help the region grow." The Adult Student Open House will take place Thursday, Nov. 29, from 5 to 7 pm at the Paducah Regional Campus (4430 Sunset Ave.). Free Murray State admissions applications will be offered to those who apply during the open house. Advisors will also be available to talk with students in both one-on-one and breakout information sessions about academic and financial aid opportunities. Children in attendance will be able to participate in a number of activities, including taking pictures with Murray State's mascot, Dunker. Refreshments will be served with door prizes and giveaways available as well. Murray State University is hosting an Adult Student Open House on November 29 from 5 to 7 pm at the University's Paducah Regional Campus to highlight the many opportunities available for adult students interested in earning their bachelor's or master's degrees. By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 22, 2018 | 05:39 PM | PADUCAH One man was hospitalized and another arrested after an argument escalated into a shooting Wednesday night. Paducah police were called just before 7:30 p.m. to a report of a shooting in the parking lot of Cardinal Point Apartments in the 2700 block of Trimble Street. Upon their arrival, officers found the victim, 24-year-old Damareon Prather of Elmdale Road, had been taken to the hospital with a gunshot wound to his right arm. Officers learned that Prather had been in an argument with 21-year-old Titus Massey in the parking lot of the apartment complex, and that Titus had shot Prather with a handgun. Massey was located a short time later and arrested. Officers located the handgun used in the shooting, and determined it had been reported stolen. They found methamphetamine in Masseys possession, as well. Massey was booked into McCracken County Regional Jail. Prather was transported to a hospital out of town. Embed from Getty Images A little bit of positive news on this dreek and dreary day: Glenn Hoddle is recovering well from the heart attack he suffered at the tail end of October. Hoddle collapsed at the BT Sport studio and was rushed to hospital where he underwent emergency surgery. A member of the BT staff, Simon Daniels, used a defibrillator on the Tottenham legend at the scene, which has since been credited as a potentially live-saving act. Last we heard, Hoddle was still in hospital and receiving specialist treatment. However, the family have since issued an update via a spokesperson, and the news is good: After being taken ill on Saturday 27th October, Glenn received specialist care at St Bartholomews Hospital in London. To aid his recovery from a cardiac arrest, Glenn underwent surgery. He responded well to treatment and is now at home recuperating from the procedure. The care that Glenn received from St Bartholomews Hospital was exemplary. His family would like to thank the hospital staff and the many people who have sent supportive messages. Doctors have outlined that rest is paramount for Glenn now. With that in mind, his family ask politely that their privacy is respected and that Glenn is given time to recover fully. Which, it goes without saying, is excellent to hear. Heres wishing Glenn and his family all the best as he continues with his rehab. 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 Education Secretary hears how Glyndwr is driving improvements across region This article is old - Published: Friday, Nov 23rd, 2018 Welsh Governments Education Secretary has heard how Wrexham Glyndwr University is working with communities to drive improvements across the region. During a visit to the universitys Plas Coch campus, Kirsty Williams AM met with four different groups about their work with people across North Wales and beyond. These included staff, students and partners on two new programmes covering public services leadership and social prescribing, as well as teams who cover community volunteering and mental health work. The session took place in the Universitys new state of the art learning space, which is equipped with a range of high-end IT infrastructure and technology. The space was designed as a Student Centred Active Learning Environment (or SCALE-UP) classroom, where academics interact with students in small groups and technology is used to enhance learning, and the Ministers visit followed the same format giving her the chance to take part in a range of one-on-one round-table discussions with the diverse range of people working with Glyndwr in communities across North Wales. Wrexham Glyndwr University Vice Chancellor Maria Hinfelaar said: It was good to catch up with the Minister and to set out some of the ways we are collaborating with people across the region. Each group she spoke to involves partnerships between our staff, students and communities, and in each area weve joined with external partners to make sure the work were doing together is effective. We work alongside volunteering services, health providers, local authorities and many other groups, and that involves close dialogue as we develop the best ways of tackling some of the challenges we face as a society. She continued: Some of these involve relatively new ideas for instance, the idea of social prescribing, which is essentially where peoples wellbeing is boosted by linking them to relevant services in the community and reducing dependency on medical interventions. Helping link those people to services means truly listening to them something the Minister herself picked up on and related back to her surgeries in Powys during our discussions. It is also the model we follow in our communities. That, to us, is true civic engagement facilitating and helping to join the dots, to get the best for our region. Education Secretary Kirsty Williams added: I am pleased to have the opportunity to visit Wrexham Glyndwr University to see the good work being carried out, connecting campus with community. It is essential that Welsh Universities dont see Civic Mission work as an extra activity in addition to current workload, rather as an integral part of academic work that both informs and is informed by teaching and research. Partnership working between the government, institutions, and the academic community is essential if we are to address our great societal and civic challenges. Universities should be accessible and relevant to their local communities, whilst also being open to students, scholars, and intellectual developments from around the world. We have a proud tradition of this kind of civic engagement, and Im delighted to see new ways of taking this work forward. From the outset, I have been clear that civic mission activity can come in many forms and I am proud of the range of activity taking place in Wales. Healthcare charity unveils new superstore on Island Green This article is old - Published: Friday, Nov 23rd, 2018 National healthcare charity Sue Ryder will open its first store in Wrexham this Wednesday, 28th November. The new store at Island Green Shopping Park promises 3,250 square feet selling high-quality second-hand furniture, white goods and clothing at bargain prices, and will be open seven days a week. Wrexhams Mayor Andy Williams will officially open the store at 10am on Wednesday and Sue Ryder staff will be on hand to guide shoppers round the store and talk about volunteering opportunities. The new superstore is one of a new phase of stores introduced by Sue Ryder and joins over 450 high street shops across the UK that support the charitys palliative, neurological and bereavement care. Karen Mogg, Sue Ryder Wrexham store manager said: Were delighted to open our first Sue Ryder shop in Wrexham and one of our new line of superstores too. Opening a new store in a retail park means we can sell larger items like furniture and white goods, as well as a wider choice of goods and all at the low prices you would expect from a charity shop. Not only will you bag a bargain for your home or wardrobe at the new Wrexham store, you will also be helping Sue Ryder support people facing a terminal illness, a complex neurological condition or the loss of a loved one. Anyone interested in volunteering is welcome to pop in for a cup of tea and chat with our friendly team. We would love some help on the sales desk and with sorting donations and testing portable appliances. No experience is necessary as training is provided, and volunteering is a great way to meet people and pick up new skills. Donations can be dropped off at the store and items of furniture can be picked up from your home for free when you fill out the form at www.sueryder.org/furniture. Sue Ryder is alo in the process of opening superstores in locations such as Sheffield and East Garforth. Huge crowds turnout as Father Christmas turns on Wrexhams Christmas Lights This article is old - Published: Thursday, Nov 22nd, 2018 Huge crowds descended on the town centre this evening to celebrate the start of Wrexhams festive activities. Thousands visited Queens Square to enjoy the event, which was organised for the third year by a team of volunteers from the Rotary Club of Wrexham Glyndwr. Hosted by Hearts Lois and Oli the crowds were treated to live performances during the evening, including Blue Genes family band, Coleg Cambria performing arts students, John Durham & Mia Lynch, Llangollen Young Uns and The Phonics (UKs No.1 Stereophonics tribute). The lights were due to be switched on by Ibiza Weekender star Jordan Davies however was unable to attend due to having the flu. Luckily Father Christmas himself was on hand and did the honours of pressing the button to turn on the towns Christmas lights. The evening culminated in a fireworks display over the town centre. The moment Lois, Oli and Santa switched on Wrexhams Christmas Lights! pic.twitter.com/uexMKCoVbs Heart North Wales (@HeartNorthWales) November 22, 2018 Tonight was the first time the new additions to Wrexhams Christmas lights were fully illuminated, with the barbed wire replaced with a carpet of lights and a more festive offering across the towns streets. The Christmas Light Switch On also marked the start of a whole host of events for the town, including the launch of Santas Grotto / Small Business Saturday on December 1st and the return of the Victorian Christmas Market. MP calls for more emphasis on literacy Brexit causing serious issues to be sidelined This article is old - Published: Friday, Nov 23rd, 2018 Susan Elan Jones MP has called for greater emphasis to be placed on literacy. The Clwyd South MP, who is co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Charities and Volunteering, made her remarks after meeting in Parliament with Nicola Cadbury of the National Literacy Trust (pictured above). Susan Elan Jones MP said: One of my big frustrations with the whole Brexit debate is that there are many other really serious issues that are being sidelined. One very important discussion we should be having is about how we can improve literacy rates. This week in Parliament I met with the National Literacy Trust. This is a well-respected charity that works with Government and also receives a lot of financial and other support from major companies. Poor literacy is both a social justice issue and a major concern for business. Research has shown that in the UKs most deprived wards up to 35% of the adult population lack the literacy skills expected of an 11 year old. There are also serious estimates that show if every child left primary school with the reading skills they need, our economy could grow by more than 30 billion by 2025. This is unacceptable and Id like to see more emphasis on literacy so that we can really improve things. Use of tights to cover NWP unmarked car emergency lights not be ruled out as a contributory factor in serious crash This article is old - Published: Friday, Nov 23rd, 2018 A serious collision between an unmarked police car and an lorry in North Wales has prompted recommendations from police watchdog the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) after it was found that the emergency blue lights had been covered with nylon tights A North Wales Police officer suffered serious injuries when the unmarked police BMW collided with an HGV in a North Wales lay-by in 2016. The officer had attempted to avoid a light goods vehicle which had moved into his lane on a dual carriageway. The collision investigation, carried out by North Wales Police, found that the emergency lighting in the front grille of the BMW had been covered with tights to help prevent members of the public identifying it as a police car when the lights were not in use. The injured officer was not responsible for covering the lights on the car and was not aware that they had been covered. It was found that there was a significant reduction in the light output with the nylon covers according to both the collision investigator and through tests carried out by a technical expert. It was also recorded that the nylon covers could not be ruled out as a contributory factor to the collision as they made it extremely difficult for the driver of the light goods vehicle to identify the vehicle behind them as a police car responding to an incident. National guidance will now be developed to standardise the practice of covering emergency blue lights on unmarked police cars following an IOPC investigation which found there no case to answer for the officers involved in covering the grille lights. The IOPC investigation, which consulted the National Association of Police Fleet Managers, identified that there is no national standardisation for covering lights and, as a result, a number of police forces are using various methods including nylon tights. Modifications are being made without any form of scientific testing to examine the effect of any coverings on the level of brightness when the emergency lights are turned on. says the IOPC Director for Wales Catrin Evans said: When police forces attempt to make unmarked police cars less visible, they need to adopt a standardised approach. Any modifications made ought to be tested and approved by experts rather than using ad hoc solutions that may not be the safest method. For the safety of police drivers and the public alike, testing would also help make sure that any coverings do not significantly limit the visibility of the emergency blue lights when turned on. Im pleased to see the NPCC has recognised the need to develop this national guidance and has commissioned a working group to produce the new policy. The IOPC report says: NWP professional standards department became aware of concerns surrounding the collision in February 2017, a year after the incident, and made a voluntary referral that month. Our investigation concluded in December 2017 since when we have consulted with the NPCC on our national recommendations. We found no case to answer for the officers involved in covering the grille lights with nylon tights due to the lack of any national policy or guidance. No members of the public were harmed in the collision. Wrexham Maelor Nurse wins Teacher of the Year This article is old - Published: Friday, Nov 23rd, 2018 Katherine White has won the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board Award for her work mentoring nurses to improve their drugs knowledge. Katherine works with the pharmacy team in Wrexham Maelor Hospital to help nurses understand how to safely administer medicines and build their confidence with administering medicines intravenously. The awards, sponsored by Centerprise International, celebrate the outstanding achievements of NHS staff from across North Wales. Assistant Director of Pharmacy for the East area, Louise Howard Baker said, Katherine is passionate about her work and she loves teaching people to ensure that the administration of medicines is done safely on the wards. Shes a natural teacher and has a lovely way with people and spends all her time out on the wards helping staff. Katherine said, I was nominated for this award because of my work I do on a one to one basis with individuals who need support and training with how to administer drugs. I offer nurses one to one support and take them away from the ward area, look at what they do and then work with them and help them gain confidence. I am very grateful for the Award. I couldnt do this without the support of the ward managers and matrons and I am very grateful to my manager for nominating me. Jeremy Nash, Chief Executive of Centerprise International, said: Its fantastic to be the headline sponsor at the Health Boards Achievement Awards for the second year running. Centerprise is committed to supporting the Welsh community and NHS in equal measure, and the awards were a fantastic celebration of the incredible efforts of healthcare staff from across North Wales. Professor Jo Rycroft-Malone, Independent Board Member for BCUHB and Pro-Vice Chancellor at Bangor University, said: All of the nominees for the award showed outstanding leadership and care for their students. Katherines work to help nursing staff regain confidence was a really inspirational example of how a teacher can make a huge difference. Photo: Katherine White receives her Award for being Outstanding Clinical Teacher of the Year from BCUHB Chairman Mark Polin, Award sponsor, Pro-Vice Chancellor of Bangor University Professor Jo-Rycroft Malone and BCUHB Chief Executive Gary Doherty. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - The Florida attorney general has released a 2018 Holiday Consumer Protection Guide to assist shoppers. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the guide is packed with advice for making secure purchases online and tips on avoiding identity theft and charity scams. "The guide also includes safety information about toys and recalled items to better prepare shoppers to make wise purchases this holiday season," she said. The guide identifies some of the latest recalled products such as baby items, furniture, household products, sporting goods and toys that pose a risk to children. The items are among the nearly 300 products recalled by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission within the past year. The guide also includes several state and national resources identifying more specific recall items. Tips in the 2018 Holiday Consumer Protection Guide include: Pay with a credit card instead of a debit card when shopping online. Both payment methods allow consumers to dispute a charge if the merchandise never arrives or is different from what was ordered. However, with a debit card, the purchase is already deducted from a bank account and it may take days or weeks for the bank to reverse the charge; Ensure that a web browser is secure before submitting payment information. To identify a secure browser, look for a padlock symbol in the address bar; and Keep receipts and be sure to understand retailers return policies and periods, so consumers can return any unwanted items for a full refund. To view the 2018 Holiday Consumer Protection Guide, click here. If consumers have questions about making secure holiday shopping purchases or believe to be the victim of a scam, call the Attorney Generals Fraud Hotline at 1(866) 9NO-SCAM or visit MyFloridaLegal.com. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Having a Thanksgiving lunch at Lake Ella has become a tradition for many in the community, whether they're volunteering or coming out for a hot meal. Now in it's 34th year, the Tallahassee Community Thanksgiving Dinner offered guests a traditional holiday meal with turkey, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and a variety of pies. Most of the food, which included about 75 turkeys, was donated by locals, businesses, and culinary groups like the one at Kaiser University. Guests were offered free transportation to and from the American Legion Hall, and free local and long distance phone calls to talk with loved ones. "People are very thankful, very appreciative. You have everybody from volunteers-wise, even kids are helping out. You usually see the people that are enjoying the meal able to thank them, some of the adults, and the kids who are really working hard. You definitely a lot of appreciation," said Owner of Premier Fine Homes, Jason Ghazvini. Volunteers usually start planning the annual community dinner each September. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Many are still coping nearly three weeks after the deadly Hot Yoga Tallahassee shooting. From coast to coast the yoga community continues to send their love and support to Tallahassee. Even on this Thanksgiving holiday, donations are pouring in to get Hot Yoga back on their feet. It was a tragic scene in Tallahassee, that caught the nation's attention. On November 2, a gunman opened fire at Hot Yoga Tallahassee on Thomasville road, hurting five and killing two, 21-year-old Maura Binkley and 61-year-old Dr. Nancy Van Vessem. One of the victims, Joshua Quick, even risked his own life by fighting off the shooter with a vacuum cleaner. He's now being hailed a hero. "I think of everybody in there who were under that situation," said Quick. "They did things to help mitigate loss, and they all did things to help people get to safety." From candlelight vigils to grief counseling sessions, residents in the Capital City have come together to help others cope with the shooting. Now on this Thanksgiving holiday, one yoga studio all the way on the West Coast is lending a helping hand to Tallahassee with a special yoga class. Flow Motion in Ferndale, Washington will host Thanksgiving Yoga. This special class is meant to lift up the yoga community and collect cash donation to help Hot Yoga Tallahassee rebuild after their recent tragedy. Flow Motion's Owner, Alyssa Springs, said she's an online friend of Hot Yoga's Owner, Brittani Whittington. Springs said when she found out about the shooting, she couldn't believe this would happen to someone she knows. "Being an owner of a yoga studio myself, I can just imagine because their not just customers that are coming to your business, you spend years getting to know these people, so they're really just family members, I can really just imagine what she's going through and the whole community there," said Springs. Since the shooting, Whittington has been vocal on Hot Yoga Tallahassee's Facebook page, expressing her grief and gratitude to the Tallahassee community and the yoga community nationwide. Hot Yoga Tallahassee also hosted their own Thanksgiving donation class at their Bannerman Crossing location at 9:30 a.m. Thursday. The class was free but they collected canned goods as donations. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 00:04:42|Editor: yan Video Player Close BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- One more Chinese city is added to the destinations of direct flights from Brunei's capital of Bandar Seri Begawan on Thursday. According to a statement from the Royal Brunei Airlines (RB), the sultanate's national carrier has launched twice weekly direct scheduled services to Haikou on southern China's Hainan province. "We are pleased to introduce Haikou, the capital of Hainan province, to our growing network of scheduled flights to China," RB's CEO Karam Chand said. "Adding Haikou to our scheduled services will support our airlines' network development and builds on the strong bilateral relationship between Brunei and China," he said. "The new route presents a very special opportunity for both cities to boost tourism and trade sectors. In addition to Haikou, we have already launched Nanning and Hangzhou routes and soon Changsha which will operate effective Jan. 15, 2019," he added. With the new move, RB now operates direct flights to five Chinese cities - Shanghai, Hong Kong, Nanning, Hangzhou and Haikou. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 00:14:45|Editor: yan Video Player Close MOSCOW, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Russia considers its activities in the Sea of Azov legitimate and rejects accusations from Ukraine and the European Union (EU) of its attempt to militarize the region, the Russian foreign ministry said Thursday. "Russia strictly observes its agreement with Ukraine on cooperation in the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait of Dec. 24, 2003, which fixes the status of the sea as internal waters of Russia and Ukraine," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a weekly briefing. Earlier this year, Ukraine accused Russia of "aggressive actions" in the Sea of Azov after Russia inaugurated a bridge over the Kerch Strait, which links the Crimean peninsula to the Russian mainland, and started carrying out inspections of commercial ships sailing through the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait. EU High Representative Federica Mogherini on Monday said Russia's activities in the Sea of Azov "are damaging not only the Ukrainian economy, but also so many vessels that are flying European Union member states' flags." The EU could take "targeted measures in the coming weeks or days," she said. Zakharova said the Kerch Strait has never been an international waterway, and therefore any claims concerning the right of transit or innocent passage for foreign vessels are inapplicable. According to Zakharova, the increase in the number of inspections is due to the need to tighten security following the opening of the bridge over the Kerch Strait, and the inspections are not discriminatory as nearly half of the vessels inspected were transmitting to or from Russian ports, including ships under the Russian flag. She said the Ukrainian authorities were purposely whipping up tensions in the region through statements about an alleged militarization of the Sea of Azov by Russia. Relations between Kiev and Moscow have deteriorated since early 2014 over Crimea and the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 00:14:46|Editor: yan Video Player Close DHAKA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Bangladesh Election Commission announced its plan on Thursday to deploy army troops across the country two weeks before the national elections slated for Dec. 30. Small teams of army personnel will work with the law enforcers after Dec. 15 in all the 64 districts, Chief Election Commissioner KM Nurul Huda said at a special meeting with law-enforcement agencies in Dhaka. The commission postponed the polling date for the country's national election to Dec. 30 from Dec. 23 after the major opposition alliance led by ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) urged the commission to defer the election date by a month. BNP Secretary-General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said their alliance decided to contest the parliamentary polls, urging the government to ensure a level playing field for holding a free, fair and neutral election. The ruling Bangladesh Awami League (AL) party of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, which rose to power with a landslide election victory in early 2009 and won its second term in 2014, is facing challenges from Zia's BNP and its allies, which boycotted the 2014 elections. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 00:34:55|Editor: Chengcheng Video Player Close Civil servants gather in front of the headquarters of parliament in Tunis, Tunisia, Nov. 22, 2018. More than 690,000 public service employees on Thursday took part in a general strike across 24 provinces in Tunisia, Tunisian national radio reported. Organized by Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT), the general strike paralyzed the entire civil service system, including ministries, as well as central and regional administrations. (Xinhua/Adele Ezzine) TUNIS, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- More than 690,000 public service employees on Thursday took part in a general strike across 24 provinces in Tunisia, Tunisian national radio reported. The strikers were shouting slogans, demanding the right to higher salary and protesting the government's refusal to improve workers' purchasing power. "Dignity, freedom and professional justice," "Gathering to defend the purchasing power and the public health sector" and "Tunisia is not for sale" are some of the slogans shouted by the strikers. Organized by Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT), the general strike paralyzed the entire civil service system, including ministries, as well as central and regional administrations. Hundreds of civil servants gathered in front of the headquarters of Assembly of People's Representatives, or the parliament in the capital Tunis. A security device was set up by Tunisian Interior Ministry to guarantee the smooth influx of peace protesters. The general strikes, however, did not cause suspension of public transport and vital services in the health sector. "It was unacceptable not to grant wage increases ... the central union had left enough time for the government to start negotiations," said UGTT Secretary-General Noureddine Tabboubi. UGTT will hold a meeting on Saturday to discuss further measures, Tabboubi revealed. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 01:20:01|Editor: yan Video Player Close BAGHDAD, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi on Thursday met with Masoud Barzani, leader of Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), who made his first visit to Baghdad after the disputed Kurdish independence referendum last year. Barzani, accompanied by a high-level delegation, arrived in Baghdad airport earlier Thursday, where he was received Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi and leader of the Fath Coalition, Hadi al-Ameri. Barzani told reporters that "our relationship is old and we have contributed together, since before the overthrow of (Hussein Saddam) regime." He hailed Mahdi's election as good news, noting that the prime minister played "a major role in building the new Iraq despite the difficult problems we faced, and had a major role in drafting of the constitution." Barzani expressed his full support for Mahdi, adding that "we will continue working together in the future to strengthen bilateral relations." For his part, Mahdi praised Barzani as a well-known "old struggler" and "one of the leaders of the democratic transformation in Iraq and the overthrow of dictatorship." "He is a great architect to build relations not only in Iraq, but in the region and the world as well. He has a strong and intensive program of meetings with Iraqi leading figures. We hope to repeat these visits whether in Baghdad or in Erbil to solve many problems that we face," Mahdi said. Barzani also held a meeting with Ameri to discuss the political situation in the country. Speaking at a joint press conference after the meeting, Barzani said his visit to Baghdad was aimed at seizing the new opportunity in Iraq for building better relations and support the new prime minister. "Our goal is to find the best ways to enhance trust, establish a strong relationship and correct the mistakes that accompanied our march before," Barzani said. Ameri said he is "looking forward to having one future, to address the problems in the spirit of brotherhood, to fight against corrupt people and reconstruct Iraq." Barzani is also scheduled to meet with other leading political figures during his two-day visit to Baghdad, according to a statement issued by Barzani's KDP office. The Kurdish leader's visit to Baghdad is regarded as an indication of the easing of the tense relations between Erbil and Baghdad that followed the controversial referendum on the independence of the Kurdistan region and other disputed areas on Sept. 25 last year. The independence of Kurdistan is opposed not only by the Iraqi central government, but also by other countries as it would threaten the territorial integrity of Iraq and its neighboring countries, especially Turkey, Iran and Syria, where a large number of Kurds live. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 01:20:01|Editor: yan Video Player Close BAKU, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- China handed over Thursday a batch of state-of-the-art equipment designed to help boost technical and vocational training in Azerbaijan, according to the state-run news agency AZERTAC. Held at Absheron-Bina Vocational Lyceum, the handover ceremony was attended by Chinese Ambassador Wei Jinghua and Azerbaijani Deputy Minister of Education Idris Isayev. Addressing the ceremony, Isayev said the equipment was delivered under the agreement on technical and economic cooperation signed between the Azerbaijani and Chinese governments. "We received a total of 168 units of driving simulators, specialized tables, mechanisms, devices and other equipment that will provide hands-on training for students who major in driving." The deputy minister said nearly 23,000 students are involved in vocational education and training in the country, who are served by more than 5,000-strong teaching and technical staff. Isayev commended the Chinese government for its assistance in improving technical and vocational training in Azerbaijan. Ambassador Wei hailed Azerbaijan's efforts to improve vocational education. He also expressed confidence that Azerbaijan-China cooperation will expand. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 02:15:15|Editor: Chengcheng Video Player Close Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu (C), European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini (L) and Johannes Hahn, commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, attend a joint press conference in Ankara, Turkey, Nov. 22, 2018. (Xinhua/Mustafa Kaya) ANKARA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Turkey and the European Union (EU) held a high-level diplomatic meeting on Thursday, signaling the resumption of the bilateral dialogue, while revealing the obstacles in Turkey's accession to the bloc. "We salute the decision that the Turkish government took to work to intensify relations with the union," EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said at a joint press conference with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and EU Neighborhood Policy Minister Johannes Hahn, following the High Level Political Dialogue meeting held in Ankara. The EU looks forward to making more joint efforts with Turkey in important areas, including energy, human trafficking and economy, the top EU diplomat said. She noted that the EU wants a strong Turkey that is "stable, prosperous and democratic - a neighbor to work with hand-in-hand in a region of strategic importance for both of us and in a very complex geopolitical context." But Mogherini expressed EU's "strong concerns" about the detention of several prominent academics and civil society representatives in Turkey. She called on Ankara to abide by a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights this week for the release of Turkey's former pro-Kurdish party leader Selahattin Demirtas. "We hope he will be released shortly and that similar cases will be dealt with soon," she said. However, Cavusoglu dismissed Mogherini's criticism of the detention of academicians, saying that it is "meaningless for the EU to defend people who carried out actions to topple the elected government in Turkey simply because they are civil society members." Cavusoglu stressed that Turkey expects full EU membership, but adding that it faces "political obstacles" created by the bloc. He warned that the EU must fully meet its obligations for a refugee deal signed in 2016, which aimed to stop the migration in return for visa-free travel for Turkish citizens, revival of its long-stalled accession talks and financial aid for refugees in Turkey. He also mentioned that Ankara has stepped up political reforms and resumed meetings of its reform action group. "Reform has always been a priority in Turkey. We were subjected to a coup attempt and notably since Gezi Park protests, there had been immense amount of attempts to overthrow the elected government. We are carrying on our work to normalize Turkey after the elections," he said. Cavusoglu added that Turkey expects concrete support from the EU member states in its counter-terrorism efforts. Turkey's accession talks with the EU, which began in 2005, have long been stalled. Ankara and EU member states mainly focus on other cooperation areas such as fight against terror and economy. The Turkey-EU ties have faced ups and downs in the past couple of years, as the EU has increasingly criticized the Turkish government for drifting away from democracy and European values. The ties took a hard blow in November 2016, when the European Parliament suspended Turkish accession talks, following a constitutional referendum expanding powers of the president in April 2017. This year, Turkey has stepped up its efforts to resume its ties with the bloc, which have deteriorated since Turkey's failed coup in July 2016, following which the government imposed a state of emergency. Ankara lifted the state of emergency after almost two years and sought to repair its ties with the EU, its top trading partner, especially at a time when the Turkish economy is struggling in face of U.S. sanctions. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 02:25:16|Editor: yan Video Player Close DAMASCUS, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Islamic State (IS) militant group launched on Thursday a large-scale offensive on the positions of the U.S.-backed forces in eastern Syria, as part of its pre-emptive strategy, a war monitor reported. The IS militants launched the offensive in the morning, trying to reach the al-Tanak oil field, where the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has a base with foreign military experts, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The London-based watchdog said the IS attack was launched from three directions in an attempt to besiege the positions of the Kurdish-led SDF in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zour Province. The assailants detonated two car bombs, leading to the retreat of the first defense line of the SDF on the eastern bank of Euphrates River. During the battles, the U.S.-led coalition warplanes scrambled and struck the IS positions. The airstrikes, however, did not last long in the morning because of the foggy weather, said the Observatory. The U.S.-led airstrikes continued in the afternoon when the weather turned better, which eventually pushed the IS back. It was the most violent counter-attack from IS militants since the SDF launched an offensive to liberate eastern Euphrates from the IS on Sept. 10, killing at least three SDF fighters and 17 IS militants, according to the monitor. The IS launched the preemptive attack ahead of the anticipated wide-scale offensive by the SDF on the last IS-held pocket in the eastern Euphrates, it noted. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 03:25:29|Editor: yan Video Player Close GENEVA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said Thursday she has sent an open letter to all states warning that decisions taken on climate change next month could put human rights "under threat". She said, "human rights are under threat from a force which challenges the foundations of all life, as we know it, on this planet we share." Bachelet sent an open letter to states ahead of the COP24 climate meeting on Dec 3-14 in Katowice, Poland. She pointed out that the decisions taken at the meeting will govern climate action under the 2015 Paris agreement "for the indefinite future," and said that "the rights of the millions of people [are] threatened by climate change." The UN rights chief urged states attending the meeting to work together "to take effective, ambitious, urgent, human rights-based climate action now." She said, "Climate change is already affecting people's lives, the effective enjoyment of their rights, and the ecosystems on which we all rely." Bachelet said it is known that the total of states' current nationally determined contributions put the world on track for roughly 3 degrees Celsius of warming, which is more than twice the target that the international community agreed to pursue efforts to reach three years ago in Paris. "The consequences of this degree of climate change are unthinkable," the high commissioner said. "Entire nations, ecosystems, peoples and ways of life could simply cease to exist." "Countless lives will be irreparably harmed," she said. This will include those who already face discrimination because of their gender; because of their economic status; because they are members of indigenous peoples or minorities. It will also include migrants and those internally displaced; the aged and those with disabilities. Bachelet said that states have obligations under international human rights law "to ensure that those affected by climate change, particularly those in vulnerable situations, have access to effective remedies and the necessary means of adaptation to enjoy lives of human dignity." "They also have an obligation to strengthen their mitigation commitments in order to prevent the worst impacts of climate change," she said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 03:55:35|Editor: Lu Hui Video Player Close DUBAI, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The United Arab Emirates (UAE) said on Thursday that British student Matthew Hedges has been treated "fairly" during the trial against him. "Contrary to media reports, Matthew Hedges has been treated fairly and according to the constitution of the UAE," Abdulla Al Naqbi, head of the Department of Legal Affairs for the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, said in a statement. "Because the official language of UAE is Arabic, Hedges was provided with translators during the investigation and trial. It is not true that he was asked to sign documents which he did not understand," Naqbi added. According to Naqbi, the final session on Nov. 21 was to announce a verdict and pass a sentence. The judges had made this clear in their previous session. It is normal that such hearings are brief. He stressed that "the crimes that Hedges was accused of are extremely serious. For the UAE, like all countries, protecting our national security must be our first priority." Naqbi added that "the UAE is determined to protect its important strategic relationship with a key ally ... Both sides hope to find an amicable solution to the Hedges case." The Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeals on Wednesday sentenced Hedges, a 31-year-old PhD student at Durham University, to life in jail on charges that he was spying for Britain. He was arrested at Dubai airport on May 5 and referred to trial in October. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 03:55:35|Editor: yan Video Player Close ATHENS, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The central Bank of Greece (BoG) presented on Thursday a plan to reduce Greek banks' non-performing loans by up to 47 percent within 3 years, Greek national news agency AMNA reported. According to an e-mailed press announcement by BoG, the proposed scheme envisages the "transfer of a significant part of non-performing exposures (NPEs) along with part of the deferred tax credits (DTCs), which are booked on bank balance sheets, to a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV)." This Special Purpose Vehicle will issue bonds (securitization) to buy NPEs worth a nominal value of 40 billion euros (45.6 billion US dollars), thus reducing by almost half Greek banks' NPLs. These loans will be sold in market prices and will be divided into three categories, namely as senior, mezzanine, and junior/equity. According to the e-mailed press release, the lower category (equity) will be covered by banks up to 20 percent and the Greek state, while it was anticipated that private investors will absorb part of the upper class of securities (senior) and a large portion of the intermediate part (mezzanine). By mid-2018, the four systemic banks in Greece had about 180 billion euro loans, of which 86 billion euros or 48 percent were non performing exposures (NPEs), according to BoG's report. The stock of nonperforming exposures has decreased from 104.5 billion euros in 2016, however, the NPE ratio remains high, primarily due to the absence of credit expansion. "The rapid resolution of bad loans has been recognized as a matter of paramount importance for restarting the economy and restoring significant and sustainable growth rates... It is obvious that a move like the one described would bring about a direct and drastic reduction in the ratio of non-performing exposures," BoG's announcement stressed. (1 euro= 1.14 U.S. dollars) Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 04:10:40|Editor: Chengcheng Video Player Close MOSCOW, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The plans of the U.S. establishment to withdraw from existing arms control agreements like the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) are shortsighted and dangerous, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday. Russia and the United States have the largest nuclear potentials and therefore have a special responsibility to maintain global security, Lavrov said in an interview with Italy's AGI news agency, according to a ministry transcript. "We do not understand and are concerned about the desire of the U.S. leadership to change the format and in fact eliminate the existing international regime for limiting armaments," he said. In October, U.S. President Donald Trump said that Washington would pull out of the INF Treaty on account of Russia's alleged breach of the agreement, which Moscow repeatedly denied and warned against a new nuclear arms race. Meanwhile, some U.S politicians are also questioning the necessity to extend the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) which expires in 2021. "We consider such considerations short-sighted and dangerous. A return to the philosophy of preserving peace based on the concept of mutually assured destruction does not meet the realities of the 21st century," Lavrov said. Noting that the two countries need to cooperate on threats and challenges including terrorism, regional crisis and climate issues, Lavrov said Moscow is ready to build a mutually beneficial partnership with Washington. "We hope that common sense will prevail in Washington in the end. This would be in the interests of not only the peoples of Russia and the United States, but also the entire world community," he said. The INF Treaty and the START treaty are both disarmament agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union, which were signed respectively in 1987 and 1991. After the expiration of the original START treaty in 2009, a New START treaty was signed by Moscow and Washington in 2010. Moscow and Washington have been accusing each other of violating the agreements in recent years amid increasing tension between the two countries. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 04:25:43|Editor: yan Video Player Close TEHRAN, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Iran's foreign minister said on Thursday that if the signatories to the Iranian international nuclear deal, other than the United States, cannot secure Iran's economic interests under the accord, the country would consider other "options" to its advantage. "One of the objectives of nuclear deal was to normalize Iran's economic and trade ties with its world partners," Mohammad Javad Zarif said in Italian capital of Rome. "However, this measure has faced problems since the U.S. (President Donald) Trump's administration has blocked other countries" from cooperating with Iran, Zarif was quoted as saying by official IRNA news agency. "If the Americans do not want or cannot take advantage of Iran's economic and trade opportunities, they are not entitled to create illegal barriers for other global companies who are willing to do trade with Iran," he added. Iranian and Italian companies should enjoy easily the immense trade and economic opportunities in both countries, he said, adding that "we are studying a number of ways to continue collaboration either through the European Union (EU) or by mutual cooperation." The Iranian foreign minister did not elaborate on the "options" that Iran may consider. After the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear accord in May and returning the unilateral sanctions against Iran in recent months, the remaining five powers have been trying to keep the deal afloat. On Tuesday, Iran urged EU to speed up international efforts to salvage the nuclear deal. A clearing house, known as a Special Purpose Vehicle, which is designed to allow European companies to bypass the U.S. sanctions, is due to be set up by the EU within the next few months, according to the western media. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 06:21:06|Editor: yan Video Player Close ANKARA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Turkey could buy U.S. Patriot missiles besides the Russian S-400 system if it got a good offer, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Thursday. "If there is a good offer, Turkey would seriously evaluate buying (Patriots) as well as a possible joint production and technology transfer," said Kalin at a forum on Turkish-Russian relations in the capital Ankara. "Turkey doesn't have to meet its needs from a single source, as Turkey is a big country," he was quoted by state-run Anadolu Agency as saying. Last December, Turkey and Russia finalized a deal to supply Ankara with two S-400 surface-to-air missile batteries. Turkey will be the first NATO member to acquire the Russian system. Kalin said the first delivery of S-400 systems is expected in October or November 2019. In the second phase, Turkey and Russia will start joint production of the S-400 systems. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu hinted on Wednesday Turkey may seek to purchase the U.S. air defence systems, saying that even though the S-400 deal was a "done deal," Ankara still needs more air defences, and prefers to buy from its allies. Turkey's procurement of the Russian missiles has raised concerns with NATO allies who often warn that Ankara should invest in defense technology that is compatible with NATO systems. The U.S. warns Turkey that the country might face sanctions for its decision as a bill prohibiting sales to Turkey of F-35 jets was adopted by Senate in June. Africa contains the greatest diversity of large-bodied mammals in the world today. This includes five species of megaherbivores (herbivores over 2000 lbs). From left to right: hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis), elephant (Loxodonta africana), white rhino (Ceratotherium simum), and black rhino (Diceros bicornis). (Xinhua/Credit: John Rowan) WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- A study published on Thursday in the journal Science revealed that our earliest tool-bearing ancestors were not to blame for ancient mammal extinctions in Africa over the last several million years. The findings, contrary to the long-head view over early hominins impacts on ancient African faunas, showed that long-term environmental change led to the extinctions, mainly in the form of grassland expansion likely caused by falling atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. A group of American researchers compiled a seven-million-year record of herbivore extinctions in eastern Africa, focusing on the very largest species weighing over 900 kilograms. Three-million-year-old hominin 'Lucy' once shared her woodland landscape with a diversity of herbivores including three giraffes, two rhinos, a hippo, and four elephant-like species at Ethiopia. But these species disappeared afterwards and the evolution of tool-using and meat-eating hominins getting most of the blame. "Our analyses show that there is a steady, long-term decline of megaherbivore diversity beginning around 4.6 million years ago," said the study leader Tyler Faith, assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Utah. "This extinction process kicks in over a million years before the very earliest evidence for human ancestors making tools or butchering animal carcasses and well before the appearance of any hominin species realistically capable of hunting them, like Homo erectus," said Faith. Their analysis revealed that over the last seven million years substantial megaherbivore extinctions occurred: 28 lineages became extinct, leading to the present-day communities lacking in large animals. Further analysis showed that the onset of the megaherbivore decline began roughly 4.6 million years ago, and that the rate of diversity decline did not change following the appearance of Homo erectus, a human ancestor often blamed for the extinctions. Faith and his team also examined independent records of climatic and environmental trends and their effects like stable carbon isotope records of vegetation structure and eastern African fossil herbivore teeth. "Low CO2 levels favor tropical grasses over trees, and as a consequence savannas became less woody and more open through time," said the paper's co-author John Rowan, a postdoctoral scientist from University of Massachusetts Amherst. "We know that many of the extinct megaherbivores fed on woody vegetation, so they seem to disappear alongside their food source," said Rowan. Researchers said that the lacking of prey may also have caused the extinctions among African carnivores at that time like saber-tooth cats. Previously, some scientist suggested that competition with increasingly carnivorous species of Homo led to the demise of numerous carnivores over the last few million years. "We think our study is a major step towards understanding the depth of anthropogenic impacts on large mammal communities, and provides a convincing counter-argument to these long-held views about our early ancestors," said Faith. U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press after talking to members of the military via teleconference from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 2018. (Xinhua/Photo by Mandel NGAN/AFP) WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Washington was "in very strong negotiations" with Afghanistan, also hinting a possible visit to the war-torn country by himself. "We're in very strong negotiations with Afghanistan right now," Trump told reporters after giving a Thanksgiving Day message to U.S. soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. "We'll see what happens," he added. The U.S. president also hinted a likely visit by himself to Afghanistan during his holiday message teleconference with U.S. troops deployed there, which will be his first trip to the war-riddled country after taking office. "Maybe I'll even see you over there. You never know what's going to happen," Trump told a U.S. general in Afghanistan after saying that he will see the general when the latter comes back to the United States. Asked by a reporter later if he looked forward to going to Afghanistan, Trump said, "We'll be doing some interesting things." Asked if he had a sense of when he will be going, Trump responded, "I do, but I can't tell you." Currently, the United States has around 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, mainly providing training and advisory service to Afghan security forces, with some others conducting counter-terrorism operations. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 08:06:19|Editor: Chengcheng Video Player Close CANBERRA, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Business Council of Australia (BCA) has condemned the government's energy plan as "ad hoc and extreme". In a submission to the Treasury regarding the energy policy, BCA chief executive Jennifer Westacott declared that the government's price regulation measure was a "heavy-handed, intrusive treasurer-ordered" remedy that "sets a dangerous precedent for other sectors of the economy and threatens our economic attractiveness". The BCA is comprised of the chief executives of more than 100 of Australia's biggest companies, making it the largest and most powerful business lobby group in the country. "The business council supports lower electricity prices but does not believe this will be achieved by ad hoc and extreme intervention in the electricity market, which brings new risks, unintended consequences and has never worked before," the submission said. Westacott's submission was a response to energy policies proposed by Angus Taylor, the minister for Energy, which could see power companies broken up if they are found to have engaged in price gouging. The Australian Energy Council (AEC), which represents 22 major electricity and gas firms, in November questioned whether the government has the legal right to pursue the policy after receiving legal advice that it could be unconstitutional. Despite strong opposition to the policy, Taylor has repeatedly said he would not back down from his position. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) on Thursday launched its alternative energy plan, including a 15 billion Australian dollars program to promote renewable energy sources. ALP leader Bill Shorten promised that his party would introduce a 50 percent renewable energy target (RET) and 45 percent emissions reduction target from 2005 levels by 2030 if victorious at the 2019 election. However, the BCA has raised concerns over the interventionist nature of Labor's policy. "We have consistently called for a minimalist approach to market intervention," Westacott said in a media release on Thursday. "Much of the detail still needs to be worked through, including the underwriting and investment program for low-emissions generation." "In such a complex policy area it is important that a thorough consultation process with industry occurs, drawing on evidence-based policy. If the last decade has shown anything, it's that the devil is in the detail, and we need to get that right." Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 09:26:28|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close CANBERRA, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese investment firm has completed one of the largest horticultural purchases in the history of Australia's Northern Territory (NT). Hong Kong-based CK Hutchinson Holdings on Friday completed the purchase of two NT watermelon farms for 27.5 million Australian dollars (19.9 million U.S. dollars). The two farms, formerly owned by local brothers Stuart and Kane Younghusband, cover a total area of 1,900 hectares near Mataranka, 420 km southeast of Darwin. Ian Baker, an agricultural consultant in the NT, said the purchase is one of the biggest he could remember in northern Australia. "In the (NT) horticultural industry, farms have been sold between five million AUD (3.6 million USD) and 10 million AUD (7.2 million USD), so this is a big sale," Baker told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Friday. "It is a big sale in Australian terms. There are not many horticulture businesses (in Australia) that sell for this sort of money." But he said he was more concerned about the new managers' ability to handle a farm in the NT's harsh conditions than he was about foreign investment in the NT. "I have never been worried about money coming from overseas. The critical thing is having managers who are able to learn and develop the business," Baker said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 09:26:28|Editor: Lu Hui Video Player Close LONDON, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Prince William and his wife Princess Kate will visit the site of a fatal helicopter crash outside Leicester City's stadium, Kensington Palace announced in a statement on Thursday. Kensington Palace tweeted, "The Duke of Cambridge, FA President, and The Duchess of Cambridge will visit Leicester on Wednesday 28th November to pay tribute to those who were tragically killed in the helicopter crash." Leicester City chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha and four others died when the aircraft came down outside the King Power Stadium on 27 October. The royal couple will also meet players and staff. Kensington Palace said: "Their Royal Highnesses knew the club chairman and wanted to visit the city to recognise the warmth and compassion that the people of Leicester and fans of Leicester City have shown in reaction to the accident." After meeting club staff, they will speak to representatives from charities supported by Vichai. The Duke and Duchess will then arrive at the University of Leicester to hear about some of the educational programs supported by the club. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 09:51:32|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close YANGON, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Trade between Myanmar and China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) hit 238.5 million U.S. dollars in the six-month mini-budget or transitional period from April to September with Myanmar's export to the region surpassing import, the official Global New Light of Myanmar quoted the Ministry of Commerce as reporting Friday. The country has changed its fiscal year period from original April-March to Oct.-Sept. beginning 2018-2019, producing a six-month transitional gap. During the period, Myanmar exported 230 million U.S. dollars' goods to Hong Kong SAR, while importing 8.5 million dollars of goods from it. In the fiscal year 2017-18, Myanmar-Hong Hong SAR bilateral trade stood at 385.63 million U.S. dollars, up from 234.46 million dollars in 2016-17. Myanmar mainly exports precious stones, agricultural products, fishery products and garments to Hong Kong SAR, while importing from the latter telecommunications equipment and optical goods. Economic interaction between Myanmar and Hong Kong SAR has been increasing rapidly with the latter emerging as the fourth largest investor in Myanmar following mainland China, Singapore and Thailand. According to official statistics, Hong Kong SAR's investment in Myanmar totaled 7.867 billion U.S. dollars in 171 projects as of August since late 1988, accounting for 10.18 percent of the total foreign investment in the country. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 10:11:36|Editor: Lu Hui Video Player Close TRIPOLI, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- The International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Thursday said that 174 illegal Nigerian migrants have been voluntarily deported from Libya to Nigeria. "Today, 174 migrants returned home to Nigeria via IOM's Voluntary Humanitarian Return and Reintegration Assistance Program," the IOM said in a statement on Thursday. "So far this year, more than 15,000 migrants were able to return home to 32 countries across Africa and Asia, with support from the European Union Trust Fund," the statement said. The IOM deported more than 19,000 illegal migrants from Libya to their home countries in 2017. The voluntary return program is carried out by the IOM, with an aim to arrange the return of illegal migrants stranded in Libya to their countries of origin. Shelters in Libya are crowded with thousands of migrants who have been rescued at sea or arrested by the Libyan security services. Libya has become a preferred departure point for illegal migrants hoping to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe due to insecurity and chaos in the North African country following the 2011 uprising that toppled former leader Muammar Gaddafi. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 10:11:37|Editor: Lu Hui Video Player Close GENEVA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The World Trade Organization (WTO) has agreed to set up panels at its Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) to decide whether U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports comply with WTO rules, a Geneva trade official said Thursday. China and the European Union (EU) protested Wednesday along with Mexico, Norway, Russia, Canada and Turkey against measures by Washington which they said are not for national security reasons but for American economic interests. In June, the United States imposed a duty of 25 percent on steel imports and a 10 percent on aluminum imports from Mexico, Canada and the EU, among other regions, citing a national security exemption. The DSB agreed to set up separate panels for the complaints. On the same occasion, India and Switzerland submitted their first requests for panels to rule on the U.S. steel and aluminium tariffs. Like the seven other members, the two argued that the U.S. actions were, in effect and content, safeguard measures, drawing concerns that the United States was using national security as a justification for the tariffs. Meanwhile, the United States secured the establishment of four panels to examine countermeasures imposed by Canada, China, the EU and Mexico on certain U.S. imports in response to the steel and aluminum tariffs. In a report Thursday, WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo issued a warning after a new report saying that new import-restrictive measures have hit a new high. He said the report's findings "should be of serious concern for G20 governments and the whole international community", warning that further escalation remains a real threat. "If we continue along the current course, the economic risks will increase, with potential effects for growth, jobs and consumer prices around the world," Azevedo said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 10:16:39|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close CANBERRA, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has dismissed legal concerns around his plan to strip convicted terrorists of their Australian citizenship. The Law Council of Australia, the peak body representing the legal profession in Australia, on Friday challenged Morrison and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton to justify the plan, which was announced on Thursday, saying the response was disproportionate to the terrorism threat. Responding to the council, Morrison said he was not concerned by its objections and would push ahead with the new laws. "Of course they would. Those who oppose laws always say this," he said in an appearance on breakfast television on Friday. "I dealt with that when I was Immigration Minister and they said I couldn't turn back boats and they said that wasn't legal. They make all these claims, but what I do is press on and just get it done." Under the current laws, citizenship can only be stripped from people who have been sentenced to at least six years imprisonment and have citizenship of another country. The new laws would abolish the minimum sentence requirement for perpetrators convicted of a terrorist offence and change the citizenship threshold. "The minister will only need to be reasonably satisfied that a person would otherwise have another citizenship, which is a change from the standard existing today," Morrison told reporters on Thursday. Australians convicted of being involved in terrorism overseas would also be banned from returning to the country for two years. Morry Bailes, president of the Law Council of Australia, on Friday called on the government to justify the "radical change." "The loss of citizenship denies a person potential administrative remedies," he told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio. "That's a serious matter in a democracy such as ours and has the potential to undermine the rule of law." "What we're calling on the Federal Government to do is to justify why, in the absence of any change to our national threat level, there should be just a radical change to such a fundamental question of stripping citizenship away from a person." The new laws were announced only weeks after the terrorist attack on Melbourne's Central Business District (CBD). Terrorist Hassan Khalif Shire killed one person and injured two others when he attacked pedestrians in the CBD with a knife earlier in November. Morrison on Thursday promised that he would introduce the new laws to Parliament when it resumes on Monday. However, Morrison's governing Liberal-National Party (LNP) does not hold a majority of seats in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, leaving the prime minister with an uphill battle to pass the laws through either house. Morrison and Dutton on Thursday ramped-up pressure on Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee to finalize its review of proposed laws that would grant law enforcement the power to access encrypted messages so that the laws could be taken to a vote. "I would insist on seeing (the laws) passed before the end of the next sitting fortnight," the prime minister said. The new citizenship laws could be passed quickly if the opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP) supported the government. "There is nothing more important than keeping Australians safe, and we will always listen to the advice of our security agencies on what they require to keep Australians safe," senior ALP member Mark Dreyfus said in a statement. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 10:26:42|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close JOHANNESBURG, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Center for Africa-China Studies (CACS), which officials and scholars believed will play a pivotal role in gathering data and assessing the development of Africa-China relations, was launched at the University of Johannesburg on Thursday. "We need to concentrate on having reliable statistics. We as scholars, don't have analytical stats on projects done due to the Africa and China relations," said David Monyae, CACS director and co-director at the Confucius Institute at the University of Johannesburg. Misinformation about relation between Africa and China was due to lack of verifiable public data, said Monyae. He said that the center will focus on relations between Africa and China and measure the impact of major infrastructural projects in Africa, including the Belt and Road Initiative, industrial revolution, people-to-people exchanges and bilateral relations. Chinese Ambassador to South Africa Lin Songtian said the center would be crucial in deepening relations between China and South Africa, as well as the rest of the continent. Lin said the center will be in a better position to verify "misunderstanding" about the relations between Africa and China. "Examining the impact of these projects on the ground is very important. We need to measure the tangible benefits of the deals being invested in Africa on the lives of ordinary people, " Emmanuel Matambo, a local scholar who will join the center, told Xinhua. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 10:31:43|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close MANILA, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Officials, business leaders and scholars in the Philippines said they are confident in the future of Philippines-China relations following the state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to the country earlier this week. Xi wrapped up his two-day visit to the Philippines on Wednesday. During the visit, the Chinese president and his Philippine counterpart, Rodrigo Duterte, agreed to upgrade bilateral ties to a relationship of comprehensive strategic cooperation on the basis of mutual respect, sincerity, equality, mutual benefit and win-win cooperation. Hermogenes Esperon, Philippine national security adviser, said Xi's visit signals a new beginning in relations between the two nations. "There are many good results. There are new beginnings, and we hope to explore and have more discussions for stronger relationships," Esperon said. "It's a good start." Martin Andanar, secretary of the Philippine Presidential Communications Operations Office, said Xi's visit further deepened and strengthened the already warm ties and upgraded bilateral relations to a new level. It means that now the two countries "are not just acquaintances or ordinary friends," said Andanar. "You're almost best friends." During the visit, Xi and Duterte reconfirmed the two countries' shared commitment to advancing cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative. Philippine Public Works and Highways Secretary Mark Villar said he saw very strong ties between the two Asian neighbors. "We have a lot of cooperation especially in infrastructure. Many of our big-ticket projects will be done with the help from China," Villar said. "That's why we're very grateful ... China is very good at infrastructure and we look forward to the mutually beneficial relationship," said Villar, expressing confidence that the relations will continue to improve. The two sides signed a number of cooperation documents covering, among many others, the Belt and Road Initiative as well as oil and gas development. The signing of the cooperation documents is "a positive step ... towards achieving a way forward on how to develop and tap the power resources in the region," said Philippine Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi. Cusi said that he hopes the cooperation "can develop something that is good for everybody" and that the deal on oil and gas development cooperation will serve as a model for other countries in the region. Francis Chua, chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, said the successful state visit by Xi was reassuring for the Philippine business community. "Now, people from the Philippine industry and commerce have higher expectations for the future Philippine-China trade relations. I think in the future more and more Philippine goods can enter the Chinese market," Chua said. During the visit, Xi said China will continue to expand exchanges and cooperation with the Philippines in education, culture and tourism. According to a joint statement, the two sides fully recognize the importance of exchanges in education, including technical vocational education. They also recognize the importance of promoting understanding and friendship between the two countries and encouraging cooperation between their relevant government agencies and educational institutions. Clarita Carlos, a political science professor at the University of the Philippines, said she is glad that some of the agreements signed are related to education. "Since I'm an educator, I think the greatest linkage between peoples is through knowing each other. We now have a number of Confucius Institutes. We have one here in the university," she told Xinhua in an interview. "Now there is an increase of interest among our young people to learn Mandarin because that is a competitive advantage. So, everything is for the good," she added. Lucio Blanco Pitlo, a lecturer with the Chinese Studies Program at Ateneo de Manila University, said China and the Philippines have more areas for cooperation in the future, not only in economy but also in culture. "It goes to show how diverse are the aspects of the bilateral relations, or how each one of them is equally important," Pitlo said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 11:21:48|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa (R) welcomes his visiting Angolan counterpart Joao Lourenco during a ceremony in Lisbon, Portugal, Nov. 22, 2018. Portugal and Angola pledged here Thursday to strengthen bilateral exchanges and boost cooperation in various fields. (Xinhua/Zhang Liyun) LISBON, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Portugal and Angola pledged here Thursday to strengthen bilateral exchanges and boost cooperation in various fields. At a joint press conference after the meeting with his visiting Angolan counterpart Joao Lourenco, Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said Portugal will sign a series of agreements in the fields of economy, finance, justice, culture and health to deepen bilateral relationship. He added that the signing of these agreements indicated that the relationship between the two countries will open a new era. Rebelo de Sousa believed that nurturing a free and attractive business environment is in line with the expectations of the two peoples. Lourenco, for his part, voiced Angola's strong resolution to fight against corruption, saying that Angola will increase political transparency and create a friendly business environment which will make the country safer and more attractive to investment and tourism. In a speech addressed to the Portuguese parliament later in the day, he said that the two countries share the same language and common values, thus bilateral exchanges should be extended to areas such as education, science and technology, and culture and sports. Lourenco arrived here Thursday for the first state visit to Portugal by the president of Angola in 10 years, and the three-day state visit is also the first to Portugal since Lourenco took office in September last year. Lourenco's visit marks the normalization of relations between Portugal and Angola. Relations between the two countries had deteriorated in recent years as Portugal investigated corruption cases involving those close to high-level government officials of Angola. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 11:26:49|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Altogether 61 individuals were arrested Thursday in a large crackdown on child pornography carried out by Brazil's Federal Police. The police apprehended these individuals in flagrante from 23 Brazilian states, and seized a number of computers and other items. The arrest was the third phase of a coordinated effort seeking to punish child pornographers and pedophiles, dubbed the Operation Light in Childhood. Producing, keeping and sharing child porn are crimes punishable with up to eight years of prison under Brazilian law. According to the authorities, a man arrested in Rio de Janeiro had as many as 48,000 child porn files on his computer. "This is a filthy crime which maculates and desecrates our children and youngsters, compromising them and our whole future," Public Security Minister Raul Jungmann said. Meanwhile, Brazilian police also worked in collaboration with authorities from Argentina. According to the Brazilian federal police, the Argentinian police carried out a simultaneous operation and executed 41 search warrants. The first phase of the Operation Light in Childhood in 2017 saw 112 individuals arrested and the second, in May 2018, with 251 arrested. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 11:31:52|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close SYDNEY, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Artificial intelligence technology that digitally identifies plants and animals suspected as biosecurity threats could form a formidable tool to keep Australia safe from pests, other invasive species and diseases, according to the latest research. Researchers at Murdoch University are working on a major project to identify the biosecurity risks within seconds, with significant savings in time and money, local media reported on Friday. "Artificial intelligence has now got to a point where it is very quick and it's very accurate," the university's Professor Simon McKirdy told the ABC news channel. "It could prove to be a very effective triage tool for us in screening samples in the field and in the laboratory," he said. "We're taking the process of facial recognition and applying it to other organisms, whether they be a rat, gecko or insect." "It starts to identify particular features of different animals and plants that we as humans wouldn't necessarily pick up as being a distinguishing point." The latest software is learning new information and adapting at an impressive pace, assisting biosecurity specialists rather than replacing them, reported the channel. For example, if it screens 100 images, it will do the triage and come back and say "We actually think there's four images here that need to be looked at by the human expert," said McKirdy. "Then the human expert can spend a lot more time making sure they get the right answer on the diagnosis." The latest study is in line with a national initiative that involves more than 300 million Australian dollars (217.6 million U.S. dollars) invested to beef up biosecurity measures over the next five years. The artificial intelligence technology can first be rolled out at airport checkpoints and state border crossings, said McKirdy. "Our aim is to get this to the point where we could see biosecurity officers at borders, in the field, or even farmers being in a position where it could be an app on a phone that allows them to take a good image," he said. "Then in close to real time they can get a response from the system that there's either a good chance this is a pest of concern or not." Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 12:22:01|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close LONDON, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- China and Britain should join hands to support free trade and take the lead in Asia-Europe cooperation so as to make greater contribution to global development and prosperity, Chinese Ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming said. Liu, in a recent signed article published by Asia House Insights, a journal of the renowned British think tank Asia House, said that the mutually beneficial cooperation among a Britain outside the EU and Asian countries, including China, will enjoy a promising future. He expected China and Britain to join hands to "safeguard the rule-based international trade system and take the lead in Asia-Europe cooperation." To build a "global Britain", the British government has launched a new export strategy, announcing that it will top G7 in the percentage of exports to GDP and regard Asia as an important part of this strategy. Liu said in the article, entitled "Openness and Cooperation is the Only Road Leading to Prosperity and Development in Asia and the World", that China and Britain should match development strategies. The senior diplomat stressed the importance of openness in his article, saying that the world economy needs to be open but surging protectionism and unilateralism and looming trade war have been a cause for grave concern. "Under this circumstance, China stays committed to upholding the multilateral trade regime with WTO as its core, opposing protectionism of all forms, supporting the role of G20, APEC and BRICS and promoting more fair and reasonable reforms in the international trade system," he said. "China never seeks development at the expense of other countries," Liu added. The ambassador said that China always believes that in China-U.S. relations, cooperation serves the interests of both and conflict neither. "Sound and steady development of trade and economic relationship is in the interests of the people of both countries, and meets the common aspiration of the international community," Liu said. Asia, with its economic dynamism and potential, has been an important engine for world economic growth. China is an important part of this "Asia miracle". Liu said that with China becoming the largest trading partner of 16 Asian countries, the interests of China and Asia are increasingly integrated and the future of China and Asia are ever more closely shared. "The development of China and the rest of Asia is a story of how openness brings progress, and openness and cooperation is the only road leading to prosperity," he stressed. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 13:22:08|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close by Xinhua writer Qu Junya BEIJING, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- China's Confucius Institute (CI) meant to be a cultural bridge is also helping many young people in a host of countries to pick up practical skills and secure job opportunities. This unintended contribution is largely due to its Chinese language programs, the basic part of the CI agenda to promote educational and cultural exchanges. Built in cooperation with the local educational institution, the CI courses are also diversifying with different focuses on such subjects as traditional Chinese medicine, textiles, vocational education and Chinese music in response to local needs. Susan Jain, executive director of the Confucius Institute of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), feels the language programs are key to giving the U.S. young people a competitive future. "The Confucius Institute gives our fellows and students exactly what they need to enable them to compete in the international marketplace," she told Xinhua recently. "When American kids learn languages like Mandarin and understand more about foreign cultures, it opens up all kinds of well-paid job opportunities for them and makes them better equipped to compete with applicants from other countries," Jain explained. Speaking Chinese fluently during a CI event in late September, Charlie Hoffs, a Standford University freshperson, said her romance with Chinese started from the love of Chinese characters, "Then I increasingly realized the language's importance in economy and tourism," she said. "China is also increasingly a rising power and is capable of navigating the business world. So, Chinese is a vital skill." The Confucius Institute is a major teaching center for about 40,000 people in Spain who study Chinese. "Thanks to the Confucius Institute ... Now I can explain the history of the city in Chinese," said Tour guide Ana Godoy in southern Spain's historic town of Granada, noting that the skill has led to enormous benefits in her career. "The (Confucius) Institute opens doors. It's no longer possible for any of us, especially young people, not to be involved with China, when China plays a major role in all our futures," said U.S. theater director Peter Sellers, now UCLA professor in world arts and culture. "Our cultures, our economies, our destinies are irrevocably intertwined," he said. Sellers' remarks describe the economic situation, especially in participating countries of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), where cooperation projects have generated inflows of Chinese investment and more local jobs. It is the understanding of a number of youths in Zambia that learning Chinese can enhance their capabilities and chances to get employed. "Very few of them take up practical skills such as learning Chinese language ... which they can use while looking for a job. That skill can later turn out to be your main job in the long run," said Lytone Chibona, a 22-year-old CI student of University of Zambia (UNZA). Even now, competence in Chinese language has helped him and his friend Gift Kunyanda, 19, obtain part-time jobs. "I have had plenty of job opportunities especially with Chinese-run firms in Zambia. I have sometimes gotten a job almost immediately because I speak Chinese," said Kunyanda, who is "working on being more proficient in Chinese language and culture" so that he could work as a teacher of Chinese and an interpreter in the future. In October, 14 Chinese enterprises, including local branches of China Harbor Engineering Company (CHEC) and China Railway, visited the second job fair held by the UNZA Confucius Institute to employ young locals. "Our business is growing with the participation of hundreds of Zambians, so we come here to recruit more skilled young workers," said Linda Yan, a human resources manager with the Chinese aviation company AVIC International. In Belarus, Belt and Road projects have made it a trend among the young to learn the Chinese language. On her decision to work as a Chinese interpreter in the China-Belarus industrial park, Anna Aliushina, a girl in her 20s, said, "I thought this company was more attractive" than those with job offers elsewhere. High school girl Anastasiya Solonets said she has learned Chinese for four years and will continue with a part-time study in the CI when in college, because she hopes to get a good job in the industrial park. In Tajikistan, the craze to learn Chinese in recent years has prompted some 3,000 people a year to pursue further study in China, making China a top host country for its overseas students. In 2017, some 6.5 million people worldwide took part in the Chinese proficiency examination for foreigners at various levels, official data showed. The examinees included a record number of 2,363 primary and middle school students in Youth Chinese Test held in November alone by the CI of Manson de Shopaa Royal Normal University in Thailand, a nation seeking growth by aligning national development plans with the Belt and Road. (Xinhua reporters Julia Pierrepont III, Peng Lijun, Guo Qiuda, Yu Xiaohua, Sun Mei, Hu Jing, Wei Zhongjie and Li Jia contributed to the story.) Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 13:27:10|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close SANTIAGO, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- A total of 100 Chinese-made electric buses have arrived at a Chilean port and will join the country's public transportation fleet in the capital soon, local media reported Thursday. The buses will be incorporated into Transantiago, the capital Santiago's mass transit system, servicing a route that covers central Grecia Avenue. According to BYD's branch office in Chile, the buses that are equipped with the latest technology will be unloaded on Saturday and will begin operating in December. The 30-seat buses, with a maximum capacity of 81 passengers, are equipped with air conditioning system, USB ports for charging mobile devices and Wi-Fi. Two Chinese-made electric buses have been operating in the city for several months, traveling over 100,000 km and transporting more than 350,000 passengers, which has gained highly appreciation from the public. In October, President Sebastian Pinera hailed the modernization of public transit with the inclusion of electric vehicles, including the 100 BYD buses and another 100 from Chinese company Yutong. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 13:42:14|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- At least six militants were killed Friday in a predawn fierce gunfight in restive Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said. The gunfight erupted early Friday at village Sutkipora of Bijbehara in Anantnag district, about 48 km south of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir. "In a predawn gunfight today here, six militants were killed in a fierce gunfight with joint contingents of police and army," a senior police official posted in Anantnag told Xinhua. According to the police, the gunfight broke out after government forces cordoned off the area on specific intelligence information suggesting presence of militants. "No sooner the joint contingents reached near the suspected area, the militants present there fired upon them, thereby triggering a gunfight," the police said. On Tuesday, four militants and a para army commando were killed while two troopers wounded in a similar gunfight in adjacent Shopian district. A guerilla war is going on between militants and Indian troopers stationed in the region since 1989. Kashmir, the Himalayan region divided between India and Pakistan, is claimed by both in full. Since their independence from Britain, the two countries have fought three wars, two exclusively over Kashmir. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 13:52:16|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close ISLAMABAD, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- At least two policemen were killed on Friday morning in a terrorist attack in the diplomatic area in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi, local media and police said. Deputy Inspector General of Police of Karachi confirmed that two policemen were killed when a group of terrorists opened fire at them in the diplomatic zone where several foreign missions are located. According to the reports, around four terrorists riding on a vehicle reached the area and started firing and hurled a couple of hand grenades at the police personnel. Soon after the gunfire, police and security forces rushed to the site and cordoned off the area. Police said they had launched an operation to clear the area from the militants. Around three to four terrorists are still present in the area and are having an exchange of firing with the security forces, local media reported. A state of emergency has been declared in all the hospitals in the city. A separatist group, Balochistan Liberation Army, has reportedly claimed the attack, but there is no official confirmation on it. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 14:57:28|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close ISLAMABAD, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- At least 6 people were killed and 20 others injured when a bomb went off in Pakistan's northwest tribal region of Orakzai Agency on Friday, local media reported. According to reports, the blast happened at the main gate of a seminary in the lower part of Orakzai Agency, one of Pakistan's seven mountainous tribal regions located near the Pakistan-Afghan border. Following the explosion, rescue teams along with security forces have rushed to the blast site and the injured people have been shifted to the nearest hospital. Several among the injured people were in critical condition, said the hospital sources. Security personnel cordoned off the area after the blast and launched a search operation. The nature of the blast is not known yet, and police have launched an investigation into the incident. No group or individual has claimed the attack yet. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 15:22:30|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close SEOUL, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's unification ministry said on Friday that the country's economic cooperation with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) would be possible under the denuclearization and improved inter-Korean relations. The ministry said in its report to the National Assembly's special committee on inter-Korean economic cooperation that the smooth inter-Korean economic cooperation would be made possible under a virtuous cycle of the Korean Peninsula's denuclearization and the improved inter-Korean ties. The report said South Korea will drive the virtuous cycle by helping the DPRK and the United States hold a second summit and encouraging the second Pyongyang-Washington summit to go smoothly. Through the development of inter-Korean relations, South Korea will make continued efforts to encourage the DPRK to help denuclearize the peninsula, according to the report. For the inter-Korean economic projects, conditions should be met such as a progress in denuclearization talks and the eased sanctions on the DPRK, the ministry said. The ministry of trade, industry and energy said in a separate report to the parliamentary committee that it will push for a broad range of inter-Korean economic cooperation in industry, national resources and energy if conditions are met such as the denuclearization and the lifting of sanctions on Pyongyang. The ministry said the effective inter-Korean economic cooperation will be pushed for following the easing or lifting of sanctions on the DPRK in the process of the denuclearization, but it noted that it will made steady preparations in advance for a smooth cooperation when the conditions are met. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 15:42:36|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close CHARIKAR, Afghanistan, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Three civilians including a 10-year-old child have been confirmed dead and four others injured in an overnight air raid in Jabal Saraj district of Afghanistan's Parwan province, provincial police chief Mohammad Mahfouz Walizada said. The operations with the objective of arresting a suspected insurgent named Mohammad Wazir was launched in the wee hours of Friday in Deh Bala area, some 75 km north of Kabul, the official said. The operation "unfortunately was not in coordination with provincial police" and that was why it led to harming civilians, he said. Meantime, hundreds of locals took the bodies to Jabal Saraj bazaar as a sign of protest, blaming the government for negligence and alleged that "unmanned plane of foreign forces" dropped bomb on a house in residential area killing three civilians and injuring four others. Neither the NATO-led Resolute Support mission nor Afghan defense ministry has made comment. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 16:17:42|Editor: mmm Video Player Close BEIJING, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Public private partnerships (PPP) signed in the past five years have driven 6.6 trillion yuan (about 952 billion U.S. dollars) of investment in China, the China Securities Journal reported. A total of 4,302 PPPs had been signed and implemented by the end of October, Jiao Xiaoping, head of the China Public Private Partnerships Center of the Ministry of Finance, was quoted by the newspaper as saying at a forum held in Shanghai Thursday. The projects covered various fields including urban engineering, public transportation and environmental protection, according to the newspaper. PPPs are a collaborative investment model between government and private companies. Chinese authorities have explored funding infrastructure and public works through PPP models since late 2013, amid growing concerns over rising local government debt. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 16:22:46|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close SEOUL, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Friday agreed to actively cooperate in upgrading the direct communications line between the two sides. The agreement was reached following the working-level talks on upgrading the decrepit communications line across the border, which were held earlier in the day at the inter-Korean liaison office in the DPRK's border town of Kaesong. During the talks, the two sides shared a view that the decrepit direct communications line between the authorities of the two Koreas needed to be replaced with optical cables. The current line is made of copper. South Korea and the DPRK agreed to continue consultations on the issue, according to Seoul's unification ministry. The five-member South Korean delegation was led by Chung Chang-min, a director-general-level official with the Ministry of Science and ICT. The DPRK delegation was represented by Ri Yong Min, a senior official in charge of communications affairs. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 16:22:47|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close KUALA LUMPUR, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Malaysian government said on Friday that it would not ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). This comes after intense opposition against the government's proposed ratification by certain groups representing the country's ethnic Malay majority who claim the treaty is a threat to Malaysia official policy that favors Malay. "The government will continue to defend the Federal Constitution which includes the social contract agreed upon by representatives of all races during the founding of this nation," said a statement from the Prime Minister's Office. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad suggested during his speech at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in September that his Pakatan Harapan government would ratify the treaty. Malaysia is one of several countries that have neither signed nor ratified the treaty which provides individuals worldwide with a mechanism to complain over issues of racial discrimination. The treaty is enforceable against member states and obliges participating countries to eliminate racial discrimination in all forms including in public institutions as well as in government policies. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 16:32:48|Editor: mmm Video Player Close BEIJING, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Wang Xiaoguang, a former vice governor of southwest China's Guizhou Province, has been indicted on charges of taking bribes, embezzlement and insider trading. The Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) announced Friday that upon designation of the SPP, a procuratorate in Chongqing has filed the case in the Chongqing Municipal No. 1 Intermediate People's Court. Wang was accused of taking advantage of his posts to seek benefits for others or using his power and status to seek illegitimate interests for others through other officials' work, and accepting "especially huge amounts of money and gifts," the SPP said. Prosecutors also accused Wang of using his posts to illegally gain vast sums from public property. According to the indictment, Wang, having obtained inside information on securities via both legal and illegal means, conducted trading of relevant stocks during a sensitive period, under especially serious circumstances. The SPP statement said prosecutors had informed the defendant of his litigation rights, interrogated him and listened to the defense counsel's opinions. The rights of the defendant have been properly protected. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 16:57:57|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has hailed the newly adopted institutional reform measures of the African Union (AU), his spokesman said late Thursday night. The decisions of the heads of state and government of AU members at an extraordinary summit in Addis Ababa on Nov. 17-18 send a strong message of the commitment of its membership to underpin the work of the AU with accountable and effective leadership, said Stephane Dujarric, the UN spokesman, in a statement. The decisions were made on the new structure of the AU Commission and on the selection of its senior leadership, according to the statement. Guterres also welcomed the further operationalization of the African Union Peace Fund and the appointment of its Board of Trustees to facilitate flexible, predictable and sustainable financing of the AU peace and security activities, said the statement. Guterres reiterated the commitment of the United Nations to support the AU Commission in those efforts, said the statement. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 17:02:58|Editor: zh Video Player Close A Kashmiri man kisses the body of a slain militant during the funeral procession at a village some 65 km south of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, Nov. 23, 2018. Six militants including top commander of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militant outfit were killed Friday in a predawn fierce gunfight in restive Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said. (Xinhua/Javed Dar) SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Six militants including top commander of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militant outfit were killed Friday in a predawn fierce gunfight in restive Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said. The gunfight erupted early Friday at village Sutkipora of Bijbehara in Anantnag district, about 48 km south of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir. Police have identified the slain six as local cadres of LeT. "The slain militants were identified as Azad Malik, Unais Shafi, Shahid Bashir, Basit Ishtiyaq, Aqib Najar and Firdous Najar," a police official said. According to police the militants were killed inside a hideout. "A cordon and search operation was launched jointly by police and army on specific intelligence information suggesting presence of militants," the police official said. "As the searches were going on the search party was fired upon by the militants, which was retaliated, leading to a gunfight in which ended with the killing of six militants." Indian army or police have not suffered any damage in the stand-off. Police had claimed that Malik was among the three militants involved in assassination of senior journalist and editor of Rising Kashmir Syed Shujaat Bukhari in Srinagar. Bukhari and his two guards were killed after masked gunmen indiscriminately fired upon them outside Rising Kashmir office in Srinagar's Press Enclave on June 14. Reports pouring in from Anantnag said the bodies of militants were handed over to their families for burial. No sooner the news about militant killings spread, a spontaneous shutdown was observed in the district. Local youth at several places threw stones and brickbats at government forces shouting pro-freedom and anti-India slogans. Authorities have suspended mobile internet services, fearing it would intensify anti-India protests. The local administration have also suspended domestic train service in the region in wake of the killing of six militants. On Tuesday four militants and a para army commando were killed while two troopers wounded in a similar gunfight in adjacent Shopian district. A guerilla war is going on between militants and Indian troopers stationed in the region since 1989. Kashmir, the Himalayan region divided between India and Pakistan, is claimed by both in full. Since their independence from Britain, the two countries have fought three wars, two exclusively over Kashmir. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 17:02:58|Editor: Shi Yinglun Video Player Close RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's President-elect Jair Bolsonaro announced Thursday that philosopher Ricardo Velez Rodriguez will be his new minister of education. The future minister of education is Colombian-born but has lived in Brazil for decades. He has written over 30 books, including one against former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. With a master's degree in Brazilian Affairs and a doctorate in Portuguese-Brazilian Affairs, Rodriguez now works as a professor at the Brazilian Army Command and General Staff School in Rio. Rodriguez said in his blog earlier this month that he had been recommended for the position by right-wing guru Olavo de Carvalho, who is regarded as one of the main theorists of the new wave of right-wing politicians in Brazil. Though Bolsonaro promised to make a "technical" pick for the ministry of education, there are rumors that one of the possible choices, Mozart Neves Ramos, was vetoed by Protestant leader Silas Malafaia, because he did not subscribe to a right-wing initiative which seeks to prevent teachers from discussing any sort of politics in class. Rodriguez, on the other hand, is clearly aligned with the Protestant politicians' stance that teachers in Brazilian schools are indoctrinating students with left-wing ideology and "trying to dismantle traditional family values," as he wrote in a blog post. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 17:07:58|Editor: mmm Video Player Close ADEN, Yemen, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- At least four members of Yemen's security forces were killed in a pre-dawn attack carried out by suspected al-Qaida gunmen in the southern province of Abyan early on Friday, a government official told Xinhua. The government source, who asked to remain anonymous, said that a group of gunmen launched a multi-pronged attack against a security checkpoint in Mudiyah district, where terrorists have strongholds. Another three security members were wounded in the pre-dawn attack that targeted the forces backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the source said. The Aden-based Yemeni government sent additional troops backed by armored vehicles to reinforce the soldiers stationed in Mudiyah district, he said. The government source confirmed that an investigation was launched, while a search operation is being conducted in the area for the determining hideouts of the attackers. The suspected al-Qaida gunmen fled the scene before the arrival of additional reinforcements, according to local residents. Government officials, including high-ranking security commanders and intelligence officers, have been the prime targets in kidnapping incidents as well as armed attacks launched by unknown gunmen in recent days. The impoverished Arab country has been locked into a civil war since the Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels overran much of the country militarily and seized all northern provinces, including the capital Sanaa, in 2014. Saudi Arabia leads an Arab military coalition that intervened in Yemen in 2015 to support the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after Houthi rebels forced him into exile. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 17:43:04|Editor: mmm Video Player Close LAGOS, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Up to 70 soldiers were killed after Boko Haram gunmen ambushed a military base in restive northeastern Nigeria's Borno state some days ago, a security official told Xinhua Friday. The deadly attack was carried out by a group of Boko Haram terrorists and targeted the 157 Task Force Battalion of the Nigerian Army in Melete area of Borno, the security source said on condition of anonymity. Most of the killed soldiers, including a Lieutenant colonel were overrun by the terrorists who came firing mercilessly, the source added, noting that a number of soldiers went missing after the attack. The casualty figure and details of the attack remained hazy as at Thursday. An unverified video seen by Xinhua claimed that the figure was 90; others said it was not up to that. Military spokesmen did not respond to inquiries by our reporters. A large cache of arms, ammunition and military equipment were reportedly carted away by Boko Haram fighters during the raid. The Monday evening attack was described as a huge setback for troops fighting to end insurgency. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 17:48:06|Editor: mmm Video Player Close NEW DELHI, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- India strongly condemned Friday's terrorist attack on the Chinese consulate in Pakistan's southern city of Karachi, in which two Pakistani policemen, two civilians and three terrorists were killed. According to India's external affairs ministry, the perpetrators of the terror attack should be brought to book as soon as possible. "We condole the loss of lives in this dastardly attack. There can be no justification whatsoever for any act of terrorism. The perpetrators of this heinous attack should be brought to justice expeditiously," said an official statement issued by the ministry. It added that "such terrorist attacks only strengthens the resolve of the international community to combat terrorism in all its forms and manifestations." Pakistani police and security forces said they have completed the operation in the site, where also several foreign missions are located in. All three terrorists involved in the attack were killed, according to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of Pakistan army. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 17:48:07|Editor: mmm Video Player Close ISLAMABAD, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Embassy in Pakistan confirmed on Friday an attack against the Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi in south Pakistan, and strongly condemned the terrorist attack, adding that all Chinese nationals in the diplomatic compound are safe. The embassy also expressed the condolence to the two policemen killed during the attack, according to a statement from the embassy. Police and security forces said they have completed the operation in the site, where also several foreign missions are located in. All three terrorists involved in the attack were killed, according the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of Pakistan army. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has condemned the attack and ordered a complete inquiry into the incident and has desired that elements behind the incident must be unearthed. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi condemned the attack and said police and security forces responded promptly and eliminated all the militants involved in the attack. At least seven people, including two policemen, two civilians and three terrorists, were killed in the attack, police said. Javed Alam, deputy inspector general of police of karachi south region, said that three terrorists armed with automatic guns, hand grenades, suicide jackets and explosive devices reached the area in a white colored vehicle and opened fire at the police personnel deployed for security in the Chinese diplomatic compound in the Clifton area of Karachi. The heavily-guarded area is considered a red zone, and it is home to a number of upscale restaurants and schools. Director of the Jinnah Hospital Karachi Seemi Jamali told media that overall five bodies and one injured have been shifted to the hospital so far. Soon after the attack, police and security forces rushed to the site and cordoned off the area and launched an operation against the terrorists. All roads leading to the diplomatic area were blocked for public and media. Following the gunshots and blasts of hand grenades, heavy smoke was rising from the site. According to the reports, the terrorists also torched three vehicles present at the site. An eyewitness said that three terrorists reached the area and started firing and also hurled hand grenades at the police personnel. Police, security forces and the bomb disposal squad have cleared the area after search operation and diffusing the explosive devices planted by the terrorists, police said. A heavy cache of explosive material, weapons, bullets, dry fruits, first aid medicines and some electronic gadgets were also recovered from the possessions of the militants. An outlawed militant organization, the Balochistan Liberation Army, has claimed the attack. However, there is no official confirmation about the claim yet. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 18:13:10|Editor: mmm Video Player Close NAIROBI, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Kenya's anti-narcotics police said on Friday they have arrested three foreigners at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) on suspicion of trafficking in narcotics. "Three foreigners who were on transit to China and India were arrested at JKIA on suspicion of trafficking in narcotics concealed in their rectum," the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) Anti-Narcotics Unit said in a statement. The detectives said one of the suspects; Msafiri Musa, a Tanzanian has already emitted 69 pellets of narcotics. "All suspects still under observation," DCI said. The detectives said they have made an application at the JKIA Law courts for custodial orders to facilitate completion of the investigations. The three foreigners were nabbed on Thursday. Police have mounted operations against drug trafficking and consumption in the past months in efforts to address the menace. According to police, seizures and arrest statistics show that more Africans are becoming involved in the drug trafficking of especially heroin. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 18:28:13|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close NAIROBI, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Kenyans love to shop, and they also love bargains as they seek to make the most out of their shopping experience. Hundreds of items are up for grabs on the e-shops currently that have joined the rest of the world in offering Black Friday sales. Mobile phones, TV sets, shoes, jackets, handbags, maize flour, tooth paste, margarine, cooking oil, dresses and furniture are among products that have been put on sale on the e-shops, some at more than half-prices. And Kenyans are cashing in on the sales that have been running since the start of the month, but whose climax is Black Friday. Black Friday, initially done only in the U.S. but has spread across the world, is regarded as the first day of the Christmas shopping season, on which retailers make special offers. Following chatter on social media on Thursday, Susan Mutua, an insurance sales agent in the capital Nairobi, saw a number of citizens talking about the e-shops sales. She visited one of the e-shops and could not believe her eyes when she saw that a 2kg packet of maize flour was going for 21 shillings (0.20 U.S. dollars), down from 0.89 dollars. A nice dress that goes for 34 dollars was selling at 17.6 dollars. A visit to two other e-shops revealed even sweater and irresistible deals for the agent as a phone that she had wished to have was being sold at 147 dollars, down from 215 dollars. "I went to my phone, transferred money from my bank account into my mobile money account and did shopping worth 205 dollars. I definitely bought the phone, flour, margarine, juice, cooking oil, a dress for myself and shoes for son," she said. Tens of other Kenyans have gone through a similar experience in the last few days as the e-shops namely Masoko, Jumia and Kilimall offer the Black Friday deals. Competition has toughened among the three major e-shops in the east African nation, with each striving to offer irresistible deals. "Up to 85 percent drop in prices," one e-shop announced in an online advert. While across the world Black Friday promotion is only a day, in Kenya, the online shops sweetened deals for consumers by offering over three weeks' shopping. "This is a shopping season I usually wait with great interest because I have benefited from the bargains. Last year, I bought my flat-screen TV during the sale and this year, I have bought a microwave and a new phone," said Vincent Matiku, a journalist in Nairobi. On Thursday, college lecturer Ernest Manuyo bought a fridge from one of the online shops in a deal that lasted only 30 minutes. "I was lucky that I opened one of the sites, saw the deal and I had money in my mobile money account. I bought the gadget and told a friend who tried but found the sale over," he said. Black Friday in the east African nation has now become one of the biggest pre-Christmas shopping seasons. A survey by Picodi.com in Kenya shows that 48 percent of those who took part in it knew what Black Friday is. The survey revealed that 30 percent of Kenyans will shop in the Black Friday sales this year, a rise from 10.5 percent in 2017. Bernard Mwaso, a consultant with Edell IT Solution, said that among the things fuelling Black Friday sales in Kenya are booming mobile money services, widespread use of internet, adoption of smartphones, great bargains, convenience and free delivery especially in Nairobi. "The e-shops are offering Kenyans just what they want, that is shopping and bargains, at their convenience and this is what is making Black Friday popular," said Mwaso. He noted that merchants are using the Black Friday sales to clear their stocks, some that may be out of season, ahead of the Christmas season, when shopping booms. There are some 40 million internet users in Kenya and a similar number of mobile money subscribers, according to data from the Communication Authority of Kenya. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 18:38:15|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close KAMPALA, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Ministers of countries in the African Great Lakes region are meeting on Friday in Uganda to monitor commitments made by member countries in strengthening the role of women in maintaining regional peace and security. A statement of the United Nations (UN) office in Uganda issued prior to the meeting said the ministers will discuss and endorse the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and other relevant resolutions. Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000, requires parties in a conflict to respect women's rights and support their participation in peace negotiations and in post-conflict reconstruction. The ministers meeting in Entebbe, 40 km south of capital city Kampala, will also discuss the implementation of the minimum quota of 30 percent of women staff in the governments of the Great Lakes region. The meeting is held under the auspices of the UN and the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, an intergovernmental organization that comprises 12 countries -- Uganda, Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 18:38:16|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close HANOI, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- The border guard of Vietnam's central Quang Tri province have arrested three members from a local drug trafficking ring. Doan Ngoc Phuc, 25, was caught red-handed transporting 2 kg of crystal meths in the province, Vietnam News Agency reported on Friday. From Phuc's testimony, the authorities caught Nguyen Duc Hai, 29, and the ringleader Le Dinh Quang, 37. According to Vietnamese law, those convicted of smuggling over 600 grams of heroin or more than 2.5 kg of methamphetamine are punishable by death. Making or trading 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal drugs also faces death penalty. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 18:43:17|Editor: Chengcheng Video Player Close Liu Cixin (2nd R) and other distinguished guests attend the establishment ceremony of an association dedicated to promoting China's sci-fi industry in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, Nov. 23, 2018. The three-day China Science Fiction Conference gathered writers, scientists, movie makers and fans across China to discuss the country's rising enthusiasm for sci-fi and its links with China's ongoing tech boom. Its opening also witnessed the establishment of an association to boost college sci-fi activities. (Xinhua/Mao Siqian) SHENZHEN, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- The third China Science Fiction Conference on Friday kicked-off in Shenzhen, a southern Chinese city known for its many tech companies. The three-day event gathered writers, scientists, movie makers and fans across China to discuss the country's rising enthusiasm for sci-fi and its links with China's ongoing tech boom. "Science laid the groundwork for sci-fi, while sci-fi gives wings to science," said Chen Gang, executive secretary of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST). "China's pursuit of technological strength hinges on the creativity of the general public," he said at the opening ceremony of the conference. China's sci-fi sector was fast growing and prospering in various categories from novels, movies, micro-videos to games. A number of locally made sci-fi movies will soon hit the screens and the pace of going abroad is accelerating, he said. China's science fiction has attracted much limelight in recent years, especially after Liu Cixin's sci-fi epic, "The Three-Body Problem," scooped the 2015 Hugo Award, sci-fi's top prize. Another of his work "The Wandering Earth" has been adapted into movie, scheduled to hit Chinese screens early next year. The conference is organized by CAST, with co-organizers including China's tech giant Tencent. The event features a number of forums, including on female sci-fi writers, cyberpunk in China and movie adaptations of Chinese sci-fi novels. Its opening also witnessed the establishment of an association dedicated to promoting China's sci-fi industry, and another association to boost college sci-fi activities. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 19:03:21|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close KHOST, Afghanistan, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- More than two dozen people have been killed or injured in a blast that rocked a mosque of national army in Afghanistan's eastern Khost province on Friday, an army officer in the province Captain Abdullah said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 19:03:21|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close TEHRAN, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Ministry on Friday dismissed the recent U.S. accusations that Iran has breached the Chemical Weapons Convention. "During the Fourth Review Conference of the Chemical Weapons Convention in The Hague on Thursday, the U.S. mission to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) once again leveled groundless accusations against the Islamic republic, which we strongly reject," the Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi said in a statement on Friday. "The crystal-clear point here is that the U.S. is the only OPCW member state with chemical weapon arsenals, which has so far failed to fulfill its commitment to destroy them," Qasemi said. Besides, the United States sides with Israel's chemical weapon program and levels such "wrong and false accusations" against Iran, he added. The Iranian mission to the OPCW will give an appropriate response to these baseless accusations at the end of the general debates in The Hague, he added. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 19:08:23|Editor: mmm Video Player Close GUIYANG, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Before someone stands trial for felling protected trees in Guiyang, capital of southwest China's Guizhou Province, the defendant or his family can plant new trees to restore the damage. By doing so, they may receive a more lenient punishment from the environmental court. Inaugurated in 2007, the local environmental tribunal is China's first special court for environmental cases. In May 2007, the algae bloom in Taihu Lake, one of the largest freshwater lakes in east China's Jiangsu Province, triggered nationwide worries over water pollution. Six months later, Guizhou set up the special court to better deal with water pollution problems in the province. "Ecological protection is an issue concerning people's livelihood," said Shu Zigui, head of the People's Court of Qingzhen, with which the environmental tribunal is affiliated. "We want to enhance people's awareness in environmental protection by judicial means." The first case handled by the special court was filed against a chemical plant for polluting a lake near the city of Guiyang, the provincial capital of Guizhou. The lake was allegedly severely contaminated by waste residue from the chemical plant. The plant lost the suit and removed the pollution sources shortly thereafter. According to Shu, the lake has seen a great improvement in water quality. But Shu said he hoped the court can bring more to people. "The tribunal should work as a seeding machine, planting the idea of environmental protection into people's hearts," he said. Lang Xueyou was prosecuted for cutting down trees in protected areas in 2007. The special court sentenced Lang to two years in prison with an additional punishment to restore damaged areas of the forest. The demand to restore the damage appeared frequently in the special court's judgements in the following cases. "As long as the defendant has made appropriate amends, the special court will show leniency," Shu said. "Besides punishment, the aim of the special court is also to make people aware of the importance of protecting the environment." To maximize the influence of each case, judges often travel to local villages where the incidents took place to carry out the trials. "We try to invite as many villagers to the courtroom as we can," Shu said. "Local people can learn about the law from court trials, which can enhance their awareness to protect the environment." Shu said the trails were also broadcast live on the internet. Over 1,700 cases were handled by the tribunal over 11 years. "Severe cases concerning heavy damage to nature are much fewer in recent years," Shu said. "Though, the number of civil lawsuits is increasing rapidly." "Average people are becoming more active in defending their rights and interests with law, for example, filing suits against noise pollution. I am delighted to see such changes," Shu said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 19:23:25|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close ANKARA, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could meet with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at G20 summit if the latter requests so, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Friday. Speaking to local TV channel CNN Turk, Cavusoglu said that Mohammed bin Salman had already expressed his will to meet President Erdogan by phone after the killing case of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi last month. Both leaders will attend the two-day G20 summit in Argentina next week. "There's no reason not to meet Mohammed bin Salman," he said. "Of course, it is up to our president." On Thursday, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin also said President Erdogan could meet the Saudi crown prince on the sidelines of the G20 summit. "It could happen," Kalin said in response to a question whether the two leaders would make contact during the G20 summit. The crown prince is on a regional tour before heading to the G20 summit, which is his first trip abroad since the Khashoggi case that caused a global outcry. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 19:23:25|Editor: mmm Video Player Close BEIJING, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- China Construction Bank (CCB) has released 26 measures to further improve financial services for private enterprises to facilitate their healthy development. The measures include boosting credit support, alleviating financing difficulties and creating a more fair and convenient financing environment for small and micro enterprises, said CCB Chairman Tian Guoli. CCB will optimize the incentive mechanism on credit assessment to prioritize financial support for private businesses to boost the development of China's real economy, said Tian. By the end of September, CCB's outstanding loans to private businesses had grown 10.34 percent year on year to 1.7 trillion yuan, CCB data showed. Tian said the bank will invest 10 billion yuan (1.4 billion U.S. dollars) to set up a high-tech industry park in Shenzhen to foster the growth of technology startups. CCB has also raised a seed fund of 30 billion yuan, which is expected to leverage a scale of funding worth 300 billion yuan to support the development of technological innovation-based enterprises. While guarding against risks, CCB plans to bring the outstanding loans for inclusive finance to 1 trillion yuan in the next three years and keep the non-performing loan ratio within 3 percent, said Tian. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 19:33:29|Editor: mmm Video Player Close Delegates attend the first meeting of a joint committee of China and Myanmar on science and technology cooperation in Yangon, Myanmar, Nov. 23, 2018. The meeting was held to seek strengthening of partnership in research, human resource development and technology transfer for promoting sustainable development. (Xinhua/U Aung) YANGON, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- A joint committee of China and Myanmar on science and technology cooperation held their first meeting in Yangon Friday to seek strengthening of partnership in research, human resource development and technology transfer for promoting sustainable development. The meeting marks the beginning of a new stage in science and technology cooperation between China and Myanmar and will lay a solid foundation for the comprehensive cooperation in science and technology between the two countries, Counselor of the Chinese embassy in Myanmar Yang Shouzheng said. On the occasion, a China-Myanmar Joint Laboratory on Radar and Satellite Communications was inaugurated. The strong momentum of China-Myanmar science and technology cooperation will provide strong support for the construction of the China-Myanmar economic corridor, Yang said. A total of 79 young Myanmar scientists have been working for a short term in China, accounting for 70 percent of all scientists from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries working in China. More than 200 Myanmar scientific and technical personnel have been also sent to China for training so far, he added. Myanmar Deputy Minister of Education U Win Maw Tun expressed hope that the Myanmar-China Technology Transfer Center, which will soon be opened, could further enhance bilateral cooperation in the field. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 19:38:30|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close WELLINGTON, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- The New Zealand government is calling for public submissions on a post-Brexit free trade agreement (FTA) with Britain. "The UK is one of New Zealand's oldest friends, and a free trade agreement makes a lot of sense," Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker said in a statement on Friday. "Our shared history, similar legal structures and openness to trade mean a high quality, comprehensive and progressive free trade agreement is a natural next step after Brexit," Parker said. Both New Zealand and Britain have committed to launching negotiations as soon as Britain is in a position to do so, he said. In line with the government's Trade for All agenda, New Zealand will seek an agreement that safeguards high standards and protections for labor and the environment, and also promotes gender equality and indigenous rights, among others, according to the minister. "We want to reduce costs and barriers for New Zealand businesses operating with the UK," he said, adding New Zealand exports to Britain are already worth more than 1.5 billion NZ dollars (1 billion U.S. dollars) annually, and there is an opportunity to grow the links between the two economies even further. As with all new trade agreements New Zealand makes, the minister said an FTA with Britain will include protections for the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand's founding document made between the British Crown and Maori chiefs, and maintain the government's right to pass laws in the public interest. The work and living rights of New Zealanders in Britain may also be part of future discussions, he added. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 19:38:30|Editor: mmm Video Player Close Wang Yang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, presides over a bi-weekly consultation session to discuss ways to solve issues related to the development of characteristic towns, in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 22, 2018. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing) BEIJING, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- China's political advisors convened a bi-weekly consultation session Thursday in Beijing to discuss ways to solve issues related to the development of characteristic towns. The small towns with characteristics play an important role in China's economic transition and new type of urbanization, said Wang Yang, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, who presided over the meeting. Wang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said China should take tailored measures and make consistent efforts to support the development of the towns. While progress has been seen in the development of the characteristic towns in the past few years, some issues have emerged, including irregularity in real estate development and improper local government rule, the advisors said. As such, one advisor suggested that local governments should let the market play a bigger role in the development of small towns. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 19:43:32|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close JUBA, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- South Sudan's petroleum ministry on Friday signed an agreement with South Africa that will allow the Johannesburg-based state-owned oil company to invest in energy sector in Juba. Ezekiel Lul Gatkuoth, South Sudan's petroleum minister, said the agreement which he signed with visiting South African counterpart Jeff Radabe, will allow the two countries to work jointly in the country's oil industry and gas to improve the economy. "What we have signed this morning is a cooperation deal between our two national oil companies and the funding will come from the Central Energy Fund of South Africa," Gatkuoth told journalists in Juba. He said the joint cooperation with South Africa will help Juba build its oil refinery that will allow the country to sell refined products to Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya and Uganda. The minister said the east African oil-rich nation will be the hub of oil in the region and also in the continent, adding that the new deal will see the two countries create alternative routes of transporting its crude oil. "We will continue to use the pipeline going to Port Sudan but for the oil that will be discovered in the southern part of the country, we will have to find a means to transport the crude and that is why it is important to have a new partner," Gatkuoth said. Jeff Radabe, energy minister of South Africa said the agreement is to ensure that the peace process is anchored with economic development by exploiting the oil resources for the prosperity of the country. Radabe said the planned oil refinery will have a capacity of producing up to 60,000 barrels of oil per day and that is why the investment is a huge undertaking. The South African minister also announced a donation of mineral laboratory to South Sudan's petroleum ministry as part of his government commitment to the deal. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 19:48:33|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close DHAKA, Nov. 23 ( Xinhua) -- The pilot of a training plane of Bangladesh Air Force died after his plane crashed Friday in the country's central Tangail district, some 97 km away from capital Dhaka, the Inter Service Public Relations (ISPR) of the Bangladesh Army said. In a statement, ISPR said Wing Commander Arif Ahmed Dipu of Bangladesh Air Force (BAF) was killed as the training aircraft crashed Friday afternoon. It said the BAF's training aircraft crashed at around 3:00 p.m. local time, minutes after losing connection with Radar. The cause of the crash was not immediately known. No further details were immediately available. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 20:03:35|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close The Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee holds a symposium to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the birth of Liu Shaoqi at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 23, 2018. Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, delivered a speech at the symposium. The symposium was also attended by Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji, and Han Zheng, all of whom are members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei) BEIJING, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee on Friday held a symposium to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the birth of Liu Shaoqi at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, stressed carrying on the great cause Liu and other members of the older generation of revolutionaries had dedicated their life to, during his speech at the symposium. The life-long firm conviction in realizing Communism has inspired generations of Communists to move ahead, rain or shine, Xi said. The symposium was also attended by Li Keqiang, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji, and Han Zheng, all of whom are members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. Li Zhanshu, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, presided over the symposium. "We are gathered here with deep respect to commemorate the 120th birth anniversary of Comrade Liu Shaoqi... and to remember his tireless endeavors to pursue national independence and liberation of the people, a stronger and more prosperous country, and the people's happiness," Xi said. Calling Liu a great Marxist, a great proletarian revolutionary, a great statesman, and a great theorist, Xi said Liu was one of the major Party and state leaders, one of the founders of the People's Republic of China and an integral member of the first-generation central leadership of the CPC. Liu worked tirelessly for the country's revolutionary undertakings and its development, and was held in high esteem among the whole Party, the entire military and people of all ethnic groups, Xi said. Liu, with noble character, has been and will always be a role model for the CPC members and the Chinese people, Xi noted. Praising Liu's loyalty to the Party, Xi urged the CPC members to follow his example in keeping to the Communist faith and ideals and devoting their lives to Communism. Xi also called on them to always stand up for truth and face up to their mistakes and fix them. Only by doing so could the Party be built into a Marxist ruling party that earns people's sincere support, has the courage to reform itself, and withstands all challenges, Xi said. "Following the example of Liu, we should put the Party's principles, its cause, and the people's interests first," Xi said. Every Party member must unwaveringly implement the Party's lines, principles and policies with a strong sense of fulfilling their duties, Xi said. Xi called on building a learning Party and a learning country by taking Liu as a role model. Xi underlined adhering to the people-centered approach and putting the people first, urging CPC members to firmly remember that their power is entrusted by the Party and the people, and should be exercised in the interests of the Party and the people. Seeking privilege and pursuing private gains through power are not allowed at any time, Xi said, asking all Party members to be loyal to the Party, have moral integrity, and demonstrate a keen sense of responsibility. At the symposium, Li Zhanshu urged efforts to attentively study and implement the spirit of Xi's speech and strive for the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 20:28:38|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Police in the U.S. state of Alaska shot and killed a man wielding a machete on Thanksgiving night on Thursday in downtown Palmer, a city about 68 km northeast of Anchorage, local TV outlets reported. Anchorage-licensed KTUU TV said Alaska State Troopers, who were called in to respond to an incident at the Palmer Train Depot, found the suspect sitting on top of a building. "Troopers encountered a subject with a large edged object," said the KTUU. The suspect was seen wielding a machete while perched on top of a restaurant named Sunrise Grill. A trooper on the scene said the man was sitting on top of the Sunrise Grill sign, removing light bulbs and throwing them at law enforcement officers. At one point, the man jumped down from the roof onto a fire truck below, holding the machete, and ran away with the police officers pursuing him on foot. "The situation ultimately resulted in shots fired at the corner of Evergreen and Dimond," The KTUU quoted Alaska State Troopers spokesperson Megan Peters as saying. The suspect was shot and died of injuries. No police officers were wounded in the incident, said the TV report. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 20:33:39|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close SARAJEVO, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Members of Bosnia and Herzegovina's (BiH's) State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) arrested one person here on Thursday night over terrorist group formation. During the raid at the Sarajevo International Airport, one person was deprived of liberty and charged of "organization of a terrorist group", "preparation of criminal offense" -- all in conjunction with the criminal offense of "terrorism", SIPA said on its website Friday. The detained person is suspected of being, since July 1, 2013, in the war-affected area of Syria and Iraq as a member of the terrorist organizations Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Due to the sensitivity of the case, SIPA did not reveal the nationality of the arrested person. The person was taken into the premises of SIPA and the criminal processing is conducted currently. . On Sept. 14 this year, SIPA members arrested one person for allegedly organizing a terrorist group and unlawful formation. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 20:38:40|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close ADEN, Yemen, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations special envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths arrived in the war-torn city of Hodeidah on Friday. Local sources confirmed to Xinhua that the UN envoy met local leaders of the Houthi group in Hodeidah and closely observed the temporary cease-fire in the Red Sea port city. Griffiths also visited the strategic port city of Hodeidah along with pro-Houthi officials and representatives from international organizations, according to the sources. On Thursday, the UN envoy met with the Houthi rebel leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi in the country's capital Sanaa. During the meeting, the Houthi leader reaffirmed his group's commitment to attending the December peace talks, the rebels' spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam said on his Twitter account. Hodeidah, the main Red Sea port city which handles 80 percent of Yemen's imports and aid, has witnessed deadly clashes over the past few weeks between the government troops backed by the Saudi-led coalition forces and the Houthi rebels. The government backed by the Saudi-led Arab coalition has been trying to recapture Hodeidah from Houthis who seized it along with much of the country's north in late 2014. Griffiths urged the UN Security Council on Friday to adopt a humanitarian truce before holding peace talks in Sweden next month. The fighting has been reduced over the past few days upon international pressure on the rival forces. The major government offensive against the rebels in Hodeidah has displaced about 445,000 people since July, according to the UN aid agencies. The previous talks in Geneva collapsed in September after the Houthi delegation did not appear. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 20:48:42|Editor: mmm Video Player Close ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese investments in Ethiopia over the past two decades have created job opportunities for many Ethiopians, said Ethiopian State Minister of Foreign Affairs Aklilu Hailemichael on Friday. The state minister made the remarks at China Zhejiang-Ethiopia Trade and Investment Symposium co-hosted by the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Chinese Council for the Promotion of International Trade Zhejiang Provincial Committee (CCPIT Zhejiang) in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa. The government of China and companies from China have over the past two decades "invested significantly in Ethiopia, creating job opportunities for a large number of Ethiopians," Hailemichael said. "My country also expects even more through the Belt and Road initiative that China launched with a focus on economic cooperation and connectivity among nations," he said. He noted that the growing investment and trade ties between "the two sisterly countries" are part of Ethiopia's "historic relations with China covering a range of areas including but not limited to trade, culture, education and development cooperation." "The relations between the two sisterly nations have been based upon diplomatic adherence, mutual respect, win-win formulation, shared development and mutual understanding," he said. The state minister added that the diplomatic and investment importance Ethiopia attached to China can be best explained in terms of the largest number of representations the East African country has in China as compared to any other country in the world. According to the ministry, the Chinese government and companies from China have over the past two decades been heavily involved in various development projects in Ethiopia, including the operational Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway and the Addis Ababa Light-Railway, roads, hydro-electric power, telecommunication, airports expansion, water development, manufacturing and various other development areas. Liu Yu, Economic and Commercial Counselor at the Chinese Embassy to Ethiopia, said that the investment and trade opportunities presented by the Chinese companies from Zhejiang province are in line with the eight major initiatives announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping, together with African leaders, during the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which include industrial promotion, infrastructure connectivity, trade facilitation and people to people exchange. Zhang Qingshan, Vice Chairman of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Zhejiang Provincial Committee (CCPIT Zhejiang), noted that China is the biggest trading partner of Ethiopia, adding that "our business trip here has become an example of the broader China-Africa cooperation." Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 20:48:44|Editor: mmm Video Player Close HEFEI, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Former vice governor of east China's Jiangxi Province Li Yihuang stood trial Friday for bribery, embezzlement, misappropriation of public funds and abuse of power at the Intermediate People's Court of Anqing in Anhui Province. Li was charged with accepting money and property worth more than 51.19 million yuan (about 7.4 million U.S. dollars) personally or through others between 2004 and 2017. He allegedly took advantage of his different positions to benefit others in business cooperation, stock right transfers, project contracting and job adjustments. The prosecutors also accused Li of taking advantage of his positions to embezzle public assets worth more than 2.68 million yuan from 2011 to 2014. In addition, Li was charged with misappropriating over 147.3 million yuan of public funds for his relatives to make profits from March 2013 to May 2016. He was also prosecuted for causing the losses of more than 20.87 million yuan of state-owned assets in 2008 to seek profits for others. In Li's final statement, he pleaded guilty and expressed remorse. More than 90 people, including legislators, political advisors, journalists and members of the public attended the trial. The verdict will be announced at a later date. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 20:53:45|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close MOSCOW, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Russia has no intention to alter its military doctrine despite the U.S. plan to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Friday. Ryabkov said the Russian military doctrine includes two scenarios where Russia may use nuclear weapons, both of which are "purely hypothetical." The first scenario envisions the use of nuclear or other types of weapons of mass destruction against Russia, and the second -- an aggression against Russia with conventional weapons of a magnitude that endangers its existence, he said. Russia will stick to this doctrine, Ryabkov said, although he admitted that Russia may react to possible changes in Europe or other regions to guarantee its own security, if the United States withdraws from the INF Treaty. But as Russia has not yet received any official notifications of the withdrawal, this issue can only be discussed "at the level of general reasoning," the diplomat said. Moscow continues a dialogue with Washington on the implementation of the INF Treaty and has provided rebuttals to U.S. accusations that Russia had violated the treaty, Ryabkov said. He said that Russia believes this treaty is of great value for European, global and its own security. The landmark INF Treaty was signed in 1987 between the Soviet Union and the United States on the elimination of intermediate-range and short-range missiles. In October, U.S. President Donald Trump said that Washington would pull out of the INF Treaty on account of Russia's alleged breach of the agreement, which Moscow had repeatedly denied and warned against a new nuclear arms race. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 20:58:46|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close BUDAPEST, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban defended the granting of asylum by his country to former prime minister of Macedonia Nikola Gruevski in a radio interview given to public station MR1 here on Friday. Those who attack Hungary for approving the refugee status to Nikola Gruevski and those who are attack Hungary for its anti-migration policy are the same, Orban said. His government granted the refugee status to Gruevski on Nov. 20, a measure that has drawn criticism against the Hungarian government both from opposition parties in Hungary, and from international organizations, as Gruevski was convicted of corruption, and sentenced to jail in Macedonia. According to Orban, the organizations that are most likely to blame the Hungarian government are the ones of George Soros, the Hungarian-born elderly American billionaire. "Since Gruevski has been known to step up against these Soros organizations, it is no wonder that they are keeping track of his life," said Orban. He recalled: "Gruevski was the first Balkan politician to build a fence, and began to stop the flow of migrants, a step in which Hungary had provided assistance." Hungary was also hit by a migrant wave in 2015, with close to half a million migrants crossing Hungary towards Western Europe. Orban had built a fence on the Hungarian border with Serbia since then to stop potential flows of migrants. He also explained that the procedure of granting refugee status was not conducted by the government, but by the Immigration Authority, "the government is only responsible for guaranteeing the framework of the procedure, the rest is the duty of the authority, and then the government accepts the authority's decision," he added. On the issue of the extradition request submitted by Macedonia, the Hungarian prime minister said there was also a legal process, which the Hungarian authorities would examine and process. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 21:18:51|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close BERLIN, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- German interior minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) has ruled out deporting Syrian asylum seekers to their country of origin until the security situation there improves, the magazine SPIEGEL reported on Friday. According to SPIEGEL, Seehofer's stance was informed by an official report which was recently presented to him by the German Foreign Office. "At the moment, deportations cannot be conducted to any region of Syria," he told the magazine, adding that the policy "also applies to criminals." Seehofer is traditionally known for his hard-line views on asylum and has repeatedly clashed with Chancellor Angela Merkel over the subject. By citing security concerns as a reason to temporarily halt deportations to Syria, however, his latest comments have put him at odds with Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the leading candidate to succeed Merkel as CDU party leader. Earlier, Kramp-Karrenbauer argued that, when in doubt, Syrian asylum seekers who had broken the law in Germany should be sent back to their home country. The Foreign Office report warned that a return to Syria would pose a personal significant risk to many asylum seekers who had fled the civil war. According to figures by the Federal Statistical Office, the number of newly-arrived Syrian refugees in Germany has continued to fall from its 2016 peak this year. Nevertheless, the country still accounted for the single largest number of new asylum seekers in Germany. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 21:23:51|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close HANGZHOU, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- After retiring from the United Nations in 2016, former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is still concerned about world changes and is committed to promoting international cooperation. In an exclusive interview with Xinhua at the Next Summit held Thursday and Friday in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, Ban, now chairman of the Boao Forum for Asia, shared insights on the causes and countermeasures for the problems in the world today. He called on the international community to strengthen multilateral cooperation and share experience in regional cooperation, governance, and sustainable development. The world today is going through pronounced changes, resulting in elevated uncertainties and new risks, Ban said. "When leaders are not looking for unity of the people and unity of the nations, then they are much more interested in political popularity," he said. "Sometimes they use their rhetoric to stoke anger and hate; then people will have uncertainties in their future." Ban said that the leaders should not erect walls among people and nations. Instead, they should build bridges among people. "I'm asking world leaders to look beyond their community, beyond their country and look for global prosperity and common prosperity," he said. Ban also emphasized the important role of young people for a better world. He said after his retirement from the UN, he has been trying to foster global citizenship among young people. It's important that every citizen, especially young people, should have much clearer views on the future of our world, they are going to lead our global society, they are the global leaders, Ban said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 21:33:53|Editor: mmm Video Player Close BEIJING, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday held an urgent telephone conversation with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi at the latter's invitation. During the conversation, Qureshi briefed Wang about Friday's attack against the Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi in south Pakistan and the preliminary investigation conducted by Pakistan, saying the Pakistani government and all sectors of the society strongly condemned the terrorist attack, and that the Pakistani government and its people will firmly stand together with their Chinese friends. The Pakistani side will carry out a thorough investigation and guarantee that all necessary measures be taken and the best efforts be made to eliminate terrorist forces, said Qureshi. The Pakistan-China friendship is precious and unique and the country will protect the safety of its Chinese friends like protecting its own citizens, Qureshi said. Qureshi's urgent briefing is a manifestation of the unshakeable China-Pakistan friendship, Wang said, adding that China is shocked by the attack, and strongly condemns the atrocity against the diplomatic institution. The Chinese side appreciated the Pakistani police's prompt and decisive action to ensure the safety of all Chinese nationals in the diplomatic compound, and expressed condolence to the Pakistani policemen killed during the attack, Wang said. Wang requested the Pakistani side to attach great importance to and conduct a thorough investigation into the incident, so as to prevent such incidents from happening again. Wang emphasized that any effort intended to harm the China-Pakistan friendship is doomed to fail, and Pakistan is definitely capable to maintain its domestic safety and stability. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 21:33:53|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close BELGRADE, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Serbia signed a financial agreement worth 100 million euros (around 114 million U.S. dollars) with the European Investment Bank (EIB) here Friday on investments in river transport infrastructure, in order to fully integrate its waterways in the European transport network. The agreement was signed by the country's Finance Minister Sinisa Mali and director for Slovenia, Croatia and the Western Balkans at the European Investment Bank Matteo Rivellini, at the presence of the Deputy Prime Minister Zorana Mihajlovic, the government said in a press release. After the signing, Mihajlovic, who is also the minister of transport, construction and infrastructure, said the country plans to invest more than 200 million euros in development of river transport infrastructure in the next five years, with the support of the EIB and the European Union (EU). "The agreement signed today provides half of the total of more than 200 million euros of investments in river transport infrastructure, and the rest of the investment will be provided from the EU grants and the state budget," she said, estimating that this is one of the largest investments in the Danube in the last 15 years in Europe. Mihajlovic added that the financial arrangement with the EIB will finance the reconstruction of the navigation locks "Djerdap 1" and "Djerdap 2", the expansion of the capacity of the Smederevo Port, the regulation of the Sava River waterway and the organization of critical sectors in the common part of the Danube between Serbia and Croatia. The projects with the EIB also include the extraction of the submersed German fleet from the Second World War from the Danube, introduction of the hydro-meteorological station system as well as the improvement of the water traffic management system in Serbia. Once the projects are realized, Mihajlovic said she expected the country to double the participation of waterways in the transport of goods and fully integrate waterways in Serbia into the European transport network. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 22:03:58|Editor: mmm Video Player Close NAIROBI, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Kenya on Friday called for increased intra-Africa trade to boost economic development. Chris Kiptoo, principal secretary in the ministry of industry, trade and cooperatives, told journalists in Nairobi that the current level of intra-Africa trade stands at 12 percent versus an estimated 59 percent for the European Union and 37 percent in North America. "Increased intra-Africa holds the key to transform Africa into a major industrial and economic giant," Kiptoo said during a forum on Kenya's preparations to participate in the Intra-African Trade Fair (IATF) that will take place on Dec. 11-17 in Egypt. The inaugural trade fair is being organized by the African Export Import Bank (Afreximbank) and the African Union. An Intra-Africa Trade Finance and Payments Conference will run alongside the pan-African trade fair. According to the organizer, the IATF intends to attract approximately 70,000 visitors, buyers and sellers as well as 1,000 exhibitors. Kiptoo said that so far 11 Kenyan firms are expected to showcase their products during the continental trade fair. Kiptoo said that Kenya is prioritizing trade with the African continent due to its huge untapped potential. He added that Africa is already the most important export market for Kenya because its accounts for about 45 percent of outbound trade. The Kenyan official said Africa absorbs most of Kenya's manufactured exports as compared to the rest of world that buy unprocessed agricultural goods. He said that Kenya is targeting foreign investments that will be used to produce goods for Africa as well as the rest of the world. Kudakwashe Matereke, Afreximbank regional chief operating officer in east Africa said that so far 42 African countries have confirmed and taken up country pavilions at the IATF. Matereke said that the exhibition will target agriculture and agro-processing, automotive, clothing and textiles, construction, consumer goods, light manufacturing as well as creative industries. He noted that very few countries contribute to intra-African trade with the top four being South Africa, Namibia, Zambia and Nigeria. The AU has set a target of increasing intra-African trade to 24 percent by 2022. The Afreximbank official said that one of the biggest challenges towards expanding intra-Africa trade is lack of adequate infrastructure to link the continent. He revealed that the current stock of infrastructure in the continent presently carries 102 trillion Kenya shillings (around 1 trillion U.S. dollars) worth of trade. According to Matereke, lack of access to trade and market information around the African continent also hinders growth of intra-Africa trade. He said that through import substitutions, intra-African trade can go up to 38 percent due to the continent's high import bill from the rest of the world. Peter Biwott, chief executive officer of Export Promotion Council said that once the African continental free trade area is operationalized, it will open up enormous opportunities for Kenyan manufacturers. He said that Kenya is keen to participate in the African trade fair because the event will provide Kenyan exporters with a platform for entry into a single market of over one billion people. File photo shows a staff member prepares coffee for visitors at the booth of Ethiopia at the first ChinaInternational Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai, east China, Nov. 6, 2018. (Xinhua/Shen Bohan) ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese investments in Ethiopia over the past two decades have created job opportunities for many Ethiopians, said Ethiopian State Minister of Foreign Affairs Aklilu Hailemichael on Friday. The state minister made the remarks at China Zhejiang-Ethiopia Trade and Investment Symposium co-hosted by the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Chinese Council for the Promotion of International Trade Zhejiang Provincial Committee (CCPIT Zhejiang) in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa. The government of China and companies from China have over the past two decades "invested significantly in Ethiopia, creating job opportunities for a large number of Ethiopians," Hailemichael said. "My country also expects even more through the Belt and Road initiative that China launched with a focus on economic cooperation and connectivity among nations," he said. He noted that the growing investment and trade ties between "the two sisterly countries" are part of Ethiopia's "historic relations with China covering a range of areas including but not limited to trade, culture, education and development cooperation." "The relations between the two sisterly nations have been based upon diplomatic adherence, mutual respect, win-win formulation, shared development and mutual understanding," he said. The state minister added that the diplomatic and investment importance Ethiopia attached to China can be best explained in terms of the largest number of representations the East African country has in China as compared to any other country in the world. According to the ministry, the Chinese government and companies from China have over the past two decades been heavily involved in various development projects in Ethiopia, including the operational Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway and the Addis Ababa Light-Railway, roads, hydro-electric power, telecommunication, airports expansion, water development, manufacturing and various other development areas. Liu Yu, Economic and Commercial Counselor at the Chinese Embassy to Ethiopia, said that the investment and trade opportunities presented by the Chinese companies from Zhejiang province are in line with the eight major initiatives announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping, together with African leaders, during the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which include industrial promotion, infrastructure connectivity, trade facilitation and people to people exchange. Zhang Qingshan, Vice Chairman of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Zhejiang Provincial Committee (CCPIT Zhejiang), noted that China is the biggest trading partner of Ethiopia, adding that "our business trip here has become an example of the broader China-Africa cooperation." Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 23:04:09|Editor: zh Video Player Close The United Nations special envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths (back, C) is seen upon his arrival in Hodeidah, Yemen, on Nov. 23, 2018. Martin Griffiths arrived on Friday in Yemen's embattled port city of Hodeidah, amid efforts to halt hostilities between warring forces ahead of peace talks, local officials said. (Xinhua/Hasan Bamashmous) SANAA, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, arrived on Friday in Yemen's embattled port city of Hodeidah, amid efforts to halt hostilities between warring forces ahead of peace talks, local officials said. Griffiths was accompanied by the World Food Program chief for Yemen, Stephen Anderson, and the UN Humanitarian Coordinator, Lise Grande. The UN officials traveled from the capital Sanaa early morning, escorted by the Houthi rebels who control both the capital and port city. "I have come here ... to learn first-hand how we can help to keep that international pledge to protect the people of Hudaydah from further devastation," Griffiths said. "I had the privilege of meeting in Sanaa with the Ansarallah (Houthi) leadership. Among other things, we talked about how the UN could contribute to keeping the peace in Hodeidah," he said. "We have agreed that the UN should now pursue actively and urgently detailed negotiations for a leading UN role in the port and more broadly ... such a role will preserve the essential humanitarian pipeline that starts here and serves the people of Yemen," Griffiths said. The officials inspected the harbor, food storages, a hospital and the center of the city. A day earlier, Griffiths met the rebel leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi in Sanaa and discussed resuming peace talks. Griffiths arrived in Sanaa on Wednesday to bring the rebels to the table of negotiations. Hodeidah, the main Red Sea port city which handles 80 percent of Yemen's imports and aid, has witnessed deadly clashes over the past few weeks between the government troops backed by the Saudi-led coalition forces and the Houthi rebels. The government has been trying to recapture Hodeidah from Houthis who seized it along with much of the country's north in late 2014. Griffiths urged the UN Security Council on Friday to adopt a humanitarian truce before holding peace talks in Sweden next month. The clashes in Hodeidah have displaced about 445,000 people since July, according to UN aid agencies. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 23:29:17|Editor: Chengcheng Video Player Close BEIJING, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- China supports necessary reforms of the World Trade Organization (WTO), raising three fundamental principles and five proposals concerning such improvements, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said Friday. The multilateral trading system is now challenged by unilateralism and trade protectionism, Wang Shouwen, vice minister of commerce, told a press conference. Wang said the WTO is threatened by three factors: the dispute settlement regime is at risk of paralysis by obstruction from certain members and as the vacancy of its appellate body members cannot be filled; certain members raising tariffs by abusing the security exception clause; and some members taking unilateral approaches in disregard of the WTO's multilateral rules. "China supports necessary reforms of the WTO to strengthen its authority and effectiveness," he said. WTO reforms should follow three fundamental principles: the reform should uphold the organization's core values of non-discrimination and opening, protect development interests of developing members and address their difficulties in integrating into economic globalization, and follow the mechanism of decision-making by consensus, Wang said. Rules should be jointly made by the international community, rather than a minority of members, and cliques or factions should not be formed, he said. WTO reforms should uphold the main channel status of the multilateral trading system, prioritize addressing issues that threaten the existence of the organization, make trade rules fairer and in line with the needs of the times, ensure special and differentiated treatment for developing members, and respect the development model of each member, he said. China opposes any individual member's actions in undermining and denying the authority of the multilateral trading system, Wang said, warning that the basic rules of the system are threatened by acts of unilateralism. "Reforms should resolve the issues as soon as possible so as to ensure the normal functioning of the WTO," he said. Wang said reforms should rectify the long-term severe distortion of international trading of farm products caused by the excessive agricultural subsidies from developed members. China is willing to shoulder duties commensurate with its development level and capacities, and will not allow other members to strip its special and differentiated treatment as a developing country, Wang said. China is against the practice of listing the development model issue as part of WTO reforms and opposes introducing groundless accusations into the reform agenda, Wang said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-23 23:44:19|Editor: Lu Hui Video Player Close A freight train leaves for China's Yiwu City in Madrid, Spain, May 18, 2015. (Xinhua/Xie Haining) by Xinhua writers Ma Zheng, Huang Zemin BEIJING, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping will pay state visits to Spain, Argentina, Panama and Portugal from Nov. 27 to Dec. 5, and attend the 13th Group of 20 (G20) summit from Nov. 30 to Dec. 1 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The trip is expected to deepen comprehensive strategic partnership between China and the European Union (EU), consolidate China-LatAm comprehensive cooperative partnership and promote global economic governance. With increasing instability and uncertainty on the global horizon, Xi will reaffirm China's commitment to opening-up, cooperation and common development with all partners. STRENGTHENING COOPERATION WITH EUROPE China established frequent trade contacts with Spain and Portugal along the maritime Silk Road centuries ago. Now they are friends and partners of China in Europe. China's cooperation with the two countries has withstood the European debt crisis and is now strengthened by the joint construction of the Belt and Road (B&R) and the defense of multilateralism together. Spain is among the first EU countries to establish a comprehensive strategic partnership with China. It is presently China's sixth largest EU trade partner and China is its largest non-EU trade partner. Spain looks forward to Xi's visit and hopes it can be an opportunity to further explore the potential of bilateral cooperation, said Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell. China-Portugal cooperation has been enriched since the establishment of a comprehensive strategic partnership in 2005. Investment of Chinese companies in the southwestern European country grew rapidly in recent years, making Portugal a major EU destination for Chinese capital. Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa said Portugal keenly awaits Xi's visit and hopes that it will elevate the current level of bilateral relations to a new height. Promoting collaboration with southern European countries like Spain and Portugal can assist China in fostering a more comprehensive and dynamic cooperation with Europe, said Cui Hongjian, head of the Department for European Studies at the China Institute of International Studies. OPENING NEW CHAPTER OF CHINA-LATAM RELATIONS Chilean cherries, Peruvian avocados, Mexico beer and Argentinean beef ... those delicacies have traveled across the ocean and appeared at Chinese people's dining tables. What used to be "rarities" for Chinese customers is now an epitome of the growing win-win cooperation between China and Latin American countries in recent years. Since establishing diplomatic relations 46 years ago, China and Argentina have achieved fruitful results in bilateral cooperation. Currently, China is Argentina's second-biggest trade partner and important source of foreign investment. Argentina welcomes Xi's visit and "everything is possible in the cooperation with China," said Argentine Foreign Affairs Minister Jorge Faurie. China and Panama established diplomatic ties in June 2017. Since then, the two sides have seen great improvement in bilateral relations including signing a memorandum of understanding to promote the B&R Initiative, beginning negotiations on a free trade agreement and launching a direct flight between Panama City and Beijing. Xi's visit is of epoch-making significance and China's international status is very important, said Oyden Ortega, president of the Panamanian Association of Friendship with China. It will be the fourth time for Xi to visit Latin America. "The rapid development of bilateral relations has a great deal to do with the leaders. I believe Xi's visit this time will ignite a 'China fever' and lift China-Latin America relations to a new level," said Wu Hongying, director of the LatAm office of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. INJECTING ENERGY INTO GLOBAL GOVERNANCE With economic globalization suffering setbacks and multilateralism and free trade under assault, this year's G20 summit under the theme of "Building Consensus for Fair and Sustainable Development" attracts worldwide attention. The summit will focus on issues like global economy, trade and investment, sustainable development, infrastructure and climate change. Argentine President Mauricio Macri said previously that while holding the G20 presidency, Argentina will continue the consensus and results achieved at the 2016 G20 Summit held in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. In the just concluded 26th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting, the strong messages Xi sent out resonated among APEC leaders and were widely believed to have infused a dose of confidence and certainty into international relations and global development. In the upcoming G20 summit, China will reaffirm its commitment to opening-up and multilateralism, and continue to build broader international consensus on promoting win-win cooperation and common development. Xi is scheduled to meet other G20 leaders during the summit, including his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump. The meeting between the heads of state of the world's two largest economies is of great significance. Healthy and stable development of China-U.S. relations not only benefits the two countries, but is of the utmost importance for global peace and prosperity. Xi and Trump agreed during their telephone conversation on Nov. 1 to meet with each other during the upcoming G20 summit. Since then, the two sides have seen frequent interactions and sent a positive message of increasing mutual understanding and cooperation in the second China-U.S. Diplomatic and Security Dialogue in Washington earlier this month. Tao Wenzhao, a senior research fellow of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the planned meeting will send a positive signal that both China and the United States have the willingness to cooperate despite the current frictions. "They should bring the positive energy of the two sides into full play, while keeping the negative elements in control," he said. (Xinhua reporters Yang Wei, Hao Weiwei, Guo Qiuda, Zhang Yadong, Ni Ruijie and Su Jin also contributed to the story.) A photo of Alfred Hitchcock, the iconic English film producer, is seen on a table in a room of Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul, Turkey on November 22, 2018. (Xinhua photo) ISTANBUL, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- It was rainy on Thursday night, when a bunch of people gathered at the small ballroom of a legendary hotel in Istanbul, talking about crime and murder. They are crime fiction buffs and renowned local and international detective novel writers, converging in the iconic Pera Palace Hotel for the fourth Black Week literary festival, a two-day event. The hotel was built in 1892 with neo-classical and art nouveau styles, specially designed for passengers travelling on the Orient Express, one of the world's most luxurious train services operating between Paris and Istanbul since 1883. Historians believe English crime novelist Agatha Christie wrote some parts of her famous book Murder on the Orient Express when she stayed in Room 411 of the hotel several times between 1926 and 1932. "The venue is historic and full of real mysteries, inspiring many writers in history, including myself," Ahmet Umit, a leading detective fiction writer in Turkey, told Xinhua. Ian Fleming, another English writer and creator of the legendary James Bond character, Alfred Hitchcock, the iconic English film producer, and the American novelist Ernest Hemingway were just a few other celebrities who used to frequent the hotel. Two photos of American novelist Ernest Hemingway are seen on wall of Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul, Turkey on November 22, 2018. (Xinhua photo) For Umit, the literary festival is getting significant in Turkey as crime novels are now increasingly generating interest compared to the past. In his view, the genre was underestimated for years and considered as pulp fiction, but it has developed into a mature literature style over the last several decades. "In this context, many young detective novelists have appeared and started to attend the festival with all their brand-new products," said the Turkish writer. At the opening of the festival, Umit advised young writers to be sincere and use a decent language in their writings. "But most importantly you should do the math and all the calculations well before starting to write," he said. "Because in the end, it will be a crime fiction and the mystery should be explained perfectly in details, without any deviation." Adnan Ozer, a poet and one of the masterminds behind the event, agreed with Umit, saying more sophisticated works have to be created in the field in Turkey. "Then our festival will be an authentic one," he told Xinhua. Ozer called for a wide range of sectors in Turkey, including gastronomy, tourism as well as municipalities, to cooperate with the festival. "Because crime fiction includes numerous venues like hotels, jazz bars, restaurants," he said, adding that these sectors could collectively contribute to the promotion of cities and literature-related tourism through tours and events at crime scenes depicted in novels. The theme of the festival this year is Mike Hammer, a legendary detective character created by the American crime novelist Mickey Spillane. "Mike Hammer became extremely popular among Turkish readers in 1940s and 1950s when the renowned writer Kemal Tahir translated Spillane's books and renamed the character as Mayk Hammer," said Algan Sezginturedi, head of the Crime Writers' Association in Turkey. "Appealing to the taste of Turkish readers with the Turkish version of Mayk Hammer, Tahir made the crime genre popular in the country," he told Xinhua. He said with the help of the festival, Turkish readers are now ready to meet prominent crime-fiction writers from the eastern world, including Arab countries, Japan and China. B. A. Paris, the British author of Behind Closed Doors, and the German writer Wolfgang Schorlau, whose 2009 novel The Munich Conspiracy has excited crime literature fans, are among the foreign guests joining the festival. All-new tutorials, skins, karts and special rewards will be available for players on Xbox, PC and, for the first time ever, PlayStation 4 on Dec. 9 Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-24 00:14:26|Editor: mym Video Player Close BANGKOK, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Thailand's Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said on Friday that the Election Commission may investigate his government's welfare measures designed to help the poor, as they definitely comply with the law. According to the premier, the welfare package, including a handout of cash to low-income earners nationwide, are merely a repetition of those which have already been provided by the current government in previous years. "Do not criticize the measures as a vote-wooing effort since this government has always been providing them. "No previous governments had provided measures to help more than 10 million low-income earners," Prayut said. An estimated 14.5 million people, categorized as low-income earners and are given state welfare cards, will be entitled as recipients to the latest welfare package, calculated to cost some 87 billion baht (about 2.63 billion U.S. dollars) in government budget starting from next month to next September. The premier confirmed, without elaborating, that similar welfare measures will be also provided during New Year season for farmers, low-income government personnel and the middle-class people nationwide. His comments apparently followed those made on Thursday by EC chairman Ittiporn Boonprakhong that the polling agency is yet to investigate the Prayut government's welfare package. Ittiporn said that his agency is dutifully bound to look into such matters without petitions from any party and no matter if the government might allegedly be found culpable of breaking the election law or not. The welfare package includes the handout of 500 baht (about 15.15 U.S. dollars) in cash as a "New Year's gift", the coverage of a maximum of 230 baht (about 6.96 U.S. dollars) in monthly electricity bill per household and the coverage of a maximum of 100 baht (about three U.S. dollars) in monthly water bill per household. The once-ruling Pheu Thai (for Thais) Party and other critics alleged that the government was providing the welfare measures merely as part of its ongoing attempts to woo votes from the low-income constituents ahead of a general election, tentatively scheduled for February 24 next year. Such government measures were not only allegedly designed to bring up the popularity for certain members of the Prayut cabinet, who have already joined a contestant political party, namely Palang Pracharath (power of people of state) Party, but also to help with Prayut's alleged bid to retain premiership. Palang Pracharath Party is largely tipped to name Prayut as its top candidate for post-election premier. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-24 02:24:51|Editor: yan Video Player Close ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopian policymakers and business people on Friday hailed the country's investment and trade ties with China as an ideal model of win-win and strategic partnership. Ethiopian government's high-level officials and business community members were participating in a trade and investment symposium held in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa on Friday, with an aim to promote trade and investment ties between the two countries. Melaku Ezezew, president of the Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Association, considered the Sino-Ethiopian trade and investment relations "comprehensive and strategic," evidenced by massive and robust investment in various sectors. "Ethiopians really feel at ease and friendly with Chinese businesses, and respect the significant achievement China has made. China has amazed the whole world by becoming one of the world's biggest economies in a relatively short period of time," Ezezew told participants from Ethiopian and Chinese businesses. "China and Ethiopia have developed multi-dimensional relations, with people-to-people, business-to-business and government-to-government relations being the cornerstones of our relations," he added. Noting that the two countries' relations have been significantly deepened during the past decades in trade and investment sectors, Ezezew said that the engagement of Chinese companies has contributed a lot to Ethiopia's road construction, supply of manufacturing goods from China, telecommunications, as well as developments in energy power sector. The East African country licensed more than 1,290 Chinese investment projects during the 2017-18 Ethiopian fiscal year ending on July 8, according to figures from the Ethiopia Investment Commission (EIC). Mekonen Hailu, communications director at the EIC, told Xinhua that Chinese investment projects made up about 24.8 percent of the total investment licenses the commission provides during the previous fiscal year. "Chinese investment and capital comprise the largest investment inflow to Ethiopia, with Chinese investors engaged in various sectors ranging from agriculture, manufacturing and service sectors including hospitality and tourism fields," Hailu told Xinhua. Ethiopian State Minister of Foreign Affairs Aklilu Hailemichael also on Friday underlined the positive contribution of Chinese companies to Ethiopia's investment landscape in line with the Ethiopian government's initiative to attract more foreign investors as the country aspires to be a manufacturing hub of Africa by the year 2025. The minister said Ethiopia expects more through the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative with a focus on economic cooperation and connectivity among nations. Habtu Asrat, senior investment promotion expert at the EIC, said that Chinese engagement in Ethiopia corresponds positively with the Ethiopian government's aspirations and ambitions, with due emphasis on infrastructure development and various other development initiatives. While calling for further investments from China, Asrat said that the Ethiopian government will make its utmost efforts to lure Chinese investments in various areas including agriculture, hotel and tourism, manufacturing and various other sectors. Ethiopia has in recent years rolled out various incentives to attract foreign investors, including customs duty exemption, income tax holidays, and provision of land at competitive lease price. China, Ethiopia's largest trading partner, had witnessed trade with Ethiopia increasing at an average rate of 22.2 percent annually during the last decade, according to the EIC. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-24 02:39:54|Editor: yan Video Player Close BELGRADE, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Construction of another Science and Technology Park started in Serbia on Friday in the southern city of Nis, with an aim to support scientific research, as well as startup and spinoff companies in country's underdeveloped region. The foundation for the 14,000-square-meter building was laid by Minister of Education, Science and Technological Development of Serbia Mladen Sarcevic at a ceremony in Nis, who stressed that the companies that will emerge from this incubator should be able to make an immense contribution to Nis, a university center well-known for talents in physics, mathematics and other fundamental sciences. The ceremony at the construction site was attended by the rector of the Nis University Dragan Antic, Director of the European Investment Bank office for the Western Balkans Dubravka Negre and Mayor of Nis Darko Bulatovic. The investment worth around 10 million euro (around 11.33 million U.S. dollars) of which 1.4 million (around 1.59 million dollars) are allocated for the necessary equipment, will be completed by March 2020, the government stated in a press release, adding that the establishment will serve for the training of students to use advanced technologies and enable them to learn through practice. Sarcevic said at the ceremony that the Draft Law on the Science Fund will enter into parliamentary procedure next week, estimating that a "special fund for this area will create an opportunity to launch a new scientific cycle." The fund will be both financed by the ministry of education and other ministries, as well as private companies and enterprises, with an aim to benefit the country's development through scientific research. Serbia already has several science and technology parks. The first was opened in Belgrade in 2015, and the second in Cacak in 2016. Construction of such a park started recently in Novi Sad, surfacing some 30,000 square meters, while there are ongoing plans to build one in the city of Kragujevac. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-24 03:35:08|Editor: yan Video Player Close MAPUTO, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopian Airlines said on Friday in Maputo it will start domestic operation in Mozambique from December, reaching eight cities in the first phase. In a press release, the biggest airline in Africa by fleet size said the eight Mozambican cities are: the capital Maputo, the central Tete, Manica, Beira, Chimoio, Quelimane, and the northern Nampula, the port city of Nacala. The flights will be operated by the company's newly created branch Ethiopian Mozambique Airlines, the third airline in Mozambique following the national LAM Mozambique Airlines, and FastJet, the statement said. Ethiopian Airlines' entrance into Mozambican territory is part of the company's 2025 vision to increase the connectivity throughout Africa, transforming the socioeconomic conditions of the continent. "Ethiopian Mozambique Airlines is an example of Africans united that will support economic development and allow the continent to win a better slice in the travelling market from inside Africa, presently dominated by non-African companies," read the release. Redi Yesuf, CEO of the new branch, said Mozambique is geographically large so it deserves strong connectivity options in addition to road travelling. "We will gradually introduce three hubs in the north, south and central regions of the country, offering unmatched flying experience to travelers," said Yesuf. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-24 04:15:16|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close Photo taken on Nov. 23, 2018 shows the 164th General Assembly of Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) in Paris. France-based BIE announced on Friday that Japan would host World Expo 2025. (Xinhua/Chen Yichen) PARIS, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- France-based Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) on Friday announced that Japan would host World Expo 2025. "After two rounds of voting during the BIE's 164th General Assembly in Paris, a majority of Member States voted for Japan's project to organise World Expo 2025 in Osaka, Kansai," BIE said in a statement. With "Designing Future Society for Our Lives" bid, Japan defeated Russian city of Yekaterinburg after collecting 92 votes against 61. The capital of the oil-rich former Soviet country of Azerbaijan, Baku, came third. "The election of Japan as the host country of World Expo 2025 marks the start of an exciting journey for Osaka," said Vicente G. Loscertales. the Secretary General of the BIE. "The Expo project, based around the co-creation of a future society to address global challenges, has a strong resonance with the international community. After the memorable success of World Expo 1970, we look forward to seeing a World Expo once again come to life in Osaka, Kansai," he added. Milan hosted the last World Expo in 2015. The next one will be organized in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates between Oct. 20, 2020 and April 10, 2021 under the theme "Connecting Minds, Creating the Future." World Expos, known officially as International Registered Exhibitions, are organised every five years. They can last up to six months. "The themes of World Expos are designed to raise awareness of and find responses to universal challenges of our time,"the BIE said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-24 04:45:24|Editor: yan Video Player Close KIGALI, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Over 700 ex-combatants of Rwandan rebel group Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) have been repatriated to Rwanda from neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), where the group is based, the Rwandan government said Friday in a statement. Another group of over 800 is expected to be repatriated to in the near future, said the statement. The ex-combatants, together with their spouses and children, were given reinstallation packages and medical screening in a demobilization and reintegration center in Musanze District, northern Rwanda, it said, adding that children are receiving all required immunisations while pregnant women will undergo all ante-natal care. The ex-combatants have been living in different transit camps across eastern DR Congo for over the last two years, where they were gathered as part of a joint UN and regional efforts to repatriate all rebel groups in the region, according to the statement. This repatriation is in line with last year's decision of regional Heads of State, which set the deadline for repatriation without preconditions of the disarmed FDLR combatants and their dependents located in transit camps in eastern DR Congo by Oct. 20, 2018, said the government. FDLR was formed after the 1994 Rwandan Genocide against Tutsi with the intention to topple the Rwandan government. It is largely made up of elements blamed for perpetuating the genocide, which claimed over 1 million lives, mostly ethnic Tutsis, For decades the rebel group has been accused of wreaking havoc in neighboring DRC, terrorizing the local population and profiting from DR Congo's rich natural resources. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-24 04:50:25|Editor: yan Video Player Close ANKARA, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Turkish prosecutors have charged 28 suspects, including U.S.-based cleric Fetullah Gulen, over assassination of Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov, Anadolu Agency reported on Friday. Andrey Karlov was shot dead by an off-duty Turkish police officer Mevlut Mert Altintas at the opening of an art gallery exhibition in Ankara on Dec. 19, 2016. Turkish prosecutors have completed two-year investigation into the assassination of Russian envoy and submitted the indictment to an Ankara court. The indictment says the assassination "is an act of provocation targeting Turkey-Russia relations." According to the indictment, the murderer previously planned to kill the ambassador at a dinner for ambassadors hosted by the ruling party on June 27, 2016, but the assassination attempt failed as Karlov was abroad on that day. A total of eight people were arrested as part of the investigation, including four former police officers. Fethullah Gulen, the U.S.-based preacher, is accused by Ankara of orchestrating a failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016. At least 251 people were killed and over 2,200 people were injured in the coup attempt. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-24 05:00:26|Editor: mym Video Player Close Palestinian protesters run to take cover from tear gas canisters fired by Israeli troops during clashes on the Gaza-Israel border, east of Gaza City, on Nov. 23, 2018. Around 100 Palestinians were wounded Friday during clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli soldiers stationed on the border between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel, medics said. (Xinhua/Stringer) GAZA, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Around 100 Palestinians were wounded Friday during clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli soldiers stationed on the border between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel, medics said. Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman of the Health Ministry in Gaza, told reporters that among the 100 injured, 14 were shot by Israeli soldiers' gunfire, including a child in critical condition. The clashes were part of the weekly rallies, known as "the Great March of Return." The high commission of the event earlier called on the Palestinians to join the 35th Friday of the protests. The protests in eastern Gaza Strip had declined in the past three weeks after Egypt and United Nations officials mediated an undeclared calm agreement with Israel in the Gaza Strip. Demonstrators did not burn tires nor release arson kites and balloons from the Gaza Strip into Israel. The protests went on as a challenge to Israel despite the rain and the cold weather in the region. Demonstrators waved Palestinian flags and clashes with Israeli soldiers. However, the Israeli media reported that protesters threw stones, handmade grenades and bombs at the soldiers. The commission of the event said in an official statement that the marches will never stop until it achieves its goals, mainly breaking the blockade which Israel has been imposing on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip since 2007. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-24 05:05:27|Editor: yan Video Player Close KIEV, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Slovak President Andrej Kiska met here on Friday to discuss bilateral cooperation, Poroshenko's press service said. In particular, the sides have discussed trade, energy and infrastructure cooperation between the two countries, as well as Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration. While speaking at a joint press conference after the talks, Poroshenko thanked Slovakia for providing rehabilitation for 52 Ukrainian soldiers, who were wounded in the conflict in Donbas. For his part, Kiska pledged continued assistance for Ukraine, noting that Slovakia is ready to allocate a fresh humanitarian aid worth about 142,000 U.S. dollars. Kiska arrived in Ukraine earlier in the day for a two-day working visit. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-24 06:05:35|Editor: yan Video Player Close TRIPOLI, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Libya's UN-backed government on Friday condemned the armed attack on the southeastern town of Tazerbu, which killed at least eight and injured more than 15 others. "The Presidential Council of the Government of National Accord strongly condemns the terrorist attack that took place today on the police station of Tazerbu," the government said in a statement. The government called for unity against terrorism, confirming it would spare no efforts to eliminate terrorism. A military source earlier told Xinhua that dozens of gunmen on armed vehicles carried out separate attacks on the police station and a number of government buildings in Tazerbu, killing eight and injuring more than 15 others. The source also confirmed that the militants took dozens of hostages as they withdrew from the area. The source said that the attackers were likely Islamic State (IS) militants, who carried out a similar attack last month in the central district of Jufra, some 650 km southeast of the capital Tripoli. Tazerbu is a small oasis town in southeastern Libya. It is one of the most important groundwater sources supplying western and central Libyan cities with water. NOT FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES OR FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Nov. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NOVA LEAP HEALTH CORP. (TSXV: NLH) (Nova Leap or the Company), a company focused on the home health care industry, is pleased to announce the release of financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2018. All amounts are in United States dollars unless otherwise specified. Nova Leap Third Quarter Financial Results Financial highlights for the quarter ended September 30, 2018 included the following: Q3-2018 Q2-2018 % Change Revenue $2,871,010 $2,425,066 18.39 % Gross Margin $879,175 $786,321 11.81 % Net loss $378,382 $171,463 120.68 % Total one-time or non-cash items included in net loss comprised of the following: $357,001 $135,364 163.73 % Acquisition related expenses $83,673 $41,255 102.82 % Amortization $177,472 $151,514 17.13 % Stock-based compensation $26,248 $26,567 (1.20 %) Foreign exchange gain (loss) $69,608 ($83,972 ) (182.89 %) Annual recurring revenue run rate (defined below) $14,624,000 $11,400,000 28.28 % We have been successfully integrating our acquisitions each quarter which is evident by the increase in our operating segment EBITDA margins, said Chris Dobbin, President and CEO of Nova Leap, Our focus for the remainder of the year is to integrate our last two acquisitions, analyze the acquisition opportunities currently in front of us and ensure a proper allocation of human and financial capital as we plan ahead for what we believe will be another year of significant growth in 2019. Other highlights for the quarter ended September 30, 2018 included the following: The Company reported double digit revenue growth for the fifth consecutive quarter; Each of the United States and Canadian operating segments were profitable during the second quarter and combined operating segment EBITDA as a percentage of revenue increased by 0.9% from 9.8% to 10.7%; Closed the previously announced acquisition of Comprehensive Home Care located in South Deerfield, Massachusetts on September 28, 2018; Announced the execution of the Definitive Agreement to acquire a home health care business in New England, the acquisition of which was completed subsequent to Q3; Closed the first tranche of a brokered private placement in September 2018 and raised gross proceeds of $361,954 ($468,550 CAD); Closed the first tranche of a non-brokered private placement in September 2018 and raised gross proceeds of $864,442 ($1,119,020 CAD). This news release should be read in conjunction with the interim condensed consolidated financial statements for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2018, notes to the financial statements, and management's discussion and analysis, which have been filed on SEDAR. Corporate Update Management had previously announced its updated plans, during the release of Q1 results and the Companys corporate update, to complete up to five acquisitions in 2018. Management has delivered on the Companys plans as five acquisitions have been closed in 2018, to date; On October 22, 2018, subsequent to Q3, Nova Leap closed the previously announced acquisition of Living at Home SeniorCare in Amherst, New Hampshire; Management continues to explore and evaluate further opportunities for the acquisition of profitable home health care businesses; Management had previously indicated that it was targeting to exit 2018 with a revenue run rate range of $14 million to $15 million. The closing of the acquisitions of Comprehensive Home Care and Living at Home SeniorCare place the Company on track to achieve this target. About Nova Leap The Home Care Providers industry is one of the fastest growing healthcare industries in Canada and the United States. Home care saves patients billions of dollars every year by treating them in their own homes instead of in hospitals. An aging population, the prevalence of chronic disease, growing physician acceptance of home care, medical advancements and a movement toward cost-efficient treatment options from public and private payers have all fostered industry growth. Nova Leap is focused on a highly fragmented market of small privately-held companies providing patients one on one care in their homes, facilities or hospice. Nova Leap's post-acquisition organic growth strategy is to increase annual revenue per location through a combination of increased employee investment, including training, focused sales and marketing efforts, billing rate increases, expansion of geographical coverage, and improved referral sources. NON-GAAP MEASURE: Annual recurring revenue run rate is the expected annualized recurring revenue based on the most recent months actual revenue for current operations multiplied by 12. For acquisitions that closed subsequent to the reporting period or are expected to close and have been disclosed in a press release as material information, annual recurring revenue run rate is the expected annualized recurring revenue based on the most recent months revenue for current operations multiplied by 12 plus the annual revenue based on the most recent financial information available for the newly acquired operations or operations which are expected to close and have been disclosed in a press release as material information. FORWARD LOOKING INFORMATION: Certain information in this press release may contain forward-looking statements, such as statements regarding future expansions and cost savings, the Companys expected 2018 revenue run rate and plans regarding future acquisitions and financings. This information is based on current expectations and assumptions, including assumptions concerning the Companys ability to integrate its acquired businesses and maintain previously achieved service hour and revenue levels, that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Actual results might differ materially from results suggested in any forward-looking statements. Risks that could cause results to differ from those stated in the forward-looking statements in this release include regulatory changes affecting the home care industry, unexpected increases in operating costs and competition from other service providers. All forward-looking statements, including any financial outlook or future-oriented financial information, contained in this press release are made as of the date of this release and included for the purpose of providing information about management's current expectations and plans relating to the future. The Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those reflected in the forward looking-statements unless and until required by securities laws applicable to the Company. Additional information identifying risks and uncertainties is contained in the Company's filings with the Canadian securities regulators, which filings are available at www.sedar.com . CAUTIONARY STATEMENT: Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-24 06:05:35|Editor: yan Video Player Close TRIPOLI, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- The death toll of the militant attack on town of Tazerbu in southeastern Libya on Friday increased to eight. The militant attack on Tazerbu killed six policemen and two civilians, and injured more than 15 others, mostly civilians, according to a military source. The clashes stopped completely between security forces and residents against the militants, and military patrols are hunting the militants south of the town, said the source. "The attack caused great damage to public and private properties," the source said. The source also confirmed that the militants took dozens of hostages as they withdrew from the area. A military source earlier told Xinhua that dozens of gunmen on armed vehicles carried out separate attacks on the police station and a number of government buildings in Tazerbu, killing and injuring several people. The source said that the attackers were likely Islamic State (IS) militants who carried out a similar attack last month in the central district of Jufra, some 650 km southeast of the capital Tripoli. Tazerbu is a small oasis town in southeastern Libya. It is one of the most important groundwater sources supplying western and central Libyan cities with water. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-24 06:25:37|Editor: yan Video Player Close PARIS, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- The French army launched on Thursday night a raid on a terrorist organization in Mali, neutralizing about 30 terrorists, including Hamadoun Kouffa, a prominent jihadist leader, according to a statement released by the army on Friday. "At this stage of the evaluation of the operation, it appears that about 30 terrorists were put out of action, among whom are probably the head of the Katiba Massina, Hamadoun Kouffa, and its main cadres," Chief of the Defense Staff of France, general Francois Lecointre, said in the statement. The raid took place in the Malian region of Mopti, and combined the action of many air assets: Mirage 2000, Tiger and Gazelle helicopters backed by Reaper drones, C135 tanker and maneuver helicopters, the general said. French Defense Minister Florence Parly, in a separate statement, hailed the "courageous and effective" action of the soldiers involved in this operation. "This new success of the French military engagement in the Sahel illustrates our desire to fight relentlessly against terrorism, and it also demonstrates our determination to help Malian authorities in their daily fight to stabilize and pacify their country," she said. Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-24 06:30:39|Editor: yan Video Player Close by Xinhua writers Ma Qian, Yang Shilong NEW YORK, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Jam-packed airports, snarling tailbacks on the interstate highways, and a grand total of an estimated over 54-million travelers... America's largest annual migration is now underway. The 2018 Thanksgiving holiday, basically running from Wednesday through Sunday, will witness travel volume reaching new high since 2005, with 54.3 million Americans hitting the road, skies, rail and waterway, a 4.8 percent increase over last year, according to AAA, a U.S. not-for-profit organization of services and information on travel, insurance, financial and automotive. BUSIEST THANKSGIVING TRAVEL Some 48.5 million Americans are projected to take on a road trip, while 4.27 million will be getting to their destinations by airplane and the remaining 1.48 million by trains, buses and cruise ships. Raven Xu, an architecture student doing internship in Brooklyn, was among the swarms of Thanksgiving holiday travelers. When Xu booked her ticket online, she found the prices rose by 70-80 U.S. dollars than normal. To avoid traffic jam, she left home one hour earlier than usual to catch her Wednesday night flight to Chicago. Bill Sutherland, AAA Travel senior vice president, attributed this year's record-high amount of travelers to three major factors, namely, higher wages, more disposable income and rising levels of household wealth. "This is translating into more travelers kicking off the holiday season with a Thanksgiving getaway, building on a positive year for the travel industry," Sutherland said in a written statement. This Thanksgiving, the biggest growth in travelers is projected to appear in air travel. A whopping sum of 30.6 million passengers will travel on U.S. airlines during the Thanksgiving holiday, an estimated 29 million passengers more than the previous year, projected by Airlines for America, an U.S. airline trade organization. #ThanksgivingTravel has become a hot hashtag on social media sites since Monday. Local netizens uploaded quite a few video clips to record their experiences at the world's busiest airports in the United States. On early Wednesday morning, passengers packed the security check of the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Georgia, shown in several video footage on Twitter. Beside the nearby elevators, another passengers line was stretching all the way down towards the entry. When there was a little room closer to the security line, these folks got to move a bit. In the immediate New York metropolitan area, La Guardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International (JFK) are among the busiest transportation hubs for Thanksgiving travel. About 737,500 passengers will use JFK, while 385,200 are expected at La Guardia, according to a forecast by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Major U.S. airlines have started to gear up for the Thanksgiving rush since last week. American Airlines have been prepping for an estimated seven million customers during a 12-day holiday travel period, which it defined as from Nov. 16 to Nov. 27. With an estimated 4.7 million customers flying through Monday, Delta Airlines has launched its Peach Corps team to assist with terminal meet-n-greet, way-finding, kiosk assist, wheelchair assistance and other customer service touch points. The team consists of hundreds of Delta employee-volunteers to help passengers at the Atlanta airport, its busiest hub. The airline projected that a peak day will come on Sunday, when nearly 650,000 customers will take to the skies on Delta flights worldwide. CONGESTED HIGHWAYS, BUMPY RIDE Bumper-to-bumper traffic has been seen since Tuesday night in metropolitan cities, including San Francisco, New York City and Boston, where drivers are expected to suffer the longest delays. Driving times for travelers there are projected to quadruple, as everyone heads out or in to gather with their loved ones, according to INRIX, a global mobility analytics company. "Thanksgiving is one of the busiest holidays for road trips, and this year will be no different," Trevor Reed, transportation analyst at INRIX, told media. Local media are circulating "the worst and best times" to hit the road and air, which were analyzed by multiple travel companies and Google Maps, in a bid to help travelers better go through the intense traffic across the country. Based on historical and recent travel trends, experts predicted drivers would bump into the greatest congestion during the early evening commute period this week. Travel times will also obviously increase on Sunday, as most holiday travelers will be making their way home after the long weekend. Apart from drivers, AAA predicted that there would also be 360,000 motorists at the roadside this Thanksgiving. The motor and leisure travel company pointed out dead batteries, lockouts and flat tires as the main troubles for road riders, reminding them to reduce the chances of a breakdown by doing better vehicle checks and inspections. Aging U.S. roads and bridges have worsened the heavy traffic during bustling holiday seasons. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation's overall infrastructure a grade of D+ in its 2017 Infrastructure Report Card, adding that an estimated total investment of 4.59 trillion dollars would be required to lift the U.S. infrastructure from a D+ to a B grade. Yet construction costs for fixing and rebuilding bridges, tunnels and highways continued to rise, due to a tight labor market and higher steel prices caused by Washington's tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from its key allies in Europe and North America. Instead of driving or riding home, plenty of people resorted to public transport this Thanksgiving. "We see more people than ever taking our trains," said an officer at the information desk of the Chicago Union Station, the third-busiest rail terminal in the United States after Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station in New York City. Outside the station, there are distant buses heading for adjacent states like Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan. Due to the heavy traffic pressure, the station witnessed a rarely-seen situation on Wednesday. A host of passengers were waiting on board a bus with route number 67788, which was heading to Madison, capital of Wisconsin. While some people already had got printed tickets, others asked bus conductor to issue the tickets, which would be paid by cash. "This scene is not always to be seen here. I already booked the ticket online two weeks ago," 63-year-old Marilyn Jackson told Xinhua. As a resident of the city's south side, she was leaving Chicago for Indianapolis to spend holiday with her 95-year-old mother and a big family there. "The most important time is family get-together. I can cook good food for my family... It's time to have family reunion, and I've taken the bus home for 13 years," she said. TRAVEL LESS PAINFUL THANKS TO NEW TECHNOLOGIES Inside the station's waiting room, there was a huge line of over 100 people waiting for Amtrak Train No. 352, which traveled from Chicago to Pontiac of Michigan. Amtrak was expecting to receive strong ridership throughout the weekend, said Marc Magliari, a spokesman for the agency. While Wednesday was thought as a busy travel day, Sunday tends to be a lot busier as people rush home, he said. To make the holiday trip as smooth as possible, a full complement of staff, including customer service representatives at major airports, police officers at main facilities and toll collectors at tunnels and bridges, has been set in place, the Port Authority said in a note to media. New technologies have been utilized this year to ensure security and improve traveler experience. More than a dozen of America's largest airports have automated screening lanes, according to local media reports. Coppered tomography X-ray scanners have been seen at the checkpoints of 16 airports to enhance threat detection capabilities. In Atlanta, it's reported that new biometrics technology has also been used to verify passengers' identities. As the number of passengers to be screened at its checkpoints across the country is expected to be "extremely high," securing the travel of millions of passengers remains a top priority for Transportation Security Administration (TSA). "We face an adaptive and agile enemy who is persistent on targeting the airline industry and transportation in general," said Andrea R. Mishoe, TSA's Federal Security Director for Maryland, in a statement, "which is why we continue to work daily with our airline and airport partners, to strengthen and expand security screening procedures." (Wang Ping, Xu Jing in Chicago, Ye Zaiqi in San Franciso also contributed to the report.) Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-24 06:35:40|Editor: Chengcheng Video Player Close PARIS, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- France will return "without delay" 26 artifacts to Benin which were removed from the West African country during the colonial era, President Emmanuel Macron's office said Friday in a statement. The Elysee said Macron decided the restitution of 26 works of arts requested by the Beninese authorities, and which had been looted during bloody battles in 1892. "Operational and legislative measures will be taken to allow these works to return to Benin, accompanied by the know-how of the museum which has preserved them until now," it added. In March this year, Macron asked Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr and French art historian Benedicte Savoy to prepare proposals concerning the possible return of some African cultural treasures from French museums. After the report's release earlier on Friday, Macron asked ministers of foreign affairs and culture to take "the next steps, which are decisive in order to reach the goal set for this process". A year ago, during a visit to Africa, the French president told a group of students at University of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso that "African heritage can't just be in European private collections and museums... It must be highlighted in Paris, but also in Dakar, in Lagos, in Cotonou." "In the next five years, I want the conditions to be met for the temporary or permanent restitution of African heritage to Africa," he pledged. To deliver on his promise, Macron would invite African and European partners in the first quarter of 2019 "to build together this new relationship and this exchange policy", according to the Elysee statement. Hungarian chocolate makers took home one bronze and four silver medals at the 2018 World Finals of the International Chocolate Awards, held between 26 October and 2 November in Florence, Italy at the historic Palazzo Ximenes-Panciatichi. All the Hungarian factories took home awards from the flavored bar section of the competition. Both ChocoCard, with their Voatsiperifery 69% chocolate, and Harrer Chocolat, with their Peru 72% with Charapita Chili, earned silver medals in the Dark chocolate bars with an infusion or flavoring category. Harrer, also successful in the white chocolate competition and awarded silver for their Mango Maracuja. Meanwhile, chocoMes Petit 21Bite-sized milk chocolate squares with Piemonte hazelnut praline and Ethiopian Harrar coffee fillingwas awarded the silver prize in the Milk chocolate ganaches/truffles category. In the Ganaches or truffles using mixed dark/milk/white for coating and fillings category, CsoKiss Manufaktura received the bronze award for their Gyulai Wild Elderberry bonbon. The international judging panel was made up of Grand jury members and judges who traveled to Florence joined by local chefs, journalists, bloggers and chocolate specialists. Founded in 2012, the International Chocolate Awards is an independent competition recognizing excellence in fine chocolate making and products made with fine chocolate. The International Chocolate Awards aims to support companies producing fine chocolate and chocolatiers, small companies and artisans working with fine chocolate. By helping these markets to grow and develop, the competition also aims to support the farmers that grow fine cacao. Winners of the regional competitions are judged together at the World Final which celebrates the best entries of the year. Government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs, in an interview to Thursdays edition of conservative Italian daily Libero, said the European Union passed a political judgement when it recently rejected the Italian governments draft budget. The Hungarian government rarely comments on EU decisions regarding other member states, but it seems obvious that the EU expressed a political opinion about Italys draft budget when it should have undertaken a strictly technical and procedural assessment, Kovacs told the paper. Libero interviewed the government spokesman during his visit to Rome just as the European Commission announced that it was launching an excessive deficit procedure against Italy over the governments draft budget. Kovacs said the EUs rules should apply equally to every member state. He said that whenever Italy and Hungary break the rules, they get sanctioned, but when France or Germany do so, they get off scot-free. The government spokesman said the blocs rules should be changed so that they can be complied with. He said Italy would be capable of drafting a budget without exceeding the EUs deficit rules. Had Hungary joined the euro zone, it would not have been capable of accomplishing the economic feats that it has, he said. Hungary will adopt the common currency when we are ready, when there are new rules and we get guarantees, Kovacs added. Kovacs said Brussels was also mulling a sanctions procedure against Hungary over its migration policy. But this is another form of intervention that does not fall within the scope of the EUs scope of authority, he said, adding that Hungary was right to implement the measures it has and he expressed hope the EU would decide against imposing sanctions on the country. MTI Photo: Bruzak Noemi A commentator suspects that the Macedonian authorities allowed former PM Gruevski to flee his country after his corruption conviction, because he is less dangerous as a fugitive abroad than as a prisoner at home. In Nepszava, Andras Kosa quotes unnamed sources according to whom PM Zaev of Macedonia agreed to allow his chief foe to flee abroad, in exchange for some of his MPs supporting the government initiative to change the countrys name to Northern Macedonia (which will remove the Greek veto preventing Macedonias NATO membership and progress towards EU membership). Eight MPs of Gruevskis VMRO party voted in favour, enabling the adoption of the law. The former Prime Minister was under constant police surveillance, Kosa writes, thus it would have been almost impossible for him to secretly cross the border. He adds that the Macedonian authorities only submitted their extradition request to the Hungarian authorities when Gruevski had already been granted asylum, by which time extradition was legally impossible. Besides, there have been regular exchanges between the foreign and interior ministers of the two countries, thus Kosa believes that the theory of a coordinated manoeuvre to remove Mr Gruevski from Macedonia is not too far-fetched. This opinion does not necessarily represent the views of XpatLoop.com or the publisher. Your opinions are welcome too - for editorial review before possible publication online. Click here to Share Your Story Related articles: Former Macedonian PM Seeks Political Asylum In Hungary Hungarian Opposition Slams Gov't For Gruevski Asylum VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Novoheart Holdings Inc. (Novoheart or the Company) reports financial results for the three months ended September 30, 2018. Amounts, unless specified otherwise, are expressed in Canadian dollars and are in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Q1 2019 Highlights: Entered into a $2.2M Service Agreement with Xellera Therapeutics Limited Selected as one of the 'Top 50 of Innovative Biotechnology Enterprise in Greater Bay Area Showcased at the Annual Safety Pharmacology Society Meeting Recruited a notable Pharma Industry Executive, Bernard Fermini, Ph.D. as Chief R&D Officer Appointed a new Senior Vice President to lead Commercial Development Financial Results for the First Quarter of 2019 The Company recorded net loss of $1,949,801 (loss per share of $0.02) for the three months ended September 30, 2018 compared to a net loss of $6,272,569 (loss per share of $0.58) for the three months ended September 30, 2017. The decrease in the net loss was due primarily to the completion of the reverse takeover transaction that occurred in the first quarter of 2018, for which the Company incurred a non-cash loss on completion of reverse takeover of $5,213,597, offset by the Companys increases in operating expenses compared to the three months ended September 30, 2017. Operating Expenses Operating expenses for the three months ended September 30, 2018 was $1,975,684 compared to $1,083,466 for the three months ended September 30, 2017. The increase in operating expenses is primarily due to the increase in marketing expenses and shared-based compensation expenses for the three months ended September 30, 2018. The increase in marketing expenses is primarily due to the focus of the Company to expand the commercialization of its MyHeartTM platform, along with the hiring of the Senior Vice President Commercial Development in August 2018 to lead the effort. For share-based compensation expenses, there was minimal share-based compensation for the three months ended September 30, 2017 as the stock options were only granted upon the Company being listed on September 27, 2017. Liquidity and Outstanding Share Capital As at September 30, 2018, the Company had cash of $503,490. The Company entered into a $2.2m service agreement with Xellera Therapeutics Limited on October 31, 2018, from which the Company received an upfront payment of $248,344 upon signing and received a second payment of $1,076,159 on November 19, 2018. As at November 23, 2018, there were 93,462,025 common shares issued and outstanding, and 6,977,098 common shares issuable upon the exercise of outstanding stock options (of which none are exercisable) at an exercise price of C$0.50 per share and the issuance of vested restricted share units. The Company also has 972,037 purchase warrants outstanding with an exercise price of C$0.50, expiring in September 2019. ABOUT NOVOHEART HOLDINGS INC. Novoheart is a global stem cell biotechnology company dedicated to human heart engineering with offices and laboratories in the United States, Canada and Hong Kong. Novohearts scientific team has pioneered a range of bioengineering technologies collectively known as the MyHeartTM platform, including the worlds first human mini-heart novoHeartTM (otherwise known as a human heart-in-a-jar) that is fully capable of pumping and ejecting fluid. Novoheart believes that its proprietary platform uniquely positions the Company to enter into commercial partnerships with leading pharmaceuticals and research institutions to deliver pre-clinical cardiotoxicity screening and to develop custom-tailored engineered heart constructs for disease modeling and drug discovery. Novoheart also believes that the MyHeartTM platform is well-positioned for the potential development of cell-based cardiac regenerative therapies with superior safety and efficacy. Common shares of Novoheart is traded on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol NVH. For further information please contact: Novoheart Holdings Inc. Suite 1430, 800 West Pender Street Vancouver, British Columbia V6C 2V6 Iris Lo Chief Financial Officer +1 604-398-3170 Christian Darbyshire Media Relations +1 587-352-5053 Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements Information set forth in this news release may involve forward-looking statements under applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are statements that relate to future, not past, events. In this context, forward-looking statements often address expected future business and financial performance, and often contain words such as "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "estimate", "expect", and "intend", statements that an action or event "may", "might", "could", "should", or "will" be taken or occur, or other similar expressions. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein including, without limitation; statements about the Companys future plans, its goals and expectations, and the potential applications its MyHeartTM platform are forward-looking statements. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements, or other future events, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others, the risks identified in the management discussion and analysis section of Novoheart Holdings Inc.s interim and most recent annual financial statement or other reports and filings with the TSX Venture Exchange and applicable Canadian securities regulators. Forward-looking statements are made based on management's beliefs, estimates and opinions on the date that statements are made and the respective companies undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change, except as required by applicable securities laws. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. NOVOHEART HOLDINGS INC. (Formerly Novoheart Holdings Limited) Condensed Consolidated Interim Statement of Financial Position (unaudited) (Expressed in Canadian dollars) September 30, 2018 June 30, 2018 ASSETS Current Cash and cash equivalents $ 503,490 $ 1,595,094 Accounts and other receivables 537,877 615,332 Prepaid expenses and deposits 260,034 312,161 1,301,401 2,522,587 Property and equipment, net 1,145,110 1,245,981 Intangible assets, net 258,889 277,948 Long-term prepayment 18,438 - $ 2,723,838 $ 4,046,516 LIABILITIES AND SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY Current Accounts payable and accrued liabilities $ 1,359,452 $ 1,357,713 Due to related parties 38,274 60,684 1,397,726 1,418,397 Deferred government grants 35,905 40,648 Long-term license payable 76,911 75,424 1,510,542 1,534,469 Shareholders' Equity Share capital 17,426,693 17,426,693 Contributed surplus 2,116,498 1,493,175 Accumulated other comprehensive income 330,988 303,261 Accumulated deficit (18,660,883) (16,711,082) 1,213,296 2,512,047 $ 2,723,838 $ 4,046,516 NOVOHEART HOLDINGS INC. (Formerly Novoheart Holdings Limited) Condensed Consolidated Interim Statements of Loss and Comprehensive Loss (unaudited) (Expressed in Canadian dollars, except number of common shares) Three months ended September 30, 2018 September 30, 2017 OPERATING EXPENSES Research and development $ 359,277 $ 263,659 Intellectual property and patent 41,569 257,558 General and administrative 547,204 539,394 Marketing 240,465 - Share-based compensation 623,323 4,722 Depreciation and amortization 163,846 18,133 1,975,684 1,083,466 LOSS FROM OPERATIONS (1,975,684) (1,083,466) Government grants 23,869 5,377 Other (loss) / income (344) 56,809 Interest income / (finance expense) 1,697 (505) Foreign exchange gain / (loss) 661 (37,187) Non-cash loss on completion of reverse takeover - (5,213,597) 25,883 (5,189,103 NET LOSS FOR THE PERIOD $ (1,949,801) $ (6,272,569) OTHER COMPREHENSIVE INCOME (LOSS) Foreign currency translation adjustment 27,727 (40,825 COMPREHENSIVE LOSS FOR THE PERIOD $ (1,922,074) $ (6,313,394) Loss per share Basic and Diluted $ (0.02) $ (0.58) Weighted average number of shares outstanding basic and diluted 93,462,025 10,759,805 NOVOHEART HOLDINGS INC. (Formerly Novoheart Holdings Limited) Condensed Consolidated Interim Statements of Cash Flow (unaudited) (Expressed in Canadian dollars) REVIEW Halo Infinite Multiplayer (Beta): Intoarcerea unui gigant O sa fiu sincer: subiectul acestui material trebuia sa fie altul decat cel pe care il vezi in titlu. Planul initial era ca randurile pe care le scriu aici sa fie despre Forza Horizon 5, una dintre cele mai anticipate lansari ale Xbox Game Studios, un joc care a dat campiile [citeste mai departe] WASHINGTON When Theodore McCarrick resigned his title as a cardinal of the Catholic Church in July, the church made one promise as shock waves rippled through the pews: McCarrick would face a canonical trial, the Vaticans version of a criminal inquiry, for the sexual misconduct he allegedly committed. Four months later, McCarrick has moved from Washington, where he was once the archbishop and then a prominent diplomat, to a remote friary in Kansas. Vatican leaders have said no to American bishops' request that the Vatican conduct an investigation here into the disgraced ex-cardinals behavior. When the U.S. bishops tried to vote last week on new rules regarding bishops, designed to prevent another McCarrick-type scandal, the Vatican issued a last-minute directive telling them to not even take a vote. The question lingering on many Catholics' minds remains: What's going to happen to McCarrick? The Vatican remains silent on the answer. What I hear from the people of God who Ive been listening to ... the Archbishop McCarrick case has particularly upset them, Bishop Robert Deeley of Maine told his fellow bishops in an emotional remark last week at the U.S. bishops' meeting in Baltimore, where numerous bishops raised demands for more investigation into McCarrick. "What the people dont understand is, this behavior must have been known, because people are saying that it was known. And how did these promotions happen? I think thats where the problem, a lack of trust, is. [Parishioners are asking] Can we trust you? " McCarricks long rise through the ranks of the church, even as rumors swirled in certain circles that the cleric acted inappropriately toward seminarians and young priests, has indeed touched a nerve. Combined with a major grand jury report in Pennsylvania less than a month after McCarricks resignation which recounted decades of abuse by hundreds of priests in the state the scandal has set off a new wave of protests, not seen since the Boston Globes revelatory reporting in 2002, condemning the churchs handling of abuse at the highest levels. Last month, McCarricks successor as archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, retired early, faced with parishioners' distrust that he truly didnt know about McCarricks misconduct, as he claims, and that he mishandled abusive priests when he was bishop of Pittsburgh, as covered in the Pennsylvania report. The McCarrick scandal has even touched Pope Francis, after Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano wrote in a furious letter that Francis knew about the allegations facing McCarrick and should resign. Francis has not specifically responded to Vigano's claims, which are unproven but widely read. When McCarrick was removed from ministry in June, the church said he had been credibly accused of molesting a minor when he was a priest in New York, nearly 50 years ago. By the time he resigned a month later, another man had come forward to say that McCarrick abused him as a youth too, starting when he was about 11 years old. And two New Jersey dioceses where McCarrick previously worked admitted that they had settled two cases out of court involving McCarrick preying on young adult seminarians and priests, paying out $80,000 in one case and $100,000 in another. The Archdiocese of New York investigated the first case and found the alleged victim's accusation credible, leading to McCarrick's removal. Ed Mechmann, the director of the Safe Environment Program for the archdiocese there, said the Vatican had assigned the same New York review board to investigate the second accusation. That investigation is ongoing and will eventually be turned over to the Vatican as well, Mechmann said. Pat Noaker, a civil lawyer who represents both the accuser whose case led to McCarrick's suspension and James Grein, the Northern Virginia man who says the ex-cardinal abused him starting around age 11, said he has heard inconsistent updates from various church officials about the status of the first case in Rome. "I have absolutely no confidence these men will receive justice from the Vatican. They protect their bishops and cardinals like princes, like the Saudis protect theirs," Noaker said. The Vatican has declined to answer questions, including those from The Washington Post this week, about the state of an eventual trial in Rome for McCarrick. But some church watchers believe the Vatican is waiting until Grein's case makes its way to Rome. It's an easier case because the victim was younger when the abuse started. According to Noaker, the other victim was 16 years old when McCarrick first put his hand in the teen's pants while preparing for a Christmas service. Until the 1980s, Catholic commentator Ed Condon said, the church's definition of sexual abuse of a minor only covered people under 16 years old. The age was raised to 18. "Under the operative law at the time of the accusation, it wasn't a minor. If you pass a law, you change the provisions of a penal law; you can't impose them retroactively," said Condon, who trained as a canon lawyer meaning he can practice in the Vatican's own legal system. Avoiding any sexual liaisons with adults or children, consensual or not is an obligation of priests under canon law, but simply having a sexual encounter with a person age 16 or older was not necessarily considered a crime under canon law at the time, Condon said: "Which isn't to say there isn't sexual behavior that could result in a criminal process, but it's not spelled out." If McCarrick were charged with a crime for molesting the teenager before the Christmas service or for harassing adults in New Jersey, Condon said, it might fall under categories such as "damage to the good of souls" and "public scandal." "The difficulty they're working with at the moment is trying to find a way of applying the law as it's been applied for the last 20, 30 years, while representing the gravity of the McCarrick situation," Condon said. That might mean the Vatican will simply wait to put McCarrick on trial until they can try him on the case of the younger victim, a more straightforward process. And that case might be slow in reaching Rome. McCarrick's canon lawyer who, like his civil lawyer, has declined requests for comment from The Post could slow down the process, Condon said, by requesting time to produce evidence such as travel records that might show McCarrick was not in the same location as the victim at the alleged times of the assaults. If found guilty of sexual abuse of a minor, Condon said, McCarrick could face being laicized meaning he would lose all status as a member of the Catholic clergy and would lose his church housing in Kansas. At the moment, he remains in the friary. Francis has ordered him to a life of prayer and penance from the very day he resigned from the College of Cardinals. Prayer and penance is typically a punishment imposed on a person convicted in a canonical trial, not a pretrial condition. So while McCarrick has not been convicted, in some sense, the Vatican is treating him as if he has already been sentenced. The Posts Marisa Iati and Michelle Boorstein contributed to this report. Fethullah Gulen, cleric that Turkey blames for the coup, has said he is not worried the U.S. will send him back Read more ANKARA, Turkey (AP) Turkeys state-run news agency says a prosecutor has concluded that a network led by a U.S.-based Muslim cleric is behind the 2016 killing of Russias ambassador to Turkey and is seeking prison terms for the preacher and 27 others. Anadolu Agency said Friday that the prosecutor's indictment accuses Fethullah Gulen and others of terror charges. An off-duty police officer fatally shot Ambassador Andrei Karlov at a photo exhibition in Ankara on Dec. 19, 2016. The officer was later shot dead at the scene by police. The prosecutor maintains that Gulen's movement which is also accused of masterminding the failed coup in 2016 aimed to derail relations between Turkey and Russia. A court must accept the indictment before a trial date is set. Gulen denies involvement in the coup. National Greyhound Adoption Program volunteer Tony Tereszcuk helps receive five Greyhounds from the Canidrome racetrack in Macau, China. The dogs arrived, at Lufthansa Cargo at the Philadelphia International Airport on Wednesday. Read more Among those flying into Philadelphia during one of the busiest travel days of the year on Wednesday were five greyhounds from China. It was a journey of more than 9,500 miles for the former racing dogs from the Canidrome in Macau, a brutal racetrack that reportedly euthanized 30 greyhounds per month. The track closed in July, leaving 650 greyhounds without homes. The National Greyhound Adoption Program in Philadelphia pledged to take 100 dogs, including the five that exited a cargo plane on Wednesday. David Wolf, who leads the greyhound rescue group, said his facility has accepted 33 greyhounds from Macau and has committed to take more than any other organization in the world. "The dogs have arrived in good condition," Wolf said this week. They are thin and have extreme dental-care needs, but that "can be put off until we put some weight on them and they're settled, and the stress of this hugely long trip has gone away," he said. Animal rights activists called the Canidrome "the worst racetrack in the world," and a 2011 investigation by the South China Morning Post found that 383 under-performing dogs were killed there in 2010. The track closed this year after the Macau government told the operator to move the races out of the gambling mecca's downtown to make room for redevelopment, the New York Times reported. To get to Philadelphia, the greyhounds traveled from Macau to Hong Kong, where they stayed overnight before boarding a flight to Frankfurt, Germany. Veterinarians greeted the greyhounds at Philadelphia International Airport to ensure they did not have serious medical issues. The National Greyhound Adoption Program transported the animals to its facility in Northeast Philadelphia in a stainless-steel dog hauler. Wolf said his nonprofit facility is the "best in the nation" and can comfortably house 100 dogs in single stainless-steel cages that are raised above the ground. That way, when the animals relieve themselves, they don't have to lie in their mess. A veterinary clinic adjoins the facility. The greyhounds get regular exercise, Wolf said. "I don't know of any one [facility] that has this combination of all this good stuff to make everything so good for the dogs that are here until we find homes for them," he said. Those who want to adopt a greyhound can contact the National Greyhound Adoption Program through its website, www.ngap.org, or by calling 215-331-7918. Adoptions cost $280, which includes neutering or spaying for the dogs and any other medical attention they may have needed. Wolf, a 79-year-old industrial landlord, started the National Greyhound Adoption Program in 1990 after a chance encounter during a Florida vacation sparked an obsession for greyhound rescue. While at a greyhound racetrack in Hollywood, Fla., Wolf met a man who raced greyhounds and bragged about disposing losing dogs at medical laboratories for $20 to cut losses. Florida will no longer have greyhound racetracks after voters there overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to phase out dog racing by 2021. That will end races at the state's 11 racetracks, leaving just six active U.S. racetracks in five states: Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Texas, and West Virginia. There were 63 racetracks nationwide in the 1980s, said Jim Gartland, executive director of the National Greyhound Association (NGA), a racetrack industry group. The NGA registers roughly 8,000 greyhounds per year, down from around 30,000 per year a few decades ago, he said. Greyhound racing has long been criticized for reports of animal abuse. A 1994 Daily News story detailed egregious examples including the discovery of 100 starving greyhounds in Florida in 1989 and 143 greyhound carcasses found in an Arizona citrus orchard in 1992. Gartland said a lot of the criticism of the industry is exaggerated and that there are "bad apples in every industry." "On the whole, this industry treats these animals better than most people treat their pets," he said. On this Black Friday, Clout bargain-hunts the best political deals for super PACs in the 2019 races in Philadelphia. We're thinking the big money may land on City Council campaigns, not Mayor Kenney's bid for a second term. In the 2015 mayoral primary, super PACs spent more than the six Democratic candidates combined. Next year, they could spend millions in races for Council. The American Beverage Association has already proven it's willing to dig deep to try to overturn the city's soda tax, Kenney's signature achievement. If the soda industry and grocery store retailers launch a super PAC in the mayor's race, former City Controller Alan Butkovitz would be first in line for that support, having declared his challenge to Kenney last week. State Sen. Tony Williams is not far behind; he is considering another try. But changing the cast of characters in Council would likely be easier than unseating an incumbent mayor, something that hasn't happened in about seven decades, at least. For Council, we've already predicted a stampede of candidates for at-large and district seats. We asked the beverage lobby if it would spend super PAC money in the mayor's race, Council races, or both. "We obviously think that City Council should do the right thing and eliminate a job-destroying tax that is increasingly being rejected by voters and political leaders across the country," said Anthony Campisi, a spokesman for the American Beverage Association-backed local coalition. On the other side are the city's building trades unions, which benefit from work created by the soda tax, which supports pre-K, community schools, parks, recreation centers, and libraries. These unions, led by Local 98's John "Johnny Doc" Dougherty, were the biggest super PAC spenders for Kenney in 2015. The soda tax passed by 13-4 in 2016, so the beverage industry needs to win four Council seats to get to a nine-vote majority and eight to score to a veto-proof majority. Doing well but falling short of these marks could cause some surviving Council members to rethink their soda tax votes. Team Soda scored some victories elsewhere using campaign donations to punish foes and reward friends. Cook County, Ill., approved and then quickly repealed a soda tax. The American Beverage Association has not been shy about throwing money around town: It spent $15.8 million on lobbying from January 2016 to October 2018. Philadelphians for a Fair Future, a pro-soda tax group, invested $3.4 million in lobbying from April 2016 to October 2018. That included $1.7 million from former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a longtime foe of the soda industry and potential Democratic presidential candidate. A Bloomberg spokesman on Thursday declined to comment. Williams pays $33K for mayoral poll Is Williams, the Democratic senator, serious about another run for mayor? Well, he paid $32,800 in August to McLaughlin & Associates, a New York polling firm with strong ties to the Republican establishment. Williams said the firm was "testing several things, including the mayoral field." He shrugged off the firm's GOP ties, stressing the quality of its work. "I'm obviously more concerned with the quality of the poll. They had done work in Philadelphia before. And they were very accurate. And I didn't have that before." Sam Pond tied to dark-money group Remember that mysterious group we told you about that backed Democrats in races for Pennsylvania's state legislature? Back in September, PA Fund for Change declined to share information about its donors, spending plans, or anything else, really. Since then, Clout got its hands on documents that show Sam Pond, a Philadelphia workers' comp lawyer, solicited donations for the PAC and raised money for its top funder. PA Fund for Change, which spent $2.5 million this year supporting Democratic candidates for the state House and Senate, received $1.4 million from PA Alliance Action, a "dark-money" group that isn't required to disclose its donors. Records filed with the Pennsylvania Department of State show that PA Alliance Action's "incorporator" is PA Alliance LLC. And Pond is "sole member" of that LLC, records show. Reached for comment, a lawyer for PA Fund for Change said Pond's law firm had "no affiliation" with the group. An Inquirer and Daily News investigation last year found that pain-management doctors and workers' comp lawyers, including Pond, had sent clients and patients to pharmacies in which they had an ownership interest, then billed their employers' insurance providers for expensive compounded creams. Such arrangements can raise conflicts of interest, according to ethics experts. Pond later sold his stake in a pharmacy. More than a half-dozen candidates supported by PA Fund for Change were elected to the legislature. Mike Stack plans his comeback President Trump's victory in 2016 broke all the rules. So now all the politicians seem to think they can break them, too. What else explains the surge in officials who, after losing reelection, consider a return to politics? Democratic Lt. Gov. Mike Stack came in fourth place in this spring's primary amid a scandal and fall-out with his boss. Instead of retiring or accepting a cushy lobbying job, though, he's taking several steps toward a comeback. Stack's spokesman, Marty Marks, told us he's "making fundraising calls," planning a fundraiser next month, and starting a "restorative justice" nonprofit. Stack is thinking about running for Council, either for an at-large seat or the Tenth District, currently held by Republican Councilman Brian O'Neill. He also hasn't ruled out challenging Kenney. Judging by this year's election results, Stack might want to go for O'Neill's job. Sure, O'Neill is a popular, 38-year incumbent who has fended off Democratic challengers. But party voters are energized under Trump. And consider how Stack performed in this year's primary: He finished first overall in Philly, but received only 38 percent of the vote. Meantime, he won decisively in the wards that make up the Tenth District. If Stack decides to not to run for anything, his fund-raiser next month will still be a boon to the Democrat: According to his most recent campaign finance report, Stack has nearly $139,000 in debts. When it comes to driving a car, parents make sure that their kids have plenty of instruction and a lot of practice. When it comes to using a cell phone? Not so much. So experts at AtlantiCare Behavioral Health, southeast New Jersey's largest provider of mental health, addiction, and family care services, decided to step in. Funded by a state Department of Children and Families grant, it provides youth programs at Atlantic City High School, Buena Regional High and Middle Schools, and Oakcrest High School, all in Atlantic County. The program has many components. We spoke recently with Cathleen Morris, a licensed clinical social worker and director of the AtlantiCare youth programs at Buena's high school and middle school. What are your biggest concerns about teen cell phone use? Cell phone etiquette is always a concern. If you're sitting at the dinner table, you don't use your cell phone. Parents need to model it. I know that life happens. Your phone rings, and you want to look at it. But there should be screen-free time. In communicating so much through screens, people are losing social skills. In a text, things can be misinterpreted. I've seen more than my share of drama because someone read a text and didn't know how it was intended. So I tell students that tone is important, body language is important, eye contact is important. All this is important through adulthood, as well. When you go to a job interview, they're not going to talk to you through texts. Texting and driving is another huge concern. Students think they can do it quickly. But studies have found that even with a quick text, you take your eyes off the road for 4.6 seconds. That's a lot of time. We actually have kids pledge that they won't text and drive. And we've sent the pledges home to have their parents sign it, as well. Bullying is a huge concern. In texting without having that face-to-face conversation it's a lot easier to say something mean and hurtful. It goes back to socialization. They think they're anonymous. But they're texting a real person, and that person has feelings. What is the purpose of your program? When and why did it start? The teen center has been at Buena High School since 2000. A sister program at the middle school was funded in 2005. We're here to provide free and voluntary services to any student in our building to help them navigate their adolescent years, finish their education, obtain skills leading to employment or continued education, and help them to graduate healthy and drug-free. Our services are open to any student in the building. One of the large components of our program is recreation. Through that, we get to know the kids, and they get to know us and feel comfortable with us. As for the cell phone part, think about when kids are starting to drive: We give them driving lessons; they get practice behind the wheel. Kids are getting phones as young as age 9. And we're giving them phones without giving them lessons on how to appropriately use them. At the school, we see kids all the time who are sitting next to each other, and they're texting rather than talking. We realized that if phones and other similar devices and social media are such a large part of their lives, that it has to be part of the conversation. It has to be part of the work that we do with them. What are some of the primary messages you try to get across to teens? I always talk to students about posting pictures. Once you put something out there, it no longer belongs to you. If you post a picture of yourself in a jersey, it might identify the high school. It might indicate the sport and the number of the player. So a predator already knows a lot about you. Or if you post a picture of your new car, that car has a license plate on it. You've just given away so much information about yourself. I tell them, "Remember, it's the World Wide Web. You're sharing it with the world." Also, we caution them about friending only people that they know in the real world. We're told as children not to talk to strangers. But kids go on Snapchat and other sites and connect with people they don't know. Physical safety is part of the discussion. They're walking around texting with their heads down. You could walk into someone, you could fall. There's a viral video of someone in a mall walking right into a display fountain. Kids get angry when their parents say, "Let me see your phone." I tell the students that when your parents do that, they are doing it out of concern, not to violate your privacy. If you have something on your phone that you don't want your parents to see, do you really want the world to know it? We all do dumb things when we're kids, but there wasn't always the same lasting evidence that there is now. I share with the students that they are creating their own legacies. The internet is not going away, so one day your children or grandchildren may Google you. What do you want them to see? We also talk about New Jersey's law against harassment, intimidation, and bullying. Related to that, we encourage students to tell an adult if someone has posted something that they know is inappropriate, or if they have a friend who seems to be depressed or contemplating suicide. Even if you're wrong, you'd rather have a mad friend than a dead friend. Get that person help. We also work with parents, but less directly. We encourage parents to be involved, to ask questions, to monitor the use of screen time, to know who your child is spending time with online. Tell them that you love them every day. Learn the apps your kids are using. Have your kids teach you the apps. Know what your kids are doing. What tells you that its working, that youre making a difference? AtlantiCare has customer-satisfaction surveys, including student surveys. Based on those results, we know we're making a difference. We bring in speakers, and we'll do follow-up discussions. I always start with, "What did you learn?" They're always able to tell me something. One student talked about knowing someone who went to a college interview and the college officials shared that they had seen posts on Facebook, and the student was shocked. Now, when we're doing a group activity with students, they're not looking at their phones. They're listening to each other. Which is huge. When we ask them questions, we can see that we're getting them to think. We can see them learning. In talking to the students, are you learning anything that has really surprised you? I'm surprised every day. One thing that really surprised me: I was waiting with a student for her mother to pick her up. The student told me her mother was only a few minutes away. I said, "How do you know?" She was tracking her mother's cell phone. I never thought about that. The kids are so savvy with any technology. As an adult, you need to be aware of what's going on. You think you've blocked something or put a parental control on it, and the kids know six different ways to get around it. I'm seeing more of a new service some phone carriers have: When the phone is in the car, it automatically responds to any new text with something like "I'm driving now; I'll respond when I park." It's really important for parents to know that's available. Contact Sandy Bauers at sandybauers10@gmail.com. An adult and child walk home on East Westmoreland Street near Rosehill at the end of the school day Tuesday November 21, 2018. DAVID SWANSON / Staff Photographer Read more On Election Day, with their students at home, Kensington High School teachers gathered in principal Jose Lebron's office with an easel and poster paper, and made a list titled, "How Students Feel." "Hopeless. There is no escape," the teachers wrote, trying to capture their students' feelings. "Upset." "Depressed." "Nothing." Weeks before, the City of Philadelphia declared a disaster in the neighborhood over the opioid crisis, and Lebron wanted to know what his teachers had been hearing from their students, most of whom have grown up in this historically neglected, drug-plagued community. Educators in Kensington have long been helping students deal with trauma. Just since August, Lebron's school has lost three students to shootings. But the opioid crisis is unlike anything seen before, principals and school officials said in recent interviews, forcing teachers and principals to join residents, city officials, and advocates on the front lines of an epidemic in which Philadelphia outpaces every other major American city for its deadliness. It has compelled a conversation about how the city cares both for those in addiction and for residents who live and learn in Kensington. Children routinely watch drug users inject themselves and they also see paramedics race to reverse overdoses. Every morning, school janitors scour the playgrounds for discarded needles and other evidence of a homeless population in addiction that has doubled in a year. Some students deal with addiction within their own families, and are further traumatized by seeing people openly inject heroin and fentanyl as they walk to school. Some go far out of their way to avoid the drug encampments in the neighborhood, and are late to class. Many worry about "becoming a part of what they see," a teacher wrote on her poster-paper list. At least the students at Kensington High are old enough to articulate some of their feelings. Lewis Elkin Elementary is a few blocks from McPherson Square, better known to local kids as "Needle Park." Children so young, said principal Charlotte Maddox, don't have the words to describe what they see and feel. They do know that the people they see are in pain, but the situation has become almost normal for many. She walked one of her third-graders to the library in McPherson Square a few weeks back. "It was the scariest walk I had," she said, not just because they stepped over needles and past people injecting drugs, but because "the child I was walking with didn't think anything of it." A few dozen children transferred out of Elkin this year, which is about normal, Maddox said. She said, though, that more parents had told her they were moving from the neighborhood because of the visibility of the opioid crisis. Heroin users used to be more hidden from neighborhood children, since they tended to flock to a railroad gulch off Gurney Street. But last year, when the city and Conrail cleared out the gulch, Lebron began to worry about what his students would encounter on their walks to school. By fall last year, encampments began to sprawl along Lehigh Avenue. "This issue was not on our sidewalks," said Evelyn Nunez, the assistant superintendent who oversees Kensington's public schools and grew up in the neighborhood. "Prior to the railroads being cleaned, it was an adult problem. Children rarely had to see it." Numerous people in addiction have told reporters and researchers that they wish children didn't have to see them, either. Some try to hide their needles when children pass, but intense cravings and withdrawal pain can make that impossible. It's a frequently mentioned reason for opening a medically supervised injection site, where drugs can be used off the streets. In the meantime, "safe corridor routes" to area schools, with parents and store owners standing watch, are expected to begin after the Thanksgiving break around Elkin and nearby Francis E. Willard Elementary School. Parents from Russell Conwell Middle School, the magnet school across the street from Willard, will also pitch in. "This is like all hands on deck," Willard principal Diana Garcia told parents who met a few weeks ago to discuss the routes. "We're going to show our children that we can keep them safe." Outside Willard last week, parents walking their children home spoke of the unique challenges of growing up in Kensington. Jamar Mears walks his 6-year-old, Jamir, back and forth to Willard every day. "The drug activity I've seen it a lot throughout my lifetime, but not as bad as down Kensington, down here," he said. Like his classmates, Jamir knows not to pick up needles, a lesson that is a routine aspect of parenting in Kensington. Richard Beauford's 5-year-old, Ajvonna, a Willard kindergartner, knows to cross the street to avoid a person injecting heroin. "We tell them, 'You don't do that. It's not good for you,' " Beauford said. "A safe route to the school would help a lot." Some of the kids at Kensington High have told their teachers they laugh at the people living rough. The teachers think that's a coping mechanism. Other students say they slip spare pretzels to people in the encampments, and some even volunteer with a church group to hand out food on weekends. These are encouraging signs that students are maintaining the compassion they're taught by parents and teachers, Maddox and Lebron said. When her students see a person struggling with addiction, Maddox said, "they see a human being who is hurt. They can't name the hurt. But we teach them to fix hurt, and that compassion they have in the midst of that confusion should be highlighted." Sharon Woods rummages through a shopping cart at a Philadelphia Walmart Friday. Walmart workers have formed OUR Walmart, which aims to fight for better wages and working conditions. Read more In May, more than 30,000 Toys R Us workers got laid off without severance as the company started the process to shut down all its stores. Meanwhile, CEO David Brandon got $2.8 million in the form of a retention bonus right before the company filed for bankruptcy. "This corporate greed is hurting me and my family and it's unacceptable," wrote Colleen Kleven, a Toys R Us worker in the Bay Area, as part of a petition she started demanding that the private equity firms that used to own the company start a severance fund for the laid-off workers. On Tuesday, days before the biggest shopping day of the year, private equity firms Bain Capital and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts announced each would contribute $10 million to a "financial assistance fund." The firms encouraged others to also put money toward the fund. Experts say the move, which could have broader implications when other major retailers go under, is an organizing success. "We're only talking about this because [the workers], like the Parkland kids, protested," Eileen Appelbaum, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told the Huffington Post. "They said, 'We built this, we're entitled to severance, and we want it.' " It's not just Toys R Us workers: Working in an industry that's increasingly under threat by changing consumer habits and technology, retail employees across the world are fighting for better wages and working conditions most of them without unions. Here's a look at some of their recent activism. The movement continues for a fair workweek Retail, fast-food, and hospitality workers have teamed up to speak out against unpredictable scheduling that they say wreaks havoc on their lives. They've won "fair workweek" bills that regulate scheduling in cities like New York, Seattle, and San Francisco and are currently fighting for one in Philadelphia. Walmart workers organize Workers from Walmart the biggest private sector employer in the country have organized, protested, and gone on strike as part of OUR Walmart. It's not a union though it was founded by one: United Food and Commercial Workers. Walmart subsequently expanded paid family leave and increased starting pay to $10 an hour. Rise Up Retail forms Born out of the momentum from OUR Walmart, a new campaign launched this fall called Rise Up Retail, a group trying to advocate for and organize retail workers at other employers. Amazon workers strike Thousands of Amazon workers in Europe are on strike this Black Friday, protesting wages and working conditions. It's the latest in a series of strikes: European workers walked off the job on Black Friday 2017, and American workers went on strike and called for a boycott on Prime Day this July, Amazon's version of Black Friday. Whole Foods workers aim to unionize A group of workers at Whole Foods, also owned by Amazon, announced in September a bid to unionize, which Amazon has fought with what's been described as "classic antiunion language": "You might need to talk about how having a union could hurt innovation which could hurt customer obsession which could ultimately threaten the building's continued existence," a training video to managers said. A month after the union effort went public, Amazon announced it would raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour. The post office for Croydon, Bucks County has been shuttered since August, when it was damaged by a late-night fire. Residents in the town are demanding answers as to why the office hasn't reopened. Read more To the 10,000 or so folks who live in Croydon, the local post office was more than a warehouse for packages and letters. It was a community staple, where an impromptu lending library thrived and neighbors shared their stories. Now, it's a literal shell, its door replaced by a thick piece of plywood that has weathered the elements and stood against the growing resentment in this Bucks County community. Croydon has been without its post office for three months, lost to a still-unexplained fire at a strip mall where the U.S. Postal Service leased the space. Nearby residents, just four weeks removed from Christmas and the steady flow of letters and packages its brings, are restless. "This is ridiculous. To have a town without a post office is bad," Pat Hamil said on a recent dreary afternoon. "We seem to be a town people forget about." Hamil has lived in Croydon for all of her 65 years. Regular mail service has been uninterrupted, she said, with carriers filling her mail box. But she and her neighbors, fed up with having to drive to nearby Bensalem to buy stamps or mail packages, are demanding answers. Their plight has caught the attention of the recently re-elected U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.), who penned a letter of complaint to Postmaster General Megan J. Brennan on Nov. 13. "In the nearly three months that members of the community have waited, we have not received information on when, or even if, the post office will reopen," Fitzpatrick wrote. "As I'm sure you can understand, the interruption of service, and the limited resources deployed by USPS to mitigate this interruption, have caused challenges to many of Croydon's residents." On Aug. 22., a late-night fire raged through the Croydon Center, according to officials in Bristol Township. Kevin Dippolito, the township's fire marshal, said the cause of the blaze remains undetermined, and it is still unclear if it was set. What is known is its origin point, between the door to the post office and an adjacent coin laundry in the aging strip mall on Bristol Pike just east of the Neshaminy Creek. Dippolito said the fire "heavily damaged" the laundry, completely gutting its attic. The post office sustained only moderate damage, he said, mostly from smoke. The township's investigation into the fire is now closed, pending further information, he added. Raymond Daiutolo Sr., a regional spokesman for the Postal Service, declined to say when the post office might re-open. He said the Postal Service is working with the owner of Croydon Center, who recently completed the necessary paperwork and is making arrangements for repairs. David Fiori, the strip mall's owner, did not return multiple requests for comment. Daiutolo echoed the fire marshal in saying the damage to the post office was "moderate." He said the Postal Service attempted to use a temporary mobile station after the fire as it often does in cases where post offices are closed but was unable to because of safety concerns at the site. The damaged post office was "unsafe for employees to enter and exit," he said. The laundry, post office, and Sarappo's, a family-run pizzeria, remain shuttered. The post office's debris-strewn floor can be seen behind its plate-glass window, which bears a sign directing customers to pick up mail at the Bensalem post office, two miles away, "until further notice." Rhonda Ryan knows firsthand how vital the post office is to Croydon she spent eight years behind its counter. These days, she's on the other side, usually to drop off packages for her budding eBay business. "They say, 'Oh, the Bensalem office is so close,' but you have to understand something," she said. "Here, a lot of people walk, ride their bikes, or are disabled and use motorized scooters. It's much harder to get to Bensalem." It's certainly not a viable option for Vickie Andress. With two bad knees, she's under doctor's orders to limit her walking and avoid standing for more than 20 minutes at a time. The influx of people to the Bensalem post office already a busy hub has her standing in lines 10 to 15 people deep just to pay her utility bills "the old-fashioned way." "People like me are screwed," Andress, 57, said. "Going to Bensalem is a pain, and going to Levittown is even worse." She implored the Postal Service to find a solution, especially as she gets ready to send holiday packages out to her family, scattered throughout Pennsylvania. "Get us a temporary office, get it up and running, or move to another building," she said. "Do something to help us people in Croydon." MELBOURNE, Australia, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Clean TeQ Holdings Limited (Clean TeQ or Company) (ASX/TSX:CLQ; OTCQX:CTEQF) announces the results of voting by shareholders during the companys Annual General Meeting held on 22 November 2018. The following information is provided in accordance with section 251AA(2) of Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) Resolution Details Results Resolution Resolution Type Votes For Votes Against Votes Abstained/Excluded* Result 1 Adoption of Remuneration Report Ordinary 165,757,845 73.44 % 59,962,615 26.56 % 1,450,112 - Carried** 2 Election of Ms Judith Downes as a Director of the Company Ordinary 428,581,418 96.30 % 16,466,939 3.70 % 352,353 - Carried 3 Re-election of Mr Robert Freidland as a Director of the Company Ordinary 364,188,059 81.83 % 80,849,379 18.17 % 363,273 - Carried 4 Re-election of Mr Ian Knight as a Director of the Company Ordinary 411,500,913 92.81 % 31,874,099 7.19 % 378,859 - Carried 5 Approval to Issue 100,757 Performance Rights to Mr Sam Riggall Ordinary 412,399,907 99.20 % 3,344,523 0.80 % 28,009,441 - Carried 6 Approval to Issue 142,341 Performance Rights to Mr Sam Riggall Ordinary 410,698,001 98.79 % 5,040,097 1.21 % 28,015,773 - Carried 7 Approval to Issue 78,192 Shares to Mr Sam Riggall Ordinary 368,835,962 88.37 % 48,528,232 11.63 % 28,036,516 - Carried *Votes cast by a person who abstains on an item are not counted in calculating the required majority on a poll. **Resolution 1 was passed as on ordinary resolution however a first strike has been noted. Details of votes on all matters of business considered at the Annual General Meeting will be available in the companys report of voting results filed on SEDAR (www.sedar.com). For more information, please contact: Richard Glass, Investor Relations (Australia) +61 3 9797 6781 Evan Young, Investor Relations (North America) +1 647 808 2141 About Clean TeQ Holdings Limited (ASX/TSX: CLQ) Based in Melbourne, Australia, Clean TeQ is a global leader in metals recovery and industrial water treatment through the application of its proprietary Clean-iX continuous ion exchange technology. For more information about Clean TeQ please visit the Companys website www.cleanteq.com . About the Clean TeQ Sunrise Project Clean TeQ is the 100% owner of the Clean TeQ Sunrise Project, located in New South Wales. Clean TeQ Sunrise is one of the largest cobalt deposits outside of Africa, and one of the largest and highest-grade accumulations of scandium ever discovered. About Clean TeQ Water Through its wholly owned subsidiary Clean TeQ Water, Clean TeQ is also providing innovative wastewater treatment solutions for removing hardness, desalination, nutrient removal, zero liquid discharge. The sectors of focus include municipal wastewater, surface water, industrial waste water and mining waste water. For more information about Clean TeQ Water please visit www.cleanteqwater.com. Collingdale Mayor Frank Kelly, seen here in 2012, died Thursday at 83. Kelly was the longest-serving municipal executive in Pennsylvania history. Read more A reporter once asked Frank C. Kelly what motivated him to keep coming back as the mayor of Collingdale, a tiny, tidy borough of about 9,000 people in eastern Delaware County. "I've been here all my life," Mr. Kelly replied at that time, 42 years into a career as Pennsylvania's longest-serving municipal executive. "I know everybody in town. I like helping people." Collingdale was his life, and his life's work was to serve it and its people. On Thursday, Nov. 22, after nearly five decades at the helm of his hometown, Mr. Kelly died at 84 from complications related to ongoing cardiac issues. He died at home after sharing Thanksgiving dinner with his family. The lifelong Republican was a month away from ending the first year of his 12th consecutive four-year term as mayor. "He was always straight to the point with everyone sometimes you liked it, sometimes you didn't," said John Hewlings, Collingdale's borough manager and a close friend of Mr. Kelly's. "But he always had what he thought was the best of the borough in his mind. And I think that was where he got his support. "Everyone thought his whole life was dedicated to Collingdale," Hewlings added. Longtime friends say Mr. Kelly's health had declined since January, when he lost Janet, his wife of 61 years. But even as he battled heart issues and diabetes, Mr. Kelly was a man about town, Hewlings said. The mayor made regular trips to borough hall, the former location of the high school where he met his wife, and a building he fought to save from demolition. "There wasn't an event that took place that he wasn't somehow involved in organizing. It was just the way he was," Hewlings said. "Everything centered around him." The son of a shipyard worker, Mr. Kelly spent his life in Collingdale aside from two years with the Army at Fort Gordon, Ga. After high school, Mr. Kelly took a job as a lineman for Philadelphia Electric Co. He put in 41 years at Peco, working his way up from climbing poles to overseeing tree-trimming work as a supervisor. Later, Mr. Kelly left to take a job at the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority, a position he stepped away from in 2011 after heart surgery. His political career had a humble start, with an appointment to the Darby Creek Joint Sewer Authority. Mr. Kelly later won a seat on the borough council, and clinched his first mayoral victory in 1970. That was around the time he met Kathleen Munro through a knock on her door as Collingdale's unofficial welcoming committee. She lamented Mr. Kelly's passing as "a tough loss for Collingdale and the end of an era." "He went to every funeral, he knew everybody's name, he went to everyone's home," said Munro, president of the borough council. "He was just hands-on, and that's why we trusted him to be mayor all these years." In 2012, the state legislature officially recognized his longevity as mayor, cementing his name in the annals of Pennsylvania history. It was an achievement won through 12 successful campaigns. But Mr. Kelly hadn't had serious competition for his seat since the early 1990s, when he elbowed past a challenger by a few hundred votes. "He was a natural leader, because he believed in Collingdale," said Bob Adams, who served 38 years on the borough's police department, the last 10 of those as chief. "And if you needed something, he was there. He made it his mission to help." Mr. Kelly was "like a second father" to Adams, the man who first hired him as a part-time officer and was there at every step of his career afterward. When a drunk driver hit Adams during a late-night shift, Mr. Kelly was at his hospital bedside, waiting for him to open his eyes. "He went above and beyond for the people in this town," Adams said. "There's no doubt about it, he was 'Mr. Collingdale.'" That reputation stretched beyond the few square miles Collingdale occupies. Andy Reilly, who stepped down this week after nine years as the head of the Delaware County Republican Party, said Mr. Kelly was "the quintessential small-town mayor." "I don't know that he had a single enemy, and regardless of people's party affiliations or allegiance, he'll be missed greatly," Reilly said. "He was a mayor that really cared deeply about his town and the lives of the people in the town." His sentiments were echoed by John McBlain, who frequently worked with Mr. Kelly as the head of the Delaware County Council. "Frank Kelly was omnipresent. He was Collingdale," McBlain said. "I would hate to be the person to follow him It'd be like following Sinatra on a bill." Mr. Kelly is survived by children Jeannette Morris, Frank Kelly, Colleen Ruggear, Kathleen Ruggear, Patrick Kelly, and Kristine Olley; 17 grandchildren; and 15 great-grandchildren. A son, Brian, died earlier. A viewing will be from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 29, and 9 to 10 a.m. Friday, Nov. 30, at St. Joseph's Church, 500 Woodlawn Ave., Collingdale, followed by a Funeral Mass at 10. Burial will be in SS. Peter and Paul Cemetery, Marple Township. Go ahead, we dare you. That's what schools all across Philadelphia public, charter, private schools, and religious schools say to parents when it comes time to apply for admission for the coming school year. I am the executive director of Educational Opportunities for Families (EOF), and that's what we learned from more than 100 hours of outreach to parents and other stakeholders as EOF developed its latest report, "Finding a Seat: How Families Navigate the School Application and Acceptance Process in Philadelphia." No matter what choice parents make in selecting a K-12 school in Philadelphia, they tell us that the process is often a nightmare of different deadlines, different acceptance dates, and indifferent support from the schools themselves. For parents, especially those in poverty, it feels like schools literally defy them to make the best choices for their children's education. They tell us the system caters to the needs of the schools instead of the families they serve. And it is incredibly inefficient, because it incentivizes parents to "game" the system by applying to multiple schools and holding onto multiple acceptances until they hear from all of their selections. All of which really hurts public schools, where enrollment for the coming year often isn't known until school starts, which forces schools to engage in a costly "leveling" process that creates upheaval and inconsistent instruction across the city. Let's simplify the process so that parents and families can make the best decisions for their children regardless of which schools they ultimately choose. We can look to other cities as a guide. In Chicago, Indianapolis, Camden, and Washington, the enrollment process has benefited from common-sense reforms. Let's do the same in Philadelphia, and here's how to start: Let's align all the deadlines for applying to K-12 schools in Philadelphia, instead of forcing parents to meet different deadlines of district, charter, private, and religious schools. Let's create one application form that can be used at every school in the city. In other words, let's do what the great majority of colleges and universities do across the country use a "common app" that makes life easier for everyone. Just as important, let's devote resources to helping families especially poor families figure out the application process so that they can make informed choices for their children. Some other common-sense solutions that would help: School leaders across the city should develop a single online portal where families can access information about individual schools, which would dramatically improve parents' ability to assess their choices. And the application process should be integrated into the school curriculum, so that, for example, children and families begin preparing in sixth or seventh grade for the process of selecting the right high school during the eighth grade. Parents, especially those in poverty, tell us over and over again that they didn't have the information or resources to find a better option. And as a result, their children too often are trapped in failing schools. Let's make it easier for them. No matter what school a child attends at EOF, we don't care whether the choice is district or charter public schools, private or parochial schools let's give parents the tools to make the best possible decision. All of us win when they do. Sylvia P. Simms is executive director of Educational Opportunities for Families and a former member of the School Reform Commission. ssimms@eofphilly.org For someone trying to demonstrate that the judiciary is not political, getting into a political fight with the president sure is a funny way to do it. After President Trump called a judge who ruled against him an "Obama judge," Chief Justice John Roberts issued an extraordinary public rebuke of the president, declaring in statement, "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges." Roberts was not only wrong to speak out, but also his claim that there are no Obama judges or Trump judges was wrong. If we do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, then why did Senate Republicans block President Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia in the final year of Obama's term? And why did Democrats filibuster Trump's nominee, Neil Gorsuch, to fill Scalia's seat? Even Roberts' fellow justices know there is a difference. If there were no Obama judges or Trump judges, then why did Anthony Kennedy wait for Trump's election to announce his retirement? And why doesn't Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just retire now and let Trump nominate her replacement? Because they both want a president who would appoint a successor who shares their judicial philosophy. (And, lo and behold, Trump appointed a former Kennedy clerk, Brett Kavanaugh, to succeed him.) The American people know that Roberts is wrong. In the 2016 election, exit polls showed that 70 percent of voters said Supreme Court appointments were either the most important or an important factor in deciding their vote. And polls show that Republicans expanded their Senate majority in 2018 in large part because conservative voters were angered over the left's brutal campaign of character assassination against Kavanaugh. Roberts is correct that we should not have "Trump judges" or "Obama judges." It would be better for the country if every judge, regardless of which president nominated him or her, strictly interpreted our laws and the Constitution. But the reality is that not all do. While conservative presidents tend to nominate judges who exercise a philosophy of judicial restraint follow our laws as written liberal presidents tend to nominate judicial activists who legislate from the bench and shape the law to reach their preferred outcomes. The left believes in a "living Constitution," which can be interpreted to mean whatever they want it to mean without being formally amended. Democratic presidents have been much more successful than Republicans in nominating judges who hew to their judicial philosophy. Over the past three decades, nearly half of all Republican Supreme Court nominees have either become "swing votes" (Sandra Day O'Connor, Kennedy) or defected to the court's liberal bloc entirely (David Souter). Even Roberts has joined the court's liberal bloc at key times, abandoning his judicial philosophy that judges should not legislate from the bench to provide the swing vote to uphold Obamacare. By contrast, not one liberal justice during the past three decades has defected to the conservative bloc or turned into a regular swing vote. What is true of the Supreme Court applies even more to the appellate courts. Trump is right, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a disgrace. This is the court that ruled that the phrase under God in the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional, that the Second Amendment doesn't recognize an individual right to bear concealed arms, and that bans on assisted suicide are unconstitutional. This is why it is so important that Trump has nominated, and the Senate has confirmed, a record number of district and circuit court judges and why liberals are aghast at the pace of Trump's judicial confirmations. As former Hillary Clinton adviser Ronald Klain complained, "Trump's judicial nominees will be deciding the scope of our civil liberties and the shape of civil rights laws in the year 2050 and beyond." Everyone, left and right, knows that Roberts is wrong. We do have an independent judiciary. Judges are not beholden to any president, including the one who appoints them. The judiciary plays a key role in our system of checks and balances. "Trump judges" should rule against Trump when he is wrong. That is why it is so important for the chief justice to stay above politics. Roberts is right that our "independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for." Rolling around in the rhetorical mud with Trump is not just bad form; it also undermines the very judicial independence Roberts is seeking to uphold. Marc Thiessen writes a twice-weekly column for the Washington 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 What would James Madison make of American democracy today? That's the question the National Constitution Center will ask on Nov. 28 at a series of public panels cohosted by the Atlantic magazine. Called The Constitution in Crisis: What Would the Founders Say?, the panels will convene America's leading journalists as well as America's leading scholars of James Madison known as the Madisonian Constitution for All Commission, a group that arose from a conversation Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic and I had last year about the state of American democracy. They are a remarkable group, and the papers are illuminating. To give a preview: Colleen Sheehan of Villanova University argues that the growth in the power of the executive, courts, and administrative agencies, and a decline in the power of Congress and the states, has resulted in "the displacement of the views of ordinary American citizens," which poses "much more of a risk to the present stability and health of the regime than the risk of majority faction." Daniel Stid of the Hewlett Foundation proposes solutions for reviving a Madisonian Congress one more empowered to address problems through legislation including depolarizing our politics with reforms like rank choice voting. And Sai Prakash of the University of Virginia explores the growth of the imperial presidency in ways that would have alarmed Madison, driven by four factors: "the advent of the popular mandate; the influence of political parties; the willingness of Congress to fund a vast bureaucracy; and the ascent of living constitutionalism." These scholars will be joined by three of America's top journalists, who come from diverse perspectives but share the same last name: Jonah Goldberg, Michelle Goldberg, and Jeffrey Goldberg. All have thought hard about the crisis in American democracy. Jonah Goldberg has described how Congress, instead of exercising its constitutional responsibilities to check the president and to deliberate policy, is instead operating like a "parliament of pundits." Michelle Goldberg, in her debut column for the New York Times, wrote about how, contrary to Madison's wishes, demographic changes have created an America ruled by the "tyranny of the minority." And in his introduction to the Atlantic special issue on the crisis of democracy, Jeffrey Goldberg emphasizes the way that tribalism as well as technology is threatening Madisonian ideals. The evening will also feature a keynote conversation with Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.). Along with Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah), Coons is cochair of a national commission that the National Constitution Center has convened of American thought leaders from the left and the right. Coons, a cochair of the Madisonian Constitution for All Commission, has pledged to revive Madisonian deliberation in a polarized Senate. As his recent conversation with Sen. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) at the Atlantic/National Constitution Center panel in Washington showed, he believes that by engaging in face-to-face deliberation, and putting the institutional interests of the Senate above immediate partisan gain, senators of both parties can further the compromise and civil dialogue that Madison thought was necessary for reason to prevail. All of the participants in the Madisonian conversations on Wednesday recognize that civic education is key to resurrecting Madisonian reason in an impetuous world. That's why all citizens have an obligation to educate themselves about the basic principles of the Constitution and the rule of law, in order to base their judgments on reason rather than passion. Please join us on Wednesday evening for an illuminating program about how American democracy is falling short of Madisonian ideals and how they can be resurrected today. Jeffrey Rosen is president & CEO of the National Constitution Center. He will be moderating Wednesday's program at the National Constitution Center on The Constitution in Crisis: What Would the Founders Say? Washington DC: United States President Donald Trump threatened to shut the US border with Mexico for an undisclosed period of time. Fox News stated that while talking to reporters in Florida, Trump asserted that if his administration concludes that its southern ally has lost "control" on its side, the borders will be closed. This comes after thousands of migrants and refugees from Central America have reached the border town of Tijuana seeking asylum in the US. He further revealed that he has given a nod to thousands of active-duty troops he sent to the border before the November 6 midterm elections to use lethal force against the migrants if needed. Earlier this week, a United States federal judge nullified the President Donald Trump-led administration`s decision of refusing asylum to immigrants who enter the US mainland from Central America. The Trump administration had on November 9 sanctioned a proclamation, saying that none of the immigrants entering the US from the southern border will be eligible for asylum. His order came when the first waves of immigrants had started entering the US. New Delhi: Senior Congress leader CP Joshi on Friday apologised for his controversial remarks that 'only Brahmins know and can talk about Hinduism'. "Respecting the ideals of the Congress and the sentiments of the party workers, I express remorse for my statement if it caused any hurt to the sentiments of any section of the society," he said in a brief statement. Dr. C.P. Joshi (@drcpjoshi) November 23, 2018 The apology came shortly after Congress president Rahul Gandhi slammed Joshi saying that the latter's comment is against the values of the grand old party. He further said that his party leaders should not give statements which can hurt sentiments of any section. On Thursday, a video of Joshi surfaced in which he was heard saying that only pandits and brahmins knew about Hinduism and were learned enough to speak about it. "Does anyone know what is the caste of Uma Bharti? What is the caste of Sadhvi Ritambhara? In this country, if anyone knows about religion, it is the pandits and the brahmins," he said. Joshi was speaking at an event in Rajasthan's Nathdwara. The state is going to polls in a single phase on December 7 while the counting is scheduled to be held on December 11. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah on Friday announced that Narendra Modi will become the Prime Minister in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Shah said that PM Modi is not a brand but a leader whom the people of the country has accepted with all their heart. In an exclusive interview to Zee News in the national capital, Shah affirmed that the saffron party will come back to power with a majority. He said that it is the decision of the people that want the Modi government in power. READ | Highlights: No need for ordinance on Ram temple for now, Congress delaying the case, says Amit Shah "We are confident that BJP will win elections. The results of Assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh will be a combination of work done by Narendra Modi government and respective state governments," said Shah. In a jibe to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Shah said that it is the people who will decide the government and not those in power. "In 2019, the BJP is definitely going to win more than 23 seats in West Bengal," reiterated Shah. Shah also highlighted that BJP's central government has provided something or other to more than 2 crore households in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. Speaking on the issue of Ram Mandir, Shah said that if the Supreme Court has decided to hear the case in January, there is no need for an ordinance as of now. The senior BJP leader said that the prices of fuel and dollar are coming down gradually. "Congress governments have in the past even removed RBI chiefs, there is no conflict between the Modi government and Reserve Bank of India (RBI)," said Shah. On the issue of recent political development in Jammu and Kashmir, where the state Assembly was dissolved by Governor Satya Pal Malik soon after PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti declared that she would stake claim to form government with the support of National Conference and Congress, the BJP president alleged that the three parties were trying to mislead people. I had a long interaction with His Holiness Jagadguru Shankaracharya Shankara Vijeyendra Saraswathi ji on 14.11.2018. I was called by His Holiness on the same day three times and given a mandate. The mandate is a long one. I earnestly pray to God to endow me with adequate strength to accomplish the same. The previous occasion I met his Holiness was on 30.11.2013. On that occasion too, he had ordained me an endeavour which I could accomplish. Incidentally, that was my first meeting with him. It was sheer coincidence that the meeting took place. There is a relevance of this column, Suraksha Mani, here too. In 2011-12, I was undergoing a lot of stress because of the stand I had taken in my tenure in the Ministry of Home Affairs. Incidentally, my family is devotee of His Holiness Jagadguru of Sringeri Sharda Peeth Shankaracharya. In the said context, it is brought out that in the south, each family has a kula guru, meaning Teacher of the Clan, from either of the two mutts, and our kula guru was His Holiness Jagadguru Sringeri Sankaracharya. But obeisance is paid to both the gurus. When I was going through a bad phase Mr R (who asked me not to name him), a person closely associated with Kanchipuram Mutt, counselled me to face it. In that context, he recalled the travails of our Jagadguru His Holiness Jayendra Saraswathi. I asked him whether he could get the details of the case in the sense that the narrative of the case, especially the scientific evidence. This I knew was the clincher as I had monitored several cases besides being trained in law and with my experience in the administration, I felt I would be able to see through. After minutely perusing the scientific evidence and other relevant reports, I found a small gap which could open the entire narrative of manufacturing and foisting of a false case on His Holiness Jagadguru Shankaracharya Shri Jayendra Saraswathi Ji. I confided my findings with Mr R. He suggested I put it in a white paper, which I did and handed over to him and forgot about it. With such experienced and erudite lawyers representing His Holiness, I do not know the worth, value or contribution of my observation to the honourable acquittal of His Holiness Jagadguru Jayendra Saraswathi ji. I also do not want to take any undue credit for this. But this is captured because of how some political forces sought to malign the towering Jagadguru and the travails he had to go through on this account. It is a matter of record that His Holiness Jagadguru Jayendra Saraswathi was acquitted honourably in November 2013. I received a call to join and meet him at Tirupati on 27-28.11.2013, where he would be visiting directly from the place of his incarceration. Accordingly, I went to Tirupati and called on him. He suggested that I accompany him during the darshan of Lord Srinivasa. During that time, even amongst the milling crowd of followers he found a few magic moments and suggested that I should go to Kanchipuram, the headquarters of the mutt on 30.11.2013, as he would be arriving there on that day. He also indicated that I should not flinch from standing up for truth. Incidentally, no friend or colleague during 2013 had given me this type of warm words which His Holiness gave me. In those days, I was ostracised in the entire Central Secretariat, and no friend or colleague had said these warm words to me. My resolve to stand for the truth multiplied on that day and I got strength from these words to face up to what all I faced in the next six months which are all well documented in my book. Hence, after returning to Chennai I proceeded to Kanchipuram, about 70 km away on the day HH was returning and sought his blessings. That is the connection of Suraksha Mani and the Kanchipuram Mutt. The current His Holiness has also ordained me to carry out the mission in the same direction. The falsehood and myth being propagated against Sanatana Dharma is to be countered in a peaceful, brave and inclusive manner. Violence and vitiation that is happening in the name of terror, religion, militancy, left-wing extremism is to be countered in a steadfast manner. At the growing stage, children should be explained the virtues of Sanatana Dharma so that they do not go astray. The scientific basis of Sandhyavandanam and other procedures should be reinvented and reinforced. Our rich traditions and heritage should not be lost. The politicisation of religion should be resisted. Emancipated and involved Sanatana Dharma, meaning Universal Order, should be disseminated and promoted with sound reasoning. Small steps have been taken by Kanchipuram Mutt through Vedal, a youth hostel near Chennai, and Grihini a girls' hostel in Tirupati, where modern, formal education in the field of their interest can be pursued along with practising virtues of peaceful living. They are also attached with 10 schools for different co-curricular activities like Vedas, Nadaswara, Agama, Sampradaya, etc. He also suggested that mutual exposure to youth from North India to South Indian culture and South India to North Indian culture, including temple, arts, tradition, etc, be taken up as an endeavour. I know to meet the expectations to His Holiness is a task. My friends who accompanied me in this meeting have already pledged their full support. I also appeal to my readers to support me in this. (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL.) New Delhi: Industry body COAI on Thursday sought urgent relief measures for the troubled telecom sector, entailing debt restructuring, cut in levies like licence fee and spectrum charges, and release of GST input tax credit locked up with the government. The COAI's comments assume significance given that hectic parleys continue between the government and industry over liquidity concerns in telecom sector, with Vodafone Idea Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla Thursday holding another round of discussion with Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan. "We have been talking all along about the stress in the industry...There is a need for immediate measures, including debt restructuring with longer duration for re-payment and lower rates, reduction in licence fee, spectrum usage charges and other levies," Cellular Operators' Association of India (COAI) Director General Rajan Mathews told PTI. The industry is also looking for refund of excess credit held up in GST, he said. Mathews noted that these measures could help ease the liquidity situation on an immediate basis, and added that a long term relief package for telecom sector could follow subsequently. Billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla, head of India's biggest telecom company has sent an SOS to the government for deferring statutory payments in a sector that is not generating enough cash to even service loans. The Vodafone Idea Chief had also expressed concern over Rs 30,000 crore that is locked up on account of GST payment under 'reverse charge mechanism'. Over the past few years, India's telecom market had become cut-throat where nearly a dozen players jostled for market share, pummelling the call rates to amongst the lowest in the world. Competition has only intensified since 2016, when Reliance Jio Infocomm, owned by India's richest man Mukesh Ambani, stormed into the market and offered free calls and dirt cheap data. This triggered consolidation in the industry. Earlier this month, at its maiden earnings announcement as a joint entity, Vodafone Idea reported a consolidated loss of Rs 4,973 crore for the September quarter and announced a fund infusion of Rs 25,000 crore to help it take on brutal competition. Bharti Airtel too has reported a drop in consolidated net profit for the 10th straight quarter as losses on mainstay India business widened due to pricing pressure from aggressive competition. Overall, its consolidated net profit of Rs 118.8 crore in July-September represented a drop of about 65 percent from Rs 343 crore in the year-ago period. Airtel's loss from India operations (before exceptional items) mounted to Rs 1,646.4 crore in the second quarter of the current fiscal compared to about Rs 940 crore in the preceding three-month period. In fact, Moody's Investors Service recently placed Bharti Airtel's rating on review for downgrade, following low levels of profitability and expectation of weak cash flow. The Pune Police on Friday moved an application in Sessions court to seek an extension of 90 days to file chargesheet against four accused in Bhima Koregaon case. The Pune police asked extension for filing a chargesheet against Sudha Bharadwaj, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves and Varavara Rao, news agency ANI reported. The last date for filing the chargesheet is November 25 while the date fixed for hearing in the court is November 26, ANI reported. Earlier on Thursday, the Bombay High Court on Thursday extended interim protection to activists Gautam Navlakha, Anand Teltumbde and Stan Swamy. The court has ordered an interim protection to the activists till December 14. A bench of Justices BP Dharamadhikari and Sarang Kotwal extended the interim protection and also asked the Pune police to file an affidavit of its probe in the case by December 5. The bench's direction came after the state's counsel, additional government pleader Aruna Pai opposed a plea filed by Navlakha seeking that the FIR in the case against him be quashed. The court had slammed Pai asking her to bring the relevant materials which they want to produce before the court by December 4. Activist Varavara Rao, who under house arrest in connection with Bhima Koregaon case, was on November 18 sent to police custody till November 26 by Pune Sessions Court. Rao was arrested by Pune police from his residence in Hyderabad on Saturday after his house arrest ended on November 17. He was under house arrest since August for having alleged links with CBI (Maoist) in connection with Bhima Koregaon violence. In August, police arrested five left-wing activists, after raiding their homes in several states for suspected Maoist links over the Elgar Parishad meeting which was held a day before the violence. The police raided the homes of the activists and lawyers from five states - Varavara Rao in Hyderabad, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira in Mumbai, Bharadwaj in Faridabad and Gautam Navalakha in Delhi. In a media briefing, the police had released details of seized letters related to five activists arrested in June in connection with the Bhima Koregaon violence. The police also claimed they have "conclusive proof" to link Left-wing activists arrested in June and this week to Maoists, saying one of them spoke of a "Rajiv Gandhi-type event to end Modi-raj". English German Curetis Accelerates 510(k) Submission Preparation for Unyvero LRT in BAL Specimen Based on Positive FDA Feedback U.S. FDA and Curetis agree on 510(k) requirements for clearing BAL as additional sample type for Unyvero LRT U.S. commercial roll-out gaining traction, with first dozen Unyvero Analyzers placed and first commercial evaluation agreements signed Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Holzgerlingen, Germany, and San Diego, USA, November 23, 2018, 07:00 am CET - Curetis N.V. (the "Company" and, together with its subsidiaries, "Curetis"), a developer of next-level molecular diagnostic solutions, today announced that following a recent meeting, the U.S. FDA has confirmed the suitability of the 510(k) clearance pathway for Curetis Unyvero LRT Application Cartridge specifically optimized for the detection of microbial pathogens in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) samples. The U.S. FDA confirmed that data required for the submission can largely be based on clinical samples previously collected during the original Curetis U.S. FDA trial for the Unyvero LRT Application Cartridge. Overall, the Company believes that U.S. FDA feedback has substantially de-risked the planned submission of the Unyvero LRT Application Cartridge for BAL and that the requirements agreed upon with the Agency should allow Curetis to accelerate generating the required data and prepare for an early submission, with an expected clearance decision in 2019. BAL is another common method for the diagnosis of lower respiratory tract infections, in which the lower airways are flushed with saline solution. The lavage fluid is then analyzed for the presence of pathogens. Sensitivity of the Unyvero LRT Application Cartridge for BAL has been further optimized for this more diluted sample type. It is estimated that half of the samples obtained for the diagnosis of lower respiratory tract infections are BALs, and Curetis believes that a clearance for this additional sample type would increase the total addressable market for the Unyvero LRT Application Cartridge in the U.S. accordingly. As part of the 510(k) submission, Curetis also plans to include data on an assay for one additional pathogen, Pneumocystis jirovecii. This fungus is particularly relevant in lower respiratory tract infections in patients with compromised immune status, such as transplant recipients or AIDS patients. The Company also reported that the U.S. commercial roll-out of the Unyvero LRT Application Cartridge for tracheal aspirates launched in June 2018 is gaining traction. Since the launch, the U.S. commercial team has qualified about 140 accounts in the top 1,000 hospitals initially targeted with about 80 being deeply vetted. Several accounts have entered into clinical and commercial evaluation agreements and with a dozen Unyvero Analyzers placed beyond FDA trial sites have since then started the on-site evaluation of the Unyvero System and LRT Application Cartridge. These and many further of these vetted accounts are expected to be converted to commercial accounts over the next several quarters with about a dozen accounts constituting near-term opportunities currently at the contract negotiation stage. These initial accounts on average are expected to have Unyvero LRT cartridge volumes of 700 to 800 annually once they become commercial customers with some accounts having significantly higher total potential annual testing volumes. The Company expects to provide an update on target placement numbers for Unyvero Analyzers in the U.S. market around the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in early 2019. We are very pleased with the feedback we received during our recent meeting with the FDA, said Johannes Bacher, COO of Curetis. With the confirmation of the 510(k) regulatory pathway and valuable feedback on the data requirements, we have considerably de-risked this commercially important extension of Unyvero LRT utility to bronchoalveolar lavage samples. Our commercial campaign for introducing Unyvero LRT in the U.S. market is gaining momentum, with several accounts having entered into commercial evaluation agreements and a strong pipeline of further near-term commercial opportunities, commented Chris Emery, CEO & President of Curetis USA Inc. Once the addition of BAL specimen usage is cleared by the FDA, the Unyvero LRT Application Cartridge for use with these samples will strengthen our position as one of the first movers in syndromic testing for lower respiratory tract infections. ### About Curetis Curetis N.V.s (Euronext: CURE) goal is to become a leading provider of innovative solutions for molecular microbiology diagnostics designed to address the global challenge of detecting severe infectious diseases and identifying antibiotic resistances in hospitalized patients. Curetis Unyvero System is a versatile, fast and highly automated molecular diagnostic platform for easy-to-use, cartridge-based solutions for the comprehensive and rapid detection of pathogens and antimicrobial resistance markers in a range of severe infectious disease indications. Results are available within hours, a process that can take days or even weeks if performed with standard diagnostic procedures, thereby facilitating improved patient outcomes, stringent antibiotic stewardship and health-economic benefits. Unyvero in vitro diagnostic (IVD) products are marketed in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the U.S. Curetis wholly owned subsidiary Ares Genetics GmbH is developing next-generation solutions for infectious disease diagnostics and therapeutics. The ARES Technology Platform combines what the Company believes to be the most comprehensive database worldwide on the genetics of antimicrobial resistances, ARESdb, with advanced bioinformatics and artificial intelligence. For further information, please visit www.curetis.com and www.ares-genetics.com . Legal Disclaimer This document constitutes neither an offer to buy nor to subscribe securities and neither this document nor any part of it should form the basis of any investment decision in Curetis. The information contained in this press release has been carefully prepared. However, Curetis bears and assumes no liability of whatever kind for the correctness and completeness of the information provided herein. Curetis does not assume an obligation of whatever kind to update or correct information contained in this press release whether as a result of new information, future events or for other reasons. This press release includes statements that are, or may be deemed to be, forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology, including the terms believes, estimates, anticipates, expects, intends, may, will, or should, and include statements Curetis makes concerning the intended results of its strategy. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and readers are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. Curetis actual results may differ materially from those predicted by the forward-looking statements. Curetis undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking statements, except as may be required by law. Contact Details Curetis GmbH Max-Eyth-Str. 42 71088 Holzgerlingen, Germany Tel. +49 7031 49195-10 pr@curetis.com or ir@curetis.com www.curetis.com International Media & Investor Inquiries akampion Dr. Ludger Wess / Ines-Regina Buth Managing Partners info(@)akampion.com Tel. +49 40 88 16 59 64 Tel. +49 30 23 63 27 68 U.S. Media & Investor Inquiries The Ruth Group Lee Roth lroth@theruthgroup.com Tel. +1 646 536 7012 Attachment The health condition of Bihar's former chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav has shown signs of improvement, the hospital authorities said on Friday. The RJD chief has been undergoing treatment at Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in Ranchi, Jharkhand. In a statement to news agency ANI, Dr Umesh Yadav of RIMS explained that the health of the RJD chief is much better than it was two days ago. "There is an improvement in his health. Blood reports are also slowly normalising. Health seems normal now, as compared to two days ago," said Dr Umesh Yadav. On November 18, the doctor attending Lalu Yadav at RIMS had informed his health condition had deteriorated due to a festering boil on his right leg. Lalu is serving jail term in fodder scam cases. Convicted in the Rs 900-crore fodder scam, the RJD chief surrendered before a special CBI court in late August, following the Jharkhand High Court's refusal to extend his bail on medical grounds. He was admitted to the RIMS and later shifted to its paying ward after he complained that he could not sleep properly due to barking dogs and mosquito menace. The fodder scam is related to fraudulent withdrawal of government funds from the treasuries of various districts of undivided Bihar in the 1990s when RJD was in power and Yadav the chief minister then. Yadav was in Ranchi jail since December last year in fodder scam cases. The Jharkhand High Court had provided him bail first for specialised treatment in hospitals in various states and again in July to attend the wedding of his elder son Tej Pratap Yadav in Patna. Tej Pratap, however, has filed a divorce suit against his wife Aishwarya Rai within less than six months of tying the knot. The petition is scheduled to come up for hearing on November 29. The development has caused stress to Prasad, taking a toll on his ailing condition, sources said. Former President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday expressed concern over rising intolerance and violation of human rights, coupled with a widening gulf between the rich and poor with top one per cent rich pocketing the lion's share of country's wealth. He was speaking at the inauguration of the two-day national conference on "Towards Peace, Harmony and Happiness: Transition to Transformation", organised by Pranab Mukherjee Foundation along with the Centre for Research for Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID). "The land which gave the world the concept of 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' and the civilisational ethos of tolerance, acceptance and forgiveness, is now in news for rising levels of intolerance, manifestations of rage and infringement of human rights," Mukherjee said. "Peace and harmony prevails when a nation celebrates pluralism, practices tolerance and promotes goodwill among diverse communities and when we purge the toxin of hatred, envy, jealousy and aggression from our everyday lives," he said. He said "happiness is higher in countries that ensure their inhabitants basic amenities and resources, greater security, autonomy and freedom as well as sufficient educational opportunities and access to information. People are manifestly happier in countries where personal freedoms are guaranteed and democracy is secured." "Regardless of economic conditions, citizens are happy in a climate of peace," Mukherjee said. Referring to the statistics, he said: If these statistics are anything to go by, we appear to be caught in a 'rising economy, receding happiness' syndrome. Our growth paradigm calls for an urgent look." Paying tributes to Guru Nanak Dev on his 549th birth anniversary, Mukherjee said given the times we are living in, it is important to recall his message of "peace and oneness". He also recalled what Chanakya said that "In the happiness of the people lies the happiness of the king" and the Rig Veda saying that we must live in one assembly, speak in one voice, with our minds in accord. In a poser he asked whether the state was functioning in conformity with the preamble of the Constitution guaranteeing socio-economic and political justice, liberty of expression and thought and the equality of status and of opportunity, Mukherjee said that on the ranking of the happiness of common man, India ranks at 113, on the index of hunger, India is at 119. Similar is the situation on the rating of malnutrition, suicides, inequality and economic freedom. Mukherjee said, "We need a State that inspires confidence among people in its ability to surmount challenges before us. We need the media and citizens, who even as they claim their rights, are equally committed to their responsibilities." Referring to the Parliament, Executive and the Judiciary, Mukherjee said in recent past these institutions have come under "severe stress" and their credibility is being questioned. He said "There is a widespread cynicism and disillusionment with the governance and the functioning of these institutions." However, former President said that to "save democracy", it was incumbent upon these institutions to "win back the trust of the people, without any delay." Former Union Minister and BJP veteran Murli Manohar Joshi in his valedictory address described as "disturbing" the merging scenarios where the "techno-economic system adopted to produce a democratic egalitarian world order has resulted in an exploitative, extremely unequal and fragmented world". "Mankind today is, therefore, unhappy, more turbulent, more violent, more fundamentalist and more alienated than ever before", Joshi said. The root cause of this "out of balance world" needs to be investigated, the veteran leader said. Singapore: A 34-year-old Indian-origin man based in Australia has been jailed for three weeks here for molesting a Singaporean cabin crew member on board a Singapore-bound flight, a media report said Friday. Paranjape Niranjan Jayant, who works for a logistics firm, pleaded guilty to two charges of molestation of the 25-year-old flight attendant in August and had one charge taken into consideration for sentencing. During the eight-hour flight from Sydney to Singapore, Jayant approached the flight attendant a few times to ask for her phone number, but she ignored him. The business class passenger on board a Scoot flight also caressed the attendant's left hip, 'The Straits Times' reported. "Subsequently, during the flight, the accused went up to approach the victim at the front galley a few times to request the victim's phone number. The victim ignored these requests," said Deputy Public Prosecutor James Chew. The attendant moved away from him and he told her she was beautiful before returning to his seat. About an hour before landing, Jayant approached the woman and molested her again, the report said. The woman immediately alerted her supervisor. She later lodged a report at the Changi Airport Terminal 2 police post. Jayant, who was unrepresented, told District Judge Lim Tse Haw that he was intoxicated when he committed the offence and added, "I can't handle my drink". He also said he was remorseful and pleaded for leniency. For each count of molestation, he could have been jailed for up to two years and fined or caned. A resident of Jammu and Kashmir's Magraypora was shot by the terrorists on Friday, metres away from Army Camp at Chhatargam, Army officials said. The person has been identified as Ishfaq Ahmad Ganie and was shot at by the terrorists in the head and leg, news agency ANI reported. The incident took place around 500-600 metres away from the Army Camp. The Quick Reaction Team rushed to the spot after they heard the sound of firing and found Ganie in a pool of blood. The team saw bullet injuries, one in the head and another in the leg, and rushed Ganie to Chhatargam hospital. He was later shifted to SMHS where he is still critical, the officials confirmed. The officials later dismissed the reports of individual lobbying grenade on Army Camp. The reports of army retaliation were termed as baseless by the army. The police have taken cognisance of the incident and have started an investigation into the matter. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Friday lashed out at the Centre for allegedly showing indifference in granting aid for the rebuilding initiatives of the state, which had suffered the deadliest flood of the century in August. Addressing a press conference here, he said the state had only received Rs 600 crore as central assistance so far from the BJP-led NDA government. "However, we might have to give back Rs 265.75 crore from the Rs 600 crore to the centre if it seeks the Minimum Support Price for the rice and kerosene ration given to us during the floods," the chief minister said. "The whole world has been compassionate towards us, but the Centre is showing gross indifference in providing assistance to the flood-hit state," Vijayan added. He said the studies conducted by the World Bank and the United Nation (UN) agencies had estimated the total loss incurred by the flood-hit Kerala to the tune of Rs 31,000 crore. But the real loss would be much more, he said. "The Central aid is inevitable for rebuilding post-flood Kerala. But not getting adequate aid from the union government is an issue before the state now," Vijayan said. The state had expected better aid when union ministers visited the flood-hit regions, he said. The chief minister said Kerala had not only been denied the central assistance it deserved, but also lost the foreign aid announced by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) due to the 'intervention' of the union government. A row had erupted in September last over the Centre's refusal to accept UAE's reported offer of Rs 700 crore to the flood-hit state. The Centre had said that India would not accept any assistance from foreign governments for Kerala in sync with an existing policy. Vijayan also pointed out that state ministers were denied permission by the NDA government to visit foreign countries to mobilise funds for the rebuilding exercise. "As per the guidelines of the National Disaster Response Fund, Kerala sought Rs 5,616 crore as aid for rehabilitation programmes. Besides this, a special package of Rs 5,000 crore was also sought," the Chief Minister said. Even this amount would be inadequate to compensate the losses the state had incurred in the devastating floods, which claimed over 490 lives, leaving a trail of destruction in August, Vijayan said. The Mother Superior General of Missionaries of Jesus, Jalandhar, has written to the Punjab police to shift the complainant and witness nuns in the Kerala nun rape case to a safer government facility, as reported by news agency ANI on Friday. The nun has also demanded specific security arrangements for nuns like night vision cameras and proper lighting on road. Jalandhar Bishop Franco Mulakkal is facing rape charges for allegedly raping a nun repeatedly. He was arrested in September but was released three weeks later on conditional bail. In her complaint to the Kottayam police in June, the nun had alleged that Mulakkal raped her at a guest house in Kuravilangad in May 2014 and later sexually exploited her on several occasions. However, Mulakkal has denied the charges. Earlier on Thursday, the Syro Malabar Church warned and sought an explanation from Father Augustine Vattoly, a priest, for extending support to the nuns who had protested against Mulakkal. The Church, in a letter to Vattoly, has warned him of "ecclesiastical" consequences for organising a dharna in front of the Secretariat at Thiruvananthapuram in support of the nuns. "I am told that such actions by a priest will seriously injure the good of the Church in public and will cause scandal among the faithful," said the letter by Mar Jacob Manathodath of Major Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Angamaly. "I strongly prohibit you from organising and attending dharna and similar activities. Disobedience will incur ecclesiastical actions as per norms of Church law," the letter said and asked Vattoly to give a written explanation for his "actions". Kerala had witnessed massive protests in September demanding the arrest of Mulakkal. Four nuns had defied the Church and joined protests even as their congregation publicly condemned them for standing up for the victim nun. However, Mulakkal was welcomed by his supporters with garlands and rose petals when he arrived in Jalandhar after he was granted conditional bail in the case. He had given up his pastoral duties of Jalandhar diocese of the Missionaries of Jesus and transferred his administrative powers to Bishop Agnelo Gracious Beijing: National Security Advisor Ajit Doval arrived in China on Friday for the 21st round of border talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during which they would also review the progress in bilateral ties since the Wuhan Summit in April. Doval and Wang will meet on Saturday in the picturesque Dujiangyan City in southwestern China's Sichuan province. They are the designated special representatives for border talks between India and China. Wang earlier this year succeeded Yang Jiechi as the state councillor, a rank higher than the foreign minister in Chinese government's hierarchy. This will be his first round of border talks. Announcing the talks on November 21, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang presented an upbeat picture of the bilateral ties saying, "We have properly managed the differences through dialogue and consultation. The border areas on the whole maintained stability." Officials maintain that this round of talks may focus more on reviewing the progress on trade and maintenance of peace at borders than movement towards a solution to the border dispute as India is headed for general elections next year. Since the first-ever "informal summit" between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan, the two countries have launched a dialogue between trade officials to enhance India's exports to China to address the over USD 51-billion trade deficit. Since then, progress has been made towards increasing India's export of rice, sugar and pharmaceuticals. This is expected to come under review at tomorrow's talks, officials said. Negotiations between the special representatives are regarded highly significant by both the countries as they cover all aspects of bilateral ties besides making efforts to resolve the vexed border dispute. The India-China border dispute covers 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control. China claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of southern Tibet. The last round, held in New Delhi between Doval and Yang, took place in the backdrop of the 73-day standoff between the two militaries at Doklam over Chinese army's plan to build a road close to India's strategic "Chicken's Neck" corridor connecting the north-eastern states. The standoff ended after the People's Liberation Army halted the plans to build the road. Officials on both sides say a lot of spadework has been done to ensure peace and tranquillity at the border, though the solution to the border dispute is still elusive even after 20 rounds of talks. Senior defence officials of India and China have held the 9th India-China Annual Defence and Security Dialogue in Beijing on November 13 after a one-year gap due to the Doklam standoff. During the meeting, both sides agreed to enhance defence exchanges and interactions. Pakistani Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has once again accused India of resorting to provocative statements and ceasefire violations. A report in Pakistan-based Dawn News said that General Bajwa made the remark during a visit to areas along Line of Control (LoC) on Wednesday. The Pakistan Army chief further said that India must adopt the course of peace and progress in the region. According to the report, Bajwa alleged that there had been surge in instances of ceasefire violations by India. This comes just days after Pakistani troops violated ceasefire along the Line of Control in Poonch sector of Jammu and Kashmir. In another instance earlier in November, India Armys Lance Naik Antony Sebastian KM was killed in cross-border firing along the LoC in Krishna Ghati sector in Poonch district. The latest remark by the Pakistan Army chief comes after country foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, said that no progress must be expected on resuming peace talks with India before the completion of 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan had also said a few days back that he believed that anti-Pakistan rhetoric raked in votes in India and hence the Indian government would possibly not engage in talks before the Lok Sabha elections are over. Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative Forum in Riyadh, the Pakistan prime minister had said that he would once again extend a hand of friendship to India after the completion of 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Talking about Pakistans efforts to mend ties with neighbours, Imran Khan said that he had extended a hand of friendship to India soon after assuming power, but the same was rebuffed by New Delhi. He had also cited that India had called off talks between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session. The Pakistan government has decided to open the Kartarpur corridor for the 550th Birth Anniversary of Baba Guru Nanak in 2019. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan will inaugurate the groundbreaking ceremony of the facilities at the crossing the Pakistan side on November 28, news agency ANI reported. Meanwhile, President of India Ram Nath Kovind and Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh will be laying the foundation stone of the Kartarpur corridor in India. The foundation stone will be laid on November 26 this year. In a landmark decision, the Cabinet on Thursday approved the building and development of the Kartarpur corridor from Gurdaspur district's Dera Baba Nanak to the International Border (IB) with Pakistan. Hours later, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Islamabad has conveyed to India its decision to open the Kartarpur corridor. The MEA sent a letter to Pakistan, urging it to construct the corridor on its side. Kartarpur Sahib is located across Ravi river in Pakistan and is about four km from the Dera Baba Nanak shrine. The corridor will facilitate pilgrims from India to visit Gurdwara Darbar Sahib at Kartarpur in Narowal District of Punjab, Pakistan. The project with all modern amenities and facilities will be implemented with the central government funding, announced Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. The decision was taken at a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to commemorate 550th Birth Anniversary of Guru Nanak Devji. The corridor will provide smooth and easy passage to pilgrims to visit the holy shrine throughout the year. "The Pakistan government will be urged to reciprocate and develop a corridor with suitable facilities in their territory," said Rajnath Singh. Highlighting on the key points for the development on the issue, Singh said that a High-Level Committee chaired by him will regularly review, monitor and oversee the implementation of activities to celebrate the anniversary of Guru Nanak. The sources said India wants the corridor to be kept open for 24 hours on all days. Taking to Twitter, Singh said, "The States/UTs also being requested to celebrate 550th Birth Anniversary of Shri Guru Nanak Devji in a befitting manner. Indian missions overseas to organize special events on the occasion. UNESCO to be requested to publish Shri Guru Nanak Devjis writings in world languages. Ministry of Railways will run a train passing through holy places associated with Shri Guru Nanak Devji." "Commemorative coin and postage stamps to be released by the Government of India. Religious activities to be organised throughout the country. Doordarshan to telecast programmes on Shri Guru Nanak Devji and Gurubani," Singh said further. "A centre for inter faith studies to be set up at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. Chairs on Shri Guru Nanak Devji to be set up in one University each in UK and Canada. International seminar on the life and teachings of Shri Guru Nanak Devji to be organised in New Delhi. As major attraction for pilgrims and tourists, a heritage complex at Sultanpur Lodhi, Pind Babe Nanak da to be developed to depict life in the times of Shri Guru Nanak Devji. Sultanpur Lodhi railway station to be upgraded and developed," added the Union Minister. The sources said Indian High Commission officials were not allowed to meet Indian pilgrims in Gurudwara Nankana Sahib in Pakistan yesterday and India may raise the issue with Islamabad. Pakistan's Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry welcomed the Indian announcement to commence the construction of the Kartarpur corridor, calling it a "victory of peace". "It is a step towards the right direction and we hope such steps will encourage voice of reasons and tranquillity on both sides of the border," he tweeted. India had first proposed the Kartarpur Sahib corridor in 1999 when the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee took a bus ride to Lahore. BJP president Amit Shah and SAD chief Sukhbir Badal termed as "historic" the Union Cabinet's decision to develop the Katarpur corridor. "I thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi for approving the historic Kartarpur Sahib corridor. This would greatly help pilgrims visiting Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, Pakistan. The Modi govt has continuously strived to enrich India's rich religious diversity and this step further reinforces it," Shah tweeted. Badal said the SAD has been persistently requesting successive central governments for this corridor. New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Sambit Patra on Friday attacked Congress president Rahul Gandhi after the latter prompted his party leader CP Joshi to apologise for his controversial remark that 'only Brahmins know and can talk about Hinduism'. Patra further alleged that leaders of the grand old party discuss things behind closed doors and it gets recorded. When they get exposed, they ask people to apologise. Lashing out at the Congress chief, the BJP leader said that Rahul Gandhi has been caught red-handed and that he should immediately sack Joshi from his party. "Congress leaders discuss things behind closed doors and it gets recorded. When they get exposed, they ask people to apologise. Rahul Gandhi ji you have been caught red-handed. You should immediately sack CP Joshi, sack him within one hour," Sambit Patra said. The Gandhi scion, earlier in the day, distanced himself from Joshi's remark in which he attacked the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister Uma Bharti, claiming that they are not qualified to speak on Hinduism. On Thursday, a video of Joshi at an event in Rajasthan's Nathdwara surfaced in which he was heard saying that only pandits and brahmins knew about Hinduism and were learned enough to speak about it. Slamming Joshi, the Congress chief had said that the former's comment is the opposite of the values of the grand old party. He further said that his party leaders should not give statements which can hurt sentiments of any section. Luxturna* (voretigene neparvovec) is the first gene therapy to treat an inherited retinal disease, indicated for children and adults with vision loss caused by mutations in both copies of the RPE65 gene and sufficient viable retinal cells[1] Nearly 60% of patients have severe forms of the disease, with severe visual impairment occurring shortly after birth [2] As a one-time treatment, Luxturna restores vision and improves sight in children and adults with a sustained effect and favorable safety profile[3],[4] The digital press release with multimedia content can be accessed here: Basel, November 23, 2018 - Novartis announced today that the European Commission (EC) approved Luxturna, a one-time gene therapy for the treatment of patients with vision loss due to a genetic mutation in both copies of the RPE65 gene and who have enough viable retinal cells. The authorization is valid in all 28 member states of the EU, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Luxturna was developed and is commercialized in the US by Spark Therapeutics. People born with mutations in both copies of the RPE65 gene can experience profound sight loss from an early age, with the majority of patients progressing to total blindness[3]. Research shows that vision impairment and blindness in children frequently cause social isolation, emotional distress, loss of independence, or hazards such as falls and injuries[5]. The working copy of the RPE65 gene provided by Luxturna can restore vision and improve sight in children and adults with sufficient viable retinal cells[3]. "Today's approval is momentous for patients given that there have been no pharmacological treatment options to date to treat this form of LCA," said Christina Fasser, president of Retina International, an umbrella organization of more than 43 patient organizations worldwide promoting research to find treatments for inherited retinal degenerative diseases. "Access to this treatment has the potential to reduce the substantial physical, emotional and financial burden this disease has on patients and their families." "As a clinician who has worked for over 20 years with patients with inherited retinal disease and their families, I've seen firsthand the profound impact blindness can have on quality of life. It's exciting to practice medicine at a time when we can offer options to children and adults facing blindness," said Dr Bart Leroy, ophthalmologist and clinical geneticist, Professor and Head, Department of Ophthalmology at Ghent University Hospital, Ghent, Belgium and Director of Retinal Degenerations Clinic at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA. "After more than 20 years of gene therapy research, there is finally a promising future ahead for the treatment of rare genetic eye disorders." "EU approval of the one-time gene therapy Luxturna marks a milestone in reimagining medicine and can bring real value to patients, their families and society as a whole," said Paul Hudson, CEO, Novartis Pharmaceuticals. "Novartis is committed to working with patients, caregivers, health systems and physicians to establish access to this gene therapy for RPE65 patients, as we believe it can help restore sight and improve vision in children and adults who currently have no treatment options." The EC decision is based on a positive CHMP opinion that looked at data from a Phase 1 clinical trial, its follow-up trial, and the first randomized, controlled Phase 3 gene therapy trial for an inherited disease[3]. In the Phase 3 clinical trial vision improvement was recorded as early as 30 days following treatment[3]. At 1 year, compared to the control group, patients treated with voretigene neparvovec improved by 1.6 light levels on the binocular multi-luminance mobility test (MLMT), the trial's novel, patient-centric, primary endpoint[3]. Vision improved by one or more light levels for 90% of patients treated with voretigene neparvovec, and 65% were able to successfully navigate the MLMT at the lowest light level of 1 lux at 1 year[3]. Decisions from national reimbursement bodies on Luxturna for patients with vision loss due to a genetic mutation in both copies of the RPE65 gene are expected in 2019 and 2020. Novartis is working closely with all stakeholders to help ensure that eligible patients can start benefitting from this treatment as quickly as possible once reimbursement decisions are available in 2019 and 2020. A range of resources and innovative reimbursement and access approaches are also being explored in order to provide as much support as possible to both patients and healthcare professionals. About RPE65 mutation-associated inherited retinal disease Inherited retinal diseases are a group of rare blinding conditions caused by more than 250 different genes[6], often disproportionally affecting children and young adults[3]. Mutations in both copies of the RPE65 gene affect approximately 1 in 200,000 people[7]. Mutations in both copies of the RPE65 gene can lead to blindness. Early in the disease patients can suffer from night blindness (nyctalopia), loss of light sensitivity, loss of peripheral vision, loss of sharpness or clarity of vision, impaired dark adaptation and repetitive uncontrolled movements of the eye (nystagmus)[8]. Patients with mutations in both copies of the RPE65 gene may be diagnosed, for instance, with subtypes of either Leber congenital amaurosis or retinitis pigmentosa[9]. A genetic test is needed to confirm that vision loss is caused by mutations in the RPE65 gene[3]. About the multi-luminance mobility test (MLMT) The MLMT measures changes in patient relevant functional vision by asking patients to navigate a course accurately and at a reasonable pace at seven different levels of illumination, ranging from 400 lux (corresponding to a brightly lit office) to one lux (corresponding to a moonless summer night)[3]. About Luxturna's mechanism of action Luxturna is the first EU-approved treatment for this disease and is designed to provide a working copy of the RPE65 gene to act in place of the mutated RPE65 gene[3]. About the Novartis and Spark Therapeutics licensing and supply agreement In January 2018, Spark Therapeutics entered into a licensing and supply agreement with Novartis covering development, registration and commercialization rights to Luxturna in markets outside the US. Upon the transfer of the marketing authorization from Spark Therapeutics to Novartis, Novartis can commercialize Luxturna in the EU/EEA. Novartis already has exclusive rights to pursue development, registration and commercialization in all other countries outside the US, and Spark Therapeutics will supply the gene therapy to Novartis. About Novartis in ophthalmology For more than 70 years, patients, caregivers and healthcare providers worldwide have looked to Novartis for state-of-the-art treatments in eye diseases. We continue to invest in science as well as in strategic alliances to help ensure patients have access to screening, diagnosis, and our eye medicines. Our commitment to vision extends globally across ages, from premature infants to seniors, from rare diseases to those affecting millions, from eye drops to gene therapies. Our aspiration: reimagining eye care to help everyone see possibilities. Disclaimer This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can generally be identified by words such as "potential," "can," "will," "plan," "expect," "anticipate," "look forward," "believe," "committed," "investigational," "pipeline," "launch," or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding potential marketing approvals, new indications or labeling for the investigational or approved products described in this press release, or regarding potential future revenues from such products. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that the investigational or approved products described in this press release will be submitted or approved for sale or for any additional indications or labeling in any market, or at any particular time. Nor can there be any guarantee that such products will be commercially successful in the future. In particular, our expectations regarding such products could be affected by, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; global trends toward health care cost containment, including government, payor and general public pricing and reimbursement pressures; our ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; the particular prescribing preferences of physicians and patients; general political and economic conditions; safety, quality or manufacturing issues; potential or actual data security and data privacy breaches, or disruptions of our information technology systems, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AG's current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. About Novartis Novartis is reimagining medicine to improve and extend people's lives. As a leading global medicines company, we use innovative science and digital technologies to create transformative treatments in areas of great medical need. In our quest to find new medicines, we consistently rank among the world's top companies investing in research and development. Novartis products reach nearly 1 billion people globally and we are finding innovative ways to expand access to our latest treatments. About 125 000 people of more than 140 nationalities work at Novartis around the world. Find out more at www.novartis.com. Novartis is on Twitter. Sign up to follow @Novartis at http://twitter.com/novartis For Novartis multimedia content, please visit www.novartis.com/news/media-library For questions about the site or required registration, please contact media.relations@novartis.com *Luxturna is a trademark of Spark Therapeutics, Inc. and is registered in the United States and in the EU References [1] LuxturnaTM (voretigene neparvovec) Novartis Pharmaceuticals. Approved EU SmPC. Available imminently at: https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines [2] Luxturna. BLA Clinical Review Memorandum. Yao-Yao Zhu. US Food and Drug administration. Available at: https://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/CellularGeneTherapyProducts/ApprovedProducts/UCM592766.pdf. Last accessed on 1 November 2018 [3] Russell S et al. Efficacy and safety of voretigene neparvovec (AAV2-hRPE65v2) in patients with RPE65- mediated inherited retinal dystrophy: a randomised, controlled, open-label, phase 3 trial. The Lancet 2017; 390:849-860. [4] Russell S et al. Three-year update for the phase 3 voretigene neparvovec study in biallelic RPE65 mutation-associated inherited retinal disease. Investigative Opthalmology & Visual Science, 2018; 59 [5] Banken, R et al. Voretigene Neparvovec for Biallelic RPE65-Mediated Retinal Disease: Effectiveness and Value, Final Evidence Report. Institute for Clinical and Economic Review 2018. Available at https://icer-review.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/MWCEPAC_VORETIGENE_FINAL_EVIDENCE_REPORT_02142018.docx.pdf . Last accessed 1 November 2018. [6] RetNet. Summaries of genes and loci causing retinal diseases. Available at: https://sph.uth.edu/retnet/sum-dis.htm . Last accessed November 2018 [7] Novartis. Data on file. 2018 [8] Astuti GD et al. Comprehensive genotyping reveals RPE65 as the most frequently mutated gene in Leber congenital amaurosis in Denmark. European Journal of Human Genetics 2016; 24: 1071-79. [9] Morimura H et al. Mutations in the RPE65 gene in patients with autosomal recessive retinitis pigmentosa or Leber congenital amaurosis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. 1998; 95: 3088-93. Novartis Media Relations Central media line: +41 61 324 2200 E-mail: media.relations@novartis.com Eric Althoff Novartis Global Media Relations +41 61 324 7999 (direct) +41 79 593 4202 (mobile) eric.althoff@novartis.com Amy Wolf Global Head, Ophthalmology Communications +41 61 696 5894 (direct) +41 79 576 0723 (mobile) amy.wolf@novartis.com Novartis Investor Relations Central investor relations line: +41 61 324 7944 E-mail: investor.relations@novartis.com Six African nationals, who were accused of abducting a child, were rescued by the Delhi Police from Dwarka on Thursday night. According to news agency ANI, the rescued Africans included four Tanzanian and two Nigerian nationals. They were rescued from Kakrola area under Dwarka north police station after the cops received a call claiming that they were allegedly being attacked by some people. The police had reportedly received multiple calls against the African nationals. One of the callers alleged that they had allegedly abducted a child. Seoul: South Korea`s Samsung Electronics on Friday vowed to compensate by 2028 its local chip and display factory workers who have suffered from work-related illnesses. The move settles a year-long dispute between the world`s top memory chipmaker and an advocacy group representing sickened workers and their families after the 2007 death of a Samsung chip factory worker with leukaemia sparked concerns over working conditions at the South Korean company. "Our effort was insufficient to better understand the pain affected workers and their families went through," Samsung Electronics Chief Executive Kim Ki-nam said in a public apology during an event to sign the agreement with the advocacy group. Following the mediation panel`s decision earlier this month on the case, Samsung will pay up to 150 million won ($132,649.45) for each former and current employee suffering from work-related diseases if they are found to be caused by exposure to harmful chemicals. All former and current Samsung employees as well as the company`s contractors who worked at Samsung`s semiconductor and display production plants for more than one year since 1984 are eligible to be compensated for their illnesses. Kim said the company would post its compensation guidelines along with an apology letter by at the end of this month on the company`s website and an independent Seoul-based law firm will conduct the review process for affected workers for their compensation eligibility. South Korean activist group Sharps claims around 200 workers have fallen ill after working at Samsung plants and 70 of them have died subsequently. Hwang Sang-ki, founder of Sharps and father of a dead chip factory worker with leukaemia, told Reuters that besides those 200 he expected more workers to apply for compensation, but it would take a long medical process to prove their diseases are directly related to the work environment. Both Samsung and Sharps did not elaborate on the potential size of the total compensation. SRINAGAR: Peoples Conference chairman Sajad Gani Lone on Thursday challenged Mehboob Mufti-led Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to go to court and prove their majority in Jammu and Kashmir Assembly. If they (PDP) are so aggrieved they can go to the court but they will not because they don't have the numbers, said Lone. We staked the claim as we had the numbers. Had there been a floor test or had we been told to bring in the numbers, then that which is within the purview of the constitution would have happened, he said. But we are happy that we got these dynastic parties together, added Lone. If @MehboobaMufti feels slighted y doesnt she go to court. Let her approach thecourt and hopefully get an order to revive assembly- and we hopefully will prove we have the numbers, on the floor of the assembly. Sajad Lone (@sajadlone) November 22, 2018 In a fast-paced development on Wednesday, the Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik dissolved the state Assembly after rivals PDP, National Conference came together with Congress to form a government. They claimed the support of 56 lawmakers in the 87-member state assembly. Same day, Peoples Conference chairman Sajad Gani Lone had also staked claim for government formation, claiming support of 45 members including 25 of the BJP and 18 other MLAs. The Election Commission on Thursday said fresh elections in the state are likely to be held within the next six months. It did not rule out the possibility of holding polls before the Lok Sabha polls due next year. "The Jammu and Kashmir assembly polls must be held on the first occasion before May ... It could be held before parliament elections also," Chief Election Commissioner O P Rawat said. He said as per the Supreme Court, the outer limit for holding fresh polls after dissolution of a house is six months, that is May, 2019. At the same time, he made it clear that the Commission will decide on poll dates after "considering all aspects." The state Governor Satya Pal Malik dissolved the assembly on Wednesday evening, after People's Democratic Party leader Mehbooba Mufti staked claim to form the government along with arch-rival Omar Abdullah's National Conference (NC) and the Congress. They claimed the support of 56 lawmakers in the 87-member state assembly. Shortly after, Peoples Conference also staked claims to form the government. Lone, who has two lawmakers, said he had the support of the BJP's 25 legislators and "more than 18" others. SRINAGAR: One of the three terrorists killed in the Anantnag encounter on Friday morning was accused of assassinating senior Kashmiri journalist Shujaat Bukhari. The terrorist has been identified Azad Ahmad Malik alias Azad Dada, a member of banned terror outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba, who belonged to Anantnag's Arwani village. Malik was one of the six terrorists killed in the encounter that broke out between terrorists and security forces in Sekipora area of Bijbhera in South Kashmir's Anantnag district in the wee hours of Friday. Indian Army`s 3 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) and state police jointly conducted the operation. The other five terrorists neutralised in the encounter were identified as Unais Shafi, Shahid Bashir, Basit Ishtiyaq, Aqib Najar and Firdous Najar. Bukhari, the editor-in-chief of local daily Rising Kashmir, was killed on June 14 by three men outside his office at press enclave in Srinagar. Two of his personal security officers were also killed in the attack. Hours after the sensational killing, police had released CCTV grabs of the three attackers, who were riding a motorcycle. While one of the attackers was wearing a helmet, the other had worn a mask. State police later released the names and pictures of four people Malik, Muzaffar Ahmad, Naveed Jutt and Sajad Gul as the accused in the Bukhari's assassination. Malik, Ahmad and Jutt were identified as LeT terrorists while gunman Sajad Gul was a Kashmiri based in Pakistan. New Delhi: Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, Sara Ali Khan's upcoming film 'Kedarnath' was shot in real locations of the Uttarakhand. Makers have been extremely careful while shooting near the temple area, vicinity of the temple. Keeping in mind the interests of the pilgrims, the makers kept shooting time cordial for the travelers to pass through and not bother them. Having shot against the backdrop of the real locations in Kedarnath, the makers have captured the surrounding so well that it will give enough of glimpses and a detailed trip for a pilgrimage. While the teaser has garnered immense praise from the audience, the first song Namo Namo took the audience on a pilgrimage trip to the holy temple. Kedarnath is an eternal love story set in the backdrop of the flash floods that wrecked the temple town in the June of 2013. It is a potent combination of love and religion, passion and spirituality. The floods that took the lives of over a hundred thousand people is a powerful backdrop for this epic love story. Kedarnath marks the debut of Sara Ali Khan and also presents the second association of Abhishek Kapoor with Ronnie Screwvala along Sushant Singh Rajput after Kai Po Che. Produced by Ronnie Screwvala's RSVP and Abhishek Kapoor's Guy In the Sky Pictures, Kedarnath is directed by Abhishek Kapoor and is slated to release on December 7, 2018 Delhi Chief Electoral Officer Vijay Kumar Dev on Friday was appointed as the Chief Secretary of Delhi. Dev is a 1987-batch IAS officer and has also been Chandigarh's UT adviser. He replaces Anshu Prakash who was transferred last week as the Additional Secretary of the Department of Telecommunications of the central government. Prakash, who was allegedly assaulted at Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence in February, has been appointed as additional secretary in the telecom department. He had allegedly beaten up by AAP MLAs in the presence of Kejriwal at the Chief Minister`s residence on the night of February 19, 2018, where he had been called for a late-night meeting. The case was filed the next morning and Amanatullah Khan and Prakash Jarwal were arrested and sent to judicial custody. Court later granted bail to Delhi CM Kejriwal, deputy Manisha Sisodia, 13 other AAP MLAs involved in the case. LONDON: Prime Minister Theresa May`s trial by parliament to deliver on her Brexit plan is only just beginning. Between now and March 29, when Britain leaves the European Union, she faces dozens of make-or-break votes in a parliament split into myriad factions, many of which have only one thing in common: their loathing of her divorce deal with Brussels. Attention is focused on the `meaningful vote`, expected in mid-December, when the 650-seat lower House of Commons decides whether to accept or reject the agreement outright. Like much about Brexit, uncertainty surrounds the process. But the Conservative prime minister will probably have to battle her way through procedural votes, and then fight attempts to amend the draft deal, even before the meaningful vote is held. Assuming she wins this - and there might even be a repeat meaningful vote - she will then face a similar ordeal in turning the complex agreement into law, and all by March. The task for May, who leads a minority government, is daunting. Eurosceptic lawmaker Steve Baker believes at least 54 of his fellow Conservatives are committed to voting against their leader. So what are May`s chances of getting the deal through? "Zero," he said. The process does allow the government a little time. May`s spokesman has said she believes the deal can get through parliament, and ministers will focus on winning support over the coming weeks. "Every member of parliament is going to have to make their own judgement, make their own decision, on what is in the national interest," education minister Damian Hinds told the BBC. So far May has survived a wave of ministerial resignations and a campaign within her own party to oust her. Once EU leaders formally sign off on the deal, expected on Sunday, the parliamentary process starts in earnest but the numbers seem stacked against the government. The plan faces opposition from both eurosceptics and europhiles among her party`s 314 active lawmakers, around 313 opposition members and 10 from Northern Ireland`s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which is supposed to prop up the government. VOTE ON A VOTE First the government must secure a procedure that avoids rivals hijacking the process, either to block approval or attach conditions such as holding a second Brexit referendum. Whatever structure the government comes up with for the meaningful vote, it has to be approved by the House of Commons - with a vote. Lawmakers are expected to debate the deal for at least five days and if usual procedure is applied, the government will need to defeat rival amendments. Failure at any stage could be fatal and prevent the deal being ratified. Then comes the meaningful vote, a focus for financial markets where sterling has already been riding a political rollercoaster for weeks. Defeat could cast an orderly Brexit into doubt and end May`s career. However, if she were to survive, she is expected by many to seek changes to the deal from the EU and then repeat the meaningful vote process. "Then we could be into a situation of a war of attrition within parliament," said Labour`s finance policy chief John McDonnell. TRENCH WARFARE Even if she wins, May`s drawn-out agony will not be over: the government must then pass legislation implementing the withdrawal agreement. This involves line-by-line scrutiny in the lower house, where May is likely to have to defeat more amendments designed to alter or thwart her exit plan. Each vote could come down to the choices of a handful of lawmakers. "The government needs to bring back a deal that can unite the Conservative Party and our DUP allies," said Conservative lawmaker Mark Harper. "That`s the only way they can be reasonably confident that it can both win the meaningful vote and get the legislation through unscathed." It must also pass through the largely pro-EU upper House of Lords, where May`s party has no majority. The lords are unlikely to block the process, but could demand changes. If every stage of that bill is completed without incident, May can ratify the withdrawal agreement to bring an orderly end to Britain`s EU membership. Peshawar: A powerful bomb blast ripped through a busy market outside a religious seminary in Pakistan's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Friday, killing at least 25 people and injuring over 35 others, officials said. The explosive material was planted in the Friday Market (Juma Bazar) near an imambargah, a Shia religious place, in Aurakzai tribal district's Kalaya area outside. At least 25 people were killed while more than 35 others injured, Geo news quoted district administration officials as saying. Officials said that most of the victims were minority Shia Muslims. The area has been cordoned off and investigation into the incident is under way. An emergency has been declared in the region's hospitals to handle the situation. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police are on high alert following the Orakzai blast and a separate attack on the Chinese Consulate in Karachi on Friday morning. "Our enemies are not happy with peace in the province," provincial Chief Minister Mehmood Khan said after the attack. Earlier in th day, two policemen were killed in firing near Chinese Consulate in Karachi's Clifton area, reported Pakistani media. The exchange of fire started around 9.30 am. An explosion was also heard. Three suspects, carrying hand grenades and other weapons, fired near the Chinese consulate and attempted to enter it. "Three gunmen tried to enter the consulate but were intercepted by security guards at a checkpoint," Deputy Inspector General (DIG) South Karachi Javed Alam Odho told Geo News. All the suspects were gunned down. Suicide jackets and weapons were recovered from their possession. All the staff inside the Chinese consulate is safe, security sources said. In 2014, the number of heavy weapons in Ukraine was significantly less than the necessary Open source Glavcom media outlet has published an investigation in the situation with Ukraines armament under various heads of the Ministry of Defense. According to the data revealed, in 20052007, when the defense department was headed by Anatoliy Hrytsenko (who plans to run for presidency in 2019, - ed.), the number of tanks in Armed Forces service fell below the required level. Then, the number of infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers decreased more than twice. The number of air defense systems in the army began to decline in 2001 when Volodymyr Shkidchenko headed the ministry. As of 1991, Ukraine had 6.5 thousand tanks, 7.6 thousand armored vehicles, 1.4 thousand aircraft, 350 ships, and 1,272 nuclear warheads. At the beginning of 2014, 1,436 tanks remained (however, the Armed Forces needed 3200 units of those); 2,020 armored personnel carriers, instead of the necessary 4,500, 158 combat aircraft of the necessary 460, and 849 combat missiles, with more than a thousand necessary. This is evidenced by an analysis conducted by the Kyiv Research Institute of Forensic Examination (KRIFE) analyzed all these calculations and presented at the Verkhovna Rada temporary investigative commission (TIC) meeting. TIC investigates the facts of theft in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the undermining of the states defense. The KRIFE Commission of Experts is currently working on three types of issues: Organization and creation of the state defense system, construction and development of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 1991-2014 (conformity of measures for reforming disbanding, reducing the number of command and control bodies, correlation between the real needs of the Armed Forces and their ability to perform the constitutional tasks of protecting the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and inviolability of Ukraine; the impact of these measures on the combat potential and combat capability of the Armed Forces of Ukraine); Withdrawal of weapons, military equipment and property from the military structure of the Armed Forces, the legality of ministry heads decision-making regarding the surplus weapons and military equipment (investigation of decisions of the leadership of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the formation of the state defense order); Budget support for the functioning and maintenance of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the activities of officials of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the Armed Forces of Ukraine regarding the formation of the state defense order, the development and procurement of weapons and military equipment (research of problematic issues of budget support of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, construction, preparation, use, maintenance and other issues of the daily activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine). The report highlighted the main changes in the state of armaments and military equipment in the Armed Forces of Ukraine from 1991 to 2014. KRIFE experts analyzed the processes of selling tanks, combat aircraft, combat and transport helicopter gunships, anti-aircraft missile systems, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, and other military equipment. According to KRIFE, since 2004 the number of tanks in Ukraine has decreased but met the requirements of the Armed Forces, and in 2005 it was far beyond the minimum allowed level. Despite this fact, the tanks were sold. The number of BMPs and armored personnel carriers met the needs of Ukrainian military personnel until 2004, and then there was less than half of what considered necessary, and since 2012, there was even less than half. Ukraine has been suffering from the lack of the anti-aircraft missile systems since 2001, and as of 2013, the existing air defense systems amounted to less than a quarter of the required number. When Ukraine became independent, there were 1,380 aircraft in the country. There were a little more than 900 in 2004, in 2009, there were of them, and in 2013, there were only 158 units. The commission of experts studied, in particular, how the defense system of Ukraine and the Armed Forces was formed during 1991-2014. The experts also investigated the withdrawal of weapons, military equipment and property from the military structure of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the legitimacy of the decisions of the defense ministers on the redundancy of weapons and military equipment with their subsequent sale, and government order. Read the original text at 112.ua. Russian militants opened fire from anti-tank missile launchers near Luhanske; none of the Ukrainian fighters were wounded or killed in action Open source On November 22, pro-Kremlin mercenaries attacked Ukrainian positions in Donbas two times. The HQ of the Joint Forces Operation reported this on Thursday evening. The enemy used a wide range of weapons, including IFVs, grenade launchers, large-caliber machine guns and small arms. The militants attacked Volny and Luhanske. Anti-tank missiles hit the area near Luhanske. None of the Ukrainian fighters were wounded or killed in action. As we reported earlier, Yevhen Marchuk will replace Leonid Kuchma as the full-fledged representative of Ukraine in Minsk contact group. It is the decision of President Petro Poroshenko. Previously, Marchuk was the member of the security subdivision of the group. Kuchma, the second president of Ukraine chaired the Ukrainain delegation in Minsk for four years. In summer, he claimed he would soon resign due to his solid age. In August, Kuchma turned 80 and left the office. His successor Marchuk is currently 77. English German Curetis Announces Financial Results for the First Nine Months of 2018 - Total year-on-year revenue growth of 43% globally, 207% in EMEA direct selling markets - Initial traction in U.S. market after Unyvero launch - Strategic collaboration with BCB in Greater China expanded - Commercial reach expanded to Northern Africa, South America and Asia Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Holzgerlingen, Germany, and San Diego, CA, USA, November 23, 2018, 07:00 am CET -- Curetis N.V. (the "Company" and, together with its subsidiaries, "Curetis"), a developer of next-level molecular diagnostic solutions, today reported its financial results for the first nine months ended September 30, 2018, and provided a business update for the third quarter of 2018. Operational and Business Highlights U.S. Launch of Unyvero System and LRT Cartridge Curetis launched the Unyvero System and the Unyvero LRT Application Cartridge for lower respiratory tract infections in the U.S. in June 2018 after receiving U.S. FDA clearance in April 2018. for lower respiratory tract infections in the U.S. in June 2018 after receiving U.S. FDA clearance in April 2018. To drive the commercial roll-out of the Unyvero System and the Unyvero LRT as a first application cartridge in the U.S., the Company in the first half of 2018 completed the operational set-up of its subsidiary Curetis USA Inc. in San Diego, CA, USA, and its field-based commercial team across the U.S. Since the launch, the U.S. commercial team has qualified about 140 accounts in the top 1,000 hospitals initially targeted with about 80 being deeply vetted. Several accounts have entered into clinical and commercial evaluation agreements and, with a dozen Unyvero Analyzers placed beyond FDA trial sites, have since then started the on-site evaluation of the Unyvero System and the LRT Application Cartridge. These and many further of the vetted accounts are expected to be converted to commercial accounts over the next several quarters, with about a dozen accounts constituting near-term opportunities currently at the contract negotiation stage. These initial accounts on average are expected to have Unyvero LRT cartridge volumes of 700 to 800 annually once they become commercial customers, with some accounts having significantly higher total potential annual testing volumes. Commercial Development In all EMEA direct markets, combined revenues from cartridges and instruments grew by more than 207% year-on-year. Total global revenue was up by 43% compared to the first nine months of 2017. year-on-year. compared to the first nine months of 2017. In August 2018, Curetis expanded its geographic presence into the Northern African and Latin American markets by signing exclusive distribution partnerships with Future Horizon Scientific for Egypt, with Quimica Valaner S.A. for Mexico and with Biko S.A. for Uruguay. Each of the three new distribution partners intends to commercialize all five Unyvero Application Cartridges (HPN, ITI, BCU, IAI and UTI) that are currently CE-IVD-marked. These partners in total have committed to purchasing a minimum of 45 instrument systems at Curetis typical distributor transfer prices over the respective three-year contractual terms. In addition, they have committed to minimum purchases of several thousand Unyvero application cartridges over the terms of the agreements. by signing exclusive distribution partnerships with Future Horizon Scientific for Egypt, with Quimica Valaner S.A. for Mexico and with Biko S.A. for Uruguay. Each of the three new distribution partners intends to commercialize all five Unyvero Application Cartridges (HPN, ITI, BCU, IAI and UTI) that are currently CE-IVD-marked. These partners in total have at Curetis typical distributor transfer prices over the respective three-year contractual terms. In addition, they have committed to minimum purchases of over the terms of the agreements. Including these additional distribution partnerships, Curetis to date has 17 distribution partners covering 29 countries. With a strong pipeline of further potential distribution partners covering additional markets, Curetis expects to sign further near-term distribution agreements. Global Installed Base Upon completion of a pharmaceutical partners phase III clinical trial, Curetis in Q1-2018 had exercised an option to buy back multiple Unyvero Systems deployed in this clinical trial and due to financing availability has concurrently taken a cautious working capital management approach with much stronger focus on higher priority accounts and conversion efficiency throughout Q3-2018, which has led to a re-deployment of Unyvero Analyzers resulting in a temporary decrease in the installed base of Unyvero Analyzers to 166 Analyzers as of the end of the first nine months 2018, down by a net of 9 Analyzers compared to 175 Analyzers at year-end 2017. The Company expects to offset this decrease through additional future U.S. placements and by entering into additional distribution partnerships and has also identified a significant number of EMEA direct market opportunities for new Unyvero placements. China Market Access In October, Curetis and BCB expanded their strategic collaboration for the Unyvero A50 System and Application Cartridges in Greater China, including an extension of their exclusive Unyvero A50 distribution agreement to eight years. This minimum commitment would indicate potential revenues to Curetis of over EUR 30 million annually in years six through eight of commercialization in China, in addition to potential cumulative revenues of more than EUR 60 million for years one through five of commercialization in China as agreed upon previously. Assuming a final submission in 2019 and a CFDA approval in late 2019 or early 2020, Curetis anticipates initial revenues from commercial sales in China starting in 2020. Business Development In January 2018, Curetis and MGI (a BGI Group Company, Shenzhen, China) signed R&D collaboration and supply agreements focused on the Unyvero Lysator technology and instruments . Under the agreement, MGI can utilize Curetis Lysator technology to develop and commercialize a universal automated solution for next generation sequencing (NGS)-based microbiology that can process any sample type routinely obtained from patients for microbiological analysis. With the feasibility phase recently completed and all pre-defined performance criteria met, the collaboration has now entered into the development phase for a first integrated product. Study data resulting from the collaboration were presented at the ICG-13 Conference in Shenzhen, China, on October 24-28, 2018. Further potential collaboration areas, including the development and near-term commercialization of an NGS-based microbiology application, are currently being discussed. (a BGI Group Company, Shenzhen, China) . Under the agreement, MGI can utilize Curetis Lysator technology to develop and commercialize a universal automated solution for next generation sequencing (NGS)-based microbiology that can process any sample type routinely obtained from patients for microbiological analysis. With the feasibility phase recently completed and all pre-defined performance criteria met, the collaboration has now entered into the development phase for a first integrated product. Study data resulting from the collaboration were presented at the ICG-13 Conference in Shenzhen, China, on October 24-28, 2018. Further potential collaboration areas, including the development and near-term commercialization of an NGS-based microbiology application, are currently being discussed. Going forward, Curetis aims to enter into further value-adding R&D and commercial partnerships with well-known industry players around the Unyvero Platform and the ARES Technology Platform. Product Development To expand the label claim of its recently U.S. FDA cleared Unyvero LRT Application Cartridge for lower respiratory tract infections, Curetis plans to file for the clearance of bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) as a second sample type . In a pre-submission meeting with the U.S. FDA at the end of September 2018, the Agency has confirmed the suitability of the 510(k) clearance pathway for Curetis Unyvero LRT Application Cartridge specifically optimized for the detection of microbial pathogens in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) samples. The U.S. FDA further confirmed that data required for the submission could be largely based on clinical samples previously collected during the original Curetis U.S. FDA trial for the Unyvero LRT Application Cartridge. Overall, the Company believes that U.S. FDA feedback has substantially de-risked the planned submission of the Unyvero LRT Application Cartridge for BAL and that the requirements agreed upon with the U.S. FDA should allow Curetis to accelerate generating the required data for an early submission, with an expected clearance decision in 2019. . In a at the end of September 2018, the Agency has confirmed the suitability of the 510(k) clearance pathway for Curetis Unyvero LRT Application Cartridge specifically optimized for the detection of microbial pathogens in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) samples. The U.S. FDA further confirmed that data required for the submission could be largely based on clinical samples previously collected during the original Curetis U.S. FDA trial for the Unyvero LRT Application Cartridge. Overall, the Company and that the requirements agreed upon with the U.S. FDA should allow Curetis to accelerate generating the required data for an early submission, with an expected clearance decision in 2019. BAL is another common sample type for the diagnosis of lower respiratory tract infections. It is estimated that half of the samples obtained for the diagnosis of lower respiratory tract infections are BALs and Curetis believes that a clearance for this additional sample type would increase the total addressable market for the Unyvero LRT Application Cartridge in the U.S. accordingly. accordingly. Curetis also expects to include data on an assay for one additional pathogen, Pneumocystis jirovecii, as part of the 510(k) submission. This fungus is particularly prelevant in lower respiratory tract infections in patients with compromised immune status, such as transplant recipients or AIDS patients. Pneumocystis jirovecii, as part of the 510(k) submission. This fungus is particularly prelevant in lower respiratory tract infections in patients with compromised immune status, such as transplant recipients or AIDS patients. In addition, Curetis has continued the collection of retrospective samples for its U.S. trials for the Unyvero IJI Invasive Joint Infection product to augment the future prospective arm of the clinical trial. to augment the future prospective arm of the clinical trial. Curetis expects to provide a more detailed update on its R&D pipeline and priorities following the most recent financing around the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in early 2019. Ares Genetics In July 2018, Ares Genetics launched the ARES & CO (Antibiotic REsistance Solutions by COoperative R&D) pharma partnering program , a program supported and largely funded by the Vienna Business Agency. It aims to establish an alliance for antibiotic stewardship with pharmaceutical companies and contract research organizations by offering advanced data-driven solutions to antimicrobial drug development and life cycle management of existing antimicrobial drugs. , a program supported and largely funded by the Vienna Business Agency. It aims to establish an alliance for antibiotic stewardship with pharmaceutical companies and contract research organizations by offering advanced data-driven solutions to antimicrobial drug development and life cycle management of existing antimicrobial drugs. Ares Genetics also initiated the development of its ARESupa Universal Pathogenome Assay . The assay for the diagnosis of microbial infections and antimicrobial drug response is based on the Company's proprietary ARES Technology Platform and genetic antimicrobial resistance database ARESdb. While planning to launch the test as a laboratory-developed test first, Ares Genetics ultimately aims to seek regulatory approval as an in vitro diagnostic test for broad and scalable commercialization. Ares Genetics is further exploring fast-track options to launch ARESupa as a laboratory-developed test in the U.S., once development of a first-generation ARESupa has been completed. . The assay for the diagnosis of microbial infections and antimicrobial drug response is based on the Company's proprietary ARES Technology Platform and genetic antimicrobial resistance database ARESdb. While planning to launch the test as a laboratory-developed test first, Ares Genetics ultimately aims to seek regulatory approval as an in vitro diagnostic test for broad and scalable commercialization. Ares Genetics is further exploring fast-track options to launch ARESupa as a laboratory-developed test in the U.S., once development of a first-generation ARESupa has been completed. With initial seed funding of Ares Genetics provided by Curetis and non-dilutive funding through grants, Ares Genetics is currently identifying U.S. strategic partners and exploring options for accessing U.S. venture capital funding to accelerate the further development, particularly for the ARESupa Universal Pathogenome Assay and its commercial deployment. Financing In October 2018, Curetis secured up to EUR 20 million in growth capital through the issuance of convertible notes with share subscription warrants to YA II PN, LTD., an investment fund managed by Yorkville Advisors Global LP, a U.S. based management firm. To date, Curetis has drawn down EUR 3.5 million of the first tranche. through the issuance of convertible notes with share subscription warrants to YA II PN, LTD., an investment fund managed by Yorkville Advisors Global LP, a U.S. based management firm. To date, Curetis has drawn down EUR 3.5 million of the first tranche. In November, Curetis raised EUR 8.9 million through private placements to institutional investors in Europe and the U.S. In this transaction, 4,450,000 out of 7,085,546 offered new ordinary shares were placed at an offer price of EUR 2.00 per share, resulting in additional available funds of EUR 7.3 million. The Company intends to use the proceeds from the sale of the Offer Shares for (i) funding the commercialization of its Unyvero Platform and LRT Application Cartridge in the U.S., (ii) its European commercialization activities, (iii) working capital requirements, (iv) research and development programs and (v) for general corporate purposes. Curetis will re-assess the priorities and allocation of proceeds to fund these activities in the light of the lower than expected proceeds from this offering and will inform its shareholders on such priorities as well as any potentially required changes to its guidance once this assessment has been completed. In this transaction, 4,450,000 out of 7,085,546 offered new ordinary shares were placed at an offer price of EUR 2.00 per share, resulting in additional available funds of EUR 7.3 million. The Company intends to use the proceeds from the sale of the Offer Shares for (i) funding the commercialization of its Unyvero Platform and LRT Application Cartridge in the U.S., (ii) its European commercialization activities, (iii) working capital requirements, (iv) research and development programs and (v) for general corporate purposes. Curetis will re-assess the priorities and allocation of proceeds to fund these activities in the light of the lower than expected proceeds from this offering and will inform its shareholders on such priorities as well as any potentially required changes to its guidance once this assessment has been completed. Curetis will continue to assess all tactical and strategic options and operational requirements to secure appropriate funding and cash for its continued operations for at least the next 12 months and to ensure it has the financial resources to continue as a going concern. First Nine Months 2018 Financial Highlights Revenues: EUR 1,191k (growing by about 43 % compared to EUR 831k in the nine months ended September 30, 2017). EMEA direct sales have grown by 207 % year-on-year. EUR 1,191k (growing by about 43 % compared to EUR 831k in the nine months ended September 30, 2017). EMEA direct sales have grown by 207 % year-on-year. Expenses: EUR 18,774k total cost of sales, distribution costs, administrative expenses and research & development expenses (vs. EUR 14,771k in the first nine months of 2017). The increase is in line with the operational and organizational growth, and driven by higher distribution costs, higher research & development expenses as well as G&A costs. EUR 18,774k total cost of sales, distribution costs, administrative expenses and research & development expenses (vs. EUR 14,771k in the first nine months of 2017). The increase is in line with the operational and organizational growth, and driven by higher distribution costs, higher research & development expenses as well as G&A costs. Operating loss: EUR -17,237k (vs. EUR -13,865k in the first nine months of 2017). EUR -17,237k (vs. EUR -13,865k in the first nine months of 2017). Net loss for the period: EUR -17,719k (vs. EUR -14,574k in the first nine months of 2017). EUR -17,719k (vs. EUR -14,574k in the first nine months of 2017). Cash and cash equivalents: EUR 5,541k as of September 30, 2018 (vs. EUR 16,311k as of December 31, 2017). EUR 5,541k as of September 30, 2018 (vs. EUR 16,311k as of December 31, 2017). Cash Burn and Financing: Net cash burn in the first nine months ended September 30, 2018, was EUR -11,066k. In April 2018, Curetis had raised EUR 4.1 million in a private equity placement and issued 854,166 new shares and signed an additional USD 10 million equity facility offered by Global Corporate Finance (GCF) New York, NY, USA. In October, Curetis secured up to EUR 20 million in growth capital through the issuance of convertible notes with share subscription warrants to YA II PN, LTD., an investment fund managed by Yorkville Advisors Global LP, a U.S. based management firm. To date, Curetis has drawn down EUR 3.5 million of the first tranche. In November 2018, Curetis raised EUR 8.9 million through private placements of 4,450,000 new ordinary shares to institutional investors in Europe and the U.S. resulting in additional available funds of EUR 7.3 million. Cash outflow from operations and investments totaled EUR 17,846k in the first nine months 2018. Key non-audited financials as of September 30, 2018 Curetis N.V. consolidated numbers in 000 Euros For the nine months ended September 30, 2018 For the nine months ended September 30, 2017 Revenues 1,191 831 Operating loss -17,237 -13,865 Total comprehensive loss -17,854 -14,451 September 30, 2018 December 31, 2017 Cash and cash equivalents 5,541 16,311 ### About Curetis Curetis N.V.s (Euronext: CURE) goal is to become a leading provider of innovative solutions for molecular microbiology diagnostics designed to address the global challenge of detecting severe infectious diseases and identifying antibiotic resistances in hospitalized patients. Curetis Unyvero System is a versatile, fast and highly automated molecular diagnostic platform for easy-to-use, cartridge-based solutions for the comprehensive and rapid detection of pathogens and antimicrobial resistance markers in a range of severe infectious disease indications. Results are available within hours, a process that can take days or even weeks if performed with standard diagnostic procedures, thereby facilitating improved patient outcomes, stringent antibiotic stewardship and health-economic benefits. Unyvero in vitro diagnostic (IVD) products are marketed in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the U.S. Curetis wholly owned subsidiary Ares Genetics GmbH offers next-generation solutions for infectious disease diagnostics and therapeutics. The ARES Technology Platform combines what the Company believes to be the most comprehensive database worldwide on the genetics of antimicrobial resistances, ARESdb, with advanced bioinformatics and artificial intelligence. For further information, please visit www.curetis.com and www.ares-genetics.com. Legal Disclaimer This document constitutes neither an offer to buy nor an offer to subscribe for securities and neither this document nor any part of it should form the basis of any investment decision in Curetis. The information contained in this press release has been carefully prepared. However, Curetis bears and assumes no liability of whatever kind for the correctness and completeness of the information provided herein. Curetis does not assume an obligation of whatever kind to update or correct information contained in this press release whether as a result of new information, future events or for other reasons. This press release includes statements that are, or may be deemed to be, forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology, including the terms believes, estimates, anticipates, expects, intends, targets, may, will, or should and include statements Curetis makes concerning the intended results of its strategy. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and readers are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. Curetis actual results may differ materially from those predicted by the forward-looking statements. Curetis undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking statements, except as may be required by law. Contact details Curetis Contact Details Curetis N.V. Max-Eyth-Str. 42 71088 Holzgerlingen, Germany Tel. +49 7031 49195-10 pr@curetis.com or ir@curetis.com www.curetis.com - www.unyvero.com International Media & Investor Inquiries akampion Dr. Ludger Wess / Ines-Regina Buth Managing Partners info(@)akampion.com Tel. +49 40 88 16 59 64 Tel. +49 30 23 63 27 68 U.S. Media & Investor Inquiries The Ruth Group Lee Roth lroth@theruthgroup.com Tel. +1 646 536 7012 Attachment The demand was voiced out during the meeting of Minsk contact group on Thursday, - Ukraine's Deputy Parliament Speaker Iryna Gerashchenko Ukraine insists on dissolution of the self-styled 'authorities' and 'institutions' in the temporarily occupied territories of Donbas. Iryna Gerashchenko, Ukraine's Deputy Parliament Speaker reported this on Facebook. The demand was voiced out during the meeting of Minsk contact group on Thursday, November 22. According to her, the Ukrainian side has repeatedly protested against the illegal 'election' in Donbas, organized by the Russian political leadership and not recognized by the civilized countries. 'Russia's support of these fake elections thwarts the Minsk process far away, threatening the peace talks, discrediting them', Gerashchenko wrote. The official added that Ukraine offered to re-shape the political group and 'to start this re-shaping from dissolution of the so-called institutions and facilities' of the 'republics' in the occupied Donbas. Kyiv also initiated the divions of military vehicles in Stanytsia Luhanska, which is slated for November 26 - provided the ceasefire mode and security demands are observed. The enemy used automatic and anti-tank launchers, heavy machine guns, infantry fighting vehicles, and small arms Open source Over the past 24 hours, the militants violated ceasefire two times on the demarcation line in Luhansk region. Therefore, Zolote came under a massive fire, as the press office of Luhansk regional civil-military administration reported. The enemy used automatic and anti-tank launchers, heavy machine guns, infantry fighting vehicles, and small arms, the message says. Besides, it was added that the militants attacked from the heavy machine guns at the defence works of our military near Stanytsia Luhanska. Earlier, the Joint Forces Operation reported that over the past 24 hours the militants shot at the Armed Forces positions in Donbas four times, yet, no reports on Zolote was made. According to Oksana Markarova, Ukraine's Finance Minister, the budget of the country is another key question for another IMF tranche Oksana Markarova, Ukraine's Finance Minister Open source Ukraines Cabinet of Ministers continue discussing gas prices hike with the International Monetary Fund, This issue remains one of the key ones in terms of adoption of the programme of the cooperation, as Oksana Markarova, Finance Minister, said at the briefing, broadcasted by 112 Ukraine. The question of the energy reform and gas prices hike and tariff increase related to this is one of those we are discussing, she said. At the same time, Markarova specified that there are two main subjects of the discussion with the IMF. The question of the budget, of course, and transfer to the market prices. Therefore, the Cabinet of Ministers has adopted the decree. Now, the tariffs are being revised, and we are conducting talks with the IMF to go on to the board directors, she specified. Earlier, gas prices in Ukraine for the population increased by 23,5% since November 1. Gas costs $305 for a thousand cubic meters. As it was reported, Ukraine and the IMF reached an agreement on a new stand-by program for $3,9 billion right after the Cabinet of Ministers decided to increase the tariffs. Moment of silence in Ukraine's Parliament censor.net.ua Members of the Ukrainian parliament discuss criminal liability for defamation again. On the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity, and a little less than five years after the abolition of the so-called "dictatorship laws" (group of ten laws restricting freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, passed by the Parliament of Ukraine on January 16, 2014 Ed.), some deputies decided to return to the experience of the " predecessors," thus congratulating the Ukrainians on the anniversary of the revolution. MPs from Petro Poroshenkos Bloc (BPP) Mykola Palamarchuk, Artur Palatny, and Oleh Velikin suggested that the parliament should return the penalty for slander and defamation. This is not the first attempt to introduce criminal liability for libel. In 2012, the corresponding proposal was made by MP Vitaly Zhuravsky from Yanukovychs Party of Regions, but after an explosive public reaction, the initiative was withdrawn. On January 16, 2014, the parliament passed "dictatorship laws," which, among other things, introduced responsibility for libel. Then it was proposed to fine for defamation or to sentence to public works, and libel with accusations of carrying out a particularly grave crime should be penalized with limiting freedom for up to two years. However, after mass protests, "dictatorial laws" have sunk into oblivion. And now, after almost 5 years since those events, the MPs again returned to the idea of punishment for slander. Mykola Palamarchuk, Artur Palatny, and Oleh Velikin propose to put the violator (for defamation with accusations of committing a particularly serious crime) behind the bars for three years, and to fine with 120-300 USD for defaming the post in social media. In addition, Ukrainian parliamentarians emphasize that the legislation of a number of European countries criminalizes defamation. At the same time, the MPs from the BPP support the decision taken in 2001 on the abolition of criminal liability for defamation. So, when you are in opposition, you call the similar laws dictatorship, and when you come to power, you take the arguments of the Yanukovychs team that criminal responsibility for defamation is something usual in the EU. But Ukrainian courts are not the European ones, and the equality of all before the law is not observed. And no one says that this norm is a pressure against freedom of speech. According to sources of 112 Ukraine in the pro-presidential political force, the bill is the reaction of MP Palamarchuk to the story of the former assistant Ihor Pavlovsky. Pavlovsky was arrested for two months on suspicion of complicity in the murder of public activist Kateryna Handzyuk. The bill is Palamarchuks personal initiative. It was not discussed during the faction meeting, 112.ua sources in BPP faction assured. The deputy himself confirmed that the return to the law of criminal responsibility for libel is his personal initiative. I introduced the bill, because a heap of unreasonable slander was poured on me, the MP explained, disagreeing with comparing his own initiative with Yanukovychs laws of 2014. He added that he did not believe in the support of the deputies' corps of their own legislative initiative, but only sought to attract public attention to it. It seems that he succeeded in it. Active social media users offered to imprison MPs for lying, and the chairman of the National Union of Journalists, Serhiy Tomilenko, called the bill a ban on the profession. However, taking into account bills blocking websites previously registered in parliament, as well as responsibility for propaganda of Luhansk and Donetsk Peoples Republics terrorist organizations , attempts to close the lobby of the Verkhovna Rada for journalists are hardly the last such initiative registered in the highest legislative body of the country. There is a suspicion that the implementation of such initiatives will depend, among other things, on the public resonance. Read the original text at 112.ua. The problems faced by the military, who return from a war zone to peaceful territories is very topical in Ukraine The bill number 8093 "On Military Consulting" has been prepared by a group of MPs with the active participation of experts in the military industry, commanders of volunteer battalions, and direct participants of the anti-terrorist operation (Joint Forces Operation, JFO). Unfortunately, those who consider the bill in the committees and discuss in the hall of the Verkhovna Rada, obviously, do not find it important, and therefore the document has not yet been considered even by the relevant committee. As for me, this position is erroneous and might lead to disastrous consequences. Let me remind you that in more than four years of Donbas conflict more than 300 thousand Ukrainians became participants of the war, that is, a lot of people, who saw the blood, the death, Saur-Mohyla, Ilovaisk, Debaltseve, and other hot spots, have returned to a peaceful part of the country. Today they live among us. We respect them, but, unfortunately, we do nothing for them. This terrible conflict between a front-line and peaceful way of life breaks many strong men. They feel a strong contrast between what they have experienced in the hostility zone, constantly being a step away from death, and the life in the peaceful parts of their motherland. The main message of the mentioned bill is to give these people a real opportunity to find themselves in a peaceful life and not to follow the wrong path. Recently, our media used to publish inconvenient stories about former Donbas war participants, veterans, who were previously known for their heroic deeds. And today they are involved in raider attacks, illegal pressure against someones business, etc. By the way, during the time that has passed since the submission of the bill to the Verkhovna Rada, we have witnessed a number of new crimes, the heroes of which were members of the volunteer movement and former soldiers of the Armed Forces. These are, for example, attacks against social activists, who often end in tragedy. Victims receive serious injuries or die, and performers are imprisoned. Why does it happen? Those who defend their native land do not see another opportunity to realize them. Here we can draw a parallel with the tests through which the Afghan veterans had to go through. Of course, these are not absolutely identical situations, but parallels can be traced. Those guys also often felt unnecessary in a peaceful life, and it was a real shock for them. Everyone was looking for their way out of the impasse: someone started their business, someone tried to kill their pain with alcohol or drugs, and a considerable part of the Afghan veterans joined the criminal gangs, popular in the 90s. In order to prevent Ukraines defenders from entering into criminal deals, we have prepared Bill No. 8093. It proposes to endow with official status and take organizations that can provide "military or security services to states, legal entities or individuals outside Ukraine" under state control. If we take the military aspect, then we are talking about: training personnel of the armed forces or other law enforcement agencies of a foreign state, as well as providing personnel, financial, logistic and informational and analytical support; maintenance and repair of the military equipment; military consulting services; ensuring the delivery of military equipment; construction work for military purposes; demining of the territory; provision of military interpreters; provision of medical and paramedical services; provision of services for the peaceful settlement of military conflicts (mediation). As for security activity, which is also an integral part of the work of military consulting organizations abroad, it provides for the protection of objects for various purposes, ensuring the protection of life and health of individuals, consulting services on security activities. The bill states that all of the above aspects of the activities of military consulting organizations are subject to licensing. A special body National Commission to implement the state supervision. So, summing up, adoption of this bill will provide a real opportunity to: create new jobs for the citizens of Ukraine, in particular for Donbas veterans; work abroad on a legal basis; act in accordance with Ukrainian legislation, since these business entities will be registered in Ukraine; pay considerable taxes to the state budget. And finally, a few words about the psychological rehabilitation of fighters who have returned from the combat zone. Only a certain part of the military will choose a career in military consulting companies, where such rehabilitation is provided. All the others should be provided with it by the relevant government agencies. Read the original text at 112.ua. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or 112.International and its owners. The President has also commissioned the Ukrainian MFA to react to the violation of the international law by Russia Sanctions against so-called elections in the occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions will be imposed. President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko claimed this during the joint briefing with President of Slovakia Andrej Kiska. I am sure that through joint efforts, political and diplomatic way Crimea, as well as the occupied territory of Donbas where fake elections were held with the participation of Russia, which destroy the Minsk process, demonstrate complete disregard on the part of the Russian Federation, Poroshenko claimed. He added that he commissioned the Ukrainian MFA to react to the violation of the international law by Russia. As it was reported, the militants scheduled the so-called elections in occupied Donbas on Sunday, November 11. The 'heads of the republics' and 'the local MPs' are to be elected. Ukraine and the international community have already condemned such elections. The representatives of the Kremlin stated that they decide on recognition or non-recognition after the final results. The President of Ukraine expects new anti-Russian sanctions due to the 'voting'. The Secretary of Ukraines National Security and Defense Council Oleksandr Turchynov stated that all the organizers and the participants of the 'elections' on November 11 would be found and prosecuted according to the Ukrainian legislation. British businessmen William Browder has urged the government of Canada to raise an issue of the exclusion of Russia from Interpol as CBS reported. According to Browder, Russia constantly uses Interpol to its advantage. At the same time, there is a point in the constitution of this international organization, which allows to exclude the countries, which uses it in their advantage from the membership. This point was never used. However, now the Canadian Parliament and the Canadian government should lead right now on suspending Russia from the Interpol system, in the same way as Russia was suspended from the Olympics after getting caught cheating, Browder reminded. He emphasized that Interpol should not be a weapon of the dictatorship. Browder, the Head of Investment Fund Hermitage Capital Management dedicated the biggest part of his life for the disclosure of the corruption inside Kremlin and revenge for the death of funds lawyer Sergey Magnitsky. On November 21, Kim Jong-yang, a high-rank police officer of Korean origin has been elected as the new chief of Interpol. Previously, Interpol had to re-elect the chairman after the-then chief Meng Hongwei went missing. Later, it was reported that China conducted an investigation into a corruption case where Meng was involved. Aleksandr Prokopchuk, Major General of the Russian police was a favorite of the elections. In 2006 - 2011, he served as deputy head of the National Central Bureau of Interpol of Russias Internal Ministry. Then, he became the head of this organization. In 2016, the Major General became the Vice-President of Interpol. Ukraine's Interior Minister and the Ukrainian delegation in Interpol decisively condemned Prokopchuk's possible election into this office; the Ukrainian side insisted that the Interpol might end up as a tool in the hands of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. In summer, the parliamentary faction of Petro Poroshenko's Bloc supported Fryz for this office; she previously served as the Chief of Ukraine's mission in NATO Iryna Fryz, Ukrainian MP novorosinform.org Iryna Fryz, Ukrainian MP and the Chief of Ukraine's mission in NATO, has been assigned the Minister for Veterans' Affairs. 270 MPs upheld her candidacy, with 226 votes necessary to pass. In February, the Parliament turned to the Cabinet, offering to create the Ministry for Veterans' Affairs. In summer, the parliamentary faction of Petro Poroshenko's Bloc supported Fryz for this office. Earlier on Tuesday, the Ukrainian lawmakers approved Oksana Markarova's candidacy as the Finance Minister. 242 MPs voted 'yes', with 226 votes necessary to pass. The official previously served in this authority as Acting Minister and Deputy Minister. She de facto chaired the Ministry when the-then Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk was sacked in June 2018. Thursday session of the Ukrainian Parliament poses special meaning; the MPs may approve the state budget for 2019. 112 International follows the situation live. The representative of Opposition Bloc For Life Viktor Medvedchuk stated that the negotiations on the exchange in an all for all format are being conducted all the time Open source The President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko conducted meeting with the representative of Opposition Bloc For Life Viktor Medvedchuk to discuss the process of the release of the Ukrainian political prisoners, as the Presidents Administration reported. The President had a couple of meetings with Medvedchuk, where he expressed discontent as the process of the release of the Ukrainian political prisoners of the Kremlin, who are illegally kept in Russia and on the occupied territories, exclusively for the shift from the deadlock of this issue, the message says. As it was reported, since May 2014, Viktor Medvedchuk conducted negotiations with the representatives of the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk Peoples Republics on finding the ways of a peaceful settlement of the situation in Donbas. The agreement on the beginning of the dialogue between the Trilateral Contact Group (which includes the representatives of OSCE, Ukraine and Russia) and the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk Peoples Republics was the result of the activity of the mediatory negotiation group. Two consulting rounds in such format took place on June 23, 24, 2014, which resulted in the agreement on ceasefire. Viktor Medvedchuk stated that the negotiations on the exchange in an all for all format are being conducted all the time. In December, 2017, the largest exchange through the 306 for 74 formula took place. Thanks to the participation of Viktor Medvedchuk, more than 480 Ukrainian citizens were released. Related video: The President added that such actions of the Russian Federation demonstrate a total disregard for the international law Open source The visit of the President of Russia to the annexed Crimea is a transgression of the international law. President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko claimed this during the joint briefing with President of Slovakia Andrej Kiska. Certainly, we consider the actions of the Russian President as a blatant violation of the international law. I want to note so that they hear us in Russia: Crimea wont be a part of Russia. Crimea belongs to Ukraine, always was and will always be. In this case, the actions of the Russian leadership shows a total disregard for the international law, Poroshenko added. As it was reported earlier, President of Russia Vladimir Putin once more visited the annexed Crimea on November 25. In particular, the President visited Yalta where he conducted An expended meeting of the Presidium of the State Council. Crimea was annexed by Russia by way of the illegal referendum that was held on the peninsula in March 2014. Earlier, the Russian military captured all strategic military objects and buildings of the key authoritative bodies. Neither Ukraine nor the rest of the civilized countries recognized the results of the referendum. A number of the European and the world countries, including Ukraine, imposed the economic sanctions against Russia. On October 7, 2015, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has signed the relevant law. International organizations recognized the occupation and annexation of Crimea illegal and condemned Russia's actions. Western countries have introduced a series of economic sanctions. Russia denied the occupation of the peninsula and calls it a "restoration of historical justice." Dublin, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global Intravenous (IV) Iron Drugs Market: Size, Trends and Forecasts (2018-2022)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. Global Intravenous (IV) Iron Drugs Market: Size, Trends and Forecasts (2018-2022), provides an in depth analysis of the global intravenous (IV) iron drugs market by value, by product, by type, by region, etc. The report also provides a regional analysis of the intravenous (IV) iron drugs market, including the following regions: The US and Europe. The report also provides a detailed analysis of the US intravenous (IV) iron drugs market by value, by products and by indication. The report also assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the overall global intravenous (IV) iron drugs market has also been forecasted for the period 2018-2022, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends. The global intravenous (IV) iron drugs market is highly fragmented with many intravenous (IV) iron drugs market players operating worldwide. Some intravenous (IV) iron drugs market players operating on a local level while other players operating on a regional and global level. The manufacturers of intravenous (IV) iron drugs market produce intravenous iron drugs for different indications, with different iron content and in different doses. However, the competition in the global intravenous (IV) iron drugs market is dominated by few intravenous iron drugs manufacturers. Further, key players of the intravenous (IV) iron drugs market are Vifor Pharma AG, Sanofi, AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd. are also profiled with their financial information and respective business strategies. Country Coverage The US Europe Company Coverage Vifor Pharma AG Sanofi AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd. Report Summary: Iron is one of the most essential mineral found in the human body. About 70% of the iron in the body is present in the red blood cells, called hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is required in the body to transport oxygen throughout the body via the blood. Deficiency of iron in the human body leads to severe health problems, which are associated with morbidity and mortality. To maintain the required level of iron in the body, iron supplements are given to the patients. Iron supplements can be given in two forms: oral iron drugs and intravenous (IV) iron drugs. Oral iron drugs can be in the form of capsules, tablets or liquid drops. Intravenous iron drugs are given by injecting iron directly inside the body with a needle through a vein. Intravenous iron drugs are favorably more preferred over oral iron drugs due to less side effects profile (oral iron drugs are not tolerable for many patients due to the poor gastrointestinal side effect); greater efficacy & better absorption (intravenous iron drugs are transported to the bone marrow through blood without need for absorption in the gut) and ensuring more efficient treatment (intravenous therapy allows larger dose of treatment over a short period of time). Intravenous iron drugs have a long history with continuously evolving new generation intravenous iron drugs. The intravenous (IV) iron drugs market can be segmented on the basis of product, type and indication. The global intravenous (IV) iron drugs market has increased at a significant CAGR during the years 2013-2017 and projections are made that the market would rise in the next four years i.e. 2018-2022 tremendously. The intravenous (IV) iron drugs market is expected to increase due to aging population, growing chronic diseases, escalating diabetic population, rising number of patients with chronic kidney disease, surge in the number of people with cancer, etc. Yet the market faces some challenges such as shift from Erythropoietin Stimulating Agents (ESAs) to HIF inhibitors, side effects associated with the use of intravenous iron drugs, etc." Key Topics Covered: 1. Executive Summary 2. Introduction 2.1 Iron Supplements: An Analysis 2.1.1 Types of Iron Supplements 2.2 Intravenous Iron Drugs: An Analysis 2.2.1 Main Clinical Indications for Intravenous (IV) Iron Treatment 2.2.2 Reasons Favoring Intravenous Iron Use Over Oral Iron 2.2.3 Side Effects and Complications 2.3 Intravenous Iron Drugs Segmentation: An Overview 2.3.1 Intravenous Iron Drugs Segmentation by Product 2.3.2 Intravenous Iron Drugs Segmentation by Type 2.3.3 Intravenous Iron Drugs Segmentation by Indication 3. Global Market Analysis 3.1 Global Iron Drugs Market: An Analysis 3.1.1 Global Iron Drugs Market by Value 3.1.2 Global Iron Drugs Market by Segments (Oral Iron Drugs and Intravenous Iron Drugs) 3.1.3 Global Oral Iron Drugs Market by Value 3.2 Global Intravenous (IV) Iron Drugs Market: An Analysis 3.2.1 Global IV Iron Drugs Market by Value 3.2.2 Global IV Iron Drugs Market by Product (Injectafer/Ferinject, Venofer and Other Products) 3.2.3 Global IV Iron Drugs Market by Type (Ferric Carboxymaltose, Sucrose, Dextran and Others) 3.2.4 Global IV Iron Drugs Market by Region (The US, Europe and ROW) 3.3 Global Intravenous (IV) Iron Drugs Market: Product Analysis 3.3.1 Global Injectafer/Ferinject IV Iron Drugs Market by Value 3.3.2 Global Venofer IV Iron Drugs Market by Value 3.3.3 Global Other IV Iron Drugs Market by Value 3.4 Global Intravenous (IV) Iron Drugs Market: Type Analysis 3.4.1 Global Ferric Carboxymaltose IV Iron Drugs Market by Value 3.4.2 Global Sucrose IV Iron Drugs Market by Value 3.4.3 Global Dextran IV Iron Drugs Market by Value 4. Regional Market Analysis 5. Market Dynamics 5.1 Growth Driver 5.1.1 Rising Disposable Income 5.1.2 Aging Population 5.1.3 Growing Chronic Diseases 5.1.4 Escalating Diabetic Population 5.1.5 Increasing Prevalence of Anemia among Pregnant Women 5.1.6 Soaring Number of Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) 5.1.7 Increasing Number of Patients with End-Stage-Renal-Disease (ESRD) 5.1.8 Surge in the Number of People with Cancer 5.2 Challenges 5.2.1 Shift from Erythropoietin Stimulating Agents (ESAs) to HIF Inhibitors 5.2.2 Side Effects Associated with the Use of Intravenous Iron Drugs 5.3 Market Trends 5.3.1 Increasing Healthcare Expenditure in Emerging Economies 5.3.2 Increasing Use of Intravenous Iron Drugs over Oral Iron Drugs 5.3.3 Emerging Second and Third Generation Intravenous Iron Drugs 5.3.4 Evolution of Combination Products 6. Competitive Landscape 6.1 Global Intravenous (IV) Iron Drugs Market Players: A Financial Comparison 6.2 Global Intravenous (IV) Iron Drugs Market Players: Product Comparison 6.3 Global Intravenous (IV) Iron Drugs Market Players by FDA Drug Approval 7. Company Profiles For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/jqlrn2/global?w=12 Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. These materials are studied now; the access to them will be opened at the beginning of 2019 The Institute of National Remembrance of Poland got about 60,000 pages of the document on the Soviet repressions of the Poles in the 1930s in the result of the cooperation with the Ukrainian archives as Polske Radio reported. This time we got the evidence of the victims and all documented processes of their arrest and next conviction. It is impressive materials not only for the historians but also for the family of the victims. We could not help them to this day but now we can, Mazhena Kruk, the Director of Archive of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance said. The pass of the digital copies of the materials is the result of the agreement signed by the Institute of National Remembrance of Poland and the Ukrainian state regional archives in Odesa, Vinnytsia and Khmelnytsky. On November 24, Ukraine will honor the memory of the victims of Holodomors. Traditionally, on Saturday, the worship services will take place and the symbolic pots with the grain and candles will be laid to the memorable signs. The Ministry called the arrival of so-called 83rd humanitarian convoy to Donbas as a blatant and cynical violation of the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Ukraine The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine condemns another humanitarian convoy of Russia, which arrived in the territory of Donbas on November 22. Kateryna Zelenko, the Spokesperson of the Ministry reported on Twitter. We firmly condemn another humanitarian convoy of the Russian Federation as a blatant and cynical violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. One more provocation despite the Minsk Agreements, reads the message. According to the message of the press service of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation, trucks of humanitarian convoy entered Donbas on November 22. This is the 83rd so-called humanitarian convoy. The convoys are loaded with 400 tons of humanitarian supplies consisting of children's food packages, medical equipment and medicines, the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia claimed. The press office has also advised that all trucks of the convoy have been checked by the representatives of the customs and border control officials. It is noteworthy that the movement of humanitarian convoys of Russia is implemented with a blatant transgression of norms of international and Ukrainian legislation, as well as the modalities agreed upon with the International Committee of the Red Cross, therefore the Ukrainian interdepartmental group carries out only visual observation without performing control functions. Military of the Armed Forces of Ukraine notes that after each arrival of the humanitarian convoy of the Russian Federation in the area of the hostilities in Donbas, the firing activity of militants increases. Heather Nauert, Spokesperson of U.S. Department of State claimed that the humanitarian convoys sent by Russia to the territory beyond Ukraines control which did not pass the check are illegal. Besides, NATO is concerned about extremism in the Middle East Rose Gottemoeller, NATO Deputy Secretary General Open source Rose Gottemoeller, NATO Deputy Secretary General, called Russian aggression in Ukraine and extremism in the Middle East the biggest threats the Alliance is facing, as Global News report. The Russian annexation of Crimea and the destabilization in the Donbass region of Ukraine represent two current concerns around Russian aggression, she said. The Deputy urged the Alliance to be attentive to the challenges that Russia poses us from the north all the way down to the southeast of the alliance. Earlier, Ukraines Parliament has preliminary supported the bill on amendments to the Constitution on Ukraines foreign policy, in particular, its EU and NATO aspirations. Ukraine and Slovakia coordinated their response against the building of the Nord Stream-2 The Nord Stream-2 is exclusively a political project. President of Slovakia Andrej Kiska claimed this at the joint meeting with President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko. Slovakia has always stressed that this is not an economic project but political. This is very important to understand if someone constantly says that this is only a business project. No, no way! This is only a political project, Kiska claimed. In his turn, President Petro Poroshenko added that the parties held negotiations on the coordination of efforts to prevent the construction of a politically motivated Russian project North Stream-2. It is noteworthy that the construction of the gas pipeline is being undertaken by the company, which owns 100 percent of the shares - Gazprom. One of the foreign investors of the gas pipeline is OWV Austrian company. Earlier, Rainer Zele, Head of the company said that the sanctions against the Nord Stream-2 would be unfair. The construction of the Nord Stream-2 became a topic, which recently was discussed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a joint press statement before the talks, Merkel claimed that Ukraine should remain the participant in the gas transit process to Europe after the launch of the Nord Stream-2. The Russian President Vladimir Putin kremlin.ru The Russian President Vladimir Putin visited annexed Crimea on Friday, November 23, as the press office of the Kremlin said. In particular, the Russian President visited Yalta, where he conducted An expended meeting of the presidium of the State Council. We have considered the challenges facing the heads of the regions and those defined in the Presidents decree on the national aims and strategic objectives of the state till 2024, the message says. Crimea was annexed by Russia by way of the illegal referendum, held at the peninsula in March 2014. Earlier the Russian militaries that stayed there without any marking conquered all strategic military objects and building of the force and state bodies. The results of the referendum were not recognized by Ukraine and the world society. The number of the European and world countries, including Ukraine imposed the economic sanctions against Russia. The graveyard's security detained three young men who carried the flares in a bag; they were taken in before they managed to light the flares Lychakivske Cemetery in Lviv, winter Open source Three Polish students attempted to burn the flares in on the premises of Lychakivske cemetery in Lviv. The actual incident took place on Thursday, November 22. Andriy Moskalenko, the Deputy Mayor for Development said this as quoted by Lviv city hall's press office. 'The provocateurs were detained not far from the tombs of the Polish military. Lychakivske cemetery director said that the police and the State Security Service were informed immediately after the detention. The provocateurs will be handed over to the law enforcers, so that the measures will be taken in accordance with the respective law', Moskalenko said. Later, it appeared that the graveyard's security detained three young men who carried the flares in a bag; they were taken in before they managed to light the flares. The investigation is underway. The Polish society for the protection of the military burial sites in Lviv reacted to the incident, condemning such actions of the provocateurs. The society insisted that the graveyard is a place to pray, and it cannot be used for any political manifestations, Polskie Radio reported. The investigation established that the deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea helped and facilitated the occupation of Crimea in March and April 2014 The Prosecutors office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea referred to a court an indictment against a former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of the AR of Crimea for treason. Reads the message of the Prosecutors office. The investigation established that the deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea helped and facilitated the occupation of Crimea in March and April 2014, reads the message. As a result of his direct participation in the adoption of so-called Constitution of Crimea Republic and the number of decrees of the Verkhovna Rada of the AR of Crimea, Republic of Crimea an illegitimate state formation was created. The accused to face an imprisonment ranging from 12 to 15 years. The Prosecutors office recalled that this is the 101st indictment against the officials of the AR of Crimea accused of treason passed to the court. The court rendered a guilty verdict by appointing a real measure of punishment in the form of imprisonment in one of these proceedings. On November 19, 2018, Dnipro Regional Court of Kyiv sentenced former deputy of the VR of Crimea Vasyl Hanysh for 12 years of imprisonment. In October, 2018, Naftogaz enrolled $3,8 million, and now, the sum is more than $22 million given August and October Naftogaz-Ukraine sent another statement on the enrolment of the overpayments for gas transit in repayment of the penny to Russian Gazprom, as the press office of Naftogaz Ukraine reported. According to the message, in October, 2018, Naftogaz enrolled $3,8 million, and now, the sum is more than $22 million given August and October. Earlier, Naftogaz-Ukraine enrolled $18,3 million overpayments for transit service under the contract with Gazprom for the repayment of the penny. On January 22, 2016, Ukraines Anti-Monopoly Committee fined Russian energy company Gazprom for $3,4 billion. The reason is Russian companys abuse of its position at the gas transit market, where Russia uses gas pipelines running through the Ukraine territory. The notification on the payment of the fine was sent to Gazprom on March 4, 2016? and it had to be paid until May 4, 2016. On April 12, 2016, Gazprom filed an appeal to Kyiv Economic Court with a request to find the decision of the Anti-Monopoly Committee as non-valid, however, the courts of higher instances confirmed the legality of such decision. Anti-Monopoly Committee filed a lawsuit on the recovery of the fine and penalty to the Kyiv Economic Court on October 5, 2016. The decision on the payment of the fine and penalty took its force on February 22, 2017. The Verkhovna Rada honored the victims of Holodomor 1932-1933 with a moment of silence at the special meeting on Friday, broadcasted by 112 Ukraine. Tomorrow, on November 24, Ukraine will honor the memory of all the deceased in those tragic days in 1932-1933. There were three Holodomors in the 20th century: 1921-1923, 1932-1933, 1946-1947. At the same time, only Holodomor of 1932-1933 has the status of a genocide. The events of 1921-1923 and 1946-1947 are qualified as mass starvation, the genocide character of which has not been proved. Holodomor lasted for 17 months from April 1932 to November 1933. The researchers have not officially decided on the number of victims: they name the numbers from 1,8 to 10 million. Most of the experts believe that 3-3,5 million people died of hunger. The priority areas to be funded remain the same: defense and security, reforms in the education, healthcare and decentralization, as well as social care system The Ukrainian Parliament passed the law about the state budget for the next year (bill No.9000). 239 MPs voted 'yes' in the second reading, 240 upheld it on the whole. The final voting took place in the early morning of Friday. Oksana Markarova, the newly appointed Finance Minister of Ukraine presented the document in the session hall of the Parliament. According to her, the priorities of funding remain the same as they currently are. They include defense and security, reforms in the education, healthcare and decentralization, as well as the social care system. 'At that, the budget remains well-balanced', she said. The budget foresees the incomes at the rate of approximately 36 billion U.S. dollars; the expenses are expected in the amount of almost USD 39 bn. The top deficit of the state budget remains on the level of 3.17 billion U.S. dollars. As of December 31, 2019, the maximum volume of the state debt is to make 92 billion U.S. dollars. The minimum salary made UAH 4,173 (USD 149). The cost of living (as of January 1, 2019) made UAH 1,853 (USD 66). In December 2019, the sum is to make UAH 2,027 (USD 72.39). The law will take effect on January 1, 2019, but not until officially published in the parliamentary outlet. McLean, VA, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Newgen Software Inc., a global provider of Business Process Management (BPM), Enterprise Content Management (ECM), and Customer Communication Management (CCM) platforms, today announced its participation as an exhibitor at AWS re:Invent 2018. Newgen will showcase how new age technologies can help enterprises to be responsive to changes, and make business happen anytime, anywhere. Since 2012, Newgen and AWS have worked together on cloud deployment projects, winning new customers from the US, and ASEAN in industries including banks, insurance firms, healthcare organizations and BPOs companies. Over 25 Newgen employees were trained last year as part of Big Bet 3-day trainings conducted by AWS for partners, and a lot of members of its technical team achieved AWS technical certifications. Newgen Subject Matter experts will be available at the re:Invent networking area in booth #2072. Attendees can discuss the art of reinventing and connecting their workplace by leveraging disruptive technologies and explore the nuts and bolts of Newgens Unified Digital Platform for a Connected Enterprise. Businesses today need to address the challenges of customer delight, business agility, and organizational change, simultaneously. By harnessing the right technology, companies can successfully transform their operations by enhancing business process agility, workforce productivity, and cost efficiency, said Diwakar Nigam, MD and Chairman, Newgen Software. Built on BPM, ECM and CCM, Newgens solutions extract greater value from enterprise data systems, integrate with content repositories across multiple sites and eliminate redundant processes. These solutions leverage Cloud, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Digital Sensing, Enterprise Mobility, and Process Analytics to transform key processes of a business. Newgens BPM enabled Banking Solutions on AWS cloud like Online Account Opening Solution, Retail/ Consumer Loan Origination Solution, Commercial Loan Origination Solution and Healthcare Solutions like Provider Contracting Solution, Appeals & Grievances Solution helps enterprises to reinvent and streamline their overall processes in a cost-efficient manner. As a result, it leads to higher efficiency and improved business performance. Digital Sensing helps them drive contextual customer experience across multiple touch-points. This further helps in converting unstructured data into structured content to harness it for analysis and action. AWS re:Invent 2018 will be held from 26th to 30th November in Las Vegas, Nevada. About Newgen Software Inc. Newgen Software Inc., is a provider of Business Process Management, Enterprise Content Management & Customer Communication Management platform with large, mission-critical solutions deployed at worlds leading banks, insurance firms, healthcare organizations, governments, BPOs & telecom companies. For more information, please visit https://newgensoft.com Connect with us: Dublin, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Middle East and North Africa Power Bank Market By Type (Lithium-ion Vs. Lithium Polymer), By Capacity (Up to 4000 mAh, 4001 - 8000 mAh and Others), By Distribution Channel, By Country, Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2013-2023" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. Middle East and North Africa power bank market is projected to grow to $ 223 million by 2023, on account of expanding mobile and portable device user base, increasing tourist footfall and rising per capita income across the region. Improving product standards for mitigating the existing and emerging hazards of high energy density lithium-ion batteries used in power banks, in addition to socio-economic development under government programs, namely, UAE Vision 2021, Saudi Vision 2030 and Kuwait Vision 2035, are expected to positively influence the power bank market in Middle East and North Africa during the forecast period. Middle East and North Africa Power Bank Market, 2013-2023 discusses the following aspects of power bank market in MEA: Power Bank Market Size, Share & Forecast Segmental Analysis - By Type (Lithium-ion Vs. Lithium Polymer), By Capacity (Up to 4000 mAh, 4001 - 8000 mAh and Others), By Distribution Channel, By Country Competitive Analysis Changing Market Trends & Emerging Opportunities Why You Should Buy This Report? To gain an in-depth understanding of power bank market in MEA To identify the on-going trends and anticipated growth in the next five years To help industry consultants, power bank distributors and other stakeholders align their market-centric strategies To obtain research-based business decisions and add weight to presentations and marketing material To gain competitive knowledge of leading market players To avail of 10% customization in the report without any extra charges and get the research data or trends added in the report as per the buyer's specific needs Some of the major players operating in Middle East and North Africa power bank market are Anker Innovations Limited Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. Promate Technologies Ltd. Sunvalley Group (RAVPower) Xiaomi Corporation Romoss Technology Co. Ltd Belkin International, Inc. Shenzhen Remax Co. Ltd Energizer Holdings Inc. Aukey International Ltd Key Topics Covered: 1. Product Overview 2. Research Methodology 3. Analyst View 4. Voice of Customer 4.1. Factors Considered Before Purchase 4.2. Brand Awareness Level 4.3. Brand Satisfaction Level 5. Middle East Power Bank Market Outlook 6. UAE Power Bank Market Outlook 7. Saudi Arabia Power Bank Market Outlook 8. Iran Power Bank Market Outlook 9. Kuwait Power Bank Market Outlook 10. Qatar Power Bank Market Outlook 11. Oman Power Bank Market Outlook 12. Jordan Power Bank Market Outlook 13. Lebanon Power Bank Market Outlook 14. Bahrain Power Bank Market Outlook 15. North Africa Power Bank Market Outlook 16. Egypt Power Bank Market Outlook 17. Morocco Power Bank Market Outlook 18. Algeria Power Bank Market Outlook 19. Country-Wise List of Distributors/Dealers for Power Banks 20. Market Dynamics 20.1. Drivers 20.2. Challenges 21. Market Trends & Developments 22. Value Chain Analysis 23. Trade Dynamics 23.1. Import 23.2. Export 24. Competitive Landscape 24.1. Competition Benchmarking 24.2. Company Profiles 25. Strategic Recommendations For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/ldq893/middle_east_and?w=12 Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. English Norwegian The extraordinary general meeting (EGM) of Selvaag Bolig ASA was held on Friday 23 November 2018. The general meeting adopted the resolutions proposed by the board and as set forth in the notice. Minutes are attached. Further information from Kristoffer Gregersen, vice president communications and market, Selvaag Bolig ASA Telephone: +47 957 75 593, e-mail: kgr@selvaagbolig.no Selvaag Bolig ASA is a residential property developer controlling the entire value chain from acquisition of land to sale of homes. The company has several thousand homes under development at any given time, and focuses on the growth areas in and around Greater Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger and Trondheim. Selvaag Bolig represents a continuation of Selvaag's 70-year history and experience, and offers a broad variety of property types. The company is headquartered at Ullern in Oslo. www.selvaagboligasa.no/en This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5 -12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act. Attachment Dublin, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Europe Automotive Forging Market By Vehicle Type (Passenger Car, Light Commercial Vehicle, Medium & Heavy Commercial Vehicle and Others), By Material Type, By Application, By Country, Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2013-2023" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. Europe automotive forging market is projected to cross $ 15.8 billion by 2023, on the back of increasing technological advancements in automotive forging processes. Some of the other factors that would aid growth in the market are increasing sales of vehicles, rising demand for complex structures from auto manufacturers, and increasing number of construction and infrastructure projects across different countries in the region. Increasing investments in research & development activities in the industry are also anticipated to fuel the Europe automotive forging market in coming years. Europe Automotive Forging Market, 2013-2023 discusses the following aspects of automotive forging market in Europe: Automotive Forging Market Size, Share & Forecast Segmental Analysis - By Vehicle Type (Passenger Car, Light Commercial Vehicle, Medium & Heavy Commercial Vehicle and Others), By Material Type, By Application, By Country Competitive Analysis Changing Market Trends & Emerging Opportunities Why You Should Buy This Report? To gain an in-depth understanding of automotive forging in Europe To identify the on-going trends and anticipated growth in the next five years To help industry consultants, automotive forging distributors and other stakeholders align their market-centric strategies To obtain research-based business decisions and add weight to presentations and marketing material To gain competitive knowledge of leading market players To avail of 10% customization in the report without any extra charges and get the research data or trends added in the report as per the buyer's specific needs Some of the leading companies operating in the Europe automotive forging market are Bharat Forge Limited Thyssenkrupp AG CIE Automotive, S.A. NTN Corporation American Axle & Manufacturing, Inc. Meritor Inc. Dana Inc. Ramkrishna Forgings India Forge & Drop Stampings Ltd. Nanjing Automobile Forging Co., Ltd. Key Topics Covered: 1. Product Overview 2. Research Methodology 3. Analyst View 4. Europe Automotive Forging Market Outlook 4.1. Market Size & Forecast 4.1.1. By Value & Volume 4.2. Market Share & Forecast 4.2.1. By Vehicle Type 4.2.2. By Material Type (Steel and Aluminum) 4.2.3. By Application (Gears, Crankshaft, Piston, Axle, Bearing, Connecting Roads & Others) 4.2.4. By Country 4.3. Market Attractiveness Index (By Vehicle Type) 4.4. Europe: Country Analysis 5. Market Dynamics 5.1. Drivers 5.2. Challenges 6. Market Trends & Developments 7. Competitive Landscape 7.1. Bharat Forge Limited 7.2. Thyssenkrupp AG 7.3. CIE Automotive, S.A. 7.4. NTN Corporation 7.5. American Axle & Manufacturing, Inc. 7.6. Meritor Inc. 7.7. Dana Inc. 7.8. Ramkrishna Forgings 7.9. India Forge & Drop Stampings Ltd. 7.10. Nanjing Automobile Forging Co., Ltd. 8. Strategic Recommendations For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/fpcq73/europe_automotive?w=12 Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. Santa Monica, CA, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE -- Gopher Protocol Inc. (OTCQB: GOPH) ("Gopher), a company specializing in the development of Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence enabled mobile technologies, including a global mesh network technology platform for both mobile and fixed solutions, announced today its new collaboration with Wise Network S.A. On September 20, 2018 Gopher had announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to license Gophers Blockchain-based, radio-generated digital currency technology on an exclusive basis to Genesis Blockchain Technologies (GBT), for GBT to integrate into its Blockchain-enabled solutions (https://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/GOPH/news/Genesis-Blockchain-Technologies--Gopher-Protocol-Enter-Exclusive-License-Agreement?id=204317). Wise Network S.A. (Wise) is a Costa Rican corporation, affiliated with GBT, that has created the Wise Platform (http://www.wise.cr/). This Platform will be using the newly created Wise Token, for which Wise will also be conducting an ICO. In addition, Wise will be announcing its Enigma Chip, based on Gophers licensed technology, which will be designed to deploy a radio wave based Blockchain system, enabling distributed ledger, robust security, and real-time, vast data handling for IoT and mobile domains. The chip hardware is accompanied with embedded software, and is designed to work through its private, secured network protocol. Enigma IC can use Wi-Fi or Cellular networks to communicate with other Enigma ICs. In addition, the microchip can communicate via its own radio waves in a wide variety of frequencies, in locations where there are no cellular or Wi-Fi services, thereby expanding IoT tracking of Blockchain-based assets globally. It is expected that this feature opens an entire world of IoT and network possibilities for remote locations. The Enigma microchip includes Gophers Avant! AI for Blockchain management and security. A demonstration is available via an educational video released by Gopher and Wise -- https://youtu.be/3z0avXbYZoc Dr. Danny Rittman, Gophers CTO, will serve as Wises CTO to enhance Wises implementation of Gophers licensed technology. GBT agreed to pay Gopher $5 million upon commencing an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). Further, Gopher shall receive 2% of gross revenue of licensed products sold by GBT under the license agreement for a period of five years after commencement of sales. Upon GBT commencing its ICO, Gopher will have the option of acquiring 30% of the ICO at a discount of 30% to the offering price. More information about the Wise ICO and its structure can be found through the following release: https://www.investorideas.com/news/2018/crypto-corner/11151Wise-Avant-AI-Enigma.asp and more elaborate information about its structure and white paper can be found by review Wise ICO rating : https://icorating.com/ico/wise/ Douglas Davis, Gophers Interim CEO, states: "We are excited to see implementation of our technology platform into the Blockchain space in partnership with GBT and Wise. As we have stated before, Gopher is not a crypto currency or Blockchain company, but is a supplier of Asset Tracking IoT and Global Mesh Network technology that licensees can use to enhance their blockchain-based offerings. It is impressive to see how the talented folks at GBT and Wise are taking our IoT and AI technologies and implementing them into their Blockchain, creating value and use to the public. Their success, other than again proving our technology, may generate income for Gopher per the terms of our License Agreement. About Gopher Protocol Inc. Gopher Protocol Inc. (OTCQB: GOPH) (Gopher) (http://gopherprotocol.com/) is a development-stage company which considers itself a native IoT creator, developing Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled mobile technology platforms. Gopher has a portfolio of Intellectual Property that, when commercialized, will include smart microchips, mobile and security applications and protocols, and supporting cloud software. Gophers system envisions the creation of a global mesh network. The core of the system will be its advanced microchip technology that can be installed in any mobile or fixed device worldwide. Gopher envisions this system as a low-cost, secure, private mesh network between any enabled devices, providing shared processing, advanced mobile database management/sharing and enhanced mobile features as an alternative to traditional carrier services. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements". Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors as disclosed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission located at their website (http://www.sec.gov). In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic conditions, governmental and public policy changes, the Companys ability to raise capital on acceptable terms, if at all, the Companys successful development of its products and the integration into its existing products and the commercial acceptance of the Companys products. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release. Transactions Positions Aleafia as Major Supplier, Retailer of Adult-use Cannabis TORONTO, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aleafia Health Inc. (TSXV: ALEF; OTCQX: ALEAF, FRA: ARAH) (Aleafia or the Company) is pleased to announce that the previously announced joint venture and financing transactions with Serruya Private Equity (Serruya) have closed. We look forward to immediately executing on our shared vision of building and scaling a retail cannabis network with immediate national reach and global expansion plans, said Aaron Serruya, a principal of SPE. We are very excited to once again play an early role in developing one of the worlds largest cannabis companies. Aleafia made a firm commitment to launch a national adult-use cannabis division with global ambitions. With final approvals now in place, we have delivered on that commitment, said Aleafia CEO Geoffrey Benic. With commercially proven brands and global retailing expertise, we believe our partnership with Serruya will provide significant value to our shareholders. Additional Highlights: Backed and supported with a $10 million investment by Serruya and its affiliate, International Franchise Inc., which has over 4500 quick service restaurant locations in over 50 countries Serruya has also been a leading early cannabis industry force as cannabis industry investors in both emerging and established issuers and other industry participants Launch approximately 20 proposed retail outlets, with a subsequent national and international expansion plan (excluding the U.S.) With turn-key store launch, licensing agreements cover established, commercially proven international cannabis brands Ready-made store design and retail systems in place, along with intellectual property including genetics and packaging The closing formalizes Aleafias acquisition of a 51 per cent interest in Flying High Brands Inc., a domestic and international cannabis brands joint-venture (Flying High) and a 9.9 per cent interest in One Plant (Retail) Corp. a Canada-wide cannabis retail joint venture (One Plant). The closing also marks the completion of Serruyas $10 million (CAD) strategic investment into Aleafia (by way of the purchase of 5 million common shares at $2.00 per common share) and the completion of Aleafias $1 million (CAD) investment in Flying High and $4 million (CAD) investment in One Plant. Aleafia purchased its 51 per cent interest in Flying High, in part, by the issuance of 6 million common shares to Serruya. For Investor & Media Relations, please contact: Nicholas Bergamini, VP, Public Affairs IR@AleafiaInc.com About Aleafia Health Inc.: Aleafia is a vertically integrated, national cannabis company with major medical clinic, cannabis cultivation and R&D operations. The company is a federally licensed producer and vendor of cannabis and will reach an annual production capacity of 98,000 kg of dried cannabis in 2019. Aleafia operates 22 medical cannabis clinics staffed by physicians and nurse practitioners, with over 50,000 patients. The company is highly differentiated, maintaining the largest medical cannabis dataset in the world with significant intellectual property holdings and current R&D operations. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. FORWARD LOOKING INFORMATION This press release contains forward-looking statements and information that are based on the beliefs of management and reflect the Company's current expectations. When used in this press release, the words "estimate", "project", "belief", "anticipate", "intend", "expect", "plan", "predict", "may" or "should" and the negative of these words or such variations thereon or comparable terminology are intended to identify forward-looking statements and information. The forward-looking statements and information in this press release includes information relating to the implementation of Aleafia Health's business plan. Such statements and information reflect the current view of the Company with respect to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in those forward-looking statements and information. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause our actual results, performance or achievements, or other future events, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others, the following risks: risks associated with the implementation of Aleafia Health's business plan and matters relating thereto, risks associated with the cannabis industry, competition, regulatory change, the need for additional financing, reliance on key personnel, the potential for conflicts of interest among certain officers or directors, and the volatility of the Company's common share price and volume. Forward-looking statements are made based on management's beliefs, estimates and opinions on the date that statements are made and the Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. CALGARY, Alberta, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- FLYHT Aerospace Solutions Ltd. (TSX-V: FLY) (OTCQX: FLYLF) (the Company or FLYHT), today announced the appointment of Jeffrey Rex as the companys VP of Sales and Marketing. The appointment is effective immediately and Rex takes over for David Perez who will leave FLYHT to pursue other opportunities. Jeff is an industry veteran and comes to us through our acquisition of the Panasonic Weather Solutions (PWS) assets from Panasonic Avionics, said FLYHT CEO Thomas Schmutz. We welcome Jeff to this new position as VP Sales and Marketing. His aerospace engineering and business development background, work within the commercial aviation industry, and experience at PWS are important to our go-forward strategies and plans. I am delighted that Jeff is stepping into this position and look forward to his contributions to FLYHT. As a director at Panasonic Avionics Corporation, with an aerospace engineering background, Rex led the companys efforts in business and product development for advanced flight tracking, flight-deck communications and aviation weather solutions. Previously, at AirDat (acquired by Panasonic in early 2013), he was responsible for the companys airline and aviation business, engineering, and product development. His responsibilities also included certification and deployment of weather sensing technology. Before AirDat, Rex held a VP role at L2 Aviation as well as senior program and account management roles at Aircraft Systems & Manufacturing and Dell. The products and services we commercialized at PWS and FLYHTs product portfolio are both complimentary and a good fit for the air transport market, says Rex. The combined product portfolio offers many exciting opportunities for FLYHT to capture business and build value for our current and future airline customers. I am eager to work with this outstanding team and the industry-leading technology in the satcom, weather sensing and aircraft fleet health markets. As part of his compensation package for joining FLYHT in October 2018, Mr. Rex was granted 10,000 incentive stock options shares of the Corporation by the FLYHT Board of Directors priced at the closing on November 7, 2018, which expire on December 31, 2022, under the formal stock option plan approved at the Annual General Meeting held in May 2018. The options will be subject to the vesting of 1/3 per year on the anniversary of the grant and are subject to a four month hold period. In addition to this reorganization, Steve Newell (VP Business Development) will also be leaving FLYHT to pursue other opportunities. About FLYHT Aerospace Solutions Ltd. 2018 marks FLYHTs 20th anniversary as a leader in real-time aircraft data streaming. FLYHTs mission is to improve aviation safety, efficiency and profitability (located in Calgary, Canada; publicly traded as: FLY:TSX.V; FLYLF:OTCQX). Airlines, leasing companies, fractional owners and original equipment manufacturers have installed the Automated Flight Information Reporting System (AFIRS) on their aircraft. The solution is used to capture, process and stream aircraft data providing real-time alerts. AFIRS sends this information through satellite networks to FLYHTs UpTime Cloud data center, which gives aircraft operators direct insight into the operational status and health of their aircraft, which in turn enables them to take corrective action to maintain the highest standard of operational control. The Company recently acquired the assets of Panasonic Weather Solutions, including FlightLink Iridium Satellite Data Unit and Tropospheric Airborne Meteorological Data Reporting (TAMDAR) sensor. For more information visit flyht.com. Contact Information: FLYHT Aerospace Solutions Ltd. Alana Forbes Chief Financial Officer 403-291-7437 aforbes@flyht.com Adelaide Capital Markets Inc. Deborah Honig 647-203-8793 deborah@adelaidecapital.ca Join us on social media! www.facebook.com/flyht www.twitter.com/flyhtcorp www.slideshare.net/flyhtcorp www.youtube.com/flyhtcorp flyht.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. Dublin, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "North America Automotive Forging Market By Vehicle Type (Passenger Car, Light Commercial Vehicle, Medium & Heavy Commercial Vehicle and Others), By Material Type, By Application, By Country, Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2013-2023" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. North America automotive forging market is projected to reach $4.9 billion by 2023, on account of increasing focus of automotive forging companies towards automating their plants and installing new pre-forming units across the region. Adoption of new technological advancements aimed at boosting the productivity of forged components, in addition to growing vehicle population and decreasing raw material costs, are expected to boost demand for automotive forging in North America during forecast period. North America Automotive Forging Market, 2013-2023 discusses the following aspects of automotive forging market in North America: Automotive Forging Market Size, Share & Forecast Segmental Analysis - By Vehicle Type (Passenger Car, Light Commercial Vehicle, Medium & Heavy Commercial Vehicle and Others), By Material Type, By Application, By Country Competitive Analysis Changing Market Trends & Emerging Opportunities Why You Should Buy This Report? To gain an in-depth understanding of automotive forging in North America To identify the on-going trends and anticipated growth in the next five years To help industry consultants, automotive forging distributors and other stakeholders align their market-centric strategies To obtain research-based business decisions and add weight to presentations and marketing material To gain competitive knowledge of leading market players To avail of 10% customization in the report without any extra charges and get the research data or trends added in the report as per the buyer's specific needs Some of the leading companies operating in the North America automotive forging market are Bharat Forge Limited Thyssenkrupp AG CIE Automotive, S.A. NTN Corporation American Axle & Manufacturing, Inc. Meritor Inc. Dana Inc. Ramkrishna Forgings India Forge & Drop Stampings Ltd. Nanjing Automobile Forging Co., Ltd. Key Topics Covered: 1. Product Overview 2. Research Methodology 3. Analyst View 4. North America Automotive Forging Market Outlook 4.1. Market Size & Forecast 4.1.1. By Value & Volume 4.2. Market Share & Forecast 4.2.1. By Vehicle Type 4.2.2. By Material Type (Steel and Aluminum) 4.2.3. By Application (Gears, Crankshaft, Piston, Axle, Bearing, Connecting Roads & Others) 4.2.4. By Country 4.3. Market Attractiveness Index (By Vehicle Type) 4.4. North America: Country Analysis 5. Market Dynamics 5.1. Drivers 5.2. Challenges 6. Market Trends & Developments 7. Competitive Landscape 7.1. Bharat Forge Limited 7.2. Thyssenkrupp AG 7.3. CIE Automotive, S.A. 7.4. NTN Corporation 7.5. American Axle & Manufacturing, Inc. 7.6. Meritor Inc. 7.7. Dana Inc. 7.8. Ramkrishna Forgings 7.9. India Forge & Drop Stampings Ltd. 7.10. Nanjing Automobile Forging Co., Ltd. 8. Strategic Recommendations For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/s33kw3/north_america?w=12 Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. Dublin, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "South America Automotive Forging Market By Vehicle Type (Passenger Car, Light Commercial Vehicle, Medium & Heavy Commercial Vehicle and Others), By Material Type, By Application, By Country, Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2013-2023" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. South America automotive forging market is projected to grow to $ 1.3 billion by 2023. Anticipated growth in the market can be attributed to growing focus of automotive forging companies towards automating their plants and installing new pre-forming units. Some of the other factors that would aid the market growth are decreasing raw material costs, increasing adoption of new technologies for introducing advanced components and growing sales of passenger cars in the region during forecast period. South America Automotive Forging Market, 2013-2023 discusses the following aspects of automotive forging market in South America: Automotive Forging Market Size, Share & Forecast Segmental Analysis - By Vehicle Type (Passenger Car, Light Commercial Vehicle, Medium & Heavy Commercial Vehicle and Others), By Material Type, By Application, By Country Competitive Analysis Changing Market Trends & Emerging Opportunities Why You Should Buy This Report? To gain an in-depth understanding of automotive forging in South America To identify the on-going trends and anticipated growth in the next five years To help industry consultants, automotive forging distributors and other stakeholders align their market-centric strategies To obtain research-based business decisions and add weight to presentations and marketing material To gain competitive knowledge of leading market players To avail of 10% customization in the report without any extra charges and get the research data or trends added in the report as per the buyer's specific needs Some of the leading companies operating in the South America automotive forging market are Bharat Forge Limited Thyssenkrupp AG CIE Automotive, S.A. NTN Corporation American Axle & Manufacturing, Inc. Meritor Inc. Dana Inc. Ramkrishna Forgings India Forge & Drop Stampings Ltd. Nanjing Automobile Forging Co., Ltd. Key Topics Covered: 1. Product Overview 2. Research Methodology 3. Analyst View 4. South America Automotive Forging Market Outlook 4.1. Market Size & Forecast 4.1.1. By Value & Volume 4.2. Market Share & Forecast 4.2.1. By Vehicle Type 4.2.2. By Material Type (Steel and Aluminum) 4.2.3. By Application (Gears, Crankshaft, Piston, Axle, Bearing, Connecting Roads & Others) 4.2.4. By Country 4.3. Market Attractiveness Index (By Vehicle Type) 4.4. South America: Country Analysis 5. Market Dynamics 5.1. Drivers 5.2. Challenges 6. Market Trends & Developments 7. Competitive Landscape 7.1. Bharat Forge Limited 7.2. Thyssenkrupp AG 7.3. CIE Automotive, S.A. 7.4. NTN Corporation 7.5. American Axle & Manufacturing, Inc. 7.6. Meritor Inc. 7.7. Dana Inc. 7.8. Ramkrishna Forgings 7.9. India Forge & Drop Stampings Ltd. 7.10. Nanjing Automobile Forging Co., Ltd. 8. Strategic Recommendations For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/spx2zq/south_america_1?w=12 Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. MOSCOW, Russia, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mechel PAO (MOEX: MTLR, NYSE: MTL), one of the leading Russian mining and metals companies, announces that it intends to release its operational and financial results for the nine months period ending September 30, 2018, on Tuesday, November 27, 2018. In conjunction with these releases, Mechel will host a conference call, which will be simultaneously broadcast live over the Internet. Oleg Korzhov, Chief Executive Officer, will host the call. The conference call will take place at the following time: Tuesday, November 27, 2018 6:00 PM Moscow Time 3:00 PM London Time 10:00 AM New York Time Please dial the number below approximately 10 minutes prior to the scheduled time of the call. Conference Call Phone Numbers: International: +44 (0) 330 336 9411 US: +1 323-794-2575 Russia: +7 495 646 9190 Conference ID: 2937189 Listeners can access the conference call live over the Internet through a link on Mechel's web site at http://www.mechel.com/shareholders/report / Please take 10 minutes prior to the call to visit the site and download presentation and any necessary audio software. Additionally, a record of the webcast will be available on our web site. Mechel PAO Alexey Lukashov Phone: +7 495 221 8888 e-mail: alexey.lukashov @mechel.com Mechel is an international mining and steel company. Its products are marketed in Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa. Mechel unites producers of coal, iron ore concentrate, steel, rolled products, ferroalloys, heat and electric power. All of its enterprises work in a single production chain, from raw materials to high value-added products. Some of the information in this press release may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of Mechel, as defined in the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We wish to caution you that these statements are only predictions and that actual events or results may differ materially. We do not intend to update these statements. We refer you to the documents Mechel files from time to time with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Form 20-F. These documents contain and identify important factors, including those contained in the section captioned Risk Factors and Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements in our Form 20-F, that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections or forward-looking statements, including, among others, the achievement of anticipated levels of profitability, growth, cost and synergy of our recent acquisitions, the impact of competitive pricing, the ability to obtain necessary regulatory approvals and licenses, the impact of developments in the Russian economic, political and legal environment, volatility in stock markets or in the price of our shares or ADRs, financial risk management and the impact of general business and global economic conditions. Dublin, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Cooperative Vehicle Infrastructure System (CVIS) and Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Industry Report, 2018" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. Autonomous driving fuses emerging technologies in many industries and produces combinations of new technologies, solutions, and products. Cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) and cooperative vehicle infrastructure system (CVIS), the two most valued technologies, boomed as expected last year. Preparing the report brings us back to the development course of personal digital assistant (PDA) and cellphone industry as we consider how cellphones become intelligent. There was a melee between PDA and PDA cellphone before the iPhone. Palm was the first sought after by numerous PDA-fanciers who voluntarily wrote evaluation reports and organized fan exchange clubs for the firm, an echo to today's Tesla. Many independent operating system developers and open API-based PDA and cell phone vendors (like Nokia), which were active players in the market, then disappeared. These days some OEMs are either developing operating systems by themselves or open software/hardware interfaces. Emerging car manufacturing forces are mushrooming, just as the herds of cellphone knockoffs did in those years. History does often rhyme. Without a doubt, car manufacturing differs a lot from the cell phone industry in that its scale and complexity is more than ten times larger, so it is not quite right to draw a full analogy between them. Apple's APPSTORE model, the built 2.5G/3G/4G wireless data networks and the unified smartphone operating systems (with developers reduced to 2 or 3 from dozens) served as a premise of the subsequent prosperity, application and service expansion of the mobile internet. The intelligent vehicle industry is probably going to follow suit. IT firms that foray into car manufacturing initially made fun of automakers by saying they still lived in primitive society in applying IT and they followed the beaten track with so low efficiency - even the most intelligent vehicle still lagged behind smartphone by generations in terms of connectivity. The truth is that chip computing, network transmission and infrastructure still fall short of basic requirements of the automobile industry, and intelligent and connected trends of cars still have not been pushed ahead on a gigantic scale. The connected car alone is little more than a top student with high IQs but low EQs. Connected cars that can only predict intentions of other road users without communicating with surroundings, just act like a straight-A student who is a low-EQ intellectual performing well on campus (a simple traffic scene) but probably falling flat in society (a complicated traffic scene). Human drivers can communicate with pedestrians by expression in their eyes and gestures when crossing an intersection with no traffic signals, through which both drivers and pedestrians can know who will go first. Automated vehicles are however incapable of intentional communication in spite of sensors. The traffic environment is quite complex and changeable, especially in China where several traffic scenes co-exist under mixed traffic flow. Current automated vehicles have yet to experience so many scenes to travel safely that commercialization of connected cars is faced with high risks. If they want to understand the intentions of other traffic participants well, connected cars undoubtedly need to communicate with them and surroundings. CVIS and V2X then play a key part. Key Topics Covered: 1 CVIS & V2X 1.1 What is CVIS? 1.2 Autonomous Driving Requires CVIS 1.3 CVIS Plays a Key Role in Future ITS 1.4 Core Technologies for CVIS 1.5 Progress of CVIS in the United States 1.5.1 Timeline for CVIS & V2X in the United States 1.5.2 Distribution of CVIS & V2X Tests in the United States 1.6 Progress of CVIS in Europe 1.6.1 The Three CVIS Projects in Europe 1.6.2 Timeline for ITS Tests in Europe during 2014-2018 1.6.3 Milestones of ITS in Europe during 2016-2020 1.7 Progress of CVIS in Japan 1.7.1 Institutions Engaged in CVIS in Japan 1.7.2 Contents of CVIS in Japan 1.7.3 VICS of CVIS in Japan 1.7.4 700MHz ITS of CVIS in Japan 1.8 Applied Scenarios of CVIS 1.8.1 CVIS Technologies Applied at Intersections 1.8.2 CVIS Technologies Applied at Critical Sections 1.9 Full Implementation of the First Urban CVIS Platform in China 2 V2X & DSRC 2.1 Key Technologies for Automotive Communications 2.2 Definition of V2X 2.3 Why Is V2X Needed? 2.4 Cases of V2X Applied 2.5 V2X Services 2.6 Two Standards for V2X 2.7 V2X Communication System Structure 2.8 Support for V2X from Governments Worldwide 2.9 China's First Association Standards for V2X Application Layer 2.10 Development Stages of V2X 2.11 Estimated Shipments of Cellular Modem Worldwide 2.12 Frequency Band of V2X 2.13 Definition of DSRC 2.14 Comparison between C-V2X and DSRC 2.15 The Demand for Base Stations from DSRC 3 C-V2X 3.1 Definition of C-V2X 3.2 Timeline for C-V2X Applied in Autonomous Driving 3.3 Advances of C-V2X Standards 3.3.1 Advances of 3GPP V2X Standards 3.3.2 Timeline for Commercial Deployment of 5GAA for C-V2X (V2V/V2I) 3.3.3 C-V2X Technology Tests and Commercial Application Program 3.4 Status Quo of C-V2X Industry 3.5 Progress of C-V2X Chip 3.6 Progress of C-V2X in China 3.7 Advances of C-V2X Standards in China 3.7.1 Accomplishment of LTE-V2X Standard System in China 3.7.2 Work Division of LTE-V2X Standard System in China 3.7.3 Progress and Targets of C-V2X Tests and Demo Projects in China 3.7.4 C-V2X Workgroup of IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Team 3.7.5 China Unicom's Timeline for C-V2X Deployment 3.8 5GAA 3.8.1 5G Development Roadmap 3.8.2 5GAA Development Course 3.8.3 Development of 5GAA Members 4 Intelligent Road 4.1 Intelligent Road 4.2 Six Directions of Intelligent Road Pilots 4.3 Three Development Stages of Intelligent Road 4.4 Role of Intelligent Road 4.5 Construction of Intelligent Roads 4.6 Technical Architecture of Intelligent Road 4.7 Monitoring Indices of Intelligent Road 4.8 Equipment and Facilities for Intelligent Road 5 Foreign CVIS & V2X Companies 5.1 Qualcomm 5.1.1 Moves in V2X 5.1.2 Road Tests Worldwide 5.1.3 Partners 5.1.4 5G NR C-V2X 5.2 NXP 5.2.1 Collaboration with Hitachi 5.3 Continental 5.3.1 V2X with M2XPro 5.3.2 V2X Road Test in Shanghai 5.4 Aptiv 5.4.1 V2X Solutions 5.4.2 Suzhou United Laboratory 5.5 Denso 5.5.1 V2X Architecture 5.6 Sierra Wireless 5.6.1 Global Operation Centers 5.6.2 OEM Solutions 5.7 Telit 5.8 Cohda Wireless 5.8.1 V2X Solutions 5.8.2 V2X Deployment in CTS 5.8.3 Partners 5.9 Savari 5.9.1 Profile 5.9.2 Savari Solutions 5.10 Kapsch 5.10.1 V2X Business 5.10.2 V2X Roadside ITS Station 5.10.3 V2X OBU 5.10.4 V2X Evaluation Kit 5.10.5 V2X Software 5.11 Arada Systems 5.11.1 DriveOn OEM DSRC Module 5.11.2 Mobile V2X Device 5.11.3 V2X Rearview MIRROR 5.11.4 ROOF V2X Plug-in 5.12 Autotalks 5.12.1 Craton2 EVK 5.12.2 PANGAEA5 5.12.3 SECTON EVK 5.13 U-blox 5.13.1 V2X Chip 5.13.2 Product Positioning 5.14 DANLAW 5.14.1 RSU 5.14.2 V2X Antenna 5.14.3 V2X AM Safety Device 5.15 Nokia 5.15.1 V2X Solutions 5.15.2 Progress of V2X Business 5.16 Commsignia 5.16.1 V2X RSU 5.16.2 V2X OBU 5.16.3 V2X Stack 6 Chinese CVIS & V2X Companies 6.1 Huawei 6.1.1 V2X Products & Partners 6.1.2 Moves in V2X 6.2 China Datang Corporation 6.2.1 V2X Products 6.2.2 LIVE DEMO 6.2.3 V2X Road Test 6.3 Alibaba's Engagement in CVIS 6.4 Baidu 6.4.1 CVIS Solutions 6.5 Nebula Link 6.5.1 C-DAS Collaborative Driver Assistance System 6.5.2 Open VPP: An Open Third-party Application Platform 6.5.3 Nebula MPP & V-Platoon 6.6 Unex Technology 6.6.1 V2X OBU 6.6.2 V2X RSU 6.6.3 V2X System on Module 6.7 CiDi.ai 6.7.1 V2X-related Products 6.7.2 Intelligent Connected Driving Solutions 6.7.3 Solutions for Management on CVIS at Intersections 6.7.4 Solutions for CVIS on Expressways 6.8 Shenzhen Genvict Technologies 6.8.1 CVIS 6.8.2 Vehicle-mounted Terminals 6.8.3 Roadside Facilities 6.8.4 Applied Scenarios of CVIS 6.9 Huali Technology 6.10 China TransInfo Technology 6.11 China Information Communication Technology (CICT) 6.12 WanJi Technology For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/kdwdmb/global_and_china?w=12 Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. 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. QMEA satisfied with the renewal of the tax credit ROUYN-NORANDA, Quebec, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Quebec Mineral Exploration Association (QMEA) applauds the support for the development of Quebec's mineral sector with the announcement made by Canada's Finance Minister Bill Morneau aiming to extend the Mineral Exploration Tax Credit, for a period of five (5) years, until March 2024. This tax credit helps junior exploration companies raise the capital they need to develop their projects. This is the first credit renewal of more than one year since its inception in 2000. The QMEA supports all efforts aiming to help our exploration companies, which allows them to invest in research and development and contribute to the discovery of new deposits. We welcome the support of the federal government, which will increase investor certainty and confidence. This announcement will ensure that our exploration SMEs will be better able to plan the implementation of their projects, said Mr. Mathieu Savard, Chair of the QMEA Board of Directors. With this announcement, the government is committed to fostering a Canadian investment climate that continues to compete with many other jurisdictions and industries. The government recognizes the importance of mineral exploration and its contribution to the development of Quebec and its resource regions. The key measures that attract our attention are the federal government's commitment to a regulatory reform program, which proposes several steps in the government's efforts to reform and modernize federal regulations. We support the government's commitment to modernizing regulations to reduce the administrative burden, while respecting the environment and protecting the health and safety of Canadians. This will greatly help companies to more easily predict the development of multi-year exploration projects, said Valerie Fillion, Executive Director of QMEA. ABOUT THE MINING EXPLORATION ASSOCIATION OF QUEBEC (QMEA) THE QMEA IS A PROFESSIONAL AND INDUSTRIAL ASSOCIATION REPRESENTING STAKEHOLDERS WORKING IN THE FIELD OF MINING EXPLORATION IN QUEBEC. FOUNDED IN 1975, THE ASSOCIATION HAS A MISSION TO PROMOTE THE SUSTAINABLE EXPLORATION AND RESPONSIBLE EXPLORATION OF QUEBEC'S MINERAL RESOURCES AND THEIR ESSENTIAL CONTRIBUTION TO THE QUEBEC ECONOMY. IT GATHERED 1200 INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS (PROSPECTORS, GEOLOGISTS, GEOPHYSICIANS, BROKERS, FISCALISTS, LAWYERS, ETC.) AND 200 CORPORATE MEMBERS FROM THE QUEBEC MINING INDUSTRY (JUNIOR AND MINOR EXPLORATION COMPANIES, OPERATING COMPANIES, FIRMS OF ENGINEERS - CONSULTING IN GEOLOGY, GEOPHYSICS, DRILLING COMPANIES, SERVICE COMPANIES, EQUIPEMENTIERS, ETC.). IT IS DIRECTED BY A BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF FIFTEEN PEOPLE FROM DIFFERENT COMPONENTS OF MINING EXPLORATION. THE ASSOCIATION ANNUALLY ORGANIZES XPLOR, A CONGRESS WHICH WILL GATHER THE QUEBEC MINING INDUSTRY IN MONTREAL ON OCTOBER 23rd AND 24th, 2019. SOURCE AND INFORMATION: ALAIN POIRIER DIRECTEUR DE PROJETS 819 762-1599 POSTE 222 ALAINPOIRIER@AEMQ.ORG DENVER, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TriMetals Mining Inc. (TSX: TMI) (OTCQX:TMIAF), (the Company), announces that on November 22, 2018, an Arbitration Tribunal of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands, issued an award awarding the Companys wholly-owned Bermudan subsidiary, South American Silver Limited (South American Silver) US$18.7 million in amounts invested and approximately US$9 million in interest thereon running from August 1, 2012 to present, for a total of approximately US$28 million (the Award). The Award relates to South American Silvers claims against the Plurinational Government of Bolivia (Bolivia) arising from Bolivias unlawful expropriation of South American Silvers investments in the Malku Khota silver-indium-gallium project (the Malku Khota Project). South American Silver, which the majority of the Tribunal confirmed to be a protected investor under the bilateral investment treaty between the Government of the United Kingdom and Bolivia for the Promotion and Protection of Investments (the Treaty), despite Bolivias objections to jurisdiction and the dissent of the arbitrator appointed by Bolivia in this regard, commenced formal arbitration proceedings on April 30, 2013 under the Arbitration Rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) in respect of Bolivias breaches of the Treaty, including the requirement to pay prompt, just and adequate compensation for the unlawful expropriation of the Malku Khota Project, provide fair and equitable treatment to South American Silvers investment and provide full protection and security to foreign investors and their investments. On May 23, 2013, the Company entered into an agreement with a third-party funder (the Fund), to fund South American Silvers future costs and expenses related to the arbitration proceedings. The Fund specializes in the funding of international arbitration proceedings and in providing assistance with the enforcement of arbitration awards. This non-brokered funding was made on a non-recourse basis and includes costs and expenses of the enforcement of any award rendered by the Arbitration Tribunal. In consideration for the funding, the Company and South American Silver will pay to the Fund a portion of the monies received from Bolivia resulting from the Award. These fees, costs and expenses will potentially reduce funds received by South American Silver by as much as one-third of the amount of the Award. Holders of the Companys Class B shares have a collective entitlement to 85% of the net cash (after deducting all costs, taxes and expenses and the Funds portion thereof), received by the Company from the Award. Eric Edwards, President and CEO of the Company stated, We are disappointed at the outcome of the international arbitration process and especially with the quantum of damages awarded to South American Silver, which we consider insufficient and are still evaluating. Given the more than two years the Tribunal spent considering the evidence and drafting the award, including detailed damages calculations and technical evidence presented by renowned quantum and mining experts, regarding the size and quality of the massive deposit at Malku Khota and fair market value of the expropriated asset, we certainly expected a more properly reasoned, just and fair outcome and an adequate amount of compensation as opposed to simply awarding amounts invested or sunk costs resulting from Bolivias illegal conduct. We are still evaluating the award and its contents in order to consider next steps, including, among other things, seeking annulment of the award or enforcement under the New York Convention should Bolivia refuse to pay or unduly delay payment of the amounts due and owing. The Company notes that one of the three arbitrators on the Tribunal, Professor Francisco Orrego Vicuna (now deceased), strongly disagreed with the opinion set out in the Award and stated that he believed, among other things, the Tribunal placed too much of the blame for any issues with the indigenous communities upon South American Silver when it is Bolivia that is responsible for maintaining public order. He also stated there was evidence that Bolivia wanted to take over the Malku Khota Project before any social unrest arose and expressed the view that South American Silver was not afforded due process which was, in his view, reduced to mere symbolism devoid of objective review. The Company also notes that Professor Orrego Vicuna believed the Tribunal should have found a violation of the Fair and Equitable Treatment Obligation and a failure to provide Full Protection and Security to South American Silvers investment. Most troubling is his view that this resulted in compensation well below that suggested by information available and the experts and valuators reports (indeed the Company notes that the Government of Bolivia has stated, in its announcement regarding the Award, that the State now owns the Malkhu Khota deposit which Bolivia values at US$8 billion, despite arguing during the arbitration that South American Silvers $307.2 million valuation of the Malku Khota Project was exaggerated). Nevertheless, Professor Orrego Vicuna felt the need to vote with the Presiding Arbitrator in order to avoid the Award remaining in a state of suspension or hibernation, without the Presiding Arbitrator being able, under the UNCITRAL Rules, to decide without a majority. About TriMetals Mining Inc. TriMetals Mining Inc. (TSX: TMI and OTCQX: TMIAF) is a growth-focused mineral exploration company creating value through the exploration and development of the near-surface Gold Springs gold-silver project in mining-friendly Nevada and Utah, U.S.A. The Companys Class B shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under TMI.B. Note that the Class B shares have no interest in the properties or assets of the Company other than the collective entitlement to 85% of the net cash after expenses received by the Company from award or settlement in relation to South American Silvers arbitration proceeding against Bolivia for the expropriation of the Malku Khota project in 2012. TriMetals Mining Inc. Contact: Eric Edwards President & CEO 303.584.0606 eedwards@trimetalsmining.com Forward-looking Statements Certain statements contained herein constitute forward-looking information under applicable Canadian securities laws (forward-looking statements). Forward-looking statements look into the future and provide an opinion as to the effect of certain events and trends on the business. Forward-looking statements may include words such as shall, will, and similar expressions. The statements regarding prompt payment and settlement of the compensation award owed by Bolivia are also forward-looking statements. These forward- looking statements are based on current expectations and entail various risks and uncertainties. Actual results may materially differ from expectations if known and unknown risks or uncertainties affect our business or if our estimates or assumptions prove inaccurate. Factors that could cause results or events to differ materially from current expectations expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, include, but are not limited to, the prompt settlement and payment of arbitration awards in a customary manner and in accordance with the Arbitration Tribunals final decision, risks that settlement may not be reached with the Government of Bolivia regarding the arbitration award and payment thereof, and other risks more fully described in the Companys Annual Information Form and continuous disclosure documents, which are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The assumptions made in developing the forward-looking statements include: the settlement and payment of arbitration awards in a customary manner and in accordance with the Arbitration Tribunals final decision. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or any other reason. Unless otherwise indicated, forward-looking statements in this press release describe the Companys expectations as of the date hereof. Dublin, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Analyzing the Global Aerospace and Defense Industry 2018" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. This report on Analyzing the Global Aerospace and Defense Industry 2018 is precisely aimed at bringing an understanding of this wide and vast industry which at times enjoys the distinction of being one of the few recession proof industries. The year 2017 witnessed the recovery of the global aerospace and defense industry worldwide, though the industry still lagged behind other industries in terms of the global GDP (gross domestic product). Revenues of the global aerospace and defense industry crossed US$686 billion by the end of 2017, though the overall growth of the sector was still weaker as compared to 2016. This decline the industry underwent was primarily due to the slowdown of the delivery of twin-aisle aircraft in the United States. While the commercial aerospace sector in Europe experienced strong growth, the same sector in the United States remained weak. Europe also saw a higher number of aircraft deliveries during 2017 as compared to the US. Meanwhile, the global defense industry recorded a jump of 4% as worldwide governments increased their spending on defense. By the end of 2017, the global defense industry posted revenues of more than US$ 362 billion. The US was the biggest contributor to this as 2017 saw the US Department of Defense increase it's funding for the defense sector. Compared to the US, the defense sector in Europe witnessed a growth of 2.5% in 2017. The European defense sector grew due to the pressure from the present US administration on NATO countries for increasing their expenditure on the military. The global aerospace and defense industry also witnessed an improvement in the operating margins in 2017 as compared to 2016. This improvement was also led by the US aerospace and defense industry, which experienced a growth of nearly 13%. The global industry further got a boost from the incredibly strong core operating earnings at The Boeing Company. The report takes an integrated approach towards both the segments of global Aerospace and Defense. This in-depth report on the Global Aerospace and Defense Industry begins with an introduction to the industry. Key Topics Covered: A. Executive Summary Section 1: Global Aerospace & Defense Industry B. Introduction B.1 Industry Definition B.2 Overview of the Global Aerospace and Defense Industry B.2.1 Global Scope of the Industry B.2.2 High Technology Requirement B.2.3 Long Lived Business Cycles B.2.4 Cyclical Demand B.2.5 Long Cash Flow Cycle B.2.6 Fluctuations in Working Capital B.3 Market Segments B.4 Competition in the Industry B.5 Mergers and Acquisitions B.6 Risks in the Aerospace and Defense Industry B.7 Rise in Global Defense Spending C. Market Forecast C.1 Overview C.2 Asian A&D Industry Forecast C.3 European A&D Industry Forecast C.4 Commercial Aircraft Market Forecast C.5 Global Defense Industry Forecast C.6 Conclusion D. Role of Suppliers in the Global Aerospace Industry D.1 Introduction D.2 Similarities with the Automobile Sector D.3 Changing Role of Suppliers D.4 Supplier Trends D.4.1 Globalization D.4.2 Consolidation D.4.3 Supply Chain Integration D.4.4 Lean Manufacturing D.5 Conclusion E. Outsourcing to China F. Looking at Civil Aerospace F.1 Market Overview F.2 Economic Activity Driving Air Traffic Demand F.3 Boom in International Traffic F.4 Regulatory Framework F.5 Major Business Factors of the Future F.5.1 Growth in Travel to Asia-Pacific F.5.2 Emergence of a New Customer Base F.5.3 Growth in Regional Carriers F.5.4 Determining the Environmental Impact of Aviation G. Looking at the Airbus - Boeing Rivalry G.1 Overview G.2 Product Comparison G.3 Airbus A380 versus Boeing 747 G.4 EADS/Northrop Grumman KC-45A versus Boeing KC-767 G.5 Comparing the Technology G.6 Comparison of Production Costs G.7 Comparing Orders & Deliveries G.8 Competition on Outsourcing G.9 Other Modes of Competition H. Global Aviation Security Products & Services H.1 Introduction H.2 Looking at Demand for Private Aviation Security H.3 Major Demand Areas H.3.1 Asia Pacific H.3.2 Western Europe H.3.3 United States H.4 Aviation Security Products H.4.1 Access Controls & Biometrics H.4.2 Automated EDS H.4.3 Biometric Access H.4.4 Burglar & Fire Alarm H.4.5 Card & Key H.4.6 Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) H.4.7 Contraband Detection H.4.8 Facial Recognition Biometrics H.4.9 Trace Detection H.4.10 Traditional X-Ray & Metal Detection H.4.11 Full Body Scanners H.5 Issues & Challenges H.6 Market Forecast H.7 Global Leading Players H.7.1 Argenbright Security H.7.2 Cash Technologies H.7.3 Command Security Corporation H.7.4 Fraport AG Frankfurt Airport Services Worldwide H.7.5 Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, S.A. de C.V. (ASUR) H.7.6 ICTS International N.V H.7.7 L-3 Technologies H.7.8 Savi Technology I. Restructuring in the Global Defense Industry I.1 Globalization & Consolidation of the Industry I.2 Revolution in the US Defense Doctrine I.3 Increase in Costs I.4 Privatization & Commercialization of Services I.5 The Export Situation I.6 Dominance of the United States I.7 Situation in Europe I.8 Other Countries I.9 Strategies for Survival in the Emerging Defense Industry I.10 Conclusion Section 2: Country Analysis Section 3: Leading Players in the Aerospace & Defense Industry Section 4: Porter's Five Forces Strategy Analysis A. Russian A&D Industry Porter's Five Forces Analysis B. US A&D Industry Porter's Five Forces Analysis Section 5: Conclusion Companies Mentioned AAR Corporation Aeroflot Airbus SE / EADS Arianespace SA Astrotech Corporation Aviation Industry Corporation of China AVIC Aircraft Co Ltd Babcock International Group Plc BAE Systems Plc BBA Aviation Plc Bombardier Incorporated China Ordnance Industries Group Corporation Limited (NORINCO) Cobham Plc CPI Aerostructures, Inc. Daimler AG Dassault Aviation SA DynCorp International Elbit Systems Embraer SA Esterline Technologies Corporation General Dynamics Corporation General Electric Company GKN Plc Harris Corporation Hexcel Corporation Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd Honeywell International Inc. Irkut Corporation Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd Korea Aerospace Industries Leonardo S.p.A. (formerly Finmeccanica SpA) LMI Aerospace, Inc. Lockheed Martin Corporation Loral Space & Communications Inc. Magellan Aerospace Corporation Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Moog Inc MTU Aero Engines Northrop Grumman Corporation Precision Castparts Corporation QinetiQ Group Plc Raytheon Company Rockwell Collins Rolls Royce RUAG Saab AB Safran SA Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) Smiths Group PLC Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) SpaceDev, Inc. Spirit AeroSystems ST Engineering Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Ltd. Textron Inc Thales Group The Boeing Company TransDigm Group United Technologies Corporation Zodiac Aerospace SA For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/rvg7dd/global_aerospace?w=12 Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. TORONTO, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Yesterdays announcement on changes to Ontarios social assistance programs are continuing Fords attack on Ontarios most vulnerable, says Ontario Federation of Labour. Without a strong social safety net that is designed with compassion and inclusivity at its core, the policies outlined by the Ford government will only push people deeper into poverty, said Ontario Federation of Labour President Chris Buckley. In a province that has eliminated workplace rights and refuses to provide a decent minimum wage of $15 an hour, these changes to social assistance programs will inevitably drive more Ontarians into poverty. The government, for example, will align the definition of disability under the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) with federal guidelines. This means excluding a significant portion of those currently eligible for the program, including injured workers, those with episodic disabilities, and people with certain mental health issues. The government has made it that much harder for people with disabilities to access ODSP, said Buckley. By raising the eligibility threshold, this government has decided to further marginalize some of Ontarios most vulnerable residents. Its absolutely shameful. The Ford government also announced that ODSP recipients can earn $6,000 a year before their support is reduced. The clawback rate on earnings above that amount will increase from 50 per cent to 75 per cent. For those on Ontario Works, the threshold will be raised to $300 per month, which is $100 less than previously announced earlier this year. Again, earnings above the threshold will be subject to an increased clawback rate of 75 per cent. The government already slashed a modest three per cent rate increase that was to take effect this fall and 18 other rule changes that would have improved the lives of people on social assistance. 960,000 Ontarians adults and children are recipients of Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program. The heartless decisions announced today, combined with this weeks cancellation of workplace rights, will be a deadly combination for many Ontarians, said Buckley. This government must increase its revenues not cut help for people who need it the most. Ontarians must be able to access the help they need not be kicked to the curb by the very government that swore to protect the little guy. Weak workplace protections, combined with weak social assistance programs, create a deadly combination. It leaves many Ontarians moving between low wage jobs and social assistance, with neither providing adequate support to move out of poverty. The Ontario Federation of Labour, which represents 54 unions and one million workers in Ontario, supports the work of community partners such as the Raise the Rates Coalition, and the mission to eradicate poverty in Ontario. For information, visit www.OFL.ca and follow @OFLabour on Facebook and Twitter . To arrange interviews or for further information, please contact: Rob Halpin Executive Director Ontario Federation of Labour rhalpin@ofl.ca l 416-707-9014 cope343 Completed the repayment in early Q3 2018 of the USD $8.5M gold linked credit facility Settled CAD $1.2M of payables by issuing shares in early Q3 2018 Repaid related party loan of $1.6M Completed more than 5K meters of the planned 10K meters drill program on the flagship Mara Rosa gold deposit Assay results on 19 holes from this drill program confirm good ore body thickness and grade continuity and are expected to contribute significantly towards the conversion from Inferred to Indicated resources Filed an updated Pre-feasibility Study * in accordance with NI 43-101 on the Mara Rosa gold deposit with highlights as follows: After tax internal rate of return (IRR) of 51% at US$1,300/oz gold (Au) After tax net present value (NPV5%) of US$244 million at US$1,300/oz Au and a USD/BRL exchange rate of 3.60 (US$198M at US$1,200/oz) After tax project payback of 2.6 years at US$1,300/oz Au Average annual gold production 144,000 oz over first 4 years Average life of mine (LOM) production 123,000 oz per year over 8 years , and total production of 985,000 ounces after 91% recovery LOM cash operating cost of US$545/oz Au, and all-in sustaining cost (AISC**) of US$655/oz Au Upfront capital expenditure of US$123M Updated Proven and Probable Reserves of 1,087,000 oz - 23.8 million tonnes (Mt) @ 1.42 g/t Au Proven 513,000 oz 9.6 Mt @ 1.65 g/t Au, and Probable 574,000 oz -14.2 Mt @ 1.26 g/t Au Notes: * PFS filed on SEDAR on September 13, 2018 and then on November 21, 2018 to incorporate the results of site visit by SRK **AISC: Total cash operating cost + Royalties + Transportation & Refining + Sustaining Capital + Closure + Corporate G&A * TORONTO, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Amarillo Gold Corporation (Amarillo or the Company) (TSX.V:AGC; OTCQB:AGCBF) today announces its financial results for the third quarter (Q3) ended September 30, 2018. This press release should be read in conjunction with the Companys condensed interim consolidated financial statements and Managements Discussion & Analysis (MD&A) for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2018, available on the Companys website at www.amarillogold.com and under the Companys name on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. All monetary amounts are expressed in Canadian dollars unless otherwise specified. Mike Mutchler, CEO of Amarillo commented "Q3 was a very productive quarter for the Company as we restructured our balance sheet by repaying the gold loan and settling other debts through a share issuance. Our 10,000 meter infill drilling program is confirming the geology and resources at Mara Rosa, and we have expanded our program to include an additional 3,000 meters of step out drilling south of the current resource. We expect to complete a resource update on Mara Rosa early in the new year and we are on track to initiate a Feasibility Study and Basic Engineering in preparation for our application for the License to Install (LI) permit mid-year." FINANCIAL RESULTS Operating Expenses and Net Loss Three and Nine Months 2018 and 2017 Three Months ended September 30 Nine Months ended September 30 2018 2017 2018 2017 ($) ($) ($) ($) Management and consulting fees 319,858 36,142 839,858 452,643 General and administrative 161,314 87,567 367,442 259,367 Stock-based compensation 397,825 - 1,273,389 751,063 Professional fees 273,999 53,946 583,275 190,527 Other expenses 56,388 49,511 279,283 151,832 Write-off of accounts payable - - (138,816 ) - Subtotal before other items 1,209,384 227,166 3,204,431 1,805,432 Accretion on gold linked loan - 326,611 713,271 962,036 Foreign exchange (gain)/loss 96,229 (654 ) 486,323 33,340 (Gain)/loss on FV of derivatives - 328,294 (284,152 ) 1,002,654 Loss before tax 1,305,613 881,417 4,119,873 3,803,462 Deferred tax expense 115,000 - 345,000 - Net Loss 1,420,613 881,417 4,464,873 3,803,462 The Companys Q3 2018 loss for the first time excluded non-cash items related to the gold linked loan consisting of accretion, mark to market adjustments for gold price fluctuation and foreign exchange as this loan was extinguished in early Q3 2018. The 2018 loss include non-cash stock compensation expense; non-cash deferred tax expense; and non-cash items related to the gold linked loan which aggregate to $512,825 for Q3 2018 (Q3 2017: $654,251) and $2,188,831 for YTD 2018 (YTD 2017: $2,749,093). ABOUT AMARILLO Amarillo is developing an open pit gold resource at its Mara Rosa Project in the mining friendly jurisdiction of Goias State in Brazil. The Mara Rosa Project, also known as the Posse deposit, was awarded its main (LP) permit which provides the social and environment permission to mine. Amarillo is progressing toward obtaining an installation permit (LI). Based on the NI 43-101 Pre-Feasibility Study 2018 (PFS 2018) update filed on SEDAR on November 21, 2018, the Mara Rosa Project contains estimated 513,000 ounces of gold in the Proven category from 9.6 Mt at 1.65 g/t Au, and 574,000 ounces gold in the Probable category from 14.2 Mt at 1.26 g/t Au, for total estimated Reserves of 1,087,000 ounces from 23.8 Mt at 1.42 g/t Au. In addition to the Mara Rosa Project, Amarillo has an advanced exploration project with excellent grades at Lavras do Sul, Brazil. A Mineral Resource Estimate Study (NI 43-101 technical report) for Lavras do Sul was filed on SEDAR on October 4, 2010. The Lavras do Sul Project is an advanced exploration stage property (190 sq. km.) comprising of more than 22 prospects centered on historic gold workings. The initial resource estimate at the Butia prospect reported 215,000 ounces of gold in the Indicated category from 6.4 Mt at 1.05 g/t Au, and 308,000 ounces of gold in the Inferred category from 12.9 Mt at 0.74 g/t Au using a 0.3 g/t cut-off grade. Both projects have excellent nearby infrastructure. Mike Mutchler, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company, is a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101 guidelines, and has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical disclosure relating to the PFS 2018 in this section of the news release. For further information, please contact: Mike Mutchler President & CEO 416-294-0736 mike.mutchler@amarillogold.com or Karen Mate External Communications 416-230-6454 karen.mate@amarillogold.com 32 Richmond St. East Suite 201 Toronto, ON Canada, M5C 1P1 Website: www.amarillogold.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. FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: This news release contains Forward Looking Statements regarding the Companys current expectations regarding future events, including with respect to the Companys business, operations and condition, and managements objectives, strategies, beliefs and intentions. Various factors may prevent or delay our plans, including but not limited to, the trading price of the Common Shares, the ability of the Company to obtain approvals from the TSX-V in respect of the transactions contemplated hereby, contractor availability and performance, weather, access, mineral prices, and success and failure of the exploration and development carried out at various stages of the program. Permission from the Government and community is also required to proceed with future mining production. Readers should review the Companys ongoing quarterly and annual filings, as well as any other additional documentation comprising the Companys public disclosure record, for additional information on risks and uncertainties relating to these forward-looking statements. Readers should also review the risk factors applicable to junior mining exploration companies generally to better understand the variety of risks that can affect the Company. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any Forward Looking Statements whether as a result of new information or future events or otherwise, except as me be required by law. HAMILTON, Bermuda, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The UKs Chris Holmes, Lord of Richmond MBE, and Bermudian Chief Executive of American International Group, Brian Duperreault, will join Premier David Burt in fireside chats during next weeks multi-industry events in London organised by the Bermuda Business Development Agency (BDA). The conversations are part of a packed two-day agenda at the ME London hotel showcasing the Bermuda markets range of global industries and expertise. On Tuesday, November 27, a chat moderated by BDA Director and EY Bermuda Partner Jessel Mendes between the Premier and Holmesa fintech champion in the House of Lords who belongs to several related All-Party Parliamentary Groupswill launch that days cross-sector Bermuda Executive Forum. On Wednesday, November 28, a similar discussion between the Premier and Duperreault, moderated by BDA Interim CEO Sean Moran, kicks off a dedicated Bermuda Fintech Forum in the morning, followed by Beyond Convergence in the afternoon, a seminar focused on insurance-linked securities hosted by ILS Bermuda. The upcoming events give us an opportunity to meet with stakeholders in the London market and highlight the business benefits of Bermuda, said the Premier. Its a significant opportunity to promote Bermudas value to overseas markets and investors and attract new business that can help grow our economy and create jobs. I look forward to dynamic discussions with both special guests, Mr. Duperreault and Lord Holmes. Well discuss Bermudas synergies with London, the legacy and foundation our market affords both established companies and startups, as well as Bermudas regulatory leadership and innovative culture, which pioneered a legislative framework around fintech this year. Holmes is a former Paralympic swimmer and nine-time Games gold-medal winner who has focused on technology and digital opportunities since entering the House in 2013. He is vice-chair of the Parliamentary Groups on Assistive Technology, Fintech, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and the 4th Industrial Revolution. He has also served as a member of House of Lords Select Committees on Artificial Intelligence, Digital Skills, Social Mobility and Financial Exclusion. Notably, Holmes has been supportive of Bermudas recent progress in fintech regulation, speaking on Parliamentary Group roundtables and in other national discussions. Duperreault was appointed President, CEO, and a Director of American International Group, Inc (AIG) in May 2017. Previously, he was Chairman and CEO of Bermudas Hamilton Insurance Group, which he established in 2013. He spent 30 years working in Bermuda and the United States in senior executive roles at Marsh & McLennan Companies, ACE, and AIG, where he started his career. Tuesdays complimentary full-day forum marks the fourth such BDA event, following successful multi-sector summits in London a year ago, in New York this springat which Duperreault was keynote speakerand in Miami last month. Each drew impressive turnouts of between 200 and 300 industry professionals, and proved a catalyst for on-site meetings, new-business inquiries, and Bermuda incorporations. Along with Holmes and Duperreault, next weeks events will also feature Euan Davis, of the Center for the Future of Work Europe at Cognizant Technology Solutions. Davis, the lunchtime keynote at Tuesdays forum, will examine how work is changing as new technologies, business practices and workers emerge over the next decade. Were pleased to be heading back to London for our final forum of the year, said the BDAs Moran. Not only do we have an expert line-up of speakers representing the full range of Bermudas established industries, but we are equally pleased to highlight the emerging business we have begun to usher in. A lot has happened in the fintech space in 2018 and we intend to put the spotlight on those developments. Our forums provide us an excellent opportunity to encourage investment by demonstrating what makes Bermuda unique and sets us apart from other jurisdictions, Moran added. Its significant to come full circle and reconnect with London business leaders, while also reaching out to new companies and individuals looking to enter the Bermuda market. Some 50 senior industry representatives will join Bermuda government and regulatory leaders at next weeks events to showcase the island as a financial centre of excellence. Ten presentations and panel discussions will highlight investment and business opportunities available in Bermuda, while underscoring synergies shared by the Bermuda and London markets. Experts will cover the gamut of Bermudas industries, including re/insurance, asset management, high-net-worth services, family offices, long-term life & annuity insurance, captive insurance, bio-med, shipping, ILS, fintech and virtual assets business. The Bermuda Tourism Authority (BTA) will partner with the BDA on a networking reception that concludes the event. To register for the November 27 Bermuda Executive Forum, click here. To register for the November 28 Bermuda Fintech Forum, click here. To register for Beyond Convergence, click here. MEDIA CONTACT: Rosemary Jones Head of Communications & Marketing rosemary@bda.bm 441 278-6558 441 337-4696 CONNECTING BUSINESS The BDA encourages direct investment and helps companies start up, re-locate or expand their operations in our premier jurisdiction. An independent, public-private partnership, we connect you to industry professionals, regulatory officials, and key contacts in the Bermuda government to assist domicile decisions. Our goal? To make doing business in Bermuda smooth and beneficial. Two photos accompanying this announcement are available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7db01e02-888b-47f4-a3b7-97ba09c63562 http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/2ea617d5-5169-4418-b742-2ad5490a1049 VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Abattis Bioceuticals Corp (the Company or Abattis) (CSE:ATT) (OTC:ATTBF) is pleased to announce that it has entered into a definitive agreement (the Agreement) to acquire 100% of Select Strains Inc. (Select Strains). Select Strains has almost two decades of experience within the cannabis space, specifically within the fields of cannabis testing, research, cultivation and optimization of proprietary seeds and strains. With a portfolio of over 140 laboratory-tested craft cannabis strains, Select Strains will allow for the continued differentiation of the Abattis brand, leveraging unique craft strains in an increasingly generic, highly competitive and standardised cannabis market. Select Strains seed and strain inventory has been carefully curated and assembled over the past two decades by a team of experienced geneticists and breeders, maintaining and solidifying quality products that have been rigorously tested to suit end user needs. The acquisition of Select Strains further augments Abattis robust portfolio of vertically integrated cannabis assets, as well as aids in the positioning of the Company to capitalize on Canadas legal recreational cannabis marketplace in the near future. Under the terms of the Agreement, Select Strains will transfer the ownership of its proprietary strain portfolio, seed inventory and clone catalogue to Abattis in exchange for 41,666,666 common shares of the Company. In addition, a finders fee is payable as part of the acquisition. With the addition of Select Strains, Abattis will furthermore have access to the vast collection of genetics and top ranked strains from around the world. Abattis plans to deploy Select Strains premium genetic strains and seed bank capabilities to its cannabis operations in Canada. This acquisition will give Abattis the ability to provide highly coveted cannabis flower through its late-stage ACMPR Licensed Producer (LP), Gabriola Green Farms (Gabriola), which is set to receive its LP in early-to-mid 2019. As a part of the vertical integration that Abattis has created since the Companys inception over 10 years ago, Select Strains will be a crucial part of building out Gabriola, aiding the project with Intellectual Property (IP) that will allow it to go straight into production upon reception of its LP license. The acquisition of Select Strains broadens the product offering that Abattis will be able to provide to its clients and through our ever-growing distribution network, stated Robert Abenante, CEO and President of Abattis. The access to proprietary strains, clone catalogues and seed inventories will certainly add to the breadth of our unique product offerings and presents a very exciting opportunity to provide superior quality products to cannabis consumers worldwide. Moreover, the inclusion of Select Strains seed and strain library is yet another step towards achieving Abattis goal of providing full-scale vertical integration in the cannabis markets and will certainly add to our future top-of-the-line Gabriola facility, which upon completion, will be a major cannabis powerhouse in British Columbia, added Robert Abenante. The Company is purchasing 100% of the Company for $5M dollars in common shares of the Company at a price of $0.12 per share. There is also a finders fee of 10% also paid in shares. This recent acquisition of Select Strains positions the Company advantageously and allows Abattis to gain access to multiple revenue streams through Select Strains unique genetics catalogues, including the licensing of premium genetic strains and seeds, clone fulfillment services, tissue culture and strain patenting services, stated Patrick Mitchell, COO of Abattis. Overall this strategic move fits in perfectly with Abattis current divisions and we are excited to continue forward with this new arsenal of carefully curated cannabis genetics, added Patrick Mitchell. About Abattis Bioceuticals Corp. Abattis is a life sciences and biotechnology company which aggregates, integrates, and invests in cannabis technologies and biotechnology services for the legal cannabis industry developing in Canada. The Company has successfully developed and licensed natural health products, medicines, extractions, and ingredients for the biological, nutraceutical, bioceutical, and cosmetic markets. The Company is also seeking to acquire exclusive intellectual property rights to agricultural technologies to be employed in extraction and processing of botanical ingredients and compounds. The Company follows strict standard operating protocols and adheres to applicable laws of Canada and foreign jurisdictions. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD, ABATTIS BIOCEUTICALS CORP, Rob Abenante Robert Abenante, President & CEO For more information, please visit the Companys website at: www.abattis.com For inquiries please contact (808) 650-3007 or at investors@abattis.com. Abattis investor relations are managed by Canada One Communications Inc. About Canada One Communications Inc. Canada One Communications Inc. (Canada One) is a full-service Investor Relations and Marketing company that focuses on both private and public sectors within the Canadian markets. Canada One offers timely responses to all investor inquiries over several mediums and effective, thorough market awareness programs that are specifically designed to maximize exposure and bring value to shareholders. Canada Ones dedicated and experienced team strives to promote client information to the public and educate potential investors on the various developments of its clients. From basic phone-call and email investor correspondence, to full-scale comprehensive marketing packages which includes industry analysis, website development, corporate videos and other marketing programs, Canada One provides a full suite of services that are fully compliant with Canadian securities regulations. Canada One is driven by an uncompromising dedication to provide publicly listed and private companies with across-the-board investor relations and marketing solutions, directly translating these services into organic growth and increased market value of its valued clients. FORWARD LOOKING INFORMATION This press release contains forward-looking statements. The use of any of the words including but not exclusive to anticipate, continue, estimate, expect, may, will, project, intends, should, believe and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this press release include: (i) statements regarding the global cannabis genetics and strain market, (ii) statements relating to the marketing and sales of Abattis strains, (iii) the anticipation of the cannabis strain production market gaining worldwide popularity; and (iv) statements that the Company anticipates to receive its LP in early-to-mid 2019. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties including: that Gabriola will not receive its LP in early-to-mid 2019; that the effect of the acquisition of Select Strains on Abattiss business profile, success and offerings will not be as expected; that the Company will not be able to execute its proposed business plan in the time required or at all due to regulatory, financial or other issues; and other factors beyond the Companys control. Additional risk factors are included in the Companys Managements Discussion and Analysis, which are available under the Companys profile on www.sedar.com. The forward-looking statements are made as at the date hereof and the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, where because of new information, future events or results, or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. English Icelandic Loftleidir Icelandic, a subsidiary of Icelandair Group, will, together with Icelandic investors, submit a binding offer for a 51% of the shares in Cabo Verde Airlines on Cape Verde. Authorities in Cape Verde and Loftleidir Icelandic have been cooperating for some time. In August 2017, Loftleidir Icelandic signed a management agreement with the Cape Verde Government on restructuring Cabo Verde Airlines. The agreement also aimed to strengthen the international airport in Cape Verde, to develop the islands as a promising tourist destination and to build an international hub for connecting flights. Coinciding with the agreement, it was announced that the company was due to be privatised. Cabo Verde Airlines already has operating licenses to fly scheduled flights to Europe and the United States. The purchase price is confidential. However, the acquisition would partly be paid for by the work already completed by Loftleidir Icelandics employees. The acquisition is made through a new company, Loftleidir Cabo Verde. Loftleidir Icelandic holds a 70% stake in the company, and other investors 30%. Loftleidir Icelandics acquisition of Cabo Verde Airlines does not have significant effect on Icelandair Group's financial statements since Cabo Verde Airlines will not be reflected in the groups consolidated financial statements. The share will classified as an associated company. Arni Hermannsson, Managing Director of Loftleidir Icelandic: The participation in the acquisition of a majority share in Cabo Verde Airlines holds great opportunities for Loftleidir Icelandic, especially in light of the expected growth in passenger demand in Africa in the coming years. We have already participated in the restructuring of the company, and Cabo Verde Airlines operations are well suited to Loftleidir Icelandics projects around the world. The knowledge and experience already available within Loftleidir Icelandic and its sister companies has come to good use in restructuring the company and will continue to assist in further developments. Further opportunities are related to shared use of airplanes from Icelandair Group's fleet, and crews where applicable, as is already being done in various projects. In developing connecting routes, we can also draw further on Icelandair's experience. In the case of Cabo Verde Airlines, we have opportunities for well-organized connecting routes between Europe and South America on one hand, and West Africa and North America on the other, along with West Africa and Europe. The islands location is ideal for developing connecting flights. For further information, please contact: Erlendur Svavarsson, SVP Sales and Marketing at Loftleidir Icelandic, email: esv@loftleidir.com BURLINGTON, Ontario, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Evertz Technologies Limited (TSX: ET) will release its second quarter 2019 financial results on December 5, 2018 at approximately 4:00 p.m. (EDT). The Company will hold a conference call with financial analysts to discuss the results on December 5, 2018 at 5:00 p.m. (EDT). Media and other interested parties are invited to join the conference call in listenonly mode. The conference call may be accessed by dialing 647-793-2625 or TollFree (North America) 1888-297-0356. For those unable to listen to the live call, a rebroadcast will also be available until January 4, 2019. The rebroadcast can be accessed at 647436-0148 or TollFree 1888-203-1112. The pass code for the conference call and rebroadcast is 2223034. For further information please contact: Anthony Gridley Chief Financial Officer (905) 3357580 ir@evertz.com VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Drivers in Metro Vancouver who pay for their parking with PayByPhone can now use the app in Punjabi. With approximately 6.2% of Metro Vancouver residents identifying Punjabi as their mother tongue, the addition of the language helps make the service more accessible across the region. Earlier this year PayByPhone also added support for Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish. To gain access to the newly supported language within PayByPhone, drivers can simply download the latest version of the app and set their iOS or Android device to Punjabi. We continuously strive to improve a users experience and providing drivers with the option to select their preferred language is one of the most effective ways to do this, explains Cindy Chau, Director, Key Accounts and Client Success, PayByPhone North America. Of those in Metro Vancouver who have Punjabi as their mother tongue, over 69% reported it as their primary language spoken at home in the 2016 census, creating a strong use case to support it within the app. As part of our efforts to make our services as friendly and as accessible to all residents as possible, we are very happy to have worked with PayByPhone to add Punjabi to their system, adds Mayor of Vancouver, Kennedy Stewart. This is the fourth most common language spoken in Vancouver, and its addition is a great reflection of our uniquely diverse community. PayByPhone has served the Metro Vancouver Area since 2001, helping drivers easily pay for their parking at tens of thousands of locations across the city. The service also includes a variety of convenient features, such as text message reminders that are sent prior to a parking session expiring, and the option to extend parking times from anywhere. With the Park Until feature, drivers even have the ability to park overnight by paying for their next days parking in advance. Beyond helping drivers, the locally headquartered company has also gained recognition as a contributor to Vancouvers active tech community, undergoing a rapid expansion and having recently opened a second office next to its Yaletown Global Head Office. Ready to start using PayByPhone? Begin parking immediately by downloading the app or by visiting paybyphone.com. To access all of PayByPhones features, register for a free account today. ABOUT PAYBYPHONE PayByPhone is one of the fastest growing mobile payments companies in the world, processing more than $345.6 million USD in payments annually. Through the companys mobile web, smartphone and smartwatch applications, PayByPhone helps millions of consumers easily and securely pay for parking without the hassles of waiting in line, having to carry change or risking costly fines. Registration is quick and easy and the app reminds the user when their parking is about to expire, allowing them to top up from anywhere, at any time. CONTACT Name: Megan Smit Designation: Marketing Director, PayByPhone Global Email: msmit@paybyphone.com Mobile: (+1) 650 - 451 - 2489 The Head of State recalled the Government has sent the documentation to Lima-based Uruguayan Ambassador Carlos Barros through a diplomatic note from the Foreign Affairs Ministry. "On Sunday, I spoke with Uruguay's President (Tabare Vazquez). It was a formal and cordial conversation," the top official expressed. "At that moment, we told him we would hand over a document supporting that there is a true rule of law in Peru and ruling out any political persecution . You and the citizens are witnesses (of that)," he added. Liverpools away European form under Jurgen Klopp has been incredibly bang or bust. For every 5-0 win in Portugal theres a 2-0 defeat in Belgrade. Whilst some of the best performances of Klopps tenure have been away from home in Europe, some of the worst have also come there. So far this season, the Reds have been atrocious away from Anfield in Europe, with their 1-0 defeat to Napoli a shambolic attacking display, which was quickly out-stunk by a disgraceful performance as the Reds were turned over by Red Star in Serbia. And that away form has left them in a precarious position in Group C, with six points from four games, meaning that they need to deliver in at least one of their final two group games. And on Wednesday, Liverpool will face PSG, in Paris. This is a critical game in the group. A victory would probably knock the French side out and all but guarantee Liverpool a last sixteen spot. A defeat on the other hand, would see Liverpool needing to win by two goals at home to Napoli. And whilst theres a temptation to relax slightly in the knowledge that Liverpool will always turn up for a big European night at Anfield they certainly have previously in terms of two goal home wins in critical final group games that absolutely shouldnt be the attitude. Liverpool have to treat the PSG trip as a winner takes all scenario. However, whilst Liverpool will travel to Paris as certain underdogs, theres absolutely a sense that this year and this team are different. Liverpool have already outclassed PSG once this season, albeit at Anfield, and theres no reason that Klopp cant draw another world class performance out of his team. PSG are a team filled with talent, but their talent doesnt have the same unity that Klopp has impressed on his squad. For me, this is an absolutely huge opportunity for Liverpool to stamp their flag in the ground. To go to a big European team like Juve, PSG, Bayern or Barca and win would be a heck of a feat and the opportunity is one that should be relished. Make no mistake, going to Paris will not be an easy game. If Liverpool play half as badly as they did against Napoli or Red Star, they will get absolutely turned over. But if they play like we know that they can, and frequently have over the last two years, then they could absolutely give PSG a run for their money. The key area will of course be the full-backs, with Trent and Robertson critical attacking pressure points, as well as having to deal with two of the most dangerous attacking players on the planet in Neymar and Mbappe. But they showed in the Anfield fixture that their work-rate and stamina were vastly superior to their opposition, which gives them a huge edge. Moreover, with Neymar and Mbappe picking up potential injuries in their international fixtures this week, that could free up even more Trent and Robbo to attack or it could mean that theyll face more defensive wide-players, depending on who Tuchel has available to him and how he decides to use them. Another important aspect for Klopp is utilising the midfield, and Fabinho is a man who has a mixed history against PSG, whilst it remains to be seen if Klopp will trust the likes of Xherdan Shaqiri in such a big game, when he reverted to a midfield of Henderson, Milner, Gini for the reverse fixture which largely worked on the night. But tactical questions aside, this match is an absolutely massive chance for the Reds to lay down a marker to the rest of Europe and to Man City that theyre not going anywhere. Beating PSG at home was a great result for Liverpool, and set them on a path with a good chance of getting out of a very tricky group. But winning in Paris to storm through the Group of Death with a game to spare, and potentially relegating PSG to the Europa League in the process, would be an incredible statement that this Liverpool team are here to play. There remains an overwhelming sense that City are favourites for the Premier League, and justifiably so given their seemingly unstoppable form. But whilst Liverpool obviously wont be in a better position to win the league if they beat PSG theres a fair argument to be made that theyll actually be in a worse one if they do what it would do is remind Man City and a lot of the journalists that cover the PL that Liverpool are a force to be reckoned with in their own right, and wont be going away. Moreover, whilst theres already a sense that Liverpool are a team to avoid in the Champions League, sending one of Europes big-boys packing would further underline that Klopps men are to be feared, and that a Last 16 draw against the Reds is nothing short of a disaster for whoever should do it. And bringing the fear factor back to Anfield could make a big difference in big games the effect that the home advantage had on Man City in particular in last seasons competition was absolutely massive. The fact is, whilst a trip to face PSG in Paris is on paper an incredibly difficult game, its the sort of game that Liverpool shouldnt flinch at if they want to demonstrate that theyre capable of winning major honours, be that the league or be that the Champions League. And whilst a draw certainly wouldnt be a bad result, it would still mean that Liverpool would most likely need to beat Napoli to secure their progression. Thats not to say that Liverpool cant or shouldnt need to beat Napoli at home, as Ive said before, this Liverpool side has history there and is exceptional at home and will have the impetus. But whilst in the past Liverpool have had to rely on stunning performances from a certain Scouse captain to secure late dramatic results, that isnt something that they can do this time. And more importantly, it doesnt need to be. Liverpool dont need to beat Napoli, and more importantly, they dont need to put themselves in a position where they need to beat Napoli. If they want to be one of the best teams in Europe, its time to act like it. Go to France, get a result. Upset the established order. Knock-out PSG. Be a big team. And take the pressure off that final game, so we can focus on finally beating Man United. Christ knows its been too long since we did that. Up the Reds. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. The Hayastan All Armenian Funds annual telethon in Los Angeles has raised 11,109,633 dollars. The Telethon 2018 ended at 10:00 Yerevan time, but at the same time donations were still being made and the number can grow. The money will be used to continue two significant infrastructure and energy-related projects in Artsakh that were started with last years telethons donations. In addition to the programs in Artsakh, the donations will also be directed for community infrastructures of Armenia. Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. The US government has called on the foreign allies to stop using the telecommunications equipment from Chinas Huawei Technologies Co., The Wall Street Journal reported. The Trump administrations officials have briefed their government counterparts and telecom executives in friendly countries where Huawei equipment is widely used, including Germany, Italy and Japan, about what they see as cybersecurity risks. Washington considers the possibility of providing financial aid to the countries as a compensation which will refuse using the Huawei equipment. Huawei has come under scrutiny in the United States recently. 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. Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. On the occasion of the annual telethon of the Hayastan All Armenian Fund, caretaker Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan visited the charity organizations Yerevan office this morning, Pashinyans office said. Pashinyan made two separate donations to the fund 1 million drams from the Prime Ministers Fund, and another 500,000 drams from his personal account. The caretaker Prime Minister then addressed those who are following the telethon live: Dear countrymen, I once again welcome you. First of all I would like to thank all those people, all our countrymen who as of this moment have already taken part in the telethon and have made their donation to the Hayastan All Armenian Fund. I would like to hope that during the remaining one hour numerous of our countrymen will manage to make donations to the fund, because this money will be spent for the improvement and development programs of important infrastructures in the Republic of Artsakh and Republic of Armenia. Dear countrymen, this new period of time is extremely important and we require an exclusive pan-national unity for the solution of our pan-national issues. Certainly, the telethon is one type of this unification, and we still have to go on this pathway to reach a level of unity that we have dreamt of for many years. Today, now, this opportunity exists, and there is no doubt that we will use this opportunity to create a truly united, free and happy Armenia. Thank you and good luck, he said during a live broadcast. Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Human Rights Defender of Armenia Arman Tatoyan has created a task force that will carry out an independent observation of the electoral process of the upcoming snap polls. The Human Rights Defenders Office said in a press release that the task force will carry out the monitoring during the period of preparations for the polls and Election Day. The group will maintain contact with all authorized bodies including the Central Electoral Commission as well as local and international observers. Armenias Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan resigned on October 16 to trigger the process of disbanding the parliament. Pashinyan took office after massive protests in April forced president-turned PM Serzh Sargsyan to resign. But Sargsyans Republican Party (HHK) still has most seats in the 105-seat parliament. Since taking office, Nikol Pashinyan has numerously said that the incumbent parliament doesnt represent the people and that early elections should take place as soon as possible. In accordance to the Constitution, when a Prime Minister resigns the parliament must elect a new PM within two weeks. Lawmakers deliberately failed to elect a new PM as a formality in order to pave the way for dissolution. The last round took place on November 1 and the parliament was dissolved by virtue of law. Later on the same day, President Armen Sarkissian signed an order on dissolving the parliament and calling early elections on December 9. The parliament will function until the new parliament is elected. The government is formally a caretaker government until a new government is formed after the election. Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. A four-month-old puppy caged for biting a police officer in the UK has been released, BBC reports. Bungle the chow-chow was held by Northamptonshire Police for more than four days after escaping from home - sparking anger among pet lovers who demanded his release. He was seized under the Dangerous Dogs Act but returned earlier after his owners agreed to a Voluntary Control Order (VCO). Police said public safety was the "priority in such situations". Bungle was detained after being spotted under a lorry by an officer, who was bitten as he tried to grab the dog. Writing on social media, owner David Hayes said the pet had sneaked out of the family home in Stoke Bruerne, near Towcester, on Friday. Hayes said his 15-year-old son Joseph "broke down at school" when he found out he may not see the puppy again until the new year. He said they were "massively regretful" about the officer's injury but criticised the the "inflexibility" of police's "zero-tolerance stance". Almost 5,000 people joined a Facebook campaign demanding Bungle be freed. On the page, the police action was described as "disgusting" and "ridiculous". Ch Supt Chris Hillery said the officer who seized Bungle had his "full support". "The dog was unattended in a live carriageway and was aggressive to those present," he said. "The potential risk posed by the dog at that time is not diminished by its age or that it was frightened. "Having already bitten the officer twice, causing puncture wounds and bruising, it would have been negligent to release a dog displaying such obvious aggression without first ensuring both the dog's and the wider publics' safety. "Having gone through a proportionate investigation and risk assessment, the dog has been returned with appropriate conditions to manage any future risk." YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. The economic policy of Armenia in the past ten to twenty years has been situational, argues economic Bagrat Asatryan, a former president of the Central Bank. He says that in the past decisions have been made based on certain situations. Now it is necessary for the new government to act in a systemic approach, he said during a conference today in Yerevan. I commend the organization of this conference, it is a good opportunity for economic and financial experts to outline the problems and make concrete recommendations, he said. He said that the biggest expectation of this year is to ensure post-revolutionary stability, which exists. He said that positive movements are noticed in the crediting direction, with growth being documented. This is unprecedented for the situation that we have. We have more than 10% growth in loan investments, this means that the domestic market is positively reacting to the ongoing changes in the country. The government should seek to give a certain look to these positive trends with a systemic approach, Asatryan said. Speaking about the decline of the economic activity index, Asatryan said it is associated with domestic and foreign factors. The foreign background is negative, fluctuations happen periodically. Lets observe the main type of raw materials cooper, gold, that is being exported. We see that copper prices have significantly dropped in recent years. The other factor is associated with Russia. Economically, Armenia has very strict ties with Russia, and the situation happening there is leaving its impact on our country. A decline of economic growth trends exists there on the background of the sanctions, the Russian ruble is depreciating. Of course this should have impacted our economic, he said. Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan ACHESON, Alberta, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- North American Construction Group Ltd. (NACG or the Company) (TSX:NOA.TO/NYSE:NOA) announced today an upsized $300 million Amended and Restated Credit Agreement (the Credit Facility) with its banking syndicate led by National Bank Financial. The upsized Credit Facility was executed concurrent with todays closing of the asset purchase agreement with Aecon Group Inc. (Aecon). Jason Veenstra, Chief Financial Officer stated, The acquisition of the heavy equipment fleet of Aecon is an exciting milestone event for NACG and we were pleased to work with our supportive syndicate members to finance this important opportunity. The Credit Facility is consistent with existing terms, maintains attractive rates and provides sufficient flexibility to allow for the $199 million asset transaction to close immediately. The Credit Facility more than doubles NACGs borrowing capacity to $300 million with an ability to increase the maximum borrowings by an additional $50 million, subject to certain customary conditions. It is also important to note that in addition to the upgraded credit facility borrowing capacity, the equipment financing limit has been increased to $150 million up from $100 million allowing for additional borrowing flexibility. The term of the Credit Facility is committed for three years and matures on November 23, 2021, with an option to extend on an annual basis. The Credit Facility is comprised solely of a revolver with no scheduled repayments and is not governed by a borrowing base that limits available borrowings. Financial covenants are consistent with the previous agreement and are tested quarterly on a trailing four quarter basis. The Credit Facility covenants are in full compliance at time of closing and have been established in consideration of the asset purchase agreement with Aecon. In addition to the new Credit Facility, the Company recently entered into a 25-year $19.9 million mortgage with Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), which will be drawn upon to cover costs already incurred in relation to the Companys recent acquisition of land and construction of its maintenance facility and head office complex in Acheson, Alberta. The mortgage, which expires in November 2043, bears interest for the first five years at a fixed rate of 4.85% and is secured by a first security interest in the maintenance and office complex. The BDC mortgage and security are structured as permitted exclusions from the security interests of the syndicate Lenders and the Senior Debt as defined in the Credit Facility. The Company believes that this facility increase to $300 million and the additional equipment financing limit provides the borrowing capacity required of a heavy equipment operator and supports its strategic priorities while providing the ability to expand its liquidity in line with its growth objectives. Forward-Looking Information The information provided in this release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements preceded by, followed by or that include the words Forward looking statements include the statements that the Company believes the Credit Facility covenants provide the flexibility to meet both its current and ongoing needs and that the increased facility amount and equipment financing capacity of the Credit Facility will provide the capacity the Company requires and will support its strategic priorities while providing the ability to expand its liquidity in line with its growth objectives, The material factors or assumptions used to develop the above forward-looking statements include, and the risks and uncertainties to which such forward-looking statements are subject, are highlighted in the Companys Managements Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) for the quarter ended September 30, 2018. Actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements because of any number of factors and uncertainties, many of which are beyond NACGs control. Undue reliance should not be placed upon forward-looking statements and NACG undertakes no obligation, other than those required by applicable law, to update or revise those statements. For more complete information about NACG, you should read the Companys disclosure documents filed with the SEC and the CSA. You may obtain these documents for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC website at www.sec.gov or on the CSA website at www.sedar.com. About the Company North American Construction Group Ltd. (www.nacg.ca) is a premier provider of heavy construction and mining services in Canada. For more than 60 years, NACG has provided services to large oil, natural gas and resource companies. For further information, please contact: David Brunetta, CPA, CMA Director, Investor Relations North American Construction Group Ltd. Phone: (780) 969-5574 Email: dbrunetta@nacg.ca PDF available: http://resource.globenewswire.com/Resource/Download/81f1cced-7183-4f6b-b0fd-41a607897f9c YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian today received head of the OSCE/ODIHR observation mission for early parliamentary elections of Armenia, Ambassador Urszula Gacek and deputy head of the mission Goran Petrov, the Presidential Office told Armenpress. At the meeting Ambassador Urszula Gacek thanked President Sarkissian for the invitation to observe the December 9 early parliamentary election in Armenia. The Ambassador briefly introduced the observer missions activity in long-term and short-term perspectives, stating that the observers of the OCSE Parliamentary Assembly and the PACE will also join the mission. The sides considered the upcoming elections very important for the countrys future progress. In his turn the Armenian President said democracy doesnt start and end on the election day, its a constantly developing and improving process which must become irreversible. The President highlighted the great importance of programs and projects aimed at strengthening the developed civil society and democratic institutions and attached importance to the cooperation with international partners and different structures on this path. Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Caretaker Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan has once again emphasized that it is the people that will determine who will become the government and who will become opposition, and who will remain outside the political arena with the results of the general election. Ive said that this is our political mission. The moment the people decide that we shouldnt be in government, we will not be government, he told reporters today after touring the Old Yerevan construction project site. And after losing power we will walk the streets of Yerevan with the same smiles and if needed we will campaign, he added. Pashinyan also addressed accusations claiming that he has abused administrative resources by campaigning before the official start of the campaigning period. He dismissed the accusations and firstly addressed a statement of the Republican Party Council which claimed that Pashinyans recent visit to a province where he held a rally constitutes abuse of administrative resources by international standards. He urged Republicans to name these international standards. Meaning, what should the caretaker Prime Minister of Armenia do? Not leave his office? he said. Asked why he called for a rally on November 24, and not two days later when the campaigning period will officially have begun, Pashinyan said: Is any citizen of Armenia restricted in holding a rally at any given day? Pashinyan said that campaigning calls can be voiced at any time and that he has not anyhow breached the Electoral Code. He said he will continue talking with the people, like he has done before. Asked about what kind of a rally will take place on November 24, he said: The march is of a walking nature. We will march, we may or may not address electoral issues. I am calling on all citizens of Armenia to vote for the Im Kayl [My Step] alliance in the upcoming parliamentary election. Did I just abuse any administrative resource? If I am abusing administrative resource by international standards, let them show us these standards, he said. Armenias Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan resigned on October 16 to trigger the process of disbanding the parliament. Pashinyan took office after massive protests in April forced president-turned PM Serzh Sargsyan to resign. But Sargsyans Republican Party (HHK) still has most seats in the 105-seat parliament. Since taking office, Nikol Pashinyan has numerously said that the incumbent parliament doesnt represent the people and that early elections should take place as soon as possible. In accordance to the Constitution, when a Prime Minister resigns the parliament must elect a new PM within two weeks. Lawmakers deliberately failed to elect a new PM as a formality in order to pave the way for dissolution. The last round took place on November 1 and the parliament was dissolved by virtue of law. Later on the same day, President Armen Sarkissian signed an order on dissolving the parliament and calling early elections on December 9. The parliament will function until the new parliament is elected. The government is formally a caretaker government until a new government is formed after the election. Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Three participating teams of the Sevan Startup Summit 2018 today received special awards of the President of Armenia at the Presidential Palace, the Presidential Office told Armenpress. In summer 2018 President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian participated in the closing ceremony of the Sevan Startup Summit during which he promised that one more nomination award of the President of the Republic, will be added to the awards for the 120 startup teams participating in the summit. Today Armen Sarkissian handed over the Presidential awards to the three winner teams. The first prize and 5 million AMD award was handed over to the SuperAnnotate AI project. The second and third awards were bestowed to YOLO and SENSE2beat projects respectively. President Sarkissian congratulated the Sevan Startup Summit organizers and award winners, expressing hope that they will continue their activities and will be presented at the international arena. Its time for us to hold the Startup also in the Silicon Valley. Of course, the participation of 120 teams is a great number, but I hope that 1200 teams will participate in the coming years. This is a really perfect idea and project. Many young people make first steps in the life and will achieve great success by your help and the will of God, the President said. Startup Armenia foundations co-founder Hakob Hakobyan considered the Presidents support encouraging. The fact that you visited us and delivered a lecture was a great progress for us. And todays awards and their idea are really obliging. We are ready to do more for Armenia to capture an importance place on the innovation map, he said. Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Caretaker minister of agriculture Gegham Gevorgyan held a meeting today with Naoufel Telahigue, Armenia Country Programme Manager at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) North Africa and Europe division. During the meeting Gevorgyan emphasized the significance of joint programs with IFAD and expressed hope that the bilateral cooperation will further develop and expand, the ministry said. The caretaker minister briefed the IFAD delegation on the governments agricultural policy and the planned reforms, as well as ongoing projects carried out jointly with other international organizations. The sides discussed the current projects and the possible steps from increasing their productivity, and also outlined the main directions for new programs. The meeting also specially addressed the Global Environment Fund (GEF) Sustainable Land Management for Increased Productivity in Armenia program, which is being carried out by a governmental agency on rural area development. The general goal of the program is to increase the revenue and assets of farmers having small businesses through investments in sustainable land management systems and technologies. Naoufel Telahigue expressed readiness to continue cooperation with the Armenian ministry of agriculture for developing and implementing new programs. Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, 23 NOVEMBER, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 23 November, USD exchange rate up by 0.21 drams to 484.47 drams. EUR exchange rate down by 0.97 drams to 551.23 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate stood at 7.38 drams. GBP exchange rate up by 2.84 drams to 622.64 drams. The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals. Gold price up by 23.08 drams to 19112.62 drams. Silver price up by 1.65 drams to 226.16 drams. Platinum price down by 9.86 drams to 13161.78 drams. Although Morrison has also been at pains to point out that PNG is leading on this joint initiative, the aims seem in reality to be modest. On the upgrade of the base, prime minister Scott Morrison has said: Its an important part of the strategic set of arrangements we have in place in our region, I think its fairly obvious. But even in that context an Australian naval presence at Manus makes little sense. The somewhat vague US decision to contribute to developing the base is even more obscure. Of course, not all of the Defence Departments activities have strictly military objectives or relate directly to the defence of Australia and, in the southwest Pacific, defence cooperation has been a major component of foreign policy and diplomacy. CANBERRA - It is difficult to find a strong, rational strategic argument for Australias to return to Lombrum Naval Base (or HMPNGS Tarangau) on Manus island. The joint PNG-Australia statement emphasised the project would further enhance inter-operability between our defence forces, and deepen our maritime security cooperation and might facilitate increased Australian ship visits over time. Not exactly a dramatic geo-strategic development. To at least one observer however this brings the US a lot closer to the South China Sea and is a significant pushback for Chinas strategic ambitions in the Pacific region. This is an overblown assessment. Both Morrison and US vice president Mike Pence were far more reticent about their joint level of commitment to home porting or transiting forces through Manus. Upgrading Lombrum is a sensible idea. The base is presently home to the PNGDFs Pacific-class patrol boat force and will also homeport the replacement Guardian class under the Pacific Maritime Security Program. The Australian defence minister announced in September that as part of the replacement patrol boat program Australia had committed to a $5 million upgrade of wharf and shore-based infrastructure in advance of the new vessels being gifted to PNG. The Pacific island nations, including PNG and Timor Leste, face huge challenges policing their exclusive economic zones and battling illegal fishing, drug smuggling and other criminal activity. The package of assistance provided through the defence cooperation program, in partnership with other security, law enforcement and intelligence agencies, is highly valued by the regional governments. The cooperative structures and personal relationships developed over time have been mutually beneficial and has been a key part of Australias foreign policy. Except for the sudden inclusion of the US as a player in the Lombrum project, this has all the hallmarks of unspectacular business as usual. The Australian public is not unfamiliar with politicians repackaging or re-announcing something already in progress. Yet the context of the tense stand-off in the South China Sea between the US and China, and Australian anxiety about Chinese encroachment into the western Pacific, tinges everything with a bit of paranoia and raises the mundane to the heights of strategic importance. The normal strategic, as distinct from other, considerations relating to investing in a naval base for Australian use would include identifying the missions that Australia expects to conduct from that location and which existing or planned Royal Australian Navy vessels might be suitable to operate from there. Perhaps the RANs new offshore patrol vessels planned to begin entering service late-2021 will visit Lombrum during transits. Yet, as the new ships are intended to to contribute to border security operations according to the White Paper, its not clear how often they would be off in the Admiralty Islands. The 7,000 tonne Hobart class air warfare destroyers might pass Manus Island on return from the South China Sea but as there are only three of them that wouldnt be very frequent. It is not apparent how often or why the ANZAC frigates on operations, or after 2030 their replacements, might wander into the Bismarck Sea. Even if these platforms did visit regularly, Lombrum is not going to be able to provide replenishment or repairs for sophisticated naval platforms. The hyped announcements around the Manus base have been provocative; providing an opportunity for Pence to leverage off an existing Australian-funded project for anti-China rhetoric. While Lombrum is important for PNG it has no geo-strategic importance; certainly not in the context of the strategic environment of the Asia-Pacific region. It is too far from East Asia and the South China Sea, or Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. It will never have the infrastructure or be able to provide the services and logistics of a forward operating base for Australia fighting vessels. It is inconceivable, given the range of better alternative options available, the US would ever invest heavily in Lombrum or operate from there. It is hard to see how what is proposed or likely for Manus would have an impact in anyway on Chinese objectives or behaviours. What the episode does demonstrate, however, is how, when little strategic justification is provided by the government for defence expenditure, the message can become distorted and confused. This leaves enormous space for other narratives. Bloombergs headline was, U.S., Australia to Develop Pacific Naval Base in Check on China. The Guardian interpreted the move as telegraphing a strategic commitment to the region at a time of concern about rising Chinese influence.which will host more warships in the Pacific. The Financial Review declared the joint project dramatically ramping up the American presence in the South Pacific in a check on Chinese ambitions to expand its strategic influence. Russian media outlet Sputnik News announced Australia will let its warships make port visits to Papua New Guineas base on Manus Island. It is none of those things. Australias strategic policy, seen from outside government, seems a shambles, and if not really chaotic and incoherent, then poorly communicated. Mike Scrafton is a former senior Defence Department executive, former CEO of a state statutory body and former chief of staff and ministerial adviser to the minister for defence This is becoming a bit of a routine in Chinas official relations: tantrum diplomacy, a senior US official involved in the negotiations told me. Them walking around like they own the place and trying to get what they want through bullying. But that was only the final incident in a week during which Chinas official delegation staged a series of aggressive, bullying, paranoid and weird stunts to try to exert dominance and pressure the host nation and everyone else into succumbing to its demands. When the summit failed, to the disgust of the other diplomats, Chinese officials broke out in applause. PORT MORESBY - For the first time in its 20-year history, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit ended in disarray on Sunday when the 21 member countries could not reach consensus on a joint statement because of objections by one member China. China swamped Port Moresby with Chinese flags. The PNG government demanded they be taken down before APEC. China then replaced them with solid red flags Even before the summit started, and continuing right up to its end, Chinese officials used every opportunity to strong-arm or undermine the host nation government of Papua New Guinea and the other summit members. Chinese tactics included being thuggish with the international media, busting into government buildings uninvited, papering the capital city of Port Moresby with pro-Beijing propaganda and possibly even using cyber attacks to stifle the message of vice president Pence, the U.S. delegation leader. I was travelling with Pence, and the APEC summit was his last stop in a week-long Asia tour, which included visits to Japan, Australia and Singapore, where the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit was held. The PNG stop was a showdown of sorts between Pence and Chinese president Xi Jinping, who had been in Port Moresby for several days prior for an official state visit. Chinas attempted charm offensive was visible everywhere. The Chinese delegation had filled the streets of Port Moresby with Chinese flags for Xis state visit. The PNG government demanded that they be taken down before the APEC summit, U.S. officials said. The Chinese officials eventually complied, but then replaced them with solid red flags almost identical to the official Chinese flags, but without the yellow stars. A huge banner along a major thoroughfare touted Chinas One Belt, One Road economic initiative as not only a road of cooperation and win-win situation, but also a road of hope and peace! In his speech at APEC, Pence called it a constricting belt and a one-way road. Chinas first outwardly intimidating move was to ban all international media from Xis meeting with the leaders of eight Pacific nations. Journalists had travelled from around the region to attend the event, and the PNG government gave them credentials. But Chinese officials barred them from entering the building and only allowed Chinas state media to cover it. A US official called it an own goal by China, because the journalists then could only write about Chinas brutish behaviour. Things got worse from there. On Saturday, Xi and Pence were the final two official speakers at the public part of the summit. They gave their speeches on a cruise ship docked off the coast, while most journalists were stationed on shore in the International Media Centre. But five minutes into Pences remarks, the Internet in the media centre crashed for most of the reporters there, meaning they couldnt hear or report on it in real time. Just as Pence was finishing his speech, the media centres Internet mysteriously came back on. U.S. officials told me although they couldnt be sure China was responsible they were investigating what happened. Was there any trouble with the Internet for the speaker before Pence? another senior U.S. official asked me. (No.) And who was that speaker again? (Xi.) Then things got even crazier. Behind the scenes, the member countries were furiously negotiating over the joint statement. Chinese officials, not happy with how they were faring inside the negotiations, demanded a meeting with the PNG foreign minister. He declined, not wanting to appear to violate PNGs neutrality as summit chair. The Chinese officials wouldnt take no for an answer. They went to the foreign ministry and physically barged into his office, demanding he meet with them. He called the local police to get them out of the building. Every diplomat I talked to in PNG was stunned by Chinas actions. But thats not the end of it. Xi and his officials at APEC: "When time ran out and the summit had officially failed, the Chinese delegation stationed in a room near the main session broke out in applause" The negotiations continued into Sunday, and the Chinese delegations bad behavior continued apace. According to US officials, Chinese officials were getting so paranoid about the statement that they began pushing into the meetings of smaller groups of countries on the summits sidelines. Inside the official sessions, Chinese officials yelled about countries scheming against China. Nobody else in the room was yelling, the US officials said. All 20 countries except China finally agreed to the joint statement, except for China, the US officials said. The Chinese delegation objected primarily to one line that read: We agree to fight protectionism including all unfair trade practices. They perceived that as singling out and targeting China. The Chinese officials filibustered inside the session, giving long monologues, knowing that time was short and the world leaders had planes waiting to take them home. When the time ran out and therefore the summit had officially failed, the Chinese delegation stationed in a room near the main session broke out in applause, a US official said. There are three conclusions we can take away from this tragicomedy of errors put on by the Chinese government. First, they are behaving in an increasingly brazen and coercive way. This is especially true with the small Indo-Pacific countries such as PNG that they are flooding with development projects and saddling with massive debt. Second, the paranoid and oversensitive nature of much of Chinas behaviour is a clear indication that the government feels under threat from the United States and its allies. This is something we should be aware of (and sensitive to) as we deal with Beijing. Lastly, the fact that Beijing is acting in a way that actually alienates other countries which is clearly against Chinas own interests shows that Chinese official action is controlled from the top down in ways that often prevent good decision-making. Even when the Chinese delegation saw its tactics were backfiring, they didnt have the authority to change course. This is what the Chinese government is today: pushy, insecure, out of control and with no desire to pretend anymore they will play by the rules the international community has been operating under for decades. How to deal with that reality is the debate the rest of the world must now begin in earnest. A wild turkey has evaded capture in Johnston, Rhode Island, for six months and continues to cause havoc in the town. The turkey has trapped people in their cars, attacked vehicles, and blocked entrances to buildings. The town's mayor has described it as "like Al Capone and John Dillinger" and thinks that it is staying in the town as people keep feeding it things like Starbucks muffins. The bird is something of a local joke: It received 69 votes for mayor. A wild turkey has been causing havoc in a Rhode Island town for six months, where it has been blocking traffic, chasing people, and stopping them paying taxes. Three wild turkeys arrived in the town of Johnston in May, but one managed to evade permanent capture the entire time by deploying a number of tactics, including being able to recognise the animal control van, the Guardian reported. The turkey has evaded town officials, halted traffic, and even interfered with people who were trying to enter the town hall to pay their taxes, the newspaper added. It has also chased a fireman, attacked cars because it saw its reflection, and flown onto telephone poles and trees to evade capture in the past. Read more: 'Peas' the turkey is pardoned by Trump after he joked that the alternate bird, 'Carrots,' had 'demanded a recount' Turkey Rhode Island Officers have started to use an undercover vehicle and a launcher that can fire out nets to try to capture the turkey, Johnston mayor Joseph Polisena told the Guardian. But those attempts have been unsuccessful so far. The turkey even managed to trap Polisena's administrative assistant inside her car this August by going up to her window and refusing to move, the local Providence Journal reported. Polisena described the bird as "like Al Capone and John Dillinger," and admitted that it was smarter than the other two that had been captured. "He's unbelievably fast," he added. Read more: People are pranking their parents by asking them how to microwave a whole turkey, but experts say it's actually doable Story continues Polisena has also come up against the bird in politics - the turkey received 69 votes in the town's mayoral elections in November, the Guardian reported. People have even made the bird its own Facebook page, which updates as the bird continues to evade capture in the town. View this content at Business Insider Polisena said that he believes the turkey has stayed in the town because people keep feeding it food, like Starbucks muffins. He also told the Guardian that the bird had inspired him to change his usual Thanksgiving meal. "I'll be having lasagna for Thanksgiving," he said. "I already told my wife: Don't make turkey. Because I'll have flashbacks and nightmares of trying to capture this guy." A man demanded that all Jewish passengers on his Delta Air Lines flight on Wednesday "raise their hands" so he could identify them, a fellow passenger said. The incident took place on a flight to Atlanta from Washington, DC. The police identified the man as David Toaff. He was arrested and taken to jail upon landing. Video footage showed a man appearing to resist arrest and shouting "I'm not a bad person." A man was arrested Wednesday after a rant on a Delta Air Lines flight that one witness said included a demand that "all Jews raise their hands" so he could identify them. The man, identified as David Toaff, 37, shouted the remarks at fellow passengers on a flight to Atlanta from Washington, DC, on Wednesday, the Atlanta police told USA Today. "Today a man on my plane went on an anti-Semitic tirade and demanded 'all Jews raise their hands' so he could 'indentify them,'" Jordan Dale, a passenger and production assistant at The Hill, tweeted. "Preliminary information indicates that while in flight a male was yelling, asking Jewish people on board to identify themselves and making remarks about bombings to passengers aboard the aircraft," Officer Lisa Bender told USA Today. It's not clear what the "remarks about bombings" were. Business Insider has contacted Delta Air Lines and the Atlanta police for comment. Law-enforcement officers arrested Toaff upon landing in Atlanta. A video posted by Dale at the arrival gate shows a man yelling "I'm not a bad person" and trying to break free from the police. https://twitter.com/JordanDale9/status/1065430743835439104?ref_src=twsrc^tfw The Times of Israel reported that the man in the video appeared to be wearing a tallit, or a Jewish prayer shawl. Toaff said he lived in Washington, DC, and "people know who I am." He was ultimately charged with obstruction and disorderly conduct and taken to Clayton County Jail, the police told USA Today. (Left) Health Minister Greg Hunt and (right) Treasurer Josh Frydenberg have jointly announced the terms of reference for the Productivity Commissions inquiry into mental health. Photos: AAP The Federal government has revealed what it wants the Productivity Commission to look at in its inquiry into mental health. The inquiry, which was jointly announced by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Minister for Health Greg Hunt on 7 October, is set to look at how mental illness affects the quality of Australians lives, such as employment, financial status, education, physical health, and social participation. Four million Australians deal with some form of chronic or episodic mental health condition, Minister Hunt said today. As well as the individuals affected and people close to them, poor mental health also affects businesses, the hospital system, emergency services and social services. The terms of reference includes: Looking at the impact that supporting mental health has on productivity, economic and social participation, and the national economy; Examining how sectors other than health, such as social services, housing, justice, employment and education can help improve mental health, economic participation, and productivity; Looking at how effective current programs and initiatives are in improving mental health and preventing suicide; Assessing whether current investment in mental health delivers value for money and the best outcomes for all Australians; And create a framework for measuring and reporting the outcomes of mental health policies and investment on participation, productivity and economic growth over the long term. In total, the nation spends $9 billion a year the equivalent of $1 million an hour on mental health, with the Federal government contributing over half ($4.7 billion). The inquiry will be able to make recommendations as to how the government can better support Australians living with mental illness, to enable them to lead fulfilling and contributing lives, said the treasurer. Hunt added that the terms of reference had been forged in consultation with state and territory health ministers, as well as the National Mental Health Commission. Story continues The Commission will consult with Indigenous leaders including the National Mental Health Commissions Professor Helen Milroy and Professor Ngiare Brown on their expertise, he said. The inquiry will begin as of today, and will submit a report to the government in 18 months from now, around May 2020. Overseeing the inquiry are Commissioners Stephen King and Julie Abramson. An Associate Commissioner is appointed A mental health policy veteran, Professor Harvey Whiteford, has been appointed as Associate Commissioner in order to assist the Productivity Commission. Whiteford is a professor of population mental health at the University of Queensland and a professor of global health at the University of Washingtons Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation. He currently sits on the advisory board of the National Mental Health Commission. He has also worked on mental health policy for the World Health Organisation, the OECD and various governments across Europe, Africa and Asia. Make your money work with Yahoo Finances daily newsletter. Sign up here and stay on top of the latest money, news and tech news. Read next: This is how 26,000 Aussies tried to steal $61 million from Centrelink Read next: Scott Morrison plans to cut immigration amid population concerns Read next: Updated: The deadline for My Health Record has been extended heres what you need to know EDMONTON, Alberta, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Athabasca Minerals Inc. (Athabasca or the Corporation) (TSX Venture: ABM) announces the appointment of Mr. Mark Smith, P.Eng, MBA to the position of interim Chief Financial Officer effective November 30, 2018. Mr. Smith is the current VP Finance for AMI Silica Inc. and will replace Mr. Lucas Murray as Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Smith is a professional engineer with an MBA in Finance from the University of Oxford. Prior to AMI Silica, Mr. Smith was with Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets in Calgary, Alberta providing Investment Banking expertise within the oil and gas industry for exploration and production, midstream, oilfield services, and royalty companies. Prior to his tenure at Scotiabank, Mr. Smith worked at Shell Canada, and was responsible for engineering and planning of exploration drilling programs in the Duvernay. The Corporation thanks Mr. Murray for his dedication to Athabasca Minerals, and wishes him well in his future endeavours. The Corporation also announces the granting of 610,000 stock options (Options) with an exercise price of $0.26 to directors, officers, management and consultants. The Options will have a five-year term and are subject to a four month hold period. The Option grant is subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval. The appointment of Mr. Smith is subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval. About Athabasca Minerals The Corporation is an integrated aggregates company involved in resource development, aggregates marketing and midstream supply-logistics solutions. Business activities include aggregate production, pit management services, sales from corporate-owned and third-party pits, acquisitions of sand and gravel operations, and new venture development. The Corporation also has industrial mineral land exploration licenses that are strategically positioned for future development in industrial regions of high potential demand. For further Information on Athabasca, please contact: Dean Stuart T: 403-617-7609 E: dean@boardmarker.net Robert Beekhuizen T: 780-465-5696 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. Images: Getty Known for its soaring skyscrapers, the island country of Bahrain is the best country overall for expats, according to an international survey of more than 18,000 people. And, its one of the best countries for expats looking to boost their income. Qatar tops the list for expats looking to earn more than they would for the same job back home, followed by Switzerland, Norway, Saudi Arabia and Luxembourg, the study by expat network InterNations revealed. At the other end of the spectrum, expats in Greece, the Dominican Republic and Portugal earn less than they would in a similar job back home. Image: InterNations But, when it comes to the cost of living, Bulgaria tops the list. Nearly three quarters (73 per cent) of respondents said their disposable income is more than enough to cover everything they need significantly more than the global average of 51 per cent. Additionally, 97 per cent of expats in Bulgaria describe the cost of living as affordable. Image: InterNations Colombia and Vietnam topped the list in terms of personal finance for the second year in a row but swapped positions. Most expats (84 per cent) are generally satisfied with their financial situation. The same goes for Vietnam, where 93 per cent think their household income is enough or more than enough to cover all their expenses. My salary in Vietnam is similar to home, but the cost of living is very low, one Australian expat told the survey. Money is important but where are the best destinations overall? Following Bahrain are Taiwan and Ecuador, with Taiwan ranking well in terms of friendliness and job satisfaction. However, 30 per cent of expats in Taiwan admit that learning the language is a challenge. Ecuador performed well financially and in terms of settling in. However, many expats there are retirees, with 20 per cent of expats relocating to Ecuador purely for the quality of life. I love the kindness of the Ecuadorians. They have been helpful and gracious from the first day, another expat told the survey. Story continues Image: InterNations So, what are you waiting for? Make your money work with Yahoo Finances daily newsletter. Sign up here and stay on top of the latest money, news and tech news. Also read: Worlds best country to grow old in revealed Also read: These are the best countries to live and work in Also read: 5 countries which will pay YOU to live there Also read: Expats rate the best and worst things about Australia Spanish striker Paco Alcacer is making his loan deal at Borussia Dortmund permanent, the Bundesliga leaders announced on Friday. "We have informed DC Barcelona today that we will apply the buy option," Dortmund's sport director Michael Zorc said in a statement on the club website. "Paco is wholeheartedly with us, he has quickly integrated and has become an integral part of our squad. "He is a real scorer of high footballing quality and has already won some important games for us. We look forward to many more goals and assists from Paco in the coming years." The 25-year-old Spanish international joined Dortmund from Barcelona on a one-year loan deal in the summer and has made an immediate impression with nine goals in just eight appearances, including the winner against Bayern Munich two weeks ago. "I am very happy in Dortmund ... in this wonderful team," said Alcacer in the Dortmund statement. "Borussia Dortmund was and is exactly the right decision for me. I will do everything I can to say thank you for your trust!" Alcacer has agreed a contract that will run until June 30, 2023. Dortmund have not released details of the transfer fee but it is estimated by German media outlets Bild and Kicker at between 21 and 23 million euros. That could rise by a further five million euros in bonuses. Paco Alcacer is set for a long-term deal with Dortmund Amnesty International said Friday it was "gravely concerned" by Bahrain's suppression of political opposition, a day ahead of the parliamentary election. "Over the past two years, the crackdown in Bahrain has seen the political opposition detained, intimidated and silenced," said Devin Kenney, the rights group's Bahrain researcher, in a statement. "We call on the authorities to stop this ongoing and escalating repression and to allow free expression of dissenting voices, including those who oppose the monarchy. "Bahrain's international partners and allies cannot remain silent, and must use their influence to pressure the Bahraini authorities to adhere to the international standards they have committed to," Kenney said. The Sunni-ruled Gulf kingdom has been hit by waves of unrest since 2011, when security forces crushed Shiite-led protests demanding a constitutional monarchy and an elected prime minister. Opposition movements have been outlawed and hundreds of dissidents have been imprisoned -- with many stripped of their nationality. Bahrain's two main opposition groups -- the Shiite Al-Wefaq and secular Waad -- are prohibited from submitting parliamentary candidates. Sheikh Ali Salman, who headed the Al-Wefaq group, was sentenced to life in prison on November 4 for spying for rival Gulf state Qatar, in a ruling rights groups have called a travesty. Bahraini authorities accuse Shiite Iran of provoking unrest in the kingdom. Tehran denies the allegation. Human rights groups have frequently said cases against activists in Bahrain -- men and women, religious and secular -- fail to meet the basic standards of fair trials. Bahraini opposition leader Sheikh Ali Salman, who was sentenced to life in prison on November 4 for spying for rival Gulf state Qatar German prosecutors on Friday charged a 95-year-old man with more than 36,000 counts of accessory to murder over his alleged time as a Nazi concentration camp guard during World War II. The allegations against the accused, identified only as Hans H., concern atrocities committed at the Mauthausen camp in Austria, the Berlin public prosecutor's office said in a statement. Hans H. is believed to have belonged to the SS-Totenkopfsturmbann (Death's Head Battalion) between summer 1944 and spring 1945 at Mauthausen, part of the Nazis' vast network of concentration camps where inmates were forced to perform slave labour. Prosecutors argue that by working as a guard at the site, the accused contributed to tens of thousands of prisoner deaths. During his time at the camp, at least 36,223 inmates died. Guards took part in killings by gas, fatal injections, gunfire and other means, while many more prisoners died of hunger or frostbite, prosecutors said. "The accused is believed to have been aware of all the methods of killing as well as the disastrous living conditions of the inmates," their statement said. "It is believed that he knew these methods of killing were used against a large number of people and that they could only be killed in this way, with this degree of regularity, if the victims were guarded by people like him." A total of 200,000 people were held at Mauthausen, half of whom died before the camp's liberation by US troops in May 1945. A Berlin court must now decide whether the case against Hans H. can proceed. Germany has been racing to put on trial surviving SS personnel, after the legal basis for prosecuting former Nazis changed in 2011 with the landmark conviction of former guard John Demjanjuk. He was sentenced on the grounds that he served as a cog in the Nazi killing machine at the Sobibor camp in occupied Poland, rather than for murders or atrocities linked to him personally. German courts subsequently convicted Oskar Groening, an accountant at Auschwitz, and Reinhold Hanning, a former SS guard at the same camp, for complicity in mass murder. Both men were convicted at age 94 but died before they could be imprisoned. Earlier this month, a former Nazi concentration camp guard, Johann Rehbogen, went on trial in the western city of Muenster accused of complicity in mass murder at the Stutthof camp in occupied Poland. Mauthausen was part of the Nazis' vast network of concentration camps where inmates were forced to perform slave labour Guards took part in killings by gas, fatal injections, gunfire and other means, while many more prisoners died of hunger or frostbite, say prosecutors One landmark conviction changed the legal basis for prosecutions after a former guard was jailed simply being a cog in the Nazi killing machine -- not for any atrocities linked to him personally At least 31 people were killed and 50 wounded when a suicide blast ripped through a crowded marketplace in Pakistan's restive northwestern tribal region Friday, officials said. The attack took place during the regular Friday bazaar in Kalaya, a town in a Shiite-dominated area of Orakzai tribal district, senior local official Khalid Iqbal told AFP. Initial investigations showed it was an improvised explosive device hidden in a carton of vegetables, but officials later said it had been a suicide blast. "It's not clear whether the bomber was on foot or riding a motorcycle," senior official Ameen Ullah told AFP. Shahbaz Ali, a resident who was buying food in the market, said he had seen a boy with his face covered ride up on a motorcycle. "Suddenly a blast took place and then I was unconscious," he told AFP. Ullah said 31 people had been killed, including 22 Shiite Muslims. More than 50 people were wounded, with 17 of them in critical condition, he said. Tribal police confirmed the toll. Many of the wounded were taken to a hospital in Kohat, a city in neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where doctors said all staff had been summoned to the trauma centre. Ambulances could be seen outside the hospital, where relatives were awaiting news of their loved ones. One man was searching people before they entered the building, a precaution against a secondary bombing targeting hospital staff. "We have received one dead body and 28 injured, three of them were serious and taken to Peshawar," Fazl Ur Reham, deputy medical superintendent at the hospital, told AFP by telephone. Six other wounded were undergoing surgery, he said. Most of the injured had been hit by ball bearings and fragments of the bomb. "We expect more injured from the site," he added. - On the fringe - Amnesty International condemned the attack, saying in a statement that it showed an "utter contempt for human life". Orakzai is one of seven restive semi-autonomous tribal regions on the Afghan border, an area that has long been a focal point in the global war on terror and was famously described by Barack Obama as "the most dangerous place in the world". Washington has said that the mountainous region provides safe havens to militants including the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda -- an allegation that Islamabad denies. Pakistan, which joined the US war on terror in 2001, says it has paid the price for the alliance. It has been battling Islamist groups in the tribal belt since 2004, after its army entered the region to search for Al-Qaeda fighters who had fled across the border following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. Multiple bloody military operations have been carried out in the area, officially known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and home to around five million ethnic Pashtuns. Security has improved in the region in recent years, though lower-level attacks are still carried out with devastating regularity, often targeting Shiites in the area. But it remains notorious for the availability of cheap guns, drugs and smuggled goods. Residents also complain of undue harassment by security forces, citing disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Earlier this year Pakistan passed legislation which paves the way for the tribal areas to be merged into neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, bringing them into the political mainstream. The move will impose the Pakistani judicial system on a region still loosely governed by British colonial-era laws and the tribal system of honour, and which has always existed on the fringes of the state. Ambulances could be seen outside the hospital, where relatives were awaiting news of their loved ones The attack took place during the regular Friday bazaar in Kalaya, a town in a Shiite-dominated area of Orakzai tribal district One man was searching people before they entered the hospital building, a precaution against a secondary bombing targeting staff An injured bomb blast victim lies on a hospital bed in Kohat The founder of a home health care company who gave his employees $24 million (US$20m) in holiday gifts says the gesture is one of pure gratitude. Mark Baiada, the chairman and founder of Bayada Home Health Care, a reported $1.4 billion private-nursing company in Philadelphia, announced the gifts on Tuesday during a staff holiday luncheon at the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia. Im taking $20 million, dividing it up and giving it to everybody, Mr Baiada told the 100-person crowd, according to Philadelphia news outlet CBS Philly. I wanted to show some gratitude to everybody for all the hard work youve done taking care of our clients. The money was distributed to 32,000 employees and allocated depending on years of service new hires received $50, and longer-term workers received upwards of tens of thousands of dollars. Even retirees who left the company after 2010 were beneficiaries of the gift, Mr Baiada, 71, a father of five, tells Yahoo Lifestyle. Bayada founder Mark Baiada (pictured with his wife Anne, far right) gave a 24 million-dollar gift to his employees. (Photo: Bayada Home Health) These are everyday people who work hard in a low-margin service business Im honoured to work with them, Mr Baiada tells Yahoo Lifestyle. I dont go to patients homes much, but my employees are there every day. In 2016, Mr Baiada, who founded the company in 1975, announced plans to convert his business into a non-profit organisation, which will open in January. Nonprofits last longer, and I dont really need the money, so were going to turn it over to a newly created nonprofit thats all mission-driven, Mr Baiada told the Philadelphia Inquirer. Were putting mission over money. He admits getting teary-eyed during his announcement. My wife Ann watches The Bachelor and said it was better than the most dramatic rose ceremony ever, he tells Yahoo Lifestyle, joking. Mark Baiada, the founder of Bayada Home Health, a private nursing company, gifted his 32,000 employees a combined $24 million. (Photo: Bayada Home Health) Employees already have big plans for their largesse, such as a trip to Ireland, new car tyres and extra Christmas presents for their children. Nicole Green, a paediatric nurse whose clients include a premature baby and a child with cerebral palsy, has worked at Bayada for only three years and will use her gift toward her daughters college tuition. Everyone was in awe we thought we were just having a holiday lunch, Green, 48, told Yahoo Lifestyle. Mark totally surprised us. He didnt have to do this. Ive only worked at Bayada a short time, but Im a lifelong employee now. A former militia leader from Central African Republic known as "Colonel Rambo" will for the first time face judges in The Hague Friday on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Alfred Yekatom, 43, was arrested late last month in the volatile African country and extradited on Saturday to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. Yekatom faces 14 charges for his role in the CAR's bloody unrest, which has pitted Christian and Muslim groups against each other since 2013. An elected MP since 2016, Yekatom was arrested after he drew his gun and fired into the air in the parliament in Bangui, the capital, during an altercation late last month. At Friday's hearing, scheduled for 1000 GMT, judges will "verify the identity of the suspect and the language in which he is able to follow the proceedings," the ICC said earlier this week. "He will be informed of the charges against him," it said in a statement. The charges include murder, mutilation, torture, cruel treatment and recruiting child soldiers into his so-called anti-Balaka militia group, responsible for attacks on Muslims between December 2013 and August 2014, prosecutors said. - 'Violent acts' - Yekatom was wanted in particular for leading an attack in Bangui on December 5, 2013, when his group armed with guns, grenades and machetes, attacked Muslims in Boeing district, killing between six to 13 civilians. The group then moved to another location where four Muslims were killed, prosecutors said. Yekatom had been in prosecutors' sights since 2015 for "engaging in or providing support for acts that undermine the peace, stability or security in the CAR", his ICC arrest warrant said. But it said the shooting incident in parliament showed "that he resorts to violent acts" and that his arrest was necessary "to prevent him from committing further crimes within the jurisdiction of the court." Yekatom's transfer is the first since the ICC's chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda opened a probe in 2014 into the deadly violence that has left thousands dead and forced more than a quarter of the population out of their homes, according to UN figures. One of the world's poorest nations despite a rich supply of diamonds and uranium, CAR has struggled to recover from a 2013 civil war that erupted when President Francois Bozize, a Christian, was overthrown by mainly Muslim Seleka rebels. In response, Christians, who account for about 80 percent of the population, organised vigilante units dubbed "anti-Balaka" in reference to the balaka machetes used by Seleka rebels. MP Alfred Yekatom, a former militia leader known as "Rambo", was arrested in late October after firing his gun in the air during a parliamentary session in Bangui, Central African Republic's capital Estimados amigos, Les doy cordialmente la bienvenida a este Blog informativo con articulos, analisis y comentarios de publicaciones especializadas y especialmente seleccionadas, principalmente sobre temas economicos, financieros y politicos de actualidad, que esperamos y deseamos, sean de su maximo interes, utilidad y conveniencia. Pensamos que solo comprendiendo cabalmente el presente, es que podemos proyectarnos acertadamente hacia el futuro. Gonzalo Raffo de Lavalle Las convicciones son mas peligrosos enemigos de la verdad que las mentiras. Quien no lo ha dado todo no ha dado nada. Helenio Herrera History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. Karl Marx If you know the other and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. Sun Tzu We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity. Paulo Coelho On November 1, AFP joined news outlets around the world in covering the release of a major academic paper warning that our oceans were warming dramatically quicker than previously thought. The study was undertaken by some of the world's most pre-eminent climate scientists, using state-of-the-art modelling systems reviewed by their peers, and appeared in one of the most prestigious academic journals. There was just one problem: it was wrong. Published in Nature, the paper by researchers from the University of California San Diego and Princeton found that ocean temperatures had warmed 60 percent more than current estimates. They concluded, with no small sense of alarm, that even the most ambitious emissions cuts laid out in the global plan to prevent climate disaster would need to be slashed again by another 25 percent. Soon after publication, an independent climate scientist -- one who has repeatedly voiced scepticism of the consensus that human behaviour is causing global warming -- spotted an error in the Nature paper's maths. "After correction, the... results do not suggest a larger increase in ocean heat content than previously thought," Nicolas Lewis wrote on his Climate Science blog. "Just a few hours of analysis and calculations was sufficient to uncover apparently serious (but surely inadvertent) errors in the underlying calculations. "It is very important that the media outlets that unquestioningly trumpeted the paper's findings now correct the record too. But perhaps that is too much to hope for," he added. With the rectified calculation, the authors quickly realised they had made a mistake. The new results had a far larger range of possibilities in ocean temperature increases -- between 10 and 70 percent: still warmer, but rendering the study vague even for the sometimes unknowable science of climate modelling. "We quickly realised that our calculations incorrectly treated systematic errors in the O2 measurements as if they were random errors in the error propagation," author Ralph Keeling wrote on climatehome.org. "We really muffed the error margins," he told the San Diego Tribune. - 'Climate hoax' - The correction prompted some climate deniers to wheel out the conspiracy theory that manmade global warming is made up. Some Twitter users suggested the study was funded by the Democrats, that human-induced planetary warming was invented by former presidential hopeful Al Gore so he could buy a house, and that decades of evidence-based research into the phenomenon constituted "pseudoscience". But scientists rallied round the authors, pointing out that the process surrounding the Nature paper's publication and correction was, really, how scientific research is supposed to work. "Science is a human endeavour and it's therefore imperfect. What's important is that results are scrutinised and replicated by others so that we can assess what is robust and what isn't," Gavin A. Schmidt, director at the Goddard Institute for Space Sciences at NASA, told AFP. "Current climate change has been looked at by thousands of scientists (and other interested people) and our understanding of it is pretty solid," he said. AFP has since corrected its coverage of the study so its updated findings are on the record for future stories on warming oceans. Peter Frumhoff, chief climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the ocean study correction was "a beautiful thing". "The rapid, transparent acknowledgement and correction of inadvertent errors in scientific papers... is at the heart of what separates science from dogma," he told AFP. "It underscores our confidence in the robustness of consensus scientific findings, based on thousands of independent studies, regarding human-caused climate change." Oceans cover more than two thirds of the planet's surface and play a vital role in sustaining life on Earth A driver who rammed his car into a group of schoolchildren, killing five and injuring 19 others, chose his target "at random" following arguments with his wife, Chinese state media said Friday. The 29-year-old unemployed local resident of Liaoning province was contemplating suicide "due to quarrels" with his spouse before he drove his car into the children on Thursday, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing police. The man "chose his victims at random" when he was driving in Huludao city, in China's northeast, Xinhua reported. The driver made a sudden turn into the opposite side of the road to hit the children, who were crossing the street shortly after noon, the report said. State media said the collision took place near an elementary school. Police in Jianchang County have placed the attacker under criminal detention for endangering public security. Unverified videos circulating on social media show a car veering onto the wrong side of the road and ploughing through the line of pupils, with the impact from the crash throwing bodies across the road. Other gut-wrenching footage showed at least two small children lying unconscious and bleeding on the street. The screams and cries of children could be heard in the background, as onlookers milled around the scene of the collision. All five killed in the car attack were children, the official CCTV broadcaster said on its Weibo social media account Thursday. Of the 19 injured, 16 were children. Two teachers and a passerby were also hurt. Xinhua said three people remain in critical condition. Violence against schoolchildren is not uncommon in China. In April, a knife-wielding man killed nine middle school children and injured at least 10 others as they returned home in northern China. The suspect, who was later executed, had told police he was exacting revenge because he had been bullied when he attended the school. Violent crime has been on the rise in China in recent decades as the gap between rich and poor has widened rapidly in China. Studies have also described a rise in the prevalence of mental disorders, some of them linked to stress as the pace of life becomes faster and support systems wither. Map locating deadly car-ramming incident in Liaoning. Tales of millions of dollars of bribe money stuffed in suitcases -- told during the trial of notorious Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman -- have shone the spotlight on corruption in the country, which experts say is endemic. Government informant Jesus Zambada, the brother of Guzman's partner at the head of the notorious Sinaloa cartel, Ismael Zambada, told a court in New York that Guzman paid bribes to prosecutors, police, soldiers and even Interpol. On Tuesday, Jesus Zambada alleged from 2005-2006 Guzman bribed former Mexican public security minister, Genaro Garcia Luna with six to eight million dollars stuffed into two suitcases and hand delivered at a restaurant. Guzman's lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman even claimed that ex-president Felipe Calderon (2006-2012) and his successor, the incumbent Enrique Pena Nieto, took bribes from the Sinaloa cartel, accusations both strongly deny. Although analysts claim it is difficult to pay bribes to presidents or the top federal officials, corruption amongst local authorities is much more common. "Corruption at state and municipal level is endemic," former US Drug Enforcement Administration agent Mike Vigil told AFP. "They control the state police and the municipal police, hence the mafiosos go to them and pay them to protect their shipments." Guzman is accused of 11 offenses ranging from drug trafficking to money laundering -- including the smuggling of 155 tons of cocaine into the US over 25 years. If found guilty he will likely spend the rest of his life in a maximum security US prison. - Protection by authorities - Accusations of state authorities, principally governors, receiving bribes from criminal organizations or colluding with drug-traffickers are nothing new. "There are no traffickers that don't have governmental cover. For this type of crime you need to be protected by authorities, soldiers, the navy, police and, of course, officials," said journalist and author of books on drug trafficking, Jose Reveles. One of the best known cases is that of Mario Villanueva, governor of Quintana Roo state from 1993-99, who is serving a long prison sentence over drug trafficking links. Another is that of Tomas Yarrington, the former governor of violent Tamaulipas state in Mexico's northeast, who was extradited to the United States on charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and banking fraud. His successor, Eugenio Hernandez, is being held in a Tamaulipas cell, accused of embezzlement and illicit enrichment. - 'False and reckless' - As for the accusations against Calderon and Pena Nieto, these have been met with widespread skepticism, as well as their own emphatic denials. "The assertions made by the lawyer of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman are absolutely false and reckless," said Calderon on Twitter, while Pena Nieto's government spokesman tweeted that the current president was the one who had "pursued, captured and extradited" Guzman to the US. For security analyst Alejandro Hope, if a president wants to get rich, "there's no sense in opting for the one form of corruption that matters to the United States, which is receiving drug trafficking money." In any case, proving the payment of bribes is always going to be difficult, said Vigil, because "they pay in cash and it's not like they sign a receipt." Las acusaciones de sobornos que afloraron en el juicio contra Joaqun "Chapo" Guzmn en EEUU ponen de relieve la corrupcin entre las autoridades mexicanas, sobre todo a nivel estatal y municipal In this photo from 2012, former Mexican president Felipe Calderon (L) hands over the national flag to his successor Enrique Pena Nieto during their transition ceremony Former Quintana Roo state governor Mario Villanueva, pictured here in 2017, was sentenced to 22 years in prison for ties with drug trafficking This handout photograph shows Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's diamond-encrusted pistol Seven local employees of a French drilling firm and a government official were killed Thursday when suspected Boko Haram gunmen stormed the compound where they were sleeping in southeastern Niger. The attack shattered months of relative calm in the Diffa region near the Lake Chad basin, a strategic area where the borders of four countries converge. The victims, all Nigerien, were shot dead at a site in Toumour, a village near the border with Nigeria where they had been drilling two deep-water wells to improve conditions for displaced people at a local refugee camp. Seven of them were employees of Foraco, a French firm which specialises in drilling for mining and water projects. The eighth victim was an official from Niger's ministry of hydraulics. "A group of terrorists attacked the building where a team of Foraco drillers and technicians were resting in the village of Toumour," a company statement said. "The assailants opened fire on the sleeping personnel and killed eight people." Another five people were wounded, two of them seriously, it said, indicating that the injured were being transported to hospital in Diffa, capital of the region of the same name which flanks both Nigeria and Chad. The location where they were staying had been chosen in agreement with the Nigerien army unit charged with protecting them, Foraco said. The attackers also made off with two of the company's pickup trucks. - 'No specific threats' - "There were about 15 employees there who under the protection of about 15 soldiers who had just set off to patrol the area at the time of the attack," said Thierry Merle, head of Foraco's Europe and Middle East division. "We know that Boko Haram is active in the region but for now we've had no claim of responsibility, neither official nor unofficial," he told AFP. "We've been operating in Niger for 20 years, and at this site for a month," Merle said, indicating there had been no specific threats. "We have never faced a problem like this before." But a local official in Diffa blamed the attack on Boko Haram militants and one local resident said the gunmen had "looted many shops" and carried off foodstuffs "in a Foraco vehicle". The attack shattered months of calm in Diffa, a region that first came under attack by Boko Haram militants in February 2015 although the violence eased off this year after a bloody start. - Overshadowed by violence - In mid-January, seven Niger soldiers were killed and 17 others wounded in another attack in Toumour. And two months later, suspected jihadists fired on civilians at the local marketplace, killing at least five people. UN figures show that between 2015 and 2017, suspected Boko Haram jihadists staged 244 raids on the region, killing 582 civilians. Boko Haram extremists who are based in neighbouring Nigeria first took the conflict across the border into Niger in 2015, with numerous raids around Diffa. As well as Niger, the Islamist violence has also spilled into Chad and Cameroon, with all three countries joining Nigeria in a military effort to crush the insurgency. Boko Haram first emerged in 2009 and its nine-year insurgency has killed more than 27,000 people in northeastern Nigeria and forced another 1.8 million people from their homes. Map locating village of Toumour in Niger, where eight people were killed when gunmen attacked a French drilling firm In Toumour, a village in northeastern Niger, local people are so fed up with the violence that some want to fight back Police have defended the decision to use a gun instead of a taser to end a dangerous stand-off at a house in Perths north eastern suburbs. Witnesses say officers were threatened with a knife when responding to a family violence incident in Beechboro on Thursday afternoon. Ly Tong, 38, was shot dead by first responders inside the house. Im crying all day, I cant eat, I dont know, Im missing him, the mans sister Oanh Tong said. They shot him three times, oh my god. I cant imagine seeing his dead body in the house. Ly Tong (pictured) was shot by police in Beechboro. Source: 7News Three generations of Ly Tongs family were inside the home when police pulled the trigger, including his elderly mother, his 10-year-old niece and six-year-old nephew. The family say Ly Tong and his father had an argument on Thursday afternoon. Relatives reported family violence to Midland police. When officers arrived at the Yenisey Cresent home, they say the man threatened them with a knife and they opened fire. WAs Police Commissioner Chris Dawson says tasers werent used before the fatal shots were fired at Mr Tong, who was known to police. Police can and do have the authority to both protect themselves and protect other persons present, he said. Police at the crime scene in Beechboro. Source: 7News Friends and family say Mr Tong had been troubled as a teenager and was involved in drugs. They say he lead a reclusive life, but he had cleaned up his act. Despite his past, Mr Tongs family says he didnt deserve to die. I know the police here is doing their job, Ms Tong said. But before they put someone out, they have to give that person a chance. Its the second fatal police shooting this year and is now under internal investigation. Gabon's Ali Bongo, who has spent a month in treatment at a Saudi hospital, will be transferred next week to Rabat to convalesce, a presidential source told AFP on Friday. Bongo, 59, was rushed to hospital in Riyadh on October 24 after falling ill at an economic forum. After an extended period of silence, the Gabonese presidency eventually admitted he was "seriously ill" and had undergone surgery, while insisting he was on the mend. The source said Bongo would be transferred to a hospital in the Moroccan capital "next week" where he would undergo "a period of convalescence and rehabilitation". "The doctors think he is up to travelling, even for such a long trip.. he is breathing normally and communicating in a coherent manner," the source said. "His life is no longer in danger, and he is no longer on a ventilator," the source said. "He is making good progress." Over the past month, the Gabonese presidency has only released two statements on Bongo's health, first saying on October 29 he had been taken to hospital "suffering from severe fatigue". Then on November 11, Bongo's office admitted he was "seriously ill" and had undergone surgery. Lack of official news -- along with memories of the secrecy-shrouded death of Bongo's father Omar Bongo in 2009 after decades at the helm -- had sparked numerous rumours, including speculation he was incapacitated or even dead. Earlier this month, a foreign source close to Bongo and his French-born wife Sylvia told AFP the Gabonese president had had a stroke. In mid-November, Gabon's Constitutional Court said it had modified the constitution to address his "temporary incapacity" to allow certain functions to be carried out by the vice president or the prime minister. The move drew widespread condemnation from the opposition and civil society groups. After a month in hospital in Riyadh, Gabon's President Ali Bongo will be transferred to Rabat for a period of convalescence Hundreds of Central American migrants staged a boisterous demonstration on the US Mexico border Thursday, screaming for President Donald Trump to let them in as US soldiers and riot police put on a menacing show of force. The increased tension over the presence of a thousands-strong migrant caravan came as Trump marked Thanksgiving Day by threatening to close the border if he thinks Mexico has lost control of it. Vehicle and pedestrian traffic at the busy San Ysidro crossing came to a halt for 40 minutes as dozens of US police wearing helmets and holding rifles formed a line facing the Mexican side of the frontier. Separately, riot police rehearsed deployment movements. US Customs and Border Protection called all of this a "large-scale readiness exercise." American soldiers in khaki-colored uniforms set off rockets that exploded with a pungent-smelling white smoke. Helicopters hovered overhead. Trump has already deployed nearly 6,000 troops along the border and on Thursday he threatened to go even further. "If we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control," Trump told reporters, before firing a warning to Mexico. "The whole border. I mean the whole border," he said, adding that "Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the United States." At almost the same time as the police and troop exercise, at another nearby border crossing called El Chaparral, Central American migrants from the caravan emptying into Tijuana defied the president with a loud rally. "Open the gates, Trump! We are not looking for war, but work," shouted Alberto Ruiz, a 22-year-old Honduran. After a trek of more than a month from Honduras, nearly 5,000 migrants have been living in a makeshift shelter fashioned from an open air sports arena. It rained Wednesday night, drenching their mattresses and other belongings. "Let's go to the border! There we can pressure Trump. We are only wasting time and strength at the shelter," Carlos Rodriguez, also Honduran, yelled into a bullhorn. - 'A special day' - "Today is a special day. It is Thanksgiving in the United States. They are not going to lynch us," he said as a crowd applauded and screamed in support. As the chill of night set in, dozens of migrants lugged their wet belongings from the shelter and set up a new camp right in the middle of a street near the El Chaparral crossing. Authorities in Tijuana have set up a job fair in an attempt to recruit skilled workers from among the migrants for the benefit of local companies, while Mexico's migration agency has offered them temporary residency papers. Some have taken advantage of the offers but others are simply determined to reach the US. Since setting out more than a month ago, mostly from Honduras, thousands of migrants -- including many women and children -- have covered about 4,400 kilometers (2,700 miles), either walking or hitchhiking, before the first groups began reaching Tijuana at the end of last week. But there have been tensions since they started arriving at the border town, with some locals fearing crime and violence. The migrants are mostly fleeing poverty and unrest in Central America's "Northern Triangle" -- El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, where gang violence has fuelled some of the highest murder rates in the world. US border control agents stand in formation during a show of force as Central American migrants mass on the other side of the frontier Central American migrants are crammed into a makeshift shelter in Tijuana, Mexico as they wait in hope of crossing into the US For thousands of years, the people of North Sentinel island have been isolated from the rest of the world. They use spears and bows and arrows to hunt the animals that roam the small, heavily forested island, and gather plants to eat and to fashion into homes. Their closest neighbors live more than 50 kilometres away. Deeply suspicious of outsiders, they attack anyone who comes through the surf and onto their beaches. Police say that is what happened last week when a young American, John Allen Chau, was killed by islanders after paying fishermen to take him to the island. The Sentinelese want to be left alone, anthropologist Anup Kapur said. Scholars believe the Sentinelese migrated from Africa roughly 50,000 years ago, but most details of their lives remain completely unknown. Kayaking to a remote island in Andaman proved an adventure too far for John Allen Chau. Image: Instagram/John Allen Chau John Allen Chau was shot dead with bow and arrows after paying fishermen to ferry him out to the remote island. Image: Instagram/John Allen Chau We do not even know how many of them are there, Anvita Abbi, who has spent decades studying the tribal languages of Indias Andaman and Nicobar islands, said. North Sentinel is an outpost of the island chain, which is far closer to Myanmar and Thailand than to mainland India. Estimates on the groups size range from a few dozen to a few hundred. What language they speak, how old it is, its anybodys guess, Abbi said. Nobody has access to these people. And, she said, that is how it should be. Just for our curiosity, why should we disturb a tribe that has sustained itself for tens of thousands of years? she asked. So much is lost: People are lost, language is lost, their peace is lost. For generations, Indian officials have heavily restricted visits to North Sentinel, with contact limited to rare gift-giving encounters, with small teams of officials and scientists leaving coconuts and bananas for the islanders. Any contact with such isolated people can be dangerous, scholars say, with islanders having no resistance to diseases outsiders carry. The 27-year-old was killed by members of a protected and reclusive tribe in the Andamans known as Sentinelese tribe. Image: Instagram/John Allen Chau We have become a very dangerous people, P.C. Joshi, an anthropology professor at Delhi University, said. Even minor influences can kill them. Story continues Because of this, Abbi said scholars who visit isolated peoples are careful to limit their visits to a few hours a day and to stay away even if they have minor coughs or colds. Many of the island chains other tribes have been decimated over the past century, lost to disease, intermarriage and migration. Survival International, an organisation that works for the rights of tribal people, said Chau may have been encouraged by recent changes to Indian rules about visiting isolated islands in the Andamans. While special permissions are still required, visits are now theoretically allowed in some parts of the Andamans where they used to be entirely forbidden. The authorities lifted one of the restrictions that had been protecting the Sentinelese tribes island from foreign tourists, which sent exactly the wrong message, and may have contributed to this terrible event, the group said in a statement. Meanwhile, Indian authorities say they are now struggling to recover Mr Chaus body, given the sensitivity of the group and the legal requirements In a statement issued on his Instagram account, Mr Chaus family said they forgive those reportedly responsible for his death. Critics of Amazon's plans for a taxpayer-subsidized Queens campus are making a concerted effort to derail the new location before it's too late. The Amazon opposition, which includes high-profile politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, remains unpersuaded by Amazon-boosters Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, who published separate essays in recent days deriding their critics as socialists and extreme conservatives, while insisting that the secretive deal to bring the company here will soon be widely celebrated by New Yorkers. In reality, opposition to the new headquartersand to Amazon as a wholeseems to be growing increasingly vocal and organized. In New York City and elsewhere, several anti-Amazon actions are planned for the post-Thanksgiving consumer holidays. We've included three below. Amazon Black Friday Action A coalition of immigrant advocates and newly formed anti-HQ2 groups will host this Black Friday demonstration, which is aimed at both speaking out against the Long Island City deal and highlighting the company's connections to Palandir, ICE and other law enforcement agenciesongoing collaborations that are "fueling" deportations, one report found. "While there has been forceful pushback on AmazonHQ as a bad deal for the city, I haven't seen a single politician address the ethical questions related to Amazon's business practices," Amy Herzog, an organizer and a professor at Queens College, told Gothamist. "No one is talking about the central role Amazon plays hosting the integrated cloud platform ICE and DHS use to target and detain immigrants." In an effort to change that, participants will be handing out flyers and caroling outside Amazon's brick-and-mortar store on 34th Street. The prepared songbook includes a variation on the Dreidel Song ("Bezos, Bezos, Bezos!/Your heart is made of clay/But all our politicians/Line up to be your bae") and an inspired take on the 12 Days of Christmas: "Amazon got a buyout and gave to NYC (1) ICE surveillance technology, (2) Death to retail jobs, (3) Bankrupt MTA," and so on. Participants will meet at the New York Public Library at 2 p.m. to organize and practice their tunes, then march down 6th Avenue toward the storefront. More details here. Protect Queens #NoAmazonNYC On Monday evening, thousands of protesters are expected to take over Court Square Park in Long Island City, just across from the Queens County Courthouse and down the block from Amazon's proposed site. "The heartbeat of Queens is the working class and immigrants, not billionaires," the event page reads. "At a time when our city is facing a crisis of affordability, New York is looking to pay Amazon, the richest corporation in the world, billions of dollars to gentrify Queens." The demonstration begins at 5 p.m. and will include many of the same groups who've led the charge against the deal since it was announced, including New York Communities for Change and Make the Road. There's good reason to expect City Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer and State Senator Mike Gianaris will be in attendance as well. This year I have been so thankful for the labor movement & so ashamed of how easily 2-day shipping got me to participate in worker exploitation so this Thanksgiving I am doing what I should've done years ago: going cold turkey on Amazon & cancelling Prime pic.twitter.com/nTSot1ieCU Jia Tolentino (@jiatolentino) November 22, 2018 Cyber Monday NYC Amazon Black Out For Amazon opponents who would like to dissent without leaving the comforts of home, the Queens Anti-Gentrification Project will "host" this boycott, which calls on participants to cancel their Amazon Prime subscriptions and share their confirmations online. The hashtags #FuckOffAmazon #CloudIndustrialComplex are encouraged, as is recruiting members for future actions. (More on what you can do to stop Amazon from devouring everything here). As a backdrop to all of this, Amazon warehouse workers across Europe are planning coordinated walk-outs and strikes in protest of what they say are abysmal working conditions. "We have had enough of the gig economy, the tech companies lying and exploiting our private lives and data for profit, the expanding militarization and surveillance of everyday life, the building of walls, and the expanding gap between the rich and the poor," the boycott's Facebook page notes. "Amazon is our enemy." Israeli lawyers have filed a class action against Airbnb after its decision to remove Jewish settler homes in the occupied West Bank from its rental listings. A spokesman for the attorneys, who spoke to AFP Friday on condition of anonymity, said the lead plaintiff was Maanit Rabinovich of Kida settlement in the West Bank. Rabinovich says Airbnb never contacted her to warn her of its intention. The suit, the spokesman said, seeks 15,000 shekels (3,500 euros) in damages for Rabinovich and each other settler host should Airbnb delete them from its listings. San Francisco-based Airbnb said Monday it would remove West Bank homes from its site, prompting Israel's tourism ministry to threaten legal action. The decision would affect around 200 homes in Israeli settlements that had been listed on the platform. Around 400,000 Israelis live in settlements that dot the West Bank and range in size from tiny hamlets to large towns, in addition to 200,000 living in settlements in occupied east Jerusalem. The international community considers the settlements to be illegal and a key barrier to peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Airbnb has said it "concluded that we should remove listings in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank that are at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians". "We know that people will disagree with this decision and appreciate their perspective. This is a controversial issue," it said in a statement. Israel's internal security minister, Gilad Erdan, called on settlers affected "to consider filing lawsuits against Airbnb". Rabinovich's suit was filed Thursday in the Jerusalem district court, according to court documents seen by AFP. It accuses Airbnb of "discriminating" against West Bank settlers while listing rooms to rent in other disputed territories around the world. "China's control of Tibet has been condemned worldwide, and yet Airbnb offers 300 apartments for rent there," it says. "In northern Cyprus, where control is deeply disputed between Greece and Turkey and has even led to war, Airbnb offers thousands of rental apartments." The lawsuit also cites Georgia's separatist republic of Abkhazia and the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, saying that Airbnb lists about 300 rentals in the former and 138 in the latter. "These partial examples testify to the fact that Airbnb has no policy regarding conflict zones around the world," it added. "It has a policy regarding (Israeli) settlements, and only to them." The US firm does not have an office in Israel, putting in doubt prospects of any ruling by the Jerusalem court being enforced. The lawyers have drafted a request for leave to pursue the case in the United States. San Francisco-based Airbnb said it would remove West Bank homes from its site, prompting Israel's tourism ministry to threaten legal action A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a packed mosque on an Afghan army base during Friday prayers, killing at least nine soldiers, officials said, in the latest bloody violence to rock the war-torn country. At least 22 were wounded in the blast in the eastern province of Khost, which follows a wave of deadly attacks across Afghanistan in recent weeks as militants step up assaults amid a flurry of diplomatic efforts to end the 17-year conflict. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but the Islamic State group has previously claimed most suicide explosions targeting mosques. A spokesman for the First Brigade of the 203 Army Corps in Ismail Khel Mandozai district, where the mosque was located, said nine soldiers had been killed and 22 wounded. But a government official told AFP on the condition of anonymity that the death toll was 27 with 44 injured. The attacker detonated his explosives after prayers started, but "we don't know how he got inside the mosque", provincial governor Hukum Khan Habibi said. Provincial public health director Gul Ahmad Shah confirmed 44 wounded had been taken to the Khost city public hospital. But at least two private medical facilities said they had received a total of 35 wounded, suggesting the casualty toll could be much higher. Four military helicopters also had been dispatched to bring some of the wounded to Kabul, defence ministry spokesman Ghafoor Ahmad Jawed told AFP. He could not provide a casualty figure. President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attack as "un-Islamic" and "inhumane", and ordered an investigation. A soldier who was injured in the blast said hundreds of worshippers were inside the mosque at the time of the attack. "When the explosion happened my leg and hand started bleeding," Mufti, who like many Afghans uses only one name, told AFP from his hospital bed in Khost city. "I don't know how I got to the hospital." - Week of violence - It has been a bloody week for Afghanistan after at least 55 people were killed and 94 wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the middle of a religious gathering in Kabul. No militant group has claimed the explosion on Tuesday evening at the Uranus Wedding Palace, where hundreds of religious scholars had been marking the Prophet Mohammad's birthday. The attack drew widespread condemnation in Afghanistan and abroad, with the United Nations describing it as an "atrocity". Friday's explosion in Khost comes as Afghan security forces suffer record casualties, which experts warn have reached unsustainable levels as the Taliban maintain the upper hand in the war. Since the start of 2015, when local forces took over from US-led NATO combat troops to secure the country, nearly 30,000 Afghan soldiers and police have been killed, President Ghani revealed this month -- a figure far higher than anything previously acknowledged. That is an average of around 20 soldiers killed per day. Casualty figures for Afghan forces have been kept under wraps since 2017 at the request of Kabul, but NATO's Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan recently told a US watchdog that this summer's toll was worse than ever. US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad expressed hopes in Kabul last Sunday that a peace deal to end the war could be struck before the Afghan presidential election, scheduled for April 20. His comments underscore an apparent increasing sense of urgency in the White House and among American diplomats for a peace deal to be done quickly. Afghan security forces arrive near the site after a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a packed mosque on an Afghan army base in Khost province Map of Afghanistan locating Khost province At least 22 were wounded in the blast in the eastern province of Khost, which follows a wave of deadly attacks across Afghanistan in recent weeks as militants step up assaults amid a flurry of diplomatic efforts to end the 17-year conflict It has been a deadly week in Afghanistan after an earlier attack on a religious celebration in Kabul killed 55 An unremorseful Islamic State supporter who helped a teenage terrorist kill NSW Police accountant Curtis Cheng has been jailed for at least 28-and-a-half years. Milad Atai was sentenced on Friday for assisting and encouraging 15-year-old Farhad Jabar to shoot Mr Cheng at the state police headquarters at Parramatta in 2015 and helping the boys sister reach Islamic State in Syria. In jailing the 22-year-old for a total of 38 years, NSW Supreme Court Justice Peter Johnson said Atai was a supporter of extreme jihad for many months before the terrorist attack and appeared to still hold radical views. As he was led away from court, Atai raised his index finger in the direction of the judge and shouted in a foreign language. His barrister earlier told the court the former plumber would not stand when he was sentenced, as is customary. That itself is an indication of his current thinking, which is regrettable, Justice Johnson said. Milad Atai has been jailed for at least 28 years for helping to organise the murder of Curtis Cheng (pictured). Justice Johnson said while Atai did not play the critical role of passing to Jabar the gun used to kill Mr Cheng, he was well aware of the plans and made no attempts to dissuade the boy. Further, as the self-described best friend of the attacks key plotter Raban Alou, Atai attended several meetings across Sydneys west and offered use of his own phone as Alou tried to get Jabar a gun. Justice Johnson said he didnt accept Atais claim that he thought the attack had been called off. By his own evidence, Atai said had he known the attack was going ahead on October 2, he would have made sure hed have attended to help Alou, the judge said. Atai also played a significant organisational role in helping to get Jabars sister to Syria, including giving her $1000 for flights and advice on the route and clothing to take to avoid detection. After losing countless comrades to better-equipped Taliban fighters and having his salary stolen by superiors, Afghan soldier Beg is fed up and plans to quit the army. He is not alone. Afghanistan's beleaguered security forces have long seen high rates of attrition. But now, as the Taliban maintain the upper hand in the 17-year conflict, casualties are reaching what experts warn are unsustainable levels. Since the start of 2015, when local forces took over from US-led NATO combat troops to secure the country, nearly 30,000 Afghan soldiers and police have been killed, President Ashraf Ghani revealed this month -- a figure far higher than anything previously acknowledged. That is an average of around 20 soldiers killed per day. "If the casualty rate continues like this, the day will come when we will have no one left to recruit," warned military analyst Atiqullah Amarkhail. The shocking mortality rate has sent already shaky morale to new lows, with many soldiers questioning how much further they should push their luck. In the third quarter of 2018 the number of soldiers and police deployed across the war-torn country fell to 312,328 -- nearly 9,000 fewer than just one year ago, and the lowest level for any comparable period since 2012, a US watchdog said in October. Reasons for attrition included fatalities, and soldiers going AWOL or declining to re-enlist, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said, citing the US defence department. Beg is one who has no intention of going back. "There have been days when I have lost five to 10 colleagues in fighting," said the 26-year-old, who is based in the northern province of Jowzjan. As with other military sources in this story, AFP is using only his surname to protect his identity. "I have survived two Taliban sieges of our unit and God helped me escape," he continued. "I will not re-enlist. I will go and do labour work if I survive." It's an increasingly big "if", as the number of security forces killed in action appears to be accelerating. Estimated figures for 2015 show 5,000 killed that year, with the remainder of the 28,529 casualties revealed by President Ghani dying since then. Casualty figures for Afghan forces have been kept under wraps since 2017 at the request of Kabul, but NATO's Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan recently told SIGAR that this summer's toll was worse than ever. That would come as no surprise to Ashiqullah, a police officer in the eastern province of Nangarhar, an IS stronghold that also has a heavy Taliban presence. "Every day we are seeing our comrades being killed," Ashiqullah, 24, said. "We don't have proper equipment and most of our friends have been killed or quit the service." - No choice but to fight - The growing number of dead and wounded has made it harder to recruit police in some areas, interior ministry recruitment chief Mohammad Daud admitted. A police recruitment centre in the northern province of Balkh has seen a near 80 percent drop in the number of recruits this year, an official told AFP on the condition of anonymity. But a centre in the Nangarhar provincial capital of Jalalabad said the number of people registering to fight remained high. Defence ministry spokesman Jawed Ahmad Ghafor said the number of people signing up to the army "has not decreased at all". Fazlullah, 24, said it had been his dream "to protect and defend my country", as he signed up in Nangarhar. "I am not joining the police force to have a peaceful life," he said. "I go to sacrifice myself for my country." Others say that in a country with rampant unemployment, they have no other options if they want to support their families. "I joined the security forces... to provide food and a salary for my family," said Sapai, 27, a soldier in Nangarhar. Salman, 27, a police officer in the northwestern province of Faryab, said he had not been paid in three months and air support during attacks by the Taliban "were not effective". "But we don't have any choice except to keep fighting," he said. - 'Never rejoin' - The bleak figures come as the Taliban intensify attacks on Afghan forces, scoring significant battlefield wins and maintaining control or influence over swathes of the countryside. Afghan and US forces say the militants are suffering heavy casualties too. But the losses do not appear to have eroded their desire to fight, even as international efforts to engage them in peace talks gather pace. "They attack us every night," said Enayatullah, a 29-year-old police officer in the southeastern province of Ghazni, who has been wounded twice by landmines. "My service in the police will finish in a few days and I will never rejoin." strs-mam-us/amj/st/amu/tom/jah Newly recruited Afghan policeman train outside Jalalabad in Nangarhar New police recruits listen to an instructor. The shocking mortality rate among security services has sent already shaky morale to new lows Experts warn casualties among security forces are reaching unsustainable levels Some soldiers say that in a country with rampant unemployment, they have no other options if they want to support their families The interior ministry recruitment chief said the growing number of dead and wounded has made it harder to recruit police in some areas The Taliban is intensifying attacks on Afghan forces, scoring significant battlefield wins In the third quarter of 2018 the number of soldiers and police deployed across the war-torn country fell to 312,328 Russia does not want any "artificial deadlines" for the Syrian peace process, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday, saying those who do want to sabotage Russian-backed peace efforts. "I don't believe in artificial deadlines," Lavrov told the MED Dialogues conference in Rome. "Those who insist on (UN envoy) Staffan (de Mistura) setting a deadline, they want only one thing, to ruin the Astana process and come back to some regime change logic." The next round of talks on Syria's conflict is to held in the Kazakh capital Astana on November 28-29 as part of a peace process set up in early 2017 by Russia and Iran, who support President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, and opposition backer Turkey. The Astana process was launched after Russia's military intervention in Syria tipped the balance in the regime's favour. It has gradually eclipsed an earlier UN-sponsored negotiations framework known as the Geneva process. More than 360,000 people have been killed in the war, which began in March 2011 as an uprising against Assad but has morphed into a complex conflict with myriad armed groups, many of whom are foreign-backed. Asked about Moscow's support for Assad's authoritarian regime which "massacres" its own people, Lavrov insisted Russia does not back any individual and that it is up to the Syrian people to change regime or not, via elections. Lavrov said it was necessary to protect human rights and that the right to life is also fundamental, pointing to civilian deaths from Western military interventions in Libya or Iraq. "If you don't give a damn about stability or life, then I am afraid you are one-sided," he said. "Ask the Libyans how they used to live" before the NATO-backed toppling of strongman Moamer Kadhafi in 2011, Lavrov said. More than 360,000 people have been killed in the Syrian civil war, which began in March 2011 as an uprising against Assad Returning home after seven years in a camp for displaced people, Mahmoud Abou al-Habel's joy was eclipsed by pain when he surveyed his vandalised property in the Libyan town of Tawergha. A burned out car, blackened date palms and damaged brickwork testify to the hostility that forced him and 26 family members to the relative safety of Tripoli's outskirts, 240 kilometres (150 miles) away. "I had planted 184 date palms -- but most of them were burned, like my 150 pomegranate trees and 28 olive trees," Habel said. "It is heartbreaking to see them, because I planted them myself," he told AFP, as he watered surviving palms via a pump with power from a generator. Habel and 40,000 fellow residents of Tawergha and its surroundings were banished because they were seen as supporting former dictator Moamer Kadhafi right up to his bloody 2011 demise. After being chased away by militia from the nearby city of Misrata, the displaced townsfolk were forbidden from returning home, until a reconciliation deal brokered in June by the internationally-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA). - Reviving a ghost town - Over the last four months or so, a few residents have trickled back. The town's alleyways remain littered with debris, while long-abandoned animals wander unimpeded. Homes are either burned-out shells, or vandalised, but life has slowly begun to restart. Five families whose homes are beyond repair have returned to eke out a living in the grounds of a former school. Among them is Salma Khalil, a widow who provides for her children by weaving palm leaves into baskets. "I have had to learn this trade" after losing so much, she said. Khalil cooks bread in an earthen oven that she built in the corner of the school. "I must support my girls, without their father, so I make the bread for us and I sell the rest," she explained. Schools and other public buildings have also been severely damaged or completely destroyed. Salma wants the children to return to school and impatiently awaits a new clinic, because the nearest field hospital is unreachable for patients without transport. - 'Significant financing' - Under the terms of the reconciliation agreement, the GNA has committed to compensating displaced families. Tawergha's municipal council has temporarily set up shop in one of the few schools spared by the conflict, where it addresses residents' grievances. Despite the challenges, mayor Abdelrahman Chakchak is upbeat. "We are finally home and life is gradually reviving -- the electricity is back, we have a school... and a field hospital," he said. Five offices have been established to evaluate and record damage, but residents can already start to rebuild their homes, Chakchak said. But others are less optimistic. "The government has not respected its promises to the residents of Tawergha," said Amal Barka, president of the Producer Family, an NGO. And the GNA itself acknowledges that much still needs to be done. The town needs "significant financing to reconstruct itself, but also support from the international community, which has promised to contribute," said Youssef Jalala, minister for the displaced and refugees. "Tawergha must be rebuilt... because the return of residents remains timid. But they are coming", he told AFP. Libyan farmer Mahmoud Abou al-Habel waters surviving palm trees after he returned to his damaged farm in Tawergha, seven years after fleeing Mahmoud Abou al-Habel (R) points out palm trees which were burned in reprisal for Tawergha residents remaining loyal to Moamer Kadhafi during the 2011 uprising Libyan residents of Tawergha in the grounds of a former school that bears the marks of the country's 2011 uprising and conflict Libyan Salma Khalil hand weaves a basket in Tawergha on November 9, 2018, after returning to her home town some seven years after militia expelled residents Tawergha residents in a makeshift store on November 9, 2018 following their return home after a reconciliation deal brokered by the Government of National Accord A building in Tawergha damaged by heavy fire, with a sign in Arabic calling for people to stay away from unexploded devices Ask a Reporter is an occasional series about civic engagement in and around the city. Q: There is a very busy intersection in my neighborhood that has no traffic lights, only a stop sign. How do I get NYC to install a light? A: The official response from the citys Department of Transportation, the agency in charge of making such a change, is to make a request through 311 or the Department of Transportations website or by writing to the department. But to better illustrate how one might go about effecting a change like this, let me offer a case study from the Borough Park neighborhood in Brooklyn. Ill give you a step-by-step guide from a college sophomore named Mahaa Tahir, who took on the issue of a dangerous intersection two years ago with her high school social studies class. Listen to WNYC's Yasmeen Khan report on making dangerous intersections safer: As Tahir noted: We made a change and it was actually easywell, not easy. But it was achievable. The Intersection of Dahill Road and Ditmas Avenue Students must cross over Dahill Road to walk from the Ditmas Avenue subway station to The Urban Assembly School for Criminal Justice. Its a busy area. At that time, cars turned from both directions on Ditmas Avenue into the crosswalk. Students often felt unsafe. They heard about collisions, including a teacher at their school who was hit while riding her bike. So, in teacher Sharon Daiellos Participation in Government class, students chose to tackle the issue of the dangerous intersection as part of their curriculum with Generation Citizen, an organization that works with schools to teach action-oriented civics. Heres the process they followed, as told by Tahir and Daiello. 1. Figure out what youre advocating for. Through research, the class learned that one option for improving pedestrian safety was establishing aget ready for some serious jargonLeading Pedestrian Interval Signal. An LPI gives pedestrians several seconds to cross before cars are given a green light. In other words, pedestrians get a head start of several seconds before cars are allowed to move. The LPI seemed the most attainable way since it didnt require, say, a change in law or a public hearing to make the intersection more safe. 2. Pinpoint who has the power to make the change. In this case, the class discovered that the citys Department of Transportation was the governing body and sent them their request. The DOT sent the class a relatively quick response informing them that the department was collecting data on collision history and undertaking a study on the feasibility of installing an LPI. 3. Back up your advocacy with research and facts. The mayors Vision Zero initiative had already brought attention to pedestrian safety and the city was collecting data on crashes. Students found out that their local police precinct, the 66th, had the highest number of collisions and pedestrian injuries in the city. The precinct also ranked the second-highest for cyclist injuries. These facts, plus the political pressure the mayor had already brought to the issue of pedestrian safety, helped bolster the students case. 4. Get your community on board. You can try to go it alone, but its better to have the buy-in of other people who would also benefit from the change. Is this a change that others in the community want to prioritize? Tahir and her classmates sent out a survey to the whole high school. 5. Get your issue on the radar of people in power. In addition to the Department of Transportation, the class reached out to elected officials. Their city council representative at the time, David Greenfield, came to visit them to discuss the issue. 6. Talk to the press. Students wrote up a press release and reached out to several media outlets. They even researched which ones (including specific reporters) had covered Vision Zero. Sadly, students did not get much of a response form local journalists (including, er, Gothamist). But they did hear back from News 12, which visited the school and talked to the class for a television segment that later aired. Daiello said the Leading Pedestrian Interval was added quickly thereafter. She credits the press report with nudging the city agency into action. (Daiello said she did not receive notice from the Department of Transportation that it actually made the change until well after the fact.) 7. Be patient and persistent. This, as we have discovered throughout the Ask a Reporter project, may be the golden rule of civic participation. Working through city agencies takes time. You may need to repeat steps as necessary. All in all, it took a few months to get the LPI installed once the students started advocating for it. Thats actually relatively quick! Not all changes will happen that fast. But at least take heart in knowing that if you are ever walking along Ditmas Avenue in Borough Park, waiting to cross Dahill Road, youll have seven seconds all to yourself in the crosswalk before the light turns green to traffic. And when taking on an issue of your own, its important to remember some civics best practices like the ones employed by students in Daiellos class. In fact, some of the most helpful guidance on civic action comes from organizations that focus on youth engagement. Makes sense. Civics lessons are generally written for middle or high school students. But, as we all very well know by now, adults need civics information too. Check out the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning, known as CIRCLE, at Tufts University for data and analysis on youth participation and for research on the challenges and opportunities for bringing young people into civic life. But really, much of their work can be applied more broadly to the general population. You can also check out the step-by-step civics guidance from Generation Citizen. They offer their curriculum online, getting students to first identify a community issue they want to tackle and then putting them on a path toward solving it. If you feel like this type of civics isnt taught much anymore youre right. We've seen the decline in civics education in school over the last several decades, said DeNora Getachew, the New York Executive Director of Generation Citizen. At one point in our nation's history, students took as many as three classes related to civics or government, and they were really getting that embedded in the academic experience. And now, you know, you barely get one semester in some states. A Turkish prosecutor on Friday charged 28 suspects including US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, blamed by Ankara for a 2016 failed coup, over the murder of the Russian ambassador later in the same year. The indictment by the Ankara public prosecutor came nearly two years after Andrei Karlov was shot dead in December 2016, state-run news agency Anadolu reported. Turkey accuses Gulen of ordering the July 15, 2016 attempted putsch, a claim he strongly denies. Karlov was shot dead by an off-duty Turkish policeman Mevlut Mert Altintas, 22, while inaugurating a photo exhibition in Ankara. Altintas was killed shortly after the murder by members of Turkey's special forces. The 28 suspects are charged with "violating the constitutional order", "being a member of a terror organisation", "premeditated murder with the intention of causing terror", and "seeking to create terror or panic", Anadolu reported. The prosecutor sought varying terms including aggravated life sentences, which have replaced the death penalty in Turkey and carry harsher conditions than normal life imprisonment convictions. Turkish authorities have repeatedly pointed the finger at Gulen and his "Hizmet" (Service) in Turkish over the killing, and said the murder was plotted by the group. In April this year, a Turkish court issued arrest warrants for eight people including Gulen over the murder. Among those sought by Ankara and also named in Friday's indictment was Serif Ali Tekalan, who headed a university linked to Gulen in Istanbul and now heads the Texas-based North American University (NAU). Ankara refers to the Gulen movement as the "Fethullah Terrorist Organisation" (FETO) and in the indictment, the prosecutor said the group was a spy and intelligence organisation that wanted to cause a "provocation" between Turkey and Russia with the murder. Moscow and Ankara had improved ties in mid-2016 after relations were damaged following the shooting down of a Russian plane by a Turkish military jet in November 2015 over the Turkey-Syria border. Although Turkey has issued multiple arrest warrants for Gulen, the United States' failure to extradite the Pennsylvania resident has been a source of tension between NATO allies Ankara and Washington. Karlov was killed while inaugurating a photo exhibition in Ankara Turkey on Friday said US President Donald Trump intended to turn a "blind eye" to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder after he said it would not affect Washington's ties with Riyadh. Trump's backing of Saudi Arabia, his key ally against Iran, comes despite global outrage over the grisly October 2 killing that has tarnished the image of both the kingdom and its de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. "In one sense, Trump is saying 'I will turn a blind eye' no matter what happens," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with CNN Turk broadcaster. "This is not the right approach. Money doesn't mean everything," Cavusoglu said, referring to Trump's continued support for Saudi Arabia, which has committed billions of dollars in US weapons contracts. Trump on Tuesday glossed over the Central Intelligence Agency's reported conclusion that the crown prince had authorised the killing. "Maybe he did and maybe he didn't!" Trump said, implying Prince Mohammed's culpability in Khashoggi's killing in the Saudi mission in Istanbul. Trump was widely pilloried for what critics called his mercantile priorities that made him appear more like a lobbyist for Riyadh. A former Saudi royal insider who became a critic of the crown prince, Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in what Riyadh -- after weeks of denial -- said was a "rogue" operation. The 59-year-old had gone there for documents he needed to marry his Turkish fiancee. Saudi Arabia has held 21 people in custody over the murder but shielded the powerful crown prince. Washington earlier this month placed sanctions on 17 Saudis, which also targeted the two top aides to the crown prince by freezing assets under US jurisdiction and forbidding US companies from doing business with them. The killing and Riyadh's explanations have angered its Western partners. Germany on Monday said Berlin would bar 18 Saudis from entering its territory and Europe's Schengen passport-free zone over their alleged links to the murder. In October, Germany called for EU countries to follow its lead and suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, prompting a dismissive response from France, the kingdom's second-biggest customer after India. But Denmark on Thursday followed suit, freezing all sales of weapons and military equipment to Riyadh. Cavusoglu said "artificial measures" would not help solve the crisis. "They (Europe) say they don't want to upset ties with Saudi Arabia. We do not want to upset our relations either," he said, but added Ankara would do anything to shed light on the murder. - 'No obstacle'- Turkey insists the murder was premeditated, sharing evidence with Riyadh as well as with the US and Western allies but stops short of pointing the finger of blame at the prince. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the order came from "the highest levels" but not from King Salman. Ankara has not ruled out the possibility of a meeting between Erdogan and Prince Mohammed on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Argentina next week. "We don't see any obstacle to a meeting with the crown prince," Cavusoglu said. "If there is a request, there could be a meeting but our president will decide." The two men spoke on the phone in late October but that would be the first face-to-face encounter since the murder. Prince Salman on Thursday embarked on a regional tour starting with Riyadh's close ally United Arab Emirates, his first official trip since the killing. The prince is also set to travel to the Tunisian capital on Tuesday. Turkish pro-government media, which has often provided gruesome details of what happened to Khashoggi in a series of leaks maintaining pressure against Riyadh, speculated further on what happened to Khashoggi's body. Sabah newspaper reported Khashoggi was first strangled using a bag over his head before Salah Muhammed Al-Tubaigy, a lieutenant-colonel in the Saudi forensic department, drained his blood in the bathtub before dismembering him. Trump has glossed over the Central Intelligence Agency's reported conclusion that the crown prince had authorised the killing Saudi Arabia has said it will not tolerate any criticism of the crown prince Turkey insists the murder was premeditated The world must help resolve the Israel-Palestinian issue by backing a two-state solution to avoid the creation of an apartheid state, Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki said on Friday. "The Palestinians are still waiting for the international community to try to resolve the Palestinian problem that has been created by the international community," with the foundation of Israel in 1948, Maliki told the MED Dialogues conference in Rome. "Unfortunately, none of you is taking serious, credible and responsible steps to solve the problem," Maliki told the assembled European and Middle Eastern leaders. Maliki slammed the US administration of President Donald Trump "which has really sided with Israel, taken the wrong side of history, of justice." The Palestinians have already vowed to block Trump's peace plan and severed ties with his administration after his December decision to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and declare the city Israel's capital. The Palestinians also see the city as the capital of their future state and international consensus has been that Jerusalem's status must be negotiated between the two sides. "If the Americans are not willing to do anything, Europe should do that," Maliki said "We should force the change to happen, that's why we are pushing for a European role," including backing an international peace conference. "It's not our responsibility to protect the two-state solution, it's your responsibility," he said, without which Israel would continue to develop separate systems for Israelis and Palestinians, as it already does with road networks and public transport. "I don't believe any of you will accept another apartheid regime to emerge in the 21st century," Maliki said. Israeli parliament speaker Yuli-Yoel Edelstein, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, was also attending the MED gathering and said the two sides should focus on cooperation. "If the idea of peace process is again some theory of two courageous leaders in a room shaking hands and signing an agreement, that doesn't work," said Edelstein. "The only way to get back to a situation where we can do something positive is cooperation in practical fields (like manufacturing or water management). We don't need a comprehensive agreement to cooperate," he said. Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki (pictured June 2018) said that Palestinians "are still waiting for the international community to try to resolve the Palestinian problem that has been created by the international community" The UN envoy to Yemen on Friday urged warring sides to "keep the peace" in Hodeida, saying the rebels agreed to talks on the UN taking a leading role in running the lifeline port. Griffiths, who started a Yemen peace mission in rebel-held Sanaa on Wednesday, said he has discussed with Huthi rebel officials "how the UN could contribute to keeping the peace" in the key port city of Hodeida. "I am here to tell you today that we have agreed that the UN should now pursue actively and urgently detailed negotiations for a leading UN role in the port and more broadly," he told reporters during his first visit to Hodeida. "We believe that such a role will preserve the essential humanitarian pipeline that starts here and serves the people of Yemen." Griffiths urged Yemen's warring parties to "keep the peace" in the rebel-held Red Sea port city, which serves as the entry point of nearly all imports and humanitarian aid into the impoverished country. "The attention of the world is on Hodeida. Leaders from every country have called for us all to keep the peace in Hodeida," he said. Griffiths was in the country ahead of planned peace talks in Sweden in December between the Iran-aligned Huthi rebels and pro-government forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition. According to an AFP correspondent, clashes could be heard in the distance as the envoy visited the lifeline port. Griffiths met rebel chief Abdulmalik al-Huthi and addressed "what can facilitate new discussions in December", rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdelsalam said on Thursday. Abdelsalam said that included "procedures needed to transport injured and sick for treatment abroad and bring them back", a key sticking point during a previous failed attempt at talks in September. Both warring sides have expressed support for the envoy's mission to hold discussions. - 'Committed' to peace talks - The UAE state minister for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, whose country is a key player in the Saudi-led coalition, reiterated Friday that the United Arab Emirates was "committed" to peace talks. "The best way forward towards a sustainable political process is to support the Sweden talks and the work of the UN Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffith without prejudging these negotiations," he said on Twitter. Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi -- whose UN-recognised government was pushed out of Sanaa by the rebels in 2014 -- has also said he supports the talks while vowing to "liberate" the city of Hodeida. Despite a lull in fighting, Hodeida residents reached by telephone said on Friday that Huthi rebels have been bringing in reinforcements. Dozens of families have fled Hodeida, as the rebels stationed snipers on top of peoples' homes, according to residents and pro-government military officials. The conflict in Yemen, which escalated when the Saudi-led alliance intervened in 2015, has killed thousands and left up to 22 million Yemenis in need of humanitarian assistance, according to UN agencies. - 'Bursts of fighting' - Under heavy international pressure, the loyalists and their Saudi-led military backers have largely suspended a five-month offensive on Hodeida. Humanitarian organisations are desperate to see the current peace push translate into a more permanent halt to the four-year war. The UN's World Food Programme said Friday it had distributed 30,000 food baskets -- each containing enough to feed a family of six for one month -- in Hodeida city. "In a city that has been enduring on and off bursts of fighting, these food baskets have an added benefit of helping families to avoid travelling more than necessary to find food, limiting their own security risks," WFP said in a statement. "Despite the difficult situation, WFP is currently assisting eight million Yemenis every month with food or food vouchers." UN agencies say 14 million Yemenis are at risk of starvation and the closure of Hodeida port would further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis. The heads of the UN's humanitarian and children's agencies said the "recent de-escalation in fighting in Hodeida is providing a desperately needed respite to hundreds of thousands of civilians". The current peace push by Griffiths is the biggest effort in two years. In September, a previous round of UN-led peace talks faltered when the Huthis refused to travel to Geneva, accusing the world body of failing to guarantee their delegation's return to Sanaa or secure the evacuation of wounded rebels to Oman. Previous talks broke down in 2016, when 108 days of negotiations in Kuwait failed to yield a deal and left rebel delegates stranded in Oman for three months. According to the World Health Organization, nearly 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen's conflict, though some rights groups estimate the toll could be five times higher. Yemeni government forces advance through a heavily damaged industrial distict of the battleground Red Sea port city of Hodeida on November 18, 2018 Map of Yemen locating Hodeida Martin Griffiths (C), the UN special envoy for Yemen, descends from his plane upon his arrival at Sanaa international airport on November 21, 2018. Five-year-old Abdelrahman Manhash is suffered from severe malnutrition. Up to 14 million Yemenis are at risk of famine, according to UN agencies The wife of a British researcher sentenced to life in prison in the United Arab Emirates on espionage charges told AFP she was cautiously optimistic he could be freed. Daniela Tejada said the family of her husband Matt Hedges had submitted a letter asking for clemency from UAE authorities on Wednesday, just hours after he received the jail term. The country's ambassador to Britain said Friday the authorities were reviewing the request, while insisting the government "does not dictate verdicts" to the courts. "I want to remain hopeful," Tejada said in an interview in London. "It's hard to do so after all of our hopes have been shattered repeatedly for six months. "I hope that the UAE... see that this is an innocent man, and that he deserves that clemency." Tejada, who Thursday met Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt after criticising British efforts at securing Hedges's release, vowed she would keep fighting no matter what. The 27-year-old added that the decision to seek clemency, with its implied admission of guilt, appeared the best option available. "I know in the bottom of my heart that Matt is innocent, but even if it takes me subjugating myself to the UAE I will, because I have the conviction that Matt deserves his freedom," Tejada said. "Until I have him safe, back home with me, I will not rest." - 'Absolutely terrified' - Hedges, 31, was detained in Dubai on May 5 while researching the UAE's foreign and internal security policies after the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011. After months of uncertainty the scholar was released on bail on October 29, prompting hopes of his imminent release. But his family and British officials were left stunned by Wednesday's ruling, in a country considered a strategic Middle East ally supplied with British arms. Amid increased diplomatic pressure, the UAE foreign ministry said Thursday it wanted an "amicable solution". Tejada hopes that could mean her husband is released in the coming weeks. "We've had so many deadlines but Christmas definitely is something we're all hoping for," she said. "It would really mean the world to have him back by then." Tejada spoke to her husband for around five minutes Thursday, and said he was not allowed to reveal where he was being held and "didn't sound well". "He's absolutely terrified," she added, noting Hedges has suffered from anxiety, depression and panic attacks. "Until he receives adequate medical treatment and personal support, he will not be OK and I'm very concerned about that because... he has experienced suicidal thoughts during his detention. "I just wish I could be there to truly just hold him and tell him 'it's going to be OK.'" - 'A dark cloud' - The UAE envoy in London, Sulaiman Hamid al-Mazroui, dismissed criticism of the case's handling, saying three judges had evaluated "compelling evidence" in three hearings over a month-long period. He insisted that genuine researchers were able to visit his country "freely". But Tejada said Hedges was denied due process from the outset. She said he had been held in solitary confinement and initially not given a lawyer or adequate consular access, and was subjected to "intense interrogations" lasting up to 15 hours. "The fact that he was held in such conditions, and that he was subject to such mistreatment, already breaches every due process standard," Tejada said. Colombia-born Tejada, who married Hedges in January last year after the couple began dating in 2011, said she has been heartened by the "overwhelming demonstration of support in the UK and abroad". An online petition she launched following the sentencing has already garnered more than 200,000 signatures. Meanwhile more than 100 academics last month signed an open letter expressing their concern over the case. Tejada revealed she has also been getting support from Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who remains held in jail in Iran on sedition charges. "(They) have been an inspiration for me -- just the strength of their relationship and resilience and how brave they've been," she said. "I'm a firm believer that every sky has a dark cloud that has to pass at some point." A handout photo taken in January 2017 and released by his family British student Matt Hedges (R) and his wife Daniela Tejada. The United Arab Emirates is reviewing a request for clemency for Hedges Daniela Tejada says "I will not rest" until her husband Matt Hedges is back home His wife says Matt Hedges was held in solitary confinement after being arrested, and subjected to interrogations lasting up to 15 hours Hedges was detained in May while researching the effect of the Arab Spring on the UAE's foreign and internal security policies Tejada has been getting support from Richard Ratcliffe, whose British-Iranian wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is being held in Iran on sedition charges AUBURN The steeple of the Wall Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn has been a visible landmark in the city for more than 130 years. But, after being vacated in the early 2000s, the historic building has deteriorated enough to put its future in doubt. The church was recently placed on the Eight That Can't Wait list by the Preservation Association of Central New York, a designation meant to raise public awareness about historic resources threatened by neglect, natural disasters and more. The Wall Street church, which is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was placed on the list as part of a group item identifying several urban neighborhood churches in the five county region that are in someway threatened, including churches in Cortland and Syracuse. Preservation Association Board Member Andrew Roblee, also the former Facilities Manager at the Seward House Museum, said the advocacy non-profit placed the church on the list because it represents a trend throughout the area. It's a theme in our area that I think as congregations shrink and demographics shrink and neighborhoods change some of these churches get abandoned," Roblee said, later adding "Once these churches are closed, it's really hard to find a new use that can sustain it." Many such churches acted as anchors that "held neighborhoods together," Roblee said, especially in neighborhoods of one prevailing ethnicity. The Gothic Revival-style Wall Street church, however, is notable for having an early biracial congregation in the 19th century that included Harriet Tubman's nephew, according to the Preservation Association's listing. Partly due to the shrinking and subsequent consolidation facing many churches and neighborhood schools across the country, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, which called the building home since 1993, was forced to vacate in the early 2000s after being unable to afford repairs. Representatives from the A.M.E. Zion Church could not be reached for comment. The building has deteriorated further since then. In 2014, the church was listed as a hazardous property by the city of Auburn, which also installed a perimeter fence after bricks and debris began to fall onto nearby sidewalks. At that time, the city's then-corporation counsel, John Rossi, told The Citizen a review by structural experts found stabilization repairs would likely cost approximately $30,000 to $36,000 to address the roof and water damage. City officials did not return requests for comment this week. Part of the reasoning behind the Eight That Can't Wait list, rather than just identifying threatened buildings, is to encourage the possibility of reuse or preservation. Thanks in part to its inclusion on the National Register, the building is eligible for tax credits, and may be eligible for an array of private and public grants. With a committed backer, the listing says the church could be rehabilitated into an ideal space for a community center, a performance space or a support facility for the nearby state prison. Staff writer Ryan Franklin can be reached at (315) 282-2252 or ryan.franklin@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @RyanNYFranklin Love 3 Funny 0 Wow 2 Sad 1 Angry 1 Culture India Pavilion recognised as One of the Most Iconic at Expo 2020 The Pavilion is built on a 1.2-acre plot, with a state-of-the-art building that will be a permanent structure and will become a part of District 2020. It will remain for posterity as part of Indias legacy in the UAE. Every Friday, The Citizen features a pet available for adoption from the Finger Lakes SPCA of Central New York. This week, we spotlight Lia and Mitzi. Q: Who is your best friend? A: Well, we are sisters and have been together from the very beginning. So we consider each other our BFF. Unless we are extraordinarily lucky and get adopted together, we know we have to move on to other BFFs. But in our little hearts we will always be BFFs. This makes us cry. Q: Do you have a job at the shelter? A: We do! We are in the condo immediately past the front door, and we are the first kittens you will see. You can't miss us because we are very cute. Anyway, our job is to meet and greet the nice people who come to our shelter. We purr up a storm that's our way of saying "hello" and "welcome." Stop by and check us out we would love to purr for you. Q: If you could meet someone famous, who would that be? A: We don't know his name, but this is what we do know. There was an Egyptian sultan who lived in 13th century Cairo. He was an enormous cat lover. When he died, he left his entire fortune to the needy cats of Cairo, and for many years afterward, homeless cats received a free meal daily. He must have been a very kind and special person and we would have loved to meet him. Q: If you could visit any place in the world, where would that be? A: Well, we wouldn't be going too far. We would like to visit the beautiful state of Maryland. According to local folklore in Maryland, calico cats bring good fortune and the very wise legislators there have named the calico cat as their state cat. This is very flattering, and we hope that one day our new family (hoping that we go home together!) will take us there for a visit. Q: Do you have an interesting fact to share? A: We do. Once again, according to folklore, calico cats are lucky! In England and the United States, male calico cats are considered especially lucky thanks to their rarity. In the U.S., male calicos are sometimes called "money cats" due to the mistaken belief that they can be sold for top dollar. Well, this is what our research turned up and it's the best we could do. Q: Do you have any advice for our good Citizen readers? A: We do! We want you all to know about an event that will happen this weekend. Our shelter is closed on Black Friday, so our shelter people are having a Black Saturday and Sunday cat adoption event. What is that, you might ask? Well, all cats over 6 months old will be available for adoption for $50. That includes all vaccinations (distemper, rabies, feline kennel cough), testing for FIV/FeLV, treatment for fleas and parasites, and spay or neuter surgery. This is a bargain that you simply can't pass up. So please stop by so we can purr for you and you can check out our other fabulous felines! Thank you and love, Lia, Mitzi 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 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 AUBURN The Salvation Army of Auburn welcomed nearly 200 people to its annual outreach dinner Thursday as part of its Thanksgiving Day works that included delivering approximately 1,000 meals throughout the community. Salvation Army Major Carmen Campbell led a number of dedicated volunteers in preparing and serving turkey, stuffing, potatoes and more to community members in need. In addition to the meal at the charity's headquarters in the city, volunteers also delivered approximately 1,000 meals to anyone who needed one at places like the Boyle Center, Schwartz Towers, the Frank Calimeri Veterans' Post, and more. Advisory Board Chair Tim Donovan said the holiday is meant to be about gratefulness, and joined the major during a pre-meal prayer to remind those gathered that everyone has something to be grateful for. For Donovan, he was especially grateful for all the volunteers that came to give back to the community. "Without the volunteers this wouldn't happen," Donovan said. "They show up with a big heart, an open heart." Richard Hoag volunteered in the kitchen Thursday, and said he was happy to give a little of his time back. Having needed the Salvation Army's services himself at times, Hoag said his favorite part of the work was seeing the smiling faces of everyone gathered together. The major, who has worked for the Salvation Army for almost 30 years across the country, said she was nearly overwhelmed by the support from the community. Whenever the group had a need, whether it was volunteer time or items for the food pantry or money to pay for the dinner, the community answered, she said. "That's a beautiful community that comes together," Campbell said. "That's a community of heart." While Thanksgiving and Christmas are the most visible days to volunteer in the minds of many, the need exists year-round, Donovan and Campbell both agreed. Anyone interested in volunteering, including for the recently started Red Kettle campaign, is encouraged to contact the Salvation Army at 315-253-0319. Staff writer Ryan Franklin can be reached at (315) 282-2252 or ryan.franklin@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @RyanNYFranklin Love 10 Funny 0 Wow 1 Sad 0 Angry 0 HIT: To continuing to expand educational opportunities. Students at Cayuga Community College recently celebrated Geographic Information Systems Day by spreading the word about that course of study at the college. Members of the GIS Club at CCC said that maps can be used in criminal justice, forestry, computer science and many other fields, making a solid understanding of mapping a data collection a good background for starting a career. MISS: To tragic reminders of the consequences of drunk driving. A Skaneateles man was sentenced in Cayuga Court this week 4 1/3 to 13 years in prison for causing a head-on crash in Fleming last March that killed a 25-year-old Auburn man and seriously injured his brother. The driver apologized for his actions, but the many victims in this case will never be whole again. The sentencing came a day after a Camillus man was sent to prison for driving drunk and high on drugs when he caused a crash that left three people dead. We hope people will think of these tragedies during the holiday season and all year long and make the smart choice to never get behind the wheel of a car when they are intoxicated. HIT: To helping make Cayuga County homes more safe. The county health department reports that the county is a high-risk area for radon, a radioactive gas that can seep into homes through cracks and holes in the foundation. Without proper mitigation, the gas can cause lung cancer. Because radon is a public health concern, free radon test kits have been made available at many local libraries and the health department's office at 8 Dill St. in Auburn. The county can also help homeowners figure out the next steps for homes that test positive. For more information, contact the health department at (315) 253-1560 or visit cayugacounty.us/health. The Citizen editorial board includes publisher Rob Forcey, executive editor Jeremy Boyer and managing editor Mike Dowd. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 On Tuesday evening, Crooked Media - the Leftist media empire launched by former Obama staffers Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor - announced that they had dumped Never Trump Republican Tim Miller. Miller had been hired by Crooked Media as a token Republican voice. But, as it turns out, any attempt by Miller or any other Republican to do work that reflects Republican priorities violates Crooked Media's sense of propriety . So Miller is gone.Crooked Media announced:Here's the honest truth: the only good Republican to the folks at Crooked Media, apparently, is a Republican willing to spend his full energies criticizing Trump. Strange New Respect turns out to amount to Respect For Republicans Who Attack Other Republicans. The minute those Republicans turn back into Republicans, the ball ends, and the carriage turns back into a pumpkin.This is the same tendency that leads those on the Left to rip Never Trumpers for failing to vote for Hillary Clinton, or to declare that Republicans must vote Democratic in Congressional elections to oppose Trump, or to state that Republicans who back Trump's tax plans or judicial picks are part of the problem. In the end, all the talk of a politics of dignity and respect goes out the window the moment that dignity and respect are required of those on the Left toward those on the Right.This wasn't a good faith firing. It was just the latest indicator that conservatives who bank on Leftist kindness thanks to conservative disquiet with Trump will find themselves under the bus the minute those Leftists no longer find them useful in their war against the Right. Many colleges deny the right to counsel by prohibiting student's lawyers, and sometimes the students themselves, from exercising the fundamental functions of an attorney, such as presenting evidence, cross-examining witnesses, or speaking to anyone but the client during a hearing. Such restrictions, moreover, exist at a time of unprecedented pressure-from the federal government, the media, and social activists-on colleges to adjudicate quasi-criminal behavior, especially sexual misconduct, outside the due process protections of the criminal justice system. Colleges and universities need rules defining unacceptable behavior and how students accused of infractions of those rules will be treated. Because determinations of guilt can have serious, long-lasting consequences, schools ought to ensure that their procedures are fair, approximating the due process of law accorded to defendants in our courts.Crucial to due process is the right of the accused to have the assistance of legal counsel. An attorney knows far better than the accused individual how to find and present evidence, how to detect holes in the case against the defendant, and when to object to unfair procedures.Unfortunately, there is nothing like the famous "Miranda rights" for accused students and this can lead to miscarriages of justice. Frequently, accused students have to defend themselves in proceedings that are geared toward finding guilt rather than eliciting the truth.In their recent Federalist Society Review essay, " The Student Right to Counsel ," Mike Adams and K.C. Johnson write,A case involving a student at the University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB) in October highlights the blatant injustice that can be done when a school denies the right to counsel. In 2015, a male student called "John Doe" in the proceedings was accused of sexual misconduct by a female student ("Jane Roe"). Both were intoxicated and happened to fall asleep on the same mattress. Both were clothed, she under the covers and he on top of them.Two days after this drunken encounter, Jane reported to campus police that she had been sexually assaulted but did not say who had done it or where. Campus police duly referred Jane's complaint to UCSB's Title IX office, which attempted to contact her. When she failed to respond, it closed the file.But a month later, Jane told the campus police that she wanted to proceed, so the Title IX office launched an investigation. That led the university to suspend John and forbid him from setting foot on campus.Even though two eyewitnesses said that it was not possible for John to have in any way molested Jane, the university's two-person Sexual/Interpersonal Violence Conduct Committee heard the case and ruled that John probably had violated the Code of Student Conduct. As punishment, he was suspended for eight quarters-from Fall 2015 through Summer 2017.John appealed to state court, arguing that his due process rights had been violated by the UCSB proceedings, but the court dismissed his case. So, he appealed to the California Court of Appeals.The three-judge panel on that court took a very dim view of the way the university had conducted its case against John and reversed the lower court's upholding of the university's punishment. It agreed with John's lawyers that the university had withheld critical evidence, excluded relevant evidence, and selectively applied the rules of evidence.Those are exactly the kinds of procedural errors an attorney could have objected to-but in the UC system, lawyers may only advise accused students, not actively participate in proceedings. On the other hand, university counsel was very active in pushing the case against John.In its decision , the court found several serious due process violations. Judge Gilbert's conclusion should have stung the university:Among the problems identified by the Court of Appeals was the fact that the school relied upon a report from its Sexual Assault Response Team, but never allowed John access to a copy of the report. In the Court's opinion,Judge Gilbert sarcastically concluded,And as for the very limited right to counsel under university rules, the Court wrote,In this case, the accused will get another hearing, but considerable damage has been done that can't be undone.During the Obama years, the Department of Education sent out "guidance letters" that told colleges and universities to minimize the ability of accused students to have effective legal representation. Although those directives were rescinded by secretary Betsy DeVos last year,wrote Adams and Johnson.A few states are at least taking steps to ensure that students will be given the right to an attorney when accused of wrongdoing. The first to do so, reported Adams and Johnson, was North Carolina with its " Students and Administration Equality Act " which was signed into law on August 23, 2013.The North Carolina statute arose out of a case at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington where a fraternity was suspended for violating campus anti-hazing rules. The accused students requested legal representation but were denied. Under the university's rules, accused students could have an advisor provided by the school, who would have limited ability to assist them, but if students wanted an outside lawyer, the lawyer could only participate if there were criminal charges pending. The deck was thus stacked against student defendants, but the new law changed that imbalance.Two other states that have addressed the student right to counsel issue are Arkansas and North Dakota, but as Adams and Johnson explain, the statues in those states do not provide as much protection as North Carolina's.Are there reasons not to give accused students the right to legal counsel? A national organization of college administrators, Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, published a letter in 2015 opposing the student right to counsel movement. It argues that if states enact such laws, they would "make it more difficult for campuses to end sexual violence and its devastating effects on victims' lives."That, however, is the same argument our Constitution rejects in its approach to criminal law. It upholds the rights of the accused, even though we certainly could secure more convictions if we didn't assure that they are accorded due process of law, including legal representation. Protecting against unjust convictions is paramount.Back in 1966 when the Supreme Court ruled in Miranda v. Arizona that defendants are entitled to legal counsel, prosecutors complained that they would have a harder time getting convictions, but over time they learned how to build their cases while respecting the rights of defendants.That's no less true in campus cases. Guilty students can still be punished if school officials have to present their cases fairly, giving the accused the right to have an attorney who can participate fully in all proceedings. A solid case won't collapse just because an attorney is there to scrutinize it. The lack of legal counsel simply means that innocent students are more apt to be punished. Such injustices don't do anything to "end sexual violence" on college campuses.More states should follow North Carolina's lead in bringing about equality between accuser and accused in campus disciplinary matters, and private schools should likewise recognize that students should be permitted legal counsel if they so choose.On November 15, the Education Department released proposed rules regarding Title IX procedures. Those rules are meant to reverse the unfairness of Title IX proceedings under Obama's Education Department and while the language does not refer to a "right to legal counsel," it does state that colleges must provide each party with "the same opportunities to have others present during any grievance proceeding" and to be accompanied "by the advisor of their choice." Moreover, if a student does not have an advisor at any hearing where the cross-examination of witnesses is involved, the school must provide one.That language indicates the Department's awareness of the importance of expert representation to ensure fairness for accused students. Perhaps the precise meaning of the "advisor of choice" provisions will become clearer during the 60-day "Notice and Comment" period for the proposed regulations.Perhaps we are finally moving toward fair treatment for students accused of Title IX violations just as we adopted fair treatment for people accused of crimes back in 1966. 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Eight hours of folks wondering why their package wasn't delivered earlier, miserable traffic conditions and heavy carrying heavy stuff up flights of stairs or wheeling boxes around tight corridors on a dolly and people that won't get the hell out of the way is enough to wear anyone down. And that's before bringing racists into the equation. From The Washington Post: Timothy Warren was driving his FedEx truck through a verdant Portland, Ore., neighborhood when the man he would soon kill screamed that Warren was going too fast. Warren stopped his truck. He was exhausted, he tried to explain to Joseph Magnuson that night in late September, and just wanted to get done with his work. Magnuson was unrelenting and hurled numerous aggressive insults and racist slurs toward him. That was something Warren, who is black, could not abide. He stepped out of the truck, and both men yelled at one another. Magnuson took a swing. Warren swung back, connecting a single blow above Magnuson's left eye that sent him tumbling to the ground. Magnuson, 55, briefly lost consciousness, then died later that evening. When police began the task of piecing together what the hell had happened, they had plenty to work with. Six people witnessed Magnuson's racist rant. Three of the six had seen the whole thing go down, from soup to nuts. Everyone the cops spoke with said that Warren had been driving safely. He hadn't been speeding. The witnesses all agreed that Magnuson had used racial slurs. Magnuson threw a drink at Warren. He threw a punch at Warren. Magnuson's was killed by his own hatred. When questioned about the incident, a man acquainted with Magnuson offered that nothing would have happened if Warren had kept on driving. If Magnuson hadn't looked to break the body and soul of a man innocent of all but doing his job, Warren wouldn't have needed to stop driving. He wouldn't have had to stand up to hatred. He wouldn't have to live with the death of a hateful man. The police and the district attorney's office concluded that Warren acted in self-defense and that no charges would be laid. Image via Wikipedia Commons On Thursday afternoon, President Cyril Ramaphosa named Siyabonga Cwele as the new Home Affairs Minister during the his cabinet reshuffle. PAY ATTENTION: Click "See first" under the "Following" tab to see Briefly news on your News Feed! South Africans anxiously awaited Ramaphosa's #CabinetReshuffle announcement on Thursday afternoon. After waiting almost an hour, Ramaphosa finally emerged on stage to announce who would succeed Malusi Gigaba after he resigned as the Minister of Home Affairs two-weeks-ago. The South African head of state went on to name Dr Siyabonga Cwele as the new Home Affairs Minister. So, Briefly.co.za decided to take a quick look at Cwele's life and career. PAY ATTENTION: Save mobile data with FreeBasics: Briefly is now available on the app READ ALSO: Woman claims pastor sprayed her with anointing oil before raping her Cwele was born on 3 September 1958, making him 60-years-old. The new Home Affairs Minister reportedly has an MBchB Medical Policy degree, which he obtained from the University of KwaZulu Natal. He also obtained his MPhil in Economic Policy from the University of Stellenbosch, The People's Assembly reported. Cwele joined the KwaZulu-Natal provincial Executive Committee in 1994, when they were still fighting for the liberation of the people. He went on to secure a position as a MP in 1994 and he has been a member of the National Assembly since 1999. Cwele has since held several ministerial positions in the ANC. Before his appointment as the Home Affairs Minister today, Cwele acted as the Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services. Prior to that, he was the Minister of State Security and he served as Minister of Intelligence from 2008 to 2009. Enjoyed reading our story? Download BRIEFLY's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major South African news! Source: Briefly.co.za - Ronadinho's house was raided by Brazilian police after he was declared bankrupt -The 38-year-old's charity institute was fined for environmental damage by the court - The former Barcelona star's passport has also been seized by security operatives PAY ATTENTION: Click "See first" under the "Following" tab to see Briefly news on your News Feed! Ronaldinho Gaucho's financial status has taken a new turn since he was officially declared bankrupt in a couple of weeks back. The Brazil legend and his brother have been at large from security operatives amid claims he owes money for fines levied against the player's charity organisation. The ex-Barcelona star's passport was seized last month after state prosecutors discovered he had just 5 left in his bank account. READ ALSO: Fikile Mbalula shares hilarious screenshots of his search history about Beyonce PAY ATTENTION: Save mobile data with FreeBasics: Briefly is now available on the app The 38-year-old's family home has been ransacked and officers from the Brazilian police have seized two of his BMW and a Mercedes Benz. The act was carried out by the Brazilian Prosecutor of Justice and Defence of the Environment in an attempt to recover funds to meet a fine accrued by his charitable institute he set up. The Ronaldinho Gaucho institute were fined the Brazilian Public Ministry for environmental damage when the organization was under construction in 2013. Enjoyed reading our story? Download BRIEFLY's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major South African news! Source: Briefly.co.za - Thuli Madonsela recently spoke at the annual Helen Suzman Memorial Lecture in Joburg - She said that South Africa had suffered in the hands of Jacob Zuma and needed to reboot its democracy - The professor blamed the troubled state of democracy on the rise of strongmen presidents PAY ATTENTION: Click See First under the Following tab to see Briefly.co.za News on your News Feed! According to former public protector Thuli Madonsela South Africa needs to reboot its democracy. She said that the country has suffered under the lost decade, under the rule of ex-president Jacob Zuma. Delivering the yearly Helen Suzman Memorial Lecture in Joburg she said that the presidents term had been characterized by heightened corruption. Professor Madonsela went on to say that democracy was troubled thanks to the rise of strongmen presidents and not just in South Africa but across the globe. PAY ATTENTION: Save mobile data with FreeBasics: Briefly is now available on the app "In South Africa, some say all we need is to intentionally clean up and rebuild democracy and its institutions to recover from the lost decade of direction-less policy choices compounded by heightened corruption, state capture, clientelism and assault on the rule of law," said Madonsela. "Others believe we need to rethink the question of effective accountability, particularly by the president and the rest of the executive. "This was particularly raised during the tenure of president Jacob Zuma who was eventually forced to leave office without completing his second term... Incidentally, it is his term that is referred to as the lost decade." READ ALSO: Ramaphosa cabinet reshuffle: Here's who took what role Madonsela went on to say that this was the reason that South African democracy needed a new dawn. Briefly.co.za recently reported that Professor Madonsela had received yet another prestigious award- The German Great Order of Merit. The award had been bestowed upon her by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeir for her contribution to South Africa's democracy. Her seminal report, State of Capture, recommended the State Capture Inquiry that's currently underway. The Commission has been making national headlines this week with political tensions running high. Not only is the Inquiry picking up corruption at every turn, the EFF has seized the opportunity to protest against Pravin Gordhan. The minister has been testifying at the commission Madonsela currently occupies a position as Chair of Social Justice at Stellenbosch University. Enjoyed reading our story? Download BRIEFLY's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major South African news! Source: Briefly.co.za News / National by Staff reporter THE Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company has recorded a 54 percent jump in after Government extended US$80 million to recapitalise the company.ZCDC was created by Government under Special Grant 6026 after the expiry of the special grant held by diamond miners in Chiadzwa with the aim of transparency and production in the sector.The company's CEO Dr Morris Mpofu last week told The Sunday Mail that, "ZCDC is emerging strong from the shadows of an industry which was marred by a myriad of challenges. Before consolidation, diamond contribution to national development was low."We have invested $25 million in a large single fixed crushing plant with capacity to crush over 450 tonnes of ore per hour. ZCDC produced about 2,4 million carats from January to October 2018 and this is an increase of 54 percent from 1,56 million carats produced in 2017. In 2016, 895 000 carats were produced."Dr Mpofu said ZCDC would likely achieve its highly competitive target of three million carats this year."Over $100 million has been invested in exploration, mining and processing right through to cleaning, valuation and sale of rough diamonds."The State miner's balance sheet has grown from $45 million in 2016 to over $250 million by September 2018."ZCDC is also focusing on contributing towards Vision 2030, which seeks to transform Zimbabwe into an upper middle-income economy by 2030 through employment creation, foreign currency generation and investment in infrastructure," he said.Dr Moyo said ZCDC was targeting to be among the top five rough diamond producers in the world."We are targeting at least 10 million carats per annum by 2023 and we are confident that the ongoing exploration work and enhanced operational capacity on current operations will facilitate the required growth," he said."The company has established a fully-fledged exploration department which is equipped with drill rigs, mobile processing plants and earth moving equipment. ZCDC will be conducting aero-magnetic surveys, ground penetrating radar, bulk sampling and other forms of exploration and resource evaluation to discover diamonds deposits in the country."Work is currently underway in three projects outside Marange where we are searching for viable Kimberlite deposits."Dr Mpofu said the plan was to invest $400 million over the next five years, with 25 percent of that going to exploration and evaluation."ZCDC has been able to upgrade some of its resource deposits categorisation from inferred to indicated category as it moves towards building a bankable resource base," he added. News / National by newzimbabwe THE Commission of Inquiry into the deadly violence which rocked Harare after elections in July is expecting opposition MDC leader Nelson Chamisa to appear before it this Wednesday, spokesperson John Masuku has said.MDC deputy national chairman Tendai Biti is also expected to appear before the panel.Headed by former South African President Kgalema Motlanthe, the commission is hearing evidence on the August 1 violence which left six people dead and several others injured.The Commission recently wrote to Chamisa, inviting him to give evidence after he had been cited in testimonies by security services chiefs who accused the opposition leader of inciting the violence.Chamisa initially said he would not submit before the panel unless President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his two deputies Constantino Chiwenga and Kembo Mohadi were also summoned.The opposition leader however appears to have had a change of heart.He is understood to have written to the Commission indicating that he would want to cross examine the military generals and police chiefs who accused the opposition of inciting the violence.Commission spokesman John Masuku said the panel was expecting Chamisa at its Wednesday session."The Commission expects all those it has invited to appear before it," said Masuku.Asked whether the Commission had received Chamisa's letter demanding more information regarding accusations made by security chiefs as well as a guarantee that he will be allowed to cross-examine them, Masuku suggested there was little prospect of this happening."I think the Commission has received the letter, but we still expect those invited to appear," He said."This is not a debate. Anyone invited should come and say their bit. It's not a situation at which to expect an exchange or words."After a relatively violence free election, Harare exploded into anarchy on August 1 when suspected opposition supporters took to the streets demanding that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission releases results of the presidential vote.At least six people were shot dead after the military was called in to help police who had been overwhelmed by the spontaneous demonstration.The protestors were repelled after trying to storm a local hotel where the poll management body was based.Last week Chamisa distanced himself from the protest, arguing it was "stupid" to demonstrate when the election results had yet to be announced. News / National by Staff reporter THE National Pharmaceutical Company (NatPharm) is considering requesting Government to avail the Health Levy Fund (HLF) in foreign currency to make the procurement of medical drugs hassle-free.Speaking at a health stakeholders meeting recently in Mutare, NatPharm managing director Mrs Florah Fifeku said they wanted to increase the supply of medicine to address the current medical shortages."While the company applauds Government for the support it has been extending, the HLF would go a long way if it is availed in foreign currency," she said."At the moment, the company has floated a tender worth US$93 million that is awaiting foreign currency availability."Mrs Fifeku said if the Government availed the HLF in foreign currency, it would boost production at local pharmaceutical companies. "Currently, we have been supporting the local industry through the fund we are receiving from Government," she said."However, most of the companies require foreign currency to source essential raw materials to operate at full capacity. NatPharm would be able to access raw materials from our biggest supplier, India, at cheaper prices so that local industry would be able to produce enough medication to meet national needs."Mrs Fifeku said despite the harsh economic environment, Government had assisted the company to remain afloat."We have improved our organisation's performance despite the unfavourable economic environment we are operating in," she said."Delivery coverage to institutions improved from 95 to 97 percent over the past year and the availability of medicine also increased due to the support from Government through the Health Levy Fund."Mrs Fifeku has blasted retail pharmacies who are selling drugs in foreign currency, saying it was a criminal offence."We have been receiving some foreign currency from the Government to buy vital drugs and equipment on behalf of all medical practitioners," she said."Among these drugs there is Novo Insulin, which we are supplying in local currency, yet most pharmacies are selling them in foreign currency." News / National by Staff reporter FELLOW parliamentarians yesterday condemned the rowdy behaviour and disrespect to President Mnangagwa exhibited by their MDC Alliance counterparts just before the presentation of the 2019 budget by Finance and Economic Development Minister Mthuli Ncube in Parliament.MDC Alliance legislators refused to acknowledge the Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces when he entered the National Assembly chamber before the budget presentation.Speaker of the National Assembly Advocate Jacob Mudenda then ordered them to leave the House, but the legislators refused despite efforts by Sergeant-at-Arms Mr Nicholas Marufu to escort them out.Chaos ensued following the refusal by the legislators to vacate the House as they resisted the Speaker's order and fought running battles with police details that had been summoned to restore order.Adv Mudenda yesterday said disciplinary action would be taken against the rowdy MDC Alliance legislators."The international community has fully recognised the legitimacy of President Mnangagwa and we do not expect anyone to de-legitimise the Head of State," he said."Appropriate action will be taken."Leader of Government business in the House and Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi deplored the behaviour by the opposition MPs."There are protocols that have to be followed when you are in Parliament and respect for the President is a must," he said."They decided to show disrespect and the Speaker had to invoke his powers and ejected them, which is correct."You cannot have a group of people who show disrespect to the President each time he comes to the House. I believe the Committee on Standing Rules and Orders will sit and consider appropriate action to be taken regarding the behaviour of those members."Kwekwe Central MP Mr Masango Matambanadzo (National Patriotic Front) condemned the MDC Alliance's behaviour, saying it was pre-planned."The behaviour by our colleagues shows that they had caucused and had planned to disrupt proceedings," he said."They were not supposed to do what they did because if the President was sworn in as happened with His Excellency President Mnangagwa, it's something that has been globally accepted. We should show him some respect."Norton legislator Mr Themba Mliswa (Independent) said the MDC Alliance MPs were hypocritical and should also reject benefits they get from the fiscus if they did not believe in President Mnangagwa's legitimacy."It is quite unfortunate because they really contradict themselves," he said."In one minute they do not accept President Mnangagwa as the President. They exercised their constitutional rights of approaching the Constitutional Court which ruled that President Mnangagwa was the legitimate winner of the election."The next minute, they want to enjoy Government resources. What they must understand is that the President is the Head of the three pillars of the State. I don't know how they do not see that they are under the President. It is unfortunate and a waste of tax payers' money. When we must be moving forward, we have such retrogressive behaviour being exhibited when the international community is watching."Who are they to say President Mnangagwa is illegitimate when the highest court in the land and the international community have accepted him? Why don't they also reject the benefits from Government?" News / National by Staff reporter CIVIC Society and Churches Joint Forum (CSCJF) activists drawn from Bulawayo and Gweru yesterday besieged Bulawayo City Council offices and the Holiday Inn Hotel - where Gweru city councillors are attending a training programme - to protest against the practice of conducting such programmes out of their jurisdictions at ratepayers' expense.Councillors from Bulawayo left the city on Monday to attend a three-day induction training programme in Victoria Falls, while those from Gweru arrived in Bulawayo on Sunday to camp at the Bulawayo Holiday Inn for similar training.Harare councillors were said to be attending a similar meeting in Mutare.CSCJF Midlands coordinator Innocent Netanyawo travelled all the way to Bulawayo to doorstep their councillors and demand that they leave the hotel and go back to Gweru.The protest was supported by the CSCJF national coordinator, Abigail Mupambi and Bulawayo coordinator Max Mkandla, who also joined the protest.The activists first went to Holiday Inn where, on arrival, were told by the hotel officials that the councillors from Gweru had since checked out."From our research, it is established that a lot of money has been spent here. While we are not against expenditure, it might also be reasonable for that money to be used in Gweru in the spirit of devolution," Netanyawo said."Generally, there is the gospel that we are under austerity measures, but when we begin to see our councillors spending a lot of money 200km away from Gweru, we think it is financial indiscipline which discourages residents from paying rates."The activists had used their own funds to travel for the demonstrations, he said."They could have utilised Midlands State University lecture rooms for the training. We are not against the programme, but what we are speaking against is them going for training in luxurious places outside Gweru. We have heard the MDC people complaining that the government was spending a lot of money by sending huge delegations outside the country, but we have started seeing the MDC displaying similar characteristics," he said.Mupambi said the councillors, who belong to the MDC, were now showing signs of the extravagance that they always accused the Zanu PF government of."We have our Bulawayo councillors right now at some special hotel in Victoria Falls, and people are raising these issues, as CSCJF we cannot allow that to happen. We have the Harare councillors failing to find suitable accommodation in the capital city and they are in Mutare right now," she said."We are not against the induction training, but we say spending money outside their jurisdiction is unfair to the ratepayers who are funding those expenses." News / National by Mandla Ndlovu A group of Zimbabwean intelligence and police officers gathered at CABS Building on April 7 1983 in Bulawayo to plot the operation to kill Nkomo and among them was one Brigadier Dominic Chinenge (currently know as Constantino Chiwenga) who was the Commander of 1 Brigade. I had my CIO man all over Matabeleland during that time and I would get information on the brutality that was happening. I remember at some point after getting information about the brutality of the Fifth Brigade from my men, I forwarded the reports to the CIO Headquarters. I was then told by the CIO Provincial commanding Officer to report what was going on to JOC Commander Brigadier Chinenge. When I told Chinenge that things had gone wrong in the curfew area , he was not perturbed with my news. He told me not to worry but to include those aspects in my normally weekly briefings which the next one will be attended by Mugabe, CIO Minister Mnnagagwa, CIO Political Affairs Bigwig Edison Shirhuru and Perence Shiri and the ZNA Chief of Staff General Gava. I met Mugabe many times and would give him security briefings at 1 Brigade in Bulawayo. Dominic Chinenge who was the 1 Brigade commander, Perence Shiri and Shirihuru would interrupt if I was saying things they did not want me to talk to Mugabe about. Things like how the 5th Brigade was going around murdering people. They would say, there is nothing like that chief this is all propaganda and stuff like that. But Mugabe Knew because I would write reports and would be told that this is not my war, I should not worry. I met Mugabe many times and would give him security briefings at 1 Brigade in Bulawayo. Dominic Chinenge who was the 1 Brigade commander, Perence Shiri and Shirihuru would interrupt if I was saying things they did not want me to talk to Mugabe about. Things like how the 5th Brigade was going around murdering people. They would say, there is nothing like that chief this is all propaganda and stuff like that. But Mugabe Knew because I would write reports and would be told that this is not my war, I should not worry. Mnangagwa, Shiri, Shirihuru and Chinenge supported Gukurahundi and parted 5th Brigade commanders on the back. Kevin Woods, a CIO operative who was also apartheid South Africa s double agent revealed how the current Vice President of the country Constantino Guvheya Nyikadzino Chiwenga was involved in the Matabeleland genocide.In an audio interview posted by seasoned journalist Zenzele Ndebele on Twitter, Woods narrates the whole Gukurahundi story including the involvement of Chiwenga, Mugabe, Mnangagwa and Perence Shiri.The interview was based on Woods' book: The Kevin Woods Story In The Shadow Of Mugabe's GallowsAsked about Mugabe's character, Woods said, "Mugabe was cruel, intelligent and paranoid about liberator of Africa, paranoid about clinging to power an being the founding Father of Zimbabwe. He could not stand anyone who opposes him and was very rich when he was young. He was very pathological about loyalty to himself."Woods said the number of people who died during the genocide maybe around 18 800. We knew more or else how many people were killed that is the closest figure that any one can reach. I had my man throughout the provinces attached to police stations and would go with the 5th Brigade when they were doing massacres. Of course, there were case where fifth Brigade will kill people at night and bury them in mass grave when we were not there, but most of the activities my men knew and were sending reports.Listen to the Interview Below: News / National by Mandla Ndlovu Top Human Rights lawyer Dr. Pedzisai Ruhanya has described President Emmerson Mnangagwa as a violent person who unleashes savage attacks at women.Ruhanya was commenting on the incident that happened on Thursday at parliament building where police forcibly ejected MDC MPs from parliament leaving two of them hospitalised."Mugabe was booed several times in Parliament but there were never such savage attacks especially against women. Ruhanya said. So, please let us not lie that this is a new dispensation. Let us not mislead ourselves that Mugabe was the violent one. The agents of violence and its system are in charge." Ruhanya said."Violence will not give Mnangagwa the political legitimacy he so desperately wants. In fact, it delegitimises his leadership big time. The barbaric attacks against MDC MPs show that it was not Mugabe alone who was violent but the system and its critical agents that took over militarily."On Thursday MDC MPs refused to stand up when President Mnangagwa walked into parliament in a protest that he is an illegitimate President.When they remained seated, police officers were then brought into the chamber to forcibly remove them one by one, resulting in the opposition MPs being roughed up in the full glare of visitors who had come to listen to the budget statement, who included United Nations Development Programme country representative Bishow Parajuli.Female MPs were handled very badly by the police officers as they forcibly pulled them out of the House, with some unfortunate situations to the extent that their skirts were pulled up, resulting in their undergarments being exposed.The violent scuffles continued for about 30 minutes, as the opposition MPs resisted the violent ejection, and Mnangagwa and his two deputies, Kembo Mohadi and Constantino Chiwenga, who were present in the House, just sat stone-faced and watched as the opposition legislators, females included, were roughed up. I joined Zanu PF in 1997 having completed my Ordinary level the previous year and I was unemployed at the time. I had grown up an admirer of Robert Mugabe,the late Mozambican President Samora Machel, General Solomon Mujuru, Che Guevara, and Nelson Mandela.I believed that if I wanted to be a politician the only party I could do that in was Zanu PF. I wanted in on the revolution and the transformation of the country from white rule to the black majority rules. I thought to myself that soon Mugabe would be gone and us the young take over.I became very active in Zanu PF in the early 2000s around the time when the land reform exercise was at its peak. I believed Mugabe was right. I believed it was our land and we had to take it back and I believed we deserved all of it .During the land reform I got to know of the existence of militia gangs in Zanu PF. I was based in Marondera at the time. There were two gangs of that nature in Marondera; one from the Dombotombo side known as The Leopards and another the Nyameni gang that had a code name Gudo.The Gudo and the Leopard gangs were made up of young people who were fearless by their nature and they joined war veterans during farm takeovers and were very instrumental in the dispatch of violence ,intimidation and displacing opposition political parties members.The two Marondera gangs were very powerful and at first. I often wondered where they got so much power and I later learnt they were financed and given adequate back up by various political Godfathers in Zanu PF who believed these young cadres would protect their powerful posts.It was not in me to be a member of such gangs. I always believed I had been educated and raised good enough to see what was wrong and right.By virtue of my involvement in Zanu PF youth league I ended up getting a lot of information relating to the gangs. These gangs were never arrested by police because police feared them. If at all police arrested one gang member for whatever reason the whole gang would besiege the police station in protest. If that failed an emissary would be sent by The Godfathers to handle the situation.Harare had Chipangano. It was empowered,well-resourced and seemed more organised (in gangster terms) it was the militant wing of ZPF Harare Province though they could be called in to assist in other Provinces. Jim Kunaka led it after its leader Ali Khan Manjengwa was shot dead.Chipangano was powerful that they had guns. They ran commuter bus ranks, working with urban transporters association. They ran markets and collected enough money to fund themselves, if they ran short they would get funds from the Godfathers and Godmothers.Kwekwe had what was known as Al Shabaab which was also a Militia affiliated to Zanu PF.It was behind a number of terror acts in the Midlands Province. it was and probably still is powerful because it has the money and influential politicians some of whom lead Zimbabwe today.In Chinhoyi there was yet another gang known as Top Six wholly funded by Zanu PF kingpins and made sure that everyone tows the Zanu PF line there.In Manicaland there was a gang which reported to and was resourced by the then all powerful Minister of State Security popularly known as Nine Fingers.The short if it is that Zanu PF was very much aware of the existence of terror militias and they sponsored them.Anyone who wants to separate the Militia gangs I mentioned from the current crop of Zanu PF leaders is mistaken. They enlisted the services of these gangs when need arose, they used them to perpetrate some of the worst crimes and protected them.In the next few days I will be discussing the activities of the Marondera gangs and who funded and protected them. Do not miss that one too. I will also explain how I met Jim Kunaka. News / National by Staff reporter MDC Alliance secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora says he is weighing his options ahead of the opposition party's elective congress next year and may challenge party leader Nelson Chamisa, if he mobilises adequate majority backing.This comes after MDC vice-president Morgen Komichi said at a rally last week in Mutoko that party members should not vote for anyone else for the presidency except for Chamisa at the forthcoming elective congress next year.However, Mwonzora this week told the Zimbabwe Independent that Komichi was expressing his "personal views" and not necessarily the position of the party, which allows members to freely contest for any position without any restrictions."The constitution allows us to have elections after every five years. At those elections people can contest for positions that they want. If what I read about what Komichi said is true that would be his preference. I am talking about the general rights of membership. In terms of the MDC constitution, any member is free to contest for any position," Mwonzora said."If Mr Komichi thinks Chamisa should be president, it is his democratic right to think so as a member. At no point did Komichi speak about party positions. Mr Komichi was talking for himself. In issues of this nature, people can only talk for themselves. Senior members of the party have a right to speak about their preferences, but they must accept that others have a right to say what they want to say as well. What is not right is to stop everyone else to think differently. We must accept that there are people who think differently within the party."Mwonzora said he would consider running for the presidency, if he is backed by the majority of its membership."I have not yet made up my mind regarding which position I am going to contest for at the congress. Having said that, I am aware as a lawyer myself of the rights that an MDC member has-and an MDC member has the right to vote, and to be voted for in any position. I do not wish to throw my rights away in that regard. Definitely, if I want to contest for something no one will stop me. I am aware of my rights as a member of the party which rights nobody can take away from me. It is the right to vote and to be voted for in an area that will be of my choosing," he said.Mwonzora, who has clashed with Chamisa over the recent expulsion of mayors, said up to five officials, including a diasporan, had expressed interest in the presidency.Mwonzora's name has featured prominently among party stalwarts believed to be seeking to challenge Chamisa for the MDC leadership. In 2014, Mwonzora beat Chamisa for the secretary-general's post. However, Chamisa was later elevated to the party's vice-presidency together with former Harare mayor Elias Mudzuri by late party leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Chamisa, however, took over the party leadership ahead of elected vice-president Thokozani Khupe without going to congress, following Tsvangirai's death in February. Khupe has now left to go it alone."I am aware of a number of people who are considering running for the presidency of the party. It is not a crime, it is allowed. I am aware of five people who are considering running for the presidency. Some people have said it, some people have acted it.They are allowed to contest for positions. They have full rights to contest," Mwonzora said.Earlier this month, he told the Independent a potential dark horse candidate could challenge Chamisa for the top post "from outside the ranks of the party"."I know of one candidate who is not within the ranks of the party (eager to contest for the presidency)," Mwonzora said.Chamisa and Mwonzora have in recent weeks clashed over the MDC leader's directive that party officials elected as mayors or deputy mayors should step down from the positions in favour of party-handpicked persons.Bulawayo deputy mayor Tinashe Kambarami, Victoria Falls mayor Somvelo Dlamini and Chegutu mayor Henry Muchatibaya were fired by the MDC, dividing the party in the process.In separate interviews, Chamisa and Mwonzora early this month expressed divergent views over the expulsions.Mwonzora said the expulsions were illegal while Chamisa stated that they would be upheld."The exact position is that the provincial executives do not have the right or the power to expel a member from the party. We view expulsion as a death sentence in the party and therefore it does not have to be easy. I also maintain what I said in my letter to the provinces that when people suspend officials, that suspension must be approved by the national organising committee. Before anybody is punished, under the MDC they must be subjected to due process. They must be heard, they must be given the right to give their explanation."I am happy to note that the Victoria Falls province has reversed the suspension and are now requesting for a hearing.However, Mwonzora said the expulsions were "null and void".Chamisa insisted the party would uphold the suspensions."Mayors are chosen by councillors. There is no provision for the public to do that process. The problem is that they got a directive from Zanu-PF and other external forces," Chamisa said. "So people cannot go around saying they were democratically elected. That is why the whip had to be cracked. It is a pretty straightforward issue."But the youth league wants nothing less than the head of their former comrades.Zanu-PF youth league national chairperson Pupurai Togarepi described Kunaka as a loose cannon and a danger to himself."He is someone who is on a suicide mission without necessarily appreciating it because he has people behind him who are using him like a puppet."However, he has done a service to the nation, albeit unbeknown to him by confessing publicly to the dastardly deeds."Now the police should investigate and arrest him if what he said was indeed true."We, however, would like to make it clear as the youth league that we dissociate ourselves from his lies and attempts to drag the name of the party into the murky waters. It is known that Kunaka was a member of the G40 cabal that had captured former president Robert Mugabe, no wonder why he rose to become a leader at the expense of fitting and bona fide Zanu-PF cadres deserving of such an appointment to lead Harare province."We are a law-abiding party and follow faithfully in the footsteps of our leader Mnangagwa who preaches peace, love and unity and there is no way Zanu-PF youths wouldhave abused people as claimed by Kunaka," Togarepi said.Another Zanu-PF youth leader Tendai Chirau, who is the influential wing's secretary for administration, said since Kunaka has confessed, what is left is for the police to do their job."Kunaka has conceded perpetrating violence against the opposition and killing people for political gain live on TV before the Commission of Inquiry."All this was done under oath. It is the duty of the law enforcement institutions to apprehend and charge him under the laws of the land. He should not be allowed to get away with this," Chirau said. News / National by Staff reporter President Emmerson Mnangagwa's ruling Zanu-PF reacted angrily to its former members' testimonies before the Commission of Inquiry into the August 1 killings, calling for the police to investigate the "violent thugs."Former ruling party officials who included former Harare province youth chairperson Jim Kunaka and legislator Shadreck Mashayamombe spilled ruling party beans of how it has institutionalised violence when they appeared before the former South Africa president Kgaleme Motlanthe's commission on Wednesday, leaving Zanu-PF at a loss for words.While the youth league of the ruling party called for the arrest of Kunaka, who confessed to have committed several barbaric acts under orders from Zanu-PF, the ruling party's spokesperson Simon Khaya Moyo was more guarded than the vociferous youths, saying the ruling party would only comment after the commission makes its report."The commission is still sitting and we don't comment when they are still sitting; we only comment when they finish their report," said Khaya Moyo. Opinion / Columnist 1893 Mthwakazi (Matebeleland) Human Rights Restoration Movement (1893 MHRRM) student wing would like to invite the Public to participate in the Matebeleland Gukurahundi Genocide Conference to be held on Saturday 1st December 2018. Below is the Venue and Time of The ConferenceVenue: Wits University Parish Hall/ Holly Trinity Catholic Church Hall16 Stiemens St, Braamfontein Johannesburg, South AfricaTime: 11:00am to 2:30pmThe theme of the conference is: Matebeleland "Gukurahundi" Genocide: A deliberate and calculated delay of South Africa's Freedom.Topics such as the current on-going genocide in Matebeleleland in all its various forms and how RSA can play a crucial role in assisting Matebeleland people to seek Truth, Justice, Reparations, Freedom and Healing for the Genocide will be handled.Expected Guest Speakers are: Moses Mzila Ndlovu Prof Peter (Wits University) Dr Zulu (University of Johanneburg) Dr N Ngwenya (UNISA) Umkhonto weSizwe Rep Zipra RepModerator will be Ayanda Manala.Guest speakers will be from both South Africa and Matabeleland and will include liberation icons and academics.A platform will also be open to all invited participants to comment on the subject and raise important questions as per presentations. We hope that all media houses we invited will also attend to cover the event.Jabulani Sikhosana1893 MHRRM Student wing Secretary Editors note: From November 19-30, Yahoo Finance Canada will be highlighting the best of Canadian innovation in a series called The Future Is Now. Well be bringing into the spotlight some of the companies and individuals that arent just pushing the limits, theyre creating new ones, for themselves and investors alike. Well be shining the spotlight on homegrown talent in the fields of satellite technology, autonomous vehicles, wearable tech and more. Check out our hub page for even more coverage and let us know in the comments: Which companies do you think represent the best of Canada looking toward the future? The MaRS Discovery District in downtown Toronto. Canadas tech sector is booming. Despite losing out on Amazon HQ2 (it was a long shot, anyways), the Canadian tech scene is growing. Just in September, Microsoft announced it planned on hiring 500 new employees as part of a $570 million expansion in Canada, one that includes a new headquarters in Toronto. A July CBRE report ranked Toronto as the fourth top-ranked tech talent market out of 50 cities in the U.S. and Canada, behind just Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. According to the CBRE report, Torontos is North Americas fastest growing tech market. There were 241,000 tech job in Toronto last year, an increase of more than 50 per cent over five years, with nearly 30,000 jobs added in 2017 alone. (Ottawa and Montreal were ranked No. 13 and No. 14, respectively.) But in the midst of this boom, startups are trying to make sure they do not lose out on potential opportunities, particularly when it comes to hiring top-tier tech talent. We have to remember that in this wave of growth that were going to see in terms of Toronto and Canadas tech profile that we dont forget to support the startups, because we dont want them to get lost in a lot of this growth, said Salim Teja, president of venture services at innovation hub MaRS, in an interview with Yahoo Finance Canada. Startups have certainly noticed an increasingly competitive market when it comes to hiring top-tier tech talent in Canada. A few years ago, the question was about who is winning the talent war? The talent itself, or the companies that are out there trying to hire? said Axle Davids, vice president of branding at Swift Medical, a Toronto-based healthcare startup. The talent has won. There is no doubt about that. Swift Medical is in the midst of hiring several people to join their current team of about 65 full-time employees. Its a process that hasnt always been easy. Laura Niblett, a human resources generalist with the healthcare startup, said there have been instances at other companies where candidates have been hired on the spot, moments after an interview ends. In tech, the hiring process can be insanely fast, she said. What weve really noticed is that a) its a highly competitive market and b) the candidate pool is not as big as people think it is and c) its really a candidates game out there, not the employers. Story continues As a result, startups are trying a range of approaches when it comes to hiring that highly-sought after talent. One approach taken by some startups has been to participate in one of the programs offered by MaRS, the innovation hub located in downtown Toronto. Swift Medical participated in the companys Talent Brand Accelerator program, which provided group programming about talent branding. MaRS also said it helped the startup re-invent its recruiting program and hire 40 new team members in six months. Lendified, a Toronto-based fintech startup that provides loans online to small businesses, also partnered with MaRS in the past year. Through its partnership, Lendified was connected with Venture for Canada, a non-profit organization that recruits recent graduates to work at Canadian startups. MaRS said Lendified hired at least three people through its partnership. Another way to bridge the talent gap, Teja said, is recruiting international talent. Vikram Rangnekar worked at LinkedIns Silicon Valley office for six years before he decided to the slight bewilderment of some of his colleagues to move to Toronto. Now, he and his wife run their own company, Mov North, a subscription-based service that helps tech employees come and work Canada. Theres a lot of local talent in Canada Rangnekar said, pointing to the University of Waterloo, University of Toronto and McGill University as hot spots for potential tech talent recruitment. The problem is there is a lack of experienced talent here so were trying to bring people in to fill that gap. I think companies are still warming up to hiring internationally. While the entrance of major U.S. tech firms into the Canadian market may make the job market more competitive, Teja argues it also brings great opportunity for local companies. We hear about this from the innovators who are running their startups and who often feel that when the big guys come in, they are going to scoop up all of the talent, salaries will rise and it will be harder to fuel growth, Teja said. What were seeing is that a lot of these big groups that are coming not only want to hire locally, but are prepared to move global talent to Toronto, which basically grows the talent pool even further. Still, many startups looking to hire talent are banking on the appeals of working for a small, innovative company more creative freedom, less bureaucracy, and the financial potential of getting through the doors of a burgeoning business in its earliest days. Indeed, Swift Medical says they dont see major U.S.-players such as Microsoft as a competitor in the talent market. Niblett says the companys hiring process has instead been focused on retaining talent that is not only highly skilled, but will stick around due to a passion for the work they are doing. Yes, our pool list gets shorter because more candidates are being hired and arent looking for other jobs, she said. But were a healthcare company and were passionate about improving the healthcare space We try not to worry too much about what other companies are doing. We need to hire people that want to work here. Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android. The boom in queer Quebec filmmaking has organizers of Montreal's Image+nation, an LGBTQ film festival, looking at expanding from a handful of venues to an online space, as well. Festival director Charlie Boudreau said there was a time when all submissions could find a place in the fest, but those days are long gone. "This speaks to a community that wants to see itself," Boudreau said. "We get 700 to 800 [short films] per year but are showing 25." This wasn't a problem when a motley crew of intellectuals and activists launched the festival. It was the only film festival of its kind in Canada at the time. Programming director Katharine Setzer said that the tone of the stories being told has evolved since the festival's inception. "There used to be an urgency to see oneself on the screen, because you couldn't, but that's changed," Setzer said. As mainstream television and movies increasingly include queer characters, it has given Image+nation the space to tell more rounded-out stories not just ones focused on coming out. Boudreau said the films are "moving past validation" into themes that speak to a larger human experience. Canadian issues One festival spotlight is Made Au Canada, which showcases the best in Canadian cinema. Among films under the spotlight is the second feature by filmmaker, multimedia artist and former CBC broadcaster Sook-Yin Lee. It's called Octavio Is Dead and is based on a paranormal experience Lee had in Catalonia. A dead poet was still inhabiting a Barcelona home she was staying in, and she could tell it did not appreciate the intrusion. "Growing up Chinese-Canadian, ghosts are not new," she said. It's common practice in Chinese culture to leave offerings and food for dead relatives, she said. But that kind of connection isn't what she felt with the presence in Barcelona she felt he was upset to have her there. Well-known Quebec actress Marie Brassard joined the cast after agreeing to live in Lee's Toronto home during the 17-day shoot. Story continues Lee said it was because the production was so cash-strapped, but Brassard considered it like an art residency. "She is so brilliant," Lee said. "I've always loved her." Joining Lee's quasi-docudrama is a documentary nearly 20 years in the making called Fruit Machine a look at the stories of survivors of the "gay purge" of Canada's military and public service. Filmmaker Sarah Fodey structured the movie as a series of portraits of former civil servants and military veterans who were victims of the purge that began in the 1950s and continued well into the 1990s. Couteau Dans le Coeur/Image+nation She first became interested in exploring the topic in 2002, but she held out on releasing the film until there was some kind of conclusion to it. "The film needed its resolution, its third act," she said. That came in 2017 when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered an apology in the House of Commons to those caught in the gay purge, and the federal government reached a settlement with survivors that includes $110 million in compensation. Queer Quebec On Monday, the Phi Centre, a multidisciplinary space located in Old Montreal, will play host to Queerment Quebec, a local shorts program that both Setzer and Boudreau say is the highlight of the festival. The night celebrates local filmmakers. "It's a moment for them to shine," Boudreau said. But with its success has come the problem of having to edit who gets in. "We had so many submissions, we had to make some really hard choices," Setzer said. The Phi Centre said the event is always a big success. "We host them every year. It's a great collaboration," said spokesperson Myriam Achard Setzer has been with the festival for 20 years but still felt anxious in the days leading up to the launch. "I had a little moment today where I felt in control, and things were going smoothly," she said Tuesday. "Once we take the stage and say, 'The festival is on,' there'll be a sigh of relief," she said. The festival runs until Dec. 2, with screenings in half a dozen venues around Montreal. OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's murder rate in 2017 jumped by 7 percent to a near 10-year high and gun-related deaths were the highest in 25 years, Statistics Canada said on Wednesday. Police reported 660 homicide victims in Canada in 2017, 48 more than in 2016. The murder rate was 1.8 victims per 100,000 people, the highest level since 2009. (Report: https://bit.ly/2Dzm1RA) By comparison, FBI data show the U.S. murder rate was 5.4 victims per 100,000 people in 2017. Canada has been hit by a rash of shooting deaths this year, particularly in major cities like Toronto. The national firearm-related homicide rate increased 18 percent from 2016 to 0.72 per 100,000 people, the highest since 1992. Amid the rise in violence, Canada's federal government - which says many guns are smuggled in from the United States - introduced gun laws earlier this year that would require retailer record-keeping and beef up background checks. In 2017, there were 266 firearm-related homicides reported in Canada, 43 more than in 2016. "Firearm-related homicides have been rising since 2014, and gang-related violence has been the primary driver," Statistics Canada said in the report. (Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) A Canadian Pacific Railway conductor was killed Monday in downtown Calgary after possibly being struck by moving equipment, according to an internal bulletin to employees. The CP bulletin, obtained by CBC News, says preliminary details indicate the conductor was walking to the front of his train, No. 201-18, when he was fatally injured by equipment on the adjacent track. The accident occurred on the CP tracks adjacent to 9th Avenue S.W. in downtown Calgary, the union says. Transport Canada is leading an investigation, which also involves federal labour officials, into what the union calls "a workplace accident." CP Rail confirmed the death in a press release Thursday afternoon. "The company's deepest sympathies go out to the employee's family and friends. CP is offering counselling to the family and our employees," it read in part. News of the man's death first came to light publicly when Teamsters Canada issued a press release. "As we prepare to enter the holiday season, I am sad to report that one of our Teamster families will be in mourning," Francois Laporte, president of Teamsters Canada, said in the news release. "On behalf of our over 125,000 members, I would like to express my sincerest condolences to the victim's loved ones and co-workers. "Once the facts have been determined, the union will sit down with CP and Transport Canada to address the issue more broadly," reads the news release. 'Remain vigilant,' CP warns In the short internal notice, CP offered condolences before warning employees of safety. "It is imperative that all employees working on or about tracks must always expect movement at any time from any direction," the internal note said. "This incident serves as a reminder to remain vigilant when it comes to your safety and the safety of your colleagues." CP Rail has not responded to interview requests from CBC News. The Calgary Police Service says it was called just before noon Monday but the matter is now in the hands of the Canadian Pacific Police Service, a private force that services rails and CP facilities. The final investigation report will be shared only with the affected workplace parties, including management and union representatives, according to Employment and Social Development Canada, which is responsible for the Canada Labour Code. COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark has suspended future approvals of weapons and military equipment exports to Saudi Arabia in response to the killing of a dissident Saudi journalist and the kingdom's role in the conflict in Yemen, the Danish Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. Germany has already suspended issuing future weapons export licenses and has moved to halt all arms sales, while France said on Monday said it will decide soon on sanctions over Khashoggi's killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last month. Saudi Arabia is one of the world's biggest weapons importers. It heads a military coalition fighting in a civil war in Yemen in which tens of thousands of people have died and caused a major humanitarian catastrophe. "With the continued deterioration of the already terrible situation in Yemen and the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, we are now in a new situation," said Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen in a statement. Denmark issued ten such approvals last year, according to the ministry. Already given approvals will not be suspended, a spokesman said. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday praised Saudi Arabia for helping to lower oil prices but pressure intensified for the United States to impose tougher sanctions on its Middle East ally over Khashoggi's murder. (Reporting by Stine Jacobsen; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Raissa Kasolowsky) By Cindy Silviana JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia is still trying to find the cockpit voice recorder from a Lion Air jet that crashed into the sea near Jakarta last month, even though its "ping" signal is no longer being detected, a transport safety panel said on Thursday. The nearly new Boeing Co. 737 MAX passenger plane crashed into the sea on Oct. 29, just minutes after taking off from Jakarta en route to an island off Sumatra, killing all 189 on board. Authorities have downloaded data from one of the black boxes found days after the crash, the flight data recorder, but are still looking for the cockpit voice recorder. "We're still putting in all our efforts to find the CVR (cockpit voice recorder)," Soerjanto Tjahjono, the chief of Indonesia's National Transport Safety Committee (KNKT), told parliament on Thursday. The search team was targeting an area with a radius of 300 metres (984 ft) using sonar and dredging mud from the sea floor, even though a signal initially heard from the recorder was now not being detected, he said. Efforts to find the second black box have been hampered by strong currents and complicated by the presence of energy pipelines in the area. The cockpit voice recorder could hold vital clues to help answer questions over the role that a new emergency system on the 737 MAX, designed to prevent it from stalling, may have played in the crash. After the crash, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration warned airlines that erroneous inputs from the anti-stall system's sensors could lead the jet to automatically pitch its nose down even when autopilot is turned off, making it difficult to control. Boeing has already provided two updates for operators around the world that re-emphasize existing procedures to deal with situations relating to the system. Lion Air, one of Boeing's largest customers globally, said on Thursday it would meet the U.S. plane maker next week to review the airline's orders for 261 Boeing 737 MAX series jets in the period until 2035. KNKT is due to announce next Wednesday the preliminary results of its investigation into the crash. (Writing by Ed Davies; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the current low price of Canadian oil is a "crisis" for Alberta, but brought nothing in the way of new help for the industry during a visit to Calgary on Thursday. He ventured into the heart of Canada's oil and gas industry just a day after his government's fiscal update, which had drawn fire from the provincial government and others who felt it didn't do enough to help the ailing energy sector. As thousands of pro-pipeline demonstrators shut down part of Calgary's downtown core outside one of Trudeau's speaking events, the prime minister reaffirmed his government's commitment to listen to energy industry leaders. He also touted tax changes introduced in the fiscal update. Trudeau told Albertans he understands they are hurting, including from the price gap between West Texas Intermediate and Western Canadian Select, which averaged around $45 US per barrel last month. "There is no question that folks in Alberta, folks here in Calgary, are living through extremely difficult times. This is very much a crisis," Trudeau said. Watch as Trudeau speaks with business leaders: "When you have a price differential that's up around $42, $50 even, that's a massive challenge to local industry, to the livelihood of a lot of Albertans. I hear that very, very clearly," he said while talking to reporters after making an affordable housing announcement Thursday morning. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, who was also in Calgary, said the oil price gap was costing the Canadian economy $80 million a day. The province's oil is selling for a lower price than West Texas Intermediate in the U.S. due, in part, to a lack of pipeline capacity to move a growing glut of Canadian crude to markets. Trudeau reiterated the federal government was doing what it could to get the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion built, which would triple its capacity to carry oil to tankers on the west coast. The federal government bought Trans Mountain and its expansion project for $4.5 billion last summer only to have the Federal Court of Appeal strike down its approval, citing inadequate Indigenous consultation and failure to consider impacts on marine ecosystems. Story continues Trudeau said Alberta's economic challenges stem from a "horrific confluence of events." "There are many things that are beyond our control here, whether it's the refineries down for maintenance or whether it's what's happening overseas around oil prices or whether it's the fact that we are constrained and have been for a long time to sell 99 per cent of our oil to the U.S," he said. "We are working very hard to change that." 'Competitive edge' Speaking at a Calgary Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Trudeau pointed to Wednesday's fiscal update, which included a measure that lets companies write off capital expenditures more quickly. That, combined with another tax benefit related to asset depreciation, will help businesses, he said. Colin Hall/CBC "Because of these changes, the marginal effective tax rate for new business investment in Canada will become, once again, the lowest rate in the G7, and that will make a big difference for Alberta companies looking for that competitive edge," he said. But many Albertans, including energy industry leaders and provincial Finance Minister Joe Ceci, blasted the Liberal government's fiscal update, saying it failed to include any direct line items that would bolster Alberta's ailing energy sector and help close the price gap between benchmark oil prices and Alberta's oil. Trudeau also dodged a question from a reporter when asked whether his government would help move more oil by rail. Alberta's NDP government has repeatedly urged the federal government to buy more rail cars to transport Alberta oil. Premier Notley repeated that call before a crowd at Calgary's Petroleum Club Thursday morning, saying the province itself would buy more rail cars if Ottawa wouldn't help move more oil by train. Protesters chant 'build that pipe' When Trudeau addressed the chamber luncheon, protesters rallied outside calling on Ottawa to do more for the energy sector. Calgary police estimated about 2,000 protesters gathered outside the hotel where he was speaking amid chants of "build that pipe!" Jeff McIntosh/Canadian Press The crowd included at least one petroleum industry leader, MEG Energy CEO Derek Evans, who said Alberta is already feeling impacts from a lack of new pipeline capacity. "We're already shutting down rigs. We're already pulling back on capital," he said. "Until we've got good visibility that we're gonna be able to move this production, either by rail or by future pipelines, capital activity the investment into the economy is going to drop dramatically in western Canada." Evans said the industry should be cutting production to stabilize costs, a popular, but divisive topic in Alberta's oilpatch. Cenovus and Canadian Natural Resources have called for the provincial government to impose temporary cuts until the oil glut clears, but others including Suncor Energy and Husky Energy have rejected the idea. Meeting energy leaders Later in the afternoon, Trudeau met with executives from a number of oil and gas companies behind closed doors. Following the meeting, Cenovus CEO Alex Pourbaix said he was satisfied the prime minister understands industry concerns over low prices for Alberta crude. But he said it's a matter that needs to be addressed provincially. Pourbaix said industry leaders also discussed the importance of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and concerns over Bill C-69, which includes Ottawa's plans to revamp the assessment process for major energy projects. "We've got to be very thoughtful about Bill C-69," he said. "It's got to be something that actually provides a certain outcome for industry in a reasonable timeline: transparent, science-based." The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, which didn't participate in the meeting with Trudeau, welcomed tax writeoffs in the fiscal update, calling them a "positive first step" but not a solution to problems faced by the energy industry. Trudeau was not scheduled to meet with Notley during this trip, but the Alberta premier is headed to Ottawa next week to discuss the price differential. Watch as PM says he sympathizes with Albertans: The sentiment was echoed by Steve Laut, executive vice chairman of Canadian Natural Resources, who was part of the group to meet the prime minister. "The accelerated capital cost allowance doesn't matter if the differentials are where they are because no one is going to spend any money," he said. Jason Kenney, the leader of Alberta's United Conservative Party, called Trudeau's visit to the province "an insult," and blamed the prime minister for policies that hurt the energy industry. "It is no longer adequate to come out here, pat us on the head and tell us he feels our pain," said Kenney. "It's time for action." Affordable housing The only new development Trudeau announced was related to affordable housing. During his first stop, he announced $31 million to build a 15-storey, affordable, rental housing tower in the city's southwest geared toward middle-class families. It will house 121 units when complete and Trudeau said it will use energy storage, wind, solar and battery power to make the project energy efficient and help residents save money on bills. By Joyce Lee and Jeongmin Kim SEOUL (Reuters) - A year of warming relations between North and South Korea has raised the prospects of closer ties, if not some form of unification for the still-warring neighbors far in the future. But it might not be obvious in a typical South Korean classroom. "I really don't know anything," 17-year-old student Roh Ha-na said. "It's like only twice a year that the school teaches about unification and national security, and about North Korean life... but I just let most of it go in one ear and out the other."This year's inter-Korean detente has highlighted what many observers see as a lack of knowledge among South Koreans about their northern neighbor, prompting government efforts to revamp the way South Koreans learn about North Korea and unification. Baek Jun-kee, the head of South Korea's Institute for Unification Education says current education methods have failed to show young South Koreans the importance of a nuanced understanding of North Korea, its people and leader Kim Jong Un. "If we don't approach the issue in a rational manner or show how the issue affects (students') personal lives in middle school or high school, it will be difficult to keep their attention," Baek told Reuters in an interview. The education shortcomings are contributing to a shortage of North Korea experts across public and private institutions at a time when increased cultural and governmental exchanges between the two Koreas make them all the more important, analysts say. "Every regional government has rolled out plans for inter-Korean exchange, but they don't have any experts, no knowledge, no networks," said Hong Min, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification. "When the heads of South Korean conglomerates went along to the September Pyongyang summit, most of them didn't have an in-house North Korea expert to brief the chief." After facing criticism at a parliamentary hearing earlier this month over funding cuts to education programs, Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon told lawmakers creating a new curriculum on unification was "crucial and urgent". "WASTE OF TIME" Cut off from the North for 70 years and still technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce not a peace treaty, many South Koreans have come to see unification as an increasingly distant and unrealistic goal. Surveys show younger generations of South Koreans are particularly ignorant or apathetic about their northern neighbors, seeing them as a troublesome distraction from the more pressing concerns of work or school. Interviews with 17 high school students revealed most had never heard of the 'parallel progress' policy key to North Korean affairs this decade. Most didn't know about the growth of private markets that has transformed many areas of North Korea's economy. "I've never heard about these North Korean issues in school, aside from learning about the Korean War in history class," said Moon So-in, a 17-year-old student at Sunil Girls' High School. "My friends don't seem very interested since we are so used to being a divided country." Education in South Korea is focused on competing for college entrance, culminating in high-pressure nationwide exams in the last year of high school, on which students stake their futures. North Korea is "not on the test," students and teachers said, and is therefore seen as a "waste of precious time," said high school teacher Choi Ki-bok. Generally, North Korea is addressed in a single chapter once a year in 4th and 6th grade, briefly in middle school and once in high school, two teachers said. In higher education, meanwhile, five out of six North Korean studies departments at South Korean universities have been shut down or changed into other programs in recent years, in part because of a lack of applicants. SPARKING DEBATE In North Korea, the South appears to be discussed more often in schools. As well as propaganda, North Korean defectors say they were taught minute details about the South. "I was taught South Korean geography down to what minerals and grains are produced in each region, history that happened on South Korean soil," said Park Na-ri, a North Korean defector educator who taught Korean and literature in Pyongyang and now teaches defector children in Seoul. "I was shocked to find South Koreans know much less about where anything in North Korea is," she said, noting that ignorance can lead to a lack of empathy for North Koreans. Five South Korean educators interviewed by Reuters said teachers don't feel equipped to navigate the thorny issue of North Korea, which in the words of one high school teacher is "an enemy, a long-lost brother, and a separate country sharing a border, depending on who you ask". The Institute for Unification Education, which oversees all lower education on North Korea, says it is setting up the first-ever year-long training programs for teachers to learn how to teach North Korea. That will include a shift away from rote teaching on unification as a given to a more flexible approach focused more on the goal of peace and designed to spark discussions among students. This year, the 91-page "Unification Education Guidelines" was cut down to 48 pages and renamed "Unification and Peace Education, Directions and Viewpoints", mirroring President Moon Jae-in's argument that reaching peace with North Korea is a more pressing and realistic goal than full unification. (Reporting by Joyce Lee and Jeongmin Kim.; Additional reporting by Hyonhee Shin.; Editing by Josh Smith and Lincoln Feast.) A newly elected Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP has denounced her party's decision to scrap the province's French language services commissioner position and a plan to build a French-language university. "The decisions made last week concerning the office of the commissioner and the Franco-Ontarian University disappoint me greatly," Amanda Simard said in a French-language Facebook post Wednesday evening. "I share this disappointment and frustration today, having initially worked as much internally as possible to reverse these decisions," said Simard, who represents Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, an eastern Ontario riding on the Ottawa River. In her post, Simard asked for support and said she has asked Premier Doug Ford to reconsider the cuts. "To my more than 600,000 fellow Franco-Ontarians, you may not know me yet, but know that I am with you," she wrote, adding that she lives in a French community and completed her schooling in French. "You have an ally in me, and I will never let you down." The premier's office issued a brief response to Simard's post "MPP Amanda Simard is an advocate for Franco-Ontarians and we appreciate having her voice in caucus," Ford's spokesperson Simon Jefferies said in an email. The Ford government says the cuts are necessary to help get rid of what it says is a $15-billion deficit, but they haven't gone over well with Ontario francophones. Carol Jolin, president of the Francophone Assembly of Ontario (AFO), praised Simard's message during a news conference on Thursday morning. "I was very happy to hear Ms. Simard come out and speak, she spoke from her heart," he said. Jolin and the AFO, an organization that represents more than 740,000 francophones in the province, announced a day of action Dec. 1 in protest of the government's cuts. Jolin said that rallies are planned in some 40 locations across Ontario. "We can't take anything for granted when it comes to protecting our rights," he said, adding that he feels Ford is walking back campaign promises to the francophone community. Story continues "It is an attack on francophones, when you look at all the decisions being made.... And we are afraid that more is coming." The province's Official Opposition has also come out swinging at the premier. "The Ford Conservatives are telling us clearly that we do not count, that our constitutional rights to be served and educated in French are unimportant," the NDP's francophone affairs critic, MPP Guy Bourgouin, said earlier this week. Quebec Premier Francois Legault met with Ford on Monday and told reporters he asked Ford to reconsider the decision, as have a number of other francophone politicians both inside and outside Quebec. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has also expressed opposition to the cuts. "The protection of official language minorities, the French language, French communities across our country is something that is extremely important to me and to my government," Trudeau said. Angelina Jolie is bringing her humanitarian efforts to the radio. The 43-year-old actress will be guest editing the BBCs flagship radio news and current affairs program Today on Dec. 28. Jolie, who has met several dignitaries throughout her time as a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador, will be interviewing high-profile guests to discuss solutions to violence against women in conflict zones and the global refugee crisis. Angelina is grateful for this opportunity to draw on the BBCs global expertise and network to explore practical solutions to a number of pressing issues of our time, her office said in a statement. She has already begun working with the Today Programme team, and is looking forward to engaging a broad and diverse range of voices in the programme. The Maleficent actress is following in the footsteps of various notable figures when it comes to being a guest editor on the radio show, including Prince Harry, Stephen Hawking, Sir Richard Branson and Melinda Gates. Even with the holidays coming up, Jolie is keeping busy. She is set to lead a Q&A session at the Fighting Stigma Through Film festival in London on Friday and Saturday. RELATED VIDEO: Angelina Jolie Travels to Jordan with Daughters Shiloh and Zahara to Meet with Syrian Refugees The festival focuses on helping fight discrimination and social stigma that survivors of war zone rape face. The mother of six has been hard at work serving as a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador, most recently taking a trip to Seoul, South Korea, with her sons, Pax, 14, and Maddox, 17. In October, Jolie traveled to Peru as a UNHCR Special Envoy for a three-day mission to assess the humanitarian needs of Venezuelan refugees, as well as the challenges facing Peru as a host country. She gave a press conference while in Peru where she said, None of the Venezuelans I met want charity. RELATED: Angelina Jolie Is Fighting Stigma of Sexual Violence with New Film Festival in London They want an opportunity to help themselves. The message that I heard consistently was, We didnt want to leave, we had to leave. After having spoken to so many people, it is clear to me that this is not a movement by choice, she explained. Jolie went on to praise the people of Peru and President Vizcarra for their generous and resilient response to this difficult situation, and for helping the Venezuelan refugees achieve legal status. She concluded, I have been deeply touched by the dignity and strength of the Venezuelan refugees I have met on this visit, and by the warmth and generosity of the Peruvian people. Thank you very much for welcoming me to your beautiful country. Tu causa es mi causa [Your cause is my cause]. WASHINGTON (AP) President Donald Trump on Thursday disputed that U.S. intelligence officials had concluded that the de facto leader of American ally Saudi Arabia ordered the killing of a U.S.-based journalist critical of the kingdom's royal family. Citing vehement denials by the crown prince and king that they were involved, Trump said "maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a vicious place. The world is a very, very vicious place." Critics in Congress and high-ranking officials in other countries are accusing Trump of ignoring human rights and giving Saudi Arabia a pass for economic reasons, including its influence on the world oil market. Trump said this week he would not impose harsher penalties on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the death and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month. "My policy is very simple: America first, keep America great again and that's what I'm doing," Trump told reporters after a Thanksgiving Day telephone call with members of the military. The crown prince and his father, King Salman, said they did not commit "this atrocity," Trump said. "It's a terrible thing. I dislike it more than you do. But the fact is ... they create tremendous wealth, really tremendous jobs in their purchases and very importantly, they keep the oil price down." American intelligence agencies have concluded that the crown prince ordered the killing in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, according to a U.S. official familiar with the assessment. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Others familiar with the case caution that while it's likely that the crown prince was involved in the death, questions remain about the extent of his culpability. Several lawmakers have indicated that the U.S. has no "smoking gun" that proves the crown prince was responsible. They have called on the CIA and other top intelligence agencies to share publicly what they told the president about the slaying. Story continues "I hate the crime," Trump said while on vacation in Florida. "I hate what's done. I hate the cover-up and I will tell you this the crown prince hates it more than I do." He said the CIA "points it both ways and as I said, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But I will say very strongly that it's a very important ally and if we go by a certain standard, we won't be able to have allies with almost any country." He also has pushed back on the idea that his refusal to punish the Saudis more will embolden other governments to go after journalists and commit other human rights abuses. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has noted that the U.S. has imposed sanctions on 17 Saudi officials suspected of involvement in the killing. "We've sanctioned 17 people some of them very senior in the Saudi government," Pompeo said Wednesday in a radio interview with KCMO in Kansas City, Missouri. "We are going to make sure that America always stands for human rights." Saudi prosecutors have said a 15-man team sent to Istanbul killed Khashoggi with tranquilizers and dismembered his body, which has not been found. Those findings came after Saudi authorities spent weeks denying Khashoggi had been killed in the consulate. Some lawmakers have triggered investigations into Khashoggi's death and specifically whether the crown prince was responsible. The investigations were requested under provisions of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. The act requires the president to report back to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee within 120 days in this case by Feb. 7 on whether the crown prince was responsible for an extrajudicial killing, torture or other gross violation of internationally recognized human rights against someone exercising freedom of expression and the administration's decision on whether sanctions are warranted. ___ Colvin reported from Palm Beach, Florida. As Christina Taft walks through the chalky rubble and blackened ash strewn on her property in Paradise, Calif., she winces as she tries to make sense of the destruction around her. "This is just completely levelled," she says. "There is nothing here." In the corner of what was once her living room, yellow caution tape ropes off a rectangle on the ground. It looks as if someone was digging in the area, and right away Taft knows why. "This is where they must have found her." Chris Corday/CBC This is the first time the 25-year-old has returned since she fled her home nearly two weeks ago when the Camp Fire destroyed nearly 13,000 structures, leaving entire neighbourhoods in the northern California community of about 27,000 unrecognizable. Eighty-six people are confirmed to have died in the fire, but hundreds of others are still unaccounted for. This spot in Paradise is the final place where Taft saw her mother, 66-year-old Victoria Taft. On the morning of Nov. 8, the neighbour with whom they shared their rental duplex knocked on their door, warning that a large fire burning to the east was spreading rapidly, and they should pack up and go. Taft began loading the trunk of her car with photos, clothes and food, but her mother didn't think there was any need to panic. Chris Corday/CBC Christina Taft says her mother was partially blind and had been through wildfire evacuations before. In 2008, when a fire threatened parts of Paradise, her home phone rang with an official emergency alert. First responders patrolled the streets honking horns and telling people to leave. None of that was happening this time. But as the sky grew darker and ash started to rain down, Taft grew frightened and pleaded with her mother to leave. When she refused, they began fighting, and in a panic, Christina Taft decided to go on her own. She joined thousands of others in chaotic exodus out of Paradise. Traffic inched along, and a drive to the city of Chico, which should have taken just 30 minutes, took more than three hours. Story continues Chris Corday/CBC On the way, she saw flames burning through part of Paradise and realized the grave danger her mother was in. She desperately called 911 and urged crews to rescue her mother, but they were overwhelmed by calls and a fire already consuming the community and trapping residents. Consumed by guilt Over the next three days Taft and a friend searched the evacuation centres for her mother and listed her as missing. Then on Nov. 11, she received a call from the coroner's office that her mother's remains had been found. "I left too early, too early," she says, admitting she is consumed by guilt. "I am partially responsible, because it is all on us." Submitted by Christina Taft A flawed list of casualties A list of casualties published by the Butte County Sheriff's Office shrinks and swells each day, depending on who is found and who is listed as missing. The department admits the list is flawed. Some names are on there twice and others are misspelled, but Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea says it will take time to go through the backlog of calls and emails of desperate family members and friends. "We are clearing hundreds of hundreds of names, so I still support the decision to get the data out even if it wasn't perfect," Honea says. All the properties in the community were quickly searched after the fire, and now crews are looking for anyone who might be buried, trapped under a wall or a ceiling that collapsed. Chris Corday/CBC Hundreds of volunteer search and rescue teams from across the United States go lot by lot, picking through the rubble. Wearing respirators and hazmat suits, they focus on areas where people likely were, like bedrooms and living rooms. Officials admit that some remains may never be found because the fire burned so hot that some bodies might have been incinerated. Unprecedented search This is the largest recovery mission ever in California, and forecast rain is complicating the effort. For crews that don't typically conduct such grim searches, the experience has been a disturbing eyeopener. "Normally we are looking for a missing person out in the woods," says Jason Denton, who is with a search and rescue team from Jackson County, Ore. "We brought 12 volunteers down here, and they will all be changed when they get back." Briar Stewart/CBC Watch how searchers carefully sift through destroyed homes: Saskatchewan's child poverty rates are higher than almost all other provinces, according to a report on the issue. The provincial rate of child poverty is about 26.7 per cent, it says in the Saskatchewan Report on Child and Family Poverty that is based on 2016 data. The national rate was reported at 19.6 per cent. Only Manitoba and Nunavut had worse numbers. The report says inequality has grown in Saskatchewan. "Again, Saskatchewan has the dubious distinction of being the bottom of the pack. We have the highest domestic violence rate of all the provinces, the highest sexual assault rate of all the provinces," said Hillary Aitken, who is the senior director of housing with YWCA Regina. Aitken said she continues to see the same vulnerable people fall through the cracks and a lack of empathy for those doing the falling. "People are getting further removed from this problem and like to think of it as something that somebody else should respond to," Aitken said. The YWCA works with children and moms at its emergency homeless shelter and domestic violence shelter. "We're seeing in both of those programs the need for services increased steadily. Not only are we serving more women, but we're turning away more women," she said. She said staff have to turn people away every day. Aitken said these shelters are for extreme situations and don't account for the people struggling day-to-day to make ends meet. The YWCA also has homes for children involved in the welfare system. Aitken said the majority are apprehended and put in the system because of issues stemming from poverty. She said children are often apprehended because moms have to make tough choices to survive. For example, they may not be able to miss work to take a child to a doctor's appointment. She also said poverty is "disproportionately impacting Indigenous kids in Saskatchewan." There is a downstream effect of poverty, she said, noting impoverished children can later become tied up in the justice or health systems if there is not early intervention. Story continues Aitken wants to see action. "The report talks about a missed opportunity to turn things around that investing in kids and family poverty is actually a good thing to do for our province and it hasn't been done for many years." Minister says poverty 'is a concern' Minister of Social Services Paul Merriman said "poverty in the province of Saskatchewan doesn't lie at the provincial government's feet. This is a community issue." Merriam said provincial data showed overall poverty rates dropped from 10.7 per cent in 2015 to 9.2 per cent in 2016. Merriam said the province will look to add more resources in identified "hot spots" such as Saskatoon, North Battleford and Prince Albert. "We have some initiatives in place but it's going to take time. We can't fix this problem within a couple of years because it took us years to get here." Author says stats unsurprising "Unfortunately, this is not surprising," said Miguel Sanchez, an associate professor in sociology at the University of Regina who co-authored Saskatchewan's report. He said the subjects of the report are children, "who through no fault of their own have to experience the effects of poverty." Sanchez said that when Saskatchewan experienced its resource boom, there was an " overwhelming message that economic growth will solve poverty." CBC He said the numbers indicate economic growth isn't the solution to Saskatchewan's child poverty problem. Sanchez wants people to consider economic redistribution and government transfers as a solution. The numbers show child poverty numbers would be much higher had it not been for government assistance, he said. 'Take a second to think,' man injured in previous Sask. crash warns after latest highway fatality RCMP say a volunteer firefighter is dead after he was struck by a passing semi-truck while responding to a two-vehicle crash near Rosetown. Darrell James Morrison, 46, was one of the first responders on scene after two semis collided about 20 kilometres north of Rosetown on Highway 4. While Morrison was providing assistance at the scene, he was struck by another semi which was passing on the highway, according to RCMP. "Life saving efforts were made by his colleagues at the scene and he was transport to hospital in Rosetown, but he died a short time later," RCMP said in a press release. It happened north of Rosetown and south of Marriott. Police say detours are in place to direct traffic away from the area. Heavy fog and ice have been reported in the area, so police are reminding travellers to be cautious while driving. Rosetown is about 117 kilometres southwest of Saskatoon. Caution urged An emotional Doug Lapchuk, president of the Saskatchewan Volunteer Firefighters Association, said people need to be extra careful when passing emergency crews. "When you're driving, watch what you're doing. There are people out there who deserve who deserve to be able to go home after the call. "If people could learn to be a little more patient and tolerant and realize that lives are at stake and these are people from your neighbourhood who have chosen to go out and help somebody else." Rosetown Mayor Adam Krieser said the town is in shock from the tragedy. "It's so much more tragic it seems when we are the people who run from the fire and these are the people that run to it. When we find ourselves in trouble somewhere these are usually the first people on the scene to come help." He said all their thoughts and prayers go out to Morrison's family and to the firefighting community. "They're doing it as volunteers to come and help others and for someone in that line of duty to pay the price is indescribable." Story continues Highway 41 closure The closure comes shortly after a stretch of highway was closed on Highway 41, about eight kilometres south of Wakaw, after a fatal crash between a car and semi. Police say both stretches of highway will be closed for several hours while the investigations continue, and they will release more information on both crashes as it becomes available. Vladimir Putin would have the power to launch nuclear strikes first according to plans to change the law in Russia (Picture: Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) Vladimir Putin could be given the power to launch nuclear strikes first under plans to change the law in Russia. Currently Russias military doctrine bans the initial use of nuclear weapons unless Russia is threatened by weapons of mass destruction. But senators in the Federation Council have reportedly recommended that Russia should be allowed to retaliate with nuclear weapons if the country is attacked by conventional, non-nuclear strategic weapons. The move comes after Donald Trump announced that the US plans to withdraw from the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. Both Russia and the United States have accused each other of violating the deal and Mr Putin and Mr Trump are expected to discuss the subject at a G20 meeting in Argentina. The move comes after Donald Trump announced that the US plans to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev (pictured above) in 1987 (Picture: PA) The Times reported that Franz Klintsevich, a member of the councils defence committee, said that eastern European countries that host Nato military bases, such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania should understand that we wont simply look at that through our fingers we will react.The proposals comes after the Pentagon updated its own nuclear policies in a similar way, broadening the circumstances under which it would carry out nuclear strikes. MORE: Nigel Farage appalled by UKIPs appointment of Tommy Robinson as adviser MORE: UKs most notorious woman paedophile able to change name before prison release But just last month, Mr Putin told an international policy forum that Russia would only use its nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack on the country. He told the Valdai Club: Our strategy of nuclear weapons use doesnt envision a preemptive strike. Our concept is a launch under attack. Only when we become convinced that there is an incoming attack on the territory of Russia, and that happens within seconds, only after that we would launch a retaliatory strike. Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh. blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. . ..BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,012..22 November '18..Benjamin Netanyahu takes pride in having played a key role in President Trumps decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Israels capital and in coaxing other states to follow his example. At the same time, there are worrying signs that in Jerusalem itself, the government is failing to ensure Israeli sovereignty over a united Jerusalem. It is allowing a substantial Palestinian Authority presence in the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, from which they intimidate and coerce Jerusalems Arab residents to further the PAs interests and undermine Israeli sovereignty.The recent abduction in Ramallah and prolonged incarceration of Issam Aqel, a Jerusalem resident, by the PAs General Intelligence Agency, for selling land in Jerusalem, and Israeli moves against the abduction reveal how extensive and intimidating is the PAs presence in Jerusalem.To begin with, the abduction only came to light because the Jerusalem resident was a citizen of the US, a fact that emboldened the family to publicize the event. One suspects that the abduction of other Arab residents who are not fortunate enough to be US citizens may never have come to light for fear of further retribution by the PA.Worse yet, Aqel had gone to the Israeli police before his visit to Ramallah to warn the authorities that he might be in danger. He evidently hoped the Israeli police would react promptly in case he was abducted. Aqel carried a blue identity card and is an official resident of Jerusalem. He had hoped that this would protect him.Yet when Aqel was first abducted, the Israeli police did nothing, claiming that he had left voluntarily for Ramallah. It was only after his arrest hit the news that the Israeli authorities responded by arresting Adnan Gheith, a long-time Fatah activist in Jerusalem, and Jihad al-Faqih, an officer in the PAs General Intelligence in charge of Jerusalem. Gheith has a long record of leading violent demonstrations against the police and Jewish inhabitants in Silwan and of organizing both violent and non-violent vigils surrounding the Temple Mount.Gheith was recently promoted by the PA to Governor of the Jerusalem District, no doubt as a reward for his more than decade-long efforts to mobilize Jerusalem residents against Israeli sovereignty. But by appointing a muscleman to the position, the PA was also signaling to Arab Jerusalemites that it means to ensure that they abide by its dictates. One of the most important of those dictates is the prohibition against selling land to Jews.Acts of intimidation quickly followed Gheiths promotion. The Muslim Joudeh family, one of two families entrusted with the keys to Church of the Holy Sepulchre, took the keys away from family member Adeeb Joudeh after he sold his house to Jewish settlers. They had likely been intimidated into doing so by the PA.More unexpected were the events surrounding a harrowing traffic accident between a truck and a van transporting East Jerusalem workers on the Jericho-Beit Shean road in the Jordan Valley. Five workers were killed in the crash. One of the bereaved families tried to bury their deceased in a burial site near the Temple Mount, but were prevented from doing so by rioters who accused the family of selling land to Jews.The aspect most injurious to Israeli sovereignty was the contrast between the treatment meted out to Gheith and al-Faqih and that suffered by the abducted Aqel. The former were quickly released by the Israeli authorities, but Aqel disappeared for a week inside a PA jail until his wife mustered the courage to inform the US consulate. She was then informed of his detention and allowed to visit him, but he was not released.As Israeli MK Bezalel Smoutrich pointed out, had Aqel been a Jewish resident of Jerusalem, the Israeli authorities would have put sufficient pressure on the PA to release him as swiftly as they released Gheith and al-Faqih. Why should the fate of an Arab Jerusalemite be any different from that of a Jewish Jerusalemite? Sovereignty over Jerusalem means according all its residents equal protection.The real issue, however, is not civil rights, as important as those rights may be.The real issue is the lesson learned by Arab Jerusalemites who want to live in peace with their Jewish neighbors. That lesson is clear: Israel will not protect you. The PA, unfettered by a High Court of Justice in the words of Yitzhak Rabin, is enabled to intimidate and imprison people without regard to human rights in clear infringement of Israeli sovereignty over its capital.More important than achieving international recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital is the necessity of ensuring sovereignty over the city itself.This means prohibiting residence in Jerusalem to PA officials, especially those involved in surveillance, intimidation, and the organization of protest and incitement against Israeli Jewish residents and visits to the Temple Mount. A liaison office should be established at the Israeli police department in Jerusalem that would allow Arab Jerusalemites to report harassment and that would penalize those harassing them, according to Israeli law. This policy should be publicized by leading Israel officials in broadcasts on Israeli Arab radio, on television, and in media sites such as al-Quds, the Jerusalem-based newspaper.It goes without saying that those involved in this intimidation, from PA officials who incite to such acts to local Fatah bully boys, should be prosecuted for such incitement and harassment.Often in the Middle East, where the law of the jungle largely prevails, Israel is compelled to act accordingly to protect itself. Ensuring sovereignty over Jerusalem is entirely different. Arab Jerusalemites must be fully protected from the PAs laws of the jungle, and Israel must act forcefully to uphold the law.This is a legal battle Israel cannot afford to lose. Laws and rights are only meaningful if they are backed by the power of the State and institutions that brought them into existence in the first place.BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family This article was originally syndicated by JNS.org ( www.jns.org ) on November 21, 2018. 2018 JNS.org Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh. blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. . ..Analysis from Israel..22 November '18..Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is being assailed by his own base for his restraint last week following Hamass massive bombardment of southern Israel. But in considering what Israels policy should be, its important to realize that for now, the option of permanently ending Hamas terror doesnt existnot because its beyond Israels capability, but because it lacks sufficient public support.If someone came up with an idea for destroying Hamas that could be executed quickly and with minimal casualties, Israelis obviously would support that, but nobody has. Thus the only plan with proven capability to suppress terror over the long term remains the one Israel executed in the West Bank in 2002 in response to the second intifada: The army goes in, and it never leaves. Thats how Israel defeated the second intifada, and how it has kept West Bank terror within tolerable limits ever since.But doing the same in Gaza would have very high costsin soldiers lives, in international opprobrium and possibly in saddling Israel with responsibility for Gazas civilian problems. It would be far more costly than it was to reoccupy the West Bank because Hamas has used its 11 years of total control over Gaza to become far better armed and far more deeply entrenched than West Bank terrorists were in 2002.No democracy could undertake such a costly plan without widespread public support, but especially not Israel, because any major military operation requires a massive call-up of reservists, and Israeli reservists tend to vote with their feet. Theyll show up in droves for an operation with broad support, but an operation widely considered unjustified will spark major protests.Thats exactly what happened when, during the second intifada, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon thought Israelis overwhelming support for reoccupying the West Bank created a golden opportunity to do the same in Gaza. He was forced to scrap that idea after a massive public outcry, especially from reservists.The crucial difference Sharon had overlooked was the level of pain that Israelis were experiencing. The West Bank was wreaking havoc nationwide at that time. A wave of suicide bombings and other attacks in cities throughout Israel killed 452 Israelis in 2002, including 130 in March 2002 alone. But Gaza was causing most Israelis very little pain. Though there were attacks on soldiers and settlers in Gaza itself, there were almost no attacks from Gaza inside Israel. Consequently, most Israelis werent willing to pay the price that a major operation in Gaza would have entailed.And for all the differences in todays situation, that same basic fact remains true: Gaza isnt causing most Israelis enough pain to make them willing to reoccupy the territory. It has made life hell for residents of communities near the border for the last seven months, and it did the same for the entire south during last weeks rocket barrage. But the vast majority of Israelis have been completely unaffected. For people in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem and most other major population centers, life continued as normal.Hamas understands this very well. Thats why it deliberately confined itself to bombarding the south, despite having missiles capable of reaching most of Israel. It wanted to cause as much pain as possible without crossing the threshold that would provoke Israel into warand it succeeded.But with the option of reoccupying Gaza unavailable, the two main options left are both short-term fixes.One is a smaller-scale military operation. The last such operation, in 2014, bought the south three-and-a-half years of almost total quiet, but at a price (for Israel) of 72 dead and massive international opprobrium. Another such operation might buy a similar period of calm, but at a similar or even higher cost. And it would have to be repeated again in another few years, by which time Hamas may be better armed and capable of exacting an even higher price.The second option, which Netanyahu evidently favors, is to negotiate a long-term ceasefire. This might buy a similar period of quiet, though since it hasnt been tried before, theres no guarantee. And it has several obvious advantages: no deaths, no international opprobrium, and most likely, greater support within Israel (though judging by past experience, not abroad) for a more forceful response once the ceasefire collapses, as it will at some point.But it also has some obvious downsides. First, its devastating to Israeli deterrence, since it shows that firing rockets is a good way to get Israel to capitulate to your demands. Second, it ensures that when the inevitable next round arrives, Hamas will be able to inflict much more damage than it could today.To grasp just how much, consider that since the 2014 war, Hamas has been under a tight Israeli and Egyptian blockade. Yet according to Israeli intelligence, it has nevertheless managed to completely rebuild and perhaps even exceed the arsenal it had then. Indeed, Hamas fired more than 450 rockets in just two days last week, almost three times the daily average of 85 rockets during the 2014 war. If it managed such a massive rearmament despite the blockade, one can only imagine how much more military materiel it would acquire under a long-term truce that would relax the blockade and pour cash into Gaza (ostensibly for civilian projects, but Hamas makes sure to take a cut of every dollar that enters).Either of these options would only postpone the inevitable: Barring a miracle, Hamas will eventually become overconfident and cause Israel enough anguish to provoke it to reoccupy Gaza. By postponing that day, and thereby allowing Hamas to further arm and entrench itself, Israel merely ensures that when it comes, it will come at a much higher pricein Israeli casualties, in Palestinian casualties and in international opprobrium.But knowing that doesnt change the political reality that such an operation isnt possible now. In todays reality, the most that Netanyahu can do is buy a few more years of quiet. And his only choice is whether to do so via a ceasefire or a limited military operation, each of which carries its own major price tag. On the surface, 31-year-old Daryll Ymbang is the picture of mental stability a married family man with a steady career in the IT industry. But underneath his successes, Ymbang is still battling the effects of mental health issues he says most in his Filipino family ignored for almost 15 years. Ymbang is among many in the Asian community who say there is still a problem with trivializing mental disabilities. There are times where I feel sick, but I look fine, Ymbang says, suspecting that he has been dealing with symptoms of social anxiety disorder since the age of 16. Despite his panic attacks which caused chest pains and shortness of breath Ymbang remembers his parents firing back with, you dont have a fever or, youre not vomiting whenever he said he felt sick. Theres no explanation around it. I dont have a fever; I dont feel dizzy. I just want to sit here and cry, he says. Asian-Canadian Shirley Lo, a registered psychologist at Calgarys Uniquely Embrace Counselling says many Asian parents dont understand mental health issues, partly because of existing traditions like saving face but also due to the absence of nuanced language about mental illness. [Asians] dont think about it, they dont talk about it, sometimes they dont even know what it is, she says, adding that Asias collectivist culture contributes to the silence surrounding mental health issues. People think about the group, the family, the community more than the individual. If one person is sick it seems to have some impact on the whole group. So one may sacrifice oneself to keep the harmony of the group. Ymbang recalls the day he finally asked his parents for professional help, only to have his confidence squashed by go-to mantras: Its all in your head, thats just how things are and you have to deal with it. I kind of got gypped in the support department, Ymbang says. But his Filipino background brought an additional obstacle to understanding mental health religion. In his upbringing, prayers were often considered the answer to many issues, something Ymbang does not think is an adequate solution for mental illness, but he says things are getting better. I think [my parents] are more conscious of the fact that [mental health] exists. From left to right: Shirley Lo, Julia Luong and Danni Lei. Registered psychologist, Shirley Lo, says she witnessed an increase in Asian patients who seek her help. Julia Luong, 20, says she has been mocked for dealing with mental health issues as a teenager. Registered provisional psychologist, Danni Lei, observed the lack of conversation about mental health issues growing up, adding that the model minority concept adds pressure to Asian-Canadians. Photos courtesy of Shirley Lo, Julia Luong and Danni Lei. Whats stopping Asian-Canadians from talking about mental illness Growing up in a Chinese-Vietnamese family, May Nguyen, 21, had her own experiences with school and the academic pressures to do well. She explains that a lot of immigrant parents get aggressive when their children perform poorly in school. So we just become afraid to express ourselves. September 2016 marked an important milestone for Nguyen. It was the year she was set to graduate from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. It was also the year she was formally diagnosed with depression. I didnt want to go to school and I didnt vocalize that because I knew the reaction I would get they just didnt understand where I was coming from, she says. Nguyen cant recall her parents ever discussing mental health, but says the hushed tones she remembers were more than enough to know that having mental disorders were unacceptable. When she did try to bring up mental illness, Nguyen says her parents would contrast her problems with their own accounts, expressing statements like, Why would you feel that way? or, Compared to what Ive had to do, its nothing. Although she withheld her deteriorating mental state for more than a decade, Nguyen managed to persevere and earn her degree in journalism. But she says she wont be talking to her parents about her struggles any time soon. I just try really hard not to talk too much about my personal feelings. This is a sentiment 20-year-old, Julia Luong knows all too well. Born to a Chinese-Vietnamese father and a Caucasian mother, Luong spent her early days with her dads side of the family, some of whom she claims openly mocked the idea of mental health issues. My dad said that I was putting myself into boxes and putting labels on myself. It was hard to get him to understand that [mental illness] is not a phase, she says. As a teenager, Luong says she wound up in the hospital several times for her mental health issues. Over the next few years, she would live with a multitude of mental health challenges including anxiety and depression. I hid my disorders for a really long time. I had a fear of being judged, she says, adding that a number of factors may influence mental health perceptions, including stoicism in Asian culture. Theres a stereotype that Asian people are supposed to be smart, put together, adept and multi-talented. Mental disabilit[ies] are heavily looked down upon because they affect work, pride and academics. Luong, now a sales associate at Chatr Mobile, says from her personal experience, failure to meet these high expectations combined with the misconceptions about mental illness often leads to being shunned in Asian communities. Both of my parents dont really know how to respond to my symptoms so they just try to keep their distance. A change in perspective Danni Lei, a registered provisional psychologist at the University of Calgary, says she sees a trend among the Asian-Canadians that walk into her office shame, fear and avoidance, all related to the historical model minority stereotype and deep cultural roots. Theres just a lot of existing shame and guilt around mental health, she says, noting the importance of family, reputation and status for Asian individuals. Lei says Asian communities view mental illness as more of a weakness of character and not being strong or hard-working enough and that the myth of exceptionalism creates high pressures for Asian-Canadians. Theres probably a lack of general mental health information among immigrant families a lack of understanding around terminology and experience. Theres this underlying belief that if you work hard enough youll be successful and thus, have no problems. Being of Chinese descent herself, Lei says she isnt surprised by the lack of support for mental health issues by some Asian families and friends. You just dont really talk about it. Mental health isnt a topic thats well discussed, especially within [Asian] families. I know that even within my own family, she says. While Lo agrees that the silence surrounding mental health issues in Asian communities reign strong, she says voices from the younger generations are breaking through and things are changing. Some of them are [in Canada] long enough to experience different ways of handling mental health issues so they become more open-minded to things they are not used to, Lo says, noting that her Asian clientele has increased more than 25 per cent in just the last four years. Nevertheless, she admits that the shift is going to take time. We are talking about tradition, a history of how people deal with mental health issues. So to break the barriers involve[s] a change in the mainstream culture. Moving the mental health conversation forward Not all parents in the Asian community are dismissive of mental health issues. Father-of-one, Guillermo Chan is one of many Asian parents spending more time on mental health education. Growing up in Costa Rica and Panama, I didnt even know depression was a thing, the 32-year-old Chinese-Panamanian says, relating his lack of awareness to his roots and culture. You are either good at what youre doing in school or youre going to get the consequences of not being good. 32-year-old, Guillermo Chan says that despite his cultures negligence surrounding mental illness, he will strive to educate himself and others on the issue. Photo by Sam Nar. While free of mental health issues of his own, Chan says hes willing to keep an open mind because he recently witnessed his wifes battle with anxiety and postpartum depression. The fact that I was able to see [my wife] crumbling down, thats what actually made me think that it was something else, he says, recalling how helpless he felt when he couldnt stop her shallow breaths during panic attacks. He says he calls his wifes breakdowns waves referencing the ups and downs of anxiety and depression. For the longest times I was trying to fix [her anxiety and depression] and I was crashing through those waves. Its not about crashing through the waves; its about learning how to surf because you have to be able to help and you have to go with them, otherwise theres no point, he says. Chan adds that he is determined to use his newfound knowledge about mental illness in positive ways to improve the communitys silence and encourage others to learn more. There are so many resources available in the city. Dont be afraid to speak up. Editor: Robyn Welsh | rwelsh@cjournal.ca First, everyone should view this Steve Bannon Oxford Union debate. Its an hour long and, while I rarely watch hour long YouTube videos, this one is worth while. He gives a talk about his European sessions with new right wing leaders like Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister. Viktor Mihaly Orban is a Hungarian politician serving as Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010. He also served as prime minister from 1998 to 2002. He is the present leader of the national conservative Fidesz party, a post he has held since 2003 and, previously, from 1993 to 2000. Orban is hated by the globalists in Germany because he has built walls to keep put migrants, which he says his county cannot support. Orbans social conservatism, national conservatism, soft Euroscepticism and advocacy of what he describes as an illiberal state have attracted significant international attention. Some observers have described his government as authoritarian or autocratic. In August 2018, Orban became the 2nd longest-serving prime minister after Kalman Tisza. If his current government lasts a full term, upon its completion, he will become the longest-serving Hungarian prime minister in history. He also talks about the Italian election and the leaders Salvini, the conservative and Di Maio, the leftist party Five Stars leader were able to come together as a coalition. Both are populists. That is his point. Bannon also has an excellent interview with Euroweek news. Again it is mostly about Trump. Also he tries to define Populism and talks about the Davos Elite. Several topics in the Oxford Union discussion came up, especially what will happen in 2020. He makes several good points about the midterm election. He says that Democrats out worked Republicans and that the turnout was what would be expected in a presidential election. He expresses interest in Beto ORourke, who lost the election in Texas to Ted Cruz. He points out that Lincoln lost the 1858 Senate election to Douglas, then was elected president two years later. He suggests that the 2020 election will be affected by a plan for Mike Bloomberg to spend $100 million on opposition to Trump. He thinks that it may well be a three way race. Bill Clinton was elected in a three way race in which he got 42% of the vote. In the Euronews interview, the moderator keeps debating him. Bannon corrects him constantly. In both discussions, the populism equals Fascism kept coming up. Finally, this Tucker Carlson speech explains a lot of where Trump came from. Indian PM Modi to launch APIX for two billion people without bank accounts at Singapore Fintech Festival Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address about 30,000 people at the ongoing Singapore Fintech Festival. He will also be launching a banking solution for two billion people without bank accounts worldwide on November 15. Modi will be on an official two-day visit to Singapore from tomorrow. He will attend a series of summits including East Asia Summit and ASEAN meetings. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photo courtesy: indianpm.gov.in Modi will launch APIX, a banking technology designed to reach two billion people worldwide who are still without bank accounts. APIX is a sophisticated technology developed by Boston-headquartered Virtusa, especially for smaller banks, Tier 3 and 4, to reach out to people in the remote regions. It has been designed by software experts based in Hyderabad, Colombo and London. PM Modi will be launching the technology at the invitation of Monetary Authority of Singapore, the International Finance Corp of the World Bank and the ASEAN Banking Association. APIX will support banks to reach out to those without bank accounts in 23 countries including the 10 ASEAN members as well as major markets such as India, and small nations including Fiji, said Menon. Earlier, Ravi Menon, Managing Director of Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) informed about the launch of APIX during his address at the Singapore Fintech festival yesterday. Ravi Menon, Managing Director of Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) speaking at the Singapore Fintech Festival. Photo courtesy: Singapore Fintech Festival Talking about APIX, Menon said, It is the worlds first cross-border, open architecture platform to enhance financial inclusion. APIX is both an online FinTech Marketplace and FinTech Sandbox. As a marketplace, it will enable FIs to discover and connect with FinTech firms through APIs on a globally curated platform. As a sandbox, it provides a platform for FIs and FinTech firms to collaborate and experiment on solutions in a contained environment." Meanwhile, India is the largest contingent at the Singapore Fintech festival with 400 exhibitors. There is also an India Pavillion of 18 companies. By 2025, there will be a minimum of 100 unicorns in the country, up from 26 currently - Mohandas Pai, Aarin Capital. More from the #India Deep Dive coming up at @AMTDGroup Stage, #SGFinTechFest pic.twitter.com/cLKM7fdEfo SG FinTech Festival (@sgfintechfest) November 13, 2018 Eight of these companies are from Mumbai. The Pavilion is organised by the state-owned Maharashtra Information Technology Corp Ltd (MahaIT). Mumbai Fintechs at the festival are seeking opportunities in the global markets, said MahaIT Fintech Officer Suniti Nanda. "Mumbai, as a financial hub, is also a gateway for international fintech companies to enter the Indian market," Nanda said, adding that the festival gives opportunities both to understand global market requirements and present the potential of large-scale Indian consumers. Union Cabinet has approved extension of term of Commission to examine issue of Sub-categorization of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in Central List for six months beyond 30th November, 2018 and till 31st May 2019. This is fourth extension granted to commission for submission of its politically crucial report on creating quotas within quotas. Background Union Government with approval of President had constituted five member Commission under article 340 of Constitution in October, 2017. It is headed by former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court Justice (Retd) G. Rohini. Its report is expected to recommend earmarking sub-quotas for the extremely backward classes within the OBCs. The commission has been formed under Article 340 of the Constitution which was also used to establish landmark Mandal Commission (set up in 1979) more than two decades ago which recommended 27% reservation for socially and educationally backward classes in higher education and government jobs. Over the years, benefits of this reservation were mostly cornered mostly by dominant OBC groups. Even National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) had in 2015 had noted that unequals cannot be treated equally and recommended that OBCs be categorised into extremely backward classes, more backward classes and backward classes. At present, 11 states have sub-categorised OBCs for their state services. Centre based on devise a similar methodology for the central OBC list It is tasked to examine extent of inequitable distribution of benefits of reservation among castes included in broad category of OBC in central government jobs and educational institutions especially with reference to OBCs included in Central list. It is also tasked to take up exercise of identifying respective castes, sub-castes, communities synonyms in Central List of OBCs and classify them into their respective sub-categories. It is mandated was to work out mechanism, norms, criteria and parameters, in scientific approach, for sub-categorization within such OBCs. India and Pakistan: Pollution knows no borders so India, Pakistan would do well to fight it together Every winter, a dark poisonous smog descends over vast swathes of land in South Asia, covering both India Gate in New Delhi and the Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore with its gray shroud. It crosses with ease what for it is a meaningless border and blankets significant portions of both countries. Despite this, the smog is treated as separate entities: in newspaper articles and policy circles, there is an Indian smog and a Pakistani smog. However, recent history shows environmental problems do not abide by political borders and transboundary collaboration and measures are needed to adequately solve them. At present, there is little cross-border collaborative work done by those in or outside government. In November last year, Shahbaz Sharif, who was at the time chief minister of Pakistani Punjab, wrote a letter to his Indian counterpart Captain Amarinder Singh that encouraged the creation of a regional cooperation arrangement to tackle the issue of smog as well as environmental pollution. There was no response from India and no follow-up from Pakistan, and the moment passed. With a different government in power, what happened a year ago in the previous government just doesnt matter, said Abid Omar, founder of the Pakistan Air Quality monitoring and awareness campaign. It can be very difficult for these two governments to collaborate, but we have similar issues and can learn a lot from each other. Despite there being next to nothing at the government level, collaboration at the civil society level is taking shape. We are already sharing with each other on best practices and technologies, said Ronak Sutaria, a Mumbai-based urban policy researcher and founder of a monitoring and data science start-up. I think this will mature over time civil society contributions are growing and will make a big impact. He added that Twitter has become a tool for like-minded researchers and activists to learn about each others work and share insights. Nepal-Pakistan collaboration on brick kilns An example of the potential benefits of such cross-border collaboration is Pakistans adoption earlier this year of brick kiln technology originally developed and used in Nepal. The new zigzag brick kilns are supposed to cost and pollute less compared to the existing brick kiln technology in South Asia. Speaking at a workshop in Pakistan in September, Nepalese experts said the zigzag technology reduces coal consumption by 40% and lowers smoke production by 80%. However, not everyone is convinced of the benefits or feasibility of the new brick kiln technology. It takes two million PKR [Pakistani rupees] and a couple of months to turn a kiln into a zigzag brick kiln, pointed out Rafay Alam, a Lahore-based environmental lawyer. The government needs to have a financially viable model for brick kiln owners, with loans and contractors. All the government has done so far is ban brick kiln operation in Punjab. Alam added, The zigzag kilns are a Nepalese solution. Its not clear that it would work in Pakistan, as they need an electrical connection which would be very expensive in the rural areas that these kilns are usually located. Whether the Pakistani government is willing to make a serious investment in this technology and whether it would yield the advertised benefits remains to be seen. However, this multilateral consultative process that included brick manufacturers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh meeting in Kathmandu is exactly the kind of cross-border sharing and collaboration needed to mitigate a cross-border challenge. In one way or another, these four countries contribute to each others pollution and environmental problems, and the effects may be hundreds of miles away from the source. Tackling crop burning together The sharing of new technologies, research, and policy interventions could also help alleviate pollution caused by crop stubble burning in between the two main growing seasons. Research shows farmers in Punjab in Pakistan would like to stop this practice, if they could. Unfortunately, the machinery to clear paddy straw is expensive. Baling, a common practice for straw management globally and in South Asia, is a space- and time-consuming process that can yield no results there is no use for it with livestock and no one to pick up enough bales to meaningfully reduce the problem. The agricultural landscape and associated effects are common across Indian and Pakistani Punjab. If either government, or a non-governmental organisation, is able to develop technology or design policy interventions that can reduce the need for stubble burning, then it is likely to be effective in both countries. In this regard, there is much to learn from how the United States and Canada dealt with acid rain just a few decades ago. This phenomenon was characterised by pollution from coal-fired power plants turning lakes and streams too acidic to support aquatic life. In the 1970s, Canadians and Americans became increasingly aware of its negative environmental impact decimation of fish and wildlife, poisoning of lakes and rivers, leaching of nutrients from soil. And in 1979, American and Canadian officials, scientists, industrialists, and environmentalists met in Toronto to discuss common challenges and sources. John Fraser, Canadas minister of environment at the time, acknowledged that emissions from both countries had negatively impacted the other and said the problem cant be solved without an agreement between the two countries. A few years later, no solution was on the horizon: among other reasons, Canadian officials believed the Ronald Reagan administration in Washington, which took office in 1981, dragged its feet and did not honour a memorandum signed under President Jimmy Carter. In 1986, a landmark report came out, just days before a meeting between Reagan and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, drawing a link between fossil fuels and environmental damage. Two years later, the United States and Canada joined 23 other nations in signing an international protocol on nitrogen oxide, a major cause of acid rain and other environmental problems. Today, as a result of those and related efforts, acid rain is no longer a problem. The United States-Canada relationship is, of course, nothing like the India-Pakistan relationship. However, the acid rain challenge of the late 20th century has many similarities with the current smog. Like the North American acid rain, the South Asian smog affects every region it touches and both countries are negatively impacting the other. It would be good to have a regional plan across borders because our problems are very similar, said Pallavi Pant, an environment researcher and curator of the @AirQualityIndia and @AirSouthAsia Twitter feeds. If something works in Pakistan, it would probably work in India too. Air doesnt have borders. There are more similarities than differences between India and Pakistan in the air pollution crisis. In both countries, hospitals fill up with patients, ranging from very young to very old, experiencing chest and throat pain. In both countries, commuters cover their mouths and keep their headlights on under a red midday sun to see a couple of metres further. Both countries struggle with the side-effects of agricultural and industrial output, urbanisation, and for a few months every year, both countries struggle to breathe. Binding regional protocols would go a long way, but collaboration in the form of sharing technology, research and best practices has significant potential. It is time for the smog crisis to be seen as a regional rather than a local challenge. Myanmar: Theres something rotten in Kwet Thit Street fish vending by MRATT KYAW THU November 23,2018 | Source: Frontier Myanmar A CAT-AND-MOUSE game between street vendors and municipal officers has been playing out on the streets of downtown Yangon for decades. Concerted attempts by the Yangon City Development Committee, the citys municipal authority, to move street vendors off main thoroughfares have had patchy success. In November 2016, Yangon Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein established a night market on Strand Road for relocated street vendors. Located between heavy lanes of traffic, the market has been a flop, and wares continue to be sold on pavements outside permitted hours. The sight of YCDC officers chasing vendors off footpaths is common in the downtown area. Small groups of uniformed YCDC officers are also regularly seen stationed along busy roads to deter street vendors from setting up their stalls before 3pm, when they are permitted to sell until midnight. However, there is one street where vendors do not appear to fear the attention of YCDC personnel: Kwet Thit, near Pazundaung market. One side of the street is in Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township and the other is in Pazundaung Township. The street is 7.6 metres (25 feet) wide and 50 metres (164 feet) long but it is so crammed with vendors and semi-permanent stalls that its width stops at about three metres. Most of the stalls are occupied by people from Thaketa [Township], said Ko Myat Thwin, 30, who owns two ground floor shops in the street. Vendors have been selling flowers, fish, fruit and hardware in the lane for more than 10 years. Before 2015, a gang controlled by a family in Thaketa collected a municipal levy from the vendors. A vendor who asked not to be identified told Frontier that the YCDC had given the gang the authority to collect the levy. We didnt need to pay the YCDC because they [the gang] dealt with the YCDC. They did whatever they wanted and people dared not complain, the vendor said. A woman vendor said she had been paying municipal levies to the gang for eight years. Not to YCDC, only to them, she said. The gangs activities were curbed in 2015 after a woman, whom gang members had beaten for not handing over money, complained to the Pazundaung township administrator. But the gang still wields power in the street, including by renting out many of the stall spaces. I rented a space from them, so I cannot talk about them, said a woman vendor who asked not to be named. Vendors say the gang rents out spaces measuring six feet by six feet (about 2m by 2m) for K2,000 a day and those 10 feet by six feet (about 3m by 2m) for K5,000 a day. A man described as a gang member who sells fruit in the street declined to speak to Frontier. Residents said the activities of the gang and the sporadic oversight of the YCDC had not led to any semblance of order. Myat Thwin said that in June 2016 vendors had blocked access to his two shops and he complained to Pazundaung YCDC, but no action was taken. Undaunted, Myat Thwin kept pressuring the YCDC and about six months later it arranged a compromise under which the vendors agreed to move back three feet from his shop front even though, as the shop owner, Myat Thwin was formally entitled to ten feet of clear pavement. The compromise failed to hold, however. At first, they stepped back but a few days later their stalls were back to where they had been, he said. Myat Thwin said that, now, if a complaint is made against the street vendors, Pazundaung YCDC staff will arrive the next day and issue notices requiring them to remove their stalls. But the street vendors are still there, he said. Under a YCDC by-law that took effect on October 1, street vendors who operate without a municipal licence are liable to fines of between K50,000 and K100,000, and one year in prison for a repeat offence. Meanwhile, the owners of unlicensed temporary or permanent stalls, such as those made from bamboo on Kwet Thit Street, are liable to a fine of up to K1.5 million, and six months imprisonment for a repeat offence. Asked about Kwet Thit Street, officials at Pazundaung YCDC gave a variety of answers. U Sit Myint, 57, administrator of the Pazundaung municipal office, said the township did not have enough staff to monitor street vendors. U Aung Swe, 54, the assistant administrator, said the townships staff on the ground had not reported the situation on Kwet Thit Street. However, Frontier saw YCDC staff sitting in chairs and monitoring the entrance to the street. Aung Swe said that they were not aware about anyone letting stall spaces. Myat Thwin said that in December 2016 he had complained directly to City Hall, YCDCs headquarters, about the illicit letting of spaces and was directed to the head of the southern district, with whom he was able to discuss the issue. Later, he said the Pazundaung office had sent documents saying the problem had been solved, but it is obvious that the township office lied to the district office, he said. Residents of Kwet Thit Street strongly suspect that members of the Thaketa gang and some YCDC officials are working together to make money from the street vendors, including through the renting out of spaces. However, that would be news for Aung Swe. Ive never heard of corruption in my township, he said. India: Indian Community Activist Network (ICAN) Adopts Mission Statement on Fisheries Paves the Way for a Stronger Network of Small Scale Fish Workers November 23,2018 | Source: Indian Community Activist Network (ICAN) India is gifted with incredible water resources. Great seas on three sides, large number of rivers, lakes, wetlands, reservoirs and ponds not only provide us with water bodies of huge number and bewildering diversity, but also produce large quantity of fish to make India stand second in the world. Total annual fish produced by both capture and culture fisheries in our country has been nearly 11 million tonnes, of which inland fisheries account for more than 66%. About 6 million workers including fishers, fish farmers, fish processing workers, fish sellers alongwith net and boat makers or repairers earn their livelihood from fisheries. Hence there is a fisheries dependent population of no less than 3 crores (30 million). Inland fisheries account for more than two third of the employment in fisheries. Fish provides high quality and cheap animal protein together with many beneficial minerals and vitamins. Around 80 crores (800 million) people eat fish in India. Since 1961 per capita consumption of fish has more than trebled. More than 13% of all animal protein consumed by our countrymen comes from fish and fish provides the next largest supply of animal protein after milk. Thus the fisheries sector plays a very important role in the food security, nutritional status and employment in our country. Also, with more than 50% of the sectors workforce being women, suffice it to mention that it plays a salient role in maintaining gender balance in employment. Fisheries resources are under tremendous pressure. Indiscriminate encroachments, pollution and consumptive use of water are killing our coastal and inland water bodies and with that the fish resources they harbour. Over and destructive fishing by mechanised boats and trawlers have made the near shore waters of Indias 8,000 kilometre long coastlines barren of fish. The small and traditional fishers and fish farmers are by far the largest non-consumptive primary stakeholders and natural custodians of our water bodies. Good fish needs good water. The small and traditional fishing communities, always and everywhere, strive to protect water bodies and fish resources. It is important to note, in this light, that traditional fishing is nature-friendly and suitable for ecology of the river. It may be remembered that traditional fishers let a new born fish mature and produce progeny so that there is natural stock replacement. The port led development project christened as Sagarmala is designed to push up the destruction of coastal natural resources. Linked up with newly announced 110 National Waterways, the tide of destruction is going to sweep through the great rivers like the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Brahmani, Godavari, Krishna, Kaveri, Mandavi and Zuari killing whatever fish resources have been left in them. Investment driven enhancement of productivity that cares little for environmental or ecological balance and edges out small fishers and fish farmers promoting their replacement by entrepreneurs from outside the sector, or sustainable production with protection and promotion of livelihood of small fishers and fish farmers the fisheries sector is witnessing a policy conflict. The small and traditional fishing communities are losing ground and with it pressure is building up against sustainability in fisheries. Blue Revolution promoted by the Government of India aims to encourage this very process. Most ironically thousands of these small fisher people, who have been struggling to protect their livelihood and the water bodies, are being driven out of the aquatic areas falling within protected areas like wild life sanctuaries and reserves... The full statement is available at: https://www.icsf.net/images/resources/statements/statements_other/172_ICAN_Statement_Fisheries.pdf.pdf Tamil Nadu: Oil spill: CG vessel begins work, but fishermen distressed November 23,2018 A day after the second oil spill at the Ennore port in two years, dedicated Coast Guard Pollution Control Vessel ICGS Samudra Paheredar arrived in Chennai from Vishakapatnam on Monday evening. MT Coral Stars, a tanker, which was docked at the Kamarajar Port caused an oil spill in the early hours of Sunday. The spilt oil is less than two tonnes, a statement from the port said. MT Coral Star is an oil tanker with a gross tonnage of 25,400. The vessel built in 2004 was carrying furnace oil. The oil allegedly spilt due to a fault in the hose that was being used to transfer it. Help was sought from the Coast Guard Pollution Control Vessel to help estimate the spillage and also to begin the clean-up, an official of the defence wing said. The vessel began its work and a report will be submitted on Tuesday morning on the extent of the spill, how much work is done and how long it will take to clean it up, an official said. Coast Guard interceptor boat and helicopter were launched to assess the extent of the oil spill. Subsequently, two Coast Guard Fast Patrol Vessels with Pollution Response equipment embarked onboard were deployed from Chennai for combating the spill. The effect of the spill, however, is already being felt by the fisherfolk who had opposed the laying of an illegal oil pipeline through the Ennore Creek by Indian Oil Corporation Limited to transport oil from the Marine Liquid Terminal in October 2018. When new projects begin, these private players stand in front of the collector and promise big things. But such incidents are happening repeatedly, said K. Bharathi, president of the South Indian Fishermens Association, speaking to Deccan Chronicle. As much as officials promise that the spill wont spread, the effect will definitely be felt because oil cannot mix with water, Bharathi said. Because the spillage is close to the dock, it will not spread into the sea, but along the shore. Both sides of the port are inhabited by fisherfolk. Whichever way the spill spreads, itll affect us, he said. The port is functioning with inexperienced and low number of employees to increase profits. Thats the sole reason this is happening, Bharathi said, adding we suspect that the spill also may be because they want to curtain fishing activities in this area, he said. The business class passenger on board a Scoot flight also caressed the attendant's left hip, 'The Straits Times' reported. (Photo: Twitter | @flyscoot) Singapore/ New Delhi: A 34-year-old Indian-origin man based in Australia has been jailed for three weeks in Singapore for molesting a cabin crew member on board a Singapore-bound flight, a media report said on Friday. Paranjape Niranjan Jayant, who works for a logistics firm, pleaded guilty to two charges of molestation of the 25-year-old flight attendant in August and had one charge taken into consideration for sentencing. During the eight-hour flight from Sydney to Singapore, Jayant approached the flight attendant a few times to ask for her phone number, but she ignored him. The business class passenger on board a Scoot flight also caressed the attendant's left hip, 'The Straits Times' reported. "Subsequently, during the flight, the accused went up to approach the victim at the front galley a few times to request the victim's phone number. The victim ignored these requests," said Deputy Public Prosecutor James Chew. The attendant moved away from him and he told her she was beautiful before returning to his seat. About an hour before landing, Jayant approached the woman and molested her, the report said. The woman immediately alerted her supervisor. She later lodged a report at the Changi Airport Terminal 2 police post. Jayant, who was unrepresented, told District Judge Lim Tse Haw that he was intoxicated when he committed the offence and added, "I can't handle my drink". He also said he was remorseful and pleaded for leniency. For each count of molestation, he could have been jailed for up to two years and fined or caned. The US Congress faces a deadline next month to fund parts of the federal government and a possible showdown over money for Trumps proposed border wall. (Photo: File) Palm Beach (Florida): US President Donald Trump warned on Thursday there could be a government shutdown next month over security on the border with Mexico, suggesting he could hold up a funding deal if no more money is provided for a wall between the two countries. Could there be a shut down? There certainly could and it will be about border security, of which the wall is a part, Trump told reporters in Palm Beach, Florida. The US Congress faces a deadline next month to fund parts of the federal government and a possible showdown over money for Trumps proposed border wall. Having won control of the House in midterm elections, Democrats have said they will be even less motivated than before to meet Trumps wall demands. Trump also said he had given the military the authorization to use lethal force if necessary on the border with Mexico. If they have to they are going to use lethal force. Ive given the okay - I hope they dont have to. Trump also warned that the United States could close the whole border with Mexico for a period of time if we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or our people are going to start getting hurt. This would mean Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the United States, added Trump, who has complained about the number of cars US manufacturers produce in Mexico. Vehicle exports from Mexico to the United States in 2017 totaled 2.3 million units. Later on Thursday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that he had been in close contact with Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray. We have affirmed our shared commitment to addressing the current challenge. The caravans will not be permitted to enter the United States, he said in a State Department statement. Ahead of US congressional elections earlier this month, Trump denounced the approach of a caravan of migrants as an invasion that threatened American national security, and he sent thousands of US troops to the border to help secure it. US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Wednesday that he had been granted authority to allow troops on the Mexican border greater powers to help protect border officials, and would await direction from the Department of Homeland Security. Mattis said troops could help protect the border agents with shields and batons, but would be unarmed. Two US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters this week a memo signed by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly gave Mattis the authority to protect immigration agents and if necessary, could include actions like use of lethal force, crowd control, temporary detention and cursory searches. Trump has issued ultimatums about wall funding before, with little impact, even with his own Republican Party in majority control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. If the two parties cannot reach a funding deal, there would be a partial government shutdown, with so-called essential services, including some at the Department of Homeland Security, likely remaining in operation. Huynh Nam Dung, former chairman of the state-run lender MHB. Photo by VnExpress/Lan Ngoc Former chairman of the Mekong Housing Bank has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for abuse of power. The HCM City Peoples Court Thursday sentenced Huynh Nam Dung to 13 years in prison for abusing power and causing serious losses to the state. Dungs accomplices, former MHB general director Nguyen Phuoc Hoa and former general director of Mekong Housing Bank Securities Company (MHBS) Lu Thi Thanh Binh were given 10 and 11 years sentences, respectively. Three other defendants received between four and six years in prison and 10 others were sentenced to five years probation. According to the indictment, between 2011 and 2014, Dung and Hoa took advantage of their positions to transfer nearly VND5 trillion ($213 million) from the state-owned MHB to MHBS, a securities company that MHB established in December 2006 with 60 per cent ownership. The purpose was to cooperate in investing in government bonds. However, MHBS deposited over VND3.36 trillion (more than $143 million) in MHB branches and earned VND45 billion ($1.92 million) in interest payments. In addition, MHBS used more than VND1.5 trillion ($63.84 million) to invest in bonds, of which nearly VND1 trillion ($42.46 million) was used to trade MHB-owned government bonds via middle companies. This action resulted in a loss of nearly VND349 billion ($14.86 million) to MHB. According to the investigations results, Dung earned VND460 million ($20,000) while other defendants also got between VND150 million ($6,400) and VND930 million ($39,800) each. Da Nang City is seeking foreign investment for a metro line from the Da Nang International Airport to ancient Hoi An Town. The line will run 33 kilometers (20.5 miles) along the coast and reduce road congestion, authorities say. The lack of public transport between the two destinations and a significant rise in the number of private vehicles in both Da Nang and Hoi An Town have prompted authorities to go for the metro, said Le Thi Kim Phuong, deputy director of Da Nang Citys department of planning and investment. She also said at a Thursday meeting that the line will be built using official development assistance (ODA) loans or under the form of public-private-partnerships (PPP). Da Nang estimates that the total investment cost could range from VND7.5 trillion ($330 million) to VND15 trillion, and construction would last from 2019 to 2025. If ODA loans are used, Da Nang and Quang Nam Province, home to Hoi An Town, will have to borrow between VND6.7 trillion to VND13.4 trillion and raise the rest as counterpart funds. Phuong told VnExpress that some foreign and domestic investors have expressed interest in the project and most of them prefer the PPP format. Le Van Trung, director of the citys transport department, said Da Nang and Quang Nam had agreed on a decision to build a metro line from Da Nang airport to Hoi An since last year but so far, Hoi An has yet to decide where to put the station. A more specific amount of investment for the metro line will be announced after the two localities come up with a feasibility report for the project, he said. The total number of tourists to Hoi An reached the highest ever at 3.22 million last year and in the first nine months of this year, it welcomed 4.55 million visitors, up 77 percent against a year ago, including 3.4 million foreigners. In Da Nang, tourist arrivals rose 27.7 percent year-on-year to 6.5 million during the nine-month period. Navy personnel of Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy take part in a military display in the South China Sea April 12, 2018. Photo by Reuters/Stringer Vietnam's foreign ministry has demanded that China stop its construction activities in the Paracel islands, saying they are a violation of Vietnam's sovereignty. "China's continuation of activities in the Hoang Sa [Paracel] Islands is a serious violation of Vietnam's sovereignty, goes against the common perceptions of the two countries' top leaders," the ministry's deputy spokesperson, Nguyen Phuong Tra, said at a regular press conference Thursday. "It violates the Vietnam-China Agreement on the Basic Principles Guiding the Resolution of Maritime Issues and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties, complicates and causes tension in the situation in the East Sea," she said, using the Vietnamese name for the waters. The ministry issued the statement after the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in the U.S. discovered on satellite images a "modest new structure" on Bombay (Bong Bay) Reef in the Paracel Islands. The platform, measuring some 90 feet by 40 feet and topped by a radome and solar panels, first appeared in satellite images dated July 7, according to The Philippine Star newspaper. Earlier the only artificial structure on the reef had been a decades-old lighthouse. While the purpose of the platform and radome is unclear, it could be for military use, AMTI said in a report. "Vietnam resolutely opposes China's above action and demands that China cease immediately and do not repeat similar actions, respect Vietnam's sovereignty and international law and take practical actions to contribute to the development of friendly relations between the two countries as well as the maintenance of peace and stability in the East Sea," Tra said. China seized the Paracel Islands from South Vietnam by force in 1974, and has since been illegally occupying the islands. In 2012 China established a so-called "Sansha City" with Woody Island in the Paracels as its seat, and has built a runway capable of handling military aircraft and other supporting structures on the island. The so-called city also covers a number of reefs in Vietnam's Spratly Islands that China seized by force in 1988 and the Scarborough Shoal, which is claimed by the Philippines. After six years, more than half of the first metro line of Ho Chi Minh City has been completed. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran HCMCs first metro line has run into another crisis. An unpaid Japanese contractor has threatened to stop work. In a letter sent to the government, ministries and the Ho Chi Minh City Peoples Committee, Japanese Ambassador to Vietnam Umeda Kunio said unpaid bills for the Japanese contractor of the citys first metro line has climbed to $100 million. If HCMC cannot pay the bill by the end of this year, the contractor, Sumitomo Corporation, will stop its work, he said. Kunio said Vietnamese government and HCMC have been "seriously" late in disbursing funds for the Ben Thanh - Suoi Tien metro line, even after the problem has been discussed several times between the governments of Japan and Vietnam, local media reported. The line, approved by the city back in 2007, was to be built using official development assistance (ODA) from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), but a delay in approving a revised plan to adjust the investment cost upwards has resulted in a lack of funding for the project. The initial cost of the metro line was estimated at VND17.4 trillion ($740 million). At this estimate, the project did not fall under the category that needs to be reviewed by the National Assembly, Vietnams national legislative body. In 2009, consultants recalculated the investment needed at VND47.3 trillion ($2 billion). In 2011, the Prime Minister agreed that HCMC can revise the original estimate, but the revised cost pushed the project into the category needing National Assembly (NA) approval. The metro system is now considered a key national project requiring the NAs approval before the government makes any financial decision. While that approval is pending, there is no point in conducting capital assessment and investment disbursement surveys, the Ministry of Planning and Investment said earlier this year. Politburo intervention proposed Given the situation, the Japanese ambassador has suggested that HCMC writes to the Politburo, the Party's decision-making body, as well as the NA Standing Committee and ask for the earliest approval possible. HCMC had said that it would use its own budget to make advance payments to contractors, but Ambassador Kunio said the city has not been able to pay contractors as promised. The HCMC Urban Railways Management Authority last month said it needs the city to use its own budget so that it can pay contractors for the parts they have finished. "The city now has to provide around VND1 trillion ($42.85 million) for the project to be continued," Hoang Nhu Cuong, deputy director of the HCMC Management Authority for Urban Railways, said at a municipal meeting. Contractors have completed work worth VND2 trillion, but only VND220 billion ($9.43 million) has been paid due to legal procedural issues, he said. Work on the citys first metro line started in August 2012. The line runs 20 kilometers (12.43 miles) through five districts of 1, 2, 9, Binh Thanh and Thu Duc and Di An District in the neighboring province of Binh Duong. It will run underground from Ben Thanh Market for 2.6 km past the Opera House and Ba Son Shipyard, and then cross the Saigon River on an elevated track that passes through District 2 on the way to Suoi Tien Park and the terminus at Long Binh in District 9. So far, more than half of the project has been completed. A consortium comprising Vietnams Civil Engineering Construction Corporation No. 6 (Cienco 6) and Japan's Sumitomo Corporation is the contractor. The project, expected to help the city deal with its chronic traffic gridlock problem, was first set to open in 2017. The date was then pushed to 2020, but this deadline is unlikely to be met, too. The forecast route of the storm is shown by Vietnam National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting at 11 a.m. Friday. The ninth storm of the year to hit Vietnam has veered toward Ho Chi Minh City. Instead of moving westwards as forecast earlier, Usagi has changed course and is now heading south. As of Friday morning the storm lay centered around 410 kilometers (254 miles) to the east of the region between Ninh Thuan and Ba Ria-Vung Tau provinces, and packed winds of up to 75 kilometers per hour. Ba Ria-Vung Tau, home to the popular beach town Vung Tau, lies next to HCMC. Over the next 24 hours it will move west-southwest at 10-15 kilometers an hour and intensify, according to the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting. By Saturday morning the storm is expected to reach around 80 kilometers to the east of Phu Quy Island in the central province of Binh Thuan with winds of 100 kilometers. Hoang Van Cuong, director of the forecasting center, said both Vietnamese and international weather stations have said there is a very high chance of the storm affecting southern and south central provinces as it makes landfall Saturday. Central provinces from Thua Thien-Hue to Binh Thuan and the southern part of the Central Highlands are likely to be battered by rains of up to 500 millimeters while southern provinces can expect up to 200mm. Rainfall from 180mm a day is considered heavy. Flood warnings have been issued for rivers from Quang Tri to Binh Thuan and in the Central Highlands, and landslides are also forecast along rivers. Le Dinh Quyet of the Southern Hydrometeorological Center said the tropical storm accompanied by high tides would cause heavy flooding in Saigon and southern provinces. Mass evacuations planned People in Can Gio are evacuated during stormy days in 2017. Photo by VnExpress/Thanh Nguyen HCMC authorities have issued a ban on fishing boats and ships from setting sail from 1 p.m. Friday. Authorities in the coastal district of Can Gio are planning to evacuate 4,000 people to safe areas and stockpile daily necessities for them. Around 270,000 students in the central province of Khanh Hoa, which is still recovering from Typhoon Toraji, have been allowed to stay home from Friday afternoon. Khanh Hoas famous resort town of Nha Trang, which was badly hit by torrential rains and landslides triggered by Toraji last weekend and reported at least 19 deaths, is considering evacuating 280,000 people from vulnerable areas. Weather forecasters in Vietnam have warned another four to six typhoons and tropical depressions could develop off the country's east coast from now until the end of the year. Half of them would make landfall in and batter Vietnams central region, they said. Coffee, oil production under threat Ongoing coffee harvest in the Central Highlands and offshore oil exploration are under threat from the tropical storm. "(Usagi) will start hitting our operational oil and gas blocks off the central and southern coast and all units must keep vigilant as the storm develops," state oil giant PetroVietnam said in a statement on Friday, as cited by Reuters. The Central Highlands, Vietnam's largest coffee growing area, is half way through its harvest season. "We are concerned that the heavy rains triggered by the storm will disrupt the coffee harvest," Nguyen Viet Vinh, General Secretary of the Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association, told Reuters. A record number of 16 tropical storms hit Vietnam last year, killing 389 people and injuring 668 others, mostly in the northern and central regions. The General Statistics Office estimated damage at around VND60 trillion ($2.64 billion), 1.5 times the previous years figure. In the first 10 months of this year natural disasters left 185 people dead or missing and injured 134 others, and caused losses of more than VND8.8 trillion ($381 million). Residents smashed walls, screamed through ventilation vents as a deadly blaze struck without warning in southern Vietnam. It was still dark and deserted as Bui Thanh Vinh drove his modified three-wheeler to deliver ice. Then, out of the blue, something slammed into his vehicle with great force and Vinh and his vehicle went flying. Bui Thanh Vinh, who was driving a modified three-wheeled motorbike rickshaw, was fortunate to survive a deadly accident with minor injuries Thursday morning in Binh Phuoc Province. Photo by VnExpress/ Phuoc Tuan The driver and the vehicle landed on the sidewalk about three meters away, but as the fallen man looked back to see what had hit him, he saw a scary sight. The tanker that had hit him swerved, hit an electric pole and overturned. The petrol it was carrying spilled and caught fire. "The fire spread very fast. The driver of the tank broke the glass and crawled out, but he was on fire. Both of us were rescued by people and taken to the hospital," Vinh said. The fire went on to engulf 19 houses along the highway Thursday morning. Six people were killed. Sitting in a half-burned house, Vo Chi Cong, 32, is still traumatized, although he and his family narrowly escaped death. "We were sleeping when I heard a loud explosion on the street, so I got up." Opening the door, he panicked when he saw the street on fire. He screamed out to his family to flee. The house has no backdoor, so he risked opening the front door to escape. But as soon as it was opened, the smoke rushed in. Cong could not take his family out that way so he closed the door. Cong used a wet towel to block the openings in his house to keep the smoke out and asked his wife and 3-year-old daughter to go to the bathroom. They could hear the sound of the fire and feel its heat. His wife and kid were screaming in fear, making Cong increasingly nervous. After 30 minutes of taking refuge in the bathroom, the father saw his girl show signs of suffocation and looked for another way out. Pointing to a broken hammer lying nearby, Cong told VnExpress that in his desperation, he tried to smash the wall, but wasnt able to. "We were all thinking that we would die. We could not get out, there was smoke outside and the house could collapse." Cong climbed out a ventilation window and started screaming for help, hoping his neighbors would hear him. Fortunately, his next-door neighbor Le Vu Thanh was fleeing his own house at the moment and quickly directed firefighters to Congs house. "About 30 minutes later, the fire was under control, and I yelled out, telling him and his family to run out. If they had waited for another five minutes, the whole family would not have survived," said Thanh. Thanhs family was able to escape the fire thanks to a backdoor in their house. Vo Chi Cong is still traumatized as he speaks about his familys providential escape from a blaze that engulfed 19 houses after a petrol tanker overturned and caught fire. Photo by VnExpress/Phuoc Tuan Like Congs family, Suu's heard an explosion at dawn and immediately rushed out of the house. When three had gotten out the fire started licking at their house and others, six of them, including Suu, had to step back into the house. He picked up a hammer and smashed the rear wall so all six of them could get out. "When I saw the big fire, I told myself to stay calm to escape, because panic could have killed us for sure," said Suu, relieved that his family escaped although the fire gutted his store. A man who lost his family Those who survived the fire had no reason to rejoice, though. They mourned the deaths of their neighbors. Nguyen Tung Chinh, 18, and Vo Hong Anh, 6, were also sleeping when the fire broke out. They quickly jumped over a low wall on the side of their house. But the gasoline from the tank near them ignited more fire, killing them. Than, a neighbor to the victims, said the fire was higher than the electric pole. "My entire family just ran out without thinking. Only after the fire was extinguished did we know that Tu, and her friend and her two children, a 15-year-old boy and 6-year-old girl, died in their house." Le Van Tuan, Tus husband, cried continuously as he did the paper work to take his wife and children to their hometown for the funeral. Tu said he was driving a truck away to get some fruits for sale. When he arrived in the nearby Binh Duong Province, his relatives called and told him about the fire. "I rushed home. When I arrived, my wife and kids had all died. I only hope they would rest in peace and their souls not wander around," said Tuan. (Many Vietnamese believe that souls of people who die of unnatural causes can be resentful and not depart to the world of the dead.) The burnt house in which four people died. Photo by VnExpress/ Phuoc Tuan Accident details On the morning of November 22, Thach Van Phong was driving a petrol tanker on Highway 13, from HCMC to Binh Long town in Binh Phuoc Province in the south of the country. Around 4.30 a.m., the tanker crashed into the back of a modified motorbike carrier in Chon Thanh District, two hours north of Ho Chi Minh City. The tanker then went on to crash into a media strip, mount the sidewalk and hit a medium voltage power pole before overturning and spilling petrol on the highway. The petrol quickly caught fire, engulfing a series of houses along the highway. Tanker-ice carrier collision survivors recount horror story Six dead, 16 houses burned in tanker truck blaze in southern Vietnam Six people died while dozens of others suffered serious injuries and were rushed to a local hospital for treatment. 19 houses were badly burned and the tanker was completely destroyed by the raging flames. Doctors from Cho Ray Hospital in HCMC said the tanker driver suffered burns on his face, neck, limbs, and back. Investigation found the driver was speeding when the accident happened. The tank was at 99 kph, while the highway only allows a maximum speed of 60 kph. No information has been shared by authorities on subsequent actions or on the state of health of the injured victims. Masena Bokang Jon from Lesotho boarded a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul Tuesday night, after staying in detention at HCMC's Tan Son Nhat Airport for two months. Photo by Shutterstock/Chris Parypa A foreigner who spent two months as an uninvited guest at Vietnams largest airport has been sent home. Masena Bokang Jon, 32, from the Kingdom of Lesotho near South Africa, boarded a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport on Tuesday night. Airport authorities said Thursday he would take another flight from Istanbul to his homeland. After confirming his personal status, immigration officers in Vietnam completed legal procedures for him to leave for home, concerned that his state of health required good care from his family. Earlier reports had said that Jon stayed in the detention room at Tan Son Nhat for two months following his deportation from Japan for using a fake passport. He had entered Vietnam with a valid visa, arriving in Ho Chi Minh City on a Vietnam Airlines flight from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta on August 18. Two weeks later, he boarded an AirAsia flight to Japan, transiting via Thailands Bangkok. However, Japanese immigration authorities denied him entry after discovering he was using a fake passport. The authorities reportedly confiscated all his counterfeit personal papers. On September 26, he was deported from Japan and sent back to Tan Son Nhat Airport, his point of departure. Without a valid passport and international travel documents, Jon was refused entry into Vietnam and was stuck in the airport. In detention at the airport, he abstained from solid food, refusing the paltry ration of bread he was offered. Not having money to buy other food, his health had worsened, prompting aviation officials to seek help from immigration authorities and the foreign affairs ministry to send him home. Jons stay had some parallels to famous Hollywood movie "The Terminal," wherein a foreign national gets stuck in a New York airport for months. Some experts in the aviation industry said the foreigners long stay at the Vietnamese airport was a rare incident. Normally, foreign tourists are immediately deported to their place of domicile if they are found using fake passports. However, Jon had successfully boarded international flights to many countries including Indonesia, Nigeria, the Republic of South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Vietnam with his fake passport before being found out by Japanese authorities. It remained unclear why he could use a counterfeit passport to visit several countries. The diplomatic agency of the Kingdom of Lesotho based in Malaysia said the passport number belonged to another woman. Vietnams State Capital Investment Corp (SCIC) raised VND7.37 trillion ($315.7 million) selling a 57.71 stake in Vinaconex on Thursday. The state-run SCIC sold all of the 254.9 million shares of construction firm Vinaconex, formally known as Vietnam Construction and Import Export JSC on Thursday, offered at an auction at the Hanoi Stock Exchange, the exchange said in a filing. The shares were sold to two domestic corporate investors and one domestic personal investor at an average price of VND28,900 ($1.24) apiece, it added. Vinaconex shares closed flat at VND18,500 ($0.79) on Thursday. Separately, military-run telecom company Viettel Group raised $85.67 million auctioning 94 million shares of Vinaconex also on Thursday, the bourse said. What do you think about our new website? Share your opinion Ukraine's Rada accepts Agrarian Minister Kutovyi's resignation 1.5 years after submission Kutovyi submitted a letter of resignation on May 23, 2017. If you see a spelling error on our site, select it and press Ctrl+Enter The main activity of "SOCAR Energy Ukraine" is to improve the network of petrol filling stations and organize wholesale of petrol and oil products in the territory of Ukraine. SOCAR Energy Ukraine, a subsidiary of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) in Ukraine, plans to build a new gas station in Kyiv. The gas station with a cafe-shop will be located at Stepan Bandera Street, 36 in Obolon district of Kyiv, Ukrainian media reported. The total construction area will be almost 0.35 ha. SOCAR Energy Ukraine plans to install 4 fuel dispensers, as well as equip the complex with a module for the sale of liquefied gas, according to AzerNews. At the gas station, customers will be offered gasoline brands Ai-92, Ai-95, Ai-95 Nano, Ai-98 Nano, diesel and diesel fuel Nano. According to SOCAR, the estimated number of gas stations at the new gas station will be 250 cars per day, and the sale of petroleum products will be 2625 cubic meters per year (1,680 cubic meters of gasoline and 945 cubic meters of diesel fuel). In addition, the annual sale of liquefied gas is expected at 1,750 cubic meters per year. In addition to the gas station on the Bandera Street, the company intends to build another gas station in Kyiv. Read alsoAzerNews: Ukrainian state enterprise to consult with SOCAR on gas supply The SOCAR Ukraine Trading House, a subsidiary of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) in Ukraine, imported 144 million cubic meters of gas to Ukraine in July-September of this year. This is equal to 4.11 percent of the total volume of gas imports to the country in the third quarter of 2018. Gas from Europe to Ukraine in this period supplied more than 30 companies, the volume of imports amounted to 3.5 billion cubic meters. Private gas importers imported 761 million cubic meters to Ukraine in July-September this year. This is equal to 18.9 percent of the total gas supply to the country. The main import volumes accounted for 5 companies. The leading importer was the Trading House SOCAR Ukraine. In general, in January-September of this year, traders imported 6.2 billion cubic meters of gas to Ukraine. The main activity of "SOCAR Energy Ukraine" is to improve the network of petrol filling stations and organize wholesale of petrol and oil products in the territory of Ukraine. SOCAR entered the Ukrainian market back in 2009. The main activity of SOCAR Energy Ukraine is to improve the network of petrol filling stations and organize wholesale of petrol and oil products in the territory of Ukraine. Azerbaijan is considered one of the main trade partners of Ukraine among the CIS countries. Main goods imported from Ukraine to Azerbaijan remains as mainly metallurgy products, machine building products, agro-industrial products, and chemical industry products. While main goods exported from Azerbaijan to Ukraine are generally products of fuel energy industry, chemical industry products, and agro-industrial products. The trade turnover between the states amounted to $810 million in 2017. Currently, SOCAR is the only producer of oil products in Azerbaijan, and operates more than 370 gas (petrol) filling stations in Switzerland, Georgia, Romania and Ukraine. SOCAR is also a co-owner of Turkey's largest petrochemical complex Petkim and other assets in Turkey. Ukraine boosts agri-exports to Saudi Arabia Grain crops, vegetable oils, meat, and offal are the major staples of Ukrainian agri-exports to the KSA's markets. If you see a spelling error on our site, select it and press Ctrl+Enter Bogdan Corporation presents first Ukrainian-made electric truck Its serial production will be launched under a large-scale contract after the certification procedure in Denmark is completed. If you see a spelling error on our site, select it and press Ctrl+Enter European Defense Agency seeks deeper cooperation with Ukraine - Vice PM According to Klympush-Tsintsadze, the agency head stated his interest in enhancing such work. If you see a spelling error on our site, select it and press Ctrl+Enter It wasnt long ago that Marcelo Vallejo still felt like he had been punched every time he heard English spoken. He couldnt stand English music and didnt want to know when his son started studying the language. In fact, he had hated everything about England since 1982, the year he turned 20 and lived through the most traumatic period of his life the Falklands War. I was angry for a long time after that, he says on the phone from Buenos Aires. Drugs, alcohol, depression. I always explain it like this: I had to hate to shoot and afterwards, its not easy to get rid of the hatred. The work is not just about that war but also about the mark war leaves on people Director Lola Arias But when multifaceted Argentinian artist Lola Arias suggested Vallejo get involved with a play she was directing alongside British veterans his former enemies he decided to say yes, despite the turmoil he felt when they came face to face. Just hearing them transported me to the past, he says. During rehearsals, any conversation or sound could take me back there again. I had trouble getting to sleep and I often thought about dropping out; I didnt feel I had the right to speak about memories that included dead colleagues. Vallejo stuck it out, in spite of his reservations, and now he is glad he did. The play Minefield premiered in 2016 to great acclaim in both Argentina and Britain, where it played at the Royal Court Theater in London. It has been touring ever since and has now become a benchmark for documentary theater. Next weekend, it will be showing in Madrids Canal Theater from November 23 to 25 together with the film War Theater that captures the relationships that developed between the veterans as they rehearsed and which was awarded the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the 2018 Berlinale Film Festival. The work is not just about that war but also about the mark war leaves on people, says Arias in a phone call from Buenos Aires. That is why it is of interest beyond those countries directly involved. Reconstructing a war scenario with veterans is, of course, very different from reconstructing it with real actors. But there is something more compelling about seeing the former enemies come together. On the Argentinian side, there is Marcelo Vallejo, who was a volunteer and is now a triathlon athlete; Gabriel Sagastume, who was called to the front while he was doing his military service obligatory in Argentina until 1995 and is now a criminal lawyer; and Ruben Otero who survived the sinking of the Belgrano navy cruiser and now plays drums in a Beatles tribute band, often in a Falklands t-shirt. I had trouble getting to sleep and I often thought about dropping out Argentinean veteran Marcelo Vallejo On the British side, there is Lou Armour, a professional soldier who left the army after the war and is now a special needs teacher; David Jackson, a radio operator during the conflict and now a psychologist for war veterans; and Sukrim Ral, a Nepalese Gurkha contracted by the British army who now works as a security guard. All are around 60 years old and were chosen to perform in Arias play after an intense selection process. Over the course of the performance, they share their various memories with the audience the journey to the Falklands, their attitude to the conflict, a wounded colleague, an enemy who dies in their arms, a letter to their family, the noise of the fighting, an explosion, fear, cold, hunger, the return home and life after the war. Using film images and music, the veterans recreate their war. Thats me! cries Armour at one point during the play when he see the front page of a newspaper with a photo of soldiers emerging from Government House with their hands above their heads. It was April 2, 1982, the day the Argentinian army surrounded the official governors residence in Stanley and took control. I felt so humiliated that I asked to go back, he says from London. Armour didnt think twice when Arias offered him a part in the play. In my country, its common for veterans to get together with their former enemies, he says. We have a lot of experience with that because of the World Wars. For the Argentinians, it was harder, particularly because it was not a professional army. Many youngsters had volunteered to go to the front because of the hatred the dictatorship had incited for the English. We didnt go with hatred. It was just another war for us. There are still significant differences between one side and the other. In Argentina, the defeat in the Falklands is still raw. You see a lot of graffiti in the streets calling for sovereignty. Thats why the play caused such a stir when it opened, says Arias. But in the UK, the play was useful for highlighting a conflict that is not considered terribly important, though it was in fact the catalyst for Thatcherism. Towards the end of the play, Armour and Sagastume contrast their versions of the war and tell the story of the colonization of the Falklands from two very different perspectives. Would they fight again if they were given the chance? No, says Vallejo. Certainly not in defense of a flag. Meanwhile, Armour says, It depends. There are just wars. Perhaps I would fight against extremism. The questions these veterans are most often asked, however, are more along the lines of: Did you kill anyone? Did you see anyone die? Did you hold anyone who was dying? They are questions that have been incorporated into the rousing punkrock song the veterans perform together to bring the complex play to its conclusion. Cutting edge theater Writer, actress, director of stage and film, Lola Arias has become a leading light in documentary theater, a genre that is beginning to catch on internationally. "It was inevitable that theater would start to reflect the world as it is now using contemporary stories, which is what film has been doing for a long time," she says. "It's fine that we use Hamlet metaphorically to speak about certain things that still relate to us but why not also use what is around us? I believe it's the only way theater can attract new audiences. For example, when we perform Minefield, there is a far greater cross-section of the public in the audience veterans, families, people who wouldn't normally go to the theater, people who are simply interested in the history." Arias says that to get documentary theater right, however, the research has to be extensive and there are far more rehearsals needed when the actors are not professional, though in Minefield, it is hard to tell. English version by Heather Galloway. The Rock of Gibraltar Daniel Ochoa de Olza (AP) Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Thursday reiterated that Spain will vote against the Brexit deal on Sunday unless the text is altered to reflect Madrids position on Gibraltar. Following my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain distant. My Government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit, he tweeted as he landed in Havana for a two-day visit to Cuba. There is a Spanish national interest that is not being sufficiently defended Aide to PM Pedro Sanchez The Spanish executive considers that the Wednesday telephone conversation between Sanchez and May did not have the desired effect: May did not accept Spains demand to have the last word on whether any future arrangements negotiated between Brussels and London will benefit Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory that was ceded to Great Britain in 1713 under the Treaty of Utrecht. Although the Brexit deal could still secure passage with a qualified majority despite opposition from Spain, sources within the delegation that has traveled to Cuba with Sanchez said it would be unthinkable for the withdrawal agreement to go ahead without the consensus of the 27. They also warned that if the political declaration is not unanimous, there is no declaration, alluding to a draft text on the future relationship that will also be voted on Sunday. There is a Spanish national interest that is not being sufficiently defended, said the same sources. My Government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit PM Pedro Sanchez On Thursday, May said in the House of Commons that British sovereignty over Gibraltar will be protected. She mentioned the telephone conversation, underscoring that I was absolutely clear with him. May also underscored the cooperation that has led to a preliminary agreement on memorandums of understanding on a set of issues of particular concern to the communities that live in and around Gibraltar, including taxation and cross-border workers. Marco Aguiriano, Spains secretary of state for the EU, has voiced concern over a clause of the Withdrawal Agreement (known as Article 184) that he said has been introduced under the cover of darkness. Spain believes that this clause could be used to include Gibraltar as a beneficiary of any future trade arrangements between the EU and UK, without requiring Spains prior approval. Aguiriano said the European Commission and Councils legal services have provided verbal assurances that Article 184 does not undermine Spains position regarding Gibraltar. This requires clarification. If they tell us there is no risk, let them simply put in down in writing, he said, suggesting that Spain might accept an addendum to the main text. The other option would be to delay approval of the deals by voting against them on Sunday. It is possible to stop the clock and call a new summit, warned Aguiriano. English version by Susana Urra. Robot waiters at a restaurant in Kathmandu. PRAKASH MATHEMA (AFP) In 2014, Amazon developed an artificial intelligence (AI) recruitment tool that began to discriminate against female job applicants. A year later, a user of Google Photos discovered that the program was labeling his black friends as gorillas. And in 2018 it emerged that an algorithm that analyzed the risk of recidivism by a million US defendants made as many mistakes as any human being with no training in criminal justice. Decisions that were once made by human beings are now being made by AI systems. Some programs deal with hiring, others with loan approvals, medical diagnoses and even court rulings. But there is a risk involved, because the data used to train the algorithms is itself conditioned by our own knowledge and prejudices. The data is a reflection of reality. If reality is prejudiced, so is the data Richard Benjamins, Telefonica The data is a reflection of reality. If reality is prejudiced, so is the data, explains Richard Benjamins, the Big Data and AI ambassador at Telefonica, a global telco and tech company, in a telephone conversation with EL PAIS. To prevent an algorithm from discriminating against certain groups, he says, it is necessary to check that the training data does not contain a bias, and to analyze the false positive and negative ratios. It is much more serious to have an algorithm that discriminates in an undesired way in the fields of law, loans or school admissions than in the fields of movie recommendations or advertising. Isabel Fernandez, a managing director of applied intelligence at consulting firm Accenture, brings up the example of automatic loan grants. Imagine that in the past, most of the applicants were men, and the few women who were approved for a loan had to overcome such stringent criteria that they all repaid their debt. If we used this data and nothing else, the system would conclude that women are better at paying back than men, which is merely a reflection of a past prejudice. Yet on many occasions it is women who are harmed by this kind of bias. Algorithms are generally developed because a group of mostly white men between the ages of 25 and 50 have decided so at a meeting. With this kind of starting point, it is difficult to include the opinion or perception of minority groups or of the other 50% of the population, which is made up of women, says Nerea Luis Mingueza, a robotics and AI researcher at Carlos III University who holds that underrepresented groups will always be affected to a greater degree by technological products. For instance, the voices of women and children fail more often in voice recognition systems. Today's society generates huge amounts of data, but using it correctly still poses a challenge. Getty Minorities are more likely to feel the effects of this bias for statistical reasons, says Jose Maria Lucia, who heads the AI and data analysis center at EY Wavespace: The number of available cases for training is going to be lower, he notes. And any groups who have suffered discrimination of any type in the past are open to this, because by using historical data we could be unwittingly including this bias in the training. This is the case with the African-American population in the United States, according to Juan Alonso, a senior manager at Accenture. Its been proven that if caught over the same kind of misdemeanor, such as smoking a joint in public or possessing small amounts of marijuana, a white person will not get arrested but a black person will. This means that there is a higher percentage of black people on the database, and an algorithm that is trained with this information will incorporate a racist bias. Sources at Google explain that it is essential to be very careful about giving decision-making power to a machine-learning system. Artificial intelligence produces answers based on existing data, and so humans must recognize that they wont necessarily provide impeccable results. Algorithms are generally developed because a group of mostly white men between the ages of 25 and 50 have so decided at a meeting Nerea Luis Mingueza, Carlos III University Machines often end up being a black box filled with secrets that are undecipherable even to their own developers, who are unable to figure out what path the model followed to reach a certain conclusion. Alonso holds that normally, when you are tried, you get an explanation for the decision in a ruling. But the problem is that this type of algorithm is opaque. Its like being in the presence of an oracle who is going to hand down a verdict. Imagine you are going to an open-air festival and when you reach the front row, the security team kicks you out without any kind of explanation. You would be incensed. But if you are told that the first row is reserved for people in wheelchairs, you would not be angry about moving back. Its the same with these algorithms: if we dont know whats going on, it can generate a feeling of dissatisfaction, explains Alonso. To end this dilemma, researchers working on machine learning advocate greater transparency and providing explanations for training models. Major tech companies like Microsoft defend a set of principles for a responsible use of AI, and they are sponsoring initiatives to try to crack open the black box of algorithms and explain why decisions get made the way they are. Telefonica is organizing a Challenge for a Responsible Use of AI at its Big Data business unit, LUCA, with the aim of creating new tools to detect undesired bias. Accenture has developed AI Fairness and IBM has also come up with its own bias-detection tool. For Francesca Rossi, director of ethics and AI at IBM, the key lies in making AI systems transparent and trustworthy. People have the right to ask how an intelligent system suggests certain decisions over others, and companies have a duty to help people understand the decision-making process. English version by Susana Urra. Two women at the border of Gibraltar. JON NAZCA (REUTERS) Spain has rejected an offer from the European Union to create a declaration to clarify the situation of Gibraltar after the United Kingdom leaves the EU in the process commonly known as Brexit. The government of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said it will vote against Withdrawal Agreement at the summit on Sunday unless it clarifies the position of Gibraltar, the contested British Overseas Territory located in the south of Spain. Given how the situation is now, we maintain the veto La Moncloa Spain wants to change the agreement to make it clear that future negotiations on The Rock are not included in the pact. Specifically, it is asking for a clause in the Withdrawal Agreement (known as Article 184) to be modified so that it leaves no doubt that negotiations with Gibraltar are separate from the Withdrawal Agreement, and are subject to bilateral talks between London and Madrid. According to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Marco Aguiriano, in an effort to appease Spains concerns, the EU and the UK offered to create a document that would clarify the position of Gibraltar after Brexit. This document would be separate from the withdrawal agreement. The 27 [EU member states] and the European Commission, without disagreements, have offered a packet that aims to meet with the demands and objectives of the Spanish government, said Aguiriano on Friday after meeting with the delegations from the 27 EU countries and the team of EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. Spain wants to change the agreement to make it clear that future negotiations on The Rock are not included in the pact But the proposal has not had the desired effect. Given how the situation is now, we maintain the veto, said sources from La Moncloa, the Spanish seat of government, after the proposal was made. This is a subject of national interest. The former government was not ambitious enough in the negotiation, they added. Although the Brexit deal could still secure passage with a qualified majority despite opposition from Spain, sources from the Spanish government said it would be unthinkable for the withdrawal agreement to go ahead without the consensus of the 27. They also warned that if the political declaration is not unanimous, there is no declaration, alluding to a draft text on the future relationship that will also be voted on Sunday. English version by Melissa Kitson. 116 million AMD assistance to minors with disabilities in Shirak Province from Mikayel Vardanyan Discussion on the topic IT infrastructure as the basis of the digital economy with the participation of the heads of telecommunication companies in Armenia Statement nn the ongoing Aggression by Azerbaijan against the Republic of Armenia "We condemn any attempts at borderisation, as observed since the incursion of Azerbaijani troops into Armenian territory on 12 May" Joint statement Google Ad The United States is deeply concerned about reports of intensive fighting today between Armenia and Azerbaijan.ANTONY J. BLINKEN Statement of the MFA of Armenia Ookla has awarded Ucom with The fastest fixedline network in Armenia award UCOM keeps on supporting the 42 YEREVAN programming school Recognizing the One-Year Anniversary of the Ceasefire Declaration Between Armenia and Azerbaijan They should not be positioned near civilian communities neither in Armenia nor in Artsakh Humanitarian and human rights protection needed following the 2020 outbreak of hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh Galaxy Group of Companies expands its activities in Belarus: a new TIME and Pandora store launched I think its a good moment to invest in Armenia. Head of Markets at Symbiotics Vincent Lehner Ameriabank has Raised USD 17.5M Tier 2 Capital UNIGHT TO UNITE. UCOM CELEBRATED ITS REBIRTH Ameriabank and HSBC Armenia to provide their customers access to each others ATMs without additional fees Google Ad Ameriabank. 62.5% Growth in Taxes YOY Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans have provided 300 million AMD to overcome the infertility in Armenia UCOM has officially launched the sale of IPHONE 13 Six servicemen were wounded by the attack of the Azerbaijani armed forces in Artsakh, two of them in critical condition S&P Improved the Outlook on Ameriabank to Positive Ararat Mirzoyan to visit to Minsk Foreign Minister of India visits the Memorial of Armenian Genocide 1217 new cases Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia Statement by the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group At UCOM only: Tv sets at 10% discount + 1 month free UMIX package + 4k tv channel Ameriabanks Special Offer for New Clients of Hrazdan Branch "Fall forward": Gurgen Khachatryan, the Co-Founder of the Galaxy Group of Companies, addressed a message to young people in Armenia Former Police Officer becomes candidate of MP (video) After 23 years of service in the police, Armen Khachatryan decided to replace the uniform with civilian clothes. The former deputy chief of the Traffic Police Department sees himself in politics. "On November 13, I resigned from the post of the RA Police Deputy Chief by the reason of being nominated for a deputy," Armen Khachatryan told "A1+." Colonel Khachatryan, who recently jointed the Civil Contract Party , wished to use the knowledge and experience gained in the police system in legislative functions. "I feel more comfortable and satisfied when I can fully utilize my knowledge and experience, and do not have any limitations. While being in the police, in the service, it already sets limits by the laws, and the limits of these powers in the National Assembly are quite wide, which was the main reason for becoming MP candidates." There was no any problem in the police, neither ideological, nor working, there were no problems in the party as well, even though his views on the speedometers and cameras did not coincide with the members of the party. The government headed by Nikol Pashinyan and personally Pashinyan find that Armenian citizens are not matters of fined, and speed cameras and cameras should not be increased. But Armen Khachatryan has been for them. Former Police Officer also participated in the preparation of the legislative package on the issue. "The essence of the package lies in the fact that safety is rising, the efficiency of administrative responsibility increases and the social burden decreases. That is, we do not fine, but we do not allow him to commit the offense," Khachatryan said. 116 million AMD assistance to minors with disabilities in Shirak Province from Mikayel Vardanyan Discussion on the topic IT infrastructure as the basis of the digital economy with the participation of the heads of telecommunication companies in Armenia Statement nn the ongoing Aggression by Azerbaijan against the Republic of Armenia "We condemn any attempts at borderisation, as observed since the incursion of Azerbaijani troops into Armenian territory on 12 May" Joint statement The United States is deeply concerned about reports of intensive fighting today between Armenia and Azerbaijan.ANTONY J. BLINKEN Statement of the MFA of Armenia Ookla has awarded Ucom with The fastest fixedline network in Armenia award UCOM keeps on supporting the 42 YEREVAN programming school Recognizing the One-Year Anniversary of the Ceasefire Declaration Between Armenia and Azerbaijan They should not be positioned near civilian communities neither in Armenia nor in Artsakh Humanitarian and human rights protection needed following the 2020 outbreak of hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh Galaxy Group of Companies expands its activities in Belarus: a new TIME and Pandora store launched I think its a good moment to invest in Armenia. Head of Markets at Symbiotics Vincent Lehner Ameriabank has Raised USD 17.5M Tier 2 Capital UNIGHT TO UNITE. UCOM CELEBRATED ITS REBIRTH Ameriabank and HSBC Armenia to provide their customers access to each others ATMs without additional fees Google Ad Ameriabank. 62.5% Growth in Taxes YOY Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans have provided 300 million AMD to overcome the infertility in Armenia UCOM has officially launched the sale of IPHONE 13 Six servicemen were wounded by the attack of the Azerbaijani armed forces in Artsakh, two of them in critical condition S&P Improved the Outlook on Ameriabank to Positive Ararat Mirzoyan to visit to Minsk Foreign Minister of India visits the Memorial of Armenian Genocide 1217 new cases Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia Statement by the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group At UCOM only: Tv sets at 10% discount + 1 month free UMIX package + 4k tv channel Ameriabanks Special Offer for New Clients of Hrazdan Branch "Fall forward": Gurgen Khachatryan, the Co-Founder of the Galaxy Group of Companies, addressed a message to young people in Armenia For Slovakia, the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is not an economic, but a political project, Slovakian President Andrej Kiska has said. "As for Nord Stream, Slovakia always emphasizes that Nord Stream 2 is not an economic, but a political project, and it is extremely important to understand when someone constantly repeats that this is only a business project. No, in no case, it is just a political project," Kiska told reporters in Kyiv on Friday after meeting with President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko. President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine has sent his greetings to the participants of the Sixth Assembly of Muslims of Ukraine, saying that the Muslim community has been actively involved in our country's political and cultural life and has made great efforts to resist the Russian aggression and liberate Crimea and the temporarily occupied territories in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. "Your meetings have always been a strong platform for an international and interconfessional dialogue and for determining strategic benchmarks for the future," a statement published on the presidential website on November 23 morning says. The president voiced the belief that Muslims in Ukraine will continue their course toward unity and concord in society. "The Muslim community of Ukraine has been an integral part of Ukrainian society. It has been actively involved in our country's political and cultural life, demonstrated patriotism, and together with the entire nation made great efforts to resist the Russian aggression and liberate Crimea and the temporarily occupied territories in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions," Poroshenko said. The president thanked the Muslims for their active civil stance and voiced the belief that "together we are an invincible force that can secure the prosperity of Ukraine among European nations." "I herewith wish all the organizers, participants, and guests of the Assembly to work fruitfully, stay healthy, be optimistic, and hope for peace," the statement reads. The Sixth Assembly of Muslims of Ukraine is taking place in Kyiv on November 23. Some 4,000 people are expected to attend the event. The assembly takes place every five years. Poroshenko approves composition of Ukraine's delegation for talks with Turkey about social security President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine has signed a decree to approve the composition of Ukraine's delegation to participate in talks with the Republic of Turkey about signing an agreement on social security between the two countries. A respective decree by the Ukrainian head of state, No 382/2018 of November 22, 2018, was published on the presidential website on November 22. In accordance with the decree, the Ukrainian delegation for the talks will be led by Oleksandr Churkin, Ukraine's Deputy Minister of Social Policy in charge of European Integration. The delegation also includes 14 representatives of other ministries and organizations. Ukrainian Defense Ministry administration to become civilian by end of year Civilians will take charge of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry by the end of this year, President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine has said. "Ukrainian Gen. of the Army Stepan Poltorak has become the first serviceman to surrender his rank and become a civilian minister. The entire administration of the Defense Ministry will do the same by the end of this year," Poroshenko told students at the National Trade and Economics University in Kyiv on Friday. The Defense Ministry will be headed by a civilian starting on January 1, 2019, in accordance with the Law on National Security. Poroshenko accepted Poltorak's resignation from military service on October 13. He continues to manage the Defense Ministry as a civilian. The president also told the students that wages of Ukrainian soldiers would increase on January 1, 2019. "Starting January 1, a soldier will be paid at least UAH 10,000, and UAH 21,000 on the front. This is a decent motivation and remuneration for a Ukrainian soldier's labor," Poroshenko said. The Verkhovna Rada's chairman Andriy Parubiy has said the Ukrainian parliament will consider laws on state language and decommunization by this year's close. "I believe we will be able to consider both the law on the state language and the one on decommunization before New Year," Parubiy told reporters in Kyiv on November 23. As earlier reported, President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine submitted a draft law (No 9310) on renaming the Dnipropetrovsk region into the Dnipro region to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. "The decommunization needs to be completed. There should be no place on Ukraine's map for Petrovsky [after which the region is still named now]. Not only was he one of the leaders of the Communist dictatorship, but he also was a co-organizer and executing authority of the Holodomor, genocide of the Ukrainian people," Poroshenko wrote on Facebook. Presidential adviser, director of the National Institute for Strategic Studies Rostyslav Pavlenko will take part in the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which will approve the text of tomos on granting autocephalous status to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has said. "On November 27-29, Rostyslav Pavlenko goes to Istanbul-Constantinople to take part in the historic Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, where the decision on the approval of tomos will be made. And in December we will assemble the Council," Poroshenko said during a meeting with students of the National Trade and Economic University in Kyiv on Friday. The International locomotive building conglomerate Skoda Transportation has opened the first official representative office in Ukraine in Dnipro, according to the website of Dnipro City Council. "The Dnipro residence will develop design projects for railway and public transport for the Czech company, as well as look for suppliers for production," the report says. Cooperation will also be facilitated by the presence in Dnipro of a network of manufacturers and repair enterprises of locomotive and heavy engineering. "Our goal is for Skoda to return to Ukraine. Dnipro is a non-random choice. The city has a great potential," Skoda Transportation Director for Human Resources Tesar Lumir said during the opening of the representative office. Skoda Transportation produces railway locomotives, subway cars, suburban electric trains, as well as trams, trolleybuses, buses, engines, traction equipment. The conglomerate is also engaged in the modernization of rail and public transport. The brand cooperates with fourteen countries of the world, including Poland, China, and the United States. Department for the Protection of National Statehood officials together with Ukraine's SBU Security Service in Sumy region have stopped the activities of a transnational criminal group that was engaged in the illegal transfer of people from the Middle East and Central Asia to the European Union. "Intelligence agents discovered that the criminal group, which included citizens of Ukraine and the countries of Central and South Asia, smuggled illegal migrants across the state border," the SBU's press service said, adding that the cost of "transit" ranged from EUR 3,000 to EUR 5,000 and clients included persons wanted for serious crimes. The SBU said businessmen also established a scheme for the illegal legalization of interested persons in Ukraine through the production of false documents. Militiamen detained members of a criminal group in Kyiv, Vinnytsia and Sumy regions during a regular attempt to move a group of illegal migrants across the state border. Law- enforcement officers discovered fake passports, equipment for their manufacture, money and other materials confirming illegal activities. Five organizers of the criminal scheme have been served with notices of suspicion of committing a crime under Part 3 of Article 332 of Ukraine's Criminal Code (Illegal transport of persons across the state border). The investigation continues. Yulia Tymoshenko, the leader of the party Batkivschyna, has called for comprehensive support of the Ukrainian language in all spheres of the country's life and promised to introduce "severe punishments" for vandalism of churches. "We will do everything we can to support the Ukrainian language in all spheres of our life, without exception. The Ukrainian language will finally affirm its absolute domination in Ukraine," Tymoshenko said at the forum "New Social Doctrine: New Opportunities for Everyone" in Kyiv on Friday. The creation of a fund to finance translations of the best Ukrainian books into foreign languages will be initiated, she said. Among other things, Tymoshenko said the first decree she will sign as president of Ukraine will be a decree on immediately conducting a census of the population. She also said the state "will do everything possible and impossible" to approve the Ukrainian Local Orthodox Church, "which we will not only create, but also protect using all accessible legal methods. We will envisage severe punishments for any vandalism, for calls for violence, we will introduce liability for denying our church. We will provide full-fledged support and reliable protection to our Ukrainian hierarchs, we will protect churches," Tymoshenko said. She also discussed the increase of wages in Ukraine. "I want to ensure that the average wage in Ukraine reaches the average wage level in a country that is located near us and where incomes have gradually gotten higher every year in the five years since the election of a new president. So that in five years we have the same average wage as Poland has now," Tymoshenko said. We view Putin's visit to Crimea as gross violation of intl law Poroshenko Ukraine condemns Crimea's visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin, regards it as a gross violation of international law, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has said. "Of course, we view the actions of the Russian president as a brutal violation of international law," Poroshenko told reporters in Kyiv on Friday after meeting with Slovakian President Andrej Kiska, commenting on the visit of the Russian president to Crimea on Friday. "Crimea will not become Russian because of these visits," he added. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) expects that an agreement to issue a loan of EUR 52 million to PJSC Ukrgazvydobuvannia could be signed by the end of February 2019, Deputy Director of the EBRD Representative Office in Ukraine Marina Petrov has said. "As the deal is with state guarantees, we hope that the Ministry of Finance will start to promote this deal soon. We, for our part, should be ready to sign it in January-February. Although this is a small deal, EUR 52 million, it is very important, because it focuses on measures to increase the efficiency of the company's production and the financing of equipment that helps rehabilitate the existing wells. There will also be co-financing from the European Investment Bank, which will be more focused on compressor stations," she said at the round table "Achievement of Gas Production Goals by 2020" in the profile parliamentary committee. Petrov also reported that at present the EBRD is considering another project for one of the private Ukrainian companies. At the same time, she said that the bank is negotiating and discussing the details of a possible deal due to which is not ready to disclose its details now. She also assured that the EBRD is ready for other larger gas projects in Ukraine. "But this requires holding auctions, allocating new sites - without this no investors will want to go to the country, respectively, there will be no new funds, and in such conditions it will be difficult to talk about increasing gas production," she concluded. A representative of the German Foreign Ministry has confirmed to Interfax that a Normandy Format meeting at the level of political directors will be held in Berlin on Monday. "We can confirm that the political directors of the Normandy Format countries will meet on Monday. At their talks, they will discuss the Minsk Process and a possible UN mission," the official said. The Normandy Four are Russia, Germany, France, and Ukraine. On November 9, 2018 in the international exhibition congress center of Kyiv Ukrainian House a second large-scale forum was held - Residential Development Forum 2018 (II ForumRED), at which professional development cases from more than 20 speakers were presented. The organizer of the forum was the developer communication platform @Red Community. Among the participating speakers: representatives of such companies as LUN, UKRBUD, Perfect Group, DIM Group, Alliance Group, Kiev Standard, Seven Hills Group, 4PS, Association of Financial Institutions, National Bank of Ukraine, Z-Capital, Globus Bank, Eclipse, SvitSoft, Adcore and others. The forum consisted of three main parts and two expert express panels, during which strategies for housing development were discussed. In particular, the development of the real estate segment in a saturated market, the financing of residential properties and financial instruments for developers, which strategies the companies of Kyiv, the Kyiv region and Ukraine will choose. Thus, a member of the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO), Olena Shulyak, in her report on whether residential real estate is alive, provided statistics according to which since 2000, 3.3% of housing in Ukraine has been built, and the industry share for 2017 is 2.3 % One of the main topics of the event was the existing instruments for financing of residential properties, their impact on sales and the buyers opportunity to purchase square meters. Among the discussed areas: credit programs and working with banks, assessment of the effectiveness of using the construction finance fund and AMC, tax nuances and possible changes in legislation, the impact of existing financial instruments on the development of the real estate market and the purchasing power of citizens, customer loyalty, and the potential of the rental housing market . Regarding the latter, expert representatives of companies such as COF, Alliance Group, Kiev Standard, Totum Law Firm, as well as the residential complex Boulevard of Fountains discussed rental strategies and the formation of a professional rental market. In particular, the CEO of Residential Development Solutions, Yaroslava Chapko, identified such problems of this segment: the lack of management companies and the unpredictability of tenants, the small interest of the latter in renting for long periods in the houses of the old foundation, the lack of practice in renting even though it is perfectly implemented abroad. The issues of innovative approaches in the implementation of facilities, research of the target audience, new trends and virtual technologies, marketing and digital strategies were also touched upon. Among the new products: a number of relevant tools for the buyer to choose housing based on quality indicators, virtual tours of apartments and local area from LUN, which were introduced by the co-founder of LUN Andrey Mima. The concept of electronic management of the real estate project from the Dutch company 4PS was also presented. Interfax conducted an educational program on cooperation with the media, and the SODA digital advertising group presented a vision of correct information work with a potential client through social networks. During the forum, both professional and informal communication was conducted among top managers, marketers and sales specialists of the residential real estate market and leading companies in marketing, advertising and PR. Also at the Residential Development Forum in the exhibition area were presented IT and other innovative sales solutions from such companies as Marketcall, Svitsoft, Smart business, Ringostat, Vrnet.io, Asset Management City Asset Management and OneBox CRM + ERP. Tetiana Shulga, CEO of RED Community, announced the holding of the next, third forum by RED Community in 2019, thereby confirming that it will be annual, and also shared some plans for the next year. In particular, new formats will be introduced on the basis of the community, such as specialized trainings for sales professionals, CEO consulting, a special program for participants from regions and a special program for personal participation. The forum was held with the support of the strategic partner - LUN, the general media partner - Interfax-Ukraine information agency, the regional media partner - KievVlast information and analytical online issue, the media partner - financial portal Minfin, the exclusive media partner - Profiles Magazine Deluxe; Partners of the express panels were the financial company Z-Capital and the law firm Totum. For more news on RED Community, follow the official FB page: https://www.facebook.com/ResidentialCommunity. The leaders of the professional rating The Best RED Professionals - the best in the residential development - were awarded in Kyiv On October 9, 2018 at the international congress center Ukrainian House in Kyiv at the end of the second large-scale forum - Residential Development Forum 2018 (II ForumRED) an awards ceremony - The Best Red Professionals was held. The event was organized by the developers communication platform @Red Community. Tatiana Shulga, CEO of RED Community, presented the winners in 7 nominations: - Marketing Team of the Year - KAN Development; - Marketing Director of the Year - Nazar Burda, Taryan Group; - Marketing Campaign of the Year - Taryan Group; - The best concept of launching the object / Opening of the year - KAN Development; - Communication strategy of the year - LinevichGroup; - Trendsetter - Taryan Group .; - Marketing digital agency of the year (residential real estate, primary market) - SvitSoft. Also, the organizers have held a voting among the participants of the RED Community platform to determine who will get the Grand Prix of the competition. According to the results, the title Company of the Year 2018 was received by Saga Development. II ForumRED 2018 was held with the support of the strategic partner - LUN, the general media partner - Interfax-Ukraine information agency, the regional media partner - information and analytical Internet resource KievVlast, the media partner - financial portal Minfin, the exclusive media partner - Profiles Magazine Deluxe; Partners of the express panels were the financial company Z-Capital and the law firm Totum. For more news on RED Community, follow the official FB page: https://www.facebook.com/ResidentialCommunity. A member of Irans powerful assembly of experts and conservative ayatollah Ahmad Khatami bemoaned thede-Islamization of Iran during his Friday Prayers sermon. According to Khatami it is the possible legalization of alcohol that would bring about the de-Islamized Iran. He argued, "Today there will be alcoholic drinks, tomorrow the headscarf for women will be abolished and then the day after tomorrow we will probably be having a referendum on whether the system should remain Islamic or not". Khatami who is known as a hardliner has in previous speeches threatened the destruction of Israel saying Iran is going to stand side by side the Lebanese Hezbollah until Israel is totally annihilated. Alcohol is banned in Iran but widely available through illegal dealers. Recently alcohol distributed through these dealers has caused scores of deaths and poisonings. No Iranian official or body has suggested that alcohol should be legalized. Katami was reacting to a column by notable reformist journalist Abas Abdi that highlighted deaths from bootleg alcohol and urged a change in policy. Khatami maintained that the three pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran: Islam, the republic and the Supreme Leader must remain intact. Khatami also asserted that "Islam is our life, so clerics like me will resist this de-Islamization with the last drop of our blood." KHUJAND, Tajikistan -- Six officers from a prison in Tajikistan that was the site of a deadly riot earlier this month have reportedly been arrested, sources say, amid questions in the West about whether the rule of law and prisoners' rights were upheld. Sources at the Sughd Regional Court told RFE/RL's Tajik Service on November 21 that a department chief at the prison in the northern city of Khujand, Farhod Sadirov, was among the arrested officers. A day earlier, court sources told RFE/RL that the warden of the prison, Faizullo Safarzod, was sent to pretrial detention for two months. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matters publicly. Tajik law enforcement sources, also speaking on condition of anonymity, told RFE/RL earlier that Safarzod was detained on November 15 and charged with negligence and abuse of power. According to the sources, Safarzod is accused of failing to inform Tajikistan's Penitentiary Service about the unrest in a timely manner. Almost two weeks after the violence, the Tajik government has issued no public statements on the incident, and Tajik authorities have not publicly confirmed the arrests. The extremist group Islamic State (IS) claimed the riot broke out after one of its "soldiers" attacked a prison guard. Government sources, also speaking on condition of anonymity, told RFE/RL on November 9 that suspected IS supporters convicted of religious extremism and terrorism were behind the unrest. Those statements could not be independently verified. The penitentiary -- high-security Prison No. 3/3 -- largely houses inmates convicted on charges related to terrorism, extremism, and other serious crimes. On November 20, U.S. Charge dAffaires Kevin Covert held talks with Tajik Foreign Ministry officials "to learn about the steps the Tajik government has taken to investigate alleged violations and to insist that the rule of law be upheld." Covert wrote on Facebook earlier on November 19 that "it is important for the [Tajik] government to conduct a thorough investigation, follow the rule of law, and protect the human rights of prisoners and their families." Two Syrian journalists critical both of the regime and Islamist militants have been killed in the province of Idlib, their radio station and a monitor said. Unknown assaillants drove up in a van and fired at Raed Fares and Hammoud al-Juneid in the town of Kafr Nabel on November 23, Radio Fresh said on its Facebook page. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, they both died shortly of their wounds. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. More than half of Idlib and the surrounding region is controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an alliance led by jihadists of Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate, while most of the remaining areas are held by pro-Turkey rebels. The Islamic State militants also have a strong presence in the region. Target killings and kidnappings are widespread in the area, with angry residents blaming all sides. Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said that the two journalists were famous for their criticism of rebels committing violations or arresting civilians. "Both have several times been detained by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham," he said. Fares founded Radio Fresh in 2013 to counter "fundamentalist narratives" in Idlib, he has said, after which he was repeatedly targeted by armed groups. Fares survived an earlier assassination attempt in 2014 when he was shot in the chest by armed men. His radio station was raided by militants and bombed by government warplanes. Radio Fresh provided news and information to Syria's northern provinces and it also provided training and jobs for hundreds of young activists and citizen journalists. In a June op-ed in The Washington Post, Fares wrote: "If it weren't for us and other independent voices, terrorists would be the only source of information about Syria locally and internationally. For that reason, the terrorist groups (and the regime) see us as a direct threat." Based on reporting by AP, AFP Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 Trend: UNEC implements dual degree diplomas and exchange programs on bachelor, master and MBA education with influential universities of the world. At the UNEC the dual degree diploma programes are being realized with the Montpellier University on the bachelors degree lvel of study, with the Lithuanian Mikolas Romeris University on the masters degree level of study, and on MBA program with UBIS (University of Business and International Studies) of Switzerland. At the same time, with the academic support of London School of Economics, UNEC joined the international programs of the London University. The students successfully completing the program can get the Bachelor's degree from the University of London and UNEC. UNEC expands the cooperation in this direction with other prestigious higher education institutions, as well. Thus, at the UNEC from 2019/2020 academic year, are expected to be implemented the dual degree diploma programs with the Lincoln University in the United States on the Bachelor and MBA programs, with the Moscow State University of Humanities and Economics in Russia on the Bachelors degree level of study, with Uludag University in Turkey on the masters degree level of study. The agreements on the dual degree diploma for MBA education have also been obtained with the ICD Paris Business School and Montpellier University of France. At present, within the framework of the dual degree diploma programs, Erasmus +, Mevlana programs and the bilateral cooperation agreements 47 UNEC students continue their education in the prestigious universities of Europe and Turkey. Under the Erasmus + exchange program funded by the European Union and within the framework of bilateral cooperation seven students are studying at Siegen University in Germany, two students at Montpellier University of France, and 4 students at the Lithuanian Mikolas Romeris University. And with the Mevlana Program, 24 UNEC students are taking part in the exchanges between Hacettepe, Uludag, Sakarya, Gazi, Yldz Technical, Ataturk, Selcuk and Mersin universities of Turkey. The number of students joining the UNEC dual degree diploma programs is increasing year by year. At present, 10 UNEC students are continuing their education in France within the framework of the dual degree diploma program with the prestigious Montpellier University. It should be noted that, in 2017/2018 academic year five UNEC students were the graduate of the dual degree program with the Montpellier University of France. The diplomas of the Montpellier University were presented to the first participants of the Dual degree Diploma Program on the Graduation Day of UNEC. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 Trend: A new print edition of the AZERNEWS online newspaper was released on November 23. The new edition includes articles Trilateral defense cooperation with Georgia, Turkey highlighted Iranian carmaker expands business in Azerbaijan, TANAP gas pipeline joins TAP at Turkish-Greek border, National film to be screened in Cannes etc. AZERNEWS is an associate member of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). The online newspaper is available at www.azernews.az. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 Trend: Baku is expecting the world community to have the final say on the peaceful settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijani Ambassador to Minsk Latif Gandilov said in an interview with RIA Novosti. In order to resolve this issue in the near future, the final say of the world community is necessary, said Gandilov. Here we often encounter double, triple standards. It is important to adhere to international law and justice. Answering the question when Minsk can host a conference where the Karabakh conflict will be finally settled, the ambassador said that Baku hopes for an early resolution of this issue. He said that the people of Azerbaijan have been waiting for a just, peaceful solution of this issue for 26 years, adding that Armenia isnt willing to resolve the conflict peacefully and protracts its settlement. Gandilov also noted the stance of Belarus on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. I am very pleased with the Azerbaijan-Belarus relations, he said. Belarus understands our problems. In particular, I am very satisfied with the objective position of Belarus on all important political issues, including the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Belarus has no double standards, this is very important; it always stands for justice, the diplomat stressed. He noted that Belarus has always been active in this issue. Even the name of the OSCE [Minsk] Group in the negotiation process on the conflicts settlement shows that Minsk is always in the spotlight of events, added Gandilov. Answering the question what Minsk can do for a peaceful settlement of the conflict, Gandilov noted that firm stance of Belarus on the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan says a lot. 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, Nov. 23 Trend: The UN may organize a live broadcast of the World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue, to be held in Baku in 2019, Azerbaijani Culture Minister Abulfas Garayev said. Garayev made the remarks at a meeting with UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications Alison Smale in New York, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Culture said in a message. Garayev appreciated that that the UN Global Communications Department organized the broadcast of the fourth World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue, held in 2017 in Baku, on TV and the online UN channel. He stressed that this has created a global information platform to convey the issues discussed at the forum to the whole world. In turn, Smale expressed gratification with the cooperation with Azerbaijan and interest in its continuation. Then the views on the organization of a live broadcast of the 5th World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue by the UN, to be held in 2019 in Baku. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 By Taleh Mursagulov - Trend: The Baku Forum showed real interest of the world community in intercultural dialogue as a topic and subject that helps to better understand the realities of the modern world, Azerbaijans Culture Minister Abulfas Garayev said in an interview with the UN News. In 2008, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev put forward the initiative to create a bridge for dialogue between different cultural societies, religions, civilizations, the minister said. This initiative found a response among organizations within the UN system: UNESCO, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and the Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC). We have established cooperation and the World Forum has already been held four times in Baku. Garayev noted that Azerbaijan began cooperation with the UNAOC since the establishment of this organization and is a member of the group of friends of the Alliance. Azerbaijan also provided periodic financial assistance for the implementation of Alliance projects, he said. However, partnership in holding the Baku World Forum of Intercultural Dialogue became the main and logical result of the cooperation, said Garayev. He noted that Azerbaijan as a country with traditions of tolerance, coexistence and joint development of layers within one society turned out to be a place where people from different cultural sectors of society come with pleasure and interest. We intend to continue our participation in the UNAOC, we announced about the preparation for the next Baku Forum and gave full information about the Baku Process, he said. A special think tank [project group] was created with a scientific base at Coventry University in the UK, where there is the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations (CTPSR), which took over the scientific development. This group includes representatives of all international organizations and the government of Azerbaijan, which have been together developing an agenda for two years, and thus each following forum becomes a step forward and gives impetus to the implementation of some new program, he noted. Garayev noted that the success of the Baku Forum is that each international organization has its own vision, which is united under the umbrella of interest in the contact of civilizations and cultures. Next year, on June 30-July 10, Baku will host a regular meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, he said. New proposals will be considered for inclusion in the World Heritage List. This is also a form of respect for cultures, forms of perception and understanding of the value of architectural, natural monuments - everything that we are rich in. There should be no division into nations, traditions, religions, and humanity is interested in preserving the most decent heritage so that our planet would have its own history. He noted that Azerbaijan is the place where respect for traditions is successfully combined with the opportunity to fulfill oneself in a new cultural space. If a state keeps traditions and gives an opportunity to develop and strive for progress to a new generation, then the state could find a synthesis of different views, and this is intercultural dialogue, he said. Intercultural dialogue is not necessarily a dialogue between different nations or religions, it is a dialogue between generations, worldviews. Garayev also said that all conditions have been created in Azerbaijan for the free exchange of information. There is an opportunity to freely express opinions online, said the minister. It stimulates both the creative process, the accelerated exchange of information between people and creative opportunities. Basically, this is a subject of interest of public organizations and independent creators. But we, as a state, do our best to help. Garayev noted that the Heydar Aliyev Foundation is very active in Azerbaijan, which promotes Azerbaijani culture in all its expressions - from traditional to megaprojects based on modern technologies. He added that there are departments in the government that are engaged in innovative programs and startups for young people, there is a public organization, the name of which can be translated from Azerbaijani as Create! (YARAT!), the purpose of which is to conduct educational programs for young people interested in contemporary art. This is a new form of culture, it is inevitable, because modern technologies have created conditions for self-expression in a wide variety of forms, the minister said. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @TalehMursagulov Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 Trend: The International Exhibitions Bureau will choose the city which will host the World Expo 2025 on Nov. 23. Voting will take place at the 164th General Assembly of the International Exhibitions Bureau in Paris. Three countries are candidates for hosting Expo 2025, namely, Azerbaijan - Baku, Japan - Osaka, the Russian Federation - Yekaterinburg. The winner will be determined by secret ballot. According to the International Exhibitions Bureaus regulations, the city with two thirds or more votes will be chosen. If none of the candidates is elected in the first round, the two cities with the majority of votes will pass to the second round, which will be decisive. Before the voting, the nominated cities will present their plans for hosting the exhibition to the members of the bureau. First, a delegation from Azerbaijan, then the Japanese and Russian delegations will deliver speeches. If Baku is chosen, then the World Expo 2025 will be held within six months from May 2- Nov. 2, 2025. It will be the first World Exhibition of the International Exhibitions Bureau to be organized in South Caucasus. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 Trend: The signed Azerbaijan-Turkmenistan documents show the practical significance of President Ilham Aliyevs visit to Turkmenistan, Deputy Head of the Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration Hikmet Hajiyev told Trend Nov. 23. He was commenting on the importance of the meetings held and documents signed during the official visit of the Azerbaijani president to Turkmenistan Nov. 21-22. Hajiyev noted that the expansion of international ties of Azerbaijan, the president's official and working visits to other countries, the development of mutually beneficial cooperation with other states, the country's receiving the foreign heads of state and government and other high-level officials are of particular importance. Before the visits of the head of state to other countries, a detailed and informative agenda is formed; the visits are of more productive nature, they serve to further deepening of cooperation in the economic, trade, humanitarian and other areas, Hajiyev said. Naturally, the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and issues of regional and international security are a priority in the president's agenda. Hajiyev noted that this week there were two official visits of the Azerbaijani president - to Belarus and to Turkmenistan. Azerbaijan has historical and traditionally friendly relations with both countries, said Hajiyev. The talks between President Ilham Aliyev and President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko that lasted more than two hours, the signing of about 10 documents, in particular the Joint Declaration, signed by the leaders of the two countries, opened up broad prospects for further deepening of strategic partnership. Hajiyev stressed that the Joint Declaration signed by the two heads of state noted the importance of resolving the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in accordance with the resolutions of the UN Security Council and on the basis of territorial integrity, sovereignty and inviolability of borders, which are generally accepted principles of international law. Turkmenistan expressed interest in expanding cooperation with Azerbaijan and in the presidents official visit there, said Hajiyev. Thus, before the presidents visit, the deputy prime minister and the foreign minister of Turkmenistan visited Azerbaijan. In 2017, the Declaration on Strategic Cooperation between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan was signed. The Declaration defines the development of ties between the two countries in line with strategic cooperation. The signing of 20 agreements and a joint statement by the two heads of state as part of the visit that took place Nov. 21-22 openly demonstrates the practical significance and results of the Azerbaijani presidents visit. The signed documents cover transportation and logistics, transit transportation and its management, long-term industrial economic cooperation, science and education, as well as the humanitarian sphere, said Hajiyev. He noted that the heads of state in a joint statement signed as part of the visit reaffirmed that the friendly countries of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan strongly support the territorial integrity and inviolability of internationally recognized borders of each other. The presidents also noted in the joint statement the need for the peaceful settlement of conflicts in accordance with the principles and norms of international law, based on the respect for and compliance with the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of internationally recognized borders, Hajiyev added. Hajiyev noted that multimodal transport systems, seaports, as well as road and transport infrastructure were created in Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. President Ilham Aliyevs visit to Turkmenistan and the documents signed during the visit gave a solid momentum to integration and harmonization of the transport systems of both countries, the creation of a legal framework for cooperation in transportation and other areas, Hajiyev added. Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan are making an important contribution to the development of the East-West Transport Corridor not only at the regional level, but at the level of the whole Eurasian continent. Details added (first version posted on 17:55) Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 Trend: The signed Azerbaijan-Turkmenistan documents show the practical significance of the visit by President Ilham Aliyev to Turkmenistan, Deputy Head of the Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration Hikmet Hajiyev told Trend Nov. 23. He was commenting on the importance of the meetings held and documents signed during the official visit of the Azerbaijani president to Turkmenistan Nov. 21-22. Hajiyev noted that the expansion of international ties of Azerbaijan, the president's official and working visits to other countries, the development of mutually beneficial cooperation with other states, the country's receiving the foreign heads of state and government and other high-level officials are of particular importance. Before the visits of the head of state to other countries a detailed and informative agenda is formed; the visits are of more productive nature, they serve to further deepening of cooperation in the economic, trade, humanitarian and other areas, Hajiyev said. Naturally, the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, issues of regional and international security are a priority in the president's agenda. Hajiyev noted that this week there were two official visits of the Azerbaijani president - to Belarus and to Turkmenistan. Azerbaijan has historical and traditionally friendly relations with both countries, said Hajiyev. The talks between President Ilham Aliyev and President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko that lasted more than two hours during the Azerbaijani presidents visit to Belarus, the signing of about 10 documents, in particular the Joint Declaration signed by the leaders of the two countries, opened up broad prospects for further deepening of strategic partnership. Hajiyev stressed that the Joint Declaration signed by the two heads of state noted the importance of resolving the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in accordance with the resolutions of the UN Security Council and on the basis of territorial integrity, sovereignty and inviolability of borders, which are generally accepted principles of international law. The Turkmen side expressed interest in expanding cooperation with Azerbaijan and in the Azerbaijani president's official visit, said Hajiyev. Thus, before Ilham Aliyevs visit, the deputy prime minister and the foreign minister of Turkmenistan visited Azerbaijan." "In 2017, the Declaration on Strategic Cooperation between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan was signed. The declaration defines the development of ties between the two countries in line with strategic cooperation. The signing of 20 agreements and a joint statement by the two heads of state as part of the visit that took place Nov. 21-22 openly demonstrates the practical significance and results of the Azerbaijani president's visit. The signed documents cover the transport and logistics, the transit transportation and its management, long-term industrial economic cooperation, science and education, as well as the humanitarian sphere, said Hajiyev. He noted that the heads of state in a joint statement signed as part of the visit reaffirmed that the friendly countries of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan strongly support the territorial integrity and inviolability of internationally recognized borders of each other. The presidents also noted in a joint statement the need for the peaceful settlement of conflicts in accordance with the principles and norms of international law based on the respect for and compliance with the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of internationally recognized borders, Hajiyev added. Details added (first version posted on 17:55) Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 Trend: The signed Azerbaijan-Turkmenistan documents show the practical significance of President Ilham Aliyevs visit to Turkmenistan, Deputy Head of the Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration Hikmet Hajiyev told Trend Nov. 23. He was commenting on the importance of the meetings held and documents signed during the official visit of the Azerbaijani president to Turkmenistan Nov. 21-22. Hajiyev noted that the expansion of international ties of Azerbaijan, the president's official and working visits to other countries, the development of mutually beneficial cooperation with other states, the country's receiving the foreign heads of state and government and other high-level officials are of particular importance. Before the visits of the head of state to other countries, a detailed and informative agenda is formed; the visits are of more productive nature, they serve to further deepening of cooperation in the economic, trade, humanitarian and other areas, Hajiyev said. Naturally, the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and issues of regional and international security are a priority in the president's agenda. Hajiyev noted that this week there were two official visits of the Azerbaijani president - to Belarus and to Turkmenistan. Azerbaijan has historical and traditionally friendly relations with both countries, said Hajiyev. The talks between President Ilham Aliyev and President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko that lasted more than two hours, the signing of about 10 documents, in particular the Joint Declaration, signed by the leaders of the two countries, opened up broad prospects for further deepening of strategic partnership. Hajiyev stressed that the Joint Declaration signed by the two heads of state noted the importance of resolving the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in accordance with the resolutions of the UN Security Council and on the basis of territorial integrity, sovereignty and inviolability of borders, which are generally accepted principles of international law. Turkmenistan expressed interest in expanding cooperation with Azerbaijan and in the presidents official visit there, said Hajiyev. Thus, before the presidents visit, the deputy prime minister and the foreign minister of Turkmenistan visited Azerbaijan. In 2017, the Declaration on Strategic Cooperation between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan was signed. The Declaration defines the development of ties between the two countries in line with strategic cooperation. The signing of 20 agreements and a joint statement by the two heads of state as part of the visit that took place Nov. 21-22 openly demonstrates the practical significance and results of the Azerbaijani presidents visit. The signed documents cover transportation and logistics, transit transportation and its management, long-term industrial economic cooperation, science and education, as well as the humanitarian sphere, said Hajiyev. He noted that the heads of state in a joint statement signed as part of the visit reaffirmed that the friendly countries of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan strongly support the territorial integrity and inviolability of internationally recognized borders of each other. The presidents also noted in the joint statement the need for the peaceful settlement of conflicts in accordance with the principles and norms of international law, based on the respect for and compliance with the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of internationally recognized borders, Hajiyev added. Hajiyev noted that multimodal transport systems, seaports, as well as road and transport infrastructure were created in Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. President Ilham Aliyevs visit to Turkmenistan and the documents signed during the visit gave a solid momentum to integration and harmonization of the transport systems of both countries, the creation of a legal framework for cooperation in transportation and other areas, Hajiyev added. Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan are making an important contribution to the development of the East-West Transport Corridor not only at the regional level, but at the level of the whole Eurasian continent. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 Trend: Today, most children are afraid to share about injustice, illegal conduct and violence faced in the families or at school and avoid speaking out the problems with their parents and relatives. The studies show that all such experiences prevent children from becoming mature and cause moral and psychological challenges. Children Hotline Service operating under the support of Azercell Telecom LLC carries out awareness-raising meetings at secondary schools for 2 years already with the view to eliminate the named problems, support children and assist their parents. In continuation of its awareness-raising activities in a number of schools of Baku, as well as the regions, the Service organized meetings for hundreds of children, parents and teachers in November. Participants of these meetings held in schools No 135, 24, 212, 45, 263, 83 and Goygol Children and Families Support Center were informed about principles and means of contact of Hotline Service, the criteria of psychological, social and legal aid. It was highlighted that, children may contact the Service in case of interpersonal relations, psychological support, miscommunication with family members, peers or school-mates, loneliness, fear about love, loss of relatives, psychological, physical and sexual violence, exam stress, escape from home, concern about future, early marriage, use of harmful substances, HIV/AIDS infection threat, as well as any kinds of illegality. At the end of the meeting, the informative leaflets of Hotline Service were distributed to the children. Azerbaijan Children Hotline Service established in 2010 in Baku with Azercells support, aims to carry children facing violence in the families, problems with age-mates and are in need of psychological and moral assistance, to help them in problem-solving and social integration. Notably, confidentiality is the vital principle of the Service which involves a group of qualified psychologists, lawyers and social workers. The appeals are referred to a related organization only upon necessity and consent by children or their parents. The leader of the mobile communication industry, the largest taxpayer and the biggest investor of the non-oil sector of Azerbaijan Azercell Telecom LLC was founded in 1996. With 48 percent share of Azerbaijans mobile telecom market Azercells network covers 80 percent of the territory (excluding 20 percent of the occupied territories) and 99,8 percent of population of the country. Currently, 4,5 million subscribers choose Azercell services. Azercell has pioneered an important number of innovations in Azerbaijan, including GSM technology, advance payment system, mobile internet services, Metro coverage, 24/7 call centre service, 7 day/week Front Office service, M2M services, one-stop-shopping approach Azercell Express offices, Online Customer Care and Social Media Customer Care services, Mobile Customer Care office, mobile e-signature service ASAN Imza etc. Azercell deployed first 4G LTE services in Azerbaijan in 2012. According to the results of mobile network quality surveys of Global Wireless Solutions company and international systems specialized in wireless coverage mapping such as Opensignal and Testmy.net, Azercells network demonstrated the best results among the mobile operators of Azerbaijan. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 By Rashid Shirinov Trend: In the first 9 months of 2018, the mutual trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan increased by 65.6 percent, Kazakh Ambassador to Azerbaijan Beibit Issabayev told Trend. "Azerbaijan's exports to Kazakhstan, amounting to almost $36 million, increased by 65.1 percent, while imports from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan rose by more than $133 million, showing an increase of 65.8 percent," Issabayev said. It is worth noting that in April last year, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan instructed the governments to double the volume of mutual trade by 2020. "I think that by the end of this year we will reach an increase of 85-90 percent and thus, without waiting for 2020, we will fulfill the instructions of our presidents," Issabayev said. The presidents of the two countries also identified the need to resume the supply of Kazakh grain to Azerbaijan. To fulfill this order, an appropriate working group was created between the ministries of agriculture, under which the parties develop practical mechanisms for increasing the export of Kazakh grain. "We already have some positive indicators in this matter. For the first 9 months of 2018, more than 200,000 tons of Kazakh grain were delivered to Azerbaijan against 76,500 tons in 2017, " Issabayev said. The ambassador added that along with the growth of grain exports, there is an increase in the supply of Kazakh rice by 3 times and lentils by 2 times in the volumes of 6,000 and 1,500 tons, respectively. This year, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan celebrated the 26th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations. Over these years, a fruitful political dialogue has been established and a strong treaty and legal basis has been formed, covering all areas of cooperation and numbering more than 60 documents. Currently, Baku and Astana are developing ties in trade and economic, cultural and humanitarian, scientific and technical spheres. The countries also actively cooperate within the framework of such international and regional organizations as the UN, OSCE, OIC, CICA, Turkic Council, CIS, etc. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @ShirinovRashid Card Beshara al-Rahi called for action to overcome the "painful" and divisive circumstances that prevent the formation of a new government. He urged leaders to take care of the "beloved homeland", enhance its role and preserve beauty. President Aoun said the country cannot waste time and must put in place crucial economic and tax reforms. Beirut (AsiaNews) - Lebanon "cannot die or fall" because it can count on the protection "of martyrs and saints" from its history and past; however, the country must overcome "painful circumstances" as soon as possible, said Card Beshara l-Rahi on the eve of the 75th anniversary of Independence, 22 November. For the Maronite Patriarch, those who have prevented the formation of a government "must become aware" of how important it is for his future. Since last May in fact, Lebanon has been without a strong, united government, able to deal with the many threats and challenges that stalk the country: economy, emigration, growing poverty and youth unemployment. The Lebanese Church has long warned about the seriousness of the situation, which has been exacerbated by the war in neighbouring Syria and the unprecedented humanitarian emergency triggered by it. Forming a government has been held back by domestic as well as foreign power struggles, including regional players like Saudi Arabia and Iran. The demand by six pro-Syrian Sunni MPs, backed by Hezbollah, for a cabinet post, has run up against the firm refusal of prime minister-designate Saad Hariri who doesnt see eye-to-eye with the Lebanese Shia party. "We must put a positive turn to a negative reality", said the Maronite Patriarch who hopes that "the Lord will inspire leaders to overcome obstacles" so that "Lebanon may return to a normal life". In thanking Lebanese president Michel Aoun, the prime minister and the countrys top political and religious leaders, the cardinal added that "it is our duty" to take care "of our beloved homeland" appreciate "its value, importance and role" and preserve its "beauty and the uniqueness and unity of its people." Meanwhile, Independence was celebrated with various events, meetings and open-air gatherings. President Aoun, Prime Minister Hariri and Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri l, representing the countrys three main confessions, Christian-Maronite, Sunni and Shia, led the official celebrations. The president laid a wreath at the bottom of the monument of the Unknown Soldier. Addressing the crowd, Aoun noted that the country can no longer afford to be without a functioning government because of mounting political, social and economic challenges. Indeed, one of the challenges the new government will face is tax reform, which is crucial for the country's future. Lebanon, the president said, cannot waste time. Growth must be a priority to ensure a future for its citizens, and personal selfishness should be put aside. Tehran, Iran, Nov. 23 Trend: The lack of SWIFT will hurt all the economic sectors in Iran, therefore it is a serious issue, former minister of commerce, Hassan Abdei Jafari told Trend. "Today, monetary transactions are carried out through SWIFT and the Western economy has set up this system to have secure banking transactions and for providing letters of credit (LCs)," he said, referring to the role of SWIFT in global trade. "In the interconnected world economy, the focus is to use an international banking system. SWIFT is one of those systems and if it is banned to work with us, many of our major banks will not be able to transfer money," he added. "Of course, in the past, we were also subject to this limitation, and we had to use indirect ways to transfer money that was more costly. During that period, since we could not use the LCs, our importers faced problems, such as lack of commitment and low quality goods. This issue occurs in transactions with countries like Brazil," he noted. "Non-issuance of LCs has two major losses: first, we had to pay 90 percent of the money first, which had a high risk, and second, the high costs, especially when suppliers were aware of our limitations and tried to raise the prices," Abdei Jafari said referring to importance of LCs during the Iran-Iraq war. "Therefore, if we buy outside SWIFT or LC framework, according to estimations, the prices will rise 25 percent. It must be accepted that cutting off SWIFT is not a joke, and in some ways the private sector, buyers and sellers will all be harmed," he said. "However, by barter transactions, like receiving goods in exchange for oil, we can continue to trade, and it seems that the Europeans also want this system, which means a special account for the governments oil exports will be opened and this account will be used to purchase goods," Abdei Jafari noted. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 By Rashid Shirinov Trend: Belarus and Kazakhstan intend to raise their bilateral trade turnover to about $1 billion in 2018, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Kazakhstan to Belarus Yermukhamet Yertysbayev told journalists, according to BELTA. "Presidents of Belarus and Kazakhstan have set the goal of raising the bilateral trade turnover to $1 billion. I think we will be able to get close to the figure this year. It is a very important indicator because the bigger is the trade turnover, the bigger are revenues of the state budget," he said. The ambassador reminded that Kazakhstan and Belarus signed an agreement on social and economic cooperation until 2026. Speaking about trade turnover between the CIS countries as a whole, Yertysbayev noted that it rose by 25 percent in 2017, to $164 billion. "These are quite impressive figures. Most importantly, growth dynamics continues this year. It is worth noting that Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia account for the lion's share of the figure," said the ambassador. Trade turnover between Kazakhstan and Belarus in 2017 increased by 56.4 percent year-on-year and amounted to $604.1 million. In particular, exports from Kazakhstan to Belarus increased twice to $95.5 million, while imports rose by 1.5 times, amounting to $508.6 million. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @ShirinovRashid Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 By Elnur Baghishov - Trend: Iran uses about 100,000 tons of bolted joints per year, 70,000 tons of which are imported and only 30,000 tons are domestically manufactured, the head of Iran's bolted joint traders' association, Nuraddin Mehri said in an interview with Iran's Young Journalists Club website. Mehri noted that presently, about 1,000 bolted joint workshops operate in Tehran and the workshops provide 4,000 people with job. Bolted joint production is one of the cornerstones of Iran's industry, Mehri said adding that there are over 7,000 types bolted joints. This industry can meet 70 percent of the country's demand, but presently, despite the potential, production doesn't meet the demand, Mehri said. One of the problems in this industry is lack of raw materials, he added. Currently, the raw material imports have decreased a great deal and this decrease led to price rise in the local markets, Mehri said. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 By Rashid Shirinov Trend: Trends exclusive interview with Kazakh Ambassador to Azerbaijan Beibit Issabayev. Mutual trade between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan In the first 9 months of 2018, the mutual trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan increased by 65.6 percent, the Kazakh ambassador said. "Azerbaijan's exports to Kazakhstan, amounting to almost $36 million, increased by 65.1 percent, while imports from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan rose by more than $133 million, showing an increase of 65.8 percent," Issabayev said. The diplomat reminded that in April last year, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan instructed the governments to double the volume of mutual trade by 2020. "I think that by the end of this year we will reach an increase of 85-90 percent and thus, without waiting for 2020, we will fulfill the instructions of our presidents," Issabayev said. The presidents of the two countries also identified the need to resume the supply of Kazakh grain to Azerbaijan. To fulfill this order, an appropriate working group was created between the ministries of agriculture, under which the parties develop practical mechanisms for increasing the export of Kazakh grain. "We already have some positive indicators in this matter. For the first 9 months of 2018, more than 200,000 tons of Kazakh grain were delivered to Azerbaijan against 76,500 tons in 2017," Issabayev said. The ambassador added that along with the growth of grain exports, there is an increase in the supply of Kazakh rice by 3 times and lentils by 2 times in the volumes of 6,000 and 1,500 tons, respectively. Trade contacts between the two countries Issabayev also noted that KazakhExport, an export insurance company, plans to open a representative office in Baku to promote Kazakh products in the Azerbaijani market. "In turn, we expect the opening of Azerbaijani trading houses in the cities of Kazakhstan," he said. The ambassador added that the implementation of these plans will further strengthen trade contacts and establish direct relations between the business communities of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Cargo traffic between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan The diplomat noted that in January-October 2018, the volume of cargo transportation between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan amounted to 1.55 million tons. "Imports to Kazakhstan from Azerbaijan and through the country increased by 72,300 tons or 18 percent due to the growth in transportation of chemicals and soda, meat and by-products, and ferrous metals. At the same time, exports to Azerbaijan during this period increased by 196,700 tons or 150 percent due to the growth in grain transportation," Issabayev said. The ambassador also added that transit traffic through the territory of Kazakhstan increased by 29,900 tons or 85 percent due to the growth of food freight to the countries of Central Asia. "Due to the fact that Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are on the route of the Great Silk Road, transit is one of the most important promising and priority components of cooperation between our countries," Issabayev said. In 2017 the volume of cargo traffic between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan amounted to 2.1 million tons, which is an increase of 1.03 million tons or 96 percent compared to 2016. Cooperation in transport and logistics The ambassador said that thanks to the work done in Kazakhstan to develop the transport and logistics infrastructure, the total capacity of the ports of Kazakhstans logistics hub in the Caspian Sea now exceeds 26 million tons of cargo per year. Issabayev noted that Aktau sea port has been expanded: now its capacity is about 20 million tons of cargo per year, and the construction of a ferry complex in Kuryk port with a capacity of more than 7 million tons per year has recently been completed. "In addition, in recent years, Kazakhstan has done tremendous work on the construction and renovation of railways from the border of China to the Caspian Sea with a total length of more than 2,000 kilometers," the ambassador said. Moreover, the construction of the Western Europe-Western China transcontinental six-lane highway with a length of more than 2,700 kilometers was completed last year. The diplomat also noted the work carried out in Azerbaijan to modernize the transport and logistics infrastructure. "The ongoing modernization of the new Baku International Sea Trade Port will undoubtedly increase transit between our countries," Issabayev said. The ambassador added that the commissioning of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway last year significantly expanded the transit transport corridor connecting Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. "Given the significant growth of transit traffic in recent years, I consider it justified and timely to create the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR) in 2014," Issabayev said. The diplomat noted that in the framework of TITR, an effective tariff policy has been built and unified cargo transportation technologies have been introduced over the past years. "In general, a solid base in the transit and transport sector was formed between our countries, providing Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan the opportunity to become a transit hub for cargo transportation between Europe and Asia," Issabayev added. Cultural and humanitarian ties The ambassador also said that work on a book about Huseyn Javid, the famous Azerbaijani poet and playwright of the early 20th century, is at the stage of completion in Kazakhstan. "This book will be one of the first to be published in the Kazakh Latin script. In early December it will be presented in Kazakhstan, and then we will hold a presentation of this book in Baku," Issabayev said. In addition, in December it is planned to present a book dedicated to the movement of the Kazakh Alash party in Azerbaijani language. Issabayev noted that along with close political and economic cooperation, the cultural and humanitarian dialogue between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan has always held a special place in the bilateral relations of the two states. The Azerbaijani Diaspora in Kazakhstan numbering 130,000 people is the golden bridge between our countries. Azerbaijanis are an active part of Kazakhstan's society, which is widely represented in the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan," the ambassador stressed. The diplomat added that next year the embassy plans to hold Days of Kazakhstan Culture in Azerbaijan. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @ShirinovRashid Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 By Fikret Dolukhanov Trend: Uzbekistan and the EU will begin negotiations to conclude an agreement on expanded partnership and cooperation, which will replace the partnership and cooperation agreement in force since July 1, 1999, the Foreign Ministry of Uzbekistan said in statement. The statement referred to the results of the 14th meeting of the Uzbekistan-EU Cooperation Council in Brussels on Nov. 22 with the participation of the Uzbek delegation led by Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov and the EU delegation led by Federal Minister for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs of Austria and OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Karin Kneissl. The sides exchanged views on key issues on the bilateral agenda, and discussed priorities for further development of cooperation in political, trade, economic, cultural, humanitarian and other fields. The European side confirmed its readiness to assist Uzbekistan in joining the World Trade Organization. The parties also discussed certain international and regional issues. In particular, the parties agreed to actively cooperate in the promotion of a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan. Following the meeting, Abdulaziz Kamilov and Karin Kneissl held a press conference. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @FDolukhanov Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 By Fikret Dolukhanov Trend: Over the past two years, the state has allocated nearly $1 billion to the authorized capital of banks, the press service of the Uzbek president said. On Nov. 22, a videoconference was held under the chairmanship of Shavkat Mirziyoyev on issues of reforming the banking system and strengthening the financial stability of banks, enhancing the role of commercial banks in regional development and entrepreneurship. The president, in particular, seriously criticized the country's commercial banks for increasing the authorized capital mainly at the expense of the state share, rather than attracting private sector funds. Despite the measures taken, the share of funds of individuals and legal entities has sharply decreased in the authorized capital of almost all banks with state shares, including Kishlok Qurilish Bank, O'zsanoatqurilishbank (Uzpromstroybank), Asaka Bank, Agrobank, Microcreditbank, Aloqabank and Ipoteka Bank, which indicates the need to actively attract private sector funds in the authorized capital of banks. Mirziyoev drew attention to the insufficient work of the supervisory boards of commercial banks in determining directions of strategic development and improving operations. In this regard, the head of state instructed the Central Bank and the Ministry of Economy to critically examine the activities of the supervisory boards of banks under the jurisdiction of the state, review their structures and increase their efficiency, as well as to attract highly qualified specialists from abroad to improve the activities of financial institutions. The president also noted the need for a significant increase in the volume of microcredits for the development of entrepreneurship, the provision of employment, and the simplification of the procedure for their allocation. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @FDolukhanov Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 By Sara Israfilbayova - Trend: The World Bank (WB) considers the sectors of justice, health, solid waste management, higher education and agriculture as the most important to focus on in Azerbaijan, Head of the WB Baku Office Naveed Naqvi told Trend. Naqvi said that now, there are ongoing projects in several sectors. "We have recently completed a solid waste management project, which included the support for development of the national solid waste management," he underlined. Naqvi went on to say that there are several sectors, which the bank can potentially support, adding that the priorities depend on the governments interests. He recalled that recently, the Azerbaijani president has approved the National Higher Education Strategy, which included innovation and partnership with the commercial entities, as well as universities outside the country. "These are the initiatives the bank supports in other countries, and I think we can bring value to Azerbaijan as well," Naqvi stressed. He noted that agriculture risk assessment study, several education studies have been already completed, further saying that in the health sector the bank helped to carry out the assessment in Mingachevir and Yevlakh. "I know that there is a plan to reform the health sector. But right now, there are no projects, because it requires the government to make a decision whether to borrow from the bank. We are open to cooperate in a range of fields," Naqvi pointed out. Speaking of the level of cooperation between the bank and Azerbaijan, Naqvi stressed it is satisfactory. He reminded that the WB has been cooperating with Azerbaijan for over 25 years and during this period has implemented more than 50 projects, in the amount of over $3 billion. "Currently, seven projects, worth about $1.5 billion, are being implemented," the head of the WB Baku office pointed out. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 By Taleh Mursagulov Trend: The volume of non-oil transit from Turkmenistan through Azerbaijan reached 190,000 tons in January-September 2018, Azerbaijani Minister of Economy Shahin Mustafayev said. Mustafayev made the remarks at a press-conference in Baku on Nov. 23 dedicated to the transport and transit potential of Azerbaijan. This does not reflect the total transit potential and this figure will grow several times in the future, the minister added. Mustafayev added that the visa regime for cargo carriers between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan will be simplified. He added that this is envisaged by the agreement signed during Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyevs visit to Turkmenistan on Nov. 21-22. During the reporting period, the volume of transit cargo transportation through the transport corridors passing through Azerbaijan reached 10 million tons, the minister added. Thus, 8.4 million tons of that volume accounted for the transit of oil and oil products and about two million tons - transit of non-oil products. The volume of transit cargo transportation through Azerbaijan increased by 23 percent over the first nine months of 2018, he said. Cargo transportation via the North-South Transport Corridor increased by hundred times. According to the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee, the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan amounted to $125.5 million in January-October 2018. Over $21 million accounted for the export of Azerbaijani products to this country. ---- Follow the author on Twitter: @TalehMursagulov Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 By Fikret Dolukhanov Trend: Uzbekistan and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) discussed prospects for further cooperation in priority areas, including in the development of regional trade and transport connectivity, the Foreign Trade Ministry of Uzbekistan said in a statement. Discussions were held at a meeting of the Uzbek delegation headed by Deputy Prime Minister Nodir Otajonov with OECD General Secretary Jose Angel Gurria in the framework of the OECD Eurasia Week, held in Paris on Nov. 22. The parties also discussed the progress and further implementation of a large multi-year project Enhancing Trade and Transport Connectivity in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) on transport policy and infrastructure issues in cooperation with the International Transport Forum (ITF). At the conclusion of the talks, the parties agreed to organize the visit of the OECD Secretary General to Uzbekistan in 2019. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @FDolukhanov Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 By Leman Zeynalova - Trend: The presentation of the Baku Expo 2025 project was held during the 164th General Assembly of the International Exhibitions Bureau on Nov. 23. The presentation was organized by Baku citizen Vafa Musayeva. She said it is the first Expo to be held in the South Caucasus. It is the first Expo to be held by a developing nation, a newly independent state that is already an expert at hosting high-profile international events, she said. Musayeva stressed that the events theme Developing Human Capital, Building a Better Future speaks to the world. This is a theme that opens possibilities for new skills and knowledge development, she said. A perfect government-owned, financially guaranteed site with great rail, road, air and sea connectivity will be allotted for the Expo park. The Expo will accelerate the transformation of the city, the country and the region, Musayeva said. It will provide economic and development opportunities for the country, the region and, internationally, for all the nations, for all the BIE members. It will leave a legacy of a wonderful green oasis. This is your chance to hear the growing voice of young developing nations, to recognize their unique importance to the global debate. The Baku Expo 2025 belongs to all of you, she said. We want to work with everyone here. It will be hosted by an international team. It will be a truly global event. The International Exhibitions Bureau will choose the city to host the Expo 2025 on Nov. 23. Voting will take place at the 164th BIE General Assembly in Paris. Three countries are candidates for hosting the Expo 2025: Azerbaijan Baku, Japan Osaka, the Russian Federation Yekaterinburg. The winner will be determined by secret ballot. According to the International Exhibitions Bureaus regulations, the city with two thirds or more votes will be chosen. If none of the candidates is elected in the first round, the two cities with the majority of votes will pass to the second round, which will be decisive. Before the voting, the nominated cities present their plans for hosting the exhibition to the members of the bureau. If Baku is chosen, the World Expo 2025 will be held for six months from May 2 to Nov. 2, 2025. It will be the first World Exhibition of the International Exhibitions Bureau organized in the South Caucasus. Azerbaijan, which has been for 18 years actively participating with its pavilions in six Expos of the International Exhibitions Bureau and having won three awards for the high quality of the pavilions, demonstrates a strong commitment to the Expo movement. The Expo exhibitions, officially known as international registered exhibitions, are organized every five years. The themes of these exhibitions are designed to find answers to the current universal challenges. The next Expo will be held in Dubai, UAE, from Oct. 20, 2020 to Apr. 10, 2021. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn Details added (first version posted on 16:10) Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 By Taleh Mursagulov Trend: The volume of non-oil transit from Turkmenistan through Azerbaijan reached 190,000 tons in January-September 2018, Azerbaijani Minister of Economy Shahin Mustafayev said. Mustafayev made the remarks at a press-conference in Baku on Nov. 23 dedicated to the transport and transit potential of Azerbaijan. This does not reflect the total transit potential and this figure will grow several times in the future, the minister added. Mustafayev added that the visa regime for cargo carriers between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan will be simplified. He added that this is envisaged by the agreement signed during Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyevs visit to Turkmenistan on Nov. 21-22. During the reporting period, the volume of transit cargo transportation through the transport corridors passing through Azerbaijan reached 10 million tons, the minister added. Thus, 8.4 million tons of that volume accounted for the transit of oil and oil products and about two million tons - transit of non-oil products. The volume of transit cargo transportation through Azerbaijan increased by 23 percent over the first nine months of 2018, he said. Cargo transportation via the North-South Transport Corridor increased by hundred times. According to the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee, the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan amounted to $125.5 million in January-October 2018. Over $21 million accounted for the export of Azerbaijani products to this country. ---- Follow the author on Twitter: @TalehMursagulov Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 By Taleh Mursagulov Trend: Azerbaijan and China will discuss expansion of cooperation in the field of transport and transit, Azerbaijani Economy Minister Shahin Mustafayev said Nov. 23 at a press conference on the countrys transport and transit potential. He said that this issue will be discussed as part of the expected visit of the Chinese delegation to Azerbaijan. The minister noted that China is showing interest in the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route in terms of container traffic. Azerbaijan plays an important role in the transportation of goods from China to Europe and in the opposite direction, and the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route passing through Azerbaijan corresponds to Chinas One Belt, One Road Initiative, the minister said. Mustafayev noted that One Belt, One Road Initiative is also important for Azerbaijan from the point of view of implementing the countrys transit potential. In addition, Mustafayev said that in 2015, as part of the visit of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to China, a memorandum of understanding was signed on the joint promotion of the Silk Road Economic Belt. Azerbaijan is one of the first countries that supported this strategy [of China], he said. Azerbaijan and China will discuss expansion of cooperation in the field of transport and transit within the expected visit of the Chinese delegation, he noted. Azerbaijans trade with China amounted to $984.5 million in January-October 2018, according to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee. At the same time, Azerbaijans exports to China amounted to $35.8 million, while imports stood at $948.7 million. ---- Follow the author on Twitter: @TalehMursagulov Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 23 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: The volume of investments in projects in Turkmenistan amounted to $7 billion, Vice-President of Petrochina and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of CNPC International Wang Zhongcai said at the International Oil and Gas Forum held on Nov. 20 in Ashgabat, a source close to the organization of the forum said. Wang Zhongcai noted that at the end of 2018, the volume of Turkmen gas imports will amount to 35 billion cubic meters, which will account to 10 percent of the demand for this fuel in the Chinese economy. CNPC participates in the development of the deposits Bagtyyarlyk and Galkynysh in Turkmenistan. The projects are aimed at supplying Turkmen gas to China. At present, three branches of the pipeline on the route Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan-China (branches "A", "B", "C") have been built and functioning. They are to supply 40 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year altogether. The agreement on the construction of the fourth branch "D" of the gas pipeline "Turkmenistan-China" via Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan was signed in September 2013. It was also reported that the additional branch's rate of flow would be 25 billion cubic meters of gas. According to the plans the annual volume of Turkmen natural gas exported to China can reach 65 billion cubic meters in 2021. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 23 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: The Global Pipe Company (Saudi-German joint venture) has started to supply steel pipes for construction and installation work on the Turkmen section of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, the Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper reported Nov. 20. The pipes are transported from the port of Dammam through the Caspian Sea to the Turkmenbashi International Seaport. Financing of this contract in the amount of $40 million is carried out by the Saudi Fund for Development. So far, 175 wagons have arrived at the Ymambaba railway station in the Mary region of Turkmenistan, and about 4,956 meters of pipes have already been unloaded. Thus, in two stages, over 35,000 meters of steel pipes will be delivered to Turkmenistan. TAPI entered the active phase in 2010 after signing of an intergovernmental agreement in Ashgabat. In 2013, governments of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India determined their state-owned gas companies to promote and invest in the TAPI project. The total length of the pipeline, with a capacity of 33 billion cubic meters of gas per year will be 1,840 kilometers. The fuel will be supplied from the Galkynysh gas field in Turkmenistan, the second largest in the world. The length of the Turkmen section will be 205 kilometers. Then, this energy bridge will pass through the Afghan cities of Herat and Kandahar (816 kilometers), through the cities of Quetta and Multan across Pakistani territory (819 kilometers), and reach the settlement of Fazilka in India. Details added (first version posted at 14:46). Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 Trend: Natig Abbasov has been dismissed as Deputy Energy Minister of Azerbaijan, the Energy Ministry of Azerbaijan said in a message on Nov. 23. The relevant order was signed by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev on Nov. 20, 2018, the message said. Abbasov had served as deputy energy minister since 2009. Born in 1968 in Baku, Abbasov is a graduate of the Azerbaijan Construction Engineering Institute. In 1991-1999, Abbasov worked as the head of the production department of a small enterprise Karvan. Then, he held various management positions at Azerigaz between 1999 and 2006. In 2006-2007, he served as the executive director of Karvan Tikinti Qurasdirma LLC, and from 2007 to 2009 he served as deputy chief state inspector and deputy head of the State Gas Supervision Department under the Ministry of Industry and Energy of Azerbaijan. The seventh meeting of the EU-Tajikistan Cooperation Council, chaired by Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl, whose country currently holds the rotating European Union presidency, took place in Brussels on November 22, news.tj reports. The two sides reportedly discussed state and prospects of further expansion of political, economic and security cooperation between Tajikistan and the European Union. They also discussed issues related to bilateral cooperation in the frameworks of international organizations. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin noted that the European Union is actively participating in economic development programs in Tajikistan and noted that Tajikistan is interested in further expansion of cooperation with the European Union. Ms. Karin Kneissl, for her part, pointed to the necessity of creating favorable investment climate. Within the framework of our cooperation the multi-annual indicative program 2014-2020 Tajikistan-EU has been signed and this document referred to development programs with an emphasis on investments. But an appropriate favorable climate is needed for this. We discussed this issue today and me as representative of the European Union received quite a detailed information, Ms. Kneissl said. Meanwhile, the European Council website notes that the European Union shares the goal of the Tajik government to establish conditions of political stability and security. We also reiterated our willingness to support Tajikistan in its reform process and its efforts to improve the socio-economic conditions of the citizens of Tajikistan. The Cooperation Council reportedly reviewed the positive development of bilateral relations, including political, judiciary and economic reforms, the rule of law, trade, investment and energy relations, and international issues. The Cooperation Council also discussed questions of good governance and strengthening civil society as well as measures to improve the business climate. The EU reiterated the importance of a stability-oriented macroeconomic policy and a further progress in public finance management. Tajikistan expressed its interest in opening negotiations on a new bilateral agreement with the EU. Human rights were also discussed, including Tajikistan's efforts on preventing domestic violence. The EU confirmed its continued support to Tajikistan in its reform process, and in its endeavors to improve the socio-economic conditions of the population, as well to fight corruption. The EU welcomed the beginning of operations of the first unit of the Roghun hydro power plant. Tajikistan expressed appreciation for the consultations on the envisaged EU Central Asia Strategy and on the implementation of the EU Connectivity Strategy. The Cooperation Council welcomed the encouraging perspectives for further cross-border cooperation in the region and beyond. Tajikistans efforts towards the stabilization of Afghanistan were particularly highlighted, in view of the Geneva's Ministerial Conference on Afghanistan (November 27-28). The Cooperation Council also exchanged views on other current political and security issues. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 23 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: The Turkmen delegation will take part in the EU-Central Asia foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Nov. 23, the Turkmen government said in a message. This will be a key event among negotiations, meetings and other events dedicated to the elaboration of a new EU strategy for the region uniting Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the message said. The EU strives for long-term relations for the sake of sustainable socio-economic development, stability and security, EU Special Representative for Central Asia Peter Burian told reporters. Burian appreciated the interaction of the Central Asian countries in resolving the situation in Afghanistan. In particular, he stressed Turkmenistans real contribution to the social and economic revival of Afghanistan, its involvement in regional integration processes. The EU-Central Asia foreign ministers meeting focuses on education, legislation, transport and energy, water resources and the environment, including climate change, border management and the fight against drug trafficking and extremism. The key topics at the EU-Central Asia ministerial meeting to be held in Brussels will be the search for the ways to strengthen the EUs interaction with the Central Asian region and the new EU strategy in this regard, to be presented in spring 2019. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 Trend: The 23rd International Conference Oil and Gas of Turkmenistan 2018, which was held in Ashgabat on November 20-21, has become another important step forward in strengthening economic and trade relations between Turkmenistan and its international partners. Over 330 leading industry experts from 42 countries of the world, heads and representatives of 161 top oil and gas companies, major world international organizations and financial institutions took part in the conference. Among them: Petronas, Dragon Oil, CNPC International, British Petroleum, Hyundai Engineering Co. Ltd, ARETI International Group, Shell, Total, Credit Suisse, EBRD, ADB, TATNEFT, Exxon Mobil, Schlumberger, KPMG, Eni, Gap Insaat, LUKOIL, Roxar, National Maritime Shipping Company "Kazmortransflot" LLP, Haldor Topsoe, LLC, Valvitalia SpA, Coral Energy and many others. Petronas, Dragon Oil, British Petroleum, Shell, Buried Hill Energy, CNPC, Hyundai, Total, SUN Group, LG International, ARETI, Eni, ILF Consulting Engineers, Thales Alenia Space became OGT-2018 Sponsors. A significant part of the presentations at the Oil and Gas of Turkmenistan 2018 conference was dedicated to the analysis of various segments of Turkmenistans oil and gas industry, plans for cooperation in various areas and projects that could be implemented. Each delegate presented an exclusive report on the main trends in the global energy market, prospects for the expansion of international cooperation, priorities and forecasts for the advancement of the gas and chemical industry, as well as analysis of the market for oil refinery products, directions for the production of environmentally friendly fuels and prospects for the development of the green economy. In addition, the investment climate in the oil and gas industry of Turkmenistan and the development of innovative technologies for hydrocarbons exploration and extraction were discussed. The discussion session on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline (TAPI) attracted particular attention. Representatives of the companies involved in the project: TAPI Pipeline Company Limited, Allen & Overy, ILF Consulting Engineers, Portland, as well as the financial advisor - the State Bank for Foreign Economic Affairs of Turkmenistan provided information on the TAPI progress, status and prospects to the parties concerned. Moreover, specialists from leading Turkmen and foreign companies examined the impact of innovations on the entire oil and gas industry and the need to apply them in the realities of modern business. During the event, business meetings of representatives of foreign companies with heads of the oil and gas complex of the country were held. Facts: Turkmenistan ranks 4th in the world and 2nd in the CIS (after Russia) in terms of natural gas reserves. The Galkynysh deposit is one of the largest fields in the world. According to the latest data, total natural gas reserves of this field together with the Yashlar deposit is currently estimated at 26.2 trillion m3 of natural gas, and together with the reserves of the newly discovered field Garakel, being a part of this block of fields - up to 27.4 trillion m3. The availability of huge natural gas reserves allowed Turkmenistan to put forward new challenges for the countrys industrialization, the accelerated development of the economy through the use of modern equipment and latest technologies, the establishment of innovative production structures, and the deepening of the country's integration into the world economic system through increased international cooperation and boosted investment activity. Tehran, Iran, Nov. 23 Trend: The EU envoy to Russia has reassured Iranian Ambassador Mehdi Sanaei over implementation of measures that would result in a financial transaction system for Iran. Markus Ederer, ambassador of the European Union to the Russian Federation, stated that due to the re-imposed US sanctions against Iran, a new cooperation system will be implemented, IRNA reported. The EU is moving ahead with Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) as an alternative to SWIFT and facilitates transactions with Iran as a means of rescuing the nuclear deal. The counterparts discussed the Iran-EU relations alongside implementation of a new payment system to transfer money, cooperation within the JCPOA (nuclear deal), the US sanctions, regional events and the upcoming JCPOA foreign ministers meeting. "The European Union has criticized the US unilateral approach and its withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action," Ederer said. The United States withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran Deal, in May. The Trump administration has recently re-imposed sanctions against the country's banking and oil sectors alongside other areas. France, Russia, China and Germany have remained supportive of the nuclear deal and aim to create a new system to bypass the sanctions. Yemens Houthi rebels have agreed to hold discussions aimed at providing to the United Nations the main role in the country's port of Hodeidah, UN Special Envoy for Yemen said on Friday, Sputnik reported. "I had the privilege of the meeting yesterday in Sanaa with the Ansar Allah leadership," UN Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths said in a statement, adding that among other things, the issue how the United Nations could contribute to keeping the peace in Hodeidah has been addressed. He further noted that the sides have agreed that "the United Nations should now pursue actively and urgently detailed negotiations for a leading UN role in the Port and more broadly." Griffiths explained that providing the United Nations such a role will save the vital humanitarian channel for Yemen that starts in the port of Hodeidah. "We hope that it will also contribute to international efforts to increase the capacity and effectiveness of port operations," the special envoy said. On Wednesday, US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said that Hodeidah must be turned over to a neutral party in order to accelerate the distribution of aid in Yemen and prevent the port from being used to smuggle weapons and contraband. Also on Wednesday, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis told reporters that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have ceased offensive operations around Hodeidah. Mattis also said that peace talks aimed at resolving Yemens crisis are expected to take place in Sweden in early December. The United Nations has been trying to revive peace talks between the Houthi rebels and the Saudi-backed government in Yemen. A UN plan to organize talks in Geneva in September was abandoned after the Houthis said they were prevented from leaving the country. One person was killed and 11 others were injured during an armed attack at the Yunnan technical college in the southwestern Chinese province of the same name on Friday, local authorities said, Sputnik reported. According to the city administration, two teachers and 10 students were injured as a result of the attack, while one of the students later succumbed to his injuries at a hospital. The police have already detained a suspect a 20-year-old student of the same college. It is not the first reported case of a knife attack in China's educational facilities. Last month, a 39-year-old woman injured 14 children in a knife attack at a Chinese preschool. Spain will proceed with its promise to vote down the provisional UK-EU agreement on the UK withdrawal from the bloc at the upcoming meeting of EU27 leaders unless Madrid's interests are taken into account in the document, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Friday, Sputnik reported. "After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away. My Government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit," Sanchez wrote on Twitter. Madrid has been threatening to veto the deal unless it is amended to incorporate provisions for direct UK-Spanish talks on the issue of the disputed Gibraltar Peninsula. On Wednesday, Sanchez held talks with UK Prime Minister Theresa May, after which she expressed confidence that the Brexit deal would be endorsed at the Sunday meeting. Gibraltar, which is claimed by Spain, is a British Overseas Territory. At the 2016 referendum, it overwhelmingly voted to stay in the European Union, however, it will have to leave the bloc together with the United Kingdom in March 2019. Despite Madrid's opposition to the Brexit deal, the draft political declaration on the future relations of the United Kingdom and the European Union after Brexit was agreed at the level of negotiators and in general at the political level on Thursday. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said Thursday his government will ask EU finance chiefs to give it more time for the budgetary economic incentive to take effect on the economy, Sputnik reported. He again refused to change the budget plan for 2019 to comply with EU rules on deficit, saying Italy will soon send a letter to the European Commission explaining the reasoning behind its big-spending policy. "We will explain in detail what we want to achieve with this maneuver to speed up investment and revise some measures in parliament that will increase its positive effect on growth," Conte said. Speaking in the lower house of Italys parliament, the prime minister said that if the Commission launches its excessive debt procedure against Italy it will ask for a "much longer period of time." "We will need this time to allow for this economic maneuver to produce effect on growth and reduce the state debt," he explained. Italys debt load is estimated at 131 percent of its economic output. The EUs executive body has told Rome to be more prudent about spending next year to prevent excessive deficit. It may now face fines for violating EUs stringent fiscal rules. Chinese President Xi Jinping will travel to Spain next Wednesday for an official visit expected to focus on trade and tourism. On Tuesday, trade ministers will meet representatives of major companies including Spanish banks Santander (SAN.MC) and BBVA (BBVA.MC), Commercial Bank of China, Spains Telefonica (TEF.MC), oil company Repsol (REP.MC), China National Building Material Group, China Energy Engineering (3996.HK) and Huawei Technologies [HWT.UL]. Philippe Le Corre, a China specialist and senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, said Spain lagged its neighbor Portugal in attracting Chinese investment and is keen to get more. He noted that China Ocean Shipping Companys 51 percent stake in Spains Noatum Port Holdings, which gives it control over the major harbours of Valencia, Bilbao and Barcelona, meant Spain is definitely part of the maritime silk road. China has courted southern and eastern European states as countries such as Germany tend to be more critical on human rights and trade issues, Beijing-based diplomats say. Neither Spain nor Portugal have signed a letter backed by at least 15 western ambassadors seeking an audience with the top official in Chinas restive Xinjiang region to discuss rights concerns, something diplomats see as an apparent sign of their reluctance to confront China on contentious issues. Spain has a chronic trade deficit with China, according to Spains Institute of Foreign Trade, but in 2017 exports jumped 28 percent to around 6.25 billion euros. The Kingdom of Denmark has reviewed its asylum system and for the first time awarded Georgia the status of Safe Country of Origin, meaning Georgia is now regarded as a safe country and meets top international standards of law and judicial requirements, Agenda.ge reports. The decision was made by the Danish Immigration Service, the National Police and Refugee Council, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia reports. The decision once again emphasises the positive aspects in terms of human rights and security, economic developments and political stability in Georgia which is also supported by our partners, Stated the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia on its official Facebook page. The decision was made after Minister Davit Zalkalianis visit to Denmark it went into effect on 21 November 2018. Israel presents great opportunities for learning and further collaboration for Denmarks academic institutions and companies, Danish Higher Education and Science Minister Tommy Ahlers told during a four-day visit to the Jewish state this week, The Jerusalem Post reports. Ahlers, accompanied by seven Danish university presidents, met representatives from Israeli academia, start-ups and incubators, as well as the Innovation Authority, Council for Higher Education and the Science and Technology Ministry. Israel is further ahead than Denmark in making sure that research carried out at universities actually serves as a foundation for start-ups being built, Ahlers said, praising Israeli success in the field of technology transfer. That is one dimension wed love to learn from Israel. While proud of the high level of Danish research, the businessman-turned-politician said that Denmark could still learn from its Israeli research counterparts. You have a few more Nobel laureates coming out of Israel than we do in Denmark, he added. Increased collaboration between Denmark and Israel could benefit from European Union funding. Israel is a full partner in Horizon 2020, the EUs research and innovation program, which provides a possible funding mechanism for Danish and Israeli research teams should they work together. Creating such partnerships, Ahlers said, comes down to personal relations fostered by forums and opportunities for Danish researchers to meet Israeli researchers. Even though we are two very different countries, both Denmark and Israel are built on strong values and on democratic values, Ahlers said. We can do quite a few things together. You have a long tradition in humanities and in technology, and so do we, and we want to strengthen that even further. In 2016, Denmark opened its seventh foreign innovation center in Tel Aviv. The center has a dual purpose, both to establish partnerships with Israeli companies and to generate collaboration in research. Unlike Denmarks other innovation centers located in major global cities including Shanghai, Munich and New Delhi Tel Aviv does not provide a local market on the same scale. That is why the Tel Aviv center is a bit special, Ahlers said. Israel is a country only slightly bigger than Denmark. The Tel Aviv center focuses on establishing innovation and research. It is not an extension of a chamber of commerce. Ahlers emphasized three different fields in Denmark that have the potential to interest Israeli companies looking for partners: agriculture, life sciences and health data. There is now a Danish chief executive of Teva, one of the biggest life science companies, which may even lead to closer ties between our life science industries, including in the field of research, said Ahlers. According to the latest OECD numbers, Denmark is number one by quite a margin in terms of investments in public medical science research relative to GDP. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday named Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir as the next deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces in one of his first acts since he also took on the mantle of defense minister, The Times of Israel reports. Prime Minister and Defense Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today approved the recommendation of the incoming Chief of Staff Gen. Aviv Kochavi and appointed Gen. Eyal Zamir as the deputy chief of staff of the IDF, the army said in a statement. The appointment comes just weeks after Kochavi was chosen for the top military job by former defense minister Avigdor Liberman, who resigned last week in opposition to a ceasefire with the Hamas terror group in Gaza. Zamir had also been a candidate for the top position and was thought to be Netanyahus preferred candidate. Zamir served until recently as head of the Southern Command, overseeing the construction of a massive underground barrier around the Gaza Strip to thwart terror groups border-crossing attack tunnels. Before that, he served as military secretary to Netanyahu. On Tuesday, a vetting committee approved Kochavis candidacy for the position of IDF chief of staff, paving the way for him to step into the role at the beginning of next year. A final vote to approve Kochavi to take over as the 22nd commander of the Israel Defense Forces is scheduled to be brought before the cabinet on Sunday, November 25, according to Netanyahus office. Earlier Thursday, Netanyahu held his first meeting with the IDFs General Staff since taking over the defense portfolio. We have a shared mission to safeguard the security of Israel on all fronts, Netanyahu told the top brass. On the first front, Gaza, we are ready to act and do whatever it takes to protect the residents of the Gaza border communities and the south, Netanyahu said. Netanyahu faced widespread criticism, particularly from residents of the south, over the recent Egyptian-brokered ceasefire, which they say has left Hamas poised to renew attacks at will. According to the military, over 460 rockets and mortar shells were fired at southern Israel in the span of 48 hours last week more than twice the rate at which they were launched during the 2014 war and the largest-ever number of projectiles fired in one day. The Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted over 100 of them. Most of the rest landed in open fields, but dozens landed inside southern Israeli cities and towns, killing a Palestinian man in Ashkelon, injuring dozens, and causing significant property damage. In response to the rocket and mortar attacks, the Israeli military said it targeted approximately 160 sites in the Gaza Strip connected to the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups, including four facilities that the army designated as key strategic assets. The flareup ended when Israel and Hamas acquiesced to the Egypt-brokered truce. Netanyahu also referred to the second front in West Bank, where he said that the IDF and Shin Bet had foiled more than 500 terror attacks. With regard to the third front, the north, Syria and Lebanon, Netanyahu said Israel continued to work to prevent the military entrenchment of Iran in Syria and the precision missile project of Hezbollah in Lebanon. African countries are missing out on a boom in Asian tourism, mainly from China, and must ease visa and entry requirements to tap into a historic shift generating billions of dollars in revenue, government officials and industry leaders said, Reuters reforms. Over 97 million Chinese traveled abroad last year, according to research group Euromonitor, and as household incomes increase that number is on track to balloon to 259 million in 2030. That would see China surpass the United States as the top origin nation for international travelers. Yet only a fraction of Chinese travelers currently visit Africa. We got just under 100,000 tourists from China last year, South African Tourism Minister Derek Hanekom told Reuters on the sidelines of a tourism conference in Stellenbosch, South Africa on Thursday. Thats not great. But the great thing is that the growth potential is huge. Tourism represents one of the fastest growing sectors in Africa, contributing nearly $178 billion last year, equivalent to 8.1 percent of GDP, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council. North African countries have already begun to lift visa requirements for Chinese tourists, and the impact has been swift and striking. According to travel sector-focused business intelligence firm Forward Keys, when Morocco did away with visas for Chinese travelers in 2016, Chinese arrivals skyrocketed 440 percent. Tunisia followed suit the next year and arrivals increased 214 percent. The Indian Ocean island resorts of Mauritius and Seychelles also allow visa-free entry for Chinese tourists. But all the countries on the continent south of the Sahara still require visas, and just a handful grant them on arrival. In South Africa - the continents top travel destination - the sector employs around 700,000 people and international visitors spent some 127 billion rand ($9.22 billion) last year. Though President Cyril Ramaphosa has made tourism a pillar of his economic revival plan, industry insiders say the government is not doing enough to court the Asian market. We need to up our game in China. Imagine if we could get 1 million Chinese tourists. Imaging the jobs that would create. Same for India, said Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa, CEO of the Tourism Business Council of South Africa. Sector analysts say that visa requirements, which often require Asian nationals to travel to embassies and apply in person, are a major obstacle. The huge opportunity for growth is to the east - India and China. Thats where its the most restrictive from a visa point of view. If you can alleviate that then youll absolutely see growth, said Velma Corcoran, South Africa manager for Airbnb. Olivier Ponti, a vice-president with Forward Keys, said the visa requirements were a lost opportunity. As long as Africa does not manage to position itself successfully in this market, it will lose business, said There is some initial progress. Angola simplified its visa process for Chinese citizens in January, and Ethiopia allowed them to apply for e-visas in May. South Africa is also looking to ease requirements, potentially exempting Chinese travelers who are already in possession of a U.S. or European Schengen zone visa. Its a no-brainer. Make it easier for people to come to the country and the response is quick and the response is quite dramatic, Hanekom said. We have to do it. Moscow continues to maintain dialogue with Washington on the implementation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) and answered all questions posed by the American side, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters on Friday, TASS reports. "We have continued dialogue with the US on the INF Treaty in specialized formats," he said. "Currently there is no reason to say that we have not answered some American questions [on the INF Treaty]. However, there is no specific schedule as to when, where and who answers questions, and what questions are answered." Ryabkov added that, unlike Washington, Moscow was interested in keeping up the dialogue on the issue. "The United States, accusing us of violating the treaty, draw the conclusion that it was no longer of any value to it. However, we, while putting forward much more substantial claims against Washington, do not do anything like that," he said. "We continue to be confident that this treaty is of great value for European, global and our own security." According to Ryabkov, Moscow has not yet received any formal notification on Washingtons withdrawal from the treaty. "So far, all that we heard is just statements on the intention to take this step. Of course, there is an obvious difference between intentions and specific steps," he concluded. US President Donald Trump said on October 20 that his country would quit the INF Treaty because Russia was allegedly in breach of that agreement. The US accused Russia of violating the agreement for the first time in July 2014. Later on, Washington repeated these claims more than once, while Moscow rejected them, likewise accusing the US of violating the treaty. The INF Treaty was signed between the Soviet Union and the United States on December 8, 1987 in Washington, DC. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23 By Rufiz Hafizoglu Trend: The Armenian trucks were not transshipped through the seaport in Turkeys Trabzon province, director general of the Trabzon seaport Muzaffer Ermish said on Nov. 23. He added that the management of the port consistently adheres to Turkeys policy concerning the relations with Armenia. "Armenia must withdraw its armed forces from the occupied Azerbaijani territories for the Armenian trucks to be transshipped and borders to be opened with this country," Ermish said. Earlier, some Turkish media outlets reported that the borders with Armenia have been allegedly opened and Armenian goods are exported to European countries through the Trabzon port. Turkey closed its borders with Armenia in response to the occupation of Azerbaijani lands in 1993. 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: @rhafizoglu Afghanistan has a better chance of finding peace than it has for many years, with more coordination in international peace efforts and willingness to include all parties, the top U.N. humanitarian official in the country said on Friday, Reuters reports. Taliban leaders met U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad at their political headquarters in Qatar last week for the second time in the past month, and President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the United States was in very strong peace negotiations. The Taliban, who are waging a war to oust the Western-backed Afghan government and expel foreign forces from Afghanistan, have launched a series of high-profile attacks against Afghan security forces in recent weeks. There are new-found opportunities in Afghanistan and there are very well founded hopes for peace, U.N. resident coordinator Toby Lanzer told reporters in Geneva. It sounds like a paradox but there are better opportunities today than there have been in many, many, many years for Afghanistan to be at peace with itself and with its key neighbors. He declined to go into detail, but said discussions would go on in the coming days, weeks and months. What I can tell you is there is more coordination amongst the international community than weve witnessed in recent times. And there is more openness in certain sectors of the international community to make sure that everyone is part of the conversation. And those are two very important changes. The turning point came in February when the Afghan government said it was ready for talks without preconditions, and since then there had been a slow but steady outreach to parties with a stake in what was going on in Afghanistan, as well as to the Taliban, he said. But after 40 years of instability, tremendous progress would not come within months. And I think that while this happens there will be spoilers, and there will people who want to derail things, he said, adding that the Islamic State armed group had exerted itself more in 2018 than in 2017 and would have to be dealt with. To share with friends and brethren The Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ (the Everlasting Gospel), and to prepare a people to stand when He returns to redeem His remnant. Also, to share relevant information of current events, and to show how they relate to prophecy; By means of articles, editorials, opinions, scripture readings, and poetry. Disclaimer Endrtimes does not necessarily endorse or agree with every opinion expressed in every article/video posted on this site. The information provided here is done so for personal edification; It's up to the reader to separate truth from error, and to examine everything (like the Bereans) from a Biblical perspective. Let the Holy Scriptures be you guide! - - - FAIR USE NOTICE: These pages/videos may contain copyrighted () material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available to advance understanding of ecological, POLITICAL, HUMAN RIGHTS, economic, DEMOCRACY, scientific, MORAL, ETHICAL, and SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior general interest in receiving similar information for research and educational purposes. KYODO NEWS - Nov 24, 2018 - 11:44 | All, World The Japanese city of Osaka was selected Friday to host the World Exposition in 2025, beating Ekaterinburg in Russia and the Azerbaijani capital Baku, as it pledged to focus on designing a future society with the help of health and medical technologies. It will be the second time that Osaka Prefecture, in western Japan, hosts the event. The 1970 World Expo was held there and attended by around 64 million people, the second most in history after the Shanghai Expo in 2010. (Osaka Gov. Ichiro Matsui (2nd from L) celebrates in Paris) Osaka beat Ekaterinburg in the final run-off with 92 votes from member countries of expo's governing body, the Bureau International des Expositions, against the Russian city's 61. In the first round, Osaka obtained 85 votes while Ekaterinburg and Baku won 48 and 23 votes, respectively. "We'll shock the world (through the event)," Osaka Gov. Ichiro Matsui said in Paris, where the BIE was holding a general meeting. "We'll make a new start from here." Under the theme "Designing Future Society for Our Lives," Osaka aims to spur a global effort to achieve sustainable societies. (People celebrate in Osaka after the city was picked to host the 2025 World Expo) Osaka hopes to bring people and ideas together in the pursuit of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals -- 17 objectives to be achieved by 2030, including no poverty, zero hunger, gender equality, sustainable cities and communities, and climate action. "We'll strive to make the expo a success. There is a big responsibility because this is everyone's expo," Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko, who joined the Japanese delegation in Paris, told reporters. In Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he is "very delighted" at the selection, saying in a statement, "The hosting of the expo will be a golden opportunity to transmit Japan's appeal to the world." He also expressed confidence that the expo will contribute to revitalizing Japan's regional economies as more tourists are expected to visit other parts of the country in addition to Osaka. Japan is expecting 28 million visitors to the expo, scheduled between May 3 and Nov. 3, 2025, and estimates that the event will help boost the local economy by 2 trillion yen ($18 billion) and underpin the country's growth after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Ekaterinburg, located near the Ural mountains and Russia's fourth-largest city, based its bid on the idea of future technological innovation as a catalyst for improved living conditions. Baku, sitting on the Caspian Sea in oil-rich Azerbaijan, offered as the theme of its proposal the talent, vitality and achievement of humanity. Neither Azerbaijan nor Russia has hosted an expo before. Known officially as International Registered Exhibitions, expos are held every five years, their themes based on the great challenges of the time. The French government had sought to host the 2025 exposition in Paris, but withdrew its candidacy earlier this year, citing financial concerns. Japan most recently hosted the event in 2005 in Aichi Prefecture, a vibrant area of central Honshu where the city of Nagoya is located and Toyota Motor Corp. is headquartered. The next expo will take place in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, in 2020, while the most recent one was held in Milan, Italy, in 2015. Earlier Friday, the three candidates made their final presentations at the general meeting. Japan's Seko somewhat nervously took the stage and extended an invitation to visit Osaka, from which he hails, before the "Pokemon" character Pikachu introduced a short video showing the planned site for the 2025 expo on the man-made island of Yumeshima in Osaka Bay. KYODO NEWS - Nov 23, 2018 - 09:43 | All, Japan Excavation work at Japan's largest mounded tomb has revealed that one of its surrounding greenbelts -- and not just the tomb itself -- was paved by many stones, signaling the massive manpower required to build it, experts said Thursday. The findings shed light as to the structure of the grave of Emperor Nintoku in Osaka Prefecture, which largely remains a mystery because the Imperial Household Agency has restricted access to the site in an effort to ensure "peace and sanctity." The tomb, also called Daisen Kofun and built in the fifth century, consists of a keyhole-shaped mound, alternately surrounded by three moats and two greenbelts, or dikes. From October, the agency has worked with the local government to study three locations in the inner dike as part of efforts to find ways to preserve the tomb. The Daisen Kofun is known as one of the three largest mounded tombs in the world, together with the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor in China and the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. Japan is seeking to register the Daisen Kofun and nearby tombs as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site next year. Mounded tombs are usually covered with stones to avoid collapsing. But the latest survey found that all three locations at the Daisen Kofun also had the stone layer, indicating that the tomb's inner dike, which has a total area of 65,000 square meters, was fully paved. "This is overwhelmingly unique," said Kazuo Ichinose, an archaeology professor at Kyoto Tachibana University, as he visited the excavation site that was shown to researchers and the press for the first time Thursday. Ichinose said he estimated the mounded tomb to have been covered by about 50 million stones. "But if a stone pavement also existed in the dikes, the time and effort devoted to collect the stones and carry them must have been immense," he said. The remains of five cylindrical earthenware objects, placed in a line, were also uncovered at the site. Katsuhisa Takahashi, a professor at Hanazono University, said the stone pavement functioned to "keep the area clean." "Surrounded by clay objects and white stones, we can imagine the inner dike having a sacred image like a shrine," he said. Some other researchers who visited the tomb in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, called for carrying on and expanding the investigation, as well as opening the site to the public. However, she intends to continue her protest -- in a new form -- until action was taken against those 'who did the injustice'. Lahore: In another awful case of enmity from across the border, Indias arc rival Pakistan has once again stopped Indian High Commission officials from meeting Indian pilgrims visiting the Gurdwara Sacha Sauda in Farooqabad close to Lahore. The incident came to light a day after India decided to construct and expand the Kartarpur corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district along the India-Pakistan International Border. Today the Sikh community observes the 550th birth anniversary Sri Guru Nanak Dev and at Nankana Sahib and Gurdwara Sacha Sauda, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officials were posing as Sikhs restricted the entry of Indian diplomats from Islamabad, led by Ranjit Singh and Sunil Kumar. Worth mention here the officials were stopped from entering the Gurdwara and a group of ISI-sponsored Sikhs walked the diplomats out of the Gurudwara sites and all of them were also reportedly insulted outside the sacred place. In a viral video, the Indian diplomat, who himself is a Sikh, stated that There are several gurdwaras in India and other parts of the world, but there are no limitations anywhere. He added that we have witnessed this for the first time that someone is being stopped from entering Gurus House. This is a clear violation of the sanctity of Gurdwara. Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt will be seen oN Big screen together in Ayan Mukerji's Brahmastra. The film hits the theatres next year on Christmas weekend as KJO announced. Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt have come together for the very first time in Ayan Mukerji's directorial Brahmastra. The film also stars superstar Amitabh Bachchan in the key role. All the actors have been shooting for Brahmastra from last one year and they kick started their first schedule last year in Bulgaria. For unversed all crew finished their Bulgaria schedule this year in September. The Brahmastra team has been at present shooting for the film in Mumbai. Presently, only Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt are shooting for this fantasy-adventure movie in filmcity Mumbai. Earlier a few pictures and videos of the duo from the sets were seen. Today some new photos of Ranbir and Alia as they were shooting for the film is snapped. Both the actors and lovebirds are dressed in black and staring on a bridge. It seems like Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt are shooting for some action scenes in this particular shot. Check out these pictures here : Reportedly, Apple AAPL may offer subsidies to major Japanese carriers that are contemplating iPhone XR price cut. Per the Wall Street Journal, as stated by MacRumors, the price cut on iPhone XR device, which costs $750, could come as early as next week. Apples rare move reflects sluggish demand for iPhone XR model in Japan, which is a huge market for the companys products. Reportedly, older models iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus are still quite popular in the country. This has probably overshadowed iPhone XR sales. Nonetheless, the price cut reflects Apples inability to convince existing users to buy new models. This doesnt offer a rosy picture to the investors. The company is also rumored to restart iPhone X production for specific markets. This again reflects dwindling demand for the companys new models. Sluggish New iPhone Demand to Hurt Sales Shares have nosedived more than 20% following Apples announcement that it would no longer provide details about the number of devices it sells, or even how that breaks down between iPhones, iPads, Macs, etc. Apple has returned 1.1%, underperforming the S&P 500 Composites rally of 1.7% in the past year. Reportedly, Apple has now lowered production orders for all the three models it had released in September. According to the Wall Street Journal, production orders for iPhone XR have been cut twice, since its release in October this year. Sluggish demand for iPhone coupled with Apples decision to introduce more models has made it difficult for the company to predict the number of components and phones needed to be produced. Apples soft sales forecast of $89-$93 billion for first-quarter fiscal 2019 reflects weak iPhone unit shipment in the holiday season. The company has been relying on higher average selling price (ASP) to uplift top-line growth. However, sluggish sales of flagship iPhone for a prolonged period can compel the company lower prices that will ultimately hurt profitability. Suppliers Slashing Forecast iPhones sluggish demand can be attributed to saturated developed markets, weak demand for very high end devices in developing markets (like India) and longer replacement cycles. Moreover, stronger dollar is making Apple products more expensive internationally. Story continues Apple Inc. Price and Consensus Apple Inc. Price and Consensus | Apple Inc. Quote The sluggish demand for iPhone negatively impacted Apple suppliers like Lumentum Holdings LITE, Qorvo QRVO, Japan Display and British chipmaker IQE. Lumentum, which supplies 3D chips used in FaceID architecture, recently lowered its revenue guidance by 17.4% at mid-point levels from $405-$430 million to $335-$355 million, cautioning investors that one of its biggest clients (which could be Apple) have recently reduced the scope of its orders. Per Bloomberg, Foxconn is planning to cut expenses by 6 billion Yuan in its iPhone business primarily due to lackluster demand. Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., is the biggest assembler of iPhones. The company also plans to eliminate about 10% of non-technical staff, according to an internal memo. Zacks Rank & A Key Pick Apple currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Intel INTC is a stock worth considering in the broader Computer & Technology sector as it flaunts a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. Expected long-term earnings growth rate for Intel currently stands at 8.4%. Will You Make a Fortune on the Shift to Electric Cars? Here's another stock idea to consider. Much like petroleum 150 years ago, lithium power may soon shake the world, creating millionaires and reshaping geo-politics. Soon electric vehicles (EVs) may be cheaper than gas guzzlers. Some are already reaching 265 miles on a single charge. With battery prices plummeting and charging stations set to multiply, one company stands out as the #1 stock to buy according to Zacks research. It's not the one you think. See This Ticker Free >> 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 Qorvo, Inc. (QRVO) : Free Stock Analysis Report Apple Inc. (AAPL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Lumentum Holdings Inc. (LITE) : Free Stock Analysis Report Intel Corporation (INTC) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. By Josh Horwitz and Adam Jourdan HONG KONG/SHANGHAI, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Meituan Dianping's share price plunged on Friday after the Chinese online food delivery-to-ticketing firm reported a far wider quarterly operating loss amid a costly battle with rivals including Alibaba-backed Ele.me. The firm, which operates a "super app" of services and is backed by tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd, saw its stock fall as much as 14.4 percent and was heading for its worst trading day since raising $4.2 billion in a September IPO. The stock was at HK$54.40 in late morning trade, down 11 percent, compared with a 0.4 percent decline in the benchmark Hang Seng Index. The drop, which chopped off more than $4 billion from the Meituan Dianping's market valuation, underscores the challenges of a company up against the clout of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Japan's SoftBank Group Corp, which has invested in ride-hailing-cum-delivery firm Didi Chuxing. "These companies are in an all-out blitz for market share - profitability only comes after one has consolidated its share of the market," said Don Zhao, co-founder of Shenzhen-based e-commerce consultancy Azoya. Meituan said late on Thursday its operating loss in the three months to Sept. 30 tripled to 3.45 billion yuan ($497.12 million) - though revenue rose 97.2 percent to 19.08 billion yuan. Overall gross transaction volume grew 40 percent in the quarter. That compared with 55.6 percent in the first half of the year. "Transactions were up only 40 percent, which indicates that growth may be slowing down," Zhao said. "This is why the market reacted so negatively - because investors question how much longer the company can sustain growth and whether or not it's willing to shift its focus to profitability." Net loss soared to 83.30 billion yuan from a loss of 4.4 billion yuan in the same period a year earlier, which the firm attributed to changes in the fair value of convertible redeemable preferred shares. Story continues Meituan Dianping, which makes most of its revenue from food delivery, said increased costs for payment processing and delivery riders had contributed to its losses. It also owns bike-sharing firm Mobike, which it bought in April for a reported $2.7 billion. In an earnings call, Meituan Dianping Vice President Shaohui Chen said the firm would reduce its number of bicycles to address "extensive supply in the market". The losses comes as China's tech scene is being roiled by concerns the heady days of growth that saw firms like Alibaba and Tencent double in value over the past few years may be over, hammering tech shares, including those of new IPO entrants. Meituan Dianping now has a market valuation of around $38.5 billion, having seen its shares drop 25 percent since listing amid cooler economic growth and a biting trade war between China and the United States which has sapped investor confidence. ($1 = 6.9400 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Josh Horwitz in HONG KONG and Adam Jourdan in SHANGHAI; Editing by Christopher Cushing) Soy beans are seen at a Grobocopatel Hermanos company storage plant in Carlos Casares, Argentina April 16, 2018. REUTERS/Agustin Marcarian/Files By Hugh Bronstein BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Talks to allow Argentine soymeal livestock feed to enter China are progressing at a slower-than-hoped pace amid bureaucratic issues, including Chinese demands to inspect local crushing plants, the head of Argentina's soy industry chamber said on Thursday. Luis Zubizarreta, president of Argentina's ACSOJA soy industry chamber that represents farmers, exporters and seed companies, said the country was keen to clinch an export deal that would secure access to the world's biggest hog- and pork-producing country. China needs enormous amounts of animal feed and has historically protected its soy crushing industry by importing raw soybeans to be processed locally. However, a trade war between China and the United States - its second largest supplier of soybeans - has limited the flow of U.S. oilseeds to Chinese plants, encouraging them to look elsewhere. Argentine President Mauricio Macri's government hopes to announce the soymeal-to-China agreement at the G20 meeting in Buenos Aires at the end of this month, but that deadline looks increasingly ambitious. "The government of Argentina is pushing to make this happen but it depends on a decision by the Chinese government to do something it has never done before: import soymeal from Argentina," Zubizarreta said in an interview. "It's a complicated road to change a policy that has been in place for such a long time," he added. Argentina has long been the world's top exporter of soymeal but the crushing plants that dot the banks of the Parana River, its main grains thoroughfare, are working at only about half their capacity due to fallout from the U.S.-China trade war. U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are due to meet at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires for highly anticipated talks on the trade dispute. Beijing has slapped a 25 percent tariff on U.S. soybean imports, effectively halting soybean shipments to China. The resulting glut of cheap soy in the United States has lowered input costs for U.S. meal crushing factories, making them more profitable and rendering crushers in Argentina uncompetitive. Story continues The soymeal manufacturing industry in Argentina was already reeling from a drought on the Pampas farm belt that dried up soybean supplies this year. The opening of China to Argentine meal would be a boon to the South American country, whose large processing plants located between the Pampas and the deep-water ports of the Parana make it the world's most efficient place to crush soy. "The government is confident that the negotiations will advance, but things are going slowly," Zubizarreta said, adding that there had been no progress in registering plants with Chinese authorities. "We are pushing to advance in all the steps, including the inspection and registration of Argentine soy crushing plants by the Chinese authorities. The ball is in their court." Argentina's agriculture chief Luis Etchevehere was in Beijing earlier this month, trying to settle the deal. There was no immediate comment from the Chinese embassy in Buenos Aires. A spokesman for the Argentine agriculture secretariat declined to comment on the talks. Zubizarreta said that, given economies of scale advantages enjoyed by the massive crushing plants on the Parana River, Beijing could include some "reasonable limits" on the amount of Argentine meal allowed into China. "It is very important for Argentina to sell value-added products," Zubizarreta said. "China has historically protected its soy crushing industry but they need to protect the food security of their country." (Additional reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Marguerita Choy) San Francisco-based Airbnb said in November it would remove West Bank homes from its site, prompting Israel's tourism ministry to threaten legal action (AFP Photo/Lionel BONAVENTURE) Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli lawyers have filed a class action against Airbnb after its decision to remove Jewish settler homes in the occupied West Bank from its rental listings. A spokesman for the attorneys, who spoke to AFP Friday on condition of anonymity, said the lead plaintiff was Maanit Rabinovich of Kida settlement in the West Bank. Rabinovich says Airbnb never contacted her to warn her of its intention. The suit, the spokesman said, seeks 15,000 shekels (3,500 euros) in damages for Rabinovich and each other settler host should Airbnb delete them from its listings. San Francisco-based Airbnb said Monday it would remove West Bank homes from its site, prompting Israel's tourism ministry to threaten legal action. The decision would affect around 200 homes in Israeli settlements that had been listed on the platform. Around 400,000 Israelis live in settlements that dot the West Bank and range in size from tiny hamlets to large towns, in addition to 200,000 living in settlements in occupied east Jerusalem. The international community considers the settlements to be illegal and a key barrier to peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Airbnb has said it "concluded that we should remove listings in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank that are at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians". "We know that people will disagree with this decision and appreciate their perspective. This is a controversial issue," it said in a statement. Israel's internal security minister, Gilad Erdan, called on settlers affected "to consider filing lawsuits against Airbnb". Rabinovich's suit was filed Thursday in the Jerusalem district court, according to court documents seen by AFP. It accuses Airbnb of "discriminating" against West Bank settlers while listing rooms to rent in other disputed territories around the world. "China's control of Tibet has been condemned worldwide, and yet Airbnb offers 300 apartments for rent there," it says. Story continues "In northern Cyprus, where control is deeply disputed between Greece and Turkey and has even led to war, Airbnb offers thousands of rental apartments." The lawsuit also cites Georgia's separatist republic of Abkhazia and the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, saying that Airbnb lists about 300 rentals in the former and 138 in the latter. "These partial examples testify to the fact that Airbnb has no policy regarding conflict zones around the world," it added. "It has a policy regarding (Israeli) settlements, and only to them." The US firm does not have an office in Israel, putting in doubt prospects of any ruling by the Jerusalem court being enforced. The lawyers have drafted a request for leave to pursue the case in the United States. * Victims of Japan's wartime brothels seek "sincere" apology, compensation * Only 27 registered South Korean survivors alive today * Japan says claims were resolved by past treaties, apologies * Historical disputes bleeding into S. Korea-Japan relations (Adds details of Japan's past compensation) By Josh Smith and Haejin Choi DAEGU, South Korea, Nov 23 (Reuters) - When 17-year-old Lee Yong-soo returned home to South Korea in 1945 after years as a child sex slave for Japanese troops, her family, having given her up for dead, thought she was a ghost. "When I returned, I had a deep wound," Lee told Reuters, holding a black and white photo of herself in a traditional Korean dress, taken in her first year back home. She still remembers the blue and purple fabric of that dress, but other memories from those years are more traumatic. "I thought I was going to die," Lee said of the abuse and torture she endured in a brothel at an airfield in Taiwan used by Japanese kamikaze pilots in the final years of World War Two. Now 90 years old, Lee says she feels like a sincere apology from Japanese authorities for the wartime exploitation of so-called comfort women is no nearer now than when she returned home more than 70 years ago. Japan says the claims have been settled by past agreements and apologies, and that the continued controversy threatens relations between the two countries. Some historians estimate 30,000 to 200,000 Korean women were forced into sex slavery during Japan's occupation from 1910 to 1945, in some cases under the pretext of employment or to pay off a relative's debt. Now with only 27 registered South Korean survivors still alive, there is a sense of urgency behind efforts by the women to receive a formal apology as well as legal compensation from Japan while their voices can still be heard. Just days before Reuters interviewed Lee at her one-room apartment in the southern city of Daegu, a fellow victim had died, one of six so far in 2018. Story continues Another survivor, Kim Bok-dong, said she wanted to share her story, but suffering from cancer and expected to live only a few more months, she was unable to find time to speak. "SINCERE APOLOGY" Under the 1965 treaty, Japan reached a deal with South Korea to provide an $800 million aid-and-loan package in exchange for Seoul considering all wartime compensation issues settled. A South Korean panel late last year concluded a separate 2015 deal between South Korea and Japan had failed to meet the needs of former "comfort women". Acting on that conclusion, the South Korean government this week shut down a fund created under the 2015 deal and vowed to pursue a more "victim-oriented" approach, a move Japan said threatened the two countries' relations. A sense of shame and secrecy meant most tales of abuse and coercion at the brothels for Japanese troops were never discussed publicly, until Kim Hak-sun, one of the South Korean victims, came forward in 1991. She and two other former comfort women joined a class action lawsuit against Japan, which prompted the Japanese government to acknowledge its role for the first time in 1993. The case was eventually dismissed by Japan's highest courts in 2004. Lee was one of the survivors emboldened by Kim's move, and has since worked to raise awareness, including meeting the Pope and travelling to North Korea to meet other victims. "Since 1992, I had been asking Japan to make sincere apology, that is what I want," Lee said. "I have been doing this for 27 years, it doesnt matter whether it was raining or snowing, or the weather was cold or hot." UNRESOLVED DISPUTE From 1995 to 2007, Japan created a fund from donations to make payments to women throughout Asia, budgeted money for their welfare support and sent letters of apology from successive premiers. While a number of survivors have accepted compensation over the years, many South Koreans see the issue as unresolved because of what they consider a lack of sincerity from the Japanese government. Despite apologies from Japan, for example, the first comfort women fund was criticised in South Korea for not being direct compensation from the state, and the 2015 deal was faulted for failing to include a clear statement of the Japanese governments legal responsibility. Japan says South Korea had waived all claims in the 1965 pact, and that under the 2015 deal, Japan agreed to provide the funds to help the women heal "psychological wounds". Critics of South Korea have also accused it of ignoring the complicity of some Koreans in the sex trade at the time. Shutting the Japan-funded foundation is one of the most significant steps President Moon Jae-in's administration has taken as it revisits the comfort women controversy. In the past year, South Korea has also opened a new research centre aimed at consolidating academic study of comfort women, named the first Comfort Women Day and unveiled a new memorial in Cheonan, a city south of Seoul. "We cannot ignore the truth just because it hurts," Moon said this week. "For the sake of sustainable and solid Korea-Japan relations, we must face up to the truth. Lee said she thinks Moon is "trying his best," and in a statement released from her hospital bed this week, Kim said the move to close the foundation restored her trust in the South Korean president. Moon's efforts, however, have faced pushback from Japanese officials, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Earlier this year, Japan formally complained after South Koreas foreign minister raised the issue in a speech at the United Nations. Japanese officials have expressed frustration at what they see as the South Korean government's changing positions and efforts to revisit settled agreements. For survivors like Lee, Japan's protests ring hollow. "The survivors of the heinous crimes the Japanese committed are dying day by day, and I bet Abe is dancing for joy," Lee said, becoming animated as she described her frustration. "They should apologise, tell the truth, and pay the legal compensation." (Reporting by Josh Smith and Haejin Choi. Additional reporting by Linda Sieg in Tokyo. Editing by Lincoln Feast.) Is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade On? Brutal Cold and Heavy Winds Don't Stop the New York City Tourist Draw Thanksgiving 2018 is upon us, and its an icy one for people living in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. According to meteorologists, Thursday is expected to be the coldest Thanksgiving in more than a century, with temperatures dropping well below zero. But even though New York is due to be hit by winds up to 30 mph and potentially the coldest low temperature for Thanksgiving since record-keeping started, the annual Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade is still on. While the organizers nearly called it off, they decided to go ahead with the parade, which made its trek through Manhattan Thursday morning. Diana Ross, John Legend, Martina McBride and the Muppets from Sesame Street were scheduled to perform, and the city of New York, concerned about frostbite, issued an advisory to spectators to ensure they were adequately dressed for the brutal weather. By 9 a.m. ET, when the parade started, the temperature dipped below 20 degrees. But there is one element of the parade that could still be threatened: the balloons. Strong winds can make it dangerous to fly the huge inflatables, so they will be grounded if the winds are stronger than 23 mph, according to USA Today. And its a good thing the parade went ahead, at least from a tourism perspective: New York remains the No. 1 destination for tourists traveling on the Thanksgiving holiday, and undoubtedly the iconic Macys parade is a big draw. okex The latest Bitcoin Cash hard fork had ramifications on the entire crypto community. Independent of whether you trade BCH, its recent split had disastrous financial consequences for many and inspired some unorthodox moves from others. Malta-based exchange OKEx left traders furious last week after taking the decision to change the terms on $135 million Bitcoin Cash derivatives contracts. As one of the worlds largest crypto exchanges (and part of a handful to offer derivatives trading as well as spot) OKEx has gained in popularity. Its also ramped up the trading volume, handling some $1 billion or more of crypto trades daily. Thats a lot of transactions. OKEx Changing the Contract Terms The OKEx decision to change contract terms involved futures in Bitcoin Cash. The fork was causing headaches and hash wars all round and splitting the crypto community down the middle. So, the exchange took matters into its own hands. It forced the early settlement of all Bitcoin Cash contracts without warning on November 14right before the fork took place and just as prices were beginning to freefall. SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: All Bitcoin Cash (BCH) futures contracts will stop trading at 9:05am and be delivered at 10:00am Nov 14, 2018 CET (UTC +1) due to the upcoming hard fork. We will provide a detailed explanation shortly.#OKExAnnouncementhttps://t.co/yh3p46tirc pic.twitter.com/oqioSUOUsf OKEx (@OKEx) November 14, 2018 This decision went against the stance that the exchange had previously announced on November 9, that it would list Bitcoin ABC after the fork. This decision was in line with most other exchanges. In the event that two chains could not co-exist after the fork and BSV emerged victoriously, futures contracts in ABC would likely settle worthless. Traders began to make adequate adjustments, selling contracts, and pricing for this risk. Story continues So, upon the news of early settlements, derivatives traders on OKEx were left hit by an ice-cold shower in the middle of winter. One trader quoted in Bloomberg Qiao Changhe said that his fund lost $700,000. The hedging position it was forced to take by OKEx was not reflective of prevailing market prices at the level it closed. Qiao will now be reducing his $5-million funds usage of the exchange. Traders Calling Contract Changes Fiddling Qiao isnt alone in fleeing from the exchange. Plenty of other traders will also be scaling back or cutting ties completely. Qiao said: OKEx is losing its credibility The futures contract became something nonsense, not something we could use to hedge. In a statement, OKEx pointed to the extreme volatility behind their decision, saying: Due to the upcoming hard fork, strong volatility is observed in the BCH spot and futures markets. We expect an even greater volatility during the hard fork that may cause large-scale impacts, such as cascade liquidation. They went on to call the outcome unpredictable and say that the exchange: may lack time to respond to the market. They also explained why no prior notice was given as a bid to reduce the chances of market manipulation: It has come to our concern that an early announcement may make room for market manipulation and cause loss to our users. Therefore, we decided to give a short notice in order to maintain the fairness and stability of the market. While this may sound plausible, OKEx is the only exchange who made the decision to force an early settlement of Bitcoin Cash contracts. This is something that may not be illegal but is certainly unorthodoxand highly unpopular with traders, leaving many reeling from losses. OKEx Accused of Market Manipulation Despite their statement to the contrary, the Malta-based exchange has also been openly accused of market manipulation. In an article on Medium by Amber AI, the author states: Over the past week we have seen behavior indicative of market manipulation by OKEx, and estimate $400mm+ of futures contracts have been forced into liquidation as a result. Today, OKEx released a statement in response to this article, discrediting the authors claims of having a Hong-Kong based company and institutional account as fictitious. Moreover, the account Amber AI was an individual and not based in Hong Kong. They went on to reinforce the reason behind the early settlement as being: Based on the consideration of market integrity and customer interests. The early settlement was implemented in accordance with clause 2.5 of OKEx Futures Trading User Agreement, If market anomalies occur before or after settlement and delivery, which results in wide fluctuation of futures index or abnormal clawback rate, we may postpone or early settlement and delivery as the case may be. We shall post an announcement regarding detailed rules. OKEx insists that upon seeing the large-scale impact that the BCH hard fork was going to have on the futures market, the exchange felt duty-bound to protect its customers as well as the markets, adding that: In the absence of evidence, Amber AI alleged us for trading against our own customers and manipulating the markets. These are completely false allegations and the defamatory statements have caused serious damages to OKExs reputation. We reserve all rights to take further legal actions against Amber AI for interfering OKExs business We reaffirm that we will NEVER trade against our customers and manipulate the market. Not the First Time the Exchange Has Been Criticized Its not the first time that OKEx has been criticized. In August, it imposed losses on its clients after saying that it was unable to cover the shortfall of a major wrong-way bet by one of its users, throwing its risk management ability into question. To add fuel to the fire, the day after the Bitcoin Cash futures contracts settled, on November 15, the exchange suffered a malfunction and traders were unable to execute orders for more than two hours during a time of extreme and heightened volatility. When you consider that mainstream adoption of crypto is a long way from getting off the ground and that the community as a whole is dogged by reports of scams, hacks, and criminal activity; this latest move by OKEx does little to boost investor confidence. In fact, it serves to further highlight what can happen when trading on unregulated crypto exchanges. Featured image from Shutterstock. The post OKEx Bitcoin Cash Futures Debacle Shows Danger of Unregulated Exchanges appeared first on CCN. FILE PHOTO: The top of a replica Crew Dragon spacecraft is show at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, U.S. August 13, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo By Joey Roulette ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) - The first flight of a SpaceX rocket tailored to fly astronauts to the International Space Station is set for liftoff from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Jan. 7, NASA said on Wednesday. The launch test is a crucial milestone in the space agency's Commercial Crew Program, which aims to launch humans to space from U.S. soil for the first time in nearly a decade. The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration said SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft - which will shuttle three astronauts to space from the same launch pad that sent Apollo 11's three-man crew to the moon in 1969 - will make its debut flight atop SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket on Jan. 7. While NASA did not detail the flight path, it said the test would provide data on the performance of the Falcon 9, Crew Dragon capsule, and ground systems, as well as on-orbit, docking and landing operations. SpaceX and Boeing Co (BA.N) are the two main contractors selected under NASA's Commercial Crew Program to send astronauts to space as soon as 2019, using their Crew Dragon and CST-100 Starliner spacecraft respectively. Since the U.S. space shuttle program was shut down in 2011, NASA has had to rely on Russia to fly astronauts to the space station, a $100 billion orbital research laboratory that flies about 250 miles (402 km) above Earth. The Demo-1 launch is the latest test in a rigorous certification timeline imposed under NASA's Commercial Crew Program. While SpaceX is targeting early January, NASA spokeswoman Marie Lewis said the demo mission could be pushed back because "flying safely has always taken precedence over schedule." Founded by Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) Chief Executive Elon Musk, SpaceX said if the Jan. 7 test is successful, it plans to launch its first crewed mission in June 2019, but the timeline may shift. Boeing plans a similar test launch of the Starliner spacecraft atop its Atlas 5 rocket as soon as March, with a crewed mission following in August. The Jan. 7 launch date announcement comes a day after NASA said it would conduct a "cultural assessment study" of the companies, "including the adherence to a drug-free environment," prior to crew test flights. [nL4N1XW01J] (Reporting by Joey Roulette in Orlando, Florida; Editing by Eric M. Johnson and Lisa Shumaker) Colorado Springs isnt expected to get snow until Saturday evening, but you can catch some flakes earlier by standing downwind from the ice carving under way at the Promenade Shops at Briargate. Ooh, its snowy, a woman exclaimed as shavings sprayed the table where she was doling out cookies and hot chocolate to Black Friday shoppers. The ice carving kicked off the second annual Parad-Ice on the Promenade, which runs through 6 p.m. Sunday. Longmont ice sculptor Jess Parrish and his team will create nine sculptures over three days: one large sculpture a day and two smaller carvings during a dueling chainsaw competition where the crowd can call out requests. Parrish started Friday by transforming 10 ice blocks into what one 4-year-old predicted would be a sled. Santas sleigh, his 14-year-old brother replied. Not so, the 4-year-old insisted, because its made of ice. That would be too heavy for the reindeer. Parrish carved an outline for Rudolph, who could lead the sleigh. Over the weekend, he said, he also will carve a large snowman and the pinnacle, a flying angel. Sean Peters brought his family visiting from Alabama for the dueling chainsaws show, something they said theyd never seen. Dad likes those lumberjack shows, so its kind of similar, Peters said. The show will take place in front of a different store at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Parrish makes the job look easy, using a chainsaw to slice through the glass-like ice as if it were butter. His creations typically are formed at international competitions, including one two days earlier in Germany. Next month, he said, hell compete in Poland and China, but Colorado always will be his favorite venue. Ive been in every state but Hawaii but this is home, Parrish said. More examples of his work, which also includes wood carving and sand sculpting, can be found on his website, coolhandice.com. People can vote on their favorite ice sculpture from the weekend on the Promenade Shops Facebook page. The sculpture with the most votes will have that dollar amount donated to the Empty Stocking Fund, sponsored by The Gazette Charities and El Pomar Foundation. The Empty Stocking Fund provides resources for health and human service agencies in the Pikes Peak region. Contact the writer at 719-636-0362 or find her on Twitter: @njKaitlinDurbin. Are you lost in the wild? Sorry, but the page you're looking for has not been found Try checking the URL for errors, goto home or try to search below. The police officers who were called to a traffic crash in a Colorado Springs neighborhood on Thursday got an unexpected treat: a Thanksgiving meal. A family saw the officers investigating the crash about noon near Milton Drive and Shelley Avenue and decided to bring them food, including turkey and ham, said police Lt. John Koch. "It's really touching to have them come up and do something like that for us that's spontaneous," Koch said. "It's very appreciated to know that we're in their thoughts as our officers are out on the streets today." Information about the crash wasn't immediately available. Police officers, like other first responders and emergency workers, "know that part of our job serving the public is to be out here on holidays and on weekends and during birthday events and family stuff," Koch said. "That's something that we all accept when we do this job, but part of the reason that it's so important to us is because we are serving a cause greater than us the people in this community and this city. "To have some people see us and stop and feed us a Thanksgiving meal is really touching, and it just is one example of thousands of the support that we get from people throughout Colorado Springs all the time." New Braunfels, TX (78130) Today A mix of clouds and sun this morning followed by mostly cloudy skies and a few showers this afternoon. High 77F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%.. Tonight Thunderstorms likely. Low 62F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. French English The dog meat industry is increasingly unwelcome in Korean society, says HSI/Korea MONTREAL, Nov. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Taepyeong, the largest dog slaughterhouse in South Korea, has been shut down by local authorities, bringing the country one step closer to ending its brutal dog meat trade. Seongnam city council intends to build a community park on the land, creating a vibrant public space where once hundreds of thousands of dogs were slaughtered for human consumption. HSI/Canada rescuers are on the scene and report that conditions inside the slaughterhouse are shocking. They found a large number of empty wire pens that would once have held hundreds of dogs, as well as knives and the electrocution equipment used to kill them. Piles of dead dogs were also found abandoned on the floor. HSI/Canada senior campaign manager Ewa Demianowicz said: It was deeply disturbing to see the inside of this slaughterhouse and to know that millions of dogs have died terribly here. It was a bleak, brutal facility, and a stark reminder of the unimaginable suffering caused by this industry. Thankfully, todays events have brought us a giant step closer to ending the South Korean dog meat trade for good. HSI/Koreas Nara Kim stated: Both as a Korean citizen and an animal campaigner, it was incredibly moving for me to a part of the historic closure of this notorious dog slaughterhouse. I shudder to think how many millions of beautiful dogs will have met their horrific fate at this place over the years. It was a stain on the city of Seongnam and we are so pleased to see it bulldozed. This really feels like a landmark moment in the demise of the dog meat industry in South Korea, and sends the clear message that the dog meat industry is increasingly unwelcome in Korean society. Taepyeong comprises six individual slaughterhouses, five of which will be bulldozed immediately; permission to destroy the sixth building was not secured in time for the closure however all its cages will be destroyed and equipment removed so that it is no longer operational. The closure of Taepyeong comes at a time when dog meat consumption is declining rapidly in South Korea, particularly among younger generations. A survey by Gallup Korea conducted in June 2018 Shows that 70 percent of South Koreans say they will not eat dog meat in future, and a series of recent moves to curb the dog meat trade reflects a society increasingly ill at ease with the industry. Most recently, last September, a Supreme Court struck down a lower court decision to allow dog electrocution (the favoured method of the dog meat trade), saying the method is "too cruel." Over the past four years, Humane Society Internationals pioneering program of dog meat farm closures has shone a global spotlight on the plight of dogs in the South Korean dog meat trade. HSI works in partnership with dog farmers who want to leave the increasingly controversial business, helping them transition to more profitable and humane livelihoods. So far HSI has permanently closed 13 dog farms and rescued nearly 1,600 dogs, who are flown to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands to find new homes. Korea Animal Rights Advocates is an HSI/Korea partner group, and the two organisations recently teamed up to present a petition of nearly 1 million signatures to the Presidents Blue House, calling for an end to the dog meat trade. Hyunji Kim of Korea Animal Rights Advocates says: We have been making constant efforts to shut down the Taepyeong-dong dog slaughterhouse through investigations and putting pressure on Gyeonggi province and Seongnam-si. As Koreas biggest, brutal, illegal dog slaughterhouse, Taepyeong-dong is notorious for supplying huge amounts of dog bodies to nearby Seongnam Moran traditional market. Its closure is an historical event, and hopefully may trigger the closure of other illegal dog slaughterhouses throughout the country. Until we achieve this, we really appreciate the support of both Korean people and global citizens who love animals for helping our campaigns to completely end dog meat in Korea. Korea Animal Welfare Association has campaigned against the dog meat trade for many years. KAWAs Iltaek Chae, says: The slaughterers in Taepyeong have long been accumulating their wealth and a huge number of dogs have been killed over the years. It is hoped that the closure of this horrific dog slaughterhouse can halt the suffering of more dogs in the future, and help trigger the collapse of the dog meat industry in Korea. Download photos and video of the dog slaughterhouse closure and rescue by clicking here. Media Contact: Christopher Pare office: 514 395-2914 x 206 / cell: 438 402-0643, email: cpare@hsi.org Humane Society International/Canada is a leading force for animal protection, with active programs in companion animals, wildlife and habitat protection, marine mammal preservation, farm animal welfare and animals in research. HSI/Canada is proud to be a part of Humane Society International which, together with its partners, constitutes one of the world's largest animal protection organizations. Celebrating animals and confronting cruelty worldwide - on the Web at www.hsicanada.ca Dublin, Nov. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Indonesia Diesel Genset Market (2018-2024): Market Forecast by KVA Ratings, by Verticals, by Applications, by Regions, and Competitive Landscape" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. Indonesia Diesel Genset Market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 2.9% during 2018-24. Emerging infrastructure sector due to growing population of the country along with rising in industrial and agricultural activities have driven the growth of diesel genset market in Indonesia. Recovering industrial sector along with growing commercial and residential sectors supported by several governments-led initiatives would be the key factors driving the market for diesel gensets in Indonesia during the forecast period. The demand and supply gap of electricity is one of the major reasons which has led to the high usage of diesel gensets in Indonesia. The growth of telecom infrastructure in Surabaya, Sulawesi and Papua islands of Indonesia along with an increase in the energy demand, especially from the commercial and industrial sectors would increase the market for diesel gensets as an auxiliary source of power at times of no grid supply. The growth in the tourism sector would result in the construction of new hotels, which requires diesel genset for power backup. Major cities of Indonesia including West Java, Jakarta, Cilegon and Bandung, are also welcoming new agricultural and industrial facilities, which would surge the diesel genset market during the forecast period. The report comprehensively covers Indonesia Diesel Genset Market by kVA rating, verticals, applications and regions. The report provides an unbiased and detailed analysis of the on-going trends, opportunities/high growth areas and market drivers which would help the stakeholders to the device and align their market strategies according to the current and future market dynamics. Key Highlights of the Report: Historical Data of Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Revenues & Volume for the Period 2014-2017. Market Size & Forecast of Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Revenues & Volume until 2024F. Historical Data of Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Revenues & Volume, By kVA Ratings for the Period 2014-2017. Market Size & Forecast of Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Revenues & Volume, By kVA Ratings until 2024F. Historical Data of Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Revenues, By Verticals for the Period 2014-2017. Market Size & Forecast of Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Revenues, By Verticals until 2024F. Historical Data of Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Revenues, By Applications for the Period 2014-2017. Market Size & Forecast of Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Revenues, By Applications until 2024F. Historical Data of Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Revenues, By Regions for the Period 2014-2017. Market Size & Forecast of Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Revenues, By Regions until 2024F. Market Drivers and Restraints. Market Trends and Developments. Players Market Share. Company Profiles. Strategic Recommendations. Key Topics Covered: 1. Executive Summary 2. Introduction 2.1 Report Description 2.2 Key Highlights of The Report 2.3 Market Scope & Segmentation 2.4 Research Methodology 2.5 Assumptions 3. Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Overview 3.1 Indonesia Country Overview 3.2 Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Revenues & Volume (2014-2024F) 3.3 Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Revenue & Volume Share, By kVA Rating (2017 & 2024F) 3.4 Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Revenue & Volume Share, By Verticals (2017 & 2024F) 3.4 Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Revenue Share, By Applications (2017 & 2024F) 3.5 Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Revenue Share, By Regions (2017 & 2024F) 3.6 Indonesia Diesel Genset Industry Life Cycle, 2017 3.7 Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Porter's Five Forces, 2017 4. Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Dynamics 4.1 Impact Analysis 4.2 Market Drivers 4.3 Market Restraints 5. Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Trends 6. Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Overview, By kVA Rating 6.1 Indonesia 5kVA - 75kVA Diesel Genset Market Revenues & Volume (2014-2024F) 6.2 Indonesia 75.1kVA - 375kVA Diesel Genset Market Revenues & Volume (2014-2024F) 6.3 Indonesia 375.1kVA - 750kVA Diesel Genset Market Revenues & Volume (2014-2024F) 6.4 Indonesia 750.1kVA - 1000kVA Diesel Genset Market Revenues & Volume (2014-2024F) 6.5 Indonesia Above 1000kVA Diesel Genset Market Revenues & Volume (2014-2024F) 7. Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Overview, By Verticals 7.1 Indonesia Diesel Genset Commercial Vertical Market Overview 7.2 Indonesia Diesel Genset Industrial Vertical Market Overview 7.3 Indonesia Diesel Genset Residential Vertical Market Overview 7.4 Indonesia Diesel Genset Public Infrastructure Vertical Market Overview 7.4.8 Indonesia Public Infrastructure Sector Outlook 8. Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Overview, By Regions 8.1 Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Revenues, By Regions (2014-2024F) 9. Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Price Trend 9.1 Indonesia 5kVA-75kVA Genset Average Price Trend (2014-2024F) 9.2 Indonesia 75.1kVA-375kVA Genset Average Price Trend (2014-2024F) 9.3 Indonesia 375.1kVA-750kVA Genset Average Price Trend (2014-2024F) 9.4 Indonesia 750.1kVA-1000kVA Genset Average Price Trend (2014-2024F) 9.5 Indonesia Above 2000kVA Genset Average Price Trend (2014-2024F) 10. Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Key Performance Indicators 10.1 Indonesia Government Spending Outlook 10.2 Indonesia Construction Sector Outlook 10.3 Indonesia Power Sector Outlook 10.4 Indonesia Industrial Sector Outlook 10.5 Indonesia Foreign Direct Investment Outlook 11. Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Import - Export Statistics 11.1 Indonesia Import of Gensets 11.2 Indonesia Export of Gensets 12. Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Opportunity Assessment 12.1 Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Opportunity Assessment, By kVA Rating 12.2 Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Opportunity Assessment, By Applications 13. Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Competitive Landscape 13.1 Indonesia Diesel Genset Market Revenue Share, By Company, 2017 13.2 Indonesia Diesel Genset Competitive Landscape, By kVA Rating 14 Company Profiles 14.1 Caterpillar Inc. 14.2 Cummins Inc. 14.3 Deutz Asia-pacific (Pte.) Ltd. 14.4 Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction 14.5 FG Wilson Asia Pte Ltd. 14.6 Kohler Power Systems 14.7 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engine System Asia Pacific Ltd. 14.8 MTU Onsite Energy Corporation 14.9 Perkins Engines Co. Ltd 14.10 P.T. Siemens Indonesia 15 Strategic Recommendations For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/nt6vj6/indonesia_diesel?w=12 Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. TORONTO, Nov. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Minister Lisa MacLeods announcement today about a new direction for social assistance in Ontario shows promising directions for Ontario Works, but leaves many unanswered questions and creates serious risks for people with disabilities. There is also no mention of addressing the most critical problem, which is improving the inadequate benefit rates for people on OW and the Ontario Disability Support Program. We are very concerned about the plan to change the definition of disability in ODSP and the impact this will have on people with disabilities in Ontario, said Mary Marrone, Director of Advocacy & Legal Services at ISAC. But the governments new vision of providing wrap-around services to better support people in their efforts to find employment would be a move in the right direction if done well. Recipients and advocates have called for such changes for many years. Other aspects of the announcement, including the new Health Spending Account and changes to amounts of money that people can keep when they work, leave more questions than answers. Disability Definition The announcement indicates that government will change the definition of disability for ODSP to align with federal guidelines. This change would exclude a large number of people who are currently eligible for the program. ODSP currently uses an inclusive definition of disability that recognizes that people whose disabilities might not be severe may still face serious obstacles to employment and participation in the community and in daily life. Moving to a federal definition of disability whether the CPP-D or the Disability Tax Credit definition would make it much harder for many people with disabilities to access ODSP, said Marrone. Many people with disabilities would be excluded, like those with episodic disabilities or some mental health disabilities, forcing them to rely on the much lower benefit amounts that Ontario Works provides. Grand-parenting current recipients of ODSP is essential to ensure the lives of current recipients will not be disrupted. But Ontario cannot condemn people with disabilities who will require support in the future to the much lower benefit rates available from Ontario Works. Reform of the system should not start with what is effectively a rate reduction for new entrants. We urge the government to reconsider the move to a more restrictive definition of disability. Health Spending Account The Minister noted the creation of a new Health Spending Account for people with disabilities that would give them the ability to select and pay for whichever health-related services they require. It is not clear whether this new amount will replace current mandatory and discretionary health-related benefits that help people access items like diabetes supplies, incontinence supplies, medical travel, and other necessities. No information is available for how much this benefit will provide, how people will qualify for it, and how they will access it. The test of the Health Spending Account will be whether everyone who needs it will have easy access to it, and whether it will provide enough money for people to pay for the health-related supplies and services they need, said Marrone. Earnings Exemptions The announcement includes changes to the amounts of money that people on OW and ODSP can keep when they work. However, these changes benefit people who work less rather than more. No timeline was given for when these changes will start. Monthly amounts that people on Ontario Works will be able to keep will increase from $200 to $300. However, clawback rates on earnings above that amount will increase from 50% to 75%. This will mean that the more people on OW earn from work, the less they will benefit. For example, a single person on OW who makes $300 is able to keep $250 currently, but will keep $300 under the new system. But a single person on OW who makes $1,000 is able to keep $600 currently, but under the new system will only keep $475. For people on ODSP, the earnings exemption amount will increase from $200 / month to $6,000 / year. Moving to an annual amount will provide much more flexibility for people with disabilities, whose earnings can fluctuate from month to month. However, in combination with the higher clawback rate of 75% on additional earnings, people with disabilities will also be negatively impacted the more they are able to earn, although at higher earnings. These changes seem counterproductive to the Ministers stated goal of providing more incentives for people to seek paid work, said Marrone. And people who work will actually become financially ineligible sooner, losing critical supports like drug coverage. Wrap-Around Supports to Employment Minister MacLeod announced a number of changes to the way in which services will be provided to move people into employment, including commitments to improve access to critically important help like mental health and addictions supports, childcare, housing, and life skills. These changes recognize that people on social assistance are not necessarily job ready and may need a range of services to stabilize their lives before contemplating employment. We are encouraged by this focus, including the commitment to undertake pilot projects and proceed carefully, said Marrone. The Ministers statement that changes to programs that support vulnerable people can have serious negative impacts demonstrates that she understands the need for carefully managed change. ISAC is a specialty legal clinic with a provincial mandate to improve the income security of people living in Ontario through test case litigation, policy development and advocacy, and community organizing. More information www.incomesecurity.org . Quote: (A) Based on records from ancient Athens, each year young Athenian women collaborated to weave a new woolen robe that they used to dress Quote: (B) Based on records from ancient Athens, young Athenian women had collaborated to weave a new woolen robe with which to dress Quote: (C) According to records from ancient Athens, each year young Athenian women collaborated to weave a new woolen robe that they used to dress that this robe depicted scenes Stem: "...young Athenian women collaborated to weave a new woolen robe..." List item #1: "...that they used to dress a statue..." List item #2 (after "and"): "...that this robe depicted scenes of a battle..." Quote: (D) Records from ancient Athens indicate that each year young Athenian women collaborated to weave a new woolen robe with which they dressed Stem: "Records from ancient Athens indicate..." List item #1: "...that each year young women collaborated to weave a new robe..." List item #2 (after "and"): "...that this robe depicted scenes of a battle..." Quote: (E) Records from ancient Athens indicate each year young Athenian women had collaborated to weave a new woolen robe for dressing This (bleeping) question is one of my all-time favorites, just because it features a whole bunch of grammar and usage issues that are simultaneously difficult and "learnable." Sometimes, it's really tough to get better at SC questions that test meaning, so it's satisfying when we can take a hard question like this one, and break it down methodically -- without any real need to worry about the subtleties of meaning.We'll eventually have to deal with some funky parallelism stuff here (as featured in our YouTube webinar on parallelism and meaning ), but the first thing that should catch your eye is that "-ed" modifier right at the beginning of the sentence. (More on "-ed" words here .) In this case, "based on records from ancient Athens" must be followed by something that can actually be based on records from ancient Athens. So...Wait, this is literally saying that "each year young Athenian women" are based on records from ancient Athens. That makes no sense at all. A conclusion or a finding or a report could be "based on records", but the women themselves certainly can't be. (A) is out.(B) has exactly the same error as (A): the young women can't be "based on records." You can eliminate (B) based on that alone.Hopefully, the past perfect tense phrase "had collaborated" catches your eye, too. As you probably know, the action in past perfect tense has to logically precede some other "time marker" in the past -- generally, another action in simple past tense. So this particular sentence is saying that the women first "had collaborated to weave a new woolen robe"; the subsequent actions in simple past are "they used to dress a statue" and "this robe depicted scenes." I suppose that they collaborated before they used the robe to dress a statue, but I think it's awfully weird to say that they "had collaborated" first, and then the robe later "depicted scenes."You don't really need to waste your energy on the past perfect tense in (B), but for whatever it's worth, it certainly doesn't seem right.I think I can live with the use of "according to records from ancient Athens" in this case, even though I don't love it. I think that particular "-ing" phrase is modifying the entire clause that follows ("...young women collaborated to weave a new woolen robe..."), and I guess it's OK to say that this action is something we know "according to records from ancient Athens." I've never been totally convinced by it, but wouldn't immediately eliminate (A). (More on the GMAT's use of "-ing" words here .)The real issue with (C) is the parallelism. And it's tricky, so bear with me here.Whenever you're looking at parallelism, start with the parallelism "trigger" -- usually an "and" or an "or", though there are others. (The other triggers are a long story that we'll save for another day.) Then you'll always want to find the thing that follows the word "and", and then figure out what's parallel to that thing.So in this case, we have: "andof a battle between Zeus, Athena's father, and giants." Something HAS to be parallel to "that this robe depicted scenes." In (C), our only option is "that they used to dress a statue." Cool, we have structural parallelism.Trouble is, it makes no sense when you actually think about the "stem" that precedes the two parallel elements. If you want, you can think of parallelism as a list of two (or more) items, and the "stem" is the thing that precedes the first item in the list. But the stem HAS to make sense with EVERY item in the list.If we break down (C) really carefully, we have the following:The first item works just fine with the stem: "...women collaborated to weave a new woolen robe that they used to dress a statue..." No problem. But that "stem" also has to make sense with the second item. And in this case, it really doesn't work: "...women collaborated to weave a new woolen robe... that this robe depicted scenes of a battle..." Huh? That's absolute nonsense.This is what tough parallelism looks like on the GMAT. You can't "hear" the parallelism error at all -- or at least I can't. But if you break the parallelism down methodically, (C) is clearly wrong.(Does your brain hurt yet? If you prefer video, our YouTube webinar on parallelism and meaning covered this question, too.)(D) cleans up the parallelism nicely! Using the same technique as in (C), we have the following:That works! "Records indicate... that this robe depicted scenes of battle..." Great. Keep (D).In (E), we still have the same past perfect tense issue that appear in (B). Plus, the parallelism is completely wrong: the trigger "and" is still followed by "that this robe depicted scenes of battle...", but there are no phrases that could possibly be parallel, since there are no subordinate clauses beginning with "that" elsewhere in the sentence.So (E) is gone, and (D) is our winner.And if you read this far, you deserve a cookie for surviving to the end of the longest freaking QOTD explanation I've ever written._________________ why we should continue the training process, even if some employees leave the company. Out of Scope - We are not concerned with advancement to employees factor. We need to look for a reason to continue the training process. Whether they are competitive in the market or not is not our concern, because this cannot be the reason to continue training people. Out of context: Even if they are offering a discount, that does not mean that employees after getting trained won't leave the job. And since we are paying money to train, if the employee leaves, we are at a loss. This statement compares the amount of training, which is again not our concern, as we want to know what happens after training them? This gives us a reason why we should continue training. So, even if some employees leave, we know that those who are still working would add value which would compensate for those who have left. Thus, that should be a good enough reason to continue training. Work Hard! Have Fun! Create History! Signature Read More Premise: With employer-paid training, workers have the potential to become more productive not only in their present employment but also in any number of jobs with different employers.Conclusion: To increase the productivity of their workforce, many firms are planning to maintain or even increase their investments in worker training.Counter Premise: But some training experts object that if a trained worker is hired away by another firm, the employer that paid for the training has merely subsidized a competitor. They note that such hiring has been on the rise in recent years.We need to weaken the argument - So, we need to find a reason which would tell usWhich of the following would, if true, contribute most to defeating the training experts objection to the firms strategy?A. Firms that promise opportunities for advancement to their employees get, on average, somewhat larger numbers of job applications from untrained workers than do firms that make no such promise.[B. In many industries, employees who take continuing-education courses are more competitive in the job market. [C. More and more educational and training institutions are offering reduced tuition fees to firms that subsidize worker training.[D. Research shows that workers whose training is wholly or partially subsidized by their employer tend to get at least as much training as do workers who pay for all their own training. [E. For most firms that invest in training their employees, the value added by that investment in employees who stay exceeds the value lost through other employees leaving to work for other companies[Correct Answer - E._________________ 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. 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 Michael Page, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said: Iranian authorities are punishing teachers and labour activists for exercising their collective bargaining rights and conducting peaceful protests that are essential freedoms for all workers. Authorities recent talk of national unity and resistance against foreign pressure are empty words when they throw educators and labour activists in jail for demanding a fair wage. The authorities have arrested at least 12 teachers since November 11 and have summoned and interrogated 30 more, according to a statement by the Council for Coordination among Teachers Unions on Telegram. Hashem Khastar, a prominent Teachers Union member in Mashhad, was arrested on November 1, after the first walkout, and held in a psychiatric hospital despite suffering no mental health problems until November 19, when he was finally released. Three other prominent members of the teachers union are still locked up. Rasoul Bodaghi, a Teachers Union member who was imprisoned from 2009 to 2016 for peaceful activism, said that Khastar was detained in the hospital without being charged with a crime, while Sadighe Maleki, Khastars wife, said that the hospital requested permission from the Mashhads prosecutors office before allowing her to visit. Meanwhile, the Iranian Regime is cracking down on labour activists across the country, with the Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane Workers Syndicate reporting on Telegram on November 18 that all of the members of the association of labour representatives for the Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane company, including two of the groups prominent leaders, Esmael Bakhshi and Mohsen Armand, had been arrested. As of November 20, 15 were reportedly released. The workers were demanding their unpaid wages and protesting the privatisation of the country. Iran does not recognize the right to create independent labour unions and has repeatedly harassed, summoned, arrested, convicted, and sentenced workers affiliated with them. Page said: The escalating crackdown against teachers and labour activists follows the same old recipe that authorities have pursued for decades. Rather than empowering unions to act as a bridge between authorities and its members, Iranian authorities suppress any effort at peaceful mobilization. Zarif made indirect references to Khamenei and the powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) on November 11, whilst speaking about those in Iran who are making billions of dollars from money laundering and spending millions to prevent the implementation of financial transparency bills that have passed through the Iranian Parliament. By November 18, there were reports that Zarif could potentially be dismissed over the remarks. Head of the judiciary Sadiq Larijani, a Khamenei supporter, called Zarifs comments a stab right in the heart, said hed been exploited by parties hostile to the Iran Regime and asked why Zarif did not file a complaint with the judiciary about his corruption claims. Thats a good question and the answer is that the judiciary is in the pockets of Khamenei and the IRGC, so they would always find in favour of them. Another good point, which is sorely lacking in most media coverage of this news, is that corruption is rife in the Iranian Regime from Khamenei to the judiciary to the parliament, including Zarif. To be clear, there are no moderates in the Iranian Regime; each mullah is intent on preserving the dictatorship that allows them to rob the Iranian people, regardless of who they want in charge. On Tuesday, the Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, reported that a member of parliament had said that a motion for Zarifs dismissal is being prepared to be put to a vote and that Zarif has been required to submit evidence to support his claims, which he hasnt yet done. Money laundering bills Zarif made his comments after the Guardian Council rejected legislation that Iran needs to implement in order to join the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), calling it un-Iranian, and demanded 11 revisions to it. European countries have demanded that Iran help to prevent terrorist financing, with joining FAFT being one of the requirements. If Iran refuses, it will lose even more support from the international community, which has been under threat since the US pulled out of the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions. However, joining FAFT would limit IRGC activity abroad, cutting funding to the IRGC Quds Force and terrorist militias like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthis in Yemen. The PMOI / MEK is no stranger to such attacks but the truth speaks for itself. The group has widespread support not just in Iran where it is supported in every single one of Irans provinces but also outside the country too. Many Members of European Parliament and numerous officials and former officials in the United States have voiced their support for the group that is working towards making Iran a free and democratic country where the peoples human rights will be acknowledged and respected. The Iranian regime, on the other hand, has been supporting terrorist proxy groups and militias, spreading chaos throughout the region, destroying the countrys economy and neglecting the many domestic issues that need immediate attention. The Iranian regime is also responsible for a number of environmental crises and it is still supressing the people of Iran. The regime arrests, tortures, imprisons and executes political dissidents, artists, religious and ethnic minorities, and so on, and still regards women as second class citizens. These are the facts so the baseless allegations made against the PMOI / MEK appear ridiculous when you look at the reality as it is. When you dig deeper, the allegations are actually laughable and ironic. Ali Fallahian, a former Minister of Intelligence, played a role in the assassination of several Kurdish dissidents in Germany in 1992. He is currently wanted by Interpol. The reason for the misinformation campaigns and slanderous articles that somehow get past editors of distinguished new publications is quite simple. The Iranian regime is under great pressure both internationally and domestically and it is running out of options so it is resorting to slandering its biggest threat. The people of Iran have been protesting and holding anti-government demonstrations since the end of last year. It is very clear that they will maintain this pressure until the regime finally collapses. They are welcoming the U.S. sanctions on Iran because they know pressure is the only way to tip the regime over the edge. The Iranian regimes arrest of many dissidents and supporters of the PMOI / MEK is doing nothing but guaranteeing disaster. The more people are arrested, the more the peoples resolve strengthens. The threat of torture, arrest, imprisonment and even execution is not enough to dissuade people from supporting the main opposition group because they can see the greater good the chance to live in a country that is free from clerical rule. Source: https://www.ncr-iran.org/en/blog/25545-character-assassination - President Rodrigo Duterte has made sure that he will not declare martial law - He also reiterated that he does not plan to extend his term - The President also urges people to remain loyal to the flag PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed President Rodrigo Duterte has made it clear once again that he will not declare nationwide martial law and that he will not extend his term as chief executive. KAMI learned that the President announced this during his speech before the military at the 35th founding anniversary of the Philippine Army Reserve Command. Iyang martial law-martial law. Hindi ako mag-declare ng martial law. Bakit ako mag-declare ng martial law? Puwede man kitang hulihin. Puwede nga kitang patayin eh, said the President at Camp General Mariano Riego de Dios in Tanza, Cavite. He also added that he does not have any plans to extend his stay at the Palace and if ever he does, he commanded the military to give him a firing squad as reported by ABS-CBN News. Kaya inuutusan ko kayo ngayon. Pag ako ang nag-overshoot ng isang oras sa termino ko, hulihin ninyo ako at i-firing squad ninyo ako, the President quipped. 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! The President also urged everyone to remain loyal to the Philippine flag. Kaya ang loyalty ninyo dapat huwag sa akin. You remain loyal to the flag. That is what is democracy is all about, he said. As previously reported by KAMI, a historian pointed out that flag protocols were breached during the state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Philippines last November 20 to 21. POPULAR: Read more news about President Rodrigo Duterte! Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news! Girls' Generation - Gee: Our Zero-Budget Version | Your favourite old school Korean pop song Gee by Girls Generation from 2007. We love classics! Check out our remake on KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel! Source: Kami.com.ph Greetings from Panama. Are you one of the people who look for products labeled "organic," "non-GMO," or "fair trade"? According to the official Fairtrade site: Fairtrade is a simple way to make a difference to the lives of the people who grow the things we love. We do this by making trade fair. Fairtrade is unique. We work with businesses, consumers and campaigners. Farmers and workers have an equal say in everything we do. Empowerment is at the core of who we are. We have a vision: a world in which all producers can enjoy secure and sustainable livelihoods, fulfill their potential and decide on their future. Our mission is to connect disadvantaged farmers and workers with consumers, promote fairer trading conditions and empower farmers and workers to combat poverty, strengthen their position and take more control over their lives.... Over and above the Fairtrade price, the Fairtrade Premium is an additional sum of money which goes into a communal fund for workers and farmers to use as they see fit to improve their social, economic and environmental conditions... Fairtrade is about better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world. By requiring companies to pay sustainable prices (which must never fall lower than the market price), Fairtrade addresses the injustices of conventional trade, which traditionally discriminates against the poorest, weakest producers. It enables them to improve their position and have more control over their lives.. With Fairtrade you have the power to change the world every day. With simple shopping choices you can get farmers a better deal. And that means they can make their own decisions, control their future and lead the dignified life everyone deserves. In 2016, farmers received 158 million euros in Fairtrade premiums. This sounds great in theory, but according to a cacao farmer I spent time with in Panama, fair trade is not fair to the farmers. He and others in his indigenous tribe earn so little from the cacao exported to Switzerland for fine Swiss chocolate that he must resort to giving tours of his plantation in order to maintain the village school and pay for medical expenses for his tribe. His farm earns only 85 cents per half kilo of cacao (or 12 pods). This .85 cents is only for the exceptional cacao. Sometimes they earn even less. The Swiss tout the organic, non-GMO product and inspect the farms annually, which means that the farmers cannot use any fertilizers to combat the fungus that kills 85% of the crop every year. This also means that the farmers do everything by hand, including cutting, fermenting, roasting, and shelling the beans. The farmer/tour guide explained that they treat the cacao plants like a woman-- they love, cherish, and protect them every day. They use the same harvesting process that they have used for over 1,000 years. Just like coffee farmers I met in Guatemala, the cacao farmer I met in Panama calls "fair trade" a marketing scheme for the Americans and Europeans. I assume the farmers I met represent the view of some portion of the 1.65 million farmers involved in the Fairtrade program. For more on the Fair Trade debate, see here. I will have more on this and other sustainability issues next week. I'll be at UN Forum on Business and Human Rights with 2500 companies, NGOs, academics, and state representative in Geneva. In the meantime, if you're buying someone Fairtrade chocolate for the holidays, do it for the taste because you're not really doing much to help the farmer. Wednesday, November 21, 2018 A justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court resolved a dispute between an attorney and Bar Counsel concerning whether an ethics course satisfied a condition of the disciplinary sanction. The attorney is a prosecutor who violated Rule 4.2 by interviewing a represented witness outside the presence of counsel. The board has recommended that the respondent be suspended from the practice of law for one month and be required to attend a continuing legal education course (CLE) approved by the Office of Bar Counsel. The respondent has accepted the one-month suspension and has attended two courses, which she contends directly relate to the ethical issues that were the subject of the suspension. Bar Counsel declined to approve either as fulfilling the requirement. The court described the courses On June 14, 2018, the Cape & Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe hosted a course entitled "Ethical Considerations Training." The course was sponsored by the National Association of Attorneys General. There were three speakers at the course, Tigran Eldred, Professor of Law, New England School of Law; Brendan Ruane, Professional Development Consultant and Lead Instruction, National Attorneys General Training and Research Institute; and Judy Zeprun Kalman, General Counsel, Massachusetts Attorney General's Office. None of the instructors was affiliated with the District Attorney's Office. The instructors made presentations totaling 4.25 ethics hours. The course provided the attendees with reference and resource materials and a Uniform Certificate of Attendance. Participants were able to ask questions... On July 31, 2018, the respondent participated in an on-line webinar sponsored by Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) entitled "Criminal Law Ethical Landmines." The program was chaired by the then chair of the Board of Bar Overseers and the assistant bar counsel prosecuting this matter was one of the speakers. There were also instructors from the Suffolk County District Attorney's office, the Attorney General's Office, and an attorney in private practice. The course qualified for 3.0 ethics hours and the respondent received a signed certificate of attendance. Issue The only issue before me is whether the courses attended by the respondent satisfy the education requirement established by the board... Bar Counsel expressed concern that neither program was sufficiently directed to the ethical issues presented in the disciplinary case to be approved by Bar Counsel for purposes of the sanction. The court I am persuaded that the program organized by the Cape and Island's District Attorney's office was independent of the control of the District Attorney. The speakers were all experts in their fields and did not work for the District Attorney. The District Attorney hosted the program on his own initiative for his entire office and not just for the respondent. The District Attorney was not required to provide this training and should be commended for such an initiative. It also appears, contrary to Bar Counsel's conclusion, that the topics covered in the training directly addressed the ethical issues presented in the matter. I conclude that the program hosted by the Cape and Island's District Attorney and sponsored by the National Association of Attorneys General fulfilled the education requirement established by the board and that Bar Counsel should not have withheld approval of this program. I am also persuaded that the MCLE program that the respondent attended on-line satisfied the education requirement. Bar Counsel's reasoning that because the course was on-line it was inadequate is contradicted by the fact that the program was advertised as: taught, in part, by Bar Counsel; available on-line; and as providing up to three CLE ethics credits. Oops At oral argument, Bar Counsel stated that the ease of taking the courses the respondent completed was not sufficient punishment. The one-month suspension was a punishment. The educational component of the sanction is corrective in nature and is not a punishment. Whether such a class is sufficiently inconvenient is not an appropriate consideration. Bar Counsel does not appear to appreciate the significant commuting difficulty for an attorney living on Martha's Vineyard to attend, in person, a rarely offered course in Boston. I am also persuaded that the MCLE course sufficiently addressed the ethical issues of concern to the board. Additionally, the only alternative course proposed by Bar Counsel as adequate was one that she herself was teaching at Suffolk University Law School. Or the danger of a dinner party encounter with Alan Dershowitz. Sanction I conclude that the one-month suspension was appropriate and that the courses attended by the respondent satisfy the CLE requirement imposed by the board. The respondent may petition for reinstatement upon filing an affidavit of compliance. MV Times reported on the bar charges and the outcome. The District Attorney issued a statement disagreeing with the finding of misconduct. (Mike Frisch) https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2018/11/a-justice-of-the-massachusetts-supreme-judicial-court-resolved-a-dispute-between-an-attorney-and-bar-counsel-concerning-wheth.html Burning coal for energy adds planet-warming carbon dioxide, or CO2, to Earths atmosphere. As the planet heats up, experts warn that simply cutting greenhouse gas emissions will not be enough to avoid possibly disastrous levels of global warming. CO2 must also be removed from the atmosphere, they say. Existing experimental machines that pull CO2 directly from the air are too costly to be widely used. But a new report from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine says effective carbon-removal technology already exists. It is not costly, or even complex science. It is forests. The report explains that planting trees and overseeing forests are cost-effective ways to clean the air. They also work well across large areas. Forests used to cover large areas of the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States. In the state of West Virginia, a kind of mining known as strip mining left the land there bare, without trees. Now experts are working to bring back the forests that once covered much of the state. West Virginia's Monongahela National Forest is home to a rare group of trees. They are called virgin woods; they have never been touched by humans. Shane Jones is a biologist with the U.S. Forest Service. "Living in the East, there's not many places you can go and be untouched by Man." Jones says the trees there were missed by mistake when the surrounding forest was cut down for wood many years ago. That mistake turned out to be a good thing; red spruce forests such as those in the Monongahela are great at taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and locking it into the soil. Jones explains as he runs his hand through the dark black earth beside a tree. "See all that organic material? It's black because it's incredibly high in carbon." Over the years, coal mining and cutting forests took over 90 percent of the red spruce forests from the Appalachian Mountains. Now, as the planet warms, the need for forests to remove coals CO2 is increasingly urgent. Chris Barton works for the University of Kentucky. As he walks along the Appalachian land, he says the needs of warm-weather rainforests get most of the worlds attention. "But here in the temperate region of the world, in Appalachia, four hours away from Washington, D.C., we have billions of trees that potentially we could be planting." So, Barton started a group called Green Forests Work. Its members aim to put trees back on the roughly 400,000 hectares of land that was cleared away by strip mining. However, Barton explains, the land has problems. "If you went out and planted trees on these sites, they just didn't grow. The ground was way too compacted. Water didn't infiltrate. Roots can't penetrate. Oxygen can't circulate in those environments." The solution? Using heavy equipment, workers tear up the ground. The process lets the trees they plant put down roots. Barton says not everyone believes the solution is a good idea. "We've had a lot of people kinda look at us twice. But the really interesting thing about it is, after we do it, there's no question that that was the right thing to do." And it has worked. Forests are coming back to the grounds. Scientists say that, in West Virginia alone, restoring red spruce forests to the area could send what is equal to 56 million barrels of oil into the ground. But it will take time. A long time. Around the world, experts say, nature offers powerful tools to fight climate change. But patience is needed, Jones says. "It's really awesome to see a tree planted eight years ago that's now waist high. But at the end of the day, at the end of my day, we're barely getting started. Because our main goal with the restoration work that we do here is to basically take actions to then let nature take over." Nature works, but slowly, in its own time. Im Anne Ball. Steve Baragona reported on this story for VOANews.com. Anne Ball adapted this story for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story greenhouse gas emissions n. gases that come out of cars and factories, etc. that trap heat in the atmosphere and great a warming of the planet global adj. of, relating to or involving the entire world temperate adj. moderate climate that lacks extremes compacted adj. having a dense structure or parts closely packed together infiltrate v. to pass through penetrate v. to gain entrance to, or pass into awesome adj. causing feeling of fear and wonderful, extremely good Officials in Northern California say a deadly wildfire that began two weeks ago is almost completely contained. The Associated Press reports that the wildfire, known as the Camp Fire, was 95 percent contained Thursday. It has been blamed for more than 80 deaths. Three other people died in a second major fire near the city of Los Angeles. State officials are using DNA tests in an effort to identify those killed by the Northern California wildfire. DNA is a substance that carries genetic information in the cells of plants and animals. The testing tool produces results in just two hours. The test, called Rapid DNA Identification, can examine DNA from small pieces of bone or other human remains. It then compares it to genetic material provided by relatives of the missing individuals. But the technology depends on people willing to volunteer their DNA for testing. And there have not been nearly as many volunteers as officials had hoped for. The Camp Fire destroyed the town of Paradise and caused heavy damage to nearby areas. As of Thursday night, at least 84 people were confirmed dead. And the official list of those missing had about 700 names. The Associated Press noted Wednesday that only about 60 people had provided DNA samples to area laboratories. That number came from Annette Mattern, a representative of ANDE the company that donated the technology. Mattern said, We need hundreds. We need a big enough sample for us to make a positive identification on these and to also give a better idea of how many losses there actually are. Differences in information, the inability of relatives to travel to Northern California and mistrust of the government may be keeping the sample number low. One womans story Tara Quinones says she had not heard from her uncle, David Marbury, for eight days before she drove from the San Francisco area to give a DNA sample. A worker took samples from her skin and inside her cheek and then asked questions about who she was looking for and their relationship. The owner of her uncles home confirmed the house burned down. The uncles car was still on the property. But Quinones had no idea if any remains were found. She said giving her DNA sample is the one way she could help find her uncle. Like Quinones, some people have offered their DNA after learning about the identification effort. Others offered it after officials told them that remains from a probable family member had been found. Mattern said it has been surprisingly easy to get DNA from the remains of those who died in the fire. ANDE won a contract in 2009 to do research and development for federal government agencies. The companys technology has been used in test programs for many years. But this is the first time ANDE has helped identify victims after a natural disaster. The company has donated seven machines and over 10 workers to the effort. Mattern said local law enforcement officials are seeking a way to make it easier for families who live outside northern California to provide samples. Local law enforcement and the company have said that the DNA samples would be destroyed once they are no longer needed. Im Jonathan Evans. Kathleen Ronayne reported this story for the Associated Press. Alice Bryant adapted the report for VOA Learning English. George Grow was the editor. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story positive adj. sure or likely; hopeful contract n. an agreement between two or more persons or sides uncle n. the brother of someones father or mother; the husband of the sister of a parent cheek n. skin inside the mouth France aims to bring more foreign students to its universities by offering more classes taught in English. French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced the plan on Monday. He said increasing the number of foreigners studying in the country would help build French influence overseas. France is home to famous universities like the Sorbonne in Paris and several leading business schools. The country is a popular choice among non-English-speaking students. But it ranks behind the United States, Britain and Australia in the total number of foreign students who study there. Between 2011 and 2016, the number of foreign students studying at French universities fell by 8.5 percent. The country has seen increased competition from Germany, Russia, Canada and China. Philippe said that in the education field, just as in other economic ones, the worlds balance of power is shifting. Thats why we need to welcome more foreign students. The new plan Under the new plan, France will ease student visa requirements. Student visa applications also will be available online. Starting next March, foreigners who have earned a French masters degree will be able to receive a residence visa. The change is meant to help recent graduates look for work or set up a business in France. France also plans to increase the costs for students who come from outside the European Economic Area. Currently, students in France -- including foreign students pay (about) 170 euros a year for a bachelor's degree and 243 euros a year for a masters degree. Officials said the low cost of education in France leads students from countries like China to believe that the quality of a French education is lower than what other countries offer. Beginning in September 2019, non-European students will pay 2,770 euros a year for a bachelors degree and 3,770 euros for graduate degrees. That is still much less costly than some other European countries, however. Prime Minister Philippe said the costs for foreign students will remain well below the 8,000 euros to 13,000 euros charged by the Dutch or the tens of thousands of pounds paid in Britain. France will use the extra money to build better education facilities and increase the number of scholarships for foreign students. I'm Ashley Thompson. Hai Do adapted this story for Learning English based on Reuters news reports. Ashley Thompson was the editor. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story shift -v. to move or to cause (something or someone) to move to a different place, position, etc. application -n. an official request (usually written) for something (such as a job, admission to a school, a loan, etc.) residence visa -n. legal permission to live in a country graduate -n. a person who has earned a degree or diploma from a school, college, or university bachelor's degree -n. a document given to a student by a college or university usually after successfully completing four years of study master's degree -n. a document that is given to a student by a college or university usually after one or two years of additional successful study following a bachelor's degree facility -n. something (such as a building or large piece of equipment) that is built for a specific purpose scholarship -n. an amount of money that is given by a school, an organization, etc., to a student to help pay for the student's education The use of bitcoin has decreased sharply in 2018. Chainalysis is a company that researches bitcoin, a digital form of money that is not controlled by a state. The company said that the value of bitcoins traded by major payment processing companies has fallen by 80 percent in the first nine months of this year. Some financial experts suspect this is because bitcoin is struggling to change from a risky asset into a widely-accepted currency. At the same time, the exchange value of bitcoin is now becoming relatively stable although sharp changes remain common. This week, bitcoins value again dropped sharply to its lowest level this year. But, financial experts say stability is what the currency needs to be used as money for payment. Joni Teves is with the bank UBS in London. She noted, There would have to be a stability requirement if it is to become another form of money. However, that is not the only thing that Teves is concerned about. One thing that would take bitcoin into the mainstream is scalability, she told Reuters news service. She said people need to be able to process it just like they do money and in very large amounts on a large scale. That could be a problem. Bitcoin, and currencies like it, are based on blockchain technology. That means all activity related to bitcoin is recorded and confirmed by computer in a blockchain. Blockchain technology permits records to be checked and stored securely, but requires a lot of computing power. The system can only process a small number of transactions compared to, for example, a major credit card company. This suggests that the use of the currency by many people could be difficult. Chainalysis said its research shows that in the month of December the value of payments made with Bitcoin reached $427 million. By September, however, that number had fallen to $96 million. The company studied 17 bitcoin payment processors, including one of the biggest, BitPay. Reuters reports that most sellers which accept bitcoin use a processor like BitPay to change bitcoin into a normal currency. However, information about bitcoin payments remains incomplete. Early successes Through its first 10 years, Bitcoin attracted many different investors who believed the currency would change traditional finance. In December, the value of a bitcoin rose to nearly $20,000. Since that time, the value has fallen a lot. That has affected some businesses that had expected profits to rise with the growth of bitcoin and other blockchain currencies. Computer chip designer Nvidia blamed a lack of demand for its products on weak bitcoin demand. The companys stock price has fallen sharply since October. Some experts argue stability in bitcoin prices is not enough. They say bitcoin use needs to be faster and less costly. Teves said that clearer rules by financial officials across the world would also help people gain trust in the currency. But such rules are expected to take time as the technology develops. One new technology promises to make bitcoin transactions faster. The so-called lightning network adds code to bitcoin blockchain that can make transactions faster and less costly. Users say lightning lets them send money to one another on the network without completing a blockchain. Ed Cooper is with Revolut, a financial technology company. He said, Lightning solves some of bitcoins scaling issue. Im Mario Ritter Jr. Reuters reported this story. Mario Ritter Jr. adapted it for VOA Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story digital adj. using computer technology asset n. something of monetary value that is owned by a person, company, etc. stable adj. not easily changed currency n. the money that a country uses and supports scalability n. the ability to easily make something larger or in much greater numbers transaction n. a business deal in which money passes from one person or group to another code n. a set of instructions for a computer All the usual rituals of international summits were there: the group photos, the gala dinners, the noticeably vibrant shirts leaders force themselves into. But eclipsing all of that at Asias two big meetings was some unusually forthright criticism that exposed deepening divisions rattling the region. Front and center was the rivalry between the U.S. and China. The two countries are locked in a widening trade war and their representatives used the summits to exchange barbs and maneuver to expand their influence. Competition between the great powers is not new to the region. But over decades of war, financial crises and other setbacks, countries across Asia and the Pacific Rim have used these annual meetings to talk through such problems, usually opting to sideline disagreements in a show of unity. Consensus, not conflict, is typically the norm. This year is different. The clash between the worlds two biggest economies is shaking the bedrock of regional amity and leaving some countries worried they will be forced to choose between Beijing and Washington. It also may bode poorly for compromise between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping when they meet this month at the Group of 20 gathering in Argentina. The antagonisms kicked off last week at a Southeast Asian summit in Singapore, where U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, standing in for Trump, declared that empire and aggression have no place in the region, a clear reference to Chinese expansion in the disputed South China Sea. The discord carried over to the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Papua New Guinea, where leaders failed for the first time in nearly 30 years of such gatherings to endorse a final joint statement. China apparently pushed back hard against U.S. demands for strong language against unfair trade practices. Pence and Chinese leaders sparred at both summits, with the vice president describing Chinas militarization and expansion in the South China Sea as illegal and dangerous. He accused Beijing of threatening the sovereignty of many nations and said it endangers the prosperity of the world. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang smacked back, urging fellow leaders to send a positive message to markets ruffled by the trade war, which has seen both sides imposing punitive tariffs on billions of dollars of each others exports and has the potential to unravel supply chains across the globe. The acrimony may be somewhat less apparent at the G-20 gathering in Buenos Aeries, which will include leaders from across the globe and the focus will be global, not regional. But the strains between the U.S. and China were painful enough in Singapore that the gatherings urbane host, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, appealed for a bit less candor and greater camaraderie, saying it would be easier if everybody was on the same side. Across Asia, countries worry they will have to choose one or the other, he said. I hope it does not happen soon. Most Asian nations are loath to make such a choice because they benefit from the rivalry, whether economically, militarily or both. For most, China is their largest trading partner. But they are wary of Chinas military might and see the U.S. and its presence in the region as a welcome counterbalance. Chinas footprint was everywhere in the Papuan capital, Port Moresby, from a showpiece boulevard and international convention center built with Chinese help to bus stop shelters sporting China Aid plaques. A huge billboard showed Xi gazing beneficently beside Papua New Guineas leader. At that meeting, Pence took aim at Chinas global infrastructure drive, known as the Belt and Road Initiative, suggesting that Beijing was drowning its partners in debt and infringing on their sovereignty. He also announced the U.S. would join ally Australias plan to develop a naval base in Papua New Guinea. That followed a hush-hush working level meeting in Singapore of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which involves the U.S., Japan, Australia and India and is viewed as a challenge to Chinas expanding military reach. Xi, the Chinese president, suggested the U.S. was bending the rules of global institutions set up after World War II, such as the World Trade Organization, and using them for selfish agendas. This years friction wasnt confined to jousting between the U.S. and China. In Singapore, Myanmars leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who usually is not put on the spot by the other leaders, appeared grim and weary after she was sharply criticized by Pence and by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed over the Buddhist majority-nations treatment of ethnic Muslim Rohingya. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled killings and other violence in Myanmar and are crowded in dire conditions in camps in Bangladesh. True to form, China saw an opportunity and responded to the criticism by having Li reach out and reaffirm Beijings support for Myanmars efforts to maintain domestic stability. Elaine Kurtenbach, Bangkok, AP Insurance firm AXA Hong Kong has announced the expansion of their business in Macau with the opening of a new office, the implementation of the latest InsurTech and the growth of their local sales teams to cope with growing demand for insurance policies within the Macau market. The average income of Macau residents has increased and the current labor population in Macau is relatively young with around 54 percent aged 25-44. The need for wealth management and insurance protection has increased accordingly, noted the company in a press statement. Besides this, the insurance penetration rate is only around 2 percent, and we can see a huge demand in the Macau market. Traditionally, life and savings insurance products have been more popular in the Macau market. However, now home and travel insurance are becoming more popular, fueled in part by the devastating effects brought about by typhoons Hato and Mangkhut. The company will launch travel and home insurance in Macau in the second quarter of 2019. AXA Hong Kong has been providing services in Macau for nearly 30 years. In the past two years, it has expanded its team in the MSAR by more than one-quarter, further expecting to double its agency force in the next two years. Over the past 12 months, AXA Hong Kong has seen its Macau business grow by about 15 percent. Value of economic activities rises 9.1 percent in 2017 The gross value added by all economic activities in Macau registered 9.1 percent growth in real terms in 2017, according to the latest data from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC), after declining 0.7 percent year-on-year in 2016. DSEC added that the growth was bolstered by the satisfactory performance of the tertiary sector, with gross value added by gaming and junket activities rising 16.2 percent, while the wholesale and retail sector increased 21.9 percent. Also according to DSEC, the relative importance of the secondary sector to total gross value added fell from 6.7 percent in 2016 to 5.1 percent in 2017, owing to a decrease in the share of construction. Meanwhile, the relative importance of the tertiary sector rose from 93.3 percent to 94.9 percent, with the increased shares of hotels and similar activities, wholesale and retail and gaming and junket activities. The share of gaming and junket activities grew by 2.5 percentage points year-on-year to 49.1 percent, whereas that of non-gaming services dropped by 0.8 percentage points to 45.8 percent. Gross value added by the secondary sector declined by 20.6 percent in real terms, with that of construction dropping by 28.8 percent, and that of manufacturing and electricity, gas and water supply rising by 7.7 percent and 17.2 percent respectively in real terms. At the same time, gross value added by the tertiary sector increased by 11.2 percent in real terms. The young woman is panting, panicked, her thin arm pointing at four men in police uniforms who had let themselves into her hotel room near midnight. You cannot treat me like this, she shouts, her voice high and reeling. You cannot barge in like this late at night, OK? I didnt do anything illegal. The men, one carrying a pair of thin white plastic restraints, tell her they are doing a routine inspection, according to a video of the Nov. 11 incident seen by The Associated Press. Only there was nothing routine about this. Their target was Zhou Chen, an environmental reporter for Caixin, one of Chinas most respected business media groups. She was on a reporting trip to Quanzhou, a city in southeastern Chinas Fujian province, to investigate a petrochemical leak that sickened more than 50 people. Journalists in China are regularly tailed and harassed by local authorities, but few Chinese reporters publicly discuss the details. Zhou broke the silence about her harassment in an article published this week, prompting an outcry on social media and a rare apology from the police. Reporters Without Borders ranks China 176 out of 180 in its World Press Freedom Index and says more than 50 journalists and bloggers are detained in conditions that pose a threat to their lives. Chinas ruling Communist Party is eager to suppress information that might contribute to social instability, while local officials often try to interfere with reporting on sensitive topics. On Nov. 4, around 7 tons of the petroleum derivative C9 leaked into the sea off Quanzhou. Dozens of residents fell sick, and scores of fish died. Local residents complained that officials mishandled the cleanup and tried to cover up the extent of the damage. Zhou went to investigate. On Nov. 11, after a long day of reporting, she was in bed, in her pajamas, looking at her phone when she heard a keycard unlocking the door of her hotel room. It was 11:30 p.m. You barged in like this when Im not even properly dressed, Zhou shouts in the video. Could you please leave immediately? The men demanded her ID. They did a cursory search of the room, flipping the curtains back and forth, and warned her to watch out for her safety. Zhous account of her terrifying night was published Monday in Caixin Weekly, part of the Caixin Media group. The police search capped a day of bullying, according to her article. She wrote that she had been blocked from taking photos by people wearing body cameras and tailed as a mother and daughter took her to see dead fish floating in their family fish farm. According to Zhou, the police didnt show her any documents authorizing their late-night search, as required by Chinese law. Hotels in China must register their guests information with the police, and a hotel receptionist later told Zhou that the police had asked for her room card specifically. I finally have seen firsthand how lawless and unscrupulous the abuse of official power can be, she wrote. After the men left her room, she wrote that she sat for some time in a frightened daze. Both Caixin and Zhou declined to comment. AP A delegation of the Permanent Secretariat of Forum Macau, has toured Angola and Portugal from November 7 to 12, as informed in a statement. During the visit to Angola, the delegation held a meeting with the director-general for Asia and Oceania of the Republic of Angolas Ministry of External Relations, Agostinho Andre de Carvalho Fernandes, where the two sides exchanged views on the achievements of Forum Macau over the past 15 years. This included talks about Macaus role as a platform for business and trade cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries. Among other discussion topics was the upcoming 6th Ministerial Conference of Forum Macau. During the tour, the delegation also had the opportunity to visit the Chinese Embassy in Angola, the Chinese-financed Higher Institute of International Relations project, and had an exchange session with representatives of China- based firms in Angola. During the Portugal leg of the tour, the delegation met the director-general of Economic Activities of the Ministry of Economy Fernanda Ferreira Dias, where both parties discussed the importance of Sino-Portuguese economic and trade relations, and the role of Macau has a platform in the development of economic and trade cooperation between China and Portugal. One of the highly relevant topics of discussion was the participation of Portugal in Chinas Belt and Road initiative, as well as the implementation of matters raised at the 5th Ministerial Conference of Forum Macau and preparations for the 6th conference. The delegation also visited AICEP Portugal Global, the Chinese Embassy in Portugal and the Huawei Portugal Innovation & Experience Centre. After their visit to Portugal, the working group of the Permanent Secretariat of Forum Macao has scheduled a tour to Sao Tome and Principe. Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected calls from nationalist lawmakers for Germany to drop its support for a U.N.-backed agreement on migration. Several countries including the United States, Hungary, Austria, Israel, Australia and Poland have announced they wont back the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, set to be approved next month in Marrakech, Morocco. Speaking during parliaments annual budget debate in Berlin, Merkel told lawmakers that the pact would ensure reasonable conditions elsewhere that already exist in Germany, such as the right for migrants to access health services and get financial support. Thats why its in our national interest that the conditions around the world, for refugees on the one hand and migrants on the other, are improved, Merkel said. Opposition to the pact has come mainly from the far-right Alternative for Germany party, but a number of lawmakers from Merkels own party have also begun to question the agreement. Health Minister Jens Spahn called recently for a broader debate about the pact and, if necessary, for a delay in approving it. Spahn appears to be trailing other high-profile candidates in a bid to succeed Merkel as leader of her Christian Democratic Union party next month. One of the leading contenders, Friedrich Merz, called yesterday [Macau time] for a clarification that the U.N. pact wont create any new grounds for asylum through the back door. At an event in eastern Germany with the other candidates, Merz also advocated a wider discussion on how the right to asylum in Germany is defined. Merkel, who has announced she wont run for a fifth term in 2021, said the migration pact is an example of the way in which global problems can only be solved through international cooperation. Amid a rise in nationalist sentiment around the world, Merkel has become one of the most vocal defenders of multilateralism, frequently noting that Germany owes its revival after World War II to institutions such as the European Union and United Nations. Presenting her governments 356 billion-euro (USD407-billion) budget for 2019, Merkel cited plans to invest more in care for children and the elderly, improve integration of migrants, raise pension levels and boost renewable energy. Alternative for Germanys co- leader, Alice Weidel, earlier accused Merkels government of spending without thinking about tomorrow. Weidel used much of her speech to defend her party over its receipt of foreign donations and accuse rivals of having similarly dubious sources of income. Merkel didnt respond to Weidels comments about party funding. Frank Jordans, Berlin, AP Architect Carlos Marreiros yesterday denied allegations of plagiarism regarding the facade of his project, the New Macau Central Library, which bears similarities with an award-winning auditorium built in the early 2000s in the Spanish city of Leon. During a press conference held yesterday, Marreiros said that architecture is not cosmetic, and explained that the project presented by he and a team of around 40 persons must be seen holistically. It was revealed on Saturday that Marreiros had been selected to design and plan the construction of the New Macau Central Library, first announced in 2007, and is expected to submit its final blueprint by 2020. The winning bid was announced at a press conference held by the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC), at a tender price of MOP18.68 million and for a design period of 268 days. The IC stated yesterday that it is following the issue and has contacted the winning company immediately asking for an explanation about it. The bureau carried the open tender and proposal evaluation process of the library design and planning of the New Macau Central Library Project strictly following the principles of fairness, impartiality and openness and in accordance with the law. At the present stage, it is not convenient to make any comments, according to a statement sent to the Times. During the press conference held at Albergue SCM, Marreiros said that he already sent a letter to the IC with further explanations, adding that he and his team only received knowledge of the existence of the Leon Auditorium on Wednesday night, after he was contacted by a journalist from newspaper Hoje Macau and asked to comment upon the resemblance. I did not know the building. I started knowing about it superficially now, through pictures and the Internet, he said. The local architect and artist said that his work had been heavily influenced by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier and the modernist movement. During yesterdays press conference, he showed several images of his previous work in Macau, where he mingled heritage buildings with modern sections, such as the expansion of the Public Security Forces Affairs Bureau building, located in the former St Francisco barracks. Regarding the project of the New Central Library, Marreiros said that the placement of the windows was made in a way similar to a famous work by Le Corbusier, namely the Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, France. The modernist architectural language has a similar vocabulary. We cant conclude that there is a copy when a section of a building is highlighted to compare it with a section of other building, Marreiros said. To find resemblance [between buildings] is something that happens all over the world in modern architecture. [] We never thought that the result of our exercise would have any resemblance to any building, much less to this Leon auditorium, which I only knew about yesterday [Wednesday]. In order to demonstrate his point, Marreiros showed images of several works of modernist architecture that are very similar to one other [see images besides]. He argued that architecture is a whole made to serve the happiness of the user. It is not only looking at the details of a window or a facade that you can compare with other thing and say it is a copy. The Macanese architect also said that the project for the New Central Library and the Leon Auditorium are very different, noting that the Macau project has 11 floors and the Leon has six. In terms of size and implementation, our project has nothing to do with the one in Leon. All the approaches, the way to build, the [architectural] discourse are completely different. During the press conference, Marreiros revealed his idea for the modern section of the building, which intends to show what libraries are built for: The block was inspired in a file drawer and a book shelf, where knowledge is stored and safeguarded. Marreiros noted that all his projects are unique and adapted to topology and use. When I draw for Macau, I dont draw the same way that I do when drawing for China, Lisbon or Cape Verde. He closed the press conference by defending his honor. I always upheld principles of good architectural practice and creativity. [] I never copied or plagiarized, he said. What would I win with 61 years of age I started to work when I was still an architecture student in Lisbon by plagiarizing? Bearing in mind all my past, it doesnt make sense that people would think that there is any intention to imitate. My conscience is clear. Four Seasons Hotel Macao is set to hold its annual charity event Run of Hope Macau, a community program that aims to support the fight against cancer, for the tenth consecutive year this Sunday. Themed Superhero, the hotel is expecting some 300 participants this year, with funds donated to Kiang Wu Hospital for cancer research initiatives and Evangelize China Fellowship Orphanage. General manager of Four Seasons Hotel Macao, Kris Kaminsky, sat with the Times, detailing the hotels activities in regards to this cause, as well as disclosing updates on the second phase of Four Seasons which Sheldon Adelson, chairman and chief executive officer of Las Vegas Sands referred to as Four Seasons Tower Suites Macao. Although no budget for this particular project was revealed, Adelson noted in the LVS third quarter results that investments in the Four Seasons Tower Suites Macao, St. Regis Tower Suites Macao and The Londoner Macao totals to a USD2.2 billion investment through to 2021. Macau Daily Times Run of Hope is set to enter its tenth year. Are there newly added elements that we can expect? Kris Kaminsky Its a special event for Four Seasons. Its been around for a long time. Our founder, Isadore Sharp, decided to do something about it. If you look around the globe, all our 112 properties are doing something around Run of Hope. Four Seasons, as a company, has raised more than CAD700 million throughout the years [which has] gone to help fund cancer research, with this goal of eradicating cancer. In Macau its our tenth year so its an exciting one. Theres a little bit of twist this year. [The event] has become more of a family event and I think theres certainly a desire for family friendly events in Macau. To celebrate our tenth year, [] weve asked all the participants to come and dress up like superheroes, and well treat them like superheroes because theyre really doing good things too. MDT Is this a part of the hotels branding? KK Yes, the hotel and the company in general. It is part of our corporate social responsibility. Weve got three pillars in Four Seasons. One is building communities, [], second is cancer research and the third pillar is supporting sustainability. So, certainly were hitting some of these markets with Run of Hope. MDT Are we seeing an increase in the funds being raised? KK We are, but thats because we are doing more events; were sort of diversifying this. Run of Hope is becoming more of a series of events than just one run. Weve got Cocktails for a Cause, which we did for the first time last year and raised MOP50,000. We finished that event two weeks ago and [] we broke MOP100,000. Its double the amount of the donations year-on-year, so if we just keep that trend, well be making a great impact. MDT There arent a lot of establishments in the SAR that have activities to support cancer research programs, particularly in Macau. Thus how significant is this Four Seasons in supporting local research? KK You know its special when you see what they do with the money. We dont always know the [direct impact] but for example two years ago, they used the money to offer breast cancer scans for people that could not afford it and would not be able to go to a private hospital to have it done. When you think about that, how can you not feel good? Thats making an impact. The people of Macau who wouldnt otherwise have the resources are able to go to Kiang Wu and because of these funds that weve been able to raise, theyre able to go and have a free scan. MDT Can you tell us details about the new phase of the Four Seasons Hotel? KK There are exciting things happening at this property. One of them is the addition of the second tower. I think that were at point where it is an extension of this hotel, so its a new experience coming. We kind of look at it as saying Four Seasons Macau has established itself as really the premier property in Macau. It will be an all-suite product. There will be some of the biggest suites in town, the design is spectacular and its really designed with home in mind. So this is a different product for this market. If you can imagine a very high- end residential product, thats what youll have with the comfort of home. Partner it along with the legendary service and anticipatory service, [and with] all this, its going to be a really amazing experience. MDT Will we see different branding in this new tower? KK This is a Four Seasons product. A lot of that is still in the works in terms of developing it, but its Four Seasons [so] youll have the service and the experience of Four Seasons. MDT How will this new tower differ from the integrated resorts that Macau currently has? KK I think product-wise its going to have its own identity. This is designed as a home, as a residential product versus a hotel product. In terms of the looks and feel of it, it will absolutely have its own identity. In terms of experience, its part of the Four Seasons. The Four Seasons brand is enhancing the product. [] There will be a pool overlooking the Cotai Strip, giving more experiences to our guests. MDT How many suites are we expecting? KK Lets say around 300. MDT Can you reveal the budget for this new tower? KK I certainly cant comment on the budget but I can say that this is being designed and built to be the premier product in Macau. The Secretary for Administration and Justice, Sonia Chan was yesterday at the Legislative Assembly (AL) to present her Policy Address for the fiscal year of 2019, following the general presentation made by Chief Executive (CE) Chui Sai On last week. In fact, the Secretary chose to focus more on a review of the works of her Secretariat during the year 2018 than to present concrete measures or topics which she plans to address in the year to come. In 2019, the area of Administration and Justice would continue to work further on the several policy measures, based on the existing works, she noted before enumerating a number of measures in which Secretary Chan believes the government has been very successful in 2018. Specifically, she mentioned the creation of the new Municipal Affairs Bureau (IAM), which will be officially created from January 1, 2019, and the development of the Electronic Government (e-gov) in relation to the general planning for 2015-2019, for which Chan claims 86 percent of the works have already been concluded. That was an opinion not shared by several lawmakers, who claim precisely the opposite among them Ma Chi Seng, Si Ka Lon and Ella Lei, who questioned the Secretary on the real effects of such works. On the topic and referring to the figures presented previously by the Secretary for Economy and Finance, Lionel Leong, Lei said, the increase in the number of workers [public servants] proves that the electronic government is not working and there is no simplification of procedures, adding, there is no efficiency and more and more workers will be needed, costing more and more money to the public coffers. Lei remarked that the government has been advertising the electronic government for many years but the concept has not moved from the project stage to a real implementation.Its far below the expectations of the population, she concluded. The creation and the expectation of the work of the IAM was also a highlighted topic at the plenary session with lawmaker Ma calling for a timetable for the publication of the list of members that will compose the Advisory Council of the new bureau. In reply the Secretary advanced that the list will be revealed next month. In December we will conclude the process and disclose the list of the selected members as well as the justification for why they were chosen, the Secretary said, noting that there was a high number of applicants from which, 60 percent are people below 45 years old, which means that the younger people are interested in participating. Chan also said all sectors of society would be represented. Another area of interest for the government will be the extension of visa-free access to countries in the American continents for Macau passport-holders. In 2019 the government of the MSAR will continue to prioritize the negotiation with American countries over the reciprocal access to visa-free entry for Macau passport holders, she said, a measure that according to Chan was already extended to 141 countries and regions in 2018. In regards to leisure and recreational areas soon to be placed under the authority of the IAM, the Chairman of Administration Committee of IACM, Jose Tavares announced that the bureau has plans to build in 2019 a bicycle path in the mountain area, starting around Seac Pai Van park as well as a refurbishing of the streets and sidewalks around Nam Van Lake and the creation of a new pedestrian path in the area of the Taipa Houses-Museum, to enhance the environment in the area and allow visitors to appreciate the flowers and plants. Further into the session, lawmaker Sulu Sou provided his own calculation of the performance of the Secretariat of Sonia Chan in 2018, noting, according to your plan and from the 11 noted topics, seven of them have not even reached the AL yet. Besides that, there was very little transparency in the way other topics were approached. It looks like the government is purposely delaying the policies that interfere directly with peoples lives, he said, naming for instance the policy to implement a tax over the use of plastic bags, among others. Chan announces end to public servants lower career index One of the measures that Secretary for Administration and Justice Sonia Chan announced is the end to some lower career indexes for civil servants, who will now move to the upper level. On the sidelines, lawmaker Jose Pereira Coutinho expressed his satisfaction but noted that it is just a small victory. This is a war that is not over yet. The government takes advantage of this [lower salary index] to put workers to do the work of higher salary indexes [but] paying less, he said, adding, the fight will continue because at this very moment, the government is paying [for example] the index 350 for the staff members with bachelor degrees and as far as I know there is no such degree anymore. Taking into to account that in Macau there are enough vacancies for university courses we cant understand why they want to keep this index. In fact, these people are hired over this index but in reality they are performing tasks of licentiates from the 430 [salary] index, the lawmaker said. Coutinho also noted that there are many other cases in which public servants are being harmed in their rights by exploitative index tables that do not match the work that these people are performing. The Miss World contest is moving to London from Nigeria after riots by Muslim youths opposed to the show left more than 100 people dead and 500 injured in the city of Kaduna. The pageants organisers said the show would be held in London on 7 December instead of the Nigerian capital, Abuja. In Abuja, police say they have regained control of the streets after violent protests spread to the city over the plans to hold the contest there. In a statement, the pageant organisers said the change of venue was in the overall interests of Nigeria and the contestants. Pageant publicist Stella Din added: The show definitely will go on. The contestants were under pressure to pull out of the event even before they arrived in Africa. Campaigners protesting against the death sentence imposed on a young Nigerian woman called Amina Lawal urged a boycott of Miss World. On 22 March this year, the 31-year-old woman was sentenced to be stoned to death by an Islamic court in the northern state of Katsina for bearing a child out of wedlock after she was raped. Her lawyers are appealing the decision. Kaduna a city in the mainly Muslim state of Zamfara which has a large Christian minority is now under curfew. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo went on television along with religious leaders to appeal for national calm, blaming a media report, not the contest itself, for the violence. It could happen at any time irresponsible journalism is committed against Islam, he said. Trouble had been brewing since the arrival of the contestants earlier this month. Many Nigerian Muslims were incensed that the event, already an affront to their conservative ideas about feminine modesty, would be held during the holy month of Ramadan. At first the protests were confined to angry statements by Islamic leaders and religious scholars. Then on 16 November when ThisDay, a Nigerian daily, published an article written by 21-year-old journalist Isioma Daniel in which she suggested the Prophet Mohammed might have married one of the contestants. Many Muslims were deeply offended, and on 20 November youths in Kaduna sacked and burned a local office of the newspaper. Two days ago the fighting degenerated into a vicious round of sectarian bloodletting, as rival gangs of Muslims and Christians burned places of worship and attacked each other. Troops and police responded in force, and yesterday the Red Cross said about 100 had been killed with the streets of Kaduna scattered with bodies. Courtesy BBC News In context The following day the 92 Miss World contestants arrived in England much to the relief of their family and friends. They left behind them scenes of carnage in Nigeria the final number of dead was 215. Two days later the deputy governor of Zamfara announced the state government had passed a fatwa, or religious edict, on journalist Isioma Daniel in spite of numerous apologies made by ThisDay newspaper. She fled to the United States on 27 November and is still living in hiding even though the Nigerian government said it would not allow her to be harmed by any fatwa that was issued. Miss World was moved to London and on 7 December Miss Turkey won the competition. Amina Lawal won her appeal against the death sentence in September 2003. British Prime Minister Theresa May said that a good Brexit deal is within reach, after the European Union and her government agreed on a draft declaration outlining their future relations. The 26-page text was agreed upon at a technical level by negotiators and endorsed yesterday by the European Commission, the EUs executive arm, which is overseeing Brexit negotiations. It paves the way for a weekend EU summit to rubber-stamp the deal. This is the right deal for the U.K., May said later outside her Downing Street offices. It delivers on the vote of the referendum. It brings back control of our borders, our money and our laws and it does so while protecting jobs, protecting our security and protecting the integrity of the United Kingdom. She said that British citizens want a good deal that sets us on course for a brighter future. That deal is within our grasp and I am determined to deliver it. In a tweet earlier yesterday, EU Council President Donald Tusk who is set to chair Sundays summit confirmed that a draft political declaration on future ties has been agreed at negotiators level and agreed in principle at political level. Tusk said he sent the draft to Britains 27 European partners and that it still requires the endorsement of the leaders. EU heads of state and government are due to meet in Brussels on Sunday to approve the declaration and a separate divorce deal. May is set to return to Brussels on Saturday for more talks on the eve of the summit, including with Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. Representatives from all 28 EU countries are due to meet Friday to prepare for the summit, which is seen as a pivotal moment in the Brexit process. May is facing widespread opposition in the British Parliament over the divorce agreement, which was agreed last week. That 585-page legal treaty deals with the terms of Britains departure, including what the country owes the EU. Britain officially leaves the EU the first country ever to do so on March 29, 2019, but a withdrawal agreement needs to be sealed soon to leave enough time for the European Parliament and the U.K. parliament to endorse it. As opposed to the withdrawal agreement, the draft declaration on future ties is a political, not a legal, text. This declaration establishes the parameters of an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security and defense and wider areas of cooperation, according to the document. It also talks about the close ties that have been cemented after 45 years of Britains membership of the EU as well as the sizes of the two economies and their geographic proximity, which have led to complex and integrated supply chains. It notes that the parties envisage having a trading relationship on goods that is as close as possible, with a view to facilitating the ease of legitimate trade. The actual legal text will have to be negotiated after Brexit on March 29, and that could well be even more complicated than what has come so far. In a speech in Berlin before Tusks announcement, German Chancellor Angela Merkel underlined that Britain should remain a partner, remain a friend. Lorne Cook, Brussels, AP CHINA Five were killed and 18 injured when a car rammed into a group of children crossing a road after leaving their school in northeast Chinas Liaoning Province, local authorities said yesterday. NORTH KOREA The head of the U.N.s atomic watchdog has called on North Korea to allow inspectors back in to monitor its nuclear program. Director General Yukiya Amano noted that Pyongyang had talked about denuclearization measures including the permanent dismantlement of the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon a reactor where it produces plutonium. INDIA Authorities were struggling yesterday to figure out how to recover the body of an American killed after wading ashore on an isolated island cut off from the modern world. EU-TURKEY The European Unions foreign policy chief expressed strong concerns yesterday over the continued detentions of academics and activists in Turkey. LEBANON marked 75 years of independence with a military parade yesterday in Beirut, but many anxious Lebanese feel they have little to celebrate: the countrys corruption-plagued economy is dangerously close to collapse and political bickering over shares in a new Cabinet is threatening to scuttle pledges worth USD11 billion by international donors. ETHIOPIA An opposition figure who recently returned from exile was named Ethiopias election chief yesterday as the country prepares for what the reformist prime minister vows will be free and fair elections in 2020. SERBIAs president has criticized the European Union and the West for allegedly failing to prevent Kosovo from triggering a trade war as tensions soar between the wartime foes. GERMANY A teenager was convicted of murder yesterday for killing a 14-year-old girl in a case that was seized upon by far-right groups, who falsely claimed that the perpetrator was a migrant. MEXICO Immigration agents have detained almost all of the Central American migrants on a fourth caravan that recently entered Mexico seeking to reach the United States. US A family of four whose remains were found at the burned-down ruins of their New Jersey mansion was slain before the home was set ablaze, authorities said, hours after the mansion owners brother was arrested on suspicion of arson at his own house. Chair of WeCreate, Paula Browning, said, Future-proofing our copyright law to ensure our content creators and our creative businesses are the ones who derive value from their work, is essential for New Zealands future. Our future wellbeing will rely on nurturing a thriving creative environment thats fit for the digital age, and where growing the contribution and competitiveness of our creative industries, as other highly developed creative economies are doing, is prioritised. PET scan of a human brain with Alzheimer's disease. Credit: public domain A major new study on Alzheimer's disease provides previously unknown evidence of how the brain-robbing illness may originate. Moreover, it proposes that certain HIV drugs called reverse transcriptase inhibitors could immediately be repurposed for Alzheimer's patients. Led by scientists from Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in San Diego, the study finds that, as long suspected, Alzheimer's is a genetic disease. But in nearly all cases, it's not inherited. Rather, it arises during a patient's lifetime by genetic rearrangements in neurons. Sequences of DNA are copied, altered and inserted back into the genome. The genetic rearranging isn't random mutation, but a process that recombines DNA into different patterns. This reshuffling creates a mosaic of slightly differing cells. The immune system uses a similar process to make antibodies, but nothing like it has been seen in the human brain. Reverse transcriptase inhibitors might also ward off Alzheimer's in those with Down syndrome, who develop Alzheimer's as they age, the study said. The study was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Confirmation of the findings is required, said Dr. Jerold Chun, the lead author. But Chun says testing with the HIV drugs should begin immediately. Even a low degree of effectiveness would be better than what is now available. The study combines single and multiple-cell analytical methods to examine 13 donated human brains, some normal, some with Alzheimer's. Its findings jibe with epidemiological data from elderly HIV patients. They have been treated with reverse transcriptase inhibitors for decades, and almost never get Alzheimer's. The first documented case of Alzheimer's in an HIV-positive individual was reported in 2016. Cautious praise for the study came from Dr. Paul Aisen, a longtime Alzheimer's researcher who specializes in clinical trials. Aisen heads the University of Southern California Alzheimer's Therapeutic Research Institute in San Diego. "The authors carefully demonstrate that there are extensive modifications to genetic material in the Alzheimer's disease brain," Aisen said by email. "These are changes that occur with aging, rather than inherited genetic characteristics. While this is an intriguing idea, the actual contribution of this age-related genetic change remains uncertain." Fred "Rusty" Gage, president of the Salk Institute and a noted brain expert, said the study's results back up the claim that DNA sequences are copied and inserted back into the neuronal genome. "These results are quite striking and could have implications for Alzheimer's disease diagnosis and progression," Gage said by email. About 5.7 million Americans today have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, according to the Alzheimer's Association. That number is expected to double by 2060, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In recent years, Alzheimer's researchers have changed their view of the disease. They now say Alzheimer's begins decades before symptoms appear. Eventually, the damage eating away at the brain becomes severe enough to affect cognition and memory. So increasingly, researchers are looking for the earliest possible signs that Alzheimer's is developing, before mental functions are affected. The study traces the ultimate cause to the genetic rearrangements, so blocking this reshuffling should block Alzheimer's. The reshuffling can be likened to a copy-and-paste function in affected neurons. But instead of making an exact copy, the process scrambles DNA segments, then reinserts them back into the neuron's genome. Normal brains also show genetic variation in individual cells. Research suggests this condition is a normal part of brain development. Instead of having billions of identical neurons, each may vary slightly in a way that helps the brain work, Chun said. This process goes wrong in producing the Alzheimer's-causing variations, derived from a gene called APP. Certain variants of this gene are strongly linked with Alzheimer's. Because genes produce proteins, these rearrangements of the APP gene likely produce variations of toxic brain proteins called beta amyloid, known to be involved in Alzheimer's. Some of these genetic variants are found in a very rare form of Alzheimer's that is directly inherited. Virtually all people with these variations come down with Alzheimer's. But this "familial" form constitutes only a few percent of all Alzheimer's cases. The vast majority of "sporadic" Alzheimer's cases shows genetic tendencies, but fall far short of a perfect correlation. The study provides an explanation for sporadic Alzheimer's: Because these genetic changes only occur in the brain, they don't show up when a person's genome is sequenced. In addition, it may explain the failures of amyloid-based therapy. Billions of dollars have been spent developing drugs according to what is known as the "amyloid hypothesis," with virtually nothing to show for it. Chun said this may be because the amyloid drugs are aimed at a single molecular target, and there's molecular diversity in amyloid. "What our data strongly supports is that there could be many, many other targets that would have been missed by these single molecularly targeted therapeutics," Chun said. This means the amyloid hypothesis is essentially correct, but doesn't go deep enough, Chun said. In an accompanying perspective article, two University of California, San Diego Alzheimer's researchers said the study was also important because it provided the "surprising existence" in the brain of what is called "somatic gene recombination." "This phenomenon, which has previously been reported only in antibody generation in immune cells, increases the diversity of proteins encoded by a given gene through DNA-shuffling mechanisms, wrote Guoliang Chai and Joseph G. Gleeson. "The study hints at a previously unanticipated mechanism in the development of Alzheimer's, and expands our understanding of the genesis of brain mosaicism," they wrote. "But whether accumulation of (the recombined DNA) in neurons is a cause of or is caused by Alzheimer's disease remains to be proved." Aisen cautioned that some studies indicate that Alzheimer's is more likely linked to defects in removing amyloid, not their manufacture. "So while there could be therapeutic implications of these new findings, additional clarification of this mechanism is needed," Aisen said. Doctors could use the HIV drugs on Alzheimer's patients as an "off-label" use, Chun said. But that would require careful ethical consideration. On the positive side, there's no treatment now that affects the underlying neurodegeneration Alzheimer's brings, and the safety profile of the HIV drugs is well-known. "Let's say this only works 25 percent of the time, that's still 1.5 million patients in the United States, not to speak of their families," he said. And even a modest effect of preserving cognition for a few years would mean a great deal to those families, he said. However, all drugs have risks, and Alzheimer's patients tend to be elderly and may have other conditions. Such off-label use also doesn't provide a scientific basis for officially approving the drugs for Alzheimer's. That's the job of a properly designed clinical trial. Designing such a trial will be complicated, Chun said. There's the need to accurately find the patients who will likely benefit. Brain scans for amyloid deposits, which are now available, might help. But as for now, actual detection of the pathological brain mosaicism in living people isn't possible. The APP-linked variations spread with the help of an enzyme called reverse transcriptase that HIV uses to replicate, the study says. With the help of reverse transcriptase, HIV copies its genome into the genome of infected cells. Since it becomes part of the cell's DNA, HIV is very hard for the immune system to reach. Reverse transcriptase inhibitors, a regular part of HIV therapy, block this process. Reverse transcriptase is also naturally found in the human body, and presumably plays an important function. "Evolutionary biologists that have looked at the human genome, have estimated that nearly half of our genome was created by reverse transcription," he said. Whether HIV's reverse transcriptase is identical to the human version isn't known, Chun said. Research funding was provided by The Shaffer Family Foundation; The Bruce Ford & Anne Smith Bundy Foundation; Sanford Burnham Prebys; the National Institutes of Health; and the government of Taiwan. More information: Ming-Hsiang Lee et al. Somatic APP gene recombination in Alzheimer's disease and normal neurons, Nature (2018). Journal information: Nature Ming-Hsiang Lee et al. Somatic APP gene recombination in Alzheimer's disease and normal neurons,(2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0718-6 2018 The San Diego Union-Tribune Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. ARCHIVED - Almost 900 migrants intercepted in the Mediterranean on Thursday: at least 14 missing Among those rescued from the sea was a pregnant woman who is now in hospital in Almeria It might be assumed that the arrival of less favourable weather conditions might slow the rate at which African migrants are attempting to cross the Mediterranean on small boats to enter EU and Spanish territory without authorization, but the events of Thursday appear to indicate that this is far from being the case. During the day the maritime rescue service intercepted or rescued 894 people of sub-Saharan and north African origin on 18 boats off the coast of Andalucia, although such has been the scale of the migratory flow this year that in many newspapers this was not even considered worthy of making the front page! It is also reported that at least 14 people are missing, having been thrown into the sea by the waves, and that among those rescued from the water was a pregnant woman who was at first thought to be dead: in fact, the rescuers arrived in time to save her life and she is receiving treatment in an Almeria hospital. While the search for the missing went on the migrants intercepted in the Alboran Sea were brought ashore in Almeria, Malaga, Motril (in the province of Granada) and Melilla (one of the two Spanish enclaves on the north African coast which share land borders with Morocco). These latest arrivals take the total of unauthorized migrants either reaching Spain under their own steam or being intercepted and brought ashore this year to close to 49,000, a new record and an increase of over 250 per cent on the 2017 figure, and it seems possible that the Spanish governments estimate that the total could reach 58,000 by the end of the year may be short of the mark. At the same time, the scale of operations in the western Mediterranean on Thursday illustrates once more the shift of focus among migrants from Turkey and Libya to Morocco and Algeria. It is believed that the agreement reached by Turkey and the EU has resulted in the country no longer being viewed as a point of entry into Europe, while in Libya it appears that the climate is so unstable that even people traffickers are wary of setting out from the coast towards Italy. Follow Murcia Today on Facebook to keep up to date with all the latest news, events and information in the Region of Murcia and the rest of Spain: https://www.facebook.com/MurciaToday/ article_detail --> The U.S. government is contacting key allies to get them to persuade telecommunications companies in their countries to avoid using equipment from Chinas Huawei Technologies Co., the Wall Street Journal reported. Officials from the U.S. have reached out to counterparts and executives in countries including Germany, Italy and Japan about perceived cybersecurity risks, the Journal said, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. The U.S. may boost aid for telecommunications development in countries that shun Huawei equipment, some of the people said. Huawei has long been labeled a security risk by U.S. lawmakers because of alleged links to the Chinese government, in part because it was founded by former military engineer Ren Zhengfei. While the Shenzhen-based company has denied any inappropriate connections, its been banned in Australia from supplying fifth-generation wireless equipment, faced scrutiny in the U.K. and found itself largely shut out from the U.S. market. Scrutiny of Huawei has increased since Donald Trump became U.S. President as trade tensions between Washington and Beijing escalate. The closely held company is now the worlds second-largest maker of smartphones and is one of the biggest producers of equipment for running phone networks. Huawei didnt immediately respond to an emailed request for comment from Bloomberg. American officials are concerned about the use of the Chinese equipment in countries that host U.S. military bases such as Germany, Japan and Italy, the Journal reported. There is concern about Chinas ability to force companies to comply with government requests, it said. A number of major telecommunications companies directed more than 5 percent of their capital expenditure to Huawei, according to Bloomberg supply chain data. That includes Telecom Italia SpA and Japans NTT Docomo Inc. and KDDI Corp., the data shows. Huawei has been pouring billions into developing 5G technology and its potential to become the global leader in the space is said to be a reason why Trump blocked the biggest ever chip deal earlier this year. Now read: Great PC hardware Black Friday 2018 deals 19272018 Sister Jeremy Carmody, a Dominican Sister of San Rafael for sixty-nine years, died peacefully on November 15 at Our Lady of Lourdes Convent in San Rafael. She dedicated her life, through her Dominican vocation, to students and their families in schools, to patients and staff at Saint Marys Regional Medical Center in Reno, to people everywhere who struggled on the margins of society, and to her community of sisters. Born in Sacramento, Barbara Carmody was in the first graduating class of St. Francis High School, and attended Dominican College for two years before she entered the convent. Sister Jeremy began her religious life in education, teaching in Santa Catalina School in Monterey, and Dominican Convent Upper School in San Rafael. She taught history, math and religion at the high school level at both schools. In 1963, Sister Jeremy was asked to serve as the Novice Director for the congregation, walking with young women as they discerned their vocations to Dominican religious life and prepared themselves for life as finally professed members. In 1969, Sister Jeremy returned to the ministry of education, serving as the Dean of Girls at Siena High School in Napa. Once Siena and Justin High Schools merged into one school, co-sponsored by the Dominican Sisters, and the De La Salle Christian Brothers, she served as dean, vice-principal and principal. Sister Jeremy was a true champion of Catholic education. Sister Jeremy was elected to lead the congregation as Major Superior in 1979, and served two terms. It was during this time, and with her encouragement, that the congregation adopted a stance on sanctuary for Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees, and welcomed a family to live in the motherhouse. Her next ministry was as the administrator for Our Lady of Lourdes Convent, for which she prepared by earning a certification in applied gerontology at San Francisco State University. Sister Jeremy moved to Reno, Nevada in 1992 to serve as the congregations representative at Saint Marys Regional Medical Center. While there, she particularly focused on expanding outreach programs for the underserved in the area, and enthusiastically volunteered with the Saint Marys Foundation and Casa de Vida, a home and support services for pregnant young women in Reno and Northern Nevada. When she retired, Sister Jeremy remained living in St. Marys Convent and volunteered as her health allowed. She returned to San Rafael in 2013 and moved to Our Lady of Lourdes Convent where she was a vibrant member of the community of senior sisters. Sister Jeremy is predeceased by her parents, William and Margaret, her brother-in-law, Jack Shea, and her niece, Liz Shea. She is survived by her beloved sister, Patt Shea, niece Shawn Shea and nephews Bill (Suzanne), Jay (Megan) and Michael (Jill) Shea, two grandnieces and four grandnephews, and by her Dominican Sisters. The funeral Mass will take place on Monday, November 26, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. in the Gathering Space at Dominican Sisters Center, 1520 Grand Avenue in San Rafael. Memorial gifts in honor of Sister Jeremy may be made to the Retirement Fund, Dominican Sisters of San Rafael, Development Office, 1520 Grand Avenue, San Rafael CA 94901. Montes Chapel Of The Hills San Anselmo 415-453-8440 On Thanksgiving Day, at least one holiday feast provided a place at the table for those in Napa who otherwise would have no home-cooked meal or no home. Through the efforts of more than two dozen volunteers, some 200 people were able to partake of the holiday at The Table, the charity that has provided meals to less-privileged Napans for more than three decades. In a dining hall at downtown First Presbyterian Church, volunteer cooks and servers produced a repast of stuffed turkey breasts, glazed hams, stuffing, sweet potatoes and all the other delicacies American families take for granted on Thanksgiving except for those who otherwise might be left out because of poverty or homelessness. Before opening The Tables 50-seat dining hall at 1 p.m. for four hours of seatings, the holiday feasts co-organizer, Red Boutaghou, gathered his fellow volunteers many of whom serve together on the first Friday of the month to remind them the days goal went beyond serving the best dinner possible. Outside, the first few dozen guests a few standing beside carts loaded with their few possessions waited for the doors to open. These people, they are friends and family treat them that way, Boutaghou, who worked in the New York City restaurant business before retiring and moving west in 2015, told volunteers waiting behind a steam table of meats and side dishes, or the pie slices and ice cream cups on the dessert bar. Keep the people happy; give them whatever they want. Its a party today. The Table has served meals to underprivileged Napans since 1986, but opened its doors on Thanksgiving for the first time only last year, according to board member Mary Beth Reyes. Even after such a short time, however, interest from would-be helpers and donors has bloomed, she said Monday. As soon as the weather changes, we get requests to volunteer. It just speaks to what our community is, Reyes said. Thanksgiving dinner at The Table is an undertaking requiring 64 pounds of turkey breasts rolled into roulades and three days of preparation by Boutaghou and his wife Isly San Pedro, who began volunteering with the charity for its 2017 holiday feast. A team of 16 helpers who together with Boutaghou and San Pedro prepare one meal a month at The Table began pitching in on Tuesday, to be joined by more volunteers Thursday morning, some arriving hours before the first plates were served. Its my favorite holiday because to me its friends, its family, its food, he said earlier in the kitchen while drizzling balsamic vinegar onto trays of sauteed Brussels sprouts. We plan it like that, we cook it that way and serve it that way. Its like friends and family coming over, and thats how I see it. An array of food purchases, donations and cash helped supply Thursdays holiday feast in Napa, according to San Pedro, including last-minute gifts of Brussels sprouts from Trader Joes and ice cream by the local Ben & Jerrys parlor. Among volunteers who have worked with Boutaghou from the start and also those who were pitching in for the first time on Thursday the feeling of making the holiday meaningful was plain. Weve helped at The Salvation Army before, so its a nice way to give back on Thanksgiving, said Noel Lopreore, a first-time helper at The Table, as she and two other women chopped chives to garnish sweet potatoes. I have plenty to be thankful for. Im thankful, honestly, for this makes me feel good to be a part of somebodys family dinner, she said. People would pay $50 for this buffet without a doubt, said George OMeara, an original member of Boutaghou and San Pedros monthly team. People who are food-challenged, theyre incredibly thankful. It warms your heart, makes you feel good. Its your opportunity to give back in a very big way. The Thanksgiving meal was a rare and much-appreciated moment of ease for one guest in particular Tanya Romano, a cancer survivor who has been homeless for 16 months and whose mother is suffering from advanced dementia. I think its a miracle that it happens every year for us, she said. Im thankful for this today; I needed this. 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. Festive dinner-table gatherings end up being complicated, especially when attempting to come up with the right wines. Dan's rule of thumb: serve several tasty wines and ignore food pairings. No one is vexed about the perfect wine to go with prune parfait. More than a year before he won election as Californias next governor, Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom did not hesitate for a moment when asked whats Californias biggest problem. Income inequality, he said in an interview then. He repeated that evaluation in subsequent sit-down interviews during the campaign. Take Los Angeles, he said. Its Americas richest city, with Bel Air, Brentwood, Beverly Hills. But its also Americas poorest city, with South Central and more. The remarkable thing is they are only a few miles apart. Then he added that You cant live a good life in an unjust society. And went on to quote the ancient Greek statesman and orator Pericles, who said, The issue of wealth and income distribution is the oldest and most fatal of all issues in a republic. Newsom left no doubt about his deep conviction on this, despite his longstanding friendships with plutocrats like Gordon Getty. He offered some immediate ideas on how to ease situations where families with annual incomes barely topping $20,000 per year live not far from others whose incomes are more than 100 times that. During his campaign, Newsom pledged to hire a statewide director to coordinate services he hopes will treat each homeless person from a whole person care perspective. He promised to push for more affordable housing aiming to take homeless off the streets, but mindful of controversies in places like Los Angeles, Orange County and San Francisco will leave it up to local authorities to decide where that housing should go. Newsom isnt the first to note the inequality problem. Californias tax-collecting Franchise Tax Board has reported that in 2016, the top 1 percent in overall wealth received 23 percent of all income in the state, while the bottom 90 percent received 49.6 percent. White families on average earned more than 1.5 times what Latino and black families got. Even more startling are net-worth figures reported by the U.S. Census, which found white families in California had a net worth (assets minus debt and other liabilities) of $171,000, more than eight times the $20,700 belonging to the average Latino family and nearly 10 times the $17,600 of African-American families. Those numbers include home equity, value of vehicles, furniture and almost every other type of material goods. There will be no immediate help from the federal government, either, on evening things out: President Trumps tax reform bill of last year will benefit whites far more than Latinos or blacks, and the richer you already are, the more you stand to benefit. So what can a new California governor do about this inequality, which grew more imbalanced than ever during Jerry Browns latest two terms as governor? The California Budget Project (CBP) suggests starting with an estate tax (sometimes called a death tax), saying that serves as a curb on dynastic wealth. In short, if youve built a valuable business, youd better pass it on to your kids before you die, if estate taxes rise precipitously, as they might with two-thirds Democratic majorities in both houses of the Legislature. But the Legislature and governor couldnt act alone on this: It would need to be okayed by voters because the 1982 Proposition 6 repealed state inheritance taxes. It can be reversed only via another popular vote. The CBP also suggests eliminating or cutting tax deductions that primarily benefit well-off homeowners, including deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes. Do that, of course, and the value of much California real estate would immediately fall, which would tend to even out the wealth held by whites, Latinos and blacks. But that would surely spur a massive political backlash, so dont bet on it happening soon. Another way to boost low-wealth families is to expand child care and renters tax credits, which help the poor while not harming others. This one is the most likely of the CBP recommendations to become reality. But one thing is for sure: Newsom will evaluate many proposed new laws that land on his desk from the perspective of what theyll do to help alleviate income inequality and boost low-income families. Which will be a very different perspective than any recent governor has brought to the 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. To Rich Jacobson and his article on hatred (President Trump is not to blame for hatred, Nov. 15): Well done, Sir! As a Jew myself, I have a fair understanding of anti-Antisemitism and am very disappointed by political opportunists including many left-wing Jews who used the tragedy in Pittsburgh to promote petty and unfounded charges against our president. Mr. Trump has proven by both acts and words that he is a stalwart supporter of the Jewish people throughout the diaspora as well as in Israel. Next, I cannot help but comment on Richard Cannons misstatements about truth (Just tell me the truth). He revealed a couple of real whoppers. Mr. Cannon first avers as a fact the myth that because a judge was appointed by a conservative, his/her decisions could not be the product of a liberal agenda. This muddles the definitions of both the terms conservative and liberal and completely misses the legal implications of Roe v. Wade. The legal issue is not whether the result of a given decision pleases either the left or right side of the political spectrum. The real issue is whether the judges are following their constitutional mandate to interpret the Constitution as written or whether they are making up their own laws. The latter practice is called judicial activism, and when judges create new law, they in essence amend our Constitution by fiat rather than by following the clear processes spelled out in that document. In this sense, they are not conserving the Constitution, thus earning a label of being judicially liberal. The power to make new law is a temptation that pulls on both Republicans and Democrats. As Lord Acton eloquently stated, Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Judges are not immune. In Roe v Wade, the problem was that the judges, struggling with the very difficult question of abortion, invented a new constitutional right the right to privacy in order to logically justify a very convoluted final decision. While the result (the ends) generally satisfied the political majority the precedent set (the means) was horrific. It essentially allowed judges to make stuff up just for convenience. Unfortunately, those on the political left have picked up on the use of judges to make laws when the more appropriate legislative channels fail them. This explains how the practice of judicial activism has become a mainstay of today's liberal agenda. Mr. Cannons second, and more disturbing, gaffe was in making the statement Therefore, another essential ingredient of compromise is our acceptance of the concept that a common, shared interest has a greater priority than the interest(s) of any individual or small group. I think Mr. Cannon is confusing the American Revolution with the French Revolution, confusing Rousseau with Burke, Locke and Montesquieu. His statement is almost an exact definition of the term statism, which is precisely what the founding of our country was not about. In our Declaration of Independence, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Sherman and Livingston clearly emphasized that all men are endowed with unalienable rights which no government, simple majority or other shared common good can take away. For the first time in the history of man, the rights of the individual held primacy over the will of the collective, and the result was the greatest country ever created. Our Constitution that followed specifically established a Republic with limited, enumerated powers restricting the power of the collective to protect individuals against a tyranny of the majority. Mr. Franklin presciently wondered if we would be able to keep it. In contrast, the French valued equality over individual liberty. The result was decades of the guillotine, degrading into dictatorship and war and ultimately into the demise of a once great country. The contrast could not have been greater. The statist philosophy continued well beyond France. Germany, the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and others all promoted a common, shared interest over the individual, all with catastrophic results. Such is the history of socialism. I am sure that Mr. Cannon's comments were made in good faith, and I applaud his plea for open conversation in search of finding common ground among us. But it is not possible to begin such conversations on false premises. It is a sad day when a poor understanding of Americas founding principles is so widespread. It leads us down a pathway toward repeating the tragedies of the past. We can avoid this mistake. As Lincoln stated soon before his death, "with malice toward none, with charity for all ... let us strive to finish the work we are in ... to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." David Forstadt Napa I am writing today to convince you and anyone who reads this to see refugees like I do. My entire school read the book Refugee for our Napa County Reads yearly book. It's really awesome to be able to read and take home a book, especially when each and every student receives one to keep. We read and annotated while discussing the problems and solutions of refugees. It was really moving and made me think, made me imagine. Imagine being a mother, living in a dangerous country, scared for your children's safety. Imagine deciding that you and your family will uproot everything and walk, walk to the promised land: America. This idea of America is enticing to these refugees. Refugees feel that they will be safe there, can start a new, successful life. There are 22.5 million of these hopeful refugees today. If you really think about it, refugees are people who did nothing to deserve the treatment they're given. Refugees are people who need a new home. There's even refugees in wine country, where we feel far from global problems like these. You are in a unique position to help these refugees -- you have the power to make the difference. If you do something to help, you could be one of the people trying to stop the problem. You may not believe me. You may ask, 'Why should I listen to such a young writer someone who can't even vote yet?' I'll tell you why: I am the next generation. I am the future. The future is where we solve this problem, but we can help now as well. Right now, in fact. We all can help displaced people and refugees by donating to organizations like the UNHCR the UN Refugee Agency, or UNICEF. Both are agencies that use our donations to provide food and clean, fresh water to refugees and displaced families. With your money, these people can go out and help these refugees who need our support. Thank you for taking the time to read my letter. I hope now you will be able to see refugees the way I do, and know that you can help them. You can be the one to save the little boy on the raft crossing the unforgiving Mediterranean, just hoping he makes the night. Samantha Pecota, student Robert Louis Stevenson Middle School Satellite radio transmitter fitted female Amur Falcon Tamenglong which was among tens of thousands of Amur Falcons after taking shelter in Tamenglong and Noney districts, is expected to reach Somalia early on Saturday morning, said scientist Dr R Suresh Kumar of Wildlife Institute of India(WII), Dehradun. Just awhile ago my heart was beating faster as I was downloading the (Satellite) data to see whether she (Tamenglong) is safe and well, said Dr R Suresh in an email tonight. Tamenglong is doing very well. Though she has not made it yet and is about 300 km from the shore line and will make landfall early tomorrow morning, added the scientist. The scientist at WII added,Her last location was received at 6.30 pm on Friday. She has almost made it having covered so far nearly 4800 km. Tamenglong which was fitted radio transmitters for the first time at a roosting site at Chiuluan village in Tamenglong district of Manipur along with Manipur, a male bird on November 5 to study their migratory route, started its non-stop 5 days migratory journey from November 19. But Manipur could not join the flight Somalia after he was killed by unidentified miscreants somewhere in Tamenglong district on November 9. On the other hand, Longleng, another satellite radio fitted female Amur falcon, has not transmitted any data today but was last located yesterday afternoon about 250 km offshore right at the tip of the famous Horn of Africa and has so far covered 4750 km, the scientist who had been tracking the bird after they tagged at a roost site in Yaongyimchen village in Longleng district of Nagaland on October 30, 2016, said. I am sure she has definitely arrived at her roost site in Somalia. Just that the data has not come in, he added. The study of migratory routes of Amur Falcon will help in understanding the environment cues etc., he felt. Amur falcons (Falco amurensis) which is one of the least known birds among 69 falcon species, are known to breed in southeast Russia and northern China and migrate west through India and across the Arabian to southern Africa where they spend their winter, making a round-trip of at least 20,000 km annually, travelling between their breeding and wintering grounds. Armenia's ex-Ambassador to Iran appointed Advisor to PM Armenia's Pashinyan receives Russia Deputy PM, unblocking of communications discussed Armenia FM presents situation created after Azerbaijani aggression during phone talks with Tajik counterpart Armenia convict dies from COVID-19 at medical center Armenia Syunik Province's community heads: Nikol Pashinyan said there won't be corridor NEWS.am daily digest: 24.11.21 Newly appointed Ambassador of Germany to Armenia presents credentials to Armen Sarkissian Armenia Armavir Province governor sacked Armenia MOD: Conscript's body found at combat position, with lethal firearm injury in head area US has invited 110 countries to Summit for Democracy in December, including Armenia Requiem Service for Armenian statesman Vano Siradeghyan to be held on Dec. 3 Armenia Parliament Deputy Speaker meets with Argentina Ambassador Armenia FM presents situation created as a result of Azerbaijan's aggression to Germany's new Ambassador Armenia PM receives community heads of Syunik Province Armenia ex-deputy economy minister appointed member of Eurasian Economic Commission's Advisory Board Exchange rates in Armenia Another plane heads to Baku through Armenian airspace Ambassador: Armenia may play major role in development of Iran-Eurasian Economic Union cooperation Details of Overchuk-Aliyev meeting reported 3 children hospitalized in Yerevan with symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning UAE-Iran-Turkey corridor to officially start functioning after visit of Emirates officials to Tehran Sweden elected a female PM for the 1st time in history Konstantin Ishkhanov: EUFSC determined to continue presenting very best in classical music Trade Representative of Russia in Armenia: Eurasian Union and Iran are interested in using North-South direction Human Rights Watch calls on Poland to end violence against migrants Apple confirms: Eavesdropping is carried out by Pegasus spy program in Armenia WTI crude oil prices rise by close of trading in US COVID-19 in Armenia: 28 new deaths Policemen apprehend protesters who close Yerevan subway entrances Apple suspends sales of devices in Turkey due to collapse of local currency Court session kicks off as Serzh Sargsyan sues Khachatur Sukiasyan Russian peacekeepers clear nearly 2 hectares of land in Nagorno-Karabakh Armenian PM: Remains of Vano Siradeghyan will be transferred to Armenia soon Armenian PM: 40-45 square kilometer territories of Armenia under Azerbaijani control after Azerbaijan's May 12 attack Armenia premier says what the heaviest blow was during his term of office, adds that it's not the defeat in the war Armenia PM: I had planned to deliver a message on circumstances of war and negotiations on Nov. 9 PM: Armenia decides road through which communication between Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan will be ensured Armenia PM: Karabakh conflict settlement and unblocking of communications shouldn't be discussed in '3+3' format Pashinyan fails to clearly state whether Armenia applied to Russia and CSTO in writing in regard to Nov. 16 attack Armenia PM: Azerbaijan is trying to turn the region into a jungle Pashinyan: Armenia and Azerbaijan recognized each other's territorial integrity when they acceded to CIS in 1991 Pashinyan: If government of Armenia was a giver, there wouldn't be shootings Armenia PM: 32 servicemen were captured on Nov. 16, according to unverified information PM: It's the first time that direct communication is established between Armenian and Azerbaijani defense ministers Armenian premier: Armenia will not give in to that policy of blackmail Armenia PM answers question about online meeting with Azerbaijani leader on Nov. 9 Armenia PM on upcoming meetings with Azerbaijan President in Brussels and Sochi Azerbaijani plane flies from Nakhchivan to Baku through Armenia's airspace (PHOTOS) Armenia PM is giving a press conference Armenian demining experts demine 2,000,000 square meters of territory in Damascus along with UNMAS Armenia opposition movement holding march in Yerevan, calling on citizens to join NEWS.am daily digest: 23.11.21 Russian analyst: Karabakh's regions under Azerbaijan's control are becoming a serious problem for Aliyev Stepanakert: Azerbaijan intends to create terrorists training centers in Karabakhs territories Iran and Georgia hold talks on creation of Persian Gulf-Black Sea corridor Israeli FM demands Turkey to close offices of Hamas movement Opposition MP: Situation in Armenia's judiciary is impacting security issues Armenia PM calls UN Under-Secretary-General's attention to facts of destruction of Armenian heritage Ruling party MP: If Russia's proposals are acceptable for Armenian premier, they are in Armenia's interests Putin, Pashinyan and Aliyev to hold talks in Sochi on November 26 Armenia Ombudsman: Baku's Armenophobia is policy aimed at maintaining hostility between two peoples around the world Karabakh National Security Service: Citizen gets lost, in territory under Azerbaijani control, taken into custody ECHR awards 5,000 each to judges detained in Turkey after 2016 putsch American Center of US Embassy in Yerevan sends more than 5,000 Armenian library items to United States Iranian Ambassador to Turkey: Iran supports '3+3' regional format Azerbaijan MOD thanks Turkish ASELSAN's CEO for equipment used during war against Karabakh Armenia MOD receives Russia Ambassador and embassy's Defense Attache MFA: Armenia has informed Moscow about its willingness to normalize relations with Turkey without preconditions UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues calls US a nation of paradoxes Armenian parliamentary commission honors memory of soldier who died yesterday Alen Simonyan briefs Gerard Larcher over continuing aggressive behavior of Azerbaijan China and Russia are discussing details of Putin's possible visit to Beijing Olympics Yerevan court rejects motion to apply to Constitutional Court due to lack of procedures for overcoming MP's immunity Criminal case initiated into death of Armenian soldier Employee of Norabak village council on exchange of fire between Armenia and Azerbaijan, issue of wounded soldiers Russian peacekeepers donate humanitarian aid to Nagorno-Karabakh Coronavirus in Armenia: 48 new deaths 116 million AMD assistance to minors with disabilities in Shirak Province from Mikayel Vardanyan Armenian soldier who died in Armenia's Gegharkunik Province was Yezdi by nationality, was in army for a year Taliban want to establish 'fraternal' ties with Turkey Letter addressed to UN Security Council President about Azerbaijani attack published as SC official document Armenia, India to end process of mutual recognition of COVID-19 vaccination certificates soon Syrian mercenaries who fought on Azerbaijani side during 44-day war complaining about not having received 'salaries' Armenia Ombudsman: Videos about captured Armenian servicemen being explored, translated from Azerbaijani and identified Armenia National Academy of Sciences Physiology Institute wins Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's grant Armenian MFA on news about Pashinyan-Aliyev meeting Armenia Parliament Deputy Speaker receives ARF-D Lebanon Central Committee member Hagop Pakradouni Armenia MOD: Conscript dies after Azerbaijani soldier's gunshot fired in Gegharkunik Province Did the U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan speak about 'the liberated territories'? Armenia PM appoints new head of Vedi village Armenian army's General Staff chief holds working consultation, presents current situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Armenia Deputy PM receives Eurasian Economic Union's minister in charge of integration and macroeconomics Armenia's new Ambassador to Iran presents credentials to FM Aysor.am: Armenia MOD: Exchange of fire began near Norabak village on border with Azerbaijan Ambassador to Baku: United States makes persistent efforts for Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders' tete-a-tete meeting Azerbaijan's special detachment soldiers conducting exercises under Turkish specialists' supervision in Nakhchivan Armenian movement leader: If Armenian parliamentary opposition can't do anything, why is it in parliament? Armenia MP to protesters: Our sovereign territories can't be transferred illegally and behind people's backs Armenian military servicemen score medals at championship in Iran Iranian FM, Azerbaijani Deputy PM discuss situation in Caucasus YEREVAN. There were some objective reasons; for example, time constraints, since the diaspora didnt know until the last moment whether or not a telethon would be held. Armenias acting Minister of Diaspora, Mkhitar Hayrapetyan, stated the aforesaid at a press conference on Friday. He noted this commenting on the results of the Telethon 2018 by Hayastan (Armenia) All-Armenian Fund, and during which fewer funds were raised than last year. But at the same time he declared that his ministry had to some extend failed in its activities with the Armenian diaspora; in particular, they had not done enough work in terms of awareness and coordination. In his words, the Armenian government and the diaspora ministry are tasked with improving relations with the Armenian diaspora, since one cannot pin hopes solely on the post-revolution euphoria. Profound steps are needed that will change the logic, the acting minister explained. Its about the specific question of what Armenia itself is going to do for the diaspora. Will we [Armenia] only continue to expect support, assistance from the diaspora? Or will Armenia assume a certain role in resolving the problems existing in the diaspora? Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has ruled out the notion that Germany could start deporting criminal refugees to Syria. The idea had been proposed within the conservative CDU party, The Local reported. At the moment there cant be any deportations to any region in Syria, that is also the case for criminals, Seehofer told Spiegel on Friday. Several of Seehofer's colleagues in the CDU party have called in recent weeks for Syrian refugees who break the law is a serious manner to be deported back to their home country. In the wake of the gang rape of an 18-year-old woman in Freiburg earlier in November, the influential interior minister of Baden-Wurttemberg, Thomas Strobl, called for his colleagues to consider lifting the ban on deportations to the war-torn country. Several of the suspects in the case were Syrian refugees. State interior ministers will meet Seehofer in Magdeburg at the annual interior minister conference next Wednesday and one topic of discussion will be the extension of the ban on deportations to Syria. The idea of lifting the ban has met with fierce resistance from the Social Democrats and opposition parties. lol fuck them, I'm glad they're finally facing some consequences Reply Thread Link Hacker sweetie, you're doing amazing. Reply Thread Link Funny how the media is saying the ads is what set this thing off...and not the DMs where st*fano calls China shit and a dog eating country. Reply Thread Link Chinese pp dont care about the ads, it's the comment that offended them and they know his account was not hacked. D&G is done in China, they won't recover from this unless Gabbana is gone. Reply Parent Thread Link exactly, there was some fuss over the ads but it wasn't a big deal until stefano opened his big mouth Reply Parent Thread Link mmhmm Reply Parent Thread Link This guy is a fucking cunt tho so good riddance to bad rubbish. Reply Thread Link Hes a self-loathing gay man who has said homophonic things in the past. No shock hes also racist. Reply Thread Link homophonic is my new favorite word Reply Parent Thread Link It's what two men sound like in bed! Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I was watching this unfold on diet prada. stefano is the biggest piece of shit Reply Thread Link These aren't apologies, these are excuses. They *might* have got away with it if we were only talking about the video (as gross as it was), but Stefano's comments were inexcusable and demonstrated exactly how he feels about Asians. They're not going to talk their way back out of this. Has the model featured in the video said anything? I hope she hasn't received backlash for participating in the video. Reply Thread Link yeah ia. the video was bad, but I think it was the kind of thing a really good PR apology/spin could still smooth over. the biggest problem is stefano's hateful messages. there's no way around that shit Reply Parent Thread Link well the girl in your icon move fast too and terminate her contract with them ... there no recover from this unless the company fire Stefano ... which I think they will. Reply Parent Thread Link Their apologies mean about as much as a Lena Dunham apology. They've been racist for a while now and I don't see them stopping anytime soon. Reply Thread Link i'm glad they're getting real push-back in a meaningful way for once. these pos have been openly and gleefully racist for years and it's abt time they finally faced some real consequences for it. Reply Thread Link They've been shitty, racist, and homophobic despite being gay for years. There's nothing more satisfying than seeing repugnant people get what they deserve. Normally I can't stand netizens but in this case they're doing amazing. Keep up the good work! Reply Thread Link I know what u meant but ur phrasing is making me laugh despite being gay for years!!! Reply Parent Thread Link this "hack" is about as believable as Rita Ora's "if you retweet this x amount of times i'll release new music" tweet. surejan.gif Reply Thread Link Hes going senile. Reply Parent Thread Link He's not having a psychotic break; he's just a mean, nasty, and hateful person. Reply Parent Thread Link He is a nasty person and has never faced consequences for the hateful shit his spills until now, so he kept getting bolder with his attacks. Reply Parent Thread Link Seconding everyone who says he's just an asshole. Hes been an arrogant, nasty prick for years and years - one that thinks himself as an artist more than as the ragmonger he is. Maybe some of his most egregious shittiness was coke-fueled, but he's far from a breakdown. Reply Parent Thread Link End these assholes. Reply Thread Link We would like to apologize to all the Chinese around the world because there are many oh, god. do they honestly not have one PR professional working for them? Reply Thread Link omg they can't help themselves huh... Reply Parent Thread Link I had to go back over that twice because I thought, "Surely they wrote 'to all of [our] Chinese [fans/customers]' and I just misread it." Nope! These guys are idiots. I mean, all racists are, of course. Reply Parent Thread Link this is making me laugh out of its sheer absurdity. ofc he had to slip a little white panic (the chinese are EVERYWHERE!) into his official apology Reply Parent Thread Link lol same. jesus. Reply Parent Thread Link Ikr lmao Reply Parent Thread Link Why did I COMPLETELY miss this. "because there are many" Reply Parent Thread Link We would like to apologize to all the Chinese around the world because there are many Edited at 2018-11-23 07:52 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Expand Link The Southern Gas Corridor on which the European Union is pinning most of its hopes for natural gas supply diversification away from Russia is coming along nicely and will not just be on schedule, but it will come with a price tag that is US$5-billion lower than the original budget, BPs vice president in charge of the project told S&P Global Platts this week. "Often these kinds of mega-projects fall behind schedule. But the way the projects have maintained the schedule has meant that your traditional overspend, or utilization of contingency, has not occurred," Joseph Murphy said, adding that savings had been the top priority for the supermajor. The Southern Gas Corridor will carry natural gas from the Azeri Shah Deniz 2 field in the Caspian Sea to Europe via a network of three pipelines: the Georgia South Caucasus Pipeline, which was recently expanded and can carry 23 billion cubic meters of gas; the TANAP pipeline via Turkey, with a peak capacity of 31 billion cubic meters annually; and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, or TAP, which will link with TANAP at the Turkish-Greek border and carry 10 billion cubic meters of gas annually to Italy. TANAP was commissioned in July this year and the first phase of TAP is expected to be completed in two years, so Europe will hopefully have more non-Russian gas at the start of the new decade. But not that much, at least initially: TANAP will operate at an initial capacity of 16 billion cubic meters annually, of which 6 billion cubic meters will be supplied to Turkey and the remainder will go to Europe. In the context of total natural gas demand of 564 billion cubic meters in 2020, according to a forecast from the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies released earlier this year, this is not a lot. Related: Trump Thanks Saudis For Lower Oil Prices, Wants Even Cheaper Crude Yet at some point the TANAP will reach its full capacity and hopefully by that time, TAP will be completed. Surprisingly, it was the branch to Italy that proved the most challenging, and BPs Murphy acknowledged that. While Turkey built TANAP on time to the surprise of the project operator, TAP has been struggling because of legal issues and uncertainty after the new Italian government entered office earlier this year. At the time, the government of Giuseppe Conte said the pipeline was pointless but, said Murphy, since then he has accepted the benefits the infrastructure would offer, such as transit fees. And yet local opposition in southern Italy remains strong but BP still sees first deliveries of gas through Italy in 2020. The BP executive admitted that at first the Southern Gas Corridor wouldnt make a splash. "The 10 Bcm/year into Europe is not a game-changer from a volume point of view, but it is a game-changer from a new source of product into mainland Europe perspective and it can be expanded." Meanwhile, however, Russia and Turkey are building another pipeline, Turkish Stream, that will supply gas to Turkey and Eastern Europe, as well as possibly Hungary. The two recently marked the completion of its subsea section. Turkish Stream will have two lines, each able to carry up to 15.75 billion cubic meters. One will supply the Turkish market and the other European countries. In this context, the Southern Gas Corridor seems to have more of a political rather than practical significance for the time being, giving Europe the confidence that it could at some future point import a lot more Caspian gas because the infrastructure is there. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Saudi Arabia if we broke with them, I think your oil prices would go through the roof. Ive kept them down, President Trump told reporters on Tuesday. Theyve helped me keep them down. Right now we have low oil prices, or relatively. Id like to see it go down even lower lower. Oil prices have indeed fallen significantly in recent weeks, and to be sure, Saudi Arabia has played a large role in that. Saudi production reportedly hit a record high 11 million barrels per day (mb/d) at times this month, and global inventories are rising once again. But Riyadh is also clearly upset at being duped by Trump. Having been convinced by the Trump administration that Irans oil exports were heading to zero, or at least close to zero, Saudi Arabia ramped up supply to offset the losses. The U.S. then surprised the market by issuing a bunch of waivers, allowing Iran to continue to export oil. Japan and South Korea may even resume buying oil from Iran in January, after cutting imports to zero in anticipation of sanctions. Almost immediately after the waivers were issued, oil prices crashed. Saudi Arabia then promptly announced that it would cut production by 500,000 bpd in December, and the rumors of an OPEC+ cut really began to pick up. Trump is happy about the slide in oil prices, but Saudi Arabia clearly isnt. Saudi Arabia and its OPEC+ partners could soon take action to push prices back up. So, it isnt clear that Washington and Riyadh have the same objectives, or that their tight relationship is resulting in lower oil prices. More to the point, however, is the odd belief in Washington that the U.S. needs to keep Saudi Arabia close in order to keep the oil flowing. Trump said that oil prices would go through the roof if he broke with them. The U.S. has coddled the Saudi monarchy for decades, and only very recently, with the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi likely at the order of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has the American foreign policy establishment finally begun to reevaluate the wisdom of the relationship. The murder has put the focus on Saudi atrocities. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi security forces jailed and tortured womens-rights activists, even as the world gushed over the decision from crown prince Mohammed bin Salman to allow women to drive. Whereas past U.S. presidents, from both parties, maintained a close alliance with Riyadh in the face of horrific human rights abuses, using varying explanations of security and cooperation, the Trump administration is more brutally honest in its transactional approach. Trump talks about how the U.S. makes billions off of weapons sales, while also enjoying lower oil prices. Related: The Oil Industry Is Facing A "Capex Conundrum" But that last point, which is arguably considered conventional wisdom in Washington, doesnt really add up. While the U.S. imported 1 mb/d from Saudi Arabia in August (a figure that has fluctuated over time but is down from between 1.5 and 2 mb/d in the mid-2000s), it doesnt really matter. The precise volumes of oil the U.S. imports from Saudi Arabia isnt relevant. What if the U.S. did break with Saudi Arabia? What if the U.S. condemned MbS, and took more punitive action towards Riyadh? Or, more significantly, downgraded the alliance with Saudi Araba? The fear implied in Trumps comments is that Saudi Arabia would somehow restrict exports to the U.S., a nonsensical scenario. Even if Saudi Arabia restricted shipments to the U.S., the oil would still flow elsewhere. Crude oil is a fungible commodity, in the jargon, which is to say that oil would still find its way to the U.S. If Saudi Arabia sent all of its oil to China instead of the U.S., that would simply displace oil heading from, say, Iraq to China. That Iraqi oil would then shift back to the U.S. and the end result would be minimal. What if Saudi Arabia decided to significantly cut production in order to jack up prices in retaliation for punishment from Washington? Thats possible, in theory, but it would also be hugely painful to Saudi Arabia. Cutting production and exports would reduce sales for Saudi Arabia; higher prices would ignite an even stronger response from U.S. shale; higher prices would aid Iran (Saudi Arabias enemy); and higher prices would also put pressure on the U.S. to issue more waivers on importing oil from Iran in order to relieve market pressure. All of this would be hugely negative for Saudi Arabia, and that is even before we consider the fact that an oil price spike would accelerate the long-term switch off of oil and bring on peak oil demand faster. As Liam Denning put it for Bloomberg Opinion, using the oil weapon would be a self-own of colossal proportions. Thus, it simply wouldnt happen. Yet, U.S. politicians are dominated by this line of thinking. Im not going to tell a country that is spending hundreds of billions of dollars and has helped me do one thing very importantly keep oil prices down so that theyre not going to $100 and $150 dollars a barrel, Trump told reporters. Right now we have oil prices in great shape. Im not going to destroy the world economy, and Im not going to destroy the economy for our country by being foolish with Saudi Arabia. Related: UAE: OPEC Very Likely To Agree To Oil Production Cuts He went on to add: If you want to see oil prices go to $150 a barrel like, by the way, Russia would love to see that all you have to do is break up our relationship with Saudi Arabia. Bloomberg Opinion called it Trumps Stage-Five MBS Clinging. For emphasis, Trump reiterated this position early Thursday morning on twitter. Its a mean & nasty world out there, the Middle East in particular. This is a long and historic commitment, & one that is absolutely vital to Americas national security. @SecPompeo I agree 100%. In addition, many Billions of Dollars of purchases made in U.S., big Jobs & Oil! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2018 Saudi Arabia desperately needs the U.S. for security, weapons and as a massive consumer of crude oil (Saudi Aramco also owns the largest oil refinery in the U.S., the Motiva facility in Port Arthur, Texas). For some reason, American officials have long thought that it is Saudi Arabia that holds all the cards. By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Oil prices collapsed on Friday, with WTI threatening to break the $50 mark and Brent falling below $60 for the first time in over a year. (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) Brent fell below $60 per barrel during trading on Friday, a threshold not breached in over a year. WTI also saw a significant collapse, threatening to break below $50. The more oil prices fall, the more pressure OPEC+ will feel as its December 6 meeting approaches. Saudi production hit 11 mb/d. Saudi Arabias oil production hit 11 million barrels per day (mb/d) temporarily in November, although the full monthly average is expected to come in a bit lower than that. The 11 mb/d figure is a record high, but Riyadh plans to cut exports by 500,000 bpd in December. Permian surge expected next year. The inauguration of new oil pipelines in 2019 could unlock another wave of supply from the Permian basin. The Permian will continue to grow and OPEC needs to learn to live with it, said Mike Loya, the head of Vitol Groups unit in the Americas, according to Bloomberg. The U.S. shale industry proved that it could weather pipeline bottlenecks this year, and even grow production at an incredible rate, which suggests that even more growth is forthcoming. Bloomberg says that shale executives talk about a coming tsunami or a flooding of Biblical proportions, with a lot of other hyperbolic adjectives being thrown around. U.S. total liquids production (both crude and natural gas liquids) could hit 17.4 mb/d by the end of next year, according to the EIA. Does Saudi Arabia want to build a nuclear weapon? The New York Times explores the secret negotiations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia over a nuclear power deal. The agreement would allow for the construction of nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia, but Riyadh wants to control the fuel cycle, which raises questions about motivations for a weapons program. The recent murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and the shifting explanations for what happened, also seriously undercuts the credibility of the Saudi regime. Chinas gasoline exports drop to 13-month low. Chinas gasoline exports in October fell to a 13-month low, a sign of an emerging glut in Asia. Inventories in Singapore are at a three-month high. At the same time, diesel exports in October jumped by 40 percent from a month earlier, as demand for middle distillates remains strong. Related: The Oil Industry Is Facing A "Capex Conundrum" BP begins production at Shetlands project. BP (NYSE: BP) began production at the second phase of its Clair field in the West of Shetland region this week. According to Wood Mackenzie, the West of Shetland region will be the only area of the North Sea zone that will see output grow through 2025. The mature North Sea has struggled to attract new investment, but some of the oil majors see the West of Shetland region as promising. Clair is a massive oil accumulation with over 7 billion barrels of oil in place. Thats why we see Clair Ridge being out there for 40 years, BPs head of North Sea Ariel Flores told Reuters. The Clair project was seven years in the making, and production could hit 120,000 bpd. TransCanada halts construction on gas pipelines in Mexico. TransCanada (NYSE: TRP) suspended construction on several natural gas pipelines in Mexico, citing delays, cost overruns and alleged acts of extortion. The social and legal uncertainty that prevails in this state makes the continuity of our investments impossible, the company wrote in the statement published in Mexican newspapers. On multiple occasions, social groups have made irrational requests that border on extortion and have performed acts outside the law. Libya expects OPEC exemption. Libyas oil production has climbed significantly this year, but the war-torn North African nation still expects to be exempted from any production cut deal, despite the fact that the global oil market is starting to suffer from oversupply. Production recently hit 1.28 mb/d, a five-year high. Political progress also promises to clear the way for Libya to boost production. The National Oil Corp. hopes to raise production to 1.6 mb/d. Canada offshore outage due to storms. Canadas eastern province of Newfoundland and Labrador saw four oil fields go offline due to a powerful storm last week, knocking a combined 150,000 bpd offline. Only one field has resumed operations. Trump administration to propose biofuels requirements. The Trump administration is set to propose blending requirements for the final three years of the U.S. Renewable Fuels Standard in January, which will set off another round of fighting between the ethanol and oil industries. The program, launched in 2007, expires in 2022. Reuters reports that the Trump administration is expected to propose blending requirements that lean more in favor of refiners, lowering the ethanol requirements that refiners need to use in their fuel mixes. We are going to ask and we expect to see lower volumes across the board, Derrick Morgan, a lobbyist for the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, told Reuters. Related: UAE: OPEC Very Likely To Agree To Oil Production Cuts Canada considers buying rail cars to move oil. The crisis in Canadas oil industry is forcing the government into action. The federal government is considering a request from Alberta to share the cost of buying rail cars to move 120,000 bpd of oil from the province, according to Reuters. The pipeline bottleneck in Alberta has pushed prices for Western Canada Select (WCS) below $15 per barrel. Investment banks lower oil price forecast. A survey of investment banks by S&P Global Platts finds an average forecasted Brent price of $75.50 per barrel in 2019, down from $78.51 per barrel in October. The price is significantly higher than prevailing spot prices, and the price also is notable because of worries over the global economy. The investment banks expect OPEC+ to cut production to help erase the supply glut. OPEC has indicated its determination not to let the market slip back into oversupply in 2019, and we think it has given a clear indication of its intention to defend prices in the $70s, HSBC said in a note last week. Philippines and China make progress on South China Sea. The Philippines and China struck an agreement that would move the two sides closer to cooperation on oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea. By Tom Kool of Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The chips are finally starting to fall in place for Saudi Arabia over the killing of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi last month. Early Thursday, Denmark announced that it had suspended future approvals of weapons and military exports to Saudi Arabia over the killing of the outspoken journalist in Istanbul. The decision was taken after recent discussions with other foreign ministers in the European Union. The suspension also includes some dual-use technologies, a reference to materials that might have military applications. The Danish move comes just days after Germany suspended issuing future weapons export licenses to the kingdom while Berlin also made gestures that it will halt all arms sales to Saudi Arabia. France, for its part, said on Monday that it will soon decide what sanctions it would put in place over Khashoggis killing. With the continued deterioration of the already terrible situation in Yemen and the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, we are now in a new situation, Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said in a statement. Denmark issued ten such approvals last year, according to the ministry. Already given approvals will not be suspended, a spokesman said. Standing by his man Despite growing angst in Europe over growing implication of not only Saudi Arabias killing of Khashoggi but likely involvement or at least knowledge by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, President Trump is standing by the Saudis - even as many members of the presidents party in both the Congress and Senate call for a tougher line and sanctions against Riyadh. In statements released by the White House on Tuesday, Trump tried to lay out why he was sticking to long time US ally Saudi Arabia. He defended Saudi intervention in the ongoing war in Yemen, stating that Saudi Arabia would gladly withdraw from Yemen if the Iranians would agree to leave. They would immediately provide desperately needed humanitarian assistance. Additionally, Saudi Arabia has agreed to spend billions of dollars in leading the fight against Radical Islamic Terrorism. Related: Is The Worlds Most Indebted Oil Company About To Be Privatized? Trump also discussed proposed Saudi investment in the US which came after he visited the kingdom in 2017. After my heavily negotiated trip to Saudi Arabia last year, the president said, the Kingdom agreed to spend and invest $450 billion in the United States. This is a record amount of money. It will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous economic development, and much additional wealth for the United States. Of the $450 billion, $110 billion will be spent on the purchase of military equipment Trump also justified his decision to stick by the Saudi, claiming that if the U.S. pulled out of arms deals with the kingdom, the vacuum would be filled by China and Russia. However, noted analysts claim that it would take years for both China and Russia to fill the void left if the US ceased arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Trump mentioned growing congressional disagreement over his decision to stick with Saudi Arabia, while also acknowledging that the crime against Jamal Khashoggi was a terrible one, and one that our country does not condone. We may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi, Trump added. In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They have been a great ally in our very important fight against Iran. The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region. It is our paramount goal to fully eliminate the threat of terrorism throughout the world! Hard decisions However, at the end of the day, despite growing alarm in Europe and the House over Trumps insistence to stand by the Saudis, he may have little choice but to do so, even if it costs him political points with his base. Related: Is It Too Late To Avoid An Oil Supply Crisis? To enact sanctions against Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi's killing would risk damaging bilateral ties with a middle eastern partner that for all intents and purposes is keeping Irans regional hegemony ambitions in check. A crack in the U.S.-Saudi alliance would be quickly exploited by Iran just as U.S. sanctions are hitting the Islamic Republic so hard that its conceivable that economic woes could force regime change, though admittedly any regime change would not be without considerable bloodshed. Second, risking Trumps own personal ties with the Saudi royal family could also roil global oil markets that often swing on little more than geopolitical developments and rumor, akin to market psychology in global financial markets. If Trump is indeed forced to enact sanctions against Saudi Arabia, the worlds largest oil exporter, Riyadh, would be forced to push back and that would mean using the oil weapon, by cutting production and oil exports. Though global oil markets have been trending downward over the past month, dropping around 20 percent since October highs amid over supply concerns, the removal of Saudi barrels from the market would see prices escalate quickly, with the knock-on effect of rising gasoline prices in the US just as the 2020 presidential election cycle nears - not a desirable scenario for the president. In effect, Trump has no easy answers over Saudi Arabia. Perhaps, the best course, at least for now, would be to continue to criticize Khashoggis murder as long as there is no incontrovertible evidence implicating both the kingdom and the Crown Prince that would force him to take a harder line and give into calls for tougher action and economic sanctions. By Tim Daiss for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Albertas oil producers are facing an extraordinary challenge caused by pipeline bottlenecks combined with growing production, Scotiabank Economics said in a report released this week. The bottlenecks could pressure the industrys 2019 earnings by as much as US$11.33-29.45 billion (C$15-39 billion), the bank said, and government revenues could suffer a loss of between US$1.13 billion (C$1.5 billion) and US3.1 billion (C$4.1 billion). This scenario, the bank said, factored in all other relevant circumstances remaining equal, with the only variable being pipeline capacity. With adequate capacity, Scotiabanks analysts said, these losses will not be borne. However, the bank is wary about a proposal from the industry to have the government order a production cut to alleviate pressure on what pipeline capacity there is. The bar for the government to intervene directly into the energy sector should be a high one and the policy option should only be considered in an effort to prevent extreme value destruction, Scotiabank said. Whats more, it seems even a production cut wouldnt make it possible to avoid all the losses that would otherwise be incurred. It would only reduce them. The potential reduction could be substantial, though: Scotiabank estimates the range of loses avoided at US$2.27-20.4 billion (C$3-27 billion). The bank went on to say it actually expected that the huge discount at which Western Canadian heavy has been trading to West Texas Intermediate would narrow in 2019. If discounts fall back, as we expect, the bank said, to a more moderate level in 2019, the pay-off of government intervention is likely to be too small to justify the policy action; however, if discounts remain wide around current level, the action could be justified given the magnitude of potential upstream earnings and royalty revenue losses. Earlier this week, the chief executive of Cenovus called for government intervention in crude oil production in Alberta to counter the sinking prices. Not everyone among the producers, however, is on board with this, but Premier Rachel Notley said the provincial government is discussing all options, including intervention. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: With its National Defence Strategy released earlier this year, the US detailed its shift from small-scale operations like counterinsurgency and toward a potential fight with a rival like Russia or China. Countries around the world have made similar moves, refocusing on large-scale conflict. Amid those changes, head-to-head comparisons of military strength are hard to come by. Global Firepower's 2018 Military Strength Ranking tries to fill that void by drawing on more than 55 factors to assign a Power Index score to 136 countries - adding Ireland, Montenegro, and Liberia to last year's list. The ranking assesses the diversity of each country's weapons and pays particular attention to their available manpower. Geography, logistical capacity, available natural resources, and the status of local industry are also taken into account. While recognised nuclear powers receive a bonus, their nuclear stockpiles are not factored into the score. Landlocked countries are not docked for lacking a navy, but countries with navies are penalised if there is a lack of diversity in their fleets. NATO countries get a slight bonus because the alliance theoretically shares resources, but in general, a country's current political and military leadership was not considered (though financial health and stability is). The top power index score is 0.0000, which is "realistically unattainabile" for any military according to Global Firepower. The closer they are to this number, the more powerful their miltary is. Per these criteria, these are the 25 most powerful militaries in the world: 25. Canada Power Index rating: 0.4356 (NATO member) Total population: 35,623,680 Total military personnel: 88,000 Total aircraft strength: 413 Fighter aircraft: 60 Combat tanks: 80 Total naval assets: 63 Defence budget: $US16.4 billion 24. Taiwan Power Index rating: 0.4331 Total population: 23,508,428 Total military personnel: 1,932,500 Total aircraft strength: 843 Story continues Fighter aircraft: 286 Combat tanks: 2,005 Total naval assets: 87 Defence budget: $US10.725 billion 23. Algeria Power Index rating: 0.4296 Total population: 40,969,443 Total military personnel: 792,350 Total aircraft strength: 528 Fighter aircraft: 97 Combat tanks: 2,405 Total naval assets: 85 Defence budget: $US10.57 billion 22. Poland Power Index rating: 0.4276 (NATO member) Total population: 38,476,269 Total military personnel: 184,650 Total aircraft strength: 466 Fighter aircraft: 99 Combat tanks: 1,065 Total naval assets: 83 Defence budget: $US9.36 billion 21. Australia Power Index rating: 0.4203 Total population: 23,232,413 Total military personnel: 79,700 Total aircraft strength: 469 Fighter aircraft: 78 Combat tanks: 59 Total naval assets: 47 (two aircraft carriers) Defence budget: $US26.3 billion 20. Vietnam Power Index rating: 0.4098 Total population: 96,160,163 Total military personnel: 5,488,500 Total aircraft strength: 283 Fighter aircraft: 76 Combat 1,545 Total naval assets: 65 Defence budget: $US3.365 billion 19. Spain Power Index rating: 0.4079 (NATO member) Total population: 48,958,159 Total military personnel: 174,700 Total aircraft strength: 524 Fighter aircraft: 122 Combat tanks: 327 Total naval assets: 46 (one aircraft carrier Defence budget: $US11.6 billion 18. North Korea Power Index rating: 0.3876 Total population: 25,248,140 Total military personnel: 6,445,000 Total aircraft strength: 944 Fighter aircraft: 458 Combat tanks: 5,243 Total naval assets: 967 Defence budget: $US7.5 billion 17. Pakistan Power Index rating: 0.3689 Total population: 204,924,861 Total military personnel: 919,000 Total aircraft strength: 1,281 Fighter aircraft: 321 Combat tanks: 2,182 Total naval assets: 197 Defence budget: $US7 billion 16. Israel Power Index rating: 0.3444 Total population: 8,299,706 Total military personnel: 615,000 Total aircraft strength: 596 Fighter aircraft: 252 Combat tanks: 2,760 Total naval assets: 65 Defence budget: $US20 billion 15. Indonesia Power Index rating: 0.3266 Total population: 260,580,739 Total military personnel: 975,750 Total aircraft strength: 478 Fighter aircraft: 41 Combat tanks: 418 Total naval assets: 221 Defence budget: $US6.9 billion 14. Brazil Power Index rating: 0.3198 Total population: 207,353,391 Total military personnel: 1,987,000 Total aircraft strength: 723 Fighter aircraft: 43 Combat tanks: 469 Total naval assets: 110 Defence budget: $US29.3 billion 13. Iran Power Index rating: 0.3131 Total population: 82,021,564 Total military personnel: 934,000 Total aircraft strength: 505 Fighter aircraft: 150 Combat tanks: 1,650 Total naval assets: 398 Defence budget: $US6.3 billion 12. Egypt Power Index rating: 0.2751 Total population: 97,041,072 Total military personnel: 1,329,250 Total aircraft strength: 1,132 Fighter aircraft: 309 Combat tanks: 4,946 Total naval assets: 319 (two aircraft carriers) Defence budget: $US4.4 billion 11. Italy Power Index rating: 0.2565 (NATO member) Total population: 62,137,802 Total military personnel: 267,500 Total aircraft strength: 828 Fighter aircraft: 90 Combat tanks: 200 Total naval assets: 143 (two aircraft carriers) Defence budget: $US37.7 billion 10. Germany Power Index rating: 0.2461 (NATO member) Total population: 80,594,017 Total military personnel: 208,641 Total aircraft strength: 714 Fighter aircraft: 94 Combat tanks: 432 Total naval assets: 81 Defence budget: $US45.2 billion 9. Turkey Power Index rating: 0.2216 (NATO member) Total population: 80,845,215 Total military personnel: 710,565 Total aircraft strength: 1,056 Fighter aircraft: 207 Combat tanks: 2,446 Total naval assets: 194 Defence budget: $US10.2 billion 8. Japan Power Index rating: 0.2107 Total population: 126,451,398 Total military personnel: 310,457 Total aircraft strength: 1,508 Fighter aircraft: 290 Combat tanks: 679 Total naval assets: 131 (four aircraft carriers) Defence budget: $US44 billion 7. South Korea Power Index rating: 0.2001 Total population: 51,181,299 Total military personnel: 5,827,250 Total aircraft strength: 1,560 Fighter aircraft: 406 Combat tanks: 2,654 Total naval assets: 166 (one aircraft carrier) Defence budget: $US40 billion 6. United Kingdom Power Index rating: 0.1917 (NATO member) Total population: 64,769,452 Total military personnel: 279,230 Total aircraft strength: 832 Fighter aircraft: 103 Combat tanks 227 Total naval assets: 76 (two aircraft carriers) Defence budget: $US50 billion 5. France Power Index rating: 0.1869 (NATO member) Total population: 67,106,161 Total military personnel: 388,635 Total aircraft strength: 1,262 Fighter aircraft 299 Combat tanks: 406 Total naval assets: 118 (four aircraft carriers) Defence budget: $US40 billion 4. India Power Index rating: 0.1417 Total population: 1,281,935,911 Total military personnel: 4,207,250 Total aircraft strength: 2,185 Fighter aircraft: 590 Combat tanks: 4,426 Total naval assets: 295 (one aircraft carrier) Defence budget: $US47 billion 3. China Power Index rating: 0.0852 Total population: 1,379,302,771 Total military personnel: 2,693,000 Total aircraft strength: 3,035 Fighter aircraft: 1,125 Combat tanks: 7,716 Total naval assets: 714 (one aircraft carrier) Defence budget: $US151 billion 2. Russia Power Index rating: 0.0841 Total population: 142,257,519 Total military personnel: 3,586,128 Total aircraft strength: 3,914 Fighter aircraft: 818 Combat tanks: 20,300 Total naval assets: 352 (one aircraft carrier out of service indefinitely) Defence budget: $US47 billion 1. United States Power Index rating: 0.0818 (NATO member) Total population: 326,625,791 Total military personnel: 2,083,100 Total aircraft: 13,362 Fighter aircraft: 1,962 Combat tanks: 5,884 Total naval assets: 415 (20 aircraft carriers) Defence budget: $US647 billion At least 31 people were killed and 50 wounded when a suicide blast ripped through a crowded marketplace in Pakistan's restive northwestern tribal region Friday, officials said. The attack took place during the regular Friday bazaar in Kalaya, a town in a Shiite-dominated area of Orakzai tribal district, senior local official Khalid Iqbal told AFP. Initial investigations showed it was an improvised explosive device hidden in a carton of vegetables, but officials later said it had been a suicide blast. "It's not clear whether the bomber was on foot or riding a motorcycle," senior official Ameen Ullah told AFP. Shahbaz Ali, a resident who was buying food in the market, said he had seen a boy with his face covered ride up on a motorcycle. "Suddenly a blast took place and then I was unconscious," he told AFP. Ullah said 31 people had been killed, including 22 Shiite Muslims. More than 50 people were wounded, with 17 of them in critical condition, he said. Tribal police confirmed the toll. Many of the wounded were taken to a hospital in Kohat, a city in neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where doctors said all staff had been summoned to the trauma centre. Ambulances could be seen outside the hospital, where relatives were awaiting news of their loved ones. One man was searching people before they entered the building, a precaution against a secondary bombing targeting hospital staff. "We have received one dead body and 28 injured, three of them were serious and taken to Peshawar," Fazl Ur Reham, deputy medical superintendent at the hospital, told AFP by telephone. Six other wounded were undergoing surgery, he said. Most of the injured had been hit by ball bearings and fragments of the bomb. "We expect more injured from the site," he added. - On the fringe - Amnesty International condemned the attack, saying in a statement that it showed an "utter contempt for human life". Orakzai is one of seven restive semi-autonomous tribal regions on the Afghan border, an area that has long been a focal point in the global war on terror and was famously described by Barack Obama as "the most dangerous place in the world". Washington has said that the mountainous region provides safe havens to militants including the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda -- an allegation that Islamabad denies. Pakistan, which joined the US war on terror in 2001, says it has paid the price for the alliance. It has been battling Islamist groups in the tribal belt since 2004, after its army entered the region to search for Al-Qaeda fighters who had fled across the border following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. Multiple bloody military operations have been carried out in the area, officially known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and home to around five million ethnic Pashtuns. Security has improved in the region in recent years, though lower-level attacks are still carried out with devastating regularity, often targeting Shiites in the area. But it remains notorious for the availability of cheap guns, drugs and smuggled goods. Residents also complain of undue harassment by security forces, citing disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Earlier this year Pakistan passed legislation which paves the way for the tribal areas to be merged into neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, bringing them into the political mainstream. The move will impose the Pakistani judicial system on a region still loosely governed by British colonial-era laws and the tribal system of honour, and which has always existed on the fringes of the state. President Rodrigo Roa Duterte delivers his speech during the 35th Army Reserve Command (ARESCOM) founding anniversary at Camp General Mariano Riego De Dios in Tanza, Cavite on November 22, 2018. Also in the photo are Southern Luzon Command (Solcom) Commander Lieutenant General Danilo Pamonag, Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff General Carlito Galvez Jr., Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, and Presidential Adviser for Military Affairs Arthur Tabaquero. RICHARD MADLEO/PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO MANILA, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has appealed to Congress to immediately pass the proposed mandatory Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC). In a speech during the 35th founding anniversary of the Army Reserve Command in Tanza, Cavite, the President said he is contemplating on issuing an executive order for the passage of the measure. Let me take this opportunity to ask Congress to expedite the passage of the Reservist Employment Rights Act that is currently pending in both Houses of Congress. I likewise encourage Congress to enact a law that will require mandatory ROTC for Grades 11 and 12 so we can instill patriotism, love of country among our youth, he said. Kapag madala ng EO siguro, Executive Order baka mapilitan ako if they do not act on it. I said that this is a constitutional requirement that you must prepare to defend your country, he added. According to President Duterte, the Philippines is far behind other countries when it comes to training and developing the youths sense of patriotism. Lahat ng bayan sa buong mundo, lalo na Israel, magte-training ka talaga kasi we are not the only generation who will be who are or will be soldiers. Ang mga anak natin, kung hindi mo gawin, walang alam kung magkaupakan. Hindi nga marunong magkasa ng baril. What will happen? he lamented. It was in 2002 when then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo made the ROTC optional due to irregularities and incidents of abuse including the death of University of Sto. Tomas ROTC Unit Member Mark Welson Chua. Story continues Instead, it was replaced by the National Service Training Program (NSTP). In order to return the mandatory ROTC, Congress should amend first the current NSTP Law. Marje Pelayo (with reports from Rosalie Coz) The post Duterte wants immediate passage of mandatory ROTC appeared first on UNTV News. AFP Headline Casts Palestinian Assailant as Victim | Main | The Washington Post Ignores Antisemitic Attack in Los Angeles November 23, 2018 Think Tank: Iran Was Closer to Building a Bomb Than Previously Thought A Nov. 20, 2018 report by a Washington D.C.-based think tank, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) argues that Irans illegal nuclear weapons program was more advanced than Western intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency had thought. ISIS analyzed documents seized by Israeli intelligence operatives in a daring raid for their study. That raid, first revealed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an April 30, 2018 speech, resulted in thousands of documents being taken from Tehrans nuclear archive. The documents were subsequently authenticated by the United States. As CAMERA noted in a Nov. 8, 2018 Daily Caller Op-Ed, several commentators many of them supporters of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, popularly known as the Iran deal immediately claimed that Israels findings revealed nothing new. For example, a May 3, 2018, CNN report by CNN was headlined Israel reveals nothing new about Irans nuclear program, experts say. But these experts made their claims which were uncritically parroted by nearly every major Western news outlet without having viewed any of the thousands of documents. The Institutes study, however, proves that they were wrong. In fact: analysts are still sifting through the archive, according to David Albright, the organizations executive director. The archive is more than 10,000 pages long and covers the period from 1999 to 2003. Iran, the ISIS report said, made more progress towards creating nuclear weapons than was known before the seizure of the archives. ISIS noted that the documents show that Iran had planned to manufacture 5 nuclear warheads, to acquire highly enriched uranium (HEU) from abroad, to achieve the ability to carry out underground nuclear tests, and to produce HEU via constructing a parallel fuel cycle. The archive also showed that Iran had created a Supreme Council for Advanced Technologies to oversee these efforts. The Supreme Council made the decision in late 1999 or early 2000 to create nuclear weapons. Hassan Rouhani, Irans current president who is frequently labeled a moderate by the media, was serving on that Council at the time in his post as the National Security Council Secretary General. According to ISIS: Mr. Rouhani was a central, on-going figure in the nuclear weapons program in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It is difficult to find evidence that his support for nuclear weapons ever ended. If anything, he seems to offer continuity for finding ways to deflect international pressure while continuing the program, awaiting a day when Iran can decide whether the program should fully re-emerge and build nuclear weapons. The Institute pointed out that prior to their analysis of the captured documents, the worldincluding the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a watchdog agency tasked with ensuring compliancedid not know how many nuclear weapons Iran planned to make, or how it was going to do so. But now, the IAEA has access to much, if not most, of the content of the Iranian archives seized by Israel in Tehran. Troublingly, ISIS noted, there is no visible indication that the IAEA is yet acting on the new information. ISISs report can be found here. Posted by SD at November 23, 2018 10:41 AM Guidelines for posting This is a moderated blog. We will not post comments that include racism, bigotry, threats, or factually inaccurate material. Post a comment Indonesia on Friday wrapped up the grim task of identifying Lion Air jet crash victims from recovered body parts, with a preliminary report on the cause of the accident that killed 189 people due next week. The Boeing 737 Max jet -- one of the world's newest and most advanced commercial planes -- plunged into the Java Sea on October 29 shortly after taking off from capital Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang city, killing all on board. Since then, investigators have been doing DNA testing on recovered body parts. As of Friday, 125 people have been identified after testing on human remains that filled some 200 body bags, said Arthur Tampi, head of the national police medical centre. "We have identified 89 men and 36 women, including two foreigners, namely an Italian and an Indian national" who was the flight's captain, Tampi told reporters in Jakarta. The identification was being called off because all the recovered remains have been tested, he added. Budget carrier Lion Air has said it is paying a little over $100,000 in compensation to the families of each crash victim. The smashed jet's flight data recorder was recovered but divers are still looking for the cockpit voice recorder. A formal preliminary report on what might have caused the crash is due Wednesday. So far, investigators have said the doomed plane had problems with its air-speed indicator and angle of attack (AOA) sensors prompting Boeing to issue a special bulletin directing operators what to do when they face the same situation. An AOA sensor provides data about the angle at which wind is passing over the wings and tells pilots how much lift a plane is getting. The information can be critical in preventing the plane from stalling. Last week, a US airline pilots union, the APA, said that companies and pilots had not been informed by Boeing of certain changes in the aircraft control system. While Boeing has come under fire for possible glitches in its newest 737 model -- released just last year -- the accident has also resurrected concerns about Indonesia's poor air safety record, which until recently saw its carriers facing years-long bans from entering European Union and US airspace. Singapore's ruling party Friday set in motion a carefully orchestrated political succession that will see the founding family hand over the premiership, a crucial moment in the city-state's short history. Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat was named to a key post in the People's Action Party (PAP), which has ruled Singapore since it gained self-rule from Britain in 1959, putting him on course to become premier. The 57-year-old is now expected to take over in the coming years from Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the son of the late founding premier Lee Kuan Yew, who oversaw the country's rapid economic development during three decades of sometimes authoritarian rule. The power transfer, which begins as Singapore gears up for elections that could come as soon as next year, is in line with 66-year-old Premier Lee's plan to hand power to a broadly younger generation of leaders. Heng would be the country's fourth prime minister and the second from outside the Lee family. It will be a sensitive moment for the financial hub of 5.6 million people, with the country's transformation into one of the world's wealthiest and most stable societies inextricably linked in many people's minds to the rule of the Lee family. The PAP announced in a statement that Heng had been appointed first assistant secretary general, putting him in pole position to take over as premier. The man seen as his closest rival for the top job -- Trade Minister Chan Chun Sing -- was named second assistant secretary general, the PAP said. "A smooth transition to the new team to lead us beyond the next elections is important not only for the PAP, but also for Singapores future," said Prime Minister Lee on Facebook following the announcement. During an unprecedented family feud last year that captivated the country, Lee rejected allegations he harboured political ambitions for his son -- meaning the looming change of leadership could spell the end of the Lees holding the country's top job. - Health concerns - But eyebrows were raised in some quarters at the choice of the finance minister as the successor to the premiership. Trade Minister Chan, who is younger at age 49, was previously regarded as the frontrunner, while there have been concerns about Heng's health since he suffered a stroke in 2016. "Heng was the weakest candidate... he's had a stroke already, and he's had a very narrow portfolio background," Michael Barr, a Singapore expert from Flinders University in Australia, told AFP. Heng entered politics in 2011 and served as education minister before becoming finance minister. Prior to that, he was head of the central bank. But Eugene Tan, a political analyst from Singapore Management University, described Heng as a "tried and tested" official, particularly due to his track record in financial matters. "I think Mr Heng would provide that rock solid assurance that economic policies will continue to be business friendly," he told AFP. Elections must be held by 2021, but Premier Lee has indicated they could be sooner. The government is not expected to face any serious challenge to its rule -- it tightly controls institutions, has firm control over the domestic media, while the opposition is weak and divided. Last year's family feud saw Lee's siblings accuse him online of exploiting their father's legacy for his own political agenda and seeking to groom his son Li Hongyi to one day become leader of the city-state. It was an escalation of a dispute over what to do with a family bungalow that has simmered since the 2015 death of the elder Lee. The patriarch wanted the building destroyed to prevent the creation of a personality cult -- something the current leader's siblings say he is attempting to block. Phuket, Thailand 23 November 2018: JW Marriott Phuket Resort & Spa joined the nationwide celebrated The Loy Krathong Festival also known as The Festival of Lights, on 22 November at the Lotus Pond. Mr. Matthias Y. Sutter (4th from left, white shirt), General Manager of JW Marriott Phuket Resort & Spa presided over the event along with the associates and hotel guests. In celebration of Loy Krathong, the hotel guests enhanced the richness of Thai cultural heritage through its significant festival; the hotels lotus pavilion and lotus pond were transformed to be the temple ambience with the Thai musical background, and a pond for guests to perform the ritual of Loy Krathong. The event was filled with numerous activities such as Family Krathong making, major Krathong decoration, Krathong contest, performances such as the procession of the major Krathong and parade, traditional Thai dance and fire shows. Guests also had the opportunity to savor on authentic Thai cuisine prepared by crafted Thai chefs. Loy Krathong is traditionally performed on the full moon night of the twelfth lunar month, which usually falls in November. The floating of a Krathong, a vessel usually made from natural product banana leaf, is intended to float away the misfortunes in life as well as to sincerely express apologies to Khongkha, the River Goddess. The celebration is held nationwide in Thailand as long as there are rivers, canals or ponds. In this Nov. 9, 2018 file photo, firefighter Jose Corona sprays water as flames from the Camp Fire consume a home in Magalia, Calif. A massive new federal report warns that extreme weather disasters, like California's wildfires and 2018's hurricanes, are worsening in the United States. The White House report quietly issued Friday, Nov. 23 also frequently contradicts President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File) As California's catastrophic wildfires recede and people rebuild after two hurricanes, a massive new federal report warns that these types of disasters are worsening in the United States because of global warming. The White House report quietly issued Friday also frequently contradicts President Donald Trump. The National Climate Assessment was written long before the deadly fires in California this month and before Hurricanes Florence and Michael raked the East Coast and Florida. It says warming-charged extremes "have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration." The report notes the last few years have smashed U.S. records for damaging weather, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015. The recent Northern California wildfires can be attributed to climate change, but there was less of a connection to those in Southern California, said co-author William Hohenstein of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "A warm, dry climate has increased the areas burned over the last 20 years," he said at a press conference Friday. The report is mandated by law every few years and is based on more than 1,000 previous research studies. It details how global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas is hurting each region of the United States and how it impacts different sectors of the economy, including energy and agriculture. "Climate change is transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us," the report says. That includes worsening air pollution causing heart and lung problems, more diseases from insects, the potential for a jump in deaths during heat waves, and nastier allergies. "Annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the centurymore than the current gross domestic product (GDP) of many U.S. states," the report says. It'll be especially costly on the nation's coasts because of rising seas and severe storm surges, which will lower property values. And in some areas, such as parts of Alaska and Louisiana, coastal flooding will likely force people to relocate. "We are seeing the things we said would be happening, happen now in real life," said another co-author Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University. "As a climate scientist it is almost surreal." And Donald Wuebbles, a co-author from University of Illinois climate scientist, said, "We're going to continue to see severe weather events get stronger and more intense." What makes the report different from others is that it focuses on the United States, then goes more local and granular. This Oct. 12, 2018 aerial file photo shows devastation from Hurricane Michael over Mexico Beach, Fla. A massive new federal report warns that extreme weather disasters, like California's wildfires and 2018's hurricanes, are worsening in the United States. The White House report quietly issued Friday, Nov. 23 also frequently contradicts President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File) "All climate change is local," said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Richard Alley, who wasn't part of the report but praised it. While scientists talk of average global temperatures, people feel extremes more, he said. "We live in our drought, our floods and our heat waves. That means we have to focus on us," he said. The Lower 48 states have warmed 1.8 degrees (1 degree Celsius) since 1900 with 1.2 degrees in the last few decades, according to the report. By the end of the century, the U.S. will be 3 to 12 degrees (1.6 to 6.6 degrees Celsius) hotter depending on how much greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere, the report warns. Outside scientists and officials from 13 federal agencies wrote the report, which was released on the afternoon following Thanksgiving. It was originally scheduled for December. The report often clashes with the president's past statements and tweets on the legitimacy of climate change science, how much of it is caused by humans, how cyclical it is and what's causing increases in recent wildfires. Trump tweeted this week about the cold weather hitting the East including: "Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?" Friday's report seemed to anticipate such comments, saying: "Over shorter timescales and smaller geographic regions, the influence of natural variability can be larger than the influence of human activity ... Over climate timescales of multiple decades, however, global temperature continues to steadily increase." Releasing the report on Black Friday "is a transparent attempt by the Trump Administration to bury this report and continue the campaign of not only denying but suppressing the best of climate science," said study co-author Andrew Light, an international policy expert at the World Resources Institute. During a press conference Friday, officials behind the report repeatedly declined to answer questions about the timing of its release and why it contradicts public statements from Trump. Report director David Reidmiller said questions about the timing were "relevant," but said what was in the report was more important. Trump, administration officials and elected Republicans frequently say they can't tell how much of climate change is caused by humans and how much is natural. Citing numerous studies, the report says more than 90 percent of the current warming is caused by humans. Without greenhouse gases, natural forcessuch as changes in energy from the sunwould be slightly cooling Earth. "There are no credible alternative human or natural explanations supported by the observational evidence," the report says. Explore further Government report sees drastic climate change impact in US: NYT 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The social networking service Tumblr announced Monday that its iOS app had been removed from Apple's App Store after child sexual abuse content had been found on the platform during a routine audit. The platform first announced an undisclosed issue with the iOS app on Friday. Monday's update said Tumblr uses an "industry database" to prevent the distribution of illicit content; however, the content that was discovered had not yet been included in that database. Apple requires iOS apps to have content filters to prevent the distribution of child pornography, The Verge reported. "We're committed to helping build a safe online environment for all users, and we have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to media featuring child sexual exploitation and abuse ... We immediately removed this content," Tumblr's statement read. Tumblr has a reputation as a platform with a permissive attitude towards adult content. The governments of Indonesia and South Korea have sparred with Tumblr over its handling of sexual content, the BBC reported. Tumblr's statement gave no timeline for when the app may be restored to the App Store. Apple did not immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for comment. Explore further Indonesia blocks online-blogging site Tumblr over porn 2018 USA Today Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Brazil-born tycoon Carlos Ghosn is now reportedly set to face a new charge from Japanese prosecutors Nissan's disgraced former chairman Carlos Ghosn under-reported his income by a total of $71 millionmuch more than initially suspectedJapanese media reported Friday. The Brazil-born tycoon is now reportedly set to face a new charge from prosecutors, after he was sacked as Nissan chairman Thursday to top a spectacular fall from grace for the once-revered boss whose fall has stunned the business world. Prosecutors arrested Ghosn Monday, accusing him and fellow executive Greg Kelly of understating the former chairman's income by around five billion yen ($44 million) between June 2011 and June 2015. But Ghosn is now suspected of under-reporting his income by another three billion yen for the following three fiscal years, the Asahi Shimbun and the Nikkei business daily reported. Prosecutors are now planing to re-arrest him on charges of understating his income by a total of eight billion yen ($71 million) since June 2011, the Asahi said. Immediate confirmation of the reports was not available. Under Japanese law, suspects in jail can face additional arrest warrants, which can impose heavier charges. Ghosn is also suspected of failing to report a profit of four billion yen through stock appreciation rightsa method for firms to give management a bonus on strong earnings, the Nikkei said. Separately, the Kyodo news agency has reported that Nissan had paid $100,000 a year since 2002 to Ghosn's sister who had no record of doing advisory work for the group. Deputy chief prosecutor Shin Kukimoto said the Ghosn case is "one of the most serious types of crime" under Japan's Financial Instruments Act, and Ghosn could face a 10-year prison sentence. His ouster is an astonishing turnaround for a titan of the auto sector who revived the Japanese brand and forged an alliance with France's Renault as well as domestic rival Mitsubishi Motors. The French and Japanese finance ministers reiterated their "strong support" for the alliance at a meeting in Paris on Thursday. In a joint statement, Bruno Le Maire and Hiroshige Seko said they both wanted "to maintain this winning cooperation". Asked about the fate of the alliance, Seko told reporters in Paris: "It is important for people concerned to deal with it after they agree and fully understand." Explore further Nissan chief Ghosn arrested over financial misconduct: reports 2018 AFP Show me the money: Tourists could be forced to shell out $500 to enter the national park where komodo dragons live, if one Indonesian governor gets his way Tourists keen for a close-up look at komodo dragons in their natural habitat could be hit with an alarming bill, if one Indonesian politician gets his way. The governor of East Nusa Tenggara provincehome to the world's biggest lizardhas proposed charging visitors $500 to see the endangered species, about 50 times the current entrance fee for foreign tourists at Komodo National Park. And if Viktor Bungtilu Laiskodat prevails, the park would be off limits to all but "extraordinary" visitors with cash to burn. "(Komodo dragons) are very unique, but sadly they come cheap," the governor said this week, during a speech to university administrators. "Only people with deep pockets are allowed to (see the komodo dragons). Those who don't have the money shouldn't visit the park since it specifically caters to extraordinary people," he added. The governorwho also suggested recreational boats should be charged a $50,000 entrance feesaid he would talk with the central government, which administers the national park. The provincial government and federal environment ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the proposed fee hike. Indonesian politicians have a long history of announcing plans that rarely come to pass, including the former drug czar's proposal to build a prison surrounded by moats filled with piranhas and crocodiles to tighten security. Komodo dragons are powerful carnivores that dominate their eco system Thousands of tourists annually descend on the cluster of islands in eastern Indonesia that are the only place in the world where komodo dragons can be seen in their natural habitat. Previously, the government planned to limit the number of tourists over concerns that the influx was putting pressure on the environment and endangering the giant lizard's habitat. The slavering carnivores, which can grow to around three metres (10 feet) in length and weigh up to 70 kilograms (154 pounds), can be dangerous to humans although deadly attacks are rare. Komodo dragons can grow to around three metres in length, and weigh up to 70 kilograms Rough edge of that tongue: komodo dragons can be dangerous to humans, but deadly attacks are rare Explore further Seven rare Komodo dragons hatch in Indonesia 2018 AFP "Art is anything you can get away with." ~ Marshall McLuhan I find it interesting that nearly everyone who hears the above quot... 4 hours ago Medtronic or Intuitive Surgical: Which is the Better Buy After Earnings? The future cant arrive soon enough for these two medical device giants Ive been bullish on both Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) and Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG) at different points this year. Read Article November 23, 2018 in iWork (E) [prMac.com] Vilnius, Lithuania - Jumsoft have launched a Black Friday sale on their macOS and iOS applications and in-app items. Starting worldwide on November 22, all Jumsoft applications on Mac and iOS App Stores will be discounted by 50%, while select individual items inside the powerful Toolbox for Keynote, Toolbox for Pages, Toolbox for MS Office applications will be discounted by up to 66% and priced from $0.99 to $1.99 until late November 25. It is Jumsoft's seventh consecutive year of offering Black Friday deals on their applications and in-app items. The range consists of the wildly popular Toolbox for Keynote and Toolbox for Pages applications for macOS and iOS, specialized template applications such as Infographics, Template Lab, and many more, as well as Jumsoft's powerful personal finance management application Money for Mac and iOS devices. "We are always excited about Black Friday and the chance to show off our applications, templates, and productivity tools for Mac and iOS users" said Algirdas Unguvaitis, CEO of Jumsoft. "Each year, thousands of Mac, iPhone, and iPad users take the opportunity to get their hands on our apps and templates with massive savings, and we hope this year will not be an exception. Our creative team are working hard, and are bringing amazing productivity templates to our apps each month. The total range has grown to over 70,000 items across our Toolbox applications, so there are plenty of things to discover for everyone." The prices will be discounted automatically both on the App Store and inside Toolbox applications, starting on November 22. Based in Vilnius, Lithuania, Jumsoft is a privately funded company, founded in 2002. Committed to developing highest-quality applications, Jumsoft consists of a team of macOS and iOS experts and enthusiasts who dedicate their time to develop amazing tools for personal and professional use. Copyright 2002-2018 Jumsoft. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iWork and macOS are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. ### The eurozones third-largest economy, Italy, is marooned in a deep political and economic crisis, with seeming endless problems: an economy that has barely grown in decades, sky-high unemployment rates, ballooning national debt, an inability to form a stable coalition government and, lately, a looming showdown with the EU over mounting debt. These have precipitated a wave of populism that has rejected the old establishment and brought in a new guard. Unfortunately, that has done little to resolve another Italian bugaboo: a massive banking crisis. European banks have accumulated about $1.2 trillion in bad and non-performing loans (NPLs) that have continued weighing down heavily on their balance sheets. Italian banks are sitting on the biggest pile of bad debt: 224.2B ($255.9B), with NPLs and advances making up nearly a quarter of all loans. As if that is not bad enough, the banks now have to contend with potentially heavy penalties coming from Brussels after Italys recalcitrant leadership refused to revise the countrys fiscal 2019 budget to lower debt and borrowing. The sharks can already smell the blood in the water, and investors have been shorting Italian banking stocks to death. Italian banks hold nearly a fifth of the countrys government bonds. (Click to enlarge) Source: Bloomberg (Click to enlarge) Source: Reuters Short sellers have mainly been targeting medium-sized lenders as well as asset manager Banca Mediolanum and investment bank Mediobanca. According to FIS Astec Analytics data, the volume of these banks shares on loana good proxy for short interesthas shot to its highest in 15 months. Short interest on Mediolanums shares now stands at 8.7 percent of outstanding shares, while Mediobanca has 15 percent of its shares sold short. Rome Refuses To Back Down Investors seem justified in their pessimism on the Italian banking sectorif the latest developments are any indication. A month ago, the European Commission rejected Italys 2019 budget on grounds that it flouted EU requirements and Italys commitment to lower its expanding budget deficit. The latest budget hiked the deficit to 2.4 percent of GDP--way higher than the targeted 1.8 percent this year. Meanwhile, total debt sits at a staggering 130 percent of GDP, the fourth highest in the world. The EC rules are clear: national debt should be maintained below 60 percent of GDP while deficit should not exceed three percent of GDP Italy's deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, however, has sent strong signals that the country will not back down from the current budget or revise it to satisfy EU requirements. He has even accused the bloc of "hypocrisy and double standards. Related: Saudi Aramco Abandons $40 Billion Bond Sale Speaking to France24 on Tuesday, Mr. Salvini balked at the whole idea saying: "Who has complied with rules in the past? Not Germany, not France, not Spain. Spain had an average deficit way above the rules. Its double standards. What is 2.4? That is the point." Although Mr. Salvini is right in his assessment that the commission has allowed exceptions to the rules in the past (including in 2016 when it turned a blind eye to Frances debt prompting EC president to famously quip "France is France"), not reacting [to Italy] is not an option, as Wolfango Piccoli, co-president of EC advisory firm, Teneo Intelligence, has noted. The Moment of Truth Some Italian politicians have been seeking curbs on the short selling in a bid to prevent a rise in bond yield spreads. While a ban on short-selling might alleviate short-term selling pressure, the moment of truth always arrives in the end determined by underlying fundamentals. The continuing challenges on the Italian banking sector directly affects returns on shareholder equity, and will continue to reflect on share prices: (Click to enlarge) Source: Reuters By Alex Kimani for Safehaven.com More Top Reads From Safehaven.com: You have permission to edit this collection. Edit Close 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. Group-IB security experts are warning about the increasing scammers activity during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sales Group-IB, an international company that specializes in preventing cyber attacks, warns about the increasing scammers activity during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sales. Group-IB experts have discovered more than 400 website-clones of the popular marketplace AliExpress and roughly 200 fake websites of famous brands and online stores. These websites aim to sell counterfeit products, steal money or credit cards information. AliExpress and its 400 clones The Black Friday Sale is a favorite time of the year for not only bargain hunters chasing the best deals, but also for online scammers chasing a quick buck. They create website-clones of famous brands and online stores long before the Black Friday starts. For instance, Group-IB discovered around 400 bogus AliExpress websites that appear to be legitimate. To attract customers fraudsters create fake websites that look almost identical to the legitimate ones: they copy branding, logo, fonts and even register a similar domain name to mislead the visitors. Most of the analyzed fraudulent websites had many variations of AliExpress legitimate URL. The damage to one customer can reach up to hundreds of dollars. Such fake websites are capable of luring up to 200 000 monthly visitors. Just one group of scammers is capable of creating hundreds of bogus websites. Not long before the Black Friday Sale Group-IB Brand Protection team detected a network of 198 fake websites that illegally used famous brands trademarks. Most of the domain names were purchased in August 2018, and all the content photos, product descriptions, and prices was copied from the legitimate website. It is worth noting that all these fake websites had the same hosting provider ISPIRIA Networks Ltd, located in Belize (Central America). Scammers create fake websites to advertise and sell counterfeit goods, such as computers and electronics, clothing, jewelry, accessories, beauty and personal care products and even medicine usually with discounts that reach 80%. Sometimes fraudsters advertise and sell non-existent products. For example, one of the fake websites offers to buy Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC, while the most anticipated game of 2018 was only released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Phishing: 1274 attacks a day Another type of fraud that pose a serious threat to customers is phishing websites that are looking to steal money or personal information (login credentials or credit card details). According to Group-IB Brand Protection experts, 1274 phishing attacks are carried out daily. In total the average monthly revenue of phishing websites, designed to closely resemble the legitimate brands trademarks, is amounted to 45,600 USD. Fraudsters use legitimate promotion channels to increase their website traffic: mass mailing via messengers, banner ads, SEO and paid social media campaigns. Fraudsters quite often buy domain names that mimic the legitimate brands websites addresses and then redirect users to different webpages. If you click on such link, you end up on a completely different website. The consequences of such fraud can be both direct financial losses and collateral, such as damage to the reputation. According to statistics, 64% of users stop buying a companys products after one negative experience. In the cybersecurity framework, the websites-clones should be considered not only as a threat to the customers, but also to the company. Detecting fraudulent websites should be a systemic activity for big brands, comments Andrey Busargin, Director of Brand Protection and Anti-Piracy at Group-IB. How to avoid online scammers: protect your brand & secure your wallet Group-IBs experts remind about basic cyber hygiene not to become a cyber criminals victim: For brands: 1. Purchase all similar domain names so that cyber criminals could not use your trademark in the fake websites domain name. For example, if your address is internet-shop.ru, cybercriminals can register the following domain names: internet.shop.ru or internet shop.ru and act on behalf of your brand. 2. Monitor references to your brand in the domain names and phishing websites databases regularly. Companies that provide brand protection and anti-fraud services on the Internet have access to these databases. 3. Look for the criminals who use your brand in search engines. Search requests should be sent from different geo locations and devices in order to have most objective search output. 4. Keep track of the promotion techniques of fraudulent resources: context ads, posts in social networks and messengers. 5. Discover the network of fraudulent websites that use your brand. Usually, cyber criminals create several website clones. They can be detected using the websites affiliation technologies that automatically detect the links between fraudulent resources. 6. Monitor mobile apps both in the official and unofficial stores, including forums, search engines, social networks and websites where they get distributed. 7. Constantly monitor the use of your brand and company management names in social media. 8. Block fraudulent resources that cause reputational and financial damage to your brand. Seek out the experts. For customers: 1. First, always pay attention to the URL in the browser. 2. If the website name contains a few dots, for example (*con.su.club), it is better not to order anything from such website. Check an official site via web search. 3. Check the date of when the website was created. In order to do this use free WHOIS-services where you can find the registration date and information on the owner of the domain (fraudulent websites are newly created, usually days before the big sales). 4. Do not trust malfunctioning websites, the official website should work correctly even at peak load. 5. Do not purchase from unauthorized resellers. 6. Do not click on the links in articles dedicated to discounts. 7. Have a separate payment card for online shopping and do not type in your card data on suspicious websites. At the end of the day, it is better not to buy a product rather than lose all the money from your bank card. About the Author: Group-IB Corporate Communications http://www.group-ib.ru https://www.group-ib.ru/blog/ telegram | facebook | twitter | linkedin Pierluigi Paganini ( Security Affairs Black Friday, Cybercrime) Share this... Linkedin Share this: Twitter Print LinkedIn Facebook More Tumblr Pocket Share On So very thankful this year that so very many voices on the political right are actively advocating for criminal justice reforms | Main | What might the Founders have to say about modern federal sentencing debates? November 23, 2018 Noticing California Gov Jerry Brown's recent robust approach to clemency The Marshall Project earlier this week had this notable account of the outgoing California Gov's clemency history under the headline "The Jerry Brown Way of Pardoning." Here is an excerpt from this piece: Unlike President Donald Trump, who has focused attention on cases brought to him by fellow celebrities and on political allies, Browns clemency decisions focus on people facing what the governor seems to view as systemic injustices. They are often timed to coincide with Catholic holidays, a reflection of his faith. Its a recognition that people can, and do, change even after committing terrible crimes, Evan Westrup, a spokesman for Brown, said in a statement. Its also a recognition of the radical and unprecedented sentencing increases and prison building boom of the 80s and beyond as well as the diminished role of parole as a vital ingredient in Californias system of sentencing and rehabilitative process. Among the people who have received clemency recently: Southeast Asian immigrants who came to the United States as children and who face deportation unless granted a pardon; non-citizen military veterans who were deported for crimes committed after their service; and prisoners serving life without parole, who were given hope of release.... During his first two terms in office, from 1975-83, Brown oversaw a dramatic shift in sentencing policy that led to a surge in the states prison population and coincided with a number of tough-on-crime bills. In those years, he handed down only one commutation and about 400 pardons.... By contrast, since returning to the governors office in 2011, Brown has issued 82 commutations and more than 1,100 pardons, far more than any California governor since at least the early 1940s. The previous governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, issued only 10 commutations and 15 pardons during his two terms. His predecessor, Gray Davis, issued none. A few days after this piece was published, Gov Brown issued another batch of clemencies as reported in this AP article headlined "California governor pardons former state lawmaker, refugees." Here is how this piece starts: A former state senator convicted of lying about his residence and three refugees from Vietnam who could face deportation are among 38 people pardoned Wednesday by Gov. Jerry Brown ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. Brown's pardons also include a man who just lost his Paradise home in a wildfire. The Democratic governor also commuted the sentences of 70 people still serving time, including Walter "Earlonne" Woods, who co-hosts a podcast called "Ear Hustle" from inside San Quinton state prison. November 23, 2018 at 05:27 PM | Permalink Comments Post a comment Amnesty International said Friday it was "gravely concerned" by Bahrain's suppression of political opposition, a day ahead of the parliamentary election. "Over the past two years, the crackdown in Bahrain has seen the political opposition detained, intimidated and silenced," said Devin Kenney, the rights group's Bahrain researcher, in a statement. "We call on the authorities to stop this ongoing and escalating repression and to allow free expression of dissenting voices, including those who oppose the monarchy. "Bahrain's international partners and allies cannot remain silent, and must use their influence to pressure the Bahraini authorities to adhere to the international standards they have committed to," Kenney said. The Sunni-ruled Gulf kingdom has been hit by waves of unrest since 2011, when security forces crushed Shiite-led protests demanding a constitutional monarchy and an elected prime minister. Opposition movements have been outlawed and hundreds of dissidents have been imprisoned -- with many stripped of their nationality. Bahrain's two main opposition groups -- the Shiite Al-Wefaq and secular Waad -- are prohibited from submitting parliamentary candidates. Sheikh Ali Salman, who headed the Al-Wefaq group, was sentenced to life in prison on November 4 for spying for rival Gulf state Qatar, in a ruling rights groups have called a travesty. Bahraini authorities accuse Shiite Iran of provoking unrest in the kingdom. Tehran denies the allegation. Human rights groups have frequently said cases against activists in Bahrain -- men and women, religious and secular -- fail to meet the basic standards of fair trials. Brazilian diplomacy is set to perform an abrupt 180-degree turn under new Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo, chosen by far-right president-elect Jair Bolsonaro for his views favoring the US while turning away from China as part of a fierce opposition to multilateralism. A little-known career diplomat who's never even held an ambassadorial role, the 51-year-old Araujo shares his new boss's passion for anti-China vitriol and skepticism over climate change. "The ideas he professes display a massive break" with diplomacy, said Fernanda Magnotta, a specialist in international relations at FAAP, one of the top higher education institutions in Sao Paulo. Once his surprise appointment was announced last week, analysts gorged on Araujo's Metapolitica 17 blog that raged "against globalization." Lauded as "a brilliant intellectual" by Bolsonaro, Araujo has been bold in his radical stances: chauvinism allied to the virulent rejection of multilateralism and "cultural Marxism" that has "influenced the scientific dogma of global warming." Brazil has "given up being a great power" due to its "obedience to the world order," Araujo says on his blog. "The ultimate aim of globalization is to break the link between God and man." - 'Trump can save the West' - Just like Bolsonaro, Araujo is a fervent admirer of US President Donald Trump, whom he believes can "save the West." He's even gone so far as to adapt Trump's "America First" slogan into "Brazil First." Such close ties between the two countries would allow Washington to further isolate its socialist foes Cuba and Venezuela, which enjoyed better relationships under Brazil's 13-year reign of the Workers Party (PT) or "Project Totalitarianism" as Araujo renamed it. And the closer ties to China that were encouraged under the PT's iconic but now-jailed leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will likely be reeled in unceremoniously. Araujo believes Brazil must resist a China "that will dominate the world." Bolsonaro had already alienated China by accusing the world's second biggest economy of "buying Brazil," and then turning his attentions to Taiwan, which he visited in February. Beijing considers Taiwan a renegade province. By burning bridges built under the Lula government, "we're going to see a very close alignment with the American regime," said Monica Herz, a professor of international relations at Rio de Janeiro's PUC Catholic university. "The relationships with Latin America could suffer. The biggest worry is China but also Europe," which Araujo has branded as "culturally empty." Bolsonaro, advised by Araujo, will be playing a dangerous game. "To ignore the importance of China or the Arab world could be devastating not just in diplomatic terms but also for the Brazilian economy," said Magnotta. Brazil is the largest exporter of halal meat and the pledged transfer of its Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is a deeply unpopular move -- one already taken by Trump -- amongst majority-Muslim Arab countries. Likewise, China's importance to Brazil's production industry is unquestionable. "In 2017, China was the first market for Brazilian exports with $47 billion in revenue, from soy to iron," said Magnotta. Alienating China would likely be an unpopular move in Brazil's Congress. Bolsonaro's controversial measures could face "strong resistance, in particular from his economic team and the agrobusiness lobby" whose support in Congress he needs to be able to govern. Similarly Araujo's own views face "strong opposition" in the foreign office where there is a "tradition based on the principles of multilateralism." - 'Criminalizing everything' - Araujo is unlikely to promote bilateral domestic political harmony either, as his hatred of the PT is rivaled only by Bolsonaro's. On his blog, he has accused the PT of "criminalizing everything that is good and pure: family, private property, heterosexual sex, belief in God and patriotism... even red meat, air conditioning, oil and all efficient and cheap energy" in the name of global warming. Bolsonaro, who pledged to quit the Paris Climate Accord, now has a powerful fellow global warming skeptic at his side. For Herz, Araujo was picked because he "clearly expresses the world vision" that Bolsonaro espouses. "They were looking for someone who speaks to their foundation, with ultra-conservative values and strong interaction between religion and politics." According to Herz, Araujo's presence in the Bolsonaro government will only serve to ensure that Brazil's "relationships with many parties around the world will suffer." Nov 23 (Reuters) - Yancoal Australia Ltd: * UPDATES ON PROPOSED LISTING ON STOCK EXCHANGE OF HONG KONG AND OFFER PRICE RANGE * BOARD DETERMINED THAT OFFER PRICE FOR SHARES OFFERED IN HK LISTING WILL BE WITHIN A RANGE OF HK$23.48 TO HK$25.84 PER SHARE * HK LISTING IS BEING UNDERTAKEN IN CONJUNCTION WITH A PROPOSED CAPITAL RAISING * GLOBAL OFFERING WILL COMPRISE AN OFFERING OF INITIALLY 59.4 MILLION SHARES * IF OFFER IS SUCCESSFUL, FINAL OFFER PRICE IS EXPECTED TO BE DETERMINED ON THURSDAY, 29 NOVEMBER 2018 * EXISTING YANCOAL SHAREHOLDERS WILL HAVE OPPORTUNITY TO PARTICIPATE IN PROPOSED CAPITAL RAISING ON A PRORATA BASIS * CAPITAL RAISING TO INVOLVE RIGHTS OFFER AT SAME OFFER PRICE AS ADOPTED FOR GLOBAL OFFERING MADE IN CONNECTION WITH HK LISTING * YANZHOU COAL MINING, AMONG OHTERS, TO COMMIT TO RENOUNCE THEIR RIGHTS IN FAVOUR OF INVESTORS IN GLOBAL OFFERING Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: By Dominique Patton and Hallie Gu GUOGEZHUANG, China/BEIJING (Reuters) - China will adjust its rules on controlling the spread of African swine fever to keep pork supplies stable, said an official on Friday, even as the country reported the first cases of the disease to be discovered in its capital. The highly contagious disease was found on two farms in a southwestern district of sprawling Beijing. At a checkpoint outside of Guogezhuang village in the Fangshan district on Friday, workers in white suits sprayed cars with disinfectant. A Reuters journalist was stopped at the checkpoint and barred from reaching one of the affected farms. China has issued strict bans on moving pigs out of provinces and regions infected with the disease, leading to excess supply in some areas and shortages in others. Some farmers are struggling to sell their pigs or facing very low prices in areas were supplies are plentiful. "Restrictions on trans-region transport of pigs and products have affected the production cycle of some enterprises," Feng Zhongwu, chief of the animal husbandry and veterinarian bureau under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, told a press briefing in Beijing. "We will adjust our supervision measures based on the production and supplies situation," he said. Authorities would make the transport of piglets easier, while still controlling the risk of spreading African swine fever, he said. China will also make it possible to slaughter hogs near affected areas to relieve pressure on farms with growing herds that cannot be moved to places with higher demand due to the transport ban. Hog supplies in the national market are still relatively ample, however, said Feng, as pigs culled because of African swine fever were only a tiny percentage of the overall pigs sent to slaughter in China. He said supplies in Beijing would not be affected by the outbreak in Fangshan. Beijing will strengthen the transport of pigs and products from major producing provinces to consuming areas to stabilize prices, he said. Story continues The Beijing city government sought to reassure the public, noting that African swine fever cannot spread to humans, and that meat sold at city markets undergoes "strict inspections". Meat processed in China has been found to contain the virus. China's Xiamen Airlines will stop serving pork from Nov. 24 due to African swine fever outbreaks, CAAC News, a publication run by China's aviation regulator, reported on Friday. China has so far confirmed 73 cases of African swine fever in 20 provinces, including the latest two outbreaks in Beijing, with a total culling of 600,000 pigs as of Nov. 22, Feng said. China produced 702 million pigs in 2017, according to official data. VIRUS ORIGINS Forty-six percent of all outbreaks investigated so far have been caused by people or vehicles spreading the disease, Huang Baoxu, deputy director of the China Animal Health and Epidemiology Center, told reporters. Feeding kitchen waste to pigs has caused 23 cases, while 13 outbreaks have been spread by transport of live hogs and products across regions, Huang said. The centre had not yet found any contaminated feed supplies, Huang later told Reuters. The virus found last week in a wild boar in the far north is a different strain to the one found in domestic pigs, and very likely came from outside China, Huang also said. He warned that there are rising risks of the new strain being transmitted to farm-raised pigs. "The complexity and time-span to control the spread of African swine fever will increase significantly once there is an interactive infection between wild boars and domestic pigs." (Reporting by Hallie Gu and Dominique Patton; Editing by Tom Hogue) As desperation swells in the squalid camps that are home to a million Rohingya refugees, long-dormant -- and often deadly -- trafficking networks are being revived, Bangladeshi officials warn. Smugglers operating rickety fishing boats prey on the hopes of people who fled violence in Myanmar, charging them small fortunes for a dangerous journey to Southeast Asia, offering an empty promise of a fresh start. The first vessel to depart Bangladesh for Malaysia since the end of the monsoon was intercepted by law enforcement, who warn others will follow. Many in the heaving Rohingya ghettos of Cox's Bazar feel they have no other option but to try to escape, community leaders and aid workers say. A deal to safely return the persecuted Muslims to Myanmar has failed, condemning them to limbo and deprivation in fetid camps where they are barred from leaving or looking for work to improve their lot. Sensing a surge, coastguard patrols have been stepped up since the first boat was detected in November in the Bay of Bengal, said Ikbal Hossain, deputy police chief in Cox's Bazar. Another boatload of refugees who fled a camp in Myanmar were found off the country's southern coast in November after spending 15 days at sea in a failed attempt to reach Malaysia. "As the sea turns calm, the smuggling rackets have resumed their activities. But we have a zero tolerance attitude toward human trafficking," Hossain told AFP. But he said traffickers were difficult to detect in the teeming hills where more than 720,000 Rohingya sought refuge after a brutal crackdown by the Myanmar military in August 2017. - Terrifying journey - Shabeda Begum, a 30-year-old widowed in what UN investigators called ethnic cleansing, said she was approached by another refugee offering to reunite her with a sister and brother-in-law in Malaysia. The Muslim-majority nation hosts one of the largest overseas Rohingya communities, many of whom arrived by boat from Cox's Bazar until that smuggling pipeline was closed in 2015. Begum was introduced to a Bangladeshi handler in the coastal town of Teknaf and arranged to get the required $120 from family in Kuala Lumpur. That secured Begum and her two children a spot aboard the crescent-shaped fishing boat crammed with 33 other refugees above and below deck. "They promised my life would change if I could reach there with my kids," she told AFP despairingly from a plastic-roofed shanty. Her son, seven-year-old Mohammad Riaz, recounted his terror as the creaking boat was tossed about in the churning sea. "I was scared because the boat was bouncing on the waves. I thought I would fall overboard and into the sea," he told AFP. Six traffickers were arrested in connection with the failed voyage, police said. One told AFP the fishing trawler had been due to transfer the Rohingya to a bigger Malaysia-bound ship out at sea. - False promises - At its peak, transnational smuggling networks passed refugees from boat to boat before docking in Thailand and moving them overland to secret campsites in Malaysia. That route collapsed in May 2015, when shallow graves were found at migrant holding camps along the Thai-Malaysia border. As authorities closed in, traffickers abandoned boats in the Andaman Sea, leaving starving and dehydrated passengers to drift south. No one knows exactly how many died in the transit camps or at sea. Local authorities fear another exodus is looming, as traffickers return to old tricks to lure vulnerable refugees onto ships. Mosammat Khadiza, a 16-year-old refugee, said her mother put her on board after traffickers promised that a wealthy Rohingya man in Malaysia would marry her. "We were kept in a fish refrigerator inside the boat's hull for hours. We couldn't move inside the tight space," she told AFP. The UN refugee agency UNHCR is running awareness campaigns in the camps about the dangers of trusting people smugglers and taking flimsy boats into the open ocean. "We recognise that the continued maritime movements, despite the serious dangers, illustrate the desperation that people feel," UNHCR spokeswoman Caroline Gluck told AFP. "Unless they believe there are other tangible solutions to their plight, Rohingya will continue to risk their lives on boats." But amid grinding hardship, with little prospect of a brighter future, camp leaders say the promise of a better life elsewhere would be difficult to counter. "This is not a life anyone would prefer," said Rohingya community leader Mohammad Osman. "That's why they jump on boats without a second thought when approached by traffickers." Despite her first setback, Begum has vowed to try again. "I will look out for another chance. My brother-in-law promised to take care of us if we could only reach Malaysia," she said. Malaysian airline Firefly announced today that it was suspending all flights to Singapore as of December 1, the day that it had planned to move their Singapore hub from Changi to Seletar Airport. As per their website, they announced that regular services would resume once regulatory issues were ironed out before their turbo-prop plane move to Seletar. No further details were given as to why the route would be suspended. Firefly, a Malaysia Airlines subsidiary, had previously announced their move to the new SG$80 million (US$58.2 million) airport that opened only on Monday of this week. The Star reports that the new facility will service regularly scheduled commercial flights, as well as chartered business routes and private jets. Operating 20 daily flights between Singapore and Subang, Ipoh, and Kuantan, it is currently the only turboprop engine that lands in Changi. No timeline has been given for the resuming of flights, with the airline stipulating that they would make arrangements for any passengers with pre-existing bookings. A previous statement to The Straits Times had forecast that some issues remained unresolved, and they were working them out internally. Text: Coconuts KL The post Firefly suspends all flights between Malaysia and Singapore ahead of move to new Seletar airport appeared first on Coconuts. He will go on to join consumer intelligence company Dattel Ashran Ghazi, Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Center (MaGIC)s current CEO, has announced he will step down from the company, effective December 12. According to a report by The Star Online, Ghazi will join Malaysia-based consumer intelligence firm Dattel as CEO. Ghazi joined MaGIC in 2016. Prior to that, he launched ComicXcel, an accelerator for companies trying to start up in the comic sector and is the man behind the Rice Bowl Start-Up Awards. He also founded Joota, a social content networking website, in 2011. MaGIC has not announced a replacement for Ghazi but Amiruddin Abdul Shukor, the organisations executive director of finance & corporate services, will man the post as interim CEO. Ghazi said that he had waited to tender his resignation only when MaGIC was safe in the hands of another ministry. The organisation, which was previously under the Ministry of Finance, has now been moved to the Ministry of Entrepreneur Development. Also Read: SGInnovate backs three deep tech startups, partners with local top universities MaGIC will receive about the same amount of funding from the new ministry, which is about RM50 million (US$11.2 million) yearly. To date, the organisation has received about RM 197 million (US$47 million). MaGIC was launched with much fanfare on April 2014 by US President Barack Obama and then-Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. The organisation was previously helmed by Founding CEO Cheryl Yeoh. Today, Yeoh serves as an advisor at various tech firms including blockchain network Tendermint and coding school Kenzie Academy. The post MaGIC CEO Ashran Ghazi is stepping down appeared first on e27. Reuters Bharat Biotech's vaccine was only 50% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in a high-risk population during a devastating second wave of infections in India this year, data gleaned from hospital workers showed. The real world study for Covaxin, conducted April 15-May 15, compares with a 77.8% effectiveness rate in a late-stage trial of more than 25,000 participants that was conducted November 2020 to January 2021. The much lower effectiveness rate for the two-dose shot seen in the new study can possibly be attributed to the fact that the study was restricted to hospital employees who had a higher risk of being infected than the general population, that it was conducted during a surge in infections and also to the prevalence of the Delta variant at the time, the study concluded. The European Union flag flies alongside the Gibraltarian flag and Britain's Union Jack at the border in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, historically claimed by Spain The European Union flag flies alongside the Gibraltarian flag and Britain's Union Jack at the border in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, historically claimed by Spain, November 23, 2018. REUTERS/Jon Nazca By Gabriela Baczynska BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Spanish reservations over Gibraltar on Friday prevented the European Union clearing the last hurdle before a summit that is due to endorse the bloc's Brexit deal with Britain on Sunday. British Prime Minister Theresa May will pick up the baton on Saturday evening when she holds talks in Brussels with Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the EU's executive Commission. National negotiators of the 27 EU states staying on together after Brexit reached no agreement on Gibraltar on Friday. With four months left until Britain leaves the EU, the legal divorce treaty and an accompanying political declaration are due to be rubber-stamped in Brussels by May and the other 27 EU leaders so that they can then go to the respective parliaments. Spain has asked for changes to both the draft withdrawal treaty and the accompanying declaration on future ties to spell out that any decisions about Gibraltar, a rocky, peninsular British overseas territory that Spain claims as its own, would only be taken together with Madrid. Spain says Britain had given it corresponding assurances before publishing its latest draft. At Sunday's summit, the EU leaders would expect to endorse the treaty and approve the declaration by consensus, which means Spain in effect has the power to hold up the process. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Thursday: "After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away," adding: "If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit." May's spokeswoman said May would work with the Spanish government on Gibraltar. PRESSURE In Germany, a government spokesman was confident a solution would be found in time for Sunday's summit. Berlin had earlier said there could be no more technical negotiations at the summit, and that Chancellor Angela Merkel could skip it if all the texts are not ready in advance. If everything goes according to the plan and the Brexit package is approved on Sunday, the EU will also commit to try to secure prompt ratification by the European Parliament "to provide for an orderly withdrawal", according to a draft statement seen by Reuters. Story continues However, the biggest obstacle to the Brexit accord is the vehement opposition in the British parliament. Without its approval, Britain could leave the bloc on March 29 without an agreement to mitigate economic and legal disruption. Former Brexit minister Dominic Raab on Friday said he expected the House of Commons to vote the deal it down. May responded that Britain would not get a better deal with the EU if it did not take this one. THE ROCK AND FISHERIES Determined not to allow any redrafting to risk derailing the fragile process, EU states want to address Spain's concerns in a separate statement by the 27 leaders on Sunday that would not be part of negotiations with Britain. It could refer back to the EU's 2017 Brexit mandate, which said that, after Brexit, "no agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without the agreement between ... Spain and the United Kingdom". It would clarify that the EU's reading of the corresponding paragraphs in the divorce treaty and the declaration on future ties is exactly that. Other clauses in this separate statement say, according to a draft seen by Reuters, that the bloc would want to get a new deal on fisheries with Britain as a priority in talks on the broader trade relationship, to be agreed "well before" the end of Britain's status-quo transition period after Brexit. It adds that any such deal would build on the existing access of EU vessels to Britain's rich fishing waters, something London wants to be firmly in control of. It further highlights EU demands that Britain does not undercut labour, environmental or labour standards. It stresses the needs to safeguard expatriates' rights, as well as the Paris climate accord. EU diplomats hoped a text would be agreed late on Friday, but feared Sanchez would still want to discuss it at the top level on Sunday to demonstrate his determination at home ahead of a December regional election. "It will only be done by the leaders," said one diplomat. The Brexit deal covers financial settlement, citizens' rights and the Irish border, as well as setting a blueprint for future trade and security ties. (Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald in Brussels, Belen Carreno in Madrid, Alistair Smout, Elizabeth Piper and William James in London, Thomas Escritt in Berlin; Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Kevin Liffey) Sri Lanka's deposed prime minister secured control of a key committee in parliament Friday, dealing a blow to the country's president in the latest twist in a month-long political crisis. Sri Lanka has been politically paralysed since October 26 when President Maithripala Sirisena sacked Ranil Wickremesinghe as premier and replaced him with divisive former leader Mahinda Rajapakse. But a vote on Friday gave Wickremesinghe control of a selection committee entrusted with setting the legislative agenda in the absence of a working government. Shortly before Speaker Karu Jayasuriya took a vote on setting up the panel, legislators loyal to Sirisena and Rajapakse walked out of the chamber in protest. Rajapakse has lost two no-confidence votes in the assembly, but refuses to step down. Wickremesinghe, despite being sacked a month ago, insists he is still in office and continues to occupy his official residence. Last week, chaos broke out in the assembly with Sirisena and Rajapakse loyalists attacking rivals with chilli powder and chairs to disrupt the second no-confidence motion against Rajapakse. Two weeks after sacking Wickremesinghe, Sirisena initially suspended parliament and then dissolved it, calling snap elections for January. However these moves were suspended by the Supreme Court days later pending an investigation. The legislature reconvened last week but degenerated into a punch-up. For 19 days, Sri Lanka had two claimants to the prime minister's post -- but since last Thursday parliament speaker Jayasuriya held that he would recognise neither. The crippling power struggle has led to a downgrade of Sri Lanka's credit rating. The authorities announced Thursday that they will halt any sovereign bond issues as international borrowing costs had shot up following a credit downgrade of the country as a result of the political crisis. Legislators on both sides say that with the administration at a standstill, key sectors such as tourism in the Indian Ocean island popular with visitors are suffering badly. Swedish Centre Party leader Annie Loof on her way to meet with the Speaker of Parliament Andreas Norlen at the Parliament Riksdagen in Stockholm Swedish Centre Party leader Annie Loof on her way to meet with the Speaker of Parliament Andreas Norlen at the Parliament (Riksdagen) in Stockholm, Sweden, November 22, 2018. TT News Agency/Jessica Gow via REUTERS STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The leader of the centre-right Swedish Centre party leader on Thursday gave up trying to form a government, bringing the possibility of another election a step closer. Centre leader Annie Loof is the third politician to fail to find a way forward after September's election left parliament deadlocked. The speaker of parliament must decide what happens next. The centre-left and centre-right blocs are roughly equally sized in parliament where the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats - a party with roots in the white-supremacist fringe - hold the balance of power. Loof said she had tried to build support for a broad government which excluded the Sweden Democrats and the Left Party and kept intact the centre-right Alliance, a four-party bloc of which the Centre is part. "Unfortunately, all these solutions have been blocked by one party or several parties saying no," she told journalists after meeting the speaker. "Now the speaker ... will decide the next step in the process." With all doors seemingly shut, Speaker Andreas Norlen is running out of options. Norlen has said he could ask parliament to vote again on Social Democrat Stefan Lofven as prime minister. Parliament has already voted him down once and there is no indication such a vote would succeed on a second attempt. If parliament rejects four candidates, Sweden must hold a another election. GRAPHIC: Election scenarios https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/SWEDEN-ELECTION/0100808Q0J6/SWEDEN-ELECTION%20GOVERNMENT-01.jpg (Reporting by Stockholm Newsroom; editing by Niklas Pollard and Robin Pomeroy) Activists in Taiwan, which has earned a reputation as a regional trailblazer on gay rights, fear that an upcoming referendum could turn back the clocks on marriage equality. Liberal and conservative groups will do battle in an island-wide vote Saturday that taps in to one of the island's most incendiary social issues. Taiwan's top court in May 2017 legalised same-sex marriage -- the first place in Asia to do so -- and called for it to be implemented within two years. But the government has made little progress towards bringing in the mandatory change as it comes under pressure from conservative campaigners. "Pro-family" activists have put forward three referendums calling for marriage to be legally defined as between a man and a woman, for a separate law to be enacted for same-sex unions, and for education on LGBT issues not to be compulsory in schools. Although the government has made clear the referendum results will not impact the court's original decision, LGBT campaigners fear a defeat could mean their new rights will be more limited when they come in to force. Pro-gay groups have brought two rival referendums calling for equal marriage rights and promoting education on gender equality -- including different sexual orientations. "We are very nervous, it's like a tug-of-war war," said Jennifer Lu, a spokeswoman for the Marriage Equality Coalition which is backing the votes. "We hope that love and equality will win," added Suki Chung, East Asia Campaigner at Amnesty International. "However, if the opposite happens then the government must not use the result as cover to water down same-sex marriage proposals," she said. Conservative campaigners accuse the court of making a political decision that did not take into account public views. "We think the Constitutional Court's ruling has created more problems rather than resolving them," said Yu Hsin-Yi, spokesman for the Coalition for the Happiness of our Next Generation, adding he was "cautiously optimistic" about the vote. A survey released by the Taiwan Public Opinions Foundation last week showed 77 percent agreed with the referendum proposal that a marriage should be between a man and a woman, with 65 disagreeing that the current Civil Code should be amended to include same-sex unions. If more than 25 percent of around 19.75 million eligible voters across the island vote in favour, and providing the "yes" votes surpass "no" votes, the government must draw up a bill that reflects the results -- which then goes to a parliamentary vote. Celebrities including famous Taiwanese dancer Lin Hwai-min have voiced support for the pro-gay referendums. Local and international firms including Google and Deutsche Bank have also said they support full equality. Conservative groups have created YouTube videos explaining their stance but insisting they are not anti-gay rights. Social media forums have been rife with posts arguing that allowing gay marriage would increase the number of foreigners with HIV coming to Taiwan to take advantage of its healthcare system. The votes are among 10 referendums on a raft of issues which will run alongside Taiwan's local elections Saturday. Ratnah Mohari, a long-time Tampines resident, showing a photo taken with her, her husband, and Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat (right) at a Hari Raya gathering in 2014. (PHOTO: Wong Casandra/Yahoo News Singapore) For the previous five Hari Raya gatherings, Ratnah Mohari, a 55-year-old housewife, had invited one special guest to celebrate the holiday at her home in Tampines St 82: her Member of Parliament (MP) and Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat. Showing a photo that she took with her husband and Heng to this reporter, the long-time resident said she plans to invite the minister again at the next Hari Raya gathering. She was among the Tampines residents approached by Yahoo News Singapore who welcomed Hengs new appointment as the Peoples Action Partys (PAP) first assistant secretary-general on Friday (23 November). Hes very good and has my full support. We saw him walking around the area several times (before he got sick). He is a very low profile and friendly person, said Ratnah, referring to the period before Heng collapsed from a stroke in 2016 during a Cabinet meeting. Heng has since made a full recovery and gave his assurance to the media on Friday that his doctors have given him the clean bill of health. The appointment of Heng as the second most senior leader in the PAP was among the latest changes in the partys Central Executive Committee (CEC). Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing has been appointed as the PAPs second assistant secretary-general. Potential prime minister Heng, 57, is now considered the prime candidate to succeed Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. The former chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore entered politics during the 2011 general elections and successfully won his MP seat in Tampines Group Representative Constituency (GRC). When asked about Heng being a potential PM, a Tampines resident for over 20 years who gave his name as Ang, said the former Education Minister is the best among the leading candidates for the job. He will be a better choice to steer the economy, not just focusing on GDP but also enhancing the well-being of people, said Ang, who works in the financial industry and is in his 40s. Story continues Eric Koh, a 61-year-old delivery man who has lived in the area for over 25 years, said, I dont really follow politics but I know Heng is soft-spoken. I am okay with him being the next PM (if that happens). Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat gives a keynote speech at the World Bank Singapore Infrastructure Finance Summit in Singapore on 5 April, 2018. (PHOTO: Reuters) Down-to-earth MP Several residents also spoke about Hengs demeanour whenever he was on his walkabouts in the area, with many describing him as down-to-earth. Speaking in Mandarin, Mary Wong, a Tampines resident for half a decade, said, I have seen him in the area more than 10 times now, and shook his hands once. My impression of him is that he is very kind-hearted and easygoing. The 58-year-old cook at a childcare centre also said, The (PAPs) announcement doesnt really matter to me. But when he was in the Ministry of Education, he was very goodAs for whether he is a good or bad PM, it is too early to say now. Teo Ee Seng, a Tampines resident for seven years, noted that Heng appeared very friendly and humble, even to his subordinates. I recall him telling them to not be anxious while meeting residents. Whatever requests are made by residents, he will try his best to help, said the 54-year-old hawker in Mandarin. Teos brother, Beng Kong, a Tampines resident for five years, said he took a photo with Heng once during the 2015 general elections when the minister visited his flat. The 65-year-old lorry driver said in Mandarin, I think he is not bad and an excellent choice for PM if he becomes one. But for Tan Swee Chye, who has lived in Tampines for the past 30 years, he is more concerned about his financial situation and felt that it does not matter who is the next PM. The 63-year-old owner of a provision shop in Tampines said in Mandarin, Business is bad, I would want the next PM to help cut rent for struggling business owners. Related stories Heng Swee Keat appointed as PAP 1st assistant secretary-general I have made very good recovery from my stroke: Heng Swee Keat In addition to Airbnb and Swvl, we also have some updates from a Chinese robotics startup and a rape allegation involving JD founder Airbnb faces lawsuit in Israel following delisting Reuters Lawyers in Israel on Thursday launched a class action lawsuit against Airbnb following its withdrawal of listings in the occupied area of West Bank, accusing the company of discrimination and demanding monetary damages. Reuters reported that based on court papers presented at the Jerusalem District Court, the class action lawsuit would seek an as yet unspecified sum on behalf of listing owners. One owner has claimed ILS15,000 (US$2,573) in personal damages. An Airbnb spokesperson declined to comment on the filing of the lawsuit. Egypts Swvl to enter Southeast Asia following Series B funding round Dealstreet Asia Egyptian transportation startup Swvl announced a plan to expand to Southeast Asia following a tens of millions of dollars Series B funding round it has recently secured from new and existing investors, Dealstreet Asia reported. The company plans to launch in Manila in Q1 2019, followed by other cities in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand, with the goal to be in seven mega cities in emerging markets by Q4 2019. Founded in April 2017, the Cairo-based startup is a bus transportation service where passengers reserve their seat and pay their fare through a mobile app. Passengers will then be directed to the nearest bus station, and its buses are traveling on a fixed route. Also Read: Todays top tech news, August 24: AirBnB appointed first female board, Googles Waymo set up Shanghai subsidiary Chinese robotics startup Geek+ raises US$150M TechCrunch Beijing-based robotics startup Geek Plus (Geek+) announced that it has raised US$150 million in Series B funding round led by Warburg Pincus, TechCrunch reported. The funding round also included the participation of Volcanics Venture and Vertex Ventures. It will be used to support product development, sales, and customer service. Story continues Geek+ said that it has delivered more than 5,000 robots across some 100 robotics warehouse projects in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Europe, and the US. It named companies such as Alibabas Tmall and VIP.com as clients. The funding round is also said to be the largest-ever for a logistics robotics startup. JD founders lawyer criticises Reuters for one-sided rape report South China Morning Post Jill Brisbois, a US-based lawyer representing JD founder Richard Liu Qiandong on his rape allegation case, has slammed Reuters for its one-sided and inaccurate report of the case. [Reuters] jeopardises the integrity of the investigation and amounts to trying a case in the media before that investigation has concluded, and well before my client has even been charged with a crime, Brisbois wrote in an email. She reiterated Lius innocence and said that the client will remain silent out of respect for the judicial process. Reuters did not immediately reply to request for comments. The post Todays top tech news, Nov 23: Airbnb faces lawsuit in Israel, Egypts Swvl to enter Southeast Asia appeared first on e27. Elliott Abrams Disagree , confidence level 6 Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations We must distinguish between Chinese national interests and those of the regime. A China not ruled by the Communist Party would have not only different domestic policies but quite different foreign policies as well. Graham Allison Agree , confidence level 9 Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government China and the United States share some vital national interests, for example no general war between them, but have conflicting national interests, for example over who will be the predominant power in the Western Pacific. Yuen Yuen Ang Strongly Disagree , confidence level 8 Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan and the author of How China Escaped the Poverty Trap The belief that U.S. and Chinese national interests are fundamentally incompatible is dangerously self-reinforcing. If American and Chinese policymakers hold this belief, they will make policies that undermine each other, and the more they do so, the more the two nations will appear to be incontrovertible enemies. This is exactly whats happening in the ongoing trade war. In fact, both the United States and China are economically interdependent; neither can do without the other. It is not possible to benefit from an open, globalized economy, and, at the same time, build walls around it. No nation can have it both ways. Michael Auslin Agree , confidence level 8 Williams-Griffis Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University Washington and Beijing have similar national interests, including territorial integrity, national security, regional stability in the Americas and Asia, domestic economic growth, and a healthy global economy, to mention but a few. Yet they view many of these increasingly in zero-sum terms and therefore incompatibly vis-a-vis each other at the present time. With Beijing determined no longer to occupy what it considers to be a subordinate role globally, areas of cooperation are shrinking as China seeks to forge rival regional and global institutions where it has a preponderance of influence while at the same time countering the United States, particularly in Asia. On questions of trade fairness, respect for intellectual property, international arbitration, territorial integrity in disputed areas, the right of political self-determination, human rights, and the like, the two capitals are clearly at odds. Salvatore Babones Disagree , confidence level 8 Associate Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney Despite all the "trade war" rhetoric, China is rapidly integrating into a trans-Pacific technological ecosystem centered on Silicon Valley. Richard K. Betts Agree , confidence level 6 Director of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations It depends on which category of interests is meant. My answer is about the most important: political, strategic, national security interests. Regarding economic interests, the answer is probably different. Bill Bishop Agree , confidence level 8 Publisher of Sinocism Dean Cheng Neutral , confidence level 6 Senior Research Fellow at the Asian Studies Center of the Heritage Foundation's Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy It depends very much on which interests, and what time-frame is being considered. In the short run, for example, both sides presumably have an interest in avoiding a full-blown trade war. In the long run, both sides presumably have a shared interest in avoiding a thermonuclear war. But there are many areas where we do have incompatible interests, so it depends. Bridget Coggins Disagree , confidence level 8 Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara Their interests may come to a point of fundamental incompatibility in the years to come, but that outcome is contingent on the nature and pace of Chinas rise and the American responseespecially in Asia. John Delury Disagree , confidence level 5 Associate Professor of Chinese Studies, Yonsei University Compatibility depends on the willingness of both sides to accept an imperfect, but viable, accommodation with the other. Jamie Fly Strongly Agree , confidence level 10 Senior Fellow and Director of the Future of Geopolitics and Asia Programs, German Marshall Fund Richard Fontaine Disagree , confidence level 7 President of the Center for a New American Security Fundamentally, they are not incompatible, and there are win-win outcomes conceivable between the big powers. But in practice the default position is far likelier to be competition. So what is theoretically possible may be simply academic, as each side pursues advantage and fears the other's exertions. Lindsey Ford Disagree , confidence level 7 Director of Political-Security Affairs at the Asia Society Policy Institute Carla P. Freeman Disagree , confidence level 8 Associate Research Professor and Executive Director of the SAIS Foreign Policy Institute, Johns Hopkins University A Sino-American relationship that is mutually and globally beneficial is possible. There are, however, significant areas of mistrust and friction, including a number of potentially irreconcilable differences between the two countries that put relations between the United States and China at high risk of deterioration if not deftly managed. The two countries' national interests are fundamentally incompatible only if both decide to contend for regional and global primacy. Bonnie Glaser Disagree , confidence level 7 Senior Adviser for Asia and Director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Patricia Kim Neutral , confidence level 8 Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Cheng Li Strongly Disagree , confidence level 8 Director, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution There is a palpable sense of urgency in the United States to protect and advance American security, prosperity, and credibility on the world stage. The fear is that unless the United Sttes unveils a new and effective approach to dealing with China, this formidable rival will surpass the United States in many important aspects and gain a substantial competitive edge within a couple of decades, if not sooner. Paradoxically, even as the United States and China become increasingly suspicious of one anothers strategic intentions, contact between the two nations has never been broader, deeper, and more frequent than it is todaywhether it be at the head of state, military, think tank, sub-national, commercial, educational, cultural, or tourism level. The United States and China both confront increasingly dauntingand largely common challenges in terrorism, nuclear proliferation, cyber security, international refugee flows, climate change, and global pandemics. In the area of global economic and financial stability, as the two largest economies in the world, the incentives for cooperation are much greater than those for confrontation. Most importantly, leaders of both countries should soberly recognize that a military conflict between the United States and China would be catastrophic. It would upend the world economy and force many other countries to take sides, thus raising the prospects of WWIII. In terms of national interests of both countries, a Sino-American war would be too calamitous to yield a winner, and thus it should never be fought. Rebecca Friedman Lissner Agree , confidence level 9 Research Fellow at Perry World House, the University of Pennsylvanias Global Policy Research Center Although the United States and China share certain interests on matters of global governance, they have opposing interests in the Asian regional order. Whether and how these competing interests are managed will be the defining geopolitical question of twenty-first century geopolitics. Oriana Skylar Mastro Agree , confidence level 8 Assistant professor of Security Studies at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University Evan S. Medeiros Agree , confidence level 7 Penner Family Chair in Asian Studies, Professor of Practice at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University The United States and China each have a diversity of national interests; some converge and some diverge with each other. The divergence is growing and on key issues related to national security and economic policy-making. Yet both have an interest in avoiding a major bilateral conflict and that will provide a modicum of stability, for now. John Mearsheimer Strongly Agree , confidence level 10 R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago China's principal foreign policy goal is to dominate Asia the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere. In other words, China wants to become a regional hegemon, which is a wise goal from their perspective. Unsurprisingly, there is an abundance of evidence that they are pursuing that aim. The United States, on the other hand, has a profound interest in preventing China from dominating Asia and instead maintaining the present balance of power in that region. Thus, it seems clear that the interests of China and the United States are fundamentally incompatible. Rana Mitter Neutral , confidence level 7 Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China, St. Cross College, Oxford University Andrew J. Nathan Disagree , confidence level 10 Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science, Columbia University Each country can in principle be secure and prosperous without detracting from the security and prosperity of the other. But whether their leaders will find their way to that happy state of affairs is uncertain. Joseph Nye Neutral , confidence level 8 University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus and former Dean of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University It depends on how the cards are played. Minxin Pei Agree , confidence level 9 Tom and Margot Pritzker 72 Professor of Government, Claremont McKenna College The root cause of the clash of national interests between China and the United States is the difference in their political regimes. Their national interests could converge if China were to have a more liberal political regime. John Pomfret Neutral , confidence level 10 Journalist and Former Washington Post Bureau Chief in Beijing It's a very mixed picture. In some areas, there's natural compatibility. In other areas, the interests diverge. Mira Rapp-Hooper Disagree , confidence level 7 Senior Fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center and Senior Research Scholar, Yale Law School Ely Ratner Agree , confidence level 8 Vice President and Director of Studies, Center for a New American Security In Asia, where the strategic competition is most consequential and immediate, U.S. and Chinese aspirations are irreconcilable, despite shared interests on international economic and transnational issues. Danny Russel Disagree , confidence level 8 Vice President for International Security and Diplomacy, Asia Society Policy Institute The Venn diagram of U.S. and Chinese national interests displays significant overlap and their differences have and can be largely reconciled if both nations have competent leadership. Orville Schell Agree , confidence level 10 Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations, Asia Society The climate of antagonism has turned markedly since President Xi Jinping took office and basically undermined the most basic suppositions of "engagement." Loren DeJonge Schulman Disagree , confidence level 7 Deputy Director of Studies and the Leon E. Panetta Senior Fellow, Center for a New American Security David Shambaugh Agree , confidence level 8 Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and Director of the China Policy Program, George Washington University Yun Sun Agree , confidence level 9 Co-Director of the East Asia Program and Director of the China Program at the Stimson Center The wife of a British researcher sentenced to life in prison in the United Arab Emirates on espionage charges told AFP she was cautiously optimistic he could be freed. Daniela Tejada said the family of her husband Matt Hedges had submitted a letter asking for clemency from UAE authorities on Wednesday, just hours after he received the jail term. The country's ambassador to Britain said Friday the authorities were reviewing the request, while insisting the government "does not dictate verdicts" to the courts. "I want to remain hopeful," Tejada said in an interview in London. "It's hard to do so after all of our hopes have been shattered repeatedly for six months. "I hope that the UAE... see that this is an innocent man, and that he deserves that clemency." Tejada, who Thursday met Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt after criticising British efforts at securing Hedges's release, vowed she would keep fighting no matter what. The 27-year-old added that the decision to seek clemency, with its implied admission of guilt, appeared the best option available. "I know in the bottom of my heart that Matt is innocent, but even if it takes me subjugating myself to the UAE I will, because I have the conviction that Matt deserves his freedom," Tejada said. "Until I have him safe, back home with me, I will not rest." - 'Absolutely terrified' - Hedges, 31, was detained in Dubai on May 5 while researching the UAE's foreign and internal security policies after the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011. After months of uncertainty the scholar was released on bail on October 29, prompting hopes of his imminent release. But his family and British officials were left stunned by Wednesday's ruling, in a country considered a strategic Middle East ally supplied with British arms. Amid increased diplomatic pressure, the UAE foreign ministry said Thursday it wanted an "amicable solution". Tejada hopes that could mean her husband is released in the coming weeks. "We've had so many deadlines but Christmas definitely is something we're all hoping for," she said. "It would really mean the world to have him back by then." Tejada spoke to her husband for around five minutes Thursday, and said he was not allowed to reveal where he was being held and "didn't sound well". "He's absolutely terrified," she added, noting Hedges has suffered from anxiety, depression and panic attacks. "Until he receives adequate medical treatment and personal support, he will not be OK and I'm very concerned about that because... he has experienced suicidal thoughts during his detention. "I just wish I could be there to truly just hold him and tell him 'it's going to be OK.'" - 'A dark cloud' - The UAE envoy in London, Sulaiman Hamid al-Mazroui, dismissed criticism of the case's handling, saying three judges had evaluated "compelling evidence" in three hearings over a month-long period. He insisted that genuine researchers were able to visit his country "freely". But Tejada said Hedges was denied due process from the outset. She said he had been held in solitary confinement and initially not given a lawyer or adequate consular access, and was subjected to "intense interrogations" lasting up to 15 hours. "The fact that he was held in such conditions, and that he was subject to such mistreatment, already breaches every due process standard," Tejada said. Colombia-born Tejada, who married Hedges in January last year after the couple began dating in 2011, said she has been heartened by the "overwhelming demonstration of support in the UK and abroad". An online petition she launched following the sentencing has already garnered more than 200,000 signatures. Meanwhile more than 100 academics last month signed an open letter expressing their concern over the case. Tejada revealed she has also been getting support from Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who remains held in jail in Iran on sedition charges. "(They) have been an inspiration for me -- just the strength of their relationship and resilience and how brave they've been," she said. "I'm a firm believer that every sky has a dark cloud that has to pass at some point." 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. Three American Icons that embody our nations counterculture. First, its not the fastest or fanciest bike out there, but Harley-Davidson has become synonymous with the motorcycle for many Americans. Then, why Georgia OKeeffe fled the East Coast for New Mexico, where she found her muse in sun-bleached bones that littered the desert. And finally, how Jimi Hendrix captured the sound of bombs falling overseas and screaming protesters, using only a whammy bar and a fuzz pedal. Studio 360 plugs: Please remember to like us on our Facebook page and Twitter. Send your emails to incoming@studio360.org. This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutters independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Slate may earn affiliate commissions. that support its work. Read Wirecutters continuously updated list of Black Friday deals here. After 40 hours spent researching artificial Christmas trees and seeing dozens in person, we think National Tree Companys 7-foot Feel Real Downswept Douglas Fir with dual-color LEDs is the best for most people. Its realistic, competitively priced, versatile, and quite attractive. The LED-lit Feel Real Downswept Douglas Fir (PEDD1-D12-75) has nearly 2,000 lifelike polyethylene branch tips surrounding a core of PVC pine needles (a construction used on all high-quality artificial trees). And at 37 percent polyethylene, it has a higher proportion of those lifelike branches than our other picks, creating a truly convincing illusion of a living tree. Its 750 LED bulbs fill its branches nicely, and the lights can switch from all-white to multicolor, giving it uncommon versatility. (The vast majority of pre-lit artificial trees are one style or the other, though all our picks can switch back and forth.) The light strings connect directly when you fit the tree sections together. At 7 feet high and almost 5 feet across (59 inches to be exact), the tree is generously proportioned; itll fill the corner of almost any living room. Finally, its widely available, easy to set up, and competitively priced. (For smaller homes, we recommend the 6.5-foot version of this tree). Also great: The GE 7.5 Just Cut EZ Light Frasier Fir Dual Color LED has many favorable specs compared with our top pick from National Tree. Its the same height and width, but it has more branch tips for a fuller appearance (2,076 versus 1,867). Like our top pick, the GE lets you switch between white and multicolor lighting modes; in addition, the GE models light strings connect automatically via the central pole as you assemble the three sections of the tree, a minor but handy feature that our top pick lacks. But we are especially fond of the way GEs LED Christmas lights lookin our test, we found them to come closest to the familiar warm glow of incandescent bulbs. However, the GE has 600 lights, versus our top picks 750, meaning it falls just short of our recommended 100 bulbs per foot of tree. And at 30 percent polyethylene, versus 37 percent on the National Tree pick, the GE tree has a lower proportion of ultra-realistic branch tipsand a higher proportion of fake-looking PVC needles. Youll never notice a difference from across the room, but up close you may find the GE slightly more artificial-looking. Also great: If the National Tree and GE picks are unavailable, this Home Accents Holiday tree is a worthy alternative. Its only 21 percent polyethylenebarely half our picks percentageand up close, the fakey PVC needles that make up most of its foliage are pretty obvious. But its high branch-tip count (2,602 versus our picks 1,867) gives it a full, realistic appearance when viewed from across the room, and its greater girth (68 versus 59 inches) will fill even the largest living space. Like our other picks, its lights (750, same as our top pick) can switch between white and multicolored; and as on our GE also-great pick, the light strings connect automatically when you assemble the tree. Also great: If you want to pay slightly lessor you just prefer to string your own lightsNational Tree Companys 7-foot, unlit Feel Real Downswept Douglas Fir (PEDD1-503-75) is a great tree at a great price. Its as tall and wide as our pick, with the same number of branch tips to give it that same full, room-filling form. Its also identical in construction, with the same realistic polyethylene branch tips and PVC core. Simply losing the lights saves you more money than you might expect: This model is usually well over $100 cheaper than our main pick. But rememberif you dont already own Christmas lights, youll eat up most of that savings buying them. (For smaller homes and apartments, we also recommend the 6-foot version of this tree). Why you should trust us For this guide, we gave ourselves a crash course in artificial Christmas trees. Wirecutter editor Tim Heffernan visited a fake-tree manufacturers New Jersey headquarters, shopped for trees at several big-box stores, and spent hours examining trees at House of HolidayNew York Citys largest holiday shopwhose owner Larry Gurino love[s] to geek out over artificial trees. Gurinos deep knowledge greatly added to this guide, as did the time we spent shopping and researching the hundreds of options online. Wirecutter research editor Courtney Schley spent hours speaking with the American Christmas Tree Association, which represents artificial-tree makers, to understand the industry itself, including manufacturing processes, sales and design trends, and statistics. How we picked Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Heres the basic fact: You can find plenty of great artificial trees these days. They come in dozens of species (assorted firs, spruces, redwoods, and pines); multiple heights and girths; multiple levels of realism (and many colors never seen in nature); versions that are bare-branched, or frosted or flocked with fake snow; and pre-lit and unlit variants with LED or incandescent options. For this guide, we defaulted to the most popular choices in our quest to come up with a tree that would please the most people. Our interview with the sales manager at National Tree Company yielded a few key facts about trends in the industry. The 7-foot size is the most popular, as US home ceilings are usually 8 feet high, but weve also added several smaller (6-foot) trees to this guide for those with smaller homes or apartments. People hugely prefer pre-lit trees, as well; to cover everyones tastes, we decided to look for a tree that could switch between all-white and multicolor. People also want artificial trees to appear convincingly lifelike. And although first-time tree buyers will probably be surprised at a good trees price, we knew wed be in the mainstream range as long as we came in between $250 and $400, judging by the information we got from House of Holidays Larry Gurino, National Tree, and our own research. An artificial tree can easily last 10 or 15 years, so the amortized cost is a lot easier to swallowthe average price for a live tree as of 2016 was $51, according to CBS News. Advertisement Advertisement Cost and realism go hand in hand. Using molds often taken from actual branches, artificial-tree manufacturers shape polyethylene, or PE, to produce highly realistic branch tips. More tips generally make the tree look fuller, with fewer gaps, and more tips cost more money. Similarly, a higher percentage of polyethylene in a trees construction generally equates to greater realismand a higher price. Our pick, for reference, has 1,867 tips and is 37 percent polyethylene, and is convincingly lifelike even up close. You can get trees with far more eye-popping stats, though. This particularly lovely Balsam Fir from Balsam Hills most-realistic line of trees, for example, has almost 6,000 tips and is 70 percent polyethyleneand comes at a price to match that extravagance. As with real trees, overall bigger sizes come with bigger costs: House of Holiday, for example, carries more than two dozen trees measuring 12 feet or taller with price tags north of $1,000. Advertisement Advertisement More than a decade ago, the only material used in trees was polyvinyl chloride. Now, on good trees, PVC appears only as the obviously fake filler branches near the trees trunk. PVC is cheaper to produce than PE, and its also a lot lighter, so the mixed materials help to balance beauty, cost, and weight. All the trees we considered for this guide consisted of realistic PE branch tips around a lighter, cheaper PVC core. Even though all-PVC trees are still widely available, we dont recommend them. From a distance they look like trees, but up close they look terrible. On the plus side, however, they are cheap: A 6-foot tree shouldnt cost more than $100. Also, what was once a genuine health concernthe use of lead as a PVC stabilizeris no longer an issue in most artificial trees sold in the US, according to National Tree Company and the American Christmas Tree Association, which represents artificial-tree companies. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Pre-lit trees make up 90 percent of the artificial trees sold in the US, according to the American Christmas Tree Association; incandescent bulbs still dominate, but LEDs are rapidly making inroads. LED bulbs cost a bit more up front but should last longer than incandescents, in both lifespan and durability terms. However, modern incandescents are more reliable than those of the past, and one burned-out bulb no longer necessarily causes the whole string to go dark. On pre-lit trees, you want roughly 100 bulbs (or more) per foot of tree height; less than that looks a bit sparse. Finally, you shouldnt pay extra for the fancy flashing patterns that are increasingly common, unless you know youll use them. As Larry Gurino of House of Holiday confided to us, Most people dont use themthey just want to see them [advertised] on the box. Advertisement Virtually all contemporary artificial trees have branches permanently mounted on hinges on the center pole. This design means that they all unfurl into place quickly when you set up the tree; in the past, you often had to snap individual branches into sockets on the center pole one by one, a time-consuming and fussy process. For this guide, we sought trees with permanently mounted, hinged branchesnot that theres much choice on that anymore. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement If our pick isnt your cup of tea, the good news is, you generally get what you pay for in artificial trees, and you can rely on a few key specs when shopping. The price directly relates to the number of branch tips, the height, and the girthan often-overlooked factor that Gurino emphasized in our interviewand all those details contribute to the trees general level of realism. Pretty much all trees come out of a handful of factories in China and Taiwan to be branded and sold here, with the same tree sometimes renamed. National Tree Company representatives told us on a visit to its New Jersey headquarters that the tree sold as the Bucks County Fir in Pennsylvania may be called something totally different in Connecticut. You may very well find another brand selling a different version of the Downswept Douglas Fir, disguised by some superficial finishing touches that could suit your style better. If one of the brands we recommend has something you like, and the specs and price seem in line with our reporting, youve probably found your perfect tree. Our pick: National Tree Feel Real Downswept Douglas Fir (PEDD1-D12-75) National Tree Companys 7-foot Feel Real Downswept Douglas Fir with dual-color LEDs (PEDD1-D12-75) is our pick among artificial Christmas trees. Its very full and highly realistic, and its 59-inch girth will nicely fill the corner of most living rooms. The lights can switch from multicolor to all-white (actually more of a soft golden white), giving it versatility. Its widely available, too: If youd like to see it in person, Home Depot, Kohls, and many holiday stores typically carry it. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement With 1,867 lifelike polyethylene branch tips, this Downswept Douglas Fir model is thickly covered and shows no gaps. And at 37 percent polyethylene, it has a higher proportion of realistic foliageand lower proportion of fakey PVC pine needlesthan our GE and Home Accent Holiday picks. Its also priced competitively with models offering similar quality and similar height, girth, and tip-count specs. Note, however, that the price of the Downswept Douglas Fir varies considerably between retailers; weve seen it listed for as low as $400 and as high as $800. It may ease the sting to remember that youre making at least a 10-year investment. Advertisement Advertisement The Downswept Douglas Firs lights give off the intense colors characteristic of LEDs. With 750 bulbs on a 7-foot tree, it exactly meets our 100-bulbs-per-foot recommendation. The all-white setting has a rich golden tone; the multicolor setting is bright and pure. To people used to the softer glow of incandescent bulbs, the effect may appear a little harsh. If youd prefer the same tree strung with all-white or multicolor incandescents, you can usually find one for the same price or less, but youll get only three or four seasons of light life, whereas LEDs may run for a decade or more with normal use. (A string of 300 white or multicolor incandescents runs about $10 at Home Depot currently; you would need three strings, or about $30 worth, to meet the at least 100 lights per foot of tree guideline for our 7-foot tree picks.) Advertisement Advertisement A feature thats available only with LEDs is the ability to toggle between all-white and multicolor lightbut most artificial trees are still sold with only one color mode or the other. Our pick is one of the relatively few that come with color-switching lights (and we made sure that all our other picks in this guide have this ability, too). We think this versatility is a big selling point for a tree youll have around for several seasons, and possibly multiple settings and occasions. For example, you could use all-white for a more sophisticated look during a grown-up holiday party and use the multicolor mode when the mood is more festive. Or you could just do something different from year to year so that it doesnt seem like the same tree every Christmas. Advertisement In a design common to modern artificial trees, the Downswept Douglas Firs branches are all permanently mounted on hinges on the center pole (older artificial trees required you to attach branches individually via sockets), and like most trees its height, it comes in three sections. As you set the tree up and the branches fold out, you need to fluff them: Just pull the individual tips apart into spreading clusters, adjust the arrangement of branches to close any gaps, and generally prettify the tree. House of Holidays Larry Gurino strongly recommends fluffing as you godo the bottom section first, then put the middle section in place and fluff it, and finally top and fluff. This technique makes the job much easier than trying to fluff the whole thing at once. We followed his advice when setting up our Downswept Douglas Fir for our photo shoot, and we had the whole thing put together and looking great in less than 15 minutes. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement As with all of our recommended trees, this National Tree model offers LED bulbs that can switch between white and multicolored lights (and various patterns). National Tree Company has a warranty for its realistic pre-lit trees taller than 6 feet, like our pick, that covers manufacturer defects for five years from the date of purchase. The lights are covered for two years. Youll need proof and date of purchase to file a claim, and youll need to have treated the tree and lights with reasonable care to have your claim approved. (Details here.) The 6-foot version of this tree also falls under that warranty, and we recommend it for smaller homes and apartments. Flaws but not dealbreakers As we learned from experience, a major drawback to owning this or any artificial tree of a similar size is that it takes up considerable storage space in the off season, and is hard to fit back into its original box. Advertisement People often overlook the fact that theyll need to store an artificial tree for 10 or 11 months out of the year, Gurino pointed out. And lack of storage space is the main reason, he added, that city and apartment dwellers favor live trees. (He also noted that when live trees get thrown out, they often become free mulch for public parksin effect, theyre recycled.) Our tree, after being packed up after the photo shoot, took up a corner of our test space for a month before we were able to send it off to another Wirecutter editor for long-term testing. So unless you have lots of storage room in your place, a live tree may make more sense. Advertisement Advertisement And even if you have room to store an artificial tree, bear in mind that, as Gurino noted, it wont easily go back into its original box: Once you fluff it, itll never fit exactly. After we were done with our photo shoot, I spent about half an hour painstakingly collapsing each branch of our tree, one by one, as tight as I could against the central pole, to prep the tree for shipping. My best advice: Start from the top (the shortest branches) and end at the bottom (the longest branches). First pinch the branch tips together into a sort of bundle; then fold up the branch itself. Even after I did that, though, it made some obvious bulges in the original shipping box. Advertisement Advertisement The re-boxed artificial tree of this size is heavy (over 50 pounds), difficult to fit on most shelves, and has a volume comparable to a tank-style water heater. But if you have ample storage space, you dont have to keep a tree in its original box. Rather, Gurino said, keeping it covered and dry is the main thing. You can separate the sections and flatten the branches as compactly as you can, or keep it whole; just dont store it somewhere itll be trampled or moved a lot. Do cover it with a light plastic painters tarp or an old sheet to keep the dust off, or buy a tree bag. And a climate-controlled space (converted basement, storage closet) is always preferable to an attic or garage. Long-term test notes After writing the original version of this guide in fall 2016, we carefully disassembled and packed our pick at the timea very similar National Tree model, the PEDD1-312LD-75Xin its original box and shipped it to Los Angeles for long-term use. After the long journey (in which the tree was jostled enough that it arrived with its top spike and branches sticking out of a corner of the box), it sat on a garage shelf for about 10 months, enduring temperatures over 100 degrees and gathering a little dust and grit without any plastic seal around the box or the contents. (Yes, we fell short of following our own advice on storage.) Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement We unboxed and set up the tree over the Thanksgiving 2017 holiday weekend, and its in perfect condition. The arms all fold down smoothly, the lights all work, no needles are bent or broken, the stand is still sturdy; we really have nothing to complain about. The cross-country truck ride was more abuse than most owners are likely to put their tree through when simply hauling it in and out of storage at home. After seeing this tree survive the shipment unscathed, were fully confident in its ability to last the decade or so that most owners will keep it at home. It genuinely looks good, too: A 5-year-old seeing the tree for the first time confidently declared that it was real (before he scooted underneath it mechanic-style and changed his mind upon a closer inspection). Advertisement Advertisement After a lifetime of owning live trees, we found the National Tree model to be far more manageable to set upno messy needles dropping, obviously, and it was also easier to assemble in its separate sections versus hoisting a 7-foot fir into position. Not having to water it or worry about its health is also a relief. The one missing element was that fresh piney scent filling the house (for the first few days at least), so we picked up a balsam and fir scented candleproblem solved, and highly recommended. Also great: GE 7.5 Just Cut EZ Light Frasier Fir Dual Color LED The GE 7.5 Just Cut EZ Light Frasier Fir Dual Color LED (model 17161HD), like the other GE trees we looked at, had us very impressed with its quality. Advertisement Advertisement For one, several of this GE trees specs are favorable when compared with our top pick from National Tree. Its the same height and width, but it has more branch tips for a fuller appearance (2,073 versus 1,867). Like our top pick, the GE lets you switch between white and multicolor lighting modes; additionally, the lights connect automatically through the central pole as you assemble the three sections of the tree, a handy (but not vital) feature. But we especially love the way GEs LED Christmas lights lookin our test of Christmas lights, we found GEs tones closest to the familiar warm glow of incandescent bulbs. Thats not to say anything against National Trees lights: We found them very pretty, especially the pale gold of the white-light setting. But if you seek something close to the incandescent look, the GE tree may be your ticket. Advertisement Advertisement Also great: Home Accents Holiday 7.5 ft. Pre-Lit Grand Fir Quick Set Artificial Christmas Tree with Supernova Color Changing Lights If the National Tree and GE are unavailable, the Home Accents Holiday 7.5 ft. Pre-Lit Grand Fir Quick Set Artificial Christmas Tree with Supernova Color Changing Lights is a worthy alternative. Its not as widely availableHome Accents Holiday is exclusive to Home Depotbut in most parts of the country that still means you can find one easily enough. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement We looked at Home Accents last year, and its higher-quality trees, like this one, are quite good. Its high branch-tip count (2,602 versus our picks 1,867) gives it a full, realistic appearance when viewed from across the room. And if you have a seriously big space to fill, its greater girth (68 versus 59 inches) will help. Like our other picks, its lights (750, same as our top pick) can switch between white and multicolored. And like the GEs, they connect automatically via the central pole when you assemble the tree. The downside is that its only 21 percent polyethylenebarely half our picks percentageand up close, the fakey PVC needles that make up the bulk of its foliage will be fairly obvious to a critical eye. Also great: National Tree 7.5 Feel Real Downswept Douglas Fir (PEDD1-503-75) National Tree Companys 7-foot, unlit Feel Real Downswept Douglas Fir (PEDD1-503-75) is a great tree at a great price, if you dont need lights included. Its the same size as our main pick, with the same generous branch count (1,867), sporting that same full, room-filling form. Its identical in construction, too, with the same realistic polyethylene tips, hinged branches, and three sections. Youll have to string the lights yourself, of course. If you already own enough lights for a 7-foot tree (roughly 700 bulbs, per the 100-per-foot guideline), choosing this tree is a no-brainer, since youll save a chunk of money. Or if you simply prefer to string your own, even if it means spending down those savings, go for itcheck out our recommended set of LED Christmas lights, or pick up three 300-bulb strings of incandescents for about $30. And for smaller homes and apartments, we think the 6-foot version of this tree also makes a great pick. The competition Aside from appreciating the quality, beauty, and value of our pick, we chose a National Tree model for a few other reasons, namely exceptionally wide availability (online, in national chain stores, and in mom-and-pop shops), diverse options (in lighting, height, girth, and other considerations) to fit everyones unique needs, consistently great reviews, and the solidity of 50-plus years of a family-run business. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement But the fact is, more than one company can claim most of those qualities, and you can find great trees under numerous brand names. Much of the situation is due to the way artificial trees are manufactured: Almost all of them come out of a handful of factories in Taiwan and China. So while the companies selling the trees specify the details of their designs, the companies making the trees use similar materials and even many of the same basic components. That means you will be able to find a great artificial tree, even if its not our pick. One particular model is worth describing in detail: the National Tree PEDD1-312LD-75X, a former pick in this guide. Its a great tree, but we made a mistake about one feature in recommending it. This model lacks the companys PowerConnect feature, in which the lights connect when the central pole connects. Instead, this model requires you to manually connect standard male/female plug connectors near where the segments of the tree come together. Its perfectly convenient, but the PowerConnect feature is even better, and our top pick has that. Advertisement Puleo is Larry Gurinos favored brand at House of Holiday; like National Tree, its a New Jerseybased, family-run business. Unfortunately, Puleo is not as widely available as some other brands, but its quality ranks among the best. Gurino has sold Puleo trees for 20 years, and they were some of the nicest-looking trees we came across in our search. If you find one you like, you can be confident in your purchase. Advertisement Advertisement Balsam Hill is the top-selling artificial-tree brand in the US, and it offers an extraordinary array of top-quality trees in three ranges of realism. After viewing and handling examples in person, we consider its Realistic line comparable overall to National Trees Feel Real series. Both have a mix of realistic PE branch tips and plasticky PVC filler branches. And both do a great job of fooling the eye. An exact apples-to-apples comparison isnt possible (due to differences in lighting options, for example), but Balsam Hills trees tend to feature more branch tips and light bulbs at a given height-width combination. Advertisement Advertisement For example, the pre-lit 7-foot-tall, 59-inch-wide version of its Rocky Mountain Pine (same dimensions as our top pick) has 2,764 branch tips (versus our picks 1,867) and 1,000 bulbs (versus 750). And it has 54 percent realistic polyethylene branch tips, versus 37 percent. On the other hand, you have to choose white or colored bulbs; the Balsam Hill Rocky Mountain Pine doesnt come in a color-switching model like our pick. And the extra tips, percent-polyethylene, and bulbs come at a premium: The Rocky Mountain pine has a list price of about $860, and typically retails for roughly $520historically, $100 or more than our pick. If thats in your budget, go for it: Its a terrific tree. To get a similarly specced Balsam Hill tree at a price close to our pick, youre limited to the companys Traditional line, which is made entirely of PVC. Advertisement Advertisement Frontgate mostly competes with Balsam Hill in the premium category, as it focuses on super-realistic and super-expensive trees. We didnt encounter Frontgate trees in person, but their specsand pricesare impressive. There are many, many more competitors than what we list here. Given the way artificial trees are produced (described in How we picked), its not uncommon for companies to buy trees off the shelf and rebrand them under their own names. So if you cant find one of our picks or a comparable tree from the makers listed here, you can still find an excellent tree. Heres how. 1. Look at the price: If a 7.5-foot tree is selling for less than about $250, its probably a deal too good to be trueor a fake-looking all-PVC tree. Advertisement 2. Look at the tagmost brands are eager to note the presence, number, and often the percentage of realistic polyethylene branch tips; we like to see at least 30 percent polyethylene. Advertisement 3. Simply look at the branch tips themselves. Although highly realistic artificial trees with polyethylene branch tips are becoming the norm, most manufacturers also still produce 100 percent-PVC trees. Theyre much cheaperand they look it. Polyethylene looks like real, living branches and needles; PVC looks like thinly sliced green paper. On fake trees, real trees, and harming the environment Between artificial and live trees, which is greener? You might not be surprised to learn that within the industry theres no consensus answerthe American Christmas Tree Association and the National Christmas Tree Association, which represent the artificial-tree and live-tree industries, respectively, both claim the greener title. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement But the definitive study on the subject (as reported by The New York Times, parent company of Wirecutter) gives the edge firmly to live trees. Artificial trees are made of petroleum-based plastics and are manufactured mostly in China, where environmental laws are less stringent. Live trees can be sustainably farmed and harvested, they absorb carbon while growing, and they provide some measure of wildlife habitat. Although live-tree farms contribute marginally to the consequences of fertilizer and pesticide use, they add value to land that might otherwise be valuable only to developers. But really, the studys author says, your fake tree versus real tree choice is not a major way to make a difference for Earth: If you exchange a couple of days of commuting by car with carpooling or riding a bicycle, youll completely overcompensate for whatever the impact of the [artificial] tree is. Its not such a big deal. Enjoy your tree, whichever one you prefer. The facts on lead in PVC tree parts Lead serves as a stabilizer in some forms of PVC. The one serious study (PDF) weve seen on artificial Christmas trees, published in 2004 in the Journal of Environmental Health, found that the lead levels and risk of lead exposure were generally very low, and well below federal guidelines at the time; a few models were outliers, however, and one slightly exceeded the federal limits. Lead exposure occurred in two ways: direct contact with the branchesas may occur when people are setting the trees up and decorating themand contact with PVC dust beneath the tree, the result of physical decomposition of the pine needles, a particular concern for crawling infants. Significantly, new trees (new in 2004, that is) generally showed much lower levels of lead than trees manufactured in the 1980s and 1990s. The authors concluded that while the proportion of trees made with lead-stabilized PVC had decreased only modestly in the 20 years preceding 2004, the amount of lead stabilizer used has been reduced to a much larger extent, suggesting a long-term trend toward low-lead or lead-free artificial trees. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement We raised our concerns with the American Christmas Tree Association, which stated in response that leaded PVC is no longer used at all in its members products. We also asked National Tree Company about its products specifically, and representatives confirmed that the company uses entirely lead-free PVC. We have no reason to doubt those claims, but since no federal standards or tests for artificial-tree materials exist, we have no independent data to confirm or contradict them, either. In general, it seems wise to wash your hands after setting up and decorating your artificial tree, as well as to prevent kids and pets from playing underneath it or (obviously) chewing on the branches. But the risk of lead exposure from a contemporary artificial Christmas tree is likely to be minimal to nonexistent. Read the original article on The Best Artificial Christmas Tree. A man was arrested Wednesday after he went on what one witness described as an anti-Semitic tirade that included a demand that all Jews raise their hands so he could identify them. This all happened 30,000 feet in the air during a Delta flight from Washington, D.C. to Atlanta the day before Thanksgiving. The man, who was wearing a tallit, or Jewish prayer shawl, was arrested shortly after the plane landed in Atlanta. Preliminary information indicates that while in flight a male was yelling, asking Jewish people on board to identify themselves and making remarks about bombings to passengers aboard the aircraft, Officer Lisa Bender told USA Today. In a statement Atlanta police also said that while in flight to Atlanta a male began uttering anti-Semitic words to passengers aboard the aircraft. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Authorities said David Toaff, 37, was uncooperative and they arrested him after he refused to calm down when they were trying to question him. Another passenger, Jordan Dale, posted a video of officers confronting Toaff. Im not a bad person Toaff can be heard saying as he appears to try to break free from police. At one point in the video, Toaff mentioned there was a White guy with blue eyes and he was just like Trump hes a Nazi! He was arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct and obstructing or hindering an officer. A former top National Enquirer editor is writing a book about President Donald Trumps love life. Barry Levine, who was executive editor of the tabloid until he left in 2016, is writing the book about Trump and his women for Hachette, reveals the New York Posts Page Six. It remains an open question whether the book will also go into the relationship between Trump and David Pecker, the owner of American Media, which publishes the National Enquirer. The relationship between Pecker and Trump has been part of the news recently due to the revelation that the Enquirer used its resources to buy stories from women who claimed they had affairs with Trump only to bury them later. Although Levine left the paper two years ago, his 17 years at the publication means he could very well have a lot of juicy material on Trump. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement In a story earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that while there were lots of tips regarding Trump that poured into the tabloid after his television show Celebrity Apprentice took off in 2002 the Enquirer turned away stories that could paint him in a bad light. The piece went on to note that Levine himself was the one who reminded employees that Pecker wouldnt allow the stories to move forward. Although the alliance between Pecker and Trump was once seen as rock solid many began questioning whether that was still the case after he was granted immunity as part of the investigation into hush payments that Trump and his lawyer made to women. Black Friday got off to a deadly start in Alabama this year after an argument between two young men led to at least one of them opening fire. A police officer then fired at the gunman while he was fleeing and killed the 21-year-old at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover. It isnt clear why the 18-year-old and the 21-year-old gunman began their physical altercation. Officers dont believe the 18-year-old, who was shot twice in the torso, was armed. A 12-year-old was also hit by a bullet but it is unclear at what point. Advertisement Lexi Joiner said she was inside the mall when she heard 6 or 7 shots fired. Workers ordered them into supply closets for cover. It was terrifying pic.twitter.com/0pLwbKIWmw carol robinson (@RobinsonCarol) November 23, 2018 The Riverchase Galleria is the largest mall in Alabama and a popular Black Friday shopping destination. There was already a heavy police presence at the mall which meant officers were able to get to the scene quickly. When the shooting began between J.C.Penney and Foot Action on the malls second floor, several shoppers drew their guns. This was my first Black Friday, an eyewitness told AL.com. I knew it would be crazy, just not this crazy. The holidays can be tricky when one has begun to reflexively assume the posture of being pinned under the breakfront as the crazy racist grandpa shrieks year round. For many of us, the echo of Donald Trumps voice, his tweets, his boasts and threats, are what wake us up at 4 a.m. and what makes us afraid to contemplate summer plans or even buy green bananas. But after two deeply destabilizing and in fact traumatic years of soaking in the presidents ugliness and invective, of absorbing the sound and sight of the sneering and the scowling and the fury, there is much to be thankful for this year. Because this year, by dint of miracle or magic or human endeavor, Donald Trump has been reduced to his actual size. He isnt everything anymore. He is barely anything at all. He becomes smaller every single day, and for that, we have America to thank. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement It is no secret that Trump himself is sliding further and further off the rails. The tweets are cruder and materially less coherent, and the public performances are more frightening still. The White House staff is in turmoil, and the president seems to have aligned himself with the Saudi murderers of a Washington Post reporter. None of this offers holiday solace, save for the fact that, as support for the president peels off among members of the military, conservative lawyers, and women, he finds himself ever more shrilly attacking them all. And as the president finds himself shunned and largely ignored internationally, he is left more and more alone to watch television, tweet hectically, and attempt to rewrite his own story to his satisfaction. At least we can, as Matt Yglesias smartly observes, be grateful that he cant manage to be effective and pissed off at the same time. Advertisement We can be thankful for other things this past autumn: a press corps that has remained vigilant and unbowed by presidential threats and abuse, and that has increasingly adjusted to the lies and the distortions that embody this presidency. We can be thankful for a judicial branch that quietly delivers setback after setback to the presidents cruelest imperatives. And we can be thankful for the tireless work of Robert Mueller (bows head), a man who is nothing less than a bionic truth-seeking robot in an age of alternative facts. Advertisement Mostly, though, it is worth recognizing that Trump has managed to shrink slowly down to a small manageable size simply by being ever more himself. Be it his military action against the caravan that wasnt, his wall that wasnt, his raking that wasnt, or his inflated election claims that werent, the deflections and distractions seem to come faster and faster. But the fall of 2018 saw truth able to get its boots on before a falsehood could travel very farmaybe because the lies are more transparent now, or maybe because we are finally getting better at this. The final factor in Trumps diminution had to be the appalling (!) White House (!) statement defending the Saudi Arabian royal family from his own CIAs finding that they had been complicit in the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Advertisement Advertisement That document has been widely read and deconstructed for its lies, exaggerations, and untruths, but it should also be briefly celebrated as the perfect distillate of Trumps moral reasoning: By the presidents own ethical lights, no criminal who might make us wealthy can ever be condemned. This is, of course, terrifying and nihilistic and dangerous as a defining statement of what America First is supposed to mean. But it also ties together everything that has been wrong with Trumpism from the moment he first announced his candidacy: Everything is transactional, nothing is intrinsically of value, and everything is worth doing only so long as it benefits you. This is hardly a novel philosophy: Its how Mitch McConnell sleeps at night and how Sarah Huckabee Sanders lives by day. But Trump has taken the philosophy and made it more apparent in how recklessly open he is about it. Go ahead, amend your financial disclosure forms again, send government emails from your private accounts againeverythings just a big colorful game of plutocrat Twister anyhow. Advertisement Advertisement Weve known this is Trumps mode of being forever, but coupled with the news that the president genuinely believed that his own Justice Department could be commandeered to prosecute James Comey and Hillary Clinton places it all in a different sort of light. Because it illuminates how abjectly and severely limited this man is, in his understanding of government, and governance, and law. And its a gift to those who stood by him for the judges, or stood by him for the tax cuts, or stood by him for national security, because now they must ask themselves if it was all worth it. The folks who wondered in 2016 whether blowing everything up might be fruitful and thought to themselves, Well, heck, lets try it, are finally starting to get a taste of what drifting ash and falling steel beams really look like. And it looks small. Advertisement Advertisement If the November midterms stood for anything, it was that in most jurisdictions that allow for meaningful voting and proportional representation, the whiz-bang showmanship of the past two years has become stale and dull. A clutch of exciting young candidates ran for office without even explicitly engaging with Trump or Trumpism. Powered by energy from below, they largely ignored the wallpaper of noise and sound that is the president. The narcissism and self-love of the 90s TV hustler has finally just become tiresome. Advertisement As a final Thanksgiving miracle, Chief Justice John Robertswho didnt weigh in publicly when Donald Trump attacked a federal judge for being a biased Mexican, or a Seattle judge for being liberal, or three federal appeals court judges for halting his travel banspoke out Wednesday to rebuke Trump for berating an Obama Judge and the entire 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (which had enjoined his new asylum rules). Day after day, we can see that the entire legal apparatus of the United States is growing tired of being treated like Trumps landscaping staff. More and more, the entire country is showing that it is tired and bored of being treated like gaffers and lighting technicians in the Trump show. Advertisement Its all so childish as to sound almost funny, but its worth remembering back to August 2017, after Nazis and white supremacists marched through Charlottesville, Virginia, when the feeling on the streets was of pure uncertainty. On the sidewalks for a time, it was impossible to make eye contact. What was top of mind for most of us there was who in this crowd wants to hurt me; who wants to run my family out of town? It was the mindless fear of unknown others that caused more pain even than Nazi chants. But this Thanksgiving weekend, the sense beginning to emerge is of the systems of democratic governance repairing themselvesof good people standing up, of women surging forward, of teenagers answering the call, of law and truth reinstating themselves. The feeling is that some kind of fever has maybe broken. That which seemed monstrous and larger than life is mostly shadows and vapors now. Its going to be a long-ass haul to restore whats been dismantled over the past two years. Fear and contempt are contagious and so, apparently, are ugliness and violence. But in so many ways resilience and dignity and pride are pushing through the noise. Its hard to see it sometimes, but its surely rattling under the surface of things. Things will turn around the way you eat an elephantbite by bite. But recognizing that the elephant was never all that enormous in the first instance makes it easier to do the work. President Donald Trump is continuing his assault on basic humanitarian protections at the U.S.-Mexico border. In recent days, the president has sent thousands of troops to the border to string miles and miles of barbed wire, overseen U.S. Customs and Border Protections decision to close ports of entry, and ratified CBPs plan to evict 450 asylum-seekers marooned on bridges connecting El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Trumps latest tactic might be his most inimical: He ordered an interim final rule to deny asylum to anyone who has crossed in between ports of entry along the Southern border. While this order has already been blocked by the courts for the time being, this latest tactic fits right in line with the administrations larger goal of criminalizing migration. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The reality is that potentially thousands of migrants cross illegally because the U.S. Customs and Border Protection systematically and unlawfully rejects their asylum attempts at official ports of entry. Asylum-seekers have no meaningful choice otherwise. For at least the past two years, brazen CBP misconduct has led to mass migrant prosecution under federal illegal entry and illegal re-entry charges. Thanks to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions prioritization of the issue, 2018 saw entry-related arrests skyrocket with nearly 60 percent of all federal criminal prosecutions having been immigration-related. As of June, in the five federal districts along the Southwest border, only 6 percent of all prosecutions were for anything other than immigration offenses. Indeed, the Justice Department openly admitted it was diverting resources from drug-smuggling operations to incarcerate migrants. This has clearly been part of a broader political strategy of vindicating President Donald Trumps xenophobia: The Trump administrations nativist rhetoric is more effective when our immigrants are manufactured into criminals, not portrayed as tired, huddled masses of refugees. Advertisement This practice of criminalizing asylum attempts is also a classic case of entrapment. Systematically rejecting destitute asylum-seekers at the border and stranding them in life-threatening border towns forces these individuals to cross unlawfully. As counsel in borderwide federal challenges to this policy and practice, Al Otro Lado v. Nielsen and now East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Trump, Ive seen what happens firsthand to individuals whom the U.S. government turns away and strands in Mexico. My clientsall of whom stated a fear of return to their home countrywanted to present at a port of entry but were turned away. CBP officers told one client that President Trump signed a new law that ended asylum in the United States, and another was promised that government officials would take their children away. The former statement is a lieTrump has signed no such lawbut the later threat proved tragically true during Trumps infamous child separation policy. The threat itself has continued to be wielded against asylum-seekers, even though the U.S. says it has ended the policy. Advertisement Advertisement This practice of criminalizing asylum attempts is also a classic case of entrapment. The recent interim rule to deny asylum to anyone who crosses the border illegally wont have its intended deterrent effect. Its just an added punitive measure. As a journalist for the Marshall Project has reported, U.S. officials are making clear theyre in no hurry to place extra border or asylum officers at ports of entry, and that the strategy is to create even bigger asylum bottlenecks, back-ups at entry stations. Migrants marooned in Texas report waits upward of two weeks due to CBP caprice or antipathy; the wait is upward of three weeks in Tijuana. As Texas Monthly noted, up to 450 asylum-seekers were recently camped out on three bridges between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. Thats only going to get worse. Advertisement Many asylum-seekers waiting at ports of entrydestitute, without resources, and with young children in toware forced to live at makeshift encampments. Many fall prey to cartels and are regularly assaulted and even killed. By callously stranding individuals outside of ports of entry in horrid, perilous conditions, the U.S. is treating migrants as flotsam. On a recent trip to the border, I met with a group of Central American LGBTQ youth who told me that on each day, for five consecutive days, CBP refused to let them apply for asylum. When I told them it was lawful to present at a port of entry to ask for asylum, they replied, Thats what we told CBP! Each day they were rejected, they say CBP told them the same thing: Guatemalans make us sick. Turned away by CBP again and again, these asylum-seekers were ultimately forced to enter outside of a port of entry and thus saw their asylum claims criminalized. Advertisement Advertisement This consequence is intentional and stems from Sessions April 6 zero-tolerance policy. That policy instituted Trumps Jan. 25, 2017, executive order directing the Justice Department to make criminal prosecution of immigration offenses a high priority. Blithely, Sessions famously urged individuals simply to wait their turn. The recent exhortations regarding proper entry pointwhich Sessions deemed the right wayare meritless. Not only are they in stark contrast to federal lawaccording to 8 U.S.C. Section 1158, asylum is available regardless of whether or not an individual entered at a designated port of arrivalbut it will now be virtually impossible to seek asylum lawfully. Whether turned away from a point of legal entry by CBP or forced to wait and possibly perish, individuals have been and will continue to be forced to swim across the mercurial Rio Grande or traverse on foot through the borders vast terranean hellscape. If history teaches us anything, when the migrant caravan reaches the border, CBP will clearly induce scores of individuals to commit crimes of illegal entry and re-entry, entrapping them. Advertisement Advertisement Under Trumps latest policy, the U.S. is criminalizing potentially thousands of individuals who have arrived at our nations doorstep seeking asylum. Worse still, the U.S. knows that these individuals are here to seek asylum; the criminalization is intentional. By instituting the zero-tolerance policy, the Justice Department is able to instantiate Trumps long-held ethnological worldview that Central American and Mexican individuals are criminals. Rather than receive tired, huddled masses, the administration is able to cast them as hardened offenders, bad hombres. In this way, it is merely the administrations latest attempt to shirk its humanitarian obligations in favor of completely unnecessary, punitive, and spiteful federal policy. 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 ... The 2019 calendar offers a selection of historical images taken by the Kozics Studio. News: Receive favorite authors articles by email. Try the new feature and turn on the subscription. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled The Kozics Studio (1854-1926/1929) operated in then Pressburg, todays Bratislava, for seven decades. During this period, the Kozics dynasty took a huge number of portraits of inhabitants and photos of the city. Portraits of composer Franz Liszt, the national awakener Jozef Miloslav Hurban and the aristocratic family of Ostrolucky were photographed in their studio. Thanks to this studio, its known how the city looked one hundred years ago and how it was devastated by fire and floods. Today, photos of the Kozics Studio portray the changing faces of the city. Bratislavske Rozky, the civic association dedicated to promoting Bratislavas history, has decided to make a selection of these rare historical photographs available to the public. In cooperation with the Bratislava City Museum (MMB), it has published a calendar with Kozics Studios photographs for the year 2019. Following the success of last years calendar with photos by Karol Korper, it was clear to us that in the next calendar, we want to use photos from this legendary studio, Sandor Papp of Bratislavske Rozky told The Slovak Spectator. For the calendar images, they have picked easy-to-identify spots, like Beblaveho Street below the castle, where the U Certa pub is located today, the view from the castle over the city and the city view from Petrzalskas embankment of the Danube River. Lovers of the citys history will enjoy the lesser known period shots. Among them is a photo from 1885, which was taken on the site of todays Trnavske Myto, where the live-stock market used to be, and the unique photograph of Zamocka Street with the now demolished Orthodox Synagogue, dating back to 1870. Those interested can buy the calendar at the Christmas market stand of Bratislavske Rozky on Frantiskanske Square. Kozics Studio The founder of the legendary studio, the first major photographic studio in Pressburg, was Eduard Nepomuk Kozics. This native from Dubnica nad Vahom probably came to the city at the end of the 1840s. Data on the beginnings of his photography business differs slightly, but in general, the beginning of the Kozics Studio is considered to be 1854. He first had a studio on Kozia Street, which was the citys periphery at that time. Some years later, he moved to what is todays Hviezdoslavovo Square. This building does not exist anymore since the Park Inn hotel was later built. Then he moved to the originally two-storey house next to the Zeleny strom Hotel. Today, this house is part of the US Embassys building. The time to speak up was in 2015 and 2016. Lajcak didnt, because it wasnt career-friendly. News: Receive favorite authors articles by email. Try the new feature and turn on the subscription. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled The Slovak governments refusal to attend the forthcoming UN migration summit in Marrakech is absurd, but so is Miroslav Lajcak. While politics are always part theatrics, debate in parliaments foreign affairs committee this week which ended with the recommendation that Slovakia skips the December 10-11 meeting was totally devoid of content. On one side, most of Smer and the Slovak National Party (SNS) were so opposed to migration of all types that they are unwilling to even speak the word migrant in the presence of other countries. On the other side, Lajcak a man who lent his face to billboards that read We protect Slovakia during the 2016 parliamentary campaign tried to convince his counterparts they needed to be sensible about migration. While Lajcak is right, Slovakia should attend the Marrakesh conference in December, he is right for the wrong reasons and far too late. Californias Camp Fire is already the most deadly in state history, claiming at least 86 lives with over 500 still unaccounted for as of Wednesday, per ABC News. The wildfire has engulfed nearly 400 square miles in Northern Californias Butte County, destroying more than 12,000 homes by NBC News count. And the coffee communityas it often does in times of crisisis stepping up. Six Degrees Service & Distribution have teamed up with the North Valley Community Foundation to create a Camp Fire relief fund to help those who have lost their homes and businesses. Based in Chico, in the backyard of the wildfire, Six Degrees knows firsthand how devastating these past few weeks have been. Many of these affected are coffee professionals. Six Degrees Elizabeth Goldblatt tells Sprudge that Paradises Juice & Java and NorCal Nitro lost their businesses and the owner of Chico Chai lost her home to the fire. Hitting so close to home, it led the coffee company to start the relief fund, to help not just coffee professionals but all affected individuals. In an email to Sprudge, Goldblatt had this to say: Six Degrees Coffee Service & Distribution was founded on the premise that we are all connected. Our community is in crisis and we are poised to help those that have lost their homes and businesses, evacuees, and first responders recover from the devastation of the Camp Fire. We honor your generosity and will utilize the funds to serve those in need in our Northern California community. Donations can be made through the North Valley Community Foundations website as one-time offerings or setup as a recurring gift. The NVCF will then decide the appropriate fund beneficiaries, per the website. An interview with the head of NVCF about the current condition in the affected areas can be found here. Listen, I know today is Black Friday and youre all probably lined up outside a Best Buy to get the new Tecmo Super Bowl or Furbies or whatever, so youve got money youre looking to throw around today. Why not take some of that cash and do some good with it by donating it to those in need? Thats more in line with this seasons current spirit of giving than anything you could buy today. Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge. Top image via Six Degrees Coffee Service & Distribution The Kurdish population in Syria has a historic opportunity to forge a path that can help them secure the rights and representation that they had previously lost writes Al-Hurra Network. Syrias al-Jazira region is inhabited by communities who have feelings of historical injustice and oppression both Kurds and Arabs can be found there. Without addressing the historical feelings related to the residents of this area, there will be no stability. The presence of the Untied States in the region could be a historic chance to resolve outstanding problems by way of reaching a just social contract serving as a model for the new Syria. Since the Baath Party seized power in 1963, the Kurds have been considered its enemy. Politicians began to pursue policies that aimed to change the demographics of Kurdish regions by establishing the so-called green strip on the border with a length of 375 kilometers and a width of 10 to 15 kilometers, whereby the Kurdish residents of this area were exchanged for Arabs from other provinces to create a human barrier between the Kurds in Syria and those in Turkey and Iraq. In 1966, the results of an exceptional census carried out in Hassakeh province in 1962 were confirmed, through which the citizenship of 120,000 Kurdish citizens was withdrawn as was recognition of the Kurdish identity. Kurdish language and culture was banned, and the Kurdish regions were marginalized in terms of development and services. At the same time, the Baath Party secured agricultural land in the al-Jazira in order to eliminate the social and economic arrangement that was in place, with the aim of eliminating the feelings of identity and belonging to the Arab tribes, while also eliminating the traditional leaders and pushing new leaders to the forefront within the Baathist political mold. The Arabs and Kurds were incited against one another on the basis of economic, social and cultural disputes which they created in order to be the referee between themand subsequently guarantee its influence and control over all. With the start of the Syrian revolution, Kurds felt it was a historic chance to be liberated from the oppressive laws imposed on them, encouraging them to participate from the first day. Then the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) began to impose its influence on Kurdish and Arab areas, taking advantage of its administrative, institutional and military organization. They expelled Arab residents and waited for the opportunity to establish a Kurdish state, rather than backing the Syrian revolution to achieve justice for all. This led to diminishing trust between Kurds and Arabs, which was weak to begin with. The Kurds lacked political leadership or a clearly-marked political project or even a political party to pursue Kurdish ambitions. The Syrian regime helped the PKK by only bombing Arab areas and opening supply routes to them in a step which aimed to prevent any Kurdish-Arab convergence. The International Coalitions war against the Islamic State (ISIS) was the opportunity to obtain the international legitimacy, which the Kurdish parties had been searching for. These parties turned into the Coalitions strike force on the ground, and Arabs were excluded from this battle, despite the fact that they had suffered from under the ISIS occupation of their territory and the policies of daily killing that ISIS had carried out against Arabs. The Kurdish parties policies toward the Arabs continued after the liberation of Arab areas from ISIS, and they governed all the centers of daily life without making any goodwill gesture towards their Arab neighbors. This increased Kurdish-Arab tensions in the areas liberated from ISIS. Kurdish parties meanwhile employed some defected ISIS leaders in important centers to deal with the Arabs, which led to a major loss of trust in everything happening on the ground. Today ISIS depends on sleeper cells deployed widely in the al-Jazira area, waiting for the right moment to return. These cells benefit from the increase of Arab-Kurdish tensions in a repetition of what happened in Iraq several times, with the aim of reproducing ISIS and presenting itself as the protector of the Sunnis or the Arabs. The matter is the same with regards to Iran, which has employed Shiification everywhere it goes. The Syrian regime will present itself as a force that will be fair to everyone in the al-Jazira area. Russia will also work to impose its political strength after finishing building its military base. Everyone is gambling on the Americans failing to understand the depth of the social, historical and cultural divisions between the communities of the region and focus only on the economic aspects. Therefore, the United States and the International Coalition against ISIS should take swift political and practical steps to prevent the return of the terrorist group and to prevent a repetition of what happened after its collapse in Iraq and plug the gaps from which the other forces present could benefit. These steps can contribute to reforming the regions identity in a way that reflects reality in a balanced fashion, which will help build trust and stability and produce a new social contract among all of societys communities. The steps that could be taken include: Stressing the unity of Syrian territory and rejecting any separatist ideas; holding Arab-Kurdish meetings to arrive at a new social contract which guarantees everyone their political, cultural and economic rights and respects the cultural particularities of the communitys groups; maintain the administrative structure set up by the Kurds and stress parallel representation for all the communitys groups with people who have skills and represent the true weight, who could have a real role in proposing the projects which their areas need, rather than donor countries; establishing infrastructure projects to serve all the areas communities in a daily fashion and without discrimination, such as building central hospitals and electricity plants; keeping leaders who have defected from ISIS away from important administrative, security and economic centers; develop the mechanisms for selecting members of the military forces so that there is balanced representation in all ranks and military responsibilities, and likewise for the civilian police, and develop legal regulations to implement this; pay concern to the displaced people who represent a high portion of the residents and work to return them to their villages and to the economic cycle; also pay heed to education and resolve problems related to revenge-taking. The stability of this area demands that all communities give concessions and work wisely to consider the challenges they faceor everyone will lose. This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. In order to provide for themselves and their families, Syrian women have stepped up and taken jobs that were traditionally only for men writes Alsouria Net. Syrian women have tasted the bitterness of forced displacement and the loss of breadwinners, husbands and sons, whether through displacement, kidnapping, arrest or death. This has pushed them to practice professions that had been traditionally monopolized by menand this situation has changed their lives radically and changed them into the leaders of families inside and outside the walls of their homes. Ibtisam, a Syrian woman, does not heed the view of society and its lack of acceptance of her profession, and she also has not surrendered to the conditions of life and the war. She has decided to overcome them through her will and determination, and so works as a taxi driver to earn a living for herself and her family. Ibtisam Abou Qura told the regime news agency SANA, After my husband died I could not rely on anyone else and I had to depend on myself. I worked with my brother in an herbal pharmacy in Damascus, but the war which devastated the live of Syrians and changed its features forced me to choose another profession. My car was the one solution to improve my life and to withstand the conditions of the war. Ibtisam knew that she was choosing a strange profession, but she overcame this through confidence and her ability to achieve success, saying that, Women are able to confront all difficulties, and they are no less willful or patient than men. In 2012, Ibtisam began her work in Douma as a taxi driver and was ferrying passengers to Damascus and the airport, but the consequences of the war forced her to leave Douma and head to the town of Sahnaya and continue her work and gather new customers who came to her and her car because of her good treatment. Similar cases Ibtisam was not the only one to work as a taxi driver, as pro-regime media has previously reported the story of Samira Helwani, who works as a taxi driverand driving a car was not strange for her, as she had previously worked as a microbus driver on the Jaramanah-al-Bab line. It has also become normal in Damascus to see women working as waitresses in coffeehouses, such as Reem (a false name) who previously told Alsouria Net the story of working in one of Sarujas cafes in Damascus, saying: Our family has four girls and two boys, as well as my father and mother. My brothers were forced to flee to escape military service, and my father is no longer able to provide for us. This pushed me to work in the coffeehouse. Amal (a false name), 42, was also forced by circumstances, to work at a booth selling tobacco, after the death of her husband. The work does not bring in more than her daily needs for her and her son Hassan, who is 10. Finally, Syrian women have entered a competition to become a government bus driver, which was announced by the Assad regimes Syrian Trading Establishment, with three women chosen for the job which has long been exclusive to men. This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. Zaman Al Wasl's reporter had previously reported on the miscarriages suffered by Syrian women living in a refugee camp in the Lebanese town of Arsal. The Lebanese security services arrested a Zaman al-Wasl reporter in Arsals refugee camps following his latest report about the 20 Syrian refugee women who suffered miscarriages due to polluted water, editor-in-chief Fathi Bayoud said Wednesday. Abdul Hafiz al-Houlani was arrested early morning by the State Security who ordered the 40-year-old reporter to visit its branch in Hermel district. 20 Syrian refugee women miscarried in Arsal due to polluted water. Zaman Al Wasl is condemning the arrest of Houlani. Houlani was previously arrested in May by the Military Intelligence Division, who took him from his makeshift tent in the al-Wafa Camp to unknown destination. Zaman Al Wasl calls on international rights groups to urge the Lebanese authorities to release our jailed journalist. A Lebanese Intelligence official revealed that the reason behind Houlani arrest is his media activities, according to one of the camp officials. Since press freedom is fundamental to any democratic society, Zaman Al Wasl demands the Lebanese government release Houlani and not undermine freedom of speech under any pretext. Last week, about 20 Syrian refugee women in the Lebanese town of Arsal miscarried due to the polluted water that might carried a deadly virus, medics told Zaman al-Wasls reporter. A health official from the al-Irshad association, speaking on a condition of anonymity, said all cases examined and treated did not reveal any physical symptoms that would have caused miscarriages, such as drinking medicines or carrying heavy weights. Their health records showed that they had not experienced any miscarriages before and that many children had had a normal birth. Abou Abdulrahman, one of the Syrian refugees in the Huda camp in al-Masyada district, said the polluted water is the reason for the tragic loss. The camp, which has witnessed five miscarriages, is home to 55 families. My wife, my sister, my niece and two of our neighbors miscarried on Tuesday, Abdul Rahman said. Zaman Al Wasl TV has interviewed the victims who demand the Lebanese authorities investigate the reasons behind the mysterious miscarriages, amid the mounting discrimination that refugees face in Lebanon. For them, its not just a matter of polluted water. About 55,000 Syrian refugees had returned since July, according to the Lebanese Caretaker Minister of State for Refugee Affairs, Mouin Merehbi. Such a number contrasts with that announced by General Securit, which put the number of returnees at almost 90,000 during the same period. He went on to criticize what he called a lack of coordination between General Security and his Ministry. The prominent dissident said the Lebanese authorities are responsible for the lives of the Syrians in Lebanon and for the lives of those who are forced to return to the criminal regime. The conflict has displaced more than five million Syrians outside the country, the United Nations says, with more than half displaced to Turkey and most of the rest split between Lebanon and Jordan. Thousands of Syrians are unable to return because their homes were destroyed during the fighting or because they fear military conscription or retribution by regime forces. Since the Syrian revolution erupted in 2011, more than 470,000 people have been killed, and more than six million people have been displaced. This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. At the conclusion of their visit, Jordanian delegates hailed the reopening of the Nasib Border Crossing and called for increased cooperation reports SANA. Members of a Jordanian parliamentary delegation said that deep brotherly relations have been binding the people of Syria and Jordan, stressing the desire to enhance these relations to serve the interests of the two countries. Speaking to SANA at the conclusion of a visit to Damascus, which began on Monday, the members of the Jordanian delegation pointed to the importance of re-opening the Nasib Border Crossing between Syria and Jordan and its positive impact on the exchange of goods and the movement of people. Head of the delegation, MP Abdul Karim al Doghmi expressed relief over the issues raised during the meetings with Syrian officials and the agreement to form joint committees in order to implement what had been decided, on the ground and overcome any difficulties. Delegate Nidal Taani MP said that the visit aims to bolster JordanianSyrian relations, adding that Syrias victory is a victory for the Arab nation and its thanks to the army, people and the leadership. For his part, delegate Haitham Ziadin MP said, We look forward to further cooperation between the two sides, both at the government and the parliamentary levels. This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. Visualization of the top hashtags used by Iranian trolls on Twitter. Credit: Zannettou et al. Over the past few years, journalists and politicians have often highlighted the presence of state-sponsored online trolls with the mission of swaying public opinion on particular issues. Researchers at Cyprus University of Technology, UCL, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Boston University have taken a closer look at this phenomenon, hoping to achieve a better understanding of how these actors operate. "Facebook has been tuning its systems to detect and block coordinated malicious behavior for several years," Gianluca Stringhini, assistant professor at Boston University, told TechXplore. "The threats faced by platforms, however, are rapidly changing. Until a couple of years ago, the main threat came from malware controlling fake accounts to spread spam and other frauds. This type of activity is controlled by programs and not by humans, and is therefore very precisely coordinated." In recent years, social media platforms have witnessed the rise of a new type of threat: coordinated state-sponsored trolls pushing a particular narrative on social media. This activity derives from humans rather than automated programs and is hence harder to tell apart from normal online chatter. Currently, there is a growing divide in the U.S., much of which is caused by political tribalism said to be fueled by foreign actors. This theory was confirmed when Twitter and Reddit released information about Russian and Iranian trolls, who had been making bold statements on their platforms. "Our goal was to take advantage of this precious ground truth dataset, analyzing it across several axes in order to better understand the behavior and the influence of these state-sponsored accounts," Savvas Zannettou, Ph.D. Candidate at Cyprus University of Technology, told TechXplore. "These insights are of paramount importance for developing robust solutions for detecting these actors, mitigating their impact on the web, and also for raising public awareness regarding this emerging form of information warfare." Visualization of top hashtags used by Russian trolls on Twitter. Credit: Zannettou et al. Zannettou and his colleagues analyzed the data released by Twitter and Reddit across several different axes in an attempt to understand how these state-sponsored trolls operate, how their posts evolve over time, who their targets are and how they influence the online community. Their analysis can be divided into three main themes. "First, we analyzed various characteristics to assess the behavior of these accounts over time," Zannettou said. "Second, we used models called word embeddings to understand the linguistics and use of language of these state-sponsored accounts. Finally, we leveraged a statistical framework known as Hawkes Processes to model and quantify the influence that these accounts had on other communities, such as the rest of Twitter, Reddit, 4chan and Gab." The analyses carried out by the researchers offer valuable insight on this widely discussed form of state-sponsored propaganda. Firstly, the researchers observed that the behavior of state-sponsored actors varied over time, making them increasingly harder to detect. "By analyzing their behavior over time and their reported locations, we were also able to shed light on these agents' targets," Zannettou said. "Specifically, we found that Russian trolls were mainly posing as users from Russia, the U.S. and the U.K., while Iranian trolls were mainly posing as users from France, Brazil, the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Turkey." Russian trolls were typically pro-Trump, while Iranian ones were against him. This suggests that regular users could be inadvertently caught in the middle of discussions between state-sponsored actors supporting conflicting ideologies. Moreover, the researchers observed that Russian-backed trolls were more sophisticated and subtle than Iranian-backed actors. The map shows the reported locations of Russian trolls (red circles) and Iranian trolls (green triangles) on Twitter. The size of the shapes denotes the number of tweets that were posted from the specific reported location. Credit: Zannettou et al. "This is evident from Russian trolls' dissemination of random and seemingly general purpose content, while Iranian trolls were more straightforward and focused on disseminating their propaganda," Zannettou explained. "Iranian campaigns are evidently motivated by real-world events. For example, we find that Iranians started communicating in French on November 2013, around the time in which France opposed to the nuclear talks. The same applies to Arabic after the attack on the Saudi Arabia embassy in Tehran, in January 2016." Zannettou and his colleagues observed that Russian trolls were more proficient in spreading information on most online communities, with the exception of 4chan's Politically Incorrect board, where Iranian actors were more influential. So far, their work has focused on the text content and metadata of tweets and online posts. Nonetheless, many state-sponsored accounts also share images and videos. "We now aim to analyze images and videos to understand what kind of information trolls disseminate in these formats and whether these were part of their propaganda," Zannettou said. "Finally, we aim to assess the influence that these accounts had to the rest of the web over time." Interactive graphs are available at trollspaper2018.github.io/trol #russians_graph.gexf and at trollspaper2018.github.io/trol #iranians_graph.gexf Explore further Propaganda-spewing Russian trolls act differently online from regular people More information: Who let the trolls out? Towards understanding state-sponsored trolls. arXiv:1811.03130 [cs.SI]. Who let the trolls out? Towards understanding state-sponsored trolls. arXiv:1811.03130 [cs.SI]. arxiv.org/abs/1811.03130 2018 Science X Network In this series on Luxembourg's Royals, RTL Today delves into the history of the Grand Ducal family. Princess Josephine-Charlotte of Belgium was the first of three children born to King Leopold III of Belgium and Princess Astrid of Sweden. She was born on October 1927 at the Royal Palace of Brussels. Her two younger brothers Baudouin and Albert would later go on to become Kings of Belgium. The young family settled down at Stuyvenberg Palace just outside Brussels. Princess Josephine-Charlotte was named after the French Empress Josephine de Beauharnais, Emperor Napoleon's first wife. While Princess Astrid was pregnant with her first child, she read a biography on the French royal whom she was distantly related to and decided to honour the Empress by naming her daughter after her. The young Princess' full name was Josephine-Charlotte Ingeborg Elisabeth Marie-Jose Marguerite Astrid, but at home, she was simply known as "Little Jo". Princess Josephine-Charlotte's godmother would later also become her mother-in-law: Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg. The two remained very close throughout their lives. Princess Astrid of Sweden in 1926, nine years before her untimely death. / Public Domain Tragedy struck early in Princess Josephine-Charlotte's life. King Leopold of Beligum and his young wife were driving along the narrow and winding roads close to their residence at Kussnacht am Rigi in Switzerland on 29 August 1935 when the King suddenly lost control of his vehicle. The car plunged into Lake Lucerne, killing the 29-year-old Queen. She left behind three young children, who were only 7, 5 and 1 at the time. Five years after her mother's untimely death, Princess Josephine-Charlotte attended boarding school for a while, but she was privately educated at the palace for the most part of her school years. After the Second World War, the Princess continued her studies in Switzerland and went on to study child psychology at the University of Geneva. Belgium under German occupation Just like its neighbouring country Luxembourg, Belgium remained neutral during the second world war. However, while the Grand Duchy didn't have a standing army at the time, the Belgian army had been preparing for the German invasion well ahead of time. Despite their preparation, the Belgian army was overwhelmed by the German Wehrmacht soon after they invaded the country on 10 May 1940. In a much criticised and arguably unconstitutional move, King Leopold decided to surrender himself, his family and his troops to the German invaders and remained in Belgium while his government fled to London. King Leopold III of Belgium in 1934. / Willem van de Poll - Nationaal Archief Belgian Prime Minister Huber Pierlot denounced the King's unilateral decision to surrender as unconstitutional on the grounds that he went against the wishes of the Belgian government. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill also had a clear opinion on the matter, writing in a letter to Belgian diplomat Andre de Staercke: "It seemed to me and many others that the King should have been guided by the advice of his ministers and should not have favoured a course which identified the capitulation of the Belgian Army with the submission of the Belgian State to Herr Hitler (...)". The Belgian royal family, including Princess Josephine-Charlotte, were now in German captivity. After the Allied forces landed in Normandy on 6 June 1944, the Princess and her family were removed from Belgium an placed under house-arrest in Saxony. The royal family was finally freed on 7 May 1945. Despite not having cooperated with the Germans, a lingering shadow hung over the King's reputation. Upon his return to Belgium, civil unrest broke out and King Leopold was ultimately forced to abdicate in favour of his eldest son Baudouin. From Princess of Belgium to Grand Duchess of Luxembourg On 9 April 1953, two years after her father's official abdication, Princess Josephine-Charlotte married Luxembourg's Hereditary Grand Duke Jean at the Luxembourg City Cathedral. After two consecutive world wars and hostile takeovers, the Grand Ducal wedding finally gave the country something to celebrate. It was one of the biggest festivities Luxembourg had seen to date. Hotels were booked out months in advance, to the point that the government had to ask Luxembourgers to open their homes to Belgian guests. Between 100,000 to 140,000 people lined the streets of Luxembourg City on the day of the wedding, over 60,000 from Belgium. Many royals from across the globe came to witness the union and the event was covered by more than 400 journalists. One newspaper jokingly described the event as "Luxembourg's greatest-ever peaceful invasion". After their wedding, the young couple went on a lengthy trip across Africa, after which settled down at Betzdorf Castle. During their 52-year marriage, the Grand Duke and the Grand Duchess had five children: Princess Marie-Astrid (1954), Prince Henri (1955), twins Prince Jean and Princess Margaretha (1957) and Prince Guillaume (1963). When her husband Jean ascended to the Luxembourgish throne following his mother's abdication on 12 November 1964, Josephine-Charlotte became Grand Duchess. She took her role very seriously and was involved in many charities. In 1964, Grand Duchess Josephine-Charlotte became an honorary president of the Luxembourg Red Cross and remained an active patron for the rest of her life. After Grand Duke Jean abdicated in favour of his eldest son Grand Duke Henri in 2000, Grand Duchess Josephine-Charlotte and her husband retired to Fischbach Castle. After a lengthy battle with lung cancer, the Grand Duchess passed away at her home on 10 January 2005, aged 77. Sarah Cames is a twentysomething freelance journalist with a keen interest in anything to do with politics, history and pop culture. Jokes that have made me laugh.... a compilation by Ivan Kaye More than 100 experts and policymakers participated in a conference hosted by Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper in the southern city of Can Tho on Thursday to discuss potential initiatives to combat currents risks faced in the development of the Mekong Delta region as well as ideas to help the area develop sustainably. The event, Toward sustainable development of the Mekong Delta, was held on November 22, one year after Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc signed Resolution No.120 on sustainable development for the Mekong Delta as part of an effort to cope with climate change in the region. The resolution sets a vision that over the next 82 years, by 2100, the Mekong Delta will sustainably, safely, and prosperously develop on the foundations of a high-quality agriculture focused economy bolstered by service offerings, ecological tourism, and industry, particularly the processing industry. At Thursdays conference, sponsored by Ton Dong A Corporation, a leading coated steel producer in Vietnam, pundits discussed possible measures to materialize the goals and visions of Resolution 120. Solutions for current risks Once known as the rice bowl of Vietnam, the Mekong Delta, home to more than 17 million people, now faces three major issues unsustainable flood management, unsustainable land use, and a lack of proper coastal zoning, experts pointed out at the event. The unsustainable land use, attributed to poor groundwater and sediment management, has resulted in severe subsidence throughout the region, whereas the lack of proper coastal zoning has made the entire area more vulnerable to severe storms and global warming, the pundits elaborated. Andrew Wyatt, Mekong Delta program manager for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), underlined that these risks are exacerbated by climate change and sea-level rise. Wyatt cited a 2016 study by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as a warning that the Mekong Delta is expected to be several meters under sea level at some point in the next few decades. The subsidence rate in such Mekong Delta provinces as Bac Lieu and Kien Giang, where the unsustainable extraction of groundwater is practiced by shrimp farms built along the local coastline, has reached as high as 2.5 cm per year. Other participants at the conference agreed with Wyatt that authorities should consider having local farmers adopt sustainable and alternative livelihood options to mitigate flood disasters. Alternative livelihood is a term referring to interventions that aim to reduce the prevalence of activities deemed as harmful to the environment by substituting them with lower impact livelihood activities that provide at least equivalent benefits. In the case of the Mekong Delta, instead of doing the third rice crop of the year, it was suggested that farmers change their methods and begin cultivating floating rice crops or make use of their rice area to grow lotus for tourism purpose, which trap more sediments left behind by annual floods. Guests examine successful agriculture models on display at the conference in Can Tho, southern Vietnam, on November 22, 2018. Photo: Tuoi Tre Data from a study released by IUNC show that intensive shrimp farming is less sustainable in terms of trapping sediment, as it keeps 14.34 cm of sediment per year, not to mention its contribution to subsidence. On the other hand, the alternative model - mangrove-shrimp farm - is more sustainable as it provides organic shrimps and traps 25.13cm of sediment a year. If the question is how to balance between the income and the long-term future of the Mekong, the answer is clear, Wyatt said. We need to move unsustainable intensive shrimp farming away from the coast and replace it with integrated mangrove-shrimp systems for coastal protection, Wyatt recommended. This will reduce ground water pumping and subsidence and help maintain elevations that can respond to sea-level rises by trapping sediments. Coastal protection planning needs to move away from the current high risk line of defense approach, which means using dykes for anti-flooding, to a more robust zone of defense, which involves using integrated mangrove-shrimp systems combined with a 500m strictly protected zone. Sustainable future to be seen All of the participants agree that one year after the signing of Resolution 120, it is time for dialogue and discussion to proactively implement the resolution. Le Minh Hoan, Secretary of the Party Committee of Dong Thap Province, suggested that each of the 13 cities and provinces in the Delta should be more active in taking advantage of all opportunities within the authorized capacity to implement Resolution 120. Currently, farmers, entrepreneurs, business in the Delta have applied their own creative initiatives to create new products and apply international standards to add more value totheir produce, but these examples are few and far between. These are only a few examples of success stories and and we need to utilize their ideas and resources to create a bigger motivation for all involved provinces and cities to be able to bring in a huge transformation for the Mekong Delta, Hoan said. Luong Minh Quyet, director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Soc Trang, said while he agreed that there should be a more proactive approach to realize Resolution 120, it is more important to have a leader to lead all involved parties on the path to resolving the issue. Prof. Ha Thanh Toan, rector of Can Tho University, proudly introduced the results from his research and cooperation with farmers in the Delta. He promised that Can Tho university will continue to carry more research as well as transfer its research results to the farmers to help them transform their lives. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Vietnams Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has approved a casino to be included in the list of permitted facilities at a resort complex on Phu Quoc Island, off the southern province of Kien Giang, as well as a pilot scheme to allow Vietnamese nationals to gamble at the resort. The casino, part of an integrated resort complex featuring ecotourism offerings, accommodation, commercial businesses, and a convention center, will be the first of its kind on the famed tourist island, Huynh Vinh lac, chief of the secretariat of the Kien Giang administration, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Wednesday afternoon. The resort megaproject, spanning across the islands Cua Can, Ham Ninh and Ganh Dau communes, is scheduled to open to the public in 2021. With the addition of the casino, the total investment needed for the complex, developed by Phu Quoc Investment and Tourism Development JSC, will rise to VND50 trillion (US$2.15 billion). The casino will be permitted to serve Vietnamese customers under a three-year pilot program effective from the day the project receives its casino operation license. If everything goes as planned, the Phu Quoc casino will become the countrys first sanctioned gambling facility where Vietnamese citizens are allowed entry. Currently, Vietnamese law only permits foreign players to enter casinos. The casino business at the Phu Quoc resort complex is required to be in line with a decree on casino businesses issued in January 2017. Specifically, Vietnamese people who wish to enter and gamble in a casino must least 21 years of age, and have full capacity for civil acts in accordance with the provisions of Vietnamese law. Vietnamese customers are also expected to prove a regular income of VND10 million ($430) or more per month to play at the casino. Players may only use Vietnamese dong to convert into the gambling currency and vice versa. All entrance fees collected the casino shall be left to the locality for social welfare, serving the community, and ensuring security and social order under the guidance of the Ministry of Finance. The Prime Minister also assigned the Kien Giang administration and relevant ministries and agencies to closely monitor the business activities of the casino, while ensuring social order and safety and security and defense in the locality. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! VinTaTa, an in-house animation studio owned by Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup, has announced that its first-ever original animated series, Monta trong dai ngan ha ky cuc (Monta in the Bizarre Galaxy), would be aired on YouTube from this weekend. The first four episodes of the series, running five minutes each, will be aired at 12:00 pm, 4:00 pm, 6:00 pm, and 8:00 pm on Sunday. Subsequent episodes will be broadcast on the video-sharing site every Thursday and Sunday, at 8:00 pm and 6:00 pm, respectively, VinTaTa said in a statement. An audio-only version of the series original theme song Hey Monta! will be released on Saturday, with a follow-up music video (MV) being made available on YouTube the next day. A poster for Monta in the Bizarre Galaxy. Photo: VinTaTa Monta in the Bizarre Galaxy revolves around the titular character Monta a Delacours langur and his adventures across the universe with a ragtag group of unique friends. Considered one of the worlds most endangered primates, the Delacours langur is exclusively endemic to northern Vietnam. The script for Monta in the Bizarre Galaxy was written by a team of four Vietnamese who won a screenwriting contest hosted by VinTaTa in 2017. The screenplay was further developed by U.S. screenwriter Jeffrey Scott, who has been nominated five times and won three Daytime Emmy Awards for Best Animated Series. VinTaTa director Nguyen Phi Phi Anh said artists at the animation studio, founded in 2016, had spent a year piecing together different elements to craft a captivating storyline with breakthrough visual effects for a Vietnamese animation. We hope that the series, with its bizarre ideas and inventions, will satisfy even the most creative minds of children and be a favorite show for every Vietnamese family, Anh said. A screenshot taken from Monta in the Bizarre Galaxy. Photo: VinTaTa Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! About Me William Kelly I am a freelance writer, journalist and historian whose major interests are music and history, with a special emphasis on the assassination of President Kennedy. View my complete profile Blog Archive Check out news you should not miss today, November 23: Politics -- A high-ranking military delegation of Vietnam led by Sen. Lieut. Gen. Phan Van Giang, Chief of the General Staff of the Vietnam Peoples Army and Deputy Minister of National Defence, on Thursday arrived in Bangkok to begin a four-day official visit to Thailand at the invitation of Gen. Pornpipat Benyasri, Chief of Defence Forces of the Royal Thai Armed Forces. -- Vietnam resolutely opposes Chinas installation of a new structure in Bong Bay (Bombay) Reef in Vietnams Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago and demands China to immediately end the operation and not conduct similar actions, said the foreign ministrys vice spokesperson Nguyen Phuong Tra in response to reporters questions at the ministrys regular press conference in Hanoi on Thursday. Society -- One was killed and many others were injured as a scaffold at a house construction on Ton That Tung Street in Ho Chi Minh Citys District 1 gave way on Thursday night. -- Police in Con Cuong District in the north-central province of Nghe An on Thursday said they are detaining three child trafficking suspects, who allegedly lured a woman in Ky Son District to sell her 20-day-old baby to them for VND40 million (US$1,711) and planned to give the baby to a female buyer a few days ago. -- The first sod was turned on Thursday on Tasco Cu Chi, a VND1,000 billion ($42.7 million)solid waste treatment and processing plant which will apply technology to convert waste into electricity, in Cu Chi District, Ho Chi Minh City. Business -- More than 1,500 enterprises from 35 provinces and cities across Vietnam on Thursday showcased their products at over 500 booths at a forum held in the southern province of Ben Tre to connect goods supply - demand between Ho Chi Minh City and provinces and cities in the countrys southeast and southwest regions. Education -- Tuoi Tre (Youth) Newspaper on Thursday handed over scholarships worth more than VND800 million ($34,233 ) to 166 poor students at vocational schools in 13 Mekong Delta provinces as part of the newspapers charity program titled Tiep suc den truong (Giving Strength to Students) to support underprivileged Vietnamese students to go to school. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A passport-less foreign passenger finally left Vietnam on Tuesday after being trapped at one of its major airports for almost two months. The foreigner departed from the Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City on a Turkish Airlines plane heading to Lagos, Nigeria, according to a dispatch Tuoi Tre News obtained from the airdromes police unit. The man was denied entry to Vietnam on September 27 and has since been detained at the Ho Chi Minh City airport. His departure on Tuesday was the result of an arrangement between Vietnamese police, immigration agency and airport authorities, and Turkish Airlines. The flyer had a miraculous history of going through many airport passport checks with a fake passport. On August 18, he entered Vietnam via Tan Son Nhat on a flight from Indonesia. On September 2, he left Ho Chi Minh City boarding an AirAsia plane to Osaka, with a transit in Bangkok. In the Japanese city his good luck ended when local authorities found him using a counterfeit passport and seized it. On September 26, he was sent back to Vietnam on the same flight route he had taken to reach Osaka. The following day he arrived at Tan Son Nhat airport but was not allowed to enter Vietnam as he carried no passport and valid international travel documents. He had since used the terminal as his temporary home up until November 20. During this period, the man was placed under observation by the airport while AirAsia had to pay the cost for this monitoring as well as his meal expenses. While the man initially insisted his name is Masena Bokang Jon, the Vietnamese immigration department pressed him into revealing his real identity as Otote Endurance, a Nigerian born in 1986, according to the same document obtained by Tuoi Tre News. Endurance, who also claimed to have stomach cancer, used a Lesotho passport to enter South Africa, Nigeria, eSwatini, Zimbabwe, Indonesia and Vietnam. A Lesotho diplomat based in Malaysia said last month the passport he had owned actually belongs to a female citizen of the South African territory. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Ho Chi Minh City authorities will start implementing a set of regulations requiring local residents to classify their garbage on Saturday, in a bid to reduce the harmful effects of household waste on the environment. The municipal Peoples Committee has recently issued Decision No. 44 on the classification of solid waste in each household. The rules will be phased in before competent authorities begin fining violators. According to the regulations, each family is required to categorize their garbage into three groups, namely biodegradable organic waste, waste that can be reused and recycled, and others. Biodegradable organic waste includes leftover food, leaves, vegetables, tubers, fruits, and carcasses, which should be contained in white, green, or blue bags. Waste made of paper, plastic, metal, rubber, and glass is considered reusable and recyclable. This group of garbage, along with the third group, should be kept in bags whose color is different from white, green, and blue. A resident in District 1 classifies her household waste. Photo: Tuoi Tre Authorities also encourage local residents to mark their rubbish with stickers or texts. Garbage collectors are scheduled to fetch biodegradable organic waste on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday and the other two groups of rubbish on the remaining days of the week. Following a certain period, those who fail to comply with the regulations are expected to be penalized. According to an official from the municipal Department of Natural Resources and Environment, the fines range from VND15 million (US$642) to VND20 million ($856), which are in line with Decree No. 155 on penalties for environment-related violations. Aside from the garbage sorting efforts, the municipal administration will also press ahead with a plan to replace vehicles in charge of collecting and transporting rubbish with new and enhanced ones from now to November 2019. A recycle bin in a public park has separate compartments to contain different types of trash. Photo: Tuoi Tre Ben Nghe Ward in District 1 is among a few neighborhoods in Ho Chi Minh City where citizens have been advised to classify their trash over the past years. Most households in the ward have agreed to follow the direction so far, said Vo Quoc Hung, vice-chairman of the local administration. Similarly, authorities in Phuoc Binh Ward, District 9, have been providing residents with eco-friendly bags to contain their garbage in the past year. The bags are labeled with different stickers to guide the locals to categorize their household waste, deputy chairwoman Bui Thu Tram said, adding that the plan has proven effective. Those who consistently follow the rules are publicly commended to set examples to other residents in the ward, Tram added. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Local residents believe that projects developed atop several mountains in Nha Trang, a beach city in the south-central Vietnamese province of Khanh Hoa, are behind recent deadly landslides that affected the residential areas below. At least 18 people were killed and several remain missing after downpours triggered mudslides in multiple areas across the city last weekend. Officials said most of the victims were buried uder massive piles of mud and rocks which fell down the mountains, and rescue efforts had been severely impeded by the difficult terrain. Residents of Thanh Phat village, Phuoc Dong Commune, comprised the majority of the victims. The houses of Thanh Phat Village are situated at the foot of the mountain. Photo: Tuoi Tre The locality was establish in the early 2000s with more than 300 houses at the foot of a mountain, Nguyen Le Van, a 58-year-old resident stated, adding that this is the first tragedy of this type to hit the area. Van and his neighbors believed that a villa complex project being carried out on the mountaintop is responsible for the fatal landslide. The project Van was referring to is the Panorama Villas, or the Haborizon Nha Trang, which is in development by Ho Chi Minh City-based The Gioi Xanh Investment and Construction Company. Aside from Thanh Phat, Thanh Dat village is also situated at the foot of the same mountain where the project is being developed. The aftermath of the landslide that was caused after the swimming pool of Hoang Phu project broke in Vinh Hoa Ward, Nha Trang City. Photo: Tuoi Tre The projects environmental impact assessment report was previously approved by the Khanh Hoa Peoples Committee. The developer has so far only been permitted to perform land reclamation to prepare for the construction. According a representative of The Gioi Xanh, the project is currently suspended in order to apply landslide prevention measures. The mudslide that hit Thanh Phat village was outside of the project area, the representative added. An aerial photo of the landslide aftermath in Vinh Hoa Ward. Photo: Tuoi Tre Meanwhile, at the Tay Hoa residential area in Vinh Hoa Ward, where a rockslide previously killed four family members and destroyed nine homes, luxury housing project Hoang Phu is also underway on top of a nearby mountain. Thanh Chau Company, the projects developer, had a swimming pool dug up at the mountains edge about a week prior to the disaster. On the day of the incident, the pool broke, releasing large amount of water, rock, onto the houses below. The Khanh Hoa Department of Police confirmed on Wednesday they are working with the provincial Department of Construction to examine the Hoang Phu project. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A police investigation has revealed that the tanker truck that caused a deadly fire after a crash in the southern Vietnamese province of Binh Phuoc on Thursday was traveling at nearly 100km per hour prior to the accident. Data from the trucks black box indicated that the vehicle, whose license plate number is 93N-2689, was running at 96km per hour when it crashed. Meanwhile, the section of National Highway 13 in Minh Hung Commune, Chon Thanh District, Binh Phuoc, where the accident occurred, only permits a maximum speed of 60km an hour. The road section runs through a residential area and includes a median strip. Police officers also discovered that the truck had seriously violated the speed limit multiple times during the hour before the deadly accident. At 3:39 am, the truck reached a speed of 100km per hour. At 3:45 am, it hit 101km an hour before taking a short break on the side of the road. The vehicle resumed its journey and continued traveling at 80km per hour at 4:31 am. The speed gradually rose to 85, 93, and 96km per hour when it crashed at 4:33 am. The tanker rear-ended a three-wheeled cargo motorcycle, according to eyewitnesses, before crossing the median strip to the other side of the street. It continued down the sidewalk and eventually rammed into a medium voltage power pole. The truck then overturned, spilling petrol onto the street which erupted in flames that quickly engulfed a series of houses along the highway. Six people died on the spot, while dozens of others were injured and the tanker was completely destroyed. About 19 houses were burned. The driver of the fuel truck suffered severe burns and is now in intensive care at Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Politicians from Australia have highly appreciated what Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper has done to cope with fake news in its coverage over the course of the papers history. The issue of misinformation was discussed by Tuoi Tre leaders and a delegation from the Australian Political Exchange Council in Ho Chi Minh City on Friday. The group of politicians visited the headquarters of the newspaper as part of their exchange program to get an insight into Vietnam and its culture and political system. The delegation, led by the lawmaker Elisapeta Kikkert, raised a question about fake news amid its ubiquity and how Tuoi Tre copes with the issue. Tuoi Tre staff and the Australian Political Exchange Council delegation pose for a picture at the newspaper's head office in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, November 23, 2018. Photo: Tuyet Kieu The newspaper is acutely aware of this kind of misinformation and always tries to fight it, Le The Chu, editor-in-chief of Tuoi Tre, said. Tuoi Tre sets a very high standard for its reporters in terms of coverage, Chu asserted. We want to be an institution of reference where reports are verified and confirmed. The editor-in-chief added that any Tuoi Tre story would be written with information provided by many sides in order to make sure it is accurate and balanced. The Australian Political Exchange Council delegates lauded what Tuoi Tre has done when it comes to coverage and battling fake news. Youve done a serious job, Kikkert said. The council was also briefed on the history of the newspaper, its bureaus, staff, social responsibility and integrated newsroom a modern model where content is smoothly distributed across Tuoi Tres platforms. Nguyen Truong Uy (R), Tuoi Tre's deputy general managing editor, briefs the Australian Political Exchange Council delegation on how the newspaper's integrated newsroom works, during their visit on November 23, 2018. Photo: Tuyet Kieu On behalf of the Australian Political Exchange Council delegation, Kikkert thanked Tuoi Tre for hosting them and hoped for more chances to visit the newspaper and Vietnam again. Tuoi Tre hosted another Australian Political Exchange Council delegation in 2015. The council develops young Australian political leaders by providing opportunities to gain insights into the political systems and cultures of countries with which it has established exchange programs, according to its website. It also offers delegates from participating countries a chance to learn about Australia and its political system and build enduring networks between young political leaders, the website reads. The councils counterpart countries include China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, the Philippines, the U.S., Vietnam and Thailand. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A poor woman from north-central Vietnam had been persuaded by three local residents to sell her infant daughter, but police eventually discovered the illegal trade and rescued the days-old baby. The three people who lured the mother, a 25-year-old referred to only as L., into selling her 20-day-old daughter are being detained by police in the Vietnam-Laos border area of Nghe An Province on charges of human trafficking. On November 11, police pulled over a long-haul bus heading from Nghe An to Hanoi for a check, having received a tip-off about a crying baby being transported aboard the vehicle. Cut Thi Tha, the woman holding the child, was brought to a police station for questioning. Tha confessed that together with two other people in the province, she persuaded L. to sell her infant to a woman for VND40 million ($1,720) and the mother agreed. The three people who convinced the mother to sell her infant. Photo: Tuoi Tre The girl experienced a medical check before she was carried to the buyer, who would pay for the deal after receiving the child. One-fifth of the sum would go to Tha and her two accomplices. Police officers gave the girl back to the mother and required her to keep bringing her up. A local leader said L. lives in penury and the mother sold the infant presumably because of thinking she was unable to raise this fourth child of the family, while her husband was working far away. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! The 2018 AACTA Awards are now less than 2 weeks away, hosted by Stephen Curry. Today AACTAs have announced Vance Joy and Katie Noonan as performers with presenters including Rebecca Gibney, Marta Dusseldorp, Jack Thompson and Kath & Kim stars Gina Riley, Jane Turner and Magda Szubanski. Im really looking forward to performing at the AACTA Awards in a couple of weeks, said Vance Joy. Ive never been to the event, so Im stoked to be asked to perform and attend the Awards. The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) today announced the star-studded line-up of presenters and musical acts set for the 2018 AACTA Awards Ceremony presented by Foxtel on Wednesday 5 December. Having just wrapped up his massive 8-month, 83-date Nation of Two world tour, Vance Joy will perform live on the AACTA Awards stage in Sydney. Boasting a total 24 platinum accolades to his name, Vance Joys Nation of Two album has stayed in the ARIA Top 50 since its release in February earlier this year. He was also just named as the main support for P!NKs European tour in 2019. Guests and telecast viewers will also experience a special In Memoriam performance from seven-time platinum selling and five-time ARIA Award winner Katie Noonan. Katie, who has been named one of the greatest Australian singers of all time by the Herald Sun, recently released the acclaimed album Gratitude and Grief, collaboration album with poet and cartoonist Michael Leunig. Host Stephen Curry will be joined by an incredible line-up of top Australian film and television talent who will take to the stage to present, including: Rebecca Gibney, Marta Dusseldorp, Jack Thompson, Sigrid Thornton, Rodger Corser, Erik Thomson, Julia Zemiro, Shane Jacobson, Fred Schepisi, Nazeem Hussain and Kat Stewart, as well as Kath & Kims Gina Riley, Jane Turner and Magda Szubanski. Oscar, BAFTA, Emmy and AACTA Award winner Nicole Kidman will attend the Ceremony alongside a number of fellow nominees, including: Simon Baker, Deborah Mailman, Bruce Beresford, Nash Edgerton, Celia Pacquola, Aaron Pedersen, Scott Ryan, Tina Bursill, Wayne Blair, Hazem Shammas, Angourie Rice, Leah Purcell and Tom Gleeson. Another hearing on the Craig McLachlan defamation case vs ABC, Fairfax and Christie Whelan Browne took place in the NSW Supreme Court yesterday. According to media reports three women have now come forward with complaints during the filming of The Doctor Blake Mysteries. The new complainants have been added, one for the 2013 season, one for the 2014 season, and one for the 2015 season,McLachlans barrister Matthew Richardson told the court. The conduct is mostly verbal, there is one unwanted kiss and one instance of inappropriate touching. He said defence documents include allegation that McLachlan stuck a stiletto into Molly Meldrum. This is recounted in Mr Meldrums own memoir, Richardson added. One complaint from 28 years ago was alleged to have happened on live television in the United Kingdom, but he has not seen nor been given a copy of the segment. Two more historical allegations were too general, or from too long ago, and unrelated to the original complaints, he said. To plead a general allegation so you can pretty much run any particular under the sun, really its a royal commission into the plaintiff, he said. Earlier this year producers December Media ordered an investigation into conduct during The Doctor Blake Mysteries final season (2017). There were findings the set could be sexual, lewd, bawdy, Benny-Hill-esque and crude, but they cleared McLachlan of any misconduct. Source: ABC Canadian drama Frontier which stars Jason Momoa (Game of Thrones, Stargate Atlantis) as an outlaw campaigning to halt the Hudsons Bay Companys monopoly on the fur trade, returns to Netflix for its third season. The series is an action-packed adventure drama following the chaotic and violent struggle to control wealth and power in the North American fur trade in the late 18th century. Told from multiple perspectives, the series takes place in a world where business negotiations might be resolved with close-quarter hatchet fights, and where delicate relations between Native tribes and Europeans can spark bloody conflicts. Friday November 23 on Netflix. While it isnt a first, there arent too many dramas that can survive the loss of their leading star and forge a new path. But thanks to Nadine Garner and producer George Adams thats just what The Blake Mysteries is undertaking following the unfortunate absence of Craig McLachlan. Housekeeper Jean, who was always wise counsel to Doctor Lucien Blake, married her employer in the final episode on ABC. As fate would have it, it was just in the nick of time. Now in its new home on Seven, The Blake Mysteries is a telemovie (with commercial breaks) but still in the world of Ballarat. Its now 1963, Kennedy has just been shot and two years after his wedding Dr. Lucien Blake went missing, and has not been seen for 8 months. The likelihood of him coming back is reflects Chief Supt. Matthew Lawson (Joel Toebeck). Indeed Matthew has moved in as a housemate of Jeans, because mystery characters need sounding boards for their wild theories, right? In this opening chapter (only one of which is greenlit by Seven) there are three murders and Jean thrusts herself into helping solve them. If that sounds unlikely, remember that the genre loves instant private eyes whether as novelists (Murder She Wrote), psychics (Medium), illusionists (The Mentalist) or mathematicians (Numb3rs). Why not a plucky housekeeper? For the most part, the accommodating Matthew facilitates her nosy assistance until about 40 minutes in when he orders, Jean youve been a tremendous help, but I think its time you left things to us. Never one to take no for an answer, Jean will protest. I can do this. I know this town better than anyone, she insists. True enough. But this is a show that needs a police surgeon too, requiring Dr. Alice Harvey (Belinda McClory) to step up for crime scene action as well as autopsies. Pairing Jean and Alice together in scenes is a challenge to the 1960s male authorities (theres a nice reference to the strength of widow Jackie Kennedy) if ironically doubling as a response to #metoo itself There are also some fine new additions in the form of a smiling Constable Peter Crowe (Joshua Orpin) and local girl Amy Parks (Emma Annand). The cast also features Tom Wren, Gyton Grantley, Alan Brough, Julie Nihill & David Whitely. But it is Nadine Garner who makes this work. In the hands of veteran director Ian Barry she commits to this with such conviction that you can forgive the absence of McLachlan, at least for a first instalment. Garner keeps Jean as whimsical and driven, and frankly it should never have taken such circumstance for her to rightfully own top billing on a television drama. The production values from December Media are again top-notch with wonderful vintage costumes, cars, Ballarat locations and swinging 60s hairdos. If I have any quibble it is that it is too peculiar that the inquisitive Jean does not head off in search of answers for her missing husband. There are questions there we would all like answered. Given the unusual context to this drama offering, The Blake Mysteries represents a leap of faith by everybody still involved. Will the die-hard fan-base accept this new world and will Seven back itself for more? With Nadine Garner in the box seat youd be crazy not to. The Blake Mysteries airs 8:30pm Friday on Seven. Last night Nine finally held its Upfronts presentation to media in Perth, with a local announcement of more content from The Block featuring 2017 contestants Ronnie & Georgia. Short-form web series Quick Room Flips with Ronnie & Georgia will feature in The Block 365, year-round Block content on the shows website and social channels. It was hunting for WA properties some months ago. The content on The Block 365 will be made-for-purpose, short-form video, said Lizzie Young, Nines Group Content Strategy Director. Quick Room Flips will launch as an eight-part video series with Ronnie and Georgia battling the clock and their budget to deliver a covetable room each week, inspiring the audience with ideas, tips and tricks to transform their own space. For advertisers we know The Block is a property that delivers, year in, year out, and The Block 365 is an extension of that 365 days a year. It is another way that brands can connect with a passionate and highly engaged audience in the home renovation space. We could not be more excited to have Perth locals Ronnie and Georgie getting their own short-form video series on The Block 365 and announce this initiative at the Nine Perth Upfront, said Clive Bingwa, Managing Director and Sales Director Nine Perth. 2018 has been another big year for Nine Perth. We are continuing to invest locally and this is reflected in the audience growth in both our six oclock news bulletin and also our overall TV prime-time schedule. We are also investing more broadly and demonstrating our commitment to the city, for example by securing both Perths Australia Day Skyworks and the Hopman Cup. The content will launch in early 2019. Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar at an October Brexit preparedness event. Pic: Reuters A senior Bank of England official recently warned that UK businesses dont really know how to prepare for a no-deal Brexit. Even though Britain is on the cusp of sealing a Brexit deal, the risk of no-deal scenario is still a possible reality, as the agreement needs to go through parliament. At the moment, businesses only have the vaguely worded technical notices from the UKs Brexit department as resources to go on. Meanwhile, Irelands state agencies are in an advanced stage of helping the country, whose economy the International Monetary Fund says could be impacted just as much as the UKs, prepare for every kind of outcome. On Friday, for instance, Irelands foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney will open a packed-out Getting Ireland Brexit Ready workshop, the fifth such event organised by his department. Leaders from semi-state agencies like Enterprise Ireland, which supports export-driven Irish businesses, and Bord Bia, which focuses on the countrys food and drink industry, are among the regular panellists at these workshops. READ MORE: Prospect of no-deal Brexit shapes Irelands 2019 budget Nearly everything that we do now is defined by Brexit, Shane Hamill, the overseas trade manager of Bord Bia, told Yahoo Finance UK. In 2017, some 35%, or 4.4bn (3.9bn, $4.9bn), of the industrys exports were to the UK. In March 2017, before prime minister Theresa May had even triggered the Article 50 departure process from the European Union, Bord Bia launched its Brexit Barometer survey. This, Hamill said, was to cut through the noise and speculation around Brexit and allowed the agency to develop an evidence-based preparedness strategy for the entire industry. And so the agency launched a series of workshops aiming to help its clients identify the practical steps they could take to insulate themselves from Brexit impacts. It released a supply chain guide and a new database of reliable distributors and logistics partners in export markets, encouraging firms to diversify away from the UK. Story continues READ MORE: Brexit fears send Irish business confidence to lowest level since 2012 While the second iteration of the survey, in March 2018, found that around 75% of the companies it supports were making plans or taking action related to Brexit, it also started to get more specific. Only a third of businesses felt highly or moderately confident about managing their post-Brexit customs processes, and only half of respondents were able to identify the right tariff classifications for their products. So we launched a customs and tariffs training programme, Hamill said. Companies get eight hours of group training and two hours of one-to-one mentoring. Meanwhile, dozens of companies have participated in its currency-risk training programme. While Hamill said that Bord Bia remains committed to the UK market, Brexit also prompted the agency to launch its largest-ever market diversification exercise. It has expanded its overseas headcount, and will have staff for the first time in Japan, North Africa and West Africa. From even the week before the referendum in June 2016, weve been telling our clients to prepare for a no-deal Brexit, hard Brexit, cliff-edge Brexitwhatever you want to call it, Jonathan McMillan, the head of Enterprise Irelands Brexit unit, told Yahoo Finance UK. READ MORE: Irish government criticised for self-congratulations on Brexit deal One of its early innovations was a scorecard that any company can use to assess how prepared it is for Brexit. And its clients can apply for 5,000 (4,400) Be Prepared grantsmoney that can be put towards Brexit-related consultancy and travel. And, like Bord Bia, it runs workshops for its clients. We call it no-regret planning, he said. And while Enterprise Irelands message remains steadfast no matter what the prevailing mood, the media ups and downs do have a tendency to shift the focus of its clients, particularly if theres a lot of talk about no-deal scenarios. Thats when the level of activity on our Brexit website goes through the roof, McMillan said. That said, there is definitely no Brexit fatigue, he insisted. We have to bring in extra seating and therere often people standing at our workshops. Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar and foreign minister Simon Coveney interviewed at an October summit. Pic: Reuters. Nor is there evidence of Brexit fatigue at the big Brexit Ready conferences, which tend to be held in upmarket conference centres. The venue for the last one, held in October in Dublin, had to be moved to the citys largest convention centre so that it could cater for the hundreds of businesses who wanted to attend. READ MORE: Varadkar says EU and UK would need a no-deal Brexit deal It was opened with an at-times-jovial joint interview of prime minister Leo Varadkar and Coveney, who said then they were optimistic that the European Union would bash out a deal with the UK. But Ireland is not under any illusions about the complexity of Brexit, a spokesperson for the Irish foreign ministry told Yahoo Finance UK on Thursday. We dont have all the answers but there are steps businesses can be taking now, and there are state supports to pay for those steps. That is what these seminars are about. Italian flag, Italian politics, Italy, Janus Henderson, European Union, Italexit Italy is highly unlikely to leave either the European Union, or the euro currency, according to Janus Hendersons Ollie Beckett. In fact, the Italian constitution makes such a scenario virtually impossible - but the fear of an Italexit is creating investment opportunities. Italys slightly strange coalition government of populist parties from both the left, in Five-Star, and the right, in Lega Nord, has led to repeated clashes with the EU. Last month, the European Commission rejected Italys Budget proposals and told the Government to come back with a revised plan that was in line with EU rules. That plan, which centred around high spending and tax cuts, still did not satisfy the EU. Italys debt currently stands at 130% of GDP, proportionally second only to Greece, which has only recently escaped its long bailout programme. Meanwhile, its deficit is set to stand at 2.4% of GDP for the next three years. Markets in Italy have been running scared since May, with yields on its 10-year Government bond having climbed from around 1.75% to 3.5% today. The FTSE MIB, Italys blue-chip stock market index, is down 24% in that period. On Wednesday, the European Commission said it would take action against Italys Government which could see it impose a fine on the country. With what the Italian Government has put on the table, we see a risk of the country sleepwalking into instability, said Valdis Dombrovskis, vice president of the European Commission. Fears that abounded for a while now that Italy would seek to leave either the European Union or the euro have only been heightened. However, markets are currently pricing in an eventual compromise between both sides. Indeed, the 10-year bond yield eased 3% yesterday, while the stock market ticked up 0.5% on news the Italian Government would be open to compromise. Beckett, manager of the TR European Growth Trust (TRG), thinks that is possible, but says the tone of the Governments rhetoric needs to change, and the only way that will happen is if their popularity starts to wane in the polls. Story continues He says: The problem is the other parties in Italy are a shambles. Thats why at the moment they are able to be quite confrontational. Italexit is Highly Unlikely Confrontational rhetoric aside, Italexit is highly unlikely to happen. In fact, Beckett says, theres no way under the Italian constitution currently that Italy can leave the European Union theres no method to even get there. Article 75 of the constitution forbids referendums on anything related to international treaties. But Beckett does not think there is any support within Italy for leaving the EU, anyway. Even Five-Star have realised that and very much backed away from that, he notes. Beckett also thinks the fact that Italy is now the third-biggest contributor to the EU means theres likely to be a bit of give and take from the EUs side, particularly with the UK leaving, they need the Italian money. On the investment side, clearly the top-down noise is not good and investors are just dumping anything in Italy. But he sees this as an opportunity to go against the crowd and pick up some bargains in his European small-cap universe. Amongst those opportunities is a play on the Italian Governments weak financial position, Banca Farmafactoring (BFF). The 763 million company offers factoring of receivables services for businesses that are awaiting payment from the Italian Government. While these companies are waiting for those payments, they will sell their accounts receivables to a third party Banca Farmafactoring at a discount in order to meet their immediate cash needs. The firm currently pays a double-digit yield. The risk on this stock, if you like, is that the Italian Government start paying much quicker. I dont want to be flippant, but thats a risk Im willing to take, says Beckett. Other more traditional banking institutions he likes includes Credito Emiliano (CE), which he says is considered to be the best-run bank in the country. It is conservatively run and offers services to customers in Reggio-Emilia, which is a wealthy region. FinecoBank (FBK) is a top 10 holding in the trust and Beckett says its how you would design a bank today if I gave you a blank piece of paper online-only and with up-to-date IT systems and infrastructure. That contrasts with most of the large Italian banks. Theyve all got the beautiful branches throughout Italy that nobody wants to go in and they have IT systems that are completely outdated. Fineco continues to gain assets and new customers. It has recently moved into Ireland and plans on launching in the UK, targeting Italian expats. Away from the banks, Beckett also likes a micro-cap firm called Indel (INDB), which services the hospitality industry, supplying mini-bars for cruise ships liners and refrigerators for trucks. Valuations are "Mad" But its not only in Italy where Beckett is seeing opportunities in the European smaller companies space. The trust has recently upped its gearing significantly to 14%. It may have started slightly too early, although it hasnt impacted performance, Beckett says he thinks it is the right thing to do. Sentiment is unbelievably negative, the likelihood of a trade deal is reasonable and, in this scenario as a closed-end vehicle, I think we have to use that opportunity to pick up one or two names which are looking very cheap. Its not a top-down call; its very much a bottom-up call. Individual stocks look cheap and the trust gives us the capability of picking those up when open-ended funds are clearly having to run away because theyre having outflows. The portfolio currently consists of 144 companies, with the top 10 accounting for around 17% and the two largest holdings, Van Lanschot Kempen (VLK) and GTT (GTT), at 2.5% and 2% respectively. But that could all change, soon; the portfolio could become more concentrated. Now I think there are one or two names that are so significantly undervalued that it might be right for us to make some bigger stock calls, says Beckett. To move to more 3% or 4% weights in certain stocks because I just think the valuations are plain mad. In fact, hes been topping up positions in some of his largest holdings in recent weeks. These include French high-voltage cable maker Nexans (NEX), which has been one of the worst performers in the fund this year. A number of problems like losing its chief executive without explanation of why he left, and delays on a few projects have seen the stock halve in the year-to-date. Youve reached a point where youve got a company on the wrong price. Youve reached a point where I dont care about the next quarter, Beckett says, focusing on the long game. He adds the new CEO is credible, having already turned around the firms European operations and shares up 15% in the past week alone. In this article: Nov 23 - Welcome to the home for real-time coverage of European equity markets brought to you by Reuters stocks reporters and anchored today by Helen Reid. Reach her on Messenger to share your thoughts on market moves: helen.reid.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net OPENING SNAPSHOT: ITALY'S THE EXCEPTION IN HO-HUM EU OPEN (0835 GMT) A bit of a lacklustre opening this morning, with little in the news to drive direction and all the major bourses largely flat. Milan's the exception, up a solid 0.9 percent with banks leading the bounce as bond yields ease following a press report that Italy's EU Affairs Minister Paolo Savona is considering resigning over the government's decision to challenge European Union budget rules. He's just denied it, but the bond and equities market appeared to view the possible departure of a eurosceptic as a positive move in helping ease tensions over the budget crisis between Rome and Brussels. GEA and Rockwool are standout movers - both down 9 percent and at the bottom of the STOXX 600 - after disappointing trading updates, but otherwise there are few other major moves up or down to report in the first 30 minutes of trading. Here's a couple of snapshots showing the ho-hum in action: (Josephine Mason) ***** WHAT'S ON THE RADAR: ITALY, ERICSSON (Hanover: ERCB.HA - news) , NOKIA (Milan: 23568.MI - news) , GEA, INDIVIOR (Swiss: OXINDV.SW - news) (0747 GMT) European stocks are set to open slightly higher on Friday after a weaker session in Asia as trade tensions and investors fears of weaker global economic growth weighed. With U.S. markets to come in again after a Thanksgiving holiday, liquidity should pick up again. Futures are trading between down 0.2 percent and up 0.1 percent, with the FTSE 100 futures lagging. Italy's budget showdown with the European Commission remains front and centre for European investors and a Corriere della Sera report that EU affair minister Paolo Savona is considering resigning over the governments decision to challenge EU budget rules could trigger sharp moves Story continues in Italian lenders, some of which investors have heavy short positions on. A Handelsblatt report that German autos bosses are ready to attend a meeting at the White House, which could take place as soon as next week, could move shares in the carmakers Volkswagen (IOB: 0P6N.IL - news) , BMW (EUREX: BMWE.EX - news) , and Daimler (IOB: 0NXX.IL - news) . Ericsson and Nokia shares are expected to rise 2 percent after the Wall Street Journal reported the U.S. government is asking allies to shun Huawei equipment. The Swedish and Finnish telecoms equipment firms were seen gaining from countries potentially switching from the Chinese telecoms firm. German industrial machinery group GEA Group (IOB: 0MPJ.IL - news) is indicated down 5 to 10 percent after it cut its outlook for cash flow for 2018. And the embattled UK pharma company Indivior (Frankfurt: 2IVA.F - news) , whose shares hit a life low earlier this week after a U.S. court ruling in favour of generic drug maker Dr Reddys, is not expected to be saved by news its opioid addiction drug sublocade was approved by Health Canada. Indivior is a one-trick pony, says a trader. The STOXX 600 is set for its second week in a row of losses, and has seen big intraday swings since the global stocks selloff in October. Overall this has been the longest period of sideways returns in Europe for more than 40 years, Citi European equity strategists write, saying equity returns for the region have been near 0 percent over three years and calling this a kangaroo market, which may eventually become a fully-fledged bull or bear market. (Helen Reid) ***** EARLY MORNING HEADLINES ROUND-UP: ITALY, FLYBE, NOVARTIS IN FOCUS (0659 GMT) Not very much in the way of earnings this morning to keep trading busy, but there are a few stories that could move the market. Italy's deputy prime minister Luigi di Maio told La Repubblica that Italy is open to dialogue but won't tweak the budget's pillars. Dolce & Gabbana provides a cautionary tale for luxury firms dependent on Chinese consumers, as Chinese online shopping sites ditch the brand after it broadcast an ad criticised for being racist. Sky News reports Virgin Atlantic is in talks to buy Flybe - news which could send the stock surging after a 41 percent fall on Oct (Shenzhen: 000069.SZ - news) 17 after a profit warning. Novartis (IOB: 0QLR.IL - news) gets European approval for sight therapy Luxturna Italy open to dialogue with EU, will not tweak budget's pillars - Deputy PM BASF makes low-nickel wager amid scramble for battery metals ECB chief economist dashes hopes of imminent cash injection for banks ECB's Weidmann says stock market correction could lie ahead EXCLUSIVE-Trafigura, BP increase loans to Russia-backed Indian refiner to $3 bln Virgin Atlantic in talks to buy Britain's Flybe - Sky News Chinese online shopping sites ditch Dolce & Gabbana in ad backlash After grim year, UK retailers hope for Black Friday tonic US asks allies to shun Huawei equipment, WSJ reports; sector stocks fall Germany is prepared for all Brexit scenarios - Scholz (Helen Reid) ***** EUROPEAN STOCKS TO ATTEMPT A RECOVERY BOUNCE AFTER ASIA SLIDES (0630 GMT) Europe's major benchmarks are expected to open slightly higher this morning after a weaker session in Asia. The STOXX 600 is set for its second weekly loss in a row - if gains today don't help boost it back up to positive. Asian shares slipped on Friday as trade tensions continued to hurt sentiment, while weak corporate earnings in Europe added to worries about global growth and outweighed hopes for progress in Brexit negotiations. Financial spreadbetters at IG (Frankfurt: A0EARV - news) expect London's FTSE to open 20 points higher at 6,981, Frankfurt's DAX to open 35 points higher at 11,173 and Paris' CAC to open 15 points higher at 4,953. (Helen Reid) ****** (Reporting by Helen Reid, Danilo Masoni, Julien Ponthus) For months, French feminists have set aside November 24 as a day for nationwide marches to protest violence against women. Protesters are hoping that last-minute blockades staged by the countrys yellow vests don't eclipse the womens message. YellowVests, please leave us November 24, @layemeraude tweeted when organisers behind Frances anti-diesel tax movement earlier this week announced a new round of road blockades this Saturday. Its the day for #Nous_Toutes, the day for when marches against sexist and sexual violence have been organised in all of France, its been planned for months! We really need this exposure! she wrote. #NousToutes, which roughly translates into All of us (women), is a French grassroots movement that was born this summer when several of the countrys feminist groups got together and decided to take last years #MeToo campaign one step further and call more attention to sexist and sexual violence against women. In September, the group organised its first protest action, garnering some 600 people in Paris and a total of 4,000 across France. According to French government figures, some 225,000 women are victim to domestic violence each year. Femicide, or the killing of a woman because of her gender, accounts for a fifth of all murders in the country. In 2016, a total of 123 women were reported to have been killed by their current or former partners, an equivalent to roughly one woman every three days. In addition, authorities say more than 250 women are raped in France every day, and as many as one in three have been sexually assaulted or harassed in their workplace at least once. The second wave of protests was planned for November 24 the day before the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The idea is to make society more aware of the extent of sexist and sexual violence, Madeline Da Silva, one of the organisers, told FRANCE 24. [The aim] is to send an electric shock through society so that it puts its foot down and says, Stop. Story continues Thousands of people are expected in Paris and we have 100 local networks [who have committed] and 50 marches in France, she said. The movement has won strong backing from several French celebrities, including writers Marie Darrieussecq and Annie Ernaux as well as actors Philippe Torreton and Karine Viard. On Friday, unions representing more than 400 French female journalists, teachers, lawyers and caregivers also threw their weight behind the campaign. Yellow vests focused on Paris But the scheduled marches risk being overshadowed, or even disrupted, by parallel protests staged by the so-called yellow vest movement, which have erupted over the governments recent tax hike on diesel fuel. The movement named after the high-visibility vests that French drivers are required to carry in their vehicles held its first protests on November 17, with nearly 300,000 people mounting barricades or using their bodies to block access to motorways, tunnels and airports across France. On Monday, organisers called on their supporters to protest again, urging them to come out in force this Saturday, especially in Paris. Although Da Silva said she wasnt worried about the yellow vests disrupting the #NousToutes protests, their planned blockades have already prompted at least one local organiser to cancel Saturdays march. In a Facebook post, the organiser in Bourg-en-Bresse said she was worried the blockages would result in people not being able to access the location, and said she couldnt guarantee the safety and security of those taking part in the march. Shame on you In the past week, social media has also been awash with #NousToutes supporters calling on the yellow vests to postpone their protests. On November 24, there is already the #NousToutes protest against violence against women. It would be very nice of the #YellowVests to ensure roundabouts are fluid, to leave cities accessible and to not protest. Thanks in advance, Laurence Rossignol, the former French minister for family, children and womens rights, tweeted. Marlene Schiappa, Frances minister for gender equality, said she would ensure that participants, whatever their message against sexist and sexual violence might be, can express them in their totality and be heard! I respect the citizen dimension [of the movement] and wish #NousToutes all success. Others have been more aggressive in their calls for the "yellow vests" to back off from their protests. Youre rendering the women who fight invisible. Shame on you. You could choose any other day. Shame shame shame, a Twitter user going under the handle @CerridwenDraw said in response to a yellow vest defending his decision to take part in Saturdays blockages. However, a defiant Da Silva told FRANCE 24 that she remains confident that the #NousToutes movement will be successful in getting its message out: I think that if there are people in the streets, the media are sure to talk about it. Because this is historic, because its the first time in 15 years that all unions have called on their members to march for the same cause. FILE PHOTO: Ethiopian opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa speaks to reporters from the window of a prison van after being freed from prison in Addis Ababa FILE PHOTO: Ethiopian opposition leader, Birtukan Mideksa, speaks to reporters from the window of a prison van after being freed from prison in Addis Ababa, October 6, 2010. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo/File Photo ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia chose a former exiled dissident to head its election board on Thursday - part of a dizzying shake-up by the new prime minister that has brought rebels back into the political mainstream and curbed the establishment. The job went to Birtukan Mideksa just weeks after she returned from the United States under an amnesty announced by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and 13 years after she was jailed in the violent aftermath of contested 2005 elections. Birtukan, once one of Ethiopia's most high profile prisoners, will now lead efforts to organise the next vote scheduled for 2020 - the latest top position to go to a woman after SahleWork Zewde was named president and Abiy chose women to fill half his cabinet posts last month. "We are appointing her considering her knowledge of the constitution and the law of the nation," Abiy told parliament. "She might have her own opinions and sayings like anyone, but we believe she will act according to the constitution," he said after several MPs raised concerns about her impartiality given her role in opposition politics. Birtukan, who founded the opposition UDJ party, promised to make the election board's work "transparent and trustworthy". What Ethiopians endured have prepared us to ask the right questions including through the ballot box, she told the state-affiliated Fana news agency. PRISON, PARDONS The former judge was convicted of trying to overthrow the state after crowds took to the streets accusing the government of rigging the 2005 vote. Security forces opened fire, killing dozens of protesters. She was pardoned in 2007 after Amnesty International, other rights groups and some Western powers pressed for her release. But the pardon was revoked and her life sentence resumed a year later, until another pardon in 2010. Abiy came to power in April and quickly turned national and regional politics on its head by making peace with neighbouring Eritrea and reining in the powerful security services. [nL8N1XQ08Z] Story continues He allowed members of outlawed opposition and separatist groups to return and promised to promote multi-party democracy - all of the seats in parliament are held by his EPRDF coalition. After parliament overwhelmingly approved the nomination, Birtukan was sworn in by Meaza Ashenafi, a women's rights activist who was appointed president of the Supreme Court three weeks ago. "(Birtukan is) overseeing not only an election but a transition, from an authoritarian state to a democratic one, a transition to an accountable government," Addis Ababa-based political analyst Hallelujah Lulie said. (Reporting by Addis Ababa bureau; Additional reporting and writing by Maggie Fick; editing by Andrew Heavens) By Karin Strohecker and Tom Finn LONDON (Reuters) - Libya's sovereign wealth fund will appoint auditors within weeks and conclude a wide-ranging examination of its assets by 2019 as part of its efforts to get billions of dollars of assets unfrozen, the fund's head told Reuters. Ali Mahmoud Hassan Mohamed, the chairman and chief executive of the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), said financial auditing and consulting company PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was one of the firms the fund was considering. About 70 percent of the LIA's $67 billion worth of assets have been frozen under United Nations sanctions since the toppling of veteran ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 pushed the country into turmoil. UN diplomats say they want to see a stable government in Libya before relaxing the sanctions. "We want to strengthen the trust of the international community in the Libyan Investment Authority. We are cooperating with the United Nations and adhering to their sanctions," Mohamed said in an interview in London. "We are making reforms from top to bottom and carrying out an audit that can be used by the UN to check the assets of the LIA," he said, speaking through a translator. Libya's economy has collapsed, and the fund could eventually be an important source of finance for the war-torn country. But it has long been hampered by a leadership dispute between rival factions in Tripoli and eastern Libya. Mohamed said he had ended some of those divisions by merging departments and offices. "We need to enhance our governance. Political splits damaged the Libyan Investment Authority. Our assets were frozen in order to protect them," he said. Asked about reports on funds that had been transferred out of European bank accounts linked to LIA, Mohammed said that stemmed from dividends and interest paid on holdings of equities and fixed income instruments. The asset freeze only applied to the equity itself or the principal of the bonds, he said. Story continues "These revenues from equity dividends are worth hundreds of millions every year. We have received those since 2011," he said, adding more than $1 billion had been transferred to LIA's accounts at Arab Bank Corporation (ABC) in Bahrain from custodian bank accounts in Belgium and Luxembourg since 2011. "Money withdrawn from ABC bank was used to pay for the operational costs of the LIA. We have statements dating back to 2011," he said, adding he had full control over the accounts and no money had disappeared. Around $8.5 billion of LIA's assets were invested in global equities and some $1.5 billion in bonds, according to Mohamed. Mohamed also said all the fund's Tripoli-based staff had now moved out of the Tripoli Tower office block to a different, undisclosed location in the city, amid security breaches that saw a number of employees threatened or abducted by militias. Tripoli is largely controlled by a handful of powerful armed groups claiming official status that have expanded their economic interests, penetrated key institutions and frequently abducted rivals with impunity. LIA said it employs 140 people directly though more than 1000 including its subsidiaries. (Reporting by Karin Strohecker and Tom Finn; editing by Larry King) See Also: PARIS (Reuters) - France connected 315 megawatts (MW) of wind and 213 MW of solar power capacity to its electricity grid on the third quarter of the year to take its installed renewable energy capacity including hydro power and bioenergy to over 50 gigawatts (GW). French electricity grid operator RTE said in its quarterly report that power from renewable energy sources covered 21 percent of electricity consumption during the period. The report said France was on track to meet its target of 15 GW of installed wind capacity by the end of the year. However, the installation of solar power capacity would likely fall short of the 10.2 GW by the end of the year. Installed solar capacity is at 8.3 GW as of the end of September, it added. (Reporting by Bate Felix; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta) See Also: PARIS (Reuters) - France called on Thursday for European battery manufacturers and carmakers to create a consortium able to meet the growing demand for electric vehicles and compete with dominant Asian producers. "It (a consortium) must be at the European level because the French market alone will not be enough," Energy Minister Francois de Rugy told Reuters following a cabinet meeting. Europe, with the backing of the European Commission, is racing to set up a viable industrial battery sector as the bloc's automakers mostly depend on Asian suppliers. Asked after if there was a potential for deal between the carmakers and battery manufacturers such as French energy firm Total through its battery subsidiary Saft, de Rugy said: "We are hoping to see some progress early next year." "We support the creation of a European battery sector. We are working with the industry, particular those in France, to build this sector," de Rugy said. Several projects have been announced in recent months to build battery plants in Europe and last week the German government said it had set aside around 1 billion euros ($1.14 billion) to support battery cell production. Berlin aims to have 30 percent of such production coming from Germany and Europe by 2030. (Reporting by Jean-Baptiste Vey and Gilles Guillaume; Writing by Bate Felix; Editing by Alexander Smith) See Also: FILE - In this Dec. 15, 2014, file photo, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi speaks during a press conference in Manama, Bahrain. President Donald Trump says the U.S. will not levy additional punitive measures at this time against Saudi Arabia over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, File) WASHINGTON (AP) The Latest on the fallout from the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi (all times local): 11:10 a.m. President Donald Trump is insisting there's not enough evidence to blame Saudi Arabia's crown prince for the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi (jah-MAHL' khahr-SHOHK'-jee) at a Saudi Consulate in Turkey. Trump told reporters during a Thanksgiving appearance at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida: "Maybe the world should be held accountable 'cause the world is a vicious place." Saudi prosecutors have said a 15-man team sent to Istanbul killed Khashoggi with tranquilizers. Trump pushed back on the idea his refusal to punish the Saudis more will embolden other governments to go after journalists and commit other human rights abuses. Trump calls the kingdom an important ally that has helped to lower oil prices. Republicans and Democrats have accused Trump of ignoring U.S. intelligence that concluded it was likely the crown prince ordered the killing. Trump says the CIA's report was inclusive. ___ 11 a.m. Finland has joined others in halting exports of military equipment to Saudi Arabia, mainly because of the war in Yemen. In Thursday's statement, Finland said it also was stopping exports to the United Arab Emirates, saying the halt to both countries came because of "the alarming humanitarian situation in Yemen." The Nordic country said it was "complying with the European Union's arms export criteria, which take particular account of human rights and the protection of regional peace, security and stability." No figures were immediately as to Finland's arms exports to the two countries. Earlier Thursday, Denmark said it was stopping military exports, citing "the continued worsening of the already terrible situation in Yemen and the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi." ___ 6:40 a.m. A senior Turkish official has raised the possibility that Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan (REH'-jehp TY'-ihp UR'-doh-wahn), could meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the upcoming Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires later this month. Story continues Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin was asked on Thursday whether the two could meet at the two-day G-20 summit, which starts Nov. 30, that "we are looking at the schedule, it is possible." His remarks were carried by the state-run Anadolu Agency. It would be the first official contact between the prince and Erdogan, who has kept international pressure mounting on Saudi Arabia over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month. Turkey insists that the killing of the journalist, who was a critic of the prince, was ordered by the high-levels of the Saudi government, but not by King Salman. Experts say such an operation is unlikely to have occurred without the knowledge of the crown prince, who controls all major levers of power in the kingdom. ___ 4:10 a.m. Denmark is halting exports of military equipment to Saudi Arabia, citing "the continued worsening of the already terrible situation in Yemen and the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi." Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said the kingdom "right now is simply destructive in many fields." He spoke in a live television interview on Thursday. Samuelsen says he hoped "the Danish decision can create further momentum and get more European Union countries to support tight implementation of the EU's regulatory framework in this area." The ban would also include so-called dual-use exports of items that can be used both for military and civilian purposes. In 2017, Denmark's overall exports to Saudi Arabia were of 5.08 billion kroner ($763 million), according to the Danish Chamber of Commerce. ___ 3 a.m. President Donald Trump's embrace of Saudi Arabia has exposed a foreign policy rift in the Republican Party, as some of his GOP colleagues warn that not punishing the kingdom for its role in killing a U.S.-based columnist will have dangerous consequences. Many Republicans even Sens. Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul, who share their views on the matter with the president have denounced Trump's decision not to levy harsher penalties on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the death and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Sen. Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Wednesday that he was "astounded" by Trump's statement and likened it to a press release for Saudi Arabia. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended Trump's decision, saying the U.S. has already placed sanctions on 17 Saudi officials suspected of involvement in the Oct. 2 killing of The Washington Post columnist, who had been critical of the royal family. By Sabela Ojea and Sarah Marsh MADRID/HAVANA (Reuters) - Spanish premier Pedro Sanchez agreed with Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel to deepen bilateral political ties on Thursday, at the start of the first official visit by a Spanish leader to the Communist-run country in three decades. The two leaders signed an agreement instituting annual high-level political dialogue meetings between Spain and Cuba, touching on an array of topics including human rights. Relations between Cuba and the European Union have steadily improved since being formally relaunched in 2016 after a two-decade chill, even as they have festered between the island and the United States. Even before he touched down in Havana, Sanchez had come under fire from some opposition activists, however. Sanchez was in Cuba "to entertain dictators instead of calling for freedom and democracy," the leader of the opposition Popular Party, Pablo Casado, wrote on Twitter. However, Sanchez will hold talks with representatives of some of Cuba's intellectual dissidents, including the directors of an independent digital magazine and a think tank, as well as proponents of the fledgling private sector, according to a Spanish government official. A succession of world leaders has paraded through the Caribbean's largest island nation in recent years as it has sought to improve relations with the West, modernize its centrally planned economy and attract more foreign investment. But this is the first official visit by a Spanish Prime Minister since that of Sanchez's fellow social democrat Felipe Gonzalez in 1986. Spain is Cuba's third largest trading partner and maintains strong cultural ties with its former colony. Sanchez and Diaz-Canel, who succeeded Raul Castro as president in April, also agreed to increase cultural cooperation on Thursday, after holding talks in Havana's Revolution Palace. "The new generation of Cuban leaders needs this rapprochement that shows Cuba's foreign relations do not need to be limited to the U.S.-Cuba conflict or alliances with countries like Russia and China," said retired Cuban diplomat Carlos Alzugaray. Story continues "It is oxygen at a difficult moment," he said. Sanchez, who is travelling with executives from two dozen companies, will on Friday morning inaugurate a Spanish-Cuban business forum in a hotel that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump recently added to a list of places banned to U.S. travellers. Spanish-Cuban annual bilateral commerce is already around $1.3 billion, according to Cuban data. The tourism sector is dominated by alliances between Spanish hotel chains and Cuban companies. "Cuba is opening up and we are interested in our companies being well positioned to have access to the most important contracts," a Spanish government official said. Although Cuba is seeking to drum up more investment and credit lines, it is behind on payment to providers from Spain and elsewhere. Diaz-Canel assured Sanchez on Thursday that Cuba would make good on those debts. Former U.S. President Barack Obama, who sought to normalize relations between the former Cold War foes, visited Havana in 2016. However, Trump has rowed back on the detente, tightening the decades-old U.S. trade embargo. (Reporting by Sabela Ojea and Sarah Marsh, additional reporting by Sam Edwards and Marc Frank; editing by Nick Zieminski and Rosalba O'Brien) By Roberta Rampton PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday the United States was "in very strong" peace negotiations in Afghanistan but he did not known whether they would be successful. "I really think the people of Afghanistan ... are tired of fighting," Trump told reporters after delivering a Thanksgiving holiday message to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, scene of one of America's longest-ever wars. "We are talking about peace and we'll see if that happens ... We have negotiations going on. I don't know that they are going to be successful, probably they're not. Who knows? They might be, they might not be." Trump was speaking after Taliban leaders met with U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad at their political headquarters in Qatar last week for the second time in the past month. Khalilzad said on Sunday he hoped to reach a peace deal by April 20, a deadline that coincides with the date set for presidential elections in Afghanistan. However, the Taliban said their three-day meeting with Khalilzad to pave the way for peace talks ended with no agreement on any issue and they had not accepted any deadline set by the United States to wrap up talks. Khalilzad's public statement that the Taliban believe they will "not win militarily" apparently angered senior members of the group, who warned U.S. officials against mixed messages that could muddle the peace process. U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan in 2001 as part of a campaign to topple the Taliban following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. Some 14,000 U.S. personnel are still there. The Taliban have strengthened their grip over the past three years, with the government in Kabul controlling just 56 percent of Afghanistan, down from 72 percent in 2015, a U.S. government report showed this month. Two senior U.S. officials confirmed this week that a second round of peace talks ended last week and the Taliban expected Khalilzad to visit Qatar for a meeting before the end of 2018. Story continues Trump hinted he may go to Afghanistan, a country he has yet to visit almost two years into his presidency, even though previous U.S. commanders-in-chief have routinely visited troops in active war zones. Trump told troops in the teleconference that while they were fighting, he was taking tough action to secure the southern borders of the United States from illegal immigration. "You are doing it over there; we are doing it over here," he said. "We have a very powerful border now ... We took old broken wall and we wrapped it with barbed wire plus ... nobody is getting through these walls and we're going to make sure they're the right people because that's what you and your family want," he said. "That's why we're all fighting you know, we're fighting for borders, we're fighting for our country." (Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Sandra Maler) There is compelling and powerful evidence to support the prosecution of British academic Matthew Hedges for spying, the UAE government has said. The justification comes amid an outcry over Mr Hedges sentence of life imprisonment, as the 31-year-old PhD student faces life behind bars after being convicted of espionage. Mr Hedges wife has told LBC that her husbands panic attacks have become worse since he was handed the sentence and has met with the UK Government to discuss efforts to free him. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is leading efforts to apply diplomatic pressure on the country and on Thursday said he had a constructive conversation with his opposite number, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed. But a statement by Abdulla Al Naqbi, head of the Department of Legal Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, said the case had been thoroughly investigated and warned the government does not attempt to interfere in court cases. Life sentence Matthew Hedges, pictured here with Daniela Tejada, has been jailed for life in the UAE (Picture: AP/Daniela Tejada) The frank statement said: The UAE respects the rule of law and is committed to upholding the highest judicial standards. Like all countries with an independent judiciary it is vital that the government does not attempt to interfere in court cases. We cannot give assurances to other countries about the outcome of trials. MORE: Extremism is thriving in parts of the UK, but we only know about the tip of the iceberg, warns top Government adviser MORE: American missionary killed by tribesmen on remote island wrote to parents, saying: Dont be mad at them Mr Al Naqbi defended the courts decision, stressing the crimes Mr Hedges is accused of are extremely serious and protecting the UAEs national interests must be our first priority. The case against Hedges was thoroughly investigated by the public prosecutor, the statement said, adding: Compelling and powerful evidence was presented in court. That included information extracted from his personal electronic devices by expert forensic analysis techniques; evidence provided by UAE intelligence agencies; witness testaments and Hedges own confession. Story continues Petition Matthew Hedges wife Daniela Tejada has launched a petition calling for the UK Government to do everything it can to free her husband (Picture: AP/Kirsty Wigglesworth) The statement rejected claims that Mr Hedges was forced to sign a document in Arabic that has been used as the confession and also denied that he had been mistreated while held in custody. A family representative said Mr Hedges was held in solitary confinement for more than five-and-a-half months, during which his mental and physical health seriously deteriorated. It added: Contrary to media reports, Matthew Hedges has been treated fairly and according to the constitution of the UAE. We are proud to have a system of justice that gives everyone the right to a fair trial. Mr Hedges, a Middle Eastern studies specialist, was arrested at Dubai Airport as he tried to leave the country on May 5. He was handed the sentence during a five-minute hearing at an Abu Dhabi court on Wednesday, prompting a furious response. Mr Hedges was given 30 days to challenge the court ruling, and on Thursday his wife started a petition on Change.org which has already gathered more than 150,000 signatures. She wrote: Matthew may be able appeal his sentence in one months time. Before then I am begging as many people as possible to back my petition calling on the British Government to do everything in their power to ensure the UAE let my husband come home. American missionary John Allen Chau was reportedly killed on November 16 when he was attacked with bows and arrows by inhabitants on Sentinel Island. Travel to the island by outsiders is prohibited by the Indian government. Despite the ban on visitors, Chau went to the island on multiple occasions. His mother released her sons notes to The Washington Post, according to News Corp Australia. The last words he penned to his family on November 16 were: God, I dont want to die. Ignored ban on travel to remote region Chau allegedly died in a brutal manner after ignoring the prohibition on outsiders traveling too close to the regions shores or setting foot on the island, which the Sentinelese people are known to fiercely defend. They do not want outsiders of any kind intruding. News Corp Australia relayed that the area is inhabited by five Stone Age tribes. They are thought to be the last in existence. The islands people live primitively, without contact with the rest of the world. There is a reason that the government is doing its utmost to protect the inhabitants from intruders. Chau, however, seemed to be on a mission or, as the News Corp noted, advance a bizarre plan to covert the Sentinelese to Christianity. He was determined to establish the kingdom of Jesus. Police contend missionary visited region to proselytize Dependra Pathak, director general of police of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, stated that Chau went to India on a tourist visa, according to CNN. In October, though, he went to the islands in Pathaks jurisdiction to proselytize. He further stated that the police refuse to reference Chau as a tourist, despite what his visa claims. Discuss this news on Eunomia WHY COVER UP? 1) US missionary & his church are proud that he was an evangelist: https://t.co/gQ3UXSf2Lc 2) But Home Ministry claiming he was NOT an evangelist: https://t.co/ABpYJUwxsl Rajiv Malhotra (@RajivMessage) November 22, 2018 Confusion emerges, no verification of attack and no body A week following Chaus reported death, confusing details continue to emerge. For one thing, there are conflicting reports surfacing that relate to the missionarys age. Authorities in India cite one age while a Christian ministry is claiming another age. Chau was either 26 or 27. Also, law enforcement authorities have not independently verified that he was actually killed, according to news agencies, including CNN. Conservationists angered by visits to region After a number of Chaus visits to the island, the locals patience with him was tried one too many times when he was allegedly attacked and killed, several news organizations have reported. Conservation groups are reportedly angered by Chaus visit to the isolated island region. Their belief is that his presence endangered the tribes safety, NBC News relayed. Victim of tribesmen made repeat trips, since 2015 Pathak explained that the recent visits that Chau made to Sentinel Island were by far not new to him. Chau also spent time visiting in 2015, as well as in 2016, according to NBC. In addition to Pathak stating that Chau made trips to the area in the past, Chau also shared photos on his Instagram account. One of the photos was taken in December 2016. His caption stated, Island living. Its freezing cold in Indianapolis right now, but it was crazy warm here in the Andamans where I was the only American on the Island! Seven area fishermen were reportedly arrested for facilitating Chaus recent trips to the forbidden island. Fearing for their own safety, though, they towed a kayak that he used to paddle himself to shore. The fisherman received $325 for helping Chau, according to Pathak. Not confirmed dead while police try to recover body Police have not confirmed Chau was killed in an attack with bows and arrows. The problem is reportedly in recovering where the fisherman alleged he was buried in the sand. The police, working along with the forest department, is determining how to recover Chaus body. Also in recent news is the death of American Almarosa Tenorio, 52. She died while cruising to the Caribbean with her husband. Her cause of death has not been determined. 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21 (18) Jan 20 (18) Jan 19 (18) Jan 18 (26) Jan 17 (24) Jan 16 (23) Jan 15 (30) Jan 14 (20) Jan 13 (18) Jan 12 (24) Jan 11 (11) Jan 10 (23) Jan 09 (22) Jan 08 (17) Jan 07 (17) Jan 06 (9) Jan 05 (18) Jan 04 (15) Jan 03 (19) Jan 02 (14) Jan 01 (6) Dec 31 (12) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (15) Dec 28 (11) Dec 27 (7) Dec 26 (10) Dec 25 (16) Dec 24 (13) Dec 23 (16) Dec 22 (11) Dec 21 (26) Dec 20 (28) Dec 19 (14) Dec 18 (25) Dec 17 (23) Dec 16 (19) Dec 15 (22) Dec 14 (38) Dec 13 (26) Dec 12 (25) Dec 11 (27) Dec 10 (31) Dec 09 (15) Dec 08 (30) Dec 07 (31) Dec 06 (27) Dec 05 (38) Dec 04 (25) Dec 03 (27) Dec 02 (15) Dec 01 (36) Nov 30 (23) Nov 29 (17) Nov 28 (23) Nov 27 (13) Nov 26 (16) Nov 25 (14) Nov 24 (18) Nov 23 (21) Nov 22 (21) Nov 21 (24) Nov 20 (20) Nov 19 (23) Nov 18 (17) Nov 17 (17) Nov 16 (34) Nov 15 (25) Nov 14 (17) Nov 13 (21) Nov 12 (18) Nov 11 (9) Nov 10 (15) Nov 09 (9) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (12) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (4) Oct 29 (1) Oct 01 (1) Jul 29 (1) May 11 (1) Jul 11 (1) Rashmika, who was last seen in Devdas, is now awaiting the release of her upcoming Kannada film, Yajamana. The actress is paired opposite Kannada star Darshan in this action drama which is being directed by P Kumaran. Tanya Hope is also playing a lead role in the film. The actress flew to Denmark recently, and she will soon join the sets of the film in Sweden where a romantic song is going to be shot on Darshan and Rashmika. The film was supposed to be wrapped up a while ago, however the shoot was postponed after Darshan met with an accident few weeks ago. Meanwhile, in Telugu, the actress has Dear Comrade in her kitty, and she is also expected to team up with Nithiin in an upcoming film to be directed by Venky Kudumula. A formal announcement is expected to be made soon. Articles that might interest you: Anis Shivani in CounterPunch: Despite the most blatant violations of civil liberties in American history by a Republican Southern evangelical president fighting a never-ending crusade against evil itself, the three leading Democratic candidates for the 2008 presidential election, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards make almost no mention of civil liberties as a campaign issue on their websites. The most liberal candidate, the Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, does include it at the very bottom of his list of issues, just underneath animal rights. Senators Clinton, Obama, and Edwards outdo each other speaking of their faith in their Lord and Savior, without whom they couldnt have gotten through difficult times, and bend over backwards to respect the different opinions of evangelical voters, on such issues as intelligent design or the preservation of adult stem-cell embryos. Clinton voted not only to authorize the Patriot Act (which gutted civil liberties in 2001), but to reauthorize it in 2006. The Democratic candidates vow to hunt down the terrorists and kill them, and to show no tolerance for illegal immigrants, as they speak a language of economic populism focused on the anxieties of the declining middle-class. And all this comes at a time when the self-destructive acts of the radical neo-conservatives in power couldnt possibly have created a more propitious time for the revival of liberal individualism in America. More here. Olga Khazan in The Atlantic: A few years ago, Laura Mickes was teaching her regular undergraduate class on childhood psychological disorders at the University of California, San Diego. It was a weighty subject, so occasionally she would inject a sarcastic comment about her own upbringing to lighten the mood. When she collected her professor evaluations at the end of the year, she was startled by one comment in particular: Shes not funny, the student wrote. Mickes realized that university students didnt seem to welcome, or even notice, the wit of many of her female colleagues. Shes not the only one. A recent graphic made by Ben Schmidt, an assistant professor of history at Northeastern University, analyzed the words used to describe male and female professors across 14 million reviews on RateMyProfessor.com. In every single discipline, male professors were far more likely than female ones to be described as funny. More here. Mychal Denzel Smith in Harpers: Toward the end of the Obama presidency, the work of James Baldwin began to enjoy a renaissance that was both much overdue and comfortless. Baldwin stands as one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century, and any celebration of his work is more than welcome. But it was less a reveling than a panic. The eight years of the first black president were giving way to some of the most blatant and vitriolic displays of racism in decades, while the shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and others too numerous to list sparked a movement in defense of black lives. In Baldwin, people found a voice from the past so relevant that he seemed prophetic. More than any other writer, Baldwin has become the model for black public-intellectual work. The role of the public intellectual is to proffer new ideas, encourage deep thinking, challenge norms, and model forms of debate that enrich our discourse. For black intellectuals, that work has revolved around the persistence of white supremacy. Black abolitionists, ministers, and poets theorized freedom and exposed the hypocrisy of American democracy throughout the period of slavery. After emancipation, black colleges began training generations of scholars, writers, and artists who broadened black intellectual life. They helped build movements toward racial justice during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, whether through pathbreaking journalism, research, or activism. At a time of national upheaval, Baldwin adroitly described the rot of white supremacy eating away at the possibility of American democracy. But his most famous book, The Fire Next Time, is emblematic of the dilemma that has always faced the black public intellectual, which Adolph Reed described memorably in the pages of the Village Voice. Black intellectuals, Reed wrote, need to address both black and white audiences, and those different acts of communication proceed from objectives that are distinct and often incompatible. Being a black public intellectual has always meant serving two masters, and one of those masters is so needy that the other is hardly tended to. More here. Mikkael Sekeres, M.D., a hematologist and oncologist at the Cleveland Clinic, was thrown into a caregiving role when his mother was diagnosed with lung cancer last year. He recalls that when his mom first told him about the abnormal spot on her chest x-ray, he offered to help schedule a biopsy to find out if it was cancer and then was shocked at how long getting one took. Even though I was a doctor who had access to back lines, it still took a good two weeks, he says. It was very difficult to coordinate care long distance. Thats part of the reason Sekeres brought his mom to the Cleveland Clinic for treatment after the spot was identified as cancer. After a colleague performed the surgery, Sekeres mother stayed with him while she recovered. That month was tough for both of them, he says, partly because it changed the dynamic of their relationship. My mom is a professional with a lot of leadership experience, and she is used to calling the shots, he says. The loss of control was hard. The good news is that his mom, now 75, is in full recovery, and is even back to work as a full-time administrator of a housing complex. Lessons Learned: For a serious diagnosis, seek a second opinion. Sekeres says his moms initial diagnosis was Stage 3 lung cancer that had spread to the lymph nodes, which would require surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. But after a second doctor ordered an additional scan, it showed the cancer actually hadnt spread; meaning chemo and radiation weren't necessary after all. When you have a serious diagnosis like cancer, always get a second opinion, preferably from a specialist, Sekeres says. A different doctor may have a different interpretation of something like a PET scan or you may simply be reassured because he or she agrees with your first physician. Ask doctors to be specific in their recovery advice. Sekeres felt like he was always nagging his mom to get up and walk around after the surgery, since her doctor had recommended it as part of her recovery plan. Next time, he says he will ask for more specifics: How often does she need to be walking? Doing so takes the burden off the caregiver, he notes, since you can blame the doctor by saying something like, Mom, the doctor said you need to get up and walk for 10 minutes, three times a day. From there, you can plan together how to fit that in. What changed in his own practice: Sekeres works harder now to reduce delays for patients and initiate treatment quickly, because he knows how difficult a wait can be. He recalls that his family was vacationing in Florida while waiting for the biopsy results. We spent a lot of time by the pool talking about What if cancer scenarios, and I could see how much my mom was struggling with the idea of having cancer, he says. It was the first time I really got to see things from the patient side. Eight games set for this weekend at Dacotah Bank Classic sports As Kathmandus air gets worse, its residents struggle to breathe Over the last month, the Post followed a small group of traffic constables across the city at different times of the day. With consent from the officers and permission from police headquarters, the Post facilitated health screening for some of the officers at the Nepal Police Hospital and asked prominent health professionals to examine the reports. The results, which include their chest x-rays, show the damaging effects of long-term exposure to particulate pollution. The New Mexico Museum of Art is bringing the dark to light. With two shows exhibited in conjunction with one another, museum curators are focusing on nighttime scenes from the late 19th century to present day. The first, which opened on Saturday and will remain up until April, takes a dive into paintings, prints and photographs in the NMMA collection. Its companion exhibit showcasing contemporary night photography will open next month. The exhibits will also share an educational station at the museum from November-April, offering night-related activities from both the scientific and artistic realms. According to Curator of 20th-century Art Christian Waguespack, the current exhibition, Wait Until Dark, features rarely seen or never-before-shown work by a whos who of New Mexico artists, including Georgia OKeeffe, Gustave Baumann, Cady Wells and more. He views the themed show as a chance to show the collection in a fresh new light. Or not light, in this case, Waguespack corrected himself. The art, which spans from the late 19th century to contemporary, falls under the nocturne artistic motif. Though the phrase was originally used to designate night-themed music compositions, Waguespack said the word nocturne started to become part of descriptions for visual art in the late 19th century. He described the works selected for Wait Until Dark as falling generally into two categories. One showcases works that use night as a motif or mood, or to show the formal engagement of trying to create night scenes. Its a tricky thing to do from an academic or trained artist standpoint, to actually get that look right, is a hard thing, said Waguespack, citing the difficulty of working in the dark while still getting the colors and compositions to correctly depict what the artist sees. Works in this section include traditional nighttime landscapes and imagery of boats sailing in the evening by 20th-century artists, along with contemporary Santa Fe photographer Cara Romeros photo that uses the iconic neon sign at Espanolas Saints & Sinners liquor store as a backdrop. Theres also a range of moods or feelings artists can elicit through nocturnes, Waguespack explained, pointing out more spooky works, such as a Veronica Helfensteller lithograph of what looks like a haunted house, and James Stoval Morris Witches of Chimayo. On the other hand, OKeeffes Landscape at Lake George, he says, feels very serene. It could eerie, it could be dramatic, it could be peaceful, it could be meditative, he said. All of these different things come out. The other half of the show looks at the night as a placemaker, with works that depict events that happen in the dark. These range from prints and paintings of Native American ceremonies by Baumann, Gene Kloss and Ira Moskowitza, and Will Shusters 1934 oil painting of a night mass held at the Cross of the Martyrs to a painting of a Ku Klux Klan rally by Louis Ribak. Ribak, a 20th-century Taos-based artist who painted scenes of the Klan while living in New York, covered a subject matter that has a double meaning for darkness, both literally and figuratively. Waguespack explained that Ribak was attuned to the broader question of why meetings like the Klans were held at night. He also noted a 1920 Gerald Cassidy sketch that will be on display. The image, originally sketched for a mural at the Santa Fe Country Club, is of a Spanish dance. So, the idea of when do we party, when do we let loose? said Waguespack. We do it at night most often, right? Why is that? Capturing the counter-intuitive The photography exhibit that opens in mid-December, Shots in the Dark, takes a different artistic direction, according to Curator of Photography Kate Ware. She said she compiled a group of atmospheric works from four Southwest artists who are primarily interested in the landscape at night. The show offers a series of images by Tuscon-based Ken Rosenthal from a Washington forest and Michael Lundgrens large images of the desert, all taken in the middle of the night. Lundgren, from Phoenix, takes what Ware described as minimal subject matter, like a snake or various plants, and makes it transformative. Photos from around urban San Diego in front of homes, in an empty parking lot and close to the highway, for example come from scott b. davis. Christopher Colville, also from Phoenix, uses the chemistry of photography and does not use a camera to make his images. On photo paper, Ware explained, he creates explosions with gunpowder. The result is abstract shots of colorful light being produced onto the paper. She described the practice of taking pictures in the middle of the night as counter-intuitive, considering that the word for the result photograph comes from Greek origins that translate to writing with light. In an art form that depends on light, these artists are intentionally limiting it. Theyre pushing the boundaries of the medium in that way; what can it do? What can I make it do? What can I make it capture? said Ware. A joint reception for Wait Until Dark and Shots in the Dark as well as a forthcoming exhibition on 20th-century sculpture will be held on Jan. 4 from 5-7 p.m. The shows will remain up until the end of April and the end of March, respectively. Plans for vacant properties in the Luna Complex have been delayed, but are still in the works, according to the developer of the commercial space on Cerrillos Road near downtown Santa Fe. Changes have been made to each of two developments, and Ken Joseph hopes to have business operations in both spaces up and running within the next few months. In July, Joseph spoke to the Journal about plans for CHOMP!, his planned food bazaar and vendor space in the former Talin Market spot. A new restaurant for an adjacent, 7,000-square-foot property which previously has housed a car dealership, a movie theater and nightclubs was also in the works. The restaurant, which Joseph was co-developing with a local consultant, was supposed to feature an urban chic menu created by Hells Kitchen chef Robert Hesse. At that time, the goal was to open both by late summer. But an agreement with TV chef Hesse didnt materialize. Joseph said we were really close, and there was just a deal I couldnt pass up to lease it to someone else. He says hes now signed a lease with the operators of one of Santa Fes best restaurants for the big dining space that faces Cerrillos. He wouldnt say more about the restaurant, except to say it was well-known and it wants to wait to make its own announcement once there is an official opening date. He said there is sill some construction work being done for the restaurant, to match the leasees aesthetic. They will be opening in the next several weeks, said Joseph. As for CHOMP!, which Joseph is operating himself, he said the main factor in the delay was the need for a change-of-use permit from the city, something he said he was unaware of in the early stages. Since it was basically a grocery store, (this is) to change the permitted use to allow for restaurant and bar, he said. He is now waiting for the final sign-off from the city. He said he hopes CHOMP! will open by the end of 2018 or early 2019. It may creep into early next year, he said. Ive been unfortunately consumed with getting the main restaurant moved in, and theres only one of me. Of the 16 maximum spots available for lease at CHOMP!, Joseph said he has four to five signed and eight to 10 handshake deals. Asked about what offerings at the bazaar will be, Joseph said (a) full bar with pizza, Thai food, sushi and honey products thats it for right now that I can announce. The Thai food, he said, will be coming from the owners of Santa Fes Crackin Crab restaurant, where they used to operate J&N Thai Bistro. Theyre going to do their Thai food at CHOMP!, he said. He also said Santa Fe Honey Salon is still on board. He declined to identify the sushi proprietor, saying he didnt have a go-ahead to release the name. Back in July, Joseph said the bar was going to be operated by New Mexico Hard Cider, which is already ensconced at Luna. He said he now plans to run a wine bar himself he has a full liquor license and serve artisan pizza using an adjacent pizza oven. A couple of restaurants Joseph believed were on board for CHOMP! last summer are now iffy, he said. As he mentioned back then, Joseph said last week that most of the still-available spaces in the bazaar are small retail kiosks for things like olive oil, skin care products or farmstands. The Luna Complex is at the intersection of Cerrillos and Manhattan Street. The demolition of the old county courthouse at Grant Avenue and Griffin Street downtown is almost complete, making way for a new Santa Fe County administrative complex expected to be open by this time next year. The razing is the beginning of a two-part, $27.9 million project that also includes the restoration of the current administrative building, known for its classic Santa Fe-style portal, at 102 Grant Ave., two blocks away. The County Commission in August awarded a design-build contract to Jaynes Corporation, of Albuquerque, and Albuquerque-based Studio Southwest Architects, which has an office in Santa Fe. It makes for a cleaner process, Deputy County Manager Tony Flores said of the design-build approach. Under a design-build process, we have more control over how the building gets built. And its a way to lock in a firm price, reducing the number of change orders and it helps us with timeliness. We have more control over the project, rather than consultants and contractors telling us what we need. Flores is serving as project manager, a role he also played with the construction of the Mountain Valley Regional Health Center in Edgewood. He said the new two-story, 62,000-square-foot building is expected to be finished by August or September of next year. It will house offices most frequently accessed by the public, including the offices of the countys assessor, treasurer and clerk. The existing county building will be used by the county manager, and the finance, human resources and legal departments, as well as house office space for county commissioners. Restoration of that building is expected to be completed by March 2020. The county administrative complex will allow Santa Fe County to consolidate county services into a central building, county documents say. This will create a dual county campus in two buildings, located within blocks of each other in downtown Santa Fe, with onsite public parking. Keeping the county administrative offices downtown was an important consideration. County officials noted proximity to the New Mexico Association of Counties and New Mexico Finance Authority offices. The countys presence in downtown Santa Fe makes county functions accessible to the public, enables the public to accomplish multiple tasks in a single trip, and helps keep downtown Santa Fe relevant to the needs of Santa Fe residents, county documents say. Most of the onsite parking will be located at the new complex, which is designed to have 200 parking spaces on two levels, one of them underground. Residents doing business at the new county building will be able to access parking from Grant Avenue. Employee parking will be on the lower level with the entrance on Griffin Street. Flores said a significant difference in elevation at the two entrances means the county doesnt have to excavate very deep. Were taking advantage of that so we dont have to dig down, he said. The lot abuts property occupied by the First Presbyterian Church, touted as the oldest continuing protestant church in New Mexico territory. The new complex is being built on property once owned by the church. Local history According to church documentation, Rev. David McFarlane opened a school nearby soon after he arrived as the churchs first minister in 1866. Women at the church raised $600 to pay the salary of a teacher and a free school was established. Years later, the school was moved to a site north of the current church and became the Santa Fe Industrial Boarding School for Mexican Girls. The school later became known as the Allison School, named for the woman who operated the boarding school for 22 years, and years after that it was combined with the Mary James Missionary Boarding School for Boys to become the Allison-James School. The co-educational junior high boarding school primarily served Hispanic boys and girls. In 1936, the mission school property was sold to Santa Fe Public Schools. The buildings were torn down and Leah Harvey Junior High was built just north of the church, opening in 1938. Forty years later, the school was remodeled and became the Judge Steve Herrera Judicial Complex until 2013, when a new courthouse bearing the same name was built on Montezuma Avenue. The county consulted with First Presbyterian Church on the new building. The county has been very, very cooperative, said Rev. Harry Eberts of First Presbyterian. Theyve listened to our concerns. Weve been waiting a long time for this to happen next door. We always want to be good neighbors and we have been shown by the county that they want to be good neighbors, so were very grateful for that. The churchs concerns mostly had to do with parking. Thats been a concern probably since the 1930s, he said, noting the time when the property was sold off by the church. It probably wasnt recognized back then, but we lost all that parking. Complicating matters is that the north wall of the church is right on the property line. Flores said the county made modifications to its original plan for the parking garage, moving it back about 25 feet and putting in a sidewalk. Gathering input from the church, the county commission and the others in the community, Flores said the county made additional changes to its original plan. Parking spaces were reduced to make way for a staircase and sidewalk leading to a small park-like area at the apex where Catron and Griffin streets come together, the building was moved back to create greater separation from the church and they softened the edges of the Pueblo Revival-style design meant to complement the Santa Fe Community Convention Center across the street. We made quite a few changes to design elements for better massing both vertically and horizontally, he said. Complementary design The building is also intended to complement the church next door. Notably, First Presbyterians sanctuary was built in 1939, the same year as the current county building on Grant Avenue. The two buildings were also designed by the same architect, the renowned John Gaw Meem, who is credited with popularizing the Pueblo Revival style. Back then, there was no Americans with Disabilities Act and the current county administrative building will incorporate whats necessary for it to be in compliance with the act. The most noticeable change to the building will be the removal of about 7,800 square feet of space to restore a placita on the side of the building facing Johnson Street, which was part of the original design. It had been expunged when the county expanded the building in the 1970s. Now, well have another entrance, a more historic entrance, on Johnson Street with a courtyard that faces the OKeeffe museum, Flores said. The building is considered a good example of a New Deal-era design, and is already listed on the State Register of Cultural Properties and the National Register of Historic Places. Funding for the project comes from $25 million in bonds approved by the County Commission in 2015 and capital outlay appropriations. When its all finished, Flores said county constituents will have an attractive, functional and efficient complex they can be proud of. I think the public will be pleased because weve taken a lot of their comments and integrated them into the project, Flores said. I think, at the end of the day, the downtown community and the county as a whole will be very pleased. Copyright 2018 Albuquerque Journal Nearly a thousand people wrapped around the corner of a Best Buy on the West Side of Albuquerque in anticipation of great savings before 5 p.m. Thanksgiving day. For many of these people it is the one time of year they can get big-ticket items at a hugely discounted price, and for others Black Friday has become a family tradition. For Rio Rancho resident Joshua Contrucci, who was first in line at Best Buy, preparing for Black Friday is his way of remembering his late cousin. My brother did this with my cousin for like eight years in a row, Contrucci said. After my cousin passed away three years ago we kind of quit doing it, so this year I wanted to keep the tradition and my cousins memory alive. Contrucci said he planned his arrival at Best Buy one week in advance to ensure he had everything covered. I make sure to come early and bring some form of heater, blankets, chairs and snacks, he said. Most importantly, make sure to bring someone with you because if you dont, youll get bored out of your mind. Contrucci said he made a game plan to be first after doing a lot research online and gathering coupons. I want to get a 43-inch TV and a computer for my mom, he said. I will be getting around $200 off the TV and $150 off of the computer. When asked why he didnt just stay home and shop for items online, Contrucci said he has seen items sell out online faster than they would at a brick and mortar store. I do it for the experience, and I wouldnt miss it for the world, Contrucci said with a smile. Its the adrenaline rush and the knowledge that if you wait long enough you are going to get a good deal. Although many of the big-name stores that have been participating in Black Friday through the years are having sales, there are almost the same number that arent. For example, specialty outdoor retailer REI announced that it will close 151 stores and not process any online sales on Black Friday for the third year in a row. Instead, the chain said, it would pay all 12,000 of its employees to #OptOutside with family and friends. According to a release on the companys website, REI gives 70 percent of its profits back to the outdoor community each year. So in reverse, the company is not trying to bring customers into its stores. Instead, REI is launching a new experimental search engine at REI.com/opt-outside to inspire people to go outside. We are doing this again to unite people and to find common ground in the outdoors, said REI CEO Jerry Stritzke in a news release. Right now, I think people are looking for a moment to take a breath, reground themselves and come together. More than 700 organizations and nearly 8 million people have joined #OptOutside over the past two years. We could not be more thankful. But last year we stepped back and said we can do more. We asked how we could offer new practical tools and inspiration. So we have captured the experiences of the outdoor community and organized them in a way that no one has done before. According to the American Marketing Association, U.S. retailers hauled in a record $7.9 billion on Black Friday last year, an increase of nearly 18 percent from 2016. On the flip side, total Black Friday e-commerce purchases occurring on desktops in 2017 surpassed $2 billion for the first time ever, according to comScore. Anthony Marquez, who was at the front of the line at Kohls on Albuquerques West Side, said he would rather shop in person because of the hassle of returning items bought online that are broken or dont fit. Sending an item back online is a very big hassle, Marquez said. Plus I cant try it on to see how well it fits. I like to hold an item in my hand before I buy it. Marquez said hes able to buy his kids great Christmas gifts that he couldnt afford without the big discounts. Let me put it to you like this. As long as stores are offering deals on Black Friday, I will wait in line, he said. (On Nov. 6), an outpouring of celebratory cries and joy filled living rooms across the state of New Mexico when Debra Haaland secured a seat in the U.S. House. She is one of two Native American women ever elected to Congress. While this is a huge step forward for Native Americans nationwide, we still face a stark reality. There are now two Supreme Court justices who have been accused of sexual misconduct. And our reality is that the Supreme Court of the United States is now led by a conservative majority. While there have been countless articles and commentary on the judiciary future of the United States, there is a conversation that is not being had. The confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh further threatens the well-being of Native women and families across the country especially in New Mexico. Let me put that into perspective. A study conducted with over 1,700 rural New Mexicans found that 46 percent of Native Americans self-reported having experienced sexual violence at some point in their lives. In many cases, these assaults go unreported because of previous negative interactions with law enforcement. Many times, we are denied justice in our own local communities. Now, the federal government is asking the impossible of us. Native Americans absolutely cannot trust someone who is a known predator to make fair decisions about our bodies, lives, families or state when he has shown that he does not respect the autonomy of women and their right to reject his advances. Respecting the legal rights of survivors isnt the only place that those wary of a Kavanaugh court need to be watching. The Supreme Court is also likely to overturn Roe vs. Wade, turning back the clock on legal abortion to when individual states decided if abortion was legal. New Mexico has policies in place that make it one of the best places in the country for women and their families to access abortion care. But for New Mexicans, overturning Roe is especially concerning, because even with many good policies in place, an archaic statute that criminalizes abortion has been sitting dormant on the books in New Mexico since the 1960s. If the new conservative-majority Supreme Court overturns Roe, that archaic statute can then be used to criminalize people who get an abortion as well as the doctor that provides it. Forbidding us from governing our own bodies is a fundamental attack on our sovereignty over our own bodies. Right now, community members and organizations across the state, including Strong Families New Mexico and my organization, Indigenous Women Rising, are working to garner support for a bill that would protect abortion access in New Mexico. We know that New Mexicans value each person and each familys right to self-determination over their own bodies and family. The upcoming 2019 state Legislature will be presented with a bill that would repeal the outdated statute that can criminalize abortion seekers and providers and protect the decades of work by New Mexicans to create policies that respect the personal decision-making of women and their families. We need bills that protect our autonomy and our safety; using our collective people power paired with this legislation can do just that. Brett Kavanaugh is the proverbial straw that will break the judicial back of this country. This year, the SCOTUS will hear multiple cases that address fundamental questions of tribal sovereignty, and I am fearful that we will lose even more of the rights we were guaranteed in countless treaties. Even so, our communities will not rest in fear and we will not sit idly while the SCOTUS attempts to chip away at our reproductive health and our right to govern our own communities, bodies and families. Brett Kavanaughs confirmation is downright deadly for Native families, our livelihoods, our culture and our bodily autonomy. Our communities have united at the polls, and now we are gearing up to protect the health and self-determination of all our New Mexican families. Join us. SANTA MONICA, Calif. Electric scooters are a little like Q-Tips. In both cases, the products are marketed with explicit warnings about how not to use them, even though everyone knows thats precisely the way pretty much every customer will use them. For scooter riders here in Santa Monica, it means: Dont you dare ride on the sidewalk, which is against the law, even though it sometimes feels super unsafe to ride next to cars. Or: Wink-wink, always wear a helmet. Also, the beach bike path is verboten, even though it is the smoothest, most fun, most scenic ride possible. And definitely dont just dump your scooter in the middle of a busy path or sidewalk. Aw shucks, well, we did warn you. Guess its your fault if you land in the ER. I get it. Electric scooters are hard to regulate. Theyre different from other popular modes of transit skateboards, bicycles, motorcycles, cars so theres no template for rules or best practices. And how do we retrofit both our laws and our car-centric infrastructure to accommodate such a promising new(ish) technology? Compounding all this, public officials are also somewhat scarred by their experience in the ride-share wars. Not so long ago, companies such as Uber and Lyft appeared and proceeded to ignore existing livery laws some of which were sensible, some of which were stupid to gain market share. In the process of turning themselves into billion-dollar-plus unicorns, the companies mounted aggressive public-relations campaigns. Persnickety politicians who tried to enforce the law were labeled puppets of Big Taxi, or worse Luddites. Faced with this new alien e-species, regulators may fear earning another scarlet L. About a year ago, Santa Monica became the first city to fully grapple with the task of regulating scooters. It shows how difficult it is to get the regs right. Developments here followed an arc that will sound familiar to the scores of other cities that have since been inundated. (The Albuquerque City Council approved a shared transportation vehicle ordinance regarding electric scooters last month. It allows bicycles, scooters, e-bikes, e-scooters and other small, wheeled vehicles to operate in public rights of way.) First came giddy media coverage about these whiz-bang devices. Theyre cheap and fast! Theyre super fun! Second came the furious stories about tangled nests of discarded scooters and, more seriously, injuries to both riders or pedestrians. One gentleman, William Kairala, recalls waking up in the emergency room with a fractured skull and possibly permanent brain damage. Theyre very handy. The problem is: You find a scooter, but you dont find a helmet, he said during an interview for a PBS NewsHour segment I did on Santa Monicas experience. And unfortunately I fell off of one. I wasnt even going fast. Third, the backlash: scooters thrown into the ocean or off buildings, set on fire, or desecrated by dogs. Brakes and batteries cut. Furious town halls. Lawsuits. Santa Monica initially fought with the scooter companies, even filing a criminal complaint against one, Bird. Ultimately the city launched a pilot program in September with tighter regulations governing when and where the devices could be used, which companies could operate, and so on. But after another PR campaign, Santa Monica appeared to cave on its original criteria for which firms could participate, and when I interviewed city officials more recently, they took on a more conciliatory tone. So, strikingly, did the vendors themselves, perhaps wary of being banned altogether. Ride-sharing companies had an established, motivated customer base people frustrated with their local taxi monopoly willing to fight the regulators on their behalf. Scooter companies dont really have an equivalent. Which perhaps explains why even Lyft emphasizes just how deferential its being in rolling out its scooter business. Our goal here is to do whats right, and whats right in this context is to work closely with the cities, get permits and launch once we have permission, David Fairbank, Lyfts bikes and scooters market manager, told me. Why does its scooter-sharing strategy seem so different from its car-sharing one? I asked. I dont have a ton of context on that but, yeah, were working closely with the governments this time, he said. Meanwhile, the bad habits that riders developed during the Wild West days remain. Helmet use is still virtually nonexistent. In January, California will actually stop requiring them. Scooters are still on sidewalks, beach paths and other places officially forbidden for safety reasons. It is great that regulators and firms have turned the temperature down a little this time and are trying to develop a workable, safety-minded set of regulations. But only if those regulations actually get enforced. E-mail crampell@washpost.com. Twitter, @crampell. (c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group. On the heels of the resounding success of Da Vinci The Genius at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, another Albuquerque museum is making a big splash with an exhibition celebrating 3,000 years of Spanish art and culture. The Albuquerque Museum is the first stop in the U.S. for Visions of the Hispanic World. The historic collection features 200 items from the Iberian Peninsula such as paintings, sculpture and illuminated manuscripts including a letter from Queen Elizabeth I to King Philip II of Spain, a Hebrew bible, ceramics, fiber and jewelry. Highlights include everything from the romantic images of Francisco de Goya to prehistoric vessels, works by El Greco and the works of Spanish Golden Age painter Diego Velasquez. The exhibit has been featured in some of the greatest art museums in the world, including Spains Museo Nacional del Prado and the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. After Albuquerque, the show will move to Cincinnati and Houston. The treasurers are from New Yorks Hispanic Society Museum and Library. Albuquerque Museum Director Andrew Connors said that when the exhibit opened at the Prado, the Spanish press went insane. Its a much more comprehensive view of Spanish traditions than any museum in Spain could provide. The Prado doesnt collect this diversity. I think there was a great sense of pride. He said the exhibit represents arguably the most comprehensive display ever shown in Albuquerque. Kudos to the Albuquerque Museum and its amazing staff for negotiating the complex logistics to bring this spectacular, one-of-a-kind collection to our state and city. This is an incredible opportunity for many in Albuquerque and New Mexico to explore their roots. And for everyone else, its an opportunity to experience world class art in our own backyard. The show is split into two chronological parts. The first part opened earlier this month; the second opens Dec. 22 and runs through March 31. If you go WHAT: Visions of the Hispanic World: Treasurers from the Hispanic Society Museum and Library. The show is split into two chronological parts. Currently on display is artwork from pre-history through the colonial period. The second part will be on display Dec. 22; it focuses on the late 1700s through the 1920s. The entire exhibit runs through March 31, 2019. WHEN: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Free admission Sunday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., on the first Wednesday of the month from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on the third Thursday of the month from 5-8:30 p.m.HOW MUCH: $5 surcharge for Visions of the Hispanic World. In addition, museum entrance fees are: out-of-state adult $6; New Mexico adult (19-64) $5; teen (13-18) $5; seniors (65+) $4; child (4-12) $3. The surcharge applies during free museum days. 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. Copyright 2018 Albuquerque Journal Presbyterian Healthcare Services has announced a partnership with several Albuquerque-area nonprofits aimed at connecting senior citizens with healthy food. The partnership is funded by a $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with matching funds from Presbyterian. Presbyterian says the money will fund several programs, including training 135 home health aides on senior nutrition and use of local ingredients in food preparation. The program is a collaboration with Encuentro, an education and advocacy group for Latino immigrants, which provides a home health aide certification program through Central New Mexico Community College. Andrea Plaza, Encuentros executive director, said the senior nutrition program will include an optional internship that pairs participants with low-income seniors, who will receive free home care for one month. While the curriculum is still in development, Plaza said it is certain to include training on nutrition, safety, food preparation techniques and the value of providing companionship during meal times. Theres research that suggests health outcomes are better for seniors when they eat their meals with someone else, said Plaza. Part of the issue with poor nutrition in seniors is related to isolation. The nutrition instruction will take place at Three Sisters Kitchen, a community kitchen project in Downtown Albuquerque. The facility will also be a site where individuals can redeem a prescription written by Presbyterian providers or select community members for fresh fruit and vegetables. At some point, a teacher at a local school may be able to determine a family needs this prescription, and then send them down here for their first visit, said Anzia Bennett, director of Three Sisters Kitchen. Well also be training our own staff in the initial screening process. We want to do everything we can to ensure these programs have a deep and wide impact. Additionally, Presbyterian says it work with Meals on Wheels to purchase more than 63,000 pounds of produce from 10 local growers over four years for use in delivered meals. Presbyterian will also sponsor free meal delivery for some of its low-income patients. Copyright 2018 Albuquerque Journal U.S. Sen. Tom Udall wants to protect New Mexicos national monuments from what he calls an overreach from the White House. He said that was among the motivations behind an amicus brief filed in an attempt to stop the reduction in size of two national monuments in southern Utah. Udall and U.S. Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, D-Arizona, were the leaders in the filing of the amicus brief in support of plaintiffs in five cases before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The cases challenge the Trump administrations decision to significantly diminish the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in southern Utah. A total of 26 senators and 92 house members have signed on to the amicus brief. While I am committed to protecting Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, this is about far more than just two national monuments, Udall said in an email to the Journal. This is about protecting all of our national monuments including monuments like Rio Grande del Norte and Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks in New Mexico from executive overreach. While New Mexicos national monuments may not be currently under attack, Udall said they could be threatened in the future if the Trump administrations actions go unchecked. Congress needs to assert its rightful authority to protect our national monuments in New Mexico and around the country, Udall said. Because if we dont, these precious lands could be lost forever to an administration that is intent on selling them off to the highest bidder. Trump announced the reduction of the Utah monuments late last year. His administration said the move would open up land for economic development and jobs in the region. Trump said the move would usher in a bright new future of wonder and wealth, according to a New York Times story on the announcement at Utahs state capital. Udall said if the Trump administration is allowed to move ahead with reducing the size of the Utah monuments it could set a dangerous precedent. Congress has granted the president authority to designate national monuments under the Antiquities Act of 1906. But Udall and others do not believe it granted the president authority to reduce or abolish national monuments. The presidents order attempts to reduce more than two million acres of protected land reducing the size of Bears Ears from 1.35 million acres to approximately 200,000 acres and Grand Staircase-Escalante from 1.9 million acres to approximately one million acres the largest ever elimination of public land protection in the countrys history. Udall calls the action a direct affront to the Native American tribes who advocated for years to designate Bears Ears, the sacred ground that is their ancestral home, as well as the small businesses, outdoor enthusiasts, and local communities that rely on our thriving $887 billion recreation economy to attract jobs and tourism. The amicus brief has the support of New Mexicos other Democratic senator, Martin Heinrich, and incoming U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland. President Trumps unprecedented move to drastically shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in southern Utah tore at the heart of Americas conservation legacy and was a direct assault on sacred lands and tribal sovereignty, Heinrich said in an email to the Journal. Haaland expressed her support on Twitter. Thank you @SenatorTomUdall and RepRaulGrijalva! I am with you, Haaland said in a tweet. I stand with Senator Udall and Representative Grijalva in protecting precious national monuments, our public lands are not for sale, Haaland said in an email to the Journal. For many Native Americans, there are national monuments we consider sacred land. They should not be deemed chess pieces used to fuel corporate greed by the Trump administration. President Barack Obama established Bears Ears as a national monument in 2016. President Bill Clinton established Grand Staircase-Escalante as a national monument in 1996. Albuquerque Public Schools is set to get $1.2 million from the state for highly rated teacher bonuses. At a special Board of Education meeting this week, the board unanimously approved including state grant funds in APS budget to fund the Excellence in Teaching Awards, money for teachers ranked exemplary under the state evaluation system. This years state budget allowed for $10,000 bonuses for exemplary math and science teachers, and $5,000 for other exemplary teachers in the 2017-18 school year. APS will award bonuses to 197 teachers 22 of whom will get the $10,000 bonuses, according to APS documents. The teachers had to be rated exemplary under the state teacher evaluation system and still be teaching in New Mexico to receive the money. APS will pay for the bonuses initially and then be reimbursed by the state Public Education Department. Payment will be made in separate checks and direct deposited into teachers accounts in early December, according to APS. The $1.2 million from the PED includes APS share of the Social Security and Medicare tax. According to PED data, Albuquerque Public Schools exemplary teachers made up 3.6 percent of district teachers in the last academic year. Statewide, 5.7 percent of teachers were rated exemplary. In all, PED spokesman Chris Eide said the state department disbursed about $6.4 million worth of Excellence in Teaching Awards statewide. The money is not without controversy. In an email sent to federation representatives this month, the Albuquerque Teachers Federation wrote that the union and the APS Board of Education are opposed to merit pay. ATF said APS and the union originally had agreed they would not take merit pay money, but APS is required to distribute the Excellence in Teaching Awards per state law. In the past, there was language in the budget that stated that merit pay must be negotiated, the email said. APS and ATF have been philosophically opposed to merit pay and have agreed that we would not take the money. A provision in this years state budget bill would have given teachers unions the ability to decide whether to participate in the bonus program for highly ranked educators, but Gov. Susana Martinez used her line-item veto authority to strike that language. Eide said Excellence in Teaching Awards are a way to acknowledge the states best teachers. The PED believes that great teachers are to be celebrated as much as we can possibly celebrate them and we hope that everyone would agree, he wrote in an email. Gov.-elect Michelle Lujan Grisham has said she plans to change the state teacher evaluation system to a new model and previously told the Journal she doesnt believe teachers perform better due to merit pay. Building and Construction Expo kicks off in Capital The second Building and Construction Expo 2018 kicked off in Bhrikutimandap, on Thursday. The expo is being touted as the place to be for anyone interested in construction works. Rio Rancho Public Schools is on track to have armed security guards in place as soon as February following the Board of Educations 4-1 vote to take the action earlier this month. Chief Operating Officer Mike Baker, a former chief with the Rio Rancho Police Department, estimated the training required would be completed and armed guards would be in the hallways in two to three months. Board members Wynne Coleman, Catherine Cullen, Ryan Parra and Martha Janssen voted in favor of the long-discussed measure. Board president Ramon Montano, favors armed guards, but he said he preferred waiting for POMS & Associates Insurance Brokers best practices for school security personnel to align with RRPS chosen course. NMPSIAs (New Mexico Public School Insurance Authority) standards for how we should implement this doesnt give us any leeway to improve the system without their approval, Montano said, so that all the ducks would be in a line. What Im concerned about is the liability. This is uncharted territory, he said. Existing NMPSIA standards outline three options for districts: contract with local police for a resource officer, contract with licensed security guards or use as a last resort Level 3 school security guards. The district has three resource officers, but stationing one at each school would be prohibitively expensive, as would getting licensed security guards. The district plans to use Level 3 school security guards, and the training the board emphasized is beyond Level 3, which is fine with Montano, but not precisely what NMPSIA has outlined. Montano is worried that requiring more training than NMPSIA calls for could be considered going against the recommendations. Were exceeding what they asked for, he said. Montano, president of the New Mexico School Boards Association, told the Observer last week that West Las Vegas Schools has deferred arming its security guards for now because of insurance concerns. Montano is a Las Vegas native. I dont want to put the district in a liability situation, Montano said. During public comments before the vote, residents urged caution, suggested exploring other options, said they still had questions, and some were categorically opposed to adding more guns to the equation. Everybody is responsible for safety, Superintendent Sue Cleveland told the board. Whatever you all decide is fine. Put this to rest so people know (what has been decided) one way or another. Cleveland also noted that several surveys among RRPS staff, parents and the community showed them overwhelmingly in support of arming security guards. COLUMBUS, N.M. A small New Mexico border town once attacked by Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa is rejecting talk of a wall and troops while embracing its legacy to draw tourists. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has cited Villas 1916 raid of Columbus as an example of why President Donald Trump was deploying active-duty troops along the U.S.-Mexico border. The deployment comes as thousands of migrants fleeing gang violence and poverty in Central America head toward the U.S. Residents of Columbus say those living on both sides of the border in the area have co-existed peacefully since the Villa invasion. They say the raid was a phenomenon of a different era, and that using it to justify tighter border security ignores more pressing needs, such as economic development and better roads. Its just an excuse, said Roberto Gutierrez, 63, who owns a grocery store in Columbus. Ever since then, people on both sides go back and forth (between the U.S. and Mexico) with no problem. In fact, the town is using the Villa assault to generate historical interest and try to pull in visitors rather than as a cautionary tale. Columbus is set to launch a campaign called Where Old Mexico Meets New Mexico that spotlights Pancho Villa State Park as a place where visitors can explore the area near the scene of the attack and the spot where the military planned its unsuccessful bid to retrieve Villa from Mexico. The town also has a small museum featuring U.S. Army recruitment posters and weapons. Residents mark the day of the raid every year to remember the Americans killed. Sometimes, there is a quiet moment with candles displayed in the middle of the village. Other times, there is a parade through the streets with volunteers dressed as Pancho Villa and U.S. General John J. Pershing. Shouting Viva Villa! Viva Mexico!, Villas forces attacked Columbus in the early morning of March 6, 1916, looting and burning homes and businesses. Around a dozen or so Columbus residents and eight U.S. soldiers were killed before members of the U.S. 13th Cavalry Regiment drove the Villistas back across the border. Historians have long debated the reason for Villas attack. University of Houston history professor Jose Angel Hernandez said it came as Mexico was locked in violent civil war. Villa felt betrayed by President Woodrow Wilson, who Villa believed would recognize his rebel government, Hernandez said. The raid has to be understood in the context of U.S.-Mexico diplomatic relations and the Mexican Revolution, not immigration, Hernandez said. The attack sparked outrage across the U.S. and Wilson ordered the Punitive Expedition into Mexico led by General John J. Pershing to capture or kill Villa. Mexican Americans who endured violence and discrimination in border towns saw Villa as a hero and celebrated the raid. The U.S. Army didnt catch Villa and withdrew from Mexico amid diplomatic pressure ahead of World War I. Columbus Mayor Esequiel Salas said the village long ago learned to accept its history. Weve come to terms with it, he said. I think we see it as an episode to learn from. Salas said its frustrating when people who have never visited Columbus cite the raid as a reason for more troops on the border or as a justification to invade another country. He said people in town rarely complain about border security or talk about a wall to replace its existing fence. He said he hears more complaints about a lack of housing for seniors and the need for more high-paying jobs in the area than about the raid 102 years ago. A lot has changed since then, and weve learned from each other, Salas said. We are still trying to learn from it all in our small community. Chinese-Nepali consortium to build Upper Marsyangdi A consortium comprising Chinese and Nepali companies have stepped forward to build the 600 MW Upper Marsyangdi Hydroelectric Project after the original developer Indian infrastructure giant GMR pulled out. CHICO, Calif. - The Chabad Jewish Center in Chico is hoping to give cars away to evacuees who had to leave their vehicles behind in the Camp Fire. Rabbi Mendy Zwiebel said he's working with donors to secure used vehicles and may have secured 15 cars to give away. Zwiebel hopes to give the cars away based on urgency and need of the individual. "It's a simple form you have to fill out and we're hoping to secure them, no promises, as we are trying to give out as many vehicles as we can," he said. To view the online application, CLICK HERE. CHICO, Calif. - Sierra Nevada Brewery hosted a Thanksgiving event for Camp Fire victims in an effort to bring people together on the holiday. Action News Now reporter Christina Vitale spoke with evacuees attending the event, who said that they took comfort in catching up with neighbors. "The best part is seeing people we know and finding out they made it out ok so that's a big relief," said Carol Wright, a Paradise resident. Many other evacuees said the event meant a lot to them, even if it wasn't the Thanksgiving that they had originally planned. "It means almost everything because everybody's so dispersed and to be able to even touch base with anybody has been a struggle and when you can at least sit down and visit for a while and have a meal," said Keith O'Brien, a resident of Paradise. "There is nowhere else to go." John Farrell, captain with Oakland Fire, spent his Thanksgiving with his team volunteering that the brewery. Some helped serve food to the evacuees. Farrell said helping out with an event like this is helping him cope with the recovery process. "For me personally, it's helping me cope with a lot of this issues," Farrell said. "You know, I'm a father and have a family and I can't imagine losing that and its just other people are doing. I think its just as important to help in the healing process as much as it is in the suppression effort." Ken Grossman, founder of Sierra Nevada Brewery, has also been spearheading many projects to assist with Camp Fire evacuees. "We decided the community really needed to come together and there are so many people displaced that we thought we'd try and pull off a big Thanksgiving and bring people together to at least have a couple hour break from some of their troubles that I'm sure they've been thinking about all the time now," Grossman said. bigbasket (https://www.bigbasket.com/), Indias largest online supermarket, has partnered with Digibank, DBS mobile-only bank, for the launch of its first co- branded debit card. Under this exclusive partnership, Digibank customers with the card who open a digi Savings account will earn a 5% cashback on every order placed on bigbaskets app and website. The cashback will be up to a maximum amount of INR 200 per month and INR 2400 annually. To benefit from this international debit card, individuals can download the digibank app from the Google Play Store/ Apple App store and sign up for a digi Savings account, using the referral code BB. The debit card can then be activated through the digibank app for seamless transaction and grocery shopping from the bigbasket app or website. The card offers a value platform for the grocery requirements of Digibanks customers. Speaking about this, Mr Vipul Parekh, Co-Founder, bigbasket, said, Our partnership with DBS Bank India is another milestone towards providing impeccable customer experience and benefits. Apart from being able to shop for a wide variety of products, the card will enable them to avail cashback, making it a wonderful value proposition every time they make a purchase with us. Commenting on the card launch, Shantanu Sengupta, Managing Director and Head-Consumer Banking Group, DBS India said, We are delighted to partner with bigbasket and introduce this unique co-branded proposition for our digi bank customers, who are avid online shoppers. This is in line with DBS Banks philosophy of embedding itself in our customers journeys, thereby partnering with digital leaders like bigbasket, to provide a superior customer experience. ChuChu TV, one of the worlds most popular YouTube channel for kids today announced the launch of its new App, ChuChu School Kindergarten. With over 20 billion views and over 32 million subscribers, ChuChu TVs channels garner around 20 million views and adds close to 50,000 subscribers a day. ChuChu School is ChuChu TVs partnership with Skoolbo, an award-winning media learning company. Skoolbos highly popular learning product is used in over 56,000 schools worldwide, including the United States of America, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong and Singapore. ChuChu School was launched in 2018 and is currently available as a YouTube channel with more than 25,000 subscribers. ChuChu School won the 2018 Moms Choice Gold Award honoring excellence in family-friendly media, products and services. The ChuChu School Apps will offer curriculum-based learning modules from pre- school to Grade 2 and the first app off the block is created for kindergarten. The ChuChu School Kindergarten App offers over 500 books, songs and lessons which cover Reading, Numbers, Basic geography, science, brain games, puzzles, stories and songs. The App features 150 audio story books and 50 learning songs as well. We are very excited to enter the world of education and learning with ChuChu School Apps. Parents all across the world have always trusted us for our edutainment content and now we take this a further step into the world of learning with our ChuChu School learning apps. We are sure both toddlers and caregivers will find our ChuChu School apps engaging and useful, says Vinoth Chandar, Founder, CEO and Creative Director of ChuChu TV. Working in partnership with the ChuChuTV team has been a rare pleasure. Skoolbo prides itself on creating immersive learning experience which is valued by students, schools and families all over the world but this experience has allowed us to perform at a whole new level. We cant wait to see the the impact of the first app on the community and releasing more and more for such an engaged audience says Shane Hill, Founder and CEO of Skoolbo. The ChuChu School Apps is the third offering from ChuChu TV. The ChuChu TV Pro and ChuChu TV lite Apps are extremely popular around the world and offer ChuChu TV content and games for toddlers and preschoolers. The ChuChu School App is priced at $3.99 per month Preschool. The Grade 1 and Grade 2 Apps will launch in the coming months. EPIC Channel's new show 'Hornbill' lets you experience the most esteemed festivals of Nagaland- The Hornbill Festival. The eagerly anticipated Hornbill Festival is one of the most esteemed festivals of Nagaland, which is celebrated by locals with much passion and enthusiasm. It began as a week-long festival to concur with Nagaland Statehood Day on December 1 every year. It features traditional arts, dances, folk songs, and ethnic games. All this takes place within immaculate models of tribal huts, complete with wood carvings and hollow log drum instruments, which are beat in haunting symphony at the end of the day. There are plenty of handicraft stalls, food stalls (smoked pork is a local delicacy), and heady rice beer to enjoy as well. Plus, a film festival, adventure activities, and kids' carnival. However, the hottest event (literally!) at the festival is undoubtedly the Naga chilli eating competition! EPIC Channel lets you experience the Hornbill festival of Nagaland which has evolved over the years from being a celebration of the heritage and tradition of the Nagas into a huge cultural event for all the 8 Northeast States. Named after the Great Indian Hornbill, the revered forest bird of the Nagas, the festival today has come to be known as the festival of festivals and is a must visit for any discerning traveller . Watch the full episode on 24th November at 3 pm, 5 pm, 7 pm, 9 pm only on EPIC channel. Joy, the beauty and personal care brand from RSH Global, continues to question stereotypes in its campaigns. Reinforcing the belief of Beautiful by Nature, Joy has unveiled its latest campaign for its Honey & Almonds Body Lotion featuring new brand ambassador Mouni Roy, which seeks to inspire women to embrace the qualities that make them naturally beautiful. Developed in-house, the campaign highlights how people are conditioned into following certain pre-defined beauty standards of how a woman should look, behave and carry her around. Physical appearance has always been the yardstick to measure a womans beauty, while her smartness or confidence is not given a similar treatment. It may be recalled that the previous campaign for Joy Honey & Almonds Body Lotion, released in 2016, had featured comedienne Bharti Singh, who candidly stated how she had been ridiculed for being overweight all her life. She mentioned how she overcame all negative comments to become the queen of comedy and then people started seeing her talent and inner beauty. Elaborating on the thought behind these campaigns, Poulomi Roy, Chief Marketing Officer, RSH Global, said, We do not believe in typecasting beauty, we discuss and debate on the various stereotypes that are attached to a womans appearance. The beauty of a woman lies not just in the way she looks, but also in the way she exudes confidence, pride and smartness. We believe in our brand philosophy that every woman is born beautiful and it translates into our products which are made from the goodness of nature (natural extracts). On the choice of Mouni Roy as a brand ambassador, she said, Mouni is most certainly categorised as a conventional beauty, and hence, is often subjected to real-life situations, where people appreciate only her external beauty and not her intellect. She is a well-read woman, yet, not much has ever been told or spoken about her beyond her looks. We try to choose people who have an interesting story to lend to our brand philosophy Beautiful by Nature. In an interaction with Adgully, Poulomi Roy speaks at length about the creative thought behind Joys latest campaign, the positioning of Beautiful by Nature, tough competition, expansion plans and more. Excerpts: Joy has had Bharti Singh as the brand ambassador for Honey & Almond Lotion. With Mouni on board, will you still continue with Bharti? That campaign has been phased out and now Mouni Roy is the new ambassador. What is the core creative thought behind Joys campaign? Through Beautiful by Nature we are trying to eradicate the stereotypes that are attached with women, like She is beautiful and thus she gets it easily in life, She is very studious, so she cant get it or Beauty with brains is a rare combination. All these are the societys perception. I have often seen even women making such comments. The thought is simple that it is not Beauty or Brains, but it is Beauty and Brains. We wanted to tell this story through a character who resembles it clearly. Every time we choose a brand ambassador, it is very neatly embedded in the story. What we want to say here is that we dont categorise among people. Everything and everyone is beautiful. That was one thought that we did last time. Similarly, a research analyst can also look like a model or just because a woman is a scientist it doesnt mean that she must look drab in specs. These are concepts that we have built around ourselves and that is something we want to remove. Every time we come out with a campaign, we try to have a conversation with the consumers which is interesting enough. What is the media mix for the current campaign? Its a 360-degree campaign comprising digital, television, print, etc. Apart from that, its a very high frequency campaign that commenced from November 12. You can see the ad film on television across genres. What is the key positioning that you see for brand Joy? I think we are one of the few Indian personal care companies having an entire spectrum of products. For example, if you look at Vaseline, it is into lotions, similarly Nivea is into lotions, Himalaya is into face wash, Lotus Herbal has skin care products but not hair care. We, on the other hand, have an entire range of products from hair care, body care, skin care, shampoo, scrubs and many more. Currently, with winters round the corner, we are focussing more on winter care products. What makes Joy Honey & Almonds Body Lotion stand out from the rest of the products is that it deeply moisturises and is perfect for the Northern markets where winters are severe. Once you use it, you dont need to reapply. Besides, the pricing has been kept very reasonable. Our product quality is consistently high and we have completed 30 successful years in the Indian market. You had mentioned that Joy aims to be a Rs 600-crore brand by 2020. How close are you to achieving that? That is our Lakshya 2020. Currently, we are a Rs 490-crore brand. We were at Rs 250 crore when we had started out. Could you share your expansion plans? Apart from units in Kolkata, Shimla and Guwahati, are you looking to setting up more manufacturing facilities? Right now geographically in India, we are looking at Maharashtra and the Eastern part of India. South is still in modern trade and we havent had a general trade entry there. So, we will hold it back for some years. Currently, Maharashtra is the main focus. How tough has it been to fight the competition in the beauty care market, now that even MNC brands are going the nature care way? Personal care is a very challenging market, because it is ever growing and ever consumed market as per the consumers needs and fancies. You have to have a very in-depth research and understanding, because what you are making is what people apply on their face. So, as far as product is concerned, at that level there are a lot of options. There are a lot of fly-by-night operators, thanks to e-commerce. There are a lot of new players who make 2-3 products and its easy for them to reach people because there are people who believe in looking good and not feeling good. People like us, who have been in this industry for long, know that these products contain certain chemicals and that utmost care is needed to use them in the correct proportion. But a lot of people in this business do not understand this. Thus, we are constantly fighting: People who are merely in it for instant beauty Consumers who do not understand the impact of using such products five years down the line As a company, we are not going to use such chemical extracts and still, we have to constantly be in the market We are competing against companies with big pockets like HUL, Johnson & Johnson and others. So, there are a lot of challenges in the way you want to convert the consumers and stay relevant for them. What would be your key focus in 2019? We are coming up with a couple of launches in 2019. We are looking at expansion in Maharashtra. Honey & Almond Lotion will see a major growth this year and we are almost there. We will also come up with something for the summers in 2019. Spearheading the cause of enhanced visibility for the SMBs, international e-commerce platform, Shopmatic announces the launch of its ground-breaking new platform, Shopmatic World. The avant-garde curated platform, Shopmatic World is harboured around the real stories of online entrepreneurs, their distinguished ingenuity and perseverance that have gone into the genesis of their brands. Endeavouring to transform the way small businesses connect with their audience, the Shopmatic World global platform will invite online shoppers to spend time discovering unique products and services from unique merchant stores. Online shoppers spending time on Shopmatic World will be delighted to discover the intent, idea, and values that serve as the foundation of these brands. Shopmatic prides itself in enabling the entire gamut of the e-commerce ecosystem for a number of inspired entrepreneurs and online merchants. With the solutions and support provided by Shopmatic, over 50,000 hobbyists, artisans, craftsperson, stay-at-home mothers, small and medium businesses, amongst others, have found their way to becoming online entrepreneurs. Now with the launch of Shopmatic World, Shopmatic will help these online entrepreneurs share their individual narratives and better connect with shoppers. This real connection would beget more opportunities for the brands to bolster their sales, presence, and influence in the digital world. While unveiling this never-seen-before platform, Anurag Avula, CEO of Shopmatic, said, We are very excited to launch Shopmatic World especially since it aims at delivering significant value to our merchants, by helping them get discovered online. Oftentimes, brands go unnoticed in the cloud and need some help getting noticed by discerning buyers. Shopmatic World curates the stories of ingenuity and perseverance of entrepreneurs and the resilience with which they transformed from skilled professionals or hobbyists to successful entrepreneurs. With this curated platform, we intend to help small businesses get discovered for their uniqueness. Shopmatic World is only open to sellers who have created their own e-commerce stores using the Shopmatic platform. Shopmatic World will serve as a discovery platform for buyers: it will showcase individual stories of these different sellers, and the products or services they are selling; those interested in buying any of the products/ services showcased, will be redirected to the sellers' individual websites, for fulfilling their orders. The curated platform opens to an enchanting showcase of different brands, carrying a brief snippet about each seller, with accompanying pictures. Online visitors can delve deeper into the brands that intrigue them at first sight and discover the story behind its genesis, along with its top-selling products. If the online visitors wish to purchase from the brand of their liking, they would then be redirected to the individual, online store of the brand. Doctors dubious admission process courts controversy The admission process for new batch of DM (Doctorate in Medicine) and MCh (Magister of Chirurgiae) at the National Academy of Medical Sciences (NAMS) has been mired in controversy after two candidates filed cases against the Ministry of Health and Population at the Supreme Court for recommending ineligible candidates for government seats. With the pace at which mobile advertising is growing, it is evident that the ads on mobile are working well for the marketers. Consumers are obviously noticing mobile ads and finding them informative. At the core of effective mobile advertising, like any other format is powerful creative idea and execution. Kaizad Pardiwalla, President & COO, The 120 Media Collective expresses, Creative process for any piece of communication should revolve around the creative idea. That holds true for mobile advertising too. Having said that we must consider size of the device and limitation of space and therefore design communication specially for mobile and not just adapt the creative to a smaller size. The things to keep in mind are: a) Few words and larger fonts. Ideally not more than three words per frame, b) Large and strong CTA, c) Use GIFs d) Mobile is highly interactive through the touch screen, use that! Experts agree that translating broadcast and even desktop creative to mobile might not be a good idea. The small size of mobile, and the way media is consumed on mobile warrants a different creative approach. Unique advertising but without any dissonance with the entire marketing campaign for the brand. Rohan Mehta, Socialkinnect elucidates it well, Dimensions of mobile screen are different from any other medium and the screen is significantly smaller. Users tend to scroll faster on mobile than a laptop, so for mobile, we prefer to focus on static rather than gifs or HTML banners. We also prefer to add contextual text based on the platforms or user behaviour for that app, to help get the users to focus faster. Needless to say, brand association must be high for better recall. One should ideally pick platforms and ad units that seamlessly blend with the user's experience, are non-intrusive but get the job done. It is a given now that traditional ad formats do not deliver optimum value on mobile platforms. Does this, however, imply that creative for mobile advertising has no reference point? Harshil Karia, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Schbang corrects us, It is not very different from traditional advertising as far as the creative thought process is concerned. However, nuances of the medium must be kept in mind you cannot interrupt the consumer for too long. You also don't want to have your ad receive the feared 'skip' or scroll treatment. Hence, the narrative has to be attention seeking and snappy. The creation of an effective mobile ad has a similar anatomy as the creation of effective advertising for traditional media consumer connect comes first. Good looking ads which are visually appealing and fit the format well but do not connect with consumers fail to deliver. Vasuta Agarwal, VP and GM, India and South Asia, InMobi takes pains to explain, Underlying principle when building creative for mobile is blending elements of both - Left brain (creative) and right brain (analytical). The creative process for mobile, like traditional advertising, can be divided into three major buckets - Context, Conceptualisation and Execution. She adds, As the first step, one should get a clear understanding of brand/product ethos & objective and the target audience mobile behaviour. As a next step, the creative teams need to immerse themselves in a brainstorming session along with brand and technology teams. At this stage, idea is to marry innovative/latest technologies, the brand objective/goals and mobile creative expertise and zero in on creative and technology that works best in the context. Execution does not only involve creating the ad campaign but also extensive testing to achieve the desired user experience and business metrics. Even after go-live, a frame-by-frame performance of the creative should be analysed to optimise. This includes enhancements in the location of the CTA, building better interactivity or enhancing messaging. As mobile comes to forefront as an effective medium of brand storytelling, there is increased focus on creatives that work on the medium. We discuss the creative aspect of mobile advertising at length at TMMS 2018. Taking its presence in India a notch higher, Uber Eats, the worlds largest food delivery platform, today announced the appointment of leading actress and youth icon, Alia Bhatt, as its brand ambassador. India will be the first country for Uber Eats globally, to have appointed a brand ambassador. Uber Eats is gaining popularity among consumers across 37 cities in India to order food of their choice at the click a button. Similarly, Alia Bhatts effortless performances in bringing out the essence of every character she plays, has positioned her as one of Indias most loved youth icons. "Alia is an inspiration to Indian millennials and we are thrilled to have her on board. The youth today relates to her easy-going, carefree and energetic personality. She is known for her unique style and agility as an actor - the same qualities are an integral part of the Uber Eats DNA; thus making her the perfect fit to represent our brand in India. We are excited to have Alia on board, as we stay focused on building and strengthening our presence in India, said Bhavik Rathod, Head of Uber Eats India and South Asia. Alia Bhatt, expressing her excitement as Uber Eats first brand ambassador said, My work hours and plans keep changing, so the freedom/flexibility to get what Im craving for whenever I want, right at the tap of a button, almost seems magical. Im delighted to be associated with a young, innovative and energetic brand like Uber Eats and I look forward to all the excitement thats in store with this partnership. Uber Eats Indias association with Alia Bhatt will lay the foundation for a host of brand-led interventions in the coming year. Besides being the face of the brand, consumers can expect to see Alia in different moods and never seen before avatars on social media platforms. Uber Eats recognizes the appetite for food delivery in India and in the past year and a half, has emerged as the fastest growing food delivery app. In 2018, Uber Eats will continue to focus on technology innovations and empowering people to broaden horizons of convenience and experience in the food delivery space. And look who is defending vaccines to the bitter end, at the end of the article. It's our old pal and vaccine court expert for pharma, pediatric neurologist Max Wiznitzer, from Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland. (From Reuters) - Childhood vaccines may trigger early onset of a severe form of infant epilepsy, but researchers say the disorder is ultimately caused by defective genes and lifesaving vaccines should not be withheld from these children. The researchers said they feared the study published in the Lancet medical journal would scare parents away from getting their children vaccinated but stressed the babies in the study would likely have developed seizures within months regardless of the vaccine. The disorder, called Dravet syndrome, generally begins with seizures around six months of age. These children have poor language and motor skills and difficulty relating to others. Up to 80 percent of them have mutations in the SCN1A gene. Anne McIntosh of the University of Melbourne's Epilepsy Research Center and colleagues examined the medical records of 40 Dravet syndrome patients with the genetic mutation who had been vaccinated against whooping cough, or pertussis. They said 30 percent of these children developed their first seizures within two days of receiving the vaccine but symptoms of their disorder were no worse than the other children who had their first seizures later on. "In about 30 percent of people, it appears that (first seizures) came on rather quickly after the vaccination. But the overall message is that the outcome to the patients did not differ regardless of whether the onset of the disorder was shortly after the vaccination, or later on," said McIntosh. 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. Government clueless about Indian chief minister's visit The visit of Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, to Janakpur to attend a religious event has sparked a controversy after the Nepal government said it has no information about his plan. An international court this week ordered Turkey to free an opposition politician, ruling his prolonged detention in Turkey was politically motivated and harmed pluralism. But Selahattin Demirtas remains behind bars after the countrys strongman leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, rebuffed the court, threatening a confrontation with Europe. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said keeping Demirtas in prison for two years during dozens of trials on terrorism charges violated three articles of the European Convention on Human Rights. Erdogan promptly shot back, saying Turkey was not obliged to implement the decision, even though it is a signatory to the treaty, which says the Strasbourg-based courts rulings are binding. The standoff cast a shadow over a visit to Ankara by top EU officials for talks on Turkeys long-stalled application for membership, just as the government works to repair its frayed relationship with the bloc. In her first visit to Turkey in more than two years, EUs foreign policy chief Frederica Mogherini criticized Demirtas detention and the ongoing arrests of journalists, academics and activists. We hope he [Demirtas] will be released shortly, and that similar cases will be dealt with soon, she said at a tense press conference on Thursday with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. We believe that it is in the interest of Turkey to follow up on the [ECHR] decisions. For his part, Cavusoglu urged the EU to stop defending his governments opponents and on Friday said Mogherini was out of line. In an interview with Al-Monitor a day before the ruling, Demirtas said he expected the EU to speak out against a clampdown in Turkey that has made justice elusive for thousands of members of his pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), which he led until early this year. Rather than standing up for me, the EU is defending its founding principles, and this means it cannot stay silent in the face of what has been done to us, Demirtas said in written responses to questions submitted through his lawyers. Everyone accepts that the judiciary is not fair nor independent. [Erdogan] himself applies the most overt political pressure on my cases, he said. Because the rule of law has been suspended in political trials, it is difficult to predict the outcome of proceedings. I'm ready for everything. One of Turkeys most popular political figures, Demirtas was jailed in November 2016 on terrorism charges arising from his political speeches that often targeted Erdogans authoritarian style of rule. For his part, Erdogan has called Demirtas a terrorist, tying him to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade armed campaign for autonomy. A former human rights lawyer, Demirtas denies links with the group and espouses a negotiated settlement to the conflict. His lengthy imprisonment has sidelined him from political life and is part of a broader crackdown on the Kurdish political movement after a resurgence in violence by militants in 2015 and 2016. Turkey began negotiating to join the EU in 2005, but a steady erosion in its democratic credentials has made membership all but impossible, especially after Erdogan faced down a military coup in 2016 and jailed more than 50,000 of his opponents in the aftermath. In its ruling, the ECHR on Tuesday deemed Demirtas initial arrest was made on reasonable suspicion he had committed an offense, but that extending his detention was made on grounds that could not be regarded as sufficient to justify its duration. It ordered Turkey to pay him 25,000 euros ($28,500) for damages and costs. Judges also found that Demirtas detention pursued the predominant ulterior purpose of stifling pluralism and limiting freedom of political debate. Demirtas had been arrested on Erdogans orders and held for so long due to a tense political climate in Turkey in recent years [that] had created an environment capable of influencing certain decisions by the national courts, they wrote. In response, Erdogan accused the court of bias. The ECHRs decisions are not binding for us. We will make our countermoves, he said without elaborating. He did not meet with Mogherini and EU Commissioner for Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn during their visit. Erdogans defiant stance belies his recent efforts to bridge the rift with the West to mitigate the impact of an economic crisis that threatens Turkey with a recession. One form of outreach has been to free foreign nationals Turkey has jailed, such as Andrew Brunson, a North Carolina Evangelist prosecuted on coup-related charges who enjoyed vigorous lobbying by US President Donald Trump. Flouting the ECHR ruling would require Turkey to withdraw from the rights convention, said Riza Turmen, a former ECHR justice from Turkey. He also told Cumhuriyet newspaper that this marked the first time his former court ruled against a country for violating a politicians right to be elected. The Council of Europe, the rights body Turkey joined as a founding member in 1949 and that created the ECHR, has also called on Turkey to respect the ruling. Cavusoglu dismissed speculation that Turkey could be forced to leave the council if it defied the ruling on Demirtas and accused the court of being politicized. The ECHR said Turkey violated the principles of fair elections by jailing Demirtas during Junes presidential election in which he staged a quixotic challenge against Erdogan from his prison cell, and a 2017 referendum that ushered in the constitutional changes Erdogan needed to implement an executive-style presidency that concentrates all levers of power in his office. Before his arrest, Demirtas, 45, led the HDP to a historic third-place finish in a 2015 general election by drawing support from nontraditional voters for a progressive platform and pledge to thwart Erdogans drive for one-man rule. But he was unable to stop the spiral of violence between the PKK and security forces that erupted a month after the election when a peace process the HDP helped the government secure collapsed. Eight other former and current HDP lawmakers are also in prison, along with as many as 6,000 party activists and mayors. Some observers argued that Demirtas victory at the ECHR should serve as a precedent for other politically motivated trials. The ruling should have far-reaching implications within the country where civil society actors are routinely remanded in prolonged pre-trial detention under trumped-up charges, Amnesty Internationals Andrew Gardner said in a statement. It exposes the pernicious and undue influence of politics in Turkeys broken judicial system, in which the peaceful expression of opinions and political dissent are punished through the courts. Demirtas said in a statement after the ruling that it showed he was a political hostage. The court cases and allegations against me have all collapsed. His lawyers applied to a Turkish court for his immediate release, arguing that continuing to hold him violated his right to liberty, according to an emailed statement. He was sentenced to almost five years in prison in September in connection with a 2013 speech in the first verdict handed down, but his pre-trial detention amounts to time served, they argue. In the interview with Al-Monitor, Demirtas said he has given up being active in politics, at least while he remains behind bars. For now, he spends his days in a prison cell writing hes already published a book of short stories and he keeps his spirits up by preparing his defense ahead of court appearances in the dozens of trials he faces. Since these court cases are to do with the speeches and political activities I engaged in while I was outside of prison defending my justified beliefs gives me strength, he said. The only way for me to contribute to peace is to continue to believe in it with all of my heart. The reimposition of US secondary sanctions has compelled Tehran to look for ways to reduce their negative impact. According to Iranian officials, one of the strategies is to increase trade and interaction with its neighbors. This is not new to Iran, as the country has pursued a policy of improving relations with immediate neighbors including investments in increased energy interdependency. Yet the past rationale for regional policy was more focused on security considerations. This time, the rationale has been expanded to include trade and economic reasons. However, this strategy is facing challenges on multiple fronts, most importantly due to the existing tensions between Iran and her southern Arab region. In fact, deputy head of the Iran-China Chamber of Commerce Majid Reza Hariri recently criticized the strategy of focusing on immediate neighbors by highlighting the tensions and disagreements that Iran has with a number of immediate neighbors. Nonetheless, Tehran can benefit from closer trade and investment ties with some of its neighbors. The best case where the merger of security and economic rationales can be witnessed is in Iran-Iraq relations. It is not an exaggeration to say that Iran-Iraq relations present the most significant regional axis in West Asia. One should always keep in mind that the two states fought an eight-year war in the 1980s under Saddam Hussein, but have managed to establish a unique relationship including expanding economic relations. In fact, in the first seven months of the current Iranian year (March 21-October 22, 2018), Iraq was the most important export market for non-crude Iranian exports with close to $6 billion of exports. A recent visit by new Iraqi President Barham Salih to Tehran and his high-level meetings across the Iranian power structure was another reminder of the nature of this relationship and its significance for Iran. The two sides agreed to elevate annual trade volume from the current $12 billion to $20 billion, which would be a major boost especially if it includes a major growth in Iranian exports to Iraq. The question is what opportunities and obstacles are in store for the planned expansion of trade relations. Iraq and Iran not only share the longest respective border with any neighbor in both countries, but they also have substantial ethnic, cultural and religious ties. Furthermore, due to the existence of a number of security challenges in the region, the two states converge on a number of geopolitical and security interests. While the existence of vast hydrocarbon reserves could be a reason for competition, so far the energy sector has brought the two nations closer particularly as Iran has large reserves of natural gas that Iraq needs for its electricity generation. Interestingly, the significance of Irans role in Iraqs energy supplies is also clear to the US administration, which granted Iraq a 45-day waiver to import natural gas and electricity from Iran. These waivers will have to be extended, as there are limited alternatives to Irans current exports to Iraq due to missing infrastructure. Evidently, in the longer run, Iraq could find substitutes, but the question is whether Baghdad would risk the deepening ties with Tehran in order to appease Washington. It will be a difficult balancing act as Baghdad needs both powers, but it is safe to expect that Baghdad will look for ways not to undermine the close ties with Tehran. Interestingly, Russian representative at the UN Security Council Vasily Nebenzya has supported Iraqs decision to continue trading with Iran. He was quoted as saying that Iraq is recovering and Moscow supports a positive Baghdad approach to ensure its security and improve its economy. The areas of developing win-win scenarios are not limited to Iranian electricity and natural gas exports. There are also a large number of shared oil fields that are being developed. The two sides have agreed to jointly develop these fields, which will allow them to effectively utilize the resources and enhance the wealth of both nations. This platform may also be an opportunity for the Iranian side to inject some of the latest technologies into the development of Irans oil sector by studying how international companies are managing the Iraqi side of the joint fields. There is also Irans role in ongoing oil and petroleum product swaps involving a triangle of Iraq, Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan. The two sides have furthermore signed an agreement to allow Iranian companies to assist Iraqi contractors in the field of expanding the capacity of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) production in Iraq, especially as LPG will play a growing role in the transportation sector and residential energy consumption in the country. Beyond the energy sector, there are also relevant investments and initiatives on both sides in order to deepen the bilateral relations. Apart from major Iranian investments in Shiite holy sites in Iraq, Tehran has also invested in a number of medical centers in border regions to attract medical tourism from Iraq. Furthermore, the two sides have set up numerous border markets to institutionalize cross-border trade and dissuade communities from engaging in smuggling activities. In economic and cultural terms, one core interest on the Iranian side is also to provide access to Iranian pilgrims to holy sites in Iraq. The combination of religious, cultural and health tourism is generating revenues and creating jobs on both sides. Another important utility of the close ties to Iraq will be the opportunity for Iranian companies to use their subsidiaries in Iraq as a front to secure the products and services that may not be available to Iran directly. The process of using Iraqi companies could in many cases replace the past path of going through front companies in the United Arab Emirates. How US sanctions enforcers will try to undercut such paths remains to be seen, but establishing front companies in neighboring jurisdictions is an important lever in Irans attempts not to allow the United States to undermine the countrys economic and technological development. The two sides are also planning to create a joint bank that will facilitate payments and transactions between the two economies in the face of increased US pressure on international banks. Another idea that has been promoted in bilateral relations has included the establishment of an industrial complex in one of the border regions that could house joint ventures and help the private sectors of the two nations to cooperate and develop solutions needed in the region. All of these realities and plans will now be challenged by the reimposed US sanctions on Iran. Not all activities will be sanctionable, but there will be activities that the US side will try to sanction which will, in turn, create challenges for the Iraqi side that need to balance relations with Iran and the United States. Other neighboring countries, such as Turkey, will also face similar challenges. In his recent meeting with Salih, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stated, A strong, independent and advanced Iraq is very important for Iran, which reflects the sentiments of the key political power centers in Iran. One key driver of this sentiment is the growing appreciation in Tehran that the more indispensable Iran becomes as a trading partner and an energy source or a trade hub for its immediate neighbors, the more difficult it will be to sanction and undermine the country. Thus, it is valid to assume that US President Donald Trumps ill-advised policy on Iran will compel Tehran to deepen its ties with immediate neighbors and make itself more and more indispensable in the region. The Nov. 11 clash between Hamas and an Israeli Special Forces unit operating within the Gaza Strip is not really over. The firefight that almost resulted in war has been replaced by a digitalized campaign and battle of wits that peaked Nov. 22 in an absurd incident. Hamas invested tremendous efforts in collecting information and publishing photos of those it claimed had taken part in the botched undercover operation in southern Gaza. In an unprecedented move, Israels military censor urged Israeli media outlets and the public not to share the photos Hamas posted online, not to react to them online and not to disseminate them so as not to help the Hamas crowdsourcing effort that could be harmful to Israels national security. As of now, the Israeli public is displaying surprising self-control and the social media buzz that Hamas Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar and his people had hoped to create has fallen flat. Hamas and Israel are engaged in a protracted war. The organization does not recognize Israel, its charter calls for Israels annihilation; Israel also does not recognize Hamas and tries to avoid any direct contacts with its people. That state of play, however, belongs in the past. Nowadays, in this new era, the military wing of Hamas, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, has Hebrew-language Telegram and Twitter accounts, and even a tattle hotline of the type provided by authorities to catch tax evaders, which Israelis can call anonymously to report information. Hamas fires rockets at the Israeli power station that supplies Gaza with electricity and funds a multipronged, complex terror network with millions of dollars in cash delivered to the Gaza Strip in armored trucks under Israeli supervision. What a crazy world. Now Hamas is trying to do to Israel what Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, head of General Security for the Emirate of Dubai, did in 2010 when he exposed an undercover Israeli team sent to kill senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Israel is still traumatized by the affair, in which Khalfans agency used digital surveillance and Israeli-developed security cameras to expose the 11-member team it claimed was working for the Mossad. For days, Khalfan embarrassed Israel which has never admitted to the operation by publishing more and more photos of the operatives of Kidon, the Mossads mythological assassinations department, and portrayed Israel in a ridiculous light. The clandestine Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip revealed almost two weeks ago is still shrouded in secrecy. Hamas claims it has managed to reconstruct the activity of the Israeli commandos, to find the house they rented near the town of Khan Yunis and the two vehicles they used. At the end of the firefight between the Israeli force and Hamas, Israels air force bombed these vehicles and destroyed them, albeit not totally. It now turns out that a gun with a silencer was left intact at the scene, which Sinwar held up proudly last week, as well as quite a few items that enabled Hamas to figure out what the Israeli force had been doing undercover for quite some time deep inside Gaza. The rare step taken by the military censor stemmed from a simple calculation: Israel believes that for now, Hamas is feeling its way in the dark. It may have photos of people it thinks took part in the operation but it has no other information. Spreading the photos all over social media would play into the hands of Hamas and provide it with information. Israel is a small country, and people might start identifying the faces in the photos, sharing their life stories with the public, thereby damaging national security. The identity of members of Israels undercover units is rarely revealed, even if they are killed in battle. Such, for example, is the case with Lt. Col. M. who was killed in the Gaza firefight Nov. 12 after saving his friends. The military chief of staff will probably award him a medal of valor posthumously, but other than his family and close friends, Israelis will never know who he was and will be unable to mourn him, lest publication of his name or photo reveal to the enemy other undercover operations in which he took part. Military officials are praising the self-control displayed by the Israeli public, which for the most part ignored the photos posted by Hamas online under the headline Wanted. Nonetheless, security and intelligence officials understand that while Israel defeated Hamas in this round killing seven of its people, and the Israeli fighters were extricated from the scene in a heroic air force operation without leaving behind a body or a kidnapped soldier Hamas has the upper hand in terms of public awareness of the botched operation. The exposure of the operation could be disastrous for Israels methods of operation behind enemy lines. The extent to which Hamas succeeded in reconstructing the teams activity and its goals could force Israel to undertake a strategic shift in the way it conducts clandestine intelligence operations, and perhaps even threaten the supremacy it enjoys in this field over its enemies. Nonetheless, no one in Israel is having second thoughts about the secret operation. This is a dangerous business, a senior intelligence source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. We carry out hundreds of clandestine operations every year, on all fronts and in places no one would even imagine. The rate of exposure and failure is virtually nil. The public only hears about the failures. The successes will forever remain veiled, which is a good thing, the source said. Israelis are hearing about the Gaza failure and surprisingly managing to distance themselves from the uproar on social media and from Hamas' efforts to draw them into the fray. A sticker spreading like wildfire on social media says it all: They protected us, now we have to protect them, urging restraint on the part of Israelis, who are generally quick to blab information. For now, its working. RAMALLAH, West Bank In a meeting held Nov. 12, the Syrian government tasked the Damascus provincial council with rehabilitating the infrastructure of the Yarmouk refugee camp in southern Damascus and restoring services to prepare for the return of the displaced. The statement comes in the wake of an official Syrian decision allowing refugees to return to the Yarmouk camp. Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Miqdad informed the Palestinian factions in Syria of the move on Nov. 6. Although the Syrian authorities have yet to specify any details for the return process, the decision gave hope to the Palestinian refugees who were displaced from the camp over the past years. Rubble-clearing operations have been ongoing in the camp since Sept. 15 after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pledged to cover their cost. The committee overseeing the rubble clearing was formed with the approval of the Syrian government and under the supervision of the General Administration for Palestine Arab Refugees in Syria in coordination with Palestinian factions. It said in a Nov. 9 press release that it is still working to remove the remaining rubble from the lanes and alleys of the camp and that the rehabilitation process will accelerate in the coming days. Committee member Mahmoud Khaled told Sputnik Oct. 10, Some 40% of the buildings in the camp remain habitable and in good condition. And while another 40% of the buildings require renovation, the remaining 20% need clearing as they are completely destroyed. Ayham Hamada left the camp with his family on Dec. 17, 2013, and has been living in Damascus ever since. He seems optimistic about the prospect of returning to the camp in the wake of the Syrian decision and the rubble removal operations. I and the residents who had to flee the camp when the fighting broke out between the Syrian army and the armed militias such as the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra now see a glimmer of hope, Hamada told Al-Monitor. I was not optimistic about our return because there are many liberated areas such as Daraya to which residents never returned as no rubble removal has started there. But we are thrilled at the Syrian decision. We are very hopeful although the rehabilitation and reconstruction operations require great efforts on the part of the [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East], the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Syrian government, international parties and businessmen. He concluded, Refugees will be able to return soon but a lot of effort is still needed as basic services such as electricity, water and health services have yet to be provided. The Yarmouk refugee camp is the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. Dubbed the capital of the diaspora, the camp was established in 1953 and hosted more than 200,000 Palestinian refugees before the waves of displacements started in December 2013. Today, the camp is home to only a few people who refused to flee the fighting. There are 15 Palestinian refugee camps in Syria, 10 of which are recognized by the UNRWA and five that are not. In statements issued Nov. 7, both the PLO Refugees Affairs Department and the UNRWA welcomed the decision of the Syrian government. Ahmed al-Majdalani, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, told Al-Monitor that since IS' defeat and expulsion from the camp in May 2018, the PLO has been in contact with the Syrian government to coordinate the reconstruction and rehabilitation process in the camp and ensure the return of refugees. Two Palestinian delegations have visited Damascus over the past couple of months. On July 9, a delegation from the PLO and the Fatah Central Committee met with Syrian officials including Syrian Prime Minister Imad Khamis and Interior Minister Mohammed al-Shaar. The delegations discussed the situation of refugees in Syria. PLO Executive Committee member Bassam al-Salehi was part of one of next, and he handed Miqdad a letter from Abbas to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Sept. 23. The letter focused on the need to restore the Yarmouk refugee camp and return refugees, and also conveyed the Palestinian positions on the political developments in the region. As the end of the rubble clearing draws near, the second phase would be the restoration of habitable houses, Majdalani said. Asked about the reconstruction cost, he said, A technical committee will visit the camp, evaluate the reconstruction cost and determine the restoration and construction priorities and the cost will be jointly covered by the PLO, the UNRWA, the Syrian government and some international parties such as the European Union. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine central information officer Anwar Raja told Al-Monitor that the Syrian decision to allow refugees to return to the camp sends a political message to the United States about preserving the symbolic character of the camp for the refugees at a time when the Donald Trump administration is hurting the Palestinian cause by cutting funds for the UNRWA. He said the fact that the government tasked the Damascus provincial council with rehabilitating the infrastructure in the camp shows that the government is serious, though the preparations will require some time. However, this wave of optimism among some Palestinian refugees is balanced by skepticism among others. Mahmoud al-Shawish, 70, left the Yarmouk refugee camp in the Gaza Strip in 2012. He told Al-Monitor, Returning to the camp is just impossible, especially considering that security needs to be restored there while living and housing requirements are still to be secured. Ayman Abu Hashem, who left the camp in 2012 and currently resides in Turkey, told Al-Monitor, The Syrian regime decision allowing the return of refugees to the camp is an unrealistic political statement. When 80% of the Yarmouk camp is destroyed, it is simply impossible for refugees to return due to the lack of habitable houses. Half of the Yarmouk camp residents currently reside outside Syria and are reluctant to return. He added, The regime might allow some families to return for show and to convey the message that it has completed the task of allowing refugees to return. CAIRO It felt like a diverse gallery stretched throughout an entire town just wonderful, exclaimed Amal Henri, who attended the eighth annual Tunis Pottery and Handcrafts Festival, held in early November. Local and foreign tourists, many with a taste for pottery and other handcrafts, flock every year to Tunis, a small, picturesque village in Egypts Faiyum governorate. Today, the village is one of the stopping points of most tours in Egypt, but a mere 50 years ago, it was an untouched hamlet. In 1980s, Swiss potter Evelyn Porret opened her studio there and quickly turned it to a pottery school, the first step toward turning the village into a center for pottery and ceramics. Porret, who still lives in the village and and continues to run her school, told Al-Monitor that the village could draw a lot more visitors. Advertising and word of mouth by visitors need to go in parallel. Using the internet and social media for campaigns should be coupled with good feedback from the visitors to the festival. It is also necessary to invite world artists to transform this festival into an international one, she said. In fact, the festivals organizing committee invited world artists and offered them specific slots for their exhibitions. However, the advertisement should reach more pottery, ceramic, and handicraft artists around the world to make this festival competitive. The village's products are not limited to pottery it's just as famous is its caricature museum, opened by artist Muhammad Abla in late 2000s as the first of its kind in Egypt and the region. Most of the cartoons are from Ablas own collection as he has been gathering the works of the caricaturists from Egypt and abroad for decades. The village also hosted an initiative called Al-Kalam, which trains artists to use Arabic calligraphy on pottery and ceramics as well as in logos and banners. During the festival on Nov. 1-3, the artists displayed their works and held workshops for children. The festival also features workshops for whole families on drawing, making ornaments with recycled materials and origami. Family-based activities play an important role in the everyday life of the village, as some of the artisans have settled with their families and they work together with their children. Mohamad Jaafar left the bustling city of Cairo in 2015 with his wife and children to establish Gloria, one of the most famous stores for wood carvings in Egypt. His workshop was decorated to for the visitors to the festival. Al-Monitor visited the festival and witnessed the preparations by the whole village to welcome the tourists. The walls of the red brick houses were painted with Welcome to Egypt in different languages and drawings expressed Egyptian art, customs and fashion. Mohamad Abdel Fatah, a tourism consultant for several travel agencies, told Al-Monitor that local art festivals have a positive influence on tourism in Egypt. He said that tourists from countries that have strong artisanal traditions such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, where woodcarving is strong will find a lot of interest in this festival, which focuses on so much more than pottery. Abdel Fatah told Al-Monitor, The festival helps boost revenues for all of the artisans here. It does not end with the festival those who did not make it to the festival are still visiting the village right into mid-November. He added that the government should help the festival financially and with marketing. For the time being, most of the sponsors are private Egypt Innovate, Bank of Alexandria, the Egyptian Export Council for Handicrafts and Ghorfat Sinaat al-Hiraf al-Yadawiya (the handicrafts chamber affiliated with the Federation of Egyptian Industries). There is the Alwan company, which supports artistic talent and initiatives, Altwasul, the American University of Cairo's student union and Makouk, which supports education and culture. Henri the tourist said that the festival, which she discovered by chance, was fantastic. If the organizers work more on on advertising, e-marketing and social media campaigns, thousands of European tourists could have heard about it and come, she told Al-Monitor. David Longueville, another French tourist on the same tour with Henri, told Al-Monitor, The organization of the festival was high caliber and the residents were very cooperative and sold their products for reasonable prices although what they were offering was great art. Congress now has its chance to evaluate Turkeys participation in building the F-35 stealth jet after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis delivered a report to Capitol Hill on the NATO allys $12 billion contribution to the program. Lawmakers are weighing whether to kick Turkish firms out of the F-35 program amid fraught relations with the NATO ally. Turkey has shown interest in purchasing up to 100 of the latest-generation aircraft and has already taken possession of two of them, but Congress froze further deliveries pending the report on the US-Turkey relationship, including Turkeys participation in the fighter jets supply chain. The Pentagon shared a classified version of the report with Congress on Nov. 16 that outlines possible delays the program would face from removing Ankara. Defense officials were quick to point out that the report would not impact the US military-to-military relationship with Turkey. Nothing has changed in our relationship with Turkey, a US defense official told Al-Monitor. The ball is in Congress court. Turkey builds the fuselage for the F-35 and is establishing engine depots for the airplane throughout Europe. Lockheed Martin handed over the first two Joint Strike Fighters to Turkey at an elaborate ceremony in Texas in August. The Pentagon now expects members of Congress to come back with more requests for information, which could lead to a classified briefing on the report from Mattis. The defense secretary has jostled with lawmakers over keeping Ankara in the program, even as Turkey has detained several US citizens, sought to acquire the Russian-made S-400 missile-defense system system and engaged in cross-border attacks against Syrian Kurds helping US troops fight the Islamic State. If the Turkish supply chain was disrupted today, it would result in an aircraft production break, delaying delivery of 50-75 F-35s, and would take approximately 18-24 months to re-source parts and recover, the defense chief said in a letter to lawmakers this summer. Should the United States decide to remove Turkey from the F-35 supply chain, it would also have to figure out how to reimburse Ankara for the jets, and find new suppliers for the airplanes fuselage and other parts. But some experts who spoke with Al-Monitor said the risk of kicking Ankara out of the fighter jet program might be worth the reward. We have been willing to cut Turkey a great deal of slack, simply because we were afraid of risking access to Incirlik Air Base, Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told Al-Monitor. What it seems that happens is frenemies among countries we do business with understand that hosting an American base or supporting an American supply chain is a get out of jail card, and that only makes their behavior worse. Rubin called on the Pentagon to make sure there's duplication in the supply chain so Turkey doesn't proverbially have us by the balls. The classified report reflects the Pentagons concern that Turkeys $2.5 billion purchase of S-400 air defenses could allow Moscow to train the systems radar on the F-35. The system was first devised by Russia in the 1990s, partly as a response to US stealth capabilities, such as night flying. US officials have expressed concern that the S-400 system would not operate in tandem with NATO systems. Turkish officials have responded by citing the case of fellow NATO member Greece, which acquired the Russian S-300 system from Cyprus in the 1990s but never integrated it with its air defense systems. Turkeys acquisition of the Russian system could also trigger State Department sanctions, which the United States can use against purchasers of Moscows military equipment. In July, Mattis sought sanctions waivers for several countries considering S-400 purchases, such as India and Vietnam. CNBC reported earlier this month that as many as 13 countries have expressed interest in the Russian system, which may be cheaper than US-made missile defenses. Defense officials have floated the US-made Patriot missile defense system and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System known as HIMARS as potential alternatives to the S-400, but sales of those systems would have to be approved by Congress. In the meantime, training for Turkish pilots continues at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. The earliest the F-35s could leave the US is next summer, another defense official told Al-Monitor, but delays could hold up delivery until 2020, accounting for training time on the aircraft. Congress could also weigh in to block the transfer of proprietary technology onboard, such as the F-35s computerized logistics system. A man was charged Wednesday with the murder of his own mother at an apartment complex in Athens. Sean Kevin Sutton, 47, was arrested at a location about 25 mins from the public housing apartment where he lived with his mother Emma Sutton, 79. A family member of the pair called police. While the cause of death has not been released, Sutton is being charged with murder, according to local law enforcement. Sutton was locked up in the Limestone County Jail where he will be held until a bond hearing can be arranged. Officers said that the accused had only been living in the apartment with his mother since June. Holidays are for family. Holidays are a time of relaxing and enjoying. This family is in pain, said Athens Police Chief Floyd Johnson told reporters. The neighborhood is in pain. She had a lot of friends here and in the area. She hasnt lived her all that long. From people Ive talked with shes very friendly, liked her, and theyre going to be hurting. The mother of a 12-year-old girl wounded when gunfire erupted inside the Riverchase Galleria praised those who rushed to her daughters aid in the midst of the Thanksgiving night chaos. Julie Moore Bennett, whose daughter Molly was an innocent bystander when shots rang out Thursday night outside J.C. Penney inside the mall, posted about the ordeal on Facebook. She said her daughter was shot in the back and chronicled what unfolded in the moments that followed. The shooting happened just before 10 p.m. on the second floor of the mall between J.C. Penney and Foot action. Hoover police said two men got into an argument which then escalated into gunfire. Capt. Gregg Rector said a 21-year-old man from Hueytown then shot the 18-year-old male with whom he was arguing. That gunfire is believed to have also wounded the young girl. Two Hoover police officers were nearby, encountered the armed suspect and shot and killed him. He was pronounced dead on the scene. The Calera mother was not up to talking about the ordeal but her post has been shared thousands of times on social media. Bennett said she received a call just before 10 p.m. Thursday from her mother saying that Molly had been shot inside the Galleria. Mollys grandmother had taken her and a friend shopping. They were upstairs, outside of J.C. Penney when a fight broke out. Shots were fired, and one of the bullets hit Molly in the back, Bennett wrote. She said that her back hurt, but didn't even realize she had been shot until she overheard my mom telling me on the phone. A military medic took care of Molly until Hoover Fire medics arrived. A nurse came to help and assured my mom that the medic was doing everything exactly right, Bennett wrote. The shoe store employees allowed the medic to use a shirt off the rack to hold pressure on the wound, and they brought a jacket to cover Molly when she got cold. Bennett rushed to Childrens of Alabama and said she arrived at the Birmingham hospital a minute or two before the ambulance arrived with Molly. I was able to walk in with Molly and talk to her for a minute before they started working on her, she wrote. There were so many kind people taking care of us and telling us what was going on. Firefighters, police, doctors, nurses, a chaplain, and more. They were all amazing. Bennett wrote that Molly was hurting a lot, but very brave and positive as always. The girl went into surgery where doctors found none of her organs were damaged, and that there was no internal bleeding. The bullet had gone in her back at an angle and lodged really close to her spine, Bennett wrote. The surgeon explained that she would have a CT scan in the morning to determine if there was any damage to her spine. If there is none, they will leave the bullet where it is, and she should be able to go home Tuesday or Wednesday. I am so thankful for everyone who helped us, for those who were at the hospital with us, and for all the messages and prayers, she wrote. Yeah, bad guys are out there. But what I learned from this is that there are so many more good guys and girls who are willing to go above and beyond to help a stranger in need. I love every single one of you. Long-term vision urged to deal with climate change Climate change experts, private sector and stakeholders have urged the government to have clear and long-term vision as well as mainstream climate issues at all levels of the government if it wants to deal with climate change effectively. A young man shot to death on Thanksgiving night in a north Birmingham apartment posted less than two hours before his death that he was thankful to see another holiday. Birmingham police identified the victim as Lyndell Miller. He was 22. The shooting happened about 8:15 p.m. Thursday at the Vice Hills public housing community. At 6:52 p.m., Miller posted these words on Facebook: Im just happy I seen another Thanksgiving. Im thankful for everybody God put in my life and every situation He put me through. All is well. Less than two hours later, officers responded to apartment B at 3191 42nd Avenue North on a report of a person shot.. Once on the scene, they found Miller unresponsive inside the apartment. Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service pronounced him dead on the scene. The Jefferson County Coroners Office also responded to the location. Police spokesman Sgt. Johnny Williams said they had little information about what led to the deadly shooting. As of late Thursday night, they were trying to locate the person who called 911 as well as any other potential witnesses. We dont know if they were celebrating (Thanksgiving), or just hanging out, Williams said. We need those persons involved in custody, so we can find out what happened. Dozens of people gathered outside the crime scene. As police were conducting their investigation, a fight erupted between multiple people. At the same time, gunfire rang out nearby. Birmingham officers quickly cleared the scene, telling all bystanders they would be arrested if they did not go home. Williams said that gunfire appears to have been unrelated to the deadly shooting or subsequent fight. Shots were fired behind the apartment but we didnt find anyone, he said. They fired the rounds and left. Millers death is the 98th homicide in Birmingham so far in 2018. Of those, six have been ruled justifiable and therefore the Birmingham Police Department will not include those in its year-end tally. There have been 144 homicides in all of Jefferson County, including the 98 in Birmingham. The 144th homicide happened less than two hours after Millers death when a gunman was shot and killed by Hoover police after a shooting inside the Riverchase Galleria that wounded an 18-year-old male and a 12-year-old girl. Anyone with information on Millers death is asked to call Birmingham homicide detectives at 205-254-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777. This is an opinion column. As government buildings go, the Mel Bailey Criminal Justice Center lacks the majesty of its older sibling, the Jefferson County Courthouse, across the street. Theres not much brass or Sylacauga white marble to speak of, and certainly no murals of the antebellum South to set protestors up in arms. Instead, its a nine-story stack of nearly identical courtrooms with a warehouse of prisoners connected to its bottom floors. But its in the basement there where the special grand juries meet, down a steep flight of stairs just past the metal detectors. When the grand jury is in session, the courthouse deputies will shoo anyone out of the basement who doesnt have business there, but if you sit near the top of those stairs you can see who comes and goes. I was sitting there about a year and a half ago, when Steve Marshall strode past the metal detectors and down those stairs. Then, he strode up and went back outside. Shortly after that, he strode back inside again and back down the stairs. Throughout that day, Marshall strode several times. A TV reporter across the hall from me and I shared a smirk. It was clear Marshall wasnt really doing anything downstairs. Newly appointed Attorney General by Gov. Robert, Bentley, he was there to be seen by me, by the TV reporter, and certainly by her photographer and his camera. The real work of that grand jury investigating corruption at the Birmingham Water Works Board was in the hands of somebody else, but rather than strutting through the front doors, Deputy Attorney General Matt Hart parked his truck in a hidden lot behind the courthouse and entered through a back door where nosey reporters couldnt spot him. For the cameras, Hart had long been as scarce as Bigfoot, whom you might mistake Hart for if you glimpsed him in the woods. Until the trial of Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard, our photo archive contained only two pictures of him, a blurry shot through a courtroom window and an ancient photo from when he worked for then-Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor. Like that lumbering beast in the woods, Hart survived in a shrinking habitat by staying out of sight. Behind the grand jury doors, Hart pursued political crooks with the fervor of a religious zealot. First for the state, then working for the feds, and then for the state again, he made cases against powerful men and women. Hubbard, Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford, an assortment of former Jefferson County Commissioners and two-year college leeches owe their incarcerations to Harts work. But for all those reasons, he was a political liability to anyone he worked for. Matt Hart is out as the head of the AGs Special Prosecutions Unit. But on primary runoff election night, Marshall told us he expected Harts leadership to continue in his offices mission to fight public corruption: #alpolitics pic.twitter.com/LNRWusiev7 Lauren Walsh (@LaurenWalshTV) November 20, 2018 Since accepting Bentleys appointment to the Attorney Generals office, Marshall has shown the fortitude and integrity of a bowl of cold mashed potatoes. First, his campaign spoiled an investigation of state lawmakers by soliciting some of those lawmakers for campaign donations and other favors days after Hart mailed them subpoenas. Next, Marshall solicited and accepted more than $750,000 of campaign contributions through out-of-state PAC-to-PAC transfers. While the plain language of Alabamas campaign finance laws appears to prohibit this, Marshall moved the money through the legal loophole of It Aint Illegal if Nobody Enforces the Law. Marshall also accepted campaign contributions from allies of Hubbard, all while Hubbard despite having been convicted two and a half years ago has not yet served a day of his four-year prison sentence. Staff from the Special Prosecutions unit Hart led began to flee for other jobs, and word spread that Harts unit was being slowly starved and strangled at the same time. In July, that TV reporter who had sat across the hall from me outside the grand jury, Lauren Walsh, asked Marshall about the units future and Harts if Marshall were reelected. Prosecuting public corruption would be a priority, Marshall insisted. Matt Hart leads that team and we expect his leadership to continue, Marshall said then. But thats not how things turned out, was it? When Bentley appointed him to the office, Marshall wanted to be seen prosecuting public corruption, but it was only after the election that he showed his true intentions. With any threat of political consequences behind him, he finally showed Matt Hart out the back door. 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. In a country which suffered terribly at the hands of the Nazis during World War II, pogroms against an ethnic minority have somehow become commonplace. When we arrived in Kiev, Ukraines picturesque capital, there was tension in the air. The ongoing war with Russian-backed separatists, almost a thousand kilometres to the east, had profoundly affected the atmosphere, and it was no surprise to see large groups of men in paramilitary uniform on the streets. Combined with the relentless rise of right-wing demagogues, which seems to be a feature of much of Eastern Europe these days, it had created a climate of ultra-nationalism and disturbing levels of xenophobia. In a country that suffered terribly at the hands of the Nazis during the second world war, the unthinkable had started to happen: pogroms against an ethnic minority, in this case, the Roma, have somehow become commonplace. The C14 affair It all began in April 2018 (on a day that many members of the far-right still mark as Hitlers birthday) when a neo-Nazi group calling itself C14 launched a violent assault on a temporary Roma camp in a park in Kiev. {articleGUID} Mobile phone footage showing women and children fleeing the attackers soon went viral on the internet. Lesia Kharchenko, from Amnesty International, tracked the tweets that followed, Roma people were just taken out of their homes and they had to run away. They were attacked by a group of young people who had gas sprays and other things, but because nobody had died at that time, there was not a lot of reaction from the state and then there were other attacks. The C14 affair and the apparent impunity of those responsible inspired other neo-Nazi groups and, before long, a vicious wave of anti-Roma raids began to sweep across the country. Iboya Popp holding photos of her murdered husband, David Popp [Al Jazeera] The first fatality came at another temporary camp on the outskirts of Lviv one night in June when 24-year-old David Popp was stabbed to death by knife-wielding youths. His widow, Iboya, showed us the wounds she received that night. There were 17 of us who were stabbed, she told us. When they were stabbing David my mind went blank. I didnt understand anything I was crying: Dont hurt the child! Dont! Hes a child!' Uniquely in this unfolding crisis, police did at least arrive and arrest the culprits. However, the alarming truth is that, on a number of other occasions, not only have the police stood by and allowed such attacks to take place but, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in some cases, they have actually participated. They dont see it any more. Theyre so used to discrimination A recent OHCHR paper entitled Report on the human rights situation in Ukraine describes raids on Roma communities during which police were physically aggressive; beating people, damaging or destroying private possessions, and treating the Roma in a humiliating manner. Most of Ukraines estimated 250,000 Roma are fully integrated into mainstream society but many still endure shocking levels of poverty, particularly in the Transcarpathia region, 800 kilometres south-west of the capital, where the inhabitants of most Roma settlements speak Hungarian. It is from within these communities that small groups of families migrate to Ukraines more prosperous cities in search of seasonal work, setting up temporary camps and sending money home, just as their parents and grandparents have done before them. But in the current climate, such people have become targets of ultra-right paramilitaries attacks usually justified in typically contemptuous terms. If you will go to a Roma community and you ask: 'Do you face discrimination in your everyday life?' they will not even be able to answer because they don't see it any more. They are so used to it. Zola Kondur, Coalition of Roma NGOs These conflicts with the Roma nationality always take place because the Roma mostly live by robbery without work, by drug trade, by fraud, says Ilya Kiva, a former paramilitary and presidential candidate in next years election, when we meet him at his headquarters in downtown Kiev. They must be taught to live according to the law of the country in which they live. Thats it. Such views are not uncommon in Ukraine. When we speak about the Roma situation in Ukraine, its the same as is in many European countries, the challenges and the problems are the same the stereotypes that the majority of the population have towards Roma, and its influence on their relations with society, says Zola Kondur, of the Coalition of Roma NGOs. She believes that prejudice is now so prevalent that it has become the norm. If you will go to a Roma community and you ask: Do you face discrimination in your everyday life? they will not even be able to answer because they dont see it any more. They are so used to it. Forgotten by the state It is to one of these Roma communities in Transcarpathia that we go next. The first thing you notice when entering the Roma settlement on the outskirts of the city of Berehove is the wall that surrounds it. On the outside it appears to be a typical Ukrainian locale, the sort you are likely to find anywhere in this part of Eastern Europe; on the inside, its as if youve entered another world, one populated by malnourished children and gaunt, prematurely aged adults. Horses and carts clunk along the pothole-filled roads, passing grimy ramshackle dwellings thrown together from pieces of discarded timber. The narrow streets are squalid and filthy, Dickensian even; to find such deprivation in a modern European country is deeply shocking. Nevertheless, it seems that the inhabitants of this miserable shanty town have been forgotten by the state. Most are unregistered, apparently uncared for, without any documents or status as citizens though, of course, citizens is what they are. A Roma settlement in Berehove, Ukraine [Al Jazeera] A Ukrainian parliamentarian, Iryna Suslova, has tried to agitate for change and action on their behalf but admits its an uphill struggle. If they have no documents they wont get [an] education. They cant get medical help. They cant get hired. So, they have no resources to live a normal way of life. Unsurprisingly, there is much sickness here and life expectancy is considerably lower than elsewhere in Ukraine. According to Olena Rovza, the communitys nurse (in effect the sole health provider for seven thousand inhabitants), children and adults often suffer from cold-related diseases and tuberculosis. Small wonder then, that so many from here want to migrate to the suburbs of Kyiv, Odessa and Lviv, albeit on a temporary basis, to earn a little money or even to beg if they have no other choice. Chilling echoes of the past But since the attacks began, most Roma migrants have fled the cities and returned to Transcarpathia. Yet, even in places like Berehove, there is danger. While we were filming there, we came across Amelia Rakoshi, an elderly woman carrying a photograph of her daughter through the muddy streets and crying inconsolably. She invited us back to her shack where she described how her daughter Isabela had been brutally killed just a short distance from the Roma settlement. An unknown assailant had cut her throat. Amelia wasnt hopeful of getting justice any time soon. Here the police have a strong bond, they are not interested in this case. When I asked them about the investigation into my daughters murder, they said there was no one in the office. Another day they said they were all on holiday. They cover for each other and they are not interested in my case at all. The authorities refusal to treat this murder as a hate crime, Amelias neighbours told us, is just another example of how Ukraines Roma community has been abandoned by the state. If Iryna education. They cant get medical help. They cant get hired. So, they have no resources to live a normal way of life.] Of course, it is only fair to point out that many Ukrainians find these attacks as abhorrent as anyone else might and would like the government to do more to stop them. But it is also true that it is hard to find articles in the Ukrainian media that dont reinforce the negative stereotypical view that a distressingly large section of the public here seem to have of the Roma as drug pushers, petty criminals and beggars. Intolerance has become disturbingly deeply embedded and so it is perhaps no surprise where that has led. It is why, too, some believe that the recent events in Ukraine carry all-too chilling echoes of last centurys horrors. In September, Dr Boris Zabarko, chairman of the Ukrainian Holocaust survivors association, led the Babi Yar memorial walk a candle-lit procession to remember the tens of thousands mostly Jews, but also many Roma and others murdered by German Nazis and Ukrainian police at the Babi Yar ravine in Kiev. Zabarko, who lived through those awful times, is acutely aware of the danger now facing Ukraine and the disturbing parallels with the past. Unfortunately, there were a lot of such pogroms in our history. If they had been stopped at the time, then maybe we wouldnt have had the pogroms in 1941, he says. If they had been stopped and condemned back then, then maybe today there would not be such intolerance by some people towards others. In its attempts to dissect the global disinformation epidemic, the BBC handily forgets its own history of fake news. Earlier this month the BBC aired an informed and informative weeklong series on disinformation and fake news, a global problem, as they rightly put it, challenging the way we share information and perceive the world around us. Whats real? Whats distortion? The series teaches us. I watched as many of the episodes in this series as I could, and the rest I followed on the BBC website. In one episode we learn how Nigerian police say false information and incendiary images on Facebook have contributed to more than a dozen recent killings in Plateau State an area already torn by ethnic violence. In another episode, we learn how in Egypt fake news becomes a weapon of choice to crush dissent. In yet another piece we learn how smartphones are making it easier for millions of Indians to communicate and share messages on social media. But misinformation is spreading fast and can often turn deadly. The series then moved to tell us how a BBC investigation has found that Russian media and officials presented false claims about a US-funded laboratory in neighbouring Georgia. In another episode, we were told about how fake news in Turkey is rampant, and targets many, including the BBC. But some are fighting back. While watching these episodes it suddenly occurred to me, as I am sure you too have noticed, something a bit strange about this series? It is all about non-British, and non-European countries about India, Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Turkey and Thailand, which is of course perfectly fine for, no doubt, fake news is a global issue that includes these countries. But targeting these non-European countries as the site of fake news par excellence implicitly puts European media and the BBC in particular as the arbiter of truth manifest. Fake news is something that backward black and brown people do, while real news is what the BBC and the rest of white people tell us. That got me thinking as we say in New York. You fake it until you make it This deliberate exoticism and exorcism of the fake news as something that happens among the dark people and not among the British sounds a bit, how shall I put it politely, strange to an Iranian pair of ears old enough to know the US-UK military coup against Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, and the function of official propaganda of their news media in that treacherous act. The holier than thou attitude of the US and UK official media, the BBC in this particular case, could use a bit of historical memory. Itll teach them some humility. Long before fake news had a name, the BBC was a master of fake news, in fact fake news of the most dangerous, the most vicious consequences, casting nations, not just individuals, into direct calamities. {articleGUID} What I have in mind is of course the harmul role of the BBC as the propaganda machine of British imperialism around the globe. As well as in enabling and facilitating the CIA/MI6 coup of 1953 in my homeland in particular, by doing precisely what it now goes around finding darker nations doing indulging in fake news and propaganda. The role of BBC in the overthrow of Mosaddeq was not out of character or unusual. In a piece titled Why the taboo tale of the BBCs wartime propaganda battle must be told published by The Guardian, David Boyle writes about characters like Noel Francis Newsome (1906-1976), who as director of European broadcasts led what is still the biggest broadcasting operation ever mounted, in 25 different languages for a total of just over 25 hours a day, across three wavelengths. Such pieces of truth are sources of embarrassments for the BBC today, for it was he who set out the strategy to use news as a weapon on war it had to be not just true but also recognizably British. Here we learn it was Newsome and Ritchie (his deputy Douglas Ritchie) who really created the myth of the BBC, by using news as a weapon not quite what the myth suggests with all the resources of culture and music and humor. If you think this too suspicious, then you ought to know: Hitlers propaganda chief Goebbels warned in 1944: There is one way in which the British, despite the narrowness of their political thinking, are ahead of us they know that news can be a weapon and are experts in its strategy. This is not any brown or black person talking these are white Germans talking about white British leading the BBC. BBC and the CIA/MI6 Coup of 1953 What the British and the BBC did in Iran against Mossadeq was perfectly in tune with their larger wartime and post-war propaganda machinery. Here the role of BBC in vilifying and demonising the character of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq is not even the issue. At issue is a more direct role that BBC Persian has played in that fateful event. After years of speculative suspicion dismissed as conspiracy theories, BBC Radio 4 finally admitted, in a programme called Document, and subtitled A very British coup, the fact of this treacherous act of the BBC. Documents reveal, BBC now admitted, the true extent of Britains involvement in the coup of 1953 which toppled Irans democratically elected government and replaced it with the tyranny of the Shah. {articleGUID} The programme then explicitly explains: Iran had just nationalised the very oil fields that had powered Britain through two world wars. Downing Street wanted them back. London paid Iranian agents to sow seeds of dissent in Tehran. Then, to win American support for a coup, the men from the Ministry fanned fears of a Russian invasion. Then comes the punch line: Even the BBC was used to spearhead Britains propaganda campaign. In fact, Auntie agreed to broadcast the very code word that was to spark revolution. By revolution of course they mean the coup. The New York Times also reports: The British, too, sought to sway the shah and assure him their agents spoke for London. A British agent, Asadollah Rashidian, approached him in late July and invited him to select a phrase that would then be broadcast at prearranged times on the BBCs Persian-language program as proof that Mr Rashidian spoke for the British. The same fact is reported by The Guardian: Another man, Asadollah Rashidian, allegedly approached the shah and invited him to select a phrase that would then be broadcast at prearranged times on the BBCs Persian language service as proof that Rashidian spoke for British intelligence. Sometimes even the paranoids have enemies Just because youre paranoid, Woody Allen is reported to have said only in half-jest, doesnt mean they arent out to get you. The same is true about conspiracy theories about the BBC. Sometimes even the paranoids are right. The issue of the BBC role in Iranian and other countries politics has become so prevalent that scholars have conducted thorough research on the veracity of the matter and published meticulously documented books on the subject. In an edited volume by Marie Gillespie and Alban Webb, Diasporas and Diplomacy: Cosmopolitan contact zones at the BBC World Service 1932-2012, which is an excellent study of diasporic communities and their compradorial services at the BBC, we learn how when it came to reporting adversely on Mossadeq, for two weeks all Iranian broadcasters disappeared. The BBC had no choice but to bring in English people who spoke Persian because the Iranians had gone on strike. {articleGUID} In their introduction, the editors cite Sir Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart (1887-1970), whom they identify as journalist, spy, and British diplomat, as having said: for the cost of a small cruiser you could recruit the services of a battle fleet as justification for the British government funding of the BBC. Two other scholars, Annabelle Sreberny and Massoumeh Torfeh have published an even more detailed study, Persian Service: The BBC and British Interests in Iran (2014) in which they examine the perception that BBC has been not just a neutral chronicler but in fact an active agent in the politics of Iran and its region at large. They concentrate on BBC Persian Service, trying to craft a neutral ground on which to interrogate both the objectivity of BBC and its perception as a soft power tool in the arsenal of British colonial and postcolonial interests. The result is a non-committal prose that itself is implicated in equivocating between fact and fake news. In their own words they are trying to find a balance in the inelegant dance between financial control versus editorial independence of BBC coverage of four major episodes in recent Iranian history: the abdication of Reza Shah in 1941, the CIA-MI6 coup against Mossadegh in 1951-1953, the 1979 revolution, and the Green Movement of 2009. Between fact and fake we think and live Sreberny and Torfehs study is an admirable exercise in judicious scholarship. But their excellent book needed and did happily receive an excellent corrective lens by the preeminent historian of modern Iran, Professor Ervand Abrahamian. In his review of this book, he reminds us how during the wartime period there was no pretense of objective reporting and impartial analysis. After all, George Orwell learned much about Newspeak and Doublespeak while working for the BBC Indian Department. Some suspect his Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four was modeled on the BBC building in Portland Place, London. Imagine that: the BBC that was the model of Orwells Ministry of Truth now preaches the world about fake news! Abrahamian also reminds us how the abdication of Reza Shah was in no small measure engineered by the BBC: Asa Briggs, later in his famous History of Broadcasting, wrote that this was probably the first time in history that a ruler had been hurled from the throne by radio. I think Stephen Sackur should do one of his Hardtalks on the history of BBC as fake news. As for the CIA/MI6 coup of 1953, Abrahamian is equally emphatic: the British government and the BBC were equally collaborative. The latter throughout the crisis loudly echoed the formers line that nationalisation of the oil industry would be disastrous for Iran that it would financially bankrupt the government, that the country would not have the technical know-how to run the industry, and that Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq had refused a series of fair and just offers for compromise. After the overthrow of Mosaddeq, the BBC continued to echo the official line that there had been no military coup but a spontaneous revolt against a dictatorial regime. Is that not fake news distinguished ladies and gentlemen of the BBC? You were the mother of all fake news when it came to the fate of an entire nation. When BBC blacklisted British critics Abrahamian quite gently reminds the authors of this important book of a serious omission: Even though the book details the close links between the government and the BBC during this crisis, it overlooks one major egregious case. Throughout the crisis, the Foreign Office and the British ambassador explicitly forbade the BBC to send to Tehran any reporters sympathetic to Iran. Professor Elwell-Sutton was explicitly blacklisted despite his outstanding expertise. The British embassy denounced him as anti-colonial and anti-British. Just to be clear: Abrahamian correctly points to the identically conspiratorial mindset of both the late Shah and the current ruling elite of the Islamic Republic for abusing these facts of BBC collusions with the British colonial interests in the past to conceal their own delusional conspiracies of blaming the BBC when their own actions were the main culprit of calamities that befell Iranians. {articleGUID} Iranians as a result are caught between a rock and a hard place: When BBC actually colludes with the British government to rob them of their democratic aspirations, and when these facts are abused by the Shah and the ruling clergy of the Islamic Republic to ascribe such aspirations to foreign conspiracies. One must remember these historical facts not as an act of vengeance but as corrective lenses. The seismic changes in Internet possibilities no intelligent follower of news is trapped or condemned into any single site of media platform BBC or otherwise. We can roam the globe from one news media to another, from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, to Europe and North America, with each news media, BBC included, giving us a fragment of truth and a lot of fake news. We watch and read them all, trust none completely, nor do we privilege anyone of them with our particular dis/trust. We dis/trust them all equally. Today the BBC should be neither demonised nor valorised, for it is neither as demonic as its conspiratorial detractors contend nor as angelic as the BBC self-promotional advertisements sing and dance. It is just one click away from the next fusion of fact and fantasy. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance. Attack was claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army, which has been fighting for an independent homeland for the Baloch. Gunmen on motorbikes opened fire on construction workers, killing 10 in Pakistans southwestern province of Balochistan, officials said Saturday. Mineral-rich Balochistan has been plagued for decades by a separatist uprising and sectarian killings. Gunmen have previously targeted labourers seen as outsiders in the region. Two gunmen riding on motorbikes opened fire on a group of construction workers in Peshukan Ganz neighbourhood of Gwadar, local administration official Munir Zamari told AFP news agency. The attack has been claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), an armed separatist group that has been fighting for an independent homeland for the ethnic Baloch. We accept responsibility for the Gwadar attack, BLA spokesperson Jeander Baloch said in a statement sent to Al Jazeera. This conspiratorial plan [CPEC] is not acceptable to the Baloch people under any circumstances. Baloch independence movements have made it clear several times that they will not abandon their peoples future in the name of development projects or even democracy. READ MORE: Does the China-Pakistan economic corridor worry India? Balochistan is the largest of Pakistans four provinces, but its seven million inhabitants have long complained they do not receive a fair share of its gas and mineral wealth. The BLA is among a number of armed groups that have been fighting the Pakistani state for about a decade, targeting security forces and civilians, mainly in ethnic Baloch areas. A greater push towards peace and development by Pakistani authorities has reduced the violence considerably in recent years. The push includes starting work on a massive Chinese infrastructure project, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which gives Beijing a route to the Arabian Sea through Balochistans deep sea port of Gwadar. Only 92 opposition legislators vote, well short of the 101 needed to remove Andrej Babis over a fraud scandal. Prague, Czech Republic The Czech Republics coalition government has survived a vote of no-confidence over a fraud scandal implicating embattled Prime Minister Andrej Babis. The vote on Friday saw only 92 opposition legislators backing the motion, well short of the 101 needed to topple Babis, an agrichemicals mogul pegged by Forbes magazine as the second-wealthiest Czech. It followed allegations that the populist billionaire had kidnapped his own son to obstruct a high-profile fraud case, in which both of them were implicated. The vote came just five months into the fragile governments term and was supported by six opposition parties. Babis faces charges of misusing $2.25m in EU subsidy for a luxury resort and farm, which he transferred to relatives, including his son, Andrej Babis Jr. The government should be headed by an ethical, moral, and decent person who is considered credible even by his political opponents. I do not see such a person heading it, Ivan Bartos, chairman of the opposition Czech Pirate Party, said in Parliament during the vote. While the opposition called for the prime minister to step aside to allow an independent investigation into the allegations, it failed to gain the support of at least one of the two coalition partners needed to win a simple majority. The Communist Party voted in favour of Babis while MPs from the Social Democratic coalition abstained from the process, assuring a win for the ruling government. The government is successful and I want to say it has our confidence. But it is obvious that the government is burdened by the circumstances surrounding the prime minister, Interior Minister Jan Hamacek, leader of the Czech Social Democratic Party, said. He assured a police investigation into the allegations against Babis will take place. Before the vote, he had told reporters that his party is open to an early election if required. Fraud scandal Last year, Babis was probed by local authorities and the EU over hiding ownership of the Stork Nest farm. Babis has repeatedly said he had no intentions of stepping down from his post due to unsubstantiated reports. He also chastised the Seznam media outlet for secretly filming his 35-year-old son, who he claims suffers from schizophrenia. In this situation, I really have no reason to resign. You have to either dismiss me or you have to defeat me in a free, democratic election, Babis said in a Facebook post on Friday. On November 12, a Seznam reporter tracked down Babis Jr in Switzerland, where he lived with his mother. He said he was forced by a leader in his fathers government into hiding to prevent him from testifying in the case. What [Fridaus vote] represents is an appeal for some standards in politics, said Jiri Pehe, political analyst and director of the New York University in Prague. The [opposition] knew they wouldnt succeed, but they had to go through this because this is a serious matter. In 30 days, some 40 million people in the DRC are expected to elect a new president after a two-year wait. The long-delayed and long-awaited race for the Democratic Republic of Congos (DRC) presidency shifted into a new gear this week with the official launch of the candidates electoral campaigns. Exactly a month from now, some 40 million people, about half of the resource-rich countrys population, are expected to finally elect a new president after two years of postponements, uncertainty and turmoil. Outgoing President Joseph Kabila has controversially remained in office even though his second consecutive and final constitutional term officially expired in 2016. While Kabila insisted the election delays were due to challenges enrolling millions of voters and financial constraints, his refusal to step down sparked violent rallies in which dozens of protesters were killed. The DRC has not known a peaceful transfer of power since independence from Belgium in 1960, and there are still several questions over how the upcoming polls will be conducted from logistical and financing difficulties to various threats to peace and security, including militia violence and a deadly Ebola outbreak in the countrys east. Still, electoral officials maintain that the vote will go ahead as planned on December 23, when at least 20 candidates will vie to succeed Kabila. Among them is Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, a die-hard Kabila loyalist who was chosen at the 11th hour as the candidate for the outgoing presidents recently-minted electoral coalition, the Common Front for Congo (FCC). Surprising but ideal pick? Kabilas choice of Shadary took most including many in the FCC by surprise. A largely unknown political figure in the vast country, Shadary has meagre finances and no independent power base. The 57-year-old is also under European Union sanctions for his role in the repression of deadly anti-Kabila protests in 2016, when he was interior minister, and is seen as someone with extremely limited ties to the international community. These are all factors that would significantly disadvantage a candidate for high political position in the DRC, says John Mukum Mbaku, nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. But its these exact factors, coupled with his hard-core loyalty, that likely endeared Shadary to Kabila and made him a perfect choice for the outgoing presidents potential political ambitions, Mbaku adds. Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary at the launch of his election manifesto in Kinshasa [Kenny Katombe/Reuters] Indeed, some observers see Shadarys choice as a deliberate move by Kabila to create a new political class, one that will remain under his control and loyal to him, even as he steps down from the presidency after 17 years. For the last years, we see an alienation between Kabila and the pillars of his regime. He had a strong team around him in the first decade of his reign, but for different reasons, these people disappeared, says Kris Berwouts, a political analyst and DRC commentator. Over the last two-three years, Kabila has tried to create new leaders people who do not have their own electoral base, no international network, no considerable financial means to deploy; people who are basically indebted to him. Ramazani Shadary is one of them. Kabilas moves Analysts say Shadarys anointment was only the last in a series of moves by Kabila to secure his political future and interests before the August 8 announcement that he would not seek a third term a decision he took amid increasing regional and international pressure. Firstly, Kabila got the National Assembly to pass a law granting immunity to former presidents for crimes committed while in office, as well as providing them with a permanent security detail and a residence at the expense of the state. Secondly, he packed the federal bureaucracy, including the judiciary and the military, with loyalists. Thirdly, at Kabilas request, the Peoples Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), the FCCs biggest and most influential group, created the post of the president, which he is expected to hold after leaving office. Finally, Kabila who will be a senator-for-life, as per the constitution will also remain the FCCs leader. Kabila has been the DRCs president since 2001 [Kenny Katombe/Reuters] Along with these safety and legal guarantees, Berwouts says Kabila wanted to remain influential in [the DRCs] politics and economically active. In the last years, he has purchased a lot of land, for instance. Mbaku, who is also a professor of economics at Weber State University, says these moves ensure that Kabila will be able to retain significant political influence, while remaining the power behind the throne and hence not having to fear any retribution from a hostile regime. Of course, given the fact that Kabila is eligible to return in 2023 and compete for the presidency, he may have chosen loyalist Shadary to keep the presidential seat warm for him until he returns in 2023, he adds. Fractured opposition Such a scenario would mark an audacious comeback for Kabila, who took power in 2001 after the assassination of his father, Laurent-Desire Kabila, who had forced out Mobutu Sese Seko, an authoritarian president who led for decades a corrupt, brutal, and dysfunctional government. Joseph Kabila went on to win elections in 2006 and 2011, but both polls were marred by accusations of widespread fraud. {articleGUID} Next months vote will be conducted in a first-past-the-post system, which means, in theory at least, that a win by Kabilas hand-picked successor is not a foregone conclusion if the vote is free and fair especially when considering Shadarys low public profile and widespread grievances over poor services, chronic financial mismanagement and corruption. Despite its huge natural resources endowments the DRC is the worlds top miner of cobalt and Africas leading copper producer the country is mired in grinding poverty and several humanitarian and economic crises. Congolese people, especially those who reside in the urban areas, are quite frustrated with their extremely poor living conditions, which have not improved since the dictator Mobutu was ousted in 1997, says Mbaku. They continue to complain about high rates of unemployment, lack of decent and affordable housing, inability of the poor to have effective access to basic healthcare and opportunities for education and job training. In what was seen as a major drive to give the traditionally fractured opposition a fighting chance in the upcoming polls, seven key DRC political leaders met earlier this month in the Swiss city of Geneva to select a joint candidate. At the time, Felix Tshisekedi and Vital Kamerhe were seen as the likely figures to unite and lead the anti-Kabila front. But after several days of negotiations under the auspices of the Lamuka Coalition, the opposition heavyweights announced Martin Fayulu, a member of parliament with a lot of grassroots credibility in the capital, Kinshasa, as their alliances flag-bearer. Barely 24 hours later, this rare instance of opposition unity was shattered. Tshisekedi, son of the late opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, pulled out of the agreement after protests by his supporters in Kinshasa. Kamerhe followed him just a few hours later. The attempt to create a common platform with a joint candidate was, of course, very ambitious, says Berwouts, author of Congos Violent Peace: Conflict and Struggle since the Great African War. The fact that two of the seven leaders who signed the agreement withdrew their signature 24 hours later was a major blow and affected the credibility of the opposition as such. Still, the other members of the coalition have continued to support Fayulus candidacy while also hoping to broaden their alliance by joining forces with civil society groups and working together with the influential Catholic Church. Meanwhile, Kamerhe announced on Friday that he was throwing his support behind Tshishekedi, in a move that has created a second opposition bloc to Shadarys candidacy. This is the winning ticket, Kamerhe told reporters alongside Tshisekedi in Kenyas capital, Nairobi. An opinion poll last month showed Tshisekedi well ahead in the race, with 36 percent. Kamerhe (17 percent) and Shadary (16 percent) followed, while Fayulus projected share of the vote stood at eight percent. Vital Kamerhe (left) and Felix Tshisekedi (right) at a joint news conference in Nairobi [Baz Ratner/Reuters] Voting machines, bias allegations The race, although crowded, is still marked by the absence of leading opposition figures who have been prevented from taking part in the elections. Key among them are Moise Katumbi, a wealthy businessman and a popular ex-governor who says he was prohibited from entering the country and file his candidacy in time; and Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former vice president who did manage to register after being acquitted of war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court in June but saw his candidacy later disqualified by election officials. Opposition figures and international observers meanwhile have expressed concern over the use for the first time of a new electronic voting system, saying it is more vulnerable to vote-rigging than traditional ballots. Electoral officials have dismissed the criticism, saying the use of the 106,000 South Korean-made touchscreen voting machines are meant to slash both election costs and the waiting period for results. Critics also accuse the government, which has refused all forms of international assistance to carry out the elections, of controlling public debate to silence dissent in the lead-up to the vote and refusing access to any potential watchdogs. In a statement on Wednesday, Amnesty International said election campaigning will take place in a hostile political environment that leaves little room for the DRCs citizens to freely and safely exercise their human rights. The authorities have shown outright bias and selectivity in allowing the ruling partys public rallies while cracking down on dissent, rallies and protests by the opposition supporters and critics of the government, said Joan Nyanyuki, the rights groups director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes. Looking ahead, Mbaku expects the next few weeks to be dominated by efforts by the ruling coalition to demonise the opposition and enhance Shadarys ability to win the election. He also warns of serious violence in the case the government mishandles the election amid opposition anger over the expected domination of the airwaves by the FCC and their candidate. Amidst this climate, Berwouts says he expects difficulties for opposition candidates eager to rally support in the coming weeks. The chances on free and fair elections are nil, he says. If elections are postponed, there will be violent protests, and if they take place, there will be violence too and the results will be contested in all scenarios. Congo has some difficult weeks and months ahead. Minister Adhikari directs NAC to produce wide-body aircraft purchase documents Minister for Tourism and Civil Aviation Rabindra Adhikari has directed Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) to submit the documents relating to the purchase of two wide-body aircraft for the national flag carrier. UN says it is ready to play supervisory role in managing key Yemeni port as Martin Griffiths arrives. Martin Griffiths, the United Nations envoy for Yemen, has arrived in the strategic port city of Hodeidah to discuss plans with Houthi rebels to cede control of the port to the world body and lay the groundwork for restarting peace talks. Griffiths, who started a Yemen peace mission in rebel-held Sanaa on Wednesday, said on Friday he discussed with Houthi officials how the UN could contribute to keeping the peace in Hodeidah. I am here to tell you today that we have agreed that the UN should now pursue actively and urgently detailed negotiations for a leading UN role in the port and more broadly, Griffiths told reporters. Griffiths urged Yemens warring parties to keep the peace in the port city, saying the attention of the world is on Hodeidah. Also on Friday, UN spokesperson Rheal LeBlanc said the world body was ready to play a supervisory role in managing the port, which before the beginning of the war in March 2015 handled more than 70 percent of the countrys imports. Earlier this year, Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, the chief of Houthi rebels, had said he was prepared to hand over control of Hodeidah port to the UN if the Saudi-UAE military alliance halted its offensive on the city. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi see the port as the main entry point of weapons for the Houthis and have accused their regional rival Iran of sending missiles to the rebels, a charge Tehran has denied. In the past week, fighting has all but ended with the rebels and pro-government forces, backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, expressing support for the UN envoys plan to end the more than three-year-war. Griffiths is expected to meet with local officials in Hodeidah later on Friday. No date has yet been set for the negotiations, but the warring parties are expected to meet in Sweden in early December. Al Jazeeras Mohammed Adow, reporting from neighbouring Djibouti, said Griffiths and the international community were aware that there can be no solution to the massive humanitarian crisis as long as fighting continues in places that are crucial to aid workers. According to the World Food Programme, up to 14 million Yemenis are now at risk of starvation. Adow also said there was momentum to ending the war in Yemen. Everyone sees the peace talks as the best possible chance to achieve this. Years of war Griffiths had arrived in capital Sanaa on Wednesday and met with rebel leader al-Houthi to discuss their attendance in the next round of consultations. Mohammed Abdul Salam, a spokesman for the Houthis, said in a statement on Twitter on Thursday that conditions for a ceasefire and an offer for Houthis to receive overseas medical treatment were discussed. According to the statement, al-Houthi also asked for an end to economic restrictions on rebel-held areas. Nader Hashemi, the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver, said the pressure was rising on Riyadh and Washington to end the war in Yemen because of the international outcry following the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The war in Yemen, the Arab worlds poorest country, started in 2014 when the government slashed fuel subsidies, prompting massive protests in Sanaa. The Houthis seized the opportunity and marched south from their stronghold of Saada province to the capital, where they toppled Hadis government. Concerned by the rise of the Houthis, a Saudi-led military coalition, backed by the United States, intervened in 2015 with a massive air campaign aimed at reinstalling Hadis government. Since then, data collected by Al Jazeera and the Yemen Data Project has found that more than 18,000 air raids have been carried out in Yemen, with almost one-third of all bombing missions striking non-military sites. Weddings, funerals, schools and hospitals, as well as water and electricity plants, have been hit, killing and wounding thousands. The decision follows a report which estimates that some 90 percent of African art is housed outside the continent. French President Emmanuel Macron has agreed to return, without delay, 26 African artworks claimed by Benin, according to the presidents office. The decision on Friday came shortly after Macron received a report detailing how former colonisers can return looted artworks to Africa. Governments from Ethiopia to Senegal eagerly awaited the report, commissioned by Macron and compiled by French art historian, Benedicte Savoy, and Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr. It recommends that the thousands of items in French museums taken without consent during the colonial period be returned to the continent. Unless it can be proven that the objects were obtained legitimately, they should be returned to Africa permanently, the reports authors say. Savoy and Starr also recommend changing the French law to allow the restitution of cultural works to Africa, after Macron announced that he wanted the process to begin within five years. French law currently forbids the government from ceding state property, regardless of how it was obtained. {articleGUID} I cannot accept that a large part of the cultural heritage of several African countries is in France, Macron said during a visit to Burkina Faso last year. There are historical explanations for this but there is no valid, lasting and unconditional justification. African heritage cannot be only in private collections and European museums it must be showcased in Paris but also in Dakar, Lagos and Cotonou. This will be one of my priorities, he said. A new era of thought At the height of its colonial empire, France controlled large swaths of the African continent, removing art produced there for display in museums in the French capital, Paris, and elsewhere. Objects that arrived in France went on to influence the work of major figures in European art, such as Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso, and Italian painter and sculptor, Amedeo Modigliani. According to the report, about 90 percent of African art is currently housed in museums and private collections outside the continent, including statues, thrones and manuscripts. There are about 90,000 African artworks in French museums, most of them housed in Paris Quai Branly museum, which also boasts a large collection of Asian art. The museum was established by former French President Jacques Chirac, an avid collector of African art. The decision could up the pressure on other European governments to return looted artefacts [Philippe Wojazer/Reuters] While the decision has been welcomed by officials in some African countries, European art dealers have expressed concerns that repatriation will leave some French museums nearly empty. The dealers have also questioned who the objects should be returned to when many of the kingdoms and civilisations they were taken from no longer exist. However, the head of Ethiopias Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage had said the report heralded a new era of thought in Europes relations with Africa, while Senegals culture minister Youssou Ndour said it was entirely logical that Africans should get back their works. Thorny diplomatic issue Frances decision could up the pressure on other European governments and museums to return looted artefacts, which can become a diplomatic headache as well as a painful reminder of colonialism. According to the AFP news agency, approximately 180,000 African artworks are held in Belgiums Royal Museum for Central Africa, while 37,000 more are in the Weltmuseum in Austria. {articleGUID} The British Museum in London is also in talks to return artefacts, looted from the ancient Benin kingdom, to Nigeria, which now occupies the territory. This month, a Chilean delegation travelled to the United Kingdom to request the return of artefacts from two London museums. The UK is also embroiled in a prolonged standoff with Greece over the Elgin Marbles, also known as the Parthenon Marbles, which were removed from Athens in the 1800s. Museums frequently cite concerns over whether countries have a suitable place to display repatriated treasures, as well as the skills to maintain them. However, in recent years, some European museums have returned a number of items to their countries of origin. {articleGUID} In August, the British Museum repatriated a trove of 5,000-year old objects looted from an ancient site in Iraq shortly after the United States invasion in 2003. France returned 20 mummified Maori heads to New Zealand in 2012, as part of a repatriation programme of the National Museum of New Zealand, which also secured the return of Maori objects from other countries. At least 400 people killed in Kashmir this year highest in a year since 2008 when over 500 were killed. Indian troops have killed six separatist fighters in a gun battle in the disputed region of Kashmir, according to the army, taking the death toll for the year to the highest in nearly a decade. So far this year, 400 people have been killed in Kashmir, Indias only Muslim majority state, and more than half of them were rebels fighting against the Indian rule. The number of the dead is the highest in the state since 2008 when 505 people were killed. The number of deaths in violence in Indian-administered Kashmir had dropped to 99 in 2012 but has since been climbing. The disputed region has witnessed a spike in violence since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took power in 2014. Analysts say the hardline policies adopted by the Hindu nationalist government may further worsen the situation. Indian army spokesman Rajesh Kalia said an operation was launched in Sekipora village, around 50km south of Srinagar, the regions main city, after intelligence reports about the presence of a group of rebels. Six militants were killed during a fierce gunfight and arms and ammunition along with their bodies have been recovered, Kalia told Reuters news agency. Indian forces have stepped up an offensive against rebels operating inside the Kashmir Valley as well as those trying to intrude from across the border with Pakistan, officials say. The rebels have hit back, targeting members of the Kashmir police and their families in recent months. On the boil Among the dead was a member of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba. The latest crackdown in southern Kashmir, which has been on the boil since the killing of popular rebel commander Burhan Wani, was prompted by the abduction of six people from the area by rebels. While four were let off, the rebels killed two accusing them of being informers for the Indian security forces. One of them was beheaded, while a video of the assailants pumping bullets into the other went viral on the social media. Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan both claim Kashmir and have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region since 1947. A military Line of Control (LoC) divides the Indian and Pakistani sides, with India ruling 45 percent of Kashmir and the bulk of its more than 11 million population. Pakistan has about 35 percent of the territory and China controls the rest. Is Iranian saffron sanction-proof? Iranian saffron sellers consider the US sanctions on Iran a buyers problem and note that their saffron, used in everything from perfumes to medicine, even sells for more now. Raed Fares, who heads Kafranbel-based Radio Fresh and survived a 2014 ISIL shooting, dies in gun attack, reports say. Gunmen in Syrias rebel-held Idlib province have killed Raed Fares, a prominent activist who ran an independent radio station in the countrys last opposition stronghold. Fares was shot on Friday along with his colleague Hamoud Juneid in the town of Kafranbel, according to their Radio Fresh station. Fares and Juneid were shot dead by unknown assailants riding a van in Kafranbel, Fresh FM, which provides independent news and satirises both President Bashar al-Assad and opposition groups, said in a post on Facebook. Salman, a 33-year-old mathematics teacher, who witnessed the attack, told the Middle East Eye website that attackers in a van driving at high speed fired shots from a machine gun, before speeding away. Juneid died during the attack while Fares died of his wounds at the Orient Hospital, Middle East Eye reported. Fares gained prominence early in the uprising against Assad, which began with mass demonstrations in 2011 and slid into civil war, with protest banners that drew international attention on social media. The banners targeted Assad, his allies Iran and Russia, Western powers that Fares portrayed as selling out ordinary Syrians through their response to the crisis, and the various armed groups who had emerged in the chaos. Fares, who survived a 2014 gun attack by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, known as ISIS) armed group, also distributed photographs and video clips showing the toll that war was taking in Kafranbel, providing a picture of life in rebel-held parts of Syria where it was dangerous for foreign media to visit. In his last posts on Twitter on September 21, Fares wrote about a demonstration against Russia, Assad and all kinds of terrorism. He also posted a picture of himself with his two sons at the rally as thousands took to the streets across Idlib to protest against a potential full-fledged offensive by government forces and their allies. Kafranbel 21 Sep 2018 Me and my sons: Mohamad & Ahmad Kafranbel Demonstration pic.twitter.com/uye23DCODy Raed Fares (@RaedFares4) September 21, 2018 Kafranbel: 21 Sep 2018 Demonstration against Russia, Assad and all kinds of Terrorism the song says: "Syria will be a Free Country" PART 2 pic.twitter.com/SvapeBdGRq Raed Fares (@RaedFares4) September 21, 2018 In an opinion piece in June in the Washington Post, calling for the United States to resume financial support for Radio Fresh, Fares wrote that the terrorist groups [and the government] see us as a direct threat. He told Al Jazeera in 2015 that Radio Fresh was the most beautiful and important thing he ever did. By his own account, his offices were targeted both by government bombardment and by armed groups, who abducted and tortured him several times. But he told Al Jazeera that though he had the means to leave Syria, he intended to stay until Assad was defeated. Calamity News of Fares killing triggered an outpouring of grief on social media. Nasser Weddady, a US-based political analyst, called Fares death an immense loss to the cause of freedom in Syria and beyond, while Marietje Schaake, a member of the European Parliament, said she saw his legacy as a task for all of us, to keep supporting Syrians who risk everything for democracy and liberty. R.I.P Raed Fares, the bravest nonviolent man I ever met. An immense loss to the cause of freedom in Syria and beyond. pic.twitter.com/C7ZZVVgaK0 Weddady (@weddady) November 23, 2018 He survived an assassination attempt by ISIS, but more than enemies, Raed had many admirers. His loved ones and the people of Syria have lost in Raed an example, a man who chose to lead and speak up, despite the harshest repression. I wish his loved ones comfort and support 2/3 Marietje Schaake (@MarietjeSchaake) November 23, 2018 Others described Fares death as a calamity. The stream of terrible news continue to pummel us. Such an irreplaceable loss. Such a calamity. Iyad el-Baghdadi | (@iyad_elbaghdadi) November 23, 2018 Awful news from Syria, that prominent activist Raed Fares from Kafranbel was assassinated alongside fellow activist Hammoud Jned. You will remember the pro-democracy banners and posters from Kafranbel, critical of the regime and Islamist extremists https://t.co/G4iYXhINBx pic.twitter.com/JLN5vk4oJb Joseph Willits (@josephwillits) November 23, 2018 More sad news from Syria. Raed Fares and Hammud Junayd, two of the sharp minds behind the great protest banners and activities in Kafranbel were assassinated overnight ( most likely by HTS). May their souls rest in peace. Haid Haid (@HaidHaid22) November 23, 2018 The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitor, has reported a succession of assassinations in Idlib over the past year targeting leaders from the areas major factions and political dissidents who publicly disagree with their governance. The Hayet Tahrir al-Sham alliance is the most powerful of several groups present in Idlib province. A Russian-Turkish deal to prevent further fighting in northwest Syria has for now averted a planned government offensive. Khadim Hussain Rizvi, whose TLP party held massive protests against Aasia Bibis acquittal, has been arrested. Pakistani authorities have arrested the leader of a religious party which had disrupted daily life with nationwide rallies following the acquittal of a Christian woman in a blasphemy case. The son of Khadim Hussain Rizvi, leader of the right-wing Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TLP) party, said his father was taken away on Friday in a nighttime raid on his religious school in the eastern city of Lahore. Police raided our school and arrested our revered leader, Saad Rizvi told the Reuters news agency. The TLP said in a statement that Rizvi was arrested along with scores of supporters, according to a report by The Associated Press. In a tweet, Pakistans Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said Rizvi has been taken into protective custody and shifted to a guest house. The action was prompted by TLPs refusal to withdraw its call for protest on November 25. Its to safeguard public life, property and order, the minister said. Rizvi has called his party members to observe martyrs day on Sunday by holding a rally in the capital, Islamabad, Pakistans Dawn newspaper said. Chaudhry, however, said the arrest has nothing to do with the Aasia Bibi case. Khadim Hussain Rizvi has been taken into protective custody by police and shifted to a guest house.They insisted to come to Rwp refusing Governments proposal for alternative arrangements Its to safeguard public life, property and order and has to do nothing with Asia Bibi case Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) November 23, 2018 Right-wing protests over blasphemy Rizvis TLP was at the forefront of a nationwide protest against the acquittal of Pakistani Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, in a blasphemy case by the countrys Supreme Court last month. The TLP had demanded Bibis public execution, while the partys founder, Mohammad Afzal Qadri, called for the death of the three Supreme Court judges who ruled to acquit her. Qadri had also called for the overthrow of the Pakistan government over the controversy. The protests ended only after the government agreed to a Supreme Court review of Bibis acquittal. Pakistans Prime Minister Imran Khan went on the national television to say that the Supreme Courts decision will be final and upheld. The chances of the apex courts acquittal being overturned are slim, according to Bibis lawyer, who fled Pakistan following the verdict. Blasphemy is a massively inflammatory issue in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where even unproven allegations of insulting Islam and Prophet Mohammed can lead to lynchings and murders. The allegations have led to at least 74 killings in Pakistan since 1990, according to an Al Jazeera tally. Meanwhile, hard line groups continue to hold sporadic, albeit peaceful, rallies across the country and calling for Bibis execution. The TLP has also vowed to return to the streets if Bibi leaves the country. The Pakistani government has repeatedly stated that Bibi is being held in a secure location in Pakistan after being released from a prison in central Multan earlier this month. The exact whereabouts of the 54-year-old woman are unknown. Her family has requested asylum, which has been offered by several countries including Canada, Spain and France. At least 26 killed and 55 wounded in blast that hit a busy market in a remote town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. An explosion has ripped through a busy marketplace in the northwestern Pakistani town of Kalaya, killing at least 26 people, officials said. More than 55 people were wounded when the blast occurred on Friday morning, health official Adnan Tahir told Al Jazeera by telephone from the provincial capital, Peshawar. It was unclear whether the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber or an improvised explosive device, local government official Mudassir Bangash told Al Jazeera. Reports are still coming in, nothing is confirmed yet, Bangash told Al Jazeera by telephone. Abbas Khan, the assistant commissioner of the district, told the Reuters news agency that a suicide bomber had driven his motorcycle into a crowd attending a festival and market that attracts people from various religious communities. Earlier, the AFP news agency, citing a police official, reported that the blast was caused by an improvised explosive device placed in a carton of vegetables at the market in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Years of conflict The attack took place in the remote town of Kalaya, about 60km southwest of Peshawar. The market in Kalaya is one of the largest in Orakzai district, a remote district in Pakistans northwest that was, until May, governed under direct rule from Islamabad. Orakzai and its neighbouring tribal districts are among the least developed in Pakistan, and saw years of conflict when the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) established bases across the region as it targeted the Pakistani state. Violence has dropped since the launch of a series of Pakistani military operations against the TTP in 2014, but sporadic attacks continue to occur. Strongly condemn the terrorist attacks against Chinese Consulate in Karachi & in Orakzai tribal area. My prayers go to the victims & their families. Salute the brave security/police personnel who gave their lives & denied success to terrorists in the mission ag Chinese Consulate. Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) November 23, 2018 No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. The attack in the Orakzai market took place minutes after three attackers attempted to storm the Chinese consulate in the southern port city of Karachi, although the two attacks appeared to be unrelated. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned both attacks in a tweet on Friday. Pakistans Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari also denounced the attack, and warned that the death toll could go up. As the US fails in Afghanistan, [Pakistan should] be prepared for [a] fallout and we must ensure greater security for our tribal areas especially protection of our [people], she tweeted. Asad Hashim is Al Jazeeras digital correspondent in Pakistan. He tweets @AsadHashim Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is touring the Middle East in a bid drum up support as questions abound about how hell be received in Argentina for the G20 summit next week. On Friday, Prince Mohammed continued his international trip dubbed a tour of brotherly countries in the United Arab Emirates as global condemnation continues over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. I think its trying to rehabilitate his despotic image after almost two months of negative press coverage over his role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, said Nader Hashemi, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver, about the visit. Hashemi said all eyes will be on Prince Mohammed also known as MBS as world leaders gather for the G20 meeting from November 30 to December 1 in Argentina. He said MBS suspected ordering of Khashoggis killing, as well as the disastrous war in Yemen that hes spearheaded, will have heads of state pondering whether to shake his blood-soaked hand. Hashemi noted the Argentina trip puts Prince Mohammed in possible legal jeopardy under the policy of universal jurisdiction under international law. If there is a case brought against the Saudi crown prince for war crimes or murder by another court that is considered to be credible then an indictment can be issued against him when he arrives in Buenos Aires. So I suspect this is something his lawyers and advisors are looking into, Hashemi told Al Jazeera. Brotherly tour Abu Dhabis Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed welcomed MBS on Thursday on his first stop in the UAE, a close ally that is part of a Saudi-led coalition battling Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to the Emirati state news agency WAM. The two leaders discussed regional and international developments and the challenges and threats facing the Middle East region, WAM said, without elaborating. King Salman asked his chosen heir to conduct the tour based on his keenness to deepen the kingdoms ties regionally and internationally, the Saudi Press Agency reported. Were proud of our deep-rooted ties The UAE will always be a loving and supportive home for our brothers in Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Zayed said in a Twitter post. The Saudi prince is set to travel to the Tunisian capital on Tuesday before heading to Argentina. They dont really care International pressure has continued to mount on Riyadh over the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. {articleGUID} The Saudi writer was killed and dismembered in what Saudi Arabia said was a rogue operation. But a CIA analysis leaked to the US media pointed the finger at Prince Mohammed. Dennis Horak, a former Canadian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, predicted international pressure on MBS wont amount to much going forward. The Saudis what they do whenever there is some sort of controversy they will make the rounds of the various Arab capitals to drum up support. And, frankly, a lot of these other countries, they dont really care about things like the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Its not an issue for them. He noted Saudi Arabia is a very important country and the only Arab state in the G20, adding speculation that Prince Mohammed could be forced out of power were naive. Look, the Saudis are not going to respond to international pressure to decide who rules that country, Horak told Al Jazeera. World accountable? US President Donald Trump has been criticised after challenging the CIAs report and saying Washington would not slacken its support for the kingdom. Trump was asked by a reporter on Thursday who should be held accountable for Khashoggis murder. Maybe the world should be held accountable, because the world is a vicious place, the president replied. Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could meet Prince Mohammed on the sidelines of the G20 summit, according to a Turkish presidential spokesman. Such a meeting would be the first face-to-face encounter between the two since Khashoggis killing. Erdogan has said the order to murder Khashoggi came from the highest levels of the Saudi government but has stopped short of directly blaming Prince Mohammed. Since 2015, nearly 30,000 Afghan soldiers and police have been killed, President Ashraf Ghani revealed this month. As the Taliban maintain an upper hand in the 17-year Afghanistan conflict, casualties in the countrys beleaguered security forces are reaching what experts warn are unsustainable levels. Since the beginning of 2015, nearly 30,000 Afghan soldiers and police have been killed, President Ashraf Ghani revealed this month a figure far higher than anything previously acknowledged. That is an average of around 20 soldiers killed every day. On Friday, a blast inside a mosque at a military camp in Khost province killed at least 10 people, the latest in a string of attacks in the country. If the casualty rate continues like this, the day will come when we will have no one left to recruit, warned military analyst Atiqullah Amarkhail. Shaky morale Afghanistans beleaguered security forces have long seen high rates of attrition. But the shocking mortality rate has sent the already shaky morale to new lows, with many soldiers questioning how much further they should push their luck. In the third quarter of 2018, the number of soldiers and police deployed across Afghanistan fell to 312,328 nearly 9,000 fewer than only a year ago, and the lowest level for any comparable period since 2012, a US watchdog said in October. Reasons for attrition included fatalities, and soldiers going AWOL or declining to re-enlist, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said, citing the US defence department. Beg, an Afghan soldier, is among those who are planning to quit the military, after losing countless comrades to better-equipped Taliban fighters and having his salary stolen by superiors. There have been days when I have lost five to 10 colleagues in fighting, said the 26-year-old, who is based in the northern province of Jowzjan. As with other military sources in this story, AFP news agency is using only Begs surname to protect his identity. I have survived two Taliban sieges of our unit and God helped me escape, he continued. I will not re-enlist. I will go and do labour work if I survive. Estimated figures for 2015 show 5,000 killed that year, with the remaining 28,529 killed since then [AP] Estimated figures for 2015 show 5,000 killed that year, with the remainder of the 28,529 casualties dying since then. Casualty figures for Afghan forces have been kept under wraps since 2017 at the request of Kabul, but NATOs Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan recently told SIGAR that this summers toll was worse than ever. That would come as no surprise to Ashiqullah, a police officer in the eastern province of Nangarhar, an ISIL stronghold that also has a heavy Taliban presence. Every day we are seeing our comrades being killed, Ashiqullah, 24, said. We dont have proper equipment and most of our friends have been killed or quit the service. No choice but to fight {articleGUID} The growing number of dead and wounded has made it harder to recruit police in some areas, Interior Ministrys recruitment chief Mohammad Daud admitted. A police recruitment centre in the northern province of Balkh has seen a near 80 percent drop in the number of recruits this year, an official told AFP on the condition of anonymity. But a centre in the Nangarhar provincial capital of Jalalabad said the number of people registering to fight remained high. Defence ministry spokesman Jawed Ahmad Ghafor said the number of people signing up to the army has not decreased at all. Fazlullah, 24, said it had been his dream to protect and defend my country, as he signed up in Nangarhar. I am not joining the police force to have a peaceful life, he said. I go to sacrifice myself for my country. Others say that in a country with rampant unemployment, they have no other options if they want to support their families. I joined the security forces to provide food and a salary for my family, said Sapai, 27, a soldier in Nangarhar. Salman, 27, a police officer in the northwestern province of Faryab, said he had not been paid in three months and air support during attacks by the Taliban were not effective. But we dont have any choice except to keep fighting, he said. The bleak figures come as the Taliban intensify attacks on Afghan forces, scoring significant battlefield wins and maintaining control or influence over swaths of the countryside. Afghan and US forces say the Taliban fighters are suffering heavy casualties too. But the losses do not appear to have eroded their desire to fight, even as international efforts to engage them in peace talks gather pace. They attack us every night, said Enayatullah, a 29-year-old police officer in the southeastern province of Ghazni, who has been wounded twice by landmines. My service in the police will finish in a few days and I will never rejoin. Greenhouse gasses are at levels not seen in the past five million years and time is running out to save Earth from the worst effects of climate change, a United Nations report has said. Since 1990, there has been a 41 percent increase in the warming effect by various greenhouse gases on the climate, said the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Thursday. The science is clear. Without rapid cuts in CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, climate change will have increasingly destructive and irreversible impacts on life on Earth. The window of opportunity for action is almost closed, said WMOs Secretary-General Petteri Taalas in a statement. The WMOs findings follow evidence presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on global warming issued in October, which sounded the alarm on the need to reach zero net emissions of carbon dioxide by mid-century, in order to keep temperature increases to below 1.5 degrees Celsius. The study showed how keeping temperature increases below 2C could reduce the risks for the well-being of the planet and its species. {articleGUID} The two reports are likely to drive discussion at the upcoming UN climate change conference the COP 24 from December 2 to 14 in Poland. Oksana Tarasova, an official from the WMO, told Al Jazeera the latest report is extremely alarming. Unfortunately, we do not see any signs in the decline of the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. If we continue at the rate we are now, we may reach a very high temperature increase, she said. Vanuatu threatens lawsuit One country increasingly affected by rising seas, Vanuatu in the Pacific, said it is considering suing fossil fuel companies and industrialised countries that use them for their role in creating catastrophic climate change, the foreign minister said on Thursday. Vanuatu, with an estimated population of 280,000 people spread across roughly 80 islands, is among more than a dozen Pacific island nations that already face rising sea levels and more regular storms that can kill and wipe out much of their economies. Foreign Minister Ralph Regenvanu said it was time some of the billions of dollars of profits fossil fuel companies generate every year goes towards the damage they cause in countries such as desperate Vanuatu. This is really about claiming for the damages, he told Reuters news agency. Speaking at the Climate Vulnerable Forums Virtual Summit, Regenvanu announced legal options Vanuatu was considering. {articleGUID} My government is now exploring all avenues to utilise the judicial system in various jurisdictions including under international law to shift the costs of climate protection back on to fossil fuel companies, the financial institutions, and the governments that actively and knowingly created this existential threat to my country, he said. About 64 percent of Vanuatus gross domestic product (GDP) was wiped out in a single cyclone in 2015, causing economic losses of $449.4m, he said. Human rights are under threat from a force which challenges the foundations of all life as we know it on this planet we share, said WMO Deputy Secretary-General Elena Manaenkova. The rights of the millions of people are threatened by climate change. Minister defends amenities for President, her deputy Despite widespread criticism, the government has defended its decision to expand the Presidents Office premises by acquiring the Nepal Police Academy, procure a motorcade for President Bidya Devi Bhandari and to relocate the Vice Presidents Office. Restarting oil wells in South Sudan has uncertain health effects South Sudans government hopes to increase oil production to boost the economy, which means that leaking oil wells will be repaired, but locals worry they will see an increase in health problems. Companys apology follows a 10-year battle by families of workers who developed severe diseases, including leukaemia. Samsung Electronics has apologised to the workers who developed cancer after working at its semiconductor factories, bringing to an end a decade-long dispute at the worlds top chip-maker. Campaign groups say 320 people developed work-related illnesses after being employed by Samsung Electronics, with 118 of them dying. We sincerely apologise to the workers who suffered from illness and their families, said the companys co-President, Kim Ki-nam, on Friday. We have failed to properly manage health risks at our semiconductor and LCD factories. Samsung Electronics is the worlds biggest mobile phone manufacturer and chip-maker and the flagship subsidiary of the Samsung Group, by far the biggest of the family-controlled conglomerates that dominate South Koreas economy. Under a deal announced earlier this month, the company will pay compensation of as much as 150 million won ($133,000) in each case. The agreement, which applies to anyone who worked at Samsung Electronics plants as far back as 1984, covers 16 types of cancer, some other rare illnesses, miscarriages and congenital diseases suffered by the workers children. The Samsung group has played a major role in the economic development of South Korea, which is now the worlds 11th biggest economy. But the company has also faced accusations of murky political connections and corruption. 10-year battle The health scandal emerged in 2007 when former workers at Samsungs semiconductor and display factories in Suwon, south of Seoul, and their families said staff had been diagnosed with various forms of cancer and some had died. A series of rulings and decisions by courts, Seouls state labour welfare agency and a mediation committee followed over a period of more than 10 years, culminating in Fridays announcement. Relatives leader Hwang Sang-gi, whose 22-year-old daughter died of leukaemia in 2007, told reporters he was glad he could now keep the promises he made her. But he went on: The apology honestly was not enough for the families of the victims but we will accept it. No amount of apology will be enough to heal all the insults, the pain of industrial injuries, and the suffering of losing ones family. I cannot forget the pain she and our family went through. Too many people have suffered the same fate. Australia is enduring a bout of wild weather that has hit all parts of the vast continent in recent days. A late spring weather system, that sent a dust storm across Australias New South Wales (NSW) region and its capital, Sydney, has caused damage through wind strength alone. According to Weatherzone, the sheer force of Wednesday nights winds removed roofs from houses and brought down trees and power lines in the city of Adelaide. We measured genuine gale force winds at Adelaide airport for about six hours and had gusts up to 98 kilometres per hour, meteorologist Peter Webb said. {articleGUID} Those sustained gale force winds also lifted the tide levels by 1.6 metres, but fortunately this corresponded with the low tide, else wed have been in real trouble, he added. The strongest gust recorded in the state of South Australia was 132km/h at Neptune Island. The stormy system, that reinvigorated on Friday just east of the Bass Strait, developed gales over parts of southeast Australia, fanning bushfires and felling trees. Severe weather warnings for damaging wind gusts were in place for parts of central and southern NSW, central and eastern Victoria, and northeastern Tasmania on Friday morning. The highest wind gust recorded on Friday was 126km/h over Wilsons Promontory, a peninsula sticking out from Victoria into the strait. Winds further up the coast of NSW fanned the flames of a bushfire near Salt Ash, north of Sydney. Wind gusts at nearby Newcastle airport increased from around 50km/h to 80km/h on Friday. The winds have brought down a number of trees, blocking roads and cutting power lines. According to Ausgrid, power was cut for around 1,400 households. This came a day after fallen trees and branches blocked roads in the suburbs of Sydney. The intense low pressure is moving further out into the Tasman Sea, which will allow the winds to ease on Saturday. Opponents of the disputed Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa have won control of a crucial committee in parliament, in a serious setback to his government. Legislators on Friday voted to hand control of the committee that sets the parliamentary agenda to the countrys deposed prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, as Rajapaksas supporters staged a walkout. Sri Lanka has been in political crisis since October 26, when President Maithripala Sirisena abruptly fired Wickremesinghe as prime minister and appointed Rajapaksa, a controversial former president. The move was widely denounced as unconstitutional and both men have claimed to be the legitimate officeholder. Wickremesinghe argues that he still commands majority support within parliament and, despite being fired, he continues to occupy his official residence. Rajapaksa has lost two no-confidence votes in the assembly but has refused to stand down. Pandemonium in parliament Last week, pandemonium broke out in the assembly when Rajapaksas supporters threw books, chairs and chilli paste at rivals in an attempt to disrupt the second no-confidence motion. Two weeks after sacking Wickremesinghe, Sirisena initially suspended and then dissolved parliament, calling snap elections for January. These moves were suspended by Sri Lankas supreme court, pending an investigation. The parliament reconvened last week but degenerated into a brawl. Speaker Karu Jayasuriya said on November 15 that he would recognise neither Rajapaksa nor Wickremesinghe as prime minister. The two rivals later met the president for talks on ending the weeks-long crisis but failed to reach a breakthrough. The ongoing power struggle has led to a downgrade of Sri Lankas credit rating. The authorities announced on Thursday that they will halt any sovereign bond issues as international borrowing costs had shot up, following the credit downgrade. Legislators on both sides say that with the administration at a standstill, key sectors such as tourism in the Indian Ocean island are suffering badly. US president says the agency had feelings but did not firmly place blame on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. US President Donald Trump has contradicted the CIAs reported assessment that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, insisting that the agency had feelings but did not firmly place the blame for the death. Last week, senior intelligence officials from the US spy agency said that such an operation would have needed the approval of Prince Mohammed, also known as MBS, the kingdoms de facto leader. Trump defended Saudi Arabia on Thursday, saying MBS and King Salman said they did not commit this atrocity. I hate the crime, I hate the cover-up. I will tell you this: The crown prince hates it more than I do, and they have vehemently denied it. {articleGUID} Asked who should be held accountable for the murder, Trump again refused to place the blame instead espousing a grim view of the world that he often shares with his advisers. Maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a vicious place. The world is a very, very vicious place. He also seemed to suggest that all US allies were guilty of the same behaviour, declaring that if others were held to the standard to which critics have held Saudi Arabia in recent days, we wouldnt be able to have anyone for an ally. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Trumps comments indicated that he would turn a blind eye to the incident. Speaking to local broadcaster CNN Turk, Cavusoglu added that the US had not informed Turkey of an audio recording in which MBS can be heard calling for Khashoggi to be silenced as soon as possible. Giving Saudi a pass Turkish officials have repeatedly said the killing was intentional and have been pressuring Saudi Arabia to extradite those responsible to stand trial. On Thursday, Federica Mogherini, the EUs foreign affairs chief, said there needed to be a transparent and credible investigation into Khashoggis murder. Those responsible, really responsible for this terrible murder have to be accountable, Mogherini told a news conference in Ankara. Khashoggi, a contributing columnist for the Washington Post, was killed when he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to obtain a document certifying his divorce. The kingdom initially rejected accusations that Saudi officials were behind his disappearance, but after Turkish authorities began leaking evidence of high-level involvement, Riyadh eventually backtracked and admitted that he was killed by rogue operatives. More than 50 days after his murder, the whereabouts of Khashoggis body is still unknown. Critics in US Congress and high-ranking officials in other countries have accused Trump of ignoring human rights and giving Saudi Arabia a pass for economic reasons, including its influence on the world oil market. Bessma Momani, a professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada, said it was unsurprising that the Trump administration had repeatedly defended its ties with the Saudi monarchy despite international condemnation. There have been several opportunities for Trump to rein in Mohammed bin Salman, to make it very clear that not only was this unacceptable but that there would be consequences. Instead, Trump has made it very clear that he sees the relationship as a strategic one, one in countering Iranian influence in the region. He has continued to suggest that there is an enormous amount of money to be made, both in preserving the US-Saudi arms trade and the limitless supply of Saudi oil in the world economy. Possible legal jeopardy Momani added that international pressure on MBS wont amount to much going forward, with Britain and France reluctant to jeopardise their large arms contract with the Saudis. Many countries are going to fall in line, particularly countries that have these large arms trade deals with the Saudis the UK and France for example. I dont think any of those leaders are going to rock the boat. But we might see leaders like Angela Merkel who knows shes in a laying duck position, has 18 months left in power and doesnt have a very strong trade deal with the Saudis. They might do something bold, she said. MBS is currently touring the Middle East, dubbed a tour of brotherly countries, and is expected to attend the G20 summit in Argentina next week. Nader Hashemi, the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver, said the trip could put MBS in possible legal jeopardy under the policy of universal jurisdiction under international law. If there is a case brought against the Saudi crown prince for war crimes or murder by another court that is considered to be credible then an indictment can be issued against him when he arrives in Buenos Aires, Hashemi told Al Jazeera. So, I suspect this is something his lawyers and advisors are looking into and I hope human rights groups in Argentina are preparing a case against the Saudi prince, not only for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, but also what the prince has been doing in Yemen. Looking at life in the caravan border camp as space gets tight Trump renews threat to shut US-Mexico border as more Central Americans arrive to begin long wait to apply for asylum. Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh fear ID system puts them at risk of forcible return as soldiers apply pressure tactics. Yangon, Myanmar Soldiers in refugee camps in Bangladesh have been accused of beating and intimidating Rohingya who refuse to take part in a controversial United Nations-backed scheme to provide them with new identity cards. Earlier this month soldiers showed up at shelters in the Hakimpara camp in Coxs Bazar to pressure people into signing up for the ID cards. They began shoving people and telling them to assemble at a nearby security post, a witness told Al Jazeera. Many of the Rohingya assumed the soldiers were there to put them on a list to be sent back to Myanmar and ran away. The soldiers got angry and started to hit some people who had gathered nearby, he said, speaking anonymously because he feared retribution. Then they organised some people and explained the advantages of the smart cards. On a separate occasion this month, security forces gathered a group of 18 majhis refugees who help run the camps and slapped and hit some of them while telling them to instruct others to accept the scheme. I was hit on the face for not agreeing with the smart cards, one man told Fortify Rights, an advocacy group working in the camps. Slapped hard Another majhi told the organisation he was accused of encouraging other Rohingya to reject the cards. The army officer threatened me saying he would force me back to Myanmar. They slapped me very hard. UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) should be making strong public calls for the Bangladeshi authorities not to coerce Rohingya refugees into accepting smart cards, John Quinley, a human rights specialist with Fortify Rights, told Al Jazeera. The agency has failed to properly communicate with the Rohingya about the scheme, he added. Thats why UNHCR and Bangladesh are coming up with issues now and the Rohingya are sceptical of the smart cards because they werent consulted in the first place. UNHCR said the cards will ensure the right of the Rohingya to voluntarily return home to Myanmar and improve access to services while they are in Bangladesh. But many Rohingya reject the cards because they fear the biometric information will be shared with the Myanmar government if they are forcibly repatriated and they are angry at the UNHCR for failing to consult them about the scheme. False rumours The reported beatings happened amid a wave of panic and chaos in the camps as Bangladesh appeared intent on pushing ahead with a plan to return thousands of Rohingya to Myanmar, just over a year after they fled a military campaign of murder, rape and arson that UN investigators say amounts to genocide. Caroline Gluck, a spokeswoman for UNHCR, said the agency had worked with the Bangladeshi government to hold numerous community meetings with refugees, including imams, elders, and teachers, in order to dispel false rumours that the card is linked to repatriation. The agency also circulated a video outlining the cards benefits, Gluck said. She added the agency had received reports of a small number of cases of violence related to the smart card scheme and reported them to the authorities. Any violence and intimidation against refugees is unacceptable, she said. The Bangladeshi government has been widely praised for hosting more than 730,000 Rohingya who fled from Myanmar since August last year, but security forces in the camps operate with total impunity, said Quinley. Apart from threats and beatings, Fortify Rights documented security forces looting property from Rohingya shopkeepers at the Balukhali camp late last month, he said. One Rohingya man told Al Jazeera he has witnessed police taking away refugees phones in the camps. Nay San Lwin, a Rohingya activist, said he received video testimonies from 10 women and girls who were beaten at another camp early last month for refusing smart cards. Many refugees have suffered for refusing the smart card, he said. Many were beaten. He informed Bangladeshi officials and a UNHCR staffer about the allegations when he visited Bangladesh in mid-October, he added. Abul Kalam, Bangladeshs refugee, relief and repatriation commissioner, said he was unaware of the allegations. Actually, I am hearing about these kinds of incidents for the first time. I am not sure if such things actually happened, he said. Rohingya identity Rohingya also object to the cards because they do not state their ethnicity. Although UNHCR policy is not to include ethnicity on the cards to prevent discrimination, the Rohingya see asserting their identity as key to their survival. Myanmar officially rejects the term Rohingya. Gluck said the cards will help Rohingya access services and enable the agency to build a database that will make it easier to provide assistance. The cards are also an important milestone in contributing to securing the identity of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, she said. The agency plans to finish the scheme at the end of this year, and so far has registered 27,000 people. The initiative began in late June shortly after UNHCR and Myanmar struck a deal designed to pave the way for the eventual return of refugees. The agreement has further undermined the relationship between the UNHCR and the Rohingya, who were not consulted about it and only learned of the details because they were leaked. The deal offers no guarantee of citizenship or freedom of movement outside Myanmars Rakhine state, even though Rohingya say both are vital to ensure their safe return home. Others remain suspicious of the UNHCR because of the controversial role the agency played in the forcible repatriation of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh in the 1990s. Beyond war: Vestiges of rich Syrian heritage on show in Doha Syria was once known for its rich cultural heritage, dating back thousands of years. Nepal razes three bridges built by India Nepali authorities have demolished three temporary bridges constructed across Mahakali River by India without taking Nepals consent. After decades of living with the threat of war, we cope by being both highly tense and unexpectedly relaxed. Amid the continuing clamor of the midterm elections, the Trump administration is confronting Russia and Iran as they continue to bite into the liberties and order we enjoy, either through terrorism or by destabilizing whole regions of the globe. In particular, National Security Advisor John Bolton recently visited the South Caucasus region of Europe and Asia. After a bizarre Obama-imposed stint in the cold, allies Azerbaijan and Georgia are back as priorities while Armenia is on notice with some forthright realities. Bolton told the Armenian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: 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. Accenting the geopolitical/strategic importance of the region situated adjacent to Russia and Iran, Bolton held frank and substantive consultations with the leaders of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. In Armenias case, though, the talks were characterized as tough. The South Caucasus, literally at the crossroads of East and West, is key to these U.S. plans. The region, particularly Azerbaijan, is vital to the energy diversity and security of Europe and Western markets, holding much of the Western-friendly portion of vast oil and gas resources in the Caspian Basin. Azerbaijan is also the only nation to border both Iran and Russia, as well as enjoying a stable, Western-oriented and emerging democratic government. Important, too, Azerbaijan is one of the few Muslim-majority nations (though staunchly secular) on which the U.S. and even Israel can truly depend. In general, Boltons discussions ranged from how to reinvigorate and enhance already significant strategic partnerships in the case of Azerbaijan and Georgia, to how the U.S. may assist Armenia in extricating itself from its current status as a vassal of Moscow and its deep dependence on the mullahs in Tehran. Clearly, Ambassador Boltons agenda with each nation includes renewed sanctions on Iran and ways to forestall Russian irredentism and neo-imperialism. Armenian leadership was heard referring to the current and upcoming sanctions on both Iran and Russia as misguided, foolish and unwise. Thought by most observers as being genuinely understanding of Armenias ominous economic, geographic, and geopolitical/strategic circumstances, Bolton maintained his and the Trump administrations customary straightforwardness. Although this seems to have rankled many in Armenia, it did give leaders of the entire region an accurate, unvarnished picture of U.S. positions on a range of issues. Long suffering from economic and geopolitical isolation stemming from the now 25-year-old Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) war, Armenia won key battles in the 1990s with the help of Soviet Army troops and the materiel support of Iran. However, it unquestionably lost the peace. Armenias unreasoning desire to maintain its hold on Nagorno-Karabakh, a region internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, leaves only a border with Iran accessible -- Azerbaijan and fraternal Turkey closed their borders in response to ethnic cleansing and wholesale murder of Azeris at the hands of Armenians. Consequently, in order to illegally occupy Nagorno-Karabakh with near impunity, Armenia mortgaged its future to Russia. Yerevan can no longer live without Moscows support politically, in terms of weapons, and weighty and regular infusions of funds. Thus, Armenia has de facto become a vassal state of Russia, doing their bidding and voting as Moscow orders in international forums, in return for Moscows support on this one issue. Ambassador Bolton presented Armenian leaders with a feasible and practical solution, explicitly taking away the issue that keeps Armenia so indebted and obligated to Moscow and Tehran. Making peace with Azerbaijan would finally put the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to bed. In doing so, the solitary nation would immediately open itself up to world markets and possibly to the numerous large-scale oil and gas infrastructure projects that have brought such wealth to its neighbors Georgia and Azerbaijan. Strikingly, Ambassador Bolton conveyed that the U.S. would support Armenia in this endeavor. Bolton told RFE/RL that current circumstances highlight the importance of Armenia and Azerbaijan finding a mutually satisfactory agreement to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. Further, Once that happened, then the Armenian-Azerbaijani border would open, said Bolton, adding, The Turkish border, I believe, would almost certainly open. Bolton acknowledged that he understood why Armenia needed Iran, but asserted that the solution was to end the conflict with Azerbaijan. So, the door to peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan ostensibly remains open. So, too, does the door to freedom for Armenia and stability in the region. A valuable byproduct would be to restrain the freewheeling of Russia and Iran. Paul Miller is president and executive director of the news and public policy group Haym Salomon Center. Follow him on twitter @pauliespoint. On Wednesday, President Trump enthusiastically threw his support behind the First Step Act, a piece of legislation aimed at reforming our criminal justice system. Unlike many other recent pieces of legislation, the First Step Act has fairly strong support among Republicans and Democrats. While it is not a perfect piece of legislation by any means, it could provide much-needed change to the criminal justice system and could also help people of various backgrounds. Should this act come to a vote, Republicans will be forced to decide whether they are willing to compromise on some of the acts obvious and significant shortcomings to get it passed. The First Step Act would make several notable changes. First, the Act would rectify the disparity in punishments/penalties relating to crack offenses. Previously, there was a huge disparity in punishment between those using crack cocaine and those using powdered cocaine. This disparity led to major racial imbalances in the system. In addition, the act would give federal judges more discretion to circumvent mandatory minimum-sentencing guidelines for a wider array of people. Currently, judges can only do this for nonviolent drug offenders without any criminal history. The act, if passed, would extend this to people with limited criminal histories. It would also lighten the severity of some automatic sentences, such as the federal three-strikes law, although this would not be retroactive. While the First Step Act contains some provisions that some hardline Republicans might oppose, Republicans (overall) could potentially help themselves should they support the act. For example, the First Step Act has fairly strong bipartisan support, as many Republicans and Democrats recognize the drastic need for criminal justice reform. For Republicans, the opportunity to pass a piece of legislation that has bipartisan support should not be taken lightly in what has been an otherwise divisive political climate. It could also show Americans that Republicans are willing to compromise on certain issues for the betterment of all people. Additionally, President Trumps willingness to work with Democrats exerts pressure on many in the Democratic party who have been obsessed with investigating the president at the expense of working for the American people. According to a recent Fox News article: Conventional wisdom suggests that divided government means stagnation and a halt to the legislative process. But President Trump is unconventional, offering post-partisan areas for compromise and leaving Democrats at a crossroads: legislate or investigate. In the era of President Trump, divided government can work on behalf of the American people. It remains to be seen, however, whether Democrats will focus on trying to hurt the president instead of trying to help the American people they were elected to serve. Moreover, if Republicans support this Act, they could also begin to discredit the stereotype that some Democrats have formed about Republicans/Conservatives. A 2017 article in Salon succinctly expressed this stereotype: It is normal to feel aghast at and disgusted by the Republican Party's war on the poor. The more challenging and perhaps even more disturbing task is to ask why today's conservatives feel such antipathy, disregard and hostility toward poor and other vulnerable Americans. Certainly greed and a slavish devotion to a revanchist right-wing ideology are part of the answer. But they may not be sufficient Notwithstanding these self-serving generalizations, the First Step Act will actually help various groups of people who were disproportionality and unfairly harmed by previous laws. The act will also help inmates seeking to reacclimate into society by providing them with training and/or education. As set forth in an article by NBC News, If it is passed, thousands of federal prisoners would have access to more help preparing for life after the end of their sentences. Thousands of well-behaved prisoners would win freedom earlier. And thousands of people who are arrested for drug crimes in the future would become eligible for exemptions from harsh mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Of course, the decision of whether to support this legislation is not without its hurdles. For example, some Republicans might view some of the acts provisions as weak on crime, including those that lower mandatory minimum sentences, provide more judicial discretion when it comes to sentencing and/or lightening the severity of some automatic sentences. More to the point, a recent article in Conservative Review sharply criticized the act, stating, in part, that the act purports to only offer leniencies to low-level, non-violent offenders when this is not really the case. The most important thing to understand about the First Step Act, S.3649, is that rather than narrowly and definitively defining low-level and targeting the early-release programs just for those individuals, the bill does the opposite. It grants early-release credits to everyone as a catch-all baseline and then writes into the statute specific exceptions. Thus, any criminal category that is not enumerated among the exceptions will be eligible for early release. The bill is artfully crafted with 11 pages of exceptions, which made it appear that many categories are excepted. But when you understand the nature of who is in federal prison and what they are actually convicted of (as opposed to initially charged with), you see that most of these exceptions are straw men. In addition to the weakness of some of the acts provisions, other problems could also arise. If sentences are reduced or shortened, for example, there could be more people who are eligible to vote. This could pose some problems for Republicans in the future (similar to the effect that Amendment 4 might have in Florida). According to BizPac Review, felons who are allowed to vote overwhelmingly favor Democrats. Republicans have an opportunity to show the American people that they are willing and able to put partisan politics aside when the circumstances warrant. The question in this case is whether enough Republicans are willing to compromise on some of the acts obvious and significant shortcomings to get it passed and whether it is wise for them to do so. While people on both sides of the political aisle agree that criminal justice reform is necessary, they dont necessarily agree on how to best accomplish this. If it doesnt happen now, it could be much more difficult once the newly elected Congress takes its place. Mr. Hakim is a writer and a practicing attorney. His articles have been published in The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, The Western Journal, American Thinker and other online publications. https://thoughtfullyconservative.wordpress.com FB: ThoughtfullyConservative Twitter: @ThoughtfulGOP It's bad enough that four people died in a mass shooting incident at Chicago's Mercy Hospital last Monday. In addition to the perp, "[t]he victims were identified as Dr. Tamara O'Neal and Chicago police officer Samuel Jimenez. A pharmaceutical assistant was also shot and killed." Mercy Hospital, Chicago (photo credit: Zol87). "He had a very, very pleasant personality," Maldonado said of Juan Lopez, noting that his internship lasted for about eight weeks in either 2016 or 2017. No written records of the internship? Alderman Maldonado goes for the Sgt. Schultz defense: "I know nothing!" The alderman said the city runs the internship program and that he didn't personally choose Lopez or know him before he applied for the job. "I think he was the only person who applied. You have to be a college student to apply," he said. "Interns are not assigned to do much of significance, they're basically gofers for the very limited staff that we have[.] ... He had no decision making authority," Maldonado said, adding that Lopez mostly was tasked with shuffling papers and getting coffee. And Maldonaldo did nothing: Maldonado said he played no role in helping Lopez secure a job earlier this year with the Chicago Housing Authority. The perp with the pleasant personality was settling a score with his ex and took out two others who got in his way, kind of like the victims of a lot of gang shootings, especially children, who catch a stray bullet. Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said late Monday that the shooting began in the parking lot outside Mercy Hospital as part of a domestic dispute between O'Neal and Lopez. Our friends at Second City Cop are appropriately sarcastic: Former FBI director James Comey's attorney says he will fight the subpoena issued by the House Judiciary Committee to privately testify on events surrounding the bureau's investigation of the 2016 election. Chairman Bob Goodlatte subpoenaed both Comey and former attorney general Loretta Lynch. Comey is demanding a public hearing rather than a private deposition. CNN: "Happy Thanksgiving. Got a subpoena from House Republicans," Comey tweeted. "I'm still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a 'closed door' thing because I've seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion. Let's have a hearing and invite everyone to see." David Kelley, an attorney for Comey, said Thursday that his client will fight the order in court. "While the authority for congressional subpoenas is broad, it does not cover the right to misuse closed hearings as a political stunt to promote political as opposed to legislative agendas," Kelley said. Lynch has not yet commented publicly about the subpoenas. Before the committee officially subpoenaed Comey and Lynch, Rep. Jerry Nadler, the Democrat who is expected to chair the panel next year, criticized the move as "unfortunate." "Months ago, Director Comey and Attorney General Lynch both indicated their willingness to answer the Chairman's questions voluntarily. My understanding is that the Republicans have had no contact with either the director or the attorney general since," Nadler said last week. "Political stunt"? What does Kelley think the Democrats want an open hearing for? As with the recent Kavanaugh hearing, Democrats want to posture, speechify, and tell the world how evil the Republicans are for questioning the integrity of the FBI investigation into Trump and Russian collusion. This isn't "political"? There are few things in Washington more political than a committee hearing. The notion that Comey has a right to choose whether the hearing is open or closed is absurd. Perhaps Comey is afraid that he can't defend the FBI and DoJ from charges of political bias in their investigation. The virulent, undeniable Trump-hatred expressed by everyone from Deputy Director Andrew McCabe down to the agents in charge of the investigation makes the claim that the probe was "professional" and unbiased ludicrous. Comey will keep insisting that the integrity of the investigation was not compromised a claim that only Hillary Clinton partisans accept. For Republicans, this is a last-gasp effort to investigate bias at the FBI and Justice Department. The Democrats will take over the House in January, at which point this will all disappear down a partisan rabbit hole. The cable news giant Fox News Channel has issued an on-air apology for a guest's comment on Hillary Rodham Clinton. I suppose it was necessary, given the need to be able to interview the once (and future?) presidential candidate, and the need to avoid being tarred as abusive. Even if the comment was pretty funny. First, the segment that caused offense, in which Turning Point USA's Director of Hispanic Engagement, Anna Paulina, likened Hillary to herpes, in that she won't go away. Transcript via Grabien: LEVENTHAL: "The President's lawyer Rudy Giuliani taking aim at Hillary Clinton, saying that she needs to be investigated again over her e-mail scandal and the 30,000 messages deleted. He tells 'The Hill,' quote, 'Of course she should be investigated. There is plenty of evidence that Hillary obstructed justice by destroying evidence in a gross and massive way.' This comes on the heels of a 'New York Times' report that the President wanted to order the DoJ to prosecute Clinton and former FBI director James Comey. Joining us now, Anna Paula, director of Hispanic engagement at Turning Point USA, and Doug Schoen, Fox News contributor and former pollster for President Bill Clinton. Good morning to you both. Happy Thanksgiving." PAULINA: "How are you?" LEVENTHAL: "I am good, Anna. Where is this all going?" PAULINA: "I would have to say, with everything that happened with President Trump and the border, the Dick Act of 1903 established the ability for the President to federalize a National Guard and basically call forth the National Guard in times of crisis and national emergency " LEVENTHAL: "I thought we were talking about Hillary's e-mails, but we can get to the border." PAULINA: "Oh, I'm sorry." SCHOEN: "I will give you a reaction to that." PAULINA: "Yes, I totally " LEVENTHAL: "Please." SCHOEN: "I think it's only fair that there be a look at Secretary Clinton. I'm one of those who thought from the start we needed a second special prosecutor given what was alleged and what I think she's acknowledged she did. Let's give her the same sort of scrutiny that we have given President Trump. I'm all for finishing the Mueller investigation. I am all for starting a Clinton investigation." LEVENTHAL: "I am just amazed that with everything going on in the world, we still have Hillary Clinton in the headlines." PAULINA: "She won't go away. She is like herpes." LEVENTHAL: "Okay, that is news that we are breaking here. Not appropriate. Can we talk about the border then?" And here is the on-air apology: Transcript via Grabien: LEVENTHAL: "We are going to wrap this segment a little bit early because of some of the language that was used in the segment, and we apologize to our viewers to for that. I have one last question for you, Doug. Where are you going to be spending this Thanksgiving?" SCHOEN: "I'm going to be with my sainted 92-year-old mother and family. And Rick, I wish to all viewers, certainly to you and to Anna, a very good holiday. And I hope for bipartisanship and amity going forward. We're all Americans after all. We want to protect our country." LEVENTHAL: "Sounds good to me. Doug, thank you very much." NEVILLE: "We are all Americans, and that is the focus and we want to reiterate that. We do not condone the language that Anna Paulina just displayed here and we apologize to Secretary Clinton for that. Fox News does not condone her sentiments. And we will be back. It's Thanksgiving, guys. Lighten up." Turning Point USA is a youth-oriented organization, and the yong are sometimes less than fully immersed in the norms of their elders. I hope Ms. Paulina will not end her public career on this note, but will return to the public stage, a little older and wiser about the limits of cable news. Chief Justice John Roberts recently wrote, "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges." The chief justice knows that this is not true, and I find it extremely insulting that he believes that I am stupid enough to believe it. As he relieved himself on my leg, he told me it was raining. Roberts's statement was a response to President Trump's criticism of "Obama judges" who ruled against the administration. The president replied, "Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have 'Obama judges,' and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country. It would be great if the 9th Circuit was indeed an 'independent judiciary'[.]" Dov Fischer at the American Spectator claimed, "[I]t sounds ridiculous even borderline delusional to deny that today's federal judiciary is chock-full of Obama judges and Clinton judges on a mission to stop President Trump's agenda." Justice Roberts is not delusional. Justices do not have the name of the president who nominated them in their titles. In this respect only, Justice Roberts is correct. However, they generally reflect the philosophy of the president who nominated them. Robert Barnes of the Washington Post remarked, "[S]tudies show there are clear ideological differences between judges nominated by presidents of different parties." Do we actually need studies to illustrate this? Yet the pool of potential judicial nominees is dominated by progressives, and even "conservative" nominees can turn out to be quite liberal. U.S. district judge Timothy Kelly a Trump appointee ruled against the administration in its attempt to revoke CNN reporter Jim Acosta's White House press credentials. Judges are human beings. They reflect a wide range of personality types and philosophies. There are "wise Latinas," "wise Yentas," and even "wise old Crackers." Their core responsibility is to make decisions free of bias using the U.S. Constitution as a guideline. This is not always the case. Justice Thurgood Marshall is famous for saying, "You guys have been practicing discrimination for years. Now it's our turn." Like any statement by the president, this one will be attacked by his opponents in government and the media. Sen. Richard Blumenthal tweeted, "Thanks Chief Justice Roberts for your powerful rebuke to Trump refuting his demagogic denunciation of an 'Obama judge.'" Blumenthal claimed, "When the history of this dark era is written, our independent judiciary (& free press) will be the heroes. Our gratitude goes to them this Thanksgiving." One of the most troubling aspects of the Judiciary's failings is what appears to be its sympathy for the criminal. Theodore Dalrymple commented, "The laxisme of the French criminal justice system is now notorious. Judges often make remarks indicating their sympathy for the criminals they are trying (based upon the usual generalizations about how society, not the criminal, is to blame." Although he was commenting on the French judiciary, the remark applies to judicial systems throughout the West. There are countless examples of this "laxisme." During the sentencing hearing for a man convicted of molesting an 11-year-old girl Judge Durke G. Thompson told the girl and her family "it takes two to tango." The late Robert Bork commented, "Today the Court has lined up with the cultural elite and against the majority of the electorate. The same thing is true in many of the lower courts, federal and state." The elite will not relinquish its control of the courts without a fight. President Trump's next Supreme Court nominee will undergo unprecedented scrutiny. John Dietrich is a freelance writer and the author of The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy (Algora Publishing). He has a Master of Arts degree in international relations from St. Mary's University. He is retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. NSU general secretary undergoes emergency surgery following heart-attack Nepal Student Union (NSU) General Secretary Kundan Kafle has undergone heart surgery at Bansbari-based Shahid Gangalal National Heart Centre after suffering from cardiac arrest on Friday. In what may be either a instance of triangulation or too much chardonnay, Hillary Clinton has confounded both friends and foes by taking a position against mass, uncontrolled immigration (in Europe, not the USA). Of course, she says the reason has nothing to do with the crime wave, displacement, and sharia that accompanied the arrival of over a million "migrants," but rather is necessary to contain the rise of "populism" in Europe. The interview with the U.K. Guardian in which she expressed these opinions was conducted before the midterms (according to a separate Guardian article) and for some reason was published only after the voters had spoken. Gee, did the Guardian editors want to avoid depressing (or, as Stacey Abrams would say, "suppressing") Democrat voter turnout by causing some open borders enthusiasts to stay home? The New York Times spoke to a number of shocked progressives reeling from Mrs. Clinton's statements to the Guardian: "I was kind of shocked," Eskinder Negash, the president and chief executive of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, said of Mrs. Clinton's comments. "If she's simply saying you need to cut down on refugees coming to Europe to ask for asylum because they have a well-founded fear of persecution, just to appease some right-wing political leaders, it's just not the right thing to do." Tanja Bueltmann, a history professor at Northumbria University in Britain who focuses on migration issues, said Mrs. Clinton's perspective was "tragically misjudged." "Ultimately, immigration is not actually the problem that inflamed voters: Much more foundational issues, such as austerity, are the real reason," Professor Bueltmann said. "Immigrants and refugees are simply the scapegoats populists have chosen to use to drive forward their ideas." The context in which the interview took place may (or may not) explain Mrs. Clinton's straying away from the Party Line that uncontrolled immigration is an absolute good. The Guardian, you see, is attempting to raise an alarm about global populism and conducted interviews with that it called three "center-left" politicians: Mrs. Clinton, Tony Blair, and former Italian P.M. Matteo Renzi, whom it called "rightwing populism's greatest scalps." In this hypothesis, with the danger of listening to what non-elite voters think on her mind, Mrs. Clinton committed a gaffe in the Michael Kinsley sense: telling the truth by mistake. Her focus was actually on the dangers of the right. The amount of verbiage disparaging her enemies that made it to print is considerable and reeks of projection: File photo by Gage Skidmore. Clinton, Blair and Renzi all said rightwing populism had not just fed off issues of identity but was also driven by a disruptive way of conducting politics that dramatises divisions and uses a rhetoric of crisis. The centre left struggles to get its voice heard over the simplistic, emotional language used against it, they said. This is laughable. The left controls mass media, academia, and popular culture in all three nations, and social media chip in suppressing distribution of conservative voices. And yet they are feigning the role of vici suable to make their voices heard. This would be psychotic-level denial of realty if it were more than a talking point. The disparagement of her enemies leads to an absurd caricature of them as big-government liberals like Mrs. Clinton: Clinton said rightwing populists in the west met "a psychological as much as political yearning to be told what to do, and where to go, and how to live and have their press basically stifled and so be given one version of reality." Remind me: is the Nanny State a goal of conservatives or Democrats? Almost as if she has been hanging out in lectures at the Heritage Foundation, Mrs. Clinton suddenly is a fan of the Founders' intent: "The whole American system was designed so that you would eliminate the threat from a strong, authoritarian king or other leader and maybe people are just tired of it. They don't want that much responsibility and freedom. They want to be told what to do and where to go and how to live ... and only given one version of reality. And we know that it is conservatives (AKA, for now, "populists") who want to run a Nanny State: "I don't know why at this moment that is so attractive to people, but it's a serious threat to our freedom and our democratic institutions, and it goes very deep and very far and we've got to do a better job of shining a light on it and trying to combat it." She also reveals her contempt for Steve Bannon, whose attempt to bolster rightwing populist parties in Europe is stalling everywhere outside of Italy. "Rome is the right place for him since it is bread and circuses and it's as old as recorded history. Keep people diverted, keep them riled up appeal to their prejudices, give them a sense they are part of something bigger than themselves while elected leaders and business leaders steal them blind. It's a classic story and Bannon is the latest avatar of it." Tom Maguire suggests that this interview signals that she is not running in 2020: But one more thing for which to be thankful with an anti-immigrant message like this, she won't be running. I disagree. I think she is attempting to "triangulate" the way her husband did in the 1990s, heeding the advice and terminology of Dick Morris. The venerable technical term for this is co-opting a rival's issue. But Bill Clinton had far more political talent and was a much, much better liar than Hillary, and he was already in office with the left committed to keeping him there because he was their guy. Hillary may be opening up a world of trouble for herself by speaking out clumsily, or she may be attempting to run against the leftward lurch of her party, with the Sandernista faction feeling its oats. After all, equally inarticulate Nancy Pelosi seems to have vanquished the Progs and secured a return to the speakership. I don't think her lust for power as POTUS has abated. If this is part of a conscious triangulation strategy, President Trump may well attempt to work his deal-making on her and her allies in Congress, with an appeal for border wall funding. So far, there is nothing in Trump's Twitter feed on Hillary latest, but then again, it is still early on the start of the holiday weekend. Triangulation or too much chardonnay? Stay tuned. If you are looking for a vigorous takedown of an arrogant critic of President Trump to help you overcome a lingering turkey coma as the L-Tryptophan works its way through your system, this editorial from the New York Sun might fit the bill. The ever arrogant Thomas Friedman used the term "amoral chump" to describe the president of the United States because in dealing with the Saudi assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, he is forgiving Mohammed bin Salman while supposedly getting nothing in return: I really wrestle with this question: What is the worst thing about President Trump's approach to foreign policy? Is it that he is utterly amoral or that he is such a chump? Because the combination is terrible a president who is an amoral chump is the worst thing of all. He sells out American values awful enough but then gets nothing of value in return. Trump presents himself as a tough, savvy deal maker, and then he lets all these leaders play him for a sucker. The word is out on the street: "Hey, guys, get in line! Trump is giving away free stuff! Just tell him you're fighting Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood or that you're a friend of Sheldon Adelson's, and you get free stuff!" Last May, Hanukkah came early for Israel when Trump moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem a dream of every Israeli prime minister for free! Trump could have gone to Bibi Netanyahu and said: "Bibi, here is the deal. I am going to make your dream come true and move the embassy. But in return you're going to freeze all Israeli settlements in the heart of the West Bank." Then Trump could have told the Palestinians: "You're not going to like this. I'm moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. But I am getting you something no American president ever got you a freeze on Israeli settlements beyond the settlement blocks." Photo credit: JD Lasica. But, as this New York Sun editorial (almost certainly written by Seth Lipsky, though uncredited) points out, that term "chump" is more appropriately applied to Friedman: [I]t was only last year that Mr. Friedman swung behind the "reform process," as he called it, of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Since the "bottom up" process of the Arab Spring failed, Mr. Friedman reasoned, the "top down" method of MBS might just work. "Only a fool would predict its success," the columnist calculated, "but only a fool would not root for it." At the time, we demurred. "Call us a fool," we wrote, "but the Sun is going to hold out for an unconditional recognition of the Jewish State." We acknowledged Mr. Friedman's reporting chops, but noted that as far back as 2002 he started retailing a Saudi plan for peace between Israel and the Arabs. The idea was that, in return for mounting the Second Intifada, the Palestinian Arabs would get half of Jerusalem. As things turned out, the Second Intifada failed and Israel is still in possession of all of Jerusalem. Not only that, but an American president Mr. Trump in the event bowed to the American Congress, recognized Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state, and moved our embassy there. Turns out that relations between America and Saudi Arabia improved dramatically. So who's the amoral chump? There is no doubt that the murder of Khashoggi has rocked Saudi Arabia's standing. Understandably so, to say the least. Mr. Friedman's recommendation, though, is that America force "an immediate, unilateral ceasefire in Yemen" and "let the Iranians and Houthis have it." That kind of strategy led in Syria to a bloodletting with few parallels. Mr. Friedman figures that we can side with the Saudis should they be attacked from Yemen. The Saudis, though, have been attacked from Yemen. So skip that detail. It may be that, at the end of the day, Mr. Friedman, who backed the articles of appeasement with Iran against the wishes of our own Congress (and the Israelis), just prefers the Iranians to the Saudis. He didn't explain that in 2002. As for the Sun, in the war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Sun is on the side of the Israelis. We don't mean that America lacks for her own interests, but in this fight, America's interests align with those of the Jewish state. And so, we would argue, do those of the Arab and Persian people. At the moment, the Times has a less clear grasp of this than the President. Then again, as we say, Times change. Hat tip: CT Dell is now discounting the 55-inch model from the 900F lineup of Sonys latest and greatest smart TVs, bringing the price down to $1099. That is $400 off of its regular price, but Dell is also throwing in a $250 eGift Card, that can be used for another purchase on Dells website. That makes this a very affordable TV from Sony, especially since it has never dropped this far before. The Sony XBR55X900F is a great TV to grab since it is a 55-inch 4K TV, and it is one of Sonys latest TVs, so its going to have the latest imaging processor, HDR processor and much more. This runs on Android TV, so you are going to get all of your favorite apps and games on this TV. That includes the likes of Netflix, Hulu, Google Play Movies & TV, YouTube and much more. There is also Google Assistant support here, so you can control your TV using your voice, and open up Netflix using your voice, and much more. This price on the Sony XBR55X900F is not going to last long, especially since it is one of Dells doorbusters today, and will likely go out of stock before the day is over, so youre going to want to grab it before it is gone. Posted on: November 23, 2018 2:56 PM CMS-Africa, the sister organisation to the Church Mission Society has celebrated its tenth anniversary by opening a new international base in Kenya as part of its vision to reach 50 million African families by the middle of the century. CMS Africa House in Nairobi was opened by the former Archbishops of Tanzania and Rwanda, Donald Mtetemela and Onesphore Rwaje. Two hundred guests attended the ceremony including key church leaders from across Africa among them the outgoing international director of CMS-Africa, Dennis Tongoi, and his successor, Canon Moses Bushendich. Canon Moses described the building as a miracle of faith, belief and trust in God. The new building will provide a base for CMS-Africa, a place where Africans can pray for mission and the means to make CMS-Africa sustainable, he said. CMS-Africas vision is to impact 50 million families across Africa by 2050 through its transformational programme of training, focusing on womens empowerment, families, young people, business owners and leaders. Since it was formed in 2008, the organisation has expanded and now has a growing team of missionaries and staff in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, DR Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan. More than 20,000 people have been on its training courses in subjects such as Financial Freedom for Families, Business for Mission and its programme for youth development. Dennis Tongoi said, We believe in church on Monday . . . as I come to the end of my tenure as director of CMS-Africa, the overriding emotion I feel is joy at seeing people that God has raised up and I have had the privilege of working alongside impacting countless lives as God works through this ministry. Canon Philip Mounstephen, the executive leader of Church Mission Society said it was a significant step towards the fulfilment of CMSs vision for mission in Africa. CMS-Africa has grown and matured and is now at the vanguard of mission, not only for Africa, but for elsewhere in the world. Through Canon Moses and his team, I believe it can be a catalyst to renew mindsets and transform communities for millions of Africans. Animal protection on the agenda for students as exhibition tours China to fight cruelty 20 November 2018 Up to 90,000 Chinese students are set to learn about the importance of animal welfare as part of a new poster exhibition university tour. Winning entries from Animal Asias 4th Design Competition will tour 90 universities across China from November to December bringing a message of animal protection to a vast audience. The exhibition of posters submitted to Animals Asias 2018 Design Competition highlight the need to protect animals in our homes, and those in captivity, from widespread neglect and cruelty. Animals Asia Cat and Dog Welfare Director Irene Feng said: Its important that the Chinese public consider animal welfare in their everyday lives and decision making. From what to eat, to how to be entertained, to what forms of medicine to use, to whether to adopt a companion animal many of our decisions affect animal lives, and to reduce animal cruelty, the public must understand animals needs. This exhibition makes it clear that in many regards, animals are not much different to humans. They have emotions, complex inner lives, and cruelty can never be tolerated. Every life deserves respect. Companion animal ownership has skyrocketed in China in recent years with 100 million animals, mostly cats and dogs, registered as of 2015. But with this has come increased numbers of abandonment as many people purchase puppies and kittens without realising the long-term commitment of their actions. Captive animal facilities, such as zoos, safari parks and aquariums, have also sprung up around the country in recent years raising animal welfare concerns due to the conditions and the proliferation of animal performances. Over 400 submissions were received from all round the country, with first place being awarded to Feng Jianghong for her piece, If the weak one were you. Feng Jianghong said: I hope to arouse peoples empathy for animals through shifting the position. Do not impose on life what you yourself do not desire. Despite increasing animal welfare awareness, instances of shocking animal cruelty continue to emerge with regularity on Chinese social media. In 2017, Animals Asia assisted Guangzhou and Anhui politicians to submit proposals for new laws to stop cruelty to animals as well as to ban the dog and cat meat trades. Sadly, despite public support, both proposals failed to gain political traction. Irene said: Introducing legislation to protect animals in China is proving extremely difficult and as a result cruelty is going unchallenged. We may not be able to influence the legal system, but we can influence the public and alert them to the urgent need to protect animals, consider their welfare and stop animal cruelty in their communities. PM Oli lashes out at central members for lodging protest Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, who is also the Chairman of Nepal Communist Party (NCP), lashed out at the central members on Thursday for lodging protests against the party leadership. BarcelonaAccording to eldiario.es, over one hundred university law professors and lecturers from Spanish universities have signed a public statement in which they reject the charges of rebellion and sedition being brought against the pro-independence leaders who will shortly stand trial before Spains Supreme Court, due to the absence of any violence in Catalonias independence bid. Entitled, "The trivialization of crimes of rebellion and sedition", the jurists warn that the interpretation made by the Prosecutor's Office and the Solicitor General, "paves the way for the trivialisation" of two crimes "virtually unheard of in democratic times and with an unfortunate past", in reference to Colonel Tejero and the other participants in the 23-F [23 February 1981] attempted coup. The academics also condemn the fact that the Public Prosecutor's Office has "turned the exercise of fundamental rights into a crime", referring to the freedom of assembly and the right to protest. According to the Public Prosecutors Office, the plan to bring about independence included the use of "the degree of violence necessary" by the Catalan police and the "riotous" demonstrations by Omnium and the ANC. According to the manifesto, "for the Prosecutor's Office, the danger lies in inciting demonstrations", whereas the academics argue that during the demonstration outside the Ministry of the Economy on September 20 or the events which took place between October 1 and 3 "the necessary levels of violence" to constitute the crime of rebellion "did not take place". The document goes on to say that "the only thing that the Attorney General has shown so far is that all the demonstrations which took place only sought a referendum through peaceful and democratic means", going on to say that they see in the prosecutors "persistent attempts to equate the Catalan independence process with the existence of violence". However, according to the manifestos signatories, the crime of sedition was never committed during the process since, "at no time has any proof been provided that the indicted caused, provoked or participated in a riotous uprising with the intention of obstructing the rule of law, unless it is understood that it is sufficient to incite the right to protest, in other words, the exercise of a fundamental right". The document was initiated by the professors of criminal law at the universities of Jaen, Castilla-La Mancha and Granada, Guillermo Portilla, Nicolas Garcia Rivas and Maria Luisa Maqueda; joined by the professors of criminal law at the universities of A Coruna and Valencia, Jose Angel Brandariz and Javier Mira Benavent. Numerous lecturers in criminal law in various Spanish universities have also added their support, such as Manuel Cancio (Autonomous University of Madrid), Jacobo Dopico (Carlos III University), Luigi Foffani (University of Modena), Patricia Laurenzo (University of Malaga) and Joan Queralt (University of Barcelona). The academics see the sentences which are being asked for, totalling 25 years in the case of the Prosecutor General and 12 in the case of the Attorney General, as a consequence of the inappropriate application of the crimes of rebellion and sedition. They argue that calling for such severe prison sentences is "highly questionable, based on the principle of proportionality, which ought to form the basis of any interpretation of the law. The statement goes on to say that, "Only by gravely violating the principle of criminal legality can one conclude that the defendants, in light of the actions attributed to them, committed the crime of rebellion or conspiracy to commit rebellion, which also requires the existence of violence". It is also highly critical of the prosecutions decision to "deviate" from Constitutional doctrine in the 1-O case in relation to the crime of rebellion, which calls for the explicit use of violence, with the use of weapons for example. The document also points out, as did a hundred academics at the start of the case, the fact that the National Court the court which originally heard the charges against the former ministers and which sent them to prison without bail is not the competent body to investigate 1-O. As a result, the manifesto concludes by calling for the release of the nine leaders jailed "for non-existent crimes", and for a full investigation into what happened during the pro-independence process based on "respect for the principle of criminal law, since only within such boundaries do opportunity, proportionality and justice ever exist". The aim of the series of meetings and VIP dinner in the heart of Europe was to strengthen the already robust relationships that the airline enjoys with key MEPs and to demonstrate Qatar Airways commitment to the European Union, the worlds largest single market area. During the visit Al Baker held successful one-to-one meetings with MEP Ramon Tremosa; MEP Jose Ignacio Salafranca and MEP Ismail Ertug at the European Parliament in Brussels, the capital of Europe. Al Baker also met with European Commissioner and Vice President,Maros Sefcovic and Henrik Hololei, Director General, Mobility and Transport for the European Commission. Al Baker, said: The support extended to our country and airline by top European decision makers is truly valued and appreciated. We come here today in the spirit of pursuing enhanced aviation opportunities for our industries and businesses, more options for travellers, and long-term prosperity for our economies, and I have no doubt we will succeed. We appreciate the openness and understanding demonstrated by the EU. We also thank the EU for the flexibility and support provided to the State of Qatar under the current blockade. During the evening, more than 16 MEPs enjoyed a VIP dinner with key note speeches in the stunning Presidential Salon at the European Parliament, with impressive views over the city of Brussels. This visit comes at a time when Qatar and the EU are close to completing the final stage of the EU-Qatar Comprehensive Air Transport Agreement, which has offered the State of Qatar and Qatar Airways an excellent platform to engage in candid discussions with its European partners on the potential growth and future cooperation between the two parties. Refugees request WFP not to stop food assistance The Bhutanese refugees living in Beldangi camp, Jhapa, have expressed dissatisfaction over the decision of the World Food Programme to discontinue food assistance to the refugees by the end of 2018. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 22, ARMENPRESS. The Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) has announced its motto for the upcoming general election. HHK has chosen If You Are Concerned [worried], Vote For Republicans to be their slogan, HHK faction MP, Vice President of the party Armen Ashotyan said on Facebook. Armenias Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan resigned on October 16 to trigger the process of disbanding the parliament. Pashinyan took office after massive protests in April forced president-turned PM Serzh Sargsyan to resign. But Sargsyans Republican Party (HHK) still has most seats in the 105-seat parliament. Since taking office, Nikol Pashinyan has numerously said that the incumbent parliament doesnt represent the people and that early elections should take place as soon as possible. In accordance to the Constitution, when a Prime Minister resigns the parliament must elect a new PM within two weeks. Lawmakers deliberately failed to elect a new PM as a formality in order to pave the way for dissolution. The last round took place on November 1 and the parliament was dissolved by virtue of law. Later on the same day, President Armen Sarkissian signed an order on dissolving the parliament and calling early elections on December 9. The parliament will function until the new parliament is elected. The government is formally a caretaker government until a new government is formed after the election. Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin and Uruguayan Minister of National Defense Jorge Menendez inked a letter of intent for the establishment of a working group on military and technical cooperation and signing several agreements on training of the Uruguayan troops, the Russian Defense Ministry said. The Uruguayan army still operates US-made M24 Chaffee light tanks dating back to World War 2 (Picture source: Dialogo Americas) "Uruguay is an important and reliable Russian partner in Latin America. We are linked for over 150 years by relations of friendship and mutual trust which create a solid basis for interaction between the defense ministries," Fomin was quoted as saying in Montevideo. Fomin said the joint letter had been signed within the framework of the current intergovernmental agreement on defense cooperation. "The statement declares readiness of the defense departments of both countries for cooperation to maintain peace and security, resolve international conflicts and strengthen bilateral ties," he said. According to him, the parties expressed their intention to "create a working group on military and technical cooperation to coordinate collaboration in the area of arms and military equipment supplies in compliance with Russian and Uruguayan legislation." In addition, the document provides for continuation of consultations on coordination of the Russian-Uruguayan intergovernmental agreement on intellectual property protection. "Work will continue to sign an agreement on training Uruguayan soldiers in military schools of the Russian Defense Ministry, along with an agreement on sending Russian military experts to Uruguay for training and education of the National Armed Forces," Fomin stated. He arrived in Montevideo at Menendezs invitation following the agreements reached at the 7th Moscow Conference on International Security in April 2018. Fomin visited several military units, including the National School for Peacekeeping Operations. The announcement follows the merger of Thomson Geer and Kemp Strang in October. It also follows Russell Kennedy making its largest-ever senior promotions round in July. Aitken Lawyers, which can trace its history in Sydney back more than 120 years, has 33 people including three partners. Russell Kennedy is equally established, operating from its Melbourne headquarters for at least a century. It has more than 230 people, including 37 principals. Paul Gleeson, Russell Kennedy managing director, said that the Sydney boutique is a natural fit for the firm, which is looking to strengthen its national presence by expanding to Sydney. The merger partners said that the combination brings together two organisations with complementary services and capabilities across a range of practice areas, including corporate and commercial, litigation and dispute resolution, property and development, estate planning and family law, commonwealth state and local government, aged care and retirement living, workplace relations and employment, insolvency, rural services, and renewable energy. Were delighted to be joining forces with Aitken Lawyers. They are an impressive team with a tremendous reputation built on outstanding client service and a genuine commitment to their people, Gleeson said. The first step in this direction will be made in 2019, when the Urus is expected to gain a plug-in hybrid powertrain with similar specifications to the one in the Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid. Total system output comes in at 680 PS (671 horsepower) and 850 Nm (627 pound-feet), which isnt enough for Lamborghini to take the crown from the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk Turning our attention back to the mid-engine lineup, the change will happen "probably around 2021, with the Aventador replacement that will add a motor to its V12 engine." Domenicali added that "the same will happen later also on the V-10 family when we replace the Huracan. A plug-in model is the only way to maintain performance and keep Lamborghini's engine sound while also reducing emissions, he concluded.Some reports suggest that the Aventador s successor would feature an electrified front axle, translating to an electric drive unit up front. The 6.5-liter V12 would remain naturally aspirated, sending all the suck-squeeze-bang-blow to the rear wheels of the supercar.Another report guesstimated the output of the Aventador replacement would level up to 1,172 horsepower whereas the successor of the Huracan would deliver up to 985 horsepower. Speaking of which, does anyone remember the Asterion concept from the 2014 Paris Motor Show, capable of 910 horsepower from a combination of three electric motors, the 5.2-liter V10, and seven-speed dual-clutch transmission from the Huracan?Being part of the Volkswagen Group, Lamborghini also experimented with the plug-in V6 powertrain of the Bentley Bentayga Hybrid. But as it happens, such a combination doesnt befit the maddest supercar manufacturer in the business, so Lamborghini scrapped the plans of using a six-cylinder engine.A fourth model is also planned, with Domenicali making a case for a grand tourer that would serve as the spiritual successor to the Espada. Complete electrification is considered for this model, which is expected to launch between 2025 and 2027 if everything goes according to plan. Back in September, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine let loose word of a possible tie-up between NASA astronauts and sponsors of the space program. A group apparently has even been tasked with setting up the framework that would give astronauts the chance to pursue suitable commercial endorsements and other media opportunities.NASA has two things to gain from this. First, exposure, thanks to privately-sponsored missions and/or crew. Secondly, boosted by the media presence, an astronaut career might appeal to more kids than it currently does, providing the necessarily generations of future astronauts.This month, The Washington Post says NASA is currently toying with the idea of space tourism.Currently, there are some private companies working on the technology needed to make space travel safe for people who have no prior specialized training, the most prominent of which being SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic.Aside for SpaceX, which plans to send its first customer on a trip to the Moon , the plans of most such companies are simple and straightforward: send to people to the edge of space for a few minutes worth of zero-G and cash those checks.NASA, on the other hand, being one of the agencies involved with keeping the International Space Station up and running has an entirely different plan, the source says.Citing a proposal made last week by a NASA advisory subcommittee, the agency intends on selling seats onboard the spaceship to take people to the ISS and back.The idea is in its infancy, and its yet unclear how all will work or how much it will cost. For reference, Richard Branson is planning for years to charge Virgin Galactic tourists $250,000 for a round trip to low Earth orbit. MQB TDI The Czech motoring publication caught wind of the name from dealer documentation, which also suggests the electric Citigo will be called CITIGOe. Inspired by the Vision X Concept from the 2018 Geneva Motor Show, the Kosmiq would serve Skoda as the half-brother to the Volkswagen T-Cross and SEAT Arona.Subcompact in size and front-wheel drive by nature, the Kosmiq uses the Volkswagen GroupA0 vehicle architecture. If Skoda can make a case for an eco-friendly powertrain similar to the one in the Vision X Concept , then all-wheel drive could be possible thanks to the integration of an electric drive unit in the rear axle. Skoda has also registered Karuq in April 2017 according to Auto.cz, which goes to show that intellectual property is nothing to scoff at in the day and age where IP theft is widespread. If the Fabia is to be taken into consideration, then the subcompact crossover would receive the 1.0-liter TSI as the entry-level engine option.Being related to the Arona and T-Cross, it is possible for Skoda to offer the 1.5-liter TSI and 1.6-literas well. The turbocharged gasoline engine is good for 150 horsepower whereas maximum torque favors both the 1.5-liter TSI and 1.6-liter TDI at 250 Nm.Depending on the engine, Skoda could use five- and six-speed manual transmissions along with the seven-speed DSG know for smooth and quick gear shifts. If we take the Arona and T-Cross as reference points, then the Kosmiq could turn out to be a good-looking crossover.In regard to pricing, dont expect Skoda to challenge Volkswagen in this regard. Matching the Arona would be the most sensible option for the Czech manufacturer given Skodas status within the Volkswagen Group. Over in Germany, the Arona starts at 16,290 for the 1.0-liter TSI with 95 PS. There are little guidelines drone operators, especially civilian ones, can follow when using the technology. The same can be said about drone manufacturers. It will take probably many more years until the proper legislation governing this new type of machine will be put in place on a scale that could make a difference.But the first steps toward such a future will be taken next year, when the International Organization for Standardization (IOS) will release the first worldwide standards for drone operations.This week, IOS released the draft set of standards for public consultation, with comments being accepted by the end of January. The adoption of the standards is expected to be announced worldwide by the end of next year.As per IOS, the standards will apply to drones operating in all environments - surface, air, space, and underwater. The guidelines are meant to cover everything from the operation of the drones to safety, privacy, and security.Safety-wise, IOS will back the enforcement of no-fly zones in certain areas like airports. Flight log protocols, maintenance, training and flight planning documentation will also be the focus of the new standards.Because drones have opened up a new world of possibilities for prying eyes, IOS will also try to set the guidelines for keeping people and their data safe.Empowered by Standards, drones are set to provide the key to some of the most pressing economic, transport, security, environmental and productivity challenges faced by governments and industry throughout the world, said the organization in a statement.As well as speeding up the delivery of large-scale infrastructure projects, drones are expected to reduce the need for some major transport projects altogether.More details on the standards can be found at this link Where did the Dharaharas bricks go? As work to rebuild the iconic Dharahara finally begins three years after the devastating earthquake, heritage conservationists and historians have expressed grave concerns over the status of the structures salvaged bricks. 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. As lawsuits swirl around last months crash of a Lion Air 737 MAX8 into the Java Sea, Indonesian investigators say the crew struggled to control the aircraft right up to the moment of impact. And a member of Indonesias National Transportation Safety Committee confirmed to The Guardian that the aircraft had experienced similar problems on its previous flight. As the aircraft pitched down, Nurcahyo Utomo of the NTSC told the Indonesian parliament Thursday, it became increasingly difficult to control the airplane because the load on the controls apparently became too heavy for the pilots to counter manually. The airplane crashed into the Java Sea on Oct. 29, shortly after taking off on a flight to the nearby island of Pangkal Pinang. It crashed about 11 minutes after takeoff, killing all 189 people aboard. Utomo told parliament that the aircrafts speed at impact was more than 400 MPH. Although it hasnt been implicated in the crash, the post-accident investigation revealed that Boeing fitted the MAX series with an automated trim and stall-protection system called MCAS. The system activates when the airplane is being hand flown with flaps up at high angle of attack and high load factors. It automatically rolls in nose-down stabilizer trim and can be disabled only by using the airplanes stabilizer cutout switches or lowering the flaps. Its also inactive when the autopilot is engaged. Boeing has been criticized by pilot unions for not clearly documenting MCASManeuvering Characteristics Augmentation Systemso it could be addressed in MAX differences training. Pilots at Southwest and American Airlines, both of which fly the MAX, said they were unaware of its existence. Meanwhile, a law firm representing the families of the victims has filed a lawsuit against Boeing in a U.S. District Court claiming that the MAX series control design in unusual conditions, can push (the planes nose) down unexpectedly and so strongly that flight crews cant pull it back up. The suit further alleges that the flight control computer was incapable of filtering inaccurate information from faulty sensors and that the approved flight manual didnt warn pilots of these potential faults. The suit is at least the second. A Florida firm filed a suit against Boeing last week on behalf of the parents of Dr. Rio Nanda Putrama, who was killed in the crash. Indonesias NTSC said it will publish a preliminary accident report by the end of November. Iran does not plan to renegotiate the 2015 nuclear deal, the country's foreign minister said Thursday in Rome, per Reuters. The big picture: Foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif explained that Iran will endure sanctions imposed by the U.S. The first round of U.S. sanctions went into effect in August and took a significant toll on Iran's economy. The Trump administration released a major new climate science report on Black Friday, warning of "hundreds of billions of dollars" in annual losses to some economic sectors without scaled up actions to adapt to current changes and slash emissions to avoid future warming. Why it matters: The report by scientists from 13 federal agencies constitutes the second volume of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, which is a congressionally mandated report. Its conclusion: Lives and property are already at risk in the U.S. due to climate change. The release date, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, which is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year, is likely to bury the news coverage of its findings. On a call with reporters this afternoon, David Reidmiller, the director of the assessment, said the timing was determined in order to have the report come out in advance of the next round of U.N. climate talks beginning in Poland on Dec. 2 as well as a large scientific meeting in Washington in mid-December. We wanted to get this out sufficiently in advance of those meetings so that folks have a chance to review it," Reidmiller said. Monica Allen, a spokesperson for NOAA, said the decision to release the report on Black Friday was "made in the last week or so." The details: The contents of the new report, which consists of 29 chapters that were extensively peer reviewed, are bleak. The report points out that the era of climate consequences for the U.S. is well underway, and only actions taken in the next few years can be effective in addressing the scope and severity of the problem. The authors warn that neither climate adaptation or the pace of emissions cuts are keeping up with the severity and swiftness of the challenge. The report release comes as the death toll from historic California wildfires continue to rise, and it finds that climate change is expected to bring more frequent wildfires and poor air quality. The report finds that under a worst-case climate change scenario, in which emissions continue to climb at current rates, extreme heat would cause labor-related losses of an estimated $155 billion per year by 2090. At the same time, coastal property damage in the U.S. from sea level rise and storm surge flooding could reach nearly $120 billion per year. The backstory: The new report builds off of findings from the first volume of the National Climate Assessment, which was released by the Trump administration in November 2017. The second volume contains more information specific to vital U.S. economic sectors, regions and national interests. It includes a region-by-region breakdown of how global warming is altering life and economic productivity, as well as what opportunities there are to adapt to it. The first report was a sweeping overview of climate science findings, which decisively concluded that there is no credible explanation for modern-day global warming other than the burning of fossil fuels for energy. The report was written and published under the auspices of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which brings together the 13 federal agencies that work on climate change issues, from the Energy Department to NOAA. "This report dives into details concerning the US in a way that has not been done before," Michael Wehner, a climate researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told Axios. Between the lines: The Trump administration has allowed the National Climate Assessment process to move forward without interference, while at the same time expressing doubt about the causes and extent of the threat of human-caused climate change when it comes to forming its energy policies. In an interview with in November with "Axios on HBO," President Trump was presented with the first volume of the assessment, and he dismissed it. Go deeper: This post has been updated with details from a press call and more information about the report. 1 big thing: Record number of immigrant children in U.S. shelters On Thanksgiving, a girl stands next to messages tacked to the US-Mexico border fence in Playas de Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. (Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images) One big problem with the ever accelerating news cyclone is that important stories are forgotten long before they're resolved. Here's a big one ... A record 14,030 immigrant children were in shelters across the country as of last week, one-third of them in Texas, the Houston Chronicle's Lomi Kriel reports. Why it matters: "It is almost three times the number of children in federal detention a year ago." "It is almost three times the number of children in federal detention a year ago." Why it's happening: "Advocates largely fault a new government requirement, implemented this summer, that requires all adults in a household seeking to care for an immigrant child to submit their fingerprints for a background check. That information is shared with the Department of Homeland Security and at least 41 so-called sponsors lacking legal status have been arrested, "Under a California judges orders, most of the separated families have now been reunited, and almost all of the children currently in shelters came here on their own." But the kids are "being detained longer an average of 75 days in August, compared to 59 days in June and 41 days in fiscal year 2017." "being detained longer an average of 75 days in August, compared to 59 days in June and 41 days in fiscal year 2017." "The daily discharge rate plummeted to 1 percent as of Nov. 15, meaning far more children are being placed in shelters than released." P.S. Immigration remained a flashpoint even on Thanksgiving, generating two of the day's top stories: A deal separating Britain from the rest of the European Union trade bloc is nearly completed, but Spain is holding the deal up over the future of Gibraltar, reports the Associated Press. The big picture: Spain effectively has veto power over future relations between the bloc and British overseas territories, and wants the future of Gibraltar to be managed between Madrid and London. Advertisers should boycott tech giants like Google and Facebook to force them to effectively address the "scandal" of online terrorist content, members of UK's Parliament said, according to The Times of London. The big picture: Social networks and web companies are under pressure around the world to police extremist content on their sites that facilitate the spread of radicalized material. Despite hiring thousands of people to identify and quickly take down such content, staying ahead of malicious actors online has proven to be very difficult. The backdrop: Salman Abedi, who killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester last year, reportedly learned how to build a bomb by watching a YouTube video. Extremist content online may have helped radicalize attackers at London Bridge and Westminster, per the Daily Mirror. What they're saying: Web companies have not done enough to take down extremist content and prevent terrorists from using their platforms as a "safe haven," MPs wrote in a report from the Intelligence and Security Committee, a parliamentary watchdog. The report acknowledged the companies are engaging more on the issue, but have made "little tangible progress." the companies are engaging more on the issue, but have made "little tangible progress." Appealing to the internet giants' sense of social responsibility hasn't worked, it says, so businesses should threaten to pull advertising to pull on "financial leavers" to force the platforms to listen. Between the lines: Major brands such as Unilever and Proctor & Gamble have in the past threatened to pull advertising until the web platforms meaningfully dealt with fake news and divisive content. But with Google and Facebook commanding such huge user bases and such a large share of advertising spending, it's very difficult for marketers to abandon them. Go deeper: Social media's new job: content cop By Trend In the first 9 months of 2018, the mutual trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan increased by 65.6 percent, Kazakh Ambassador to Azerbaijan Beibit Issabayev told Trend. "Azerbaijan's exports to Kazakhstan, amounting to almost $36 million, increased by 65.1 percent, while imports from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan rose by more than $133 million, showing an increase of 65.8 percent," Issabayev said. It is worth noting that in April last year, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan instructed the governments to double the volume of mutual trade by 2020. "I think that by the end of this year we will reach an increase of 85-90 percent and thus, without waiting for 2020, we will fulfill the instructions of our presidents," Issabayev said. The presidents of the two countries also identified the need to resume the supply of Kazakh grain to Azerbaijan. To fulfill this order, an appropriate working group was created between the ministries of agriculture, under which the parties develop practical mechanisms for increasing the export of Kazakh grain. "We already have some positive indicators in this matter. For the first 9 months of 2018, more than 200,000 tons of Kazakh grain were delivered to Azerbaijan against 76,500 tons in 2017, " Issabayev said. The ambassador added that along with the growth of grain exports, there is an increase in the supply of Kazakh rice by 3 times and lentils by 2 times in the volumes of 6,000 and 1,500 tons, respectively. This year, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan celebrated the 26th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations. Over these years, a fruitful political dialogue has been established and a strong treaty and legal basis has been formed, covering all areas of cooperation and numbering more than 60 documents. Currently, Baku and Astana are developing ties in trade and economic, cultural and humanitarian, scientific and technical spheres. The countries also actively cooperate within the framework of such international and regional organizations as the UN, OSCE, OIC, CICA, Turkic Council, CIS, etc. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Abdul Kerimkhanov The International Bureau of Exhibitions (BIE) will select the capital of the World Expo 2025 on November 23. Voting will take place at the 164th General Assembly of the International Exhibitions Bureau in Paris. Three countries are candidates for Expo 2025: Azerbaijan (Baku), Japan (Osaka) and Russia (Yekaterinburg). The winner will be determined by secret ballot. According to the International Exhibitions Bureaus regulations, the city with two thirds or more votes will be chosen as a host. If none of the candidates is elected in the first round, the two cities with the majority of votes will pass to the second round, which will be decisive. Before the voting, the nominated cities will present their plans for hosting the exhibition to the members of the bureau. First, a delegation from Azerbaijan, then the Japanese and Russian delegations will deliver speeches. It is expected that the voting will begin after 18:00. If Baku is chosen, then the World Expo 2025 will be held within six months from May 2- November 2, 2025. It will be the first World Exhibition of the International Exhibitions Bureau to be organized in South Caucasus. The exhibitions topic will be Developing human capital, building a better future. World Expos, known officially as International Registered Exhibitions, is organized every five years. They can last up to six months, and international participants can build their own pavilions on the Expo site. The themes of World Expos are designed to raise awareness of and find responses to universal challenges of our time. Azerbaijan has been a member of the BIE since 2008. Its first Expo participation since gaining independence in 1991 was at World Expo 2000 in Hannover. The Azerbaijani pavilions at World Expo 2015 Milan and Specialised Expo 2017 Astana were among the most popular in terms of visitor numbers. The most recent World Expo was held in the city of Milan, Italy, in 2015, under the theme Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life. For the first time, Azerbaijan participated in this Expo with its national pavilion. More than three million people visited Azerbaijans pavilion at Expo Milano 2015. Azerbaijans national pavilion was of great interest to the participants of Antalya EXPO 2016 World Botanical Expo held in Turkey. At the EXPO 2017 in Astana, the country was represented by a pavilion prepared on the basis of the concept of Land of Energy energy from the past to future. The next World Expo will take place in Dubai (UAE) between October 20, 2020 and April 10, 2021 under the theme Connecting Minds, Creating the Future. --- Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend The World Bank (WB) considers the sectors of justice, health, solid waste management, higher education and agriculture as the most important to focus on in Azerbaijan, Head of the WB Baku Office Naveed Naqvi told Trend. Naqvi said that now, there are ongoing projects in several sectors. "We have recently completed a solid waste management project, which included the support for development of the national solid waste management," he underlined. Naqvi went on to say that there are several sectors, which the bank can potentially support, adding that the priorities depend on the governments interests. He recalled that recently, the Azerbaijani president has approved the National Higher Education Strategy, which included innovation and partnership with the commercial entities, as well as universities outside the country. "These are the initiatives the bank supports in other countries, and I think we can bring value to Azerbaijan as well," Naqvi stressed. He noted that agriculture risk assessment study, several education studies have been already completed, further saying that in the health sector the bank helped to carry out the assessment in Mingachevir and Yevlakh. "I know that there is a plan to reform the health sector. But right now, there are no projects, because it requires the government to make a decision whether to borrow from the bank. We are open to cooperate in a range of fields," Naqvi pointed out. Speaking of the level of cooperation between the bank and Azerbaijan, Naqvi stressed it is satisfactory. He reminded that the WB has been cooperating with Azerbaijan for over 25 years and during this period has implemented more than 50 projects, in the amount of over $3 billion. "Currently, seven projects, worth about $1.5 billion, are being implemented," the head of the WB Baku office pointed out. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Trends exclusive interview with Kazakh Ambassador to Azerbaijan Beibit Issabayev. Mutual trade between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan In the first 9 months of 2018, the mutual trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan increased by 65.6 percent, the Kazakh ambassador said. "Azerbaijan's exports to Kazakhstan, amounting to almost $36 million, increased by 65.1 percent, while imports from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan rose by more than $133 million, showing an increase of 65.8 percent," Issabayev said. The diplomat reminded that in April last year, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan instructed the governments to double the volume of mutual trade by 2020. "I think that by the end of this year we will reach an increase of 85-90 percent and thus, without waiting for 2020, we will fulfill the instructions of our presidents," Issabayev said. The presidents of the two countries also identified the need to resume the supply of Kazakh grain to Azerbaijan. To fulfill this order, an appropriate working group was created between the ministries of agriculture, under which the parties develop practical mechanisms for increasing the export of Kazakh grain. "We already have some positive indicators in this matter. For the first 9 months of 2018, more than 200,000 tons of Kazakh grain were delivered to Azerbaijan against 76,500 tons in 2017," Issabayev said. The ambassador added that along with the growth of grain exports, there is an increase in the supply of Kazakh rice by 3 times and lentils by 2 times in the volumes of 6,000 and 1,500 tons, respectively. Trade contacts between the two countries Issabayev also noted that KazakhExport, an export insurance company, plans to open a representative office in Baku to promote Kazakh products in the Azerbaijani market. "In turn, we expect the opening of Azerbaijani trading houses in the cities of Kazakhstan," he said. The ambassador added that the implementation of these plans will further strengthen trade contacts and establish direct relations between the business communities of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Cargo traffic between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan The diplomat noted that in January-October 2018, the volume of cargo transportation between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan amounted to 1.55 million tons. "Imports to Kazakhstan from Azerbaijan and through the country increased by 72,300 tons or 18 percent due to the growth in transportation of chemicals and soda, meat and by-products, and ferrous metals. At the same time, exports to Azerbaijan during this period increased by 196,700 tons or 150 percent due to the growth in grain transportation," Issabayev said. The ambassador also added that transit traffic through the territory of Kazakhstan increased by 29,900 tons or 85 percent due to the growth of food freight to the countries of Central Asia. "Due to the fact that Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are on the route of the Great Silk Road, transit is one of the most important promising and priority components of cooperation between our countries," Issabayev said. In 2017 the volume of cargo traffic between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan amounted to 2.1 million tons, which is an increase of 1.03 million tons or 96 percent compared to 2016. Cooperation in transport and logistics The ambassador said that thanks to the work done in Kazakhstan to develop the transport and logistics infrastructure, the total capacity of the ports of Kazakhstans logistics hub in the Caspian Sea now exceeds 26 million tons of cargo per year. Issabayev noted that Aktau sea port has been expanded: now its capacity is about 20 million tons of cargo per year, and the construction of a ferry complex in Kuryk port with a capacity of more than 7 million tons per year has recently been completed. "In addition, in recent years, Kazakhstan has done tremendous work on the construction and renovation of railways from the border of China to the Caspian Sea with a total length of more than 2,000 kilometers," the ambassador said. Moreover, the construction of the Western Europe-Western China transcontinental six-lane highway with a length of more than 2,700 kilometers was completed last year. The diplomat also noted the work carried out in Azerbaijan to modernize the transport and logistics infrastructure. "The ongoing modernization of the new Baku International Sea Trade Port will undoubtedly increase transit between our countries," Issabayev said. The ambassador added that the commissioning of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway last year significantly expanded the transit transport corridor connecting Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. "Given the significant growth of transit traffic in recent years, I consider it justified and timely to create the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR) in 2014," Issabayev said. The diplomat noted that in the framework of TITR, an effective tariff policy has been built and unified cargo transportation technologies have been introduced over the past years. "In general, a solid base in the transit and transport sector was formed between our countries, providing Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan the opportunity to become a transit hub for cargo transportation between Europe and Asia," Issabayev added. Cultural and humanitarian ties The ambassador also said that work on a book about Huseyn Javid, the famous Azerbaijani poet and playwright of the early 20th century, is at the stage of completion in Kazakhstan. "This book will be one of the first to be published in the Kazakh Latin script. In early December it will be presented in Kazakhstan, and then we will hold a presentation of this book in Baku," Issabayev said. In addition, in December it is planned to present a book dedicated to the movement of the Kazakh Alash party in Azerbaijani language. Issabayev noted that along with close political and economic cooperation, the cultural and humanitarian dialogue between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan has always held a special place in the bilateral relations of the two states. The Azerbaijani Diaspora in Kazakhstan numbering 130,000 people is the golden bridge between our countries. Azerbaijanis are an active part of Kazakhstan's society, which is widely represented in the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan," the ambassador stressed. The diplomat added that next year the embassy plans to hold Days of Kazakhstan Culture in Azerbaijan. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Laman Ismayilova The 3rd Polish Wisla Film Festival solemnly opened at Rotunda Club on November 22. The film festival provides a unique, often the only, opportunity to see Polish films on the big screen. Addressing the event, the Polish Ambassador Marek Tsalka said that the festival aims to increase interest in Polish cinema in Azerbaijan. He stressed that Azerbaijan and Poland have close ties in the field of culture. In conclusion, Tsalka added that this year marks the 100th anniversary of the independence of Poland. The festival opened with the historical drama - the film "Battle of Warsaw 1920" directed by Jerzy Hoffman, Trend Life reported. The film highlights the events of the Battle of Warsaw (1920) of the PolishSoviet War. The film made a lasting impression on the viewers. The 3rd Polish Wisla Film Festival will run until November 28. The festival features such films as "Warsaw Battle. 1920", "Fair", "City 44" and other works by Polish film directors. The entrance is free. The history of Polish cinema is almost as long as history of cinematography, and it has universal achievements. A number of Polish filmmakers have influenced the development of the world cinema. Last year, the festival started with the screening of spy thriller "Jack Strong" (2014). The films by famous Polish film directors such as "Gods", "The High Frontier" and other works were presented to the audience. The festival was held for the first time in 2008 at the Moscow Khudozhestvenny cinema. Today the festival covers more than 30 cities in 8 countries. Polish Wisla Film Festival managed to catch the fancy of viewers in many other countries around the world. Every year, the festival brings the best of Polish cinema to Azerbaijan, Russia, Croatia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The festival program traditionally includes the best feature films, documentaries, as well as the works by students and graduates of the leading Polish film schools. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Laman Ismayilova Work on a book about the famous Azerbaijani poet and playwright of the early 20th century, Huseyn Javid will be published soon in Kazakhstan. The Ambassador of Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan Beibit Isabayev told Trend that the book is one of the first to be released in the Kazakh language in the Latin script. "In early December, it will be presented in Kazakhstan, and then we will hold a presentation of these two books in Baku," he said. In addition, a presentation of a book dedicated to the movement of the Kazakh party "Alash" in Azerbaijan will be published in December. Isabayev noted that along with close political and economic cooperation, the cultural-humanitarian dialogue between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan has always occupied a special place in the bilateral relations of the two countries. "The "golden bridge" between our countries is the 130 thousandth Azerbaijani Diaspora in Kazakhstan. Azerbaijanis are an active part of Kazakhstans society, which is widely represented in the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan," the Ambassador stressed. He added that next year the Embassy plans to hold Days of Kazakhstan Culture in Azerbaijan. Note that this year was full of various cultural events organized with the support of the Embassy of Kazakhstan in Baku. Among them are a big gala concert of the Kazakh National Academy of Choreography, the exhibition "Heritage of the Great Steppe: Masterpieces of Jewelry Art", etc. Huseyn Javid was one of the founders of the progressive romanticism movement in the contemporary Azerbaijani literature. His works bear the ideas of humanism, love for homeland, philosophical poems, historical drama, opening a new page in Azerbaijan's literature and drama. Javid's first book of lyrical poems, titled "The Past Days" was published in 1913. However Huseyn Javid was known more as a playwright. In his literary tragedy Sheikh Sanan (1914), he philosophized about the idea of a universal religion to lift the inter-religious barrier between human beings. His most famous creation was "The Satan", written in 1918, the work exposing all oppressive forces as the supporters of "humans are wolves to each other" philosophy and "the 20th century cultural savages", and summarized them in the character of Satan. Huseyn Javid wrote a number of historical epics, such as "The Prophet" (1922), "Timur" (1925), "Sayavush" (1933) and "Khayyam " (1935). In his plays "The Prophet" and "The Satan", Huseyn Javid brilliantly used dialogues as a tool to make confrontations between opposing views. Javid was arrested in 1937 on trumped-up charges of being a "founding member of a counter-revolutionary group that was plotting an overthrow of the Soviet power". His arrest was a part of the nationwide campaign of purge against intelligentsia. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Laman Ismayilova House-Museum of Tahir Salakhov hosted the meeting with the world-famous national artist. The event was held as part of the project "Conversations about Art" of the Russian Information and Cultural Center, Trend Life reported. The director of the House-Museum Saadat Mirzoyeva addressed the guests of the creative evening. Then the documentary film of the Honored Art Worker, the famous film director Zia Shikhlinsky "Painter with Heart" was shown. The event participants also got acquainted with the works of the outstanding master, examined the exhibits of the museum. Tahir Salahov, one of the most prominent representatives of the Azerbaijani art, is the vice-president and honorary president of the International Association of Plastic Arts of UNESCO, the vice-president of the Russian Academy of Arts, People's Artist of the USSR, Azerbaijan and Russia, and is the winner of a number of high awards, including the State Prize of the USSR and Azerbaijan. The world-renowned artist, who sensitively catches the rhythms of life and able to listen and hear the time, Salahov is the master of portraits, landscape pictures, still-life paintings and large many-figured paintings. His paintings such as "Oilmen", "Portrait of Gara Garayev", "Woman of Absheron" and "Aydan" have become the most beloved works of the artist. The artist currently lives in Moscow, where he is a professor at the Moscow Art Institute. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Abdul Kerimkhanov The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is a serious threat to regional and international security, Chairman of the Azerbaijani parliament, Ogtay Asadov, said at a conference dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the Parliamentary Assembly of Turkic-speaking countries in Izmir. The 8th plenary meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of Turkic-speaking countries (TURCPA) was held in the Turkish city of Izmir on November 21. The meeting, chaired by the Chairman of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (BST) Binali Yldrm, was attended by parliamentary delegations from other member countries of the organization - Turkey, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as Hungary and Uzbekistan, including heads of organizations working in the direction of unity and development of the Turkic the world, as well as being partners of the TURCPA. Chairman of the Parliament Ogtay Asadov headed a delegation to the meeting, that included head of the parliamentary committee on health Ahliman Amiraslanov, MPs Hikmet Mamedov, Nizami Jafarov, Ilham Aliyev, Sevinj Huseynova, Sadagat Veliyeva, Agalar Veliyev, head of the Parliaments administration Safa Mirzayev. Ogtay Asadov noted that the Turkic-speaking peoples, who historically gave life to the most powerful states, and also played the role of a spiritual bridge between the cultures and civilizations of the East and the West, once again began to appear on the historical scene as an organized force. Asadov expressed his gratitude to fraternal Turkey for the continuous support of our efforts to resolve the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on the basis of international legal norms and principles. Asaf Hajiyev, Secretary General of the Parliament of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC), noted that despite the implementation of sufficiently large projects for the region, there are dangerous issues hampering development and progress. He stressed that conflicts, problems of refugees and IDPs are the main problem for cooperation. Also, he added that in Azerbaijan, there are more than one million refugees and internally displaced persons, Turkey has sheltered 3 million refugees, and governments ensure their daily expenses. Noting the rapid change and renewal of the modern world, Secretary General said that resistance to external influences depends on high science and education. In this sense, the expansion of ties in the field of science and education is the basis of cooperation, concluded Hajiyev. Next 9th plenary meeting of the TURCPA will be held in September 2019 in Azerbaijan. --- Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend The Armenian trucks were not transshipped through the seaport in Turkeys Trabzon province, director general of the Trabzon seaport Muzaffer Ermish said on Nov. 23. He added that the management of the port consistently adheres to Turkeys policy concerning the relations with Armenia. "Armenia must withdraw its armed forces from the occupied Azerbaijani territories for the Armenian trucks to be transshipped and borders to be opened with this country," Ermish said. Earlier, some Turkish media outlets reported that the borders with Armenia have been allegedly opened and Armenian goods are exported to European countries through the Trabzon port. Turkey closed its borders with Armenia in response to the occupation of Azerbaijani lands in 1993. 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 Azerbaijans State Border Service has prevented an attempt by four Iranian citizens to cross the borders using fake Italian passports, the Service said in a message. Italian passports, submitted at the border control by four Iranian citizens who arrived Nov. 21 on the Tehran-Baku flight, caused suspicion, and as a result of a thorough check, it was established that they were fake. During the investigation, Iranian passports of these individuals were found, and it was established that on Nov. 17 they flew from Tehran to Istanbul and returned a day later. Apparently, they flew to Istanbul to get Italian passports. The detainees were deported from Azerbaijan to Iran. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz A new print edition of the AZERNEWS online newspaper was released on November 23. The new edition includes articles Trilateral defense cooperation with Georgia, Turkey highlighted Iranian carmaker expands business in Azerbaijan, TANAP gas pipeline joins TAP at Turkish-Greek border, National film to be screened in Cannes etc. AZERNEWS is an associate member of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). The online newspaper is available at www.azernews.az. By Narmina Mammadova The number of Azerbaijanis who visited foreign countries in January-October 2018 increased by 16.2 percent compared to the same period last year, the Azerbaijani State Statistics Committee reported on November 22. It is noted that the total number of Azerbaijani citizens who have made foreign trips during the specified time amounted to over 4.014 million people. The largest number of citizens visited neighboring Iran - 32.2 percent of the total number of leaving people, Georgia is on the second place, which was visited by 29.6 percent of Azerbaijani citizens, and the third is Russia with 19.1 percent of visitors. Turkey, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates are also among the most popular travel destinations of Azerbaijani citizens. At present, Azerbaijani citizens have the visa free or simplified procedures of visa issuance with more than 80 countries. Citizens of Azerbaijan can visit 63 countries in a visa-free regime, according to the updated rating of Index of Passports 2018 prepared by Henley & Partners. Azerbaijan ranked 72nd for this indicator. In 2016 and 2017, the countrys citizens could visit 62 countries without a visa, and in 2015 - 58 countries. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Narmina Mammadova In the Shahdag National Park, unidentified people killed a bear, the species of which are included in the Red Book of Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources reported on November 23. It is noted that the department appealed to the Ismayilli district police in connection with the case of the murder of a brown bear in the Basgal forest range. It is not yet known who shot the animal included in the Red Book of Azerbaijan. The fact of the shooting of a brown bear is under investigation. The brown bear is a usual inhabitant of highland forests and rarely appears in lowland forest. It can be found in the upper part of the forest belt, where it eats rich grass stems on glades and meadows, looks for worms, insects and other invertebrates under stones and deadfall. By the end of summer, when bilberry, cherry plum and others ripe, bars come down to forests and stay there till late autumn. They switch to high-caloric food such as acorns, beech nuts and especially chestnut. At this time, bears can go through tens of kilometers. Continent bears eat fish when there is spawning in internal rivers. Other food is not so abundant in the late summer and early autumn, and it is the time when bears can be easily discovered by a hunter because they are more active and spend more time above the forest border to find food necessary for hibernation fat. The first strong snowing of late autumn or early winter pushes them into dens. Healthy and well-fed bears lie in dens in late December which they arrange in caves, hollows and deadfall piles and fall asleep till spring. About 2-3 cubs may be born in a den. In warm and little-snow winters males often ramble and don't fully hibernate because their body temperature doesn't decline. In early spring, bears wake up, full-grown males first. Waking up in spring, bears again have thick and shiny fur. After the 1970s, bear numbers declined in Azerbaijan. Their population increased between 1993 and 2000. According to annual counts carried out by the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan, there were approximately 1,600 individuals in the country at the time. Habitat destruction and especially illegal hunting have been suggested as major limiting factors for the bear population in Caucasus. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 1. Yes. Nonprofit youth organizations are underfunded in the city. Its a good decision. 2. Yes. In conjunction with city-run programs, it will provide needed opportunities. 3. No. The money should be used to benefit all residents, not just the citys youth. 4. No. The funds should be invested in the area where the project is being developed.. 5. Unsure. Its hard to say whether its an appropriate use of the money. Vote View Results By Abdul Kerimkhanov SOCAR, State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, will build nine gas stations at new Istanbul airport, the company said on November 23. SOCAR won the relevant tender. The gas stations will become operational from December 31, 2018. Five stations will operate on the platform, one - in the area of cargo transportation, two - in the parking area, another one will be served by the taxi drivers' cooperative. Every day, these gas stations of SOCAR will serve about 10,000 cars. Chairman of the Board of SOCAR Turkey Vagif Aliyev, whose words are quoted in the message, noted that the company will, for the first time, begin serving customers in Turkey by opening petrol stations. Aliyev said that SOCAR entered the Turkish market in 2008 by acquiring Petkim, and to date has invested $ 14.2 billion in such projects as the STAR refinery, the Trans-Anatolian pipeline, the container terminal Petlim, and the Petkim wind station. Recently, the territory in the city of Aliaga, where all the SOCAR projects in Turkey are located, was named the first private industrial region. Brotherly Turkey is a very important country for us, stressed Aliyev. As the Chairman of the Board noted, the opening of gas stations at the largest airport in the world is a strategic step in terms of brand awareness and establishing direct contacts with consumers. He added that the company always evaluates new opportunities in the gas station sector and closely follows the processes occurring in the market, not excluding that in the future, SOCAR could invest in this sector. The opening of a new airport took place in Istanbul on October 29. The construction of the airport cost 10 billion Turkish liras ($1.9 billion). The airport is capable of receiving 200 million passengers annually. Founded in 2008, SOCAR Turkey, officially entitled SOCAR Turkey Enerji A.S., is one of the world companies. With its total investment volume of $ 19.5 billion to be realized by 2020, SOCAR is the biggest foreign investor of Turkey. Similarly, SOCARs group of companies in Turkey, namely Petkim, STAR Refinery, Petlim Container Terminal and Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) represent the SOCAR is a wholly state-owned national oil company headquartered in Baku, Azerbaijan. The company produces oil and gas fields from the Caspian Sea. SOCAR includes the oil and gas enterprises and the Azeri oil and gas industry, and the companies that produce oil and gas onshore and offshore involved in geophysical and drilling operations. --- Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Abdul Kerimkhanov The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has once again confirmed that Iran continues to fulfill the commitments made under the agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, said Yukiya Amano, general director of the organization. "Iran fulfills commitments related to the nuclear program within the framework of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It is very important that Iran continues to fully fulfill these commitments," Amano said to the IAEA Board of Governors. The U.S. introduced a second package of unilateral sanctions against Tehran aimed at restricting the export of Iranian oil on November 5. More than 700 individuals and legal entities, ships and aircraft of Iran fell under the new U.S. sanctions. This is the second wave of sanctions imposed by the Trump administration since May of this year. Despite the desire to reduce to zero the supply of Iranian oil to the world market, Washington nevertheless went for relief for a number of countries purchasing energy from Iran, including Italy, Greece, Turkey, India, China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan. In 2012, the Iranian government ceased, in response to sanctions by Western countries, the sale of oil to the U.S. and the UK, and from the beginning of 2013 to the EU. On July 14, 2015, Iran and the six international mediators (Russia, USA, Britain, China, France, Germany) reached a historic agreement on resolving the long-standing problem of the Iranian atom: the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan was adopted, the implementation of which removed Irans previously introduced economic and financial sanctions from the UN Security Council, the United States and the European Union. After Iran made concessions on the nuclear program, in 2016 the U.S. authorities announced the lift of sanctions from 59 individuals (citizens of Iran and other countries), 385 enterprises, 77 planes and 227 ships. In 2018, the Trump administration restored sanctions against Iran. U.S. President Donald Trump announced in May that Washington was withdrawing from an agreement on a nuclear program with Iran. Trump also reported on the restoration of all sanctions against Iran, including secondary ones, that is, in relation to other countries doing business with Iran. The United States re-introduced part of the sanctions against Iran on August 7. More substantial sanctions that will cover oil exports are expected from the beginning of November. From August 7, 2018, the updated Blocking Statute entered into force in the EU, the provisions of which are aimed at protecting European companies from the influence of U.S. extraterritorial sanctions. --- Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend The volume of investments in projects in Turkmenistan amounted to $7 billion, Vice-President of Petrochina and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of CNPC International Wang Zhongcai said at the International Oil and Gas Forum held on Nov. 20 in Ashgabat, a source close to the organization of the forum said. Wang Zhongcai noted that at the end of 2018, the volume of Turkmen gas imports will amount to 35 billion cubic meters, which will account to 10 percent of the demand for this fuel in the Chinese economy. CNPC participates in the development of the deposits Bagtyyarlyk and Galkynysh in Turkmenistan. The projects are aimed at supplying Turkmen gas to China. At present, three branches of the pipeline on the route Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan-China (branches "A", "B", "C") have been built and functioning. They are to supply 40 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year altogether. The agreement on the construction of the fourth branch "D" of the gas pipeline "Turkmenistan-China" via Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan was signed in September 2013. It was also reported that the additional branch's rate of flow would be 25 billion cubic meters of gas. According to the plans the annual volume of Turkmen natural gas exported to China can reach 65 billion cubic meters in 2021. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend Once the 350-kilometer Qazvin-Rasht-Astara railway is commissioned, it will connect Indias Mumbai to Finlands Helsinki, Iranian MP Davoud Mohammadi said in an interview with IRNA. He was speaking on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of the 164-kilometer Qazvin-Rasht railway commissioned in test mode Nov. 22. He added that the Qazvin-Rasht-Astara railway is a national and important railway project of Iran. In addition to Tehran, Alborz, Qazvin and Gilan provinces will benefit from this railway, he said. He noted that however laying the Qazvin-Rasht railway started 10 years ago, huge investments were made in the last six years and great progress was observed in this project. This railway will reduce rail traffic jams and traffic accidents as well as make it possible to decrease energy consumption, he said. Transportation of 10 million tons of cargo, 3.85 million passengers per year is one of the goals of the Qazvin-Rasht-Astara railway project. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Abdul Kerimkhanov Uzbekneftegaz and Russian oil and gas company Tatneft will jointly conduct research work on the development and production of shale oil and gas, bitumen and heavy oil, as well as monitoring geodynamic changes using satellite observation systems, the press service of the Uzbek oil and gas company said on November 23. This was announced during a meeting in Uzbekneftegaz between Deputy Prime Minister of Uzbekistan Alisher Sultanov and Tatneft CEO Nail Maganov, which was also attended by the leaders of Uzbekneftegaz, industry enterprises and organizations. Tatneft is one of the leading partners of Uzbekneftegaz JSC. Cooperation between the parties is developing dynamically. Strengthening ties is facilitated by regular meetings at which prospects for bilateral cooperation, including the joint implementation of investment projects are discussed. The parties discussed partnership in such areas as mechanical engineering, petrochemicals, geological exploration, field development and enhanced oil recovery, exchange of experience and training. At present, of particular interest to the parties are the localization of the production of chain drives (PC-22) at Uzbekhimmash together with the Tatneft Bugulma mechanical plant, the development of fields, including the Pritashkent investment block, the creation of a joint venture in the future. The Uzbek oil and gas company offered Tatneft to participate in the operation of the Fergana refinery and expressed willingness to consider mutually beneficial forms of cooperation. Representatives of Tatneft, in turn, expressed interest in participating in the project and organizing joint visits to the production sites of the plant. Following the meeting, the parties agreed to develop a roadmap for long-term cooperation and create a coordinating council to promote the development of bilateral relations in all areas. --- Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Abdul Kerimkhanov A solemn ceremony of laying the foundation of a gas-turbine power plant with a capacity of 432 megawatts took place in Chardzhevsky etrap of the Lebap velayat. The investment project will be implemented jointly with Sumitomo Corporation and Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems (Japan), as well as Ronesans Holding (Turkey). The relevant contract with the State Electric Power Corporation "Turkmenenergo" was signed in 2015 during the official visit of the Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe to Turkmenistan. The Japanese Bank for International Cooperation, which has entered into a loan agreement with the State Bank for Foreign Economic Affairs of Turkmenistan, participates in financing the project. In the main production building of the power plant, it is planned to install three gas turbine units with a capacity of 144 megawatts each, which will be supplied by Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems. In addition to the power units, an administrative building will be constructed, where the main control panel of the HPP will be located, the gas distribution station, as well as engineering and technical communications. The territory of the power plant will be equipped and landscaped. Turkey is one of the largest trade partners of Turkmenistan: about 600 Turkish companies operating in trade, investment, construction, energy, transport, communications, textile and processing industries have been registered in Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan exports the products of textile, energy, chemical, agricultural industries. Metals and products made of metals, household goods, equipment, building materials, electrical goods, products of chemical and light industries, food products, vehicles, and medicines are imported from Turkey. Ashgabat and Ankara expressed readiness to develop energy cooperation. Turkey declared its readiness to promote the transportation of the Caspian energy resources to Europe through Turkish territory, one of the options being the transportation along the bottom of the Caspian Sea and further across the territory of Azerbaijan. Japan is one of the reliable business partners of Turkmenistan. The portfolio of cooperation with Japan includes the implementation of work for construction of industrial complexes in the Balkan region of Turkmenistan including the enterprises for the production of urea fertilizers in Garabogaz, polyethylene and polypropylene - in Kiyanly, the plant for the production of gasoline from natural gas in Akhal region. Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) expressed its readiness to finance the project of construction of a gas-turbine power plant with a capacity of 432 megawatts in the Charjew district of the Lebap region of Turkmenistan. In 2013, a number of agreements and contracts were signed between the Turkmengaz, Turkmenkhimiya and Turkmennebit (Turkmenoil) state concerns with Japanese Sojitz, Chiyoda, Nippon, ITOCHU, JGC, Kawasaki, TOYO, Mitsui, Tsukishima, Mitsubishi Sumitomo companies. The total cost of the joint projects slated for implementation was estimated at $ 10 billion. --- Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Abdul Kerimkhanov Uzbekozikovkatholding will supply 35,000 tons of dry hot pepper for $ 49 million under an agreement signed with a Turkish company, chairman of the board of the holding Tokhirzhon Jalilov told Uzbek media. Now the Uzbek side is discussing another major contract with Turkey for the supply of 200,000 tons of dry hot pepper. Previously, the company signed contracts with Russia and China for the supply of 40.300 tons of pepper for a total amount of $ 45.9 million, declared the head of the holding. To ensure the required crop volumes, the holding purchased 15.6 tons of pepper seeds from India, Indonesia and Korea, which were sown on 15,600 hectares of land, Uzbekozikovkatholding reported. Experts point out that up to 1520 tons of pepper can be harvested from one hectare of land. At the same time to get one kilogram of dry pepper, you need 45 kilograms of fresh. According to the State Statistics Committee, in the first nine months of 2018, Uzbekistan exported only $ 7.4 million worth pepper. "Uzbekistan is among the top five world leaders in the export of seven types of agricultural products, including sweet cherries, apricots and beans," Tokhirzhon Jalilov said. 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 Turkey is one of the most important trade partners of Uzbekistan. In 2016, the mutual trade turnover between the countries reached $1.2 billion. In February 2017, Turkey and Uzbekistan signed cooperation agreement to boost economic relations. In the January-June 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 the participation of the residents of Turkey. There are currently about 500 companies in Uzbekistan with Turkish capital, 100 of which are representation 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. --- Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend Uzbekistan and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) discussed prospects for further cooperation in priority areas, including in the development of regional trade and transport connectivity, the Foreign Trade Ministry of Uzbekistan said in a statement. Discussions were held at a meeting of the Uzbek delegation headed by Deputy Prime Minister Nodir Otajonov with OECD General Secretary Jose Angel Gurria in the framework of the OECD Eurasia Week, held in Paris on Nov. 22. The parties also discussed the progress and further implementation of a large multi-year project Enhancing Trade and Transport Connectivity in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) on transport policy and infrastructure issues in cooperation with the International Transport Forum (ITF). At the conclusion of the talks, the parties agreed to organize the visit of the OECD Secretary General to Uzbekistan in 2019. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Narmina Mammadova Japan hopes to develop relations with Azerbaijan in tourism sector, Japanese Ambassador in Baku Teruyuki Katori told reporters at an event on the occasion of the Emperor's birthday on November 22. The diplomat noted that trade relations between the two countries are developing rapidly. "Azerbaijan and Japan have ensured the development of relations in various fields, especially in the energy sector. We are looking forward to expand relations in tourism and agriculture as well," Katori said. From Azerbaijan, Japan mainly imports oil and agricultural products, the ambassador said, adding that the trade turnover between the two countries is $1 billion per annum. Katori said that after a 19-year hiatus, the Japanese foreign minister visited Azerbaijan and held significant talks with senior officials of the country. The ambassador expressed confidence that relations with Azerbaijan will further develop with the coming to power of the new emperor in Japan. Japan has simplified the process of issuing multiple entry visas for Azerbaijani citizens, Teruyuki Katori told reporters at the event. The ambassador noted that about 30 million tourists visit Japan every year and the influx of tourists to Japan continues to increase. Speaking of economic cooperation, the ambassador noted that the Azeraijani Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources, Mukhtar Babayev, has been appointed co-chairman of the intergovernmental commission for economic relations. "I am confident that under Babayevs leadership, economic relations between the two countries will develop further," he added. Speaking at the event, Mukhtar Babayev, in turn, noted that there have always been friendly relations and partnership between Azerbaijan and Japan. "Azerbaijan and Japan have always contributed to peace and stability in the world. Japans support for Azerbaijans fair position in resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is important," the minister said. "There is a great potential for the development of economic relations, and a goal has been set to increase the bilateral trade. In addition, I would like to mention the prospects for opening direct flights. Japans use of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is also of great importance," Babayev said. Japan recognized Azerbaijan on December 28, 1991. Diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and Japan were established in 1992. Relations between the two countries have continued to develop steadily. A number of important projects are being implemented in Azerbaijan through the financial support of Japan. Japan was one of the first countries to support Azerbaijan's forward-looking oil strategy. Azerbaijan has an embassy in Tokyo since October 12, 2005. Embassy of Japan was opened in Baku since January 21, 2000. In total 26 agreements in different spheres were signed between two countries. Today two major Japanese companies Itochu and Impex are involved in the Contract of the Century. Leaders of Japanese business, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Marubeni, and Sojits are involved in energy and infrastructure projects in the country. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend Japan has simplified the process of issuing multiple entry visas for Azerbaijani citizens, Japanese Ambassador in Baku Teruyuki Katori told reporters at an event on the occasion of the Emperor's birthday on Nov. 22. The ambassador noted that about 30 million tourists visit Japan every year and the influx of tourists to Japan continues to increase. Speaking of economic cooperation, the ambassador noted that the Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan Mukhtar Babayev has been appointed co-chairman of the intergovernmental commission for economic relations. "I am confident that under Babayevs leadership, economic relations between the two countries will develop further," he added. Speaking at the event, Mukhtar Babayev, in turn, noted that there have always been friendly relations and partnership between Azerbaijan and Japan. "Azerbaijan and Japan have always contributed to peace and stability in the world. Japans support for Azerbaijans fair position in resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is important," the minister said. "There is a great potential for the development of economic relations, and a goal has been set to increase the bilateral trade. In addition, I would like to mention the prospects for opening direct flights. Japans use of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is also of great importance," Babayev said. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By Trend Russians made up the majority of the tourists who visited Azerbaijan in January-October 2018, State Statistics Committee of Azerbaijan said in a report on Nov. 22. In January-October 2018, 2,420,400 foreigners and stateless persons from 194 countries arrived in Azerbaijan, and this indicates a 6.1 percent growth compared to the same period of 2017. According to the report, 31.1 percent of the tourists came from Russia. The list follows with Georgia - 20.2 percent, Turkey - 10.1 percent, Iran - 8.9 percent , UAE - 3.2 percent, Saudi Arabia - 2.8 percent, Iraq - 2.6 percent, Ukraine - 2 percent, Israel - 1.6 percent, while 17.4 percent accounted for citizens of other countries and 0.1 percent - for stateless persons. The Committee reported that 65.5 percent of the tourists visiting Azerbaijan are men, while 34.5 percent account for women. During the period, a greater increase was observed in the visitors from the Gulf countries (except the UAE and Iran). Compared to the figures for January-October 2017, the number of Bahraini and Saudi citizens arriving in Azerbaijan increased 2.2 times, while the number Kuwaiti visitors increased 2 times, Qatari visitors - 1.6 times, Iraqi visitors - 13.7 percent and Omani visitors - 6.3 percent. The number Iranian tourists decreased by 33 percent, while the number of Emirati tourists decreased by 6.7 percent. As for the tourists from the EU, during the period their number increased by 8.3 percent, reaching 99,400 people, and the number of tourists from the CIS increased by 4.1 percent, reaching 891,000 people. Some 56.5 percent of the tourists and stateless persons who arrived in Azerbaijan used rail and road transport, 42.5 percent - air transport and only 1 percent traveled using water transport. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. Humpbacks and Sea Lions Put on Wild Show on N. Oregon Coast, Near Cannon Beach Published 11/23/2018 at 5:49 AM PDT By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff (Cannon Beach, Oregon) - Last week saw some incredible whale action on the north Oregon coast, as a handful of Humpbacks were spotted just south of Cannon Beach and caught on camera by Seaside Aquarium's Tiffany Boothe. It's almost as if they too came out for the great weather, perhaps sunning themselves in the warm winds and calm surf as well. (All photos Tiffany Boothe). In actuality, that's what made them so easily spotted, but it was all the baitfish wandering in the area that caused them to linger for a fishy feast. That wasn't all Boothe documented, as apparently hordes of little fishies like anchovies or herring in the area were the main attraction for other species as well. Three Humpbacks, somewhere between 30 to 50 sea lions and simply gobs of birds were making, well a splash. "Joined by lots of sea lions, they could be seen casting bubble nets," Boothe said. "A feeding behavior which involves multiple whales swimming in an ever shrinking circle, blowing bubbles below a school of fish. The shrinking column of bubbles surrounding the school forces the fish upwards. The whales spontaneously swim up through the bubble net, mouths wide open, catching thousands of fish in one gulp. This technique of bubble net feeding can be very helpful to a Humpback trying to consume 3,000 pounds of fish in a single day (the average quantity an individual Humpback eats while foraging)." It's all part of the big migration that's about to slam the Oregon coast with thousands and thousands of whales. Gray whales will reach their peak migration soon, coinciding with Whale Watch Week at the end of December, where volunteers stand out on high vantage points and help point them out to visitors over winter break. For now, however, we're seeing Humpbacks. "These humpback whales are on their way to their breeding grounds some 3,000 miles away in the warmer waters of Hawaii and Mexico," Boothe said. "Gray and Humpback whales are Oregon's most common visitors. Both species migrate up to the Arctic in the spring to refuel on fatty rich krill and then return to the warmer protected waters around Mexico and Hawaii in the fall." If Humpbacks are in the area, there's usually other creatures around too, generally because they're all feeding on the tiny fish. Adding to the fun is a hard-to-spot and amusing thing that sea lions do called rafting. This is where they bundle together out in the far breakers. "Sea lions haul out on shore to sleep and rest, but when fishing is good or conditions do not allow for them to haul out they can form 'rafts,' " Boothe said. "Interlocking flippers, they can rest while in the water and have the added protection from predators while in the group. They can easily break away from the raft to hunt for fish and then return for a rest." Boothe said when they're rafting it's typical see them playing in the surf and jumping in and out of the water. More photos below: Oregon Coast Lodgings for this event - Where to eat - Maps - Virtual Tours More About Oregon Coast hotels, lodging..... More About Oregon Coast Restaurants, Dining..... Coastal Spotlight LATEST Related Oregon Coast Articles Back to Oregon Coast Contact Advertise on BeachConnection.net All Content, unless otherwise attributed, copyright BeachConnection.net Unauthorized use or publication is not permitted With zydeco music playing, mouthwatering smells lingering in the air, and warm greetings, pulling up to Vautrots feels like going to your Cajun grandparents house - if they had a food truck. Born in Beaumont but raised in Louisiana, Martha Vautrot steps out into the cold, chilly weather exuding warmth, giving you the same full feeling you get after you eat a bowl of her gumbo. Cooking is my life, she said. I love it. Coming from Cajun, thats one thing we like to do. I have always cooked since I was four years old. My grandmother taught me all of her recipes. A lot of people come by and ask me, How do you do that? I want to do that. I say, Im sorry. Ill do it for you, but I dont give out my recipes. After working as a deputy for eight years in Louisiana, Martha decided it was time to come back home, moving to Beaumont, where she spotted culinary possibilities. When I came here, I saw the potential of the little restaurant, so I asked Gilbert Quibodeaux, who owned this property with the acres in the back, Why dont you build a restaurant and Ill run it for you, she said. At first he said no, and then he went home and called me first thing in the morning to come on down. He said, I have the plans for the restaurant, so he built it for me. Vautrots opened in 1993 and then the first calamity struck, the flood of 94. That set a precedent for four future disasters. We had the flood of 94, then we had Rita that took the whole roof off and almost destroyed it, then I had Ike come in and destroy my kitchen and one of the dining rooms, and then we had a fire in 08, then we had the Harvey flood, Martha said. Weve been through five disasters, and weve always come back. They call me a Cajun phoenix. I come back down from the ashes. I rise up higher than ever. With a 4-foot-higher minimum this time, her son Nicholas, who is also the general manager of Vautrots, interjected with a laugh. More Information Vautrot's Cajun Cuisine Where: 13353 TX-105, Beaumont, TX 77713 Hours: 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday Credit cards: All major Drink situation: BYOB, canned drinks, tea Info: (409) 445-0066 or Vautrot's Cajun Cuisine on Facebook Price range: $4.50-$14.95 See More Collapse After the fifth disaster to strike the eatery, Martha wasnt sure she would reopen, but motivated by her love of people and the support of her family, she decided to start again. When Harvey came, I told them I didnt think I was going to come back after the fifth time, she said. I lost 40 trailers in the back of the trailer park besides my restaurant and my house - my house was sitting right here. But Ive had people from every state almost in the country that has called or come by. They kept saying you have to come back. With no place to serve food, Martha and her family repurposed a camper to fit their needs. It was our 25th anniversary in August; we started up in a food truck because we would go to festivals, and we ended up in a food truck this time, she said. My son got in there and did everything, stripped it, and did everything that had to be done for a food truck. On the way to where Vautrots currently resides off Texas 105 near Bevil Oaks, you pass the skeleton of its old beloved location and the foundation of its new location, a reminder of what was and what will continue to be - a story of resilience and good home-cooking. Ive had such good times in that restaurant, Martha said. Its been such a joy for me. Its a name thats been around. Im thankful for that. The good Lord did provide me with a place I can show how much love I can give to these people and help them out and feed them - thats my main thing. I want to feed you. For Nicholas, Vautrots is home. I grew up in that restaurant, and for her and me as well, these people are almost like extended family, he said. Ive spent more time in there than I did my own house. I think thats why, for other people too, it becomes that feeling of home. Its the same people. They come to see Mama or us. I grew up in there with people. Ive watched people grow up. Especially when disasters hit - weve been through a few here - you grow closer and you bond more. Weve always been service-oriented. We try to take care of people and Mom, of course, being a mother wants to feed everybody anyway. Vautrots has become a staple in the community, Martha said. You come in a stranger, you leave family, she said. Thats how we are. Youll get a hug. Ive seen kids graduate, get married, graduate college, and have babies. They bring their babies to me. They all come home and meet me. Theyve got to come to Vautrots and get their fix. When I go out to places, I go shopping and people say Mrs. Vautrot, come see, and they grab me and hug me, and that hug means so much to me because that hug comes from the heart. When you can hug somebody and feel their heart, you know that youve done something right. Martha said the eatery is known for their fried shrimp and gumbo. Im famous for my fried shrimps, she said. Ill put them up against anybody else in Southeast Texas. We cant keep gumbo right now either. Its cold out today, and people are going crazy. Desserts include homemade banana pudding and blackberry cobbler, with the restaurant rotating different desserts throughout the week. The menu is limited while at the food truck location with dishes listed on Vautrots Facebook page weekly. However, the full menu will return in January when Vautrots opens its new space, a stones throw from where it currently stands. Although the eatery will be housed in a new building and raised four and a half feet higher than its previous location, the feel will be the same, Nicholas said, with there being similar design touches. Be on the lookout for an opening date by visiting Vautrots Facebook. Kara Timberlake is a freelance writer. A pantsless man accused of attacking a Whataburger manager died after he stopped breathing while being arrested by Houston police on Thanksgiving, officials said. The suspect believed to be in his 40s was wearing just a shirt when he began throwing chairs, spilling canisters of tea and jumping on the counter around 7 p.m. at the fast food eatery in the 9500 block of Bissonnet near Braeburn, Houston police Assistant Chief Larry Satterwhite said. He allegedly threw a manager to the ground at around 7 p.m. as he chased after her and other employees who tried escaping the restaurant. One worker manning the drive-thru at the time of the attack and during the police investigation said the suspect "trashed the whole place." The employees fended him off, prompting him to dart into a large parking lot across Bissonnet where two officers found and chased after him. A scuffle ensued, Satterwhite said. "There was a struggle to get him handcuffed," Satterwhite said. "Once they got him handcuffed, they started to move him. He started struggling again." While in custody, the unidentified man collapsed and stopped breathing, police said. He was rushed to Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital, where he died. Satterwhite said the man appeared to be in crisis at the time of the Whataburger rampage. The employee knocked to the ground was not seriously hurt but suffered a scraped knee, police said. While the officers were waiting for paramedics to treat the suspect, Satterwhite said they noticed a two-inch puncture wound in his side. It was not immediately known what caused the injury or if that contributed to his death. Both officers were wearing body cameras that were turned on during the arrest, Satterwhite said. Before the alleged attack, the suspect stopped at the neighboring Shell Station where a cashier said he banged on the window and knocked over a trash can. A new climate-change report by the U.S. government offers little doubt that Hurricane Harvey's catastrophic rainfall was worsened by rising global temperatures. Citing Harvey and the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, the new report acknowledges that the severity of the storms that devastated Texas, Puerto Rico and Florida were "consistent with what might be expected as the planet warms." Compiled with the help of 13 federal agencies and some 300 scientists, the Fourth National Climate Assessment notes that climate change intensified both the rainfall and rapid development of last year's major storms. "...the ability of four hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Jose, and Maria to rapidly reach and maintain very high intensity was anomalous and, in one case, unprecedented," the report states. "This is consistent with the expectation of stronger storms in a warmer world." The report goes on to touch upon the relationship between rising temperatures and Harvey's extreme rainfall, which reached an average of 51.88 inches before gauges broke and stopped recording rain amounts. READ MORE: Government climate report warns of worsening US disasters "Harvey's total rainfall was likely compounded by warmer surface water temperatures feeding the direct deep tropical trajectories historically associated with extreme precipitation in Texas," the report reads, "and these warmer temperatures are partly attributable to human-induced climate change." One study cited by the climate change assessment estimates that heavy rainfall from storms and hurricanes increased an average of 6 to 7 percent in the past century. Elsewhere in the report, authors point out that the warming planet isn't the only factor that made Harvey more deadly. The federal climate change assessment echoes the findings of a ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigation that predicted runaway land development would risk increased flooding. "In the area affected by Hurricane Harvey, regional land management practices over the last several decades have reduced the area covered by wetlands, forests, and prairies, which historically absorbed stormwater runoff," the report states. "These natural environments have been increasingly replaced with impermeable surfaces, decreasing Houston's resilience to flooding." Fernando Ramirez is a digital reporter for Chron.com and Houstonchronicle.com. Read him on our breaking news site and on our subscriber site. Follow him on Twitter at @fernramirez93 or email him at Fernando.ramirez@chron.com. Stephen Kelly from Manufacturing NI and Claire Guinness from Warrenpoint Harbour were at the meeting The DUP and other Brexiteers need to consider the "catastrophic" consequences for Northern Ireland's economy of leaving the EU without a deal, a business leader has said. Manufacturing NI chief Stephen Kelly was speaking after a high-level delegation involving the heads of some of Northern Ireland's biggest employers met directly with Prime Minister Theresa May to discuss the draft EU withdrawal agreement. The 50-strong delegation included Moy Park president Chris Kirke and the head of Bombardier in Belfast Michael Ryan. Other businesses at Downing Street for yesterday's hour-long meeting included Norbrook Laboratories, Coca-Cola HBC, MJM Marine, Derry Refrigerated Transport, Irwin's Bakery, Wilson's Country, Manfrieght and Woodside Haulage. The CBI NI, Ulster Farmers Union and NI Chamber of Commerce and Industry were also in attendance. After the meeting, Mr Kelly said: "We need a deal. To crash out in 130 days or so, that's catastrophic to the Northern Ireland economy and catastrophic as well to the rest of the UK. So no deal is not an option, first. "The second thing is that the future relationship is where this will be won for the UK, but to get there we need the withdrawal agreement. We would hope that not just the DUP, but all parties in Parliament, would rally around this withdrawal agreement, rally around the political declaration and let's move on to a more positive, substantive future relationship conversation." Seamus Leheny of the Freight Transport Association tweeted that Mrs May was given a "spontaneous round of applause from all in the room". Aodhan Connolly of the NI Retail Consortium said businesses made their views known. He said: "The only good thing to come from Brexit has been the collegiate nature of business groups coming together. It's unprecedented and questions have to be asked why it's unprecedented. It's because we're not only thinking about our businesses, we're thinking about jobs and households." Moy Park, which employs around 6,300 people in Northern Ireland, is among the major firms who have yet to make their position on the draft Brexit deal public. Mrs May told delegates: "Taken together - the draft withdrawal agreement and the broad terms of our new relationship - should provide your businesses with the reassurance that I know is so important to you. "That's a transition period to avoid a cliff-edge for businesses and to provide the certainty you need to invest. An outline relationship that creates a new free trade area with the EU, with no tariffs, fees, charges or quantitative restrictions. "And no hard border within the island of Ireland." The number of businesses publicly opposing the agreement so far remains small. Irwin Armstrong of Ballymena medical testing firm Ciga Healthcare has said he fears it will hinder Northern Ireland's ability to strike overseas trade deals. On Wednesday Arlene Foster said David Boyd of marine fishing firm Rockabill NI had expressed "real worry" about the deal. But yesterday engineering firm Terex, which employs 1,700 people here, and Coca-Cola HBC endorsed the draft Brexit agreement. Coca-Cola HBC said it "fully supports the views of business organisations in Northern Ireland, which have welcomed the draft EU/UK withdrawal agreement". US-owned engineering giant Terex said: "For the benefit of our industry, our customers and our employees, we agree with many of our industry representatives that a deal is better than no deal at all. "The EU withdrawal agreement allows for a transition period during which a comprehensive UK/EU agreement on future relations can be negotiated, to hopefully include frictionless trade for companies both north-south and east-west." Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) has entered preliminary discussions with the Republic's planning authorities about raising the cap on the number of passengers it can handle from 32 million to 35 million. The construction of the airport's Terminal 2, which opened a decade ago, was subject to a planning condition that included the current maximum number of passengers that could use the airport. According to the NI Statistics and Research Agency's (Nisra) air passenger flow report, 990,000 passengers from Northern Ireland used the airport in 2016, falling to to 950,000 in 2017. But Dublin Airport, which is led by Dalton Philips, has said its data suggests there were just under 1.2 million travellers from over the border. The airport is on track to handle more than 30 million passengers this year. Even a 5% rise in passenger numbers during 2019 would see it approach the current cap. The DAA wrote to An Bord Pleanala earlier this year to initiate a pre-consultation process, which has now begun. A DAA spokesman said the 32 million passenger limit was imposed largely due to surface transport limitations. But he said that since the planning application for T2 was lodged in 2006, the number of passengers using public transport to access the airport has increased from 26% to 37%, while the percentage of people using cars has fallen from 44% to 31%. The airport's passenger numbers have surged in recent years, as an improving economy, route expansion and its growing level of transfer traffic have boosted activity. The airport handled 29.6 million passengers last year, which includes 1.8 million transit passengers who used it as a hub. New services this year will have helped to lift the total figure to more than 30 million. This year the airport has benefited from new services to Hong Kong, Beijing and Seattle. Next year new destinations - including Dallas and Minneapolis-St Paul - will be added. In tandem with seeking to increase the existing passenger cap, the DAA is also contemplating additional car parking facilities to accommodate the increased numbers. Recently, property developer Gerry Gannon sought permission to make a nearby site a permanent car park. The site currently accommodates more than 6,200 cars and has been operating on a temporary basis for nearly 20 years. Bombardier's decision to axe almost 500 jobs at its site in Belfast is not a Brexit issue, UK Business Minister Richard Harrington said as he was blasted for saying the Government had "no role" to play in the matter. Over the summer the Canadian firm's Belfast operation was awarded Government funding packages worth a combined 27m. Mr Harrington told the Commons yesterday that Bombardier's decision to axe 10% of its core staff as a cost-cutting measure was "regrettable". He said: "This is unwelcome news for the Belfast workforce and their families. "It's regrettable that they face further uncertainty at this time of year, but Bombardier is a private company and the Government has no role in its commercial decisions." The minister also revealed that he had been assured by the firm's senior figure in Belfast, Michael Ryan, that Brexit had not played a role in the decision. Shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner warned that there would be "significant implications" if the firm continued to downsize operations. He said: "Bombardier's presence in Northern Ireland is vital to the economy there, representing 8% of GDP and about 40% of manufacturing output. The company employs about 4,000 people across Northern Ireland as a whole, so this announcement will be a devastating blow not only to the 490 families who will be directly affected by it in the run-up to Christmas but there are an estimated 20,000 jobs throughout the UK supply chain." The manager of Craigavon's Rushmere Shopping Centre has said it's considering improving road access to the development. Martin Walsh said confidential plans were being discussed to improve access - as the centre confirmed a 17% leap in visitors after the opening of two new fast-food restaurants. "There are plans that I can't go into now but improving ease of access into the scheme is part of a wider redevelopment," he told the Belfast Telegraph. He said the centre's management had now deployed car park attendants to manage flow into its car parks - earlier than usual in the run-up to Christmas. He said it would also be using a shuttle bus to bring shoppers from spaces some distance from its main car parking. The shopping centre is anchored by department store chain Debenhams, and has also announced the opening of stores by ladieswear retailer Vogue, and fashion and footwear chain DV8. Mr Walsh said visitor numbers to Rushmere Shopping Centre had increased by 17% in October after new openings by fast-food chains Five Guys, a burger joint, and Nando's, which specialises in chicken. The centre has said the extended dining on offer had encouraged 17.4% more shoppers to visit compared with October last year. Many centre visitors had also stayed longer, boosting evening footfall by 25% alone. Five Guys and Nando's opened in early October as part of a 2m investment which brought 100 new jobs. "Our new restaurants have proven to be a real draw and we're delighted by the response and support given to these great new additions," Mr Walsh added. Bombardier is set to cut its Belfast workforce by more than 10% A recruitment drive within the Northern Ireland engineering sector could offer some hope to the hundreds of people set to lose their jobs at Bombardier in Belfast. The Canadian aerospace giant confirmed on Wednesday that 490 jobs will go at the plant as part of its plans to cut its worldwide workforce by 5,000. There is no detail of the redundancy packages which will be open to staff. Trade union Unite said the details of redundancy would be strictly confidential. Unions are due to meet senior executives from Canada in Belfast next month. Bombardier said yesterday that it had triggered a 90-day consultation period, during which the company "will explore opportunities to mitigate the number of compulsory redundancies". The firm also said it will consider offering voluntary redundancy. Despite major job losses in the past 12 months, including a total of 1,660 jobs as a result of the gradual closures of Michelin and JTI Gallaher's in Ballymena, Northern Ireland's unemployment rate remains relatively low at 4.1%. And demand for skilled workers in the engineering sector is particularly high. "I would expected that skilled, quality operators would find themselves successful in the employment market pretty quickly," said Stephen Kelly of Manufacturing NI. Among the engineering firms which could employ Bombardier staff are Lisburn-based Camlin, Dungannon firm Mallaghan GSE and Cookstown's CDE Global. The Camlin Group, which makes products for the electricity and rail industries, announced 298 new jobs last month as part of a 28m expansion. It already employs 251 people in Lisburn. Around 100 of the 298 positions are filled, but the company is growing its workforce on a month-by-month basis. Mallaghan Engineering, which makes ground support equipment for the aviation industry, announced a recruitment drive for 210 people in July. CDE Global has said it expects to increase its workforce by up to 150 by 2020. In March the mining products firm confirmed plans to buy the Newtownabbey plant vacated by Caterpillar. The move is viewed as a bid by CDE to tap into a broader base of skilled workers in the greater Belfast area. Other potential destinations for staff exiting Bombardier includes Thales in east Belfast, US-owned Terex, which has four locations here, and KME Steelworks in Lisburn, which is seeking 40 new workers. Luca Guadagnino was 10 when he first saw the poster for 1977 horror hit Suspiria. The Italian became mesmerised by it as he walked to summer camp each day, and now, more than three decades later, the Call Me By Your Name director (47) has remade the classic story for the silver screen. It depicts darkness swirling at the centre of a world-renowned dance company in Berlin, darkness that will engulf the troupe's artistic director (Tilda Swinton), an ambitious young dancer (Dakota Johnson) and a grieving psychotherapist. For 29-year-old Johnson, playing Susie Bannion was not just appealing because she loved movies about dancers growing up, but also because this is a female-led movie. "You go in thinking, 'Okay, I'm going to film this psychotic story in an abandoned hotel with a cast of 40 women. It's going to be mayhem!'" jokes the Texas-born star, known for the Fifty Shades Of Grey franchise. "Everyone was on the same menstrual cycle - the whole thing was so witchy - but there was such a foundation of support and love and true, deep connections with one another. "It was so liberating and it made me feel proud to show this way of film-making to the world. There doesn't have to be a leading man, or a male-female story, to get the point of love across." Of course, the actress - whose parents are Hollywood stars Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson - was also drawn to the themes of Suspiria. "Growing up, I loved movies about dancers," she says. "I loved movies about bands of women, like The Craft or even, like, Clueless, Hannah And Her Sisters, or Heavenly Creatures... these relationships between women. "I was also interested in witches, witchcraft, magic, this sort of other-worldly, energetic something. "I wanted to see what Luca wanted to do with this movie and with the story." Back to the appeal of the project for Guadagnino, and he confides that the period in his life when he first saw the startling image for the original Suspiria poster "was a trying time". "I was not the popular one; I was the shy one," he says. "I'd already nurtured a passion for things the average kid wasn't fond of, like cinema, and an attraction for the morbid." It wasn't until he was 13 that he actually saw Suspiria, when he stumbled upon a broadcast of it on Italian television just as his family were about to sit down for dinner. He refused to eat, locking himself in his room to watch it, and became even more fascinated by its "crazy boldness". "I think the stamina, the driving agent, was the love for Dario's (Argento) film," he says of his bloodthirsty remake. "But the inspiration probably lies in the year of the movie by Dario, the release, 1977. That is the focus that me and David (Kajganich, writer) started to really put our attention on - 1977, Berlin - and how to use the history of the time, the reality of the place in a sort of mirroring with the story of the witches and Susie Bannion." Once Guadagnino made the decision to cast Johnson, the actress spent a year before production developing her character. Expand Close Dakota Johnso with director Luca Guadagnino / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Dakota Johnso with director Luca Guadagnino "Susie comes from a Mennonite family and was born feeling as though her soul did not match up with the religion, the people, the rules," she says. "She wants to explore the world, sexuality and movement. She has this innate power within her that I'm not sure she's even aware of." While it was an emotionally demanding role, Johnson says it was "a very fun shoot". As well as feeling empowered being surrounded by women, she learned a lot from the professional dancers in the film, who play her fellow classmates. "They really know how to band together and do 'shotgun get to know you', because they travel around and they do different dance shows and you're always in teams together. It's similar to making a movie - you get very close with people for a short period. That's very intense and you spend long hours together." The director agrees it was a lot of fun bringing his vision of Suspiria to life, though he admits it was "very tiring" too. "My partner (Ferdinando Cito Filomarino) was the second unit director, and had to shoot a scene in a tunnel with you," he recalls, turning to Johnson. "It was so humid and so cold and she was almost naked... I don't know if you got the flu, but Ferdi got this heavy flu, and had like a week of recovery. It was a tiring but really happy shoot." Guadagnino's famed Call Me By Your Name was based on the novel by Andre Aciman, and told the story of romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy called Elio (played by Timothee Chalamet) and a summer guest, Oliver (Armie Hammer), at his parents' Italian mansion. Considering how successful the film was (it won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 2018 Oscars), I couldn't sit down with Guadagnino and not ask about the rumoured sequel. "I think that Call Me By Your Name Two is not the right way to describe what we are thinking of," he says. "I'm sure it's going to be a second episode of hopefully a chronicle in the lives of these characters. And I have many ideas for the story." The director has previously said he would love Johnson to play Armie's wife in the future, and Johnson reveals she has "absolutely" said yes to Guadagnino's request. However, the film-maker is keen to point out the character is not "Armie's wife" as such - "it's going to be a character in itself". "I'm never going to make a movie where there is a 'wife' of some characters" he continues. "She is going to be a lead role, the way you see for instance Annella, the mother of Elio, being her own thing in Call Me By Your Name. "Never forget that Call Me By Your Name is really a movie about the way people uplift each other by transmitting knowledge to each other, and I think this is a theme that will be at the centre of every episode of this story." Suspiria is in cinemas now As the gin industry continues to grow in Northern Ireland and further afield, new Tyrone-based gin brand Symphonia knew it needed to set itself apart. Symphonia founder Ric Dyer, who has a PHD in Chemistry and 30 years of pharmaceutical experience, recently combined his knowledge of science and quality to produce an innovative series of spirits using ingredients from the local area. However, the challenge was to give the gin an identity that would properly bring its unique story to life and position it for launch in a highly competitive market. Step forward Belfast brand agency The Foundation. Inspired by the brands unique passion to combine science and nature, The Foundation has created an identity that is bold, fresh and gives life to the gins different flavours: Dry gin, apple gin and fruit cup. Ric says, The Foundation spent time getting to know me and to understand the unique process I use for gin distillation. From this understanding they then developed brand and naming concepts that gave me different, highly creative ways to present my gin and I am delighted with the response people have had to Symphonia as a brand. We used a combination of bold typography, illustration and photography to represent the overall brand, and its product range, says Steve Neill, Head of Design at The Foundation. It was important for us to communicate the unique qualities of Symphonia and to promote the logical yet creative elements that make this particular gin stand out. Were really happy with what was achieved. Mary Meehan outside the Court of Appeal in Belfast at an earlier hearing. A woman subjected to child cruelty by her former Sinn Fein councillor stepmother has won her legal battle over being refused compensation. The Court of Appeal ruled today that the bar on Mary Meehan and other abuse victims who lived in the same house as the perpetrators was not justified in law. Lord Justice Treacy said: "We can think of no reasonable foundation for a decision to maintain in being an arbitrary exclusion of this proven victim of criminal injuries from a compensation scheme which is specifically designed to compensate such victims." The decision could pave the way for pay-outs to be made to those abused by assailants while living under the same roof as members of the same family. Ms Meehan (47) who waived her right to anonymity, suffered physical abuse when she was aged between nine and eleven. In 2013 her step mother and former guardian, Briege Meehan (71) admitted child cruelty and assault charges - receiving a suspended prison sentence. Expand Close Her stepmother, Briege Meehan / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Her stepmother, Briege Meehan The offences occurred between July 1979 and October 1980. At the time Briege Meehan was the girlfriend of Martin Meehan, a senior north Belfast republican either on the run or remanded in custody on IRA-related charges. The abuse began after Mary Meehan's mother died and the assailant moved into the family home to live with her father in the Ardoyne area, a previous court heard. Initial physical assaults involved hair pulling, tripping up the applicant and throwing her clothes on the floor. It was claimed that after her father was imprisoned the abuse worsened until she was taken into care. Briege Meehan, a former Sinn Fein councillor in Newtownabbey with an address at Elmfield Street in Belfast was suspended by the party after the abuse allegations surfaced in 2009. Her stepdaughter launched judicial review proceedings against the Department of Justice after a criminal injuries compensation panel turned down an application for compensation. Under legislation dating back to the 1970s, pay-outs were not made in cases where the abuser and perpetrator lived in the same household. The rationale was based on difficulties in establishing the facts and to ensure no benefit to the offender. Although the law has since been amended, the bar remains in place for historic cases. Ms Meehan's legal team argued that the policy breaches his client's human rights. They claimed it was unfair to deny her when it has already been established beyond reasonable doubt that she was the victim of physical abuse. It was contended that if she had been abused by her next door neighbour she would be entitled to compensation. She appealed a High Court ruling that the position was justified, with her barrister describing the policy as discriminatory and anachronistic. Backing her case, Lord Justice Treacy pointed out that she is being excluded from access to compensation forever over criminal injuries she says were inflicted on her. "No other form of effective redress or compensation is available to her," he said. "Whilst excluded due to 'an historic provision long since abolished because it was recognised to create unjustifiable anomalies', the applicant will regularly see and hear of other victims of similar, and in many cases lesser crimes, receiving compensation for the injuries and damage unjustly inflicted on them." He continued: "We are acutely aware that the irrational exclusion of some victims from access to all the intended benefits of the compensation scheme may be actively damaging to the long-term prospects of recovery of these victims." Allowing Ms Meehan's appeal, the judge said: "In our view there is no justifiable, rational or lawful ground for requiring some victims of violent crime to forgo an otherwise valid claim for compensation in order that funds may be saved for distribution to other claimants whose circumstances are equally, or possibly less, deserving of support." The Chancellor of the Exchequer has pledged an immediate 66million cash injection for 23 schools in Northern Ireland ahead of his speech at the DUP party conference tonight in Belfast. Philip Hammond has earmarked the funding for shared and integrated schools to launch capital projects. Read More The schools, which teach children from different faiths and backgrounds, will be the first to be able to take on more pupils. Mr Hammond said: The UK Government is backing these vitally important schools so they can offer a shared education to more children across Northern Ireland. Northern Irelands economy is powering ahead and the UK Government is committed to supporting a bright, shared future, helping more young people here to achieve their full potential. During his visit to Belfast, Mr Hammond will meet pupils and teachers from one of the schools who are to receive the funding. He will also meet local businesses to discuss how they will be supported by the Governments Autumn Budget. In total, the Chancellor said shared and integrated schools would get more than 300m in funding from the Budget boosting pupil numbers by up to 2,200. Previous plans for 13 shared and integrated schools to get 160million will progress to design and construction phases soon. Some 76m for other school projects has previously been identified as suitable for funding. Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Karen Bradley said: "I am delighted that the Chancellor has delivered 300 million for shared and integrated education in Northern Ireland. This is a huge boost for young people and will help break down barriers and overcome divisions in society. "The UK Government is delivering on our commitment in the Stormont House and Fresh Start agreements to help build a shared, inclusive future for Northern Ireland." The 23 schools to benefit from the immediate 66million are Drumlins, Braidside, Roe Valley, Rowandale, Millennium, Mill Strand, Phoenix, Fort Hill, Forge, Enniskillen, Bangor Central, New-Bridge, Shimna, Ulidia, North Coast, Fort Hill, Priory, Strangford, Moy Shared Education Campus, Limavady, Ballycastle, Duneane/Moneynick and Brookeborough. The Budget announced 350m for a Belfast City Region Deal and opened negotiations for a Londonderry and Strabane City Region Deal. Northern Ireland has seen the fastest productivity growth in the UK since 2010. A Co Donegal man wanted by prosecutors in Northern Ireland over the August 1972 murder of two soldiers is to face an extradition hearing in Dublin later on Friday. A Co Donegal man wanted by prosecutors in Northern Ireland over the August 1972 murder of two soldiers is to face an extradition hearing in Dublin later on Friday. John Downey, 66, whose trial for the IRAs Hyde Park bombing collapsed in controversy four years ago, was detained on an unrelated matter in Ireland this month on a European Arrest Warrant. Northern Irelands Public Prosecution Service initiated extradition proceedings after determining it had sufficient evidence to charge him with the murders of Lance Corporal Alfred Johnston, 32, and Private James Eames, 33, in a car bomb attack in Enniskillen in Co Fermanagh. The two Ulster Defence Regiment soldiers died when an IRA bomb exploded in a car they were checking on Irvinestown Road, Cherrymount. In 2013, Downey was charged with murdering four Royal Household Cavalrymen in an IRA bomb in Londons Hyde Park in 1982. Expand Close The scene following an IRA car bomb blast in Hyde Park (PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The scene following an IRA car bomb blast in Hyde Park (PA) He stood trial at the Old Bailey, but the case dramatically collapsed after it was revealed he had received a written assurance from former prime minister Tony Blairs government that he was not actively wanted by the authorities under the On The Runs (OTRs) scheme. The episode sparked a government inquiry into the peace process scheme which prompted a backlash from unionists. Downey has always denied any involvement in the Hyde Park attack. His defence barrister Tony McGillicuddy told a previous hearing on the extradition matter in the Irish courts that Downey has had a commitment of working in a positive manner in the Irish peace process since the early 1990s. A bid to halt the extension of the mining has failed. A Co Tyrone man has failed in a legal challenge to the extension of a neighbouring goldmine. William Donnelly took action over the decision to approve underground work on the site at Cavanacaw, near Omagh. But the Court of Appeal dismissed claims that more than 20 hectares at the location was never properly assessed. Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan ruled that features within the planning application process "overwhelmingly identified" the full scale of the project. Following the verdict Mr Donnelly said he is now considering mounting a further challenge to the Supreme Court in London. Mining has been carried out at the site by Omagh Minerals, a subsidiary of Canadian firm Galantas Gold Corporation. In 2015 the then Department for the Environment Minister, Mark H Durkan, gave the green light to the extended project. Planning permission was granted for underground work at the existing mine on the basis of compliance with strict environmental conditions. At the time Mr Durkan said these would include progressive restoration of the above ground site to ensure the protection and enhancement of habitat over time. But Mr Donnelly, who has shares in the goldmine, claimed there was an unauthorised removal of large quantities of rock. Expand Close Mark H Durkan / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Mark H Durkan Part of his case centred on the environmental impact and possible acidity of this waste rock. Points were also raised about the size of the site being either 60 hectares or 81 hectares. According to Mr Donnelly that raised the possibility that the Minister was "misinformed or even confused as to the scale of the project being approved". Lawyers for the Department countered by insisting work was already covered by previous planning approval obtained more than 20 years ago. No regulations were breached during the decision-making process, they argued. In September last year a judge dismissed Mr Donnelly's initial challenge against the Minister's decision. He appealed that verdict in a fresh attempt to have the approval quashed and a new planning process undertaken. Mr Donnelly contended that while planning permission was issued for an 81 hectares site, an environmental and habitats assessment was only carried out in respect of 60 hectares. But the court held that the content of an environmental statement dealing only with 60 hectares displaced the conclusion that the application site comprised the larger area. Sir Declan found that "approved drawings overwhelmingly identified the application site as comprising 81 hectares, 60 hectares of which was the open case mining operation and 21 hectares of which was blanket bog." He confirmed: "Accordingly, in so far as the appeal sought to overturn the decision not to quash the planning permission, it must fail." Outside court Mr Donnelly said he was "seriously considering" seeking leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. "This has always been about ensuring Planning Service do their jobs," he added. "I'm a shareholder in this goldmine, and have been for 25 years, I'm not anti-development." Arlene Foster and Nigel Dodds meet Chancellor Phillip Hammond as he arrives to speak at the DUP party conference. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) DUP leader Arlene Foster has warned her party's confidence and supply deal with the Conservative party will have to be revisited should the Brexit withdrawal agreement pass through Parliament. She was speaking to the BBC ahead of her party's annual conference. The party has told the Prime Minister to ditch the controversial backstop in the agreement and explore other alternatives outlined in the post-Brexit future trade political declaration between the EU and UK. Read More Theresa May said not backing her withdrawal agreement risks crashing out of Europe in March with indications coming from Europe there is no appetite - or time - to start again. Since the withdrawal agreement was published the DUP has been at odds with the Conservatives. However, despite refusing to support the deal and voting against the government in the Commons both sides have said the confidence and supply arrangement is not dead. Arlene Foster said the Prime Minister had not breached her party's red line - that Northern Ireland would be divided from the rest of the UK - as she had not got the deal through Parliament. "She has the intent to break the red line," she told the BBC. "If she is successful in parliament and there is no evidence she is going to be successful in parliament then of course we will have to revisit the confidence and supply arrangement. "That agreement was about getting national stability, it was about acting in the national interest and delivering on Brexit. Read More "If this is not going to deliver on Brexit then of course that brings us back to the situation of looking again at the confidence and supply deal. "But we are not there yet and we are not going to jump ahead until we see what happens in parliament." Chancellor Phillip Hammond is in Northern Ireland to attend the DUP conference for a private function. On Saturday Boris Johnson will give a speech just before the party leader. Read More Mr Hammond met DUP leader Arlene Foster and her deputy Nigel Dodds in the lobby of a Belfast hotel before holding a meeting with them. He said he was delighted to be there and relations between the two parties were good. Given the lack of support for the Prime Minister's deal, Arlene Foster said time could be better spent working on a new arrangement. She described as "mythical" warnings of a hard border being imposed at the Irish border. She said an "awful lot of time" had been wasted not looking at technological solutions to the border. "Instead of wasting time promoting a deal that's not actually going to get support, wouldn't it be much better to use of that time to get a better deal.," she added. "To get a deal for everyone to sign up to and to ditch the Irish backstop because it is not needed." Anne Ferguson (right) of the McKerr family is consoled by a relative of Joseph Murphy at the Ballymurphy inquest yesterday The families of two men killed in the Ballymurphy Massacre have paid powerful tributes to them at an inquest. John Laverty was 20 when he was shot dead on August 11, 1971. His sister Carmel Quinn was eight at the time and told the court of the devastation the loss still caused. Her other brother Terry Laverty was arrested that day, and she said a soldier had told him: "I have already shot one Irish b****** dead, another won't matter." John McKerr (49) was shot outside a Catholic church on the same day, and died nine days later. At the time he had been accused of having a gun in his right hand and being an IRA member. His eldest daughter Anne Ferguson told the court this was impossible - as he didn't have a right hand, having lost it as a soldier fighting in the British Army in World War Two. She added he had been proud of his military career and would never have associated with paramilitaries. Ten people died after three days of shooting in August 1971, including a mother-of-eight and a priest coming to the aid of a wounded man. Another died later of heart failure. The family members have always blamed the shootings on members of the Parachute Regiment, but there have been claims the UVF also fired shots. Yesterday Ms Quinn and Ms Ferguson struggled with emotion at times as they read pen portraits of their loved ones out to a packed court attended by around 70 family members. Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan, who recommended the inquest, also attended. Ms Quinn told the court her brother was more than just a statistic of the conflict. Born the fifth child of Tommy and Mary, he was followed by six more siblings. "Our John was a kind, loving child who grew up to be a six-foot tall, laid back, easy-going lad," Ms Quinn said. Her earliest memory of her brother was sitting on his shoulders aged four on the way to the Clonard Novena. Painfully shy, he had at first been reluctant to give a speech at his brother Tommy's wedding. The last time she heard her brother's booming laugh was at her eighth birthday party. "My life completely changed forever six days later," she added. Children were being evacuated from Ballymurphy and John walked his little sister to a local community centre. "I began to cry because I didn't want to go," she said. "I remember having a real sense of fear. John told me that it would be all right. I was only going on a holiday and when we come home everything would be OK again. "We got on the bus and left. Our John stood waving to us until we couldn't see him anymore. Unknown to us, this would be the last time we would see our beautiful brother." On August 11 he died after being shot in the back. The family said not knowing the truth of what happened added to their grief. "We do know our John was not a gunman," she said. Ms Quinn said her brother Terry was arrested that morning and "tortured" by soldiers. "One soldier said to him; 'I have already shot one Irish b****** dead, another won't matter'. "Terry, at this stage, did not know he was talking about our John." He was later convicted for riotous behaviour, but this was quashed in 2015. After John's death Ms Quinn said her parents functioned "but their hearts were too sore to find any joy in life again". She concluded: "We remember him for the loving person he was. A young fella that had so much life in him to live. We truly wish we could hear his loud laugh, see the glint in his big brown eyes, and most of all to hear him sing once more." Ms Ferguson, the oldest of eight children, was 23 when her father died. She was working in England on the day he was shot, with her two young children staying with her parents. When Mr McKerr failed to come home on the evening of August 11 the family assumed he had been held up by trouble in the city. The next morning Ms Ferguson's sister Maureen, known as Mo, learnt her father had been shot as she read a paper at a bus stop. The family rallied to his bedside in hospital, but he never regained consciousness and died on August 20, 1971. Ms Ferguson said the family were devastated by the false newspaper reports about having a gun in his right hand and being in the IRA. She said he couldn't have held a gun with his prosthetic hand and had remained proud of his Army career. Speaking afterwards, Ms Quinn said she wanted the Prime Minister to know: "This isn't a witch-hunt. No one is above the law." Ms Ferguson added her family were more interested in getting the truth than punishing those responsible. At the end of yesterday's proceedings, an application was made for a soldier to remain anonymous and give his evidence behind a screen. Known only as witness M3, he is understood to have evidence about the death of Edward Doherty (31), who was killed near an anti-internment barricade on August 10, 1971. The Coroner, Mrs Justice Keegan, said she would decide on the matter soon. A care assistant who called a resident of a home in which he was working a "fat f****** b******" has been struck off A care assistant who called a resident of a home in which he was working a "fat f****** b******" has been struck off. Alan Stewart Vance was also found guilty of referring to a second resident in a "foul and derogatory manner". The incidents happened while he was working as an adult residential care worker at Cregagh Nursing Home in Belfast during a night shift on July 10, 2017. A fitness to practise hearing also found Vance guilty on the same night of removing a call bell from a resident and closing his bedroom door as he was "doing his head in". An agency nurse, who was working her first shift at the home, described his behaviour as "horrendous". The Northern Ireland Social Care Council also found Vance was not properly completing patient records, and concerns were raised that he was "making the records up". Vance started working at the home on February 7 last year and was suspended on August 3 after a number of complaints from staff in relation to his conduct. The fitness to practise committee considered four allegations against Vance relating to the night of July 10 last year. The panel heard that Vance told two colleagues that he had turned off a service user's bell, had removed his hand bell and had closed his bedroom door. A third colleague told the panel that Vance also told her he had removed the service user's buzzer, prompting her to return it to his room. She also told the committee that for the rest of the shift she answered the service user's buzzer. The committee heard that during the shift Vance described service user 'R' to a colleague as a "fat b******" and that he was only ringing his bell for "stupid stuff". She went to the resident and spoke to him about this and he told her: "It'll be okay." Another colleague told the committee she had seen Vance coming from the same resident's room saying "that f****** fat b******". The panel was told Vance originally denied doing this during an investigation by the home on August 2. He later claimed he could not remember doing this during a subsequent disciplinary hearing. In another incident on the same night, a colleague working on the first floor of the home heard the buzzer of a resident from the ground floor where Vance was working. She responded to the buzzer and discovered the resident needed help to go to the toilet. When she asked Vance to assist, he referred to the resident in a derogatory way and she said he appeared unhappy about having to help the resident to go to the toilet. The panel also heard that colleagues had raised concerns between February, when Vance started working at the home, and August, that he was not doing his paperwork properly. As a result, other staff had to complete this work, while it also appeared as though he was not carrying out essential safety checks. Considering the facts of the case, the committee said removing the call bell "constituted a serious abuse of care, and was a deliberate act which left this service user at risk". His use of foul language "signified a lack of respect" for residents and a "total disregard for their dignity and uniqueness", the committee said, while the failure to complete paperwork "constitutes a fundamental failure in the provision of safe and appropriate care for service users". Vance was found guilty of serious misconduct and that his fitness to practise was impaired. The panel found no evidence of regret and said a removal order was the "only sanction sufficient to protect the public". A christmas marketing billboard has been removed from the Waterside in Londonderry after unionists objected. The concerns over the campaign launched by Derry City and Strabane District Council were initially raised by Ulster Unionist deputy mayor Derek Hussey after he was made aware that the council was using the slogan 'Have yourself a Derry little Christmas'. He was supported by Graham Warke and David Ramsey of the DUP, although the council said it had received no complaints about the slogan. Mr Warke claimed that members of the public had complained to his party after the large billboard appeared close to Spencer Road at the Clooney Terrace and Dungiven Road junction. The council confirmed the billboard had been removed earlier than planned to reflect the councillors' concerns, and said it had now "amended" its campaign. Unionist councillors said they would like to see more inclusive branding that reflects both sides of the community by utilising 'Derry' and 'Londonderry' in its wording. "The Christmas programming was brought to the council in September and within that we were assured that it would be developed in such a way so as to be inclusive," Mr Hussey said. "I feel that using 'Have yourself a very Londonderry Christmas' works just as well. "There has to be work done to ensure that within branding we remain inclusive and there has been subsequent branding that reflects that desire. "When I raised it to council officials and was supported by Graham and David, officials approached us and assured us that our concerns had been taken on board and this would be reflected." Mr Ramsey said the council was "airbrushing" culture and tradition" through the omission of 'Londonderry' from its campaign, and Mr Warke added that he was voicing the concerns of members of the public to make the council aware of the issue for future campaigns. "Loads of people have been in contact with us. Branding has to be for everyone and we can't have people feeling left out of events," he said. Derry City and Strabane District Council said that the aim of the festive marketing campaign was to positively promote the retail offering and Christmas programming in the city and district over the Christmas shopping period. It added: "This year's campaign intended to engage visitors with a catchy slogan using wordplay in the tagline 'Have yourself a Derry little Christmas'. "However, it has since been highlighted by some council members that this may not be considered inclusive by all members of the community and as such has been amended in some campaign branding. "The billboard in Spencer Road has been refreshed slightly earlier than planned to reflect members' concerns." Former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, who has been given permission to appeal against two historic convictions at the UKs highest court. (PA/Brian Lawless) Gerry Adams has been given the go-ahead to challenge two historic prison escape convictions at the UKs highest court. The former Sinn Fein president claims two convictions received in 1975, relating to attempts to escape from the Maze Prison during the early 1970s, are unlawful because of flaws in the detention process. Lawyers for Mr Adams, 70, argue that, because the order used to intern him was not lawful, he should not have been prosecuted for trying to escape from what they assert was unlawful custody. In February, the Court of Appeal in Belfast rejected Mr Adams argument that the interim custody order (ICO) used to detain him had to be personally considered by the secretary of state for Northern Ireland. But, on Monday, the Supreme Court in London announced that Mr Adams had been granted permission to appeal against that ruling. The Louth TD was first detained in March 1972, but was released in June that year to take part in secret talks in London. He was rearrested in July 1973 at a Belfast house and interned at the Maze Prison, also known as Long Kesh internment camp. Expand Close A stock picture of watch towers on the remnants of the former H Block Maze prison at Long Kesh (Niall Carson/PA) PA Archive/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A stock picture of watch towers on the remnants of the former H Block Maze prison at Long Kesh (Niall Carson/PA) Mr Adams is challenging convictions handed down by two separate Diplock Court trials, cases tried by a single judge sitting without a jury, relating to two attempts to escape from internment. The Court of Appeal heard in February that, on Christmas Eve 1973, he was among four detainees caught attempting to break out of the Maze. His barrister Sean Doran QC said: A hole had been cut in the perimeter fence and all four were already through. The second escape bid in July 1974 was described as an elaborate scheme which involved the kidnap of a man who bore a striking resemblance to Mr Adams from a bus stop in west Belfast. The man was taken to a house where his hair was dyed and he was given a false beard, the court heard. The man was then taken to the Maze where he was to be substituted for Mr Adams in a visiting hut, however prison staff were alerted to the plan and Mr Adams was arrested in the car park of the jail, the court was told. Mr Adams was subsequently sentenced to 18 months in jail for attempting to escape. Mr Doran said that Mr Adams detention was unlawful because the ICO was signed by a junior minister at the Northern Ireland Office and not the secretary of state. But the Court of Appeal said it was satisfied that the ICO was valid having been made by the minister on behalf of the secretary of state and dismissed Mr Adams appeal. Internment was introduced in 1971 by former prime minister of Northern Ireland Brian Faulkner for those suspected of involvement in violence. The policy lasted until December 1975. During that time, 1,981 people were interned, 1,874 were nationalist and 107 were loyalist. It is understood Mr Adams instigated legal proceedings after the Pat Finucane Centre recovered a document from the British National Archives in London. No date for the Supreme Court hearing of Mr Adams appeal has been given. A senior DUP MP says there is "no enthusiasm" for the draft EU withdrawal agreement and has urged the Prime Minister to work for a better deal. Theresa May has said the agreement with the European Commission on the draft political framework represents the "right deal" for the UK. However Sammy Wilson said the document has been drafted to help Mrs May rather than mitigate what he called "the very damaging and dangerous" draft withdrawal agreement. The East Antrim MP said: "The Government needs to recognise that there is no enthusiasm for the withdrawal agreement across all sides of the House of Commons. The Prime Minister must accept that it is not a pure choice for MPs between her withdrawal agreement and a so-called no deal. It is time to work for a better deal." Ulster Unionist leader Robin Swann added that there is still "a lot of ambiguity" in the text and yesterday's announcement will do little to allay concerns that have been raised since the 585-page draft agreement was published last week. The declaration on Britain's future relationship with the EU agreed in Brussels sets out plans for an "ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership" across a wide range of issues. Mr Swann said: "This is about our future outside of the European Union. "It is understandable that many are focused on avoiding a cliff edge come March 2019 - we want to avoid this too. "But as a political party we must also analyse this for the problems that will only arise in years to come as both the EU and UK develop and evolve." Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald said it was crucial that the safeguards included in the withdrawal agreement were fully respected and given effect in any future relationship. She added: "The backstop as agreed must remain in place unless and until a better mechanism is agreed to protect our agreements, our economic interests and to avoid a hard border." Alliance Brexit spokesperson Stephen Farry said the open-ended backstop remains absolutely central to any agreement. Measures to prevent a hard border make a "complete nonsense of Brexit", Prime Minister Theresa May has been told by furious Tory backbenchers as she struggles to bring her withdrawal deal to conclusion. She faced intense backlash over the declaration on post-Brexit relations agreed with Brussels, with many citing concerns over the customs backstop. This is the guarantee that keeps the UK in the customs union to prevent the return of a hard border in Ireland. But Mrs May repeatedly insisted her deal meets the demands of Brexiteers. She said: "This is the right deal for the UK. It delivers on the vote of the referendum, it brings back control of our borders, our money and our laws and it does so while protecting jobs, protecting our security and protecting the integrity of the United Kingdom." On the border question, the declaration commits both sides to continuing to explore technological solutions to avoiding frontier infrastructure on the island of Ireland. Any hope that this would help bring on board those who pursued a so-called "maximum facilitation" solution were quickly dashed in Parliament when MPs, including Ian Duncain Smith, appeared to dismiss it immediately. The DUP's Jeffrey Donaldson said there was still an acknowledgement from the EU side that alternatives could be used. "There are alternative arrangements that can be put in place without the need for the backstop," he said. "If she wants to have the support of my party for the withdrawal agreement, then we need to see an end of the backstop, and those alternative arrangements put in place." One Dublin source said that there was nothing to fear in this document despite the references to technology in the border. The issue of the backstop is dealt with comprehensively in the withdrawal agreement, which is a legally binding treaty, they said. But former Conservative Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said: "We should junk forthwith the backstop, upon which the future economic partnership - according to this political declaration - is to be based, and which makes a complete nonsense of Brexit." But Mrs May said her deal delivers what Mr Johnson wants: "The future relationship we have set out in the political declaration ends free movement, ends sending vast sums of money to the European Union every year and ends the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the United Kingdom. It enables us to hold an independent trade policy and to negotiate trade deals around the whole of the world." The 26-page draft political declaration agreed in principle yesterday cleared the way for a Brussels summit on Sunday, at which leaders of the remaining 27 EU states are expected to give their stamp of approval to both the future framework and a separate withdrawal agreement setting out the terms of the UK's departure. Meanwhile, the head of the CBI has said Mrs May's Brexit deal "is not perfect" as internal emails revealed concerns in the business organisation about the plan. CBI director general Carolyn Fairbairn said business had been "clear and honest" about the flaws in the deal, but it was the best option available. Her intervention came after ITV News published email exchanges within the top ranks of the organisation showing its Brexit specialist thought it was "not a good deal". In its official response, CBI deputy director general Josh Hardie said: "It appears that we're on the cusp of a much-needed agreement. This shows a deal can be done and businesses across the continent will be watching this weekend's EU summit closely. "The progress made is a credit to both sets of negotiators. But hard work lies ahead. "A 20-page vision needs to become a 2,000-page agreement that secures trade and jobs before the spectre of no deal can be put to rest." ITV reported, however, that Nicole Sykes, the organisation's head of EU negotiations, said there was "no need to give credit to the negotiators" in the statement "because it's not a good deal". The message was inadvertently sent to the broadcaster at the foot of the official statement. In its response to ITV, the CBI said the broadcaster "reproduced private debate knowing it's not CBI position". "Responding to big announcements involves testing different views before issuing a public statement." Ms Fairbairn said: "This deal is not perfect - business is both clear and honest on this. But it is the best option we have for avoiding a cliff edge and building a pathway to a good future deal." Former First Minister Peter Robinson has said that the Irish language is "such a small issue" it should not prevent power-sharing institutions at Stormont from being restored. He was speaking ahead of the DUP's party conference on Saturday which is to feature outspoken Brexiteer, the former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. Mr Robinson said that while he believed devolution could be restored, direct rule should be fully implemented until the impasse could be resolved. Read More In a wide-ranging talk at Belfast's Methodist Centre on Thursday he said the DUP not talking directly with its adversaries was "one of the greatest mistakes," the party had ever made. Mr Robinson was the latest guest speaker in a series of talks under the title 'The World Around Us'. His speech, on the subject 'What Lies Ahead?' was detailed at EamonMallie.com. The former MP and MLA also warned against his party being led by the "most vociferous voices" and that the confidence and supply deal with the Tories had a shelf life. He said that if people want to maintain the union "it is necessary for us to have a stable government in Northern Ireland". And how a former Taoiseach shared with him that people in Dublin were not "chomping" to be part of a united Ireland. The veteran politician stressed that he believed Irish language issues should not be standing in the way of devolution, and they could be overcome. Expand Close A man walks past graffiti calling for an Irish Language act (Niall Carson/PA) PA Archive/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A man walks past graffiti calling for an Irish Language act (Niall Carson/PA) "I couldnt care less about the Irish Language. Let them speak it until they are green, white and orange in the face, as long as it doesnt encroach on me Mr Robinson said. Read More The Irish language issue, the former DUP leader said, paled in comparison to policing and justice which had been an obstacle to power sharing in Northern Ireland in the past. Mr Robinson highlighted the importance of co-operation between the DUP and Sinn Fein saying that the British and Irish governments had their "own agenda". One of the greatest mistakes the DUP ever made was not talking directly to our adversaries, the former First Minister said. He also issued a warning about polarising politics. You need to be careful not to allow the most vociferous voices in your party lead you," Mr Robinson said. The former East Belfast MP told how he had to put his own feelings aside in order to share power with Sinn Fein. Mr Robinson's best friend Harry Beggs was killed in an IRA bombing at the electricity board offices on Belfast's Malone Road in August 1971. I decided then at the funeral not to let the terrorists win, he said. I would have to admit there were times when I looked across the room at Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness and my mind went back to Harry Beggs but decided the best way to honour those killed was by making sure others did not get killed." PSNI and Army experts at the scene of the murder bid in Londonderry - February 2017 A 46-year-old man arrested for the attempted murder of a police officer in Londonderry in February 2017 has been released. He was arrested under the Terrorism Act by detectives on Friday. He was detained in the cityside area of Derry on suspicion of dissident republican activity including the attempted murder of an off-duty police officer in the city on February 22 2017. A viable Under Vehicle Improvised Explosive Device (UVIED) was discovered at the home of an officer in the Ardanlee area. He has been taken to Musgrave Serious Crime Suite for questioning. He was later released unconditionally. Those held under the Terrorism Act must be either charged, reported to the Public Prosecution Service or released unconditionally and bail not permitted under the law. A man is in hospital after being assaulted during an aggravated burglary in Coleraine, It was reported two masked men entered the property in the Drumtarsey area at around 2pm on Thursday. One of the men is thought to have been armed with a firearm. The occupant was taken to hospital for treatment for injuries to his head and face. Two men, aged 35 and 43, have been charged with a number of offences including aggravated burglary with intent to commit GBH, possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, and intimidation. They are both due to appear at Ballymena Magistrates Court on Saturday. As is normal procedure, all charges will be reviewed by the Public Prosecution Service. Traders in the north west whose businesses were badly hit by severe flooding last August have claimed they have not received the same assistance as their counterparts in Belfast affected by the Primark fire Traders in the north west whose businesses were badly hit by severe flooding last August have claimed they have not received the same assistance as their counterparts in Belfast affected by the Primark fire. Compensation has not been provided to private business owners in the Derry and Strabane Council area because there was no Stormont minister to sign it off. Despite the lack of a minister, the head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, David Sterling, has invested 1.1m to help Belfast traders located close to the cordoned-off area around the Primark building. However, the NI Executive Office has stressed that no money went directly to any traders, reiterating that it is being used to attract footfall into the city centre. It also reiterated that 12m was spent by the Department for Infrastructure in the aftermath of the flood, adding this was for domestic households. "A new scheme for businesses would need to be approved by ministers. In their absence the civil service could not take forward such a scheme," a spokesperson explained. SDLP Foyle MLA Mark H Durkan has called for traders in areas like Eglinton and Drumahoe and farmers who bore the brunt of the freak flood to be given the same assistance on a retrospective basis. "I don't think it's reasonable to compare money spent on essential infrastructural repairs with this initiative to give businesses in Belfast a much-needed boost," he said. One of the dozens of businesses affected was Gavin Boyd's printing business in Drumahoe, which was so badly damaged by the flood he had to relocate his firm. "I moved to new premises on higher ground to minimise the chance of that every happening to me again, but anything I did, I did by myself, with no assistance from a government department." By Jhoo Dong-chan Export-Import Bank of Korea (Korea Eximbank) will provide 415 billion won ($367 million) to finance a refinery project in Bahrain in which a dozen Korean builders are participating, the state-run bank said Friday. Of the $367 million, Eximbank said it will loan $257 million and guarantee $110 million for Korean builders, including Samsung Engineering, who are participating the $6.6 billion turnkey project in Bahrain. Samsung Engineering formed a consortium with France-based Technip and Spain-based Tecnicas Reunidas to land the oil refinery upscale deal from state-run Bahrain Petroleum (BAPCO). The BAPCO project aims to refurbish the country's only oil refinery at Sitra. It includes replacing old crude distillation facility and adding a residue hydro-conversion unit to boost its crude processing capacity. "Not only Samsung Engineering but also the nation's small- and medium-sized builders are expected to participate in the project as suppliers. It will be a great opportunity for these firms," said an Eximbank official. "The Eximbank has been in talks with BAPCO about possible project finance even before the bidding process, contributing to Korean builders' entry to the country. It was the bank's first project financing to BAPCO, and will do its best to clinch a similar deal in the future." Korean firms account for a $1.3 billion stake in total. Not only Samsung Engineering but also 12 other Korean builders are in cooperation for the refurbishment work. Also 37 small and medium-sized Korean firms will provide machinery and equipment for the project, according to the Eximbank. Last week, the Eximbank donated 240 million won to the Korea Central Council of Social Enterprise. It said the half, or 120 million won, will be provided for six social enterprises as facilities or operating funds. The remaining half will be used to pay salaries and training costs for 20 underprivileged people including North Korean defectors and marriage migrants. The Oxford Union has voted down a motion that Ireland is ready for reunification, after hearing from high profile politicians from both sides of the border. (Pacemaker) The Oxford Union has voted down a motion that Ireland is ready for reunification, after hearing cases made by high-profile politicians from both sides of the border. In a debate on Thursday evening, the university's students heard arguments in favour from SDLP leader Colum Eastwood, leader of Fianna Fail Micheal Martin, and former Tanaiste Joan Burton. Making the case against were former UUP leader Mike Nesbitt, former Justice Minister Claire Sugden, and Irish High Court judge Richard Humphreys. The motion fails: This house does not believe Ireland is ready for reunification. Oxford Union (@OxfordUnion) November 22, 2018 The brief for the debate posted on the Oxford Union website reads: "Twenty years on from the Good Friday Agreement, government in Northern Ireland is at a standstill. "Partisan politics have strengthened, not soothed, sectarian divisions, and a settlement becomes less likely by the day. In this context, the United Kingdom's impending departure from the EU has triggered a renewed focus on that question which has shaped an island's history - has the time come for a united Ireland? "The Oxford Union is proud to host this historic debate between leaders North and South of the border." The Oxford Union quoted Colum Eastwood as saying: "The comfort blanket of the European Union has been whipped off of us, it has shaken our confidence for the first time just as much as the Good Friday agreement did." On social media after the debate Mr Eastwood wrote: "Really enjoyed debating Irish unity at the @OxfordUnion last night. Great to meet so many Irish students there too." The Oxford Union hosts a range of high-profile speakers, having heard from Russell Brand, pornographic actor Stormy Daniels who is alleged to have had an affair with US President Donald Trump, and boxer Manny Pacquiao. The debating body has drawn controversy in recent times for some of the speakers it has invited, including former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. Police have issued a warning to mobility scooter users after a lucky escape in Co Londonderry. This photograph, released on the Magherafelt PSNI Facebook on Wednesday, shows a mangled mobility scooter that was involved in a collision with a lorry in the town centre. "It was a very fortunate escape for the rider of this one in town this afternoon," the PSNI said. "If you use one of these or know someone who uses one, show them and keep this picture in mind the next time you attempt to cross the road. "In line of sight terms you are no more visible than a child to drivers. If there is gap in traffic remember you could be crossing right in the blind spot of a lorry, bus or car." Urging users to be cautious, the PSNI added: "Mobility scooters are covered by the Highway Code and law." A decision to suspend the release of certain files requested under Freedom of Information law is to face a court challenge. The family of a loyalist murder victim already taking a legal case over delays obtaining official papers linked to his death have issued pre-action proceedings over the suspension announced by the Public Record Office for Northern Ireland (PRONI). The UK Information Commissioner's Office told PRONI it does not have authority to release closed files, due to the Stormont impasse. It cited the absence of a minister in its overseeing government department, the Department for Communities. The record office has written to some FoI applicants, telling them while it has the papers requested, it cannot now provide them. The move is set to impact many relatives campaigning for fresh investigations. Lawyers regularly use the PRONI to obtain coroner's files from historic inquests and court papers from old criminal trials. Belfast law firm KRW Law is set to challenge the move on behalf of the family of Martin Lavery, a father-of-three murdered by the UVF in Belfast in 1992. The Department for Communities said: "From November 21 2018, certain Freedom of Information requests to PRONI are temporarily unavailable pending the appointment of a minster to the department. "This applies only to closed records held by the Public Records Office. All other FoI requests to the department are being processed as normal. Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Services large animal team, assisted by Delta Watch and the district commander from Omagh, as they came to the aid of a horse trapped in a ditch near Sixmilecross Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Services large animal team, assisted by Delta Watch and the district commander from Omagh, as they came to the aid of a horse trapped in a ditch near Sixmilecross This is the dramatic moment when a rescue team saved a stricken horse from almost certain death after it became trapped in a water-filled ditch. A 10-strong crew from the Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service's (NIFRS) large animal rescue team based in Omagh were called to a farm on the Drumduff Road near Sixmilecross yesterday morning after a horse was reported to have fallen into the deep sheugh. In a series of pictures posted on its social media page, the NIFRS documented the operation to rescue the terrified horse. It took around two hours to bring the animal to safety, a spokesman told the Belfast Telegraph last night. "All went well," the spokesman said. "The horse is fine. "We were able to remove him from the ditch using manual handling techniques, and we also had the assistance of a telehandler which was supplied by the farmer." The Fire & Rescue Service has two specialist large animal rescue teams - one based in Omagh, Co Tyrone the other in Newcastle, Co Down. Both teams are very busy, according to the NIFRS spokesman, with the bulk of their rescue missions involving animals trapped in slurry tanks, or having fallen into rivers or watercourses. The specialist teams were established in 2006, and the NIFRS has worked with Greenmount Agricultural College and the USPCA to provide extensive training in animal rescue techniques as well as safe handling of animals. The rescue team is particularly alert to the risk of diseases spreading from animals to humans or from farm to farm. Team members use personal protection equipment and disinfect equipment and appliances before entering and before leaving a farm. In July this year the team rescued 72 pigs from a slurry pit on a farm in Aghalee, Co Antrim - the biggest single animal rescue incident they have had to handle so far. Sinn Fein expressed anger at the appointment of a former DUP MLA as an Electoral Commissioner, claiming they were not even asked to submit a nomination. However, the party was not eligible to nominate for the position as their MPs do not take their seats in the Commons and swear an Oath of Allegiance to the Queen. Former East Antrim DUP MLA Alastair Ross was appointed as an Electoral Commissioner on Thursday. Read More Sinn Fein has seven MPs who do not take their seats due to the party's abstentionist policy at Westminster. Mid-Ulster MP Francie Molloy launched an attack on the Electoral Commission accusing them of "ignoring the nationalist electorate" and said the move was "the latest in a series of attempts to disenfranchise nationalist voters". "The Electoral Commission did not even seek nominations from Sinn Fein. Indeed, Sinn Fein was the only party that was not invited to put forward a candidate for consideration as Electoral Commissioner," Mr Molloy said. On this basis the party is now seeking legal advice, and will consider how to challenge the matter in the short time ahead. However an Electoral Commission spokesperson told the Belfast Telegraph that the issue is not even handled by the commission and was the remit of the Speaker's Committee in the House of Commons. The spokesperson did say that Sinn Fein were not eligible to nominate an Electoral Commissioner. "Sinn Fein aren't entitled to put forward as a nomination as a candidate because they do not take part in the Oath of Allegiance," the spokesperson said. Expand Close Alastair Ross / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Alastair Ross Members of the House of Commons are required to take on oath or solemn affirmation of allegiance to the Queen upon taking their seats in Parliament. This is one of the reasons offered by Sinn Fein for not taking their seats. There are 10 Electoral Commissioners and four of them are nominated by political parties. One comes from the Conservative Party, one from Labour, and one from the third largest party, the SNP. The fourth commissioner comes from the smaller parties in the House of Commons, each party with over two seats is entitled to put someone forward. The DUP, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party nominated a candidate and Alastair Ross was appointed. The junior minister in the Executive Office stood down from politics last year opting not to seek re-election in the last Assembly poll. A TUV member of Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Councillor has defected to the DUP. Sharon McKillop was first elected to Moyle District Council in 2011, before being re-elected to Causeway Coast and Glens Council in 2014. DUP leader Arlene Foster said she was delighted to welcome Ms McKillop into the party. "She is a hardworking and dedicated local representative focused on serving the community in which she lives and works," she said. "She is a dedicated and committed unionist who shares the desire to promote a positive vision for Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom." Ms McKillop said: "I want to build a better Northern Ireland and one which we can all be proud of. As a unionist I want to be part of promoting a strong, positive case for the Union. "I share the DUP's vision for this." Ulster Unionist Party MLA Doug Beattie has claimed Theresa May's Brexit deal would limit the legislative powers of Stormont. Mr Beattie was part of a UUP delegation which met with Attorney General John Larkin QC to discuss a range of issues relating to the proposed EU Withdrawal Agreement. Read More He was joined by MLAs John Stewart and Steve Aiken. UUP leader Robin Swann has claimed the Prime Minister's plan will see Northern Ireland "potentially drift farther away" from the United Kingdom. "The impact may not necessarily happen immediately but as the months and years pass, the implementation of the disastrous backstop will see Northern Ireland potentially drift farther away from the rest of the United Kingdom unless action is taken to reverse its effects," he said. After the meeting with the Attorney General Mr Beattie said that the agreement would bind Northern Ireland to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and limit Stormont's legislative powers if it gets up and running again. It is clear that if this Agreement does come into being, Northern Ireland will remain subject to the ECJ. In fact, with matters that are in the jurisdiction of the ECJ, they will retain primacy in Northern Ireland while this would not be the case in the rest of the United Kingdom," the Upper Bann MLA said. "They will also have an interpretive role in respect to the protocols of the agreement that cannot be challenged. This hardly tallies with the Prime Ministers claim that we are taking back control of our own laws. If we ever do get an Assembly re-established here, its legislative role will be extremely limited, because it will have to adopt EU laws without question or having any ability to revise or amend. His party colleague Steve Aiken OBE said that if the deal goes ahead, Northern Ireland will be caught between the UK and the EU As a party we have been engaging with the widest range of business leaders and business groups, and now with the Attorney General, to get some sense of the implications that the activation of the protocol would have," the South Antrim MLA said. "It is obvious that the Assembly if it ever comes back would have a much diminished role. This would increasingly look like joint authority between the EU and the UK. Ulster Unionist Jim Rodgers has urged Belfast City Council to be financially responsible, after a vote approving a stain glass window to celebrate the LGBT+ community be put in place at City Hall. The issue was voted to proceed by members of the Council's Strategic Policy and Resources Committee, which Alderman Rodgers chairs. He said the window would cost in the region of 30,000. A proposal to install the window was put in front of the committee on Friday, with Ulster Unionists and the DUP voting against it with Sinn Fein and the SDLP supporting it. The window has not been designed yet, however, should it be approved by the full council an artist will be commissioned for the piece. Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, Mr Rodgers said his focus was getting council spending to an "acceptable level," something he had been contacted by the business community about. "There are a number of organisations who have been seeking to have windows and they have actually agreed that we should look at this that windows should be put in City Hall for the name of the organisation," he said. "There was an amendment to the proposal. And basically I was arguing for getting a report back on this rather than jumping in with both feet. "With so many looking for stain glass windows we have to have a fair and equitable system." Mr Rodgers said there was one opening on the ground floor for a stain glass window, and ensuring enough clear light was available in the building was also an issue. Members of the Alliance party and the PUP also sit on the Committee but were absent for the vote. It will now be debated in the main chamber on December 3. Sinn Fein councillor Mary Ellen Campbell said: "This decision is another positive step in visibility and will help make City Hall and indeed Belfast a more welcoming and vibrant city. A working group will now be set up to deal with the design and other processes in order for the window to be installed." Police and forensic officers at the scene of the murder in Ballymena Police and forensic officers at the scene of the murder in Ballymena A 53-year-old woman has been arrested after a man was murdered at a house in Ballymena yesterday, police have said. The victim (40) was reported dead at around 3pm. His death occurred at an address in Devenagh Court in the town, not far from the Fairhill Shopping Centre. Detectives from the PSNI are investigating. Last night forensic officers took swabs in the upstairs flat, which was sealed off with police tape. Small figurines were silhouetted just inside the window frame, while potted plants could be seen in and around the building. There was shock among residents in the area as news of the death spread. One person near the scene appeared upset, while elderly neighbours expressed their surprise that a murder had taken place just a few yards from their door. The buildings in the street appear to be blocks of four flats, with one resident saying that few people knew each other. However, they said they did not believe any children had lived in the residence where the murder had taken place. PSNI detective chief inspector Peter McKenna, who is leading the investigation, said: "A post-mortem examination has yet to take place, but at this time I'm treating this as murder. "A 53-year-old woman was subsequently arrested on suspicion of murder and remains in police custody at this time. "My thoughts go out to the victim's family at this tragic time." Police appealed to anyone who had any information to contact detectives on 101, quoting reference 732 of 22/11/18. Alternatively, information can be passed to the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. In 2018-2019, 11 Kazakh-Chinese projects for US $4.4 billion will be implemented, an official website of the Finprom.kz monitoring agency informs. As of the end of the first six months of 2018, the cumulative amount of Chinese investment has amounted to US $15.6 billion, against US $14.8 billion in the previous year. During the last three years, the linear growth of up to 6.6% in investment flows from China has been observed. There are 5 most attractive sectors for Chinese investors, they are transport and storage (US $4.9 billion), mining (US 2.6 billion), finance and insurance (US $ 2.6 billion), construction (US $2.1 billion), and manufacturing (US $2.1 billion), that has replaced the retail and wholesale trade (US $833.1 million). The top-5 sectors occupy 88.9% (US $ 14 billion) of all Chinese investment (in 2014 - 68.4%). In 2018, direct investment for the first time has turned into the main tool of Chinese investors, with the amount of US $9.5 billion by the end of the first six months (60.3% of the total amount of investment). Portfolio investment and derivative financial instruments still take the smallest part - US $2.1 million (less than 1%). However, the amount of investment by the means of these instruments has increased by 69.8% within the year. The total number of Kazakh-Chinese investment projects is 51, the cumulative amount of investment totals at over US $27 billion. In 2018-2019, an additional 11 projects for US $4.4 billion will be implemented, creating around 20 thousand new permanent working places. The crucial projects is the Belt and Road projects, within which a number of large infrastructure projects have already been brought into use within five years, including Lianyungang Port; Khorgos-Eastern Gates Dry Port, on the border with China; Aktau Port in the Caspian Sea; the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran rail corridor with a total length of around 900 km linking the Central Asian states with the Persian Gulf and Bandar Abbas Port in south of Iran; Western Europe - Western China International Transit Corridor passing Kazakhstan. Over 80 zones of trade and economic cooperation have been established, as well as over 200 thousand workplaces have been created with the participation of Chinese companies. Globalization gains momentum with the integration of the financial sector. Astana and its financial center consolidate the investment activity of world investors. China is a good example of the active participation in developing the capital market of Kazakhstan. 5 memorandums and agreements have been signed in the Financial Hub in 2018 (total 13 for 2016-2018), the main objective of which is to develop transborder businesses to ensure high-quality services and to develop new financial services. The rankings of the ease of doing business index compiled by the World Bank are a crucial indicator that assesses countries' business orientation. Following the 2019 rankings, Kazakhstan has climbed 8 positions up, and ranks 28th (in 2018 - 36th), and is the best country in the region in business doing. The closest EEU neighbors are found between the 3rd to 70th positions. In its turn, China ranks 4th (in 2018 - 5th). The foreign trade turnover of Kazakhstan and China has reached US $8.2 billion for 9 months of 2018 (a year ago - US $7.4 billion). China is one of the key partners of Kazakhstan: the trade turnover share with China is 12.1% of the total amount (US $68.2 billion). Kazakhstan's exports and imports of commodities and services to China in parities: exports - US $4.2 billion (+6.6%), imports - US $4 billion (+17.2%). In 2017, China ranked second in the amount of trade turnover with Kazakhstan - US $10.5 billion. Police and forensic officers at the scene of a murder in the Devenagh Court area of Ballymena. (Photo by Kevin Scott for Belfast Telegraph ) A woman arrested and questioned over the murder of a man in Ballymena has been released pending further investigation and the outcome of a post mortem. Name locally as Robin McMaster - known as Rab - the 40-year-old was found dead in a home in Devenagh Court on Thursday afternoon. Residents described him as a fun-loving neighbour who was always willing to lend a helping hand. There was shock in the community with those living in the quiet residential area saying they first heard of the death after police sealed off the scene. On Friday evening, Detective Chief Inspector Peter McKenna said: "A 53-year-old woman arrested by detectives investigating the death has been released on bail pending further enquiries and the outcome of a post mortem, which is due to be held tomorrow. "Detectives investigating the man's death subsequently arrested the same woman earlier today. She has been charged with fraud by false representation and is due to appear at Ballymena Magistrates' Court tomorrow. "As is normal procedure, the charge will be reviewed by the Public Prosecution Service." Ulster Young Unionists have said that they will be opposing the erection of Irish language signs at Ulster University's Students' Unions. Earlier this week the proposal was given the go-ahead at a meeting of Ulster University's Students' Council. Read More The Ulster University has four campuses, one in Belfast, Coleraine, Jordanstown and Londonderry. Each location has their own students' union. Ulster Young Unionist Chairman Joshua Lowry expressed concern that a "hierarchy of equality" is being introduced at Ulster University. The Young Unionists are the youth wing of the Ulster Unionist Party. Mr Lowry outlined his group's reasons for opposing the plan. Firstly, it creates a hierarchy of equality that suggests that Irish is more important than all the other languages spoken at the University, including - but not limited to - Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese and Ulster-Scots. Secondly, this political stunt has nothing to do with promoting the use of the Irish language and everything to do with attempting to make the University a cold house for unionists, and others who do not support the republican agenda in the University. "We feel that this will create an unwelcoming atmosphere at the University, and will further dissuade unionists from choosing to attend Ulster University." The Young Unionists Chairman said that if the plans go-ahead the group would report it to the Equality Commission. Irish language signs were taken down from Queens University Belfast in 1997 because the Fair Employment Commission concluded at the time that it created a 'chill factor' amongst Protestant students, did not in any way 'spread the use of the Irish language' and was just being used as an excuse for 'tokenism'," Mr Lowry said. "We have written to the Vice Chancellor of Ulster University to ask that the same logic be applied, or we will be forced to report the matter to the Equality Commission. Ulster University has a responsibility to staff and students to ensure that it provides equality to all, and that it is a safe space for open and respectful learning and debate. It would be sheer folly to allow this University to turn into one that values one community over another. Sinn Fein have welcomed the plans, while TUV leader Jim Allister and UUP Education spokesperson Rosemary Barton said the move would make unionist students feel uncomfortable. An Irishman has died following a suspected assault in New York, police said. The 21-year-old, with an address on 41st Street in the borough of Queens, was discovered lying on the pavement outside the Gaslight Bar in the district in the early hours of Thursday morning, the New York Police Department said. He had suffered a head injury and was transported to Elmhurst Hospital Centre where he was pronounced dead. A police spokesman said preliminary investigations suggested the victim had been punched in the head by an unknown male in front of that location. He said the suspect fled on foot. Irelands Department of Foreign Affairs has said it is providing consular assistance to the family of the man, who has not yet been named. Angelina Jolie has spoken about sexual violence in her role as UN envoy. (Yui Mok/PA) American actress Angelina Jolie has spoken out against sexual violence in global war zones during a Government film event in London. Held at the British Film Institute, 38 movies and documentaries are being shown as part of a festival enabling survivors to tell their stories. The United Nations envoy spoke at the event, which aims to tackle rape and sexual violence in conflict zones. Jolie welcomed the work of the festival, which was attended Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt. She said: I want to thank the British Government for hosting this festival and for recognising the power of storytelling as a tool to enhance empathy and understanding. I welcome that the Foreign Office is supporting art and artists, putting the issue of sexual violence in conflict forward as an urgent international issue.@Refugees Envoy Angelina Jolie opens film festival to raise awareness of sexual violence in conflict#TimeToAct pic.twitter.com/jaP6PQdJ2o Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (@FCDOGovUK) November 23, 2018 I welcome what it says, that the Foreign Office is supporting art and artists, putting the issue of sexual violence in conflict forward as an urgent international issue, allowing the voices of that set the agenda to be those of the survivors themselves. Art highlighting the horrors of sexual violence in conflicts across the world was displayed in addition to the screenings. The event included the unveiling of a code to set the standard for evidence-gathering for investigating sexual violence in war zones and was backed by Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon, who is the UK Governments special representative on such violence. With @Refugees envoy Angelina Jolie at #PSVI film festival to discuss new Murad Code, named after Nobel Peace Prize laureate @NadiaMuradBasee. Code will set standard for gathering evidence of sexual violence in conflicts. There must be justice for survivors! @end_svc #TimeToAct pic.twitter.com/E33R4VxskX Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) November 23, 2018 Hunt tweeted about the event, writing: With @Refugees envoy Angelina Jolie at #PSVI film festival to discuss new Murad Code, named after Nobel Peace Prize laureate @NadiaMuradBasee. Code will set standard for gathering evidence of sexual violence in conflicts. There must be justice for survivors! The code is named after Nadia Murad, a Yazidi human rights activist who was kidnapped at the hands of Islamic State. A couple have told how they considered giving up farming after one of their cows was found to have BSE. The case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, more commonly known as mad cow disease, was identified as part of routine testing of a dead cow at their farm in Huntly, Aberdeenshire, Scotlands chief veterinary officer Sheila Voas has said she believes the disease was not transmitted and occurred spontaneously in the affected animal. Farmer Thomas Jackson told BBC Scotlands countryside magazine series Landward they were shocked by the discovery as they operate a grass-fed closed herd with no new incomers. It was hard work for me, literally being in tears, and just wanting Thomas to stop farming, wanting him to stop what he's always done, just because it was so upsettingFiona Jackson Mr Jackson, who was was in England to attend his mothers funeral when the public announcement about the case was made, said: My initial thought was dont be so stupid, because the cow had never had any concentrates and thats where I thought it came from, so I just thought well they have made a big mistake here. We were the least likely people as far as I was concerned to ever turn up a case. A movement ban was immediately put in place at the farm as investigators worked to determine the source. Tests are being carried out on the carcasses of four cows culled as a precaution while investigations continue. The BBC reported all restrictions on the farm have now been lifted. Mr Jacksons wife Fiona told Landward presenter Euan McIlwraith the crisis pushed them to considering giving up farming. She said: It was hard work for me, literally being in tears, and just wanting Thomas to stop farming, wanting him to stop what hes always done, just because it was so upsetting. Mrs Jackson added: I wasnt here when the animals were put to sleep. Thomas was. I came to see him and just thought hes just a broken man. Hes worked so hard all his life for these animals, he loves these animals, they are really important to him. The couple moved up from Gloucestershire six years ago to take on the farm, at which they have a small pedigree herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle. Although the experience led them to question their future in farming, they have since resolved to keep going. Mr Jackson said: Our whole life and all our worldly goods are invested in this farm, it not just something you are going to chuck. His wife added: As Thomas has said, farming is his life, and its my life as well, so weve got a future here. Landward will broadcast on BBC One Scotland on Friday at 7.30pm and the following day on BBC Two Scotland at 4.30pm. Millions of cattle were culled in the UK in the 1990s during a BSE epidemic. Strict controls were introduced to protect consumers after it was linked to a fatal condition called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in humans. Before the discovery of the latest case, Scotland had been BSE free since 2009, earning it negligible risk status along with Northern Ireland. Nicola Sturgeon said the 10% pay rise teachers are demanding is simply not affordable (Jane Barlow/PA) Teachers must be prepared to accept a fair and realistic pay deal, not the unaffordable 10% rise unions are demanding, the First Minister has said. Nicola Sturgeon said she recognised the strength of feeling there was on the issue, after a ballot by Scotlands largest teaching union saw 98% vote to reject the wage offer. It comes as the SNP leader was told teachers were having to buy pens, pencils, books for pupils because Scotlands schools are starved of cash. Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard challenged her on the issue after two unions voted overwhelmingly against the offer that has been made by councils and the Scottish Government. Education Secretary John Swinney has already said that while teachers are being offered a 3% pay rise across the board, restructuring of the main pay grade scale, combined with other changes will mean most would receive a rise of between 5% and 11%. In a ballot 98% of EIS union members rejected that, with 97% of members of the SSTA teaching union who took part in a vote also opposed. The last time Scotland's teachers were angry enough to go on strike Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. - @IainGrayMSP on the SNP's education shambles. pic.twitter.com/9uluuY1JRd Scottish Labour (@ScottishLabour) November 22, 2018 Mr Leonard said: The First Minister wants to be judged by her record on education, so lets examine that record its a record of austerity, which even SNP councillors now admit is going too far. How can education be your top priority with underfunded schools and undervalued teachers? Ms Sturgeon insisted: Teachers are not undervalued, we highly value the work that teachers do. But Labours Iain Gray, a former teacher, said: The last time Scotlands teachers were angry enough to go on strike Margaret Thatcher was still prime minister, I was a school teacher, the First Minister was a school pupil and some of the 98% of current teachers who have just rejected the pay offer were not even born. That is how badly this government has handled teacher pay. Patrick Harvie of the Scottish Greens also called on the Government to come back to pay talks with a realistic offer saying staff in classrooms had seen theri salaries fall in real terms by almost a quarter over the last decade. Teachers feel overworked, under-resourced, and have seen the value of their salaries eroded year after year. No one wants to see a strike. Will Scot Gov work towards a realistic offer and ensure Councils are adequately funded to deliver it? - @patrickharvie #FMQs Scottish Greens (@scottishgreens) November 22, 2018 We all want teaching to be an attractive rewarding profession, where people fell valued for that hard work, but that isnt happening now, he said. Huge numbers of teachers feel overworked, under resourced and demeaned as they see the value of their salaries eroded year after year. To avoid the prospect of a teaching strike he said ministers needed to they work towards a realistic offer and give local councils the resources they need to meet it. Ms Sturgeon said the government and the council body Colsa would negotiate with teaching unions in a bid to resolve the pay row. She told MSPs: I recognise that offer has been rejected, I respect that and I recognise the strength of feeling, so the Scottish Government and Cosla will go back to the table and we will continue to seek a reasonable agreement in good faith. Expand Close Teachers campaigning for a 10% pay rise staged a march and rally in Glasgow last month. (Stuart Mackenzie/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Teachers campaigning for a 10% pay rise staged a march and rally in Glasgow last month. (Stuart Mackenzie/PA) She said she wanted to see teachers get a good pay rise, one that recognises the vital and very difficult job they do, one which recognises not just the current cost of living pressures but starts also a process of restoration of the lost ground that all public sector workers have suffered because of the years of pay restraint. But she made clear the 10% rise unions are demanding is not affordable. The First Minister said: This is a statement of simple fact pay awards have to be affordable, because if they are not affordable they can not be delivered. I would love to give teachers and all public sector workers a 10% pay rise but that is simply not affordable in a single year. So what we need to do now, and the Scottish Government will play our full part in this, we need to come back to the table to agree a fair and affordable agreement, in the same way that the Scottish Government has already done for nurses and other health care workers and police officers. The Scottish Government will proceed to do that in good faith and I hope we can before too much longer reach that fair and reasonable agreement. She pledged ministers would go into talks in good faith and with the political will to find an agreement, and said: What we need to do is get back round the table, which is happening, and come up with a fair offer, but one that is also realistic and affordable. Theresa May heads to Brussels on Saturday with her Brexit deal under threat at home and abroad. The Prime Minister will hold talks with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker before a summit of EU leaders on Sunday which is expected to endorse the deal thrashed out between negotiators from the two sides. But Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has threatened to veto progress without further guarantees for Madrid over the status of Gibraltar. Mrs May also faced domestic difficulties, with her relationship with the Democratic Unionist Party looking increasingly strained as Arlene Fosters party prepared for its conference in Belfast. DUP leader Arlene Foster warned that the confidence and supply deal propping up Mrs Mays minority administration would have to be revisited if her Brexit deal gets through Parliament. The DUP has strongly opposed the deal and the guest star at its conference will be Boris Johnson, a prominent critic of the Prime Ministers approach and a potential rival for the Tory leadership. Expand Close DUP leader Arlene Foster and deputy leader Nigel Dodds have strongly opposed Theresa Mays deal (Brian Lawless/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp DUP leader Arlene Foster and deputy leader Nigel Dodds have strongly opposed Theresa Mays deal (Brian Lawless/PA) The tensions over Gibraltar concern Spains demand that Gibraltars future is considered a bilateral issue between London and Madrid rather than between the EU and UK. Mr Sanchez has suggested that Sundays summit could be scrapped unless there is a breakthrough. After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away. My Government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit. Pedro Sanchez (@sanchezcastejon) November 22, 2018 Mrs May has insisted her deal is in the interests of the whole UK family including Gibraltar. The last-minute diplomatic spat comes as Mrs Mays critics laid bare the scale of their opposition to the Brexit plan. Former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, a committed Leaver who quit last week over the Withdrawal Agreement, said he believed the terms were so bad the UK would be better off remaining in the EU. Im not going to advocate staying in the EU, he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. But if you just presented me terms, this deal or EU membership, because we would effectively be bound by the same rules but without the control or voice over them, yes, I think this would be even worse than that. With more than 80 Conservative MPs from both the Leave and Remain sides threatening to vote against the agreement, Mr Raab warned it was unlikely to get through the Commons and said ministers should consider leaving without a deal. But if it did pass the Commons, the repercussions could bring down Mrs Mays Government, with the DUP hinting at withdrawing the support of its MPs. The DUPs 10 MPs have proved reluctant to vote with the Government since the terms of the Brexit deal became known and the termination of their Westminster arrangement would be a major blow to the Prime Minister. Mrs Foster told the BBC: If she is successful in Parliament, and there is no evidence that she is going to be successful in Parliament, then of course we will have to revisit the confidence and supply agreement. But Mrs May, who launched an effort to sell the Brexit deal directly to the public, insisted that there would be no changes to appease critics at this late stage. Our position on Gibraltar and its sovereignty has not changed, and will not change. Prime Minister Theresa May tells caller Laura-Beth the UK is working with the governments of Gibraltar and Spain in this phase of the negotiations.#BBCAskThis | @EmmaBarnett | @BBCNews pic.twitter.com/TVKshjhowz BBC Radio 5 Live (@bbc5live) November 23, 2018 In a BBC phone-in she said: If we were to go back to the European Union and say People didnt like that deal can we have another one?, I dont think they are going to come to us and say We will give you a better deal. This is the deal that I think works for the UK. She warned rejection of her plan would lead to more uncertainty and division and that the public now wanted the Government and MPs to get on and deliver Brexit. In Parliament theres a lot of focus on whos going to vote for the deal or not, and outside I think people are thinking Actually, lets make sure we can get this through and get on with delivering, she said. If this deal doesnt go through we are back at square one. What we end up with is more uncertainty and more division. Expand Close Dominic Raab has claimed the UK will be worse off under Mrs Mays deal than if it stayed in the EU (Andrew Matthews/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Dominic Raab has claimed the UK will be worse off under Mrs Mays deal than if it stayed in the EU (Andrew Matthews/PA) Despite the turmoil, the Prime Minister again insisted that as far as she was concerned, Brexit would go ahead next year as planned. Personally, there is no question of no Brexit, because the Government needs to deliver on what people voted for in the referendum in 2016, she said. As far as I am concerned, the UK is leaving the European Union on March 29 2019. Katie Allan whose mother, Linda, has launched a campaign to reform the way the justice system deals with mental health (Family handout) Mental health provision for young people entering Polmont Young Offenders Institution will be reviewed after two suicides in four months. Following the death of Katie Allan, 21, in June, another inmate, 16-year-old William Brown, also known as William Lindsay, killed himself just 48 hours after being sent there on remand. Lawyer Aamer Anwar, representing the families of Ms Allan and Mr Brown, said that they cautiously welcomed the announcement of a review. Mr Anwar said: The deaths of Katie and William were never inevitable, the system and the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) failed them. The families of Katie Allan and William Lindsay expect and demand a lot more to happen in the days and weeks ahead. Today is a good start, but the families hold Polmont responsible for suicides which took place, ultimately they failed in their duty of care. If this review is independent then the families wait to see the proof of that as they must be fearless in the questions they ask. Every death by suicide is a tragedy, and a death in custody can rightly raise particular questions for familiesHumza Yousaf, Cabinet Secretary for Justice Cabinet Secretary for Justice Humza Yousaf announced the review, which will look at relevant operational polices, practice and training and report by the spring, in a letter to the Parliaments Justice and Health committees. In the letter, Mr Yousaf wrote: Every death by suicide is a tragedy, and a death in custody can rightly raise particular questions for families. I have expressed my deepest of sympathies to the families of Katie and William. I had the opportunity to express this personally to Katies parents when I met them. As with any death in custody a mandatory and independent Fatal Accident Inquiry investigation will be undertaken by the Crown Office into the deaths of both Katie Allan and William Lindsay. It is important that those independent investigations are allowed to proceed. However, I have reflected on some of the more immediate questions raised particularly around the provision of mental health support and services for young people in custody. A mental health expert will work with the independent HM Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland and others to review mental health provision for young people entering custody, including background information available ahead of their admission, the reception arrangements, and ongoing support and supervision while in custody. Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport, Jeane Freeman, confirmed that NHS Forth Valley have engaged with the Scottish Prison Service to assess and augment provision for people living at Polmont. Patrick Maguire, who was 13 years old when he was arrested for an IRA bombing, has described it as the day his childhood ended. Mr Maguire was part of the Maguire family, members of which were wrongfully convicted for involvement in the Guildford and Woolwich pub bombings in 1976. The plight of the Maguire Seven has been highlighted in a new BBC documentary entitled A Great British Injustice produced by host Stephen Nolan, which is set to be broadcast nationwide on Sunday. Patrick was arrested along with his mother Anne Maguire, her late husband Patrick and her other son Vincent, 16 at the time of the arrest. Read More Other members of the Maguire Seven wrongfully convicted of bomb making were Sean Smyth, Patrick O'Neill, and Patrick 'Giuseppe' Conlon, who died in prison. All seven had their convictions quashed in 1991. In the documentary broadcaster Stephen Nolan meets with members of the Maguire family, including Anne Maguire and her son Patrick, and hears their emotional retelling of the events which saw them imprisoned. Appearing on the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme, Mr Maguire was speaking ahead of the UK-wide broadcast of the documentary this weekend. Patrick Maguire, who is now an artist, said: "That was the day my childhood ended. The colour was taken out. And as an artist today the child has become the artist and Im just looking for rainbows. The main police station that I ended up going to was Guilford, because they were going to charge me. "And on the way down he told me exactly what he was going to do to me regardless. That he was going to, I dont want to use bad language, but he was going to beat the crap out of me. "A gun was put to my head, I felt something cold and we drove past some woods on the way to Guilford, a place I had never heard of, and he said he would like to stop, take me in there, and blow my head off - he didnt say it as nice as that - like the IRA do." A Great British Injustice will be broadcast this Sunday at 10pm on BBC Two. Biddeford-Saco-OOB Courier He was born and raised in Biddeford, and continues to work here. Theresa May has been warned she faces a battle to reach a final agreement on Brexit as she prepares for a special summit of European Union leaders. Ahead of Sundays gathering, Spanish premier Pedro Sanchez demanded last-minute changes to the deal despite Mrs Mays efforts to win him round. The Prime Minister will head to Brussels on Saturday for eve-of-summit talks with Jean-Claude Juncker knowing that she also faces an uphill task in Westminster to persuade her own MPs to back her deal. Mrs May declared that final agreement on Brexit is within our grasp following a breakthrough on future relations between the UK and European Union on Thursday. But she endured a bruising session in the House of Commons as critics lined up to condemn both the divorce deal contained in the Withdrawal Agreement and the aspirations for a close future relationship in the Political Declaration. And, at the EU level, a major obstacle remains in the form of Madrids continued concerns about Gibraltar, with Mr Sanchez vowing to defend the interests of Spain. Mrs May said she spoke to Mr Sanchez on Wednesday night and was confident on Sunday that well be able to agree a deal that delivers for the whole UK family, including Gibraltar. After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away. My Government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit. Pedro Sanchez (@sanchezcastejon) November 22, 2018 But in a late-night tweet on Thursday Mr Sanchez said: After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away. My Government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit. Mr Sanchez cannot veto Brexit or the Withdrawal Agreement, but a refusal to co-operate will sour the atmosphere at a summit where leaders of the 27 remaining EU members were aiming for consensus. Meanwhile the scale of the challenge Mrs May faces at Westminster was underlined in response to the latest move towards a final deal. Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson urged her to junk her backstop plan for keeping the Irish border open, which he said makes a nonsense of Brexit. Nothing in this political declaration changes the fact that this deal gives the EU a continuing veto over the unilateral power over the entire U.K. to do trade deals or take back control of our laws. We must junk the backstop or we make a nonsense of Brexit pic.twitter.com/VrFdn4zKGR Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) November 22, 2018 Brexit-backing ex-Cabinet minister Priti Patel branded the deal a costly surrender by the UK Government. Home Secretary Sajid Javid acknowledged the Government had to work harder to sell the deal to Brexiteer MPs such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has led a so-far ineffective campaign to oust Mrs May. Weve all got a job to do over the coming days and weeks, to do a better job of communicating to colleagues whether its Jacob or anyone else what the deal is and what it isnt, and try to listen to their concerns and see what can be done to allay some of them, Mr Javid told The House magazine. Mrs May was also left in little doubt that she will not be able to count on the votes of the 10 DUP MPs. The Government needs to recognise that there is no enthusiasm for the withdrawal agreement across all sides of the House of Commons, the partys Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson said, adding it was time to work for a better deal. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told the Commons that Mrs May had returned from Brussels with 26 pages of waffle. Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer indicated Labour would vote down Mrs Mays deal but could back a compromise involving a permanent customs union something she has rejected. Asked what would be required to secure Labour support, Sir Keir told BBCs Newsnight: A comprehensive, permanent customs union that protects manufacturing and gives us a say in trade policy with the EU. He said Mrs May had repeatedly ruled out such an approach but if she reflects between now and the vote we will look at what she brings back however the customs concession wouldnt be the only thing sought by Labour. The Prime Minister said the joint UK/EU declaration on the future relationship is the right plan for the UK. Two years of botched negotiations in which @Theresay_May's red lines have been torn up, Cabinet resignations have been racked up and Chequers has been chucked. pic.twitter.com/vQsbf1Ahli Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) November 22, 2018 The text calls for an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership between the EU and the UK in areas like trade, security and defence, possibly in the form of a Ukraine-style Association Agreement. It confirms the UKs right to develop an independent trade policy and end the free movement of EU nationals and leaves open the possibility of using technological solutions to keep the Irish border open after Brexit. But elements which infuriated Brexiteers included: Plans for a free trade area, combining deep regulatory and customs co-operation, building and improving on the single customs territory provided for in the withdrawal agreement; Provisions to ensure a level playing field on business competition, which could cover areas including state aid, workplace and environmental protections, climate change laws and tax; A role for the European Court of Justice in providing binding rulings on the interpretation of EU law in any disputes between the two sides. I have just sent to EU27 a draft Political Declaration on the Future Relationship between EU and UK. The Commission President has informed me that it has been agreed at negotiators level and agreed in principle at political level, subject to the endorsement of the Leaders. Charles Michel (@eucopresident) November 22, 2018 Aides said that Mrs May received strong support from Cabinet ministers in a conference before addressing the Commons. Downing Street has always stressed that the 585-page legally binding Withdrawal Agreement setting out the terms of the UKs departure from the EU including a divorce bill estimated at 39 billion can only be finalised alongside the shorter declaration setting out the two sides aspirations for their future relations. Matthew Hedges, pictured with his wife Daniela Tejada, was handed a life prison term in the UAE (Daniela Tejada/PA) Clemency for a British academic jailed for life in the United Arab Emirates on a spying charge is being considered by the Gulf states leaders, an official announced as he defended the nations judicial system. Diplomatic efforts to free PhD student Matthew Hedges are being led by Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt amid an outcry after the 31-year-old was handed the sentence earlier this week. The Durham University researchers wife, Daniela Tejada, has lobbied for his release and won assurances from Mr Hunt that the Government is now standing up for her husband, after she claimed it had initially put foreign relations above his liberty. Mr Hunt held further talks with his UAE counterpart on Friday and said he believed the Emirati authorities wereworking constructively to find a solution to this problem. In a statement at the UAE embassy in London on Friday, ambassador Sulaiman Almazroui praised the closeness between the two nations as he said clemency is being considered for the extremely serious case. Mr Hedges family have made a request for clemency and the government is studying that request, he said. Because of the strength of that relationship we are hopeful that an amicable solution can be reached. Expand Close Daniela Tejada said she believes the Government is now standing up for her husband (David Mirzoeff/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Daniela Tejada said she believes the Government is now standing up for her husband (David Mirzoeff/PA) He also made efforts to defend the judicial process, denying it was a five-minute show trial and claiming three judges evaluated compelling evidence over three hearings to make their ruling. He did not address whether the academic was given adequate legal representation throughout the process, which Ms Tejada has said he lacked. She swiftly rebuked the ambassadors defence, saying her husband had been held in solitary confinement for more than five months without charge or lawyer, and when he did receive consular access he was not able to talk openly. The judicial system in the UAE and the UK cannot be compared, she said in a statement. We have asked for clemency, we will wait to see what happens. The UAE has a history of issuing a wave of pardons in anticipation of its national day, which falls on December 2. Despite the diplomatic efforts being made, Ms Tejada said her husband remains in fear that he will have to serve the entirety of his sentence, after speaking to him in a brief phone call on Thursday night. He is not well. He mentioned that his panic attacks have become worse than they were before. However, he did say that he has access to a doctor, she told the BBC. I wasnt allowed to know where he is, so still dont know anything about his whereabouts, and I think hes just absolutely terrified at the idea of having to spend the rest of his life behind bars for an offence he hasnt committed. Expand Close Daniela Tejada, wife of British academic Matthew Hedges who was jailed for life in the United Arab Emirates on an allegation of spying, arrives at the Foreign Office for a meeting with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt (David Mirzoeff/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Daniela Tejada, wife of British academic Matthew Hedges who was jailed for life in the United Arab Emirates on an allegation of spying, arrives at the Foreign Office for a meeting with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt (David Mirzoeff/PA) There are hopes that the UAE will show some leniency, with the head of its foreign ministrys legal department, Abdulla Al Naqbi, also saying the nation wants to find an amicable solution. However, he added that compelling and powerful evidence had proved espionage, including computer analysis and an alleged confession. Ms Tejada has stressed her husbands innocence and said the Middle East expert, who was finishing his thesis, was the victim of a misunderstanding while carrying out research. Mr Hunt said he has seen absolutely no evidence to support claims that Mr Hedges was spying when he visited Dubai earlier this year, and has threatened serious diplomatic consequences if he is not freed. Answering questions about the case on Facebook, Mr Hunt said: This is an issue we have been in constant touch with the Emirati authorities on. The thing that I have been encouraged about is that I have been able to have constructive, positive discussions with the Emirati foreign minister Abdullah Bin Zayed and I have been in further touch with him this afternoon. I do believe that they are working constructively to find a solution to this problem. I think that is the intention of the Emirati government. This is at a delicate stage as those discussions happen. He had previously voiced surprise at the life sentence handed to Mr Hedges on Wednesday, which came despite his discussions with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed a little over a week earlier. Expand Close Matthew Hedges with his wife, Daniela Tejada (Daniela Tejada/PA) Press Association Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Matthew Hedges with his wife, Daniela Tejada (Daniela Tejada/PA) Mr Hedges, originally from Exeter, was arrested at Dubai Airport as he tried to leave the country on May 5. Professor Stuart Corbridge, vice-chancellor of Durham University, said there is no reason to believe that Matt was conducting anything other than legitimate academic research. Mr Hedges was given 30 days to challenge the court ruling, and Ms Tejada has launched a petition on Change.org which has gathered more than 200,000 signatures. The Foreign Office said: We hope the UAE now looks favourably on the familys request for clemency. Meanwhile drivers and fans at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Sunday have been urged by Amnesty International to show their support for Mr Hedges. The human rights organisation said a supportive tweet from a big name in Formula One could help the Britons cause. Kate Allen, Amnesty International UKs director, accused the UAE of sportswashing, where a controversial regime uses sport to enhance its reputation. She said: Arrest, extended solitary confinement and sham trials are the dark reality for those who the authorities go after in the UAE a far cry from the glamour of motor sport. We cant allow the UAE to use the Grand Prix for yet more sportswashing. The UAE authorities should immediately and unconditionally release all prisoners of conscience who have been detained solely for peacefully criticising the authorities. Undated handout photos issued by the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit (NWROCU) of Joseph Mulhare (left) and Gregory Mulhare, two Wirral brothers who were wanted in the UK over drug allegations, as they have been arrested in Thailand. Two British brothers who were wanted in the UK over drug allegations have been arrested at a hotel in Thailand. Joseph Mulhare, 43, and Gregory Mulhare, 38, were arrested in a hotel room in Chon Buri, south east of Bangkok, by armed Thai officers earlier this week. Their arrest follows an appeal to the public from a British organised crime unit who could not locate the brothers, from Wirral. Merseyside Police on Friday confirmed the Mulhares had been arrested and are being deported to the UK but did not detail the allegations against them. We will be looking to speak to them when they return to the UK, a spokeswoman said on Friday. North West Regional Organised Crime Unit launched an appeal for the wanted brothers on November 14 as part of an investigation into the supply of Class A drugs. The Bangkok Post reported the brothers were watched by a team of immigration and crime officers for days and had tried to throw police off their trail by taking a taxi to Suvarnabhumi airport only to leave and travel to Chon Buri. As Americans around the world gathered together for Thanksgiving on Thursday, US President Donald Trump told reporters what he is most thankful for this year: himself. Speaking from his holiday resort at Mar-a-Lago in Florida on Thursday, the president gave thanks for the tremendous difference he said he has made in the country since his election in 2016. What are you most thankful for Mr President? calls a reporter at the end of an hour-long press conference. Mr Trumps great family received the first mention but only amounted to 6% of his full answer, the core of which was devoted to the impact people cant even believe he has made to America. He said: For having a great family and for having made a tremendous difference in this country. Ive made a tremendous difference in the country. This country is so much stronger now than it was when I took office that you wouldnt believe it. I mean, you see it, but so much stronger that people cant even believe it. When I see foreign leaders they say we cannot believe the difference in strength between the United States now and the United States two years ago. [We] made a lot of progress. Adam Hug, director of the Foreign Policy Centre in London, said the biggest difference Mr Trump and his administration have made is on the political culture of the United States rather than any significant impact on the economy or laws. He said: The primary feature of the Trump presidency has been the way in which his administration and him personally have sought to challenge the operation of Americas institutions and challenge some long-standing norms around how the presidency should operate. That has obviously created some significant tensions and a more volatile political environment in the United States than weve seen in recent years. The Trump administration has continued to ride the economic expansion which began under Obama, he added, and Mr Trumps tax and regulatory changes do not seem to have negatively affected economic growth. How Trump deals with any slowdown in the economy will be a significant test for the second half of his presidency, he said. A British corporate investigator has filed a complaint to UK regulators about Chinese state TV, saying its British licence should be revoked because it broadcast his forced confession when he was imprisoned in China. Peter Humphrey filed a complaint against China Central Television and its international division, China Global Television, for violating British broadcasting rules. Mr Humphrey and his wife Yingzeng Yuspent two years in prison after being convicted of illegally acquiring personal information of Chinese citizens. Expand Close Peter Humphrey addresses the media (Frank Augstein/AP) AP / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Peter Humphrey addresses the media (Frank Augstein/AP) The couple had been hired on contract by pharmaceuticals company GlaxoSmithKline to look into a security breach, but became collateral damage when the Chinese government began investigating the pharmaceutical companys bribery practices. They were shown on Chinese television purportedly confessing. CGTN is available on free and pay television channels in Britain. The broadcaster is reportedly expanding its presence in Europe with a new studio and production centre set to open in London by the end of the year. In 2012, Britains communications regulator Ofcom revoked Iranian state-owned Press TVs licence following a complaint by Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari that the station aired an interview with him while he was detained. Mr Bahari said he was forced to do a scripted interview with his captors, who threatened him with execution. Mr Humphrey said his televised confession was done under duress and he was sedated. He said he was forced to confess twice. It always happened after or amid a massive wave of international press coverage of our case, so it was part of a propaganda war, he said. Expand Close Peter Dahlin addresses the media (Frank Augstein/AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Peter Dahlin addresses the media (Frank Augstein/AP) He got help with his case from Peter Dahlin, a Swedish activist who was also detained in China and allegedly forced to confess on air after authorities cracked down on his human rights group. Mr Dahlins new rights group, Safeguard Defenders, said it has documented more than 100 forced confessions shown by CCTV. At least eight were broadcast on British airwaves, he said. Many people think CCTV merely broadcasts these, theyre made by police and (the station is) forced to broadcast them, but its journalists are actively engaged in these reports, Mr Dahlin said. By filing the complaint, he said they want to influence the broadcasters behaviour, so it will abide by basic standards, both regulatory standards in Britain but also journalistic ethical standards. Ofcom said it was assessing the complaint as a priority and would take necessary enforcement action if it found any rules had been broken. President Donald Trump talks with troops via teleconference from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla (Susan Walsh/AP) President Donald Trump used a Thanksgiving Day call to troops deployed overseas to pat himself on the back and air grievances about the courts, trade and migrants heading to the US-Mexico border. Mr Trumps call, made from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, struck an unusually political tone as he spoke with members of all five branches of the military to wish them happy holidays. Its a disgrace, Mr Trump said of judges who have blocked his attempts to overhaul US immigration law, as he linked his efforts to secure the border with military missions overseas. He later threatened to close the US border with Mexico for an undisclosed period of time if his administration determines its neighbour has lost control on its side. You really are our heroes, he said as club waiters worked to set Thanksgiving dinner tables on the outdoor terrace behind him. You probably see over the news whats happening on our southern border, Mr Trump told one Air Force brigadier general stationed at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, adding: I dont have to even ask you. I know what you want to do, you want to make sure that you know who were letting in. Mr Trump also continued to rail against the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which he said has become a big thorn in our side. Its a terrible thing, he said, when judges tell you how to protect your border. He added: Its a disgrace. Expand Close President Donald Trump speaks to reporters following his teleconference with troops (Susan Walsh/AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp President Donald Trump speaks to reporters following his teleconference with troops (Susan Walsh/AP) Later, Mr Trump asked a US Coast Guard commander about trade, which he noted was a very big subject for him personally. Weve been taken advantage of for many, many years by bad trade deals, Mr Trump told the commander, who sheepishly replied: We dont see any issues in terms of trade right now. Mr Trump added: I hope that youll take solace in knowing that all of the American families you hold so close to your heart are all doing well. The nations doing well economically, better than anybody in the world. He later told reporters nobodys done more for the military than me. This country is so much stronger now than it was when I took office and you wouldn't believe it and when you see it, we've gotten so much stronger people don't even believe itDonald Trump Indeed, asked what he was thankful for this Thanksgiving, Trump cited his great family, as well as himself. I made a tremendous difference in this country, he said. This country is so much stronger now than it was when I took office and you wouldnt believe it and when you see it, weve gotten so much stronger people dont even believe it. Mr Trump continued to warn about the situation on the southern border as he took questions from reporters, pointing to the caravans of Central American migrants that have been making their way towards the US. He said: If we find that it gets to a level where we lose control or people are going to start getting hurt, were going to close entry into the country for a period of time until we get it under control. The Rock of Gibraltar as seen from the sea (Ben Birchall/PA) Gibraltars chief minister Fabian Picardo has said he is willing to discuss directly with the Spanish government their bilateral relations after the United Kingdom leaves the European Union. But Mr Picardo warned on Thursday that the sovereignty of the British territory at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula is non-negotiable. Spain has never dropped its claim of jurisdiction over the rocky outcrop, and its government has baulked at the possibility of its post-Brexit future being decided between London and EU authorities without direct Spanish involvement. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez has threatened to vote against the planned Brexit agreement unless Spains misgivings are addressed. Mr Picardo told Gibraltars parliament that as long as issues such as sovereignty, jurisdiction and control of the territory are off the table, he is happy to discuss close cooperation with Madrid. A Peruvian aircraft blocks the runway after having problems landing (AP Photo/Juan Karita) A Peruvian Airlines Boeing 737 suffered a collapsed landing gear when it arrived at an airport in Bolivia, forcing closure of the runway for 10 hours. Officials say none of the 122 passengers or five crew members were hurt. Officials say they were unable to move the plane, prompting a 10-hour closure that delayed several other flights into and out of the El Alto airport near the Bolivian capital on Thursday. The plane was arriving on a flight from Cuzco, Peru. The airline said in a statement that the cause of the incident is under investigation. It was the ceiling-to-floor curtain, royal blue in colour, that instantly drew my eye when I walked into Courtroom 12. Behind it, I knew, sat the young woman who had accused Ulster Rugby players of rape, of which they were later acquitted. I couldn't see her directly, and neither could the other members of the media, nor the people in the packed public gallery beside us. She was shielded too from the four defendants sitting in the dock, but we could all watch her under cross-examination, because the complainant was being filmed. Her evidence was screened on a large TV monitor, in view of everyone. I had never attended a rape trial before, so I didn't know exactly what to expect. Shortly after I took my seat in the press box, I was astonished to hear the young woman's name being used in open court. Not just the judge and jury, but every single member of the public in the gallery heard her name mentioned as she went through the gruelling, combative process required by the court. How on earth could the woman's identity, which was supposed to be kept a secret for her whole life, have a chance of being properly protected in such circumstances? The rule of law strictly forbids the public naming of alleged victims in rape and other sex crime cases, but Northern Ireland is a tiny place, the hyper-connected reach of social media is wide, and there will always be loose-lipped, irresponsible fools inclined to breach this order - especially in such a high-profile case. Sure enough, the complainant's name was soon circulating. Anonymity, I quickly realised, must mean something very different in a legal setting than it does in everyday life. Now, Sir John Gillen, the retired senior judge appointed to independently review the handling of such cases in Northern Ireland, following the rugby rape trial, has produced his preliminary report. It is a thorough, wide-ranging and insightful document: clear, compassionate and bold in its vision, yet balanced and fair to both defendants and complainants. Judge Gillen consulted extensively before publishing it. He said that hearing the experience of complainants was "one of the most harrowing experiences" of his life. And he is clearly listening. Controversially, Gillen suggests banning the public from serious sexual offences trials, and only allowing close family of the complainant and the defendant to be present, along with members of the press. I believe in open justice, but having witnessed the shocking behaviour of some people in the public gallery during the rugby rape trial - particularly the sneering, jeering, scoffing and laughing while the complainant was speaking - I think there's a strong case for exclusion. It would surely improve the chances of keeping the names of alleged victims private. While many people expressed distaste for the disturbingly explicit nature of some media reports on the trial - there were even calls for the media to be banned at one point - the media is not the problem here. Journalists are bound by strict guidelines in their coverage, and they take those responsibilities extremely seriously. A journalist will never name an anonymous complainant. Their foremost duty is to report accurately on what happens in court, however lurid or unpleasant the details may be. In my view, it is the nature of the proceedings themselves that need to change, so that prospective complainants are not deterred from coming forward by what Gillen has rightly called "an unacceptably daunting trial process". The judge also recommended measures to combat pervasive rape myths and stereotypes that might affect the judgment of a jury. These include the harmful and highly inaccurate beliefs that victims provoke rape by how they dress, or that if victims don't scream, shout or fight back, it somehow does not count as rape. While the report's suggestion of a widespread publicity campaign, in order to educate the public, is welcome, these deeply embedded attitudes - rooted in ignorance and ancient misogyny - are difficult to eradicate. As Sir John Gillen has realised, the most important thing is to listen as widely and as deeply as possible. He has said that there must be "no voice unheard". Now the criminal justice system - which has sometimes appeared as an aloof, unaccountable and complacent law unto itself - needs to start listening, too. The way things stand at present, there seems little point in having a screen to hide the identity of alleged rape victims in court, especially in high-profile cases. The potential exposure is so great that the curtain may as well be whisked away. It was the smirk that did it. Throughout his address to the Dail on Wednesday, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar's face bore a simpering smile as he expressed his frustration at dealing with the DUP over Brexit, declaring, in effect, that the only thing they cared about was "the precious Union". He smirks a lot, but this one told a tale. It was a signal to fellow TDs in the Irish parliament that said: "I know they're ridiculous, lads, but what can you do?" There's nothing wrong with calling the Union "precious"; unionists wouldn't hesitate to do so. It was Varadkar's sneaky, sarcastic use of the word which should raise hackles. Two years ago, nationalists in Ireland commemorated the centenary of the Easter Rising with due pomp and ceremony. Imagine the furore back then if Arlene Foster had grinned as she snidely wondered why the Irish were so attached to their "precious Republic". Critics would have called it an outrageous act of discourtesy. And they'd have been right. In a way, Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar has simply reaffirmed what everyone knows - that unionists are from Mars and nationalists from Venus and, however much they try to see things from each others' points of view, there will always be a deep chasm of misunderstanding between them. Brexit didn't create, but has widened, that ancient divide. The mystery is why the Taoiseach thought it appropriate, at this delicate point in cross-border relations, to stand on one edge of the gorge, taunting those on the other side. Only days ago, UUP leader Robin Swann was telling a side event at the Fine Gael ard fheis in the Irish capital that certain recent comments by politicians in Dublin had been "a poke in the eye to unionists". It's almost as if Leo heard that warning and secretly thought: "Just wait till you hear what I'm going to say next week." Fine Gael would have everyone believe they're above such sectarian spats. It's certainly hard to imagine previous leaders of the party - from Enda Kenny and John Bruton to Garret FitzGerald - blundering in so clumsily to this contested territory. Such belligerence is doing Leo no harm in the polls. Fine Gael remains well on course to be the largest faction in the next government, as it is in this one. Standing up to the Brits over Brexit has been a popular, populist move. But when dealing with Northern Ireland, it's not voters in the Republic that any Taoiseach has to worry about. It's ones north of the border whose opinions matter most. That it's Leo Varadkar who has thrown diplomacy to the winds is surprising on one level, because his appeal has always been as a solid centrist; a safe pair of hands. Being young, gay, urban, and of mixed race, he ticks all the right boxes for our liberal age, but without being any threat to the status quo. In another sense, it's not surprising at all, because Varadkar is also - how shall we put this? - a teensy bit shallow. He's got a sharp political brain when it comes to calculating what works in the party and in elections, but he doesn't have an overflow of ideas. He attaches himself to certain lines of thought, but doesn't generate them himself. Even the tough position he's adopted on Northern Ireland since becoming leader last year doesn't seem particularly organic. It feels more like one he took on board from his rival for the Fine Gael leadership, Simon Coveney, now Minister for Foreign Affairs, who was always much more "green" in his outlook. That, in itself, has caused frequent issues. What's becoming more problematic by the hour is that the Taoiseach has simultaneously attached himself enthusiastically to the federalist European project in order to distance the country from the UK as it leaves. Currying favour in Brussels, he's clearly decided, will reap dividends - and that's an entirely logical conclusion; but it does mean that, not only has he aligned with the enemies of unionism in Ireland, he's now further lined up with the increasingly bitter opponents of Britain inside the EU and he's not sufficiently adept to know how to do that without alienating unionist opinion in Northern Ireland. He simply vacillates between competing needs in a haphazard way. Wednesday's performance in the Dail was the latest example of his making it up as he goes along, telling one audience what it wants to hear without considering the effect on a different audience. He's like a toddler who covers his eyes and can't see anything and, therefore, presumes no one can see him either. Did he really think unionists wouldn't notice what he said? "Precious union" was derisive enough, but his disparaging interpretation of where the DUP stands in relation to the Withdrawal Agreement between Britain and the EU was even more condescending. Varadkar said that Irish politicians may have "tried to persuade" Arlene Foster that Northern Ireland would have "the best of both worlds" under the agreement, but that "it's not the best of both worlds that the DUP wants ... and if that means a lesser world, that's acceptable provided that the integrity of the Union is upheld". The haughtiness dripping from those words was quite something. The implication, which he clearly expected his audience of fellow deputies to share, was that unionists are so stupid they can't even recognise a good deal when they see one. This is the sort of thinking which has made the Brexit debate so toxic. Underlying everything is the assumption that the other side is being pig-headed, rather than just seeing things from a different perspective. The DUP is not holding out against the Withdrawal Agreement despite knowing that it offers them the best of both worlds. They're against it because they don't think it offers the best of any world. More than that, they're certain that the so-called "backstop", once implemented, would incrementally weaken Northern Ireland's constitutional position. They may be right about that, or wrong, but that's what they think. Nor are they alone in doing so. Scottish Nationalists obviously feel likewise, which is why they want the same half-in, half-out relationship with the EU which is currently being dangled in front of Northern Ireland. That's because they hope it would fatally weaken the Union, too. Regardless of what happens next, grandees in Dublin sneering at unionists for being so obsessed with "the precious Union" that they'd mulishly embrace a "lesser world" sends all the wrong signals about their imperious attitude to their neighbours. Nationalists - of all people - should know exactly what that condescension feels like: they were on the receiving end of it from London for long enough. The DUP gathers for its annual conference this weekend after one of the most turbulent years in the party's recent history. Thank goodness Boris Johnson will be speaking, just to calm everyone down. Brexit-marginalised by the Prime Minister; near-collapse of the confidence-and-supply arrangement with the Government and at odds with Northern Ireland's business and farming communities. Stormont in deep freeze; a failed attempt to sell an Irish Language Act; a series of embarrassments at the RHI inquiry. I'm half-expecting to turn up and find the conference cancelled. So those gathered at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Belfast - there's proof the party embraces change, as the conference is normally held at the La Mon - might be reeling from all such dramas. Yet the DUP has, of course, been written off before. Twenty years ago, the party's obituaries were being written. Opposition to the Good Friday Agreement placed the DUP at odds with every major political party, most of civic society and the industrial and business classes. Five years later and the DUP had become Northern Ireland's most popular party. Whilst the party might not revel in its current apparent isolation, it is operating at a much more rarefied level than was the case two decades ago. Last year saw it achieve a record vote share, its highest number of Westminster seats and power at Westminster. Having flexed its muscles this week on the Finance Bill, the DUP has illustrated how the Conservative government might struggle to pass legislation. The DUP's pro-Brexit voter base is not repelled by their party's approach or concerned by the vociferous condemnation of its rejection of the Prime Minister's EU withdrawal deal. The typical DUP voter is a skilled or semi-skilled manual worker, a small local business owner or a modestly-rewarded clerical worker - not a person doing cross-border business. Whether the DUP has used its power wisely is another matter. Last December saw the party veto Theresa May's plan to blithely proceed with a two-tier Brexit. This would have left Northern Ireland half-in and half-out of the EU in the (likely) event of a comprehensive UK-EU trade deal failing to be agreed which addressed the border issue. Exercise of that apparent veto ought to have provided a platform by which the DUP worked with local businesses and farmers, and those across the border, to examine what areas of continuing alignment with the EU might be acceptable - and not - and to present that case to the Westminster government and the EU. Instead, the DUP's blanket rejection of any internal regulatory divergence to manage the EU/UK border has been brushed aside, not just by May's government and the EU - that was to be expected - but by Northern Ireland's cross-border traders. The DUP could have been more cognisant of their genuine fears of a no-deal exit from the EU. The DUP's objection - as a unionist party - to checks on goods travelling from Great Britain to Northern Ireland is understandable. The Withdrawal Agreement is far too vague over their extent and scope. The DUP could still play a role in ensuring these are minimised and regularly reviewed and the party was entitled to greater clarity from the UK government. But it's hard to see the DUP mobilising a Unionist Task Force to Larne or Aldergrove to thwart these checks. Arlene Foster faces a tough job in her leader's speech in charting the way forward. She can hope her Westminster Ten will help down the Withdrawal Agreement - May's majority remains distant - but very few see a no deal exit as good for Northern Ireland. Parliamentary paralysis might lead to a People's Vote and possibly no Brexit. There are a few DUP members who, quietly, might not be too aghast - at least Remain would be a UK-wide policy - but we won't be hearing those voices in the conference hall. Most will be applauding Boris accusing the PM of betrayal. For Arlene, there is also the task of shoring up her position as leader. The extent of disquiet can be overblown. There have always been opponents - a few never wanted an 'Ulster Unionist' taking over 'their' party, but they are not a sizeable or coherent grouping. Some resented the attempt to revive Stormont via an Irish Language Act, but given her lack of local power, Foster's attempt at reviving the failed Assembly was understandable. Of more salience is the RHI inquiry verdict next spring. The DUP leader's best hope might be for the widest possible distribution of blame and a verdict grounded in cock-up not conspiracy. Leadership issues always attract interest and babble. But even if Foster was obliged to depart, what difference would it make? For I can exclusively reveal that there isn't a pro-Irish Language Act, same-sex marriage supporting, abortion liberalising, amnesties-for-all backing, Remain-voting, EU-sympathising, regulatory divergence-accepting rival candidate lurking within the DUP's ranks. Whatever the broader sense of crisis, there will be little talk of Spads or spats or schisms this weekend. A DUP conference is a convivial rally, much enjoyed by the faithful. Security might be tight, but that's just to keep out Conservative Whips. No votes are taken and the stage is a platform for some tub-thumping rhetoric - so Boris should blend in nicely - juxtaposed with some intelligent panel discussions with business stalwarts (that could be trickier this year). A bit like the Conservative conference, but more flags. It begins with prayers, which seems a particularly good idea this year. And to finish things off, there's always Willie McCrea singing 'There'll Always be an Ulster ... Farmers' Union'. Not. Jon Tonge is Professor of Politics at the Liverpool The Korean telecom leader has signed an agreement on the use of Big Data in preventing infectious diseases with the Ghana Health Service. South Koreas largest telecommunications company, KT Corporation has signed a historic deal with Ghana to fight epidemics in Africa and other parts of the world with the companys innovative technology. The Korean telecom leader has signed an agreement on the use of Big Data in preventing infectious diseases with the Ghana Health Service. Attendees at the signing ceremony in Accra, Ghana, included Yoon Jong-Jin, KTs senior executive vice president in charge of public relations and Dr. Anthony Nsiah Asare, director-general of Ghana Health Service (GHS). KTs disease prevention system analyzes location-based information including roaming data that it collects, uses the data to guide its customers on preventing epidemics, and builds a monitoring system that helps health authorities assess infection risk at the initial stage of an outbreak. Based on the projects success, KT is seeking collaboration with foreign governments and international organizations on the use of Big Data and information technology in preventing the spread of infectious diseases. Lung cancer today accounts for higher number of deaths in the country than colorectal cancer, prostate cancer and breast cancer. Data from Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) suggests that lung cancer is fast turning into an epidemic in India. It is a high-mortality cancer due to late stage at diagnosis and poor access to affordable healthcare, and today accounts for higher number of deaths in the country than colorectal cancer, prostate cancer and breast cancer. This was stated recently by oncologists from Vikram Hospital, Bengaluru, who were speaking at a workshop to create awareness about lung cancer in Bengaluru. Worldwide, November is observed as the lung cancer awareness month. Said Dr. Niti Raizada, Sr. Consultant Medical Oncologist and Hemato-oncologist, Vikram Hospital, Bengaluru: Only 15 percent of cases of lung cancer are curable at the time of diagnosis. Patients with lung cancer present themselves for diagnosis at a much later stage than other cancers due to the nature of the disease. Early on, people with lung cancer have no symptoms or vague symptoms. In fact, if lung cancer is detected by chest X-ray, it is already too late for the patient. The only effective method for screening lung cancer in early stages is the Low Dose Helical Lung CT, where high-resolution images pick up early lung lesions. Said Dr. Suraj Manjunath, Consultant Onco-surgeon, Vikram Hospital, Bengaluru: Lung cancer has one of the highest morbidity and mortality among all cancers. It accounts for 14.5% of all cancers in men and 8.4% in women globally. It is a leading cause of cancer death in men worldwide at 22%, which means that one in five of all cancer deaths in men occur due to lung cancer. Lung cancer accounts for 5.9% of all new cancer cases diagnosed in India (both sex combined), while mortality is 8.82% of all cancers combined. Smoking is the single largest contributor for lung cancer. Passive smoking, exposure to carcinogenic toxins like asbestos and radon, radiation and air pollutants are other causes, besides a small percentage of genetic cancer. Exposure of women to smoke from the burning of charcoal for cooking is also a cause of lung cancer. Physical activity may reduce the risk of lung cancer by about 20 percent. Exercise is known to improve lung function and reduce the danger of other diseases too. In the West, there is a small decrease in the number of smokers. However, such trend is not seen in India yet. Moreover, the country is seeing an emerging population of women smokers. The most common age group for lung cancer is 50-59 years, Dr. Niti Raizada said. Talking about prevention, Dr. KS Satish, Consultant Pulmonologist & Chest Physician, Vikram Hospital, Bengaluru, said: Its never too late for anyone to quit smoking. Quit by age 30 and you reduce the risk of smoking-related diseases by 90 percent! Quit by age 50 and you reduce the risk of smoking-related diseases by 50 percent. Quit by age 60 and you would live longer than smokers in your age group, according to data by the National Cancer Institute in US. In fact, 15 years after one quits smoking, the risk of lung cancer become the same as that of a non-smoker. Two out of every three patients with lung cancer are over 65 years of age, so one gets enough time in life to take steps to avoid this high-mortality disease. Said Dr. Somesh Mittal, CEO, Vikram Hospital, Bengaluru: In India, the highest reported incidence of lung cancer is from Mizoram in both males and females. Its incidence in North East India can be as high as 45 per 100,000 population. The time trends of lung cancer show a significant rise in Delhi, Chennai and Bengaluru across both sexes. The incidence and pattern of lung cancer differ as per geographic region and ethnicity, and largely reflect the prevalence and pattern of smoking. On occasion of Lung Cancer Awareness Month in November, Vikram Hospital Bengaluru is running a lung cancer screening program for chronic smokers, including assessment by paramedical workers and, if required, a low-dose CT scan of the chest. The hospital also offers smoking cessation therapy through a dedicated clinic run by the department of medical oncology to help smokers quit smoking. HxCentral plans to set up a healthcare center of excellence to accelerate innovation in improving the patient safety and healthcare quality through technology HxCentral, a SaaS-based healthcare solution of SapphireIMS which digitizes the core processes of a hospital plans to set up a healthcare center of excellence to accelerate innovation in improving the patient safety and healthcare quality through technology. HxCentral, a healthcare experience management solutions provider has announced its partnership with Indian Institute of Health Management Research (IIHMR), Bangalore, a premier healthcare research institute, to collaboratively improve the healthcare technology solutions that help hospitals in ensuring high rate of patient safety, improve quality compliance and overall healthcare experience. Indian healthcare industry is on the cusp of digital transformation. Digitization and automation of healthcare processes is becoming a critical need for hospitals to efficiently serve more patients, ensure their safety, comply with complex standards and importantly offer affordable healthcare to the public. IIHMR will bring its years of healthcare research experience that will enable the HxCentral solutions to be even more relevant to the current and future needs of the hospitals. Indian Institute of Health Management Research (IIHMR) was established in 1984, with a fundamental purpose of creating new knowledge and developing alternate modes of improving healthcare to management research, education and training in India and other parts of the world. Baiju VY, Vice President, at HxCentral is also selected as the Academic Advisory Council of IIHMR, Bangalore. In this role, Baiju will collaborate with the IIHMR experts in advancing the curriculum to set new standards for healthcare professionals of the future. As part of the agreement, HxCentral will set up its solution in IIHMR for the students to get a practical understanding of healthcare experience solutions and also to give them the exposure to real-world issues and challenges in managing the healthcare operations. Dr. S. D. Gupta, Trustee Secretary, IIHMR, Jaipur said, "Healthcare in India needs a different and a comprehensive approach to digital transformation. An approach led by healthcare institutes, solution providers, hospitals and academics. I am glad that this partnership between HxCentral and IIHMR will be pioneering this change." Baiju VY, Vice President at HxCentral said, "IIHMR is a premier healthcare research institute and I am confident that, together we will advance the innovation possibilities on healthcare digital transformation. Healthcare standards and regulations, such as NABH, JCI, HAAD-JAWDA are complex and takes a lot of understanding and preparedness to implement in everything we do at hospitals. Our idea is to integrate the standards mindset into the solutions and not as an afterthought. The healthcare CoE is one of its kind and am happy for the students as it will give them valuable exposure to the real industry needs." Dr. Usha Manjunath, Director, IIHMR said, "We are very excited to partner with HxCentral. There is still a lot of work to be done in the healthcare digitization space and such collaborations will help both the industry and the students, who are the future of this industry. A deep association with HxCentral will give us the right balance and direction to our research efforts that can have direct impact on patient safety and healthcare compliance." Margashirsha Begins Today, Here Is The List Of Festivals Falling In Margashirsha Festivals oi-Renu Margashirsha is the ninth month of the Hindu calendar. There are basically two ways that Hindu months are referred to. It is based on the day the month begins with. There is a Purnimant calendar in which the month ends with a Purnima and begins with another Purnima. It is vice-versa in the other, the Amant calendar. While the Purnimant calendar is followed in most of the Northern regions of India, it is the Amant calendar that the southern states mostly adhere to. However, the difference is seen only in the names of the months; all festivals fall on the same dates. Margashirsha will begin from 24 November 2018 and will continue till 22 December 2018. Here is the list of festivals falling in the month of November-December 2018. Take a look. 1. Kaalbhairav Jayanti Kaalbhairav Jayanti refers to the day when Lord Kaalbhairav was born. Lord Kaalbhairav is another fierce form of Lord Shiva. It is also known as Bhairav Ashtami, Bhairava Jayanti and Kala-Bhairava Ashtami. It is said that the one who worships Lord Shiva on this day stays blessed and protected from all forms of negative energies. Kaalbhairav Jayanti shall be observed on 29 November 2018. Most Read: Kartik Purnima Measures To Get A Blessed Happy Life 2. Utpanna Ekadashi Ekadashi refers to the eleventh day of a fortnight. There are two fortnights in a month; hence, there are two ekadashis as well. Utpanna Ekadashi will fall on 22 December 2018. The legend associated with this day tells us how all the Ekadashis began to be considered more auspicious than many other days of the months. An Ekadashi fast for Lord Vishnu is observed on this day, which shall fall on 3 December this year. 3. Vivah Panchami Vivah Panchami is the fifth day of the fortnight. This day marks the day when Lord Ram and Goddess Sita got married. Hindu devotees celebrate the festival with huge religious fervour. This year the festival will be celebrated on 12 December. 4. Gita Jayanti Celebrated on the eleventh day of the waxing phase of the moon, Gita Jayanti is the day when Bhagvad Gita was imparted by Lord Krishna to Arjuna. The most widely known literature of the world, Bhagvad Gita literally means the song of the universe. It falls on the Ekadashi during Shukla Paksha in the month of Margashirsha. This year it will be observed on 19 December 2018. it is also known as Mokshada Ekadashi. 5. Dattatreya Jayanti It is the birth anniversary of the Hindu deity Lord Dattatreya. Lord Dattatreya was the combined form of Lord Brahma, Lord Vishnu and Lord Shiva. Dattatreya Jayanti falls every year on the Purnima of the Margashirsha month. This year it will be observed on 22 December 2018. 6. Annapurna Jayanti Annapurna day is meant to celebrate the birth anniversary of Goddess Annapurna, the Goddess of nourishment. It is believed that she was the incarnation of Goddess Parvati. Celebrated according to different traditions and rituals, it is mainly the womenfolk who perform the associated rituals. This year the festival will be observed on 22 December 2018. 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Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) and Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi. [Photo: China Plus] During the conversation, Qureshi briefed Wang about Friday's attack against the Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi in south Pakistan and the preliminary investigation conducted by Pakistan, saying the Pakistani government and all sectors of the society strongly condemned the terrorist attack, and that the Pakistani government and its people will firmly stand together with their Chinese friends. The Pakistani side will carry out a thorough investigation and guarantee that all necessary measures be taken and the best efforts be made to eliminate terrorist forces, said Qureshi. The Pakistan-China friendship is precious and unique and the country will protect the safety of its Chinese friends like protecting its own citizens, Qureshi said. Qureshi's urgent briefing is a manifestation of the unshakeable China-Pakistan friendship, Wang said, adding that China is shocked by the attack, and strongly condemns the atrocity against the diplomatic institution. The Chinese side appreciated the Pakistani police's prompt and decisive action to ensure the safety of all Chinese nationals in the diplomatic compound, and expressed condolence to the Pakistani policemen killed during the attack, Wang said. Wang requested the Pakistani side to attach great importance to and conduct a thorough investigation into the incident, so as to prevent such incidents from happening again. Wang emphasized that any effort intended to harm the China-Pakistan friendship is doomed to fail, and Pakistan is definitely capable to maintain its domestic safety and stability. Username: Password: or Register Back to Forum Reply to This post Post New Thread Thread Rating: 1 Vote(s) - 1 Average 1 2 3 4 5 Page: 1 2 Free speech in Canada died today Pike Registered User User ID: 412570 11-23-2018 10:50 PM Posts: 1,609 Post: #1 Free speech in Canada died today Advertisement Free speech in Canada died today. Trudeau just announced a $600M initiative to give money to journalists who are trusted sources. Criteria to be set by people appointed by Trudeau. I dont care how you vote. If you care about free speech, you should oppose and share this. http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com My Website: Free speech in Canada died today. Trudeau just announced a $600M initiative to give money to journalists who are trusted sources. Criteria to be set by people appointed by Trudeau. I dont care how you vote. If you care about free speech, you should oppose and share this.My Website: https://canadianrepublicradio.blogspot.ca/ LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 474264 11-23-2018 11:01 PM Post: #2 RE: Free speech in Canada died today Pike Wrote: (11-23-2018 10:50 PM) Free speech in Canada died today. Trudeau just announced a $600M initiative to give money to journalists who are trusted sources. Criteria to be set by people appointed by Trudeau. I dont care how you vote. If you care about free speech, you should oppose and share this. Pin it! Watch the girl, she's right. Trudeau is subverting Canadian media and using your tax dollars to do it! Pin it!Watch the girl, she's right.Trudeau is subverting Canadian media and using your tax dollars to do it! ashes emerged from the BT lop guest User ID: 459308 11-23-2018 11:13 PM Post: #3 RE: Free speech in Canada died today Hang in there Canada. Trump should liberate Y'all next. He Man Subscriber User ID: 426188 11-23-2018 11:21 PM Posts: 40,089 Post: #4 RE: Free speech in Canada died today Helping real news and supporting non corporate media is in the interest of any democracy. This is a good idea, and will help fight the growing election interference and the spread of CT news and fake news that is dumbing down Canada and many other nations including the nations of the EU and theUK and US. Why let "untrusted news" flourish with dark money and foreign intelligence pumping BS and propaganda into the Canadian media? Feds give struggling media $600M in tax measures in fiscal update "OTTAWA - The federal government is stepping in to help the struggling Canadian media industry with new tax credits and incentives valued at nearly $600 million over the next five years. To protect the vital role that independent news media play in our democracy and in our communities, we will be introducing measures to help support journalism in Canada, Finance Minister Bill Morneau said in his speech to the House of Commons. The full details of the program won't be available until the next federal budget, after the government receives advice from an independent panel from the news industry. The goal is for the program to be funded by the government but have no role for politicians to decide what constitutes a media outlet or who would be eligible. That way, the government hopes to avoid the appearance of conflict between a free press and government influence. The program will likely cost the federal treasury about $45 million in 2019-20, rising to $165 million in 2023-24. It's expected most of the expense will be for a new tax credit for media organizations to support the labour costs of producing original news content, but finance officials said specific amounts won't be available until eligibility details have been decided. Another temporary tax credit will be created for subscribers to digital news media sites. Plus, the government will allow non-profit media organizations to apply for charitable status, enabling them to seek donations for which they could issue tax receipts. Non-profit media with such status would also be eligible to receive funding from other registered charities. La Presse, Canada's largest French daily newspaper, moved to become a non-profit entity earlier this year, severing ties with the Power Corp. conglomerate owned by the Desmarais family. Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre said his party would never endorse assistance for journalism. The Conservatives believe government help for journalists interferes with press freedom and Poilievre said the government is choosing who gets to sit on a panel that will ultimately decide which news organizations survive and which don't. We should not have a situation where the government picks a panel that then decides who gets to report the news, Poilievre said. Morneau dismissed the idea the government is buying journalists. Phillip Crawley, publisher of The Globe and Mail, which owns a share of The Canadian Press, said he welcomes all three of the initiatives as well as the government's stated commitment to the value of independent journalism. I think it will help give some confidence to media owners that there is something here they can work with, said Crawley. He said the government has made it very clear it wants no say in what counts as journalism for the purposes of these funds, adding the make-up of the independent panel will be crucial to ensuring the proposals don't interfere with press freedom. Crawley said the Globe gets 55 per cent of its revenues from subscriptions and the proposals will both encourage subscriptions and help media companies hire journalists to produce high-quality content that attracts subscribers. The Globe has also talked to the government about creating a separate charitable foundation to solicit donations from people and organizations that want to invest in certain types of journalism. John Honderich, chair of Torstar Corp., which owns the Toronto Star and a number of other newspapers as well as a share of The Canadian Press, said he is encouraged by the proposals. They should significantly help the media sector as it transforms to a sustainable digital future, he said in a statement. More than 250 news outlets in Canada have closed in the last 10 years and newspaper revenues alone are down as much as 40 per cent since 2012." https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/feds-give-st...-1.1172022 Here is the other side of the story that counters that fact free youtube video.Helpingand supporting non corporate media is in the interest of any democracy. This is a good idea, and will help fight the growing election interference and the spread of CT news and fake news that is dumbing down Canada and many other nations including the nations of the EU and theUK and US.Why let "untrusted news" flourish with dark money and foreign intelligence pumping BS and propaganda into the Canadian media?"OTTAWA - The federal government is stepping in to help the struggling Canadian media industry with new tax credits and incentives valued at nearly $600 million over the next five years.To protect the vital role that independent news media play in our democracy and in our communities, we will be introducing measures to help support journalism in Canada, Finance Minister Bill Morneau said in his speech to the House of Commons.The full details of the program won't be available until the next federal budget, after the government receives advice from an independent panel from the news industry.The goal is for the program to be funded by the government but have no role for politicians to decide what constitutes a media outlet or who would be eligible. That way, the government hopes to avoid the appearance of conflict between a free press and government influence.The program will likely cost the federal treasury about $45 million in 2019-20, rising to $165 million in 2023-24.It's expected most of the expense will be for a new tax credit for media organizations to support the labour costs of producing original news content, but finance officials said specific amounts won't be available until eligibility details have been decided.Another temporary tax credit will be created for subscribers to digital news media sites.Plus, the government will allow non-profit media organizations to apply for charitable status, enabling them to seek donations for which they could issue tax receipts. Non-profit media with such status would also be eligible to receive funding from other registered charities. La Presse, Canada's largest French daily newspaper, moved to become a non-profit entity earlier this year, severing ties with the Power Corp. conglomerate owned by the Desmarais family.Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre said his party would never endorse assistance for journalism. The Conservatives believe government help for journalists interferes with press freedom and Poilievre said the government is choosing who gets to sit on a panel that will ultimately decide which news organizations survive and which don't.We should not have a situation where the government picks a panel that then decides who gets to report the news, Poilievre said.Crawley said the Globe gets 55 per cent of its revenues from subscriptions and the proposals will both encourage subscriptions and help media companies hire journalists to produce high-quality content that attracts subscribers. The Globe has also talked to the government about creating a separate charitable foundation to solicit donations from people and organizations that want to invest in certain types of journalism.John Honderich, chair of Torstar Corp., which owns the Toronto Star and a number of other newspapers as well as a share of The Canadian Press, said he is encouraged by the proposals.They should significantly help the media sector as it transforms to a sustainable digital future, he said in a statement.More than 250 news outlets in Canada have closed in the last 10 years and newspaper revenues alone are down as much as 40 per cent since 2012." Making LOP Great again since 06-07-2013! Robert Reich @RBReich "News flash: If you ban mask mandates, outlaw abortions, dictate what educators can teach in schools, and stop people from voting, you're not the party of "limited government."" He Man Subscriber User ID: 426188 11-23-2018 11:22 PM Posts: 40,089 Post: #5 RE: Free speech in Canada died today ashes emerged from the BT Wrote: (11-23-2018 11:13 PM) Hang in there Canada. Trump should liberate Y'all next. Trump's going to have a hard time doing that from jail. Trump's going to have a hard time doing that from jail. Making LOP Great again since 06-07-2013! Robert Reich @RBReich "News flash: If you ban mask mandates, outlaw abortions, dictate what educators can teach in schools, and stop people from voting, you're not the party of "limited government."" LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 408320 11-23-2018 11:24 PM Post: #6 RE: Free speech in Canada died today Looks like an open admission that the left is willing to use your tax dollars to pay for leftist shilling to me. nordway Registered User User ID: 455922 11-23-2018 11:25 PM Posts: 123 Post: #7 RE: Free speech in Canada died today It died a long time ago Join my conspiracy discord chat server - https://discord.gg/a88FcGk (no registration needed) https://conspiracybear.com/ Sorry if my English is bad not my 1st language. . LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 445011 11-23-2018 11:28 PM Post: #8 RE: Free speech in Canada died today He Man Wrote: (11-23-2018 11:21 PM) Here is the other side of the story that counters that fact free youtube video. Helping real news and supporting non corporate media is in the interest of any democracy. This is a good idea, and will help fight the growing election interference and the spread of CT news and fake news that is dumbing down Canada and many other nations including the nations of the EU and theUK and US. Why let "untrusted news" flourish with dark money and foreign intelligence pumping BS and propaganda into the Canadian media? Feds give struggling media $600M in tax measures in fiscal update "OTTAWA - The federal government is stepping in to help the struggling Canadian media industry with new tax credits and incentives valued at nearly $600 million over the next five years. To protect the vital role that independent news media play in our democracy and in our communities, we will be introducing measures to help support journalism in Canada, Finance Minister Bill Morneau said in his speech to the House of Commons. The full details of the program won't be available until the next federal budget, after the government receives advice from an independent panel from the news industry. The goal is for the program to be funded by the government but have no role for politicians to decide what constitutes a media outlet or who would be eligible. That way, the government hopes to avoid the appearance of conflict between a free press and government influence. The program will likely cost the federal treasury about $45 million in 2019-20, rising to $165 million in 2023-24. It's expected most of the expense will be for a new tax credit for media organizations to support the labour costs of producing original news content, but finance officials said specific amounts won't be available until eligibility details have been decided. Another temporary tax credit will be created for subscribers to digital news media sites. Plus, the government will allow non-profit media organizations to apply for charitable status, enabling them to seek donations for which they could issue tax receipts. Non-profit media with such status would also be eligible to receive funding from other registered charities. La Presse, Canada's largest French daily newspaper, moved to become a non-profit entity earlier this year, severing ties with the Power Corp. conglomerate owned by the Desmarais family. Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre said his party would never endorse assistance for journalism. The Conservatives believe government help for journalists interferes with press freedom and Poilievre said the government is choosing who gets to sit on a panel that will ultimately decide which news organizations survive and which don't. We should not have a situation where the government picks a panel that then decides who gets to report the news, Poilievre said. Morneau dismissed the idea the government is buying journalists. Phillip Crawley, publisher of The Globe and Mail, which owns a share of The Canadian Press, said he welcomes all three of the initiatives as well as the government's stated commitment to the value of independent journalism. I think it will help give some confidence to media owners that there is something here they can work with, said Crawley. He said the government has made it very clear it wants no say in what counts as journalism for the purposes of these funds, adding the make-up of the independent panel will be crucial to ensuring the proposals don't interfere with press freedom. Crawley said the Globe gets 55 per cent of its revenues from subscriptions and the proposals will both encourage subscriptions and help media companies hire journalists to produce high-quality content that attracts subscribers. The Globe has also talked to the government about creating a separate charitable foundation to solicit donations from people and organizations that want to invest in certain types of journalism. John Honderich, chair of Torstar Corp., which owns the Toronto Star and a number of other newspapers as well as a share of The Canadian Press, said he is encouraged by the proposals. They should significantly help the media sector as it transforms to a sustainable digital future, he said in a statement. More than 250 news outlets in Canada have closed in the last 10 years and newspaper revenues alone are down as much as 40 per cent since 2012." https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/feds-give-st...-1.1172022 This person quote above hates freespeech. He hates that you or I can take our phones out in public and film things and report it online. He agrees with tyrants that would supress freespeech so that only the government controlled narrative is promoted. People like him are out of touch with reality. They dont understand they can not shut down the internet. That anyone with a camera can be a journalist. They hate freespeech because it doesnt promote their agenda. This person quote above hates freespeech.He hates that you or I can take our phones out in public and film things and report it online. He agrees with tyrants that would supress freespeech so that only the government controlled narrative is promoted.People like him are out of touch with reality. They dont understand they can not shut down the internet. That anyone with a camera can be a journalist. They hate freespeech because it doesnt promote their agenda. LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 445011 11-23-2018 11:32 PM Post: #9 RE: Free speech in Canada died today Pike Wrote: (11-23-2018 10:50 PM) Free speech in Canada died today. Trudeau just announced a $600M initiative to give money to journalists who are trusted sources. Criteria to be set by people appointed by Trudeau. I dont care how you vote. If you care about free speech, you should oppose and share this. TO be frank, I feel Canada lost their freespeech with hatespeech laws. The ability to speak even when your opinion is disagreeable is a thing, and when government decides what is disagreeable and what is not... Well your f**ked. Canada has been in trouble for awhile..... Never thought Id miss harper. Ugh TO be frank, I feel Canada lost their freespeech with hatespeech laws.The ability to speak even when your opinion is disagreeable is a thing, and when government decides what is disagreeable and what is not...Well your f**ked.Canada has been in trouble for awhile..... Never thought Id miss harper. Ugh LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 474900 11-23-2018 11:48 PM Post: #10 RE: Free speech in Canada died today He Man Wrote: (11-23-2018 11:22 PM) ashes emerged from the BT Wrote: (11-23-2018 11:13 PM) Hang in there Canada. Trump should liberate Y'all next. Trump's going to have a hard time doing that from jail. Go find a rawstory ta deluded leftie globalist puppet Go find a rawstory ta deluded leftie globalist puppet sovietCUCKISTAN lop guest User ID: 372620 11-23-2018 11:50 PM Post: #11 RE: Free speech in Canada died today Quote: Hang in there Canada. Trump should liberate Y'all next. start with toronto and vancouver. start with toronto and vancouver. Uppity Me Registered User User ID: 449159 11-23-2018 11:56 PM Posts: 38,413 Post: #12 RE: Free speech in Canada died today ashes emerged from the BT Wrote: (11-23-2018 11:13 PM) Hang in there Canada. Trump should liberate Y'all next. No Canada, liberate yourself, don't wait for us btw - it's your money that he is stealing - keep that in mind No Canada, liberate yourself, don't wait for usbtw - it's your money that he is stealing - keep that in mind Quote: Les pauvres n'ont-ils des Euros ? Alors laissez les pauvres 'sh*t' dans les rues Uppity Me Registered User User ID: 449159 11-24-2018 12:00 AM Posts: 38,413 Post: #13 RE: Free speech in Canada died today He Man Wrote: (11-23-2018 11:21 PM) Here is the other side of the story that counters that fact free youtube video. Helping real news and supporting non corporate media is in the interest of any democracy. This is a good idea, and will help fight the growing election interference and the spread of CT news and fake news that is dumbing down Canada and many other nations including the nations of the EU and theUK and US. Why let "untrusted news" flourish with dark money and foreign intelligence pumping BS and propaganda into the Canadian media? Feds give struggling media $600M in tax measures in fiscal update "OTTAWA - The federal government is stepping in to help the struggling Canadian media industry with new tax credits and incentives valued at nearly $600 million over the next five years. To protect the vital role that independent news media play in our democracy and in our communities, we will be introducing measures to help support journalism in Canada, Finance Minister Bill Morneau said in his speech to the House of Commons. The full details of the program won't be available until the next federal budget, after the government receives advice from an independent panel from the news industry. The goal is for the program to be funded by the government but have no role for politicians to decide what constitutes a media outlet or who would be eligible. That way, the government hopes to avoid the appearance of conflict between a free press and government influence. The program will likely cost the federal treasury about $45 million in 2019-20, rising to $165 million in 2023-24. It's expected most of the expense will be for a new tax credit for media organizations to support the labour costs of producing original news content, but finance officials said specific amounts won't be available until eligibility details have been decided. Another temporary tax credit will be created for subscribers to digital news media sites. Plus, the government will allow non-profit media organizations to apply for charitable status, enabling them to seek donations for which they could issue tax receipts. Non-profit media with such status would also be eligible to receive funding from other registered charities. La Presse, Canada's largest French daily newspaper, moved to become a non-profit entity earlier this year, severing ties with the Power Corp. conglomerate owned by the Desmarais family. Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre said his party would never endorse assistance for journalism. The Conservatives believe government help for journalists interferes with press freedom and Poilievre said the government is choosing who gets to sit on a panel that will ultimately decide which news organizations survive and which don't. We should not have a situation where the government picks a panel that then decides who gets to report the news, Poilievre said. Morneau dismissed the idea the government is buying journalists. Phillip Crawley, publisher of The Globe and Mail, which owns a share of The Canadian Press, said he welcomes all three of the initiatives as well as the government's stated commitment to the value of independent journalism. I think it will help give some confidence to media owners that there is something here they can work with, said Crawley. He said the government has made it very clear it wants no say in what counts as journalism for the purposes of these funds, adding the make-up of the independent panel will be crucial to ensuring the proposals don't interfere with press freedom. Crawley said the Globe gets 55 per cent of its revenues from subscriptions and the proposals will both encourage subscriptions and help media companies hire journalists to produce high-quality content that attracts subscribers. The Globe has also talked to the government about creating a separate charitable foundation to solicit donations from people and organizations that want to invest in certain types of journalism. John Honderich, chair of Torstar Corp., which owns the Toronto Star and a number of other newspapers as well as a share of The Canadian Press, said he is encouraged by the proposals. They should significantly help the media sector as it transforms to a sustainable digital future, he said in a statement. More than 250 news outlets in Canada have closed in the last 10 years and newspaper revenues alone are down as much as 40 per cent since 2012." https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/feds-give-st...-1.1172022 Uh, no You don't steal over one half Billion dollars of hard earned taxpayer money to "assist" your friends - in any situation Stealing is stealing, no matter what you nut cases call it Uh, noYou don't steal over one half Billion dollars of hard earned taxpayer money to "assist" your friends - in any situation Quote: Les pauvres n'ont-ils des Euros ? Alors laissez les pauvres 'sh*t' dans les rues LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 448972 11-24-2018 12:04 AM Post: #14 RE: Free speech in Canada died today ashes emerged from the BT Wrote: (11-23-2018 11:13 PM) Hang in there Canada. Trump should liberate Y'all next. Nahh please stay there. Deal with your own problems. We don't need your type of liberation. Nahh please stay there. Deal with your own problems. We don't need your type of liberation. LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 445011 11-24-2018 12:10 AM Post: #15 RE: Free speech in Canada died today sovietCUCKISTAN Wrote: (11-23-2018 11:50 PM) Quote: Hang in there Canada. Trump should liberate Y'all next. start with toronto and vancouver. Arent you quite the French racist. LOL Arent you quite the French racist. LOL Advertisement Back to Forum Reply to This post Post New Thread Site traffic information and cookies We use cookies to collect and analyse information on our site's performance and to enable the site to function. Cookies also allow us and our partners to show you relevant ads when you visit our site and other 3rd party websites, including social networks.You can choose to allow all cookies by clicking Allow allor manage them individually by clicking Manage cookie preferences, where you will also find more information. A shortage of workers in Manitobas hog industry is putting pressure on companies such as Brandons Maple Leaf Foods, the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council says. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 23/11/2018 (1097 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Advertisement Advertise With Us Hylife Foods staff assemble at the newly modernized integrated pork processing plant in Neepawa earlier this year, which was part of a $176 million upgrade and expansion project. (Submitted) A shortage of workers in Manitobas hog industry is putting pressure on companies such as Brandons Maple Leaf Foods, the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council says. Both Maple Leaf and Neepawas HyLife Foods "are having trouble getting enough people to work in their operations," said Debra Hauer, project manager for a new labour market survey being conducted by the council. "We have had a strong response (to the survey) from Manitoba and also a very strong response from pork producers because theyre really feeling the labour pinch," Bauer said. Spokespeople for Maple Leaf Foods and HyLife Foods could not be reached for comment this week. In HyLifes case, unemployment in the area is low, Bauer said, "and so the challenge is to recruit people to come and live in the community and to work in the sector." As well, she said, both Maple Leaf and HyLife "are very concerned about having enough products to enter their plants." Rural abattoirs are also faced with labour shortages, Bauer said, adding that this has also had an impact on production. "The pork industry is being whipsawed, caught in the cross-currents of a trade war right now," Bauer said, and that is affecting the prices Manitoba producers are able to get for their product. A survey conducted by the council four years ago found labour shortages were costing Canadas agriculture sector $1.5 billion a year. In Manitoba, the cost was $282 million, or five per cent of sales affected by labour shortages. "Its just a series of unfortunate events that are happening right now," Bauer said. Manitoba Pork general manager Andrew Dickson said there is always high turnover in the hog-processing industry. "Its tough work," he said. While companies try to hire locally, immigration programs such as the provincial nominee program have had great success in attracting and retaining workers. In fact, he said, the first worker brought into the province by the newly created provincial nominee program 20 years ago got a job in the hog industry. Since it began, the program has attracted more than 130,000 immigrants to this province. The new survey, which is seeking participation from more than 1,000 producers, farm workers and stakeholder organizations, closes Nov. 30. The results will be released next spring. brobertson@brandonsun.com Twitter: @BudRobertson4 After promising last week to bring a detox centre to Brandon if elected, Manitoba NDP Leader Wab Kinew used question period on Thursday to press the provincial government to do the same, after he and others received a letter calling for more addictions treatment services in the Westman area. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 23/11/2018 (1097 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Advertisement Advertise With Us THE CANADIAN PRESS Manitoba NDP Leader Wab Kinew speaks to media after the reading of the throne speech in Winnipeg on Tuesday. (The Canadian Press) After promising last week to bring a detox centre to Brandon if elected, Manitoba NDP Leader Wab Kinew used question period on Thursday to press the provincial government to do the same, after he and others received a letter calling for more addictions treatment services in the Westman area. Kinew said he received a letter from a mother in Brandon who drove her son to Winnipeg last month to be treated for his methamphetamine addiction. Although he didnt mention her by name, the letter was sent in an email by Kim Longstreet, who has been publicly calling for more detox and long-term treatment options in Brandon along with several others in the city. Her letter touched on the difficulties she faced having to travel two hours away to get her son to rehab, only for him to be admitted into a program that lasts only a few weeks. Longstreet sent her letter to Kinew, as well as the premier, health minister, Brandons two MLAs, the leader of the Manitoba Liberal Party, the member of Parliament for Brandon-Souris and the mayor. Kinew told The Brandon Sun that Longstreets letter illustrates the need for a detox facility in Brandon. In his alternative throne speech released last week, Kinew promised to use federal funds that are already earmarked for addictions and mental health in Manitoba to renovate an existing building into a detox centre, at an estimated cost of $2 million. The province has opened five Rapid Access to Addictions Medicine clinics in Manitoba, including one in Brandon, to connect people to addictions treatment, but Kinew criticized the clinics for only being open a few hours a week. "Some issues are rising under his (Brian Pallister) watch and the meth crisis is one of them," Kinew said. During question period, Premier Brian Pallister said as someone who grew up in a rural environment, he understood the challenges of being further away from services. He said several hundred people have already been helped by the RAAM clinics and noted that the NDP did not open any locations while in government. "I appreciate the members concerns, I hear them, but I also appreciate reasonable questions and I havent heard those," he said. Manitoba Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont, who also received Longstreets letter, said he emailed her back right away, noting that she was the first person who put the meth crisis on his radar more than a year ago. Lamont, in his own throne speech released this week, said his party would use cannabis revenue to create a prevention program and drug stabilization units for people to detox in. He said the province also needs affordable long-term treatment and transitional housing with mental health supports. "We really need action on this and its too bad that its sort of become a partisan issue, because it shouldnt be," Lamont said. Longstreet, meanwhile, said services are needed closer to home so people have a chance to re-integrate into their communities. "Im doing what I know is the right thing to be doing for many, many people in our trading area who are struggling and who, if they had the right resources ready for them when theyre ready, the success rate would be much, much better," she said. In a statement, Health, Seniors and Active Living Minister Cameron Friesen said the government will respond to Longstreets letter and "continue to make good investments that address the rising challenge of addictions in our communities." "Manitobans understand we are making an important investment to address addictions challenges in Brandon and the Westman region," he added. "I was pleased to visit the 7th Street Health Access Centre earlier this month to see one of the newest Rapid Access to Addictions Medicine clinics, which offers faster access to addiction specialists, treatments and supports." "In just one month, dozens of people have sought help at this clinic, joining hundreds who have visited these clinics throughout the province." In a text message, a spokesperson for Brandon East Progressive Conservative MLA Len Isleifson said his office, along with Brandon West PC MLA Reg Helwer, communicate with Longstreet regularly about drug use and detox centres. "Our office is very proud of the steps our government is taking with regards to this issue with such things as the opening of the RAAM clinic in the 7th Street (Health) Access (Centre) here in Brandon," the spokesperson said. "We receive frequent emails from Ms. Longstreet and do our best to ensure each one is brought to the attention of the minister and his staff." A spokesperson for Brandon-Souris Conservative MP Larry Maguire said he received the email and would respond as well. In an email, Mayor Rick Chrest said he offered his support to Longstreet, along with his "continued advocacy" toward issues she and others in the community are facing. "The matters are not municipal in nature," Chrest said. "However, we remain engaged and supportive of efforts being undertaken by senior levels of government." mlee@brandonsun.com Twitter: @mtaylorlee Stocks rose Friday on expectations that major infrastructure projects will finally take off after the government signed loan agreements with China and Japan. The Philippine Stock Exchange index, the 30-company benchmark, gained 71 points, or 1 percent, to close at 7,340.18 Friday. The broader all-share index also went up 33 points, or 0.8 percent, to settle at 4,409.23, on a value turnover of P14.8 billion. Gainers outnumbered losers, 108 to 74, while 46 issues were unchanged. Fourteen of the 20 most active stocks ended in the green, led by Bloomberry Resorts Corp. which climbed 5.1 percent to P8.02 and Security Bank Corp. which picked up 5 percent to P162.80. Meanwhile, fresh fears over headwinds facing the global economy saw Asian stocks plunge into the red Friday, in light holiday trading after US markets were closed for Thanksgiving. Chinese shares led the downward charge as Shanghai slumped by more than two percent, with the tech sector hit hard by a Wall Street Journal report that Washington is urging its allies to avoid using equipment from Chinese telecoms giant Huawei. Worsening tensions between the US and China have shattered confidence on global trading floors, and investors were sceptical of new claims from Donald Trump he was hopeful of resolving the bitter trade dispute between the two countries. China wants to make a deal. If we can make a deal, we will, Trump said, ahead of crunch talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the G20 in Argentina next week. Beijing Friday also signalled its willingness to make progress, with vice minister of commerce Wang Shouwen telling a press briefing he hoped the two economic heavyweights could finally find a solution to solve the problem. But the fractious recent APEC summitwhich for the first time ever failed to issue a joint statement after US-China trade tensions boiled overhas set an ominous tone for the high-stakes summit in Buenos Aires. The worlds top two economies have been locked in a trade war since the summer, with the US imposing punitive tariffs on Chinese goods worth $250 billion per year. In retaliation, China imposed tariffs on $110 billion of US goods. Washington has threatened to toughen measures even further if the issue is not resolved before January. Investors are waiting for either a conclusion to the trade war or for Xi to present some meaningful stimulus, James Soutter, head of global equities at K2 Asset Management in Melbourne, told Bloomberg News. Chinese companies are actually more sanguine than investors, and in many cases still seeing growth, although not at the levels of last year.Speculation is growing that the Peoples Bank of China will again cut the level of cash that banks must hold in reserve, in a fresh bid to lower financing costs and blunt the economic impact of the trade dispute with the US. The [Chinese] central bank is worried about external shocks in the wake of the cantankerous APEC summit which highlighted a considerable political divide, said Stephen Innes, head of Asia-Pacific trade at trading group Oanda. But moves are unlikely to be substantial given the local markets are effectively in holiday mode. With markets in Japan and India closed for holidays, Hong Kong, Taipei and Seoul all chalked up losses on Friday, as Asian stocks headed for a third week in the red. Sydney, which saw gains of 0.4 percent, was a rare bright spot. European stocks steadied at the start of trading on Friday following another volatile week for markets. London and Paris were flat, while Frankfurt gained 0.1 percent. US markets will open for a partial day Friday. The pound fell Friday, erasing its gains the previous day after Britain and the European Union struck a crucial draft deal on post-Brexit ties, as uncertainty again triggered unease. But analysts said many forex traders were biding their time. Currencies are also likely to stay within current ranges ahead of the Trump-Xi meeting next week, which could provide a deeper move depending on the outcome, Khoon Goh, head of Asia research at ANZ in Singapore, told Bloomberg News. The bearish mood was exacerbated by fresh falls in crude prices as traders took fright over risks of oversupply, after US authorities announced stockpiles had climbed for the eighth week in a row. The overhang from swelling US inventories which remain freshly minted in trader minds suggests the massive crude glut continues to outweigh OPEC output cut, Innes said. Google Ireland paid just under 171m in tax last year as turnover increased by almost 6bn to 32.2bn, according to its annual financial statements. The online giant said the turnover increase was primarily driven by a rise in advertising revenues, generated by an increase in the number of paid clicks through Googles advertising programmes. Small artisan craftspeople are joining forces to encourage shoppers to think of buying local during Black Friday. The artisan businesses are encouraging consumers to use the #GreenFriday tag in their social media activities. Their hope is to gain a little traction on the back of the flood of #blackfriday tweets. In 2017, Irish Customers spent 16bn in online shopping on this day, 75% of which was on websites outside of Ireland. Even opting for local Irish websites would make a difference. Its a movement to get people to support local Irish-owned businesses, said Kay Lyng, Irish jewelry designer, entrepreneur and owner of K Kajoux Jewels in Kilkenny. Were hoping some people will rally around #GreenFriday and save small businesses from being completely lost in the busiest commercial week of the year. Small businesses arent in a position to discount to compete with the big corporate entities. "I decided not to discount online because that would mean undercutting the stores that support me all year. Some readers will be familiar with K Kajouxs handmade jewellery, all unique items crafted from semi-precious stones, swarovski crystals and freshwater pearls. Were hoping people will think to just show a little solidarity with local businesses, said Kay Lyng, who is also an advocate of the Trading Online Voucher Scheme (TOVS) hosted by the Local Enterprise Offices (LEOs) network. Oisin Geoghegan, chair of the network of Local Enterprise Offices, said: The Trading Online Voucher Scheme (TOVS) can make transformative changes to a small business. Salina Skinny Bracelet, retails at 23.95 on www.kkajoux.com. In todays ever-evolving business world, the ability to trade online and sell your products and services around the globe is essential in expanding revenue streams. Along with a grant of up to 2,500 to help them trade online the scheme also provides expert advise on how to set your business up online from experienced Local Enterprise Office mentors that is invaluable to small businesses taking that first step online. "Getting trading online as a small business is a lot easier than you think. Ireland's future strength in advanced business education will be reinforced with next Mondays formal opening of the new UCC Centre for Executive Education at No1 Lapps Quay. The new centre is Irelands biggest undergraduate business college, effectively combining the Irish Management Institute (IMI) and Cork University Business School (CUBS), and it is the second largest postgraduate business college in Ireland. UCC has committed 30m to the new centre. 1 Lapps Quay is phase one of this development and the other will be the acquisition within the city centre of a large building which will be purpose-fit for the business school. There will be lots more news to come, said Prof Ursula Kilkelly, Head, College of Business and Law, UCC. Mondays formal opening with An Tanaiste Simon Coveney will focus on our commitment to executive education and to our local communities. We are also looking at the opportunities which our association with IMI will create in terms of delivering the kinds of executive education required by the business community, from local SMEs up to multinationals. The association has combined our research capability with IMIs cutting edge industry focus to create a hub that will deliver pathways right across the educational spectrum. The UCC Centre for Executive Education is effectively the culmination of seven years of partnership between CUBS and IMI. They combined their strengths with the formation of CUBS in 2015. That partnership was central to the UCC centre bringing in 16 professors and significantly transforming the colleges capabilities in areas such as syntech, information services, fintech and data analytics. UCC now offers a continuum of business education from undergraduate through postgraduate and onto doctorate level and MBA. In 2016, UCC acquired IMI. Since then, UCCs reputation continues to soar across financial services and entrepreneurship, with the universitys ability to harness its undergraduates business ambitions delivering cross-departmental benefits from food to science, among others. Ursula Kilkelly (BA, LLM, PhD) is Head of the College of Business and Law, UCC. She is also currently Dean of the School of Law at University College Cork and is a Professor of Law. She is an international childrens rights scholar. She has published widely on childrens rights, the European Convention on Human Rights and youth justice. At UCC, Ursula directs the innovative Child Law Clinic, a research initiative which provides student-led research services to lawyers litigating childrens issues. She says the formal launch of the new centre at 1 Lapps Quay not only keeps UCC close to its business partners, it also confirms the colleges long-held commitment to serving local communities in Cork. The building at 1 Lapps Quay has always been a bank; from Cork Savings Bank to Trustee Savings Bank to Permanent TSB Bank. It will now effectively become a Bank of Knowledge with a clear plan to serve students, business and society alike. Like UCC itself, the building is steeped in history. Designed by architects T and K Deane in 1839, the now listed building first opened to the public in 1842. A cornerstone of the citys architectural heritage, the landmark 7,600sq ft building was constructed using locally sourced limestone from the Ballinlough quarry and retains many of its internal and external features, including a three-storey banking hall, offices and a large boardroom. Purchased by UCC in 2016, the building has been sensitively refurbished and enhanced. Central to the redevelopment is the restoration of the historically significant banking hall, which will be made available for future events. The decision to move into the heart of the city centre sits well with our presidents [UCC President, Professor Patrick OShea] commitment that the college would be city-facing, that we should be of the community and for the community, said Prof Kilkelly. Our choice of building is part of our partnership with the community. The building has been designed very tastefully. With this building, we are part of the renewal of the city centre. A lot of companies and universities around the world are moving to greenfield sites. At UCC, we decided a long time ago that we would strive to make a positive economic impact on the city. The campus is small and we need to expand, but were committed to expanding within the city centre. We are also listening closely to the needs of business. Our Dean [Prof Thia Hennessy, Dean of CUBS] is a member of Cork Chamber of Commerce. The formal launch of the UCC Centre for Executive Education at 1 Lapps Quay ticks a lot of boxes for the college. Not least of these is the commitment to deliver courses which are closely aligned to the needs of industry and business. Like all third level colleges, in recent decades UCC has come under increasing pressure from the State to take initiatives to become more self-financing. It has passed that test with flying colours. A study earlier this year showed that UCCs graduates and postgraduates are finding employment at rates of around 95%. The college is contributing over 850m to the Irish economy through expenditure and tax payments. UCC currently employs 2,700 staff and supports 15,000 jobs. According to the study, UCCs 241m development plan for the years 2017-22 will support a further 11,482 full-time jobs. Those figures do not include an estimate of the likely impact of the new centre at 1 Lapps Quay, nor the likely impact of its eventual twin business college, also in the city centre at a location yet to be confirmed. Were you born in 1978? If so, you've free entry into Dublin Zoo tomorrow! November 24 is the day Sibu the Orangutan turns the ripe old age of 40 and to celebrate Dublin Zoo are giving free entry to any one of the same age. Kids will also be able to visit for half price. The day will be celebrated with themed arts and crafts, a special keeper talk, orangutan games and a fundraiser for the Orangutan Foundation. Just don't forget your I.D! Black Friday and Cyber Monday are known worldwide as the biggest shopping days of the year and with flash deals popping up left, right and center most people don't give too much thought to where they're spending their money, beyond where they'll get the best deal. With that being said, its important to remember to shop your local businesses during this time as well. The Department of Transportation and port operator International Container Terminal Services Inc. inaugurated the Cavite Gateway Terminal, the countrys first container barge terminal. A project by ICTSI, in coordination with the DOTr and Philippine Ports Authority, the Cavite Gateway Terminal will allow trans-shipment of cargo from international ports in Manila to Cavite via barges and roll-on roll-off operations. ICTSI said that by moving cargo and people out of the roads and into the waterways, the CGT was expected to decongest traffic in major roads and offer a faster, more cost-effective access to the Cavite market. The terminal offers direct port-to-port customer service and seamless cargo transfer to other major Luzon ports, acting as a container hub and provisions for empty container storage. Located in Tanza, Cavite, the terminal is positioned to be strategic, as it is within the presence of the Cavite Export Processing Zone, which hosts 400-plus actively operating companies in the municipality of Rosario, and future processing zones in neighboring cities. The CGT has an annual capacity of 115,000 twenty-foot equivalent units, including a RoRo wharf, storage for dry laden and empty containers, project cargo and ISO tanks. It will also offer RoRo barge berthing, container storage/yard leasing, empty container maintenance and repair, dry and reefer, container weighing and other container related services.All services are backed by a state-of-the-art logistics hub on 24/7 systems-based operation and a one-stop logistics shop for reefers dry cargo. Once operational, the CGT is expected to result in 140,000 fewer truck trips annually, reducing road traffic by almost two kilometers of trucks per day. As we try to make the Filipino life comfortable, we also try to make the pursuit of the businessman worthwhile and profitable, Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade said. Construction of the CGT began in October 2017 and was completed in about a year. Barge operations started in September. A Brazilian student has described how an attack by a serial sex offender she met on Tinder destroyed her dream of learning English here. Patrick Nevin (37) was convicted last December of sexually assaulting a Brazilian student whom he had met for a first date, after they contacted each other via Tinder in July 2014. Last June Nevin pleaded guilty to raping a second woman and sexually assaulting a third victim. These attacks also took place in July 2014 and also involved Nevin meeting the women on Tinder and then picking them up at their home in his car. Nevin, with former addresses of Mounttown, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin and Castlebellingham, Co Louth, then drove the women to secluded locations and attacked them. After a trial in late 2017 a jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court found him guilty of sexually assaulting the Brazilian woman on UCD campus, south Dublin on July 23, 2014. His lawyers told the court this morning, that Nevin continues to deny the charge. The Brazilian woman, aged 36, told the court that it had been very hard for her to travel back here for the trial last year and to see her attacker. Becoming tearful at times and flanked by the investigating garda, the woman said when the jury returned a guilty verdict, she felt a freedom she hasn't felt for a long time. She said that she the attack forced her to change her plans to learn English here and she was only able to find work as a cleaner. She said she was working alone most of the time so the only words she learned were related to cleaning. She said she still dreams of returning to Ireland to live here. Patrick McGrath SC, defending, told the court that his client does not accept the verdict of the jury. Judge Cormac Quinn adjourned sentence to next Tuesday. Nevin is due to be sentenced in another court next December for the rape offence and the other assault. The woman told the trial that she thought he was taking her for a coffee when he picked her up in his car. She said he drove her to a secluded field on UCD campus and his demeanour changed completely and he became like a monster. She said he attacked her and she was in fear of her life. After deliberating for around 90 minutes, the jury of six men and six women returned a unanimous verdict of guilty on the single count. After the jury left the court room, Nevin told his lawyers, I don't accept that verdict. The woman said that she had come to Ireland to learn English and had arrived the previous month. She said she was using Tinder as a way of meeting people and practicing speaking English. After some weeks of communicating with the accused on the Tinder dating programme and on Whatsapp, she arranged to meet him. She said she believed they were going for a coffee, but the man later told gardai that he saw the date as a hook up for sex. He picked her up in his car, a blue BMW, and drove her to a secluded field on UCD campus. The woman said that he then changed completely, becoming aggressive and sexually assaulting her. After his arrest, Nevin told gardai that while in the car he leaned in to kiss the woman and that she pushed him away and he moved away. He said she then became hysterical and freaked out before jumping out of the car. He then drove off. Investigating gardai put it to the man that nobody would react like that over a kiss. They asked him if he had lost it and got angry because she had knocked him back. Paul Burns SC, prosecuting, told the jurors that simply agreeing to meet someone does not make them fair game. He said the complainant was not looking for sex and at no stage did she show an interest in meeting the man for sex. Everyone has the right to say no to sexual advances. No-one is entitled to force themselves on another, to kiss or force themselves on another, he said. He said there was no reason for the woman to lie and it was highly unlikely that a woman would travel here, three years after the events in question, to mislead or make false allegations. He asked why someone would subject themselves to what she had undergone in the courtroom, unless she was telling the truth. Mr Burns said that despite a lengthy and gruelling cross-examination, her core testimony had not been shaken by the defence. The British government is considering providing extra border backstop assurances to the DUP, the UK Chancellor has said. Philip Hammond said ministers have a number of choices through the parliamentary process, which include extending the Brexit implementation period ahead of the permanent relationship. That could avoid having to use a backstop, in which the UK would continue to follow EU regulations relating to trade across the Irish border a solution which is adamantly opposed by the DUP. Mr Hammond met DUP leader Arlene Foster and her deputy Nigel Dodds in the lobby of a Belfast hotel before holding a meeting with them. He said he was delighted to be there and relations between the two parties were good. Earlier, the Chancellor visited a school in Moira, Co Down, and told the BBC: I would much prefer to see us extending the implementation period and I am sure my DUP colleagues would take the same view. Mr Hammond visits a school in Moira, Co Down, on Friday (Liam McBurney/PA) The DUP has promised to oppose the Theresa May's draft Withdrawal Agreement with the EU over its concerns about the Irish backstop arrangement, which is designed to prevent the imposition of a hard Irish border. It would mean Northern Ireland continuing to follow EU regulations relating to matters like cross-border trade. The DUP is determined to prevent any divergence from the rest of the UK. International Trade Secretary Liam Fox also visited Northern Ireland on Friday and said language in the draft UK-EU Political Declaration, which refers to looking at technology to address the Irish border, is encouraging. No technological solution has yet been identified. The DUPs arrangement to support the Government on key votes like finance and Brexit matters in exchange for 1 billion (1.1bn) extra funding for Northern Ireland is under huge strain because of their dispute over the backstop. The Chancellor pledged 66 million (74m) to 23 schools (Liam McBurney/PA) As part of previous political agreements, the Chancellor said 66 million (74m) would be released for shared and integrated education projects in Northern Ireland. A total of 23 schools will benefit. The Chancellor said: The UK Government is backing these vitally important schools so they can offer a shared education to more children across Northern Ireland. Northern Irelands economy is powering ahead and the UK Government is committed to supporting a bright, shared future, helping more young people here to achieve their full potential.- Press Association Coveney confident Brexit deal will be signed off on Sunday The Tanaiste believes Britain and the European Union will sign off the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on Sunday. That is when EU leaders will gather in Brussels to seal the Brexit deal. There had been some uncertainty over Spanish concerns about Gibraltar. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar spoke by phone today with Commission President Jean Claude Juncker and told him Ireland had approved the Withdrawal Agreement and was happy with the text of the future relationship. Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney says everyone wants a positive conclusion to this phase of the negotiations. "A huge amount of work has been done over the last ten days, in particular, to prepare now for EU leaders, Theresa May included, to sign off now on this package on Sunday," said Mr Coveneny. "I think it will happen and I think everybody wants to work towards a positive conclusion of this phase of negotiations to provide certainty for the many, many people - particularly in Britain and Ireland - who are looking for that certainty for their businesses and for other stakeholders as well." Efforts to deal with Spanish concerns over Gibraltar in Brexit negotiations, will not require a change to the Withdrawal Treaty, according to Mr Coveney. Digital Desk A review by Crumlin Children's Hospital in Dublin into its accuracy in communicating a genetic test result to patients has found no further issues in the process. It comes after a woman was incorrectly told she did not have a gene that put her at higher risk of developing cancer. The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, was told last month that she had tested positive for the BRCA1 gene, despite being informed in 2009 that she had tested negative. She is now being treated for an aggressive form of ovarian cancer. In a statement this evening, the hospital says "no further discrepancy was identified" and that an audit of correspondence to patients who had a negative test result will now take place. "We want to offer reassurance to all patients who have undergone genetic consultation at OLCHC that there is no concern regarding the accuracy in communicating the correct result of their positive Diagnostic Genetic BRCA test," a spokesperson for the hospital said. We wish to reiterate that there is no concern regarding the accuracy of the BRCA test itself, regrettably the error occurred in communicating the test result. "For completeness, and based on the findings of this review, the next phase is to audit the accuracy of correspondence to patients who had a negative Diagnostic Genetic BRCA test result." Any patient with concerns is asked to contact a dedicated Genetics helpline at OLCHC on 01 409 6219. The helpline is open from Monday to Friday from 9am to 5.30pm. Digital Desk A day-old baby boy was forcibly removed from his mother at a maternity hospital due to great concern he was at serious risk of injury or possible death, the Child and Family Agency has told the High Court. There was no alternative to separating the child from his mother as social workers faced a situation where mother and baby were fit for discharge that evening and could disappear into the Dublin air, Barry ODonnell SC, for the Agency, said. The parents had not opposed their several other children being taken into care over concerns of neglect, domestic violence and the mothers mental health, he noted. The CFAs concerns for this child included the parents had left several different substandard tenancies due to erratic behaviour and the CFA had no current address for them. There were also serious concerns about the mothers mental health presentation, including delusional behaviour during pregnancy such as saying demons and spirits were trying to take the baby out of her. The parents failed to engage with a safety plan for the baby and did not attend a pre-birth case conference where professionals expressed serious concerns and put the unborn baby on the child protection notification system. There was limited engagement by the mother with social workers and the father was hostile, insisting he would speak for his wife in any engagement with professionals. The mother had failed to attend several access appointments with her children and during her pregnancy failed to attend some of her ante-natal appointments, he added. Counsel was opposing judicial review proceedings by the mother and child alleging their rights to constitutional justice and fair procedures were infringed because of the way in which emergency (ECO) and interim (ICO) care orders were made earlier this month. The father, a notice party, makes similar claims in the proceedings against the CFA. The hearing concluded today and Mr Justice Seamus Noonan said he hoped to rule as soon as possible. The newborn was removed from his mother on foot of an ECO made earlier that day by the District Court. An ICO was made two days later and is returnable to next week. During exchanges with Mr ODonnell, Mr Justice Noonan said his concern was whether there was an alternative to this extraordinarily dramatic removal by three gardai and two social workers. The mother reacted by clinging to the baby as any mother might. The European Court of Human Rights has said all reasonable alternatives must be considered before such a dramatic step is taken, he said. While a possible alternative was an order directing the child remain in the hospital with access by the mother, it appeared the District Court was not given such options. Mr ODonnell said the court could not infer the mother might have reacted any differently if the child was removed to another part of the hospital rather than put in emergency foster care. The 1991 Child Care Act does not require the agency to have a protocol in place concerning newborns about whom there are safety concerns, he added. The judge remarked the ECHR jurisprudence seemed to suggest such a protocol might be appropriate. When Mark William Murphy BL began closing arguments for the mother, the judge asked was she seeking the babys return to her care. Mr Murphy said he had no instructions otherwise but the court could make any orders it considered appropriate in the childs best interests. Counsel said the ECHR jurisprudence puts newborns in a unique category and the CFA is obliged to show all reasonable alternatives were explored. It was unreal to suggest there was any actual exploration of alternatives in this case, he said. The CFA was obliged under the Constitution to demonstrate its actions were a proportionate response to this situation and had not done so, he argued. There was a big difference between the mother knowing her baby was in the hospital where she could access him and not knowing where he was. Alan Brady BL, for the father, said his client believes the child should ultimately be returned to the mother. His child has clear rights to have decisions about his welfare made as part of a fair process and that position did not change because the other children were in care. The family of Celine Cawley, who was killed by her husband Eamonn Lillis in Howth in Dublin in 2008, has called for a review of domestic killings in Ireland. Ms Cawleys brother and sister made the appeal at the launch of a new Femicide Report from Womens Aid. The report found that 225 women have been killed since 1996, which is an average 10 per year. 16 children have also died alongside their mothers. Women's Aid is calling for a review of domestic killings after launching the report. It also found that more than half of women were murdered by their current or former boyfriend, partner or husband (resolved cases) and 61% of women were killed in their own homes. Women's Aid says they want formal reviews of domestic killings to help protect women and children and save lives. Margaret Martin, Director of Womens Aid said: "When women call Womens Aid and tell us that they are afraid for their lives, we believe them. "We know just how dangerous domestic violence can be. We know where women are killed. We know how women are killed and by whom. It is time to act. Femicide by an intimate partner must not be accepted as a fact of life for women. Women should be safe in their homes and in their relationships. And we must recognise the strong connection between the killing of women and domestic violence. - Digital Desk A man who who sexually assaulted a married woman as she lay in bed with her husband has been jailed for 18 months. Matthew Reilly of Billeragh West, Araglen, County Cork, who is originally from Leeds was sentenced to three years with half of it suspended by Judge Sean O Donnabhain at Cork Circuit Criminal Court. The judge said: He assaulted the woman in her own bed with her husband a very serious incursion on her privacy and freedom. The injured party told the court: We were in a complete state of shock for at least two weeks after the assault, unable to process anything. I could not be left alone at night and still find it very difficult. Neither of us has been able to sleep properly since the incident. Our bedroom which was once a safe haven has been destroyed. I have had to endure gossip, lies and rumours about myself which have compounded my lack of confidence. I cannot comprehend or come to terms with what happened or what could have happened if my husband hadnt been with me. Your bed should be your safe place and Matt Reilly has destroyed that for both of us. I feel extremely sorry for Matts family who are also innocent victims in this mess. Two families have been torn apart by his actions on that night. There are no winners here today. I feel it is my responsibility to protect other women from men like Matt who seem to think sexual assault is acceptable and comes without consequence. Garda Denise Fitzgerald said the parties had been socialising together and the defendant ended up on the couch downstairs staying overnight when the injured party and her husband went upstairs to sleep in their own bedroom. The injured partys husband woke to hear the defendant entering another room upstairs in the early hours and told him to leave. Reilly returned to the room downstairs. Garda Fitzgerald said that at 4.30am. the injured party woke up to find Reilly lying behind her in the bed with his fingers in her vagina. Both the injured party and her husband got up out of bed. Reilly ran down the stairs and pretended to be asleep on the couch. He was asked to leave. He pleaded guilty to the sexual assault. Defence barrister Ray Boland said: It is obviously a very serious case. He is coming before the court at 34 with no previous conviction. The husband and son of a woman who died at the National Maternity Hospital hours after undergoing an emergency Caesarean section to deliver her baby have settled for 650,000 their High Court action for nervous shock. Nora Hyland (31) a Malaysian woman who was living at Charlotte Quay in Dublin 4 at the time, died on the operating table at the National Maternity Hospital (NMH), Holles Street, on February 13, 2012, within three hours of undergoing an emergency Caesarean section to deliver her son Frederick. An inquest later returned a verdict of medical misadventure in the case of the first-time mother who had to wait almost 40 minutes for a blood transfusion after she suffered severe bleeding following an emergency birth. Dublin coroner Dr Brian Farrell found the cause of death was a cardiac arrest as a result of severe post-partum haemorrhage. However, he said that he was not able to say the delay in Mrs Hyland receiving blood was a "definite" risk factor in her death. The inquest previously heard that a labelling error in the laboratory contributed to a 37-minute delay in Mrs Hyland receiving a blood transfusion. No emergency supply units of O-negative, the universal blood type, were kept in operating theatres at the NMH at the time. In the High Court today Mr Justice Kevin Cross approved the 650,000 settlement on behalf of Nora's husband Stephen Hyland and their son Frederick. The Hyland's counsel Sasha Louise Gayer SC with Sara Antoniotti BL told the court the settlement was without admission of liability. She said the Hylands were satisfied with the settlment but were too upset to attend court. Counsel said Ms Hyland died after delivering her first child Frederick. The baby was delivered successfully but Ms Hyland began to lose a lot of blood. Steps were taken in theatre and a request for blood Counsel said was made just after midnight and a blood transfusion took place at 12.45 am. At the inquest, Counsel said the hospital indicated new protocols were later put in place in relation to blood supply stock. Stephen Hyland, (42) Station Road, Portmarnock, Co Dublin had sued the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, Dublin for nervous shock over the shocking and traumatic circumstances leading to and surrounding the death of his wife after she had her baby son, Frederick by caesarean section in 2012. On February 2012 Ms Hyland had her baby by caesarean section but went on to suffer a massive post partum haemorrhage and blood loss. It was claimed the medical records report that no blood was given to Ms Hyland until 12.40am when she had her first transfusion of the O negative blood. She had several more units of blood but she went at 1.45 am Ms Hyland went in cardiac arrest and efforts to resuscitate her were unsuccessful. Mr Hyland claimed he suffered severe and profound nervous shock, upset and mental distress as a result of what happened. The claims were denied. Approving the settlement Mr Justice Kevin Cross sympathised with the Hyland family on their loss. At the time of the inquest in 2014, Mr Hyland paid tribute to his late wife whom he met while travelling in Malaysia. They were together for eight years and married for three-and-a-half before her death. Nora was the most gentle, kindest, warm-hearted, beautiful little lady that I ever met. I fell in love with her the very first time that I saw her. She was just full of life, loved nature, loved animals, he said. Their son Frederick he added was full of health, full of life". "He is making me laugh and smile and every time I see him, I see Nora," he said A mother who is a full-time carer for her disabled son has won High Court orders directing the Minister for Justice to reconsider a refusal of visas for her other two children to join her here from an African country. There were "grave deficiencies" in the Minister's decision refusing appeals by the woman over the rejection of applications for two 'join family' visas for the two children, Mr Justice Max Barrett ruled. The mother, a native of an African country, is an Irish citizen and her disabled son has Irish residency. Another son, aged 20, and the woman's teenage daughter, live with their father in an African country but it is claimed the father is of such an age he finds caring for them difficult, the judge noted. The mother sought judicial review after the Minister rejected her appeals against decisions of the Irish Embassy in the relevant African country in May 2017 refusing the visas. In his judgment, Mr Justice Barrett said the grave deficiencies in the Minister's decision include a statement when addressing the alleged ailing health of the applicants' father, that "no medical documents have been provided". That was wrong because a medical certificate had been provided, the judge said. Another finding there were no "special" circumstances in this case, made in the context of the State's Non-EEA family reunification policy, was based on inadequate reasoning, the judge considered. The test set out in the policy is "exceptional" circumstances and it was unclear just what form of test was applied in this case, the judge said. The son who is resident here is so disabled and unwell his mother cannot work outside the home so as to bring herself above the financial threshold identified in the family reunification policy, he noted. A medical doctor/registrar at a "renowned health service provider" had provided a letter on headed paper stating the disabled son would "benefit hugely" from reunification with his siblings but the decision maker had said there was "no clear link" between that doctor and the son, the judge said. The court did not know what the decision maker meant by that, he said. If a decision maker considered a letter was "phoney" or that a particular doctor is behaving unprofessionally, there are ways of addressing that but no such circumstances was alleged to be present here, he said. The disregard of that medical evidence for the reasons stated involved acting wrongly and unreasonably, he held. Those and other administrative law deficiencies justified the Minister's decision being quashed and the matter is being remitted for reconsideration, the judge ruled. The coxswain of a RNLI lifeboat, honoured for his role in helping to rescue up to 30 people, including 23 trainees aboard a Tall Ship off Kinsale Harbour five years ago, was jailed for seven years on drugs charges. Liam O'Connell from Presentation Terrace, Kinsale, Co Cork had stored 269,000 worth of cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy at his home. He was sentenced to ten years in jail with the last three years suspended after he pleaded guilty at Cork Circuit Criminal Court to charges of possessing cannabis, cocaine and MDMA or ecstasy for sale or supply at his home on October 27, 2017. O'Connell played a heroic role when seven Belgian crew and 23 student trainees from France, Ireland, the Netherlands, UK and Spain were dramatically rescued after a Dutch-owned 42-metre Tall Ship Astrid ran aground after engine failure off Kinsale in July 2013. Four RNLI stations tasked crews and air rescue was alerted in what had been one of the biggest sea rescues. Defence counsel Siobhan Lankford SC said the accused was a valued member of the volunteer RNLI crew in Kinsale. She presented, to the court, a testimonial where one character witness said that OConnell was the man to call if somebody found themselves in trouble off the Old Head of Kinsale at 4am. OConnell had been the cox of the RNLIs Kinsale lifeboat Ms Sally Anne Baggy and was later honoured with a West Cork Community Award for his role in the dramatic rescue. Detective Sergeant Joanne OBrien testified at Cork Circuit Criminal Court that members of the West Cork Divisional Drugs Squad received intelligence about OConnell and searched his house on the day in question. Detective Garda Colin OMahony found three bags hidden in a wardrobe in OConnells bedroom. The bags contained large amounts of cocaine, cannabis and MDMA with the total value of the cocaine amounting to over 154,000, the value of the cannabis amounting to over 57,000 and the value of the MDMA (ecstasy) amounting to over 56,000 giving a total value of 269,000. Det Sgt OBrien said that gardai also found a ledger in the room which was being used as a tick-list for dealers that OConnell was supplying. He admitted previously collecting drugs in Dublin and bringing them to Kinsale where he stored them for distribution. He was to be paid 6,700 for distributing and storing the seized drugs. O'Connell had no previous convictions and had worked as a fisherman and in construction but was on social welfare at the time of the seizure. Judge Sean O Donnabhain said OConnell had exploited his status in the community where he was well respected because of his role as a volunteer member of the RNLI to trade in drugs as a distributor and storeman where drug dealers would call to his house for their supplies. He said it was significant that OConnell was not a drug user or drug addict himself and was in the drugs business to make a profit. Phoenix to issue P5b in preferred shares posted November 23, 2018 at 07:30 pm by Alena Mae S. Flores November 23, 2018 at 07:30 pm The board of oil player Phoenix Petroleum Philippines approved the issuance of P5 billion worth of perpetual preferred shares as part of its fund-raising program to finance expansion. We are redeeming P500 million preferred shares this December. We will issue up to P5 billion next year [using unissued, authorized share inventory], Phoenix Petroleum vice president for external affairs Raymond Zorrilla said. Phoenix said the preferred shares would be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission and listed with the Philippine Stock Exchange. The board also approved the appointment of BPI Capital Corp. and RCBC Capital as joint issue managers, joint underwriters and joint bookrunners.The proceeds from the planned fundraising will be used to fund the Companys expansion requirements, it said. The company said net income after tax went down to P1.317 billion in the first three quarters from P1.437 billion a year ago. COMMENT DISCLAIMER: Reader comments posted on this Web site are not in any way endorsed by Manila Standard. Comments are views by manilastandard.net readers who exercise their right to free expression and they do not necessarily represent or reflect the position or viewpoint of manilastandard.net. While reserving this publications right to delete comments that are deemed offensive, indecent or inconsistent with Manila Standard editorial standards, Manila Standard may not be held liable for any false information posted by readers in this comments section. A Cork man who kicked an 80-year-old man in the groin and then punched him after he was reprimanded by the elderly man for stealing from a poor box in a church was jailed for three years today. Judge Sean O Donnabhain imposed a sentence of four years with the last year suspended in the case against David ODonovan, 41 who is originally from Monkstown, County Cork. Defence barrister, Nikki OSullivan, said the accused was surprised to hear from gardai an account of his own actions as he had no recollection of it. He accepted it and pleaded guilty. The judge said it was cowardly and outrageous to assault the elderly man in church. The victim, Robert Duggan, told the culprit he was in the house of God and to stop what he was doing. Detective Garda Padraig Harrington said ODonovan responded: 'F*** you and f*** the Church'. He then counted down 4-3-2-1 and kicked him in the groin area. Mr Duggan went down on one knee. He (ODonovan) knocked his glasses off. He gouged his eye and punched him in the same eye. A Polish lady at the mass came to the assistance of the local man attacked by the heroin addict. Det. Garda Harrington said: The Polish lady later identified him (the defendant) to me at Centra, approximately one hour later." She followed Duggan from the church at a safe distance and saw him enter the shop. Mr Duggan said previously at Cork Circuit Criminal that in many years volunteering at St Augustines church on Grand Parade, Cork, I have come across people under the influence of drink or drugs and people who are depressed but never anything like this. Thankfully he did not have a knife. I am sure he would have used it if he had one. My glasses fell to the ground during this and he deliberately stamped on them. It knocked my confidence back. David ODonovan was arrested by Det Garda Harrington and brought to the Bridewell garda station for questioning. However, questioning of ODonovan, with an address at 6 Glendalough, Grenville Place, Cork, was suspended for six hours due to his intoxication. The detective said that unfortunately, the injured party was not given any medical attention at the Mercy hospital despite waiting for seven hours after that Saturday evening mass. The detective contacted the CEO of the hospital the next morning and she arranged to have the injured party seen immediately. Nikki OSullivan BL said that even though the accused had 22 previous convictions he had none for violence. She said he expressed remorse for his actions and was surprised when it was outlined to him what he had done in the church. ODonovan was sentenced on the charge of assault causing harm to Mr Duggan at St Augustines church, Grand Parade, Cork, on March 24. A group of pro-life doctors have accused the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP) of "completely sidestepping" their concerns around the roll-out of abortion services. However, the College emphasised no doctor who has a conscientious objection to abortion will be required to provide the service. It comes as the legislation to allow for the roll-out of abortion services in this country from January is due back into the Dail for debate next week. But there are concerns the abortion bill could face delays in the Dail after pro-life TDs resubmitted amendments already voted down at Committee stage. Over 640 GPs, 373 of whom are members of the ICGP, had asked for an emergency general meeting of the group over concerns around the provision of terminations. The group, refusing to facilitate termination services, has described as farcical and untenable the decision of the ICGP board to scrap all the EGM motions submitted by members and replace them with a series of topics for discussion at the meeting. The original motions submitted for the EGM included motions about routine General Practice not being a suitable setting in which to deliver an abortion service and securing proper freedom of conscience protections for doctors, including not being obliged to facilitate abortion through referral. However, yesterday the ICGP said the Colleges position has been clear from the beginning in that it favours an opt-in service for GPs who wish to provide the service, with the provision of a 24-helpline that patients can access directly as an essential requirement. "In other words, no GP who does not wish to provide a termination of pregnancy service should be required to do so," an ICGP spokesperson said. Both in the development of guidelines and in advocating for the necessary resources the College's primary concern is patient safety and quality of care. The board of directors has called the EGM for December 2, to consult further and listen to members, and to enable debate and provide an opportunity for the board of directors to explain the Colleges position. "There will be no formal motions at this meeting. The purpose of the meeting is to consult with members and enable debate," the spokesperson said. However, Dr Andrew ORegan described the ICGP's decision not to accept the motions as "breathtaking". He said: "For over five months, they have point blank refused to consult openly and transparently with GPs about the negotiations they are conducting with government in our name on the rollout of GP-led abortion services throughout the country." Two Dublin men have been found guilty of murdering a man whose body was found with 20 stab wounds on a roadside in the south of the county. Stephen Tynan (41) of Deerpark Lodge, Kiltipper, Tallaght, and Raymond Fitzgerald (37) of Knockmore Grove, Killinarden, also in Tallaght had both pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Tynans cousin, Andrew Guerrine, at an unknown place between May 22 and May 23, 2015. The Central Criminal Court trial heard that Mr Guerrines body was found in the early hours of May 23 on Steelstown Lane in Rathcoole, 10km from where he was last seen alive in Tallaght. The deceased, who was from New Street in the city, had sustained 20 stab wounds, including two that penetrated his skull and spine. A Knockmore man, Darren Finnegan, testified that Tynan and another man had arrived at his door some time before midnight that May 22. They had wanted to buy his black Peugeot 307, which he said was for sale in his driveway. He said he eventually took some cash and threw the other man his keys, with Tynan telling him he would get the rest the following day. He said he later realised that his childs jacket and car seat were still in the car. He rang Tynan a number of times the following day and the car seat was returned to him. An associate of the deceased stated that Mr Guerrine had arrived at the entrance to Knockmore some time after 11.30 that night in order to sell diazepam tablets to an unnamed person. Luigi Forte told gardai that he had supplied the tablets to the deceased and had accompanied him to the deals location in a taxi. Both he and the taxi driver stated that they waited in the taxi while Mr Guerrine went to an entrance into the estate. However, they left when the deceased went out of view, with Mr Forte saying he thought Mr Guerrine had ripped him off. Andrew Guerrine However, Mr Guerrine was stabbed to death some time after disappearing out of view and his body dumped on Steelstown Lane 10km away. It was found by a passerby in the early hours of the morning. When gardai arrived, they found a toddlers jacket entangled in his feet. A salvage operator noticed a car on fire in a Tallaght field about 24 hours later. He returned with his truck the next day and moved the Peugeot to his yard before taking it with other cars to be scrapped. However, the engine had fallen out of the Peugeot and he was able to pass this onto the gardai when they arrived to speak to him. The engine number matched that of the Peugeot that Mr Finnegan had sold to Tynan and his associate. Through CCTV footage, the gardai traced the Peugeots movements from shortly after its purchase from Mr Finnegan. Its defective lights made it easier to recognise travelling up and down Steelstown Lane about 45 minutes later. It was daylight by 5.20am the following day, when the two accused were captured pushing the car into a petrol station on Fortunestown Road in Tallaght. Fitzgerald could clearly be seen holding his sleeves down over his hands and wiping the car door, in what his barrister conceded was shifty and guilty looking. Both killers had got new phones by the time they made their statements to gardai. However, detectives secured the records for their old phones. These showed that Stephen Tynans phone had not operated from when Andrew Guerrine was last seen alive until his body had been found. Ray Fitzgeralds phone had been almost continuously using data throughout May 22nd, but its last ever activity was shortly before 1am on May 23rd. The phones of all three men had used the same mast on the Blessington Road shortly before midnight. Fitzgeralds phone continued to use masts after this time, pinging off a mast in Rathcoole, about three kilometres from Steelstown Lane. The prosecutor described the killing as pre-planned in his closing speech. Brendan Grehan said that although there was no DNA evidence, murder weapon or eyewitness testimony to connect the accused men to the killing, the circumstantial evidence proved their guilt. However, Sean Guerin SC, defending Fitzgerald, said that all the suspicious circumstances that the State said were attributable to his guilt could be explained by him being an accessory after the fact. Tynans barrister, Seamus Clarke SC, said that his client was "hardly the typical candidate for the gruesome attack" on his own cousin, but might have stupidly got involved in the aftermath. Both lawyers asked for an acquittal. Mr Justice Michael White told the jury that there was an alternative verdict available: being an accessory after the fact. He read out Section 7 (2) of the Criminal Law Act 1997, which states that it is an offence to impede the apprehension or prosecution of someone, who has committed an arrestable offence. The five women and seven men of the jury began considering their verdict on Wednesday and were given the option of reaching a majority verdict on Friday morning. They returned with a question later in the morning: If someone has prior knowledge that harm is going to be inflicted on another person and the person dies of a result of that harm, are they guilty of murder on accessory before the fact? Mr Justice White said that their question specifically related to knowledge or mens rea but that it also related to another legal principle, joint enterprise or common design. Guilty knowledge is a prerequisite of murder, he said, before reading out the legal definition of murder. He also defined joint enterprise or common design for them, explaining that where two people embarked on a joint enterprise, all parties to that agreement were criminally liable. He said he was placing an emphasis on the word embark. The jurors returned to the jury room and had deliberated for a total of 10 and a half hours before reaching their verdicts. They found both men guilty by a majority of 10 to two. Neither accused gave any reaction when the verdicts were read out, but a number of their supporters sobbed quietly. Mr Justice White thanked the jurors for their service and patience in this very difficult case and excused them from jury service for life. He adjourned sentencing until 19th December to give the Guerrine family a chance to prepare a victim impact statement. A 47-year-old woman wept in court as she was jailed for six months after being found guilty by a jury found of sexually assaulting he brother when he was aged from nine and she was in her early twenties. Judge Brian OCallaghan said that what had struck him most forcibly following conviction were the complete lack of remorse and the complete lack of insight by the woman into the harm that she had caused her younger brother after such a terrible breach of trust. Judge OCallaghan noted the defence submissions and he noted that the woman had no previous convictions and had never come to the attention of the gardai before or since this incident and in all other respects she was a completely law abiding person and unlikely to re-offend. However Judge OCallaghan said he had come to court hoping that there would be some expression of remorse from the woman for everyones sake in the case but it was clear that she had no insight or appreciation of the harm she had caused to her sibling by her abuse. Judge OCallaghan he noted that in the course of contesting the case, she had wrongly accused her brother of fabricating the allegations of sex abuse in order to prevent her gaining access to her nephew in the family law matter when it was clear that the mans sole motivation was to protect his own young son. The judge said there was an element of premeditation in that the assaults happened when their parents were away and she was guilty of a huge breach of trust not just as her brothers older sister but also in respect of her parents who had entrusted her to mind him only for her to use him for her own sexual gratification. He recognised that the conviction would mean an end to her career while a custodial sentence would also have an impact on her elderly parents but he felt that such was the breach of trust, the seriousness of the harm and the lack of remorse, he felt he had to impose a custodial sentence. The woman pleaded not guilty to all ten charges of sexual assault, and a jury of seven women and five men returned with their verdicts yesterday afternoon. The jury found her - by a majority 10-2 verdict - guilty of four counts of sexually assaulting her brother. They found her not guilty of six counts of sexual assault at Cork Circuit Criminal Court. The parties cannot be identified for legal reasons. Furthermore, the judge made an additional order that certain other matters within the trial could not be reported because of other legal restrictions. The jury was not told in this trial that it was in fact a retrial and that another jury who heard the case in February were unable to reach a verdict on any count. The complainant told prosecution barrister Noel Whelan what allegedly happened to him on ten incidents between May 1993 and April 1995. He said that because of the age difference between himself and his sister, people used to say his sister was like his second mother. Their mother was in court for the case and comforted the accused when she broke down in tears at the guilty verdict yesterday afternoon. The complainant said the first alleged incident occurred when he was nine and his parents were away for a weekend in May 1993. He described other similar incidents. He said these disputed incidents occurred in the family home when there was no one else present and once in a hotel in Dublin when the family were away together. He described the feeling of being like auto-pilot where he did nothing to stop her and did not understand what was happening. He thought when he was nine that if people found out about it he would be seen as being at fault. The man told in his Victim Impact Statement how his life had been changed irrevocably by the abuse his sister had perpetrated on him, leading to him to attempt suicide when he was just 12 as a means of escape and to a complete lack of trust in others that took him years to overcome. He told how every morning, he used to put on a mental and emotional suit of armour to face the day and pretend that he was leading a normal life when the abuse continued to haunt him particularly by night when he suffered nightmares right through his teenager years and beyond. Defence barrister, Donal OSullivan BL acknowledged that his client had fully contested the case but he pleaded for leniency on a number of grounds including the fact that the woman had a number of serious medical conditions. The Ulster Defence Association has admitted it has "grave concerns" over the future of the troubled northern peace process. Even though the body has been linked to a developing campaign of sectarian attacks on Catholic homes, the largest loyalist paramilitary organisation is this morning denying a split within its ranks. Construction company and real estate developer D.M. Wenceslao & Associates Inc. submitted a letter of intent to participate in the privatization of the 650-megawatt Malaya Thermal Power Plant and its property in Barangay Malaya, Pililia, Rizal. D.M. Wenceslao submitted a letter of intent and purchased bidding package. He is our 11th bidder, Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. president Irene Joy Besido-Garcia said. D.M. Wenceslao confirmed that its board granted authority to chief operating officer and director Paolo Vincent Wenceslao to issue a letter of interest to receive all pertinent documents, communications, correspondences, notices, and legal processes, including but not limited to the supplemental bid bulletin and asset purchase agreement of the Malaya power plant. Wenceslao will also sign for and on behalf of the company all the necessary documents required in such privatization process. D.M. Wenceslao is an integrated property developer with expertise in land reclamation, construction and real estate development. It is the master developer and primary owner of Aseana City, a development project with a total land area of 107.5 hectares located along Manila Bay. The company has reclaimed more than 2.4 million square meters of land, leased or developed 245,000 square meters of land and buildings and completed over 100 construction and infrastructure projects including large, complex government developments across the Philippines.Other interested bidders for the Malaya power complex are Phinma Energy Corp., Korean firm STX, AC Energy Inc. of the Ayala Group and SMC Global Holdings Corp. of San Miguel Corp. It is hoped that the transition of Malaya to private ownership will be a win-win venture for both the government and the winning bidder, PSALM said in a statement earlier. Bid submission deadline is on Dec. 14 at 12 noon at the PSALM Office. The Malaya plant consists of a 300-MW unit with a once-through type boiler and a 350-MW unit fitted with a conventional boiler. A 95-year-old man has been charged with more than 36,000 counts of being an accessory to murder on allegations that he served as a guard at the Nazis' Mauthausen concentration camp, prosecutors in Berlin said. Hans Werner H, whose last name was not released because of German privacy regulations, is accused of serving as an SS guard in the camp in northern Austria from mid-1944 to early 1945. During that time, 36,223 people were killed at Mauthausen, primarily by gassing, but also by lethal injection, shooting, starvation and exposure, prosecutor Martin Steltner said. The suspect is not accused of a specific killing, but prosecutors argue that as a guard he helped the camp function. Overall, 95,000 people are believed to have died in the Mauthausen camp system, including 14,000 Jews, along with Soviet prisoners of war, Spaniards who had fought against General Franco, and others. "With his service as a guard he aided or at least made easier the killing of many thousands of inmates," Mr Steltner said, adding that the suspect denies the charges. Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, noted that Mr Wiesenthal himself was an inmate at Mauthausen when it was liberated by Americans in May 1945. Mr Wiesenthal died in 2005 after devoting his life to tracking down Nazi war criminals so they could be brought to trial. In a sense it gives a certain very nice closure that someone like this is brought to justice, which I'm sure would have been Simon's dream," Mr Zuroff said. The 95-year-old man is accused of serving as an SS Rottenfuehrer, roughly equivalent to corporal, in the outer perimeter of the camp and inside, as well as guarding prisoner work details at a nearby quarry. Mr Steltner said he is alleged to have "known about the various methods of killing as well as the disastrous living conditions of the imprisoned people". As such, he is alleged to have "been aware that a large number of people were killed with these methods and that the victims could have only been killed with such regularity if they were being guarded by people such as himself", he added. A court must review the charges and determine whether the suspect is fit for trial. Mr Steltner said his office considers him able to stand trial. New legal reasoning in Germany advanced in recent years holds that former Nazi camp guards can be charged with accessory to murder even if there is no evidence they participated in a specific killing. The argument has been upheld by the country's highest criminal court and has led to a string of prosecutions, including an ongoing case at the Muenster state court where a 94-year-old former SS guard at the Stutthof concentration camp, Johann Rehbogen, is being tried on hundreds of counts of accessory to murder. - Digital Desk Detectives investigating the Salisbury and Amesbury nerve agent incidents released footage of the two suspects as they made a new appeal for information from the public. CCTV footage of the two suspects - known by their aliases Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov - shows them as they arrive and travel around Salisbury on Sunday 4 March. British Prime Minister Theresa May has been warned she faces a battle to reach a final agreement on Brexit as she prepares for a special summit of European Union leaders. Ahead of Sunday's gathering, Spanish premier Pedro Sanchez demanded last-minute changes to the deal despite Mrs May's efforts to win him round. The UK's Prime Minister will head to Brussels on Saturday for eve-of-summit talks with Jean-Claude Juncker knowing that she also faces an uphill task in Westminster to persuade her own MPs to back her deal. Pedro Sanchez Mrs May declared that final agreement on Brexit is "within our grasp" following a breakthrough on future relations between the UK and European Union on Thursday. But she endured a bruising session in the House of Commons as critics lined up to condemn both the divorce deal contained in the Withdrawal Agreement and the aspirations for a close future relationship in the Political Declaration. And, at the EU level, a major obstacle remains in the form of Madrid's continued concerns about Gibraltar, with Mr Sanchez vowing to "defend the interests of Spain". Mrs May said she spoke to Mr Sanchez on Wednesday night and was "confident on Sunday that we'll be able to agree a deal that delivers for the whole UK family, including Gibraltar". But in a late-night tweet on Thursday Mr Sanchez said: "After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away. "My Government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit." After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away. My Government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit. Pedro Sanchez (@sanchezcastejon) November 22, 2018 Mr Sanchez cannot "veto Brexit" or the Withdrawal Agreement, but a refusal to co-operate will sour the atmosphere at a summit where leaders of the 27 remaining EU members were aiming for consensus. Meanwhile the scale of the challenge Mrs May faces at Westminster was underlined in response to the latest move towards a final deal. Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson urged her to "junk" her backstop plan for keeping the Irish border open, which he said "makes a nonsense of Brexit". Brexit-backing ex-Cabinet minister Priti Patel branded the deal "a costly surrender by the UK Government". Home Secretary Sajid Javid acknowledged the Government had to work harder to sell the deal to Brexiteer MPs such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has led a so-far ineffective campaign to oust Mrs May. "We've all got a job to do over the coming days and weeks, to do a better job of communicating to colleagues - whether it's Jacob or anyone else - what the deal is and what it isn't, and try to listen to their concerns and see what can be done to allay some of them," Mr Javid told The House magazine. Mrs May was also left in little doubt that she will not be able to count on the votes of the 10 DUP MPs. "The Government needs to recognise that there is no enthusiasm for the withdrawal agreement across all sides of the House of Commons," the party's Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson said, adding it was "time to work for a better deal". Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told the Commons that Mrs May had returned from Brussels with "26 pages of waffle". Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer indicated Labour would vote down Mrs May's deal but could back a compromise involving a permanent customs union - something she has rejected. Asked what would be required to secure Labour support, Sir Keir told BBC's Newsnight: "A comprehensive, permanent customs union that protects manufacturing and gives us a say in trade policy with the EU. " He said Mrs May had repeatedly ruled out such an approach but "if she reflects between now and the vote we will look at what she brings back" however the customs concession "wouldn't be the only thing" sought by Labour. The Prime Minister said the joint UK/EU declaration on the future relationship is "the right plan for the UK". The text calls for an "ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership" between the EU and the UK in areas like trade, security and defence, possibly in the form of a Ukraine-style Association Agreement. It confirms the UK's right to develop an independent trade policy and end the free movement of EU nationals and leaves open the possibility of using technological solutions to keep the Irish border open after Brexit. But elements which infuriated Brexiteers included: - Plans for a "free trade area, combining deep regulatory and customs co-operation", building and improving on the "single customs territory" provided for in the withdrawal agreement; 887299[/reaedmore] - Provisions to ensure a "level playing field" on business competition, which could cover areas including state aid, workplace and environmental protections, climate change laws and tax; - A role for the European Court of Justice in providing "binding" rulings on the interpretation of EU law in any disputes between the two sides. Aides said that Mrs May received "strong support" from Cabinet ministers in a conference before addressing the Commons. Downing Street has always stressed that the 585-page legally binding Withdrawal Agreement setting out the terms of the UK's departure from the EU - including a "divorce bill" estimated at 39bn - can only be finalised alongside the shorter declaration setting out the two sides' aspirations for their future relations. - Press Association We can run through the particular tests that provide evidence for these harsh assessments momentarily. It is worth noting here that the only reason ASIC chairman James Shipton, who was in the witness box on Thursday and Friday, was not reduced to a puddle on the floor is because he only started in the job this year. Most - but not all - of this report card doesnt assess him, rather the organisation he now leads. It would have been way more interesting and instructive to have his predecessor, Greg Medcraft, taking fire. In large part the new chairman avoided the bludgeoning by constantly repeating the mantra that things were a-changing. Conveniently Shipton was able to blame someone else for previous decisions that he admitted had been poor, unfortunate or simply wrong. (He probably learnt a few lessons from the testimony earlier in the week from CBA chief executive Matt Comyn and chairman Catherine Livingstone. They artfully managed to offload blame to their predecessors). Shiptons other defence was that ASIC has been under-resourced and needed to pick its battles. That is a fair defence, it has needed to spread itself thin. But there is a serious question mark over whether it has picked the right battles. What is even more frustrating is that it is only now that ASIC has shouted its decree that things will be different and it will consider court action - rather than infringement notices - as a starting point for regulatory action. Fomer ASIC Greg Medcraft - a narrow escape Credit:Michel O'Sullivan It really makes one cynical about whether ASIC would have come to this landing absent the hiding it took in the royal commissions interim report. There are a number of damning examples of Keystone Cop moments that the commission has traversed during Shiptons evidence. Let's begin with National Australia Bank whose foreign exchange staff were found to be sharing confidential market information with operatives outside the bank. During ASICs investigation of the case an email read out on Friday, reveals ASIC Commissioner, Cathie Armour, was discussing the case with an NAB executive. ASIC was attempting to have NAB accept an enforcement deal. Loading Counsel assisting, Rowena Orr, QC, asserted that, "the commissioner was telling NAB's chief risk officer [David Gall] that if the investigation progressed there was a chance that ASIC would uncover evidence of serious misconduct which would render a weaker remedial outcome inappropriate". She suggests that Armour was telling Gall from NAB if he wanted to make an offer, he better do it quickly or new information might render the current remedy insufficient. Expedient or not - that has to be a bad look for the regulator. It certainly adds weight to the theory that ASIC has been a capture regulator. As for ASICs record on timeliness of its investigations one need go no further than the newly-minted decision to start looking at CBAs selling of income protection for credit insurance products to people that were not employed. This matter has been dealt with on numerous occasions during the royal commission and was first and self-reported back in 2015. An incredulous Orr put to Shipton on Friday: "So it was, according to your statement, about a month ago, on 22 October, nearly two and a half years after the notification by CBA and months after the matter was examined in the public hearings in the royal commission that your enforcement team accepted that referral?" I would certainly agree with you that it was a mistake not to commence the investigation much, much, much earlier. ASIC chairman James Shipton There was no escape route for Shipton, whose response reached new heights in understatement. "I would certainly agree with you that it was a mistake not to commence the investigation much, much, much earlier." Also under the spotlight were commissions paid by lenders to mortgage brokers for signing up new loans. Senior counsel assisting Rowena Orr, QC, grilled Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn at length about internal emails from 2016 in which he expressed the belief that all such commissions should be axed. Consumers, instead, should be asked to pay upfront for home loan advice provided by brokers, in a move similar to reforms in the Netherlands, Comyn argued. However the bank decided not to act, and continues to pay commissions. Commonwealth Bank's Matt Comyn said he would follow the Netherlands' example on payment of mortgage brokers. "Would you like to move to the Netherlands model, to go the whole hog and have a flat fee paid by the consumer?" Orr asked Comyn on Monday. "I think that is, in my view, the most attractive model," he replied. Macquarie Group's Nicholas Moore. Credit:AAP In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, the Dutch government banned commissions from lenders to brokers for arranging loans. Instead, Dutch borrowers now pay a flat fee in the region of 2000 ($3145) which is tax deductible. Banks are also required to charge a fee, to level the playing field between bank and broker-originated loans. But Macquarie Bank CEO Nicholas Moore sounded a note of caution. "We think ... that the broker network does provide genuine competition, and that genuine competition has reduced the cost for all mortgages," he said. Bank executive pay Bank bosses' bonuses, which were excluded from a banking industry review of bank staff pay lead by Stephen Sedgwick, were also examined this week. The commission heard how the Commonwealth Bank's board approved millions of dollars in bonuses for executives, despite clear problems with the bank charging fees for no service and to dead people, and failing to comply with obligations to prevent money laundering through "smart" ATMs. CBA chairman Catherine Livingstone sensationally revealed that the board asked then chairman David Turner to return 40 per cent of his director's fees, only for him to refuse. Reforms to executive pay structures to give less weight to short-term profits and greater weight to customer outcomes appear to be under consideration by the commission, as are ways to ensure boards dock pay for poor outcomes. Board minutes and duties All company boards should be on renewed notice to comply with their strict legal duties after this week's hearings, according to Ramsay. "Is your board passively just receiving volumes of information from management, or is your board one where there is good robust discussion and frank views being expressed?" Rowena Orr QC raised the prospect of criminal penalties over inadequate board minutes. Orr raised the prospect of criminal penalties this week if board minutes fail to record significant exchanges. This came after CBA's Livingstone revealed she had challenged management on the unfolding money-laundering scandal, but that neither her challenge, nor management's response, was recorded in the board minutes. Regulator reform With the corporate regulator also in the box this week, Ramsay said it was increasingly clear that tougher boards would require a tougher regulator. In the flat plains of Melbournes western industrial heartland sits the southern hemispheres largest fridge and freezer. The two box-like, highly insulated buildings owned and operated by European cold storage specialist NewCold can hold up to 100,000 pallets each, stacked on ceiling height racks inside the fully automated, dimly lit interiors. At 35-metres tall and more than 130-metres in length, they are equivalent in size to an eight-storey office building. Oliver Morns inside the 38-metre high -23 degrees freezer. Credit:Simon Schluter Chilled to -23 degrees celsius, one building serves NewColds clients chip and frozen pizza manufacturer McCains and ice cream company Peters. More Electric Power Corp., a company headed by billionaire Enrique Razon, is prepared to offer cheaper power rates to Iloilo City residents, a top executive said Friday. Cyril del Callar, More chief compliance regulator and former National Power Corp. president, said the company would immediately move to reduce electricity rates in Iloilo City by securing electricity supply from the cheapest sources, including from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market where power rates sold were lower by P4 per kilowatt-hour. We already received an offer from three [power generating] companies to supply the cheapest electricity to Iloilo residents, Del Callar said. He said it was the residents of Iloilo City who started the campaign to replace power distributor Panay Electric Co. because they had been paying high electricity bills and receiving bad service for the longest time. Del Callar said these consumer complaints formed the basis of the Iloilo City Council resolution in November 2017 that asked Congress not to renew the franchise of Peco and the national government to take over its operation. Del Callar said the complaints under the resolution prompted More to apply for a congressional franchise to distribute electricity in Iloilo City to address these consumer complaints and help lower Iloilo Citys power bills while improving electricity service. He said Ilonggos had been paying electricity rates of P13 per kWh since 10 years ago, while residents in Metro Manila were paying only about P11 per kWh.More secured a franchise for the Iloilo City electricity distribution business from the House of Representatives on Oct. 9. The Senate also approved the franchise on second reading. Razon earlier said Iloilo City residents had suffered from Pecos poor services, overcharging of power bills with some reaching more than 1,000 percent, accumulated billings due to erroneous meter readings, technical failures, poor customer service, high electricity rates, constant power interruptions and unexplained charges for decades. If Peco had been doing a good job, we wouldnt have had the opportunity to apply for this franchise and transform it into a modern, efficient, low cost and state-of-the-art distribution network, he said. Four generations of Ilonggos have suffered under Peco. Neither are they heard by Peco, who has not addressed the many pending complaints numbering 1,800against it Clearly, it is time that the Ilonggos are relieved of their misery, Razon, who also chairs port operator International Container Terminal Services Inc., said. Razon also rebuffed the claims of Peco that More did not have the qualifications to run an electric company. We certainly never want to have the qualifications of Peco. We are exactly the opposite of Peco because we have a track record of success in start-ups and large-scale projects not only in the Philippines but globally, Razon said. Retailers are heading into the Christmas sales rush with cautious optimism, as lower unemployment and signs of relief at the petrol bowser give them hope for the make-or-break trading period. Outdoor apparel retailer Kathmandu and Australia's biggest shoe seller, Accent Group, both delivered upbeat trading updates on Friday, and the Australian Retailers' Association is forecasting the best Christmas sales growth in at least four years. Consumers are feeling more confident, but headwinds will prevent a major increase in spending. Credit:Craig Sillitoe "Were hearing some fairly positive signs out there from our retailers and its fair to say that the bottom line is tracking fairly well," ARA executive chairman Russel Zimmerman said. I know there are still people doing it tough because of the price of energy but the price of fuel is coming down and thats always a good sign. So were fairly optimistic. The federal government faces a mounting business backlash over energy policy as leaders of some of nation's biggest companies and most influential lobby groups have publicly lamented the ditching of the National Energy Guarantee and blasted its proposed replacement. One of the country's biggest manufacturers, Bluescope, on Friday singled out the decision to scrap the National Energy Guarantee as disappointing. BlueScope chief executive Mark Vassella said the steelmaker, which employs thousands of people around Australia, understood energy policy was "complex and political" but the challenges in the sector needed to be addressed. BlueScope CEO Mark Vassella said the government has wasted the potential of the National Energy Guarantee. Credit:Louie Douvis We have been very concerned about the impact of skyrocketing gas and electricity prices, and declining reliability of supply, on the competitiveness of our Australian manufacturing operations, he said. When Costanzo talks about Ferrante now, it is with a deference you rarely see directors exercise toward writers whose work they adapt. She has commented by email on drafts of all eight of his scripts. She has flagged moments when his dialogue verges on the melodramatic. "She was just saying, 'This dialogue is ridiculous, the way she talks here is ridiculous.'" She has protected him from serious missteps, like when he thought to cut the loud, quarrelsome wedding banquet that ends My Brilliant Friend from the series because he was over budget and running behind schedule. "She said: 'Listen, the first moment I thought about My Brilliant Friend, the first image I had was a banquet, a very vulgar banquet of Neapolitan life. Please put the banquet back in.'" "She is very strong," Costanzo repeats, permitting himself a sheepish little laugh. "I like that." When he recalls all the times he had risked disappointing her, he pouts, like a child who has failed, yet again, to live up to his mother's expectations. The Neapolitan novels tell the story of a writer, also named Elena ("Lenu," for short), whose subject is the filth of the neighbourhood in Naples where she grew up and her long acquaintance with Lila, the brilliant, disagreeable classmate she leaves behind and returns to intermittently over the next 50 years. When Lila disappears without warning at age 66, leaving no clothes, shoes, letters or photographs to testify to her existence, Lenu decides to write about their long and troublesome relationship: their shared love of reading, the education they defied their parents to pursue, the writing they collaborated on, the men they both loved, the children they raised together, all set against the backdrop of postwar Italy's social and political turbulence. Spurred by anger and a desire for vengeance, Lenu sets out to counter Lila's self-erasure by preserving her life in the form of a novel, making their history irrevocably present in the reader's imagination. Though the novels are billed as tales of female friendship, "friendship" always skates on the edge of absurdity intimacy is inseparable from violation. Lenu is the one making art out of Lila's life, but she suspects that Lila has driven her to do it, that the pleasure she derives from writing and reading is spiked by the pain of submitting to another's will. It is a fitting model for the relationship Ferrante's readers have with her novels, which are celebrated for their addictiveness. You are pulled, sometimes dragged, along by Ferrante's prose with an intensity that seems at once utterly singular and reassuringly dispersed. To read her novels is to feel that you are drawing on a reservoir of shared emotion rage, disgust, pity, indignation, tenderness to which you have somehow, secretly, contributed. Ferrante's women are inscrutable, their minds disordered and disinclined to sentimentality, to easy morals. As a narrator, Lenu recalls her younger self tentatively, piecing together hypotheses that tend to obscure rather than clarify her motivations. Her choice words in examining her actions are "maybe", "or" and "who knows". Though her characters' minds are indefinite and abstract, their bodies are always present. The women in Ferrante's novels bleed and break. They know the monotonous injuries inflicted on them by men seeking only their own satisfaction, as well as the frank, intense sexual pleasure that arrives when you least expect it. The agitated gaze of Ferrante's women mirrors the desires of readers who have sought, behind the name Elena Ferrante, the flesh-and-blood person who has inflamed their imaginations. Since the publication of Troubling Love in 1992, Ferrante has abstained from interviews, festivals, award ceremonies. It is not clear when her abstention turned into anonymity, or when that anonymity acquired its peculiar aura, but it might have been in the mid-1990s, when she began to correspond with journalists, answering their questions about her life, sometimes with the caveat that her answers might be lies. By the early 2000s, there was an impressive shortlist of people rumoured to be Elena Ferrante men, women, couples, collectives. In 2006, the physicists Vittorio Loreto and Andrea Baronchelli, collaborating with the journalist Luigi Galella, used stylometric analysis to compare her novels against a corpus of Italian literature and concluded that she was most likely the Italian novelist Domenico Starnone. Ten years later, the reporter Claudio Gatti used Edizioni E/O's leaked financial statements to name someone else, a woman. This disclosure (neither confirmed nor denied by her publisher) was met with a public outcry that he "spoils the fun". What fun, exactly? The theorist Michel Foucault once observed that literary anonymity was nothing more than a puzzle to be solved. But literary anonymity, as Ferrante practises it, is not a puzzle it is an expressive strategy. It has a style and goals, one of which is to multiply and muddle the distinct egos of the author: Elena as the writer of the Neapolitan novels; Elena as their first-person narrator; Elena as a commentator on the novels she has written. Sometimes the tension that holds these egos in check is precisely calibrated, thrilling to behold. "Elena Ferrante is the author of several novels," she wrote in an interview with The Guardian, weaving between the first and third person. "There is nothing mysterious about her, given how she manifests herself perhaps even too much in her own writing, the place where her creative life transpires in absolute fullness." Ferrante often describes her novels as mysterious, inviolable creatures that have escaped her grasp and journeyed freely into the world. Their immortal life offers a supplement to her mortal one and suggests that we can revive the historical moment before authorship, before writers owned the words they wrote, before the spines of books came bearing names. Yet, paradoxically, Ferrante's self-erasure has had the opposite effect from what she claims. It has resurrected a powerful, almost transcendent, myth of the author as removed from the realities of time and space, a creator whose novels spring from her head armoured and fully formed, a theorist of her own conditions of existence. What other writer enjoys such power? Ludovica Nasti, left, as young Lila, and Elisa del Genio as Lenu in My Brilliant Friend. Credit:Eduardo Castaldo It is dangerous to draw too close to that power; it convinces you that you can share in it. When I first asked Ferrante's English-language editor if I could put some questions to her for this article, he explained that she was not doing any interviews. Then, for reasons unknown to me, she made an exception. It was impossible not to speculate about why. I was vain, imagining that the questions I proposed to her editor about literary form and the politics of collaboration were smarter, more respectful, than the questions she was used to fielding about friendship or identity. I wanted to please, and I imagined that if I did, our exchange would vibrate with intellectual camaraderie. Yet over the course of a two-month correspondence mediated by her editor, my editor and her translator, Ann Goldstein, the distance between us seemed only to expand. She answered questions I had not asked and ignored the ones I had. She got irritated, apologised, misinterpreted my phrasing wilfully, I suspected. When I asked about the living authors she enjoyed reading, she wrote: "I would have to give a very complex answer, talking about various stages of my life. I'll answer you some other time." I wondered when that might be, imagining that one day I might open my door and find a children's wagon full of mouldy novels, with no address, no note, no glimpse of a telltale figure hurrying away. An interview is a collaboration, too, though like all collaborations with Ferrante, an imbalanced one. Often she answered my questions in the same oblique style as her narrator. "Maybe in more than a few cases I was overly frank," she wrote when I asked her what instructions she gave Costanzo. "Maybe I intervened, with some presumptuousness, in irrelevant details." She told me she thinks collaborations between women are more difficult than collaborations between a woman and a man, whose authority a woman can either submit to or pretend to recognise while pursuing her own agenda. "Certainly it's more complicated to recognise the authority of another woman; tradition in that case is more fragile," she wrote. "It works if, in a relationship between the person in charge and the subordinate, the first wants the other to grow and free herself from her subordinate status, and the second gains her autonomy without feeling obliged to diminish the other." As the subordinate, I could only strategise how to ask questions that would compel her to write useful answers for me. My initial plan was to present myself as a new mother who found in Ferrante's fiction the emotional tumult of motherhood as I am living it. In the note that preceded my questions, I told her that I have found myself returning to the third book in the Neapolitan series, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, many times since having my two children. No other novel I have read captures the vicissitudes of motherhood with such precision: the power and vulnerability of caring for others, the intimacy and distance between mother and child. When I became a mother, it was painful to realise that my mother had a separate life, a different self, before she became my mother; painful, too, to think that my children might not realise this about me until it was too late. She did not acknowledge my note. I tried again with a question, only this time my tone was less sentimental, more acerbic. I observed that contemporary writing on motherhood has an irritating tendency to treat children as psychological impediments to creativity as if a child must steal not only time and energy from his mother but also language and thought. But her novels entertain the possibility that motherhood might be an experience conducive to creativity, even when it is tiring or onerous. For a short time, Lila transforms motherhood into an act of grace, and though she finds her children burdensome, Lenu's greatest professional success comes after she becomes a mother. What did she take to be the relationship between time spent taking care of words and time spent taking care of children? Ferrante was more receptive, if a little scolding. "I very much like the way you've formulated the question," she wrote. "But I want to say that it's not right to speak of motherhood in general. The troubles of the poor mother are different from those of the well-off mother, who can pay another woman to help her. But whether the mother is rich or poor, if there is a real, powerful creative urge, the care of children, however much it absorbs and at times even consumes us, doesn't win out over the care of words: one finds the time for both. Or at least that was my experience: I found the time when I was a terrified mother, without any support, and also when I was a well-off mother. So I will take the liberty of asserting that women should in no case give up the power of reproduction in the name of production." There was something different about the style of this answer. The "I" she wielded seemed more present, the defenceless voice of the writer behind the author. I asked her to say more about being a terrified mother. What, I asked, was the nature of that terror for her? She retreated, adopting the impersonal tone of the commentator once again. "I'm afraid of mothers who sacrifice their lives to their children," she wrote. "I'm afraid of mothers who surrender themselves completely and live for their children, who hide the difficulties of motherhood and pretend even to themselves to be perfect mothers." It is tempting to rewrite these statements to reclaim the immediacy of her "I": "I was afraid of sacrificing my life to my children; I was afraid of surrendering myself completely." But nothing authorises it. It may not even be the right interpretation; she may really be talking about her fear of other mothers. Why do I want to make it about her? To do so would be to traffic in fiction. But the traffic in fiction is pleasurable. It prompts me to study her language carefully, to appreciate anew the words she has chosen, the phrases she repeats, how easily she moves between sentences. It prompts me to rewrite her words to project fears I may or may not have onto the figure of the author the character she and I are sustaining. It lets me speak without speaking for myself. Loading Last try. For the past two months, I told her, my two-year-old son has developed an obsession with her children's book The Beach at Night. The book involves a self-pitying doll a little girl abandons on the beach at sunset, preferring to play with her new pet cat. At night, the doll is discovered by the Mean Beach Attendant, who pulls a thin golden hook from his lips and forces it into the doll's mouth, ripping from her a secret she has guarded with great care: her name. It struck me as an unsubtle allegory for Ferrante's anonymity, and it was hard to shake the sense that children were not its target audience. But my son has two copies of the book, and sometimes before he goes to bed, he stares for a very long time at the strange, sad pictures of the doll. "I wrote The Beach at Night for a four-year-old friend of mine who, to her great disappointment, had just had a little sister," she wrote. "I was very surprised that my little book was considered unsuitable for young children my friend had liked it. I've always believed that stories for children should have the same energy, the same authenticity, as good books for adults. It's a mistake to think that childhood needs syrupy fables. The traditional fairy tales weren't made with cotton candy." My son has just had a little brother, I told her. He is also disappointed, and I use "disappointment" to mirror how I think she is using it: to minimise a child's sense of abandonment, making his despair more palatable to the mother responsible for upending his world. Maybe my son is more discerning than I have realised. Maybe he has taken the book as it is, innocent of authors and allegories, and found in it a trace of his experience: a story that begins with the injury of replacement and ends with partial restitution the reunion of the little girl, her doll and, begrudgingly, the new cat. In his innocence, my son may be a better reader than I am. She did not respond. Gaia Girace, left, and Margherita Mazzucco play Lila and Lenu as teens. Credit:Eduardo Castaldo Having failed to see more than a glimpse of Ferrante in our correspondence, I sought traces of her influence in the early episodes of My Brilliant Friend. Over the course of two years, she and Costanzo exchanged regular emails; screenwriter Francesco Piccolo described her as "a kind of supervisor" of his work. "There is nothing wrong with a man wanting to make a film from my books," she wrote in The Guardian last month. But "even if he had a strongly defined vision of his own, I would ask him to respect my view, to adhere to my world, to enter the cage of my story without trying to drag it into his." How had Ferrante coaxed Costanzo into the cage of her story? What were her instructions for transforming the uncertain stuff of Lenu's consciousness into a definite series of images? Ferrante pronounced the child portraying Lila "perfect" and the child playing Lenu "effective" at setting up the narrator's "indecipherable" quality. They and their teenage counterparts are amateur actors chosen from an open casting that drew more than 9000 people; Costanzo and his casting director were looking for girls with "sad eyes" and "something a little bit broken". But their excellent performances do not stop the episodes from feeling constrained. Costanzo outsources the narrator's emotional utterances to a voice-over, which he worried Ferrante would find "cheesy". Unlike the voiceover, which addresses the audience in formal Italian, the actors speak stiffly in a 1950s Neapolitan dialect tailored for the series. The sets are realistic, but strenuously so, resembling the backdrops you often see in heritage dramas. The neighbourhood is sufficiently dusty and poor but curiously underpopulated compared with the human riot of Ferrante's novels, whose atmosphere of violence Costanzo literalises in overdrawn, almost comical, fights among angry women. But none of this bothered Ferrante, who, Costanzo tells me, mainly insisted on one thing: that he and the girls convey the unknowability of her characters' minds through a technique she called acquiring "density". He illustrates the concept with a metaphor he has borrowed from Ferrante. Imagine that the lines an actor reads are a river that runs calmly along the surface of the earth. Then imagine the actors are the earth, and that under the earth is another river, a wilder one whose current leaps in the opposite direction, whose roar is muted. Every time the actor speaks her lines, she must offer a glimpse of the river beneath: the mysterious churn of her consciousness, the lawlessness of a person's doubts or desires. "What decides the success of a character," Ferrante wrote to me when I asked about density, "is often half a sentence, a noun, an adjective that jams the psychological machine like a wrench thrown into the works and produces an effect that is no longer that of a well-regulated device but of flesh and blood, of genuine life, and therefore incoherent and unpredictable." It is, however, an important story, and Lawrence and producer Rebecca Bennett have done extremely well, not only in documenting a story unfolding so unpredictably over such a long period of time, but in the difficult task of illuminating the effects of childhood trauma while doing their best to maintain their duty of care to their subjects. That a child's brain can be so traumatised as to erase its own memories in self-preservation is utterly tragic, and Ghosthunter shows that there's no simple Hollywood fix. Resolute steps forward can be followed just as quickly by heartbreaking steps backward. The documentary is nominated for an AACTA Award. Mercifully, this AACTA-nominated film reminds us that there is always hope - and that there are real examples of success. Support is available for anyone who may be distressed by phoning Lifeline on 13 11 14 and Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800. Glenn Howerton as Jack in A.P. Bio on Stan. Credit:Ron Batzdorff/NBC A.P. Bio Stan* The old bad-teacher trope gets an enjoyable retread in this new series starring Glenn Howerton from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Howerton is Jack Griffin, a disgraced Harvard philosophy scholar who finds himself reduced to teaching high-school biology. The thing is, though, that Howerton isn't actually teaching biology; he's using his kids as a personal army to try to bring down an enemy philosopher. Created by long-time Saturday Night Live writer Mike O'Brien, it has good little roles for Patton Oswalt, Niecy Nash and Paula Pell. You can watch Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj on Netflix. Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj Netflix How many of these deep-diving comedic current-affairs shows do we need? The more the merrier, perhaps - America certainly has a surfeit of political and corporate bastardry to expose - but Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj is no Last Week Tonight. The writing lacks sharpness and precision, and the audience is distracting in the way it seems to be on a completely different wavelength to the host. Perhaps they're all politically disengaged Netflix employees who've been herded into the studio at bayonet point. John Leguizamo's Latin History for Morons Netflix Earnestly conceived and brilliantly performed, John Leguizamo's one-man show is nonetheless disappointing. Built around Leguizamo's quest to find Latin American heroes through which to instil pride in his racially bullied son, it's at its best when focusing on how the erasure of Native and Latin American history contributes to modern injustices. But Leguizamo seems more interested in camping it up playing Incas and Conquistadors than he is in examining the struggles and achievements of real Latin heroes. Watch You're the Worst on SBS on Demand. You're the Worst SBS On Demand Pretentious British writer Jimmy and irresponsible American publicist Gretchen really are the worst. That much is clear from the moment they meet outside a friend's wedding - he's just humiliated the bride and her family and she's just stolen a blender from the gift table. But, awfulness being the aphrodisiac that it is, they're soon tumbling into bed for one of the most sardonically disdainful and confronting sex scenes ever filmed for an American network TV pilot. The sex is meant to be a one-time thing, of course, but Jimmy (Chris Geere) and Gretchen (Aya Cash) quickly realise that they're kindred spirits - or at least kindred balls of id, snark and mid-level misanthropy. Gretchen in particular is appealing in an abrasive way, and series creator Stephen Falk (Orange Is the New Black) supplies her and Jimmy with an endearingly oddball retinue as they pinball around Los Angeles. Prominent among them is Gretchen's best friend, Lindsay (Pitch Perfect's Kether Donohue), who is deliciously not the dull housewife she appears to be. Thoroughly uninhibited fun. You can catch My Perfect Instagram Body on Stan. My Perfect Instagram Body Stan A grim little special looking at the extreme lengths to which British woman are going in the hope of measuring up against glamorous Instagram models. You might think that 27-year-old personal trainer Lauren (not pictured) would be happy with her own gym-toned physique, but no. The firies' union has called for the funding of two new recruit courses, new uniforms and two new fire stations in next year's ACT budget. United Firefighters Union ACT branch secretary Greg McConville said the current uniforms for Canberra firefighters were inferior, putting firefighters at risk, especially during "flashover events". United Firefighters Union ACT branch secretary Greg McConville. Credit:Karleen Minney A flashover event occurs when the temperature from one fire in a room gets so hot, everything else in the room suddenly and simultaneously ignites. In their submission to the 2019-20 ACT budget, the union repeated previous calls for two new fire stations, one in the city and one in the Molonglo Valley in western Canberra. What distinguishes most such cases, is that justice was finally done only after action outside the formal criminal justice system and then only after action inside that system had failed. Fundamental flaws in police briefs had survived the scrutiny of senior investigators, prosecutors with a formal duty to be fair, experienced trial judges and learned appellate judges. Experience has repeatedly shown judges to be reluctant to look anew at old evidence, or to regard anything they thought could have been or should have been discovered before trial as fresh evidence. And there was a steady - if declining - tendency on the part of judges to imagine that good honest policemen could never 'verbal' a defendant, withhold evidence that might support a claim of innocence, or 'brick' or 'fit up' a suspect. Those who suggested it were putting their own good characters on the line and giving prosecutors the option of telling jurors about any previous convictions they might have had. They generally assumed that scientific evidence was the detached and objective conclusions of independent experts, rather than, as shown in many cases, the partisan advocacy of tame witnesses who had taken sides. Murdered AFP assistant commissioner Colin Winchester. Credit:Fairfax All these weaknesses were on display in the case in which David Eastman was charged with the murder of Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Colin Winchester nearly 30 years ago. These weaknesses saw Eastman convicted 24 years ago because of scientific and other evidence that did not stand up to (nor get) proper analysis. This week Eastman was found not guilty of a murder for which he spent nearly 20 years in jail for. It was not a good look for the Australian Federal Police, for the prosecution system, for an ACT judicial system which had repeatedly turned Eastmans arguments down, and for an ACT government which was generally deaf to representations about Eastmans innocence. Had any of these branches of government worked properly, ACT taxpayers would be tens-of-millions of dollars better off. The front page of The Canberra Times for January 11, 1989. Credit:Fairfax Media Colin Winchesters murder was more than a mere murder. It was an assassination, crying for exemplary investigation. It did not want for resources. The biggest and most extensive police investigation in Australian history did not set standards anyone else would want to follow. If AFP detectives cannot get such a case right, people are entitled to wonder about the safety of more run-of-the-mill convictions. In fact, the case showed that the AFP, the ACT, its hierarchy of courts and judges, and its politicians were not immune from the problems besetting other states and territories. Indeed, the AFP, being a smallish and rather inbred force, and the ACT, as a small city-state tended to have fewer, rather than more checks and balances than other jurisdictions. This was because so many of the players knew each other, often under different hats, and had at many times acted for or against, or in league with various of the players. Loading A good many of the magistrates, and even a good many of supreme court judges had at one time or another acted for David Eastman, the man accused of the murder. Two had previously been directors of public prosecutions at the time of the prosecution and had wisely disqualified themselves from matters involving him. The husband of another judge had given evidence against the man at the original trial (before his wife became a judge). Others had been bruised (one literally) by previous encounters with Eastman, or had indicated their general view of the matter in previous hearings. They were often strangely eager (and relieved) to accede to suggestions that they disqualify themselves. Even the supply of additional judges, whether from the Federal Court or the ranks of the retired judiciary was not inexhaustible, and many soon showed themselves quick to come to conclusions and slow to see that there was often more than a molehill of genuine argument in every matter presented as a mountain by Eastman. Almost every proposition raised in non-stop Eastman litigation was arguable, even if it did not win. Eastman was a good advocate, with a strong command of the law. His litigation was designed both to agitate fundamental matters (the safety of his conviction) and specific matter, individual points about errors in previous, lower court judicial reasoning. For 20 years, the courts could provide no justice for Eastman. None showed much concern about evidence of systemic police harassment of Eastman, known to be mentally unwell and to have a quick temper, in the hope that it would induce him to do or say something that could make his guilt plain. Investigators also took seriously psychiatric advice, if obtained at a distance, that Eastman was dangerous as well as unstable, and went out of their way to warn anyone with whom he associated with that they were at risk. The harassment was obvious, and publicly reported, but Eastmans complaints, including directly to judges, were ignored. Some of the judges believed that Eastman was constantly focused on such matters as a way of distracting from his probable guilt. Others, including the prosecutor and the first trial judge, thought that Eastman was putting on any symptoms of distress, in the hope of forcing the trial to abort. Responding to his complaints, they believe, was playing his game. Their determination not to be baited accentuated Eastmans frustration, and made the conduct of the trial more difficult. It also heightened jury antipathy and made his conviction almost inevitable. Eastman hardly helped himself by failing to cross-examine some of the key evidence because of snits with the judge. Rod Campbell - the late legendary Canberra Times court reporter who attended every day of a very long inquest and a six-month trial and any number of other judicial engagements - ended up concluding that a jury could have properly convicted Eastman on the evidence as presented in court, particularly after the judges summing up. But, he thought the prosecution case would have been a lot weaker had it been properly tested. He always had a nagging doubt. Brian Martin. Credit:Andrew Meares So did Brian Martin, the retired judge from South Australia and the Northern Territory who conducted the review, who recognised that there was a strong circumstantial case against Eastman. But it left him with a nagging doubt, and he recommended that the verdict be quashed, with no retrial to follow. He found the first trial had involved a serious miscarriage of justice, even if he was reluctant to blame anyone. He was critical of police, and - in initial draft findings - scathing of the prosecution. In the final report, however, he tempered his criticism of the DPP and thought shortcomings of the prosecution, including the failure to produce exculpatory evidence to the defence, as probably accidental and unintentional. Martins inquiry showed that much of the scientific evidence presented at trial was deeply flawed, primarily because of an unscientific approach, and an advocacy role, adopted by the expert imported from Victoria to examine gunshot residue. Some of his findings were untenable; some could not be replicated, and it seemed doubtful that some reported experiments had been carried out at all. It emerged that investigating police knew their expert had been dismissed from Victoria Police for scientific misconduct and the defence was not told. Police said they had told members of the prosecution staff, but none of them had any memory of this and claimed they had not known. The defence claimed that other exculpatory material was not shown to them; prosecutors denied any policy of withholding evidence or said that if the defence sought additional material it would have been provided. In some cases, there were doubts about whether prosecutors had passed on material, because Eastman frequently changed legal representatives, and in the passage of materials from team to team, things might have gotten lost or out of order. There were other flaws, still unexplored. The 'proof', for example, that Winchester was killed by a particular Ruger rifle said - though not proved - to be associated with Eastman, depended on spent .22 shells found at the scene. But no one proved that these had contained the bullets that killed Winchester, or even that the shells had been recently fired. The passenger seat in Winchesters car contained boxes of ammunition he had just been given in preparation for a hunting trip in NSW. Loading Senior investigators, upset about the murder of a close friend, were very unprofessional in trampling over the crime scene, ignoring the pleas of the scene of crime officers. They are still in denial about its ill effects. Others made early and unwise solo searches of Winchesters office for clues. The full litany of investigative errors or misconduct is yet to be catalogued, because the full files have not been made available to independent scrutiny. One can be sure that if no external inquiry is announced soon, that documentation of the full debacle will mysteriously disappear. The flaw with a good deal of the overseas expert evidence, from FBI, Israeli Police and British laboratories, was that its confirmations took the form of saying that if the tests were performed as is stated, and the findings were as stated, then the conclusions are probably right. When one foreign expert volunteered that he suspected that the Australian expert was too much of a jack of all trades to be an expert in any of them, prosecutors helped him, and the Australian carefully recrafted their evidence to conceal any differences of opinion. The defence team was blissfully unaware, even if, according to prosecutors, they would have been given copies of the notes had they asked. I have argued elsewhere that the police investigation was flawed by tunnel vision, and what some people call confirmation bias. There was also an all too common AFP tendency to cut corners and to be all too clever for words. It was not detached, and internal police politics determined too much of the police tactics, especially a decision to focus on Eastman at the expense of all other lines of inquiry once senior detectives developed a hunch that he was the killer. That was a hunch which arose long before objective evidence to support it. It may have influenced the eager-to-please actions of some of the experts. From then on, the top team was looking for material which supported its conclusion or seeking to dispute, reject or ignore anything which did not support their hypothesis. It was not investigated with all the patience, professionalism, detachment, or, at the end of the day, integrity it needed. Inside the court room during David Eastman's trial. Credit:David Pope The DPP, like his predecessors, and the AFP resisted all efforts, including by several unsuccessful judicial challenges, to have an inquiry. Neither participated in a search for the truth; both were present only to defend their reputations, usually by stonewalling. Both were very slow to produce; even slower to produce anything which showed them in a bad light. Even when it was clear that evidence the original prosecution had argued to be critical was wrong, DPP insisted that the case against Eastman, based on other bits of circumstantial evidence could still be maintained for probable conviction. He was wrong. Having a new trial served another purpose. While anything legal was on foot, the DPP and the AFP could resist any call for an external inquiry. Neither have ever conceded any flaws in what they did. The public, or the jury, was failed the prosecution system, not the other way round it seems. The AFP was loyal to the original investigators, with a mind closed to other possibilities. It did not re-examine its case, search for new evidence, one way or another, or use fresh forensic devices to freshen the evidence. It was take it or leave it. The jury, ultimately, was not satisfied. More than a few cops had anticipated this, but the AFP now had an alibi that the case had foundered because of the ineptness of the lawyers, and technicalities. David Eastman in court. Credit:David Pope The case is not suddenly ancient history, of no relevance to today or with no lessons for current AFP investigators, who are using new investigative tools, are better educated and are differently focused, particularly on terrorism. AFP culture has not undergone a fundamental change something may manifest by the absolute reluctance of police to admit that anything was wrong. Many involved in the investigations went on to more senior positions, several to commissioner level, including in other forces. The AFP, which at senior levels over recent decades has become dominated by an inbred self-replicating network of good old boys has never been keen on retrospection, examination of conscience or external inquiry. It is the only Australian Police Force not subjected to real external reviews since it was established 39 years ago. By now its weaknesses, idiosyncrasies and hostility to any system of accountability it cannot manipulate, outstare or ignore have become part of its DNA. Being joined with other paramilitarised agencies in the over-powerful, and under-accountable, department of home affairs will potentiate its weaknesses, not its strengths. How sad that the history shows how poorly organised the law and the courts are in preventing serious injustices because of systemic faults in the AFP and the criminal justice system. Once the prestige of the ACT Supreme Court was among the highest in the land, with several of its members ending up as chief justices of the High Court. Its judgments are now not much cited outside the ACT. Once having the most modern technical systems in the land, it has recently opened new quarters with facilities already of a lower standard than elsewhere, unworthy both of the national capital or of a city of highly educated and fairly litigious citizens. In the incestuous ACT, too many judges and magistrates are to be seen hobnobbing with ministers, senior bureaucrats, or sitting on worthy committees with representatives of interests appearing before the courts. Even more lamentable has been the timorousness of the ACT executive in dealing with either the brotherhood and sisterhood of ACT AFP voters, or with the senior police establishment. The AFP is highly political, with media units used to push the police barrow, and ample capacity to leak matters embarrassing to politicians. It was shown, for example, when the world became aware of police concerns about the interactions between a minister, her staff, and the CFMEU - then a target of a deeply politicised police inquiry (one which, typically, has come to nothing). Just one day after Renae Lawrence returned to Australia after 13 years in an Indonesian prison, the Bali Nine drug trafficker has handed herself in to police over a number of outstanding warrants. A spokeswoman for NSW Police confirmed the 41-year-old attended the Waratah police station in suburban Newcastle on Friday afternoon "in relation to outstanding warrants issued in 2005." Bali Nine drug smuggler Renae Lawrence arrives at Brisbane airport on Thursday. Credit:AAP Ms Lawrence was allegedly involved in a police chase using a stolen car on the Central Coast on March 26, 2005, a month before she was arrested in Indonesia. Police claim on that date, Ms Lawrence stole a car from Sydney's inner west and drove north with fellow Bali Nine member Matthew Norman. It has been described as a "landmark moment" in Queensland fire safety: Fifteen young backpackers lost their lives almost 20 years ago when their hostel on the state's central coast was set alight. The Palace backpacker hostel in Childers, 300 kilometres north of Brisbane, went up in flames in June 2000. The Palace backpacker hostel in Childers. Credit:Fairfax Media The arsonist, Robert Paul Long, had previously been evicted from the hostel, but returned to start the fire in the TV/lounge area. He was sentenced in 2002 and is serving a life sentence. A 2006 coronial inquest revealed allegations that emergency exits at the hostel were blocked, doors and windows were nailed closed or barred, fire alarms were disabled and the premises was over-occupied. The Queensland police constable who was hit by a stolen car two months ago in Ipswich has been discharged from the Princess Alexandra Hospital after what has been described as a miraculous recovery. Constable Peter MacAulay makes a miraculous recovery. Credit:Queensland Police Service Constable Peter McAulay, 24, had spent almost two months in hospital after he was critically injured while rolling out stingers on Brisbane Road in the suburb of Booval on September 27. While performing his duties, the Ipswich police officer was run over and dragged by the car on Brisbane Road in Booval. He suffered broken bones and serious head injuries and was rushed to the intensive care unit, where he remained for weeks in a coma. The choice at this election is very clear. You can choose between the Liberal Nationals' plan to get back in control of your cost of living and crime or more hip-pocket taxes under Daniel Andrews and Labor. Opposition Leader Matthew Guy and his campaign bus. Credit:Jason South Our priority is to ease the pressure on Victorian households by delivering a lower cost of living; securing our neighbourhoods from crime; building reliable infrastructure to reduce commute times and reducing the pressure on our frontline services such as health, education and police. Under our cost of living relief packages, families can be up to $1700 a year better off. Employees of Panay Electric Co. admit that a new management is necessary to provide solutions to Iloilo City residents who are facing province-wide electricity problem. Gaudioso Sumandi, PECO lineman and troubleshooter for the past 24 years, said he could not stand the management lapses of the company, which led him to air his sentiments to President Rodrigo Duterte through the 8888 Citizens Complaint Hotline last Aug. 12, 2018. Sumandi had asked Malacanang to conduct an investigation on the situation in Iloilo, particularly of the PECO employees. He added that some of his co-workers would also want to voice their grievances against the company, especially on the issue of contractualization. In the operations department for instance, wherein there is only one regular employee while the rest works under a contractual basis. He also expressed alarm over the overloading of PECO power lines that posed great danger to the public. Fire incidents were caused by the overloading. Sumandi explained the complaints on frequent brownouts resulted from interrupted and damaged power lines, with PECO providing only band aid solution to address the problem.The lack of concrete and long-term solutions to replace these power lines have caused recurring issues almost daily. PECO does not want to allocate additional fund to address this, Arnejo said, adding that the company was only turning a blind eye on the matter. He said, It seems that the PECO is no longer interested in running the companywe were not provided with office supplies from pens and vehicle services, which have been in use for the last 30 years. Their management is indeed in bad shape. PECO also had to deal with issues before the Department of Labor and Employment-Iloilo because of complaints on non-payment of overtime pays. In the case of Sumandi, 21 out of his 24 years as PECO employee, he served under contractual terms, earning a measly P14,200 per month. This proves that the company does not give a care about us, he said. Sumandi appealed to PECO to admit their lapses especially on providing bad service to its consumers. Ertunc Eriklioglu outside AFP offices. Credit:Justin McManus One of the three men charged this week with plotting a terror attack in Melbourne is due to face court in January accused of driving at double the speed limit in recent months. Police allege they caught Ertunc Eriklioglu driving at 123km/h in a 60km/h zone in September in Greenvale, a few kilometres from his home in Dallas in Melbournes northern suburbs. Brothers Samed and Ertunc Eriklioglu, aged 26 and 30, were arrested during pre-dawn raids at their homes in Dallas and Campbellfield on Tuesday, while their friend Hanifi Halis, 21, was arrested at his home in Greenvale. Following the arrests, Police Commissioner Graham Ashton said on Tuesday morning that two of the men had no criminal history and the third believed to be Ertunc had a minor charge from 2007 relating to the failure to show L-plates. After a decade of fighting for justice, a Perth couple wrongfully tasered by police during a night out in Fremantle have defeated a final attempt by the state government to withhold compensation. Robert Cunningham and Catherine Atoms were outside the Esplanade Hotel in the early hours of November 2, 2008 when they saw a group of men falling into a garden bed and tried to help. Robert Cunningham and wife Catherine Atoms. Credit:ABC News But police believed they were causing a disturbance and the couple were tasered during a scuffle. The University of WA associate professor of law and Ms Atoms sued the state and the three officers involved, Peter Clark, Simon Traynor and Glenn Caldwell, and were awarded $1.1 million in damages. Australias spy and police agencies are set to enter a politically charged debate over whether far-reaching laws to help authorities access encrypted messages of terrorism and criminal suspects need to be rushed through before Christmas. ASIO, the Australian Federal Police and other organisations have been called back to Parliaments intelligence and security committee on Monday, in part to give a view on whether the laws passage need to be accelerated. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten on Friday said Labor would take the time needed to get the laws right after Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton wrote to the intelligence committee asking it to accelerate its work. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has also said he would insist on the laws being passed in the 2018s final parliamentary sitting fortnight. The legislation will compel technology companies to help authorities access the content of communications sent by suspects in terrorism and serious criminal case. Police and spy agencies have warned they are increasingly blind to messages on platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram, which use end-to-end encryption. Growing up in Wangaratta, Mum and Dad always taught us, Say what you do, and do what you say. Ive carried that lesson with me every day since, and now Cath and I are teaching those values to our kids. Premier Daniel Andrews. Credit:James Ross Its also the way Ive approached the last four years of government staying true to those values and true to my word. We promised wed remove 50 of our most dangerous and congested level crossings by 2022. New Delhi: For thousands of years, the people of North Sentinel Island have kept away from the rest of the world. Clouds hang over the North Sentinel Island, in India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Credit:AP They use spears and bows and arrows to hunt the animals that roam the small, heavily forested island, and gather plants to eat and to fashion into homes. Their closest neighbours live more than 50 kilometres away. Deeply suspicious of outsiders, they attack anyone who comes through the surf and onto their beaches. Police say that is what happened last week when a young American, John Allen Chau, was killed by islanders after paying fishermen to take him to the island. Brussels: Australia is playing a key role in facing down Russia, Iran and China to give an international watchdog the power to attribute blame for chemical weapons attacks anywhere in the world. Headquarters of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, OPCW, in The Hague, Netherlands. Credit:AP But the move has been criticised as an effort to create a de facto new UN Security Council in order to get around Russias veto power. We must call out users of chemical weapons anywhere, anytime and by anyone, Australias ambassador to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said at the bodys meeting in The Hague on Thursday. Previously the OPCW has had the power to identify the use of chemical weapons but not assign blame. Others point to social media and the hostile rhetoric of US President Donald Trump, who said it harboured criminals and gang members and was planning an "invasion". Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, left, walks next to a section of the border wall fortified with razor wire separating Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego, on Tuesday. Credit:AP Loading Many also say the actions of a few are tarnishing the image of the roughly 4000 migrants who are camped in Tijuana. In the past week, city officials have arrested three dozen caravan members for drug possession, public intoxication, disturbing the peace and resisting police, and said they would be deported to their home countries. It's also only been months since an earlier caravan of Central Americans arrived, and some of them are still in the city waiting to get asylum in the US. That has added to fears here that it could be the start of a never-ending deluge. US border inspectors are processing only about 100 asylum claims a day at Tijuana's main crossing to San Diego, and there was already a waiting list of 3000 when the new migrants arrived, so most will have to wait months to even be considered for asylum. Merary Alejandra feeds her three-year-old sister Britany Sofia, outside a migrant shelter in Tijuana on Thursday. Credit:AP Tijuana has a long history as a kind of Ellis Island for US-bound migrants. It receives up to 80,000 a year from across Mexico, Latin America and more recently as far away as India and Africa. The city has large pockets of Chinese and Korean immigrants. Central Americans have been coming to the city since the civil wars of the '80s in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala. Many in the newly arrived caravan, however, are destitute people who left their homelands on the spur of the moment and have been utterly dependent on handouts along their journey. Many of the Haitians, meanwhile, arrived with at least some resources after working in Brazil, though despite what the mayor said, they also stayed at shelters after taking an accidental route to Tijuana from their impoverished Caribbean homeland. The last group of Haitians moved out of the Padre Chava shelter in April. A pigeon flies near the border wall that separates Mexico, left, from the US, where the wall ends in the Pacific Ocean, seen from Tijuana, Mexico. Credit:AP Brazil and its neighbours took in the Haitians after that country's 2010 earthquake. As construction jobs for the 2016 Summer Olympics ended and Brazil's economy slumped, they crossed 10 countries by plane, boat, bus and on foot to San Diego, where US authorities initially let them in on humanitarian grounds. Then president Barack Obama shifted course in 2016 and started deporting Haitian arrivals. Many decided to stay in Mexico after the government gave them temporary transit permits and have since applied for Mexican residency. The majority in the Central American caravan so far have refused Mexico's repeated offers of residency or asylum and vowed to cross the border. Many of the Haitians also have college degrees and have been recruited to work for factories that export to the US. Some can be found waiting tables and worshipping at congregations that have even added services in Creole. Haitian immigrant Wilthene Pierre poses for a photo with two of his cooks Emily, left, and Violette Novembre, in front of the Kriskapab Baborijinal Haitian restaurant in Tijuana. Credit:AP They opened beauty salons, shops and restaurants, like Kriskapab Baborijinal, a bright blue-and-red cafe that is busy serving Mexicans and Haitians daily dishes of coconut rice, mashed plantains and goat stew. In the window is a sign for the Association of the Defence of Haitian Migrants. Philocles Julda, 44, is one of 11 Haitian immigrants who started the group a year ago to give the community a place to help itself with everything from Spanish lessons to paying medical bills. Julda said he too wanted to get to the US when he first arrived to Tijuana and still wishes he was earning dollars, but said he has been able to make a life here. He works at a factory. "I feel for the migrants who are arriving from other countries just like we did," he said. "But you do adapt." Philocles Julda, 44, poses for a photo in front of a Haitian barbershop in Tijuana. Credit:AP And work is plentiful in Tijuana, whose economy has been growing and whose factories have thousands of openings. "We have been looking for workers for quite a while," said Alejandrina Yanez, who works in human resources at a factory that makes warehouse storage racks for Costco, Home Depot and other international companies. Yanez went to the Padre Chava shelter on Wednesday to see if any migrants were interested in jobs that pay about $US100 ($137) a week. Washington: When asked on Thanksgiving Day what he was thankful for, US President Donald Trump said his "great family" before talking at length about the positive impact he believes his presidency has made on the country. "What are you most thankful for, Mr President?," a member of the media asked as Trump took questions from reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where he's spending the holiday with family members. "For having a great family, and for having made a tremendous difference in this country. I've made a tremendous difference in the country," the President responded, as documented in a video published by The Hill on Twitter. Trump continued, "This country is so much stronger now than it was when I took office that you wouldn't believe it." From the first British woman to win a Nobel Prize to one of the countrys early suffragettes, portraits dedicated to inspirational women now grace the walls of the University of Bristols most famous building. Although the University was the first higher education institution in England to welcome women on an equal basis to men, the wooden panels of the Great Hall in its Wills Memorial Building have been an all-male domain thanks to hosting portraits of its Vice-Chancellors. Now, thanks to a project specially-commissioned to mark 100 years since the first women in Britain won the right to vote, a series of ten portraits redresses the balance and celebrates notable Bristol women who have changed the institution and, indeed, the world. They will be unveiled at an interactive panel discussion event on 22 November, entitled 'Women and equality: the next 100 years', which looks to the future of gender equality by asking what key challenges still need to be overcome and how. The portraits, taken by photographer Jessica Augarde, will be the first of many initiatives to honour women at the University, with new permanent artworks to be commissioned every year until 2028: the 100-year anniversary of full suffrage in Britain, when all women over 21 were given the right to vote, not just those over the age of 30 who owned property. Among the women featured are activists, educators and research pioneers: The Right Honourable the Baroness Hale of Richmond , the first female President of the Supreme Court and former Chancellor of the University of Bristol , the first female President of the Supreme Court and former Chancellor of the University of Bristol Professor Jean Golding OBE , leading epidemiologist and founder of the Children of the 90s study at the University of Bristol , leading epidemiologist and founder of the Children of the 90s study at the University of Bristol Dr Gaositwe Chiepe , Botswanas first female cabinet member and University of Bristol alumnus , Botswanas first female cabinet member and University of Bristol alumnus Professor Dorothy Hodgkin , the first British woman to win a Nobel Prize and former Chancellor of the University of Bristol , the first British woman to win a Nobel Prize and former Chancellor of the University of Bristol Winifred Shapland , first female registrar of the University of Bristol and the first female Registrar of any British university , first female registrar of the University of Bristol and the first female Registrar of any British university Dr Elizabeth Casson , the first woman to receive a medical degree from the University of Bristol and a pioneer for occupational therapy , the first woman to receive a medical degree from the University of Bristol and a pioneer for occupational therapy Professor Helen Wodehouse , the first female Chair at the University of Bristol (Chair of Education) , the first female Chair at the University of Bristol (Chair of Education) Norah Fry , champion for people with learning disabilities, who donation led to the creation of the Norah Fry Research Centre at the University of Bristol , champion for people with learning disabilities, who donation led to the creation of the Norah Fry Research Centre at the University of Bristol Enid Stacey , socialist and campaigner for women's rights and alumnus of University College, Bristol (the precursor to the University of Bristol) , socialist and campaigner for women's rights and alumnus of University College, Bristol (the precursor to the University of Bristol) Mary Paley Marshall, the first woman lecturer at University College, Bristol Photographed holding images of these inspirational and influential women are pioneering members of today's University community. These include Dr Peggy Styles, who became the University's oldest graduate when she collected her postdoctorate in 2016, aged 86; and Lara Lalemi, a Chemistry PhD student who's been an advocate for encouraging people from diverse backgrounds to study STEM subjects. The achievements of some of the women featured are well-known, such as The Right Honourable the Baroness Hale of Richmond - the University's former Chancellor and the first woman to hold the role of Supreme Court President. But the achievements of many of the women, especially those born in the 19th Century, aren't so widely known and celebrated. Enid Stacy, who won a scholarship to study Advanced Latin at University College, Bristol (the precursor to the University of Bristol), between 1887 and 1890, went on to became one of the best-known female propagandists for British socialism in the late 19th century, speaking at 122 meetings in 1894 alone. It was during a wave of strikes in Bristol in 1889 when Enid heard an inspiring speech from Labour leader Tom Mann, prompting her to join the Gasworkers' Union and dedicate her life to activism and raising awareness of equality issues. Her portrait is held by Dr Sumita Mukherjee, an historian whose research has looked at how Indian suffragettes campaigned for the vote around the world. Also celebrated in the project is 95-years-old graduate Dr Gaositwe Chiepe, who completed her Master's degree at Bristol in 1959. In doing so, she became the first woman from Botswana to earn both an undergraduate and postgraduate degree. In 1966, she became Botswana's first director of education and she laid down reforms that transformed the education system such that today Botswana has one of the highest literacy rates in Africa with equally high progression rates from primary through to higher education. Her portrait is held by Samantha Budd, Chief Executive of Bristol SU and the first black woman to be a Chief Executive of a students' union in the UK. Professor Judith Squires, incoming Deputy-Vice Chancellor and the most senior woman at the University, is pictured holding a photograph of Winifred Shapland - Registrar at the University of Bristol for nearly 20 years and the first female Registrar of any British university. Professor Squires said: "As a University with a proud history of giving women equal opportunities, we wanted to evidence and celebrate this in our most famous building. It's only right that our students will now graduate in a hall which features inspirational women alongside portraits of our Vice-Chancellors. "Although the achievements of women such as Lady Hale, Jean Golding and Dorothy Hodgkin have been rightly honoured at the University in the past, we also wanted to uncover the stories of unsung heroines, whose achievements aren't as well-known and documented as they should be. "Featuring them alongside ten women in today's University community gave us the opportunity to show how their legacy is continuing to inspire our teaching and work today, showcasing our current pioneers and prompting a conversation about how we can work together as we strive further towards equality." The portraits will be a lasting legacy of the University's Vote 100 campaign, which has been run as part of local celebrations led by Bristol Women's Voice throughout 2018 to explore Bristol's history as a city of change-makers and consider how it can continue to fight for equality in the future. You can watch a video of 'Women and equality: the next 100 years' on Facebook: The Makati City government has asked the Bureau of Immigration for the immediate deportation of a Turkish national caught driving without a license and who assaulted a local traffic enforcer along Sen. Gil Puyat Avenue last Thursday. Mayor Abigail Binay tapped the citys legal department to immediately seek the deportation of Yuksel Ibrahim who was charged by the police with direct assault, threat, resisting arrest, and malicious mischief. Binay said: We will not tolerate Mr. Ibrahims disrespectful and abusive behavior. Our traffic enforcer, Michael Orcino, was at his designated post performing his duties when the incident happened. Mr. Ibrahim had no right to assault an officer who only asked to see his drivers license. His behavior was arrogant and uncivilized. He should be deported and declared persona non grata. The 24-year old Ibrahim is a businessman and residing at Teachers Compound in Barangay West Rembo, Makati. He is currently in police custody awaiting inquest proceedings. Binay noted that Ibrahim blatantly disrespected Philippine laws by driving a vehicle without a license. The city chief executive also commended Orcino, a member of the Public Safety Department, for standing his ground and continuing to do his job despite the circumstances. Investigation showed that Ibrahim was driving a black Honda car at the corner of Gil Puyat Avenue and Bautista Street in Barangay Palanan around 5pm when he hit the car of Orcino, who was directing traffic in the area.Orcino asked the foreigner to stop and present his drivers license. Since he had none, Ibrahim tried to escape but Orcino maneuvered his motorcycle in front and blocked the car. Ibrahim alighted from the vehicle and dragged the motorycle off the road. He also physically assaulted Orcino when the traffic enforcer refused to let him through. Orcino was wearing a body camera when the altercation took place. It was knocked off after Ibrahim shoved and pushed him several times. Ibrahims Filipino companion, identified as Felix Pancha, even tried to help the foreigner escape. In light of the incident, Binay reminded motorists, whether foreign or local, to respect and follow traffic laws and regulations. She asked drivers to be fair to traffic enforcers who were just doing their jobs. Tata Sons Non-Executive Director Amit Chandra has expressed his desire to step down from the board of the company, but has left the decision to the Tatas. Chandras term as a board member ends in March next year. However, it is not clear whether he will complete his term or leave earlier. He has already stepped down as a trustee of various Tata trusts. Chandra was also the only representative on the Tata Sons board representing the trusts. 9.56When contacted, he declined to comment on the issue. Sources in the know say Chandra took the step because he was not being ... 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 India Friday lodged a strong protest with Pakistan over the alleged harassment of officials in Islamabad and the denial of access to Indian Sikh pilgrims visiting that country. The Ministry of External Affairs said consular officials of the were "harassed and denied access" to meet Indian pilgrims at Gurudwara Nankana Sahib and Gurudwara Sacha Sauda on November 21 and 22. It said the access was denied despite the Pakistan Foreign Ministry granting them prior travel permission. In a statement, the MEA said India has also expressed grave concern at the reports of attempts being made during the ongoing visit of the Indian pilgrims to Pakistan, "to incite communal disharmony and intolerance and promote secessionist tendencies with the objective of undermining India's sovereignty and territorial integrity". There were reports that pro-Khalistani banners were shown to the Indian pilgrims in Pakistan. It said Pakistan has been called upon to take all measures to not allow its territory to be used for any "hostile propaganda" and support for "secessionist tendencies" against India. India strongly condemned the terror attack on the Chinese Consulate in Friday and said such strikes only strengthen the resolve of the international community to combat in all its forms and manifestations. Three heavily-armed suicide bombers stormed the Chinese consulate, killing two policemen. The terrorists were shot dead by security forces. "India strongly condemns the terrorist attack on the Chinese Consulate in this morning. We condole the loss of lives in this dastardly attack," the Ministry of External Affairs said. India strongly condemns the terrorist attack on the #ChineseConsulate in #Karachi this morning. We condole the loss of lives in this dastardly attack. There can be no justification whatsoever for any act of terrorism. Our press statement at https://t.co/T04YOWrj6Y pic.twitter.com/o9Ed2YfjoB Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) November 23, 2018 "There can be no justification whatsoever for any act of The perpetrators of this heinous attack should be brought to justice expeditiously," it said in a statement. It said such terrorist attacks only strengthen the resolve of the international community to combat in all its forms and manifestations. ALSO READ: 7 killed in terrorist attack near Chinese Consulate in Pakistan The consulate, located in the posh Clifton area, came under attack early morning and the three were killed before they were able to enter the facility. A fearless woman officer of Karachi Police, who was once abandoned by relatives in her village for joining a private school, on Friday saved the lives of many Chinese diplomatic staff when heavily-armed terrorists stormed the mission in the Pakistani city. Senior Superintendent Police Suhai Aziz Talpur led the security operation that foiled the brazen attack by members of the Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, in Karachi. ALSO READ: Beijing asks Pak to safeguard Chinese working on CPEC after Karachi attack She ensured the terrorists, armed with nine hand-grenades, assault rifles, magazines and explosives, did not reach the diplomatic staff inside the consulate building. Police said the terrorists were carrying food supplies and medicines, suggesting they had planned to take hostages. ALSO READ: 7 killed in terrorist attack near Chinese Consulate in Pakistan But as soon as they reached the gates of the consulate, the police team took positions and retaliated. Two police officials were killed in the gunfight in which all the attackers were also neutralised. Suhai hails from a lower middle-class family of Bhai Khan Talpur village in Tando Muhammad Khan district of Sindh province. She joined the police force after clearing elite Central Superior Services exam in 2013, The Express Tribune reported. "When my parents decided to enroll me at a school, most of our relatives started taunting my family. So much so, that my family had to leave our village and move to a nearby town," she told the daily. Her father Aziz Talpur, a political activist and writer, always dreamt big for his daughter. "My relatives cut off ties with me because I wanted Suhai to study as they were only in favour of religious education," Aziz told the daily. "But I vowed to provide my daughter quality education." Suhai started her primary education at a private school in Tando Muhammad Khan and joined Bahria Foundation for her intermediate studies. Her educational path then led her to pursue B.Com from the Zubaida Girls College, Hyderabad in Sindh province. "My family wanted me to become a chartered accountant but I found the job to be very dull as it had no social value," she said. "That is when I appeared for CSS and cleared it in the first attempt." She credited her success to hard work and her upbringing. "My parents are nationalists. As a child, they used to emphasise that I memorise Sindhi poetry. This developed my interest in literature and history, leading me to secure top marks in both the subjects in the CSS (Central Superior Services) exams. Noting that there is disillusionment with governance and functioning of institutions, former Friday said they are a mirror of character and must immediately win back the people's trust to save India's democracy. Mukherjee, who was speaking at the inauguration of a conference on "Towards Peace, Harmony and Happiness: Transition to transformation" here, stressed the need for maintaining the delicate balance of power between institutions and the state, as provided in the Constitution. Correctives, he said, have to come from within these institutions to restore their credibility. "Our Constitution provides a delicate balance of power between various institutions of the state. This balance has to be maintained," he said at the event organised by Foundation and the Centre for Research in Rural Development (CRRID). In the last 70 years, the former said, the country has established a successful parliamentary democracy, an independent judiciary and strong institutions such as the Election Commission, Comptroller and Auditor General, and the that sustain and support our democratic structure. The country needs a Parliament that debates, discusses and decides, and not disrupt, a judiciary that gives justice without delay and a leadership that is committed to the nation and those values that made us a great civilization, Mukherjee asserted. We need a state that inspires confidence among people in its ability to surmount challenges before us, he said. "In the recent past, these institutions have come under severe strain and their credibility is being questioned. There is widespread cynicism and disillusionment with the governance and functioning of these institutions. To restore this credibility, the correctives have to come from within. "Institutions are a mirror of character. To save our democracy, these institutions must win back the trust of the people, without any delay," he said. His remarks come in the wake of the recent strain between the RBI and the government. In Mukherjee's view, peace and harmony prevail when a nation celebrates pluralism, practices tolerance and promotes goodwill among diverse communities. "The land which gave the world the concept of 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' (the world is one) and the civilizational ethos of tolerance, acceptance, and forgiveness, is now in the news for rising levels of intolerance, manifestations of rage and infringement of human rights," he added. "Harmony prevails when we resolve the man-nature conflict and achieve a balanced growth through sustainable lifestyles." Peace and harmony, he asserted, prevail when the toxins of hatred, envy, jealousy and aggression are purged from our everyday lives. According to the former president, for peaceful and harmonious social transformation, society must have the capacity to meet the basic human needs of its citizens, establish the building blocks that allow citizens and communities to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives and create the conditions for all individuals to reach their full potential. "Where people are largely dependent on the governments for basic amenities, good governance has a vital role to play in such transformation," he said. Mukherjee said the conference is being held at a time when the country is passing through a "difficult phase" with newspaper headlines a painful and a distressing experience as they only highlight violence, anger and hatred. An inclusive public policy with poor implementation is of little value to society and the nation and the country's bureaucratic system "tends to work in silos leading to poor coordination and lack of teamwork", he said. While policy formulation is critical, it is essential to pay focussed attention to policy implementation, he said. "In the light of these facts, we all - the politicians, the academicians, the thought leaders, the opinion makers, the intellectuals and the civil society have to work together, to carve-out the path for a violence free transformation of the society towards peace, harmony and happiness," Mukherjee said. Former union minister and BJP MP also spoke on the occasion, stressing on the transformation towards creating a peaceful, harmonious and happy society. He said the "world is one" and the concept of holistic universe where science and spirituality converge can lead to a better understanding of human relationships and goals of creating a peaceful, egalitarian, inclusive, non-violent and progressive world. TARIFFICATION. 1 Pacman Party-list Rep. Mikee Romero (left), one of the principal authors of House Bill 7735 or The quantitative import restrictions on rice with tariffs and creating the rice competitiveness Enhancement Fund, attends the Bicameral Conference Committee at the Senate for the Rice Tariffication Act on Tuesday. The House of Representatives has recommended for Senate action a bill that grants tax amnesty to errant taxpayers.House Bill 8554 or the Tax Amnesty Act of 2018, principally authored by Party-list Rep. Michael Romero of 1-PACMAN party-list, was approved on third and final reading Tuesday night on a vote of 213-7 with no abstention The bill, Romero said, is expected to raise additional P114.8 billion in immediate revenues for the government, clear case backlogs in both administrative and court proceedings, and enhance revenue administrations by having a wider tax base. Rep. Estrellita Suansing of Nueva Ecija, chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means and sponsor of the bill at the plenary floor, echoed Romeros view. She said the bill provides delinquent taxpayers a chance to start over with a clean slate by becoming tax-compliant and to avoid penalties and surcharges for the delinquency, For both formal and informal sectors, they will be absolved by settling [the taxes due] all their undeclared assets and previous unpaid taxes without fear of civil, criminal or administrative penalties, Suansing said Suansing noted that the last amnesty was granted in 2007 through Republic Act 9480 where 25,017 applicants paid some P7.2 billion pesos, or 0.07 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). For the next 10 years, HB 8554 will be the amnesty program that the government will apply in conjunction with one of the legislative priorities of President Rodrigo Duterte. The provisions of HB 8554 encompass Estate Tax Amnesty, General Tax Amnesty, and Tax Amnesty on Delinquencies. On the matter of the Estate Tax Amnesty, Suansing observed that estate taxes account for a very small percentage of the tax collection of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. This means that despite the increase in numbers of deaths, there is a greater percentage of the legal heirs who did not file the required Estate Tax Return, she said. Suansing reasoned that few may have known that even if the estate is exempt from taxes, legal heirs must still file the Estate Tax Return.But when heirs fail to file a return within a certain period, penalties and interest are incurred. Heirs are then considered non-compliant and are prevented the use of their properties, rendering the properties idle and unproductive and therefore a drain to the economy as more income opportunity is lost. To address this, HB 8554 provides that for two years, the authorized administrator or executor, or the legal heirs and recognized successors may avail of the Estate Tax Amnesty at a rate of 6 percent of the net value ofthe estate for taxable year 2017 and prior years. The General Tax Amnesty, on the other hand, encompasses all national internal revenue taxes except value-added tax and excise tax collected by the Bureau of Customs. Under this, a taxpayer may avail of the amnesty tax at the rate of 2 percent based on the taxpayers total assets. It will be a one-time opportunity for the erring taxpayer to file and pay their tax returns with one year worry-free from any penalties, surcharges, even criminal, civil, or administrative cases as long as the declaration is truthful and honest, Suansing said. At a rate of 2 percent of the total assets, the taxpayer will have a cordial relationship with tax authorities and may move forward with a clean slate, she added. Lastly, HB 8554 imposes the Tax Amnesty on Delinquencies, which Suansing described as the most exceptional feature of the measure. The provision aims to decongest the dockets of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, Regional Trial Courts, Court of Tax Appeals, and the Supreme Courts by granting tax amnesty on delinquent accounts with final assessments; those that have become final and executory; and those with existing tax evasion cases at a rate of 40 percent, 50 percent, 60 percent, respectively. The government is moving forward from these unending and tiring pursuits of non-compliant citizens by encouraging the taxpayer to merely pay at a rate of 40 percent, 50 percent, 60 percent, respectively, of the basic tax which excludes the penalties and surcharges should there be any imposition or decision to pay, Suansing explained. In addition, HB 8554 mandates the BIR to establish a tax database of all taxpayers availing of the tax amnesty, list of total assets of applicants, and other relevant taxpayer information. Home sales have gone up 40 per cent in the top seven cities in first nine months of this year on yearly basis, a report by property consultant JLL said on Friday. The report said new project launches had gone up 75 per cent during January-September 2018. But rivals have shared lower growth numbers for sales and launches between January and September. Anarock, promoted by former JLL country head Anuj Puri, said the absorption of homes in top seven cities went up by a mere 8 per cent. The new supply has gone up 18 per cent, Anarock said. Pankaj Kapoor, managing director of ... Prime Minister on Friday accused the of ignoring development in and said that the northeast has moved beyond shutdowns, guns and blockades. "The northeast has moved beyond guns, shutdowns and blockades. Today everyone is experiencing it from Itanagar to Aizawl, from Kohima to Kamrup," he said while addressing a public meeting in the poll-bound that will be voting on Nov 28. also attacked leaders for calling the attire of the northeast outlandish. "People in northeast in many places give me the traditional attire which is called outlandish by the leaders. They speak a lot when they come here but this is their reality. I feel a deep sense of anguish, when I see the leaders of the Congress party abuse the same traditions." "In the last four years, the BJP government at the Centre, has worked for greater recognition, and spread of Indian culture and traditions, far and wide," he said. Appealing to the people of the state to get rid of the Congress rule, said, "Due to the Congress government in Mizoram, people are not being able to benefit from it. In fact, the Congress government does not bother about "Its work culture has caused many projects to be delayed, leading to crumbling infrastructure in the state. However, the neighbouring states have excellent roads," he said. Taking a dig at the Congress, Modi said that the work culture of the Congress is not development. Its culture is to "delay, halt and divert...For them corruption is the medium of politics," he alleged. Highlighting his government's "Act East and Act Fast for India's East" Modi said, "In the last four and half years, the BJP at the Centre has been working on 'Act fast for India's East'. And we have developed every region of the Northeast." The Prime Minister also took a dig at the Congress for being confined to only two to three states where it is in power. "The Congress which once governed most of the Indian States is now restricted to just two or three states. Now, the people of Mizoram, have a golden opportunity to rid themselves of this Congress culture." Describing the Congress' policies as "divide and rule", Modi said "after decades of exploitation at the hands of the Congress, it is now that the people of the country have understood their formula. For them, only the chair matters." The 40-seat Mizroam Assembly will go to polls on November 28. Counting of votes will take place on December 11. Mizoram is the only state in the northeast where the Congress is ruling. Puwersa ng Bayaning Atleta Party-list Rep. Jericho Nograles on Friday assailed Grab Philippines anew for its refusal to take full responsibility on an accident involving one of its sleepy and overworked drivers that left a 20-year-old University of Santo Tomas mechanical engineering student in critical condition. According to the relatives of the victim identified as Marko de Guzman, Grab only offered a small amount as financial assistance but refused to cover his entire medical expenses, claiming that the driver is not the companys direct employee. Grab as a common carrier has a legal duty of extraordinary responsibility over the passengers. They are presumed to be at fault for the negligence that led to serious personal injury on the UST student, Nograles, a deputy majority leader, said. Nograles said that while Grab is raking in billions in profit from its overworked drivers and unwary passengers, it has managed to free itself from any legal responsibility in the event of any accident or a crime because of lack of enforcement of laws. This is the result of greed. Grab makes millions in a day and would rather fatten their bank accounts than look after the welfare of Filipinos. How can our regulators allow irresponsible operators violate civil and transpartation laws? said Nograles who had consistently fought Grabs unfair and abusive business practices. Nograles also questioned Grabs operation because of its 100 percent foreign ownership in violation of the constitutional requirement that transport companies must be 60 percent Filipino-owned. You cannot expectfrom foreigners like Grab, Nograles said. He cited the case of De Guzman who is now fighting for his life when the Grab car he was riding crashed into a scaffolding of an ongoing roadwork along Taft Avenue late last month. A portion of the metal scaffolding penetrated through the Grab car and punctured De Guzmans head. The victim is now in critical condition as a fist-sized portion of his brain had to be removed as a result of the accident. In a post that went viral in Facebook, De Guzmans cousin Steffi de Guzman said Marko suffered a fractured skull and had to undergo a very complicated brain surgery. De Guzman is also unable to talk and function normally. ImagineMarkoGrab, his cousin said. (He cant recognize his own mother. Imagine, Marko just went out and booked a ride on Grab, then suddenly he can no longer move, speak, and cant understand his loved ones.) The family said Grab has offered to pay only for a fraction of the P2.5 million worth of medical expenses.The De Guzman family said Grab made several offers but not enough to cover his hospital bill. They also claimed that Grabs policy only gives out a maximum of P200,000 for accidents. Marko lost his future, his chance to get a job and earn for himself and his family. He lost his capacity to learn, to understand, to recognize his loved ones, Steffi said. The family is now raising funds for Markos medical expenses. But in a statement, Grab Philippines said it is saddened by this terribly unfortunate incident. We continue to pray for his immediate and successful recovery, the company said. Grab Philippines Spokesperson Leo Gonzales said they have been in constant communication with the family and offered financial assistance. While the family has not accepted any of our offers, we are continuously reaching out to extend adequate support that would cover Markos hospital expenses. We are also assisting them in claiming their insurance, which is offered to all Grab passengers and driver-partners, Gonzales said. Nograles, meanwhile, said that according to reports, the driver, who was later identified as Allan Sarmiento, crashed into the scaffolding because he was too sleepy to drive. Sarmiento, has been permanently banned from the Grab platform. He and another driver await arraignment. This is not an isolated incident. There are many others. There will be more. The main reason is, drivers working themselves to death to reach their quota thereby endangering their own lives, lives of passengers, and lives of the general public. Nograles also questioned Grabs refusal to cover the full medical expense of De Guzman because in its website, it claimed that Grab is providing a Group Personal Accident insurance for all Grab car rides. It claims that all eligible drivers who are registered with GrabCar and Passenger(s) on board with a valid GrabCar booking are covered with personal accident insurance to compensate the Insured Person(s) for bodily injuries arising from a GrabCar accident. Grab, however, cannot pass liability to insurance companies. Our civil laws provide that Grab is directly responsible for all negligence unless they have exercised extraordinary diligence. Grab is not exercising diligence by pushing exhausted drivers to drive beyond humane conditions. Unless our regulators address these legal and safety issues, everyone is in danger, Nograles added. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday expelled 11 rebel leaders from the primary membership of the party for six years. The action has been taken against these leaders for contesting against the official party candidates in the upcoming Rajasthan assembly elections. Two leaders each have been expelled from Churu, Jaipur and Pali districts of the state. Whereas one leader each from Sri Ganganagar, Alwar, Bikaner, Banswara and Dungarpur has been expelled for fighting against party's official candidate. After the announcement of the candidate list, many leaders have shifted camps. Read our full coverage on Rajasthan Assembly Elections 2018 On November 18, Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) sitting MLA from Ramgarh constituency Gyandev Ahuja had resigned from the party and later announced to contest as an independent candidate after the party declined to give him ticket. Last Wednesday, former legislator Habibur Rahaman Ashrafi Lamba joined the party. Rahman had tendered his resignation on November 12 to state chief Madan Lal Saini after he found his name was missing from the party's first list. Rajasthan will go to polls on December 7, and results will be declared on December 11. A concerned China on Friday asked Pakistan to step up security for thousands of Chinese working on after three heavily-armed gunmen stormed its consulate in Karachi, but said it "highly appreciated" Islamabad's quick response to thwart the attack. Strongly condemning the attack, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters the gunmen tried to enter the consulate but were repulsed by Pakistani policemen. All the three gunmen and two policemen were killed in the incident, he said. "The gunmen had not entered the consulate. The crossfire happened outside the consulate general office," he said. "All Chinese staff and families in the consulate are safe. Pakistan prime minister sent a condolence to the consulate general. China strongly condemns the violent attack on diplomatic missions," Geng said. ALSO READ: India strongly condemns terror attack on Chinese Consulate in Karachi "We have asked the Pakistani side to take measures to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens and organisations there. At the same time, we mourn for the two policemen killed. We express our sympathy to the families and injured," he said. Asked about the Balochistan National Army (BNA), a separatist group, claiming responsibility for the attack, Geng declined to go into the details saying, "Pakistani side is conducting investigation on this incident". The BNA staunchly opposes the USD 60-billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor connecting Gwadar port in Balochistan province in southern Pakistan with China's Xinjiang province through a maze of rail and road projects. To a question whether any attacker managed to escape, Geng said, "According to my information three gunmen attempted to barge into the consulate building. All of them were killed. The consulate is closed now," he said. ALSO READ: 7 killed in terrorist attack near Chinese Consulate in Pakistan Asked whether China is satisfied with the Pakistani security forces' response, Geng said, "I think Pakistan has taken immediate, effective measures to protect the staff of the consulate general office. Two policemen were killed. We highly appreciate the efforts made by Pakistan," he said. Asked whether the attack will have any impact on the CPEC, he said, "China and Pakistan are all-weather partners. Our pragmatic cooperation has delivered benefits to two peoples. Advancing the CPEC is also the consensus reached by the two countries' leaders". He said the CPEC is of great significance for the development and its construction is a priority for the two counties. "We will work with Pakistan to advance the CPEC and deliver more benefits for the two countries and other countries in the region," he said. "China appreciates the measures taken by Pakistan to safeguard the CPEC, Chinese citizens and institutions. We believe the Pakistani side will take effective measures to safeguard the safety of the CPEC and make the project to advance in a smooth way," he said. India has protested to Pakistan over the CPEC as it traverses through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Nissan's disgraced former chairman under-reported his income by a total of $ 71 million -- much more than initially suspected -- Japanese media reported Friday. The Brazil-born tycoon is now reportedly set to face a new charge from prosecutors, after he was sacked as Nissan chairman Thursday to top a spectacular fall from grace for the once-revered boss whose fall has stunned the business world. Prosecutors arrested Ghosn Monday, accusing him and fellow executive Greg Kelly of understating the former chairman's income by around five billion yen ($ 44 million) between June 2011 and June 2015. But Ghosn is now suspected of under-reporting his income by another three billion yen for the following three fiscal years, the Asahi Shimbun and the Nikkei business daily reported. Prosecutors are now planning to re-arrest him on charges of understating his income by a total of eight billion yen ($ 71 million) since June 2011, the Asahi said. Immediate confirmation of the reports was not available. Under Japanese law, suspects in jail can face additional arrest warrants, which can impose heavier charges. Ghosn is also suspected of failing to report a profit of four billion yen through stock appreciation rights -- a method for firms to give management a bonus on strong earnings, the Nikkei said. Separately, the Kyodo news agency has reported that Nissan had paid $ 100,000 a year since 2002 to Ghosn's sister who had no record of doing advisory work for the group. Deputy chief prosecutor Shin Kukimoto said the Ghosn case is "one of the most serious types of crime" under Japan's Financial Instruments Act, and Ghosn could face a 10-year prison sentence. His ouster is an astonishing turnaround for a titan of the auto sector who revived the Japanese brand and forged an alliance with France's Renault as well as domestic rival Mitsubishi Motors. The French and Japanese finance ministers reiterated their "strong support" for the alliance at a meeting in Paris on Thursday. In a joint statement, Bruno Le Maire and Hiroshige Seko said they both wanted "to maintain this winning cooperation". Asked about the fate of the alliance, Seko told reporters in Paris: "It is important for people concerned to deal with it after they agree and fully understand. Russian-backed Indian refiner Nayara Energy is set to secure its biggest fuel-backed loan, a $1.5 billion advance from Trafigura, BP and some banks, according to industry and banking sources familiar with the matter. It takes the total size of Nayara's pre-payment deals to nearly $3 billion despite concerns over US sanctions. The company, previously owned by the debt-laden Essar Group, is gradually raising its profile on India's energy map. It is scouting to secure its future revenue streams by locking in export financing deals. Trafigura and oil major BP are in the ... Before Saudi Arabias crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was implicated by the C.I.A. in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, American intelligence agencies were trying to solve a separate mystery: Was the prince laying the groundwork for building an atomic bomb? The 33-year-old heir to the Saudi throne had been overseeing a negotiation with the Energy Department and the State Department to get the United States to sell designs for nuclear power plants to the kingdom. The deal was worth upward of $80 billion, depending on how many plants Saudi Arabia decided to build. But there ... President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the upcoming Group of 20 meeting in Argentina are quite likely to founder on the question of Chinas industrial strategies: While Beijing may be willing to buy more American goods to mollify Trump, it almost certainly wont stop supporting sectors it sees as key to Chinas technological and economic progress. In fact, China would be much wiser to scale back its industrial policies now. They could well turn into a bigger headache for Chinas own economy than for ... 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 Philippine Sea Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana on Friday revealed that he had called off plans to deploy the countrys naval forces to Scarborough Shoal in July 2016 as President Rodrigo Duterte warned them not to offend China. Lorenzana said the Philippine Navy was supposed to drive away the Chinese nationals in the, but he decided to call it off after Duterte told them not to lock horns with Beijing as such a move would provoke the Asian giant. READ: No country can enforce Hague rulingPalace When the arbitral ruling was about to be announced, we were all in Malacanang so when it came out, we had this meeting with the president... He said we should not be... overly celebrating because we might offend China so thats what happened, Lorenzana said in a speech during a forum on maritime disputes. At the time, the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in favor of the Philippines, invalidating Chinas nine-dash line claim over the resource-filled waters.ruling declared that the Panganiban (Mischief) Reef, Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal and Recto (Reed) Bank in the South China Sea are all within the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Philippines. A week before the ruling was announced, [then] US Defense Secretary Robert Gates [called]. He said, the ruling will come out soon, and we think it is in your favor. So I talked to the Philippine Navy...[to see] if we can field a small force in Scarborough Shoal, drive away the Chinese there, recover the Scarborough Shoal, Lorenzana said. The DND chief said he and other members of the Cabinet met with the President in the Palace on the day the ruling was announced. He (Duterte) decided to call us, so as to make it a soft landing [in terms of our response to the UN ruling]. He told us we should not be overly celebrating, because we might offend China, he said. He remembered that then Foreign Affairs secretary Perfecto Yasay was criticized for not appearing victorious when announcing the tribunals decision. People thought we should be celebrating, laughing, shouting about, Lorenzana added. The Defense chief also admitted that China attempted to bar the countrys plan to repair structures on Pag-asa Island, considered one of the biggest islands in the Spratlys region in the. He said Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Zhao Jianhua went to him when he learned of plans to repair the runway in Pag-asa. He came to me and said, No, Lonrenzana said, adding that the envoy tried to deceive him and keep him from visiting the island. When he did so anyway, he was accused of blocking the agreement between the Philippines and China to properly deal with the South China Sea issue. Lorenzanas revelation about plans to send a small force to the disputed islands came a day after members of the Chinese coast guard prevented a GMA-7 news team from filming and interviewing Filipino fishermen in Scarborough Shoal. It also follows the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the two countries on joint oil and gas development in the disputed waters. A Duterte ally, Senator Aquilino Pimentel, said the Presidents decision not to send an armed force immediately after the arbitral decision was a judgment call that was understandable.Since the country had just won the arbitration case, a military deployment to the area being contested might add fuel to the fire, Pimentel said. He said "it was understandable for Duterte to show 'magnanimity in victory.' For me, it was a good call. Otherwise, tensions might have escalated to beyond a controllable point, Pimentel said. On the Chinese action to bar Philippine reporting on Panatag Shoal, Senator JV Ejercito said he has long been against the bullying by China. Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, a staunch critic of the President said that was clearly an act of aggression. Yes, the DFA must file a diplomatic protest about the matter, he also said. Senators Joel Villanueva and Francis Pangilinan agreed, saying the government should file a protest. Pangilinan said the Philippine government should not simply be as meek as a lamb in the face of these assaults on the countrys sovereignty. In the House, Akbayan party-list Rep. Tom Villarin said Lorenzana should have insisted on deploying the countrys naval forces to Scarborough Shoal as this is part of the Armed Forces constitutional mandate of defending our territory and sovereignty. The Presidents directive not to offend China doesnt mean we dont patrol our own seas and maritime borders. The UN Arbitral ruling was a significant legal victory and not an empty victory. Secretary Lorenzana should know better than kowtow to the wishes then of President Duterte, Villarin said. Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Carlos Zarate said he finds it gravely ironic that the Defense Department can be passive and meek in the face of evident violations of the countrys sovereignty by foreign troops in pursuit of the so-called soft landing approach. Yet, the same department acts like a rabid dog in opposing the GRP-NDFP peace process and in running after our poor countrymen defending and asserting their rights, he said, referring to the talks between the government and communist rebels. He said the Philippines has only emboldened China to become more aggressive in expanding its occupation of the. Also on Friday, acting Chief Justice Antonio Carpio said the code of conduct for the South China Sea being hammered out by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China must cover the fishing grounds of Scarborough Shoal, the Paracel islands and the Spratlys, because Beijing wants them excluded. The code must also be legally binding, Carpio added. READ: DFA chief wants US President Donald Trump warned on Thursday there could be a government shutdown next month over security on the border with Mexico, suggesting he could hold up a funding deal if no more money is provided for a wall between the two countries. "Could there be a shutdown? There certainly could and it will be about border security, of which the wall is a part," Trump told reporters in Palm Beach, Florida. The US Congress faces a deadline next month to fund parts of the federal government and a possible showdown over money for Trump's proposed border ... Donald Trump has disputed that officials had concluded that the de facto of American ally Saudi Arabia ordered the killing of a US-based critical of the kingdom's royal family. Citing vehement denials by the crown prince and king that they were involved, Trump said on Thursday "maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a vicious place. The world is a very, very vicious place." Critics in and high-ranking officials in other countries are accusing Trump of ignoring human rights and giving Saudi Arabia a pass for economic reasons, including its influence on the world Trump said this week he would not impose harsher penalties on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the death and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in last month. "My policy is very simple: first, keep great again and that's what I'm doing," Trump told reporters after a Day telephone call with members of the military. The crown prince and his father, King Salman, said they did not commit "this atrocity," Trump said. "It's a terrible thing. I dislike it more than you do. But the fact is ... they create tremendous wealth, really tremendous jobs in their purchases and very importantly, they keep the down." American intelligence agencies have concluded that the crown prince ordered the killing in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, according to a US official familiar with the assessment. The official was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Others familiar with the case caution that while it's likely that the crown prince was involved in the death, questions remain about the extent of his culpability. Several lawmakers have indicated that the US has no "smoking gun" that proves the crown prince was responsible. They have called on the CIA and other top intelligence agencies to share publicly what they told the about the slaying. "I hate the crime," Trump said while on vacation in "I hate what's done. I hate the cover-up and I will tell you this the crown prince hates it more than I do." He said the CIA "points it both ways and as I said, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But I will say very strongly that it's a very important ally and if we go by a certain standard, we won't be able to have allies with almost any country." He also has pushed back on the idea that his refusal to punish the Saudis more will embolden other governments to go after journalists and commit other human rights abuses. Secretary of State has noted that the US has imposed sanctions on 17 Saudi officials suspected of involvement in the killing. "We've sanctioned 17 people some of them very senior in the Saudi government," Pompeo said Wednesday in a radio interview with KCMO in Kansas City, Missouri. ALSO READ: Donald Trump stands with Saudi Arabia despite Jamal Khashoggi killing "We are going to make sure that always stands for human rights." Saudi prosecutors have said a 15-man team sent to killed Khashoggi with tranquilizers and dismembered his body, which has not been found. Those findings came after Saudi authorities spent weeks denying Khashoggi had been killed in the consulate. Some lawmakers have triggered investigations into Khashoggi's death and specifically whether the crown prince was responsible. The investigations were requested under provisions of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. The act requires the to report back to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee within 120 days in this case by February 7 on whether the crown prince was responsible for an extrajudicial killing, torture or other gross violation of internationally recognised human rights against someone exercising freedom of expression and the administration's decision on whether sanctions are warranted. At least two policemen were killed and one other got injured in an explosion and firing outside the Chinese consulate in Karachi's Clifton Block 4 on Friday morning. According to Deputy Inspector General (DIG) South Javed Alam Odho the incident took place at around 9:30 am, Geo TV reported. "Three to four men attempted to enter the Chinese consulate and fired upon being stopped by security guards," sources said. The sources added that the security forces deployed outside the Chinese consulate retaliated to the firing. The blast was heard during the exchange of fire. The identity of the person injured has not yet been identified. The roads leading to the Chinese consulate have been cordoned off and heavy security has been deployed near the area. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Six African nationals, who were accused of abducting a child, were rescued by the Delhi Police from southwest Delhi's Dwarka area on Thursday night. The police said that four Tanzanian and two Nigerian nationals were rescued from Kakrola area in Dwarka. The police had apparently been receiving multiple calls against the African nationals including an allegation of child kidnap. The latest call received by the cops claimed that the African nationals were allegedly being attacked by the locals. The cops rushed to the spot and rescued them. The Delhi Police denied the incident being a racist attack. In a statement, the Delhi Police said: "There was no racial attack. We received a call that people were gathering. We reached there, dispersed the crowd and rescued two Tanzanian women. The crowd had gathered following abduction rumours. Later, we received a call of abduction, which turned out to be a hoax. We rescued the (remaining) Nigerian and Tanzanian nationals. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As per the India Skills Report 2019, a joint initiative of Wheebox, a Global Talent Assessment Company, PeopleStrong, a leading HR Tech Company and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), and supported and backed by renowned partners like United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Association of Indian Universities (AIU), Andhra Pradesh has topped the list of states with the highest employability in India. The employability level of B.Tech/B.E is 63.11% as against last year which was 42.08%; The employability level of MBA & Polytechnic stands low at 47.18% & 45.90% but has shown small improvement against last year (MBA 44.90%; Polytechnic 33.85%). In the words of N. Chandrababu Naidu Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, "It is our vision to make AP as the Knowledge and Skills hub of the country by facilitating the development of a robust Skilling ecosystem with International Standards. We are on a Mission mode to enhance the employability skills of our students and unemployed youth to meet the skilled manpower demand from Industry, spurred by sustained double-digit growth rates in AP." "I invite Skilling and Vocational training agencies of repute to set up their high end training centres in AP and be a part of our exciting growth story. I also invite the Recruiters to visit AP to meet their staff hiring needs as they can reap the benefit of ready availability of highly skilled manpower here. AP leads the employability race, Government will provide all assistance to industry to hire talent" : Chandrababu Naidu. According to K.Sambasiva Rao IRTS, MD & CEO, AP State Skill Development Corporation, "APSSDC's initiatives in providing market driven training programs are leading to creation of a readily available talent pool to effectively meet the skilled manpower needs of various sectors. Our focus is on structuring and delivering high quality, industry-relevant training courses to the students and unemployed youth to enhance their employability quotient. He further added that "Going forward, we plan to further expand our activities in active collaboration with academia, industry and training agencies to shape AP as the Skills Capital of the country duly facilitating a top class Skilling infrastructure." India skills report also stated that Andhra Pradesh is one of the preferred hiring destination and one of the most preferred state of work by both Male and female workforces. The students from ITIs, Polytechnic and Engineering colleges, identified and ranked top skills which are work ethics, verbal communication, analytical and critical thinking, problem solving, interpersonal skills, written communication skills. As per the India Skills Report 2019, nearly 70% of the youth perceive the lack of professional guidance in identifying jobs that match their skills to be the main obstacle in searching for a desirable job. "The increase in employability in Andhra Pradesh is good sign for the market. But we have a long way to go and entire ecosystem should focus on bridging the employability gaps, enhancing the talent pool thus taking measures from school level to professional level focusing on learning," said founder and CEO - Wheebox, Nirmal Singh. He further added that Educational Institutes should focus in identifying the skill gaps amongst the students and Students should explore options of developing their skills which would give them the direction towards their career. According to the survey, Millennial consider a university degree or post-graduate degree as a requirement for their ideal job. Every Industry from FMCG, Startups, consulting etc. hire internships which are paid or unpaid. According to the report, a small percentage of students in all states have done at least one internship in the past twelve months, apart from many steering efforts by State skilling and education bodies increase in this one factor of creating an internships ecosystem in States will build more employable resource and that is the need of the hour. Another interesting insight from the Wheebox report is that close to 80% of candidates assessed are keen to explore internship opportunities and they believe that internship will help them in being employable, whereas 85% of the candidates feel that they are not fully equipped with information or guidance to take a conscious, thought-out career decision. The sixth edition of India Skills Report captures insights and trends from the largest employability test that was spread out to 5200 Universities and Professional Institutions in India. The test reached out to more than 3 lakh students across 29 states and 7 Union Territories on the talent supply side, along with India hiring intent - a primary research survey on the talent demand side that reached out to over 100+ large employers across 9 major industry verticals for talent demand. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The hefty price of the newer generation iPhone probably did not work in favour of Apple. The company is reportedly looking at restarting the production of its older iPhone X which had a good response. According to Mashable, the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, which debuted in September, are not selling at a pace the company expected. Apple also decided to cut production on all new iPhones. Now, just days after reportedly putting a halt on the new iPhones, Apple is restarting the iPhone X production. The decision is due in part to an agreement with Samsung to purchase a certain amount of OLED display panels. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) KarachiTwo policemen were killed on Friday when gunmen armed with hand grenades and a suicide vest stormed the Chinese consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi, officials said, with the attack claimed by a separatist group that branded Beijing an oppressor. Pakistani authorities said security forces had secured the area after the attack, the latest assault on Chinese nationals in the country, where Beijing has poured billions of dollars into one of the largest projects in its massive Belt and Road program. China strongly condemned the attack and asked Pakistan to take measures to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens and institutions in the country, as well as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor mega-project. Three gunmen tried to enter the consulate in the southern port city, but were intercepted by guards at a checkpoint, Karachi police chief Ameer Sheikh told AFP. They were holding Kalashnikovs. First, they hurled a small [grenade] and then started firing, said Allah Bakhsh, a guard at a nearby house who witnessed the attack. Sheikh said two police personnel were killed in the fighting. At least one of the attackers was wearing a suicide vest which did not detonate, another senior police official said. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told reporters in Islamabad that all the terrorists have been eliminated, and that all 21 staff at the consulate during the attack had been taken to a safe location. Situation under control, the militarys media wing added in a statement. The attack was claimed by a separatist militant group from Pakistans southwestern province of Balochistan, which is at the centre of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the major Chinese project in the country. We have been seeing the Chinese as an oppressor, along with Pakistani forces, the spokesman for the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), Geand Baloch, told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location, adding they were destroying the future of Balochistan. The BLA later emailed a statement to media in which it said the attack was aimed at making it clear that Chinas military expansionism on Baloch soil will not be tolerated. It warned the Chinese to leave or be prepared for continued attacks. The group is just one of the militant outfits operating in Balochistan, Pakistans largest and poorest province, which is rife with ethnic, sectarian and separatist insurgencies. Residents of the resource-rich province, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, have long complained that it does not receive a fair share of the profits made from its mineral wealth.Prime Minister Imran Khan said Fridays attack would not undermine the Pakistan-China relationship, which he described in a statement as mightier than Himalayas and deeper than Arabian Sea. Also on Friday a blast at a marketplace in Pakistans northwestern tribal region killed at least 20 people. Officials in Orakzai, one of the seven semi-autonomous tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, said they were investigating the nature of the blast which also left many others injured. China, one of Pakistans closest allies, has poured billions into the South Asian country in recent years as part of CPEC, a massive infrastructure project that seeks to connect its western province Xinjiang with the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar in Balochistan. The project is one of the largest in Beijings One Belt One Road initiative, comprising a network of roads and sea routes involving 65 countries. For Pakistan, participating in the project presents an enormous challenge in a country plagued by weak institutions, endemic corruption and a range of insurgencies in areas slated to host the corridor. The subject of economic dividends from CPEC is extremely sensitive in some of those areas -- particularly in Balochistan. Since the beginning of the project militants have repeatedly attacked construction sites, blowing up numerous gas pipelines and trains, and targeted Chinese workers. In August this year three Chinese nationals were among six wounded in a suicide attack on a bus transporting Chinese engineers working on a mining project in Balochistan, in an attack that was also claimed by the BLA. Islamabad regularly accuses its eastern neighbor India of funding and arming Baloch separatists, and of targeting development projects in the province, particularly CPEC. Indias foreign ministry swiftly condemned Fridays attack in a statement, saying: There can be no justification whatsoever for any act of terrorism. Karachi, Pakistans largest city and the capital of Sindh province which neighbors Balochistan, was for years rife with militancy, but a crackdown by security forces in recent years has brought a lull in violence. The Pune Police on Friday filed an application in the Pune Sessions Court seeking a 90-day extension to file charge sheet against four people-- Sudha Bhardwaj, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves and Varavara Rao in the Bhima Koregaon violence case. The four activists were arrested from various locations on August 28 for their alleged role in instigating caste violence in Maharashtra's Bhima Koregaon village on January 1. The last date of filing charge sheet against four is November 25. The sessions court, which is hearing the case, will hear the petition of the prosecution and the response of the accused on November 26. Earlier on November 15, the Pune Police filed a charge sheet in the case naming ten people as accused. On January 1, violence erupted at an event to mark 100 years of the Bhima-Koregaon battle, leaving one dead and several injured, including 10 policemen. The police had filed 58 cases against 162 people during a state-wide shutdown in January following clashes in Bhima-Koregaon. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Minister of Building Construction Department Maheshwar Hazari is confident that Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav will abide by the Patna High Court's orders and vacate the official residence which he was accorded during his term as Bihar's deputy chief minister. Speaking to ANI, Hazari said: "During the 'Mahagathbandhan' government, the bungalow was allotted to Tejashwi ji. When the NDA government was elected to power, it was decided to reserve it for Deputy Chief Ministers only. The matter then went to court, which directed him (Tejashwi) to vacate it. My department has also written to the district administration to oversee the eviction lawfully. I believe he will respect the law and vacate it." Additionally, Hazari confirmed that his department quashed RJD supremo Lalu Yadav's elder son Tej Pratap Yadav's appeal for the provision of government accommodation, which he was given while he served as the Health Minister in the state government. Hazari said, "We thought about it, but according to law, we can only give residences to ministers of the Central pool, MLAs have to appeal to the Assembly Speaker for a residence. He should appeal there." The Patna High Court on October 6 rejected Tejashwi's appeal against the Chief Minister Nitish Kumar-led Bihar government's plea to evict Tejashwi from his official residence at 5, Deshratna Marg. The department has written to the Patna District Magistrate to oversee leader Tejashwi's eviction from the government bungalow in the state capital in a lawful manner. When asked about the measures the government will resort to in case Tejashwi resists the order, Hazari said it will be "extremely unfortunate" if a person who preaches law and justice does not stand by his own words. "I have total belief that he will not neglect his responsibilities towards the public and the law, and vacate the bungalow himself," Hazari said. He also confirmed that the bungalow has been reassigned to current Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi. He add that the bungalow "has been assigned to the position of the deputy chief minister" instead of an individual. "So in the future, when a new government is formed, the bungalow will be reserved for the deputy chief minister," Hazari said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Congress President Rahul Gandhi broke his silence on Friday over Dr CP Joshi's controversial remark stating only Brahmans can talk about Hinduism. Logging on to Twitter, the Gandhi scion stated that Joshi's remarks do not sync with his political party's ideals and urged his leaders not to utter anything which can hurt the sentiment of any section of the society. "C P Joshi Ji's statement is contrary to Congress party's ideals. The party leaders should not give any statement that hurts sentiments of any section of the society." The Congress president also sternly stated that Dr Joshi must express regret over his statement. "While respecting the principles of Congress, the spirit of the workers, Joshiji must surely realize the mistake. He should express regret over his statement," Gandhi wrote on his Twitter handle. Shortly after Gandhi's statement, Joshi expressed regret for his remarks and stated, " With due to the Congress party's principles and its workers, I express regret over my statments if it has caused hurt to any section of the society." On Wednesday, AICC general secretary and senior Congress leader from Rajasthan, Dr CP Joshi, stated that only Brahmins can talk about Hindusim. He also mentioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi and central minister Uma Bharti in his speech, questioning why the two speak on Hindu religion when they are not Brahmins or pandits. While addressing a public gathering at his hometown Nathdwara on Wednesday, Joshi had said, "They say a Congressi can't be a Hindu, who gave them the authority to issue certificates? Have they opened a university? If anyone knows about religion then its pandits/brahmins. They are just misguiding the people by such moves. Uma Bharti is a Lodhi, and she talks about Hinduism, Modi ji talks about Hinduism. Its only Brahmins who don't talk about it. The country is being misled. Religion and governance are two different things. Everyone has the right to practice their religion." Dr Joshi also charged BJP with spreading lies about the equation shared by India's first home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. He stated that, contrary to what is portrayed by BJP, Patel never initiated a move without consulting Nehru. Known as the 'Iron Man of India', Patel was instrumental in uniting the country through the merger of princely states. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Intensifying his attack against the Congress ahead of the assembly elections in Mizoram, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that the party's priority is grabbing power and not people of Mizoram. Taking a strong objection to Congress Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor's remark who had termed Naga headgear "outlandish", the Prime Minister accused the Congress of being least bothered about aspirations of Mizos. "In the last four years, the BJP government at the Centre has worked for greater recognition and spread of Indian culture and traditions, far and wide. I feel a deep sense of anguish when I see the leaders of the Congress party abuse the same traditions," Prime Minister Modi said at a rally here. "A Congress leader called the attire of the North-East as outlandish. Your hopes, ambitions do not matter to the Congress. Their priority is power and not the people of Mizoram," he added. While addressing a seminar in Thiruvananthapuram in August, Tharoor said: "Why does our Prime Minister, who wears all sorts of outlandish headgears wherever he goes around the country and around the world, always refuses to wear a Muslim skull cap? You see him in hilarious Naga headgears and feathers. You see him in various kinds of extraordinary outfits, which is a right thing for a Prime Minister to do. Indira Gandhi has also been photographed wearing various kinds of costumes. But why he always says no to one?" Further hitting out at the Congress for ignoring people's aspirations, the Prime Minister said that no developmental work took place during the party's regime and it has left the state behind in terms of development. He said, "The work culture of the Congress has caused many projects to be delayed leading to crumbling infrastructure in the state, whereas the neighbouring states have excellent roads." The Congress which once governed most Indian States, is now restricted to just two or three States, said Prime Minister Modi adding that the people of Mizoram now have a golden opportunity to get rid of the Congress culture. He emphasised that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has developed every region of the Northeast by pursuing 'Act fast for India's East' policy in the last four-and-half years. Prime Minister Modi observed that "the Northeast has moved past from bandh, guns and blockades. The people across Northeast are experiencing it." Transformation through transportation is BJP's mantra for North Eastern states, he emphasised. "To speed up the development of Mizoram and to provide a corruption free government in the State, the BJP seeks your blessings and your support," the Prime Minister wooed the voters. Further enticing the people of Mizoram, the Prime Minister said that the double engine of BJP governments in both the Centre and the state will take Mizoram reach new heights. A total of 209 candidates are contesting the state assembly elections which are slated to be held in a single phase on November 28. Of this, the ruling Congress has fielded 40 candidates while the BJP and Mizo Front are contesting in 39 and 40 assembly seats respectively. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) People residing in Delhi woke up to a misty morning on Friday with the minimum and maximum temperatures hovering at 31-degree Celsius and 13-degree Celsius. The air quality continued to remain in 'very poor' category. Over the past few weeks, the air quality in Delhi and Capital Region (NCR) has remained in the same category with PM (particulate matter) 2.5 hitting an average of 300 during morning hours, according to Centre-run System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting (SAFAR). The overall air quality today docked up at 302 at 8:30 am. At Dhirpur, the AQI was 337, while in Mathura Road area it dipped to 'very poor' category at 306. Furthermore, AQI near Pitampura, Airport Terminal 3 and Delhi University stood at 327, 168 and 282 respectively. Due to increase in the PM 10 levels, regions such as Dwarka, Mundaka, Rohini and Anand Vihar registered "severe" air-quality. Delhites are finding it tough to carry out their daily activities owing to the hazardous air quality. Narrating his ordeal, Ashok Mathur, a businessman said, "Nowadays I can't even go out for a few minutes without a mask. Without using one, I suffer from fatigue and breathlessness. It is high time that the Government must do something. The leaders must introduce certain programmes so that the residents can be aware of the causes of air pollution and can take precautionary measures as and when required." Another resident of Lodhi road was of the view that despite Centre taking several actions to fight air pollution no improvement was registered in the Delhi's air quality index. "Though the government has taken certain steps but we cannot see any improvement in the quality of air," said the local. Taking the cognigance of the prevailing situation, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has made certain recommendations to the Supreme Court to combat the menace of air pollution. In its dossier, the CPCB recommended banning of industrial, construction and demolition activities in the major hotspot areas where air quality plummeted. The organization has also stated that stringent actions must be taken against the defaulters breaching pollution laws put in place by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee, traffic police and other agencies. Delhi, which is home to approx 19 million people, is reeling under the menace of air pollution from the past couple of years. The region faced a major air quality crisis last year as pollution levels shot through the roof and even forced shutdown of schools. Moreover, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had described the capital as a gas chamber and local administration was compelled to declare a public health emergency. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An encounter broke out between terrorists and security forces in Sekipora area of Bijbhera in South Kashmir's Anantnag district on wee hours of Friday. Indian Army's 3 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) and police are jointly conducting the ongoing operation. Two to three terrorists are believed to be holed up in the area. More details of the ongoing encounter are awaited. The Valley has been witnessing a spurt in terror activities for the past few months. On Tuesday, One Indian Army jawan was killed and four terrorists were gunned down in an encounter at Nadigam village of Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tightening its grip to contain the spread of misinformation and influence of voters through its portals, Google has announced that it will require advertisers to undergo verification before they can buy political ads. Ahead of the European Parliament elections which begin next year, advertisers will have to submit an application for verification. Google will also require all ads that mention political parties, candidates and current officeholders to know exactly who is paying for them, Engadget reported. Google will further publish an EU-specific Election Ads Transparency Report that will show a list of advertisers and their spends. This report will be accessible to the public and they can look up for the most spender, or who is putting up the ads, and whom they are targeting. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Amritsar, the holy city in northern India, is celebrating the auspicious occasion of Guru Nanak's 449th birth anniversary with devotion and zeal. Guru Nanak Jayanti or Gurupurab is one of the most sacred festivals in Sikhism and Guru Nanak was the founder of Sikhism and the first of the ten Sikh Gurus. "Shri Guru Nanak Dev Ji taught us the path of truth, righteousness and compassion. He was committed towards eradicating injustice and inequality from society. He also believed in the power of education. We bow to him on his Jayanti and recall his inspiring thoughts," tweeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday. In a landmark decision, on the eve of Guru Nanak Gurupurab, the Union Cabinet on Thursday approved building and development of Kartarpur corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district to India-Pakistan International Border. The development of the corridor will facilitate pilgrims from India to visit Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur on the banks of the Ravi river, in Pakistan, where Shri Guru Nanak Devji spent eighteen years. With this infrastructure development, pilgrims would be able to visit the holy shrine throughout the year. Back in India, the Golden Temple, also known as Sri Harmandir Sahib or Darbar Sahib is soaked in spirituality as devotees take a holy dip in Sarovar. It is an important pilgrimage site of Sikhism. Aashu Grover, who came all the way from Lucknow to Harmandir Sahib, said, "I have travelled this long to rejoice the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev Ji. I feel so tranquillised as my quest for peace has been fulfilled today." Some devotees have crossed continents to celebrate Gurupurab in India. Amritpal has come to Amritsar from Australia- solely to celebrate Guru Nanak Devji's birth anniversary. "There is so much peace in here and I feel so blessed. I could feel the holy spirit," she said. While she came all the way from Australia, President Ram Nath Kovind wished people from Melbourne, where he is on a state visit. "Gurpurab greetings to all fellow citizens, especially to our Sikh brothers and sisters in India and abroad. The life and teachings of Guru Nanak Dev inspire us to follow the path of peace, compassion and service," read a post on the official Twitter handle of the President of India. Even the residents of Amritsar are not lagging behind. Expressing contentment, Poonam Mahajan said, "Guru Nanak Dev Ji taught us to keep our miseries away by bringing peace to both mind and soul. Thus, he has vanished darkness form the earth. I feel so serene and blessed." Special langars have been organised in gurudwaras, where the free, vegetarian meal is being served to everyone- regardless of their sex, colour or religion. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) New Delhi (India), Nov 24, (ANI): The Delhi High Court on Thursday in an interim relief to the visually impaired candidates of the All India level Lower Division Clerk Exam put a stay on the result of the exam. The candidates had approached the court to seek its direction for a stay on the results and a re-examination of the Hindi Typing Test. The decision was announced by the single judge bench of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait, who also directed the Union of India and Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan -- who conducted the test on 13th November, to file their replies in this regard. The petitioner alleged that there was should have been two types of the keyboards as per a notification of the conducting authorities but on the day of the exam, only one keyboard (In-Script) was made available to the candidates, the others had to do it on the Remington CBI keyboard. So, those who had prepared on the In-script keyboard failed to complete the test. The petitioner, who is a visually handicapped candidate, through his counsel Advocate Ganesh Chand Sharma apprised the Court that the Respondent Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan in their Notice dated 18th May informed all the candidates qualified for Hindi typing test, that, the test would be conducted in Mangal Font i.e in Inscript Keyboard and Remington CBI keyboard. The counsel of the petitioner argued that the candidates coming for the typing exam from all over India, who had prepared and practiced on Remington CBI keyboard failed to appear in typing exam because the choice of the said keyboard was not made available to them during examination and all candidates felt cheated. The petition further claimed that many candidates wrote hundreds of emails to the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan but no satisfactory reply was given by KVS to the candidates. While concluding the arguments the court stayed the declaration of results of the exam conducted by Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan and sought a reply from Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan and Union of India till next date of hearing on 5th December. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India on Friday strongly condemned the terrorist attack on the Chinese Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan in which three terrorists and two policemen were killed. "India strongly condemns the terrorist attack on Chinese Consulate in Karachi. We condole loss of lives in this dastardly attack. There can be no justification whatsoever for any act of terrorism. The perpetrators of this heinous attack should be brought to justice expeditiously," read a statement from the Ministry of External Affairs. The two policemen were killed and a security guard got injured after three gunmen tried to enter the consulate around 9:30 am, Geo TV quoted Deputy Inspector General (DIG) South Karachi Javed Alam Odho as saying. The three suspected suicide bombers were gunned down by the security forces before they could enter the Chinese Consulate. Nine hand grenades, Kalashnikov bullets, magazines, and explosives were recovered from the possession of the terrorists, police said. All the staff inside the Chinese Consulate is safe, according to security sources. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) "Mike Pences decision was primitive and misplaced." "Mike Pences decision was primitive and misplaced." The failure of the delegates to agree on the final communique at the conclusion of the 18h Asia-Pacific Economic Conference in Papua New Guinea now brings the trade war between the US and China to a higher level covering wider dimension. To begin with, tariff in violation of the WTO rules is a prohibited trade practice known as protectionism. It defies the accepted comparative advantage principle in international trade. In the case of the US, to make it less discernible, the Trump administration included countries like Canada, Mexico, South Korea, Japan, and countries of the European Union by slapping them with additional tariff. The common denominator for the imposition of penalties is that they all enjoy a trade surplus with the US. Strangely however, the US did not file the same charges for illegal and unethical trade practices against them, except for China, for forced technology transfer and theft of intellectual property. Maybe the US contemplated that uniformly charging them would be unwise, and that the move is calculated to intimidate them to increase their imports from the US. As expected, countries with precarious economic standing easily caved in like what Mexico and Canada did to reach an early compromise, although there was no clear indication as to which country won in that compromise deal. Nonetheless, the US fears that shaking them up altogether could drive them away instead of offering to compromise. This is contrary to the bullying tactic of the Trump administration. In the case of China, their objective is different. The additional charges are intended to stultify the awaited possibility of China overtaking the US as the worlds biggest economy. The problem, however, is that the US has not clarified those charges which China has consistently demanded so that the problem could be addressed properly. Neither has it filed a case before the WTO. If China is proven guilty, it could be slapped with fines and other trade sanctions. Rather, it has chosen to operate outside of the WTO to justify its policy arbitrariness and unilateralism. It is for this why many trade analysts are wondering whether the imposition of additional tariff is a legitimate form of economic defense. No matter how one looks at the decision of President Trump, that policy is inescapably one of economic protectionism. It is a serious reversal of free trade, the reason that gave birth to the creation of the WTO. Protective tariff is only allowed under certain conditions. In no case can a member-state impose protectionist policies as a form of retaliation without first submitting the case for arbitration before the WTO.Some even dare question whether the charges of intellectual property and forced technology transfer are cases that can be properly adjudicated by the WTO. They argue that China has repeatedly demanded the US to be specific of those charges, knowing that they constitute criminal violations of ones proprietary rights. They are raising this question because the violation committed is not resolvable by the mere imposition of protectionism. It requires payment of compensation and/or damages against the violator provided the country has given its consent to be sued. Nonetheless, US Vice President Mike Pences decision to raise the issue of trade war with China before the APEC summit under the pretext of wanting to introduce reforms in the WTO was treated as primitive and misplaced. That caused confusion because the issue of trade war could have been raised separately. Pence wanted to ram the issue under cover of seeking to reform the WTO. He wanted to steal the show; this surprised many as they were unprepared to deal with the trade war. It was the work of the US delegates led by Pence to hijack the summit to make it appear that the members came out in support of its position which is totally different from the original reforms demanded by Third World countries in the 70s which call for the complete removal of discriminatory tariff barriers which the US consistently opposed before the WTO was formed in 1995 to replace the General Agreements on Tariff and Trade or Uruguay Round Agreement. Even if the delegates failed to come out with a final communique, Pence as his cabal managed to divide the organization. From there, US propagandists trumpeted that a number of the APEC members were supportive of its mischievous position though in truth, their refusal to sign stems from the US attempt to insert a line that would inferentially blame China for serious trade imbalance. It was a sole US initiative to recalibrate WTO to allow it to regain its economic dominance clothed as an APEC amendment to restore US economic competitiveness. Other delegates refusal to sign the declaration has nothing to do with and is not in support of the US demand for reforms. It is a position that such issue should be brought before the proper forum. The attending delegates wanted to observe the protocol by not affixing their signature to the declaration that would inferentially condemn China. According to sources quoted by AFP, the US wanted to press the leaders to issue what amounted to a denunciation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and a call for its wholesale reforms. What was clear that the members of APEC are also members of the WTO, the imbroglio that has deeply affected global trade is more of a US concern against the world. China has become its main target because it enjoys the biggest trade surplus against the US. By seeking to reform the WTO, the US hopes to resolve its trade deficit which is seen by its arbitrariness to overvalue its currency, which practice has backfired to wipe out its own productivity. By reforming the trade rules, the US expects that its comparative advantage will be resurrected through the instrumentalities of the WTO. The US refuses to look back that most of the provisions of the WTO, including the definition of a free market economy, which imposed certain restrictions and conditions before a state can attain full status of membership, were conceived by the US and supported by its Western allies. In fact, there are trade barriers that remain embedded in the rules like the subsidy to agricultural products by Western Europe, US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, while strictly prohibiting underdeveloped countries from subsidizing their own products intended for exports and the discriminatory entry of textiles and clothing to selective countries under the multi-fiber agreement (MFA) where the quota system still operates. The US has not raised an issue about the discriminatory trade practices in the WTO because it is working to its advantage. Now that its trade with most countries has been faltering, the US wants to introduce reforms. The solution it offers is to incorporate its protectionist policies, which are apart from what other countries are seeking to remove all forms of tariff barriers. The US is trying to recruit allies it could count as with them in their crusade against China. [email protected] Indian on Friday summoned Pakistan's Deputy High Commissioner Syed Haider Shah and lodged protest against harassment and denial of access to Indian High Commission officials and attempts at hostile propoganda during the visit of Indian Sikh pilgrims to Pakistan. Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) lodged a strong protest with the Government of Pakistan that despite having been granted prior travel permission by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan, the Consular officials of the High Commission of India in Islamabad were harrased and denied access on 21 and 22 at Gurudwara Nankana Sahib and Gurudwara Sacha Sauda to the Indian pilgrims visiting Pakistan under the Bilateral Protocol. As a result of such harassment they were compelled to return to Islamabad without performing their diplomatic and consular duties vis-a-vis Indian pilgrims. The MEA, in a statement, said, "We have shared our grave concern that this is the third consecutive visit of the Indian Sikh pilgrims when Pakistan has prevented the Indian High Commission officials from meeting the visiting Indian nationals on the pretext of security in order to deflect attention from Pakistan's violation of the international legal instruments and conventions like the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961 and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963." "This is also in breach of the letter and spirit of the 1974 Bilateral Protocol on visit to religious shrines and the Code of Conduct for the treatment of diplomatic/consular personnel in India and Pakistan, 1992. Pakistan has been reminded that this is in contrast to the treatment met out to their High Commissioner and the Consular officials in New Delhi who have been provided full access to meet the Pakistani pilgrims who are currently in India on pilgrimage to Kalyar Sharif," the statement added. In a landmark decision, on the eve of Guru Nanak Gurupurab, India on Thursday approved building and development of Kartarpur corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district to India-Pakistan International Border. But the resolution on the project was passed by Union Cabinet after months of deliberation, and not in response to a proposal by Pakistan, which continues to create roadblocks for Indian pilgrims. "We have also expressed grave concern at the reports of attempts being made during the ongoing visit of the Indian pilgrims to Pakistan, to incite communal disharmony and intolerance and promote secessionist tendencies with the objective of undermining India's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Pakistan has been called upon to take all measures to not allow its territory to be used for any hostile propaganda and support for secessionist tendencies against India in keeping with the commitments made under the Simla Agreement, 1972 and endorsed in the Lahore Declaration, 1999," the MEA statement added. Pakistan has been remined that such actions are not in consonance with the stated intentions of Pakistan to facilitate the visits of Indian Sikh pilgrims, espeially as we commemorate the 550th Birth Anniversary of Guru Nanak Devji. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Brigade Commander-level flag meeting was held between the Indian Army and Pakistan Army at Poonch-Rawalkote Crossing Point on Friday. It focused on augmenting confidence-building measures, maintaining peace along the Line of Control (LoC) and prevention of infiltration from Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK). The Indian Army delegation was led by Brigadier VS Sekhon while the Pakistan Army delegation was led by Brigadier Qaiser. The flag meeting was held in a cordial and friendly atmosphere. It ended with both sides assuring to adhere to the norms of the 2003 Ceasefire agreement and the Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) level talks of May 29, 2018, and work towards improving the situation along the LoC. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Embassy of India in Kathmandu celebrated Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) Day and Maulana Azad Day on Thursday evening. The event was chaired by Nepal's Minister for Education, Science and Technology of Nepal Giriraj Mani Pokharel and Ambassador of India to Nepal Manjeev Singh Puri. While addressing the program Chief Guest, Minister Pokharel acknowledged and highlighted the importance of the ITEC program in Nepal. "Thousands of Nepali students are benefitting from the scholarship schemes in Medicine, Agriculture Science, Law, Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities. I would like to express our sincere thanks to the Government of India for providing such wonderful support," Minister Pokharel stated. Under the ITEC program, a number of senior officers and officials from various Ministries and Departments of the Government of Nepal have received scholarships and grants in India's premier institutions. As many as 150 ITEC alumni from Nepal attended the celebration. The training courses offered under the ITEC program focuses on the fields of computers, engineering, information technology, journalism, banking, legislation, power, remote sensing, manpower research, education, empowerment of women, hydrology, law enforcement, business planning and promotion, accounts and finance, etc. "Dozens of Nepali water resources experts are pursuing their M. Tech or P.G. Diploma in the fields of irrigation water management and water resources development at the prestigious IIT, Roorkee. Till date, 1353 participants have attended mid-career short, medium and long-term professional training courses under ITEC programme," a release from the Indian Mission in Nepal stated. Highlighting the objective of the scheme, Indian envoy to Nepal Manjeev Singh Puri said, "This particular program has something integral to the government in terms of reaching out to all the various departments, letting those to whom to avail of his capacity building exercise which span the entire and to nominate people; good and qualified people from your government and from other institutions in Nepal who can go and avail of these particular programs." The event also marked the 130th Birth Anniversary of Bharat Ratna Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad who oversaw the establishment of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and laid the foundation of the University Grants Commission (UGC) as the first Education Minister of India. Students of Swami Vivekananda Cultural Centre (SVCC), Embassy of India in Kathmandu organised a cultural programme on the occasion. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Six terrorists of Lashkar-e-Taiba were killed in an encounter with security forces in Sekipora area of Bijbhera in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district on Friday. Indian Army's 3 Rashtriya Rifles (RR), 116 battalion of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and Jammu and Kashmir Police jointly conducted the operation, which started in the wee hours. Based on a credible input about the presence of terrorists, a cordon and search operation was launched in a forested area of Sekipora. As the operation was underway, the search party was fired upon by terrorists. The fire was retaliated leading to a gunfight. Incriminating materials, including a huge quantity of arms and ammunition were recovered from the site of encounter. Five AK and one INSAS rifle have been recovered. Police have registered a case and initiated an investigation in the matter. Pertinently no collateral damage took place in this incident, read a statement from the state police. They have also requested the citizens to not venture inside the encounter zone since such an area can prove dangerous due to stray explosive materials. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Terrorists killed an individual namely Basharat Ahmad in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district after he was kidnapped from Reban area earlier. As per an official statement released on Friday, "Three young men kidnapped forcibly by terrorists from Reban area of Shopian were identified as Reyaz Ahmad, Zahid Ahmad and Basharat Ahmad, all residents of Reban Shopian." Two of them were set free however, police retrieved the dead body of one Basharat Ahmad from village Nikloora in Pulwama. Police said, "His body was handed over to his family after completion of medico-legal formalities." A case under has been registered for this terror crime in the concerned Police Station and investigation has been initiated in the matter. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Jammu and Kashmir People's Conference chairman Sajjad Gani Lone on Friday asserted that he staked claim to form the government in the state as he possesses the required number of legislators in the Assembly. "We staked the claim as we had the numbers. Had there been a floor test or had we been told to bring in the numbers, then what is within the purview of the constitution would have happened," Lone told ANI. In a bid to counter the move to form a government by Congress- Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)- Conference (NC), Lone on Wednesday staked claim to form a government in the state with the support of the 25-legislator strong Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and more than 18 other lawmakers. The People's Conference Chairman dared the PDP to go to the court if they have the required numbers. "If they (PDP) are so aggrieved they can go to the court but they will not because they don't have the numbers," he said. Reacting to arch-rivals PDP and NC coming together with the Congress to stake claim to form a new coalition government in the state, Lone said, "We are happy that we got these dynastic parties together." A political tussle broke out in Jammu and Kashmir soon after Governor Satya Pal Malik suddenly dissolved the state assembly on Wednesday. Malik dissolved the assembly hours after PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti and BJP ally Sajid Lone of the People's Conference staked claim to form a government in the state. Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba had attacked Malik for dissolving the assembly shortly after she wrote a letter to him staking claim to form the government in alliance with the NC and Congress. Earlier on Wednesday, the PDP, NC, and Congress confirmed their alliance in a bid to preserve the state's special status (Article 370). . (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) France has imposed a travel ban on 18 Saudi Arabian nationals who were involved in the murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. According to Al Jazeera, the foreign ministry stated that more sanctions could be imposed following the investigation report. French Foreign Ministry on Thursday released a statement which did not name the banned individuals; however, the decision was made in coordination with the other European partners. "The murder of Mr. Khashoggi is a crime of extreme gravity, which moreover goes against freedom of the press and the most fundamental right," the statement asserted. The statement further reiterated that the sanctions are "interim measures that may be reviewed or extended depending on the progress of ongoing investigations." Germany and the United States of America (USA) also imposed travel bans on individuals involved in the killing of the journalist. Khashoggi's' killing attracted global criticism and condemnation from Saudi's close allies including the United States. Amnesty's Secretary General Kumi Naidoo wrote to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on November 21 (IST), urging him to set up a UN-led investigation into slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi's killing. A CIA investigation had earlier inferred that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the scribe's killing, according to The Washington Pos.t Jamal Khashoggi had gone missing on October 2 after stepping into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, following which he was confirmed to be have been killed on the consulate's premises by Saudi Arabia. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Digital Intelligence Systems (DISYS), a leading global staffing, IT consulting & managed services firm, has started operations in North India after achieving success in the south. The company on Thursday opened an office in Noida to expand its footprint in India. It has successfully built and operates its first Center of Excellence in US staffing, in Chennai, India. DISYS, a US-based multinational incorporated in 1994, has seen exponential growth and ranks as one of the largest IT staffing firms in the US which caters to staffing requirements of companies in various verticals. DISYS which boasts of a long history in the staffing and consulting industry has emerged as a leading international global talent productivity partner. As of today, DISYS has more than 33 offices across various countries and is rated among the top US staffing firms. "High performance and productivity has been the hallmark of DISYS team. DISYS India is equipped with ISO 9001, 27001 and CMMI level 3 certification and has matured employee engagement and retention practices with national level accolades for its HR practices and L&D initiatives. With opening in Noida, we strive to provide the same level of employee care program to build a strong customer focused team," said Kumar Rajagopalan, Vice President - India Operations of DISYS. "We believe in delivering a high level of satisfaction, on a consistent basis, to our clients," added Kumar. "Noida is at the epicenter of the talent ecosystem required for US staffing and offers highly talented and agile workforce required to excel in this Our experience with hiring from this region has been extremely rewarding in the past and now with a fully staffed office in Noida, we are ready to take this to the next level. We strive to be the employer of choice for the most talented people in this business," said Sumeet Pankajakshan, Director, Talent Acquisition. DISYS provides talents for critical functions like application development, analysis, business and IT consulting, business intelligence and big data, cloud computing, customer relationship management (CRM), database administration and SAP consulting. DISYS solves critical challenges in staffing industry by deploying experts in vertical and horizontal delivery teams. Its automated solutions help companies increase accuracy, process speed and productivity. DISYS also conducts rigorous, standardized and in-person skills assessments to ensure the talents it sends have the requisite technical capabilities. It also ensures its consultants have the necessary soft skills to be fit into corporate culture. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Missionaries of Jesus on Friday wrote to the police, requesting to relocate the victim and other witnesses in the Kerala nun rape case to a safer government facility. This comes after Father Kuriakose Kattuthara, a key witness in the rape case against Bishop Franco Mulakkal, was found dead in Punjab's Jalandhar on October 22. The brother of the nun, who leveled the rape accusations against the Bishop, alleged that the murder was "pre-planned." The police had earlier asked the Catholic congregation to reveal specific security arrangements for the nuns in the convent home. The police had also suggested a number of safety measures that the Missionaries of Jesus could implement, like night vision cameras and proper lighting on the streets. Bishop Mulakkal, who on October 16 came out on bail from a Kerala jail, a day after being granted conditional bail, is facing allegations of repeatedly raping a nun of his own congregation, a charge that he has categorically denied. The allegations against the senior Catholic priest from Jalandhar whipped up a storm, polarising the church hierarchy with several priests speaking against Bishop Mulakkal. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Mumbai Police on Thursday arrested a woman and solved a kidnapping case of a minor in less than 24 hours. The police arrested a woman who allegedly kidnapped a 9-month-old girl during the Eid-e-Milad-un-Nabi celebrations near JJ Marg area in Mumbai. Victim's mother, Nasreen while speaking to ANI said, "We had come to Bhindi Bazaar area to celebrate Eid, the accused was sitting beside me, when the niyash (food offering) was being offered, the accused asked me to take the offering and asked me to hand over my child saying that she will take care of her but as soon as I came back, the accused fled with her." She further said, "I immediately informed the nearest police station and lodged a missing complaint." The police informed that after an extensive search and scanning of numerous CCTV cameras and with the help of the locals they got a tip-off about a house where the neighbors heard a baby crying. "On suspicious grounds, we raided the house and recovered the child," the police said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) "Her shadow is that of a weary old woman." "Her shadow is that of a weary old woman." On my home office desk is a souvenir from a recent trip to Seoul. It is a statue of a girl sitting on a wooden chair, a bird perched on her left shoulder. She looks straight ahead, her expression blank. It is as if she is waiting. On the ground under her chair is a shadowexcept that the shadow is that of a weary old woman. To the girls right, just a little behind her, is another chair, this time an empty one. This statue has come to be the symbol of comfort womens struggle to obtain justice for their ordeal at the hands of the Japanese military during World War II. The statue was initially unveiled in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul in 2011, commemorating the regular Wednesday rallies that have taken place for years in the pursuit of justice for the wartime sex slaves, euphemistically called comfort women. The pressure led to a landmark agreement in 2015, where Japan apologized for the sexual enslavement of the women, and offered government money (a fund had previously been set up but by the private sector) to set up a foundation to be run by the Korean government. Both sides also agreed to stop criticizing the other over the issue the deal, it was declared, was a final and irreversible resolution. While it was by no means perfectthere were not enough consultations with the survivors, it is saidthe deal was seen as, at least, a decisive start. As of January 2018, the agreement had been at least partly implemented. About half the 1 billion yen from Tokyo has been spent, including payments to 34 of the 47 surviving sex slaves. Only 31 women are still alive today, the Celeste Arrington of The Washington Post reported. The present Moon administration enjoys wide support from his people in separating disputes over history from coordination with Japan on North Korea and other issues, according to The Post. Meanwhile in Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently said South Korea was its most important neighbor with whom it shares strategic interests.A life-size version of the statue is also at the War and Womens Human Rights Museum, which was opened to the public in May 2012. The museum is a long narrow uphill road. Leading to the door are paintings on the wall depicting halmonigrandmothers in traditional wear, smiling and standing amid pastel-colored trees. There is a board containing letters written, on bright, butterfly-shaped stationery, by Korean girls to their less fortunate elders. Upon entrance to the museum, visitors are given earphones with narration tracks they could match with display numbers. One begins by entering a narrow passageway, which leads to a dark basement. One could peek into a room which approximates the brothels in which the women were kept. On one side were photos of some of the young women; on the opposite side were their photos decades later. Upstairs were more relics that showed how slavery was institutionalized: Personal belongings, building plans, even diary entries by a young Japanese soldier. And there of course were the stories of the women themselves, told late in their lives after decades of hiding it even from their families. * * * While it was later revealed that some 200,000 women across Asia became military sex slaves, the story began in Korea. It was in 1998 that the secret was first revealed. Yun Chung-Ok, a professor of English at the Ewha Womens University, began studying the plight of wartime sexual slaves in the region. Her work led to the creation of The Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Slavery for Japan.Three years later, or in 1991, a Korean woman named Kim Hak Sun came forward, saying that she was held as a sex slave during the war. That year, two Korean women filed the first lawsuit at the Tokyo District Court. In a matter of a few years, the comfort women issue had swept spread across the region, including the Philippines. Here at home, Maria Rosa Luna Henson came forward in 1992. She narrated in her book that she was drying laundry when she first heard about the call for victims to join the causeand she almost froze. Nanay Rosa, as she became known, and many others also sought justice for the ordeal they endured decades before. They held press conferences, filed cases in Japanese courts, demanded reparation and apology and even marched on the streets. Fast forward to 2004, when some 90 womencalled Malaya Lolasfiled a petition before the Supreme Court claiming that government leaders at that time committed grave abuse of discretion by not espousing their claims for official apology and other forms of reparation from Japan. At the time, womens numbers were dwindling, their health becoming poor. In 2010, the high court ruled that the womens petition had no merit because from a domestic law perspective, the Executive Department has the exclusive prerogative to determine whether to espouse petitioners claims against Japan. The court also said that the Philippines is not under any international obligation to espouse the petitioners claims. A motion for reconsideration was denied in 2014.I met four of those women nearly three years ago, at a restaurant in Malate, Manila. Adelina Culala, Isabelita Vinuya, Emilia Mangilit and Candelaria Soliman, who were in their 80s, had travelled from their hometown of Mapanique, Tarlac for a press conference. The Japan-South Korea agreement had just been announced at that time, and the four elderly Filipinas wondered whenor if it was even possible to dream of a similar feat during what remains of their lifetime. On that day, the Lolas lawyer, pre-Duterte-era Harry Roque, slammed the Supreme Court for taking 10 full years to decide on the issue when the women were already at the twilight of their lives. In 2016, just 32 of the 90 original petitioners remained alive. I have no idea what the numbers look like today.In December last year, we here in Manila had something similar to the seated Korean girl. A seven-foot statue of a woman in traditional Filipiniana wear was erected on the bayside along Roxas Boulevard. Her dress was embellished with a vine called cadena de amor, representing her resilience. But she is in blindfold, because she still seeks justice. And she mourns. The statue didnt stand there too long; it was taken down in April this year. The city administration removed the statue, supposedly for a flood control project of the Department of Public Works and Highways. But President Rodrigo Duterte said the statue was removed to avoid offending Japan, because it is not our policy to insult other nations. He added though that he would not have objected to the statue had it been put up in a private space. It is now back at the Antipolo City workshop of the artist, Jonas Roces. Roces insisted the statue was not even put up as a symbol of protest. It was just a reminder of our history so that the future generations would never forget, the sculptor said. In fact, the statue was commissioned by the Chinese-Filipino group Tulay Foundation, with support from the National Historical Commission of the Philippines. A graphic on the CNN web site explains the symbolism of the original girl-on-a-chair statue in Seoul. The girls face shows her determination. The clenched fists show that the struggle continues. The shadow under the chair is that of an old woman because the hardships they experienced have lasted a lifetime. The empty chair is an invitation to anyone who wishes to empathize with and support their plight. One day we will no longer hear anything about the bitter past and the long struggle of comfort women in Korea, here at home, and in all other places where there slaves. Sadly, it will be because all of them will have passed on, from old age, disease, frustration, heartbreakor all of the above. [email protected] NASA is all geared up to send humans for the first time in eight years through SpaceX Crew Dragon. As part of the preparation, the space agency will first shoot out a test flight on January 7. The SpaceX Crew Dragon can seat three astronauts, but will be unpiloted for its first test flight which will be launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida. It will undergo an in-flight abort test sometime before its first crewed flight in June, Cnet reported. NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be the first two astronauts to test the commercial spaceflight. The flight aims to provide NASA with performance data from the SpaceX spacecraft and also help the agency certify if transportation system is ready for taking astronauts between Earth and the International Space Station. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) AICC general secretary and senior Congress leader from Rajasthan, Dr CP Joshi, brewed a fresh controversy by stating that only Brahmins can talk about Hindusim. He also mentioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi and central minister Uma Bharti in his speech, questioning why the two speak on Hindu religion when they are not Brahmins or pandits. Joshi also questioned Bharatiya Janata Party's charge against Congress and asked who gave them the authority to decide that a member of his party cannot be a Hindu and can only think about welfare of Muslims. "They say a Congressi can't be a Hindu, who gave them the authority to issue certificates? Have they opened a university? If anyone knows about religion then its pandits/brahmins. They are just misguiding the people by such moves. Uma Bharti is a Lodhi, and she talks about Hinduism, Modi ji talks about Hinduism. Its only Brahmins who don't talk about it. The country is being misled. Religion and governance are two different things. Everyone has the right to practice their religion,"he state while addressing a public gathering in his hometown Nathdwara on Wednesday. The Congress leader also charged BJP with spreading lies about the equation shared by India's first home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. He stated that, contrary to what is portrayed by BJP, Patel never initiated a move without consulting Nehru. Known as the 'Iron Man of India', Patel was instrumental in uniting the country through the merger of princely states. "Sardar Patel ji was in Pandit Nehru's cabinet. Patel ji's unifying India project had the support of Pandit Nehru, he never did anything without Pandit Nehru's nod. But these people today spread misinformation that both of them did not get along," Joshi said. He also stated that BJP has forgotten that the development India is witnessing was started by Nehru. The leader substantiated his statement with examples of agriculture and connectivity sectors. After facing criticism for his remarks, the senior Congress leader took to micro-blogging site Twitter on Friday and wrote, "I strongly condemn the fabricated use of my statement by BJP." Dr Joshi began his political career as a student leader in the 70's and was first elected as MLA from Nathdwara, Rajasthan in 1980 and will contest the upcoming state polls from the same constituency. He has been an MLA in the Rajasthan Vidhan Sabha for four terms and has served as a State Cabinet Minister in the previous Government between 1998 to 2003. He has held various portfolios in the social sector including education, Panchayati raj, rural development, public health engineering, and planning. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least 25 people were killed and dozens injured in a blast in Orakzai district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Friday. The blast took place outside a religious seminary, reported Geo TV quoting security sources. The injured people were rushed to a nearby hospital and the entire area was cordoned off as security forces began the investigation into the incident. This is the second such incident in Pakistan today. Earlier, at least two policemen were killed and one other got injured in an explosion and firing outside the Chinese Consulate in Karachi's Clifton Block 4. According to Deputy Inspector General (South) Javed Alam Odho, the incident at the Clicton Block 4 took place at around 9.30 am. "Three to four men attempted to enter the Chinese consulate and fired upon after being stopped by the security guards," Geo TV quoted sources as saying. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Pakistan government on Friday decided to open the Kartarpur corridor next year on the occasion of the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev. Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, while briefing the National Assembly today, said that the government decided to open the Kartarpur corridor in 2019, an official statement said. The response came after India on Thursday issued a Note Verbale to the Pakistan government urging it to develop a corridor with suitable facilities in its territory from the International Border to Gurudwara Kartarpur Sahib. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan is slated to inaugurate the groundbreaking ceremony of the facilities at the crossing on the Pakistan side on November 28. Kartarpur is a small town in Narowal district, situated about 4 kilometres from the Pakistan-India border, where Guru Nanak Dev spent the last 18 years of his life. Subsequently, Gurdwara Darbar Sahab was built at the site on the Pakistan side and Gurdwara Dera Baba Nanak in India, which are visited by thousands of Sikhs every year. The statement from the Pakistan government added, "This decision can be a step forward in the right direction from conflict to cooperation, animosity to peace and enmity to friendship." The cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved to build and develop the proposed corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district to the International Border. This would allow pilgrims from India to visit Gurudwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) President Ram Nath Kovind and First Lady Savita Kovind have left for India from Melbourne, Australia after concluding a six-day visit to Vietnam and Australia. During the first leg of his visit to Vietnam, the President addressed the National Assembly and met with his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Phu Trong and agreed to strengthen relations in defence, civil nuclear energy outer space, oil and gas, infrastructure, agriculture and innovation-based sectors. He also held discussions with Prime Minister of Vietnam Nguyen Xuan Phuc on a wide range of issues of mutual interest including trade, energy and regional security. In the final leg of his visit, President Kovind visited the cities of Sydney and Melbourne. While in Sidney, the President unveiled the statue of Mahatma Gandhi. He also addressed the Australian Financial Review India Business Summit. In Melbourne, President Kovind met with Governor of Victoria Linda Dessau. The President also addressed the student at the Melbourne University. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday greeted the nation on the occasion of Guru Nanak Jayanti and recalled teachings of the Sikh Guru. "Gurpurab greetings to all fellow citizens, especially to our Sikh brothers and sisters in India and abroad. The life and teachings of Guru Nanak Dev inspire us to follow the path of peace, compassion and service," read a post on the official Twitter handle of President of India. President Kovind is currently on a three-day state visit to Australia. Prime Minister Modi tweeted, "Shri Guru Nanak Dev Ji taught us the path of truth, righteousness and compassion. He was committed towards eradicating injustice and inequality from society. He also believed in the power of education. We bow to him on his Jayanti and recall his inspiring thoughts." Guru Nanak Jayanti, also known as Guru Nanak Gurpurab, celebrates the birth of the first Guru Nanak, and is considered one of the most sacred festivals among Sikhs. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tearing into the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government, Congress president Rahul Gandhi government accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of remaining silent over his government's failure to do anything substantial for farmers and the poor in the past four-and-half years. Speaking at the rally here, the Gandhi scion reiterated his point claiming that the Prime Minister did not respond to his question as to why the central government did not waive-off loans of poor farmers. "In Madhya Pradesh, there is no scarcity of funds. The government could have easily provided relief to the farmers. I have personally questioned Modi ji on why he doesn't waive off farmers' loans when he waived off loans worth Rs 3,50,000 crore of corporate tycoons. He remained silent. Not only that, state chief minister's family members too ran away with a large sum of money. This country is not formed by a person or a political party, the country is formed by its people, its farmers and its small businessmen." "If you want to listen to lies and fake promises, listen to Narendra Modi ji and Shivraj Ji's speech. But, if you want to know the truth, then you must listen to my speech,"he added. He further trained guns at the central government saying,"Modi ji wants you to listen to his 'Mann ki baat'. We do not want to do that. We want to listen to your voice and take Madhya Pradesh on the path of progress." The Congress president assured that his government will install food processing plants near each block of a village, if voted to power. "The farmers are selling vegetables, fruits, grains in the markets but are unable to get the right Minimum Support Price (MSP). If we come to power, my government will install food processing plants in every village. The Congress government in Madhya Pradesh will prioritise in generating employment for the youth". The 48-year-old leader also touched upon the issue of unemployment saying, "Young minds from Madhya Pradesh want to be educated but there is no opportunity here. The youths studying in the state are forced to cheat in order to pass examination. If you are honest and do not possess any money, then you cannot pass the examination in this state." Criticising the central government over Rafale fighter jet deal, Gandhi said: "Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the contract of Rafale from Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) and gave it to Anil Ambani" and added "CBI director was ousted as he was going to conduct a probe in to the Rafale deal." "Modi ji talks about surgical strike but he should know that the helicopters used during the surgical strike were manufactured by HAL. Then why was Rafale deal taken away from HAL and given to Anil Ambani? Narendra Modi has made a profit of 30,000 crores to Anil Ambani alone. Every day, at every level, from top to bottom, your (public) money is stolen from the Prime minister," he said. Elections to the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly will be held on November 28 to elect 230 members. The result will be declared on December 11. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Mega Church Pastor, Jaerock Lee, who raped as many as eight female followers in God's name, was sentenced 15 years in prison on Thursday. According to The Washington Post, the pastor told the victims that he was "carrying out an order from God." In its verdict, the court stated that victims were psychologically positioned to obey Lee. "The victims, who attended the church since childhood, believed that obeying Lee as a godlike figure is the path to heaven. Apparently, the victims were psychologically positioned to be powerless to disobey Lee, and Lee took advantage of their status to commit the crime," the verdict asserted. Lee is the head of the Manmin Central Church, which claims to have 133,000 followers, and 10,000 branches and associate churches worldwide, reported The Washington Post. The Pastor was removed from the Christian Council of Korea in 1999 for his "heretical" beliefs and was also branded a "cult leader" by the Korean Ministry Association after he claimed that he was without sin and exempt from dying. The court also stated that Lee denied the "objective facts" during the investigation and did not regret his actions. The 75-year-old Pastor was about 50 years older than his victims, the court revealed said. "The victims believed him to be a divine being who wields divine power. They would have accepted Lee's behavior as a divine act, rather than a sexual one, and gave up questioning him, thinking that it would constitute a sin," the Court stated. For almost 20 years, Lee has been accused of abusing his powers to lure female followers to have sex with him, said The Washington Post. As many as 300 of his supporters stormed a Korean television station after it broadcast a documentary critical of Lee and his claims that he could cure illness in 1999. The cult followers also obtained a court order preventing Munhwa Broadcasting from screening a story about Lee's sex life. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Friday clarified that his state police did not misbehave with union minister Pon Radhakrishnan. Vijayan's statement comes a day after Radhakrishnan's convoy was allegedly blocked by the Kerala Police while he was returning from the Sabarimala Temple in Pathanamthitta district. While addressing the media in Trivandrum, Vijayan said: "Sangh parivar tried to create trouble last time also. Now the people and public know about it. They attacked women and children last time and so based on that we have made these restrictions so that the madalam season is peaceful." Further substantiating his point, he asserted, "When VIP vehicles come they are allowed from Nilackal to Pampa. Others have to take state transport bus. When the union minister arrived he wanted all vehicles of his convoy to be allowed, which the police could not accept. The minister himself spoke to the police and the personnel explained the reason to him with all due respect." Elaborating upon the Kerala High court's 14-page-order the Chief Minister said, "The High Court has accepted the initiatives taken by the government. It is made clear that Section 144 was implemented to make pilgrimage smooth for real devotees. Police is responsible for making arrangements to ensure smooth darshan of devotees. This verdict has given complete permission to take action to ensure peace in Sabarimala." On Thursday, the bench of Judge PR Ramachandra and Judge Anil Kumar of the Kerala High Court had ordered that the imposition of Section 144 of the CRPC was meant for smooth movement of pilgrims. The order read, "The situation is more relevant when pilgrims come in groups from far off places in various states. If any deed or misdeed on the part of any stakeholder creates apprehension/fear in the minds of such pilgrims, knowingly or unknowingly, that there is a chance for them to be segregated or restricted with regard to the entry or in offering the prayers then the system as it exists, cannot but be blamed." Vijayan further said, "People spreading messages that chanting Saranam mantras was stopped at sannidhanam are false." The November 21 court order said, "as far as possible, customary right of a community should not be disturbed." The Kerala chief minister reiterated that the devotees who have gone to Sabarimala have had smooth and peaceful darshan. Citing the court order, he said: "There is no objection at all, either from the state or the police in respect of the pilgrims going to Sabarimala in groups or as individuals or in chanting the 'saranamanthra' and that the objection is only in respect of some identified persons with vested interest, posing themselves as pilgrims and may pursue acts leading to breach of peace, which has to be checked." The order also categorically mentioned about the 'care and caution' the police has to ensure so that it does not exceed the limit. "There cannot be any dispute that, it is the duty of the police to look into all aspects and to see that there is no advancement from any insurgents in any manner to make use of the situation and intrude to Sabarimala spoiling smooth and peaceful pilgrimage of genuine devotees. With this intent it is also open for the police to conduct reasonable extent of search and analysis, which cannot be prevented," read the order. Hitting out at the central government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vijayan at the press conference alleged that the Centre has not compensated for the loss caused due to floods in the state as compared to the aid given to other flood hit states. "We expected good help from the Centre. But, we have not got our due. Not just that those who came forward to help us like United Arab Emirates were also not allowed to help. We had sought Rs. 5,617 crore and a special package of Rs 5,000 crore. The studies claim that the loss is of Rs 31,000 crore. Centre has only given us Rs 600 crore so far," said Vijayan. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a ground-breaking statement, former Uttar Pradesh chief minister and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Friday urged the Supreme Court to take note of the situation in Ayodhya and call the Army, if needed, to keep it under control. Talking to reporters, Yadav said: "The BJP does not believe in either the Supreme Court or the Constitution. The BJP can go to any extent. The kind of environment there is in Uttar Pradesh, especially in Ayodhya, the Supreme Court should take notice of it and bring Army, if necessary." The statement comes ahead of a mass gathering by organisations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and some Hindu activists and saints in Ayodhya over the weekend to build up pressure on the central government for a Ram temple at the site of the razed Babri mosque. The mega show will coincide with a two-day visit of Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray to Ayodhya. His statement comes following the increased demand for an early court decision on the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya. Certain sections are also pushing for an ordinance to hasten the construction process. Earlier in the day, Shiv Sena Member of Parliament Sanjay Raut implied that it would not take long to bring an ordinance for construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya when it took only 17 minutes for the Ram bhakts (devotees) to demolish Babri Masjid. Even BJP MLA Surendra Singh reportedly stirred up a controversy when he warned that 1992 could be repeated in Ayodhya, if required, during a "Dharam Sabha" to be held November 25. A big push for the temple construction came on Tuesday when a litigant Mohammad Iqbal Ansari, in the Babri Masjid case, said that he does not have any objection to an ordinance for Ram temple construction. On October 29, the Supreme Court adjourned the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit till January 2019 to fix the next hearing date in the matter, challenging the Allahabad High Court ruling of 2010. The Allahabad High Court in its 2010 verdict had suggested a division of the disputed land in Ayodhya - one for each of the parties the Nirmohi Akhara, the Sunni Waqf Board and Ram Lalla. It is believed that the Babri Masjid which was constructed by Mughal emperor Babur in Ayodhya in 1528 was allegedly demolished by Hindu activists on December 6, 1992, who claimed that the mosque was built after destructing the Ram Temple to the ground. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) "Does this spell disaster for the vice mayor?" "Does this spell disaster for the vice mayor?" About two weeks ago, I was in the vicinity of the Quezon City Hall when this sudden urge to watch a session of the City Council just hit me. Of course, I was just taking chances to see if there was a session that day. Fortunately, there wasand it was about granting exemptions to ongoing building constructions in the city. One of the projects to be heard that day was 22-story residential condominium in Barangay Sacred Heart, the subject of a court litigation among the Morato siblings, which I have been following closely. To refresh everyones mind, former Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office chairman Manuel Manoling Morato, the eldest of the Morato clan, and his siblings, sued their youngest brother, Jose Pepito Morato, accusing him of falsifying documents to facilitate the sale of a prime piece of property which supposedly belongs to all of them and on which their ancestral house stands. Sources bare that it was the Belmontes (Yes, the family of former Speaker Feliciano Sonny Belmonte) who reportedly acquired the property, with Pepito retaining a certain percentage. And as the Moratos allege, Pepito and the Belmontes, supposedly entered into an agreement with the Aiomi Residence Corp. for the construction of the condominium. But while the falsification of the documents to facilitate the sale of property might be internal to the Moratos, the involvement of the Belmontes in the issue might put Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte in hot water. As presiding officer of the City Council, Joy reportedly issued a special permit to green light the construction of the condominium which included the demolition of the ancestral house of the Moratos which was constructed in the 1950s. The special permit was said to have been issued on the basis of a City Ordinance which created the Morato Avenue as a commercial area. However, this order, the Moratos allege, directly violates Republic Act 10066 which provides protection for heritage structures 50 years and older. This prohibits the demolition without going to court. In fact, the Moratos prize their ancestral house so much, describing it as rich as the Philippine history. Our ancestral house was a beautiful six-bedroom house. If you enter it, its like being in Europe. All the narra, molave used there are now prohibited to be cut by law. My father was a lumberman and owned the first plywood company in the country, Philippine Plywood Corporation, Manoling says.Sadly, with its demolition, the grandiose design including its marble fixtures and collections of paintings are no longer to be found. And aside from violating RA 10066, Manoling claims Pepito and his partners also violated Republic Act 4850 which created the Laguna Lake Development Authority, which he says is the sole body authorized to issue developmental clearances. In his column the other day, Manoling cited a Supreme Court-decided case, which upheld the authority of the LLDA on the issuance of developmental clearances on projects which might affect Laguna Lake. The Court has assisted not only the PAB [Pollution Adjudication Board], but other quasi-judicial agencies such as the LLDA, whose power to issue a CDO [cease and desist] ordering the City Government of Caloocan, Metropolitan Manila Authority, their contractors and other entities to completely halt, stop and desist from dumping any form or kind of garbage and other waste matter at the dumpsite in Barangay Camarin, Tala Estate, Caloocan City was upheld by the Court in the case of Laguna Lake Development Authority v. Court of Appeals, 231 SCRA 292 (1994), Manoling stated in his column in another paper, adding that the Court referred to the LLDA Charter which invested the agency with sufficiently broad powers in the regulation of all projects initiated in the Laguna Lake region, whether by the government or the private sector, insofar as the implementation of these projects concerned. I may not be a lawyer but based on my limited knowledge on legal issues, I am quite sure a City Ordinance cannot supersede a Republic Act which the special permit issued by the Joy Belmonte-led City Council. The City Council usurped its power when it disregarded RA 10066. Manoling adds the Quezon City Council also usurped the function of the Laguna Lake Development Authority under RA 4850. As such, the Quezon City Council cannot issue special permits without the concurrence of the Laguna Lake Development Authority from Caloocan city to Quezon Province where the polluted water are drained in the canals leading to Laguna Lake; the only body of water that supplies Metro Manila and all the way down to Quezon Province. If the Laguna Lake dies of pollution, the entire Metro Manila will die as well, says Manoling. And when the City granted exemption to the condominium project during the last hearing, it lost the golden opportunity to correct the error it might have committed earlier. Alas now, Joys special permit might not be so special now as during the hearing, and the Moratos say they are considering bringing Joy to the court. And while Councilor Marvin Rillo, Chairman, Committee on City Planning, Building and Zoning assured the Moratos their side would be heard in another hearing, it just couldnt bring any relief for the vice mayor. Her special permit might in fact spell disaster for her fledgling political career. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the journalist Gauri Lankesh murder case has submitted the additional chargesheet against 18 accused persons in Special Court for Karnataka Control of Crimes Act (KCOCA). The deadline for filing the chargesheet was November 27. The chargesheet is of 9235 pages. The SIT also sought permission from the Court for further probe. So far 17 people have been arrested in connection with the case including Amit Degwekar from Goa and Amol Kale from Maharashtra. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in August recovered the pistol used for killing her while investigating the Narendra Dabholkar murder case, thus establishing a connection between the two murders. The senior journalist was murdered at her house in Bengaluru on September 5 last year in May. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) 13-year old Sandra Parks who won an award for her essay on gun violence in her neighbourhood of Milwaukee was killed by a stray bullet here on Monday. The teenager was killed after a bullet was fired outside and was aimed at no one in particular pierced through her bedroom window and hit her in the chest, reported CNN citing police officials. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said, "Sandra Parks ... went into her bedroom. She never came out alive. Tragically, her death was caused by someone who just decided they were going to shoot bullets into her house, and she's dead. A 13-year-old, on Thanksgiving week, on a school night, in her bedroom, and she died." "Little children are victims of senseless gun violence. I sit back and I have to escape from what I see and hear every day. When I do; I come to the same conclusion ... we are in a state of chaos," she wrote in the award-winning essay "Our Truth". Two men were charged in the case. Sandra's mother Bernice Parks stated that her daughter was against violence. "My baby was not violent. My baby did not like violence," she said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) United States President Donald Trump threatened to shut the US border with Mexico for an undisclosed period of time. Fox News stated that while talking to reporters in Florida, Trump asserted that if his administration concludes that its southern ally has lost "control" on its side, the borders will be closed. This comes after thousands of migrants and refugees from Central America have reached the border town of Tijuana seeking asylum in the US. He further revealed that he has given a nod to thousands of active-duty troops he sent to the border before the November 6 midterm elections to use lethal force against the migrants if needed. Earlier this week, a United States federal judge nullified the President Donald Trump-led administration's decision of refusing asylum to immigrants who enter the US mainland from Central America. The Trump administration had on November 9 sanctioned a proclamation, saying that none of the immigrants entering the US from the southern border will be eligible for asylum. His order came when the first waves of immigrants had started entering the US. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Fugitive Indian businessman on Thursday faced a major setback in his battle to save his luxurious house from foreclosure by Swiss after the United Kingdom (UK) rejected scores of the arguments presented by his legal team during the trial of the matter. The judicature has issued an order asking to pay a hefty amount of 88,000 to Investment Bank, which had issued 20.4 million in the mortgage loan for his property. The property was referred to in the UK as a high-class home for Dr and his family members and United Breweries Group corporate guests.The former liquor baron, who is on bail on an extradition warrant after his arrest in April 2017 is also facing trouble from New Delhi, after the led by Prime Minister made an attempt to get him extradited from the UK on charges of laundering to the tune fo Rs 90 billion.Mallya is residing in the UK from the past two years. His extradition case is reportedly in its final stage at London's Westminster Magistrates Court which is expected to deliver it ruling by the year-end. (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 United States (US) Department of State on Friday released a statement condemning the terrorist attacks in Pakistan which claimed as many as 30 lives. "The United States condemns in the strongest terms today's terrorist attacks in Orakzai and Karachi, Pakistan, which killed over 30 people and injured dozens more," the US Department of State spokesperson Heather Nauert stated. Commending Pakistani security force, the US appreciated the quick response to the attack on the Chinese Consulate in Karachi. Extending its support to Pakistan the US said, "The United States stands with the Pakistani people in the face of these terrorist acts, and will continue to seek opportunities to cooperate with the Pakistani government to combat these threats in the region." In the statement, the US also extended condolences to the victims' families and wish for the speedy recovery of the injured. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Samajwadi Party leader and former Uttar Pradesh cabinet minister Azam Khan on Thursday criticised the stand of various Hindu organisations on Ayodhya dispute, saying, " when power becomes the law, the law is reduced to nothing." Commenting on the resolution passed during a congregation of saints in Delhi last month, he said, "When a Sant Sammelan was organised in Delhi they proclaimed that they would no more request but are ready for a fight. On this we have requested that we are nowhere in this fight, on 6 December 1992 also we were not part of struggle and had called for obeying the law. But at that time no law could help, so what law will obstruct construction of temple now. When power becomes the law, the law is reduced to nothing in front of such power. And this is what leads to dictatorship." Reacting on Shivpal Yadav's recently floated party, Khan said, "There is only one Samajwadi party and it has only one president, Akhilesh Yadav. Whatever other party is made is entirely a different thing." Replying to a question about various Muslim communities supporting the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya, he said, "The issue of construction of Temple is pending in the Supreme Court. We have faith in court but if someone wants to bring forward a solution even before the decision of the court that is also fine. But the atmosphere that was created during the Ram Janaki Rath Yatra must not be repeated because it harms the country." On being asked about law and order situation under the incumbent Government led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Khan said, "The government is good. If someone has death in their fate, Yogi cannot do anything about it. If children are destined to die, Yogi ji can't do anything about it as he had already told them to get better treatment. He is busy worshipping the God for as much as 23 hours 45 minutes in a 24 hour day. He should not be blamed. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As the spotlight has shifted to Ram Mandir construction issue ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Friday assured that he would respect the Supreme Court verdict on the matter. Addressing the media, Akhilesh said: "Samajwadi believes that Supreme Court is the top court of the country. As Ayodhya's Ram Mandir matter is pending in the court, whatever will be the decision, my party will respect that." Coming down heavily on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Akhilesh said: "BJP does not believe either in the Supreme Court or the Constitution. BJP can go to any extent." On the present situation in the state, the former chief minister observed: "The kind of environment exists in Uttar Pradesh, especially in Ayodhya, the Supreme Court should take notice of it and bring the Army, if necessary." His statement comes following the increased demand for an early court decision on the issue. Certain sections are also pushing for an ordinance to hasten the temple construction. The Ram Mandir got a major push when one of the litigants in the Babri Masjid case, Mohammad Iqbal Ansari, said that he would welcome the ordinance and would obey the law. On October 29, the Supreme Court adjourned the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit till January 2019 to fix the next hearing date in the matter, challenging the Allahabad High Court ruling of 2010. The Allahabad High Court in its 2010 verdict had suggested a division of the disputed land in Ayodhya - one for each of the parties the Nirmohi Akhara, the Sunni Waqf Board and Ram Lalla. It is believed that the Babri Masjid which was constructed by Mughal emperor Babur in Ayodhya in 1528, was allegedly demolished by Hindu activists on December 6, 1992, who claimed that the mosque was built after destructing the Ram Temple to the ground. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 10-day design festival which aims to celebrate creative ideas got off to a grand start on Friday at the posh UB City shopping plaza in this tech hub's downtown across the famous Cubbon Park. "The first edition of 'Bengaluru ByDesign' festival celebrates creativity, encourages thinking and explores innovations in contemporary design for the public through various events across the city over the next 10 days," festival's founder Suprita Moorthy told IANS here. To be held till December 2, the festival will involve art installations, exhibitions, workshops, conferences and screenings on multiple aspects of design including textiles, technology, gaming, sustainability, products, graphics and photography. "We want to democratise design and make it accessible not just to the elite but everyone," Moorthy said. Even as the organisers claimed the festival aimed to make design "accessible" to all, it is being held mainly in city's upscale suburbs -- art installations and conferences at the UB City shopping mall, swanky VR Mall in east Bengaluru and at facilities of companies in Electronic City and Whitefield. Installations have also been also set up at Town Hall in the city centre using textiles, and on St. Marks Road, close to UB City, bringing in greenery onto the busy road. "Bengaluru is a fast-growing city. We hope that through design, we can influence the infrastructure and build-up of the city," Moorthy added. On the sidelines of the festival, an India Design Forum (IDF) for discussions on application of design in various fields including buildings, technology, gaming etc., will be held till Saturday. The platform will witness the participation of about 30 experts like Country Head of animation firm Technicolor India Biren Ghose, Managing Director of Accenture Labs (Asia-Pacific) Sanjay Podder, Chief Designer at German software firm SAP Kai Richter, and co-founders of city-based real estate firm Total Environment Kamal and Shibanee Sagar, among others. "Through the festival, we want to impact the general public, businesses as well as education. We have set up installations for general public, conferences for design enthusiasts and are engaging businesses through various aspects of design," festival's co-founder Priyanka Shah-Bhandary told IANS. The fest will also see the participation of students from various design institutes, including city-based Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, JD Institute of Fashion Technology and others, taking part in workshops. --IANS bha/nir (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two policemen were killed on Friday in an exchange of fire between a security guard and unidentified assailants near the Chinese Consulate in Karachi, police said. Deputy Inspector General (DIG) South Javed Alam Odho confirmed the death of the two policemen, reports Dawn news. An explosion, the nature of which has not been determined as yet, was also heard in the high-security Clifton area. According to initial reports, heavy contingents of police and Pakistan Rangers have been deployed. Governor Sindh Imran Ismail has taken notice of the incident and called for a report on the matter from the Sindh inspector general of police. The governor has also contacted Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah. --IANS ksk (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) "Here is the second part of my piece on General Emilio Aguinaldo. " "Here is the second part of my piece on General Emilio Aguinaldo. " Last week, I wrote about why I agree with President Dutertes declaration of March 22, 2019 as Emilio Aguinaldo Day to commemorate the countrys first presidents 150th birth anniversary. I also began to respond to an article on Interaksyon entitled, With new declaration, questionable hero Emilio Aguinaldo now has a day written by Catalina Ricci S. Madarang. Ms. Madarang painted Gen. Aguinaldo as a villain and used three important historical events to besmirch him: the Tejeros Convention, Gen. Antonio Lunas and Supremo Andres Bonifacios deaths. My last piece discussed why Aguinaldo could not have manipulated the Tejeros Convention (as claimed by the writer) because it was the Magdiwang, not Aguinaldos group, Magdalo, that organized and controlled the event with Bonifacio himself as the presiding officer. The Magdiwang dominated the convention as there were were only a handful of Magdalos (eight or nine) there. It was also held in Tejeros, a Magdiwang territory. Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo was manning the battlefield in Pasong Santol so he was NOT in Tejeros for the convention. In fact, when he was summoned to take his oath after being elected as president, he refused to leave the battlefront because the Spaniards were already upon them. The second group that summoned him was led by his brother Gen. Crispulo Aguinaldo who promised Miong that the enemies would only be able to claim the territory over his dead body. Miong relented, took his oath as president BUT Crispulo perished in the battle of Pasong Santol. Such was Aguinaldos personal tragedy in relation with Tejeros. Ms. Madarang, in her piece said, Intriguing details surrounding Aguinaldos heroism resurfaced recently thanks to Tarogs film wherein Aguinaldo was tagged in the killing of Antonio Luna. Obviously, she failed to recognize that the film Heneral Luna is not a documentary. As said at the beginning, it is FICTION based on historical facts. Therefore, an intelligent viewer will not fall for it hook, line, and sinker. Recently also, a telegram alleged to have been sent by Aguinaldo to Luna has been making the rounds online. Said telegram is going to be auctioned off by the Leon Gallery. The piece Aguinaldos deadly telegram to Heneral Luna emerges in auction by Amierielle Anne Bulan features a picture of the telegram. Immediately Ms. Bulan called the paper Aguinaldos deadly telegram to Heneral Luna, which, intentionally or not, revealed her bias against Aguinaldo. She did not question the authenticity of the document which is crucial. She immediately concluded that Its the telegram historians have been looking for for more than a century Further, Ms. Bulan said, Luna was committed to protecting the people during the war with the urgent matters he wanted to discuss with the president. Aguinaldo, on the other hand, was committed to silencing Luna. What judgment! I daresay that the writer did not do her research well, and perhaps does not know much about the circumstances surrounding Lunas death. A most important thing is for the telegram to be authenticated. There is no proof that it was indeed from Aguinaldo. On this, I hope that the Aguinaldo descendants will move and demand that the telegram be subjected to authentication process. If the telegram was supposed to be in the handwriting of Gen. Miong, it can easily be ascertained if the penmanship was his. While I am no expert, I am quite familiar with Gen. Miongs handwriting because I have been transcribing some of his unpublished notes. The one on the telegram attributed to him is very different from his existing self-written records during the period. Moreover, even if the telegram is authentic, it could have been sent by anybody, especially Lunas enemies (and he had many) without the knowledge of Aguinaldo to make sure that Luna would go to Cabanatuan.In one of Aguinaldos unpublished notes, and in earlier publications, Aguinaldo denied having sent Luna a telegram asking the latter to come to Cabanatuan. On the contrary, Aguinaldo said that it was Luna who sent him a telegram on June 1 asking for an audience with him to discuss urgent matters. Luna said that he would arrive in the Presidential headquarters on June 5. Aguinaldo said that he did not answer this telegram because he already knew that Luna would insist on his golpe de estado plan against the other members of his Cabinet that Luna has accused of being traitors. Luna wanted a coup. The president believed that should Luna succeed, this could result in a civil war and Aguinaldo did not want that. Instead of waiting for Luna, Aguinaldo left on June 3. He gave instructions to those left behind that should Gen. Luna arrive on June 5 and create trouble (because of Lunas temper), they should disarm and jail Him. Aguinaldo was off to disband Lunas biggest powerbase with the help of Gen. Gregorio del Pilar. This was meant to clip Lunas powers to prevent him from carrying out the coup he was planning. The questionable telegram attributed to Aguinaldo bears the date June 4. Per Aguinaldos notes, he was traveling on foot with Gen. Goyo the whole day. It was unlikely for him to go to town to send a telegram especially since they were also evading the Americans. This telegram in the name of Gen. Aguinaldo could have been sent by anyone who wanted Luna to be in Cabanatuan while Aguinaldo was away. After all, it is on record that Luna has mistreated many revolutionists and made many enemies. It should also be noted that forging documents was a common tactic done during this time. Americans forged papers to defeat the revolutionists. Even Andres Bonifacio forged papers to incriminate wealthy Filipinos who did not want to support the Katipunan. He made it appear that those people were Katipunan members or supporters. Many of them were arrested and jailed by the Spaniards, and a good number was executed. According to Teodoro Agoncillos book Malolos, The Crisis of the Republic, Aguinaldo only knew of Lunas death on June 6 from Gen. Venancio Concepcion (one of Lunas men) who said that, For about five minutes, Aguinaldo remained speechless, surprise written all over his face. This testimony is quite telling considering that Concepcion was Lunas man. Moreover, in an interview with Aguinaldo, in response to Agoncillos questions about Lunas death, the general said that he was no fool and that if he wanted Luna dead, he would not do it within the vicinity of his headquarters that could easily be attributed to him. Aguinaldo said that it would have been easy for him to have Luna killed on the battlefield and blame it on the Americans. Indeed, Aguinaldo was an astute military strategist as proven by his many victories in the battlefield. There is also the question of timing. Ms. Bulans piece said that the telegram set to be auctioned has been in the possession of one of Gen. Lunas descendants. If this is the smoking telegram that has been missing for more than a century and could give Gen. Luna the justice he deserves, why release it only now? Lunas death is a tragedy. It is equally tragic that people just blame this on Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo who had nothing to gain for having Luna killed.@bethangsioco on TwitterElizabeth Angsioco on Facebook The Aam Aadmi Party, which will contest both the Lok Sabha and the state Assembly elections in Haryana, will start its campaign in the state on Saturday with a public rally in Gurugram. Senior Party leader Gopal Rai said that the party is all set to contest both the elections in the state. "Our focus for Lok Sabha will be Delhi, Haryana and Punjab where we will contest for all seats," he told IANS. The party is aiming to win all the 90 Assembly seats and 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana, for which the party will start its campaigning on Saturday with a public rally by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in Gurugram, he said. Senior party leader Sanjay Singh told IANS that the party will contest from all the constituencies of Haryana and AAP MLAs in Delhi have been assigned 10 assembly constituencies each and they will monitor the work and the campaign. The party, he said, is confident of winning the elections in Haryana. "I can see a positive sign in Haryana. Last time when we were contesting for the elections in Delhi, our posters were trashed and we won clear majority. The same is happening in Haryana now. And this, I see, as a positive sign. The party will put all its effort and energy in Haryana," he added. However, Singh said, the candidates will be announced after December 11, when the results of five Assembly elections -- Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Mizoram and Chhattisgarh -- will be out. For the past few months, Kejriwal has been active in attacking his Haryana counterpart Manohar Lal Khattar on various issues including the conditions of schools and hospitals in the state. Earlier this month, he wrote to Khattar for a surprise cross inspection of Delhi's 'Mohalla Clinics' and Khattar's dispensaries. Later, he also invited the people from Haryana to visit the national capital to inspect the schools and clinics here and to see the work done by his government. Last month, Kejriwal along with other AAP leaders -- Manish Sisodia, Satyendar Jain, Naveen Jaihind and Surinder Singh -- visited a government school in the Beri village of the Jhajjar district of the state. --IANS nks/ahm/sed (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has cancelled the UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik) licence of low-cost carrier Air Odisha for seven airports for its irregular flight services, an official said on Friday. Air Odisha flight services to the eastern regions, including Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand have been suspended under the regional connectivity scheme. The AAI has cancelled the agreement with the air carrier for operating flights from and to seven airports -- Jharsuguda, Raipur, Raigarh, Bilaspur, Ambikapur, Jagdalpur and Visakhapatnam. "The Airports Authority of India has cancelled the agreements with Air Odisha for its poor performance. From November 20, they will not be permitted to operate from these seven airports. They have failed to operate the minimum 70 per cent of the scheduled flights from these airports within a period of three months," said Jharsuguda's Veer Surendra Sai Airport Director S.K. Chauhan. Biju Patnaik International Airport Director Suresh Chandra Hota said the AAI has sent a letter mentioning the termination clause to the airlines. "As the airlines failed to operate 70 per cent of flights in last three months, the termination notice has been served. If they resort to any legal option challenging the decision, we will also take legal recourse," said Hota. After the inauguration of the Veer Surendra Sai Airport by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in September, Air Odisha had started operating flight services from Jharsuguda to Raipur. But, it stopped services completely from October 6 citing technical glitches. --IANS cd/mag/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Army on Friday denied that a civilian was shot at by soldiers in Badgam district. Colonel Rajesh Kalia, Defence Ministry spokesman, said, "In a case of terrorist-committed atrocity, Ishfaq Ahmad Ganai of Magraypora was shot at by terrorists, about 500 metres from the Army camp at Chhatargam." "When the Army troops heard the shots, the Quick Reaction Team immediately rushed towards the direction of fire to find out what was happening. When a team reached there, they saw Ishfaq in a pool of blood," said Col Kalia. "Ganai bore bullet injuries, one in head and the other in leg, and was immediately taken to Chhatargam hospital from where doctors shifted him to SMHS hospital in Srinagar," said Col Kalia. "Reports of an individual lobbing the grenade at the Army camp and the Army retaliation are completely baseless," he said. Ishfaq Ahmad Ganai, 28, a carpenter by profession, was shot and critically injured when he was moving in Chattergam area of Badgam district on his motor cycle. Doctors at the hospital said his condition is critical. --IANS sq/prs (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) British Prime Minister Theresa May has hailed the draft agreement on post-Brexit relations as "right for the whole of the UK" and insisted a deal "is within our grasp". The political declaration -- outlining how UK-EU trade, security and other issues will work -- has been "agreed in principle", the European Council said, BBC reported on Thursday. London and Brussels have already agreed the draft terms of the UK's exit from the EU on March 29, 2019. May told MPs it would deliver the Brexit people voted for. The political declaration is a separate document to the 585-page withdrawal agreement, published last week, which covers the UK's 39 billion pounds "divorce bill", citizens' rights after Brexit and the thorny issue of the Northern Ireland "backstop" - how to avoid the need for a manned border on the island of Ireland. The withdrawal agreement is legally-binding - the political declaration is not. It sets out broad aspirations for the kind of relationship the UK and the EU will have after Brexit. Some of the wording of it is non-committal and allows both sides to keep their options open. "The negotiations (on the political declaration) are now at a critical moment and all our efforts must be focused on working with our European partners to bring this process to a final conclusion in the interests of all our people," said the PM. "The British people want Brexit to be settled, they want a good deal that sets us on a course for a brighter future, and they want us to come together as a country and to move on to focus on the big issues at home, like our NHS. "The deal that will enable us to do this is now within our grasp. In these crucial 72 hours ahead, I will do everything possible to deliver it for the British people." But Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn described the agreement as "26 pages of waffle" which "could have been written two years ago". "This is the blindfold Brexit we all feared - a leap in the dark. It falls short of Labour's six tests," he added. "What on earth have the government been doing for the past two years?" Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable, who is campaigning for another referendum, described it as an "agreement to have an agreement" that was "full of worryingly vague aspirations". --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Senior Congress leader C.P. Joshi on Friday apologised for his remarks a day after a video surfaced of him saying "only brahmins know and can talk about Hinduism". "Respecting the ideals of the Congress and the sentiments of the party workers, I express remorse for my statement if it caused any hurt to the sentiments of any section of the society," he said in a brief statement. In the video, he was heard saying that only pandits and brahmins knew about Hinduism and were learned enough to speak about it. "Does anyone know what is the caste of Uma Bharti? What is the caste of Sadhvi Ritambhara? In this country, if anyone knows about religion, it is the pandits and the brahmins," he said. Joshi's apology came after the Congress on Friday distanced itself from his statement with party President Rahul Gandhi asking him to apologise. --IANS vv-and/ksk/sed (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rebuked by his own party and facing backlash from the BJP, former Union Minister and Congress veteran C.P. Joshi on Friday apologised for his remarks that "only Brahmins can speak about Hindu religion, not Prime Minister Narendra Modi and union minister Uma Bharti". In a video gone viral, Joshi is seen saying: "It is strange that Uma Bharti, who is of the Lodhi community is talking about Hindu religion, Narendra Modi is of some other religion and he talks about Hindu religion. "In this country, if anyone knows about religion, it is the pandits and the Brahmins." The video has been shared by several Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and ministers on social media, condemning Joshi and the Congress. Strongly disapproving the comments, Congress President Rahul Gandhi said Joshi's remarks were against the ideology of the party and he should apologise for it. "Respecting the principles of the party and sentiments of its workers, Joshi would definitely realise his mistake. He should express remorse for his statement," said Gandhi and warned party leaders to refrain from making any statements which may hurt sentiments of any section of the society. Soon after Gandhi's rebuke, Joshi issued an apology. "Respecting the ideals of the Congress and the sentiments of the party workers, I express remorse for my statement if it caused any hurt to the sentiments of any section of the society," he said in a brief statement. Taking strong offence to the remarks, the BJP accused the Congress of indulging in casteist and divisional and demanded Joshi's expulsion from the party. "Joshi's remarks reflect the Congress' casteist and communal Joshi has mentioned Uma Bharti's caste, he has mentioned Modi's caste, don't people from the Lodh community deserve respect. The Congress' strategy of dividing people will not yield any results," said BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra. Describing Gandhi's admonition of Joshi as "merely a drama", Patra dared the Congress chief to expel him. "If Gandhi is really hurt by the comments as he says, then he should immediately expel Joshi from the Congress," added Patra. Sharing Joshi's video on Twitter, Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan accused the Congress of pursuing the of "divide and rule". "The Congress which claims to have fought against the British is following their footsteps and pursuing the politics of divide and rule," said the Petroleum Minister. --IANS and/ksk/sed (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China on Friday condemned the terror attack at its consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi and asked Islamabad to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens in the country where it has multi-billion dollar investments. "China strongly condemns any violent attacks against diplomatic missions and have asked the Pakistani side to take measures to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens and organisations in the country," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said. Geng said three men tried to barge into the consulate who were later killed by Pakistani policemen. The spokesperson said that the Consulate staff were safe and condoled the death of the two Pakistani policemen. Asked about the Balochistan Liberation Army, a separatist group that has reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack, he said: "According to my information, the Pakistan side is conducting an investigation." Beijing has invested millions of dollars and building a $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). It connects China's Kashgar in Xinjiang with Pakistan's restive province Balochistan where locals and separatists are against the project. China has been expressing concern over the security of citizens working on the CPEC and other Chinese projects. In August, there was a suicide attack on a bus ferrying Chinese workers in Balochistan. In another incident, gunmen shot dead one Chinese national in Karachi in May. Last year, China had told Pakistan to ensure the security of its envoy following threats to his life by a terror outfit - East Turkistan Islamic Movement. Asked if the attack will affect the Chinese investments and the CPEC in the country, Geng said both countries have the strong resolve to advance the project. "China and Pakistan are all-weather strategic partners. Advancing the CPEC is also a consensus reached by the two leaders (Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and Chinese President Xi Jinping) and it is of great significance to promote the development and prosperity of the two countries." --IANS gsh/ksk/sed (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Chinese staff working at the consulate in Pakistan's Karachi is safe, Beijing said on Friday after the mission was attacked by three militants. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said the attackers, who were killed, failed to enter the premises of the consulate. Two Pakistani security personnel were also killed in the exchange of fire. --IANS gsh/ahm/sed (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A civilian was injured on Friday in alleged Army firing in central Kashmir's Badgam district. The police identified the civilian as Ishfaq Ahmad Ganai, 28. He sustained a bullet injury in Chattergam area of Badgam district. "He was referred by local doctors to Srinagar city for specialized treatment where doctors described his condition as critical. We are ascertaining the details", police said. Locals alleged that Ishfaq Ahmad, a carpenter by profession, was moving on his motorcycle in Chattergam area when he was shot by the army soldiers posted at the camp in the area. --IANS sq/prs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) data revealing the BJP to be the number one on television in the run-up to Assembly elections, the Congress on Friday demanded that the Election Commission take cognisance of the data and asses the impact of BJP's advertisement spending on the ongoing polls in five states. As per the BARC data, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) topped the rankings of advertisers across all TV channels for the week ended November 16, prompting the Congress to question its electoral funding. "These advertisement spends by the BJP reflect a clear nexus between big businesses and big politicians... This is crony capitalism personified, this is the quintessential 'suit-boot ki sarkar'," Congress leader Manish Tewari told the media here citing the BARC data. Flaying the Narendra Modi government for turning electoral funding "far more opaque" through the electoral bond schemes, the Congress demanded that the EC intervene, especially in view of the Assembly polls in the five states -- Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Telangana and Rajasthan -- the results of which will be declared on December 11. "The EC must summon this BARC data and need to find out how much money India's top advertiser (BJP) has spent on these advertisements. "We demand the EC take suo-motu cognisance of the BARC data, translate it into monetary spends and see what is the impact on electoral process. The EC must take serious cognisance of its impact on the probity transparency and integrity of the electoral process," said the former Minister of Information and Broadcasting. He also said the electoral bonds scheme has made political funding very opaque giving rise to crony capitalism. "The ruling dispensation has access to source and final destination of the bonds which acts as deterrence for any company to try and fund an opposition party, especially when this government has unleashed central agencies on opposition parties and leaders, media houses or anyone who dares to oppose them," added Tewari --IANS and/nir (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) SCI Ventures, Inc. (SCI), the Philippines pioneering Blockchain venture builder since 2014 launches its brand new Enterprise and Blockchain Innovation division, SCI Blockchain Technologies. The team is led by its Head of Enterprise, Peter Ing, who has worked alongside a number of Philippine-based venture-capital incubated startups largely focussed around e-commerce. Originally from the UK, Peter brings over nine years of international work experience with previous clients that include UBS, MasterCard, and FactSet. Also a partner in Acceler8 by UnionSPACE, a tech-oriented co-working space, Peter also heads up the coworking networks Blockchain Division in the Philippines called BlockchainSPACE. BlockchainSPACE whose network spans 4 countries in South-East Asia provides a landing ground for companies and individuals to enter the Blockchain industry, connecting them to community, academe, associations and existing players in the market. The Manila chapter currently focuses on building community and hosting educational events. Just like the days of the early Internet, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are still uncertain about the future value of blockchain. And as this technology approaches its tenth anniversary, we are here to help our customers decipher the value it will bring to their business, in order to build long-lasting solutions that will help ready them for the future, Peter says, emphasizing the groups commitment to putting its clients interests first. While blockchain is not a solution for everything, we promise honest guidance in helping companies determine that, he adds. Peter is joined by SCIs Chief Blockchain Architect, Marco Mejia, an early adopter of Blockchain technology and founder of Teravibe.com, the Philippines first-ever Bitcoin wallet back in 2012. Rounding out the team are Senior Blockchain Developers Jerico James Flores, a highly skilled programmer with experience in research and development, and Tristan Peralta, an Ethereum developer well-versed in ERC standards. With over ten years of development experience, the duo has built a suite of commercial grade apps and APIs for commercial banks, architected and built a real estate tokenization platform, as well as several e-commerce related platforms.SCI, one of the first companies to receive a virtual currency license by Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, has successfully been running products such as BuyBitcoin.ph (one of the first Bitcoin brokerages in the Philippines), Rebit.ph (a blockchain cross-border remittance service) and Bitbit.ph (a crypto mobile wallet). Approaching its fifth year in the industry, SCI is now ready to offer its expertise to other companies that wish to leverage on the benefits of blockchain technology, hence the assembling of this new team. We are glad to add this new division and finally share the technology that we have been working with over the last four years. says SCI Co-founder and CEO John Bailon. These past months businesses have been asking what can this technology do for us and our business and this team is here to answer that. We are incredibly fortunate to bring onboard seasoned professionals who I have personally known in the tech space for years and were early adopters of the Blockchain technology. I cannot think of better people to drive this, he adds. With the hype around cryptocurrency settling down during much of 2018, the underpinning technology has taken the spotlight in recent months, with growing interest from traditional businesses, the academe, and even the government. While prices are unpredictable, one thing is certain - blockchain technology has a bright future ahead. To find out more about SCI Blockchain Technologies and how they can help your company, visit www.sciblockchain.tech The Congress on Friday distanced itself from senior leader C.P. Joshi's statement that "only Brahmins know and can talk about Hinduism" with party President Rahul Gandhi saying his remarks were against the ideology of the party and he should apologise for it. He also warned party leaders to refrain from making any statements which may hurt sentiments of any section of the society. "C.P. Joshi's statement is against the ideals of the Congress party. Party leaders should refrain from making any statement which may hurt any section of the society," Gandhi said in a tweet in Hindi. "Respecting the principles of the party and sentiments of its workers, Joshiji would definitely realise his mistake. He should express remorse for his statement." Gandhi's remarks came after a video of Joshi surfaced on Thursday in which he is heard saying that only pandits and brahmins knew about Hinduism and were learned enough to speak about it. "Does anyone know what is the caste of Uma Bharti? What is the caste of Sadhvi Ritambhara? In this country, if anyone knows about religion, it is the pandits and the brahmins," Joshi is heard saying in the video. --IANS vv/and/ksk (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former Vice President Hamid Ansari on Friday said among the identified issues faced by the Muslim community, education has been the most important one and is neglected by all the segments of the community. "We have identified the issues (faced by the Muslims) a number of times. The issue is of identity and security, it is also of education. And I feel education is the most important issue," Ansari said during the 12th Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer Memorial Lecture On 'Muslims of India: Past and Present'. Education, according to him, "has been neglected by all segments of the community and it has only confined to a small section of the community". "Delhi has a large number of Sikhs and most of them were refugees. They have not only rehabilitated themselves but have also set up their religious institutions as well as their educational institutions. If a small community can do that, why can't a much bigger community," he asked. He also said that, "190 million (of population) is not a minority except in terms of legal technicality". He also suggested that, "interacting on a continuous basis with the wider community of fellow citizens is the answer" to remove the mental barriers. "It (the interaction) does not have to confine to our idioms and our manner of behaviour. If I interact with another person, I will do it on the level of equality not on saying my way is the only way." He also said this formula (of interaction) has worked in different parts of the world, and he does not see any reason why it will not work in the country. The lecture, dedicated to Indian reformist-writer and social activist, was organised by the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism. Delivering the lecture, A.G. Noorani, Advocate, Supreme Court and Constitutional Expert, advised the Muslims to involve themselves in national issues. He also said "denying the discrimination is to denying the truth". "There is a form of agitation among the Muslims and that can only be controlled through secularising the identity and by including them," he said. --IANS nks/prs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former Prime Minister of Norway, Kjell Magne Bondevik, on Friday met senior separatist leaders here. The meeting was held at the uptown Hyderpora residence of Syed Ali Geelani, senior separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq tweeted. "Fruitful meeting of JRL (Joint Resistance Leadership) with Kjell Magne Bondevik, ex-Prime Minister of Norway. As Norway is known to play a constructive role in conflict resolution across the globe, urged Bondevik to help in ending the daily killings and urgent resolution of the festering Kashmir dispute." Syed Ali Geelani has been under house arrest in his Hyderpora residence for the last eight years. --IANS sq/mag/sed (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In the run-up to (EU) elections in May 2019, will introduce a EU-specific Election Ads Transparency Report and searchable ad library to provide more information about who is purchasing election ads, whom they're targeted to and how much money is being spent. In May 2019, up to 350 million voters across the EU will take to the Parliamentary polls to elect 705 Members of European Parliament (MEPs). "To support this democratic process, we're rolling out products and programmes to help people get the information they need to cast their votes," Lie Junius, Director, EU Public Policy and Government Relations, said in a blog post on Thursday. will require ads that mention a political party, candidate or current officeholder, to make it clear to voters who are paying for the advertising. "We'll also introduce a new process to verify EU election advertisers to make sure they are who they say they are," Junius added. The company will also work with campaigns, elections officials, journalists, human rights organisations and others across the EU to ensure the security of the online platforms that they depend on. "For the EU 2019 Parliamentary elections, we're offering in-person security training to the most vulnerable groups, who face increased risks of phishing attacks," said The company will walking them through Google's Advanced Protection Programme and Project Shield, a free service that uses Google technology to protect news sites and free expression from DDoS attacks on the web. "Google News Lab will collaborate with news organisations across all 27 countries to support online fact checking," said the company. Film: "Green Book"; Director: Peter Farrelly; Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini, Sebastian Maniscalco, Dimiter D. Marinov, P.J. Byrne and Montel Miller; Rating: **** Set in the early 1960s, director Peter Farrelly's "Green Book" is a warm and insightful road-film exposing race dynamics and identity tensions in the US through its buddy-drama. The movie gets its title from "The Negro Motorist Green Book", which was written by Victor Hugo Green. The book was published annually from 1936 to 1966 as a guide for black travellers as to where they could stay, eat and receive services during the Jim Crow era, when discrimination against non-whites was widespread. The film is based on the real life friendship between Doctor Don Shirley, a preen and pristine black, classical pianist and his driver cum bodyguard, a rough and ready Italian-American bouncer and enforcer by the name of Tony "Tony Lip" Vallelonga, when they go on a tour in the segregated American South in 1962. Whist it might be easy to dismiss this as an inverted "Driving Miss Daisy", with bits of "My Fair Lady" and "Cyrano de Bergerac" thrown in for good measure, this has a more politically aware and acceptable racial role reversal going for it. Through the eyes of Tony, we encounter a gradually escalating set of injustices and prejudices Shirley had to endure because of his skin colour as they head deeper south. Via this enlightening experience, Tony goes through a redemptive arc that begins with him having similar prejudices due to his ignorance and finishes with him rejecting and turning around his erroneous ways just in time for Christmas. Pegged as a mainstream feel-good film, Farrelly, known previously for very different films like "Dumb and Dumber" and "There's Something About Mary", brings a light touch to the subversive drama. It is also packed with life lessons like, "The world is full of lonely people waiting to make the first move" and "Being genius is not enough, it takes courage to change people's hearts", that are subtly told. But equally surprising and astonishing are the transformative central performances by Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen. They dig into their characters with resounding success by shedding previous roles they are known for and inhibit almost polar opposite ones here. Both actors show a range unseen before in an impressive pair of portrayals that are believable and simply inspirational. With brilliant production values, the era is well captured. Overall, despite its by-the-numbers structure and some convenient conflict resolutions, "Green Book" delivers on a laid back crowd pleasing experience that is effective and affecting. --IANS troy/rb/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) State-run HAL's arm Naini Aerospace Ltd (NAeL) at Prayagraj (Allahabad) in Uttar Pradesh delivered aero structures and sub-assemblies for making five multi-role Advanced Light Helicopters (ALH) Dhruv here, said the defence behemoth on Friday. "The HAL's Helicopter Division in Bengaluru received the first batch of helicopter structures and sub-assemblies manufactured by NAeL, Prayagraj, for ALH (Dhruv)," the city-based Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) said in a statement here. The state-run aerospace major's chairman and managing director R. Madhavan opened a structural assembly shop for production of helicopter structures at NAeL about two months ago. "With the handing over of helicopter structures, NAeL has developed capabilities in the field of aero-structures apart from aircraft loom manufacturing," said NAeL chairman V.M. Chamola in the statement. The company, however, did not disclose to the media the unit's capacity, set up at what cost and how many employed. The Naini unit of state-run sick Hindustan Cables Ltd (HCL) was shut for nearly 15 years. It was taken over by NAeL, a subsidiary of HAL on February 1, 2017. The ageing manpower of HCL was absorbed in the company and trained with skills required in the aerospace sector. The infrastructure for aero-structures and aircraft loom manufacturing were set up in a year. The subsidiary commenced production of wire harnesses of helicopter and aircraft in July 2017. The company had made its maiden delivery of aircraft looms (electrical cables to transmit signals or power through an aircraft) to HAL on March 27. It has manufactured about 600 aircraft looms for ALH and Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas fighters. --IANS bha/fb/ahm/sed (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Heritage Fest will be organised in West Bengal's Chandernagore, a historic town by the Hugli river on November 25 by local project team in partnership with the University of Liverpool and IIT Kharagpur, a statement said on Friday. Their two-year project covers the stretch from Hooghly district's Bandel to North 24 Parganas' Barrackpore and seeks to protect and raise awareness of the rich cultural heritage of the cities and towns along the course of the river. Raising awareness among the young, the inheritors of the world's heritage, is the chief aim of the World Heritage Week. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, Director IIT Kharagpur, said the premier institution believes in a knowledge economy "where the modern and heritage have a harmonious and caring relationship." The Fest in Chandernagore will bring together participants from schools and colleges and sensitise them about the value of the heritage of their town through an interactive event that will also see the deployment of technology. Through iPads, the school children will be educated on how to use a custom-made, free smartphone App - the Hugli River AR App - which has been specially designed by the University of Liverpool, the statement from IIT Kharagpur said. Jenia Mukherjee, the principal investigator on the part of IIT Kharagpur, says, "This will allow us to gauge how much information or awareness is already available on the ground and also help us generate enthusiasm among the young about the town's heritage." --IANS bdc/prs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actor Riteish Deshmukh, who has just wrapped up shooting for "Housefull 4", says every shoot in the upcoming comedy film has been fun, adding that it was four times funnier. Riteish on Thursday night tweeted a photograph of himself along with the cast and crew of the film and captioned it: "Wrapped up 'Housefull 4'... Every shoot in this series has been super fun. This one was just four times funnier." The actor, who has also been a part of the previous three installments of the "Housefull" franchise, said he got a chance to work with some new talents for the first time. "Got to work with some old friends again and some talented actors for the first time. It was like a reunion at a freshers party. #HouseFull4 was an absolute blast - See you Diwali 2019," he added. "Housefull 4" also stars Kriti Sanon, Akshay Kumar, Bobby Deol, Kriti Kharbanda, Rana Dagubatti and Pooja Hegde. The film has faced several ups and downs. Rana replaced veteran actor Nana Patekar after the latter was accused of sexual misconduct by actress and former beauty queen Tanushree Dutta on the sets of 2008 film "Horn OK Pleassss". In October, filmmaker Sajid Khan stepped down as its director after he was accused of several sexual harassment incidents. He was replaced by Farhad Samji. --IANS dc/ksk (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India on Friday strongly condemned the terror attack on the Chinese Consulate in Karachi that claimed the lives of at least six people. "India strongly condemns the terrorist attack on the Chinese Consulate in Karachi this morning," the External Affairs Ministry said in statement. "We condole the loss of lives in this dastardly attack," it said. Stating that there can be no justification whatsoever for any act of terrorism, it said: "The perpetrators of this heinous attack should be brought to justice expeditiously. Such terrorist attacks only strengthens the resolve of the international community to combat terrorism in all its forms and manifestations." Two policemen and three suspected militants were killed on Friday in an exchange of fire between a security guard and unidentified assailants near the Chinese Consulate in Karachi, police said. --IANS ab/ksk/sed (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India and Laos reviewed the entire gamut of their bilateral ties during the Ninth Joint Commission meeting co-chaired by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Lao counterpart Saleumxay Kommasith here on Friday. "The meeting reviewed the India-Lao PDR relations comprehensively and took note of all that has been achieved and current state of the various cooperation programmes," the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement. "The meeting also laid out the road map for future cooperation and enhancement in bilateral relations," it stated. Laos is member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) regional bloc with which New Delhi has been actively engaging under its Act East Policy. Sushma Swaraj paid a two-day official visit to Laos that started on Thursday. She was accompanied by a delegation of senior officers from the Ministry of External Affairs as well as some members of media. Prior to the Joint Commission meeting, Sushma Swaraj met Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith and discussed bilateral relations and various areas of mutual interest and cooperation. According to the Ministry statement, Sushma Swaraj assured Sisoulith that India will stand by Laos in its quest for development and growth and will be happy to assist through soft loans projects aimed at building Laos's infrastructure, including roads, agriculture and irrigation, IT, human resource development and other sectors. On Thursday, soon after her arrival here, she interacted with members of the small Indian community and asked them to work towards contributing to the increase of bilateral contacts between India and the Southeast Asian nation especially in the commercial and cultural fields. --IANS ab/ksk/sed (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China Stock Market Preparing New Elliott Wave Bullish Cycle The trade war between USA & China had led to a global fear around the stock market and causing a mid-term bear market in China which lost 30% since the start of 2018. The latest plan is that the two leaders US President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping would meet for dinner on December 1 immediately after the G20 meeting in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires. Trump says US is doing extremely well with China but deal not done yet. Therefore the next meeting could be critical for this ongoing war trade talk and its result will have important effect around the market. At ElliottWave Forecast, we believe the market is ruled by technical aspect and the news is an after-fact event to drive the market into the pre-determined direction. Therefore, understanding the Nature of the Market is key for traders to stay in the right side and follow a clear path which have nothing to do with Fundamentals or events. For our technical explanation, well be using the largest China ETF iShares China Large-Cap ETF FXI which tracks an index of the 50 largest and most liquid Chinese stocks traded on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. China Large-Cap ETF FXI Monthly Chart Since 2008 low, we can count 5 swings sequence (Red Color) to the upside until the recent 2018 peak which isnt an Elliott Wave count but a representation of the sequence. In this case, FXI has an incomplete bullish sequence and ideally after ending the 6th swing it will be heading higher in the 7th swings toward equal legs area $61.46 $69.38. There, the ETF can be ending a larger 3 swings (Blue color) followed by 3 waves pullback. After clarifying the bigger picture for FXI, we can switch to the daily time frame to understand the current structure: From January 2018 peak, FXI declined in a 3 waves Zigzag structure and reached the extreme blue box area $38.8 $35.76 which is a High-frequency area where the markets are likely to end cycles and make a turn. Up from there, the ETF is looking to resume the rally higher in an impulsive 5 waves structure or at least it will bounce in 3 waves to correct 2018 decline. Consequently, Chinas stock market will rally and drive the rest of global market with it in the coming few weeks based on the Monthly bullish sequence and the current daily structure. So deal or no deal between USA & China the result will be the same in favor of the Bulls. Get our latest updates for World Indices like SPX , DAX and NIKKEI by using our Black Friday promotion: 50% Off All Monthly Plans to learn how to trade our blue boxes using the 3, 7 or 11 swings sequence. You will get access to our 78 instruments updated in 4 different time frames, Live Trading & Analysis Session done by our Expert Analysts every day, 24-hour chat room support and much more. By Ayoub Ben Rejeb https://elliottwave-forecast.com ElliottWave-Forecast has built its reputation on accurate technical analysis and a winning attitude. By successfully incorporating the Elliott Wave Theory with Market Correlation, Cycles, Proprietary Pivot System, we provide precise forecasts with up-to-date analysis for 52 instruments including Forex majors & crosses, Commodities and a number of Equity Indices from around the World. Our clients also have immediate access to our proprietary Actionable Trade Setups, Market Overview, 1 Hour, 4 Hour, Daily & Weekly Wave Counts. Weekend Webinar, Live Screen Sharing Sessions, Daily Technical Videos, Elliott Wave Setup . Copyright 2018 ElliottWave-Forecast - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors. 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. The Indian and Pakistani armies on Friday held a Brigadier level flag meeting at the Line of Control (LoC) in Poonch district. "A Brigade commander level flag meeting was held between Indian Army and Pakistan army at Poonch Rawlakote Crossing Point on the LoC. The Indian delegation was led by Brigadier V.S. Sekhon while the Pakistani delegation was led by Brigadier Qaiser," Defence ministry spokesman Lt. Col. Devender Anand said. "The flag meeting focussed on augmenting confidence building measures, maintaining peace along the LoC and prevention of infiltration from Pakistani side of Kashmir. "The flag meeting was held in a cordial and friendly atmosphere and ended with either side assuring to adhere to the norms of the 2003 Ceasefire agreement and the DGMO level talks of May 29, 2018 and work towards improving the situation along the LoC," Anand said. --IANS sq/ahm/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India on Friday strongly protested Pakistan's denial of consular access to Sikh pilgrims visiting two gurdwaras there on the occasion of Gurpurab - the 549th birth anniversary of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev. "India has today lodged a strong protest with the government of Pakistan that despite having been granted prior travel permission by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan, the consular officials of the High Commission of India in Islamabad were harassed and denied access on Thursday and Friday at Gurdwara Nankana Sahib and Gurudwara Sacha Sauda to the Indian pilgrims visiting Pakistan under the Bilateral Protocol," the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement. "As a result of such harassment they were compelled to return to Islamabad without performing their diplomatic and consular duties vis-a-vis Indian pilgrims. "We have shared our grave concern that this is the third consecutive visit of the Indian Sikh pilgrims when Pakistan has prevented the Indian High Commission officials from meeting the visiting Indian nationals on the pretext of security in order to deflect attention from Pakistan's violation of the international legal instruments and conventions like the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961 and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations 1963". The statement said that this breached the letter and spirit of the 1974 Bilateral Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines signed by the two countries and the 1992 Code of Conduct for the treatment of diplomatic and consular personnel in India and Pakistan. It said that Pakistan's action was in contrast to India's treatment to their High Commissioner and the consular officials in New Delhi who have been provided full access to meet Pakistani pilgrims who are currently in India on a pilgrimage to Kalyar Sharif. Friday's development comes after India on Thursday decided to build a corridor from Gurdaspur district in Punjab to Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan ahead of the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. Kartarpur Sahib is where Guru Nanak died in 1539. New Delhi urged Islamabad to build the corridor on their side of the International Border and demanded that Sikh pilgrims should be allowed access throughout the year. According to Friday's Ministry statement, India also "expressed grave concern at the reports of attempts being made during the ongoing visit of the Indian pilgrims to Pakistan, to incite communal disharmony and intolerance and promote secessionist tendencies with the objective of undermining India's sovereignty and territorial integrity". "Pakistan has been called upon to take all measures to not allow its territory to be used for any hostile propaganda and support for secessionist tendencies against India in keeping with the commitments made under the Simla Agreement, 1972 and endorsed in the Lahore Declaration, 1999. "Pakistan has been reminded that such actions are not in consonance with the stated intentions of Pakistan to facilitate the visits of Indian Sikh pilgrims, especially as we commemorate the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Devji." --IANS ab/ksk/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India on Friday strongly protested Pakistan's denial of consular access to Sikh pilgrims visiting two gurdwaras there on the occasion of Gurpurab - the 549th birth anniversary of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev. "India has today (Friday) lodged a strong protest with the government of Pakistan that despite having been granted prior travel permission by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan, the consular officials of the High Commission of India in Islamabad were harassed and denied access on Thursday and Friday at Gurdwara Nankana Sahib and Gurudwara Sacha Sauda to the Indian pilgrims visiting Pakistan under the Bilateral Protocol," the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement. "As a result of such harassment, they were compelled to return to Islamabad without performing their diplomatic and consular duties vis-a-vis Indian pilgrims. "We have shared our grave concern that this is the third consecutive visit of the Indian Sikh pilgrims when Pakistan has prevented the Indian High Commission officials from meeting the visiting Indian nationals on the pretext of security in order to deflect attention from Pakistan's violation of the international legal instruments and conventions like the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961 and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations 1963." In April this year and then again in June, Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan Ajay Bisaria and other consular officials were denied access to Sikh pilgrims who were visiting Gurdwara Panja Sahib. The statement said that this breached the letter and spirit of the 1974 Bilateral Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines signed by the two countries and the 1992 Code of Conduct for the treatment of diplomatic and consular personnel in India and Pakistan. It said that Pakistan's action was in contrast to India's treatment to their High Commissioner and the consular officials in New Delhi who have been provided full access to meet Pakistani pilgrims who are currently in India on a pilgrimage to Kalyar Sharif. Friday's development comes after India on Thursday decided to build a corridor from Gurdaspur district in Punjab to Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan ahead of the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. Kartarpur Sahib is where Guru Nanak died in 1539. New Delhi urged Islamabad to build the corridor on their side of the International Border and demanded that Sikh pilgrims should be allowed access throughout the year. India also called for free and readily available consular access for Indian citizens on the Pakistani side. According to Friday's Ministry statement, India also "expressed grave concern at the reports of attempts being made during the ongoing visit of the Indian pilgrims to Pakistan, to incite communal disharmony and intolerance and promote secessionist tendencies with the objective of undermining India's sovereignty and territorial integrity". "Pakistan has been called upon to take all measures to not allow its territory to be used for any hostile propaganda and support for secessionist tendencies against India in keeping with the commitments made under the Simla Agreement, 1972 and endorsed in the Lahore Declaration, 1999. "Pakistan has been reminded that such actions are not in consonance with the stated intentions of Pakistan to facilitate the visits of Indian Sikh pilgrims, especially as we commemorate the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Devji." --IANS ab/nir (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actor Govinda says the environment in the film industry is not good. The actor said he is disappointed about the Central Board of Film Certification's (CBFC) opposition to his forthcoming film "Rangeela Raja". The censor board has suggested 20 cuts in "Rangeela Raja" for its theatrical release. To oppose the CBFC's decision, producer Pahlaj Nihalani had filed a petition earlier this month saying the suggestions were unjustified and uncalled for as he firmly believed that the film was not vulgar in any manner. He also hit out at the present CBFC head Prasoon Joshi, accusing him of being "politically motivated". When asked when the film will get released, Govinda said: "We will let media and audiences know about the release date of the film. It is unfortunate that CBFC has censored few scenes of our film and because of that, we had to take legal route to release the film." Govinda said this kind of environment is not good for the film industry. "I don't see any controversial scenes which are there in the film. I think it has been deliberately done to stop release of the film and it's not a good environment in the film industry to release the film. I have started my film career with Pahlaj Nihalani's film, so I hope this film releases without any difficulties," he added. Earlier, at a press conference, Govinda said that since the last few years some people are deliberately opposing his films' release by not giving enough screen space and now CBFC has stopped the release of his upcoming film. Do these things hurt him? "It doesn't hurt me as a person because in the initial period of my career, I haven't seen such kind of treatment to my films but now people from politics are entering into film business and people from film industry are entering into politics, so that could be the reason that such kind of things are happening in the film industry. "In the south film industry, we will never see such things because they co-operate with each other. So, we should learn something from them." "Rangeela Raja" is a comedy film, written and produced by Nihalani, and directed by Sikander Bharti. The film also features Shakti Kapoor, Prem Chopra and Mishika Chourasia and Anupama Agnihotri in lead roles. --IANS iv/rb/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Back from a visit to some of the worst-affected parts of the cyclone-ravaged districts in Tamil Nadu, Tamil superstar Kamal Haasan on Friday appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit the state and see for himself the sufferings wrought on the people so that the Centre can come out with massive assistance to the state. Haasan, who has entered recently by floating the Makkal Needhi Maiyam (MNM), went on a whistlestop tour of a few hundred kms of Thanjavur and Nagapattinam districts and Vedaranyam town, which bore the brunt of Cyclone Gaja, on Thursday and described the situation there as "pitiable and abysmal". He accused the state government of being lax and not making a proper assessment of the destruction of homes and crops in vast swathes of land in these affected areas. Haasan questioned the hurry with which Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswamy rushed to Delhi on Thursday and presented a memorandum to Modi seeking relief of Rs.15,000 crore. "It (rushing to Delhi) was a knee-jerk reaction under criticism from political parties in the state of the state government's inaction," he told IANS in an interview. The Chief Minister should have done more extensive visits to the affected areas and made a proper assessment instead of doing a half day tour before rushing to Delhi. The actor said a visit by the prime minister would infuse new hope in the affected people and galvanise the machinery into doing relief work efficiently. "The cyclone has been a great leveller. It has affected the rich and the poor equally without caste and religious discrimination. They are looking for succour. And the help is slow in coming. Food is being given to the affected only once a day and that too the quality is poor," he said. The state government gives an appearance of doing some work but it is confined mainly to highways and main roads where accessibility is relatively easy. Power is being restored mainly on the arterial roads, he said. Haasan said the two districts he visited were a scene of total disaster with cash crops like tamarind, mango, jackfruit, cashew and palm trees laid waste by the cyclone while the state government was talking of only damage to coconut trees. The farmers have to be supported in a big way by the governments to get them back on their feet after the great losses they have suffered, he said. He said while the local officials claim that about 2,50,000 people have been affected by the cyclone, his own estimate from various sources put the figure of those displaced and homeless at around 4,00,000. The sea has eroded into the towns in various places and at one place 400 fibre boats have been pushed far into the woods by the tidal waves. The damage has been huge to the fishermen and they needed urgent help to restore their lives. He said his concern was also about the fear of epidemics spreading in these places which the government should attend to. Haasan also said there is some kind of healthy competition among political parties to reach aid to the people. He expressed confidence that they would cut across lines and help the people and government in a difficult time. He said activists of his own outfit have rushed 60 truck loads of food and other materials worth over Rs.1.2 crore to the needy. --IANS vsc/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump has said that the CIA did not blame Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for ordering the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi was murdered on October 2 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Officials told US media such an operation would have needed the prince's approval. "They didn't conclude," Trump said on Thursday when asked about the CIA's evaluation by reporters at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, BBC reported. "They have feelings certain ways. I have the report, they have not concluded, I don't know if anyone's going to be able to conclude the crown prince did it," he said. The President has repeatedly stressed the importance of Saudi Arabia to the US following the killing. Earlier this week, Trump released a statement suggesting that the crown prince "could very well" have known about the incident. His statement said: "(It) could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event - maybe he did and maybe he didn't!" On November 17, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters that Trump had confidence in the CIA following conversations with Director Gina Haspel and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the Khashoggi murder. Sources quoted in the US media at the time stressed that there was no single piece of evidence linking the crown prince directly to the murder, but officials believed the killing would have required his endorsement. Saudi Arabia called the claim false and insisted that the crown prince knew nothing about plans for the killing. The Gulf kingdom's public prosecutor says Khashoggi was killed as a result of a "rogue operation". However, the Hurriyet newspaper reported on Thursday that Ms Haspel told Turkish officials last month the CIA had a recording in which the crown prince gave instructions to "silence" the Saudi writer as soon as possible. When asked about the claims by reporters, Trump said: "I don't want to talk about it. You'll have to ask them." The Saudi crown prince left on a visit to "brotherly Arab states" on Thursday, Saudi state media reported, beginning a regional tour with the United Arab Emirates. It will be his first official trip abroad since Khashoggi was killed. The crown prince is also expected to participate in a G20 meeting of world leaders in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at the end of the month that will be attended by leaders from the US, Turkey and a number of European countries. Meanwhile, France has announced that it is imposing sanctions on 18 Saudi nationals -- the same individuals targeted with sanctions by the US, UK and Germany - allegedly linked to the Khashoggi murder. Their list of individuals does not include the crown prince, a spokesperson for the French ministry of foreign affairs said. --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Thousands of indigenous Khasi and Pnar youths, elderly men and women attired in traditional dress took to the streets in this mountainous state capital of Meghalaya proclaiming the dignity and solemnity of the indigenous Khasi faith and culture on occasion of the annual Seng Kut Snem on Friday. The colorful procession projected the diverse and rich Khasi tradition through folk music and tableaux depicting various facets of the simple yet rich and colorful indigenous life-style. The procession which started from Madan Iewrynghep and culminated at the Weiking Ground, where traditional dances were held and special prayers were offered. The annual Seng Kut Snem festival is celebrated to commemorate the Seng Khasi Movement to preserve, protect and uphold indigenous Khasi religion and culture. This year the festivities marked the 119th anniversary of the Seng Khasi Movement. It was on August 23, 1899 that 16 brave and nationalist Khasi youths formed the Seng Khasi to protect their indigenous religion, rich culture and unique language in the face of British onslaught. Since then, the movement has gained momentum imbibing a sense of pride in the Khasi youths in their rich heritage which is unique in the world. "On April 4,1829, U Tirot Sing Syiem, the king of Nongkhlaw took on the might of the aliens by leading an attack on the British Garrison at Nongkhlaw and inflicting major casualties'', said Sumar Sing Sawain, an elderly member of theASengAKhasi. This marked the beginning of a bitter four-year long conflict between the uncompromising Khasi soldiers under the leadership of Tirot Sing and the British culminating in Tirot Sing's martyrdom at Dacca. "The second uprising in Ri Hynniewtrep (Khasi nation) began from December 28, 1861 under the leadership of the legendary U Kiang Nongbah of the Jaintia Hills who waged a war with the British after the aliens desecrated an indigenous Khasi religious ceremony at Ialong. The third historical movement of the people of Ri Hynniewtrep against suppression of their age-old faith and culture begun from April 23, 1899 through the organisation of the Seng Khasi which is the torch-bearer of the Khasi religion -'Niamtre' and the traditional culture. --IANS rrk/prs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Kolkata still remains a "great city" that hasn't lost its heart of culture and among whose people there is "some kind of discipline", says P. Thankappan Nair, its 86-year-old barefoot chronicler who has left the eastern metropolis after a 63-year-long association with the city. His legacy will be the 62 books he penned on the city and the 2,000 he purchased over the years and which he has donated to the Town Hall library. Nair has gone back to his roots -- Chendamangalam, a small town in Kerala's Ernakulam district -- as his children and grandchildren did not want him and his wife to stay on alone in Kolkata at their age. "The heart of the city has not changed. Although the city has lost its importance as many companies shifted their operations, but the city has not lost its culture. It still remains a great city," Nair told IANS while recalling his memories of the city. "Somehow I like the city. It has got some kind of discipline among its people," added Nair, who still prefers to call it "Calcutta" though the name was changed to Kolkata in 2001. "I am already 86 and my two children and three grandchildren do not want me to stay here at this age, though my wife is also staying with me for last 10 years," he said while his wife was busy with last-minute packing. His latest book, "Gandhiji in Kolkata", would be released at next year's Kolkata Book Fair and he was not sure whether he would present at the event. Explaining his style of work, he said he would gather information from government records, newspaper clippings and listening to the local people as this was "very important" to know about a city and its culture, he said at his rented accommodation at Kansari Para Road, about 10 minutes walking distance from the National Library -- his primary source of research. "I used to ask the people whenever I saw any buildings or came across any little street to collect material and prepare notes about its origin. For example, I have been staying at Kansari Para Road since the 1960s and took interest in how it was named after Kansari." Recalling the day he had arrived in the city on a Thursday morning in October, 1955, Nair said: "Armed with only a matriculation certificate and Rs 20-25 in cash, I had travelled ticketless in a train to Howrah station for seeking a job here. I did not have anybody in Kolkata but had a reference of a U. Raman hailing from a village near mine." He fell in love with the metropolis at first sight while crossing the river Hooghly and the iconic Howrah Bridge in a tram that took him to Dalhousie Square, Nair said, adding that he managed to meet Raman and stayed with him for few days. Nair secured a steno-typist's job in a private company in Dalhousie Square within a week of his arrival in the city and kept on changing jobs. He eventually got a job at the Anthropological Society of India and was posted in Shillong for few years before returning to Kolkata. The historian has given all the books that he had purchased for his research to the city's Town Hall library to make it an "alternative and rich source" of historical documents, beside the National Library, he said. "I used to go to College Street every day and had purchased almost each and every book written on Calcutta and West Bengal. There are about 1,700 books. In addition, a list of 300 books is being prepared and these would also deposited to the Town Hall authority. I have chosen the Town Hall as an alternative source of books as there are many books on the city in the National Library," Nair explained. "The research work that I am intending to take up will be of a different kind. There is scope of researching in my native village because Chendamangalam is a place where the first printing was started in India by Portugese. I would like to explore more on this," said Nair, who still remains on the lookout for a new challenge. (Bappaditya Chaterjecan be contacted at bappaditya.c@ians.in) --IANS bdc/vm/tb/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Friday said that he and President Ram Nath Kovind will jointly lay the foundation stone of the Kartarpur corridor project in Dera Baba Nanak area of Gurdaspur district on November 26. "Happy to share that I'll be joining President Ram Nath Kovind ji in laying foundation stone for Kartarpur Corridor to International Border at Dera Baba Nanak, Gurdaspur, on November 26. It will be a great moment indeed for all devotees of Sri Guru Nanak Dev," the Chief Minister tweeted. The Union Cabinet on Thursday decided to develop the corridor from Gurdaspur in Punjab to the International Border (IB) to facilitate the passage of pilgrims to the Kartarpur Sahib gurudwara in Pakistan as part of the 550th birth annversary celebrations of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev, next year. However, the Centre clarified that India's decision was not in response to any proposal from Pakistan. The resolution was passed after many weeks of internal consultations and preparations within the government. The gurdwara is significant for the Sikh community since Guru Nanak Dev spent 18 years of his life in Kartarpur till he died in 1539. It is located around 2 km from the IB between both countries and can be seen from the Indian side. --IANS js/ksk/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The national leadership of the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) on Friday decided to replace Mathew T. Thomas, state Minister for Water Resources, with party veteran K. Krishnankutty, said a senior party leader. Speaking to the media in Bengaluru, party general secretary Danish Ali said he has already intimated the Left Democratic Front convenor A. Vijayaraghavan and a communique would be sent in this regard. "Thomas has happily accepted the decision of the national leadership, and Krishnankutty will take his place. In 2016 itself this was decided. Thomas in 2009 had resigned when he was asked to do so by the national leadership and that was one of the main reasons, why Thomas was given the post in 2016," said Ali. The JD-S is the third-largest ally of the CPM-led government and has three legislators -- Thomas, former state Minister C.K. Nanu and K. Krishnankutty -- in the state Assembly. JD-S national President and former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda had called his three legislators to Bengaluru on Thursday to meet him, but Thomas did not turn up. Finally, the meeting with the others present took place on Friday when the decision was taken. The present impasse in the JD-S began when the Pinarayi Vijayan government completed its two-and-a-half years in office. Nanu had earlier told the media in Bengaluru that the national leadership had told them that there was an agreement that Thomas would relinquish the ministership in Krishnankutty's favour once the government completed the half-way mark of its five-year term. However, this claim has been refuted by the Thomas camp and he is yet to respond to the fresh development. Speaking to the media in Bengaluru, minister-designate Krishnankutty said everything has been sorted out. "There are no major issues in the party and things are all fine. I will seek his (Thomas) help when I become a Minister," said Krishnankutty. With the fresh session of the Kerala Assembly scheduled to begin on coming Tuesday, it remains to be seen if the new Minister would be sworn in before that. --IANS sg/nir (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 38-year-old coal merchant, wanted in the murder attempt on Meghalaya's frontline women's rights activist Agnes Kharshiing and her aide, was arrested from Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport in Assam on Friday, police said. "The special team of Meghalaya Police picked up Showmewell B. Kyndait from Guwahati airport following intelligence input that he was attempting to fly to New Delhi to evade police arrest in connection with the attack on the two women's activists," Sylvester Nongtnger, the district police chief of East Jaintia Hills, told IANS. Kyndait, a resident of Shangpung village, was arrested by Khliehriat police after he told his interrogators that "he was one of those people" who brutally assaulted Kharshiing and her aide Amita Sangma on November 8 at Tuber Sohshrieh area in East Jaintia Hills district, police said. With the arrest of Kyndait, the total number of people arrested in the case has risen to seven, including a 44-year-old woman Skhemlang Dkhar on Wednesday from Jowai, the district headquarters of West Jaintia Hills. "Search is on to arrest the other accuses in the case. We are hopeful to arrest them," Nongtnger said. Nongtnger said that police officer of the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police is investigating the entire case, even as police have registered case vide Khliehriat PS case No 195(11) u/s 307/392 Indian Penal Code which is attempt to murder and robbery. Meanwhile, Additional Deputy Commissioner of East Jaintia Hills district, S.S. Syiemlieh has issued an order directing Kharshiing and Sangma to appear before him at North East Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health Medical Sciences (NEIGRIHMS) hospital for deposition of statement in the interest of the inquiry to ascertain facts and circumstances leading to their assaults. Kharshiing along with Sangma were brutally assaulted by a group of people after the activist lodged a complaint on illegal mining and transportation of coal in the district. The National Green Tribunal had ordered an interim ban on "rat-hole" coal mining in Meghalaya from April 17, 2014, after the All Dimasa Students' Union and the Dima Hasao District Committee filed an application before it, alleging that the water of the Kopili river was turning acidic due to coal mining in the Jaintia Hills. The Meghalaya High Court has asked the investigating officer to file the status report of the investigation and to remain present in the Court along with the case diary on November 27. --IANS rrk/prs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Maoist commander was killed in a gun battle with security forces in Jharkhand's Simdega district on Friday, police said. According to police, the gun battle between the security forces and the Maoists took place at Jhapala hill in Simdega district. The slain Maoist -- Vijay Dang, belonging to the People's Liberation Front of India (PLFI), was carrying a reward of Rs 2 lakh on his head. Dang was terrorizing the area after the arrest of PLFI zonal commander Barud Gope. He was involved in several incidents including the killing of a Bharatiya Janata Party legislator. There were seven Maoists involved in the shootout. Dang was one of the most wanted Maoist commanders after PLFI head Dinesh Gope, Superintendent of Police of Simdega district Sanjiv Kumar told reporters. Dang's killing is a big success for the state police. The PLFI is the second biggest Maoist organisation operating in Jharkhand. --IANS ns/mag/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Militants on Friday attacked the house of a Congress leader in Tral town of Pulwama district with a grenade, police said. Militants hurled a grenade at the house of Congress leader Surinder Singh Channi in Monghama village of Tral area on Friday, the police said. "The grenade exploded in the compound of the house. No damage was, however, caused to anybody," the police added. --IANS sq/nir (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Congress President Rahul Gandhi, who is visiting the poll-bound state of Madhya Pradesh, attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the plight of youth and farmers in the country. Addressing a rally on Friday in Ganj Basoda, Gandhi said Modi has failed to fulfil his promise of giving jobs to two crore youths and ensuring remunerative prices to farmers for their produce. Citing official data, Gandhi said that in India only 450 youths get jobs every day while in China, 50,000 people get employed every 24 hours. He said the government is working for industrialists only and does not care about the youth or the farmers. He claimed that the government waived off loans amounting to Rs 3 lakh crore of 15 industrialists but did not give any such relief to the farmers. --IANS hindi-mag/sed (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday paid tribute to Guru Nanak Dev on the occasion of his birth anniversary and said the first Sikh Guru taught the path of truth, righteousness and compassion. Recalling his inspiring thoughts, Modi said Guru Nanak was committed towards eradicating injustice and inequality from society and believed in the power of education. "Shri Guru Nanak Devji taught us the path of truth, righteousness and compassion. He was committed towards eradicating injustice and inequality from society," the Prime Minister tweeted. "He also believed in the power of education. We bow to him on his 'jayanti' (birth anniversary) and recall his inspiring thoughts." Guru Nanak was born in November 1469 at present day Nankana Sahib, Punjab, Pakistan, near Lahore. --IANS vv/ksk (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Friday said the Congress carved out Telangana state, though it had to pay a political price for it. On her first visit to Telangana after it came into being as a separate state in 2014, the former Congress president said the Congress accorded statehood though it had to pay a price for it. She was apparently referring to the drubbing Congress faced in Andhra Pradesh in Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in 2014. Sonia Gandi was addressing a massive public meeting at Medchal near Hyderabad to formally kick off the campaign of People's Front headed by the Congress for the next month's elections to Telangana Assembly. Gandhi projected herself as the 'mother of Telangana' by stating that she is feeling happy to be in Telangana in the same manner as a mother would feel happy to see her child after many days. "Every mother wants to see her children prosper, but I am pained to see the condition of the new state," she said castigating the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government for failing to fulfill the promises at the time of formation of their state. "You know if a newborn is not properly taken care of in the initial years, he has to face many problems in future. Unfortunately, the responsibility of looking after the child was entrusted to those who only looked after themselves and left the child to fend for itself," said Sonia Gandhi. Stating that elections are an opportunity for people to get rid of this difficult situation, she appealed to people to use the power of vote to teach TRS a lesson and bring Congress and its allies to power with a huge majority. "I remember what difficulties we had to face in taking a decision to form Telangana state. It was not an easy task," said Sonia Gandhi recalling the passage of bill in Parliament by Congress-led UPA government for bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh. "We kept the interests of both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana before us but your emotions and aspirations gave Dr Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi and others the strength, enabling us to take this big decision," she told a huge gathering amid loud cheers. The Congress leader said they felt the pain of Andhra Pradesh and that was why they announced special schemes and promised special category status to that state. She assured people of Andhra Pradesh that the Congress stands by the commitment it made including the special category status. Recalling that Telangana was achieved on the slogan of "water, funds and jobs", she alleged that TRS failed to live up to the expectations of people. She said people had hoped that the new state would bring about change in their lives but it did so in the lives of those in power and their near and dear ones. Stating that farmers were yet to get water for irrigation, she said their suicides were continuing. Gandhi said the youth were still waiting for jobs. Telugu Desam Party's Telangana unit president L. Ramna, Telangana Jana Samithi's M. Kodandaram and Communist Party of India's state secretary Chada Venkatreddy shared the dais with Sonia Gandhi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi. Rahul Gandhi said the TRS rule was about to come to an end. Without naming TRS president and Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao, the Congress president said during last five years, one person ran the state at his whims and fancies for the benefit of his family. Rahul Gandhi assured the people that the alliance would fulfill their dreams which Chandrashekhar Rao failed to do. "The government of the alliance will not work for one person but for all the people of the state. It will work to address the problems of farmers, provide employment to youth and carry all sections people with it." The meeting was held the first show of strength by four-party People's Front ahead of December 7 elections to 119-member Assembly. --IANS ms/prs (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Muslims will find it hard to bury their dead in the national capital in a year from now, since there will be no space left in the graveyard which are already out of free space, says a report compiled by the Delhi Minority Commission. Released by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday, the report said there are approximately 13,000 Muslim funerals in a year on average and there is a space for only 29,370 in Delhi, as per their data collected in 2017. "This means that at the present pace, there will be no space left after only one year from now (2018) unless some remedial strategies are adopted," said the report. As one of its "remedial strategies", the Commission suggested using "'kaccha' graves that allow re-burial in the same space after a few years" and freeing land from encroachers for building of new graveyards. There are 704 Muslim graveyards in the national capital, as per the report. "Out of these existing graveyards, only 131 are functioning now and even out of these, a total of 16 graveyards are under litigation and therefore they are not functioning. "These also include 43 graveyards which have been encroached upon by various entities. Most graveyards are small, measuring 10 bighas or less; 46 per cent have five bighas or less," it read. --IANS vn/nir (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actor Riteish Deshmukh, who will be seen sharing screen space with Kriti Sanon in the fourth instalment of the "Housefull" franchise, asked the actress to not lose her "never stop questioning" attitude. Kriti had praised Riteish and said he is the nicest person she has ever come across. "So glad that I got to know you. A fabulous actor and an even better human being! Stay the same and please keep in touch... Will miss our chats and word-links! Riteish," she tweeted. To which, Riteish replied: "You are extremely kind with your words dear Kriti Sanon - the pleasure is all mine... Had a great time shooting with you. A great quality for an actor to have is to 'Never stop questioning' -- don't ever lose that - see you soon! Big hug." "Housefull 4" also stars Akshay Kumar, Bobby Deol, Kriti Kharbanda, Rana Daggubati and Pooja Hegde. --IANS dc/sim/sed (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Mumbai's Chabad House in the Nariman House Colaba, one of the bloody targets of the 26/11 terror strikes, will be renamed as 'Nariman Light House' on the 10th anniversary of the attacks and 10 months after Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit, official sources said on Friday. The present rabbi, Israel Kozlovsky, said the rechristening ceremony will be organized on behalf of the Chabad of India Trust on Sunday afternoon, the eve of 26/11 attacks, at the main Jewish social-cultural-religious hub in the fashionable Colaba, south Mumbai. The event will mark the unveiling of a memorial on the Nariman House terrace, making it the only place in Mumbai to honour all the 166 victims of the terror strikes, besides plans to reconstruct the heavily damaged fourth-fifth floors will be announced by Rabbi Kozlovsky and other officials. The Nariman House, housing the Chabad House, was one of the main targets of 10 Pakistani terrorists who sneaked in through the Arabian Sea route and disembarked at a Colaba fishing jetty, barely a stone's throw. Among the victims brutally killed in the indiscriminate firing and grenade attacks were the then Nariman House Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his pregnant wife Rivka, and two other Israelis, an American and a Mexican, all Jews, besides Indian security officials. However, their two-year-old old toddler son, Moshe was saved by his Indian nanny, Sandra Samuels, and a few days later they were flown off to Israel. On January 18 this year, Moshe, now a shy, bespectacled 12-year-old boy, joined Netanyahu and other dignitaries at the Chabad House, along with his grandfather, Shimon Rosenberg and grandmother. It was the first-ever visit by any high-ranking Israeli dignitary to Chabad House, which reopened in 2014, and is now considered a 'Living Memorial' to the November 26, 2008 carnage. --IANS qn/prs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A group of Egyptians have been kidnapped and held hostage in the east of Libya after the men fell out with a businessman who accused them of stealing part of a contract money. Egyptian residents from Nile Delta village of Kafr el-Sheikh told Reuters that the men who went Libya to work, were kidnapped at least four days ago in the town of Tobruk. They were abducted by a group of armed men at the instructions of a businessman who accused them of stealing 100,000 Libyan dinars ($72,000). The businessman, according to Reuters, is from the same village as the workers. He conditioned the release of the men after he gets his money back. The Libyan side said he wants his money before letting the men go, a resident of the village told Reuters. I am now worried about my brothers life because killing in Libya has become a common practice, another resident said. Thousands of Egyptians are currently working in Libya despite security concerns. Many of them are in the construction sector. The Islamic State group (ISIS) in 2015 slaughtered 20 Egyptian Christians by the sea. The horrible deed sparked anger of the Egyptian government, which had carried out several sorties to pound positions of the terror group. The Punjab government on Friday launched 26 development projects worth Rs 150 crore, including upgradation of infrastructure in the three historic towns of Sultanpur Lodhi, Dera Baba Nanak and Batala, to mark the launch of year-long celebrations of the 550th anniversary of founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Punjab Governor V.P. Singh Badnore and Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Friday laid the foundation stones for these projects at a state-level function organised in this town to mark the 549th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev. Thirty-six villages and 11 Nagar Panchayats visited by Guru Nanak Dev during his life time (1469-1539) have been identified for development at a cost of Rs 150 crore, announced the Chief Minister. The holy town of Sultanpur Lodhi, located in Kapurthala district - around 190 km from Chandigarh, is linked to the Guru's life and Sikh religious history. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, who further announced projects and welfare schemes to the tune of Rs 3,312 crore to facilitate pilgrims and to commemorate the historic occasion, also launched a drive to plant 550 trees in the villages of the state in the next one year at a total cost of Rs 10.5 crore. Amarinder appealed to all Punjabis to plant at least one fruit tree each in their homes. The Chief Minister announced the release of 32 prisoners and remission of term for another 2,952 to mark the occasion. The Punjab government has also proposed to build a "Sri Guru Nanak Dev ji Marg". This will be be finalized by a group of experts from the Department of Religious Studies, which has been assigned the task to study and propose alignment for the same. The Chief Minister has also announced a "Sarbat Sehat Bima Yojana", under which 43 lakh families would be brought under insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh at a cost of Rs 371 crore from January 1, 2019. --IANS js/nir (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The BJP on Friday filed a complaint with the Election Commission against C.P. Joshi, Congress leader and contestant from Nathdwara, for making caste-based statements at a public gathering. State convener of BJP's election cell Nahar Singh Maheshwari said Joshi commented on castes and religion at a public gathering in Sema village, which is a violation of the model code of conduct. "As his statements could trigger communal disharmony in the state, we have demanded strict action against Joshi in our complaint made to the Election Commission," said Maheshwari. IANS arc/prs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Premier League (PL) side Liverpool and Senegalese winger Sadio Mane reached an agreement to extend Mane's contract with the Reds, the club announced on Friday. The new contract is to link Mane, who landed at Anfield stadium in the summer of 2016 coming from Southampton, with Liverpool until 2023, reports Efe news. "It is a great day for me," Mane said, adding, "I've always said, when I knew I had a chance to come here I didn't have to think twice." Mane has taken part in a total of 89 matches wearing the Reds' jersey, scoring 40 goals. The 26-year-old was also a part of the Liverpool team that made it all the way to the UEFA Champions League final last season. Liverpool aims to top the Premier League for the first time since the Reds' last title in 1990 with the team presently holding the second spot in the overall PL standings with 30 points, just two points behind leader and defending champion Manchester city. --IANS kk/sed (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Samsung Electronics on Friday made a formal apology to all victims of work-related diseases who were employed at the company's chip and display production lines, settling the long-standing dispute that lasted for more than a decade. Samsung Electronics President and CEO Kim Ki-nam, who heads the tech giant's crucial device solution division, expressed deep regrets on behalf of the company to the victims, claiming that Samsung will make every effort to comply with the compensation plan prepared by the mediation committee. "Beloved colleagues and families have suffered for a long time, but Samsung Electronics failed to take care of the matter earlier," Kim said. "We lacked being considerate of such pains and promptly settled the issue. "Samsung Electronics also did not fully and completely manage potential health risks at our chip and liquid-crystal display production lines. Today, we wish to express a sincere apology to the workers who suffered from diseases, as well as their families," Kim added. The standoff involving the South Korean tech giant surfaced when Hwang Yu-mi, who worked on a Samsung chip production line, died of leukemia in 2007. Victims have been claiming that Samsung should provide compensation, apologise and come up with measures to prevent further outbreaks, Yonhap news agency reported. The world's top chipmaker and the Supporters for the Health and Rights of People in the Semiconductor Industry (SHARPS), a group of victims, agreed to accept any decision made by a mediation committee in July, unconditionally. Earlier this month, the mediation committee announced the settlement that included compensation of up to 150 million won (US$132,000) per illness. The compensation plan also covers congenital diseases suffered by children of the victims. The agreement, however, did not acknowledge that the workplace environment is directly related to the diseases afflicting some employees. On Friday, Samsung and victims accepted and inked the mediation plan as agreed in July. Government and industry officials attended the event as well. Kim reiterated that Samsung will unconditionally accept the mediation. Samsung said the compensation will be carried out by a third party -- Jipyong, a South Korean law firm. The deadline for the compensation is October 31, 2028, although it can be extended depending on circumstances. All incumbent or former workers of Samsung and its sub-contractors, who have served at the company's chip and LCD production lines in Giheung, south of Seoul, since 1984 will be eligible to apply for compensation. Along with the compensation, Samsung donated 50 billion won to the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency to help improve workers' safety and health in the country. The fund will be used for researching and building facilities for industrial safety. Samsung and Jipyong plan to open an office to carry out the compensation scheme in December, and start the process within this year at the earliest. "Honestly, today's apology made by a Samsung Electronics CEO is not sufficient for the victims of the work-related diseases," said Hwang Yu-mi's father, Sang-ki. "But I will consider the apology as Samsung Electronics' resolution." "We still have more tasks. The work-related diseases are not limited to Samsung Electronics' chip and LCD segments. "There are also ailing workers from Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Samsung SDS, Samsung SDI and other affiliates, after handling hazardous substances," Hwang added. "I hope Samsung prepares a comprehensive compensation for all workers suffering from such illnesses." --IANS ksc/na/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Kerala Assembly Speaker P. Sreeramakrishnan on Friday said that an oral statement of the Supreme Court cannot be taken as a judgement. He was responding to queries here about his statement that was carried by the media that he would not allow entry to Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) MLA K.M. Shaji after the apex court had given an oral order that he could attend the Assembly session starting from November 27. "I was misquoted by the media. The only written directive that we have with us now is one from the Kerala High court which says that Shaji has been disqualified and he is yet to get a stay from the apex court. An oral statement from the Supreme Court cannot be taken as a judgement," said Sreeramakrishnan. On Thursday, the Supreme Court declined an urgent hearing of a plea by Shaji challenging his unseating and disqualification by the Kerala High Court for making communal overtures during his election campaign. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi refused to hold an early hearing and said that the matter can come up in due course. The IUML is a part of the Congress-led United Democratic Front, which is in the opposition after its defeat in the 2016 Assembly elections. The IUML is the second biggest constituent of the UDF. The High Court, while unseating Shaji for corrupt practices in breach of the election code of conduct under the Representation of the People Act, disqualified him from contesting elections for six years. Shaji won from Azhikode constituency in Kannur district in a bitterly fought battle by a margin of 2,462 votes. --IANS sg/ksk/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two days ahead of the massive show of strength by the saffron camp in this temple town with the police turning it into a fortress, Shiv Sena's Rajya Sabha lawmaker Sanjay Raut on Friday created a flutter here by saying when Babri Masjid could be demolished in 17 minutes, why it was taking so long for a law to build a temple there. "We demolished the Babri Masjid in 17 minutes but for paper work why it is taking so much time...for drafting a law or ordinance," he told reporters here in comments seen as provoking BJP with which its oldest saffron ally is not on good terms in the last few months. The Shiv Sena leader, camping in the temple town for the last couple of days along with other party leaders and hundreds of Sena supporters who arrived here in two special trains, said: "From Rashtrapati Bhavan to Uttar Pradesh, there is BJP government. In Rajya Sabha there are a lot of members who support Ram temple." Raut demanded that the government enact a law for "quick construction of a grand Ram temple" in Ayodhya. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) are due to hold a 'Dharma Sabha' on Sunday to press for an early construction of a Ram temple. Several trains, buses, tractor trolleys, taxis have been booked by the organisers to ferry people from across the state to be part of the congregation, which the VHP has announced would be "the last before the war bugle is sounded." Police sources said there would be over two lakh people converging on Ayodhya on what is now being called the 'Super Sunday'. The Shiv Sena has already jumped into the fray to whip up passions on the Ram temple. Party chief Uddhav Thackeray is to attend several events in the temple town on Sunday and is likely to pitch in for early construction of the grand Ram temple. Party MP Sanjay Raut was in the town twice in the past fortnight and had discussions with local seers. Mahant Nritya Gopaldas, a guardian figure in the Ram temple movement, after initial reluctance has agreed to meet the Shiv Sena chief. There is growing anxiety among locals on what this maiden visit to the Maratha satrap would mean for the Ram temple. Local traders have already threatened to down shutters on Sunday and show black flags to Thackeray to protest attacks on North Indians in Mumbai, fomented by his party. Sources said that the state BJP government is working the wires with the Shiv Sena top brass to ensure that there is no untoward incident in and around the disputed site. The Ayodhya case is before the Supreme Court and is scheduled for hearing in January next year. Government sources said local intelligence units have been "alerted" and extra security deployment has been made ahead of the Shiv Sena chief's visit. It was then Shiv Sena Chief Bala Saheb Thackeray who had proudly claimed that "brave" Shiv Sainiks razed the Babri mosque on December 6, 1992. What is worrying the security agencies, insiders say, is the fact that many VHP and even the ruling BJP lawmakers have openly threatened a "repeat of 1992" on Sunday. Beria (Barabanki district) legislator Surendra Singh has publicly said that if things do not move fast towards an early announcement of the Ram temple, "they will not hesitate in taking law in their hands". The Yogi Adityanath government is treading with caution. On the one hand, the government has said that "Ram bhakts" can gather in Ayodhya and perform rituals, on the other, it has asked the police and the district administration to be extra vigilant. On Friday the temple town turned into a fortress with the police dividing Ayodhya into eight zones and 16 sectors. State Chief Secretary Pradesh Anoop Chandra Pandey, principal secretary (home) Arvind Kumar and Director General of Police (DGP) O.P. Singh have reviwed the town's security through video-conferencing. The state government has also increased the number of provincial armed constabulary (PAC) from 20 to 48. "There is nothing to fear. We are vigilant and the law and order will be maintained," said the DGP on Friday. Iqbal Ansari, the lone Muslim litigant in the decades-old title suit of the Babri mosque-Ram Janmabhoomi case had recently said they were feeling insecure as the "atmosphere in Ayodhya was akin to 1992". RSS's Bhaiyya ji Joshi had recently visited Ayodhya and expressed the hope that "his next visit to the temple town would be when the Ram deity sits under a grand temple." RSS has pumped in its might to make the Sunday event a success and has divided the 200-km area around Ayodhya into 1.000 sections wherein processions, door-to-door campaigns, bike rallies and processions are being held to mobilise the Hindus. --IANS md/prs (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An "unexpected de-growth" during the festival season this year has shocked the automobile industry with consumers "postponing" purchase of both two and four-wheelers, a top industry official said here on Friday. During the festival season Navratri to Diwali, the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (FADA) recorded a dismal decline in sales of two-wheelers and four-wheelers, barring three-wheelers like commercial vehicles and autorickshaws. In fact, this is the first time in the past five years or so that FADA has notched a negative growth during the auspicious festival season of around 42 days, when thousands flock to book or purchase vehicles. "We had not witnessed such a dull festival season... Many negative factors came into play during this season. It's a matter of deep concern for the dealership community," FADA President Ashish H. Kale told IANS. According to Kale, four-wheelers or passengers vehicles recorded a steep decline of 14 per cent in the prime time between September 21-November 20 this year, compared to the same period in 2017. This came to actual sales of 287,717 passenger vehicles this season, down from last (2017) season's 333,456, he said. In the two-wheelers segment, the decline was equally sharp at 13 per cent during the same period, recording 15,83,276 two-wheelers sold compared to 18,11,703 last season, Kale said. Incidentally, four-wheelers have notched an overall decline of 1.4 per cent from April to November this year, or 16,26,555 passenger vehicles sold compared to 16,49,650 sold during the same period in 2017. The only silver lining for FADA was the 10 per cent growth in the three-wheelers and commercial vehicles categories. For three-wheelers, the sales figure this year was 58,801 (53,457 last year) and commercial vehicles it was 119,597 (103,370 last year). "Dealer inventory in the two and four-wheelers has risen substantially due to this and is a matter of great concern for us," Kale said, of the FADA's move to release independent figures for the first time in view of the grim situation. The "negative factors" which slashed sales this year include the fuel prices which were on the upward swing till October-end, and although the petrol-diesel prices started going downwards, the damage was done. Adding to the negative sentiments was the ongoing Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFC) liquidity issue which hit buyers, especially those opting for two-wheelers and commercial vehicles. Kale hoped that the recent liquidity measures initiated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the government, the banks and automobile NBFCs would help the automobile industry grow in the days ahead. "We request the government and RBI to further ease the liquidity for auto NBFCs which operated in a less riskier business environment compared to infrastructure and housing NBFCs due to short repayment cycle and mobility of the assets," Kale said. On the positive side, he said that customer enquiries did not fall this festival, but they failed to materialise into transactions on expected lines due to "postponement" of decisions, and is optimistic the trend could reverse in the next four months. --IANS qn/nir (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Punjab Cabinet Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu on Friday welcomed the Central government's move to construct the infrastructure for the Kartarpur corridor in Punjab. He also urged the Centre to initiate steps with the Pakistan government on working out visa formalities once the corridor is completed. "It fills my heart with joy unspeakable on learning that the Government of India has agreed to build a corridor for pilgrims to visit Kartarpur Sahib on 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev ji. "As a Sikh devotee and as a man committed to the cause of Punjab and its people, I am extremely grateful and indebted for the steps initiated by the Government of India," Sidhu said in a letter to Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. He said the move will "write a new chapter of faith and love for the region" and "will act like a soothing balm for two neighbouring countries". This has been a long standing demand of the Sikh community across the globe and a step in this direction has brought a new ray of hope among pilgrims who are anxiously waiting for paying obeisance at the historical Gurudwara Sahib across the border, Sidhu said. The Kartarpur corridor will enable pilgrims from India to visit the Sikh shrine located in Pakistan, close to the international border with India. President Ram Nath Kovind and Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh will lay the foundation stone of the project in Dera Baba Nanak area of Punjab's Gurdaspur district on Monday. --IANS js/mag/sed (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Film stars Shah Rukh Khan, Kangana Ranaut and Vijay Devarakonda will share their personal 'Passion to Paycheck' stories with a live audience as part of Signature Masterclass, to be held across six cities starting December 15. Shah Rukh will talk about his journey to the audience in Lucknow, while southern star Vijay will share his experience with the Hyderabad audience. Kangana will travel to Gurgaon, Kolkata, Guwahati and Pune. Popular VJ-actor Cyrus Sahukar will host the interactions. Looking forward to the experience, Shah Rukh said in a statement: "I came to Mumbai from Delhi with nothing more than a passion to act. I had grown up amidst the great actors on the campus of the National School of Drama and that really inspired me. I am excited to have the opportunity to share my story with the audience through the Signature Masterclass platform." Kangana said: "My journey has been really personal and I dreamed that it would ever be one that could inspire people. I love the fact that I get the chance to share my story with people in such an intimate way. As a woman, I understand the struggles we undergo and through my masterclasses, I hope to inspire women and men alike to follow their passion irrespective of the barriers and challenges they face." "Arjun Reddy" fame actor Vijay also hopes to inspire the youth. "Everyone has a dream and to get to make it become a reality is rare. I was lucky enough to have been given the opportunity to convert my passion for acting into reality through my films. In my life, my parents always encouraged me to do what I wanted to and through my masterclass, I hope I can inspire others who dream to take the leap," he said.This will be the third season of the Signature Masterclass, sponsored by Signature Packaged Drinking Water. Each segment includes a special performance by an up-and-coming local artiste, providing them with an opportunity to showcase their passion and talent with the crowd. Amarpreet Anand, Executive Vice President and Portfolio Head, Marketing, Diageo India, said: "Over the last two years, we built a platform that inspires people across the country to pursue their true passion... We predict this season will empower even more millennials to follow their dreams and make their mark." --IANS rb/sed (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Thousands of devotees thronged gurdwaras across Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh on Friday to offer prayers on the occasion of 'Gurpurab' - the 549th birth anniversary of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev. It also marks the start of the year-long celebrations leading to the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev (1469-1539) next year. The holiest of Sikh shrines Harmandir Sahib, popularly known as Golden Temple in Amritsar and other gurdwaras elsewhere saw religious fervour to mark the occasion. Long queues of devotees could be seen waiting to offer prayers inside the sanctum sanctorum. People braved the early morning chill to offer prayers at gurdwaras. Guru Nanak Dev was born in 1469 in Nankana Sahib town (now in Pakistan), around 80 km west of Lahore city. Reports of Gurpurab celebrations were received from Nankana Sahib also. Over 3,000 Sikh devotees have gone to Pakistan to celebrate at Nankana Sahib. Tight security arrangements were made around all leading Sikh shrines in Punjab in view of recent terror-related incidents in the state. The Golden Temple complex was decorated with lighting since Diwali and Bandi Chhor Diwas earlier this month. Hymns were being rendered at the holy shrine and scores of other gurdwaras across the region to mark the occasion. At other gurdwaras in cities, towns and villages, hundreds of people could be seen coming to offer prayers. 'Langars' (community kitchen) were arranged at most gurdwaras. Punjab Governor V.P. Singh Badnore and Chief Minister Amarinder Singh greeted people on the occasion and urged them to follow the Guru's teachings and to maintain peace and harmony. --IANS js/ksk (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Qatar Thursday said rivalry between its regional and powerful neighbor, Iran and its strongest western ally, the US, is putting the Gulf country in uncomfortable situation, offering to play mediator role if possible. There is this dispute between the US and Iran, its putting us in a situation in which we see a disagreement between our strongest ally and our neighbor, which is not comfortable, Qatars foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told an international conference in Rome. There should be a way to find a bridge to mediate this problem, if Qatar can provide this bridge, why not? The US early this month imposed new punitive measures targeting Irans oil and financial sector with the aim to dry out Tehrans main financial source and thus force it to negotiate a new nuclear accord. President Donald Trump walked away from the 2015 multinational nuclear agreement signed between Iran and World powers with an endorsement of the UN Security Council. The US has prohibited countries willing trade with the American market from dealing with Iran. Qatar according to Sheikh Mohammed will however continue dealing with Iran despite the US sanctions. Iran last year in June backed up Qatar at the onset of the Gulf crisis when Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, plus Egypt cut off ties with Doha and imposed on it a sea/air/ground blockade. Iran stepped forward to provide food supplies, which enabled the tiny gas-rich country to circumvent food shortage. That the nation is embodied in the Prime Minister is the telling similarity between the Emergency of 1975-77 under Indira Gandhi and the contemporary state of affairs in India under Narendra Modi; but unlike the former, Modi's "authoritarian governance" is not based on "the assumption of emergency powers by the executive", says Gyan Prakash, a professor of history at Princeton University and author of several highly acclaimed books, including "Mumbai Fables", which was adapted for the film "Bombay Velvet", and the just-released "Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy's Turning Point". In his latest book, that has just hit the stands with glowing endorsements by the likes of Sunil Khilnani and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Prakash, who was a member of the influential Subaltern Studies Collective until its dissolution in 2006, is quite vocal when it comes to drawing a comparison between the regimes of Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi. He contends in the book that "Hindutva is fundamentally anti-democratic", adding that "Hindutva ideologues target dissent as anti-national". Asked what made him reach this conclusion and what was its likely impact on Indian democracy, Prakash said that the two situations are not exactly the same but both the similarities and differences are revealing. Modi's authoritarian governance, Prakash said, is by a combination of two factors. "First, the BJP government uses and abuses the centralising powers of the state to weaken institutions and stifle dissent by terming it anti-national. Second, unlike Indira Gandhi's Emergency, which never enjoyed popular support, Narendra Modi's government is able to deploy Hindutva forces on the ground to intimidate the opposition. In addition, it enjoys support from the corporate media, particularly electronic media," Prakash told IANS in an email from New Jersey, recalling that there was no private electronic media during the Emergency, and the government-controlled media never enjoyed the reach and influence that the media does today. "For these reasons, authoritarian power is far more ominous for democracy today," he maintained. He said that the gatekeepers of democracy are its institutions -- political parties, the rule of law, an independent press, and avenues to express dissent. "You cannot realise democracy's substantive promise of equality without its institutions. Centralisation of power in one person or one office damages the health of these institutions. There were some people in India who welcomed the BJP victory in 2014 even if they didn't agree with its Hindutva ideology. They thought that because the BJP was a proper political party with seasoned national and regional leaders, and not beholden to one family like the Congress, it would respect and strengthen democratic institutions. But the stunning depletion of its leadership to one oversized personality has meant that the space for the expression of multiple and divergent views in the party has contracted almost overnight. So has the possibility of the BJP playing its role, as a political party, as a gatekeeper of democracy," he said. In the book, published by Penguin Random House India, Prakash argues that the surge of Hindu nationalism has catapulted Narendra Modi into the kind of position that Indira occupied only with Emergency. Asked if he was suggesting that there is an undeclared emergency kind of a scenario in contemporary India, he said the term conjures up a false and misleading similarity. "The Emergency was a very specific state action, a lawful suspension of the law. But Indira's draconian laws and abuse of authority could never summon foot soldiers on the street to back her power. The very fact that she had to formally silence the press, meddle with the judiciary, and place over a hundred thousand people in prison were signs that her power lacked the force of popular support. The deployment of coercion to implement the 20-point programme, sterilisation drives, slum clearance campaigns, and efforts to break through the controlled economy, signified that all was not well with her regime at the ground level. This is why she resorted to the Emergency to salvage her regime and its policy agenda," Prakash explained. He said the situation today is very different. "Today we witness an unprecedented combination of state power and populist mobilisation in the name of development and the nation. Yes, there is a growing centralisation of power, and attacks on institutions, abuse of authority, etc., but what makes the current context radically different is that moves at the top are joined by mobilisation from below. This coordination between state and society -- deliberate or not -- threatens democracy in a fundamental way, one that is not captured by the term 'undeclared Emergency'," Prakash maintained. He said the Congress has never come to terms with the legacy of 1975-77, and needs to address it squarely, not with half apologies and part justifications. "But more important than apologies and acknowledgments is to recognise the Indian political system's deeper and continuing failure to realise the promise of democracy," he said, pointing to several chapters in "Emergency Chronicles" that are devoted to describing how popular discontent with the shortcomings in this regard found expression in the JP movement. "This is necessary to demolish the comfortable myth that permits us to believe that nothing is fundamentally amiss in India's experience with democracy, and that all the problems began and ended with Indira," he said. Priced at Rs 699, the 439-page book is available both online and at bookstores. (Saket Suman can be contacted at saket.s@ians.in) --IANS ss/vm/tb/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump has threatened to close the whole US-Mexico border, including halting trade with Mexico, if the arrival of migrants from central America leads to disorder. He also said on Thursday that he had given troops at the border the go-ahead to use lethal force if needed, BBC reported. On Monday, the US briefly closed a busy crossing to install new barriers. Thousands of migrants are at the border after travelling more than 4,000 km from Central America. They say they are fleeing persecution, poverty and violence in their home countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Trump has deployed about 5,800 troops to the border and has previously described the migrants as an "invasion". "If we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control," he told reporters. "The whole border. I mean the whole border. Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the US where they make so many cars," he added. Trump's reference to lethal force came after Defence Secretary James Mattis said military police at the border would be unarmed. "They don't have guns in their hands, there is no armed element going in," he told reporters on Wednesday. On Thursday, Trump also warned that the US government could shut down next month if no more money was provided for a wall between the US and Mexico. "Could there be a shutdown? There certainly could and it will be about border security, of which the wall is a part," he said. He has renewed his attacks after earlier saying a federal judge who blocked his executive order to deny illegal migrants the right to seek asylum was an "Obama judge". "Judges must not legislate security and safety at the border. They know nothing about it and are making our country unsafe," he said in a tweet. It comes after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts took the unusual step of rebuking Trump's criticism, and said that "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges". --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump has renewed a threat to shut down the entire US border with Mexico as part of his administration's efforts to deter the entry of Central American migrants. "If we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control," Trump told reporters on Thursday in Palm Beach, Florida, where he is spending the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Xinhua reported. "I mean the whole border," he said. "Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the US where they make so many cars." A group of migrants, many of whom say they are fleeing persecution, poverty and violence in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, are making their way through Central America towards the US border for weeks. Many of them want to claim asylum. More than 1,000 migrants have arrived in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, according to reports. Thousands of US troops have been deployed along the country's southern border with Mexico to help strengthen border security while offering only engineering, logistic and medical support. However, Trump said on Thursday he has given the troops the "OK" to use lethal force against migrants "if they have to". --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Twitter has permanently banned far-right activist Laura Loomer for her tweet criticising Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democratic Representative-elect, and her Muslim faith. Loomer was banned for violating Twitter rules regarding "hateful conduct", Mic.com reported on Thursday. Omar is one of the first Muslim women to be elected to US Congress. "Isn't it ironic how the twitter moment used to celebrate awomen, LGBTQ, and minorities' is a picture of Ilhan Omar?" Loomer tweeted. The later part of her tweet where she termed Omar as "anti-Jewish" got her permanently banned from the micro-blogging platform. "The reason I was suspended was simply for telling the truth, the truth about Ilhan Omar," Loomer defended herself in a YouTube video. "I've been silenced in America. I've been silenced as a journalist for reporting the truth. It's egregious. And so what I need all of you to do is to subscribe to my website." Twitter replied: "You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease". Loomer's Twitter account had over 260,000 followers before the ban. --IANS na/ksk (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Congress president on Friday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of bringing ignominy to all chowkidars (watchmen) in the country. Addressing campaign rallies for the November 28 Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Gandhi said the situation now is such that whenever the word chowkidar is uttered, people say "chor hai" (is a thief). "Wherever you go, as you pronounce the word "chowkidar" comes a reply "chor hai". I want to apologise to the chowkidars of the country. It is not your mistake, you all are not thieves, you all are honest. Only one person has brought ignominy to you. The country's prime minister has defamed all its chowkidars," he said. Before coming to power in 2014, Modi used to talk about combating corruption, unemployment and farmers' welfare but is now mum on these issues, Gandhi said. The sentiment across the country is that he broke their trust, Gandhi added. When Modi gave the "acche din" (good days) slogan ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, people would respond to the catch-phrase, saying "aayenge" (will come), he said. The promised "Acche Din" were not meant for the people but for some top industrialists, Gandhi said. Good days have come for industrialists like Nirav Modi, Anil Ambani and Vijay Mallya, he added. Modi, in his election campaign in 2014, had said he wanted to be the country's chowkidar, not the prime minister. "People had then reposed faith in him. The youth were assured 20 million jobs, farmers were assured minimum support price for their produce, the entire India was assured that Rs 1.5 million would be deposited in the bank account of each citizen. People believed this then," Gandhi said. "Why has this changed? In four years, people found that these (promises) were false. Narendra Modi speaks lies. This is the sentiment in the country because he has broken the (people's) trust," Gandhi said. A "Congress wave" would sweep Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram and Telangana, he said. The BJP-led government waived of Rs 3.5 trillion loans of the rich, but did not write off debts of farmers, he said. The previous Congress-led UPA government, on the recommendation of the Indian Air Force, decided to purchase 126 Rafale fighters at a cost of Rs 5.26 billion per plane with the stipulation that the state-owned aerospace company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) would make them in India, Gandhi said. "But Modi went to France and conveyed to the French government that each Rafale jet will be purchased for Rs 16 billion. He told them to give the contract to (Anil) Ambani instead of giving it to HAL," Gandhi said. There was no immediate reaction from the BJP on the allegations. The ruling party has dismissed the charges in the past. The Congress president asked his party men to stand at polling booths and not back off "even an inch" to convey a message to the BJP that people of Madhya Pradesh are now with the principal opposition party. Gandhi, who faces a defamation suit for claiming that Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's son was named in the 'Panama Papers', said, "I spoke mistakenly that Shivraj ji's son was named in Panama Papers, actually it was Chhattisgarh CM's son. Shivraj ji threatened me of filing a defamation suit." "But when I talk about scams like e-tendering, Vyapam, illegal mining and mid-day meal scam, he (Shivraj) doesn't speak a word, he doesn't threaten to file defamation. What does it mean," he said. Chouhan "stole" people's money in Vyapam, the entrance examination, admission and recruitment scam unearthed in Madhya Pradesh in 2013, he said. At least 11 grenades were found buried near a pond in Baksa district of lower Assam along the Indo-Bhutan border on Friday, police said. Whether the grenades were live is being examined. A group of people of Sashipur village under Tamulpur police station spotted a jute bag while fishing in the pond, police said. The villagers dug out the jute bag and and found mud-covered grenades inside. Police said the grenades were later handed over to them and investigations are on. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least 14 Palestinians have been wounded by Israeli gunfire during protests along the Gaza border, the enclave's health ministry said, as a lull in deadly violence held after a truce deal last week. Thousands of demonstrators turned out for the protests but largely kept their distance from the fortified frontier. Health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said 14 people were injured by Israeli army fire along the border, including "a child shot in the chest east of the Al-Bureij refugee camp" in the central Gaza Strip. An AFP correspondent said protesters held back from launching burning tyres or balloons carrying flaming material towards Israel - tactics they have frequently employed since the border protests began in March. Demonstrators were directed "to keep back from the separation fence and to maintain peaceful protests... to give a chance to Egyptian efforts to calm things down", an organiser told AFP. It marked the second straight Friday of lighter protests since an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire on November 13 ended the worst flare-up between Israel and Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas since a 2014 war. Efforts to reach a more lasting truce have angered Israeli right-wing rivals of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It brought the government to the brink of collapse when the defence minister resigned last week and took his party out of the ruling coalition. Netanyahu was able to avoid snap elections when another key minister pledged on Monday to stay on board, despite sharp disagreements with the premier. Gaza border tensions have soared since the March 30 start of what the Palestinians call the "Great March of Return", a mass protest movement demanding the right for Palestinians to return to homes they fled or were expelled from during the war surrounding Israel's creation. Protesters have often moved right up to the border fence every Friday and occasionally breached it. At least 235 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly by Israeli fire during border clashes but also by air strikes. Two Israeli soldiers have been killed over the same period. A senior Hamas official said a delegation headed by the Islamist group had arrived in Cairo on Wednesday to meet with Egyptian officials on efforts to "stabilise the truce" with Israel. The meeting was also expected to address reconciliation between Hamas and its rival party Fatah, headed by Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Amid the stand-off over entry of women of menstrual age into the Lord Ayyappa temple, the Kerala government Friday informed the High Court that two days could be set apart for women pilgrims of all ages to offer prayers at the Sabarimala hill shrine. The suggestion was made when the court was hearing a petition moved by four women devotees seeking protection for women of all age groups to offer prayers at the shrine besides facilities for smooth pilgrimage in the wake of the recent Supreme Court judgement. In their PIL, the four women, in their 20s and 30s, suggested devoting two to three days exclusively to women of all ages "who are desirous to go to Sabarimala after ridding the shrine, its premises and nearby towns from the goons and henchmen" opposing entry of women of menstrual age into the shrine. The petition, filed by Reshma Nishanth, Shanila Sajeesh, Dhanya V S and Surya M, came up before a division bench, comprising Chief Justice Hrishikesh Roy and Justice A K Jayasankaran Nambiar. During the hearing, the state government, in line with the suggestion made by the women, informed the court that two days could be set apart for women of all age groups to offer prayers at the shrine during the pilgrimage season. The petitioners said they were ardent devotees of Lord Ayyappa and have been observing the customary "vritham" (the mandatory austerities for visiting Sabarimala) adorning the ritual chain and wearing black dresses after the Supreme Court pronounced its judgement opening the hill temple to all women irrespective of age. The petitioners said they very much wanted to go and pray at the shrine. But due to the protests by some people with the support of leaders of the BJP, the Congress and temple head priest, they could not enter the shrine, they alleged. They sought a directive to the government to ensure facilities and arrangements for smooth pilgrimage for all women and to provide adequate and sufficient protection to them for entering the temple fearlessly and freely in compliance with the apex court judgment. Meanwhile, another division bench Friday ordered the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), which manages the shrine, not to divert funds to the state government without prior permission of the court. A bench of justices P R Ramachandra Menon and N Anil Kumar issued the order in the light of complaints that expenses for food and accommodation for the police deployed at the temple were met by the TDB. The state government claimed that the expenses were met by the government. However, the TDB expressed its willingness to provide food and accommodation to the police at Sannidhanam, the temple complex. Hundreds of police personnel have been deployed in Sabarimala following protests by Ayyappa devotees opposing the September 28 apex court order. The temple was opened on November 16 for the over-two-month-long pilgrimage season amid tension. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Unidentified gunmen opened fire near the Chinese consulate in Pakistan's Karachi city on Friday, killing two policemen, officials said. An explosion was also heard in the high-security Clifton area where the Chinese mission is situated. Two policemen have been killed in an exchange of fire, Deputy Inspector General (DIG) South Javed Alam Odho said. Four people were also injured in the attack, Dunya TV reported. The gunmen, armed with automatic weapons, proceeded towards the gate of the consulate after killing the policemen, defence contractor and analyst Ikram Sehgal said. However, the guards closed the gate and the Chinese officials were taken to a safe location, he said. "Police, rangers were all on duty when the attack happened. The attackers took their car inside but weren't able to enter the Chinese consulate compound," Additional Inspector General of Police Amir Ahmed Shaikh was quoted as saying by Dawn Heavy contingents of police and paramilitary forces have been deployed in the area after the exchange of fire which began around 9.30 AM (local time). Shaikh said that the firing has ended and the area was being cleared by police and Rangers. The area, considered a red zone, is heavily guarded. Nearby schools and eateries have been locked down until the area is cleared. Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah contacted the Chinese consul general and assured him that the situation will be taken under control. Governor of Sindh Imran Ismail has sought a report on the attack from the Sindh inspector general of police. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two Tanzanian women were rescued after a hostile crowd gathered outside their homes in Dwarka following rumours that they were cannibals and were abducting children, police said Friday. Later, a police patrol party, while conducting searches in the area, found that two Nigerian men were locked inside a room and rescued them as well, they said, adding, there were rumours about them also being cannibals. There were allegations about the foreign nationals being assaulted by the locals, but police dismissed the reports as baseless, saying the four were rescued safely. They said the women were rescued Thursday evening after police received a series of calls informing them that they had an altercation with the locals. Five phone calls were received at the police control room within a span of 41 minutes -- between 6.57 pm to 7.38 -- pm Thursday informing them about the altercation involving the two Tanzanian women in Kakrola area of Dwarka, police said. When police teams reached there, they found that a crowd had gathered in front of the women's house and allegations were floating around that they had killed a child and eaten his flesh. Police rescued the two women, said a senior police officer. Subsequently, a sixth call was received at 7.40 pm by a woman who alleged that her 16-year-old son had been kidnapped by the Nigerian men, he said. However, investigations showed that it was a false charge and the caller's phone was also switched off, he added. While searching the area during the night time, police found the Nigerian nationals locked inside a room, police said. They said they were sleeping when some people came and locked their room from outside. One of them does not possess Indian visa, and will be deported, they added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Qatar Thursday lambasted Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt for neglecting international calls to end their reckless boycott of the tiny gas-rich country. We still see them (Saudis and Emiratis) continuing with the same behavior, continuing not to be responsive to any attempt of the international community to end the conflict, said Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, Qatars foreign minister, during an international conference in Rome. Qatar has been facing a sea/air/land blockade since June 2017 imposed by Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt after the four severed ties with the tiny Gulf Arab country over its alleged support for terrorism. The blockade dealt a blow to the economy of the worlds largest liquefied gas exporter. Several countries mainly world powers tried to mediate the crisis but the Saudi-led side remained defiant. Speaking at the conference, Sheikh Mohammed said the blockade was reckless and jeopardizes the security of the region. Early this week, Kuwait, which has tried but to no avail to fix the diplomatic row, said the Gulf Cooperation Council summit to take place next month in Riyadh could be an opportunity to bring the crisis to an end. A 28-year-old tailor was arrested for allegedly killing a tea vendor in central Delhi's Karol Bagh area, police said Friday. On October 26, the body of a 55-year-old man was found lying in a pool of blood, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (central) Amit Sharma said. The deceased was identified as Ranjan Biswas, a tea vendor. CCTV footage of the area was analysed and the accused was identified as Bishu Saha, a native of Kolkata, Sharma said. Police traced the accused and arrested him from Bidhan Nagar in Kolkata, he said. During interrogation, he said he worked as a tailor and knew Biswas since they lived in the same locality at Karol Bagh, Sharma said. Saha revealed that he had grudges against Biswas as he used to interfere in his family matters a lot, the officer added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Three persons including two women were injured after a clash broke out between two groups here, police said Friday. The incident happened Thursday in Bhanwada village while some children were throwing stones at monkeys to scare them away, they said. One of the stones accidentally hit a woman which led to confrontation between the two groups, they added. The situation soon spiralled out of control as both sides began pelting stones at each other, they said. Sitara and Salma sustained injuries and were shifted to hospital, police said, adding that a hunt has been launched to nab the main accused. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least four people have been killed in fighting between the army and militias in the capital of Central African Republic, sources said on Friday. The clashes erupted in Bangui's mainly Muslim PK5 district -- an area that has become a flashpoint in the troubled country, already weakened by sectarian violence and dogged by militias. The fighting started when a "PK5 fighter fired on the security and defence forces" at around 1600 (1500 GMT) on Thursday, a local resident told AFP, with battles going on for two hours. The bodies of three people were brought to the neighbourhood's Ali Babolo mosque, the local imam said, and a taxi driver was also killed, according to a medical source. More than 20 people were injured. It was unclear Friday whether the people killed and wounded were civilians, soldiers or militia fighters. The distinction between fighters and civilians is sometimes difficult to make in the PK5 district, a major economic hub which has been a battleground on and off for years. One of the world's poorest countries, the CAR spiralled into bloodshed after longtime leader Francois Bozize was overthrown in 2013 by a predominantly Muslim rebel alliance called the Seleka. Nominally Christian militias called the anti-Balaka emerged in response, accelerating a cycle of sectarian violence. France intervened militarily from 2013 to 2016 to push out the Seleka, winding down the operation after Faustin-Archange Touadera was elected president. Touadera governs today with the support of a large UN peacekeeping operation, but most of the country is controlled by ex-rebels and militias. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Four Tanzanian women were rescued after a hostile crowd gathered outside their homes in Dwarka following rumours that they were cannibals and were abducting children, police said Friday. Later, a police patrol party, while conducting searches in the area, found that two Nigerian men were locked inside a room and rescued them as well, they said, adding, there were rumours about them also being cannibals. There were allegations about the foreign nationals being assaulted by the locals, but police dismissed the reports as baseless, saying they were rescued safely. A police official said the women were rescued Thursday evening after police received a series of calls informing them that they had an altercation with the locals. Five phone calls were received at the police control room within a span of 41 minutes -- between 6.57 pm to 7.38 pm --- Thursday informing them about the altercation involving the Tanzanian women in Kakrola area of Dwarka, police said. When police teams reached there, they found that a crowd had gathered in front of the women's house and allegations were afloat that they had killed a child and eaten his flesh. Police rescued the women, a senior police officer said. A sixth call was received at 7.40 pm by a woman who alleged that her 16-year-old son had been kidnapped by the Nigerian men, the police officer said. However, investigations showed that it was a false charge and the caller's phone was also switched off, he said. While searching the area during the night time, police found the Nigerian nationals locked inside a room, police said. They said they were sleeping when some people came and locked their room from outside. One of them does not possess Indian visa, and will be deported, they said, adding further investigation is underway. There was no assault on the Africans, police said, adding all the six were brought to police station for their safety and no one was injured. In May last year, at least six Africans were injured in three separate incidents in Chattarpur area of south In October this year, a video had surfaced showing a man, believed to be a Nigerian, tied to a pole and being beaten up with sticks by a group of men after he allegedly attempted to burgle their house in south Delhi's Malviya Nagar. Over five lakh people are expected to gather at Old Goa village near here for the annual Feast of St Francis Xavier, patron saint of the coastal state, to be celebrated on December 3, the organisers said on Friday. The Feast of St Francis Xavier is one of the most important events for the followers of Christianity. The feast is celebrated at Basilica of Bom Jesus, a church located at Old Goa, where the body of the saint who died in 1552 and whose relics are still preserved. "Tomorrow onwards annual Novenas (prayers) to celebrate Jesuit St Francis Xavier will begin, which will culminate into a feast on December 3," Fr Patricio Fernandes, Rector of the Basilica told PTI. He said during the ten days, including nine days of Novenas, more than five lakh people from across the country and also abroad, are expected to arrive in Old Goa to seek blessings of the patron saint. The church has set up three dimension stage within the precincts of the Basilica, which will host the high mass at 10.30 am on December 3, which would be celebrated by Bishop of Bombay Fr Barthol Baretto along with other Bishops, including Archbishop of Goa and Daman Rev Fr Filipe Neri Ferrao. Fernandes said the church has been promoting to celebrate the events in an eco-friendly way, and hence the use of plastic material was stopped last year. "For the first time, we have set up a three dimensional stage so that the people can have a good experience. For the first time we will have screens and LED walls so that the person even in the last row can see the masses. It will be telecast live on the television and also on YouTube Channel," he said. Fernandes said the theme this year is 'Like St Francis Xavier, let us live the Beatitudes and Be Holy'. "Beatitudes are the attitudes of Lord Jesus. They are next level from Ten Commandments in the Bible," he said According to him, to take part in the celebrations, several devotees from nearby villages in Karnataka and Maharashtra states walk their way to Old Goa from their villages, as a mark of respect for the patron saint. "They come from areas like Kolhapur, Ajra, Gadhinglaj, Nesargi, Madhwal, Deshnur which are Marathi and Kannada-speaking areas," Fernandes said. The church has made elaborate arrangements for them, he said adding that there will be a pilgrim mass for them on December 2, which will be in Konkani, Marathi and Kannada languages. "It's a unique kind of pilgrimage they undertake. They generally walk for three to five days," he said. During the 10 days, the masses would be held in Indian languages- Konkani, English, Tamil, Malyalam, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada and Marathi- he said. The Spanish and French masses are also scheduled on the Feast day, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) : Nine policemen were injured Friday when the van in which they were travelling to join the convoy of Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister O Paneerselvam overturned near Orathanadu in the district, police said. The armed reserve police personnel were proceeding in a van from Thanjavur to Aladikkimolai to join the deputy chief minister's convoy when it overturned at Ammamuthukula near Orathanadu, police added. Panneerselvam is touring cyclone-affected areas in Thanjavur district. Cyclone Gaja had crossed the state's coast last week, leaving a trail of destruction in several districts including Thanjavur. The injured policemen were being treated at the government hospital in Orathanadu. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Hopping from one rally to another across western Madhya Pradesh, BJP president Amit Shah on Friday exhorted people to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai', cracked jokes and took jibes at the Congress for what he called its misgovernance and dynastic rule. As poll campaign heated up in Madhya Pradesh in the run-up to the November 28 assembly election, Shah stepped up his offensive against the Congress, taking potshots at its president Rahul Gandhi and former chief minister Digvijay Singh. Addressing multiple rallies on a day of hectic electioneering across Chhindwara, Balaghat and Jabalpur regions, capped with a road show in Katni, Shah exhorted people in his meetings to raise slogan of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' in such a loud voice so as to reach Prime Minister Narendra Modi campaigning in distant Mizoram in the Northeast. As he travelled from one rally to another, Shah waved at people from his chopper, cavalcade and dais, cracked jokes in his speeches, targeted the dynastic rule by four-and-half generations of the Gandhi-Nehru family, and mocked Rahul Gandhi's efforts to rise to power now. He peppered his scathing attack on the Congress with jokes and light-hearted banter. While seeking vote for BJP candidates in the region, he once asked one candidate to come forward and not hide behind, saying it was his area and he was the most important person at the moment. He also hit out at Rahul Gandhi, repeatedly calling him "Rahul Baba" and said he was also "flying here and there, somewhere nearby", referring to the Congress leader's campaign in the area on the same day. Declaring that Shivraj Singh Chouhan is the BJP's chief ministerial candidate, Shah asked Gandhi who was his party's candidate. "They don't have a leader whom people of the state will accept," Shah said, while making fun of the Congress saying it was very brave of its leaders to aspire forming a government. "I heard Rahul Baba saying they will form the government. I checked whether it's day or night and found it was day only. I said Rahul Baba, dreams should come during night only," Shah said, leaving people in a peel of laughter. He listed all the states where the Congress was ousted from power and the BJP formed the government. He asked tribal residents at one rally whether 'Bijli Rani' (power) used to come to their homes when 'Diggy Raja' was in power, alleging there was no electricity during former Congress government headed by Digvijay Singh, the last chief minister of the grand old party in this vast state. Shah said the BJP government has ensured there is 24/7 power supply now. He said farmers are now getting loans without any interest as against whopping 18 per cent during the Congress rule. On questions being raised by Rahul Gandhi seeking a report card of the Modi government, Shah said even a Yuva Morcha leader of the BJP would be good enough to answer the Congress leader. Shah also talked about surgical strike on terror launch pads across the Line of Control (LoC) as he listed out achievements of the Modi government and referred repeatedly to former prime minister Manmohan Singh as "Mauni Baba", mocking his reticent nature. At his rally in Balaghat, Shah apologised for the delay in his arrival and making the people wait. But soon he was back at attacking the Congress. "Whenever elections come Rahul Baba starts talking about farmers but as soon as elections are over, he leaves for foreign vacation." Promising to come back to talk in detail, Shah also reeled out figures about the central assistance and other development works done by the BJP governments at the Centre and in the state for the people. He accused the Congress government of scams worth Rs 12 lakh crore covering all aspects of the universe -- from space, sky, land, seas to 'pataal'. He also hit back at Congress leaders for their 'chowkidar chor hai' barb at Prime Minister Modi, saying people are smart enough and they don't believe these "thieves" who have come together in the name of 'maha gathbandhan' or grand alliance. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Few hours before he was killed by members of a protected tribe in the Andamans, American national John Allen Chau survived an arrow attack by a short-statured tribesman as it hit the Bible he was carrying, his diary noting has revealed. The hand-written notes of Chau, who was killed when he tried to enter the prohibited North Sentinel Island, also mention that he wanted to acquaint the tribespeople with the message of Jesus Christ. Director General of Police, Andaman and Nicobar, Dependra Pathak, told PTI on Friday that Chau "appeared to be a staunch believer" (of Christianity). The 13-page notes of Chau, handed over to the police by his local contact Alexander who has been arrested in connection with his killing, have details of his trip to the island without permission. The notes written in incongruent sentences in English throw light on his misadventure. The DGP said that as part of the probe, a police team on Friday made a trip towards the Sentinel island with Alexander, whom they have taken on remand. Chau was killed possibly with arrows. But Andaman Police PRO Jatin Narwal had said on Wednesday that it was a subject of probe. He had maintained that the death was caused by traditional weapons, adding that it cannot be specifically said whether he was killed by arrows or spears. The DGP said that on November 17 the fishermen, who had taken Chau near the island, saw a dead person being buried at the shore which from the silhouette of the body, clothing and circumstances appeared to be the body of the American national. The access to North Sentinel Island and its buffer zone is strictly restricted under the Protection of Aboriginal Tribe (Regulation), 1956 and Regulations under Indian Forest Act, 1927. The US national, who according to the DGP, had paid around Rs 25,000 to local fishermen to take him to the island, wrote that god sheltered him from the coast guards and the Navy. Chau in his notes dated November 16 narrated that around 4.30 am, standing near the shore of the Sentinel island he saw two persons as the sun rose. He told them that he too has two legs. He further recounted that he was inches from an "unusual guy about 5 ft 5" and as they got bunched together he gave them some gifts. But, the short-statured man "shot me with an arrow that directly hit the Bible which I was holding near my chest", he wrote. The Sentinelese people are among the tribes that survived the tsunami of 2004 without any help from the outside world. For the 2011 Census, enumerators could locate only 15 Sentinelese people - 12 men and three women. However, their numbers could be anything between 40 and 400, according to experts. The natives of the Sentinel island have past record of attacking visitors to their island. In 2006, two Indian fishermen, who had moored their boat near North Sentinel to sleep after poaching in the waters around the island, were killed when their boat broke loose and drifted onto the shore. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi's monthly radio broadcast 'Mann ki Baat', which completes 50 episodes this Sunday, saw him flagging several key issues, including education of the girl child, tackling exam stress, curbing pollution and drug menace, in his previous addresses. In October 2014, in the very first episode, PM Modi urged citizens to use at least one khadi product, saying it would help poor weavers. A statement from the Prime Minister's Office issued Friday said that after the episode was aired, the sale of khadi products went up by 120 per cent. Taking cue from a listener, Modi dedicated the entire December 2014 episode to making India drug-free. He requested all those active on the social media to create a continuous online movement by using #DrugsFreeIndia hashtag. The episode in January 2015, was the first ever joint radio address by an Indian Prime Minister and an American President. PM Modi and then US President Barack Obama shared some personal stories and accounts and answered questions like "what makes you smile after a long day at work? or "did you ever think you would reach the position you have reached today?" The PM also discussed how exams should be celebrated as a festival. The PM followed it up with a book titled "Exam Warriors" which discussed how to deal with exam pressure as well as a community-driven initiative to make exams fun. In May 2015, the PM talked extensively about June 21 being declared by the United Nations as the 'International Yoga Day'. In June 2015, the prime minister shared the account of a Haryana village sarpanch who launched #SelfieWithDaughter campaign and the hashtag soon became a social media rage with millions of posts from citizens from all walks of life -- celebrities, national as well as global leaders, the statement said. Modi had termed the initiative special for Haryana as the state has a skewed sex ratio. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Australia have been fined for maintaining a slow over-rate in the first T20 International against India in Brisbane. Jeff Crowe of the ICC Elite Panel of Match Referees imposed the fine after Aaron Finch's side was ruled to be one over short of its target when time allowances were taken into consideration. Australia won the opening T20 by four runs on Wednesday while the second one on Friday was called off due to rain. "In accordance with Article 2.5.1 of the ICC Code of Conduct for Players and Players Support Personnel, which relates to minor over-rate offences, players are fined 10 per cent of their match fees for every over their side fails to bowl in the allotted time, with the captain fined double that amount," said the ICC in a statement. Finch has been fined 20 per cent of his match fee, while his players have received 10 per cent fines. If Australia commit another minor over-rate breach in a T20I within 12 months of this offence with Finch as captain, it will be deemed a second offence by Finch and he will face a suspension. "Finch pleaded guilty to the offence after the end of the match and accepted the proposed sanction, so there was no need for a formal hearing," the statement added. The charge was levelled by on-field umpires Simon Fry and Paul Wilson, third umpire Gerard Abood and fourth umpire Shawn Craig. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Princess Lalla Hasnaa, chairwoman of the Mohammed VI Foundation for Environment Protection, received on Friday in Tokyo the 2018 Goi Peace Award. This prestigious distinction honors annually a personality or an organization that made outstanding contributions for a peaceful and harmonious world as stated in the Declaration for All Life on Earth. The award was handed over to the Princess by Mr. Hiroo Sainji, chairman of the managing board of the Goi Peace Foundation, set up in 2000. The selection committee of this Japanese Foundation has chosen Princess Lalla Hasnaa for the Goi Peace Award for her leadership and role played in promoting the protection of the environment and improving peoples quality of life, particularly through education and advocacy for sustainable development. The Goi Peace Foundation is dedicated to fostering a sustainable and harmonious global society by promoting consciousness, values and wisdom for creating peace, and by building cooperation among individuals and organizations through education, science, culture and arts. The Foundation believes that humanity shall advance toward a world of harmony, a world in which all different races, ethnic groups, religions, cultures, traditions and customs are respected, a world free from discrimination or confrontation and wherein diversity is appreciated and while coexistence celebrated. In an address she made on receiving the award Princess Lalla Hasnaa stressed the importance of developing rules and regulations, even restrictions to protect our environment, and safeguard the remarkable diversity of the planet. What is essential () is to contribute to the emergence of a different world a world based on cooperation, in which the responsibility for environmental protection, is shared by all, requiring equal effort from all of us, said Princess Lalla Hasnaa. Given the huge challenge posed by environment protection, a task which involves all citizens, education should come before all other means and considerations, she noted, adding it would be more beneficial and effective to give proper education to our children, instill in them another culture, and foster a different relationship with the world, and towards others. I am a daughter of Al Maghrib, or the Kingdom of the Setting Sun, who has come to the land of the Rising Sun, to receive this Award. Between our two countries, the sun never goes down. I hope that eternal light will be the light of everlasting peace, which we dedicate along with this Award to the children of our two countries, she concluded saying. Jonny Bairstow laid down a marker to be England's permanent number three on Friday but Sri Lanka clawed their way back into the final Test with late wickets. At stumps on day one, England, 2-0 up in the series, were 312-7, Bairstow having made 110 after valuable partnerships with Joe Root and Ben Stokes, who made a half-century. Batting after Root won his eighth straight toss, England lost both openers cheaply in the morning. Rory Burns disappointed again, bowled by Dilruwan Perera for 14 as he tried to cut. Keaton Jennings fell three overs later, caught at leg slip off Malinda Pushpakumara for 13. But Root and Bairstow, England's fourth different number three in the series, steadied the ship, surviving one review each to steer the visitors to 102-2 at lunch. Bairstow and Root put on a 100-run stand before the captain fell to left-arm wrist spinner Lakshan Sandakan after lunch, top-edging an attempted slog sweep on 46. Sri Lanka should have had Stokes as well, with umpire Chris Gaffaney incorrectly turning down Perera's lbw appeal when the Durham allrounder was yet to get off the mark. Stokes and Bairstow then made hay, Stokes hitting five fours and two sixes before Sandakan got the Durham all-rounder to edge to slip, sending him back to the pavillion for 57 off 88 balls. Bairstow, playing his first Test of the series having been injured at Galle and left out at Kandy, then passed his century, removing his helmet and celebrating with gusto. But he fell for 110, bowled by Sandakan, and was soon followed by Buttler for 16, caught and bowled by Sandakan, and by Ben Foakes who nicked Malinda Pushpakumara to the keeper for 13. Moeen Ali, who has had a woeful tour with the bat -- in contrast to with ball in hand -- then survived an lbw review. He ended on 23 and Adil Rashid not out on 13. England have rested fast bowler James Anderson to give Stuart Broad his first Test of the series. Sri Lanka also made two changes, bringing in left-arm wrist spinner Lakshan Sandakan to replace Akila Dananjaya who is in Brisbane having his bowling action tested. Under-performing opener Kaushal Silva was left out in favour of Danushka Gunathilaka. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Reacting sharply to TRS supremo K Chandrasekhar Rao's attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP said on Friday the Telangana caretaker chief minister's statement reflected his "desperation" for Muslim vote. Earlier in the day, Rao said Prime Minister Modi and the BJP are afflicted with a "disease" that has caused "communal madness" and prompted them to block enhanced job quotas for Muslims in Telangana. BJP national spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao alleged that as chief minister, KCR (as Rao is popularly known) has pursued 'rabid, anti-Hindu politics' in the state. "The people of the state will teach him a lesson for his Nizam-like rule with unconstitutional decisions like religion-based reservations and industrial corridors for Muslims," he told PTI. KCR's tacit alliance with the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) itself revealed his true communal colours and politics of appeasement, G V L Narasimha Rao alleged. He said the TRS chief has no moral right to comment on the prime minister, who has adopted 'Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas' as governance principle to ensure that there was neither any discrimination nor appeasement of any community. Telangana BJP spokesperson Krishna Saagar Rao said "It is KCR who has all sorts of diseases, not Modiji. It's KCR who is into full-time Muslim and Hindu appeasement." "Those with spine can only bend forward. However, KCR can bend both ways, unnaturally. He swings both sides to appease Muslims and Hindus," he alleged. "One day he is doing 'yagnas' for Hindu appeasement and on the other he is demanding 12 per cent reservation for Muslims," Krishna Saagar Rao said. According to him, KCR is scared of Modi's election rallies in Telangana next week. "He (KCR) is levelling these charges to save his chair. If there is any brazen Muslim appeaser, it is KCR. In fact, he went to the extreme of praising foreign oppressor Nizam as a great ruler to be in the good books of the AIMIM brothers(Asaduddin and Akbaruddin Owaisi)," the BJP spokesperson alleged. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The BJP on Friday lodged a complaint with the Election Commission against senior Congress leader C P Joshi for his casteist remarks during a poll meeting in Rajasthan. Joshi had reportedly said Thursday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP MP Uma Bharti and Hindu activist Sadhvi Ritambhara are from "lower castes" and know nothing of Hinduism. He had also said it is the Brahmins who are learned and know of Hinduism. Though Joshi on Friday apologised for his comments, the BJP rejected the apology, saying the remarks "insulted" Indian culture and the Hindu religion, and dared Congress chief Rahul Gandhi to expel him from the party. "The comments made by the Congress leader (Joshi) based on caste, section and religion in an election rally are violation of the model code of conduct. So, a complaint has been lodged with the Election Commission," BJP Rajasthan election cell convenor, Nahar Singh Maheshwari, said in a statement here. Polls in Rajasthan are scheduled on December 7. "There is fear of social unrest and hatred in society due to Joshi's comments, so the Election Commission should take strong action (against him) for making such a statement," he said. Joshi apologised after Gandhi disapproved his comments and asked him to express regret. The Congress chief also asked other party leaders to refrain from making such statements which hurt any segment of society. In a tweet in Hindi, Joshi said, "Respecting the principles of the Congress party and the sentiments of party workers, I feel sorry if my statement has hurt the feelings of any section of society." Thursday night, he had posted his speech on Twitter and Facebook, saying, "I strongly condemn the fabricated use of my statement by BJP. To put all the speculation to rest, here is enclosed the clipping of the speech." Gandhi disapproved the Congress leader's comments in a tweet, saying Joshi's remarks do not reflect, and are contrary, to the ideals of the Congress party, and urged party leaders to refrain from making such statements. "C P Joshi's remark is contrary to the Congress party's ideals. Party leaders should not give such statement that hurts any segment of the society, he said. "While respecting the Congress party's principles and the sentiments of party workers, I am sure Joshiji will realise his mistake. He should express regret over his remarks," the Congress chief said on Twitter. Stressing that Joshi had "insulted the Indian culture as well as the Hindu religion", Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi accused the Congress of "dividing every religion for power". "The statement of Congress leader (Joshi) is baseless, wrong and condemnable. It reflects that the Congress doesn't know the history of Indian culture and Hindu religion," Trivedi said at a press conference in Jaipur. BJP leader and spokesperson Sambit Patra said, "What CP Joshi has done is target the prime minister based on his caste. It is not acceptable. If Rahul (Gandhi) ji has the guts, then remove CP Joshi now.... CP Joshi insulted Hindus while pretending to be one. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Extending support to the government's Digital India programme, England's University of Bradford organised a workshop in the city on "Leadership in the Age of Digital Era". The workshop, part of the university's "India-Engagement symposium", focused on enhancing the knowledge of the participants regarding different leadership styles, skills and attributes associated with good leaders. "In recent times, India has projected itself in the global setting as a major hub for technological advancement and development. "However, there is further potential for Indian organisations to leverage new disruptive technologies such as the artificial intelligence, big data and block chain in order to out-innovate and out-execute established standards and outperform their competition both nationally and globally. In order to do so, having a forward-thinking mind-set and skill-set is imperative," Associate Dean of the Bradford University Vishanth Weerakkody said. He said leading an organisation is not a piece of cake. There are key themes that need to be recognised in order to be a competent leader in the digital era. "In today's time when disruption technologies are evolving, every leader needs to have knowledge of their potential and how those technologies may end up affecting their own selves or the organisations that they lead," he added. The experts leading the workshop opined that it is need of the hour that educational institutions start conducting training programmes on leadership and the attributes that are needed to succeed in the digital age so as to nurture the future leaders of the world. The India Engagement Symposium witnessed participation from school leaders, student counsellors, recruitment agents as well as representatives from various universities, corporate and financial institutions. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Global rights body Amnesty and a group of activists Friday alleged that individuals declared as "irregular foreigners" were living in "deplorable conditions" in detention centres in Assam, and sought introduction of a "statutory time limit" on their confinement. Amnesty India Friday also released a report here titled -- 'Between Fear and Hatred: Surviving Migration Detention in Assam' and urged the Assam government to ensure that an "operations manual" for detention centres is created that addresses the specific circumstances of detainees. Asmita Basu, Amnesty India's Programs Director, said, the nearly 30-page report draws from "empirical data gathered through semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and informants, including six individuals who had been formerly detained, and families of seven individuals who had been or are in detention". "There is no statutory limit on the period for which individuals declared as 'irregular foreigners' can be detained. Also, such people are kept inside criminal prisons along with convicts and undertrial prisoners," Amnesty India has alleged in its report. The circumstances and conditions of detention "cause harm" to individuals' mental and physical health, and the foreigners tribunals, which adjudicate citizenship cases, "follow flawed processes" to identify "irregular foreigners", it alleged. As on September 25, 2018, there are 1,037 people detained for being "irregular foreigners" in detention centres housed inside prisons in Assam, Basu said. "There are children who grow up with their mothers inside prison. Many detainees suffer from mental and physical health issues associated with the conditions of their detention. Healthcare services are inadequate, and there are few avenues for recreation," according to the report. Amnesty India researchers also interviewed two persons who visited detention centres as part of a mission conducted by the NHRC, two doctors who have worked in detention centres, three academicians working on the political economy of Assam and representatives of three civil society organisations in Assam who work on land rights, minority rights and corruption, Basu said. The rights body in the report has urged the Centre to "ensure, that in any given case, migration detention is lawful, necessary, proportionate and used only as a last resort and a statutory time limit for detaining irregular foreigners be introduced". It has also asked to "significantly reduce" the use of detention for 'irregular foreigners', ensuring that far fewer people are detained and that anyone who is detained is held for a far shorter time. "The government of Assam should ensure that persons detained under the provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946, are segregated from convicts and undertrials, and housed in separate detention centres with basic amenities," the report said. It also asked to "ensure that an operations manual for detention centres is created that addresses the specific circumstances of detainees". "Ensure the right to the highest attainable standard of medical care to all detainees, including access to appropriate mental health care through psychiatrists, psychologists and torture and trauma counsellors," the report said. The Amnesty India also urged the Assam government to "permit periodic audits of detention centres by independent auditors". Social activist Harsh Mander, and a few other activists, at an interaction hosted by the rights body here after the launch of the report, also alleged that the condition of the detention camps in the state were "extremely bad" and system is such that it means practically an "infinite detention" for them. Mander, a former bureaucrat, had earlier this year, resigned as the special monitor at the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), alleging "lack of response" from the rights panel on a report submitted by him on the conditions of persons "deemed to be foreigners" in Assam detention camps. Aman Wadud, a lawyer working on detention cases, claimed, "Families are being torn apart. Children are growing up in detention. No child should have to grow up in a prison". He alleged that many people have been deemed to be foreigners because of "clerical errors" and said, people should be given "adequate time" to provide documents. Kismat Ali and Ashraf Ali, whom the Amnesty India said were, "former detainees" also shared their experiences during the interaction. "I was picked up by authorities in the middle of the night. I spent nearly two years in a detention centre. It was a painful experience," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Amid explosive growth in data consumption, India's broadband subscriber numbers touched 463.6 million at the end of August 2018, up 0.74 per cent over the previous month, according to official data by the Department of Telecom (DoT). The number of broadband subscribers stood at 460.24 million in July this year. According to data released by the DoT on its website, the total number of telephones rose to 1,189.17 million, up 9.73 million over the previous month. Of this, wireline phone connections remained almost flat, while the wireless connections climbed 0.84 per cent month-on-month to almost 1,167 million. "Maximum rise in total telephone connections was recorded in Mumbai (19,35,854) followed by Bihar (10,26,007) and Madhya Pradesh (9,61,251). However, Jammu & Kashmir recorded a fall in telephone connections over previous month, with a decrease of 1,72,445," it said. The share of wireless segment in total connections stood at 98.13 per cent by the August-end, and wireline telephones at 1.87 per cent. As on August 2018, the share of public sector companies in total telephone connections was pegged at 11.12 per cent, with private sector accounting for 88.88 per cent share. Further, area-wise telecom services analysis revealed that that Uttar Pradesh (East) has the highest share in the total telephones (8.62 per cent) followed by Maharashtra (8.12 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (7.40 per cent), Bihar (7.38 per cent) and Tamil Nadu (7.05 per cent), it pointed out. These five service areas taken together have a share of 38.57 per cent in the total telephone connections in India. "The number of broadband subscribers was 463.65 million at the end of August 2018 as compared to 460.24 million in July 2018, showing an increase of 0.74 per cent," it said. A cab driver and his two children, including his daughter, were arrested here for allegedly manhandling a police inspector, an official said on Friday. The accused were identified as Bahadur Dwarka Prasad (50), his son Arun (22) and daughter Shweta (23), police said. Bahadur Prasad, an Ola cab driver, had picked up a passenger from Mumbai and dropped him in Thane on the night of November 21, the official said. "But when he asked the passenger to pay the fare, the latter accused him of overcharging and allegedly started abusing and beating up him," he said. After a heated exchange, the driver took the passenger to Naupada police station and lodged a complaint against him. The police asked both of them to return in the morning, the official added. "As instructed by the police, both the parties went to the police station on Wednesday morning. Shortly before noon, when police inspector (crime) Sanjay Dhumal was discussing the case with the driver, his son and daughter, who were also present there, started interrupting him and talking loudly," police said. "The officer asked them to remain calm and sit by the side and allow him to complete his work. However, this annoyed them and they started abusing Dhumal," police said adding that Shweta even pulled him by his uniform. Sub-inspector Mohini Kapile lodged a complaint against the trio and they were booked under IPC sections 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and others. They were arrested on Wednesday and later produced in a local court, which remanded them in judicial custody, police said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The iconic casket that has housed the relics of St Francis Xavier, a Jesuit and patron saint of Goa, at a church for over 300 years, will undergo major restoration work, a priest said Friday. The casket, comprising silver, wood and cloth, was originally made by Italian Jesuit Marcelo Mastrili, which is now showing signs of wear and tear. Fr Patricio Fernandes, rector of the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa, where the relics of the Spanish saint have been preserved, said the casket is at the church since 1637. It is safe on top and untouched at the right side of the altar in the church, a popular tourist destination, but time has taken a toll on the coffin, he said. "But with the time it wears off. It's wooden, cloth and silver. The cloth things are falling apart. If they dont take care now, in ten years time, it will fall apart," he told PTI. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), in-charge of the Old Goa Heritage Monument complex, where the Basilica is located, will take up the restoration work, he said. "ASI will restore the casket and most probably, the work will start after the annual feast of St Francis Xavier scheduled on December 3," Fernandes said. This will be for the first time since the 17th century that the casket will undergo restoration work to prolong its life, he added. The casket has been kept at a height in the Basilica, he said. The urn where the relics have been preserved was changed from a wooden case to that made of glass in 1953, the rector said. "But the casket was not changed. It has remained the same from the year 1637," Fernandes said. Church authorities had invited experts from Italy in May this year for their advice on the casket's restoration. They had suggested taking the coffin to a workshop in Florence in Italy and bringing it back after a year. However, the Indian government rejected the suggestion of Italian experts and instead asked the ASI to take up the work, Fernandes said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An explosion rocked a mosque on an Afghan army base during Friday prayers, killing or wounding a number of soldiers, officials said, in the latest violence to hit the war-torn country. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast in the eastern province of Khost, which defence ministry spokesman Ghafoor Ahmad Jawed told AFP had caused casualties. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Indian and Pakistan armies Friday held a brigade commander level meeting at a border crossing in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch sector to adhere to ceasefire, a defence official said. The flag meeting comes in the wake of several ceasefire violations by the Pakistan army in the past over one month, during which five Indian security personnel were killed and seven others injured. The Indian delegation was led by Brigadier V S Sekhon and Brigadier Qaiser led the Pakistani side. They met at the Poonch-Rawlakote Crossing Point on the Line of Control (LoC), Public Relation Officer (PRO), Defence, Jammu, Lieutenant Colonel Devender Anand, said. The delegation had discussions on augmenting confidence building measures, maintaining peace along the LoC and preventing infiltration from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, he said. The meeting came on a day when security forces shot dead six Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militants during an encounter in a forested area in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district. "The brigade commander level flag meeting was held between the Indian Army and the Pakistan Army at 1100 hours at the Poonch-Rawlakote Crossing Point," Anand said. The meeting was held in a cordial and friendly atmosphere, and ended with both sides assuring to adhere to norms of the 2003 Ceasefire agreement and the Director-General of Military Operations (DGMO) level talks of May 29, he said. The armies also decided to work towards improving the situation along the LoC, the PRO said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Terming the RBI-government rift as a ''symptom of a disease'', West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra Friday said the Deputy Governor's concern on autonomy shows RBI is imploding from inside and the Centre does not know how to manage institutions like the RBI and the CBI. The development surrounding RBI and CBI is a reflection of poor governance on the part of NDA government, Mitra said at a press conference here. He said no such incident of conflicts in the two institutions were witnessed during the previous governments. "This government does not know how to manage institutions. They have to learn... This is only a symptom of a disease," he said while commenting on the ongoing rift between RBI and the central government. RBI and the Centre have not been on the same page with regard to certain key issues like level of the central bank's reserves, lending to MSMEs, and liquidity of NBFCs. However, in a board meeting on November 19, RBI has agreed to some of the proposals of the government. In a public speech last month, RBI Deputy Governor Viral Acharya had raised issues regarding independence of the central bank. He had said that undermining the central bank's independence could be "potentially catastrophic". Referring to Acharya's speech, Mitra said it shows "it (RBI) is imploding from inside". Mitra also said it was unfortunate that there are two camps within the CBI, which is the premier investigative agency in the country. The infighting between CBI Director Alok Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana, the second in command at CBI, has reached the Supreme Court, which is currently looking into the matter. Earlier this month, TMC-ruled West Bengal withdrew its "general consent" to the CBI to conduct raids and investigations in the state. Following this, the agency would now need permission from the state government to carry out investigation in the state, except those ordered by courts and against central government officials. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) BJP national general secretary P Muralidhar Rao Friday attacked TDP president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu calling him anti-Telangana while also slamming the Congress-TDP coalition for the December 7 state polls. The BJP leader alleged Naidu's 'influence' in any manner in Telangana is going to hurt the state's development. "In 2014 itself, the BJP understood the way he (Chandrababu) was functioning that he is working against Telangana...we have suffered because of that and immediately we have distanced unilaterally and came out of that partnership," Rao told reporters here. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) had an alliance with the BJP during 2014 elections in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Attacking the Congress-TDP alliance, Rao said, "Definitely, it will have serious implications and negative consequences for Telangana and its people. The BJP wants Chandrababu Naidu-mukt Telangana...we have become free from his influence...and we want to retain it. We will not allow any kind of this influence coming into the Telangana governance. "It is the Congress which has to take a decision... the Congress has become covert to Chandrababu Naidu," he alleged. For the BJP, the upcoming Assembly elections in Telangana are very important in the context of the south, Rao said, adding "We have a kind of ambition to expand in South. We have an abiding commitment for development of Telangana." Rao also accused the TRS of failing to fulfill its promises and said anti-TRS campaigns will be taken up extensively by the party's national leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah, central ministers, chief ministers of BJP-ruled states and over 100 public meetings will be organised in the coming days. The TRS and the Congress are "family first" parties while the BJP stands for nation first, he claimed. "Earlier, TRS president and caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had met JD(S) President and Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy and later Chandrababu and other 'Mahagathbandhan' (grand alliance) leaders also met Kumaraswamy. Tomorrow if needed they will come together. Vote for Congress is vote for TDP and TRS...all are one. BJP is the only party which has a distinct and uncompromising stand against TRS," the BJP leader asserted. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Goa government is promoting a novel technique to improve crop yield: asking farmers to chant ancient Vedic 'mantra' (hymns). The state government has started advising farmers to adopt 'cosmic farming' in which they need to chant 'Vedic mantra' for 20 days in the farm for better quality and quantity of their crop, an official of the agriculture department said Friday. He said the government has been holding talks with institutions like the Shiv Yog Foundation and Brahmakumaris who have expertise in this field. Agriculture Minister Vijai Sardesai and Agriculture Director Nelson Figueiredo recently visited Guru Shivanand in Gurgaon in Haryana, the promoter of Shiv Yog Krishi, to see how 'cosmic farming' can benefit farmers in Goa, he said. "The agriculture department wants to tread the path of organic and eco-friendly farming. It has been holding talks with propagators of cosmic farming and other believers of similar activities, which can increase the farm yield in an organic way," Figueiredo said. Farmers are being explained importance of 'cosmic farming' under the guidance of Shiv Yog Foundation, he said. "As part of this, a farmer needs to spend at least 20 minutes a day chanting the 'vedic mantra' for 20 days in his farm. The believers of cosmic farming claim that mantra draws the energy of universe into the field and helps the seeds to sprout better and gives quality yield," he said. Importance is being given to organic farming practise in Goa so that environmental stress due to use of fertilisers and chemicals reduces, he said. "India is at the centre of an organic revolution that is set to take the world by storm and Goa wants to contribute to this in a big way," Figueiredo said. The state government is also in touch with Sustainable Yogic Farming project of the rural development wing of the Brahmakumaris, he said. "They (Brahmakumaris) claim that over 1,000 farmers in India are combining organic farming with meditation and it is showing remarkable results," he added. Figueiredo said farmers are also educated on how sustainable yogic farming can result in lower costs and reduce the pressure on Earlier this year, Sardesai had said the state's paddy yield would increase if its farmers chanted vedic mantra in their fields and adopted "cosmic farming" techniques. "Cosmic farming will give you safe food without any chemicals or fertilisers. Under this type of farming, no chemical is put on paddy and it will be grown with organic manure only," he had said. Claiming that the technique proved beneficial for the farmers, he had said: "The testimonials of the beneficiary farmers make us believe that there is science beyond science and Shiv Yog Krishi may be the future of farming in the country. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With themes like gender stereotypes, women's empowerment and social justice, children's theatre is not just about child's play any more. The realisation that children, regardless of their age, are also opinion makers is being mirrored in stages big and small, say theatre veterans. "At the ground level, in small towns and cities, almost all schools do at least one production every year as part of their annual functions. Apart from established theatre groups taking up children's projects, there are groups that are devotedly working for and with children," Abdul Latif Khatana, chief of Theatre in Education (TIE) Company at the National School of Drama (NSD), told PTI. Despite a short history of 30-35 years, children's theatre has grown rapidly with serious work happening at the grassroots level, he said. In its early years, children's theatre was all about enacting fairy tales and dressing children up but now the subjects have "matured" to issues like women's empowerment, gender stereotypes and cases of social justice, he said. Children are now considered capable of making and projecting their own opinions, a message going out through the medium of theatre. "The earlier tradition of children's theatre met with this strong and exactly opposite version of it. We started realising that children's lives are not entirely different from grown ups. They have their own issues, troubles and points of views. They are capable of making opinions too. They are complete individuals, Khatana said. One evidence of the changing scenario is the ongoing JashneBachpan international theatre festival here with over 500 artistes, young and adults, taking part in 23 theatrical productions in various languages, including Hindi, English, Assamese, Malayalam and Bengali. One of the plays staged at the nine-day festival, which ends on Sunday, was "Puberty", a non-verbal play from Sri Lanka's Red Apple International Theatre Gathering, which discussed the growing up years of a girl child. Then there was "She Stood Up", from Chandigarh's Wings Theatre Academy and Vivek High School, which centred around women's empowerment and gender stereotypes. The women's movement has been gaining momentum in our country in the last decade, but we are still dealing with the horrors of Nirbhaya and Kathua," said director Zubin Mehta, referring to the rape and murder of a physiotherapy intern in Delhi and an eight-year-old in Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir. "Real empowerment should happen at a young age. It is the young girls that we need to empower to make a significant difference, the "She Stood Up" director added. The dramatis personae of this changing scenario are youngsters like 10-year-old Yuvraj Mavi, who speaks about his aspirations and reasons for taking up theatre it all begins to come together. "I like how you get to practice on your expressions and voice projection through theatre. I have been training since I was five and want to continue doing it in the future as well," the youngster said. But cinema is not for him, he said with the wisdom of one much older. He added that he doesn't want his work "to be edited" and prefers "performing live" in front of an audience. Jitesh Sharma, slightly older at 16 is also passionate about theatre. His journey started from a love for dance and an incidental workshop at the Hindi Akademi. And now theatre has become more of "a stubborn need than just passion", he said. "My parents tell me to focus on my studies and do theatre after I have finished school. But now all I want to do is theatre, and then maybe move to films. I love to be involved in the entire production process," Sharma said. Though there are increasing number of different types of productions -- theatre for children and theatre by children -- there are still some gaps. Rajesh Bakshi of Theatre Actors' Studio said there is urgent need to create more theatre that can connect directly with the main audience, which is children. Despite a lot of work happening for children, we still lack works that can communicate with their psychology. We are working with children but we want them to work according to adult perspectives. Yes, they have their own issues but they are different from those of an adult. They are not worried about their salaries or politics or the country. They are worried because their best friend isn't talking to them, or that they didn't finish the homework, Bakshi said. Apart from the change in mindset of theatre directors, the genre has also grown by involving audiences -- participatory theatre. It's a great combination of theatre and education, he added. So what can be done to make children's theatre more mainstream and accepted by the society? This country is so large, so many schools and even more children, one institution or organisation cannot bring a significant change. We, as a society, need to bring policy changes, which then need to be enforced by the states, make drama and theatre a part of school curriculum, Khatana suggested. A long way travelled and some more to go for children's theatre, but children like Mavi are happy to be playing their parts. The pride in his voice was as visible as the smile on his face when he said, My father told me he will come and see my play if it is at NSD. I told him, dad, I am already at NSD'. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China's President Xi Jinping will in December make his first visit to Panama since the Central American country switched diplomatic ties last year from Taiwan. President Juan Carlos Varela said on Twitter that his government has received official confirmation from Beijing about Xi's visit. Xi is to meet Varela on December 3, and the two leaders will witness the signing of about 20 agreements in a range of sectors from science to infrastructure, the statement said. Varela already met Xi in Beijing late last year after the change in diplomatic recognition. In August, El Salvador also switched diplomatic allegiance to Taiwan, as did the Dominican Republic in May under a campaign by Beijing to split democratic Taiwan from its few remaining diplomatic allies. China and Taiwan have been governed separately since the end of a civil war on the mainland in 1949, but Beijing sees the island as part of its territory to be brought back into the fold. Beijing has tried to depict the changes in diplomatic allegiance as economic and not motivated by any desire to undermine Taiwan. Only 17 countries remain in Taiwan's diplomatic circle as the island struggles to fend off Beijing's growing influence around the globe. Central America has been a bastion for Taiwan, with Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua still recognising Taipei rather than Beijing, which has used its economic muscle and promises of investment to entice governments. China is the second major user of the Panama Canal behind the United States. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China on Friday strongly condemned a terror attack on its consulate in the Pakistani port city of Karachi that killed two policemen and urged its all-weather ally to take "practical measures" to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens in the country. Three heavily-armed gunmen stormed the Chinese consulate in Karachi and exchanged gunfire with security forces who shot them down. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said all consular staff and their families were safe following the attack. "China strongly condemns any violent attacks against diplomatic agencies and requests that Pakistan takes practical measures to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens and institutions in the country," Geng said at a regular press conference. Geng said the attackers did not enter the consulate and the exchange of fire took place outside the mission. "We highly appreciate the efforts of the Pakistani side," he said when asked about Pakistan's response to the attack. He said the attack would not affect Beijing's commitment to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which seeks to connect its western province Xinjiang with the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar, in Balochistan. "China and Pakistan are all-weather strategic partners," the spokesman asserted. "With the broad support of the two peoples, it (CPEC) is proceeding in an orderly manner. China will continue to work with Pakistan to firmly move forward with the construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 10-year-old girl from Uzbekistan suffering from bone cancer got a new lease of life after undergoing a unique surgical procedure at a city hospital. Mftuna Kamilova was suffering from pain and swelling on her left thigh and was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a very aggressive and malignant cancer that normally affects thigh or leg bones, said Dr Aashish Chaudhry, the managing director and the head of orthopaedics and joint replacement department of Aakash Healthcare Super Speciality Hospital. Once diagnosed with the critical and life-threatening disease, her parents began searching all over the Internet and came across Dr Chaudhry with whom they discussed her case. They brought Mftuna to Delhi and got her admitted at Aakash Healthcare on November 15. "In most cases of osteosarcoma, doctors suggest amputation. But considering her young age, we had to save her limb. "One option was to replace the tumour-affected bone with a metal implant (customized prosthesis), but it was too expensive for the patient's family, Dr Chaudhry said. "Another option was to use her mother's bone. But, in cases where the bone is more than 12 cm, there are high chances of fractures and other complications in the future," the doctor said. Orthopedic and oncology experts were roped in for the surgery. A green corridor was created between a nearby advanced pathological centre and the affected bone was sent there to eliminate the cancerous parts. The bone was then brought back to the operation theatre for final surgery. All this was done within 45 minutes. The excised bone was stripped off of all soft tissue attachments, cleansed thoroughly and soaked in vancomycin-saline gauze. The resected bone was then given radiation and brought back to the operation theatre. It was cleaned with saline and the marrow was removed with the help of reamer. "Bone cement was used to fill in the cavity of the resected bone, sparing 2-3 cm on either side. Finally, the resected bone was fixed with the parent bone with the help of Long Proximal Humerus locking plate. The resected muscles were re-sutured. The patient got her previous bone back and is in a healthy condition now," Dr Chaudhry said. The patient is recovering quite fast and will soon be discharged from the hospital, he said. Mftuna's father said, "I was extremely worried for my daughter. From the Internet and later with the help of an Indian Doctor, I came to know about Dr Aashish Chaudhry and his expertise. My daughter has got a new life now. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A civilian was injured in firing near a security forces camp in Budgam district of Jammu and Kashmir on Friday, officials said. Ishfaq Ahmad Ganaie was injured in the firing near the camp of the Army's 50 Rashtriya Rifles in the Chattergam area, a police official said. Residents alleged that the Army opened unprovoked fire, injuring Ganaie. An Army official, however, denied the allegation and said troops did not open fire. The civilian might have been a victim of militancy-related violence, the Army official added. The injured civilian has been rushed to a hospital here in critical condition, the police official said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat Friday inaugurated Narendra Nagar bypass, builtas part of Uttarakhand's ambitious all weather roads project, saying it will not only make chardham pilgrimage more convenient but also rid Narendra Nagar of its frequent traffic jams. Underscoring the strategic importance of the stretch, the Chief Minister congratulated the BRO for building the vital road on time. "It is wide enough even for the landing of helicopters and fighter aircrafts," he said. "Apart from being strategically very important, the road will also make the annual chardham pilgrimage easier and rid Narenera Nagar of its frequent traffic jams," Rawat said. Better roads will also boost tourism, he said and announced that it will be named after erstwhile Tehri royal and former MP Manvendra Shah. The 4-km stretch was built by the BRO at a cost of Rs 22 crore, BRO DG Lt Gen Harpal Singh said. Uttarakhand's ambitious, over eleven thousand crore rupees, all weather roads project was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is closely monitoring its progress. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) State-owned shipbuilder Cochin Shipyard Friday said its up to Rs 200 crore share buyback offer will open next week on November 28. Cochin Shipyard Ltd (CSL) informed about the "Letter of Offer" to buyback 43.95 lakh equity shares constituting 3.23 per cent stake of the company in a regulatory filing. The buyback offer will close on December 11. Edelweiss Financial Services Ltd is the manager to the buyback offer. Last month Cochin Shipyard's board had approved buyback of equity shares worth up to Rs 200 crore. "The board approved the buyback proposal for purchase of fully paid equity shares of Rs 10 each not exceeding 43,95,610 equity shares at a price of Rs 455 per share," Cochin Shipyard had said. CSL completed its landmark IPO in August last year, which attracted more than Rs 1.11 lakh crore as against the offer size of Rs 1,442 crore. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A group of religious figures led by godman Computer Baba on Friday declared support to the Congress for November 28 Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh. It marks a radical change in the political stand of Swami Namdev Tyagi, popularly known as Computer Baba, who had been anointed as a minister of state by the BJP government. Computer Baba had organised 'Narmade Sansad', a gathering of like-minded religious leaders from various states including Uttar Pradesh, here Friday to decide which party they should support in the polls. "The saints will support the Congress," he said at the gathering. "When we can give fifteen years to them (the Bharatiya Janata Party), then we can surely give five years to Congress," he said. "If Congress upholds dharma, we will go with them in future or else we will withdraw the support," he said. In April, the BJP government in the state accorded him the status of Minister of State alongwith five others by appointing him on a committee for conservation of the river Narmada. Before that, he had announced a 'yatra' (procession) to expose illegal sand mining in the Narmada. He resigned in October, accusing Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan of being a hypocrite and not fulfilling the promises made to him. The BJP government did little to stop illegal mining in the river, he alleged. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Senior Congress leader from Rajasthan C P Joshi Friday apologised for his casteist remarks after party chief Rahul Gandhi disapproved his comments and asked him to express regret. However, the BJP rejected his apology, saying the remarks "insulted" Indian culture and the Hindu religion. Addressing a poll meeting in poll-bound Rajasthan on Thursday, Joshi had reportedly said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP MP Uma Bharti and Hindu activist Sadhvi Ritambhara are from "lower castes" and know nothing of Hinduism. He had said it is the Brahmins who are learned and know of Hinduism. "Respecting the principles of the Congress party and the sentiments of party workers, I feel sorry if my statement has hurt the feelings of any section of society," Joshi said in a tweet in Hindi. Thursday night, he had posted his speech on Twitter and Facebook, saying, "I strongly condemn the fabricated use of my statement by BJP. To put all the speculation to rest, here is enclosed the clipping of the speech." Gandhi disapproved the Congress leader's comments in a tweet, saying Joshi's remarks do not reflect, and are contrary, to the ideals of the Congress party, and urged party leaders to refrain from making such statements. "C P Joshi's remark is contrary to the Congress party"s ideals. Party leaders should not give such statement that hurts any segment of the society, he said. "While respecting the Congress party's principles and the sentiments of party workers, I am sure Joshiji will realise his mistake. He should express regret over his remarks," the Congress chief said on Twitter. Joshi's remarks come ahead of Assembly elections in Rajasthan on December 7 and Madhya Pradesh on November 28, and have the potential of alienating lower caste voters from the party. He has launched his poll campaign in Nathdrawa on Friday, where he is contesting as a Congress candidate. The BJP, however, rejected Joshi's apology and said Gandhi must take responsibility and express regret. Stressing that Joshi had "insulted the Indian culture as well as the Hindu religion", Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi accused the Congress of "dividing every religion for power". "The statement of Congress leader (Joshi) is baseless, wrong and condemnable. It reflects that the Congress doesn't know the history of Indian culture and Hindu religion," Trivedi said at a press conference in Jaipur. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Cuba President Miguel Diaz-Canel personally welcomed back doctors at Havana airport, a local newspaper reported, as 200 returned from Brazil following a spat between the two Latin American countries' leaders. Cuba announced last week it was pulling its doctors out of a medical aid program to Brazil following criticism of the island-nation by the South American giant's new far-right president-elect Jair Bolsonaro. "Early on Friday, the apostles of Cuban health returned home," wrote Diaz-Canel on Twitter, paying "tribute to the men and women who made history in Brazil." The first of more than 8,000 doctors working in Brazil started returning last week to be welcomed at Havana airport by Cuba's deputy health minister, Regla Angulo. The doctors are due to return to their homeland by December 10. The program was started five years ago when Brazil was in the hands of leftist president Dilma Rousseff. Those returning on Friday held flags from the two countries. "We're returning today as our colleagues will, with all the honour and dignity of the world," one doctor told the Juventud Rebelde newspaper. "We will never allow threats nor that anyone questions the humanity and professionalism with which we attended to our Brazilian patients." The feud erupted after Bolsonaro, who is due to assume office on January 1, accused Cuba of keeping most of the money Brazil was paying for the doctors' salaries. He also said he would make changes to the program to include a competency test for Cuban medical personnel wanting to work in Brazil. He has offered to directly hire those doctors wishing to remain in Brazil. Cuba pays its foreign-based doctors 30 percent of what it receives for their services but says it puts the rest into the state coffers that provide free and universal health care for all its citizens. The export of skilled workers is Cuba's primary resource generator and used to be worth USD 10 billion a year to the impoverished country, although that number has dropped considerably over the last few years due to the economic crisis in Venezuela, which employs thousands of Cuban doctors. Cuba's "white coat diplomacy" was introduced under late ruler Fidel Castro and spread to 67 countries. A Brazilian diplomatic source told AFP last week that 2,000 Cuban doctors were expected to remain in the country. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) chairperson Swati Maliwal, a close associate of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, was trolled by her party members after she rebuked AAP MLA Somnath Bharti for allegedly using objectionable language against a television anchor. "I strongly condemn Somnath Bharti's misogynistic and shameful statements against a female reporter. I believe NOIDA Police has filed an FIR in the matter. Law shall now take its course. I strongly feel people in public life should control their anger!" Maliwal tweeted. The police had registered an FIR on Wednesday against Bharti on a complaint by the woman anchor. Reacting to Maliwal's tweets, Bharti hit back saying she came out with a judgement on him watching a 20-second video and questioned her if she would seek similar action against leaders from the ruling party at the Centre. Raghav Chadha, AAP leader and party's Lok Sabha in-charge for south Delhi Lok Sabha constituency, took an aim at Maliwal saying he hoped that she will also seek swift action against politicians from the ruling party at the Centre. Chadha is also the probable candidate for the south Delhi Lok Sabha seat. Senior AAP leader Dilip Pandey and party's Lok Sabha in-charge of Northeast constituency also retweeted Chadha's tweet. As the issue triggered a storm online, Kejriwal, while reacting to a tweet from a journalist against Bharti, also took the same line of seeking action against leaders of the BJP. AAP leaders Preeti Sharma Menon, Durgesh Pathak too echoed the CM's views. Senior leader of AAP Atishi Marlena also sought to defend Bharti. Maliwal, who looked after the grievance cell of the chief minister before her appointment as the DCW chairperson, is considered a close confidante of Kejriwal. She is also one of the party workers who have been associated with Kejriwal since the days he ran an NGO. Both are ardent practitioners of Vipassana. Maliwal is married to AAP leader Naveen Jaihind. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The South Indian cell of Delhi BJP staged a demonstration outside the Kerala House here Friday, protesting alleged misbehaviour with Union minister Pon Radhakrishanan and other devotees by the state police at Sabrimala temple complex. The minister had expressed displeasure during his pilgrimage to Sabarimala earlier this week, over the behaviour of a senior police officer. On Tuesday, the Union minister had engaged in a brief war of words with the police in Nilackal over the restrictions on private vehicles heading to Pamba, the last entry point to the Lord Ayyappa shrine. Though Superintendent of Police Yatish Chandra had said Radhakrishnan could travel in his official vehicle, he proceeded to Pamba from Nilackal in a state-run KSRTC bus as a mark of protest against the restrictions that were "causing difficulties" for pilgrims. The BJP men protested outside Kerala House at Jantar Mantar raising slogans against the CPI(M) government in the state. The protesters including Delhi BJP general secretary Kuljeet Chahal, spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor, and convener of the cell K Mutthu Swami, also torched an effigy of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, during the demonstration, said a party statement. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Delhi Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Vijay Kumar Dev has been appointed as the chief secretary of the national capital, an official order said. The Ministry of Home Affairs had Thursday issued the order appointing the 1987-batch IAS officer of the AGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram and Union Territory) cadre. Dev will succeed Anshu Prakash following his transfer to the department of telecommunications in the Central government. Prakash, who was allegedly assaulted at Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence in February, has been appointed as additional secretary in the telecom department. The outgoing chief secretary had claimed that some Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) lawmakers, in the presence of Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia, had thrashed him leading to a standoff between the Delhi chief minister and the bureaucrats. Dev will hold the post of chief secretary superseding 1986-batch IAS officer Manoj Parida who is currently serving as additional chief secretary (home) and principal secretary in the Public Works Department (PWD). "With the approval of the competent authority, it has been decided to appoint Vijay Kumar Dev, IAS (AGMUT:1987) as Chief Secretary, Government of NCT of Delhi with effect from the date of joining till further orders," the ministry said in its order. Dev has also served as Chandigarh UT adviser and is currently posted as CEO of Delhi, his second stint as the top official in the poll body. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The founders of Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana apologised to Chinese customers on Friday as a row over racially offensive posts snowballed, with its products pulled from lucrative Chinese e-commerce platforms. In an attempt to salvage their reputation in the world's most important luxury market, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana capped a 1 minute 30-second mea culpa by saying "sorry" in Mandarin in a video posted on a Chinese social media platform. "Our families always taught us to respect different cultures across the world and because of this we want to ask for your forgiveness if we have made mistakes in interpreting yours," said Dolce in Italian. "We want to say sorry to all Chinese across the world, of which there are many, and we are taking this apology and message very seriously," Gabbana added. The Chinese-subtitled video -- the company's second apology this week over the row -- was posted on Weibo, the popular Chinese Twitter-like social media platform where they have close to one million followers. The controversy marks the latest backpedalling by a foreign company for offending Chinese consumers or authorities. Earlier this year, German automaker Mercedes-Benz apologised for "hurting the feelings" of people in China after its Instagram account quoted Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, seen as a separatist by Beijing. The foreign ministry welcomed the apology. Under pressure from Beijing, a growing number of international airlines and companies have edited their websites to refer to the self-ruling democratic island of Taiwan as "Taiwan, China" or "Chinese Taipei". Marriott's website in China was shut down by the authorities for a week earlier this year after a customer questionnaire listed Taiwan, Tibet and Hong Kong as separate countries, prompting the hotel chain to apologise and change the wording. Dolce & Gabbana had already issued a written apology on Weibo earlier this week after the scandal prompted Chinese celebrities to boycott a Dolce & Gabbana fashion show in Shanghai, which the company then cancelled. The controversy arose after the brand posted short clips on Instagram showing a Chinese woman eating pizza, spaghetti and a cannoli with chopsticks that some deemed culturally insensitive. But it escalated after screenshots circulated of an Instagram user's alleged chat with the famously volatile Gabbana, who used five smiling poo emojis to describe China and launched insults at the country and its people. The company said its account and that of Stefano Gabbana had been hacked and that its legal office was investigating the matter. Despite the earlier apology, the Italian fashion house's products disappeared from multiple Chinese e-commerce platforms. A spokeswoman of retail giant Suning.com said they have removed all Dolce & Gabbana products after the incident. The brands also could not be searched on retail giants Taobao and JD.com. The two companies did not respond to requests for comment. A protestor on Thursday targeted the Dolce & Gabbana store in Shanghai, plastering the storefront with the alleged screenshots of Gabbana's conversation. "Improper comments that insult China from the so-called famous designer of an internationally famous brand have really ruined our mood," said protestor Edward Gu, who claims to work for a modelling and talent agency. Referring to the cancelled show, he said many models, manufacturers and publicists from around the world worked hard on it but it was now a "wasted effort". Chinese social media users were unconvinced by the latest apology, with the video garnering over 100,000 comments some three hours after it was posted. "They're bowing their precious heads to the renminbi (yuan) then," one Weibo user commented on the apology post. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) National Security Advisor Ajit Doval arrived in China on Friday for the 21st round of border talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during which they would also review the progress in bilateral ties since the Wuhan Summit in April. Doval and Wang will meet on Saturday in the picturesque Dujiangyan City in southwestern China's Sichuan province. They are the designated special representatives for border talks between India and China. Wang earlier this year succeeded Yang Jiechi as the state councillor, a rank higher than the foreign minister in Chinese government's hierarchy. This will be his first round of border talks. Announcing the talks on November 21, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang presented an upbeat picture of the bilateral ties saying, "We have properly managed the differences through dialogue and consultation. The border areas on the whole maintained stability." Officials maintain that this round of talks may focus more on reviewing the progress on trade and maintenance of peace at borders than movement towards a solution to the border dispute as India is headed for general elections next year. Since the first-ever "informal summit" between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan, the two countries have launched a dialogue between trade officials to enhance India's exports to China to address the over USD 51-billion trade deficit. Since then, progress has been made towards increasing India's export of rice, sugar and pharmaceuticals. This is expected to come under review at tomorrow's talks, officials said. Negotiations between the special representatives are regarded highly significant by both the countries as they cover all aspects of bilateral ties besides making efforts to resolve the vexed border dispute. The India-China border dispute covers 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control. China claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of southern Tibet. The last round, held in New Delhi between Doval and Yang, took place in the backdrop of the 73-day standoff between the two militaries at Doklam over Chinese army's plan to build a road close to India's strategic "Chicken's Neck" corridor connecting the north-eastern states. The standoff ended after the People's Liberation Army halted the plans to build the road. Officials on both sides say a lot of spadework has been done to ensure peace and tranquillity at the border, though the solution to the border dispute is still elusive even after 20 rounds of talks. Senior defence officials of India and China have held the 9th India-China Annual Defence and Security Dialogue in Beijing on November 13 after a one-year gap due to the Doklam standoff. During the meeting, both sides agreed to enhance defence exchanges and interactions. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) BJP MP Nishikant Dubey has sent to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan a privilege notice against Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance chairman Veerappa Moily for allegedly tweeting details of proceedings of the panel, and claimed the information shared by the Congress leader was not correct, sources said Friday. Dubey, who is also a member of the panel, was referring to a tweet by Moily in which he had claimed that the "Agriculture Ministry briefed the committee on the impact of demonetisation on agriculture". "This is the first official acknowledgment by the government about the burden our farmers had to bear because of the ill-conceived idea of note ban," Moily had tweeted. However, the Twitter account, which Dubey claimed belonged to Moily, did not carry the blue verification mark. Dubey has termed that Moily has tweeted incorrect information and said sharing the information of the proceedings was violation of the Lok Sabha norms. In the privilege notice sent to the Speaker, Dubey has alleged that Congress leader Moily was "blatantly politicising" the working of the finance committee to gain media attention and serve his ulterior political motives. Moily has violated the relevant provisions and rules of Lok Sabha business, Dubey said, adding he should be allowed to raise the issue of privilege in the House in the upcoming session. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Ethiopian House of Peoples Representatives on Thursday approved the nomination of Birtukan Mideksa as the new head of the electoral commission. Birtukan Mideksa, a former judge and leading opposition figure returned to Ethiopia earlier this month after seven years in exile in the US. According to Africanews portal, some lawmakers reportedly questioned Mideksas independence, considering her past roles as an opposition leader and critic of the ruling coalition. Mideksa founded the opposition Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ) party in 2008, and had previously worked with opposition parties like Rainbow Ethiopia: Movement for Democracy and Social Justice and Coalition for Unity and Democracy. She believes in the equality of all Ethiopians, Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed said. He added that Mideksas appointment is aimed at helping him fulfil his promise of electoral reforms and strengthening the elections board. Abiy had earlier this year pledged to deliver a credible election in 2020, and said that he will conduct a smooth transition should the ruling coalition lose the election. The last two elections were decried by the opposition as shams following a messy poll. The 42-year-old leader has carried out wide-ranging reforms since coming to office in April. These include making peace with neighboring Eritrea. He has also given half of the governments 20 ministerial posts to women. The Ministry would not curtail its plan for this financial year even as state-owned banks would be needing fewer funds following the RBI's decision to defer the deadline to meet norms by a year, according to sources. Under the new dispensation, the by the government in for meeting the capital buffer norms would come to around Rs 150-200 billion, sources said. However, there will not be any reduction in the capital funding plan as announced in October last year despite a lower requirement due to the extension of the deadline for meeting the CCB of 2.5 per cent until March 2020, sources said. The would help improve the financial health of banks, sources said, adding that some banks would get necessary regulatory capital while others would get it for fueling growth, they clarified. Earlier this week, the RBI in the central board meeting decided to extend the implementation of the last tranche of 0.625 per cent of capital conservation buffer by a year to March 2020. However, the board decided to retain the capital adequacy ratio or CRAR at 9 per cent, against 8 per cent prescribed by norms. The CCB currently stands at 1.875 per cent and the remaining 0.625 per cent was to be met by March 2019, as per the earlier deadline fixed by the RBI. The extension of the timeline for the implementation of the last tranche of the CCB under Basel-III capital regulations could reduce the burden of (PSBs) by Rs 350 billion this fiscal, according to rating agency Generally, there is a leverage of 10 times on the capital, sources said adding that the lending capacity would increase by Rs 3.5 trillion. After assessing the requirement of each bank, the ministry is expected to finalise the capital infusion of about Rs 540 billion by this month-end or by the first half of the next month. The ministry had earlier this year provided a capital infusion of Rs 113.36 billion to five PSBs to help them meet their interest payment commitments. (PNB), hit by the Nirav Modi scam, got the highest amount of Rs 28.16 billion, while received Rs 17.90 billion. got the capital support of Rs 20.19 billion, received Rs 21.57 billion and got Rs 25.55 billion. The infusion was part of the remaining Rs 650 billion out of Rs 2.11 trillion capital infusion over two financial years. The government announced the Rs 2.11 trillion capital infusion programme in October last year. As per the plan, the PSBs were to get Rs 1.35 trillion through re-capitalisation bonds, and the balance Rs 580 billion through the raising of capital from the market. Out of the Rs 1.35 trillion, the government has already infused about Rs 820 billion through recap bonds and the balance would be done during this fiscal. The country's foreign exchange reserves rose by USD 568.9 million to USD 393.580 billion in the week to November 16, mainly due to a spurt in foreign currency assets, according to RBI data. In the previous week, reserves had declined by USD 121.2 million to USD 393.01 billion. In the reporting week, foreign currency assets, a major component of overall reserves, increased by USD 506 million to USD 368.541 billion, as per the RBI data. Expressed in US dollars, foreign currency assets include the effect of appreciation or depreciation of non-US currencies such as the euro, the pound and the yen held in the reserves. Forex reserves had touched a record high of USD 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 USD 31 billion. Gold reserves rose by USD 73 million to USD 20.961 billion, the data showed. The special drawing rights with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) declined by USD 5.7 million to USD 1.453 billion. The country's reserve position with the IMF also dipped by USD 4.4 million to USD 2.623 billion, the apex bank said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Citizens may have to shell out a maximum of Rs 1 lakh for littering in public places, as the passed a Bill to enhance the for offenders. The has been raised through an amendment to section 338 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (second amendment) Act which was passed in the Assembly Thursday. The move comes after Chief Minister expressed her displeasure after finding out the newly inaugurated Dakshineswar skywalk was stained with betel juice. The Bill proposed to impose a minimum of Rs 5,000 and a maximum of Rs 100,000 on litterbugs. The earlier law stipulated that minimum penalty for throwing waste was Rs 50 and the maximum fine was Rs 5,000. It also came on a day, state Urban Development Municipal Affairs Minister Firhad Hakim was elected the new mayor of Kolkata after the exit of Sovan Chatterjee, on the directions of Chief Minister and TMC chief Banerjee had formed a 11-member committee on Wednesday to check spitting and littering in public places. Hakim said, he will take up a major awareness drive to keep the city clean. A senior citizen, who did not wish to be named, said "When the city had earlier failed to impose a fine of Rs 50 for littering, I am not sure how effective it will be this time. A movement of citizens seeking resignation of the ailing Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar has decided to protest against Governor Mridula Sinha over her "inaction" and widen the agitation, its leader said Friday. Several hundred people had marched to Parrikar's residence near here on November 21, demanding that he resign. Opposition Congress, Shiv Sena and NCP had backed the protest. "For the last nine months Parrikar has been ailing ...administration has come to a standstill. The governor, who has a constitutional responsibility to intervene in such a situation, is silently watching the whole show. Ministers are doing whatever they want," said activist Aires Rodrigues, the leader of the movement. "From tomorrow, it will not be just Parrikar but our target will be the inaction by governor Mridula Sinha...in a situation like this she can not continue as mere spectator but should act and take some action so that governance returns to Goa," he added. There will be a meeting, presided over by cardiologist Dr Francis Colaco, at Azad Maidan here Saturday evening to press for Parrikar's resignation and decide the future course of action, he said. RTI activist Rajan Ghate is on hunger strike demanding chief minister's resignation for the last eight days. Rodrigues said a 48-hour ultimatum given to Parrikar on November 21 has expired. "Now we have decided to take the agitation across all 12 talukas of Goa," he said. "We can assure the people of Goa that before December 19, Goa will be liberated from Parrikar," he said. The state was liberated from Portuguese rule on the same day in 1961. "The agitation will be peaceful. We will make sure there is least inconvenience to the public," he said. Some ministers and BJP MLAs have also assured that they will take part in the agitation, he claimed. Parrikar, suffering from a pancreatic ailment, underwent treatment in the United States for nearly three months earlier this year. He has been recuperating at his residence after being discharged from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi on October 14. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad Friday nabbed a "hardcore naxal" who was involved in the killing 10 CRPF commandos in Aurangabad district of Bihar in 2016 and was now working as a factory labourer in Valsad district by concealing his identity, police said. The 33-year-old Rajesh Ravidas, who was declared 'wanted' by the Bihar government, was arrested from Vapi town in Valsad district, the Gujarat ATS said. Among other crimes, Ravidas, a key member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) outfit, was involved in the killing of 10 commandos of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in a Naxal ambush in the Aurangabad forests in 2016, the anti-terror squad said in a statement. Based on a specific tip-off, an ATS team nabbed him from the industrial town of Vapi in South Gujarat, where he was working as a labourer in a factory by concealing his real identity, said police officials. According to the ATS, Ravidas, also known as Uttamji, is a "hardcore naxal" involved in over 50 crimes, including attacks on security forces, and the Bihar government had declared a reward of Rs 50,000 for information on him. Ravidas was considered the 'right hand' for Pradyuman Sharma, the head of 'special area committee' of the CPI (Maoist), Bihar and Jharkhand, the agency said. The ATS claimed Sharma had appointed Ravidas as the 'Zonal Commander' of Rajgir area of Bihar. Ravidas, a native of Bahorma village in Gaya district of Bihar, fled to Gujarat earlier this year, said the statement. As per the ATS, Ravidas came in contact with Naxals at the age of 17 in 2002 following a land dispute among his family members. After resolving the land row with the help of Naxals, he became an active member of the banned outfit and started engaging in anti-national activities, the statement said. In March 2017, Ravidas was injured in a retaliatory fire by CRPF commandos in the forests of Gaya district. In that operation, four Maoists were gunned down. However, he managed to flee with injuries, the ATS said. He changed is name to 'Gopal Prasad' and started working as a security guard at a factory in the Union Territory of Daman near Gujarat in the beginning of 2018. Later, he came to Vapi, which is close to Daman, and started working at a factory, the statement said. Before handing him over to the Bihar police, the ATS is questioning him to find out more about his works in Gujarat and whether he was in contact with Sharma during his stay in the state, it added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) / -- The ASCENT Conclave is the flagship event of the ASCENT Foundation, bringing together a confluence of thought leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs ASCENT Foundation, a not-for-profit, peer-to-peer learning platform for entrepreneurs, hosted its 3rd edition of the ASCENT Conclave, on Thursday, November 22, 2018, at St. Regis, Mumbai. The full-day event brought together some of India's most inspiring and recognized leaders who shared their entrepreneurial journey over the years, failure and success stories. Themed 'Beyond the Conversation', the Conclave hosted several insightful discussions that addressed the growing need for entrepreneurs to focus not on only on the business aspects, but also on the emphasizing the importance of physical and mental well-being aspects. The event commenced with a welcome note by Harsh Mariwala (Founder, ASCENT Foundation and Chairman, Marico Ltd.). Rajiv Bajaj (Managing Director, Bajaj Auto) was the keynote speaker. Mr. Bajaj through his inspiring discussions, delved on the how can entrepreneurs keep reinventing themselves by keeping them constantly motivated and inspired. He also elucidated on his lessons learnt from past business challenges and how being mentally and physically fit has helped him build a world-class organisation. PC Musthafa (iD Fresh Food Pvt. Ltd.) engaged in a compelling discussion moderated by Govindraj Ethiraj (BOOM and IndiaSpend) on the opportunities and pitfalls in the perishable mass-food products sector and PC Musthafa's journey as an entrepreneur. The Conclave also hosted a highly riveting exchange of thoughts and ideologies by Kishore Biyani (CEO - Future Group and Managing Director - Pantaloon Retail) and Falguni Nayar (Founder & CEO - Nykaa) on the future of the Retail Sector with the advent of newer multi-dimensional avenues. This session was moderated by Menaka Doshi (Managing Editor - BloombergQuint). The Conclave hosted two unique panel discussions, the first being on the importance of employee re-branding with the changing employee value proposition. This session was moderated by Prabir Jha (President and Global Chief People Officer - Cipla Inc.) and had Lavanya Nalli (Vice-Chairperson - Nalli Silk Sarees Pvt. Ltd.), Nicolas Dumoulin (Managing Director - Michael Page India) and Sunit Sinha (Accenture Solutions) share their approaches towards employee and talent management. The second panel discussion shared 4 distinct stories of 4 trailblazers from different walks of life and how each story highlights a strong quality which drives them. Hosted by Tanvi Dubey (Editor, YourStory), the panel saw the participation of Gauri Sawant (Director, Sakshi Char Chowghi), Harshwardhan Zala (CEO, Aerobotics 7), Gauranga Das (Director, Govardhan Ecovillage) and Milind Soman (Director, Maximus MICE & Media Solutions) with each speaker inspiring takeaways based on their journeys. Audiences were left inspired by the entrepreneurial growth stories of Gauri Devidayal (Food Matters India Pvt. Ltd.) and Pankit Desai (CEO, Sequretek), both members of ASCENT Foundation. Gauri discussed on how collaborating with competition could prove to be advantageous for business growth, while Pankit elaborated on how companies can overcome digital and cyber security related challenges. Sangita Reddy (Joint Managing Director - Apollo Hospitals Group) gave the closing address and shared her views on approaches that can help 'Bridge the Innovation Gap' in Healthcare in India. IIFL Wealth Management Ltd. has collaborated with ASCENT Foundation as the Lead Partner for ASCENT Conclave 2018. Harsh Mariwala, Founder, ASCENT Foundation and Chairman, Marico Ltd. Commented, "I am thrilled to share that the ASCENT Conclave 2018 has been able to achieve the goal that we had set for ourselves - to constantly improve the learning opportunities for growth-ready entrepreneurs. The Conclave provides a lot of take-home value for entrepreneurs that can help their businesses scale further. My thanks and appreciation to all the speakers and our partners who have helped make the ASCENT Conclave a one-of-its-kind experiential learning platform." About ASCENT Foundation:ASCENT Foundation is a not-for-profit expression of Harsh Mariwala (Founder, ASCENT Foundation and Chairman, Marico Ltd.) and his passion to identify high-potential growth-ready entrepreneurs and enable them to grow their enterprise. Launched in 2012, ASCENT is designed as a unique, powerful peer-to-peer platform that leverages the 'power of collective' through self-facilitated Trust Groups and enables entrepreneurs to share and exchange experiences, ideas, insights and create a healthy ecosystem to learn from each other. Additionally, ASCENT provides peripheral access to relevant growth enablers like service providers, investors and banks, industry role models and domain experts. ASCENT is 400 member entrepreneur ecosystem strong and present in Mumbai and Chennai. For more details please visit: http://www.ascentfoundation. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Delhi High Court has sought responses of the Centre and the government on a plea seeking directions to them to take steps and address issues related to starvation deaths, especially of children, in the capital and also in other parts of the country. A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice V K Rao issued notice to the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Delhi government seeking their stands on the issue raised in the petition which claims malnutrition and deaths due to starvation were more prevalent among slum-dwellers as many of them do not have ration cards to access subsidised food grains. The court also directed that the Delhi government's departments of Health and Family Welfare, the Social Welfare as well as the Women and Child Development be also made parties to the case. The court listed the matter for further hearing on February 15, 2019. The order came on the PIL filed by lawyer Maneesh Pathak who has claimed that often the poor families living in slums do not have ration cards due to lack of address proof and has contended that it should not be a ground for denial of subsidised food to them. "Making food security conditional (to be given only to a ration card holder) is a violation of the fundamental right to life under the Constitution," the lawyer has said in his petition. He has referred to the death of three minor girls in July this year who according to their post-mortem report were suffering from extreme malnutrition. He has contended that such cases were on the rise in other states as well. ALSO READ: AAP govt to convene special Assembly session to discuss attack on Kejriwal The plea was initially moved by Pathak in the Supreme Court, which on September 7 asked him to first approach the Delhi High Court. ALSO READ: Chilli powder to ink, here's Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal's 'attack' record The petition has sought framing of a policy so that the marginalised section of society receives adequate supply of food and drinking water to ensure that a proper nutritional level is maintained amongst them. The petition said that this can be achieved by an efficient public distribution system for free delivery of essential food articles to the poor families, including those without ration cards. (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.) A 'Heritage Fest' is being held at the former French colony of Chandernagore, about 35 km from the city, on November 25 by the University of Liverpool, IIT Kharagpur and a local project team. The fest is the culmination of a two year project which covers the stretch from Bandel in neighbouring Hooghly district to Barrackpore in the fringes of the city in North 24 Parganas and seeks to protect and raise awareness of the rich cultural heritage of the towns along the Hooghly river, an IIT Kharagpur statement said Friday. The 'Heritage Fest' will bring together participants from schools and colleges of Chandernagore and through an interactive session sensitise them about the value of the town's heritage, it said. The school children will be taught how to use a custom-made, free smartphone app 'the Hugli River AR App' - specially designed by the University of Liverpool. The app on the free-to-download platform allows any location-enabled smartphone user in Chandernagore to point his or her camera at important houses and monuments and see, superimposed on the actual real-time image, a historical image taken from the same angle of that place as far back as 120 years ago, the statement said. The image also carries additional information about the heritage site, it said. Various competitive events, such as drawing, debate and interactive quiz on Chandernagore would also be held, Jenia Mukherjee, the principal investigator on the part of IIT Kharagpur, said. IIT Kharagpur director Partha Pratim Chakrabarti said the institution believes in a knowledge economy "where the modern and heritage have a harmonious and caring relationship." The event will also see the launch of a bilingual heritage resource book on Chandernagore, 'Chandernagore mon amour: the Citadel of the Moon', edited by Antara Mukherjee, Assistant Professor, West Bengal Education Services and published by University of Liverpool. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A new technology has been developed to assess the rise of water level in rivers and reservoirs by rain and can help state governments to minutely monitor the impact of rainfall, IMD chief K J Ramesh said, in the aftermath of the deadliest deluge in Kerala. The technology called the 'Impact Based Forecasting Approach' which shows "pre-event scenario" can help authorities in taking real-time decisions, he said. "We should be able to generate a scenario where we can take decisions to release water or not release it. It will be helpful for every state authority to take decision. We can run this system in pre-event scenario. We are now in a position to use to this technology into service," Ramesh said at an event organised by the Centre for Science and Environment. The heavy downpour that ravaged Kerala for a fortnight ending August 21 caused death of around 500 people and economic damages worth over Rs 400 billion. ALSO READ: AAI identifies 20 locations for the development of water aerodromes Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had said in the state assembly that there were "lapses" on the part of the IMD's rain forecast. The IMD had forecast an estimated 98.5 mm rain in the state between 9 and 15 August, but Kerala received was 352.2 mm of rainfall, Vijayan said. The IMD director general admitted that excessive rainfall that led to floods in Kerala were a result of climate change and in terms of rainfall it was very heavy. "The number of cyclones have increased from 10 to 18 every year as reported in Nature magazine and secondly quantum of precipitation which was 13 days has come down to 10 days," he said. There is another technology which would help in identifying warm ocean segments that are contributing to the rapid intensification of the systems. Cyclone Ockhi's unpredictability was due to such warm ocean segments, following which the technology was developed in October, Ramesh said. Ockhi is the first severe cyclonic storm in almost 40 years to have travelled about 2,400 kilometres from the Bay of Bengal to as far as the Gujarat coast, a senior Met Department official said. Ockhi, which formed as a depression over southwest Bay of Bengal on November 29 last year, intensified into a cyclone off the Kanyakumari coast in Tamil Nadu on November 30 and travelled up to the Gujarat coast before it dissipated on December 6 after weakening into a low-pressure area. ALSO READ: Sensing and stopping water wastage CSE Director General Sunita Narain stressed on the need to plan "deliberately for drainage" to prevent disasters like Kerala floods. "Every river, pond, paddy field and city should be mapped and protected at all costs," Narain said. "Every home, institution, village and city must be required to do rainwater harvesting so that rain can be channelised and recharged," she said. Tbilisi City Assembly MP Sentenced to Imprisonment for Swindling By Tea Mariamidze The former member of Tbilisi City Assembly and majoritarian of Krtsanisi district Temur Gorgadze was found guilty by Tbilisi City Court on the charges of attempted swindling by misusing his official authority.The man was sentenced to six years in prison.Tbilisi City Court found Temur Gorgadze guilty of the attempt of fraud According to the charges filed, T.G. was accused of fraud. Using his work position, he attempted to gain a large amount of money by misappropriating other persons belonging, the statement of the City Court reads.According to the case materials, in February 2018, Temur Gorgadze met with two citizens whose relative was in jail for drug trafficking. They wanted to get acquainted with the issues related to the acquisition of the benefits provided by the law.The investigation says that Gorgadze promised these people that in exchange of $7000 the pardoning commission would grant amnesty to their relative and during the following meeting he fraudulently misappropriated half of this sum $3500.Right after the meeting, the anti-corruption agency employees detained Gorgadze who resisted them and threw the misappropriated money into the elevator shaft.Georgias State security Service reports that upon the completion of the court trial, the lawyer of the defendant stated that Temur Gorgadze accused the deputy head of the State Security Service of Georgia Grigol Liluashvili of politically motivated revenge and linked Gorgadzes detention with the political interests of Grigol Liluashvili.The State Security Service of Georgia categorically denies the accusations. The Court has passed a judgment of conviction on the basis of evidence, the statement of SSS reads.Giorgadze does not plead guilty. He headed the Bureau of Beka Natsvlishvili, majoritarian member of the Krtsanisi district of the Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia in 2014-2016;In 2017 he was the head of the bureau of the majoritarian MP of the Krtsanisi district of the Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia, Beka Odisharia.From 2017 he was the Executive Secretary of the Georgian Dream's Krtsanisi District Organization. Indian business leaders have urged Singapore to collaborate on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in areas like smart cities, 5G, electronic manufacturing, infrastructure and prevailing social issues in health and education. Likewise, Singapore business leaders have also called for reduction of tax rate under the Singapore-India Tax Treaty from the current 15 per cent to 10 per cent, which is in line with other countries, or even 7.5 per cent given the strategic relationship of the two countries. These proposals and suggestions came following the signing of a "Joint Intention Document" as part of the first Singapore-India CEOs Forum held on Nov 14, 2018, Friday weekly Tabla reported. The Joint Intention Document aims to double bilateral investments to USD 250 billion over the next five years and was signed by the former president of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Harshavardhan Neotia and chairman of Singapore Business Federation's (SBF) South Asia Business Group, Gautam Banerjee. "Singapore is a strategic partner of India and the launch of the Singapore India CEOs Forum as a high-level bilateral consultation mechanism will support the enormous potential for expanding bilateral trade and investments between the two countries," Neotia was quoted as saying in the report. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 34-year-old Indian-origin man based in Australian has been jailed for three weeks here for molesting a Singaporean cabin crew member on board a Singapore-bound flight, a media report said Friday. Paranjape Niranjan Jayant, who works for a logistics firm, pleaded guilty to two charges of molestation of the 25-year-old Singaporean flight attendant in August and had one charge taken into consideration for sentencing. During the eight-hour flight from Sydney to Singapore, Jayant approached the flight attendant a few times to ask for her phone number, but she ignored him. The business class passenger on board a Scoot flight also caressed the attendant's left hip, 'The Straits Times' reported. "Subsequently, during the flight, the accused went up to approach the victim at the front galley a few times to request the victim's phone number. The victim ignored these requests," said Deputy Public Prosecutor James Chew. The attendant moved away from him and he told her she was beautiful before returning to his seat. About an hour before landing, Jayant approached the woman and molested her again, the report said. The woman immediately alerted her supervisor. She later lodged a report at the Changi Airport Terminal 2 police post. Jayant, who was unrepresented, told District Judge Lim Tse Haw that he was intoxicated when he committed the offence and added, "I can't handle my drink". He also said he was remorseful and pleaded for leniency. For each count of molestation, he could have been jailed for up to two years and fined or caned. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An Indian-origin woman has been jailed for six months in the UK for drunken behaviour on an aeroplane which caused a passenger to have a seizure. Kiran Jagdev, an executive assistant based in the city of Leicester, had attempted to blame the crew of Jet2 for supplying her with alcohol during her flight from Tenerife in back to the UK in January this year. Judge Philip Head rejected her excuse and decided to impose what he described as a deterrent sentence during a hearing at Leicester Crown Court this week. The court was told that during a bumpy landing, the 41-year-old had started screaming "we are all going to die", causing further distress to passengers. "The effect you had on other passengers must have been dreadful," the judge said. "As the pilot was unable to put the craft down on the approach, that triggered a further foul-mouthed tirade where you shouted 'we're all going to die' for about 10 minutes, he said. According to the prosecutors, Jagdev had consumed between six and eight beers even before boarding the four-hour flight to East Midlands Airport. She then proceeded to drink a further four to six glasses of wine on the plane, using her own supply from her handbag when the crew refused her more drinks. "She continued to ask cabin crew for a drink and they continued to refuse her and she was issued with an Air Navigation Order," Prosecutor Joey Kwong told the court. After she was moved for kicking seats, causing a passenger to have a seizure, an off-duty police officer on the same flight offered to sit next to her to assist cabin crew but she began making "vulgar" comments to him. She was arrested by police on landing and proceeded to direct abusive remarks at airport immigration authorities. The air rage incident came days after Jagdev, was convicted of assault in Tenerife and handed down a suspended sentence, which involves a deferred jail term reliant on good behaviour. "There isn't any excuse. We can't put the blame on anyone other than herself and she accepts that," her defence lawyer, Harbinder Lally, told the court. The judge concluded: "You are the author of your own and other people's misfortune. "This demands a deterrent sentence so people who travel by air and get drunk will know there are consequences. (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.) Iran "strongly rejected" on Friday US accusations that it has a chemical weapons programme and accused Washington of breaching its own commitments to the international watchdog. The US allegations are the latest salvo against Iran from the administration of President Donald Trump, who earlier this year pulled out of a landmark 2015 nuclear deal between major powers and Tehran and reimposed crippling unilateral sanctions. "The United States... has made, as is its habit, baseless accusations against the Islamic republic which we strongly reject," the foreign ministry said in a statement. "Such incorrect and false accusations are due solely to enmity towards the Iranian nation and are intended to deflect international attention from its own broken commitments and continued support for the Zionist regime's chemical arsenal and for terrorist groups." The US accused Iran on Thursday of failing to declare a chemical weapons programme to the global watchdog in breach of international agreements. US envoy Kenneth Ward told the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague that Tehran was also seeking deadly nerve agents for offensive purposes. Iran promised its delegation would provide the OPCW with a detailed reply and in turn accused the US of being the "only member state that has a chemical weapons arsenal and has, until now, not acted on its obligations to destroy it." Iran is one of the few countries that has been attacked with chemical weapons since the end of World War I in 1918. Chemical weapons used by Saddam Hussein's Iraq during its 1980-88 war with Iran killed tens of thousands of Iranian soldiers and civilians. Iran has expressed strong opposition ever since to the use or possession of chemical weapons by any country. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Indian envoy in Nepal has said that the Indian Technical & Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme has played an important role in the development of human resources in the Himalayan country. During an event on Thursday to mark the ITEC Day, Indian Ambassador to Nepal Manjeev Singh Puri said senior Nepalese government officials are trained at premier Indian institutions under the programme. Training courses under the programme are available in various fields, including engineering, information technology, journalism, banking, and remote sensing. Dozens of Nepali experts are pursuing M. Tech and P.G. Diploma courses in irrigation water management and water resources development at the Indian Institute of Technology in Roorkee. Till date, 1,353 participants have attended training courses under the programme. Nearly 150 ITEC alumni and senior officials of the Nepal government attended the event, where Nepal's Minister for Education, Science and Technology, Giriraj Mani Pokharel, was the chief guest. During the event, the 130th birth anniversary of 'Bharat Ratna' Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad was also celebrated. Azad, as the first education minister of India, oversaw the establishment of the IITs and the University Grants Commission. Students of Swami Vivekananda Cultural Centre, Embassy of India, Kathmandu, presented a cultural performance during the event. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das Friday said the state government will celebrate the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev next year in a grand manner. "A grand programme will be organized in Ranchi (to celebrate it). The message of Guru Nanak Dev Ji is still relevant. He gave a message to end distortions of society. The one who is in you is in me, is the fundamental element of his message," Das said, addressing a programme organized on the occasion of 549th 'Prakash Parv' of Guru Nanak here. Das said that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided to make Kartarpur corridor from Gurdaspur. "This has been a demand from the Sikh community for years ...," an official release said quoting Das. Praying for prosperity of the state on the occasion, Das said that he is associated with gurudwara from his Jamshedpur constituency. "The education being served by the gurudwara is unparallelled. The Sikh community is known for its service. Guru Nanak Dev Ji started langar with message that we are all alike," Das said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The TDP Friday hit back at caretaker Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao for his repeated attacks on its president N Chandrababu Naidu, calling it a "panic reaction". TDP politburo member Ravula Chandrasekhar Reddy asserted it was under Naidu's helmsmanship of undivided Andhra Pradesh that the present-day Telangana capital Hyderabad developed exponentially and now accounted for 64 per cent of the state's income. "On September 6 (the day the Assembly was dissolved) he (Rao) said TDP has a mere 0.2 per cent vote share in Telangana. Now he is devoting 50 per cent of his speech time criticising Naidu and the TDP. It shows his panic reaction and frustration," Reddy told PTI. Rao, the ruling TRS president, and other party leaders have frequently targeted Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, calling him an outsider and anti-Telangana leader who created hurdles in the way of Telangana's development during his stewardship of the undivided state. The TDP is fighting a do-or-die battle in the Assembly elections in Telangana where it had clinched 15 seats in the 2014 polls in alliance with the BJP. It had bagged 14.7 per cent votes. However, 13 of the TDP MLAs deserted the party with 12 defecting to TRS and one to the Congress. After snapping ties with the BJP-led NDA, Naidu's TDP has forged a pre-poll coalition with the Congress, CPI and Telangana Jana Samiti. TRS leaders, who often accuse Naidu of blocking irrigation schemes in the Telangana region as the chief minister of united Andhra Pradesh, warn people against voting for the opposition coalition, saying the TDP boss will call the shots if it is voted to power. Despite its hugely depleted strength in the dissolved Assembly following a spate of defections, Reddy claimed the cadre was with the TDP. "We are confident of winning the 13 seats that we are contesting now," he said. As the chief minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh Naidu worked hard for the all-round development of Hyderabad, particularly in the information technology sector, Reddy said. "Sixtyfour per cent of Telangana's income is from Hyderabad only. This (pro-development, pro-investment) atmosphere was created by Naidu," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actors Keira Knightley and Keeley Hawes are all set to play the lead in the drama, "Misbehaviour". The film is a retelling of the fascinating true story about Women's Liberal Movement's activists who stormed the 1970 Miss World pageant in protest, reported DigitalSpy. The feature, to be helmed by Philippa Lowthorpe, will examine the movement and the global prominence that came from crashing Miss World. Knightley, 33, and actor Jessie Buckley will play members of the Women's Liberation Movement. Hawes, 42, who most recently featured alongside Richard Madden in "Bodyguard", will take on the role of Miss World pageant executive Julia Morley. Gugu Mbatha-Raw, the star of "San Junipero" episode of "Black Mirror", will play Miss Grenada. The 1970 pageant was also famed for being the first to be won by a black woman, which caused further controversy, as suspicions were raised over the judges' voting system. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal Friday paid tributes to Major Amit Sagar, killed in an avalanche in Jammu and Kashmir's Sonamarg last year, and handed over a cheque of Rs 1 crore to his family in west Delhi here, the city government said in a statement. "Country is indebted to the supreme sacrifice made by officers like Major Amit Sagar. Rs 1 cr to his family by Del govt is a small way to express our indebtedness (sic)," Kejriwal tweeted. In January 2017, an avalanche hit an Army camp at Sonamarg in central Kashmir's Ganderbal district, resulting in the death of major Amit Sagar. "The Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi Government pays Rs 1 crore to the family of martyr as a mark of respect," the Delhi government statement read. It also stated that the event was also attended by Delhi Revenue Minister Kailash Gahlot and local MLA Jagdeep Singh. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tensions in Kosovo rose again after police arrested three ethnic Serbs, including two police officers, early Friday on suspicion of involvement in the killing earlier this year of a leading Serb politician in the north of the country. The three men were arrested in the Serb-dominated town of Mitrovica, 40 kilometers north of the capital, Pristina, as suspects in the January slaying of Oliver Ivanovic, police said in a statement. A fourth Serb was arrested for resisting police. A fifth person is still at large, police said. Police said they seized evidence for the investigation into Ivanovic's killing during raids in four locations. Police showed photos of a drone, automatic weapons and ammunition and other equipment found in the raids. Prosecutor Syle Hoxha said they have questioned more than 40 witnesses to date in the case. Nobody has yet been charged in the slaying. Thousands of Serbs protested in Kosovo towns, some blocking all main roads leading to Northern Mitrovica, as well as several border posts with Serbia. No violence was immediately reported. Kosovo's ethnic Albanians fought a bloody war with Serbia from 1998-1999 which ended with a 78-day NATO air campaign in June 1999. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 which Belgrade still refuses to recognise. Earlier this week, tensions soared after Kosovo failed to become a member of the international police organization, Interpol, following intense lobbying by Serbia. Kosovo slapped a 100 per cent tax on goods imported from Serbia in apparent retaliation. Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj's Cabinet appealed for calm and said the police operation was not linked to any political development. NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo, a force known as KFOR, also urged calm and said "there was no unlawful operation or military action and there has never been any threat to safety and security of the citizens." KFOR said in a statement that the situation "remains stable and under control on the ground," but acknowledged rising tensions "at political level due to some international and economic developments." Haradinaj met with ambassadors of Western powers including the US, Britain, Germany, and France, for talks on the country's situation and to explain the tax on Serb and Bosnian goods. Ethnic Serb leaders in Kosovo also called for calm and asked Serbia and the international community to assist them. Goran Rakic, mayor of Northern Mitrovica, told The Associated Press that ethnic Serb leaders had formed a crisis centre and called on the international community and Serbia for help. He said he had talked by phone with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. The Serbian government is to hold an emergency session to discuss the crisis. Serbian Vucic held a meeting with the commanders of army and police and security services. Vucic also met with the ambassadors of China and Russia, Serbia's allies in its rejection of Kosovo's independence. Vucic's adviser Nikola Selakovic said the arrests of four Serbs in Kosovo were designed to "spread fear, intimidate and demonstrate force" against the Serbs in Kosovo. "This is a game of nerves, a walk on thin line. The goal is to provoke our reaction which would be immediately used for measures against us," Selakovic said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis Friday said his government plans to complete the construction of 30,000 kilometres of rural roads by June next year. He was speaking at the inaugural function of the Indian Road Congress being held here. He said these roads were being built under the aegis of the Mukhyamantri Gram Sadak Yojana and 10,000 kilometres had already been completed out of the 30,000 km planned. "The Asian Development Bank (ADB), which was assessing the quality of roads, gave 95.5 percentage grading to these (rural) roads, indicating best quality," Fadnavis told the gathering. Speaking on the Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Corridor, Fadnavis claimed it would be the smartest expressway in the world and among the longest in the country. The Rs 49,250-crore Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Mahamarg, alternatively referred to as a Super Communication Expressway, will be 700 kilometres long and will pass through 392 villages, spread over 11 districts. "We are trying to make 22 smart cities along this expressway which will provide a huge boost to economic growth. Moreover, this expressway will connect 24 districts to the Jawaharlal Nehru Port near Mumbai," Fadnavis said. He said work on the 22-kilometre long Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL) between the metropolis and neighbouring Navi Mumbai had begun and it would be the longest sea bridge in the country. "We expect to finish the project in four years," he added. He said the state government is also working on building a coastal road from Nariman Point to Worli and a sea link from Versova in Mumbai to Virar in neighbouring Palghar district. Fadnavis cited a Deutsche Bank report which said that 51 per cent of all big infrastructure projects currently being executed in the country are located in Maharashtra. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Jallianwala Bagh memorial will be given a facelift as part of government's plans to mark the centenary year of the 1919 massacre, Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma said Friday. The government has prepared a blueprint for the year-long commemoration of the massacre that took place on April 13, 1919 as part of its efforts to mark the lives of eminent personalities and events of historical importance, said Sharma who visited the site Friday. The Tourism Ministry along with the Culture Ministry will renovate this historical site by creating suitable infrastructure for providing basic amenities for tourists, he said. "We will also have an interpretation centre, a musical fountain and a light and sound show telling the story of what happened here. We will also develop the site around the well where people gave up their lives," the minister said. While the Tourism Ministry has already earmarked Rs eight crore for the project, the Culture Ministry will provide additional funds. On the harvest festival of Baisakhi, about 15,000 civilians had gathered at Jallianwala Bagh near the Golden Temple for a peaceful protest against the arrest and deportation of two national leaders, Satya Pal and Saifuddin Kitchlew. Around 50 troops of the British Indian Army, under the command of Colonel Reginald Dyer, fired on the crowd. A number of people had jumped into a well on the premises to save themselves from the firing. Later, 120 bodies were recovered from the well. The government is also planning to issue commemorative coins, postage stamps and will organise 'kavi sammelans', exhibition, seminars around the Jallianwala Bagh memorial. "As we prepare for remembrance of the '100 years of Jallianwala Bagh Massacre' in 2019, it shall undergo necessary redevelopment and upgradation. Jallianwala Bagh shall continue to remind the young generation about the sacrifices made in freedom struggle," Sharma tweeted. The National Implementation Committee headed by Home Minister Rajnath Singh has formed a three-member panel comprising former Punjab chief minister Prakash Singh Badal, ex-chairman of the National Commission for Minorities Tarlochan Singh and Rajya Sabha MP Shwait Malik, for five years to oversee the commemoration. The government is currently commemorating the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, the first Sikh Guru. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Three heavily-armed suicide bombers on Friday stormed the Chinese consulate in Pakistan's largest city of Karachi, killing four people including two policemen before being shot dead by security forces which foiled the daring attack in the high-security zone, police said. The attack was soon claimed by the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) which said it would not tolerate "any Chinese military expansionist endeavours on Baloch soil". Resource-rich Balochistan is at the heart of ambitious China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Three suspected suicide bombers were killed by security forces before they could enter the consulate, located in the posh Clifton area, Karachi Police Chief Amir Shaikh said. Nine hand grenades, Kalashnikov assault rifles, magazines and explosives were recovered from the possession of the terrorists, Geo reported. "Food supplies and medicines were also recovered from their possession," officials said. "We have received two dead bodies of policemen and an injured Chinese security guard who is under treatment," said Seemi Jamali, the executive director at the Jinnah Hospital. Two civilians, a father and his son were also killed, officials said. The Sindh government and the Pakistan Army confirmed that three terrorists were killed in the operation. The heavily-guarded E-Street neighbourhood, which is considered a red zone, is home to a number of upscale restaurants, diplomatic missions and schools. The Bilawal House of Pakistan People's Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is also in the area. Schools and eateries have been locked down. Residents said they first heard firing and explosions around 9.30 AM (local time). "The terrorists first attacked the checkpost outside the consulate and detonated a hand grenade in the area," Shaikh said. Shaikh said the attackers had parked their vehicle at some distance from the consulate before moving towards it. Defence analyst and security contractor Ikram Sehgal, whose company's guards have been posted at the consulate, said that the attackers had first engaged in an exchange of fire with policemen. After the policemen and civilians were killed, he said, the attackers proceeded towards the gate of the consulate. However, the guards were quick to usher civilians with consular business into the building and shut the gates behind them. The paramilitary rangers then reached the spot and engaged the attackers, he said. Sheikh said that all Chinese staffers "are safe and secure". The separatist group BLA shared the photographs of the three attackers. "Karachi: Fidayeen of BLA attacked the Chinese embassy in Karachi," it said in a tweet. The BLA has been designated as a terrorist entity by Pakistan. The USD 60 billion CPEC is a string of huge infrastructure investments by China in Pakistan which will link its western Xinjiang province with the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar in Balochistan. Over the years, construction projects and Chinese workers in Balochistan have been repeatedly targeted by militants but this is one of the most prominent such attacks to date. The Foreign Office spokesman said that Islamabad is "in touch with the relevant agencies and will react quickly" to ascertain the facts. Prime Minister Imran Khan took to Twitter to condemn the attack. "Strongly condemn the terrorist attacks against Chinese Consulate in Karachi & in Orakzai tribal area. My prayers go to the victims & their families. Salute the brave security/police personnel who gave their lives & denied success to terrorists in the mission against Chinese Consulate," he said. "The failed attack against the Chinese Consulate was clearly a reaction to the unprecedented trade agreements that resulted from our trip to China. The attack was intended to scare Chinese investors and undermine CPEC. These terrorists will not succeed," Khan said. Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah contacted the Chinese consul general and assured him that the situation will be taken under control. Governor of Sindh Imran Ismail has sought a report on the attack from the Sindh inspector general of police. In Beijing, the China's foreign ministry strongly condemned the attack on its consulate and urged its all-weather ally to take "practical measures" to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens in the country, mostly on projects linked to the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Hundreds of Chinese nationals are presently working in Pakistan specially in Karachi and the restive Balochistan province on projects of the CPEC and on other business ventures. Chinese nationals in Karachi generally consider it a safe city to move around, carrying out their day-to-day business. In February, a senior Chinese shipping executive was killed when unknown assailants opened fire on his vehicle near Zamzama park also in the Clifton area. Sindh police chief Kaleem Imam said that security has been beefed up for the Chinese nationals and a comprehensive security plan would be drawn up to ensure they are under a security cover round the clock. It is the first major terror strike in Karachi since March, 2016 when 45 Ismaili Muslims were killed in a targeted attack. Since then, there had been calm in the country's financial hub as police and the paramilitary Rangers have kept up a constant operation against militants, killing dozens of them in different parts of Karachi. Friday's attack will leave the government and security forces concerned as the Chinese mission is located in a densely populated area. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Foreign Minister of the Maldives Abdulla Shahid will arrive here Saturday on a four-day visit, with an aim to repair the bilateral ties which came under severe strain during the previous government in the island nation. Officials said External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will hold extensive talks with Shahid on Monday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had attended the swearing-in ceremony of Maldivian President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih on November 17 in Male. During their meeting, Modi and Solih vowed to renew close ties and friendship between the two countries and agreed on the importance of maintaining peace and security in the Indian Ocean region. Solih, as the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party's candidate, had surprisingly defeated strongman Abdulla Yameen in the presidential election held on September 23. India-Maldives ties came under strain under Yameen who was perceived to be close to China. Some decisions by Yameen including imposition of restrictions on work visas for Indians and signing of a new Free Trade Agreement with Beijing also did not go down well with New Delhi. Relations between India and the Maldives deteriorated further after Yameen imposed emergency on February 5 this year. India had criticised his decision and asked his government to restore the credibility of the electoral and political process by releasing political prisoners. The emergency lasted for 45 days. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 32-year-old inebriated man allegedly mowed down his wife with his truck and injured his two step-daughters in a fit of rage at JJ Colony in north Dwarka, police said Friday. Akhlesh (32), a native of Garpura village in Begusarai district of Bihar, used to quarrel with his wife, Vibha (38), frequently over his extra-marital affair, which led to the incident. He was arrested from Dwarka Mod, police said. The accused's 17-year-old step-daughter, who survived the incident, told police that her mother Vibha married Akhlesh after getting divorced from her husband. The couple used to stay at a rented house in Kakrola village. Vibha later came to know about Akhlesh's extra-marital affair which caused frequent fights between them, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Dwarka) Anto Alphonse said. The 17-year-old told police that the accused had taken away her younger sister, one-and-half-year-old Jhanvi, forcibly after a quarrel with Vibha. On the intervening night of November 19 and 20, Jhanvi was traced in the accused's truck which was parked at J J Colony, police said. Seeing Akhlesh in deep sleep, the mother-daughter duo managed to sneak in the vehicle and took Jhanvi away, the DCP said. While they were coming back, Akhlesh, angered that the daughter was taken away from him, hit them with the truck, killing Vibha on the spot. The elder daughter sustained head injuries, while the younger one sustained only minor injuries, the police official said. The Dwarka North police station were informed at about the incident 1.30 am on Tuesday. They said a local, who was witness to the accident, chased the truck till near Dwarka Metro Station where Akhlesh abandoned his vehicle after it got stuck in a sand dune and fled. The two daughters of the deceased admitted to a local hospital from where they were were referred to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, the DCP said. The accused has been arrested and a case was registered at Dwarka north police station, the police officer said, adding two mobile phones and Rs 25,110 on cash were recovered from the accused as he was trying to flee to his native village. During interrogation, the accused admitted to killing Vibha as he was enraged that Vibha had taken away their youngest daughter. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 33-year-old man, released on bail, was arrested for allegedly extorting and robbing a builder of cash and attempting to kill another man in central Delhi's Karol Bagh area, police said Friday. The accused was identified as Jojo alias Gyaneshwar alias Ravi, they said. Recently, a case of robbery was registered wherein the victim alleged that he had been receiving extortion calls from Jojo for the last three months. When he did not give money, Jojo, along with his accomplices, barged into the victim's office at Raigarpura in Karol Bagh on November 11 and threatened him, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central) Amit Sharma said. The officer said that Jojo demanded Rs 2 lakh from the victim and also robbed him of gold chain and Rs 20,000-25,000 in cash at gunpoint, the officer said, adding that the victim also accused Jojo of damaging his office by throwing bricks. On July 14, Jojo robbed another person at Tank Road with his accomplice Vinod, Sharma said. On November 7, Jojo, along with his associates, tried to kill one Raj Gautam at Hardhyan Singh Road, Karol Bagh. He fired at the victim with his gun and fled the spot, the officer said. On Thursday, police received information that Jojo would come near Nukkar Faiz Road, Karol Bagh in the evening. Police laid a trap and apprehended Jojo, he added. During interrogation, Jojo disclosed that he was released on bail in March in a murder case of one Sunder. He had allegedly shot Sunder in an area falling under Sarai Rohilla police station limits in 2015, police said. A country-made pistol and five cartridges were recovered from his possession, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Conjuring up delicacies like chicken liver mousse, savoury betel leaf and cauliflower with caramelised whey in her Bangkok restaurant Gaa, Garima Arora has become the first Indian woman chef to be awarded a Michelin star. And she is ecstatic after the accolade that recognises culinary establishments for excellence. "It (Michelin star) is a like a stamp of approval that we are on the right path and to keep doing what we are doing," Arora told PTI over email after Gaa last week became the latest name to be added on the nearly century-old list. "I have always known I wanted to become a cook," said the 30-year-old who is owner and executive chef at Gaa. After making a brief layover at mediahouses as a journalist, the Mumbai girl eventually took the road to where her heart truly lay. But it wasn't merely a leap of faith. It was a calculated move. She studied and researched to understand what it took to be a woman in kitchens that have traditionally been ruled by men. Decades later, her choice is vindicated -- by the just won Michelin star, by critics and the many foodies who frequent her restaurant. The 2019 Michelin guide recognised Gaa as a restaurant with "high quality cooking" and one that was "worth a stop". "Modern eclectic cuisine that blends traditional cooking and innovative techniques is served here. Diners choose between the 10- and 14-course tasting menus which are changed quarterly to reflect seasonal specialties," the guide noted. Arora is the executive chef at Gaa. A Noma-trained, ex-sous chef at Bangkok restaurant Gaggan, she is assisted by an international team of chefs. "As an owner, you're responsible for every aspect of the restaurant. You have to keep your staff motivated, guests satisfied and investors happy it is a tricky balance," she said. Launched in April 2017, her fine dining restaurant in the heart of Bangkok attempts to tap into techniques from around the world and apply it to locally sourced ingredients to create something unique. To achieve that, Arora and her team are constantly exploring ways to create food that captures the vibrancy of Bangkok and its amalgamation of cultural influences. The restaurant was born out of Arora's determination to synergize the connection between India and Thailand. At Gaa, it is not difficult to spot such cross-cultural gastronomical collaborations. There is Crayfish on Khakra, Chilled Soup of Mango, Pumpkin and Pickles, Duck Vindaloo and Grilled Young Corn among others. The Young Corn, which has come to become a favourite at the restaurant, for instance, takes its inspiration from the desi 'bhutta'. Arora grills it, just like back home here, but serves it with a dipping sauce of corn emulsion made of sweet corn, clarified butter and Japanese vinegar. The journey to this culinary triumph was, however, not an uneventful one -- lessons were learnt and challenges battled. That cooking is "a young person's game" was lesson number one. "It is very demanding physically and mentally," she said. While being a woman has traditionally been a setback, particularly at workplaces, Arora said she was fortunate to have had a "welcoming" office environment. "Personally, I've worked with some of the best chefs in the world who made it a point to make me feel welcome in the kitchen," she said. She worked alongside several world-renowned chefs such as Gordon Ramsay (2011) and Ren Redzepi (2013-15), before relocating to Bangkok in 2015 to join the Gaggan restaurant group. The most important lesson of all, she said, was "nothing replaces hard work." "Whether you are a man or a woman, there is no shortcut in the kitchen. You have to put in the hours and go through the grind," she said, adding that there was no challenge like "running my own restaurant". Still waiting the big to sink in, Arora said her plan ahead was to "push even harder". "You have to love what you do. I still work in the kitchen everyday and I just love it," she said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, alleging that he created a cobweb just like the Bollywood villain Mogambo to "loot" the armed forces and that the Rafale scam is one of his many adventures which will be exposed soon. Gandhi shared a report alleging that the Rafale deal was against the Defence Ministry's interests. "The Rafale scam is only a glimpse of Modiji's adventures. To loot the armed forces, he created a cobweb just like Mogambo of selected officers, ministers and industrialists. The threads of this cobweb to make the armed forces hollow from inside are connected to Modiji and his industrialist friends. Now many masks would be exposed," he said in a tweet in Hindi. The Congress party and its chief have launched an offensive on Modi and his government, alleging corruption and favouritism in the Rs 58,000-crore fighter jet deal for purchase of 36 Rafale aircraft from France's Dassault Aviation, a charge the government has strongly denied. Mogambo, essayed by Amrish Puri, was the villain in the 1987 Hindi film 'Mr. India'. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) / -- Transition Cost, an Analytics India Magazine original documentary on self-driving cars in India has been made live on the company's YouTube and Facebook channels. The documentary which was first screened at Cypher 2018 has been directed by Hera Pheri Films. (Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/690836/Analytics_India_Magazine_Logo.jpg ) Today Indians spend more time behind the wheels than they would have a few years ago. In cities like Bengaluru, where roads are shrinking and the number of vehicles is increasing exponentially, the situation is worsening. People already convey distance in terms of time rather than kilometres. On an average, a person spends 3-4 hours a day behind the wheel. While all are struggling to claim their share of the downtrodden roads, there fights erupt with a variety of stakeholders ranging from stray cows to speeding taxi drivers. While in a different world, people are working on the development of autonomous vehicles. As people here still debate if the technology should be human-centric or technology-centric, there are numerous researchers and startups in India that are excelling the development in the field of autonomous vehicles. For the huge population and lack of lane disciplines, the enthusiasm for self-driving technology is quite high. The documentary includes inputs from leading researchers, academicians and thought leaders such as Nitin Gupta (Professor, IIT Kanpur), Sanjeev Sharma (Founder, Swaayatt Robots), Avneesh Agrawal (CEO, Netradyne), Saurabh Chandra (Co-founder, Ati Motors) and Rajendra Ravi (Director, Institute of Democracy and Sustainability), among others The documentary is divided into three chapters. The first chapter, 'Hello World', talks about the rapid rise of AI in the transportation sector and how this sudden boom is impacting the lives of people in that sector and also the entire human race in general. Powered by Manipal ProLearn, it gives a plot of recent work in self-driving cars in India. The second chapter, 'Human Proxy', is about the human-technology relationship. It talks about AI taking away jobs vs. various job opportunities that AI can create. The third chapter, 'Beyond Consciousness' addresses how AI lacks consciousness despite all the efforts in the field, the limitations in the current program and what would happen when AI develops consciousness. Bhasker Gupta, Founder and CEO, Analytics India Magazine said, "While we have been covering the industry in the form of studies, interviews and opinions for a long time, a documentary is a new and interesting way to reach out to the community. We have accumulated views from the industry's best, that too, on a very debated subject like autonomous and self-driving vehicles. We hope that the audience connects with the documentary, as we all have." Watch the documentary here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pvGJbzTTWk&t= About Analytics India Magazine Founded in 2012, Analytics India Magazine has since been dedicated to passionately championing and promoting the analytics ecosystem in India. It chronicles the technological progress in the space of analytics, artificial intelligence, data science, big data by highlighting the innovations, players in the field, challenges shaping the future, through the promotion and discussion of ideas and thoughts by smart, ardent, action-oriented individuals who want to change the world. Analytics India Magazine has been a pre-eminent source of news, information and analysis for the Indian analytics ecosystem by covering opinions, analysis and insights on the key breakthroughs and developments in data-driven technologies as well as highlighting how they are being leveraged for future impact. Visit: www.analyticsindiamag. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam on Friday demanded that a case of forgery be registered against Maharashtra Cooperation Minister Subhash Deshmukh. The Congress has accused the minister of forging documents and fabricating permissions to get a contract for Lokmangal Multistate Co-operative Society's milk processing plant in Solapur. The Co-operative Society has been founded by Deshmukh, a BJP leader. He has denied the allegations in the past. The state Dairy Development Department said Thursday that a Rs 24 crore contract granted to the plant has been scrapped. Nirupam wrote to Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao, demanding that a case of forgery be registered against Deshmukh and he should be sacked immediately. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Friday spoke of the close association of the state with Guru Nanak Dev, whose birth anniversary is being celebrated on this day. Talking to reporters at the Patna Sahib Gurudwara, built in the memory of 10th and last Guru Gobind Singh who was born here, Kumar said grand celebrations will be held in the state on the occasion of Guru Nanaks 550th Prakash Utsav (birth anniversary) next year. "We will celebrate the 550th Prakash Utsav in Rajgir, which was one of the couple of places in Bihar which Guru Nanak had visited. It is said that when Guru Nanak had approached the renowned hot springs there, in search of cool water, one of the fountains started oozing the same in an incident that is ascribed to the holiness of the spiritual giant," Kumar told reporters. "The spot is called Guru Nanak Sheetal Kund. It is visited by Sikhs from all parts of the world and also held in reverence by people of other religions. Construction of a grand Gurudwara is also proposed there. Necessary clearances for the same have been granted by the state government as well as the Centre. We will strive to ensure that the temple is ready by the time the festivities are held next year," he said. Situated in the Chief Ministers home district of Nalanda, Rajgir is a bustling pilgrimage town thronged by people of many faiths including Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs. "Nanak had also stayed at Gaighat, which is close to Patna Sahib. Gaighat also derives its name from Sikh history. It is said that ninth Guru Tegh Bahadur had made the Ganges embody a cow for the benefit of Jaitamal, a contemporary of Nanak who had lived on for long and had stayed here for taking a dip in the holy river daily," the Chief Minister said. "People from across the world had appreciated Bihars hospitality during the 350th birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Gobind Singh. The state is ready to live up to its reputation when the world celebrates 550th birth anniversary of the founder of Sikhism," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar Friday said there is no scope for an ordinance on building Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya, while asserting that the temple should be constructed at the birth place of Lord Ram and efforts are to build consensus on the issue. Addressing a press conference at the Red Fort to announce the 17-day-long Gita Jubilee Festival in Kurukshetra from December 7, he said a number of dignitaries, including BJP president Amit Shah, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and former President Pranab Mukherjee attend the event. "The Haryana government's efforts to promote the teachings of holy book at the global level has started yielding results as for the first time the festival will be organised in Mauritius in February next year. Mauritius will be the partner country in the celebrations of upcoming International Gita Mahotsav," Khattar said. To an question on building Ram temple in Ayodhya, he said, "The temple should be built at the birth place of Lord Ram. Efforts are being made to build consensus on this issue to ensure that temple is built at the birth place of Lord Ram." "There is no scope for ordinance on it," he said. Sharing the details of the Gita Jubilee Festival, Khattar said the main event would be organised from December 13 to December 18, which would be attended by Haryana Governor Satyadeo Narain, Tripura Governor Kaptan Singh Solnaki, Odisha Governor Ganeshi Lal and others. Shri Shri Ravi Shankar, Swami Ramdev, Shankracharya, various foreign dignitaries, including the Art and Culture Minister of Mauritius and diplomats of 15 countries would attend the event, he said. The Haryana chief minister also informed reporters that 'Gita Sansad' would be held in more than 30 colleges of the state for the first time, in which discussion would be held on the scripture to effectively disseminate the message of the Gita among students. The International Gita Mahotsav, is organised every year by the state government in collaboration with Kurukshetra Development Board (KDB) at Kurukshetra. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Classical music stalwart Ustad Imrat Khan, who dedicated his life to propagating the sitar and the surbahar worldwide, has died in the US after a brief illness, his son said Friday. He was 83. He breathed his last on Thursday in a hospital in St Louis, his home for over two decades, after a stroke, his son Nishat Khan told PTI. "He had developed pneumonia. He was in hospital for a week. He had a stroke last night. He had not been keeping well for the last few months," Nishat, a sitarist of repute himself, said before leaving for the US. The funeral will take place on Saturday, he said. Imrat Khan, who famously turned down the Padma Shri last year saying the recognition had come too late and diminished his achievements, belonged to the illustrious Etawa gharana, or the Imdadkhani Gharana, named after his grandfather Ustad Imdad Khan. His elder brother was Ustad Vilayat Khan. The gharana, one of the oldest in India with a musical legacy of over 400 years, traces its roots to Agra. The family later moved to Etawa before finally settling down in Kolkata with Ustad Inayat Khan, Imrat Khan's father. The family is credited with developing the musical instrument surbahar, a stringed instrument that is sometimes called the "bass sitar". Imrat Khan toured the world with his music and performed at the Cannes Film Festival in 1970 for a Merchant-Ivory partnership. He was also a regular at various music festivals in India. Calling his father one of the greatest surbarhar players of his time, Nishat said his father carried forward the country and the family's heritage till the very end. "He was my guru, mentor, teacher and father. He was a great philosopher, an evangelist for music. He really carried forward the heritage of Indian classical music all over the world to the very end of his life," Nishat said. One of the big disappointments of his life was not being recognised for his musical contributions by the government even when his students and juniors were given the Padma awards. Refusing the Padma Shri was not a matter of self-aggrandisement but "an issue of propriety", he told PTI in an interview in February last year. Having performed with stalwarts like his brother as well as Ustad Bismillah Khan, Ustad Amedjan Thirakwa Khan and Pandit V G Jog, Imrat Khan said he did not want to compromise this legacy by accepting the award. "My music has been the centre-stage of my life and I have put it on the highest pedestal with a lifetime of devotion to its art, refusing any form of corruption to its form and essence. I do not expect at this moment in my life that my devotion and contributions be diminished to a level lower than my followers, students and sons - by age or reputation," he had told PTI. He said he had never compromised in his life. "Why should I compromise now when this award presented to me is not parallel to my worldwide reputation and contributions in the name of the pure arts and culture of India?" Nishat said his father was "heartbroken" when his name was announced as a Padma Shri winner. "He was so disappointed that the award was being given to him when even my juniors were awarded with the Padma Shri. He was really sad and heartbroken about it. "It's an 'anyay (injustice) that the government could not see his contribution to Indian classical music," Nishat said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India put up a much improved effort with the ball, reducing Australia to 132 for seven in 19 overs before intermittent rain delayed the start of their chase in the second T20 here Friday. Bhuvneshwar Kumar (2-20) and Khaleel Ahmed (2-39) shared four wickets to rock the Australian top-order and reduce them to 41-4 at one stage. The weather interrupted thrice and the match was reduced to 19-overs a side and the DLS target for India to level the series is 137 runs. This was after India won the toss and opted to bowl. The visitors went in with an unchanged side while Australia made one change, bringing in Nathan Coulter-Nile for Billy Stanlake who picked up an ankle niggle during warm-up. Kumar then struck with his second delivery, dismissing Aaron Finch (0) caught behind. From there onwards, India exerted themselves on the field and there was never any let up. But there were hiccups. The swing bowler should have had at least a couple more wickets, but was twice unlucky in the third over. First, Rishabh Pant spilled a difficult diving catch behind the wickets with D'Arcy Short (14) getting a life on 7. Two balls later, Chris Lynn (13), on nought, should have been caught at fine leg, only for Jasprit Bumrah (1-20) to spill it over the rope and for a six. Ahmed did strike in the fourth over and pegged Australia back as Lynn was caught in the deep going for another big one. Two overs later, he bowled Short and India's missed chances didn't cost them too much. The longer boundaries further aided India as Bumrah had Marcus Stoinis (4) caught in the deep in the seventh over to put the hosts under more pressure. Glenn Maxwell (19) and Ben McDermott (32 not out) added 21 runs for the fifth wicket to stem the rot, but Krunal Pandya (1-26) struck to remove danger-man Maxwell. The spinner found some grip and a hint of turn as Maxwell was bowled in the 11th over. Kuldeep Yadav (1-23) too made his presence felt, chipping in with Alex Carey's (4) dismissal, sending the 60000-odd prominently Indian crowd into raptures. Australia somehow managed to cross the 100-mark in the 16th over, thanks to a 27-run partnership between Nathan Coulter-Nile (18) and McDermott. Coulter-Nile hit two sixes and a four during his nine-ball stay, as McDermott held one end together, providing a little impetus to the innings before rain halted proceedings. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has confirmed the death sentences of 11 hardcore terrorists, who were involved in heinous offences, the army announced on a day when the country witnessed two major terror attacks that killed nearly 40 people. The convicts were accused of attacking armed forces/ law enforcement agencies of Pakistan, killing of an innocent civilian and destruction of an educational institution, the Inter-Services Public Relations, the media wing of the military, said. "On the whole, they were involved in killing of 26 persons including a civilian and 25 Armed Forces/Frontier Constabulary/ Police Officials and injuring 22 others," the ISPR press release said. Arms and explosives were also recovered from their possession, it said. The convicts were tried by special military courts. Besides, the 11 terrorists given the death sentence, 22 others have also been setenced to various jail terms, the release said. On Friday, three terrorists belonging to the Balochistan Liberation Army attacked the Chinese consulate in Karachi, killing four people, including two security personnel. The three terrorists were also killed. In the second incident, a suicide bomber triggered a powerful bomb at a Friday market in the country's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing at least 32 people and injuring over 40. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan assured China on Friday of "robust security" to Chinese nationals in the country and thoroughly probe the terror attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi that killed four people. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi telephoned Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi to apprise him of the prompt action taken by the security forces to thwart the attack and the death of two policemen in the security operation, according to the Foreign Office. "Pakistan is fully committed to taking all necessary measures to provide robust security to all Chinese nationals in Pakistan," Qureshi said. Three terrorists affiliated to the Baloch Liberation Army attacked the consulate in Karachi, the port city in southern Pakistan's Sindh province. After a gunfight with security forces, the three were killed. Qureshi also assured the Chinese state councilor that a thorough investigation will be done to arrest the financiers, planners and facilitators behind the attack. He said Pakistan and China will continue to cooperate to thwart the designs of hostile forces against their "time-tested" friendship. Wang strongly condemned the terrorist attack against Chinese consulate and appreciated the quick and effective action of Pakistan security and law enforcement forces. He said the terrorist attack was an attempt to impact Pakistan-China relations and to harm the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. He stressed the ties between Pakistan and China are clad in iron and such cowardly attacks could not affect it. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Maharashtra government has asked seed companies to pay a compensation of Rs 1,147 crore to the farmers whose crops were affected by the pink bollworm, a pest, in the Kharif season last year. In a written reply in the Legislative Assembly, Relief and Rehabilitation Minister Chandrakant Patil said Thursday that the third instalment of compensation was disbursed through the Revenue and Forest department on November 1. Twelve cotton seed firms have now moved the Bombay High Court against the government's order to compensate, and the court has granted a stay to the payment of compensation to remaining farmers, the reply said. In Buldhana district, cotton crop on 1.75 lakh hectares was damaged by various pests including the pink bollworm, Patil said in reply to another question. Farmers had complained that low-quality seeds were responsible for the plants getting attacked by the insect. The government then announced a compensation of Rs 6,500 per hectare, to be paid by seed companies. An amount of Rs 89.56 crore has been disbursed in Buldhana district, and another Rs 44.78 crore were being paid out, the minister said. In August this year it was found that cotton crop in more than 900 villages was infested with pink bollworm and other pests, the reply said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress Friday alleged Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not able to get rid of his childhood habit of telling lies after he claimed that the Karnataka government was arresting indebted farmers. Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said at a press conference here that it hurts when a person holding the prime minister's post lies. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a bad habit of speaking lies. It seems he is not able to get rid of his childhood habit," he said, when asked about Modi's allegation. The prime minister, addressing campaign rallies in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, had pooh-poohed Congress chief Rahul Gandhi's promise of farm loan waiver in the two states. He claimed the party had made the same promise during the Karnataka polls but did not fulfil it. The coalition government consisting of Congress in Karnataka was, instead, issuing warrants and arresting farmers for defaulting on loan repayments, the prime minister alleged. Surjewala asked about the loan waiver that was announced by the BJP-led government in Maharashtra. "About 50,000 farmers marched to Mumbai asking the Devendra Fadnavis government what happened to loan waiver promise. The implementation of loan waiver in Punjab and Karnataka (where the Congress is in power) has set an example. The PM should visit these areas," Surjewala said. He alleged the Modi-led government had written off loans worth Rs 2.63 lakh crore of industrialists but had refused relief to indebted farmers. The Congress spokesperson also accused the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh of misleading people on the investment attracted by the state from 2007 to 2016. "The Shivraj Singh Chouhan government held 12 investor meets during this period and declared that investment of Rs 17.49 lakh crore has been made. But according to experts, proposals of only Rs 50,000 crore materialised," he alleged. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Uh-oh! It could be you, or it could be us, but there's no page here. Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma hit back at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday for accusing the opposition party of practising "dynastic" politics, saying he needs a "crash course" on the country's history. Sharma alleged that the prime minister has not kept the dignity of his office and is making "frivolous" statements. "It is unfortunate that the prime minister is making such statements. The prime minister is less literate in history, geography and economics," he said. "Regarding using word dynasty and democracy, PM Modi needs a crash course. Advise him to read the objectives resolution moved by Pt. Nehru in the constituent Assembly on December 13, 1946, which laid the foundation of a robust democracy," Sharma said. "On dynasty, Modiji must know that after Rajiv Gandhi's oath in 1985, no member of the family took oath even as a minister. Rahul Gandhi was MP since 2004 but declined ministerial office. The PM is running scared as people are angry and the BJP is headed for a big defeat," the former Union minister said. The Congress leader's strong remarks came after Prime Minister Modi attacked the Congress and its leadership during election rallies over dynastic Sharma tweeted, "Sad that PM Modi will not keep his office's dignity while making frivolous statements. We understand his discomfort with Nehru-Gandhi family who fought for India's Freedom and made supreme sacrifices including martyrdom of Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. Why?" "Because PM Modi is the ideological descendant of those who opposed freedom struggle or collaborated with the British during quit India struggle," he alleged. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A case of rape has been registered against a police officer in Thane district of Maharashtra. The officer allegedly raped a 23-year-old woman who wanted to withdraw a complaint of rape she had filed against her friend, said Kongaon Police in Bhiwandi taulka of the district Friday. While a case under IPC sections 376 (rape) and 506 (criminal intimidation) was registered against police sub-inspector Rohan Gonjari, he is yet to be arrested. The victim had earlier lodged a complaint of rape with Mankurd Police in Mumbai, which was later transferred to Shanti Nagar Police Station in Bhiwandi for investigation. The victim later said she wanted to withdraw her complaint as she and the accused were good friends. Sub-inspector Gonjari, attached to Shantinagar Police Station, allegedly told her that he will release her friend, and asked her to meet him at Rajnoli bypass on August 16. From there, he allegedly took her to a guest-housein Kalyan town in the district and raped her, the victim said. After she approached Kongaon Police on November 21, an FIR was registered. Further probe is underway. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Police on Friday moved a court here seeking another 90 days to file a supplementary charge sheet against left-wing activists Sudha Bharadwaj, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves and in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case. A charge sheet has already been filed in the case against activists Surendra Gadling, Shoma Sen, Mahesh Raut, Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale (who were arrested in June) and five 'underground' Maoist leaders. The police filed an application before District Judge Kishor Vadane on Friday, seeking extension of 90 days to file a supplementary charge sheet against Bharadwaj and others under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). They needed time as investigation is still going on, the police said. Bharadwaj, Rao, Ferreira, Gonsalves and Gautam Navlakha, accused of having Maoist links, were arrested on August 28 following multi-state raids by Police. However, on the directions of the Supreme Court, all five were put under house arrest in their respective cities. Later, as the period of house arrest got over and the apex court refused to grant further relief to the accused, police arrested all of them except Under the law, a charge sheet has to be filed within 90 days of arrest. But under the UAPA, an extension of 90 days can be obtained from the court. Assistant Commissioner of Police Shivaji Pawar, the investigating officer, said the court will hear the matter on November 26. According to police, Maoists had backed the Elgar Parishad conclave held in on December 31 last year. The provocative speeches made at the gathering allegedly led to violence at Koregaon Bhima in Pune district the next day. Polson Ltd has settled a case with markets regulator Sebi for alleged delay in compliance of public shareholding norms on payment of Rs 6.8 lakh towards settlement charges. The order came after the Mumbai-based company approached the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) with a plea under settlement regulations, proposing to pay a penalty without admission or denial of guilt. "The instant adjudication proceedings initiated against the applicant (Polson) ... are settled", Sebi said in a settlement order dated Nov 22. The regulator in May, 2018, appointed an adjudication officer to look into the matter of delayed compliance of the requirement to maintain the 25 per cent minimum public shareholding (MPS) by the company. Sebi, in its order passed in January this year, had noted that the company had made a delay of over 4 years (from June 2013 till October 2017) in complying with MPS requirement. While the adjudication proceedings were in progress, Polson submitted an application for settlement of the adjudication proceedings. Thereafter, Sebi's High Powered Advisory Committee, is considering the facts and circumstances of the case and settlement terms recommended the settlement on payment of Rs 6.8 lakh. Accordingly, after the approval by Sebi's panel of whole-time members, the company has remitted the amount. The order also states that enforcement actions, including commencing or reopening of the proceedings, could be initiated if any representation made by it is found to be untrue. Earlier in June, 2013, Sebi had imposed various curbs on Polson and its directors as well as promoters for not meeting the minimum public shareholding regulations. Later in June 2016, the regulator had confirmed the directions. In its submission to Sebi in October 2017, the firm said that it had complied with MPS requirements by way of sale of 11,200 shares by its promoters through 'offer for sale' mechanism and the same was informed to the exchange. Pursuant to this, the regulator in January, 2018 had revoked the restrictions imposed on the firm, its directors, promoters with immediate effect. However, Sebi had noted a delay in compliance with the regulations. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prajnesh Gunneswaran earned a shot at a second consecutive title on the ATP Challenger circuit after conquering top seed Radu Albot in a gripping semifinal at the KPIT-MSLTA tournament here Friday. Prajnesh, the winner of Bengaluru Open last week, had to sweat it out to beat the Moldovan 1-6 6-4 6-4 in exact two hours. The 29-year-old southpaw had lost to Albot at the Liuzhou Challenger semifinal last month and it was again a test of skills and nerves but the Indian came out on top this time. It is the second time that Prajnesh has reached the final at this tournament, having ended runner-up in the 2016 edition to Frenchman Sadio Doumbia. It will be the fourth straight year at the Pune Challenger that a home player is in the final. It was only in the inaugural edition in 2014 that no Indian could reach the final. Fourth seed Prajnesh will now fight it out with Swedish third seed Elias Ymer, who sent packing Canadian Brayden Schnur 6-3 3-6 6-3 in the other semifinal. In their previous and only meeting at this year's French Open qualifying, Ymer had beaten Prajnesh in the third and final round. Besides Prajnesh, the Indian pairing of Ramkumar Ramanathan and Vijay Sundar Prashanth are also in title contention after their 7-6(7) 6-0 win over Andrej Martin and Hans Podlipnik-Castillo in the semifinals. Albot came with a clear plan, hitting mostly on the backhand side of Prajnesh, whose forehand is fierce and strong. Albot peppered the Indian left-hander with shots on his backhand side and it worked immediately. The Moldovan drew first blood, breaking the Indian in the third game and consolidated the break by serving the next game at love. He led 3-1, much to the disappointment of about 300 fans in the stadium and soon made it 4-1 with another break of serve. Prajnesh had two chances to break back in the sixth but Albot did not let the Indian capitalise. Prajnesh's power-packed forehand was silent, not helping his cause as he made a lot of errors on his favourite stroke. However, the Indian left-hander found his touch in the second set as he succeeded in involving Albot in long rallies. The Moldovan had kept points short in the opening set. Prajnesh's forehand started to talk as he hammered a winner to earn his first break opportunity in the second set and converted with a return, which Albot netted. He was serving much better, which was the key in the turnaround. Long rallies worked in Prajnesh's favour as he unleashed his power-packed forehand to win points. The break stayed with Prajnesh, who served out the set at love in the 10th game with an ace. Albot did try to re-employ his strategy of hitting it on the backhand side of Prajnesh but could not do it as consistently as he did in the opening set. In the decider, it was Prajnesh who nosed ahead. At 15-15 in the third game, Albot hit a forehand wide and followed it up with a double fault, handing two break points to the Indian. Prajnesh hit deep returns on both the flanks. Albot, trying to finish the point, attempted a drop shot with his backhand from the left flank but it could not clear the net. Prajnesh faced his first breakpoint in the sixth game when he hit a forehand long but saved it, thwarting the danger. Albot was not throwing in the towel and kept the home favourite under pressure wit his excellent game. He also stayed strong on his service games. There were no easy points. A dog-fight was on. Two forehand errors put Prajnesh down by two more breakpoints but he bailed himself out with strong serving to eventually lead 5-3. Serving for the match, Prajnesh began with a double fault but held nerves to close it out. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pro-Khalistan banners were erected at the Gurdwara Janam Asthan in Nankana Sahib in Pakistan on Friday during the visit of Indian Sikh pilgrims to commemorate the 550th Birth Anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev. Sikhs from North America, Europe and the UK under the banner of Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) were canvassing in the gurdwara where more than 3,000 Indian Sikhs were also present to attend the festivities. 'Referendum 2020' banners and 'Khalistan' flags with the life size portrait of slain militant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale were placed throughout the gurdwara premises. When PTI sought the comment of the Evacuee Trust Property Board, which is responsible for looking after the holy places of minorities in Pakistan, its spokesperson Amir Hashmi said: "I am not authorised to speak on the issue to media." The ETPB Secretary Tariq Wazir was also contacted for his comments but he did not reply. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) : Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami Friday directed the Collectors in the districts to provide tarpaulin to the cyclone-affected people. In a statement here, he said he had received requests for the tarpaulins to cover the roofs of houses damaged by the cyclone Gaja and accompanying rains. He said the sheets could be procured with the assistance from the Chief Minister's Public Relief Fund and distributed through the Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Corporation. Meanwhile, VCK leader Thol Thirumalavan met the Chief Minister and presented a cheque for Rs 10 lakh towards cyclone relief. Film actor Vivek and representatives from Ramco Group and the Velammal Educational Trust too called on Palaniswami and handed over contributions for the relief work, an official press release said. The cyclone had crossed the Tamil Nadu coast between Nagapattinam and Vedaranyam on November 16, claiming 63 lives and leaving behind a trail of destruction that severely hit farming, fishing and power sectors. The districts of Thanjavur, Tiruvarur and Pudukottai had suffered the worst damage. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ousted Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickeremesinghe's alliance on Friday won control of a powerful panel in Parliament, dealing a major blow to President Maithripala Sirisena and his prime ministerial appointee Mahinda Rajapaksa. Sirisena's party members walked out of Parliament, which resumed its session on Friday after being adjourned on Monday, protesting against Speaker Karu Jayasuriya's move to appoint five members of the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) which is led by the President. The Speaker named five members from the United National Front (UNF) of Wickeremesinghe, and one each from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). This is in continuation of the political unrest plaguing the country since October 26. Both Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa claim to be the prime ministers. Wickremesinghe says his dismissal is invalid because he still holds a majority in the 225-member Parliament. Jayasuriya, at the start of the session, announced that following a meeting of all party leaders which ended without an agreement over the composition of the committee, he had decided to grant five members each to the UPFA and the UNF. The committee would comprise 12 members, he said. Senior UPFA member Dinesh Gunawardena slammed the speaker's conduct as biased. "I urge you to recognise us as the government and give us the majority in the select committee. "We have precedents that even during the minority governments in the past the government had been given majority in the select committee," he said. Lakshman Kiriella on behalf of the ousted government said that Jayasuriya has declared the members based on two previous votes that there was no government and the purported government does not exist. Wimal Weerawansa, another Sirisena backer, said that if Jayasuriya was not recognising the government, they would not recognise Jayasuriya as the Speaker. "We will leave the chamber allowing you to conduct a meeting of the United National Party," Weerawansa said and led Sirisena's side out of the chamber. Jayasuriya then proceeded to take a vote on his decision on the select committee composition after a vote was moved by JVP's Vijitha Herath. The proposal was adopted with 121 votes for and nothing against. The members of the UNF, Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and the Tamil National Alliance voted in favour. Sri Lanka is witnessing a political crisis since President Sirisena abruptly sacked Wickremesinghe on October 26. Sirisena later dissolved Parliament, almost 20 months before its term was to end, and ordered snap election. The Supreme Court overturned Sirisena's decision to dissolve Parliament and halted the preparations for snap polls. Speaker Jayasuriya then ordered a floor test in the 225-member assembly to end the ongoing political crisis, a move which invited the wrath of the government of Rajapaksa. The UNF has already moved two motions of no trust against Rajapaksa and they are to move a third vote again, perhaps Friday. Rajapaksa, however, has refused to step down. On Wednesday, Wickremesinghe's party handed Parliament another motion, demanding suspension of funds of all ministry secretaries whom they claim had been illegally appointed since October 26. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Rajasthan BJP has suspended 11 rebel leaders, including four ministers, for six years over their decision to contest elections against party candidates, a party spokesperson said Friday. Four ministers, Surendra Goyal (Jaitaran),Hem Singh Bhadana (Thanagaji), Rajkumar Rinwa (Ratangarh) and Dhan Singh Rawat (Banswara), who are contesting as independent candidates, are among those who were suspended on Thursday night after they did not withdraw nomination papers. The party termed the action "expulsion" for six years. Thursday was the last day for withdrawal of nomination papers for the Rajasthan assembly polls. The other suspended leaders include sitting MLAs Anita Katara (Sagwara) and Kishnaram Nai (Sridungargarh) and former MLAs Radheshyam Ganganagar, Laxminarayan, among others. "They have been expelled from the party for contesting against the party's official candidates," the BJP spokesperson said here. The rebels were dismissive of the party action. "I am a five-time MLA and have a good hold on voters in my constituency. Despite that the party dropped me this time and gave the ticket to a candidate who had lost the election of ward panch. I had resigned as a party member and as minister soon after I was dropped by the party and therefore the party's action against me does not hold any value," Goyal said. Goyal had won from the Jaitaran seat with a margin of 34,874 votes in the 2013 assembly elections. He said he was banking on the work he did in his constituency and expressed confidence that he will win this year too. Rawat, who is contesting from Banswara constituency, said the party's decision meant "nothing" to him. "Why would I care about the party's action? I do not care, I am contesting the elections and will win," he said. Union minister and senior BJP leader Arjun Ram Meghwal said the disciplinary action against the rebel candidates was routine. The Rajasthan BJP managed to convince some of the rebel candidates, including sitting MLAs Gyan Dev Ahuja (Ramgarh) and Bhawani Singh Rajawat (Ladpura), to withdraw their nomination papers on Thursday. Ahuja, a Hindu hardliner, and Rajwat had filed their nomination papers as independent candidates from Sanganer and Ladpura constituencies. The party has fielded former Congress MP Ijyaraj Singh's wife Kalpna Devi from Ladpura this year. Apart from the BJP, the Congress is also facing a challenge from the rebels on several seats. Former Union minister Mahadev Singh Khandela (Khandela), former Rajasthan minister Babulal Nagar (Dudu), former MLA Nathuram Sinodia (Kishangarh), among others, turned rebel after being denied tickets and will be contesting the polls as independent candidates. A total of 2,294 candidates, including 189 female candidates, are in the fray for the December 7 polls for the 200-member Rajasthan Assembly. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Over 50 of the 200 assembly constituencies in Rajasthan will see a triangular contest with rebels from both the BJP and the Congress remaining in the fray as independent candidates on many of these seats. There will be three-way contests also for seats where other independents and parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party are challenging the two major parties. The BJP Thursday night suspended four Rajasthan ministers from the party for six years for not withdrawing their nomination papers in favour of the official nominees. Three other sitting MLAs who insisted on contesting again as independents in the December 7 elections were similarly punished. The party called the action expulsion for six years. Surendra Goyal (Jaitaran), Hem Singh Bhadana (Thanagaji), Dhan Singh Rawat (Banswara), Rajkumar Rinwa (Ratangarh) are the four rebel ministers. They stop being party members but have not been sacked as ministers. The sittings MLAs affected by the recent action are Navnit Lal Ninama (Dungarpur), Kishnaram Nai (Shridungararh) and Anita Katara (Sagwara). Other BJP leaders like Radheyshaym Ganganagar (Sriganganagar), former minister Laxminarayan Dave (Marwar junction), Deendayal Kumawat (Phulera) are also making the contest tougher for the BJP. The BJP is expected to act against more leaders. Senior BJP and Congress leaders remained busy till Thursday - the last day for withdrawing nominations - in their efforts to make the rebels step down. The BJP managed to persuade MLAs Gyan Dev Ahuja, Bhawani Singh Rajawat, Taru Rai Kaga and Alka Gurjar from contesting against the party nominees after being denied tickets. In the Congress, former Union minister Mahadev Singh Khandela (Khandela), former Rajasthan minister Babulal Nagar (Dudu), former MLA Nathuram Sinodia (Kishangarh) are among those who have turned rebels on being denied party nominations. They are contesting as independent candidates, who may encroach into the party's vote share. Disciplinary action was taken against some of the leaders, which is a routine process. There will be no impact of any rebel candidate and we will win a majority of the seats, Union minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said. There are 2,294 candidates fighting the elections in which the main contest is between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress. Altogether 3,293 candidates had filed nomination papers. The papers of 420 candidates were rejected after scrutiny while 579 candidates withdrew their nomination. With this, 2294 candidates are left in the field. The BJP is contesting all 200 seats while the Congress has fielded its candidates on 195 seats and entered into alliances on five seats. The Rashtriya Loktantrik Party, formed by independent MLA and Jat leader Hanuman Beniwal, is contesting 58 seats. Former BJP leader Ghanshyam Tiwari's Bharat Vahini Party has fielded 63 candidates. The BSP is contesting 191 seats and the Aam Aadmi Party 143. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje accused Friday the Congress of promoting one family instead of focusing on the country's development. Raje made the remarks at an election rally Friday ahead of the December 7 polls. "The BJP treats the country as its mother but the Congress's mother is Sonia Gandhi. She is more than the Mother India for the party. They believe in worshipping one family than the country," Raje said referring to sloganeering in Bikaner where a Congress leader allegedly asked workers to raise slogans of 'Sonia Gandhi ki Jai' instead of 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'. Raje was campaigning ahead of the assembly polls in Tonk, Bundi, Banswara and Chittorgarh districts. She said the Congress worked to create a divide among different castes in the last 50 years. Raje exuded confidence that saffron will again bloom in Rajasthan riding on the development work and public welfare schemes of the BJP-led state government. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Dubbing the Congress as a "marriage procession without a groom", Union Home Minister and BJP leader Rajnath Singh Friday said his party will be voted back to power in Madhya Pradesh for a fourth straight term on the basis of good work done by its government since 2003. Campaigning for the BJP for the November 28 polls, he accused the Congress of engaging in divisive Rajnath Singh said there was hardly any development in Madhya Pradesh under the Congress rule, but things changed rapidly after the BJP came to power 15 years ago. "Till 2003 there were no roads and power rarely came in the state. After the BJP came to power, development took place at a rapid place," he said, addressing a poll rally at Tiyara in Singrauli district. "And the BJP on the basis of its good governance this time will hit a four (win a fourth straight term)," the Union home minister said. Taking a jibe at the Congress for not declaring its chief ministerial candidate, he dubbed the main opposition party as a "marriage procession without a groom". "There is not a single leader in the party who commands popularity among the people," said the former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. On the contrary, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is very popular and dedicated to the welfare of people, especially the poor, for whom he has launched a large number of schemes, he said. In an apparent reference to a purported video on Muslim votes featuring MP Congress president Kamal Nath, the senior BJP leader said the Rahul Gandhi-headed party has always indulged in the of dividing people. In the purported video, Nath is allegedly asking a group of Muslims to ensure his party gets 90 per cent of votes in their booths. Congress leaders are fighting for their existence either in Chhindwara or Guna, the Union home minister maintained. Chhindwara and Guna are represented in the Lok Sabha by Congress leaders Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia, respectively. Madhya Pradesh will have a single phase polling on November 28 for its 230-member assembly. Counting of votes will take place on December 11. The BJP is seeking a fourth straight term in office in the state, while the Congress is eyeing return to power in its erstwhile bastion after 15 years. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Shiv Sena MP Arvind Sawant said Friday his party is pushing for construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya because it was promised by the BJP ahead of elections. Speaking to a channel on-board a flight to Uttar Pradesh, he said people of the country were promised that a Ram temple will be constructed in Ayodhya once the BJP comes to power at the Centre. Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray will visit Ayodhya Saturday amid a clamour among Hindu outfits for bringing an ordinance to build Ram Temple. The Sena, which is part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) but has had strained ties with ally BJP, has demanded the Centre come out with an ordinance and declare a date for the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya. "We have promised to the people of the country that once we come to power Ram mandir will be constructed at Ayodhya," Sawant said. "We are forgetting that promise. Therefore, Uddhav ji has taken this initiative. We have given the slogan 'Har Hindu ki yahi pukaar, pehle mandir phir sarkar'," he added. Meanwhile, 12 Vibhag Pramukhs/Vibhag Sanghataks (office-bearers) of the party have been tasked with organising "maha aartis" (grand prayers) simultaneously at 6 pm Saturday at several temples in Mumbai to coincide with Thackeray's Ayodhya visit. A Sena functionary, requesting anonymity, said the district administration in Ayodhya has denied permission to Thackeray to hold a rally on November 25 in the holy town of Uttar Pradesh. "Uddhav ji will perform an evening maha aarti on the banks of river Sarayu on November 24 and the next day will visit the site of Ram temple in Ayodhya," he said. The local administration has imposed CrPC section 144 in Ayodhya, restricting assembly of people, he said. Meanwhile, former Sena MLC Ghanshyam Dube said before expanding its base in North India, the Sena should make Hindi- speaking people living in Mumbai feel safe. Speaking to reporters in Vidhan Bhavan Thursday, he disclosed Sena founder Bal Thackeray had confided in him that he wanted to expand the Sena's support base in North India. "However, after that the Sena leadership, for some strange reasons, did not trust me to do the job. Before the Ayodhya visit, the Sena should have first tried to make the North Indian community feel at home whose generations have lived here," Dube said. According to a senior BJP minister in Maharashtra,the Sena is waiting for the results of assembly polls in three BJP -ruled states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh before taking a decision on continuing in the NDA. The results will be announced on December 11. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) DMK President MK Stalin Friday alleged the relief activity was "not satisfactory" in the Cauvery delta areas that were ravaged by Cyclone Gaja last week. The Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly demanded that Chief Minister K Palaniswami convene a meeting of stakeholders from the region to take forward the relief activities in an effective manner. He also said Palaniswami should stay put in the delta region to oversee the relief work. "The people in the delta region have lost their livelihood. The relief work is not satisfactory for them. Palaniswami should actually stay there and expedite and regulate the relief activities," he told reporters here. Further, Palaniswami should convene a meeting of stakeholders in the delta region--farmers' and political parties' representatives and welfare organisations, and discuss further streamlining and expediting the relief and rehabilitation efforts, he added. Cyclone Gaja had crossed the Tamil Nadu coast between Nagapattinam and Vedaranyam on November 16, claiming 63 lives and leaving behind a trail of destruction, severely affecting the farming, fishing and power sectors. Nagapattinam, Thanjavur, Tiruvarur and Pudukottai districts had suffered the worst damage. Tamil Nadu government has already released Rs 1,000 crore as interim measure to aid the relief and rehabilitation efforts, even as Palaniswami met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi on Thursday seeking a Rs 14,910 crore relief package. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Gautam Buddh Nagar administration has recovered nearly Rs 16 crore pending revenue from a defaulter builders firm, officials said Friday. A recovery certificate was issued against the SDS Infracon Private Limited over pending revenue of Rs 40 crore by the Yamuna Expressway Authority, the officials said. "The director of the company handed over a cheque of Rs 15.63 lakh to Additional District Officer of Finance and Revenue Keshav Kumar last night," Sub-Divisional Magistrate Rajpal Singh said. He said the matter had moved the Allahabad High Court, which ordered the defaulting firm to clear the dues by November 28. "The company is yet to clear the remaining amount, failing which legal action, including arresting of defaulters, attachment and auctioning of properties could be done," he said. SDS Infracon Pvt Ltd was earlier also accused of not opening an escrow account from the investors' money for a housing project and instead diverting the funds into other projects. It had allegedly delayed installments worth crores to the Yamuna Expressway Authority for land allotment. Meanwhile, District Magistrate Brajesh Narain Singh said the administration was using all instruments given in revenue courts to get the recoveries done in such cases including going public with identities, naming and shaming the defaulters. "The properties, both movable and immovable, of the defaulters will be attached and auction to recover the revenue. They will also be held and kept in Tehsil lock-ups, whoever they are. Those with the misconception that they are above the law will be booked," he told PTI. Singh said the administration will make more organised attempts in future to ensure recoveries from defaulters including rogue builders. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress on Friday sought to the blame the BJP for lowering public discourse in the country and said the onus of maintaining civilised debate lies with the ruling party. The party's reaction came following criticism of remarks by its leader Raj Babbar who had compared the Rupee's falling value against the US dollar with the age of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's mother. Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari alleged that a spate of "offensive" statements against former and current Congress presidents had emanated from the BJP leaders. "The statements which have emanated from the Prime Minister and downwards. Personal, offensive, salacious statements against the former Congress president, the current Congress president. It assaults me to repeat those statements but people who have made those statements, they have been rewarded with Rajya Sabha (nomination)," he told reporters at the party office here. He said that Congress believes that the public discourse should be civilised but the ruling party has a bigger role to play in it "We have always believed and we continue to believe that we must keep the public discourse civilised. But, the responsibility of keeping the public discourse civilised lies, in addition to the opposition, principally on the ruling party that is the BJP," Tewari told reporters at the party office here," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) S&P Global Ratings has revised downwards the credit outlook on GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd (GHIAL) to 'stable' from 'positive', citing that higher spending and lower tariffs could push debt levels higher. However, the agency has affirmed the 'BB+' long-term credit rating on the airport operator as well as its outstanding senior secured notes. Generally, 'BB+' indicates relatively less vulnerability of defaults. "The outlook revision reflects our view that GHIAL's expanded capital expenditure (capex) plans will result in higher leverage than we expected over the next two to three years," S&P Ratings said in a release Thursday. It noted that regulatory uncertainties would remain elevated for the airport operator, given continuing tariff reset delays and timing uncertainty of capex recovery. GHIAL operates the Hyderabad international airport. "The stable outlook reflects our view that GHIAL will manage the execution risks on its enlarged capital spending plans and have strong passenger growth over the next 12-24 months," the release said. Further, the rating agency said that the airport operator's higher spending and lower tariffs would result in negative free operating cash flows of about Rs 4 billion (Rs 400 crore) in fiscal 2019 and rise to more than Rs 16 billion (Rs 1,600 crore) by fiscal 2021. "As a result, we expect the company's net debt to increase to close to Rs 50 billion (Rs 5,000 crore) by fiscal 2021, from Rs 20 billion (Rs 2,000 crore) in fiscal 2018. "We believe the weakening credit and liquidity profile of most major Indian airlines could put pressure on GHIAL's working capital, potentially increasing leverage," the release noted. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) / -- Excellent medical team, clinical outcomes, affordable price range makes this possible Sahyadri Hospitals added another feather in its cap by conducting 100th liver transplant at its Deccan Unit. The liver transplant was conducted on a 48-year-old male from Atpadi, Sangli who was suffering from end stage liver cirrhosis. Hepatobilliary and Liver Transplant Surgeons Dr. Bipin Vibhute, Dr. Dinesh Zirpe, Dr. Shailesh Sable; Transplant Anaesthetist - Dr. Dinesh Babu, Dr. Manish Phatak; Chief Consultant Liver ICU Dr. Chetan Pandey, Coordinators - Mr. Arun Ashokan, Mr. Aman and Mr. Rahul Tambe and Medical Social Worker Ms. Sharmila Padhye were the team who made this possible. (Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/591161/1463896_Sahyadri_Logo.jpg ) Dr. Sunil Rao said, "This is an extremely proud moment for us as we celebrate 100 lives with liver transplants in span of just 2.5 years. We are happy that we not only achieved this milestone, but we have been able to transform the lives." He further said, "Availability of well-trained medical team under the leadership of Dr. Vibhute, excellent clinical outcomes and affordable price points & availability of service helped us. We have made liver transplant service available not only in Pune but also in Nashik and Aurangabad, and have extended Liver OPDs at tier 2 & 3 cities like Satara, Karad, Kolhapur, Sangli, Baramati, Ahmednagar and Indapur."Dr. Sunil Rao added that while saluting the donors and their families, we congratulate our team of doctors, staff members and also ZTCC and Traffic Police who have played a key role in achieving this significant milestone. Dr. Bipin Vibhute, Hepatobilliary and Liver Transplant Surgeon Sahyadri Hospitals, said, "We are proud to have serviced so many patients with 89%* success rates in such a small period. During this journey, apart from challenging Liver Transplants, we have also been able to do some rare surgeries like Kidney-Pancreas Transplants, maximum number of Paediatric Liver Transplants in Maharashtra and simultaneous Liver, Kidney and Pancreas Transplant and donor Liver retrieval from a 84-year-old man, which was first case reported in the state." Continuing further on medical milestones, Dr. Vibhute said, "We have also achieved some striking milestones like Liver harvesting and successful transplantation from a dengue positive donor; it was reported as the first such case in Asia, besides, for the first time in India, Sahyadri retrieved Liver from a brain dead Kidney Transplant recipient." Dr. Manish Pathak, Transplant Anaesthetist, said, "This has been possible because of the state-of-the-art Infrastructure, dedicated team of doctors like Dr. Bipin Vibhute, Dr. Dinesh Babu, Dr. Dinesh Zirpe, Dr. Shailesh Sable, Dr. Sandeep Kulkarni and trained staff members and comprehensive medical care to the patients across the entire spectrum of liver disorders. In addition, a dedicated Liver ICU consists of 5 bedded ICU with expert team exclusively for liver transplants, a dedicated rehab team to ensure quicker and better post-surgery recovery for the liver transplant patient, which will help us cutting down the extra expense post-surgery." Dr. Ketan Apte, Head Sahyadri Hospitals Deccan, Hadapsar and Nagar Road, said, "I want to congratulate the team of doctors who not only did the transplants successfully but focused on fast track recovery and discharge of the patient. Having achieved this major milestone, our journey forward will be more ambitious as we step up organ donation awareness activities. We salute all those donors and their families who have made this possible with their noble deed. As a part of our organ donation awareness program, we recently conducted World's Largest Organ Donation Drive, in association with Rotary District 3131, which also got registered into Guinness World Records for achieving Maximum Online Organ Donation pledges in 8 hours. We are happy that we were a part of the resounding success." About Sahyadri Hospitals: Sahyadri Hospitals is the largest chain of hospitals in Maharashtra with 8 hospitals across three cities of Pune, Nashik and Karad. The hospital chain has over 900 beds, 1200 clinicians and 2300 support staff providing round the clock healthcare. To know more: http:ahyadrihospital. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Friday asked the to come out with an ordinance and declare a date for the construction of the in Ayodhya. While slamming the BJP, the Sena said those in power should be proud of Shiv Sainiks who had "destroyed Babur's raj in Ram Janmabhoomi". The Babri Masjid was built in Ayodhya n the orders of Mughal emperor Babur. In an editorial in party mouthpiece 'Saamana', the Sena said it neither moves around with a begging bowl asking for votes in the name of Lord Ram nor does it indulge in "jumlebaazi" (rhetoric) during polls. Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray is scheduled to visit Ayodhya on November 25 as part of his party's push to build a there. "Why did those, who call themselves pro-Hindutva, start getting a stomach ache when we announced our plans of going to Ayodhya? We are not going there for political purposes," the Sena said in the editorial. It claimed the party had not given the slogan "Chalo Ayodhya", but Shiv Sainiks were going there for Lord Ram's darshan and also because Ayodhya is "nobody's private place". "There is no Ram raj there now, but the raj of the Supreme Court. However, in 1992, Balasaheb's Shiv Sainiks had destroyed Babur's raj in Ram Janmabhoomi. Instead of being scared and jealous of such Sainiks, those in power should be proud of them," the Sena editorial claimed. It further said that instead of casting aspersions on the motive of Sainiks going to Ayodhya, the government should declare a date for the construction of the temple and put all suspicions to rest. "We ask you ask once again, why don't you declare a date for the construction of the If the issue of Ram temple goes out of your hands, in 2019, apart from your 'rozi-roti' (livelihood), many people's tongues too will become handicapped," the editorial warned. "Instead of doing everything to stop the Sena, we ask again, why don't you come out with an ordinance and declare a date for the construction of the temple," the editorial stated. Some unidentified gunmen in Pakistan opened fire near the Chinese consulate in Karachi, media reports said. An explosion, the nature of which was not immediately known, was also heard in Clifton area, Dawn reported. Heavy contingents of police and paramilitary forces have been deployed in the area after an exchange of fire between a security guard and unknown assailants, it said. The area, considered a red zone, is heavily guarded. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Punjab cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu wrote to Union minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday and hailed the Centre's decision to develop the Kartarpur Sahib corridor. The Centre Thursday said it will develop and build the corridor from Punjab's Gurdaspur district to the International Border to facilitate Indian pilgrims to visit Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur in Pakistan. Hailing the Centre, Sidhu in the letter said, "As we move down this road, and write a new chapter of faith and love for the region, I pray and hope that this enterprise will yield undeniable and implicit change and thaw in the relations, that it will build bridges, burn animosity and will act like a soothing balm for two neighbouring countries." He said he was extremely grateful and indebted for the steps initiated as a Sikh devotee and as a man committed to the cause of Punjab and its people. This has been a long standing demand of the Sikh community across the globe and a step in this direction has brought a new ray of hope among pilgrims who anxiously await to pay obeisance at the historic Gurdwara Sahib across the border, he said. "A few months ago, I had met you to express my concern that the Government of India must take up this initiative by formally writing to your Pakistan counterparts as this would be a great service to the community," he said in the letter. These positive steps by both the nations are a great respite for the followers of guru's timeless teachings and for the people of Punjab, he said. "I wish that the Government of India writes formally to Pakistan on visa and other related issues for easy passage for pilgrims once the corridor is complete," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least 31 people including three Sikhs were killed and more than 40 others injured when a powerful bomb blast ripped through a busy market outside a religious seminary in Pakistan's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Friday, officials said. The explosive material was planted in a bike in the Friday Market (Juma Bazar) near an imambargah, a Shia religious place, in Orakzai tribal district's Kalaya area, bordering Afghanistan. People were buying warm clothes when the bomb went off, officials said. At least 31 people were killed while more than 40 others injured, district administration officials as saying. "Three Sikh traders and three children were also among the dead in the Orakzai blast," Deputy Commissioner of Orakzai Tribal district Khalid Iqbal told PTI. Officials said that most of the victims were minority Shia Muslims, who in the past were also targeted in the area. "Three children were among those killed. The remote-controlled bomb was attached to a motorcycle," officials said. The area has been cordoned off and investigation into the incident is under way. An emergency has been declared in the region's hospitals to handle the situation. Prime Minister Imran Khan strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Orakzai tribal area and said: "My prayers go to the victims & their families". "Let there be no doubt in anyone's mind that we will crush the terrorists, whatever it takes," he said in a tweet. Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari blamed the US failure in Afghanistan for the attack and warned Pakistan to be prepared for more such incidents. She condemned the horrific terror attack. "As the US fails in Afghanistan, Pakistan should be prepared for fallout and we must ensure greater security for our tribal areas especially protection of our people," she tweeted. No group claimed responsibility of the attack but the Taliban militants often carry out such attacks. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police are on high alert following the Orakzai blast and a separate attack on the Chinese Consulate in Karachi on Friday morning. "Our enemies are not happy with peace in the province," provincial Chief Minister Mehmood Khan said after the attack. It was the second attack on Friday as security forces foiled a bid by militants to enter the Chinese consulate in Karachi and killed three attackers. In 2011, 30 people including 10 cops, were killed and over 50 injured when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden van into the building of the Communication and Works Department. Orakzai, a terror hotbed, is one of the seven semi-autonomous tribal regions of Pakistan which has a porus border with Afghanistan. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least 32 people, including three Pakistani-Sikhs, were killed and more than 40 others injured on Friday when a suicide bomber triggered a powerful bomb blast at a busy market outside a religious seminary in the country's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, police said. According to initial investigation, an improvised explosive device was planted in a bike that was used for transporting vegetables to the popular Friday Market (Juma Bazar) near an imambargah, a Shia religious place, in Orakzai tribal district's Kalaya area, bordering Afghanistan. "This is a Friday bazaar, where hundreds of people had gathered for groceries," Deputy Commissioner Khalid Iqbal said. "The ground is then used for Friday prayers as well," he added. At least 32 people were killed while more than 40 others injured, Dawn quoted district administration officials as saying. "Three Sikh traders and three children were also among the dead in the Orakzai blast," Iqbal told PTI. The minority Sikh community in the area was previously displaced by the Taliban that controlled the region prior to the military operation in 2010, Samaa TV reported. Officials said that most of the victims were minority Shia Muslims, who in the past were also targeted in the area. "Three children were among those killed. The remote-controlled bomb was attached to a motorcycle," officials said. "I was buying vegetables at a distance from bomb site," Karam Khan, who accompanied an injured person to the hospital in Kohat, said. "There was a huge explosion and I woke up with blood splashed all over the place and there were body parts everywhere," he said about the gory scene. The area has been cordoned off and investigation into the incident is under way. An emergency has been declared in the region's hospitals to handle the situation. The explosion in lower Orakzai is the second terror attack in Pakistan on Friday. Earlier this morning, an attack targeting the Chinese consulate in Karachi's Clifton area was foiled by security forces. Four people, including two security personnel and two civilians were killed in the attack. Three terrorists were also gunned down. Prime Minister Imran Khan strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Orakzai tribal area and said: "My prayers go to the victims & their families". "Let there be no doubt in anyone's mind that we will crush the terrorists, whatever it takes," he said in a tweet. Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari blamed the US failure in Afghanistan for the attack and warned Pakistan to be prepared for more such incidents. She condemned the horrific terror attack. "As the US fails in Afghanistan, Pakistan should be prepared for fallout and we must ensure greater security for our tribal areas especially protection of our people," she tweeted. No group claimed responsibility of the attack so far but the Taliban militants often carry out such attacks. "Our enemies are not happy with peace in the province," provincial Chief Minister Mehmood Khan said while condemning the attack. In 2011, 30 people including 10 cops, were killed and over 50 injured when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden van into the building of the Communication and Works Department. Orakzai, a terror hotbed, is one of the seven semi-autonomous tribal regions of Pakistan which has a porus border with Afghanistan. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a blow to Pakistan-based Lashker-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen, six militants, including a terrorist involved in planning journalist Shujaat Bukhari's murder and three commanders, were killed in an early morning encounter at Bijbehara in South Kashmir, police said. The security forces had launched an operation in the foothills of Wagahama Suktipora Thursday night following information about the presence of militants in a hideout there, they said. The police said there was firing from a house and the six militants were killed when they were trying to escape under the cover of darkness in the ensuing encounter. "It was a swift operation based on intelligence inputs provided from the ground," Inspector General of Police (Kashmir range) Swayam Prakash Pani said here after the encounter ended. The terrorists were identified by the police as Azad Ahmad Malik of Arwani in Bijbehara, Unais Shafi of Takiya Maqbool Shah, Bijbehara, Basit Ishtiyaq of Pushwara Anantnag, Atif Najar of Waghama Bijbehara, Firdous Ahmad of Muchpuna Pulwama and Shahid Bashir of Kawni Awantipora. "It was a combined group of Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashker-e-Taiba terror groups. Unais Shafi and Basit Ishtiyaq, as per police records, were with the HM and Unais was HM's commander of Anantnag district. The others were with the LeT," police spokesman said. "All the six terrorists were wanted by the law for their complicity in a series of terror crimes, including attack on security establishments and civilian atrocities," he said. The police said Azad Ahmad Malik alias Azad Dada, who was the district commander of LeT Anantnag, had escaped from an encounter site at Khudwani Kulgam in April this year along with one more associate. "Azad was a close associate of absconding accused Naveed Jatt and was wanted in the assassination of journalist Shujaat Bukhari and his security personnel. In this case, a hue and cry notice was issued against the him along with three others on the basis of material evidence collected," the spokesman said. Bukhari was killed by Lashker-e-Taiba militants on June 14 this year during the holy month of Ramzan at Lal Chowk while he was on his way to break his fast. The police spokesman said a huge quantity of arms and ammunition, including four AK-47 rifles and one Insas rifle, were recovered from the site of encounter. All materials were taken in the case records for further investigation, he said. The police advised citizens not to venture inside the encounter zone as the area could be dangerous due to stray explosive materials. They requested the people to cooperate with the police till the area was completely sanitised and cleared of all the explosives materials, if any. Last month, seven civilians were killed in Kulgam in South Kashmir when they pelted stones at security forces and later thronged an encounter site which was not sanitised. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a major success, security forces Friday shot dead six Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militants during an encounter in forest area of Anantnag district in Jammu and Kashmir, police said. "In one of the most successful operations this year, six Lashkar militants were killed in an encounter with security forces in Wagahama area of Bijbehara in Anantnag district," a police spokesman said. The security forces had launched an operation in the foothills of Wagahama Suktipora on Thursday night following information about presence of militants at a hideout there, he said. "The search operation turned into an encounter when the hiding militants opened firing on the security forces. In the retaliatory action, six militants were killed and six weapons recovered from the hideout," he added. The slain militants were identified as Azad Malik, Unais Shafi, Shahid Bashir, Basit Ishtiyaq, Aqib Najar and Firdous Najar, all local residents, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Six militants were Friday killed in an encounter with security forces in Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir, officials said. An army official said exchange of fire between security forces and militants began in the early hours in Bijbehara area of the district. Six militants were killed in the operation and weapons were recovered from the spot, he said. Further details of the incident were awaited, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi Friday attacked TRS chief and caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao for running a "family rule" in Telangana and "failing" to respond to the aspirations of people of the state. In a show of strength by the Congress-led opposition alliance, leaders of its constituents-- the TDP, Telangana Jana Samiti and CPI-- shared the dais with them at an election rally at Medchal on the city's outskirts. Sonia Gandhi, on her maiden visit to Telangana after the formation of the state in June 2014, recalled the problems the Congress party faced due to its decision to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh. She said despite being aware of adverse political consequences, the Congress went ahead and created Telangana, and paid the price in the elections that followed. "It (carving out Telangana) was not an easy task. It was no small decision. But former prime minister Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party decided to form Telangana state," she told the rally. The Congress intends to use its role in the creation of Telangana as a major election plank to blunt Rao's claim that a protracted agitation led by him forced the Centre's hand. The decision to field Sonia Gandhi, who has hardly addressed an election meeting in a long time, apparently stemmed from the Congress's desire to appeal to the pro- Telangana sentiments of the voters. "Chief Minister Rao has cared only for himself and his own people leaving the child (Telangana) to suffer. "Dalits, adivasis, minorities, backward classes, women and students were all neglected. The chief minister should tell us what promises he made to them and he kept," she said. She said she was "very sad" that development which was expected after the state's formation had not happened under the TRS dispensation which disappointed youth by its failure to provide them jobs. Farmer suicides were taking place and agriculturists were still facing water scarcity, the UPA chairperson said. "The TRS government failed to fulfil the aspirations of the people of the state," she said, adding it did not implement the land acquisition law enacted by the UPA government. The people did not reap full benefit of the UPA dispensation's flagship rural employment scheme MNREGA under Rao's government, she said. "Through this meeting I appeal to you to vote for the Congress and allied parties, and ensure their victory. Extend your support for the development of Telangana," she said even as she reaffirmed the Congress party's commitment to special category status for Andhra Pradesh. Congress chief Rahul Gandhi attacked Chandrasekhar Rao, saying "only one man ran Telangana for the last five years. He did whatever came to his mind for his family". "I am asking what did the TRS government do for dalits, tribals, backward classes...what promises were fulifilled?" he said and predicted that the TRS rule was all set to end. The Congress leader said it was to provide jobs to the unemployed youth and to address the problems of farmers that the Congress had formed an alliance with the TDP, CPI and the TJS. "The alliance government will work for the people and not for one person. The dreams for which you fought (for creation of Telangana) the CM did not fulfil. This alliance with fulfil them," he said. In her speech, Sonia assailed Rao for trying to perpetuate family rule. "What did the TRS government do for women and youth of Telangana in the past four years? If at all there was any development, it was only of one family (of KCR)," she said. Comparing Telangana to a newborn baby, the UPA chairperson said every mother wishes her children to grow up well. "But I feel sad when I see the people of Telangana (suffer) and the state of affairs here," she said, seeking to strike an emotional chord with the people of the state. Lok Sabha member Konda Vishweshwar Reddy, who quit the TRS a few days ago citing "disappointment" with the party leadership, formally joined the Congress at the rally. Though TDP president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu was not present at the rally, the party was represented by its Telangana unit chief L Ramana. CPI state secretary Chada Venkat Reddy and TJS chief M Kodandaram besides Ramana addressed the rally. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said Friday that a special monitoring team would be set up to prepare and implement development plans for Mewat area. In this team, Commissioner, GurugramDivision and the district's Deputy Commissioner would be included along with senior officers of the Additional Chief Secretary level to effectively monitor and implement the schemes, an official release said. The chief minister was addressing the officers and the representatives of steel industries of the country, in a review meeting, regarding development works in Nuh here Friday evening, it said. Union Minister of Steel Chaudhary Birender Singh was also present in the meeting. "There is a need to do a lot for improving the living standard of the people, along with development works inNuh. And, this can only be done by a good leader and a good team," the release quoted the chief minister as having said. Therefore, a special monitoring team is being appointed here and entrusted with the major responsibility of bringing change, he said. He said that the team of this monitoring group would monitor all infrastructural, educational, health and agricultural facilities. Khattar said there is a huge shortage of employees in all departments in Mewat area and whoeveris appointed here from outside the district, they immediately try to seek transfer. "For the purpose, a separate cadre had been made for the district. However now, this will also be ensured that afternew recruitments, serving (in Mewat-Nuh) would be made mandatory for some years in this district.At the same time, facilities for present employees and officers posted here would also be increased," he said. The chief minister asked all the officers and employees to take the work as mission for the development of Mewat area. "Haryana's per capita income is Rs 2.41 lakh and for Gurugram district alone, the per capita income is Rs 6 lakh per annum, whereas that of the people of Mewat is only Rs 60,000 per annum. We have to remove such a huge difference between two closely located districts," he said, according to the release. The chief minister directed the officers to explore the possibility of setting up industries here. "We will also work to remove the reluctance of industrialists to come here. We will seek help of NGOs and take people into confidence," he said. While presenting draft of the development of the area, he said that apart from the budget provided to the district, the state government would provide for additional budget for the district. Khattar said that the construction of Kundli Manesar Palwal Expressway (KMP), has opened new doors of development here. "This district is also included in the economic corridor being developed and a different proposal would be prepared for it. Apart from this, Gurugram-Alwar Highway would also pass through it which open new path of development. "The industries of Sohna would come to Nuh also. The work of construction of Mewat canal would be expedited to deal with the water scarcity in the area. 100 cusecs of waterpipelines are being brought for Mewat and in future, there is also a plan to increase it to 300 cusecs," he said. He said that there is a large market in Delhi for fruits, flowers and vegetables from the villages of Mewat for which special clusters have been created. He directed the officers to complete all farm-based schemes at the earliest. Speaking on the occasion, Birender Singh said that this district is the sole district of Haryana which is included in the 115 backward districts of the country. If we make concrete decisions about the area of Mewat, then it would benefit the whole state, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Budget carrier SpiceJet Friday launched a daily direct flight service to Hong Kong from New Delhi, seeking to tap the growing business and leisure travel demand, besides eyeing the Indian students community there. Following the introduction of the new service, SpiceJet offers over 2,500 seats per week on the Delhi-Hong Kong-Delhi route, which will be serviced by the latest 189-seater Boeing 737 Max plane, the airline said in a release. With this, SpiceJet has become the only domestic budget carrier operating a direct flight on the route, it added. "We are delighted to launch our direct flight on the Delhi-Hong Kong route. We see tremendous potential in this sector. We have already witnessed a huge demand on this sector and foresee that this will only grow in the coming days," said Shilpa Bhatia, chief sales and revenue officer, SpiceJet. Besides Hong Kong, the Gurugram-based airline also flies to Colombo, Dubai, Dhaka, Kabul, Male and Muscat. Passengers flying to Delhi will now be able to access SpiceJet's 48 connections within India, the release said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) SriLankan Airlines plans to connect more Indian cities with Colombo as India is an important market for the carrier, a senior official said Friday. Currently, the national carrier of Sri Lanka operates 122 flights every week from 13 destinations in India. "India will be an important market for expansion for the airline... we plan to fly to more destinations (in India)," SriLankan Airlines' Manager (North India) Chinthaka Weerasinghe said. He was speaking at a briefing here to mark the airline's 25 years of operations in India. The carrier commenced its flights to the national capital in June 1993. The airline is also working with STIC Travels, its General Sales Agent (GSA), and Sri Lanka Tourism to further increase the number of air travellers to the country. It has a code share agreement with Air India. Code sharing allows an airline to book its passengers on its partner carriers and provide seamless travel to destinations where it has no presence. The Sri Lankan carrier has services to Chennai and Kochi, among other destinations. As per its website, SriLankan Airlines has a fleet of 27 Airbus planes, including 13 A330 aircraft. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actor Oscar Isaac says the upcoming "Star Wars: Episode IX" deals with actor Carrie Fisher's death in a "really beautiful way". Fisher, who played Princess Leia in the film series, died in December 2016. To make her a part of the final installment of the Skywalker saga, the makers had said they will be using previously unreleased footage shot from "Star Wars: The Force Awakens". In an interview with Daily Beast, Isaac, 39, said, "The story deals with that quite a bit. It's a strange thing to be on the set and to be speaking of Leia and having Carrie not be around. There's definitely some pain in that. "... It deals with the amazing character that Carrie created in a really beautiful way," he added. The actor, who plays Poe Dameron, further explained that "there's a looseness and an energy to the way that we're shooting this that feels very different". "It's been really fun being back with JJ (Abrams) with all of us working in a really close way. I just feel like there's an element of almost senioritis, you know?" Isaac said. "Since everything just feels way looser and people aren't taking it quite as seriously, but still just having a lot of fun. I think that that energy is gonna translate to a really great movie," he added. "Star Wars: Episode IX", which will once again feature Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Lupita Nyong'o and Domhnall Gleeson, is set to be released in December 2019. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Sabarimala shrine witnessed a steady flow of devotees Friday, even as Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan came out in support of a senior IPS officer who was allegedly embroiled in a spat with Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan two days ago. Backing Superintendent of Police Yatish Chandra, who has been facing backlash from right-wing activists for allegedly insulting Radhakrishnan, Vijayan alleged the Sangh Parivar was "attacking sincere officers to demoralise them." Amid the stand-off over entry of women of menstrual age into the Lord Ayyappa temple, the State government informed the High Court that two days could be set apart for women pilgrims of all ages to offer prayers at the shrine. The suggestion was made when the court was hearing a petition moved by four young women devotees seeking protection for women of all age groups to offer prayers at the shrine besides facilities for smooth pilgrimage in the wake of the recent Supreme Court judgement. The footfalls at the Sabarimala temple, which had witnessed protests against the state government's decision to implement the top court verdict allowing entry of women of menstrual age into the shrine, picked up on Friday. The police said the temple, which was opened on November 16 for the over-two-month-long pilgrimage season, witnessed comparatively more crowd than on other days. "We are yet to collate the details," an official at Pamaba police control room told PTI. Coming out in support of SP Yatish Chandra, Vijayan said the police officer was explaining the "peculiar situation of Sabarimala" to the union minister. The Bharatiya Janata Party and right-wing activists observed a dawn-to-dusk bandh in Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, stopping Kerala State Road Transport buses plying through the district, protesting the alleged misbehaviour of the officer. "Only VIP vehicles are allowed to Pamba from Nilackal. This is due to the peculiar situation at Sabarimala. However, the people accompanying the union minister wanted their private vehicles to be allowed till Pamba. The officer was politely explaining the situation," Vijayan told reporters at Thiruvanathapuram. "The Sangh Parivar has been attacking police officials who have been doing sincere work to demoralise them," Vijayan said. Real devotees would never face any issues at Sabarimala, he said, adding that the restrictions were only for the safety and security of the pilgrims. "A real devotee will never face any kind of trouble at Sabarimala. However, it's the responsibility of the police to detain those who come to the shrine to create trouble. If someone tries to hamper the peace there, police will have to intervene," he said. He rejected media reports that the Kerala High Court had slammed the government and police for its "high-handedness." Meanwhile, BJP general secretary K Surendran, whose remand has been extended for 14 more days, alleged that the office of the Chief Minister has been "unleashing" an "orchestrated" campaign to keep him behind bars. He was taken into custody earlier this week from Nilackal, the base camp of Sabarimala, after he refused to go back despite the police request. Sixtynine protesters were arrested after they had held a "nama japam" (chanting Lord Ayyappa mantras) inside the temple complex late on Sunday, defying prohibitory orders. The Pathanamthitta district administration has extended prohibitory orders clamped in Sabarimala and surrounding areas till November 26. Though over 50 days have gone by since the Supreme Court delivered its historic verdict, no woman or girl in the traditionally barred age group of 10-50 has been able to set foot in the hallowed precincts of the shrine. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday met Laotian Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith here and discussed bilateral relations and areas of mutual interest and cooperation as they resolved to strengthen ties through political dialogue and increased trade and investment. Swaraj assured Sisoulith that India will stand by Laos in its quest for development and growth and will be happy to assist through soft loan projects aimed at building the country's infrastructure including roads, agriculture & irrigation, IT, human resource development and other sectors, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement. "Both agreed that India and Laos enjoy excellent bilateral relations which need to be strengthened further," the MEA said. Earlier, Swaraj met her Laotian counterpart Saleumxay Kommasith and held wide-ranging talks to enhance cooperation in key areas. Swaraj, who is in Laos on a two-day visit, co-chaired the ninth Joint Commission Meeting with Kommasith as the two ministers laid out a roadmap for collaboration and partnership. They held constructive discussions covering cooperation in agriculture, trade and investment, defence, education, culture, information technology, energy and mining, MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said. "Swaraj offered to share India's expertise and experience towards supporting developmental needs of Laos, taking the total offer of grant and line of credit proposal to USD 250 million," Kumar said. On Thursday, she attended an Indian community event here and interacted with participants. She asked the community to work towards contributing to the increase of bilateral contacts between India and Laos especially in the commercial and cultural fields. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday met her Laotian counterpart Saleumxay Kommasith and held wide-ranging talks to enhance cooperation in key areas like defence, trade, energy and agriculture. Swaraj, who is in Laos on a two-day visit, co-chaired the 9th Joint Commission Meeting with Kommasith as the two leaders laid out the roadmap for cooperation and partnership. The ministers held wide-ranging discussions covering cooperation in agriculture, trade and investment, defence, education, culture, Information Technology, energy and mining, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said. Swaraj and Kommasith had constructive discussions during the meeting, he said in a tweet. "Swaraj offered to share India's expertise and experience towards supporting developmental needs of Laos, taking the total offer of grant and line of credit proposal to USD 250 million," Kumar said. On Thursday, she attended an Indian community event here and interacted with participants. During her two-day visit, Swaraj will also call on Laos Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Sweden's Social Democrat leader Stefan Lofven was handed a fresh chance to form a government Friday after the leader of the conservative Moderates party failed to build a ruling coalition following an inconclusive October election. Andreas Norlen, speaker of the Swedish parliament, turned again to interim prime minister Lofven after the leader of the conservative Moderates party Ulf Kristersson proved unable to break the deadlock. Both the two main parties have tried and failed to form a ruling coalition in parliament since the September 9 election. Lofven's leftwing bloc holds 144 parliamentary seats, just one more than the centre-right Alliance: but that is not enough for a ruling coalition in the 349-seat Riksdag, where the threshold is 175. Neither side is willing to accept the far-right, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats as a coalition partner. With 62 seats, they are now the third-largest party in the Riksdag. The centre-right and far-right together brought down Lofven's previous administration in a no-confidence vote at the end of September, though he has stayed on as caretaker prime minister. "For the citizens, it's time for this situation to end," he said Norlen on Friday, while holding out hope that a new prime minister would be appointed before the December 12 vote on the budget. In Sweden, the speaker of parliament has four attempts to task a candidate to form a government that parliament will accept. But if all four attempts fail then new elections must be held. So far, parliament has rejected one proposed minority government. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A woman pretending to be a former South Korean first lady was arrested Friday on suspicion of swindling a politician out of nearly USD 400,000, a report said. Claiming to be late president Roh Moo-hyun's widow Kwon Yang-sook, the fraudster allegedly persuaded the then mayor of Gwangju to transfer her 450 million won (USD 398,000), saying she needed it for her daughter and promising to repay it quickly. At the time Yoon Jang-hyun, a member of the Democratic party of both Roh and current President Moon Jae-in, was seeking the organisation's nomination for a second term as leader of the southern city. Corruption allegations are commonplace in South Korean politics, and its last two presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye are both serving prison sentences for graft. Roh himself committed suicide by jumping off a cliff in 2009 after he was questioned over a corruption case involving Kwon. Her alleged impersonator texted around 10 prominent figures in Gwangju in December but Yoon was the only one to pay out, Yonhap agency reported. In the event he did not secure the mayoral nomination and has left the political scene. Friday's arrest came after a man was held earlier this week on charges of pretending to be close to a presidential aide in charge of managing Moon's supposed slush funds. The 65-year-old allegedly persuaded his victim to hand over 550 million won, promising him some of the proceeds of bars of gold bullion he claimed were stashed in a secret warehouse. Moon -- who previously worked as a top aide to Roh -- last month warned South Koreans against people impersonating his family or staff. "If you meet anyone who calls for money, citing the names of presidential relatives or Blue House officials, consider all of them as swindlers and report them immediately to authorities," he said in a statement. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tej Pratap Yadav, RJD leader and elder son of former Bihar Chief Ministers Lalu Prasad and Rabri Devi, has dropped a fresh hint that he was in no mood to patch up with Aishwarya Rai, his wife for six months from whom he has sought a divorce much to the chagrin of both families. The mercurial former state minister took to twitter late Thursday night for expressing his sentiments where he cryptically wrote a stanza from a verse composed by 16th century poet Abdul Rahim Khan-e-Khana - "tute se phir na jute, jute ganth pari jaay". The couplet, of which the above stanza is the second part, implies - may the thread of love never be broken. If it gets snapped it cannot be mended and any attempt to do so results in knots. Twitterati latched on to the cue, coming up with advice to the temperamental politician who has been away from home for more than a fortnight, not turning up for festivals like Deepawali and Chhath, and roaming around in pilgrimage towns like Vindhyachal, Varanasi, Vrindavan and Haridwar. Earlier this week, Rabri Devi had visited New Delhi to appear before a court in connection with a money laundering case and upon return she had told journalists that her elder son had come to meet her and his return was expected soon. RJD sources had claimed that Yadav was likely to return after a holy dip in Sangam at Allahabad on the occasion of Kartik Purnima. However, with the festival having passed on Thursday, they were now clueless about the return of the volatile leader. Yadav had filed his divorce petition before a court here on November 03. The matter is likely to come up for hearing on November 29. He had told the media after filing the petition that his differences with his wife were "irreconcileable". Rai who is a management graduate unlike her high school dropout husband, has maintained a dignified silence over the entire episode even as Tejashwi Yadav, the RJD supremo's younger son and political successor, has been expressing displeasure over the spotlight on what was essentially a marital dispute. Rai is the daughter of RJD MLA Chandrika Rai and grandchild of former Chief Minister Daroga Prasad Rai. Her in-laws too, are said to be unhappy with the decision of her husband who had whined "I would not return home until my family members come in my support". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Three heavily-armed suicide bombers on Friday stormed the Chinese consulate in Pakistan's largest metropolis Karachi, killing two policemen before being shot dead by security forces which foiled the daring attack in the high-security zone, authorities said. The consulate, located in the posh Clifton area, came under attack early morning. Three suspected suicide bombers were killed before they were able to enter the facility as forces successfully foiled the attack, Karachi Police Chief Amir Shaikh said. Nine hand grenades, Kalashnikov bullets, magazines and explosives were recovered from the possession of the terrorists, Geo quoted police officials as saying. "Food supplies and medicines were also recovered from their possession," officials said. "We have received two dead bodies of policemen and an injured Chinese security guard who is under treatment," said Seemi Jamali, the executive director at Jinnah Hospital. The Sindh government and the Inter-Services Public Relations Wing (ISPR) confirmed that three terrorists were killed in the operation. The heavily-guarded E-Street neighbourhood, which is considered a red zone, is home to a number of upscale restaurants, diplomatic missions and schools. The Bilawal House of Pakistan People's Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is also in the area. Schools and eateries have been locked down until a clearance operation is concluded. Residents said they first heard firing and explosions around 9.30 AM (local time). "The terrorists first attacked the checkpost outside the consulate and detonated a hand grenade in the area," Shaikh said. Shaikh said the attackers had parked their vehicle at some distance from the consulate before moving towards it. Defence analyst and security contractor Ikram Sehgal, whose company's guards have been posted at the consulate, said that the attackers had first engaged in an exchange of fire with policemen. After the policemen were killed, he said, the attackers proceeded towards the gate of the consulate. However, the guards were quick to usher civilians with consular business into the building and shut the gates behind them. Chinese staff at the mission were taken to the main building, Sehgal said. The paramilitary rangers than reached the spot and engaged the attackers, leaving three of them killed. Weapons and explosive materials were recovered from the attackers, he said. Sheikh said that all Chinese staffers "are safe and secure". The security situation has been brought under control and all areas will soon be cleared, he said, adding that a team of police has been deployed inside the consulate. The Foreign Office spokesman said that Islamabad is "in touch with the relevant agencies and will react quickly" to ascertain the facts. Shaikh said he would be able to provide a clearer account of the attack later. The area, considered a red zone, is heavily guarded. Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah contacted the Chinese consul general and assured him that the situation will be taken under control. Governor of Sindh Imran Ismail has sought a report on the attack from the Sindh inspector general of police. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Three heavily-armed suicide bombers on Friday stormed the Chinese consulate in Pakistan's largest city Karachi, killing four people including two policemen before being shot dead by security forces which foiled the daring attack in the high-security zone, authorities said. The attack was claimed by the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) which said it would not tolerate "any Chinese military expansionist endeavours on Baloch soil". The consulate, located in the posh Clifton area, came under attack early morning. Three suspected suicide bombers were killed before they were able to enter the facility as forces successfully foiled the attack, Karachi Police Chief Amir Shaikh said. Nine hand grenades, Kalashnikov bullets, magazines and explosives were recovered from the possession of the terrorists, Geo quoted police officials as saying. "Food supplies and medicines were also recovered from their possession," officials said. "We have received two dead bodies of policemen and an injured Chinese security guard who is under treatment," said Seemi Jamali, the executive director at Jinnah Hospital. Two civilians, a father and his son were also killed, officials said. The Sindh government and the Pakistan Army confirmed that three terrorists were killed in the operation. The heavily-guarded E-Street neighbourhood, which is considered a red zone, is home to a number of upscale restaurants, diplomatic missions and schools. The Bilawal House of Pakistan People's Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is also in the area. Schools and eateries have been locked down until a clearance operation is concluded. Residents said they first heard firing and explosions around 9.30 AM (local time). "The terrorists first attacked the checkpost outside the consulate and detonated a hand grenade in the area," Shaikh said. Shaikh said the attackers had parked their vehicle at some distance from the consulate before moving towards it. Defence analyst and security contractor Ikram Sehgal, whose company's guards have been posted at the consulate, said that the attackers had first engaged in an exchange of fire with policemen. After the policemen and civilians were killed, he said, the attackers proceeded towards the gate of the consulate. However, the guards were quick to usher civilians with consular business into the building and shut the gates behind them. The paramilitary rangers then reached the spot and engaged the attackers, he said. Sheikh said that all Chinese staffers "are safe and secure". The separatist group BLA shared the photographs of the attackers. "Karachi: Fidayeen of BLA attacked the Chinese embassy in Karachi," it said in a tweet. BLA has been designated as a terrorist entity by Pakistan. The Foreign Office spokesman said that Islamabad is "in touch with the relevant agencies and will react quickly" to ascertain the facts. Prime Minister Imran Khan took to Twitter to condemn the attack. "Strongly condemn the terrorist attacks against Chinese Consulate in Karachi & in Orakzai tribal area. My prayers go to the victims & their families. Salute the brave security/police personnel who gave their lives & denied success to terrorists in the mission against Chinese Consulate," he said. "The failed attack against the Chinese Consulate was clearly a reaction to the unprecedented trade agreements that resulted from our trip to China. The attack was intended to scare Chinese investors and undermine CPEC. These terrorists will not succeed," Khan said. Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah contacted the Chinese consul general and assured him that the situation will be taken under control. Governor of Sindh Imran Ismail has sought a report on the attack from the Sindh inspector general of police. In Beijing, the China's foreign ministry strongly condemned the attack on its consulate and urged its all-weather ally to take "practical measures" to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens in the country, mostly on projects linked to the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Hundreds of Chinese nationals are presently working in Pakistan specially in Karachi and the restive Balochistan province on projects of the CPEC and on other business ventures. Chinese nationals in Karachi generally consider it a safe city to move around, carrying out their day-to-day business. In February, a senior Chinese shipping executive was killed when unknown assailants opened fire on his vehicle near Zamzama park also in the Clifton area. Sindh police chief Kaleem Imam said that security has been beefed up for the Chinese nationals and a comprehensive security plan would be drawn up to ensure they are under a security cover round the clock. It is the first major terror strike in Karachi since March, 2016 when 45 Ismaili Muslims were killed in a targeted attack. Since then, there had been calm in the country's financial hub as police and the paramilitary rangers have kept up a constant operation against militants, killing dozens of them in different parts of Karachi. Friday's attack will leave the government and security forces concerned as the Chinese mission is located in a densely populated area. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Top manufacturer of electric cars is slashing prices of its models in China by up to a quarter in an effort to boost sales in the world's largest new energy vehicle market. The US carmaker said on Thursday that it is cutting the prices of its Model S sedan and the Model X SUV in China by 12 per cent to 26 per cent. The cheaper Model 3's prices in China, which were also released on Thursday, are now 14 per cent lower than the previous pre-order prices. "We are absorbing a significant part of the tariff to help make our cars more affordable for customers in China," state-run China Daily quoted a statement as saying. China, where new energy vehicle sales surged 75.6 per cent in the first 10 months of this year to 860,000 units, is one of Tesla's most important markets. Tesla's sales in China totalled 2,147 units from August to October, a 56 per cent fall year-on-year, according to statistics from the China Passenger Car Association. Last year, it sold 17,030 cars, accounting for 16.5 per cent of its global sales. The carmaker had raised the prices of its models in July by around 20 per cent after China imposed an extra 25 per cent tariffs on cars from the United States in response to on Chinese goods. The new move by the carmaker is seen as an attempt to ward off any negative effect from the ongoing US-China trade war, the report said. is the first foreign carmaker to be granted approval to establish a wholly owned plant in China as the nation opens its automotive industry wider to the world, the China Daily reported. Last month, Tesla secured the site for the facility, which is expected to produce around 250,000 vehicles and battery packs annually, with this figure growing later to 500,000 units. The first cars are expected to roll off the production line in around three years, the report said. The head of Thailand's military government has invited representatives of political parties contesting next year's promised elections to discuss the planned lifting of a ban on political activity that has been in force since the army seized power more than four years ago. The site of the Dec 7 meeting called by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha is Bangkok's Royal Thai Army Club, where the May 2014 coup led by Prayuth was announced. The junta that took over declared a nationwide ban on political gatherings of more than five people as one of many measures to suppress opponents of military rule. Prayuth said Friday the planned meeting is necessary to make clear rules for the polls, which he confirmed were still tentatively scheduled for Feb 24. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 25-year-old Navi Mumbai man has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a local court for killing his wife in 2014. Thane Principal District Judge V G Bisht Thursday also imposed a fine of Rs 1,000 on Nareshkumar Vishnu Sahu. Additional Public Prosecutor Rekha Hirwale said Sahu and his wife Pooja, residents of Nageshwar Shiv Mandir locality in neighbouring Navi Mumbai's Sanpada area, had frequent quarrels over their one-year-old daughter. On March 6, 2014, after one such fight, he bludgeoned his wife to death with a hammer and fled with their daughter, the APP said. He was subsequently arrested. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Three persons including a former special police officer (SPO) were kidnapped by unidentified gunmen Friday in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir, official sources said. The gunmen kidnapped Basharat Ahmad Wagay, a former SPO, Zahid Ahmad Wagay, and Reyaz Ahmad Wagay from their village at Reban in Zainapora area of Shopian, the sources said. However, a police official said they were ascertaining the reports about kidnapping of the three persons. "No one has come forward with a complaint about the kidnappings so far. We are ascertaining facts," the official said. Militants killed two persons -- one shot dead and another terminated in ISIS-style execution -- in South Kashmir last week on the charge of being informers of security forces. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actor Tom Felton says he never got around to rewatching the "Harry Potter" series as he has reserved the moment for a "sacred day". Talking to People magazine, the 31-year-old actor, who portrayed Draco Malfoy in the "Harry Potter" franchise, said that he has no plans to watch all the eight films anytime soon. "I have seen the Potter films during the premieres, but other than that no never! I'm saving that for a sacred day," Felton said. "I have visions of doing that with my two kids, when I'm a little bit older," he added. The actor joked that it is a lie that him and his co-stars got along with each other. "It's all a lie, we hate each other and we're all absolute b**t**ds! No, everyone is really sweet. I was lucky enough the last few months to see Daniel [Radcliffe] on Broadway, he's doing well. "He is always inspiring with his work choices and his outlook on life. I saw Emma (Watson) recently and had a little day on the beach," Felton said. The actor currently stars in the web series "Origin", which premiered on YouTube Premium on November 14, 2018. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A self-styled zonal commander of the banned Peoples Liberation Front of India (PLFI), carrying a Rs 2 lakh reward on his head, was killed Friday in an encounter with security forces in Simdega district, police said. Simdega Superintendent of Police, Sanjeev Kumar told reporters that the police got information that the self-styled zonal commander of PLFI, identified as Vijay Dang, was in the Jhapla forest of Kolebira in the district. When a police team surrounded the area, the extremists opened fire and in the retaliatory fire Dang was killed while his five to seven associates melted into the forests, the SP said. Around 100 rounds were exchanged between the two sides during the half-an-hour gunfire, he said. During the search operation, the police recovered a country-made gun, a bullet of .303 gun, two shells of AK-47, two mobile phones and a small diary from the encounter spot. Dang was involved in 22 cases and was even wanted in neighbouring Odishas Sundargarh district, the SP said. He was also involved in the killing of BJP leader Manoj Nagesia. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 39-year-old bullion trader allegedly committed suicide Friday by shooting himself inside a car at Lalbaug in central Mumbai, police said. The incident took place around 1 pm on Saibaba Road. Ashwin Lalitkumar Jain, the deceased, was apparently under stress for the last two days as he had purchased gold from another trader but was unable to make a payment, a police official said. Sitting inside his car parked near Kalpataru Habitat building, he allegedly shot himself in the head using his father's licenced revolver. Hearing the loud sound, some passers-by rushed to the spot and found Jain lying in a pool of blood. He was taken to a hospital where he was declared dead in the evening. An accidental death report has been registered at Kalachowkie Police Station and probe is underway, the police official said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) President used a Day call to troops deployed overseas to pat himself on the back and air grievances about the courts, trade and migrants heading to the US- border. Trump's call, made from his opulent private Mar-a-Lago club, struck an unusually political tone as he spoke with members of all five branches of the military to wish them happy holidays. "It's a disgrace," said of judges who have blocked his attempts to overhaul US immigration law, as he linked his efforts to secure the border with military missions overseas. later threatened to close the US border with for an undisclosed period of time if his administration determines has lost "control" on its side. The call was a uniquely Trump blend of boasting, peppered questions and off-the-cuff observations as his comments veered from venting about slights to praising troops "You really are our heroes," he said as club waiters worked to set dinner tables on the outdoor terrace behind him. And it was yet another show of how Trump has dramatically transformed the presidency, erasing the traditional divisions between domestic policy and military matters and efforts to keep the troops clear of "You probably see over the news what's happening on our southern border," Trump told one Air Force brigadier general stationed at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, adding: "I don't have to even ask you. I know what you want to do, you want to make sure that you know who we're letting in." Later, Trump asked a US Coast Guard commander about trade, which he noted was "a very big subject" for him personally. "We've been taken advantage of for many, many years by bad trade deals," Trump told the commander, who sheepishly replied that, "We don't see any issues in terms of trade right now." And throughout, Trump was sure to congratulate himself, telling the officers that the country is doing exceptionally well on his watch. "I hope that you'll take solace in knowing that all of the American families you hold so close to your heart are all doing well," he said. "The nation's doing well economically, better than anybody in the world." He later told reporters "nobody's done more for the military than me." Indeed, asked what he was thankful for this Thanksgiving, Trump cited his "great family," as well as himself. "I made a tremendous difference in this country," he said. But Trump continued to warn about the situation on the southern border as he took questions from reporters, pointing to the caravans of Central American migrants that have been making their way toward the US and warning that, "If we find that it gets to a level where we lose control or people are going to start getting hurt, we're going to close entry into the country for a period of time until we get it under control." He said he had the authority to do so by executive order and claimed he'd already used it earlier this week. "Two days ago, we closed the border. We actually just closed it, said nobody's coming in because it was just out of control." By no means did he seal the border with Mexico. Officials did shut down one port of entry, San Ysidro, in California, for several hours early Monday morning to bolster security because of concerns about a potential influx of migrant caravan members. They closed northbound lanes into the US and reopened most of them before the morning rush. Trump's border threat came days after a federal judge put the administration's attempts to overhaul asylum rules on hold. Courts have also blocked several versions of the president's travel ban as well as his attempt to end a program that allows young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children to live and work in the country. Trump probably could close the entire southern border by order, at least temporarily, invoking national security powers. But doing so could cause extraordinary damage to bilateral relations as well as to cross-border commerce between the US and Mexico, its third largest trading partner. It would not necessarily stop migrants from coming either; Trump would have to contend with the same asylum laws already vexing his efforts to harden the border. Trump said he'd spoken with his daughter Ivanka following news she'd sent hundreds of emails from a private address while serving as a senior adviser. Trump said she was "very innocent" and that situation was very different from the one he's said his 2016 rival Hillary Clinton should be in jail for. He defended his acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, calling him "a highly respected person" whom the press had treated nastily. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Friday accused the European Union's top diplomat of overstepping her brief by calling for the release of jailed Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas. "She exceeded her limits a little," Cavusoglu told CNN-Turk television, a day after Federica Mogherini expressed hope that Demirtas, who has been held in Turkey for two years on terror charges, would soon be freed. Demirtas, 45, one of two former co-leaders of the leftist Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), was arrested in November 2016 over alleged links to Kurdish militants. The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday urged Ankara to release Demirtas -- which was hailed by the jailed leader as "legal acknowledgement of my status as a political hostage". The court accepted Demirtas had been arrested on "reasonable suspicion" of committing a crime, but said the reasons given for keeping him behind bars were not "sufficient". At a press conference with Cavusoglu in Ankara, Mogherini said on Thursday: "We hope he will be released shortly." Demirtas denies all the charges and claims the case against him is politically motivated. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejected the European court's finding. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Turkey on Friday said President Donald Trump intended to turn a "blind eye" to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder he said Washington's ties with Riyadh would not be affected by the incident. "In one sense, Trump is saying 'I will turn a blind eye'," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with CNN Turk broadcaster, referring to Trump's continued support for Saudi Arabia, which has committed to billions of dollars in US weapons contracts. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Turkey on Friday said US President Donald Trump intended to turn a "blind eye" to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder after he said it would not affect Washington's ties with Riyadh. Trump's backing of Saudi Arabia, his key ally against Iran, comes despite global outrage over the grisly October 2 killing that has tarnished the image of both the kingdom and its de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. "In one sense, Trump is saying 'I will turn a blind eye' no matter what happens," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with CNN Turk broadcaster. "This is not the right approach. Money doesn't mean everything," Cavusoglu said, referring to Trump's continued support for Saudi Arabia, which has committed billions of dollars in US weapons contracts. Trump on Tuesday glossed over the Central Intelligence Agency's reported conclusion that the crown prince had authorised the killing. "Maybe he did and maybe he didn't!" Trump said, implying Prince Mohammed's culpability in Khashoggi's killing in the Saudi mission in Istanbul. Trump was widely pilloried for what critics called his mercantile priorities that made him appear more like a lobbyist for Riyadh. A former Saudi royal insider who became a critic of the crown prince, Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in what Riyadh -- after weeks of denial -- said was a "rogue" operation. The 59-year-old had gone there for documents he needed to marry his Turkish fiancee. Saudi Arabia has held 21 people in custody over the murder but shielded the powerful crown prince. Washington earlier this month placed sanctions on 17 Saudis, which also targeted the two top aides to the crown prince by freezing assets under US jurisdiction and forbidding US companies from doing business with them. The killing and Riyadh's explanations have angered its Western partners. Germany on Monday said Berlin would bar 18 Saudis from entering its territory and Europe's Schengen passport-free zone over their alleged links to the murder. In October, Germany called for EU countries to follow its lead and suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, prompting a dismissive response from France, the kingdom's second-biggest customer after India. But Denmark on Thursday followed suit, freezing all sales of weapons and military equipment to Riyadh. Cavusoglu said "artificial measures" would not help solve the crisis. "They (Europe) say they don't want to upset ties with Saudi Arabia. We do not want to upset our relations either," he said, but added Ankara would do anything to shed light on the murder. Turkey insists the murder was premeditated, sharing evidence with Riyadh as well as with the US and Western allies but stops short of pointing the finger of blame at the prince. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the order came from "the highest levels" but not from King Salman. Ankara has not ruled out the possibility of a meeting between Erdogan and Prince Mohammed on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Argentina next week. "We don't see any obstacle to a meeting with the crown prince," Cavusoglu said. "If there is a request, there could be a meeting but our president will decide." The two men spoke on the phone in late October but that would be the first face-to-face encounter since the murder. Prince Salman on Thursday embarked on a regional tour starting with Riyadh's close ally United Arab Emirates, his first official trip since the killing. The prince is also set to travel to the Tunisian capital on Tuesday. Turkish pro-government media, which has often provided gruesome details of what happened to Khashoggi in a series of leaks maintaining pressure against Riyadh, speculated further on what happened to Khashoggi's body. Sabah newspaper reported Khashoggi was first strangled using a bag over his head before Salah Muhammed Al-Tubaigy, a lieutenant-colonel in the Saudi forensic department, drained his blood in the bathtub before dismembering him. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Twenty people have been detained over the abduction of an Italian woman from a village in southeast Kenya, the east African country's police chief said on Friday. An armed gang seized Silvia Romano, a volunteer with a charity, on Tuesday in Chakama, 60 kilometres (40 miles) inland from the coastal town of Malindi, an area popular with Italian tourists and expatriates. The 23-year-old's whereabouts are unknown. "We have 17 people in custody. We have further arrested three other persons whom we consider as persons of interest to this investigation," Inspector General Joseph Boinett told reporters on Friday. "They have given us very valuable information which has gone to assist the ongoing operation to trace and rescue the lady who was abducted by unknown persons," he added. The gang shot and wounded five people, including three children, while abducting Romano and escaped across the nearby Galana river. A police manhunt has so far failed to find any trace of the kidnappers or Romano, who was volunteering for Italian charity Africa Milele Onlus. Police are considering motives, including robbery, but some fear Romano could be smuggled north towards the Somalia border, where other abductees have been taken in the past. A spate of abductions on the coast in 2011 saw a British man shot dead and his wife, Judith Tebbutt, kidnapped from a resort island. Weeks later a French woman, Marie Dedieu, was abducted from her home on Manda island in the Lamu archipelago. Both women ended up in Somalia, where Tebbutt was released after six months, while Dedieu died of ill health. Gunmen from the Al Qaeda affiliated Shabaab militant group also abducted two Spanish aid workers in 2011 from the Dadaab refugee camp close to the Somali border. "We have significant measure of optimism that we should be able to find the lady within the shortest time possible," said Boinett, discussing Romano's case. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two suspected drug smugglers were arrested and 14 kg poppy seized from their possession in Jammu and Kashmir's samba district Friday, police said. A police party during a routine checking at Mansar crossing in the district intercepted a tractor-trolley, they said. During the checking, 14 Kg of poppy was recovered which was concealed in the tyres of the vehicle, they added. The accused persons, identified as Gurmaj Singh and Amar Singh of Amritsar, were arrested, they said. A case was registered at Samba police station in this connection and a probe has been initiated, police said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two robbers who were active in the national capital region (NCR) were arrested after a gunfight with police here during which a constable also suffered injuries, police said Friday. The two, identified as Chandan alias Babar, and Rahul, were arrested Thursday night and have 18 cases registered against them, police said. S P (City) Shlok Kumar said, Sahibabad Police during its routine checking intercepted a bike at around 11.30 pm. The bikers, instead, opened fired at the police team and sped away. In retaliatory firing, the two robbers were shot in the leg. A constable, Javed Zaidi, also suffered gunshot wound in the hand during the encounter, the SP said. There are 18 FIRs registered against the two at several police stations across Delhi and Ghaziabad, police said, adding that the duo confessed to several crimes such as snatching, loot, and murder. Police have recovered two country-made pistols, used and live cartridges, a gold chain, and a motorcycle used in commission of crimes from possession of the arrested robbers. The injured constable and robbers are undergoing treatment at a private hospital, the officer said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The world must help resolve the Israel-Palestinian issue by backing a two-state solution to avoid the creation of an apartheid state, Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki said on Friday. "The Palestinians are still waiting for the international community to try to resolve the Palestinian problem that has been created by the international community," with the foundation of Israel in 1948, Maliki told the MED Dialogues conference in Rome. "Unfortunately, none of you is taking serious, credible and responsible steps to solve the problem," Maliki told the assembled European and Middle Eastern leaders. Maliki slammed the US administration of President Donald Trump "which has really sided with Israel, taken the wrong side of history, of justice." The Palestinians have already vowed to block Trump's peace plan and severed ties with his administration after his December decision to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and declare the city Israel's capital. The Palestinians also see the city as the capital of their future state and international consensus has been that Jerusalem's status must be negotiated between the two sides. "If the Americans are not willing to do anything, Europe should do that," Maliki said "We should force the change to happen, that's why we are pushing for a European role," including backing an international peace conference. "It's not our responsibility to protect the two-state solution, it's your responsibility," he said, without which Israel would continue to develop separate systems for Israelis and Palestinians, as it already does with road networks and public transport. "I don't believe any of you will accept another apartheid regime to emerge in the 21st century," Maliki said. Israeli parliament speaker Yuli-Yoel Edelstein, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, was also attending the MED gathering and said the two sides should focus on cooperation. "If the idea of peace process is again some theory of two courageous leaders in a room shaking hands and signing an agreement, that doesn't work," said Edelstein. "The only way to get back to a situation where we can do something positive is cooperation in practical fields (like manufacturing or water management). We don't need a comprehensive agreement to cooperate," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Britain faces "more division and more uncertainty" if a draft deal falls through, Prime Minister said on Friday as she sought to win over sceptical Britons ahead of an this weekend. In a call-in show on BBC radio, May also refused to say whether or not she would resign if the British parliament eventually voted down the divorce agreement and outline on future ties. "This isn't about me... I am focused on ensuring we get this deal," she said, adding that she would be touring Britain to explain the agreement "to people up and down the country". "If this deal does not go through we are back at square one. What we end up with is more division and more uncertainty," she said. May, who voted to stay in the in the 2016 referendum, also dismissed calls for a second vote with an option to keep Britain in the EU, but then refused to say whether her deal was preferable to remaining in the bloc. Instead, she said Britain could build a "better future" for itself outside the She repeated her position on British sovereignty over Gibraltar -- a contentious issue with Spain that in recent days has threatened to upend the on Sunday. "We're very clear, as the UK, that when we negotiate on these matters... we do so on behalf of the whole UK family including Gibraltar," she said. May's spokeswoman told reporters earlier on Friday: "We've negotiated very openly and constructively with the EU in matters relating to Gibraltar and worked closely with Spain. "The withdrawal agreement isn't being re-opened. We will work with the government of Gibraltar and Spain on our future relationship," she said. May is due to travel to Brussels on Saturday for last-minute talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker ahead of the summit. UN envoy Martin Griffiths arrived in the battleground Yemeni port city of Hodeida on Friday to press the warring sides to exercise restraint ahead of planned peace talks in December. Griffiths's visit aims to send a message to the rebels, who control the Red Sea city, and the government forces, who have been attacking it with support from a Saudi-led coalition, to keep a lid on hostilities in the runup to the talks in Sweden, a UN source told AFP. According to an AFP correspondent, clashes could be heard in the distance as the envoy visited the lifeline port from which nearly all the country's imports and humanitarian aid pass. Griffiths, who arrived in the rebel-held capital Sanaa on Wednesday, has met rebel chief Abdulmalik al-Huthi and addressed "what can facilitate new discussions in December", rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdelsalam said. Abdelsalam said that included "procedures needed to transport injured and sick for treatment abroad and bring them back", a key sticking point during a previous failed attempt at talks in September. Both warring sides have expressed support for the envoy's mission to hold discussions. The UAE state minister for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, whose country is a key player in the Saudi-led coalition, reiterated Friday that the United Arab Emirates was "committed" to peace talks. "The best way forward towards a sustainable political process is to support the Sweden talks and the work of the UN Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffith without prejudging these negotiations," he said on Twitter. Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi -- whose UN-recognised government was pushed out of Sanaa by the rebels in 2014 -- has also said he supports the talks while vowing to "liberate" the city of Hodeida. Despite a lull in fighting, Hodeida residents reached by telephone said on Friday that Huthi rebels have been bringing in reinforcements. Dozens of families have fled Hodeida, as the rebels stationed snipers on top of peoples' homes, according to residents and pro-government military officials. The conflict in Yemen, which escalated when the Saudi-led alliance intervened in 2015, has killed thousands and left up to 22 million Yemenis in need of humanitarian assistance, according to UN agencies. Under heavy international pressure, the loyalists and their Saudi-led military backers have largely suspended a five-month offensive on Hodeida. UN agencies say the closure of its port because of fighting or damage could put up to 14 million Yemenis at risk of starvation. Humanitarian organisations are desperate to see the current peace push translate into a more permanent halt to the four-year war. The UN's World Food Programme said Friday it had distributed 30,000 food baskets -- each containing enough to feed a family of six for one month -- in Hodeida city. "In a city that has been enduring on and off bursts of fighting, these food baskets have an added benefit of helping families to avoid travelling more than necessary to find food, limiting their own security risks," WFP said in a statement. "Despite the difficult situation, WFP is currently assisting 8 million Yemenis every month with food or food vouchers." The heads of the UN's humanitarian and children's agencies said the "recent de-escalation in fighting in Hodeida is providing a desperately needed respite to hundreds of thousands of civilians". The current peace push by Griffiths is the biggest effort in two years. In September, a previous round of UN-led peace talks faltered when the Huthis refused to travel to Geneva, accusing the world body of failing to guarantee their delegation's return to Sanaa or secure the evacuation of wounded rebels to Oman. Previous talks broke down in 2016, when 108 days of negotiations in Kuwait failed to yield a deal and left rebel delegates stranded in Oman for three months. According to the World Health Organisation, nearly 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen's conflict, though some rights groups estimate the toll could be five times higher. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The US Friday condemned two terrorist attacks in Pakistan and said that it will continue to look for opportunities to cooperate with Islamabad to counter regional threats. Three attackers opened fire and detonated a hand grenade near the Chinese Consulate in Karachi, killing four people before being shot dead by security forces. A few hours later, an attack on a marketplace in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region of Orakzai claimed at least 32 lives. "The United States stands with the Pakistani people in the face of these terrorist acts, and will continue to seek opportunities to cooperate with the Pakistani government to combat these threats in the region," State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert said. The United States condemns in the strongest terms today's terrorist attacks in Orakzai and Karachi, Pakistan, which killed over 30 people and injured dozens more, she said. "We send our deepest condolences to the victims' families and wish for the speedy recovery of those injured," she said. The US also commends the Pakistani security forces' quick and brave response to the attack on the Chinese Consulate in Karachi that prevented further loss of life, Nauert said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tech major UST Global Friday said it has set up a new delivery centre in Hyderabad, Telangana and plans to add 1,000 technology associates by end of 2019 at the new location. The key focus of the Hyderabad centre is to support the company's global banking, financial and insurance services, healthcare, retail, technology, media, telecom and semiconductor clients, it said in a statement. "Hyderabad is a key market for us with existing portfolio of clients, vast business opportunities and promising talent. We are very excited to inaugurate and add Hyderabad office to our growing portfolio of delivery centres," UST Global Chief Administrative Officer and Country Head Alexander Varghese said. He added that the company is also looking to hire associates who are aligned to its vision of transforming lives using new-age digital technologies. The statement did not disclose any investment details. "Telangana is well positioned in terms of infrastructure and talent to host organisations focused on digital and high technology like UST Global. We welcome UST Global to Hyderabad and are confident they will do well and find best of the talent here," Jayesh Ranjan, IAS, Principal Secretary to Government of Telangana, said. The Hyderabad centre will be led by UST Global Centre Head Hyderabad Harilal Neelakantan. UST Global has regional headquarters in California, Singapore and London, and has over 35 offices across the world. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu Friday said the demographic advantage that India has would yield complete dividends only if the youth are equipped withthe required skills and attitude. "We are a young India with nearly 65 per cent of our population being less than 35 years of age... Youth represents the energy that will drive India of the future," Naidu said. Delivering the valedictory address at the "World Youth Meet" here, he said their knowledge and imagination, competence andconfidence, their risk-taking ability and multi-taskingability, their agility and adaptability would change the course of India's development. "The demographic advantage that we today will yield complete dividends only if youth are equipped with the required skills and attitude, with the knowledge and wisdom," the Vice President said. "I earnestly hope that our educational system... will provide a good foundation for the youth," he added. Naidu, during his speech paid tributes to SriSatya Sai Baba and Guru Nanak on their birth anniversary,calling them "leading lights" of Indian spiritual heritage,who had shown humanity the path of devotion and service. The Vice President expressed hope that the youth of India would also continue to aim high and strive hard, be rooted in the Indian ethos, but be willing to learn from the best in the world. "Setting high benchmarks requires courage. Achieving them requires competence. I do hope you will have both," he said. Pointing out that the government was devising effective policies and programmes, Naidu said the massive effort required for transformation would be possible only with the active participation of the civil society, the private sector and the academic and charitable organisations. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Issues of unequal distribution, lack of planning, political interference and growing demand for water were giving rise to disputes among the different regions of Maharashtra, according to experts on the subject. Maharashtra received inadequate rainfall this monsoon and the government recently declared drought in 151 out of the 353 talukas in the state. Citing lack of a state-level policy for water distribution and storage, Sanjay Lakhe Patil, president of the Marathwada Backlog Removal and Development Forum, blamed politicians. "They have always invested heavily in their own areas. Maximum dams have been constructed per hectare area, resulting in water imbalance and conflictsbetween different regions, talukas and districts," he said. "Our water policy has always remained flawed. Needs of the region were never considered while sanctioningirrigation projects. Political leaders only thought about regions of their influence," Lakhe Patil claimed. Giving an example, Lakhe Patil said the huge expenditure on Krishna Valley irrigation projects resulted in water disparity in western Maharashtra. While Baramati, Kolhapur, parts of Satara, Sangli and Pune benefited, other areas like Sangola, Maan, parts of Satara, Sangli, Pune, Solapur and Atpadi remained without water, he said. Lakhe Patil said the Tembhu-Takari irrigation project in Sangole in western Maharashtra, a perennially drought-prone area, is incomplete due to lack of funds. Similarly, additional water storage capacity dams were built in the upper catchment areas of Jayakwadi Dam which, he said, went against irrigation rules. "Additional storage capacity breaks the catchment water which is meant for Jayakwadi in Marathwada. The conflict started because Jayakwadi does not get enough water," he claimed. In 2016, the Bombay High Court passed a historical judgement regarding equitable distribution of water and held that water is owned by the state and not any particular district, region, person or personality, he said. The Mendhegiri Committee set up by the state government laid down a formula on distribution of water from the upper catchment area dams in Ahmednagar and Nashik districts as and when Jayakwadi Dam faced scarcity, he added. The Vithalrao Vikhe Patil Sugar Factory and Mula Sugar Factory moved the Supreme Court against the release of water from these dams to Jayakwadi Dam but their plea was rejected by the apex court, said Lakhe Patil. Following the SC order, Nashik authorities released water earlier this month into Jayakwadi Dam. Lakhe Patil added that 90 thousand million cubic feet of water from west-flowing rivers like Damanganga, Aurangiya, Ambika, Nar, Par goes into the Arabian Sea and no efforts had been made to store this water. He added that Mahrashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority, with its chairperson being a retired Indian Administrative Officer with rank equivalent to the state Chief Secretary or a high court justice, had enough powers to tackle water conflicts. Ratnakar Mahajan, former vice chairman of the Mahrashtra Planning Commission said the previous Congress-NCP government formulated a uniform water policy for the state through which it set up the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority. But, he said, the authority could not function independently while taking decisions on water distribution for drinking and agricultural purposes due to political interference. Apart from the water conflict related to Jayakwadi Dam, there are other ones too that are coming to the fore in the state. Farmers in Sangola, a perennially drought-prone taluka inSolapur district, are demanding that water be released from the Tembhu lift irrigation project on the Krishna river. They have alleged that water is not being released to them from upstream regions of Sangli and Satara due to political pressure. In Nashik district's Dindori taluka, farmers claim the quantity of their produce has declined as water from the east-flowing rivers in the district's western talukas is getting over before the crops gained strength. Farmers fromKalwan taluka in Nashik don't want water from the Chankapur dam, across the Girna river, to be released to Malegaon and Chandwad, the eastern talukas of Nashik and, further, to Marathwada. Officials said despite the general belief that there was plenty of water in the upper parts of the Godavari Basin, drinking water needs had grown tremendously due to rapid urbanisation among other aspects. There are 23 dams in the Godavari and Tapi basins, but put together, their capacity is less than 50 per cent of that of Jayakwadi, these officials noted. Economist H M Desarda attributed the present situation to what he claimed was a plunder of groundwater levels. "The groundwater bank is in negative balance and depleted due to excessive pumping. There is a needfor holistic programme for rainwater harvesting. Rainwater needs to be conserved and impounded immediately, and replenished in the soil and vegetation," he said. Desarda also called for water literacy among policy makers and society. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The World Health Organization (WHO) has felicitated Nepal for eliminating trachoma, a tropical disease that leads to blindness, as a public health problem and controlling rubella that causes serious and irreversible birth defects. Nepal is the first country in WHO South-East Asia Region, which also includes India, to eliminate trachoma as a public health problem, and among the first countries in the region to be verified for having controlled rubella. The validation for trachoma elimination and verification of rubella control were completed in May and August respectively. Trachoma is a disease of the eye caused by infection with the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis. "Nepal's remarkable achievements will positively impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of people country-wide and provide an inspiring example to countries striving to eliminate trachoma and other neglected tropical diseases," said Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia. The regional director also handed over plaques to Deputy Prime Minister and Health Minister Upendra Yadav for the country's public health achievements. Singh said Nepal's achievements demonstrate that with right tools and strategies, every country has the power to end neglected tropical diseases like trachoma that have no reason to exist anymore. "The country's success underscores the wisdom of WHO's SAFE (Surgery for trichiasis, Antibiotics to clear infection, Facial cleanliness, and Environmental improvement to limit transmission) strategy for trachoma elimination," she said. Singh said Nepal has steadily, methodically and rigorously implemented these strategies by making focused efforts to reach the most marginalised and hard-to-reach population, with preventive mass drug administration, surgical outreach for advanced cases, among others. On the country's achievement to control rubella and congenital rubella syndrome, she said, "Strong immunization delivery systems guided by sensitive and actionable surveillance data are the main strategies to control any vaccine preventable disease including rubella." "By demonstrating these successfully, Nepal has shown the way for other countries to follow," Singh said. Nepal has achieved 97 per cent reduction of rubella cases as against a target of 95 per cent, in comparison to 2008. This has been achieved two years ahead of the regional target of 2020 and one year ahead of the national target of 2019. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Delhi BJP chief and MP Manoj Tiwari Friday said he would move a privilege notice in the Lok Sabha against AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan for allegedly assaulting and threatening him during the inauguration of the Signature Bridge here earlier this month. After the incident, the AAP and the BJP had filed complaints against each other, alleging assault during the event held on November 4. The month-long Winter Session of Parliament is set to commence from December 11. "I will bring Privilege notice under Rule 222, Chapter XX of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Lok Sabha against AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan," he told PTI. The North East Delhi MP had gone to the event to stage a protest for allegedly not being invited to the inauguration despite being a Member of Parliament from the area. Tiwari alleged that Khan allegedly "assaulted, threatened, obstructed and intimidated" him in the public domain. In response, the ruling Aam Aadmi Party had demanded the arrest of Tiwari for allegedly "rioting" and "posing a threat" to the security of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal at event. After the incident, the AAP's East Delhi Lok Sabha seat in-charge Atishi had alleged Tiwari had gone to the venue for "rioting. Three FIRs have been registered in the matter including the one against Khan on a complaint by Tiwari. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu Friday said he has taken up with the finance ministry the issue concerning credit to the gems and jewellery sector to ensure adequate availability of funds for them. Prabhu also said the ministries are looking at the industry's demand of cutting import duty on gold to 4 per cent from the current 10 per cent. The industry also wants a reduction in the duty on diamond to 2.5 per cent from 7.5 per cent. "This is one of the important issues...for the industry that is export-oriented... If you have import duties, the working capital gets blocked up. So, we are already working on that. "At the same time, the Ministry of Finance has a responsibility to curtail CAD (current account deficit), therefore they are also trying to find out how we can keep the imports under control. So, we have to balance both together," the minister told reporters here. On financing issues of the sector, Prabhu said meetings were held with bankers to address the matter as the genuine needs of the industry should be looked at. "I have again taken up the issue with the finance ministry and we will make sure that the industry is not starved of necessary finances," he added. The gems and jewelery sector, especially the diamond industry, is facing credit crunch as banks have tightened their hands following the Rs 14,000-crore Nirav Modi scam in Punjab National Bank. The minister also stated that the government would soon come out with a gold policy and set up a domestic gold council to promote the growth of the sector. The country's annual gems and jewelery exports stand at about USD 40 billion. The sector, which contributes 13.5 per cent to India's total merchandise exports, employs about five million people. It also accounts for 7 per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). Commerce Secretary Anup Wadhawan said various stakeholders are being consulted on formulation of the policy and setting up of the council. "I hope to reach a logical outcome very soon," he said. The secretary also asked the industry for self regulation, so that rules and regulations could not be violated. Further, he said the industry needs to look at innovative ideas to exploit India's huge gold reserves to contain imports. India imports about 1,000 tonne of gold every year. The imports, which have a bearing on CAD, increased by 22.31 per cent to USD 33.65 billion in 2017-18. The country is the largest importer of gold, which mainly caters to the demand of the jewellery industry. CAD, the difference between outflow and inflow of foreign exchange, widened to 2.4 per cent of the GDP in the first quarter of 2018-19. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) : As the Congress-JD(S) coalition government completed six months in office on Friday, state BJP chief B S Yeddyurappa said its survival for six months itself was a big success of the "non serious" Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy. The government, he said, has neither any directionnor goal, and alleged that Kumaraswamy has spent half of his days in office by visiting temples and the other half by passing time in posh hotels. "The big achievement of this government, which has completed six months in office, is making false promises to the people. Its six months survival itself is a big success ofChief Minister H D Kumaraswamy," Yeddyurappa said. He demanded to know why farmers were committing suicide 'on a daily basis', if the government, as claimed, had taken steps in the last six months to alleviate the sufferings of the people. "Even today farmers committed suicidein Mandya and Kalaburgi. Most shocking is that the farmers who arecommitting suicide are holding the chief minister responsible fortheir deaths" he said in a statement. On Kumaraswamy's comments that his governmentwas a "child of circumstances", Yeddyurappa said that as far as one'sknowledge goes, a baby born out of circumstances would neitherhave any direction nor a goal to achieve. "This government, born out of circumstances, has no direction and goal. Surprisingly, the non-serious chief minister Kumaraswamy has spent half of his days in office by visiting temples and the other half by passing time in posh hotels," he added. On May 23, JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy was sworn-in as chief minister at a grand ceremony attended by a galaxy of topleaders and regional satraps in a rare public show of unity, perceived as a possible harbinger of a broad based anti-BJP alliance ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The Congress and JD(S), which came second and third respectively in the May 12 Karnataka assembly polls, joined hands to form a government in the post poll scenario to keep BJP, the single largest party, out of power. Yeddyrurappa opined that the only 'achievement' of Kumaraswamy was issuing statements, 'insulting' the people in general and the farmers in particular. "Power hasgone to his head and has made him speak arrogantly and repeatedly say that if the situation warrants I will put in mypapers and go home. This kind of statement is an insult tothe people in a democratic set up," he said. Expressing surprise over Congress leaders' tolerance towards this "non-performing" government and the "arrogance" of the chief minister, who even bullied a woman farmer leader, 'asking her where she had slept for the last four years, he saidthe Chief Minister has disgraced women bysaying so. Kumaraswamy had clarified that he did not make such a comment todisrespect the woman. "What I meant was, "why have you woken up to that situation now? Were you sleeping?' I would never disrespect a woman. These are not farmers who are agitating but these are sponsored protests," he had said. Yeddyurappa said the Congress should be held responsible for all the 'failures' and 'follies'of the Chief Minister and added that people would teach the party a lesson in the coming days. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By Helen Reid and Ron BoussoLONDON (Reuters) - The latest collapse in oil prices has proved some investors right in their lack of confidence in energy stocks this year. Crude prices surged to a four-year high early in 2018 as tensions with Iran and OPEC supply cuts raised concerns that global oil supply was dwindling. (Graphic: Gap between stocks and crude closes https://tmsnrt.rs/2QxTH5T) But the narrative has flipped since October as worries over a global trade war and rising U.S. shale oil production mounted, driving oil to a one-year low on Friday. Brent crude is down to $60 a barrel ... By Jessica JaganathanSINGAPORE (Reuters) - Asian spot prices for liquefied natural gas (LNG) tumbled nearly 10 percent this week to a more than three-month low, knocked lower by a slide in oil prices, forecasts for a warmer than average winter and ample supply onshore and in tankers.Spot prices for January delivery in North Asia were estimated at $10 per million British thermal units (mmBtu), 90 cents lower than last week, according to traders. "The big question mark right now is how the weather will pan out as the market will quickly turn once it starts to get cold. But until then, it's ... Trade talks between the United States and China should be equal and mutually beneficial, Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen said on Friday, adding that he hoped the two countries can find ways to manage their differences through dialogue. U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are expected to hold talks during the G20 summit in Buenos Aires next week as trade ties between the world's two largest economies become increasingly fraught. "We hope that, on the basis of equal consultations, mutual benefits and trust, we could make common ... By John MillerZURICH (Reuters) - Just weeks after Novartis floated the idea that $4-5 million was fair value for its new gene therapy against a deadly neuromuscular disease, a major benefits manager is pushing back.The Swiss drugmaker's assessment of AVXS-101's value for treating spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) has put the company front-and-centre in the debate over what "super drugs", for rare diseases afflicting relatively few patients, are really worth.Among the first to react was pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts, which helps U.S. employers manage workers' prescription costs.Its ... By Tom SimsBERLIN (Reuters) - A meeting between the U.S. administration and the heads of German carmakers Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler to discuss trade policy will likely take place mid next week, a source close to the matter said.President Donald Trump has threatened for months to impose tariffs on all European Union-assembled vehicles, a move that could upend the industry's business model for selling cars in the United States.But he has refrained from such a move while Washington and Brussels launch talks to cut other trade barriers.The White House has extended an invitation through the U.S. ... By Mai Nguyen and Melanie BurtonSINGAPORE/MELBOURNE (Reuters) - An expected surge in refined zinc output after a clutch of new mine openings has been derailed by bottlenecks at smelters across Asia, putting the brakes on an eye-watering price fall.Benchmark zinc tumbled over 35 percent in the seven months to mid-September, with prices of the metal used mainly to rustproof steel also hurt by concerns of a global economic slowdown.Prices are still down about 20 percent so far this year, but are expected to be underpinned in coming months by issues that have cut refining capacity in China, ... It is 2018, and the director of the National Science Foundation, France Cordova, is tired of learning that male scientists whose research she supports with public funds have sexually harassed their female students, staff and colleagues. At 71, she still remembers an unwanted sexual remark from a graduate-school professor she had sought out for advice on her astrophysics research. And over the last few years, she has listened to stories so many stories shared by younger scientists at conferences for geologists and astronomers. So last month, Cordova enacted the ... Samsung Electronics apologised Friday to workers who developed cancer after working at its semiconductor factories, ending a decade-long dispute at the world's top chipmaker. "We sincerely apologise to the workers who suffered from illness and their families," said Samsung co-president Kim Ki-nam. "We have failed to properly manage health risks at our semiconductor and LCD factories." Campaign groups say that 320 people have suffered from work-related illnesses after being employed by Samsung, with 118 of them dying. Under a deal announced earlier this month, the firm will pay compensation of up to 150 million won ($133,000) per case. It covers 16 types of cancer, some other rare illnesses, miscarriages and congenital diseases suffered by the workers' children. The scandal emerged in 2007 when former workers at its semiconductor and display factories in Suwon, south of Seoul, and their families said that staff had been diagnosed or died of various forms of cancer. A series of rulings and decisions by courts, Seoul's state labour welfare agency and a mediation committee followed over more than 10 years, culminating in Friday's announcement. Relatives' leader Hwang Sang-gi, whose 22-year-old son died of leukaemia, said Friday: "The apology honestly was not enough for the families of the victims but we will accept it." Noting that there is disillusionment with governance and functioning of institutions, former president Pranab Mukherjee Friday said they are a mirror of national character and must immediately win back the people's trust to save India's democracy. Mukherjee, who was speaking at the inauguration of a national conference on "Towards Peace, Harmony and Happiness: Transition to transformation" here, stressed the need for maintaining the delicate balance of power between institutions and the state, as provided in the Constitution. Correctives, he said, have to come from within these institutions to restore their credibility. "Our Constitution provides a delicate balance of power between various institutions of the state. This balance has to be maintained," he said at the event organised by Pranab Mukherjee Foundation and the Centre for Research in Rural Development (CRRID). In the last 70 years, the former president said, the country has established a successful parliamentary democracy, an independent judiciary and strong institutions such as the Election Commission, Comptroller and Auditor General, Central Vigilance Commission and the Central Information Commission that sustain and support our democratic structure. The country needs a Parliament that debates, discusses and decides, and not disrupt, a judiciary that gives justice without delay and a leadership that is committed to the nation and those values that made us a great civilization, Mukherjee asserted. We need a state that inspires confidence among people in its ability to surmount challenges before us, he said. "In the recent past, these institutions have come under severe strain and their credibility is being questioned. There is widespread cynicism and disillusionment with the governance and functioning of these institutions. To restore this credibility, the correctives have to come from within. "Institutions are a mirror of national character. To save our democracy, these institutions must win back the trust of the people, without any delay," he said. His remarks come in the wake of the recent strain between the RBI and the government. In Mukherjee's view, peace and harmony prevail when a nation celebrates pluralism, practices tolerance and promotes goodwill among diverse communities. "The land which gave the world the concept of 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' (the world is one) and the civilizational ethos of tolerance, acceptance, and forgiveness, is now in the news for rising levels of intolerance, manifestations of rage and infringement of human rights," he added. "Harmony prevails when we resolve the man-nature conflict and achieve a balanced growth through sustainable lifestyles." Peace and harmony, he asserted, prevail when the toxins of hatred, envy, jealousy and aggression are purged from our everyday lives. According to the former president, for peaceful and harmonious social transformation, society must have the capacity to meet the basic human needs of its citizens, establish the building blocks that allow citizens and communities to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives and create the conditions for all individuals to reach their full potential. "Where people are largely dependent on the governments for basic amenities, good governance has a vital role to play in such transformation," he said. Mukherjee said the conference is being held at a time when the country is passing through a "difficult phase" with newspaper headlines a painful and a distressing experience as they only highlight violence, anger and hatred. An inclusive public policy with poor implementation is of little value to society and the nation and the country's bureaucratic system "tends to work in silos leading to poor coordination and lack of teamwork", he said. While policy formulation is critical, it is essential to pay focussed attention to policy implementation, he said. "In the light of these facts, we all - the politicians, the academicians, the thought leaders, the opinion makers, the intellectuals and the civil society have to work together, to carve-out the path for a violence free transformation of the society towards peace, harmony and happiness," Mukherjee said. Former union minister and BJP MP Murli Manohar Joshi also spoke on the occasion, stressing on the transformation towards creating a peaceful, harmonious and happy society. He said the "world is one" and the concept of holistic universe where science and spirituality converge can lead to a better understanding of human relationships and goals of creating a peaceful, egalitarian, inclusive, non-violent and progressive world. Liquor tycoon-turned-fugitive economic offender Vijay Mallya's grip on his prized London home is looking shaky with the UK High Court recently rejecting many of the arguments against bank foreclosure put forward by his legal team. Swiss bank UBS has sought repossession of the property at Cornwall Terrace over the non-payment of a five-year 20.4 million pound (about Rs 185.4 crore) mortgage loan. According to The Times of India, the 62-year-old ex-billionaire, his 31-year-old son Sidhartha and his 92-year-old mother Lalitha currently live in this townhouse overlooking Regent's Park in central London. UBS is seeking an order for possession against the three family members and an order for payment of the sum due against Rose Capital Ventures Limited. Mallya's team claims the bank called in the loan ahead of an agreed period, but the bank says that it is within its rights to call in the mortgage for non-payment. While a 10-day trial in the case has been scheduled for May next year, on Wednesday, Chief Master Marsh of the business and property courts of the High Court in London ruled on the UBS' application to strike out parts of arguments Mallya and his co-defendants had put forward in their amended defence dated May 11, 2018. The court found substantially in favour of the bank, and Marsh ruled that all defence arguments except one should be "struck out" as they were "bound to fail". He also concluded that he can see no basis upon which the defendants should be given an opportunity to amend their defence. "They have had an ample opportunity to explain their case in answers to UBS' request for information. The case they put forward is not curable by simple amendments," Marsh added. "I accept that the change of solicitors put the defendants' legal team under considerable pressure. However, I am not satisfied that the defendants have shown a good reason for seeking an adjournment. It seems to me that the defendants are largely the authors of their current misfortune," the judgment read. Moreover, the judicature has reportedly issued an order asking Mallya to pay a hefty amount of 88,000 pound to UBS Investment Bank. The daily added that as per the judgement, Rose Capital purchased the derelict property in 2005, when the British Virgin Islands-registered company had no connection to the Mallya family. The property was used for offices and was purchased with a view to it being converted back to residential use. Two years later, Gladco Properties Inc, which is owned by the Sileta Trust, a Mallya family trust created by Lalitha, purchased shares in Rose Capital. Planning permission to convert the property to residential use was granted in 2008 and refurbishment works commenced the following year to turn it into "a high class home for Dr Vijay Mallya and his family members and United Breweries Group corporate guests", the judgment states. Rose Capital mortgaged the property to UBS as security for the interest-only loan of 20.4 million pound by a mortgage deed dated March 27, 2012. The property was not inhabited until sometime after March 2012. "UBS is pleased with the decision. Given that proceedings are ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment further," the bank said in a statement. Meanwhile, Mallya remains on bail on an extradition warrant executed by Scotland Yard last year on fraud and money laundering charges brought by the Indian government, amounting to nearly Rs 9,000 crore. A ruling in his extradition case is expected at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London next month. With PTI inputs Edited by Sushmita Agarwal Markets regulator SEBI on Thursday slapped a fine of Rs 65 lakh on Apollo Tyres for violating norms pertaining to the buyback of shares. The ruling comes after the Securities Appellate Tribunal, in January 2017, had set aside the over Rs 1 crore penalty imposed by Sebi on Apollo Tyres in the matter and had directed the regulator to pass a fresh order. According to the tribunal, the overall penalty amount was in excess of the limit prescribed under the Sebi Act. It was alleged that shares of Apollo Tyres were bought back by the company and its promoters in contravention of the relevant section of the Companies Act and Sebi regulations. The violations were allegedly committed by the company in 2003. In a fresh order on Thursday, Sebi said,"The noticee (Apollo Tyres) had bought back a controlling block of shares as per the scheme, but did not comply with the provisions of buy-back Regulations". According to Sebi, Apollo Tyres did not follow any of the methods for the repurchase of shares as specified under the buyback Regulation. Under the Regulation 4(1) of the buyback, a company can buy back shares through tender offer; open market through book building process via stock exchange; and from odd-lot holders. "I am of the view that the noticee failed to comply with Regulation 4(1) of buyback Regulations while effecting the buyback of its shares," Sebi General Manager and Adjudicating Officer K Saravanan said in his 102-page order. Further, the company failed to submit its board resolution dated April 24, 2003, authorising the buyback to the markets regulator with the requisite timeframe. The company also failed to issue a public notice within time limit about the extinguished shares. Accordingly, the regulator has imposed "a penalty of Rs 65 lakh on the noticee viz Apollo Tyres Limited". Earlier in July 2014, Sebi had levied a total fine of Rs 1.03 crore fine on Apollo Tyres for violating norms pertaining to the buyback of shares. 14 Mar 2019, 10:26 AM Arun Jaitley to present interim budget in February, may include tax measures Keeping with the convention, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will present an interim budget for fiscal year 2019-20 in February as the Modi government goes to polls a few months after. This puts an end to speculations that the Modi government could present a full-fledged budget a few months before the 2019 General Elections. The interim budget is likely to highlight the government's achievements as well as draw a picture of what it has planned for the next five years, The Economic Times said while quoting a senior official. Samsung apologises to workers suffering from cancer caused by its factories Samsung Electronics apologised Friday to workers who developed cancer after working at its semiconductor factories, ending a decade-long dispute at the world's top chipmaker. Under a deal announced earlier this month, the firm will pay compensation of up to 150 million won ($133,000) per case. Bank credit records 11.8% growth, household credit displays robust growth The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday said the Scheduled Commercial Banks (nationalised banks) recorded an overall credit growth of over 11.8 per cent YoY in June 2018. The growth in bank credit is an indicator of a rise in the economic activity. Disclosing the credit performance of the SCBs, the RBI report said credit to all major occupations and population groups have gone up compared to the June 2017 level. With regard to the public sector banks, the private sector banks continued to lead the overall credit growth. Applying for passport to get easy for everyone! Passport Seva Kendras to open in all 543 constituencies The Indian government plans to open a 'Passport Seva Kendra' in each of the 543 parliamentary constituencies across the country by March next year to ensure convenient passport services to its people, Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh said here. The government is trying to ensure that Indian citizens do not face any difficulty in obtaining their passports whether in India or abroad, he said as he launched the 'Passport Seva' programme Now, you can make your LIC premium payment on Paytm app Digital Wallet Company Paytm and Life Insurance Corp. have joined hands to allow customers to pay their premiums online. Paytm now has 29 insurance companies on its platform including LIC, ICICI Prudential Life, Reliance Life, Max Life Insurance, HDFC Life, TATA AIA, SBI Life, Aditya Birla Sun Life, Canara HSBC Life Insurance, Shri Ram Life and Star Health among others. Paytm and its partnership with LIC will offer a simpler and faster method of premium payments for policy holders. While paying insurance premium through the Paytm app, one can also avail the benefit of several deals and offers. Facebook launches 'Your Time' tool to curb social media addiction Social media giant Facebook wants you to spend less time on Facebook! Yes, you are reading it right. The feature was first spoken about in the month of June this year but after several delays, it is finally here. A tool called 'Your Time on Facebook' is slowly but surely rolling out to everyone and it will count the minutes of your life you have used up on Facebook - one tick at a time. The dashboard will help you manage your social life online by giving you the account of every second you've spent on Facebook's app on each day for the past week and will also give you an average time spent on it daily.Facebook will allow you to set the time limit you want and once that is breached, you will receive a reminder to log off.Number of Indians travelling to Greece has doubled this year Indian tourist arrivals to Greece has more than doubled to 38,046 in the first nine months of the current calendar year Around 17,376 Indian tourists visited Greece in the same period of 2017, according to a data by Greece National Tourist Office (GNTO) and Athens International Airport. The strategy that Greece has adopted is to promote 365-day tourism in Greece and create awareness about lesser known cities of Thessaloniki, Xanthi and Kavala, which have great geophysical, historical and cultural importance, along with Athens. Swedish automaker Volvo Cars aims to locally assemble plug-in hybrid variant of its premium SUV XC 90 in India from next year, a top company official said Thursday. The company is also gearing up to drive in four additional plug-in hybrid models in the country over the next three years as part of its plans to build a portfolio of environment-friendly vehicles. "We are going to be the first car company to assemble plug-in hybrid cars locally in India. The first model would be introduced in the last quarter of next year. The localisation of plug-in hybrids marks the future of electrification for us," Volvo Car India Managing Director Charles Frump told reporters here. The company would be rolling out the locally-assembled XC 90 T8 plug-in hybrid from its Bengaluru facility. It currently imports the vehicle as completely built-up units (CBUs). In a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), battery can be recharged by plugging it into an external source of electric power. Volvo, which sells a total of ten models in India, currently assembles three models -- XC 90, XC 60, S90 in India. "As a responsible luxury car company, we believe electrification is the future. However, till the time we have a supporting infrastructure for fully-electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids offer immediate solution," Frump said. The company would also continue to look at opportunities to introduce full battery electric vehicles in the country, he added. Globally, Volvo Cars has announced that every vehicle it launches from 2019 will have an electric motor and is aiming to have one million electrified cars on roads by 2025. "We expect India to be an important part of this one-million-cars target. We at Volvo firmly believe that road to full battery electric vehicles runs through plug-in hybrids," Frump said. The company has also rolled out various initiatives to generate awareness about air pollution. The Indian government had last year said it plans to have 100 per cent electric vehicles in public transport and 40 per cent in personal mobility by 2030. However, earlier this year it changed its stance and decided against formulating an electric vehicle (EV) policy saying technology should not be trapped by rules and regulations. Even as the shock waves from the arrest of Nissan's once-revered chairman Carlos Ghosn for understating his compensation continue to linger, the latest buzz is that the alleged financial misconduct may be far bigger than initially suspected. A day after the 64-year-old was unanimously ousted from the Chairman's position by Nissan Motor Co's board, Ghosn is reportedly set to face a new charge from prosecutors for under-reporting his income by a total of $71 million, AFP reported. That's 61% more than the amount he was previously accused of. Prosecutors had intercepted the Brazil-born tycoon on Monday as he landed in Tokyo on a private jet, accusing him - as well as fellow executive Greg Kelly - of understating his income by around 5 billion yen ($44 million) between June 2011 and June 2015. But according to the agency, Japanese media Asahi Shimbun and the Nikkei business daily today reported that Ghosn is now suspected of under-reporting his income by another three billion yen for the following three fiscal years. So prosecutors are reportedly now planning to re-arrest him on charges of understating his income by a total of 8 billion yen in the past seven years. Under Japanese law, arrested suspects can face additional arrest warrants, which can mean heavier charges. The Nikkei reportedly said that Ghosn is further suspected of failing to report a profit of four billion yen through stock appreciation rights. The latter is a type of incentive plan that allows companies to give its management a bonus on strong earnings. On Wednesday, prosecutors successfully applied to extend Ghosn's custody for an additional 10 days as they step up their questioning. He is being held custody in a Tokyo detention centre, where inmates are typically allowed 30 minutes exercise per day and only two baths a week. That's a steep fall from grace for the titan of the auto sector who is credited with not only turning around Nissan's fortunes but also forging the alliance with Renault and Mitsubishi Motors, which sold a combined 10.6 million cars last year - more than any other firm. Nissan said on Monday an internal investigation triggered by a tip-off from a whistleblower had revealed that Ghosn engaged in other financial wrongdoing as well. The allegations include using Nissan's money to secretly buy and maintain a string of luxury homes across the world as well as help his sister. The Japanese media reported that Nissan had paid $100,000 a year as consulting fees to Ghosn's sister since 2002 although there is no record of her doing advisory work for the group. It is further alleged that the Brazil beachfront home that she was living in was bought with company money. Meanwhile, the future of the fractious alliance between the auto brands - employing 450,000 people globally - hangs in balance. Yesterday, the French and Japanese finance ministers reiterated their "strong support" for the alliance at a meeting in Paris, adding that both wanted "to maintain this winning cooperation". With agency inputs Three heavily-armed suicide bombers on Friday stormed the Chinese consulate in Pakistan's largest metropolis Karachi, killing two policemen before being shot dead by security forces which foiled the daring attack in the high-security zone, authorities said. The consulate, located in the posh Clifton area, came under attack early morning. Three suspected suicide bombers were killed before they were able to enter the facility as forces successfully foiled the attack, Karachi Police Chief Amir Shaikh said. Nine hand grenades, Kalashnikov bullets, magazines and explosives were recovered from the possession of the terrorists, Geo news quoted police officials as saying. "Food supplies and medicines were also recovered from their possession," officials said. "We have received two dead bodies of policemen and an injured Chinese security guard who is under treatment," said Seemi Jamali, the executive director at Jinnah Hospital. The Sindh government and the Inter-Services Public Relations Wing (ISPR) confirmed that three terrorists were killed in the operation. The heavily-guarded E-Street neighbourhood, which is considered a red zone, is home to a number of upscale restaurants, diplomatic missions and schools. The Bilawal House of Pakistan People's Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is also in the area. Schools and eateries have been locked down until a clearance operation is concluded. Residents said they first heard firing and explosions around 9.30 AM (local time). "The terrorists first attacked the checkpost outside the consulate and detonated a hand grenade in the area," Shaikh said. Shaikh said the attackers had parked their vehicle at some distance from the consulate before moving towards it. Defence analyst and security contractor Ikram Sehgal, whose company's guards have been posted at the consulate, said that the attackers had first engaged in an exchange of fire with policemen. After the policemen were killed, he said, the attackers proceeded towards the gate of the consulate. However, the guards were quick to usher civilians with consular business into the building and shut the gates behind them. Chinese staff at the mission were taken to the main building, Sehgal said. The paramilitary rangers than reached the spot and engaged the attackers, leaving three of them killed. Weapons and explosive materials were recovered from the attackers, he said. Sheikh said that all Chinese staffers "are safe and secure". The security situation has been brought under control and all areas will soon be cleared, he said, adding that a team of police has been deployed inside the consulate. The Foreign Office spokesman said that Islamabad is "in touch with the relevant agencies and will react quickly" to ascertain the facts. Shaikh said he would be able to provide a clearer account of the attack later. The area, considered a red zone, is heavily guarded. Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah contacted the Chinese consul general and assured him that the situation will be taken under control. Governor of Sindh Imran Ismail has sought a report on the attack from the Sindh inspector general of police. An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Heather Humphreys TD and Minister for Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe TD yesterday consulted 160 key stakeholders at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin on Future Jobs, the Governments new plan to guide the next phase of Ireland's economic development. Speaking yesterday, An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said, "Todays school children will be doing jobs that dont currently exist. At the same time our planet is under pressure from climate change and other challenges. New forms of energy, transport and food production will transform industries, companies and jobs. Future Jobs is about positioning us now to embrace these big changes." He added, "The Future Jobs strategy sets out longer term ambitions for the future of the economy, taking account of the challenges facing us, then translating these into a small number of impactful and deliverable actions which can be taken on an annual basis, starting in 2019. There will be accountability for delivery of these actions, overseen personally by me and by my Department. The next few decades will involve great change and opportunity. If Ireland is to adapt to and continue to thrive, we must start preparing now for tomorrows economy." Source: www.businessworld.ie Schoolchildren wave Australian and Chinese flags as China's President Xi Jinping arrives in Hobart, Australia, in November 2014. Photo: VCG (AFR) A knowledge deficit on China inside the federal government's top foreign policy and national security agencies has driven it to make under-the-radar investments in more Sino analysts, Chinese language skills and to gain better insights into the Chinese Communist Party. Inside the Canberra bureaucracy, there has been private recognition that Australia was blindsided by the speed of Beijing's island building in the South China Sea, its surprise push into the neighboring South Pacific and meddling in domestic politics. The Department of Foreign Affairs, Defense Department, Australian Security Intelligence Organization and Office of National Assessments are sharpening their China capabilities by hiring more experts and enhancing development of existing analysts, sources said. The Coalition government's hawkish turn on China, which began under Malcolm Turnbull and has continued via actions though not rhetoric under Prime Minister Scott Morrison, has unsettled some of the pro-China bureaucratic old guard and fueled frictions between hawkish intelligence agencies and more pragmatic foreign policy mandarins. Photo: VCG For example, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade under then foreign minister Julie Bishop privately disagreed with the government's public blanket ban on Huawei supplying the 5G wireless technology network. DFAT wanted a compromise solution. Cabinet's national security committee in August imposed the ban on Chinese telcos Huawei and ZTE, upsetting Beijing. The government bureaucracy has some senior China specialists, such as DFAT's Graeme Fletcher and ONA's Harry Genn. But there is acknowledgment in Canberra that its understanding of China needs to be considerably deepened, especially in the era of President Xi Jinping. Former DFAT and ONA senior official Richard Rigby of the Australian National University said Australia's understanding of China compared reasonably to that of other Western countries "but we could always be better". "China is such a big part of our life, so however good we may be, we ought to be working out how we can do it better than we're currently doing," he said. "There are some very good individuals in government, but because of the nature of the Chinese system there are areas we just don't know all that much about." John Garnaut, a former Fairfax Media journalist in China and adviser to Mr Turnbull on the government's foreign interference laws, told the US Congress in March that the knowledge across Western capitals of how the Chinese Communist Party operates was "unbelievably thin". Close observers say there is a big gap in the understanding of elite Chinese politics, where Beijing's foreign policy affecting Australia is influenced. Some of Australia's top China political experts are outside government. Outside of government, Kevin Rudd is one of Australia's leading China experts. Here he shakes hands with China's then-Vice President Xi Jinping in 2010.Photo: AFR These include former prime minister Kevin Rudd, Lowy Institute senior fellow and author of acclaimed books on China, Richard McGregor, China Matters head Linda Jakobson, Mr Rigby, Mr Garnaut and several academics at universities who are engaged with the government to varying degrees. A small number of local companies, including mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto, which export billions of dollars of iron ore to China, employ and hire international China experts for insights on government policy and the economy. China accounts for about 30 per cent of Australia's exports and is crucial to the economy. The Reserve Bank of Australia opened a small office in Beijing in 2011 inside the Australian embassy, allowing its economists to liaise regularly with government, business and universities to gain a better understanding of the economy from on-the-ground and beyond the official government data, which is treated with caution. The RBA also has a dedicated China and India economic analysis team in Sydney. In Canberra, there is debate among Sino watchers about the value of diplomats maintaining access to China versus hard-nosed, independent analysis by intelligence agencies. For example, many DFAT diplomats prioritise managing cordial relations with China and have long-standing personal relationships with senior Chinese officials. The defence and intelligence agencies have taken a "more Pentagon view" on China, a source outside the bureaucracy said. "DFAT fears the consequences of Australia's standing and national interest if the government is too hawkish," the person said. The Morrison government in the past week announced several initiatives aimed at countering China's influence in the region. These included the US and Australia jointly developing a naval base at Papua New Guinea, and the US, Australia, Japan and New Zealand committing to a big infrastructure program to connect 70 per cent of PNG to electricity by 2030. Japan and Australia signed a series of Memorandums of Understanding to fund infrastructure in the Pacific and advanced talks on a more substantive agreement, which would facilitate larger and more regular joint military exercises. Despite the "Pacific pivot", the Morrison government's rhetoric on China has been softer than under Mr Turnbull's leadership. This article was originally published in The Australian Financial Review. The Chinese government is raising the amount of money that people living in major cities can spend tax-free on overseas goods via e-commerce platforms by 30%, as it looks to stimulate consumer spending amid trade tensions with the U.S. Starting in January, the annual tax-free quota for individual consumers will rise to 26,000 yuan ($3,750) from 20,000 yuan, according to a statement (link in Chinese) posted by the State Council, Chinas cabinet, on Wednesday. The policy also raised the limit for a single transaction to 5,000 yuan from 2,000 yuan. The announcement came after Chinese Premier Li Keqiang chaired a State Council executive meeting the same day, at which it was decided that existing policies on e-commerce retail imports would be expanded to broaden opening-up and stimulate the potential of domestic consumption demand. At the first China International Import Expo in Shanghai early this month, President Xi Jinping vowed to rebrand China as an importer to fend off complaints from the U.S. that the country has long maintained a trade deficit with trading partners. The statement said the policy will be expanded from 15 cities to 22 cities, such as Beijing, Shenyang, Wuhan and Xiamen. In the first half of 2018, Chinese people spent a total of 1.03 trillion yuan on imported goods through e-commerce platforms, according to a Thursday report from the Electronic Commerce Research Center (ECRC). It predicts the figure for the whole year will hit 1.9 trillion yuan, a 26.7% year-on-year increase. The new policy will expand the market pie, said Cao Lei, an ECRC analyst in the report, adding that Chinese consumers tend to favor foreign products over domestic ones. Chinas thriving e-commerce import business is currently dominated by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., JD.com Inc. and NetEase Inc., but it has also seen a slew of challengers coming onboard. Suning.com focuses on home appliances and electronic gadgets, while Jumei.com promotes cosmetics. In the wake of the Beijings call for increased imports, Alibaba said it would seek to facilitate $200 billion worth of imports over its various e-commerce platforms over the next five years. Alibaba runs the popular Tmall and Taobao. The new rule represents the governments recognition of the role of the e-commerce platforms (in boosting imports), Wang Haoyang, an executive responsible for the cross-border business at Alibaba, was quoted as saying in the ECRC report. As China has begun to crack down on undeclared imports of consumer goods by personal shoppers traveling overseas, known as daigou in Chinese or buy on behalf, more consumers are expected to turn to e-retailers for overseas nutritional products, baby milk formula and cosmetics. Contact reporter Mo Yelin (yelinmo@caixin.com) For years the Philippines have been one of the fiercest adversaries in the battle for control of the South China Sea. While China has made the claim that the tiny islands in the area were mapped by Chinese cartographers centuries ago, thus laying claim on them, the Philippines have used geographical proximity as a main argument, although in the Spanish-American treaty handing over the colony of the Philippines, these islands were not included, weakening the position of the Philippine argument. However, backed by its close ally, the U.S., which entertains substantial military bases on the island nation, the Philippines took the debate to an international court in Europe, which ruled the Spratly Islands, which China calls the Nansha Islands, were in fact not islands and thus couldnt constitute a territorial claim for China. This placed the Philippine government in the awkward position of having judicial support of the West opposed to the economic and military power of China, which refuses to let Europeans debate the scope of its territory again. Having earned my MBA in the Philippines and traveled extensively to various regions, I have a very personal relationship with this beautiful and diverse tropical country. While living in China, I also have a close affection for China. So I see with great joy that a solution at the negotiation table is drawing closer. As I have always suspected, the interests in the South China Sea for the two countries, although overlapping, are actually different in nature: China has since its inception as New China and even before during the period known as the Chinese Republic under Sun Yat-sen has always claimed the whole of the South China Sea, based on claims going back at least to the feudalist times of the Qing Dynasty (1636-1912). To give up this territorial claim, especially upon pressure from Western former colonialists, would wake deeply buried grief and anger from the time when Western powers by force of pure military strength took swaths of Chinese territory away and managed the areas as colonies. The French Concession of Shanghai, the German remains in Qingdao (Tsingtao) and of course the only recently returned colonies of Hong Kong and Macao all tell stories of this period of shame for the proud nation of Chinese peoples. The Philippines have their own history with colonization, having suffered 300 years under the cruel yoke of the Spanish, and even more under the cultural oppression by the Catholic Church. However, after the Spanish-American war the Philippines were handed over as reparations to the U.S. at a time when the U.S. could be seen as idealistic rather than power hungry. The U.S. promised to only hold the Philippines for a limited time and then let them have independence. During this period, the U.S. did invest a lot in the education of the country, and somewhat in economic development. The people could see tangible improvements of their lives, and thus didnt hold that much of a grudge against their second colonizers with the exception of the Muslim south, which never succumbed to the Spanish attempts of colonization or to the U.S. attempts of westernizing the Philippines. With this background in mind, it is easy to understand that the Philippines were always a willing pawn in the great chess game of the U.S. trying to contain China. At the same time the Philippines have a very legitimate and at least understandable interest in the South China Sea. The very legitimate interest is the right of the coastal people to fish deep into the areas that China claims. While for China this is an economic interest of the fishery industry a tiny fraction of its huge economy for those coastal people in the Philippines it is a question of economic survival. The second interest is the oil and gas deposited in the South China Sea close to the Philippines. I think the breakthrough in negotiations is to acknowledge that the Philippine interest is mainly of economic nature, while the Chinese interest is mainly about pride. Let China ensure the safety of the area; let China control who enters the area when and where; and let the Philippine fishermen get unlimited access rights for subsistence fishing and ensure that Philippine interests are considered when fishing quotas are decided in the South China Sea. Additionally, let the Philippines exploit some of the oil and gas in its proximity, ideally with Chinese technical assistance. With that, everyone should be happy everyone can be happy. For China, an end to this long-running conflict would be a major success in the much bigger game of the U.S. trying to contain China. I think the independent mind of current Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and the cool-headed approach of the Chinese president Xi Jinping provide these two countries with a great opportunity to reach an agreement with vast benefits for both sides. Harald Buchmann is a strategic management consultant and trainer for Swiss management consultancy Malik Management. Born in Switzerland, he has a masters degree in Strategy and International Management (SIM) from the University of St. Gallen (HSG) in Switzerland and an MBA from the Asia Institute of Management (AIM) in Manila, Philippines. ETATS-UNIS :: Hate crime committed against a gay man from Cameroon after his private photos were posted online :: UNITED STATES A Seattle man was attacked and his mother who lives in Cameroon was assaulted after a woman stole his phone and posted intimate photos of the man and his husband online, according to prosecutors. Two men have since been charged with a hate crime. A Seattle man was attacked and his mother who lives in Cameroon was assaulted after a woman stole his phone and posted intimate photos of the man and his husband online, according to prosecutors. Two men have since been charged with a hate crime. After a Seattle mans former house guest released intimate photos of him and his husband to members of the regions Cameroon community, the man was attacked outside his North Seattle apartment last month and his mother who still lives in the Central African country where homosexuality is illegal was assaulted and had her house destroyed, according to police and prosecutors. Christian Djoko, 27, of Bothell, and Rodrigue Fodjo-Kamden, 32, of Lynnwood both members of the local Cameroon community were each charged last week with malicious harassment, the states hate-crime statute, for allegedly ambushing the victim outside his house and assaulting him because of his sexual orientation, charging papers say. Fodjo-Kamden was arrested Nov. 3 and spent two days in jail before posting bail, jail records show. Jail records say he posted a $15,000 bond, but court records indicate his bail was set at $50,000. Djoko was arrested Saturday and remains jailed in lieu of $50,000 bail, according to jail records. The female house guest who allegedly stole the victims cellphone and sent private text messages and photos of the man and his husband to the victims relatives and then posted them to various social-media sites remains at large and is believed to have moved to Washington, D.C., charging papers say. In one Facebook post, the woman allegedly used an anti-gay slur and said the victim needs to kill himself after writing his will, say the charges. The Seattle Times is not naming her because she has not been charged with a crime. Seattle police requested the FBIs assistance investigating the case because there is potential that an international crime of internet stalking charge could be brought, though the charges dont specify who might face such a charge. State law defines malicious harassment a felony commonly referred to as a hate crime as intentionally injuring, damaging property or threatening someone because of his or her perception of the victims race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or mental, physical or sensory handicap. The number of hate crimes has skyrocketed across the country since the 2016 presidential election, The Seattle Times reported this month. In Seattle, the number of reported hate crimes almost doubled, from 118 incidents in 2016 to 234 in 2017. Of the hate crimes reported in the city last year, 57 of the cases were based on victims sexual orientation. Amnesty International lists Cameroon as one of seven nations where discrimination against LBGT people is especially dangerous and where men have been imprisoned for homosexual acts. According to charging papers: At 1 a.m. on Oct. 21, the victim parked his car and was walking toward his apartment building when two men he knew from Seattles Cameroon community quickly approached him on foot. One of them grabbed the mans wrists and held them behind his back while the second assailant violently shook the man by his ears, causing him to fall to the ground, charging papers say. The victim, who suffered injuries to his ears and knees, later told police his assailants spoke to him in French, called him a variety of derogatory names pertaining to his sexual orientation and said he needed to change, say the charges. The victim, who reported the alleged hate crime to police the next day, told officers hed let a female friend from Cameroon stay with him and his husband when she moved to Seattle in December and confided in her that he is gay, the charges say. The woman, who constantly told him he needed to change from being gay and offered to have sex with him to make him straight, began releasing the victims private photos in August and moved out in September, say charging papers. One photo she allegedly released was of the couples marriage certificate. Soon after the photos were posted online, the victim started receiving threatening text and voicemail messages. He told police he believed the Oct. 21 attack was related to his former house guest. He also reported that his mother had been assaulted and her house trashed. After an officer helped the victim obtain a protection order against Djoko and Fodjo-Kamden, the victim reported on Nov. 2 that his car had been spray-painted with anti-gay slurs and crude images of penises, the charges say. In a later interview with a Seattle police detective and an FBI agent, the victim was extremely emotional, sad, quiet, (and) weeping at times. He was very fearful for himself and his family in Cameroon, the charges say. He gave investigators a photo of a medical document showing his mother had sought treatment for her injuries after she was assaulted and the detective found a social-media post where an unidentified person referenced destroying the mothers house in Cameroon, say charging papers. The victim also showed the detective and agent the photos that had been posted on different websites, which were images of what a reasonable person (would) conclude were of a gay couple, the charges say. news, latest-news At Pierces Creek, to Canberra's west, a thin ribbon of silver snakes through the charred landscape. It is all that remains of the stolen ute that earlier this month sparked Canberra's biggest scare since the devastating 2003 firestorm. So intense was the blaze that the ute's aluminium engine block melted, dribbled down a shallow ditch and solidified into an unrecognisable puddle. If the drivers had been looking for a secluded spot to do their work, they had found it. On the afternoon of November 1, they had driven the vehicle south-west of the Cotter Dam, almost an hour out of Canberra, dumping it deep in the back roads of the Pierces Creek pine forest. Firefighters had been warning for weeks that Canberra was seeing conditions similar to the lead up of the deadly 2003 January bushfire, which killed four people, destroyed nearly 500 homes, tore up the outer suburbs and left an indelible mark on the city's psyche. For weeks, park rangers had reported seeing more and more cars dumped and set alight in Canberra's parks. Two hours before the November 1 blaze was first reported, ACT Policing had tried to stop a stolen blue Toyota Hilux Workmate with NSW registration. The fire that followed burned up 204 hectares of pine forest, raging for four days and coming within seven kilometres of Tuggeranong. Among those tasked with managing the dangerous and unpredictable situation was ACT Rural Fire Service senior liaison officer Chris Condon, ACT Rural Fire Service chief officer Joe Murphy and ACT Parks and Conservation Service acting fire manager Adam McLachlan. It was just as his usual 12-hour shift on Thursday, November 1 was winding up that Condon got word a fire had started out in Pierces Creek. By the time he arrived on the scene it had already eaten up about four hectares. It would be another 24 hours before Condon would get any sleep. By about 6.30pm on the Thursday, the winds had picked up and the fire started to grow. Fuelled by the pine needles and blackberry bushes on the ground, the flames were soon carried into the tops of the trees by the wind, where they grew in intensity. Firefighters didn't do changeovers during the night on the first day of a blaze - it was too dangerous, would have slowed down command to brief new firefighters and could have led to confusion. "Crews [were] really starting to get a handle of the terrain; the fire activity," Murphy says. But due to the fire and smoke, crews coming in the middle of night weren't able to get any sense of what they were working with. Instead, those first responders spent most of the time on their feet taking short breaks down by a resting area, until they were relieved on Friday morning. But not Condon - he stayed up in the ranges all night. "I had my food brought up to me," he recalls. "There were a few times [that night] we had to get crews to stand back a little bit and let it decide what it was going to do and settle down." The aim was never to contain the fire but slow it down, as the terrain was too difficult and spot fires - small fires started by embers blowing ahead of the blaze - were making it too dangerous. As Condon finally headed home for some rest, firefighters were battling to keep the fire from the nearby Bullen Ranges, about five kilometres west of Kambah. Murphy says had the fire reached the ranges, Fridays wild wind conditions would have driven it through the valley and into Tuggeranong. It had become, in effect, a battle for Bullen. "That would have been a whole different beast to worry about," says Murphy, surveying the now cold, blackened earth at the source of the fire. "We were lucky the winds were quite low. Once it gets to the Bullen Range, it's windy, it gets up over the ridge and it's into the grasslands heading towards the suburbs." By late that Friday erratic weather had arrived, bringing some rain but also complications as firefighters started working through the night to bulldoze in containment lines. Murphy says the rain did nothing, but the humidity helped. Firefighters in aircraft watched the fire from above and even infra-red cameras tracking the blaze were grounded for an hour as the storm blew through. By Monday, with the threat of the fire under control and welcome rain on the way, McLachlan and park rangers began to turn their attention to the impacts on the landscape. The forest grounds had been chewed up by the fire and fire trucks, meaning the soil was loose and could be carried by the rain into the nearby Murrumbidgee River Catchment, one of Canberra's drinking water sources. The burned soil and the debris of what was left of the ute after police towed it out was still cordoned off by police tape. The collapsed trees were a sign of how dense the forest around the car was before the fire. Some trees still hung over the spot, and metres away a creek bed infested with wild blackberry shrubs which were ripe for the fuel. But the fire had jumped across the road, up the hill and to the east before, thanks to the erratic winds, carving a strange, random pattern around the forest, hampering firefighters' efforts. Murphy says while the Pierces Creek blaze wasn't like 2003, conditions were similar. And eerie reminders of that terrible day a decade-and-a-half ago are all around. In the foyer of The Canberra Times' offices in Fyshwick, a piece of art with odd lumps of metal and twisted springs hangs from the wall. It is the remains of the engine of firefighter Matt Dutkiewicz's car, which was melted to a puddle as Dutkiewicz battled in the hills alongside his colleagues to save the city's homes. The people of Canberra are quite complacent, says Murphy. "This was a good reminder: it wasn't particularly bad firefighting conditions but look what it did. Low humidity, a bit of heat, a bit of wind: it takes just a few conditions and away she goes ... or just some idiot with a car." /images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/3276cd14-b7b3-49bc-a956-4a9b2d027a18/r0_224_4215_2605_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg news, crime Investigators did not exhaust to the point of negation the theory that Colin Winchesters assassination had been the work of the Calabrian Mafia, a former Canberra top cop said Friday. Roman Quaedvlieg was the chief of ACT Policing when the re-trial of David Eastman for the murder was ordered in 2014. Mr Eastman was convicted and sentenced to life for the murder after a 1995 trial. He spent almost 19 years behind bars before his conviction was found to be unsafe and quashed, and he was released from jail. On Thursday, Mr Eastman, 73, was acquitted of the 1989 murder after a five month re-trial. Mr Quaedvlieg - one of Mr Winchester's successors - took to Twitter to share his insights into the case, specifically the theory that Mr Winchester had been killed by the Calabrian mafia, after the news of the not guilty verdict broke. The retrial heard Mr Winchester had previously worked on an operation observing the Calabrian mafia growing cannabis in Bungendore - men who believed they were under protection from authorities. The cannabis growers were later arrested and put before court, and the theory went that they believed Mr Winchester had betrayed them. A portion of the mafia evidence during the re-trial was heard in a closed court. In a series of tweets, Mr Quaedvlieg said, as ACT police chief, he had spent many spellbound weeks reading the old reports. The case [against Mr Eastman] was always circumstantial, however some of the avenues of inquiry were fascinating, especially the theory that two Calabrian hit men had travelled to Australia to undertake a mafia assassination on Winchester as retaliation for ratting them out, he said. When I read the evidence as presented at the 1st trial, my leaning was [Mr Eastman] was guilty but knew it was hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. The retrial verdict reflects that view. Mr Quaedvlieg said that, when he read all material, he thought other avenues needed to exhausted to negate them fully. For the record, while I dont think that avenue of investigation was exhausted to the point of negation, I dont believe Winchester was a dirty cop. The evidence points to the contrary, but the Italian organised crime entities involved may have wrongly believed otherwise. Prosecutors during the retrial had dismissed the mafia theory, saying the murder was the work of an amateur and that Mr Winchester's death served the organisation no purpose. Meanwhile, there have been no wild celebrations by Mr Eastman - who is truly free for the first-time in almost 30 years. Mr Eastman became an immediate suspect after the murder, and was questioned by detectives the following day. Although he was released from prison in 2014, he had been subject to bail conditions since then. The former Treasury official did not front the waiting media for a jubilant press conference outside the court after the verdict, instead preferring to quietly slip away through a backdoor. Mr Eastman spoke privately to a number of close supporters immediately afterwards, although those conversations have not been made public. Through lawyers he politely declined a request for comment by The Canberra Times shortly after the acquittal. It is unknown how Mr Eastman spent his first full day of freedom in three decades, other than he has kept his head down in preparation for the litigation of a civil claim. The fallout of the verdict on Friday centred on the decision to pursue the re-trial, with a peak ACT legal body saying it was a waste of taxpayers' money and did not serve justice. The ACT Bar Association criticised ACT Director of Public Prosecutions Jon White SC's decision to mount the retrial despite an inquiry's recommendation a new trial would "not [be] feasible and would not be fair". Mr White declined to respond to the association's criticisms. The full bench of the ACT Supreme Court in 2014 quashed Mr Eastman's 1995 conviction for the murder and ordered he face a re-trial over the assassination. The court, comprised of Justices Steven Rares, Michael Wigney and acting Justice Dennis Cowdroy, found Mr Eastman did not receive a trial according to law. The judges said it had not been convinced that a new trial would be unfair and had even been necessary as a strong circumstantial case of murder of a senior police officer existed against Eastman. The court heard he should not "escape having a jury decide whether or not he is guilty of that crime". "Weighing all the relevant factors and considerations, we have concluded that the interests of justice require that we order a retrial," Justice Rares told the court in August 2014. Despite the court's orders, the ultimate decision on whether to conduct a retrial fell to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Jon White, SC. Mr White, in November 2014, decided Mr Eastman would be re-tried for the 1989 murder. Bar president Steven Whybrow said there had been little justification in pursuing Mr Eastman the second time. "A judicial inquiry had raised real questions about the fragile forensic evidence and the effluxion of time had further undermined the prosecution case and the accuseds capacity to challenge it," Mr Whybrow said. Mr Whybrow said Mr Eastman's age (he turned 73 during this latest trial), the 19 years he already served in custody, and the cost of the retrial all weighed against the prosecution. "Perhaps most significantly Acting Justice Brain Martin, who undertook the judicial inquiry into the original conviction, specifically expressed the view that even though he thought Eastman was probably guilty, he still had a nagging doubt (probably the same doubt the jury entertained) and in any event a new trial would be neither feasible or fair," he said. "The slaying of Colin Winchester was of course an abominable and serious crime that justified the significant resources that went into the inquest, police investigation and the original trial. "The heinous nature of the crime could not alone justify the retrial of the main suspect particularly where a judge has said such a trial would not be fair and where he had a nagging doubt about guilt." /images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/82097796-8928-45b0-ab53-0df1170aedd7/r0_254_4928_3038_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg news, latest-news It was the moment that united the world like no other. On July 21, 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the moon - July 20 in Houston, but the following day in this part of the world. At four minutes before 1pm Australian time, astronaut Neil Armstrong took a small jump off the spacecraft's ladder and bounced slightly on the lunar module's landing pad. He tested the lunar surface gingerly with his foot before taking the final step, saying the immortal words, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Six hundred million people watched the black and white television pictures live - but where did they come from? A new book lays out the crucial role a group of Australians played in bringing that event to the world. Its author, Andrew Tink, argues that the record needs righting to give full recognition to the role played by Honeysuckle Creek tracking station near Canberra. The 2000 fictionalised movie The Dish may have been good drama, but it was not good history, he says. For the historic first six minutes of the broadcast, mission control took its video feed straight from the ACT-based tracking station. At that point, the moon hadn't risen sufficiently for Australia's other tracking station, Parkes, to the north in New South Wales, to get a good signal - and the tracking station in California had let mission control down. So Honeysuckle Creek provided footage of the crucial moment when history was made. If Honeysuckle Creek hadn't worked efficiently, nobody would have seen that "giant step for mankind" Mr Tink, who has researched the events thoroughly, even listening to recordings made by NASA at the time and piecing together the sequence of events, says. He says the controller in Houston suddenly said, "All stations, we are switching video to Honeysuckle." That they did, capturing the moment before Parkes took over. The book, Honeysuckle Creek: the story of Tom Reid, a little dish and Neil Armstrong's first step, is as much about the station as it is the man who ran it - who happens to have been a friend of the author. Tom Reid was a gravel-voiced Glaswegian who joined the British navy, then the Australian navy, and ended up settling here. He sailed into Sydney Harbour and never forgot it, Mr Tink says. Reid had graduated as an electrical engineer, but Mr Tink says his management skills were as important as his technical ones. As the newly appointed director of the station, Reid realised NASA was disatisfied with its performance, particularly as the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union took on huge political significance in the Cold War. The survival of Honeysuckle Creek - and even the success of the American space program - depended on the station upping its game. So he shook the place up, Tink says, getting rid of the people he believed were underperforming. He moved highly qualified engineers and replaced them with less qualified people who nevertheless could perform better in crises. "Tom Reid was called in to sort Honeysuckle out, which he did," Mr Tink says. "He was pretty ruthless about it". And the management lessons? Mr Tink says there are several: relentlessly pursue perfection, be hard and unsentimental in selecting people to work in teams, and sometimes the most qualified people aren't the best if they can't cope with pressure. He thinks the story of Honeysuckle Creek matters because it is giving rightful honour both to an overlooked Australian achievement and to an overlooked Australian achiever. He says Tom Reid only mentioned the drama of those six minutes to him once, when he said "it hadn't been planned that way, but that's the way it was. And goddamn, we were ready." /images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/eeacb404-e5d7-4179-8d76-2f5b5bc08d51/r0_229_1500_1077_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg news, latest-news The ACT government has begun flattening a block of land at Chapman to build public housing on the site, before the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal has released its reasons for rejecting an appeal against the proposal. While some residents had been considering appealing the tribunal's decision to allow the 20-unit public housing development in the ACT Supreme Court, the government may have thwarted their prospects, with construction now under way. Residents have also alleged they were misled about the government's intentions for the site, particularly in relation to plans to subdivide the land - originally zoned for community facilities - to sell part of the block to house people with disabilities. A raft of residents had appealed the government's decision to approve the development on several grounds, including that it was in a bushfire abatement zone and there was no formal lease over the land to allow it to be built on. Residents had lodged four separate appeals against various parts of the proposal, which were combined into a single case, but on a series of technicalities, the tribunal excluded several issues as outside its remit. In the final decision in August this year, the tribunal ultimately sided with the government and rejected residents' appeals. But it has not yet published its reasons for the decision, and in the meantime the territory government has started construction and the 28-day period for lodging an appeal has lapsed. The government's rationale is expected to be published later this month, the tribunal has confirmed, but it is understood residents were waiting for the release of that rationale before deciding whether or not to appeal the decision. Darwinia Park Residents Group's Simone Hunter said the entire community in the area had been waiting for those reasons. "Whats distressing to residents is the ACT government hasnt allowed us to go through that process. Instead of waiting for those reasons, its turned up with bulldozers," she said. "The whole process has been stacked against us from the very beginning. Why [can't] they just sit down at a table with a community group and try to find an appropriate solution?" Ms Hunter said the community had suggested other sites in the area, including one former Mr Fluffy block about 700 metres down the road which was not on the edge of the suburb and closer to amenities. But she said the government had ignored such proposals. Residents also said they were misled about a planned direct sale of part of the block to Hartley Life Care, as well as the scope of the plans. The government presented us with plans that they never intended to go through with. They had been in discussion with regards to subdividing the block and negotiating a direct sale for months prior to the public dissemination of the 30-house plan," she said. "They lied to us in 2017, even in the consultancy, they said they would leave bottom of block alone." The release of the northern section of the block to them was conditionally approved this February, although public housing renewal taskforce meeting minutes released under freedom of information laws show discussions about the direct sale had been ongoing since at least January 2017. The disability organisation plans to build a four-bedroom house for three people with disabilities and their support staff on the site, and is in the process of lodging a development application, though the sale was subject to development approval. While the government had made some changes to the public housing proposal, including cutting the number of dwellings from 30 to 20 dwellings and ensuring it would meet higher bushfire protection standards, Ms Hunter said the process had left a bad taste in the community's mouth. A public housing taskforce spokeswoman said the government had been open and transparent throughout consultations, including six meetings with residents over several months last year. But she did not directly refute the claim the government failed to inform residents in 2017 about the planned sale of part of the land, instead saying the taskforce had had no involvement in that process, though it understood what was proposed on the site. /images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/df37e4e4-bcbc-437b-813a-b08be95f1f67/r0_219_4256_2624_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg Metro Manila (November 22, CNN Philippines) For Foreign Affairs Secretary Teddy Boy Locsin, the Philippines is only sending diplomatic protests "at a brick wall" whenever it protests China's militarization of the West Philippine Sea. "Don't you think within a period of time, considering we don't have the firepower to do anything about it, the accumulation of note verbales becomes really evidence of the facts of life? That we are powerless and they are indifferent," Locsin told CNN Philippines' The Source on Thursday. "The strong will do what they want and the weak will suffer as they must," he added, quoting Greek historian Thucydides. The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), previously under former Senator Alan Peter Cayetano, has insisted that it has filed hundreds of diplomatic protests against China for its incursions in the West Philippine Sea, an area of the South China Sea within the Philippines' 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone. The exact number varies, with Cayetano saying during a House probe last May that the Philippines has filed "50 to 100" protests, while the DFA said in June that the country was engaged in in 85 "diplomatic actions" on the South China Sea row. But in August, Cayetano said during a hearing on the proposed 2019 budget of the DFA at the Senate that they do not count how many diplomatic actions have been filed against China. Still, he insisted in an interview on The Source last August that "dozens and dozens" of written and oral protests have been filed and have the same weight. While Locsin has a pessimistic outlook on filing diplomatic protests, he is not entirely shutting the door on it. "Sometimes it works, among equal countries, yes it does, where we have something over them," he said. In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague invalidated China's sweeping claims over virtually the entire South China Sea and ruled that the Philippines has sovereign rights over the West Philippine Sea. A majority of Filipinos reject the Duterte administration's inaction on China's incursions in the West Philippine Sea, which reportedly include stealing the catch of Filipino fishermen and building weather stations. 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. Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) has released an employment notification calling out aspirants to apply for the post of Deputy Engineer. Those interested can check out the eligibility, salary scale, how to apply and the complete details of the government job here. Selected candidates can earn up to INR 1,40,000 per month. The last date to apply for this government job is 15 December 2018. BEL Recruitment 2018 For 16 Contract Engineers BEL Recruitment 2018 Vacancy Details CRITERIA DETAILS Name Of The Posts Deputy Engineer Organisation Bharat Electronics Limited Educational Qualification Graduate degree in engineering Experience 3 years Job Responsibilities Responsible for effective management of repair, maintenance and operations of systems Skills Required Engineering and managerial skills Job Location Jammu and Kashmir Salary Scale INR 40,000 to INR 1,40,000 per month Industry Electronics Application Start Date November 22, 2018 Application End Date December 15, 2018 Maximum Age Limit: 28 years Also Read: WAPCOS Limited Recruitment 2018 For 100 Civil Engineers How To Apply For BEL Recruitment 2018 In order to apply for BEL Recruitment 2018, follow these steps: Step 1: Log on to the BEL official website. Step 2: Hover over the Careers tab. Step 3: Select Recruitment - Advertisements. Step 4: The list of notifications will be displayed on the screen. Step 5: Select Application Form against Application for the post of Dy. Engineer (DCCS) on 2 years Fixed Term basis for Ghaziabad Unit - Posting at LEH, J&K. Step 6: The application form will open. Save it to your computer and take a printout of it. Step 7: Send the application to BEL. BEL Recruitment 2018 Application Format And Mailing Address Superscribe on the envelope, "Application for the post of Deputy Engineer" and send it to: Dy. General Manager (HR&A), Bharat Electronics Limited, Sahibabad Industrial Area, Ghaziabad - 201010. Follow the link - http://bel-india.in/Documentviews.aspx?fileName=detailad_adv_dccs-20-11-18.pdf to read the detailed official notification. Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) has released an employment notification calling out aspirants to apply for the posts of Architectural Expert, Manager (Civil UG) and Assistant Chief Controller. Those interested can check out the eligibility, salary scale, how to apply and the complete details of the government job here. Selected candidates can earn up to industry standards. The selection process is through a walk-in interview held on 8 December 2018. RRC WCR Recruitment 2018 For Group C And D Posts CMRL Recruitment 2018 Vacancy Details CRITERIA DETAILS Name Of The Posts Architectural Expert, Manager (Civil UG) and Assistant Chief Controller Organisation Chennai Metro Rail Limited Educational Qualification Graduate degree in any field Experience 15 years Skills Required Technical skills Job Location Chennai Salary Scale Industry standards Industry Railways Application Start Date November 22, 2018 Application End Date December 8, 2018 Maximum Age Limit: 45 years Also Read: GMRC MEGA Recruitment 2018: Manage Duties At Gujarat Metro Rail How To Apply For CMRL Recruitment 2018 In order to apply for CMRL Recruitment 2018, follow these steps: Step 1: Log on to the CMRL official website. Step 2: Read the public notice on the pop-up menu and close it. Step 3: Hover over the CAREERS tab below. Step 4: Select JOB NOTIFICATIONS. Step 5: The list of notifications will be displayed on the screen. Step 6: Click on the link that reads, EMPLOYMENT NOTICE No.CMRL/HR/10/2018. Step 7: The detailed advertisement will open. Read the details carefully. Step 8: Scroll down to the bottom of the screen to find the application form. Step 9: Save it to your computer and take a printout of it. Step 10: Complete the application form and carry it to the venue at the time of your interview. Venue Chennai Metro Rail Limited CMRL Depot, Admin Building, Poonamallee High Road, Koyambedu, Chennai - 600 107. Follow the link - https://chennaimetrorail.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/CMRL-HR-10-2018.pdf to read the detailed official notification. Kerala Public Service Commission (KPSC) has released an employment notification calling out aspirants to apply for the posts of Pharmacist, Junior Health Inspector, Lift Mechanic, Driver, Dental Hygienist, Teacher, Dairy Extension Officer, Lower Division Clerk, Optometrist, Junior Inspector, Assistant, Prosthetic and Medical Officer. Those interested can check out the eligibility, salary scale, how to apply and the complete details of the government job here. Selected candidates can earn up to INR 75,600 per month. The last date to apply for this government job is 19 December 2018. BPSC Recruitment 2018 For Child Development Project Officers KPSC Recruitment 2018 Vacancy Details CRITERIA DETAILS Name Of The Posts Pharmacist, Junior Health Inspector, Lift Mechanic, Driver, Dental Hygienist, Teacher, Dairy Extension Officer, Lower Division Clerk, Optometrist, Junior Inspector, Assistant, Prosthetic and Medical Officer Organisation Kerala Public Service Commission Educational Qualification UG or PG degree in relevant field Experience Freshers can apply Skills Required Technical skills Job Location Kerala Salary Scale INR 25,000 to INR 75,600 per month Industry Civil services Application Start Date November 14, 2018 Application End Date December 19, 2018 Age Limit: 18 to 36 years Also Read: GPSC Recruitment 2018: 134 Medical Professionals Wanted How To Apply For KPSC Recruitment 2018 In order to apply for KPSC Recruitment 2018, follow these steps: Step 1: Log on to the KPSC official website. Step 2: Click the button that reads, One Time Registration. Step 3: A login screen will open. Click on the link below that reads, New Registration. Step 4: The registration form will open. Enter your details in the fields provided. Step 5: Enter the captcha code. Step 6: Click on the declaration check box. Step 7: Click Register and complete the registration process. Follow the link - https://www.keralapsc.gov.in/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=875&Itemid=161 to read the detailed official notification. The restoration of the 800m Borris Railway Viaduct in Carlow has been included in a 1billion spend under the Regeneration and Development Fund. A sum of 654,820 has been allocated for the project which will link the Borris Railway Viaduct to amenities in Borris town, will improve access and will re-surface the viaduct for use as a walk and cycleway. It will also provide a tourist attraction for the area. Local Carlow TD Pat Deering has welcomed the funding allocation and said it was the end result of a lot of hard work over the years from the local community and all the stakeholders involved. "It will add hugely to the area," he added. An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar and the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Michael Ring, on Friday announced the first successful applicants under the Governments 1 billion Rural Regeneration and Development Fund, which aims to breathe new life into Irelands smaller towns and villages. At a special event in Sligo the Taoiseach, Minister Ring and Minister of State, Sean Canney outlined the scale and ambition of the fund. In total some 1 billion in funding will be allocated over the next 10 years for rural communities with a population of fewer than 10,000, as part of the Project Ireland 2040 plan to redevelop Ireland. The Rural Regeneration and Development Fund aims to rejuvenate smaller towns, villages and rural areas, generate job opportunities in rural areas, and help communities to improve their quality of life. More than 290 projects applied for this first stage, with the focus in this round on heritage and tourism, infrastructural improvement, economic development, and rural regeneration. Some of the successful projects announced at todays event include: Conversion of prominent heritage building in Kinsale, Co Cork into a local public library A new National Centre of Excellence for Surfing in Strandhill, Co Sligo Converting the Valentia Island Trans-Atlantic Cable Station in Co Kerry into a museum and business innovation hub Restoration of the 800 metre Borris Railway viaduct in Co Carlow - linking the town to local walkways Restoration of Swan Park in Buncrana, Donegal following its devastation by flooding last year Todays announcement focuses on 18 projects to be supported in 2019, totalling 24.4 million. 55 million in total has been allocated to the Fund for 2019 and further announcements of projects to be funded in 2019 will follow shortly. Over 290 applications for funding were received from a wide variety of state funded bodies in 2019. Over the next four years, 315 million will be invested in rural communities through the Fund. An Taoiseach said: "In May, I was joined by Ministerial colleagues to launch four game-changing funds under Project Ireland 2040, with a total investment of 4 billion. "Together these funds represent a new and innovative approach to investment and capital spending in Ireland. "The 1 billion Rural Fund will enable towns, villages and outlying rural areas to grow sustainably. Its all about making Rural Ireland a more attractive place to stay, move into or run a business." Photo: Contributed A North Okanagan prolific offender took the 'bait' and ended up getting reeled in by police. Const. Kelly Brett said on Nov. 18 just after 4 a.m., the Vernon North Okanagan RCMP were notified of a bait car activation in the west end of Vernon. Officers observed one male allegedly using a screwdriver and a rock in an attempt to steal a bait vehicle, said Brett. Police attended the area and the male suspect fled on foot through a creek, leading officers on a brief foot chase. However, he was unable to evade police and was taken into custody without incident. Be assured that Vernon North Okanagan RCMP Members will go anywhere they are led to apprehend a suspect who is committing crime in our community, said Brett. This is the second foot chase in a week that members have been involved in where suspects have attempted to evade police by entering water. Darcy Every, 37, of Vernon, has been charged with theft of motor vehicle, possession of break and enter tools and obstruct police officers. Darcy Every is a well-known prolific offender and has a lengthy criminal record for vehicle thefts and other property related offences. In any given community prolific offenders account for 80 percent of all crime committed. The Vernon North Okanagan RCMP is committed to continually identifying, locating and arresting these individuals for the crimes they have committed, said Brett. Insp. Brian MacDonald, Officer in charge of IMPACT- BCs Auto Crime Police, said the bait car program has been very successful throughout British Columbia. We are putting would-be thieves on notice that bait cars are everywhere and you will go to jail. To learn more about the Bait Car program, go online or follow them on Twitter @officialbaitcar. Photo: The Canadian Press President Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up as he has Thanksgiving Day dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. President Donald Trump used a Thanksgiving Day call to troops deployed overseas to pat himself on the back and air grievances about the courts, trade and migrants heading to the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump's call, made Thursday from his opulent private Mar-a-Lago club, struck an unusually political tone as he spoke with members of all five branches of the military to wish them happy holidays. "It's a disgrace," Trump said of judges who have blocked his attempts to overhaul U.S. immigration law, as he linked his efforts to secure the border with military missions overseas. Trump later threatened to close the U.S. border with Mexico for an undisclosed period of time if his administration determines Mexico has lost "control" on its side. The call was a uniquely Trump blend of boasting, peppered questions and off-the-cuff observations as his comments veered from venting about slights to praising troops "You really are our heroes," he said as club waiters worked to set Thanksgiving dinner tables on the outdoor terrace behind him. And it was yet another show of how Trump has dramatically transformed the presidency, erasing the traditional divisions between domestic policy and military matters and efforts to keep the troops clear of politics. "You probably see over the news what's happening on our southern border," Trump told one Air Force brigadier general stationed at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, adding: "I don't have to even ask you. I know what you want to do, you want to make sure that you know who we're letting in." Later, Trump asked a U.S. Coast Guard commander about trade, which he noted was "a very big subject" for him personally. "We've been taken advantage of for many, many years by bad trade deals," Trump told the commander, who sheepishly replied that, "We don't see any issues in terms of trade right now." And throughout, Trump was sure to congratulate himself, telling the officers that the country is doing exceptionally well on his watch. "I hope that you'll take solace in knowing that all of the American families you hold so close to your heart are all doing well," he said. "The nation's doing well economically, better than anybody in the world." He later told reporters "nobody's done more for the military than me." Indeed, asked what he was thankful for this Thanksgiving, Trump cited his "great family," as well as himself. "I made a tremendous difference in this country," he said. But Trump continued to warn about the situation on the southern border as he took questions from reporters, pointing to the caravans of Central American migrants that have been making their way toward the U.S. and warning that, "If we find that it gets to a level where we lose control or people are going to start getting hurt, we're going to close entry into the country for a period of time until we get it under control." He said he had the authority to do so by executive order and claimed he'd already used it earlier this week. "Two days ago, we closed the border. We actually just closed it, said nobody's coming in because it was just out of control." By no means did he seal the border with Mexico. Officials did shut down one port of entry, San Ysidro, in California, for several hours early Monday morning to bolster security because of concerns about a potential influx of migrant caravan members. They closed northbound lanes into the U.S. and reopened most of them before the morning rush. Trump's border threat came days after a federal judge put the administration's attempts to overhaul asylum rules on hold. Courts have also blocked several versions of the president's travel ban as well as his attempt to end a program that allows young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children to live and work in the country. Trump probably could close the entire southern border by order, at least temporarily, invoking national security powers. But doing so could cause extraordinary damage to bilateral relations as well as to cross-border commerce between the U.S. and Mexico, its third largest trading partner. It would not necessarily stop migrants from coming either; Trump would have to contend with the same asylum laws already vexing his efforts to harden the border. Four months export revenue growth 23 November 2018 Pakistan's cement industry earned foreign exchange revenue of US$26.74m by exporting 616,648t of cement during October 2018, compared to US$29.05m on 671,913t of cement in previous month. This represents a fall of 7.9 per cent and 8.23 per cent in value and quantity, respectively on MoM, according to the Federal Bureau of Statistics. If compared to October 2017, earnings of US$23.3m on 472,216t of cement, translates to a growth of 14.8 per cent in earning of foreign currency and 30.5 per cent in quantity YoY. Export revenue during July-October 2018 rose by 21.3 per cent to US$104.33m, exporting 2.39Mt of cement, compared to US$86m from exporting 1.7Mt in July-October 2017. The growth in Pakistani rupees stood at 44.7 per cent to PKR13bn during this period, but the value in dollars fell from US$50.48/t to US$43.54/t in the first four months of current fiscal year. In a comment, Elixir Securities Pakistan stated that the improvement in exports is due to expansions by Lucky Cement, Attock Cement (ACPL) and DG Khan Cement, as these players have started to divert their excess capacity towards lower priced exports. Published under PPC reports 8% rise in 1H revenues ICR Newsroom By 23 November 2018 PPC posted an eight per cent increase in 1HFY18-19 revenues to ZAR5.597bn (US$403.9m) on the back of strong growth in the rest of Africa as the companys performance in its domestic market of South Africa remains weak. Gross profit fell by 17 per cent to ZAR1.103bn in the six months ending 30 September 2018 from ZAR1.329bn in 1HFY17 while operating profit fell 34 per cent to ZAR507m. However, foreign exchange gains of ZAR38 and investment income of ZAR62m were unable to offset finance costs of ZAR336m, which were up 18 per cent YoY. As a result, pretax profit fell by 49 per cent to ZAR251m in 1HFY18-19 when compared with ZAR497m in the previous-year period. The companys net profit fell 14 per cent YoY to ZAR260m in 1HFY18-19 in the first six months of 2017. In South Africa, volumes were down by three per cent as drought and imports in the Western Cape affected local sales. The inland market experienced flat volume growth but domestic volumes improved from 1QFY18-19 to 2QFY18-19. In addition higher fuel prices affected mining and logistics costs and combined with the phasing of kiln shutdowns and unplanned downtime, cost of sales in ZAR/t rose by four per cent. Overheads were also up one per cent as the head office restructured. In the rest of Africa, the company enjoyed a 31 per cent rise in revenues in Zimbabwe to ZAR1.077bn but its sales in Rwanda fell by seven per cent to ZAR402m as the company upgraded its plant, resulting in volume loss. Revenues from its operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo also contributed positively, by ZAR240m to the group total. Published under Saudi Engineering Dimensions interested in Bangladesh cement sector 23 November 2018 Saudi company Engineering Dimensions has expressed an interest to set up a modern cement factory in the Chhatak upazila of Sunamganj district, Bangladesh, according to New Nation. During a meeting with Secretary-in-Charge of the Industries Ministry, M Abdul Halim, Engineering Dimensions President, Mohammed N Hijji, said Bangladeshs huge population, domestic demand and skilled workforce have created an opportunity to attract foreign investors such as Saudi Arabia. Published under Government and business agree HNL30 price drop in public works cement ICR Newsroom By 23 November 2018 Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, has announced a reduction of HNL30 (US$1.22)/bag of cement for public works and housing, following talks with the cement industry. The agreement is directly linked to national development, with an impact on housing projects, the road network and other initiatives, said the president. Not only social projects will benefit, but generation of employment and investment in the construction sector will also improve as the country saves around HNL365m/month in 2019 and around HNL1bn in three years. Published under Im a big advocate of common sense. Yes, it is true that I have only a limited supply of walking-around powers but even I know we have a huge problem with illegal guns in the United States. Already weve had 85 incidents at our schools in 2018. In Chicago, there have been 125 shot and 36 dead in the month of November alone, and, in what has become a holiday tradition, the shooting gallery on Thanksgiving weekend in the Windy City is heart-breaking. Why? Mass shootings have lost their luster, their sex appeal in the mainstream media. I am being totally honest. We have had 317 mass shootings in the United States since Jan.1, 2018. Earlier this month, the American College of Physicians came out with a position paper that included recommendations for reducing deaths. The next day our CDC reported gun violence continues to rise unabated in the United States but you didnt see either report.Why? Mass shootings have lost their luster, their sex appeal in the mainstream media. I am being totally honest. We have had 317 mass shootings in the United States since Jan.1, 2018. Thats according to Gun Violence Archives, which also reveals that in all 50 of our United States through Nov. 22 weve had 50,870 shootings that have killed 13,046 this year. That includes 596 children under the age of 10 and 2,528 teenagers up to the age on 17. And people dont think this is a vicious epidemic? Earlier this month you paid hardly any attention to another shooting in California, where, on Nov. 7, a 28-year-old Marine veteran walked into a country-western bar in Thousand Oaks, Ca., and proceeded to murder 13 innocent people while wounding 12 others. The gunman was killed in the insensible melee but now mass shootings are so boring and mundane weve gotten actually numbed and calloused. Wed rather watch the weatherman. What you did see on the day after the Thousand Oaks massacre was that some hotshot at the National Rifle Association got on the NRAs twitter account and posted, Someone should tell the self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing gun control. Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves. (As laughable as it may be, can you possibly imagine calling the NRA in search of any answer whatsoever?) The totally unwarranted NRA insult was so wrong it infuriated many more people than those in the medical profession. Stay in their lane? Are you kidding me? The NRA aint even been on the highway. As a haughty collection of gun enthusiasts, there has never been a larger collection of cowards in a one-on-one test of will. If the NRA was real, youd see them on the front times of every mass shooting in America. But now, they want the doctors to stay on duty in the OR lest some goombah accidentally shots himself in the hip. I can go it one better. Anytime some wacko low on common sense cares to peek in my email box, a couple of doctors just sent me some gruesome photos Ill be delighted to share. Not one picture was of a gunshot victim but each showed the scrubs of trauma surgeons still wearing them (their faces hidden) and the scrubs were heavily soaked through with a targets operating-room blood. Gun violence belongs to all of us. The NRA, of course, is so intent on our Second Amendment rights and lobbying politicians with its twisted leadership and misguided agenda that today the organization is a punch line. At one time almost every high school boy in our circle had a NRA sticker on our back bumpers but all of that has been well swept away I cant name one of my pals who would dare salute the NRA, even on a muddy bumper sticker. Just for fun: Lets see how much common sense we have left today you want to know about real gun control? Heres where the doctors are wrong. Doctors are used to rules, laws, peer reviews, and certificates. These regulations are wonderful, but the guys who are killing each other, who bleed profusely in the operating room, dont play by the rules and rely on indigent fun for every service rendered. The only license these guys ever had is stamped, Suspended. You see, both the MDs and the thugs have big circles but never can I imagine they would ever touch. All of a gangs hardware is bought on the street. Serial numbers mean nothing think Glass Street in East Chattanooga, or about a block off Rossville Boulevard from the old Krystal, or down in St. Elmo, almost to the Georgia line near what is politely called The River. No receipt, only cash, and no we dont make change. Come in a different car next time. Now, back to the NRA. Can you see that empty bottle of wine under the the park bench, just line away from the restroom path. See that bench near the park bench? Yeah, its in a brown sack. About 30 minutes after we leave, wander down there and fetch it. The switch was textbook an empty bottle the same as a totally-wrapped substitute so my man can scram with his catch in less than a minute. My point is this: Can you imagine one self-important doctor pulling such a change? Lacking the svelte or the courage to attack the gangs and druggies who fire our bullets, Im telling you the soft hands would have to self-medicate. Finally whoever it was who tweeted for the nations doctors to stay in their own lane, is that to imply the Nation Rifle Association wants to take full credit for what has occurred in Chicago? I dont suspect that is true, based on the following preliminary figures: CURRENT COSTS ESTIMATES INVOLVED WITH CHICAGO SHOOTING VICTIMS Costs assume the following: $55,000: Average gunshot victim ER and hospital expenses. $1,000: Average CFD ambulance ride, only applicable to 80 percent of victims, the rest are self-transport. $800: Homicide-related autopsies. Doesnt include hospice care or ongoing rehabilitation. Cost estimates provided by Chicago: Killings have now cost $2.5 billion The cost for treating a gunshot wound: $21,000 for the first 35 minutes. * * * So Im just saying, if the NRA wants a lane by itself, kindly inform the city of Chicago how big a chunk of the shooting you want. Christopher Dewayne Lee, 21, of Memphis, was arrested on Thursday evening and charged in an officer-involved shooting. Jessica Garder, 26, of Oakland, was also arrested and charged in a robbery both were involved in at a gas station in Oakland Thursday morning. An investigation by special agents with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation of an officer-involved shooting in Fayette County resulted in their arrests. At the request of 25th District Attorney General Mark Davidson, TBI special agents responded to an officer-involved shooting that occurred Thursday at Murphys Gas Station on Highway 64 in Oakland. During the course of the investigation, agents developed information that just before 8 a.m., Lee walked onto the station parking lot and took the deposit bag from the clerk, Jessica Gardner. Agents said Lee then ran through woods nearby and encountered a Fayette County Sheriffs Deputy and an Oakland police officer, who had been dispatched to a reported robbery at that location. Shots were exchanged between the subject and the two law enforcement officers and the deputy was struck. The investigation revealed Lee then ran across the street to another gas station and stole a vehicle from an individual there. Lee fled the scene in that car, crashing the vehicle at Highway 64 and Rockcreek Parkway in Shelby County, and was taken into custody by Memphis police. He sustained non-critical injuries from the crash and was transported to a Memphis hospital. The deputy sustained non-critical injuries and was also taken to a Memphis hospital to be treated. Agents learned that Ms. Gardner was aware of and helped plan the robbery. Lee is charged with one count of attempted first-degree murder, one count of aggravated assault against law enforcement, one count of carjacking, one count of theft over $10,000, one count of employment of a firearm during commission of a dangerous felony, one count of felon in possession of a weapon, and one count of felony evading arrest. Gardner is charged with one count of theft over $10,000. Both were booked into the Fayette County Jail. Here is the upcoming City Council agenda for Tuesday: I. Call to Order. II. Pledge of Allegiance/Invocation (Chairman Smith). III. Minute Approval. IV. Special Presentation. V. Ordinances Final Reading: PLANNING a. 2018-160 Somerset Partners of TN ? Jimmy Allen (R-1 Residential Zone to R-T/Z Residential Townhouse/Zero Lot Line Zone). An ordinance to amend Chattanooga City Code, Part II, Chapter 38, Zoning Ordinance, so as to rezone property located at 584 Boy Scout Road, more particularly described herein, from R-1 Residential Zone to R-T/Z Residential Townhouse/Zero Lot Line Zone, subject to certain conditions. (District 1) (Recommended for approval by Planning) (Planning Version #2)b. 2018-167 Bill Sanders/Trotters Place, Inc. (R-4 Special Zone to C-5 Neighborhood Commercial Zone). An ordinance to amend Chattanooga City Code, Part II, Chapter 38, Zoning Ordinance, so as to rezone part of property located at 6750 Shallowford Road, more particularly described herein from R-4 Special Zone to C-5 Neighborhood Commercial Zone, subject to certain conditions. (District 6) (Recommended for approval by Planning) (Planning Version #2) VI. Ordinances First Reading: (None)VII. Resolutions:ECONOMIC AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENTa. A resolution authorizing the Mayor to execute a Declaration of Restrictive Covenants,in substantially the form attached, for seven (7) City-owned parcels located in thefloodway and identified as Tax Parcel Number 117C-A-009 at 1134 Mountain CreekRoad; Tax Parcel Number 117P-C-006 at Norman Lane; Tax Parcel Number117P-C-027 at 108 Signal Hills Drive; Tax Parcel Number 117P-C-028 at SignalHills Drive; Tax Parcel Number 117P-C-030 at Signal Hills Drive; Tax ParcelNumber 117P-C-032 at Norman Lane; and Tax Parcel Number 117O-A-011.03 at832 Mountain Creek Road. (District 1)b. A resolution authorizing the Mayor to enter into a lease agreement, in substantiallythe form attached, with Chattanooga Radio Control Club, at 4246 Woodland Drive,on a portion of Tax Parcel Number 140-133, for the lease of approximately six (6)acres and a defined fly zone for the flying of model airplanes, club meetings, andother connected activities, for a term of three (3) years, with the option to renew foran additional term of one (1) year, for the annual rent in the amount of $200.00 peryear. (District 4)c. A resolution authorizing the Administrator of the Department of Economic andCommunity Development to enter into an agreement with Southeast TennesseeDevelopment District (SETDD) for a three (3) year period beginning on December 1,2018 and ending on November 30, 2021, to, on behalf of the City of Chattanooga,apply for Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Brownfield Assessment andClean-Up Grants.d. A resolution authorizing Brightbridge Inc. (Subrecipient), on behalf of the City ofChattanooga, to assign, as per Section XIII(4)(a), Assignability, of the currentSubrecipient agreement between the City of Chattanooga and Brightbridge, Inc., theagreement to Southeast Tennessee Development District (SETDD) (Subrecipient) andfurthermore, authorizing the Administrator of the Department of Economic andCommunity Development to enter into a new agreement with SETDD, insubstantially the form attached, for a three (3) year period beginning on December 1,2018 and ending on November 30, 2021, to, on behalf of the City of Chattanooga,administer the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Section 108 Guarantee LoanFund Program.FINANCEe. A resolution authorizing Tanikia Jackson, Deputy City Finance Officer, to signvouchers, requisitions and other necessary documents for and on behalf of theFinance Department effective as of October 1, 2018.HUMAN RESOURCESf. A resolution amending Resolution No. 28367 entitled A resolution adopting the Cityof Chattanooga Employee Information Guide and allowing changes to any and allinformation presented to City Council for approval within six (6) months of theresolution effective date of September 8, 2015, one (1) year from the effective date,and annually thereafter to reflect changes effective January 8, 2019.g. A resolution authorizing the appointment of Zlatko Kozlica, as a special police officer(unarmed) for the Department of Economic and Community Development, to dospecial duty as prescribed herein, subject to certain conditions.h. A resolution authorizing the Director of Human Resources to execute a two (2) yearagreement with three (3) one (1) year renewal options with OnSite Rx, Inc. for on-sitepharmacy services, as outlined below, for an estimated total amount not to exceed $8million per year. (Deferred from 11/20/18)PUBLIC WORKS AND TRANSPORTATIONPublic Worksi. A resolution authorizing the approval of Change Order No. 1 (Final) for Tri-StateRoofing Contractors of Chattanooga, TN, relative to Contract No. Y-17-019-201,replacement roofing for Shepherd YFD Center Building, for an increased amount of$18,546.00, for a revised contract amount not to exceed $173,615.00. (District 6)j. A resolution authorizing the approval of Change Order No. 1 forHefferlin+Kronenberg Architects, PLLC, relative to Contract No. Y-15-008-101, TheAvondale Youth and Family Development Center, for an increased amount of$164,798.00, for a revised contract amount of $505,298.00. (District 8)k. A resolution authorizing the approval of Change Order No. 1 for J & J Contractors,Inc., relative to Contract No. Y-15-008-201, the New Avondale Youth and FamilyDevelopment Center, for an increased amount of $166,539.00, for a revised contractamount of $4,952,539.00, and to re-establish a contingency amount of $183,461.00.(District 8)l. A resolution authorizing the City Finance Officer to execute any and all documentsnecessary related to a loan agreement with the Tennessee Department of Environmentand Conservation (CW7 2019-428) for financing of capital construction projectsrequired by the Consent Decree for the Interceptor Sewer System (ISS), for a totalproject cost in the amount of $3 million. (Consent Decree)m. A resolution authorizing the City Finance Officer to execute any and all documentsnecessary related to a loan agreement with the Tennessee Department of Environmentand Conservation (SRF 2019-429) for financing of capital construction projectsrequired by the Consent Decree for the Interceptor Sewer System (ISS), for a totalproject cost in the amount of $21 million. (Consent Decree)VIII. Purchases.IX. Other Business.X. Committee Reports.XI. Recognition of Persons Wishing to Address the Council on Non-Agenda Matters.XII. Adjournment.TUESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2018CITY COUNCIL AGENDA6:00 PM1. Call to Order.2. Pledge of Allegiance/Invocation (Councilman Ledford).3. Minute Approval.4. Special Presentation.5. Ordinances Final Reading: (None)6. Ordinances First Reading: (None)7. Resolutions:ECONOMIC AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENTSHORT TERM VACATION RENTALSa. 2018-21 Virginia Johnson. A resolution approving Short Term Vacation RentalApplication No. 18-STVR-00106 for property located at 711 Oxford Road. (District2)b. 2018-25 Melissa Manwaring. A resolution approving Short Term Vacation RentalApplication No. 18-STVR-00101 for property located at 1724 Kirby Avenue.(District 9)c. 2018-26 Kurtis Morris/Scenic City Investments, LLC. A resolution approving ShortTerm Vacation Rental Application No. 18-STVR-00116 for property located at 5410Alabama Avenue. (District 7)d. 2018-27 Jeffrey and Katelyn Rau. A resolution approving Short Term VacationRental Application No. 18-STVR-00130 for property located at 514 Crewdson Street.(District 2)e. 2018-28 Christie Burns/Vision Partners, LLC. A resolution approving Short TermVacation Rental Application Nos. 18-STVR-00134 and 00135 for property located at1603 Williams Street (Units B & H). (District 7)PUBLIC WORKS AND TRANSPORTATIONPublic Worksf. A resolution authorizing the Administrator for the Department of Public Works toenter into an agreement with HDR Engineering, Inc. to increase the scope and amountof existing contract for professional services relative to the Water Quality ProgramRate Study, for a total amount not to exceed $469,984.00.8. Purchases.9. Other Business.10. Committee Reports.11. Recognition of Persons Wishing to Address the Council on Non-Agenda Matters.12. Adjournment. A Thanksgiving perspective Christian Post Contributor | 22 November, 2018 by Troy Fink 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. This week, millions in the Western world will celebrate an American holiday in the name of thankfulness. This treasured tradition was birthed in the application of spiritual disciplines such as fasting, prayer, and thanksgiving. In 1621, when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, they were grateful just to be alive. Not long after, they faced decimation by the inhospitable environment and frigid winter temperatures. The native Wampanoag Indians helped them to acclimate to their new world. After many trials, they survived and celebrated with a three-day feast thanking God for all He had done. From Praises to Pumpkin Pie Today, in a post-Christian America, Thanksgiving looks much different. Like many other aspects of our culture, the secularization of this once consecrated holiday has descended into a shallow form of itself. It's safe to assume that as a nation, we've never been more ungrateful. Consumerism has consumed us, the Internet has desensitized us, and our appetites for godlessness is even bigger than it is for Turkey. Instead of glory, honor, and praise to God for lavishly pouring out grace on His people, the concern has shifted to NFL, food, and Black Friday. Unlike the Pilgrims who were forced to till the ground for physical and spiritual food, modern America has grown fat by being the apathetic benefactors of others' labor. No longer are we a people desperately leaning on God and each other for provision. Instead, we have grown increasingly proud and entitled. A sin that has driven us far from the humble beginnings of the brave men and women whose blood and tears laid the foundations of this great country. I Am, I AM Romans 1:21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Of all the fleshly and worldly compulsions that confront a believer, there is hardly a more polarizing offense to the Lord than ingratitude. Ingratitude suffocates the life of joy and freedom available through the great sacrifice of Jesus. Christians often act more like spoiled children than a peculiar people and royal priesthood. We pout and whine as self-love coaxes us into a false sense of entitlement before God. Who do I think I am? And therein lies the problem; I think that I am, "I AM." No matter how godly a person is, on some level we all think this way. Even the most pious believers still struggle with a deep-rooted pride that results in the self-aggrandizing that deceives us into thinking we are the center of the universe. Before Christ, the world told us that we could be the masters of our lives. This old-school tactic is precisely how the Devil deceived Eve and we still haven't completely abandoned this notion. We pray to God to use us according to His will but feel slighted when He doesn't do it our way. Whether your ingratitude manifestation is subtle or overt, the time to tackle it is now. Here is a non-exhaustive list of Scripture application for you to battle ingratitude if: 1. You're likely thinking too highly of yourself Romans 12:3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 2. You struggle to view circumstances that challenge you as an opportunity for growth from God James 1:2-4 Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. Read more about Thanksgiving on The Christian Post. Former Planned Parenthood manager says evangelical church saved her life Christian Post Contributor | 23 November, 2018 by Samuel Smith A former Planned Parenthood clinic manager says that joining a small nondenominational evangelical church "saved her life" and helped equip her to leave the nation's largest abortion provider. Sue Thayer, a Christian mother of five, worked nearly 18 years as nonmedical staff with Planned Parenthood of the Heartland in Iowa before she was fired for voicing her objection to the business' attempt to institute "webcam abortions" at her clinic. Thayer began working at Planned Parenthood in 1991, thinking that she'd be "helping women," she said in an interview with The Christian Post. The pay was great, and within a month of working there, she was sent to train at an abortion unit. "I really wasn't prepared for what I saw and experienced," she said, adding that she's often asked why she didn't quit her job then. After seeing the horrors of surgical abortion, she decided it was best that she commit to working on Planned Parenthood's family-planning programs. Although Thayer's Planned Parenthood facility in Storm Lake didn't initially offer abortion (with the closest abortion facility being over two hours away), it was in 2007 that Planned Parenthood instituted telemedicine abortions at her facility and others throughout the state. Also known as "webcam abortion," the procedure involves a woman going into a Planned Parenthood clinic where no doctor is present and taking pills for a chemical abortion while a doctor watches via the internet. In the case of Thayer's facility, they would do webcam procedures with doctors in places as far away as Des Moines, which is over 150 miles away. "[N]onmedical staff like myself and my employees that I had hired would be doing transvaginal ultrasounds, which are an invasive procedure. We were going to be doing those after only a single day of training," she explained. "I kept asking my boss if this was even legal. They were like, 'Our I's are dotted and our T's are crossed, nothing will stop us.' I would question the wisdom or the legality or the ethics of having a nonmedical person doing an invasive procedure. They just said, 'If you are breathing, you can do it and if you can play a video game, it is a lot like running a joystick.' I was really concerned about that." Thayer was vocal in her opposition and ended up getting fired. Committing over 300,000 abortions per year nationwide, Thayer said that she knew Planned Parenthood was "notorious for doing horrible things" but was afraid to leave behind the well-paying job that she needed to provide for her family. Having grown up at a large denominational church and attending that church for most of her life, Thayer received mixed messages of support and condemnation from different pastors at her congregation. "[W]e had a pastor that was very comfortable with abortion and my job there. I had one of the pastors there say, 'When you start doing abortions, can I come down and escort the women in?' I thought, 'Aren't you supposed to be on the other side?'" Thayer recalled. "We also had a pastor there that was like, 'You are in the wrong place and you got to get out of there.' It flip-flopped but I finally knew in my heart that I had to get out of there." While still employed by the abortion giant, Thayer said she began listening to Christian radio more frequently and grow in her faith. After a while, she realized that her denominational church was the "wrong place" for her. "Because of Christian radio and listening to that and just getting a handle on how much God loves me, it was just a natural step to leave there and I didn't know where to go," she explained. "I ended up at this other big church and that was not quite right either." Struggling with a divorce that she didn't see coming, Thayer started attending a nondenominational megachurch where she tried desperately to fit in. "They had big screens and more upbeat worship. I thought it was the perfect place. I went there for a couple of years and they told me that I would never be a member," Thayer recalled. "They were like, 'You work at Planned Parenthood, you can't be a member.'" Thayer said she was devastated. She then turned to the small nondenominational Faith Bible Christian Outreach Center in Storm Lake, one of the same churches that protested outside her abortion clinic. "They are all about the Gospel and loving people," Thayer said, adding that they loved her as Jesus would. "They welcomed me and really saved my life. God used them and Christian radio to save my life." Thayer said she continued working at Planned Parenthood for about five years while attending Faith Bible Christian Outreach Center. "It was really that unconditional love," she added. "I talked with them at length and I talked with the elders. We talked about what goes on there. I remember when I heard about webcam abortions. I was so mortified because this was just another new horrible level to what they are doing." Thayer explained that Planned Parenthood's entry into webcam abortions was another attempt by the organization to "be over the edge." "When I told my pastor and the board what was going on they were supportive [of me]. I was a single mom and had all these kids, and if I lose my job I will never find any place else where I get paid like that," she explained. "They were telling me that God will provide and I need to leave that to Him. He has. He has been very faithful to not only meet our needs but just provide everything. I am just very thankful to Him for His faithfulness to see us through." Thayer said that one of the hardest things for her was getting over the guilt she felt after pressuring women to get abortions. But even before her departure from Planned Parenthood, she was able to provide valuable information about telemedicine abortions to Iowa Right to Life, the state's leading pro-life advocacy organization, after hearing about them on the radio. "I knew that my days there were numbered but I did try to hang on so I could share information with Iowa Right to Life, thinking that somehow they would fix it," she explained. Read more about "Former Planned Parenthood manager says evangelical church saved her life" on The Christian Post. The ISC also raised two broader issues that played a part in two or more of the attacks: the "out of date" system for regulating the purchase of explosive ingredients, which has since been overhauled, and the failure of communication service providers (CSPs) to stop their systems becoming a safe haven for extremists. Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), a cross-party panel of lawmakers that scrutinises the work of government in these fields, said there had been a number of failures by those monitoring the bomber, 22-year-old Briton Salman Abedi who was born to Libyan parents. Abedi returned to the United Kingdom from Libya but MI5 failed to adequately monitor his travel, allowing him to return "undetected", the report said. Furthermore, MI5 could have put a plan in place to monitor Abedi's movements, which would have revealed his return to the United Kingdom from Libya, days before he struck. A major British parliamentary report has found that security services shortcomings led to missed opportunities to possibly prevent last year's lethal extremist attack at Manchester Arena. The committee said one failing it had identified was so sensitive, it could not be shared publicly. The committee criticized MI5 and the Metropolitan Police Counter-Terrorism unit for failing to follow up after Abedi visited a contact with extremist links in prison. He said it is "impossible to say" whether proper handling would have prevented the attack but that "potential opportunities to prevent it were missed". Twenty-two people died after Salman Abedi blew himself up at an Ariana Grande concert. AP In September previous year, 51 people were injured when a bomb partially exploded on a London Underground train at Parsons Green in west London. "Multiple attempts" had been made to extract the "full evidence" from the Home Office but the information had not been provided in time. From what we have seen to date, there were fundamental failings in the handling of this case by the Home Office, the police and Surrey county council. The committee will now carry out a separate review into what it claims are a "litany of errors" in the handling of that case. The report said it was striking that numerous issues it was raising on the 2017 attacks were similar to those in a report on previous attacks. "Following the attacks, the Government, police and MI5 undertook a series of rigorous reviews to ensure we are all doing everything we can to tackle the evolving threat of terrorism". "The lessons from last year's tragic events must now result in real action", he said. Home Secretary Sajid Javid said in a statement: "We have updated our counter-terrorism strategy, introduced new legislation to allow threats to be disrupted earlier and have increased information-sharing with local authorities". Scotland Yard said the police and MI5 have foiled 13 plots since the Westminster attack in March 2017. Twenty-two people die and more than 800 are injured. Britain suffered four attacks in 2017 that killed 36 people - the deadliest spate since the London July 2005 train bombings. 'Less Santa, more Jesus;' Churches observing 'Bless Friday' instead of 'Black Friday' 23 November, 2018 by Michael Gryboski , | On a day when many Americans are crowding the stores for "Black Friday" bargains, a group of churches will instead do acts of charity as part of an annual observance called "Bless Friday." "We're here to help connect individuals, groups and churches to the service opportunities that can transform our communities and our hearts," noted its website. "If you don't find an activity on our website in which you can participate, please allow the Spirit to lead you and your family and friends to a need in your community." First begun in 2010, this year for the first time a Christian-owned business will be joining the churches taking part, according to Bless Friday organizer and founder Chuck Fox. In an interview with The Christian Post, Fox explained that RE/MAX Legacy Living of Richmond, Texas was going to be involved. "For the first time we are partnering with a Christian owned, small business, RE/MAX Legacy Living. Jemila and Patrick Winsey learned about Bless Friday on November 5, less than three weeks before Bless Friday, and they asked if they could participate," explained Fox. According to Fox, Jemila Winsey has been helping with social media outreach, with her sending out promotional videos created by the Bless Friday organizers. "The quickness, professional use of social media and partnership with a business are all new. We are happy to have anyone involved who honors Christ and keeps the focus on Him at Christmas," noted Fox. In total, ten churches are taking part in this year's Bless Friday observance, which is an increase of two congregations from the year before. "We have ten churches participating this year up from eight last year. We added two churches in Cotulla, Texas. Cotulla is a small town with about 3600 residents. The local Catholic Church and Church of Christ are visiting a nursing home," Fox explained. "We hope that by beginning their Christmas celebration with service participants will place their focus on Jesus. We especially hope that Bless Friday connects Christmas and service in the minds of children, less Santa and more Jesus." Bill Bray, organizer of the Bless Friday volunteer efforts for The Woodlands Community Presbyterian Church in Texas, told CP in a 2016 interview that he considered Bless Friday "a much better way of ushering in the Christmas season than Black Friday." Read more about Bless Friday on The Christian Post. Stephen Colbert reveals what brought him back to Jesus from atheism, shares who God is to him Christian Post Contributor | 22 November, 2018 by Stoyan Zaimov "The Late Show" host Stephen Colbert says a chance encounter with a person handing out Bibles on the street is what brought him back to faith when he was an atheist. Colbert, a Roman Catholic, spoke last week with the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor at America magazine, and said he was a convicted atheist in his 20s. "I had lost my faith in God, to my own great grief," Colbert said. "I was sort of convinced that I had been wrong all this time, that I had been taught something that wasn't true." In past interviews, Colbert has opened up about the tragedy of his childhood, describing how his father and two brothers died in a plane crash when he was 10 years old. In his interview with Martin on the "Faith in Focus" program, he said that it was a cold night in Chicago, Illinois, when one stranger handed him a little green pocket Bible. He was 22 then. That Bible was indexed by topics, and so Colbert turned to the page about anxiety. Jesus' words at the Sermon on the Mount were presented: "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ... Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" The talk show host revealed that he was "absolutely, immediately lightened" by Christ's words. "I stood on the street corner in the cold and read the sermon. And my life has never been the same," he added. In another exchange posted online, Martin asked Colbert to tell him "who is God for you?" "It's Jesus Christ," Colbert immediately replied. "Not an old man with a beard." The comedian went on to say that physically, he thinks of Jesus when someone asks him that question, but "that image dissolves, as I try to subsume that image into the Trinity." He added that one of the things he prays about is the ability to love. "If I can love, I can be free," he said. "When I think of love, I think of God, and when I think of God, I think of love." Colbert has featured several segments and comedy bits revolving around religion on his CBS "Late Show" program. He has also debated some notable atheist celebrities, such as comedian Ricky Gervais, on the topics of Creation, God, science, and religion. Read more about "Stephen Colbert reveals what brought him back to Jesus from atheism, shares who God is to him" on The Christian Post. In 2020, we were the church on our heels. A global pandemic shut down much of our world. But the church has been on the move since it was birthed; it will continue to be on the move until God makes all things new. Church member rebuked for dressing like woman claims pastor never told him about dress code Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A 16-year-old student who was publicly rebuked for dressing like a woman during church services at Power House International Ministries in Chicago, Illinois, has claimed that the pastor never warned him that his attire was against church rules. A 16-year-old who was publicly rebuked for dressing like a woman during church services at Power House International Ministries has claimed that the pastor never warned him that his effeminate attire was against church rules. No, [not] at all me and that man never talked [before the rebuke], Antwan Haywood said on the "Larry Reid Live" show on Monday, in response to Pastor Antonio Rocquemore's public rebuke. Earlier this month, Rocquemore was captured in a now viral video telling Haywood to leave his church and not come back without man clothes. "Can you leave my church and go put on man clothes?" Rocquemore asked firmly. "And don't come here like that no more," he continued, as someone can be heard in the video declaring "thank you Jesus!" "I hold a standard in here. Whatever you do on the outside is your business, but I will not let drag queens come in here. And if you're gonna come in here you're gonna come in here dressed like a man. ... If you're a man, dress like a man. If you're a woman, dress like a woman. I'm not going to allow it. My salvation is more important and God is holding me accountable," he added. "... you will not be wearing weaves and heels and fooling people up in here." Rocquemore also noted in response to the viral video that he had warned Haywood about his churchs rules and told him he couldn't "dress like a female" during services. He said Haywood verbally agreed to follow the church's rules but he still continued dressing like a woman, forcing the public rebuke. "He challenged me publicly and I challenged him back publicly. I asked the young man to leave. There was no security taking him out. ... Sir, can you please change clothes," he said. Haywood, who appeared to be speaking in tongues and praising God during a telephone conversation with Reid about his rebuke by Rocquemore, denied being a drag queen. He explained that he was wearing a green checkered shirt, jeans and heels with blonde hair on the day he was asked to leave the church. They never told me I couldnt dress that way (feminine). He (pastor) never told me I had to come to church [dressed] a certain way, Haywood continued. He added that a female church elder once approached him about his clothing and told him he wasnt going to be a girl in their church. He said he was wearing blue jeans and pink gym shoes along with a handbag during that incident. I think he (pastor) has something against me, Haywood asserted. The teenager was among about 10 people who protested outside Powerhouse International Ministries by holding signs against hate speech last Sunday, according to ABC. Despite Haywoods denial that he was warned in private before his viral rebuke, a recent statement from Power House International Ministries insists that he was warned privately multiple times before the open rebuke. "During these private sessions, the pastor utilize[d] love, compassion and thoughtfulness in articulating the church policy. The young man agreed to abide by the policy, but would continuously disregard the pastor's appeal," the statement said. At the protest on Sunday Haywood told ABC: "I felt like that was discrimination he was judging me, and I felt like the members were judging me too." Former SBC president Ronnie Floyds Cross Church gives away 2,250 Thanksgiving meals to families in need Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment The church headed by former Southern Baptist Convention President Ronnie Floyd has gathered over 2,000 Thanksgiving meals for local families who cannot afford to provide them. Cross Church, a multisite megachurch based in Springdale, Arkansas, gathered 2,250 meals, known as Blessing Baskets, for their annual charity drive last weekend. Floyd, senior pastor of Cross Church, said in a statement emailed to The Christian Post earlier this week that the Blessing Baskets event, which has occurred annually at the church since 1992, represents a primary calling for his congregation. Our first and highest calling as a local church is to love our neighbors, and that is what our Blessing Baskets ministry is all about, said Floyd. Our entire Cross Church family loves our Blessing Baskets ministry. They love loving on people and meeting their physical and spiritual needs. Doug Sarver, minister of global missions at Cross Church, told CP that the Blessing Baskets annual charity event came about as a response to the significant hunger need in our community. We discovered there were hardly any others doing anything during Thanksgiving. I pitched the idea to Pastor Ronnie Floyd of blessing families who might not be able to afford a Thanksgiving meal with a basket of food, and thats where it all began, Sarver recalled. Blessing Baskets is our way to simply show that Cross Church loves Northwest Arkansas. Large membership churches can be misunderstood, and this kind of ministry helps connect our church with the local community, showing the kind and compassionate side of the church. One Blessing Basket includes a Thanksgiving meal, plus enough food for two or three additional meals. Specific items include beans, cereal, chili, corn, at least one large hen, peanut butter, rice, beans, tuna, yams, chili, fruit, bread and a dozen eggs. People come to one of the Weekend services where we distribute the Blessing Baskets and are welcomed warmly by volunteers. We provide free child care for families with small children, explained Sarver. Then we have a brief celebration service with one song and a message of hope and the Gospel. We always extend an invitation to trust in Christ as our Savior and even offer for those who were saved to follow in baptism. Over the years we have many incredible stories of families and individuals being saved and getting their lives back on track. Since it first began in 1992, the annual Blessing Baskets event has fed over 52,000 families and brought more than 11,000 people to belief in Christ, according to Sarver. So many of our church members look forward to this day to serve with their families. It really fosters a spirit of servanthood and Thanksgiving, said Sarver. The Blessing Baskets has become part of our DNA as a church. This ministry has connected us more deeply with our local community, and helped us reach more people with the Gospel. AME Church leader was in dark about Jamal Bryants decision to take job at New Birth until days ago Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Like many in his congregation at Empowerment Temple, controversial megachurch pastor Jamal Bryant said Bishop James Levert Davis, who leads the Second District of The African Methodist Episcopal Church which oversees his church, knew nothing about his decision to resign from his church until just days ago. In an extended video statement on Facebook Live on Wednesday, Bryant thanked Davis for giving his blessing even though he had no idea about this transition, about this shift, or this change until I called him this weekend to let him know that the call has been made from this new station. He sighed with shock and with disappointment but said Let me pray on it. He prayed on it and said if this is what God is calling you to do, then I am standing with you and Im going to support you, Bryant said. In an earlier interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Bryant revealed that he only told his parishioners at the 10,000-member Empowerment Temple in Baltimore that he was resigning on Sunday but did not tell them it was to take over as senior pastor at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia, once led by his former benefactor, Eddie Long. He noted that people were not very happy about the shock announcement made by New Birth publicly on Monday but insisted on Wednesday that his decision was made by God. I am mindful that many of those of you who have been privileged to serve and to lead for 18 years are disillusioned and dizzy, frustrated, upset, many of you are angry, I want you to know that this was not my choice, not my decision but this is what it is that God has dictated over my life. And because Ive always followed God into the realms of the ridiculous, the unseemly, this is no different than that, Bryant told his supporters. He also explained that he first began hearing from God that it was time for him to leave Empowerment Temple about a year ago. About a year ago, started feeling a pull from God that was unsettling and unnerving that was tapping me saying your season is coming to an end. And it made absolutely no sense to me because we were about to become the first black megachurch in the country to go completely green. Made absolutely no sense ..., Bryant explained while citing a host of other projects his church was involved in. In the middle of that, God tapped me on my shoulder and says, your season is coming to an end almost like Hezekiah. Get your affairs in order. Almost reminiscent of Abraham. He didnt tell me where I was going, what I was going to do or where I would be. Then a few months ago, God shifted something. He said Im getting ready to take you to a place outside of what Alice Walker calls the temple of your familiar to go away from the city in which you were raised, the denomination in which youve always been a part of three generations in, he continued. Bryant said he was challenged by God to see whether you can trust me and be obedient even when its inconvenient. Bryants ministry at Empowerment Temple was almost destroyed after he admitted to an extramarital affair while he was married to now ex-wife Gizelle Bryant, who stars on Bravo TVs Real Housewives of Potomac. Since his divorce, he was also alleged to have fathered a child with Latoya Shawntee Odom. His ministry remained intact and he thanked his church for supporting him. Through all of that, Empowerment Temple saw me get married, saw me go through divorce, saw me live through embarrassment, through shame, through depression, through all of that, Empowerment stuck with me. They loved me not just as a pastor but even as a shepherd. [They] said in spite of your frailty, in spite of your brokenness, we still see the God in you, he said. With all of your transitions, with all of the shifts, with all of the changes, all of the shame, all of the demonic attacks, all of the negative press, Empowerment stood with me. We have the anointing of the phoenix and we kept rising through the ashes, he continued. If I live a thousand years, I wouldnt be able to thank Empowerment Temple enough and the people of Empowerment Temple. Bryant said in helping to make the decision to move to New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, he consulted his father, John Richard Bryant, a retired presiding bishop in the AME Church, who advised him that when God called him to preach he didnt call you to a denomination, he called you to service. That meant the world to me as a third-generation AME, Bryant said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Baltimore preacher said even though he is moving to lead a church which is part of a different denomination, he wasnt abandoning the AME church or leaving Empowerment Temple completely until his successor has been found. I am not abandoning the AME church. It is the oldest black Christian denomination in this country. They have supported me, invested in me, prayed for me and pushed me. So the larger AME church, know that while it is I am shifting locations, demographics and construct, as long as there is breath in my body, I honor the AME Church and my denomination. Theres absolutely nothing that Ive attempted to do in innovative ministry that the AME Church has stifled, Bryant said. Asia Bibi's daughter thanks Christians worldwide for support, but fears religious enemies want them dead Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment One of Asia Bibis daughters has appeared on a video thanking God and Christians worldwide who've been praying for her family as they continue to face many uncertainties. "Thank you everybody for praying for my mother. I'd also like to thank the brave judges and the Pakistani justice system that recognize my mother's innocence, Eisham Ashiq says in a video, supplied by Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need. I'd also like to thank all the governments the Italian government that [is] concerned about our future and safety, she adds. "Thanks God, she (Bibi) is free and I hope our entire family is finally happy and free. Thanks to all of you for praying for my mother and persecuted Christians." Bibis family has also said that religious enemies want them dead. "They are living almost as fugitives with mullahs going house to house looking for them, ACNs John Pontifax told Sky News. The British government has refused to grant asylum to Bibi and her family, The Telegraph reports her supporters as saying, "because of fear it would prompt 'unrest' in the U.K. and attacks on embassies." Christians across Pakistan have been warned by police to expect attacks by Islamic hardliners following Bibi's acquittal in October. The Christian mother of five spent eight years on death row for the crime of blasphemy, but the countrys Supreme Court found last month that there wasn't enough evidence against her. Bibi's release has sparked protests, with Islamists shutting down streets across the country. Reports have said that Christians have been dragged out of cars and beaten in the wake of the unrest. "Christians will pay close attention and act with caution in the organization of gatherings and celebrations at Christmastime, Catholic layman Adeel Patras Chaudhry of "Jesus Life TV" said in response to the latest police warnings. We pray for the protection of the faithful and of the security forces, committed to our protection. We are aware of the delicate situation and collaborate with the police and with the government. Ashiq Masih, Bibi's husband, said earlier in November that the family has "nothing to eat" as they remain trapped in Pakistan. "Help us get out of Pakistan. We are extremely worried because our lives are in danger. We no longer have even anything to eat, because we cannot leave the house to buy food," Masih pleaded. The father has also called for world leaders to help. "I request [U.S.] President Donald Trump to help us leave [the country], and I request the prime minister of the U.K. to do their level best to help us, to grant us freedom," he asked. "I also request [this of] the prime minister of Canada. Canada, the Netherlands, and Italy are believed to be in discussions with the Pakistani government to take in Bibi's family, though there has not been confirmation yet as to where they will find asylum. Condom fashion show, Planned Parenthood swag at Utah College outrages pro-life students Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Activist students at Westminster College, a private liberal arts school in Salt Lake City, Utah, riled some students and pro-life advocates when they held a Condom Fashion Show featuring outfits partially made from condoms and swag promoting abortion giant Planned Parenthood. Im fine with whatever sort of events clubs and organizations plan on doing," Westminster College student Ryan Kruger told Campus Reform. "However, a condom fashion show just seems like a little much. We could be spending our time doing something more productive, but that is just my two cents." The event was hosted by Students United for Reproductive Freedom, a group that was criticized by Pro-Life Utah for promoting dangerous sex practices to youth. Students United for Reproductive Freedom at Westminster College (which partners with [and is] partly funded by #PlannedParenthoodUtah) hosted a Condom Fashion show. These organizations push dangerous sex practices on young people, the organization noted in a tweet about the Nov. 14. event. The student group insists on the colleges website that they are simply fighting for abortion rights. We are a student group at Westminster College working to involve students to become empowered in their reproductive health choices and local government. Working in conjunction with the Planned Parenthood Action Council, we believe in the fundamental rights of every individual, throughout the world, to manage his or her fertility, regardless of the individuals income, marital status, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, age, national origin, disability, or residence, a description says. At the Nov. 14 condom fashion show, however, the group reportedly hosted performances by drag artists, Terra Flesh and Harlot, who consider themselves part of the drag community." SURF also reportedly held a raffle to give out Planned Parenthood swag and sex toys. Maggie Regier, 21, vice president of Westminsters student government, Associated Students of Westminster, gave a presentation about various sexual pleasure zones, noting that nipples are for everyone," buttholes might be magic," and the clitoris is key. Pro-Life Utah Community Outreach Coordinator Katherine Bright told Campus Reform that they were working to counter the work of such groups on campus with more Students for Life Clubs. Pro-Life Utah is working to create Students for Life clubs as a way to counter [SURF]. We feel it is important to expose it, especially its explicit connection to Planned Parenthood, Bright said. Less Santa, more Jesus; Churches observing Bless Friday instead of Black Friday Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment On a day when many Americans are crowding the stores for Black Friday bargains, a group of churches will instead do acts of charity as part of an annual observance called Bless Friday. Were here to help connect individuals, groups and churches to the service opportunities that can transform our communities and our hearts, noted its website. If you dont find an activity on our website in which you can participate, please allow the Spirit to lead you and your family and friends to a need in your community. First begun in 2010, this year for the first time a Christian-owned business will be joining the churches taking part, according to Bless Friday organizer and founder Chuck Fox. In an interview with The Christian Post, Fox explained that RE/MAX Legacy Living of Richmond, Texas was going to be involved. For the first time we are partnering with a Christian owned, small business, RE/MAX Legacy Living. Jemila and Patrick Winsey learned about Bless Friday on November 5, less than three weeks before Bless Friday, and they asked if they could participate, explained Fox. According to Fox, Jemila Winsey has been helping with social media outreach, with her sending out promotional videos created by the Bless Friday organizers. The quickness, professional use of social media and partnership with a business are all new. We are happy to have anyone involved who honors Christ and keeps the focus on Him at Christmas, noted Fox. In total, ten churches are taking part in this years Bless Friday observance, which is an increase of two congregations from the year before. We have ten churches participating this year up from eight last year. We added two churches in Cotulla, Texas. Cotulla is a small town with about 3600 residents. The local Catholic Church and Church of Christ are visiting a nursing home, Fox explained. We hope that by beginning their Christmas celebration with service participants will place their focus on Jesus. We especially hope that Bless Friday connects Christmas and service in the minds of children, less Santa and more Jesus. Bill Bray, organizer of the Bless Friday volunteer efforts for The Woodlands Community Presbyterian Church in Texas, told CP in a 2016 interview that he considered Bless Friday a much better way of ushering in the Christmas season than Black Friday. Roger Patterson, senior pastor of the Houston-area West University Baptist Church and Crosspoint Church, told CP in an earlier interview that his congregation participated because of the beauty of the idea and the desire to keep generosity at the forefront of the Thanksgiving and Christmas season. We feel practical pathways of giving help us combat the ease by which we can fall into the trap of greed, Patterson told CP in 2016. Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade broadcasts same-sex kiss on live TV Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment The Macy's Thanksgiving parade has been known to be a wholesome celebration that families enjoyed together every year but this year's parade is drawing attention for its first controversial public display of same-sex relations. During a performance highlighting the Broadway musical "The Prom," the show's actresses, Caitlin Kinnunen and Isabelle McCalla, were seen romantically slow dancing together and ultimately sharing a kiss to end the ensemble. The kiss is believed to be the first broadcasted kiss between a lesbian couple during the Macy's celebration event. "The first #LGBTQ kiss in the Parades history," cast member of "The Prom" Josh Lamon wrote on Twitter. "We here at @ThePromMusical have never been so proud. #LoveIsLove." Some on social media also praised the homosexual embrace. Others, however, said the kiss was inappropriate during a family program. YouTube user Brittney Iowa even penned a public letter to NBC: Dear Macy's and NBC, There is a time and place to make lifestyle choice statements and the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade wasn't the time and place. Please consider my opinion for next year." The Macys Parade is not the only place same-sex relations have been promoted to young people. Earlier this month, a Florida school showed high school-aged children a sex ed video produced by Planned Parenthood without parental consent. Fox 13 reported that the Safe Place and Rape Crisis Center video was created to teach Sarasota County high school students about consent. The video includes sex talk, a man grabbing a woman's breast, and multiple same-sex couples making out. The district in Florida had to issue an apology to parents. Disney has also used its platform in recent years to highlight homosexuality. In 2017, the Disney XD channel introduced the company's first male princess on the same show that previously drew controversy for featuring the first same-sex kisses. Conservative groups, such as the American Family Association, have warned that Disney's portrayal of gay characters is dangerous and could have "grave and eternal consequences." All the staff inside the Chinese consulate is safe, security sources said. Three gunmen and two police were killed in an hour-long shootout near the Chinese consulate in southern port city of Karachi. The attack ended shortly after it began on Friday morning, and later video showed paramilitary forces and police rushing to cordon off the area. The Balochistan Liberation Army, a separatist group based in the southwestern province of Balochistan, claimed responsibility for the attack and released photos of the three attackers. According to reports, the blast happened at the main gate of a seminary in the lower part of Orakzai Agency, one of Pakistan's seven mountainous tribal regions located near the Pakistan-Afghan border. Friday's attack was a brazen uptick in the level of violence perpetrated by the Baluch separatist, said Amir Rana, executive director of the independent Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan ordered an inquiry into the attack. He said they threw a grenade and then opened fire. Schools in the area were placed on lockdown. The incident is the latest in a series of assaults on Chinese nationals, including workers involved in the multi-billion dollar infrastructure project in Pakistan. The BLA is just one of the militant groups operating in Balochistan, Pakistan's largest and poorest province, which is rife with ethnic, sectarian and separatist insurgencies. The incident is the second major attack this year on Chinese officials in Karachi, a megacity of at least 15 million people in a country that is one of the key partners in China's Belt and Road initiative. The letter was addressed to China's ambassador to Pakistan. "Any attempt to undermine China-Pakistan relationship is doomed to fail". "These threats were already on Pakistan and China's threat radar", he said. Over Half of American Protestants Say They Tithe but Some Count Secular Charity Donations Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment More than half of American Protestant Christians report tithing their income. But all tithes don't necessarily go to the church, with some Christians believing they can tithe to charities, including secular ones, according to recently released findings by LifeWay Research. In a report released last Thursday, LifeWay noted that 54 percent of surveyed Protestants give at least 10 percent of their income to the church. Among them, 37 percent say they tithe and 17 percent say they give more than 10 percent. One in 5 say they give regularly but they give less than 10 percent of their income. Seventeen percent say they're not consistent with their tithing and 8 percent say it's difficult for them to tithe due to finances. Those more likely to tithe are those who attend services regularly. Based off of a 2017 survey of 1,010 Americans who attend Protestant or nondenominational services at least once a month and 1,000 Protestant senior pastors, the report also found that many believe donating money to non-church entities can count as a tithe. While 98 percent say their tithe money is directed to a church, nearly half (48 percent) say tithes can be given to a Christian ministry, 35 percent say tithes can go to another church, and 34 percent say funds can go to an individual in need. Notably, 18 percent say donations to a secular charity can count as part of their tithe. Those more likely to agree with this are Lutherans and Methodists. Overall, 83 percent believe tithing is a biblical command that still applies today while only 8 percent disagree. Recently, some, including Thomas Schreiner, professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, have argued that the practice of tithing is no longer necessary for Christians to perform. "The commands stipulated in the Mosaic covenant are no longer in force for believers," argued Schreiner in a 2017 column for The Gospel Coalition. "Some appeal to the division between the civil, ceremonial, and moral law to support tithing. Yet these divisions, I would observe, are not the basis Paul uses when addressing how the law applies to us today. And even if we use these distinctions, tithing is clearly not part of the moral law." Pastor J.D. Greear of The Summit Church in Durham, N.C., has argued that although "Jesus left us under no part of the law, not the tithe or anything else," the idea of giving 10 percent of all that God gives remains a "good guide." "[T]he law said 'Don't murder;' yet, Jesus said the Gospel demanded we love our brother always and not hate him, not even our enemies. So, if the law says 'Give 10 percent,' what kind of generosity does the Gospel call for? Would it not be greater generosity than 10 percent, just as the other commands were also intensified in Christ?" he posed. Weekly briefing: Joni Eareckson Tada, missionary killed, Kari Jobe Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment We've compiled the top stories of the week. Here's what you need to know: Joni Eareckson Tada has cancer again The beloved speaker and disability advocate revealed that a cancerous tumor was found over the site of her mastectomy. The new cancer diagnosis comes three years after she beat stage 3 breast cancer. When I received the unexpected news of cancer from my oncological surgeon, I relaxed and smiled, knowing that my sovereign God loves me dearly and holds me tightly in His hands. What good is it if we only trust the Lord when we understand His ways? That only guarantees a life filled with doubts, Tada said. Missionary killed John Chau, a 26-year-old American missionary, was killed by a remote tribe in Indias North Sentinel Island. Despite knowing the risks, he wanted to share the Gospel with the isolated Sentinelese. Ahead of his death, he asked God to forgive those who try to kill me, and especially if they succeed. Wedding magazine shutting down over biblical marriage views The Christian owners of White magazine, based in Australia, announced that they will be shutting down their operation after advertisers pulled out due to the owners refusal to feature same-sex couples. Australia legalized same-sex marriage last year. Instead of allowing us the space to work through our thoughts and feelings, or being willing to engage in brave conversations to really hear each others stories, some have just blindly demanded that we pick a side. Were not about sides, were about love, patience and kindness, the owners, Luke and Carla Burrell, said. Kari Jobe at the White House Popular Christian artist Kari Jobe revealed that she visited the White House this month for a faith briefing that involved other worship artists, including Michael Tait, Tauren Wells, Colton Dixon and Bethel Music. The event hosted by Paula White, President Donald Trumps spiritual adviser was held to discuss some of the projects the administration is involved in, including aiding victims of human trafficking and former inmates. "They pray and seek God for wisdom for people. It all seemed beyond politics - it was Kingdom. I realized there are some Kingdom minded people who work in the White House and that was extremely encouraging, said Jobe. Jamal Bryant named senior pastor of New Birth New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, previously led by Eddie Long, named Jamal Bryant as its new senior pastor. After Longs death in January 2017, Bishop Stephen A. Davis took the reins but resigned in June. Bryant currently leads Empowerment Temple, a church of 10,000 members in Baltimore. He announced on Sunday that he was resigning from Empowerment, which left his congregation in shock. Thanksgiving Americans celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday. Amid tragedies and division in the country, Americans found reasons to be thankful. Churches also participated in annual charity drives to help their local communities. Cross Church in Springdale, Arkansas, collected 2,250 meals to distribute. Large membership churches can be misunderstood, and this kind of ministry helps connect our church with the local community, showing the kind and compassionate side of the church, said Doug Sarver of Cross Church. Pray for Joni Eareckson Tada and Anne Graham Lotz, who is experiencing severe side effects from chemotherapy Christians in China whose churches could be shut down New releases Movies: Creed II (Nov. 21) Ralph Breaks the Internet (Nov. 21) Album: Christmas Vol. 2 by Planetshakers (Nov. 23) Book: The Magnificent Journey: Living Deep in the Kingdom by James Bryan Smith (Nov. 6) Arizona Supreme Court to hear Christian artists' lawsuit against law forcing them to work gay weddings Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Arizonas highest court has agreed to hear the appeal of two Christian artists who filed a lawsuit to strike down a city ordinance that would require them to provide services for same-sex weddings despite their religious objections. The Arizona Supreme Court announced Tuesday that they would hear arguments in the case of Brush & Nib Studio et al v. City of Phoenix. At issue is whether Joanna Duka and Breanna Koski, owners of Brush & Nib Studio, should be forced to create wedding invitations for same-sex marriages, which they're morally opposed to. The high court hasn't yet set a date for when it will hear oral arguments in the case, but it will likely be sometime next year, according to The Arizona Republic. In 2013, the city of Phoenix added a new ordinance titled "Discrimination in public accommodations," which bans discrimination "in places of public accommodation against any person because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or disability." Also known as City Code Section 18.4(B), the ordinance provided an exemption for religious organizations, but did not include businesses in that category. Someone found guilty of violating the law could face up to six months in prison. In May 2016, Duka and Koski filed a lawsuit against the ordinance. However, in September of that year, Arizona Superior Court Judge Karen A. Mullins rejected a request to block enforcement of the law. "It is absurd to think that the fabricator of a wedding invitation for a same-sex couple has endorsed same-sex marriage merely by creating or printing that invitation," wrote Mullins. "Moreover, there is nothing about the creative process itself, such as a flower or vine or the choice of a particular font or color, that conveys any pledge, endorsement, celebration, or other substantive mandated message by plaintiffs in regard to same-sex marriage." Last October, Mullins again ruled against the artists, prompting them to appeal to the Court of Appeals. In June, a three-judge panel of that court ruled unanimously against them. "Appellants have failed to prove that Section 18-4(B) substantially burdens their religious beliefs by requiring that they provide equal goods and services to same-sex couples. Appellants are not penalized for expressing their belief that their religion only recognizes the marriage of opposite-sex couples," read the panel's opinion. "Nor are appellants penalized for refusing to create wedding-related merchandise as long as they equally refuse similar services to opposite-sex couples." In July, Brush & Nib Studio sent an appeal to the state Supreme Court. They are being represented by the Scottsdale, Arizona-based law firm Alliance Defending Freedom. Jonathan Scruggs, senior counsel with the ADF, said in a statement released earlier this year that he believed the "government must allow artists to make their own decisions about which messages they will promote." "Artists shouldn't be forced to create artwork contrary to their core convictions, and certainly not under threat of criminal fines and jail time," stated Scruggs. "Breanna and Joanna are happy to design custom art for all people; they simply object to being forced to pour their heart, soul, imagination, and talent into creating messages that violate their conscience." Judge blocks Trump admins new rule limiting number of asylum seekers Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A judge in California blocked President Donald Trumps new policy of barring asylum for migrants who enter the nation illegally, noting that it goes against federal law. U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar of San Francisco ruled on Monday that the Trump administrations policy violated the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. The rule barring asylum for immigrants who enter the country outside a port of entry irreconcilably conflicts with the INA and the expressed intent of Congress, wrote Judge Tigar, as reported by USA Today. Whatever the scope of the Presidents authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden. Tigars restraining order is temporary, expiring on Dec. 19, when a court case over the new rules begins. Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced a plan to limit the number of asylum seekers coming to the United States. This included Trump signing a presidential proclamation that stated: "aliens who enter the United States unlawfully through the southern border in contravention of this proclamation will be ineligible to be granted asylum." Those aliens may, however, still seek other forms of protection from persecution or torture, continued the proclamation. In addition, this limited suspension will facilitate ongoing negotiations with Mexico and other countries regarding appropriate cooperative arrangements to prevent unlawful mass migration to the United States through the southern border. President Trumps efforts to reduce the number of asylum seekers came in response to the approach of the thousands-strong migrant caravan from Central America. At one point estimated to have around 7,200 men, women, and children, the caravan entered Mexico last month and is expected to get to the USA's southern border soon. Their headline-grabbing presence has reignited political debate over immigration policy, including the admission of refugees and President Trump's much-promoted border wall. The Rev. Franklin Graham, a prominent evangelical leader who supports Trump, took to his official Facebook page to comment on the caravan situation on Monday. While expressing concerns over the nature of the caravan and that there are also violent criminals mixed into this crowd, Graham called for prayers for all involved. Lets pray for the people in the caravan. Pray for our border police and military that they make the right decisions, and pray for President Donald Trump as he responds to this issue. We dont want people on either side of the fence to get hurt, he stated. Students ask Supreme Court to overturn school district's transgender bathroom policy Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A group of Pennsylvania students has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to protect their bodily privacy in school by overturning their school districts transgender-inclusive bathroom and locker room policy. Represented by the conservative nonprofit legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, the group of anonymous students filed an appeal with the nations highest court on Monday, asking it to overturn a ruling from the Third Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals favoring the Boyertown Area School District. The students sued the school district after it decided in the 2016-2017 school year to change its policy to allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity rather than their biological sex. The school districts policy change came after the Obama administration sent out a guidance in 2016 (that has since been rescinded by the Trump administration) to public school districts nationwide, urging them to allow boys who identify as girls to use the girls' bathrooms, locker rooms and showers, and vice versa. According to ADF, the BASD changed its policy without informing parents or students, which led some students to find out about the policy while they were getting undressed in front of other students of the opposite sex who were in the same locker room. Embarrassed and confused, petitioner Joel Doe went to school officials, and the officials said to try and act natural, the lawsuit explains. Joel Doe was marked down in gym class for failing to change his clothes, and he eventually felt forced to leave the school entirely. In June, a three-judge panel on the Third Circuit ruled that a U.S. District Court correctly concluded that the students claims for privacy rights were not likely to succeed on the merits. Furthermore, the Third Circuit panel asserted that the school had adopted a very thoughtful and carefully tailored policy to address some very real issues while faithfully discharging its obligation to maintain a safe and respectful environment in which everyone can both learn and thrive. In the appeal to the Supreme Court, ADF argued that the Third Circuits decision is faulty because the Supreme Court has long recognized the need for separating male and female students in locker rooms, restrooms, and showers. The appeal also states that the Third Circuit decided that a male who identifies as a female is, in fact, female, and vice versa. As well, ADF asserts that the the court criticized Petitioners for declining to embrace the view that their right not to be viewed undressed by members of the opposite sex depends entirely on what another person believes about their own gender. Forcing a teenager to share a locker room or restroom with a member of the opposite sex can cause embarrassment and distress, particularly for students who have been victims of sexual assault, the appeal states. Recognizing this reality does not diminish concern for students who believe they are of the opposite sex. ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of Appellate Advocacy, John Bursch, said in a statement that there are sound reasons for why schools have separated male and female teenagers in showers, restrooms and locker rooms. No students recognized right to bodily privacy should be made contingent on what other students believe about their own gender, Bursch said. The Third Circuits decision made a mess of bodily privacy and Title IX principles, and the decision deserves review and reversal by the U.S. Supreme Court. BASD lawyer Michael Levin told The Morning Call that the district plans to file a response to the Supreme Court reflecting that the district believes the lower court decisions were well-reasoned and will be able to be defended. Also listed as defendants in the case is the statewide pro-LGBT advocacy organization Pennsylvania Youth Congress, which intervened in the case on behalf of an transgender student. According to The Morning Call, the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania has joined the case on behalf of the PYC. Their claim that transgender students are a threat to others is offensive and not supported by the evidence in Boyertown or schools around the country, ACLU attorney Ria Tabacco Mar argued. The ADF is aided in this case by Independence Law Center. Schools should not expect students to accept that the differences between females and males dont matter in the very places set apart for privacy from the opposite sex, ILC Chief Counsel Randall Wenger said in a statement. Other circuit courts have also ruled that trans-identified students have the right to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. Last year, the Seventh Circuit ruled in that the Kenosha Unified School District in Wisconsin violated the rights of a trans-identified student by requiring that students use facilities consistent with their biological sex. Last year, the Supreme Court sent a similar appeal filed by a Virginia school district back to a lower court for review after the Fourth Circuit ruled that a trans-identified student had the right to access facilities according to their gender identity. Trump taps pro-life neuroscientist for National Science Board post Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment President Trump has nominated a pro-life neurobiology professor who has spoken out in defense of the unborn to serve on the National Science Board. Maureen Condic, who is an associate professor at the University of Utah and is known for her work on spinal cord repair, was chosen earlier this month to fill one of the 25 spots on the NSB, LifeNews reported. She will serve a six-year term. Im just thrilled that its an opportunity to serve my country and the greater scientific community, she told the Salt Lake City Tribune. In May 2013, Condic, who is Catholic, testified before the Judiciary Committee in support of a bill that would have restricted abortions after the 20-week mark, telling lawmakers that human fetuses can feel pain at eight weeks. She explained then that the "neural circuitry responsible for the most primitive response to pain, the spinal reflex, is in place by eight weeks of development, the earliest point at which a human fetus can experience pain. Imposing pain on any pain-capable living creature is cruelty, the neuroscientist stressed. And ignoring the pain experienced by another human individual for any reason is barbaric. We dont need to know if a human fetus is self-reflective or even self-aware to afford it the same consideration we currently afford other pain-capable species. We simply have to decide whether we will choose to ignore the pain of the fetus or not. Her advocacy for life has caused professional setbacks, Intermountain Catholic noted in 2015, but did not specify what they were. Shes really been an advocate for a pro-life message and she has done this at great personal sacrifice, then-Rev. John C. Wester, a former Catholic bishop in Salt Lake City, told the Catholic outlet at the time. It has not always been easy for her; she has suffered in her profession because of the very strong stance she has taken in defending life, and yet she has not wavered. She has been very consistent in promoting the sanctity of human life as a gift of God. Condic earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and has been published in several peer-reviewed journals. She is listed an associate scholar of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the pro-life political action group the Susan B. Anthony List. In November 2014, she was nominated and approved for a five-year term as corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, a group of physicians, scientists, and theologians from around the world whose mission it is to study questions and issues regarding the promotion and defense of human life from an interdisciplinary perspective. The National Science Board is the policymaking body of the National Science Foundation and advises Congress and the administration on issues in science and engineering. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment The pattern is as predictable as it is obvious. When the left (especially the far left) talks about freedom, it means freedom for those who conform. When it talks about diversity, it means my way or the highway. Political correctness is to be enforced. Dissent will not be tolerated. So much for the left bringing liberation. Of course, the left will say to us, No, you are the ones who require conformity. You are the ones who refuse to recognize marriage when its different than what youre used to. You are the ones who want to forbid a woman from having control over her own body. It is our side, the left, which loves freedom. But that objection misses the point. Our argument is that marriage in our society has a certain meaning and history and function. To tamper with that is to tamper with our foundations. But if two men or two women want to live together, thats their choice. We simply dont want to be required to validate or celebrate that choice. When it comes to abortion, notice that, despite our abhorrence of that sinful practice, were not forcibly stopping women from having abortions. Were arguing that no one has the right to terminate the life of an innocent baby and were advocating for a change in the laws and the culture through political and persuasive means. In sharp contrast, it is the left that wants to shut down dissenting views. That is protesting at college campuses before a thoughtful conservative delivers a speech. That is forcing conservative professors into hiding. That is forbidding professional counseling for minors with unwanted same-sex attractions. That is requiring people to use certain terms in their speech and punishing them if they dont. The more power the left has, the more dissension must be crushed and the more a radical PC norm must be enforced. In the spirit of communism, the playing field must be leveled, since you cannot offend me (or my system) and you cannot have what I want to have. Its equality, the good, old Animal Farm way. How else do you explain this headline, announcing, Liberal Australian Colleges Ban Sarcasm From Campus? As Kassy Dillon reported on the Daily Wire, Several universities in Australia have brilliantly put a ban in place to protect students from the life-threatening dangers of sarcasm. In an interview on Sky News, Gideon Rozner, the Director of Policy at the Institute of Public Affairs, said that the majority of Australian Universities are hostile to free speech and that only one university respects free speech. He added that several universities ban sarcasm because its a form of violence. Seriously? You want to ban sarcasm?But of course! If it offends you, you ban it. Or how about this story, from England, as reported by US News? A high school inEngland has banned students from wearing expensive winter coats in an attempt to stop the shaming of those less fortunate or struggling financially. Woodchurch High School in Birkenhead, located in northwestern England, sent a letter to parents earlier this month announcing that the restriction would be enforced after Christmas. Rebekah Phillips, the head teacher at the school for students 11 to 16 years old, told CNN that she was mindful that some young people put pressure on their parents to purchase expensive items of clothing, but that these jackets cause a lot of inequality between the students. Did I say that equality must be enforced? And what happens if you dont like the results of a statewide election? You call for a boycott of that state! The people must be punished for their conservative and moderate votes. Thats why, Several Hollywood actors have called for a boycott of Georgias film industry after Republican Brian Kemp officially won the states gubernatorial contest. How dare the people of Georgia refuse to elect a far-left candidate supported by the Hollywood elite (namely, Stacey Abrams)? They must be punished. Thats why conservative stars in Hollywood often keep their views quiet. Its too costly to challenge the system. And thats why, in the world of academics, if you want a good career, especially in the elite schools, youd best keep your conservative views in the closet. In the words of economist James Miller, Practically the only way for a womens-studies professor to get a lifetime college appointment is for her to contribute to the literature on why America is racist, sexist, and homophobic. Diversity is a one-way street when it comes to the lefts mandatory, PC world. Let the reader beware. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Schools in Washington D.C. just announced that next years enrollment form will allow parents to choose between three gender options for their child: male, female or non-binary. One activist, quoted in The New York Times , says that doesnt go far enough, arguing, Kids should be able to have the agency and the freedom to define themselves and have that respected, especially if there is no support for them at home. Gender activists claim there are not just two sexes, but a multitude of genders, and that individuals can move between the two sexes. Transgenderism is being integrated in our education system from coast to coast not just in the more liberal places that you might expect. Sadly this ideology is having egregious consequences for students, teachers and parents from pre-schools to graduate programs. Here are four stories that show the negative impact of this movement on free speech, religious freedom, parental rights and an individuals right to privacy and safety: Two middle school P.E. teachers objected when a Florida school board told them they must allow a girl who identifies as male to undress, change and shower with boys. A complaint letter sent from Liberty Counsel to Pasco County School Board says that the young girl walked in, catching boys (literally) with their pants down. One teacher, Robert O., objected to supervising a minor girl while she dressed and undressed in the locker room. Both teachers were forbidden from discussing the issue with students, and school administrators have told Robert he will be disciplined by being transferred to another school. when a Florida school board told them they must allow a girl who identifies as male to undress, change and shower with boys. A sent from Liberty Counsel to Pasco County School Board says that the young girl walked in, catching boys (literally) with their pants down. One teacher, Robert O., objected to supervising a minor girl while she dressed and undressed in the locker room. Both teachers were forbidden from discussing the issue with students, and school administrators have told Robert he will be disciplined by being transferred to another school. Dr. Nicholas Meriwether , a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio, was punished by university officials when he refused to refer to a male student as maam or with a female title such as Miss. The student berated Meriwether and filed a complaint with the school. After one official mocked his Christian faith, university officials then said the professor created a hostile environment for the student and placed a warning in Meriwethers personnel file. The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has filed a federal lawsuit against the school. , a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio, was punished by university officials when he refused to refer to a male student as maam or with a female title such as Miss. The student berated Meriwether and filed a complaint with the school. After one official mocked his Christian faith, university officials then said the professor created a hostile environment for the student and placed a warning in Meriwethers personnel file. The (ADF) has filed a against the school. In a heartbreaking case in Georgia, a five-year-old girl was assaulted in the girls bathroom by a gender fluid boy. The City Schools of Decatur had implemented a policy allowing students who identify as the opposite sex to use restrooms, locker rooms and shower areas that align with their gender identity, rather than their biological reality. The girls mother, with the assistance of ADF , filed a complaint alleging that the school districts policy opened the door for the attack. The Department of Education (DOE) is investigating the incident. in the girls bathroom by a gender fluid boy. The City Schools of Decatur had implemented a policy allowing students who identify as the opposite sex to use restrooms, locker rooms and shower areas that align with their gender identity, rather than their biological reality. The girls mother, with the assistance of , filed a alleging that the school districts policy opened the door for the attack. The Department of Education (DOE) is investigating the incident. A Christian student, Isabella Chow , at University of California-Berkeley is under fire because she abstained from voting for an Associated Students Senate resolution condemning the Trump administration and supporting transgender- and non-binary-identified students. Under the Obama administration , sex discrimination in various non-discrimination laws was redefined to include gender discrimination and cover the wide variety of genders claimed by activists. Now, the Trump administration intends to return the definition of sex back to its meaning when these laws were passed by Congress: two sexes, male and female. In a graciously worded statement , Chow affirmed her belief in Gods creation of humanity as male and female. In a three hour student Senate meeting, LGBT-identified students and their allies attacked her faith and called for her resignation. Our goal in writing about this isnt to evoke fear or anger, but to educate and equip Christians to engage these issues with biblical grace and truth. Its a difficult balance, but we encourage Christians to love those struggling with gender confusion while standing firm for important issues such as free speech, religious freedom, parental rights in education, and an individuals right to privacy and safety. To that end, here are a variety of Focus on the Family resources to help you respond to this growing issue in our education system: Equipping Parents to Respond to Gender-Confusing Messages in Schools This free, downloadable resource gives guidance for parents when their children encounter gender-confusing messages in schools. This free, downloadable resource gives guidance for parents when their children encounter gender-confusing messages in schools. Public Restrooms - Your Privacy and Safety - This series explains how all of us are affected by gender ideology and gives guidance about keeping you and your family safe in restrooms, locker rooms and dressing rooms. - This series explains how all of us are affected by gender ideology and gives guidance about keeping you and your family safe in restrooms, locker rooms and dressing rooms. Transgender Resources This web page lists every Focus on the Family resource dealing with this subject, including encouraging resources for individuals struggling with their sense of gender identity. This web page lists every Focus on the Family resource dealing with this subject, including encouraging resources for individuals struggling with their sense of gender identity. When Transgenderism Enters Your World This downloadable resource explains the basics of this difficult topic and offers guidance for dealing with three scenarios where a family might encounter transgenderism. Jeff Johnston is a Culture and Policy Analyst at Focus on the Family. Dutch church holds 24/7 worship to save refugee family from deportation For nearly a month, a Dutch church has been holding services round the clock to prevent an Armenian refugee family from being deported. Sasun and Anousche Tamrazyan and their three children, Hayarpi, Warduhi, and Seyran fled Armenia after Sasun's political activism led to death threats against him and have lived in the Netherlands for almost nine years. However, while a judge granted them asylum, the government succeeded in having the ruling overturned, according to Quartz. An application for a 'children's pardon', in theory granted to refugees with children who have lived in the Netherlands for more than five years, was also refused. The family appealed to the Protestant Church for help and took refuge in Bethel Church. Police in Holland are not allowed to enter places of worship during religious services so the church has help worship continuously since October 25, relying on a rota of ministers drafted in from other churches. Theo Hettema, chairman of the General Council of Protestant Ministers, said the church wanted to 'create time and space for dialogue with the government about a dilemma that...should not be faced by a church: choosing between respect for the government and protecting the rights of a child'. The church said: 'We do what we always do: a church service, but then continuously just as the need to be supported is continuous. We do this to encourage this family, to show that we are there as a church, that there is a God who does not let anyone fall.' Far-right anti-immigration movements have increasingly gained popularity in Holland. The church has invited prayer 'for us, for the Tamrazyan family, for the 400 children in the same situation', as well as donations, groceries and participation in the continuing worship. Government must work to heal rifts over Brexit, says bishop The Bishop of Leeds has urged the Government not to ignore the need for reconciliation as the bitter debate over Brexit continues. The Right Reverend Nick Baines told the House of Lords that the Government had a 'primary duty' to consider reconciliation as part of the Brexit process. The bishop told peers that the debate around leaving the European Union was characterised by a 'polarising aggression' that he said was not being helped by the Prime Minister's repeated calls to get behind her deal or promises of a glorious future outside the EU. The relationship between Remainers and Leavers had become fractured to the point of being 'toxic', he said as he called upon the Government to work on restoring trust as a public value. On social media platforms, the bishop said people had to wade through 'acres of muck' to find the few gems of fair analysis and comment on the topic. 'I am not making a case for leaving, remaining, wishful thinking or dreaming. The referendum happened, the rest is history - in the making,' he said. 'However, the factual phenomenon of Brexit, its language and behaviours, its polarising aggression and its destructive reductionism are not going to be addressed by statements about getting behind a deal and people romantically falling back into line. 'That line has been crossed in our public discourse, and I think two things have exacerbated it: first, the repeated implication that "the will of the people" is immutable and clear; and, secondly, that the nature of the split down the centre of the United Kingdom is being ignored.' Theresa May is heading to Brussels with her deal this weekend but she faces a tougher challenge on her hands to win the backing of her own party when it is voted on in Parliament in a few weeks. According to the BBC, only seven Tory MPs are needed to defeat the deal but 81 have already signalled objections. Some unidentified gunmen in Pakistan opened fire near the Chinese consulate in Karachi, media reports said. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Friday said all staff members of the Chinese consulate remained safe in the attack. "It was a brazen attack, I can say that", he added. "(The consulate is in) a very heavily guarded area, the firing is still continuing and we can hear small blasts, which suggests the attackers are still engaged with security forces", Latif said. Police officials confirmed another two terrorists were killed in fire exchange. Reports are surfacing that at least two police officials have embraced martyrdom while one has sustained injury. The attack was claimed by a separatist militant group from Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan, which is at the centre of a major Chinese investment project in the country. Dr Seemi Jamali said the condition of a security guard wounded in the attack is critical. He further informed that the terrorists were wearing vests that appeared as suicide vests, adding that the bomb disposal squad has been called immediately to inspect the suspected vests and the nearby locality. Smoke is rising from the building as the shootout continues. A crackdown in the city by security forces in recent years has brought a lull in violence, but scattered attacks still take place. According to eyewitnesses, unknown men possessing hand grenades and other weapons fired near the Chinese consulate in Karachi's Clifton Block 4. Two pastors among victims of Islamist militant group Two Congolese pastors were among seven Christians killed in attacks by an Islamist militant group in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this month. Six Christians, including Rev Kausa Kaule Yosua and his daughter, 27-year-old Masika, were killed in the attacks on November 10 and 11 by members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) on two villages near Beni, in the northeast of the central-African country, according to World Watch Monitor (WWM). A local source told WWM they also kidnapped 13 people, adults and children. Among them was another pastor, Rev Josias Kapanga Katembo, whose body was later found in the forest, bringing the death toll to seven. In the first attack, on the village of Mayimoya, militants raided the church compound and nearby homes of Christians. A church leader said: 'At about 10pm they [the militants] got into the pastor's house and attacked his daughter with machetes. When she started screaming for help, her father came out to see what was happening and to rescue her. They shot him dead, and then shot her dead too. One of his grandchildren remains missing.' A survivor said: 'From my window I could hear the attackers discussing that the area where they operate belongs to the Muslims, and not to Christians, and that every Christian found in it is an enemy."' In the attack three children between eight and 13 were also killed. Seven Christians, including four children and three men, are still missing after they were reportedly forced by ADF members to carry away the things they looted from Mayimoya. On the following day, Pastor Josias Kapanga Katembo, 44, was kidnapped from the village of Boyikene with two of his four children and three other Christians belonging to his church. Twelve houses and a vehicle were set on fire by the attackers, who entered the village in military uniform. Pastor Katembo's wife Rebecca, 34, was also killed when she tried to flee as militants set fire to her home. The whereabouts of their other four children is still unknown. The violence has caused civilians to flee the area. A spokesperson for a local Christian NGO caring for displaced people told WWM: 'The people have fled in great numbers to places like Orientale and Ituri provinces, to Butembo, and some have even crossed the border to Uganda. Please pray for God to help us.' The Congolese army, backed by UN forces, fought the ADF group and in an offensive near the city on November 14 and 15. Seven UN-peacekeepers and 12 Congolese soldiers were killed. The group originated in Uganda and has been blamed for more than 2,500 civilian deaths. Western countries are not doing enough to stop global surge in violence against religious minorities - report Western nations are failing to help the world's religious minorities as they grapple with a surge in violent attacks and intimidation, a new report has claimed. Religious Freedom in the World 2018 warns that religious minorities are coming under increasing threat as a result of 'ultra-nationalism' by governments as well as groups of extremists. The report by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) examined 196 nations over a two-year period up to June 2018. It says that there has been a 'spike in hatred' against religious minorities in countries around the world and an 'especially serious decline' in religious freedom in India and China. Other countries where religious freedom has deteriorated include Burma, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Turkey. 'Many of the others including North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Eritrea the situation was already so bad, it could scarcely get any worse,' it said. Elsewhere, the report says governments have failed to respond to requests for assistance from religous minorities trying to return to northern Iraq after the ousting of the Islamic State. Where Christians and Yazidis have been able to return, ACN said this was with the help of only a few foreign governments, leaving church organisations to step in and fill in the gap by repairing and rebuilding many of the destroyed homes. 'This work of rehabilitation has mainly been done by charities and church organisations,' it said. 'Had they not provided this assistance, the Christian community in the region could have vanished. 'Western governments, to whom appeals for urgent assistance were made, badly let down the communities concerned. 'Christians and Yazidis were recognised as victims of genocide self-evidently deserving of help and events have shown that there were eminently viable means of doing so.' The report went on to say that the plight of religious minorities worldwide has been exacerbated by inaction and an attitude of 'indifference' on the part of Western countries. 'Most Western governments have failed to provide urgently needed assistance to minority faith groups, especially displaced communities wanting to return home,' the report read. 'There is a barrier of indifference, a cultural curtain, behind which the suffering of entire communities of religious minority groups goes largely unnoticed. 'Hence, with notable exceptions, religious illiteracy and apathy blinds the West from the surge in ultra-nationalist violence, which is being perpetrated against minority faith groups. 'This blinkered indifference does not extend to racial, cultural, or gender matters, only to religion. This report calls for the suffering of ignored religious minorities to be recognised and action taken to defend their rights.' Oil notched its biggest weekly loss since the depths of the last price crash, as record Saudi output, pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump and a global stock sell-off intensified crude's freefall. Futures slid below $60 in London on Friday and ended the week down about 12 percent, the worst showing since January 2016. Traders focused on the growing risks of a new glut of crude after Saudi Arabia's oil minister said Thursday that production from the world's largest exporter had climbed further this month. Oil joined a swoon in equity markets nervous about international trade and a weakening economy. The S&P 500 Index fell to its lowest mark since May while European markets lost ground after a report showing a slowdown in Germany. Energy companies led declines, with shale drillers Concho Resources Inc. and Devon Energy Corp. each down more than 5 percent. "Crude's getting shellacked," said Kyle Cooper, director of research at energy consultant IAF Advisors in Houston. "The equities are giving a foreboding sign for overall economic growth. I think that's what's disturbing people." In the U.S., West Texas Intermediate oil prices slid toward $50 a barrel, the baseline at which many large shale explorers set their budget this year, RBC Capital Markets analyst Scott Hanold said in a note to clients. Smaller producers planned on even more, predicating budgets on WTI prices 10 to 15 percent higher, he wrote. "Outside of a few better-positioned companies, demonstrating free cash flow will be challenging at current oil prices," Hanold said. See also: Global Oil Benchmarks Extend Slide on Bearish Technical Signals The Saudis have signaled they will throttle back on production in December. But unless OPEC and Russia can reach a new deal to constrain output in Vienna next month, analysts see the prospect of sustained oversupply in 2019, undoing the group's success over the last two years to drain global inventories. Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will attend next week's G20 meeting in Buenos Aires. The Russian and Saudi energy ministers are also scheduled to travel to Argentina's capital, according to people familiar with their plans. Crude collapsed into a bear market this month after the U.S. allowed some nations to continue buying Iranian supply. Trade tension between America and China is raising concerns over demand and Trump renewed a call for lower oil prices. Those factors pushed up oil's volatility this week to the highest since early 2016. "We continue to see fundamentals improving in the near-term, but caution traders against sticking their necks out until the momentum shock finds a more solid floor," TD Securities analysts led by Bart Melek wrote in a note to clients. Oil briefly eased off on some of its losses after the Wall Street Journal reported the Saudis and the rest of OPEC were negotiating a compromise that would cut output while still placating Trump. Nonetheless, Brent for January settlement fell 6.1 percent to $58.80 a barrel at the close of trading on London's ICE Futures Europe exchange. The global benchmark traded at a $8.38 premium to WTI. West Texas Intermediate for January delivery lost 7.7 percent from Wednesday's close to reach $50.42 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. There was no settlement Thursday due to the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. --With assistance from Sharon Cho. 2018 Bloomberg L.P. Braun Enterprises has purchased a shopping center on North Shepherd Drive at 10th Street in Houston Heights for its latest retail redevelopment. The 18,506-square-foot property, at 1002 N. Shepherd across from Kroger, will be called Shepherd Row in the Heights. The building was purchased from the original developer, Braun Enterprises director of leasing Zach Wolf said. The property is a few blocks north of M-K-T, an office and retail redevelopment by Radom Capital and Triten Real Estate Partners on 12 acres at North Shepherd and 6th Street along the Heights Hike and Bike Trail. The renovations, which will usher in tenants such as restaurants and coffee shops, are expected to take eight months. Any current tenants will remain open during construction, Wolf said. The deal puts Braun Enterprises on track to complete 16 acquisitions in 2018. The company is wrapping up a redevelopment of the historic Heights Waterworks, which will welcome its first tenants in January. Other projects include 2522 Yale, which has leased space to Bishops Barbershop, F45 and Ten Fold Coffee, and has upstairs office space. Work will start next year on redeveloping the Hickory Hollow restaurant building on Heights Boulevard near Washington Avenue. Braun will soon start a redevelopment of 4602 Dacoma in northwest Houston. It is across from a major retail and apartment project planned by Fidelis Realty Partners on the former Exxon Mobil Brookhollow campus. katherine.feser@chron.com twitter.com/kfeser Russos New York Pizzeria has opened a 2,200-square-foot location at Grand Parkway Marketplace at 6633 Spring Stuebner in Spring. It is one of four Russo locations in the north Houston area operated by franchisee Guillermo Medellin. U'Maki Sushi Burrito plans to open in University Commons on U.S. 59 and University Boulevard in Sugar Land in the second quarter. It will be U'Makis third restaurant in the Houston area and its first franchise unit. Texas Card House, a private social club offering card games, billiards and catered events, has leased 6,532 square feet in the Northland Shopping Center in Spring. Texas Card House has one location in Austin and another under construction there. Wulfe & Co. represented the tenant, while David Z. Mafrige Interests represented the landlord. The new club will be at the southeast corner of Interstate 45 and FM 2920. Lily Lash Artistry has leased 794 square feet at 1939 W. Gray. Christi Davis represented the landlord, Weingarten Realty. Jenny Mueller of JLL represented the tenant. Preppy Pet, a national franchised pet boarding and grooming company, has leased 3,600 square feet at 21922 Bellaire, Suite 100, in Richmond. Jane Nodskov and Lang Motes with ICO Commercial represented the tenant. Jeremy Moss with ARC Management represented the landlord. Tam Nguyen of Endless Diamonds has purchased a 2,588-square-foot retail building at 28429 Tomball Parkway for a new store. The seller was BNR Eyemax, doing business as Ellas Eyes. Shawn Ackerman of Henry S. Miller Brokerage handled the sale. Fidelis Healthcare Partners, a recently launched affiliate of Houston-based Fidelity Realty Partners, has reached a deal to develop its first project. The Dallas-based company has been awarded the contract to build Saint Joseph Medical Office Pavilion, a five-story office and retail building on the recently completed campus of Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver, the company announced. The 100,000-square-foot project will be owned by Fidelis Healthcare Strategic Partners, a joint venture of Fidelis and a state pension fund advised by Bentall Kennedy. SomiSomi Soft Serve has leased 1,200 square feet in Shops at Katy Grand, at Interstate 10 and Grand Parkway, Katy, from NewQuest Properties. Rebecca Le and Heather Nguyen of NewQuest Properties represented the landlord. Grace La of NewQuest Properties represented the tenant. Smile Doctors has leased 1,800 square feet in The Market at Crenshaw, at 4557 E. Sam Houston Parkway South in Pasadena. Kristen Barker of Wulfe & Co. represented the tenant. Crystal Allen of Transwestern represented the landlord. katherine.feser@chron.com The childrens ministry director asked if she could talk with me and my spouse after the service, and I felt a knot form in the pit of my stomach. I knew what was coming. Sure enough, she explained that this congregation wouldnt be able to provide us any care for our son, who is nonverbal and on the autism spectrum. If we were going to attend this church, my son would be unable to join the other kids in childrens church. My spouse or I would have to sit apart from the rest of the congregation in a family room with him. As I feared, our search for a community of faith would have to start again. The next week, we just stayed home. We were tired, discouraged and longing for community. A place of rest and refreshment always seemed out of reach for our familys special needs. At one point, we didnt attend church for a year. What was the point if we were going to be quarantined in a family room to care for our boys we now have two sons who are nonverbal and on the autism spectrum with little to no interaction with anyone else? It was easier to look after them at home. Our periodic disengagement from organized religion is not unique. Across the United States, children with developmental or intellectual disabilities are much more likely to never attend religious services than are children with no health conditions. In a new study, as part of my work as a sociologist of religion, I analyzed three waves of nationally representative data on children in the United States. I found that the odds of children on the autism spectrum never attending religious services are almost double (1.84 times greater) than they are for children without a chronic health condition. The odds of never attending religious services for children with depression, or a developmental delay or learning disability, are also higher (1.73 and 1.36 times greater, respectively). This is not true of children with chronic health conditions that are more physical in nature asthma, diabetes, or hearing or vision problems. Those children are no more or less likely to attend than children without a health condition. My work also shows that these findings are stable over time. From 2003 to 2012, children with chronic health conditions that primarily influenced communication and social interaction were consistently less likely to attend religious services. These children may not be able to act like everyone else around them. They may have a hard time sitting still or listening quietly. They may not be able to tolerate loud music or boisterous games. They may stand up when the rest of the children are seated or call out when everyone else is quiet. As parents, its difficult to have to continually explain, apologize and advocate for your child, especially in a faith community that might not see including them as important (and might be annoyed when moments of silent prayer are interrupted). Congregations themselves are a pivotal reason children with chronic health conditions attend at much lower rates. Faith communities often create barriers to inclusion with their physical architecture (when there are no wheelchair ramps), liturgy (when rituals or sacraments are not adapted to meet individual needs), communication (when lights, sounds or visuals limit participation), programming (when activities present obstacles for children with different needs) and attitudes, according to research by Erik Carter, the Cornelius Vanderbilt professor of special education at Vanderbilt University. And sometimes, the attitudes from congregants can be absolutely devastating. These include degrading comments or behaviors signaling that a child with a health condition is not welcome. We have had people tell us that a child who is a disruption in church probably shouldnt attend. Others have asked whether children with certain health conditions really get anything out of participating. Many parents report that their children with disabilities have been unable to participate because of lack of support and said their congregations had never asked how to best include their children. And like us, more than half reported that they were expected to stay with their children during worship services. We know how isolating that is. For a year, we spent every Sunday morning at our current church alongside nursing mothers and sick children; we watched the service on a television in the family room. Occasionally, my wife or I would sit in the sanctuary, alone or with friends, while the other stayed with our boys. We knew that cultivating support for our children would take time, so we stuck it out. But many families like ours may not be able to make that commitment. Requiring that parents provide care for their children every Sunday morning negates the whole reason for attending religious services: connecting with others of the same faith. In a survey of more than 400 parents of children with special needs, researchers found that one-third of them had changed faith communities because they felt their child was not included. Finding a new faith community, though, is a significant challenge. In another study of that survey, a mother was quoted as saying, We wish we had a community to belong to, however . . . we have not had the time or energy to seek-out and prepare (educate) a new spiritual home for ourselves. Congregations also pay a price for excluding families like ours. They miss out on our service we want to serve as much as we need to be served. We want to greet people as they arrive, play an instrument during worship, serve coffee during social hour, care for other children while their parents worship. And faith communities compromise their credibility when they do not work to integrate families with children with chronic health conditions. As a practicing Christian, I speak directly to my faith tradition here: When we claim that Jesus said to let the children come to him, but we do little to make that possible for every child, our rationalizations about a lack of resources, space, volunteers or expertise ring hollow. When we claim that Jesus once took a little (five loaves and two fish) and met the needs of many, but we act as though he wont help us meet the needs of others; when we claim that our faith is for all people but tolerate the exclusion of those with various physical, mental or emotional needs, we fail. A first step for faith communities is to make a theological and ethical commitment to welcome and value children with chronic health conditions. This means moving beyond compassion, which is usually in broad supply in faith communities, to actionable steps. Have a plan in place when a child with a disability walks through your doors. Cultivate connections to members of your congregation who have a heart for children with special needs. Perhaps there are congregants who have expertise in this area. Congregations could also consider providing a safe place for children with special needs, like a sensory room - a therapeutic space filled with toys and apparatuses that help soothe kids experiencing stress. Creating a whole room might not seem feasible for many places of worship, and indeed for some, it is not. But many congregations build nurseries to care for infants. Faith communities value babies, and making space for them signals that commitment. Children with special needs should be equally valued. Our current faith community happens to be opening its own sensory room this weekend. Today, our two boys enjoy Sunday mornings. Each has an adult buddy who spends time with him and provides support when needed. These buddies are not trained professionals but are generously volunteering their time to help our sons, who benefit from a familiar face on Sundays and sometimes need help knowing when to sit or when to play. These volunteers came forward on their own after learning of our needs. Now both our sons have fewer struggles fewer tears and anxiety attacks which brings us so much joy. Our boys disabilities often isolate us from others. Some days, taking a trip to the store can feel like too much. This doesnt mean we dont want connections with others. We just need help in cultivating and maintaining them. When we make it through a Sunday morning, we feel an intense sense of hope, gratitude and even achievement. For a moment, our sons disabilities do not define our familys existence. Andrew Whitehead is an assistant professor of sociology at Clemson University and studies religion, disability and Christian nationalism. Every year, for more than 35 years, Willis resident Max Duke has traveled to Splendora to put an American flag on his uncles grave. Its his way of paying tribute to his uncle, William R. Bradford who gave the ultimate sacrifice for his country when he was killed in World War I in 1918. Although Duke never knew his uncle, his mothers oldest brother, he still treasures some photos and documentation that show Bradfords remains being brought to Splendora on a horse-drawn wagon for burial in the Splendora Cemetery, two years after his death. Duke says its a miracle that the photos and documentation survived all these years. Duke experienced a flood in his Humble home in 1994 and the photos and documentation happened to be stored in a sealed container. Last week, Duke brought the documentation and photos to The Courier as The Courier continues to recognize the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I this month. William R. Bradford was born on April 26, 1893 in Harris County as the oldest son of Sam Bradford and Carrie Morrow. Duke said his grandmother, Carrie, was born in raised in Sheldon, Texas, an unincorporated community in northeastern Harris County. According to Bradfords military record, he enlisted in Houston on June 30, 1917 at the age of 23. He served overseas from July 18, 1918 until his death on Nov. 4, 1918 in France. He was a private in Co. M 9th Infantry and participated in battles in St. Mihiel, Champagne and Argonne Forest. Bradford died just a week before the Armistice which ended World War I on Nov. 11, 1918. A letter dated Dec. 16, 1920 referred to his mother, Carrie Morrow, requesting her sons body be returned to the United States for burial in the Splendora Cemetery. Per the letter, it appears he was first buried in France in a temporary cemetery. Bradfords remains were returned to Splendora and his burial took place on Dec. 23, 1920. Duke has photos of his uncle being brought for burial in Splendora with his coffin draped in an American flag and being brought to the cemetery on a horse-drawn wagon. Bradford was half-brother to a large family including brothers and sisters Sam Bradford, Douglas Bradford, Mary Bradford, Esther Bradford, Louise Bradford and Dukes mother, Avie Inez Bradford Duke. Today a patriotic headstone with an American flag and the inscription Gone but not forgotten, marks his final resting place in the Splendora Cemetery. The figure, known as Hoa Hakananai'a, was taken from the island in 1868 and given to Queen Victoria, who passed it on to the British Museum. You, the British people, have our soul'. After the meeting, the governor tearfully said her dead grandmother had never had the chance to see her ancestor. It is one of more than 900 giant Moai sculptures on Easter Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, most carved from volcanic ash between the sixth and seventeenth centuries and believed to carry the spirits of important ancestors. "I am nearly half a century alive and this is my first time", she added. For now, Hoa Hakananai'a will remain on view in the British Museum's Wellcome Trust Gallery. The Rapa Nui agreed that further meetings over the statue are set to take place. Jasmine Andersson 2 days Wednesday November 21st 2018 At least 85,000 children have starved to death in Yemen civil war World A number of these treasures have become the subject of intense debate and requests for their return by their countries of origin, among them the Grecian antique sculptures known as the Elgin Marbles, and the Benin Bronzes from modern-day Nigeria. The Rapa Nui's latest repatriation effort has at least one powerful backer: the government of Chile, as represented during the London visit by National Assets Minister Felipe Ward. But Easter Island's indigenous community, the Rapa Nui, want Britain to give back the spiritually "unique" effigy. Chile annexed Easter Island, situated some 2,480 miles west of its capital city of Santiago, back in 1888 and made it a special territory in 2007. It has been one of the most popular items on display at the museum. "We are looking forward to the next, and probably the Second one will be in Rapa Nui (Easter Island), where we invited the authorities of the museum". The "stolen friend" statue at the British Museum. The trustees will always consider loan requests'. Courtesy illustration The Houston Grand Opera presents Transforming the Human Spirit through Song, a holiday sing-along and part of the Seeking the Human Spirit initiative. The holiday sing-along includes members of the HGO Chorus and members of the HGO Studio led by HGOco Music Director and Composer-in-Residence Damien Sneed at Discovery Green. The Dec. 15 event is free and open to the public. Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush announced the second amendment to the Texas General Land Offices $5.024 billion state Action Plan for Hurricane Harvey has been posted for a federally required 30-day public comment period. The amendment details an additional allocation of $652 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to benefit unmet housing recovery needs. Hurricane Harvey devastated the homes and lives of thousands along the Texas Coast, Bush said. This allocation of $652 million will be used by the GLO to provide additional housing resources for Texas families recovering from Hurricane Harvey. We look forward to working with our partners in communities across the region to leverage these resources efficiently and effectively to benefit Texans affected by Hurricane Harvey. The amendment details how $652 million will supplement current Hurricane Harvey programs being implemented by the GLO, as well as additional programs in Harris County and the city of Houston. The amendment allocates the following amounts: $236 million added to the GLOs Homeowner Assistance Program to repair single family homes damaged by Hurricane Harvey; $200 million added to the GLOs Affordable Rental Program for the rehabilitation, reconstruction or new construction of multifamily rental units; $89.3 million additional direct allocation for Harris County programs; and $89.6 million additional direct allocation for city of Houston programs. All comments should be submitted to cdr@recovery.texas.gov by 5:00 p.m. on December 19, 2018, to be considered. Per federal requirements, the GLO must respond to public comments before the amendment can be sent to HUD for its 45-day final approval. Background and timeline of CDBG-DR funds for Hurricane Harvey recovery On Sept. 8, President Trump signed the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2018, and Supplemental Appropriations for Disaster Relief Requirements Act, 2017, which included $7.4 billion appropriated to HUD for long-term recovery. HUD then allocated $5.024 billion of the appropriations to Texas for Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts the single largest allocation of its kind for any event. To date, the GLO estimates more than $105 billion in unmet need in Texas as a direct result of Hurricane Harvey. In April, HUD announced additional allocations from the March 23, 2018, Congressional appropriation of nearly $90 billion in total federal disaster relief funds. HUD allocated nearly $5 billion of this allocation to Texas with $652 million of the total to help rebuild damaged homes, businesses and infrastructure, while the nearly $4.3 billion in remaining funds were targeted for mitigation. On Aug. 14, 2018, HUD released its guidance for the $652 million, allowing the GLO to begin the action plan process for how to use these funds to plus up the existing housing programs. The GLO is currently awaiting guidance through a Federal Register notice from HUD to begin the planning process for the remaining $4.3 billion. The GLO will continue to work with local, state, and federal partners to ensure funding is available for ongoing recovery efforts. The United States could become a net exporter of petroleum in less than five years, the first time the country would achieve such a feat since at least 1949, according to a new report. The shift from importer to exporter is driven by the surge in U.S. oil production that has followed the unlocking of crude reserves from shale formations, according to the report by the research firm IHS Markit. U.S. oil production grew to 9.4 million barrels a day in 2017, nearly double the 5.1 million barrels a day produced a decade earlier. Since then production has only accelerated: the Energy Department last week estimated that U.S. output has reached 11.7 million barrels a day. Since a ban on crude oil exports was lifted at the end of 2015 oil exports have more than doubled from 465,000 barrels a day in 2015 to nearly 1.2 million barrels in 2017. Through August, oil exports have averaged 1.8 million barrels a day. In making its forecast, IHS Markit included all petroleum products, including fuels, natural gas and petrochemicals. IHS Markit projects that as these exports increase, crude imports will decrease, turning the U.S. from a net importer to a net exporter by 2022. The transformation could happen even sooner perhaps by 2020, said Per Magnus Nysveen, an analyst with the research firm Rystad Energy. With crude from Canada, the largest source of U.S. oil imports, the U.S. could soon satisfy its thirst for oil solely from North American sources, Nyvseen said. Politically of course it is just a completely different situation that the U.S. doesnt need the Middle East oil, said Nysveen. That is an extremely important implication. Texas has led the U.S. production boom, accounting for about 40 percent of the nations production. Energy companies have invested billions of dollars in pipelines to move oil from the Permian Basin in West Texas, as well as other oil fields, to the Gulf Coast for export to foreign market. On the coast, meanwhile, companies are also rushing to expand and built export facilities to handle some of the worlds largest oil tankers. Enterprise Products Partners of Houston wants to build an offshore crude oil loading terminal 80 miles off the coast near Galveston, while Swiss commodities trader Trafigura wants to build one 15 miles offshore near Corpus Christi. The Port of Corpus Christi is pursuing its own $1 billion onshore export terminal on Harbor Island, near Port Aransas, with support from Washington investment firm The Carlyle Group. Meanwhile, the Oklahoma pipeline company Magellan Midstream Partners said it is evaluating building its oil export terminal on Harbor Island. Moda Midstream of Houston recently bought an oil loading terminal at Ingleside from the Houston oil company Occidental Petroleum. JupiterMLP, a Houston energy transportation company, has also said it wants to build a terminal by the Port of Brownsville, near the border with Mexico. Growing U.S. shale oil and natural gas production lowered the trade deficit by an estimated $250 billion in 2017, according to the IHS Markit reports. In 2017, the United States was a net exporter of natural gas, natural gas liquids such as propane and butane, and refined products, such as gasoline, according to IHS Markit. Crude oil imports declined from more than 10 million barrels a day in 2007 to 7 million barrels a day in 2017. rdruzin@express-news.net twitter.com/druz_journo Oil prices mired in a bear market are continuing their declines as bearish technical indicators signal further pain. Brent crude in London, the marker for more than half the worlds oil, slipped below the 38.2 percent Fibonacci retracement support level of $62.27 per barrel earlier on Friday, extending its losses to $61.90 at 10:10 a.m. London time. U.S. oil benchmark is facing more selling pressure as West Texas Intermediate crudes 50-day moving average fell below its 200-day moving average, forming a bearish pattern known as death cross. Futures in New York slumped as much as 3.3 percent to $52.82 a barrel Friday, on course for a seventh consecutive weekly decline. PRODICTION: Saudi oil production surges to record in early November We did hit and breach some technical support areas so we might see some scrambling out of longs, Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist for Asia Pacific at CMC Markets in Sydney, said by phone. It looks like were having another wobble. The benchmarks both collapsed into a bear market this month, joining a rout in equities around the globe, as fears over a supply glut mounted after the U.S.s temporary waiver allowed Iranian oil to continue flowing into the market. 2018 Bloomberg L.P. The Costco Wholesale on Richmond Avenue lacked the congested aisles and long checkout lines to which its bulk shoppers are accustomed, but it did hold dual appeal to those who ventured there Friday morning. Good deals and normal shopping needs. Sap Basu, 33, of the Heights, hadn't been Black Friday shopping in years. He's more of an online Cyber Monday shopper. But he wanted the experience before Black Friday totally fades away. "They say the real brick and mortar is dying out," he said. "I just wanted to see how Black Friday was here." And he did find good deals on a Dyson vacuum and a home theater sound system -- knowing they were good deals because he used his phone to search other stores' prices while inside Costco -- but also in his cart were everyday items such as dog dental chews and Lysol cleaner. Ben Lai, 42, of southwest Houston, needed gasoline. After fueling up at the Costco pump, he decided to step inside and see what else he could check off his Black Friday wish list. He'd already purchased a TV from Costco's website and tires from Walmart. He picked up a home security system at the Costco store and was next headed to Pep Boys for brakes. "I don't shop at Macy's," he said. "No clothing for me. This is guy's stuff." Others came to Costco with a clear purpose. Kati and Rhett Davis, 38 and 40, of Houston, came for American Girl dolls for their 4-year-old twin daughters. The mom blogs said Costco had good prices, and the Davises couldn't find anymore of what they wanted on Costco's website. They wanted two different dolls so the girls didn't have the same toy. "There are some things you have to go in for," she said. And since their kids have already told Santa what they want for Christmas, shopping early helps ensure that those toys aren't sold out. Derrick Mehal, 36 of east downtown Houston, was after a TV. He was initially considering Walmart and Best Buy, but the line at Best Buy was way too long on Thanksgiving Day. "We just kind of got back in the car and left," he said. "We said, 'OK, we will do our Black Friday on Black Friday." His dad has a Costco membership, so they decided to look there. But it was his mom who first started the Black Friday tradition when he was a kid. She'd wake up early and go shopping, making the family return to their rooms as she unloaded presents from the car. That tradition has stuck, and Mehal typically shops on Black Friday. But he shops Cyber Monday, too. Online is his preferred shopping. "For everything else I need, I just Amazon it," he said. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is considering replacing the current 25 percent tariffs on Mexican and Canadian steel imports with restrictive import quotas under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Such a move could prospectively cripple expansion of U.S. oil and natural gas production because of supply restrictions. A tax on material used in exploration and production and critical infrastructure projects was imposed on the U.S. oil and natural gas industry with previously adopted steel and aluminum tariffs with Mexico and Canada. This added expense, combined with challenges associated with pipeline constraints in West Texas and the Chinese retaliation on domestic oil exports, has caused unnecessary strain for an industry vital to our state and country from an economic and national security perspective. If import quotas were to be imposed, the consequences could be far worse if these products are made unavailable. Of particular concern to independent oil and natural gas producers is the reality that quotas also have a disproportionate impact on small businesses, who are unable to purchase this material in bulk to meet their supply needs. As the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the United States, Texas will bear an inordinate burden from the adoption of quotas on steel imports from Canada and Mexico. Crude oil production in the state totaled an estimated 1.1 billion barrels through September of 2018, representing an increase of 189 million barrels of oil produced compared to the same timeframe last year, and a total of 1.5 billion barrels forecasted for the full year. Natural gas production increased slightly for a total of 6.1 trillion cubic feet of gas produced through September. Much of the increased output and related activity is coming from West Texas. Permian Basin oil production is expected to average 3.4 million barrels per day in 2018, an 871,000 b/d increase from 2017. Texas currently contributes over 40 percent of U.S. crude oil production and approximately 30 percent of U.S. natural gas. More than 10,000 net new oil and natural gas jobs were added to the states economy through September of this year compared to 2017, for a total of 336,000 workers directly employed by the industry. Oil and natural gas jobs also have a multiplier effect of two to 27 times per job, with the industry fully supporting over one million workers directly or indirectly in Texas. Upstream sector jobs continued to account for the majority of the employment growth through September as more favorable market conditions continue to drive increased exploration and production activity, with a total of 78,000 oil and gas extraction jobs and 142,000 oil and gas support activities jobs in the state. Texas, and the U.S. economy as a whole, has much to lose if the trade office moves forward with implementing quotas on steel imports. Under any scenario, quotas will result in a reduction in workforce, threatening historic statewide unemployment lows fueled by the Texas oil and gas industry. Slowing down drilling while companies wait on steel product availability will ultimately decrease overall production as well as severance tax revenues that benefit the public. At a minimum, the Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association encourages the trade office and the U.S. Department of Commerce to exclude steel products that are critical to the energy sector from the proposed import quotas to maintain strong economic growth and a healthy employment rate. Such an approach would maintain Texas contribution to making America energy dominant on a global basis and would preserve access to steel products for small and large oil and natural gas producers alike. Continuing regulatory improvements at the federal level, expanding pipeline capacity in West Texas and an expedited resolution to trade disputes will support increased U.S. energy production, strengthen national security and drive further economic growth for the state of Texas. Ed Longanecker is president of the Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association. After resistance from citizens and much consideration, Jersey Villages city council opted to keep a future dog park in its originally intended location. A motion to move a future dog park in Jersey Village failed during the regular council meeting on Nov. 19. As a result the dog park will stay at its originally chosen location near Rio Grande Street, which was initially said to be too expensive of a location after receiving a quote from Harris County, according to the meeting packet. Jersey Village Mayor Justin Ray said that although the dog park is important in the larger scheme of creating amenities for Jersey Village, he understands the communitys vocalized disdain for the park. We need to continue to focus and put emphasis on the quality of life initiatives in our neighborhood that make it an attractive destination., he said. The dog park, standalone, is just one thing, but as a basket of amenities I think its important. So, Im going to advocate that we continue to push forward with the creation of a dog park. With that being said, I dont want to push for a dog park that a chunk of the neighborhood is going to hate. Ray said the council should move forward with the dog park at the original location in order to continue to improve quality of life. Councilman Greg Holden said the council should look into another location since citizens are opposed to the alternative proposed location near Philippine Street. Councilman Bobby Warren said also said the council should look for alternative options. Citizens were able to be presented with several options and [had] to choose from those, he said. Things can change and they have changed. ...It would be a good idea to sort of step back [and] look at more options, because I dont think theres just an A and a B, and kind of think out of the box on this. Several citizens gave comments on the relocation of the dog park, which were overwhelmingly negative. Citizen Fanny Messick said the dog park is overall unnecessary, noting that citizens could use the nearby dog parks, such as Weswillow Dog Park and Bane Park. Since there is a dog park, a very nice one just north of the city across the drainage ditch, I dont know why we even need one here, she said. People are going to use cars to get to it anyway. They can drive a little further and go to the really nice one thats over there. Another resolution was passed during the regular meeting, granting Jersey Village the ability to rollover $39,500 from their 2017-2018 general fund to their 2018-2019 general fund in order to cover the cost of the park. According to the meeting packet, the funds were never used due to several factors stopping the construction of the dog park, including the parks director resigning. The council will discuss the dog park at a future meeting. chevall.pryce@chron.com Police are on the lookout for a man who fled from a Friendswood officer during a traffic stop at 11 p.m. Nov. 16 near the intersection of FM 2351 and Beamer Road. Bodycam video and mugshots were used to identify the man as Gabriel Rodriguez Barcenas, 30, of Friendswood, police said. Barcenas allegedly provided a false name during initial contact with the officer. When the officer approached the vehicle a second time, Barcenas put his vehicle in gear and fled, police said. Officers ended the pursuit when Barcenas reached a speed of more than 80 mph within seconds, according to the report. Houston officers found the vehicle Barcenas was driving abandoned at 11:45 p.m. on Interstate 45 just south of Dixie Farm Road, police said. Barcenas had a parole violation warrant for robbery and was on probation for a drug charge, police said. This latest incident adds warrants for evading in a motor vehicle and failure to identify as a fugitive. Anyone with information is asked to contact the department, 281-996-3300. Assault A 19-year-old Friendswood man was charged with assault, family violence after he allegedly assaulted his mother Nov. 13 in the 200 block of East Castle Harbour Drive, police said. He reportedly became angry when she flushed his marijuana down the toilet. He fled on foot when police were called, according to the report. An officer found him walking near the intersection of West Parkwood Avenue and Cypress Point Drive. A witness flagged down an officer Nov. 14 in the 1700 block of Pensacola Lane to report an aggravated assault in the 1600 block of Country Club Drive, police said. The suspect, a 48-year-old Friendswood man, allegedly pulled a knife and attempted to stab his brother. Hearing a threat to call police, he fled on foot, according to the report. Officers responding to a disturbance call at the Country Club Drive residence a few hours later picked him up on a warrant for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, police said. Burglary Tools were stolen from a vehicle Nov. 13 at 24 Hour Fitness, 130 W. Parkwood Ave., police said. Two vehicle burglaries were reported Nov. 13 at the Goddard School, 1650 Friendswood Lakes Blvd., police said. Both vehicles had windows smashed and purses stolen while mothers were inside the school picking up their children, according to the report. The suspect vehicle allegedly pulled into the parking space between the two vehicles. One victims credit card was used at a Walgreens in Houston, police said. Theft A Friendswood man selling tires and rims on Craigslist for $950 received a business check from a buyer for $2,550, police said. The buyer allegedly instructed the seller to use the remaining $1,600 to pay movers based in California, even though the buyer claimed to live in San Antonio. Chase cashed the check, placing $950 into the victims account and giving him $1,600 in cash, which he turned into money orders, according to the report. After the transactions were made, the victim reportedly learned the check was fraudulent. Fraud A Friendswood man claimed fraudulent activity on one of his accounts, according to a Nov. 14 police report. Beginning Oct. 26, money was withdrawn from his account weekly by three different companies, police said. Narcotics Police charged a Texas City woman, 20, with possession of drug paraphernalia after a traffic stop for expired registration Nov. 15 in the 1500 block of West Parkwood Avenue. A passenger, she reportedly was found in possession of a small amount of marijuana. A 17-year-old Houston man was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia after a traffic stop for speeding Nov. 17 in the 1800 block of FM 528, police said. While one officer checked his driving status, another officer reportedly saw the driver attempt to conceal something in the center console. When confronted, the driver produced a marijuana grinder, according to the report. He also had a vaping pen with THC oil, police said. Police charged a Webster woman, 40, with possession of a controlled substance after a traffic stop Nov. 18 in the 1500 block of South Friendswood Drive. A passenger, she reportedly had two syringes in her purse and methamphetamine. When a female officer arrived to search her, the woman pulled a bag of methamphetamine from her underclothing, police said. Driving while intoxicated Police charged a Friendswood man, 32, with DWI after a witness reported a reckless driver Nov. 16 near the intersection of South Friendswood Drive and Whispering Pines Avenue. The driver struck another motorist on El Dorado Boulevard at Beamer Road before hitting a curb on Friendswood Link Road, according to the witness report. An officer found the suspect vehicle in the parking lot of a daycare center; the driver allegedly had gone inside the center to pick up his daughter. The officer took the driver into custody and found a cocktail in a plastic foam cup inside the vehicle, according to the report. At the jail, the suspect failed a field sobriety test and agreed to provide a blood specimen, police said. The child was released to her mother. Evading arrest Police charged a La Porte man, 26, with evading arrest or detention after a witness reported a suspicious person Nov. 18 in the 2900 block of Cedar Ridge Trail. An officer arrived to find the suspect on top of the fence in a residents backyard, according to the report. The man jumped off the fence and ran but was caught a few blocks away and taken into custody, police said. Public intoxication A Pearland man, 33, was charged with public intoxication after he was found with a female passenger in a parked, running vehicle Nov. 16 in the 2900 block of West Bay Area Boulevard, police said. The man allegedly exhibited signs of intoxication and told the officer he had called for an Uber ride. The officers left the man to wait for his ride, but took him into custody 10 minutes later when they saw him preparing to exit the parking lot in his vehicle, according to the report. Police charged a 21-year-old League City man with public intoxication after an officer found him Nov. 16 in the 3800 block of Crofterglen Drive, walking toward Blackhawk Boulevard with dirt on the back of his sweatshirt. He told the officer he had been riding with a friend and had exited the car after an argument, police said. Police charged a Pasadena woman, 40, with public intoxication after a disturbance Nov. 18 in the 3000 block of West Parkwood Avenue. A victim jumped from a vehicle and ran to escape her abuse, according to the report. A suspicious person then was reported in the 100 block of Tower Drive, and officers arrived to find the suspect looking for the man who had jumped, police said. She reportedly exhibited signs of intoxication and was taken into custody. Traffic Police charged a Houston man, 20, with no insurance and possession of drug paraphernalia after a traffic stop for speeding Nov. 13 in the 3700 block of FM 528. A search yielded marijuana residue, a glass pipe, a metal grinder and THC oil, according to the report. Police are looking for a suspect in a hit-and-run incident that occurred Nov. 18 at the intersection of Tibet Road and Crofterglen Drive. The driver of a gray truck reportedly ran a stop sign and hit another motorist. The suspect stopped momentarily but left the scene, driving north before pulling into a driveway in the 16700 block of Tibet Road, police said. When an officer knocked at the door, the homeowner did not want to identify herself and claimed the truck belonged to a friend who was not at the residence, according to the report. The suspect was described as slim, male and 5 feet 7 inches tall. The holidays are about spending time with relatives. This Christmas season, the first without former First Lady Barbara Bush who passed away in April, is making Jenna Bush Hager miss her late grandmother all the more, Southern Living reports in its December issue. A sentimental Hager shares some loving holiday memories of the late matriarch of her family, whom she called "Ganny." This time of year especially, the former First Lady was the center of the family, along with her husband former President George H. W. Bush. "Sisters First": Twin sisters Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Bush remember their late grandmother in updated book "I'm nostalgic for the days when we were together. This time of year is full of love, but for those who have recently lost someone, that loss is illuminated," the 36-year-old "Today Show" contributor told the magazine. "When they were President and First Lady, our huge, rambunctious crew of uncles, aunts, and cousins traveled from all over Texas, Florida, Virginia, and Marylanddescending upon the White House for the holiday," Hager recalled. Then on Christmas Eve, the family drove to Camp David, the Presidential retreat in Maryland, where the family gathered together in the main cabin, Laurel Lodge, for lots of laughter and good food. With the family's strong Texas ties, it's little surprise that the "good food" served at the holidays included tamales and guacamole. Namesake: Jenna Bush Hager posts touching photos with maternal grandmother Jenna Welch For her grandmother, this time of year meant needlepointing feverishly. And while she worked on many projects, the stockings she made for her great-children were the fondest to her heart. "My daughters, Mila and Poppy, hang their own each year with care. Mila's is traditional, with her name stitched in cursive next to poinsettias; Poppy's has a Christmas cat watching Santa suspiciously, as only cats do," Hager said. "She wanted to make sure there were stockings on reserve for great-grandchildren who would come after she was gone. That was our Ganny: She wanted to leave the world a little more beautiful through her work, her words, and even her needlepoint stockings." The first holiday season without the former First Lady has left an enormous void. "Her place at the table will never be filled. I miss her jokes and laughter. I even miss her arguing with me about my love of cats. Ganny left so much of herself here," Hager laments. After the former First Lady and former President George H. W. Bush's 3-year-old daughter Robin passed away, the President wrote a letter to his mother in which he addresses the loss of a family member. It reads: "Dear Mum, There is about our house a need. There is a running, pulsating restlessness of the four boys as they struggle to learn and grow; the world embraces them...all this wonder needs a counterpart. We need some starched crisp frocks to go with all our torn-kneed blue jeans and helmets. We need some soft blond hair to offset those crew cuts. We need a legitimate Christmas angel...." The message resonated with Hager. "Ask any member of our family, and we know who greeted Ganny in heaven: that "Christmas angel," her daughter, Robin." 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 Kitchen Cabinet Distributors selects Houston for new distribution center In January 2019, the city of Houston will add Kitchen Cabinet Distributors to its ever-expanding city limits as the company opens its first distribution center outside of its Raleigh, N.C., headquarters. The 11-year-old cabinet company will open its new 180,000 square-foot distribution in Houstons Greenspoint neighborhood, just north of downtown. Growing demand for affordable, quality cabinetry and a steady housing market continues to drive our growth and our new Houston facility will allow us to better serve the state of Texas and other nearby markets, says Megan Mazur, vice president of sales and marketing. At this new facility, our expansive inventory and world-class customer service will allow customers to receive cabinets in days, not weeks, for both renovation projects and new construction. The distribution facility will feature a showroom for contractors, home improvement dealers and cabinet shops to experience the companys affordable styles and possibilities. The showroom will host customers seeking kitchen or bathroom inspiration to fit any budget. The facility will be integrated with the companys recently launched online dealer ordering system. The system provides full transparency to inventory levels and product specifications allowing customers to submit orders anytime and anywhere. Kitchen Cabinet Distributors will be filling more than 50 Houston-based positions in 2019, including customer service representatives, and warehouse personnel. Thor Equities Group welcomes Dakota to Kirby Collection Thor Equities Group , an urban real estate development, leasing and management, has leased more than 11,000 square feet at Kirby Collection in Houston to Dakota, company executives announced. The high-end restaurant and lounge, which will include two outdoor patio spaces, is scheduled to open next summer on the first and second levels of the luxury mixed-use property. Additional retail tenants at Kirby Collection include Pinstripes, clothing boutique A Ma Maniere, Atelier Isabelle Rose, and modern contemporary Indian restaurant Verandah. Approximately 6,300 square feet of retail space remains available for lease. Office tenants at 3200 Kirby (the office component of Kirby Collection) are Hancock Whitney Bank, Novum Energy Trading, Lukoil, The Alexander Group, and Regency Centers. Kirby Collection is located in the Upper Kirby District near Houston iconic River Oaks neighborhood. The 1 million-square-foot luxury property features a 25-story residential tower with 199 apartments, a 13-story Class A office building, and two levels of prime retail space. Etoile raises funds in November for HARC Houston Every month since it opened its doors, Etoile Cuisine et Bar in Uptown Park has been pleasing lovers of good French food, but the restaurant has also been quietly been sharing some of that pleasure around the city its owners call home. Chef Philippe Verpiand, who owns the restaurant with his wife Monica Bui, create two special prix fixe menus each month, one for dinner and one for weekend brunch, and from each sale, a portion goes to a designated monthly charity. For November, the restaurant in joining forces with the Houston Aphasia Recovery Center to continue that organizations work in providing support for people with aphasia, their families and caregivers. Those suffering from aphasia have lost the ability to speak or easily communicate, usually the after effect of a debilitating stroke, and most have been denied further insurance coverage to help. The Houston Aphasia Recovery Center was conceived in 2008 to address a conspicuous void in Houston's medical services community. As the fourth-largest city in the country, Houston has one of the most respected medical centers in the world, yet nothing existed for long-term recovery and wellness for people with aphasia, their families and caregivers. HARC provides counseling, group therapy and various other activities that work toward improvement and recovery. For more information, visit www.harctx.org. At Etoile, the monthly prix-fixe dinner menu includes four courses, which includes a choice for each course. The cost for this dinner is $65 per person plus tax and gratuity, from which $7 will go to HARC. Similarly, there is a special brunch menu on Saturday and Sundays. This three-course meal sells for $29 per person plus tax and gratuity and provides $4 to the program for each one sold. In December, Etoile will raise money for Abandoned Little Angels, a Houston organization that works to financially support various religious orders (both Catholic and non-Catholic) in Viet Nam that are currently adopting abandoned children regardless of their ethnic or religious background. Etoile Cuisine et Bar is located at 1101-11 Uptown Park Blvd in Uptown. It is open daily lunch and dinner seven days a week.Monday-Thursday: 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 5-10 p.m.; Friday: 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 5-10:30 p.m.; Saturday: 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 5-10:30 p.m.; Sunday: 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 5-9 p.m. Free valet service is offered for lunch and dinner daily. For reservations or information, call 832-668-5808 or go to www.etoilecuisine.com. GSM named a winner of Houston 2018 top workplaces award GSM, a full-service marketing agency specializing in omnichannel, digital, and direct solutions for the automotive industry, has been awarded a 2018 Top Workplaces honor by The Houston Chronicle. The criteria evaluates several aspects of workplace culture, rating areas such as potential for advancement, flexibility of work schedules, pay and benefits and leadership. The list is based solely on anonymous associate feedback gathered through a third-party survey administered by research partner Energage, LLC (formerly WorkplaceDynamics), a leading provider of technology-based employee engagement tools. GSM was endorsed as a 2018 Top Workplace based on its commitment to fostering leadership, a culture offering a family spirit that promotes fun and growth, and meaningful ways for associates to showcase teamwork and productive engagement. Respondents cited strong internal alignment scores well above industry benchmark standards - noting GSM operates by strong values and ethics, offers above average interdepartmental communication and overall, associates feel genuinely appreciated. Visit gsmarketing.com for more information. Houston Methodist named 2018 CHIME HealthCares Most Wired recipient For the 11th time, Houston Methodist has been named one of the 2018 Most Wired recipients by College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) HealthCare. CHIME, comprised of 2,700 members in 51 countries, chooses hospitals and health systems at the forefront of using health care IT to improve the delivery of care and adopting technology and applying it strategically to achieve great outcomes. HealthCares Most Wired, now in its 20th year, traditionally tracked the adoption of health care IT in hospitals and health systems. The report findings fell into the two categories of foundational and transformational technologies. Highlights under foundational technologies include: 94 percent of participants used integrated clinical application suites and 86 percent used remote published applications. About three-fourths send blood glucose, bedside blood pressure, bedside pulse oximetry and EKG data directly to the EHR but only 25 percent send data directly from IV pumps and 10 percent from in-bed scale. Almost all physicians have electronic access to the EHR and other resources but only half have access to these resources using mobile applications. 94 percent can consume data in some form from a Continuity of Care Document (CCD) and 97 percent can contribute to a CCD but only 60 percent can consume discrete data with a home health agency or a skilled nursing home. Only 29 percent report having a comprehensive security program in place. Nearly all use firewalls, dispose devices containing personal health information properly and secure mobile devices with passwords but many lack other fundamental authentication and safeguarding procedures. Meg Booth named CEO of Society for the Performing Arts Society for the Performing Arts (SPA) Board of Directors announced today the appointment of Meg Booth as the new Chief Executive Officer of Houstons prestigious non-profit presenting arts organization, effective Dec. 1. An international arts leader, Booth joins SPA from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., the leading cultural center in the nations capital, where she currently is Director, Dance Programming. She joined the Kennedy Center in 2003 and has been in her most recent position for the past 11 years. SPA Board Chair Theresa Einhorn conveyed the enthusiasm of the Board of Directors saying Meg is a dynamic and talented leader in both the U.S. and international performing arts communities, having helped steer one of the worlds premier performing arts centers. She will be a tremendous asset to SPA, and we are delighted to welcome her as our CEO. Through our extensive national search, Meg stood out among many brilliant and gifted candidates. Her artistic vision, her marketing savvy and her curation and programming expertise, along with strong management skills, are the perfect combination for SPA as we plan for our future. Booths prior arts administration experience includes positions with the prestigious Twyla Tharp Dance Foundation, Baryshnikov Productions, Inc., and IMG Artists (all in New York City) along with Charlotte Ballet in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is a past board chair and long-time board member of Dance/USA and currently serves on the Audit Committee and also serves on the board of Dance Metro DC. Booth earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Notre Dame. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) Ahead of the ninth anniversary of the gruesome massacre of 58 people in Maguindanao, the Justice Department said the case may be decided in the first half next year. Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said Wednesday they will finally close the cases against the Ampatuan family, the alleged perpetrators of the attack on November 23, 2009. "We could have done it faster but there were certain factors beyond our control, so many accused, so many witnesses too. Anyway, we are winding up now, and we expect a decision hopefully within the first half of 2019," Guevarra told CNN Philippines in a text message. The government has filed cases against Ampatuan family members and their supporters involved in the killings. Guevarra said the trial pace could have been improved, but some factors beyond their control delayed the proceedings. In June, he had said the trial would end by yearend. Malacanang also acknowledged the slow trial but said the Justice Department is doing its job. "Many cases take so long. But what's important to us is justice will prevail. The Justice Department is doing its job to speed up the case," Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said Thursday. The Justice Department previously charged 188 persons out of 197 initially accused. The primary suspect was the Ampatuan patriarch, Andal Sr. He succumbed to liver cancer while in detention in 2015. The victims were members of the Mangudadatu family, the political rival of the Ampatuan clan, 32 media workers and some civilians. Their bodies were dumped in a shallow grave in Ampatuan town. The Mangudadatu family released a statement Thursday expressing relief for the possible resolution of the case. "We meet this news with renewed vigor and relief for we have waited too long and have given so much to the case over the years," the statement read. The family said they are confident justice will be served on Andal Ampatuan Jr., the principal suspect. "We have full confidence that the evidence presented is enough to prove Dati Unsay's guilt beyond reasonable doubt and we await the verdict with cautious hope," the statement read. The killing happened as 15 relatives of then Maguindanao gubernatorial bet Esmael "Toto" Mangudadatu, accompanied by a media convoy, were on their way to file his candidacy in the 2010 elections. Mangudadatu is current Maguindanao governor. Minister of Employment, Workforce Development & Labour Patty Hajdu said the government has re-appointed a special mediator to work with Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), which represents striking employees across the country. Palecek, who earlier had appealed to the Liberal government to reappoint a mediator to assist with the contact talks, insisted that an "agreement can be reached, if only Canada Post would address the issues and stop looking for ways not to negotiate". This continued even after Trudeau told parliament on November 8 that "all options" would be on the table if CUPW didn't soon reach a settlement with Canada Post, and through most of last week as various Labour Departments officials reiterated Trudeau's threat. "The rotating strikes have gone on long enough", he said. "We strongly encourage both sides to reach a deal and are prepared to table legislation if we do not see a resolution over the next few days, a step we do not take lightly", she said in a statement. "How can we do that?" Canada Post has apologized to its customers for the continued walkouts, and warned that it can not now predict the exact length of delivery delays. CUPW national president Mike Palecek, in commenting on the union's rejection of the latest offer, has said the offer does not reflect the union's concerns on health and safety. The walkouts have created massive backlogs, just days before an expected rush of millions more parcels from Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. "This proposal also includes a way for the parties to resolve their differences and these negotiations". Hajdu says that despite the government's belief in the collective bargaining process, supplying conciliation officers and appointed mediators, the two have made "limited promise", and the government has "exhausted" their options. If an agreement were not reached by January 31, the corporation said a mediator would provide recommendations for settlement. Jarema said the postal workers' union is working on another counter-offer and will be going back to Canada Post in the near future. Rotating strikes by unionized workers are in their fifth week, with the two sides in the contract dispute still far apart. Canada Post's latest request was to put the strike on hold with a cooling off period until after the busy Christmas season. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has warned that the government may be forced to intervene if the disagreement continues, but has refrained from mentioning any plans for a tangible solution to the problem. Letter carriers are especially vulnerable, because their bodies are bearing the burden of Canada Post's push to cash in on a huge increase in parcel deliveries due to the expansion of online shopping. A caravan of more than 7,000 migrants from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador is barreling north towards the southern border of the United States. Their end goal? Eventual asylum status within our borders. This surge in unfettered immigration is the new normal. The number of families arrested for unlawfully crossing the southern border spiked nearly 40 percent between July and August. The chaos at the border will continue unless Congress reforms our warped asylum and employment laws, which entice people to illegally journey to the United States. Nearly all recent deportees came to the United States in pursuit of work, according to the Pew Research Center. Its relatively easy for illegal immigrants to find jobs. Five percent of the workforce is here illegally. Employers are happy to take advantage of immigrants cheap labor. Three in four illegal immigrants have worked without compensation. The federal government has done little to deter illegal hiring. It doesnt require companies to thoroughly vet the legal status of their workers. And it rarely prosecutes employers who knowingly hire illegal workers. Easily abused asylum policies further incentivize people to come here illegally. Before 2009, only people claiming persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political affiliation, or membership in a particular social group could receive asylum. But early in the Obama administration, the government began granting asylum to people who claimed to be victims of domestic abuse and gang violence. Suddenly, asylum became a golden ticket to a better life in the United States. The number of asylum seekers has skyrocketed almost 1,700 percent in the past decade. Last year, more than 141,000 immigrants sought asylum. Most of these asylum claims arent credible. Eighty percent are ultimately denied by U.S. immigration courts. But by claiming asylum, immigrants can stay in the country for years while their cases are adjudicated. Competition from illegal workers depresses wages for Americans and legal immigrants, especially ones at the bottom of the socioeconomic totem pole. The average high school dropout earns about $800 less each year due to competition from illegal laborers. Federal officials could boost Americans wages, and humanely discourage people from undertaking the dangerous journey across the southern border, by making it harder for illegal workers to find jobs. Thousands of employers already use the free, online E-Verify system to cross-check new employees mandatory I-9 forms against other government records such as drivers licenses. In as little as five seconds, the system identifies whether a new hire is authorized to work in the United States. E-Verify is effective. A 2008 Arizona law mandating the use of E-Verify shrank illegal migration to that state. Requiring all employers to use E-Verify would drastically reduce illegal immigration. Unlike a multi-billion-dollar wall, the software is already available, free of charge. Lawmakers should also plug the loopholes in our asylum system. People who sneak across the border should not be allowed to retroactively claim asylum after theyve been caught. If people have legitimate asylum applications, they should file them at official ports of entry. Sadly, until these reforms happen, the chaos at the border will only get worse. Deena Flinchum is an IT worker who was employed by the AFL-CIO for 25 years before retiring. She is now a community volunteer in southwest Virginia. John Cooper School announced that author and international sensation Kevin Kwan will be the Keynote Speaker November 30 during its 14th annual Signature Authors Series. Kwan, author of the book on which hit movie Crazy Rich Asians is based, will speak at 12:30 during a luncheon in The Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel. Kwan is a graduate of Clear Lake (Texas) High School. He earned a bachelor of arts in creative writing at the University of HoustonClear Lake. From there he went on to earn a bachelor of fine arts from Parsons School of Design. But he is most noted for penning trilogy Crazy Rich Asians, China Rich Girlfriend, also destined for the big screen, and Rich People Problems that was released last May. Kwan earned the distinction of having three best sellers in the top five on the New York Times Best-Seller List all at the same time. Time Magazine put Kwan on its 2018 list of the 100 most influential people in the world. A premier event from its founding 14 years ago, the John Cooper School Signature Authors Series began with the late Barbara Bush at a sold-out luncheon where she discussed literacy, a subject that was close to her heart. Invitations to speak at the Signature Authors Series are extended to only the most renowned individuals. Some from the past are Mitch Album, Dave Barry, Jodie Picoult, Nicholas Sparks, late Chef Anthony Bourdain, and more of that caliber. Two of my most enjoyed speakers were best-selling writer Jodi Picoult, and Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help. She brought her childhood friend, Tate Taylor, director of the award winning movie version. The November 30 Signature Authors Series begins at 10 a.m. with its Visiting Authors where 18 local writers from around the area were invited to set up booths, informally discuss, and sell their books. A rainbow of choices exists from fiction for all ages, to self-improvement, to culinary and party volumes. Each year we seek to highlight the talented authors who live in our immediate area, said Kylie Haslam, who chairs that portion along with Mari Dewberry. A few of this years 18 visiting authors are Pam Franks with her childrens Christmas book about five elves who take up residence in a gingerbread house; John Cooper alum Gabriel Garcia; Molly and Gary Whitney who penned a tale about an irresistible red-haired troll; Kathryn Lane whose fiction is inspired by Latin American cultures; Lynn Wilson a 38-year military spouse who collected recipes and party ideas from around the world; Lorrie Parise, and Michael Hurd, both with adult non-fiction; and self-help writers Avery Neal, and Angelica Ribeiro. Kristen Martin, an international best-selling author on Amazon, will be there with her dark fantasy Shadow Crown, as well as Curt Locklear who writes about the 186064 period of American History; and more authors just as appealing. Several years ago I was invited to attend the Visiting Authors happening with a novel I wrote, and the experience is a lifelong memory. The Signature Authors Series includes an exclusive VIP reception with the author for high-level sponsors. This incorporates signed copies and photo options as well. An informal press conference also is planned at an earlier time. In addition, author Kevin Kwan will meet with students on the John Cooper School campus November 29 at an unannounced time. A portion of the Signatures proceeds are earmarked for a nonprofit literary organization, which this year, is the Montgomery County Memorial Library System. Some of the visiting authors also dedicate part of the days earnings to their own favorite nonprofits. Individual tickets to attend the luncheon and hear the keynote speaker are $150 each. A question & answer period follows his talk. Although the Marriotts Signature Authors site can accommodate a thousand guests, the event is already on its way to selling out as in previous years. Sponsorships are available at the $5,000, $3,500, and $2,000 levels. Contact Deb Spiess, Cooper Director of Marketing and Communication, at debspiess@johncooper.org or at (281) 367-0900, extension 2406. Dave Feranchak, a leader in the theatre arts department at Conroe High School, announced that the drama department is offering a novel Black Box theatre-in-the-round presentation of Anton Chekovs Uncle Vanya. Its scheduled November 29 & 30; December 1 & 3, each evening at 7 p.m. The classic is about young Sonya and her Uncle Vanya who operate a family estate in the Russian countryside, around 1898. When her father and his young bride arrive, family tensions and romantic entanglements arise, just as sometimes happen in todays modern families. One of the worlds most respected dramatists, Chekov wrote this, The Cherry Orchard, and The Seagull while studying at the Moscow Art Theatre circa 1900. However, Feranchak, himself, is to be credited with adapting this version of the play to accommodate the needs of the theatrical students in his classes. This is only the second time in the past 16 years that a CHS Black Box production has been done in-the-round. Because of limited seating for this in-the-round show, patrons are urged to purchase tickets in advance at www.conroe.seatyourself.biz . Cost is $7 for adults; $5 for students and youngsters. If any remain unsold, the cost is $8 and $5 at the door. Call CHS Theatre Department at (936) 709-5847 with questions. Peggie Miller may be reached at pegmiller01@gmail.com. Three years ago, a Conroe woman was so heartbroken to hear about the shooting death of veteran Harris County Sheriffs Office Deputy Darren Goforth that she felt moved to do something. I didnt know him but it tugged at my heart, Yolanda Yo Vollbrecht said during the 2018 Montgomery County Police Rally in New Caney hosted by Americans Stand United last Nov. 17. She, her daughter, and her husband participate in craft shows and have made guardian angels of all different colors, which gave her an idea to make Blue Guardian Angels for law enforcement. I took every blue one out, and started flashing my lights and pulling cops over, whatever I could do to get these in the hands of cops, Vollbrecht said. I went to my whole sale bead place and now have that specific color blue bead and these specific wings and this is what we do. She said she also sent 100 Blue Guardian Angels to Baytown where Harris County Precinct 3 Assistant Chief Deputy Clinton Francis Greenwood was shot and killed outside a courthouse in April. One of the officers there had a Blue Guardian Angel hanging on her mirror and she said that when she was one of the first responders to Deputy Greenwood that when she got back in her car with blood on her that she looked up and she knew by looking at the Blue Guardian Angels that she had her Guardian Angel with her, said Vollbrecht whose uncle served for 30 years as the Walker County Sheriff. Today, she estimates that she has made between 5,000-6,000 Blue Guardian Angels, including for Montgomery County law enforcement members and even sent to police during riots across the country. Some have been sent to Sweden, Guam, Puerto Rico, and all over the state, nation, and world. She made the Blue Guardian Angels for 160 for police officers which were included in their gift bags at a law enforcement appreciation banquet hosted by the Americans Stand United. I came across those and I thought every officer needs to have this because it is a reminder to them that people are praying for them and people have their back, said American Stands United President Mary Jobe, whose husband has served with Montgomery County Sheriffs Office for 12 years. Its a reminder especially in tragedy that people do think about them, we care about them, their community stands behind them; and, as a police wife that people care about my husband when he goes out. In addition to the Blue Guardian Angels, she also made red, white, and blue military-themed angels. The angels are available in key chains and earrings. The Blue Guardian Angels, which are available by sending a direct message on her Facebook page, are offered free of charge and any donations provided go 100 percent back to continue creating the angels. Vollbrecht laughed fondly as she shared her gratitude for all the stories, the photos, and the hugs for the angels that she hopes will keep the officers and all who carry one safe. As I make these I pray for God to give protection to any that possess this, she said. I just pray every night for our military, law enforcement, fire, EMS, doctors, nursesI pray for protection. And I feel as I make them and pray, that God has put the power of protection over these guardian angels. mellsworth@hcnonline.com About 200 volunteers with the Salvation Army and Friends of Conroe came together to serve more than 3,000 holiday meals on Thanksgiving Day in Conroe. This is the definition of a community-wide Thanksgiving Dinner, Major Don Wildish with the Salvation Army said. Wildish shared the Friends of Conroe, along with other sponsors and members of the community made the event possible. He estimated it costs about $7 a meal--more than $21,000 to host the event this year that he said saw more people than last year. About 1,000 of those meals were served at tables set up behind the Salvation Armys Center of Hope in Conroe where Shirley Miller, 63, laughed as a flood of skating rink memories came back while watching a catfish dance the chicken dance to some music playing. The Friends of Conroes mascot represents the organizations annual Conroe Cajun Catfish Festival which helps fund events like this for the community. I want to tell them thank you very much because this is my Thanksgiving, Miller said. These people didnt have to do this. Across the street, volunteers busily packed to-go boxes and bags that were handed to community members who drove through the parking lot to take the food home to their family. Volunteer Brenda Carter, who is a multilingual flight attendant that lost everything during Hurricane Harvey and is still living with concrete floors in her home in The Woodlands, shared it is rewarding to volunteer at the event each year and it takes the focus off the self. Its important, they go out to the community they deliver to the Washaterias, low-income housing, the hotels nearby the people who are out of their home and out of their area due to Hurricane Harvey still Carter said. This may be the only meal they get. Friends of Conroe President Stephen Naleway, working on about an hour of sleep, carried another tray of food. He shared the volunteers began preparing the food, which included 800 pounds of New Turkey and 700 pounds of ham along with all the fixings, Wednesday. Some of the volunteers had smoked the turkey for over 15 hours, some had started a shift at 7 a.m. for the event that went on until 3 p.m. And, they are already planning to do the event again next year. We just love to do it, Naleway said. Thats why we here. Miller expressed gratitude for the volunteers taking the time to provide the community members with a good Thanksgiving. She shared she is currently living at the Salvation Army and will ring the Red Kettle bell starting tomorrow morning. She has faced some financial challenges in recent years, including from suffering a heart attack last year. Her trucks engine also blew. Most of her family has passed away from cancer, the rest mostly live out of state. Because of these people, we did (have a good Thanksgiving), Miller said. I didnt expect this in the morning when I woke up. mellsworth@hcnonline.com During a rehearsal on the Saturday after slain Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared in Turkey, Willis ISD Theater Director Susan Burge told her students to pay close attention. The 18 students, including some from Lynn Lucas Middle School, Willis High School and Montgomery ISDs Lake Creek High School are involved in Workshop Theatre, which is a nonprofit program that falls under Willis ISD, who have received a golden ticket to perform a one-act play based on George Orwells 1984 on the national stage in June. I told them to go home and watch this story unfold and think about how similar it is to Winston, Syme and Parsons ending up in the Ministry of Truth in Room 101 in that last scene how that could have been Room 101, Burge said. That today is relevant of people getting pulled for what they say against a government and I think these kids realize that we may not be there in America but we are there as a world, as a global community, we are very close to living here. As an agricultural science teacher, Burge started the program in 2011 after she learned there was a need for a theater instructor. With a passion for teaching and some experience under her belt, including traveling and assisting her husband who worked in the theatre industry, she had agstudents construct a stage with dance platforms. The theater students performed on the stage for the agriculture students and the program has since grown to what it is today. In March, an audition video was sent and later selected which prompted the invite for the students to travel to Gerrysburg, Pa., and perform 1984 at the week-long American Association of Community Theatre convention. Burge said the cast was not only selected for their talent and ability but because of the relevance to current issues in 2018. However, the students still lack the funds needed to perform next summer. Freshman Aiden Collier, 14, was among the original 11 cast members featured in the audition video submitted in March. During one scene performed in rehearsal, his protagonist character Winston Smith, who is living in a dystopian society governed by the party, emotionally endured brainwashing from one of the main antagonist characters and Inner Party member OBrien. We are learning that even though this play was written a while ago it is coming back in our world today, Aiden Collier said. OBrien is now acted out by his older brother and Willis High School Sophomore Cameron Collier. History is repeating itself, Cameron Collier said. For a group of youth to go to a national scale competition and compete with a theme like this is pretty amazing to show the world. To help pay for the travel, lodging, and some costume costs the students will be hosting a Holiday Talent Show at the Lynn Lucas Middle School at 6 p.m. on Dec. 19. The cost is $5 per ticket. Other activities are expected to be held throughout the year and a GoFundMe page has been set up. The LLMS-Workshop-Theatre-2019 page has raised $890 in a month with a $5,000 goal. On Jan. 19 the students will also perform 1984 at Lee College in Baytown and at the Crighton Theatre the first Saturday in March. mellsworth@hcnonline.com Texas EquuSearch An elderly couple from Campbell turned up safe Thursday night, a day after they went missing during a Thanksgiving trip to visit their family west of Fort Worth, police said. Nell McMillan, 76, and her husband, David McMillan, 83, left their home in southern San Jacinto County Wednesday morning, according to a San Jacinto County Sheriff's Office news release. Avery Padillas drama teachers at Alvin High School and San Jacinto College South introduced her to immersive theater as performed by Horse Head Theatre Company, a leading practitioner of that approach in Houston. You bring in an audience, not with audience interaction but by enveloping them in the space so they experience the setting of the play, explained Padilla, who stars, alongside Antonio Lasanta of Pearland, in Horse Heads production of The Flick from Nov. 30 through Dec. 15 in Houston. Annie Bakers 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning script is set in a rundown movie theater; so Horse Head technicians built a facsimile inside the 100-year-old Houston Warehouse Studios at 1506 Lorraine St. in east Houston. You are going to feel like you are walking into a movie theater, down to the 35-millimeter projector, said Padilla, 23. We even have (movie) theater seats. Padilla, a 2014 graduate of Alvin High, plays Rose, the cinemas 24-year-old projectionist who has a drinking problem and $20,000 in student loans to pay off. Lasanta, who graduated from Dawson High in 2016, portrays a brainy, young man, Avery, who the audience meets on his first day working at the theater. For him, the janitorial job is a way-station before returning to college. Plus, he loves movies. The play opens with Sam, a 35-year-old slacker portrayed by Greg Cote, showing Avery how to sweep and mop the sticky auditorium floor. Part of the shows appeal is its presentation of the repetition and monotony of the characters jobs, as their individual struggles of being black, poor or female play out against the backdrop of Hollywood films. Like his character, said Lasanta, I am also a huge movie buff. At Dawson, the son of Rene and Ann Lasanta of Pearland played Antonio Salieri in a production of scenes from Peter Schaffers play Amadeus that was his schools entry in University Interscholastic League one-act play competition. At the end of my senior year, I realized I didnt want to stop acting, said Lasanta, 20. He enrolled at the University of Houston, where he is studying toward a bachelor of fine arts in theater. Its funny, the first week I started college, the first play I read was The Flick, said Lasanta, who described himself as half African-American and half Puerto Rican. I was attracted to the role of Avery almost three years ago. In October, Lasanta portrayed a 5-year-old child in a production of Noah Haidles comedy Mr. Marmalade at the University of Houston. Padilla, whose parents are Ruben Padilla of Alvin and Connie Padilla of Houston, was president of the theater club and voted most likely to become famous her senior year at Alvin High. In University Interscholastic League competition, she was directed by Alvin Highs technical theater teacher, Drake Simpson. He and Kevin Holden, who was Padillas theater director at San Jac South, were founding members of Horse Head. After a year in college, Padilla moved to Houston, where she works as a server/bartender in Midtown and has acted in shows for Cone Man Productions and The Landing Theater Company. The Flick was directed by Jacey Little, the artistic director at Horse Head. For more about The Flick, visit www.horseheadtheatre.org. Don Maines is a freelance writer who can be reached at donmaines@att.net Two policemen were killed on Friday when gunmen stormed the Chinese consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi, officials said, while hours later a market was also targetted in the northwest, killing at least 12 people. "The firing is still continuing and the police have not made any official statement but eyewitnesses said there are three to four attackers, heavily armed attackers who tried to storm the Chinese consulate and still we can hear gunshots", Latif said. Video from the scene showed smoke billowing from the area as the sound of explosions echoed through the upscale neighborhood. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told reporters in Islamabad that "all the terrorists have been eliminated", and that all 21 staff at the consulate during the attack had been taken to a safe location. The assailants, whose attack has been claimed by separatist militant group the Balochistan Liberation Army, were thwarted in their murderous campaign as they approached a security checkpoint. He said security forces have surrounded the area. In a letter dated August 15, the group released a letter warning China against the "exploitation of Baluchistan's mineral wealth and occupation of Baluch territory". Dr Seemi Jamali, a spokeswoman at the Jinnah Hospital, said a consulate guard was also wounded in the attack and was being treated at the hospital. Dozens more people were wounded, with fears the toll could rise. Khan said in a statement that Pakistan's relations with China could not be shaken by such incidents, calling bilateral ties "mightier than the Himalayas and deeper than the Arabian Sea". Talpur, whose given name means "moonlight" in the Sindhi language, was among the guards and police that faced down the attackers. Geo TV reported one gunmen was killed in the attack and a "suicide vest" had been recovered. Afghans struggle to identify Kabul bombing suspects Balochistan is at the center of China's billion-dollar investment and infrastructure plan as part of the country's massive Belt and Road Initiative. Achchu is now being treatment at Max Hospital in New Delhi. Raffaello Pantucci, director of global security studies at the London-based Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, said the attack was "reflective of a growing China focus by the BLA". He said most of the victims were Shia Muslims. They could not even get in the compound. Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in Beijing on Friday that China would not waver in its commitment to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project and expressed confidence that Pakistan could ensure security of its citizens. All the staff inside the Chinese consulate is safe, security sources said. The Pakistani military has been targeting insurgencies in the province since 2004, and has been repeatedly accused by global rights groups of abuses there. The suicide bomb attack in the Afghan border province of Khost came as people gathered for Friday prayers at the mosque on the army base. India and the United States also accuse Pakistan of supporting the Afghan Taliban. Worldwide police body Interpol elected Mr Kim Jong -yang of South Korea as president yesterday, beating a Russian national whose candidacy had raised concerns in Europe and the United States about the risk of Kremlin interference. In a dynamic week for world-wide police agency Interpol, the organization has accepted two new members, rejected the application of Kosovo and named on Wednesday a new president after the previous one resigned following his arrest in China. The U.S. and others expressed concern that if Russia's candidate had been elected, that would have led to further Kremlin abuses of Interpol's red notice system to go after political opponents and fugitive dissidents. A spokesman for the Kremlin said that a letter from US Senators opposing Prokopchuk's candidacy amounted to election meddling, Tass news agency reported. The surprise victory saw Mr Kim secure at least two-thirds of votes at Interpol's general assembly in Dubai, attended by most of the 194 member countries. South Korea's police and Foreign Ministry issued a joint statement saying Kim's election is a "national triumph" that could elevate the country's worldwide standing. While it has tried to clean up this system, it remains vulnerable to pressure from powerful member states: Its last president vanished in China in a possible political purge, while Interpol quietly looked on. Mr Kim beat Russian candidate Alexander Prokopchuk, who has been accused of abusing Interpol's arrest warrant system to target critics of the Kremlin. "The representative of South Korea has been elected as a President of Interpol!". "Russia has consistently misused Interpol to pursue its political opponents", he wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. Irina Volk told the Interfax news agency that Prokopchuk will retain his position and continue to "focus on advancing the stature of Interpol in the global police community and making its work more effective". The president of Interpol is not in charge of the organization's day-to-day operations. Watchdog groups are urging Interpol to reform the diffusion system. Kim has over two decades of experience working for South Korea's police force, and he is now officially selected for a two-year term at the organization's helm. "Voting against Kosovo's accession in this global organization only serves.criminals and no one should rejoice", the Kosovar government said in response to the vote, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The selection of Kim comes after many experts and critics believed the agency meant to appoint Russian national Alexander Prokopchuk - the highest ranking Russian in the agency. "This is a real humiliation for Putin and a huge sigh of relief for anybody who is at odds with Putin", 54-year-old Mr Browder, of London, added to the Press Association. "This battle is won!" was the gleeful tweet of Ukrainian interior minister, Arsen Avakov, after the decision. He will serve until 2020, completing the four-year mandate of his predecessor, Meng Hongwei, who was detained in China. He was already senior vice-president of Interpol and had been serving as acting president since Mr Meng's disappearance. Kristin Gyldenege said she's always been known as the "potty mouth" real estate agent with an edge. The Houston-based Realtor aims for authenticity in her marketing tactics to avoid being cast as a stuffed shirt. And earlier this week, she launched one of her most edgy ideas yet, posing half-naked fitness models throughout a listed home in Conroe to draw attention to the property. UNUSUAL MARKETING: Houston home listed for $1 sells for $270,000 She took photos of the models throughout the home to show a more realistic scenario of a young couple walking around partially clothed, she said. Multiple listing services showed the images after she uploaded them to har.com, but that website has since removed the photos after receiving more than 100 complaints, Gyldenege said. The tattooed models are shown performing normal household tasks like changing a light bulb or cooking. The photos helped her book six showings the day after they went live, she said. "I didn't want anything slutty," she told Chron.com. "I wanted to represent a young couple who was on top of their game all the way around and who had just moved into this great house." Gyldenege said some listing services still have the photos on their websites. The home, located in a notoriously flood-prone neighborhood at 590 Mosswood Drive in Conroe, initially had been on the market for 40 days without any significant attention. In that time, fewer than 1,000 people had viewed the photos on the website, she said. The models helped garner 20,000 views within the first 24 hours of posting the photos, she said. RELATED: Houston-area realtor attracts home buyers with free tacos Despite the complaints, Gyldenege said she doesn't regret the idea. She expected backlash, and the homeowner approved of the idea from the start, she said. "In the end, that's what matters doing what's best for my client," she said. She said she had not received any serious offers as of Wednesday afternoon. She added that even though the neighborhood is known for flooding, the home sits on relatively high ground. At the very least, she hopes the boost in attention will force more people to see it for themselves. "[Potential buyers] may not look like [the models], but if they think they could look like that in this house, they would be more attracted to at least see it," she 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 The Student Activity Center at the University of Texas at Austin is known for operating a Chick-fil-A, providing study areas and hosting free movie screenings. At times, it also served as the campaign hub for one side of Texas closest lieutenant governors race in 20 years. In a relatively sleepy contest, Democrat Mike Collier entrusted his digital operation to two 19-year-old UT sophomores, Ali Zaidi and Jared Hrebenar. They regularly sketched out the campaigns Facebook ad strategy on a blackboard in a student center meeting room. We always joke that the campaign for the second most powerful position in the state was run out of a room in the Student Activity Center at the University of Texas campus. So, props to UT for great WiFi access, said Zaidi, who with Hrebenar helped engineer a campaign that came within five points of unseating Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, despite being outspent more than twenty-fold since the start of 2018. Fresh off massive midterm gains and narrow losses in GOP strongholds, Democrats including incoming Texas legislators and an army of presidential hopefuls around the country now are compiling staffs, filling scores of positions with young aides like Zaidi and Hrebenar who proved instrumental during the midterms. The skill sets of 20-somethings proved valuable this cycle as campaigns continued to become more digitally focused in the realms of fundraising and voter outreach, a trend perhaps best demonstrated by Democrat Beto ORourkes $70 million haul in a losing but attention-grabbing bid to oust Republican incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz. Zaidi and Hrebenar, who grew up in Sugar Land, attended high school together and worked for several campaigns in Fort Bend County, now are transitioning to a digital-centric but otherwise undefined role during next years legislative session. They will juggle government work and college courses, a now-familiar circumstance. Getting Ali and Jareds perspective is like getting the political crystal ball for the next 20 years, said state Rep.-elect Trey Martinez Fischer, a San Antonio Democrat whose staff Zaidi and Hrebenar are expected to join. They are utilizing technology that Ive never seen before, that is really sophisticated and cutting edge. Other young staffers around the Harris County area are making their own moves, whether staying in the area or assuming larger roles in anticipation of the 2020 election cycle. "Democrats talk about engaging millennials a lot. Well, let me tell you something who's going to relate to a 26-year-old? Another 26 year old," said Odus Evbagharu, the Harris County Democratic Partys communications director who is starting as state Rep.-elect Jon Rosenthals chief of staff in December. The Houston Democrat knocked off state Rep. Gary Elkins, a Republican who began representing House District 135 when Evbagharu, 26, was 2 years old. Meanwhile, Shelby Cole, 27, a top digital aide to ORourke and the architect of a record-shattering online fundraising campaign fueled by thousands of small-donor donations, is joining a firm led by Sen. Kamala Harris main digital consultant, CNN first reported. The California Democrat largely is expected to run for president. Brittany Switzer, the Texas Democratic Partys digital director, similarly was instrumental in helping the party raise nearly $2 million in small-dollar contributions during the 2018 campaign. She has worked with the party for the past few cycles, and plans to stick around to continue growing its digital program. The value of digital platforms on political campaigns became apparent through Barack Obamas 2008 campaign, said Switzer, 29. In the decade since, that approach essentially taking grass-roots outreach to the internet has attracted far more young people to campaign staffs. "I think a lot of folks like myself who kind of grew up coding their own MySpace pages just naturally have these skills and these inclinations toward online platforms, she said. The tools that we use online, they are constantly evolving. The presence of millennials on campaigns and government staffs is not new, but the prominence of their roles appears to be growing. Zaidi, for instance, served as field director for an unsuccessful Pearland municipal race while attending high school, during which he hired Hrebenar as a field organizer. That race helped lay the foundation for this years blue wave in Fort Bend County, where Democrats flipped numerous judicial and county-level seats. They also won an open race for district attorney, an office held by the retiring incumbent Republican since 1992. Theyre not just the future, they are today, said Manny Garcia, deputy executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, which worked closely with Colliers campaign. Collier initially did not intend to entrust so much of his political fate to a pair of teenagers. His consultant, Courtney Grigsby, had hired Zaidi an international studies and Middle Eastern studies major for a prior Missouri City state House race, and brought the two on as interns. Hrebenar, who is pursuing degrees in international relations, Chinese and government, and Zaidi originally were tasked with researching Texas school funding formula, a key role for a campaign built on school finance reform and property taxes. They quickly were able to point out that they knew more about digital operations than the firm Collier had hired for that purpose, which Zaidi said was operating like it was still 1995. If I get credit here, its for figuring out they were a lot smarter than me, Collier said. Later in the campaign, Hrebenar and Zaidi learned advanced tactics for fundraising and targeting voters through an outfit called Tech for Campaigns, a network of tech employees that works with Democratic candidates. The best way I think I would describe (what we did) is doing field organizing but in the digital realm, Zaidi said. In general, he said, digital outreach was at the heart of the effort of the ORourke, Collier and state partys campaigns. Always in the past, in any statewide race, digital has been on the backburner, he said. In future elections, campaigns will lean more heavily on young and less experienced operatives as they strike a balance between newer and more traditional forms of candidate outreach, Grigsby said. Evbagharu believes the changing makeup of campaigns has the potential to impact policy outcomes as eventual officeholders become more in touch with millennials. "It's time that we start taking our future in our own hands and not let other people dictate that, he said. And I think that once you have young people on these campaigns, working in these offices that govern, you're going to see more of that. It makes issues that are relevant to us prevalent. jasper.scherer@chron.com twitter.com/jaspscherer SAN ANTONIO Every year local law enforcement agencies warn residents of Bexar County not to get behind the wheel while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Still, thousands of people are arrested each year for driving while intoxicated. The gallery above shows a number of clues San Antonio police officers look for to determine whether a person is driving under the influence. "If you are ever in that situation where you are behind the wheel of a car and you have had too much to drink and you see the red and blue lights behind you, that's really the best place you could be," said San Antonio Police Department spokesman Sgt. Javier Salazar. "That officer has intervened and prevented you from ending someone's life, possibly your own." According to the Bexar County District Attorneys Office, there were 7,322 DWI arrests tallied in the countys 2014 year-end count, which measures arrests made in one calendar year beginning Oct. 1. Of those, 5,434 were for first offenses, 1,021 were for second offenses and 687 were for a third offense or higher. There were 139 arrests made while a child under the age of 15 was in the vehicle. In 2013, that number was even higher. There were 7,649 DWI arrested through the end of 2013. Of those, 5,637 were first offenses, 1,105 were second offenses and 703 were for a third offense or higher. Additionally, 152 DWI arrests were made while a passenger under the age of 15 was in the vehicle. Driving while intoxicated can also come with substantial monetary penalties. Salazar said he has seen DWI costs ranging from $15,000 to $20,000. When you think about it, that is such an unbelievable waste, he said. Stiffer consequences, he said, can come in embarrassment, the possibility of offenders losing their jobs, and even their freedom. mdwilson@express-news.net Twitter: @MDWilsonSA Youve read the research. You know your team needs to be diverse to create innovative products, make good decisions, and boost your bottom line. Youve told the hiring managers, pestered HR, and set quotas. So why does every recruit look exactly like the staff you have? Sure, there is a supply problem for skilled IT pros; finding diverse candidates is even harder. I believe diversity generates creativity and balance, says Tim Enwall Head of Misty Robotics. But every person on the planet is looking for these people. As a startup, we can't afford these skyrocketing salaries. Its called the diversity pipeline problem. The real problem with that pipeline, though, is that its a myth. I hear the excuse that women and people of color with the right skills don't exist, says Debbie Madden, CEO of development and product consultancy Stride Consulting. That is factually incorrect. Women make up over 50 percent of both the U.S. population and college graduates. In fact, there are hirable women in the workplace. If you want a diverse team, look different. Change both the way you search and the way you appear. If a company presents as not inclusive or unsafe, women and people of color wont reach out to you. Some solutions are simple, obvious even once theyve been pointed out to you. Others are complicated. But all are possible. To get you started, we asked experts for their advice for finding that unicorn you dont believe exists a diverse tech team. Here's what they said. Write better job listings Whats your first step when filling a job? Write the job description? That document might be the beginning of your problem. Unconscious bias often filters through to job descriptions, explains Barbara Adams, Founder and Chief Learning Officer at Gender, Age, and Race Diversity Consulting and the author of Women, Minorities and Other Extraordinary People: The New Path for Workforce Diversity. A study done by the American Psychological Association found that words associated with masculine and feminine stereotypes perpetuate gender inequality in job ads. Take a look at your phrasing. Is it sending a message you dont intend? Masculine wording like 'competitive, 'dominant, or 'aggressive' make job descriptions less appealing to women, says Adams. Feminine wording like 'responsible', 'dedicated' or 'conscientious' has the opposite effect. Tech companies frequently make this mistake. A study from Ziprecruiter found that 92 percent of tech companies use gendered wording in job listing. And making a fairly simple edit here can have huge results. When gender neutral terms were used in job descriptions, the study found, applications increased by 42 percent. You can dig into the original study to help identify the gendered terms you might be using. Or there are companies, such as Textio.com, that specialize in rewriting job descriptions to make them gender neutral. Look in the mirror Before you spend a fortune hiring consultants or upping your hiring bonuses, make sure the problem isnt staring back at you when you look in the mirror. Statistically speaking, if you are running an IT team, chances are youre a white male. The problem may not be in the pipeline but in your mind. Often our biases run counter to what we think of ourselves, explains Adams. They come up, though, in the hiring and recruitment process because, as humans, we naturally migrate towards people who are like us. Look in the mirror. Look at your web site. Look at your management team. Look at your staff. Does everyone look like you? You probably have an unconscious bias problem. This is complex and human. You cant expect yourself and your team to snap a finger and erase it. But there is training available. It helps. We did workshops on unconscious bias, explains Emily King, Human Resources Director for ScienceLogic. We dug into some brain science and talked about where our own gaps in awareness were. The goal was, simply before we did anything else to broaden our awareness. For many of Kings hiring managers, this became an ongoing process. It involved deep soul searching, an examination of what company culture means, and many one-on-one conversations. It was like therapy. We are uncomfortable with people who are not like us, says Adams. That feeling of discomfort often translates into not a fit. Discomfort, though, can be a sign that you should be considering this person more. Once people understand that, they are much better able to overcome it. Especially when it comes to interviews, says Daphne Wotherspoon, managing director at Hire Strategy and a board member of Women in Technology (WIT). You need to take a hard look at your unconscious bias. The people running the interviews may not intend to undermine your diversity goal, but that doesnt mean they arent. After King led ScienceLogics hiring managers through training on unconscious bias, one came to her, horrified. The thing you told me not to do, he lamented. That is exactly what I do. He had the best intentions, says King. But his process was filtering out people who were not like him. In the interviews, he asked what people like to do for fun. He often shared that he liked to hike. Some people would say, Me too! says King. He loved those people. But there were strong candidates who didnt want to talk about what they did on weekends or who did things he didnt like as much. He was shutting them down, says King. Not for any reason that pertained their ability to do the job. You want to know if this person has the right talent and skills. What they do for fun isn't relevant. This person hired a lot of people and was very upset to think that he may have been part of the companys diversity problem. King is sanguine. This is why we do this training, she says. This was the tweak we needed to make him a fantastic hiring manager. Do you have a pay disparity? Diversity hiring starts with equal pay, says Madden. Why would a woman join your team if she knows she will be underpaid? You dont think you have this problem. But are you sure? According to a recent survey by Hired, men are offered higher salaries than women for the same job at the same company 63 percent of the time. And according to the U.S. census, a woman earns 70 cents for every dollar a man earns. The same survey found that more than half of women know theyve been paid less than men in similar roles throughout their careers. The women suing Google certainly know they arent being paid the same as their male coworkers, even if Google denies it. I give Mark Benioff at Salesforce a lot of credit for how he handled this, says Adams. He didnt believe his company had a pay gap but when he was shown the numbers, proving the company did have a clear pay disparity between men and women, across the board in every department and in every geography, he corrected it. Then he came out and said, according to Adams. I am a tech guy and I fixed this. All of us need to fix this. This is the sort of change that likely brings in resumes or at least stops the mass exodus of women from your ranks. Two years ago, a Salesforce spokesperson explained. We made a commitment to ensure equal pay for equal work. Since then, we've conducted three global equal pay assessments, which resulted in the company spending $8.7 million to address unexplained differences in pay between men and women, as well as race and ethnicity in the U.S. Today, women make up 30.9 percent of our global workforce, up from 30.1 percent last year. Get out more If the people you are looking for arent coming to you, go to them. There are a myriad of job fairs and conferences in the world. If you are looking to hire women, go to a womans job conference. Minorities? Same. In addition to finding the pipeline you didnt think existed, you might learn something. I go to the Black Enterprise Tech Connext conference every year, says Adams. It reminds me what its like to feel different. Its a wonderful opportunity anyone can take to remind yourself of how others experience life and society. Many companies find female staff at the Women in Technology job fairs. This becomes a virtuous cycle, says WIT President Margo Dunn. Companies come to the job fairs looking for qualified candidates. And when they see the WIT community, they become sponsors because it offers even more opportunities. We have attended two WIT job fairs, says King. They were very rewarding. ScienceLogic treated it like a trade show and handed out company swag. A lot of the people attending were there to get information about companies they might consider working for. We hired a woman from the first conference and she is working out well, says King. We also networked with other companies at the show and, since, have been gaining more and more traction. Write and speak If you are trying to attract a diverse team, say so. Write about it on your blog. Speak about it at conferences. Share your thoughts in social media. When a person seeks a new job, says Madden, they are seeking a team where they will feel included and safe. What better way to show the world that you offer a diverse and inclusive environment than to speak and write about the topic? Make sure you mean it, though. If your team is racist or sexist, you're better off spending your time and energy fixing the problems within than touting falsehoods, says Madden. That sort of false advertising will likely inspire people who have experienced workplace harassment or sexism in your company to also speak up. It was one woman with a blog and a harrowing story of sexual harassment in the workplace that started the wheels in motion to bring down Ubers CEO. A well-trained military Around 200,000 people leave the military every year, says Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Chris Cortez, vice president of Microsoft Military Affairs. [At the same time, thousands of jobs in IT go unfilled. We thought if we could prepare the veterans who are interested in IT, we could offer them opportunities. Five years ago, the company started the Microsoft Software & Systems Academy, an 18-month program that teaches fundamental IT skills to veterans. This group is inherently diverse, says Cortez, of the programs graduates. They come from all over the country and from all kinds of backgrounds. This is diversity in a very real form. They bring with them not just their training from Microsoft but also military training. When you come out of the military, says Cortez, you bring experience and maturity. You know what its like to work with a diverse team. And that brings diversity of mindset. Microsoft and 360 other tech companies hire from this program. We have many fantastic employees that have come out of this program, says Cortez. Some of their stories are quite moving. Ryen Macababbad, for example, joined the military when she was twenty-two. After a traumatic experience in Afghanistan, she decided her military career was over. Not sure what to do next, she went through the MSSA program. Today, she is program manager for Azure Active Directory at Microsoft and was honored by Michelle Obama at the White House for her passion for technology. The MSSA program is expanding to fourteen locations and is poised to graduate 1,000 people a year. Have you tried peer-to-peer? The idea behind peer-to-peer hiring is that you look for talent in non-traditional ways. Instead of letting the hiring manager or human resources do the screening, interviewing, and hiring, get someone who is already doing the job to handle it. For example, a company is going to Cal Tech to recruit potential female hires for engineering," says Adams. "Someone from human resources, would attend with a Cal Tech grad currently working at the firm plus an engineer currently doing the job you are hiring for. If you are hoping to hire women, someone here should be female. This way, the potential new talent can understand the job, work environment, and the possible differences between the companys espoused values and the actual values at play. Another way to go about this is to hire through your current employee resource groups. So, if you want to find people of color to work in the IT department, ask people of color who already work in the IT department to attend events to network and identify potential new hires. Peer-to-peer hiring has the ability to focus on competence over consensus, since the peer often knows the job better than HR or the hiring manager, says Adams. An innovative internship program An industry of code-school boot camps has spawned to meet the bottomless demand for technical staff. Some of these even specialize in helping women transition from other industries into tech. The catch with most of them, is price. The UKs largest social care charities have said they will continue to pay sleep-in shift care workers the full minimum wage, despite a court ruling in July saying it was not mandatory. A Court of Appeal hearing involving Mencap ruled in July that workers on sleep-in shifts were not always entitled to the full minimum wage. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) updated its guidance this month to reflect the Court of Appeal ruling to say that employers are not necessarily required to pay sleep-in shift workers the full minimum wage. BEIS had previously published guidance in 2016 saying sleep-in shift workers were due the minimum wage for time spent at work but asleep, following employment tribunals which had ruled against Mencap. As a result of the employment tribunal hearings, many social care charities started paying top-up fees to sleep-in shift workers to bring their pay into line with the minimum wage. But since the Court of Appeal ruling, Alternative Futures Group, a charity, and an unnamed large council have both announced they are dropping pay for sleep-in shift workers back to below the minimum wage. However, the UKs ten largest charities that employ sleep-in shift workers, have all said they have no plans to follow suit and cut care workers pay. Jan Tregelles, chief executive of Mencap, said earlier this month that her charity had committed to paying the minimum wage for sleep-ins despite the ruling. Now, Leonard Cheshire, RNIB, Turning Point, Orders of St John Care Trust, Community Integrated Care, National Autistic Society, Sense, United Response and Hft have all told Civil Society News they have no plans to reduce funding. Unable to make long-term decisions However, some charities said their ability to continue paying top-up fees would depend on the funding they receive from commissioners, who are usually local authorities. Jacqui Roynon, executive director of people and communications at Hft said: While we firmly believe staff deserved to be paid fairly for the work that they do, our ability to pay is dependent on the money we receive from the local authority. Hft has contracts with over 100 local authorities across England, many of whom are still working out what the updated guidance from BEIS means for them and how it will affect the funding they give to providers. As a result, while we have already committed to paying top ups until at least the end of December to help our staff manage the increase costs associated with Christmas, we have not been able to make any firm decisions around the long term payment arrangements of sleep-in shifts. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Turning Point said the charity was waiting to see whether workers union Unison is successful in its application to appeal the latest Mencap ruling in the Supreme Court. They said: As with other organisations we follow with interest the potential appeal of the recent judgment and therefore have not changed our current approach. Councils still funding minimum wage Some 20 county councils in England have also told Civil Society News they have not made plans to cut funding for sleep-in shift workers since the Court of Appeal ruling. Cambridgeshire, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Dorset, East Sussex, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Leicestershire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Warwickshire, West Sussex and Worcestershire all said they had not reduced fees since July. An Essex County Council spokesperson said: Many providers in Essex have told us that they are not making any changes at present either. However, some councils said they were also waiting to see whether Unisons appeal would be heard. A spokesperson for Warwickshire County Council said: Legal advice suggests that there could be further change to the law depending on the progress of further appeals, so it is not possible to state that this matter is concluded. A spokesperson for Staffordshire County Council said: Whilst we are fully aware of the Mencap Court of Appeal ruling, we are also aware that this is currently being challenged by the unions. On this basis, Staffordshire havent currently made any changes to its funding of sleep in provisions but continue to review the situation. Somerset County Council also said it was awaiting a decision about the case being taken forward to the Supreme Court. Buckinghamshire, Devon, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, North Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Surrey are all yet to respond. Homelessness charity Depaul UK has appointed Paul McKenzie as its new executive director of fundraising and communications. McKenzie, who is currently head of philanthropy and partnerships at Battersea, is set to take up his new post with Depaul UK on 2 January 2019. He has worked at Battersea for over four years and, in that time, helped grow the organisations major gifts and corporate partnerships income from 666,000 to 3m, and built up a 17-strong team. He has worked in the fundraising sector for over 14 years and, prior to joining Battersea, worked for Age UK and Action for Children. McKenzie said his passion for solving the issue of homelessness was the reason why he decided to join Depaul UK. Since my first roles in the charity sector as a support worker for refugees and then homeless adults, I have been determined to be part of solving the issue of homelessness," he said. Throughout my 14 years in fundraising, I have always gravitated back towards the homelessness issue and how I could raise money to enable real change for those who many forget. McKenzie is the second senior fundraiser to leave Battersea since the summer. Liz Tait, the former director of fundraising at the charity, announced she would be leaving in August and took up her new role as director of fundraising at the Teenage Cancer Trust a few weeks ago. She had been director of fundraising at Battersea for nearly eight years and the charity are currently in the process of recruiting for her replacement. Speaking about McKenzies appointment, Mike Thiedke, chief executive of Depaul UK, said: Paul has an impressive track record of fundraising in the charitable sector, has led multi-disciplinary teams, developed and managed growth strategies and has applied a can-do, more-and-better approach to everything he does. He will lead cross-functional innovation specifically focusing on how fundraising, service/programme, finance and communications work together to maximise opportunity and outcome. McKenzie said: I have been a huge admirer of the work of Depaul UK and what the fundraising and communications team has achieved in the past four years. I am really excited about being part of Depaul UKs future and working with everyone at the charity to ensure we do everything we can to empower the thousands of young people who face homelessness every year. NORTH OLMSTED, Ohio - Melva Simulcik was among the first shoppers at the Sears store at Great Northern Mall early Friday morning before the rest of the mall opened, and she sounded offended while talking on the phone about one of her favorite places to shop. I was just talking to my brothers girlfriend, and she was surprised that theres still a Sears left in this area, said Simulcik, while looking at clothes in a sparse store. Ive always shopped at Sears, since I was a child when my parents used to bring me here. Simulcik, of Lorain, said she has so many good memories of Sears, except for one as a child, because she never did get her wish of a yellow Volkswagen in the Sears Wish Book. But looking around the fairly empty store on Black Friday morning, she feared it might be her last time shopping at Sears, one of four anchor department stores at the mall. Sears filed for bankruptcy in October, and its fighting hard not to slip into liquidation. Sears closed its SouthPark Mall location in September, making the Great Northern Mall location the last one in Northeast Ohio. I like the quality of the clothes here. Its always one of my first stops on Black Friday, but I shop here year-round for me and my husband. Id hate to see Sears close. A lot of stores at the mall just focus on the younger generation, but Sears serves multiples ages from young to old. Many retailers ring up a third or more of their sales during the holiday quarter. But for struggling retailers like Sears and other department stores, the pressure is on to earn enough money to support the business so it can simply stay alive. Last year, similarly challenged Toys R Us filed for bankruptcy shortly before the holidays. In March the retailer announced plans to liquidate. In August, Sears announced plans to close 46 more stores in November, the latest similar announcement for the struggling retailer. During the past five years, the company lost about $5.8 billion, and over the past decade, it shut more than 1,000 stores, leaving about 700 remaining. Founded shortly after the Civil War, the original Sears, Roebuck & Co. built a catalog business that sold Americans the latest dresses, toys, build-it-yourself houses and even tombstones. Sears was the Amazon of the 1930s. Until 1989 when Walmart surpassed it, Sears had the largest domestic revenue of any retailer in the United States. Amy Scullin, 53, of North Ridgeville, was shopping for her 4-year-old granddaughter at Sears, and while she was disappointed with the selection of kids clothes, she was happy to discover a hard-to-find snowsuit. Actually me and my friends always preferred J.C. Penney over Sears, but that company is struggling too. I get why they started catering more to younger people, and my daughters like the Sephora store in J.C. Penney, but I started shopping more at Sears. Its really sad that these stores are struggling, because its hard to order online. I hate returning things from online shopping. But I can see why theyre having a hard time. Look around. Its time to shop for Christmas and theres hardly anyone in here." Sears store General Manager Bradley Gilbo said the early morning sparse store on Black Friday morning was the exact opposite on Thanksgiving Day when the store closed at midnight. Last night the mall was so busy. We had lots of customers. We had some drowsy associates because of turkey, but yesterday was pretty awesome, he said. Gilbo pointed to Sears circular, and talked about how Black Friday is just not the same anymore, with so many deals offered before the actual day. You could get anything in this flyer a week ago, on Sunday. Its supposed to be a private members event, but we let anybody make purchases. Weve been doing that for the last few years, he said. Ohioans expected to increase holiday spending from last year: Earlier this week, economic forecasters said they expect Ohio shoppers to increase holiday spending by 3.2 percent over last year. Ohio consumer confidence continues to soar, according to the annual forecast ahead of Black Friday and the December holiday season that comes from the University of Cincinnati Economics Center. It's in conjunction with the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants and its research arm Focus on Ohios Future. The state is seeing continued growth in jobs, wages, housing prices and other key indicators, forecasters said as they projected retail spending to climb to nearly $24.9 billion, up from $24.1 million in 2017. More than half of the state's spending will come in the Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus metro areas, with Cleveland sales growth leading those three areas with a projected 3.8 percent. Sears needs more than same loyal shoppers At Sears at Great Northern Mall, Sue and Steve Hadick, of Independence shopped for stocking stuffers in the tools department. When you walk in and the store looks so empty its sad, said Sue, 52. But her husband had way more to say. Ive shopped here for tools for years. Its where my parents shopped. I remember coming to Sears so much as a kid, said Hadick, 57. Growing up, I used to love going to the candy counter at the store on 117th street, buying candy by the scoop. I always got those little chocolate stars. Sears has always been in my life. They gave me my first credit card and I still have it. It helped to get my credit started and I have loyalty to this company.but yeah, I assume that this will probably be it for Sears. On Friday morning, Nick Theodore, 27, and his wife, Cayla, 26, were shopping for shoes, in a store with mostly middle-aged shoppers. I find good work clothes and boots at Sears for a decent price, said Theodore, who turns to Sears for attire needed for manufacturing and construction jobs. Im not a fan of their tools anymore though since they sold off their Craftsman line last year. We do a lot of shopping online. Cayla said she hopes Sears doesnt close though, noting that she and her husband were at the Sears in Middleburg Heights last year right before it closed. But the couple said they didnt go to the store because of memories about Sears or their selection. We went to find deals, he said. Were not that sentimental. CLEVELAND, Ohio The overwhelming question arising from Wednesdays release of an exhaustive U.S. Marshals Service report about inhumane conditions at the Cuyahoga County jail is this: How did things get so bad? The answer, according to a two-month cleveland.com investigation, is money. While crowding overwhelmed the understaffed jail, while conditions throughout the facility worsened while seven inmates died in four months -- the chief conversation by county officials about the jail was about how much revenue could result from a game-changing consolidation of jails throughout the county. The deaths, between June 10 and Oct. 2, happened as Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish commenced his long planned merging of many city and township jails including Clevelands -- into the system operated by the county. At every juncture of the planning, the chief benefit discussed was money how much savings the cooperating cities would realize, and how much revenue the county could generate for itself. Last year, Budish said that jail regionalization would bring in $5.5 million to the county over two years. Maggie Keenan, county director of the Office of Budget and Management administration, said at an April 3 committee meeting that more money could be brought in if the county continued to add more inmates. If more than half of the jails beds were filled as a result of taking on regional inmates, the county would break even, Keenan said. But money raised beyond that break-even point by filling more beds would then be used to shore up the county budget. That would happen by using the extra revenue to pay jail expenses, including administrator salaries, that for years have been paid from county taxes, county spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan said after weeks of questioning by cleveland.com. To understand the breadth of the issues involving the jail, cleveland.com spent months conducting dozens of interviews of current and former corrections officers, inmates, medical staff and other employees, and reviewing several lawsuits, the countys own budget projections and public records. The sources agreed to speak with cleveland.com under the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation. They attributed that decision to the ousting of Gary Brack, a former medical supervisor at the jail who was forced out after speaking critically of now-former jail director Ken Mills during a County Council committee meeting. Regionalization and revenue The drumbeat of talks over regionalizing the county jail system have been persistent since the days of the county commissioner form of government, which ended in 2010. The talks began in earnest with the first county executive, Ed FitzGerald, who reached a tentative deal with the city that he did not complete before leaving office. Budish made jail consolidation a top priority when he took office in 2015. And when he went out to sell it, he talked about the money. The county sold the idea to cities and townships as a way for them to save money and get out of the jail business, which is often one of the costliest and most difficult local government functions. County officials argued that they were the authority on running a jail anyway, since they are one of the largest jails in the state. Fitzgerald created a new position, director of regional corrections, specifically to shepherd regionalization throughout the county, but never filled it. Budish hired Mills, who did not require confirmation from the County Council, despite his lack of experience working in or running jails. He was the only person considered for the job. Mills was persuasive. Cleveland signed on. The county cut deals with Euclid, Bedford Heights, Woodmere, Bratenahl, Richmond Heights, Highland Hills and Moreland Hills. As many as 16 other Cuyahoga County communities told the county that they are be interested in signing over their prisoners, Mills told council members earlier this year. Not part of the sales pitch to the cities was the benefit to the countys coffers of consolidation. Bringing inmates from cities and townships under the county umbrella and charging them $99 per day per inmate -- would grow the countys revenues. County officials said in various public meetings in late 2017 and early 2018 that they expected net revenue from jail regionalization to be between $1.7 million and $5.5 million per year. As long as we keep the beds filled up, I think its a very safe projection, Mills told County Council on April 3. At the same time, records show the county spent less money on basic supplies for inmates, such as toilet paper, under Mills direction. They reduced the cost of inmate meals. Mills also sought to cut costs by switching the jails providers of food and medical care. Last fall, Budish proposed the regionalization plan as a way to help close a gap in the budget, primarily triggered by the loss of $60 million in state money. More than a year later, Keenan backtracked, saying the jail revenue proposal was mistakenly included in a list of ways to address that budget shortfall, and that all money from the jail would be used on jail expenses or expansion. But because county taxes were subsidizing the jail, getting revenue from consolidation to pay jail expenses could free up tax money for other uses. The consolidation had startup costs. The $99 per-day rate paid by Cleveland and others was to be used, in part, to pay for jail expansion, but that expansion would be paid off in the first two years. After that, the county would have extra money to put back into the general fund. Under questioning by cleveland.com about the county using the jail to generate revenue, Keenan said something Monday that she had never said before: The actual per-diem cost could drop after the startup costs were covered. If that happened, Keenan said the county would charge Cleveland, or any other municipality, less money per inmate. That has never before been publicly discussed and it was not mentioned when Cleveland first announced the deal, which allows the county to increase the per-diem rate by 2 percent annually. County officials say they plan to reinvest all additional revenue made from regionalization into jail operations and expansion. Again, though, because the county uses tax dollars to pay for much of the jail operations, any revenue from consolidation used for jail operations would free up tax dollars now spent on the jail to be used elsewhere. Meanwhile, conditions at the jail get worse, and inmates start dying During all of the selling and planning for consolidation, conditions were getting worse in the downtown jail, as the marshals investigation ultimately showed. The county absorbed the Cleveland prisoners over the summer and negotiated with small police departments for handling their prisoners. Inmates started dying in June, but the revenue-generating plans for consolidation continued. Finally, after the seventh death, Budish put regionalization on hold. Because it doesnt make sense to add more prisoners if we cant handle them, Budish told cleveland.com. When did the project go so far off the rails? The influx of Clevelands 160 inmates clearly overwhelmed a county system that already was over capacity. Mills had told County Council members that he expected a smooth transition of adding Cleveland inmates to the jail and only foresaw paperwork issues. Paperwork issues did arise, and they led to inmates being jailed for several days without seeing a judge or being formally charged with a crime. In one case, a man with a simple traffic ticket spent six days in jail before seeing a judge. Several others were held for more than five days without seeing a judge or without being charged with a crime, the records show. But paperwork issues dont result in deaths. The crowding and inhumane conditions were the likely culprits for that, and the marshals report says 55 inmates tried to kill themselves in a single year. Mistreatment of inmates included: Locking them down for 27 hours at a time, because the jail was too understaffed to monitor them in dayrooms Forcing some 100 inmates to sleep on mattresses on the floor every night Jail officials, including the warden, withheld food as punishment Pregnant inmates were seen sleeping on the floors A specialized squad of paramilitary officers known as the Men in Black routinely intimidated and harassed inmates Inmates were denied access to running water and toilets for hours at a time Vermin and mice infested food storage areas Inmates with mental illnesses were placed in isolation and denied access to mental health care for the duration of their stay Child inmates are housed with adults, and are subjected to the same lockdowns And the list goes on. Budish said he had no idea conditions were so bad until receiving the marshals report. He said he requested the marshals investigation because he was shocked by the seven deaths. Cleveland.com asked Budish whether he asked questions about whether the jail had the resources to absorb so many prisoners, feed them, see to their medical needs and keep them safe. He said he relied on state inspection reports that gave the jail good reviews as proof that the jail had the capacity. Consider the contrast. When it came to the money, Budish has for months been able to speak with specifics about the costs and the revenues. When it came to the mechanics, his answer almost always came back to state inspection reports. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction inspected the jail twice since June, a criminal investigation is underway in connection with the death of one of the inmates and the FBI is investigating a use-of-force involving an inmate and a corrections officer. The state inspections overlooked many of the more inhumane aspects of the U.S. Marshals examination of the jail, Budish and the sheriff both noted that jail officials are given significant notice ahead of state inspections. U.S. Marshal Pete Elliott, who organized the investigation, explained why the state and federal investigations reached different conclusions. At the end of the day this is the difference: If a father thinks somethings wrong with his son, goes and walks around his bedroom, walks out and thinks everythings okay. Then the mother goes up to the bedroom, looks in the dresser, looks under the bed, looks under the curtains and finds things, Elliott said. Thats the difference. Thats what the federal part is. They looked behind the curtains when they saw curtains. And across the board, they found it to be unsatisfactory. However, a consistent concern of state investigators was always the population of the jail, and Budish and his jail administrators continued to court inmates for a jail they knew was already crowded. In earlier discussions with cleveland.com, both Mills and Budish discussed something called red-zoning, which is a practice in understaffed jails where a single corrections officer oversees between 100 to 200 inmates spread across two to four hosing areas called pods. It often resulted in large groups of inmates placed on lockdown for hours with little to pass the time. The marshals report showed that some lockdowns went on for up to 27 consecutive hours, or the same inmates were locked down for 12 days in a row. Sources and documents obtained by cleveland.com showed that red-zoning leads to corrections officers being overwhelmed with routine tasks, responding to individual inmate needs and questions, helping to distribute food and medicine, and checking on inmates every 15 minutes, as county policy requires. As the jail population continued its rise, so did the frequency of red-zoning and locking inmates down for most of the day. Mills said in October that jail supervisors try to plan out daily staffing so the same inmates arent locked down for two days in a row. He acknowledged, however, thats not always possible. You try everything you can to keep someone from being on lockdown two days in a row, Mills said. But sometimes its staffing. Its what happens. Staff shortages There were 553 corrections officers at the downtown jail at the time of the most recent death, 60 below what the jail needs to meet national jail staffing standards. Budish said in October that he authorized the county to hire those additional officers, but acknowledged that if everything goes according to plan, it would take until spring of 2019 at the earliest to train and hire them all. The lockdowns and high population create tension among the corrections officers, sources said. Budish and Mills both blamed the problems on corrections officers calling off work. The union that represents the corrections officers also acknowledge the call-offs are an issue. The two sides are at odds as to why. The union says that the conditions at the jail are so bad the officers get burned out. They say officers must watch multiple pods at the same time, and that supervisors require them to work four hours of overtime at the end of their shift when someone else calls off. The officers who are forced to stay the extra time get more burned out and end up calling off sick, forcing another corrections officer to work overtime in a cycle that seemingly has no end. Mills said the county has tried to aggressively hire new corrections officers for years, and Budish said that the staff level increased under Mills. But theyve only raised their staffing level by about 10 officers during Mills tenure, Budish said in October, and there was a mass exodus of officers retiring or resigning in 2017. Budish, along with the Ohio Police Benevolent Association, the union that represents corrections officers, said theyve struggled to get candidates to apply, and the ones who do dont always make it through training and their probationary term. The county also expected to hire 60 Cleveland City Jail officers after the transition, but only got 30. The officers are hired at $15.31 per hour. Mills said they planned on offering jobs to 35 candidates after they pass their corrections training program at Cuyahoga Community College this month. He said new hires will be used to help reduce daytime lockdowns. Even if the jail was at full staff, however, current corrections officers say tensions with the administration are constant and hamper their ability to do their jobs. Several said they worry about the well-being of inmates and themselves and have tried to bring safety concerns to the attention of administrators, but those concerns are routinely ignored. The OPBA in 2017 offered to pay for an independent review of the jails policies and procedures, but the county denied the request, OPBA Attorney Dan Leffler said. A county spokeswoman did not respond to questions about why the county declined the unions offer. Budish acknowledged Wednesday that there are entrenched problems within the jail administration, and, in the same meeting, Cuyahoga County Sheriff Clifford Pickney said that more jail administrators could head to the chopping block -- including current warden Eric Ivey in order to win back the confidence of the corrections staff. The directors of the union have filed several grievances against the county regarding several issues around overcrowding, double-podding and officer safety. In many cases, those grievances receive blanket denials, the union said, meaning problems arent fixed in the short-term and can often drag out for months. The union in August filed an Unfair Labor Practices charge against the county about those blanket denials. The two sides met Oct. 11 with a State Employee Relations Board mediator. A ruling has not yet been made. Whats the county going to do about it? Budish pointed out that the jail administration does not choose how many inmates are sent to the jail or for what crimes, but he continues to acknowledge the jails problem with overpopulation. But without a steady stream of money, Budishs financial plans for his regionalized jail system fall apart. There are two major hurdles to fixing problems in the jail, Budish said. Both are long-term, systemic changes that will require money, time and collaboration. This became more apparent Wednesday as Budish and Pinkney continued to grapple with the magnitude of the findings contained in the marshals' report. Budish has previously pointed to bail reform efforts as one way to reduce low-level crime suspects in jail. But Budish said he cant implement those reforms on his own. You have to have the agreements between the municipal judges and the common pleas judges, Budish said. No one can just mandate that this comes together. The second long-term solution is the need for a new Justice Center. Budish and Mills said the jail's outdated physical structure makes it difficult to monitor inmates efficiently. A decision about whether to remodel the current jail or build a new one was expected by the end of 2018, but that process has been delayed because Budish and the judges have yet to reach an agreement on specifics of the plan. However, the marshals report underscored a number of urgent potential civil rights issues that the county wont have the luxury to address when it has the resolve or extra cash on hand. Other measures being proposed to reduce population include implementing a mental health diversion program, re-entry programs, and additional use of GPS tracking in lieu of jailing. Two other programs aimed at reducing jail population are also being developed in conjunction with the courts, but those are months or years away from implementation. The problems within the jail prompted all 34 Cuyahoga County Common Pleas judges to say they no longer trust the jail administrators assurances that they will fix the problems. They accused Budishs administration of indifference. A Cleveland judge also made national headlines when he said he would no longer send non-violent offenders to the jail for fear theyd end up dead. The county promised in a press release to open the Bedford Heights Jail at least one month before it started accepting city inmates. They were moved into the county jail this summer, but by October, Bedford Heights Jail could only accommodate 60 people not the 200 it is expected to hold. Budish said in October that once Bedford Heights Jail is operating at that full capacity, it will help alleviate the crowding at the downtown jail. County officials said they never intended to fill the Bedford Heights facility to capacity after it first opened, and that a lack of corrections officers and nurses contributed to a delay in moving inmates out of the downtown jail. Other plans to reduce overpopulation in the downtown jail included renovating an old kitchen into housing at the downtown jail and bringing the Euclid jail up to capacity it can hold 83 people, but only about 45 were being held there in October. Mills and Budish told cleveland.com that once Euclid and Bedford Heights are up to capacity and the downtown jail is expanded, there will be 350 more beds for inmates. Those projects werent complete before the county opened the doors of the downtown jail to inmates from the city. And even if the plans for expansion in Bedford Heights and at the downtown jail went through, the downtown jail would still be over capacity by about 100 to 350 inmates, depending on the day. Morocco, which is located only 8.6 miles (14 Km) away from Spain, is facing a growing number of migrants from around Africa attempting to cross to Europe from its Northern coasts. Moroccan authorities have foiled 68,000 illegal migration attempts and dismantled 122 human trafficking networks since 2002, said on Thursday Junior Interior Minister Noureddine Boutayeb at the Africa Security Forum held by Atlantic think tank in Rabat. He also said the North African Kingdom has seized 2,000 migrant smuggling boats since 2002 and dismantled 185 terrorist networks during the same period. Morocco had called on European and African countries to enhance dialogue on migration, saying Euro-African migration cooperation should be based on solidarity with African countries and not focusing only on border control and the fight against criminal networks. Migration is a global issue, which should be tackled through a comprehensive and open approach seeking to consolidate peace, stability and development of the African continent. Morocco will host Dec.10-11 the intergovernmental conference on international migration. The UN conference is expected to work out a global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration. The global compact for migration will be the first inter-governmentally negotiated agreement prepared under the auspices of the United Nations, to cover all dimensions of international migration in a holistic and comprehensive manner. Defending the landmark migration compact, President of the UN General Assembly, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, said the accord is a tool that would ensure all migrants everywhere have their rights safeguarded and are treated fairly. The Compact allows enormous flexibility for countries to use the parts of the compact that can be adapted to their sovereign decisions and existing legal frameworksit is a cooperation instrument, said Ms. Espinosa, briefing reporters at UN Headquarters in New York recently. Democrats will investigate President Donald Trump's financial ties to Saudi Arabia as part of a "deep dive" on the kingdom when majority control of the House changes hands in January, the lawmaker in line to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said in a Washington Post interview published Friday. "There are a whole set of potential financial conflicts of interest and emoluments problems that Congress will need to get to the bottom of," Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told Greg Sargent, a liberal columnist for the paper. "Certainly if foreign investment in the Trump businesses is guiding U.S. policy in a way that's antithetical to the country's interests, we need to find out about it." Trump has repeatedly said he has no financial interests in Saudi Arabia, but he has also boasted about making millions of dollars from the Saudis. Indeed, business from Saudi-based customers helped buoy revenue this year at Trump namesake hotels in New York and Chicago, according to a Washington Post report. A spokesman for Schiff did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for further comment on the lawmaker's interview with the Post. A representative for the White House also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Schiff's statements. Schiff's remarks on his party's plans to investigate Trump's ties to the Saudis came amid the president's response to the death of Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi royal family who was killed inside the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul in October. Multiple outlets reported last week that the CIA concluded with high confidence that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing. But Trump, in a lengthy, combative statement Tuesday that was full of political slogans and exclamation points, asserted that the U.S. stands with Saudi Arabia as a crucial ally as the Trump administration pursues its economic and national security goals. On the question of whether the crown prince knew in advance about the slaying, Trump said: "Maybe he did and maybe he didn't!" The president appeared to go even further to defend the young Saudi leader on Wednesday, telling reporters outside his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida that the crown prince "denies it vehemently." Trump added: "I hate the crime, I hate the cover-up. I will tell you this: The crown prince hates it more than I do." Saudi Arabia initially insisted that Khashoggi, who had entered the consulate in Turkey on Oct. 2 and was never seen outside it again, had left voluntarily shortly after he arrived. But as the evidence mounted and a crescendo of criticism from international leaders intensified the kingdom eventually admitted that Khashoggi had been killed, calling it "an unfortunate accident." To be sure, the Trump administration on Nov. 15 announced sanctions under the Magnitsky Act against 17 people alleged to have been involved in the killing. Schiff told the Post's Sargent that the Intelligence Committee will be looking into what U.S. intelligence services know about Khashoggi's death, as well as Trump's response to it. Schiff said House committees will probe Trump's international financial ties with Saudi Arabia and other nations although it is yet unclear which committees will take on what tasks. The lawmaker said the "deep dive" on Saudi Arabia will also touch on the U.S. relationship to the kingdom in general, as well as the Saudi-led war in Yemen and the stability of the Saudi royal family. Schiff is one of Trump's most prominent critics on Capitol Hill and in the media, as well as one of the most vocal defenders of special counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He is poised to lead the Intelligence Committee as chairman when the next Congress convenes Jan. 3. Schiff has already signaled his intention to revive and expand the panel's own probe of Russian election meddling, which Democrats claim was prematurely concluded by the Republican majority. The Intelligence Committee's investigation, led by staunch Trump ally Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., found "no evidence" of coordination between Trump's 2016 campaign and the Kremlin. European Union negotiators meet on Friday to try to clear the last hurdle before a Sunday summit is due to endorse the Brexit deal, but Spain's eleventh-hour objections over Gibraltar mean the final text could not be ready until the last minute. Four months before Britain leaves the EU, the legal divorce treaty and an accompanying political declaration on the two sides' future ties are ready to be rubber-stamped by British Prime Minister Theresa May and the leaders of the 27 union states staying on together after Brexit. Spain has asked for changes to the withdrawal treaty and the declaration on a new EU-UK relationship to make clear any decisions about the disputed British overseas territory of Gibraltar would only be taken in direct talks with Madrid. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Thursday that Spain will veto the draft deal on Britain's exit from the European Union, if there are no changes made. "After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away. My government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit", Sanchez said in a tweet. Pedro Sanchez on Twitter: After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away. My Government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit. Under EU rules, the withdrawal treaty is adopted by qualified majority and not unanimity, so a single state cannot block it. EU leaders, however, seek unity on this most politically sensitive matter. The Brexit package faces vehement opposition in the British parliament, which must vote in favor for it to take effect. Otherwise Britain risks crashing out of the bloc on March 29, 2019, without an agreement to mitigate economic disruptions. Determined not to allow any redrafting of either of the two texts and risk derailing the fragile process, EU states have instead proposed to address Spain's concerns in a separate statement by the 27 leaders on Sunday that would not be part of negotiations with Britain. The national leaders' EU negotiators or "sherpas" meet at 0900 GMT on Friday in Brussels and May will then come for talks with the head of the bloc's executive, Jean-Claude Juncker, on Saturday evening, just hours before the summit. EU diplomats hope a text could be agreed by Friday evening but they also fear Sanchez would want to make a case of discussing it at the top level on Sunday to show determination and win points with voters at home ahead of a December regional election. The Brexit deal covers financial settlement, expatriates' rights and the sensitive Irish border, as well as setting a blueprint for future trade and security ties. It must also be backed by the European Parliament to come into force next year. Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) and Philippines' President Rodrigo Duterte (R) raise a toast during a state banquet at the Malacanang Presidential Palace in Manila on November 20, 2018. MARK R. CRISTINO | AFP | Getty Images Two years since Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte began warming up to China in exchange for promised investments, Manila is still waiting for the financing. In 2016, Duterte secured $24 billion in investment, credit and loan pledges from Chinese President Xi Jinping's government to upgrade his country's infrastructure. But Xi's government has yet to deliver. To date, Beijing has promised Manila 10 big-ticket infrastructure projects but only one has moved toward implementation, political scientist Richard Heydarian told CNBC. In the meantime, Duterte has been "soft peddling on the South China Sea disputes and towing the Chinese line," he said. China and the Philippines have contesting territorial claims in the South China Sea, an international waterway that Beijing largely claims as its own despite nearly unanimous diplomatic opinion to the contrary. Former Philippine President Benigno Aquino launched a formal case against China over the matter and in 2016, the Hague tribunal ruled in favor of Manila, invalidating Beijing's claims. Chinese officials, however, dismissed that ruling. Critics say Duterte has not done enough to demand China's compliance on the issue. A few months after the court's decision, the Philippine leader made a dramatic about-turn on foreign policy in declaring a separation from Manila's historic ally, the United States choosing instead to align with Beijing. Duterte's alliance with the Communist country has angered many Filipinos who accuse him of making geopolitical concessions in the South China Sea for Chinese capital that has yet to materialize. Nearly half of Duterte's proposed 75 infrastructure projects the pillar of his $180 billion "Build, Build, Build" economic strategy were earmarked for Chinese funds but financing has only come through for three ventures, according to Reuters. Philippine Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno on Monday publicly acknowledged the slow pace of Chinese investment. The Philippine president continues to enjoy widespread support, but polls reveal public reservations about his China stance. More than 80 percent of Filipinos felt their country should oppose Beijing's militarization of its man-made islands in the South China Sea, according to a Monday survey from research institute Social Weather Station. Where's the money? During Xi's visit to the Philippine capital this week, the two nations signed 29 agreements on a variety of areas such as education cooperation and industrial park development. But upon closer examination of the deals, "much is yet to be desired," said Heydarian. The bulk of those agreements were just memorandums of understanding and vague frameworks, he said: "Very few of them have anything to do with major implementation of infrastructure projects." President Duterte is in a weak position against China and he put himself there. Malcolm Cook senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute In a statement on Wednesday, Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo said the bilateral friendship "should not come at the expense of the interests of our people and our nation." The Philippines' sovereignty "must not be compromised in any agreement we enter into with any country," she added. During Xi's trip, the two leaders pledged to manage contentious issues in the South China Sea but it's not clear whether Duterte pressed the Chinese president on the 2016 court ruling. The two countries also signed a pact to jointly explore oil and gas development in the disputed waterway even though the ruling stipulates that Beijing has no sovereign rights to the area. "President Duterte is in a weak position against China and he put himself there," said Malcolm Cook, senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a Singapore think tank. "He embraced closer relations with China so quickly and so fully after coming to power that he gave them what they wanted before China had to reciprocate, so it is not a surprise that China's promised economic benefits to the Philippines are fewer and slower than promised." The pan-European Stoxx 600 moved lower in the early afternoon but recovered ground to close Friday's session provisionally 0.42 percent higher by the closing bell. Oil prices slumped to their lowest levels in more than a year on Friday, deepening a rapid seven-week sell-off that has plunged crude futures deep into a bear market. Friday's declines further ramp up the pressure on OPEC ahead of a much-anticipated meeting between the influential oil cartel and its allied partners. OPEC and non-OPEC members are expected to start curtailing output at a meeting in Vienna on December 6. By the close of trade WTI sat at around $51.13 per barrel and Brent Crude was at $58.83. The Stoxx Euro Oil and Gas sector shed 2.9 percent Europe's banking index moved into positive territory on Friday, up around 0.5 percent amid support from Italy's notoriously fragile lenders. Banco BPM, Unicredit and Ubi Banca were all trading more than 2 percent higher after the country's deputy prime minister, Luigi Di Maio, reportedly said Rome would show the highest willingness to work with European institutions in order to resolve a budget stand-off. However, Di Maio also told La Repubblica Friday that Italy would not be prepared to amend the main pillars of its expansionary 2019 budget. The European Commission has already rejected the country's big spending plans, saying it fails to bring down the deficit as required by EU regulations. Looking at other individual stocks, Britain's Flybe surged towards the top of the London Stock Exchange on Friday. It comes after the regional airline confirmed Virgin Atlantic was one of the parties it was in talks with as part of a formal sales process. Rival airlines including Ryanair and Easyjet had previously ruled themselves out of bidding for Flybe. Shares of the stock rose more than 70 percent on the news, albeit from a low base.. Formula One the popular motor racing event has had a hard time cracking the U.S. market, but it may finally be on the right track, the chief executive of McLaren Racing said. "Well, they're starting to get it right now. What they got wrong is they didn't have the same venue that they were going to ... it's been in Phoenix, it's been in Detroit, it's been in Dallas, it's been in Indianapolis, I don't think that has helped that lack of consistency," Zak Brown, the CEO of the company, told CNBC's "Capital Connection" on Friday. "Now, we've solved that with Austin, that was an outstanding race. I think we need another race," he added. Austin has hosted the race since 2012. Miami was supposed to be added into the Formula One 2019 race calendar, but that plan has been postponed potentially to 2020. Attendance at U.S. Grand Prix fell in 2017 by 4.4 percent from a year ago. But Brown said that could be changing soon. "It is growing in America but from a small base," he said. "I think we need to pick a plan, stay the course. I think it can be very popular in America." Disclosure: CNBC has a partnership with McLaren. European leaders should push for greater control over immigration in order to deal with the rise of right-wing politics, according to former Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton. "I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame," Clinton told U.K. newspaper The Guardian in an interview published Thursday. Clinton suggested that immigration was inflaming voters and contributed to the election of President Donald Trump and Britain's June 2016 vote to leave the EU. As Europe started to recover from its financial woes following its sovereign debt crisis of 2011, the continent witnessed an influx of migrants and refugees fleeing conflict in the Middle East, particularly the civil war in Syria. German Chancellor Angela Merkel garnered praise in many quarters for her principled stance when migration peaked allowing over 1 million migrants to enter the country in 2015 but the decision also cost her dearly. Her position on migration has been cited as a reason that her party didn't fare so well in the country's last election and fueled the rise of right-wing party the Alternative for Germany. "I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message 'We are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support' because if we don't deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic." Clinton's interview with The Guardian is available to read on its website here. CNBC's Holly Ellyatt contributed to this article. WATCH: The economic cost of immigration detention Jerome Corsi, who wrote "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, walks down a corridor Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2008 as he arrives at the immigration department in Nairobi, Kenya. Jerome Corsi, a right-wing conspiracy theorist and associate of political operative Roger Stone, is in plea negotiations with special counsel Robert Mueller. Corsi confirmed the talks, first reported by The Washington Post, to NBC News on Friday. Corsi's attorney, David Gray, declined comment on the negotiations. A special counsel spokesman also declined to comment. Corsi said in an interview with NBC earlier this month that Mueller's team told him he would be indicted. Gray had previously told journalists the special counsel's office likely put Corsi in its cross hairs because of his connections to Stone. Mueller is investigating Russian election interference during the 2016 presidential election, as well as potential collusion between the Kremlin and Trump campaign-related people. The investigators are reportedly looking into U.S. individuals' contacts with WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing database that published stolen emails of Democratic leaders during the 2016 campaign. U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that the emails were hacked and shared by Russian government-backed sources. Stone, a longtime confidant of President Donald Trump, hinted that he had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks' plans to leak the emails from high-ranking Democrats, including Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign chairman John Podesta. The Post reported that Corsi provided research on Democrats to Stone during the campaign. Stone has since denied that he had any inside information about WikiLeaks. In a statement, Stone said: "It is clear from his recent videos and his recent interviews that my friend Dr. Corsi has been under a tremendous amount of pressure and it is beginning to affect him profoundly." He added: "As for what he may have known and when he may have known it, his discussions with me regarding the Podesta brothers were strictly limited to their overseas business interests unearthed in the Panama Papers and other public sources that were writing about John and Tony's activities. To the best of my recollection, there was not one publication, mainstream or otherwise, that ever mentioned John Podesta's email prior to their posting by WikiLeaks. As I told The Washington Post if Dr. Corsi knew that John Podesta's emails had been obtained by anyone and would be published he never shared this information with me nor did he give me any such documents." Andrew Gillum would be governor of Florida if the polls were infallible. Photo: Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images One of the great postelection rituals of the recent past has been to assess and in some quarters, to excoriate the accuracy of public opinion polls. It was a natural preoccupation after the Trump shocker of 2016, which took people by surprise in part because most of the better-regarded national polls did not predict it. In retrospect, the national polls didnt do badly at all that year, as Nate Silver explained: Trump outperformed his national polls by only 1 to 2 percentage points in losing the popular vote to Clinton, making them slightly closer to the mark than they were in 2012. Meanwhile, he beat his polls by only 2 to 3 percentage points in the average swing state.3 Certainly, there were individual pollsters that had some explaining to do, especially in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where Trump beat his polls by a larger amount. But the result was not some sort of massive outlier; on the contrary, the polls were pretty much as accurate as theyd been, on average, since 1968. Still, many Republicans have continued to believe that pollsters are generally part of a media establishment conspiring to undermine their confidence via the fake news of cooked data, as their leader has suggested: The two fake news polls released yesterday, ABC & NBC, while containing some very positive info, were totally wrong in General E. Watch! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 24, 2017 Trump will tout a Rasmussen poll now and then, but only if it confirms his conviction that hes winning so much on every front at every moment. So as part of their intense effort (before and after the election) to spin the 2018 midterms as a split decision if not an actual triumph, there was some talk of systemic pro-Democratic polling bias once again. Unless you insist on making the entire election about a handful of cherry-picked contests, the evidence is clear that the polls were reasonably accurate in 2018, and didnt really err in any one direction when they were off a bit. Harry Enten made the case for a good polling year earlier this week: Nonpartisan polls taken within three weeks of the 2018 election were far more accurate than the average poll since 1998. Nonpartisan House polls have historically missed the mark by an average of 5.9 points. This year it was just 4.9 points. Again, that means the average district poll was a full point closer to the result than usual. Statewide polling also had a strong year, although it should be noted that Senate and governors polling did pick fewer winners than usual. The average poll in the Senate was off by only 4.2 points. The average Senate poll historically has been off by 5.2 points, which means this years polls were a point better than average. Likewise, the average governors poll had an error rate of 4.4 points. Thats 0.7 point more accurate than the average governors poll since 1998. The reason for the pick fewer winners problem wasnt so much polling error as the exceptional number of very close races. The gold-standard Cook Political Report rated nine Senate races and 12 gubernatorial races as toss-ups. There were a few races which happened to be very high-profile contests where the polls seemed to be off more than a hair, such as the Florida governors race, where the RealClearPolitics polling average on election eve showed Andrew Gillum up by nearly four points; it showed a slight lead for Bill Nelson in the same state; both lost by an eyelash. And the polls missed Mike Brauns solid Senate win in Indiana. But the RCP averages correctly predicted the outcome of many cliff-hangers like the Georgias governors race and Senate contests in Missouri, Montana, and Texas. Where there were mistakes, they didnt follow any partisan pattern, as Nate Cohn observed in his review of midterm polling: On average, the polls were biased toward Democrats (meaning the Democrats did worse in the elections than polls indicated they would) by 0.4 points, making this years polls the least biased since 2006 and nothing like the polls in 2016, which were three points more Democratic than the results. And if you get into particular types of races, as Harry Enten did, the partisan errors were mixed: The average governor and Senate polls were about a point more favorable to the Democrats than the result. The average generic congressional ballot and House district polls were less than a point more favorable to Republicans than the actual result. Since sky-high turnout (the highest as a percentage of eligible voters in a midterm in over a century) may have been the biggest surprise of the elections, and the one pollsters would have had the hardest time predicting, the overall accuracy and balance were especially impressive. Certain types of voters, however, still seem to marginally elude pollsters, notes Cohn: The higher-than-expected turnout might have inadvertently contributed to a 2016-like pattern, since lower-turnout voters in the big urban states tend to be nonwhite and Democratic, while lower-turnout voters in rural, less educated states tend to be white working-class voters. In the Times Upshot/Siena polls, undecided voters tended to follow a similar pattern: In the Sun Belt, the undecided voters tended to be nonwhite Democrats; in the North, they were more likely to be white voters without a degree. So unsurprisingly, polls again tended to underestimate Republican votes in states with big white working-class populations and to underestimate Democratic voters in states with large nonwhite populations. And very late trends in undecided voters which polls always miss to some extent may have mattered here and there as well. From a consumers point of view (and no one consumes polls quite like a daily political writer like yours truly), the big new development in 2018 was the large battery of House polls conducted by the New York Times in conjunction with Siena College. The combine not only supplied rare data on competitive House races (where a lot of the polling is private), but hit the mark quite often, as Enten notes: [The] increase in accuracy [in House races] was driven in large part by the Siena College/New York Times polls, whose surveys made up the bulk of district level polling and had an average absolute error of just about 3 points. Thats nearly 3 points better than average, which is off the charts good. If, like me, you believe the answer to questionable data is more, not less, data, the proliferation of polls is a good thing, even if quality continues to vary. And while Republicans may continue to follow Trumps cynical habit of attacking any information that doesnt confirm their own biases, youd hope that at least privately theyd concede that more competition produces a better and more reliable result. Shares of Chinese food delivery app Meituan Dianping plunged on Friday after the company posted its first earnings report since its $4.2 billion IPO in September. Meituan Dianping's shares dived 11.79 percent on Friday. Shares of its main backer, gaming and social media company Tencent Holdings, fell 1.29 percent. Chinese tech juggernaut Tencent committed $400 million during Meituan's highly anticipated IPO. Meituan-Dianping, an online platform with services from food delivery to ticketing, announced that its operating losses tripled to 3.45 billion yuan (approx $497 million) in the June to September quarter compared to a year ago. Revenue for the three months to Sept. 30 rose 97.2 percent to 19.08 billion yuan and overall gross transaction volume grew 40 percent from a year ago. In this April, 2010 file photo, Donald Trump, left, chairman and CEO of the Trump Organization, cuts the ribbon with his children Eric, Ivanka, and Donald Trump, Jr. right, at the opening of the Trump SoHo New York. A New York judge on Friday denied a request from President Donald Trump and his family members to dismiss a lawsuit against them and the Trump Foundation alleging that the charitable foundation violated state and federal laws for "more than a decade." In her ruling, Justice Saliann Scarpulla of the New York state Supreme Court shot down an argument from the Trump family's attorneys that the case should be dismissed because the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution suggests "a sitting president may not be sued." Scarpulla also rejected Trump's argument that the state court lacked jurisdiction over the president in this case. While the Constitution prohibits state courts from exercising "direct control" in a way that interferes with federal officers' duties, Scaruplla wrote: "Here, the allegations raised in the Petition do not involve any action taken by Mr. Trump as president and any potential remedy would not affect Mr. Trump's official federal duties." Scarpulla noted that the defendants "have failed to cite a single case in which any court has dismissed a civil action against a sitting president on Supremacy Clause grounds, where, as here, the action is based on the president's unofficial acts." "I find that I have jurisdiction over Mr. Trump and deny Respondents' motion to dismiss the petition against him on jurisdictional grounds," she wrote. New York state Attorney General Barbara Underwood praised Scarpulla's decision. "As we detailed in our petition earlier this year, the Trump Foundation functioned as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump's business and political interests. There are rules that govern private foundations and we intend to enforce them, no matter who runs the foundation. We welcome Justice Scarpulla's decision, which allows our suit to move forward," Underwood said in a statement. A lawyer for the Trump Foundation, in a statement to CNBC, said: "The decision means only that the case goes forward. As we have maintained throughout, all of the money raised by the Foundation went to charitable causes to assist those most in need. As a result, we remain confident in the ultimate outcome of these proceedings" The White House did not immediately responded to CNBC's requests for comment on Scarpulla's decision. The judge's ruling could bolster other legal actions against Trump in New York and other states. Those include a complaint by former ''Apprentice'' contestant Summer Zervos, who is one of a dozen or so women who accused Trump of sexual misconduct. Zervos, who has been pursuing a defamation case against the president, claimed that Trump forced himself on her in 2007. Trump has denied the claims. The Trump Foundation suit, filed by Underwood in Manhattan state Supreme Court, alleged that Trump had misused the Trump Foundation "for his own personal benefit." The "pattern" of illegality, Underwood's office wrote, included "improper and extensive political activity, repeated and willful self-dealing transactions, and failure to follow basic fiduciary obligations or to implement even elementary corporate formalities required by law." After Underwood first filed the suit in June, Trump had vented rage on Twitter against "the sleazy New York Democrats." Trump tweet 1 Trump tweet 2 --CNBC's Mike Calia contributed to this report. Oil prices fell on Friday to their lowest levels in more than a year, deepening a rapid seven-week sell-off that has plunged crude futures deep into a bear market. Friday's declines further ramp up the pressure on OPEC ahead of a much-anticipated meeting between the influential oil cartel and its allies in Vienna on Dec. 6, when they are expected to announce that output will be curtailed. So far, the prospect of the Middle East-dominated group orchestrating a fresh round of supply cuts has done little to prop up crude futures. U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude ended Friday's session down $4.21, or 7.7 percent, at $50.42. WTI hit its weakest price since mid-October 2017 on Friday. International benchmark Brent crude dropped $3.66, or 5.9 percent, to $58.94 by 1:34 p.m. ET. The contract hit its lowest level since late October 2017. WTI has now lost 34 percent of its value from its peak on Oct. 3 to the trough on Friday. Brent has fallen as much as 32 percent. "I have to say that the speed in which the oil market has declined has surprised me even as OPEC and non-OPEC members discuss a production cut," said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates. "The market does not think it will be enough." The latest wave of energy market selling comes amid escalating concerns about an increase in global supply and a slowdown in economic growth. Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al Falih on Thursday said the kingdom's output this month would surpass October's production of 10.6 million barrels per day. That is near an all-time high but below the 10.7 million bpd guidance for October that Falih announced last month. Falih also said in October that November output would hit 11 million bpd. Sources told Bloomberg News this week the Saudis are currently pumping a record 10.8 million to 10.9 million bpd. Falih on Thursday said demand will be lower in January and the kingdom will respond to weaker consumption. The minister has already warned Saudi oil shipments will fall by 500,000 bpd in December. U.S. shoppers desperate for deals banged on doors and formed long queues at checkout counters on Black Friday, as a strong economy and rising wages drove a solid start to the holiday shopping season. Shoppers picked up big ticket items such as TVs, Apple iPads and Watches in-store and online at Target, while phones, toys, gaming consoles and cookware were top sellers at Walmart. Shortly before 6 a.m. ET on Friday, shoppers were seen banging on the door at a Bath & Body Works in the Waterfront Mall in Pittsburgh, lining up for discounted candles, soaps and lotion, while long lines formed at checkout counters in a Dick's Sporting Goods store in the mall. But there was little evidence of the delirious shopper frenzy customary of Black Fridays from past years, in other parts of the country, especially the North East, where crowds were thin due to record-cold weather. Twenty one-year old Columbia computer science graduates Bhavaya Shahi and Ketakee Nimavat pulled an all-nighter outside Macy's Herald Square store in New York hoping to beat long snaking lines that usually forms in front of popular store. "We heard there were going to be long lines," Shahi said, with bags in her hands and bags hanging on her forearm. "It's emptier than we thought." Stores, such as the Macy's in Herald Square, opened doors as early as 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving, but a large chunk of retailers are scheduled to open at 7 a.m on Friday. Moody's analyst Charlie O'Shea, who was visiting stores in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on Thursday said a slower start at stores on Thanksgiving and Black Friday was increasingly not indicative of shopper appetite during the season. "The season is expected to be strong and all signs when it comes to consumer sentiment point to that," he said. People shop during a Black Friday sales event at Macy's flagship store on 34th St. in New York City, November 22, 2018. Stephanie Keith | Reuters Large crowds were absent in many locations on Thursday, but it was not as bad as 2015 and 2016 when shoppers largely stayed away from stores on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, according to retail analysts and consultants. "Traffic is building up and in many places is on par with last year," said Craig Johnson, president of retail consultancy Customer Growth Partners, who was visiting stores in Connecticut on Thanksgiving. Sarah Perez, a 26-year-old visiting New York City from upstate New York with her husband, did not enjoy the shopping experience at J.C. Penney because of a very long line at the checkout. "We're never doing it again," Perez said adding she had already done some of her shopping on Amazon before coming out. Online boom Shoppers spent $1.75 billion online by 5 p.m. ET on Thanksgiving, with smartphone sales lifting overall online spending by 28.6 percent from a year ago, according to Adobe Analytics, which tracks transactions from 80 of the top 100 U.S. online retailers. Consumers in San Francisco led the rest of the country with over 2.3 million online transactions, followed by over 954,000 in New York City, more than 415,000 in Dallas and 389,000 in Houston by 10.30 pm ET, according to payments processor First Data, which collects data from about 1 million U.S. merchants. Electronics retailers such as Best Buy Co Inc saw the most number of transactions followed by department stores such as Macy's, according to Adobe's data. OPEC and Saudi Arabia are reportedly planning to throttle back oil production but will attempt to message the output cut in a way that does not antagonize President Donald Trump. The strategy, explained by OPEC and Saudi sources to The Wall Street Journal, implies that top OPEC producer Saudi Arabia would slash production by up to 1 million barrels per day. OPEC is preparing to pull back output because the 15-nation cartel thinks the oil market will be oversupplied next year. Crude prices have plunged more than 30 percent since last month on the growing consensus that supply will soon outstrip demand. But ahead of OPEC's policy meeting on Dec. 6, Trump is urging the group against cutting production and imploring the Saudis to help him drive oil prices even lower. The president praised Saudi Arabia on Wednesday for helping to cut fuel prices by increasing output earlier this year. On Tuesday, Trump declared he'd stand by the Saudis even though the CIA has reportedly concluded that the nation's powerful crown prince ordered the killing of journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi. Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the CIA assessment this week. "Because of Khashoggi, the Saudis will do anything to make sure Trump doesn't do anything nasty," an OPEC official told The Wall Street Journal. In light of Trump's overtures, OPEC and the Saudis plan to reaffirm the output targets they first agreed to in November 2016, the Journal reported on Friday. That means Saudi Arabia would begin cutting output from its target of 11 million bpd this month to its 2016 quota, which is just over 10 million barrels a day. OPEC reportedly considered announcing a cut of 1.4 million bpd. But by instead saying the group will stick to its 2016 quotas, the group hopes to be more discreet in cutting output, an OPEC official told the Journal. OPEC agreed two years ago to cut production by 1.2 million barrels per day. Russia and several other producers soon joined the agreement, bringing the total output cuts to 1.8 million barrels per day. That deal helped drain a global crude glut and boost oil prices from a prolonged slump. But the group eventually took more barrels off the market than it intended and agreed in June to increase output. A United Parcel Service worker loads orders onto a truck in the shipping area at the Overstock.com distribution center in Salt Lake City, Utah. Overstock plans to sell its decades-old retail business in the next few months to make way for a full-blown bet on blockchain. The previously announced sale plans could go through as soon as February, the company's CEO told The Wall Street Journal in a report published Friday. Overstock founder and CEO Patrick Byrne an ardent believer in the technology that underpins bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies declined to name any of the potential buyers. Shares of Overstock surged as much as 26 percent Friday but the stock is down 66 percent this year. Byrne founded Overstock in 1999 to sell goods like furniture and jewelry on the internet. He's now betting the future of that brand on multiple blockchain start-ups through its fully owned subsidiary called Medici Ventures. The Salt Lake City-based company has invested $175 million in Medici, which has been burning money since its 2014 inception: It lost lost $39 million in the first three quarters of the year, and roughly $22 million last year, according to the company's public filings. Overstock itself is in the red, with a net loss of $163 million in the first three quarters of this year. One of its best-known start-ups, tZero, a trading system that hasn't launched commercially, is also burning money. "I don't care whether tZero is losing $2 million a month," Byrne told the Journal. "We think we've got cold fusion on the blockchain side." Medici houses start-ups that go well beyond the scope of just cryptocurrencies. One company Voatz, runs blockchain-based voting through a smartphone app while another is working on digital property rights in Rwanda. While Byrne told investors in a September shareholder letter that Overstock does not "have significant holdings of bitcoin," the share price moves have been tightly correlated. During the cryptocurrency's rise to nearly $20,000 last year, Overstock shares surged more than 400 percent from July through the end of 2018. After trading above $80 in January, the stock is down to just above $21 as of Friday afternoon. Bitcoin itself was trading above $4,200 on Friday, down 78 percent since its high reached in December 2017. Multiple Wall Street CEOs have denounced bitcoin as a scam or bubble, while Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett famously likened it to rat poison. But its underlying technology is more widely accepted among public companies. IBM, J.P. Morgan, Deloitte, Amazon and Facebook are among those implementing the technology in some way. Still, skeptics abound on the blockchain side. Global economist Nouriel Roubini, one of the few who predicted the 2008 financial crisis, recently called the technology the most "over-hyped and least useful technology in human history." Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) President Rodrigo Duterte has renewed his call for mandatory military training for the youth. In a speech delivered Army Reserve Command (ARESCOM) in Cavite, Duterte said that he would again urge Congress to pass a law that would make Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) mandatory again as a part of the K-12 curriculum. "I encourage the Congress to pass a law that would require mandatory ROTC for Grades 11 and 12 so you can instill patriotism and love of country to the youth," Duterte said. Duterte added that he is also considering reinstating ROTC as a mandatory subject through an executive order. "Kung madala ito ng Executive Order baka mapilitan ako if they do not act on it. I said that this is a Constitutional requirement, that you must prepare to defend your country," he said. ROTC was made optional as one of the three National Service Training Program (NSTP) courses for college and university students. The National Service Training Program (NSTP) Act of 2001 was passed following the controversial death of ROTC Officer Mark Chua, who had published an expose on alleged irregularities in the ROTC unit of his university, the University of Santo Tomas (UST), in the university paper. Chua's body was found floating in Pasig River, bound with packing tape and wrapped inside a carpet. Duterte, however, alleged that a certain hazing-related death was to blame for the removal of ROTC from the mandatory school curriculum. "That simple hazing caused an aberration in our country. Ang Pilipino ngayon wala nang alam dahil doon sa nawala ang ROTC," Duterte said. Duterte also argued that ROTC is needed for future Filipinos to be able to protect the country. The NSTP act, while offering the alternatives of Literacy Service Training (LST) and Civil Welfare Service Training, also puts value in patriotism. "Recognizing the youth's vital role in nation-building, the State shall promote civic consciousness among the youth and shall develop their physical, moral, spiritual, intellectual and social well-being. It shall inculcate in the youth patriotism, nationalism, and advance their involvement in public and civic affairs," the NSTP act read. The provision in the Constitution on the requirement for people to defend the state, Article II, Section for reads: "the Government may call upon the people to defend the State and, in the fulfillment thereof, all citizens may be required, under conditions provided by law, to render personal military or civil service." There are currently bills in both the Senate and the House of Representatives for the reinstatement of the ROTC as a mandatory subject. Trump with the person hes most thankful for this year, and also his wife. Photo: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images Asked Thursday what hes thankful for this Thanksgiving, President Trump answered as only he could, with a perfunctory nod toward his family and high praise for himself. For having a great family, and for having made a tremendous difference in this country, Trump said at Mar-a-Lago, his private Florida club. He went on: Ive made a tremendous difference in the country. This country is so much stronger now than it was when I took office that you wouldnt believe it. He added that foreign leaders regularly compliment the strength of the U.S., apparently unaware that feeding his ego is a well-known strategy. When I see foreign leaders, Trump said, they say, we cannot believe the difference in strength between the United States now and the United State two years ago. Made a lot of progress. President Trump reveals what he's thankful for this #Thanksgiving: "For having a great family, and for having made a tremendous difference in this country. I've made a tremendous difference in the country." https://t.co/RM5VrVvlY7 pic.twitter.com/w6Gl8ssxGs The Hill (@thehill) November 22, 2018 Earlier on Thanksgiving, Trump made a phone call to military leaders around the world, an apparent attempt to push back against the criticism hes received for failing to visit troops in a war zone in the two years since he was elected. But the call quickly veered away from the expected praise and pleasantries. In his characteristic stream-of-consciousness style, Trump spoke to the military leaders about the U.S.-Mexico border, Jamal Khashoggi, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. At one point, he tried to get a Coast Guard commander to weigh on bad trade deals, leading to this awkward exchange. Coast Guard commander in Arabian Gulf does his best to respond to Trump complaining about unfair trade deals. pic.twitter.com/ssMfJE4SrL Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 22, 2018 Trump also aired some grievances on Twitter, continuing his attacks on the Ninth Circuit and his spat with Chief Justice John Roberts, who on Wednesday knocked down Trumps criticism of Obama judges and Trump judges. Justice Roberts can say what he wants, but the 9th Circuit is a complete & total disaster. It is out of control, has a horrible reputation, is overturned more than any Circuit in the Country, 79%, & is used to get an almost guaranteed result. Judges must not Legislate Security... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2018 ....and Safety at the Border, or anywhere else. They know nothing about it and are making our Country unsafe. Our great Law Enforcement professionals MUST BE ALLOWED TO DO THEIR JOB! If not there will be only bedlam, chaos, injury and death. We want the Constitution as written! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2018 Later, Trump delivered sandwiches, fruit, and chips to a nearby Coast Guard station before returning to Mar-a-Lago to eat Thanksgiving dinner with hundreds of wealthy members of the exclusive private club. United Technologies received a key antitrust approval from China on Friday for the industrial giant's purchase of aircraft parts maker Rockwell Collins. Rockwell Collins shares jumped 9.2 percent in trading, closing at $141.63 a share, while United Technologies' stock rose 2.7 percent to $129.04 a share. Shareholders were concerned that the deal would become a victim of the trade war between United States and China since the Chinese government's decision was delayed from September. The $23 billion deal won antitrust approval from the United States and the European Union earlier this year. United Technologies' acquisition is the largest in aerospace history. Combined, the two aerospace suppliers brought in nearly $67 billion in revenue last year. United Technologies makes Pratt & Whitney engines and other plane parts, acting as a major supplier to large aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing and Airbus. As with approval from U.S. and European regulators, China's approval requires United Technologies and Rockwell Collins to dispose of certain assets and some requirements related to the supply of aircraft components in the Chinese market. Europe's competition watchdog required United Technologies sell businesses making actuators, pilot controls, ice protection and oxygen systems. To win U.S. approval, United Technologies agreed to sell two Rockwell Collins' businesses: One that sells systems that de-ice planes and one that sells trimmable horizontal stabilizer actuators that help aircraft maintain altitude. Under the deal announced in September 2017, Rockwell shareholders will receive $140 per share in stock and cash, split between $93.33 in cash and $46.67 in United Tech stock, the companies said in a statement. Reuters contributed to this report. Shoppers pulled out their phones and shopped on Thanksgiving Day to spend more than they ever have before on Turkey Day, potentially stealing some of Black Friday's thunder. Sales online Thanksgiving Day totaled $3.7 billion, up 28 percent from a year ago, Adobe Analytics said in a report. That makes Thursday the fastest-growing day for e-commerce sales in history, added the firm, which tracks transactions from 80 of the top 100 internet retailers. Thursday was also the first day in 2018 to see $1 billion in sales from smartphones, according to Adobe, with shoppers spending 8 percent more online on Thursday compared with a year ago. In addition to spending a record amount online, shoppers were also seen lining up in throngs around the country outside of stores Thursday evening. That was despite record-cold temperatures chilling much of the Northeast. With many doors opening earlier and retailers like Target, Macy's and Walmart dolling out doorbusters unique to Thursday, it "appear[s] to have enticed consumers to spend a little earlier," said Taylor Schreiner, director of Adobe Digital Insights. J.C. Penney opened its doors at 2 p.m. ET Thursday, while Best Buy, Kohl's, Macy's and Target opened at 5 p.m., and Walmart's deals started at 6 p.m., though shoppers could stroll through Walmart stores and receive free cookies and coffee even earlier. More than 200 people, including many families, were lined up outside of a Target store Thursday evening in Minnetonka, Minnesota, before its doors opened. Items like the Nintendo Switch, L.O.L. Surprise!, $10 giant plush teddy bears and Apple watches were hot sellers. The company also said in a blog post that many shoppers this year took advantage of special deals for credit-card holders that went live Wednesday on Target.com, pulling spending even earlier. Walmart chief merchandising officer Steve Bratspies said "traffic was steady" all Thursday night in stores across the country. The company launched its online deals Wednesday evening at 10 p.m., two hours earlier than in 2017. Bratspies said "millions" of people were shopping on Walmart.com, though there were also reports of the website experiencing delays. It was working again by Friday morning. Macy's CEO Jeff Gennette chimed in by saying traffic was strong Thursday. Shoppers "showed up early online. And when we opened at 5 [p.m.], they were there," he told CNBC from inside Macy's flagship Herald Square location Friday morning. "People responded very well last night." With so many deals taking place earlier in the week, Black Friday could be losing some of its luster. "Here at the mall, it has been remarkably slow to be honest," Kerri Sapp, senior manager of Deloitte, told CNBC Friday morning. Sapp was inside Lenox Square in Atlanta. She said shoppers were starting to file in "as they woke up," but there were no long lines, like many at big-box stores on Thanksgiving night. The longest line in the mall Black Friday morning was at a Starbucks coffee shop, she said. Early winners on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday appear to be Walmart, Old Navy and Bath and Body Works, KeyBanc analyst Ed Yruma said. Traffic at Target, Urban Outfitters and Gap stores matched expectations, he said, while Nordstrom and Victoria's Secret shops seemed more empty than anticipated. "Traffic has seemed busier than normal, but I would say ... the Black Friday push isn't as strong as it used to be," Yruma told CNBC. He was visiting Tysons Corner Center in Virginia Friday morning. Fifty-seven percent of shoppers are planning to buy online this holiday season, compared with 36 percent in stores, Deloitte found in its annual holiday survey that polled 4,036 consumers in September. Sixty percent of those surveyed said they planned to start shopping for the holidays before Thanksgiving and planned to spend 28 percent more, or $370, than people who procrastinate. The National Retail Federation is predicting holiday sales gains will be better than a five-year average of 3.9 percent. It expects a bump ranging from 4.3 percent to 4.8 percent. President Donald Trump on Friday urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to pass a "badly needed" criminal justice reform bill. But while Trump tweeted that the proposal has "a true shot at major bipartisan support" in the Senate, it's unclear whether the bill will make it to a vote this year. TRUMP TWEET The bill, known in the House as the "First Step Act," passed the House in May with overwhelming support from lawmakers of both parties, securing 360 votes in favor and just 59 against. Supporters included 134 Democrats. The measure also has backing from the libertarian-leaning Koch political network, which routinely backs Republican candidates and has often pushed back on some of Trump's policies. Getting the First Step Act passed is one of the group's priorities for the remainder of the year. The legislation, pushed by Trump's senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner, pares back the major proposal to reduce mandatory minimum sentences that foundered in Congress in 2016. Trump has strongly endorsed the bill in recent weeks, saying at a Nov. 14 press conference that it "will make our communities safer and give former inmates a second chance at life after they have served their time." "I'll be waiting with my pen," Trump said. After a stunning plunge in the price of oil over the last seven weeks, President Donald Trump has rooted for oil prices to fall even further. Yet the U.S. oil and gas industry, a pillar of Trump's political base, might be decidedly likely less enthusiastic. This year's oil prices rally has swiftly collapsed as fears of potential oil shortages give way to forecasts that crude supply will swamp demand next year. The sell-off is pushing U.S. crude prices to levels that may impact drillers' spending plans and their ability to return cash to shareholders. On Sunday, the president cheered the steep drop in crude and its effects on the broader economy. For added measure, Trump even hinted that the Federal Reserve which he considers a scourge of his economic agenda should take note. Trump tweet "Exxon, Chevron, BP will survive because they are so big, but some of the smaller companies might have problems as costs are rising and revenue is falling," said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures tumbled from a nearly four-year high at $76.90 on Oct. 3 to a more than one-year low at $50.15 on Friday. From peak to trough, the WTI benchmark has lost more than a third of its value. Oil's drop below $55 earlier this week was apparently not enough for Trump. On Wednesday, the president took to Twitter to praise Saudi Arabia for hiking output and helping to cap oil prices. Trump implored the kingdom to keep at it, saying "let's go lower!" @realDonaldTrump: Oil prices getting lower. Great! Like a big Tax Cut for America and the World. Enjoy! $54, was just $82. Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let's go lower! Trump sent the tweet one day after he declared his support for Saudi Arabia, shrugging off bipartisan calls to punish the kingdom after Saudi agents murdered journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi last month. The CIA has reportedly concluded Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing, but Trump has been casting doubt on that assessment throughout the week. The president's defense of Saudi Arabia comes about two weeks before a critical OPEC meeting on Dec. 6. Trump wants the Saudi-led group to keep pumping at full tilt, which would keep a lid on oil prices. In recent weeks, the 15-nation OPEC cartel and several other exporters have signaled that they will agree to a price-boosting output cut. But Trump's overtures to the Saudis could make it more difficult for the kingdom to support throttling back output. "It looks like they're going to be backing off on that," John Kilduff, founding partner at energy hedge fund Again Capital, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Wednesday. "Our relationship with them appears to be bought and paid for now, and the oil market's MVP, President Trump, is helping to keep a lid on prices." The Clair Ridge platform sited off the coast of Scotland in the North Sea. BP has started extracting oil from one of the U.K.'s biggest offshore investments in decades. The energy giant said in a press release Friday that oil is now being pumped from its Clair Ridge project, a section of a hydrocarbon field in the North Sea first discovered in 1977. BP said its intention was to extract 640 million barrels of oil, with production peaking at 120,000 barrels a day. The project is designed to last for 40 years. The second phase development of the oilfield, which lies around 50 miles west of the Shetland Islands, is a joint venture with Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips. When discovered in 1977, the field was estimated to contain 7 billion barrels of hydrocarbons, but complex rock formations had prevented extraction. BP bosses said the first oil from Clair Ridge was the culmination of "decades of persistence" that required capital investment exceeding 4.5 billion ($5.77 billion). The company claimed the project is the largest commissioning in the North Sea in 20 years and has employed at least 6,000 people to date. BP said construction involved a "flotel," a floating accommodation vessel that housed 500 workers. It is intended that BP will hold a 45.1 percent interest in the field, Shell will own 28 percent, Chevron North Sea is to take 19.4 percent and ConocoPhillips 7.5 percent. A man holds a smartphone with the icons for social networking apps on the screen. S3studio | Getty Images U.K. lawmakers urged advertisers to boycott internet firms that fail to remove or control the publication of extremist content. In a report published Thursday evening, the U.K. Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee concluded that security agencies needed help from the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google to curb the "enormous growth" in online extremist material. The committee said online communications service providers (CSPs) had made "little tangible progress over the last four years" to tackle the publication of this content. "Action that affects the CSPs' profits clearly hits home harder than any sense of 'doing the right thing'," the report said. "Encouraging companies who advertise on the CSPs' platforms to put pressure on the CSPs to remove extremist content with the threat of pulling their adverts if they do not will have more impact on the CSPs." Unilever boycott The Committee said the U.K. government should seek to lobby the business community to take action, "following the Unilever example." In February, Unilever threatened to boycott Facebook and Google if they failed to police extremist and illegal content. At the time, a Facebook spokesperson told the BBC: "We fully support Unilever's commitments and are working closely with them." The Committee also pointed to Google subsidiary YouTube, which experienced an exodus of advertisers earlier this year over commercials appearing alongside extremist and illegal content. A Google spokesperson told CNBC on the phone that 98 percent of all videos it has removed for violent extremism were now flagged by Google's machine-learning algorithms. Since introducing this technology in June 2017, the number of those videos removed before exceeding 10 views grew from 8 percent to more than 50 percent, it said. The spokesperson added that Google had hit its goal of ensuring that 10,000 people were working to address content that violated its policies, and noted that Google had invested $5 million in supporting non-profit organizations that focused on tackling hate and extremism. A Twitter spokesperson said the company was committed to "improving the health of the conversation on Twitter." "Safety is a key part of this goal. In relation to terrorist content, 95% of it is now being removed proactively through our technology 75% before their first Tweet," they told CNBC via email. "We will also continue to work collaboratively with the Home Office, law enforcement, and our peer companies through the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, with a view to making further progress." Facebook has taken several steps to reduce extremist content on its platform. It states that 99 percent of content relating to terror groups Islamic State and al-Qaeda is taken down before being flagged up by users.The team responsible for enforcing Facebook's policies is made up of around 30,000 people, with 200 dedicated specifically to counter-terrorism procedure. A spokesperson for Facebook declined to comment directly on the government report. Business leverage U.S. government debt prices rose on Friday as investors looked for safety as equities and oil fell under pressure once again. The benchmark 10-year note yield fell to 3.05 percent while the 30-year yield slipped to 3.306 percent. Bond prices move inversely to yields. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 fell on Friday, adding to their steep losses for the week. Both stock indexes were down 4.3 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively. Expect a photo opportunity, a "mock deal," and temporary market relief from the much-touted meeting between U.S. President and his Chinese counterpart at the , an economist said on Friday. "We don't think this deal will be engineering a long-term truce between the two countries," Bo Zhuang, chief economist and director of China research at TS Lombard, said of the meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina next week. Zhuang told CNBC he expected a "photo op" and a probable "mock deal" from the meeting between the leaders of the world's two largest economies, "which means there will be temporary market-positive feedback from that." But trade tensions will continue to escalate, he added. China's economy will be hit by the trade war, with real GDP growth getting shaved by 0.5 to 0.7 percentage points from the beginning of 2019, he said. Zhuang said China doesn't want to provoke further escalation in bilateral relations with the U.S., but Beijing may actually let the Chinese yuan weaken should the tariff fight continue. As for the risk of being labeled a "currency manipulator" should the Chinese yuan decline further, Zhuang said there appeared to be little downside risks from that. "Everything has already happened i.e. putting in tariffs, negotiations. Trade war was the worse case scenario even before being labeled a currency manipulator," said Zhuang. The trade war between the Washington and Beijing is pushing many global companies to rethink the manufacturing and fabrication work they now do in China and a bloc of Southeast Asian countries stands to benefit tremendously, according to a senior partner at consulting firm Bain & Co. In the short term, there will be an adverse effect on the region as an exporting base for the world, and for the U.S. in particular, Satish Shankar, managing partner for Southeast Asia, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Friday. "Certain intermediate exports that go into China, and then onto the U.S., are going to be impacted in industries such as textiles and electronics," he said. "However, in the long term, we feel pretty confident that ASEAN is a very attractive alternative supply chain base for companies looking to diversify away from China." The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is made up of 10 countries in the region including Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Bain predicted that as companies consider moving their supply chains into Southeast Asia, small and medium enterprises in the region will adopt more technologies into their daily operations that could potentially create a $1 trillion opportunity. US President Donald Trump hinted on Thursday he may visit Afghanistan, scene of one of America's longest wars but a country he has yet to visit almost two years into his presidency. Delivering a Thanksgiving holiday message by teleconference to troops in Afghanistan, Trump told a US Air Force general he would see him back in the United States, before adding: "Or maybe I'll even see you over there. You never know what's going to happen." Recent US commanders-in-chief have routinely visited troops in active war zones. Trump has come under criticism for failing to do so, though Vice President Mike Pence made a surprise trip to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan last December to visit troops. By this point in his presidency, former President Barack Obama had made a trip to Iraq and two to Afghanistan. Former President George W. Bush traveled to Afghanistan twice and Iraq four times during his two terms in office. Trump was criticised when he scrapped a planned visit to a major US military cemetery during a visit to Paris this month because his helicopter was grounded by bad weather during a trip that marked the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One. Back in Washington on Veterans Day, he failed to visit Arlington National Cemetery, saying later that he was "extremely busy" but admitting that he should have. Asked by a reporter whether he would visit a war zone, Trump said: "At the appropriate time, we'll be doing some very interesting things." He was then asked whether he knew the timing: "I do, but can't tell you. You're the last people I can tell," he told reporters. Presidential trips to war zones are normally cloaked in secrecy for security reasons, revealed only when the commander in chiefs have landed, and sometimes only after they have safely left the region. Responding to criticism that phoning the troops on Thanksgiving was not enough, Trump defended his actions, arguing that he had hiked spending on the military and veterans. US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Wednesday was asked by reporters whether he thought Trump should visit troops in war zones. "The president is the commander in chief and he decides where he needs to go. There are times I don't want him in certain locations to be frank with you, for his security and the troops' security," Mattis said. The United States has some 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, serving in the NATO-led Resolute Support training and advisory mission as well as in separate counter-terrorism operations against militant groups like Islamic State. US troops arrived in Afghanistan in 2001 as part of the campaign to topple the Taliban following the September 11 attacks in the United States. Bazaar Corporate Radar | Feb 22, 2021, 12:00 AM IST Bazaar Corporate Radar Bazaar Corporate Radar is your window into the minds of top CEOs, Boardrooms, global economists, fund managers and sector analysts. If it?s making news, you?ll find it on Bazaar Corporate Radar. The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form Sorry, this page isn't available The link you followed may be broken, or the page may have been removed. May attacked on all sides in the Commons as she defends her deal Theresa May warned MPs that the public wanted Brexit settled as she faced bitter opposition from her own party to her EU exit deal yesterday. The prime minister presented the draft agreement on a future relationship with Europe to a largely hostile Commons after closing a 17-month negotiation earlier than expected. Claiming that her deal delivered the referendum result while protecting jobs and security, she told opponents that she had the backing of a public weary of division and desperate to return to domestic issues. The British people want Brexit settled, she said However, the scale of her task in forcing the deal through the Commons next month was exposed in a bruising debate of two and a half hours during which she was attacked from all sides. Half of Tory backbenchers opposed as Prime Minister told to junk the backstop Daily Telegraph Eurosceptics find only strained relations with May FT Scottish Tory MP says hell find it difficult to back the deal Daily Telegraph Raab and Johnson tear into plan as big beasts wade in Daily Mail Leavers say proposals amount to total surrender to the EU Daily Telegraph Prime Minister to appeal over the heads of MPs FT May demands mutinous MPs fall into line Daily Mail More than half of Tory backbenchers have spoken out against the draft agreement with only a few weeks to go before the crunch decision in parliament. Senior Tory Brexiteers dismissed her commitments yesterday to look again at their proposal for a technological solution to the Irish border, which were contained in a political declaration setting out Britains future relationship with the EU. The Times More: Hancock faces calls to quit over second referendum remarks Daily Express May vows there will never be another vote whilst she is Prime Minister Daily Mail >Today: >Yesterday: as Spain fights to re-insert Gibraltar into the Brexit negotiations A senior Spanish diplomat shouted at his German counterpart as tensions over Brexit talks between European Union countries reached snapping point this week. Pablo Garcia-Berdoy, the Spanish permanent representative to the EU, compared British sovereignty over Gibraltar to the Soviet Unions creation of East Germany, according to diplomatic accounts. Yesterday Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish prime minister, further entrenched his countrys position when he said that having spoken to Theresa May, he would veto Brexit unless there were changes to the deal. After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away, he said. My government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit. Spanish anger is understood to have erupted during a meeting of EU ambassadors on Tuesday when Mr Garcia-Berdoy raised his voice at Michael Clauss, Germanys permanent representative to the EU, who had appealed to Spain not to derail the deal over the issue of Gibraltar. The Times EU warns of threat to fish and chips if deal isnt struck over access to waters Daily Telegraph Daily Telegraph May denies that fishermen are being sold out for a deal The Scotsman Leaked political declaration fails to offer frictionless trade The Guardian Tensions brew between Member States over Brexit Daily Express More: CBI humiliated over leaks showing what it really thinks of the deal The Sun >Today: Lord Ashcroft in Comment: My Brexit poll. Its good for May but bad for her deal >Yesterday: and Hammond prepares to make last-ditch plea to Unionist allies at conference DUP activists to vent fury over gross betrayal at conference FT May must ditch backstop to win back Northern Irish MPs News Letter Chancellor Philip Hammond will make a last minute desperate plea to the Democratic Union Party to support the Brexit deal as the Prime Minister prepares for this weekends crunch EU summit. The Chancellor is expected to speak at the DUP conference in Northern Ireland to try and win over the party who have so far rejected Theresa Mays draft Brexit withdrawal agreement. However the Chancellors speech could be overshadowed by an appearance by arch-Brexiteer Boris Johnson who will ask DUP MPs to vote down the deal. Mrs May is relying on DUP support to get the draft bill agreed by Parliament when MPs vote next month. Mr Hammond will arrive in Belfast on Friday afternoon before addressing members at the conference in the evening. International Trade Secretary Liam Fox will also be in Northern Ireland today as he visits a business on the Irish border. The DUP is opposed to the Prime Ministers negotiated deal over the backstop agreement. Daily Express Editorial: Northern Ireland needs a deal to avoid a hard border FT >Yesterday: Henry Hills Red, White, and Blue column: Hammond and Johnson set to appear at the DUP conference Iain Martin: Tories are preparing for an emergency Prime Minister Tories are turning their attention to what happens if Mays deal is defeated. An emergency prime minister, chosen in a hurry with the leadership election rules tweaked, might be needed within weeks. Who would it be? The clear frontrunners are Sajid Javid, the home secretary, and Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary. Dominic Raab, the recently-departed Brexit secretary, would run with the backing of Brexiteers. Michael Gove is the champion of those hoping at the last moment to switch to a Norway-style compromise deal. Amber Rudd believes the backing of 30 or so Tory wets would help her influence the outcome. Rudd said this week that no-deal wont happen because MPs will stop it. But the legislation is hard to change, and without a front bench pledged to halt Brexit, we could end up leaving that way. If the deal fails and the Commons cannot agree on an alternative, it will be the job of an emergency prime minister to say that MPs can vote on as many contested combinations as they like, but look at the calendar. On March 29, Britain leaves the EU. Better get ready. The Times Cabinet Brexiteers are gambling on managed no-deal Fraser Nelson, Daily Telegraph May has a record of winning votes against insurmountable odds Macer Hall, Daily Express The Prime Minister has only herself to blame for her dire position Anna Soubry MP, Times Red Box So whats in the deal May got Brussels to agree? Ian Drury, Daily Mail EU protests show that this is no British capitulation Henry Newman, Times Red Box Believe it or not, that was the easy part of the talks Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Daily Telegraph Were heading for a second vote, and maybe a third Vernon Bogdanor, The Guardian Britain needs an immigration policy fit for Brexit Madeline Grant, The Times >Yesterday: Dr Sheila Lawlor in Comment: This deal is a challenge to our historic freedoms Ministers 1) Williamson announces that offshore patrol vessels are saved Armed Forces need major cash boost to meet Russian and Chinese threats, claims Ellwood Daily Express Ministers 2) Hinds to push for primary pupils to get out of the classroom A fleet of Royal Navy ships dedicated to protecting British waters has been saved in a post-Brexit boost, it was yesterday announced. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson confirmed three offshore patrol vessels will not now get the chop, as they are needed more than ever to secure UK shorelines. Trusty HMS Tyne, HMS Mersey and HMS Severn, which were due to get axed, will now stay on. And the entire Fishery Protection Squadron will be boosted to eight when new patrol vessels enter service over the next two years The Fishery Protection Squadron the oldest squadron in the Royal Navy is tasked with stopping illegal fishing, aiding sailors in distress and combating illegal smuggling of people, drugs and money. They have even shadowed Russian warships sailing in waters off the UK and taken part in counter terror missions. The current fleet was due to be decommissioned and replaced by a new fleet, but thanks to Williamsons intervention, they will now be kept boosting the entire squadron. The Sun Primary school pupils will be taught to dam streams, make mud pies, play conkers, canoe and ride horses to build character rather than spending hours just on homework, under new measures revealed today. Education Secretary Damian Hinds will publish a series of extra-curricular goals for pupils to achieve every year which could include cooking on campfires, knitting and growing vegetables in order to toughen them up. He said: Bluntly, it is about doing stuff that doesnt involve looking at a screen. Its about getting out and about. Mr Hinds said he recognised formal qualifications are obviously not the only thing. He said it was important to teach children how to bounce back from the knocks that inevitably come to all of us The Education Secretary came across the idea on a visit to St Werburghs Primary School in Bristol, where pupils are given a passport of enrichment activities. Between arrival in reception and leaving in year six youngsters are given 15 goals to achieve each year. The Sun Labour MP accused of sexism for flounce jibe at Leadsom The Times MPs call for boycott of tech firms which arent tough on terror Web giants let terrorists plot attacks online The Sun News in Brief: Why the bankers wont bail out Mays Brexit deal Matt Singh, CapX The Withdrawal Agreements Northern Ireland Protocol is neither a backstop nor temporary Martin Howe QC, Brexit Central Why I cannot support Mays Brexit deal Priti Patel MP, 1828 Quickest way for Labour to split and destroy the Tories? Vote for Mays Brexit Iain Martin, Reaction The Brexit political declaration confirms we are heading to a blind Brexit Ross Clark, The Spectator Technology groups such as Google and Facebook should be boycotted by advertisers unless they do more to tackle extremism, according to a report by British lawmakers which highlighted missed opportunities by MI5 to stop last years terror attacks. In a rare admission to parliaments Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), MI5, the domestic security service, said it should have placed one of the attackers the Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi under closer travel surveillance before he carried out the attack which killed 22 people last May. The failure to monitor Abedis movements was one of 12 themes identified by the ISC in its long-awaited report on last years attacks which led to the deaths of 36 innocent people the deadliest year for terrorism in Britain since the 7/7 bombings in 2005 But the ISC reserved some of its strongest criticism for technology groups over their handling of online extremist content and communications, urging the government to lobby marketing executives to pull advertising from the big online platforms unless they did more to remove extremist content online. FT After perhaps her most difficult fortnight as Prime Minister, which is saying something, the news from my latest poll, conducted on Wednesday and Thursday, is surprisingly mixed for Theresa May. Though she would probably say this is a side issue and that she is focused on other things, her personal standing among voters is actually consolidated. She now leads Jeremy Corbyn by 15 points in the best Prime Minister stakes, and while not sure still leads the field over both leaders, the proportion naming her has risen while Corbyns numbers have fallen, most dramatically among his own voters. Less than half of 2017 Labour voters now say he would be the better Prime Minister of the two. We see much less change when we ask if people would prefer a Conservative government led by May, or a Labour government with Corbyn as Prime Minister. Here, there has been almost no change since I last asked the question at the beginning of the year, with just over half preferring the incumbent itself a telling commentary on public reaction to the recent turmoil. In fact, the political class as a whole has not covered itself in glory as far as the public is concerned. We asked whether peoples views of various politicians had become more positive or negative over the last few weeks, and in every case the latter outweighed the former. Even outspoken Brexiteers like Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dominic Raab and David Davis had as many Conservative Leave voters saying they had a lower opinion as a higher one. For May, the results were again mixed: nearly half of Conservative Remain voters said their opinion of her had risen, while just over a third of Conservative Leavers said it had fallen. As far as the public were concerned, none of the supposed contenders to be Prime Minister would do a better job than the person who currently holds it. The group who thought another candidate would make a better Prime Minister than Theresa May was 2017 Labour voters, 58 per cent of whom (yes, just over half of Labour voters) thought Corbyn would do so. Though a third of Conservative Leavers thought Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson would do a better job, slightly more of them thought that they would not. Conservative Leavers were most likely to warm to the idea of David Cameron taking over an idea suggested by the irrepressible Steve Hilton but even they were more likely to prefer the idea of May staying on. Another piece of mixed news for the Conservatives is that perceptions of both parties are largely unchanged since I last asked about them in September. This is good news in the sense that tumultuous times have not pushed the partys ratings a great deal lower; on the other hand, there wasnt a great deal further for them to fall. While just under half think the party is willing to take tough decisions for the long term, only 22 per cent think the Tories are competent and capable, compared to 20 per cent for Labour. Only six in a hundred voters think the Conservative Party is united. Just under half (45 per cent) of voters claimed to know either a great deal or a bit about the draft Brexit deal agreed between the Government and the EU. Just over half admitted they did not, including a quarter who said they knew little or nothing about the agreement. Overall, just under one in five said that, from what they had read or heard, they thought the Brexit deal honoured the referendum result, including just 13 per cent of Leave voters. Only one group Conservative Remainers was more likely to say the deal honoured the result (35 per cent) than that it did not (27 per cent). Nearly four in ten said they didnt know. Voters as a whole were slightly more likely than not to say they thought the agreement was better than leaving the EU with no deal. Conservatives as a whole were evenly divided on this question, though Tory Remainers thought it was better than no deal by a 36-point margin, while Tory Leavers thought the opposite by 15 points. Labour voters overall were more likely to think the agreement better than no deal, but four in ten said they didnt know. However, voters were twice as likely to think the deal sounded worse than remaining in the EU on our current terms (42 per cent) as to think it sounded better (21 per cent). While Remain voters thought it sounded worse by a 43-point margin, Leavers were precisely divided indeed Conservative Leave voters were the only group to think the deal would be preferable to remaining on our current terms (40 per cent) than worse (33 per cent). Even so, voters were pessimistic about the prospects of negotiating a new agreement. Only just over one in ten thought the EU would be willing to agree new terms if Theresa May were to seek them, and only 15 per cent thought they would do so if they were approached by a new Prime Minister. That being the case, what should MPs do if asked to vote for a Brexit deal they were unhappy with? By a 20-point margin, voters as a whole said MPs should vote to reject the agreement even if it is not clear what the outcome would then be, rather than vote to accept the Brexit agreement as an imperfect compromise and move onto other issues. Labour voters, Remainers as a whole and Conservative Leavers all favoured rejecting the agreement even in the face of unknown consequences; Conservative Remainers, notably, were the only group more inclined to accept an imperfect deal and move on. By 65 per cent to 24 per cent, Conservative Remainers thought that a Labour government with Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister would be worse for Britain than leaving the EU with no deal. By the lower margin of 54 per cent to 33 per cent, Conservative Leavers thought a Corbyn-led Labour government would be worse than accepting a Brexit deal that did not mean the UK taking back full control of its money, borders and laws. Labour Leave voters, meanwhile, said it was more important to them for the UK to take back full control than it was to get a Labour government with Corbyn as Prime Minister. Voters rejected the idea of a second referendum to choose between the draft withdrawal agreement and leaving the EU with no deal by 19 points though one in five said they didnt know. However, there was only a nine-point margin against a referendum to choose between the draft deal and remaining in the EU. There was less appetite for a general election. Only just over one in five including fewer than four in ten Labour voters said there should be a new election before the terms of Brexit are finalised. Only just over one in three said a general election should take place if Theresa May were replaced as PM before the Brexit deal was signed and sealed. Further details of the research, including full data tables, are available at LordAshcroftPolls.com. Nabil Najjar is a political consultant working in the UK and the Middle East. He is an elected councillor in Wiltshire, Director of Conservative Progress. Earlier this week Matthew Hedges, a British tourist and PhD student, was sentenced to life in prison in the United Arab Emirates. His alleged crime? Spying for the British Government. Sadly, this is not the first time that a Western citizen has been locked up in a Middle Eastern prison on unproven, sometimes frankly spurious, intelligence-related charges, and if we do not act decisively it will not be the last. In 2016 Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national, was detained in Iran for allegedly plotting to topple the Iranian regime, and last year Xiyue Wang, an American student from Princeton University, was convicted of spying in Iran and sentenced to 10 years in prison. The US State Department described this as the latest in a succession of fabricated charges against US nationals. Whether through cases such as these, or for that matter the assassination of journalists or former spies on foreign soil, Middle Eastern powers such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran, as well as Russia, have begun flexing their muscles and projecting their own questionable human rights records on an international stage, in flagrant disregard for international precedents. Opinions abound as to the reasons why. But the nature of our response to a complex international chain of events boils down to a simple one: how much do we as a country value the welfare of our citizens? The oft-repeated argument about how these countries (and Saudi Arabia in particular) are valuable allies and strategic partners in a tumultuous region, and must not be upset, is one which is well understood, and I am in the camp that believes that, by and large, it is not the UKs obligation to act as an international policeman. Once, however, this pattern of passive aggression begins to impact the lives of British people, the time has come to lay down a new set of rules of engagement, one which places the interests of our own citizens ahead of economic gain, and puts principle above politics. Essentially, these governments are taking British nationals hostage; political bargaining chips to be exchanged when needed or returned when expedient. Diplomacy alone yielded pitiful results in the Zaghari-Ratcliffe case, and if we are to avoid another protracted (and potentially unsuccessful) parley with Abu Dhabi, our Government needs to be tough and act decisively from the outset. Rhetoric alone is not enough. Successive governments have boasted about the UKs unrivalled arsenal of soft power its ability to use diplomacy, intelligence and negotiation to further its interests but our Government must be bolder in backing up its soft power with the threat of action, a combination of soft and hard power today known as smart power. Whether it comes in the form of issuing travel warnings against holidaying in Dubai, threatening economic sanctions, or expelling diplomats, it is time for ministers to make a bold statement that actions have consequences, and that, in the United Kingdom, we put the human rights of our citizens first, even whilst they are abroad. Imprisonment without due cause will not be tolerated. Her Britannic Majestys Secretary of State Requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary. This sentence is printed on the inside cover of each British passport perhaps it is time that those whom it may concern are issued with a reminder. If we do not, then we have only ourselves to blame when another British citizen is taken captive. Iain Dale is an LBC presenter, a commentator with CNN and the author/editor of over 30 books. On Tuesday, Steve Baker led a Commons debate on the loan charge scandal. Although it was held in Westminster Hall, it was extremely well attended, with MPs from all parties giving John Glen, the Treasury Minister tasked with responding to the debate, a right going-over. I wasnt there, but am told that he looked rather shaken at the vehemence of some of the contributions. For those who dont know about the loan charge controversy, HMRC is trying to claim 20 years of back taxes from people who legitimately took advantage of a tax scheme that reduced their tax liabilities. These are not rich people; they are independent contractors. It emerged this week that Philip Hammond has had to apologise for the evidence he gave to the Treasury Select Committee in which he called such schemes illegal tax evasion. Since the schemes were endorsed by HMRC, they certainly couldnt be described in this way. Indeed, not only were they endorsed by HMRC, but we found out this week that it was paying contractors itself using these schemes! Hypocritical, much. I have no problem with the Treasury stopping these arrangements, but to go after people for 20 years of back taxes is just outrageous and contrary to all the rules of natural justice. Theyre causing huge amounts of human misery, bankruptcies, family break-ups and even two suicides. I have no doubt that they will have to backtrack on this, and admit that theyve got it wrong. Indeed, I intend to make sure of it. Its just a matter of when. If Theresa May is actually ever knocked off her perch, it is rumoured that up to 15 candidates might put their names forward to succeed her. Most of their candidacies would be utterly self-delusional, of course, but one name which hasnt yet done the rounds very much is that of the keeper of the 48 letters (or fewer) himself Sir Graham Brady. Hes trusted across the party, hes a Brexiteer of the non-foaming-at-the mouth-variety, hes the right age I could go on. Elected in 1997 he would be popular with the older guard and, as Chairman of the 1922 Executive Committee, hes also liked and respected by new MPs. I hate to use the phrase compromise candidate, but it wouldnt be the first time someone had come through the middle as everyones second choice. His main drawback is his relative lack of visibility in the voluntary party, I suppose. I first met Graham back in the early 1990s when he was working at the Centre for Policy Studies. He then joined the transport-based public affairs consultancy that I was co-owner of. I came to know him well enough to be able to say repeatedly on the radio over the past week or two that if theres anyone the Conservatives can trust to maintain the rules of the party over the leadership, its Graham. And I mean it. I wonder if the betting markets are taking bets on the number of Tory MPs who will throw their hat into the ring when the time comes. I reckon there are at least a dozen who have made it known they would consider running, or are expected to stand. Heres my list so far Geoffrey Cox David Davis George Freeman Michael Gove Jeremy Hunt Sajid Javid Boris Johnson Philip Lee Penny Mordaunt Amber Rudd Tom Tugendhat I saw one article claim that, if Michael Gove doesnt stand, Nick Boles might while, according to one of my sources, Caroline Nokes, the Immigration Minister, might also take a punt. Given her record in the post so far, Id say this would be a courageous move on her part. One statistic leapt out at me from the recent spate of polls. It was the fact that Labours six point lead among female voters has recently been transformed into a five point Tory lead. I think there is a general feeling out there among so-called normal voters that Theresa May is doing her best and that the beastly men are being unfair to her. The rights and wrongs of the Brexit deal dont really concern ordinary voters, but the optics do. Women may not always be the greatest supporters of female politicians, but if they feel that a fellow woman is being bullied or unfairly treated, then the wagons begin to circle. Thats whats happening here. A lot of attention has been paid to Cox over the last six weeks, since he sprang into our collective consciousness at the Birmingham conference, where he introduced the Prime Minister with a barnstorming rallying cry. Hes now said to harbour some leadership ambitions himself. A bit as with Graham Brady, its not impossible to see the stars aligning. But attention should also be paid to his deputy, Robert Buckland, the Solicitor-General. Hes increasingly rolled out to defend a sticky wicket in the media by Number Ten, and does a bloody good job at it. Hes also got a very well-developed sense of humour I imagine he rather enjoys his current job, but in the next reshuffle I hope he gets a Minister of State post in which he can prove whether hes got Cabinet potential. I rather think the answer will be yes. 100% Website sante-nature-innovation.fr uses latest and advanced technologies. It supports HTTPS. The main html page has a size of 612 bytes (0.60 kb uncompressed). This CoolSocial report was updated on 2021-02-04, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want. CORNWALL, Ontario The Cornwall Community Police Service (CCPS) is requesting the assistance of the public in providing a safe environment for participants in the Santa Claus Parade as well as its spectators. The parade will commence at 5 pm from St-Lawrence Intermediate School located at 1450 Second Street East and will travel westbound on Second Street from Anthony Street to York Street. Traffic will not be allowed on Second Street from 4:30 pm until the end of the parade. Please note that No Parking signs will be posted on Second Street from Anthony Street to Augustus Street. We ask for the publics assistance with having all vehicles moved from Second Street prior to 4:30 pm. CCPS officers will use their discretion to tow vehicles in contravention of the posted signs. Officers will be on scene to ensure the safety of the participants and the general public. Detours may be necessary in order to reduce the interaction between vehicles and pedestrians, as well as parade participants. The CCPS would like to thank you for your co-operation in advance and for your continued support in making this a safe and enjoyable parade. In addition to the street closures for the Santa Claus Parade, there will also be a street closure on Montreal Rd. between McConnell and Baldwin avenues until 4 p.m. for the Santa Street Hockey Tournament. Back in the 1970s, "darknet" wasn't an ominous term: it simply referred to networks that were isolated from the mainstream of ARPANET for security purposes. But as ARPANET became the internet and then swallowed up nearly all the other computer networks out there, the word came to identify areas that were connected to the internet but not quite of it, difficult to find if you didn't have a map. The so-called dark web, a catch-all phrase covering the parts of the internet not indexed by search engines, is the stuff of grim legend. But like most legends, the reality is a bit more pedestrian. That's not to say that scary stuff isn't available on dark web websites, but some of the whispered horror stories you might've heard don't make up the bulk of the transactions there. We spoke to some security pros who offered to give us a bit of a guided tour of the web's nether regions. Hopefully it will demystify things a bit. Here are ten things you might not know about the dark web. New dark web sites pop up every day... A 2015 white paper from threat intelligence firm Recorded Future examines the linkages between the Web you know and the darknet. The paths usually begin on sites like Pastebin, originally intended as an easy place to upload long code samples or other text but now often where links to the anonymous Tor network are stashed for a few days or hours for interested parties. While searching for dark web sites isn't as easy as using Googlethe point is to be somewhat secretive, after allthere are ways to find out what's there. The screenshot below was provided by Radware security researcher Daniel Smith, and he says it's the product of "automatic scripts that go out there and find new URLs, new onions, every day, and then list them. It's kind of like Geocities, but 2018"a vibe that's helped along by pages with names like "My Deepweb Site," which you can see on the screenshot. Daniel Smith ...and many are perfectly innocent Matt Wilson, chief information security advisor at BTB Security, says that "there is a tame/lame side to the dark web that would probably surprise most people. You can exchange some cooking recipeswith video!send email, or read a book. People use the dark web for these benign things for a variety of reasons: a sense of community, avoiding surveillance or tracking of internet habits, or just to do something in a different way." It's worth remembering that what flourishes on darknet is material that's been banned elsewhere online. For example, in 2015, in the wake of the Chinese government cracking down on VPN connections through the so-called "great firewall," Chinese-language discussions started popping up on the darknet mostly full of people who just wanted to talk to each other in peace. Radware's Smith points out that there are a variety of news outlets on the dark web, ranging from the news website from the hacking group Anonymous to the New York Times, shown in the screenshot here, all catering to people in countries that censor the open internet. Daniel Smith Some spaces are by invitation only Of course, not everything is so innocent, or you wouldn't be bothering to read this article. Still, "you can't just fire up your Tor browser and request 10,000 credit card records, or passwords to your neighbors webcam," says Mukul Kumar, CISO and VP of Cyber Practice at Cavirin. "Most of the verified 'sensitive' data is only available to those that have been vetted or invited to certain groups." How do you earn an invite into these kinds of dark web sites? "They're going to want to see history of crime," says Radware's Smith. "Basically it's like a mafia trust test. They want you to prove that you're not a researcher and you're not law enforcement. And a lot of those tests are going to be something that a researcher or law enforcement legally can't do." There is bad stuff, and crackdowns means it's harder to trust As recently as last year, many dark web marketplaces for drugs and hacking services featured corporate-level customer service and customer reviews, making navigating simpler and safer for newbies. But now that law enforcement has begun to crack down on such sites, the experience is more chaotic and more dangerous. "The whole idea of this darknet marketplace, where you have a peer review, where people are able to review drugs that they're buying from vendors and get up on a forum and say, 'Yes, this is real' or 'No, this actually hurt me'that's been curtailed now that dark marketplaces have been taken offline," says Radware's Smith. "You're seeing third-party vendors open up their own shops, which are almost impossible to vet yourself personally. There's not going to be any reviews, there's not a lot of escrow services. And hence, by these takedowns, they've actually opened up a market for more scams to pop up." Reviews can be wrong, products sold under false pretensesand stakes are high There are still sites where drugs are reviewed, says Radware's Smith, but keep in mind that they have to be taken with a huge grain of salt. A reviewer might get a high from something they bought online, but not understand what the drug was that provided it. One reason these kinds of mistakes are made? Many dark web drug manufacturers will also purchase pill presses and dyes, which retail for only a few hundred dollars and can create dangerous lookalike drugs. "One of the more recent scares that I could cite would be Red Devil Xanax," he said. "These were sold as some super Xanax bars, when in reality, they were nothing but horrible drugs designed to hurt you." The dark web provides wholesale goods for enterprising local retailers... Smith says that some traditional drug cartels make use of the dark web networks for distribution"it takes away the middleman and allows the cartels to send from their own warehouses and distribute it if they want to"but small-time operators can also provide the personal touch at the local level after buying drug chemicals wholesale from China or elsewhere from sites like the one in the screenshot here. "You know how there are lots of local IPA microbreweries?" he says. "We also have a lot of local micro-laboratories. In every city, there's probably at least one kid that's gotten smart and knows how to order drugs on the darknet, and make a small amount of drugs to sell to his local network." Daniel Smith ...who make extensive use of the gig economy Smith describes how the darknet intersects with the unregulated and distributed world of the gig economy to help distribute contraband. "Say I want to have something purchased from the darknet shipped to me," he says. "I'm not going expose my real address, right? I would have something like that shipped to an AirBnBan address that can be thrown away, a burner. The box shows up the day they rent it, then they put the product in an Uber and send it to another location. It becomes very difficult for law enforcement to track, especially if you're going across multiple counties." Not everything is for sale on the dark web We've spent a lot of time talking about drugs here for a reason. Smith calls narcotics "the physical cornerstone" of the dark web; "cybercrimeselling exploits and vulnerabilities, web application attacksthat's the digital cornerstone. Basically, I'd say a majority of the darknet is actually just drugs and kids talking about little crimes on forums." Some of the scarier sounding stuff you hear about being for sale often turns out to be largely rumors. Take firearms, for instance: as Smith puts it, "it would be easier for a criminal to purchase a gun in real life versus the internet. Going to the darknet is adding an extra step that isn't necessary in the process. When you're dealing with real criminals, they're going to know someone that's selling a gun." Specific niches are in Still, there are some very specific darknet niche markets out there, even if they don't have the same footprint that narcotics does. One that Smith drew my attention to was the world of skimmers, devices that fit into the slots of legitimate credit and ATM card readers and grab your bank account data. And, providing another example of how the darknet marries physical objects for sale with data for sale, the same sites also provide data manual sheets for various popular ATM models. Among the gems available in these sheets are the default passwords for many popular internet-connected models; we won't spill the beans here, but for many it's the same digit repeated five times. Daniel Smith It's still mimicking the corporate world Despite the crackdown on larger marketplaces, many dark web sites are still doing their best to simulate the look and feel of more corporate sites. Daniel Smith The occasional swear word aside, for instance, the onion site for the Elude anonymous email service shown in this screenshot looks like it could come from any above-board company. One odd feature of corporate software that has migrated to the dark web: the omnipresent software EULA. "A lot of times there's malware I'm looking at that offers terms of services that try to prevent researchers from buying it," he says. "And often I have to ask myself, 'Is this person really going to come out of the dark and trying to sue someone for doing this?'" And you can use the dark web to buy more dark web And, to prove that any online service can, eventually, be used to bootstrap itself, we have this final screenshot from our tour: a dark web site that will sell you everything you need to start your own dark web site. Daniel Smith Think of everything you can do thereuntil the next crackdown comes along. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is "unable" to testify at a rare joint hearing with lawmakers from seven countries - representing more than 368 million people - who remain frustrated about the social media giant's handling of misinformation online. Instead, Facebook will dispatch Richard Allan, the company's vice president of policy solutions, to answer questions at a Tuesday hearing featuring top policymakers from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Latvia, Singapore and the United Kingdom, representatives from the U.K. said Friday. Zuckerberg's decision against testifying at the global gathering could add to Facebook's woes with governments around the world, which have grown frustrated with the company's business practices. It's uncommon for seven countries to band together and seek to question a chief executive, reflecting the heightened threat of regulation and other punishments now facing Facebook and its peers in Silicon Valley. In Europe, lawmakers recently have taken aim at the way social media companies handle users' personal data and combat hate speech and terrorism online. The European Union previously grilled Zuckerberg at a short, controversial hearing in May. In Brazil, meanwhile, Facebook has had to battle back misinformation on its site during its most recent election, while WhatsApp emerged as a major flash point for candidates who felt it had been deployed deliberately to spread falsehoods. In other countries, Facebook has big business opportunities at stake: Singapore is preparing to host Facebook's first-ever data center in Asia, which the tech giant has said will cost $1 billion. "The Committee still believes that Mark Zuckerberg is the appropriate person to answer important questions about data privacy, safety, security and sharing," lawmakers said jointly in a statement Friday, pointing to recent reports about Facebook's efforts to discredit its political opponents and slowness to identify Russia as a major threat. The worldwide push for Zuckerberg to testify began earlier this year with the U.K., where Damian Collins, the leader of a top, tech-focused parliamentary committee, has probed Facebook over mishaps, including the company's entanglement with Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy that had improperly accessed personal data of about 87 million Facebook users. U.K. investigators even have fined the social media company in response, which Facebook indicated last week it would appeal. But Zuckerberg repeatedly has declined to appear at a hearing in front of British lawmakers, including a request at the end of October to testify at a joint hearing with the U.K. and Canada. In early November, those countries' calls for the Facebook leader to appear before an "international grand committee" of policymakers expanded to include Australia, Argentina and Ireland. Facebook leaders again said it was "not possible" for Zuckerberg to "be available to all parliaments," according to a letter sent at the time. By Monday, Brazil, Singapore and Latvia added their voices to the campaign to persuade Zuckerberg to testify, even if by video from afar. Zuckerberg declined for a third time in a letter sent by a subordinate, instead offering Allan. "As we have stated previously," wrote Rebecca Stimson, Facebook's head of public policy in the U.K., "Mr. Zuckerberg is unable to accept your invitation. BRIDGEPORT - Social media sensation Bryan Silva had hoped for a quiet Thanksgiving dinner with his wife at her parents Easton home. But the body builder/rapper, known as the GraTaTa Guy for the machine-gun sound he made in his last rap video, found himself under the gun after his wife accused him of hitting her. Looking a little worse for wear and wearing checkered pajama pants from the previous evening, the 27-year-old Silva was arraigned in Superior Court Friday afternoon. Initially held in lieu of bond on a domestic violence charge, Silva was later released on a promise to appear in court on the recommendation of Senior Assistant States Attorney Stephanie Damiani after she reviewed the police report. Judge Tracy Lee Dayton issued Silva an order barring him from further contact with his wife, Melissa Barney. Both were charged with disorderly conduct, and she was previously released on a promise to appear. Clutching his few possessions in a plastic bag, Silva declined comment Friday as he left the Golden Hill Street courthouse. In October 2016, Silva was sentenced in Virginia to more than a year in prison for an armed standoff with Charlottesville police. It was while he was in a Virginia prison that he met Barney, 23. On Thursday, police said, Silva came to his wifes parents Easton home to reunite with his bride of less than a year. But police said things did not go well. After the traditional turkey dinner, police said, Silva fell asleep. While he was out, his bride decided to go through his cellphone, police said, and discovered what she believed to be evidence that he was cheating on her. Police said Barney became so enraged that she punched her sleeping husband in the mouth. She claimed he then punched her in the head. At any rate, police said Silva then grabbed his suitcase and was heading out the door when his wife called 911. Barney stated that she loves Silva and didnt want him to leave, so she called police, police related. When officers arrived on the call of an assault, they confronted Silva, who was kneeling in the driveway trying to close his suitcase, police said. They said they saw blood on Silvas mouth. Police said Silva told them he never really knew what his wife was like and was now thinking of divorcing her. STRATFORD - Latoya Thomas apparently means what she says. Police said the 33-year-old Norwalk woman was arrested following a road rage incident here. A local man was driving into the intersection of Barnum Avenue Cutoff and Longbrook Avenue when police said he was cut off by Thomas who was driving a red Mercedes sedan. Police said Thomas then pulled over, blocking the other car and walked over to the mans drivers side window. How about I punch you in the mouth, police said Thomas told the other driver, who had lowered his window. Pardon me? police said the man asked. Police said Thomas then punched the man in the mouth. She then got back into her car and drove off. Thomas was charged with third-degree assault and second-degree breach of peace. DERBY A claim that a Derby police detective made a racist comment during a July encounter with a group of teens was found to be substantiated in part, according to a copy of the an internal affairs investigation obtained by Hearst Connecticut Media. This was one of several claims in a complaint filed by Jessica Matthews against four Derby police officers. Matthews said her 16-year-old son and a group of primarily African American friends were harassed and racially profiled after the July 3 Derby-Shelton fireworks. The complaint alleged and the internal affairs investigation confirmed that Detective Benjamin Bartone said, white boy wants to be like them, to Matthews son, who is white. Yes, I did say white boy wants to be like them, Bartone said in a statement to Lt. Stanko, who led the internal affairs investigation and has been Bartones supervisor for 11 years, according to the report. Bartones statement goes on to add, I meant that he wanted to act like the rest of the crowd which was disobeying the officers. He started to act like them, being loud, unruly and walking in the street and not listening to officers commands ... Stankos report said the claim that Bartone made derogatory/racist comments is sustained in part. Stanko recommended a written warning for Bartone. Instead, the detective got a half-day suspension without pay after the investigation, according to a letter from Chief Gerald Narowski, who did not respond to request for comment Friday. Stanko said that while the context of the statement, certainly connotes racial and discriminatory intent (e.g. the white boy wants to act black) ... I do not feel that it was motivated by race, bias, or discrimination. Matthews did not respond to request for comment Friday. Bartone could not be reached for comment. Stanko said claims against the other officers involved were unsubstantiated. The only profiling that occurred was that of targeting groups of people, albeit juveniles, who were congregating in the streets, blocking traffic and disobeying commands, Stanko said in his conclusion. Race was not a factor in any of those actions. Bartone has been with the department for 15 years and has never had complaints filed by or against him related to racial discrimination/bias, the report said. But Stanko said, the use of white boy in this context was unprofessional and not within the expected standards of how a Derby Police Officer should address members of the public. On the night in question, police were flagged down by a group of mothers and their children near Fifth and Elizabeth streets who claimed a group of juveniles were threatening to shoot them, the report said. The report indicated the officers repeatedly asked the juveniles some of whom the officers recognized as having criminal histories to clear the area, adding that they were blocking the sidewalk and spilling over onto the roadways, which had been reopened to traffic after the fireworks display. Though initially the officers were dealing with a small group of youths, at some point they joined another larger group, making it around 30 to 40 people, according to the report. It was very hectic and stressful. No one was listening to our commands, Bartone said in a statement provided in the report. Several teens recorded their interactions with the officers on cellphone videos that were reviewed by Stanko for the internal affairs investigation. In one video, Bartone said he didnt have to give his badge number, the report said. Stanko said that was a violation of the departments policy. In a statement to Stanko included in the report, Bartone said, I felt that being a police officer in uniform, with my name tag on the front of my uniform, was enough to identify who I am. Stanko recommended in his report that Bartone and the rest of the department get additional training on the requirements of officers to identify themselves when asked, tactics in crowd control, de-escalation techniques and peacefully dealing with demonstrations. With Black Friday just hours away, Connecticut State Police urged residents to be aware and to report any suspicious behavior. State police said shoppers need to be aware of their surroundings. People are packed into tight spaces on Black Friday, the agency said. Be aware of people who are too close, they may be pickpocketing. Shoppers can deter pickpockets by carrying their purse close to their body, or keeping their wallet inside a coat or front pocket. Criminals look for easy targets, state police said, so shoppers shouldnt buy more than they can easily carry. Dont leave packages visible in your car, state police said. Lock them in the trunk, or if possible, take them directly home. When it comes to credit cards, shoppers should only carry one or two cards, making it easier to cancel should a card get lost or stolen. When possible, shoppers should swipe their own card and always keep it in their sight. When using a keypad, shoppers should be sure to cover the keypad so no lingering eyes get a glimpse of the PIN numbers. ID theft is higher during the holiday season, state police said. Save all receipts from your purchase so that you can prove what you purchased and what you didnt. Any suspicious behavior should be reported to the store and local law enforcement. WESTPORT A judge ordered two chefs fired from Matsu Sushi for refusing to complete a 36-hour shift be reinstated immediately, but the restaurants owners have yet to renew the workers employment. Were letting the community know this is happening and urging them to boycott and support the workers, Sarah Ahn, an organizer with the Flushing Workers Center, said while protesting with the fired workers Liguo Ding and Jianming Jiang outside Matsu around noon on Monday. National Labor Relations Board Judge Kenneth W. Chu wrote in his Oct. 26 decision that said Matsus owners Ziqiao Cao and Kim Ming Cheng discriminatorily fired Ding and Jiang. Chu ordered the owners to immediately reinstate Ding and Jiang to their previous or equivalent positions and also provide the fired workers with backpay and other expenses related to their loss of employment. As of the day of the protest, nearly a month after the decision, Ding and Jiang had not been reinstated and Matsus owners could not be reached for comment. They think they can continue to pay attorneys fees instead of fixing the conditions and following the law, Ahn said. Ding and Jiang, both residents of Flushing, Queens, N.Y., contacted the Workers Center last December after Matsus owners allegedly fired Ding and Jiang for refusing to work a 36-hour shift in order to finish a large lunch order from Bridgewater Associates. Bridgewater, a Westport-based investment management firm, periodically put in larger lunch orders to Mastu. This prompted the restaurants owners to force Matsu employees to work from 8 a.m. until 10 p.m. the following night, Ding and Jiang said. In testimony before the National Labor Relations Board in July, Matsus owners said Ding and Jiang were not forced to work continuously for 36 hours. Rather, on the morning of large orders, they were permitted to sleep on the restaurants second floor at the end of the shift at 10 p.m. before resuming work from 1 to 6 a.m., with another break before the start of the 11 a.m. shift, according to the owners. Ding and Jiang, who both worked at Matsu for over a decade before their termination, said the 36-hour shifts harmed their health. Last December, they told the restaurants manager they would work normal hours, but not the additional 1 to 6 a.m. shift in the event of a large order, testimony revealed. A week later, Matsus manager asked Ding and Jiang to work the 36-hour shift for the next days large order, and when they refused, she allegedly called to tell them not to return to work. After repeated calls in following days from Ding and Jiang, she did not give them an answer as to when they could return to work, according to the testimony. Customers trickling out of Matsu during the protest, however, seemed unmoved by Ding and Jiangs unlawful firing in the eyes of the National Labor Relations Board. One unidentified woman said she was aware of the controversy but said, I dont want to get involved. Its our favorite restaurant and when my kids get home from college. They want to come here. Another man leaving the restaurant with a friend turned to the protestors and said, Just dont do anything to harm our favorite lunch spot. Both Ding and Jiang said they would like to return to work at Matsu. We have been serving the community for a long time and know a lot of customers. I miss the Westport customer, Jiang said. svaughan@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2638; @SophieCVaughan WASHINGTON - Conservative writer and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi is in plea negotiations with special counsel Robert Mueller III, according to Corsi and another person with knowledge of the talks. The talks with Corsi - an associate of GOP operative Roger Stone - could bring Mueller's team closer to determining whether Trump or his advisers were linked to WikiLeaks' release of hacked Democratic emails in 2016, a key part of his long-running inquiry. Corsi provided research on Democratic figures during the campaign to Stone, a longtime Trump adviser. For months, the special counsel has been scrutinizing Stone's activities in an effort to determine whether he coordinated with WikiLeaks. Stone and WikiLeaks have repeatedly denied any such coordination. Stone has said that Corsi also has a relationship with President Donald Trump, built on their shared interest in the falsehood that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Corsi confirmed the plea negotiations after they were first reported by The Washington Post on Friday. "It's true. Your story is accurate," he said, declining to comment further except to say there may be further developments next week. David Gray, an attorney for Corsi, declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Mueller. An attorney for Trump declined to comment. Stone said in a statement that he was not aware of any plea discussions involving Corsi, describing him as an investigative journalist "whose activities I would think would largely be covered under the First Amendment." The deal is not yet complete and could still be derailed. Last week, Corsi said his efforts to cooperate with prosecutors had broken down and that he expected to be indicted on a charge of allegedly lying. He described feeling under enormous pressure from Mueller and assured his supporters that he remains supportive of the president. In a webcast and interviews, Corsi said he had spoken to prosecutors for 40 hours and feared that he could spend much of the remainder of his life in prison. After two months of interviews, Corsi, 72, said he felt his brain was "mush." "Trying to explain yourself to these people is impossible. . . . I guess I couldn't tell the special prosecutor what he wanted to hear," he added. At that time, he gave no indication that he intended to plead guilty, instead casting himself as an unfairly targeted victim of a Mueller campaign against Trump. Then Corsi abruptly fell silent, canceling a scheduled Nov. 13 interview with NBC. Gray, his attorney, told NBC that he had just spoken to the special counsel's office and had advised Corsi to cancel. Since then, Corsi has resumed talks with Mueller's team about a possible deal that could result in him agreeing to plead guilty in exchange for leniency, according to the person familiar with the situation. Speaking on a Buffalo radio station Friday, Stone said Corsi is under pressure "to say what the special counsel wants him to say, rather than the truth." "I feel badly for Jerry Corsi. He looks like he's been squeezed," Stone said on the WBEN radio program hosted by his longtime ally and friend Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign communications official. Stone questioned the credibility of Corsi as a witness, calling him an "eccentric guy. He doesn't believe the moon landing happened, for example. He believes it was staged." "I don't know how credible a witness he would be," Stone added. It is not clear what information Corsi could leverage to get a deal with prosecutors. However, he told the Daily Caller last week that prosecutors are focused on whether he had developed a source with inside information about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's plans. Corsi said he did not have a direct source to the group. Instead, he said he developed a theory that Assange had access to hacked emails belonging to Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and that WikiLeaks would release them in October 2016. He told the Daily Caller that he shared his prediction with many people, including Stone. If Mueller could prove that Corsi learned about Podesta's emails from Assange or another person in contact with him, he could try to link WikiLeaks' releases to Stone or others in Trump's world. Stone said Friday that Corsi never relayed such information. "Jerry Corsi never told me that John Podesta's emails had been stolen and would be published," he said on WBEN. On Aug. 21, 2016, Stone tweeted that "it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel." He has insisted his tweet had nothing to do with any plan by WikiLeaks and that it was based on research Corsi had provided to him about work Podesta and his lobbyist brother Tony had done involving Russia. "He simply told me of their Russian business deals in banking gas and uranium," Stone said in a text message this week to The Post. "There was NO WikiLeaks context." Stone told the House Intelligence Committee in September 2017 that his Podesta tweet was "based on a comprehensive, early August opposition research briefing provided to me by investigative journalist, Dr. Jerome Corsi, which I then asked him to memorialize in a memo that he sent me on August 31st, all of which was culled from public records. There was no need to have John Podesta's email to learn that he and his presidential candidate were in bed with the clique around Putin." Stone has since said that the information in the Aug. 31 memo - which he received 10 days after his now-infamous tweet - was similar to information that Corsi had relayed to him verbally before the tweet. The prediction that Corsi said he made that Assange would publish Podesta's emails was correct: On Oct. 7, 2016, WikiLeaks began publishing 50,000 emails stolen from Podesta's account, releasing them in batches of a few thousand at a time each day leading up to the November election. Corsi told the Daily Caller that hebased his prediction on public sources of information, including the fact that Podesta was not among the Democrats whose emails had been published by WikiLeaks when the group released Democratic National Committee correspondence in July. He said he concluded that WikiLeaks must be holding back Podesta's correspondence to make a bigger splash later in the campaign. Podesta did not work for the DNC and the emails were stolen from his private Gmail account, not an address linked to the Democratic Party. Corsi told the Daily Caller that Mueller's prosecutors did not believe his explanation and pressed him to name his WikiLeaks source. They were especially interested, he said, in a trip he took to Italy with his wife that he said coincided with his realization about the Podesta emails. "They said they wanted me to tell the truth, but when I did tell the truth they told me it was preposterous, and they wouldn't accept it," Corsi said. Stone is under scrutiny because he made a series of comments during the campaign that suggested he was in contact with Assange and knew of WikiLeaks' plans. Since then, Stone has vigorously contended that his comments were exaggerations based on public information, as well as tips from New York radio host and comedian Randy Credico. Stone has also told The Postthat Corsi had a relationship with Trump and spoke directly with the Republican candidate during the campaign. Stone said the two men became friendly after Corsi published a book in 2011 advancing the false theory that Obama was not qualified to hold office because he was not born in the United States. Trump became a leading proponent of that falsehood. - - - The Washington Post's Michelle Lee contributed to this report. --- Video Embed Code Video: Jerome Corsi, 72, is a conservative author who may help special counsel Robert S. Mueller III determine whether Roger Stone coordinated with WikiLeaks. Here is what you need to know about him.(The Washington Post) Embed code: Video: Several of Roger Stone's longtime associates have been interviewed by the special counsel. The Post visited Stone on Oct. 19, just as Mueller's probe zeroes in on him.(Monica Akhtar,Erin Patrick O'Connor/The Washington Post) Embed code: President Donald Trump has again brushed off the horrifying murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, blithely claiming that the Saudi crown prince "vehemently denied" any role in the killing. Trump again appears to be contradicting the CIA, which has reportedly determined that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman did, in fact, order the assassination, which was carried out by Saudi agents. But, while in some ways Trump's latest comments - delivered from his Mar-a-Lago resort on Thursday - reiterate his reprehensible statement from earlier this week, this time Trump went further, both in taking a cavalier stance toward the murder and in casting doubt on the CIA's reported conclusion. Trump claimed the crown prince "hates" the crime and its coverup "more than I do" - which sounds a lot like exoneration - and characterized the CIA's conclusions as mere "feelings." This raises the questions: What did the intelligence conclude, and is Trump deliberately downplaying it, which would constitute active participation in covering up the truth on the crown prince's behalf? It turns out we are not helpless in answering these questions. They can and will be the subject of scrutiny when Democrats take over the House majority next year. In an interview with me, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. - the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee - confirmed that the committee will be examining these and other questions related to Trump's response to the Khashoggi murder and its broader implications. "Certainly we will be delving further into the murder of Khashoggi, and I want to make sure that the committee is fully debriefed on it," Schiff told me. "We will certainly want to examine what the intelligence community knows about the murder." In his latest comments, and in his recent statement, Trump cast the question of whether the crown prince ordered the killing as an unanswered one. In both, Trump said: "Maybe he did" and "maybe he didn't." But as Schiff pointed out to me, congressional scrutiny of this matter will attempt to flesh out in greater detail what, in particular, the intelligence community has concluded and how firm the basis is for that conclusion. Members of Congress will then have a clearer sense of whether Trump is deliberately misrepresenting that conclusion to protect the crown prince, and if so, how audaciously. "We'll look at what the intelligence community assessments are at any given time," Schiff said, while stressing that he was not characterizing the CIA's conclusions on the Khashoggi killing one way or the other. "Then it will be quite clear whether the president is relying on the intelligence community and our best source of information or whether the president is representing something very different." Schiff stressed, however, that the committee would look at much broader questions about the United States' relationship with Saudi Arabia and about that country's conduct on other fronts. Schiff vowed a "deep dive on Saudi Arabia" that would also look at "the war in Yemen," at "how stable is the House of Saud" and how "the kingdom is treating its critics or members of the press generally," among other things. Trump has repeatedly justified his hands-off approach to the Khashoggi killing with lies about how much we're benefiting from the relationship, particularly when it comes to continued arms sales. Schiff noted that the proper role of the Intelligence Committee would be to establish what exactly the intelligence tells us about the Saudis on all these fronts, which could then supply members of Congress with more information to try to hold the Saudis accountable - for example, through sanctions - in defiance of the president, if necessary. "If members of Congress are able to get a complete briefing on Saudi Arabia" or on other matters, Schiff told me, and this shows "the facts to be at odds with what the president is representing," then Congress will be "armed with good enough information that it can take action to make sure that our national interests are protected and that we base our policy on the facts." Schiff noted that this would enable Congress to determine whether Trump "is making representations to the public that are at odds with what we know." Schiff also said the goal, on this and many other fronts, such as North Korea denuclearization, would be to "provide some accountability if the president is representing evidence that we know to be untrue and putting the country at risk." Another big question is whether Trump's financial relations with the Saudis are shaping his response in some way. Schiff said that Democrats will also delve into Trump's international financial entanglements - on the Saudi matter and others - though he said which committees will look at what remains to be determined. "There are a whole set of potential financial conflicts of interest and emoluments problems that Congress will need to get to the bottom of," Schiff said. "Certainly if foreign investment in the Trump businesses is guiding U.S. policy in a way that's antithetical to the country's interests, we need to find out about it." In his comments on Thursday, Trump was asked who should be held accountable for the Khashoggi murder. The president replied: "Maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a very, very vicious place." At the core of Trump's refusal to hold the Saudis to account is his continued broader claim that bad things happen in this vicious, evil world and that he must act to protect U.S. interests - "America First!" - even if it means overlooking such conduct at times or doing other things people find distasteful. I've already detailed why the claim that Trump is even acting in U.S. interests in the first place is a lie on this and many other fronts. But what's also pivotal to this Trumpian posture is the notion that the question of what happened to Khashoggi is fundamentally unanswerable. If this illusion can be maintained, then Trump can continue to blame the generic "viciousness" of "the world" for it, which both makes it politically easier for Trump to protect the crown prince and makes accountability for this "viciousness" harder to attain - deliberately so. That is the truly reprehensible ethos at the core of Trump's stance, and it is why the illusion on which it is based must be dispelled. Hopefully effective House Democratic oversight will succeed in doing just that. Sometimes an organizational shift or even disruption must occur for credit unions to drive the invention and innovation that is needed to compete effectively in todays world. Proactively fostering diverse viewpoints throughout the organization can turbocharge the fresh thinking of innovation. Although it may feel disruptive to traditional management structures, studies show that diversity in team members brings diverse perspectives, and diverse teams do a better job in furthering innovation than teams lacking diversity. When all employees know that senior management will go to bat for compelling ideas regardless of the source, the organization is poised to unlock innovation that drives growth. A recent BCG study found that diversity in management teams was linked with overall organizational innovation, as measured by the percentage of revenue from products and services launched in the last 3 years. Significantly, overall nancial performance also benefited from diverse management teams. According to a recent study published in the Harvard Business Review, EBIT margins were about 9% higher in companies with more management diversity than for those that were below-average. Diversity involves both intrinsic inborn traits and characteristics gained through experience. Gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and age are determined at birth. Veteran experience, college major, industry background, career path, and foreign work experience, whereby one learns to appreciate cultural differences, are examples of diversity acquired through experience. It is not enough, however, to have a diverse workforce. Inclusion is essential to harness the business strength diversity brings. Fair employment practices are a start, including a strong non-discrimination policy, equal pay for equal work, and a welcoming work environment. All employees must feel valued. They must know that it is safe to propose new ideas. Outside perspectives and diverse voices get airtime, and ideas are considered regardless of age, background or experience level. Novel twists on old and new problems are considered. Leaders demonstrate they value diversity and inclusion through budgets, communications, management systems, and metrics that track status and progress. Tools like training and technology are deployed to accelerate diversity and inclusion. Management implements techniques and supplies the resources to help diverse teams engage and ourish across the business. Feedback is clear, actionable and has a real focus on what is working well and going right. Employees are empowered to contribute to their full potential. When senior leadership support and invest in diversity, they energize adaptability, agility, nonlinear thinking, risk taking, and an action orientation. Leaders and their teams share decision-making authority and credit for successes. For organizations that have had traditional hierarchical administration that lacks diversity, such changes may feel disruptive, but the disruption is not only healthy, it stimulates success. Smart leaders will take every opportunity for their organization to gain an edge, and diversity and inclusion deliver just such an edge. STORY LINK Pound to Australian Dollar Forecast: GBP/AUD Exchange Rate Rises despite Brexit Turbulence GBP/AUD Exchange Rate Spikes as Iron Ore Price Drop Hits Aussie Pound to Australian Dollar (GBP/AUD) Exchange Rate Rises despite Continuing Brexit Fallout Australian Dollar (AUD) Stumbles as House Sales Worst since Early 90s EU Brexit Summit and US-China Trade Tensions Likely to Determine GBP/AUD Exchange Rate Next Week Like this piece? Please share with your friends and colleagues: The Pound Australian Dollar (GBP/AUD) exchange rate spiked on Thursday with the Aussie being hit by a slump in iron ore prices the pairing is currently trading at A$1.7751.AUD was also knocked by a drop in property sales, with a fall reported to be the lowest since the early 1990s.Meanwhile the GBP/AUD exchange rate benefited from positive Brexit news yesterday.Prime Minister Theresa Mays visit to Brussels to meet the President of the European Commission (EC), Jean-Claude Juncker, presaged a positive outcome on Thursday resulting in an agreement in principle over Brexit.Today saw a similar trajectory for the GBP/AUD exchange rate as Brexit developments remained controversial as ex-Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, aired his criticism of the Brexit draft agreement as being worse than staying in the European Union.The Labour MP Virendra Sharma also weighed in saying:Even the prime ministers allies think this is a bad deal. She cant convince her party, and even the CBI have privately panned her deal.With the fast-approaching EU Brexit summit on Sunday, any public objections to Brexit could damage investors confidence in Sterling, as Mays deal comes under increasing fire from allies and opposition alike.The Australian Dollar to Pound (AUD/GBP) exchange rate took a hit from a reported decrease in property sales, with fears that this could lead to an economic recession further dampening sentiment in the Aussie.David Scutt, an economics correspondent for Business Insider, commented:As for whether the slump in property turnover is an ominous sign for the Australian economy like it was in the early 90s, past performance is not indicative of future returns.The Aussie was further hit by the fall in iron ore prices, with benchmark 62% fines dropping to $72.18 a tonne.This followed iron ore exports from Australias Port Hedland suffering supply disruptions at the beginning of the month.The GBP/AUD exchange rate is set to be driven by Brexit developments at the start of next week, following Sundays EU Brexit summit.Sunday will also see Philip Lowe, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) delivering a speech, with investors focusing on any comments he makes that could be interpreted as being hawkish.Later in the week the risk-correlated Australian Dollar is likely to be affected by the G20 gathering in Argentina, with Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump set to go head-to-head over trade, meaning risk sentiment is likely to be volatile in the days ahead. International Money Transfer? Ask our resident FX expert a money transfer question or try John's new, free, no-obligation personal service! ,where he helps every step of the way, ensuring you get the best exchange rates on your currency requirements. TAGS: Pound Australian Dollar Forecasts For Subscribers Meet the Daily American Somerset County All-24 Football All-Stars The inaugural Daily American Somerset County All-24 Football Team is announced. Offensive and defensive MVP's chosen as well as the top performers. The sickening photo of dozens of Wisconsin high school boys apparently giving a Nazi salute sparked so much media outrage last week that even Gov. Scott Walker shook his head and said, Theyre just a bunch of idiots. The well-dressed boys were photographed outside a county courthouse last spring at prom time, and about two-thirds of them had their right arms raised in what looks to anyone with eyes in their head to be a Sieg Heil salute. One student also appears to be making the upside-down OK hand signal that white supremacists use to mean white power. To be fair, the parent who took the photo who also owns a photography business said that he had simply asked the boys to wave goodbye for the camera, and that the final result had been misinterpreted. However, several news outlets also reported that some of the boys meant it, possibly as a joke. Har dee har har. One student at the school, Jordan Blue, told media outlets that some of his classmates were goofing around. He told CNN the episode was a scary moment, and it was very shocking and upsetting. Nate Mathis-Vargas, a white father of two girls who attend the high school, spoke to the podcast Its Been a Minute with Sam Sanders and said he was appalled by the picture. He also said he was concerned for his daughters not only because they go to school with people who either hold white-supremacist beliefs or think its a joking matter, but also because many students didnt even understand the problem. He said he discussed the incident with his daughters and found that they werent aware of a lot about the Nazi army itself, so they didnt understand what that meant, which was more shocking to me than the picture itself. Its like: How did they not teach that? How do they not know that? Sadly, those kids are not alone in their ignorance. A study released last summer by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which pursues restitution for victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs, delivered the alarming news that 11 percent of all Americans and 22 percent of millennials hadnt heard of the Holocaust or werent sure what it was. The study also found 31 percent of all Americans and 41 percent of millennials believe 2 million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Forty-one percent of all Americans and 66 percent of millennials cannot say what Auschwitz was, and 52 percent of Americans wrongly think Hitler came to power through force. As amazing as it may sound, only 10 states New York, New Jersey, California, Florida, Rhode Island, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Connecticut and Kentucky have legislative requirements about the teaching of genocide and the Holocaust in their public schools, according to the New York-based Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect. In the absence of such education, Mathis-Vargas daughters were angry about the backlash over the photo, because they didnt understand what was wrong about what the boys had done. All they saw, according to Mathis-Vargas, was their school being attacked and their friends demonized and threatened. It opened my eyes about what I need to do as a parent on talking to my kids about these things, the father said. He added that he hoped the school would start offering more instruction to prevent these kinds of misunderstandings in the future. Hopefully, the future wont be too late. Already, hate crimes in America have spiked by 17 percent over 2017, with a corresponding 37 percent increase in anti-Semitic attacks, according to FBI statistics. America needs some serious schooling before it relives historys worst mistakes. Esther Cepeda is syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group. You can call bummalo Bombay Duck but it is still fishy. You can stick a Volvo grille on a rubber-banded Daf but it still whirrs like a sewing machine and the public wont buy it. Theresa May, defying these lessons, brought her draft EU departure plans to the Commons with their latest modifications at 3pm yesterday. Prime Minister Theresa May gives a statement outside 10 Downing Street to announce that the UK and the EU agreed the draft political declaration on their future relationship The House proved little more eager than before. On the Tory benches there were long faces. Heads were shaken. Sir Bill Cash (Con, Stone) pushed out his cheeks and blew. Sorry, chef, but this dish of the day just aint shifting. The Prime Minister, it must be said, looked chipper more so than for many a day. At 12.45pm she had stepped out of the front door of Downing Street with an almost impertinent sashay and spoken to the nation in time for the lunchtime news bulletins. Ian Duncan Smith, left, and the former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab , right. On the Tory benches there were long faces She had opted for a coutoured, grey look, her fringe picking up the TV lights as she recited a longish statement from memory. As an act of performance, it wasnt too bad. The idea of that TV turn was to try to set the image of the day and ensure she was not simply depicted as a prisoner of the Commons. She was appealing to the country over and around the parliamentarians. The new document giving rise to yesterdays flurry was the full political declaration on our future trading relationship with the EU once transition is over. A few days ago this declaration was seven pages. Jacob Rees Mogg watches Theresa May's Brexit statement in the House of Commons this afternoon Now abracadabra it was 26 pages and contained a few fresh phrases. The one she was most proud of and duly flourished was its mention that Britain could have an independent trade policy. Jeremy Corbyn had fun with the airiness of the documents language but then he made the mistake of using the expression this is waffle. Never say that in the Commons. The House will simply roar YES! (believing that this is waffle describes perfectly what you yourself are saying). Poor Mr Corbyn struggled to command the Chamber after that. At one point he spoke of section 107 of the document. Given that he recently admitted he had not read the draft withdrawal agreement, the Tory benches ooohed with mockery. Slow reader Jeremy had reached section 107? Gold star. Jeremy Corbyn speaks to the House over the Brexit agreement. He had fun with the airiness of the documents language but then he made the mistake of using the expression this is waffle Mr Corbyn bellowed about how the document did not meet Labours six tests for a proper Brexit. With that he resumed his seat and Sir Nicholas Soames (Con, Mid Sussex) practically burped out the despairing verdict my God! Mrs May proceeded to run through those six tests of Labour, asking, with each one, if it was met. Yes! cried a few of the tamer Tories. NOOOOO! came the rather louder volley from Labour MPs. Sir Vince Cable, for the Lib Dems, thought the document worryingly vague and pathetically weak. Tory blowhards pointed at Sir Vince, saying thats you! Eurosceptics were technical, polite, and firmly, immoveably, coldly unenthusiastic. Democratic Unionist Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, pictured centre, told the House to scrap the backstop. Mrs Mays replies were as long and tangled as spaghetti [File photo] Time and again they said Mrs May should remove the stuff about the Northern Irish backstop from her deal. Iain Duncan Smith: Strip it out. Owen Paterson: Consider withdrawing it. Boris Johnson: Junk forthwith the backstop. Kate Hoey (Lab, Vauxhall): The backstop should be taken out. From Democratic Unionist Sir Jeffrey Donaldson: We need to see an end of the backstop. Mrs Mays replies were as long and tangled as spaghetti. Blairites showed they, too, could synchronise soundbites. Chuka Umunna (Lab, Streatham) said it was a charter for years of uncertainty. Ben Bradshaw (Lab, Exeter) predicted years and years of more uncertainty. Headmaaster, I do believe certain boys have been copying one another. Dominic Raab, on his first appearance since quitting the Cabinet, reached the regrettable but inescapable conclusion was that the PM had given away more powers than we were regaining via Brexit. Steve Baker (Con, High Wycombe) asked: What other country would submit to these kind of agreements? The Tory Whips have work to do. At first glance, the behaviour of the United Arab Emirates over the British so-called spy Matthew Hedges is baffling. The charge of espionage against the Durham University research student appears as grotesque as the life sentence he was given by the court. And what makes this case all the more extraordinary is that the UAE a federation of seven monarchies has long-established friendly relations with this country. Hundreds of thousands of British tourists flock there every year, drawn by the duty-free high-end shopping and the permanent sunshine. Moreover, in a country of just eight million people there are more than 100,000 British expatriates, many of them working in hospitality, medicine, construction and even security. The ties between our nations are mirrored in a host of other ways, including the popularity of the Emirates airline with British travellers, or the regular visits by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York. The infamous quip by former foreign secretary Boris Johnson that London is the eighth Emirate certainly contained an element of truth. Daniela Tejada reads a statement to reporters outside the Foreign Office in London after meeting with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt to discuss her husbands jail sentence That relationship now threatened by the cruel treatment of Matthew Hedges reflects the history of the Emirates, whose geographic position still makes them far more important than their size on the map suggests. Their strategic location in the Middle East, at the heart of Britains vital trade route to its Empires key trading centres in Asia, meant the Royal Navy guarded the Gulf ports for a century before oil was discovered making them even more valuable in the twentieth century. The federation gained independence from Britain in 1971, but the intimate connection has remained, especially in security and defence. Apart from purchasing plenty of BAE weapons, around 200 British servicemen and women are permanently based there. The UAEs armed services and security police get equipment and know-how from us, while the Port Zayed is the most visited Royal Navy port in the world. With so many security contacts already in situ, I find the idea that the British government would rely on a PhD student to poke around for the Emiratis deepest secrets absurd. Indeed, the Foreign Secretary has broken protocol on intelligence matters to state that Matthew Hedges is not an MI6 agent. Matthew Hedges with his wife Daniela Tejada. The British academic accused of spying in the United Arab Emirates was sentenced to life imprisonment in a five-minute hearing at an Abu Dhabi court on Wednesday This strange episode is perhaps more explicable in the context of the UAEs true political nature and its role in the Middle East. The image of the country as a beacon of pro-Western, tolerant and progressive attitudes is an illusion that is sedulously cultivated by its rulers and their spin machine. Yes, it is true that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, who holds the real power in the land, has pioneered many superficial changes to give the UAE a modern image. He has opened up tourism, encouraged foreign investment, diversified from dependency on oil and hosted rock concerts and Formula One. But the reality is that, beyond the soaring skyscrapers and fashionable cultural events, the UAE is still a profoundly reactionary despotism, run by a hereditary elite which refuses to accept political dissent or real democracy. Western values such as freedom of speech or, as Mr Hedges discovered, due process under the law, are wholly absent. In place of pluralism, there is paranoia, with the royal family utterly terrified of losing its authority. Paradoxically, the huge size of the foreign population in the UAE just 8 per cent of residents are Emiratis feeds this climate of brutal institutionalised distrust, where much of the public is viewed with suspicion. As a result, the UAE leaders with the help of the CIA have invested millions of dollars in surveillance technology to keep the citizenry under control. A key target in this crackdown is the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical movement that seeks to replace Middle Eastern monarchies with Islamic republics. The UAE governments intense hostility to the Brotherhood may partly explain why Mr Hedges was targeted, since he was reportedly researching the part played by this organisation in the Arab Spring. After a very, very scared Mr Hedges was convicted of being an MI6 spy, Mr Hunt had condemned the totally unacceptable verdict and threatened serious consequences against the UAE Given that the 2011 revolutions in Middle Eastern countries were largely directed against family rule, anything connected with it was bound to raise the hackles of the UAE regime. In the totalitarian Emirates, there is no understanding of Western students being free to choose their own subjects and research them. There is a parallel here with the tragic Jamal Khashoggi, the investigative journalist who was recently murdered by the Saudi Arabian regime at its embassy in Istanbul. The Saudis accused him of being a spy for the Muslim Brotherhood. It is no coincidence that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are close allies. Both ruled by their crown princes, both rich through oil, they are consumed by fears of internal and external threats to their dictatorships. Each is an enemy of Iran, their biggest regional rival, and this fact, too, could also have played its part in the Hedges saga. This year US President Donald Trump scrapped a controversial deal with Iran to restrict its nuclear programme and reinstated tough economic sanctions a move that has been opposed by the British Government and that may have fuelled the UAEs disillusionment with its old friend. Daniela Tejada arriving at Heathrow Airport from the UAE after her husband was jailed More importantly, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been waging a brutal war in Yemen, where the rebels are supporters of Iran. Our Governments recent condemnation of this military campaign, based on both its barbarity and the famine it has caused, has provoked the anger of both Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which claim to be acting in the defence of their own vital national interests. Indeed, the UAEs rulers have proved keen to flex their military muscles, even intervening in the tribal conflict in Libya. They have the wealth and, thanks partly to British weapons and military expertise, the capability to throw their weight around abroad and at home. The case of Mr Hedges could be a further indicator that the UAE will no longer be a compliant ally of the West, refuses to be taken for granted and is going to set its own rules. Mr Hedgess wife, Daniela Tejada, has complained that the Foreign Office has not handled the imprisonment of her husband with sufficient robustness, trusting in Britains historic connection to the UAE and reluctance to cause any embarrassment. But the UAE, which does not perhaps care as much about Britain as our diplomats believe, had no such hesitations and the personal consequences have been felt all too horribly by the couple. I believe Mr Hedges is the victim of a gross injustice, driven by regional politics and the determination of the Emirates to send a chilling message to dissidents at home and abroad. The crucial question is what will Britain do now? Mr Trump has provided one possible course. In his response to the Khashoggi case, he stated explicitly that however heinous the crime, realpolitik will prevail because Saudi Arabia is such a valuable ally of the US, particularly through its purchase of weaponry and planes. The commercial needs of America will not be undermined by outrage over the murder of a journalist, even one who had made his life in the US. Al Wathba prison is the notorious Abu Dhabi jail where it is feared Matthew Hedges will be sent after he was sentenced to life in prison for 'spying' in the UAE But it would be impossible for Theresa Mays Government to follow this line. The public would rightly not tolerate such indifference to one of our own citizens. That kind of surrender to brutality would be intolerable. The right moral course is clear for Mrs May and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt. Their task is made all the more difficult because they are already trying to win the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual-national who has been imprisoned in Iran since 2016. Perhaps Mr Hunt will pull off a diplomatic coup by getting both of them released, but I am not optimistic. The mood has been ugly and paranoid in these Middle Eastern regimes since the Arab Spring, while our influence is in decline. However, the Government must not stop trying. The Emiratis money can buy many things here, but it should not buy silence about Mr Hedges unjust fate. Arab jailers dangle prospect of appeal or pardon after wife says: We didnt even get to say goodbye By Sam Greenhill, Claire Ellicott and George Odling A young academic jailed as a British spy was offered a glimmer of hope yesterday as Arab rulers dangled the prospect of clemency. In the face of furious UK threats, Gulf leaders held out the olive branch of an amicable solution for Matthew Hedges after he was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday. Last night his wife, Daniela Tejada, was said to be hopeful but cautious. She spoke of the beyond heartbreaking moment she watched her 31-year-old husband being pronounced guilty in a five-minute hearing in an Abu Dhabi courtroom, adding: We didnt even get to say goodbye. No boycott, minister warns colleges Academics in Britain must not boycott the United Arab Emirates, the universities minister urged yesterday. Sam Gyimah warned universities that cutting ties with the country risks harming our ability to positively influence its future leaders. He said student exchange programmes must continue to facilitate a change of outlook and show overseas youngsters what a fully functioning democracy looks like. His comments come after staff at Birmingham University voted for an academic boycott of its campus in the UAE over the affair. The Birmingham action means lecturers based in the Midlands will refuse to teach in Dubai and will not provide the campus with any academic support, such as course materials and marking exams. In addition, the University College Union (UCU), which represents academics across the country, has urged institutions to seek stronger assurances on treatment of staff before committing them to travel. However, yesterday, Mr Gyimah said that, while the case was extremely worrying, academic boycotts may not be the answer. He said: Its an incredibly tragic story and I am pleased to see that the Foreign Office is using all the available levers available to intervene on behalf of this graduate. Weve got to be cautious. But student exchange is one of those things that should always go on. I think that even where you have countries where you might have profound policy disagreements, one of the issues that can actually help facilitate a change of outlook in ideas is student exchange programmes. It worked during the Cold War, I dont see why it cant work now. Advertisement Miss Tejada accused the Foreign Office of failing to help Durham University PhD student Mr Hedges for six months, following his arrest in Dubai on May 5 after he had interviewed sources for his thesis on security policies in the Gulf. In an excoriating interview, she claimed the UK government prized relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) over her helpless husband who had been held in solitary confinement for six months and forced to sign a confession while British officials shrugged that it was not our job to intervene. But last night after meeting Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Miss Tejada, 27, softened her tone and thanked him for now standing up for Mr Hedges and doing everything to get him home. Earlier Mr Hunt had summoned the UAEs ambassador in London for a very frank dressing down. On Wednesday, after a very, very scared Mr Hedges was convicted of being an MI6 spy, Mr Hunt had condemned the totally unacceptable verdict and threatened serious consequences against the UAE. Yesterday the Gulf state denied Mr Hedges had faced a kangaroo court and insisted the evidence he was engaged in espionage for the UK was strong. But in a significant climbdown, its authoritarian rulers also raised the possibility of clemency or a successful court appeal, stressing this sentence is not final. Abdulla Al Naqbi, head of legal affairs at the UAE foreign ministry, said the Briton had a chance to appeal and also the right to appeal for presidential clemency, adding that the UAE was determined to protect its important strategic relationship with Britain. He added: Both sides hope to find an amicable solution to the case. By chance, UAE National Day falls next Thursday, traditionally a day when pardons are granted. A Whitehall source said it was interesting the word clemency had been used, while Mr Hunt tweeted of having held a constructive conversation by phone with the UAE foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed. He said: I believe and trust hes working hard to resolve the situation ASAP. The Emiratis insisted yesterday that Mr Hedges has been treated fairly. Mr Al Naqbi said compelling and powerful evidence was presented in court that included information extracted from his personal electronic devices as well as Mr Hedges own confession. He claimed it was not true the academic had been made to sign documents he did not understand. Yesterday Colombian-born Miss Tejada, who married Mr Hedges last year, broke down as she told Radio 4s Today programme: I imagine he is just as distraught as I am. She said he only got to see a British consular officer after six weeks of intensive interrogation, adding that the Foreign Office just disregarded my requests. Last night Daniela Tejada spoke of the beyond heartbreaking moment she watched her husband being pronounced guilty in a five-minute hearing in an Abu Dhabi courtroom Miss Tejada claimed: They said it wasnt part of their job they were not obliged to make representations. I was under the impression that they were putting their interests with the UAE above the rights of a British citizens rightful freedom and welfare. They were stepping on eggshells instead of taking a firm stance. But later, after she had met Mr Hunt at the Foreign Office for an hour, she admitted, This is not a fight I can win alone, and thanked the Foreign Office for now standing up for one of their citizens. Miss Tejada said: We really appreciate all the positive support that has been shown to Matt. Seeing him shaking in court after being handed a life sentence and then being made to leave was beyond heartbreaking. We didnt even get to say goodbye. I really appreciate the Foreign Secretary taking the time to meet me. He has assured me that he and his team are doing everything in their power to get Matt free and return him home to me. The right to protest peacefully is an essential freedom in any democratic society. The right to make the lives of your fellow citizens a misery is not. So lets acknowledge that the self-styled environmental campaigners who took to the streets of London this week are perfectly entitled to promote their views. What theyre not or, at least, shouldnt be allowed to do is close roads and bridges, bringing swathes of the city to a standstill. In the process, they caused serious inconvenience to tens of thousands of people trying to go about their lawful daily business. This is the group causing chaos on the Elephant and Castle roundabout in South London on Wednesday, including pop star Jim Davidson, who was on his way to Folkestone for a gig All week, demonstrators have been descending on main road junctions and river crossings, staging sit-down protests aimed deliberately at causing gridlock. Tailbacks stretched for miles, from Tower Bridge to Heathrow. To be fair to the police, they did make 82 arrests last weekend when activists targeted five bridges. Some of those who had their collars felt glued themselves to government buildings. In which case, why not just leave them there? Then we all could have gone along and thrown rotten fruit at them. But it was the weekday, rush-hour road closures which created the most disruption. Commuters and taxi drivers accused the police of indulging the demonstrators. Scotland Yard even put out a statement advising people not to travel by car or motorbike, adding that attempting to drive through protesters in the road is dangerous and illegal. So is blocking the road. It is a criminal offence, punishable by a 50 fine. Not nearly enough, if you ask me. Surely the advance warnings should have been directed at those planning to cause as much chaos as possible not at law-abiding motorists. Tower Bridge was also targeted by a swarming roadblock of activists on Wednesday - but police have not arrested anyone over the problems they caused How many people were late for work, how many children were late for school? How many important business meetings were cancelled? How many long-awaited GP and hospital appointments were missed? More to the point, what the hell was all this disruption supposed to achieve? Were still none the wiser. The organisers say they want to put pressure on the Government to do more to tackle climate change. What, for instance? Thats the question LBC Radios Nick Ferrari put to one of the ringleaders, Roger Hallam, from an outfit calling itself Extinction Rebellion. What precisely should Britain do? Er, cut carbon emissions by 2025, Hallam said, accusing the Government of criminal inaction to prevent the polar ice caps melting. Ferrari tried to pin him down on specifics. Did they want to ban cars, perhaps? Should everyone be forced to travel by bicycle? When Hallam declined to offer any solutions, Ferrari cut him off. The only conclusion we can draw from all this is that the demonstration, like most of these self-indulgent demos, was simply about drawing attention to themselves. In this case, the protesters may claim to love the polar bears, but they clearly have little regard for their fellow citizens. Protesters from the Extinction Rebellion group hold banners at Elephant and Castle on Wednesday. The organisers say they want to put pressure on the Government to do more to tackle climate change Getting around London is already an ordeal thanks, primarily, to the ludicrous and ruinously expensive network of largely deserted cycle lanes built in the name of, yes, tackling climate change. Did it not occur to Hallam and his fellow layabouts that if they want to save the planet, erecting human roadblocks is an inter-galactically stupid way of going about it? Forcing cars, buses, taxis and emergency vehicles to sit in deliberately manufactured traffic jams, revving their engines, only increases the amount of exhaust emissions released into the atmosphere. Lest you think this column is a little London-centric, there have already been smaller-scale Extinction Rebellion protests in Bristol, Manchester and Glasgow. We can all brace ourselves for more of this kind of aggravation from the anti-car fanatics. Look, I accept that the police have to perform a difficult balancing act. But their primary job should be to keep the roads open and the city moving. Climate change activists are blocking roads across London to cause gridlock. Pictured, one of the demonstrations on the A5 in London yesterday They could have done with Boris Johnsons water cannon, foolishly flogged off to the lowest bidder this week. Though tempers were understandably frayed, drivers and passengers caught up in the chaos acted with commendable restraint. How much longer the peace can be maintained if these protests are to become a regular occurrence remains to be seen. Comedian Jim Davidson, once a staunch supporter of police charities, had a few choice words with officers on the scene after being stranded by the protest at the busy Elephant and Castle junction in South London. A motorist drives through the protest at the Minories near Tower Bridge in London on Wednesday Meanwhile, at Tower Bridge, a geography student who stood in the road, waving a banner and blocking traffic, claimed that former Tory attack dog Norman Tebbit, now 87, drove slowly into her, brushing her leg. He looked incredibly angry, she complained. He was mouthing things at me through the window. Can anybody blame him? Instead of moaning, she should reflect that she may have had a lucky escape. Back in the Eighties, when he was known as the Chingford Skinhead, Norman was instrumental in smashing Arthur Scargills flying pickets during the miners strike. In those days, I couldnt imagine him letting a bunch of soppy student activists stand in his way, let alone shut down half of London. Bring on the water cannon! Sunday night is le Carre night. Ever since Tom Hiddleston soared to superstardom in The Night Manager, all glamorous resorts and high-tension thrills, the nation has been agog for more spies, seduction and gun-play. The Little Drummer Girl set in the brutal Seventies as the Cold War and international terrorism collided has gripped millions with its complex double-crosses and deceptions. As we await the penultimate episode tomorrow, the thriller has proved to be vintage John le Carre, with a twist: none of his other novels has a heroine at the centre of the story, taking on the macho world of espionage and beating the spymasters at their own game. The intensely stylish start was, perhaps inevitably, baffling. Israeli secret agents trailed Palestinian bomb-makers, while an ominously silent stranger stalked a British actress on a Greek isle. It all ended in a high-speed ride as wary romantic Charlie (Florence Pugh) found her date in Athens with the monosyllabic Gadi (Alexander Skarsgard) turning into an abduction. But patterns have gradually emerged. The machinations of Mossad masterspy Martin Kurtz (Michael Shannon) have propelled Charlie deeper into the murderous world of Middle East politics. The Little Drummer Girl, starring Alexander Skarsgard and Florence Pugh (seen together), has gripped millions with its complex double-crosses and deceptions The author behind the show - John Le Carre, picture with his son Simon Cornwell (left) and star Alexander Skarsgard (right) - is just as complex as his characters Last week saw her interrogated at gunpoint, then kidnapped in Beirut and thrown into the boot of a car taken to meet shadowy figure Fatmeh (Lubna Azabal), who seems to wield more control over the terrorist cell than anyone had guessed. As the credits rolled, viewers were desperate for more, if somewhat baffled by some of the smoke and mirrors. But while the TV drama has sometimes been difficult to fathom, the life of its creator is ten times more mysterious. Le Carre is a compulsive storyteller and as his sons Simon and Stephen explain today, that can make him hard to know. The legend often obscures the truth... sometimes deliberately. For a start, John le Carre, now 87, is not the writers real name. He was born David Cornwell, in 1931 in Poole, Dorset, but by the time he published his first novel, aged 30, hed been working for British intelligence for seven years, ostensibly with the Foreign Service. His controllers didnt like to see their agents writing books he once revealed, Even if it were about butterflies, they said, Id have to choose a pseudonym. With typical sleight of hand, Cornwell claims he chose le Carre because he saw the name over a tailors shop and liked it then admits, in the same breath, that this is a lie he tells to satisfy nosy parkers. His father Ronnie was a small-time fraudster and serial philanderer who liked to boast he was friendly with the Kray twins. When David was two years old, his father was sent to prison; when he was five, his mother Olive walked out on the family. After a series of brutal boarding schools, he went to university in Bern, Switzerland, where he was recruited in 1950 by the British Army Intelligence Corps. One of my jobs was trawling through displaced-persons camps in Austria, looking for people who were fake refugees, he has said. They were actually Communist spies, and the Army sent some back behind the Iron Curtain as double agents. This notion of recruiting and inverted loyalties would become a constant theme of his novels. Cornwell switched to MI5 while studying at Oxford, where he mingled with Communist activists and reported what he heard. After a stint teaching German at Millfield and Eton public schools, he returned to diplomatic duty, first with MI5 and then MI6 a period that he now dismisses disingenuously as a few years spooking around. Le Carre (pictured with his family in 1964) was born David Cornwell, in 1931 in Poole, Dorset, but by the time he published his first novel, aged 30, hed been working for British intelligence for seven years After his third novel, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, became a bestseller, he left the intelligence services to become a full-time writer, leading a nomadic life around Europe with his first wife Ann and their three sons Simon, Stephen and Timothy. Divorced in 1971, he remarried the following year to Valerie, an editor with his publishers. Today, the couple live near Penzance in Cornwall. After more than half a century of producing bestsellers such as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, le Carre is intensely protective of his work. The idea of updating his novels for television might seem too daunting, but was made easier because the production company that owns the rights is run by two of his own sons. Simon and younger brother Stephen set up The Ink Factory, a production company for video games as well as TV and films, in 2010. They made Our Kind Of Traitor, another le Carre adaptation, for the cinema in 2016, but it was The Night Manager that brought the breakthrough, in the same year. Le Carre was initially dubious. He disliked the idea of giving arms dealer Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie) a Majorcan villa for his HQ instead of a superyacht, and of turning his villainous customers into Arab warlords instead of Colombian drugs barons. Most of all, he was concerned to see his chief spy Leonard Burr become Angela, played by a heavily pregnant Olivia Colman. But the novelist was eventually persuaded by his sons, and became so keen on the mini-series that he played a cameo as a wealthy tourist, drinking a vodka martini at a restaurant table who is stunned by a Roper tantrum. Vodka martini, of course, was James Bonds drink of choice. Thats a typically subtle le Carre joke: he despises Bond, dismissing him as a an international gangster and insisting that Ian Flemings novels shouldnt even be classed as spy thrillers. In the world of John le Carre, even the drinks arent what they seem. So what was it like, growing up with such a brilliant but complex man for a father... and then going into business with him? Here, his sons reveal their ambitions and fears in bringing le Carres work to the TV screen, and what it was like growing up as the sons of the Tinker Tailor man... The Little Drummer Girl, tomorrow, 9pm, BBC1. Life with Dad is a thriller by le Carres sons, Simon & Stephen Cornwell HAVING A FAMOUS NOVELIST FOR A FATHER Every child loves listening to stories. We were lucky our father told them for a living. We travelled around Europe as we were growing up, living for a while in Crete and other places, and Dad told us stories. Sometimes he made them up. Sometimes he took them from books. Occasionally, as we got older, he would read to us from the novel he was working on... It was a very special part of our upbringing. He was always a master of anecdotes. But we werent properly aware until we were a bit older that Dad wasnt only our father, David Cornwell: he was also somebody called John le Carre. That didnt affect us at the time: le Carre was a remote notion to us, just Dads nom de plume. John was eventually persuaded by his sons to play a cameo in the Night Manager as a wealthy tourist, drinking a vodka martini at a restaurant table who is stunned by a Roper tantrum. Pictured: Le Carre (centre, in blue shirt) in his cameo role in The Night Manager It wasnt until we were much older that we realised what a deep effect his storytelling had on us and the way we saw the world. Thats how our family communicated, and still does: through stories. As we were growing up, Dad taught us how to see the narratives that exist in the real world. Stories arent just for fiction. There are characters all around us. And now we have children of our own, we hear them asking him questions theres a difference to the questions that grandchildren ask their grandparents and Dad is open with his answers. It makes us realise how smart and self-aware he actually is. Any reader can guess hes a clever man, but his emotional intelligence is extraordinary. All of that is crystallised in The Little Drummer Girl. WHY WE CHOSE THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL After we had such a success with The Night Manager in 2016, we wanted to make something equally ambitious. The Little Drummer Girl is a big book, about 660 pages, and like The Night Manager it travels all over the place from West Germany to London, Greece and beyond. It has amazing characters that leap off the page, and in particular uniquely for a le Carre novel it has a strong female protagonist at its core. That gives the story a timely, relevant feel. But at the same time, its deeply rooted in the late Seventies, when the novel is set. We updated The Night Manager to the present day, to keep it innovative. We didnt actually sit down and discuss the choice with our father. We didnt have to: we knew that this novel is very close to his heart, and hes eager to see it brought to new audiences. That could only be done properly through television. A feature film is too short to do it justice. Like almost all Dads writing, The Little Drummer Girl is prescient, and although its set 40 years ago it feels contemporary and very relevant to today. Thats because, although he draws on his past experiences, our father lives very much in the present. John Le Carre taught his sons how to see the narratives that exist in the real world, and that stories arent just for fiction Hes 87, and hes constantly surrounded by the days papers as well as history books. He has a double perspective, and that enables him to see where things are going. If you sit down for a conversation with him, youd better be prepared to talk about whats happening now. Hes been a hugely successful and influential novelist for more than half a century, and a major reason for that is his constant focus on the here and now. Its the current choices that humanity faces, the immediate dilemmas we face, that fascinate him and always have done. WORKING WITH OUR FATHER Getting a major TV series right is always nerve-wracking... especially when the author is your father. We always want to work closely with authors when we adapt books, and we want to get it right because you only get that one chance. But we wouldnt be human if extra pressure was not added by the fact these are our dads books. It definitely adds an extra dimension. If things went wrong, the next family dinner might be awkward! Luckily, this is a golden age for television drama. Only five years ago, it was rare for major films stars to want to do TV. Now, they all do. Were able to get great directors on The Little Drummer Girl, it was the brilliant South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook. He was able to attract a stellar cast, including Florence Pugh as Charlie, Alexander Skarsgard as the mysterious stranger who lures her into danger, and Michael Shannon as Kurtz the spymaster. This golden age is the perfect foundation for adaptations of le Carre. A big budget mini-series with high production values enables us to bring out all the subtleties of the characters and the tale-telling. The books deserve it. Spending lots of money isnt an automatic recipe for success, but its such a privilege to be translating our fathers work to the screen that we couldnt hold back. These books are in our DNA, after all. Le Carre's sons would love to do a second series of The Night Manager, but the stars, including Tom Hiddleston, are in high demand and scheduling is too tricky at the moment WHAT'S NEXT? Everybody asks whether therell be a second series of The Night Manager. The answer is, we dont know at the moment. The stars Tom Hiddleston, Olivia Colman, Hugh Laurie are all in such demand that scheduling is tricky. And the story has to be a really good one. Of course wed love to do it though! Meanwhile, were also getting excited about the prospect of making The Spy Who Came In From The Cold for television. That is a challenge, because there is already a film version, starring Richard Burton and Claire Bloom. It came out more than 50 years ago but many still say its one of the greatest spy movies ever. The bar is set high. We love the idea of a TV version, as it comes very close to the start of the George Smiley series that forms the core of le Carres work. And if The Spy Who... was a success, wed inevitably want to continue and remake The Looking Glass War, Tinker, Tailor and Smileys People, as well as tackling the other great books in the series such as The Honourable Schoolboy and A Legacy Of Spies. The challenge would be to capture the period detail, and retain their relevance to today, just as with The Little Drummer Girl. To do that, wed have to find an actor who could match Alec Guinness as Smiley. Who might that be? Suggestions on a postcard please... Celebrities share the stories behind their favourite photographs. This week, its the turn of Shirley Ballas, 58. Strictly Judge Shirley Ballas, pictured, shares the stories behind some of her favourite snaps 1967: This is my father Andrew with my brother David and me when I was seven. Dad left home when I was young and it was my mother Audrey who raised us in Wallasey, Merseyside. He wasnt there at all when I was growing up, and getting into dance, so I never knew what it was like to have a male influence in my life. After my brother David died in 2003, though, I did start to see him a couple of times a year 1973: Here I am with David Fleet, my first male dance partner. I used to wear fake tan, so at school all the kids picked on me, but I didnt care. Until I was 13, Id only done all-girl contests with my partner Irene Hamilton. She loved dancing but wasnt as dedicated as me. Ive always been married to the business thats probably why I havent had a boyfriend for three years 1976: I still owe a debt of gratitude to my dancing partner Nigel Tiffanys family for taking me in at 14 until Nigel and I got engaged and moved to London two years later. He lived in Shipley, Yorkshire, and it was too far for me to travel on buses from Merseyside to train together, and my mum didnt have a car. I loved doing competitions in Blackpool, because if you came in the top three you won a prize, such as an electric fire. Nigel is now my financial adviser 1978: I have big eyelashes glued on here for my first professional photoshoot in Manchester, organised by Sammy Stopford, my then dance partner and future husband. Id left London and broken off my engagement to Nigel to dance with Sammy. Id been working at a firm of solicitors in London and I thought my boss was being nice when he let me go to pursue my dancing dreams, but now I realise it was because I was an awful secretary! 1982: This was taken with Sammy Stopford at a dance contest in Canada. Even though Sammy could afford for me to have dresses made, there was an instinct in me that said, I can do this myself. So I stitched the rhinestones on that dress myself, and on Sammys shirt, and I did my own headbands and make-up as well as decorating Sammys shoes. Just a year or so later, Sammy and I split up and I got together with my second husband, Corky Ballas from Texas 1986: Heres proof we thought we were having a girl! Corky and I had decorated the room with pink things, thinking a baby girl Elizabeth would be coming home, but my beautiful boy Mark was born. I always say he came out doing the cha-cha-cha and hes now a professional dancer. My mother lived with me and Corky in Houston from when Mark was two until we returned to the UK when he was four, and continued to take care of him until he was 22 and left home. Im so proud Mark was influenced by us all 1995: All our Christmas cards that year had this photo of Corky, Mark and me on them. Corky and I had had a very successful dance partnership, but our careers were coming to an end. Corky came from a rich family his father invented a strimmer called the Weed Eater but by the time we returned to the UK in 1990, business wasnt going so well and money was tight. We had to start again from nothing, renting a flat in south London, and I would sit on the stairs in dance studios, waiting to take classes that other teachers couldnt make it to With a seemingly endless range of options available to Australian women in order to preserve their youth, an ever-increasing number are turning to Botox. Now, one Sydney-based cosmetic physician has revealed the best age to think about starting a relationship with injectables - and it's long before most wrinkles even start to set in. Dr Phoebe Jones, who has worked as both a clinician and a researcher, said she is often asked by patients of the 'magic number', or when they should start anti-wrinkle procedures. 'If I had to put an age on it, I would say around 27. This is the age when we start to lose collagen and elasticity in the skin,' Dr Jones said. Cosmetic physician Dr Phoebe Jones has revealed the best age to start a relationship with injectables - and it's long before most wrinkles even start to set in Dr Jones said Botox should be first done as a preventative measure Ideally, the treatment should be first done as a preventative measure in a bid to deter deeper set lines making an appearance later down the track. 'For the majority of people, starting smaller doses of anti-wrinkle injections in their late 20's or early 30's is ideal for preventative purposes,' she said. 'Anti-wrinkle injections are performed to ensure that fine lines will soften and not become deeply set. 'If left untreated, these fine lines become more difficult to treat which is why we encourage people to receive anti-wrinkle injections in their late 20's or early 30's rather than hold off until their 40's or 50's.' However, she's also adamant that each person's skincare should be approached on a case-by-case basis as signs of ageing often appear with no cohesive warnings. 'While an individual's age is a contributing factor to deciding on when to get anti-wrinkle injections, there is no fixed age and other factors come into play,' she said. Dr Jones is also adamant that each person's skincare should be approached on a case-by-case basis as signs of ageing often appear with no cohesive warnings 'For example, people with overly expressive faces may start a little earlier than their late 20's,' Dr Jones said. 'Additionally, lifestyle factors including the time spent in the sun without protection and smoking can really speed up the skins ageing process.' In the lead up to Christmas, over 100,000 Australians are expected to go under the knife before the party season. Advertisement With Black Friday in full swing, shoppers around the world are scouring the Internet for the best festive bargains. And IKEA Australia's offering might be one of the best around, with the Swedish home furniture brand offering a staggering 50 per cent off selected items. Among the best deals are fridges for as little as $999, sofas for just $99 and budget outdoor furniture to ensure your summer party goes off with a bang. The deals are available online between Friday 23 November (or Black Friday) and Monday 26 November (or Cyber Monday), but they're only available while stocks last - so you'll have to shop quick. Scroll down for video IKEA Australia have slashed the price of countless items between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, taking off as much as 50 per cent from certain online items (stock image) Among the best deals are fridges for as little as $999 (left), sofas for just $99 and wardrobes for just $149 (right) The deals (pictured) are available online between Friday 23 November (or Black Friday as it has become known) and Monday 26 November, but they're only available while stocks last - so you'll have to shop quick. Those looking to invest in some new living room furniture will have plenty of choice, with on-trend two seater sofas in yellow and print available for just $99 and a stylish storage table retailing for as little as $9.99. You can also save $8 on a high pile rug in either green, pink, yellow, black or cream, with the rug costing just $9.99. If you're in need of office pieces, look no further than IKEA, who have hi-tech swivel chairs for $99, white desks for $49 (reduced from $99) and an assortment of storage boxes for as little as $4.99. Brightly-coloured and patterned sofas (pictured) have 50 per cent off, and now cost just $99 online You can also buy a high pile rug for less than $10 (left); storage tables (right) also retail for just $9.99 You can also buy wardrobes reduced from $249 to $149, chests of drawers for $79 and even a fridge that has a whopping 50 per cent off the original $1999 price. The stylish French door fridge and freezer now costs just $999 online. Elsewhere, there is plenty of outdoor furniture available - including parasols with bases for $69, outdoor lanterns for $7.99 and chairs for just $29. You can buy a beige table with two folding chairs for $68, reduced from $119 and buy a stylish day bed for $249. 'At IKEA we are always working to bring you the lowest prices and new products,' IKEA sales manager Mark Mitchinson told Daily Mail Australia (stock image) The promotional period at IKEA began at 0:01am on Black Friday and is set to run right the way up until Monday 26 or Cyber Monday at 11.59pm (pictured: some of the items on sale) The promotional period at IKEA began at 0:01am on Black Friday and is set to run right the way up until Monday 26 or Cyber Monday at 11.59pm. In-store purchases are exempt from the offer, as is click and collect - and the products are only available while stocks last. Historically, clearance sales from the Swedish homewares giant have proved incredibly popular. 'At IKEA we are always working to bring you the lowest prices and new products,' IKEA sales manager Mark Mitchinson told Daily Mail Australia. With Christmas fast approaching the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are set to throw their support behind military personnel who will be spending the festive season away from their families. The royal couple will complete two engagements during the first week of December, including a Christmas party for families and children of personnel from RAF Coningsby and RAF Marham who are serving in Cyprus Kensington Palace said the couple want to 'acknowledge and honour' the fact that 7,500 military personnel are deployed overseas or away from home on exercises and may miss out on time with their families over the festive period. On Wednesday 5th December, the couple will fly to RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus to meet with personnel, families and members of the local community. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are set to throw a Christmas party for children of deployed troops, and will flyi to Cyrpus to meet personnel and their families next month. Pictured: Meeting British soldiers from the Light Dragoons on July 18, 2017 in Gdansk, Poland After training at Sandhurst, William was commissioned into the Blues and Royals (pictured in Army uniform in 2008) before joining the RAF The royal family has always maintained close links with the Armed Forces and both William and his brother Harry have previously served with the latter completing ten years in the British Army. Prince William trained at Sandhurst military academy and when he graduated in December 2006 he was commissioned into the Blues and Royals, a regiment of the Household Cavalry. Two years later he received his RAF wings from his father, the Prince of Wales, and transferred from the Army to the RAF and made Flight Lieutenant Wales Two years later, in 2010, he joined the RAF's Search and Rescue Force Prince Wiliam Flight Training at RAF Cranwell, Lincolnshire, in 2008. The Duke has a long histor in the Armed Forces and spent five years in the RAF In 2012, he was deployed for a tour in the Falkland Islands 30 years after Britain fought a war with Argentina to reclaim them His active service with the Air Force came to an end in 2013, and he joined the East Anglian Air Ambulance in 2015. In addition to their royal duties, Christmas will be a busy time for the couple who will be enjoying their first as a family-of-five after Kate gave birth to their third child Prince Louis in April. The couple last year spent Christmas at Sandringham with the Queen and members of the royal family, however it's not yet clear if they will follow suit for 2018. Prince Louis, pictured in his mother's arms on his christening day in July, will be celebrating his first Christmas this year, alongside his parents and brother and sister Charlotte and George In an interview on German TV channel, Leute Heute, earlier this month, Kate's brother James said he was looking forward to a family Christmas that will give the Middletons a chance to 'regroup'. His comments suggest that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge may once again skip Christmas at Sandringham with with Queen in favour of spending 25th December at the Middleton home in Berkshire. Describing the warm reception guests can expect to receive at Michael and Caroles 4.7million mansion in Bucklebury, Berkshire, James, 31, said: 'I welcome people into our family home. I want it to feel like it's their home. Kate and Pippa's younger brother James has opened up about looking forward to champagne and turkey with the family in an interview with German TV channel Leute Heute 'There'll be turkey, champagne and some wine. For me it's all about family. It's one where we can all regroup.' In 2016, William and Kate broke with tradition by spending the festive season with the Middletons rather than joining the Queen at Sandringham. At the time experts said the decision was made to put the needs of George and Charlotte, who were then three and 18 months, first and give them a more relaxed experience rather than the formality of Sandringham. Two sets of twins have forged a close bond thanks to their shared experience of watching a sibling transition from a brother to a sister. Both sets of twins were born as brothers but are now brother and sister, with nine-year-old Nataisha and Jakeb Smiley reaching out to 27-year-old Jada Tahiry and Branden Miguel after spotting them in a documentary. Branden and Jada, who live in New York, have since traveled to New Jersey to spend more time with the Smileys who are 18 years their junior. Nataisha, born Logan, first told her family she wanted to be a girl when she was just five years old and has identified as female ever since. Nine-year-old Nataisha and Jakeb Smiley reached out to 27-year-old Jada Tahiry and Branden Miguel after spotting them in a documentary (L-R Jakeb, Branden, Nataisha and Jada) The Smiley twins when they were little. Nataisha, born Logan, first told her family she wanted to be a girl when she was just five years old and has identified as female ever since Jada Tahiry and Branden Miguel were born as twin brothers, pictured, but Jada is now living as a woman. The twins, now 27 years old, have forged a close bond with the Smiley family Her mother Allison said: 'My reaction was confusion, a lot of confusion. But Nataisha has become a different child. 'She knew what she was talking about, we have applauded her for her strength with it and we support her.' After meeting Jada and Branden, the youngsters felt encouraged by their shared experience and asked them to be their godparents. 'Jada and Branden remind me so much of Nataisha and Jakeb, despite being adults. The way they support each other and their close bond is so similar,' Allison said. Her husband Nick added: 'Branden and Jada and Jakeb and Nataisha have found a way to identify with each other. I think it has helped all of them become more confident in themselves.' Jada added: 'The last time we met Nataisha and Jakeb, it was amazing. We had an immediate connection.' The Smiley twins as baby boys. Reflecting on Logan's revelation four years ago, mom Allison said: 'My reaction was confusion, a lot of confusion. But Nataisha has become a different child' Nataisha and Jakeb Smiley when they were younger. After meeting Jada and Branden, the youngsters felt encouraged by their shared experience and asked them to be their godparents Logan (now Nataisha) and twin brother Jakeb on their second birthday. The twins' parents have been supportive of Nataisha's decision to transition but admit they have had to 'mourn' the loss of their little boy, who is now a girl Nataisha wearing girls' clothing when she was still living as Logan. Her mother said: 'Before the transition she was really quiet and when she spoke it was with frustration and anger, but now she's really opened up and has become a much happier child' Nataisha has found reassurance in knowing another trans woman and looks to Jada for guidance. 'When I met Jada, I was excited because she was another transgender person,' Nataisha said. 'We like being with Jada and Branden because they are like us strong and confident,' Jakeb added. However, Nataisha's journey hasn't been easy, with a backlash from the local community with their parents forced to take the twins and their elder brother, Noah, out of school and home-school them instead. The Smiley twins with their parents and older brother Noah. Nataisha's journey hasn't been easy, with a backlash from the local community with their parents forced to take the twins and their elder brother, Noah, out of school and home-school them instead The Smiley twins before Logan's decision to live as a girl (left, with their parents and right, with their big brother Noah). The family has struggled with people response to Logan's transition Nataisha Smiley, far left, wears a 'Princess' t-shirt with her twin brotherJakeb and older brother Noah. The siblings experienced a backlash following Nataisha's decision to live as a girl which has forced their parents to pull all three children out of school to be home-schooled Nataisha, right, with twin brother Jakeb. The twins' mother admits that Nataisha 'is like a different child' and is happier than ever since her decision to live as a girl 'We got to the point where we had to remove Nataisha from school because she was scared,' Allison said. 'She was made to do her homework in the principal's office because she teachers were uncomfortable with her. 'I decided I couldn't make her go anymore. The school was mad about it at first but my child comes first.' Allison and Nick admit they, too, found their son's transition challenging. 'The grieving process was really hard because we gave birth to these beautiful children and they were healthy, so when she transitioned it was kind of like a loss,' Allison explained. Jada and Branden pictured before Jada's transition. The 27-year-old twins want to help and guide Nataisha and Jakeb through this journey, as Branden identifies with Jakeb's position of having your twin brother become your sister Twins Jada and Branden (pictured before Jada's transition) have formed a close bond with the nine-year-old Smiley twins and have even become their godparents Branden and Jada, who live in New York (pictured before Jada's transition), have traveled to New Jersey to spend more time with the Smileys who are 18 years their junior 'But Nataisha has become a different child. Before the transition she was really quiet and when she spoke it was with frustration and anger, but now she's really opened up and has become a much happier child.' Nick added: 'Watching Nataisha become step away from Logan was hard at first and I didn't really know how to handle it, but watching her blossom as Nataisha I couldn't see life going back to how it was because she is a beautiful individual.' Jada and Branden want to help and guide Nataisha and Jakeb through this journey, as Branden identifies with Jakeb's position of having your twin brother become your sister. 'Being here with Nataisha and Jakeb is heartwarming because it's like looking at our little selves. 'We are a big age difference, we come from a different background and we are a different race but we can identify with one another and it's a blessing,' Branden said. Branden and Jada, who live in New York, have traveled to New Jersey to spend more time with the Smileys who are 18 years their junior (pictured together at the youngsters' NJ home) The Smileys enjoy spending time with the Miguels. The two sets of twins have forged a close bond thanks to their experience of watching a sibling transition from a brother to a sister Jada, 27, with Nataisha, nine, who says of her friend: 'Meeting Jada has helped me not get bullied or get hurt. She will protect me from bullies at all times' The two sets of twins love spending time together (pictured in New Jersey). After meeting Jada and Branden, the youngsters felt encouraged by their shared experience and asked them to be their godparents 'Meeting Jada has helped me not get bullied or get hurt. She will protect me from bullies at all times,' Nataisha added. In regards to surgery, both Nick and Allison have decided it is something for Nataisha to think about when she is older. 'As of right now, we will do the aspects where it would be easier for her to transition such as the puberty blocker, but when it comes to the actual transition it is something she will have to decide. 'I don't think a parent should decide as it is her personal body. If she chooses to go forward with that then it is her decision and we will support it,' Allison said. Nick added: 'The decision will be strictly upon her wants and needs.' A royal insider has opened up about why the Queen will never abdicate in favour of her son Prince Charles, as she's keen to 'ride the wave' of popularity that younger family members have brought to the monarchy. Speaking to Yahoo News' series The Royal Box True Royalty TV editor in chief and co-founder and award-winning documentary filmmaker, Nick Bullen, opened up about his years working closely with and observing the royal family. After producing countless programmes about the royals, including Ant and Dec's 2015 TV documentary with Prince Charles, Nick is firmly of the opinion that 'abdication will never happen' - and not just because of her incredible sense of duty. 'I think the Queen sees what those boys and their wives bring, I also wonder whether she even throws forward to the great grandchildren,' he explained. 'Princess Charlotte, already at the age of 3, knows how to work a crowd. Maybe now through her grandchildren she can see a way of just staying on the crest of that wave.' Scroll down for video The Queen is enoying the popularity that younger members of the royal family such as the Duchess of Sussex, pictured with Her Majesty in Cheshire in June, bring to the monarchy and is determined to keep 'riding the wave', according to royal insider Nick Bullen She's only three years old, but Princess Charlotte's supremely confident nature has helped to given the monarchy a popularity boos (pictured at Princess Eugenie's wedding in October) Nick said that Prince Charles is more than ready to become King, but believes the royal could easily be 80-years-old by the time it happens. The "a word" is a really dirty word at the palace. Many people say becoming the King is what ultimately killed her father. 'Her mother lived to 101. The Queen is there for the long runshe could live for at least another 10 years. 'Shes seen it all, shes done it all, she is the ultimate working mother and working woman, and I dont think shes going anywhere, anytime soon.' Prince Charles could be 80-years-old by the time he takes the throne, unless his mother decides to abdicate In 1936 Edward VIII ascended the throne after the death of his father George V. He made clear his intentions to marry his America mistress Wallis Simpson as soon as her second divorce came through. It caused a national scandal and the church of England decreed he couldn't marry a divorcee with two living former husbands. Wallis went to live in exile in France to escape the pressure, and in December 1936 Edward abdicated so they could marry. His brother George VI, the Queen's father, ascended the throne and reigned for 16 years until his death at the age of 56 in 1952. The Queen's uncle Edward and his wife Wallis Simpson in 1937. He abdicated less than a year after taking the throne so that he could marry his twice divorced American mistress Last year, palace sources indicated that plans were afoot which, if implemented, would see Charles appointed King in all but name. the Queen has told her inner circle that, if she is still on the throne at the age of 95, she will ask for a piece of legislation called the Regency Act to come into force granting her eldest son full power to reign even while she still lives. In 2017, Charles was appointed the Queen's successor as Head of the Commonwealth and she has been increasingly handing over patronages and royal duties to younger family members in recent years. As Intel India marks 20 years of its presence in the country, the company has evolved into a largest research and development hub outside of USA from being a small technology centre initially. With close to Rs 30,000 crore investment in Intel India, the centre now stands critical for global company's growth too. Business Today spoke to Nivruti Rai, country head, Intel India, to discuss the nextgen revenue generators. Edited excerpts: Q: You recently opened a new design facility in Bengaluru. How integral is the work that happens here to Intel globally and rate of adoption of the same across globe? Nivruti Rai: It is not just a new design centre that we have opened, we are also doing the best cutting-edge work here, be it in the space of cloud, client, server or technologies like AI and 5G; we are doing it all here. There was a time when we were partners or contributors, but now we are fully engaged and can drive leading work, architecture, and complex designs for almost any segment of Intel. Intel has evolved into a data centric company, which means, whether you look at network, cloud, automotive, or internet of things (IoTs), we have our engagement in all these areas. Whether it's technologies like AI or block chain, Intel India is fully entrenched with the corporate and there is absolutely nothing that the global Intel can do and Intel India cannot. This tells you the level of maturity that we have and that we have also evolved over the last 20 years. Q: Intel recently announced the launch of the 5G modem months ahead of its schedule. How do you see your Indian partners gearing up for 5G role out? Nivruti Rai: We showcased our 5G solutions successfully in Korea and Japan Olympics. As far as India is concerned, we are leading a couple of consortiums and the goal is to partner with critical stakeholders, whether it is telecom service providers, the government for policymaking or our system integrators. We are looking at providing 5G solutions in India in time as compared to the rest of the world. In fact, BSNL has announced to deploy 5G by end-2019, and we will do whatever it takes to make it happen. Do you see India 5G-ready by 2019 considering the fact that we still face basic problems with connection and 4G data? Nivruti Rai: If we are making some progress on 5G, it doesn't mean work on 4G will stop. In fact, we are deploying certain technologies on 5G like 'Massive Mimo'. When we say 5G, we shall be looking at 10x lower latency, 100x more devices, 1000x more bandwidth, 1 million devices in 1 square kilometre, that tell you the density. We are looking at many technologies, be it Massive Mimo or Millimetre Waves to enable 5G. 4G and 5G technologies can simultaneously exist. In fact, some of these technologies can be tested on 4G to make it work on 5G. But I believe even countries like USA and Japan will be able to roll it out only by 2020. But at least some amount of implementation will happen in time by 2019. What is the latest research and R&D that you are currently doing in India? Nivruti Rai: A lot of AI innovation is happening out of India. The impact will be felt by everyone in segments like health, agriculture, and smart mobility. We have partnered with many governments to bring AI in these sectors. In smart mobility, we are looking at how to avoid collisions. On an average, 17 deaths happen in India every hour. We want to address such issues via technology. I'm excited about AI, and what 5G will do and also the ability of what analytics can do in cloud. All of this will be enabling revenue generation for us and I truly believe technology will enable the prime minister Narendra Modi's goal of doubling the economy in the next few years. Which are the areas that Intel India is pursuing when it comes to innovation around smart cities, smart mobility and the likes? Nivruti Rai: Just look at what happened in India's payment space! India never really got into credit cards. We were paying with cash and now digital wallets. We skipped the credit card phase. I believe we have a similar opportunity in smart mobility. The combustion engine can directly shift to electric or autonomous vehicle. I really think about the next generation. Intel will be heavily contributing in AI. Anything and everything will be smart. Whether it is the space or cloud or devices; all of it will be smart. AI will turn computer into a tool that will become a companion. You won't tell it what to do, but you would ask it what to do, and Intel will enable that. Princess Eugenie's wedding photographer has revealed the 12-person team behind the couple's jaw-dropping portraits. Fashion snapper Alex Bramall shared a previously unseen image of newlyweds Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank at Windsor Castle on 12 October, tagging the 12-person squad who helped to make the shoot happen. It includes creative director Patrick Kinmonth, set designer Matthew Duguid, producer Stephanie Rutherford, lighting director Michael Furlonger, photographer John Munro, and production agency Art Post. Bramall also personally thanked photographers Aitor Santome, Lucy Birkhead, Robert Self and Tean Roberts and 'Jimmy' in the snap posted to Instagram on Thursday night, although it is not clear what their exact involvement was with the shoot. Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank are pictured embracing in front of a portrait of Prince Albert in one of Windsor Castle's grand reception rooms after their 12 October wedding. The couple's wedding photographer has revealed there were 12 people behind their portraits The team includes creative director Patrick Kinmonth, set designer Matthew Duguid, producer Stephanie Rutherford, lighting director Michael Furlonger, photographer John Munro, and production agency Art Post The couple are pictured embracing in front of a portrait of Prince Albert in one of Windsor Castle's grand reception rooms. Jack has his arms placed gently around his wife's waist, while Eugenie rests her left hand on his chest. Eugenie also shared the wedding portrait last night, gushing over her star-studded big day in a 'throwback' post shared on Instagram - calling it 'the greatest day of my life'. The image was met with widespread excitement from Eugenie's nearly 600,000 Instagram followers, racking up nearly 60,000 likes in under an hour. The couple, who first met in Verbier in 2010, tied the know in front of a star-studded congregation on 12 October. Radiant: The couple have already released a handful of photos from the day, including this one capturing them in their evening looks. Eugenie wore a stunning blush pink Zac Posen gown Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank, who first met in Verbier in 2010, tied the know in front of a star-studded congregation on 12 October at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle Robbie Wililams' daughter Teddy was a bridesmaid while models Kate Moss, Poppy and Cara Delevingne and Naomi Campbell were among the congregation, alongside Demi Moore, Stephen Fry and Jamie Redknapp. After lunch hosted by the Queen, the couple celebrated into the small hours at a party at her family home, The Royal Lodge at Windsor. Next day there was more partying, at a fairground-themed bash complete with rides and food stalls. The newlyweds have kept a low-profile since, only being seen together at Prince Charles' 70th birthday party at Buckingham Palace last week. Eugenie, 28, was previously photographed by Bramall when she posed for a shoot with Harper's Bazaar US in 2016. Bramall, who has previously worked with the likes of Keira Knightley, Alexa Chung and supermodel Natalia Vodianova, described it as a 'honour and privilege' to be chosen for the job. He said in a statement at the time: 'It is an honour and a privilege to be invited to photograph Princess Eugenie and Jack on this most special of days. 'I look forward with great excitement to capturing this significant occasion and wish them both a happy future together.' Alex began his career at the art department of British Vogue, before setting up his own studio in 2014. Since then, his work has been published internationally in titles such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harpers Bazaar and Porter Magazine. Queen Mathilde of Belgium looked a vision of sophistication as she joined husband King Philippe for a visit to Berlin today. The mother-of-four stepped out in a flattering, calf-length checked black, white and maroon tweed coat dress with button and belt detail that cinched her in at the waist. Mathilde, 45, completed the look with an elegant burgundy hat and matching suede clutch bag and leather gloves - which she removed to shake hands with those who welcomed her. The royals were welcomed to Berlin by the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife Elke, as they marked the centenary of the end of the First World War. The Belgian Queen looked as stylish as always as she and King Philippe were welcomed to Berlin by German federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (right) and his wife Elke (left) German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife Elke stopped for an official photo before walking up the stairs to Bellevue Pallace Mathilde and husband Philippe, 58, were greeted by German federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife Elke Buedenbender as they arrived in the German capital. They looked in high spirits as they inspected the guard of honour outside Bellevue Palace ahead of the commemorative occasion. Wife of the German Present, Elke Buedenbender, and Mathilde were all smiles earlier today. The 45-year-old completed her look with burgundy accessories, which included a hat, gloves and clutch bag The visit to Berlin was mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War Mathilde and King Phillipe were seen inspecting the guard of honour outside Bellevue Palace ahead of today's meeting in the German capital The German President's wife Elke, dressed suited to the weather in a smart navy two-piece with a statement red jumper underneath. She completed the look with a pearl necklace. Mathilde and Phillipe have had a busy month of engagements after hosting a lavish state banquet at the Royal Castle in Laeke for French President Emmanuel Macron and wife Brigette, 65, on their state visit to Belgium on Tuesday. Emmanuel Macron (second from left) was on an official state visit to Belgium with the First Lady, Brigitte (right), and the couple were joined by King Philippe and Queen Mathilde at a working breakfast on Tuesday Queen Mathilde chose an elegant off-the-shoulder long-sleeved black gown for the occasion, which was overlaid by a royal red sash which was held in place by a pin at the side. The elegant ensemble was completed with a satin burgundy clutch, dazzling tiara and dangling sparkly earrings. Meanwhile, France's First Lady, 65, opted for a custom long-sleeved gown by Louis Vuitton, which had a glitzy sequinned collar and waistband. She accessorised with a simple black clutch and pointed pumps. A beacon of gratitude and positivity, Elizabeth Smart gushed about how thankful she is this Thanksgiving. The 30-year-old, who was famously kidnapped from a bedroom she shared with her younger sister in 2002, shared a picture on Instagram on Thursday in which she smiles proudly with her husband and three kids including her newborn baby Olivia. 'So much to be thankful for!!!! #happythanksgivng' she captioned the family snap. Happy day! Elizabeth Smart shared this family photo on Instagram on Thanksgiving Gratitude: She said she had 'so much to be thankful for' as she celebrated with her husband Matthew Gilmour and three children In the photo, Smart sits on a sofa in jeans and a red sweater, cradling her newborn baby Olivia, who was born earlier this week. Next to her is her husband Matthew Gilmour, who is holding on to their other two children: two-year-old Chloe and ten-month-old James. Social media followers wished the mother-of-three a happy holiday, and also marveled at her resilience. 'I greatly admire you for your positive and inspirational outlook on life and on how you didn't let your horrible ordeal as a teenager ruin your life,' wrote one. 'I have tried to adopt your hopeful outlook on life ... I learned through hearing your story and reading your books how to move on with my life.' 'Thank you, so much, for being a source of hope for me,' wrote another. And a third: 'Your family is so beautiful! Thankful for you, such an inspiration to the world.' The smiley group is especially thankful this Thanksgiving due to the newest addition to their family. On November 19, Smart uploaded a photo of her and Matthew in the hospital with little Olivia. 'So happy to welcome Olivia to our family!' she captioned the image, in which she is seen beaming as her newest little one slept on her chest. She and Matthew live in Park City, Utah with their three kids. Growing family! She and Matthew welcomed a new baby girl earlier this week Happy moment: The 30-year-old shared a post on Instagram announcing that she had given birth to a girl named Olivia 'My children have brought so much happiness and joy,' she told People in September. 'To me, theyre the very definition of love.' Still, given her own traumatic history, the mother-of-three admitted she may be a bit more worrisome than other mothers. 'Theres a part of me thats always thinking, "Are the windows shut? Where is she at? Who is by her? Can I see her?" I dont want to let Chloe out of my sight,' she said. 'I will never regret being there for my children, watching them, making sure theyll be okay. But I might regret not being there for them.' Smart first announced on Instagram that she was expecting baby number three back in June, posting a picture of her sonogram. While she hadn't spoken much more about her pregnancy since, she has been quite busy advocating for other victims of kidnapping and sexual abuse. The birth announcement comes just two months after one of her kidnappers, Wanda Barzee, was released from Draper Prison in Utah on September 19. T he 72-year-old and her husband Brian Mitchell kidnapped Smart from her bedroom in 2002, holding her captive for nine months in the woods where Mitchell raped her daily. Big siblings! She and her husband live in Park City, Utah and have two other children, two-year-old Chloe and ten-month-old James Traumatic past: Smart was famously kidnapped from her bedroom in 2002 and held for nine months in captivity Smart was saved when a stranger saw the trio walking on a public street and called police. But while Mitchell will spend the rest of his life behind bars, Barzee was released two months ago after being in jail since 2003. She was previously scheduled to be released in 2024. In June, Smart begged for Barzee not to be granted parole and said she was still a danger to society. Speaking on CBS This Morning, she said her kidnapper fell short on her court-ordered apology, which was part of her plea deal. 'But it was just a very brief, "I'm sorry for what I've done, the end," kind of thing,' Smart said. 'I don't think you can just kidnap a 14-year-old girl and, you know, not only sit by her while she's being raped but encourage the rapist to continue... Then just at the end of it say, "I'm sorry," and really mean it.' While Smart said she did not get a sense from Barzee that her captor was remorseful, she herself has forgiven her. 'I don't feel that I could have moved forward in my life had I still been holding on to hate and anger inside me, because that would still be taking up a percentage of my soul,' she explained. 'And that means that, you know, I wouldn't be able to love my own children 100 per cent, love my husband 100 per cent, because a part of me would still be taken up with anger.' When the decision was made for Barzee's release, Smart said it was 'incomprehensible'. Awful: Smart appeared on CBS This Morning to talk about her reaction to Barzee's release In a statement, she said she was 'surprised and disappointed' to learn that her captor will be freed after failing to undergo mental health evaluations and failing to attend her own parole hearing in June. Barzee will most likely live alone in a private residence. The conditions of her probation require her to enter a mental health treatment program, check in with her probation officer every month, register as a sex offender, and submit to DNA collection, but she does not have to wear a GPS monitor. Just before Barzee's release, Smart shared a picture of herself as a child just before her kidnapping, and in the caption reacted to the news that Barzee was getting out. 'The past few days could certainly be described as shocking,' she wrote. 'I find this news greatly disturbing and incomprehensible. In my efforts to learn more it seems there are no viable legal options open to me at this time. So it is now that I ask those that have the power, and her family to start proceedings to have her be civilly committed. 'To my knowledge she has neither complied with medication or treatment and as some one who has experienced first hand just how depraved she truly is, 'I believe her to be a threat and a danger not just to myself but to the community, any vulnerable person. 'I am very concerned and precautions have been taken however I refuse to live in fear. I have spent the last 15 years rebuilding and moving forward with my life, having a family, and pursuing my goals. I lived in absolute fear and terror for nine months, no matter the outcome I will not do so again. In June, she'd reflected more on the feelings she had after getting rescued. Just a little girl: Smart said she is 'very concerned' about Barzee's release after the woman helped her husband kidnap her and rape her daily 'It is so easy to focus on all the negative things that happen and to feel that everything is unfair and should not have happened to you. 'Well I think youre right. Too many things happen that you dont deserve, and are unfair. But even though bad things happen they often lead to knowledge, compassion, understanding, empathy, love, healing, and change. 'In my book all those things are good. Out of great darkness light often shines through. I see that in my own life. Perhaps the only way for me to be where I am today was by going through everything that I did. 'I never asked to be kidnapped, and nor would I ever want it to happen again to me or anyone else,' she wrote. 'But had I not been kidnapped and raped, I wouldnt understand what it is to be a victim/survivor, I would naively think that the victims would have some responsibility over what happened to them, I would have built barriers between what happened to them and what could never happen to me. 'There would be so much I wouldnt know or understand. 'Looking back I can honestly say it was the worst experience I have ever dealt with and I hope no one ever goes through it again but I am also grateful it happened to me for what it has taught me and allowed me to be a part of, and for making me into the person I am today.' Tess Holliday may have eaten Thanksgiving dinner with her family and friends on Thursday, but she has made it clear that she doesn't support the 'bulls**t holiday.' The 33-year-old plus-size model was in Las Vegas when she took to Instagram share a racy lingerie selfie with her 1.7 million followers before opening up about her refusal to honor Thanksgiving. 'I think Thanksgiving is a bulls**t holiday, but it's nice to be surrounded by family and friends and to reflect why you are thankful,' she wrote on Instagram Stories. 'I'm just not going to support a holiday that celebrates the slaughter of native folks.' Scroll down for video Strike a pose: Tess Holliday kicked off Thanksgiving by sharing a sexy selfie on Instagram the night before the holiday Revelation: The 33-year-old explained on Instagram Stories that she doesn't support Thanksgiving because it 'celebrates the slaughter of native folks' Opinions: The plus-size model later shared screengrabs of two very different direct messages she received in response to her post criticizing the national holiday Although she refused to celebrate the holiday, she made it clear that she has no problem showing gratitude. 'So yeah, I'm thankful for my followers, family, friends, etc,' she wrote in a second post. An hour later, Tess returned to Instagram Stories to share a screengrab of the direct message a woman named Anne sent her in response to her post. 'Thanksgiving is not about slaughtering natives,' the woman wrote. 'It's celebrating how two groups of very different people, natives and immigrants, worked together and then celebrated the fruits of their labor. 'It's a day to be grateful and thankful and happy for the good things in your life. I am as liberal as they come. We don't need to attack Thanksgiving. Why does everything have to be negative?' she asked. On holiday: Tess spent Thanksgiving with her friends in Las Vegas, where she road and ATV and had a turkey dinner with all the fixings Tess couldn't resist writing a sarcastic, 'Oh, okay,' before sharing Anne's message. Another person DMed Tess to hit back at Anne's response, writing: 'I hope you told Anne those "immigrants" slaughtered that native tribe after dinner.' When Tess posted the person's criticism of Anne's message, she added a GIF that flashed 'claps 4 u' across the screen. Tess spent the holiday with her friends in Vegas, and she shared videos of the night, which included a Thanksgiving feast and a joyride in an ATV. Although she doesn't support Thanksgiving, she was happy to celebrate her friends Jolene Frances and Joe Robinson's birthdays on Thursday. Fun times: They celebrated two of their friends' birthdays during the Thanksgiving gathering Feminist: Tess donned a black crop top that had 'Women's World' splashed across the front Of course, Tess isn't the only celebrity who has spoken out against the celebration of Thanksgiving. Cher revealed on Twitter in 2013 that she doesn't celebrate the holiday, calling it the 'beginning of a great crime.' Last Thanksgiving, Girl Meets World star Rowan Blanchard took to Instagram to encourage her followers to donate to The Navajo Water Project 'on this strange, state sanctioned annual celebration of colonial genocide.' And Shailene Woodley boycotted the national holiday in 2016 after being arrested at the North Dakota Access Pipeline. The actress was protesting the construction of the oil pipeline that would run through Standing Rock Indian Reservation, potentially contaminating the drinking water. Take that: Before sharing her views on the holiday, Tess hit back at trolls who accused her of her editing her backside in her latest sexy selfie 'Thanksgiving was founded on a massacre,' she told TYT Politics that year. Before Tess made her own feelings about Thanksgiving known, she hit back at trolls who accused her of her editing her backside in her latest sexy selfie, which shows her wearing nothing but a black teddy. After sharing the snapshot with a black and white filter on Wednesday, she posted the original photo on Instagram Stories the next day, writing: 'I love when ppl tell me I edit my ass in photos... f**k u.' The body positive activist shamed her own trolls a few days before with an Instagram post in which she refers to herself as a 'fat pig.' The model took to social media to post a photo of herself sitting with a cute baby pit snuggling in her lap. Witty: Tess posted a picture of herself with a rescued pig earlier this week Hitting back: 'Just two fat pigs hangin out being cute, she captioned the image, adding emoji of a pig snout and pink hearts Cute! The pig was rescued by comedian Whitney Cummings. Tess initially shared this snapshot of them together The girls: Before heading to Las Vegas, she shared a few busty photos in her Insta Stories Just two fat pigs hangin out being cute, she captioned the image, adding emoji of a pig snout and pink hearts. In the picture, Tess appears to be sitting on the couch with a blue blanket in her lap. Her hair is up and she wears a black tank top, and a small pig sits in her lap. As she explained in the caption of another picture a similar snap in which comedian Whitney Cummings sits with her and the pig the animal is actually staying with Whitney. She wrote that the sweet 4 week old piggy was rescued from the fires in Southern California, and Whitney is 'fostering him until he is ready to go to his forever home'. 'She was gracious enough to let me go over last night and cuddle the sweet guy & give him thousands of nose touches!' she went on. 'Also special shout-out to you Whitney, youve not only rescued so many animals during the fires the past week (& reunited some with their owners!), but helped so many families & youre a special human being!' A disgusted student has blasted Boohoo after she claims she bought a supposedly new bodysuit only to discover a 'period blood' stain in the crotch. Jasmin Richardson, 18, from Bracknell, Berkshire, was pulling the size 12 bodysuit up her legs when she spotted the bloody stains and quickly whipped it off in horror earlier this month. The fashion-conscious teen claims that the 12 item, now on sale for 6, didn't have a hygiene sticker on it and despite complaining numerous times on social media she has yet to hear back from the online giant or receive a refund. Student Jasmin Richardson, 18, from Bracknell, Berkshire, pictured here with boyfriend Kai, was horrified when a size 12 bodysuit from online retailer Boohoo arrived with blood stains on the crotch The fashion-conscious teen ordered the 'slinky square neck bodysuit' in white and a size from the online fashion retailer earlier this month. She quickly whipped it off when she made the grim discovery Jasmin describes the bloodstained bodysuit above as 'really gross and disgusting' and believes it to be period blood 'I went to try it on over my tights and as I was pulling them up I noticed the hygiene sticker was missing and that something was on it,' explained the fashionista. 'I didn't actually manage to put it on as I remember thinking "what's that?" When I had a closer look I could see what it was, it was disgusting.' The stylish student thinks she knows exactly what the blood stain is, too. 'I think it's period blood for sure,' she said. 'It's really gross and disgusting. They've obviously not checked their refunds, it's so unhygienic. 'I don't know anything about the person whose blood it is, they could have anything, it's so gross and the health implications could have been really serious.' Jasmin says she messaged Boohoo regrading the dirty item which she claims arrived without a hygiene sticker Jasmin ordered the item, now reduced to 6, earlier this month to take on an upcoming family trip to Cuba. 'I order from Boohoo quite a bit especially when they have an offer on,' said the 18-year-old. 'I ordered a few things including the white bodysuit - everything else was fine.' 'When the delivery arrived I was excited because I was supposed to be taking it on holiday with me to Cuba, but instead it was disgusting. I took a picture as I knew I was going to send it back and complain about it.' Despite complaining on social media, Jasmin says she is yet to hear back from the online giant or receive a refund for the product, which is now reduced to 6 Now, Jasmin claims that despite contacting Boohoo multiple times through social media, she has yet to receive a response or a refund. 'I private messaged them twice and then friends said to tweet publicly and they might respond, they didn't get back to me at all,' Jasmin said. 'I've sent it back and I'm really angry about it. I'd like an apology and my money back as well. It's definitely put me off shopping there in future.' A Boohoo spokesman told FEMAIL: 'We are in direct communication with the customer in relation to this matter. We have offered a full refund and a gesture of good will. 'Furthermore, we are conducting a full investigation to understand how this could have happened. The warehouse team do have policys and procedure in place are working to ensure that an incident of this type does not happen again.' Colin Hanks has created a whole business based on some funny wordplay. The 40-year-old actor, who is the son of living legend Tom Hanks, has launched his own line of handkerchiefs called Hanks Kerchiefs. His punnily-named new accessories launched this month and despite the standout name alone being reason to buy, Colin is also seriously making the case for adding handkerchiefs into your fashion rotation. New gig: Colin Hanks has debuted his own line of handkerchiefs called 'Hanks Kerchiefs' Wardrobe staple: The 40-year-old actor said anyone who knows him knows he always has a kerchief on him The collection of eight handkerchiefs, which cost $28 each or $200 for the whole collection, went on sale November 16 The collection of eight handkerchiefs, which cost $28 each or $200 for the whole collection, went on sale November 16. They come in a variety of colors and prints, and Colin says there are plans to expand in the future. 'After several months of work and planning, I am incredibly excited to announce the launch of our Fall 2018 collection of Hanks Kerchiefs!' the star wrote on Instagram last week. 'I've enlisted the help of the @anderson.brothers, as well as countless others, to help turn a passion of mine into a reality. Something you can hold in your hand, put in your pockets, or wear on your neck. The possibilities are pretty much endless. 'Also, I'm a sucker for wordplay.' Accessorize: They come in a variety of colors and prints, and Colin says there are plans to expand in the future Style: He suggested several ways to wear them, including around your neck 'like John Wayne' or wrapped around your head 'like Brett Michaels from Poison' The handkerchiefs are all made in California, and Colin promised that a portion of each sale from the first line will be donated to help with the recovery efforts for the fires in California. On the brand's website, Colin wrote about how he's actually a big fan of handkerchiefs, and didn't only get into the business for the wordplay. 'With so many options in today's world, it's unique to discover something, anything, that brings a newfound sense of comfort. For example, a new favorite band, food, or t-shirt,' he said. 'Kerchiefs have been one of those small items that have always brought me that same kind of pleasure.' Famous fam: Each is named after someone he cares about, but there is no 'Tom' kerchief because 'there's enough about that dude' (pictured right with dad tom Hanks) With the release of the first collection, Colin has been promoting Hanks Kerchiefs on social media, and went live on Twitter a week ago with a video in which he talked to fans. 'This is a real thing now that I'm selling,' he said, holding up several of the products. 'I started a kerchief company. A handkerchief company called Hank's kerchiefs, and I got a bunch of different designs.' He went through each them, which are all named after people. There's an Arthur, a Samantha (named after his wife), an Olivia and a Charlotte (named after his daughters), a Tim, an Earl (named after his dog), a Russ, and an Akiva. 'Yeah I really did name one after Akiva from The Lonely Island,' he said. 'Because when I first was coming up with the designs and I had my first sort of samples, he really gravitated toward this one. Meaningful: 'Kerchiefs have been one of those small items that have always brought me that same kind of pleasure,' he said of the designs, which are all made in California Love: Colin added that the designs are all 'named after people that I care about'. There are kerchiefs named after his wife Samantha and his kids, Olivia and Charlotte 'All of them are named after friends of mine. People that I care about,' he said. 'I got 'em named after a bunch of people. And no, I didn't name one Tom, because there's enough about that dude.' Colin said he's a big fan of handkerchiefs, and most people who know him are familiar with his love of the accessory. 'I've always had a kerchief on me. Pretty much anyone who knows me knows that I always have one,' he said, adding that he typically keeps his in his left rear pocket. He also suggested several different ways to wear them, including around your neck 'like John Wayne' or wrapped around your head 'like Brett Michaels from Poison.' Jenna Bush Hager celebrated Thanksgiving with her husband, Henry, and their two daughters, Mila and Poppy, on Thursday, as she and her family prepare for their first Christmas without her late 'Ganny,' Barbara Bush. The 36-year-old Today correspondent took to Instagram to post a sweet family portrait, which appears to have been taken somewhere far warmer than their home in New York City. 'Happiest Thanksgiving!' Jenna wrote. So thankful for great friends, a beautiful country and these precious gifts!' Scroll down for video All smiles: Jenna Bush Hager shared this sweet family portrait after posing for a photo with her husband, Henry Hager, and their daughters, Mila and Poppy, on Thanksgiving Mommy's girls: Mila, five, and Poppy, three, wore matching cream cardigans, tan wool skirts, and black Mary Janes. The pictures appear to have been taken somewhere relatively warm She ended her post with a quote from Mr. Rogers, writing: 'The real issue in life is not how many blessings we have, but what we do with our blessings.' In the snapshot, Jenna is wearing a sleeveless patterned dress and holding her three-year-old daughter, Poppy, who has her light brown hair in pigtails. Her husband Henry, meanwhile, has five-year-old Mila in his arms as they smile for the family photo. The family presumably spent the holiday somewhere warm; neither Jenna nor her daughters are wearing coats in the picture. Although it is unclear where Jenna traveled to for Thanksgiving, she also posted pictures of her daughters on Instagram Stories. Feeling the chill! On Black Friday, Jenna took to Instagram Stories to post photos of her daughters sitting in front of a fire and Mila getting a falconry lesson Difficult: During a Today show segment that aired on Friday morning, Jenna opened up about having to celebrate her first Christmas without her late grandmother, Barbara Bush, this year My loves,' she captioned a sweet snapshot of Mila posing with her arm around her little sister. Both girls are wearing matching cream cardigans, tan wool skirts, and black Mary Janes. The next day, the family appeared to be in a colder climate. Jenna posted a photo of her daughters sitting in front of a fireplace with another little girl, writing: 'Frozen.' A second photo shows Mila bundled up in a pink winter coat with a fur hood while a bird is perched on her arm, which is covered with a protective glove. The little girl appeared to be enjoying a visit with a trained falconer, and Jenna captioned the picture: 'Always loved a bird!' Memories: Jenna was full of emotion as she explained how her grandmother needlepointed Christmas stockings for her daughters Bittersweet: Jenna explained that her grandmother needlpointed as many stockings as she could before she died so all of her future grandchildren would have one Jenna and her family are getting ready to celebrate their first Christmas without her late grandmother Barbara Bush, and she opened up about the matriarch during a Today show segment that aired on Friday morning. 'It is our first Christmas without our Ganny, and she was the force that kept us all together,' the Today correspondent explained. 'She was the one that we would be trying to be on our best behavior. Now she's not here, so I can go drink with Willie [Geist] just kidding Ganny.' All jokes aside, Jenna was full of emotion as she explained how her grandmother needlepointed Christmas stockings for her daughters. 'She started this tradition, which I just love. She needlepointed stockings . . . for my girls,' she said. 'They have one that will be hung on the chimney with care, and then she actually stockpiled. Winter wonderland: Jenna said Mila's 'traditional' stocking has her 'name stitched in cursive next to poinsettias,' while Poppy's features a 'Christmas cat watching Santa suspiciously' Looking back: In an essay for Southern Living, Jenna wrote about spending Christmas with her grandparents at the White House (pictured in 1991) 'She knew she was sick, so she did as many as she could,' Jenna continued. 'She needlepointed as many as she could so that grandbabies that came great-grandbabies that came after she passed could have a stocking from her.' 'I think those are the things y'all, those are the things that matter. That's what I remember.' Jenna wrote about her grandmother's needlepoint stockings, and how much she is going to miss her this holiday season in an essay for Southern Living. 'This Christmas, our first without Ganny, I'm nostalgic for the days when we were together. This time of year is full of love, but for those who have recently lost someone, that loss is illuminated,' she wrote. Jenna detailed how her Ganny made her daughter Mila a 'traditional' stocking with her 'name stitched in cursive next to poinsettias,' while Poppy's features a 'Christmas cat watching Santa suspiciously.' Good times: Jenna recalled how her whole family traveled to Camp David for Christmas Eve. President George H.W. Bush is pictured reading to his grandchildren at Camp David in 1991 Head start: Jenna and her twin sister, Barbara Bush, celebrated their 37th birthday a week early. The two were born on November 25 'Ganny left so much of herself here. And up until the last year of her life, she needlepointed feverishly,' Jenna wrote. 'She wanted to make sure there were stockings on reserve for great-grandchildren who would come after she was gone. 'That was our Ganny: She wanted to leave the world a little more beautiful through her work, her words, and even her needlepoint stockings.' Jenna also recalled her family traveling to the White House for Christmas when her grandparents were president and first lady. They would all drive to Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, on Christmas Eve, and would gather in the main cabin, Laurel Lodge, 'for good food and plenty of laughter.' In just a few days, Jenna and her twin sister, Barbara Bush, will be celebrating their 37th birthday. Although they were born on November, 25, they enjoyed an early birthday dinner with their husbands last week. Jenna posted a snapshot of herself sitting alongside her sister as they blew out the candles on their individual desserts a week before their birthday. 'Wombmate.com! Early birthday dinner with my favorite. (Thanks to our husbands!)' she captioned the image. A flesh-eating bug ravaged a mother's abdomen after she became infected while having a C-section. Ashley Thompson, 36, from Conway, Arkansas, was induced when doctors discovered she was carrying the bacteria group strep B, which can be harmful if it passes to an unborn baby. After suffering a prolapse, baby Jude was born via an emergency C-section on April 23 2014 and immediately rushed to intensive care due to breathing difficulties. Forced to go home without her newborn, Mrs Thompson was rushed back to hospital days later when she developed severe pain in her abdomen, which was diagnosed as necrotising fasciitis. Given just hours to live, doctors were forced to reopen her C-section scar to cut away the infected tissue - and did not even have time to anaesthetise her. After spending six days in an induced coma, the mother-of-three did not recognise her husband Eric, 31, when she woke or even remember giving birth. Although her memories quickly returned, she still suffers severe abdominal pain and swelling four years on, which have left the former nurse unable to work. Ashley Thompson's abdomen was ravaged by flesh-eating bacteria after she became infected while having a C-section to deliver baby Jude. Pictured with the newborn after the incident, she claims their bond is particularly strong due to the 'hell' they went through together Doctors were forced to cut away Mrs Thompson's infected abdominal wall in order to save her life. She is pictured in an induced coma, which she stayed in for six days to recover Jude is now four years old (pictured left with Mrs Thompson and his father Eric Thompson, 31). Although over the worst of it, she still suffers too much abdominal pain and swelling to work Speaking of her symptoms after giving birth, Mrs Thompson said: 'Over the next two days, I started to realise something wasn't right, as this awful pain built up in my tummy and a wave of confusion and tiredness hit me. 'Still, even though it hurt a lot, I thought it was all to do with some sort of irritation from the stitches.' After going to her GP to be on the safe side, Mrs Thompson was rushed to hospital A scan then revealed her lower abdominal muscle wall - a layer of muscle between the organs and skin - was being consumed by the flesh-eating bacteria. 'Everything then happened really quickly,' Mrs Thompson said. 'Before I knew it, I was lying in the operating room having my stomach ripped open. 'It was such a race against the clock that they didn't even have time to anaesthetise me, so I was awake as they cut my Caesarean stitching open again and cut the rotting flesh away. It was by far the worst pain of my life. 'The surgeons knew that if they waited any longer I was going to die because of this thing. It felt as though someone was ripping my insides out. 'The stench was so horrendous surgeons were having to leave the theatre to be sick. It smelled like death.' Mrs Thompson was put into a coma (pictured) after doctors had given her just hours to live She is pictured holding Jude for the first time after coming out of the coma. She did not initially remember her husband or even giving birth, but her memories returned just a week later Jude was born on April 23 2014 and was rushed to intensive care due to breathing difficulties Mrs Thompson then endured a further two operations, which involved cutting out her entire lower abdominal muscle wall and replacing it with a pig-skin mesh to hold her organs in place. After a total of ten hours under the knife, she was put into an induced coma to protect her organs, which had started shutting down as the necrotising fasciitis took hold. NECROTISING FASCIITIS: THE VICIOUS FLESH-EATING BACTERIA Necrotising fasciitis, more commonly known as 'flesh-eating disease', is a rare but extremely vicious bacterial infection. 'Necrotising' refers to something that causes body tissue to die, and the infection can destroy skin, muscles and fat. The disease develops when the bacteria enters the body, often through a minor cut or scrape. As the bacteria multiply, they release toxins that kill tissue and cut off blood flow to the area. Because it is so virulent, the bacteria spreads rapidly throughout the body. Symptoms include small, red lumps or bumps on the skin, rapidly-spreading bruising, sweating, chills, fever and nausea. Organ failure and shock are also common complications. Sufferers must be treated immediately to prevent death, and are usually given powerful antibiotics and surgery to remove dead tissue. Amputation can become necessary if the disease spreads through an arm or leg. Patients may undergo skin grafts after the infection has cleared up, to help the healing process or for aesthetic reasons. There are 500 to 1,500 cases reported a year, but 20 to 25 percent of victims die. Advertisement After not initially recognising her loved ones, Mrs Thompson's memories returned within a week and she quickly bonded with her newborn. 'Jude and I have this connection that comes from the very difficult passage he had into the world,' she said. 'Once I had recovered enough to start taking care of him myself, I instantly became very protective of him, much more so than I am with my other children. 'He was without a mother when he really needed it in the first few weeks of his life and I feel like we went through a hell of a lot together - that really creates a closeness.' While Mrs Thompson, who is also mother to Hunter, 18, and Chance, 15, spent three weeks recovering in hospital, Jude was cared for by his father and grandparents. 'I wanted to get myself better as soon as I could, so that I could be a mum to Jude and take care of him when he really needed me. That's what kept me going,' she said. Although over the worse of it, Mrs Thompson is still deeply affected by what happened. 'I find it very difficult to stand up for long periods of time because my belly very quickly begins to bulge and become agonising,' she said. 'I'm also covered in scarring, which really used to upset me. 'Now, though, I have come to terms with it and with everything that happened to me. I'm not looking for pity or attention, but I really do feel proud that I survived this terrible ordeal. 'It is amazing what the human body can overcome, and now I'm just set on living as long as I can and being the best mother I can be to my kids.' Mrs Thompson spent three weeks in hospital recovering after the incident. Pictured with Jude during the stint, the newborn had to be cared for by his father and grandparents Pictured during her recovery stay in hospital, Mrs Thompson said wanting to be there to look after Jude motivated her to get better. She added she is 'very protective of him' An NHS report that claimed more than one in 18 pre-school children has a mental health disorder has been criticised for medicalising what is 'nothing more than bad behaviour'. Among two to four-year-olds, the most common mental health disorder is 'oppositional defiant disorder '(ODD), according to figures released yesterday. This is defined as children refusing to do what they are told and acting aggressively towards their parents. It is said to affect more than a quarter of pre-school children with supposed mental health problems. But there are doubts about whether it is a real psychological illness, with one expert saying the NHS is 'turning everything into a mental health problem' and youngsters just 'dont do what theyre told' Some 5.5 per cent of two to four-year-olds are thought to have mental health disorders, according to NHS figures released yesterday, with more than a quarter of these having 'oppositional defiant disorder', which is characterised only by bad behaviour (stock image) 'We are turning everything into a mental health problem,' Professor Julian Elliott, from the University of Durham, told The Telegraph. 'For many of these children they dont have a mental disorder; its a question of conduct. 'The main problem with three and four-year-olds is that they dont do what theyre told.' WHAT IS OPPOSITIONAL DEFIANT DISORDER? Oppositional defiant disorder is a mental disorder recognised by the NHS which is characterised by ongoing bad behaviour and aggression. Symptoms include: Repeatedly questioning rules and arguing with parents and adults Blaming others for their mistakes Behaving to deliberately annoy or upset others Not doing what they're told Having uncontrollable rages or severe tantrums Appearing angry and frustrated much of the time Struggling to concentrate on tasks Rarely considering the impact of their behaviour before acting Having low self-esteem or a negative attitude Being easily aggravated by others According to The Priory private mental health clinics, which offers treatment for the disorder: 'The signs and symptoms of ODD may be apparent in all children at some point during their development. '[But] if your child has been diagnosed with the condition, then these symptoms will be so frequent and severe to the point where their learning and social relationships are negatively impacted.' The rehab centre says it can treat the disorder with behavioural therapy sessions, counselling and even medication. Source: The Priory Advertisement Symptoms of ODD include arguing with adults, blaming others for their mistakes, deliberately upsetting people and having uncontrollable tantrums. But experts argue toddlers' parents would spend be constantly visiting doctors if they thought tantrums were a sign of mental illness. And controversial treatments for the unruly toddlers include sending their parents on NHS-funded parenting courses. But the experts who wrote the report have defended the classification, saying ODD can seriously affect a child's health and education. The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence, which advises the NHS, adopted the US-devised condition in 2013. Exeter University's Professor Tamsin Ford said: 'It does affect these young people their health is poor and their educational outcomes are poor.' Some 1.9 per cent of two to four-year-olds are believed to have ODD, with the next most common problems being autism spectrum disorder (1.4 per cent of two to four-year-olds) and sleeping disorder (1.3 per cent). Experts have also criticised the Government's decision to bring in specialist mental health nurses in schools and colleges. Leading nurses said existing school medics should just receive further training instead of 'reinventing the wheel', the Health Service Journal reported. The NHS revealed the new mental health practitioner role last month. Sharon White, chief executive of the School and Public Health Nurses Association, said: 'The suggestion that after only one year of training these practitioners would be able to provide the level of understanding deserved by our children and young people is a nonsense sticking plaster.' There were calls instead for more investment in the current school nursing system. Yesterday's landmark report on the mental health of children and young people in England is the first in more than a decade. The findings were based on a survey of 9,117 children and included those aged two to four and 17 to 19 for the first time. It shows a worsening picture for young peoples welfare, with one in eight five to 19-year-olds suffering a mental health disorder in 2017. The rates of illness increase with age, affecting one in ten by the time they finished primary school, one in seven by 16 and one in six by age 20. Women aged between 17 and 19 are the worst affected age group, with almost a quarter of them (22.4 per cent) suffering from an emotional disorder. And one in three gay, lesbian or bisexual teenagers suffer from mental health problems, compared to one in seven heterosexuals. Shockingly, a quarter of teenagers with a mental disorder have self-harmed or tried to kill themselves, and this rose to almost half of 17 to 19-year-olds. The figures have coincided with concerns hundreds of children are being given high-strength antidepressants by doctors going against guidelines to prescribe them. Experts called the figures 'shocking' and said inadequate mental health and support services leave many young people stuck in a 'vicious circle of solitude and suffering'. 'These figures are shocking,' said Denise Hatton, chief executive of YMCA England & Wales. 'And while progress has been made to normalise conversations about mental health and successive governments have made additional funding for NHS services available, todays figures are a wake-up call that this clearly hasnt gone far enough.' The Mental Health of Children and Young People in England report revealed the proportion of five to 15-year-olds with mental health problems rose from 9.7 per cent in 1999 to 11.2 per cent in 2017. Experts offering their insight into the figures suggested social media could be partly to blame. Dr Dennis Ougrin, a senior psychiatrist at Kings College London, said: 'Children with mental disorders are heavier users of social media and are affected by the social media more significantly, than the children without mental disorders.' Teenagers aged between 17 and 19 have the highest rate of emotional disorders, with one in six of them suffering (16.9 per cent), and 6.4 per cent having more than one. The YMCA's Ms Hatton added: 'To end this crisis that is ruining young lives, its crucial that action and investment goes into preventing young people from experiencing poor mental health in the first place. 'From preventative youth and community services, to education in schools, mental health must be incorporated in every aspect of daily life to stop young people from reaching crisis point. 'Without preventative services and with the NHS struggling to cope, too many young people are still left alone to deal with their mental health difficulties by themselves, leading to a vicious circle of solitude and suffering.' WHERE DO THE MOST CHILDREN HAVE MENTAL DISORDERS? East of England (15.6%) South West (15.5%) North West (14.7%) Yorkshire and the Humber (14.7%) East Midlands (12.2%) South East (11.7%) West Midlands (11.7%) North East (11.6%) London (9%) Source: NHS Digital Advertisement The British Medical Association a leading doctors' union has also called for more investment in mental health services. NHS psychiatrist and deputy chair of the consultants' committee, Dr Gary Wannan said: 'These findings are extremely concerning yet not at all surprising given that the BMA has for a long time warned of the need for greater investment in child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) to be able to meet the rising demand. 'Prevention where possible or early intervention is by far the most effective and beneficial means of treating children and young peoples mental health.' It was also revealed yesterday that almost 600 children, including some aged 10 or under, are being given strong anti-depressants which raise their risk of suicide. Figures unveiled by The Guardian showed 597 under-18s were given 'last resort' drugs by doctors going against NHS guidance. The meds, paroxetine and venlafaxine, should not be given to children under normal prescribing circumstances, the paper reported, because they are believed to increase the risk of suicidal thoughts among young people. Use of the super-strength depression drugs came as the number of under-18s taking anti-depressants rose from around 69,000 in 2016 to 71,365 last year. Oxford University psychiatrist Andrea Cipriani told The Guardian: 'Paroxetine and venlafaxine should not be prescribed as first-line treatment, that is for sure.' She added: 'Medications are not a quick fix for depression.' 'COUNSELLING WASN'T CUTTING IT AND I DIDN'T REALLY KNOW WHERE TO GO' Catherine Nixon felt she'd had a mental health problem from the age of seven but didn't seek expert help until she was 16 years old when it began to take over her life. She told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme she would get up at 7am and spend seven hours in the bathroom on her compulsive 'morning routine'. Not feeling like her condition was severe enough to seek help from the NHS, Miss Nixon waited for years before getting professional support. Catherine Nixon suffered with mental health problems for years but never felt like she was severe enough for help until she was 'in and out of A&E' 'It started to get worse during the first bit of year 12,' she said. 'I'd had counselling and low-level CBT but that wasn't really cutting it and I didn't really know where to go. 'It wasn't until things got to its absolute worst when I was in and out of A&E that I eventually got into [NHS Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service] and they were like "you're a bit too severe for us, we're going to have to send you to a psychiatric unit", where I was for six months.' Advertisement Mental disorders measured in Thursday's NHS figures included emotional, behavioural and hyperactivity disorders, as well as other, less common disorders. Data breaking down rates by region revealed children in the East of England and the South West are worst affected, with nearly 16 per cent of them suffering. Whereas those in London have the fewest mental disorders, with nine per cent of them suffering. 'We need to support the children who are most vulnerable while making children and young peoples mental health a consistently high priority, and everyones business,' said the Mental Health Foundation's chief executive, Mark Rowland. He added children in low-income homes or who have parents with mental health problems are at a heightened risk of suffering from disorders. Alana Ryan, senior policy officer at the NSPCC said: 'When a generation of children are struggling with their mental health with many having self-harmed or attempted suicide, we are fundamentally failing our young people. 'Our own research shows even if children are referred for specialist mental health treatment there is a slim chance they will receive it, which is totally unacceptable.' The British Psychological Society warned the rising number of mental health problems are proof the current treatment system isn't working. Chief executive, Sarb Bajwa, said the statistics confirm 'what psychologists who work with this group have known for years that the mental health challenges children and young people face are increasing.' He added: 'We need to prioritise prevention and early intervention and psychological approaches that are proven to work with children and their families, peers, schools and communities.' Training nurses in Eastern Europe and hiring them in the NHS could fix the health service's staffing crisis, recruiters claim. The cost of training a nurse in Poland is a third of what it is in the UK and 'not enough people want to go into nursing' here, a London-based agency has said. As many as 40,000 extra nurses could be hired from universities around the EU if the NHS would agree to help educate and employ them. But Hunter Miller, the agency suggesting the link-up, said NHS bosses haven't warmed to the idea despite their ongoing struggle to recruit more staff. Uncertainty about Brexit could be putting hospitals off the idea, but the agency said hospitals hadn't said this explicitly. The suggestion comes after the Nursing and Midwifery Council this week announced English language tests will be made easier to encourage foreign nurses, and figures recently revealed there are 42,000 vacant nursing posts in the NHS. Recruiting nurses from Eastern Europe could help plug the staffing gap, according to a recruiter who said the prospect of a job in the NHS would encourage more people to train as nurses in countries like Poland and Bulgaria there are currently around 42,000 vacant nursing job posts in the NHS 'The problem in the UK is that not enough people want to go into nursing,' Nick Miller, general manager for international recruitment at Hunter Miller, told the Nursing Times. 'In Poland there are plenty of people who would go into nursing, but they can go and work in a shop and get just as much money quickly without having to go through a training programme.' Mr Miller suggested his company could link NHS trusts to universities and colleges across the EU to train and recruit more nurses for the UK. People living in those countries would be offered jobs in the NHS which would both fill vacant training places in Europe and vacant jobs in the UK. In exchange for the job offer the NHS would be allowed some control over what was taught in the training courses, to match them to UK requirements. But uncertainty over the future of the NHS and foreign relations after Brexit could be making the health service hesitant to commit to the idea. The number of EU nurses registering to work in the NHS fell dramatically in the six months after the Brexit vote. And senior nurses have warned the health service will be hit harder if the Government doesn't guarantee staff from overseas can stay after Brexit. It was revealed this month that some NHS hospitals will be forking out for visas so they can keep nursing staff from the European Union. Three hospital trusts in London have agreed to pay for the visas of 1,300 EU staff to keep them in work, which is expected to cost more than 100,000. Mr Miller believes more people in the EU would train to become nurses if they knew it came with a realistic prospect of working in the NHS, where pay is higher. 'If they can get 2,000 a month as opposed to 400 Euros and someone like me can say, "these are all the jobs you can do once you qualify as registered nurse in the NHS", they are going to think about it,' he said. HOW BAD IS THE NURSING CRISIS? The shortage of NHS staff in England is continuing to worsen, official figures show. Figures published by the regulator, NHS Improvement, for the April to June period showed that 11.8% of nurse posts were not filled - a shortage of nearly 42,000. According to Health Education England, around 33,000 of these positions are filled temporarily by agency staff an unwelcome extra expense for local NHS trusts. A report by three leading health sector think-tanks estimates that if demand rises as predicted, the NHS will need 250,000 additional staff by 2030. But if skilled workers cannot be attracted from abroad the shortage could reach 350,000 roughly a quarter of the 1.2million workforce. Experts say low pay and long hours are two of the main factors which make finding nursing staff difficult. This, paired with student debt, makes the profession unappealing for young people. Of those quitting, more than half are under 40, with many citing stress and rising workloads for being behind their decision to leave. In January the Royal College of Nursing warned the NHS was 'haemorrhaging nurses', as around 3,000 more nurses quit their jobs than started new ones in 2017. Advertisement Mr Miller said he already has five colleges in Poland and Bulgaria, and two NHS hospitals, in discussions, but has been 'astonished' by the lack of interest here. For years the NHS has been struggling to recruit enough nurses and the Royal College of Nursing said a recent rise in job adverts was 'very worrying'. In January the body said the NHS was 'haemorrhaging nurses', as around 3,000 more nurses quit their jobs than started new ones in 2017. Many job vacancies are filled by temporary agency staff, who are more expensive because agencies have to be paid finders' fees on top of staff wages. The NHS is keen to encourage more foreign nurses to apply for jobs and the Nursing and Midwifery Council this week revealed it would make English language tests easier. They have proposed a slight drop in the level of written English required from level seven to 6.5 because applicants from abroad are 'just missing out' on current requirements. Fewer people are applying to nursing courses at universities, too, after the Government stopped offering a funding bursary to help students afford tuition. Previously, student nurses could expect up to 6,500 a year from the NHS to help fund their three-year degree, but this was scrapped in 2017. 'It costs a third of the price to train a nurse in Poland than it does in the NHS,' Mr Miller added. He explained foreign governments might take issue with the UK poaching their nurses, but said even reimbursing some of the cost of university courses could be cheaper than the NHS training its own nurses. 'There is no reason why the NHS could not do deals with the national health services of Poland or Hungary to say, "for each nurse that is employed by the NHS, well reimburse you some of the cost per year of the training of that nurse",' he told the Nursing Times. Mr Miller said the fact his agency isn't a mainstream supplier for the NHS, or uncertainty over Brexit, could be reasons why the NHS hasn't taken up his offer. He has spoken to more than 30 hospitals and NHS Improvement, Health Education England, NHS England and the Royal College of Nursing but 'gained no traction whatsoever'. Hunter Miller has already worked with the North East and East Midlands ambulance services to hire, train and relocate paramedics from EU countries. And because the training would focus on extra English language skills and integrating employees, he believes new hires would be more likely to stay long-term. Mr Miller said one of the hospitals he is in negotiations with already has 450 empty nursing jobs. He believes linking up with European institutions can 'get rid of that problem once and for all' then scale up to the wider NHS. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo on Thursday addressed commuters' woes regarding the traffic jams and surprise road closures during Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit this week. In a media briefing, Panelo said the traffic situation should have been understandable given that the government's "top priority" is the security of the visiting head of state. "We have to live with that because the concern of the state would be the security of a visiting head of state," Panelo told reporters in Malacanang. "I think that should be understandable, given the fact that in Manila area, work was suspended. Hence all the motorists would not be passing here because of the security so they have to converge in the Makati area and other places," he added. "And there would be traffic. All of us (experience it), me too." The country on Tuesday rolled out the red carpet for the Chinese leader. This marked the first state visit to the Philippines of a Chinese President in 13 years. However, his trip was met with rage not only from critics and protesters but also from motorists. Transport authorities previously released a list of road closures prior to the historic state visit, but some netizens pointed out there were several other road blocks that caused standstill traffic. Meanwhile, the Presidential Security Group (PSG) in a statement apologized to all commuters affected by the incident. "As to its implementation and how they accomplish such task, it's their (Metro Manila Development Authority and Philippine National Police) call and would involve their concept of operations, to ensure that the designated route/s is/are secured," it said. "As host to our State Guest, we provided the necessary hospitality and security to ensure the smooth flow of their movement." How about a train that shaves off five hours from travel time between Chennai and Mysore, via Bengaluru, allowing you to make the journey in just 2 hours and 25 minutes? This bullet train could become a reality by 2030 if the Railway Board accepts the proposal recently submitted by the German government. The feasibility report for the 435 km Chennai-Arakkonam-Bengaluru-Mysore route was submitted to Railway Board Chairman Ashwani Lohani by German Ambassador Martin Ney yesterday. According to report, the route will be 85% elevated and will boast 11 per cent tunnels, and by travelling at a maximum speed of around 320 kmph the proposed train could significantly cut down travel time from the current seven hours. In fact, travel time between Chennai and Bengaluru will reportedly be reduced by 100 minutes while that between Bengaluru and Mysore will be reduced by 40 minutes. The estimated cost of the project? The infrastructure cost is pegged at around Rs 1 lakh crore along with an additional cost of Rs 150 crore for rolling stock. "The [feasibility] study was both commissioned and financed by the German government. The route was found to be not only extremely viable, but also prove to be the most effective solution to manage traffic growth," Ney told PTI. The report added that the route will be operational by 2030, after a planning period of three years followed by a construction period of nine years. In order to bring down costs and minimise land acquisition issues, the German study had suggested that India integrate its existing conventional railway line with the high-speed line - instead of building a dedicated high-speed corridor. However, the Railway Board reportedly rejected the plan stating that India's present network was too over-saturated and complicated for such integration. "The proposal is an exciting one and we are reviewing it at the moment. The Germans studied both mixed modes and dedicated mode and we decided that a detailed study of dedicated mode was more viable," said Lohani. "We are expecting that we will be able to ground some passengers from airlines when they see that the travel time has been reduced so drastically. Unless one lives near to the airport, trains will be faster than airlines once this kind of high speed rail network is introduced." While Railway officials are being tight-lipped about the fare structure for this proposed high-speed train, sources told the agency that a journey between Chennai and Mysore will cost about the same as airfares on that route. Other routes on which feasibility studies for high-speed trains are being conducted include New Delhi-Mumbai, Mumbai-Chennai, Delhi-Kolkata, Delhi-Nagpur and Mumbai-Nagpur. If they are approved then Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have delivered on one of his key electoral promises - that of a high speed rail network. With PTI inputs Sushmita Agarwal A mother-of-three with twins on the way is in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant to save her from leukemia. But out of tens of millions of people - including her own sister - no one has proved a match for 36-year-old Susie Rabaca of Carson, California. Rabaca was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in September, when she was approaching the third trimester of her pregnancy. The fast-moving cancer mutates the bone marrow, which produces new blood cells. It can quickly take over the production of these cells, forcing the marrow to instead churn out malfunctioning blood that can't fight infection or clot as well. AML is among the most aggressive forms of leukemia, but can sometimes be cured - if a patient gets a bone marrow transplant. But that is easier said than done for Rabaca, whose blood profile is difficult to match because she is both Latina and Caucasian, Fox11 reported. She intends to have a transplant just after her twins are born on December 6 - but Rabaca is still desperately searching for a match. Her daughter (unidentified, left) keeps Susie Rabaca's (right) spirits high as she battled leukemia. Rabaca is 36, pregnant, and desperately searching for a one marrow donor Leukemia comes in many forms, some of which strike children, while others are more likely to develop in adults. Because they affect the blood, leukemias don't form tumors, but can become widespread throughout the body. Broadly speaking, leukemia is expected to strike about 60,300 people in the US this year. The first indications of leukemia are somewhat subtle, including joint or bone pain, unusual levels of fatigue, dizziness, fever or loss of appetite. A little less than one third of these will be AML, according to the American Cancer Society. Rabaca was one of those people. In September, her doctors told her that she would need a bone marrow transplant if she was going to survive. Treatments and prognoses for leukemia are as diverse as the types of the blood cancer and the people that get it, and quite different from other cancer treatments. Rabaca has an aggressive form of leukemia that saps her energy, but that hasn't stopped her from tirelessly advocating for more people to donate bone marrow While surgery would be the first line of treatment for many cancers in their earlier stages, neither an operation nor radiation therapy are typically used to treat AML. Chemotherapy is an effective way to kill cancer cells of most types, but it has to be used judiciously because it can be so destructive to healthy cells. This is certainly the case for AML. Because it produces new blood cells, the bone marrow is too precious to target to heavily with chemo on its own. But when chemo drugs are given with stem cells in a bone marrow transplant, the body is more resilient. Doctors are certain that this is the treatment plan that Rabaca needs - but they can't find bone marrow to treat her with. Rabaca tried family members. Only her sister was a match at all, and only a partial one, so if her marrow was used, the grueling procedure might not even work. Rabaca is mixed race - Caucasian and Latina - which makes it far harder for her to find a match, even among 30 million donors So Rabaca joined BeTheMatch.org, a system meant to match donors with recipients in need. 'Theres 30 million people registered on BeTheMatch.org and none of them are my match,' she told Fox11. Now, she's trying to widen the donor pool, calling for anyone and everyone to give her and the other 12,000 or so people who need a marrow donor the ultimate gift this holiday season. 'What I need people to do is join and they send you a kit, a little swab for your mouth, send it back, and if youre my match its as simple as a blood draw, and that can possibly save my life,' she said in a tearful interview with Fox11. In order for a bone marrow transplant to be safe and effective, a donor and recipient have to have sufficiently similar DNA, at least in a group of genes called the HLA system. People of the same ethnic groups tend to have the most similar clusters of these particular genes. So if you are from a smaller minority group, there are fewer people with similar HLA genes to yours. If you are mixed-race, the odds become even more slim. Rabaca keeps a brave face, though these statistics are discouraging - and her little girls and her hopes of seeing the babies she's carrying grow up help to lift her spirits. 'My 4-year-old, she just holds my hand, grabs my bald head, she just yeah, shes my Little Rock,' she said. But when she isn't occupied caring for her girls, Rabaca has become single-minded about her cancer battle. 'Finding my match is everything to me, so I can be here for the three children I have, and the two that I have on the way, its everything,' she told Fox11. 'Its so easy, theres no painful procedure, theres no surgery its just swab your mouth and its as simple as a blood draw, and you can save somebodys life, if not mine, somebody else's.' A baby girl who was born with a back-to-front heart has defied the odds after having surgery just a few hours old. Alba Butler celebrated her first birthday despite her parents, Alejandra Garcia, 26, and Danny Butler, 30, being told she had a 50 per cent chance of survival. When Alba was born she was blue from lack of oxygen, due to a rare condition called transposition of the great arteries (TGA), where the arteries leaving the heart are the wrong way round. She was rushed to surgery as soon as she was born to create a hole in her heart to help oxygen-rich blood reach her fragile body. Then eight days later, her distraught first-time parents, who were previously told they would never be able to conceive naturally, had to watch as their miracle daughter was taken in for nine-hour open heart surgery. Alba Butler was born with a rare heart condition called transposition of the great arteries (TGA), where the arteries leaving the heart are the wrong way round. She had surgery a few hours old (pictured after) and open heart surgery eight days later Alba's engaged parents, Alejandra Garcia, 26, and Danny Butler, 30, from Lancashire, were told their baby had a 50 per cent chance of survival 'She's thriving': Alba defied the odds and celebrated her first birthday this month Miss Garcia and Mr Butler, from Thornton, Lancashire, were told they would never be able to conceive naturally, and were on the IVF waiting list. Then, to their delight, Miss Garcia, who is engaged to Mr Butler, discovered she was pregnant at 10 weeks in May 2017. But at their 20-week scan, the parents-to-be's joy was shattered when they were told their baby girl had transposition of the great arteries (TGA). The condition is relatively common, according to NHS Choices, accounting for around 5% of cases of congenital heart disease, and affecting approx 20 to 30 per 100,000 live births. Miss Garcia, who works in marketing, said: 'We found out about Alba's heart at her 20-week scan. We were so upset, I couldn't stop crying. 'Heart defects are so difficult to pick up on ultrasounds so it really is amazing that they found it. 'Neither of us had heard of TGA before which made it all so scary. My first thoughts were "we're going to have to terminate". 'After being told I would never conceive and then finding out I was pregnant with Alba, I knew it all felt too good to be true.' But Alba was born via a planned cesarean at Liverpool Women's Hospital on November 15 2017 and rushed in an ambulance to Alder Hey Children's Hospital where she underwent her first operation. 'When they told us she would need to be to transferred and taken to theatre right away, they had to warn us that some babies don't make it. 'I couldn't believe it. I couldn't stop crying. 'When she was born, Alba was already quite blue from the lack of oxygen. She was so poorly she had to be taken straight to the ambulance waiting to transfer her for her first surgery. 'I didn't get to hold her, I just got to touch her finger as she was taken away.' 'I didn't get to hold her, I just got to touch her finger as she was taken away', Mrs Garcia remembers the moment Alba was taken to surgery straight after a c-section delivery The mother, who was on the IVF waiting list after being told by doctors she would never conceive naturally, met her 'miracle' baby for the first time 39 hours after she was born Alba after her nine-hour open heart surgery to reverse the heart condition Doctor's warned Alba wouldn't reach her first birthday, but she 'exceeded all expectations' The condition meant that Alba's pulmonary artery (which takes blood to the lungs to pick up oxygen) was switched with the and the aorta (which takes blood from the heart to the body). Some babies with TGA also have a hole in their heart, called a ventricular septal defect (VSD), which allows the oxygenated and deoxygenated blood to mix. But ultrasounds carried out every few weeks throughout Mrs Garcia's pregnancy showed Alba didn't have a VSD so no oxygen would get to her body when she was born. Her first surgery was a Balloon Septostomy surgery to allow her blood to mix. 'When Alba came out of her first surgery, all I wanted was to hold her in my arms but I couldn't leave the hospital because I'd had major surgery. 'Danny was with her and sent me lots of pictures. The cardiac consultant even made the effort to come to my hospital room to explain it had all gone well which they didn't have to do.' The parents' relief was short-lived as they then had to watch their newborn go for open heart surgery to reverse her condition. Mrs Garcia said: 'When the nurses came to give me her gown to get her ready I just burst into tears. 'No gown should be made for a baby. Just looking at this tiny, tiny gown, I felt like I couldn't put her in it. 'Then I remember walking down this really long corridor with loads of doors to theatre and I could barely even see I was crying so much. 'I couldn't believe I was handing my baby over to strangers and I might never see her or hold her again. It was so surreal. 'She was in surgery for just under nine hours. When she came out they called Danny and he barged into the breastfeeding room where I was expressing milk. 'I just left the milk behind, I didn't care, and started running down the corridor. 'As soon as I could see her and see she was okay and breathing, I just can't even describe that feeling - it was a huge relief. I could replay that moment every day in my head.' Alba has since been back at hospital with a fluid build up called chylothorax and pneumonia, but recovered well at Alder Hey Children Hospital, her mother, pictured, said 'I never thought she would even exist but she is here, fighting all the odds' Mrs Garcia said Alba had her first birthday party last week despite doctors' warnings that Alba might not make it. Mrs Garcia said: 'When we got Alba's diagnosis, we prepared ourselves for the worst but she has exceeded all our expectations. She's a little warrior. It sounds cheesy but she's my hero. We're so proud. 'We were told she might be a bit delayed with her development but she's reaching all her milestones. 'She had her flu jab the other day and most babies would scream and cry but she just looked at the nurse like 'I've been through more than this'. 'I never thought she would even exist but she is here, fighting all the odds.' Alba's incredible recovery hasn't all been plain sailing as a month after her release from hospital in December 2017. She was back at hospital with a fluid build up called chylothorax and then contracted pneumonia. But once again, with the help of the 'amazing' doctors and nurses at the hospital, Alba fought back and went home seven weeks later. The mother said the hospital didn't just save her baby's life but hers too. 'I can't stress enough how amazing Alder Hey Children Hospital - and all the hospitals - have been', she said. 'At Alder Hey they're more like a family than a hospital. They even sent her a first birthday present which I cried my eyes out over. 'They are all just fabulous. I'm doing the Inka trail next year and I'm not fit so it's going to be a challenge but I don't think there's anything I could ever do to fully pay them back. 'I don't just owe them Alba's life, I feel like I owe them my life too.' 'Knowing that I never even thought I would be able to have a baby just makes Alba even more of a miracle.' Mrs Garcia is walking the Inka trail next year to raise money for Alder Hey. Researchers traced the genetic changes to constant exposure to traffic fumes Her breast cancer genes had shut down but she hadn't inherited the mutation One woman with cancer had worked in the heavy traffic for 20 years Working near busy roads triggers breast cancer, scientists warn after they found at least six women at the same bridge got it within three years of one another. The group of women all developed a cancer believed to have been caused by exhaust fumes in what researchers have branded a 'new occupational disease'. There is a one in 10,000 chance the cases were a coincidence, the study said, because the cancers were all so similar and close together. And another group of seven women developed the disease after working at a tunnel just four miles away at the border between the US and Canada. Despite scientists going as far as to label a new disease after one woman's ordeal, she was denied any compensation by the Canadian government. Women working at the Ambassador Bridge (pictured), which connects Detroit and Ontario in North America, were found to have a 16 times higher risk of getting breast cancer than the average population, because around 27,000 vehicles use the road every day Research focused on the case of one unnamed woman who worked for 20 years at the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario. The bridge connects the US with Canada and is the busiest commercial border crossing in North America, seeing 12,000 trucks and 15,000 cars every day. Assuming the volume of traffic was the same over the woman's 20-year employment and she worked 40 hour weeks, she could have been exposed to the fumes of up to 46.8million vehicles. Doctors Michael Gilbertson and Jim Brophy, from the University of Stirling in Scotland, believe chemicals in the traffic fumes caused the cancer. They say the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which try to stop tumours growing, can be shut down by vehicle exhaust fumes. 'These outbreaks of breast cancer represent a new occupational disease,' said Dr Gilbertson. These women's cases revealed working in the toll booths gave them a 16 times higher chance of breast cancer than the average woman. The woman in the case study developed breast cancer when she was 44, and then again at the age of 51. Her diagnosis came within 30 months of five other women working at the same border crossing. And at the Detroit-Windsor tunnel, four miles away, another seven women were developing the same disease alongside them. What is the BRCA gene and how does it affect people's risk of cancer? Having a mutated BRCA gene - as famously carried by Angelina Jolie - dramatically increases the chance a woman will develop breast cancer in her lifetime, from 12 per cent to 90 per cent. Between one in 800 and one in 1,000 women carry a BRCA gene mutation, which increases the chances of breast and ovarian cancer. Both BRCA1 and BRCA2 are genes that produce proteins to suppress tumours. When these are mutated, DNA damage can be caused and cells are more likely to become cancerous. The mutations are usually inherited and increase the risk of ovarian cancer and breast cancer significantly. When a child has a parent who carries a mutation in one of these genes they have a 50 percent chance of inheriting the mutations. About 1.3 per cent of women in the general population will develop ovarian cancer, this increase to 44 percent of women who inherit a harmful BRCA1 mutation. Advertisement Dr Gilbertson added: 'This new research indicates the role of traffic-related air pollution in ... increasing [the] incidence of breast cancer in the general population.' BRCA1 and BRCA2 are genes the breast cancer genes which play a big role in preventing breast cancer by repairing DNA to stop defects leading to uncontrolled tumours. Around one in 400 women inherit a BRCA mutation which puts them at much higher risk of breast cancer famously, Angelina Jolie did and had a double mastectomy. But the Stirling researchers say chemicals in traffic pollution can shut down the genes in the same way. Dioxins, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and aldehydes all of which are found in exhaust fumes are believed to stop the genes working. Past research has confirmed this and the woman in the study did not have functioning BRCA genes but hadn't inherited the defect. And all the women's cancers were early-onset (around half of cases are in women over 65), happened pre-menopause, and were recurring cancers. Dr Gilbertson said: 'We now have plausible mechanisms for inferring how the BRCA1/2 tumour suppressors in this highly-exposed border guard became dysfunctional and likely contributed to the ongoing epidemic of sporadic, early onset, premenopausal breast cancer among her colleagues.' And shift work could make the pollution-cancer link worse, as past research on rats has shown those constantly exposed to daylight developed 60 per cent more tumours and the tumours grew 36 per cent faster. The woman, whose case was revealed in a compensation claim at the Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeals Tribunal, was denied any compensation. The research was published in the journal New Solutions. The first ever scientific study to find out why women get saggy breasts will be carried out by researchers in the UK. Experts at the University of Portsmouth will conduct a two-day study to scan women's breasts and analyse them while the women walk on a treadmill. During the experiment next month they hope to find out why some breasts droop over time, and by how much they do so. The findings could help clothing companies develop better bras, the researchers say, and they're calling for women to volunteer to be part of the study. Scientists will carry out the research by measuring how much women's breasts move when they walk and considering how this might affect their shape over time The University of Portsmouth is calling for volunteers to join the world-first study, and is offering 30 in return for women taking part in the breast scans and treadmill walks at St Mary's NHS Treatment Centre in Portsmouth, Hampshire 'This research will be the first time scientists will have evidence on whether the density of breasts affects their movement,' said senior researcher Dr Tim Blackmore. 'The results will allow us to better understand the demands different women's breasts put on bras and, for example, why one bra design won't work for every woman.' Women will be offered 30 to take part in the study, in which they will have MRI and 3D scans taken of their breasts. They will also walk on a treadmill so scientists can analyse how their breasts move when they walk, to work out how that affects their shape or position over time. Scans will also be used to work out the proportions of fat and glandular tissue inside women's breasts. The two-day study is being run by the Research Group in Breast Health, which is based at the Hampshire university. Experts at the expert Research Group in Breast Health say developing a better understanding of why breasts sag and change shape as women get older will allow companies to develop better bras The group has become a leader in breast studies over the last decade, with its scientists working with lingerie manufacturers, the military, the NHS and other organisations to test bras. The tests will be carried out next month at St Mary's NHS Treatment Centre in Portsmouth. Hospital director Penny Daniels added: 'This is a worthwhile project. 'Not only may it allow greater comfort for women everywhere at the end of a very long day at work, but it may also reveal valuable insights into women's health and wellbeing. 'I would encourage women to consider participating.' Jeff Fairburn's exit from Persimmon should have a meaningful impact Jeff Fairburn may have been shown the door at Persimmon but his exit should have a meaningful impact. The normally sub-octane Investment Association, representing 7.7trillion of assets, is introducing what amounts to Jeffs law. It is issuing guidelines which will make it possible for boards to reclaim bonuses when rewards to the chief executive damage the companys reputation. Had the tougher regime been in place when the Persimmon boss was originally awarded his 105million bonus, later reduced to 75million, the board could have reversed its original mistake of failing to impose a cap. The saga was not only painful for former Persimmon chairman Nicholas Wrigley, but focused attention on a record of shoddy building and exploitation of leaseholds. It brought opprobrium on the whole housebuilding industry. This was extremely unfair in a year when 220,000 houses were built, the most in three decades. There is a tendency when corporate leaders, such as Sir Martin Sorrell leave, for employers to hide behind legal contracts. In Sorrells case it could be argued that his high pay over a number of years reflected badly on advertising giant WPP because it focused public attention on disregard for governance, rather than performance. The Investment Association played a behind- the-scenes role in showing Unilever the error of its ways in seeking to hide itself away in Rotterdam. It now looks to have the bit between its teeth. Among its targets are pension pots, now almost always paid as a cash benefit, because the recipients long ago reached the lifetime limit of just over 1million. Tesco chief executive Dave Lewis has done a splendid job in resuscitating the grocer but his pension contribution of 25 per cent of his base salary is out of line. The new, already very well-heeled chief executive of BT, Philip Jansen is to receive a 165,000 contribution to his pension which amounts to 15pc or so of his base pay. The Investment Association believes that the percentage of salary paid to executives towards their pension should never exceed that paid to the rest of the workforce, or act as disguised pay. Big battalion investors also want a Carillion-Patisserie Valerie clause which requires executives and former bosses to hang on to any share and share option awards for two years. So when the ship goes down, the greed of the captain goes down with the vessel. It is high time that the gaping governance shortfalls that damage the free-market model are properly addressed. Gas escape The stewardship of Iain Conn at British Gas owner Centrica cannot be considered an unalloyed success. In his three years at the helm Conn has earned 8.7million, presided over a 50 per cent-plus fall in the share price and seen 3m customers leave. But it has not been all bad for investors since the dividend has been retained, which means the shares yield 9 per cent. That used to be considered unattainable but Vodafone, another utility, offers much the same. As painful as Centricas recent share price performance has been, the changes in the energy market have been broadly positive. One of the weaknesses of privatisation is that it turned public monopolies into quoted replicas, ceding them rents, which previously went to the taxpayer. The brilliant development in the energy market is that competition has been unleashed and more than 25 per cent of the market, aided by comparison sites, has gone walkabout. It is not Theresa Mays ill-defined price cap which has done that but free-market forces. Similarly, in the telecoms market disrupters like TalkTalk and broadband specialist Cityfibre have started to give BT a run for its money. Centrica has learned it must have a better retail offer and is rapidly transferring people from the default standard variable tariff to more attractive packages. That should over time stem the outflows and allow Conn to strengthen margins through cost-cutting, better marketing and careful investing in deregulated activities. Competition is forcing change. Wine lake Just as well that ebullient Majestic Wine boss Rowan Gormley has caught some headlines with the disclosure that he is stockpiling up to 1.5m extra bottles of wine ahead of Brexit. That saves him having to explain why the wine merchant fell into loss in the first half and full-year earnings have been downgraded. Not much holiday cheer in that. Royal Mail shareholders have demanded more information about the flop of its American parcels businesses Royal Mail is facing more investor anger this time over a 68million writedown of its American parcels businesses. Top 20 shareholders have demanded more information about the flop, saying they are 'not happy'. It could trigger a fresh rebellion by irate investors, just months after the resignation of former chairman Peter Long over sky-high pay. The company paid 80.6million in total for Postal Express and Golden State Overnight Delivery (GSO) but now says 85 per cent of their value has been wiped out. Both are part of Royal Mail's GLS parcels division and it has been combining them into one. But this month it revealed the merged operation made a loss of 6million in the six months to September 23. Royal Mail blamed rising costs and teething problems with the merger. It said GSO was growing but Postal Express continues to be affected by its integration and a decision to focus on small to medium-sized businesses. Two top investors are now reportedly demanding answers as to why. Jefferies analyst David Kerstens said the pressures, which also include sluggish progress on cost savings and low productivity, could put its dividend at risk. The industry watchdog is probing Britains biggest bean-counters over 15 botched audits. Accountants at major firms such as KPMG, Deloitte and PwC face investigations from the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), which is desperately attempting to prove it is up to the task of regulation. It has now opened a fresh investigation into KPMG, which is already being scrutinised in five cases, for alleged misconduct relating to the work it did for mattress company Silentnight. Before its collapse, Silentnight was promoted by celebrities including Myleene Klass. But in early 2011, it was struggling under cash flow pressure and a hefty pension deficit It is claimed that KPMG and one of its partners, David Costley-Wood, accepted the job when their professional judgement was compromised. The FRC also alleges that KPMG and Costley-Wood were involved in misleading claims made by Silentnight to regulators and trustees over its pension fund. The case will go to a tribunal. In previous cases where misconduct has been proven, firms have been slapped with multi-million pound fines and individuals banned from the accounting profession. A KPMG spokesman said: We believe the FRCs allegations to be wholly without merit. Before its collapse, Silentnight was promoted by celebrities including Myleene Klass. But in early 2011, it was struggling under cash flow pressure and a hefty pension deficit. It called in KPMG, which proposed a so-called Company Voluntary Arrangement, where Silentnight would agree with its lenders to pay back a portion of its debt over a longer period. However that fell through when the Pensions Regulator and the Pension Protection Fund refused to support it, and KPMG was appointed administrator. Eventually, Silentnight was sold to private equity firm HIG Capital. The FRC, which announced a probe into scandal-ridden bakery chain Patisserie Valerie this week, is trying to throw off criticism for being ineffective. MPs called the watchdog toothless after it failed to hold any audit firms to account over financial statements they rubber-stamped for banks which came close to collapse during the financial crisis. Sir John Kingman is leading a Government-commissioned review of whether the FRC should be scrapped. Metals mining giant Fresnillo sent the FTSE 100 into a downward spiral, after analysts at Morgan Stanley sparked fear among investors. A law proposed in Mexico to protect indigenous people from miners could make business much harder, Morgan Stanley said. Companies which operate in Mexico have already come under pressure over the last week, as Leftist president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador scrapped an airport for the capital. But Morgan Stanleys analysts said that since the election in July, 11 bills have been proposed which could affect the mining industry. Companies which operate in Mexico have already come under pressure over the last week, as Leftist president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador scrapped an airport for the capital Analyst Dan Shaw said that Fresnillos earnings per share how much of the companys profit is allocated to each share could fall as much as 11 per cent. One particularly troubling bill for Fresnillo would give the state the right to take back land granted to miners, if their activities create a negative social impact. The bill would also require consent from indigenous communities before concessions can even be granted, and require miners to set up a fund for development in the communities they work in. Though Morgan Stanley said there was no reason to believe Fresnillo would fall foul of these measures, they add uncertainty to the mining environment. Stock Watch - FireAngel Smoke detector company FireAngel sounded the alarm for investors, saying its results would be materially below market expectations. The company, which creates home smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, has been trying to work with its manufacturer to increase its production. This is now on track, but the firm said it has added short-term costs and slowed down the delivery of more profitable products. The shares fell 20.2 per cent, or 9p, to 35.5p. Fresnillos shares tumbled by 12.1 per cent, or 110.2p, to 802.4p. That added to the drag on the FTSE 100, which ended the day down by 1.3 per cent, or 89.92 points, at 6960.32 points. Sterlings rally, up to $1.288 from $1.278, also pulled the index down the pound and the FTSE 100 tend to move in opposite directions, as blue-chip companies make much of their money abroad in foreign currencies. On the FSTE 250, industrial valve company Rotork took a dive after admitting its orders in the third quarter were slightly lower than expected. It makes actuators that sit alongside valves on oil, gas and water pipes to turn them on and off, and said order intake dipped by 4 per cent compared to the same time last year. Revenue, however, was still up 8.4 per cent. Its financial performance is still expected to be on track for the year, but investors were nervous and shares dipped 9.1 per cent, or 25.8p, to 258.2p. Shopping centre owner Intu was another poor performer, as shareholders grew more impatient over a potential 2.9billion takeover. A group of bidders hoping to buy the business, including property investors Peel Group, Olayan Group and Brookfield Property Group, requested a second extension to the bid deadline. Intu said the bidders checks into the company are largely complete. But the bidders, who were due to make a decision on November 15 as to whether they would make a firm offer or not, have pushed the deadline to the end of the month. Intus shares sank 3.6 per cent, or 6.95p, to 188.5p. Hill & Smith, which creates the metalwork used on road signs, hinted a recovery was on the horizon. Bad weather and delays to road projects prompted a profit warning in August, but from July to October revenue picked up by 5 per cent. It is encouraged that the Government is increasing investment in roads to 25.3billion between 2020 and 2025. Shares ticked up by 3.3 per cent, or 37p, to 1157p. Marketing company Ebiquity sank as it said profit for the year would be materially below expectations. It blamed a slowdown in its advertising intelligence division, which analyses how effective businesses adverts are, and delays in pulling in new media clients in Germany. Shares dropped 19.7 per cent, or 13p, to 53p. A couple have won four years of state pension credits and 250 compensation from HMRC after a 'crazy' battle to set their child benefit records straight. The pair had reached deadlock in the lengthy dispute and were threatening to take their fight to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, when the taxman abruptly backed down and apologised for 'several mistakes' it made in the case. Anna Smith will be potentially tens of thousands of pounds better off in retirement, after she and husband John (not their real names) forced HMRC into a u-turn. It marks a second victory struck by parents since This is Money launched a campaign against the unfairness of parents getting smaller state pensions after being caught in child benefit red tape or making simple errors over forms. Child benefit: This is Money is campaigning on behalf of parents facing a smaller state pension due to red tape or simple errors on forms But John condemns the treatment he and his wife have received since 2013, when Anna opted out of child benefit because his earnings meant they no longer qualified for the payments. That includes his complaint letters going ignored, and a wrangle over how and when they notified HMRC about a change of address from Spain back to the UK, which This is Money reported on previously. 'There are clearly big issues in that department. I can't believe how many women must have suffered injustice over this. To have to fight for four years over this is crazy,' says John. He adds that he doesn't think 250 is fair compensation for how he had to push for his wife's rights, saying: 'While we have accepted it I don't think it's sufficient. I do feel for the other women who clearly have been messed about.' Have you lost state pension by not signing up for child benefits or filling form in wrong? If this has happened to you, contact tanya.jefferies@thisismoney.co.uk and tell us your story. An HMRC spokesperson says: 'Mrs Smith ceased to be entitled to child benefit because she moved overseas. 'Following our investigation, we uncovered that several mistakes had been made handling her claim when she returned to England. In light of these errors we have apologised and put her case right.' Read HMRC's full response below. John says a reader question answered by This is Money's pension columnist Steve Webb in January made him sure that 'as a matter of principle' his wife was entitled to state pension credits. John says he is grateful to the former Pensions Minister, who is now director of policy at Royal London and has highlighted the issue of parents unfairly losing state pension for several years. Webb says about this case: 'I am delighted to hear that Anna has finally been awarded the state pension credits to which she should always have been entitled. 'It is quite wrong that she has had to battle like this, and right that HMRC have acknowledged their poor service. 'The recent changes to child benefit have led to thousands of mothers missing out on National Insurance credits and HMRC should be systematically contacting those mothers and making sure they claim this crucial help.' Last week, Webb launched a petition to win back vital credits towards the state pension for mums who fail to claim child benefit. He says that with each passing year more and more mothers are choosing not to claim child benefit because high earnings mean they no longer qualify for it. Controversial changes reduced the entitlement for those earning 50,000-plus a year or wiped it out entirely for those earning 60,000-plus. Those who failed to sign up when new rules began in 2013 could have lost six years of state pension credits by now. Each annual credit is worth around 244 per year in state pension, or 4,880 over the course of a typical 20-year retirement. But current rules only allow parents to backdate credits by three months when they make a belated child benefit claim. However, the Smiths' case was different because Anna originally signed up for child benefit when the couple had twins in 2010. Parents who were already in the system but opted out after 2013 still automatically receive state pension credits. According to HMRC, the case also hinges on Anna moving overseas. Read more below about the child benefit rules, and what to do if you think you've lost state pension credits. How did Anna and John win their case - and could it help other parents? HMRC initially refused to reinstate Anna's credits as we previously reported, so the couple were planning to take their case to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. That is the final stop for complaints that have not been resolved by Government departments including HMRC, the NHS or other public organisations, though you have to gain the support of your MP before you can use the free service. However, John says he then got a call from a staff member in 'Tier 2 Complaints' at HMRC, who told him Anna would be given four years' worth of credits and 250 would be credited to the couple's bank account. He reports the staff member was 'very apologetic', said there were 'flaws' in the way the issue had been handled, admitted correspondence HMRC received from the couple had not been addressed, and that the case should have come to Tier 2 Complaints sooner. John goes on: 'She said I can tell you that there will be action taken and new guidance going forward. There were incorrect judgments by various people. 'My wife was lucky. I was persistent. As a matter of principle I knew my wife was entitled to this.' John offers the following advice to other parents who have lost state pension credits: 'You have got to be extremely persistent. Write to Tier 2 Complaints team which I didn't even know existed. Don't accept rejections you get. 'Keep all your correspondence. If necessary go through the Parliamentary Ombudsman route. Don't be afraid of asking for compensation because clearly there is a pot of money there.' Mum and campaigner Emma Maslin: 'This is a great result for this family' Emma Maslin, a parent who writes a blog for families called The Money Whisperer, lost four years of state pension credits by not claiming child benefit that she didn't qualify for after her daughter was born. However, Emma was never originally in the child benefit system - unlike Anna, who first claimed before 2013 - and only got three months of credits backdated when she belatedly filled in the form. She says of the Smiths' case: 'This is a great result for this family. It frustrates me however that they needed to threaten to take their case to the Parliamentary Ombudsman in order for HMRC to sit up and do something about it. 'If HMRC are prepared to back-date state pension credits on a case-by-case basis, it gives me hope that they may consider doing a proper review for ALL of us who have been affected by opting out. 'After all, the numbers are only going to grow; people still arent understanding how the system works, and continue to opt out of child benefit leaving themselves without valuable state pension credits.' What does HMRC say about this case and the child benefit rules? 'In recognition of the mistakes HMRC made with this particular case involving Mr and Mrs Smith, we chose to reinstate her credits and pay 250 into her bank account by way of an apology for the distress caused,' says HMRC. How does moving overseas affect child benefit claims? The rules depend on a number of factors, such as where you move to, your reason for being abroad and how long you remain away. Read more here. On the wider issue, it says: 'No-one should miss out on their full state pension entitlement and the Government has always urged families in the UK to claim child benefit to help protect their future right to the state pension. 'Parents are advised to claim at the birth of their child, through gov.uk and through partners such as Citizens Advice Bureau. 'If your circumstances change at any time please let HMRC know so we can help make sure you pay the right amount of tax at the right time as well as receive any benefits due.' Parents who signed up for child benefit before the rules changed in 2013, and then subsequently opted out because they no longer qualified for the payments, are still automatically awarded credits. This is important because Government figures show the number of families claiming child benefit dropped dramatically following the 2013 changes. Dramatic fall: Many people who previously claimed child benefit stopped doing so after 2013 In cases where people had claimed prior to this, HMRC says: 'When people contact the child benefit office and ask for their payments to be stopped, providing they are still entitled to claim child benefit, they will only be opted-out of receiving payment and they will continue to receive credits.' The situation is different if a parent terminates a child benefit claim because they are no longer entitled - for example, if they are no longer responsible for a child, or move abroad for longer than allowed - but later make a new claim because they become entitled to it again. When this happens, claims are only backdated by three months as they are considered essentially new. This is the amazing moment a Brazilian man saves the life of his neighbour's beloved dog, after spotting it falling from a ninth floor balcony. Joao Augusto was about to enter the block of flats in Ribeirao Preto, Sao Paolo state, when he saw Mel the Shih Tzu about to go over the railing almost 100ft above him. CCTV footage shows Mr Augusto standing next to a parked car with his arms out ready to catch the pet when it comes crashing down. What a hero: Joao Augusto spotted Mel the Shih Tzu about to go over the railing on a balcony on the ninth floor of a block of flats in Ribeirao Preto, Brazil, and held out his arms. Within seconds, the dog falls into his arms, knocking Mr Augusto over. Despite falling 98ft (30 metres), and slipping through Mr Augusto's grip, Mel the Shih Tzu can be seen running off without a scratch. Mr Augusto said he had spotted the dog and screamed to the building's caretaker to get a sheet or towel to catch the pet in, 'but there wasn't enough time'. 'Then, she fell from the ninth floor. I knew that I wouldn't be able to catch her but I was aware that I could cushion the fall. 'I was on the floor for a few seconds but it was from relief. I think that I was in the right place at the right time. I Shih Tzu not: Mr Augusto is seen making a miracle save, cushioning the fall with his arms and body - and falling to the floor in the process - as Mel runs off without a scratch Did I do something wrong? Mel's owner has now put up protective netting to stop the adventurous Shih Tzu from climbing the balcony railing Modest: Mr Augusto credited the caretaker with helping him with the rescue effort, and said he had simply done what he could 'I did what I could, the most I could to help. It was a joint effort with the caretaker who acted quickly to help the dog. It was a happy ending.' The caretaker of the building, Paulo Narciso, had reportedly opened the gate of the building for Mr Augusto when he came sprinting towards him. Mr Narciso told reporters: 'We saw that the dog was curled over the railing and was going to fall. I went up to the flat but the owner wasn't home. 'When I went back down the cleaning lady told me the dog had fallen and that he had grabbed her.' Neither Mel nor Mr Augusto were injured in the incident and the dog's owner, who asked not to be identified, has installed protective netting on the balcony to prevent the incident from happening again. A day after the Confederation of ATM Industry (CATMi) warned of shutting down over 1.13 lakh ATMs by March 2019 due to the unviability of operations, state-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB) has said it has no plans to reduce the number of its ATMs. "PNB would like to clarify that it has no major plans to reduce ATMs by March 31 2019," the bank said in a statement. The bank has also assured that it will not increase various charges related to the ATM usage. This has also ended speculations that banks would ultimately pass the buck on to customers. However, other banks are yet to issue any such statement on the matter. The CATMi had said changes in the regulatory landscape were making it unviable to operate ATMs and might lead to the closure of half of the total 2.38 lakh machines in the country. "A large number of ATMs in non-urban locations may be shut down due to unviability of operations. If this happens, the financial inclusion programme would be severely impacted as millions of beneficiaries under the government's Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana scheme, who withdraw cash from ATMs, may find their neighbourhood ATMs shut. This may result in long queues and chaos similar to what the country witnessed when ATMs were not dispensing cash post demonetisation," the industry body said. The bank is one of the largest ATM service providers with over 9,428 ATMs on the pan-India basis. Despite assurances about not increasing the ATM usage charges, it has not said anything about bearing the additional compliance requirements that call for a huge cost outlay. The ATM industry rues low ATM interchange and ever-increasing maintenance costs. The ATM service providers need around Rs 3,500 crore to fully comply with the new RBI and Centre's guidelines on the management of the ATMs. "These requirements were never anticipated by the industry participants at the time of signing contracts with the banks. Many of these agreements were inked four to five years ago when no such requirements were in sight," said CATMi. Meanwhile, PNB has said it fully agrees with the RBI guidelines on the security of ATMs and has already started the upgradation process. "The security measures advised by the RBI are in the interest of the bank and the customers at large and PNB has already started the process of implementation of the security measures on its ATMs," it said. A kindergarten in south-east China has caused outrage among parents after it lined up a pole dancing performance to welcome its students back to school after the summer holidays. Video footage of the bizarre arrangement on Monday shows a woman in skimpy clothing and high platform shoes spinning around a pole on a small stage as confused three- to six-year-olds looked on. The school in question, Xinshashui Kindergarten in Shenzhen, has issued an apology, citing that the performance was well-intentioned. A kindergarten in Shenzhen, south-east China has caused outrage among parents after it lined up a pole dancing performance to welcome its students back to school after the summer Video of the bizarre arrangement shows a woman in skimpy clothing and high platform shoes spinning around a pole on a small stage as confused three- to six-year-olds looked on Horrified parents posted clips of the pole dance on social media, with many saying that they're now trying to withdraw their children from the school and get their tuition back. 'What was the principal thinking? Pole dancing is entirely inappropriate in a school setting,' one parent commented. 'I demand my money back.' Michael Standaert, a journalist based in Shenzhen who has two children attending the preschool, said having pole dancing as part of the opening ceremony is a 'strange' choice. 'I have nothing against pole dancing for adults doing exercise or in adult clubs and things like that, but it is so strangely inappropriate for a kindergarten performance,' Standaert told MailOnline, adding that he is still deciding whether to withdraw their children from classes. Several witnesses also told reporters that the performer was dancing on a flagpole bearing the Chinese national flag in front of about 600 people, according to Shenzhen Evening News. Although pole dancing is gaining popularity in China, many people still associate the sport with pornography and strip clubs and is highly controversial. Several witnesses also told reporters that the performer was dancing on a flagpole bearing the Chinese national flag in front of about 600 people, according to local reports Horrified parents posted clips of the pole dance on social media on Monday, with many saying that they're trying to withdraw their children from school and get their tuition back Although pole dancing is gaining popularity in China, many peoople still associate the sport with pornography and strip clubs and is highly controversial Lai Rong, the principal of the pre-school in the city's Bao'an District, said in the apology that the school was trying to 'lighten up the atmosphere' during the first day of school. 'We apologise for not putting more consideration into the planning of the dance performance and for causing a bad experience among students and parents,' it added. The Shenzhen Education Bureau stated on its official Weibo account that the ministry is investigating the incident. 'The education bureau believes it is not appropriate to arrange pole dancing performances for children in kindergartens,' it said. The authorities have also demanded the dismissal of the preschool's principal. However, some parents online were supportive of the school's arrangement, saying that there is nothing wrong with the performance. 'What kind of prejudice is this? What's wrong with pole dancing? A lot of children practise Latin dancing, ballet, jazz nowadays - pole dancing is just another art form!' one commented. A string of horrific baby killings at the hands of sadistic parents is just the tip of the iceberg in a deepening child abuse crisis - and an 'overwhelmed' system is failing to protect them, safety advocates say. From strung out ice addicts bashing their babies to a pulp to a crazed mother leaving her children to die after driving them into a lake, Australia has in recent times seen some of the most unimaginable crimes against our most vulnerable. In the latest tragedy to rock the nation, a nine-month-old girl's naked body was found washed up on a Queensland beach in the early hours of Monday morning. The girl's 48-year-old father, who was charged with murder on Thursday, told police his daughter was 'possessed by demons' after she was found dead in the shallows of Surfers Paradise beach. The pair - along with the child's older brother and their 23-year-old mother - were homeless and had been living in a hut made from sticks and tree branches when she died. 'How can it be that we've got a newborn child and her sibling living rough on our streets, in Australia?,' Hetty Johnston, founder of child protection organisation Bravehearts, told Daily Mail Australia. 'We've got a system right across the country that's bulging at the edges, because we've got too many parents navigating their responsibility.' In the latest tragedy to rock the nation, a nine-month-old girl's naked body was found washed up on a Queensland beach in the early hours of Monday morning The little girl was found dead by the water in the early hours of Monday. Paramedics tried to revive her but she was pronounced dead at the scene (pictured) The pair - along with the child's older brother and their 23-year-old mother - were homeless and had been living in a hut made from sticks and tree branches The girl's father was a violent schizophrenic with a history of alcoholism and drug abuse - and he'd previously tried to attack a council officer who warned him not to camp in sand dunes with his family, Southport Court heard on Wednesday. Daily Mail Australia does not suggest the father is guilty of any offence. The latest in a string of baby deaths highlighted a broken system which is failing defenceless children, Ms Johnston said. There are all kinds of tragedies occurring against children that we don't hear about - BECAUSE THEY DON'T DIE Just one day after the child's body was found, another Queensland girl, aged four months, died in suspicious circumstances. Police said a woman and a man were assisting with their inquiries into the death on Tuesday of the infant from the Logan District. Ms Johnston said Australia's child abuse and neglect epidemic runs far deeper than what is reported in media. 'We only hear about the ones that are dead. What about the others that are getting raped and abused?,' Ms Johnston added. 'There are all kinds of tragedies occurring against children that we don't hear about - because they don't die.' In September, ice addict William Andrew O'Sullivan was sentenced to nine years jail for bashing his 22-month-old stepson in a drug-fuelled rage. The child later died. In September, ice addict William Andrew O'Sullivan was sentenced to nine years jail for bashing his 22-month-old stepson Mason Jet Lee, suffered anal injuries, a broken leg and a ruptured intestine. Traces of meth were found in his blood The young boy, Mason Jet Lee, suffered anal injuries, a broken leg and a ruptured intestine, spending the last of his days vomiting, feverish and dehydrated. Traces of methamphetamine were found in his blood. 'They might be lovely people when they're straight and sober, but they're not always straight and sober, which makes them very dangerous parents - and they're putting their children at great risk,' Ms Johnston said. In the last seven years, ice-related deaths have doubled to 300 a year and instances of ice-addicted parents killing their children are becoming shockingly common. 'We've got a real problem with ice, we've got increasing dysfunction in adults - and it's because we're not working on prevention,' Ms Johnston said. 'We're mopping up carnage is what we're doing. And we're doing it on a daily basis - right across the country. I hate to admit it, but I think we've almost given up. 'The Family Court, police and others - the complaints are so overwhelming - I believe we've got to a point where we're throwing our hands in the air and saying ''I give up, I can't stop this''.' In 2016, ice user Melissa Louise Bulloch, 27, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of her son Lochlan, who was found dead at his Hamilton Hill home, south-west of Perth, in January 2014. In 2016, Melissa Louise Bulloch, 27, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of her son Lochlan Lochlan was found dead at his Hamilton Hill home, south-west of Perth, in January 2014 The baby suffered severe brain injuries, bruising to his head and neck - and also had meth in his system. Justice John Chaney said Bulloch's drug use was out of control and affected her parenting, causing her to act impulsively and unpredictably. Another baby boy, six-month-old Chayse Dearing, was bashed to death by his mother's drug addict partner - who thought he was a spider. Chayse was killed by Dwayne Justin Lindsey, 34, at Glenroy while his mother Michelle went shopping in Melbourne in June, 2016. The baby suffered severe traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries, marks on his neck, bruising and abrasions on his groin, and retinal bleeding. Six-month-old Chayse Dearing (left) was bashed to death by his mother's drug addict partner - Dwayne Justin Lindsey (right) - who thought he was a spider Chayse was killed while his mother Michelle went shopping in Melbourne on June 26, 2016 Lindsey claimed he fell asleep with the child on his chest, then woke and jumped when he thought a spider was crawling on him. He said the baby fell off his chest, hitting his head on a wall heater. He was found guilty of murder. Yet another baby, a three-month-old girl known only as BLGN, died in her cot in 2014 after her drug addict mother neglected her, despite repeated warnings to child services. A court was told when the girl was found dead at an Oxley Park home in western Sydney, there was an ice-pipe above the baby's bottle warmer and her mother seemed 'dazed'. A three-month-old baby girl known only as BLGN died in her cot in 2014 after her drug addict mother neglected her The young mother (pictured) admitted in Glebe Coroners Court to having an ice addiction since she was 13 Police who visited the home said her grandmother also 'appeared to be on something' and the baby's older siblings were 'dirty and hungry.' The young mother admitted in Glebe Coroners Court to having an ice addiction since she was 13, saying she was coming down off drugs and had become lazy the day her older child died. Meanwhile, in September this year a suppression order was lifted and Daniel James Holdom's shocking crimes against his girlfriend and her two-year-old daughter were exposed. The 43-year-old murdered Karlie Pearce-Stevenson, 20, so he could sexually assault her daughter, Khandalyce Pearce, in December 2008. Daniel James Holdom (left) murdered Karlie Pearce-Stevenson (right) so he could sexually assault her daughter Khandalyce Pearce (pictured) was brutally murdered by Daniel James Holdom in December 2008 The mother and daughter, whose bodies were dumped 1,200km apart, were not identified until 2015. The child's skeleton was found in a suitcase with cloths stuffed in her mouth. 'This is a crisis. If these deaths came out of the blue, that would be distressing - but understandable in terms of responses from authorities,' Ms Johnston said. 'But most often these kids are known to authorities - most often members of the community tried to help them and reported [them]. Most often, those notifications were ignored or minimised.' Last year, mother-of-seven Akon Guode pleaded guilty to killing three of her children by driving them into a Melbourne lake. Khandalyce Pearce's skeleton was found in this suitcase with cloths stuffed in her mouth Hetty Johnston (pictured), founder of Australia's leading child protection organisation Bravehearts, said the system is failing the country's most vulnerable children She later claimed her 26-year jail sentence was too harsh because she was mentally unwell, while a witness testified that Guode believed 'witchcraft' had caused the crash. During the sentence hearing, her barrister Marcus Dempsey blamed the atrocity on an 'accruing of pressures and stress'. Guode's 17-month-old son, Bol, and four-year-old twins, Hanger and Madit died, while her five-year-old daughter, Aluel, survived the 2015 incident. Meanwhile, Tyrell Cobb, four, died in 2009 after two blows to his abdomen caused internal bleeding and the leaking of his stomach contents, leading to peritonitis. Last year, mother-of-seven Akon Guode (left) pleaded guilty to killing three of her children by driving them into a Melbourne lake (right) Guode's 17-month-old son, Bol (left), and four-year-old twins, Hanger and Madit (right) were killed His mother, Heidi Strbak, was sentenced to nine years' jail, with a non-parole period of four years, after the Brisbane Supreme Court found her guilty of manslaughter. Tyrell's stepfather Matthew Scown sparked national outrage earlier this year when he laughed outside court moments after he was released. While Scown did not cause the injuries, he did not contact authorities or seek medical help - even when Tyrell was vomiting green bile the night before his death. He was handed a four-year jail sentence for the manslaughter of his stepson, but was released after already spending two years and eight months in custody. Gold Coast mother Heidi Strbak was sentenced to nine years' jail for the manslaughter of her four-year-old son Tyrell Cobb Tyrell's stepfather Matthew Scown (right) sparked national outrage when he laughed outside court after being slapped with a suspended jail sentence. Strbak is pictured left Ms Johnston said the courts weren't doing enough to stop the abuse and neglect of children. 'The average sentence for an adult who kills a child is 6.8 years. I just don't know that we value our children - I don't think we get it. The system doesn't prioritise children,' she said. 'I just wonder if that's where our system is coming to. We're just rolling the dice and hoping the worst doesn't happen. That's not something we can accept, surely. 'The only people that can protect these children are adults. We can't turn the other cheek. We have to make our politicians and our systems accountable for their failures to act.' Ms Johnston is lobbying for the introduction of a new 'child killing' charge which would carry a life sentence. On average, 25 Australian children are killed every year because of murder or manslaughter, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. A dog which was rescued from a slaughterhouse at China's notorious Yulin dog meat festival this year has found a safe new home in Britain. Lily, a female collie mix, arrived in London on Tuesday from China together with four other dogs that had escaped cruel deaths. The five pooches were brought to safety by animal lovers from filthy underground animal abattoirs ahead of the annual Yulin feasts in June. Scroll down for video Lily (circled) stays still and stares at the camera while being found at a slaughterhouse in China Lily meets her new owner at Heathrow on Tuesday after escaping a cruel death in Yulin. Susie Warner (pictured with Lily, right) from Berkshire couldn't wait to give the pet a safe new home It is estimated that 10 million dogs are slaughtered for meat in China annually. Many of them are believed to be stolen pets. WHAT IS THE YULIN DOG MEAT FESTIVAL? Some claimed that the consumption of dog meat has been observed in Guangxi Province, China, for hundreds of years. However, the activity was promoted and encouraged until around 30 years ago - first by the dog meat traders, then by the Yulin government for driving tourism. The annual Yulin Dog Meat Festival can be traced back to 2009. The event has drawn waves of criticism from media and animal lovers, with influential figures leading campaigns around the world in a bid to stop it. The local government has stopped organising the festival under pressure, as it is understood, but vendors continue selling dog meat and residents carry on eating it on the summer solstice. Advertisement Yulin dog meat festival, held on the summer solstice, is a highly controversial food festival in southern China's Guangxi Province. Each year, thousands of dogs are cruelly killed, skinned and cooked with blow-torches before being eaten by the locals. The popular Yulin No. 1 Crispy Dog Meat restaurant prepared 12 tables along the pavement outside with 20 more tables nearby for this year's feasts, local sources reported at the time. People in some other Asian countries, such as Vietnam and South Korea, also have the tradition of eating dogs. The five lucky dogs, Lily, Harley, Fred, Cocoa and Rosie, were found inside three slaughterhouses on the outskirts of Yulin. A heart-breaking picture from the rescue mission shows a frightened Lily sitting completely still on the blood-stained ground of the slaughterhouse while staring at the camera. Workers at the dim-lit slaughterhouse were said to kill around 50 dogs every day for human consumption. Staff from the Humane Society International hold Fred (left) and Lily (right) at Heathrow. One-year-old Fred (left), a pug mix, and two-year-old Cocoa (right), a mix breed, arrive safely in London together with Lily after being rescued from slaughterhouses in Yulin earlier this year Three-year-old Rosie (left), a Spaniel mix, and 18-month-old Harley (right), a Siberian husky, have also found new homes in Britain after escaping cruel deaths at China's dog meat festival Allen, one of the volunteers who rescued Lily, said at the time: 'It was deeply moving, as though she knew we were her only hope to get out of that hell alive, so she didn't take her eyes off us for a single second in case we left without her - which of course we never would!' The five animals were brought to the UK with the help of charity group Humane Society International. The organisation's UK Director Claire Bass said: 'It was such a joyful moment to see our beautiful dog meat trade survivors arrive in the UK to start new, happy lives.' Ms Bass also said the influence and size of the Yulin dog meat festival had already been reduced in recent years thanks to the pressure from the public. Volunteers saved a total of 135 dogs, including Lily, from three slaughterhouses in Yulin in June Volunteers from Humane Society International look after the dogs after they were saved The organisation said Lily had already found a new home. She has been adopted by Susie Warner from Berkshire who was waiting for the cute pooch at the Heathrow Animal Reception Centre. Ms Warner, who already has a dog, couldn't wait to hold Lily. She said Lily would make the perfect companion for her pet and was excited to get her home. Ms Warner also said she knew Lily was the dog for her as soon as she saw the photo of her at the slaughterhouse and a video of Lily being comforted by rescuers at the shelter in China. Three-year-old Spaniel mix Rosie and 18-month-old husky Harley have also found new owners. The other two dogs - one-year-old Fred and two-year-old Cocoa - are still looking for new homes. Adoption applications can be sent to Wild at Heart Foundation here (for Fred) and here (for Cocoa). Humane Society International said they were looking for people that had extra patience and love to give these dogs as the animals had gone through a traumatic time and desperately needed a fresh start. The rest of the 135 dogs saved from the slaughterhouse are currently being looked after in shelters in China. A young woman in north-east China has been sentenced to 15 years in jail for murdering her mother by setting her on fire. The woman, identified as Li, grew resentful towards her mother, Zhang, because she did not approve of her romantic partner and the two had always had a strained relationship, Chinese media reported. Li was home in Shenyang, Liaoning province for a family photoshoot last December when she poured a bucket of paint thinner on her mother's hair before lighting her on fire. A young woman in north-east China has been sentenced to 15 years in jail for murdering her mother by setting her on fire. Li has been convicted of intentional homicide (file photo) Li had purchased three bottles of thinner at a convenience store before the crime (file photo) 49-year-old Zhang suffered serious burns and died of septic shock from her injuries, according to Huashang Morning News. Prior to arriving home, Li had purchased three bottles of paint thinner and a lighter at a convenience store. She then poured the thinner into a bucket and asked her mother if any of the plants needed watering. 'She was bragging about my brother's academic results and that's when I decided to douse her with the thinner. I then lit her hair on fire,' she said in court, according to the report. The woman from Shenyang, Liaoning province (pictured) testified that her mother, Zhang, 49, had disapproved of her love life and they did not have a good relationship Li then ran out of the room. 'Mum was chasing after me. Her whole body was on fire. I ran outside and could still her shouting for help,' she testified. Following the incident, Li told police that her mother had tried to set herself on fire because she did not approve of her love life. When she was rescued, Zhang had told police it was her daughter that had tried to kill her, prompting Li's arrest. She later admitted to her crime and was charged by police. She was convicted of intentional homicide. An assassin-for-hire says a local jailed drug dealer offered to pay him $4,000 if he eliminated a rival trafficker's brother in the Dominican Republic. Hitman Felipe Valerio confessed he messed up the hit when he mistakenly shot dead pastor Santo Cedeno del Rosario, who resembled the target, on October 17. According to the Dominican National Police, drug dealer Felix Antonio 'Liquito' Martinez Valdez contracted two local thugs to carry out the hit job on Julio Cesar Cabrera Ruiz, who works in the southern Caribbean coastal town of La Romana. Ruiz's brother Pascual Cabrera is currently on trial for money laundering, ordering murders and drug trafficking. Felipe Valerio admits to firing the shot that killed an innocent Santo Cedeno del Rosario, a pastor in the Dominican Republic who was also an immigration lawyer. Valerio says he was offered $4,000 Felix Antonio 'Liquito' Martinez Valdez, a jailed drug dealer, who wanted his rival's brother, Julio Cesar Cabrera Ruiz. Pastor Santo Cedeno del Rosario (right) was assassinated in a case of mistaken identity with Julio Cesar Cabrera Ruiz (left) As Felipe Valerio was being led into a jail in El Seibo, just north of La Romana, on Tuesday, a group of reporters caught the shooter's confession on camera, according to Diario Libre. 'The one who sent me to kill the lawyer is imprisoned there,' Valerio said. 'He contacted me for that. He offered me $200,000.' Valerio was finally arrested last Friday afternoon in El Seibo when he and another man, identified only as 'Santo', allegedly mugged three milk delivery men of $170,000 pesos [$3,400]. A confessed assassin [pictured seated behind motorist] in the Dominican Republic was captured by a surveillance camera moments before he fired a series of shots that killed an innocent man in front of a church Dominican authorities immediately also detained the two other accomplices in connection with the assassination plot while they were hiding inside a ranch at a farm. The shooting occurred after Valerio's accomplice Carlos Alfredo del Rosario De Jesus, believed he'd found Cabrera's white Mitsubishi truck and alerted his partner. Vaelerio rushed down but it was Cedeno del Rosario who was waiting outside a school for one of his children to be dismissed a school near a church. Natanael de Jesus Severino admitted to being at the control of the motorcycle that sped up to the church before Valerio fired the shot that killed Cedeno del Rosario. A disgraced politician and convicted paedophile is prepared to walk the streets again three years before he was due to be released from prison. Former Labor MP Milton Orkopoulos, 61, will be granted the ability to apply for day release from Sydney's Long Bay jail, it was announced on Thursday. But the decision to let Orkopoulos back into the public has been fiercely opposed by high-profile politicians, including recently introduced New South Wales Opposition Leader Michael Daley. Former Labor MP and convicted paedophile Milton Orkopoulos (pictured) is prepared to walk free from jail on day release three years before his 14 year sentence is fully served A former Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Orkopoulos has served only ten years of his 13 years and ten months sentence and is not due to be released until 2021. He was found guilty of 28 charges of child sex and drug offences in 2008, convicted for supplying teenage boys with heroin and cannabis so he could molest them over the course of 11 years. A married father-of-three, Orkopoulos reportedly attempted suicide the day after he was charged in 2006. However, new conditions approved by Corrective Services NSW will see him able to apply for day leave after a recommendation was made by the Serious Offenders Review Council. The disgraced politician was convicted for 28 counts of child sex offences and drug supply His victims, who were as young as 15 at the time of offending, were invited to have an input on the decision. 'Registered victims were invited to make submissions on this recommendation, and to request any terms and conditions they may want placed on the offender,' a Corrective Services spokesperson told Fairfax Media. Orkopoulos' victims were sent letters saying the man's 'classification has been reduced' and 'he is now eligible for pre-release leave.' Speaking in Parliament on Thursday, NSW Corrections Minister David Elliott said he will demand strict conditions if Orkopoulos is given leave. Sharing the sentiment, Mr Daley said: 'What he did to those young people was horrendous and inexcusable, the people of New South Wales have an expectation he'll serve his sentence out in full.' Orkopoulos has thrice been denied bail, most recently calling himself a 'victim of injustice' Orkopoulos has been denied bail three times, first applying when he became eligible in February 2017 and again in January 2018. After the third rejection came in August this year, he claimed he was the victim of 'manifest injustice'. An ice-addict with a 'significant' criminal history has been sentenced to one year behind bars for driving a stolen Alfa Romeo car. The theft of the luxury vehicle occurred at a Sunshine Coast home, in southern Queensland, on the morning of October 28. Ironically, just weeks earlier the accused, Zak Christy John Trimble, 25, had shared a Facebook photo posing in front of a black car with the number plate 'JA1L ME'. The court heard on Wednesday that Trimble, from Brisbane, had been addicted to the drug ice since he was 15 years old, the Gold Coast Bulletin reported. Self-fulfilling prophecy? Weeks before his arrest for driving a stolen Alfa Romeo, Zak Christy John Trimble (pictured) shared a photo in front of a car with the number plate JA1L ME Trimble, who is currently in custody for drug trafficking offences, appeared in Maroochydore Magistrates Court via video link and pleaded guilty to unlawful use of a vehicle. Trimble's lawyer, Ben Rynderman, stood alongside Trimble's mother and partner, and argued that while his client had a reasonable belief that the car was stolen he was not the one who took it. Zak has a passion for expensive cars (pictured), but driving a stolen one has landed him in jail However, CCTV footage from the Park Regis North Quay hotel Brisbane, where the car was found, showed Trimble and a second man arriving and leaving in the vehicle. In addition, police who seized the stolen car found a duffel bag containing Trimble's ID and his fingerprints on the vehicle's original number plates. Trimble regularly boasts about living a lavish lifestyle, posting photos online posing next to luxury supercars and motorbikes while wearing flashy jewellery. His bio on Instagram reads: 'eat diamonds for breakfast and shine all day' along with the motto 'be anything but predictable! Zak (pictured) posts about his lavish lifestyle on social media, and is often seen wearing gold watches, thick chains and designer sunglasses Magistrate Graham Hillan sentenced Trimble to 12 months in jail for driving the stolen car with parole release in March. While his lawyer argued for bail, Mr Hillan said that given that Trimble had breached his sentence on previous offences at the time of the theft, he was to remain in custody to face the Supreme Court again to be re-sentenced. Australians seem to be putting themselves more at risk when travelling to south-east Asia with alarming rates of deaths, injuries and arrests. The number of Australians dying in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand - the top three countries for overseas deaths - has skyrocketed. There were 238 Australians who died in Thailand in 2017-18, up 17 per cent on the previous year, while 153 died in the Philippines (up 21 per cent) and 117 in Indonesia (up nine per cent). Some of the deaths in those countries have included Callan Jay Everts, 32, from Perth, who died of severe head injuries when he crashed his motorbike into the Santo Paulus Church in North Kuta, Indonesia on October 17 this year. Callan Jay Everts, 32 (left), from Perth, died of severe head injuries when he crashed his motorbike into the Santo Paulus Church in North Kuta on October 17 this year More than 7,000 Australian overseas travellers were killed, hospitalised, jailed or had vanished in the past year (stock image) The figures equate to an Australian dying or being injured overseas every two-and-a-half hours (stock image) Meanwhile, Melbourne's Benjamin Robb, died February 9 in Pattaya, Thailand after at least five men savagely assaulted him in a bar and 70-year-old Reginald Rene Hodgens was reportedly shot in the head at the gate of his rented home in the north-western coastal province of Ilocos Sur in the Phillipines on October 15. A staggering total of 1,600 Australian travellers have died overseas in the past 12 months, while 500 others simply vanished. The shocking statistics were released by the Department of Foreign Affairs on Friday. According to the department's report, 1,540 tourists were arrested abroad and 1,585 more were hospitalised. The figures equate to an Australian dying or being seriously injured overseas every two-and-a-half hours - an increase of 36 per cent over the past five years. The number of people arrested abroad fell by six per cent on the previous year, but climbed 28 per cent over the past five. Immigration detention, where Australians are denied entry to a country or breached visa conditions, accounted for 385 of the 1,540 arrests. There was a 72 per cent increase in these cases in Thailand, where the immigration policy was tightened during the year, the Department said. The United States again accounted for the most arrests and detentions, and Japan for the first time was listed in the top five countries for that category. The number of Australians being arrested in Japan for drug offences increased by more than 170 per cent. Immigration detention, where Australians are denied entry into a country, accounted for 385 of the 1,540 arrests (stock image) Australian residents took more than 10.7million overseas trips in the past year (stock image) The Department helped 19 Australians arrested in Japan for drug offences in 2017-18, with the same number of Aussies also finding themselves in handcuffs in China for similar reasons - a 58 per cent increase over the period. Those detained overseas are regularly checked in on by the Department, who say they managed nearly 400 imprisonment cases worldwide in the past year. That accounts for a 15 per cent increase over the past five years, with majority of the imprisonment due to fraud and drug cases. But as Australians are detained more frequently overseas, similarly, more are catching the travel bug than ever before. Australian residents took more than 10.7million overseas trips in the past year, an increase of 13 per cent over the past five. CCTV footage has emerged of two women allegedly using a mobility scooter to steal a $90 sex toy. Footage from the Libido Adult store in the Perth suburb of Northbridge appears to show the women stealing a luxury vibrator shortly after 11am on November 17 before stowing it in a mobility scooter. The alleged theft is the third reported adult store robbery in less than a month after two teenage girls were charged over stealing from the same store on November 11. One of the women is in a mobility scooter and her friend is seen surreptitiously slipping a white box into the front basket before covering it with one of her bags. The two women then appear to shop around for a few moments before making a swift exit, footage obtained by The West Australian shows. The woman in the mobility scooter was wearing a light green vest top and had brown hair tied back in a ponytail. The woman in the mobility scooter was wearing a light green vest top and had brown hair tied back in a ponytail The second woman had shorter dark brown hair which was pulled back from her face with a pair of sunglasses. She was wearing a black and red flowered dress The other woman had shorter dark brown hair which was pulled back from her face with a pair of sunglasses. She was wearing a black and red flowered dress and had a two black bags. Western Australia Police have urged anyone who recognises these woman to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000. Footage from the Libido Adult store in Northbridge, Perth shows two women stealing a $90 vibrator shortly after 11am on November 17 The two teenagers charged with theft from the same store on November 11 stole $600 worth of sex toys by removing the packaging and hiding the items in their clothing. Both women were issued with a Criminal Code Infringement Notice. On November 18, the Lovers Adult store in Perth's Midland was also targeted by alleged thieves who stole $300 worth of goods. Police are still searching for the culprits which they believe include a man and two women. They have also released an image of a ute they believe was associated with the incident. A hairdresser has been slammed for refusing to cut a four-year-old girls hair ahead of her uncles wedding. Shelby was a customer at Bogaarts Styling Lounge in Pukekohe, New Zealand since she was just one-year-old but on Tuesday her regular hairdresser refused to cut her hair over a 'new salon policy'. The policy requires both parents and their children to be customers if they want to get their kids' haircut. A hairdresser has been slammed for refusing to cut a four-year-old girls fringe ahead of her uncles wedding Shelby, 4, wanted to get her hair cut at Bogaarts Styling Lounge (pictured) in Pukekohe, New Zealand ahead of her uncle's wedding Shelbys mother said she couldnt afford to get her hair cut at the same salon which charged her daughter $25 for a quick fringe trim. 'We've been there quite a few times, I'd say at least five times before, since Shelby was one-year-old,' her mother told the NZ Herald. The distraught mother said she was told, 'You have two options: sign up with us or go somewhere else.' People have taken to social media slamming the salon for refusing to cut the girls' hair. 'You clowns are greedy idiots. #Boycott this greedy business,' one woman said. 'A lesson in bad PR turning away customers,' another said. (Pictured) Boogart's Styling Lounge, the hair salon who refused to cut Shelby's hair 'You clowns are greedy idiots. #Boycott this greedy business,' one woman said 'A lesson in bad PR turning away customers,' one woman said A hairdresser from Bogaarts Styling Lounge told Daily Mail Australia that the policy is still in place. She said: 'It is not a total ban on children. We still have existing clients who have children. We have just decided to look after those children and not necessarily take walk ins.' When pressed on why Shelby was refused when her mother claimed she had been to the hairdresser five times over the last four years, the hairdresser said the girl had been there only twice according to their records. She said she didn't want to make any further comments. A hairdresser from Bogaarts Styling Lounge (pictured) told Daily Mail Australia that the policy is still in place The incident comes just months after a barber Sam Rahim also refused to cut the hair of a young girl in Sydney's lower north shore. Mr Rahim told the girl's mother he was not qualified to cut womens or girls' hair. The mother, who is also a lawyer, believed her daughter experienced gender discrimination and took her complaint to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in April. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro went on sale for the first time at 12:00 pm today on Mi.com, Flipkart and Mi Home stores, and then again on 3:00 pm. On top of that, the latest Xiaomi offering in India was offered at a discounted price of Rs 12,999 under the Black Friday sale offer. According to Xiaomi India head Manu Kumar Jain, both flash sales were over within minutes the device went for sale for the first time in India. However, those who missed the Redmi Note 6 Pro in the first two sales need not lose heart just yet. Xiaomi will hold a two more rounds of flash sale today, one at 6:00 pm and another at 9:00 pm, with the same discounts and offers as the first two flash sales. Launching the Redmi Note 6 Pro on Thursday, Xiaomi had announced that it will hold a surprise sale for the device along with the first flash sale on Friday. Under the Black Friday sale, the 4GB RAM variant of Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro is available at Rs 12,999, whereas the 6GB RAM variant is available at Rs 14,999, with a discount of Rs 1,000 on both models. There is an additional instant cashback of Rs 500 on using HDFC Bank cards. #RedmiNote6Pro: 3pm sale too went out of stock within mins! Mi Fans! Don't worry if you still did not manage to buy one. We have two more special #BlackFriday sales - 6pm Y and 9pm Y today! YZ Only on @Flipkart and https://t.co/lzFXOcYa5q. - Manu Kumar Jain (@manukumarjain) November 23, 2018 The Xioami Redmi 6 Pro has a lot to prove, as it is the successor to the crowd favourite Redmi Note 5 Pro. The Redmi Note 6 Pro is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 processor coupled with 4GB or 6GB of RAM. Both variants come with 64GB of internal storage, which can be expanded to 256GB. The screen is a 6.26-inch Full HD+ (2280x1080 pixels) panel with an aspect ratio of 19:9 and a notch up top. It even comes with Corning Gorilla Glass protection. The Redmi Note 6 Pro gets its juice from a massive 4,000mAh battery which comes with support for Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 and a claimed battery usage worth 2 days. However, it is the camera of the Redmi Note 6 Pro where is betting its money. The device comes with a total of four cameras - two in the front and two in the back. The rear has a 12MP primary sensor capable of dual pixel autofocus, and 5MP sensor for depth perception. The dual camera setup at the front has a 20MP primary sensor with pixel binning technology and a 2MP sensor for depth perception. ALSO READ:Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro review: A notch above Edited by Vivek Punj Prime Minister Scott Morrison's hard line stance on immigration and terrorism came to a head in a fiery interview with embattled Today show host Karl Stefanovic. The Liberal leader refused to back down on plans to begin deporting anybody with dual citizenship who is convicted of terror - or planning a terror attack - against Australia. Stefanovic was quick to question the legality of the potential laws, and how they could impact Australians. Prime Minister Scott Morrison's hard line stance on immigration and terrorism came to a head in a fiery interview with embattled TODAY show host Karl Stefanovic Prime Minister Scott Morrison's hard line stance on immigration and terrorism came to a head in a fiery interview with embattled TODAY show host Karl Stefanovic The laws could only apply to people who have dual citizenship to avoid leaving a person stateless. Mr Morrison said: 'We need to toughen the laws. People need to know if they commit a crime not just against fellow Australians, but against Australia, the country that gave them their liberty - then that liberty will be taken away.' As the law currently stands, dual nationals who commit an act of terror and are sentenced to six years or more in an Australian prison can be stripped of their Australian citizenship. But Karl quickly quipped back at Mr Morrison, asking what would happen to these people if their other country of origin didn't want them. The Liberal leader refused to back down on plans to begin deporting anybody with dual citizenship who is convicted of terror - or planning a terror attack - against Australia Karl was quick to question the legality of the potential laws, and how they could impact Australians 'If they've got citizenship of that country we will just deport them. That's what we do. It's the same for others who commit crimes in Australia, we just cancel their visas and deport them. Once they're out of jail they get put on a plane home.' 'I've been calling out extremists and violent radical Islam as being a real threat to religion in this country. It's the biggest religious extremism threat we have in this country and we all have a job to do something about that. Mr Morrison announced the laws on Thursday and said he hoped to have them passed through parliament by Christmas - leaving only weeks for deliberation. The Prime Minister said the Home Affairs minister would only need to be 'reasonably satisfied' that a convicted terrorist was a dual-citizen to retract Australian citizenship. The Prime Minister said the Home Affairs minister would only need to be 'reasonably satisfied' that a convicted terrorist was a dual-citizen to retract Australian citizenship When announcing the proposed new laws, he said terrorism 'can't be tolerated.' 'For those who would engage in this sort of activity, and they have citizenship elsewhere, and we have reason to believe they do, they can go. That is the message.' He also hopes to make it more difficult for terrorists fighting overseas to return home to Australia. Mr Morrison hopes to implement temporary exclusion orders - which will prohibit certain people returning to Australia until the government gives them explicit permission. Upon return, they would be the subject of strict sanctions and curfews, similar to that of a parolee. Peter Dutton has pleaded with federal MPs to back plans to snoop on encrypted messages in a bid to prevent another terrorist attack before Christmas. The Home Affairs Minister has written to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security demanding it tell the public its view on the government's proposal to allow security agencies to spy on private app communications. The plea was made this week, days after three Muslim men of Turkish background were arrested in Melbourne and charged with plotting a massacre. Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton (pictured with PM Scott Morrison) has pleaded with federal MPs to back plans to snoop on encrypted messages in a bid to prevent another terrorist attack Ertunc Eriklioglu, Hanifi Halis and Samed Eriklioglu are accused of trying to get hold of a semi-automatic rifle after allegedly being influenced by ISIS. Their arrests occurred less than a fortnight after Somali-born terrorist Hassan Khalif Shire Ali killed Italian-born cafe owner Sisto Malaspina on Melbourne's Bourke Street during a knife rampage. In his letter to the parliamentary committee, obtained by The Australian, Mr Dutton told politicians from both houses of Parliament how the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation was concerned about copycat terrorist attacks over Christmas. He asked them to 'accelerate' their response and enable new laws to be passed during the next fortnight. Ertunc Eriklioglu (left), Hanifi Halis (right) and Samed Eriklioglu are accused of trying to get hold of a semi-automatic rifle after allegedly being influenced by ISIS Weeks after becoming Prime Minister, Scott Morrison's government introduced a bill in September to give ASIO and the Australian Federal Police the power to spy on encrypted messages. Terror suspects are known to ask private apps like Telegram to plot acts of violence. ASIO acting director-general Heather Cook has pleaded for MPs to pass laws that would force force telecommunications companies, internet service providers and social media companies to co-operate with security agencies. 'The individuals involved in Bourke Street and the disrupted alleged terrorist plot were known to use encrypted messaging applications on their communication devices,' she told The Australian. 'Like all security and intelligence agencies, ASIO is challenged by those using encryption in an attempt to hide their illegal and abhorrent ambitions and as a means to evade detection.' Authorities ignored desperate pleas for help in the days before the alleged murder of a nine-month-old girl, who lived under twigs on a public beach and was raised by her homeless parents. Police were forced to drive the family across the Queensland border to a relative's home in New South Wales on Monday, two days before the toddler washed up on a Gold Coast beach. Government sources who spoke to the Gold Coast Bulletin said police had repeatedly tried to alert the Department of Child Safety about the distressed young girl and her living conditions, but their calls for help had been ignored. The failure comes as Daily Mail Australia can reveal the final moments of the baby, who spent her last afternoon alive playing in the sun with her loving young mother. The father (left) of a baby girl found dead on a Gold Coast beach had a very different relationship with his daughter (pictured left) than his doting mother (pictured right) did The nine-month-old girl was allegedly thrown into the water at Jack Evans Harbour in New South Wales late on Saturday, before washing up on a beach at Surfers Paradise, Queensland, on Monday. The 48-year-old father has been charged with murder over the death On Saturday afternoon, the 23-year-old mother sat at Jake Evans Boat Harbour, on the border, playing with her infant daughter. Onlookers say the pair looked so happy to be in each other's company, the mother clearly doting on her nine-month-old baby, as the child reached up towards her face. Hours later, the baby had disappeared, and within two days, her body would wash up on the shore 30 kilometres north. Her father would be charged with her murder shortly after. Anyone who knew the couple found their relationship confusing. The pair could not be more different, and their pairing was always set to be doomed. The mother is a 23-year-old university graduate, while the father, 48, is understood to have a very limited education. She was raised in a loving home, attended an all-girls private school in Geelong, and went on to study psychology services at Deakin University. As she was studying, the father was battling issues with drugs and alcohol. Before the baby's death, the family were living between a rundown van and a small shack made from twigs and sticks (pictured) When the pair first got together, the young woman turned her back on her life in Geelong and moved up to Queensland with him. 'She had what you would consider a very normal upbringing,' a member of the mother's family told Daily Mail Australia. 'But she's battled mental health issues and has unfortunately just got mixed up with the wrong people.' Friends say she was a virgin when they met, and that he would brag about impregnating her the first time they had sex, as though it was a sign they were meant to be together. Far from the mother-of-two's comfortable life with her family, she and her partner lived rough, sleeping in parks, bus shelters, and most recently, a 'humpy' - which is a teepee-like shelter constructed of branches. The primitive living conditions (pictured) of the family are in stark contrast to the comfortable upbringing the 23-year-old mother enjoyed The family first welcomed a son, and soon after a daughter. While the son is believed to have received the affection of both his parents, locals told Daily Mail Australia the situation was different for the baby girl. Robin, who lives in a motorhome and spent considerable time camping alongside the couple, said the father was noticeably closer to his son. The pair played the harmonica, and enjoyed a loving relationship that contrasted harshly with the one he shared with his daughter. 'He was really good to the boy, but the little girl - he didn't want a bar of her,' she said. The mother, who was arrested after her daughter's body was found, but has been released from police custody without charge and placed into the care of Queensland mental health services, had a strong bond with her daughter, Robin said. On that fateful Saturday, the mother was sitting on a small hill, behind a watersports rental van, and spent the afternoon showering her daughter with love. 'I watched her play with that baby all afternoon, she loved that baby,' Robin said. 'She was kissing it, the baby was bouncing up and down, reaching up to grab her face. 'That was her last afternoon in the sun.' The little girl was found dead by the water (pictured) early on Monday. Paramedics desperately tried to revive the little girl but she was pronounced dead at the scene. Her father was arrested soon after The baby girl was found in the early hours of Monday morning, her naked body washed ashore on a beach near Surfer's Paradise, 30 kilometres north. Her parents and two-year-old brother had set up camp not far from there, and were living in a humpy in the sand dunes of a Surfers Paradise beach. Both parents were initially arrested, and police pressed murder charges against the father and had him extradited to NSW. In New South Wales, court documents indicate police will allege the father lied to his partner about where he was taking their baby on the night he allegedly killed her. Police claim he had told the 23-year-old mother-of-two he was taking the infant to see an elder - leaving her and their son on their own for about half an hour, while he dumped her body, clothed only in a nappy, in a waterway. The documents outline the devastating final hours of the young girl, with officers reporting they were called to a park at Broadbeach about 3am on the day she is believed to have died after reports of a domestic violence incident. There, the officers who visited the pair allegedly raised concerns about 'their ability to provide care and shelter for their children'. Later that day the family - including their two-year-old - were driven by police south to Kingscliff, across the NSW border, before catching a bus to Tweed Heads. They spent the remainder of the day in the vicinity of Jack Evans Harbour, at which time the couple reportedly asked another homeless woman to take the baby. Police will allege the man said to the child's mother: 'Let them have this time to themselves to get to know each other'. After a short period with the girl, the woman allegedly handed her back and told the couple: 'I can't do it, I'm living on the street (too)'. A heavy downpour saw the parents and their two children flee to a shopping centre for protection from the rain. That night the family were captured on CCTV footage pushing a trolley in the Tweed Heads area with their two kids, who were both only wearing nappies. Police established a crime scene at the Surfers Paradise beach (right), a far cry from the glitz and glamour that is normally associated with Surfers Paradise (left) It is known the family lived rough and used a rundown black van at one point (pictured) On Sunday, the family was again spotted on CCTV - this time in the Broadbeach area, and without the baby girl. About 12.30am the next day the infant was found by a passerby in the surf of the popular beach - about 30 kilometres from where police believe her body was dumped. Locals in the Tweed Heads area say they are furious the police and child services didn't intervene on the family earlier, and claim multiple reports had been filed with both law enforcement and the government agency. But Robin, who knew the couple better than most, said many people in the community had shunned them - and shunned her when she stepped in to help. She claims when she tried to help the struggling family at the shopping centre, she was snubbed by the locals. 'A lot of people look down on them,' she said of the parents. '[The mother] would go into the parents room at [the shopping centre] to try and get some shelter on a rainy day, and the cleaners would come along and chuck her out. 'Child welfare knew about [their situation], the police knew about it... this town has as much to do with this baby dying as the perpetrator. 'None of you tried to help.' As the investigation into how the infant died continues and media flood the pristine beaches, speculation has been rife as to how the couple met, and what kept them together. Tributes for the young girl were laid out at the site where her body was found (pictured) One included a touching letter lamenting that more was not done to save her young life Multiple people told Daily Mail Australia they believe 'black magic', a controversial and ancient part of Indigenous culture which is associated with healing, curses and relationships, was involved in the couples' meeting. 'She's been sung up,' Robin said. 'He was into the black magic and stuff he shape shifted. 'His teeth came down, he made a clicking noise, his shoulders rounded and his eyes were black. 'He'd walk around my van with his head turned away from me, spitting on the ground.' Local woman Edy Johnson, 53, told The Australian if you are sung up, a tune is put into your head that draws you back to the person who sung you. 'Once you are sung, you can't get out of that relationship and that's what happened here,' she said. The child's father has been remanded in custody, and will reappear in court on February 25. A heartless thief is stealing Christmas presents from families' doorsteps after following Australia Post vans to find her victims. The woman was caught in the act on CCTV carrying a box she grabbed from a home in Mount Colah in the Ku-ring-gai area of Sydney's north at 12.35pm on Monday. One victim filmed the shocking act on her cameras and said the thief followed the postage van in a grey car and waited for it to drop off its package. The woman was caught in the act on CCTV carrying a box she grabbed from a home in the Ku-ring-gai area of Sydney's north 'Australia Post said it's very common this time of the year for thieves to do this,' with so many gifts being bought online, she said. 'I'm so angry that someone would blatantly do something like this, like they're entitled to it because it's not locked up.' The woman said she reported the theft to police and gave them the video in the hope of tracking her down. Detective Inspector Neil Higgins said it was the third theft of packages from the front of a house reported to Ku-ring-gai police this month. The other two were in Pymble on November 7 and Warrawee on November 16, but neither had security cameras. 'We're investigating but this footage which we collected this morning is the first lead other than them all having similar MOs,' he said. One victim filmed the shocking act on her cameras and said the thief followed the postage van in a grey car and waited for it to drop off its package The woman was seen approaching the house after the van was gone, heading straight for the door He said it wasn't known if a thief followed the postal vans to the other crimes, but the same tactic had previously been used in western Sydney. 'I encourage anyone who's had a package stolen to report it to us or online as every bit of information could help as catch them,' he said. A resident in nearby Hornsby said they also had a package stolen from their doorstep, but didn't see who took it. Australia Post often leaves packages on doorsteps when there is no one home, unless the parcel requires a signature for delivery. Customers can also direct their parcels to free postal lockers where they can be securely stored until they are collected. This is the shocking moment three staff members at a jewelry store fought of would-be robbers with huge swords after watching them smash the windows in. In the surveillance footage from Ashok Jewellers in Toronto, Canada on Wednesday, the four assailants can be seen attempting to climb through the frames after breaking the glass in broad daylight. A staff member and a female customer jump back when they realize the Mississauga store is under attack. Three men inside a Toronto, Canada jewelry store fended off robbers with swords Wednesday The men fought back despite at least one of the four assailants having a gun and one a hammer The would-be robbers had broken the window of the storefront to get in It gave the men fighting back time to return to the window brandishing weapons Two of the robbers were wearing blue jumpsuits with visibility panels Suddenly, three staff members emerge wielding huge swords, terrifying the robbers, who turn and flee. In video footage filmed from the street the men a couple and others hooded tops and trousers tote empty duffel bag they presumably planned to stuff money and valuables in. The two wearing blue jumpsuits and deflective decals are described as males between 5ft 8in and 5ft 10in. Another handgun-wielding male suspect wearing a black jacket with a hood, blue jeans, black shoes, white gloves - is approximately between 5ft 9in and 5ft 11in with a heavy build. One of the men who fought back had been serving a customer when the incident occured A fourth assailant is described as slim build and he was wearing black pants, white gloves and a black winter jacket with fur lining the hood. They appear to change their minds several times, going back and forth toward the store until they realize it's ultimately not worth the risk. The clip then shows them heading off in a dark-colored Dodge Durango northbound on the Airport Road. The suspects were filmed from a street view too. Two dressed in blue and two in black They eventually gave up and went off in a dark-colored Dodge Durango northbound Law enforcement responded to a call from the store on Beverly Street at around 12.15pm. While no one was hurt in the incident, Peel Regional Police said they wouldn't recommend other people trying to fight back. 'It could have easily turned into a completely different situation. We could have been looking at numerous people being injured,' Constable Danny Marttini told Global News on Thursday. The suspects were still on the loose. Anyone with information can call the Central Robbery Bureau at (905) 453-2121, ext. 3410. Alternatively call Peel Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-8477. The father of a baby girl found dead on a Gold Coast beach reportedly told her mum he was taking the infant to visit an elder, before allegedly throwing her in a river. Police charged the 48-year-old man with murder on Thursday, alleging he tossed his nine-month-old daughter into the Tweed River, in northern New South Wales, on Saturday night. Less than two days later her body was found 30 kilometres north washed up across the Queensland border in the shallows of a Surfers Paradise beach. Court documents seen by the Gold Coast Bulletin detail the final hours of the child's life and indicate police will allege the man lied to his lover, 23, about where he was taking their baby - before discarding her into the waterway. Scroll down for video The father (left) of a baby girl found dead on a Gold Coast beach reportedly told the mother of the child (right) he was taking the kid to visit an elder, before allegedly throwing her in a river The child was allegedly thrown into the water at Jack Evans Harbour in New South Wales late on Saturday, before washing up on a beach at Surfers Paradise, Queensland, on Monday Police visited the homeless couple in a park at Broadbeach about 3am last Saturday morning after reports of a domestic violence incident. According to the court documents, the officers who visited the pair raised concerns about 'their ability to provide care and shelter for their children'. Later that day the family - including their two-year-old - travelled south to Kingscliff, across the NSW border, before catching a bus to Tweed Heads. They spent the remainder of the day in the vicinity of Jack Evans Harbour, at which time the couple reportedly asked another homeless woman to take the baby. Police will allege the man said to the child's mother: 'Let them have this time to themselves to get to know each other'. After a short period with the girl, the woman allegedly handed her back and told the couple: 'I can't do it, I'm living on the street (too)'. Police will allege the baby's father (pictured) threw the child into the Tweed River wearing only a nappy The little girl was found dead by the water (pictured) in the early hours of Monday. Paramedics desperately tried to revive the little girl but she was pronounced dead at the scene A heavy downpour saw the parents and their two children flee to a shopping centre for protection from the rain. That night the family were captured on CCTV footage pushing a trolley with their two kids, who were both only wearing nappies. On Sunday the family were again spotted on CCTV in the Broadbeach area, this time without the baby girl. About 12.30am the next morning the infant was found by a passerby in the surf of the popular beach. Before the baby's death, the family were living between a rundown van and a small shack made from twigs and sticks (pictured) The primitive living conditions (pictured) of the family led a number of women to offer to take care of the two children, but the parents declined Police took the child's parents into custody, before releasing the mother without charge on Tuesday. She is currently under watch in a mental health facility. The baby's father was charged with murder at Tweed Heads Local Court on Thursday just hours after being extradited from Queensland. He did not give an address as he appeared via videolink and did not enter a plea. He was remanded in custody until February 25. The Bandidos president is set to parade up to 400 bikie gang members through Melbourne today, as Victoria prepares for its state election tomorrow. National club president Jason Addison will hold the Bandidos annual meeting in Melbourne which kicks off with members convoying through the city to a location in the city's south. Victoria will tomorrow decide who governs the state for the next four years, and the Victoria Police anti-bikie Echo taskforce will be on the ground monitoring the Bandidos ride ahead of the election. The Bandidos bikie gang will hold its annual meeting in Melbourne this weekend, which will begin with between 250-400 members convoying through the city to a location in its south Melbourne will have a strong police presence including anti-gang enforcement teams, and bikies involved will be drugs and alcohol tested, have their licence and registration checked and be interrogated over any warrants out for their arrest All Bandidos figureheads are expected to be involved in the ride, and Police told Daily Mail Australia that critical intelligence on the gang will be collected and shared into a national database. 'Victoria Police is aware of the Bandidos Outlaw Motorcycle Gang run from Friday 23 to Saturday 24 November through Victoria into the south eastern suburbs of Melbourne,' a Victoria Police spokeswoman said. Officers from interstate anti-bikie taskforces and national anti-gang squads will also have a physical presence in the city. Bikies involved will be drug and alcohol tested, have their licence and registration checked and be interrogated over any warrants out for their arrest. The Bandidos meeting will run throughout the weekend with a Victoria Police spokeswoman said the gang would be monitored. 'Our monitoring of OMCGs permits us to respond in an appropriate fashion if and when any risk of violence is anticipated,' she said. Police have noticed an increase in the number of national runs in Victoria which is fast-becoming the bikie capital of Australia. Unlike other states, Victoria allows bikie gangs to ride in unison, but they cannot enter certain establishments wearing their club colours. Long-term Bandidos president Jason Addison (pictured) will lead the ride through the city The Bandidos meeting will run throughout the weekend and Victoria Police Detective Senior Seargent Stephen Pucar, from the anti-bike Echo taskforce, told reporters the gang would be monitored for criminal activity 'It is accurate to say other states have legislation to make it hard for them to ride as a group,' Detective Senior Seargent Stephen Pucar told The Herald Sun. However, he said that Victoria Police works within the legislation they have and added that it allows them to identify all participants of these events ahead of time, which is a benefit to national intelligence. Victoria is home to nine out of around 50 Bandidos chapters in Australia and in August the group celebrated its 35 years in the country. The bikie gang also has a big presence in the US and Europe. A married couple who sexually assaulted a homeless girl after she moved into their family home have both been jailed over the sickening abuse. The girl, 15, moved into the Ipswich home, west of Brisbane, after a bout of homelessness. She was friends with the couple's teenage daughter. Their sick love triangle was exposed when paramedics were called to the home in response to a 15-year-old girl suffering an overdose on medication. During questioning, she told paramedics she was in a sexual relationship with the 35-year-old woman and 36-year-old man, and believed they would all get married. A married couple sexually assaulted a teenage friend of their daughter's who moved into the family home after a bout of homelessness (stock image) The young girl was invited to move into the home by the married couple and their daughter, with whom she had a good friendship, the Queensland Times reported. An Ipswich District Court heard the girl paid board and helped with chores around the house. The woman pleaded guilty to the sexual relationship with a child under 16, spanning from March 1st, 2017 to June 23rd, 2017. She was also charged with eight counts of indecent dealing of a child. Judge Dennis Lynch sentenced her to a three year suspended sentence after serving six months in prison. Her husband was also charged with maintaining a sexual relationship and indecent treatment of a child under 16. He was sentenced to four years jail, but will be eligible for parole in 12 months. A woman who paid two girls to bash her own boyfriend's rape victim for reporting him to the police has been found guilty. On Tuesday, Debra Yvonne Warren appeared before a Ballarat jury in Victoria, where she was found guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice. Warren organised to pay two teenage girls to bash a girl who was raped by her boyfriend Wayne Jeffrey Smith in a paddock in Dereel in 2017, The Courier reported. Warren organised to pay two teenage girls to bash a girl who was raped by her boyfriend Wayne Jeffrey Smith in a paddock in Dereel in 2017 She plotted the attack after the victim made a complaint to police about the rape, but the two girls didn't go ahead with the bashing without her knowing, the court heard. Warren's barrister, Shane Kennedy, told the court his client had experienced a difficult life with Smith over the span of their 18-year relationship. 'The frightening, dictatorial regime that he influenced on the family has worn Debra Warren down substantially,' Mr Kennedy said. 'She has gone from a person who was making a comfortable living and supporting her entire family to a state of penury.' Mr Kennedy said Warren has cut all ties with Smith and urged the court to consider a community corrections order, but Judge Paul Lacava said it wouldn't be appropriate. 'I regard this offending as very serious. Extremely serious,' Judge Lacava said. On Tuesday, Debra Yvonne Warren appeared before a Ballarat jury in Victoria, where she was found guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice (stock image) He also told the court the maximum jail sentence for attempting to pervert the course of justice was 25 years in jail. Crown prosecutor Andrew Grant also said that a jail sentence was necessary due to Warren's offending being very serious. The court heard Warren's plea hearing was adjourned so the defence can arrange for a thorough psychological assessment to be completed. Warren was bailed and will appear in court in February. The discovery of two mobile phones may be crucial in answering questions in the 'unexplained' death of a pregnant woman, whose body was discovered by three surfers on Tuesday. Sonam Shelar was found on White Rock Beach, Wairarapa, New Zealand, four days after she was first reported missing by her husband. Two mobile phones belonging to Mrs Shelar were also found in the ocean at the secluded beach on the same day of her disappearance, including a waterproof iPhone X. Could a washed-up iPhone X hold the clues to solve the unexplained death of Sonam Shelar? Detective Senior Sergeant Warwick McKee told the NZ Herald that two young men had found the cellphones in the the water at Island Bay on Saturday. After speaking with Mrs Shelar's husband Sagar Shelar, who provided police with passcodes to unlock the phones, authorities will continue to work through a forensic analysis to determine polling and call data. Police are hopeful that the phones can help them resolve how Mrs Shelar died, and how she ended up on the south coast. Mrs Shelar's family and friends remain in shock, after Stuff reported that three teenagers had found the body of the Wellington woman earlier this week. The manager of nearby business White Rock Station, who did not wish to be named, said the surfers had came in to inform him of their grim discovery. When Mrs Shelar (pictured) went missing, Mr Shelar said his wife had been upset by the results of a recent ultrasound 'Their car was parked up by the gate and they came up and said a body was washed up on the beach,' he said. 'When they said it was a lady I put one and one together and thought it might be the lady that went missing in Wellington.' 'One [of the surfers] was pretty shaken, but they'll be alright. They may still be in shock and they might be a bit sad in a couple days.' The 26-year-old mum-to-be was last seen at her home at 8.30am in Khandallah, Wellington, on Saturday. Sonam Shelar, 26, (pictured left) went missing four days ago. Her body was found on a remote beach. Her husband Sagar Shelar (pictured right) said he is the police's first suspect Her husband Sagar Shelar told Stuff the pair had never been to the beach, which is about an hour's drive from Martinborough. Family spokesman Harshal Patkar told the New Zealand Herald the family was devastated. Mrs Shelar was five months pregnant with her first child. 'It might be a murder, that is what I'm saying, that is what her family thinks, especially her mother,' Mr Patkar said. When Mrs Shelar went missing, Mr Shelar said his wife had been upset by the results of a recent ultrasound. White Rock Beach in the Wairarapa is about an hours drive from Martinborough. The winding road is not widely known and the beach is mainly used by surfers He said she cried as soon as they got in their car because she was desperate for a boy and the sex of their baby was not yet known. Mr Patkar said on the day of the scan Mrs Shelar had called her family in India and sounded 'normal'. The family does not believe Mrs Shelar would harm herself. They described her as a 'strong-willed' woman. Mrs Shelar regularly called her mother, sharing with her the difficulties at home. Mrs Shelar had worked as a personal trainer in India, but when she moved to New Zealand in April to be with her husband and fell pregnant she had stopped working. Ms Shelar's husband Sagar, an Indian national from Mumbai, told NewsHub police were not ruling him out as a suspect. Mr Shelar said the results of the ultrasound before she went missing were not able to confirm the sex of the child which left Mrs Shelar (pictured) upset because she wanted a baby boy 'I know that I'm their first suspect, but I know that I haven't done anything wrong.' The matter has been referred to the Coroner. The investigation is still ongoing and police are working closely with the family of the deceased to ascertain further facts. Mrs Shelar was last seen at 8.30am on Cashmere Avenue in Khandallah, and was wearing a brown jacket with fur on the hood, as well as white, black and orange trainers. Detective Senior Sergeant McKee said police were also seeking CCTV from any businesses or residences on Cashmere Avenue, Onslow Road, Box Hill, Burma Road, Agra Crescent. Over the last couple of years, there has been an influx of smart TV in India. Brands such as Xiaomi, VU, Sanyo, Thomson, and many more have come up with some promising TV panels at less than half the price of what the leaders such as Sony, LG and Samsung offer. The latest one to join the bandwagon is the German car audio company Blaupunkt with the wide range available at different sizes. But is the 55-inch TV actually a smart TV with great image and sound quality? Design & Display panel: The 55-inch 4K LED TV has a metallic finish grey bezel running around the sides of the panel and seems to be placed on the top of the soundbar. Although the design looks a little tired, the age-old recipe of adding a soundbar underneath the panel works in favour of Blaupunkt. However, the company seems to have cut corners on the tablet mount as it felt flimsy and even screws holes lacked symmetry. The 4K A+ grade panel with 178 degrees viewing angle offers rich colours and deep blacks but it doesn't appear to be as rich as the Xiaomi's 55inch 4K LED TV. There are various picture modes onboard - standard, eyesafe, user, cinema, dynamic - and I preferred watching content on Cinema mode. User Interface: This isn't a Google certified Android TV but the user interface looks very similar to one. The UI seemed to be a trimmed down version of Android OS. The home page of the TV has been neatly categorised into TV inputs, apps, settings and content from various sources. It even has a list of popular apps and content that one can start streaming instantly, once connected to the WiFi network. The Netflix app was pre-installed and I was able to stream content just by logging into my account. However, the same could not be updated from the Play Store as the TV wasn't compatible with the updated app. I was able to download the Prime Video app from the Google Play Store, which worked flawlessly. Most of the apps on the Play Store are the mobile versions and are not optimised for the big screen. Other than the Play Store, there was Aptiode TV Store as well for download apps. With voice search becoming common across platforms, this TV supports one too. But it isn't something you can rely on as the TV failed to understand what I had requested for. Built-in soundbar: In order to achieve thinner TV panels, the sound has been compromised. Blaupunkt is addressing this problem by adding a 60W soundbar to the TV. Instead of a built-in soundbar, it seems to be attached below the TV panel. The 60-watt dual speaker output offers better and immersive sound than most LED TVs in the same category. However, the built-quality could have been better as it lacks base and the volume tends to distort at higher volumes. Remotes: This smart TV is accompanied with two remotes. First is a standard remote with number keys and the second being an air mouse remote. Latter resembles Amazon FireTV Stick and Xiaomi's Mi TV remote and features minimal yet all necessary controls such as four directional navigation button, voice search, volume control, home and more. Unlike the Bluetooth remote for Xiaomi TV that is connected while setting up the TV for the first time, the Air Mouse remote is accompanied with a USB dongle that plugs into the TV's USB port. Using AirMouse remote over traditional one was convenient as it offered quick navigation. But you cannot just rely on the AirMouse one as I had to often pick the standard remote to access certain settings. Connectivity and Ports: TV has all the standard ports including two USB and three HDMI placed at the rear of the panel, which might be difficult to reach once the TV is wall mounted. The two USB ports might feel less if you end up using them for the AirMouse dongle and second for plugging in the Sensy Cable (bundled in the box) used for controlling set-top-box with TV's remote. The TV connects to WiFi for streaming content and using the Ethernet port can be connected with a LAN cable too. While some of the brands are trading off headphone jack for S/PDIF, Blaupunkt has retained one. Verdict: The 55inch 4K Blaupunkt TV for Rs 47,999 is pretty decent but faces tough competition from Xiaomi Mi LED TV 4 Pro 55inch featuring a frameless HDR 4.9-mm thin panel. The latter not just looks good but is an Android TV with built-in Chromecast along with PatchWall user interface with a content first approach for Rs 49,999. The Satanic Temple has settled its $50million lawsuit against Netflix after accusing the streaming site of stealing the copyrighted design of its Baphomet statue. Lucien Greaves, the co-founder of the Satanic Temple, announced in October that he planned to take legal action against Netflix for displaying a very similar statue on its hit show The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Greaves accused Netflix of 'appropriating our copyrighted monument design to promote their asinine Satanic Panic fiction'. But it seems there's now no bad blood between the two, as Greaves announced on Wednesday that his lawsuit against Netflix and Warner Bros has been 'amicably settled'. The Satanic Temple claims Netflix's The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina stole the copyrighted design of its Baphomet statue, which it calls a 'central icon' of the religion. Pictured is the Baphomet statue featured on the show Both the show and the Satanic Temple's statues display Baphomet sitting down as two children look up at him. Pictured is the Satanic Temple's Baphomet statue Greaves said Netflix also agreed to acknowledge the 'unique elements of the Satanic Temple's Baphomet statue' in the credits of the Sabrina episodes that have already been filmed. 'The remaining terms of the settlement are subject to a confidentiality agreement,' he added, not disclosing whether Netflix had financially compensated the Temple. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina - based on the Archie Comics - follows the story of teen Sabrina Spellman as she tries to balance life as half-human and half-witch. The Baphomet figure - also known as the Sabbatic Goat - is prominently displayed at the Academy of Unseen Arts, where Sabrina goes to learn witchcaft. Both the show and the Satanic Temple's statues display Baphomet sitting down, holding two fingers up, as two children look up at him in adoration. Lisa Soper, the production designer for Sabrina, denied that the show modeled their Baphomet statue from the Satanic Temple's design. The Baphomet figure - also known as the Sabbatic Goat - is prominently displayed at the Academy of Unseen Arts, where Sabrina goes to learn witchcaft, on the show (pictured) The Satanic Temple claims its Baphomet statue is 'very distinct' and 'has numerous prominent features that do not exist in any prior representation'. Pictured is Satanic Temple co-founder Lucien Greaves with the religion's Baphomet statue 'I think that's kind of a coincidence,' she told Vice when Greaves announced his lawsuit. 'When you look at Baphomet, there's really only a couple of statues of him. They have their statue, and we've got our statue in the show.' 'There's hundreds and hundreds of iterations of him, he's always seen with his people around him.' 'It's more of like a father figure kind of thing,' Soper continued. 'So depicting his children with him, those kinds of elements are all kind of the same.' 'It's no different from any other of the mass amounts of iterations of him that have been around.' But Satanic Temple co-founder Malcolm Jarry said the religion's statue is 'very distinct' and 'has numerous prominent features that do not exist in any prior representation'. Greaves confirmed on Twitter that he planned to take 'legal action' against Netflix for 'appropriating our copyrighted monument design to promote their Satanic Panic fiction' 'Our depiction of Baphomet is wholly original,' Jarry said. 'I cannot compare ours with all previous depictions.' The Satanic Temple was even more worried that the statue would inspire a new 'Satanic Panic'. 'One of the central missions of the Satanic Temple has been to fight back against witch hunts and irrational mob panics,' Greaves said. 'There are signs of a Satanic Panic revival today, and as Satanists we need to do all we can do to fight back against negligent and harmful representations.' Greaves claimed the show was representing Baphomet as something 'evil', and said he worried people would associate it with the Satanic Temple. 'I feel that the use of our particular image that is recognized as our own central icon [being] displayed fictionally as central to some cannibalistic cult has real world damaging effects for us,' he told the San Francisco Chronicle. 'It's deeply problematic to us. But even if that wasn't the case, we'd be obligated to make a copyright claim because that's how copyright works.' Greaves claims the show is representing Baphomet as something 'evil' and that he worries people will associate it with the Satanic Temple Greaves said on Wednesday that many people 'immediately supported' his copyright lawsuit and 'felt they recognized it to have clear merit'. 'Surprisingly to me, however, there were also a large number of people who flooded us with hate mail and armchair legal analysis,' he added. Greaves said he got 'quite a bit of hate mail' from people who claimed the Satanic Temple was bullying Netflix. 'One email implored me not to "ruin" a show that "just tries to bring joy into the world,"' he added. This isn't the first time the Satanic Temple's Baphomet statue has made headlines. The Temple has used the Baphomet statue as a way to fight against the placement of religious statues on public property. In 2012 it fought against a six-foot tall statue of the Ten Commandments outside the Oklahoma State House, arguing it should thus be permitted to 'erect a monument glorifying the Dark Lord' on the grounds. The strategy worked and the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the Ten Commandments monument was unconstitutional. Thousands of fast food enthusiasts in Australia have wrongly accused McDonald's of 'secretly' downsizing their Big Macs in recent years. Contributors to the website Reddit are convinced the iconic burger has shrunk in appearance, but the fast food giant has flatly rejected those claims. One Reddit user said 'all Maccas products have shrunk' while another pointed out the display burger boxes are also smaller. But a McDonald's spokesperson on Friday confirmed the Big Mac burger remains in its original format. Thousands of frustrated Australian customers have accused McDonalds of reducing the size of their iconic Big Mac burger in recent years (stock image) The iconic Australian Big Mac - some burger fans in believe it has shrunk in size in recent years (stock image) 'The Big Mac has not changed in size,' she told Daily Mail Australia. 'In fact, it has not changed in weight, height or diameter. The only change we have made is making the packaging slightly smaller.' Social media users on Facebook and Twitter remain unconvinced. 'Are McDonald's Big Macs getting smaller? Have not had one for over a year and I swear it was smaller,' complained one woman. 'Either Big Macs have gotten smaller or my hands have gotten bigger,' added another. 'Big Macs need to have larger patties. The patties have gotten smaller and thinner each year. Customers notice!' tweeted a third. According to a recent study abroad, the Big Mac burger diameter in other countries is slightly bigger, with 12cm-wide beef 'behemoths' served in Central America and the Middle East. Australia's Big Macs have a 9cm diameter. Originating in America back in 1967, the modern day Big Mac consists of two beef patties, a 'special sauce', iceburg lettuce, cheese, and onions served in a three-part seed bun. This reddit user observed the Big Mac bun 'has always had a smaller diameter, but has essentially been two burgers in one - three layers of bun and two meat layers' Another user felt 'All Maccas products have shrunk, with Big Macs not very big' A third user stated all the burgers these days have the same 'small size dimension' One refugee is living the Australian Dream after he moved to a regional town and opened his own restaurant inspired by his Afghani heritage. Ali, 44, is one of many refugees who have taken the plunge and moved to the outback instead of trying their luck in Sydney and Melbourne which are becoming increasingly overpopulated and expensive to live in. The former refugee from Hazara, Afghanistan opened his restaurant in Griffith, about 480km west of Sydney in April and hasnt looked back. Scroll down for video One refugee Ali, 44, (pictured) is living the Australian Dream after he chose to move to a regional town and open up his own restaurant inspired by his Afghani heritage Ali told Daily Mail Australia that it was his 'dream' to setup his own business in Australia. He said his restaurant fittingly named Afghan Friendships Restaurant has allowed him to better integrate into the Griffith community and share apart of his culture through food. 'Before there was no Afghani restaurant in this area. 'I wanted to share my culture so the people could know more about me,' he said. Ali told Daily Mail Australia that it was his 'dream' to setup his own business and he was so glad the first day he opened his restaurant's doors in April Ali said: 'It's good for me to know more about them and for them to know more about my culture.' And members of the regional community have been warmly supporting Ali's venture. Will Mead from Rural Australians for Refugees advocacy group told AFP, 'I get involved with refugees in Griffith because they're such wonderful people with such big hearts. They've done it really tough and are obviously doing it pretty tough most of the time.' 'I wanted to share my culture so the people could know more about me,'Ali said Ali, who arrived in Australia in 2013, has only every lived regionally. He first arrived in Wagga but moved to Griffith after just one month. Ali said he recommended many other friends and refugees to consider moving to regional towns like Griffith. I suggest to all of my friends, especially Afghan people, to come to Griffith, because they're [sic] very friendly. We can find a job as well, because the population is not too much,' he told AFP. Ali is part of a minority of migrants who have moved outside the capital cities. He said his restaurant, fittingly named Afghan Friendships Restaurant (pictured) has allowed him to better integrate in the Griffith community New statistics released by the Department of Home Affairs show a staggering 87 per cent of new migrants are currently settling in Sydney and Melbourne. While the Griffith community have been very welcoming to Ali, they don't share the same views as the majority of Australians towards immigration. A recent poll by think tank Lowy Institute found 54 per cent of Australians thought the total number of migrants coming to Australia each year was 'too high,' which is a 14-point jump from the results in 2017. A recent poll (pictured) by think tank Lowy Institute found 54 per cent of Australians thought the total number of migrants coming to Australia each year was 'too high' Four in ten Australians believed large numbers of immigrants and refugees coming into Australia was a critical threat to the nation, according to the Lowy Institute Poll. This week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced he will cut Australia's intake of migrants. In a speech on Monday night the prime minister suggested he would reduce the current migration intake cap following concerns of overpopulation in capital cities. 'They are saying: enough, enough, enough. The roads are clogged, the buses and trains are full. The schools are taking no more enrolments,' he said. A Peruvian Airlines Boeing 737 averted major disaster when it skidded on the runway due to faulty landing gear at El Alto International Airport in Bolivia on Thursday. Bolivian officials said none of the 122 passengers or five flight crew members on Flight 331 were injured during the frightening incident at 10.22am local time. The airliner departed from Peruvian capital of Lima before stopping for a layover in Cusco, Peru, where passengers were met by immigration officials before continuing on to the airport near the Bolivian capital of La Paz. According to passenger Susana Sabat, the Boeing 737-500 encountered an abrupt descend before landing. Peruvian Airlines Boeing 737 avoided disaster when it skidded on the runway and suffered a collapsed landing gear at El Alto International Airport in Bolivia on Thursday Passengers await to evacuate Peruvian Airlines Flight 331 after the Boeing 737 encountered problems when it landed at a Bolivian airport. Panels detached from the airplane's ceiling while an emergency oxygen mask dangles in front of passenger Bolivian Civil Aeronautics transportation officials said none of the 122 passengers or five flight crew members suffered injuries Sabat recalled the plane shook from the impact after it came to a full stop and fellow passengers panicked once they smelled something burning. 'The plane panels started to fall on top of the people especially on the right side. All of the people were scared,' Sabat told a group of reporters according to EFE. Passengers were immediately removed from the plane while it rested on its fuselage on runway 10. Officials from with General Directorate of Civil Aeronautics of Bolivia had to shut down the airport for 10 hours while they found a way to remove the plane, delaying inbound and outbound flights and leaving several hundred passengers stranded at the airport. It's the second incident involving a flight in the 11 years Peruvian Airline's existence. A March 2017 plane with 141 passengers skidded off the runway and caught fire at Francisco Carle Airport in Jauja, Peru. But none of the passengers or crew members reported injuries A Boeing 737's landing gear collapsed when the Peruvian Airlines plane landed and skidded on a Bolivian airport runway A crane was later seen near the accident site trying to clear the airplane from the landing strip. Peruvian Airlines said in a statement that the cause of the incident is under investigation. The company was planning to dispatch a plane to El Alto airport on Friday morning to transport the rest of the affected passengers to their final destinations. Passengers exited through the front of the aircraft at El Alto International Airport in El Alto, Bolivia after a Peruvian Airlines plane skidded on the runway due to faulty landing gear Fuel spills on the runway moments after a Peruvian Airlines plane encountered severe issues landing properly in Bolivia. None of the 122 passengers and crew member were injured. It the second flight incident in the airline's 11-year history. A Boeing 737-300 also skidded off the runway and caught fire after landing at Francisco Carle Airport in Jauja, Peru, on March 28, 2017. None of the the 141 passengers on board Flight 112 were injured during the accident. From Donald Trump to Mick Jagger, the super-rich are often accused of being narcissists. But a study has found that wealthy people really do think they are something special. Researchers who questioned 130 millionaires in Germany found they were more extroverted and conceited than the general population. Donald Trump has been accused of being a narcissist in the past They were more focused on themselves and getting ahead than their relationship with others and getting along. But their competitive streak may be partly due to the fact that most participants were older men. Millionaires were more likely to agree they were a very special person who deserved to be seen as a great personality. Experts compared their answers in personality tests with those of 23,000 ordinary people. But as well as being more narcissistic, the millionaires were more emotionally stable and conscientious. Dr Marius Leckelt, who led the study from the Universities of Munster and Mainz, said: Our findings of personality differences between the millionaires and the general population fit the stereotypes about the rich quite well, although the stereotypes are exaggerated... The study, published in the British Journal of Psychology, also found that millionaires were more educated and open. Bali Nine drug mule Renae Lawrence has been spotted running errands with her mother just hours after touching down on Australian soil. The 41-year-old, who was released this week following 13 years in an Indonesian jail, was seen outside an Aldi supermarket in her home town of Newcastle on Friday morning. Her mother purchased half a dozen bread rolls from the store before meeting Lawrence outside. The pair left in a black Honda Civic. Renae Lawrence has been spotted running errands with her mother just hours after touching down on Australian soil Her mother purchased half a dozen bread rolls from the store before meeting Lawrence outside On Thursday, Lawrence was confronted with a media scrum as she arrived in Newcastle her first day of freedom. Lawrence, 41, who spent over 13 years behind bars in Indonesia for drug smuggling touched down on Australian soil on Thursday morning. At the arrival gates of Newcastle Airport, Lawrence was met by a media frenzy of reporters shouting questions and cameras flashing. The 41-year-old was seen outside an Aldi supermarket in her home town of Newcastle on Friday morning Lawrence was released this week following 13 years in a Indonesian jail for her role in an international heroin smuggling syndicate Hanging her head and pushing her arms forward, the former prisoner was forced to make a made dash through the terminal in a bid to escape the media spotlight. She was chased by unrelenting media crews as she made her way to a vehicle parked outside the airport. In chaotic scenes captured on camera, a member of the media fell to the floor during the race to interview Lawrence. The man, who wearing beige pants, rolled on the ground as a trail of people continued to follow the convicted drug smuggler. On Thursday, Lawrence was confronted with a media scrum as she arrived in Newcastle her first day of freedom The 41-year-old moved through a media scrum after stepping into the terminal, before she started running Lawrence had stepped off the plane at Newcastle Airport wearing sunglasses but removed them in the terminal She had been given priority boarding and special attention as she made the trip to her hometown Newcastle, New South Wales, with a transfer flight leaving from Brisbane, Queensland. But nothing could prepare Lawrence for the media storm on arrival. Lawrence was ushered onto her Virgin Australia flight at Brisbane Airport on Thursday morning, bound for Newcastle, north of Sydney, where she is expected to stay with her mother, Beverley Waterman. In chaotic scenes captured on camera, a member of the media fell to the floor during the race to catch Lawrence (pictured) Lawrence's mother Beverley Waterman was closely by her daughter's side to help her navigate through the media scrum The convicted drug mule was seen with her mobile phone in-hand and appeared to have made a last-minute phone call before boarding her flight home. Lawrence had earlier sparked speculation she is married after arriving back in Australia wearing a ring on her wedding finger following her release from Bali's Bangli prison. She had been issued with a travel document for her travel back to Australia, not a passport. The man, wearing beige pants, rolled on the ground as a trail of people continued to follow the convicted drug smuggler Lawrence had numerous reporters and camera crew following in her wake, who were also forced to run to keep up with her Lawrence is pictured outside Newcastle Airport, the first time she has been back in her hometown in more than a decade She covered herself with a towel inside an awaiting car which took her from the airport to the family home Lawrence had touched down at Brisbane Airport about 5am local time on a Virgin Australia flight from Bali where she flew economy but sat towards the front of the plane. She was freed from Bangli Prison on Wednesday evening - where she had spent 13 years behind bars - after her sentence was reduced for 'good behaviour'. Lawrence, the only member of the notorious gang to be released, clashed with media as she exited the airport's international terminal, pushing past a reporter. She refused to answer questions as she navigated her way through the airport, supported by family members including her mother. Lawrence appeared to have made a last-minute phone call before boarding her flight to Newcastle Lawrence stepped off the plane at Newcastle Airport surrounded by members of her family, including her mother 'We don't want to comment. We've got nothing to say. Please just leave us,' Ms Waterman told reporters. Lawrence, who appeared teary and overwhelmed, boarded a bus to the domestic terminal, to catch the transfer flight to her Newcastle. Prior to her release from jail, Lawrence's secret romance with an ice addict jailbird was revealed. Lawrence had struck up a turbulent relationship with 38-year-old lesbian lover Agus Erna Wijayanti, known as Erna, behind bars. Lawrence (pictured) arrived back in Australia on Thursday after spending 13 years in an Indonesian prison Lawrence did not answer questions from journalists after she exited Brisbane Airport's international terminal following her arrival in Australia The 41-year-old later boarded a bus to the airport's domestic terminal, to catch a transfer flight to her hometown of Newcastle, north of Sydney, where she is expected to stay with family Erna, who has been jailed twice for possessing ice, met Lawrence in Bangli prison and had been reportedly 'spoiling her like a child' ahead of her release. The pair first met in 2012 when Erna was given a prison sentence on drug charges, and grew closer when Lawrence was transferred from Kerobokan prison to Bangli jail in 2014. Lawrence had been arrested at Bali's main airport in April 2005 with 2.7 kilograms of heroin strapped to her body as part of a failed bid to smuggle a total of eight kilograms of the drug into Australia with a number of other mules - later dubbed the Bali Nine. The taste of freedom could be short lived as New South Wales Police have two arrest warrants for Lawrence which have been outstanding since 2005. She was supported by her mother Beverley Waterman as she returned to Australia following a lengthy absence from the country 'We don't want to comment. We've got nothing to say. Please just leave us,' Ms Waterman told reporters Lawrence touched down on Australia soil for the first time in 13 years following her release from Bali's Bangli prison The 41-year-old had left Australia for Bali in 2005, where she was arrested with eight others and convicted of drug smuggling One warrant alleges she was involved in a high-speed chase in a stolen car with fellow Bali Nine member Matthew Norman. Lawrence was released at about 5pm on Wednesday evening after officials held a press conference at the prison doors. Maryoto Sumadi, Justice Ministry chief, spoke in Indonesian before holding up her release papers and saying: 'She is a free woman'. Mr Sumadi said Lawrence would be deported and banned from re-entering Indonesia for life. Lawrence's secret romance with ice addict jailbird Agus Erna Wijayanti (left) was revealed just prior to her release from jail Lawrence was supported by family members including her mother as she walked out of Brisbane Airport's international terminal Lawrence is pictured waiting at Brisbane Airport for her flight back to her hometown of Newcastle, north of Sydney Lawrence (right) touched down at Brisbane Airport about 5am local time on Thursday on a Virgin Australia flight from Bali The 41-year-old (centre) was provided with a much different view at Brisbane Airport compared to the one she had experienced in jail Lawrence was surrounded by cameras and reporters after disembarking her flight from Bali and making her way through Brisbane Airport 'We have also conducted a hand over between Bangli and the immigration office in Denpasar,' he said. 'Because she is a foreigner, therefore, the person is deemed to be in Indonesia without permission, therefore she needs to be released from prison and into immigration office custody.' Justice Department officials conducted a health check and said Lawrence was found to be in good health. At the conclusion of the conference, guards and media flooded the prison door in anticipation for the release of Lawrence. The convicted drug smuggler, 41, was released from Bangli Prison, Bali, on Wednesday evening after her sentence was reduced for 'good behaviour' Renae Lawrence has spent her first moments of her uncertain future with her mother and step-brother after spending over 13 years locked up in prison Lawrence appeared after a media conference concluded, flooded by guards and wearing sunglasses at about 5pm on Wednesday evening Lawrence eventually walked from the doors, covered by a heavily armed mobile brigade police. She wore sunglasses and hung her head as she was swept into a black SUV with dark-tinted windows. The convicted drug smuggler remained silent and ignored questions journalists shouted at her. There was speculation Lawrence would speak at the media conference, ahead of her release. The convicted drug smuggler remained silent and ignored questions journalists shouted at her There was originally speculation Lawrence would speak at a media conference On Wednesday, Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said he has 'no sympathy' for Lawrence (centre), and suggested she face the full extent of the law On Wednesday, Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said he has 'no sympathy' for Lawerence, and suggested she face the full extent of the law. 'If you commit that kind of offence, there is a heavy penalty to pay, and it doesn't give you credit when you get back to Australia,' he told Sky News. But NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller suggested a deal with Lawrence's lawyers was more likely than a fresh set of handcuffs on the tarmac. Lawrence was originally sentenced to life in prison but her sentence was reduced to 20 years on appeal. She served 13 years and seven months after numerous reductions for good behaviour. Renae Lawrence (pictured a week after her arrest in 2005) flew home from Bali on Wednesday night but she has outstanding criminal offences awaiting in Australia Renae Lawrence (pictured) days after her arrest in Bali on April 17, 2005 - she was released from jail on Wednesday Daily Mail Australia understands Lawrence will be given a few days to 'settle in' at her Newcastle home before she responds to the outstanding police charges from over a decade ago. A court date will likely be set for December in Gosford, on the NSW central coast. Lawrence is the only Bali Nine member to be released. Ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were executed in 2015 and Tan Duc Thahn Nguyen died of stomach cancer in May earlier this year. Martin Stephens, 42, Michael Czugaj, 32, Scott Rush, 33, and Si Yi Chen, 33, Matthew Norman, 31, remain in prison where they are serving life sentences, with little chance of release. A pensioner has shot himself dead during a police standoff after he opened fire on another man at a home in Sydney's south. The incident unfolded at a property in Engadine on Friday morning, with neighbours reporting sounds of gunfire at about 7am. Police said a shot was fired at the front door of the home, striking a 56-year-old man in the forehead. Emergency crews rushed to the scene and found an 81-year-old man attempting to flee in a car. 'The man pointed the firearm at the police officers when challenged by them,' police said in a statement. 'He then discharged the firearm, suffering a self-inflicted gun-shot wound, to his neck.' A pensioner has died after he and another man were shot following a domestic dispute in Sydney's south The man was unable to be revived and died at the scene. Police described the 56-year-old man's gunshot wound as 'minor' and said he was treated at the scene by Ambulance paramedics. 'We heard a loud bang but we didn't know if it was a car or a gun,' a neighbour told the St George Shire Standard. 'Around here we don't know what a gun sounds like, it's not Merrylands.' A critical incident investigation team from Eastern Beaches Police Area Command will now investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident. Lifeline 13 11 14 Beyondblue 1300 22 4636 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) An Australian scientist has found a previously unknown area of the human brain that allows people to play the piano and perform complex surgery. On Thursday, neuroscientist Professor George Paxinos announced he had discovered a region of the brain that could play a role in enhancing fine motor skills. Professor Paxinos said the previously unknown part of the brain may be responsible for extremely unique skills such as playing piano or performing complex surgery. On Thursday, neuroscientist Professor George Paxinos (pictured) announced he had discovered a region of the brain that could play a role in enhancing fine motor skills The newly charted part of the brain, which Professor Paxinos called 'Endorestiform Nucleus', is near the point where the brain connects with the spinal cord. Located at the base of the brain, the area combines sensory information and kinetic energy to correct posture, balance and control small skillful movements. Professor Paxinos, a researcher at the Neuroscience Research Australia-NeuRA in Sydney, said he suspected the existence of the brain area 30 years ago. 'It found me. It was staring me in the face for 30 years,' he told The Canberra Times. Professor Paxinos, who has spent more than 40 years mapping out the human brain, said better detection and imaging methods made it possible to prove its existence. 'There is nothing more enjoyable for a neuroscientist than finding a previously unknown area of the human brain,' he said. The professor said what is important to note is the new region is absent in monkeys and other animals because when he went looking for it and couldn't find it. The newly charted part of the brain, which Professor Paxinos called 'Endorestiform Nucleus', is near the point where the brain connects with the spinal cord Professor Paxinos (pictured right), who has spent more than 40 years mapping out the human brain, said better detection and imaging methods made it possible to prove its existence 'There must be some things that are unique to the human brain beyond its larger size, and this area is probably one of them,' he told the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA). Professor Paxino speculated the Endorestiform Nucleus may explain why humans have a such a unique ability to move our fingers with great precision. 'Monkeys, you don't see them playing pianos, do you?' he told The Canberra Times. The brain cartographer said what remains to be done now is to determine the exact function of this previously unknown region of the human brain. 'Now that it has been mapped, it will be possible for it to be studied by the wider research community,' he said. Brexiteers lined up to attack Theresa May's deal with Brussels last night as it emerged more than half her backbenchers intend to vote against it. Senior Tories including Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab criticised the 'political declaration' on post-Brexit relations which was published yesterday. But most of the anger focused on the so-called 'backstop' which keeps the UK in a customs union with the EU to prevent the return of a hard border in Northern Ireland. Last night a total of 88 Tory MPs had announced they would vote against the deal more than half the party's backbenchers. In a fiery Commons debate, former foreign secretary Mr Johnson insisted Mrs May's proposals to avoid a hard border made a 'complete nonsense of Brexit'. Boris Johnson (pictured in the Commons yesterday) said the inclusion of an Irish border backstop that would lash the UK to EU rules 'makes a complete nonsense of Brexit' And Mr Raab, who resigned as Brexit secretary last week, said the Prime Minister's agreement contradicted the will of the people by giving away even more power over laws. But a string of Tory MPs stood up for Mrs May, with one saying her deal was one 'few may love but most could live with'. The Prime Minister also had to fend off repeated calls for a second referendum, mainly from the Labour benches but also from her own. Meanwhile, it emerged yesterday that the UK could still be tied to EU rules and be made to pay into Brussels' coffers until the end of 2022 more than six years after the referendum. At present Britain will have a 'transition period' until the end of 2020. In the meantime it effectively remains in the EU but without representation in Brussels. But a new version of the Withdrawal Agreement said this may be extended for another 'one or two years'. Theresa May has repeatedly said the transition would end before the next general election, due before mid-2022. However, a full two-year extension subject to a vote by the UK's Parliament would take it much further than the election. The Prime Minister (pictured yesterday) also had to fend off repeated calls for a second referendum, mainly from the Labour benches but also from her own In a seemingly co-ordinated move, Eurosceptic Tories and DUP MPs attacked the plan for a backstop in the Commons yesterday. Mr Johnson said: 'We should junk forthwith the backstop, upon which the future economic partnership according to this political declaration is to be based, and which makes a complete nonsense of Brexit.' Tory former Northern Ireland secretary Theresa Villiers, another Brexiteer, warned the EU would be 'unlikely to agree' a future trading agreement with the UK as the backstop in the Withdrawal Agreement offered more favourable terms. In his attack, Mr Raab added: 'The top reason people voted to leave the EU was to take back control over our laws. Isn't it the regrettable but inescapable reality that this deal gives even more away?' However, around 20 Conservative MPs spoke in support of Mrs May, with Matt Warman saying her deal was 'the only practical way' to deliver Brexit. Damian Green, Mrs May's effective number two until last year, said people outside Westminster appreciated her 'tenacity'. And James Heappey attacked hardline Brexiteers who wanted 'ideological perfection', while Richard Graham praised the 'sensible compromise', saying the deal was one 'few may love but most could live with'. A bid to protect forces veterans from homelessness and mental illness was announced by defence minister Tobias Ellwood yesterday. He revealed the initiative as he opened a debate on the Armed Forces Covenant, which is intended to protect servicemen after they have left the forces. Around 50,000 veterans have mental health issues, often sparked by combat stress. Another 6,000 are homeless and 10,000 are in prison or on probation. Defence minister Tobias Ellwood focused on suicide prevention, unveiling a working group to investigate the problem. The minister warned against military service being blamed as the sole cause of suicide [File photo] But Mr Ellwood yesterday told MPs the Ministry of Defence and Ministry for Housing had signed up to a statutory duty for commanding officers to refer vulnerable individuals to councils for housing. This is so important, he said. It means we should not see people who might become homeless leaving the Armed Forces with nowhere to go because their plight will be flagged up. He also focused on suicide prevention, unveiling a working group to investigate the problem. The minister warned against military service being blamed as the sole cause of suicide, saying there were usually complex underlying issues. He said: Suicide is the most tragic symptom usually of many other issues such as mental health or family breakdown, debt, unemployment or a myriad of other problems. Around 50,000 veterans have mental health issues, often sparked by combat stress. Another 6,000 are homeless and 10,000 are in prison or on probation [File photo] Its inaccurate, disrespectful and trivialising to link suicide solely to military service. 'But I do say that in some cases military service plays a role and we need to better understand the causes. He also confirmed a Veterans Board had been introduced to enable ministers to hold to account those other departments that need to upgrade their support. Dr Julian Lewis, chairman of the defence committee, later highlighted bonkers provisions in the widows pension scheme which have penalised women for remarrying. A first-hand testimony from a child affected said: When I inquired at the MoD about the pension being reinstated I was told no, but if my mum divorced her husband and then remarried him again she would get it back. The Uttar Pradesh government has approved a fund of Rs 1,260 crore for acquisition of land for the proposed Jewar airport in Gautam Buddh Nagar, according to an official document. The amount, released for acquisition in the first phase of airport construction, is to be spent on land acquisition and payment to the farmers concerned, the letter stated. A total of 5,000-hectare land is required for the development of the proposed Greenfield international airport and cost Rs 15,000 crore to Rs 20,000 crore, officials said. For the first phase of the airport, the second in the National Capital Region (NCR) 1,334-hectare land is required. 1,239 hectare land from six villages (Rohi, Dayanatpur, Parohi, Kishorpur, Ranhera and Banwariwas). "The Governor has approved sanction of Rs 1,259 crore for the acquisition of land for the Jewar Airport in the financial year 2018-19," Special Secretary Surya Pal Gangwar wrote in a letter to the director of state Civil Aviation Ministry. At a meeting held in Lucknow to discuss the progress of the project on November 14, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had directed officials of the Noida International Airport Limited and the Gautam Budh Nagar administration to expedite work on the airport. On October 30, the state government had issued a notification for the acquisition of land for the greenfield project in the district under Section 11 (1) of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. The district administration had on October 17 completed the proceedings at its level and sent a proposal to the government for the acquisition of 1,239 hectares of land from six villages in Jewar. The Noida International Airport Limited (NIAL), formed by the government to develop the airport, will invite bids to rope in a concessionaire to execute the project. Some landowners, including farmers, had initially resisted the land acquisition citing various reasons such as an "inadequate" compensation amount and related benefits, besides the resettlement policy. The proposed airport, which will be the second in the NCR after Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport, is expected to go operational by 2022-23. A Victorian Greens candidate has been stood down over allegations of sexual misconduct made against him only two days before the state election. Greens candidate for the seat of Sandringham, Dominic Phillips was named as the subject of the anonymous complaint by Victorian Greens party leader Samantha Ratnam. Mr Phillips' name will still appear on voters' ballots when they take to the voting booths on Saturday, though he's been forced by the party to cease all campaigning. Greens candidate Dominic Phillips (pictured) has withdrawn ahead of the state elections Ms Ratnam received an email from the unnamed accuser early on Thursday morning. In it, an allegation of sexual misconduct was made against Mr Phillips, a claim Ms Ratnam replied to with promises of immediate action. 'The Greens take allegations of this nature extremely seriously,' the party said in a statement. 'At 10:12am Samantha Ratnam personally contacted the complainant to confirm that their message had been received, was being taken seriously and that immediate actions were being taken to initiate an investigation in line with agreed processes.' Initially, Mr Phillips' name was kept anonymous, but was ordered to 'withdraw from all campaign-related activities' on Thursday. On Friday morning, Ms Ratnam named him on ABC Radio to address rumours circulating on social media. Victorian Greens leader Samantha Ratnam (pictured) received an email from an anonymous woman accusing Mr Phillips of sexual misconduct towards her 'We have acted swiftly and decisively, we're taking it very seriously and the candidate has been stood down,' Ms Ratnam told the ABC. 'I want voters to have confidence when they go to the ballot box about the status of all our candidates.' More than a million people have already voted in the election. Sandringham is considered a safe bayside Liberal seat in the city's southeast, held on a margin of 7.3 per cent. The alleged victim has asked the party not to reveal her identity. Ms Ratnam said they would respect her wishes and encourage her to report to police. Victorian Premier and state Labor leader Daniel Andrews reacted to the party's string of scandals by saying: 'I refuse to take that political party seriously.' Greens candidate for Footscray Angus McAlpine was also embroiled in scandal after releasing rap music detailing date rape, but he refused to withdraw himself from the ballot The allegations continue a horror lead-up to the state elections for the minor party. Upper house candidate Joanna Nilson resigned after a series of embarrassing Facebook posts emerged, including calling Liberal MP Michaelia Cash a 'disgusting smug parrot' and talk about shoplifting and drugs. Footscray candidate Angus McAlpine was revealed to have previously produced rap music featuring lyrics margionalising women and detailing date rape drugs. Mr McAlpine, however, refused to step down and continued his candidacy. Party staffer Paul McMillan handed in his resignation earlier in the week after making jokes about Islam and pedophilia over social media. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Mr Phillips for comment in relation to the womans allegations. A springer spaniel has miraculously survived after falling 230 feet down a cliff on to a Cornish beach. The lucky animal, Dexter, chased a bird and went straight over a cliff edge while walking with owner Mark Harris at a beauty spot near Portreath, Cornwall. Dexter fell 230 feet (70 metres) but coastguard volunteers found Dexter had not even broken any bones after shooting off during the walk. Coastguard workers have described the pet as 'the luckiest dog the in UK'. Dexter pictured at the bottom of the cliff after falling 230 feet to what his owner Mark Harris thought was his death. The animal was found alive and had not even broken a bone Mark Harris with Dexter, who fell from the top of the cliff after he chased a bird over the edge of the Cornish beauty spot Mr Harris, from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, said: 'We climbed what must have been some 260 feet and then reached the plateau on the top of the cliffs. 'I never took into account what he would do if a large bird flew up in front of him and disappeared over the edge of the cliff. 'With hindsight, Dexter should have been on a lead because the sight of such a bird allowed for a red mist to descend over Dexter and he careered straight after it. 'All my calling and shouting in that very instant could not stop what happened next... Dexter disappeared over the edge of the cliff. 'In blind panic, I ran to the cliff's edge hoping that there would be a ledge but there was a sheer drop to the beach below. 'Dexter's body was lying on the beach at the bottom of the cliffs sprawled and unmoving.' Mr Harris thought that Dexter was surely dead, but called 999 so the dog's body could be removed. He continued: 'I took a photo of him lying motionless on the beach as I needed something to cling on to and remind me of my idiocy of not following the code of walking dogs along the cliffs. 'I was just about to call 999 when there was movement from below. First Dexter's head moved a little. Then he raised himself up on his front legs and the back legs followed. 'He walked slowly towards the sea and the wash lapped over his paws. He walked back towards the base of the cliffs and curled up on the sand. The lucky animal, Dexter (pictured), chased a bird and went straight over a cliff edge while walking with owner Mark Harris at a beauty spot near Portreath, Cornwall Mr Harris said he and the dog had gone on a circular walk, climbing 260 feet and then reaching the plateau on the top of the cliffs (pictured nearby) 'The Coastguard arrived within 20 minutes - quite an incredible response time. They got me back from the cliff's edge and took control. 'Due to the height of the cliffs and more so their unsafe and crumbly nature, the coastguard decided to call the RNLI boat from St Agnes to ride up onto the beach and pick Dexter up. 'I was driven down to the harbour at Portreath to take Dexter and if still alive and get him straight to the vets. 'Dexter was carried into the surgery in his crate. I explained what happened and they took my details and I left Dexter in their capable hands. 'The good news was that miraculously he had no broken bones. Furthermore all his internal organs were fine, apart from his lungs that had undergone quite severe bruising. 'If he isn't the luckiest dog in the world, I don't know one that could be!' Over the years, people have sometimes asked if I ever make things up about family life in my articles. I suppose I should be mortally offended at the suggestion that I may be a liar, but I wont pretend I dont understand why they ask. To some, it must arouse suspicion that week after week, I claim to have personal experiences that appear uncannily relevant to items in the news. When the papers are full of stories about rights for disabled people, for example, youll find me stating that my father was totally blind from the age of nine. When politicians discuss the plight of single mothers, up Ill pop, saying one of my sisters never got round to marrying the father of her daughter (not least, because he was and as far as I know still is married to somebody else). The boomerang generation? Ill tell you that our own sons are forever bouncing back to the family nest, just when we thought wed got rid of them for good. Adoption? Ill claim my brothers three beloved children are all adopted. For good measure, Ill even report that when I met her in 1979 she was working as a barmaid at my local, where the very first words I addressed to her were: A pint of bitter, a packet of cheese and onion crisps and your hand in marriage, please (stock image) Claims Civil partnership rights for siblings? Ill write that my two elderly sisters have lived together throughout their adult lives yet by a gross injustice, theyre offered none of the tax advantages extended to couples in sexual relationships, gay or straight, who dont happen to be related by blood. If public transport is in the news, here Ill be, claiming that Mrs U used to drive double-decker buses in London. If tax avoidance is topical, Ill say she worked for an accountant who specialised in that very subject, looking after notorious tax avoiders such as St Bono of U2. If my subject for the week is abortion, Ill write that she now works for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. For good measure, Ill even report that when I met her in 1979 she was working as a barmaid at my local, where the very first words I addressed to her were: A pint of bitter, a packet of cheese and onion crisps and your hand in marriage, please. What can I say when people question my veracity, apart from protesting that every word Ive written is true? My father really was completely blind from early childhood (and, yes, he did write speeches for Margaret Thatcher, who did indeed describe him after his death as: Quite simply, the most distinguished Tory thinker of our time). In the same way, my three siblings family set-ups are exactly as Ive described. It is also Gods own truth that my wife has had an extremely varied career, as a barmaid, bus driver and secretary to all sorts of people including, since you ask, a wildly eccentric Italian restaurateur, an MP, a tax lawyer, a military historian, the publisher of Andrew Mortons sensational book Diana: Her True Story and, yes, she now works for the boss of SPUC. All this, and for many years when the boys were growing up she was a stay-at-home mum. But then there is nothing particularly unusual about my family. Or to put it another way, we are wholly unremarkable in our remarkableness. For such is the variety of human existence that there is no such thing as an ordinary family. Indeed, few of us have to look far beyond our close friends and relatives to find people who have undergone extraordinary experiences, triumphs and tragedies people in unconventional relationships, others who have fascinating obsessions or surprising achievements or people with tales to tell about maddening brushes with officialdom or the law. What Im saying is that in writing about family life even a humdrum, suburban family life like mine theres no need to resort to fiction, since every family has real-life stories and characters enough to fill acres of newsprint on just about any subject under the sun. Embellish But I have another reason for sticking as rigidly as I can to the truth (though when my memory lets me down as my sons are all too quick to tell me I admit that Ive occasionally got the odd detail wrong). Yes, I understand the temptation to embellish a story in order to make it more interesting. But the fact is that the truth is so much easier to remember than a falsehood. And though Id like to claim its pure piety that keeps me on the straight and narrow, its also the terror of telling a lie and then forgetting all about it, only to be caught out in an inconsistency later. As Sir Walter Scott so wisely observed: Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive! This week, a study by a U.S. university confirms what so many of us have found that lying, and then remembering the lie, requires much more mental effort than simply coming out with the truth. The researchers at Brandeis University (no, me neither) find that as our brains slow down with age, we become less accomplished at lying and far more likely to be caught out when we do it. Thus, we older folk should be very wary of making something up in order to get out of an unwelcome invitation. For example: Were so sorry, we wont be able to make it to your party because were going to the theatre that night. The danger is that the next time you meet your spurned hostess, shell ask: How was the play? And before youve collected your thoughts and remembered the lie, youll hear yourself answering: What play? We havent been to the theatre for months. Mind you, weve all met young people who are rotten at lying, too. It starts from the earliest years, when the toddler with the chocolate-smeared face claims it must have been his brother who ate all the Cadbury mini rolls. Moving up the age scale, I once had a colleague in his 20s who was forever taking days off work to attend his grandmothers funeral. Most of us have only two grandmothers. He must have had about six. Honest But Id like to think its not only because we become even worse at it, and more likely to be caught out, that we older people tell fewer lies than the young. Isnt it also because we feel less need to excuse our behaviour, to conceal our innermost thoughts or impress others by exaggerating our achievements or qualifications? Im not saying any of us should be honest at all times, telling the missus her new dress makes her look ridiculous or informing our dinner-party hostess that the meal shes served up is uneatable. And Im certainly not suggesting we should all be as truthful as my great-uncle Pat, who would answer the question How are you? with a long description of all his aches and pains, starting with his gouty toes and working upwards from there. Half an hour later, he would still have got no further than his dicky hips, pausing only for breath before moving on to his digestive problems and chesty cough. With Christmas on the way, however, we must all get into practice for lying, says TOM UTLEY The correct answer to inquiries about our health is, and always has been: Fine thanks. But the older I get, the less I feel the urge to pretend that Ive read the book everyones talking about or to say Im late for work because my train was cancelled, when in fact Ive merely overslept after a heavy night at the local. With Christmas on the way, however, we must all get into practice for lying, in preparation for the moment when we unwrap that garish tie or frock, contort our features into expressions of rapture and proclaim that its the smartest thing weve ever seen. There are times and places for telling the unvarnished truth about what we think and feel. But whatever our ages may happen to be, Christmas definitely isnt one of them. Having a few schooners at the local after work could well be bettering your health, according to new Australian research. A study from the University of Western Sydney has discovered that drinking at your local pub can boost both social and emotional well-being, and tackle loneliness. Findings suggest that people who regularly visit the pub have broader friendship networks than those who don't, and identify more closely with their community. A study from The University of Western Sydney has discovered that drinking at your local pub can boost both social and emotional well-being, and tackle loneliness Conducted by the university's social-personality psychologist Dr Peter Jonason, the study, 'Where Everyone Knows Your Name', surveyed 1200 people and carried out a number of individual case studies. The survey, commissioned by beer giant Lion, aimed to examine the value of having 'a local', and found that the social interactions held at these pubs and clubs are crucial. 'There is a long and honoured tradition in Australia and the United Kingdom for going down to the "local" bar for a drink to socialise and relax with friends,' the report stated. 'Arguably the motivation for most patrons of locals is not to abuse alcohol, but instead, to seek out social support.' Only six per cent of those surveyed said they drank alone at the pub, with most using it for socialising and drinking with others. Furthermore, those that regularly attend local pubs were found to be more trusting and satisfied with their lives. Findings suggest that people who regularly visit the pub have broader friendship networks than those who don't, and identify more closely with their community The report also noted a divide between men and women, with the former more likely to engage in intimate conversations and the latter preferring larger groups. These intimate conversations between men are 'likely essential to maintaining their psychological health and sense of connectedness to the community,' the research states. The study concluded that 'locals are not just an important feature of Australian life because of their cultural histories, but they appear to also serve mental health benefits to men and women around the country'. A Chinese investment company is the new owner of two of the Northern Territory's biggest watermelon farms which produce more than half the state's melons. Hong Kong-based CK Hutchinson Holdings bought the two watermelon farms near Mataranka owned by brothers Stewart and Kane Younghusband. Agricultural experts say the $27.5 million deal is one of the biggest horticultural deals in the state's history, the ABC reported. These two melon farms (pictured) near Mataranka in the Top End are under new ownership and management The neighbouring farms operated as separate businesses and produced 25,000 tonnes of watermelons every year on a combined total of 1,900 hectares of land. Kane ran Roper River Agriculture Pty Ltd while his brother Stewart ran Crystalbrook Farming Company. The new owners have signed a 10-year lease with New South Wales-based Rombola Family Farms to manage the farms in Mataranka, which is 420km south-east of Darwin and 107km south of Katherine. Based in the Riverina district, Rombola Family Farms was the source of the rockmelon listeria outbreak which led to a miscarriage and the deaths of seven people earlier this year. Agricultural consultant Ian Baker said horticultural farms in the Top End sell for $5-10 million on average, so the $27.5 million sale is a huge deal. 'There are not many horticulture businesses [across Australia] that sell for this sort of money,' he told the ABC. Roper River Agriculture Pty Ltd (pictured) and Crystalbrook Farming Company sold for a combined $27.5 million, one of the biggest horticultural deals in the state's history Mr Baker in't concerned about the foreign investment but believes increased melon production by the new managers will likely affect prices. '[The NT] puts out about 50,000 tonnes of melons roughly, and the market is not endless. There's probably limited export opportunities, and the price is very sensitive to over-production,' he told the ABC. 'They are going to have to be careful about how much they ramp up there is plenty of land and water to do it but I think any manager who knows the Australian market would be silly to over-produce and depress prices.' The brothers' watermelon farms produced more than half of Northern Territory's melons The Rombola family have been farming in the Riverina district for more than 50 years since arrived from Italy in the 1950s. Extreme weather in the Riverina district was recently identified as the cause of the deadly rockmelon listeria outbreak that came from Rombola Family Farms. Australian Melon Association industry development manager Dianne Fullelove recently told Daily Mail Australia that he industry had worked hard in recent months to ensure the deadly melon listeria outbreak never happens again. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Rombola Family Farms, Roper River Agriculture Pty Ltd and Crystalbrook Farming Company for comment. The founders of a reclusive Muslim sect are facing jail for contempt of court after surrendering in their battle to build a religious retreat without any legal approval. Dr Mustapha Kara-Ali and his brother Diaa each pleaded guilty in the NSW Land and Environment Court on Friday to four counts of contempt after repeatedly ignoring a judge's orders they stop building on the property. The pair claimed they were exempt from Australian laws as they continued work on the religious site at Colo, in the Hawkesbury region north of Sydney. Friday's guilty pleas and undertakings they will reverse the damage they have done to the land are a complete back-flip on the men's previously stated position. Iman Dr Mustapha Kara-Ali has pleaded guilty to four counts of contempt after ignoring court orders to remove buildings and other works from a religious retreat north of Sydney Mustapha (right) and Diaa Kara-Ali (left) pictured when confronted by Hawkesbury City Council officers at the gates of their 12 hectare property in the Hawkesbury region in July This picture shows some of the work illegally carried out on a once picturesque property at Colo by the Diwan Al Dawla Islamic guild. The guild's founders have been order to repair it The Kara-Ali brothers were charged with contempt after ignoring orders to remove buildings, fences, flagpoles and other structures which were all illegally installed. They refused to let council officers onto their property and were arrested earlier this month but freed on bail. Dr Kara-Ali said in September that severed pigs heads had been dumped at the retreat's front gates and his group had been victims of religious hatred. The brothers believe symbols within the Australian flag and New South Wales coat of arms are an affront to their religion and anyone bearing them is a 'Crusader'. Until this month the two men had refused to even attend the court case initiated by Hawkesbury City Council over the unlawful development. 'It's against our religion,' Dr Kara-Ali told Daily Mail Australia in August. 'It's against our religion to be subject to any other religion.' 'Because of the religious symbolism of the court, that contradicts with my religion. For my religion to be free I can't be dictated to by another religion.' Dr Mustapha Kara-Ali (right) and his brother Diaa refused to dismantle an Islamic retreat built without council approval because they claimed not to be answerable to Australian laws Hawkesbury City Council has won a civil action against Dr Kari-Ali and his brother over illegal land clearing and earthworks carried out on the site. Pictured is the frame of a horse barn However, when the brothers faced Justice Terry Sheahan on Friday they pleaded guilty to contempt and agreed to reverse the building works on their property. 'My clients have indicated they want to enter into discussions with Hawkesbury Council,' a lawyer acting for the pair told the court. 'They have resigned themselves to a position of compliance. 'They've consciously made a decision to de-escalate the matter.' Religious signs, flags and flagpoles had already been removed, while the work of clearing the site of buildings and restoring vegetation would be ongoing. 'They have begun the process of complying with the orders,' the lawyer said. 'It is my clients' position the site is no longer suitable for religious purposes. It has been desecrated, as such.' Hawkesbury Council has submitted the pair should be jailed for their contempt and Justice Sheahan ordered that a pre-sentence report be prepared. Imam Mustapha Kara-Ali at the gates of the Southern Chariot religious site. Dr Kara-Ali says the Southern Cross is a corrupted Christian version of this celestial navigation diagram The Diwan Al Dawla guild carved a hippodrome out of this hillside at Colo so it could train Arabian horses. The group did not seek development approval from council to construct it Dr Kari-Ali is the founder of the religious guild Diwan Al Dawla which bought the Colo property for $670,000 in May last year and began building what it calls the Southern Chariot religious site. The 12 hectares has been home to about 30 Arabian horses which the group wants to use to help troubled Muslim youth, particularly from western Sydney, engage with God. A shed and two demountable buildings were erected on the site and a barn was being built. A grove of young trees including olives, figs and walnuts was planted. The Land and Environment Court found in August the sect had undertaken land clearing and earthworks in breach of planning laws and had built structures without approval. The brothers agreed they did not seek approval for the work and originally said they had no intention of doing so because they did not recognise Australian law. Justice Sheahan ordered all structures on the site including an elaborate entrance, four flagpoles, three concrete slabs, a shed and the partly-built barn be demolished within 28 days. That did not happen. This shed on a concrete slab was built without development approval by the Diwan Al Dawla guild at Colo, north of Sydney. The guild claimed it did not recognise Australian law A 'river entry ramp' which council submitted was for boats and Diwan Al Dawla said was for baptisms had to be removed in the same timeframe. Justice Sheahan also restrained the group from 'carrying out of any and all religious activities of devotion, self-discipline, ritual baptism, inter-community prayers, contemplation and religious study or for the purposes of public worship.' Dr Kara-Ali and his brother claimed the council had no power to tell them what to do because they were 'not required to comply with the law'. The brothers said their Diwan Al Dawla guild was a 'basic religious charity' registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for profits Commission (ACNC). 'Charities who meet the definition of Basic Religious Charity do not have to submit annual financial reports, and they do not have to comply with the ACNC governance standards which include... compliance with Australian laws,' Dr Kara-Ali has said. Lawyer Mark Cottom, for Hawkesbury Council, previously told the court police had been asked to accompany council officers on an inspection of the property in case they were required to force entry. Hawkesbury City Council says this structure was a boat ramp. The imam of the Diwan Al Dawla group says it is a walkway to the Colo River used for baptisms fashioned from an old spillway 'The police appear to have significant concerns in relation to safety... wishing to have the riot squad and Polair available,' Mr Cottom said. Dr Kara-Ali told Daily Mail Australia that was 'just plain ridiculous'. 'There is no need for the police,' he said. All the police would find is 'a group of people praying and a few horses.' 'We are living our life like we desire. We desire to be separate from the secular. Is this too much to ask? And the secular wants to intimidate us with military might.' 'We are more powerful than their helicopters.' The brothers are on bail with conditions they surrender their passports, be of good behaviour, report once a week to police and lodge $8,000 surety. Asked outside court on Friday if he had anything to say about the latest developments in the case, Dr Kara-Ali said 'No, not today thank you.' The matter will be back before court on December 13. A young mother's chilling last Facebook post shows how she knew her life could change 'in the blink of an eye'. Harry Watson was taken into police custody over the death of his girlfriend and mother-of-four Emily Miller, 31, at Whittington in Victoria's Geelong on Wednesday night. Just before her death, Ms Miller shared a post about lessons she had learned in life. 'Those who died yesterday had plans for this morning. And those who died this morning had plans for tonight. Don't take life for granted,' the post read. 'In the blink of an eye, everything can change.' Harry Watson was taken into police custody over the death of his girlfriend and mother-of-four Emily Miller (pictured), 31, at Whittington in Victoria's Geelong Just before her death, Ms Miller shared a post about lessons she had learned in life Ms Miller's ex-boyfriend Beau Forehan also took to social media to write a heart-wrenching post about his four children losing their mother. 'I was with her for six years, now my kids are without their mum just before Christmas,' Mr Forehan wrote. Watson, 25, has been charged with prohibited person possess firearm and trafficking and possessing heroin. He will appear before Geelong Magistrates' Court on Friday. Homicide squad detectives are continuing to investigate Ms Miller's shooting and Watson has not been charged over her death. Hours before the shooting, Mr Watson posted an an image of himself holding what appears to be a gun, the Herald Sun reported. Mr Watson had captioned the photo: 'You know what time it is? Time for this b---- to get cut off.' Harry Watson (pictured) was taken into police custody over the shooting death of mother-of-four Emily Miller at Whittington in Victoria's Geelong on Wednesday night Emily Miller (pictured) was found in her home with a gunshot wound to her abdomen The picture was posted using Ms Miller's Snapchat account. A close friend to Ms Miller, Simone Trench said she had started a relationship with Mr Watson three months before her death. The pair had been living together with Ms Miller's children at a commission house. The children are reported to have been nearby when the shooting happened. Social media pictures suggest Mr Watson was friendly with the children as one photo showed him holding the youngest girl on his lap. Ms Miller for her part referred to herself as a 'proud mummy' who flooded her Facebook page with pictures of her family. Ms Miller for her part referred to herself as a 'proud mummy' who flooded her Facebook page with pictures of her family Emily Miller said in a Facebook post made in July: 'Those who died yesterday had plans for this morning. And those who died this morning had plans for tonight' Homicide Squad detectives searched the home on Thursday for the missing gun, with the investigation ongoing. Friends have heaped tributes to the mother on social media. 'I love you Emily Miller you are the bestest friend I could of ever of had,' one friend said. 'Rest in peace Emily Miller. Gone way to soon. We had some good times girl. Your beautiful children will be taken care of, I promise you that. Until we meet again fly high my friend,' another friend said. 'My heart aches for her children,' a family member told Daily Mail Australia. Friends have heaped tributes to the mother on social media. 'I love you Emily Miller you are the bestest friend I could of ever of had,' one friend said Harry Watson and Emily Miller had been living together with Ms Miller's children at a commission house Another person posted, 'All I want to do is call you and tell you why Im upset, then Im reminded of the living nightmare this is. 'I have no words, but the fact Im writing the words I do have like this is f***ing ridiculous and makes me sick to my stomach. 'To say I love you isnt enough, to say I miss you doesnt feel real and the immense pain Im in trying to accept that this is in fact real is unbearable. 'I love you so much Emmy and my life as I knew it will never be the same.' Friend Bliss Tannenberg said everyone was in shock over Ms Miller's death. Any witnesses or anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or submit a confidential report online at www.crimestoppersvic.com.au. Democrats won the popular vote in the House by the largest margins since the Watergate scandal and resignation of Republican President Richard Nixon. An analysis by NBC News reveals that Democrats stormed to victory over the Republicans in House races, by a whopping 8.6 million votes in this year's midterms. NBC reported that number is the largest margin that Democrats have defeated Republicans in a midterm House election since 1974. That midterm race, shortly after Nixon resigned, allowed Democrats to win the popular vote by 8.7 million votes, NBC reported. A victory for the Democratic party in the midterm elections means they have more power to exercise oversight over the Trump administration The results of the election are a significant blow for President Donald Trump's agenda in Congress NBC reported that number is the largest margin that Democrats have defeated Republicans in a midterm House election since 1974, shortly after Richard Nixon resigned Some commentators have made comparisons between the administrations of Trump and Nixon as special counsel Robert Mueller examines the role of Russia in the 2016 election and whether the president attempted to obstruct justice and end the probe. Nixon also resisted investigations after his administration attempted to distance itself with five men who broke into the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate hotel. There is some recognition among Republicans that they need a tune-up moving forward. 'I think everybody acknowledges we have a helluva problem,' Josh Holmes, a top political adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Politico. 'The question is whether we can get everybody to set egos and business considerations aside to solve it. Id certainly like to try'. The outcome is a significant victory for Democrats after the party was locked out of power in Washington following the 2016 presidential election. The results deal a major blow to Republicans who will lose their majority in the lower chamber and is a significant setback for President Donald Trump's agenda in Congress. Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (pictured) heralded the victory as 'a new day for America' Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi celebrated the win on Tuesday night at an event in Washington DC. 'Women and men mobilized in historic numbers who saw what this GOP Congress was doing and refused to stand still. Tomorrow will be a new day in America'. Drew Hammill, an aide to Pelosi, tweeted Tuesday evening that the President called Pelosi at 11.45 pm 'to extend his congratulations on winning a Democratic House Majority'. Capitol Hill will now have divided party control after Republicans maintained control of the Senate, according to projections. That could lead to more gridlock and clashes between the two chambers or it could force the two parties to find common ground. The midterms led to significant gains for the youngest elected congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (left) and Ayanna Pressley (right), Massachusetts' first black congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (left) became the first Muslim women elected to Congress while Jared Polis (right) was the first gay man to win a governor's race While a Democratic victory was far from guaranteed, the party had been viewed as a slight favorite to win the House on Election Day. Under a Democratic-controlled House, Democrats will have more authority and fewer constraints on their ability to exercise oversight of the Trump administration and could launch investigations into the President's finances. They could also investigates Trumps tax returns, as well as ramp up a probe into the possibility that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to win the White House, which Trump has denied. The election was also a historic one for women, people of color and the LGBTQ community. Republican adviser Josh Holmes admitted his party must work hard to regain control Female candidates spearheaded Democratic gains and at least 80 women had been elected to the House. Sixty-nine of the House women are Democrats, including 27 of 28 newcomers, according to a USA TODAY analysis. Jared Polis was the first gay man to win a governor's race. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became the youngest woman elected to Congress. Ayanna Pressley became Massachusetts' first black congresswoman. Minnesota's Ilhan Omar and Michigan's Rashida Tlaib became the first Muslim women elected to Congress. On Tuesday evening, Pelosi pledged that a Democratic House will act as a check on the White House and Republicans in Washington. 'Today is more than about Democrats and Republicans. It's about restoring the Constitution's checks and balances to the Trump administration. 'It's about stopping the GOP and Mitch McConnell's assault on Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and the health care of 130 million Americans living with pre-existing medical conditions'. Discussion about the possibility of impeaching the President is also likely to intensify in a Democratic-controlled House. A man has been arrested for shooting dead a pregnant 14-year-old girl who was babysitting her sister's children when she was hit by a bullet from an upstairs Atlanta apartment. Souleyman Diallo, 20, was charged with second-degree murder for the killing of 14-year-old Sonja Star Harrison and her unborn child, according to local police. Family members say Sonja 'Star' Harrison was an eighth-grader from Stone Mountain who was expected to give birth next month the day before New Year's. Souleyman Diallo, 20, was charged with second-degree murder for the killing of 14-year-old Sonja Star Harrison and her unborn child, according to local police Harrison was shot on Monday at the Pavilion Place Apartments after a gunshot went through the floor of an upstairs apartment and struck her in the head. She had been babysitting her young nephews at the time. Sonja's mother, Sonja Denise Harrison, shared that she had learned of the arrest but asserted that she wasn't aware of any connections between the two. 'Folks saying he's the baby's father,' she told the Atlanta Journal Constitution. 'He is not the father. He is not the father.' Harrison was shot on Monday at the Pavilion Place Apartments after a gunshot went through the floor of an upstairs apartment and struck her in the head. She had been babysitting her young nephews at the time Sonja's mother, Sonja Denise Harrison, shared that she had learned of the arrest but asserted that she wasn't aware of any connections between the two The mother would not provide any new details until she spoke with her lawyer. Harrison was loved and 'a people person,' according to her mother, and was also described as being 'sweet, bright and helpful'. The girl was expected to give birth on the day before New Year's Day The teen planned to go into the army after graduating high school. 'She wanted to have a better future for her and her baby,' her mother said. 'Only thing I can tell you about my child is that she will be totally missed. She will be so much missed just like that bundle of joy she was carrying.' A candlelight vigil will be held at 6pm on December 4 at the apartments. Diallo was also charged with reckless conduct and possession of a firearm. He has a number of other convictions, including shoplifting, disorderly conduct, cruelty to children, willful obstruction of law enforcement, public drunkeness, public indency, possession of a controlled substances and probation violations. He had been let out of jail on October 18 for a shoplifting charge. Samsung Electronics has apologised for illnesses and deaths of some of its workers, saying it failed to create a safe working environment at its computer chip and display factories. The announcement by the South Korean technology giant came weeks after the company and a group representing ailing Samsung workers agreed to accept compensation terms suggested by a mediator and end a highly-publicised standoff that went on for more than a decade. The company's apology was part of the settlement. Kinam Kim, president of Samsung's device solutions division, said the company failed to 'sufficiently manage health threats' at its semiconductor and liquid crystal display manufacturing lines. Kinam Kim, President & CEO, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics bows in apology in Seoul, South Korea, today Hwang Yu-mi at home, a few months before her death from leukemia on March 6, 2007 As detailed in Associated Press reporting over the past decade, dozens of employees who worked there have experienced grave illnesses such as leukemia and brain tumors. 'We offer our sincere apology to our workers who have suffered with illnesses and their families,' Kim said during a news conference in Seoul, which was also attended by activists and relatives of the workers. But while cutting a deal and loosely admitting to lapses in safety standards, Samsung has yet to fully acknowledge its workplace environment as the direct cause of the illnesses. The standoff began in 2007 when taxi driver Hwang Sang-gi refused to accept a settlement after his 23-year-old daughter died of leukemia after working at a Samsung factory. Kinam Kim, President & CEO, Device Solutions, Samsung Electronics apologises in Seoul, South Korea today Hwang's efforts to clarify the cause of Yu-mi's death and hold Samsung responsible for problems related to working conditions galvanized a broader movement to hold businesses and the government accountable for safety lapses in the chip and display industries, which use huge amounts of chemicals. 'No apology would be enough when considering the deception and humiliation we experienced (from Samsung) over the past 11 years, the pain of suffering from occupational diseases, the pain of losing loved ones,' Hwang said at the news conference. 'But I take today's apology as a promise from Samsung Electronics,' to improve the safety of its workplaces, he added. Hwang Sang-gi, right, father of former Samsung semiconductor factory worker Hwang Yu-mi who died from leukemia in 2007, Kinam Kim, left, President & CEO of Samsung Electronics Device Solutions and Kim Ji-hyung, center, a chairman of the Mediation Committee pose for the media after signing the documents in Seoul According to the settlement, Samsung will compensate for various illnesses of employees who have worked at its chip and LCD factories since 1984, including as much as 150 million won ($132,000) for leukemia. The compensation also covers miscarriages and congenital illnesses of the workers' children such as child cancer. Since 2008, dozens of workers have sought occupational safety compensation from the government. Few won compensation, mostly after years of court battles. Half the remaining claims were rejected and half remain under review. Families of the victims often have depleted their savings and sold their homes to pay hospital bills. Some workers end up incapacitated and unable to work. Director Shankar's 2.0 is hardly a week away from its release. The costliest film in the Indian cinema's history is all set to hit the screens on November 29. The movie will also be the first Indian film to be entirely shot in 3D. 2.0's producers Lyca claims the movie would not compromise on any technical aspect to make sure it'll be a first global Indian film. Lyca has produced this movie with a budget of nearly Rs 500 crore. Lyca has already planned ways to recover the movie's production cost. The production has pre-sold satellite rights for Rs 120 crore and the digital rights for Rs 60 crore for all three versions of the movie, according to Bollywood Hungama. Also Read: Rajinikanth's 2.0 breaks Baahubali 2: The Conclusion's this record even before its release! The distribution rights were sold to individual distributors in Andhra Pradesh-Telangana, Karnataka and Kerala for Rs 70 crore, Rs 25 crore and Rs 15 crore, respectively. The distributors in Telangana-Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, won't share their profits with Lyca. The distributors in the northern region will share the profits with Lyca at a pre-defined ratio. The film's pre-distribution rights were sold for Rs 80 crore in the northern India. Lyca has kept the distribution rights of overseas and Tamil Nadu for itself. As per an estimate, the filmmakers are around Rs 130 crore short of recovering the budget of the movie. Recovering this amount in Tamil Nadu and overseas markets would not be a problem for the makers of 2.0, considering the buzz around the Rajinikanth movie. If Rajinikanth's 2.0 lives up to the hype, producers are expected to earn around Rs 85 crore in Tamil Nadu. Sarkar is looking forward to achieving $10 million worldwide, and the makers hope to cross the benchmark in its opening weekend. Lyca expects a distributor share of minimum Rs 50 crore from the overseas collection. With a budget over Rs 550 crore, Rajinikanth's 2.0 is the first film in the Tamil film industry to earn more than Rs 100 crore before its release. The movie will release in around 10,000 screens worldwide, along with 6,600-6,800 screens in India. This will break the record of Baahubali 2, which released in as many as 6,500 domestic screens and 9,000 across the world. Apart from Enthiran and Shivaji, 2.0 is the third collaboration between Rajinikanth and director Shankar. The movie also stars Amy Jackson. (Edited By Vivek Dubey) An unremorseful Islamic State supporter who helped a teenage terrorist kill NSW Police accountant Curtis Cheng has been jailed for at least 28-and-a-half years. Milad Atai was sentenced on Friday for assisting and encouraging 15-year-old Farhad Jabar to shoot Mr Cheng at the state police headquarters at Parramatta in 2015 and helping the boy's sister reach Islamic State in Syria. In jailing the 22-year-old for a total of 38 years, NSW Supreme Court Justice Peter Johnson said Atai was a supporter of extreme jihad for many months before the terrorist attack and appeared to still hold radical views. As he was led away from court, Atai raised his index finger in the direction of the judge and shouted in Arabic. Supporters of Milad Atai arrive at the NSW Supreme Court on Friday Milad Atai (pictured) was sentenced on Friday for assisting and encouraging 15-year-old Farhad Jabar His barrister earlier told the court the former plumber would not stand when he was sentenced, as is customary. 'That itself is an indication of his current thinking, which is regrettable,' Justice Johnson said. Justice Johnson said while Atai did not play the critical role of passing to Jabar the gun used to kill Mr Cheng, he was well aware of the plans and made no attempts to dissuade the boy. Atai was wearing a skullcap and kept his head down as he was sentenced, being told by Justice Johnson that his actions were 'cruel and devoid of basic humanity'. Mr Cheng's son Alpha and his widow Selina were in the courtroom during sentencing, and comforted each other. Atai had to be removed from the court by security officers. 'The offender's recent stance has caused upset to his wife and will no doubt have an adverse impact on his son,' Justice Johnson said. Justice Johnson said while Atai did not play the critical role of passing to Jabar (pictured) the gun used to kill Mr Cheng, he was well aware of the plans and made no attempts to dissuade the boy Further, as the self-described best friend of the attack's key plotter Raban Alou, Atai attended several meetings across Sydney's west and offered use of his own phone as Alou tried to get Jabar a gun. Justice Johnson said he didn't accept Atai's claim that he thought the attack had been called off. By his own evidence, Atai said had he known the attack was going ahead on October 2, he would have made sure he'd have attended to help Alou, the judge said. Atai also played a significant organisational role in helping to get Jabar's sister to Syria, including giving her $1000 for flights and advice on the route and clothing to take to avoid detection. Atai had rescinded an earlier apology he gave to Mr Cheng's family, calling it 'bulls**t'. NSW Police accountant Curtis Cheng was shot dead at Parramatta in 2015 'I take back what I said in the box because I was in the heat of moment and I just slipped up,' Atai wrote in a letter to police and prosecutors, the Daily Telegraph reported. 'If use (sic) can please let the judge know about this letter and I want him to know where I stand with this remorse bulls**t. 'I ask Allah to grant victory to the believers and to destroy those who oppress his slaves.' Justice Johnson said Atai had adopted the 'perveted ideology' of violent and radicalised jihad, which he called a 'warped and criminal belief system'. Atai helped his friend and convicted terrorist Raban Alou as he attempted to source the firearm that was used to shoot Mr Cheng as he left work on October 2, 2015. Justice Johnson said the plan was the product of 'twisted and evil minds'. Just three days after Jabar shot Mr Cheng, his actions were praised in a WhatsApp chat group. 'Allahu Akbar... the young brother had a smile on his face and his finger up,' Atai messaged. After Theresa May finally hammered out a Brexit deal that could be used to guide Britain out of the European Eunion, Ian Drury analyses what exactly is in the agreement... FUTURE TRADE DEAL The 26-page political declaration makes clear that both sides want an ambitious, comprehensive and balanced agreement covering goods and financial services. There would be zero tariffs on goods imported from the EU into the UK under an arrangement that goes well beyond that between the EU and other countries. The document also recognise the development of an independent trade policy by the UK, paving the way for the country to signs deals with other countries. But it also says that both sides should seek to build and improve on the single customs territory in the withdrawal agreement that sets out the terms of the UKs departure from the EU. Brexiteers are concerned that would bind the UK so firmly into EU rules on goods a future deal that resembles the customs union. Staying in close alignment to EU rules was the price for reducing any damage to trade from friction at the border and protecting industries which rely on swift movement of parts, such as car manufacturers. Controversially, it says the UK should be bound to the same standards as the EU over state aid, competition, social and employment standards, environmental standards, climate change, and relevant tax matters. It also reminds the UK that the more economic rights it retains, the more obligations it will be forced to take on board. TRANSITION PERIOD The transition period before Britain leaves the EU could be extended until the end of 2022 six-and-a-half years after the country voted for Brexit. The clarification will irk Brexiteers because the UK could be tied to Brussels rules and pay billions into its coffers for two more years, without having a say over decisions. But they will be relieved the withdrawal agreement has finally fixed an end date. Previously, the date read 20XX in the document leading some Brexiteers to warn it could mean abiding by EU regulations until 2099. Designed to avoid a Brexit cliff edge, the transition period acts as a bridge in which negotiations can continue on the future trade deal. May shakes hands with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker before a meeting to discuss draft agreements on Brexit, at the EC headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on Wednesday The draft of the declaration was published today after intense horse-trading between the UK and EU nations Last week Mrs May said it was important that the UK is out of the transition period by the next general election, scheduled for June 2022. Calls from Cabinet Brexiteers for the 39billion divorce payment to be linked to the future deal appear to have failed, however. ULSTER BACKSTOP AND MAX FAC The controversial backstop, where the whole of the UK stays in the EU customs union if there is no deal after the transition period, is still in place. The proposal, demanded by Brussels to protect the single market, would come into force to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. That angered the DUP, whose ten MPs prop up the Government, because the province would follow single market rules on goods meaning a different regulatory regime, prompting fears of the break-up of Britain. It also sparked anger and anxiety among Brexiteers, who were concerned the UK would effectively be locked in to the EU in perpetuity, unable to pursue international trade deals. But in a significant victory for Mrs May, the declaration explicitly says that the EU has agreed to the determination to replace this with alternative arrangements to keep the border open. This revives the so-called Max Fac maximum facilitation technological solution favoured by Eurosceptics that was dismissed many times by the EU. Other measures, such as the mutual recognition of trusted traders programmes and facilitative arrangements and technologies to prevent checks at the border will also be considered. One glitch is that technological solutions that avoid the need for any border infrastructure are not in operation anywhere in the world. If the backstop is activated, European judges will have jurisdiction over how its customs code, technical regulations, VAT and excise, agriculture and the environment, single electricity market and state aid apply in the province. The separate withdrawal agreement says the UK would not be able to leave the backstop unilaterally and would have to apply to an independent arbitration panel. No 10 insists it hopes the backstop will never be triggered. IMMIGRATION Clearly the biggest win for the Prime Minister, the declaration promises that free movement of people from between Britain and the EU will no longer apply. Mrs May was unwilling to compromise on what was a demand for millions who voted Leave. From the end of 2020, Britain will set its own migration rules. Ministers have made clear they want to attract the brightest and best high-skilled workers from anywhere in the world. But in return for a better trade deal, the EU is certain to demand preferential treatment. For longer visits, visas will be needed. But the declaration seeks to provide visa-free travel for short-term visits including business and tourism. Both sides will also allows the others nationals to move for the purposes of research, study, training and youth exchanges a boost for UK universities. CRIME AND SECURITY Britain and the EU have not yet managed to nail down a bespoke deal on crime and security co-operation. But both sides have agreed to work towards a broad and comprehensive partnership, covering threats including terrorism, cyber-attacks and organised crime. They are working towards reaching agreement on exchanging passenger names, DNA, fingerprints, and car registration data. The Prime Minister (pictured yesterday) also had to fend off repeated calls for a second referendum, mainly from the Labour benches but also from her own They are also considering putting in place arrangements for the UK to access data on the Second Generation Schengen Information System (SIS II), a database of 76million real time alerts for wanted or missing people. The UK is likely to co-operate with the EU law and order agencies Europol and Eurojust. And arrangements to allow the efficient and expeditious extradition of criminals are set to be put in place, currently covered by the European Arrest Warrant. If no agreement is reached, the EU would suffer because of Britains significant intelligence and policing capabilities instrumental in foiling terror plots on the continent. FISHING Britain will be an independent coastal state for fishing rights. Mrs May also told MPs there would be unfettered sovereignty over UK waters. Ditching membership of the unpopular Commons Fisheries Policy, Mrs May says she will not trade away fishing rights. But there are concerns because the document proposes a new agreement on access to waters and quota shares, negotiated annually. It urges the two sides to use their best endeavours to sign a deal on fishing rights by July 2020, to be in place by the beginning of 2021. Fishing rights are seen as totemic for many Brexit supporters, but EU member states such as France will lobby vocally for access to UK waters. EU JUDGES Mrs May insists that the UK will regain control of its laws after Brexit. However, the declaration makes clear that the European Court of Justice will still have a significant role in British affairs even if direct jurisdiction will end. Echoing the divorce deal, disputes between Britain and an EU country will be resolved involving a joint committee and an independent arbitration panel. But if the issue involves interpretation of EU law and there will be plenty in any future relationship it will be referred to the ECJ for a binding ruling. Needless to say, the proposal has gone down badly with Brexit supporters. A senior police officer has been suspended after cops failed to act when a sex attacker on parole was accused of making sickening phone calls to a woman - just weeks before he allegedly abused a little girl in a dance studio toilet. The NSW Police constable was suspended with pay on Friday, the force said in a brief statement. Anthony Sampieri, 54, is accused of sexually assaulting a seven-year-old girl in a bathroom at a dance studio in Kogarah, Sydney. Following the alleged assault, it emerged that Sampieri was questioned over an offensive phone call he is alleged to have made to a woman just four weeks earlier. He was on parole at the time for raping a 60-year-old woman in Wollongong in 2012. Sampieri also told Community Corrections in September that he was smoking ice - in breach of his parole. He told a court in 2012 that the drug led him into 'sex binges' and made him feel 'sexual'. Annthony Sampieri, 54, used meth while on parole over a previous assault - but authorities did nothing, despite knowing he had breached his release conditions. Last Thursday, he allegedly sexually abused a seven-year-old girl in a toilet in Sydney's south 'At the time, the offender was already taking part in a drug program and other professional support to manage his addiction,' a Corrective Services spokeswoman told the Daily Telegraph. 'Community Corrections used their lawful discretion to not breach the offender because the drug use was self-disclosed and he was already in active treatment.' Had police notified the parole board of the phone call complaint, Sampieri's release could have been revoked and he would have been behind bars last Thursday, NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said. Instead, Sampieri went on to allegedly physically and sexually assault the girl inside a toilet cubicle for up to 30 minutes. The series of missed opportunities to revoke Sampieri's parole before last week's alleged attack has prompted politicians and police top brass to promise it won't happening again. Pictured: The Kogarah dance studio bathroom where a seven-year-old girl was allegedly sexual assaulted Commissioner Fuller admitted police 'may have dropped the ball' - but vowed to 'get to the bottom of it'. 'Just to set the record straight, on Tuesday afternoon my office was notified that there could be a problem - that police may have dropped the ball in this matter,' he told 2GB Radio on Thursday. 'I ordered an urgent investigation into that... We don't have all the answers but NSW Police and Mick Fuller are not hiding from anything.' Commissioner Fuller said an alleged offence relating to an offensive phone call made by Sampieri was reported on October 26. NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller admitted officers 'may have dropped the ball' 'It appears that an officer has, at best, failed to notify the parole board of the activities of Sampieri,' he said. 'And, at worst, an officer may have significantly neglected their duty... I promise the community we'll get to the bottom of it.' Asked whether the attack could have been prevented, Deputy Commissioner Loy said on Wednesday: 'Nobody can predict the future or the future actions of any person.' Sampieri's parole was revoked within hours of his arrest on Thursday night. 'He is a danger to the public and that's why he's under corrective services guard in hospital,' the deputy commissioner said. NSW Corrections Minister David Elliott on Wednesday said he was 'horrified' that the man had been granted parole in the first place. Sampieri is accused of abusing the girl for up to 30 minutes before stabbing a man who confronted him He also took aim at the state's parole board. 'The mere fact that I have taken parole board decisions to the Supreme Court in the past is good evidence to suggest that I'm not comfortable with a lot of parole board decisions,' he said. Sampieri was convicted of aggravated sexual assault in July 2013 and ordered to serve at least four years behind bars, backdated to the day of the crime. According to Mr Elliot, Sampieri was subject to a number of strict parole conditions, and his most recent attack has left the minister deeply troubled. 'I am deeply troubled by the events under investigation at the Kogarah dance studio,' he said in a statement given to Daily Mail Australia. 'This offender was on parole and was subject to a number of strict conditions. 'As community safety is paramount, I have asked for an urgent brief on all the circumstances which led to the offender being granted parole.' Wollongong District Court previously heard Sampieri was drunk and high on prescription drugs when he invited the 60-year-old woman into his home in Fairy Meadows in 2012. The woman thought she was going to inspect two second-hand tables he had for sale, but was lured into his room after seeing the first one. He pulled out a 25cm knife and told her 'now we're going to have some fun' before forcing her to strip and repeatedly raping her, the Illawarra Mercury reported in July 2013. The alleged sexual assault was thwarted by a parent, 46, from the class at St George Dance Centre in Kogarah. Police are pictured at the scene Police later raided his unit and found duct tape and a role of wire on his bed and cable ties and nylon rope under his pillow. The judge at the time noted Sampieri showed remorse for his crimes. Last week's alleged sexual assault was thwarted by a parent, 46, from the class at St George Dance Centre, who heard a commotion and ran to help. But Sampieri allegedly lashed out with a surgical scalpel, with a man stabbed in the abdomen and neck. Sampieri remains under guard in hospital and police are waiting for medical professionals to grant his release when he will likely be hit with fresh charges. A vigilante who invaded a house with four relatives to confront a man they were accusing of abusing a child, has been jailed. Terrence Limerick, 34, was described by a judge as not one of the 'main agitators' of the events in Tennant Creek but he will spend at least the next 10 months behind bars. Limerick pleaded guilty to unlawful entry to a house with intent to commit an offence while armed and aggravated assault. He was sentenced to two years and seven months but could be out by September due to a 16-month non-parole period and the fact he has been in jail since the day of the home invasion on May 6. A vigilante invaded a house with four relatives to confront a man in a terrifying armed home invasion in Tennant Creek (pictured) in May The group went to a house in the Northern Territory town and began yelling at a man inside to come out and to fight. The women were 'upset and angry' and told Limerick 'of a version of events which occurred the night before involving a family member', Acting Justice Dean Mildren said in sentencing remarks in the Supreme Court in Alice Springs. The group of women were calling him a rapist and a paedophile. When he wouldn't come out they broke the gate off its hinges, Limerick grabbed an axe on the porch and one of the women kicked open the front door. The man was inside and pulled his son behind him to protect him. One of the women grabbed the axe, raised it above her head with both hands and advanced towards the man and his son, Justice Mildren said. Terrence Limerick was sentenced to two years and seven months in jail at Alice Springs Supreme Court (pictured) on Thursday but could walk free as early as next September The man then grabbed a 30cm hunting knife and held it in front of him for the protection of the child and himself. The group of women picked up property belonging to the man, including glass cups, a mirror and tank with a lizard inside and began throwing it at him until he said he would call the police. Terrence Limerick was described by a judge as not one of the 'main agitators' of the events in Tennant Creek (pictured) but he will spend at least the next 10 months behind bars The women were the main agitators and Limerick had diffused what could have been an ugly situation when he urged all of the women to leave. 'Fortunately, no one suffered any serious injuries as a result of your behaviour,' Justice Mildren said. 'You had no business to go into his home and to demand an explanation ... the matter was in the hands of the police.' Limerick and a group of four women went to a house in the Northern Territory town of Tennant Creek (pictured) in May and began yelling at a man inside to come out and to fight His offences were serious, said the judge, and Limerick had a criminal record including being jailed for assault and committing an act of gross indecency with a child under 16. The attack came only several months after Tennant Creek received national notoriety over the rape of a two-year-old in February, for which a 25-year-old man has been charged. A gibbon at San Diego zoo surprised staff when she went into labor and had a baby despite being on birth control for seven years. Eloise, a 37-year-old siamang and her 35-year-old male companion Unkie already have six children together, which is why the zoo was using chemical contraception to keep them from having more. But on November 12 she gave birth to her seventh child in her exhibit much to the surprise of zookeepers. Eloise, a 37-year-old siamang, surprised staff when she went into labor and had a baby despite being on birth control for seven years (pictured with her baby) Having too many offspring would make them too dominant in the San Diego Zoo siamang populations genetic pool. 'It was amazing to see Eloise give birth,' said Jill Andrews, animal care manager at the San Diego Zoo told the San Diego Union-Tribune. She said she had showed no outward signs of being pregnant an staff that care for her on a daily basis didn't notice any changes. The zoos siamang population is a part of a breeding program called the Species Survival Program, which aims to restore endangered species populations while also guaranteeing genetic diversity. Were not certain why birth control didnt work in this case, but as with humans, it is not uncommon for contraceptive failure to happen from time to time,' Andrews said. 'Still, we are overjoyed because any birth of an endangered species is a reason to celebrate'. Eloise showed no outward signs of being pregnant an staff that care for her on a daily basis didn't notice any changes. Eloise (left) and her 35-year-old male companion Unkie (right) already have six children together The zoo said the babys gender will be revealed once animal care staff are able to give it a full exam, which should happen in the coming months. 'Were just going to allow her to be a mama for right now', zoo spokesman Andrew James told the San Diego Union-Tribune. Logging and the spread of agriculture have cut into the apes habitat, pushing them to become endangered, according to the zoo. Another reason their population numbers have suffered is that poachers kill adult siamangs to sell their primate children as pets. All gibbon species are listed as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Natures Red List of Threatened Species. San Diego zoos siamang population is a part of a breeding program called the Species Survival Program Their main threats are loss of habitat from logging and agriculture. Siamang are sometimes killed to capture the young, who are illegally sold as pets. Siamangs are also fierce in defense of their young so it can be extremely difficult to capture their babies without killing the mothers. Eloise is quite old to be a mother. The lifespan of a wild siamang is about 30 years, although in captivity they can live to be over 40. Mother and father usually stay together for life, sharing responsibility for raising their offspring. 'Theyve been together for a long time,' James said of Eloise and Unkie. The better option was to put her on birth control'. Bali Nine drug mule Renae Lawrence has handed herself into a police station just hours after touching down in Newcastle. Lawrence, 41, was released and flown to Australia this week after spending 13 years in prison in Indonesia. She handed herself into Waratah Police Station in Newcastle, New South Wales on Friday afternoon in relation to outstanding arrest charges from 2005. Lawrence was allegedly involved in a police chase on the NSW Central Coast on March 26, 2005. The 41-year-old has been granted court bail and will appear in Newcastle Local Court on Thursday, December 6, police confirmed to Daily Mail Australia. Bali Nine drug mule Renae Lawrence has handed herself into a police station to face outstanding charges related to an alleged high-speed chase using a stolen car Lawrence, 41, was released and flown to Australia this week after spending 13 years in prison in Indonesia Lawrence arrived at the police station in a white 4WD from her mother's house, and lay down in the back seat to make it seem like the car was empty in order to avoid a media frenzy. Two arrest warrants were issued for her arrest by Gosford Local Court in 2005, but by then she was already in Bali and awaiting trial for drugs charges. NSW Police commissioner Mick Fuller said Lawrence would be 'arrested by appointment' after her return, but that she had 'paid the price for her sins'. She is set to be charged with several offences including stealing a motor vehicle, driving without a licence, speeding and failing to comply with police, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. 'I have to be honest with you, I know she's sinned, and I think she's paid a fairly heavy price for that,' Mr Fuller said. She was spotted outside Waratah Police Station in Newcastle, New South Wales on Friday 'There are other circumstances where we'd be waiting on the plane and we'd arrest the individual when they got off the plane. 'Others will judge me and think we should have been waiting at the plane for her to pay a price. I think she paid her price for her sins. 'Nevertheless we will still take those two matters to court in terms of the two matters that are still outstanding.' Lawrence allegedly stole a car from Sydney's inner west and drove north, together with fellow Bali Nine member Matthew Norman. NSW Police commissioner Mick Fuller said Lawrence would be 'arrested by appointment' after her return, but that she had 'paid the price for her sins' Lawrence was allegedly involved in a police chase on the NSW Central Coast on March 26, 2005 Lawrence had earlier has been spotted running errands with her mother just hours after touching down on Australian soil. The 41-year-old, who was released this week following 13 years in an Indonesian jail, was seen outside an Aldi supermarket in her home town of Newcastle on Friday morning. Her mother purchased half a dozen bread rolls from the store before meeting Lawrence outside. The pair left in a black Honda Civic. Renae Lawrence has been spotted running errands with her mother just hours after touching down on Australian soil Her mother purchased half a dozen bread rolls from the store before meeting Lawrence outside On Thursday, Lawrence was confronted with a media scrum as she arrived in Newcastle her first day of freedom. Lawrence, 41, who spent over 13 years behind bars in Indonesia for drug smuggling touched down on Australian soil on Thursday morning. At the arrival gates of Newcastle Airport, Lawrence was met by a media frenzy of reporters shouting questions and cameras flashing. The 41-year-old was seen outside an Aldi supermarket in her home town of Newcastle on Friday morning Lawrence was released this week following 13 years in a Indonesian jail for her role in an international heroin smuggling syndicate Hanging her head and pushing her arms forward, the former prisoner was forced to make a made dash through the terminal in a bid to escape the media spotlight. She was chased by unrelenting media crews as she made her way to a vehicle parked outside the airport. In chaotic scenes captured on camera, a member of the media fell to the floor during the race to interview Lawrence. The man, who wearing beige pants, rolled on the ground as a trail of people continued to follow the convicted drug smuggler. She had been given priority boarding and special attention as she made the trip to her hometown Newcastle, New South Wales, with a transfer flight leaving from Brisbane, Queensland. But nothing could prepare Lawrence for the media storm on arrival. Lawrence was ushered onto her Virgin Australia flight at Brisbane Airport on Thursday morning, bound for Newcastle, north of Sydney, where she is expected to stay with her mother, Beverley Waterman. The convicted drug mule was seen with her mobile phone in-hand and appeared to have made a last-minute phone call before boarding her flight home. Lawrence had earlier sparked speculation she is married after arriving back in Australia wearing a ring on her wedding finger following her release from Bali's Bangli prison. She had been issued with a travel document for her travel back to Australia, not a passport. Lawrence appeared to have made a last-minute phone call before boarding her flight to Newcastle Lawrence stepped off the plane at Newcastle Airport surrounded by members of her family, including her mother 'We don't want to comment. We've got nothing to say. Please just leave us,' Ms Waterman told reporters The 41-year-old had left Australia for Bali in 2005, where she was arrested with eight others and convicted of drug smuggling Lawrence was released at about 5pm on Wednesday evening after officials held a press conference at the prison doors. Maryoto Sumadi, Justice Ministry chief, spoke in Indonesian before holding up her release papers and saying: 'She is a free woman'. Mr Sumadi said Lawrence would be deported and banned from re-entering Indonesia for life. A couple will finally receive more than $1 million in compensation after being wrongfully tasered by police a decade ago. Catherine Atoms and her husband Robert Cunningham were wrongfully arrested, detained and tased by police outside a hotel in Fremantle, Western Australia, in 2008. An eight-year court battle saw the pair eventually awarded $1.1 million in compensation in 2016, but the State and Police immediately appealed the decision. Today, that decision has been overruled, Perth Now reports. Catherine Atoms (pictured) and her husband Robert Cunningham were wrongfully arrested, detained and tased by police outside a hotel in Fremantle in 2008 Maurice Blackburn Principal, Phil Gleeson, hopes today's decision will enable Ms Atoms and Mr Cunningham to 'move on with their lives'. 'The damages awarded to them by the District Court is a reflection of the profound effect this incident has had on my clients and there is now an opportunity for the State Government to draw a line under this matter, he said. Ms Atoms and Mr Cunningham had been helping a group of people who had fallen into a bush outside the Esplanade Hotel in Fremantle in 2008 when police arrived and tased them, believing they were causing a disturbance. An eight year court battle saw the pair eventually awarded $1.1 million in compensation in 2016, but Police and the State appealed the decision (Pictured, Robert Cunningham) In 2016, a District Court ruled they were subject to battery, false imprisonment and maliciously prosecuted and awarded them $1.1 million in compensation. The $1.1 million breaks down into $1.024 million to Ms Atoms to account for her loss of earnings, distress and damage to her back, while the remaining $110,000 was awarded to Mr Cunningham. However, the pair are still yet to receive a penny of this money as both the State and the police launched separate appeals against the action. In court, State Counsel George Tannin quoted the Police Act which reads that the State is liable for a wrongful act 'that results from anything done by a member of the police force, without corruption or malice'. 'The Crown cannot be held liable for malicious or corrupt conduct by police officers all of this conduct (in this case) has its genesis in malice,' Mr Tannin said. Despite this, the police appeal was rejected in August and today, Western Australia's highest court also dismissed the State's argument. The Police appeal was dismissed in August and today, Western Australia's highest court also dismissed the State's argument Outside court today, Ms Atoms told reporters she hoped the case would change the attitude towards allegations of misconduct. 'We should focus on building communities and keeping harmless people out of reach of the criminal justice system' she said. Mr Cunningham added that the case was a 'costly exercise and a great concern to Western Australian citizens if the State's role in justice and the rule of law is consigned only to civil procedures'. Mr Cunningham is a law professor at Curtin University in Perth and Ms Atoms started a new job as a community engagement consultant after the incident in 2008. She is now a sustainability consultant. A man in a burqa and a woman in a motorcycle helmet have walked into a Melbourne bank to make a point about political correctness. Conservative activist Avi Yemini, who is running as an Australian Liberty Alliance candidate at tomorrow's Victorian election, and the right-wing party's president Debbie Robinson entered an ANZ branch in the city on Friday afternoon. Bank security guards raised no objection to Mr Yemini, a former Israeli soldier, wearing a black Islamic outfit as he carried a handbag during the lunch hour. Conservative activist Avi Yemini (pictured), who is running as an Australian Liberty Alliance candidate at tomorrow's Victorian election wore a burqa into a Melbourne city bank branch Mrs Robinson however was approached by security as she wore a black helmet over a blue suit jacket, moments after arriving at the bank on Collins Street. She asked why she had to remove her helmet while her party colleague, running as an upper house candidate for Southern Metro, could keep his burqa on. 'Well, how come that lady can wear a burqa?,' she said. The bank employee struggled to answer her question. The right-wing party's president Debbie Robinson (pictured) entered an ANZ bank in the city on Friday afternoon Bank security guards raised no objection to Avi Yemini (pictured), a former Israeli soldier, wearing a black Islamic outfit as he carried a handbag 'Yeah, I know but it's um,' he said. Still wearing her motorcycle helmet, Mrs Robinson protested about being discriminated against. 'So I have to take this off and she doesn't have to take that off?,' she said. The security guard still struggled to answer her. 'Yeah, I'm not going to get into that,' he said. At that point, Mrs Robinson told him she thought the double standard was ridiculous. Mrs Robinson was approached by security as she wore a black helmet over a blue suit jacket, moments after arriving at the branch on Collins Street Mrs Robinson then removed her helmet and made her point about political correctness as Mr Yemini walked by her in a burqa 'Why? What's the difference? I feel like that's kind of discriminating against me,' she said. 'I mean she's sitting there with that on. Why do I have to take this off?.' Mrs Robinson then removed her helmet and made her point about political correctness as Mr Yemini walked by her in a burqa. 'I think it's really unfair I have to take this off and people can walk around with those on,' she said. 'I think that's terrible in this day in age. How come you can wear that? That's not fair.' She protested that it was unfair she had to remove her motorcycle helmet as her political colleague was allowed to continue wearing a burqa Mr Yemini then removed his facial covering. The conservative Jewish activist, who campaigns against Islamist extremists, mocked the security guard for being politically correct. 'You're a good man for standing up for multiculturalism,' he said. 'Don't you feel safer?' Like One Nation, the Australian Liberty Alliance is in favour of banning full facial coverings in public. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson last year wore a burqa into the Senate chamber to make this point. Daily Mail Australia has contacted ANZ to clarify their policy on full facial coverings in bank branches. A woman who slashed her lover's throat with a pocket knife after saying the chilling words 'See you later, sweetheart' has been jailed for two-and-a-half years. Bernadette Maria Simpson pleaded guilty to unlawfully wounding her partner, Warren Clarke, when she faced Townsville District Court this week, The Townsville Bulletin reported. The court heard Simpson drank 10 ciders before she arrived at Mr Clarke's home on January 28 and took a knife to his throat, causing a 7cm deep gash in his neck. Bernadette Maria Simpson pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding her partner, Warren Clarke, when she faced Townsville District Court (pictured) Judge Greg Lynham said Simpson had intended to kill Mr Clarke at his Charters Towers home because she had already told a close friend she intended to do so. He said Simpson had also been sleeping with the victim for about three to four days before the incident - despite their relationship having already ended. Judge Lynham told the court how Simpson brazenly used the flick blade pocket knife to wound Mr Clarke while whispering haunting words in his ear. 'She walks up behind him, pulls his head back and then runs the knife across his throat,' Judge Lynham said. 'Even describing it like that is quite chilling.' He then addressed Simpson, saying; 'You said the words 'see you later, sweetheart' and then with your right hand you dragged the knife across Mr Clarke's throat.' The court heard Simpson drank 10 ciders before she arrived at Mr Clarke's home on January 28 and took a knife to his throat, causing a 7cm deep gash in his neck As Simpson took the knife to Mr Clarke's throat, other people in the house were able to separate the former lovers and call for emergency services. Luckily, the pocket knife didn't seriously injure Mr Clarke, and when the paramedics eventually arrived, they found him rolling a cigarette. The court also heard Mr Clarke didn't provide a complaint to the police and even submitted a letter of support for Simpson to her defence barrister, Wayne Pennell. When handing down his sentence, Judge Lynham took into account the 'unusual support' shown by the victim - along with Simpson's minor criminal history. Simpson will be released on parole on April 13, 2019. Incident happened outside a pub on New Zealand's North Island back in March A family is reeling after their 14-year-old son was found guilty of murder. Haami Hanara was on trial in the Napier High Court in New Zealand on Friday following the death of homeless man Kelly Donner, 40, in March. The jury of 12 found the teenager guilty of stabbing the rough sleeper four times, including twice in his neck. Hanara's savage attack severed Donner's carotid artery which led him to bleed out. Baby faced Haami Hanara (pictured) was found guilty of murder in a New Zealand High Court on Friday The jury deliberated for three-and-a-half hours before handing down the verdict. A large contingent of Hanara's family watched the trial, including his grandfather, who flew over from Australia. Tony Ratahi, Hanara's uncle, said the outcome was sad for all parties. 'It's a waste what happened, because that's his future now jeopardised,' he told the New Zealand Herald. Members of Kelly Donner's family were unmoved by the verdict. The fatal incident occurred after Hanara and a group of youths were out on a Sunday night planning to rob a liquor store. The group met Mr Donner and asked to borrow a torch. When Mr Donner asked for his torch back, a fight then broke out. CCTV footage was also played in court showing Hanara with a knife in his hand chasing Donner. The teenager then returned into frame with the knife covered in blood. Hanara will be sentenced on February 5. 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... Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has joined convoys of firefighters battling an out-of-control blaze threatening homes in a rural area two hours north of Sydney. He was one of more than 180 firefighters working to fight the fires burning at Salt Ash, 36km north of Newcastle. Mr Abbott donned a hard-hat and appeared dusty and dirty but in high spirits as he spoke on the phone and with a fellow firefighter. Windy conditions have made the blaze difficult to contain, with gusts reaching 90km/h in the region. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has joined convoys of firefighters battling an out-of-control blazes just outside of Sydney He was one of more than 180 firefighters working to fight the fires burning at Salt Ash, 36km north of Newcastle Sydney will have a very high fire danger and an air quality forecast alert has been issued due to poor conditions Firefighters are stationed in every direction attempting to get the flames under control. Residents in the area have been asked to seek shelter and parts of Nelson Bay Road have been closed in both directions. The NSW Rural Fire Service issued an emergency warning due to the bushfire burning at Salt Ash in the Hunter region, which is moving towards homes. More than 1300 hectares of land has been scorched by the blaze, which has also spread across Pacific Dunes and Campvale. Mr Abbott donned a hard-hat and appeared dusty and dirty but in high spirits as he spoke on the phone and with a fellow firefighter The NSW Rural Fire Service issued an emergency warning due to the bushfire burning at Salt Ash in the Hunter region, which is moving towards homes Hot and windy conditions have stirred up bushfires which have forced an emergency response and almost destroyed a hospital A bush fire burning near Newcastle, north of Sydney, has increased in strength overnight and residents living close by have been urged to seek shelter Another bushfire in the same region came close to torching a hospital in Kurri Kurri. The blaze was eventually brought under control by the fire service, who downgraded it to a non-emergency level on Thursday. Rural Fire Service Inspector Rolf Poole told residents to keep away from any active fires. 'If people are in the immediate area and they can see the smoke we are asking them to avoid this area completely,' he told Nine News. 'Especially whilst we've got these strong wind conditions.' NSW director of environmental health Dr Richard Broome said people living in Sydney needed to be cautious for at least another day due to the dust storm. Dr Broome told news.com.au that NSW was enduring several spots of hazardous weather, as extreme conditions brought bushfire warnings in some areas and snow in others. Mr Abbott received a 10-year service award for his contribution to the Rural Fire Service in 2015. Firefighters are stationed in every direction attempting to get the flames under control Sydney will have a maximum temperature of 25C on Friday, with strong winds of up to 60km/h Busy bargain hunters can now pay people up to $35 an hour to wait in line for them on Black Friday. Time poor, money rich millennial don't have to waste their precious hours idling in line for Broadway tickets, iPhone drops, restaurant reservations or big sales, when they can pay someone to do it for them - then switch spots once the sitter reaches the front. Some entrepreneurs who have set up the so-called line sitting companies said that they are doing a brisk trade. 'People dont have a lot of time,' Jennifer Goff, the founder and CEO of Skip the Line told MONEY. People can hire professionals to wait in line for them for Broadway tickets, iPhone drops, restaurant reservations and then switch spots once the sitter reaches the front Shoppers are waiting for doors to open during Black Friday at Macy's store on 34th St in New York 'This is a service that really helps them to be able to do what they want to do'. Goffs venture started in June 2017 when a Game of Thrones pop-up bar debuted in Washington, DC. Fans turned out in force for a chance to drink The North Remembers cocktails and sit on the Iron Throne, and Goff took notice of the huge volume of people waiting hours to get in. 'Before I had a business plan, it was a way to make extra money. 'I [would approach] people in line and [say] Im here if they want me to wait [for them]. They can go get a drink somewhere, go get food. Ill keep them updated with text messages and photos. The most well-known business is Same Ole Line Dudes in New York City, which dispatches people to wait in lines for sample sales, Saturday Night. Darren Hromadka got into the line-sitting game when he learned his colleagues in Omaha, Nebraska, were paying college students to hold seats for them at Warren Buffetts annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting. Some 40,000 attendees turn out for a three-day event nicknamed the Woodstock of Capitalism. Some people even wake up before dawn in order to get good seats to see Warren Buffett speak. Jennifer Goff (left) is the founder of Skip the line and Darren Hromadka (right) founded the InLine4You app which are busier than ever, according to the entrepreneurs Buffett himself told the Wall Street Journal in 2017 that hiring a person to stand in line for seats to the meeting is 'probably what I would do'. Hromadka thought there had to be a better way to bring together people who want a spot in line and people who are willing to do the work. He classified each group, calling them hoppers' and spotters respectively and founded the InLine4You app. Hoppers can post requests on the app and say how much theyre willing to pay, and spotters claim the gigs. The average price is about $25 an hour. When the hopper shows up to take the spotters place in line, InLine4You processes the payment. It is giving the gift of time,explained Hromadka, whose app is available nationwide and has about 22,000 downloads. The inlineforyou app allows people to Hire a 'tasker' to stand in line for restaurants, special events, concerts and more Hoppers can post requests on the inlineforyou app and say how much theyre willing to pay and spotters claim the gigs. Hoppers take a cut of the money Another entrepreneur who set up an app called Same Ole Line Dudes is busy at particular times of the year. He said tourists flood New York City looking for Hamilton tickets and more holiday-specific events. He is currently recruiting line-sitters to reserve spots at the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade, for which theyll get time and a half, but have to deal with crazy crowds and frigid temperatures. Skip the Line and Same Ole Line Dudes operate similarly, though they have set rates. Skip the Line charges about $30 an hour for most events; Same Ole Line Dudes costs $45 minimum for two hours. Both have variables that can drive up prices, like bad weather, event popularity or delivery options. Becoming a line sitter involves a lot of free time and patience so the job is perfect for students and retirees. Another crucial quality is a willingness to take on jobs, as Samuel said: 'Its an easy gig to get, but its also easy to get let go from if an employee doesnt regularly fill requests'. Police have seized a huge haul of weapons and arrested a 24-year-old man after raiding a Melbourne home on Friday morning. Detectives executed a firearms warrant at the property on Gladstone Parade, Glenroy just after 9.30am. Investigators allegedly located a sawn-off shotgun, a semi-automatic rifle, a revolver and an AK47 machine gun with a loaded magazine, at the property just 15km north of the CBD. Detectives executed a firearms warrant at the property on Gladstone Parade, Glenroy (pictured) just after 9.30am Police located a sawn-off shotgun, a semi-automatic rifle, a revolver and an AK47 machine gun with a loaded magazine (stock photo) The man was arrested and charged with trafficking firearms, being a prohibited person in possession of firearms and possessing ammunition. He is expected to appear at the Broadmeadows Magistrates' Court on Friday afternoon. The raid occured as Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews rejected suggestions that Melbourne deserved the title as Australia's 'terror central' following a recent spate repeated high-profile arrests and attacks. An American tourist has been rescued off Australia's northeast coast after his boat capsized, forcing him to spend a cold and lonely night on the overturned vessel as it drifted on the tide. Levi Verwoest, 29, was sailing his 23-foot catamaran 'Isis' 25 miles off the Queensland coast on Wednesday evening when he realized the vessel was taking on water. Within minutes the boat capsized and Verwoest spent 12 hours adrift before being able to activate his emergency locator beacon. A helicopter from the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland (RACQ) winched Verwoest from the hull of his overturned boat only 12 minutes after the beacon was activated. 'Without that emergency beacon the poor bloke faced a much longer and more dangerous wait in the water for either a passing boat to see him or to be reported missing,' RACQ rescuer Arno Schoonwinkle was quoted in a media release as saying. RACQ described Verwoest as 'uninjured and incredibly calm despite his ordeal' on Facebook. Levi Verwoest's catamaran capsized within minutes of taking on water on Wednesday night The American tourist then spent 12 hours adrift through the night clinging to the hull of his overturned vessel Verwoest was hoisted into a rescue helicopter only a few minutes after activating his emergency locator beacon The tourist from Hawaii lost his possessions, including his passport, in the capsizing, and is in need of assistance to return home The tourist, who is from Hawaii and has been travelling along the Queensland coast and Great Barrier Reef for about three years, was not hurt. He lost all his belongings though, including his passport and his catamaran but was calm as he spoke to the media. 'It was just irritating mostly,' Verwoest said of the ordeal. Levi Verwoest with his rescuers from the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland (RACQ) 'If I didn't have the EPIRB I'd still be drifting out there and hoping someone sailed past.' 'Although we've been able to assist him with the basics including food and clothing, he is desperately in need of help to get to Sydney and the American consulate,' the RACQ posted on behalf of the stranded tourist. 'If you can help Levi in his time of need, we'd love to hear from you!' A driver in a stolen ute who mowed down seven children and a mum waiting to cross a busy Victorian intersection has been labelled a danger to the community. Melbourne man Zhane Su'a, 22, was jailed on Friday after he pleaded guilty to 10 charges including five counts of recklessly causing injury, and one each of recklessly causing serious injury reckless conduct endangering life. 'I am hesitant to say this to someone so young, but you're a danger,' Judge John Smallwood said while sentencing Su'a. Scroll down for video Zhane Su'a, 22, (pictured centre) pleaded guilty to 10 charges including five counts of recklessly causing injury, and one each of recklessly causing serious injury reckless conduct endangering life He sped through an intersection at Pakenham in February crashing through a pedestrian island, hitting eight pedestrians. After jumping from the ute Su'a called a friend and fled the scene instead of stopping to help. Victims including children aged as young as six, and their families were seriously affected by the crash. 'It's been the worst experience of my life,' parent Brad Nash said in a statement to the court. His wife Michelle was left with a broken arm and vertebrae when she was hit along with their two daughters. Both girls were also injured. 'I'll never get the sound of screams out of my head,' Ms Nash said in a statement. He sped through an intersection at Pakenham in February crashing through a pedestrian island, hitting eight pedestrians including Michelle Nash (pictured) Su'a was 21 at the time of the crash and had a string of prior offences including aggravated burglaries, armed robbery and serious driving charges. In 2015 Su'a, who has never had a licence, took a stolen car on a joy ride with two passengers and was pursued by police before crashing. 'Your criminal history is of real concern and is of real significance for one so young,' Judge Smallwood said. Su'a had shown remorse for his actions and wrote an apology, but did so after previous crimes and his offending continued, the judge noted. Su'a had shown remorse for his actions and wrote an apology, but did so after previous crimes and his offending continued, the judge noted The court took into account Su'a's difficult upbringing and substance abuse issues. 'Your life has been in a spiral of dysfunction,' Judge Smallwood said. Despite this he said the crimes were serious and a significant custodial sentence was 'the only option'. 'Quite easily three or four people could have died and I don't think the community should be subjected to this kind of risk.' Su'a was sentenced to nine years in jail and must serve at least five years before being eligible for parole. He has already served 277 days behind bars. Michelle Stephanie Foster, 36, (pictured) was bashed to death at a shopping centre A mother who was bashed to death at an Adelaide shopping centre has been farewelled by her grieving friends and family at a funeral service on Friday. Michelle Stephanie Foster, who's identity can now be made public, suffered significant head injuries after a random attack at Colonnades Shopping Centre. The 36-year-old from Ethelton was remembered as a 'beautiful mother', as her partner Ashley Thomas recalled how a trip to see her father had ended in tragedy. Ms Foster, (pictured) who's identity can now be made public, suffered significant head injuries after a random attack at Colonnades Shopping Centre Ms Foster died from the attack at the Noarlunga Centre complex just after midnight on Thursday, October 25. Jayden Tanee Lowah, 20, was arrested nearby and charged with her murder. There has been no apparent link established between Ms Foster and her alleged attacker and the attack was believed to be random, police said His identity was revealed after an Adelaide Magistrates Court suppression order expired on Friday, the Adelaide Advertiser reported. Lowrah - who has no fixed address - has been remanded in custody to face court again in March next year. There has been no apparent link established between Ms Foster and her alleged attacker and the attack was believed to be random, police said. They have, however, ruled out robbery as a motive. Mr Thomas said his family and the couple's two young daughters have been left with no answers. Jayden Tanee Lowah, 20, (centre) was arrested nearby and charged with her murder 'Ashley is an incredibly loving, caring and doting father. He is now the sole parent of two little girls. He has been unable to return to work for the foreseeable future,' a gofundme page set up for the family reads. 'He now faces the tremendous task of being the sole financial, physical and emotional provider for his girls as well as taking care of himself. 'The violent attack that caused her death has not only deeply affected family and friends that she leaves behind but also the wider community who are distraught that yet another life has been taken way too soon in such horrifying circumstances.' Advertisement Four people were killed today when gunmen armed with hand grenades and a suicide vest stormed the Chinese consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi, officials said, with the attack claimed by a separatist group which branded Beijing 'an oppressor'. Police officials said two of their personnel were killed, along with a father and son from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, who were seeking Chinese visas and were caught in the crossfire. Pakistani authorities said that security forces had secured the area after the attack, the latest assault on Chinese nationals in the country, where Beijing has poured billions of dollars into one of the largest projects in its massive Belt and Road programme. Pakistani police have released CCTV footage which reportedly shows the gunmen march towards the Chinese consulate. Police said two of their personnel were killed, along with a father and son from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan Security stands at the site of a shootout at the Chinese Consulate. The armed separatists stormed the building, triggering an intense hour-long shootout during which two police officers were killed Pakistani security personnel stand next to burned out vehicles in front of the consulate after an attack in Karachi this morning Pakistani ambulance volunteers transport a dead body in front of the Chinese consulate after an attack in Karachi today Smoke rising from the Chinese consulate after an attack by gunmen in Karachi, Pakistan. Witnesses reported gunshots Pakistani rescue workers shift a body after the attack on the Chinese consulate at around 9:30am local time The attackers killed the officers and stormed the building in the southern port city, leading to an intense shootout at about 9:30am local time (4:30am GMT) today. CCTV footage has emerged showing the gunmen marching towards the building before opening fire at guards. Senior police official Ameer Ahmad Sheikh said all 21 Chinese diplomats and staff at the consulate were safe and were not harmed during the assault or the shootout. The attack was claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a separatist insurgent group that branded Beijing 'an oppressor' and opposes Chinese exploitation of natural resources in the resource-rich southwestern Pakistani province of Balochistan. 'We have been seeing the Chinese as an oppressor, along with Pakistani forces,' a spokesman for the group told the AFP news agency. Members of the bomb disposal unit, checking the exlosives recovered from a bag, after an attack on the Chinese consulate The attack happened at the Chinese consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi Pakistani ambulance volunteers transport a dead body in front of the Chinese consulate after the attack today Authorities said attackers first opened fire at consulate guards and managed to breach the main gate and enter the building Authorities said the attackers first opened fire at consulate guards and then managed to breach the main gate. Pakistani security forces quickly surrounded the area. Local TV broadcast images showing smoke rising from the building, which also serves as the residence of Chinese diplomats and other staff. 'They were holding Kalashnikovs. First, they hurled a small (grenade) and then started firing,' said Allah Bakhsh, a guard at a nearby house who witnessed the attack. The situation was brought under control after the shootout, which lasted for about an hour. The three attackers were killed before they were able to enter the facility. 'Because of a quick response of the guards and police, the terrorists could not reach the Chinese diplomats', Mr Sheikh said after the fighting ended. Pakistani police have released CCTV footage which reportedly shows the moments the three gunmen march towards the Chinese consulate. A bomb disposal squad member checks a bag belonging to an attacker outside the Chinese consulate after the attack Paramilitary forces and police take cover behind a wall during an attack on the consulate Paramilitary soldiers take cover behind a wall during an attack on the Chinese embassy, where blasts and shots are heard A police officer checks ammunition recovered during an investigation after the attack on the building Aftermath: Pakistani security personnel work in the compound of the building 'We have completed the operation, and a search is still under way to trace and capture all suspects,' he added Mr Sheikh said one of the attackers was wearing a suicide vest that did not detonate. Authorities will try to identify the assailants through fingerprints. Dr Seemi Jamali, a spokeswoman at the Jinnah Hospital, said the bodies of two police officers were brought to the hospital while one of the consulate guards who was wounded, is being treated. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan has 'strongly condemned' the attack in a statement, saying he has ordered an investigation. He described the assault as part of a conspiracy against Pakistan and China's economic and strategic cooperation. A Pakistani police commando walks past a burned out vehicle outside the consulate after the attack Pakistani troops arrive at the Chinese Consulate. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan has 'strongly condemned' the attack in a statement, saying he has ordered an investigation The attackers killed two police officers and stormed the building in the southern port city in Pakistan, leading to an intense shootout at about 9:30am local time Pakistani rescue workers stand beside the bodies of victims who were killed in the attack on the Chinese consulate Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan vowed such incidents would never be able to undermine Pakistan's relations with China Police said one of the attackers was wearing a suicide vest. Authorities will try to identify the assailants through fingerprints People hold and console an unidentified relative of one of the victims of the fatal attack The consulate is located in the affluent Clifton neighbourhood, along with those of several other nations. Khan vowed that such incidents would never be able to undermine Pakistan's relations with China, which are 'mightier than the Himalayas and deeper than the Arabian Sea.' Beijing 'strongly condemned' the attack and asked Pakistan to take measures to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens in the country. 'China strongly condemns violent attacks against diplomatic agencies and requests that Pakistan takes practical measures to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens and organisations in the country,' Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang said at a regular press briefing. China is a long-time ally and has invested heavily in transport projects in Pakistan. The two countries have strengthened ties in recent years and China is currently building a network of roads and power plants under a project known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC. A paramilitary soldier walks past the wreckages of cars after the attack on the Chinese consulate. China is a long-time ally and has invested heavily in transport projects in Pakistan Volunteers wait outside the Chinese Consulate after an attack in Karachi Beijing 'strongly condemned' the attack and asked Pakistan to take measures to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens A hairdresser who suspected an intruder was getting into her home rigged up a secret camera in her bedroom and caught her neighbour rummaging through her knicker drawer. Sharon Bulman, 45, of Skelton, North Yorkshire, watched in horror as she saw good friend Steve Gill, 49, rifling through her underwear in video taken on a device she had hidden in an owl cushion. Married HGV driver Gill, who Sharon and her firefighter husband James relied upon to keep watch on the three storey townhouse when they were away, committed a sex act with one of her pop socks. And while doing so Gill, who had made a copy of a spare key the couple gave him while they were away on holiday, watched a secretly recorded video of Mrs Bulman chatting to a friend. Steve Gill is filmed on a camera hidden in an owl cushion creeping into the couple's bedroom After drawing the curtains he crouches over Mrs Bulman's underwear drawer and starts rummaging through it The 49-year-old admitted burglary and stalking and was given a suspended jail term and a restraining order to stay away from Mrs Bulman, which is likely to mean selling his 210,000 home. After the hearing at Teesside Crown Court, Mrs Bulman, a hairdresser and successful amateur runner, said that Gill had invaded her family's privacy in 'the worst possible way.' The family moved into their home when it was first built seven years ago, with father of two Gill and wife Karen moving in a short while later. The two couples became friends with Gill offering to do odd jobs and look after their daughter if they were out. Mrs Bulman, left, and with her husband James, right, said the incident had left her feeling 'disgusted, filthy and disappointed' But 18 months ago Sharon started to become suspicious of his reasons for being helpful. She said: 'The first time I wondered what was going on was one day that he was in having a coffee and I went upstairs to change into my running gear which was laid out on the landing. 'As I got ready I saw movement and caught sight of Steve running down the stairs. He later explained that he had gone up to look at our carpet which we'd had cleaned but now of course I believe differently. 'On another day as I was driving out of the estate I looked in my car's rear view mirror and got a shock because I thought I saw a figure standing in our house. 'James also caught Steve leaving our back gate with a can of WD40 and he said he looked very sheepish. He hurriedly explained to James that I'd been complaining about the back door squeaking. Gill wanders over to the window to draw the curtains, and then is filmed peering outside 'I'd said no such thing and we became convinced something was going on but I didn't know what, although I suspected he might be looking in my underwear drawer. 'I started deliberately leaving it slightly open and sure enough when I would get home it would be shut so someone had to be in there tampering with it. 'I would very often get texts from Steve saying: 'Hello lovely Sharon, when do you think you'll be getting home?' 'At the time I didn't think much of it, just that he was being friendly, but again it makes sense now because he wanted to know how much time he had undisturbed in our house. 'Once we really strongly suspected him James bought a camera from Argos and I hid it inside a cushion which had an owl on it. I took out one of the owl's eyes and the camera lens poked through. 'The camera was triggered by movement and it caught the whole thing as he walked into our bedroom. 'It was absolutely awful to see him walk into our room as though he owned the place, close the curtain,s have a peep outside and then head straight for my underwear drawer. It looked like something he'd become used to doing. 'Whilst he was doing what he did he was watching and rewinding a video on his phone. You can see the screen on the video and it appears to be a video of me just talking and close up. 'The whole thing is really creepy and unsettling, he was given a key because he offered to help us while we were on holiday in Cyprus but he's abused our trust in the worst possible way. Married HGV driver Gill then grabbed one of Sharon's pop socks from an underwear drawer (pictured) before he committed a sex act 'Lots of people rely on good neighbours for help but you never expect someone to do something so horrible, it's been really hard to deal with.' Gill admitting burglary and stalking, but dodged prison because he had never been in trouble before and being locked up would have an impact on his two sons and mother. The court heard that his wife is standing by him. She was in the public gallery, and was one of a number of family and friends to write a letter of support for the judge to read. He was given a 12-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, ordered to go on a sex offenders' treatment programme, do 150 hours of unpaid work, pay 200 costs and 500 compensation to Sharon. Describing the offences of burglary and stalking as 'highly unusual examples', Judge Peter Armstrong told him: 'It was quite extraordinary behaviour for a man of 49 with no previous convictions. 'Suspecting things only happened when you were there, your neighbours carried out some detective work and eventually a camera caught you doing what has been rightly described as quite outrageous behaviour. 'The most serious aspect of this case is the effect on Mrs Bulman. She must have been devastated to discover what had been happening. No doubt, the thought of you going through her underwear drawer has caused her considerable distress.' Andrew Turton, mitigating, said Gill was going through a troubled time in his marriage, and appeared to be getting depressed. He told the court: 'Custody would have a devastating effect not only on him but also his family. A lesson has been severely learned by this defendant in his fall from grace. 'There is clearly distorted thinking in terms of going through the act of entering the house and doing what he did. He has a good understanding about how his neighbour feels.' Gill, who sat through the entire hearing with his head bowed, was described by Mr Turton as a loving father and loving husband. The lawyer added: 'It is a disturbing case and an unusual case. It was not designed to cause distress because it was designed to carry out the nefarious activity in secret. 'He was acting out a fantasy in a situation that was secret. Obviously, he hoped never to be discovered. 'There was a level of estrangement from his wife, something of an attraction between him and his neighbour which he is candid enough to accept was a misinterpretation on his part in relation to the signals he was receiving. 'A perfect storm was created given he has in his background some fetish tendencies.' In a statement, Sharon told how Gill was becoming over-friendly towards her when she first noticed things out of place at her family's semi-detached home. She said the ordeal has left her feeling 'disgusted, filthy and disappointed' and said: 'I thought he was a friend and could be trusted, but he has proved me wrong. 'I no longer want to be in my bedroom and have trouble sleeping. I feel like throwing my underwear out in case anything else has happened.' Two teenage girls posted a selfie to WhatsApp moments before they are believed to have jumped into a well and drowned in a suicide pact. The bodies of the 17-year-olds, whose names have not been revealed, were found in the popular suicide spot in Mumbai in India's western Maharashtra state. Police say the girls took a selfie picture close to the well and turned it into their WhatsApp profile pictures just before they died. Their smartphones, shoes and anklets were found nearby leading cops to believe they had deliberately jumped into the water. One last selfie: the girls, both 17, pose for a picture which they uploaded to WhatsApp before they are believed to have drowned themselves deliberately in the well Firefighters and police rushed to the murky well where they drowned in an apparent suicide pact Their shocked families say neither of the girls had shown any signs of being depressed or suicidal and they are mystified. One of the grieving fathers revealed his daughter had recently begged him to buy her some dresses she had seen on television. 'I promised to get them for her... The clothes will arrive in a few days but my daughter is not around to wear them,' he said. One of the father's told the Indian Express, 'What sort of friendship is this where one person says jump into a well with me and the other actually jumps? 'Even in their last moments, they were dressed in identical tops and black pants.' Police are studying the girls' phones in the hope of establishing a motive. However, the girls had deleted their WhatsApp chats. Police said one had recently broken up with her boyfriend, telling him that she was seeing another boy, and that could be linked. It is believed to have been the fourth suicide incident at the well in two years and police said they were 'tired' of asking local officials to cover it up. It is known to be a suicide spot and locals say it is the fourth incident in two years; police say they are 'tired' of asking local officials to cover the well The police said one had recently broken up with a boyfriend after telling the boy she was seeing someone else and they believe there could be a link The girls were friends who lived near each other and both of their parents were rice farmers. One was still in school while the other had left and had started sewing to make some money. Police say they had left their hamlet on the afternoon of their deaths without saying anything to their families. One of the girl's fathers said a local boy saw them walking in the direction of the well but they asked him not to tell anyone he had seen them. The man said the girls called a boy they knew and told him what they planned to do. He had called the brother of one of the girls who raced to the scene but arrived too late. He called emergency services who sent firefighters to recover the bodies from the well and police officers to investigate the incident. Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage (pictured at the European Parliament last week) today said he was 'appalled' by the appointment Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage today said he was 'appalled' that far-Right activist Tommy Robinson has been appointed as an adviser to the party. The English Defence League founder - real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon - will advise current Ukip chief Gerard Batten on rape gangs and prison reform. But Mr Farage called on the party to have a vote of no confidence in Mr Batten as the party leader - and to 'get rid of him'. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'Well, I'm appalled. The NEC of the party voted overwhelmingly last week not to have a ballot of members to let the man, potentially, join the party. 'But Gerard Batten has got this, sort of, fixation with Tommy Robinson and discussing Islam, and dragging Ukip into a direction of effectively being a, sort of, street activist party.' Mr Farage added: 'It goes against all the things I did as leader to say we will talk about immigration, we will talk about the extreme forms of Islam. But, we will do it as a non-racist, non-sectarian party. This blows a hole in all of that.' Mr Robinson (right) is pictured with Ukip leader Gerard Batten (left), who has appointed him as a special adviser to the party on the issues of rape gangs and prison conditions Robinson (centre) surrounded by supporters at City Thameslink railway station in September Asked if the appointment was the end of Ukip, Mr Farage said: 'Well, I haven't given up yet. 'I will be writing to the National Executive Committee of the party today and urging that we have a vote of no confidence in Gerard Batten as leader, that we get rid of him. 'We can have one last go at getting rid of somebody who, as leader, is dragging us in a shameful direction.' Mr Batten said Mr Robinson who in May was jailed for 13 months for contempt of court in relation to his activities filming defendants in grooming trials had 'great knowledge' about the subjects. Police hold back supporters of Robinson outside the Old Bailey in London two months ago Mr Robinson's sentence has since been quashed and the case referred to the Attorney General. Currently, Ukip has a ban on allowing former members of the British National Party and the EDL from joining the party meaning the anti-Islam campaigner is barred. But Mr Batten said: 'I have appointed Tommy Robinson to be a personal special adviser on two subjects which he has great knowledge. 'It is not necessary for him to be a party member in order to assist me in this role. I am looking forward to working with him.' Robinson (left) with EDL fans in masks protesting in Woolwich, South East London, in 2013 Mr Robinson also has convictions for mortgage fraud, drugs and public order offences. Gerard Batten has got this, sort of, fixation with Tommy Robinson and discussing Islam, and dragging Ukip into a direction of effectively being a, sort of, street activist party Nigel Farage, former Ukip leader Years before he founded the EDL in 2009, he was convicted of an assault, reportedly on an off-duty police officer. Mr Robinson was also imprisoned in 2013 for using someone else's passport to travel to the US. Other convictions include drugs and public order offences and he was jailed in 2014 for 18 months for mortgage fraud. He said that 'going to prison was the best thing that ever happened to me' after the passport conviction. Theresa May refused three times yesterday to say whether she would resign if her Brexit deal is killed off by MPs. The Prime Minister faces an 'impossible' battle to persuade enough MPs to back her deal next month and launched a PR blitz in a bid to win the fight in the country. Mrs May announced she would be going on the road to convince voters her deal was the 'right one' for Britain - effectively tying her political fortunes to the project. It comes as she travels to Brussels today to defend her planned Brexit divorce bill, where she must overcome a number of hurdles including separate meetings with Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk this evening. In a BBC phone in, Mrs May warned that EU is not 'going to give us a better deal' if MPs vote down her settlement While in interview with BBC's Emma Barnett yesterday she refused to say if she would quit if she fails during a live radio phone-in. She said the deal - due to be signed off by the EU leaders on Sunday - would protect jobs and allow Britain to get on with Brexit in March. But asked repeatedly whether she will resign if she loses in the Commons - as seems inevitable - Mrs May swerved the question to insist: 'No... I'm focusing on ensuring that we get this deal through Parliament. Could EU council summit be called off by Spain if no agreement is reached on Gibraltar? The grim picture comes as Mrs May scrambles to clear the final hurdle in negotiations with the EU - an ambush from Spain over the status of Gibraltar. The standoff showed little sign of shifting last night with Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez saying the two sides were still 'far apart'. Madrid wants Gibraltar excluded from a future trade pact, with its treatment decided bilaterally with the UK. Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez delivers a speech during a visit to Havana, Cuba, last night Mr Sanchez has insisted 'Spain maintains its veto' over the draft Brexit agreement during a press conference in Cuba. Asked by reporters in Havana during his official visit if he intended travelling to Brussels on Sunday, he added: 'With regards to Gibraltar, I say the guarantees we have are still not enough. 'I insist, the guarantees are still not sufficient and therefore Spain maintains its veto in regards to the Brexit agreement. 'Logically if there is an agreement beforehand I will go to Brussels.' Asked by another reporter to state categorically whether he would go to Brussels if Spain failed to reach an agreement with Britain and other EU member states before Sunday, he replied: 'If there is no agreement its evident that what will occur is that very probably the European Council will not take place.' Questioned on exactly what Mr Sanchez was referring to when he spoke about 'insufficient guarantees', the Spanish PM replied: 'I reiterate what I said before, that the guarantees in the agreement that is being discussed in Brussels are not sufficient and therefore Spain still maintains its veto.' Advertisement 'I believe this is absolutely the right deal for the UK. This is not about me.' Asked again the Premier said: 'I'm focused on actually ensuring we do get this deal through Parliament, because I believe this is absolutely the right deal for the UK. 'This isn't about me. As I'm sitting here, I'm not thinking about me, I'm thinking about getting a deal through that delivers for the people of this country. 'That's what drives me and that's what is at the forefront of my mind.' The hint will alarm wavering MPs, who fear the departure of Mrs May could plunge the Government into chaos and spark an election. She piled further pressure on MPs yesterday by urging them to focus on other peoples jobs rather than their own. Mrs May's intervention came after former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab heaped pressure on the PM as she faces 'mission impossible' to get the package through Parliament. Around 90 Tory backbenchers have now publicly declared that they will vote against the deal in a looming Commons showdown next month. Mrs May was savaged by MPs from all sides in a brutal Commons session on Thursday, leading one Tory ally to remark privately that getting her plan through looked like 'mission impossible'. Unless large numbers of MPs switch sides there are fears she could be defeated by well over a hundred votes when the crunch comes in the House next month. A loss of that magnitude would likely leave No10's fallback option of making MPs vote again in tatters. Mrs May used her interview yesterday to appeal for MPs to look beyond the Westminster bubble and focus on 'people's jobs'. 'In Parliament there's a lot of focus on who's going to vote for the deal or not, and outside I think people are thinking 'Actually, let's make sure we can get this through and get on with delivering',' she said. 'My job is to persuade people. I believe this is the right deal for the UK. My job is to persuade people in Parliament of that view. 'And I think the job of an MP is actually, when they come to look at voting for this deal, to say to themselves 'Does it deliver on what people voted for?' - I believe it does - and secondly, 'What do we need to focus on for our constituents, for people up and down the country?' 'I believe people's jobs, people's futures, the future for their children should be at the forefront of MPs' minds.' 'I believe that if we were to go back to the European Union and say 'People didn't like that deal can we have another one?' I don't think they are going to come to us and say 'We will give you a better deal.' The Prime Minister today mounted another staunch defence of the settlement she has thrashed out with Brussels, saying it is the 'right' one for the country Mrs May insisted that as far as she was concerned the UK will leave the EU in March 2019 as planned. 'Personally there is no question of no Brexit because the Government needs to deliver on what people voted for in the referendum in 2016,' she said. So what happens next? If a vote in Parliament on Theresa May's deal is passed, Britain leaves the EU on those terms in March next year. But if the vote is defeated, there are four scenarios: Option 1. Labour tables a vote of no confidence in the Government. If passed, there is a general election 2. Tory MPs force a vote of no confidence in Mrs May. If passed, she would resign, triggering a leadership contest. A new leader could delay the UKs exit by up to a year, in order to negotiate a new deal 3. The Cabinet persuades Mrs May to seek more concessions from Brussels. If successful, she could try a second vote on the new deal 4. Mrs May forces a second Commons vote on her existing deal (or a new one), hoping market turmoil will persuade MPs to think again If a second vote is defeated there are five possibilities: Option 1. Labour tables a vote of no confidence in the Government, hoping to trigger a general election 2. Mrs May announces Britain will leave without a deal which could trigger Cabinet resignations and a vote of no confidence in her 3. Parliament votes to keep the UK in the customs union, compelling Mrs May to try to negotiate such a deal from Brussels 4. The Government extends Article 50 to delay the UKs exit by up to a year, allowing more time for negotiations and preparations 5. MPs vote to hold a second referendum on Britains membership of the EU Advertisement 'As far as I am concerned the UK is leaving the European Union on March 29 2019.' Asked whether the UK would be better-off under her deal than it would be if it stayed in the EU, Mrs May said: 'I think we will be better-off in a situation which we will have outside the European Union, where we have control of all those things and are able to trade around the rest of the world. 'I was one of those people who said that it wasn't going to be the case that, outside the European Union, we were going to have the sort of problems that some other people said we would. 'But it's different. You say 'better-off'. Actually it's a different sort of environment and a different approach we will be taking to things. 'What will make us better-off is not so much about whether we are in the EU or not, it's about what we can do for our economy, it's about what we can do for our prosperity.' Mrs May's comment came after a caller named Michael said he was not satisfied by her first response to his question, when she said: 'It will be a different world for us outside the EU, but it will be a good one... I genuinely believe there is a bright future for this country and our best days lie ahead of us.' Mrs May told a caller named Nigel, from Tamworth, that she would be sending a Christmas card to David Cameron, who initially called the EU referendum. Asked whether she would also send one to Mr Rees-Mogg, she replied: 'All my Conservative colleagues I send Christmas cards to.' Mr Raab - who plunged Mrs May into chaos by resigning over the deal last week - waded back in yesterday, saying that the premier need to start thinking about alternatives. Asked if the PM's deal was worse than remaining in the EU, Mr Raab told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I'm not going to advocate staying in the EU. 'But, if you just presented me terms, this deal or EU membership, because we would effectively be bound by the same rules but without the control or voice over them, yes, I think this would be even worse than that.' Former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab (pictured in the Commons on Thursday) heaped pressure on the PM as she faces 'mission impossible' to get the package through Parliament Tory former minister Phillip Lee (top) and Labour's Pat McFadden seized on the comments by Mr Raab about the attractions of Mrs May's deal The last part of the Brexit deal - sketching out future trade terms after a mooted transition period ends in December 2020 - was dramatically signed off by negotiating teams yesterday. During furious Commons clashes, the Prime Minister hailed the outcome. 'This is a good deal for our country, for our partners in the EU,' she told MPs. 'It ends free movement once and for all.' She said a new immigration system would give people access based on 'what they can contribute to the UK', there would be no more 'sending vast sums of money to the EU', and the jurisdiction of the European court will end. PM reveals she was sent cupcake by girl to 'make her smile' Nine-year-old Gabby Balaes sent the PM a cupcake with her face on it The PM today revealed she was sent a cupcake by a nine-year-old girl who wanted to cheer her up over Brexit. Mrs May said she had received messages of support from members of the public - including a young girl who made her a cake. She told the BBC: 'I've had a huge number of messages - really kind messages - from people up and down the country, who have sent me flowers. 'One nine-year-old, Gabby Balaes, actually baked a cupcake with my face on it. 'There was a message. It said that her dad had said I'd had a tough week and she wanted to make me smile.' She said she was 'sorry' and 'disappointed' that some members of her Cabinet had resigned over her Brexit stance, adding: 'Obviously, they have got strong feelings about this issue, they had campaigned to leave the EU and they had done good work in the Cabinet.' Asked if she might sometimes 'go home and swear' about colleagues walking out, she replied: 'No, it's up to people's choice.' Advertisement But Eurosceptics condemned the package as a 'costly surrender' and a 'betrayal of Brexit'. Boris Johnson said the inclusion of an Irish border backstop that would lash the UK to EU rules 'makes a complete nonsense of Brexit'. Former Cabinet ministers Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson, and DUP chief whip Jeffrey Donaldson also insisted the backstop must be scrapped altogether, warning: 'None of this is going to work.' There was also anger that the issue of access to UK fishing waters appears to have been kicked back to be decided after March. Remainers accused her of putting the country on course for 'blind Brexit' with vague commitments. Some 88 Tory MPs have now publicly confirmed they will oppose the Brexit deal in a so-called 'meaningful vote' next month. Once the 'payroll' of ministers is taken into account, that is over half the party's numbers in the Commons. With the DUP, Labour, the SNP and Lib Dems also opposed, the prospects for the PM look bleak. Downing Street is pinning hopes for success on MPs looking at the alternatives of chaos of Brexit being cancelled altogether, and swinging behind Mrs May at the last moment. However, attention at Westminster has been turning to what happens if she lose the vote - with speculation Mrs May could try again in the New Year. Allies fear that unless the result is relatively tight she could be so badly damaged she will have to quit. Barring large numbers of MPs changing their minds, the government appears to be on track for humiliating loss by well over a hundred votes. Education Secretary Damian Hinds was sent out to steady the ship today, insisting support for the deal would grow in Parliament. 'The deal that we have on the table is a strong deal. It is a good, balanced deal. As people reflect on what the alternatives are, I think people are going to come to see this is a very good deal for Britain,' he said. 'If we weren't to pass this deal, I think it becomes rather unpredictable what happens next. There is a risk on the one hand beyond that of no Brexit at all - and there are people trying to thwart Brexit - and there is also a risk of no deal. 'Neither of those two things are attractive. This is why I believe this deal, which is a strong deal, will gain more and more traction.' Boris Johnson said the inclusion of an Irish border backstop that would lash the UK to EU rules 'makes a complete nonsense of Brexit'. Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez (pictured with Mrs May in Brussels last month) said the two sides were still 'far apart'. Madrid wants Gibraltar excluded from a future trade pact, with its treatment decided bilaterally with the UK. In concessions designed to help Mrs May get the deal through Parliament, the 26-page future framework document - which is not legally binding - makes clear that Britain will have an 'independent trade policy'. And it stresses both sides' 'determination to replace the backstop' for the Irish border with alternative plans in future - potentially reviving the 'Max Fac' technological solution favoured by Brexiteers. The pact confirms that free movement will end, which was claimed as a win for the PM - but also states that the UK will not discriminate between nationals from different EU countries. There would be visa free travel for all citizens making short trips, which will be a relief for holidaymakers. Kiran Jagdev (outside Leicester Magistrates' Court in August) has been jailed for six months A drunk woman who screamed 'we're all going to die' on a flight and made a passenger have a seizure has been jailed. Kiran Jagdev downed up to eight beers and six wines before drinking more alcohol from her bag on the Jet2 flight from Tenerife to East Midlands Airport. The 41-year-old kicked the seat of an autistic passenger then 'inappropriately touched' and made 'vulgar remarks' to a police officer who tried to calm her, before verbally abusing him. She has now been jailed by a judge who said her 'catalogue of bad behaviour required a deterrent sentence'. The judge said Jagdev was 'the author of [her] own and other people's misfortune' and said her actions created 'a dreadful experience for all those who were exposed to her behaviour.' Jagdev, from New Parks in Leicester, pleaded guilty to being drunk on an aircraft at Leicester Magistrates' Court in August. She was sentenced to six months in prison at Leicester Crown Court this week. Prosecutor Joey Kwong told the court how Jagdev had drank between six and eight beers before boarding the Jet2 flight from Tenerife on January 28 this year. She then drank a further four to six glasses of wine on the plane. Jagdev downed up to eight beers and six wines before drinking more alcohol from her bag on the Jet2 flight from Tenerife to East Midlands Airport (pictured) During the flight she repeatedly kicked the back of the seat in front of her where an autistic girl was sitting with her family. The girl became extremely distressed and was offered another seat by cabin crew. Jagdev was then seated behind another passenger, and despite being asked to stop kicking, continued to do so, causing the woman to have a seizure, the court heard. Mr Kwong said: 'She continued to ask cabin crew for a drink and they continued to refuse her and she was issued with an Air Navigation Order.' After being refused more alcohol by cabin crew, Jagdev then brought her own alcohol out of her bag and began to drink that. 'An off-duty police officer then offered to sit next to her and assist cabin crew,' Mr Kwong said. 'He said the conversation was initially pleasant, but then she began to touch him inappropriately and made vulgar remarks. 'The police officer refused her advances and she became abusive towards him.' As the flight began its approach to East Midlands Airport, high winds prevented the aeroplane from landing first time. When the plane began to circle, Jagdev repeatedly shouted: 'We're all going to die' and kept standing up and trying to leave. When the plane landed, she was immediately arrested by police and became abusive towards immigration staff. The 41-year-old kicked the seat of an autistic passenger then 'inappropriately touched' and made 'vulgar remarks' to a police officer who tried to calm her, before verbally abusing him In her police interview when she was sober she had described herself as '7/10 drunk' while on the plane. She is also known to have an alcohol dependency and was described to have a 'troubled background'. Judge Philip Head said: 'When you boarded the plane in Tenerife to fly back to East Midlands Airport, you were drunk, so much so that you had to be helped into your seat. 'The effect you had on other passengers must have been dreadful, but the worst was yet to come. 'As the pilot was unable to put the craft down on the approach, that triggered a further foul-mouthed tirade where you shouted 'we're all going to die' for about 10 minutes. 'It is not easy to contemplate the effect of what you were doing doing to other passengers in a stressful situation. 'When you were sober in your police interview, you blamed the crew for selling you more alcohol, but I reject this. You are the author of your own and other people's misfortune. 'This was a dreadful experience for all those who were exposed to your behaviour and it culminated when the landing was aborted. 'This demands a deterrent sentence so people who travel by air and get drunk will know there are consequences.' Jagdev also has nine previous convictions, and five days before her flight home while in Tenerife she was charged with assault and given a suspended sentence before coming back to the UK. Defending, Harbinder Lally, said: 'She was intoxicated before she got on the plane itself and the only person the finger of blame can be pointed at is Ms Jagdev herself. 'She simply wants to get back on track and wants to get professional assistance and she is working to do that.' Jagdev was jailed for six months. Matthew Hedges with his wife Daniela Tejada, who fears for him as he sits in a UAE prison The wife of a British academic jailed for spying said today she was 'disappointed' by United Arab Emirates officials claiming they followed due process in his case. Diplomatic efforts to free Durham University PhD researcher Matthew Hedges, 31, are being led by Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt amid an outcry after he was jailed earlier this week. And the UAE raised hopes this morning that he could be freed, as it considered his family's 'request for clemency'. Meanwhile Durham University today advised its students and staff to avoid travelling to the UAE in solidarity with Mr Hedges until he is safely home. Sulaiman Hamid Almazroui, the UAE ambassador to the UK, said he was 'hopeful that an equitable solution can be reached' in Mr Hedges's case. But Mr Hedges's wife Daniela Tejada told Sky News that she was unimpressed by the country's officials insisting there has been due process in her husband's case. Today, Mr Almazroui said at the UAE embassy in London: 'Matthew Hedges was not convicted after a five-minute show trial, as some have reported. The PhD researcher's wife, Daniela Tejada (pictured together on their wedding day), said she has won assurances that the UK Government is 'now standing up for' her husband Ms Tejada, pictured today, was 'disappointed' by claims that there was due process in the case 'Over the course of one month, three judges evaluated compelling evidence in three hearings. They reached their conclusion after a full and proper process. 'This was an extremely serious case, we live in a dangerous neighbourhood, and national security must be a top priority. This was also an unusual case. Don't travel to the UAE, university tells students Durham University has advised its students and staff to avoid travelling to the United Arab Emirates until their student Matthew Hedges is home. Stuart Corbridge, its vice-chancellor and warden, sent a message to staff and students to issue a 'moratorium', or suspension, on travel there. He said: 'Following my previous email about the case of Durham student Matthew Hedges, please note that we are advising a moratorium on all travel to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for our non-UAE staff and students until Matt is safely back home.' The universities minister has urged academics not to boycott the UAE in protest over its treatment of Mr Hedges. Sam Gyimah warned universities that cutting ties with the country risks harming our 'ability to positively influence' the situation there. His comments come after staff at Birmingham University voted for an academic boycott of its 100million campus in Dubai over the affair. City University, the London Business School, Birmingham, Middlesex and Heriot-Watt also have sites in the UAE. Advertisement 'Many researchers visit the UAE freely every year without breaking our laws. Under UAE law, everyone has the right to appeal after conviction, and everyone can request a pardon from our president. 'Mr Hedges's family have made a request for clemency and the Government is studying that request. 'British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt had a good conversation with our foreign minister. I also met him yesterday privately. 'As Mr Hunt said, we have an extremely close partnership with the UK. Because of the strength of that relationship, we are hopeful that an equitable solution can be reached.' Following the ambassador's statement this morning, Ms Tejada said: 'We have asked for clemency, we will wait to see what happens. 'Matt was held in an undisclosed location in solitary confinement for over 5 months, with no charge, no lawyer and very limited consular access. 'The judicial system in the UAE and the UK cannot be compared. I was in the court room and the hearing lasted less than five minutes.' Earlier today, Ms Tejada said she has won assurances from Mr Hunt that the Government is 'now standing up for' her husband, after she claimed it had initially put foreign relations above his liberty. But after a five-minute phone call with him last night, she said Mr Hedges remains in fear that he will have to serve the entirety of his sentence. Mr Hedges and Ms Tejada, pictured on their wedding day in Dartmoor, Devon Sulaiman Hamid Almazroui, the UAE ambassador to the UK, speaks in London this morning Mr Almazroui said at the UAE embassy today he hoped 'an equitable solution can be reached' 'He is not well,' she told the BBC this morning. 'He mentioned that his panic attacks have become worse than they were before. However, he did say that he has access to a doctor.' UAE 'wants Britain to say student is a spy' The United Arab Emirates might have handed back jailed academic Matthew Hedges if Britain had admitted he was a spy, it has been claimed. The UK has consistently denied that Mr Hedges was working for the Secret Intelligence Service. But the UAE wanted Britain to go via intelligence channels in handling the case, which could have seen him released. However, the UK Government declined to do this over concerns it would be seen as admitting Mr Hedges's guilt, reported The Times. When Jeremy Hunt spoke to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed about the case, the Foreign Secretary denied Mr Hedges was a spy but the prince chose to leave it to 'due judicial process', according to a source. Advertisement 'I wasn't allowed to know where he is, so still don't know anything about his whereabouts, and I think he's just absolutely terrified at the idea of having to spend the rest of his life behind bars for an offence he hasn't committed.' There are now hopes the Gulf state will show some leniency after an official said the nation wants to find an 'amicable solution'. However UAE official - Abdulla Al Naqbi, the head of the foreign ministry's legal department - said 'compelling and powerful evidence' had proved espionage, including computer analysis and an alleged confession. Ms Tejada has stressed her husband's innocence and said the Middle East expert, who was finishing his thesis, was the victim of a 'misunderstanding' while researching. Mr Hunt said he has seen 'absolutely no evidence' to support claims Mr Hedges was spying when he visited Dubai earlier this year, and he threatened 'serious diplomatic consequences' if he is not freed. The Cabinet minister said last night that he had had a 'constructive conversation' with his UAE counterpart, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, meets Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt on November 13 at the Presidential Palace in the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi But this came after he had previously voiced surprise at the life sentence handed to Mr Hedges on Wednesday, which came despite his discussions with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed a little over a week earlier. Mr Hedges, originally from Exeter, was arrested at Dubai Airport as he tried to leave the country on May 5. Professor Stuart Corbridge, vice-chancellor of Durham University, said there is 'no reason to believe that Matt was conducting anything other than legitimate academic research'. Mr Hedges was given 30 days to challenge the court ruling, and Ms Tejada has launched a petition on Change.org which has gathered more than 160,000 signatures. How Matthew Hedges is a 'brilliant researcher' and 'man of integrity' Matthew Hedges is a 31-year-old PhD student and is married to Daniela Tejada Matthew Hedges has begun a life jail sentence in the United Arab Emirates after being accused of spying. The Government has said it has seen no evidence to back up this claim, while his family and colleagues have defended him as an academic researching in the Gulf state. But what do we know about Mr Hedges? Originally from Exeter, he is a 31-year-old PhD student at Durham University and is married to Daniela Tejada. She has fought his corner since he was arrested at Dubai airport on May 5, initially on undisclosed charges. The 'brilliant researcher' and 'man of integrity' was visiting solely to perform academic research, she said. He was reported to have been interviewing sources about the country's foreign policy and security strategy. His Durham University profile states that his interests include Middle Eastern politics, the changing nature of war, civil-military relations and tribalism. A statement from academics said he completed a Masters degree in Middle East Studies at Exeter before beginning his PhD at Durham in 2013. His wife has fought his corner since he was arrested, initially on undisclosed charges His thesis was near completion and had been carried out 'in full accordance with Durham University's research and ethics procedures', the joint statement from both institutions said. 'His academic colleagues speak highly of his work, noting both his diligence and level of scholarship, as well as his undoubted passion and care for the Arab Gulf and its people,' it added. It emerged that Mr Hedges was being held on allegations of spying, which were vehemently denied. His family said he was held in solitary confinement with little access to legal advice for almost six months. Ms Tejeda, from Bogota in Colombia, continued to lobby the Government to act and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt raised her husband's plight with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed and foreign minister Abdullah bin Zayed on November 12. But a little over a week later, on November 21, he was sentenced during a five-minute hearing to life in prison, pending an appeal. On hearing the sentence, he 'started shaking' and had to 'double-check' with the Arabic translator that he had understood correctly, said his wife, who was present in the Abu Dhabi court. Mr Hunt said the UK has been presented with 'absolutely no evidence' to support the charge and vowed 'serious diplomatic consequences' if the academic is not freed. Advertisement MARK ALMOND: UAE can buy the world... but they CAN'T buy Britain's silence over unjust jailing of brilliant academic for 'spying' At first glance, the behaviour of the United Arab Emirates over the British so-called spy Matthew Hedges is baffling. The charge of espionage against the Durham University research student appears as grotesque as the life sentence he was given by the court. And what makes this case all the more extraordinary is that the UAE a federation of seven monarchies has long-established friendly relations with this country. Hundreds of thousands of British tourists flock there every year, drawn by the duty-free high-end shopping and the permanent sunshine. Daniela Tejada reads a statement to reporters outside the Foreign Office in London after meeting with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt to discuss her husbands jail sentence Moreover, in a country of just eight million people there are more than 100,000 British expatriates, many of them working in hospitality, medicine, construction and even security. The ties between our nations are mirrored in a host of other ways, including the popularity of the Emirates airline with British travellers, or the regular visits by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York. The infamous quip by former foreign secretary Boris Johnson that London is 'the eighth Emirate' certainly contained an element of truth. Daniela Tejada arriving at Heathrow Airport from the UAE after her husband was jailed That relationship now threatened by the cruel treatment of Matthew Hedges reflects the history of the Emirates, whose geographic position still makes them far more important than their size on the map suggests. Their strategic location in the Middle East, at the heart of Britain's vital trade route to its Empire's key trading centres in Asia, meant the Royal Navy guarded the Gulf ports for a century before oil was discovered making them even more valuable in the twentieth century. The federation gained independence from Britain in 1971, but the intimate connection has remained, especially in security and defence. Apart from purchasing plenty of BAE weapons, around 200 British servicemen and women are permanently based there. The UAE's armed services and security police get equipment and know-how from us, while the Port Zayed is the most visited Royal Navy port in the world. With so many security contacts already in situ, I find the idea that the British government would rely on a PhD student to poke around for the Emiratis' deepest secrets absurd. Indeed, the Foreign Secretary has broken protocol on intelligence matters to state that Matthew Hedges is not an MI6 agent. This strange episode is perhaps more explicable in the context of the UAE's true political nature and its role in the Middle East. The image of the country as a beacon of pro-Western, tolerant and progressive attitudes is an illusion that is sedulously cultivated by its rulers and their spin machine. Al Wathba prison is the notorious Abu Dhabi jail where it is feared Matthew Hedges will be sent after he was sentenced to life in prison for 'spying' in the UAE Yes, it is true that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, who holds the real power in the land, has pioneered many superficial changes to give the UAE a modern image. He has opened up tourism, encouraged foreign investment, diversified from dependency on oil and hosted rock concerts and Formula One. But the reality is that, beyond the soaring skyscrapers and fashionable cultural events, the UAE is still a profoundly reactionary despotism, run by a hereditary elite which refuses to accept political dissent or real democracy. Western values such as freedom of speech or, as Mr Hedges discovered, due process under the law, are wholly absent. In place of pluralism, there is paranoia, with the royal family utterly terrified of losing its authority. Paradoxically, the huge size of the foreign population in the UAE just 8 per cent of residents are Emiratis feeds this climate of brutal institutionalised distrust, where much of the public is viewed with suspicion. As a result, the UAE leaders with the help of the CIA have invested millions of dollars in surveillance technology to keep the citizenry under control. A key target in this crackdown is the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical movement that seeks to replace Middle Eastern monarchies with Islamic republics. The UAE government's intense hostility to the Brotherhood may partly explain why Mr Hedges was targeted, since he was reportedly researching the part played by this organisation in the Arab Spring. 'Exchange of British students with countries like UAE must continue' The exchange of British students with countries like the UAE must continue in order for them to see a functioning democracy, the Universities Minister has said. Sam Gyimah made the comments after British PhD student Matthew Hedges was sentenced to life imprisonment in Abu Dhabi, accused of spying. He described the case as 'incredibly tragic' and voiced his support for the work of the Foreign Office in the matter. Asked whether the longstanding relationships between British and UAE universities can continue in the wake of the sentence, he added: 'We have got to be cautious, but student exchange is one of these things that should always go on. 'I think that, even where you have countries where you might have profound policy disagreements with, one of the issues that can actually help facilitate a change of outlook and ideas is student exchange programmes. 'It worked during the Cold War, I don't see why it can't work now, but that is not in any way to suggest that we approve of what has happened in this case.' Mr Gyimah said student exchange works both ways and provides the UK with the opportunity to share what it has to offer. 'I think that students from those countries coming here and experiencing what it means to live in a fully functioning democracy can only be a good thing,' he said. 'So if you were to boycott these exchange programmes, it is potentially undermining our ability to positively influence what is going on in these countries by getting their future leaders to understand, experience and share the values that we hold dear.' Advertisement Given that the 2011 revolutions in Middle Eastern countries were largely directed against family rule, anything connected with it was bound to raise the hackles of the UAE regime. In the totalitarian Emirates, there is no understanding of Western students being free to choose their own subjects and research them. There is a parallel here with the tragic Jamal Khashoggi, the investigative journalist who was recently murdered by the Saudi Arabian regime at its embassy in Istanbul. The Saudis accused him of being a spy for the Muslim Brotherhood. It is no coincidence that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are close allies. Both ruled by their crown princes, both rich through oil, they are consumed by fears of internal and external threats to their dictatorships. Each is an enemy of Iran, their biggest regional rival, and this fact, too, could also have played its part in the Hedges saga. This year US President Donald Trump scrapped a controversial deal with Iran to restrict its nuclear programme and reinstated tough economic sanctions a move that has been opposed by the British Government and that may have fuelled the UAE's disillusionment with its old friend. More importantly, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been waging a brutal war in Yemen, where the rebels are supporters of Iran. Our Government's recent condemnation of this military campaign, based on both its barbarity and the famine it has caused, has provoked the anger of both Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which claim to be acting in the defence of their own vital national interests. Indeed, the UAE's rulers have proved keen to flex their military muscles, even intervening in the tribal conflict in Libya. They have the wealth and, thanks partly to British weapons and military expertise, the capability to throw their weight around abroad and at home. The case of Mr Hedges could be a further indicator that the UAE will no longer be a compliant ally of the West, refuses to be taken for granted and is going to set its own rules. Mr Hedges's wife, Daniela Tejada, has complained that the Foreign Office has not handled the imprisonment of her husband with sufficient robustness, trusting in Britain's historic connection to the UAE and reluctance to cause any embarrassment. But the UAE, which does not perhaps care as much about Britain as our diplomats believe, had no such hesitations and the personal consequences have been felt all too horribly by the couple. I believe Mr Hedges is the victim of a gross injustice, driven by regional politics and the determination of the Emirates to send a chilling message to dissidents at home and abroad. The crucial question is what will Britain do now? Mr Trump has provided one possible course. In his response to the Khashoggi case, he stated explicitly that however heinous the crime, realpolitik will prevail because Saudi Arabia is such a valuable ally of the US, particularly through its purchase of weaponry and planes. The commercial needs of America will not be undermined by outrage over the murder of a journalist, even one who had made his life in the US. But it would be impossible for Theresa May's Government to follow this line. The public would rightly not tolerate such indifference to one of our own citizens. That kind of surrender to brutality would be intolerable. The right moral course is clear for Mrs May and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt. Their task is made all the more difficult because they are already trying to win the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual-national who has been imprisoned in Iran since 2016. Perhaps Mr Hunt will pull off a diplomatic coup by getting both of them released, but I am not optimistic. The mood has been ugly and paranoid in these Middle Eastern regimes since the Arab Spring, while our influence is in decline. However, the Government must not stop trying. The Emiratis' money can buy many things here, but it should not buy silence about Mr Hedges' unjust fate. President Donald Trump's refusal to point the finger at the Saudi crown prince over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has infuriated Turkey who say he is turning a blind eye. On Tuesday, Trump said he would remain a 'steadfast partner' of Saudi Arabia despite the CIA reportedly assessing Mohammad Bin Salman (MbS) had ordered the hit at the Saudi consulate in Instanbul, Turkey, last month. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu surmised in an an interview with CNN Turk, 'In one sense, Trump is saying "I will turn a blind eye."' Trump doubled down on Thanksgiving Day by saying: 'I hate the crime. I hate what was done. I hate the cover up. I will tell you this - the crown prince hates it more than I do.' Trump speaks from the 'Southern White House' in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, as he told reporters: 'I hate the cover up. I will tell you this - the Crown Prince hates it more than I do.' Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu speaks at a joint news conference in Ankara on Thursday; he told CNN Turk in an interview that he feels Trump is saying 'I will turn a blind eye' Cavusoglu also said the US had not told them of an audio recording regarding Khashoggi's killing. A Turkish daily reported the CIA was in possession of a recording in which the crown prince ordered to 'silence Khashoggi'. Cavusoglu added there would be 'no obstacle' to a meeting between President Tayyip Erdogan and MbS at the upcoming G20 Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Trump continues to back the Saudis who he said were 'investing hundreds of billions of dollars in our country' and keeping oil prices down. Certainly the Saudis have paid billions in weapons contracts to the Americans and Washington would not wish to see them shopping elsewhere. Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince, was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on October 2; Trump said he has listened to a recording of the 'terrible' killing Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and Donald Trump shake hands at a meeting in Riyadh in May 2017 'Frankly,' he continued, 'if we went by this standard, we wouldn't be able to have anybody who's an ally, because look at what happens all over the world.' Asked by reporters who was to blame, Trump said: 'Maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a vicious place.' Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner have cultivated deep personal relationships with the crown prince. This week the President has faced growing backlash for his comments on Khashoggi's death from both sides of the House. A bipartisan group of senators wrote to Trump to implore him to open an investigation into the killing of the Washington Post columnist. Republican senator Rand Paul tweeted on Tuesday: 'I'm pretty sure this statement is Saudi Arabia First, not America First.' In an interview with Fox News on Sunday Trump said he had been advised not to listen to a recording of the murder, confirming it was a 'suffering tape' and it was 'terrible.' Callum Chant outside Minshull Street Crown Court where he admitted sexual activity with a girl aged under 15 and child abduction A teenager has been ordered to sign the Sex Offender Register after he was caught canoodling with a 14-year old schoolgirl as they watched a movie together at the cinema. Callum Chant, 19, and the youngster were sat together side-by-side in one of the rows and during the film were seen to close in on each other as if they were about to kiss. Chant, of Bury, Greater Manchester, also touched the girl's leg and bottom over her clothing before he was spotted by her stepfather and the girl's mother who turned up unexpectedly to check on them. The mother later obtained CCTV from the cinema in Bury, which showed Chant and her daughter 'sat next to each other and their heads moving close to each other' a court heard. Chant later claimed he and the girl had agreed to go with friends to watch the film but it is thought the group separated leaving them alone together. He was arrested and issued with a Child Abduction Warning notice urging him to stay away from younger girls. But he was detained again just three months later after another girl aged 15 was found at his flat. At Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester Chant, who was 18 at the time of the offences, admitted sexual activity with a girl aged under 15 and child abduction and was ordered to sign the Sex Offender Register for five years. He was also made subject a two year community order and abide by a fourth month curfew from 7pm-7am. Both girls refused to make a statement to police. The cinema trip occurred on February 24 this year after Chant asked the girl to go on a date with him. Chant (pictured) and the girl were sat together side-by-side in one of the rows and during the film were seen to close in on each other as if they were about to kiss, the court heard Prosecutor Katherine Johnson said: 'That day the 14 year old's mother received a telephone call saying she was going to the cinema with the defendant. Her mother didn't know him but was told he was 18. 'She and her partner went to the cinema, and her partner went in to find the girl. He saw her there with him and they were sat close together. She was shocked to see him, and the partner asked Chant if he knew she was 14. 'The defendant replied saying 'yes' and that they were just friends. The two said they had been with other friends who left the cinema earlier. The partner then told the girl to leave with him which she did.' Ms Johnson said her mother than made enquiries with the cinema to see CCTV of the pair. It showed them say next to each other and their heads moving close to each other. She added: 'They denied that they kissed at all, but there was some touching of her bottom shown on CCTV over clothes and on her leg. 'He was placed under a child abduction warning notice on 13th March but he said they were friends and wanted to meet up. He did accept he had touched her bottom on the day he was interviewed. 'On May 9 the other girl had been staying with her grandma but she didn't return home and her grandma learned she had gone to the defendant's flat. The girl refused to let her grandma in when she turned up, and did this for an hour. 'She managed to get in and the girl was in the flat with Chant and another male. Her grandma got in and the young persons tried to prevent her to get in the living room. 'On 13th May the girl had not returned home again and was in fact reported missing at 10pm. Her grandma sent a taxi to her and asked her to come back home with the defendant and said she wished to meet him, to trick her to come home. 'They turned up and her grandma spoke to him and he denied being in a relationship with her, but the police attended and he was arrested in the early hours of 14th. 'He was interviewed in relation to both offences he was in the company of the girl. On 9th he had gone to the flat so his friend could charge his phone. On 13th he met up with her and they went for a Chinese with their friend. 'He believed the warning notice had been lifted. Being out on that time put him in breach of bail as it was past his curfew time anyway. He was not supposed to have any unsupervised contact with anyone under 16. Both girls refused to make a statement.' Defending lawyer Daniel Colder said his client 'recognises these are serious offences' but said he had been rejected by friends his own age because of his physical appearance. Sentencing Judge Mark Savill told Chant: 'There is nothing technical about these offences. She was a child and it was sexual activity and you have to understand the seriousness of it. 'It has been evaluated that you do not pose as high risk of immediate harm, you are genuinely remorseful and are not someone with an interest in underage girls. But if you are foolish enough to breach this court order you will be back before me. You should consider yourself extremely lucky.' The James Bond-style perfume bottle Russian hoods used to carry novichok into Britain contained enough nerve agent to kill 4,000, police revealed today. Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov's bungled attempt to murder Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in March could have caused 'significant loss of life' Four months after the first assassination bid, Dawn Sturgess, 44, died after she and partner Charlie Rowley, 45, found the discarded Nina Ricci bottle. Ms Sturgess is said to have sprayed it on her wrist believing it was genuine perfume at Mr Rowley's home in in Amesbury - Mr Rowley survived. A specially made model of the counterfeit 'Nina Ricci' perfume bottle that carried enough the novichok to kill 4,000 The perfume bottle full of Novichok (left), which Russian agents Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov (right) are accused of using in the attack, could have killed up to 4,000 people Deputy Assistant Commissioner Dean Haydon said the significant amount of novichok and the way it was applied was completely reckless. He said: When we found it, there was a significant amount of novichok contained within the bottle. When asked how many people it could have killed, he told BBCs Panorama: Its difficult to say, you know, possibly into the thousands. The amount that was in the bottle and the way it was applied to the Skripals home address was completely reckless. His probe named Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov as suspects. They have since been unmasked as officers with Russias military intelligence service. Boshirov is Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, while Petrov is Alexander Mishkin, a military doctor. They smuggled the novichok into the UK disguised as a sample bottle of Nina Ricci Premier Jour perfume. Counter-terrorism sources last night confirmed the bottle could have killed as many as 4,000. Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by the chemical agent novichok in Salisbury in March Dawn Sturgess, left, who died following exposure to the nerve agent, and her partner Charlie Rowley, right The Russians spent a fortune on the tiny James Bond-inspired perfume bottle used to carry novichok including developing new technology to ensure it wasn't a suicide mission for their agents, experts revealed. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, one of Britain's top chemical weapons experts, says the fake sample vial of Nina Ricci Premier Jour could only have been produced by Putin's top scientists in their most sophisticated and top secret lab. He told MailOnline: 'They needed to ensure that the men carrying out the attack did not kill themselves while doing it. It would be deeply embarrassing if their agents died on foreign soil'. The two assassins, using the aliases Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, carried the bottle of Novichok into the UK unhindered before spraying it on Sergei Skripal's front door in suburban Salisbury in March. Experts believe the botched hit came after up to three months of development and testing probably sanctioned at the highest levels of the Russian state. The lab, branded 'Q-ski' after the research and development division of the British Secret Service in James Bond, made the bottle and 'one-way' applicator nozzle so it was impossible for novichok to leak out in transit. It was also made of special toughened glass, plastic or ceramic sure not to smash, crack or degrade while carrying one of the world deadliest weapons. Alexander Petrov (pictured right) has now been revealed as Dr Alexander Mishkin. Ruslan Boshirov (pictured left) was revealed two weeks ago as Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga The BBC is set to have splashed out around 3million by the end of the financial year in order to promote a new app to young listeners and could spend a further 7.65million by next year. The broadcaster has described the Sounds app as its biggest launch since the iPlayer and has spent significant sums in order to promote the audio app to the younger generation. In order to bolster downloads and the popularity of the app, licence-fee money has been used to fund stunts such as transforming the London Eye to the 'London Ear', as well as giving free headphones to people who have agreed to download the app in shopping centres and railway stations. The new BBC Sounds app hosts original content from across the BBC including drama and music Well known artists such as Olly Murs have come out in support of the new app, as well as the BBC's very own Greg James. The Sounds app is home to original BBC podcasts, music and radio shows and allows users to create a personalised experience, as it allows you to collate your own music and podcast libraries. The drive comes as the BBC prepares to ready itself for the next generation of consumers. Earlier this year OFCOM had penned a letter to director general of the BBC Tony Hall, in order to urge the broadcaster to expand its remit when it comes to young people. Documents obtained by The Times have revealed that the broadcaster has been burning through a hefty 3million figure to promote the app, with possible plans to spend a further 7.65million in the coming year. In order to promote the new app the BBC had turned the London Eye into the 'London Ear' and had invited celebrities such as Olly Murrs (right) to attend the event However, the BBC's budget has not yet been finalised and these figures could fluctuate. A spokesperson for the BBC said: 'The Charter and OFCOM have challenged the BBC to do more for younger audiences and BBC Sounds is part of that drive. 'Because those audiences aren't consuming the BBC as much as older audiences we have to use other means to reach them. 'This is the biggest product launch we've done in ten years and like any media organisation we're using advertising to tell audiences about it because the more people who use it the better value it delivers to licence fee payers. BBC Sounds is free to use and our campaign is working as we're already seeing millions of plays on the platform every week.' As part of the campaign, the broadcaster has also pushed out adverts on billboards and in cinemas as well as purchasing promotional posts on social media and paying 'influencers' to promote the app. In the 48 hours after the launch of the app, the BBC was said to have spent around 630,000 on marketing, with a further 1.44million being set aside to 'build understanding' of the app in the run up to Christmas. 930,000 has also been pledged in order to 'drive habit' until March. The BBC radio iPlayer app is set to be phased out and replaced by the new Sounds app By the end of the five months the BBC expects the campaign to have reached 96 percent of Britons, with each of them having heard of the app around 17 times. According to the Times, many BBC staff are said to be concerned about the sums spent promoting Sounds, especially as other departments are being cut such as news, which is said to be under pressure to save 80million in the next four years. How the BBC racked up its 10m bill The broadcaster is thought to have spent around 10million of license fee money on the new app. Documents revealed by The Times show a full break down of the costs. Phase 1: Nov 1-2 Budget: 630,000 Purpose: 'Establish Fame' Method: Reach 500,000 people with stunt to transform London Eye into 'London Ear'. Phase 2: Nov 3-Dec 24 Budget: 1.44m Purpose: 'Build Understanding' Method: Billboards and ads in cinemas and on social media help reach 47.86 million people. Phase 3: Dec 25-March 31 Budget: 930,000 Purpose: 'Drive Habit' Method: Ads continue, plus an influencer-led digital campaign intended to reach 8 million. Phase 4: April 2019-April 2020 Option one: Spend 3 million, including 1.5 million for ads on social media. Option two: 7.65 million, including 1.7 million for social media ads. Advertisement A source said: 'We all know the BBC has to move with the times, but should spending millions on a rebranding exercise really be a priority? It doesn't seem like a wise use of licence fee money.' Sounds takes over from iPlayer Radio, as the BBC continues to dive into the podcast revolution. The iPlayer Radio app will soon be no more and was only used by 3 percent of under 35s each week. Alexander George (pictured), 77 and from Bristol, has been jailed for two-and-a-half years and banned from acting as a company director for nine years following his conviction at the Old Bailey yesterday An elderly businessman who made up to 5million after grooming a 'very naive' couple into supplying prohibited fighter jet parts for Iran's military has been jailed for 30 months. Alexander George, 77, recruited Paul Attwater, 65, and wife Iris, 66, to smuggle prohibited aircraft parts to him in Malaysia from their company Pairs Aviation, based in Crawley, West Sussex. His web of deceit involved sourcing parts from Pairs Aviation which were then exported by the Attwaters via a Dutch shipping company and on to Iran through a network of companies in the Far East. The couple were handed suspended sentences last month after Mr Attwater insisted he had no idea the superficially innocuous nuts and bolts George was exporting had a nefarious military application. George was so concerned about his activities coming under investigation that he trawled the internet in an effort to find out who was wanted by the FBI, CIA and Interpol for flogging aircraft parts to Iran. He held substantial contracts to source and supply Iranian aviation firms with parts and components for planes and helicopters through companies he owned in Malaysia and Dubai. The parts he sent in 60 shipments included Russian MiG and US F4 Phantom components. Paul Attwater, 65, and wife Iris, 66, were handed suspended sentences after Mr Attwater insisted he had no idea the superficially innocuous nuts and bolts George was exporting had a nefarious military application Shipments such as these were found to be in violation of weapons of mass destruction controls, over fears they could have been used in Irans WMD programme. The programme has come under increasing scrutiny following the cessation of the Iran nuclear deal by President Trump. George was questioned by HMRC officers at Heathrow Airport in August and December 2010 and denied he was dealing in aircraft parts at all. He boldly told officers his trade was in wheelbarrows, goggles and gloves for the construction industry. The Old Bailey heard that the Attwaters were aware of the need for a licence to export some of their products after boarder officials impounded their goods. But the couple continued to deal with George, sending him the same parts that had been returned by Customs via a forwarding house in the Netherlands. They claimed they were tricked by George and only wanted a bit of extra cash to pay for their summer holidays and a Crawley Town season ticket. Judge Michael Grieve, QC, sentenced the Attwaters to six months jail suspended for 12 month last month and said: The fact that you were, in effect, groomed by Mr George I accept - he deceived you. I do not, for one moment, think that either of you are bad people. You have, in my view, been very, very naive. The Attawaters (pictured outside Southwark Crown Court) were jailed last month, where Mr Attawater admitted being knowingly concerned in the exportation of goods with intent to evade prohibition or restriction. While Mrs Attwater, also of Ketley, Shropshire, denied but was convicted of the charge Sending George straight to prison, he told him he had been entirely responsible for the Attwaters becoming involved in the scheme. Unlike you, they could not see how innocuous objects like nuts and bolts could be, or would be, put to nefarious use in Iran, the judge said. You, by contrast, knew that that was precisely why your customers in Iran wanted them. Judge Grieve added that the George, unlike the Attwaters, knew full well the superficially innocuous items with no obvious military use were in fact dual-purpose goods. The court heard George fought the five-week trial tooth and nail but was ultimately convicted in just two hours in light of the overwhelming evidence against him. The judge said in 2009, Customs officials blocked the exports of some of the goods which required a licence due to concerns about the production of weapons of mass destruction in Iran. He added that although the export controls might be confusing, they are there for a very good reason'. That ultimate risk is one with potentially very serious humanitarian consequences. Such a consequence included use against others in nuclear weapons. Defending George, Dean Armstrong QC, said: There is every possibility, and I do not say this to be over-dramatic but simply to point out the obvious possibility, that any sentence of imprisonment could be a death sentence for him because of his age and circumstances. He told the court how George would find prison a harder task due to various medical conditions while his wife would also suffer the loss of his assistance around the house. George Hepburne-Scott, defending Mr Attwater, said: He genuinely did not believe that these items could have a military application...These were nuts and bolts. He has also been completely open with the authorities. He has been extremely naive. HM Revenue and Customs helped lead an investigation into George and the Attawaters. Speaking after George's conviction at the Old Bailey (pictured), Simon York, Director, Fraud Investigation Service, HMRC, said: 'These three sold banned items that ended up in Iran. They didnt care what these parts might be used for, as long as they got paid' Mr Attwater agreed to sign a basis of plea prior to his formal guilty plea, in which he said: I did not know or believe that goods or aircraft components would be shipped to Iran. I did not think there was even the remotest opportunity of these good ending up in a nuclear weapons program. George, of Long Ashton, Bristol, denied two counts of being knowingly concerned in the supply or delivery of controlled goods to an embargoed destination but was found guilty by a jury. He was jailed for two-and-a-half years and banned from acting as a company director for nine years. Mr Attwater had admitted being knowingly concerned in the exportation of goods with intent to evade prohibition or restriction Mrs Attwater, also of Ketley, Shropshire, denied but was convicted of the charge. They were both sentenced to six months jail suspended for 12 months and barred from being company directors for the next six years. Proceedings against Georges wife, Ruth, 74, were earlier dropped after the judge ruled she had no case to answer. Simon York, Director, Fraud Investigation Service, HMRC, said: These three sold banned items that ended up in Iran. They didnt care what these parts might be used for, as long as they got paid. This was a calculated and cynical attempt to undermine strict trade embargoes and internationally agreed controls. They knew the rules and weaved increasingly elaborate plans to stay under the radar. This case, and these sentences, send a clear warning to others that if you try and shift illegal goods to sanctioned and embargoed countries - we will catch you and you will face justice. Luke Dockwray, Senior Specialist Prosecutor at the Crown Prosecution Service, added: Alex George, Paul Attwater and Iris Attwater sold aircraft components to countries and customers they knew required a licence from the government. Despite being warned the goods they were exporting were at risk of being used in a Weapons of Mass Destruction programme, the defendants introduced new corporate entities into the trading chain to disguise the destination of the sales, in order to continue their supply. The CPS worked closely with HMRC to present the complex trading chains to the jury to demonstrate the criminal activity of these defendants. A Sydney terrorist sentenced to death in Iraq has reportedly claimed he never fought Iraqi forces and only travelled overseas to volunteer as a nurse. Ahmed Merhi, 27, was convicted for being a member of Islamic State in the Central Criminal Court in Baghdad and was sentenced to death by hanging on Thursday. But Merhi, who lost a leg in an air strike in 2016, has claimed he travelled to Syria for volunteer work, the Daily Telegraph reported. The former Granville Boys High School student, from Sydney's west, travelled to Syria in 2014 or 2015. Sydney terrorist Ahmed Merhi (pictured) who has been sentenced to death in Iraq is being held in a crammed prison cell He has pleaded for Australia to intervene and free him from his sentence, despite turning his back on the country. The 27-year-old told News Corp he was based in Tel Abyadh, in northern Syria, to assist with aid work. The town never fell to Islamic State. In court, Merhi was reportedly asked whether he joined Islamic State and he said: 'I never joined'. 'I never fought Iraqi forces, and the first time I saw them was then (sic.) the Americans handed me to them,' he said. Merhi was arrested by Kurdish soldiers in December 2017 when he was trying to escape to Turkey. He was given to American troops who took him across the boarder and passed him on to Iraqi authorities. Merhi, 27, was convicted for being a member of Islamic State in the Central Criminal Court in Baghdad and was sentenced to death by hanging on Thursday night Merhi's lawyers claimed he was working for NGO Syria Charity International but the organisation is difficult to find on an English-based search online. The former Sydney man told News Corp about his dire living conditions as he remains locked up in prison in Baghdad. He shares a three metre by eight metre cell with 14 other criminals. Merhi is typically fed a small plate of rice each day, some dates syrup and a small portion of jam four times a week. He has complained about pain from his leg injury but there are claims he has not been given medicine to cope with the injury. After enquiring with the Australian Embassy to assist with obtaining medicine, his request was declined. Merhi's lawyers asked the Australian Embassy to pay for some of his legal expenses which was swiftly denied by officials in Sydney. Born into a Lebanese family at Westmead Hospital in Sydney (pictured), Mehri finished school in year ten and started a job as a builder's labourer He has, however, been visited by a consular official from the Australian Embassy based in Baghdad. Born into a Lebanese family at Westmead Hospital in Sydney, Mehri finished school in year ten and started a job as a builder's labourer. In his early 20s he was unemployed and became a drug-taking petty criminal. In 2014, he developed an interest in extremist groups and began funneling money to the group. Merhi travelled to Syria after telling his family he would complete the pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the pillars of Islam. Instead of arriving in Saudi Arabia for the Hajj, he ventured to warn-torn Syria and ignored family pleas to come home. In 2014, Merhi developed an interest in extremist groups and began funneling money to the group before travelling to war-torn Syria (stock image) Merhi told News Corp he would like to come back to Australia and said Iraq had no right to prosecute him as there was no justice and no evidence or witnesses. 'I'm a good person,' he said. The high profile Australian Islamic State supporter previously shared numerous photos to his social media accounts displaying weaponry and dressed in military uniform. Merhi compared taking photos with guns to people who take photos with Ferraris - arguing it doesn't mean you own them. In another comparison Merhi said taking a photo with a model didn't mean it is your wife. Merhi was arrested alongside his cousin Tarek Khayat who is accused by Lebanese and Australian authorities of plotting to bring down an Etihad Airways flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi. Merhi was arrested by Kurdish soldiers in December 2017 when he was trying to escape to Turkey (stock image) Khayat, 46, admitted to being a financial officer for the terror group Islamic State in Raqqa, Syria, and was ordered to face death by hanging. Australian police allege Merhi was involved with extremists in Australia who were involved in a number of terror plots. This included the murder of police accountant Curtis Cheng who was shot dead after he left work in Parramatta, Sydney, by a 15-year-old. The teenager, Farhad Mohamad Jabar, was shot by police. Merhi said his cousin's case was starting from scratch following investigation from the appeals court and hoped the same would happen with his case. Cutting-edge augmented reality and artificial intelligence which will modernise the capability of combat systems on warships has today been unveiled. The 20m investment by BAE systems will see technology developed to help Royal Navy personnel to 'respond more readily to evolving threats.' The technology includes Augmented Reality (AR) glasses which will allow an Officer of the Watch, who is responsible for the ship's safety, to work outside of the operations room and still be able to see tactical situation data and other vital information from anywhere on the ship. The 20m investment by BAE systems will see technology developed to help Royal Navy personnel to 'respond more readily to evolving threats' Augmented Reality Part of the investment will see the integration of AR into the bridges of naval ships, through products such as wearable AR glasses. This will allow an Officer of the Watch, who is responsible for the ships safety, to work outside of the operations room and still be able to see tactical situation data and other vital information from anywhere on the ship. This ability could result in information such as the location of friendly vessels or other data being overlaid onto a real world view, giving crews enhanced situational awareness. The use of augmented reality would allow the officer to spend more time maintaining a heads-up visual lookout without the need to refer to a console or rely on clarifications from his crew instead, taking control of situations with increased effectiveness and adaptability. Source: BAE Advertisement Frank Cotton, Head of Technology, Combat Systems, BAE Systems, said: 'These technologies have the potential to transform maritime warfare and greatly increase the situational awareness and efficiency of crews on board Royal Navy ships. 'Our combat systems expertise and investment in future technologies will ensure we continue to deliver innovative capabilities to navies.' Part of the investment will see the integration of AR into the bridges of naval ships, through products such as wearable AR glasses. They would allow an Officer of the Watch to spend more time maintaining a heads-up visual lookout without the need to refer to a console or rely on clarifications from his crew Engineers are also implementing artificial intelligence aids into combat systems, providing crew with the most important information as well as recommended courses of action. BAE says the technology will give crews the information they need to track, analyse and respond to threats in combat, as well as coordinating resources in other operations including intelligence gathering and disaster relief. BAE Systems has developed leading combat systems expertise for more than 30 years and its technologies are used across the Royal Navys surface fleet Artificial intelligence Engineers are also implementing artificial intelligence aids into combat systems, allowing their users to quickly process data and reach crucial decisions faster, providing a vital advantage in combat. Artificial intelligence aids will provide crew with the most important information as well as recommended courses of action. BAE Systems has developed leading combat systems expertise for more than 30 years and its technologies are used across the Royal Navys surface fleet. These essential systems give crews the information they need to track, analyse and respond to threats in combat, as well as coordinating resources in other operations including intelligence gathering and disaster relief. Source: BAE Advertisement This comes at the Ministry of Defence said the Royal Navy will be also able to provide three times the protection to Britain's fishing fleet post-Brexit after a decision to axe three ships was reversed. HMS Tyne, HMS Mersey and HMS Severn, which currently support the Fishery Protection Squadron, were in the process of being decommissioned. But, speaking during a visit to Tyneside, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said the Batch 1 Offshore Patrols Vessels (OPVs) will be retained for at least the next two years in a move the Ministry of Defence said would 'bolster the UK's ability to protect our fishing fleet as well as our shores'. It said the Royal Navy currently provided around 200 days of fishery protection a year and the announcement meant the capacity would increase to 600 days a year if needed. Each ship will operate from its home city - Newcastle, Liverpool and Cardiff - to boost rapid response in British waters. The ships have also been used in anti-smuggling and counter-terrorism work, and frequently escorted foreign vessels, including those from Russia, through the English Channel. Part of the investment will see the integration of AR into the bridges of naval ships, through products such as wearable AR glasses (similar to the ones pictured) This graphic from BAE systems shows how a future operations room could look Speaking on board HMS Tyne, Mr Williamson said: 'Britain's patrol vessels are essential to protecting our waters, our fisheries and our national security. 'Safeguarding the future of these three ships in the Royal Navy will ensure we can respond quickly to incidents at any time, further protecting our waters as we exit the EU. 'By forward-operating these ships from their affiliated locations across the country, including the Tyne, it will not only allow them to react quickly, but also strengthen the bonds between the Royal Navy and local communities.' Last month HMS Tyne monitored a Russian frigate as it passed through the English Channel and in 2017 HMS Mersey returned from a 48,000-mile deployment which included a 12 million drugs bust off Nicaragua. The announcement came during the Defence Secretary's visit to Newcastle, where he also revealed the name of the fifth frigate in Britain's Type 26 class of anti-submarine warships as HMS Newcastle. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson on board HMS Tyne where he announced the future of HMS Tyne, HMS Mersey and HMS Severn has been secured River Class patrol vessels of the Fishery Protection Squadron, HMS Severn, HMS Tyne and HMS Mersey exercising off the coast of Cornwall. The Royal Navy will be able to provide three times the protection to Britain's fishing fleet post-Brexit after a decision to axe the three ships was reversed Mr Williamson said: 'I am also delighted to be able to continue to strengthen the bond to Tyneside today, by announcing one of Britain's future world-beating Type 26 warships will be called HMS Newcastle.' It will be built on the Clyde and will protect the UK's nuclear deterrent and aircraft carriers. HMS Newcastle will also be joined by her sister ship HMS Sheffield, whose name was announced by Defence Minister Stuart Andrew. Asked if the announcement was a sign to the rest of Europe, pro-Brexit Mr Williamson said: 'It's a very clear message that Britain is an incredibly ambitious nation and our armed forces are incredibly ambitious. 'We're going to be protecting our interests - that's why we have the patrol vessels - but also we want to be expanding our interests and expanding our global presence. 'That's why we're going from three to eight. 'You couldn't have a more clear and significant increase.' 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 Advertisement Mink, foxes and raccoon dogs are forced to tear each other to pieces as they suffer appalling conditions in Finnish fur farms. An investigation by the Humane Society International (HSI) was launched and they have released shocking footage and images of the conditions the animals face to coincide with International Fur-Free Friday. The footage reveals animals are forced into cannibalism and kept in tiny cages with raw wounds festering. The miserable foxes, mink and raccoon dogs suffer with deformed feet, diseased eyes and open lacerations across their bodies. Scroll down for video A fox has had an ear ripped off and suffers from red eyes as it lives in a cramped cage inside a Finnish fur farm; the Humane Society International went to Finland to investigate two certified fur farms and took these harrowing images Two of the animals fight in their tiny cage; the conditions the animals live in, not only damages their physical health, but also their mental health and they are forced to become more aggressive A gorgeous black fox - one of the rarest breeds in the UK - is caged in a Finnish fur farm, no doubt his black coat will fetch a premium from overseas buyers Raccoon dogs are packed tightly into their prisons to maximize efficiency and profit; since 2003 the UK has imported 14 million worth of fur from Finland Fur farming confines animals for all their lives before they are harvested for the coat on their back - mink are killed by gassing and foxes and raccoon dogs are killed by anal electrocution. Veterinary professor, Alastair MacMillan, looked at the footage and said it 'shows the toll that the continued isolation and confinement is having on these animals, many are showing signs of severe physical and psychological distress. 'Several of the mink and foxes have open, infected wounds and several foxes have grossly diseased eyes which will be extremely painful. 'If this is the best the fur industry can offer animals, no wonder so many designers, retailers and now cities no longer want anything to do with it.' Two mink can be seen with injuries, the one on the left with an open wound on its nose and the one on the right with blood and reddening on its face; he may have come out the better on this occasion as the helpless animals attack each other A fox curiously approaches the camera, it appears to be nervous and timid around the people; this could be an indication of the treatment he has suffered at the hands of his owners In the UK fur farming has been banned since 2000 but Britain continues to import fur from a variety of species including foxes, rabbits, mink, coyotes, raccoon dogs and chinchillas. The charity wants Britain's Environment Secretary Michael Gove to 'stop his double standard' and stop importing furs. The UK director of the Humane Society, Claire Bass, was so shocked she staged a protest by locking herself in a cage yesterday for 24 hours outside the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in London. A UK ban would follow in the footsteps of similar action in West Hollywood, Berkley and San Francisco. The footage taken by HSI showed two fur farms where thousands of mink, foxes and raccoon dogs are being raised for fur. The fox on the left appears to have a sore wound to its right flank as it bows in submission to another fox who is about to take a bite into the top of its head The mink on the left's eye is closed and looks very raw with blood and pus seeping out, while the rear of a mink can be seen on the right with its fur torn off and packed with dirt that has got stuck to the blood Each of the fur farms was certified by the fur industry as being 'high welfare', despite the harrowing pictures. Since the UK's ban took effect in 2003, they have imported nearly 700 million of fur, including 14 million worth from Finland. Finnish farms are the biggest producers of fox fur in Europe where around 2.5 million foxes are reared and electrocuted every year for the global fur trade. Other exporters include Italy, France, Poland, China and Russia where the conditions on fur farms are as bad or even worse. Ms Bass said: 'Seeing first hand these animals mentally broken on fur farms and even driven to cannibalism has been utterly heart-breaking. A raccoon dog appears to be obese as the animals are not cared for properly and lead a poor quality of life, nothing like they should as wild animals A white fox, a breed which we do not have in the UK, looks frightened as a camera lens it pressed up against the wire of its cage Another white fox has its tail wrapped through the fence and at its base the tail has become detached partly to reveal a bloody open wound 'In their tiny barren cages these animals have zero quality of life, they merely exist as shadows of the wild animals they should be. 'It's sickening that the fur trade still attempts to justify this blatant animal suffering, and we hope that our investigation will encourage designers still using this fur to see through the travesty of so-called "high welfare fur."' A Finnish animal right activist, Oikeutta Elaimille, who accompanied HSI on the fur farm visits, said: 'Tragically what we saw on these farms is far from unusual. A wider angle of mink in their cages shows the tiny space they are confined to; a venerinary professor, Alistair MacMillan said: 'If this is the best the fur industry can offer animals, no wonder so many designers, retailers and now cities no longer want anything to do with it' A disturbing gash can be seen in the side of this fox's abdomen as a small toy provided for them to gnaw on has not sufficed for one of his vicious neighbors A younger white fox has suffered catastrophic wounding to its left eye which is one of a number of animals who suffers from blindness due to the appalling conditions Two mink lie down in their horrible cage, with their feet hanging through the wire which is covered in detritus and flecks of fur 'I have visited more than one hundred fur farms and the suffering of the animals has been obvious in every single trip. 'More and more countries are banning fur farming and the Finnish government's support for it is looking increasingly isolated and outdated.' In July, the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Select Committee published a report on its inquiry into the UK fur trade, including recommending that the government holds a public consultation on banning the sale of animal fur in the UK. Finland's ProFur director of communications said earlier this year: 'Fur industry is part of the Finnish bio-economy and circular economy. 'It brings 400 - 500 million euros annual export incomes especially to rural areas. It is traditional, responsible and constantly developing. I want to be part of making fur industry more transparent to the general public.' Johanna Korpela, a veterinarian for the Finnish Fur Breeders Association, said today: 'The symptoms that some animals had in photos are regrettable and everything has been done in daily care routines to prevent such. But as in all animal farming, there will be the rare occasion when sicknesses or wounds etc can occur. 'Although responsible fur farmers are doing their best, it is possible that some of the thousands of production animals can suddenly fall ill. Four dead animals out of the 12,000 animals on the mink farm on the date of the secret filming equals 0.033% mortality, which is below the typical figures in the production animal sector.' A statement from the organisation says that minks become distressed by intruders and torches and may become aggressive towards each other, adding that sudden eye infections or wounds can also occur between care and feeding rounds despite careful animal husbandry. 'Both of the farms involved have valid Finnish Standards Fox/Mink/Finnraccoon certification and both farms have been inspected according to this certification programme,' the statement reads. 'Official veterinarians and ProFurs own veterinarians have inspected both farms. A municipal veterinarian visited the second shed area on the farm in Southern Ostrobothnia on the day of the intrusion, on 2 October, and the farm at Ostrobothnia on 5 October, as a separate request due to the intrusion. 'The farms received no complaints. There are more than 12,000 minks on the farm in Ostrobothnia and 2,000 foxes and Finnraccoons on the farm in Southern Ostrobothnia.' A recent report by the Daily Mail found that many UK shops, including TK Maxx and Amazon were selling real fur - such as fox and raccoon dog - as faux-fur. Thousands of Amazon workers are today staging demonstrations in protest against the 'inhuman conditions' people work under at the company's warehouses. Strikes and demonstrations will hit Germany, Italy, Spain, and the retail giant's warehouses in Rugeley, Swansea, Peterborough, Milton Keynes and Warrington. They are staging protests on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, arguing: 'Next-day delivery should not mean a lifetime of pain for Amazon workers.' A representative from GMB, the union for Amazon workers, stages a protest outside the Amazon Swansea fulfillment centre at Ffordd in Swansea, Wales Members of the GMB union protest outside the Amazon offices in Milton Keynes Amazon reportedly called the Spanish National Police to break the strike in San Fernando de Henares WHY ARE AMAZON WORKERS PROTESTING? An investigation by GMB - the union for Amazon workers - earlier this year revealed ambulances were called out to Amazon warehouses 600 times during the past three financial years. One of the retail giant's 'fulfilment centres,' the 1,500-worker Rugeley warehouse, was recently labelled 'one of the most dangerous places to work in Britain.' Separate figures by GMB revealed a total of 602 reports have been made from Amazon warehouses to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). GMB members working in Amazon warehouses also reported working in constant agony, not having time to go to the toilet and a heavily pregnant woman being forced to work standing. Workers are protesting Amazon's 'dangerous, high-pressure work culture and its aggressive anti-union actions.' The strikes could affect delivery across Europe in key countries. After the United States, Germany and the UK are Amazon's second and third biggest markets, respectively. Advertisement GMB general secretary Tim Roache said: 'We're standing up and saying enough is enough. 'You'd think making the workplace safer so people aren't carted out of the warehouse in an ambulance is in everyone's interest, but Amazon seemingly have no will to get round the table with us. 'Working people and the communities Amazon operates in deserve better than this. That's what we're campaigning for.' Christy Hoffman, General Secretary of UNI Global Union added: 'Amazon's refusal to negotiate with unions is not only a violation of workers' rights, it is dangerous. 'By not addressing workers concerns, hazards remain, and the injuries continue. 'Next-day delivery should not mean a lifetime of pain for Amazon workers.' One Amazon UK worker said: 'I have repetitive strain, and spondylosis with arthritis. 'The work is dehumanising, you are a number not a person. 'If you have health issues, the Amazon way is to pay you off and replace you with temporary workers with less terms and conditions.' Andreja Schmidtkunz, a German Amazon worker and ver.di member said: 'I've seen too many people starting healthy and now having their second or third surgery already. 'You start at the company healthy and leave it as a broken human.' Workes demonstrating outside the Amazon Swansea fulfillment centre at Ffordd this morning Workers wore hoodies emblazoned with slogans stating 'We are not robots' in Milton Keynes The protests come as Brits are expected to spend 13.4 million per minute this Cyber Weekend, as hundreds of stores, including Amazon, slash prices. Shoppers are expected to spend a massive 8.29 billion over the four-day sales weekend - up six per cent on last year. Staff at Amazon have been busy picking and packing in their warehouses as they fulfil millions of Black Friday deals. Workers at the Hemel Hempstead fulfilment centre in Hertfordshire have been working round the clock to send out bargains, snapped up by Brits in Amazon's 10 days of Black Friday deals, which ends on Sunday. Amazon has been offering more deals than ever before on thousands of Christmas must-haves. The website has had new Deals of the Day every day, offering lower rates on Amazon devices, electronics, toys, fashion, sports and beauty. There have also been thousands of 'Lightning Deals' - products available at a discount, in limited quantities, for a short period of time - with new deals becoming available as often as every five minutes. Workers arrive as GMB, the union for Amazon workers, stages a protest over what it claims are 'inhuman conditions' in Wales Workers are protesting Amazon's 'dangerous, high-pressure work culture and its aggressive anti-union actions.' Pictured, a protester in Swansea Amazon Spain said around 90 percent of workers at a logistics depot in near Madrid joined the walkout Friday. Only two people were at the loading bay, spokesman Douglas Harper said. However, he said Amazon had diverted cargo deliveries to its other 22 depots in the country. Amazon reportedly called the Spanish National Police to break the strike in San Fernando de Henares. Fiorenzo Molinari, the local FILCAMS CGIL secretary in Piacenza, added: 'Amazon has not made worker safety a top priority. 'To us, it seems like the company only pretends to care. Our warnings about unsafe conditions often go ignored, and our concerns about our jobs get deflected.' Placards joking Amazon had won an anti-social behavioural order could be seen in Milton Keynes today Christy Hoffman, General Secretary of UNI Global Union said: 'Amazon's refusal to negotiate with unions is not only a violation of workers' rights, it is dangerous.' Pictured , the Swansea warehouse Police guard the entrance as workers stand outside the main Amazon Logistics Centre where goods are stored for distribution on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain today The company's request was denied, as labour relations does not fall within the police's purview and Spanish legislation protects the right to strike. When asked about the reasons why he is striking, Spanish Amazon worker Kevin Douglas said: 'I've been working long hours, getting home late, tired, and under a lot of stress. We do morning shifts, then evening and night shifts. 'Now we have to work six days in a row, but the company now wants to make that seven. At least some of us used to have one day off a week. 'Most of my friends and family work from Monday to Friday, so I never get to spend time with them.' Police officers talk with a driver outside Amazon's facilities in San Fernando de Henares, the biggest in Spain When asked about the reasons why he is striking, Spanish Amazon worker Kevin Douglas said: 'I've been working long hours, getting home late, tired, and under a lot of stress' Amazon said in a statement: 'Amazon has created in the UK more than 25,000 good jobs with a minimum of 9.50 an hour and in the London area, 10.50 an hour on top of industry-leading benefits and skills training opportunities. 'All of our sites are safe places to work and reports to the contrary are simply wrong. According to the UK Government's Health and Safety Executive, Amazon has over 40% fewer injuries on average than other transportation and warehousing companies in the UK. 'We encourage everyone to compare our pay, benefits and working conditions to others and come see for yourself on one of the public tours we offer every day at our centres across the UK.' Labour's Diane Abbott predicted Leave would win a second referendum by a bigger margin than in 2016 if a re-run was ever ordered today. The shadow home secretary said any attempt to reverse the first vote would just stoke resentment among Brexit supporters. Ms Abbott's claim may reflect the thinking of her close friend Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who has resisted calls from party activists to back a second vote. Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott (file) said any attempt to reverse the first vote would just stoke resentment among Brexit supporters Ms Abbott told the BBC's Nick Robinson: 'If we had a second referendum tomorrow, Leave would again and not only would Leave win again, but leave voters would say 'what didn't you understand about Leave the first time.' Official Labour policy is only to consider a new referendum if it proves impossible to secure a snap election that could install Mr Corbyn and his own Brexit plan in No 10. But the policy has been mired in confusion amid mixed messages from senior figures. Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer added to the mystery today by hinting he wants to kill off Brexit altogether - saying he would vote Remain in a second referendum. Amid bitter Labour infighting over leaving the EU, Sir Keir again appeared to talk up the prospect of another national vote. He made clear that staying in the bloc should be on the ballot - and said that was the option he would support. Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer (pictured) has hinted he wants to kill off Brexit The Labour leader - a veteran Eurosceptic - has said Brexit 'can't be stopped', insisted the question of a referendum was 'for the future', and said he 'doesn't know' how he would vote if one was held. Many of the party's MPs have been joining the SNP and Lib Dems in demanding a so-called 'People's Vote' to stop Brexit. But Theresa May has dismissed the idea pointing out that the country made a clear decision on the issue in 2016. The Labour leadership has so far resisted grass roots pressure to endorse the plebiscite, trying to stay in the fence as much as possible while the Tories try to navigate the Brexit process. But asked how he would vote if there was a second Brexit referendum, Sir Keir told ITV News last night: 'Remain. I voted Remain first time and I would vote Remain again.' He said: 'As I say what we've got to do is take every decision as it comes. Unless the deal falls then other options simply are not available. Sir Keir stressed that the party wanted a general election to be held but added: 'If it doesn't happen then we press on to other options including a public vote.' The comments contrast sharply with recent interventions by Jeremy Corbyn (pictured in the Commons this week) Theresa May (pictured in Downing Street yesterday) has dismissed the idea of a second Brexit referendum pointing out that the country made a clear decision on the issue in 2016 Asked what Mrs May could do to secure Labour's support, Sir Keir said joining a permanent customs union - something that Mrs May has repeatedly made a red line - would be a first step. 'A comprehensive, permanent customs union that protects manufacturing and gives us a say in trade policy with the EU,' he told BBC's Newsnight. Sir Keir said 'if she reflects between now and the vote we will look at what she brings back' However the customs concession 'wouldn't be the only thing' sought by Labour, he added. Far-right activist Laura Loomer was permanently banned from Twitter on Wednesday for violating the company's hateful conduct policy in a tweet aimed at a newly elected Democrat politician. Loomer, 25, who describes herself as 'an investigative journalist', had her account shut down after she posted an Islamophobic tweet attacking the Minnesota Rep.-elect Ilhan Omar and her religion. She previously had around 260,000 followers on the social-media platform, which says on its website that it strives for 'a safe place for free expression' and prohibits 'abusive behavior.' Far-right activist Laura Loomer, 25, has been banned permanently from Twitter after violating its hateful conduct policy during a tweet aimed at newly elected Muslim Democrat politician Loomer - who has often referred to herself as a martyr for the right-wing cause - said: 'I've been silenced in America' after she was banned from Twitter for Islamophobia In the tweet, Loomer levelled multiple accusations at Omar, including that she was 'anti-Jewish', 'pro Sharia' and 'pro-FGM (female genital mutilation)', which were all based solely on her Muslim faith. Loomer also said that under Islamic law, 'homosexuals are oppressed' and that 'women are abused' and 'forced to wear the hijab.' In a YouTube video responding to the ban, Loomer - who has often referred to herself as a martyr for the right-wing cause - said: 'I've been silenced in America'. This is not the first time Loomer has clashed with tech companies over Islamophobia. On November 1 last year, she was barred from using both Uber and Lyft after tweeting that she was late to a conference because she could not find a 'non Muslim' cab driver. Ilhan Omar, the new Democratic Representative-elect from Minnesota's 5th district, is the first woman of colour to ever to represent the state, and the first woman to wear a hijab Omar will be the first Somali-American and one of the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress Loomer said in a statement that yesterday's permanent ban from Twitter will not be the end of her career and maintained that she did not violate its terms. 'Everything I said is 100 per cent true and factual. It's not malicious, it's not mean, it's not hateful,' she said. 'My haters are celebrating today, and they are saying this is the end of my career, but I want everyone to know I'm just getting started. 'Everyone who knows me knows I don't back down.' The former editor of the far-right news platform Breitbart Milo Yiannopoulos, who was himself banned from Twitter two years ago, said Loomer's removal from the website was 'political warfare.' 'She was banned for criticizing an elected politician,' he said on Facebook. Omar, the new Democratic Representative-elect from Minnesota's 5th district, is the first woman of colour to ever to represent the state, and the first woman to wear a hijab. Ilhan Omar, newly elected to the U.S. House of Representatives on the Democratic ticket, speaks to a group of supporters in Minneapolis, Minnesota on November 6 She was elected during this month's midterms in which Democrats took back control of the House of Representatives. Omar is also the first ever Somalian-American legislator to be elected. She and her family were forced to emigrate during the Somalian civil war in the 1990s. Though critical of some of the Israeli government's actions, she has previously said that the 'anti-Jewish' accusations levelled at her, like the one made by Loomer, 'are rooted in bigotry toward a belief about what Muslims are stereotyped to believe.' She opposes a boycott of Israel and supports a two-state solution, saying 'it is going to be important for us to recognize Israel's place in the Middle East and the Jewish people's rightful place within that region.' Loomer's account had been previously suspended by Twitter for the duration of the midterm elections earlier this month, which she called 'election meddling', but was reinstated after six days. Rapper Fat Joe tried to warn Daniel Hernandez about his alleged affiliation with the Bloods gang Rapper Fat Joe tried to warn Daniel Hernandez, known to many as Tekashi 6ix9ine, about his alleged affiliation with the Bloods gang before he was arrested. Fat Joe - real name Joseph Antonio Cartagena - addressed Tekashi 6ix9ine during an unearthed podcast nine months ago. Cartagena said that Hernandez was in a frantic state of mind when he realized the police were after him two weeks ago, TMZ reports. He told the news site: 'I was just trying to school him, I mean I had the heat on me, I was wiling in the streets so I felt it was my job, because none of the OG's when I came into the rap game schooled me - they could have stopped me from a lot of trouble.' The rapper said that he tries to warn any young stars entering into the rap game, it just so happened that his warning to Hernadez was on camera. He added: 'I prayed for him all last night, when you get to know him he's a cool kid and unfortunately he's got a serious situation on his hands but I tried to warn him.' Despite the charges Hernadez is up against, Caragena said at the end of the interview that he doesn't believe his career is over. 6ix9ine, whose real name is Daniel Hernandez, was indicted on racketeering and firearm charges in Manhattan federal court on Monday. He is pictured in court in October It comes after the news that the rapper, 22, has been moved from prison to a federal facility just days after he was warned that he could face life behind bars. During the 'Coco Vision' podcast aired on Tidal, Cartagena told Hernandez that police were 'one million per cent plotting on him', after revealing that he believes they tried to set him up. Cartegena said: 'I got to tell you right. You seen what happened to Bobby Shmurda', who was sentenced to seven years in prison for weapons possession in 2016. He added: These people, these police tried to set me up so many times. 'They did not like who I was, who I stood for, They wanted to get me, one million per cent they are plotting on you.' Records show that Hernandez was discharged from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn on Wednesday, after a grand jury indicted him and five members of the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods on racketeering charges. The rapper faces 25 years to life in prison. He is pictured in Manhattan Criminal Court in July It comes after the news that the rapper, 22, has been moved from prison to a federal facility just days after he was warned that he could face life behind bars There is no transfer facility listed however for Hernandez, as is standard when a prisoner is released from the MDC. The 'FeFe' rapper has not been cleared however in that racketeering case, and is still facing six counts and a sentence of 25 years to life in prison for his alleged involvement in multiple acts involving murder, robbery, extortion, and distribution of controlled substances. 6ix9ine has been involved in the violent New York City-based gang Nine Trey for several years, federal prosecutors said DailyMail.com reached out to Hernandez's lawyer Lance Lazzaro over the holiday, who did not respond to a request for comment. There are conflicting reports as to where Hernandez has been moved at this time. TMZ first broke the story on Thursday and reported that the rapper was being housed in a facility for individuals who agree to cooperate with authorities. Soon after DJ Akademiks, who worked with Hernandez on his now-delayed album Dummy Boy, offered up his own theory. He posted a lengthy diatribe on his YouTube channel in which he conjectured that Hernandez may have been used as a pawn to get the other five defendants indicted on RICO charges. The producer cited the decision by law enforcement officials to quickly indict the group and pointed out that it all happened after Hernandez disbanded his team, a move that would have made it harder to show the connection between members of the group. That would ultimately make it difficult to prosecute on racketeering charges, so his belief is that prosecutors are hopsing hernandez will flip and therefore put him in a ghang-free facility. Hernandez was initially held without bail after an initial appearance before a Manhattan federal magistrate judge Monday. The indictment alleges that the violent episodes involving 6ix9ine included the July shooting of a bystander in Brooklyn and the gunpoint robbery of one of the gang's rivals last spring. Hernandez was initially held without bail after an initial appearance before a Manhattan federal magistrate judge Monday. On Wednesday, defense attorney Lance Lazzaro said in a statement that his client was 'completely innocent of all charges.' This April 3, 2018 still image from a surveillance video was released by federal prosecutors to document alleged involvement by the rapper in several violent incidents This April 21, 2018 still image from a surveillance video shows a shooting at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, which prosecutors claim the rapper and Nine Trey were involved in 'An entertainer who portrays a 'gangster image' to promote his music does not make him a member of an enterprise,' said Lazzaro. 'Mr. Hernandez became a victim of this enterprise and later took steps by firing employees and publicly denounced this enterprise through a morning show. Threats were then made against his life which resulted in this case being brought immediately.' At Monday's hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Longyear pointed out that the rapper did not renounce his membership in the gang while appearing on a radio show last week. 6ix9ine's former manager Kifano Jordan (pictured November 7 in Manhattan court) has also been charged in the gang-related crimes He said Hernandez would have been arrested this week anyway, but the timetable was speeded up when authorities learned that he planned to go to a Connecticut casino where it would be harder to protect him from the threats. Longyear said the threats were overheard on phone calls intercepted Saturday by investigators, including one in which an individual was heard saying that gang members wanted to 'super violate him.' The prosecutor noted that violence seemed to surround the entertainer. He said 10 shots were fired into a Beverly Hills, California, home where he was filming a music video a week ago. Hernandez had previously been kidnapped outside his Brooklyn residence as well in a bizarre incident this past July in which three men alleged robbed and beat him before making off with $750,000 worth of jewelry and $35,000 in cash. His ex-manager Kifano Jordan, aka Shotti,Faheem Walter, aka Crippy, Jamel Jones, aka Mel Murda, Jensel Butler, aka Ish, and Fuguan Lovick, aka Fu Banga, were also indicted. Prosecutors described Nine Trey as a 'criminal enterprise involved in committing numerous acts of violence, including shootings, robberies, and assaults in and around Manhattan and Brooklyn'. 'Members and associates of Nine Trey engaged in violence to retaliate against rival gangs, to promote the standing and reputation of Nine Trey, and to protect the gang's narcotics business,' the press release continues. The group 'enriched themselves by committing robberies and selling drugs, such as heroin, fentanyl, furanly fentanyl, MDMA, dibutylone, and marijuana.' Nine Trey was established in the early 90s at Rikers and operates in other areas of the country, including California. In 2015, 6Hernandez pleaded guilty to one felony count of using a child in a sexual performance. Authorities said the rapper had sexual contact with a 13-year-old girl when he was 18 and distributed videos of the incident online. Hernandez recently pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in Brooklyn Criminal Court in connection with a May traffic stop. Last week the rapper revealed in an Instagram clip that he had dismissed his entire staff, including his manager and booker. 'I fired everybody on my team,' the Gummo artist said in the clip, imploring his fans that he was not going to be performing live in the near future, even in cases where he might be advertised. 'I don't got no manager, I got no booking agent, no PR, no publicist, I don't got nobody on my team - it's just me.' A male massage therapist has been banned from providing services that involve touching female clients in a Victorian first. Melbourne therapist Charles Michael Dispenzeri is the first masseur in the state to be slapped with the permanent ban that stops him from providing any health service involving physical contact with women. The Massage Australia One and Massage One Supplies trader was handed the permanent prohibition order on Friday. Melbourne therapist Charles Michael Dispenzeri is the first masseur in the state to be slapped with the permanent ban that stops him from providing any health service involving physical contact with women Victoria's Health Complaints Commissioner Karen Cusack began investigating Mr Dispenzeri after a complaint was made against him. 'I don't issue prohibition orders lightly and only do so when I'm satisfied that it's necessary to avoid a serious risk to the health, safety or welfare of the public,' Ms Cusack said in a statement. The complainant had alleged Mr Dispenzeri breached the code of conduct for general health service providers. 'Victorians have a right to access safe, quality healthcare that meets the code of conduct, and unsafe and unethical practices will not be tolerated,' Ms Cusack said. The order stands in place of an interim prohibition order that was brought against Mr Dispenzeri in October. Mr Dispenzeri is also banned from advertising his business. A copy of the prohibition order must be displayed at his business premises for all potential clients to see. Only last year major changes brought in a new code of conduct for general health service providers. The complainant had alleged Mr Dispenzeri breached the code of conduct for general health service providers (stock photo) Victoria's new office of the Health Complaints Commissioner now holds the power to dole out temporary or permanent bans on health service providers. Ms Cusack reminded health service providers had to fall in line with the new code of conduct. She urged anyone with concerns to contact her office. 'It's incredibly important members of the public bring their concerns to us, so we're aware of issues and can take appropriate action to protect the public,' he said. Jewish leaders are calling for new editions of the Bible and Koran to carry warning messages which highlight anti-Semitic passages in the holy texts. The recommendations have been made in a new document called An End to Antisemitism! A Catalogue of Policies to Combat Antisemitism. It was produced following an international conference organised by the European Jewish Congress, at which academics gathered to discuss how prejudice and discrimination can be tackled. Ariel Muzicant, Vice-President of the European Jewish Congress, and co-author of the new document holds it up, showing the title 'An End to Antisemitism! A Catalogue of Policies to Combat Antisemitism' Among the policies mentioned in the document was the idea of warning messages in holy texts, a topic discussed in a chapter entitled 'recommendations regarding Religious Groups and Institutions'. The document reads: 'Translations of the New Testament, the Quran and other Christian or Muslim literatures need marginal glosses, and introductions that emphasize continuity with Jewish heritage of both Christianity and Islam and warn readers about antisemitic passages in them. 'While some efforts have been made in this direction in the case of Christianity, these efforts need to be extended and made consistent in both religions.' There are several themes in the New Testament that have come under fire for their use as justification for anti-Semitic attitudes. These include the blame of Jews for the death of Jesus and the seemingly stubborn nature of the Jewish people and their disloyalty to God. While there are some negative remarks about Jews in the Koran, and negative portrayals of the people. The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has previously spoken of how religious texts can be exploited or misinterpreted to promote discriminatory attitudes. The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has previously spoken of how theological teachings have in the past been used to spread anti-Semitism. He spoke of how it had 'infected the body of the Church' Academics and leaders gathered in Vienna earlier this year to discuss how an end to anti-Semitism can be brough about. Pictured here (left to right) are Ariel Muzicant, Vice-President of the European Jewish Congress, Heinz Fassmann, Federal Minister for Education, Science and Research, Mathias Doepfner, CEO Axel Springer SE, Danielle Spera, Director of the Jewish Museum Vienna, Kenneth Jacobson, Deputy National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, Pawlo Klimklin, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and Dina Porat, Head of the Kantor Centre Writing in a collection of essays published in 2016, he said: 'It is a shameful truth that, through its theological teachings, the church, which should have offered an antidote, compounded the spread of this virus. 'The fact that anti-Semitism has infected the body of the Church is something of which we as Christians must be deeply repentant. We live with the consequences of our history of denial and complicity.' The document, which was produced by academics including Dina Porat and Lawrence H. Schiffman, also calls on all antisemitic texts and passages in the heritage of Christianity and Islam 'to be identified and rejected'. Other recommendations include religious leaders and thinkers 'publicly denouncing as unholy writ' canonical or quasi-canonical writings of religious anti-Semites. The justification for these changes, the documents states, is because divine messages are always communicated through human beings and therefore subject to error. It reads: 'Gods revelation is thus marred by human fallibility. Beginning with the New Testament, divine revelation expresses itself in Christian holy texts that also express a form of hatred. 'The manifestations of this hatred resulted in a tradition of antisemitism that gave moral legitimacy to crimes against the Jewish people, the epitome of which is the Shoah.' Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress, and Manfred Weber, Chairman of the European People's Party, are pictured during a conference on anti-Semitism in Vienna, Austria. The conference followed the publication of a document outlining a number of policy suggestions Once the 'antisemitic contents of a religious memory are identified' religious leaders and followers need to be told, the document concludes. Other areas highlighted, following the conference, include addressing anti-Semitism online and within research organisations and academic institutions. This includes ensuring internet search engines privilege positive depictions of Judaism and accurate descriptions of the history of anti-Semitism. Academics have been reacting to suggested recommendations laid out in the documents. Dr Christine Joynes, a theology lecturer at Oxford, told The Times that she had 'some sympathy' over the suggestion of an annotated bible. But said: 'The whole Bible needs a health warning to read it through the right critical lens and in historical context.' While Muhammad Abdel Haleem, professor of Islamic Studies at the University of London, and also speaking to The Times said that the Koran is entirely negative towards Jews. He said: 'If someone wants to get involved in antisemitism or anti-Islamic behaviour, they will do it whether or not you add warnings and footnotes.' Stunning new footage shows police knocking moped muggers off their bikes in fresh tactics to stamp out the scooter crime-wave that has plagued London. Dashcam video released today shows a squad of specially trained drivers carrying out so called 'tactical contacts', which involve tipping crooks off their scooters or dumping them on the bonnets of police cars. One incredulous rider raises his hands in indignation after he is sent clattering to the ground, and another told police: 'I took my helmet off so I thought you'd stop chasing me.' The Met says it only uses the tactic as a last resort to stop muggers who are a risk to pedestrians or putting police in danger. A moped criminal is left scrambling on the bonnet of a police car in footage released today Police say they are now carrying out 'tactical contacts' every day and have used the method 63 times so far. Sergeant Tony McGovern, who is one of the specially-trained 'Scorpion' drivers using the tactic, said: 'They think that if they remove their helmets we'll stop the pursuit, sometimes we may but, as you can see, we have used tactical contact against riders without helmets.' He said police drivers have to quickly weigh up the risk to the public and the rider before carrying out the manoeuvres, as fleeing criminals often ride along busy pavements or behind railings to evade capture. The method has been rolled out around the country after a seemingly-unstoppable crime wave gripped the capital this year, with scooter yobs grabbing people's phones, watches and bags, smashing their way into jewellery shops and stabbing anyone who got in their way. Some moped robbers have hit 30 victims in one hour alone, with those coming out of tube stations seen as an easy target. Police officers have also been injured by thieves riding directly into them. Scotland Yard was previously frustrated in catching the criminals, who often discarded their helmets to make officers think twice before chasing them. Police say they not afraid to mount pavements to stop moped thieves getting away The video shows the specially trained drivers pursuing the fleeing crooks on their bikes A thief is then rammed from behind before he is flung onto a bonnet as he is hit by a police car What is police guidance on 'tactical contact'? Police said guidance on the use of vehicles in stopping mopeds is similar to that surrounding the use of force by officers on foot. Officers are told they can only use force when it is 'absolutely necessary, reasonable and proportionate'. Police car drivers have to keep this in mind when deciding whether to crash into a fleeing moped mugger. Whereas police may have been more reluctant to chase robbers without helmets in previous years, the spike in moped crime has concentrated the minds of Scotland Yard chiefs. More training for 'scorpion' drivers and the increasingly dangerous tactics used by muggers has led to the method being more widely used. Advertisement Victims of the spate of incidents included ex chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and comedian Michael McIntyre, who was robbed of his Rolex by two men on a moped while parked outside his children's school. But Scotland Yard chiefs have now vowed to get tough with the gangs as they attempt to take back control of the streets. Met Commander Amanda Pearson said: 'There is a perception that if you remove your helmet or fail to stop for police when requested to do so we will not take any further course of action. This is untrue. 'The public quite rightly expects us to intervene to keep London safe. Our highly trained police drivers weigh up the risks and decide upon the most appropriate tactics in those circumstances. 'Offenders on mopeds and motorcycles who attempt to evade the police are making a choice that puts themselves and others at risk. 'So our message is clear: we can, we will and we do target those involved in moped and motorcycle crime at every opportunity.' Police released this footage to show how difficult it is to follow a speeding bike as its rider weaves in and out of small streets on a London housing estate The Met says it has cut 'moped-enabled crime' by 36 per cent in the last year, from 19,000 offences to 12,500. Police say from January to October last year there were 19,455 such offences across London but from January to October this year the numbers had dropped to 12,419 offences. And in the same period last year there were 12,192 moped thefts across London compared to January 2018 to October 2018 when there were 8,261 offences - a reduction of 32 per cent. Commander Pearson added: 'We are not complacent and we will continue to work tirelessly across London to maintain this downward trend.' Commanders say no stop carried out by the operation targeting moped criminals has needed to be referred to the police watchdog, although three incidents involving mopeds are being looked at by the IOPC. The moped crook caught by new DNA spray As part of the new blitz on moped thieves, police are spraying riders with so-called 'DNA spray', which links them to their crimes when they are eventually caught. Mohammad Khaleghi was sprayed with the substance as he rode his moped dangerously in Camden in May in this year. When police later caught up with him, a UV light exposed the spray and he was jailed for driving without a licence, failing to stop and dangerous driving. Mohammad Khaleghi when he failed to stop on his moped in Camden this year The spray is visible under UV light, even in daylight, and helps link criminals to crimes Over 6,000 new forensic tagging sprays have been handed to local officers on London's streets. The sprays are used to 'tag' a suspect or suspicious moped without putting the officer at a serious risk of harm. UV scanners at police stations can then pick up whether an offender has been sprayed- and so they can be linked back to other crimes. Chief Inspector Jim Corbett said: '6,900 officers have been trained so far. We are going to train everyone. 'If they spray an offender in a location, a custody UV light will pick it up. It's contributing to cutting crime while not putting themselves at risk.' Advertisement A gang robbed 103 phones in an 18 day reign of terror across the capital - including targeting ex-Chancellor George Osborne. Pictured: The gang in action Among the most shocking of the incidents that hit the capital in recent years were those involving Nathan Gilmaney and Troy Thomas, who tried to rob as many people as possible in a quickfire series of robberies. They killed 28-year-old Abdul Samad for his iPhone and little more than 'aggression and blood lust' as they swept across west London on a scooter. A chilling video shows Gilmaney and Thomas the criminals calmly return to their victim to demand his PIN number before knifing him. The pair, from Maida Vale, west London, were jailed for more than 20 years each in June. Following their arrest, police noticed a 40 per cent drop in that type of offending. Politician turned Evening Standard editor was also hit by moped robbers, who made a grab at his mobile as he left BBC headquarters in Portland Place. He said: 'I was physically unharmed but felt shocked and stunned. The incident happened so quickly that I barely registered what had happened until afterwards. The scooter was so close that it almost brushed past me. Had it hit me, I have no doubt I would have been seriously injured.' Footage showed the victim working on a device at the Broad and Bean Cafe in Archway, north London as a helmet wearing thief walks in Londoners suffered 60 moped-crimes a day Shocking figures showed at one time there were more than 60 moped thefts a day on London's streets. Moped or motorbike-enabled crimes were up 50 per cent on the last 12 months, figures published in June revealed. Separate statistics revealed 86 per cent of robberies and 78 per cent of burglaries in the UK went unsolved last year. Advertisement Another video last year laid bare how brazen the robbers had become after one was filmed walking into a busy cafe and pulling a laptop from a woman's hands. Footage showed the victim working on her device at the Broad and Bean Cafe in Archway, north London as the helmet wearing thief walks in. He quickly grabs the computer before running back out of the door and jumping on a waiting moped, which then speeds off. The raid took less than 10 seconds. Cafe owner Valbona Sadiku said it was the second time moped robbers have targeted the premises in just three weeks. She told MailOnline: 'It's unbelievable that these moped gangs will now actually enter peoples' property, it's gone to another level, it's horrific.' Two mothers without driving licences downed lager and rum and coke before crashing a car into a wall and another vehicle then fleeing the scene. Mother-of-five Jane Maggs, 42, who had never driven a car, offered to teach Kelly Shone, 35, how to drive her family MG3. Maggs switched on the ignition and released the clutch as Shone operated the gears, but the MG shot across the road, ploughing into a parked car and a brick wall. The pair fled back to Maggs' home in Eccles, Greater Manchester but police were called and Maggs was found to be almost twice the limit while Shone was four points over. Jane Maggs (left) and Kelly Shone (right) leaving Manchester Magistrates' Court, where both were banned from the roads The pair had been drinking throughout the day before their drunken jaunt on June 8. The value of the damage to the parked car and wall was estimated at 150 but it is not known what damage was done to Maggs' car. At Manchester Magistrates' Court Maggs admitted drink-driving, and driving without a licence or insurance and was banned from the roads for 18 months. Mother of two Shone, also from Eccles, admitted aiding and abetting drink driving and was disqualified for 12 months. Prosecutor Miss Sonia Alford said Shone initially lied, telling officers she was the driver and Maggs was the passenger. Tests revealed Maggs had 152 milligrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood. The legal limit is 80mg. Shone blew 39 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35mg. Miss Alford added: 'Maggs said she got in the car and they put the music on. The conversation turned to the fact she wanted to learn how to drive and hadn't had driving lessons. 'She said she had three to four Rum and Coke's. She said all of a sudden her right leg began to spasm. The engine was on, but she couldn't hear it over the music.' A neighbour said after the sentencing: 'Some of the local have jokingly calling them Thelma and Louise after this incident - but we just hope Jane is as a good as her word about never trying to drive again.' Jane Maggs and Kelly Shone, pictured posing beside a car, were each fined 180 and ordered to pay 75 compensation and 85 court costs The pair's lawyer Nicola Carter said in mitigation: 'They are very apologetic. They now they are going to be disqualified despite not even having licenses. They are both on benefits. 'Miss Shone is a carer for Miss Maggs [who] is in a wheelchair and has a number of medical issues as a result of having a stroke.' Both women were each fined 180 and ordered to pay 75 compensation and 85 court costs. Upon leaving the court room, Maggs told the court: 'I never want to drive again.' Mitesh Patel (pictured) is accused of murdering his wife after she was found dead at their home A pharmacist accused of murdering his wife wrote that her 'days are marked' in text messages to another man that were read out in court. Declarations of love between alleged killer Mitesh Patel from Middlesbrough, north Yorkshire, and a man named Amit Patel were read to jurors at Teesside Crown Court yesterday. The accused asked Amit Patel how he'd feel if his wife 'goes earlier than you think' after in response to a note saying 'she might be alive for 18 years'. Prosecutors Nicholas Campbell QC and Jolyon Perks presented the messages to the jury, who also heard of a deleted internet search relating to giving someone a 'huge overdose of insulin'. One conversation began with the accused saying: 'I really have fallen for you dear. I love you.' Amit Patel, who originally lived in Yorkshire before moving to Australia in 2016, replied: 'I feel exactly the same. If I had any doubts they're all gone.' The accused sent Amit Patel a note explaining he had 'lied about something really big', adding he was married to Jessica Patel, the court heard. Officers attend the scene in Linthorpe, Middlesbrough, where Jessica Patel was found dead in May this year 'She fell in love with me,' he wrote. 'I was like, great, this is my cover-up, and I went for it. My feelings for you still haven't changed. I love you so much it's inexplainable. I finally feel complete. Please don't kill me. Love, Mits.' In the messages that followed Mitish Patel said: 'Now you know the truth. You have made me so happy. You have no idea how much. I'll make you happy. I know I will. But I've lied to you. I've searched for you so hard but now that I've found you I don't want to lose you.' Jessica Patel (pictured) was found dead after the pharmacist allegedly murdered her In April 2012 Amit wrote: 'I still don't like sharing you, that's all. I may have the truth but I can't cuddle up next to that, can you.' The alleged killer responded: 'Oh babes, hurts me there. Like you said, she's a leaseholder. One day that lease will expire.' In June 2015 the pair discussed Mitesh and Jessica having a baby. He said to Amit: 'I want to but I don't want to lose you either.' Amit replied: 'Have it if you want. She might not even get pregnant. We'll deal with it when it happens.' Mitesh: 'Will you stand by me or not?' Amit: 'Just have it. There's too many ifs. She might be alive for 18 years.' Mitesh: 'No because I'll curse it if I lose you. What are your thoughts if she goes earlier than you think? Will you love it like your own?' Amit: 'Baby please, don't. Go to sleep. I can love it, as long as there isn't anyone else involved.' Forensics officers are pictured scouring the scene in Middlesbrough, where Mrs Patel was found dead in May The pharmacist (pictured) described his wife as a 'thorn' in his life and told a man thought to be his gay lover that her days were marked Police found the body of Mrs Patel at the couple's marital home in the Linthorpe area of Middlesbrough and are pictured at the scene in May Mitesh: 'I've only ever loved one person in my soul so I can't hurt you. I love my God and I see him in you.' A month later Mitesh Patel said his wife's days 'were marked'. 'If she's a thorn in our life, we should be in hers. If she can cause us upset, it's only fair the same to her. 'See you think I'm mad too. I'm telling you, her days are marked. Do you understand where I'm coming from?' Amit replied: 'Yes I do honey.' The prosecution say Mitesh planned to start a new life in Australia with his 'soulmate'. Teesside Crown Court has heard that, after the murder of his wife, syringes containing insulin were found in the defendant's laptop bag. The jury was told that, two months earlier, searches were made on an iPhone belonging to Patel, and subsequently deleted but they were recovered by police. They included the phrases 'Can 3ml of insulin kill me', 'Would it be painful to die from an insulin overdose' and 'Can injecting a huge overdose of insulin kill a healthy person'. Jurors have heard that Mitesh Patel was in a secret relationship with Amit Patel, a doctor who emigrated to Sydney, Australia. Ten days before Mrs Patel's murder, her husband sent Amit Patel an iMessage saying: 'You know this plan. Do you think it will succeed?' Amit Patel replied: 'Only you know the answer.' Mitesh Patel then wrote: 'Do you think it's a bad plan?' Earlier on Thursday the court heard about searches made on his computer, including 'men have sex with prison' and 'Hindu funeral'. Mrs Patel was found dead at the couple's Linthorpe home in May. Mitesh Patel denies murder. The trial continues. Advertisement This year's Black Friday has proven to once again be the biggest shopping day of the year with masses of people fighting for the best deals. Photos and videos from all over the country show that stores are packed with eager Black Friday shoppers lined up for this year's sales. The huge crowds of customers haven't been deterred by stores opening hours early on Thursday to encourage shoppers with special Thanksgiving deals. Americans also spent around $3.7billion online alone on Thanksgiving day, a whopping 27.5 per cent increase in online sales compared to last year's $2.9billion total, according to TechCrunch. However, the early spending seems to have done little to slow down Black Friday sales appetites, with footage from one Walmart store showing a scene of carnage as customers fought for TV and electronics deals. Elsewhere, a 21-year-old gunman was shot dead by Alabama police after an argument led to him shooting the 18-year-old man he was fighting with, and wounding a little girl, age 12, in the process. Both the 18-year-old and the child have been hospitalized. It's unclear whether the men knew each other or the fight was related to shopping. This year's Black Friday has proven to once again be the biggest shopping day of the year with masses of people fighting for the best deals. In one video of a fight that broke out at a Walmart, a man is shown pinned to the floor by another man, while a third can be seen swinging at him while being pulled away by others as a woman stands over him and shouts, 'Don't talk to me like that' In one video of a fight that broke out at a Walmart, a man is shown pinned to the floor by another man, while a third can be seen swinging at him while being pulled away by others. A woman stands over him and shouts, 'Don't talk to me like that.' 'Get in my face again!' she says, with a raised voice, as the man on the ground gets up and another man's voice can be heard in the distance saying, 'Get in a girl's face?' Another person tries to calm things down, telling the man who just got up from the ground, 'That's enough,' while yet another says, 'Ain't no point in going to jail,' with a woman stepping in and ushering the man who was pinned away. One of the first, and comparatively mild, fights of Black Friday happened on Thursday afternoon at another Walmart, this time in Rockmart, Georgia. A woman can be seen on the ground with a box of pots of pans, as another woman tries to steal the package from her clutches, but the woman on the floor hangs on for dear life and keeps the goods to herself One of the first, and comparatively mild, fights of Black Friday happened on Thursday afternoon at another Walmart, this time in Rockmart, Georgia. A woman can be seen on the ground with a box of pots of pans, as another woman tries to steal the package from her clutches, but the woman on the floor hangs on for dear life and keeps the goods to herself. 'First fight of the night [woman shrugging emoji],' Facebook user Kaitlin Bires wrote with the video, adding, 'pioneer women pots and pans are no joke [laughing emoji].' What's ironic about the tussle is that there are several boxes of the kitchenware behind the woman, which people are easily grabbing from as she tries to pry one away from the woman on the ground. But the woman completely ignores those boxes while instead wrestling the woman to the ground over the one she has in her hands. Footage of two women wresting on the floor of another warehouse-style store was shared on social media on Friday at around 12pm Eastern, with both women gripping onto each other's hair Footage of two women wresting on the floor of another warehouse-style store was shared on social media on Friday at around 12pm Eastern, with both women gripping onto each other's hair. A woman off-camera can be heard shouting, 'Get off of her,' at the dark-haired woman, who eventually gets up from the ground and shouts, 'She did that to me!' Multiple on-lookers shout, 'Stop!' at the two adults, with the dark-haired woman continues to claim she was reacting in defense, to which another lady responds, 'I don't care!' Macy's Herald Square in New York City was packed with a steady stream of shoppers since opening early on Thursday The aisles inside Macy's in Manhattan's Herald Square are stuffed, with people shoulder to shoulder, covering the walkways Well before things were starting to get ugly out there, Macy's flagship store in Manhattan was already a huge hit with Black Friday shoppers with 70 per cent discounts on cookware and 40 percent off of boots. Macy's Herald Square, which has been open all night, is packed with a steady stream of shoppers, though they are late to the party because others were there on Thursday. 'We got here at 4.30am. We couldn't go to sleep so we went shopping,' says Shane Wilson, who arrived in Manhattan from London on Wednesday. Nicole Battini, from Bologna, Italy showed up with a friend at Macy's at 5am after a night of clubbing. Battini, who arrived in New York earlier this week, is looking for shoes, a handbag and a coat. Then she says she's going to sleep. 'Tomorrow, we go back to clubbing,' she says. In Tyler, Texas, long lines were also seen at a local gun shop, with firearms out on display for prospective bargain buyers In Tyler, Texas, long lines were also seen at a local gun shop, with firearms out on display for prospective bargain buyers. Patrons in camouflage jackets perused the Superior Firearms store, while works in blue polo shorts waited behind the counter to assist with purchases. Although the shop was busy, the patrons kept their wits about them, maintaining their composure while browsing. In Plainville, Massachusetts, however, it was another story at the local Target. Just grabbing a cart at the store was a task in itself, with people pulling them from every which way while making their way in the doors and to the sales. In Plainville, Massachusetts, customers were seen grabbing a cart at the local Target, which was a task in itself in the crowd Another clip of Black Friday chaos shows people doing whatever they can to snag a television at a department store, with a woman pulling a TV out of the middle of the pack, and then naturally, those on top then topple to the ground with nothing left below them to provide support Another clip of Black Friday chaos shows people doing whatever they can to snag a television at a department store. One woman reaches over the crowd to yank a set out of the display, getting her grasp on one in the middle before all of the TVs were taken from the top of the stack. She succeeds in pulling a TV out of the pack, and then naturally, those on top then topple to the ground with nothing left below them to provide support. The rest of the crowd doesn't seem too bothered though, and appears happy to grab a discounted television that may or may not have been damaged in the fall. In Omaha, Nebraska, Black Friday shoppers are seen carrying purchases, including a 43-inch Ultra HD television set, at the Nebraska Furniture Mart store. In Omaha, Nebraska, Black Friday shoppers are seen carrying purchases, including a 43-inch Ultra HD television set, at the Nebraska Furniture Mart store In Garden City, New York, one sleepy shopper settled down for a long, late fall nap in the midst of bargain hunting In Garden City, New York, one sleepy shopper settled down for a long, late fall nap in the midst of bargain hunting. With an H&M bag in the person's clutches, the thrifty spender was leaned over on a couch and using a puffy, camouflage jacket as a pillow for the snooze fest. Women shopping at a Century 21 department store in Manhattan on Friday had so many bags of new buys that they had to take a break to gather their wares on the ground. Customers in Bentonville, Arkansas were seen leaving Walmart with a pretty hefty haul. Two shoppers, alone, had a television set, a giant box of toy trucks, what looked like it might be a full, child-sized electric car, and at least one other massive package. Other shoppers with bags and bags of things had to sit for a rest in Miami, pulling up a seat wherever they could squeeze in at Dolphin Mall on Friday. Other shoppers with bags and bags of things had to sit for a rest in Miami, pulling up a seat wherever they could squeeze in at Dolphin Mall on Friday Women shopping at a Century 21 department store in Manhattan on Friday had so many bags of new buys that they had to take a break to gather their wares on the ground Customers in Bentonville, Arkansas are seen leaving Walmart with a pretty hefty haul, including a television set Eager shoppers wait in line outside for Black Friday sales at a Target store in Newport, Kentucky in the earlier hours of this morning Well before things were starting to get ugly out there, Macy's flagship store in Manhattan was already a huge hit with Black Friday shoppers with 70 per cent discounts on cookware and 40 percent off of boots, with bargain shoppers rushing in through the doors at Herald Square Video games, TVs and stuffed toys are popular choices on Black Friday. Here some teddies sit in a shopping cart at a Target store in Westbury, New York Target was also a popular destination for shoppers in the early hours of Black Friday, with the most popular items there being TVs, iPads, and Apple Watches Target is also a popular destination for shoppers. The store says that it's had more than double the customers on its app, compared to last year. The most popular items are TVs, iPads, and Apple Watches. Among the most popular toy deals are Lego, L.O.L. Surprise from MGA Entertainment and Mattel's Barbie. Target says that gamers are also picking up video game consoles like Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. Retailers are offering new ways for shoppers to get deals online and in-store easier and faster. Walmart is introducing a digital map on its mobile app to make it easier for shoppers to find an item's exact location in the store. Black Friday has started early for some shoppers in the US who could be seen rushing to popular stores to pick up bargains before the traditional 12am start This Best Buy store in Chicago saw shoppers pile inside late at night and determinedly pushing their trolleys around the store Customers flocked to stores like Best Buy to pick up TVs and other electronic goods at discounted rates before Black Friday morning Eager people rushing through the doors of the Macy's store in New York City during the early hours of Black Friday shopping Kohl's has a new feature on its mobile app that lets customers take photos of products anywhere and find similar items at the department store. And customers, frustrated with long checkout lines, can check out at Walmart and other stores with a salesperson right on the spot. Shoppers are also enjoyng new free shipping options. Target leapt in front of Walmart and Amazon to offer two-day free shipping for the holidays without any minimum purchases. Online leader Amazon followed, dropping its $25 minimum. Walmart is still sticking with its $35 threshold. There were fears that the spread out nature of Thanksgiving shopping would slow down Black Friday sales - but customers are clearly still ready to splash the cash. This person seems to be well into the Black Friday spirit and can be seen carrying a pile of discounted Playstation and Xbox video games Black Friday, which is the day after Thanksgiving in the US, has been beset by violence and angry scenes in recent years but these shoppers looked more than happy to queue up A huge team of staff at Target gear up in the final moments before the doors open on Black Friday in Maple Grove, Minnesota 'Retailers are pulling out all the stops to get shoppers earlier with online deals and using online to push shoppers in the store,' said Marshal Cohen, chief industry adviser at the NPD Group, a market research group. 'I think overall spending will be decent.' The National Retail Federation, the nation's largest retail trade group, is expecting holiday retail sales in November and December - excluding automobiles, gasoline and restaurants - to increase as much as 4.8 percent over 2017 for a total of $720.89 billion. The sales growth marks a slowdown from last year's 5.3 percent, which was the largest gain since 2010. But the figure is still healthy. Bargain hunters were seen flocking to stores like Best Buy late at night to pick up some bargains and beat the mad Black Friday morning rush. They were seen joining long queues all over the country as they fought to make sure they picked up the best offers before anyone else. Bargain hunters were seen flocking to stores like this Best Buy in Overland Park, Kansas on Thursday night to pick up some bargains and beat the mad Black Friday morning rush Shoppers were ready and waiting for the 2pm opening of the JC Penney store in the Kirkwood Mall in Bismarck, North Dakota Grinning shoppers have been spotted carrying huge TVs between them while others pushed trolleys laden with discounted goodies. Photos show customers flocking to a Best Buy store in Chicago, Illinois and carrying piles of reduced electronics and video games joyfully in their arms. Before it even hit 8pm, people could be seen carrying out large television screens from Best Buy in New York. Most Macy's and Best Buy stores got a very early start on Black Friday, bypassing the once popular midnight openings to unlock their doors at 5pm on Thursday instead. Shoppers could be seen entertaining themselves on their phones or guzzling down coffee as they waited in line together People carry a television out of a Best Buy during a sales event on Thanksgiving day in Westbury, New York on Thursday Hundreds of shoppers filed into Macy's flagship store in New York on Thanksgiving afternoon (pictured) on Thursday Americans spent $4.15billion total just online between Wednesday and 5pm Eastern on Thursday. Sales increased by 32 percent on Wednesday alone to $2.4billion, over figures from last year. Wednesday was also the first time in online shopping history that 50 percent of online shopping was done through cell phones. It is predicted that appliances, clothing, and jewelry will be the most popular items this holiday season. And when it comes to electronics, Amazon Echo speakers, Amazon Fire TVs, and Nintendo consoles have been the biggest sellers in November. People wait in line to shop at Best Buy during a sales event on Thanksgiving day in Westbury, New York before the official start of Black Friday A spectacle for all ages: Teenagers are known to be especially big fans of Black Friday sales and some could already be seen adding games and other electronic devices to their collection People can hire professionals to wait in line for them for Broadway tickets, iPhone drops, restaurant reservations and then switch spots once the sitter reaches the front Early shoppers at a Best Buy store in Washington carrying a brand new Samsung TV between them as they dodge the lines Shoppers are waiting for doors to open during Black Friday at Macy's store on 34th St in New York Black Friday shoppers flee in horror as gunman, 21, is killed by police after he shot a 12-year-old girl and 18-year-old boy at Alabama mall A 21-year-old gunman was shot dead by police after opening fire at a busy Alabama mall on Thursday night. The shooting happened at 9.30pm on at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, a nearby suburb of Birmingham. It started when the gunman, an unnamed 21-year-old from Hueytown, got into a fight with an 18-year-old boy. It is unclear if they knew each other beforehand or if the fight was shopping-related. Witnesses told WBRC in Alabama that the shooting happened 'between JCPenney and Footaction near the food court.' The gunman opened fire, injuring the 18-year-old and a 12-year-old girl who was nearby, then fled. He was shot dead by police who were nearby and ran towards the gunfire after hearing the shots ring out. Both victims were taken to hospitals and are expected to survive. The 12-year-old girl was shot once. None of the youngsters involved have been named. The shooting sparked horror and panic among the crowds of bargain hunters who had flocked to the mall after Thanksgiving dinner to snap up discounts. They took to social media in confusion to describe hearing shots in the mall. It was unclear at first if it was an intended mass shooter. Photos and videos of the mass panic caused by the shooting were shared on social media. One Twitter user said: 'Im in the parking lot of the Riverchase Galleria in Alabama where a shooting just happened. 'Im so shaky right now Im sorry if I don't make any sense. The suspect is dead. My prayers go out to those injured.' Videos posted to social media showed shoppers fleeing in terror as shots rang out at the mall following a fight between a young gunman and a teenage boy Mall staff later tweeted: 'We are devastated by the incident that happened tonight in our shopping center. 'We are working closely with the Hoover Police Department and are grateful for their swift action to contain the situation. 'While there is no current danger to our community, the shopping center will remain closed until further notice.' Hoover Police Chief Nick Derzis said on Thursday night: 'They heard the gunfire, they engaged the subject and they took out the threat.' An 18-year-old was taken to hospital in a 'serious' condition while a 12-year-old girl had to have emergency surgery An image posted to Twitter in the aftermath of the shooting Advertisement How bargain hunters are paying line sitters up to $35 an hour to queue outside stores ahead of Black Friday In other news, busy bargain hunters can now pay people up to $35 an hour to wait in line for them on Black Friday. Time poor, money rich millennials don't have to waste their precious hours idling in line for Broadway tickets, iPhone drops, restaurant reservations or big sales, when they can pay someone to do it for them - then switch spots once the sitter reaches the front. Some entrepreneurs who have set up the so-called line sitting companies said that they are doing a brisk trade. 'People don't have a lot of time,' Jennifer Goff, the founder and CEO of Skip the Line told MONEY. Jennifer Goff (left) is the founder of Skip the line and Darren Hromadka (right) founded the InLine4You app which are busier than ever, according to the entrepreneurs 'This is a service that really helps them to be able to do what they want to do'. Goff's venture started in June 2017 when a Game of Thrones pop-up bar debuted in Washington, DC. Fans turned out in force for a chance to drink The North Remembers cocktails and sit on the Iron Throne, and Goff took notice of the huge volume of people waiting hours to get in. 'Before I had a business plan, it was a way to make extra money. 'I [would approach] people in line and [say] I'm here if they want me to wait [for them]. 'They can go get a drink somewhere, go get food. I'll keep them updated with text messages and photos'. The most well-known business is Same Ole Line Dudes in New York City, which dispatches people to wait in lines for sample sales, Saturday Night. Darren Hromadka got into the line-sitting game when he learned his colleagues in Omaha, Nebraska, were paying college students to hold seats for them at Warren Buffett's annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting. Some 40,000 attendees turn out for a three-day event nicknamed the Woodstock of Capitalism. The inlineforyou app allows people to Hire a 'tasker' to stand in line for restaurants, special events, concerts and more Hoppers can post requests on the inlineforyou app and say how much they're willing to pay and spotters claim the gigs. Hoppers take a cut of the money Some people even wake up before dawn in order to get good seats to see Warren Buffett speak. Buffett himself told the Wall Street Journal in 2017 that hiring a person to stand in line for seats to the meeting is 'probably what I would do'. Hromadka thought there had to be a better way to bring together people who want a spot in line and people who are willing to do the work. He classified each group, calling them hoppers' and spotters respectively and founded the InLine4You app. Hoppers can post requests on the app and say how much they're willing to pay, and spotters claim the gigs. The average price is about $25 an hour. When the hopper shows up to take the spotter's place in line, InLine4You processes the payment. 'It is giving the gift of time,' explained Hromadka, whose app is available nationwide and has about 22,000 downloads. Another entrepreneur who set up an app called Same Ole Line Dudes is busy at particular times of the year. He said tourists flood New York City looking for Hamilton tickets and more holiday-specific events. He is currently recruiting line-sitters to reserve spots at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, for which they'll get time and a half, but have to deal with crazy crowds and frigid temperatures. Skip the Line and Same Ole Line Dudes operate similarly, though they have set rates. Skip the Line charges about $30 an hour for most events; Same Ole Line Dudes costs $45 minimum for two hours. Both have variables that can drive up prices, like bad weather, event popularity or delivery options. Becoming a line sitter involves a lot of free time and patience so the job is perfect for students and retirees. Another crucial quality is a willingness to take on jobs, as Samuel said: 'It's an easy gig to get, but it's also easy to get let go from if an employee doesn't regularly fill requests'. Advertisement Black Friday fever spreads across the world: Carnage breaks out in stores as shoppers clamber over each other to get a bargain Black Friday fever has spread across the world with carnage breaking out in stores and shoppers clambering over each other to snap up deals. Scuffles broke out amid chaotic scenes at one store in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where crowds of bargain hunters scrambled to get their hands on cheap televisions. Footage purportedly taken this morning also shows frantic shoppers storming into shops in South Africa. The clip was reportedly captured at 'game' in Baywest Mall, Port Elizabeth, as its metal shutters were opened for the day. Bargain hunters: There were chaotic scenes as shoppers made a frantic dash for discounted televisions at a department store in Sao Paulo, Brazil A separate video shot at an unknown location in South Africa shows an armed guard patrolling a mall as crowds descend on a shop. A man can be seen desperately trying to beat queues by scrambling over a metal barrier. In Barakaldo, near Bilbao, Spain, long queues were pictured outside a department store advertising Black Friday deals. In the US, a teenager was killed and two others injured following a shooting at an Alabama shopping centre prior to Black Friday shopping. Authorities say the shooting happened about 9.30pm local time on Thursday at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, a nearby suburb of Birmingham. Police say a fight between two teenagers, including an 18-year-old, resulted in an exchange of gunfire. One teenager fled but was confronted by two Hoover police officers. Captain Gregg Rector said at a news conference that a Hoover officer 'did engage that individual, shot him and he is dead on the scene'. The second teenager was taken to hospital and is in a serious condition. Police said a 12-year-old girl also struck by gunfire was in hospital. Black Friday, the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, was so named because spending in the United States would surge and retailers would traditionally begin to turn a profit for the year - moving from the red into the black. It falls on November 23 this year. The Black Friday concept still divides opinion. Keep cool and carry on: A member of staff was pictured trying to calm crowds as he stood on a display in a shop in Sao Paulo on Black Friday Supporters say carefully planned, targeted promotions in close co-operation with global suppliers allow retailers to achieve a sales boost while still maintaining profit margins. Naysayers argue the discounts suck forward Christmas sales that could otherwise be made at full price and can dampen business in subsequent weeks. Meanwhile, Britain's retailers are hoping Black Friday discounts will get shoppers spending again after a torrid year for much of the sector. A string of store groups have gone out of business or announced shop closures this year as they battle subdued consumer spending, rising labour costs, higher business property taxes, growing online competition and uncertainty over Brexit. Toys R Us UK, Maplin and Poundworld have all gone bust, while Marks & Spencer, Debenhams, Mothercare and House of Fraser are between them shutting hundreds of stores. A baby boy born on the Paris Metro has been given free transport on the underground railway system for the next 25 years. The child, identified only as Ousmane, came into the world on Wednesday night on a train that stopped at Glaciere Station in the French capital. 'The service on Line 6 was interrupted and, by chance, a doctor was on board who was able to help Ousmane's mother through her labour,' said an official working for RATP, the Paris transport operator. The child, identified only as Ousmane, came into the world on Wednesday night 'Ousmane has now been given a free travel card which will be valid until 2043.' The baby boy was born at 10.40 pm and the mother was taken to Hopital Cochin in the 14th arrondissement by firefighters a few minutes after, reported The Local in France. The 25 years of free travel is a traditional gift from RATP when a child is born on one of their services. A similar story emerged from Paris in June when another baby boy entered the world on the underground on the A line at Auber station in the north of the city. A baby boy born on a train bound for Glaciere has been given free transport for 25 years The operator's official Twitter even live-tweeted the events. Train service was disrupted by the birth but the train operators sent out a warm congratulations to the mother and child and ensured passengers they were doing well. In September another child was born in a 'lightening birth' in the busiest station in Europe, Gare du Nord. Andrew John Street CBE, former John Lewis managing director, branded the station the 'squalor pit of Europe' after arriving on the Eurostar in 2014. 'I saw a woman in difficulty,' Paris transport worker turned mid-wife Mohamed Nadour told Le Parisien at the time. 'I realised that her waters had broken and she was in the process of giving birth. 'I laid the woman down. She was crying in agony. She told me the baby was coming. Fortunately there was a hospital nurse on her way to work. She stopped to help me.' 'It was a lightning birth, it took 10 minutes maximum,' added Mohamed. Ecuador has removed a UK ambassador who had been negotiating Julian Assange's fate at the London embassy, sparking speculation the country is preparing to hand the WikiLeaks founder over to British police. Assange has been holed up inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012 when he was accused of sexual assault by two women in Sweden. The Australian denied their claims but refused to travel to Sweden to face them, saying it was part of a ruse to extradite him to the US. But Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno is now said to have terminated the credentials of his British ambassador, Carlos Abad Ortiz, according to a decree published by WikiLeaks on Wednesday. Ecuador has removed a UK ambassador who had been negotiating Julian Assange's fate at the London embassy, sparking speculation the country is preparing to hand the WikiLeaks founder over to British police. President Lenin Moreno is said to have terminated the credentials of his British ambassador, Carlos Abad Ortiz (pictured) The decree, published by WikiLeaks, does not say why Ortiz, ambassador to the UK since 2015, has been recalled or who his successor will be Assange has been holed up inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012 when he was accused of sexual assault by two women in Sweden The envoy has been a key part of negotiations over the 47-year-old whistleblower, who was behind a massive dump of classified US documents in 2010. The decree does not say why Ortiz, ambassador to the UK since 2015, has been recalled or who his successor will be, RT reports. In a tweet, WikiLeaks said 'all diplomats known' to Assange have now been 'terminated... transferred away from the embassy'. Some have claimed online that the move increases the likelihood of Assange being handed over to British police. It comes after one of Assange's lawyers said the WikiLeaks founder will not willingly travel to the United States to face charges filed under seal against him. Assange, who has taken cover in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been granted asylum, has speculated publicly for years that the Justice Department had brought secret criminal charges against him for revealing highly sensitive government information on his website. That hypothesis appeared closer to reality after prosecutors, in an errant court filing in an unrelated case, inadvertently revealed the existence of sealed charges. The filing, discovered last week, said the charges and arrest warrant 'would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.' WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (pictured) has been charged in the United States, the organisation said last week A person familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity because the case had not been made public, confirmed that charges had been filed under seal. The exact charges Assange faces and when they might be unsealed remained uncertain Friday. Any charges against him could help illuminate whether Russia coordinated with the Trump campaign to sway the 2016 presidential election. They also would suggest that, after years of internal Justice Department wrangling, prosecutors have decided to take a more aggressive tack against WikiLeaks. A criminal case also holds the potential to expose the practices of a radical transparency activist who has been under U.S. government scrutiny for years and at the center of some of the most explosive disclosures of stolen information in the last decade. Those include thousands of diplomatic cables from Army Pvt. Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, secret CIA hacking tools, and most recently and notoriously, Democratic emails that were published in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election and that U.S. intelligence officials say had been hacked by Russia. Special counsel Robert Mueller, who has already charged 12 Russian military intelligence officers with hacking, has been investigating whether any Trump associates had advance knowledge of the stolen emails. Assange could be an important link for Mueller as he looks to establish exactly how WikiLeaks came to receive the emails, and why its dump of stolen communications from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta - beginning just after a damaging video of Trump from a decade earlier publicly surfaced - appeared timed to boost the Trump campaign. Assange, 47, has resided in the Ecuadorian Embassy under a grant of asylum for more than six years to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where he was accused of sex crimes, or to the United States, whose government he has repeatedly humbled with mass disclosures of classified information. The Australian was once a welcome guest at the embassy, which takes up part of the ground floor of a stucco-fronted apartment in London's posh Knightsbridge neighborhood. But his relationship with his hosts has soured over the years amid reports of espionage, erratic behavior and diplomatic unease. Barry Pollack, a Washington lawyer for Assange, said he expected Ecuador to 'comply with its obligations' to preserve asylum for him, though he acknowledged a concern that the county could revoke his asylum, expel him from the embassy and facilitate an extradition to the U.S. 'The burden should not shift to Mr. Assange to have to defend against criminal charges when what he has been accused of doing is what journalists do every day,' Pollack said. 'They publish truthful information because the public has a right to know and consider that information and understand what its government and institutions are doing.' Assange speaks on the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy after Swedish authorities announced that they dropped their investigation into rape allegations against him The charges came to light in an unrelated court filing from a federal prosecutor in Virginia, who was attempting to keep sealed a separate case involving a man accused of coercing a minor for sex. The three-page filing contained two references to Assange, including one sentence that said 'due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.' It was not immediately clear why Assange's name was included in the document. Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the Justice Department's Eastern District of Virginia said, 'The court filing was made in error. That was not the intended name for this filing.' The filing was discovered by Seamus Hughes, a terrorism expert at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, who posted it on Twitter hours after The Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department was preparing to prosecute Assange. The case at issue concerns a defendant named Seitu Sulayman Kokayi, a 29-year-old teacher who has since been indicted on charges of enticing a 15-year-old girl to commit sex acts and to produce child pornography. There doesn't appear to be any connection between Assange and Kokayi. The since-unsealed document, a motion filed in late August, mentions Assange in two boilerplate sections, suggesting a copy-and-paste error or that his name was inadvertently left in a template used for the common filings. The filing suggests prosecutors have reason to believe they will be able to arrest and extradite Assange. Ecuadorian officials say they have cut off his high-speed internet access and will restore it only if he agrees to stop interfering in the affairs of Ecuador's partners, such as the U.S. and Spain. He is allowed to use the embassy's WiFi, though it is unclear if he doing so. Officials have also imposed a series of other restrictions on Assange's activities and visitors, and ordered him to clean after his cat. Carlos Poveda, Assange's lawyer in Ecuador, said he suspects Ecuador has been maneuvering to kick Assange out of the embassy through the stricter new living requirements it recently imposed. He said possible U.S. charges, however, are proof his client remains under threat, and he called on Ecuador's government to uphold Assange's asylum protections. He said Ecuador would be responsible if anything happened to Assange. With shrinking options - an Ecuadorian lawsuit seeking to reverse the restrictions was recently turned down - WikiLeaks announced in September that former spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson, an Icelandic journalist who has long served as one of Assange's lieutenants, would take over as editor-in-chief. In a brief interview in Reykjavik, Iceland, Hrafnsson called the U.S. news 'a very black day for journalism.' Pope Francis named a close U.S. ally to an organizing committee for a February abuse prevention summit whose stakes have grown after the Holy See blocked U.S. bishops from taking action to address the scandal. Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, a Francis appointee, will sit on on the preparatory committee, rather than the head of the U.S. bishop's conference or its top sex abuse official. Notably absent from the lineup announced Friday was Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who heads the pope's sex abuse advisory commission, though one of his members, the Rev. Hans Zollner, is the point-person for the group. In addition to Zollner and Cupich, Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, for a decade the Vatican's sex crimes prosecutor, and Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias, a member of Francis' key cardinal adviser group. Cupich's inclusion as a member of the Vatican organizing committee is significant, since he is not himself the head of a bishops' conference - as are Scicluna and Gracias - and would otherwise have no reason to attend the February summit. Pope Francis named a close U.S. ally to an organizing committee for a February abuse prevention summit Pope Francis snubbed Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who heads the pope's sex abuse advisory commission, (left), instead picking Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich (right) for a key committee that will organize an international church summit on sexual abuse That Francis chose him over head of the U.S. bishops conference, Houston Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, is perhaps understood by the obvious tensions between DiNardo and the Vatican over the rejected U.S. accountability proposals and DiNardo's public call this summer for a Vatican investigation into the U.S. scandal, which Rome refused. Cupich, on the other hand, is far more of a defender of the embattled pope, whose popularity in the U.S. has tumbled over his uneven handling of the abuse crisis. 'Pope Francis is calling for radical reform in the life of the church, for he understands that this crisis is about the abuse of power and a culture of protection and privilege, which have created a climate of secrecy, without accountability for misdeeds,' Cupich wrote in a blog post Thursday. 'All of that has to end.' Francis summoned leaders of the world's bishops' conferences to the Vatican February 21-24 after the abuse scandal erupted in his native South America and again in the U.S. and he botched the case of a Chilean bishop implicated in cover-up. The stakes of the meeting grew exponentially after the Vatican told U.S. bishops earlier this month not to vote on proposed new measures to investigate sexual misconduct or cover-up within their ranks. The head of the U.S. bishops conference, Houston Cardinal Daniel DiNardo (above), was also snubbed after tension with the Vatican over his proposed abuse accountability rules The Vatican still hasn't explained why it blocked the vote on a U.S. code of conduct for bishops and a lay-led board to investigate them, though the proposals were only given to the Vatican at the last minute and were said to contain legal problems. DiNardo said the Holy See wanted to delay any vote until after the February global summit. However, it is unlikely that such a diverse group of churchmen, some representing national churches that continue to deny or downplay the scandal, will over the course of four days come up with any universal proposals that come close to the accountability norms that U.S. bishops were seeking. Cupich has said he was disappointed by the Vatican's decision, but at the time of the U.S. bishops' meeting, he proposed they go ahead and debate the measures and even came up with a revised proposal himself. Zollner, who heads a safeguarding institute of study at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, acknowledged that the expectations were high going into the meeting. 'And it's understandable that they are high, given the gravity of the scandal that has shocked and hurt so many people, believers and not, in so many countries,' he told Vatican Media. Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said Francis' decision to host the meeting showed he considered protection of minors a 'fundamental priority for the church.' Theresa May has secured her deal in Brussels but her fight to get it actually in place in time for Brexit day is just beginning. The 'meaningful vote' promised to MPs is expected to happen in early December and is the single biggest hurdle to the Brexit deal happening - and Mrs May' fate as PM. Mrs May needs at least 318 votes in the Commons if all 650 MPs turns up - but can probably only be confident of around 230 votes. The number is less than half because the four Speakers, 7 Sinn Fein MPs and four tellers will not take part. The situation looks grim for Mrs May and her whips: now the deal has been published, 89 of her own MPs and the 10 DUP MPs have publicly stated they will join the Opposition parties in voting No. This means the PM could have as few as 225 votes in her corner - leaving 410 votes on the other side, a landslide majority 185. This is how the House of Commons might break down: Mrs May needs at least 318 votes in the Commons if all 650 MPs turns up - but can probably only be confident of around 230 votes. Mrs May needs at least 318 votes in the Commons if all 650 MPs turns up - but can probably only be confident of around 230 votes. Theresa May has secured her deal in Brussels but her fight to get it actually in place in time for Brexit day is just beginning The Government (plus various hangers-on) Who are they: All members of the Government are the so-called 'payroll' vote and are obliged to follow the whips orders or resign. It includes the Cabinet, all junior ministers, the whips and unpaid parliamentary aides. There are also a dozen Tory party 'vice-chairs and 17 MPs appointed by the PM to be 'trade envoys'. How many of them are there? 178. What do they want? For the Prime Minister to survive, get her deal and reach exit day with the minimum of fuss. Many junior ministers want promotion while many of the Cabinet want to be in a position to take the top job when Mrs May goes. How will they vote? With the Prime Minister. European Research Group Brexiteers demanding a No Confidence Vote Who are they: The most hardline of the Brexiteers, they launched a coup against Mrs May after seeing the divorce. Led by Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker. How many of them are there: 26 What do they want: The removal of Mrs May and a 'proper Brexit'. Probably no deal now, with hopes for a Canada-style deal later. How will they vote: Against the Prime Minister. The most hardline of the Brexiteers, they launched a coup against Mrs May after seeing the divorce. Led by Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker Other Brexiteers in the ERG Who are they: There is a large block of Brexiteer Tory MPs who hate the deal but have so far stopped short of moving to remove Mrs May - believing that can destroy the deal instead. They include ex Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and ex minister Owen Paterson. Ex ministers like Boris Johnson and David Davis are also in this group - they probably want to replace Mrs May but have not publicly moved against her. How many of them are there? Around 50. What do they want? The ERG has said Mrs May should abandon her plans for a unique trade deal and instead negotiate a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal. This is based on a trade deal signed between the EU and Canada in August 2014 that eliminated 98 per cent of tariffs and taxes charged on goods shipped across the Atlantic. The EU has long said it would be happy to do a deal based on Canada - but warn it would only work for Great Britain and not Northern Ireland. How will they vote: Against the Prime Minister. Remain including the People's Vote supporters Who are they: Tory MPs who believe the deal is just not good enough for Britain. They include the group of unrepentant Remainers who want a new referendum like Anna Soubry and ex-ministers who quit over the deal including Jo Johnson and Phillip Lee. How many of them are there: Maybe around 10. What do they want? To stop Brexit. Some want a new referendum, some think Parliament should step up and say no. A new referendum would take about six months from start to finish and they group wants Remain as an option on the ballot paper, probably with Mrs May's deal as the alternative. How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister. Anna Soubry is in a small group of unrepentant Remainer Tory MPs who want a second referendum on Brexit Moderates in the Brexit Delivery Group (BDG) and other Loyalists Who are they? A newer group, the BDG counts members from across the Brexit divide inside the Tory Party. It includes former minister Nick Boles and MPs including Remainer Simon Hart and Brexiteer Andrew Percy. There are also lots of unaligned Tory MPs who are desperate to talk about anything else. How many of them are there? Based on public declarations, about 48 MPs have either said nothing or backed the deal. What do they want? The BDG prioritises delivering on Brexit and getting to exit day on March 29, 2019, without destroying the Tory Party or the Government. If the PM gets a deal the group will probably vote for it. It is less interested in the exact form of the deal but many in it have said Mrs May's Chequers plan will not work. Mr Boles has set out a proposal for Britain to stay in the European Economic Area (EEA) until a free trade deal be negotiated - effectively to leave the EU but stay in close orbit as a member of the single market. How will they vote? With the Prime Minister. Tory Simon Hart leads a group of Tory MPs committed to getting a pragmatic Brexit deal without pandering to ideological interests The DUP Who are they? The Northern Ireland Party signed up to a 'confidence and supply' agreement with the Conservative Party to prop up the Government. They are Unionist and say Brexit is good but must not carve Northern Ireland out of the Union. How many of them are there? 10. What do they want? A Brexit deal that protects Northern Ireland inside the UK. How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister on the grounds they believe the deal breaches the red line of a border in the Irish Sea. The DUP, led in Westminster by Nigel Dodds (right), have a deal with Theresa May but could still vote agianst her Brexit deal Labour Loyalists Who are they? Labour MPs who are loyal to Jeremy Corbyn and willing to follow his whipping orders. How many of them are there? Up to 250 MPs depending on exactly what Mr Corbyn orders them to do. What do they want? Labour policy is to demand a general election and if the Government refuses, 'all options are on the table', including a second referendum. Labour insists it wants a 'jobs first Brexit' that includes a permanent customs union with the EU. It says it is ready to restart negotiations with the EU with a short extension to the Article 50 process. The party says Mrs May's deal fails its six tests for being acceptable. How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister's current deal. Labour MPs who are loyal to Jeremy Corbyn and willing to follow his whipping orders are expected to vote against the Prime Minister Labour Rebels Who are they? A mix of MPs totally opposed to Mr Corbyn's leadership, some Labour Leave supporters who want a deal and some MPs who think any deal will do at this point. How many of them are there? Maybe 10 to 20 MPs but this group is diminishing fast - at least for the first vote on the deal. What do they want? An orderly Brexit and to spite Mr Corbyn. How will they vote? With the Prime Minister. Other Opposition parties Who are they? The SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Green Caroline Lucas and assorted independents. How many of them are there? About 60 MPs. How will they vote? Mostly against the Prime Minister - though two of the independents are suspended Tories and two are Brexiteer former Labour MPs. The SNP led by Ian Blackford, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Green Caroline Lucas and assorted independents will almost all vote against Theresa May Which Tory MPs have already said they will vote against the deal? LETTER OF NO CONFIDENCE GROUP John Whittingdale Mark Francois David Jones Jacob Rees-Mogg Steve Baker Andrea Jenkyns James Duddridge Ben Bradley Marcus Fysh Maria Caulfield Simon Clarke Ross Thomson Henry Smith Nadine Dorries Chris Green Andrew Bridgen Sheryll Murray Bill Cash Lee Rowley Peter Bone Martin Vickers Philip Davies Anne-Marie Morris Adam Holloway Zac Goldsmith Philip Hollobone Laurence Robertson OTHER BREXITEERS Boris Johnson David Davis Iain Duncan Smith Owen Paterson Priti Patel Sir Desmond Swayne Julian Lewis Sir Bernard Jenkin Sir Mike Penning Sir David Amess Sir Edward Leigh Sir Christopher Chope John Redwood Anne Main Craig Mackinlay Charlie Elphicke Richard Bacon Giles Watling Matthew Offord Derek Thomas Michael Fallon John Hayes Julia Lopez John Baron Conor Burns Trudy Harrison Andrew Lewer Nigel Mills Ranil Jayawardena Suella Braverman Anne-Marie Trevelyan Andrew Rosindell James Gray Crispin Blunt Richard Drax Bill Wiggin Pauline Latham Nigel Evans Scott Mann Tim Loughton Robert Courts Michael Fabricant Michael Tomlinson Damian Collins Dominic Raab Esther McVey Rehman Chishti Hugo Swire Neil Parish Steve Double Theresa Villiers Royston Smith Mark Pritchard Damien Moore Daniel Kawczynski Lucy Allan David Evennett Rob Halfon Bob Stewart Gordon Henderson Stephen Metcalfe Robert Syms Mark Harper Douglas Ross Tracey Crouch REMAINERS Jo Johnson Phillip Lee Heidi Allen Justine Greening Dominic Grieve Shailesh Vara Grant Shapps Anna Soubry Guto Bebb Sam Gyimah Sarah Wollaston Advertisement This is the adorable moment a five-month-old puppy was filmed clinging onto his owner while receiving his very first shower. Gabe Fullerton, 27, from Renfrewshire, Scotland, had taken his Wolf Sable Pomeranian puppy Rollo for a walk around the woods on Sunday evening when he noticed the canine's 'manky' musk. The physiotherapist from Scholars Green, Johnstone, decided to capture the dog's very first shower on camera while his partner Rhea Gathercole, 25, gave the dog a good scrub. This is the adorable moment dog owner Gabe Fullerton, 27, from Renfrewshire, Scotland, decided to give his five-month-old Wolf Sable Pomeranian puppy Rollo his very first shower Mr Fullerton decided to capture the amusing scene on camera while his partner Rhea Gathercole (right), 25, applied soap and water to the dog's fur Rather than wipe the dog down using wipes, Mr Fullerton and his partner decided it was time their puppy, who they have owned for two months, experience the joys of a shower. In the amusing video, the tiny pooch is seen balancing himself on his hind legs as Ms Gathercole applies soap and water to his fur. The dog, who is clearly in completely new territory, clings onto the arm of Mr Fullerton in an effort to keep his balance. Footage of the puppy's first shower was later posted on social media by Mr Fullerton's brother Daniel, 24. During the footage the puppy is seen standing on his hind legs while desperately trying to hold onto Mr Fullerton's arm Mr Fullerton and his partner decided it was time their puppy, who they have owned for two months, experience the joys of a shower after noticing his 'manky' smell Footage of Rollo's first shower was later posted on social media by Mr Fullerton's brother Daniel, 24 Speaking on the amusing footage Mr Fullerton added that he was glad it made people smile. This is not the first time owners have captured their pooches having a wash. In 2017 a French mastiff called Legend, was filmed looking particularly miserable while receiving his bespoke shower by his owner Teddy Lawhead's son Isiah. The video became an instant hit gathering more than 95,000 views on the social network and numerous comments. Advertisement A series of photographs have captured the intense duel between two 300kg seals as they fought a furious battle over territory. As breeding season gets underway the male grey seals were spotted viciously biting and smashing their bodies into one another in Donna Nook, Lincolnshire. The large, powerful bulls could be seen dripping with blood as they fought for more than 25 minutes on the coastline where seals flock in November and December every year to give birth to their pups. The pair fought for an intense 25 minutes and traded deep bites as they smashed their 300kg bodies into each other Blood can be seen dripping from their mouths as they bite each other while fighting over the territory Every November and December, grey seals come to the Donna Nook coastline to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes - a wildlife spectacle which attracts visitors from across the UK GREY SEALS: The 'hook-nosed sea pig' The face of a grey seal bobbing in the waves is a familiar sight all around the British Isles. Its scientific name is Halichoerus grypus whic it means hook-nosed sea pig. Grey seals come ashore to give birth, with large colonies breeding on sandy shores on the east coast of England and on remote beaches and islands. Fluffy white pups are born between September and December and remain on land until they have moulted their white coats and trebled their birth weight; at which point they head to the sea to hunt for themselves. Every November and December, grey seals go to the Donna Nook coastline to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes; a wildlife spectacle which attracts visitors from across the UK. Source: Wildlife Trust Advertisement Blood could be seen dripping from their mouths as they bit each other in the brutal fight. The photographs were taken by field worker David Higgins in Donna Nook, Lincs, who said the pair eventually went their separate ways. The 49-year-old from Frosterley, County Durham, said: 'Donna Nook is one of the largest pupping sites for grey seals in the UK and once the females have weaned their pups they are ready to mate with the males. 'During this time the males fight to hold the best grounds and will often fight for dominance. 'These two are fairly evenly matched and so engaged in a fight which involves bashing their bellies against each other and biting any part of their opponents body that they can, which is usually the fatty neck and shoulder area. 'I was impressed by the power and the viciousness of the fight, but mostly the stamina of these two seals, the fight went on for at least 25 minutes with a few breaks so they could catch their breath before going at it again. 'They slap the ground and bang their bodies against each other which makes a loud slapping sound which could be heard where I was stood about 75 metres away. 'These seals probably ignore each other for the majority of the year but fight with incredible power and tenacity during the breeding season. 'Both dominance and breeding territory will give the more powerful seals an advantage when it comes to mating with as many females as possible.' Seals are large predators which can move surprisingly quickly and, having teeth similar to a dog, can inflict a nasty bite Grey seal bulls can measure up to 2.6metres and weight around 300kg - making them formidable opponents A Turkish rapist who attacked a 16-year-old girl will be deported from Germany after a judge said his expulsion from the country would act as a deterrent. The defendant, named in Germany only as Ali B., raped the teenager - also of Turkish origin - in Worms, a city in Rhineland-Palatinate state. A judge has now said the 26-year-old must leave Germany 'to discourage foreigners from a culture of sexual inequality from committing sex crimes'. a Turkish rapist named in Germany as Ali B. (pictured in court) who attacked a 16-year-old girl will be deported from Germany after a judge said his expulsion from the country would act as a deterrent The defendant raped the teenager - also of Turkish origin - in Worms (pictured), a city in the country's Rhineland-Palatinate state The expulsion was announced by 64-year-old judge Dagmar Wunsch at a court in Rhineland-Palatinate. Ali B. had been in Germany for 19 years, according to the German tabloid Bild. Judge Wunsch is said to have emphasised the 'general preventive aspects' of the ruling in order to deter such crimes in the future. The expulsion was announced by 64-year-old judge Dagmar Wunsch at a court in Rhineland-Palatinate In 2016, it was reported that Germany had toughened its rape laws in the wake of a series of sex attacks carried out in Cologne on New Year's Eve. The German parliament passed legislation broadening the definition of sex crimes and making it easier to deport foreign nationals who commit them. It followed years of debate on the need for tougher treatment of rape by the country's criminal justice system. A fake taxi driver has been jailed after he tried to extort 220 from a Thai couple by locking them in his car and attacking the male passenger in central Paris. Named as Enock C, the 25-year-old demanded the couple pay his ludicrous fee and when they refused he locked them inside as he drove around town. Chakrid Thanhachartyothin and his wife wanted a cab to take them from Charles de Gaulle airport to their hotel in central Paris, which usually costs 40, on November 6. In the heated exchange, Enock gesticulates aggressively saying: 'You pay me 200 Euro! Pay me, pay me.' The stunning scenery of central Paris is blighted by Enock C gesticulating aggressively and demanding, 'You pay me 200 Euro!' Their Haitian driver turns to leer at the couple who are doing everything they can to diffuse the situation 'Alright we go outside first,' Mr Thanhachartyothin responds, 'we will pay you, we go outside first.' He repeats to Enock: 'Stop and you put the luggage out.' 'You hit us too just now,' his wife says after the camera comes back from showing a black screen, 'you just hit him.' 'What?' Enock replies, as the couple accuse him of hitting Mr Thanhachartyothin in the face. The Haitian tells them he is the one who might go to the police because they are taking pictures of him which he objects to. The couple paid Enock because they were so desperate to be rid of him and eventually got to their hotel in the Ninth Arrondissement, an elegant area known for its opera house and restaurants. Mr Thanhachartyothin wrote on his YouTube channel on November 10: 'We are now back to Bangkok. 'One of our friend in Paris went to the Police Station for us today to report the case.' The driver shows the tourists his phone which he claims is a legitimate taxi meter and has logged a journey price of 247 Enock C brandishes a permit which the court in Paris found to be fraudulent as he was jailed for eight months Le Parisien reported that Enock was captured by police on Tuesday and they found three vehicles, 320 cash and a fake Paris taxi permit at his address. The investigation was carried out by Les Boers - a specialist unit of the Parisian police force to deal with the scourge of fake cabbies. Enock was jailed for eight months for extortion by violence, threat or coercion, according to the Paris daily. Children have laid heart-breaking tributes to a mother and her five-year-old son after police found two bodies at a reservoir. An abandoned Peugeot 308 belonging to Emma Sillett was found at Valehouse reservoir yesterday after she went missing with Jenson Spellman on Tuesday. Today children placed dinosaur-themed tributes to their young classmate at Simmondley Primary School in Glossop, Derbyshire, with one note reading: 'Jenson, we love you forever.' Flowers and hand-drawn pictures were placed in tribute to him and his mother after police confirmed they had recovered two bodies yesterday. Children placed dinosaur-themed tributes to their classmate outside the school today in Glossop after two bodies were found at a reservoir yesterday Pupils have left touching tributes at the school gates this morning after Jenson Spellman went missing on Tuesday with his mother A schoolmate called Isabelle wrote to Jenson 'I hope you like your dinosaur' in one of the many tributes to appear at the school today Emma Sillett (pictured, left) has not been seen since Tuesday when she was spotted with Jenson Spellman (pictured, right) at a McDonald's in Hattersley Flowers were also laid at the school after Emma Sillett and her son, Jenson, went missing. Police have recovered bodies that will be examined today in a post-mortem Cars in plastic wallets were hung at the school playground in Glossop today as children paid tribute to their classmate Officers recovered the bodies less than three miles from Ms Sillett's home in the village of Dinting. Ms Sillett, 41, was last seen with Jenson at a McDonald's just a few miles from her home on Tuesday lunchtime. Post-mortem examinations will take place today and Derbyshire police said they are not looking for anyone else in connection with their deaths. Mourners are pictured at the school fence this morning, where people left tributes to Emma Sillet and her son in Glossop A shocked community in Glossop placed tributes to a five-year-old and his mother after they went missing and police recovered two bodies yesterday Assistant Chief Constable Kem Mehmet yesterday (thurs) said: 'At 11.35pm on Tuesday, November 20, we received a call to report Emma Sillett and Jenson Spellman as missing. 'Since then extensive enquiries have been carried out by police and external agencies to locate 41-year-old Emma and five-year-old Jenson safe and well. 'After a detailed search by specialist officers, it is with great sadness, that the bodies of what are believed to be Emma and Jenson were located at Valehouse Reservoir earlier today.' Mr Mehmet said there is no indication anyone else was involved in their deaths. 'At this time our enquiries are ongoing and officers will be in the area for some time to come,' he added. 'Whilst in the investigation is in its early stages we have no indication that any other person is involved in their deaths. Police cordon off an area alongside Valehouse reservoir, near Tintwhistle, Derbyshire, where her black Peugeot 308 was discovered 'Further enquires are ongoing to establish the full facts of the case. I would like to take this opportunity to pass on my own condolences, as well as those of every officer in Derbyshire, to the family and friends of Emma and Jenson.' Friends say the mother has recently been dealing with 'underlying problems'. Officers have appealed for the public's help to find the pair. Her son is understood not to have been seen by staff at Simmondley Primary since Tuesday morning. Emma Sillett's black Peugeot 308 was discovered at the Valehouse reservoir, near Tintwhistle, Derbyshire (pictured) The mother and son lived at this address in the village of Dinting, where neighbours described them as a 'great family' A neighbour, who didn't want to be named, said: 'I'm crying over it, look at my eyes. He was a smashing little lad, this community looks out for one another - they were a great family. It is really really sad and my heart goes out to them.' When she was reported missing worried friends also took to social media urging Emma to contact them. A map showing where Emma Sillett was last seen and where her black Peugeot 308 was discovered today at Valehouse reservoir The pair were last seen on Tuesday at this McDonald's in Greater Manchester and friends are increasingly concerned Maggie Hunt wrote: 'I'm so sad for her, I want her to know it's ok to come home.' Jodie Vitti said: 'I haven't slept just hoping & praying she just needs a couple of days to clear her head xx' Another added: 'I can't sleep for thinking about them. Praying they turn up safe. It's heartbreaking.' Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 23) An outspoken bishop finds himself on the receiving end of President Rodrigo Duterte's new tirades against the Catholic Church. In a speech Thursday night, Duterte said he knows the "sins of the Bishops here," cursing a certain Bishop "David," whose full name he did not disclose. "Ikaw, David, tumahimik ka ha. Sige ka lang hingi ng contribution diyan sa mga Saan ang pera ng mga tao? Ang g*** sige lang hingi, may second collection pa," Duterte said. [Translation: "You, David, should shut up. You always ask for contribution Where are the people's money? You **** just ask, there's even a second collection."] The President also claimed he has a video to prove that the bishop is pocketing the Church's offerings. "Alam mo totoo lang, sabihin ko sa inyo, iyong mga offerings, iyong mga pinya, mga avocado, saging, saan napupunta yan? Gusto ninyong malaman? Gusto ninyo ng video? Ibigay ko sa inyo. Doon sa pamilya niya," he added. [Translation: "You know the truth is, I will tell you, the offerings, the pineapple, avocado, banana, where do these go? Do you want to know? Do you want a video? I will give it to you. These go to his family."] Caloocan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David on Friday said he has reason to believe the President was referring to him, since he is "the only Bishop 'David' in the CBCP (Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines)." David denied Duterte's allegations, saying the 73-year-old President does not know what he's saying because he's sick. Critics have been calling for transparency regarding Duterte's health after he admitted having several medical conditions, and disclosing in October that his medical tests turned out "negative" for cancer. In a public Facebook post, David said, "I think he (Duterte) has confused me for someone else. You see, people who are sick sometimes do not know what they are talking about, so we should just bear with them." "My parents never taught me to steal," David added. David has been posting on social media his reactions to some of Duterte's statements. Early this month, David called Duterte a "very sick man" and urged Catholics to pray for the President who tagged saints as fools and drunkards. In September, David said Duterte's public confession that his "only sin are extrajudicial killings" should be followed by "sincere repentance" and "concrete acts of penance" so God can forgive him. Duterte in July met with CBCP President Archbishop Romulo Valles in a one-on-one conversation, where the President vowed to stop his outbursts against God and the Church. This was supposed to be followed by Malacanang's dialogue with the CBCP, but the date has yet to be set. A Thai man drowned in the early hours of the morning today while stealing coins that worshippers had floated on a canal for good luck. Nattapol Yothongyos, 20, swam through hundreds of candle-lit baskets which had been placed on the water in Samut Sakhon for the country's colourful Loy Krathong festival. He loaded his pockets with small change that revellers had added to the boats but at around 1am local time he suffered cramps in his leg and drowned in the 17ft deep canal. Yothongyos loaded his pockets with small change that revellers had added to the boats Nattapol Yothongyos, 20, swam through hundreds of candle-lit baskets which had been placed on the water in Samut Sakhon for the country's colourful Loy Krathong festival Children gathered on the bank of the canal called for help after witnessing the man slip below the surface but they were initially dismissed after a security guard thought they were kidding - and threatened them with arrest. The boys eventually convinced a passer-by they were telling the truth and police arrived on the scene shortly after 1:30am. Nattapol's body was later recovered by police divers - with the stolen coins in his pocket. Paramedics move 20-year-old Nattapol Yothongyos's body from the scene in Samut Sakhon Emergency services and onlookers surround the scene. Young boys alerted the authorities Prapat Chaosamut, Deputy Director of Samut Sakhon Province, said: 'The duty security officer was told by four children who were sitting on the bank of the canal that a man had drowned. He didn't believe them and thought they were joking. 'The children were told they would be arrested if they were lying but they insisted it was true, so he reported the drowning to the police. 'Officers co-ordinated with divers and the children to recover the body. When they pulled it to the shore, in the man's pockets they found a large amount of change which had been taken from the Krathong baskets.' Nattapol's body was recovered by police divers - with the stolen coins in his pocket Police said that Nattapol had been dead for around 30 minutes before his body was recovered. The corpse has now been sent for an forensic examination to check if he had alcohol in his body at the time.' Prapat added: 'It is expected that the victim drowned after developing cramps in his leg. There will be an examination of the body to find the true cause of death.' A former soldier polishing his medals was attacked by a cowardly mob of teens in a sleepy market town in East Sussex. Malcolm Wilkins was thrown to the ground and repeatedly kicked by up seven hooded youths in revenge for him asking them not to vandalise his fence. The 53-year-old ex-corporal became the latest victim of Wild West Britain as he prepared for a Remembrance Sunday service. Malcolm Wilkins, 53, a former corporal in the Queen's Regiment, was polishing his medals He was set upon by a gang of teenagers, sustaining serious bruising on his legs He had stayed up late on Saturday November 10th to polish his medals in readiness to honour the war dead. After hearing a commotion around 1am outside his cottage in the market town of Wadhurst in East Sussex, he went to investigate. Mr Wilkins said he shouted at two youths wearing hoodies to stop kicking his fence and was immediately threatened for daring to speak out. It is just so shocking that it could happen here Malcolm Wilkins, former soldier One of them just said "what you going to do about it old man?" and took a swing at me, said Mr Wilkins. I swung back at him and then the other five or six who were across the road just ran over and piled in. I didnt stand a chance. There is no way I can take on seven teenagers. Mr Wilkins, who served for nine years in the Queens Regiment, including tours of duty in Northern Ireland, found himself dragged into the middle of the road by the mob, aged from 14-17. He said: I had one in a headlock, but the others were just kicking and stamping on me. I could feel the blows coming from all sides. I was in a lot of pain. His wife Alison, 48, ran out to help and brandishing a phone shouted that she had called the police. Mr Wilkins said: When they realised the police had been called, they all ran off. I was very shaken and came back into the house. This is usually such a quiet place to live with no crime. It is just so shocking that it could happen here. The ex-soldier said it took police an hour to arrive at his cottage where they took statements from him and his wife. The ex-soldier said it took police an hour to arrive at his cottage where they took statements Mr Wilkins had told the teenagers not to vandalise his fence, left, when they set upon him He was left in such pain that he was unable to attend the villages Remembrance Day service. I had to stay in bed. My body just ached from where I had been kicked,' he said. As an ex-soldier I always attend Remembrance Day, but there was no way I could do it this year. Almost two weeks after the attack, the deep bruises on his leg are still visible. Mr Wilkins said he was angry that it took police an hour to respond to the 999 call. By the time the police turned up they had long gone, said Mr Wilkins. They told me they had come from Uckfield which is about 16 miles away. I said by the time they got here the kids were probably tucked up in bed. Details of the assault were posted on a Facebook page for the village, but no one has yet given police any information about who was likely involved. I was told they had been at a party, but even though people in Wadhurst must have an idea of who they are no one is saying anything as they are scared of reprisals, said Mr Wilkins, who works as an HGV driver. 'Someone must remember having a party and the teens leaving around 1am but no one is saying much. I just find it so sad that there is no respect. Teens dont have respect for the police or other peoples property. 'You see it all the time and it just sickens me. It isnt thought any of the teenagers filmed the attack as no clips have been posted to social media. A spokesman for Sussex Police said they were investigating the incident and no arrests had been made. The man charged with murdering one woman and sexually assaulting two others at a Catholic Supply store in Missouri was a pastor at a nonprofit church, a pastor at an affiliated ministry said. Thomas Bruce, of Imperial, Missouri was arrested on Wednesday following a two-day manhunt after he allegedly shot dead a woman who refused to perform a sex act on him when he forced her into the back of the store along with two others. David Fitzgerald, a pastor at Calvary Chapel in Maryland Heights, Missouri, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Bruce had been a pastor at Calvary Chapel of Cape Girardeau. Calvary Chapels are affiliated under the same ministry, Fitzgerald said. The Missouri Secretary of State's office also Bruce as the leader of a nonprofit church which was formed in 2003 but dissolved in 2007, CBS reported. Thomas Bruce , 53, a former pastor, is accused of murdering 53-year-old Jamie Schmidt. Schmidt was one of three women forced into the back of a Catholic Supply store in St. Louis, Missouri, on Monday. She was shot dead when she refused to perform a sex act on the gunman Fitzgerald told the St. Louis paper that he and Bruce only spoke occasionally since the church folded, but that he was shocked by the nature of the crime. 'It was completely out of character for the Tom Bruce that I knew, completely surprising,' he told the Post-Dispatch. 'If it wasn't for the amount of evidence against him I would think they've got the wrong guy.' Bruce , 53, allegedly attacked the three women at the religious supplies store in Ballwin, a southwestern suburb of St. Louis, on Monday. He allegedly entered the store at around 3.30pm, pretending to be a customer then forced Jamie Schmidt, a 53-year-old married mother-of-three, and two other women who have not been named into the back at gunpoint where he forced them to take off their clothes. The killing happened inside this Catholic Supply store in St. Louis, Missouri, on Monday It is unclear if the two victims who survived were employees of the supply store or customers. Afterwards, the gunman fled the scene It is unclear if the other women were employees of the store or customers. After forcing them into the back room, Bruce is said to have ordered them to perform unspecified sexual acts and when Schmidt refused, he shot her dead. The other two women complied. Police would not specify what they were made to do beyond saying they were forced to 'continue performing deviant sexual acts on him.' Afterwards, the gunman fled the scene. Bruce was arrested at his trailer on Wednesday after a tip from a member of the public led police to him. According to The St. Louis Dispatch, neighbors saw 100 police officers surround the trailer on Wednesday before he was taken into custody Schmidt's husband described her as an 'angel'. The other two women have not been named He has been charged with 17 criminal counts including murder, kidnapping, multiple counts of sodomy, armed criminal action, burglary and tampering with evidence. He is yet to enter a plea and he is being held without bail. Bruce lived in the trailer with his wife Diane, according to neighbors. He has no criminal record and police have never been called to their house before. According to The St. Louis Dispatch, neighbors saw 100 police officers surround the trailer on Wednesday before he was taken into custody. Schmidt's grieving family has paid tribute to her since, describing her as an 'angel' who was committed to the church. 'She was my angel, my partner, my best friend and the love of my life. 'I'm sorry if you never got to hear her sing recently because it gave me chills,' her husband Gregg wrote on Facebook after her death. Kay & Burton Real Estate described the shed as the 'ultimate holiday experience' Boatshed had been owned by a Portsea family for almost 70 years before sale A family has cashed in by selling their beachside boatshed for close to $1million in what is believed to be a record sale. The boatshed is located just metres from the water in Portsea, a town in the outer south-east of Melbourne. A local family had owned the boatshed for almost 70 years, before recently deciding to sell it,news.com.au reported. Scroll down for video A family have cashed in by selling their boatshed for close to $1million in an impressive sale The boatshed is located just metres from the water in Portsea, a town in the outer south-east of Melbourne The price fetched for the boatshed is believed to have been around the mid-point of $910,000 and $1 million, which was the asking price. The record boatshed sale is much higher than the average price of a house in Melbourne. The city has a $780,130 median house value, according to CoreLogic. Kay & Burton Real Estate described the property as an 'extra-large, elevated Boatshed' which 'provides the ultimate holiday experience and has been tightly held since 1950.' 'It's very rare for them to come up on Fishermans Beach - no one can remember the last time one did,' Kay & Burton Portsea director Liz Jensen told News Corp. Ms Jensen added the buyers were Portsea locals who had wanted to own a beach hut for a long time. Kay & Burton Real Estate described the property as an 'extra-large, elevated Boatshed' which 'provides the ultimate holiday experience and has been tightly held since 1950' Three people are dead and two critically injured after a shooting on Thanksgiving night at a house in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Two men and a woman died in the gunfire, while two men were taken to the hospital in a critical condition. Officers were called to a house on the south side of Fort Wayne around 10.30pm Thursday. They found four victims inside the house and one outside. Two men and a woman died in the gunfire at the house in Fort Wayne, Indiana, while two men were taken to the hospital in a critical condition The house is immediately south of Towles Intermediate School. Police spokesman Jason Anthony told The Journal Gazette that two males and a female were pronounced dead at the scene. Police haven't as yet released the victims' names or revealed the events leading up the shooting. Three victims were pronounced dead at the scene. Police haven't identified any suspects Around 20 relatives and friends of the victims gathered across the street from the home following the shooting. The area around the house was cordoned off with police tape. Police haven't as yet released the victims' names or revealed the events leading up the shooting which happened on the south side of Fort Wayne Investigations are underway but police haven't identified any suspects. Schoolies is living up to its notorious reputation as the wildest graduate celebration in Australia. Online blogger Jamie Zhu went into the belly of the beast on Queensland's Gold Coast to capture some of the annual celebration's outrageous antics. Footage of teenage girls kissing and sucking suggestively on the host's microphone are peppered throughout the five-and-a-half minute video, which has been viewed more than 1.1million times. Rowdy Schoolies-goers have their eyebrows and entire head of hair shaved off while one party-goer sucks on her friends foot. The vision, which has been viewed more than 1.1million times, was posted to Facebook as thousands of school leavers descended on the Gold Coast Chair of the Gold Coast Schoolies Advisory Group Mark Reaburn told the Gold Coast Bulletin some Schoolies-goers would get up to 'mischief'. 'Kids will be kids, and ultimately they have to take responsibility for their actions,' he said. One teenage girl bragged that she 'f***ed a Red Frog and he was so mint.' Red Frogs founder Andy Gourley hit back at the claim and said the organisation had to follow strict policies. 'As per the State Government response all Red Frog volunteers come in line with the Department of Child Safety policy with Blue card and volunteer checks, are always in groups, never alone, and under the direction of a team leader.' TV's Love Island contestant Charlie Taylor and social media star Justin Ryan also appeared in the video as they partied on the Gold Coast. Even the less-favourable toolies made an appearance. Mr Gourley said the video should not be taken as an illustration of the entire Schoolies experience. 'This hasn't been typical behaviour for over a couple of decades now, most schoolies these days aren't as big drinkers, and quite a few are not drinking at all.' A man taking part in Schoolies celebrations was captured having his hair shaved off Despite the outrageous antics, a Queensland Police Service spokeswoman said arrests were down and police were pleased with the overall behaviour. She said only a 'handful of schoolies' had come to 'police attention' each night, a good outcome considering the huge scores of revellers that turned up to the coastal city. Nearly 21,000 Queensland graduates showed to the rowdy celebrations during its first week, a bump up on previous years. Next week, about 12,000 graduates from New South Wales, Victoria and New Zealand will have their turn and show up to the nightclub precinct. The hospital worker stabbed in the car park of a drug rehabilitation unit yesterday has been named locally as 42-year-old Donna Maxwell. The community support worker was attacked outside Ailsa Hospital in Ayr before she staggered back inside the building to raise the alarm. Police closed off the hospital as officers searched for the female attacker. Dog handlers and a police helicopter were called to the scene to assist in the hunt. Ms Maxwell was taken to Ayr Hospital where her condition was last night described as serious but stable. Hospital community support worker Donna Maxwell was stabbed outside a hospital yesterday Patients and staff at Ailsa Hospital (pictured today) in North Ayrshire, Scotland, were told to stay in their rooms, while a police helicopter circulated overhead A source told the Scottish Sun: 'The knife was still lodged in poor Donna when she came back into the hospital.' Police yesterday issued a plea for information about a woman seen leaving the area shortly after the attack. Officers later said a woman arrested over a separate matter shortly after the attack was 'of interest to the inquiry'. The hospital houses an addiction rehabilitation centre and also offers mental health services. A former employee who lives nearby said: 'I was walking through the woods behind the hospital when the stabbing happened. I didn't know what was going on at the time until a policeman came up to me and asked if I'd seen anyone in the grounds around the time it happened. 'He told me there had been someone stabbed in the car park and that the place was on lockdown. The police helicopter suddenly appeared overhead and the dog unit also arrived. 'I heard it was something to do with the addiction services clinic. They have a drop-in service at around 10am so it's likely something happened there. 'Police were crawling all over the place all morning and in the afternoon.' Police Scotland said it increased patrols in the area in a bid to reassure patients, staff and the public. The hospital was reopened at 1pm but the car park outside the addiction services unit was being guarded by police last night. Two officers were also posted outside the accident and emergency department of Ayr Hospital throughout the afternoon. Superintendent Brian Shaw said 'I am particularly keen to hear from anyone who was in the area around 10am and has information about a woman who was seen leaving the area shortly after the 42-year-old woman was stabbed. 'She is described as being around 5ft 2in to 5ft 3in, slight build and pale complexion. She was wearing a dark woolly hat and a dark jacket. 'Officers remain at the hospital and we have increased highvisibility patrols in the area to reassure patients, staff and the wider public. 'Officers are reviewing CCTV and carrying out door-to-door inquiries in the area in an effort to identify the woman responsible.' NHS Ayrshire and Arran associate director Billy McClean said: 'NHS Ayrshire and Arran is aware of an incident in the grounds of Ailsa Hospital this morning. 'We are assisting Police Scotland with their investigations, and to ensure the safety of staff, patients and visitors. We are unable to comment further at this time.' Officers were today hunting for the culprit and no one was allowed out of the hospital site In a statement, the Royal College of Nursing said: 'Our thoughts are with the woman and her family and colleagues. The safety of patients and staff must be the priority at this time.' Former workers told of fears among staff that cutbacks could potentially leave nurses and other employees vulnerable at the hospital. One local, who worked as a psychiatric nurse at Ailsa and other hospitals in Ayrshire and Arran for 34 years, said the attack may have happened due to a lack of mental health facilities. The retired 66-year-old, who did not wish to be named, said: 'There's not many nurses at Ailsa now since most of the buildings are used for community teams who use it as their base.' Ayr MSP John Scott raised the attack during First Minister's Questions at Holyrood. In response, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: 'The health secretary has been able to advise me and our understanding is, let me stress this is our understanding, that injuries sustained by a nurse are not life-threatening.' A man in south-west China has been detained by police for publicly shaming his wife. The couple in Huangping, Guizhou got into an argument over trivial matters before the woman asked for a divorce, Chinese media reported. The husband, surnamed Yang, immediately called his two older brothers for 'back up'. Shocking footage shows the three men surrounding the woman on a street, pulling her hair and attempting to restrain her with a rope while stunned passers-by looked on. A man in south-west China has been detained by police for publicly shaming his wife Shocking footage shows the three men surrounding the woman on a street, pulling her hair and attempting to restrain her with a rope while stunned passers-by looked on Local police were alerted to the scene last Friday and stopped the fight, according to Guiyang Evening News. The woman was seen sitting on the ground and wiping away tears while the men berated her. The three brothers were brought back to the police station and were detained for 10 days. They have expressed remorse for their actions after receiving a 'stern lecture' from the police, according to the report. The woman was seen sitting on the ground and wiping away tears while the men berated her Local police were alerted to the scene last Friday and immediately stopped the fight The three brothers were brought back to the police station and were detained for 10 days Net users slammed the men's actions, saying they deserved a heavier penalty. 'Just 10 days? They should have been in jail! Someone please grant them a divorce!' one user said. 'What is wrong with them? Three men against one woman? another said. 'This is just straight-up abuse!' another comment read. 'Divorce him!' In China, about a quarter of women have reported experiencing some form of domestic violence, according to the All-China Women's Federation. The country introduced a domestic violence law only in 2016. A disability pensioner has spoken of the terrifying moment she suffered a fractured skull, broken ribs and a busted eye socket after she was allegedly beaten and kicked to the ground. Emma Martin, 36, was in her Gold Coast apartment building's underground car park when she was allegedly approached by a fellow tenant. Ms Martin had been smoking a cigarette. 'You're not allowed to smoke down here mate,' a male voice can be heard saying in a video captured by Ms Martin's friend Kylie Klievens. Scroll down for video Disability pensioner Emma Martin (right) has spoken of the terrifying moment she was allegedly savagely beaten and kicked to the ground in her apartment car park The alleged attack left Emma Martin (pictured) with a fractured skull, broken ribs, a busted eye socket and a burst eardrum 'What is your deal mate? F**k off!' Ms Martin can be heard replying. The man can be seen in the footage allegedly lunging and striking at Ms Martin who falls to the ground behind a parked car. The '20 minute incident' also shows the man allegedly kick Ms Martin while she is struggling to get up from the ground. 'My baby's sick... she's got asthma!' a male voice can be heard saying. The man can be seen in the footage allegedly lunging and striking at Ms Martin who falls to the ground behind a parked car 'I was really scared. I nearly died down here,' Ms Martin told Nine News The alleged attack left Ms Martin with a fractured skull, broken ribs, a busted eye socket and a burst eardrum. 'I was really scared. I nearly died down here,' Ms Martin told Nine News. Rewi Borell has been charged with assault occasioning bodily harm and is due to face Southport Magistrate's Court next week. President Donald Trump targeted Congress on Twitter Friday morning, demanding Democrats and Republicans come together on border security - including funding his wall - and working on criminal justice reform. Trump on Thursday threatened to shutdown the government this fall if he doesn't getting the billions needed to build his wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. 'Republicans and Democrats MUST come together, finally, with a major Border Security package, which will include funding for the Wall. After 40 years of talk, it is finally time for action. Fix the Border, for once and for all, NOW!,' he tweeted Friday morning from Mar-a-Lago, where he is spending his Thanksgiving holiday. President Trump targeted Congress on Twitter Friday morning Trump said on Thursday he would shut down the government if his wall is not funded Trump has been pushing GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell to bring up criminal justice reform He also made a push for criminal justice reform, an issue his son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump are backing. The president took a zinger at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer in his tweet, saying there is a 'true shot a major bipartisan support.' 'Really good Criminal Justice Reform has a true shot at major bipartisan support. @senatemajldr Mitch McConnell and @senchuckschumer have a real chance to do something so badly needed in our country. Already past, with big vote, in House. Would be a major victory for ALL!,' he wrote. Trump reportedly talked to McConnell this week on the issue, but the Senate Majority Leader warned him that the clock is ticking on the lame duck session of Congress, which is scheduled to end Dec. 14, although that could be extended. Lawmakers have to finish funding the government by Dec. 7, an issue that will likely dominate their time when they return to Washington D.C. next week. They are also trying to pass a farm bill, an issue of importance in red states that voted for Trump in 2016. Trump on Thursday threatened to shutdown the government if there's not funding for his border wall. Speaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago, the president said there 'certainly could' be a government shut down this fall. 'Could there be a shut down? There certainly could and it will be about border security, of which the wall is a part,' he said. Congress has until Dec. 7 to fund the rest of the government after lawmakers failed to approve seven of the 12 individual funding bills before the deadline and, instead, passed temporary funding to keep the government open while they work on the issue. House and Senate versions of appropriations bills have funding for the president's wall at different levels. The House bill funding the Department of Homeland Security has $5 billion in funding for the border wall while the Senate version has $1.6 billion. They will spend December trying to resolve the issue. Democrats have felt Trump's wrath on border security. He repeatedly hammered them on the campaign trail for not being tough enough. While Democrats say they want border security, they have bristled at the wall funding particularly without broader reform measures for immigrants, including protections for the so-called Dreamers, children who were brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents. The criminal justice reform bill Trump is touting - the First Step Act - would lower mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug offenders and create new prison training programs aimed at reducing reoffenses. However, there could be a civil war in his own Republican Party over the legislation. Trump targeted Senate GOP Mitch McConnell (left) and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (right) in his tweet Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have pushed for criminal justice reform While Republicans Senators like Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham support the legislation, an influential bloc of conservatives, led by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, oppose legislation that has early release provisions for jailed convicts. That divisiveness in his own party could be why Trump included an appeal to Schumer as, thus far, Senate Democrats have been watching how the issue plays out from the sidelines. The president may need votes from Democratic senators to get the issue passed. The House did pass a version of the legislation in May but the Senate added the changes to sentencing laws in its version, meaning the lower chamber would need to approve the latest legislative package. Senate Republicans who support criminal justice reform are eager to pass it before Congress adjourns for the year out of fears a Democratically-controlled House would add even more reform measures next year, making it harder for the GOP to pass on their side. Jamie Beards (pictured) was given a suspended sentence at Isleworth Crown Court A jealous former lover who flew into a rage after seeing 'graphic' photos his former girlfriend had sent another man and attacked her cousin when he tried to stop him has been sparred jail. Jamie Beards had a furious row with his ex Linda Chamberlain at her home in southwest London and attacked her cousin David Palmer when he tried to intervene. Mr Palmer, 34 had been drinking with Ms Chamberlain, 40, at The Temperance pub, where she worked in Chiswick, before they went back to her home on October 21 last year. Beards, 36, turned up and punched Mr Palmer repeatedly, leaving him with a damaged eye socket, Isleworth Crown Court heard. Beards, originally from Oxford, was given a sentence of 18 months suspended for two years due to his previous good character. He denied assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm but was convicted after a two day trial. Beards was also was ordered not to contact Mr Palmer. Alex Jamieson, defending, told the court that Beards had no previous convictions and had stayed out of trouble since the incident occurred. A sheaf of glowing character references were handed by the defence to Judge Edward Jenkins. Judge Jenkins acknowledged that Beards was of previous good character and had stayed out of trouble since the assault. The judge told him: 'If an offence occurs you may be sent to prison. I hope you understand that you made an effort to change your life. I hope you build upon it.' Linda Chamberlain (pictured above) and Jamie Beards had broken up after she had reportedly 'cheated' on him Nicholas Cooper, prosecuting, told the court that Beards and Ms Chamberlain split up on October 9 and had not seen each other since. 'Ms Chamberlain and Mr Palmer left the pub in Chiswick and headed to her home after midnight. 'After some time they heard banging on the front door and it was the defendant, Jamie Beards.' Jamie Beards (pictured) Mr Palmer told the court that Beards and Ms Chamberlain had broken up after she 'cheated' on him. He explained that Beards had been very drunk and very angry. 'He was calling her a slut and a whore. He was having a go at her and trying to go into the details of what she had done. 'He had found the conversations, pictures and things, quite graphic. He was not quite right in the head because he was angry about nine years of a relationship.' Beards split up with Ms Chamberlain on October 9 and they had not seen each other since Mr Palmer told the court that Beards left for a few minutes then came back. 'He stumbled in and lay on the floor. I went down, had a look at him, where he was, and then went back to the front room and sat down.' He told the court that Mr Beards was drunk and he started arguing with Ms Chamberlain. The Temperance pub in Chiswick where Linda Chamberlain had worked Mr Palmer said he tried to stay out of it but when he did step in he was 'pushed in the face' by Beards. It was then that the argument then spilled outside and Mr Palmer tried to put himself between the pair. He said Beards tried to push past him, then punched him repeatedly in the side of the face. They ended up on the ground with Chamberlain trying to break them up. Police arrived soon after and both men were arrested but Mr Palmer was left needing surgery for his damaged eye socket. Kelly Gibbs, 30, died early on Thursday inside a Delaware prison For the second time this month, an inmate involved in a Delaware prison riot that killed a guard has died behind bars. Kelly Gibbs, one of 16 inmates charged with the murder of Correctional Officer Lt. Steven Floyd, died at 2:45 a.m. on Thursday at the Howard R. Young Correctional Institution in Wilmington. He was 30. The Department of Corrections said in a statement that foul play is not suspected in Gibbs' death, Delaware Online reported. No further details were released. It follows the November 8 death of Luis Cabrera, a 49-year-old who was listed as a potential witness in the trials over Floyd's murder. Cabrera was serving time on a double-murder conviction and also died at Young Correctional. Correctional Officer Lt. Steven Floyd (left and right) was killed in the prison riot on February 1, 2017 at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center A prison guard stands on a tower during a hostage situation at James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna, Delaware on February 1, 2017 The prison riot occurred on February 1, 2017 at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center. Several trials that have already taken place have revealed key details about the deadly riot. Inmate Dwayne Staats admitted to planning the uprising to force Governor John Carney to hear inmates' protests about prison conditions. 'My goal was to do something to expose this place to where the public and the government would take notice. I say I got their attention,' said Staats, 37. 'A lot of stuff wasn't being addressed until that happened.' 'When you get into a 'by any means' mode, sometimes you do what is necessary,' Staats later explained under cross-examination. Police searched Delaware prison inmates in the yard after they found an officer dead inside the building on February 1, 2017 following a 20-hour hostage situation Prosecutors say that inmates worked together to take control of Building C by beating and handcuffing the three guards there, and locking them in closets. In addition to Floyd being killed, two other correctional officers were beaten and tormented by inmates before being released. Hours later, response teams used a backhoe to breach a wall and rescue a female counselor who was still being held hostage. She was not injured. In the trials that have already taken place, Staats was convicted of murder while Jarreau Ayers was guilty of lesser charges and not convicted of murder. Defendant Deric Forney was exonerated of all charges. Mounted police patrol travel along Smyrna Landing Road alongside the Vaughn Corrections Center last year after the 20-hour hostage standoff was brought to an end Gibbs was mentioned several times during testimony at the trial. One witness said that he had bragged about beating the corrections officer Floyd with a fire extinguisher until he heard a 'crack or a pop'. Another witness said that Gibbs was present during the fatal assault and had blood on his hands, but did not say whether he struck the fatal blow. Earlier this week, Gibbs pleaded guilty to rioting, kidnapping, and conspiracy in connection with the February 2017 uprising. But he still faced charges of first-degree murder and first-degree assault. His body was turned over to the Medical Examiner's Office and state police to investigate his death. A man exchanged text messages with a woman outlining an erotic encounter with 'rope and blindfolds' days before her death, a court has heard. Richard Clay Dunlop, 28, pleaded guilty in the Cairns Supreme Court on Friday to the manslaughter death of China Crawford, 32, as well as interfering with a corpse and stealing. The court heard the pair had exchanged text messages organising a rendezvous after meeting on a dating website in April, 2017, the Cairns Post reported. Cairns man Richard Clay Dunlop, 28, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of China Crawford, 32, (pictured) who he met through an internet dating website and organised to meet for a rendezvous Crown prosecutor Nigel Rees told the court the test messages about 'rope ties and blindfolds' were sent on April 1 and 2 of 2017 before the meeting on April 3. The court heard Dunlop had rejected Ms Crawford's advances on the night of her death, and she lashed out at him as a result. Mr Nigel told the court Dunlop then forced Ms Crawford against the wall with his forearm firmly against her throat and that within moments the victim had collapsed. 'The deceased was lying naked, face up (her) left arm and leg, carpet surrounding her body and a wardrobe door and a mattress were partially burned,' he said. The court heard that Dunlop forced Miss Crawford (pictured) against the wall with his forearm firmly against her throat and that within moments the victim had collapsed Dunlop has autism and his defence barrister Justin Greggery argued that his clients actions were both 'immature' and 'panicked' but not premeditated. Mr Gregory argued his client had no premeditated plans to hurt Ms Crawford and that her death came as the result of a very short physical altercation, the Cairns Post reported. Ms Crawford's body was not discovered for two days when a work friend arrived at her home. The court also heard Dunlop tried to set fire to the house in an attempt to cover up the evidence but the flames failed to catch and destroy the home. Dunlop will be sentenced on Monday and could face up to nine years in jail. Authorities in a desperate search for abducted 13-year-old Hania Noelia Aguilar hope to find clues to her disappearance in footage provided by deer hunters in the area of Robeson County in North Carolina. The Charlotte Observer reports that the FBI have asked for trail camera footage from hunters in the county for the period between November 5 and November 8 in the ongoing investigation. 'It is vitally important we find every piece of video that may help us determine the exact movements of the stolen SUV from Rosewood Mobile Home Park to Quincey Drive where it was found on November 8,' FBI spokeswoman Shelley Lynch said in a statement according to ABC News. 'Let us determine whether or not the footage you have can provide us with any investigative clues.' Hania Noelia Aguilar, 13, was abducted outside the Rosewood Mobile Home Park in Lumberton, North Carolina Areas of interest for the FBI that may be covered by any cameras include Highway 41/Elizabethtown Road, Lovett Road, Popes Crossing Road and Wire Grass Road. Witnesses say a man dressed in black with a yellow bandanna grabbed Hania and forced her into a green Ford Expedition before driving off Both the FBI and the Lumberton Police Department in North Carolina also posted a Thanksgiving Day reminder of the efforts to return the missing teen to her family under the hashtag #FindHania. 'She's a young girl, a young girl and her mom, I know her mom is hurting,' Patsy Jones, a neighbor who lives next door to Hania's family church, told ABC 11. Witnesses say the eighth-grader went outside more than two weeks ago to start a relative's SUV to prepare to leave for the bus stop when she was grabbed by a man wearing black and a yellow bandanna who then forced her into an SUV and drove off. Investigators have also been asking after the identity of the man who was caught on video near the scene of the abduction. 'The public was critical in the recovery of the SUV, now we need you to come through again for us. Who is the man on the video?' said Supervisory Resident Agent Andy Delarocha in an earlier news release. Videos show a man wearing light colored shoes, a light-colored shirt and a hoodie. Authorities also said the green Ford Expedition that was sought after in the abduction investigation was found in Lumberton, several miles from the mobile home park. Agents are also conducting searches on foot and using drones as part of the search. Authorities are looking to identify a man who was seen in the vicinity of the kidnapping described as wearing light colored shoes, a light-colored shirt and a hoodie A reward for information in the disappearance of Hania was raised recently to $25,000 by the FBI, and North Carolina is offering a $5,000 reward as well. Hania is described as a Hispanic girl who is 5 feet tall and weighs about 125 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes and was last seen wearing a blue shirt with flowers and blue jeans. A special tip line was set up to investigators find Hania: (910) 272-5871. It was the Nazi death camp where Hitler sent the most 'incorrigible political enemies of the Reich'. Prisoners at Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria were forced to climb 186 steps, while carrying 50-kilogram blocks of granite, 'without a second's rest' for 12 hours a day. Harrowing images from the German Federal Archive show prisoners undertaking back-breaking labour at the camp, which was built around a working quarry with the mission to work inmates to death. The Nazis named the camp 'the bone grinder' and one of its most punishing features was the brutal steps, roughly carved into the cliff face of the quarry, called the Stairs of Death. The photo (left) shows inmates carrying roughly-hewn blocks of stone often weighing as much as 50 kilograms up the 186 stairs known as The Stairs of Death. Pictured (right) is the same stairs today, 72 years after the camp was liberated. The stairs have been refitted and straightened so that tourists can easily climb up and down them Exhausted prisoners would often collapse and topple back on those following them, creating a horrific domino effect. Christian Bernadac, a French resistance fighter who was imprisoned at Mauthausen, and later wrote a book titled The 186 Steps, recalled how the steps were simply cut with a pick into the clay and rock, held in place by logs, unequal in height and tread, and therefore extremely difficult, not only for climbing but also for the descent. The prisoners painstakingly carried the stone up the steps while dressed in their striped prison uniform and unsteady sandals. 'Stones rolled under our wooden-soled sandals, and we were forced to keep moving at a very rapid pace,' Mr Bernadac said. 'The work consisted of carrying up a stone of considerable size and weight, along the 186 steps, after which there was still a considerable distance to cover. The man who chose a stone found to be too small was out of luck. And all of this went on at the rate of eight to ten trips per day. The pace was infernal, without a second's rest.' Another survivor said a guard would ask prisoners if they wanted to rest for a minute on a ledge - but would execute anyone who accepted the offer. Former inmate Aba Lewitt recalled the brutal practice as Austria marked the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen in 2015. The crematorium oven at the Nazi death camp He said: 'The guard said, "Well, then, sit over there" - then he shot him. He said the inmate tried to escape the camp. That happened umpteen times every day.' Other prisons remembered how Hitlers sadistic SS guards would often force prisoners to race up the stairs carrying the blocks of stone. Those who survived the ordeal would then be placed in a line-up at the edge of the cliff, called 'The Parachutists Wall'. The men were held at gun-point and given the impossible choice of choosing whether to be shot or to push the prisoner in front of him off the cliff. Some prisoners, unable to bear the tortures of the camp, would willfully jump as part of a suicide pact. Between 122,766 and 320,000 people died at Mauthausen, Austria's largest concentration camp, in the years between the first railway wagon of inmates arrived in 1938 and the camps liberation by American troops in 1945. If prisoners survived their hard labour shifts in the quarry, the SS and Kapos found other ways to kill them. Boston University history professor James Schmidt wrote in a 2005 paper that inmates were starved to death in bunkers, hung, thrown at electric barb wire fences and killed in mass shootings. Some 3,000 inmates died of hypothermia after being forced to take and icy shower and then stay outside, while others were drowned in large barrels of water. Weakened prisoners were blasted with high pressure jets of ice-cold water with many suffering circulatory collapse and dying on the spot, drowning in water pooling in the concrete basin or perishing afterwards through pneumonia. Mauthausen, situated about 12.5miles east of the city of Linz in Upper Austria, had some of the most brutal detention conditions of the time. It was classified Grade III and was a place where incorrigible political enemies of the Reich were sent to be exterminated. Austrian and German criminals, political prisoners, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Roma were first imprisoned in the camp but as time went on Jews, Poles, Spanish civil war refugees and Soviets were also among the tortured. A platoon of 23 men from the 11th Armored Division of the US Third Army, led by Staff Sgt. Albert J. Kosiek, liberated the camp on May 5, 1945. Louis Haefliger, the Red Cross representative, who led the US troops to the camp recalled the horrific scenes of the day in the book 'The 186 Steps'. 'The camp at Mauthausen was overcrowded, and the camps of Gusen I and II filled beyond human limits. There were as many as five sick men to a narrow camp bed. 'There were sixty thousand human beings - men, women and children... The Krematorium chimney smoked day and night. The sanitary conditions were at the lowest imaginable level. They were dying of hunger,' Mr Haefliger said. Today, the 'Stairs of Death' form part of the guided tours at the Mauthausen Memorial. The stairs have been redone and straightened so that tourists can easily climb up and down them. The Mauthausen quarry is now overgrown with trees and bushes and much of the camp site is also covered by residential areas built after the war. Japan is giving away homes or selling them at heavily discounted prices amid a growing number of abandoned properties. The country has an estimated 10 million empty homes, and its 'Akiya' scheme is designed to address this problem while helping young families to get into the property market. Some local governments are also handing out subsidies to new homeowners for renovation projects. Akiya' means 'vacant' or 'abandoned' in Japanese. Properties up for grabs tend to be in rural areas which have seen an exodus of young people heading for the city. Japanese superstition also makes it tougher to sell old homes difficult because buildings associated with the likes of suicide, murder, or 'lonely deaths' are considered unlucky, according to Insider. Japan is planning to give away homes or sell them at heavily discounted prices amid a growing number of abandoned properties (pictured) Japan's population has been gradually shrinking since 2010 when it stood at 128,551,873, to today's figure of 127,185,33, according to data from Worldometers. In 2013, Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications estimated there to be 8.2 million abandoned homes, Rethink Tokyo reports. Kagoshima, Kochi and Wakayama were the front runners with more than 10 per cent of homes in these municipalities vacant, and it is estimated that by 2033 more than 30 per cent of all Japanese homes could be abandoned. 'Akiya' means 'vacant' or 'abandoned' in Japanese, and the properties tend to be in rural areas as young people are continuing to opt for city living The 'Akiya' scheme gives these homes to young families for free (or at a vastly discounted rate), and in some cases offers subsidies to encourage owners to renovate the properties The 'Akiya' scheme gives these homes to young families for free (or at a vastly discounted rate), and in some cases offers subsidies to encourage owners to renovate the properties. However, there are a number of conditions required to become eligible. For example, some local governments require all family members to be under the age of 43 and to have children young enough to attend junior school. The properties can be found via a range of 'Akiya Banks' that list the abandoned homes online. There are risks to consider when taking on an 'Akiya' property, including the cost of renovation which, in some cases, could amount to the same price as purchasing a property elsewhere, according to Yamamoto Property Advisory The properties can be found via a range of 'Akiya Banks' that list the abandoned homes online These 'Akiya Banks' allegedly ensure the purchasing process is simple and fast, making it a popular option for Japanese buyers and foreigners alike. Many find their rural locations and spacious layouts desirable, but there are a number of risks to consider when taking on an 'Akiya' property. Firstly is the cost of renovation which, in some cases, could amount to the same price as purchasing a property elsewhere. Another hazard is the ambiguity surrounding the property's abandonment, and what might stop an original owner turning up one day and demanding ownership. According to some, purchasing an 'Akiya' home is deemed 'absolute social failure', but with house prices in Tokyo creeping up (around $790,000 for a new build property in January 2018), it may be an option worth considering for many young families. These 'Akiya Banks' allegedly ensure the purchasing process is simple and fast, making it a popular option for the Japanese and foreigners alike Century-old shipwreck J.H. Jones which went down killing everyone on board has been discovered by a maritime historian in the depths of Georgian Bay. One of the victim's of the wreck was Captain James Crawford, who went down with the ship in 1906, after it was battered by a perilous storm. More than 100 years later his 83-year-old great-grandson Robert Crawford went to visit the site along with the diving crew. There were ten crew members on board the small steamer from Wiarton, Ontario in Canada and between them they left 16 children behind. Research began on the wreck several years ago by Cris Kohl, who has also previously discovered other missing ships in the Great Lakes Research began on the wreck several years ago by Cris Kohl, who has also previously discovered other missing ships in the Great Lakes. The shipwreck was found on Canada Day, with the help of two other enthusiasts, Ken Merryman and Jerry Eliason from Minnesota. It was discovered lying on the bottom of the bay 200 ft deep, near Lion's Head, Ontario. Footage of the wreckage shows the ship, with the hull mostly intact, covered in algae however the outline of the ship is still clear to see The shipwreck was found on Canada Day, with the help of two other enthusiasts, Ken Merryman and Jerry Eliason from Minnesota When the researchers dived down to take a better look at the remnants of the ship, they found no trace of human remains. Footage of the wreckage shows the ship, with the hull mostly intact, covered in algae however the outline of the ship is still clear to see. The ship's smoke stack had toppled onto it's side but the steam engine components were still identifiable. The ship's smoke stack had toppled onto it's side but the steam engine components were still identifiable A half-tonne endangered turtle was helped back into the sea after it found itself tangled in a fishing net on the coast off the Philippines. Several villagers were able to assist the struggling leatherback after she was spotted near a beach in Camarines Sur, a province located in the Bicol Region, on November 22. During the heartwarming video locals were seen hauling the female turtle back into the depths of the sea after removing the tangled net from her shell. A half-tonne endangered turtle was filmed being rescued by locals on a beach in Camarines Sur, Philippines, after it found itself tangled in a fishing net In the video several villagers were seen helping the struggling leatherback back into the sea after she was found tangled in a fishing net The female turtle was spotted by locals near the shore struggling to free herself from a fishing net The leatherback, which belongs to the largest sea turtle species, was then checked over by local vets, before receiving the all-clear. Following her ordeal, the turtle, who suffered minor cuts and bruising, was then released back into the sea by fisherman from the nearby fishing village of Duran. Nonie Enolva, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), said: 'The turtle became tangled in the net owned by a local fisherman at approximately 6:30am. 'It was brought ashore and treated before being released back into the ocean.' Following her ordeal, the leatherback was checked by local vets and was said to have suffered minor cuts and bruising Locals filmed the heartwarming moment fisherman from the nearby fishing village of Duran hauled her back into the sea Nonie Enolva, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), said the area had become a 'hotspot' for leatherbacks due to the the large concentration of plankton in the sea Ms Envolva added that the coastal town of Balatan, where the leatherback was found, had become a 'hotspot' for the species due to the large concentration of plankton in the sea for them to feed on. The leatherback, named for their leather-like shell, is a migratory animal that crosses both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The turtle is listed on the International Union for Conservation (IUCN) red list for endangered species, with the pacific populations having seen a decline in numbers over the last twenty years. Attorney George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, has slammed President Donald Trump again, this time saying he's using a 'misleading' argument in his attack on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Conway dove into statistics of Supreme Court reversals to counter a claim by Trump that the Ninth Circuit 'is overturned more than any Circuit in the Country.' 'The number of Ninth Circuit cases reviewed and reversed was high, but the Ninth Circuit is by far largest federal circuit by number of judges and size of docket,' Conway wrote on Twitter on Thursday. Attorney George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, has slammed President Donald Trump again Conway took to Twitter to slam Trump's argument about the Ninth Circuit court He used statistics to cite the overturn rate that Trump claimed was highest for the ninth Conway called that argument 'misleading' 'Anyway, to put the point more simply, the Supreme Court doesn't usually take cases to affirm them, which is why the statistic the President is citing is misleading,' he added. He also pointed out that an average of 74 percent of all court rulings across the U.S. that were reviewed by the Supreme Court were overturned last year. Trump has had the Ninth Circuit in his sights after it ruled against him in his attempt to stop illegal immigrants applying for asylum once they cross the border. It also led to the president getting into an unprecedented battle with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. The Ninth Court is the largest of the 13 circuit courts in the United States and its reversal rate in cases that go the Supreme Court is the third highest among all the appeals courts, coming in after the Sixth Circuit based in Ohio and the 11th Circuit in Atlanta. Conway has become something of a social media star in his critical tweets on his wife's boss. But he's caused a fury this month, when he co-wrote an op-ed in the New York Times that Trump's appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general was unconstitutional. He also gave an interview to the 'Skullduggery' podcast on Yahoo! News, where he said the Republican Party under Trump has become a 'personality cult' and that he would rather 'move to Australia' than vote for the president again. But it was his comments on Whitaker that got the president's attention. Trump said that 'Mr. Kellyanne Conway' was 'just trying to get publicity for himself.' Kellyanne Conway, meanwhile, has brushed aside political differences with her husband. 'It doesn't affect me or my job at all,' she said on 'Fox News Sunday' recently. 'I've never been doing better personally or professionally,' she noted, adding: 'I'm sure the feminists are really cheering me on today, an independent, strong-willed, strong woman in a very powerful position that disagrees with her husband.' Trump has been railing against the Ninth Circuit, which ruled against his asylum ban Kellyanne Conway has brushed aside political differences with her husband Trump has been on a tear about the Ninth Circuit all week, even slamming it on Thanksgiving Day in a talk with reporters. 'Essentially they're legislating,' he said of the court which put a hold on his asylum ban on illegal immigrants. 'We are doing really well considering the laws are a disaster. And if we had the right laws, it would be a lot less expensive and we would do it a lot easier, but we don't have the right laws and we have people interpreting the laws and they always give us a bad interpretation. So hopefully we have shown some light on the Ninth Circuit,' he said. Trump also acknowledged his spat with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. 'I know that Chief Justice Roberts, John Roberts, has been speaking a little bit about it. And I think - I have a lot of respect for him. I like him and respect him, but I think we have to use some common sense. It's Ninth Circuit, everybody knows it, it's totally out of control. What they're doing, what they're saying, the opinions are very unfair to law enforcement. They're very unfair to our military. And they're very unfair, most importantly, to the people of our country,' he said. Trump had complained that a judge appointed by former President Barack Obama has ruled against his asylum ban, calling him an 'Obama-judge.' That earned a sharp rebuke from the chief justice. Roberts, who is a Republican and was nominated to the Supreme Court by George W. Bush in 2005, said: 'We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. 'What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. 'The independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.' Trump hit back on Twitter afterwards, saying: 'Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have 'Obama judges', and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.' 19-year-old shepherd Malkhaz Kobauri has been charged with murdering the Smith family after taking them to view a waterfall An American woman was raped then murdered by a shepherd in ex-Soviet state Georgia after she was forced to watch the man shoot dead her husband and four year old son, say prosecutors. The killer had logged onto pornographic websites before staging his attack, it is alleged. The horrific case is due to go to trial but it was earlier believed Lora Joy Smith had died falling off a cliff as she fled the crime scene in the Khata Gorge, 52 miles from Tbilisi. Later reports alleged that Kobauri drowned her. Now investigators - working with the assistance of the FBI - have said there is forensic evidence that 19-year-old shepherd Malkhaz Kobauri raped the terrified mother after killing her husband Ryan, and the couple's young son Caleb. Then he murdered the 42-year-old woman in 'aggravating circumstances', forcing her off a cliff at gunpoint, it is alleged. The shepherd had been showing the family to a scenic waterfall on July 4 this year when he turned the gun, first on husband Ryan and then on 4-year-old Caleb. The Smith family were murdered on July 4 and new evidence suggests that Lora, 42, was raped by 19-year-old shepherd Malkhaz Kobauri after he shot dead Ryan, 43 and Caleb, four The Smiths were 'well respected' members of the local and expat community and had joint US and Georgian citizenship An argument ensued after 43-year-old Ryan - who like his wife had joint US and Georgian citizenship - told Kobauri to take care with the hunting rifle he was carrying. Ryan told him he had not acted cautiously enough with the weapon, 'especially in the presence of the child,' prosecutor David Kazarashvili told the court. The 'irritated' shepherd then shot him in the back and face before shooting dead his son at point blank range, according to the autopsy. New charges have been made against Kobauri that he raped the wife despite his defence's claims that he was incapable of having sex and was a virgin. 'The investigation found that before the incident, Malkhaz Kobauri had been visiting pornographic websites, which underlines his interest in this regard,' said prosecutor David Kazarashvili. Lora Smith was found next to a waterfall on July 6, and her husband Ryan and four-year-old son Caleb were found later, authorities in Georgia said. Malkhaz Kobauri (pictured) is charged with their murder Ryan (right) and Caleb (left) were shot dead with a hunting rifle on July 4, and Lora died when she fell off a cliff after being raped by 19-year-old Malkhaz Kobauri DNA tests found the shepherd's sperm was found in the body of the victim and on her underwear, said reports citing law enforcement. Earlier Georgian media reported that the police had found photos of Lora Smith on Kobauri's mobile, taken after she fell into the ravine. Shortly after the DNA results from the autopsy were declared Kobauri's lawyer David Girgvliani quit the case. Girgvliani did not give one specific reason, but said in a statement reported by Georgian news outlet Agenda that he has always 'fought against illegalities and his goal was to establish the truth' concerning the case. 'I refuse to continue to participate in the case. I wish success to those who will defend Kobauri's interests,' Girgvliani said. The defendant's new lawyer Lekso Kobaidze insists his client is innocent, and he has retracted an earlier confession. Lora (right with son Caleb) was a teacher while Ryan started a handcrafted Azerbaijani carpet business that sold rugs all over the world The Smith family ran a business founded by Ryan (pictured) called ReWoven, that creates traditional, handcrafted Azerbaijani woven carpets He is now claiming that 'two foreigners' killed the family and intimidated him into not saying a word. Georgia Today reports that the accused says two men from the North Caucasus turned up in Khada Gorge in a black car before shooting dead the family. However, no witnesses have come forward saying they also saw the car. 'They told me that they would kill my family members if I reported the murder,' Agenda quoted Kobauri as saying. Kobauri's mother Mariam Martiashvili has said her son was forced to confess, but prosecutors say Kobauri showed police where the child's body was hidden. If convicted in next month's jury trial Kobauri faces a life sentence. A psychiatric examination of the shepherd Kobauri found he was fit to stand trial and has no mental health problems, Georgia today reported citing Kobauri's lawyer, Mr Kobaidze. 'Psychologists and psychiatrists jointly evaluated his mental condition and found that this person is mentally healthy,' Kobaidze said. 'I am sure the examination results will be released Kobauri is an absolutely sane and balanced person,' he added. Ryan Smith, who was originally from San Diego, California, and Lora Smith had been living in Georgia's eastern Marneuli city for more than 10 years. They ran a business founded by Ryan called ReWoven, that creates handcrafted Azerbaijani woven carpets. The company uses traditional methods of centuries past which have 'all but vanished'. According to its website, it hopes maximize the benefits for 'weavers and their community today' and ensure the tradition continues. Ryan, originally from California, and his wife Lora moved to Tbilisi 10 years ago to run a carpet weaving business called ReWoven Each carpet costs more than $1,000 and they have been sold all over the world. According to the company's website, Ryan left the US for Azerbaijan in 2002 because of his 'passion for travel and a love for people of other cultures'. While living in the capital of Baku he started working in the rug market and was inspired to start his own rug weaving business. Ryan left Azerbaijan in December 2005 and came back to the US where he met and married his wife. Lora had been a teacher in Washington state but later worked as an English teacher through a Georgian government program. Khada Gorge in the former Soviet state of Georgia, 52 miles from Tbilisi. The shepherd who is accused of their murder had been showing the family to a scenic waterfall on July 4 The couple then moved to Georgia in 2011, receiving Georgian citizenship a year later. The Smiths were 'well respected' members of the local and expat community, having lived in the Marneuli region of eastern Georgia for around seven years. Lora's body was the first to be found on July 6 - two days after the hike the family took with Kobauri. According to the company's website, Ryan left the US for Azerbaijan in 2002 because of his 'passion for travel and a love for people of other cultures' She was discovered by a Georgian emergency response group next to a waterfall in the Khada gorge. The following day investigators recovered Ryan's body, but Caleb was not found for three days. Agenda reported that the 4-year-old was only discovered on July 9 after Kobauri was remanded in custody and led officers to the place where he had buried the boy's body. Kobauri is originally from the Akhalgori district in the Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) region, which is controlled by Russian forces and South Ossetian militia. Since the 2008 Russia-Georgia war the accused has lived in the Mtskheta municipality of Georgia. Theresa May revealed today she had finally found the Brexit formula to both have her cake and eat it after receiving a cupcake from a sympathetic child. The PM revealed the treat had been among a 'huge number' of messages of support as she faced her rebellious party with a Brexit they hate and confronted a Tory coup. Mrs May revealed the gift from Gabby Balaes, 9, during a phone-in on the BBC to drum up support for her ailing Brexit package. Theresa May revealed today she had finally found the Brexit formula to both have her cake and eat it after receiving a cupcake from a sympathetic child She said: 'I've had a huge number of messages - really kind messages - from people up and down the country, who have sent me flowers. 'One nine-year-old, Gabby Balaes, actually baked a cupcake with my face on it. There was a message. It said that her dad had said I'd had a tough week and she wanted to make me smile.' She said she was 'sorry' and 'disappointed' that some members of her Cabinet had resigned over her Brexit stance, adding: 'Obviously, they have got strong feelings about this issue, they had campaigned to leave the EU and they had done good work in the Cabinet.' Asked if she might sometimes 'go home and swear' about colleagues walking out, she replied: 'No, it's up to people's choice.' In the BBC phone in, Mrs May also warned that EU is not 'going to give us a better deal' if MPs vote down her settlement. Torpedoing the plan will just lead to 'more division and uncertainty', she said. Asked repeatedly whether she will resign if she loses in the Commons - as seems inevitable - Mrs May appeared to rue out the prospect: 'No... I'm focusing on ensuring that we get this deal through Parliament. 'I believe this is absolutely the right deal for the UK. This is not about me.' The PM revealed on 5 Live (pictured) the treat had been among a 'huge number' of messages of support as she faced her rebellious party with a Brexit they hate and confronted a Tory coup The comments came after former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab heaped pressure on the PM as she faces 'mission impossible' to get the package through Parliament. More than half of Tory backbenchers have now publicly declared that they will vote against the deal in a looming Commons showdown next month. Mrs May repeatedly dodged today when asked whether she has a 'Plan B' for a defeat in Parliament. She also appeared to avoid saying that her blueprint would be 'better' than the current membership terms - suggesting it would be 'different'. Mrs May insisted none of the Tory rebels who have been trying to oust her - led by Jacob Rees-Mogg - were off her Christmas card list. A wheelchair user who was prevented from drinking at a wine tasting event over 'safety' concerns is seeking compensation in a Japanese court. The man in his 50s is demanding 12,000 in damages from the organisers and Seibu Department Store in Tokyo, where the event was held in August, the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper reported on Thursday. Staff gave him a written statement which said: 'To customers coming to the store with manual and electric wheelchairs, please refrain from tasting.' The Seibu Department Store in Tokyo who are being sued after their wine tasting event held in August resulted in a wheelchair user in his 50s being thrown out over safety concerns During the trial's first day this week, the manual wheelchair user whose name was withheld told Tokyo district court that he was asked to stop drinking after two glasses of wine, the daily said. He told organisers that he was not heavily drunk and the instruction was unreasonable, but he thrown out of the venue. His complaint noted that the act was 'unjust discrimination' against him and violated the nation's disability discrimination law, the newspaper said. 'Accidents and troubles inside the store are not always caused by wheelchair users,' his lawyer told the court, saying the he was treated as as 'a nuisance.' The wheelchair user was ejected from the department store in Tokyo after being handed a note which said: 'To customers coming to the store with manual and electric wheelchairs, please refrain from tasting' But a lawyer of the department store, run by Seibu & Sogo, told the court that the instruction was 'necessary to secure safety,' the daily said. The legal team added that there were minor accidents between an electric wheelchair user and customers when the store held a similar wine tasting event two years ago. In Japan, both manual and electric wheelchairs are mostly categorised as 'pedestrians' under law, while police strictly instruct electric wheelchair users not to roll them after drinking. There was a glimmer of light for Theresa May today amid signs voters think Jeremy Corbyn and her Tory rivals would be making a worse job of Brexit. The Prime Minister is battling to push her deal with the EU through in the face of huge resistance from her own party and the Opposition. As she fights off a concerted attempt to oust her by Conservative Eurosceptics, research for Lord Ashcroft has suggested replacing her with Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg would not go down well with the public, She also still rates well ahead of the Labour leader. In further hope for the PM, people view her Brexit package as better than a no-deal outcome. But worryingly it is also seen as less attractive than the current EU membership terms. Research for Lord Ashcroft suggested replacing Theresa May with Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg would not go down well with the public According to the survey, just under half of voters claimed to know at least a 'but' about the Brexit package thrashed out with Brussels. Some one in five said they thought the Brexit deal honoured the referendum result, with the figure falling to just 13 per cent among Leave voters. But 43 per cent of the wider public and 59 per cent of Leave voters said it did not. Overall 34 per cent of people thought the deal was better than going with no agreement - outweighing the 27 per cent who said the opposite. Asked how they believed the deal compared to existing membership terms, 21 per cent said it was better, and 42 per cent worse. On the question of who would make the best PM, Mr Corbyn was preferred to Mrs May by 28 per cent - but 45 per cent said he would be worse. Some 22 per cent said Mr Cameron back in No10 would be an improvement, but they were contradicted by 43 per cent. Mr Johnson - seen as Mrs May's biggest rival - was regarded as worse by 53 per cent, and better by just 19 per cent. Mr Rees-Mogg's ratings were similarly dismal, with just 14 per cent saying he would be an improvement, and 42 per cent a downgrade. None of the other potential replacements - including David Davis, Sajid Javid and Dominic Raab - recorded a net positive result when compared to Mrs May. A court in Spain has cleared two men of raping a woman, despite her begging them to stop. The move has prompted outrage across the country just eight months after thousands took to the streets to protest another Spanish court's decision to clear five men, who dubbed themselves 'the wolf pack', of gang-raping a teenager. In the latest controversial case, the court in Lleida, in the north east of the country, ruled that a man and his nephew sexually abused rather than raped the woman - because they were deemed not to have used intimidation or violence. A woman is seen with a sign with the text 'we want to be free' in protests in Spain earlier this year over the sentence given to the members of a group known as the 'wolf pack' They were jailed for four-and-a-half years rather than the maximum rape sentence of 15 years, infuriating Spaniards once again. The victim met the two men in a bar before accompanying them to a nightclub. Afterwards the men, whose ages are unclear, forced her into intercourse and a sex act in a back alley. The court ruled that the men 'took advantage of her vulnerable nature, which, added to her consumption of alcohol and antidepressants, may have weakened her ability to defend herself, thus making the use of violent or intimidatory acts unnecessary'. Despite this damning appraisal of their behaviour and admission that her weakened state left her vulnerable, the court prompted the ire of many when it stated that without the use of violence or intimidation from the men, they couldn't be tried for rape. The controversial verdict comes just two days shy of the UN International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women - wherein activists plan to stage 200 demonstrations. Thousands of people protested across Spain, in April, after a court acquitted five men of rape charges for an attack on a young woman during a bull-running festival People tweeted their outrage at the case in Lleida, just months after Pamplona case rattled Spain People have reacted with utter disbelief at the verdict online with a particular ire directed at the section of the law focusing on intimidation and violence. Jose Antonio tweeted: 'If the justice does not protect the victims with this type of interpretation of the laws, we will not advance one iota in the fight against gender violence. 'This type of crime can not remain unpunished, it is a psychological condemnation for a victim for his (sic) entire life.' Sabel Carreira added: 'We want a justice that protects women, not this farce!' 'Although she cried and told them no, (...) was not able to express her refusal physically.' If you do not defend yourself, it's not rape. If you do, they kill you,' said Mercedes Domenech, quoting the court's findings. The reaction online echoes the sentiment of a much more physical outrage in late April that saw thousands of protesters take the streets after a Pamplona court ruled in a similar fashion. The men, who had recorded video of the attack on their mobile phones and laughed about the incident afterwards on a Whatsapp group, were charged with the lesser crime of sexual abuse instead of rape. Protestors face off against police in Spain after the verdict that quashed rape charges against the wolf pack in April Jose Angel Prenda, Jesus Cabezuelo, Jesus Escudero, Angel Boza and Antonio Manuel Guerrero have been dubbed the 'wolf pack' after the name of their WhatsApp group The woman involved in the April court ase alleged she had been raped during the San Fermin bull-running festival in Pamplona (file picture) This is despite the five men, including a former policeman and a former soldier surrounding the woman in a small alcove, removing her clothes and having unprotected sex while recording the encounter. Thousands gathered in cities across Spain from Seville to Barcelona and outside the Justice Ministry in Madrid bearing notices reading 'I believe you sister' and chanting 'It's not abuse, it's rape'. The five - who belonged to a WhatsApp group called La manada (wolf pack) - were jailed for nine years for sexual assault, but many saw the sentence as too lenient. The BBC reported that after the 'wolf pack' ruling, Spain's government asked a group of legal experts to revise the sexual assault laws, with a view to unifying the different offences under the umbrella term rape. Undercover police have been banned from using nylon tights to cover up emergency lights on unmarked cars after a crash left a policeman seriously injured. Officers around the country have been using nylon tights on the front grilles of their unmarked cars to stop criminals identifying them by seeing the half-hidden lights. One unmarked squad car in Llanfairfechan, north Wales was involved in a crash after covering its blue lights with tights. As the squad car rapidly approached a van from behind its driver did not see the obscured blue flashing lights and did not give way. The police driver was forced to swerve into a lay by where it ploughed into a Marks & Spencer truck. This accident between an unmarked police car and a M&S lorry has led to officers being banned from using tights to cover up blue lights in the grilles of undercover cars A collision investigator recorded that the nylon covers could not be ruled out as a contributory factor to the collision as they made it extremely difficult for the driver of the light goods vehicle to identify the vehicle behind them as a police car responding to an incident. North Wales Police's professional standards department became aware of the issue in February 2017, a year after the incident. They made a voluntary referral to the IOPC that month. The IOPC investigation found that there was no national standard policy over covering lights and as a result, they found a number of forces had been using various measures including using tights to cover lights. Catrin Evans, of the IOPC, said: 'When police forces attempt to make unmarked police cars less visible, they need to adopt a standardised approach.' An officer was seriously injured when he slammed into the back of this truck on a lay by in north Wales when he was forced to swerve out of the way of another vehicle which failed to spot him because his emergency blue lights were covered by a pair of tights Ms Evans added: 'Any modifications made ought to be tested and approved by experts rather than using ad hoc solutions that may not be the safest method. 'For the safety of police drivers and the public alike, testing would also help make sure that any coverings do not significantly limit the visibility of the emergency blue lights when turned on. 'I'm pleased to see the NPCC has recognised the need to develop this national guidance and has commissioned a working group to produce the new policy.' The IOPC found no case to answer for the officers involved in covering the grille lights with nylon tights due to the lack of any national policy or guidance. Police are spraying moped criminals with so-called 'DNA spray' as part of the new blitz on scooter gangs. The invisible liquid can be used to link suspects to mopeds used in crime and prove their involvement when cases come to court. One moped yob who fell foul of the new tactic is Mohammad Khaleghi, who was sprayed with the substance as he rode his moped dangerously in Camden in May in this year. When police later caught up with him, a UV light exposed the spray and he was jailed for driving without a licence, failing to stop and dangerous driving. Mohammad Khaleghi when he failed to stop on his moped in Camden this year Khaleghi rode along pavements, through red lights, against oncoming traffic and along cycle paths as he tried to get away from police. He was sprayed by an officer on a motorcycle as he fled in case he later need to be connected to the crime. In this instance, police managed to catch up with him and he was arrested. Scotland Yard released photos of him under UV lights to show how their new spray works. Chief Inspector Jim Corbett said 'Khaleghi not only failed to stop for police but rode at speed through several red traffic lights. 'He took off his helmet and he continued to ride through bollards onto a cycle path and then on a pavement being used by pedestrians. 'His riding was extremely dangerous and he endangered other motorists and people as well as himself. 'Khaleghi thought that if he removed his helmet we would not continue to pursue. He was wrong. We continued in the pursuit and he was caught and has been jailed.' The spray is visible under UV light, even in daylight, and helps link criminals to crimes Khalegi, 22, received a 10-month jail term at Southwark Crown Court on November 8. He was spotted by specialist officers riding erratically through Camden on May 5 and started following him. According to a Scotland Yard spokesman: 'A police officer from Operation Venice (which tackles moped crime) on a police motorcycle, noticed Khaleghi riding in an erratic manner along Adelaide Road and so followed him. 'On Boundary Road Khaleghi went through a set of red traffic lights at speed. He did the same on Finchley Road which is a busy three lane A road. He turned left onto Hillgrove Road, then left onto Alexandra Road, then through width restricting bollards on Dorman Road, riding onto a pedal-cycle path and then back out onto Finchley Road. 'A marked police Scorpion car overtook Khaleghi and indicated for him to pullover and stop. Instead, Khaleghi accelerated away from the officers, discarding his helmet as he did so. 'The helmet was recovered by police. On Avenue Road, Khaleghi rode against oncoming traffic on an opposing carriageway before riding on the pavement, endangering members of the public. 'Another police vehicle safely ended the pursuit by pulling in front of Khaleghi and making tactical contact with his motorcycle to stop it going any further. Taken off his scooter, Khaleghi fled on foot. 'The motorcycle officer managed to spray him with DNA spray, which would assist in proving he was the suspect should he manage to escape and be recaptured at a later date. 'However, he was caught and detained by officers and arrested on suspicion of dangerous driving, failing to stop for police, and driving without insurance. Khaleghi was taken to a north London police station where he was later charged with dangerous driving, failing to stop for a police constable, driving otherwise in accordance with a licence and driving without insurance.' Over 6,000 new forensic tagging sprays have been handed to local officers on London's streets. The sprays are used to 'tag' a suspect or suspicious moped without putting the officer at a serious risk of harm. UV scanners at police stations can then pick up whether an offender has been sprayed- and so they can be linked back to other crimes. Chief Inspector Jim Corbett said: '6,900 officers have been trained so far. We are going to train everyone. 'If they spray an offender in a location, a custody UV light will pick it up. It's contributing to cutting crime while not putting themselves at risk.' An official exorcist has claimed that he received 1,700 requests for exorcisms in the past year as people struggle to deal with day-to-day life. Although the church doesn't keep official statistics, several priests suggested that year-on-year they receive more requests for exorcisms. The official exorcist for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, Father Vincent, told The Atlantic that this year he received the most inquiries he has ever had. Human's are constantly completing with social problems beyond their control such as the loss of skilled jobs, drug addiction, and blighted communities have led people to believe there are other forces at work. An official exorcist has claimed that he received 1,700 requests for exorcisms in the past year as people struggle to deal with day-to-day life Father Gary Thomas, who's exorcism experience was documented in 2011 movie The Rite, said he typically receives dozens of requests a week. As well as those who have been exorcists for years, the church has also been training priests up for the role across the globe in Chicago, Rome and Manila. Just seven years ago the U.S. Catholic church had around 15 exorcists but there are now believed to be more than 100 practicing. However for most people who insist that they require an exorcism, they are in fact suffering from something completely different entirely. Although the church doesn't keep official statistics, several priests suggested that year-on-year they receive more requests for exorcisms Father Lampert recalled a young man who sought an exorcism and had been told he was experiencing schizophrenia symptoms, which he believed were the work of the devil. The priest will only take the exorcism seriously if both the mental health evaluation and physical exam do not produce a reasonable explanation for their symptoms. They will then search for signs of possession including language they are unlikely to have learned, physical strength, secret knowledge and an abhorrence of God. The process begins with the priest sprinkling holy water on the possessed, they would then make the sign of the cross and kneel to say the Litany of the Saints and several readings of scripture. The exorcist will then try to directly address the demon and request that they must reveal themselves and answer with their name, and also leave when the are ordered out. Due to the fact that the exorcist is working with the power of God the demon has no choice but to obey, according to Catholic doctrine. Louise Muskovits (pictured), 33, is one of many American's who have sought an exorcism after being 'taken over' by unnatural forces in March 2016 As well as people struggling with modern life, some exorcists suggested that their has also been an increase in witchcraft and attempting to communicate with the dead. Louise Muskovits, 33, is one of many American's who have sought an exorcism after being 'taken over' by unnatural forces in March 2016. On the surface Muskovits appeared to be having a panic attack, during an interview with her counselor in Tacoma, Washington while recovering from alcohol abuse. However following the experience she was left convinced she had been possessed, after her character transformed and she began screaming and pulling out her hair. She told the counselors that were trying to communicate with her that 'nobody could save Louisa'. Louisa apparently switched between this erratic state and her normal self, as if she was fighting an internal battle. She had previously detailed being 'taken over' by a dark force where she would read scripture out loud to send it away. Following the experience Louisa looked for mental-health treatment as well as the ritualized remedies of her Catholic faith. A neighbour of a woman in the UAE 'who killed and cooked her lover' heard a chopping machine and could 'smell meet grilling' at her house, it has emerged. The unnamed Moroccan woman carried out the killing at her home in Al Ain after her boyfriend of seven years said he was planning to marry someone else in their homeland, prosecutors say. Officers said she cut up his body and used a blender to mince her former partner's remains before cooking and serving them to Pakistani workers near her home as machboos - a traditional Gulf dish of rice and meat similar to biryani. Her lawyer has denied the claims, but police say they found two fingers and a tooth which the woman had dropped while trying to dispose of the remains. A female neighbours has told local media how she heard the sound of the chopping machine and could smell meat being grilled in the oven. A Moroccan woman has been accused of butchering her lover, cooking his remains and serving them to workers as machboos (file picture) - a traditional rice dish - in the United Arab Emirates She said: 'Four days after the woman moved to the house, I heard the sound of a chopping machine at 3am. 'Then, there was a strange stinking smell mixed with that of the grill. What surprised me was the continued sound and the long-lasting smell which continued for a few days. 'I even had to stop going to the yard because of that smell. We came to know what happened only after the police brought in police dogs and discovered the crime. Then I informed the police about the mincing sound and the smell.' Earlier this week, it was reported that police were called after the man was reported missing by his brother. He went to the couple's home in the hope of finding him, but she claimed to have kicked the victim out and said she did not know where he was. The unnamed woman carried out the killing at her home in Al Ain (file picture) after her boyfriend of seven years said he was planning to marry someone else in Morocco, prosecutors say Reports in Morocco then quoted the brother as saying that police found a human tooth inside the woman's blender. According to The National, DNA tests confirmed the tooth belonged to the man and his girlfriend was arrested. She was arrested and is said to have told police she carried out the killing in a moment of 'insanity'. The woman said it was out of revenge, having financially provided for him for years. She said she had asked a friend to help dispose of the body - but the friend denied witnessing the crime when questioned by police, The National reports. According to the Khaleej Times, the woman's lawyer said his client 'might have mental problems'. Khalid bin Jumhour Al Ahbabi also denied that the Moroccan cooked the body and served it to workers. Police say the woman invited her victim for dinner before stabbing him twice in the chest and abdomen, cutting him up and putting his body into two bags. She then sold her jewellery to buy knives, a saw, a meat grinder and a gas stove before slicing the body and putting it in the oven, police say. The next court hearing takes place on December 31 in a case that will see 24 witnesses giving evidence. The head of billionaire George Soros' philanthropic organization has called for 'congressional oversight' of Facebook after the company confirmed it had hired a public relations firm to dig up dirt on Soros. 'Sorry, but this needs independent, congressional oversight,' Open Society Foundations President Patrick Gaspard wrote on Twitter Wednesday, following Facebook's admission it had hired the Definers PR firm. 'So @facebook decides to drop a turkey on Thanksgiving eve, with admission that Definers was tasked by company leadership to target and smear George Soros because he publicly criticized their out of control business model,' Gaspard wrote. Earlier Wednesday, Facebook's outgoing Head of Communications and Policy Elliot Schrage published a blog post detailing the company's decision to hire Definers Public Affairs, a Republican-affiliated firm, to research Soros. Open Society Foundations President Patrick Gaspard (above last month) called for 'congressional oversight' of Facebook over the company's research on George Soros Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (left) has said he will not step down after it was revealed that the company hired a PR firm to dig dirt on billionaire George Soros (right) Schrage wrote that Definers had looked into Soros after the billionaire called Facebook a 'menace to society' in a speech at Davos in January 2018. Definers later prepared and distributed research showing that Soros funded several organizations in an anti-Facebook coalition, Schrage wrote. Regarding the research, Gaspard accused Facebook of 'making claims about a behind the scenes puppet master role that is a total fiction with the intent of delegitimization of critics and stirring up polarization.' He compared it to efforts to portray Soros as the funding source behind the migrant caravan and protests against the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg denied having any knowledge of the company's PR campaign against Soros until it was made public by a New York Times investigation. Sheryl Sandberg, the company's chief operating officer, also denied having knowledge of the hiring of Definers. However, in a statement supplementing Schrage's blog post, she said she recently learned that the PR company's work had 'crossed my desk'. Facebook's outgoing Head of Communications and Policy Elliot Schrage (above) published a blog post detailing the company's decision to hire Definers Public Affairs to research Soros Schrage defended Facebook's investigation into Soros as a response to the liberal financier calling the company a 'menace to society' during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos last January. 'We had not heard such criticism from him before and wanted to determine if he had any financial motivation,' Schrage said Wednesday. 'Some of this work is being characterized as opposition research,' Schrage wrote. 'But I believe it would be irresponsible and unprofessional for us not to understand the backgrounds and potential conflicts of interest of our critics'. Facebook has since cut ties with Definers. In the memo, Schrage said the blame lies with him and Facebook's communications team. Schrage said Facebook did not ask Definers to create or distribute fake news. Schrage announced in June he would be stepping down, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but has stayed on during the search for a replacement. In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Zuckerberg said he had no intention of stepping down as chairman of Facebook. While some Facebook shareholders and analysts have called for Zuckerberg to step down as chairman, he said Tuesday 'That's not the plan'. He told CNN on Tuesday that he hopes to work with Sandberg 'for decades' to come. An elderly man driving the wrong way on a Massachusetts highway caused a fiery crash that killed him and injured five on the eve of Thanksgiving, authorities said. Two children who were among the injured were pulled out of the car by a stranger who smashed the windows just before it burst into flames. State Police spokesman Dave Procopio said the crash happened around 11.30pm. Wednesday on Interstate 495 in Taunton. The burnt out shell of the 2016 Mercedes GL450, which was being driven by a 56-year-old man with three passengers - a 42-year-old woman and two boys, aged 10 and 12, all from Foxborough - when Arnold Reda collided with them on Wednesday Procopio said 84-year-old Arnold Reda, of Foxborough, was headed south on the northbound when his car struck two other cars, causing one of the vehicles to burst into flames. An investigation showed that Reda, driving a 2005 Toyota Camry, had been travelling north on I-495, when he made a U-turn and began driving in the southbound lane. He then crashed into a 2016 Mercedes GL450 driven by a 56-year-old man who had three passengers - a 42-year-old woman and two boys, aged 10 and 12, all from Foxborough. Emergency services arrived at the scene to find the Mercedes fully engulfed in flames. Reda was pronounced dead a the scene Police said a passing motorist pulled over and smashed the windows of the Mercedes SUV, managing to pull the two boys out before the vehicle caught fire. Boston 25 News reported that the boys' family are hoping to track down the good Samaritan so they can thank him for saving their lives. Emergency services arrived at the scene to find the Mercedes fully engulfed in flames. Images posted on Twitter by Taunton firefighters later show the burnt out shell of the SUV. The adults were treated at Rhode Island Hospital and the children were transported to Hasbro Children's Hospital, NBC 10 WJAR reported. Police later described all their injuries as non-life-threatening. Reda's Toyota collided with a 2003 Lincoln Towncar (pictured). The driver, a 58-year-old woman from Weymouth, was unhurt. Her passenger, a 27-year-old woman from Foxboro, was taken to Sturdy Memorial Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries After striking the Mercedes, Reda's Toyota collided with a 2003 Lincoln Towncar, with two occupants. The driver, a 58-year-old woman from Weymouth, was unhurt. The passenger, a 27-year-old woman from Foxboro, was taken to Sturdy Memorial Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Reda, the sole occupant of his vehicle, was pronounced dead at the scene. Nicole Russel was on her way home from work on I-495 in the Mansfield area when she was almost hit by Reda. 'All of a sudden, I see a guy swerve over quickly,' she told Boston 25 News, 'I see headlights coming at me.' Russell estimated Reda was driving around 80 to 90 mph. Arnold Reda, 84, had been travelling north on I-495 when he made a U-turn and began driving in the southbound lane. His 2005 Toyota Camry (red vehicle) then collided with two other cars, injuring five people and killing Reda The northbound lanes were closed overnight but reopened to holiday traffic early Thursday. Procopio said police haven't determined how or why the Reda turned on to the wrong side of the highway. Massachusetts State Police, Taunton Fire Department, Norton Fire Department, MassDOT, Taunton Police, Easton Fire, and Brewster Ambulance Service all responded to the scene. Welcome Guest! You Are Here: A sweet shop has had all of its confectionery seized by police after drugs were found on the premises. Flying saucers, humbugs and liquorice flyers were just some of the treats confiscated from The Convenience Store near Stanley in County Durham. The sweets were taken after police discovered a quantity of white powder, thought to be amphetamine, during a planned raid. Flying saucers, humbugs and liquorice flyers were just some of the treats confiscated The sweets were confiscated from The Convenience Store near Stanley in County Durham The sweets were taken after police found white powder, thought to be amphetamine Officers from Stanley Neighbourhood Policing Team, led by community beat officer PC Gary Smith and supported by a dog team from the Cleveland and Durham Specialist Operations Unit, swooped at lunchtime. Durham Police say they took the sweets 'as a precautionary measure to ensure contaminated sweets did not find their way into the hands of children'. A home in Stanley was also searched where officers found a quantity of cannabis, along with drug equipment and a large quantity of cash. A 50-year-old local woman was arrested on suspicion of possession with intent to supply and a 56-year-old local man was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the supply of controlled drugs. Both were taken to Durham City Police Station for questioning. Officers say items seized during the operation are now being examined and the probe is continuing. The sweet shop had all of its confectionery seized by police after drugs were found on the site Community beat officer PC Gary Smith led the operation which swooped at lunchtime today Some of the removed stock from the sweet shop in Stanley following the police raid today Sergeant Dave Clarke of Stanley Police, who led today's operation, said: 'This is a shop which sold sweets to children. 'Families with children were regular customers at the premises, which is right in the heart of the village and straight opposite a nursery. 'We have confiscated the contents of the shop because we couldn't take the risk that some of those loose sweets might become contaminated with a potentially dangerous substance.' He added: 'Today's operation shows that when the local community gives us information about the supply of drugs, then we will take decisive action. 'Hopefully, today's operation will also have left local drug dealers with a sour taste in their mouths.' Anyone with information about the supply of drugs in their community is urged to ring Durham Police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111. The Home Office has been urged to take action after 86 migrants were picked up off the coast of Kent in just two weeks. Some eight 'migrants' were picked up from a dinghy near Dover today, while 14 were detained on Thursday in two separate dinghies and a further 11 rescued by a French coastguard vessel. Since November 3, there have now been 101 migrants - mostly claiming to be Iranian - who have been rescued or detained after being found in small boats or dinghies in UK waters in the Channel. Tory MP for Dover Charlie Elphicke has now warned the French authorities and the Home Office must 'do more' to stop the crossings amid an unprecedented surge in recent weeks. The eight migrants were brought into Dover after being picked up by the border force boat with the help of the french lifeboat, a french naval ship and the dover RNLI Officials helped the group from the boat off the coast of Kent on Friday morning 101 migrants detained off the coast of the UK in less than one month Some 101 migrants have been picked up off the UK coast in less than one months. Here are the Channel incidents involving migrants on boats/RHIBs/dinghies since November 3: November 3: 15 picked up in two separate dinghies (8 in one and 7 near Dover. One off the coast near the port and the other close to the beach. November 9: Seven in a dinghy rescued two miles off Dover who dialled 999 to be rescued in stormy waters. November 13: 17 people including a woman and boy aged four found in a stolen French fishing boat which was intercepted as it came into the entrance of the marina at Dover. November 14: 24 found in one day. Nine on one RHIB, 10 crammed into a tiny fishing boat and five picked in a dinghy picked up by a tanker in the English Channel near Ramsgate and taken to Falmouth where the ship docked. November 16: Seven found in a dinghy at Samphire Hoe near Folkestone. November 18: Nine found on rocks at Folkestone after getting off a RHIB. November 22: 14 in two separate dinghies off Kent coast. November 23: Eight found off Dover * Migrants detected on Lorries: November 1: 21 Vietnamese found in back of a refrigerated lorry at Newhaven, November 13: Seven found in the back of a lorry at Dover. * Eurotunnel incident: 19.11.18: Migrant found dead under a bus at Eurotunnel terminal Folkestone. Advertisement A Border Force coastal patrol vessel was deployed after the group was sighted near Dover at about 7am this morning. It brings the total of 86, mostly Iranians, have been caught by Border Force officials in just two weeks. France has been accused of 'turning a blind eye' following a huge rise in the number of migrants entering Britain this month. Mr Elphicke added: 'The Home Office say they have stepped up patrols in the South East - yet clearly not enough is being done. 'Even as winter sets in, these people remain determined to break into Britain. The numbers we are seeing are unprecedented and deeply concerning. 'It's clear that these crossings are being organised. The Home Office need to urgently step up efforts with the French to catch the crooks responsible. 'The French cannot just turn a blind eye and say this is a problem for Britain. Lives will be lost if this trafficking network is not stopped in its tracks. 'We need to see a more vessels patrolling the English Channel - and the Government must invest in more cutters and skilled officers at the Dover frontline.' The migrants who arrived in the early hours of Thursday came in groups of seven on two dinghies. The first group were intercepted by a patrol vessel off the Kent coast at 1.30am. Police said the second group, who were spotted two and a half miles off Dover at 8.23am, were suffering from mild hypothermia. The engine of their dinghy was not powerful enough to make the 23-mile crossing unaided. One possibility is that the group may have been dropped off in the dinghy under the cover of darkness from a larger vessel off the Kent coast. It is the latest in a series of similar incidents which has seen children also being brought into the country. A total of 33 boats have been reportedly stopped trying to cross the Channel this year - 20 of them since October 1. That shows a hike from the 13 in the whole of last year, and 23 in 2016. French officials believe gangs are telling migrants Britain's borders will be tightened once Brexit happens next March, so they must get into the country quicker. A Border Force coastal patrol vessel was deployed after the group was sighted near Dover at about 7am this morning Ingrid Parrot, a spokeswoman for the French maritime police, puts the 'worsening' situation down to the people smugglers - who can makes thousands of pounds per journey - using Brexit as bait to get more migrants over quicker. It is claimed that crossing the Channel will become more difficult after Britain leaves the EU. Ms Parrot said: 'We're dealing with a situation that's getting worse. We think they want to leave at all costs now because Brexit hasn't yet happened.' French authorities say they have rescued more than 200 people this year. Retired coastguard Andy Roberts expects there will be deaths to deal with as weather conditions become more extreme. He said: 'This situation will go on and on and I expect there to be tragedies and deaths. 'If a boat is crossing they could just run them over in a total accident but they would not even know what they would have done. 'The numbers that are arriving are totally unprecedented. I imagine what has happened is the first few that arrived would have got a message back to say they've used a small boat and it's possible. 'They're all getting more confident as they're having more success. One of the reasons I believe we have not had a death yet is because they are mostly fit men arriving. We've had one child and a woman so far.' The Homes Office said the group consisted of eight men all of whom presented themselves as Iranian A Home Office spokesperson said: 'Border Force was contacted by HM Coastguard at around 7.15am. 'A Border Force coastal patrol vessel was deployed and intercepted a dinghy off the Kent Coast with eight people on board. 'The dinghy and those on board were brought into Dover where they were met by Border Force officers. 'The group consisted of eight men all of whom presented themselves as Iranian. On arrival all eight individuals were checked by ambulance staff but were found to be medically well. 'They will now be transferred to Immigration officials for interview.' A HM Coastguard spokesman said: 'We can confirm we are assisting Border Force with suspected migrant activity but cannot comment further until the incident is complete.' 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. Theresa May handed a veteran Brexiteer MP a Knighthood today as she launched her campaign to get her Brexit deal through Parliament. The Prime Minister faces what appears to many as an impossible task to win a Commons vote on her deal. But she took to the airwaves today and vowed to travel the country selling her proposals directly to the public over the heads of fractious MPs. The crucial vote in the Commons is expected in mid December and Mrs May must win over scores of rebels to have any chance of a win. She handed John Hayes a Knighthood today in a move seen by many as the first round of a softening up exercise by whips ahead of the vote. Mr Hayes had voiced concern about the deal but crucially not declared against it. In a BBC phone in earlier, Mrs May warned that EU is not 'going to give us a better deal' if MPs vote down her settlement. Torpedoing the plan will just lead to 'more division and uncertainty', she said. Asked repeatedly whether she will resign if she loses in the Commons - as seems inevitable - Mrs May appeared to rue out the prospect: 'No... I'm focusing on ensuring that we get this deal through Parliament. 'I believe this is absolutely the right deal for the UK. This is not about me.' The Prime Minister today mounted another staunch defence of the settlement she has thrashed out with Brussels, saying it is the 'right' one for the country She handed John Hayes (file) a Knighthood today in a move seen by many as the first round of a softening up exercise by whips ahead of the vote. Mr Hayes had voiced concern about the deal but crucially not declared against it. Mrs May faced claims of cronyism for handing out gongs ahead of the vote. Shadow cabinet office minister Chris Matheson said: 'It would be a spectacular act of desperation for Theresa May to be giving away knighthoods in a bid to win votes for her botched Brexit deal.' Labour MP and Best for Britain champion Jo Stevens said: 'This stinks of cronyism. It seems that in order to pass it's unpopular Brexit deal, the government is willing to hand out knighthoods left, right and centre.' The comments came after former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab heaped pressure on the PM as she faces 'mission impossible' to get the package through Parliament. More than half of Tory backbenchers have now publicly declared that they will vote against the deal in a looming Commons showdown next month. Mrs May repeatedly dodged today when asked whether she has a 'Plan B' for a defeat in Parliament. She also appeared to avoid saying that her blueprint would be 'better' than the current membership terms - suggesting it would be 'different'. PM reveals she was sent cupcake by girl to 'make her smile' Nine-year-old Gabby Balaes sent the PM a cupcake with her face on it The PM today revealed she was sent a cupcake by a nine-year-old girl who wanted to cheer her up over Brexit. Mrs May said she had received messages of support from members of the public - including a young girl who made her a cake. She told the BBC: 'I've had a huge number of messages - really kind messages - from people up and down the country, who have sent me flowers. 'One nine-year-old, Gabby Balaes, actually baked a cupcake with my face on it. 'There was a message. It said that her dad had said I'd had a tough week and she wanted to make me smile.' She said she was 'sorry' and 'disappointed' that some members of her Cabinet had resigned over her Brexit stance, adding: 'Obviously, they have got strong feelings about this issue, they had campaigned to leave the EU and they had done good work in the Cabinet.' Asked if she might sometimes 'go home and swear' about colleagues walking out, she replied: 'No, it's up to people's choice.' Advertisement Mrs May insisted none of the Tory rebels who have been trying to oust her - led by Jacob Rees-Mogg - were off her Christmas card list. The grim picture comes as Mrs May scrambles to clear the final hurdle in negotiations with the EU - an ambush from Spain over the status of Gibraltar. The standoff showed little sign of shifting last night with Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez saying the two sides were still 'far apart'. Madrid wants Gibraltar excluded from a future trade pact, with its treatment decided bilaterally with the UK. Mrs May was savaged by MPs from all sides in a brutal Commons session yesterday, leading one Tory ally to remark privately that getting her plan through looked like 'mission impossible'. Unless large numbers of MPs switch sides there are fears she could be defeated by well over a hundred votes when the crunch comes in the House next month. A loss of that magnitude would likely leave No10's fallback option of making MPs vote again in tatters. Mrs May used her interview today to appeal for MPs to look beyond the Westminster bubble and focus on 'people's jobs'. 'In Parliament there's a lot of focus on who's going to vote for the deal or not, and outside I think people are thinking 'Actually, let's make sure we can get this through and get on with delivering',' she said. 'My job is to persuade people. I believe this is the right deal for the UK. My job is to persuade people in Parliament of that view. 'And I think the job of an MP is actually, when they come to look at voting for this deal, to say to themselves 'Does it deliver on what people voted for?' - I believe it does - and secondly, 'What do we need to focus on for our constituents, for people up and down the country?' 'I believe people's jobs, people's futures, the future for their children should be at the forefront of MPs' minds.' 'I believe that if we were to go back to the European Union and say 'People didn't like that deal can we have another one?' I don't think they are going to come to us and say 'We will give you a better deal.' Mrs May insisted that as far as she was concerned the UK will leave the EU in March 2019 as planned. 'Personally there is no question of no Brexit because the Government needs to deliver on what people voted for in the referendum in 2016,' she said. 'As far as I am concerned the UK is leaving the European Union on March 29 2019.' Asked whether the UK would be better-off under her deal than it would be if it stayed in the EU, Mrs May said: 'I think we will be better-off in a situation which we will have outside the European Union, where we have control of all those things and are able to trade around the rest of the world. Former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab (pictured in the Commons yesterday) heaped pressure on the PM as she faces 'mission impossible' to get the package through Parliament 'I was one of those people who said that it wasn't going to be the case that, outside the European Union, we were going to have the sort of problems that some other people said we would. 'But it's different. You say 'better-off'. Actually it's a different sort of environment and a different approach we will be taking to things. 'What will make us better-off is not so much about whether we are in the EU or not, it's about what we can do for our economy, it's about what we can do for our prosperity.' Mrs May's comment came after a caller named Michael said he was not satisfied by her first response to his question, when she said: 'It will be a different world for us outside the EU, but it will be a good one... I genuinely believe there is a bright future for this country and our best days lie ahead of us.' Mrs May told a caller named Nigel, from Tamworth, that she would be sending a Christmas card to David Cameron, who initially called the EU referendum. Asked whether she would also send one to Mr Rees-Mogg, she replied: 'All my Conservative colleagues I send Christmas cards to.' Mr Raab - who plunged Mrs May into chaos by resigning over the deal last week - waded back in today, saying that the premier need to start thinking about alternatives. Tory former minister Phillip Lee (top) and Labour's Pat McFadden seized on the comments by Mr Raab about the attractions of Mrs May's deal Asked if the PM's deal was worse than remaining in the EU, Mr Raab told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I'm not going to advocate staying in the EU. 'But, if you just presented me terms, this deal or EU membership, because we would effectively be bound by the same rules but without the control or voice over them, yes, I think this would be even worse than that.' The last part of the Brexit deal - sketching out future trade terms after a mooted transition period ends in December 2020 - was dramatically signed off by negotiating teams yesterday. During furious Commons clashes, the Prime Minister hailed the outcome. 'This is a good deal for our country, for our partners in the EU,' she told MPs. 'It ends free movement once and for all.' She said a new immigration system would give people access based on 'what they can contribute to the UK', there would be no more 'sending vast sums of money to the EU', and the jurisdiction of the European court will end. But Eurosceptics condemned the package as a 'costly surrender' and a 'betrayal of Brexit'. Boris Johnson said the inclusion of an Irish border backstop that would lash the UK to EU rules 'makes a complete nonsense of Brexit'. Former Cabinet ministers Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson, and DUP chief whip Jeffrey Donaldson also insisted the backstop must be scrapped altogether, warning: 'None of this is going to work.' There was also anger that the issue of access to UK fishing waters appears to have been kicked back to be decided after March. Remainers accused her of putting the country on course for 'blind Brexit' with vague commitments. Some 88 Tory MPs have now publicly confirmed they will oppose the Brexit deal in a so-called 'meaningful vote' next month. Once the 'payroll' of ministers is taken into account, that is over half the party's numbers in the Commons. With the DUP, Labour, the SNP and Lib Dems also opposed, the prospects for the PM look bleak. Downing Street is pinning hopes for success on MPs looking at the alternatives of chaos of Brexit being cancelled altogether, and swinging behind Mrs May at the last moment. However, attention at Westminster has been turning to what happens if she lose the vote - with speculation Mrs May could try again in the New Year. Allies fear that unless the result is relatively tight she could be so badly damaged she will have to quit. Barring large numbers of MPs changing their minds, the government appears to be on track for humiliating loss by well over a hundred votes. Boris Johnson said the inclusion of an Irish border backstop that would lash the UK to EU rules 'makes a complete nonsense of Brexit'. Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez (pictured with Mrs May in Brussels last month) said the two sides were still 'far apart'. Madrid wants Gibraltar excluded from a future trade pact, with its treatment decided bilaterally with the UK. Education Secretary Damian Hinds was sent out to steady the ship today, insisting support for the deal would grow in Parliament. 'The deal that we have on the table is a strong deal. It is a good, balanced deal. As people reflect on what the alternatives are, I think people are going to come to see this is a very good deal for Britain,' he said. 'If we weren't to pass this deal, I think it becomes rather unpredictable what happens next. There is a risk on the one hand beyond that of no Brexit at all - and there are people trying to thwart Brexit - and there is also a risk of no deal. 'Neither of those two things are attractive. This is why I believe this deal, which is a strong deal, will gain more and more traction.' In concessions designed to help Mrs May get the deal through Parliament, the 26-page future framework document - which is not legally binding - makes clear that Britain will have an 'independent trade policy'. And it stresses both sides' 'determination to replace the backstop' for the Irish border with alternative plans in future - potentially reviving the 'Max Fac' technological solution favoured by Brexiteers. The pact confirms that free movement will end, which was claimed as a win for the PM - but also states that the UK will not discriminate between nationals from different EU countries. There would be visa free travel for all citizens making short trips, which will be a relief for holidaymakers. The PM called Peppa Pig World 'my kind of place' and it has since emerged that his bodyguards queued up for the Johnsons but the PM did pay for his family's 85 ticket after a series of controversial freebie holidays this year. Speaking to MailOnline today, Neville Astley (left), one of the show's creators, said: 'We don't get involved in politics. Peppa is apolitical. The only politics she knows is that within her family, mainly Grandpa Pig and Daddy Pig, over a broken lawnmower or something. I'm quite proud that he called us geniuses though. It means I can go down the pub later and wear a badge that says 'genius' on it.' The Tory leader was photographed with young Wilf at the wheel of a bright blue toy car on Sunday afternoon (right). Boris, his new wife and their son were also pictured having fun on a water ride. But others also there for the day admitted most failed to recognise him. George Bell, who was there with his family, said that in order to keep a low profile at Grampy Rabbit's Sailing Club, the PM's security queued up for them with 'seven jotted around and spaced out' wearing ear pieces before the Johnsons jumped in. Another woman told MailOnline that later a 'rather scruffy' Mr Johnson was seen browsing toys and games in the gift shop. A Leonardo Da Vinci painting which sold for 350million last year is 'lost', prompting art lovers to plead with the Saudi Royals to confirm its location. 'Salvator Mundi' by the great artist hasn't been seen in public since it was 'acquired' by Louvre Abu Dhabi via the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. Now, scholars and restorers of the painting are growing increasingly concerned about the painting's whereabouts. Salvator Mundi hasn't been seen in public since it was 'acquired' last year Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman most recently acquired the painting Professor Martin Kemp, the Da Vinci scholar who helped authenticate the piece a decade ago, told The Times: 'Nobody outside the immediate Arab hierarchy knows where it is.' In 2005, the painting was acquired for less than $10,000 (7,809) at an auction in New Orleans by a consortium of art dealers that included Robert Simon, a specialist in Old Masters. When asked where the 500-year-old painting might be, he rather worryingly responded: 'I have no idea. The mystery of its location is, of course, disturbing.' The Louvre Abu Dhabi museum (pictured) have not confirmed where the painting is Another person with an intimate insight into the painting is someone who's actually worked on it, and she has no idea where it is either. Dianne Dwyer Modestini, an internationally renowned conservator of old master and nineteenth-century paintings who spent hundreds on hours restoring the one in question has pleaded with the Louvre Abu Dhabi to confirm that the 'extremely fragile' panel is in good hands. The painting depicts a blue-robed Jesus holding a crystal orb and gazing directly at the viewer. Visitors at the Louvre Abu Dhabi museum, in the Emirati capital, which bought the piece Its price was double the previous record set by Pablo Picasso's painting 'Women of Algiers (Version O)' ('Les Femmes D'Alger) which sold for $179.4 million in May 2015. It was lost in the past when in 2015 its whereabouts was unaccounted for until it was bought at a cut price by two collectors that had a hunch it was a Da Vinci. They enlisted the help of Dianne Dwyer Modestini and her husband who restored it to its former glory, eventually seeing it displayed in the National Gallery in 2011. It was confirmed to be the real deal and In 2013 Robert Simon's consortium sold the painting to the dealer Yves Bouvier, who the Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev says was acting as his agent. It was he, in dramatic and controversial circumstances, that sold it to the Saudi Crown Prince just days before he announced the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The Monaco football club owner had bought the painting for $127.5 million although he later accused a Swiss art dealer of overcharging him. He then sued Sotheby's for at least $380 million, alleging the auction house helped his former art adviser to defraud him. Painting depicts a blue-robed Jesus holding a crystal orb and gazing directly at the viewer 'Salvator Mundi,' which means 'Savior of the World,' went on public display in 2011 in a dramatic unveiling at The National Gallery in London, where the work was declared to be the first newly discovered Da Vinci painting in a century. It is one of fewer than 20 paintings generally accepted as being from the Renaissance master's own hand, according to Christie's. It had sold for a mere 45 British pounds in 1958, when the painting was thought to have been a copy, and was lost until it resurfaced at a regional auction in 2005. The painting was due to be shown the new Louvre in September this year but recently announced that they are postponing the unveiling, further worrying art experts. The gallery and its Parisian version have declined to comment with further comment ever since. Simon, the former owner of Salvator Mundi, is worried too, he told The Times: 'I am concerned about its condition, its wellbeing. 'I am trusting and believing that, wherever it is, there are people who understand that it is a 500-year-old, very fragile work of art and that they are keeping it in museum conditions.' The painting's history is long and complicated and this is the latest installment in the drama surrounding it. Advertisement John Chau's mother Lynda (pictured) and the rest of his family say no one is responsible for his death but him The family of an American missionary has forgiven the native tribe which killed him when he arrived uninvited on their island last week and are urging authorities not to hold anyone but him responsible for his death. John Chau, 27, was killed on North Sentinel Island last week as he attempted to visit the tribe. Local fisherman reported seeing the tribe drag his body days after Chau paid them to take him as close as they would to the island before he kayaked over to it. He had written to his family beforehand and told them not to blame the Sentinelese people if he did not make it out alive. Despite the fact that the tribe is protected and it is illegal for anyone to try to go onto the island, Indian police have lodged a murder case against its members and some of the people who helped Chau get there. In an Instagram post on his account on Wednesday, his parents John and Lynda Chau, who live in Washington State, revealed they had forgiven the tribe and urged Indian authorities to release the local men who Chau paid to take him close to the island. 'He loved God, life, help those in need, and had nothing but love for the Sentinelese people. 'We forgive those reportedly responsible for his death. We also ask for the release of those friends he had in the Andaman Islands. 'He ventured out on his own free will and his local contacts need not be persecuted for his own actions,' the family said in their Instagram statement. Chau was killed by members of the Sentinelese people (some of whom are shown in an undated stock photograph) after approaching their island uninvited on a kayak to spread the word of God. He was killed with a bow and arrow and his body is still on the island The family of John Chau released this statement on his Instagram account this week as they begged for Indian police to release the seven men they have charged in relation to his death and not pursue charges against the tribe The Sentinelese tribe are an indigenous tribe who live on North Sentinal Island, lies around 450 miles from the coast of Thailand and more than 745 miles from mainland India The Andaman and Nicobar Police Department has arrested seven people including five fishermen and two of Chau's friends, alleging that they helped him get to the island despite it being illegal for anyone to go there. It remains unclear if the police department has merely opened a murder investigation for the purposes of thoroughness or if they intend to level charges against the group which would pose a labyrinth of logistical and ethical challenges given its status as a protected tribe. Police are still unsure of how they will even retrieve Chau's body because of the tribe's hostility. A spokesman for the Andaman and Nicobar Police Department did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com's inquiries on Friday afternoon. International Christian Concern, an anti-persecution group based out of Washington DC, issued a statement about Chau's death demanding that the tribe be brought to justice. It alleged that he was killed because he was Christian and not because he approached the island where no one but the tribe has lived for 30,000 years. 'This murder comes at a time when Indian Christians report ever escalating levels of persecution across the country. John Allen Chau, 26, was shot dead with arrows last week by tribesman when he arrived at North Sentinel Island - one of the world's most isolated regions in India's Andaman islands DailyMail.com has since obtained a letter Chau wrote to his parents he penned prior to his death that detailed how he was committed to teaching the tribe about Jesus 'India has a history of attacks on foreign Christian missionaries....Across India, reports of persecution continue to escalate in both number and severity,' it said. 'Please do not be angry at them': John Chau's letter to his parents You guys might think I'm crazy in all this but I think it's worth it to declare Jesus to these people. Please do not be angry at them or at God if I get killed. Rather please live you lives in obedience to whatever he has called you to and I'll see you again when you pass through the veil. This is not a pointless thing - the eternal lives of this tribe is at hand and I can't wait to see them around the throne of God worshiping in their own language as Revelations 7:9-10 states. I love you all and I pray none of you love anything in this world more than Jesus Christ.' Soli Deo gloria. Advertisement William Stark, ICCs Regional Manager, said, 'We here at International Christian Concern are extremely concerned by the reports of an American missionary being murdered in Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands. 'Our thoughts and prayers go out to both Johns family and friends. Every day, new reports of persecution are being documented in India. Many Christians fear this may be the new normal for their community as Hindu radicals and others have been allowed to attack Christians and other minority communities with impunity. 'India must take steps to counter the growing wave of intolerance and violence.' Chau had written a letter to his parents before he kayaked to the island. In it, he told them not to hold the tribe responsible for his death if he did not come back alive. Before he was killed, he tried to approach the island at least one other time and was shot at. He described how an arrow pierced his bible as he approached them. 'I hollered, "My name is John, I love you and Jesus loves you,"' he wrote in his diary. He went on to say: 'You guys might think Im crazy in all this but I think its worthwhile to declare Jesus to these people. 'God, I don't want to die.' One of Chau's friends revealed to DailyMail.com that he was 'committed' to travelling to the remote island, deep in the Indian Ocean, to preach Christianity to the tribesmen and had been planning the trip for at least three years. Neil MacLeod, of Stornaway, Scotland, said he met Chau on a flight from London to Phoenix, Arizona, in October 2015. 'I saw him reading some Christian literature and I'm a Christian and we started talking,' he said. MacLeod, 47, said Chau told him he had recently returned from India and was trying to figure out how to travel to the remote North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal. 'He mentioned that he wanted to go to these islands, the islands where he has now died,' MacLeod said. 'I had heard of these islands and I know how dangerous they are, so I was surprised by that. The Sentinelese attracted international attention in the wake of the 2004 Asian tsunami, when a member of the tribe was photographed on a beach, firing arrows at a helicopter (pictured) Chau took a boat ride with the fishermen before venturing alone in a canoe to North Sentinel Island (pictured, a file photo shows tribesmen on the island) 'He recognized the dangers of travelling there, but I think he had a sense of call. This was something he was working on for three years. He was committed to going there. In his view, he was trying to help these people. 'There are islands that are nearby and he was making relationships and connections to help him get to the islands.' Since the flight, MacLeod said he had emailed back and forth with Chau, who he described as 'magnetic' and 'charming.' 'He was a lovely character and wanted to help people. The thing that came across was what a delight it was to be in his company. 'He was such a warm and engaging and friendly kind of fellow. You might have an idea of what a missionary might be like, he was a million miles from that. I think he's a real loss. I'm just very sorry about what has happened.' MacLeod said Chau was based in Portland, Washington, and working as an EMT at the time. He said he had helped during major incidents, including in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. 'He was a free wheel so he would go to incidents, like major incidents around the world and look to help,' he said. 'He had worked with FEMA when he went down to Katrina. He was working there. 'He's worked in some pretty rough places.' Advertisement Royal Navy sailors were hugged and kissed by loved ones as they returned to Britain for Christmas. Service personnel on board the HMS Albion and HMS Diamond docked in Plymouth and Portsmouth to warm welcomes from family members and the public. The country's flagship vessel, HMS Albion heralded its arrival today into Plymouth by making an 11-gun salute. She received a tumultuous welcome from hundreds of family and friends who greeted her home after a ten-month deployment - just in time for Christmas. Since she left Devonport in Plymouth, Devon, HMS Albion has steamed 33,004 nautical miles that has taken her through the Mediterranean to the Far East. Emotional: A officer embraces his son after returning to Portsmouth from HMS Diamond after months away at sea A sailor on board HMS Albion is welcomed back by his partner to Plymouth as two ships arrived in Britain for Christmas Welcome back daddy: A sailor embraces his three children in a heart-warming scene after returning to Portsmouth from HMS Diamond A child waving a Union flag and wearing a medal on his jacket puts up a 'welcome home daddy' poster in eager anticipation of his dad's arrival at from HMS Albion Plymouth During that time the ship has sailed across the Indian Ocean, South China Sea, North Pacific Ocean, Atlantic, the Arabian Sea and the Mediterranean Sea visiting Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, South Korea and Borneo along the way. Her homecoming came less than two months after the ship - along with HMS Bulwark - was spared the axe in the latest defence review amid fears she would be scrapped or sold off. Commanding Officer of HMS Albion, Captain Tim Neild, said: 'It's been a terrific deployment. We've covered a broad range of operations. 'HMS Albion is the Swiss Army knife of UK defence - capable of humanitarian aid right through to whites of the eyes war fighting. 'We couldn't have asked for a better welcome back. We've had an absolutely fabulous ten months but now we can focus on home.' 'We missed you': Crowds gathered in Devonport, Plymouth, to welcome loved ones on board HMS Albion back to Britain A couple embrace in Devonport, Plymouth, after months apart while the HMS Albion travelled 33,004 nautical miles through the Mediterranean to the Far East During its time at sea HMS Albion sailed across the Indian Ocean, South China Sea, North Pacific Ocean, Atlantic, the Arabian Sea and the Mediterranean Sea visiting Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, South Korea and Borneo Sailing home for Christmas: Two children wait for a loved one to arrive of HMS Albion today along with hundreds who also gathered to give them a warm welcome A sailor embraces his family after returning to Portsmouth from HMS Diamond. Four children wearing Royal Navy jumpers greet their dad today Royal Navy warship HMS Diamond also returned home to Portsmouth with a bang after two months operating in the Mediterranean. The Type 45 destroyer fired a 17-gun salute as she sailed back into her home port earlier today. Her deployment was part of the ongoing counter-ISIS NATO operations where she used her state-of-the-art technology to gather intelligence on the air battlespace, sharing this with the RAF and international allies in the region. She is one of just several Royal Navy warships to operate in the Eastern Med last year. As well as the counter-terrorism operations, HMS Diamond also held port visits to Crete, Cyprus, Malta and Gibraltar to reinforce the Royal Navy's long-standing links with those countries. Commanding Officer of HMS Diamond Commander Ben Keith said: 'This has been a challenging, but extremely rewarding and successful deployment. 'I'm proud of all that my ship's company has achieved while we've been away and I'm incredibly grateful to Diamond's extended family for all their support.' HMS Diamond also proved her ability to integrate with the UK Air Component Commander (UKACC) by working with the RAF assets based in Cyprus. Some family members held up pictures of loved ones as waited them to arrive of their vessels, which had been away at sea for months A sailor and his daughter during the homecoming of HMS Diamond in Portsmouth during emotional scenes after two months operating in the Mediterranean A couple hug for the first time in months after HMS Albion was operating through the Mediterranean to the Far East The amphibious assault ship, HMS Albion, left the UK in February her first deployment following a two-year extensive modernisation programme Aye captain: A sailor called 'Pab' was warned he was about to be 'de-briefed' on his return to British shores after ten months at sea Training with E3s, Voyagers, Tornados, Typhoons and F-16s, Diamond practiced controlling a congested environment, observing and directing a variety of aircraft while operating with other UK Forces. During her time in the Med, Diamond also spent a week on weapons and sensors training. She held live firing exercises with the 4.5' Gun, the 30mm, Phalanx and small arms, using her embarked Wildcat Helicopter from 815 Squadron at RNAS Yeovilton callsign Roughcut - to observe and direct the firings onto the targets with impressive accuracy. The amphibious assault ship, HMS Albion, left the UK in February her first deployment following a two-year extensive modernisation programme. The first part of their deployment was to lead the Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 operating in the Mediterranean. They were then re-deployed at short notice to go to the Far East demonstrating the Royal Navy's global reach. Highlights of Albion's ten-month deployment have included a period of two months operating in and around Japan where the two navies had planned a combined amphibious exercise. They would have deployed their full range of kit - Offshore Raiding Craft, Inflatable Raiding Craft, large and small landing craft, Royal Marines and elements of Japan's Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade. 'There they are': A sailor on board HMS Albion spots a family member in the crowd as the ship pulls into the dock after a ten month deployment HMS Albion received a tumultuous welcome from hundreds of family and friends who greeted her home after a ten-month deployment - just in time for Christmas Since she left Devonport in Plymouth, Devon, HMS Albion has steamed 33,004 nautical miles that has taken her through the Mediterranean to the Far East HMS Albion's last act before turning for home was to lead the Royal Navy involvement in the largest military exercise staged in Oman in 17 years, Exercise `Saif Sareea 3', involving 65,000 Omani and more than 5,000 British military personnel, including Royal Marines from 40 Commando The two navies were thwarted by the arrival of Typhoon Cimaron and although not in the storm's direct path, the planned landings would have been threatened by the weather. Although the exercise was cancelled the planning represented a significant milestone for relations with the Japanese military. On departure from Japan their assault ship Shimokita ploughed through the heavy seas alongside Albion saying goodbye with salutes of respect before breaking away while Albion continued on her way to Vietnam. There were no problems with the weather though when the ship demonstrated their amphibious skills alongside His Majesty the Sultan of Brunei's Forces in Exercise Setia Kawan With HMS Albion poised offshore, Royal Marines supported the Royal Bruneian Special Forces and Infantry in attacking a simulated target from the sea. With helicopters flying low overhead, Landing Craft from HMS Albion put ashore commandos and Viking armoured vehicles onto the beach The enemy position was rapidly secured in a demo of the close co-operation between Brunei and the UK. Her last act before turning for home was to lead the Royal Navy involvement in the largest military exercise staged in Oman in 17 years, Exercise `Saif Sareea 3', involving 65,000 Omani and more than 5,000 British military personnel, including Royal Marines from 40 Commando. Commander Keith, the commanding officer of HMS Diamond greeting his family as he disembarks the ship as it arrives in Portsmouth Cdr Keith, the CO of HMS Diamond disembarks as the first man off the ship as the ship returns home to Portsmouth 'Welcome home': Crowds wait eagerly for the Royal Navy sailors to disembark from their ships so they came be greeted ashore A family reunited upon the return of HMS Diamond to Portsmouth after ten months travelling the world's oceans The exercise marked the culmination of everything Albion has worked towards all year and gave Albion the chance to lead a task group of Royal Navy and Omani warships under the Commander Amphibious Task Group, Commodore James Parkin and his staff. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said: 'HMS Albion and her crew of dedicated Sailors and Royal Marines have led from the front over the past 10 months. 'Her deployment this year, along with HMS Sutherland and HMS Argyll, has meant that the Royal Navy has had a vessel in the strategically critical Asia-Pacific region for the first time since 2013 and has had an almost unbroken presence there this year. 'As we exit the EU, Global Britain will be more outward-looking and engaged on the world stage. 'The Nation's flagship has exemplified what Britain stands for - promoting freedom of navigation, engaging with partners and allies around the world and fulfilling our global defence commitments. 'She provides us with a unique platform from which to project our influence and throughout her service she has delivered time and time again, which is why I committed to protecting both HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark in September. 'Daddy Powis' is welcomed home by loved ones Royal Navy warship HMS Diamond has returned home to Portsmouth with a bang after two months operating in the Mediterranean John Blandy (centre), grandfather to Oscar (right) and Annabelle (left) Wayfield awaiting the homecoming of HMS Diamond today and showing their support with flags Crowds gathering for the homecoming of HMS Diamond in Portsmouth, where the Type 45 destroyer fired a 17-gun salute as it came into port HMS Albion came into her home port earlier today after her deployment as part of the ongoing counter-ISIS NATO operations where she used her state-of-the-art technology to gather intelligence on the air battlespace 'Be it taking part in Saif Sareea 3, our largest exercise in 17 years or supporting UN sanctions in the Pacific this ship and her crew epitomise Britain's global reach.' It was a poignant moment for Captain Tim Neild as he guided the ship into the Plymouth for the last time. He will hand over his command in January moving on to pastures new. He added: 'During the past ten months HMS Albion has upheld the United Kingdom's commitment to Peace, Security, and Prosperity throughout the Asia Pacific and Middle East. 'I am immensely proud of my 500 Sailors and Marines who have delivered success on operations with trademark professionalism, upholding the Rules Based International System. 'I'd also like to pay tribute to our families back home. 'They provide us with some fantastic support which enables us to focus on our jobs.' Joshua Clark died after snorting a drug he found in a bag, an inquest has heard A 13-year-old boy tragically died after snorting brown powder he and a friend found in woods, an inquest has heard. Joshua Clark fell unconscious and was later found to have heroin in his system after discovering the bag of powder in Bramcote, near Nottingham last February. An inquest this week heard Joshua 'didn't know what he was doing' and was 'follower' who would 'copy his friends'. The coroner was told Joshua and his friend found the bag of powder on his way to a house and they reportedly snorted the substance while watching a film. Joshua later fell unconscious and was rushed to hospital, where he died two days later, NottinghamshireLive reported. His friend also suffered a cardiac arrest but was saved by medics and later returned home. Heroin was found in both boys' systems, a pathologist said, and cannabis was found in Joshua's system. Joshua's grieving grandmother Rosemary Jackson, 60, described the 'cheeky' youngster, who would visit her every day for a cheese and salad cream sandwich, as 'lovely, kind and caring'. The scene in Bramcote, near Nottingham last February after Joshua tragically died Tributes to the teenager were left at the scene by devastated friends and family Mrs Jackson, who rushed to the house where Joshua was found unconscious, said: 'I did not feel he was going to pull through when I saw him in that house. 'I was told his heart had stopped for six minutes and it was unlikely he would survive. 'Joshua was a loving and caring child and he lived life to the full, even though he was 13 when he died. 'He came to see me every day - he had a cheese and salad cream sandwich, a bottle of pop and a packet of crisps and would say: 'Have you got a pound, nana?' 'He was a lovely lad and loved by so many people. I am broken. I just need to take it one day at a time.' Joshua's family rushed to his friend's home when they heard he had fallen ill. Detective Constable Martine Smith told the inquest: 'I have been told the boys snorted brown powder in that room.' She added: 'I don't believe the boys realised what they were taking because of what happened thereafter. I do not think they knew what they were doing.' His auntie Marie Smith, 33, from Ilkeston, Derbyshire, told the inquest that Joshua had been suffering with sight problems and was concerned about how he would be viewed by his peers. Ms Smith said: 'He wanted this big group of friends. He was a follower and he would do anything that other people would do.' On hearing about his sight loss, Ms Smith said that he would call himself 'an outcast' and was worried that 'no one is going to love me.' Rosemary Jackson (left), 60, pictured with Melvin Robinson outside The Council House in Nottingham after the inquest into the death of her grandson, Joshua Clark Ms Smith added: 'I always tried to pick him up.' Assistant coroner Tanyka Rawden, sitting at Nottingham's Council House, recorded a verdict of 'drug-related' death. A woman later admitted allowing children to smoke cannabis at her house and was given a curfew. Family and friends were left devastated by Joshua's death last year, with scores of people leaving floral tributes at the scene. His uncle, Martin Smith, wrote on Facebook at the time: 'Worst day of my life my nephew's gone I am so heart broken words cannot describe how I feel I love you Josh Clark sleep tight little one. 'Never in my life would I of thought my little innocent nephew would pass away in front of my eyes. 'I feel this will effect me for the rest of my life and hopefully this never happens again. 'Keep your family close and appreciate every last second with them because tomorrow they could be gone xx' The medical cause of death was brain injury through hypoventilation, also known as respiratory depression, due to opiate toxicity. His auntie Marie Smith, 33, from Ilkeston, Derbyshire, told the inquest that Joshua had been suffering with sight problems and was concerned about how he would be viewed by his peers. Police are looking for burglars who stole a priceless diamond tiara described as a 'national treasure' from a historic country estate. The thieves broke into the Welbeck Estate in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, between 9.45pm and 10pm on Tuesday this week. A diamond brooch along with the Portland Tiara, said to be 'worth millions', were stolen from an armoured glass display case, as alarms sounded during the heist. The Portland Tiara is said to be 'worth millions' is a considered one of the great historic tiaras of Great Britain The sixth Duke of Portland commissioned Cartier to create the tiara for his wife Winifred, Duchess of Portland (pictured) The heirloom is considered one of the 'great historic tiaras of Great Britain' after the Duke of Portland commissioned jewelers Cartier to make it in 1902. Nottinghamshire Police have launched an investigation and are appealing for information about a silver Audi S5 believed to be involved in the raid. A broach was also taken from the same glass case as the tiara They confirmed they were pursuing a 'number of lines of inquiry'. Detective Inspector Neil Humphris said: 'We particularly want to hear from anyone who has any information about a silver Audi S5 which is suspected to have been involved in this offence. 'This vehicle was found abandoned and burnt out in Cross Lane, Blidworth, about half-an-hour after the incident. 'Did you see this vehicle in the Welbeck area around the time of the burglary or anywhere between the Welbeck Estate and Cross Lane in Blidworth between 9.45pm and 10.30pm on Tuesday night? 'If you have any information about this vehicle or the offence itself we'd urge you to please come forward and contact us as soon as possible. 'We'd also like to hear from any drivers who may have dash cam footage of this vehicle.' Richard Edgcumbe, Curator of Jewellery at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, said: 'The Portland Tiara is one of the great historic tiaras of Great Britain'. The Welbeck Estate Welbeck is one of the great traditional landed estates, nestled within Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire. The estate is within the area of North Nottinghamshire known as the Dukeries. The name comes from four historic neighbouring Ducal estates, Welbeck, Clumber, Thoresby, and Worksop Manor. Depending on where you drew the line, the estates between them covered 88 thousand acres, giving the Dukeries at the time some of the qualities of a self-contained world. Welbeck is still a working estate and contains a Grade 2 registered historic park designed in 1748 by Francis Richardson; ancient woodlands and forestry; a beautiful chain of lakes; farmland and grazing; a deer park; and some of the countrys most important rural heritage buildings. At its heart lies the historic Welbeck Abbey and Welbeck Village. Credit: welbeck.co.uk Advertisement 'Since its creation by Cartier in 1902, using diamonds from the historic collections of the Dukes of Portland, it has been recognised as a jewel of supreme importance, a superb design magnificently executed.' The sixth Duke of Portland commissioned Cartier to create the tiara for his wife Winifred, Duchess of Portland. She wore it to the 1902 coronation of King Edward VII. She was one of four pall-bearers at Queen Alexandra's anointing. The Portland diamond is the centre-piece of the jewellery, which dates back to the 19th century. Flanked by two diamond drops and other valuable pendant diamonds, the tiara is set in gold and silver. The stolen brooch was made of diamond clusters which stood at the apex of the tiara. These gems can be seen on the tiara in a painting of Duchess Winifred at the anointing of Queen Alexandra. Anyone with information is asked to call police on 101, quoting incident number 856 of 20 November 2018, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. Four Finnish tourists on a hunting expedition have died in a plane crash in Zimbabwe. The crash on Friday also killed their pilot Barry Style, the Finnish consul in the African country said today. The plane, reported to be a Cessna-182 light aircraft, crashed near Zimbabwe's southern city of Masvingo. Four Finnish tourists on a hunting expedition have died in a plane crash in Zimbabwe, in which the pilot of the Cessna light aircraft (stock photo) was also killed 'There were four Finnish citizens and their pilot in the plane, they all died,' Sally Ward told AFP. 'It was cloudy and they were trying to get above the clouds.' The accident occurred near Renco, a gold mine on the outskirts of Masvingo, police spokesman Paul Nyathi said. According to ZimLive the passengers were flying from Buffalo Range Airport in Chiredzi to the country's famous Victoria Falls. The bodies were said to have been so badly destroyed in the crash that emergency services initially thought only three had died, it is claimed. Investigators also found a Finnish identity card and a passport at the scene, police said. Trophy hunting which has caused fury around the globe is taking place in the UK with animals being killed for fun - for thousands of pounds. A UK firm is taking tours into woodland around Britain to shoot and kill deer, muntjac and roe buck with prices reaching 17,500 per animal. Protesters have blasted the firm Europe Hunts which gives hunters the chance to kill British wildlife. The company is run by is Texan Aaron Bulkley, 41, and Englishman Alex Hinkins, a well known UK deer stalker. On Europehunts.com, Mr Bulkley boasts: 'What we have in England are some species you can't hunt anywhere else in the wild or estate. 'We have some of the largest red stag, the world record Chinese water deer, the Muntjac. This really is a destination for hunters to fulfil some European slams.' Images of hunts in the UK appear on the Europehunts website where animals can be killed for thousands of pounds One image shows a man posing with a large dead fallow deer somewhere in Britain The fee for shooting a smaller red stags falls in stages from 18,500, to 16,500, to 13,500, right down to 3,500. Accommodation, flights and meals, as well as airport collection, are extra. Among the prey on the hunting menu are animals which narrowly survived complete extinction. The Pere David's deer- which costs 8,500 for a kill - was saved after a French missionary brought them to the UK from their native China, early in the twentieth century. When the species became extinct at home, the deer at Woburn Abbey remained the only breeding herd in the whole world. Now they can be killed for fun. The website boasts of making big kills. Hunters are flying into the UK to shoot deer- including some species which were once on the brink of extinction It states: 'On our November group hunt from Texas, Aaron Bulkley and guests hunted for 5 days in England. 'After quite a few Chinese Water Deer and Muntjac hit the ground, it was time that they put down some Monster Fallow Deer and the New World Record Red Stag from England with a Muzzle Loader.' Protesters were furious the hunting is taking place here. Chris Luffingham, of the League Against Cruel Sports, said: It is sickening to know that trophy hunting is taking place here in the heart of the UK. Bedfordshire Against Trophy Hunting started a petition to try and get the hunting stopped. It said: This is a disgrace and should be investigated by Parliament. EuropeHunts has been contacted for comment. A half-naked man who was arrested for assaulting a Whataburger manager later died at a hospital in Texas. Houston Police Department Chief Larry Satterwhite said during a press conference that the man entered the restaurant located at 9517 Bissonnet Street and started destroying property. 'He appeared to be in severe crisis. We don't know what caused it,' Satterwhite said, adding that the man was throwing trash cans and chairs at employees and customers. The man also jumped up on the counter. Houston Police Department Chief Larry Satterwhite said a half-naked man who was arrested for assaulting a Whataburger (pictured) manager later died at a local hospital Satterwhite said during a press conference that the man entered the restaurant and started destroying property and throwing things at customers and staff The man, who appeared to be in his 40s, was throwing trash cans and chairs and jumped up on the counter. Tea urns are seen on the restaurant's floor along with a turned over chair Video courtesy of CW39 Satterwhite said the man continued acting in a 'violent manner', and he was only wearing shirt. Employees of the Whataburger immediately called 911. The employees also tried to evacuate the restaurant, but the man followed them out and assaulted the manager. 'He knocked her to the ground and started assaulting her. The other employees managed to knock him off of her,' Satterwhite said. Satterwhite said the woman suffered a knee injury but was otherwise OK. The man, who appeared to be in his 40s, then fled the scene as police arrived. He continued to run from authorities who chased him on foot before they were able to arrest him. Satterwhite said during the arrest that 'there was a struggle to get him handcuffed'. Employees of the Whataburger immediately called 911. The employees also tried to evacuate the restaurant, but the man followed them out and assaulted the manager. Police are seen inside the restaurant after the incident The man then fled the scene, but he was later captured by police. During the arrest 'there was a struggle to get him handcuffed' and the man became unresponsive. He later died at a local hospital. Pictured is the Whataburger located at 9517 Bissonnet Street By the time the officers were able to get him to a patrol car, the man collapsed and became 'unresponsive', Satterwhite said. Officers called emergency responders who transported the unidentified man to a local hospital where he died a short time later. 'It's a very tragic situation, Satterwhite said, adding that they are still trying to determine the cause of death. But Satterwhite said officers observed a two-inch puncture wound on the man's side; however, it's unclear if that contributed to the man's death. No other information has been provided by authorities at this time. The investigation is ongoing. Conservative writer and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi - an associate of Roger Stone - is in plea talks with Robert Mueller as part of the special counsel's investigation into Russia's role in the election and any possible links with President Donald Trump's campaign. Corsi's talks could aid Mueller's team in their determination into whether Trump and his team were tied to WikiLeaks' release of hacked Democratic emails in the summer of 2016. Mueller's team has been examining Stone's activities to see whether he coordinated with WikiLeaks. Stone is a longtime GOP operative who has advised Trump's campaign. The team has been working with Corsi on a plea deal that would grant him leniency, The Washington Post reported. Conservative writer and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi is in plea talks with the special counsel Corsi worked with Roger Stone, who is also under investigation Stone and WikiLeaks have repeatedly denied any such coordination. Corsi's role in Mueller's investigation revolves around the possibility that he was an intermediary between Stone and WikiLeaks. President Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion with Russia, saying he is the victim of a witch hunt. During the presidential campaign, Corsi provided research on Democratic figures to Stone. Corsi's deal has not been finalized, The Post reported, so it could still fall through or be subject to change. Earlier this month Corsi said he feared he'd be indicted for perjury by Mueller's team and felt enormous pressure from the special counsel's office. 'This was one of the most confusing and frightening things I've experienced. I'm 72 years and I'm afraid they're going to lock me up and put me in solitary confinement,' he told NBC News this month. He could be subject to a number of charges - from perjury to making false claims to obstruction of justice, CNN reported. The potential charges could be related to false statements he made about his relationship with WikiLeaks and Stone. Corsi has been involved in Mueller's investigation for about two months and has been in multiple interviews with prosecutors, given over documents and has testified before the grand jury. Corsi told the Daily Caller last week that investigators are looking at whether he had developed a source with inside information about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's plans. Wikileaks, shortly before the Democratic National Convention in 2016, posted hacked emails from officials. The emails revealed how the party was working to secure Hillary Clinton's nomination over that of primary challenger Bernie Sanders and resulted in then Democratic National Convention Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigning her post. Corsi had, during the presidential campaign, predicted that, in October 2016, Wikileaks would posted hacked emails from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta. Corsi's prediction turned out to be correct - on Oct. 7, 2016, WikiLeaks began publishing 50,000 emails stolen from Podesta's account. Corsi, who writes for the conservative website InfoWars, told the Daily Caller he based his prediction on public sources of information and concluded from the fact Podesta was not among the Democrats whose emails had been published by WikiLeaks in July, they were being held back to make a bigger impact before Election Day. The special counsel is examining if President Donald Trump's campaign has any ties to the Wikileak's release of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee Special counsel Robert Mueller is thought to be wrapping up his investigation Podesta's emails were stolen from his private gmail account and not an official work account. 'They wanted to know who my source was to Julian Assange, who gave me information where I really appeared to know in advance that he had Podesta emails,' Corsi told the Daily Caller. Stone said Corsi did not tell him anything about Podesta emails. 'Absolutely, positively not,' he told the Daily Caller. 'He never told me that he had figured out or believed that John Podesta's emails had been stolen. There is no email that says that. There is no text message that says that. And there is no phone call that says that. He never told me that,' he said. During the presidential campaign, Stone publicly bragged about having 'backchannel communications' with Julian Assange and, in multiple occasions, appeared to predict the WikiLeaks releases Since then, Stone has walked back those claims. He said his claims were exaggerations based on public information, as well as tips from New York radio host Randy Credico. In a statement, Stone said: 'It is clear from his recent videos and his recent interviews that my friend Dr. Corsi has been under a tremendous amount of pressure and it is beginning to affect him profoundly.' He added: 'As I told The Washington Post if Dr. Corsi knew that John Podesta's emails had been obtained by anyone and would be published he never shared this information with me nor did he give me any such documents.' If Corsi cuts a deal with Mueller, he would be the 33rd individual defendant charged by the special counsel's team. Mueller is thought to be wrapping up his investigation now that the midterm election is over. A military sergeant brutally dismembered his wife, a fellow sergeant and mother-of-two, in a jealous rage at their Argentina home. Jesica Hoffmann, 34, had been seriously planning to end her decade-long marriage to Fernando Gonzalez, 35, before he beat and hacked her to death on Tuesday. He then placed the dismembered body parts into small bags, which he hid inside a military-issued duffel bag. He had previously attempted suicide, in front of their children, after Hoffman announced she wanted to leave him. Police say the ruthless killer even went for a drink with Hoffman's parents the following day. When asked where their daughter was, he claimed that his wife had remained overnight at her military base because they had an argument. But the victim's father Ramon Hoffmann was suspicious. Jesica Hoffmann, a first sergeant in the Argentine military, was dismembered on Tuesday by her husband of 10 years, Fernando Gonzalez, also a sergeant in the South American armed forces Fernando Gonzalez (left, being arrested and right) confessed on Thursday to the gruesome murder of his wife and mother of his eight-year-old son. The military member chopped up her body and placed it into a military duffel bag And when officials from the victim's military base in El Palomar showed up at his home Thursday, informing him that Jesica had been missing since Monday, Ramon Hoffman decide to investigate. Officials say he jumped over a porch, which adjoined the two homes, and searched Gonzalez's property. Ramon, a former military member himself, made the gruesome discovery when he found the duffel bag near a pile of clothes that was prepared as if a trip had been previously planned. Ramon Hoffmann said he knew there wasn't a trip in the horizon because of the couple's economic situation and figured it wasn't filled with meats. 'I decided to feel the bag,' the somber parent said Friday morning 'I felt right there that there wasn't any clothes in it.' On Thursday late afternoon, Gonzalez was arrested at Campo de Mayo, a military base 30 kilometers northwest of Buenos Aires, and confessed to police officers that he had murdered the mother of their eight-year-old son, Augustin, who had been staying with his paternal grandmother since Monday night. Ramon Hoffmann (pictured) said he knew something was wrong on Wednesday when his son-in-law mentioned that his daughter had spent the night at her military base because they had an argument Jesica Hoffman pictured with her eight-year-old son, Augustin. The murdered Argentine mother also leaves behind a 15-year-old daughter, Gabriela, from a prior relationship Gonzalez,(left) distraught over news that his wife (right) wanted to dump him, tried to commit suicide in front of their son a couple of months ago while they were still living in the Buenos Aires town of Caseros Hoffman was also the mother to Gabriela, a 15-year-old daughter from a previous relation. She was living with her dad. The concerned father then called 911. The responding unit confirmed his worst fears. According to Argentine news station C5N, Jesica Hoffmann called her cousin Jennifer on Saturday and mentioned she need to speak to her in private about her issues with Gonzalez. But a teary-eyed Jenifer told the news outlet that her cousin refused to say anything over the phone, preferring to air out her concerns in person while also letting her know she had a pair of tickets for her upcoming year-ending performance for a belly dancing class she had been attending. 'Come cousin, I need to tell you something about Fernando,' were some of the last words Jennifer recalled from her conversation with Jesica Hoffman. Jennifer also told C5N that while the couple never had any domestic violence episodes, her cousin was totally unsatisfied with the relationship's future. The couple failed to renew their lease at the previous home last month and had been living at the home that was built years ago next to her parents. Gonzalez, distraught over news that his wife wanted to dump him, tried to commit suicide in front of their son a couple of months ago while they were still living in the Buenos Aires town of Caseros. Investigators searched the couple's living quarters on Thursday and discovered that Gonzalez had utilized a special cleaning agent to remove the blood stains. The investigative team also found the killer's knife, which had been wiped clean. Jesica Hoffmann offered nice words for her husband on Facebook three years ago, writing in Spanish, ' a great son for a great dad.' But the victim was unsatisfied with her relationship and told her husband she no longer wanted to be with him Jennifer [third from right] and Claudio [second from right] recall the tragic death of their cousin on Friday, a day after Fernando Gonzalez [second from left] was arrested at his military base During her free time, Jesica Hoffman enjoyed performing belly dancing routines at a dance school 'I think not even an animal would do what he did,' said Claudio, who identified himself a Jesica Hoffmann's cousin. 'There aren't enough words. I really don't know. The fact that Fernando did something crazy, I don't understand.' According to a report that appeared in the Argentine news outlet, Popular, Gonzalez's self-admission to killing his wife didn't carry any judicial validity because the statement was made without a lawyer being present. However, the prosecutor that will be in charge of the case will be presenting the autopsy report to proceed with the case. 'We are waiting for the results of the autopsy,' a judicial site told Popular. 'Although we already have an overview from the forensic doctor who was on the scene, we want to confirm the death date, how he killed her, whether the dismemberment was postmortem and whether there was sexual abuse, among other issues.' A pastry chef has created stunning portraits of her favourite Disney characters on top of her signature pies. YouTuber Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin released a tutorial showing how she creates life-like images of characters such as The Little Mermaid, Aladdin's Princess Jasmine, Princess Belle from Beauty And The Beast, Mulan and Princess Merida from Brave. The baker, from the US, carved the characters into the crust of her pies using pastry dough,a knife, food colouring and some brushes. Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin demonstrated how to create Aladdin's Princess Jasmine in her YouTube tutorial The Little Mermaid was another Disney favourite that the baker carved onto her pie crust She said: 'I created them to honour and celebrate some of the most beloved of Disney's classic heroines, as well as to showcase some new techniques in the pie baking world that I hope you'll find inspiring. 'The Disney Princesses have a special place in the hearts of fans the world over, and have been immortalized in just about every form of fan art there is. 'For years I've been getting requests to bake your favourites. Well this month I decided it was time.' The pie-lover, who has 40,000 followers on her Instagram , can be seen using a knife and cookie cutters to sculpt the pastry dough into various shapes. The red-headed Princess Merida from Brave was also featured in the two-minute long video The YouTuber applies a finishing touch - a gold flower - to her impression of Princess Belle from Beauty And The Beast Mulan - with two swords protruding from behind her - was created using cookie-cutters and food colouring She then dips her brushes into food colouring and delicately brings her creations to life. She said: 'I promised to pie them [Disney characters] up. I hope I did them justice, and that they put a smile on your face. 'I sure had a blast coming up with the designs for these and experimenting with new edible pigments, texture plates and impression molds.' Oxford University students stripped down to their knickers today in protest of an Irish rape trial in which the alleged victim's underwear was used as evidence against her in court. Around 60 students from the prestigious university marched in Oxford wearing lacy underwear over their clothes waving signs that read 'this is not consent'. Some members of the group braved the cold and removed their overcoats to reveal their underwear beneath. A female protester stripped down to her lacy underwear and held a sign that read 'Not Consent' with a pair of knickers stuck to it Another holds a placard with lacy pink underwear attached, in protest of a defence barrister's comments during a rape trial in Ireland A woman braves the cold (left) to get her message across while another demonstrator holds a sign highlighting the injustices of rape The group of around 60 demonstrators said they wanted to bring an end to 'victim blaming' They chanted slogans including: 'What causes rape? Rapists', 'Clothing is not consent', and 'I believe her!' The protest comes on the back of comments made to a jury by defence lawyer Elizabeth O'Connell. She used the 17-year-old complainant's lacy underwear to get a 27-year-old man acquitted of rape in Cork. The defence barrister told jurors that the alleged victim's knickers were a sign she 'was open to meeting someone that night'. Around 60 students from Oxford University gathered to protest the lawyer's comments A woman uses a megaphone to chant slogans including: 'What causes rape? Rapists', 'Clothing is not consent', and 'I believe her!' A half-dressed woman holds a sign reading 'Boys will be held accountable for their actions' She said: 'You have to look at the way she [the alleged victim] was dressed. She was wearing a thong with a lace front.' Protest organiser Bryony Streets told Cherwell: 'The anger I felt only grew as I looked further into the case, moving me to organise a protest against victim blaming. 'I hope this will show our support for all victims of sexual assault and continue to press the point that victims should never be blamed for the actions of their attackers.' Students hung up underwear on a clothes line in the middle of Cornmarket Street in Oxford The demonstrators took issue with the alleged victim's pants being used as a sign of consent Ellie McCourt-Clarke, who attended the protest, added: 'Clothing is not consent and protests like this are only the beginning to change attitudes surrounding that belief. Everyone should come to make a stand whilst simultaneously supporting anyone affected by rape, sexual assault and its consequences.' Monica Lewisnky recounted the moment that the sitting president encouraged her to lie under oath on the final episode of the A&E docuseries The Clinton Affair. It marked the first time that Lewinsky has actually stated that Bill Clinton advised her to deny their affair if called to testify in the Paula Jones case, pointing out that she could avoid being deposed if she simply denied the charge in an affidavit. Then, in a shockingly bold move, Clinton called for Lewinsky a few days later and the pair enjoyed an intimate, and private, Christmas party in the White House. Unbeknownst to Lewinsky that was the end of the pair's relationship, with Clinton quickly bailing on his 24-year-old paramour who was left to do battle with the special prosecutor, the FBI and the American public on her own while he fell back on a multi-million dollar legal fund raised by supporters. It became too much for Lewinsky at one point she said, and she seriously considered taking her own life. Wake-up call: Monica Lewinsky revealed that Bill Clinton phoned her at 2.30am to inform her that she was on the witness list for the Paula Jones case 'Bill called at 2.30 in the morning and there were two pieces of bad news which he was passing along,' recalled Lewinsky. 'One was that Betty Currie's brother had been killed in a car accident and I had grown very close to Betty, I mean, our relationship was complicated, but I cared very much for her she had had another relative who had passed away recently so this was distressing news to me.' Things then got worse for Lewinsky with the second bit of news, which hit much closer to home. 'And then, he really dropped the bombshell that he had seen the witness list for the Paula Jones case and I was on it,' revealed Lewinsky. 'The information about Betty spun me one way and the information about the witness list spun me completely the other way. He told me that it broke his heart and that he'd thought that I probably wouldn't get called as a witness.' She continued: 'I was petrified. I was frantic about my family, and this becoming public. Thankfully, Bill helped me lock myself back from that and he said I could probably sign an affidavit to get out of it, and he didn't even know if a 100 percent I would be subpoenaed.' Tears: 'Thankfully, Bill helped me lock myself back from that and he said I could probably sign an affidavit to get out of it,' said Lewinsky(above in The Clinton Affair) Lewinsky then pointed out that Clinton never said: 'Now, listen you're gonna have to lie here.' She followed that up though by stating he also never said: 'Listen, honey, this is gonna be really awful we're gonna have to tell the truth.' Lewinsky was subpoenaed just a few days later, so she decided to speak with Clinton's close friend and attorney Vernon Jordan. Up until this point, the docuseries had been remarkably detailed in the chain of events leading up to the impeachment, but here there are some obvious questions that are not even asked, let alone answered. Lewinsky claims that she called up Jordan on her own and managed to secure a meeting with him in his office. And from there she claims he introduced her to her attorney. Apologize: She signed the affidavit and soon after got called to the White House for a Christmas tryst (Clinton above in 1998 denying the affair) There is no examination of how a 24-year-old working at the Pentagon managed to quickly book a face-to-face with one of the most powerful litigators in the world at the time. 'I didn't know whom to contact and Vernon mentioned a lawyer Frank Carter, and took me to meet him,' said Lewinsky. 'Frank Carter explained to me, if I'd signed an affidavit denying having had an intimate relationship with the president it might mean I wouldn't have to be deposed in the Paula Jones case. 'I did feel uncomfortable about it but I felt it was the right thing to do, ironically, right? So, the right thing to do, to break the law.' Soon after she did this she was rewarded with a call to meet Clinton at the White House. 'This is the first time I met Buddy, the dog and we kind of all played around with Buddy in the office and then we went into the back study and we had a Christmas kiss,' said Lewinsky. 'Over the summer he had gone to Martha's Vineyard and he brought back a bunch of different things. He had this big canvas bag from the Black Dog. This marble bear, sunglasses. 'It was the most presents he'd given me at one time. He knew the subpoena was gonna ask to produce certain items and yet he was giving me more gifts. He clearly still trusted me.' She handed those gifts, and all others, to Clinton's secretary for safekeeping and to avoid possible seizure. Then she was left to fend for herself, a situation that quickly became dire. This comes after the premiere of the series on Sunday, when Lewinsky's parents spoke about their daughter's affair for the first time. Dr Bernard Lewinsky and his ex-wife Marcia said on the second episode of the The Clinton Affair that they were thrilled when their daughter got an internship at the White House. 'I'm an immigrant from El Salvador and it was awesome and unbelievable that she would be working at the White House,' said her father, the son of German Jews who fled to Central America during World War II. That internship soon spiraled out of control when Lewinsky was discovered to be having an affair with the president, and the FBI forced her to help in the investigation into Clinton. Lewinsky reveals they did this by threatening to prosecute her mother, breaking down in tears as she recalls how Kenneth Starr's team and federal agents said both women were facing 27 years in prison for lying about the affair. I kept asking could I call my mom, they kept saying no,' recalled Lewinsky of the 12-hour interrogation inside a hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton. 'You're 24, you don't need to call your mommy, you need to make a decision about what to do.' Lewinsky was unflappable at that point however, and told the men: 'Well you should learn I am leaning towards not cooperating.' That is when the men made the decision to threaten not only her, but also her family. 'And then he said, "Well, you should know, we're also thinking about prosecuting your mom for the things you said she did on the tape,"' said Lewinsky, breaking down in tears. Lewinsky then informed the men that she had to call someone, either her mother or a lawyer, before she would make this decision to wear a wire and have her calls tapped by the FBI. Tight unit: Lewinsky broke down in tears when recalling the moment that she was told both she and her mother were looking at 27 years in prison for lying (Monoica and Marcia above circa 1996) Gown: Clinton then bailed on Lewinsky, who found herself targeted by the FBI and Kenneth Starr's team (Lewinsky at the 1997 inaugural ball) The men eventually gave in to Lewinsky's demands, and she said she went to a pay phone and called her mother in the local mall. Lewinsky said her mother attempted to get her to calm down and breathe, before finally coming to realize the situation her daughter was in at the time. 'FBI ... have me ... I'm in a hotel,' recalled Lewinsky of her words to her mother. Monica's mother recalled her daughter's earlier days in the second episode, while sharing some photos of the girl's childhood. 'Monica was a beautiful and very, very smart little girl,' said her mother Marcia. 'But stubborn. Really stubborn. Dr Lewinsky added: 'She was very gregarious, friendly, you know when she was in the room.' And he said of the moment he learned about her internship: 'I was so proud of her and she was so happy about it.' Lewinsky also detailed the events that led to her decision to confide in Linda Tripp, the woman who would eventually alert the special prosecutor to the fact that Clinton was having an affair with a former intern. It all started when members of Clinton's staff decided to move Lewinsky out of her post working for Legislative Affairs at The White House and transfer her to the Pentagon amid growing concerns over how close she had become with the president. Lewinsky suggested that this was all done with the knowledge of her paramour, who she describes as 'crestfallen.' The two had been seeing one another daily and enjoying weekly trysts prior to that Lewinsky had revealed, but the move to a new job and building changed all that in an instant. Lewinsky would instead be forced to wait until the middle of the night for Clinton to call, but she said that he had promised to move her back to a White House position after the election. At that point the pair had been carrying on their affair for five months, and a number of staff members had begun to take notice of how often Lewinsky was around the president and Oval Office. It was an optics problem however said staffers, with no one explicitly stating that they believed the intern was having an affair with the president. The job shift also came while Clinton was in the middle of his reelection campaign, meaning that he was not in touch with Lewinsky for days or even weeks at a time. 'I had this nagging insecurity that maybe he just did all these things these last six months cause he wanted to keep me quiet during the election,' explained Lewinsky. 'How stupid am I that I believed this, that I bought this. I felt so deflated and so desperate. And those were the conditions along with some other things that led to me confiding in Linda Tripp.' Lewinsky described her mindset at the time by saying she 'had naively invested in his promise,' but that was shattered when the election came and went without the offer of a White House job. It was too much for Lewinsky, who says that after a few hours she began to think about commiting suicide. Twenty years later, it still causes her to break down in tears. 'The ground completely crumbled in that moment. I felt so much guilt. And I felt terrified,' she revealed in the interview. An FBI agent involved in the case acknowledged this, saying that Lewinsky was 'alternating between being hysterical, being angry, being abusive.' 'They imagined that I would have flipped really easily. They had no plan in place for what would happen if i said no,' said Lewinsky. That then gave way to thoughts of ending her own life. 'There was a point for me somewhere within these first several hours where I would be hysterically crying and then I would just shut down,' she recalled. 'And in the shut down period I just remember looking out the window and thinking the only way to fix this is to kill myself.' Lewinsky, who up until that point had managed to hold back her tears, then burst out sobbing. 'I just felt terrible ... and I was scared ... and I was mortified,' she said while trying to regain her composure. This all played out at the Ritz Carlton in January 1998, with the Office of the Independent Counsel getting Linda Tripp to set up a meeting with Lewinsky. She was then taken to a room and held by prosecutors until that night. Lewinsky admitted that the thing that made this so difficult for her was the fact that she was still in love with Clinton and she stood her ground, until they threatened her mother. Spacious tunnels that may have been used for smuggling in Chinese-Cuban prostitutes during Prohibition have been discovered during construction in Florida. There's been talk about mysterious passageways underneath the suburb of Ybor City in Central Florida going back about 20 years, University of Southern Florida - St. Petersburg professor Emeritus of history Dr. Gary Mormino told DailyMail.com. Mormino, 71, who has been researching the history of Ybor City for about 40 years, said the first tunnels of this kind were unearthed about two decades ago when work was being down below a Blue Ribbon grocery store. 'That provoked the question, "Why would you build a tunnel in an area that has a water table of about one foot below sea level?"' While some have guessed the underground passages may have been used by bootleggers, Mormino said that doesn't make sense, and it's more likely they were used to bring in prostitutes or Chinese laborers from Cuba. Spacious tunnels that may have been used for smuggling in Chinese-Cuban prostitutes during Prohibition have been discovered during construction in Tampa, Florida's Ybor City These latest tunnels were found earlier this week near the Old Florida Brewery, close to East 6th Avenue and Noccio Parkway, while construction was being done on a new office building. Workers were tearing down a warehouse when they found the hidden passage, tall enough to stand up in with a rounded ceiling. Mormino described them as, 'nothing too remarkable to look at,' flat on the bottom, and wide, making them unsuitable as a sewage system, and all the more interesting to those wondering why they exist. History professor and researcher Dr. Gary Mormino described the tunnels to DailyMail.com as, 'nothing too remarkable to look at,' flat on the bottom, and wide, making them unsuitable as a sewage system, and all the more interesting to those wondering why they exist 'At this point, I'm looking at ruling things out,' he said. 'I'm asking myself, "What were the tunnels not used for?"' While some are quick to guess they may have been used to transport bootlegged alcohol during the 1920s and early 1930s, Mormino said that doesn't make any sense, either. 'I interviewed a lot of people in the 1970s and '80s who would have been involved in bootlegging of '20s and '30s and they've all said the only people who feared the police were those who weren't involved in the rackets' he said. 'If you paid off the police, you were fine.' University of Southern Florida - St. Petersburg professor Emeritus of history Dr. Gary Mormino told DailyMail.com the tunnels (pictured) were likely part of a criminal network, and that Ybor City officials would have had to be in on the construction Mormino shared a story about one of his interview subjects named Sam, who said his father was an Italian bootlegger, who would receive a call once each month from the police telling him he had to come in and be arrested and pay his fines. Once there, Sam said the police would ask his father what name he wanted to be arrested under 'this time,' and the next day the front page of the newspaper would read, 'Seven Italian bootleggers arrested,' as part of a ruse intended to appease the public. In fact, Mormino said Sam also told him he used to deliver crates of bootlegged alcohol to shops and when the police were they, they would open the door and help him carry the boxes in, praising him for being such an enterprising young man. So, Mormino has determined, the tunnels probably weren't used for bootlegging. Instead, he said, it's far more likely they were used for 'white slavery related to bringing women across interstate lines for immoral purposes,' along with smuggling in Chinese laborers and Chinese-Cuban prostitutes. Mormino said Ybor City has had a large Chinese-Cuban population dating back to 1886. 'Chinese people were brought to Cuba after slavery ended in late 19th century to replace slaves and work in the sugar industry,' Mormino said. The professor guessed that around that time, city of Tampa officials may have been in on creating the tunnels which would have otherwise been a massive and expensive undertaking for a criminal enterprise. While some are quick to guess they may have been used to transport bootlegged alcohol during the 1920s and early 1930s, Mormino said that doesn't make any sense, because police were so 'in on it' that tunnels wouldn't have been necessary; In this undated photo federal authorities are shown unearthing a buried whiskey cache in the backyard of a Ybor City home Mormino believes that local leaders may have extending the passages down to the port 'Basically, corrupt politics likely allowed the criminal elements to use those tunnels as part of a vast, interconnected network,' he said. But, Mormino made sure to mention, that while it's fun to guess about what may have gone on in those hidden passageways all those years ago, anything anyone has come up with is just a guess. 'I don't know if we'll ever know the truth, to be honest,' Mormino said. 'It's a rather elusive story now. A Michigan judge with the same name as the federal judge who restored CNN reporter Jim Acosta's access to the White House has been receiving angry calls over the ruling. Furious callers mistook Bay County District Court Judge Timothy J. Kelly for US District Court Judge Timothy J. Kelly for the District of Columbia. US District Judge Kelly granted Acosta a two-week injunction to return to work on November 16. Meanwhile, on November 16 Bay County Judge Kelly was out of the office. The White House had initially revoked Acosta's credentials after he and President Donald Trump tangled verbally during a November 7 press conference. Furious callers mistook Bay County District Court Judge Timothy J. Kelly (left) for US District Court Judge Timothy J. Kelly (right) for the District of Columbia US District Judge Kelly granted CNN reporter Jim Acosta (pictured) a two-week injunction to return to work on November 16. Meanwhile, on November 16 Bay County Judge Kelly was out of the office Judge Kelly's Bay City's office received a half-dozen phone calls complaining about the other Timothy J. Kelly's ruling, according to MLive.com. Bay County Judge Kelly said he thinks the callers 'would at least do your homework' before calling someone to complain. 'In my line of work, of course, you expect to be criticized for some of your decisions,' Bay County Judge Kelly told the news site. 'That goes with the territory. However, to be criticized for decisions you didn't make... It just makes you wonder.' Bay County Judge Kelly's court recorder and judicial secretary Alexa Pobanz said she was initially bewildered by the calls. 'It took me three or four calls to figure out what they were talking about,' Pobanz told MLive. 'People didn't identify themselves necessarily; they just started in - "This is the worst ruling ever made by the judge today." I was very confused.' Pobanz said every single call was someone who just wanted to complain. On Monday, the Trump administration abruptly dropped its effort to bar Acosta from the White House, but warned he could have his credentials pulled again if he doesn't follow guidelines governing journalists' behavior. The White House said reporters would be permitted one question each if called upon at news conferences and allowed follow-ups only at the discretion of the president. In a letter to Acosta, White House communications director Bill Shine and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said they will be forced to reconsider the decision 'if unprofessional behavior occurs'. CNN said that, as a result, it has dropped its lawsuit against the White House filed on Acosta's behalf. On Monday, the Trump administration abruptly dropped its effort to bar Acosta (pictured, walking into the White House) from the White House, but warned he could have his credentials pulled again if he doesn't follow guidelines governing journalists' behavior 'Thanks to everyone for their support,' Acosta tweeted. 'As I said last Friday ... let's get back to work.' Acosta's credentials were revoked earlier this month, with the Trump administration's initial reasoning being that Acosta had manhandled a White House intern seeking to take his microphone. But that fell apart after Sanders distributed a doctored video sped up to make Acosta look more aggressive than he actually was. Instead, the White House focused on behavior they deemed disrespectful to the president. The White House had initially revoked Acosta's credentials after he and President Donald Trump tangled verbally during a November 7 press conference Acosta and CNN have been frequent targets of a president who has derided coverage of his administration as 'fake news' and called the media the enemy of the people. CNN filed suit to get Acosta's credentials restored, arguing that the action violated the constitutional right to freedom of the press and that he had been denied due process. After DC District Court Judge Kelly cited the due process argument last Friday in granting Acosta a two-week injunction to get back to work, the White House initially fought back, saying it had made a preliminary decision to keep Acosta out when the two weeks were up. But after CNN requested a hearing, Shine and Sanders changed course. 'The view from here is that White House interaction with the press is, and generally should be, subject to kind of a natural give and take,' Shine and Sanders wrote. 'President Trump believes strongly in the First Amendment and interacts with the press in just such a way. It would be a great loss for all if, instead of this give-and-take, and instead of relying on the professionalism of White House journalists, we were compelled to devise a lengthy and detailed code of conduct.' The White House Correspondents Association said the White House did the right thing in restoring Acosta's pass. The WHCA said it had no role in crafting any of the new procedures, and objected to one. 'For as long as there have been White House press conferences, White House reporters have asked follow-up questions,' said Olivier Knox, WHCA president. 'We fully expect this tradition will continue.' Excise department employees or contractors will not carry out raids without police presence Sukhbir Badal asks Kejriwal to tell if he had implemented a single promise he was making in Punjab and Delhi A woman who was six years old during the 1921 Tulsa race riot, one of the worst race riots in U.S. history, has died aged 103. Olivia Hooker was a small child when the riot, that began on May 31, destroyed much of a Tulsa neighborhood that had been known as 'Black Wall Street.' She told National Public Radio in an interview this year that she hid under a table as a mob of torch-carrying people destroyed her family's home. Olivia Hooker (pictured in 2005) was 6 when the riot, that began on May 31, destroyed much of a Tulsa neighborhood that had been known as 'Black Wall Street' The violence began after a black man allegedly assaulted a white woman in an elevator. The number of deaths was never confirmed and varies from about three dozen to 300. Hooker's goddaughter, Janis Porter, says her godmother died Wednesday at their home in White Plains, New York. The cause of her death isn't known. She had no immediate survivors. Dr Hooker was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma on February 12, 1915, and was one of five children. Dr Hooker taught in an elementary school after graduating from Ohio State University. She got her master's degree in psychology from Teachers College at Columbia University before going on to earn a doctorate from the University of Rochester. She was among the first black women to serve in the Coast Guard and became an associate professor of psychology at Fordham University in New York. Dr. Hooker was among the first black women to serve in the Coast Guard and became an associate professor of psychology at Fordham University in New York Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum announced in early October that he plans to re-examine whether mass graves hold remains of those killed as the 100 year anniversary of the Tulsa race riot draws near. He said a man who was a child in 1921 told a state commission studying the massacre that he remembered seeing bodies dumped in a cemetery. 'Councilor [Jack] Henderson and I turned our findings over to the City Administration, but nothing ever came of it,' Bynum wrote on Facebook. 'I promised myself that if I ever became mayor and had the authority to direct further examination I would,' he added. There are three main potential sites that will be investigated. The first is Newblock Park. The second is Booker T. Washington Cemetery, 'where previously marked graves were found in a disturbed state by researchers in the late 1990s,' Bynum said in his Facebook post. Lastly, the Oaklawn Cemetery will be investigated. On one side of the cemetery, there is a grassy field with no marked graves, according to Bynum. If there are unmarked graves, the investigative team will then determine their nature to see if the bodies are consistent with the violence from the massacre or if they appear to be the remains of people who died from natural causes. The mayor added he plans to speak with archaeological experts to come up with minimally invasive ways to look for mass graves in the three locations. 'We do not begin this process with a certain outcome. We may not find any mass graves. Or we may. Tulsans are compassionate and supportive toward victims of violent crime - and that standard should apply whether they are victims in 2018 or 1921,' Bynum wrote. 'This is a matter of basic human decency,' he added. Jose Peralta died in hospital on Wednesday night surrounded by his family New York State Senator Jose Peralta suffered from septic shock that eventually led to organ failure, his despondent widow has revealed. Evelyn Peralta met with officials from New York City's Medical Examiner om Friday and shared what she was told by the office to the New York Post. 'All they said is that he was septic,' she said on Friday. 'And that led to organ failure.' But more conclusive tests still need to be conducted. 'They need to do additional tests,' she added. 'There is no final conclusion yet. They don't know.' 'His body was poisoning itself,' she added stating that the septic caused a fatal blood infection. Sepsis occurs when the immune system overreacts to an infection and releases chemicals into the blood that create widespread inflammation Evelyn Peralta met with officials from New York City's Medical Examiner and revealed that her husband suffered from septic shock that led to organ failure Peralta was just 47-year-old when he died on Wednesday and was the first Dominican-American senator. 'I just came back from viewing the body. The doctor said it's rare, [given] his age and that it happened so quick he was healthy. He was a healthy guy,' said his wife. According to the widow, her husband had complained of shortness of breath and pressure to his head before developing a fever on Tuesday. Doctors 'didn't find anything' at the time. 'I just came back from viewing the body. The doctor said it's rare, [given] his age and that it happened so quick he was healthy. He was a healthy guy,' said his wife Evelyn is now planing the funeral for her late husband and has asked for people to please 'write something nice.' The couple have a 13-year-old son named Myles and a 21-year-old son named Matthew. The Democrat was pronounced dead on Wednesday at 8pm at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens. His family was at the scene at the time. He had served as the State Senator for New York's 13th District since 2010. He served for eight years but was unseated in the recent election by fellow Democrat Jessica Ramos earlier this month. She was among those who paid tribute to him after his death on Thursday, writing on Twitter: 'Jose Peralta is gone too soon. 'When I met him in 2003 I saw a world of promise for our community & though years later we'd disagree on tackling the issues, I know in his heart he loved his community. 'He was a true public servant. Strength & love to his wife, sons, and loved ones.' A spokesman for the late politician told Pix 11: 'I can confirm that Senator Jose Peralta passed away on Wednesday. 'We have no further details to release at this time and ask that the family's privacy be respected. The couple have a 13-year-old son named Myles and a 21-year-old son named Matthew Jessica Ramos, who unseated Peralta in the recent elections, was among those to pay tribute to him after news of his death emerged 'Thank you to all who have reached out with words of kindness and support.' Neither Mayor Bill de Blasio nor the Governor Andrew Cuomo has yet paid tribute to him or commented on his death. In October, Peralta's Queens office was shuttered after a staff member opened an envelope which contained white powder. It had not been addressed to him and was intended for Sen. Michael Gianaris but somehow ended up at Peralta's office. President Donald Trump's administration, in a move to get around the circuit court, on Friday appealed directly to the Supreme Court to hear a challenge to the administration's policy that bars transgender people from military service. The move comes as the president has railed against the Ninth Circuit, which put on a hold on his asylum ban for illegal immigrants. Several district courts have blocked the policy, including the Ninth Circuit, which heard arguments earlier this fall, and the DC Circuit, which will hear arguments in early December. President Trump's administration asked the Supreme Court to rule on a challenge to the ban on transgender soldiers The US Supreme Court is pictured in full with the president and first lady on November 8 But, on Friday, the administration moved to bypass those courts and go straight to the top. Solicitor General Noel Francisco of the Justice Department filed petitions asking Supreme Court justices to take up the issue in three separate cases that are still in lower courts, CNN reported. Francisco argues that lower court rulings imposing nationwide injunctions are wrong and warrant immediate review by the high court. The administrations attempt to get the issue before the Supreme Court in their current term could mean a decision by June 2019 - if the justices agree to take up the matter. The policy, which Trump announced on Twitter in July 2017, was later officially released by Secretary of Defense James Mattis. It blocks individuals who suffer from a condition known as gender dysphoria from serving in the military with limited exceptions. It does let individuals without the condition serve but only if they do so according to the sex they were assigned at birth. Typically, the Supreme Court does not like to take up an issue before it has made its way through the lower courts. The administration had made similar requests of the high court in the past and the Supreme Court has rebuffed those attempts, as it did in a challenge to the administrations attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for Dreamers, sending the matters back to the lower courts before it weighs in. President Trump has been railing against the Ninth Court and got into an unprecedented battle with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on the role of the judiciary. A supporter of LGBT rights holds up an "equality flag" on Capitol Hill in Washington, during an event held by Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass. in support of transgender members of the military The policy blocks individuals who suffer from a condition known as gender dysphoria from serving in the military with limited exceptions The Supreme Court does not like to bypass the lower courts On Thanksgiving Day, he slammed the circuit court while on a call with U.S. troops based in Afghanistan. 'We got a lot of bad decisions from the Ninth Circuit, which has become a big thorn in our side. We always lose, and then you lose again and again, and you hopefully win at the Supreme Court, which we have done,' he said on a call with U.S. troops based in Afghanistan. Trump also acknowledged his spat with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. 'I know that Chief Justice Roberts, John Roberts, has been speaking a little bit about it. And I think - I have a lot of respect for him. I like him and respect him, but I think we have to use some common sense. It's Ninth Circuit, everybody knows it, it's totally out of control. What they're doing, what they're saying, the opinions are very unfair to law enforcement. They're very unfair to our military. And they're very unfair, most importantly, to the people of our country,' he said. Trump had complained that a judge appointed by former President Barack Obama has ruled against his asylum ban, calling him an 'Obama-judge.' That earned a sharp rebuke from the chief justice. Roberts, who is a Republican and was nominated to the Supreme Court by George W. Bush in 2005, said: 'We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. 'What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. 'The independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.' Trump hit back on Twitter afterwards, saying: 'Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have 'Obama judges', and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.' A British jihadi couple who tried to sneak back into the UK after two years in Syria have been jailed in Turkey. Muslim convert Stefan Aristidou, 24, and his wife Kolsoma Begum, 23, were convicted of being in an armed terrorist organisation and sentenced to six years and three months each. Last night, MPs said the case was the tip of the iceberg, and pointed to the far greater number who had come back to Britain without facing prosecution. Only 40 out of 400 British jihadis who fought in Syria and Iraq have been prosecuted on their return, it has emerged. At least 360 battle-hardened fanatics were allowed to go free as there is not enough evidence to jail them. It is unclear which sanctions Aristidou and Begum, who gave birth to a girl in Syria, will face on their return. But they are unlikely to lose their passports unless they are dual nationals. Jihadi Kolsoma Begum was jailed in Turkey along with her husband and Muslim convert Stefan Aristidou as they tried to get back to the UK The Londoners had been trying to return to the UK since September 2016 after defecting from IS. They fled Syria last April but were arrested after surrendering to the Turks. The couple claimed they joined IS in April 2015 so they could live under sharia law rather than to fight, but went into hiding after seeing the terror groups murderous regime with their own eyes. But last month a court in the Turkish town of Kilis, three miles from the Syrian border, rejected their defence. They were jailed alongside US citizen Kary Paul Kleman, 48, from Wisconsin, who claimed he had been captured by IS militants while visiting his Syrian wifes family in 2015. Aristidou, who grew up in middle-class surroundings in Enfield, north London, and Begum, who was training to be a midwife, became desperate to return to the UK after discovering that living under IS was like being in prison. In March 2017, while on the run from the terror group, Aristidou told Sky News: Im just trying to get my life back. So be it if I have to go to prison in order to do that. Im prepared to do that. Im just here to look after my family. After their arrest, Begums father Ahmed Ali, 48, told the Mail that his daughter, from Poplar, east London, should face justice if she wants to return to Britain. British jihadist Stefan Aristidou went to Syria in 2015. Along with his wife Kolsoma Begum he was convicted of being in an armed terrorist organisation and the pair were sentenced to six years and three months each Home Secretary Sajid Javid plans to make it illegal to travel to terror hotspots without good excuse to deter Britons from travelling to warzones to join extremist groups. Independent MP John Woodcock, a member of the Commons home affairs committee who has campaigned for the new law, said last night: Its clear that this couple are actually only the tip of the iceberg. They are the small minority who have been caught red-handed, but every story like this points to the far greater number who have been able to come back to the UK without facing any kind of prosecution. That is why the new counter-terror legislation for which I called and the Government is taking through the Commons is potentially so important. If this can get through, well be able to prosecute people simply entering particular terror hotspots when they dont have a clear reason to do so. The Government has also come under pressure from the US and Kurdish leaders in Syria to take responsibility for UK citizens captured abroad. A Foreign Office spokesman said: Anyone who has travelled to Syria or Iraq is putting themselves in danger. Any foreign terrorist fighters captured overseas should be treated in accordance with applicable law and, wherever possible, brought to justice in accordance with legal due process in the most appropriate jurisdiction. The exchange of British students with countries like the UAE must continue in order for them to see a functioning democracy, the Universities Minister has said. Sam Gyimah made the comments after British PhD student Matthew Hedges was sentenced to life imprisonment in Abu Dhabi, accused of spying. He described the case as 'incredibly tragic' and voiced his support for the work of the Foreign Office in the matter. Asked whether the longstanding relationships between British and UAE universities can continue in the wake of the sentence, he added: 'We have got to be cautious, but student exchange is one of these things that should always go on. 'I think that, even where you have countries where you might have profound policy disagreements with, one of the issues that can actually help facilitate a change of outlook and ideas is student exchange programmes. 'It worked during the Cold War, I don't see why it can't work now, but that is not in any way to suggest that we approve of what has happened in this case.' Mr Gyimah said student exchange works both ways and provides the UK with the opportunity to share what it has to offer. 'I think that students from those countries coming here and experiencing what it means to live in a fully functioning democracy can only be a good thing,' he said. 'So if you were to boycott these exchange programmes, it is potentially undermining our ability to positively influence what is going on in these countries by getting their future leaders to understand, experience and share the values that we hold dear.' The United Arab Emirates might have handed back jailed academic Matthew Hedges if Britain had admitted he was a spy, it has been claimed. The UK has consistently denied that Mr Hedges was working for the Secret Intelligence Service. But the UAE wanted Britain to go via intelligence channels in handling the case, which could have seen him released. However, the UK Government declined to do this over concerns it would be seen as admitting Mr Hedges's guilt, reported The Times. When Jeremy Hunt spoke to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed about the case, the Foreign Secretary denied Mr Hedges was a spy but the prince chose to leave it to 'due judicial process', according to a source. Durham University has advised its students and staff to avoid travelling to the United Arab Emirates until their student Matthew Hedges is home. Stuart Corbridge, its vice-chancellor and warden, sent a message to staff and students to issue a 'moratorium', or suspension, on travel there. He said: 'Following my previous email about the case of Durham student Matthew Hedges, please note that we are advising a moratorium on all travel to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for our non-UAE staff and students until Matt is safely back home.' The universities minister has urged academics not to boycott the UAE in protest over its treatment of Mr Hedges. Sam Gyimah warned universities that cutting ties with the country risks harming our 'ability to positively influence' the situation there. His comments come after staff at Birmingham University voted for an academic boycott of its 100million campus in Dubai over the affair. City University, the London Business School, Birmingham, Middlesex and Heriot-Watt also have sites in the UAE. Framing is an art. The right frame can make a picture sing, while, like an unfortunate haircut, the wrong one will do nothing for it at all. Build me up buttercup: Works by Rose Electra Harris in William Yeoward's King's Road store Which is why, deep inside the National Gallery in London, there is an enormous workshop full of frames in various stages of production and in all sorts of styles, with a dedicated head of framing, Peter Schade, in charge of the whole process. Schade trained as a woodcarver in Rhon, near Frankfurt in Germany. He is creating a leafy design out of poplar wood when I visit the pattern inspired by something he saw in a gallery in Palma, Italy. Poplar is traditionally used for gilded carvings. Farmed in Lombardy, its soft, light and cheap. Schade has worked part-time at the National Gallery for 13 years and has re-framed about 250 paintings from the collection. When he started, he estimated that 80 per cent needed re-doing. Art of framing: Peter Schade at work in the National Gallery's Framing Studio And its amazing what a difference a frame can make. When Schade reframed Caravaggios Boy Bitten By A Lizard, it made such an impact, the curators thought the painting looked as if it had been cleaned. Bellinis Doge Leonardo Loredan, from 1501-02, one of the most striking paintings in the Mantegna And Bellini exhibition on now, would be even more arresting in a different design. Its in a frame from the period, says Schade, but its one that you look into, which creates a world, while it should be in something outward-looking. Striking: Bellinis Doge Leonardo Loredan, from 1501-02, in the National Gallery exhibition In the 15th century, frames were designed to help make paintings appear more three-dimensional. By the 18th century, they were fashioned to complement interior schemes. Most of the National Gallerys frames are French 18th century and would have been designed to mirror the rooms they were hanging in. Theyre ornate with shells, flowers and flourishes. Some frames are considered so beautiful, theyre part of the Victoria and Albert Museums collection. But these days were more inclined to use such heavy designs for mirrors rather than paintings, though you can pick up vintage styles at markets like Kempton in Surrey or in antique shops. More streamlined 20th-century frames can be found in junk shops, and Schade recommends looking on French eBay. He re-framed a work by Degas in a frame bought from the website. Ornate: A 1550-1600 Italian frame bequeathed by George Salting which is part of the Victoria and Albert Museum collection If youre putting prints rather than paintings on your wall, a minimalist look will be less distracting. A sleek, simple and beautifully crafted frame lets the art speak for itself, while a mount can help to elevate the piece, says Amber Henry, from Print Club London, where prints cost from 20, printclublondon.com. We recommend black frames for a classic, understated finish. If you want something more glitzy, switch last seasons copper for elegant brass to create a sophisticated and on-trend look, she suggests. West Elm has thin polished brass frames in a variety of sizes, from 22, westelm.co.uk. Heavy graphic shapes look great in a boxed black frame, whereas you should let prints with a lot of white space breathe in a simple white frame, adds Henry. Glitzy goings on: Brass is the softer answer to copper, as shown by these frames from West Elm When I ask a local framer for some advice, he tells me the most important thing is to ask for acid-free backing, especially if the work in question is valuable. Otherwise you get those age-related reddish-brown spots where the paper has deteriorated. Floating the glass is more expensive but cuts down on reflection, he advises. And just like everything else, frames follow fashion. In the old days, people just used gold. In the Seventies and Eighties it was all about metal frames, then we moved on to black, then white. Now people want pale greys. You have to paint them. I use vintage paint inspired by the 18th-century Adam style, he says. He admits that Ikea and Habitat are brilliant for cheap, quick fixes, but their frames might not last the course. Artist Rose Electra Harris (roseelectraharris.com), who has a show in William Yeowards Kings Road shop in Chelsea, creates dream-like prints. I always ask for a float mounting so it looks like its hovering and dont have any paper cut off, so, as the viewer, you are right in it. Because her artworks come in such vibrant shades, she sticks to monochrome frames, but tries to display her work against a colourful wall with yellow a favourite. While Yeowards buttercup walls are arresting, if your scheme is more muted, a bright or gilded frame can provide a flick of glamour. I have a fluorescent pink frame in my mainly grey sitting room, and its cheering. The cherry on top, if you like. Apple is cutting the price of its latest iPhone in Japan to boost sales after an underwhelming launch. The Silicon Valley firm is offering subsidies to mobile network operators in Japan to help shift its $749 (749) iPhone XR, which was released less than a month ago. Operators will offer price cuts as early as next week, a decision which indicates Apple's long-term dominance in the smartphone market may be wavering. It is not known whether the firm will offer the discount in other regions. Apple has released a trio of iPhones in 2018, with the XR billed as the 'budget' option in a bid to tempt buyers away from a wave of cheaper handsets offered by Chinese smartphone makers like Huawei and One Plus. Scroll down for video Apple is cutting the price of its latest iPhone in Japan to boost sales after an underwhelming launch. Pictured are iPhone XR handsets at an Apple store in Moscow last month IPHONE XR SPECS Price: $749 (749) Screen size: 6.1-inch Processor: A12 Bionic Battery life: Up to 15 hours Colours: Yellow, White, Coral, Black, Blue, and Product Red Wireless Charge: Yes Face ID: Yes Advertisement The company started selling its latest generation of phones, the $999 (999) iPhone XS and $1099 (1099) XS Max, in September and the XR model in October. Sources close to the company told the Wall Street Journal that is has been forced to offer subsidies for the XR to operators in Japan in a bid to fix poor sales figures. The XR costs around $750 (749) on the Japanese Apple Store, but carriers often bundle phones with data plans, the journal noted. Production of the device has already been cut by the company, and the addition of price drops is a sign of limited enthusiasm among consumers for the model. The iPhone XR has fewer features than Apple's other two new releases and costs more than still-popular older models like the iPhone 8. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier this week, the WSJ reported that Apple had cut production orders in recent weeks for all three iPhone models launched in September. The $749 (749) iPhone XR features a 6.1-inch LCD display and comes in black, white, red, yellow, coral, and blue A lower-than-expected demand for the new iPhones and Apple's decision to offer more models has made it difficult to anticipate the number of components and handsets the company needs, according to the report. Forecasts have been particularly problematic for iPhone XR with Apple cutting its production plan by up to a third. Some suppliers had been asked to produce 70 million units between September and February, WSJ reported. As recently as last week, Apple informed several suppliers that it had lowered its production plan again for iPhone XR, the Journal said. Apple shocked investors a few weeks ago with a sales forecast for the Christmas quarter below Wall Street expectations, prompting certain suppliers to issue warnings that pointed to weakness in new iPhone sales. Kaikoura earthquake brought the two islands five metres closer together in 2016 New Zealand's north and south islands are 'creeping' closer together in the aftermath of the devastating Kaikoura earthquake. The 7.8-magnitude earthquake initially brought the islands five metres closer when it struck the tip of South Island in November 2016. Now two years on, post-quake monitoring has revealed the land is still reshaping due to unsettled fault lines - with Cook Strait, the body of water between the two islands, narrowing. The 7.8-magnitude earthquake initially brought the islands five metres closer when it struck the tip of South Island in November 2016 (file photo) Police investigate the aftermath of the Kaikoura earthquake on a road in New Zealand's South Island The northern part of South Island has been moving northeast towards its sister island since the quake, GNS Science revealed. Dr Sigrun Hreinsdottir, a GNS Science geodetic scientist, told Stuff that Cape Campbell on the northeastern coast of the South Island is now 35 centimetres closer to Wellington. Dr Hreinsdottir also said GPS monitoring stations installed after the earthquake showed Kaikoura had moved 15 centimetres east, Blenheim had slipped 15 centimetres northeast and Nelson had moved five centimetres southeast. The Kaikoura earthquake tore apart a record of 25 faults when it hit near to North Canterbury The country's capital, Wellington, had also moved five centimetres to the northeast. But the scientist said it was difficult to work out which fault line was responsible for each movement. She said: 'In reality we are having all these creepings going on and the question is, which is the dominant factor? 'The idea there was a quite significant component on that plate interface was the surprising thing to us.' Now two years on, post-quake monitoring has revealed the land is still reshaping due to unsettled fault lines (file photo) Dr Hreinsdottir said the land creep is likely to continue for years at a much slower pace. The Kaikoura earthquake tore apart a record of 25 faults when it hit near to North Canterbury, on the tip of South Island. It claimed the lives of two and caused dozens of injuries as parts of the Malborough coast were lifted more than six metres in some places and fell more than two metres in others. A whole 500ml plastic bottle was found inside the stomach of a monkfish by a fisherman in South Korea. The disturbing discovery was described as a wake-up call for governments to commit to reducing waste in the coastal areas. The monkfish was caught along with ten others in the coastal town of Buan-Gun near North Jeolla on Monday. Scroll down for video A whole 500ml plastic bottle was found inside the stomach of a monkfish by a fisherman in South Korea. The grim discovery is a wake-up call to governments to commit to reducing waste in the coastal areas A fisherman named Hwang noticed that one of the them had a bloated stomach and cut it open expecting to find prey. Monkfish are known for their wide mouths frequently swallow other species like squid or other flatfish, making them profitable finds for fishermen. Expecting to find the prey it swallowed, he opened up the fish's stomach, only to find the plastic bottle. Environmental activists are calling for a 'systemic response' from the government to ensure safe disposal of plastic waste. 'Hwang opened up the fish and found a plastic bottle, so he sent me a photo,' said Lee In-gyu, a member of the Korean Federation of Environmental Movement's North Jeolla branch. 'It shows that the marine debris issue is quite severe in Korea.' Local fishermen consider the waters near Buan County a rich fishing ground. 'We're finding more plastic and trash inside fish these days,' Hwang said. 'I've found vinyl products, cans and pieces of plastic inside some fish, and this is not limited to monkfish. Earlier in this week, a sperm whale washed ashore off the Indonesian coast with almost 6kg of plastic inside it, including 115 plastic drinking cups. The rotting carcass of the 31-foot (9.5-meter) whale was found Monday in shallow waters just off Kapota Island The whale had consumed a horrifying collection of plastic trash, including 115 drinking cups, 25 plastic bags, plastic bottles, two flip-flops and a bag containing more than 1,000 pieces of string I've found plastic waste inside mudskippers and bartail flatheads, too. 'It is worrying because people don't seem to care for the environment.' Earlier in this week, a sperm whale washed ashore off the Indonesian coast with almost 6kg of plastic inside it, including 115 plastic drinking cups. A Greenpeace senior oceans campaigner said: 'If nature had a distress signal to warn us that it can't take any more of our plastic rubbish, it would look like this - a dead whale with 1,000 pieces of plastic in its stomach. 'When the news about the dead whale broke, it seemed like something happening quite far away,' said Lee Jeong-hyun, secretary general of the Korean Federation of Environmental Movement's North Jeolla branch. 'But the news about the monkfish that swallowed a whole plastic bottle shocked me. This is a warning for us all.' HOW SEVERE IS INDONESIA'S PLASTIC WASTE PROBLEM? Four of Indonesia's rivers rank among the 20 most polluted in the world. Plastic waste in Indonesia's Ciliwung River This means the country is the second-largest contributor to marine plastic pollution after China. An estimated 200,000 tonnes of plastic flows into the world's oceans from Indonesia's rivers every year, mainly from Java and Sumatra. As well as ocean pollution levels, the country's plastic problem also affects its residents. Microplastic produced by the break-down of larger pieces of waste are ingested by fish, and later passed up the food chain to humans. Trash Free Seas Alliance (TFSA), a United States NGO, revealed in December 2017 that microplastics had been found in 28 per cent of fish in Indonesia's markets. Advertisement According to a UN report published in 2017 at the Ocean Conference in New York, more than eight million tons of plastic waste are swept into the oceans every year. They said that at that rate, by 2050 oceans will hold more plastic than fish. Lee called for a government commitment to reducing waste in the coastal areas. 'The government should come up with a more systemic response to collect sea-side waste in time.' The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, a branch of the government in South Korea collects some 70,000 to 80,000 tons of waste in coastal areas every year. But it says it cannot collect everything before it's swept into the ocean. 'We have some 180,000 tons of marine debris every year,' the ministry said in a statement in May. Marine biologists believe that the amount of plastic in the ocean now makes it next to impossible sea life to eat any nutritional food. Macrocollum itaquii was vegetarian and stood at 12 feet long and five feet tall A newfound species unearthed in Brazil is the oldest long-necked dinosaur ever discovered. Three 'exceptionally well-preserved' dinosaur skeletons dug up in Rio Grande do Sul are estimated to have walked the Earth 225 million years ago. The species, known as Macrocollum itaquii, was vegetarian, stood at around 12 feet long and five feet tall, and weighed around 200 pounds. Three 'exceptionally well-preserved' dinosaur skeletons dug up in Rio Grande do Sul are estimated to have walked the earth 225 million years ago (pictured, an artist's impression) One of the most striking features of animal was its long neck - and scientists now believe it to be the oldest long-necked sauropodomorpha ever discovered. Its 'remarkably elongated' neck would have 'provided a competitive advantage' when gathering food resources, a report published Royal Society journal Biology Letters said. The species would have existed on Earth during the Triassic period, when Brazil was still a part of super-continent Pangaea. The dinosaur is also a distant cousin of sauropods like the Brontosaurus - a long-necked herbivore who walked on four legs and was ten times its size. One of the most striking features of skeleton was its long neck - and scientists now believe it to be the oldest long-necked dinosaur ever discovered But unlike these giant beasts, Macrocollum itaquii walked on two legs when it roamed South America. This discovery is particularly remarkable as experts believe it proved the dinosaurs chose to live in groups rather than alone. 'There are three articulated skeletons in five tons of rock,' Rodrigo Muller from the Federal University of Santa Maria in Brazil, told the Independent. 'This is unique. It suggests these animals probably died together, as they share the same degree of disarticulation. Two of the skeletons had perfectly preserved skulls (pictured) which is extremely rare in bones this old 'So if they died together, these dinosaurs probably lived together.' The dinosaur skeletons were unearthed after Mr Muller's uncle found a group of fossils on a rural property in Agudo, southern Brazil in 2012. This tip led to the discovery of the three skeletons, two of which had perfectly preserved skulls. Scientists are proposing an unproven way to tackle climate change by spraying sun-dimming chemicals into the Earth's atmosphere. A technique known as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) could cut the rate of global warming in half, they say. The idea - proposed by Harvard and Yale - involves spraying large amounts of sulphate particles into the Earth's lower stratosphere at altitudes as high as 12 miles. Scroll down for video Scientists are proposing an unproven way to tackle climate change by spraying sun-dimming chemicals into the Earth's atmosphere. Using a technique known as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), they say could cut the rate of global warming in half The scientists say they will deliver the sulphates with specially designed high-altitude aircraft, balloons or large naval-style guns. The report does, however, acknowledge that the technique is purely hypothetical right now. There is no existing technology or aircraft suitable for adaptation but the team say the system could be created in 15 years time. They say they are 'developing a new, purpose-built tanker with 'substantial payload capabilities' and would neither be 'technologically difficult nor prohibitively expensive.' The cost of launching the SAI system is estimated at 2.7 billion ($3.5 bn) with running costs of 1.7 billion ($2.25 bn) a year. 'We make no judgment about the desirability of SAI,' the report states. 'We simply show that a hypothetical deployment program commencing 15 years hence, while both highly uncertain and ambitious, would indeed be technically possible from an engineering perspective. It would also be remarkably inexpensive.' There is no existing technology or aircraft suitable for adaptation but the researchers say the system could be created in 15 years time. Experts in the economics of climate change said the system would be more costly and 'much more risky over the long run The team acknowledge that there would be extreme risks with the hypothetical system. Coordination between multiple countries in both hemispheres would be required. Aside from that they say the SAI techniques could jeopardise agriculture, lead to droughts or cause extreme weather. Dr Gernot Wagner from Harvard University's School of Engineering and co-author of the study said: 'Given the potential benefits of halving average projected increases in radiative forcing from a particular date onward, these numbers invoke the ''incredible economics'' of solar geoengineering. 'Dozens of countries could fund such a program, and the required technology is not particularly exotic.' WHAT SHOULD THE EU BE DOING TO PROTECT PEOPLE FROM CLIMATE CHANGE? In 2013, the European Academies' Science Advisory Council (EASAC) published a report which looked at the frequency of extreme weather events. Since then, there has been a continued rise in how common these events occur. In order to cope when such adverse weather conditions strike, they made recommendations as to how the EU can better protect its citizens from climate change. 1. Information The report claimed that in order to best deal with the issues, it is necessary to understand them first. To understand how global warming will affect the extremes of weather, it is necessary to study and model them. 2. Heat waves Across the European continent, heatwaves can vary massively and have vastly different impacts. Understanding the nuances of these phenomena is key to weathering the storm. 3. Flood defence and early warning Good practice in flood preparedness and for flood defence across Europe should be shared, including information about different responses to flood preparedness and flood warnings. 4. Agriculture The report stated that the agriculture sector as a whole needed to improve. Vulnerability to extreme weather and possible measures to increase resilience should be produced. 5. Strengthen the knowledge of climate change The research found that it was crucial that we viewed climate change adaptation as a continuous process. In order to do this sustained observations, analysis and climate modelling about the Earth are integral parts of a robust and flexible climate-change adaptation strategy. It claims knowledge dissemination, innovation and building international relationships is key. 6. Changes in policies Before adaptation can be achieved, there are several barriers which include those that are physical, technical, psychological, financial, institutional and knowledge-based. Advertisement The proposals also don't address the issue of rising greenhouse gas emissions, which are a leading cause of global warming. But not everyone is convinced. Philippe Thalmann from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, an expert in the economics of climate change said the system would be more costly and 'much more risky over the long run'. David Archer from the department of geophysical science at the University of Chicago told CNN: 'The problem with engineering climate in this way is that it's only a temporary Band-Aid covering a problem that will persist essentially forever. 'It will be tempting to continue to procrastinate on cleaning up our energy system, but we'd be leaving the planet on a form of life-support. 'If a future generation failed to pay their climate bill they would get all of our warming all at once.' The full findings of the study were published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Advertisement The beaches in England deemed too dangerous for swimming: Tynemouth Cullercoats (Tyne and Wear); Allonby South (Cumbria); Scarborough South Bay (Yorkshire); Burnham Jetty North (Somerset); Weston Main (Somerset); Combe Martin (Devon); Ilfracombe Wildersmouth (Devon); Instow (Devon) and Leigh Bell Wharf (Essex) Clacton - Groyne 41 (Essex) Ten English beaches have been ruled as being unfit for bathing after failing strict water quality tests. The Environment Agency examines water quality at 420 bathing spots throughout England between May and September each year to establish how much bacteria is living in them. And figures released for 2018 show that 10 spots have been rated as being 'poor' for water quality - up from only six beaches in 2017. Three of the poorly rated beaches are in the north of England - Tynemouth Cullercoats beach, Allonby South beach in Cumbria and Scarborough South Bay. At Tynemouth Cullercoats, the Environment Agency in the North East said that DNA analysis had identified a predominantly human source that was affecting water quality and that it is committed to identifying the source. Two of the beaches are in the south east of the country - Leigh Bell Wharf and Clacton Groyne 41 (by the pier), both in Essex. Last year, baffled officials from Tendring Council revealed they were unable to understand why Clacton's Groyne 41 beach kept failing water quality tests. Meanwhile at Leigh Bell Wharf, its location next to a busy working fishing port is believed to disturb the silt, which can have an effect on water tests. Ten English beaches have been ruled as being unfit for bathing after failing strict water quality tests and being rated as poor. One of them is Weston-super-Mare main beach, pictured Scarborough's popular South Bay was ruled as having poor water quality for a second year running in the Environment Agency tests Two beaches in Essex have been ruled as having poor water quality. One of them is Clacton Groyne 41 beach, left. Officials have been left baffled as to why it keeps failing the tests. Combe Martin beach, right, is one of three Devon beaches that failed water quality tests. It also had a poor rating last year The rest of the poorly rated beaches are Weston-super-Mare (the main beach) and Burnham Jetty North, both in Somerset, and Combe Martin, Instow and Ilfracombe Wildersmouth, all in Devon. Earlier this year it was revealed that a 12-year-old girl who went swimming every day at Ilfracombe Wildersmouth beach ended up becoming infected by parasites and contracting cryptosporidiosis, a diarrhoea-related disease. The Environment Agency and local officials are also trying to work out why there has been a reduction in water quality at both Weston-super-Mare and Burnham Jetty. At Combe Martin beach, warnings against swimming have been previously issued as a result of short-term pollution. While at Instow beach, the Environment Agency says there is permanent advice against bathing as it is 'not feasible' for it to reach the minumum standard. To carry out the analysis of water quality, 20 samples are taken at each beach during the bathing season before they are tested in Environment Agency labs for escherichia coli (or E. coli) and intestinal enterococci. The beach at Instow in North Devon, left, where swimmers are advised against bathing. The Environment Agency says there is permanent advice against bathing here as it is almost impossible for water quality to reach the required standard. Ilfracombe Wildersmouth beach, right, was also rated as being poor. Earlier this year, it was revealed that a 12-year-old girl who went swimming every day here for two weeks ended up becoming infected by parasites E.coli is well known for causing illness, with symptoms including cramps, diarrhoea and vomiting. Meanwhile, high levels of intestinal enterococci suggest a presence of either human or animal faeces in the water. If a beach doesn't meet the minimum standard, it must display a sign advising against bathing, although the beach does remain open to the public. The bathing water classifications are not based on an individual year's results, but on an assessment of up to four years' of data and are relatively constant for most sites. Because of this, although an individual year's results do have an effect, they won't always change a classification. The good news is that the new Environment Agency data shows that 97.9 per cent of the bathing waters tested met the required standard. For a fourth year running the beach at Burnham Jetty North in Somerset, left, has been ruled as unfit for bathing. The bathing spot at Leigh Bell Wharf, right, had previously been rated having 'sufficient' water quality but now it has been deemed as poor In addition, 92.4 per cent of the beaches were given a good or excellent rating with spots in Whitby, Sidmouth and Skegness being rated as excellent for a fourth year running. In the early 1990s just 28 per cent of bathing waters would have met today's standards but dramatic improvements have been made to water quality over the past two decades, in part due to EA regulation reducing pollution from water companies and industry. Environment Minister Therese Coffey said: 'This is great news for anyone who enjoys a trip to the seaside. 'We want everyone to be confident in the quality of our bathing waters and that's why the Environment Agency carry out regular tests to protect the health of visitors. 'Britain's beaches are visited around 130 million times each year, generating over 7 billion for the economy. 'Working together we can all keep driving up standards to reduce pollution, ensuring everyone can continue to enjoy our iconic coastline.' And Emma Howard Boyd, Chair of the Environment Agency, added: 'Seaside tourism is worth over 7 billion to the economy and good water quality is essential for people to visit and enjoy our beautiful beaches. 'The Environment Agency's hard work has helped 388 beaches achieve the top Excellent or Good ratings this year and at beach cleans throughout the summer I've seen the commitment of local communities and campaigners to reduce pollution and protect our environment. 'Everyone can take small steps to help us protect water quality as we continue work with water companies, councils and local communities to maintain high bathing water standards.' Tynemouth Cullercoats beach, left, has been rated as having poor water quality. In 2015 it was rated as 'good'. It is believed that a predominantly human source is affecting water quality. Allonby South beach, right, in Cumbria received a poor rating in 2018 after receiving a sufficient rating for the three previous years While an Environment Agency spokesman added: 'There have been dramatic improvements to water quality over the past two decades, much of this is down to investment from the water industry to reduce pollution from infrastructure including combined sewer overflows (CSOs). 'CSOs are a necessary part of the current sewerage system. They act as relief valves that prevent the system from overloading during storms which would otherwise result in sewage flooding homes, roads and open spaces.' Regarding the results at Leigh Bell Wharf, Councillor Mark Flewitt, from Southend-on-Sea Borough Council, said: 'It is clearly disappointing that the bathing water quality has declined at Leigh Bell Wharf. 'As a seaside resort, I do not underestimate the importance of clean bathing waters in attracting and sustaining visitors, so I am pleased to see the bathing water quality rated as sufficient, good or excellent on all other beaches in the borough. Seaside tourism is worth over 7 billion to the economy and good water quality is essential for people to visit and enjoy our beautiful beaches Emma Howard Boyd, Chair of the Environment Agency 'It should be noted that the water quality rating is based on an average of test results over a four-year period and so the reclassification is not necessarily a reflection of the quality of bathing waters as they stand today. Anglian Water has recently carried out substantial work on drainage connections in the area but it will take some time to see what impact this has on water quality. 'Our priority now must be to support the work of Anglian Water and The Environment Agency in tracing the sources of the bacteria and ensuring any necessary action is taken to bring the bathing waters back up to standard.' Commenting on Tynemouth Cullercoats beach, Northumbrian Water said: 'Multi-agency work is ongoing at Cullercoats, the only bathing water area in the North East to not pass the standards, to identify and remedy the cause of a localised deterioration in quality resulting in its "Poor" classification.' A spokesman for Tendring District Council said Clacton, and the wider district, had a number of top quality beaches with seven given Seaside Awards, including two Blue Flags, this year. He added: 'Clacton has a number of first-class beaches and bathing spots, and is a popular destination for residents and visitors alike, but the council is not resting on its laurels. 'The issues around Groyne 41 are contained to a very small area, and just a few hundred yards along the beach the water quality is rated as excellent. 'Investigation work on the causes of the poor water quality around Groyne 41, carried out by ourselves and partners including the Environment Agency and Anglia Water, have been ongoing for some time now. 'However, although the experts including microbiologists have yet to determine the cause, work is still ongoing and we are hopeful a solution will be found.' Last year, meanwhile, scientists found that plastic pollution is overwhelming Britain's coastlines, making up close to 90 per cent of litter on beaches. Scientists have reported that 220,000 pieces of plastic were found along one 37-mile stretch of coastline, including plastic bags, bottle caps and cotton bud sticks. A huge study that analysed where plastic packaging ended up found the 220,802 plastic items along only nine beaches in Cornwall. They represented 89 per cent of the litter found on the beaches. Among them were 2,509 cotton bud sticks, thought to have been flushed down toilets, 13,115 drinks caps and lids, 3,109 drinks bottles and more than 81,000 unidentifiable plastic fragments thought to have been in the sea for decades. Study co-author Adam Porter, from the University of Exeter, said at the time: 'Many people blame beach users for not putting their litter in the bin, they blame fishermen for dumping waste, but our study shows the majority of waste is made up of fragmented plastics which have been in the sea for a long time and broken down and these come from all of us. 'We need to use plastics responsibly, and they need to be recycled to protect the hundreds of animal groups known to be swallowing this waste.' Julian Kirby, Friends of the Earth campaigner, said: 'These are shocking findings but we don't need more evidence of this problem, it's clear that the absolutely unacceptable damage to wildlife and our natural environment is beyond calamitous. 'What's needed is the will to do something and a good place to start is with a deposit return scheme - incentivising people to treat plastic as something other than rubbish. 'Nobody wants polluted oceans and littered beaches. To that end it's also worth recognising that those with the most responsibility for this waste, and the most power to do something about it, are the companies that make and ferociously market it in the first place. 'This should be the rightful focus of government to end the scourge of plastics pollution once and for all.' Advertisement It's one of the most prestigious photography competitions - so it's no surprise that the some of the entries for this year's National Geographic Photo Contest are truly stunning. The annual contest honours photographers who have captured jaw-dropping shots from around the world, whether they be of wildlife, people or landscapes. Here, with permission from National Geographic, we present 10 of this year's jaw-dropping entries. They include a photograph of dramatic summer lightning storm over Greece, two bear cubs embracing in Alaska and a haunting image of a mountain in Australia at night. There is also a picture of sombre Day of the Dead celebrations in Guatemala and a stunning underwater photograph showing a diver in a deep natural pit in Mexico. The winner of the 2018 contest is set to be announced next month, and there are also prizes on offer in three categories including wildlife, people and places. Scroll down and marvel. Photographer Alexandros Maragos captured this dramatic shot of a severe summer thunderstorm over Athens in June Two bear cubs share an embrace in a sweet snap taken by Heather Nicole in Lake Clark National Park in Alaska. She said: 'One of the many highlights of the trip was watching these adorable cubs run, play and wrestle with each other. I was lucky enough to snap this shot as they took a very brief break from playtime to enjoy a moment of peace. Don't worry, momma was very close by watching their every move' American photographer Buck Holzemer took this sombre image of the Day of the Dead procession that winds through the streets of Antigua in Guatemala on November 1 each year French photographer Guillaume Nery travelled to Mexico, where he took this stunning underwater image in a cenote. He said: 'A cenote is a natural deep pit of crystal clear water that is found especially in Central America. They were once considered by the Mayan people as sacred. In the heart of the Yucatan jungle, a free-diver was joining the surface of the cenote with the sun's rays as a guide when the light behind him formed the illusion of an underwater face' Todd Kennedy captured this haunting image of a remote mountain illuminated at night with aerial lighting in Australia's Northern Territory, which he says reveals a face in the rock. He said: 'Taking this shot was surreal. The wind made audible language like sounds and it was as if the mountain's spirit was talking to me. The hairs stood up on my skin and I left the site immediately. It was only after reviewing the images I saw the face that had been staring at me' Aprison Aprison snapped this colourful image next to Mount Bromo on the island of East Java in Indonesia during a 'kasodo' event. He said: 'They are hoping for some offerings from visitors and tourists. Visitors can drop chicken, goats, money and other valuable things to seek blessing from the God. Locals below try to catch it by using the net. They stand around a crater and try to balance to stop themselves from falling in' Susan Blick captured the image on the left showing the hustle and bustle of the streets of Paharganj in India. She explained: 'We stopped for a break at a rooftop cafe, it was late afternoon, the light was softening and the street shadows were disappearing. I set up my tripod and with the help of an ND filter, I lowered my exposure to eight seconds to add emotion to the scene.' Pictured right is a scenic shot of river rapids in Slovenia captured by French photographer Hugo Grandcolas. He said: 'I love to capture details and for me this Red Kayak in rapids was a great opportunity. In the middle of my landscape, it represents everything I need for an adventure photograph' A brown bear growls a warning of his presence to an interloper with his breath vanishing slowly in a windless forest in Romania in an image captured by photographer Bence Mate Advertisement Tourists looking for the perfect Instagram snap have been spotted posing for selfies - and even lying down - on the tracks of a working railway line. In the heart of Hanoi's busy Old Quarter in Vietnam, the French-built tracks are lined with cafes serving hot coffee and cold beer - and are overrun with visitors. Although the track is picturesque, it is also perilous as the tracks are still in use and most days visitors must scramble for safety as the daily train rumbles through the narrow streets. A group of tourists wearing brightly coloured dresses pose on the tracks of a working train line in Hanoi's busy Old Quarter Although the track is picturesque, it is also perilous as the tracks are still in use by a daily train that rumbles along the narrow street Visitors scramble for safety when the train comes rolling along the tracks. When it does, everyone takes a snap of it But for many, the thrill of dodging a speedy train is part of the appeal. 'It was amazing but scary in the same sense, a little bit overwhelming being so close to the train,' Australian tourist Michelle Richards told AFP. The tracks were first built by former colonial rulers France, which used the railway to transport goods and people across Vietnam, then part of Indochina, along with Laos and Cambodia. During the Vietnam War, parts of the railway were badly damaged by American bombs that rained down on the communist-ruled north. Today the original metre-gauge tracks are still a mode of transport for tourists and travellers seeking a cheaper option. The tracks were first built by former colonial rulers France, which used the railway to transport goods and people across Vietnam. Pictured is a visitor lying across the tracks in a quirky pose Hemmed in by houses and cafes, the tracks offer a unique charm for budding travel photographers But in the past few years, visitors to Hanoi have seized upon their photographic possibilities. Hemmed in by houses and cafes, the tracks offer a unique charm for budding travel photographers and a business opportunity for makeshift cafe owners who have set up shop. Hong Kong tourist Edward Tsim said: 'It's got a really weird charm. You've got flowers from the balcony coming down, you've got buildings which are very old and close to each other. The original metre-gauge tracks are still a mode of transport for tourists and travellers seeking a cheaper option 'It was amazing but scary in the same sense, a little bit overwhelming being so close to the train,' Australian tourist Michelle Richards said Hong Kong tourist Edward Tsim said: 'It's got a really weird charm. You've got flowers from the balcony coming down, you've got buildings which are very old and close to each other' 'You see people here living close to the train tracks.' As the train rumbles into view, everyone clears the tracks and pulls their phones out to capture the scene. 'It felt like waiting for Christmas... and when it arrived, wow, it was something else,' British tourist Paul Hardiman said. 'Well worth the wait.' Advertisement Candice Swanepoel is already back into bikini shape after giving birth to her second son, Ariel Swanepoel Nicoli, on June 19. And the 29-year-old blonde beauty seemed to be very aware of that as she slipped into a low-cut olive green one piece swimsuit for a day of fun in the sun on Monday. The blonde Victoria's Secret model looked ready for a photo shoot as she splashed around on a beach in Brazil with her two young kids. Back into supermodel shape: Candice Swanepoel looked slender on a beach in Brazil one month after welcoming her second child, Ariel Swanepoel Nicoli A 10 again: And the 29-year-old blonde beauty seemed to be very aware of that as she slipped into a low-cut olive green one piece swimsuit for a day of fun in the sun on Monday Good times: The Elle model splashed some water on her very trim tummy as she tried to cool off The star looked to have lost nearly all the weight from her last pregnancy with only a tiny bit of tummy left. In fact, at most angles she looked absolutely perfect. The Vogue model had very toned legs and arms, proving that she worked out during her pregnancy. Swanepoel hit the beach with her sons, Anaca and baby Ariel, displaying her hands-on parenting skills as she constantly checked in on the little ones. The South African beauty had fun playing in the warm waters with toddler Anaca, before going for a solo dip. Her pride and joy: The blonde Victoria's Secret model was spotted having a great time in Brazil with her family which included her two young kids Her boy: The South African beauty had fun playing in the warm waters with toddler Anaca, before going for a solo dip Not seen was her partner Hermann Nicoli. This beach sighting comes after she flaunted her incredible post-baby body in a nude snap she shared to her Instagram. The stunning supermodel posed with her back turned to her mirror and one hand covering her chest. The mother of two snapped the picture in a mirror while wearing just a pair of earrings. Trim, tall and tan: The star looked to have lost nearly all the weight from her last pregnancy with only a tiny bit of tummy left. The Vogue model had very toned legs and arms, proving that she worked out during her pregnancy A cool look for a casual beach day: The Yves Saint Laurent model added a scarf to her head and also wore mirrored sunglasses with gold earrings and a matching necklace Time to cover up: Then the pinup put on a very sheer light blue top to cover her from the sun. All around her beach chair were kids toys and a water bottle She styled her ombre tresses back into a top knot. In early July, Candice fired back at internet trolls after they criticized her bikini body while she was snapped in a bikini 12 days after giving birth. The supermodel took to Instagram to make her response, telling those who ridiculed her to 'check' themselves. 'This is me 12 days after having my son,' began the Victoria's Secret Angel. Keeping her room key with her? Candice also seemed to have a stretchy wristband that had a key on it Making a statement: This beach sighting comes after she flaunted her incredible post-baby body in a nude snap she shared to her Instagram . The stunning supermodel posed with her back turned to her mirror and one hand covering her chest. The mother of two snapped the picture in a mirror while wearing just a pair of earrings Outspoken: In early July, Candice fired back at internet trolls after they criticized her bikini body while she was snapped in a bikini 12 days after giving birth Not taking the hate: The supermodel took to Instagram to make her response, telling those who ridiculed her to 'check' themselves 'If you have something bad to say about itcheck yourself.' 'Society can be so cruel to one another. Beauty standards are sometimes impossible for women these days. 'I'm not ashamed to show my post partum tummy. I am proud actuallyI carried my son for 9 months in there. I think I've earned the right to have a little tummy.' A good reminder: She told the troll, 'If you have something bad to say about itcheck yourself.' 'Society can be so cruel to one another. Beauty standards are sometimes impossible for women these days' Proud parent: 'I'm not ashamed to show my post partum tummy. I am proud actuallyI carried my son for 9 months in there. I think I've earned the right to have a little tummy,' the cover girl added Fun with her friends: Several pals surrounded the supermodel who is friends with Gisele Bundchen Candice continued, 'Is it because I'm a model? Well we are normal people too, so let me enjoy the beach in peace please.' Candice got her start at age 15 when she was spotted by a model scout in a Durban flea market. She went on to work for Allure and W then walked for Fendi and Christian Dior. Got her start early: Candice got her start at age 15 when she was spotted by a model scout in a Durban flea market. She went on to work for Allure and W then walked for Fendi and Christian Dior Baby joy: Here is the best look at her little son who wore a green T-shirt. She sipped a water from a tall bottle In 2010 she became a VS Angel and then modeled for the Kardashian swimwear line. Next came runway shows for VS and she even modeled their Fantasy Bra. She appeared in several of their catalogs and earned her wings. Ealier this year the beauty launched her swimwear line called Tropic Of C. She often shows off the designs on Instagram. Like fellow model Christy Turlington, Swanepoel is actively involved in Mothers2Mothers, a charity devoted to achieving an HIV-free generation of children and mothers in Africa. They haven't been able to keep their hands off each other since going public with their relationship on The Bachelorette finale last week. And Ali Oetjen, 32, and Taite Radley, 28, once again over did it on the PDA on Thursday, with the bank manager licking the blonde beauty's face during their romantic getaway in Queensland. In a clip uploaded to Instagram, the loved-up pair are seen enjoying a boat ride to Magnetic Island. Get a room! The Bachelorettes Taite Radley LICKS Ali Oetjens face as the couple continue to enjoy their post-finale 'honeymoon' After showing her fans the beautiful tropical surrounds, Taite is seen seductively licking Ali's cheek. It's the latest in a string of loved-up appearances for the couple, who have made no secret of their physical attraction to each other since revealing their romance. Earlier in the week, The Bachelorette lovebirds packed on the PDA during a steamy beach date in the heart of The Great Barrier Reef. The couple, who arrived at the small sandy Island via helicopter, appeared to engage in some serious canoodling as they turned their backsides to the camera lens. Sweet spot! It's the latest in a string of loved-up appearances for the couple, who have made no secret of their physical attraction to each other since revealing their romance 'My special person to chase dreams with,' Ali captioned the revealing image, clearly referencing the Ballarat bank manager. Ali and Taite have been enjoying a romantic holiday in far north Queensland for the past few days, with both sharing several photos from their picture perfect trip on Instagram. Speaking to 10 Daily last week, Ali said she was relieved the couple no longer had to hide their relationship now The Bachelorette is over. Picture perfect! Ali and Taite have been enjoying a romantic holiday in far north Queensland for the past few days, with both sharing several photos from their picture perfect trip on Instagram 'I couldnt really do what I wanted to do,' she said. 'It just makes me so happy now that I can shout it from the rooftops - that hes my one and only, and that Im so in love.' Ali Oetjen and Taite Radley are currently enjoying a luxury holiday in Far North Queensland - but the question is, who's paying for it? The couple have been staying at five-star hotels, soaring skywards in helicopters and embarking on zip-lining adventures in the week since The Bachelorette finale aired. Every step of the way, they've been tagging the venues and businesses on Instagram to thank them for their hospitality, prompting speculation their honeymoon-style getaway could be freebie. Scroll down for video The perks of being a Bachelorette! Ali Oetjen's luxurious post-finale getaway with Taite Radley appears to be sponsored by several companies Social media endorsements are big business for reality TV stars, who are known for receiving everything from discount meals to free holidays in exchange for promoting a company on Instagram. And it would seem that both Ali and Taite - who boast 176,000 and 72,000 followers respectively - are taking advantage of their newfound popularity. The reality TV lovebirds are currently staying at The Ville resort, with Ali taking to Instagram earlier this week to give fans a tour of their luxurious suite. #Spon: It would seem that Ali and Taite - who boast 176,000 and 72,000 Instagram followers respectively - are taking advantage of their newfound popularity with free accommodation Ali made sure to tag the video with The Ville's Instagram handle, sometimes doing so twice in a single post. Prices for suites at the hotel range between $350 and $550 per night. In a statement, a spokesperson for the resort told Daily Mail Australia the pair were staying as 'guests'. 'They are enjoying a well-earned break in tropical north Queensland as guests of The Ville Resort-Casino,' they said. Whirlwind: The couple have been staying at five-star hotels, soaring skywards in helicopters and embarking on zip-lining adventures in the week since The Bachelorette finale aired The representative refused to be drawn on whether it was a complimentary stay or part of a sponsorship deal. However, they were happy to confirm that the publicity on Instagram was already paying dividends. 'We've had a lot of enquiries since their [Ali and Taite's] Instagram Stories, which is great,' they said. Advert? On Wednesday, Ali shared a series of videos to Instagram of herself climbing into a red Nautilus Aviation branded helicopter. The brand's logo never left the frame during the clips On Wednesday, Ali shared another series of videos to Instagram of herself climbing into a red Nautilus Aviation branded helicopter. The brand's logo never left the frame during the clips, with the blonde account manager making sure to tag the company in her posts. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Nautilus Aviation for comment and clarification. Smart shoppers! If Ali and Taite are enjoying a holiday free of charge, it's nothing unusual by today's standards as 'contra deals' and sponsored posts are increasingly commonplace If Ali and Taite are enjoying a holiday free of charge, it's nothing unusual by today's standards as 'contra deals' and sponsored posts are increasingly commonplace. Ali's former Bachelor in Paradise co-star Jarrod Woodgate previously told Who magazine that his ex-girlfriend Keira Maguire earns up to $1,500 per post. Married At First Sight's Tracey Jewel is even believed to have reached a mutual agreement with a mental health facility that assisted her after a suicide attempt. She recently enjoyed well-deserved holiday with her AFL star husband Lance 'Buddy' Franklin. And Jesinta Franklin (nee Campbell) has shown her legions of fans her in-flight beauty routine. The 27-year-old took to her Instagram on Thursday, to share a short clip of herself in her seat, wrapped up in a Qantas blanket and ready to demonstrate her simple regime. Scroll down for video Flying pretty! Jesinta Campbell has revealed the go-to skincare products for her in-flight beauty routine. The former beauty queen, who is an Olay brand ambassador, began by applying a layer of Olay Provital Night Cream all over her youthful visage The former beauty queen, who is an Olay brand ambassador, began by applying a layer of Olay Provital Night Cream all over her youthful visage. She then followed up with a small amount of Olay eyes pro-retinol eye treatment, massaging it into her under eyes. Jesinta completed her routine by covering up her eyes with an eye mask to ensure she can get ample rest on the long haul flight back to Sydney. Beauty routine: She then followed up with a small amount of Olay eyes pro-retinol eye treatment, massaging it into her under eyes. Jesinta completed her routine by covering up her eyes with an eye mask to ensure she can get ample rest on the long haul flight back to Sydney The Gold Coast-born beauty recently returned home from a well-deserved long holiday with Sydney Swans star husband Buddy Franklin. She and her beau kicked off their vacation with a few days in Singapore before flying out to a luxurious resort in the Maldives. After several days in the idyllic paradise, the lovebirds found themselves in Paris seeing iconic sights such as The Eiffel Tower and The Palace of Versailles. Vacation mode: The Gold Coast-born beauty recently returned home from a well-deserved long holiday with Sydney Swans star husband Buddy Franklin. Pictured: Jesinta and Buddy at the Seljalandsfoss waterfall in Iceland The couple then flew out Iceland and enjoyed a road trip checking out the Nordic country's dramatic landscape and went on a boat ride on a lagoon to see glaciers. Earlier in the year, Jesinta revealed that she plans to retire from modelling by the age of 40 to focus on charity work. She told The Daily Telegraph back in July, 'This year has been like a building year for me, and it's like everything that I've done is finally falling into place.' She sparked pregnancy rumours on Tuesday when she attended the 2018 Australian Fashion Laureate in Sydney with boyfriend Matty J. And on Thursday, former Bachelor star Laura Byrne covered her stomach in her latest smiling selfie. The Sydney-based jewellery designer took to Instagram to promote a watch brand, drawing attention to her arms and wrist. Something to hide? Laura Byrne covers her stomach in latest smiling selfie... after she and boyfriend Matty J sent fans into overdrive that they're pregnant 'Who needs a PT (sic) when I've got a watch to track my heart rate, step count and tell me when I'm being a lazy bia**h,' part of her post read. In the snap, Laura sits on the grass in her activewear, resting her arms on her knees as she smiles at the camera. It comes after she and Matty J sparked rumours they're expecting their first child together. Baby on board? It comes after she and Matty J sparked rumours they're expecting their first child together when they attended the 2018 Australian Fashion Laureate in Sydney on Tuesday (pictured) Stepping out at the 2018 Australian Fashion Laureate in Sydney on Tuesday, onlookers noticed Laura was not drinking alcohol at the event and avoided questions on the red carpet. While posing by the media wall before the ceremony, Laura displayed what appeared to be a tiny bump in her slinky We Are Kindred dress. Her glowing appearance even prompted one eagle-eyed fan to comment on Instagram: 'Pregnant'. Sending fans into a frenzy! Her glowing appearance even prompted one eagle-eyed fan to comment on Instagram: 'Pregnant' Matty, 31, couldn't wipe the smile off his face as he posed for photos with his live-in girlfriend, at one point protectively placing a hand over her tummy. During the event, The Living Room host was seen proudly taking photos of Laura and, at one point, swooped in to help when she appeared unsteady on her feet. A guest at the event told Daily Mail Australia that the appearance of The Bachelor 2017 couple had raised more than a few eyebrows. 'Laura wasn't drinking at the event like many other guests and didn't talk to media,' they said. Matty and Laura fell in love on the fifth season of The Bachelor, less than 12 months after he was left heartbroken by Georgia Love in The Bachelorette 2016 finale. Tammy Hembrow is currently searching for the next big Australian Instagram model. The 24-year-old influencer recently shared a casting call to find four females, and their friends, to pose for her active-wear brand Saski Collection on the Gold Coast. But there's one surprising condition if you win the chance to pout alongside Tammy. Scroll down for video 'Clear lighting and minimal filters': Tammy Hembrow posts Aussie casting call to find a new Instagram model for her active-wear brand ...but there's one surprising condition if you win Whereas professional models tend to get flown around the world to glamorous locations for their photoshoots, that isn't the case here. Tammy's casting for Saski Collection states that 'flights and accommodation are not included' and you must make your own way to Queensland, at your own expense. The purpose of the campaign is to 'showcase women that embody strength, beauty and uniqueness and rock it with confidence'. Dig deep! Tammy's casting call for Saski Collection states that 'flights and accommodation are not included' and you must make your own way to Queensland, at your own expense Tammy shared a blog earlier this month with all the instructions on how to enter. Among the conditions, the post stated that the photos you tag the brand in on Instagram 'should have clear lighting and minimal filters'. The star also asks applicants to write 'what being a #saskigirl would mean to you' in their captions alongside their most recent selfies. Learn from the best? Among the conditions, the mum-of-two's post stated that the photos you tag the brand in on Instagram 'should have clear lighting and minimal filters' Tammy completed a workout session wearing a pair of barely-there shorts on Thursday, in a public gym on the Gold Coast. No doubt giving patrons an eyeful, the 24-year-old proudly flaunted her fit physique and infamous derriere near the exercise equipment. Tammy was wearing a pair of her brand Saski Collection's Seamless Booty Shorts in grey, which are now sold out on her website. Model Cheyenne Tozzi and her Marlon Teixeira recently welcomed her first daughter. And it seems wedding bells could be on the horizon for the 29-year who stepped out at the Tiffany & Co. Start of Summer soiree, on Thursday. As the stunner posed for photos along the media wall, she revealed what looked like a sizable diamond - possibly an engagement ring - on her left hand. Engagement bling? Model Cheyenne Tozzi has sparked engagement speculation as she reveals a stunning sparkling ring at the Tiffany & Co. Start of Summer soiree Her finger was also adorned with a gold band surrounded by little sparkling diamonds around it, creating a halo effect. The blonde beauty flaunted her incredible post-baby body in a cooper sequinned playsuit matched with a velvet belt. But her ring was particularly noticeable in another photo, where she was photographed alongside her good friend and fellow model Jordan Barrett. Sparkling: Her ring was particularly noticeable in another photo, where she was photographed alongside her good friend and fellow model Jordan Barrett As she posed in front of Tiffany & Co. neon lights, Cheyenne provided a better glimpse of dazzling jewel in all its glory on her delicate hand. New parents Cheyenne and partner Marlon have been dating since 2017 after meeting through mutual friend Jordan. Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Cheyenne's management for comment. New parents: Cheyenne and Marlon have been dating since 2017 after meeting through mutual friend Jordan She recently gushed about her Brazilian model beau, telling Harper's Bazaar: 'He speaks to the baby in Portuguese, he sings her little songs. 'I think she's over my voice already, so when she hears Marlon she tap-dances in there. It's been a special time for us,' she added. The proud new parents welcomed their daughter in September 2018. Cheyenne was previously engaged to Jon Adgemis, KPMG head of mergers and acquisitions, before splitting up in March 2017. She is the Australian actress who has a penchant for mindfulness and healthy living. And Isabelle Cornish has demanded the attention of her legions of followers by posting a topless photo of herself on Thursday. The 24-year-old took to Instagram to share a snap of herself sitting by the rocks of a beach, wearing only a pair of bikini bottoms. Scroll down for video 'All I need to do is be myself': Isabelle Cornish (pictured) courted attention on Instagram on Thursday as she posted a provocative topless photo while championing self-acceptance In the photo she looks down at her exposed body which she edited over with a heart emoji. In the caption, the beauty revealed she had an important message to convey about self-acceptance. 'Now I have your attention let me tell you something,' she wrote. 'I've been everything. And no matter what thing I worked my butt off for better or worse to become made me any more me. 'What made me ME is realising that I don't have to be anything. I don't have to push to become something.' Positive message: In the caption, the beauty revealed she had an important message to convey about self-acceptance 'All I need to do is be myself. To surrender and embrace all that I am the good and the bad,' Isabelle continued. The stunner went on to add that self-love, empowerment and learning to embrace your own 'uniqueness' was important. 'Stop trying to be anyone else. Don't let the external world influence you out of YOUR beliefs. The world needs your uniqueness, don't follow the crowd,' she concluded. 'The world needs your uniqueness!' The stunner went on to added that self-love, empowerment and learning to embrace your own uniqueness was important Isabelle recently revealed that she doesn't go to her older sister, actress Abbie Cornish, for advice. The younger Cornish sister told The Daily Telegraph back in August, 'We are very different and there is such a big age gap, so I don't really go to her for advice.' While Abbie, 36 starred in Oscar-winning epic Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Isabelle believes the siblings can't relate professionally as the pair have 'different styles.' 'I have a different style to her and we don't discuss acting,' she added. Ali Oetjen and Taite Radley have achieved more in their first week as a couple than most manage in a lifetime, after finally being able to go public with their romance. Since The Bachelorette finale aired last Thursday, the lovers have shared over 100 selfies online, tagged 25 companies and teased some non-existent 'baby news' to fans. And as their oversharing sways more towards self-promotion than satisfying their followers, have they become Australia's most shameless couple in just one week? Scroll down for video Are Ali Oetjen and Taite Radley the most shameless couple in Australia? Their first week together included 100 selfies, 25 branded posts and fake 'baby news' after Bachelorette finale (Pictured is an example of their branded uploads, with this loved-up snap endorsing a boutique resort, private sailing experience and tourism organisation) In their first seven days as a couple that no longer have to hide their romance, Ali, 32, and Taite, 28, have captured every moment together and posted it on Instagram. And as they continue their loved-up trip to Queensland, almost every post from the pair have tags of a company of some kind, suggesting aspects may be free. Daily Mail Australia can reveal that the brands they have repeatedly promoted online this past week include two luxury boutique resorts and a tourism organisation. Their list of never-ending endorsements also includes seven clothing brands, a celeb stylist, makeup artist, hairdresser and both a brand of eyelash and hair extensions. Flying high: The majority of Ali and Taite's endless posts from their first week as a public couple have contained countless tags to various brands and organisations So much to share: Their constant selfies totalled over 100 And the list of brands Ali and Taite have prompted in just one week, who may have provided their services for free, does not end there. They have also shared exclusive content promoting a helicopter charter service, private sailing experience and a car rental service. Promoting the hotels they've stayed at even further, Ali and Taite have also tagged themselves in shots showcasing activities on offer including couples yoga. 'Love is something you become,' Ali wrote alongside one selfie with Taite, which was both geotagged at their luxury hotel and linked to the company's direct profile. In the midst of their trip, Ali also shared one post, with what appeared to be a throwback picture, dedicated to an organic superfood supplements company. 'Love is something you become,' Ali wrote alongside one selfie with Taite, which was both geotagged at their luxury hotel and linked to the company's direct profile Meanwhile, the pair's constant selfies posted on their Instagram pages and stories, totalled over 100. Some of the content they've chosen to share, mostly always containing one kind of branded tag, include Taite licking Ali, and Ali showcasing her busty swimwear. The couple have also been trailed by paparazzi for the duration of their post-Bachelorette break, but it seems newly-famous Taite hasn't minded. Living their best life? Their list of never-ending endorsements also included seven clothing brands, celeb stylist, makeup artist, hairdresser and brand of eyelash and hair extensions Were these freebies? Even more posts, plugging a car rental service and room service meal, suggest these could have been sponsored and gifted to the couple at no cost After the pair put on a loved-up display in Sydney Airport last Friday, Taite later went on to share one of the professional press images to his own Instagram profile. While being photographed during their trip, the couple also appeared to put on show for spectators, including getting frisky on a public beach at one point. Whereas Ali and Taite may simply be enjoying opportunities that have presented themselves and the fact they no longer have to hide, it does appear they are also both mutually enjoying the speculation and hype surrounding their romance. 'Baby news': After an Australian magazine stated that the couple were expecting twins, rather than dismiss the news directly on their pages, they teased it and left fans guessing Too far? Taite also attached a picture of a pregnancy test, with the result blocked out by a baby emoji, before revealing hours later live on TV that Ali is not expecting After an Australian magazine stated that the couple were expecting twins, rather than dismiss the news directly on their pages, they teased it and left fans guessing. 'Back on The Project tonight addressing the baby news,' Taite wrote on his Instagram Story while actively creating more excitement around the non-existent fetuses. He also attached a picture of a pregnancy test, with the result blocked out by a baby emoji, before revealing hours later live on TV that Ali is not expecting. 'We're definitely not pregnant,' Ali said while on the Channel 10 show, during a live-link filmed from the luxury boutique the pair had been promoting that day. She's a Golden Globe-winning superstar, who earned much acclaim for her performance as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown. But Claire Foy has admitted she 'felt an amount of judgement' playing embattled hacker Lisbeth Salander in The Girl In The Spider's Web, after becoming the third actress to take on the famous literary role. The 34-year-old British actress told the i newspaper she felt some pressure to wow with her performance as Lisbeth, adding that she chose to bulk up with a muscular physique as she thought such a character would 'project that image.' Under pressure: Claire Foy has admitted she 'felt an amount of judgement' playing Lisbeth Salander in The Girl In The Spider's Web, after becoming the third actress to take on the role Claire explained that when she was offered the part she knew there would be pressure to take it in a new direction, after Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara wowed in Swedish and American adaptations of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. 'At a certain pointI had to realise I'm taking this job on,' she said. 'I'm taking this on; this amount of expectation, this amount of judgement, this amount of criticism. I either surrender to it or I try to change it. And I can't change it so I might as well go, 'Ah well!' You have to be sanguine about it. What am I going to do?' Impassioned: The 34-year-old British actress told the i newspaper she felt some pressure to wow with her performance as Swedish hacker Lisbeth Old faces: Claire took on the role of Lisbeth after it was played by Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara in the Swedish and American versions of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Claire plays Lisbeth in the newest novel The Girl In The Spider's Web, a sequel to the original Millennium trilogy of books. This book was written David Lagercrantz as a follow-up to the original trilogy, after its author Steig Larsson died of a heart attack in 2004. The stunning actress went onto explain that she chose to bulk up and get in shape to play the character, adding that she wanted to project a positive body message to her fans. She said: 'It was very physical. I had to get muscles that I never had before in order to look right. 'I don't want to project that image I don't think she has to be emaciated. I don't know why she would have to be.' Toughen up: The Golden Globe winning actress also explained that she decided to bulk up for the role, as she thought it was the body image a character such as Lisbeth would portray This version of Lisbeth Salander also comes in the wake of the recent #MeToo and #Time'sUp movements, and Claire's co-star Sylvia Hokes said she had much of the movement in mind when filming The Girl In The Spider's Web She said: 'I think the world has finally caught up with Lisbeth because she's been doing it for a long time. 'She's always that pioneer, right? I think I say in the film, ''The girl who hurts men who hurt women.'' 'She's always been that girlso to have her back in this time having shot the film right in the middle of that whole thing happening was interesting. It did make us even more conscious of the abuse of power.' Amazing: Claire said she hopes to wow in her incarnation of the Lisbeth, who has already been tipped as a heroine for the #MeToo movement Meanwhile the film's director Fede Alvarez added that he thinks it would be down to male fans to decide whether Lisbeth will become a heroine of the #MeToo movement. He added: ' 'Women will tell us when they watch the movie. I think to impose it beforehand, it's unfair and pretentious. I think they'll watch the movie and they'll tell us if they feel she represents that. 'The whole #MeToo started with Harvey Weinstein and those stories. I'm sure Weinstein would not get Lisbeth in a hotel roomshe'd kick the s*** out of him! In that aspect, Lisbeth represents a woman that takes no shit and she's really saying 'Enough!' This in an extract from the full interview with Claire Foy, available to read in this Friday's issue of the i newspaper, priced at 60p. Love Island's fourth series sent fans into overdrive this summer and now it's set to return for a festive special. ITV have confirmed that 19 islanders will be back to get a grilling from host Caroline Flack, as they reunite at a festive retreat to spill all on what's been going on since they left the villa many months ago. And it seems along with the show's successful love stories, such as that of winners Dani Dyer and Jack Fincham, Love Island's ex-couples are in for an awkward reunion as they finally come face-to-face. Confirmed! Love Island's fourth series sent fans into overdrive this summer and now it's set to return for a festive special with winners Jack Fincham and Dani Dyer and many more All four remaining Love Island couples will be dishing all on how their romance has survived back on home soil, with Megan Barton-Hanson and Wes Nelson, Adam Collard and Zara McDermott and Kaz Crossley - who will appear solo as beau Josh Denzel is filming in the US - will join Dani and Jack. But viewers will no doubt be more intrigued by the villa's ex-couples who are set to come face-to-face for the Christmas special - especially as their splits have played out publicly with many being plagued by 'cheating' accusations. Laura Anderson will be reunited with former boyfriend Paul Knops. They split in September, blaming their busy working schedules for driving them apart. Eek: Love Island's ex-couples (including Georgia Steel and Sam Bird above) are in for an awkward reunion as they'll come face-to-face at the festive retreat Success: All of Love Island's four remaining couples - including winners Dani and Jack - will be on the show to discuss how their romances have fared on home soil Flying solo! While Kaz Crossley and Josh Denzel are still together - only Kaz will appear on the special as Josh is filming in the US At the time, Laura had hit back at accusations their relationship was 'fake' and insisted the romance had been very 'real' for her. In the weeks that followed their break up, Laura confirmed her romance with Love Island series two winner Max Morley and was later hit by claims she had been 'secretly dating' Max while she was with Paul. The blonde vehemently denied the claims, with her rep insisting the accusations were 'total nonsense'. Still going strong: Megan Barton-Hanson and Wes Nelson's relationship has blossomed since their time together in the villa Serious: The duo have now moved in together in London and are often seen packing on the PDA across social media Ellie Brown and Charlie Brake, meanwhile, announced their split at the beginning of October. Ellie confessed she was left 'heartbroken' over the failed romance, with her co-star Laura claiming Charlie dumped Ellie by announcing it on social media without her knowledge. Charlie was linked to string of beauties in the wake of their split and found himself at the centre of claims he had been 'unfaithful' to Ellie, after she was sent a photo of him 'having dinner with another woman'. Awkward: Laura Anderson will be reunited with former boyfriend Paul Knops - they split in September, blaming their busy working schedules for driving them apart Moved on: Laura is now dating Love Island series two winner Max Morley Awkward: Ellie and Charlie split at the beginning of October and Charlie has been linked to a string of beauties ever since Ellie is rumoured to be dating former TOWIE star Joey Essex, while Charlie has found himself linked to Ferne McCann. Meanwhile, Georgia Steel and Sam Bird are in for an awkward encounter following their split last month. Sam revealed that the duo had ended their relationship, after Georgia stayed at her ex-boyfriend's house while dating him. She has insisted that she 'never cheated' on Sam with her ex, but admitted to staying with her former flame. Following their break up, Sam admitted he was 'devastated' while Georgia has said she is 'happier than ever' being a 'single pringle' - confessing she 'fell out of love' with Sam. End of the road: Georgia Steel and Sam Bird split last month, with Georgia claiming she is 'happier than ever' since the break up Still searching for love? Eyal had appeared on Celebs Go Dating following his early Love Island exit and attempted to find romance with an ordinary member of the public Single ladies: Kendall Rae Knight (L) and Samira Mighty (R) will be back for the reunion show Other Love Island stars set to appear include Samira Mighty, following the breakdown of her relationship with Frankie Foster, Dr Alex and Alexandra Crane. Kendall Rae Knight, who was linked to last year's show winner Kem Cetinay, will return, as well as Hayley Hughes, who is now dating DJ Tom Zanetti and Eyal Booker. Eyal had appeared on Celebs Go Dating following his early Love Island exit and attempted to find love with an ordinary member of the public. He starred alongside Chloe Sims, Olivia Attwood and Alik Alfus. Caroline Flack will be back at the helm of the show and raising a glass to Love Island's class of 2018, while Iain Stirling will provide a voice over for the special. ITV are yet to confirm an air date for the festive special. She's back! Caroline Flack will be back at the helm of the show and raising a glass to Love Island's class of 2018, while Iain Stirling will provide a voice over for the special Taron Egerton recently revealed that he split from his British producer girlfriend Emily Thomas after the couple dated for two years. And the actor, 28, put on a brave face following the breakup as he stepped out for the World Premiere of the new Range Rover Evoque at The Old Truman Brewery on Thursday night. The Kingsman: Secret Service star looked dapper as he sported double denim in a faded denim jacket and navy blue jeans. Putting on a brave face: Taron Egerton looked dapper as he stepped out for Range Rover event on Thursday... after actor split from girlfriend Emily Thomas after two years together Taron completed his casual ensemble with a blue chequered shirt, which was frayed at the bottom for a punk chic flair. Opting to cover his newly shaved locks, the actor accessorised with a brown trilby hat as he beamed on the red carpet. The Robin Hood star completed his look with a pair of bulky brown lace-up boots, that matched his choice of headgear. Looking good: The Kingsman: Secret Service star looked handsome in double denim in a faded denim jacket and navy blue jeans, which he teamed up with a chequered shirt and brown boots His outing comes after it was revealed on Wednesday that he had split from Emily, after the pair started dating two years ago in November 2016. The couple were last seen attending a series of red carpet events over the summer of this year, and the actor dropped the bombshell they had gone their separate ways in a number of recent interviews in November. MailOnline has reached out to Taron Egerton's representatives for further comment. Mending his heartache: Taron's outing comes after it was revealed on Wednesday that he had split from Emily, after they started dating in November 2016 (Windsor, June 2018) Taron insisted he was 'reinventing' himself in the wake of the break up as he shaved his head to play Sir Elton John in the new biopic Rocketman. The actor claimed shaving his head had a 'cathartic' impact to change the way he looked following his split. He said: I found it quite liberating because I just finished the Elton John thing and had this awful hair. So, I shaved my hair cos they had thinned it right out and given me this bald patch. So sad: The Robin Hood actor dropped the bombshell he had gone his separate ways from the brunette beauty in a number of recent interviews in November (London, February 2018) History: They first began dating two years ago and the couple were last seen attending a series of red carpet events over the summer of this year (Windsor, June 2018) It was very cathartic and also, not to put a downer on things, I split up with my girlfriend not long ago and it weirdly felt a bit like reinvention to sort of change the way I look. However, the actor also voiced his fears about starting dating again in the light of the powerful #MeToo movement. The Hollywood star confessed his concerns about becoming a target of fabricated accusations of sexual assault. Made the cut! Taron insisted he was 'reinventing' himself in the wake of the break up as he shaved his head to play Sir Elton John in the new biopic Rocketman Moving on: The actor claimed shaving his head had a 'cathartic' impact to change the way he looked following his split #MeToo, a collective reaction to sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, gained momentum following the allegations of Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey. Taron reflected on the allegations aimed at Kevin, who he worked with on Billionaire Boys Club, and how it made him question if he wants to actively date. He told the Radio Times: 'Like a lot of people with a profile I was like, "Holy s**t, what have I done since I was 18?" 'I have just become single again and Im not in a place where Im thinking about dating, but when I am, it will probably affect my thinking a bit. There are certainly situations where I avoid being alone with certain people.' Kyle Sandilands offered up some unwarranted relationship advice to Jackie 'O' Henderson live on-air during their KIIS FM radio program, The Kyle & Jackie O Show, on Friday morning. The longtime collaborators had been discussing Paris Hilton's recent split from her fiance of 11 months, Chris Zylka, with Kyle, 47, speculating the reason for their split was because they spent too much time together. 'You can't look at her all day, all night. You'd think, "I'm sick of r**ting this,"' he announced. Expert? Kyle Sandilands offered up some unwarranted relationship advice to Jackie 'O' Henderson during their KIIS FM radio program, The Kyle & Jackie O Show, on Friday morning But Jackie, 43, didn't agree, telling her outspoken co-host that 'sometimes people love to spend every minute together'. Things then turned personal, with Kyle telling the radio personality this was a mistake she often made in relationships, referencing her recent split from Lee Henderson, her husband of 15 years. 'And then the relationship fizzles out. This is where you go wrong,' he told her. 'You spend your whole waking life glued to your man, and then instead of lasting 60 years, pop, it's over in 18.' Needy: Kyle told his co-host Jackie 'O' Henderson that she was too clingy in her relationships, saying that's why they always fizzled out Over: The longtime collaborators had been discussing Paris Hilton's recent split from her fiance of 11 months, Chris Zylka Jackie tried to laugh off his comments, claiming it wasn't the reason for her marriage breakdown. The radio host made the shock announcement she was splitting from her husband last month. The former couple also share a seven-year-old daughter, Kitty. Breaking up: The radio host announced she was splitting from her husband of 15 years, Lee Henderson, last month. They also share a seven-year-old daughter, Kitty 'After 18 years together, we have made the decision to separate. We do so amicably, sharing many incredible memories and remaining best friends,' she said in a statement at the time. 'Our focus for this next chapter is of course our wonderful daughter and continuing to provide her love and happiness, together.' Speaking exclusively to Daily Mail Australia last month, Kyle revealed the split had been a long time coming for the former couple. False accusations: Jackie tried to laugh off Kyle's comments, claiming it wasn't the reason for her marriage breakdown 'Everyone thinks it's the worst thing that's ever happened... from the outside looking in they looked like everything was great, but they just drifted apart over a few years,' he said. Meanwhile, Paris, 37, announced her split from Chris, 33, on Monday. 'They broke up a few weeks ago. The relationship moved very fast, and she realised it wasnt right for her,' an insider told People. They married in a fairytale ceremony three years ago. And Sofia Vergara paid loving tribute to her husband Joe Manganiello as they celebrated their anniversary on Thursday. The actress, 46, posted a picture to Instagram, showing her kissing the neck of the Magic Mike hunk. Three years! Sofia Vergara paid loving tribute to her husband Joe Manganiello as they celebrated their anniversary on Thursday 'Happy Aniversary love of my life!!!!' (sic) she captioned, followed by 14 hearts. The couple appear to be in a bar and Joe has wrapped a muscular arm around the Modern Family star. In return, Joe posted a message to his love on Twitter. Pretty: Sofia was looking as fabulous as ever as she was spotted out and about in Los Angeles on Wednesday 'Thankful that three years ago today I made the best decision of my life...,' he scribed. Meanwhile, Sofia was looking as fabulous as ever as she was spotted out and about in Los Angeles on Wednesday. She teamed a classic white T-shirt with blue jeans, as she stepped out in perspex heels. Classic style: She teamed a white T-shirt with blue jeans Elevated: The Modern Family beauty she stepped out in perspex heels The Colombian mother of one enhanced her natural beauty with a smokey eye and crushed raspberry lip. Vergara is currently in the midst of production of the final season of her hit sitcom Modern Family. Along with her final season of Modern Family, Vergara has also appeared in two movies this year. She starred alongside Karl Urban and Andy Garcia in Bent and with Tim Roth, Alice Eve and Maggie Q in The Con Is On. She will also star with her husband Manganiello in Stano, a true story adaptation in theaters next year. From 1991 to 1993, Sofia was wedded to her high school beau Joe Gonzalez, by whom she shares 26-year-old son Manolo. The Barranquilla-born bombshell then went on to marry her second and current husband in Florida's chichi Palm Beach on November 22, 2015. They've already touched down in India where they will be getting married in a little over one week. Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas celebrated Thanksgiving with a lavish dinner in the actress' home country where they will soon tie the knot. The bride-to-be took to Instagram with a photo of her giant family enjoying their holiday dinner at an opulent and massive dining table in Delhi on Thursday. Reasons to be thankful: Priyanka Chopra posted a photo with her whole family, including fiance Nick Jonas, dining on their Thanksgiving dinner at an opulent table in India on Thursday The 36-year-old Bollywood star and her 26-year-old pop star fiance will wed at a lavish Indian palace on December 1. Despite being so far away from America, it seemed that Priyanka brought her husband-to-be's national holiday abroad and hosted Thanksgiving dinner with her family. In a dimly lit photo, Nick smiled seated at the head of a romantically lit outdoor dining table. His future wife sat to his right and held his hands while grinning broadly for the camera. In love: A week before saying 'I do,' Priyanka took to Instagram to post a loved up photo with fiance Nick Chandeliers and swagged drapery hung above over 40 people who were seated at a huge and ornate outdoor dining table. 'Happy thanksgiving,' the future Mrs. Jonas wrote in the caption. Adding: 'family.. forever..' Earlier in the day, the couple looked like they've already entered the honeymoon stage in another photo that the blushing bride-to-be posted on Instagram after Nick arrived in India. Bride goals: Nick and Priyanka will wed at a lavish palace in India on December 1 In the photo, the future Mr and Mrs were shot in an extreme close up, nuzzling one another with their eyes closed. The couple's expressions are one of pure bliss. 'Welcome home baby,' the Quantico star captioned the image. She added a smiling emoji with heart eyes, In just a handful of days, Priyanka is set to walk down the aisle and say 'I do' at a spectacular $60,000 a night wedding venue in India. Bridal party! The Quantico star recently enjoyed a lavish bridal shower in New York and then a whirlwind bachelorette party weekend in Amsterdam wiith a small group of friends The venue is India's last living palace, Umaid Bhawan in Jodhpur, which comes complete with butler service, strutting peacocks and a couple's massage room. The lavish palace features 65 original Art Deco bedrooms and suites featuring antiques, with each room costing an eye-watering $922 per person per night. It's been all wedding, all the time for the actress recently who was honored by her friends and family at swanky bridal shower at Tiffany's in New York last month. Shortly after, she jetted off with a small group to Amsterdam for a whirlwind bachelorette weekend. Wedding registry: The bride-to-be asked for a few adorable trinkets that read mrs and wifey on their Amazon wedding registry Sister-in-law-to-be, Sophie Turner, of Game of Thrones fame, was by Priyanka's side during the whole celebration. Priyanka was also recently tapped by Amazon to display her bridal registry with the online retailer. The couple listed things like a wifey eye mask and cutlery, as well us more unusual asks like roller blades. In love! The Jonas Bro popped the question on Priyanka's 36th birthday in London Nick recently gifted his groomsmen electric scooters. The musician decided to give his party of ushers and his best man an unusual gift to mark the special occasion. Posting a picture of himself next to a pool, surrounded by six Lime scooters, he wrote: "I was searching for a fun way for my groomsmen to be mobile and ready to roll - so I called up my friends at @Limebikefor some help... #groomsmengift #CitrusGotReal (sic)" The post - which was a paid promotion with the Lime bike brand - had his three brothers Kevin, Joe, and Frankie, as well as Priyanka's brother Siddharth, and actor Jonathan Tucker all tagged as each of the scooters, suggesting they will make up his groomsmen. Nick popped the question in London during Priyanka's 36th birthday just three months ago after dating since May of 2017. The Girl in the Spider's Web (15) Rating: Robin Hood (12A) Rating: Honestly, youd think Claire Foy might have worked harder to avoid being typecast. After glittering in Netflix series The Crown as Queen Elizabeth II Lilibet to her nearest and dearest here she is playing Her Majestys near-namesake, Lisbeth, in The Girl In The Spiders Web. Admittedly, this Lisbeth is a humourless, hard-knock, chain-smoking lesbian with a nose ring and a massive dragon tattoo on her back, from whom you wouldnt want a tap on the shoulder with a ceremonial sword just in case she got the sudden urge to decapitate you and drop-kick your head into a wheelie-bin. But still, another Lisbeth. How unimaginative. Hang-ups: Claire Foy with a wrecked car in The Girl In The Spiders Web and (inset) stringing up a baddie This one, Lisbeth Salander, is the avenging angel created by the late Stieg Larsson, although the film is based on the first of the so-called Millennium series of novels to be written after Larssons death, by David Lagercrantz. In the previous movie adaptations, our fearsome heroine was played first by Noomi Rapace and then Rooney Mara. But Foy is the first British actress to take the role, and if ever there was a feature-length audition for a woman to be the next James Bond, this is it. Theres even a fiendish and distinctly Bond-like plot to hack into the worlds nuclear defence systems, a cyber-attack which nobody but Salander can foil, albeit with the help of a prodigiously gifted child called August (Christopher Convery), whose boffin father, Frans, is played by Stephen Merchant. Its not entirely clear where Frans is meant to come from, incidentally, but its almost certainly not the suburbs of Bristol. Yet Merchants rolling Bristolian vowels remain intact, while Foy treats us to a Swedish accent as heavy and unwieldy as a flat-pack Ikea wardrobe. There she is in the foreground sounding like ABBAs Anni-Frid, while a Swedish TV reporter in the background sounds like ITNs Anna Ford. All I ask for is consistency. Never mind. Whatever the loose state of her vowels, if Salander is to save the world she must first save herself, which she does by diving into a bath to escape an inferno. She also eludes her pursuers by riding a motorbike across a frozen lake, dodges no end of machine-gun bullets and is more computer-savvy than everyone in Silicon Valley put together. She has a penchant for leggy blondes, too, making her more 007 than 007. Claire Foy plays Lisbeth Salander in Columbia Pictures 'The Girl in the Spider's Web' Or she would be, if she werent also a firebrand feminist on a mission to string up every abusive man by the you-know-whats, her anger stoked by memories of the paedophilic crimes committed on her and her sister by their own father. Knowing that, youll understand why a friend of mine described reading Larssons books as akin to being repeatedly battered over the head with a rolled-up copy of The Guardian. Watching this film is less painful, since the action skips nimbly from set-piece to set-piece, Foy is terrific even with the dodgy accent and the dialogue is not as leaden as it might be. One of the screenwriters, along with Jay Basu and director Fede Alvarez, is the estimable Steven Knight, who, long ago, in what must seem like another life entirely, was one of the creators of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. Perhaps in homage to the show that made Knight rich, Salander gets to phone a friend, her journalist pal Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason). Hes the one person in Stockholm who knows what makes her tick. As a thoroughly ludicrous but nevertheless pacy plot unfolds, it turns out theres another person, even closer to home, who knows what makes her tick. But youll get no spoilers here. The spoiler in the case of Robin Hood is the 1938 version of the same folk story, which was superior in every way. Forget what youve seen before, forget what you think you know, says a hopeful voice-over at the beginning. Chance would be a fine thing. For the rest of the film, what weve seen before stands as a reproach to the nonsense were served up here. Of course, there have been countless cinematic efforts (both before and since Michael Curtizs classic The Adventures Of Robin Hood) to tell the story of Sherwood Forests stalwart thief. Some have been more than watchable. But quite why this one was made is anybodys guess, especially as Nottingham appears to have been relocated to the Balkans. I dont doubt that the East Midlands looked different in the Middle Ages, but Ill wager four-and-twenty groats that there were no mountains. Eve Hewson and Taron Egerton play Maid Marian and Robin Hood in the new Robin Hood film The story sees the outlawed aristocrat Robin (Taron Egerton) join forces with a Moor, played by Jamie Foxx (whose tricky Muslim name is anglicised to John), to foment rebellion against the evil Sheriff of Nottingham (Ben Mendelsohn). There are duly lots of audacious heists, a disappointingly svelte Friar Tuck (Tim Minchin) and heartbreak for Robin as he returns from the Crusades to find that his beloved Marion (Eve Hewson), believing him to be dead, is now shacked up with another dishy rebel, called Will (Jamie Dornan). Clumsy anachronisms abound, perhaps deliberately, though the film isnt nearly witty enough to carry them off. Robin talks pure Estuary English while sporting a quilted anorak with a hoodie that wouldnt look out of place in a Jack Wills window, and director Otto Bathurst tosses in a few Molotov cocktails, a millennium or so before Molotov. So if you do yearn for a spot of robbing the rich to give to the poor this weekend, do yourself a favour, and sit down with Errol Flynn & Co. instead. These starving shoplifters will steal your hearts and minds Shoplifters (15) Rating: This captivating Japanese film, both sad and uplifting, arrives in our cinemas (the comparative few that are showing it, anyway) with a great big feather in its cap: it was anointed with the prestigious Palme dOr at this years Cannes Film festival. Hirokazu Kore-edas film is set on the margins of society in Tokyo, where what appears to be a tight-knit family, headed by an elderly grandmother, subsists mainly on stolen food. Every day, a middle-aged man and a boy of about ten go shoplifting, and we assume them to be father and son. But they arent even related. The man, Osamu (Lily Franky) has somehow recruited the boy, Shota (Kairi Jyo), as he then recruits an even younger girl, a tiny waif called Yuri (Miyu Sasaki, far left, with Kairi), setting her to work, too, in the shoplifting business. Hirokazu Kore-edas film is set on the margins of society in Tokyo, where what appears to be a tight-knit family, headed by an elderly grandmother, subsists mainly on stolen food Osamu is a rogue, but he has a kind heart. The little girl was under-nourished and seemingly unwanted by her family. He took her in partly as an act of charity, but he can also see how useful she will be to his nefarious activities. His common-law wife Noboyu (Sakura Ando) is similarly dishonest, stealing what she can at the laundry where she works. But a seam of decency runs through her, too, and really this film is about the good and bad that co-exist in people, perhaps in all of us. An age-old witch-hunt in a very modern world Assassination Nation (18) Rating: The story of the Salem witch trials of the 17th century continues to resonate in the United States. Arthur Miller used it as an allegory for McCarthyism in his famous 1953 play The Crucible, and now writer-director Sam Levinson has cleverly, if not very subtly, given the tale a 21st-century spin, using social media as the springboard for collective paranoia and fear. Assassination Nation, despite its 18 certificate, is firmly aimed at younger audiences, who might enjoy its music video-style snap and punch. It is based in the actual town of Salem, Massachusetts, where first the mayor, and then the high school principal, have their iPhones and internet browsing histories hacked. Public opprobrium follows, with tragic consequences. Lock him up! chants a baying mob over and over, in an echo of Donald Trumps presidential campaign. The story unfolds from the perspective of four high school girls, one of whom, Lily (Odessa Young), also finds herself hacked and her affair with a married neighbour exposed. The hatred and hysteria escalate, culminating in alarming violence. By this stage, the films satirical message has been rather undermined by its own lack of restraint. Still, as a warning about the dangers of living your life through your iPhone, and of internet porn and all the other associated technological temptations of our time, it deserves to be seen. She frequently turns heads when stepping out for glitzy industry events. So it's no surprise Shelby Tribble dazzled as she joined her BFF Clelia Theodorou at Chicks' charity event at The Waldorf Hilton in London on Thursday evening. The TOWIE star, 25, pulled out all the stops as she slipped her enviable figure into a cobalt blue gown, complete with a sizzling one-shoulder feature. Working it! Shelby Tribble (L) dazzled as she joined her BFF Clelia Theodorou (R) at Chicks' charity event at The Waldorf Hilton in London on Thursday evening Flashing a hint of her lean legs, the model's garment came complete with a risque thigh-high slit. The TV personality ensured all eyes were on her as she boosted her frame in a pair of metallic strappy heels and accessorised with diamond stud earrings. Styled her tresses in a poker straight fashion, Shelby amplified her beauty with a neutral-toned make-up palette. Ooh-la-la: The TOWIE star, 25, pulled out all the stops as she slipped her enviable figure into a cobalt blue gown, complete with a sizzling one-shoulder feature Leggy: Flashing a hint of her lean pins, the model's garment came complete with a risque thigh-high slit Chic: The TV personality ensured all eyes were on her as she boosted her frame in a pair of metallic strappy heels and accessorised with diamond stud earrings Meanwhile, Clelia, 23, looked equally chic in an off-shoulder white jumpsuit, embellished with sheer ruched sleeves. Centering focus on her striking appearance, Miss Great Britain 2014 enhanced her height with pointed stilettos. The brunette added a pop of colour to her look with dark brown eyeshadow, while framing her stunning visage with tight curls. Chicks is a national children's charity providing free respite breaks to children aged 8-15. Style savvy: Meanwhile, Clelia, 23, looked equally chic in an off-shoulder white jumpsuit, embellished with sheer ruched sleeves Sizzling: Lizzie Cundy commanded attention in a metallic green gown, which worked well with her animal print clutch Youthful: The 50-year-old TV personality injected even more sparkle into her look with silver peep-toe heels Meanwhile, Shelby appears to have moved on from her split with Pete Wicks, as she enjoyed a brief fling with Sam Mucklow. Shortly after her split from Pete, 29, the brunette admitted she was 'devastated' to find out that her former beau had also been sending sexually explicit messages with up to ten women. Speaking candidly with The Sun, the reality star said: 'I was devastated, I thought he was The One but after reading those texts I was left heartbroken.' She continued: 'He was sexting another girl and talking about joining the Mile High Club with her. 'Someone else sent nude pictures to him. I saw all these messages to other girls on Instagram, other texts in his archive in fact some of the texts were sent just two days before we were due to go to a wedding together in Croatia.' Meanwhile, on the latest series of TOWIE, Shelby became extremely close with sportsman Sam, 26, with the pair even enjoying rock-climbing date. However, the co-stars agreed that they were better off as close pals, and Sam went on to pursue a romance with Lauren Pope. Taking the plunge: Presenter Tonia Buxton complemented her slender frame in a black sequin gown Instagram fitness queen Tammy Hembrow is famous for her incredible physique, so it's no surprise that she likes to show off her body outside of the gym. The blonde bombshell has no problem flaunting her muscular curves in a variety of racy outfits, whether it's showing underboob in the middle of a St Laurent store or channeling Kim Kardashian in busty pink ensembles. The 24-year-old turned heads at New York Fashion Week in September in a low-cut sequinned mini dress that left little to the imagination. Stylish? Instagram model Tammy Hembrow is famous for her gym-honed physique, but her style outside the gym has often raised a lot of eyebrows The frock, which was designed by Melbourne label Discount Universe, was adorned with colourful graphics of a unicorn, rainbow, stars and roses. The controversial fitness entrepreneur teamed the attire with a pair of white ankle boots and a perspex clutch. She wore her blonde locks up in a nineties-style updo, revealing her heavily applied makeup. Colourful: The 24-year-old turned heads at New York Fashion Week in September in a low-cut sequinned mini dress Gym bunny: Tammy's famous workout ensembles often leave little to the imagination She later turned heads in a raunchy PVC outfit as she stepped out to hit some NYFW after parties. Taking to the streets, Tammy wowed in a high waisted leather skirt and a matching bandeau top. The garment was tied at the bust, accentuating both her generous cleavage and her taut torso. Leather lady: She later turned heads in a raunchy PVC outfit as she stepped out to hit some NYFW after parties A month earlier, the buxom beauty flashed her nipples as she posed braless in a sheer, metallic dress at the Your Cosmo Cover Event in Sydney. Tammy put her ample assets on display in the daring frock, which featured a cut-out detail across the waist, offering a glimpse of her toned abs. This week, the Instagram babe raised eyebrows yet again for wearing a revealing ensemble while shopping at luxury retailer Saint Laurent. Feeling nippy? A month earlier, the buxom beauty flashed her nipples as she posed braless in a sheer, metallic dress at the Your Cosmo Cover Event in Sydney Pretty in pink: The blonde also loves matching pink ensembles, many of which appear to be inspired by Kim Kardashian's wardrobe Flaunting some serious underboob in a barely-there crop top without a bra, fans quickly labelled the 24-year-old's outfit as 'inappropriate', 'unflattering' and 'not classy.' Tammy, who is the mother to two young children, flaunted her gym-honed frame in skintight workout shorts and a halterneck crop top by Staple And Hue. Leaving little to the imagination, it was clear Tammy had neglected to wear a bra during the outing, with the tiny white top barely covering her her chest. She's a regular fixture on the London night scene. And Suki Waterhouse cemented her sartorial credentials as she attended the opening for Choose Love shop for Help Refugees on Carnaby Street on Thursday evening. The actress, 26, showcased her flair for fashion as she sported a green leather trench coat and a multi-patterned shirt with clashing colours. She's got it! Suki Waterhouse cemented her sartorial credentials as she attended the opening for Choose Love shop for Help Refugees on Carnaby Street on Thursday evening Injecting even more detail into her outfit, the Charlie Says star wore animal print boots on her foot, while toning down her appearance with straight-leg jeans. The model opted for her signature messy curly 'do and accentuated her beauty with a heavy winged eyeliner look. Also in attendance was Daisy Lowe, who certainly stood out with her head-turning blonde mane as she stormed the star-studded bash in a silky trouser suit. Radiant: The actress, 26, showcased her flair for fashion as she sported a green leather trench coat and a multi-patterned shirt with clashing colours Looking good: The model opted for her signature messy curly 'do and accentuated her beauty with a heavy winged eyeliner look (pictured with Poppy James) Starry: Also in attendance was Daisy Lowe, who certainly stood out with her head-turning blonde mane as she stormed the star-studded bash in a silky trouser suit Glowing: Daisy completed her look with black sports-trim joggers and a chic black and white slogan T-shirt TV presenter Laura Whitmore nailed edgy chic in a pair of floral slacks, a longline blazer and a slogan tee by Choose Love. The shop is open to the public from Friday, and is set up to support refugees across Europe and the Middle East. Suki's outing comes after she admitted she accidentally shot someone while filming her new movie. Style savvy: TV presenter Laura Whitmore nailed edgy chic in a pair of floral slacks, a longline blazer and a slogan tee by Choose Love Casual: Strictly's Vick Hope (L) looked effortlessly chic in a shearling coat and checked trousers, while Juliet Stevenson (R) stunned in grey dungarees and a cosy knit jumper Natural beauty: The 29-year-old radio presenter exhibited her radiant complexion as she went make-up free for the event She admitted her lack of firearms training ahead of filming meant that she 'hurt someone' when her bullet ricocheted while playing Sarah in the upcoming black comedy thriller Assassination Nation. 'I hurt somebody. The bullet ricocheted. They hadn't seen that in 20 years. The bullet came back at the guy and hurt him. We didn't get extensive [firearms] training. I'm not gonna lie, it was maybe an hour' she told the New York Post during the film's premiere. With her busy modelling career and acting schedule, Suki, who's been romantically linked to Bradley Cooper, is finding it hard to date because she's never in the same country for long enough. Dapper: Steve Coogan put on a suave display as he donned a tweed blazer, matching waistcoat and brown trousers Cool: Mr. Nobody actor Toby Regbo wrapped up in a off-black wool coat and skinny jeans Her globe-trotting career meant that her brief relationship with Robert Pattinson over the summer came to an abrupt end after just a month of dating. However, there are no hard feelings between the pair as they both made it clear that they were just having 'fun' and neither were looking for anything serious. A source said at the time: 'Rob is having fun right now and has definitely moved on from his relationship with FKA Twigs. He likes to have fun when he has breaks in between filming and him and Suki have a great time together. He isn't looking for anything serious right now. but they are definitely into each other.' Film-maker Alfonso Cuaron - who made the colossal hits Gravity and Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban - has directed a new film - titled Roma - based on his childhood The film-maker Alfonso Cuaron starts talking about cracks in a wall, and wounds in a heart. Hes talking about himself and about us, the audience for his new film Roma (which he wrote and directs). The title refers to the affluent district of Mexico City where Cuaron, who made the colossal hits Gravity and Harry Potter and The Prisoner Of Azkaban, and more personal pictures like Y Tu Mama Tambien, grew up. Roma, too, is both personal based on the directors childhood and focusing on the young woman who raised him (played with powerful warmth by Yalitza Aparicio) and colossal, because the experiences it explores are local but, in Cuarons magic hands, universal. Cuaron began thinking about making the film 12 years ago. First, he searched the far reaches of his memory to summon episodes from his time with his beloved Libo Rodriguez (in the film, her name has been changed to Cleo). A scene from Alfonso Cuaron's Oscar-tipped film 'Roma' which will stream on Netflix Cuaron pictured during a press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles ahead of the release of his new film Four years ago he asked if he could interview her. The first part was going through her routine, and it was almost a forensic account, he said. He called it The Book Of Hours. All the detail was there, like how she would sit on the bed and wake up one of my siblings. We were talking about the bubble I was aware of. The house and my neighbourhood. Those conversations took place (mostly over the phone) over a long period. He asked what she did on her days off. What was revelatory was when she was telling me about the Seventies. The theatres she went to werent the same ones she would take me to. And she talked about how students were attacked, and beaten by hired thugs. Then there was sex. She was like my parent, and you dont question your parents about such things, he says, when we meet. The movie opens with a beautifully shot scene of Cleo cleaning up the mess the family dog has left in the gated drive. She has to clean it up; and shes blamed when theres too much of it, Cuaron says. It wasnt real, by the way. It was made of food stuff! But the problem was the dog kept trying to eat it. So we had to put Tabasco sauce on it. Cuaron admits feeling white middle class guilt about Libos treatment. On the one hand were saying: We love you! ... but go and wash the clothes, and bring me a smoothie. Back then, he was oblivious to the privations she had suffered. She had hardships in her life. Hunger when she was a child. And the cold. My experience of hunger then was Oh, were late for lunch. The director says he accessed so many memories that it opened wounds. But he embraced them. The wound is part of who you are, he insists. Its like repairing a crack in a wall. Or, better, mending broken pottery. Its about repairing yourself. And the end product is more beautiful than the original. The films a masterpiece Ive seen it four times and its still doing its repair work on me. Roma is based on the directors childhood and the young woman who raised him - played with powerful warmth by Yalitza Apariciom (pictured) Cuaron notes that people have responded to Roma in a deeply emotional way. In many ways, film is nothing but a vessel in which audiences put their own experiences. For the movie, he had a carbon copy of his childhood home built within the shell of a similar building. He drove his producers crazy because he insisted they find a dog a cross between a Pointer and a street dog that was a match for his own pet. A family member who saw a group shot of the screen family thought it was the actual clan from the Seventies. Thats how close I got, the director says, proudly. Roma opens at the Curzon Soho on Thursday, November 29; and will be at the Curzon Bloomsbury from December 6. It will go to other cinemas nationwide from December 14 the same date it begins streaming on Netflix. Id like to propose a toast! The cast of Evening Standard Theatre Award-winning musical Company led by Rosalie Craig and Patti LuPone will go in to Rak Studios in St Johns Wood on Sunday to start making the cast recording. Director Marianne Elliott and producer Chris Harper have secured composer Stephen Sondheim to oversee the sessions. Cameras will film each number, with excerpts to feature in a documentary about the gender-swap show. Claire Foy ordered us both non-alcoholic cocktails at Kettners in Soho but it took a while to drink them because every 20 seconds someone would stop to tell her how fabulous she was in Damien Chazelles movie First Man, in which she portrays the wife of Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling). To me, its a movie about a family. The bid to get U.S. astronauts to the moon is simply a magnificent backdrop. Soon Chazelle, below with Foy, joined us. Then Richard Curtis collared Claire, to tell her he was hypnotised by her eyes in the film, or rather how she used them to convey Janet Armstrongs pain. Claire Foy and Damien Chazelle attending for the premiere of 'First Man' in Paris in September Stephen Daldry was close behind. He and Foy became good friends after he cast her as Elizabeth II in The Crown. Chazelle met Mrs Armstrong and taped five hours of conversation before filming. That tape was instrumental in helping me find out about Janet, Foy said. Her speech patterns, tone, told me so much. Im sad I didnt meet her but also glad, because I would have been so embarrassed asking her personal questions, she said of the woman who died in June, a few months before First Man opened. Armstrongs sons Mark and Eric both paid moving tribute to Foy when I saw them at the Toronto International Film Festival, saying she had totally captured our mother. Shes the heart of the film. Ryan Gosling (pictured in October) plays Neil Armstrong as the lead in First Man Id like to propose a toast! The cast of Evening Standard Theatre Award-winning musical Company led by Rosalie Craig and Patti LuPone will go in to Rak Studios in St Johns Wood on Sunday to start making the cast recording. Director Marianne Elliott and producer Chris Harper have secured composer Stephen Sondheim to oversee the sessions. Cameras will film each number, with excerpts to feature in a documentary about the gender-swap show. Inside The Foreign Office Rating: Nazi Murder Mysteries Rating: Big knickers, thats what we need to make a triumphant success of Brexit. And perhaps half a bottle of chardonnay, ten Bensons and an ill-advised snog under the mistletoe. Inside The Foreign Office (BBC2) set out a slightly different Bridget Jones plan for international trade, as we flew to Ulan Bator in Mongolia. This remote and sparsely populated nation is sitting on more gold, oil and other mineral wealth, head for head, than any other country on earth and theyre eager to do business. The British ambassador, Catherine Arnold, is nicknamed Bridget Jones by her staff, probably because of her resemblance to actress Renee Zellweger. She says shed rather be like the Tomb Raider heroine Lara Croft, played by Angelina Jolie . . . which is just what Bridget would say. Boris Johnson, who was Foreign Secretary when the show was filmed, seemed to be the only one not on top of his game. Trying to record chatty segments for his Twitter followers, he kept fluffing his lines. Her solution to kickstarting trade with this ex-Communist country, sandwiched between Russia and China, was to stage a fashion show and try to launch a trend for facemasks. It sounds mad; actually its brilliant. Despite its vast, unpopulated steppes and mountain ranges, Mongolia has a pollution crisis, because of its smoking problem. Forget cigarettes: people here keep warm by burning mountains of old rubber tyres. Their smog makes Los Angeles look like a nature reserve. The ambassador brought in a British firm making state-of-the-art masks with built-in air filters, and helped them find Mongolian artists to design the patterns. Then she arranged a catwalk display. The masks looked very chic. I suspect theyd sell by the truckload in Tokyo, too, where everyone wears pollution protection. After last weeks pompous and staid introduction to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, this was an upbeat episode loaded with eccentricity. In Nigeria, we dropped in at a QBP, or Queens Birthday Party, where dozens of Lagos entrepreneurs were clamouring to strike an export deal over the canapes. The mandarins back in Whitehall rolled their eyes whenever Brexit was mentioned, but this documentary suggests the referendum delivered a massive kick up the pinstripes to our diplomats, forcing them out of a lazy rut. Now they are scrambling to secure new business partners and that, as Bridget would say, is v.v. good. Boris Johnson, who was Foreign Secretary when the show was filmed, seemed to be the only one not on top of his game. Trying to record chatty segments for his Twitter followers, he kept fluffing his lines. New talent of the week: For lovers of noir crime and twisted family drama, Blood (C5) has been a real treat every night, building to a shocking climax. Its creator, Sophie Petzal, is just 28. Heres looking forward to a lot more from this young writer. Advertisement If Boris is planning to go full Portillo after politics and become a TV presenter, hes going to have to tighten his technique. Anyone wanting to know what a real diplomatic nightmare looks like could have tuned in to Nazi Murder Mysteries (Yesterday channel), which investigated how the Duke of Windsor hushed up a murder scandal when he was Governor of the Bahamas during World War II. The former King Edward VIII and his American wife Wallis Simpson didnt want Scotland Yard detectives snooping around their island hideaway. The British police might uncover evidence of money laundering and even treason. So when Canadian gold magnate Sir Harry Oakes, the richest man in the Commonwealth, was found bludgeoned to death with a hammer, the Duke did everything he could to impose a news blackout and ensure the case was handled by corrupt American cops. This was a complex account, briskly and clearly told, with excellent period news footage. But while it focused on the Dukes attempts to frame an innocent man, it made no effort to explain who really murdered Sir Harry. This was only half a story. This year's Love Island castmembers have cashed in lucrative endorsement deals ever since leaving Majorca. But despite their rising success, the stars are reportedly set to earn just 10 an hour for The Christmas Reunion, where 19 islanders will lift the lid on their post-villa lives. According to The Sun, the line-up, including winners Dani Dyer and Jack Fincham, will film the highly-anticipated show over a two-day schedule. Shock: This year's Love Island stars are reportedly set to earn just 10 an hour for The Christmas Reunion, where 19 islanders will lift the lid on their post-villa lives (pictured Megan Barton-Hanson and Wes Nelson) A source told the publication: 'They have been in uproar over being paid so little for two days work. It almost isnt worth hours of awkward conversation with your ex which for many of the islanders will be the case now. 'A few have even discussed dropping out to avoid any unnecessary aggravation. The low fees have also upset their agents, who are used to dealing with much bigger contracts', they added. MailOnline has contacted ITV representatives for comment. Earlier this week, ITV have confirmed that 19 islanders will be back to get a grilling from host Caroline Flack, as they reunite at a festive retreat to spill all on what's been going on since they left the villa many months ago. They're back: According to The Sun, the line-up, including winners Dani Dyer and Jack Fincham (pictured), will film the highly-anticipated show over a two-day schedule Tense: 'They have been in uproar over being paid so little for two days work. It almost isnt worth hours of awkward conversation with your ex which for many of the islanders will be the case now', a source told the publication And it seems along with the show's successful love stories, such as that of Megan Barton-Hanson, 24, and Wes Nelson, 20, Love Island's ex-couples are in for an awkward reunion as they finally come face-to-face. All four remaining Love Island couples will be dishing all on how their romance has survived back on home soil, with Megan and Wes, Adam Collard and Zara McDermott and Kaz Crossley - who will appear solo as beau Josh Denzel is filming in the US - will join Dani and Jack. But viewers will no doubt be more intrigued by the villa's ex-couples who are set to come face-to-face for the Christmas special - especially as their splits have played out publicly with many being plagued by 'cheating' accusations. Laura Anderson will be reunited with former boyfriend Paul Knops. They split in September, blaming their busy working schedules for driving them apart. Eek: Love Island's ex-couples (including Georgia Steel and Sam Bird above) are in for an awkward reunion as they'll come face-to-face at the festive retreat Success: All of Love Island's four remaining couples - including winners Dani and Jack - will be on the show to discuss how their romances have fared on home soil Flying solo! While Kaz Crossley and Josh Denzel are still together - only Kaz will appear on the special as Josh is filming in the US At the time, Laura had hit back at accusations their relationship was 'fake' and insisted the romance had been very 'real' for her. In the weeks that followed their break up, Laura confirmed her romance with Love Island series two winner Max Morley and was later hit by claims she had been 'secretly dating' Max while she was with Paul. The blonde vehemently denied the claims, with her rep insisting the accusations were 'total nonsense'. Still going strong: Megan and Wes' relationship has blossomed since their time together in the villa Ellie Brown and Charlie Brake, meanwhile, announced their split at the beginning of October. Ellie confessed she was left 'heartbroken' over the failed romance, with her co-star Laura claiming Charlie dumped Ellie by announcing it on social media without her knowledge. Charlie was linked to string of beauties in the wake of their split and found himself at the centre of claims he had been 'unfaithful' to Ellie, after she was sent a photo of him 'having dinner with another woman'. Awkward: Laura Anderson will be reunited with former boyfriend Paul Knops - they split in September, blaming their busy working schedules for driving them apart Moved on: Laura is now dating Love Island series two winner Max Morley Awkward: Ellie and Charlie split at the beginning of October and Charlie has been linked to a string of beauties ever since Ellie is rumoured to be dating former TOWIE star Joey Essex, while Charlie has found himself linked to Ferne McCann. Meanwhile, Georgia Steel and Sam Bird are in for an awkward encounter following their split last month. Sam revealed that the duo had ended their relationship, after Georgia stayed at her ex-boyfriend's house while dating him. She has insisted that she 'never cheated' on Sam with her ex, but admitted to staying with her former flame. Following their break up, Sam admitted he was 'devastated' while Georgia has said she is 'happier than ever' being a 'single pringle' - confessing she 'fell out of love' with Sam. End of the road: Georgia Steel and Sam Bird split last month, with Georgia claiming she is 'happier than ever' since the break up Still searching for love? Eyal had appeared on Celebs Go Dating following his early Love Island exit and attempted to find romance with an ordinary member of the public Single ladies: Kendall Rae Knight (L) and Samira Mighty (R) will be back for the reunion show Other Love Island stars set to appear include Samira Mighty, following the breakdown of her relationship with Frankie Foster, Dr Alex and Alexandra Crane. Kendall Rae Knight, who was linked to last year's show winner Kem Cetinay, will return, as well as Hayley Hughes, who is now dating DJ Tom Zanetti and Eyal Booker. Eyal had appeared on Celebs Go Dating following his early Love Island exit and attempted to find love with an ordinary member of the public. He starred alongside Chloe Sims, Olivia Attwood and Alik Alfus. Caroline Flack will be back at the helm of the show and raising a glass to Love Island's class of 2018, while Iain Stirling will provide a voice over for the special. ITV are yet to confirm an air date for the festive special. She's back! Caroline Flack will be back at the helm of the show and raising a glass to Love Island's class of 2018, while Iain Stirling will provide a voice over for the special Sydney PR queen Roxy Jacenko is set to release a new children's book in February, aimed at addressing the issue of school bullying. Titled Penelope's Playground - and co-credited to Roxy's daughter Pixie Curtis - it will be the mother-of-two's fifth book, but her first aimed at kids. Roxy, 38, drew inspiration for the story from her own experience of bullying at school. Scroll down for video 'I too know how it feels to be ostracised': Roxy Jacenko (pictured) announced the release of her new children's book on Friday, aimed to inspiring inclusiveness among kids, after her own experience of being bullied at school The blonde businesswoman told Daily Mail Australia on Friday: 'As a cross-eyed toddler and teen, I too know how it feels to be ostracised because of being a little different and more often than not, these differences can be beyond ones control.' 'I think we need to start educating kids from a young age to be far more accepting of one another, no matter what our differences are,' she added. The book - whose characters are based on Roxy's own kids Pixie, six, and Hunter, four, and pet dog Oreo - follows young girl Penelope, who has a 'unique' style of personal dress. Fans: The blonde businesswoman's Instagram followers welcomed the news, with one writing: 'Wish books like this and stories this important had been around when I was in school because I went through some similar things' But a new girl at school 'brings Penelope's world crashing around her', according to the blurb on the back of the book. Roxy took to Instagram on Friday to share a photo of the book, writing: 'This children's book is an essential for all families with young children. 'It talks about the fact that it's OK to be different and the importance of being kind and accepting of one another no matter what our differences or challenges are.' Guiding light: The book - whose characters are based on Roxy's own kids Pixie, six, and Hunter, four, and pet dog Oreo - follows young girl Penelope, who has a 'unique' style of personal dress Roxy's Instagram followers welcomed the news, with one writing: 'Wish books like this and stories this important had been around when I was in school because I went through some similar things.' Roxy is married to Oliver Curtis, 33, who was jailed for a year for conspiracy to commit insider trading in 2016. Penelope's Playground is scheduled for release in February next year but pre-orders are available from dymocks.com.au Guwahati: Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister and National Conference Chairman Farooq Abdullah on Wednesday hit out at J&K Governor Satya Pal Malik and termed him is a slave of centre. Farooq Abdullah said in Guwahati that, the J&K Governor worked in direction of the centre. I am very sad about his decision. The Governor dissolved the house while the ex Chief Minister had communicated to him. He is a slave of the centre. When the centre tells him to get up, he get up and when the centre tells him to sit down, he sit down. I had a lot of hopes from the Governor, but he turned out to be another slave of the centre. The post of Governor needs to be looked into, Farooq Abdullah said. The NC Chairman questioned the Governor of J&K that, why did he take five months time to dissolve the house. Why did he wait five months to dissolve the assembly? Why he was waiting for trading of MLAs for BJP government to be formed, Farooq Abdullah said. On the other hand, reacting over the BJPs terror-friendly parties remarks, Farooq Abdullah said that, when the PDP was in alliance with BJP, then PDP was not terror-friendly. When the NC, Congress and PDP come together, then we are all terrorists. I feel sad about it, Farooq Abdullah said. The veteran political leader also hit back BJP leader Ram Madhav and said that, the National Conference has never waited for Pakistan signal. Kristen Doute suffered through a tumultuous relationship with James Kennedy during the third and fourth seasons of Vanderpump Rules. And while the 35-year-old has since moved on with photographer Brian Carter, she has no plans to bury the hatchet with her ex any time soon. Speaking exclusively to Daily Mail Australia, the reality star vowed to 'take down' James and said that viewers will see his true colours on the upcoming seventh season of Vanderpump Rules. Unfiltered: Kristen Doute vowed to 'take down' ex-boyfriend James Kennedy and said that viewers will see his true colours on the upcoming seventh season of Vanderpump Rules 'I love to take down the bad guy and I will stop at nothing, so sorry James Kennedy!' she said. 'He is my target and I will continue to make him my target until all is well in the world,' she continued. 'Until girls are no longer called fat and bad names. 'Just the way that he treats human beings in general, I just think that he's such garbage.' 'I just think that he's such garbage': The 35-year-old reality star didn't hold back when talking about the DJ (pictured) The leggy brunette said that she has the DJ blocked on forms of social media and that she refuses to even be in the same restaurant as him. 'He's such a bad, bad person,' she said. 'There have been times where his stupidity and ego can be entertaining [on the show], but I feel like and I really hope that everyone changes their mind this season. 'James digs so deep that he wants to hurt people, and that's another kind of evil.' 'I don't know if she's as dumb as I think she is, or if she just doesn't care that James is a terribly lying cheating human': Kristen also took a swipe at James' current girlfriend, model Raquel Leviss (far right) James who? Kristen is currently dating photographer Brian Carter, who will appear alongside on the upcoming seventh season of Vanderpump Rules Kristen also took a swipe at James' current girlfriend, model Raquel Leviss. 'I don't know if she's as dumb as I think she is, or if she just doesn't care that James is a terribly lying cheating human who says horrible things to women,' she said. 'Or if she actually thinks he's that cool and believes him, their whole dynamic is just super odd to me. True love: Kristen is currently in Australia with her boyfriend Carter (L) for a romantic holiday and to promote the upcoming season of Vanderpump Rules 'I just pray and I hope that viewers change their mind about him this season.' Kristen is currently in Australia with her boyfriend Carter for a romantic holiday and to promote the upcoming season of Vanderpump Rules. Vanderpump Rules season 7 streams Tuesdays from December 4, same day as the US on Foxtel and hayu. Golden Globe nominee Jessica Alba brought along her baby boy Hayes to shop for last-minute Thanksgiving groceries at Bristol Farms in Beverly Hills on Wednesday. The 37-year-old mother-of-three dressed down in an Army-green jacket and spotted mules while her 10-month-old son looked adorable in a tiger cap and blue bandana. 'He's just such a sweet little butterball,' The Honest Company boss told People that same day. 'He's just such a sweet little butterball!' Jessica Alba brought along her baby boy Hayes to shop for last-minute Thanksgiving groceries at Bristol Farms in Beverly Hills on Wednesday Cutie: The 37-year-old mother-of-three dressed down in an Army-green jacket and spotted mules while her 10-month-old son looked adorable in a tiger cap and blue bandana 'He's gonna be into opening [Christmas] presents and trying to put ribbons in his mouth, which I'm not looking forward to. He loves tearing things and opening things and throwing things.' Little Hayes was rocking a similar outfit on turkey day as her husband of over a decade, Cash Warren, cradled him in the yard. Inside the house, Jessica put the finishing touches on her large dining table featuring floral arrangements by Flowermaid. Alba - who boasts 28.5M social media followers - Insta-storied quick glimpses of the homemade stuffing as well as one of the pies crafted by her 'sissy' Koa Jones. 'My guys!' Little Hayes was rocking a similar outfit on turkey day as her husband of over a decade, Cash Warren, cradled him in the yard Thanksgiving family portrait: The Mexican-American mompreneur and the 39-year-old Pair of Thieves sock/underwear designer are also parents to two daughters Haven, 7; and Honor, 10 Hungry? Inside the house, Jessica put the finishing touches on her large dining table featuring floral arrangements by Flowermaid 'Happy Thanksgiving folks!' Alba Insta-storied quick glimpses of the homemade stuffing as well as one of the pies crafted by her 'sissy' Koa Jones 'Sissy love!' The Pomona-born beauty sported a black floral hoodie as she posed for a selfie with Koa (L) and her other 'sissy' Makayla Elena (R) The Pomona-born beauty sported a black floral hoodie as she posed for a selfie with Koa and her other 'sissy' Makayla Elena. The Mexican-American mompreneur and the 39-year-old Pair of Thieves sock/underwear designer - who met on the 2004 set of Fantastic Four - are also parents to two daughters Haven, 7; and Honor, 10. Jessica currently plays a famous actress who joins Detectives Cullen and Tolbeck (Patrick Brammall and Tim Meadows) for a ride along in the eight-episode second season of No Activity, which started streaming Thursday on CBS All Access. Thanksgiving prompted some heartbreaking reflection for Ariana Grande. The pop star, 25, was reminiscing abut her relationship with her late ex-boyfriend Mac Miller who died of a drugs overdose a little over three months after the pair split up. Ariana posted a throwback photo from Thanksgiving 2017 showing her and Mac together. 'v missed': Thanksgiving prompted some heartbreaking reflection for Ariana Grande. The pop star, 25, shared a throwback photo from a year ago showing her with then boyfriend Mac Miller The snap has a Thanksgiving-themed filter and was originally captioned with: 'a pie.' In posting it Thursday, she changed the caption to: 'You're v missed.' Ariana and Mac dated for almost two years before they broke up, with the Dangerous Woman hitmaker announcing the end of the romance in May. Two months later, she announced her engagement to SNL castmember Pete Davidson. Lost love: Mac died September 7 from a drugs overdose at the age of 26. The pair had dated for almost two years when Ariana announced their split last May Rapper Mac was found dead at his Los Angeles-area home on September 7. He was 26. The next month Ariana split from Pete, calling off their engagement. Since then, Ariana has released a new single called Thank U, Next, that details her past relationships. She directly references both her relationships with Pete and Mac in the song, as lyrics include: 'Thought I'd end up with Sean/ But it wasn't a match/ Wrote some songs about Ricky/ Now I listen and laugh.' Over: Ariana went on to date SNL's Pete Davidson, getting engaged just two months after her breakup with Mac. She called off their engagement in October just weeks after Mac's death During the past week, Ariana has been teasing elements of her new music video for Thank U, Next on her social media. She's revealed it will have elements of Hollywood movies Mean Girls, Legally Blonde and 13 Going On 30. And on Wednesday, she confirmed that the final film she'd be honoring would be Bring It On. Taking to social media, the 25-year-old pop star shared various shots of herself in a cheerleading uniform uniform and added the caption: 'I transferred from los angeles, your school has no gymnastics team this issaalast resort ........ ok i've never cheered before so what?' It's a quote from the 200 movie spoken by star Eliza Dushku. New hit: During the past week, Ariana has been teasing elements on social media of her new music video for Thank U, Next. On Wednesday, she revealed she'll pay homage to Bring It On She has been showbiz royalty for over two decades now. And on Thursday, American socialite and heiress Paris Hilton was mobbed by fans as she jetted into Melbourne Airport. While flanked by security, the 37-year-old was presented with balloons and a princess banner, as Australian fans baring her face on clothing battled through the paparazzi to pose alongside the superstar. Balloons, a princess banner and flanked by security: Paris Hilton is mobbed by Australian fans as she jets into Melbourne Social media savvy Paris documented the very warm welcome on her Instagram. After flying in from Dubai, her A-list arrival first became apparent as two fans, each wearing pink tutus and tiaras, clutched a huge banner in the arrivals lounge. 'Welcome Princess,' the duo had printed across their huge homemade artwork. 'Welcome princess': After flying in from Dubai, her A-list arrival first became apparent as two fans, each wearing pink tutus and tiaras, clutched a huge banner in the arrivals lounge A scrum of photographers and videographers then desperately scrambled to document each step Paris took on Australian soil. Among the mayhem many fans confessed their love for the reality TV personality with excitable screams, which echoed across the terminal. One fan had even donned a T-shirt with Paris' face, complete with a crown, printed below the word 'Hollywood' - referencing her position as showbiz royalty. The beauty was surrounded by countless security as she made her way through the chaotic scenes in Victoria. Can you spot the superstar? The beauty was surrounded by countless security and even balloons, as she made her way through the chaotic scenes Paris -who is single after splitting with ex-fiance Chris Zylka - stepped out in Melbourne wearing all-black. The beauty appeared to have dressed comfortably for her flight, slipping into a matching velour tracksuit with flared trousers and slim-fitting hooded top. Keen to give the outfit a bit of star quality, Paris proudly donned a T-shirt with several high-end designer names boldly printed across the chest. Shielding her eyes from the terminal's fluorescent lighting following her late-night arrival, Paris accessorised the look with a pair of her signature over-sized glasses. Showbiz royalty: Among the mayhem many fans confessed their love for the reality TV personality with excitable screams, which echoed across the terminal Over: Paris is single after splitting with ex-fiance Chris Zylka (pictured in March last year) Paris is in Australia to promote her latest fragrance, Platinum Rush. The star appeared at the Chemist Warehouse in Melbourne's Highpoint Shopping Centre on November 23rd at 4pm to meet fans. 'Can't wait to see you all,' Paris gushed on Instagram before landing in Australia. They met on Love Island 2017 and last month, they laughed off claims that their relationship is on the rocks. And Camilla Thurlow and Jamie Jewitt put on a very cosy display as they attended a charity event in the capital. Humanitarian Camilla, 29, and Jamie, 28, were all smiles a they did their bit at Help for Refugees's Choose Love pop-up shop in London on Thursday. All smiles: Camilla Thurlow and Jamie Jewitt put on a very loved up display at the Choose Love pop-up shop for Help for Refugees in London on Thursday The brunette beauty looked stunning as she posed for cameras in a white Choose Love jumper and casual black jeans. She added some height to her look in a pair of pale pink sandals and matching pink coat. Camilla's locks were scraped away from her face in a messy bun and she added plenty of glam with her heavy eye makeup and bronzer. Meanwhile her beau looked suave in a black Choose Love hoody and matching black jeans which he styled with a pair of brown leather shoes. Choose Love: The pair, known for their humanitarian work, both sported the same jumper in honour of the charity event Style sensation: Camilla's locks were scraped away from her face in a messy bun and she added plenty of glam with her heavy eye makeup and bronzer The hunk wore his hair push backed from his face and was seen sporting a lot of bling on his fingers. The Choose Love pop-up shop takes place in London and New York and provides shoppers the chance to buy items such as lamps, clothes and blankets - which each purchase going towards a similar item for a refugee. The outing comes as Camilla revealed she is shooting for a new ITVBe series What Camilla Did Next which will document the couple's relationship and Camilla's charity work and air next year. Fans of the pair will no doubt be keen to scrutinise the couple's interactions following claims their romance is on the rocks amid a series of furious rows. Reports emerged in October that they were close to splitting after Jamie was seen secretly partying with his Playboy model ex-girlfriend in New York. Not camera shy: The outing comes as Camilla revealed she is shooting for a new ITVBe series What Camilla Did Next which will document the couple's relationship and charity work Jamie and Camilla, one of the few couples still together from the 2017 series, have apparently been rowing furiously over his antics and planned 'crisis talks' when he returned to Essex. Camilla told MailOnline last year: 'We don't feel any pressure, as long as were happy. We are just taking things at our own pace. I think the trick is to enjoy things as they are now, and that builds a strong foundation for the future.' Camilla also said that her family and friends 'really like' Jamie - and that she gives him her 'full support' when it comes to talking about his previous battles with depression - something he spoke about after leaving the series. He decided to dramatically drop the price of his stately home on the market despite splashing the cash on renovating it after he failed to sell the property in 2015. But Michael Flatley didn't let it dampen his spirits when he enjoyed the evening with Niamh O'Brien at the Irish Post VIP Business Gala dinner on Thursday. The Lord Of The Dance sensation, 60, proudly paraded his elegant younger wife, 44, on his arm when they made their entrance to the star-studded bash. Keep on dancing: The Lord Of The Dance star Michael Flatley and his wife Niamh O'Brien looked more in love than ever as they attended a lavish dinner, in London on Thursday Michael dressed down his two-piece suit and shiny shoes by wearing his bow tie loose around his neck and the collar to his shirt unbuttoned. Niamh oozed sophistication in her floor-length dress which had an exquisite colourful pattern to catch the eye. The dancer styled her blonde bob in coiffed curls, she applied a red lip and toted a clutch with a golden clasp to add the finishing touches of her look. Michael and Niamh proved the fire of their love burned brightly still after all this time as they cuddled up to each other at the event. Dazzling duo: The Lord Of The Dance sensation proudly paraded his elegant wife on his arm when they made their entrance to the star-studded bash They embarked on a whirlwind romance in 2006 when they decided to get married four months after they started dating and their son Michael Jr was born a year later. The happy couple tied the knot in a romantic ceremony in October and they hosted their reception at Castlehyde. Michael bid farewell to the stage in 2016 after he took the world by storm with his Irish dancing skills on The Lord Of The Dance. Perfect pair: Michael and Niamh proved the fire of their love burned brightly still after all this time as they cuddled up to each other at the event The dancer decided it was time to make another change in June earlier this year when he put his luxurious Irish mansion Castle Hyde back on the market. Castle Hyde was listed for $14.5 Million (11 million) after it failed to sell at $23.2 million (17.6 million) in 2015. The price was reduced by 36 per cent, despite Michael spending about $35 million (26.6 million) on rennovations. Lord Of The Dance star Michael has spent 20 years living in the home he bought for $4.6 million (3.4 million) in 1999. Ravishing in red: Claire Sweeney looked incredibly leggy in her thigh-split scarlet dress as she attended the glamorous event among the stars For the frill of it: A statement ruffle was stitched into the right shoulder of the floor-length dress which ensured all eyes were on Claire The professional dancer's palatial home was first built in the 1700s, before being extended in 1801. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal about the reduction, Michael said: 'I don't mind taking the cut because I spent 20 of the best years of my life in that house.' Michael, who has a net worth of $350 million (266.6 million), explained he decided to sell the house after purchasing a mansion in London's extravagant Belgravia. The star has an extensive property portfolio which includes homes in Barbados and Monaco. She's best known for playing bold roles in Game Of Thrones and Star Wars. And actress Gwendoline Christie showed off her stunning 6ft 3in height on the runway for Miu Miu's Cruise 2019 Fashion Show in Shanghai on Thursday The British actress, 40, showcased her model style in a contrast green and leopard print gown with sexy cut-out details at the sides and black statement heels. Catwalk queen: Gwendoline Christie showcased her model style in a leopard print gown with cut-out details as she walked the Miu Miu Cruise 2019 Fashion Show in Shanghai on Thursday The beautiful blonde, styled her signature bob in a simple middle parting and sported bold red lipstick and nude eyes for the look Later that evening Gwendoline, who is fronting Miu Miu's 2019 campaign, was spotted after the show looking glamorous in a black lace dress and diamante studded coat. The Star Wars actress spoke to ES Magazine in September where she revealed she was bullied 'terribly' at school but has learned to find her 'inconsistencies and ugly parts' beautiful in later life. Model style: The statuesque blonde styled her signature blonde in a simple middle parting and sported bold red lipstick and nude eyes for the look She confessed: You either think Im unconventional and theres no place for me and therefore I should disappear, or you think good, Im happy to be on the outside. 'Because if this is the small-minded, mean, uncompassionate viewpoint of the inside, then I dont want to be there. Im happy out here with all the other leftovers, who show love and support for each other. 'All of the inconsistencies, complexities and ugly parts whatever that might mean can exist and beauty can be made out of it. Thats what I want beauty to be. All smiles: The Star Wars actress spoke to ES Magazine in September where she revealed she was bullied 'terribly' at school The actress also admitted clothes became a form of escapism following years of torment at school. Gwendoline explained: 'It was a combination of wanting to escape the unpleasant narrative that was being applied to me at school, where I was bullied terribly, and loving the transportative nature of the arts. 'It was about not wanting to live a prescriptive life. The model, who is in a relationship with fashion designer Giles Deacon, also confessed her role as warrior Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones was both a 'professional and personal' triumph. He is one of fashion's most iconic designers. So Karl Lagerfeld was naturally a guest of honour on Thursday as he turned on the Christmas lights on Paris' Champs-Elysee where he was sporting his classic all-black look with trademark sunglasses and his white hair pulled-back. While he sported his usual look, the 85-year-old designer was transformed slightly as he displayed missing teeth while giddily beaming at the chic event. Beaming: Karl Lagerfeld was naturally a guest of honour on Thursday as he turned on the Christmas lights on Paris' Champs-Elysee where he was sporting his classic all-black look with trademark sunglasses and his white hair pulled-back (pictured, right, in 1998) Karl was joined by a bevy of revelers as he turned on the lights yet dropped his fashion pout in favour of a beaming grin, which flashed his transformed dentistry. A representative for Karl told MailOnline: 'He is currently undergoing dental treatment, however he wanted to honour his longstanding commitment to attend the ceremony.' He was joined the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, and two children, a nine-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl who had been chosen to attend the ceremony by the French charity Les Petits Princes. Heading out: While he sported his usual look, the 85-year-old designer was transformed slightly as he displayed missing teeth while giddily beaming at the chic event Happy days: One of the festive guest happily posed for a snap with the fashion superstar In April this year, he gave his typically acerbic responses in an interview with Numero magazine as he criticised runway models in comparison to his beloved personal assistant Sebastien Jondeau. He said: 'Sebastien embodies a male canon that is the complete opposite of those skinny things with wonky teeth we see on runways They certainly dont run the risk of getting harassed. To be honest what they really need is a good dentist.' The star also proudly discussed his physique and how he stays in good shape saying: 'I dont get fat anymore. I was on a diet for 15 years, but now I can eat all I want without ever gaining a gram. Its very strange.' Way back when: As the head creative director of the Italian powerhouse Fendi, it's no surprise Karl was in demand for the glamorous event on the iconic parade (pictured last year) As the head creative director of the Italian powerhouse Fendi, it's no surprise Karl was in demand for the glamorous event on the iconic parade. On his new appearance, Dr Rhona Eskander spoke to MailOnline about his dentistry and changed look, saying: 'It looks as though Karl has had his teeth treated with both crowns and veneers... 'Some of his teeth were obviously being prepped (prepared for crown and veneer replacement) and in the first picture is shows that he had lost the veneers/crowns, which have been replaced in the earlier image... 'A crown is a type of cap that completely covers a real tooth. It's usually made from porcelain and is fixed in your mouth. Crowns can be fitted where a tooth has broken, decayed or been damaged, or just to make a tooth look better... All hands on board! Karl was later pursing his lips during the fun-filled event Expert opinion: On his new appearance, Dr Rhona Eskander spoke to MailOnline about his dentistry and changed look, saying: 'It looks as though Karl has had his teeth treated with both crowns and veneers' 'To fit a crown, the old tooth will need to be drilled down so it's like a small peg the crown will be fixed on to. Veneers are new facings for teeth that disguise a discoloured or damaged tooth. To fit a veneer, the front of the tooth is drilled away a little.' Meanwhile, celebrity dentist, Dr Richard Marques, added: 'Years of neglect and possibly a dental phobia have likely led to this deterioration of Karls teeth... 'He could have also experienced an accident or traumatic incident with the front teeth which has caused them to fracture. Additionally, it is possible he is in the middle of some extensive treatment to have his teeth fixed. His outing comes after he sent shockwaves earlier this year when he slammed the #MeToo movement while revealing that he is 'fed up' with models and actresses speaking up about the sexual harassment they have faced over the years. Bling, bling: He wore his favoured dark glasses which boasted a dazzling addition on the side Out and about: Karl is well-known for his sleek look and frosted ponytail (pictured in 2012) In an interview with French magazine Numero, he suggested models should know what they are getting into, while defending Interview creative director Karl Templer, who has been accused of 'aggressively' pulling down models' underwear. 'If you don't want someone pulling down your panties, don't become a model,' he said. 'Join a nunnery, there'll always be a place for you in the convent. They're recruiting even!' he said. Karl is the head creative director of Chanel and Fendi, as well as his own eponymous fashion line, and he believes the accusations being made by models are making it nearly impossible for designers to do their jobs. 'I read somewhere that now, you have to ask models whether they feel comfortable when they are posing,' he said. 'That's opening the door to anything. From then on, as a creator, you don't do anything anymore.' Out and a pout: Karl is the head creative director of Chanel and Fendi, as well as his own eponymous fashion line, and he believes the accusations being made by models are making it nearly impossible for designers to do their jobs Serious suddenly: He later pulled his trademark pout while showing off his edgy style The designer said he didn't believe a 'single word' of the accusations against Templer, noting that 'a girl is complaining that he pulled on her panties and he gets excommunicated from an industry that, until then, worshiped him.' Fashion photographers Mario Testino and Bruce Weber have also been accused of sexual misconduct this year, while Kate Upton called out Guess founder Paul Marciano for 'sexually and emotionally harassing women.' But Karl has taken issue with the fact that that many of the women are sharing their stories of sexual harassment decades after it happened. Robbie Williams will reunite with Take That for a special one-off performance for the X Factor final next Sunday. It was revealed on ITV's Lorraine on Friday, that the Angels hitmaker, 44, will join former bandmates Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen during the show on December 2, ahead of their 30th anniversary celebrations. While the judge was first to leave the band in July 1995, Jason Orange was the next departure when he quit the group in September 2014, yet he will not perform during the X Factor reunion. Reunited: Robbie Williams will reunite with Take That for a special one-off performance for the X Factor final next Sunday (pictured in 1991) Dan Wooton revealed on Lorraine: 'It would be totally wrong for Take That to perform as a trio with Robbie in the audience'. Robbie performed with Take That last year during the final of Let It Shine, a BBC talent show to find five contestants to join the cast of a new West End show featuring the music of the band. The news comes a month after the Take That tour dates for 2019 were announced for the group's Greatest Hits Live event in celebration of their 30th anniversary, with Rick Astley also being confirmed as their special guest for their UK-wide tour. Gary, Howard and Mark will be travelling across the UK without Robbie and Jason in a follow up to their 2017 Wonderland tour, with US and Middle East dates still rumoured to be added. No rest: It was revealed on ITV's Lorraine on Friday, that the Angels hitmaker, 44, will join former bandmates Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen during the show on December 2, ahead of their 30th anniversary celebrations Back for good? Robbie last performed with Take That last year during the final of Let It Shine last year During a candid interview with presenter Ross King earlier this month, Gary revealed details about his so-called rivalry with Robbie, his health and his ego. Speaking of the Robbie rivalry, he teased: 'We'd both say it's not a rivalry, but you know it is. I'm completely fine as long as I sell one more copy of my new album... 'I mean, no, honestly we're probably in the best place we've ever been... We talk a lot. We email a lot. I think those days are over, I really do.' While touching on his career, he also revealed he went to great lengths to repair his relationship with Robbie, following their fallout in 1995. Ego: Gary revealed details about his so-called rivalry with Robbie, his health and his ego earlier this month (Take That pictured in 1992) The star added that it was a 'genius idea' for Robbie to join his wife Ayda on the X-Factor, which Gary was also a former judge on from 2011 to 2013. He said: 'I know what Rob's like, he doesn't really like new environments. 'I remember the first time I met Ayda, I remember coming home to the hotel and phoning everyone up and saying, "Rob's going to be alright, I've just met his fiancee, she's going to look after him, she's going to save his life".' Genius: Gary Barlow said it was a 'genius idea' for Robbie to join his wife Ayda on the X-Factor, which Gary was also a former judge on from 2011 to 2013 The boyband are keeping busy, having put their plans to perform in Las Vegas on hold to focus on their new film. The boy band trio have admitted while there are still discussions about following the example of Robbie with a Sin City residency, they have other commitments after next year's UK tour. Howard told the Daily Star: 'There's talk of still going to the States - but not for a while.' Gary explained a big screen adaptation of their own musical 'The Band' will keep them busy when filming starts next summer. He added: 'We are going to make a film of our musical The Band next year, we are all signed off on that now. Happy days: The star added that it was a 'genius idea' for Robbie to join his wife Ayda on the X-Factor, which Gary was also a former judge on from 2011 to 2013 'Tim Firth is doing the film script and we are going to shoot next summer. Again we can get involved with the music and that will keep us busy after the tour next year.' Meanwhile, the group's new greatest hits collection 'Odyssey' has given the trio a chance to reflect on their career while giving the a songs a new twist. Mark admitted: 'The songs mean a lot to us, so if I'm a listener I don't want to mess about too much with them.' Earlier this month, Robbie unveiled his own plans for a run of shows at Wynn Las Vegas in March 2019. He said: 'I'm beyond excited to announce my first ever residency in Las Vegas. To follow in the footsteps of some of the greatest entertainers of all time is a dream come true - I can't wait.' She spent many years modelling in Italy where she became a household name. And on Friday, Australian stunner Megan Gale revealed she is teaching her two young children how to speak Italian. The 43-year-old was asked by a fan on her Instagram Story on Friday, if she spoke Italian to son River, four, and daughter, Rosie, one. Big in Italy! Megan Gale reveals she will be teaching her two young children to speak Italian after she became an an overnight celebrity in the Mediterranean nation 'With River yes a little bit,' she replied and added, 'Rosie is still a bit young but I will try and teach her too.' Megan now enjoys a quieter life in Melbourne where she is based with her partner, AFL star Shaun Thompson and their two children. The Perth-born stunner's modelling career kicked off in Italy started when she cast in a commercial for local phone network Omnitel in 1999, which was a hit with Italians - making her an overnight celebrity. Learning the language: The 43-year-old was asked by a fan on her Instagram Story, on Friday, if she spoke Italian to son River, four, and daughter, Rosie, one Bi-lingual babies: 'With River yes a little bit,' she replied. The statuesque stunner added, 'Rosie is still a bit young but I will try and teach her too' She split time between Australia and Italy, but eventually relocated Italy where she was booking more jobs, including shoots with publications such as Vogue Italia, GQ and Maxim. Earlier in the question and answer session, another fan asked her if she enjoyed her experience in Italy. 'Yes it was amazing. It overwhelmed me at times... to be come famous to 60 million people overnight is a shock to the system of a 22 year-old girl far away from home,' she said. She's popular! The Perth-born stunner's modelling career kicked off in Italy started when she cast in a commercial for local phone network Omnitel in 1999, which was a hit with Italians - making her an overnight celebrity. Megan is pictured in 2002 Successful: The model returned to Australia in 2005 for a career in TV presenting programs such as Getaway and Australia's Next Top Model. Megan is pictured in 2003 'Forever grateful': Another fan asked Megan if she enjoyed her experience in Italy, she call it 'One of the best experience of my life and I miss it a lot' Megan said she was 'forever grateful for the experience' of learning the culture, the language and the Italian way of life. 'One of the best experience of my life and I miss it a lot. But so happy to be back and settled in Oz,' she added. Megan later landed a TV presenting role with travel program Getaway from 2005 to 2006 and became a swimwear designer, launching her label Isola in 2010. Megan also host Project Runway Australia in 2011 and became a judge on Australia's Next Top Model in 2016. ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- Following Democrats' sweeping victories in the House of Representatives during the 2018 midterm elections, many in the party are already looking ahead to the 2020 presidential election and the opportunity to unseat President Donald Trump. A number of people with presumed interest in the Democratic nomination were active during midterm campaigns over the past few months, and some have even begun to travel to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, the early caucus and primary states. Here's a look at what some of the most talked-about potential candidates have been up to recently: Former Vice President Joe Biden Biden, who declined a run in 2016, was one of the busiest surrogates on behalf of Democratic candidates nationwide this year. The former vice president endorsed a number of successful party up-and-comers, such as Sen.-elect Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Pa., and Rep.-elects Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., and Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich. This week Biden endorsed former Mississippi Senate candidate Mike Espy. Asked repeatedly about his presidential ambitions, Biden has mostly dodged the questions, saying in October that there are many Democrats who could oust Trump from office, but that he was not one "at this point. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg A billionaire Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat again, Bloomberg spent $100 million this year to assist in the ultimately successful goal of flipping the House and to boost several Senate candidates. Last month, Bloomberg re-registered as a Democrat, less than a month after a Times of London report that he had settled on a presidential run. Bloomberg commented earlier this year that such a run as a Democrat was a possibility. Sen. Sherrod Brown After winning re-election to the Senate in Ohio, a state coveted by presidential candidates, earlier this month, even as Republicans won the governor's race and several close House races, Brown became the focus of much forward-looking attention. In response to calls that he run, the senator told the Associated Press last week that he was "seriously looking at it." Sen. Cory Booker Over the course of the year, the New Jersey Democrat spent time in Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina, and on Monday spent time with Espy in Mississippi. Next month will join New Hampshire Democrats for a "Post-Election Victory Celebration." Asked during an appearance on ABC's "The View" earlier this year if he was a "contender" in 2020, Booker laughed and said his focus was solely on the 2018 midterms, urging the hosts not to look beyond November. Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro Castro, who was the mayor of San Antonio before serving over two years in the Obama cabinet, has been more forthcoming about his intentions that most other rumored candidates. In October, he told Rolling Stone that he was "likely" to run, saying he had "a strong vision for the country," but was "going to take a long, hard look at what that kind of commitment would mean." Two years ago, Castro was on Hillary Clinton's vice presidential shortlist, a spot that ultimately went to Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. Rep. John Delaney The Maryland congressman was only seven months into his third term when he announced his candidacy in July 2017, becoming the first member of Congress to launch a bid in the 2020 cycle. While Delaney, a millionaire entrepreneur and businessman before arriving in Congress, does not have the name recognition of the other likely candidates, he has already traveled to all of Iowa's 99 counties a right of passage for many caucus hopefuls -- and this week, the Associated Press reported that he already has 10 staffers working across the state and plans to add another 20. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand Gillibrand's easy re-election to the Senate earlier this month and her tour to promote her new children's book about women's suffrage have landed her on television and in the headlines in recent weeks. She told ABC's "Good Morning America" that a presidential run was "something I will give long hard thought to" and that it was "a moral question right now." In an interview on "The Late Show," Gillibrand explained to Stephen Colbert that witnessing the Trump-spurred "hatred and the division" in the nation was calling her to "fight as hard as I possibly can to restore the moral compass of this country." Sen. Kamala Harris In October, Harris took a two-day trip through Iowa for the first time in a decade to campaign for the state's Democratic candidates, but, much like Booker, indicated that her focus was solely on the midterms. "I'm really focused on the next 15 days, she told ABC News. "You can focus on whatever you're thinking about." Harris made previous midterm campaign stops in Ohio and South Carolina, among other states. Richard Ojeda After his defeat in West Virginia's 3rd Congressional District race, retired Army major Richard Ojeda wasted no time in jumping into his next race, the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. A relative political novice who was nevertheless successful in outpacing Hillary Clinton's performance by over 35 points earlier this month, Ojeda captured headlines for having voted for President Trump and embracing the description "JFK with tattoos and a bench press." "Let me tell you something, we can do this. I think that I relate to the people far more than what the president can ever relate to these people," said Ojeda, as he announced his run last week." Rep. Beto O'Rourke O'Rourke's near-miss in his Texas Senate race against Sen. Ted Cruz riveted Democrats across the country who poured a record amount of money into the third-term congressman's campaign and won him an army of supporters who are already hoping that his newfound fame will lead him into the presidential race. But asked about the possibility by TMZ earlier this month, O'Rourke said. I havent made any decisions about anything. Sen. Bernie Sanders Sanders, who was Clinton's primary rival in 2016, admitted in recent days that he is "looking at" running in 2020. I havent made any decisions about anything," he told MSNBC Sunday. The Vermont senator, who recently turned 77, was active on the trail this year, endorsing a large number of progressive candidates coast-to-coast and embarking on a 9-state campaign tour that took him through Iowa, Colorado and California, among other states with competitive races. Tom Steyer The billionaire Steyer, a prolific Democratic donor who amassed a large following via his "Need to Impeach" organization, released a platform of five rights this week that he is calling on the party to champion ahead of 2020. Steyer is further embarking on a conversation tour starting in South Carolina in December and has previously commented on the prospect of a 2020 bid: "I'm not ruling it out." Rep. Eric Swalwell Two days after Election Day, Politico reported that Swalwell, a third-term California congressman, was planning to run in 2020. Currently 38-years-old, Swalwell would be youngest president in United States history if he is successful. A native of Iowa, Swalwell was an early endorser of former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's 2015 Democratic primary bid, and has made 13 trips to the state in the last two years, according to the San Joes Mercury News. Sen. Elizabeth Warren Warren, who cruised to re-election in Massachusetts this year, has the support of at least one high-profile politician as she considers her 2020 plans. "I hope she's running for president because I think she would be very easy," President Trump told reporters in October after Warren released results of a DNA test indicating she had distant Native American ancestors. A prolific fundraiser whose staffers spent time in a number of early primary states, Warren admitted in September that following the midterms she would "take a hard look at running for president." Copyright 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Guwahati: One NSCN (IM) militant was killed during a gun fight between NSCN (IM) and Zeliangrong United Front (ZUF) militants in Manipurs Noney district on Wednesday. According to the reports, the gun fight took place at Khoupum Lubanglong area under Khoupum police station at around 11-30 am. A top official of Manipur police said that, heavy round of bullets were exchanged from both sides and one NSCN (IM) militant was killed on spot. The slain militant was identified as self styled Corporal Apam. On the other hand, the Assam Rifles troops had apprehended two hardcore militants of NSCN (KN) in Nagalands Kohima area. Kohima based Defence PRO Colonel Chiranjeet Konwar said that, security forces under the aegis of HQ IGAR (North) conducted an operation based on specific information regarding extortion by NSCN (KN) militants in general area local ground, Kohima alongwith police representative of North Police Station. During the operation, security forces had apprehended two NSCN (KN) militants and they were identified as self styled Leacy Neikepeo Angami and self styled Major Mejukhrei. Security personnel had recovered cash receipts of Govt of Peoples Republic of Nagaland, Angami region (GPRN/NSCN), 120 numbers cash receipt of Govt of Peoples Republic of Nagaland, Ministry of Chaplee affairs, 97 numbers work permit of NSCN (KN), Govt of Peoples Republic of Nagaland, Angami Region letter heads 3 blank pads, cash of Rs 3,430, Hyundai Accent Car bearing regd No NL 02C 7989 (left near Phulbari) and personal documents. Self styled Leacy Neikepeo Angami revealed that he has been carrying out extortion for NSCN (KN) and was appointed as SS Leacy since Aug 2018. There were four members in his team doing extortion for past one week in Kohima as SS Maj Mejukhrei confessed that he was Ex Nagaland Police person, arrested and expelled by Police in 2013 and admitted that he has a point 7.65 Pistol and 07 live rounds of ammunition however location of the weapon and ammunition was not revealed by him. Kate Garraway was terrified when Ben Shephard terrorised her with a snake just minutes after a giant millipede urianted on him on Good Morning Britain on Friday. The presenter, 51, recoiled in terror when she came face-to-face with the wriggling reptile as GMB got swept up in I'm A Celeb fever. Horrified Kate nearly fell off her chair when her co-presenter Ben, 43, tormented her with the scaly serpent wrapped around his hands. Scroll down for video Hilarious: Kate Garraway ran away as Ben Shephard terrorised her with a snake after a millipede urinated on him... as GMB got swept up in I'm A Celeb fever on Friday The breakfast host's jaw dropped when she confronted her fears on live TV. Good Morning Britain's Kate begged for her tormentor to stop as she said in protest: 'No, no, no Lorraine!' Before Ben decided to give his co-host a fright, he bravely handled some of the jungle critters himself. Funny times: Before Ben decided to give his co-host a fright, he bravely handled some of the jungle critters himself Face your fears: The presenter recoiled in terror when she came face-to-face with the wriggling reptile as GMB got swept up in I'm A Celeb fever The former The Xtra Factor presenter's hands were covered in millipede wee after the bug snaked across his palms. He announced: 'It's weeing on me! Im covered in millipede wee. I need sanitiser.' Kate responded with the cheeky quip: 'I quite like him now. Hes treated you with the respect you deserve. Well done.' Sheer terror: Horrified Kate nearly fell off her chair when her co-presenter Ben tormented her with the scaly serpent wrapped around his hands Screaming for help: The breakfast host begged for her tormentor to stop as she said in protest: 'No, no, no Lorraine!' Yuck: The former The Xtra Factor presenter's hands were covered in millipede wee after the bug snaked across his palms During Thursday's I'm A Celeb, Noel Edmonds caused quite a stir when he made his late arrival into the star-studded camp. Earlier in November, Piers Morgan joked about Kate jetting off to the snake-infested jungle in Australia to compete on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here. The outspoken presenter admitted he would tune in to watch the shower scenes. But Kate responded: 'I thought you'd like to see me buried underground with all of the creepy crawlies!' Hanging out: During Thursday's I'm A Celeb, Noel Edmonds caused quite a stir when he made his late arrival into the star-studded camp On the screen! Ollie Locke also got involved in the I'm A Celeb-inspired trial Squeamish! The former Made In Chelsea star looked terrified when he took part in the Bushtucker Trial-inspired event on Good Morning Britain Horror: Ollie recoiled in fear when he came face-to-face with the snake They have vowed to not let her cheating betrayal mar their marriage. And Katya Jones enjoyed a night out without her husband Neil as she headed out with her Strictly Come Dancing co-star Amy Dowden in Mayfair on Thursday night. The professional dancer, 29, was dressed to the nines as she slipped into a black a-line dress and grey furry coat. Glam: Katya Jones enjoyed a night without her husband Neil as she headed out with her Strictly Come Dancing co-star Amy Dowden in Mayfair on Thursday night The sophisticated dress skimmed over Katya's toned frame, showcasing her tremendous pins due to its knee-high hemline. She added a boost to her height with gold open-toe heels and amped up the glamour in a furry coat and red tassel earrings. The Russian beauty wore her raven locks back in a sleek bun and finished off her party outfit with a magenta lipstick, blush-swept cheeks and soft brown eye-shadow. Elegant: The professional dancer, 29, was dressed to the nines as she slipped into a black a-line dress and grey furry coat for her evening out Katya was joined by Amy, Luba Mushtuk, Janette Manrara and husband Alijaz Skorjanec, Zoe Ball and Johannes Radebe for the night out. Earlier on in the series, Katya and her partner comedian Seann Walsh faced a huge backlash after the pair were spotted sharing a kiss together on a night out in London. The comedian issued a feeble apology in which he blamed his actions on alcohol, while Katya echoed the sentiments however insisted her marriage to fellow Strictly Come Dancing professional Neil is fine. Pals: The sophisticated dress skimmed over Katya's toned frame, showcasing her tremendous pins due to its knee-high hemline, while Amy looked chic in a tailored black coat Time to party: The girls' were joined by fellow dancer Johannes Radebe for the night out However it appears that Katya's other half has reason to worry again, as the pair are said to be dancing together for the finale in a few weeks, according to The Sun. A source told the publication: 'Neil will be gutted as when Seann was voted off the show, he was glad to see the back of him. 'Since he went, the atmosphere backstage has improved and Neil has been visibly happier. Loved-up: Married couple Janette Manrara and Aljaz Skorjanec held hands as they left the Grosvenor Hotel in Mayfair Suited and booted: Johannes Radebe looked sharp in his all-black ensemble Casual chic: Zoe Ball looked comfy as she stepped out in a turtleneck jumper and denim jeans 'Things are back on track in his marriage - so hell be gutted when Seann is back on set.' MailOnline contacted their representatives at the time. After the kiss came to light, Seann was dumped by girlfriend Rebecca online in a scathing statement in which she revealed she was taking their beloved cat Winston. And just last week, Jones couldn't help but post a cryptic message about 'never looking back' as he took to Instagram to share a smouldering snap. Chic: Nadiya Bychkova donned a fluffy black coat over a figure-hugging grey dress Elegant: Luba Mushtuk was seen leaving the Grosvenor Hotel in a blue longline coat, which had a fur trim Back on track: While Neil and Katya have got their marriage back on track, reports circulated saying he is 'gutted' she will have to reunite with Seann for the finale in December The snap came amid reports Neil allegedly likened Seann to a 'scab' and said he was 'delighted' his wife and the comedian were kicked off Strictly after the pair were caught kissing. According to The Sun, Neil has reportedly been telling his friends he can 'finally move on' from the cheating scandal as Seann has left the show meaning the atmosphere is 'great again'. Sources claim Katya and Neil, who has since forgiven his wife for the indiscretion, are worried they will be dropped by BBC bosses because of the incident and subsequent backlash from viewers. She's Hollywood royalty and is set to take the stage in an exclusive show in London in January. And Cate Blanchett, 49, was enjoying a rare night off from work as she left exclusive private members' club Soho House in London on Thursday evening. The Lord of the Rings star paired a brown and black chequered coat with pink tinted glasses as she wrapped up warm from the autumnal chill. Chic: Cate Blanchett, 49, showed off her quirky sense of style in pink glasses and a tweed coat leaving Soho House in London on Thursday evening Cate teamed her coat with a pair of sexy leather trousers and heeled black boots. The actress also wore an androgynous black velvet shirt, with a high neckline. The British-Australian star placed her belongings in a monogrammed brown overnight leather bag embroidered with her initials 'C B' . Effortlessly cool: Adding a touch of cool to the look, Cate wore a pair of sexy leather trousers and a heeled black boot and carried a monogrammed brown leather bag Adding to her natural beauty, Cate added a pop of colour to her lips with a deep rose gloss, and extended her eyelashes with a light lick of mascara. The star's outing comes as it was announced she will be starring in When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other in the West End, alongside Game of Thrones star Stephen Dillane. The play 'explores the messy, often violent nature of desire and the fluid, complicated roles that men and women play', according to the National Theatre. It is based on Samuel Richardson's 1740 novel, Pamela, during which 'six characters act out a dangerous game of sexual domination and resistance'. All tickets are balloted, and cost between 10 to 58. It has been a busy creative period for Cate, with the two-time Oscar winner recently signing on to star in the new FX limited series Mrs America. Created and written by Mad Men co-producer Dahvi Waller, the nine-episode series will feature Cate as activist Phyllis Schlafly, who led the fight against the movement to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Exciting new role: The star's outing comes as it was announced she will be starring in When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other in the West End The ERA is a proposed amendment to the US Constitution stating that equal rights may not be denied on the basis of one's sex. The amendment was passed by the US Congress in 1972 but failed to win the backing of enough states. 'Through the eyes of the women of that era ... the series explores how one of the toughest battlegrounds in the culture wars of the '70s helped give rise to the Moral Majority and forever shifted our political landscape,' FX said in a statement. Mrs America, which will begin production next year, will mark the actress' first role in a US television program. 'I feel privileged to have this opportunity to collaborate with Dahvi, Stacey (Sher) and Coco (Francini) under the robust and fearless FX umbrella,' Cate recently said in a statement. 'I am extremely excited about delving into the material as there couldn't be a more appropriate time to peel back the layers of this recent period of history, which couldn't be more relevant today.' She has jetted to the Maldives to celebrate her ten-year wedding anniversary with her husband Chris Hughes. And Amanda Holden showcased her incredibly-toned figure in a green bikini as she posted a bikini-clad Instagram snap on Friday. The Britain's Got Talent judge, 47, looked thoroughly relaxed as she lay on the seabed gazing at the sky in the tiny two-piece. Stunning: Amanda Holden showcased her toned figure in a green bikini as she posted a bikini-clad Instagram snap on Friday as she holidays in the Maldives with husband Chris The television personality seductively posed as she modelled the tiny triangle bikini top, which highlighted her washboard abs while the string bottoms made the most of her lithe limbs. She captioned the snap: 'And #breathe #theplacetobeMaldives #secondhoneymoon #love'. Amanda and Chris tied the knot in December 2008 at Babington House in Somerset - two years after welcoming their first child together; daughter Alexa (Lexi), 12. Sun-worshiper: The television personality regularly litters her Instagram with bikini snaps (posting this one during her time in Corsica earlier this year) 10 years on: Amanda and Chris tied the knot in December 2008 at Babington House in Somerset They are also parents to daughter Hollie, six - who they welcomed a year after Amanda's tragic stillbirth after falling pregnant with son Theo. Amanda has since candidly spoken of the heartbreak she endured losing her son, admitting it was 'one of the most surreal moments of my life.' Speaking about her loss in an interview on Giovanna Fletchers Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast recently, Amanda recalled the moment her son's heart stopped: 'They scanned my tummy... and it was one of the most surreal moments of my life. 'I remember hearing this woman screaming and shouting and I was thinking, "Where is that coming from?" And it was coming from me and I didnt even know I was doing it. Milestone: The Britain's Got Talent judge has jetted to the Maldives to celebrate her ten-year wedding anniversary with her husband Chris Hughes 'The obstetrician was trying to tell me that my baby's heart had stopped beating and was not alive anymore and I just was saying, "I dont know what Im going to tell Lexi," and this is the woman I could hear, screaming that. And I didnt know it was me. It was the oddest, most awful thing.' Adding to the pain was the fact that Amanda then learned that she would have to give birth to her son, just moments after learning he'd passed away. 'The weirdest thing was, I forgot completely that I would have to give birth,' she recalled. 'Thats the other thing. You go, "Oh my god I have... get this baby out of me. And I absolutely cannot do that..." I don't how I did that. 'The hours that followed were awful. I refused to have a natural birth, because I just thought I cant do that, I need to have an operation and I need to get this baby out of me, and I was really cross and really heart broken and all the things. 'You just cant imagine, I was absolutely scared to death and I kept saying to my midwives, "When he comes out, I dont know if I am going to be able to hold him..." You know, I was so cross, scared to death.' She continued: 'I remember Jackie [Amandas midwife] saying, "We are really struggling to pull him out of you, he doesnt want to leave you," which was really sad. 'She held him in her arms and Chris left the room. He waited 'til right to the moment and said, "Mandy, I cant you know I need to leave the room." 'And I respected anything he wanted to do, was totally fine by me, and he left the room and Jackie just described him to me and I just said, "I just need him, Im still a mummy." Its the weirdest sensation. And I just held him and he was perfect.' They narrowly avoided elimination from Strictly Come Dancing last week after receiving the lowest score from the judges. Yet AJ Pritchard and Lauren Steadman proved they were moving forward as they headed for a cosy lunch at a London branch of Wagamama on Wednesday. Looking casual in a blue T-shirt and black cap, 24-year-old AJ looked content with partner Lauren, 25, as they both tucked into a bowl of noodles. Cosy: AJ Pritchard, 24, and Lauren Steadman, 25, put their low scores behind them as they headed for a cosy lunch at Wagamama in London on Wednesday Paralympian Lauren cut a casual figure in an all-grey ensemble with white Converse as she sipped on a glass of water in the midst of their meal. Gentleman AJ then put his arm around his partner as they left the restaurant while he wrapped up warm in a bright orange Superdry hoodie while Lauren opted for a navy blue puffer jacket with a fur detail on the hood. AJ, who was linked to his partner Mollie King last year, earlier sparked rumours of romance with Lauren after he told the Mirror: 'You never know what's going to happen in the future'. Casual chic: Gentleman AJ then put his arm around his partner as they left the restaurant while wrapped up warm in a bright orange Superdry hoodie while Lauren opted for a navy blue puffer jacket with a fur detail on the hood as she clutched a cup of coffee Speaking to the paper earlier this week, he said: 'I am very protective of Lauren because we have worked so close together... 'There are different things that she will talk about in training that she would never talk about on camera... 'It's for that reason that we have grown so close together and we will be friends for life and who knows in the future. You never know what is going to happen.' It comes as Lauren will be fighting for her place in the competition after getting just 25 with her Argentine Tango to 'River' by Bishop Briggs, leaving Lauren as one of the favourites to leave the competition along with Graeme Swann and Charles Venn. Despite giving it her all the performance earned a mixed reception from the panel, who said that while she got the technique right, the performance missed the sizzling chemistry. Bruno said: 'It's watching a little girl growing up in front of your eyes, all dark and moody and scary, I love the intent you put into the dance, but it lacked a little bit of fluidity and intimacy... Fighting to stay: Lauren will be fighting for her place in the competition after getting just 25 with her Argentine Tango to 'River' by Bishop Briggs last weekend 'Imagine a conversation, it's ver,y very grown up and it's very difficult to portray, but you did the best you could with a v difficult dance.' Darcy added: 'I have to be with the judges here, it's so hard and it did look challenging for you, that extraordinary focus you have, you were putting it solely into the technique and you were really missing that chemistry and passion. 'To have that narrative so each movement has purpose, and for me that was just missing, you just have a little bit time on that one.' They might hail from the land Down Under, but that hasn't stopped Australia's biggest celebrities from celebrating Thanksgiving in the US. Actress Naomi Watts, 50, led the Australian stars celebrating the American holiday, with the likes of Nicole Kidman and Teresa Palmer also marking the day. The Ring star Naomi took to Instagram on Thursday, to share a simple snap of herself rugged up in a plaid coat with a beanie on and cosying up to her pet dog. 'Grateful for so much!' Naomi Watts (pictured) and Nicole Kidman lead the Australian stars celebrating Thanksgiving in the US... as pregnant Teresa Palmer bakes vegan banana bread with her family In her caption, she wrote, 'Happy thanksgiving everyone. Thankful and Grateful for so much... Love to all xxx.' Her close friend and fellow actor Nicole Kidman, 51, also marked the special day with a greeting on her social media. The Academy Award winner wrote: 'Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I'm so thankful for my loved ones and all of you xx.' Her husband Keith Urban, 51, followed suit with his own Instagram message of gratitude to his legions of fans. Thankful: Her close friend and fellow actor Nicole Kidman (pictured) also marked the special day with a greeting on her social media. In her Instagram post, she wrote: 'Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I'm so thankful for my loved ones and all of you xx' Holiday: Her husband Keith Urban (pictured) followed suit with his own message of gratitude to his legions of fans. The country music superstar said: 'Happy Thanksgiving!!! We are so thankful for all of YOU! #GraffitiUWorldTour' The country music superstar said, 'Happy Thanksgiving!!! We are so thankful for all of YOU! #GraffitiUWorldTour.' Pregnant actress Teresa Palmer, 32, spent the holiday with her husband Mark Webber and their two sons Forest, two, and Bodhi, four. In her caption of her candid family photo she wrote that she was thankful for many of things, in particular her family, friends and for her soon-to-be born daughter. She also shared an adorable clip on her Instagram Story of her sons attempting to smash bananas for her vegan banana bread. Family time: Pregnant actress Teresa Palmer (pictured) spent the holiday with her husband Mark Webber and their two sons Forest, two, and Bodhi, four. In her caption she wrote that she was thankful for many of things, in particular her family, friends and for her soon-to-be born daughter Helping hands: She also shared an adorable clip of her sons attempting to smash bananas for her vegan banana bread 'Thankful everything in my life!' Catwoman star Ruby Rose (pictured) kept her message simple and sweet sharing a short clip of her pet dog (right) Catwoman star Ruby Rose, 32, kept her social media message simple and sweet sharing a short clip of her pet dogs. She also posted a snap of actress Elizabeth Banks' list of things she's thankful for and added she was thankful for, 'everything in my life, my friends, my family, my dogs and my job.' Extra TV presenter Renee Bargh, 32, celebrated thanksgiving with with rumoured beau, actor Glen Powell, 30, and his family. Meeting the family? Extra TV presenter Renee Bargh (left) celebrated thanksgiving with with rumoured beau, actor Glen Powell (right) and his family Sweet treats: She posted a photo of sumptuous selection of desserts including a pumpkin pie She took to Instagram to post a photo of sumptuous selection of desserts including a pumpkin pie. Former Neighbours star Olympia Valance, 25, celebrated her first Thanksgiving with friends. Her holiday feast included roast vegetables, beans, stuffing and the all important turkey. Yum! Former Neighbours star Olympia Valance (pictured) celebrated her first Thanksgiving with friends Delicious: Olympia's holiday feast included roast vegetables, beans, stuffing and the all important turkey 'Forever thankful': Bindi Irwin, who is half-American through her mother Terri, also marked the holiday with a photo of herself, her mum, younger brother Bob, boyfriend Chandler and a friend from Australia Zoo (pictured) Bindi Irwin, who is half-American through her mother Terri, also marked the holiday with a photo of herself, her mum, younger brother Bob, boyfriend Chandler and a friend from Australia Zoo. In the caption, the wildlife warrior, 20, wrote, 'Forever thankful. #MyEverything.' Shanina Shaik, 27, and her husband DJ Rukus - Gregory Andrews - went all out for the special American holiday. 'Won't be feeling guilty today': Shanina Shaik (left) and her husband DJ Rukus - Gregory Andrews - went all out for the special American holiday. She feasted on a plateful of turkey, steamed beans, spinach, potato bake, corn and corn bread After months of 'training like an angel' for the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, she feasted on a plateful of turkey, steamed beans, spinach, potato bake, corn and corn bread. 'Won't be feeling guilty today with all that food in my belly,' the statuesque beauty wrote in reference to Thanksgiving dinner. While pregnant former Home and Away star Tammin Sursok, 35, shared a sweet selfie of herself with husband Sean and their five-year-old daughter Phoenix, after recalling her heartbreaking miscarriage. Her Strictly Come Dancing partner couldn't hide his fury when her dancing came under criticism. But Faye Tozer was all smiles as she headed to rehearsals in London on Friday, looking stylish in a black coat. The Steps star, 43, looked confident and relaxed ahead of her waltz performance this weekend with Giovanni Pernice. Feeling confident: Faye Tozer was all smiles as she headed to Strictly Come Dancing rehearsals in London on Friday, just a few days after her pro partner Giovanni Pernice couldn't hide his fury when her dancing came under fire Faye stepped out in figure hugging black bottoms and a black coat with suede boots. She kept her blonde hair tucked back from her face and was sporting casual make-up. Also spotted heading to rehearsals was her Strictly competition, Joe Sugg, 27, clad in a denim jacket and tracksuit while carrying a Burberry suit bag. The YouTube star and pro partner Dianne Buswell will be taking on commercial and street dance this weekend after scoring three tens last week. Casual: Faye kept her blonde hair tucked back from her face and was sporting casual make-up Competition: Also spotted heading to rehearsals was Joe Sugg, 27, who was overjoyed at scoring three tens in the BBC1 show on Saturday In the zone: Joe and pro partner Dianne Buswell will be taking on commercial and street dance this weekend On Wednesday's episode of It Takes Two, Giovanni, 28, couldn't hide his fury as Faye's dancing skills came under fire. The professional dancer sat in the audience as he listened to dance veteran Ian Waite offer his viewpoint but his face turned to thunder when Ian suggested Faye needed to 'be careful' with her foot turns. Ian joked from the offset that he would have to behave himself when critiquing Faye's recent training, as she and Giovanni are set to dance a waltz on Saturday. Raging: Giovanni Pernice couldn't hide his fury on Wednesday night, after Faye's dancing was criticised on spin-off It Takes Two He said: 'This is looking lovely. Gorgeous. Obviously I'm saying that because Giovanni's here,' leading to a small smile from the Italian pro. Things started nicely enough, but Ian soon offered a more cutthroat view of the routine, suggesting that Faye be more aware of her foot turns when doing heel leads in the fluid dance. He said: 'What I did notice here - be careful Faye - because sometimes you turn your foot out too much so you don't get your lovely heel leads in there.' Views: The awkward moment came as pro Ian Waite was offering his critique on each of the couples Explosive: Fellow Strictly pro Ian Waite offered his views on Giovanni and Faye's waltz training, leaving Giovanni furious when Faye was told she needed to 'be careful' with her feet Immediately the camera cut to Giovanni showcasing his furious face while Faye laughed alongside him. Trying to salvage the situation Ian quickly added: 'It's only some of them,' while Giovanni continued his angry expression. It comes after Faye and Giovanni left viewers hot under the collar over the weekend with a sizzling paso doble, wowing the audience with the fiery routine in Blackpool's Tower Ballroom. Getting into shape: Earlier in the show, Faye and Giovanni showed off their holding position, as they prepare to dance a waltz this Saturday Complete with plenty of fire displays and bull fighting-esque movements, her performance left everyone struggling to catch their breath. Darcy gushed: 'Beautiful strong delivery, dramatic attack but what you kept was that femininity and that was difficult, that is hard when the music is so powerful, and you have to keep that with the action of the movements, that extraordinary straight lift. Being passed around, really well controlled.' Bruno added: 'I'm still steaming like a pressure cooker but I have to say the dynamic and structure of the dance was superb, every partner is different, but this was one was the paso dominatrix.' This resulted in yet another high score from the duo, with 38 points out of 40 and left viewers at home gobsmacked by the pair's sizzling performance. Simon Cowell invited his fellow X Factor judges, Robbie Williams and Ayda Field to an extravagant Thanksgiving dinner soiree at his London home on Thursday. The couple were pictured leaving the property hand in hand after indulging in the autumnal feast, as Ayda shared glimpses of the party on social media. Long tables were lined with floral arrangements with fairy lights and each guest had a personalised name card made out of leaf-shaped biscuits. Seasonal soiree: Robbie Williams and Ayda Field attended Simon Cowell's woodland-themed Thanksgiving dinner at his home in London on Thursday evening Happy family: Ayda shared glimpses of the party on social media, as she sat with Simon and his girlfriend Lauren Silverman (centre) Simon put on the very plush party with the help of his stunning girlfriend Lauren Silverman, 41, and their young son Eric, 4. Light flooded the room from the hanging candles which brought attention to the stunning autumnal setting. The tables were laid with wine glasses galore while berries, roses and leaves in red and green gave the dinner party a wonderful woodland atmosphere. Wow: The tables were laid with wine glasses galore while berries, roses and leaves in red and green gave the dinner party a wonderful woodland atmosphere The incredible spread: The autumnal dinner feast had extravagant table dressings and fairy lights Strength to strength: Robbie and his wife held each other's hands when they made their departure from the party Each place was set with a menu which informed guests of all the delicious foods they would be sampling including butternut squash soup and honey glazed carrots. As well as the printed menu, each table place had a gingerbread biscuit in the shape of a leaf with their name personalised on the sweet treat in salted caramel icing. The music mogul showed his abundance of generosity as guests left the swanky venue with quirky presents. Special: Ayda and Robbie's daughter Teddy, six, was also in attendance and she, along with other guests had a personalised gingerbread biscuit place setting Let Me Entertain You: X Factor judges Robbie and Ayda posed for more pics with Lauren as candle light flooded the room Robbie and Ayda led the star-studded guest list and were overjoyed to spend the holiday season with Simon and his family. The X Factor judges, who have a very close relationship with Simon, even brought their children to the glamorous occasion. Ayda puckered up her lips as she cosied up to her rocker husband when they posed for a flirty close-up selfie. Kisses from the missus! Ayda puckered up her lips as she cosied up to her rocker husband when they posed for a flirty close-up selfie What a treat: The music mogul showed his abundance of generosity as guests left the swanky venue with quirky presents The blonde bombshell dressed to catch the eye in her scarlet patterned dress and she defined her features with heavy eyeliner. Meanwhile, Robbie look suave in his patterned casual shirt which he paired with a two-piece suit and shiny shoes. She publicly thanked Simon and his ladylove Lauren for their 'amazing' dinner party as she expressed her 'deep' gratitude while she shared the snaps on Instagram. How lovely: Ayda dressed to catch the eye in her patterned scarlet dress and boots Sensational in stripes: Robbie looked suave in his pinstriped suit when he left the bash in his shiny brogues She shared with her followers: 'Thank you to Lauren and Simon for hosting an amazing Thanksgiving dinner. 'I am so deeply grateful to my beautiful friends and family for all the joy and laughter they bring me. And the abundance of health and great adventures we share. 'Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, to those who celebrate, and those who don't. Love and happiness to all... AW xx.' (sic) Great night: Simon Cowell put the rest of Hollywood to shame with his extravagant Thanksgiving dinner soiree on Thursday where no expenses were spared Karl Stefanovic is due to marry Jasmine Yarbrough in Mexico on December 8. And a source said on Saturday that the couple have already obtained the required marriage license before they officially tie the knot. 'Karl and Jasmine have secured their marriage licence ahead of their wedding in Mexico,' the source told Daily Mail Australia. Scroll down for video Almost man and wife! Karl Stefanovic and Jasmine Yarbrough (pictured) have secured their wedding licence ahead of their Mexican nuptials, a source confirmed to Daily Mail Australia on Saturday 'It was done recently ... both are looking forward to celebrating with their family and friends in Mexico,' the source added. Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Karl and Jasmine for comment. When the couple marry in Mexico, their nuptials will be legally recognised in Australia, provided they have completed the required paperwork. Getting ready for the big day! 'Karl and Jasmine have secured their marriage licence ahead of their wedding in Mexico,' the source told Daily Mail Australia on Saturday 'The marriage licence was done recently ... both are looking forward to celebrating with their family and friends in Mexico,' the source added. Karl is pictured with his family including brother Peter (far right) and mother Jenny (centre) The first of the celebrations: The couple held a commitment ceremony at Palm Beach in Sydney in March The couple held a commitment ceremony in Sydney in March. Karl, 44, and Jasmine 34, had an intimate ceremony where they pledged their love for one another at a $13 million Palm Beach mansion, on Sydney's Northern Beaches. The TV host took the week following the ceremony off from the Today show, with the couple thought to be honeymooning in the South Pacific. Wedding location: Karl and his shoe designer partner are expected to tie the knot in a picturesque chapel at the One&Only Palmilla Resort (pictured) where they'll also be staying Karl and Jasmine are expected to tie the knot in a picturesque chapel at the One&Only Palmilla Resort in the seaside town of San Jose del Cabo, where they will also be staying. The wedding will be a three-day affair, with the soon-to-be newlyweds sparing no expense. They've booked two villas, one at US$8,500 (approximately AU$11,600) per night, and another for US$11000 (approximately $AU15,000) per night. Ready to celebrate: The wedding will be a three-day affair, with the soon-to-be newlyweds sparing no expense (pictured is another couple marrying at the chapel) According to a Sydney Morning Herald report, Karl's children from his first marriage to Cassandra Thorburn, Jackson, 19, Ava, 13 and River, 13, will travel to Mexico with Karl and Jasmine. However, the paper went on to claim that the three siblings will not attend the actual wedding ceremony. Nice views! They've booked two villas, one at US$8,500 (approximately AU$11,600) per night, and another for US$11,000 (approximately $AU15,000) per night Relaxing: Karl and Jasmine are expected to get married in Mexico on December 8 before heading home to enjoy the Christmas holidays with family Also missing will be the shoe designer's 92-year-old grandmother Isabel who cannot endure the flight all the way to San Jose del Cabo for the big day. Jasmine's parents Cheryl and Bobby hosted a high tea earlier this month so that her beloved nan could be included. Among those on the guest list are reportedly Jasmine's Mara & Mine business partner Tamie Ingham and her sister Katie, James Packer and his girlfriend Kylie Lim. Joined in: Jasmine's parents Cheryl and Bobby hosted a high tea so that her beloved nan Isabel (pictured) could be included. The 92-year-old grandmother can't endure the flight all the way to San Jose del Cabo for the big day Also rumoured to be attending are Richard Wilkins and his girlfriend Virgina Burmeister, and Karl's manager Sharon Finnigan. It comes after Karl revealed some candid details of what punters can expect from his upcoming Mexican nuptials. 'I'm marrying a Queensland girl, there is going to be a few Queensland elements to the wedding. It's a really important thing for us,' he told The Courier-Mail. Karl revealed some candid details of what punters can expect from his nuptials: 'I'm marrying a Queensland girl, there is going to be a few Queensland elements to the wedding. It's a really important thing for us,' he told The Courier-Mail Karl also revealed that his biggest hope was that there was 'a lot of love' for him and Jasmine on their wedding day. 'There's going to be a lot of love in the room, and I think it will be a really nice opportunity to say "thanks and we're getting on with it",' he told the paper. Karl went on to say that the couple are 'very fortunate to have met each other' and 'just want to focus on getting on with life'. Good will: Karl also revealed that his biggest hope was that there was 'a lot of love' for him and Jasmine on their wedding day He went on to reveal that after the destination wedding in Los Cabos, he and Jasmine will spend the remainder of their honeymoon back home. As their nuptials take place prior to Christmas, the newlyweds will head back to Queensland to visit with Karl's mother Jenny over the holiday season. 'We've got to go see my mum up in Cairns, which is going to be hot, and we've got other family in Queensland, so we're just going to be hanging around which is going to be so nice,' he said. The couple confirmed their engagement in February, with New Idea reporting Karl had popped the question to Jasmine during a holiday in Fiji. Roxy Jacenko has revealed she purchased her family's new $6.5 million mega-mansion without any financial help from her husband Oliver Curtis. And after paying for the pricey three-storey abode in the ritzy Sydney suburb of Vaucluse all on her own, she's keeping her hubby off the legal paperwork. When asked by Domain why the PR queen had settled on the property in just her name, the 38-year-old responded: 'That's because I bought it'. Scroll down for video 'That's because I bought it': Roxy Jacenko reveals she's keeping Oliver Curtis off the paperwork of new $6.5 million family home as she paid for it... but he's still getting his own gym! During an exclusive chat with Daily Mail Australia in September, the beauty revealed the extraordinarily lavish renovations she has planned for their new family home. The entrepreneurial blonde explained she would be installing a vanity room, a children's playroom, and a room just for her Hermes Birkins. And lucky for Oliver, his wife will kindly be installing him his own home gym. A room JUST for her Hermes Birkins! PR queen Roxy recently revealed the extraordinarily lavish renovations she has planned for the abode in the ritzy Sydney suburb of Vaucluse (pictured) Roxy, who currently resides with her family in Sydney's North Bondi, revealed she would be working with renowned interior designer Blainey North. The couple, along with children Pixie, seven, and Hunter, four, are expected to move into their new home in the new year. 'I have a hair and makeup room going in, a full gym for (husband) Oli and I, a bigger cinema and a playroom for the kids,' she confessed. Roxy, however, admitted that the piece de resistance on the ritzy renovation would be a room just for her collection of Birkins, by French designer Hermes. Display room! The blonde powerhouse confessed that she would be creating a room JUST for her Birkin collection (above) - which is thought to be worth approximately $1 million It's believed the blonde powerhouse has around fifteen of the exclusive bags, with a collective value of $1 million. The prize in her collection is a black crocodile skin handbag, which Hermes has revealed has an estimated value of AUD $84,350. Birkin bags can retail anywhere from $11,000 to $300,000. Never one to skimp on style, the Sweaty Betty PR founder told Daily Mail Australia that some of her collection is very 'rare' and also includes a number of 'Kelly' bags. The business-minded personality is a diehard Hermes fan, calling her collection 'art' and attending the brand's catwalk show at Paris Fashion Week in the past. Not up to scratch! Despite the mansion, situated in Sydney's ritzy eastern suburbs being a dream for most people, Roxy said it would undergo a number of changes Fit for the queen of Sydney's social scene, the palatial residence offers a stand-alone master suite on the top floor, steam room and a pool. Despite it being a dream home for most, ambitious Roxy said she was all about the improvements. As for whether it will inspire a stint on hit reality show The Block, Roxy said she was far too busy to commit to a filming schedule. Family home! The property will be a new family home for Roxy and her family, partner Oliver (pictured) and their children (Pixie, Hunter and their Pomeranian Oreo also pictured) Away from the renovations, Roxy and Oliver are set to reveal all in a no-holds-barred interview with Melissa Doyle on Sunday Night. And in a new preview for the tell-all talk, an emotional Roxy is seen admitting that she had a 'nervous breakdown' following her husband's incarceration for insider trading in 2016. 'I couldn't cope,' admits the 38-year-old. 'I had a nervous breakdown.' 'How has this happened to me?' she asks herself, before Melissa says that the PR mogul 'went off the rails.' Guwahati : Two people were killed in a grenade explosion carried out by suspected ULFA (I) militants in upper Assams Sivsagar district on Wednesday evening. According to the reports, the grenade exploded at a hardware shop at Demow area in the district at around 5-30 pm. One person identified as Anup Gupta died on spot, while one succumbed to his injuries in hospital. A top police official said that, trader Kamal Agarwal was critically injured and he was immediately rushed to Assam Medical College Hospital in Dibrugarh, where he succumbed to his injuries. Following the explosion, top police officials had rushed to the spot and cordoned off the area. Security forces have launched operation against the attackers in the area. Locals said that, suspected ULFA (I) militants were involved in the incident. Meanwhile, Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal has strongly condemned on the subversive incident and directed Assam DGP Kuladhar Saikia to take immediate steps to nab the attackers. It's already one of the most widely anticipated movies of next year, with a star-studded cast and controversial story-line. And Margot Robbie was spotted on the set of the upcoming flick about Roger Ailes - the disgraced former boss of Fox News. The 28-year-old actress was seen making a phone call as she filmed scenes in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday. She plays Kayla Pospisil, a fictional associate producer for Fox News. Filming: Margot Robbie was spotted on the set of the upcoming flick about Roger Ailes - the disgraced former boss of Fox News The Wolf of Wolf Street beauty flashed her legs in a knee-skimming flared skirt, and black heels. Her blonde tresses were loose, with a braid pinned around the side. She is seen looking nervous as she makes a phone call, outside in the street - which is meant to look like New York City. In character: The 28-year-old actress was seen making a phone call as she filmed scenes in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday The film - said to be called Fair and Balanced, boasts an all-star cast that includes John Lithgow as Roger Ailes and Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson. Charlize Theron is playing Meghan Kelly and is also producing the film. Connie Britton, Allison Janney and Kate McKinnon are all set to co-star in the upcoming Jay Roach-directed film, about the women who decide to take on the Fox News boss and the toxic male culture which presided. As chairman of the network, Ailes helped launch the careers of Kelly and Carlson. Unrecognisable: Margot also wears a number of prosthetic scars for her forthcoming role as Elizabeth First However, as several reports of Ailes' sexual misconduct toward Kelly, Carlson and more surfaced, the powerful media mogul was forced to resign in 2016. Meanwhile, Margot is also promoting her role as Elizabeth First in period drama Mary Queen of Scots with Saoirse Ronan, as well as many films in which she'll reprise her role as the villainous Harley Quinn, including The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, Birds of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) and an untitled project featuring Quinn and the Joker. She is also set to reunite with Leonardo DiCaprio for Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Sofia Richie celebrated Thanksgiving with her mother and a group of friends on Thursday. The 20-year-old aspiring model documented her day in Malibu on social media, sharing pictures of her mother Diane and a pal, Bianca Bowes. Her dad Lionel Richie didn't appear to be there, but they were joined by other pals at a picturesque home right on the beach. Meanwhile, Sofia's boyfriend Scott Disick was celebrating the holiday with his ex Kourtney Kardashian and their brood. Fun: Sofia Richie spent Thanksgiving with her mom Diane Richie (left) and a pal, Bianca Bowes Scott - whom dated Kourtney, 39, on and off for almost a decade until 2015 - rung in the festive season with the extended Kardashian clan and their children, Mason, eight, Penelope, five, and Reign, three. Kourtney posted a photo of her with Scott and the kids on Thursday. She wrote: 'I woke up this morning in bed with my children, in the same house as my sisters (minus @khloekardashian i miss you), my brothers, the father of my kids, my mommy, my grandma, my nieces and nephew. I feel beyond grateful. Happy Thanksgiving!' It's unknown whether Sofia was invited to the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star's Thanksgiving get together. Meanwhile... Scott Disick spent the day with ex Kourtney Kardashian, who shared a snap of the pair with their children Kourtney also took to her Instagram story to post several videos of the famous family's feast being prepared, which was largely cooked by the youngest sister in the family, 21-year-old Kylie Jenner. Family matriarch Kris Jenner took charge when it came to making brownies, whilst Kourtney joked in the clips that she was 'teaching' Kylie how to cook their extravagant meal. Meanwhile, Khloe Kardashian and her seven-month-old daughter True weren't present at the get together, as they were spending the holiday in Cleveland, where Khloe's boyfriend - and True's father - Tristan Thompson lives. An insider said: 'Tristan's schedule worked out so they could spend Thanksgiving together in Cleveland. 'It's True's first Thanksgiving and Khloe wants to celebrate it as a family. It's very important to her that True has her own family traditions and is with both her mom and dad.' Joanna Gaines counted her blessings on Thursday as she celebrated Thanksgiving with her family including the latest addition, baby Crew. The Fixer Upper host, 40, posted a picture showing the five-month-old holding hands with 12-year-old sister Ella. The siblings were relaxing on the sofa and bundled in a furry blanket. Sweet moment: Joanna Gaines shared an adorable snap five-month-old Crew with big sister Ella as she gave thanks on Thursday Snuggles: She also shared a snap of her son cuddling his bunny blanket She captioned: 'Thankful' followed by a heart emoji. The interior designer and her husband, Chip, 44, are also parents to Drake, 13, Duke, 12, and Emmie, eight. Joanna's parents Jerry and Nan Stevens joined in the fun too, with Nan cooking up a storm for the celebration. The fest had a Lebanese twist, in homage to the heritage of her late paternal grandfather. While sharing pictures of the incredible spread, Joanna wrote: 'My Korean mama made this amazing Lebanese spread. Grandpa Stevens would be proud.' Family time: Joanna's parents Jerry and Nan Stevens joined in the fun too Feast! Joanna's mother, who is from Korea, cooked up a Lebanese inspired spread in honor of her late father-in-law It has been a particularly momentous year for the Gaines family. In June, the Kansas native announced the arrival of her fifth child in an Instagram post. 'Our baby boy, Crew Gaines, is here and we couldn't be more in love,' she began, in a photo collage. 'He made an unexpected (and speedy) entrance into the world two and a half weeks early - which is fitting given he was a sweet surprise from day one. Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers. We are so grateful.' Guide: In her new book, Homebody, Joanna details how she makes a house a home And much to their fans' delight, she and Chip are also planning on a return to TV. The couple confirmed they are in discussions with Discovery about creating a lifestyle-focused network. 'We're excited to share that we are currently in the early stages of talking with Discovery about a lifestyle-focused media network for Magnolia,' a Magnolia spokesperson recently told People. 'The details surrounding this opportunity remain a work in progress, but together, our hope is to build a different kind of platform for unique, inspiring and family-friendly content.' In the meantime, Joanna is promoting her new book, Homebody: A Guide to Creating Spaces You Never Want to Leave, which was published earlier this month. Joanna and husband Chip found international success as co-stars on their home design show, Fixer Upper. The series, which premiered in 2013, came to a halt earlier this year. Beverley Mitchell has revealed she suffered a miscarried of twins. In a heartbreaking post on her blog Growing Up Hollywood, the 7th Heaven star described how she and husband Michael Cameron were delightfully surprised by the pregnancy news, only for their new dream to come crashing down. 'A few months back Michael and I were thrilled, we had just found out we were pregnant, and though we were surprised, we were excited,' she wrote on Friday. 'It didnt take long before we began to prepare for a life filled with more little people in it.' Mourning: Beverley Mitchell has revealed she and husband Michael Cameron suffered a miscarriage of twins earlier this year 'And much to our surprise, we came to find out it was twins! After our shock, came acceptance and excitement.' But a few weeks later, she said their new dream of growing their family came crashing down: 'We had a miscarriage. This was a shock.' The 37-year-old who is already mom to five-year-old daughter Kenzie, and three-year-old son Hutton revealed her first instinct was to say she was fine. 'And to be honest; I was trying to be. I thought I had to be, for my family, for myself. I had to jump on a plane and go to work being surrounded by babies and kids while I was still miscarrying. That was interesting.' Family: The 37-year-old is already mom to five-year-old daughter Kenzie, and three-year-old son Hutton She recalled how one of her best friends had told her during her first pregnancy that 'if the pregnancy is viable it will stick, if the baby (babies) are not viable they wont.' 'Though this makes perfect sense and was something I even said when I shared the news of our pregnancy to our closest friends, this challenged me. Because though it made sense in my head, my heart could not make sense of it,' she admitted. 'I never really considered that I would miscarry being that I had already had two healthy pregnancies. 'This was my misconception, you see, I didnt know much about miscarriages and I didnt know many people who had miscarried, or so I thought.' Highs and lows: In a heartbreaking post on her blog Growing Up Hollywood, the 7th Heaven star described how they were delightfully surprised by the pregnancy news, only for their new dream to come crashing down But upon sharing her story, Beverley discovered many people around her 'shared the same scars'. 'I was now part of a group, the unspoken and hidden group who mourn their losses in the shadows,' she wrote. 'This was the hardest part, suffering in silence. 'Every time I shared what we were going through I made people uncomfortable, no one ever knows what to say, and to be honest, there is nothing to say.' She said that most people who share such stories and looking for anything in return; just the opportunity to share. Not alone: But upon sharing her story, Beverley discovered many people around her 'shared the same scars' 'It is with sharing it that the healing begins, the acceptance that it happened, it is when you ignore it or pretend that it never happened that you cause more pain,' she said. 'Dismissing it almost makes it worse.' She went on to reveal that months had passed since the miscarriage, and that she had begun to heal, thanking her 'rock' of a husband and 'ride or die' friends for their help and support. 'It is crazy how quickly you can adopt the idea of a new life and how fast that can all go away,' she wrote. 'We still have dreams of growing our family but now more than ever, I look at Kenzie, Hutton, and Michael and just feel full,' she concluded. 'If we are blessed with more children they will fill us with more love, but for now, I look at my family and I am GRATEFUL, BLESSED, and THANKFUL.' Ben Shephard fought back tears after watching a viral Christmas video which has been hailed by fans as better than the John Lewis advert. The short film called Love is a Gift by Phil Beastall, which was made for under 50, was shown on Good Morning Britain on Friday and caused the presenter, 47, to well up. I'm going again, I've just done it again! Phil what have you done to me, the host asked before Kate Garraway told the 32-year-old filmmaker from Gloucestershire: We both started crying and we are hard as nails. Emotional: Ben Shephard fought back tears after watching a viral Christmas video which has been hailed by fans as better than the John Lewis advert The short fictional tale racked up more than six million views on Facebook this week after Phil posted it in response to the store's big-budget production. The clip shows a man - played by actor Chris Ilston - ticking off the days to Christmas, seemingly in anticipation of festivities and presents. Instead, on the day, he opens up a cassette box - an annual tradition - and listens to a tape of his tragic mother's final Christmas message from beyond the grave. Close to tears: The short film called Love is a Gift by Phil Beastall (left), which was made for under 50, was shown on Good Morning Britain on Friday and caused the presenter to well up Talking about his reasons for making it, Phil told the presenters: It was a last minute decision really, I was a frustrated filmmaker and I really wanted to get a film out there. I really wanted to create something that resonated with people because especially in today's society we need a reminder that we are not just defined by our career, and family does come first." He added: I wanted to make something that makes them hug their dads, wives or their family. Much loved: The short film racked up more than six million views on Facebook this week after its creator, Phil Beastall, posted it in response to the store's big-budget production Excited: The clip shows a man - played by actor Chris Ilston - ticking off the days to Christmas, seemingly in anticipation of festivities and presents Speaking about the first time he watched the video back, he continued: I remember when I had the first edit together and I played it for the first time. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I welled up myself. Since then it's always the film I speak most proudly of. Since the emotional tale went viral, Mr Beastall has been inundated with messages from fans who claim the video could have been used instead of the expensive Elton John-themed John Lewis advert. I've just been so distracted on my phone, getting all these notifications from people saying it's better than the John Lewis advert which is the ultimate compliment, Phil explained. Tear-jerker: Instead, on the day, he opens up a cassette box - an annual tradition - and listens to a tape of his tragic mother's final Christmas message from beyond the grave Touching: Mr Beastall, from Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, made the video in 2014 but was inspired to share it again now after seeing the Elton John advert on TV From people who have lost loved ones recently, saying it's allowed them to cope better. Parents saying they've given their kids an extra squeeze, I've cried, he confessed. When asked by Kate if the company had called to offer him a job yet, the creator revealed: Not yet, where is my call! While the highly-anticipated John Lewis advert cost 7million to create, Love is a Gift was done on a budget-friendly 50. Big spender: While the highly-anticipated John Lewis advert cost 7million to create, Love is a Gift was done on a budget-friendly 50 But Phil revealed on the morning programme that in fact the film cost a little less. He said: I must admit it cost a bit less. It was just the fuel to get to where Chris lived, we used Christmas decorations we already had, and maybe lunch was a tenner. The father-of-three added: Chris had a Walkman, he went into the attic and a little spoiler, if you do watch closely the Walkman doesn't work! Spider-Man sensation Tom Holland had his first taste of Thanksgiving pumpkin in newly-released footage from the kitchen of new LA restaurant Simone on November 12. The 22-year-old Englishman and his Avengers: Infinity War director Joe Russo sampled Simone owner Jessica Largey's dish featuring kabocha squash, chanterelle mushrooms, passionfruit, and kale. 'It's hard that I'm starting with probably the best pumpkin I'll ever have,' the Current War actor told the AP of the Japanese pumpkin. Trying new things! Spider-Man sensation Tom Holland (R) had his first taste of Thanksgiving pumpkin in newly-released footage from the kitchen of new LA restaurant Simone on November 12 Try it! The 22-year-old Englishman and his Avengers: Infinity War director Joe Russo (M) sampled Simone owner Jessica Largey's (L) dish featuring kabocha squash, chanterelle mushrooms, passionfruit, and kale 'That's so good, the passionfruit as well, and the kale is crunchy so there's a nice like textural thing. That was delicious. So, I'll come back tomorrow!' Tom and the 47-year-old Emmy winner were taking a cooking class with Largey, whose restaurant opened September 20 in downtown LA's Arts District. Holland - who had tasted pumpkin seeds before - typically spends Thanksgivings in his native United Kingdom. The former West End thespian has a unique way of cooking one of his favorite comfort food recipes - macaroni and cheese - using a mug of cheese, basil, tomato sauce, rigatoni, and more cheese. The Current War actor told the AP: 'That's so good, the passionfruit as well, and the kale is crunchy so there's a nice like textural thing. That was delicious. So, I'll come back tomorrow!' Boss lady: Tom and the 47-year-old Emmy winner were taking a cooking class with Largey, whose restaurant opened September 20 in downtown LA's Arts District 'That's my go-to!' Holland has a unique way of cooking one of his favorite comfort food recipes - macaroni and cheese - using a mug of cheese, basil, tomato sauce, rigatoni, and more cheese 'You put a plate on, flip it that way and bake it,' the Pilgrimage star explained. 'Then you take it off and you have a pasta pie - it's really good and it's super easy to do and it looks way more impressive than it actually is. That's my go-to.' Tom next resumes his role as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the fourth Avengers flick helmed by the Russo Brothers, which hits UK theaters April 26 and US theaters May 3. The corporate regulator may take action against National Australia Bank over home loan fraud involving its 'introducer' program. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has taken action against individuals over the fraud and misconduct by 60 bankers, including branch managers. But ASIC only expanded its investigation to include the bank itself in the last couple of months, well after the banking royal commission examined the case in March. "I'm clearly of the view that we need to be taking action against NAB," ASIC chair James Shipton told the royal commission on Thursday. The inquiry heard some ASIC staff considered taking no action against NAB over the home loan fraud, or asking for an enforceable undertaking involving a community donation. It is not clear what form of enforcement action ASIC will take against NAB and if it will involve court proceedings. Sixty bankers were involved in fraud and misconduct connected to NAB's introducer program, which pays people outside the bank such as financial planners and accountants for successful lending referrals. Several bankers created false documents and accepted cash payments from introducers. TWO DAYS TO GO IN VICTORIA'S ELECTION CAMPAIGN WHERE THEY WENT: * Daniel Andrews - Greensborough (the electorate of Bundoora) and Deer Park (Kororoit) * Matthew Guy - Ballarat (Wendouree) WHAT THEY SAID: * "North East Link will give local roads back to local residents and only Labor will deliver it." - Premier Daniel Andrews pledging to kick-start work on the $15.8 billion toll road on Monday if re-elected on Saturday * "It'll give them a future which is brighter, a career path that is longer and importantly it will allow the police to have greater pressure taken off their workload." - Opposition Leader Matthew Guy on custody officers becoming PSOs WHAT THEY PROMISED LABOR: * Pledge to put the North East Link out to tender on Monday if re-elected * Remove three rail level crossings in Deer Park, a part of its $6.6 billion promise to remove 25 level crossings by 2025 * $5 million to establish a Victorian Wine Showcase to target key markets overseas LIBERAL: * $461 million to match Labor's budget commitment to expand Ballarat Base Hospital, with an extra $1.6 million for mother-and-baby mental health and $1.8 million for pain patients * $100 million to discount stamp duties for pensioner downsizing properties * $30 million plan to retrain 400 police cell custody officers into protective service officers * $1 million for upgrades to Alfredton Primary School * $520,000 to Greek Orthodox Archdiocese * Plan to lease Melbourne's sewage treatment service for 50 years to fund $5 billion worth of road and rail projects. The worst kept secret in Supercars has been confirmed - but it will still be hard to stomach for Ford fans. Former series champion and 2014 Bathurst winner Mark Winterbottom has confirmed he will switch from Ford to arch rival Holden in 2019 after signing with Charlie Schwerkolt's Irwin Racing outfit. Winterbottom, 37, had been linked to a manufacturer move since announcing earlier this month that he would end his 13-year association with Ford powerhouse Tickford Racing. Yet Blue Oval fans will still find it hard to stomach that Ford poster boy Winterbottom has replaced Lee Holdsworth at Irwin Racing and will link with Holden next year for the first time in his glittering career. Winterbottom will contest his last round for Ford in this weekend's season finale - the Newcastle 500. "I'm really excited. It was a big call to go ... but now I've met the team and sponsors and seen what's coming it's really exciting," said Winterbottom. While some Ford fans will be livid with the switch, Winterbottom reckoned he hadn't thought much about the ramifications of his dramatic manufacturer switch. "I haven't thought about the badge (constructors' brand) to be honest." Winterbottom said. "I've looked at the opportunity not the brand of car and haven't quite come to terms with that at the moment but from the inside they all look the same and I think the opportunity that Charlie offered was too good to turn down. "The Holden will be different but at the same time if we are winning races I'll be happy to do it in whatever equipment we have." Next year looms as a culture shock for Winterbottom who moves from the four-car, 60-staff Tickford Racing set-up to the single vehicle Irwin Racing option that has 12 employees. "A small team is refreshing. To have the whole team working together for one goal and all working together," Winterbottom said. "Every person has to deliver to get the result and that's myself, the engineers, everyone. "I'm sure there will be some difficulties like pitstops and data sharing, but in saying that with the weaknesses comes the strengths and having 10 to 12 crew with one goal and having a little family going racing is going to be a great approach." The knife used to bring down Malcolm Turnbull is now being twisted in Bill Shorten's hands. Energy policy is the true miserable ghost of the coalition, the haunting mess that will not go away. It brought down Turnbull twice, and still divides the Liberal Party. But Shorten is tripling-down on renewable energy as a vote-winner. He's taking advantage of the coalition's internal difficulties to ramp up his own energy policy. "We will build the essential energy infrastructure to power industry and manufacturing," he said in a speech on Thursday. "We will help households genuinely cut their power bills with more renewables and more storage. "And we will take real action on climate change." Right now, the coalition doesn't have a clear policy to address any of those three problems. Energy Minister Angus Taylor is working on the first one, hoping to have a shortlist of new power generation projects to support early next year - potentially including coal. Meanwhile, Labor plans to pump $10 billion extra into the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to back "value-for-money" projects, and will also spend $5 billion building the new transmission lines the energy market operator recommends. On renewable energy, the coalition struggles for clear air. That's because conversations often come back to coal - support for it, possible funding for it, and what to do with it given there is so much of it. And even the renewable projects coming online are due to the renewable energy target - which the coalition has tried hard to scrap. Shorten, in contrast, is pitching to the millions of Australians who put solar panels on their roof to cut their power bills by pushing to get one million household batteries installed. A fundamental shift in energy generation has flummoxed the Australian energy market, which was built on a 1990s-style macro-economic, top-down approach. Big generators, connected with big transmission lines, powering big markets - those days are long gone. Decentralising the grid while strengthening it against failure is the way experts see Australia's energy future, and Labor does too. But it has opened up a potential attack line for Prime Minister Scott Morrison. "We have gone from pink batts to pink batteries. They never learn from their mistakes, the Labor Party," Morrison told reporters. Kevin Rudd's "pink batts" home insulation scheme succeeded in insulating more than one million homes, but it cost more than expected and killed four young men. The batteries Labor is subsidising cost about $10,000 each - too expensive for many even with the $2000 subsidy. But those costs will come down. And Labor learned with the solar panel scheme that followed the pink batts to prosecute dodgy installers quickly. Shorten will have to find a way to combat the attack if he is to make the policy a real vote-winner. Tackling climate change is the third challenge. There is no coalition policy to reduce emissions, even as the country struggles through drought and experts say the Great Barrier Reef most likely cannot be saved. Meanwhile, Shorten is adopting the National Energy Guarantee. Labor's campaign strategists have hours of footage of Morrison, Turnbull, and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg saying how important the NEG is. It will wedge the Liberals, many of whom still believe in the policy they developed and fought so hard to make work. Turnbull's plan was to bring down power prices through the guarantee and go to an election showing his record of cutting the cost of living. His colleagues made him bleed over it, and then kicked him out. Shorten wants to explicitly link leadership instability with higher power prices. He said the worst failure of politics in the past 10 years has been leadership instability. "I submit that a close second has been the inability to move forward on climate and energy policy," he said. "We are ready to resolve the climate and energy paralysis which is holding Australia back, damaging our environment, making families and businesses pay more." Energy policy has been destructive for every prime minister in the past decade - but Shorten hopes he can make it a winner. Australia's national security could be compromised if unlawful non-citizens accused of crimes are given the choice to be deported instead of facing criminal proceedings, a peak legal body has warned. The Law Council of Australia is concerned about reports the Home Affairs Department has interpreted the Migration Act in a way that would allow such deportations. In a letter to Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton this week, council president Morry Bailes has urged the department to reconsider its view. "The consequences of not doing so may result in an undermining of Australia's criminal justice system or impeding Australians national security, enabling perpetrators of crime to evade justice by making a request for removal," he wrote. At the moment, unlawful non-citizens alleged of crimes can be subjected to a "stay certificate" that requires them to face charges. The law council argues that if such a certificate is issued, deportation requests by unlawful non-citizens should be heeded only after criminal justice has been administered. The council's letter comes after the Director of Public Prosecutions from all the states and territories recently wrote to the minister expressing concerns on the matter, bringing the issue to their attention. The matter will reportedly be discussed when state attorney-generals meet with their federal counterpart Christian Porter on Friday. A staffer for a senior NSW government minister was involved with a neo-Nazi infiltration of the state's National party, the opposition have alleged under parliamentary privilege. The staffer also took paid leave to campaign for candidates with alt-right links in the US mid-term elections, Labor MP Walt Secord alleged in the NSW upper house on Thursday. Mr Secord questioned what Roads Minister Melinda Pavey had done to remove the staffer from her office. "What steps has Minister Pavey taken to remove this individual from her office and limit his influence on her portfolio responsibilities and decisions," Mr Secord asked in the Legislative Council's question time. AAP understands the staffer took recreational leave to observe the US primaries last month and was not paid by the Republican candidate they spent time with. Close to 20 NSW Nationals members resigned from the party in October amid an internal investigation into the alt-right infiltration of the party. Screenshots of members arguing the merits of fascism, or making coded references to Hitler and skinheads on social media, have been seen by AAP. NSW Nationals state director Ross Cadell defended the staffer and said he had been cleared by an internal investigation. "We looked at dozens of people that had either a photo, a social network friend, or anything associated with this group and he came up clean in all respects," Mr Cadell told AAP. A spokesman for Ms Pavey said no government staff, campaign staff, head office staff or members of the central council or executive were implicated in the internal investigation. A driver accused of killing a teenage girl and a heavily pregnant newlywed in a Sydney car crash had allegedly been drinking for about eight hours in the lead-up to the collision, a court has heard. Police allege Richard Moananu was driving more than 45 km/h over the speed limit when his Mazda 3 crossed to the wrong side of the road in Orchard Hills and collided with a Nissan Tiida in September. Both the 17-year-old learner driver and 23-year-old passenger Katherine Hoang, who was heavily pregnant with twins, died at the scene. Her unborn babies didn't survive and her husband Bronko Hoang, who was also a passenger, was taken to hospital in a critical condition. A wheelchair-bound Moananu, who suffered leg injuries in the crash, appeared in the NSW Supreme Court via video link for a bail application on Thursday. The 29-year-old is charged with numerous offences including manslaughter, aggravated dangerous driving occasioning grievous bodily harm and unlicensed driving. Justice Natalie Adams, in refusing his bail application, said he had a "somewhat poor" driving history and there was an unacceptable risk he'd drive again. She said a letter from Moananu's partner, which police found in his vehicle after the crash, suggested he'd already been "on notice" about his lifestyle. The letter read: "I'm at the age where being settled is what I need ... you like to drink and gamble and be with your friends 80 per cent of the time." "I want you to think and ask yourself what is important to you." Justice Adams said that on the evidence, Moananu had been drinking from 10.30am to 6.45pm that day and returned a .204 blood alcohol reading at the time of the collision. It's also alleged traces of cannabis were found in his blood. Moananu during his application said he was only getting one physiotherapy session a week at Long Bay Hospital and his mental health in custody was "not good" as he tended "to keep things inside". The court also heard Bronko Hoang remains in hospital about eight weeks after the crash. He and his wife had only recently married after meeting and falling in love at the Western Sydney University Taekwondo club. A year after revealing it had improperly dumped 14,000 tonnes of toxic waste, the management of waste remains a problem at the NT's McArthur River mine, a report has found. The mine, one of the world's largest zinc-lead operations and owned by global giant Glencore, has been beset with criticisms over its environmental impact. The dumping of waste revealed last year was particularly controversial because it was burning and releasing toxic smoke and dust and risked leaking into the McArthur River. NT government-appointed independent monitor David Browne said while there had been a substantial improvement in the mine's environmental performance over the last five years, there remained plenty of risks. "A key issue for the site is managing the waste rock and tailings and the open pit in terms of the end of mine life pit will be important," he told reporters. "That and seepage from the tailing facility will always be issues that need to be managed at the site." The mine's "stakeholders" had not understood the rocks they were mining and the risks of releasing acid and metals before they started, he said. It was being managed better now with trials of geo-synthetic liner covers due to start, Mr Browne said. Seepage from tailings has been blamed for elevated lead levels in fish in Barney Creek and dust at the mine's crushing plant on the coast has contaminated local air and water. There are also fears the diverted McArthur River will revert to its original path through the mine, causing environmental damage by collecting large amounts of sediment and creating an unstable river. But Mr Browne said management of water around the entire site and the waste rock had significantly improved in the last year. Residents in Borroloola have protested outside Glencore's Sydney offices accusing the company of contaminating groundwater supplies. Indigenous residents from town camps said they did not accept assurances from the NT Health Department the water was safe and the lead had been due to old pipes. The mine's general manager Sam Strohmayr said the company's investment in high quality monitoring equipment and new systems had improved its performance, noting levels of metals in fish in the area presented minimal risk to health. A man is behind bars accused of stealing items from a Sydney apartment after the tenant climbed over the balcony and impaled himself. Abdul Tabbaa was refused bail on Thursday accused of stealing property from a home in Surry Hills on November 4. He's due to face Central Local Court via audio visual link on Monday. Detectives earlier in November said they suspected a Swedish-American IT worker climb over the balcony of the inner Sydney apartment, fell three floors and impaled himself on a table leg. That incident was possibly witnessed by the man's date, who then was seen leaving the apartment with a Louis Vuitton bag, police said. The injured man appeared to climb over the rail of his own volition but police were puzzled why he made the potentially life-threatening decision while his date was still in the unit. Victorian voters will likely be demanding answers ahead of the state election, after it emerged a Greens candidate is facing an accusation of sexual misconduct. The allegation was made in writing on Thursday morning to party leader Samantha Ratnam, who then contacted the complainant to inform them that action would be taken. The woman has asked to remain anonymous and "out of respect for her we don't feel it's appropriate to make any further comment", the Greens said. The candidate has been ordered to "withdraw from all campaign-related activities" by the Greens while investigations continue. However it's unclear if this means the accused's candidature representing the party continues. He and the electorate he is contesting have not been named, and he will remain on ballot papers. Late on Thursday an ABC reporter said Ms Ratnam had withdrawn from a pre-arranged interview scheduled for Friday morning. It is not the first time scandal has hit the minor party. Upper house candidate Joanna Nilson resigned over a series of embarrassing Facebook posts, and it was later revealed Footscray candidate Angus McAlpine had previously released rap music including misogynistic lyrics detailing date rape. Party staffer Paul McMillan quit after making social media jokes about Islam, pedophilia and sexist slurs. Queensland is setting up a 'koala advisory council' but rather than featuring Blinky Bill and friends, it will be made up of experts keen to help save the famous marsupials. One of Australia's most iconic animals, Koalas are under increasing pressure from deforestation, feral and domestic animals and diseases. The head of Queensland's branch of the RSPCA, Mark Townend, will lead a council made up of koala experts, local council representatives and land management groups. Mr Townend said the council come together next month and meet with key stakeholders by early next year. "The council will work collaboratively and transparently with all stakeholders in order to achieve the best possible outcome for Queensland's shrinking koala population," he said. "We are only too well aware of the challenges posed by increased urbanisation as the state continues to grow." Another of their tasks will be to work with the Queensland government to finalise a new strategy to conserve animals in the state's south east. Thousands of South Australian school leavers are expected to gather at Victor Harbor, south of Adelaide, for the annual three-day schoolies festival. The event gets into full swing on Friday night with police urging students to "step up" to ensure that this year's festival is safe, inclusive and enjoyable. "Schoolies has an overwhelmingly positive culture and an excellent record for safety, but it's only as good as those groups attending," Superintendent Mark Fairney said. As well as a large contingent of police, this year's graduates will also be watched over by volunteers from the Encounter Youth Green Team. Chief executive Nigel Knowles said over the past 20 years the SA event had evolved from a chaotic and dangerous environment to Australia's safest school-leaver gathering. "One of the key changes we made was enclosing Warland Reserve to create a centralised area for school leavers that deterred toolies from attending and emergency services were able to proactively respond to incidents," he said. Police have warned toolies, or non-school leavers, to stay away from the festivities. Supt Fairney said the festival also remained a dry zone and urged everyone attending not to consume illicit drugs. "You can't know what's in a pill, or how your body will react. No drug is without risk," he said. US celebrity heiress Paris Hilton is set to visit Melbourne just days after it was reported she has split from her fiance. The 37-year-old announced her engagement to actor Chris Zylka in January, but the couple are said to have recently called off their wedding. Hilton said at the time that Zylka, whose acting credits include The Amazing Spider-Man, was "perfect" for her. "Fairytales really do exist," she told People magazine. Hilton, the great-granddaughter of hotel magnate Conrad Hilton, will meet fans at Highpoint Shopping Centre in Melbourne on Friday as she promotes her new fragrance. Walter Mikac, whose wife and two daughters were killed in the Port Arthur massacre, says the tragedy motivates him to bring change and is part of the reason he is running in the Victorian state election. Mr Mikac, who set up The Alannah and Madeline Foundation in honour of his children in the aftermath of the 1996 horror, is standing as a candidate for the newly-formed Aussie Battler Party. High crime rates and the cost of living in Victoria are two areas where Mr Mikac feels people are being let down, and he hopes the party will appeal to voters disillusioned with the status quo. Mr Mikac, who was born in Melbourne and moved back shortly after he lost his family, says he would have been unlikely to enter politics without experiencing such tragedy. "That thrust me into a pretty extraordinary situation and I think part of that was having a public persona and being able to use that leverage to make change happen," he told AAP. "I have used it as a motivator to do things, and in some ways that's part of the core reason why I have decided to run in the election, to try to restore Victoria's lifestyle to how I grew up." Mr Mikac longs for a return to his childhood when it was considered safe enough for children to travel alone on public transport in Melbourne, and wants older people to feel secure in their own homes again. He suggests education programs and community work could be used to engage disenfranchised communities and lower crime rates. Mr Mikac, who is running for the Northern Metropolitan Region upper house seat, said his campaigning for gun law reform after the Port Arthur massacre is testament to his dedication and passion. The body count of the Bourke Street attack on November 9 could have been much higher if the perpetrator had had access to a firearm, he said. "The fact that they (firearms) are not so available is really a legacy of what happened at Port Arthur and that's something that I'm really proud of," Mr Mikac told AAP. A total of 19 candidates are standing for the Aussie Battler Party in the Victorian state election on Saturday. A federal Labor government would spend $15 billion on fixing the national energy network and subsidise 100,000 household batteries. But that's not what has most excited business advocates about its power plan, unveiled by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten on Thursday. Instead, business groups have focused their support on Labor's intention to put the National Energy Guarantee (NEG) - the coalition's dumped energy policy - on the table for bipartisan support. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Business Council of Australia are both hungry for a solution to the nation's energy woes supported by both sides of parliament. "We have consistently called on all sides of the political divide to support the NEG to end the policy paralysis that has stalled much needed investment," chief executive Jennifer Westcott said. ACCI chief executive James Pearson would like the NEG to be complemented by efforts to bring power prices down in the short-term The lobby groups have also taken the opportunity of Labor releasing its energy plan to warn against direct intervention in the market. "Direct intervention carries significant risks to taxpayers' funds and will further distort a market that has suffered for years from inconsistent and contradictory approaches from federal, state and territory governments," Mr Pearson said. Under Labor's plan, it would invest $15 billion in energy transmission and generation if it wins the next federal election. Subsidies of up to $2000 would also be given to 100,000 households to install batteries to link their solar panels, which cost about $10,000 each. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the plan to get batteries into homes would fail like the pink batts insulation scheme under Kevin Rudd's leadership, which was cut short when four installers died. "We have gone from pink batts to pink batteries. They never learn from their mistakes, the Labor Party," Mr Morrison told reporters. He said the "expensive subsidies" would be paid for by higher taxes and struggling families would not go out to buy a household battery, even with a subsidy. Air quality is expected to remain poor in Sydney for another day after thick lines of dust smothered much of NSW. Strong winds from a low-pressure system whipped up masses of dirt across the drought-stricken state and from South Australian lake beds before it moved towards the coast on Thursday. A second band was expected late on Thursday or Friday morning, Bureau of Meteorology senior meteorologist Simon Louis. Extra paramedics and call takers were on duty on Thursday to keep up with a rise in calls from people suffering asthma and other breathing difficulties. The gusty winds also affected flights at Sydney Airport and firefighting efforts in the Hunter, where two blazes had residents seeking immediate shelter. Dreamworld's former engineering boss has questioned whether a single emergency stop button should have been installed onto a ride that later killed four people. Cindy Low, Kate Goodchild, her brother Luke Dorsett and his partner Roozi Araghi died in October 2016 when a water pump on the Thunder River Rapids failed. It caused water levels to drop and their raft to flip after colliding with another raft that became stuck. Bob Tan, former general manager of engineering at the Gold Coast tourist attraction, on Thursday told an inquest into their deaths that shutting down the ride could have caused a bigger hazard. He told coroner James McDougall putting a stop to the ride would have also turned off a water pump that would have led to dangerous amounts of water then washing through the ride. "If two pumps turned off at the same time, there is violent water turbulence back flowing into the reservoir at the area at the bottom of the conveyor," he said. "I would not be comfortable to agree to doing that." The inquest has previously heard experts suggested a single emergency stop button be fitted during safety audits, but it could not be done because the attraction was too old to be retro-fitted. Prior to the tragedy, Mr Tan was made aware the now defunct Wonderland theme park in Sydney had fitted a similar pump to their version of the ride. But he did not consider making similar adjustments to the Dreamworld ride because it was built differently. The long-running inquest has previously heard that the water pump had malfunctioned on October 19, 22, 23 and twice in the hours before the October 25 tragedy. None of those failures were investigated. Mr Tan, affectionately known among Dreamworld staff as the "oracle" because of the 28 years he'd worked at the park, also overlooked major modifications to the ride as posing a safety risk. He said the removal of slats from the ride's conveyor belt took place before he started working at the park and so didn't see an issue with the changes. "I was not involved in removing them but I assumed whatever had to be done was done," he said. "Nobody reported they had a concern, so I didn't do what I didn't know." Mr Tan, who resigned from Dreamworld in 2016, presumed safety analysis was carried out before the slats were removed but never found proof that it had been. The inquest has previously heard the removal of the slats from the conveyor belt introduced a hazard, but Mr Tan assumed it complied with basic engineering and safety standards. The inquest has wrapped up until December 6, when three expert witnesses will give evidence. Today's Birthday, November 24: Ted Bundy, US serial killer (1946 -1989) A law student hiding an insidious obsession with possession, starting with objects that he stole and eventually countless women's lives he took in cold blood. Ted Bundy is one of the most notorious criminals of the late 20th century. His infamy has spawned several books and most recently an upcoming film starring teen heart-throb Zac Efron. His rouse was beguiling. Feigning injury he would beg assistance from young women of similar appearance, long dark hair parted in the middle. After luring them into his tan Volkswagen Beetle, most were never seen alive again. Bundy escaped twice from capture before he was tried for several of the murders and sentenced to die by electric chair. While he admitted to murdering more than 30 women, some victims as young as 12, the actual death toll is expected to be much higher. Born Theodore Robert Bundy out of wedlock in 1946, he was raised in Philadelphia by his grandparents. He grew up believing his mother was his sister so she avoided scrutiny for having an illegitimate son. Whispers of his father's identity circulated but he was never formally identified. In 1972 he graduated in psychology from University of Washington. For a time he was active in politics, receiving a letter of recommendation from the Republican governor of Washington after working on his campaign. It's believed the killings began about 1974. The first signs were missing women from Seattle and Oregon. Two years later Bundy moved to law school in Utah and they began disappearing there. His unravelling began after police found burglary tools in his car. He was soon convicted of kidnapping Carol DaRonch in 1975, one of the few lucky enough to escape. He famously escaped twice from imprisonment. Acting as his own lawyer, he jumped out of the window of a car. Then in 1977 he squeezed out through a hole in the ceiling of his cell after losing 30 pounds. He fled to Florida where he killed two young women in a sorority house. A few weeks later he kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Kimberly Leach. Not long after he was arrested and his trial was televised live. In 1982 Carole Ann Boone gave birth to his daughter. January 1989 Bundy was executed in a Florida prison as crowds outside cheered and set off fireworks. The number of Victorian women seeking homelessness assistance because of family violence has risen 70 per cent in four years, new data has revealed. As Victorians go to the polls to choose the government for the next four years, the state's peak body for homelessness has released the alarming statistic in a desperate call for more social housing. "We've had a tidal wave of new people needing help, but we haven't seen a tidal wave of low-cost housing or funding," Council of Homeless Persons chief executive Jenny Smith said. The statistics come from the Specialist Homelessness Services Annual Report 2016-17 published by federal government body, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. In 2016-17, the data shows that 25,755 women aged 15 and above approached homelessness services because of family violence. In 2012-13 this number was 15,090 - an increase of more than 10,000 people. The Council of Homeless Persons says the shocking rise is due to increased reporting of family violence and a shortage of affordable housing. Council chief Ms Smith said a recent DHHS rent report indicated just three per cent of all two-bedroom homes in Melbourne were affordable for a single mother on a low income. "More housing for people on the lowest incomes, including women fleeing violence, must be the first point of order for the new state government," she said. Of the 25,755 Victorian women who sought accommodation in 2016-17, around 75 per cent of those were able to be permanently housed, or to have their existing tenancies saved if they were at risk of homelessness, the council said. But more than 6,000 of the 25,755 ended up in crisis accommodation, shelters, motels or couchsurfing. In some cases, they slept rough after seeking help. Ms Smith said homelessness agencies used "tenacity and wits" to find homes for women and children victims of domestic violence in a private housing market that had nothing for them. "Workers are brokering deals with real estate agents, advocating for urgent clients to be prioritised up the social housing wait list and providing short-term loans to help women pay the rent after they've made the brave decision to banish a partner from the home," she said. The council's calls also come ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Sunday. The corporate regulator has promised to be tougher in punishing financial misconduct. Australian Securities and Investments Commission chairman James Shipton says it will take more enforcement action over misconduct, including through the courts, and be quicker and more robust. Over two days at the banking royal commission, Mr Shipton denied being too friendly with the big banks and financial institutions or failing to investigate them for misconduct. But he accepted the regulator had made mistakes and needed to up the ante, after being slammed by the royal commission for letting much of the widespread misconduct in the financial sector go unpunished and rarely going to court. ASIC now plans to take criminal and civil action more often, rather than negotiating resolutions with the big banks and others. It only adopted a new approach that immediately considers litigation two or three weeks ago. After spending five days in Sydney, the royal commission returns to Melbourne on Monday for the second week of its final hearing. The heads of National Australia Bank, AMP, ANZ and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority will be questioned about policy issues, along with the chair of Bendigo and Adelaide Bank. The Paradise Inn hotel burns as the Camp Fire tears through Paradise, California on November 8 The fire that has ravaged northern California is now almost completely contained, authorities said Thursday as the death toll rose to 84. Rain fell in the first measurable amounts in months in the drought-stricken area and this helped put out hot spots and smouldering fires, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. It said the so-called Camp Fire is now 95 percent contained. The number of people listed as unaccounted for in the deadliest and most destructive fire in state history stands at 563. Previously the death toll had been put at 83. Another three people died in a second major blaze that struck Malibu in southern California. In the north, the Camp Fire has scorched 153,000 acres of land and destroyed more than 13,600 homes since it broke out on November 8. South Korea's cults The jailing of a South Korean religious leader on Thursday for the rape of multiple followers is only the latest example of such abuse. The world's 11th-largest economy is technologically advanced but has a history of cult organisations and charismatic religious leaders, some of whom have amassed enormous wealth and influence. Here are some groups that have previously attracted controversy or had brushes with the law. - World Mission Society - The World Mission Society Church of God predicted the end of the world would come on December 31, 1999. The continued existence of the earthly realm has been no barrier to its fortunes, and an anti-cult group estimates that it has more than 200,000 followers, although it claims more than two million. Its founder Ahn Sang-hong, who died in 1985, is in effect worshipped as the Heavenly Father, who it says will come for the salvation of 144,000 souls -- the number appears in a biblical prophecy. Ahn's wife Jang Gil-ja is regarded as the Heavenly Mother. Its aggressive evangelical activities in Southeast Asian countries sparked controversy. - Temple of the Tabernacle - Shincheonji, or the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony, suggests that its founder Lee Man-hee has donned the mantle of Jesus Christ and will take 144,000 people with him to Heaven, body and soul, on the Day of Judgement. But its adherents have long surpassed that number, and critics say they have to engage in endless loyalty competitions to earn credits to be included among the saved, sacrificing their everyday lives and leading to serious family disputes. Shincheonji "is the nation of God, created by Him to fulfil what is in heaven on this earth in todays time", it says on its homepage, adding that Lee "is creating Gods kingdom of heaven here on earth, exactly as he witnessed it in heaven". - Grace Road Church - The female leader of a doomsday cult and three of her acolytes were arrested this year for allegedly holding some 400 followers captive in Fiji and subjecting them to violence and barbaric rituals. Victims were hit hundreds of times in ceremonies known as "threshing floors", defectors told South Korean media. Shin Ok-ju, founder of the Grace Road Church, has gone on trial on charges of violence, child abuse, exploitation and incarceration, among others. - Providence - One of South the largest and best-known cults is Providence or Jesus Morning Star, also known by the acronym JMS -- which matches the initials of its founder Jung Myung Seok. He set it up in 1980 as a breakaway from the Unification Church, also known as the Moonies. Jung was released from prison earlier this year after serving a 10-year sentence for the rape and sexual assault of four female followers. He told them to have sex with him to purge themselves of sin. - Salvation Sect - Guwonpa, or "Salvation Sect", came to national attention when the Sewol ferry -- whose operating company was run by its leader Yoo Byung-eun and his family -- sank in 2014 with the loss of more than 300 lives, most of them children. On the run from charges of corruption and negligence, Yoo's body was found in a field, so badly decomposed that authorities were unable to determine the precise cause of death. - Five Oceans - In 1987, 32 members of an apocalyptic cult called Odaeyang, meaning "five oceans", were found dead at their headquarters in the southern city of Yongin in an apparent murder-suicide pact. Among them was the cult's leader Park Soon-Ja, who had been under pressure from her lenders over $17 million of debts and was under police investigation for embezzlement. Police said Park's two sons and a cult official strangled her and 28 others before killing themselves. The Tokyo detention centre, where Nissan chairman is being held, typically allows 30 minutes of daily exercise and two baths a week A solitary cell, 30 minutes of daily exercise and two baths a week: Carlos Ghosn's new routine is a world away from the private jets and lavish parties the millionaire tycoon once enjoyed. The 64-year-old auto industry titan stands accused of serious financial misconduct and is being questioned at a concrete 12-floor detention centre in northern Tokyo which also houses convicted criminals and even death-row inmates. While it is impossible to know Ghosn's exact surroundings, lawyers who have made several visits there to clients as well as former detainees paint a picture of an austere facility where solitude is the biggest enemy. Veteran attorney Yoshiro Ito said the barren rooms have nothing but a bed, toilet, and a handle-less door with an iron-barred window. Detainees follow a strict routine. Wake-up call is shortly before 7am and lights out at 9pm. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are provided. For an extra charge, inmates can order additional food from pre-approved options. It is a far cry from the macaroons and colourful cakes photographed at Ghosn's Marie-Antoinette-themed wedding party thrown in 2016 at the sumptuous Palace of Versailles near Paris. Inmates have the option of taking half an hour of physical exercise and can take a bath twice a week. "You can wear your own clothing but ties, strings and belts are taken away to prevent suicide," said Ito. Books and letters can be sent in but are all censored by prison officials. - 'Extremely lonely' - Generally, high-profile detainees are kept away from other inmates, with the cells either side and in front left vacant. "There are solitary cells as well as rooms that can accommodate several people, but in special cases like Mr Ghosn, I believe he is undoubtedly in a solitary room," said lawyer Ito. Ghosn, 64, stands accused of serious financial misconduct and is being questioned in the austere 12-storey compound Takafumi Horie, a Japanese businessman detained at the same centre and later jailed in 2011 for securities fraud as head of Internet giant Livedoor, said the toughest part was "not being able to talk to people". Frenchman Ghosn has received a visit from the French ambassador as part of consular protection and the Brazilian consul has also seen the businessman who was born in Porto Velho in northwestern Brazil. But Horie said his overriding memory at the centre is being "extremely lonely." "There was a guard who spoke to me through a small hole on the door and said he would talk to me for a short while... Honestly, I cried," said Horie in his book "Tettei Kosen" ("Total Resistance"). Horie said there was no track of time in the cell, as the clock was removed "because some people try to commit suicide or harm themselves by using plastic or glass covering the clock." Even toothbrushes and hand towels were taken away each night, said Horie. "Until I was detained, I didn't realise that losing the freedom to look at my face (in the mirror) was this tough," said the former inmate. Following Ghosn's arrest, Horie tweeted it would also be "pretty cold" at this time of year. - 'American crime drama' - Toshio Sakamoto, who worked as a prison guard there for nearly three decades, said conditions would be "very tough" and not just for Ghosn, but also for officials monitoring a maximum of 3,000 inmates. "He's super-famous and rich and a foreign national. It's very difficult to detain someone like him due to the language barriers and difference between Japan's justice system and the system he knows," Sakamoto told AFP. If he had complaints, he would only be able to address the detention centre staff, whose English would unlikely be strong enough to understand every detail, added the former guard. "It's a disaster for the Tokyo Detention Centre. You must be very careful to prevent any mishap, which could be an international issue. I wouldn't want to be there myself," he said. He described the centre as a "monster" not just because of its size but "because you never know what will happen there". Sakamoto said he was aware of cases where paparazzi-style conmen deliberately commit a crime so they can spy on famous inmates in the hope of splashing their story. "It's just like an American crime drama in there," he said. Debate is revving up over the noise levels around Myanmar's annual Tazaungdaing Buddhist festival From grumbling neighbours to witty memes of the Buddha imploring a man with speakers to "stop your noise", the cacophony around Myanmar's annual Tazaungdaing festival is revving up debate over the modern racket accompanying religious customs. Myanmar is 90 percent Buddhist, and October and November are packed with donation drives in the aftermath of Buddhist lent. The religious season culminates in the Tazaundaing festival, which ends late Thursday with amusement park rides and block parties. But some residents in the commercial capital Yangon want the volume turned down as religious chants, sermons and entreaties for donations blared over speakers compete with electronic dance music, Burmese rap and rowdy evenings. "I don't believe Buddha would like this... Buddha likes peace and silence," Nyein Myat, a 28-year-old bank employee told AFP, adding that her sisters struggle to study because of the noise. But in Myanmar, where authorities have struggled with hardline Buddhist nationalists and the faith is deeply ingrained in society, few make an effort to plead for quiet. Faith is deeply ingrained in Myanmar society, and few make an effort to plead for quiet In 2016, a Dutch tourist was arrested in Mandalay and spent three months in jail after unplugging a speaker relaying a late-night sermon. "Many people complain but it is the religious season so it is difficult to complain or report to police," said Min Saw, a 22-year-old who works the night shift at a shop. "This season is full of good deeds for (us) Buddhists... but we mostly get annoyed." Frustration is playing out online too. One drawing shows Buddha in the forest holding up his hand and saying "dear son, please stop your noise" as a man races towards him with numerous loudspeakers. A local artist tweaked Edvard Munch's celebrated "Scream", placing Buddha in the foreground holding hands over his ears in horror at the sound. At the culmination of the religious season, Buddhist chants, sermons and entreaties for donations are blared over speakers Images of the meme rocketed around Myanmar social media, drawing mostly praise but some anger over the portrayal. "We have faced so many noise problems every day but these days it is worse," said Myo Kyaw, a 35-year-old audio engineer who was eating lunch. "This is our tradition and I love it but noise is not really good for the people." Than Win, a community leader in Yangon's Lanmadaw township, conceded decibel levels were high but said it is one of the holiest festivals of the year and that all religious customs deserved respect. "We can hear the sound from the mosque loudly in the evening and if you live near the church, you can hear their sound loudly," he said. Those taking part say they are aware of potential disturbances and have taken proper measures. Shipyard worker Zaw Win Naing said they asked older members of the community for permission, telling them: "we would like to play loud music on these days". Seguin, TX (78155) Today A mix of clouds and sun during the morning will give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. Slight chance of an afternoon shower. High 78F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph.. Tonight Showers and thunderstorms likely. Low 63F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%. China A car rammed into a group of children crossing a street in front of an elementary school in northeast China on Thursday, killing five people and injuring another 18, state media said. Police took the driver into custody and are investigating the cause of the incident in Huludao, Liaoning province, the official CCTV broadcaster said on its Weibo social media account. Unverified videos circulating on social media appeared to show a car veering onto the wrong side of the road and ploughing through the line of pupils, with the impact from the crash throwing bodies across the road. Other gut-wrenching footage showed at least two small children lying unconscious and bleeding on the street. The screams and cries of children could be heard in the background, as onlookers milled around the scene of the collision. Victims of the crash are undergoing medical treatment, according to CCTV. The incident happened around noon. The ages of the victims were not released. Police from Jianchang county in Huludao city did not immediately respond to AFP requests for comment. - Dangerous roads - Grisly car accidents are common in China, where transportation authorities have struggled to enforce safety regulations, which are often flouted or go unenforced. According to authorities, 58,000 people were killed in traffic accidents across the country in 2015 alone. Violations of traffic laws were blamed for nearly 90 percent of accidents that caused deaths or injuries that year. Earlier this month, at least 13 people died when a bus plunged off a bridge in Chongqing municipality, after the driver got into a fist fight with a passenger who had missed her bus stop. Search and rescue teams dispatched more than 70 boats, as well as a team of scuba divers and underwater robots, to find the wreckage and retrieve bodies from the water. In February, a van packed with pressurised gas tanks and petrol-filled bottles caught fire and ploughed into pedestrians in Shanghai, leaving at least 18 people injured. Authorities concluded that it had been a "traffic accident". But a 2013 incident was blamed on militant separatists. Two tourists were killed at the time when a car rammed into bystanders in Beijing's iconic Tiananmen Square before bursting into flames. Three attackers also died in the incident, which Beijing blamed on separatists from the restive western region of Xinjiang. And in September, 11 people died and dozens were injured when a car struck a crowd in a public square in the central Hunan province city of Hengdong. Police detained the driver, a man in his 40s, and described him as a "vengeful repeat offender" who had daggers in his car and intended to "cause serious damage". Erwiana Sulistyaningsih says she is "disappointed" that her former employer, convicted for abusing her, has been freed from prison A former Indonesian domestic worker in a high-profile abuse case said Thursday she was "sad and disappointed" after her employer, who was jailed for starving and beating her, walked free before finishing her sentence. Erwiana Sulistyaningsih became the face of abused maids in Hong Kong, after pictures showed how she was imprisoned, starved and violently beaten by her former employer. Law Wan-tung was sentenced to six years in prison in 2015 for grievous bodily harm, assault, criminal intimidation and failure to pay wages, and was ordered by a court last year to pay more than $100,000 in damages. But Law secured an early release from prison a few months ago, the South China Morning Post reported Wednesday, citing a lawyer from the city's justice department. Erwiana expressed her disappointment Thursday and said the six-year sentence was not enough "for the terrible crimes that she committed against me and the other victims". "I feel very sad and disappointed when I learned that my former employer Law Wan-tung was released from jail earlier than the actual imprisonment that she had to serve," she said. "She.. tortured me, held me captive, denied me rest and refused to pay me any wages," Erwiana told reporters. "It is my hope that Law Wan-tung can admit to her wrongdoings, apologise to the victims and resolve to never do the same thing to anyone ever again," she added. Tutik Lestari Ningsih -- another former maid from Indonesia of Law -- said the news made her feel "very unsafe" because Law had previously threatened to kill her. The Correctional Services Department said in a statement to AFP that due to privacy regulations they would not disclose specific details. Prison inmates can receive a one-third sentence reduction on good behaviour, although Law had not yet served adequate time of her sentence for this to apply. More than 340,000 domestic helpers work in Hong Kong -- mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia -- often performing menial tasks for low wages while living in poor conditions. Daniel Tejada, the wife of jailed British student Matthew Hedges, accused the Foreign Office in London of putting diplomatic interests above those of her husband The wife of a British scholar who was sentenced to life for spying in the United Arab Emirates accused London on Thursday of refusing to defend her husband for fear of upsetting Dubai. The sentencing of 31-year-old Matthew Hedges on Wednesday shocked Britain and put political pressure on Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt. Britain views the UAE as a strategic Middle East ally which it supplies with arms. The oil-rich Gulf state said on Thursday that Hedges can still appeal the verdict or request "presidential clemency". "Both sides hope to find an amicable solution to the Matthew Hedges case," the UAE foreign ministry said. But Dubai's apparent attempt to put the dispute behind it came only after an unusual diplomatic scandal erupted in London. Hedges's wife Daniela Tejada gave an impassioned interview to BBC radio on her return from the court hearing. She accused the Foreign Office of placing its interests above those of an innocent Briton. "I got the impression that they were putting their interests with the UAE above a British citizen's rightful freedom and his welfare and his right to just a fair trial, just to freedom," Tejada said. "They were stepping on eggshells instead of taking a firm stance." Hedges was detained at Dubai airport on May 5 while researching the UAE's foreign and internal security policies after the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011. Hunt became foreign minister in July but only began to speak out about the case after Hedges's family went public with news of his arrest in early October. The scholar was released on bail on October 29 and top British officials appeared stunned by Wednesday's court ruling. Prime Minister Theresa May told a session of parliament she was "deeply disappointed" and instructed the Foreign Office to "continue to press this matter at the highest level with the Emiratis". - 'Disregarded my requests' - Hunt received Tejada for a private meeting at the Foreign Office that ended with her only marginally softening her tone. Daniela Tejada, wife of detained British scholar Matthew Hedges, had a private meeting with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt "This is not a fight I can win alone and I thank the Foreign Office and the British public for now standing up for one of their citizens," she told reporters in a prepared statement. She had earlier told the BBC that she had pleaded in vain with the Foreign Office to force the UAE to release her husband from solitary confinement during his pre-trial detention. "They just disregarded my requests. They said that it wasn't part of their job, that it wasn't part of their duty." Her voice broke down several times as she described the fear that gripped her husband during the sentencing. "He was very, very scared when he was standing in front of the judge," said Tejada. "He started shaking when the translator told him the sentence. He actually had to ask to double-check if he had heard right." A professor at England's Durham University who supervised the research said Hedges was conducting interviews in Dubai to support his thesis. "There was nothing clandestine or covert in any of the material he had been using," Professor Clive Jones told the BBC. The UAE statement said Hedges was convicted after "compelling and powerful evidence was presented in court". It said that included "information extracted from his personal electronic devices by expert forensic analysis techniques". The UAE also denied that Hedges's confession to spying was made under duress or that "he was asked to sign documents he did not understand." The Indian-administered region of Kashmir has been plagued for decades by political instability and an armed insurgency that has left tens of thousands dead, mostly civilians India's government has dissolved the Kashmir state assembly in a sudden move that could lead to fresh elections and further turmoil in the disputed region also claimed by Pakistan. The move, which came after two rival local alliances both staked claims to form a government in the heavily-militarised region, was seen to strengthen the hand of the New Delhi government, which has ruled Kashmir directly since June and is gearing up for next year's general election. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's hand-picked governor said he dissolved the legislature late Wednesday in the absence of stable government in Jammu and Kashmir, in India's far north. Satya Pal Malik said late Wednesday that elections would be held "at an appropriate time so that a government with a clear mandate is duly formed". Malik is the first politician to be appointed governor of Jammu and Kashmir in decades, with the role traditionally reserved for non-political figures. The Indian-administered region has been plagued for decades by political instability and an armed insurgency that has left tens of thousands dead, mostly civilians. Rebel groups have long fought half a million Indian troops stationed there, demanding an independent state or merger with Pakistan. Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) pulled out of the governing coalition in Jammu and Kashmir in June, because of what it called worsening "terrorism and violence". This latest move has agitated an alliance of local parties that claimed to have a majority in parliament, and a right to rule free from New Delhi's control. Malik dismissed their claim, saying "extensive horse-trading and possible exchange of money" had occurred and the alliance could not ensure stable government. The BJP called for fresh polls "at the earliest". "J&K needs a firm administration to deal with terrorism and not a combination of terror-friendly parties," the ruling party declared in a Twitter post late Wednesday. - Power play - Analysts say the BJP hope to rule in their own right in the region, and this latest move could be aimed at appearing tough on Pakistan and militancy ahead of a national election next year. The Hindu-right party could exploit the sense of political instability as Modi campaigns for a second term in coming months, experts said. "The BJP could sell it both ways across India, for gains in general elections," said Noor Ahmad Baba, a political scientist at University of Kashmir. "Now, they would say they didn't let the local parties come together against the national interest, didn't bow down to them," he added. It is unclear when a fresh local poll will be held but historically ballots have lacked credibility. Last year just seven percent of voters turned out to elect a state representative to the national parliament. Another vacant seat in the lower house has not been filled in two years. State assembly elections in 1987 were marred by graft and foreshadowed an armed rebellion against Indian rule that continues today. "This (latest) move by New Delhi confirms the lack of credibility elections in Kashmir have," Prof Siddiq Wahid, a historian and political commentator told AFP. "It also means more confrontation between the people and the Indian state in Kashmir." Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the end of British colonial rule in 1947. Both countries claim the former Himalayan kingdom in its entirety. Earlier this month gunmen killed a local BJP leader and his brother in a remote district of the region. This screengrab taken from a video shot and provided by NNIS shows a baby girl next to train tracks after being dropped in the station in Uttar Pradesh state An Indian baby who was dropped onto railway tracks moments before a train passed through the station has escaped unscathed. The dramatic incident, captured on cell phone footage Thursday, showed a train rolling over the infant in Uttar Pradesh state as screaming onlookers stand by hopelessly. The one-year-old reportedly fell into the gap between the carriage and the platform as the girl's parents were stepping off the train. She was wedged flat on her back alongside the track as the train left the platform, picking up speed and thundering overhead -- but just missing her. Once the train passed a man quickly scooped up the tiny child who, apart from crying, was astonishingly left unscathed by the terrifying incident. Indian media reported that the girl's parents lost grip of their child as a crowd surged from the train onto the platform in Mathura city. Indian railway officials said the lucky escape was a reminder to be cautious at all times on crowded trains. "We are actively running campaigns to sensitise people against travelling on rooftops or standing on foot boards of the train doors," said G K Bansal, a railways spokesman. India's huge railway network is notorious for overcrowding and accidents, including scores who die while crossing the tracks illegally or falling off over-capacity trains. A 2012 government report described the loss of 15,000 passengers to rail accidents every year in India as a "massacre". The government has pledged $137 billion over five years to modernise the crumbling network. Sibanye-Stillwater is South Africa's largest gold producer, operating three mines -- all of which were shuttered by the strike South Africa's largest gold producer, Sibanye-Stillwater, on Thursday said one of its employees was shot dead in a violent strike that shuttered all three of its mines. Called by the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), the strike began late on Wednesday, shutting down all of Sibanye's mines which employ some 32,000 people, in the latest test for the country's struggling mining sector. "There has been quite a lot of violence and intimidation. It is a charged environment and emotions are (running) high," Sibanye spokesman James Wellsted told AFP. "One of our employees was killed during the night. There have been a number of other injuries, including workers in hospital with gunshot wounds and stab wounds." The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said the dead man, who was a union member, was attacked on a bus taking workers to the Beatrix mine in Welkom, Free State province. "Attackers started by closing the security gates, throwing stones at the bus," an NUM statement said. "One of our members was shot and killed and others sustained serious injuries." South Africa has a history of mining strikes, with the 2014-15 labour dispute in the platinum sector causing severe damage to the industry. "Our members are prepared to (strike) in order to achieve a living wage in this sector," AMCU president Joseph Mathunjwa told local media. The South African Minerals Council, which represents mine owners, estimates profitable gold reserves could be exhausted as soon as 2033. Hindu hardliners have been calling for a Ram temple to be built on the site of the Babri Mosque, which was demolished in 1992 Some 300,000 Indians are expected to rally this weekend to press for a Hindu temple to be built at a disputed site where a mosque was destroyed in 1992, organisers said Thursday. The demolition by mobs of the mosque at Ayodhya in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh sparked nationwide riots in which thousands were killed, most of them Muslims. Many Hindus believe the Babri Mosque was only built after the destruction of a temple on the same spot that marks the birthplace of their god Ram, and the issue remains hugely divisive. With legal wranglings dragging on for years, the right-wing nationalist group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) wants parliament to pass a law for the construction of the temple. On Sunday it expects 300,000 people to attend three rallies -- in Ayodhya, in Nagpur in central India and in Bangalore in the south, a spokesman said. "We hope that these meetings will remove roadblocks to the construction of the Ram temple and force the politicians, especially in the opposition, to support any move (in favour of the temple) inside the parliament," Vinod Bansal told AFP. The VHP is linked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP was on the margins until the 1980s when it backed the movement for construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. The promise for construction of a temple has since prominently figured in several BJP campaigns, especially in the bellwether Uttar Pradesh state, which it rules with an absolute majority. Modi -- who will be up for re-election within months -- faces some disquiet from his core supporters who feel that he has not done enough for the cause, despite his parliamentary majority. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's reputation has been tainted by the murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last month Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Argentina next week amid tensions between Ankara and Riyadh, the Turkish presidential spokesman said Thursday. "We are looking at the programme," spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said in Ankara. "There could be" a meeting between the two men, he said. Saudi Arabia and Turkey are clashing over the murder of Riyadh critic and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi, 59, inside the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul last month. Such a meeting would be the first face-to-face encounter between Erdogan and the crown prince since the killing that tainted the image of Prince Salman, known as MBS, who is seen as the driving force in day-to-day rule of the kingdom. The two men previously spoke on the phone last month where they discussed joint efforts to shed light on what happened to Khashoggi. Khashoggi, a US resident and Saudi citizen, was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, killed and dismembered, according to Turkish prosecutors. After lengthy denials, Saudi authorities admitted responsibility and said 21 people had been taken into custody. However, a CIA analysis leaked to the US media went further, reportedly pointing the finger at the crown prince. Turkey has repeatedly called for those who ordered the murder to be held accountable but has stopped short of directly blaming Prince Mohammed. Carlos Ghosn once dominated Nissan Nissan's board sacked Carlos Ghosn as chairman on Thursday, a spectacular fall from grace for the once-revered boss whose arrest for financial misconduct has stunned the business world, as France and Japan insisted they want the Nissan-Renault alliance to survive the scandal. Ghosn, in jail since Monday, stands accused of under-reporting his income by millions of dollars and a host of other financial irregularities after an internal Nissan probe following a whistleblower report. His ouster is an astonishing turnaround for a titan of the auto sector who revived the Japanese brand and forged an alliance with France's Renault as well as domestic rival Mitsubishi Motors, which sold a combined 10.6 million cars last year -- more than any other firm. It also throws the future of the alliance into doubt as Ghosn was the architect of the far-flung partnership -- which employs 450,000 people globally -- and the glue holding it together. "After reviewing a detailed report of the internal investigation, the board voted unanimously... to discharge Carlos Ghosn as chairman of the board," Nissan said in a statement after the four-hour meeting, not naming a replacement. Ghosn's ouster is an astonishing turnaround for a titan of the auto sector who revived the Japanese brand and forged an alliance with France's Renault as well as domestic rival Mitsubishi Motors But it reiterated that its "partnership with Renault remains unchanged" and that "the mission is to minimise the potential impact and confusion on the day-to-day cooperation" between the firms. - 'Winning cooperation' - The French and Japanese finance ministers also reiterated their "strong support" for the alliance at a meeting in Paris on Thursday. In a joint statement, Bruno Le Maire and Hiroshige Seko said they both wanted "to maintain this winning cooperation". Renault's board has so far stood by Ghosn -- naming his deputy Thierry Bollore to handle day-to-day business. Bollore on Thursday pledged "to stay focused on our mission to preserve the interests of Renault and the sustainability of the alliance". "You can count on my full commitment," he said in a statement on Twitter. The board of Mitsubishi Motors was reportedly set to meet on Monday to discuss Ghosn's future. The structure of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance Prosecutors intercepted the Brazil-born tycoon Monday as he landed in Tokyo on a private jet, accusing him and another executive Greg Kelly of understating the chairman's income by around $44 million between June 2011 and June 2015. His fate as Nissan chairman appeared sealed just hours later as his hand-picked successor as CEO, Hiroto Saikawa launched an impassioned broadside at his former mentor, muttering about a "dark side" to the Ghosn era and urging his sacking. Even after being jettisoned as chairman, Ghosn remains technically a member of the board as a full shareholders' meeting is required to remove him. Nissan said it would study the creation of a "special committee" to take advice from a third party on improving its internal governance and executive pay. - 'Good health' - Ghosn is being held in spartan conditions at a Tokyo detention centre Ghosn is being held custody in a Tokyo detention centre and has not been seen in public or made any comments since his arrest. He received a visit from Brazilian consul Joao de Mendonca on Thursday who told AFP that Ghosn "sounded very well, in good health". But his conditions are likely to be a far cry from what the millionaire businessman is used to. Inmates at the centre are typically allowed 30 minutes exercise per day and only two baths a week. Ties and strings are removed to prevent suicide attempts, and former guards and lawyers said Ghosn was almost certain to be held in a cramped cell on his own. On Wednesday, prosecutors successfully applied to extend his custody for an additional 10 days as they stepped up their questioning. Deputy chief prosecutor Shin Kukimoto said the type of crime Ghosn is accused of is "one of the most serious types of crime" under Japan's Financial Instruments Act, and Ghosn could face a fine of 10 million yen ($89,000) and a 10-year prison sentence. Under the law, companies themselves can also be held accountable for the falsified documents, Kukimoto said, following reports that prosecutors believe Nissan also has a case to answer. Nissan may also soon find itself in the firing line The Kyodo news agency in Japan also reported Thursday that Nissan had paid $100,000 a year since 2002 to Ghosn's sister who had no record of doing advisory work for the group. Public broadcaster NHK has reported that Nissan paid "huge sums" to provide Ghosn with luxury homes in Rio de Janeiro, Beirut, Paris and Amsterdam "without any legitimate business reason". - 'Couple divorcing' - According to the Financial Times, Ghosn's fall from grace came as he was working on a full-blown merger of Nissan and Renault. This was opposed by executives in the Japanese firm that has ended up being the most profitable player in the partnership, and the FT said Ghosn's departure could be used as a pretext to rebalance the alliance in Nissan's favour. Analysts said that despite clear tensions between the two firms headquartered 10,000 kilometres apart, neither company has the financial might alone to make the heavy investments in electric vehicles considered to be the industry's future. "It would be like a couple divorcing after 20 years -- it would be complicated, very expensive and not easy to do," said Gaetan Toulemonde, an analyst at Deutsche Bank. "Honestly, I don't know if it's even possible." burs-ric-adp/js/dl/har Tunisians protest in the capital Tunis during a general strike by civil servants on November 22, 2018 Tunisian civil servants staged the largest general strike in five years on Thursday after their powerful trade union failed to secure wage hikes in tense negotiations with the government. Thousands of people gathered outside parliament, responding to calls from the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) for demonstrations. "You have destroyed these people, you have starved them," the union's secretary general Noureddine Taboubi said at the rally. "We will not yield to your liberal choices, we will take campaign decisions and mobilise all sectors," he added The UGTT is demanding 673,000 state employees receive salary bumps equal to those granted this year to public companies, which range from 15 to 30 euros ($17-34) a month. Bouali Mbarki, UGTT deputy secretary, told AFP the wage increase "had not been taken into account in the 2019 state budget". The demands for wage hikes are tied to "an unprecedented rise in prices, a deterioration of citizen purchasing power.... and a degradation of daily life," Mbarki said. Tunisian protesters wave national flags in the capital Tunis on November 22, 2018 during a general strike Civil servants represent a sixth of Tunisia's workforce and Thursday's strike, the widest of its kind since 2013, marked their first walkout over wages in decades, according to the UGTT. The union said 90 percent of the country's civil servants took part in the strike, crippling ministries, hospitals and public schools, although public transport continued to run. - Tunisia 'not for sale' - In Tunis protesters chanted "the wage increase is not a favour" and "Tunisia is not for sale", also employing a popular slogan of the country's 2011 revolution -- "work, freedom, national dignity". Beyond the capital, demonstrations were also held in numerous cities including coastal Sfax, where protesters marched to the local government headquarters. In Gafsa, a central mining area, hundreds of people protested following a speech by the local head of UGTT, an AFP correspondent said. Donors keeping Tunisia afloat have called on the government to control civil service salaries to avoid pushing up the public deficit. But Mbarki said the government "must find a solution without being subjected to the instructions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)-- even if it has made commitments with it -- and preserve social stability". Tunisian protesters wave national flags and chant slogans during a general strike in the capital Tunis on November 22, 2018 Mbarki said the union was "not negotiating with (head of the IMF) Christine Lagarde but with the head of the Tunisian government", Prime Minister Youssef Chahed. The North African country is seen as having had a relatively smooth democratic transition since the January 14, 2011 toppling of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali after 23 years in power. At the same time price hikes, fuelled in particular by the fall of the Tunisian dinar, combined with tax increases and stubborn unemployment have spurred social discontent that escalated into riots across several cities in January. In 2016, the IMF granted the North African country a 2.4-billion-euro loan over the span of four years in exchange for a promise to carry out economic reforms. In recent months, political life in Tunisia has been paralysed by power struggles ahead of presidential elections set for 2019. A picture taken in Baghdad's Tahrir Square, on February 9, 2018 shows Iraqi security forces standing guard following protests in the Green Zone Iraqi authorities began removing cement walls surrounding Baghdad's Green Zone on Thursday in preparation for a partial reopening of the high-security enclave, an Iraqi official and AFP correspondents said. The Green Zone became home to Iraq's parliament and other government offices, United Nations agencies and western embassies after the US-led invasion of 2003. The area on the west bank of the Tigris River is ringed by blast walls topped with barbed wire and guarded by Iraqi security forces, but inaccessible for most Iraqi citizens. On Thursday, AFP reporters saw some walls had been removed. "Work is ongoing to lift the cement blocks, and a main road will be opened provisionally on Saturday and officially on Sunday," an Iraqi official told AFP. The official said three entrances into the 10-square kilometre (3.8-square mile) zone would be opened to allow access to a key thoroughfare and therefore relieve traffic clogging other parts of Baghdad. "The reopening of the road that cuts through the centre of the Green Zone came after directions from the prime minister," the official added. When Adel Abdel Mahdi was appointed premier last month, he called on parliament to open up the area to all as a way to break down barriers between Iraq's citizens. Abdel Mahdi also moved his government's headquarters outside the Green Zone, in a first since 2003. Previous prime minister Haidar al-Abadi had also ordered the zone reopened during his reign, but it was sealed off again after only a few days. It was rumoured at the time that objections by the US embassy -- which has the tightest security regulations of all bodies present in the Green Zone -- were the reason. The United States accused Iran at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) of failing to declare a toxic arms programme The United States accused Iran on Thursday of failing to declare a toxic arms programme to the global chemical warfare watchdog, in breach of international agreements. US envoy Kenneth Ward told the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague that Tehran was also seeking deadly nerve agents for "offensive purposes". Tehran did not immediately respond to the accusations, which add to tensions with Washington over Iran's nuclear programme, terrorism, and the war in Syria. "The United States has had longstanding concerns that Iran maintains a chemical weapons programme that it failed to declare to the OPCW," ambassador Ward told a five-yearly meeting on the body's future. "The US is also concerned that Iran is pursuing central nervous system-acting chemicals for offensive purposes." Ward said Iran had failed to declare the transfer of chemical-filled shells sent to Libya in the 1980s despite an appeal by the OPCW to identify their origin. They were found after the death of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi in 2011. "They were clearly of Iranian origin as evidenced by the farsi writing on the boxes containing the artillery shells," he said. Iran had also failed to declare a "chemical weapons filling capability" despite the discovery of toxic shells and bombs in Libya and also in Iraq. Finally, Iran had failed to declare riot control agents despite having marketed them at defence expos, he added. The new chemical warfare allegations come amid growing pressure on Iran from President Donald Trump, who has withdrawn from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and introduced several rounds of unilateral US sanctions. Ward accused Iran and its ally Russia of "enabling" the use of chemical weapons by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "while pursuing their own chemical weapons programmes". Western powers have accused Russia of carrying out an attack using an undeclared Soviet-era nerve agent on former double agent Sergei Skripal in the British town of Salisbury in March. Member states at the OPCW this week rejected attempts by Russia to block the watchdog's new powers to identify the perpetrators of chemical attacks in Syria and elsewhere. Previously the OPCW -- charged with enforcing the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention under which all toxic arms will be destroyed -- was only able to confirm the use of chemical weapons without assigning blame. The Pakistan government has been overwhelmed with complaints about infrastructure and public services via its new mobile app A mobile app launched by the Pakistan government to allow the public to voice their grievances over creaking infrastructure has been inundated with responses. A government official said Thursday that more than a hundred thousand complaints had been made through the official app, which launched only month ago. The application was intended to offer swift resolution for basic civic problems being faced by Pakistanis. But the government has been overwhelmed with responses, particularly about problems in public services like energy, health and education, said the prime minister's Special Assistant Iftikhar Durrani. Talking to reporters in Islamabad, Durrani said around 84,000 complaints were yet to be addressed, while around 16,000 had been resolved. Around 4,000 more complaints were received by Pakistanis living abroad, while 96 percent of those who downloaded the app were men. Prime Minister Imran Khan came to power in July with a populist slogan of "Naya Pakistan" ("New Pakistan") -- promising to root out corruption. "Our state institutions will be so strong that they will stop corruption. Accountability will start with me, then my ministers, and then it will go from there," Khan said in his first speech after coming to power in July. But Pakistan -- which has a population of around 207 million and around 150 million mobile phone users -- is known for sluggish bureaucracy, with incompetence and corruption rampant. Tunisian women demonstrate in the capital on August 13, 2018 to mark Tunisian Women's Day and to demand equal inheritance rights A draft bill giving women equal inheritance rights to men is set to be submitted Friday to the Tunisian cabinet in a step towards a vote in parliament, the presidency said. Announced last month by President Beji Caid Essebsi, the proposal -- unprecedented in the Arab world -- sparked heated debate in the North African country and beyond for departing from a principle inspired by the Koran. The presidential initiative must first gain approval from cabinet ministers before heading to parliament, where it will be debated both in committee and plenary sessions. "The president will declare this bill a priority," presidential spokeswoman Saida Garrach said, adding it was expected to reach parliament "in the coming months". Garrach said it was the second time the president has proposed a law to the cabinet. The first, a controversial bill which gave amnesty to officials accused of corruption, passed in 2017. Tunisia's current inheritance system, inspired by Islamic law, stipulates that men receive double the assets given to women of the same kinship level. Under the proposed bill, Tunisians wishing to divide their assets as they see fit would still be able to do so before a notary. The draft bill is among the most hotly debated of a raft of proposed social reforms, guided by a commission the president set up a year ago. It is expected to draw fiery debate ahead of legislative and presidential elections set for late 2019, the presidency said. The Islamist Ennahdha party, the largest in parliament, has been highly critical of the proposed bill. Map locating village of Toumour in Niger, where a French drilling company camp was attacked Seven employees of a French mineral and water drilling firm and a local official were killed early Thursday when gunmen attacked their site in southeastern Niger, the company said. "A group of terrorists attacked the building where a team of Foraco drillers and technicians were resting in the village of Toumour, in southeastern Niger," the company said in a statement. "The assailants opened fire on the sleeping personnel and killed eight people," it said, adding that five others were wounded, two seriously. The victims, all Nigerien, were drilling two water wells to supply a camp for displaced people at a refugee camp at Toumour, near the borders with Chad and Nigeria. Foraco, based near the southern French city of Marseille, said the site had been chosen in conjunction with the Niger armed forces escort protecting the workers. The company did not identify the attackers, but Toumour was the site of a fierce firefight in September 2016 between the military and Boko Haram jihadists which left 38 of the insurgents dead. "We know that Boko Haram is active in the region but for now we've had no claim of responsibility, neither official or unofficial," Thierry Merle, Foraco's vice president in charge of Europe and the Middle East, told AFP. "We've been operating in Niger for 20 years, and at this site since a month ago," Merle said. "We hadn't received any threat in particular," he added, and the company had not previously suffered similar attacks. Boko Haram fighters have carried out a series of attacks in northeast Nigeria in recent days, the latest in a nine-year insurgency in the country which has driven 1.8 million people from their homes. Migrants hoping to reach Britain on a road leading to the Calais harbour in northern France French authorities warned Thursday of a spike in migrants attempting the dangerous crossing of the English Channel by boat to reach Britain, which could reflect fears the border will be shut after Brexit. Maritime police rescued 18 people in two separate rescue operations overnight, bringing to 30 the number of attempted crossings so far this year. "But 17 of those are since October," said Captain Ingrid Parrot, a spokeswoman for the French maritime police based in Cherbourg. "We're dealing with a situation that's getting worse," she said, adding that France was reinforcing its patrols in the Channel. Britain's interior ministry said Thursday that 14 people had been rescued overnight, bringing the total number to 78 in the last two weeks. "We have stepped up deployments of our coastal patrol vessels along the South-East coast in light of recent events," the ministry said. Migrants have long massed along France's northern coast hoping to stow away on trucks heading for Britain, where many have family or believe they stand a better chance of getting asylum or finding a job. But starting in 2016, officials began seeing attempts by migrants to use dinghies and inflatable rafts to cross the 33-kilometre (20-mile) Strait of Dover, one of the world's busiest shipping channels. A total of 23 attempted crossings were reported that year, falling to just 13 in 2017, Parrot said. But the prospect of Britain's exit from the EU next March, which could lead to tighter controls on immigration, may be pushing more migrants to make an attempt by sea instead of trying to stow away on vehicles in Calais. "We think they want to leave at all costs now because Brexit hasn't yet happened," Parrot said. Unseasonably mild weather in October may also be a factor in the recent increase, while security has also been progressively stepped up around the ports, making stowing away on trucks increasingly difficult. - Fears of collision - At around 2:00 am (0100 GMT) Thursday a tugboat spotted an inflatable raft carrying six men and a woman and escorted them toward England, where it was intercepted by Britain's Border Force some five kilometres off the coast. About an hour later, a ferry alerted authorities to another dinghy in distress after its motor broke down, with 11 people on board. French authorities were unable to establish communications and locate their precise location initially. They were later spotted by a navy helicopter and picked up by a French patrol boat. "Four of them were suffering from hypothermia and transferred to the Calais hospital," the authorities said in a statement, while the others were handed over to border police. Last week a group of 17 Iranian migrants stole a fishing boat from a French port and managed to reach the harbour at Dover, a feat Parrot described as "unprecedented" since much smaller vessels are usually used. Britain's interior ministry said all 78 people rescued since November 9 -- including 24 people intercepted in three incidents on one day last week -- also claimed to be Iranian. The attempted crossings are especially risky given the heavy boat traffic in the Channel, sustained high winds and extremely cold water. "Nobody should put their life at risk attempting to smuggle themselves into the UK across the Channel," the British foreign ministry said, adding that such attempts remain "relatively rare." But so far no migrant drownings have been reported since 2016, Parrot said. "Our biggest fear is a collision with a bigger boat," she said. The rise in import barriers imposed by big economies and tracked by the WTO is causing concern The world's biggest economies slapped import restrictions on nearly half a trillion dollars' worth of trade over the past six months, the World Trade Organization said Thursday, voicing "serious concern". Forty new import barriers were erected by G20 states between mid-May and mid-October this year -- six times more than during the preceding six months -- impacting $481 billion in trade, a fresh WTO report showed. That was the highest figure recorded since the WTO started calculating the measure in 2012. "The report's findings should be of serious concern for G20 governments and the whole international community," WTO chief Roberto Azevedo said in a statement. The soaring trade barriers spur "economic risks," WTO chief Roberto Azevedo says "Further escalation remains a real threat," he warned, calling for an immediate reversal of the trend. "If we continue along the current course, the economic risks will increase, with potential effects for growth, jobs and consumer prices around the world," Azevedo said. An average of eight new restrictions on international trade, including tariff increases, import bans and export duties, were imposed by the big economies each month, the report showed. The report appears to show the impact of US President Donald Trump's relentlessly confrontational trade policy, including launching a trade war with China and slapping stiff tariffs on steel and alumium imports from many countries. On Wednesday, the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body agreed to review complaints from a range of countries over the US tariffs, as well as Washington's complaints over retaliatory duties. "The WTO is doing all it can to support efforts to de-escalate the situation, but finding solutions will require political will and it will require leadership from the G20," Azevedo said. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will visit a "number of brotherly" Arab states at the request of his father, King Salman Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman embarked Thursday on a regional tour starting with the United Arab Emirates, his first official trip abroad since critic Jamal Khashoggi's murder tipped the kingdom into crisis. Prince Mohammed will visit a "number of brotherly" Arab states at the request of his father, King Salman, the royal court said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, without naming the countries. Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed welcomed him on his first stop in the UAE, a close ally that is part of a Saudi-led coalition battling Iran-aligned Huthi rebels in Yemen, according to the Emirati state news agency WAM. The two leaders discussed "regional and international" developments and the "challenges and threats facing the Middle East region", WAM said, without elaborating. The prince is also set to travel to the Tunisian capital on Tuesday, a presidential source in Tunis told AFP. The regional tour, just before the crown prince is expected to attend the G20 summit in Argentina next week, comes as international pressure has mounted on Riyadh over the grisly murder of Washington Post columnist Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. The Saudi insider-turned-critic was killed and dismembered in what Saudi Arabia said was a "rogue" operation, but CIA analysis leaked to the US media pointed the finger at Prince Mohammed. US President Donald Trump on Tuesday glossed over the CIA's reported conclusion that the crown prince had authorised the killing, saying Washington would not slacken its support for the kingdom. - Prince and Erdogan could meet - Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman shakes hands with Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in July, 2017 Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could meet with Prince Mohammed on the sidelines of the G20 summit, according to a Turkish presidential spokesman. Such a meeting would be the first face-to-face encounter between the two since the killing that has tainted the image of both the crown prince and the kingdom. Erdogan has said the order to murder Khashoggi came from "the highest levels" of the Saudi government but has stopped short of directly blaming Prince Mohammed. Saudi Arabia has said that 21 people are in custody, with death penalties sought against five men, but attention remains focused on whether the crown prince ordered the murder despite the kingdom's denials. The European Union on Thursday called for those "really responsible" to be held to account. Calling for a "completely transparent and credible investigation", the EU's top diplomat Federica Mogherini said: "For us accountability does not mean revenge." Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Wednesday said criticism of Prince Mohammed is a "red line", and that calls for him to be held accountable for the murder would not be tolerated. But keeping up the international pressure on Riyadh, Denmark on Thursday suspended arms sales to Saudi Arabia over the murder, the second country to do so after Germany. Separately on Thursday, the French foreign ministry said it would impose sanctions against 18 Saudi citizens over Khashoggi's murder. bur-dm-mah-ac/dl Angolan President Joao Lourenco (L) met his Portuguese counterpart Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa (R) in Lisbon at the start of a three-day state visit Angolan President Joao Lourenco on Thursday compared the fight against corruption in his country to "touching a wasps nest", a day after his predecessor Jose Eduardo dos Santos refuted allegations he emptied the state's finances. Dos Santos, who stepped down in September 2017 following 38 years in control of the oil-producing nation, has been accused by Lourenco of leaving "state coffers empty". Dos Santos hit back against the allegation on Wednesday, insisting: "In September 2017... there was about $15 billion in the National Bank of Angola." At the start of a three-day state visit to Portugal, Lourenco on Thursday reaffirmed his determination to take on graft. "When we decided to fight corruption in Angola, we knew that we were touching a wasp nest. We started to feel the bites but that will not kill us and we will not back down," Lourenco told a press conference in Lisbon. Asked how Angola would recover the nation's funds, Lourenco said: "We are not afraid to play with fire. We will continue to do so, being careful to keep it under control." The Angolan government has said it intends to voluntarily or forcibly return illegitimate funds to the country. Despite its oil wealth, Angola remains among the poorest countries in the world. Lourenco has pledged to kickstart the ailing economy with a push to attract foreign investment to end its "excessive" dependence on oil revenue. Since coming to power, Lourenco has fought against corruption while also removing figures associated with the previous regime, including deposing Dos Santos' daughter from the helm of state oil giant Sonangol. Billionaire Isabel dos Santos is Africa's richest woman. Palestinians stand next to the remains of a car destroyed by an Israeli air strike in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on November 12, 2018 Israel's army censor warned Thursday against publishing photos released earlier in the day by Hamas of eight people it claimed were part of a recent Israeli special forces operation in the Gaza Strip that turned deadly. The armed wing of Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip, called for information on the people in the photos as it continued an investigation into the botched Israeli mission. Hamas also distributed images of two vehicles purportedly linked to the covert operation, but provided no further details on the identities of the people pictured. Israel's army censor issued a statement shortly afterwards calling on the public and news media not to distribute the photos or information relating to them. "Hamas is attempting to understand and analyse the incident that occurred in Gaza on November 11 and any information, even if it seems harmless by those who distribute it, can endanger lives and put state security at risk," the army statement said. It said in issuing the warning that it was not commenting on the credibility of the information Hamas had distributed. A botched Israeli special forces operation on November 11 in the Gaza Strip prompted Hamas to vow revenge and led to the deadliest escalation between the two sides since a 2014 war. The clash that resulted from the blown operation killed seven Palestinian militants, including a local Hamas military commander, as well as an Israeli army officer. Israel has provided few details on the operation, but said it was an intelligence-gathering mission. Palestinian militants in Gaza responded by firing some 460 rockets and mortar rounds at Israel, as well as an anti-tank missile that hit a bus Hamas says was being used by Israel's army. In all, some 27 Israelis were wounded, three of them severely. A Palestinian labourer from the occupied West Bank was killed when a rocket hit a building in the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Israel hit back with widespread air strikes in the Gaza Strip that saw seven Palestinians killed in 24 hours. A November 13 ceasefire brokered by Egypt ended the fighting that had raised fears of a fourth war between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza since 2008. az-cmr-mib-mjs/dco US President Donald Trump used a Thanksgiving phone call to troops deployed overseas to complain about a federal appeals court in California that temporarily blocked a proclamation on asylum US President Donald Trump renewed his attacks on the judiciary on Thanksgiving Day Thursday, accusing judges of making the country unsafe as he fanned a bitter row over asylum seekers on the US-Mexico border. In a teleconference with US troops, comments to reporters at his Florida estate and early morning tweets, Trump resumed a fight begun Wednesday after Chief Justice John Roberts defended the independence of federal judges. Trump threatened to close the border with Mexico if the situation gets out of control, claiming that criminals and "bad people" were in a migrant caravan trying to gain entry as candidates for asylum. In another matter that has set off rule-of-law alarms, Trump also doubled down on his decision to accept Saudi Arabia's denial that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the October 2 assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi -- and insisted that contrary to reports the CIA has not concluded otherwise. "We have a very strong ally in Saudi Arabia. We have an ally that said they did not commit at the top level the crown prince, the king, they did not commit this atrocity," he said. The president had issued a proclamation earlier in the week ordering that only people entering the country at designated border points be permitted to apply for asylum, a rule that would automatically reject anyone caught trying to cross elsewhere. But a federal judge in San Francisco, Jon Tigar, temporarily blocked the measure, raising Trump's ire who denounced him as an "Obama judge." That triggered an extraordinary rebuke on Wednesday from Roberts, the high court's conservative chief justice. "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges," Roberts said in a statement to the Associated Press on Wednesday. "What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them," he said. The issue clearly was uppermost on Trump's mind during a Thanksgiving teleconference with US servicemembers around the world. It was the kind of forum that previous presidents would have reserved to thank troops for their service, steering well clear of politics. But Trump lost little time in raising the border. "It's a terrible thing when judges take over your protective services, when they tell you how to protect your border. It's a disgrace," he told the troops, denouncing the San Francisco appellate court that oversees Tigar as "a big thorn in our side." He praised the deployment of US troops in the border area, and compared his administration's border battles to US military operations against Islamic militants overseas. - Border tensions - "We took an old broken wall and we wrapped it with barb wire plus. I guess you could really call it barb wire plus. This is the ultimate. Nobody is getting through these walls," he told the troops. Later, in comments to reporters, Trump said troops on the border were authorized to use lethal force if necessary. "If they have to, they have to use lethal force. I hope they don't have to, but you're dealing with a minimum of 500 serious criminals. So I'm not going to let the military be taken advantage of," he said. US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said earlier this week the troops would be armed only with batons. More than 4,300 migrants -- most of them from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala -- have massed in Tijuana, Mexico across the border from San Diego, California after a weeks-long trek from Central America. Mexican police say 57 Central Americans have been detained and tensions have been growing between the local authorities and the new arrivals. "If we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control," Trump said. "The whole border. I mean the whole border. Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the united states where they make so many cars," he said. - Chief justice - Over the course of the day, Trump alluded several times to Roberts, the chief justice. "Justice Roberts can say what he wants, but the 9th Circuit is a complete & total disaster. It is out of control, has a horrible reputation, is overturned more than any Circuit in the Country," he said in his opening Twitter salvo of the day. "Judges must not Legislate Security ... and Safety at the Border, or anywhere else," Trump tweeted. "They know nothing about it and are making our Country unsafe." The latest figures show the 9th Circuit had the fourth highest reversal rate during the October 2017 term. MP Alfred Yekatom, a former militia leader known as "Rambo", was arrested in late October after firing his gun in the air during a parliamentary session in Bangui, Central African Republic's capital A former militia leader from Central African Republic known as "Colonel Rambo" will for the first time face judges in The Hague Friday on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Alfred Yekatom, 43, was arrested late last month in the volatile African country and extradited on Saturday to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. Yekatom faces 14 charges for his role in the CAR's bloody unrest, which has pitted Christian and Muslim groups against each other since 2013. An elected MP since 2016, Yekatom was arrested after he drew his gun and fired into the air in the parliament in Bangui, the capital, during an altercation late last month. At Friday's hearing, scheduled for 1000 GMT, judges will "verify the identity of the suspect and the language in which he is able to follow the proceedings," the ICC said earlier this week. "He will be informed of the charges against him," it said in a statement. The charges include murder, mutilation, torture, cruel treatment and recruiting child soldiers into his so-called anti-Balaka militia group, responsible for attacks on Muslims between December 2013 and August 2014, prosecutors said. - 'Violent acts' - Yekatom was wanted in particular for leading an attack in Bangui on December 5, 2013, when his group armed with guns, grenades and machetes, attacked Muslims in Boeing district, killing between six to 13 civilians. The group then moved to another location where four Muslims were killed, prosecutors said. Yekatom had been in prosecutors' sights since 2015 for "engaging in or providing support for acts that undermine the peace, stability or security in the CAR", his ICC arrest warrant said. But it said the shooting incident in parliament showed "that he resorts to violent acts" and that his arrest was necessary "to prevent him from committing further crimes within the jurisdiction of the court." Yekatom's transfer is the first since the ICC's chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda opened a probe in 2014 into the deadly violence that has left thousands dead and forced more than a quarter of the population out of their homes, according to UN figures. One of the world's poorest nations despite a rich supply of diamonds and uranium, CAR has struggled to recover from a 2013 civil war that erupted when President Francois Bozize, a Christian, was overthrown by mainly Muslim Seleka rebels. In response, Christians, who account for about 80 percent of the population, organised vigilante units dubbed "anti-Balaka" in reference to the balaka machetes used by Seleka rebels. Two policemen along with a father and son from Quetta who were seeking Chinese visas were killed in the attack Four people were killed on Friday when gunmen armed with hand grenades and a suicide vest stormed the Chinese consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi, officials said, with the attack claimed by a separatist group which branded Beijing "an oppressor". Pakistani authorities said that security forces had secured the area after the attack, the latest assault on Chinese nationals in the country, where Beijing has poured billions of dollars into one of the largest projects in its massive Belt and Road programme. China "strongly condemned" the attack and asked Pakistan to take measures to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens and institutions in the country, as well as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) mega-project. The attack happened at the Chinese consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi Three gunmen tried to enter the consulate in the southern port city, but were intercepted by guards at a checkpoint, Karachi police chief Ameer Sheikh told AFP. "They were holding Kalashnikovs. First, they hurled a small (grenade) and then started firing," said Allah Bakhsh, a guard at a nearby house who witnessed the attack. Police officials said two of their personnel were killed, along with a father and son from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, who were seeking Chinese visas and were caught in the crossfire. At least one of the attackers was wearing a suicide vest which did not detonate, another senior police official said. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told reporters in Islamabad that "all the terrorists have been eliminated", and that all 21 staff at the consulate during the attack had been taken to a safe location. - China is an 'oppressor' - The attack was claimed by a separatist militant group from Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan, which is at the centre of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the major Chinese project in the country. "We have been seeing the Chinese as an oppressor, along with Pakistani forces," the spokesman for the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), Geand Baloch, told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location, adding they were "destroying the future of Balochistan". China "strongly condemned" the attack and asked Pakistan to take measures to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens The BLA later emailed a statement to media in which it said the attack was "aimed at making it clear that China's military expansionism on Baloch soil will not be tolerated". It warned the Chinese to leave or "be prepared for continued attacks". The group is just one of the militant outfits operating in Balochistan, Pakistan's largest and poorest province, which is rife with ethnic, sectarian and separatist insurgencies. Many are active on social media. After Friday's attack Twitter suspended an account that the BLA had also used to issue its claim. Residents of the resource-rich province, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, have long complained that it does not receive a fair share of the profits made from its mineral wealth. Prime Minister Imran Khan said Friday's attack would not undermine the Pakistan-China relationship, which he described as "mightier than Himalayas and deeper than Arabian Sea". Also on Friday a bomb hidden in a carton of vegetables killed at least 31 people at a marketplace in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region. Dozens more people were wounded, with fears the toll could rise. - Chinese investment - China, one of Pakistan's closest allies, has poured billions into the South Asian country in recent years as part of CPEC, a massive infrastructure project that seeks to connect its western province Xinjiang with the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar in Balochistan. The project is one of the largest in Beijing's "One Belt One Road" initiative, comprising a network of roads and sea routes involving 65 countries. Pakistan sees the project as a "gamechanger", but it presents an enormous challenge in a country plagued by weak institutions, endemic corruption and a range of insurgencies in areas slated to host the corridor. The subject of economic dividends from CPEC is extremely sensitive in some of those areas -- particularly in Balochistan. At least one of the attackers was wearing a suicide vest which did not detonate Since the beginning of the project militants have repeatedly attacked construction sites, blowing up numerous gas pipelines and trains, and targeted Chinese workers. In August this year three Chinese nationals were among six wounded in a suicide attack on a bus transporting Chinese engineers working in Balochistan, in an attack that was also claimed by the BLA. The Pakistani military has been targeting insurgencies in the province since 2004, and has been repeatedly accused by international rights groups of abuses there. Islamabad regularly accuses its eastern neighbour India of funding and arming Baloch separatists, and of targeting development projects in the province, particularly CPEC. Delhi, which has denied the claims, swiftly condemned Friday's attack. Chinese authorities are facing an unlikely challenge spawned from their own efforts to indoctrinate the population with the ideology of the party: young Marxists The Chinese Communist Party has faced and crushed a myriad of dissidents over its decades-long rule, from pro-democracy reformers to human rights advocates and outspoken religious leaders. But Chinese authorities are now facing an unlikely challenge spawned from their own efforts to indoctrinate the population with the ideology of the party: young Marxists. "After I started university, I became very sensitive to the treatment, rights and interests of workers," a student activist at Peking University told AFP, requesting anonymity. As the son of migrant farm workers, the 21-year-old had a sense of social responsibility for China's underclass, he said. In exploring ways to help them, he read the work of Karl Marx. His story is not unique. Reacting against the increasing consumerism in Chinese society and the growing inequality between the rich and poor, students at elite universities are turning to Marxism - the ideological bedrock of any Communist Party. On campus, students organised movie nights and socials for the school's janitorial and cafeteria staff. They gathered to sing socialist anthems. But when students tried to apply theory to practise by joining efforts to organise a labour union for factory workers in southern Guangdong province, Chinese authorities flew into action. In August, a police raid swept up the student activists, beating several of them and confiscating their phones, according to the Jasic Workers Solidarity group, a labour rights organisation that the students joined. Several of them, including Yue Xin, a Peking University graduate who became known after co-authoring a petition demanding details of a sexual abuse case at the school, have not been heard from since. "We, the academics, are really concerned about the students' freedom and their safety," said Jenny Chan, an assistant professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University who studies labour movements. - A violent past - The crackdown continued this month, with around five graduates detained in various cities, according to activists. Among them was a Peking University graduate who was beaten and taken by men in dark clothing on campus, an eyewitness told AFP. The school issued a statement on the university's internal online forum, calling the Peking University alumnus a "suspected criminal". Several members of activist organisation the Jasic Workers Solidarity group say they were beaten by police and their phones confiscated At one university, students who participated in Jasic Workers Solidarity activities are tightly monitored by teachers and are questioned if they leave campus for an extended period of time, according to an activist who asked that her school not be named for fear of retribution. Students say their Marxist societies have struggled to register with their universities. "These incidents will only make me feel more angry and further arouse my will to fight," a Nanjing University student involved in the Jasic group told AFP, requesting anonymity. "It will not make me yield." Though the activists make up a small portion of the student body, Chinese authorities are taking no chances. In 1989, thousands of university students joined workers in pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square that eventually provoked a bloody crackdown. Since those protests, authorities have moved "swiftly and harshly against anything that seems capable of linking people in different occupations and different places," explained Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a Chinese history professor at the University of California, Irvine. "In one sense, it is certainly ironic to find a government that claims to adhere to Marxism cracking down on a Marxism group," he said. With the upcoming 100th anniversary of the May 4th movement, another historical mass demonstration led by students in Beijing, the Chinese Communist Party will be on "high alert," he told AFP. - Divided campus? - So far, police and school authorities seem to have succeeded in containing the burst of activism. Online censors have scrubbed posts about police detentions and Jasic workers. Chat groups circulating information about student activists have also been shut down. At Peking University student views on the school's Marxist society and the activism of their fellow classmates run the gamut. Some were sympathetic, while others criticised the group as militant and extremist. "I strongly support them because they dare to put others before themselves," wrote one student on Peking University's internal online forum. The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 are commemorated in Hong Kong but seen as a warning to Beijing of student activism "Forget it," scoffed another. "I'm a left-leaning Maoist and I don't even like them." The ideological clash also comes as Chinese leader Xi Jinping calls for a refocusing on Communist roots -- including a May speech which called for Marxism to be promoted in campuses and classrooms. For most students, many of whom are liberal-minded or influenced by Western ideas, Maoism and worker rights are very distant concepts, explained Li, a fourth-year Peking University student who only gave his surname. "As a political science student, I'm not very leftist in how I view labour," he told AFP. He criticised the activists for their lack of "objectiveness and impartiality", but said that doesn't mean they should be suppressed. Even if the government tries to clamp down on students, the labour disputes that sparked the protests in the first place won't vanish, added Chan. "It is the government now who has to come up and resolve the problems," she said. Otherwise, "all these grievances and discontent" will simply increase. "Obviously," she added, "the students are not going to be silent." Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana issued a written apology on Weibo after a video was posted on their company's Instagram feed that some deemed culturally insensitive to China The founders of Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana apologised to Chinese customers on Friday as a row over racially offensive posts snowballed, with its products pulled from lucrative Chinese e-commerce platforms. In an attempt to salvage their reputation in the world's most important luxury market, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana capped a 1 minute 30-second mea culpa by saying "sorry" in Mandarin in a video posted on a Chinese social media platform. "Our families always taught us to respect different cultures across the world and because of this we want to ask for your forgiveness if we have made mistakes in interpreting yours," said Dolce in Italian. "We want to say sorry to all Chinese across the world, of which there are many, and we are taking this apology and message very seriously," Gabbana added. The Chinese-subtitled video was posted on the brand's official Weibo account, the popular Chinese Twitter-like social media platform, where they have close to one million followers. The company had already issued a written apology on Weibo earlier this week after the scandal prompted Chinese celebrities to boycott a Dolce & Gabbana fashion show in Shanghai, which the company then cancelled. The controversy arose after Dolce & Gabbana posted short clips on Instagram showing a Chinese woman eating pizza, spaghetti and a cannoli with chopsticks that some deemed culturally insensitive. But it escalated after screenshots circulated of an Instagram user's alleged chat with the famously volatile Gabbana, who used five smiling poo emojis to describe China and launched insults at the country and its people. The company said its account and that of Stefano Gabbana had been hacked, and that its legal office was investigating the matter. Despite the earlier apology, the Italian fashion house's products disappeared from multiple Chinese e-commerce platforms. A spokeswoman of retail giant Suning.com said they have removed all Dolce & Gabbana products after the incident. The brands also could not be searched on retail giants Taobao and JD.com. The two companies did not respond to requests for comment. - 'Insult' China - A protestor on Thursday targeted the Dolce & Gabbana store in Shanghai, plastering the storefront with the alleged screenshots of Gabbana's conversation. "Improper comments that insult China from the so-called famous designer of an internationally famous brand have really ruined our mood," said protestor Edward Gu, who claims to work for a modelling and talent agency. Referring to the cancelled show, he said many models, manufacturers and publicists from around the world worked hard on it but it was now a "wasted effort". Chinese social media users were unconvinced by the latest apology, with the video garnering over 100,000 comments some three hours after it was posted. "They're bowing their precious heads to the renminbi (yuan) then," one Weibo user commented on the apology post. The controversy marks the latest backpedalling by a foreign company for offending Chinese consumers with advertising or information that insults China or clashes with Beijing's official position. Earlier this year, German automaker Mercedes-Benz apologised for "hurting the feelings" of people in China after its Instagram account quoted Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, seen as a separatist by Beijing. Trump has glossed over the Central Intelligence Agency's reported conclusion that the crown prince had authorised the killing Turkey on Friday said US President Donald Trump intended to turn a "blind eye" to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder after he said it would not affect Washington's ties with Riyadh. Trump's backing of Saudi Arabia, his key ally against Iran, comes despite global outrage over the grisly October 2 killing that has tarnished the image of both the kingdom and its de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. "In one sense, Trump is saying 'I will turn a blind eye' no matter what happens," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with CNN Turk broadcaster. "This is not the right approach. Money doesn't mean everything," Cavusoglu said, referring to Trump's continued support for Saudi Arabia, which has committed billions of dollars in US weapons contracts. Trump on Tuesday glossed over the Central Intelligence Agency's reported conclusion that the crown prince had authorised the killing. "Maybe he did and maybe he didn't!" Trump said, implying Prince Mohammed's culpability in Khashoggi's killing in the Saudi mission in Istanbul. Saudi Arabia has said it will not tolerate any criticism of the crown prince Trump was widely pilloried for what critics called his mercantile priorities that made him appear more like a lobbyist for Riyadh. A former Saudi royal insider who became a critic of the crown prince, Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in what Riyadh -- after weeks of denial -- said was a "rogue" operation. The 59-year-old had gone there for documents he needed to marry his Turkish fiancee. Saudi Arabia has held 21 people in custody over the murder but shielded the powerful crown prince. Washington earlier this month placed sanctions on 17 Saudis, which also targeted the two top aides to the crown prince by freezing assets under US jurisdiction and forbidding US companies from doing business with them. The killing and Riyadh's explanations have angered its Western partners. Germany on Monday said Berlin would bar 18 Saudis from entering its territory and Europe's Schengen passport-free zone over their alleged links to the murder. In October, Germany called for EU countries to follow its lead and suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, prompting a dismissive response from France, the kingdom's second-biggest customer after India. But Denmark on Thursday followed suit, freezing all sales of weapons and military equipment to Riyadh. Cavusoglu said "artificial measures" would not help solve the crisis. "They (Europe) say they don't want to upset ties with Saudi Arabia. We do not want to upset our relations either," he said, but added Ankara would do anything to shed light on the murder. - 'No obstacle'- Turkey insists the murder was premeditated, sharing evidence with Riyadh as well as with the US and Western allies but stops short of pointing the finger of blame at the prince. Turkey insists the murder was premeditated President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the order came from "the highest levels" but not from King Salman. Ankara has not ruled out the possibility of a meeting between Erdogan and Prince Mohammed on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Argentina next week. "We don't see any obstacle to a meeting with the crown prince," Cavusoglu said. "If there is a request, there could be a meeting but our president will decide." The two men spoke on the phone in late October but that would be the first face-to-face encounter since the murder. Prince Salman on Thursday embarked on a regional tour starting with Riyadh's close ally United Arab Emirates, his first official trip since the killing. The prince is also set to travel to the Tunisian capital on Tuesday. Turkish pro-government media, which has often provided gruesome details of what happened to Khashoggi in a series of leaks maintaining pressure against Riyadh, speculated further on what happened to Khashoggi's body. Sabah newspaper reported Khashoggi was first strangled using a bag over his head before Salah Muhammed Al-Tubaigy, a lieutenant-colonel in the Saudi forensic department, drained his blood in the bathtub before dismembering him. Yemeni government forces advance through a heavily damaged industrial distict of the battleground Red Sea port city of Hodeida on November 18, 2018 The UN envoy to Yemen on Friday urged warring sides to "keep the peace" in Hodeida, saying the rebels agreed to talks on the UN taking a leading role in running the lifeline port. Griffiths, who started a Yemen peace mission in rebel-held Sanaa on Wednesday, said he has discussed with Huthi rebel officials "how the UN could contribute to keeping the peace" in the key port city of Hodeida. "I am here to tell you today that we have agreed that the UN should now pursue actively and urgently detailed negotiations for a leading UN role in the port and more broadly," he told reporters during his first visit to Hodeida. "We believe that such a role will preserve the essential humanitarian pipeline that starts here and serves the people of Yemen." Griffiths urged Yemen's warring parties to "keep the peace" in the rebel-held Red Sea port city, which serves as the entry point of nearly all imports and humanitarian aid into the impoverished country. "The attention of the world is on Hodeida. Leaders from every country have called for us all to keep the peace in Hodeida," he said. Griffiths was in the country ahead of planned peace talks in Sweden in December between the Iran-aligned Huthi rebels and pro-government forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition. According to an AFP correspondent, clashes could be heard in the distance as the envoy visited the lifeline port. Yemen Griffiths met rebel chief Abdulmalik al-Huthi and addressed "what can facilitate new discussions in December", rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdelsalam said on Thursday. Abdelsalam said that included "procedures needed to transport injured and sick for treatment abroad and bring them back", a key sticking point during a previous failed attempt at talks in September. Both warring sides have expressed support for the envoy's mission to hold discussions. - 'Committed' to peace talks - The UAE state minister for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, whose country is a key player in the Saudi-led coalition, reiterated Friday that the United Arab Emirates was "committed" to peace talks. "The best way forward towards a sustainable political process is to support the Sweden talks and the work of the UN Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffith without prejudging these negotiations," he said on Twitter. Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi -- whose UN-recognised government was pushed out of Sanaa by the rebels in 2014 -- has also said he supports the talks while vowing to "liberate" the city of Hodeida. Despite a lull in fighting, Hodeida residents reached by telephone said on Friday that Huthi rebels have been bringing in reinforcements. Martin Griffiths (C), the UN special envoy for Yemen, descends from his plane upon his arrival at Sanaa international airport on November 21, 2018. Dozens of families have fled Hodeida, as the rebels stationed snipers on top of peoples' homes, according to residents and pro-government military officials. The conflict in Yemen, which escalated when the Saudi-led alliance intervened in 2015, has killed thousands and left up to 22 million Yemenis in need of humanitarian assistance, according to UN agencies. - 'Bursts of fighting' - Under heavy international pressure, the loyalists and their Saudi-led military backers have largely suspended a five-month offensive on Hodeida. Humanitarian organisations are desperate to see the current peace push translate into a more permanent halt to the four-year war. The UN's World Food Programme said Friday it had distributed 30,000 food baskets -- each containing enough to feed a family of six for one month -- in Hodeida city. "In a city that has been enduring on and off bursts of fighting, these food baskets have an added benefit of helping families to avoid travelling more than necessary to find food, limiting their own security risks," WFP said in a statement. "Despite the difficult situation, WFP is currently assisting eight million Yemenis every month with food or food vouchers." UN agencies say 14 million Yemenis are at risk of starvation and the closure of Hodeida port would further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis. Five-year-old Abdelrahman Manhash is suffered from severe malnutrition. Up to 14 million Yemenis are at risk of famine, according to UN agencies The heads of the UN's humanitarian and children's agencies said the "recent de-escalation in fighting in Hodeida is providing a desperately needed respite to hundreds of thousands of civilians". The current peace push by Griffiths is the biggest effort in two years. In September, a previous round of UN-led peace talks faltered when the Huthis refused to travel to Geneva, accusing the world body of failing to guarantee their delegation's return to Sanaa or secure the evacuation of wounded rebels to Oman. Previous talks broke down in 2016, when 108 days of negotiations in Kuwait failed to yield a deal and left rebel delegates stranded in Oman for three months. According to the World Health Organization, nearly 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen's conflict, though some rights groups estimate the toll could be five times higher. MP Alfred Yekatom, a former militia leader known as "Rambo", was arrested in late October after firing his gun in the air during a parliamentary session in Bangui, Central African Republic's capital A former militia leader from the Central African Republic known as "Colonel Rambo" was tortured in detention before his transfer to The Hague on war crimes charges, his lawyer said Friday. The arrest of Alfred Yekatom, who made his first appearance at the International Criminal Court since his extradition, was "brutal" and he was later beaten with rifle butts, his defence said. Yekatom, 43, was arrested in October in Bangui and sent on Saturday to the Netherlands for his role in bloody unrest in the CAR pitting Christian and Muslim groups against each other since 2013. "The arrest was, according to him, brutal," lawyer Xavier-Jean Keita told the court. "He was tortured, he says, he was beaten with Kalashnikovs and rifle butts, and he still has visible signs of the beating," the lawyer added. "The medical team at the ICC detention centre has observed this." An elected MP since 2016, Yekatom was arrested after he drew his gun and fired into the air in the parliament in Bangui, the capital, during an altercation late last month. He faces 14 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, mutilation, torture, cruel treatment and recruiting child soldiers into his so-called anti-Balaka militia group. The group is accused of attacks on Muslims between December 2013 and August 2014. Yekatom said the first he had known about the war crimes charges was when he arrived in The Hague. "No one said anything to me, I was at parliament and there was a bit of trouble there. Then they arrested me and sent me here," the ex-fighter, wearing a suit and listening to a translation of the proceedings on headphones, told the court. "When I got here on Sunday I was given some documents and I read the charges. No one said anything to me there, it was only here that I was told." - 'Violent acts' - Yekatom's lawyer added that his "fundamental rights had been violated" because he had been denied access to a judge in the CAR, and the first time he had seen a lawyer was on Monday at the ICC. The court will hold an official hearing to confirm the charges on April 30 2019, Judge Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua said. The judge said he could not immediately deal with the allegations of torture. "You have raised a very important problem and we cannot deal with it orally. We have to have written submissions, at this stage we cannot discuss this question, nor resolve it." Yekatom's transfer is the first since the ICC's chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda opened a probe in 2014 into the deadly violence that has left thousands dead and forced more than a quarter of the population out of their homes, according to UN figures. One of the world's poorest nations despite a rich supply of diamonds and uranium, CAR has struggled to recover from a 2013 civil war that erupted when President Francois Bozize, a Christian, was overthrown by mainly Muslim Seleka rebels. In response, Christians, who account for about 80 percent of the population, organised vigilante units dubbed "anti-Balaka" in reference to the balaka machetes used by Seleka rebels. Yekatom had been in prosecutors' sights since 2015 for "engaging in or providing support for acts that undermine the peace, stability or security in the CAR", his ICC arrest warrant said. Yekatom was wanted in particular for leading an attack in Bangui on December 5, 2013, when his group armed with guns, grenades and machetes, attacked Muslims in Boeing district, killing between six to 13 civilians. The group then moved to another location where four Muslims were killed, prosecutors said. The arrest warrant said the shooting incident in parliament showed "that he resorts to violent acts" and that his arrest was necessary "to prevent him from committing further crimes within the jurisdiction of the court." Bahraini opposition leader Sheikh Ali Salman, who was sentenced to life in prison on November 4 for spying for rival Gulf state Qatar Amnesty International said Friday it was "gravely concerned" by Bahrain's suppression of political opposition, a day ahead of the parliamentary election. "Over the past two years, the crackdown in Bahrain has seen the political opposition detained, intimidated and silenced," said Devin Kenney, the rights group's Bahrain researcher, in a statement. "We call on the authorities to stop this ongoing and escalating repression and to allow free expression of dissenting voices, including those who oppose the monarchy. "Bahrain's international partners and allies cannot remain silent, and must use their influence to pressure the Bahraini authorities to adhere to the international standards they have committed to," Kenney said. The Sunni-ruled Gulf kingdom has been hit by waves of unrest since 2011, when security forces crushed Shiite-led protests demanding a constitutional monarchy and an elected prime minister. Opposition movements have been outlawed and hundreds of dissidents have been imprisoned -- with many stripped of their nationality. Bahrain's two main opposition groups -- the Shiite Al-Wefaq and secular Waad -- are prohibited from submitting parliamentary candidates. Sheikh Ali Salman, who headed the Al-Wefaq group, was sentenced to life in prison on November 4 for spying for rival Gulf state Qatar, in a ruling rights groups have called a travesty. Bahraini authorities accuse Shiite Iran of provoking unrest in the kingdom. Tehran denies the allegation. Human rights groups have frequently said cases against activists in Bahrain -- men and women, religious and secular -- fail to meet the basic standards of fair trials. A handout photo taken in January 2017 and released by his family British student Matt Hedges (R) and his wife Daniela Tejada. The United Arab Emirates is reviewing a request for clemency for Hedges The wife of a British researcher sentenced to life in prison in the United Arab Emirates on espionage charges told AFP she was cautiously optimistic he could be freed. Daniela Tejada said the family of her husband Matt Hedges had submitted a letter asking for clemency from UAE authorities on Wednesday, just hours after he received the jail term. The country's ambassador to Britain said Friday the authorities were reviewing the request, while insisting the government "does not dictate verdicts" to the courts. "I want to remain hopeful," Tejada said in an interview in London. "It's hard to do so after all of our hopes have been shattered repeatedly for six months. "I hope that the UAE... see that this is an innocent man, and that he deserves that clemency." Daniela Tejada says "I will not rest" until her husband Matt Hedges is back home Tejada, who Thursday met Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt after criticising British efforts at securing Hedges's release, vowed she would keep fighting no matter what. The 27-year-old added that the decision to seek clemency, with its implied admission of guilt, appeared the best option available. "I know in the bottom of my heart that Matt is innocent, but even if it takes me subjugating myself to the UAE I will, because I have the conviction that Matt deserves his freedom," Tejada said. "Until I have him safe, back home with me, I will not rest." - 'Absolutely terrified' - Hedges, 31, was detained in Dubai on May 5 while researching the UAE's foreign and internal security policies after the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011. After months of uncertainty the scholar was released on bail on October 29, prompting hopes of his imminent release. But his family and British officials were left stunned by Wednesday's ruling, in a country considered a strategic Middle East ally supplied with British arms. His wife says Matt Hedges was held in solitary confinement after being arrested, and subjected to interrogations lasting up to 15 hours Amid increased diplomatic pressure, the UAE foreign ministry said Thursday it wanted an "amicable solution". Tejada hopes that could mean her husband is released in the coming weeks. "We've had so many deadlines but Christmas definitely is something we're all hoping for," she said. "It would really mean the world to have him back by then." Tejada spoke to her husband for around five minutes Thursday, and said he was not allowed to reveal where he was being held and "didn't sound well". "He's absolutely terrified," she added, noting Hedges has suffered from anxiety, depression and panic attacks. "Until he receives adequate medical treatment and personal support, he will not be OK and I'm very concerned about that because... he has experienced suicidal thoughts during his detention. "I just wish I could be there to truly just hold him and tell him 'it's going to be OK.'" - 'A dark cloud' - The UAE envoy in London, Sulaiman Hamid al-Mazroui, dismissed criticism of the case's handling, saying three judges had evaluated "compelling evidence" in three hearings over a month-long period. He insisted that genuine researchers were able to visit his country "freely". But Tejada said Hedges was denied due process from the outset. Hedges was detained in May while researching the effect of the Arab Spring on the UAE's foreign and internal security policies She said he had been held in solitary confinement and initially not given a lawyer or adequate consular access, and was subjected to "intense interrogations" lasting up to 15 hours. "The fact that he was held in such conditions, and that he was subject to such mistreatment, already breaches every due process standard," Tejada said. Colombia-born Tejada, who married Hedges in January last year after the couple began dating in 2011, said she has been heartened by the "overwhelming demonstration of support in the UK and abroad". An online petition she launched following the sentencing has already garnered more than 200,000 signatures. Meanwhile more than 100 academics last month signed an open letter expressing their concern over the case. Tejada has been getting support from Richard Ratcliffe, whose British-Iranian wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is being held in Iran on sedition charges Tejada revealed she has also been getting support from Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who remains held in jail in Iran on sedition charges. "(They) have been an inspiration for me -- just the strength of their relationship and resilience and how brave they've been," she said. "I'm a firm believer that every sky has a dark cloud that has to pass at some point." Mourners attend the funeral of citizen journalists Raed Fares and Hamod Jnaid, who were "shot dead by unknown assailants" in the village of Kafr Nabel in the northwestern province of Idlib Two activists critical of both the regime and jihadists were gunned down Friday in Syria's last major rebel bastion in the northwest of the country, their radio station and a monitor said. Citizen journalist Raed Fares and Hamod Jnaid were "shot dead by unknown assailants riding in a van in the town of Kafr Nabel" in Idlib province, Fresh FM said on its Facebook page. More than half of Idlib and the surrounding region is controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an alliance led by jihadists of Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate, while most of the rest is held by pro-Turkey rebels. The Islamic State (IS) group also has a presence in the province. Targeted killings and kidnappings have for months plagued Idlib, with angry residents blaming all sides. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the two men died of their wounds from the attack, for which there was no immediate claim of responsibility. "They were famous for their criticism of rebels committing violations or arresting civilians, especially when it came to jihadist groups," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said. "Both have several times been detained by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham," he said. Throughout Syria's seven-year uprising, Fares has been known for his often humorous signs in English and Arabic criticising President Bashar al-Assad's regime. Fares founded Fresh FM in 2013 to counter "fundamentalist narratives" in Idlib, he has said, after which he was repeatedly targeted by armed groups. IS militants raided the radio's offices on several occasions, but it was also bombarded by regime forces, he wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Times in June. "In 2014, I almost lost my life when two armed men opened fire at me and shot me in the chest," he said. "I was abducted four times by Al-Qaeda militants and released a few days later after being tortured." Jnaid, who also worked at the radio, was an advocate for freedom of expression and the rule of law. "I want freedom of opinion. I want to be able to speak and not be scared," he said in a video posted on Facebook earlier this year. A September deal between regime ally Russia and rebel backer Turkey held off a major regime assault to retake Idlib. But a buffer zone has yet to be implemented around the region, as stipulated by the deal, after jihadists refused to withdraw from a planned demilitarised area by mid-October. Syria's civil war has killed more than 360,000 people and sent millions fleeing from their homes since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-regime protests. It has since evolved into a complex conflict involving world powers and jihadists. eSwatini Prime Minister Ambrose Dlamini said all senior officials including himself and ministers "will no longer travel first class but in business class when flying on national duties" The newly-appointed prime minister of the tiny kingdom of eSwatini on Friday banned first class air travel for top government officials as part of a slew of measures to control spending. Prime Minister Ambrose Dlamini, who took office a month ago, also announced that he will not buy a new car for himself but inherit the old one used by his predecessor as the economy battles slowing growth. "Following the current economic challenges facing the kingdom, cabinet has decided to implement major interim fiscal decisions to enhance financial prudence and controls so as to spend as little money as possible," he said in a statement. Dlamini said all senior officials including himself and ministers "will no longer travel first class but in business class when flying on national duties". "All other public servants will fly in economy class". All foreign trips by government officials would be vetted to ensure they were of national importance. A former banker and national executive of Africa's leading mobile operator MTN, Dlamini was last month named prime minister by King Mswati III, to replace Sibusiso Barnabas Dlamini who died in September. Dlamini said he was preparing an "economic recovery" plan for the country which suffers dire poverty and has struggled to lift its economy. The World bank says that eSwatini's GDP is projected to contract by -0.6 percent this year mainly as a result of "worsening fiscal challenges and governments fiscal consolidation efforts". Declining government revenue and high expenditure have resulted in high fiscal deficit and cash flow problems. The king, Mswati, one of the world's last absolute rulers, who has 14 wives and more than 25 children, has a reputation for lavish spending on private planes and royal palaces while 63 percent of his subjects live in poverty. Without warning in April, Mswati III marked 50 years since his country's independence from British colonial rule by announcing that it would now be known as eSwatini ("land of the Swazis"). The landlocked kingdom, which has close economic ties with South Africa, faces international criticism that the government stifles dissent, jails its opponents and denies workers' rights. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, pictured August 2018, tweeted that the US "wants to resort to international conventions to make allegations against Iran when it's made a policy of violating them itself" Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Friday said that US accusations that Tehran has a chemical weapons programme were "obscene and dangerous". The US allegations are the latest salvo against Iran from the administration of President Donald Trump, who earlier this year pulled out of a landmark 2015 nuclear deal between major powers and Tehran and reimposed crippling unilateral sanctions. "(The) US wants to resort to international conventions to make allegations against Iran when it's made a policy of violating them itself," Zarif said in a tweet. He said that allegations about weapons of mass destruction "by a country that supported Iraq's use of CW (chemical weapons) against Iran, then invaded Iraq to allegedly rid it of them is not just obscene, it's dangerous". Earlier on Friday the Iranian foreign ministry said Tehran "strongly rejects" the US accusations. "The United States... has made, as is its habit, baseless accusations against the Islamic republic which we strongly reject," the foreign ministry said in a statement. "Such incorrect and false accusations are due solely to enmity towards the Iranian nation and are intended to deflect international attention from its own broken commitments and continued support for the Zionist regime's chemical arsenal and for terrorist groups." The US accused Iran on Thursday of failing to declare a chemical weapons programme to the global watchdog in breach of international agreements. US envoy Kenneth Ward told the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague that Tehran was also seeking deadly nerve agents for offensive purposes. Iran has accused the US of being the "only member state that has a chemical weapons arsenal and has, until now, not acted on its obligations to destroy it". Iran is one of the few countries that has been attacked with chemical weapons since the end of World War I in 1918. Chemical weapons used by Saddam Hussein's Iraq during its 1980-88 war with Iran killed and wounded tens of thousands of Iranian soldiers and civilians. Iran has expressed strong opposition ever since to the use or possession of chemical weapons by any country. Zarif, who is in Italy for a conference, on Friday also expressed his frustration with the European Union's delay to come up with means of allowing EU trade with Tehran despite US sanctions . "(The) EU needs to make a decision: does it want the US to dictate its relations with others...?" he asked in a tweet. The nuclear deal "was in the interest of the security of Europe (which) now needs to invest in that security." he added. Although the European Union has vowed to create a "special purpose vehicle" (SPV) to protect companies buying oil, analysts see little chance that firms will risk US penalties by using it. Palestinians react to tear gas fired by Israeli forces during a protest on November 23, 2018, in the eastern outskirts of Gaza City, near the border with Israel At least 14 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli gunfire Friday during protests along the Gaza border, the enclave's health ministry said, as a lull in deadly violence held after a truce deal last week. Thousands of demonstrators turned out for the protests but largely kept their distance from the fortified frontier. Health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said 14 people were injured by Israeli army fire along the border, including "a child shot in the chest east of the Al-Bureij refugee camp" in the central Gaza Strip. An AFP correspondent said protesters held back from launching burning tyres or balloons carrying flaming material towards Israel -- tactics they have frequently employed since the border protests began in March. Demonstrators were directed "to keep back from the separation fence and to maintain peaceful protests... to give a chance to Egyptian efforts to calm things down", an organiser told AFP. It marked the second straight Friday of lighter protests since an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire on November 13 ended the worst flare-up between Israel and Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas since a 2014 war. A Palestinian protester throws a stone towards Israeli forces during clashes on November 23, 2018, in the eastern outskirts of Gaza City, near the border with Israel Efforts to reach a more lasting truce have angered Israeli right-wing rivals of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It brought the government to the brink of collapse when the defence minister resigned last week and took his party out of the ruling coalition. Netanyahu was able to avoid snap elections when another key minister pledged on Monday to stay on board, despite sharp disagreements with the premier. Gaza border tensions have soared since the March 30 start of what the Palestinians call the "Great March of Return", a mass protest movement demanding the right for Palestinians to return to homes they fled or were expelled from during the war surrounding Israel's creation. Protesters have often moved right up to the border fence every Friday and occasionally breached it. At least 235 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly by Israeli fire during border clashes but also by air strikes. Two Israeli soldiers have been killed over the same period. A senior Hamas official said a delegation headed by the Islamist group had arrived in Cairo on Wednesday to meet with Egyptian officials on efforts to "stabilise the truce" with Israel. The meeting was also expected to address reconciliation between Hamas and its rival party Fatah, headed by Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas. Felix Tshisekedi represents the veteran face of DR Congo's mainstream opposition after taking up his late father's mantle As the son of DR Congo's veteran opposition leader, Felix Tshisekedi is hoping that the December 23 elections will hand him the prize that eluded his late father -- the presidency. He goes into the election as head of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), a party founded by his father Etienne who spent decades as the country's main opposition leader but died in February last year. Taking over his role at the head of the country's oldest and largest opposition party, Tshisekedi junior is now hoping to make the great leap from political opponent to president. Known to his friends as "Fatshi", the portly 55-year-old is hoping to win enough support to replace President Joseph Kabila, who has ruled the volatile, poverty-stricken nation with an iron fist since 2001. But for a while, it looked like he wouldn't even to be on the ballot. - Pentecostal rivals - On November 11, Tshisekedi joined six other opposition leaders to rally behind a single unity candidate, Martin Fayulu, to take on Kabila's handpicked successor, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary. But the deal drew a furious response from his supporters, prompting him and fellow opposition leader Vital Kamerhe to abandon the deal and run on a joint ticket, effectively weakening and splitting the opposition. If they succeed, Tshisekedi will become president with Kamerhe as his prime minister. For decades, Etienne Tshisekedi was the face of DR Congo's opposition Since his father founded the UDPS in 1982, the party has served as an opposition mainstay in the former Belgian colony -- first under dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, then under Kabila's father Laurent-Desire Kabila, who ruled from 1997 until his death in 2001. A father of five, Tshisekedi goes to the same Pentecostal church as Fayulu in Kinshasa, the capital. Though rivals, both men are now fighting to see off Shadary, a Catholic, at the polls. Although Tshisekedi does not enjoy the same degree of popularity as his father, he has risen steadily through the party ranks. "Etienne was stubborn and proud," said one keen observer of the country's opposition. "Felix is more diplomatic, more conciliatory, more ready to listen to others." - Rooting out corruption - In 2008, he became national secretary for external relations and was elected to the national assembly in 2011 as representative for Mbuji-Mayi, the country's third city. However, he never took up his seat as he did not formally recognise his father's 2011 election defeat to Kabila. A month after his father's death, Tshisekedi was elected as party head. Although he holds a Belgian diploma in marketing and communication, his opponents point out that he has never held high office or had managerial experience. And some detractors have even suggested his diploma is not valid. After announcing his bid to run for the presidency, Tshisekedi promised a return to the rule of law, to fight the "gangrene" of corruption and to bring peace to the east of the country. Last year, he told AFP that if he won, he would set up a "truth and reconciliation commission" to call Kabila to account, but would allow him to stay in the country. Firebrand cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi is the leader of the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan party Pakistan authorities launched a crackdown Saturday against hundreds of supporters of a hardline cleric whose party recently paralysed the country with violent protests over the acquittal of a Christian woman accused of blasphemy. Hours after firebrand cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi was himself arrested late Friday, police said over 300 Tehreek-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) party supporters were detained in Punjab province in efforts to "maintain public order". The arrests came ahead of a scheduled party rally on Sunday in Islamabad, but Punjab information minister Fayyaz ul Hassan Chohan said TLP supporters would be banned from gathering in the neighbouring province. "We are detaining supporters of TLP across the province to avoid any backlash after the arrest of their leaders," said Chohan. Early on Saturday clashes took place in the southern city of Karachi between Pakistani paramilitary forces and protestors over the arrest of Rizvi "Police has been deployed in all major cities of the province to deal with any untoward incident. There is a complete ban on all type of political gatherings in the province." The country's information minister Fawad Chaudhry said the detention of Rizvi "has to do nothing with (the) Asia Bibi case," referring to a Christian woman who was on death row for eight years before the Supreme Court overturned her blasphemy conviction last month. The court's decision sparked furious demonstrations led by the hardline TLP, with protesters calling for Bibi's execution as they blocked major roads, leaving large swathes of the country paralysed. In response, the government made a deal with the Islamists to impose a travel ban on Bibi, who was released from jail earlier this month as she awaits the outcome of a final review of her case. TLP leaders said police had arrested dozens of party workers in the port city of Karachi The TLP has vowed to return to the streets if she is allowed to leave the country. Early on Saturday clashes took place in the southern city of Karachi between Pakistani paramilitary forces and protestors over the arrest of Rizvi. "Khadim Hussain Rizvi has been taken into protective custody by police and shifted to a guest house," tweeted Chaudhry. "It's to safeguard public life, property and order ... Law shall take its course and it cannot be left to individuals," he added. A notification issued by the Punjab government said the cleric will be detained for 30 days. The notification said there was "credible" information that the cleric would create a law and order situation. In a video message released on Friday, another TLP leader Pir Afzal Qadri called for fresh protests, saying police had arrested dozens of party workers in the port city of Karachi as well as Lahore. Pakistani Rangers take up position on a street in Karachi during clashes with protestors after the arrest of hardline cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi Blasphemy is a massively inflammatory issue in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where even unproven allegations of insulting Islam and Prophet Mohammed can lead to lynchings and murders. Bibi's conviction stemmed from a 2009 incident when she was asked to fetch water while out working in the fields. Muslim women labourers objected to her touching the water bowl as a non-Muslim, and a fight reportedly erupted. A local imam then claimed Bibi insulted the Prophet Mohammed. Bibi has consistently denied the charges, and her prosecution rallied international rights groups, politicians and religious figures. Artefacts from the Kingdom of Dahomey claimed by Benin French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday agreed to return 26 cultural artefacts to Benin "without delay", a move that could put pressure on other former colonial powers to return African artworks to their countries of origin. The decision -- which Macron said should not be seen as an isolated or symbolic case -- came as the president received the findings of a study he commissioned on repatriating African treasures held by French museums. Macron agreed to return the 26 works, mainly royal statues from the Palaces of Abomey -- formerly the capital of the kingdom of Dahomey -- taken by the French army during a war in 1892 and now in Paris' Quai Branly museum. In addition, he proposed gathering African and European partners in Paris next year to define a framework for an "exchange policy" for African artworks. The president "hopes that all possible circulation of these works are considered: returns but also exhibitions, loans, further cooperation", the Elysee palace said. Ousmane Aledji, director of the Benin cultural centre Artisttik Africa, said he was pleased to see "a new form of cultural exchange" with France. Britain has also faced calls to return artefacts, including the Elgin Marbles to Greece and the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, while museums in Belgium and Austria house tens of thousands of African pieces. - Legislation to return art? - In 2016 Benin demanded the repatriation of treasures which also include carvings, sceptres and sacred doors Calls have been growing in Africa for restitution of artworks, but French law strictly forbids the government from ceding state property, even in well-documented cases of pillaging. In 2016 Benin demanded France return items including statues, artworks, carvings, sceptres and sacred doors. While that request was initially denied, in November 2016 Macron raised hopes in a speech in Burkina Faso, pledging to "return African heritage to Africa". Following his speech, Macron asked French art historian Benedicte Savoy and Senegalese writer Felwine Sarr to study the matter. Their report, a copy of which has been seen by AFP, has been welcomed by advocates of the restitution of works which were bought, bartered, or in some cases simply stolen. It proposes legislation be developed to return thousands of African artefacts taken during the colonial period to nations that request them. There are conditions, however, including a request from the relevant country, precise information about the works' origins, and the existence of proper facilities such as museums to house the works back in their home country. Macron's office said that museums will be invited to "identify African partners and organise possible returns" and should quickly establish "an online inventory of their African collections". The president also called for "in-depth work with other European states that retain collections of the same nature acquired in comparable circumstances". - Museums fear losing artefacts - Macron, during a visit to Burkina Faso last year, said "Africa's heritage cannot just be in European private collections and museums" A UNESCO convention against the export of illicit cultural goods adopted in 1970 called for the return of cultural property taken from a country but it did not address historic cases, including from the colonial era. With museums fearing they could be forced to return artefacts, former colonial powers have been slow to ratify the convention: France only did so 1997, Britain in 2002, Germany in 2007 and Belgium in 2009. On Tuesday, the governor of Easter Island in the Pacific tearfully begged the British Museum to return one of its famous statues. The London museum has held the Hoa Hakananai'a, one of the most spiritually important of the Chilean island's stone monoliths, for 150 years. Of the estimated 90,000 African artworks in French museums, around 70,000 are at the Quai Branly museum, created by ex-president Jacques Chirac, a keen admirer of African and Asian art. Elsewhere in Europe, 37,000 objects from Sub-Saharan Africa were at Vienna's Weltmuseum and 180,000 were at Belgium's Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren. The report commissioned by Macron said such collections were effectively depriving Africans of their artistic and cultural heritage. "On a continent where 60 percent of the population is under the age of 20 years old, what is first and foremost of a great importance is for young people to have access to their own culture, creativity, and spirituality from other eras," it said. COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - Two men each claim to be the prime minister. Lawmakers are exchanging blows in Parliament. A former finance minister says the country is on the brink of an "economic anarchy." Welcome to Sri Lanka, where the political crisis is getting worse by the week. The trouble started when President Maithripala Sirisena, fed up with disagreements with his prime minister over money, an alleged conspiracy plot and unresolved issues of wartime crimes against civilians, fired Ranil Wickremesinghe and his Cabinet and replaced them with a government headed by a popular former strongman, Mahinda Rajapaksa. But lawmakers balked and twice passed a no-confidence motion. Sirisena, however, refuses to accept that his choice of prime minister has been defeated. Jehan Perera, head of the local analyst group National Peace Council, said that the government appointed by the president can't be called legal because Sirisena had not sought a parliamentary vote when he dismissed Wickremesinghe. "It can be called illegitimate because provisions for a confidence vote in Parliament are being blocked by the president's own party through their riotous behavior," Perera said, referring to a brawl last week that was followed by another pandemonium in the chamber when Rajapaksa loyalists refused to let the speaker conduct proceedings. FILE - In this Oct. 26, 2018 file photo, newly appointed Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, center, sits to talk with supporters at a Buddhist temple in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Two men each claim to be the prime minister. Lawmakers are exchanging blows in Parliament. A former finance minister says the country is on the brink of an "economic anarchy." Despite the crisis gripping Sri Lanka when the president fired his prime minister but Parliament refused to accept his choice for a replacement, life hasn't collapsed - thanks to the efficient bureaucracy that keeps the wheels of administration turning. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena, File) Wickremesinghe says his dismissal is invalid because he still holds a majority in the 225-member Parliament. The dismissal is also disputed because of a latest constitutional change, which lawyers say has taken away presidential powers to dismiss the prime minister. Despite all the drama and two rival prime ministers, life hasn't collapsed - thanks to the efficient bureaucracy that keeps the wheels of administration turning. Even though there is no Cabinet recognized by Parliament, and despite warnings by Wickremesinghe supporters that state officials should not take orders from an "illegal government" of Rajapaksa, bureaucrats continue to work with the president who is the chief executive and the ministers appointed by him, officials said on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media. However, decisions regarding new projects or purchases involving large sums of money are on hold. The absence of a recognized government has delayed the budget for 2019. Mangala Samaraweera, who was finance minister in Wickremesinghe's Cabinet, said that there will be no legal way of spending money in the coming year without a parliament-approved budget. Sri Lanka's Constitution says that control over public finances lies with Parliament and no funds can be released without a warrant signed by the finance minister and approved by the legislature. That means all government payments starting from January can be deemed illegal, Samaraweera says. Sri Lanka is on the brink of an "economic anarchy and chaos as never experienced before." "The cavalier and irresponsible actions of the president ... based on personal animosities and precipitating a series of illegal acts, places at risk Sri Lanka's ability to meet its immediate debt obligations," he said. Sri Lanka has to repay $1 billion of its foreign loans in early January, which is also in the prerogative of Parliament to approve. Wickremesinghe's lawmakers have presented a motion to the speaker seeking to block funding to the prime minister's office, which if passed, would curtail Rajapaksa's functions. "As far as the people are concerned, they are witnessing the normal functioning of the country," insisted government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella. However, he conceded that Sri Lanka will have issues on accessing government money if the stalemate is not resolved by the end of the year. Sirisena called snap elections for Jan. 5, but the opposition challenged the decision, and the dispute is in court. FILE - In this Oct. 26, 2018 file photo, Sri Lanka's sacked Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, center, speaks with party members at his official residence in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Two men each claim to be the prime minister. Lawmakers are exchanging blows in Parliament. A former finance minister says the country is on the brink of an "economic anarchy." Despite the crisis gripping Sri Lanka when the president fired his prime minister but Parliament refused to accept his choice for a replacement, life hasn't collapsed - thanks to the efficient bureaucracy that keeps the wheels of administration turning. (AP Photo/Rukmal Gamage, File) FILE - In this Oct. 28, 2018 file photo, Sri Lankans watch a televised speech by president Maithripala Sirisena at their residence in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Two men each claim to be the prime minister. Lawmakers are exchanging blows in Parliament. A former finance minister says the country is on the brink of an "economic anarchy." Despite the crisis gripping Sri Lanka when the president fired his prime minister but Parliament refused to accept his choice for a replacement, life hasn't collapsed _ thanks to the efficient bureaucracy that keeps the wheels of administration turning. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena, File) FILE - In this Nov. 12, 2018 file photo, Sri Lankan police officers stand guard outside the supreme court complex in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Two men each claim to be the prime minister. Lawmakers are exchanging blows in Parliament. A former finance minister says the country is on the brink of an "economic anarchy." Despite the crisis gripping Sri Lanka when the president fired his prime minister but Parliament refused to accept his choice for a replacement, life hasn't collapsed - thanks to the efficient bureaucracy that keeps the wheels of administration turning. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena, File) FILE - In this Nov. 11, 2018 file photo, Pro- democratic Sri Lankans take part in a candle light vigil, in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Two men each claim to be the prime minister. Lawmakers are exchanging blows in Parliament. A former finance minister says the country is on the brink of an "economic anarchy." Despite the crisis gripping Sri Lanka when the president fired his prime minister but Parliament refused to accept his choice for a replacement, life hasn't collapsed - thanks to the efficient bureaucracy that keeps the wheels of administration turning. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena, File) FILE - In this Nov. 13, 2018 file photo, supporters of Sri Lanka's ousted Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe shout slogans as they celebrate after the country's Supreme Court suspended dissolution of parliament by President Maithripala Sirisena, outside the court complex in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Two men each claim to be the prime minister. Lawmakers are exchanging blows in Parliament. A former finance minister says the country is on the brink of an "economic anarchy." Despite the crisis gripping Sri Lanka when the president fired his prime minister but Parliament refused to accept his choice for a replacement, life hasn't collapsed - thanks to the efficient bureaucracy that keeps the wheels of administration turning. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena, File) FILE - In this Nov. 14, 2018 file photo, Sri Lankan riot policemen stand between supporters of ousted Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and supporters of Mahinda Rajapaksa following the no-confidence motion in parliament in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Two men each claim to be the prime minister. Lawmakers are exchanging blows in Parliament. A former finance minister says the country is on the brink of an "economic anarchy." Despite the crisis gripping Sri Lanka when the president fired his prime minister but Parliament refused to accept his choice for a replacement, life hasn't collapsed _ thanks to the efficient bureaucracy that keeps the wheels of administration turning. . (AP Photo/ Rukmal Gamage, File) FILE - In this Nov. 15, 2018 file photo, Sri Lankan Lawmakers fight in the parliament chamber in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Two men each claim to be the prime minister. Lawmakers are exchanging blows in Parliament. A former finance minister says the country is on the brink of an "economic anarchy." Despite the crisis gripping Sri Lanka when the president fired his prime minister but Parliament refused to accept his choice for a replacement, life hasn't collapsed - thanks to the efficient bureaucracy that keeps the wheels of administration turning.(AP Photo/Lahiru Harshana, File) FILE - In this Nov. 14, 2018 file photo, supporters of newly appointed Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa protest outside parliament gate following the no-confidence motion in parliament in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Two men each claim to be the prime minister. Lawmakers are exchanging blows in Parliament. A former finance minister says the country is on the brink of an "economic anarchy." Despite the crisis gripping Sri Lanka when the president fired his prime minister but Parliament refused to accept his choice for a replacement, life hasn't collapsed - thanks to the efficient bureaucracy that keeps the wheels of administration turning. (AP Photo/ Rukmal Gamage, File) FILE - In this Nov. 15, 2018 file photo, ousted Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe addresses supporters in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Two men each claim to be the prime minister. Lawmakers are exchanging blows in Parliament. A former finance minister says the country is on the brink of an "economic anarchy." Despite the crisis gripping Sri Lanka when the president fired his prime minister but Parliament refused to accept his choice for a replacement, life hasn't collapsed - thanks to the efficient bureaucracy that keeps the wheels of administration turning.(AP Photo/Rukmal Gamage, File) FILE - In this Nov. 16, 2018 file photo, policemen escort Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, in black robe, inside parliament in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Two men each claim to be the prime minister. Lawmakers are exchanging blows in Parliament. A former finance minister says the country is on the brink of an "economic anarchy." Despite the crisis gripping Sri Lanka when the president fired his prime minister but Parliament refused to accept his choice for a replacement, life hasn't collapsed - thanks to the efficient bureaucracy that keeps the wheels of administration turning.(AP Photo/Lahiru Harshana, File) TOKYO (AP) - Nissan Motor Co. fired Carlos Ghosn as chairman Thursday, curtailing the powerful executive's nearly two-decade reign at the Japanese automaker after his arrest for alleged financial improprieties. In an hourslong meeting, the company's board of directors voted unanimously to dismiss Ghosn as chairman and as a representative director, Nissan said in a statement. It said its own internal investigation, prompted by a whistleblower, found serious misconduct including under-reporting of his income and misuse of company assets. It was a stunning downfall for one of the biggest figures in the auto industry. Ghosn had helped drive turnarounds at both France's Renault SA and at Nissan and then managed an alliance between them that sold 10.6 million cars last year, besting its rivals. Renault is still reeling from Ghosn's Monday arrest, and its share price has yet to recover. Its acting chief, Deputy CEO Thierry Bollore, spoke publicly Thursday night for the first time since Ghosn was sidelined, and sought to soothe markets, car buyers and his employees by promising continuity. In a video released by Renault, Bollore said the carmaker still plans to release several new models next year. Acknowledging the "particular situation" the company is in, he pledged his "full commitment" to Renault's 180,000 workers and its partners and customers. Renault's board decided not to fire Ghosn, instead installing temporary leadership. The French government, which owns 15 percent of Renault, is also worried. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Thursday that France has yet to receive information from Japan about what Ghosn is accused of and insisted on "respect for the presumption of innocence." People walk by Nissan Motor Co. Global Headquarters in Yokohama near Tokyo Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Nissan's board of directors will meet Thursday to decide whether to dismiss its chairman Carlos Ghosn following his arrest on suspicion of underreporting his income. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) Speaking to The Associated Press, Le Maire said "this turbulence shouldn't weaken" the Renault-Nissan alliance or its hundreds of thousands of jobs. Nissan said in a statement filed to the Tokyo Stock Exchange that its investigation uncovered misuse of company investment funds and expense money for personal gain. The Wall Street Journal, citing an anonymous source close to Nissan's investigation, reported that Ghosn used company funds to buy personal residences and enrich his sister. Another Nissan executive, Greg Kelly, was arrested in Japan on suspicion of collaborating in the wrongdoing and also will be dismissed as a representative director, Nissan said. Their replacements will be decided later, it said. Ghosn, 64, is suspected of under-reporting $44.6 million in income from 2011 to 2015, according to Tokyo prosecutors. Nissan's board consists of nine members, including Ghosn and Greg Kelly. The seven other board members voted at the meeting, including two members from Nissan and two from Renault. Ghosn and Kelly will remain on Nissan's board for now as that decision will be up to shareholders. No date has been set yet for a shareholders meeting. Ghosn is also chairman at Mitsubishi Motors Corp., a smaller Japanese automaker that's partnering with the Renault-Nissan alliance and plans to hold a board meeting next week. He has been held since his arrest Monday at a Tokyo detention center, under the same Spartan conditions as other detainees, Tokyo deputy prosecutor Shin Kukimoto told reporters Thursday. He gave few details about the case. Under Japanese law, suspects can be held for 20 days per possible charge without an official indictment. Additional charges can be tagged on, resulting in longer detentions. Neither has been charged so far. The maximum penalty upon conviction for violating finance and exchange laws is 10 years in prison, a 10 million yen ($89,000) fine, or both. A French citizen born in Brazil, Ghosn became something of a corporate superstar in Japan as he led Nissan's revival from near bankruptcy after Renault sent him to help in 1999. Ghosn served as Nissan's chief executive from 2001 until last year. He became chief executive of Renault in 2005, leading the two automakers simultaneously. In 2016, he also became chairman of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. after Nissan took it into the alliance. Kelly, 62, joined Nissan, maker of the Leaf electric car and Infiniti luxury models, in the U.S. in 1988. He became a board member in 2012. His background is in human resources and alliance management. Analysts say the future of Nissan's alliance with Renault may be at stake, though Nissan's statement Thursday said the company's leadership was determined to minimize the impact from Ghosn's case on the partnership. Renault owns 43 percent of Nissan, and Nissan owns 15 percent of Renault. The economy ministers of Japan and France met in Paris on Thursday to discuss the issue and released a statement saying both sides are committed to supporting the alliance. Nissan said its board will study setting up a third-party committee to beef up governance in management and compensation at Nissan. Janet Lewis, managing director and head of industrial research, Asia, at Macquarie Capital Securities in Tokyo, said in an interview that an adjustment was needed to give Nissan more say in the alliance with Renault. The partnership remains crucial for both companies, she said, since apart from financial ties the companies share technology and parts. The automakers need to be more like roommates than a married couple, she said. "So they have to find a way to share their house and share all of their expertise because it's very necessary in terms of new automotive technology, new platform development," Lewis said. "They need to figure out how they can continue this and still live happily together in the same house." ___ Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report. ___ Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/yurikageyama On Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/yurikageyama/?hl=en People stand near the logo of Nissan Motor Co. at Nissan Motor Co. Global Headquarters in Yokohama near Tokyo Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Nissan's board of directors will meet Thursday to decide whether to dismiss its chairman Carlos Ghosn following his arrest on suspicion of underreporting his income. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) A man pauses near a displayed Nissan car at a Nissan showroom in Tokyo Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. The arrest of Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn could extinguish any remaining hopes for a merger with key shareholder Renault, which the Japanese company's CEO has publicly opposed.(AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) Visitors walk near the logo of Nissan at a Nissan showroom in Tokyo Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. The arrest of Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn could extinguish any remaining hopes for a merger with key shareholder Renault, which the Japanese company's CEO has publicly opposed. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump on Thursday disputed that U.S. intelligence officials had concluded that the de facto leader of American ally Saudi Arabia ordered the killing of a U.S.-based journalist critical of the kingdom's royal family. Citing vehement denials by the crown prince and king that they were involved, Trump said "maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a vicious place. The world is a very, very vicious place." Critics in Congress and high-ranking officials in other countries are accusing Trump of ignoring human rights and giving Saudi Arabia a pass for economic reasons, including its influence on the world oil market. Trump said this week he would not impose harsher penalties on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the death and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month. "My policy is very simple: America first, keep America great again and that's what I'm doing," Trump told reporters after a Thanksgiving Day telephone call with members of the military. The crown prince and his father, King Salman, said they did not commit "this atrocity," Trump said. President Donald Trump talks with troops via teleconference from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) "It's a terrible thing. I dislike it more than you do. But the fact is ... they create tremendous wealth, really tremendous jobs in their purchases and very importantly, they keep the oil price down." American intelligence agencies have concluded that the crown prince ordered the killing in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, according to a U.S. official familiar with the assessment. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Others familiar with the case caution that while it's likely that the crown prince was involved in the death, questions remain about the extent of his culpability. Several lawmakers have indicated that the U.S. has no "smoking gun" that proves the crown prince was responsible. They have called on the CIA and other top intelligence agencies to share publicly what they told the president about the slaying. "I hate the crime," Trump said while on vacation in Florida. "I hate what's done. I hate the cover-up and I will tell you this - the crown prince hates it more than I do." He said the CIA "points it both ways and as I said, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But I will say very strongly that it's a very important ally and if we go by a certain standard, we won't be able to have allies with almost any country." He also has pushed back on the idea that his refusal to punish the Saudis more will embolden other governments to go after journalists and commit other human rights abuses. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has noted that the U.S. has imposed sanctions on 17 Saudi officials suspected of involvement in the killing. "We've sanctioned 17 people - some of them very senior in the Saudi government," Pompeo said Wednesday in a radio interview with KCMO in Kansas City, Missouri. "We are going to make sure that America always stands for human rights." Saudi prosecutors have said a 15-man team sent to Istanbul killed Khashoggi with tranquilizers and dismembered his body, which has not been found. Those findings came after Saudi authorities spent weeks denying Khashoggi had been killed in the consulate. Some lawmakers have triggered investigations into Khashoggi's death and specifically whether the crown prince was responsible. The investigations were requested under provisions of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. The act requires the president to report back to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee within 120 days - in this case by Feb. 7 - on whether the crown prince was responsible for an extrajudicial killing, torture or other gross violation of internationally recognized human rights against someone exercising freedom of expression and the administration's decision on whether sanctions are warranted. ___ Colvin reported from Palm Beach, Florida. FILE - In this Dec. 15, 2014, file photo, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi speaks during a press conference in Manama, Bahrain. President Donald Trump says the U.S. will not levy additional punitive measures at this time against Saudi Arabia over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, File) WASHINGTON (AP) - Incensed by a ruling against his migrant asylum policy, President Donald Trump on Thursday demanded "some common sense" from America's judges and directed his ire at a liberal-leaning appeals court. He professed respect for Chief Justice John Roberts, with whom he is engaged in a startling public dispute over the independence of the judiciary, yet shrugged off the Republican appointee as someone who "can say what he wants." Trump, still seething over Monday's decision by a President Barack Obama-nominated judge, began his Thanksgiving Day by asserting on Twitter that courts should defer to his administration and law enforcement on border security because judges "know nothing about it and are making our Country unsafe." The president, spending the holiday in Florida, later told reporters that law enforcers and military service members he has sent to the U.S.-Mexico border "can't believe the decisions that are being made by these judges." Trump has gone after federal judges before who have ruled against him, but the current dustup is the first time that Roberts, the leader of the federal judiciary, has offered even a hint of criticism of the president. Roberts issued a strongly worded statement Wednesday defending judicial independence and contradicting Trump's claim that judges are partisans allied with the party of the president who nominated them. It is highly unusual for a president to single out judges for personal criticism, and a chief justice's challenge to a president's comments is unprecedented in modern times. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters following his teleconference with troops from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) In challenging a co-equal branch of government, Trump complains that his opponents file lawsuits in courts that are part of the liberal-leaning 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That's where an appeal of the recent asylum ruling would normally go. It's not unusual for those challenging a president's policies to sue in courts they consider likely to back their claims. "Everybody files in the 9th Circuit," he said with exaggeration. "I think we're going to have stop that somehow. The judges are going to have to get together or Congress is going to have to get together and stop it because they're taking advantage of our country." Trump did not elaborate. Conservative groups tended to bring challenges to Obama-era policies in Texas, part of the conservative-leaning 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. "I like him and I respect him," Trump said about Roberts, "but i think we have to use some common sense. The 9th Circuit, everybody knows that it's totally out of control." Trump began the holiday by tweeting that Roberts "can say what he wants, but the 9th Circuit is a complete & total disaster." He even raised the topic during his call to service members, saying the 9th Circuit "has become a big thorn in our side. ... It's a terrible thing when judges take over your protective services, when they tell you how to protect the border. It's a disgrace." With Roberts' court feeling the heat over the president's appointment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Roberts and several of his colleagues have gone out of their way to rebut perceptions of the court as a political institution divided between five conservative Republicans and four liberal Democrats. Trump's appointments to the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have themselves spurred charges that the courts are becoming more politicized. Roberts, as the justice widely seen as closest to the court's middle, could determine the outcome of high-profile cases that split the court. The new drama began with remarks Trump made Tuesday when he went after Jon S. Tigar, the San Francisco-based judge who had ruled against Trump's asylum order. The president claimed, not for the first time, that the 9th Circuit was biased against him. Roberts had refused to comment on Trump's earlier attacks on judges, including the chief justice himself. But on Wednesday, after a query by The Associated Press, he spoke up for the independence of the federal judiciary and rejected the notion that judges are loyal to the presidents who appoint them. "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges," Roberts said. "What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them." He concluded: "The independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for." Trump responded by questioning the independence of federal judges appointed by his predecessor and confirmed by the Senate. He especially criticized judges on the 9th Circuit. "Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have 'Obama judges,' and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country," the president tweeted. Trump has never been reticent about criticizing the judiciary. Last year, the president scorned the "so-called judge" who made the first federal ruling against his travel ban. During the presidential campaign, he criticized Roberts for the chief justice's decisive vote in 2012 to preserve President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. Trump also referred to an Indiana-born judge of Mexican descent, who was presiding over a fraud lawsuit against Trump University, as a Mexican who would be unable to rule fairly because of Trump's proposal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The president's remarks on Tuesday came when a reporter asked for his reaction to a ruling by Tigar that put the administration's asylum policy on hold. Under that new policy, Trump declared no one could apply for asylum except at an official border entry point. That tends to back migrants up for weeks if not months. A number of migrants remain in Tijuana after traveling in a caravan to reach the U.S. "Every case that gets filed in the 9th Circuit, we get beaten," Trump said. "And then we end up having to go to the Supreme Court, like the travel ban, and we won." The president went on to say about the asylum ruling: "This was an Obama judge. And I'll tell you what, it's not going to happen like this anymore. " The initial travel ban ruling in 2017 was issued by U.S. District Judge James Robart, an appointee of President George W. Bush in Washington state. Roberts, too, was appointed by Bush. The 9th Circuit is by far the largest of the federal appellate courts, covering Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. Some Republicans in 9th Circuit states have proposed splitting the circuit in two, but legislation has not advanced. The court has long had a majority of judges appointed by Democratic presidents, with the current breakdown at 16-7. But Trump has the opportunity to narrow that edge significantly because there are six vacancies, and he already has nominated candidates for five of them. ___ Colvin reported from Palm Beach, Florida. FILE - In this Sept. 27, 2017 file photo, Chief Justice John Roberts speaks during the Bicentennial of Mississippi's Judiciary and Legal Profession Banquet in Jackson, Miss. Roberts is pushing back against President Donald Trump's description of a judge who ruled against the administration's new asylum policy as an "Obama judge." It's the first time that the leader of the federal judiciary has offered even a hint of criticism of Trump, who has previously blasted federal judges who ruled against him. Roberts says Wednesday that the U.S. doesn't have "Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges." He is commenting in a statement released by the Supreme Court after a query by The Associated Press. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) ST. LOUIS (AP) - A suburban St. Louis man has been charged with killing one woman and sexually assaulting two others after herding them at gunpoint into the back room of a religious supplies shop. The arrest of 53-year-old Thomas Bruce ended a two-day manhunt that followed the brazen Monday afternoon attack at a Catholic Supply store in the St. Louis suburb of Ballwin. The attack frightened the region and led some schools, churches and businesses to close. Bruce, of Imperial, was charged Wednesday with 17 counts, including first-degree murder, sodomy and attempted sodomy, kidnapping and other crimes. He is jailed without bond. It wasn't yet clear if he had an attorney who could speak on his behalf. At a news conference announcing the arrest, St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch called the crime "heartbreaking," a sentiment that was echoed by the county's police chief, Jon Belmar. "It shocked the senses," a somber Belmar said. Authorities allege that Bruce entered the store and said he was shopping, then left briefly before returning with a handgun. He forced the three women into the back room, told them to strip, exposed himself and ordered them to "perform deviant sexual acts on him," detectives wrote in the criminal complaint. Authorities investigate the scene at a Catholic Supply store where a gunman went into the religious supply store, sexually assaulted at least one woman and shot a woman in the head, Monday, Nov. 19, 2018, in Ballwin, Mo. (Johanna Huckeba/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP) Two of the women complied but the third, 53-year-old Jamie Schmidt of nearby House Springs, refused, so he shot her in the head, they wrote. The attacker ordered the other women to continue performing the sexual acts on him, and he later fled, apparently able to blend in along the busy street in broad daylight. McCulloch said there was no indication the store was targeted because of its religious affiliation. "It seems to me a guy like this saw an opportunity - three women in the store alone," McCulloch said. A Missouri pastor said Bruce used to work as a pastor in southeast Missouri. Pastor David Fitzgerald at Calvary Chapel in Maryland Heights told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Bruce was a pastor at Calvary Chapel of Cape Girardeau from about 2003 into 2007. The Missouri secretary of state's office identifies Bruce as the operator of a nonprofit church formed in 2003 and dissolved in 2007. Bruce, who claimed to be a Navy veteran on his LinkedIn page, had no previous criminal record in Missouri beyond a traffic ticket in 2001. McCulloch said his office is checking with other states. Belmar said tips from the public helped lead to Bruce's arrest, though he declined to elaborate. McCulloch said the aggravating circumstances make the crime eligible for the death penalty, but he said that decision will be up to the man who replaces him in January. McCulloch, the county's prosecutor for nearly three decades, lost to Wesley Bell of Ferguson in the August Democratic primary. Bell ran unopposed in the November general election. Dan Stutte, president of Catholic Supply store, which operates three stores in the St. Louis area, said the company was "deeply relieved" by the arrest. Schmidt, of House Springs, was a married mother of three who worked as a secretarial assistant at St. Louis Community College's campus in Wildwood, Missouri. Two of her children are adults and the third is in high school. Several members of her parish, St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in High Ridge, gathered for a memorial service Tuesday to remember Schmidt, who sang in the church choir. A friend told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Schmidt may have been at the store to buy supplies to make rosaries for fellow parishioners. CHICO, Calif. (AP) - Patty Rough lost her Paradise home and most of her belongings in the Camp Fire, and she had no place to cook a family meal on Thanksgiving. But she and her husband are safe, and she was still able to spend the holiday with her children over plates of turkey, cranberry sauce and pie at a feast for thousands of people put on by volunteers. She's sad about everything she lost but realizes that others have far less. "Today we're grateful; I don't know about happy," she said, tearing up as she sat next to her son and across from her daughter. " 'Happy' Thanksgiving is kind of a weird thing at the moment." Rough is among the thousands of people whose homes burned down when the deadly wildfire ripped through Paradise and surrounding communities. At least 84 people died, and more than 13,000 homes were destroyed. The blaze was 95 percent contained Thursday, two weeks after it began. Rain that fell Wednesday night and started against Thursday afternoon aided the firefight but complicated the search for human remains in the debris left by the blaze. Michael Reining, left, and Chelsea Meddings, right, chop mint in preparation for a community Thanksgiving meal for survivors of the deadly Camp Fire in Northern California, on the campus of California State University, in Chico, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. They are volunteering with World Central Kitchen, which is teaming up with local businesses to provide thousands of Thanksgiving meals to displaced people. (AP Photo/Kathleen Ronayne) Wet, windy, cold conditions were making it hard for workers to see and move. It wasn't a normal Thanksgiving for any of the evacuees or workers. Matt Berger, a member of a FEMA Urban Search and Rescue team from Orange County, said he and his colleagues are trying not to "get too wrapped up in the fact that we're not at home for the holidays." "It's just another work day for us - trying to bring some closure to some of the families that are missing their loved ones," he said, standing in the cold outside a Paradise store that didn't burn down. Volunteers tried to bring a dose of normalcy to the difficult time. The Washington-based nonprofit World Central Kitchen cooked 15,000 meals, teaming up with Chico-based Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., the local university and the town of Paradise to serve them. Celebrity chefs Jose Andres, who started World Central Kitchen, and Guy Fieri cooked and stopped for selfies with fans while reflecting on the tragedy that brought them there. "This is going to be a year we're never going to forget," Andres said. Eduardo Garcia was happy for a warm meal and a place to spend the day. He sat alone at a long table but said he enjoyed the sense of company the gathering in an auditorium at California State University, Chico provided. Years ago, Garcia helped build the auditorium, plastering the outside walls. He lost the Paradise home where he lived, and his immediate family is in Hawaii. For now, he's living with a friend in Chico. "I don't have anywhere else to go," he said. "Even though I'm not with my family, you can feel good around other people who are in the same situation." Outside the Paradise area, scores of people opened their houses to strangers to provide a more intimate Thanksgiving. Rachael Anderson hosted a displaced mom and daughter at her home in Redding, about an hour and a half from Paradise. Anderson knows what it's like to live in a community devastated by flames: A massive wildfire swept through Redding last summer. She didn't lose her home, and she now wants to share it for the day with Athenia Dunham and her 15-year-old daughter, Natalie. "They've lost their home, their traditions, whatever it is that they do. I just want to give them a little piece of home," Anderson said. "That's what Thanksgiving's about; it's not just about your blood family - it's about giving thanks and helping each other." Faun and Danny O'Neel were hosting three families at their home in the Sacramento-area city of Folsom. Faun O'Neel's parents and grandparents lost their homes in a Calaveras County fire several years ago, so she said opening hers to others was a "no-brainer." Thanksgiving at a stranger's house may not be what her guests initially expected, but O'Neel hopes it can provide some calm in a trying time. "A few hours of normalcy," she said. "Where they can laugh and enjoy other peoples' company without thinking about what they just lived through and what is in front of them." Hundreds of frozen turkeys are unloaded on the campus of California State University, in Chico, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. The nonprofit World Central Kitchen is preparing them for a Thanksgiving meal for residents displaced by the Camp Fire in Northern California. The fire ignited Nov. 8 and devastated Paradise, Calif., and surrounding communities. (AP Photo/Kathleen Ronayne) Mick Zalis oversees preparations for a Thanksgiving dinner to be served for people displaced by the Northern California Camp wildfire on the campus of California State University, in Chico, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. Zalis is volunteering with World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit that is teaming up with businesses near the town of Paradise, Calif., to provide thousands of meals Thursday. (AP Photo/Kathleen Ronayne) Katherine Clement, a volunteer from Oakland, Calif., prepares bagged lunches for firefighters as she works with the nonprofit World Central Kitchen, which is also hosting a Thanksgiving meal for people displaced by the Camp Fire, on the campus of California State University, in Chico, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. World Central Kitchen is teaming up with businesses near the town of Paradise, Calif., to provide thousands of meals Thursday. (AP Photo/Kathleen Ronayne) Chef Guy Fieri pulls a turkey from a grill, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018, in Chico, Calif. Fieri was among the volunteers who showed up to prepare Thanksgiving meals for evacuees from the Camp Fire, which devastated the nearby town of Paradise, Calif. (Benjamin Spillman/The Reno Gazette-Journal via AP) KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghan officials say a Taliban assault on a military convoy in southwestern Badghis province left four Afghan soldiers dead. Mohammad Nasir Nazari, a member of the Badghis provincial council, says the ambush by the Taliban insurgents on the convoy traveling early on Thursday through the provincial capital of Qalay-e-Now, also wounded seven soldiers. Separately, Afghan special forces called in a NATO airstrike during an operation late on Wednesday against Taliban fighters in eastern Logar province. Provincial council chief Mohammad Nasir Ghyrat says 10 died in that airstrike but that it isn't immediately how many civilians were among the dead. The Logar governor's spokesman Khalid Safai says an investigation was underway. NATO did not immediately comment on the strike. An Afghan security officer stands guard outside a wedding hall in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018, a day after a suicide attack. A suicide bomber was able to sneak into the wedding hall where hundreds of Muslim religious scholars and clerics had gathered to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul) A resurgent Taliban stage near-daily attacks on Afghan forces, leaving many casualties. MOSCOW (AP) - Igor Korobov, head of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU, which has been accused of meddling in U.S. elections, has died in Moscow. He was 62. The Defense Ministry said Thursday in a statement that Korobov, who led the GRU since 2016, died Wednesday of "a lengthy and grave illness," a usual Russian euphemism for cancer. His predecessor had died two years earlier, at 58. Russian President Vladimir Putin offered condolences to Korobov's family but did not immediately name his successor. "He dedicated his life to serving the Fatherland, defending national interests and strengthening security of our state," Putin said in a statement released by the Kremlin. The United States and its allies have accused the GRU of hacking the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, orchestrating the March nerve agent attack on a Russian ex-spy in Britain, and disrupting anti-doping efforts in world sports. Russian authorities have rejected the accusations, calling them part of a Western smear campaign. This has been a tough year for the GRU, which has faced a series of exposures that revealed its inner workings. In this Aug. 25, 2017, photo, Gen. Col. Igor Korobov, the head of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, speaks during a news conference in the Russian Defense Ministry's headquarters in Moscow, Russia. The head of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU which has been accused of meddling in the U.S. elections has died in Moscow. He was 62. The Defense Ministry said Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018, in a statement that Korobov, who led the GRU since 2016, died Wednesday of "a lengthy and grave illness," a usual Russian euphemism for cancer. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP) In September, British intelligence released surveillance images of GRU agents accused of the nerve agent attack on former GRU officer and British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury. The investigative group Bellingcat and the Russian site The Insider quickly exposed the agents' real names, and media outlets including The Associated Press were able to confirm their real identities. Dutch authorities also have recently identified four alleged GRU agents who tried to hack the world's chemical weapons watchdog from a hotel parking lot. Putin visited the GRU headquarters earlier this month to congratulate the agency on its centenary, praising the agency for its professionalism. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that the president had maintained a "regular dialogue" with Korobov as the chief of one of the nation's top intelligence agencies. He added that Korobov took part in a series of meetings on military issues chaired by Putin this week. CAIRO (AP) - Authorities in eastern Libya said Thursday they have taken into custody suspects in the 2013 killing of a U.S. chemistry teacher in Benghazi, and that more suspects would be tried over the deadly attack a year earlier that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans there. The announcement highlights efforts by Libya's eastern forces, led by Gen. Khalifa Hifter, to bring justice to hundreds of cases involving unlawful killings. Authorities have also come under pressure by families of the detained who are awaiting hearings. "Those who took part in this crime" - the killing of teacher Ronnie Smith - "are in custody," the self-styled Libyan National Army said on social media. The announcement was presented alongside details on dozens of other unsolved local cases, in hopes of stopping not-infrequent cycles of revenge killings. Prosecutors have decided that no further information on the number of suspects or their identities would be made public as yet, the force's communications office said in a statement to The Associated Press. Smith taught at Benghazi's International School. The U.S. State Department at the time said he was killed while jogging, while Libyan security officials said he was shot near the compound where U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed by Islamic militants a year earlier. Smith's widow, Anita, or her lawyers would be welcome to attend the trial and see all its files, the army's communication office said. FILE - This undated file photo provided by Omaima ElFaitori shows Ronald Thomas Smith II. Authorities in eastern Libya say they have taken into custody suspects in the 2013 killing of the U.S. chemistry teacher in Benghazi. The self-styled Libyan National Army said on social media on Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018 that "those who took part in this crime" - the killing of teacher Ronnie Smith - "are in custody."(AP Photo/Omaima ElFaitori, File) It added that Smith's killing had been ordered by Libyan militant Ahmed Abu Khattala, now imprisoned in the United States serving a 22-year sentence for his role in the rampage that killed Stevens and the three other Americans on Sept. 11, 2012. Abu Khattala was captured by U.S. commandos in Libya in 2014. Libyan authorities initially arrested dozens over the attack that killed Stevens, but they were later released. Thursday's statement from the LNA, the dominant force in eastern Libya, said several new suspects involved in that attack on the U.S. ambassador are now also in custody and on trial after confessing to various levels of complicity. The office did not elaborate. Libya has been plagued with lawlessness since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. It is now governed by rival administrations in the east and west, and has become a haven for armed groups, including several from neighboring countries, which survive on looting and human trafficking. The LNA is supported by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, France and Russia, and is led by strongman Hifter. It answers to the government based in eastern Libya, which is at odds with the U.N.-backed government based in the capital, Tripoli. Libyan authorities are also struggling to process hundreds of cases involving unlawful killings and showcase their efforts to establish rule of law and institutions. They have also come under pressure by families of the detained, awaiting hearings. Representatives of Libya's quarrelling factions and of countries keen on stabilizing the North African nation this month agreed in Italy to hold a national conference in early 2019 to chart a path to stability and elections. A more stable Libya would bolster hopes in the struggle against Islamic militants and human trafficking as thousands of illegal migrants cross the Mediterranean hoping to reach Europe's southern shores. DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistani security officials say a bomb at a militant hideout killed two militants and wounded 12 in the South Waziristan region bordering Afghanistan. The officials say the explosion took place on Thursday in the northwestern border town of Angore Adda. They say the casualties were from the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani militant network. It wasn't immediately clear what set off the bomb. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to the media. South Waziristan has long been a base for Pakistani militants and foreign fighters. The army claims to have cleared most of the region of insurgents but violence has continued there. Islamabad and Kabul often trade accusations that the other is harboring enemy insurgents. Pakistan says it's taken steps to curb cross-border movement of militants. TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's Revolutionary Guard says five of 12 Iranian border guards abducted in October by militants near the Pakistani border and freed in Pakistan earlier this month have returned home. The report on the Guard's website, Sepahnews.com, says the five arrived in Iran on Wednesday night. The fate of the others remains unknown. The guards were abducted in a pre-dawn raid near the Loukdan border crossing in Iran's southeastern Sistan and Baluchistan province. The area has seen occasional clashes with Baluch separatists and also drug traffickers. Details were sketchy and Iran has since twice revised the number of the abducted border force, including some from the vaunted Revolutionary Guard. Pakistan has promised to help free the Iranian guards. WARSAW, Poland (AP) - A Polish nun who was believed to be the oldest nun in the world and was recognized as a rescuer of Jews during the Holocaust was laid to rest on Thursday after dying last week at the age of 110. Sister Cecylia Roszak was remembered as modest and merciful as nuns and other members of the church gathered in Krakow to bid her farewell. The mother superior of her convent, Stanislawa Chruscicka, recalled in a phone interview with The Associated Press that Sister Cecylia would often comment that "life is very beautiful but too short." Born March 25, 1908, Roszak joined the convent at age 21. During the German occupation of Poland during World War II, when she was in her 30s, she was one of several nuns who set up a new convent near Vilnius, today in Lithuania, sheltering Jews who had escaped the ghetto there. In 2009, when she was 101, Roszak and others from her convent were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust remembrance institute for saving several Jews, actions that put them at risk of being executed by the Germans. Chruscicka said a huge bouquet at Thursday's funeral was sent by a woman, Wanda Jerzyniec, who, along with her brother, was sheltered by Sister Cecylia after the Germans shot both of their parents in Vilnius in 1944. A nun prays beside the casket and photo of 110-year-old Roman Catholic Sister Cecylia Roszak, believed to be the world's oldest nun, and a rescuer of Jews during the Holocaust, during her funeral ceremonies at Church of Our Lady of the Snows the Dominican in Krakow, Poland, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. She died the previous week at a Dominican convent in Krakow. (AP Photo/Beata Zawrzel) Chruscicka said the nuns learned about Jerzyniec earlier this year after Polish media wrote about Sister Cecylia on her 110th birthday. She said that Jerzyniec was too frail to attend the funeral. The funeral Mass was held at the Dominican nuns' church in Krakow and Roszak was then buried at the city's historic Rakowicki cemetery. Father Pawel Rytel-Andrianik, spokesman for Poland's Roman Catholic Church, described her as "probably the oldest nun in the world," though Chruscicka said she was certain that Roszak was the oldest. ___ Vanessa Gera in Warsaw contributed. SHANGHAI (AP) - The young woman is panting, panicked, her thin arm pointing at four men in police uniforms who had let themselves into her hotel room near midnight. "You cannot treat me like this," she shouts, her voice high and reeling. "You cannot barge in like this late at night, OK? I didn't do anything illegal." The men, one carrying a pair of thin white plastic restraints, tell her they are doing a "routine inspection," according to a video of the Nov. 11 incident seen by The Associated Press. Only there was nothing routine about this. Their target was Zhou Chen, an environmental reporter for Caixin, one of China's most respected business media groups. She was on a reporting trip to Quanzhou, a city in southeastern China's Fujian province, to investigate a petrochemical leak that sickened more than 50 people. Journalists in China are regularly tailed and harassed by local authorities, but few Chinese reporters publicly discuss the details. Zhou broke the silence about her harassment in an article published this week, prompting an outcry on social media and a rare apology from the police. Reporters Without Borders ranks China 176 out of 180 in its World Press Freedom Index and says more than 50 journalists and bloggers are detained "in conditions that pose a threat to their lives." China's ruling Communist Party is eager to suppress information that might contribute to social instability, while local officials often try to interfere with reporting on sensitive topics. An online post by the Quanzhou police detailing the investigation and an apology for an incident where police personnel let themselves Into the hotel room of Zhou Chen, an environmental reporter for Caixin, seen on computer screens in Beijing, China, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Few journalists in China go public about harassment by authorities, but one has broken the silence and won a rare apology from police. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) On Nov. 4, around 7 tons of the petroleum derivative C9 leaked into the sea off Quanzhou. Dozens of residents fell sick, and scores of fish died. Local residents complained that officials mishandled the cleanup and tried to cover up the extent of the damage. Zhou went to investigate. On Nov. 11, after a long day of reporting, she was in bed, in her pajamas, looking at her phone when she heard a keycard unlocking the door of her hotel room. It was 11:30 p.m. "You barged in like this when I'm not even properly dressed," Zhou shouts in the video. "Could you please leave immediately?" The men demanded her ID. They did a cursory search of the room, flipping the curtains back and forth, and warned her to watch out for her safety. Zhou's account of her terrifying night was published Monday in Caixin Weekly, part of the Caixin Media group. The police search capped a day of bullying, according to her article. She wrote that she had been blocked from taking photos by people wearing body cameras and tailed as a mother and daughter took her to see dead fish floating in their family fish farm. According to Zhou, the police didn't show her any documents authorizing their late-night search, as required by Chinese law. Hotels in China must register their guests' information with the police, and a hotel receptionist later told Zhou that the police had asked for her room card specifically. "I finally have seen firsthand how lawless and unscrupulous the abuse of official power can be," she wrote. After the men left her room, she wrote that she sat for some time "in a frightened daze." Both Caixin and Zhou declined to comment. Other journalists rushed to support Zhou. Liang Yingfei, also a reporter at Caixin, wrote in a Tuesday blog post that she too had faced interference in the past. "Reporters being 'accompanied' as they work seems to have become the new normal," she wrote. A commentator for CCTV state television, Lei Mu, jumped in, writing that "the public has the right to know the truth" about the chemical leak in Fujian. "Damage to the credibility of the party and government organs caused by abuse of public power sometimes is far more profound than that caused by an accident." On Tuesday, the Quanzhou police issued an apology and said one district police officer had been suspended. "We have verified that the situation reflected by Comrade Zhou Chen is basically true," said the statement, which was published on a local Communist Party-run website. "We sincerely apologize for this!" On social media, questions still swirled about who had authorized the search and whether the officer who was suspended was taking a fall for just following orders. The Quanzhou police could not be reached for comment. ___ Associated Press researcher Chen Si in Shanghai contributed to this report. ___ Follow Kinetz on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ekinetz GENEVA (AP) - A top U.N. scientist on Thursday shrugged off an online quip from U.S. President Donald Trump that questioned global warming, saying a U.S. government report will show the "fundamental impacts of climate change on the U.S. continent." Officials at the World Meteorological Organization also said environmentally minded efforts by the state of California, in parts of the financial sector, among grassroots activists and others will have more of an impact to help the fight against climate change than "political disturbance" and "discourse" will impede it. The science, they said, will have the last word. Some of that science comes Friday in a new U.S. federal climate change assessment report, from agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Energy. "It's very interesting what you will see tomorrow," said Pavel Kabat, WMO's chief scientist. "That is a major report coming supported by all agencies ... under the administration of President Trump ranging from NOAA to NASA, from NASA to DOE, showing the fundamental impacts of climate change on the U.S. continent." Kabat was speaking at a news conference to present WMO's latest greenhouse gas bulletin, which said levels in the atmosphere climbed to a record last year. In a statement, WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas warned "the window of opportunity" to act against climate change has nearly closed. Pavel Kabat, WMO Chief Scientist and Research Director, speaks about the release of WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin with details on annual average concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, during a press conference, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP) WMO says globally averaged concentrations of carbon dioxide reached 405.5 parts per million in 2017, up slightly from the previous year and from 400.1 in 2015. Concentrations of other heat-trapping gases, like methane and nitrous oxide, also rose. The findings come ahead of next month's meeting of world leaders in Katowice, Poland, for the annual global climate summit where they hope to find ways to implement the 2015 Paris climate accord that aims to keep global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius. The Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, which lies about 2,000 kilometers northeast of Australia, is one of those countries already suffering severe effects of climate change. Its foreign minister, Ralph Regenvanu, said his government is exploring the possibility of suing fossil fuel companies responsible for most man-made greenhouse gas emissions over the damage they have caused. "By hiding what they knew and misrepresenting the dangers of unabated fossil fuel use, the fossil fuel industry and supportive governments protected their high-emissions profits and obstructed the changes needed to prevent or at least minimize the impacts of climate change," he told a 'virtual' summit of nations that are vulnerable to climate change. WMO's Taalas said the last time Earth had such high levels of carbon dioxide concentration was 3-5 million years ago. Without cuts in greenhouse gases, Taalas said, "climate change will have increasingly destructive and irreversible impacts on life on Earth." That came just hours after Trump, who once called global warming a "hoax" and has pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, floated a new question about climate change on Twitter: "Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?" Despite that, Kabat cited a "global transformation" underway in thinking about global warming, saying "the point of no return has been passed." He said efforts by some industries, in civil society and by local officials could "overtake" governmental agreements or statements on the issue. "I think on the longer timescale we are not that much worried about the current political disturbance," he said. "Despite the statements of President Trump, there is still a very concrete and specific movement by the agencies under the administration to actually make the case of action against climate change," Kabat said. ___ Frank Jordans contributed from Berlin. Oksana Tarasova, Chief, Atmospheric Environment Research Division WMO, speaks about the release of WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin with details on annual average concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, during a press conference, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP) JERUSALEM (AP) - An Israeli court has sentenced the man behind a string of bomb threats against Jewish community centers in the United States to 10 years in prison. The Tel Aviv district court announced its verdict Thursday against the dual citizen hacker whose name is barred for release since the crimes were committed while he was still a minor. The case was uncovered last year after a trans-Atlantic investigation with the FBI and other international law enforcement agencies. Authorities say he used advanced technologies to mask the origin of his calls and communications. The man, from the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, suffers from autism. He was convicted of sending thousands of threatening messages against the U.S. community centers and elsewhere around the world. The case had stoked fears of rising anti-Semitism. WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on the fallout from the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi (all times local): 11:10 a.m. President Donald Trump is insisting there's not enough evidence to blame Saudi Arabia's crown prince for the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi (jah-MAHL' khahr-SHOHK'-jee) at a Saudi Consulate in Turkey. Trump told reporters during a Thanksgiving appearance at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida: "Maybe the world should be held accountable 'cause the world is a vicious place." Saudi prosecutors have said a 15-man team sent to Istanbul killed Khashoggi with tranquilizers. Trump pushed back on the idea his refusal to punish the Saudis more will embolden other governments to go after journalists and commit other human rights abuses. Trump calls the kingdom an important ally that has helped to lower oil prices. FILE - In this Dec. 15, 2014, file photo, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi speaks during a press conference in Manama, Bahrain. President Donald Trump says the U.S. will not levy additional punitive measures at this time against Saudi Arabia over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, File) Republicans and Democrats have accused Trump of ignoring U.S. intelligence that concluded it was likely the crown prince ordered the killing. Trump says the CIA's report was inclusive. ___ 11 a.m. Finland has joined others in halting exports of military equipment to Saudi Arabia, mainly because of the war in Yemen. In Thursday's statement, Finland said it also was stopping exports to the United Arab Emirates, saying the halt to both countries came because of "the alarming humanitarian situation in Yemen." The Nordic country said it was "complying with the European Union's arms export criteria, which take particular account of human rights and the protection of regional peace, security and stability." No figures were immediately as to Finland's arms exports to the two countries. Earlier Thursday, Denmark said it was stopping military exports, citing "the continued worsening of the already terrible situation in Yemen and the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi." ___ 6:40 a.m. A senior Turkish official has raised the possibility that Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan (REH'-jehp TY'-ihp UR'-doh-wahn), could meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the upcoming Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires later this month. Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin was asked on Thursday whether the two could meet at the two-day G-20 summit, which starts Nov. 30, that "we are looking at the schedule, it is possible." His remarks were carried by the state-run Anadolu Agency. It would be the first official contact between the prince and Erdogan, who has kept international pressure mounting on Saudi Arabia over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month. Turkey insists that the killing of the journalist, who was a critic of the prince, was ordered by the high-levels of the Saudi government, but not by King Salman. Experts say such an operation is unlikely to have occurred without the knowledge of the crown prince, who controls all major levers of power in the kingdom. ___ 4:10 a.m. Denmark is halting exports of military equipment to Saudi Arabia, citing "the continued worsening of the already terrible situation in Yemen and the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi." Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said the kingdom "right now is simply destructive in many fields." He spoke in a live television interview on Thursday. Samuelsen says he hoped "the Danish decision can create further momentum and get more European Union countries to support tight implementation of the EU's regulatory framework in this area." The ban would also include so-called dual-use exports of items that can be used both for military and civilian purposes. In 2017, Denmark's overall exports to Saudi Arabia were of 5.08 billion kroner ($763 million), according to the Danish Chamber of Commerce. ___ 3 a.m. President Donald Trump's embrace of Saudi Arabia has exposed a foreign policy rift in the Republican Party, as some of his GOP colleagues warn that not punishing the kingdom for its role in killing a U.S.-based columnist will have dangerous consequences. Many Republicans - even Sens. Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul, who share their views on the matter with the president - have denounced Trump's decision not to levy harsher penalties on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the death and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Sen. Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Wednesday that he was "astounded" by Trump's statement and likened it to a press release for Saudi Arabia. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended Trump's decision, saying the U.S. has already placed sanctions on 17 Saudi officials suspected of involvement in the Oct. 2 killing of The Washington Post columnist, who had been critical of the royal family. MOSCOW (AP) - A leading Russian polling agency says the electoral rating of President Vladimir Putin has dropped below 60 percent for the first time in five years. The survey by Levada Center published Thursday showed 56 percent of likely voters saying they would cast their ballots for Putin in elections expected in 2024. That is 10 percent lower than a year ago. The last time electoral support for Putin dropped below 60 percent, according to similar Levada surveys, was in 2013. Putin, who has been ruling Russia since 2000, was re-elected for another six-year term in March. Unpopular changes to the pension system announced earlier this year have dented his popularity, while euphoria over the widely popular 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula has waned. LONDON (AP) - British counterterrorism police have arrested a 48-year-old man in connection to the discovery of two apparent explosive devices found in northwest London. Police said the man was arrested Thursday morning in north London on suspicion of violating the Explosive Substances Act. Police say detectives do not believe the suspect has links to any terrorist organizations and say there is no ongoing threat to public safety posed by the incident. The two devices were found Wednesday in an unoccupied apartment in northwest London. The area was evacuated as a precaution. Police said the "initial assessment" is that the items were improvised explosive devices. The suspect has not been charged or identified. The country's official terrorism threat level is at "severe," meaning intelligence analysts believe an attack is highly likely. EL-ARISH, Egypt (AP) - Egyptian authorities say police killed 12 Islamic militants when security forces stormed three deserted buildings used as militant hideouts in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula. An Interior Ministry statement on Thursday says the militants were the first to open fire on the policemen as they surrounded the buildings in the Mediterranean coastal city of el-Arish. The statement says there were no casualties among the police. Egypt has for years battled Islamic militants in Sinai. The insurgency intensified after the military in 2013 ousted an Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, whose one-year in power proved divisive. However, a large military operation launched this year against the militants in northern Sinai has significantly reduced the number of attacks. BEIJING (AP) - Dolce&Gabbana goods disappeared Thursday from Chinese e-commerce sites as the fallout grew over remarks insulting to China that were apparently made by two of its Instagram accounts. The company has blamed hackers. Searches for Dolce&Gabbana turned up no items on major online retailers such as Alibaba's Tmall and JD.com. Both companies didn't respond to requests for comment. A duty-free shop at the Haikou Meilan airport on China's Hainan island posted a photo of empty shelves on its social media account, saying that it had pulled all Dolce&Gabbana products. It wrote in another post that "Even if our power is small, we have to show our stance. We are proud of being Chinese." The moves by retailers came one day after several screenshots were circulated online showing co-founder Stefano Gabbana referring to China with crude terms and emoji as he defended promotional videos that had sparked controversy earlier. The comments were made in a private message exchange with another Instagram user. Separately, the Dolce&Gabbana account used offensive language in another exchange. The Italian luxury fashion house apologized and said both accounts had been hacked. "We have nothing but respect for China and the people of China," it wrote. A computer screen shows the online impact on Dolce & Gabbana products displayed in Beijing, China, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Dolce & Gabbana goods have disappeared from Chinese e-commerce sites after insulting remarks about China it allegedly made in exchanges on Instagram sparked outrage. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) The apology was too late to save a major extravaganza in Shanghai that Dolce&Gabbana had billed as one of its biggest shows ever outside of Italy. Major Chinese celebrities threatened to boycott the event, which had been scheduled for Wednesday night, and the company finally called it off. Actress Zhang Ziyi, who starred in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," said that the Italian brand had "disgraced itself." An analyst said the bad publicity will have a lasting effect. "It's the kiss of death for Dolce&Gabbana," said Shaun Rein, founder and managing director of China Market Research Group in Shanghai. "I expect them to have a real tough time over the next six to 12 months." The three promotional videos that led to the Instagram fiasco showed a Chinese woman using chopsticks to eat pizza and other Italian food. Many in China called them racist and full of outdated stereotypes. The videos were previously deleted from the company's account on Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter. Rein said it's a big mistake when westerners come up with creative content but don't understand how the campaigns will be received by Chinese consumers. He noted a trend of rising nationalism in China. "So if you, as a western brand, do anything that looks like you are mocking or making fun of Chinese culture, that's a big no-no," he said. The ruling Communist Party's People's Daily newspaper wrote on Weibo late Wednesday: "China has always been friendly to foreign businesses. But it doesn't mean there's no bottom line. There is a deal only when there is respect." ___ Associated Press researcher Shanshan Wang contributed to this report. SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - A South Korean pastor was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Thursday for raping or sexually molesting eight female followers who believed he was God. The Seoul Central District Court said that Lee Jae-rock of the Seoul-based Manmin Central Church was convicted of abusing the women "habitually" for an extended period. A court statement said the victims had "absolute belief in Lee's religious authority" and thought they could go to heaven if they obeyed his order. The court said that Lee had denied all the charges against him. But it said the women "testified about details that cannot be cooked up if they hadn't experienced them personally." Lee's church later Thursday said it will make best efforts to gather evidence to prove Lee's innocence. "We'll immediately appeal to tell the truth about (Lee) because we believe his innocence," a church statement said. Both Lee and prosecutors have one week to appeal. In this May 3, 2018 photo, A South Korean pastor Lee Jae-rock, center, is questioned by reporters upon his arrival for hearing at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul, South Korea. Lee has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for raping or sexually molesting eight female followers who believed he was God. (Ko Bum-jun/Newsis via AP) Some of the eight women gave their accounts about Lee's abuses in a series of programs by local JTBC television network in April. They described how Lee summoned each of them to his apartment at night and raped them by telling them they were improving their chances to go to heaven. Their names were not disclosed and faces obscured. "(He) said he was a holy and righteous man and would choose me to go to the new Jerusalem," said one victim. Another victim told the network that Lee demanded she take contraceptives before coming to his house. A third victim said Lee instructed her to pay only in cash for the cab ride she took to get to his house, apparently out of concerns of leaving any credit-card records. "(He said) other kids were taking pills before coming and I should too," the second woman said. "(He said) heaven was a place where everyone was clean and didn't feel shame or lust even if they were naked." Lee, reportedly 75, set up his church in Seoul's formerly blue-collar Guro neighborhood in 1982. It has more than 135,000 followers, according to the church's website, which is also filled with claims of Lee's miracle cures through prayer. Mainstream churches in South Korea have described Lee's church as a cult. LONDON (AP) - The Latest on Britain's talks to leave the European Union (all times local): 3:25 p.m. The leader of Britain's main opposition party has slammed the draft political agreement the government has agreed with the European Union over the outlines of their future relationship. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn told Parliament that the agreement represents a failure of the Conservative Party and its leader, Prime Minister Theresa May, during years of negotiations. He says the EU has made "no concessions" and that the Labour Party's six tests over the deal have not been met. Corbyn says the agreement "represents the worst of all worlds" and that Britain will have "no say" over EU rules that will continue to apply in Britain. Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement outside 10 Downing Street, London, Thursday Nov. 22, 2018. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth) "This is the blindfold Brexit we all feared," he said. "A leap into the dark." Given that May's Conservatives don't on their own have a majority in the House of Commons, she may have to rely on rebel Labour votes to get her Brexit deal through. ___ 3:20 p.m. Prime Minister Theresa May says a draft political declaration with the European Union on future relations after Brexit lays the groundwork for a future free trade agreement with the bloc as well as allowing the country to forge new trade deals with other countries. She told lawmakers that the deal will help protect jobs, give British fishermen more control, avoid a hard border with Ireland, and allow for a "smooth and orderly" departure from the European Union. May also says she has been clear in talks with Spain's leaders that British sovereignty over Gibraltar will be protected. May said the British people "want Brexit to be settled." She added that the rights of EU citizens living in Britain will be protected along with the rights of Britons residing in EU countries. May's Brexit plan faces harsh opposition in Parliament ___ 3:00 p.m. Gibraltar's Chief Minister Fabian Picardo says he is willing to discuss directly with the Spanish government their bilateral relations after the United Kingdom leaves the European Union. But Picardo warned Thursday that the sovereignty of the British territory at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula is non-negotiable. Spain has never dropped its claim of jurisdiction over the rocky outcrop, and its government has balked at the possibility of its post-Brexit future being decided between London and EU authorities without direct Spanish involvement. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has threatened to vote against the planned Brexit agreement unless Spain's misgivings are addressed. Picardo told Gibraltar's parliament that as long as issues such as sovereignty, jurisdiction and control of the territory are off the table, he is happy to discuss close cooperation with Madrid. ___ 1:00 p.m. British Prime Minister Theresa May says the agreement with the European Commission on the draft political framework on a future relationship represents the "right deal" for Britain. Speaking outside her Downing Street residence, May said Thursday that the deal "delivers on the vote of the referendum" and will give Britain control of its borders, money and laws. She also says the deal will protect British jobs and security and maintain the integrity of the United Kingdom. May's plan faces a significant challenge in Parliament, where a debate is expected next month. ___ 11:05 a.m. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is pledging to do everything to reach an agreement with Britain securing its orderly exit from the European Union. Merkel said Thursday at a Berlin conference of Germany's main employers' organization that "Britain's withdrawal is shaping up to be more difficult than a fictitious withdrawal of another member country," simply because of the complexity of regulating the border between EU member Ireland and the U.K.'s Northern Ireland. Merkel said: "I can tell you that I will do everything so that we get an agreement - a disorderly withdrawal is the worst possible way for the economy but also for the mental situation of our future relationship." She added that "there will certainly still need to be many discussions, particularly in Britain." ___ 10:50 a.m. The pound is rallying on the news that the European Union and Britain have agreed on a draft declaration on the future of their political relations after Brexit. European Council President Donald Tusk said Thursday that a deal had been agreed on in principle and requires the final approval of EU leaders at a summit on Sunday. The British currency, which has been volatile since the 2016 Brexit vote, jumped 1.1 percent to $1.2915 on the news. The deal on future relations comes after Britain and the EU agreed on a divorce deal that settles the terms of Britain's exit. The state of future relations are of particular concern to investors as they would influence how closely businesses can continue to trade across borders. While Britain and the EU are expected to rubber-stamp the Brexit deal Sunday, the pact faces significant opposition in the British parliament, which could yet vote it down, with uncertain consequences. ___ 10:30 a.m. European Council President Donald Tusk says that the European Union and Britain have agreed on a draft declaration on the future of their political relations after Brexit. Tusk said in a Tweet Thursday that "the (EU) Commission President has informed me that it has been agreed at negotiators' level and agreed in principle at political level." Tusk, who chairs meetings of EU leaders, says he has sent the draft political declaration to Britain's 27 European partners. He says the draft declaration still requires "the endorsement of the leaders." EU leaders are due to meet in Brussels on Sunday to rubber-stamp the declaration and a separate divorce deal. ___ 10:00 a.m. British Prime Minister Theresa May is to meet Austria's chancellor to build support for her Brexit plan ahead of a possible Sunday summit. May plans to meet Thursday with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, whose country holds the rotating European Union presidency. The U.K. and the European Union agreed last week on a 585-page document sealing the terms of Britain's departure, but are still working to nail down a separate political declaration on their future relations after Brexit. Kurz told the Austria Press Agency in remarks published Thursday that his trip to London is designed to help May build support for the deal, which faces opposition in the British Parliament. He also says he hopes to get a "realistic picture" of May's chances of getting majority support for the bill. A Union flag, left, flaps in the wind alongside EU flags in front of European Commission headquarters in Brussels, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. British Prime Minister Theresa May meets with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday evening in a bid to finalize a Brexit agreement as she continues to battle domestic critics of the draft deal. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) European Union chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, center, speaks with EU Commissioner for Energy Miguel Arias Canete, left, and EU Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Karmenu Vella, right, during a meeting of the College of Commissioners at EU headquarters in Brussels, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. European Commissioners met Thursday in an extraordinary session at a critical stage in Brexit negotiations, ahead of a weekend EU summit focused on Britain's departure from the bloc. (AP Photo/Thierry Monasse) European Union chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, center, arrives for a meeting of the College of Commissioners at EU headquarters in Brussels, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. European Commissioners met Thursday in an extraordinary session at a critical stage in Brexit negotiations, ahead of a weekend EU summit focused on Britain's departure from the bloc. (AP Photo/Thierry Monasse) European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker attends a meeting of the College of Commissioners at EU headquarters in Brussels, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. European Commissioners met Thursday in an extraordinary session at a critical stage in Brexit negotiations, ahead of a weekend EU summit focused on Britain's departure from the bloc. (AP Photo/Thierry Monasse) Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement outside 10 Downing Street, London, Thursday Nov. 22, 2018. Theresa May says Brexit deal's approval "is within our grasp" and she is determined to deliver it. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth) BEIJING (AP) - China on Thursday rejected a U.S. government report that accuses Beijing of stepping up efforts to steal technology ahead of a meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. The Commerce Ministry dismissed the U.S. Trade Representative's report as "new unwarranted accusations" and said Washington was wrecking economic relations. The two sides have raised tariffs on billions of dollars of each other's goods in a fight over U.S. complaints that Beijing steals or pressures companies to hand over technology in violation of its market-opening obligations. The USTR report said Chinese computer hacking attacks aimed at stealing American technology have increased this year while Beijing made no basic changes to policies its trading partners consider improper. "This is completely unacceptable to China," said a Commerce Ministry spokesman, Gao Feng. "We hope the U.S. side will stop the words and deeds of destroying bilateral economic and trade relations." Gao called on Washington to "create favorable conditions" to get economic relations "back on the right track." Tuesday's report added a potential new irritant before Trump and Xi meet in Buenos Aires during a gathering of the Group of 20 major economies. Economists say there is little chance the meeting by itself will produce a settlement to a dispute companies worry will chill global economic growth. The Trump administration is pressing Beijing to roll back plans for state-led development of Chinese competitors in robotics and other fields. Washington, Europe, Japan and other trading partners say those violate China's trade obligations. Communist leaders see them as a route to prosperity and global influence. American and Chinese officials have been talking in preparation for the Trump-Xi meeting. News reports say Bejiing has sent written proposals but no details have been released. Beijing has tried without success to recruit France, Germany, Japan and other governments as allies against Trump. They dislike his tactics but echo U.S. complaints. BERLIN (AP) - A former nurse accused of killing 100 patients at two hospitals in northern Germany addressed the families of his victims on Thursday and expressed regret. "If there was a way to help you, I would do it, believe me," said Niels Hoegel, who is on trial at a regional court in the northwestern city of Oldenburg. The 41-year-old said he was now convinced he owed an answer to the families of each victim, German news agency dpa reported. Hoegel had earlier told the court he initially wasn't moved by the killings, which occurred over a decade ago. "Now I sit here fully convinced that I want to give every relative an answer," Hoegel said. "I am really sorry." The murder charges stem from Hoegel's time at a hospital in Oldenburg between 1999 and 2002 and at another hospital in nearby Delmenhorst from 2003 to 2005. The alleged victims were aged between 34 and 96. Defendant Niels Hoegel who is charged with the killing of 100 patients as nurse on an intensive care unit waits for the beginning of the third day of his trial in the court in Oldenburg, western Germany, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. (Mohssen Assanimoghaddam//pool photo via AP) Hoegel was convicted in 2015 of two murders and two attempted murders. He said then that he intentionally brought about cardiac crises in some 90 patients in Delmenhorst because he enjoyed the feeling of being able to resuscitate them. He later told investigators that he also killed patients in Oldenburg. Authorities subsequently investigated hundreds of deaths, exhuming bodies of former patients. The Oldenburg state court is conducting the trial at a courtroom set up in a conference center, a venue chosen to accommodate the large public interest in the proceedings and the many co-plaintiffs. Hoegel told the court last month that he had a "protected" childhood, free of violence. He said his grandmother and his father, who were both nurses, had been his role models for going into the profession. An additional conviction could affect Hoegel's possibility of parole, but there are no consecutive sentences in Germany. In general, people serving life sentences are considered for parole after 15 years. The trial is scheduled to last until May. Police have said that, if local health officials hadn't hesitated in alerting authorities, Hoegel could have been stopped earlier. Authorities are pursuing criminal cases against former staff at the two medical facilities. Defendant Niels Hoegel who is charged with the killing of 100 patients as nurse on an intensive care unit waits for the beginning of the third day of his trial in the court in Oldenburg, western Germany, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. (Mohssen Assanimoghaddam//pool photo via AP) WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Two of Poland's most famous foes, former President Lech Walesa, and the country's de facto leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, faced off in court Thursday, exchanging wry comments. Kaczynski, the powerful head of the ruling Law and Justice party, is suing Walesa for blaming him in social media posts for the 2010 plane crash in Smolensk, Russia, that killed Kaczynski's twin, then-President Lech Kaczynski, along with 95 others including top Polish political and military leaders. In one 2016 post, Walesa alleged that Kaczynski, "guided by bravado," was on the phone pushing for the plane to land in heavy fog. It's an allegation sometimes made by Kaczynski's critics, but no evidence has ever emerged to prove it. Kaczynski wants Walesa to admit his words were untrue and that he be forced to pay 30,000 zlotys ($8,000) to charity. This is the latest in the long history of feuding between Walesa, the 75-year-old founder of the 1980s Solidarity pro-democracy movement that peacefully ended communism in Poland, and Kaczynski, his former ally and aide. Kaczynski, 69, and his twin, who was a top Solidarity activist, promoted Walesa to be democratic Poland's first popularly chosen president in 1990. They became his closest aides, but soon bitterly fell out with him in still unclear circumstances. Walesa has claimed that the brothers wanted control over him. Poland's two most famous foes, the country's de facto leader, head of the ruling party Jaroslaw Kaczynski, right, and former President Lech Walesa, second left, stand near each other after exchanging wry comments before a courtroom in Gdansk, Poland, on Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Kaczynski is suing Walesa for blaming him for a 2010 plane crash that killed his twin, then-President Lech Kaczynski. (AP Photo/Wojciech Strozyk) The Kaczynskis alleged he had been a communist collaborator codenamed "Bolek," which Walesa denies and says documents suggesting that were forged. Kaczynski insists that Poland's transformation to democracy was imperfect and left a lot of political and financial influence in the hands of the former communist rulers. Outside the courtroom in Walesa's hometown, the Baltic port city of Gdansk, the former allies-turned foes sparred verbally. "Why did I ever make you my minister?" Walesa asked Kaczynski as they stood together before entering the courtroom, calling him "my great mistake. "Why did I ever make you the president?" Kaczynski retorted, though both could be seen smiling. He also called Walesa his "great mistake" and an "embarrassment." Today, Walesa is a bitter critic of the government that Kaczynski guides from behind the scenes, accusing it of eroding the democracy he helped bring to life. He arrived in court wearing a T-shirt with the word "Konstytucja" (Constitution), which has been a rallying cry of the anti-government opposition. Kaczynski was dressed in a black suit and tie, the attire he has always worn publicly since his brother perished. Despite the court's encouragement, they failed to reach an agreement, so more court sessions will be held. LONDON (AP) - The wife of a British academic sentenced to life in prison for espionage in the United Arab Emirates said Britain's foreign secretary assured her Thursday that the government was now working to get him out of jail after months of inaction to gain his freedom. Daniela Tejada had earlier told the BBC that Foreign Office officials bungled the case of her husband, 31-year-old Ph.D. student Matthew Hedges, who was arrested May 5 at Dubai Airport after a research trip to the UAE. But after emerging from her meeting with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, she said authorities pledged to "return him home to me." "He has assured me that he and his team are doing everything in their power to get Matt free and return him home to me," she said. "This is not a fight I can win alone and I thank the Foreign Office and the British public for now standing up for one of their citizens." Tejada has become her husband's primary advocate, turning up the pressure on the government to act. She told the BBC earlier in the day that the government had failed to robustly intervene on Hedges' behalf during the early stages of his imprisonment, when he was held in solitary confinement under inhumane conditions. "I was under the impression they were putting their interests with the UAE above a British citizen's rightful freedom and his welfare," Tejada said. "They were stepping on eggshells instead of taking a firm stance." The verdict, announced Wednesday after a five-minute hearing, caught the British government off guard. Hunt issued a statement saying he had discussed the case with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed during a visit to the country last week and the verdict "runs contrary to earlier assurances." This undated family handout photo shows Matthew Hedges with his wife Daniela Tejada. The family of a British academic jailed in the United Arab Emirates on spying allegations says he's been sentenced to life in prison. Matthew Hedges, a 31-year-old PhD student in Middle Eastern Studies at Durham University, was arrested at Dubai Airport on May 5, 2018. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt expressed shock at the verdict Wednesday Nov. 21, 2018 and has travelled to the UAE to make representations on his behalf. (Daniela Tejada via AP) Hunt said he was "deeply shocked" by the verdict, which "is not what we expect from a friend and trusted partner of the United Kingdom." Tensions over Hedges' treatment have quickly escalated into a crisis, in part because ties between Britain and the seven emirates of the UAE are considered close and date back 200 years. The UAE is strategically located on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and the British military trains with UAE troops. The emirates of Abu Dhabi and Dubai are home to large numbers of British nationals who work in areas ranging from finance to sports, and thousands of tourists visit the country each year, attracted by sunny beaches, luxury hotels and theme parks. Ties also include lucrative defense contracts. U.K. companies have a backlog of orders with the UAE worth more than $261 million over the coming decade, according to data from IHS Markit. More importantly, the UAE plans to award another $20 billion of arms contracts over the coming decade - a significant source of potential revenue for Britain, which is set to leave the European Union next year and is seeking to expand trade elsewhere. Hedges traveled to the UAE to conduct interviews as part of his research into civil-military relations after the Arab Spring. There was "nothing clandestine or covert" in anything he was doing, according to Clive Jones, his Ph.D. supervisor. The Muslim nation prides itself on being tolerant of foreigners. But British nationals often run afoul of local customs and laws, which prohibit public intoxication, kissing in public and cursing. Most of the time, the violators are deported. The UAE's vast surveillance network has been used to go after critics, journalists and activists conducting research in sensitive areas. Human rights organizations have been barred from the country after researching the conditions of migrant laborers who do the back-breaking construction work behind the glittering high-rise towers and sprawling shopping malls. Andreas Krieg, a military and security expert at King's College London, said the UAE sees any information that isn't state-controlled a threat to the regime. The Hedges sentence was meant to send a message to journalists, rights advocates and academics to take the government line or face the consequences, Krieg said. "They see civil society as a threat to security," he said, adding that the idea runs contrary to the well-oiled publicity machine that sells the UAE as an attractive investment and tourist attraction. "This is going to be a stain for years and years unless they release him." Tejada said it had been a horrible time for her husband. As she read a prepared statement outside the Foreign Office, she recalled his shock as the verdict was read. "Seeing him shaking in court after being handed a life sentence and then being made to leave was beyond heartbreaking," she said. "We didn't even get to say goodbye." Daniela Tejada, wife of Matthew Hedges, arrives at The Foreign Office for a meeting with Britain's Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, in London, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. A British academic has been sentenced to life in prison in the United Arab Emirates on charges that he was spying for the U.K. Britain described the verdict as shocking and urged its Mideast ally to reconsider its decision. Matthew Hedges, a 31-year-old PhD student in Middle Eastern Studies at Durham University, was arrested at Dubai Airport on May 5 and detained. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth) Daniela Tejada, wife of Matthew Hedges, arrives at The Foreign Office for a meeting with Britain's Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, in London, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. A British academic has been sentenced to life in prison in the United Arab Emirates on charges that he was spying for the U.K. Britain described the verdict as shocking and urged its Mideast ally to reconsider its decision. Matthew Hedges, a 31-year-old PhD student in Middle Eastern Studies at Durham University, was arrested at Dubai Airport on May 5 and detained. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth) Daniela Tejada, wife of Matthew Hedges, arrives at The Foreign Office for a meeting with Britain's Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, in London, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. A British academic has been sentenced to life in prison in the United Arab Emirates on charges that he was spying for the U.K. Britain described the verdict as shocking and urged its Mideast ally to reconsider its decision. Matthew Hedges, a 31-year-old PhD student in Middle Eastern Studies at Durham University, was arrested at Dubai Airport on May 5 and detained. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth) Daniela Tejada, wife of Matthew Hedges, arrives at The Foreign Office for a meeting with Britain's Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, in London, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. A British academic has been sentenced to life in prison in the United Arab Emirates on charges that he was spying for the U.K. Britain described the verdict as shocking and urged its Mideast ally to reconsider its decision. Matthew Hedges, a 31-year-old PhD student in Middle Eastern Studies at Durham University, was arrested at Dubai Airport on May 5 and detained. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth) Daniela Tejada, wife of Matthew Hedges, arrives at The Foreign Office for a meeting with Britain's Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, in London, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. A British academic has been sentenced to life in prison in the United Arab Emirates on charges that he was spying for the U.K. Britain described the verdict as shocking and urged its Mideast ally to reconsider its decision. Matthew Hedges, a 31-year-old PhD student in Middle Eastern Studies at Durham University, was arrested at Dubai Airport on May 5 and detained. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth) VIENNA (AP) - The head of the U.N.'s atomic watchdog on Thursday called on North Korea to allow inspectors back into the country to monitor its nuclear program. Speaking at a board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Director General Yukiya Amano noted that Pyongyang had in September talked about denuclearization measures including the "permanent dismantlement of the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon" - a reactor where it produces plutonium. Amano said there has been activity observed at Yongbyon, but "without access the agency cannot confirm the nature and purpose of these activities." At a news conference later Thursday, he said he couldn't elaborate on when exactly the activity was observed. IAEA inspectors were expelled from North Korea in 2009 but Amano said the agency continues to prepare for their possible re-admittance. "The agency continues to enhance its readiness to play an essential role in verifying (North Korea's) nuclear program if a political agreement is reached among countries concerned," he said. "I again call upon (North Korea) to comply fully with its obligations under relevant resolutions of the U.N. Security Council and of the IAEA board, to cooperate promptly with the agency and to resolve all outstanding issues." Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, Yukiya Amano of Japan, waits for the start of the IAEA board of governors meeting at the International Center in Vienna, Austria, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak) On the other hand, Amano told board members that Iran continues to abide by the deal reached in 2015 with major world powers that aimed at preventing Tehran from building atomic weapons in exchange for economic incentives. He reiterated the agency's findings in a report distributed to member states earlier this month that "Iran is implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action." The issue has grown more complicated since the U.S. withdrew unilaterally in May from the deal and then re-imposed sanctions. Iran's economy has been struggling ever since and its currency has plummeted in value. The other signatories to the deal - Germany, Britain, France, Russia and China - are continuing to try to make it work. Amano stressed that "it is essential that Iran continues to fully implement" its commitments. In its full report, the IAEA said its inspectors continue to have access to all sites in Iran that it needs to visit and that inspectors confirmed Iran has kept within limits of heavy water and low-enriched uranium stockpiles. "The agency continues to verify the non-diversion of nuclear material declared by Iran under its safeguards agreement," Amano said. "Evaluations regarding the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran continue." BERLIN (AP) - Germany's foreign minister on Thursday rejected comments by a candidate for the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel's party who appeared to question the right to asylum enshrined in the German constitution. The constitution states that "persons persecuted on political grounds shall have the right of asylum." Friedrich Merz, one of three high-profile contenders to succeed Merkel as head of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, asserted Wednesday that the constitutional "individual right to asylum" is unique to Germany. Germany, he added, should discuss at some point whether it "can continue in this form if we seriously want a European immigration and refugee policy" and whether a "legal reservation" should be built into the constitution stating that the right to asylum is subject to European rules. Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, of the center-left Social Democrats, tweeted Thursday that "our fundamental right to asylum is a historic achievement. There is nothing to change." Maas argued that the constitution already ensures there is no conflict with European law. In this Nov. 21, 2018 photo Friedrich Merz, former CDU faction leader, gestures during his speech at the CDU regional conference to present his concept as candidate for the CDU chairmanship in Seebach, central Germany. The regional conference is the third of eight nationwide meetings of this kind. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer) Merz sought to counter that and other criticism Thursday, telling news agency dpa that he was not questioning the fundamental right to asylum and stands by a policy based on "Christian responsibility and the background of German history." Merz, a former leader of the conservatives' parliamentary group and one-time Merkel rival, is seeking a comeback after a decade away from front-line politics. He stands for a more right-wing approach than Merkel, as does another contender, Health Minister Jens Spahn, who has made migration a key issue. The CDU is seeking to dent the appeal of the far-right Alternative for Germany, which has capitalized on discontent over migration. Merz and CDU general secretary Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who appears more in tune with Merkel's centrist approach, are viewed as the front-runners. The new party leader, who will be elected Dec. 7, will be the favorite to become the conservative candidate for chancellor in Germany's next election. NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - The U.S. military on Thursday announced the latest of several deadly airstrikes this week against al-Shabab extremists in Somalia as it targets a region well north of where the al-Qaida-linked fighters control large parts of the country. The U.S. Africa Command statement said two new strikes killed six fighters and destroyed a weapons cache on Wednesday near Harardere. That al-Shabab-controlled community last month was targeted by the deadliest U.S. airstrike in almost a year, with dozens of extremists killed. The U.S. has now carried out 35 airstrikes this year against al-Shabab, Africa's deadliest Islamic extremist group, which continues to stage deadly attacks in the capital, Mogadishu, and other cities. Somali intelligence officials said the latest airstrikes targeted locations in the rural villages of Jimo-Luqunyar and Adaley, 75 kilometers (46 miles) northeast of Harardere. They said at least four missiles hit a base for over 30 extremists assigned to collect livestock taxes from nomadic communities in the area. The officials requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Two U.S. airstrikes on Monday killed 37 extremists and one on Tuesday killed seven. This week's airstrikes have been carried out in Mudug region, well north of Mogadishu and the south and central areas where al-Shabab continues to hold large parts of rural land. Al-Shabab recently relocated to Harardere as a key training and planning base after the U.S. and allies increased pressure and surveillance further south. Somali intelligence officials last month told The Associated Press that last month's U.S. airstrike near Harardere largely destroyed a training camp where recruits were preparing to graduate. The officials said more than 75 people were killed, while the U.S. said about 60 extremists were killed. The Mudug region, however, is a more difficult hideout for al-Shabab as its fighters prefer the shrubbier ground further south. The U.S. military has said the airstrikes are aimed at reducing al-Shabab's ability to plan attacks, disrupting its leadership networks and limiting its freedom of movement in the Horn of Africa nation. ___ Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa AMSTERDAM (AP) - Dutch King Willem-Alexander visited the Anne Frank House museum Thursday after a two-year reboot to give the building a new entrance hall, redesigned exhibition spaces and a new way of telling the story of the teenage Jewish diarist. The aim of renewing the landmark museum was to "provide more information about the historical context and background of the story we represent, which is the story of Anne Frank," executive director Ronald Leopold said Wednesday night at a press preview of the renewed museum. What hasn't changed is the museum's moving centerpiece: the Spartan secret annex, reached via a door concealed behind a bookcase, where Anne wrote her world-famous diary as she, her family and four other Jews hid for two years from Nazis during World War II until they were arrested and deported to concentration camps. "Of course we did not change the hiding place itself - the annex - which is the most authentic place where Anne Frank was in hiding and where she wrote the diary," Leopold said. The museum believes that telling Anne's story remains relevant more than 60 years after she and her sister both perished in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after contracting typhus. On Wednesday, the head of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor, warned at a conference in Vienna that "Jewish communities in Europe are increasingly concerned about their security and pessimistic about their future." Dutch King Willem-Alexander looks at Anne Frank's diary displayed in the new Diary Room at the renovated Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. The museum is built around the secret annex hidden in an Amsterdam canal-side house where teenage Jewish diarist Anne Frank hid from Nazi occupiers during World War II is expanding to better tell Anne's tragic story to the growing number of visitors. (Patrick van Katwijk, pool photo via AP) Leopold said the museum, which receives 1.2 million visitors annually, has an important role to play in combatting anti-Semitism. "We run a museum and we know how powerful the influence of this museum is," he said. "A visit ... really has a huge impact on young people and encourages them to fight discrimination, anti-Semitism, racism in their own communities." The museum got a new entrance and changes to rooms including the darkened space that displays the iconic books that made up Anne's diary, which was published by her father after the war and went on to become a symbol of hope and resilience. The diary has been translated into more than 70 languages. The building housing the secret annex was turned into a museum in 1960. The museum, which remained open throughout the renovations, also has revamped the way it tells the story of the Frank family, and by extension the Nazi persecution of Jews. "What we tried to do is ... use the family history as kind of a window onto a larger history," said Tom Brink, the museum's head of publications and presentations. He said the larger history includes the Nazi-occupied Dutch capital during the war "and, of course, European history because all Europe was affected by the Nazi rule." As well as the physical changes, the museum now has an audio tour which pieces together narrated fragments from the diary, family stories and historical perspective. That allowed curators to keep physical exhibits sparse while still explaining the Franks' story and putting it in historical context. A room that served as the office for Anne's father's company has just a few photos on the wall. One shows a group of Jewish men in Amsterdam kneeling, their hands on their heads, watched over by a Nazi soldier carrying a rifle. On another wall is a map drawn up by Amsterdam civil servants for the city's Nazi occupiers with black dots representing the places where Jews lived. "We wanted to preserve the character of the house, which is very much its emptiness," said Leopold. "I think its emptiness is probably the most powerful feature of the Anne Frank House." Journalists take images of the renovated Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. The museum is built around the secret annex hidden in an Amsterdam canal-side house where teenage Jewish diarist Anne Frank hid from Nazi occupiers during World War II is expanding to better tell Anne's tragic story to the growing number of visitors. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong) A picture of Anne Frank accompanies visitors as they leave the renovated Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. The museum is built around the secret annex hidden in an Amsterdam canal-side house where teenage Jewish diarist Anne Frank hid from Nazi occupiers during World War II is expanding to better tell Anne's tragic story to the growing number of visitors. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong) Dutch King Willem-Alexander, right, looks at Anne Frank's diary, foreground, displayed in the new Diary Room at the renovated Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. The museum is built around the secret annex hidden in an Amsterdam canal-side house where teenage Jewish diarist Anne Frank hid from Nazi occupiers during World War II is expanding to better tell Anne's tragic story to the growing number of visitors. (Patrick van Katwijk, pool photo via AP) Dutch King Willem-Alexander, right, looks at Anne Frank's diary, displayed in the new Diary Room at the renovated Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. The museum is built around the secret annex hidden in an Amsterdam canal-side house where teenage Jewish diarist Anne Frank hid from Nazi occupiers during World War II is expanding to better tell Anne's tragic story to the growing number of visitors. (Patrick van Katwijk, pool photo via AP) Dutch King Willem-Alexander looks at Anne Frank's diary, foreground, displayed in the new Diary Room at the renovated Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. The museum is built around the secret annex hidden in an Amsterdam canal-side house where teenage Jewish diarist Anne Frank hid from Nazi occupiers during World War II is expanding to better tell Anne's tragic story to the growing number of visitors. (Patrick van Katwijk, pool photo via AP) View of the secret annex with it's blacked out windows at the renovated Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. The museum is built around the secret annex hidden in an Amsterdam canal-side house where teenage Jewish diarist Anne Frank hid from Nazi occupiers during World War II is expanding to better tell Anne's tragic story to the growing number of visitors. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong) View of the secret annex with it's blacked out windows at the renovated Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. The museum is built around the secret annex hidden in an Amsterdam canal-side house where teenage Jewish diarist Anne Frank hid from Nazi occupiers during World War II is expanding to better tell Anne's tragic story to the growing number of visitors. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong) View of the secret annex with it's blacked out windows at the renovated Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. The museum is built around the secret annex hidden in an Amsterdam canal-side house where teenage Jewish diarist Anne Frank hid from Nazi occupiers during World War II is expanding to better tell Anne's tragic story to the growing number of visitors. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong) A museum employee emerges from the secret annex at the renovated Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. The museum is built around the secret annex hidden in an Amsterdam canal-side house where teenage Jewish diarist Anne Frank hid from Nazi occupiers during World War II is expanding to better tell Anne's tragic story to the growing number of visitors. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong) TOKYO (AP) - Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn is in custody in Tokyo after his arrest this week for alleged financial improprieties. Japanese prosecutors have been very tight-lipped about details of their investigation. But on Thursday they confirmed Ghosn is not getting VIP treatment and is subject to the same Spartan conditions faced by any other detainee in Japan. A look at what is known about Ghosn's situation: Q: WHERE IS GHOSN? A: Prosecutors say Ghosn is detained at the Tokyo Detention House, a 12-story building in downtown Tokyo's Katsushika district. About 3,000 people, mostly pre-trial suspects, defendants and some death row inmates, are held there. It is one of Japan's eight detention centers. The facility's gallows were used in July to hang cult leader Shoko Asahara, the mastermind of a Tokyo subway gassing and other crimes. Q: WHAT IS LIFE LIKE IN DETENTION? A: Officials say Ghosn has met with officials from the French Embassy and a lawyer. Under Japan's criminal justice procedures, his counsel is not allowed to attend questioning by prosecutors. Tokyo deputy prosecutor Shin Kukimoto said Ghosn is being treated just like any other detainee, with about eight hours of sleep and three simple meals a day. Q: WHAT ARE INTERROGATIONS LIKE IN JAPAN? A security guard stands near the logo at Nissan Motor Co. Global Headquarters in Yokohama near Tokyo Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Nissan's board of directors will meet Thursday to decide whether to dismiss its chairman Carlos Ghosn following his arrest on suspicion of underreporting his income. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) A: Kukimoto said Ghosn is being questioned for several hours a day in a room with prosecutors and a translator. He gave no further details and would not say if Ghosn has acknowledged the allegations. Japanese investigators once were notorious for lengthy, tough interrogations of suspects denied contact with their lawyers. Conditions have improved in recent years with increased awareness of human rights standards. Q: WHAT ARE THE ALLEGATIONS AGAINST GHOSN AND POSSIBLE PENALTIES? A: Ghosn, who was arrested with Nissan representative director Greg Kelly, is suspected of violating financial reporting laws which carry a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison or a fine up to 10 million yen ($89,000) if he is convicted. Q: WHAT'S NEXT? A: Wednesday's court approval of 10-day detention allows prosecutors to keep Ghosn through Nov. 30. They could extend that by another 10 days before having to decide whether to indict him, though they could add new allegations and win more time - 20 days per charge. He is unlikely to be released on bail anytime soon. ___ Follow Mari Yamaguchi on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/mariyamaguchi FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - Top officials at the European Central Bank expressed concern at their last rate-setting meeting about higher government borrowing costs for Italy but saw little evidence that the debt troubles were spreading to other eurozone countries. The written account released Thursday of the Oct. 25 meeting of the bank's 25-member governing council revealed discussion of increasing borrowing costs for "one large euro area country" but that "contagion" to other markets or countries "had so far remained limited." The officials were concerned bigger deficits in indebted countries could hurt market confidence. Italy has the second highest debt level in the eurozone, at 132 percent of GDP. The officials reiterated their stance that they saw an "on-going, broad-based recovery" and that they would end their bond purchase stimulus at year end. LONDON (AP) - The draft divorce agreement between British and European Union negotiators has two parts: a legally binding withdrawal agreement, which runs more than 580 pages, and a 26-page political declaration on future relations. Some key points: WITHDRAWAL AGREEMENT Transition period: Britain will leave the EU on March 29 but remain inside the bloc's single market and bound by its rules until the end of December 2020, while the two sides work out a new trade relationship. The transition period can be extended for up to two years before July 1, 2020 if both parties decide more time is needed. Irish border: The deal commits the two sides to a "backstop" solution to guarantee the border between EU member Ireland and the U.K.'s Northern Ireland remains free of customs posts or other obstacles. It keeps the U.K. in a customs arrangement with the EU, and will last until superseded by permanent new trade arrangements. Both sides say they hope to have a new deal in place by the end of 2020, so the backstop is never needed. Divorce bill: Britain agrees to cover contributions to staff pensions and commitments to EU programs the U.K. made while a member for the funding period that runs to 2020. The bill has previously been estimated at about 39 billion pounds ($50 billion). European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, right, greets British Prime Minister Theresa May at EU headquarters in Brussels, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. British Prime Minister Theresa May meets with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in a bid to finalize a Brexit agreement as she continues to battle domestic critics of the draft deal. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) Citizens' Rights: EU citizens living in Britain, and Britons elsewhere in the bloc, will continue to have the rights to live and work. ___ POLITICAL DECLARATION The two sides commit to "an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security and defense and wider areas of cooperation." But many of the details will only be worked out after Britain leaves the EU on March 29. Trade: The two sides commit to a "comprehensive" economic relationship, including a free-trade area. There will be common customs arrangements to provide tariff-free trade, and the two sides commit to "build and improve on" the temporary single customs territory set out in the withdrawal agreement. The U.K. "will consider aligning with Union rules in relevant areas" to ensure a friction-free economic relationship. But the document acknowledges that closeness will be limited by the EU's need to protect the integrity of its single market, and by Britain's desire for an independent trade policy. Irish border: Britain and the EU commit to replacing the "backstop" with a permanent solution "that establishes alternative arrangements for ensuring the absence of a hard border on the island of Ireland." This could include as-yet undeveloped technological solutions. Financial services: The two sides should explore whether they can declare the other's regulatory regimes "equivalent" in order to facilitate cross-border financial services. They should aim to conclude their assessments by the end of June 2020. Fishing: One of the most contentious issues - who has access to U.K. and EU territorial waters - is deferred. The declaration says only that the two sides should "establish a new fisheries agreement," ideally by July 1, 2020. Security: The two sides will try to maintain law-enforcement cooperation at the same level as now, "as far as is technically and legally possible." There should be "timely exchanges of intelligence and sensitive information between the relevant Union bodies and the United Kingdom authorities." Travel: Citizens of the U.K. and the EU will not need visas for short visits. The conference, presided over by standing deputy chairman of HCMC Peoples Committee Le Thanh Liem and deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Thang Hai. At the conference, enterprises and cooperatives introduced specialties in their provinces such as grape, Vietnamese apple and seaweeds from Binh Thuan province; green peel pomelo, Lai Vung mandarin and Cao Lanh mango from Dong Thap province; and dried snake head fish, shrimp, snakeskin gourami and red tilapila. The conferences organization board arranged an area showcasing specialties of Ben Tre province including coconut oil, coconut candy, banana candy and other farm produce. Visitors at the conference (Photo: SGGP) Standing deputy chairman of HCMC Peoples Committee Le Thanh Liem appreciated performance results of the program, saying it has created a tight connection and established a comprehensive cooperation relationship in the trading field between HCMC and other provinces and cities nationwide. Three hours after the opening ceremony, 309 contracts and memorandum of understandings on goods supply and distribution were signed. By THUY HAI Translated by Hai Mien WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and President Donald Trump (all times local): 8:05 a.m. President Donald Trump has begun his Thanksgiving Day by resuming his public dispute with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts over the independence of the American judiciary. Trump started the back-and-forth this week with remarks critical of a judge who was appointed by President Barack Obama and who rejected Trump's migrant asylum policy. Roberts responded Wednesday in a statement by saying there are no "Obama judges or Trump judges" but instead "an extraordinary group of dedicated judges." Trump's holiday criticism of the judicial branch of government takes aim at California's 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which long has had a majority of judges appointed by Democratic presidents, with the current breakdown 16-7. Trump tweets that Roberts "can say what he wants, but the 9th Circuit is a complete & total disaster." President Donald Trump gestures as he walks to Marine One after speaking to media at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2018, for the short trip to Andrews Air Force Base en route to Palm Beach International Airport, in West Palm Beach, Fla., and on to and onto Mar-a-Lago. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) ___ 12:50 a.m. The chief justice of the United States, John Roberts, has told President Donald Trump that there are no "Obama judges or Trump judges," but instead what Roberts calls "an extraordinary group of dedicated judges." To Trump, there are indeed "Obama judges" as he originally asserted in remarks critical of a federal judge who rejected his migrant asylum policy. The back-and-forth represents an extraordinary public dispute over judicial independence. It's highly unusual for a president to single out judges for personal criticism. But it's unprecedented in modern history for a chief justice to challenge a president's comments. Roberts and several of his Supreme Court colleagues have rebutted perceptions of the court as a political institution divided between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) - A Kenyan police official says authorities are questioning several people who could have "good information" leading to the arrest of the gunmen who abducted an Italian woman in a coastal town. Noah Mwivanda, police commander for the region, told reporters that those taken in for questioning are not under arrest. Tuesday's attack was the first kidnapping of a foreigner in Kenya in several years. Police say the attack on the Chakama trading center in the Kilifi area was carried out by three gunmen who wounded five people, including children, and seized 23-year-old Italian Silvia Costanza Romano. Such attacks had become rare on Kenya's coast since 2011, when the country deployed forces inside Somalia against the al-Shabab extremist group. There has been no claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attack. Kenyan police stand guard inside the compound of the command centre that is directing operations in the search for kidnapped Italian volunteer Silvia Costanza Romano, in Malindi, Kenya Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Gunmen firing indiscriminately on Tuesday kidnapped Romano, a 23-year-old volunteer working with Kenyan students, from the village of Chakama in Kilifi county. (AP Photo) A Kenyan police officer talks on his phone inside the compound of the command centre that is directing operations in the search for kidnapped Italian volunteer Silvia Costanza Romano, in Malindi, Kenya Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Gunmen firing indiscriminately on Tuesday kidnapped Romano, a 23-year-old volunteer working with Kenyan students, from the village of Chakama in Kilifi county. (AP Photo) Unidentified tourists are seen in the outdoor pool area of a hotel in the beach town of Malindi, the largest town in Kilifi county, Kenya Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. A Kenyan police official says authorities are questioning several people who could have "good information" leading to the arrest of the gunmen who abducted 23-year-old Italian volunteer Silvia Costanza Romano from the village of Chakama in Kilifi county on Tuesday. (AP Photo) An unidentified tourist discusses with local men proposing tourism excursions, on the waterfront next to a hotel in the beach town of Malindi, the largest town in Kilifi county, Kenya Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. A Kenyan police official says authorities are questioning several people who could have "good information" leading to the arrest of the gunmen who abducted 23-year-old Italian volunteer Silvia Costanza Romano from the village of Chakama in Kilifi county on Tuesday. (AP Photo) Thanksgiving is nothing to celebrate for Native Americans, who gathered Thursday in the town where the Pilgrims settled for a solemn National Day of Mourning observance. The holiday's noon gathering in downtown Plymouth, Massachusetts, recalled the disease, racism and oppression that the European settlers brought. It's the 49th year that the United American Indians of New England have organized the event on Thanksgiving Day. Moonanum James, a co-leader of the group, said: 'Native people have no reason to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims.' In this November 15, 2018 photo, Mashpee Wampanoag Kerri Helme uses plant fiber to weave a basket while sitting next to a fire at the Wampanoag Homesite at Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth Actor David Madden, left, in the role of pilgrim John Cooke, interacts with visitors at Plimoth Plantation living history museum village in Plymouth on November 18, 2018 People walk through the living history museum village where visitors can get a glimpse into the world of the 1627 Pilgrim village on November 18, 2018 Participants of the annual gathering beat drums, offered prayers as well as public speeches. Participants condemned pipeline projects and fracking that they say needlessly and recklessly degrades the environment. They also expressed their solidarity with refugees from Latin America who are being denied entry to the U.S. Mashpee Wampanoag Phillip Wynne pours water to control fire and temperatures while making a mishoon, a type of boat, from a tree at the Wampanoag Homesite at Plimoth Plantation, in Plymouth on November 15, 2018 The UAINE website explained that this year's event is 'dedicated to our thousands of relatives who are migrants and are being abused by ICE and other government agencies, including having their children stolen from them. 'Thanksgiving day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands, and the relentless assault on Native culture. 'Participants in National Day of Mourning honor Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today.' Visitors stand in a pavilion while looking at Plymouth Rock, in Plymouth on November 18, 2018 WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Republicans are working to soon fill the nation's longest judicial vacancy with a North Carolina lawyer whose nomination has raised objections from black lawmakers and civil rights groups concerned about his work defending state laws found to have discriminated against African-Americans. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has helped push 84 of President Donald Trump's nominees over the finish line and is itching for more. With just a few more weeks to go before Congress adjourns for the year, he has teed up a vote on the nomination of Thomas Farr, 64, to serve as a district court judge in North Carolina. The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Farr's confirmation with a party-line vote back in January, meaning McConnell has waited about 10 months and until after the midterm elections to hold a vote on the floor. Senators tend to save their biggest fights in the judicial arena for Supreme Court and appeals court nominees, but Farr's nomination has proved an exception. "It's hard to believe President Trump nominated him, and it's even harder to believe the Senate Republicans are considering it again," said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York in one of about 20 tweets he has sent out in recent days concerning Farr. Farr has the backing of home-state Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis, both Republicans. They have noted that Farr was also nominated to the same position by former President George W. Bush and has a "well qualified" rating from the American Bar Association. They have protested the implication that Farr is racially insensitive or biased. FILE - In this Sept. 20, 2017, file photo, Thomas Farr is sworn in during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on his nomination to be a District Judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File) "I think absolutely destroying a good man's reputation is inappropriate," Tillis said before the committee advanced Farr's nomination. In introducing Farr last year, Burr said the judiciary needs good people and he "fills every piece of the word good." But Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., described Farr as "probably the worst of the litter" when it comes to Trump's judicial nominees. "Could this administration have picked an individual who is more hostile to the rights of minorities than this man? It is hard to imagine," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in the same committee hearing. GOP leaders in charge of the North Carolina Legislature hired Farr and others at his firm to defend congressional and legislative boundaries that the Legislature approved in 2011. A federal court eventually struck some boundaries down as racial gerrymanders and the Supreme Court affirmed that decision. Farr also helped defend a 2013 law that required photo identification to vote, reduced the number of early voting days and eliminated same-day registration during that period. North Carolina Republicans said that requiring voter ID would increase the integrity of elections. But the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state provided no evidence of the kind of in-person voter fraud the ID mandate would address. The Richmond, Virginia-based court said the law targeted black voters "with almost surgical precision." Farr told lawmakers that, as an advocate, he vehemently disagreed with the argument that the North Carolina Legislature sought to curtail the voting rights of people of color or any other voter. But, said, "I am obligated to follow the decision by the 4th Circuit and pledge that I will do so." The history of the particular judicial opening Farr would fill has also contributed to the acrimony. President Barack Obama nominated two African-American women to serve on the court, but neither was granted a hearing and their nominations stalled. If confirmed, they would have been the first blacks to serve in that particular district, which is about 27 percent black. Farr also served as a lawyer for the re-election campaign of Republican Sen. Jesse Helms in 1990. The Justice Department alleged that about 120,000 postcards sent overwhelmingly to black voters before that election was intended to intimidate them from voting. Farr said he was not consulted about the postcards and did not have any role in drafting or sending them. He said that after he had been asked to review the card, "I was appalled to read the incorrect language printed on the card and to then discover it had been sent to African Americans." The explanation has failed to win over the NAACP. "The courts are supposed to be where we can find and seek justice. But Farr's lifetime crusade is to disenfranchise African Americans and deprive them of their rights," said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau. "He belongs nowhere near a bench of justice." Democratic lawmakers called on the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, to schedule Farr for another round of testimony about his role in the Helms' campaign, but Grassley declined. With a 51-49 majority, Republicans will have little margin for error in confirming Farr. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., has already pledged to oppose all judicial nominees until he gets a vote on legislation to protect special counsel Robert Mueller. ATLANTA (AP) - A newly restored steam locomotive known for chasing a stolen train in the American Civil War is helping to tell the story of how railroads fueled Atlanta's growth since its earliest days. The Atlanta History Center is using many railroad artifacts, a new exhibit hall and actors playing the roles of historic railroad figures to show how railroads forged Atlanta into one of the South's most important transportation and business hubs. The newly restored 1856 locomotive "Texas" is paired with the Zero Mile Post, which marked the terminus of the Western & Atlantic Railroad and Atlanta's epicenter. The 800-pound (363 kilogram) marker was recently moved from downtown Atlanta to the history center in the city's Buckhead neighborhood. "Locomotion: Railroads and the Making of Atlanta" opened this month. It aims to tell the story of Atlanta - and how railroads shaped the future life of the city and the region, said Sheffield Hale, the history center's president and CEO. "This locomotive, particularly when paired with the Zero Mile Post, is our origin story," Hale said. "This is why we're here." "We're here because Western & Atlantic Railroad chose this to be the spot," he added. "This is the origin story, this is our Planet Krypton." In this Nov. 14, 2018, photo Atlanta History Center Vice President of properties Jackson McQuigg stands in front of a restored 1856 Texas locomotive as he talks about a new railroad exhibit at Atlanta History Center in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Jeff Martin) The locomotive is lit up at night can be seen from the nearby sidewalk and street through expansive windows - part of Hale's broader vision to connect the history center with the surrounding community and make it more accessible and inviting. The Texas itself has been designed with stairs, so visitors can climb into it, touch it and see firsthand how it a steam locomotive worked. "The fact that they can get into the locomotive and see the coal, look into the engine box and do all that, we think is going to make it just pop in terms of history," Hale said. The Texas made history during the "Great Locomotive Chase" of the American Civil War. U.S. Army troops northwest of Atlanta commandeered a locomotive named The General in 1862. They then headed northwest toward Chattanooga, Tennessee, destroying bridges and parts of the rail line along the way. Confederate forces hopped aboard The Texas to chase the stolen train, eventually catching it. Before going on display in Atlanta, The Texas underwent a year-and-a-half restoration by Steam Operations Corp. at the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer, North Carolina. In its permanent home in the history center's new Rollins Gallery, the architecture is reminiscent of old train stations and train sheds, and includes several railroad signs and a passenger bench that dates back more than a century. Also on display are remnants of two of Atlanta's main train stations: A 1905 bronze building dedication plaque and an operating signal from Atlanta's Terminal Station; and the "Track 1" sign from Atlanta's 1930 Union Station. These artifacts are meant to tell the broad story of railroading in Atlanta, said Jackson McQuigg, the history center's vice president of properties Museum theatre performances will also help tell the story, he said. They will feature performances from people playing the roles of historic railroad figures that include pioneering woman brakeman Gertie Stewart; and Southern Railway chairman W. Graham Claytor Jr. RIDGELAND, S.C. (AP) - Authorities say a deputy responding to a family fight in South Carolina was shot at and ended up with a shotgun pellet or bullet fragment in the eye. Jasper County Sheriff Chris Malphrus says the suspect also shot a woman in the house, then died from a self-inflicted gunshot. Malphrus said his deputies were called to the home near Ridgeland early Thursday morning. He did not give details about the domestic incident. Malphrus said in a post on Facebook that the deputy is recovering from surgery. He says the woman wounded is at a Savannah, Georgia, hospital, but did not give her condition. The State Law Enforcement Division is investigating the shooting. Ridgeland is about 30 miles north of Savannah. COLUMBUS, N.M. (AP) - A small New Mexico border town once attacked by Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa is rejecting talk of a wall and troops while embracing its legacy to draw tourists. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has cited Villa's 1916 raid of Columbus as an example of why President Donald Trump was deploying active-duty troops along the U.S.-Mexico border. The deployment comes as thousands of migrants fleeing gang violence and poverty in Central America head toward the U.S. Residents of Columbus say those living on both sides of the border in the area have co-existed peacefully since the Villa invasion. They say the raid was a phenomenon of a different era, and that using it to justify tighter border security ignores more pressing needs such as economic development and better roads. "It's just an excuse," said Roberto Gutierrez, 63, who owns a grocery store in Columbus. "Ever since then, people on both sides go back and forth (between the U.S. and Mexico) with no problem." In fact, the town is using the Villa assault to generate historical interest and try to pull in visitors rather than as a cautionary tale. In this Oct. 3, 2018 photo, the historic railroad station in Columbus, N.M. once targeted by Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa sits in the middle of town. The small New Mexico village is rejecting talk of a wall and troops while embracing its legacy along the U.S.-Mexico border. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis last week cited Villa's 1916 raid of Columbus, New Mexico, as an example for why President Donald Trump was deploying active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. (AP Photo/Russell Contreras) Columbus is set to launch a campaign called "Where Old Mexico Meets New Mexico" that spotlights Pancho Villa State Park as a place where visitors can explore the area near the scene of the attack and the spot where the military planned its unsuccessful bid to retrieve Villa from Mexico. The town also has a small museum featuring U.S. Army recruitment posters and weapons. Residents mark the day of the raid every year to remember the Americans killed. Sometimes there is a quiet moment with candles displayed in the middle of the village. Other times there is a parade through the streets with volunteers dressed as Pancho Villa and U.S. General John J. Pershing. Shouting "Viva Villa! Viva Mexico!" Villa's forces attacked Columbus in the early morning of March 6, 1916, looting and burning homes and businesses. Around a dozen or so Columbus residents and eight U.S. soldiers were killed before members of the U.S. 13th Cavalry Regiment drove the Villistas back across the border. Historians have long debated the reason for Villa's attack. University of Houston history professor Jose Angel Hernandez said it came as Mexico was locked in violent civil war. Villa felt betrayed by President Woodrow Wilson, who Villa believed would recognize his rebel government, Hernandez said. "The raid has to be understood in the context of U.S.-Mexico diplomatic relations and the Mexican Revolution, not immigration," Hernandez said. The attack sparked outrage across the U.S. and Wilson ordered the Punitive Expedition into Mexico led by General John J. Pershing to capture or kill Villa. Mexican Americans who endured violence and discrimination in border towns saw Villa as a hero and celebrated the raid. The U.S. Army didn't catch Villa and withdrew from Mexico amid diplomatic pressure ahead of World War I. Columbus Mayor Esequiel Salas said the village long ago learned to accept its history. "We've come to terms with it," he said. "I think we see it as an episode to learn from." Salas said it's frustrating when people who have never visited Columbus cite the raid as a reason for more troops on the border or as a justification to invade another country. He said people in town rarely complain about border security or talk about a wall to replace its existing fence. He said he hears more complaints about a lack of housing for seniors and the need for more high-paying jobs in the area than about the raid 102 years ago. "A lot has changed since then, and we've learned from each other," Salas said. "We are still trying to learn from it all in our small community." ___ Associated Press journalist Russell Contreras is a member of the AP's race and ethnicity team. Follow Contreras on Twitter at http://twitter.com/russcontreras In this Oct. 3, 2018 photo, Columbus, N.M., Mayor Esequiel Salas shows off a new welcoming banner that acknowledges that Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa raided the town in 1916. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis last week cited Villa's 1916 raid of Columbus, New Mexico, as an example for why President Donald Trump was deploying active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. (AP Photo/Russell Contreras) In this Oct. 3, 2018 photo, a historical marker points out the spot where Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa attacked a U.S. border town at Pancho Villa State Park in Columbus, N.M. The small New Mexico village is rejecting talk of a wall and troops while embracing its legacy along the U.S.-Mexico border. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis last week cited Villa's 1916 raid of Columbus, New Mexico, as an example for why President Donald Trump was deploying active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. (AP Photo/Russell Contreras) In this Oct. 3, 2018 photo, a border fence in Columbus, N.M., sits along the U.S.-Mexico border at sunset. The small New Mexico village once attacked by Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa is rejecting talk of a wall and troops while embracing its legacy along the U.S.-Mexico border. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis last week cited Villa's 1916 raid of Columbus, New Mexico, as an example for why President Donald Trump was deploying active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. (AP Photo/Russell Contreras) PARIS (AP) - A French priest has been sentenced to two years in prison for sexual abusing multiple children while his former bishop was convicted for failing to report the crimes. A court in the city of Orleans handed down the verdict Thursday against priest Pierre de Castelet and retired Orleans bishop Andre Fort. A court official said the ruling forbids De Castelet from working as a priest or meeting with minors, puts him on a national list of sex offenders and orders him to receive psychiatric treatment. Fort was given an eight-month suspended sentence. Three victims were awarded 16,000 euros ($18,245) each in damages. Predominantly Catholic France has seen priests accused of sexual abuse but has not faced a national scandal or reckoning like that seen in some other countries. SANAA, Yemen (AP) - The leader of Yemen's Shiite rebels has met U.N. envoy Martin Griffiths in the capital Sanaa to discuss peace talks hoped for next month, as fighting continues in the key port city of Hodeida. A rebel statement Thursday says Abdul-Malek al-Houthi stressed that the Saudi-led coalition battling his group should establish "credibility" that it truly seeks "a political solution" before any such meeting. Meanwhile, Yemeni security officials on the ground in Hodeida say fighting rages on in the area, with both sides using heavy weapons, scrapping a plan for Griffiths to visit the city. Hopes remain he will be able to arrive on Friday, they added, speaking on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorized to brief reporters. Griffiths has said both sides have agreed to attend peace talks. TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) - More than a decade of bad decisions, toxic relationships and sleeping inside garages and vacant apartments had left Army veteran Michael Robertson with thoughts of ending his life. It wasn't until he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder that he began seeing a way out. But with no way to afford the upfront costs for his own apartment, he was stuck in a shelter for the homeless three years ago in Houston where he settled after drifting around the country. That's when a nonprofit organization called Veterans Matter stepped in - one of several groups that fill gaps government agencies can't reach even as they push to end homelessness among veterans. Since setting out with that goal at the beginning of this decade, the departments of Housing and Urban Development and of Veterans Affairs said in November the number of homeless veterans has dropped by about half to 38,000. Robertson, who served in the Persian Gulf War, is among the many no longer on the streets. Now, he has a dream of opening a food truck someday as he continues with therapy. "I couldn't imagine any of that or being stable just a few years ago," he said. The number has dropped under a strategy that brought the two federal departments together to offer homeless veterans assistance with monthly rent and case management and clinical services. But they can't cover all the needs, said Anthony Love, director of community engagement for the Veterans Health Administration's office for homeless programs. Some nonprofits help the veterans furnish new apartments, buy groceries or find jobs. Many operate in just one community or region, Love said. Veterans Matter pays for security deposits and the veteran's share of the first month's rent. So far, it has helped 2,600 veterans in 20 states get off the streets. Nine out of 10 remain housed after the first year, the organization said. "Veterans Matter is one of few with a national scope that will go where the need is," Love said. "They can get a check to a landlord pretty much the same day or within 24 hours." Founded by Ken Leslie, a former comedian and businessman who was once homeless himself, Veterans Matter began in 2012 after he learned about a few dozen veterans in Toledo who were unable to get a place to stay because each couldn't cover the $700 deposit. What that often meant was asking veterans to make an appeal to churches and military service organizations, said Shawn Dowling, who works for the VA in Ohio and Michigan. "It's really hard to admit that because it's so uncomfortable," she said. "It did feel like begging. It was really embarrassing for the guys." Since then, Veterans Matters has grown state by state with an assist from a list of celebrities, from Katy Perry to Kid Rock. ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill was an early supporter who helped take the organization to a national level by bringing it to his home state of Texas. Rocker George Thorogood just released a promotional video a few weeks ago. The message isn't just about getting a veteran a warm place to stay, Leslie said, it's about changing their lives and giving them hope. "If it was just about getting them housed, I wouldn't be doing it," he said. "We're targeting veterans who have nowhere to go." Rodney Larson, who was in the Army during the 1970s, had been in and out of homelessness and found himself without a place to stay last January in his hometown of Cincinnati. He had no idea there were ways to get his own apartment until he met with a veteran services worker. "Without people who care enough to help us," he said, "a lot of us won't make it." Solely relying on donations, Veterans Matter has collected and spent nearly $2 million on housing. Funding is limited, and sometimes that means turning down a request, especially in areas where costs have soared, Leslie said. Much of the money comes from corporate donations along with individuals and veteran service organizations. First Nation Group, a medical device distributor based in Florida, has donated $800,000 since the beginning, getting its employees and suppliers involved, too. "You can write checks and feel good about giving, but often times you don't really know the outcome," said company president Steve Baugh. "We're sure that a veteran who needs housed today, gets housed." According to the report, titled e-Conomy SEA 2018, the internet economy is growing in all six Southeast Asian countries surveyed but the stage of development relative to the size of each countrys economy differs. It is most developed in Vietnam, where the gross merchandise value (GMV) of the internet economy is 4 percent of the countrys GDP. With e-commerce almost doubling in 2018 from a year earlier, and with online advertising and gaming growing at more than 50 percent year on year, the Vietnamese internet economy is booming. Amidst one of the lowest penetrations of online travel bookings in the region, the online travel market has huge room for growth. While e-commerce is experiencing healthy growth in all Southeast Asian countries, Indonesia is leading the way, reaching $12 billion in 2018 and accounting for more than $1 in every $2 spent in the region. E-commerce adoption has also accelerated in Vietnam, where it reached nearly $3 billion in 2018. Online media is also growing rapidly in Vietnam, reaching $2.2 billion. This is not surprising considering the country ranks among the top 10 globally in terms of user engagement on gaming, social media and video platforms. According to the report, powered by a large, growing, and incredibly engaged internet user base, it is estimated that the Southeast Asian internet economy has reached $72 billion in GMV in 2018 across online travel, e-commerce, online media and ride hailing. Growing at 37 percent from a year earlier, it has accelerated beyond the 32 percent compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) that was recorded between 2015 and 2018. With the addition of the new sectors of online vacation rentals, online food ordering and subscription music and video on demand, and amidst the accelerated growth observed across all sectors, the internet economy in the region is on track to exceed $240 billion by 2025 $40 billion higher than previously estimated. The GMV of the internet economy stands at 2.8 percent of Southeast Asias GDP in 2018 up from 1.3 percent in 2015 and is projected to exceed 8 percent by 2025. To put that into perspective, Southeast Asia is still trailing almost 10 years behind the US, where the GMV of the internet economy already accounted for 6.5 percent of GDP back in 2016. The gap, however, has started to narrow. The report also estimated there are more than 350 million internet users across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam in June 2018 90 million more than in 2015. PARIS (AP) - The Latest on the influx of migrants into Europe (all times local): 5:05 p.m. Morocco's government says it has stopped 68,000 illegal migration attempts and dismantled 122 human trafficking networks since 2002. As Morocco faces increasing numbers of migrants from around Africa attempting to cross to Europe from its coasts, government minister Noureddine Boutayeb announced the figures at an African security conference Thursday. He also said Morocco has stopped 2,000 migrant boats from making the crossing since 2002. He did not give a breakdown per year. Morocco is hosting a major U.N. migration conference next month and is seeking to showcase its security record. Boutayeb said security services have dismantled 185 terrorist networks and arrested more than 3,000 terrorist suspects over the same period. Earlier this month, Moroccan authorities arrested two alleged supporters of the Islamic State group suspected of preparing attacks, according to the Interior Ministry. ___ 11:45 a.m. French maritime authorities say 18 migrants have been pulled from boats in the English Channel as they tried to illegally reach British shores. The regional maritime service said in a statement Thursday that a helicopter and rescue ships saved 11 migrants overnight whose boat was in distress off the coast of the French town of Wimereux. Four migrants were hospitalized with hypothermia and the others handed over to border police in Calais. The statement says a patrol ship discovered another boat carrying seven migrants and alerted British authorities who intercepted it near the British coast. Authorities shut down a sprawling migrant slum in Calais in 2016, but migrants continue to cluster there. Most try to sneak to Britain on trucks traveling n ferries or in the tunnel under the Channel. TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - Democratic and moderate Republicans lawmakers worked together last year to try to make Kansas the latest state to expand Medicaid, only to see their bipartisan effort rewarded with a veto from former conservative GOP Gov. Sam Brownback. The election this month of a governor who supports Medicaid expansion seemed to remove the biggest hurdle for those hoping to bring health coverage to thousands of the state's poor. But it's not that simple. In the same election that put Democrat Laura Kelly in the governor's office, Kansas voters also elected a more conservative Legislature. Any bill seeking to expand Medicaid will have a tougher time getting to the governor's desk. "I'm still looking at every possible way that we can stop that," said state Rep. Dan Hawkins, a conservative Republican from Wichita who is chairman of the House's health committee. Republicans retained their large majorities in both chambers and will appoint the leaders of the committees, who can help them bottle up or kill legislation they don't like. In this month's election, conservatives gained at least half a dozen seats in the House and might replace the chamber's majority leader, a moderate, with someone who leans further to the right. Hawkins is vying for the post. In the Senate, the health committee chairwoman is a moderate Republican who was instrumental in pushing Medicaid expansion last year but is leaving her position after being elected state insurance commissioner. Her replacement is likely to be more conservative. Governor-elect Laura Kelly holds her first news conference Thursday, Nov. 8, 2018, at the statehouse in Topeka, Kans. Joining her was her lieutenant governor-elect Lynn Rogers. (Thad Allton/The Topeka Capital-Journal via AP) With conservatives in control of the majority party, Kelly will likely have to make concessions on Medicaid expansion to get enough support to pass the Legislature. One could be a work requirement for recipients, something other Republican-leaning states have imposed. For her part, Kelly, a veteran state senator from Topeka, has promised to have a working group create a bipartisan plan. "I'm not exactly sure what it will look like yet," she told The Associated Press recently. "I'm a fiscal realist, and I need to make sure whatever we present is doable." Medicaid provides health coverage for lower-income and disabled Americans, including 377,000 in Kansas, and is funded jointly by states and the federal government. Thirty-five states have expanded Medicaid under the health care law signed by former President Barack Obama. Voters in Idaho, Utah and neighboring Nebraska approved expansions earlier this month. In a 36th state, Maine, voters approved an expansion in 2017, only to see their Republican governor stymie it. But the newly elected Democratic governor promised to move ahead. In Kansas, Brownback and departing Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer were the biggest reasons for the state not expanding the program. Both cited the cost of providing coverage to as many as 150,000 more people. A much-disputed study for Brownback's administration in 2015 suggested the state's costs could reach more than $100 million a year. Some projections after that were lower: In 2018, Colyer's budget office estimated a net cost of $22 million for the fiscal year beginning in July 2019. The federal government paid the full cost of covering the expansion group until 2017 and will continue paying 90 percent starting in 2020. Voters in Oregon, which approved the expansion early, approved taxes on hospitals, health insurers and managed care companies to pay for the program. In Montana, voters this month rejected a ballot measure that would have raised tobacco taxes to extend the state's Medicaid expansion. "We don't want to take on something that we know is absolutely unaffordable and will require a tax increase," said Kansas Senate President Susan Wagle, a conservative Wichita Republican. But supporters point to the closing of a small nonprofit hospital in southeast Kansas - after a closing in another town in the region in 2015 - as a cost of not expanding Medicaid. Kelly said providing health coverage to more Kansas residents is "a moral obligation." Advocates also contend that expanding Medicaid in Kansas would reduce expenses associated with uncovered medical care, reduce the costs of some state programs, make it easier for some people to hold jobs and promote employment in health care. The Kansas Hospital Association projects a net gain for the state. "No, it's not going to be easy, but it is easier from the standpoint that we have a governor who is going to push for it," said Kansas Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat. ___ Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, and Andrew Selsky in Salem, Oregon, contributed to this report. ___ Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna Governor-elect Laura Kelly holds her first news conference Thursday, Nov. 8, 2018, at the statehouse in Topeka, Kans. Joining her was her lieutenant governor-elect Lynn Rogers. (Thad Allton/The Topeka Capital-Journal via AP) MOSCOW (AP) - Investigative group Bellingcat and Russian website 'The Insider' claim they have identified a second Russian GRU military intelligence officer involved in a 2016 coup attempt in Montenegro. Montenegro's prosecutors have accused two Russian GRU officers of organizing the botched coup attempt in order to prevent the small Balkan nation from joining NATO. Russia has opposed Montenegro's bid as part of the alliance's expansion eastward, but denied any involvement in the plot. Montenegro joined NATO in June. Bellingcat and 'The Insider' had previously said the first GRU suspect was Eduard Shishmakov. On Thursday, they said they had determined the real name of the second suspect, who only had been known to Montenegro prosecutors under his cover identity, Vladimir Popov. They said the officer's true name is Vladimir Moiseev. ST. LOUIS (AP) - The Latest on the slaying and sexual assaults at a suburban St. Louis religious supplies store (all times local): 11:20 a.m. A Missouri pastor says the man charged with killing one woman and sexually assaulting two others at a suburban St. Louis religious supplies shop used to work as a pastor in southeast Missouri. Thomas Bruce of Imperial, Missouri, was arrested Wednesday and charged in Monday's attack at a Catholic Supply store in Ballwin. David Fitzgerald is pastor at Calvary Chapel in Maryland Heights. He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Bruce was a pastor at Calvary Chapel of Cape Girardeau from about 2003 into 2007. The Missouri Secretary of State's office identifies Bruce as the operator of a nonprofit church formed in 2003 and dissolved in 2007. Authorities investigate the scene at a Catholic Supply store where a gunman went into the religious supply store, sexually assaulted at least one woman and shot a woman in the head, Monday, Nov. 19, 2018, in Ballwin, Mo. (Johanna Huckeba/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP) Fitzgerald says Calvary Chapels are affiliated under a ministry that originated in Costa Mesa, California. Associated Press attempts to reach church officials Thursday have been unsuccessful. ___ 12:15 a.m. Prosecutors have charged a 53-year-old man with killing one woman and sexually assaulting two others after herding them at gunpoint into the back room of a suburban St. Louis religious supplies shop. St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch on Wednesday announced charges against Thomas Bruce of Imperial, Missouri, in Monday's attack at a Catholic Supply store in Ballwin. Bruce's arrest ended a two-day manhunt that frightened the region and led some schools, churches and businesses to close. Bruce is charged with 17 counts, including first-degree murder, kidnapping and other crimes. He is jailed without bond. Authorities allege in the criminal complaint that Bruce shot 53-year-old Jamie Schmidt in the head after she refused to "perform deviant sexual acts." The married mother of three died later at a hospital. Authorities say there has been one more fatality in the Camp wildfire, bringing the death toll from it to 84. They also say the fire is 95 percent contained. The blaze that started Nov. 8 leveled Paradise, destroying more than 13,000 homes. The Butte County Sheriff's Office says more than 560 names remain on the missing list. Authorities stressed that many of the people on the list may be safe and unaware they have been reported missing. Residences leveled by a wildfire line a neighborhood in Paradise, Calif. on Nov. 15, 2018 Smoke hangs over the scorched remains of Old Town Plaza following the wildfire in Paradise on Nov. 15, 2018 Flames burn inside a van as the Camp Fire tears through Paradise on Nov. 8, 2018 Paradise is about 140 miles north of San Francisco. More rain is on the way for northern California, helping firefighters extinguish the last of the wildfires, but increasing the risk of landslides in the scorched Sierra Nevada foothills. Between 1 to 3 inches of rain will fall between Friday and Sunday, adding to the 3 inches that already fell this week, the National Weather Service said. At least 84 people died in the so-called Camp Fire which started more than two weeks ago, and as many as 560 are believed missing. The fire was 95 percent contained across 154,000 acres, officials said early on Friday, in and around Paradise, a mountain town of nearly 27,000 people, some 175 miles northeast San Francisco. Search and rescue personnel search a home for human remains in the aftermath of the Camp Fire on Nov. 16, 2018 Firefighters work to keep flames from spreading through the Shadowbrook apartment complex as a wildfire burns through Paradise on Nov. 9, 2018 A home burns as the Camp Fire rages through Paradise on Nov. 8, 2018 Hundreds of volunteers and police officers spent the Thanksgiving holiday combing through the wreckage, searching for the remains of victims killed in the blaze as the ongoing rains looked set to complicate their work. 'It's the vegetation that holds the soil in place,' Brian Hurley, a forecaster with the NWS's Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said. 'Without that vegetation, all bets are off when the rain hits.' More rain is on the way for northern California, helping firefighters extinguish the last of the wildfires Between 1 to 3 inches of rain will fall between Friday and Sunday, adding to the 3 inches that already fell this week, the National Weather Service said Hundreds of people forced to flee Paradise spent Thanksgiving in warehouses in the nearby city of Chico. Celebrity chef Jose Andres was among the volunteers bringing some festive cheer by cooking Thanksgiving meals for evacuees. The cause of the Camp Fire, which destroyed more than 13,500 homes, remains under investigation. A separate California wildfire - the Woolsey Fire, which killed three people and threatened the wealthy beachfront enclave of Malibu near Los Angeles - was declared 100-percent contained on Wednesday. Hundreds of frozen turkeys are unloaded on the campus of California State University, in Chico, Calif. on Nov. 21, 2018 Michael Reining, left, and Chelsea Meddings, right, chop mint in preparation for a community Thanksgiving meal for survivors of the deadly Camp Fire in Northern California, on the campus of California State University, in Chico, Calif. on Nov. 21, 2018 Mick Zalis oversees preparations for a Thanksgiving dinner to be served for people displaced by the Northern California Camp wildfire on the campus of California State University, in Chico on Nov. 21, 2018 BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) - A first batch of departing Cuban doctors is leaving Brazil as the countries wind down a program that sent more than 8,000 Cuban doctors to parts of Brazil where medical services are scarce. Cuba is recalling the doctors rather than meet conditions imposed by Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, who takes office Jan. 1. He said the program could continue only if doctors' pay isn't channeled through the Cuban government and if they could bring their families. The doctors generally receive a fraction of the salary paid to the Cuban government. The first two flights of returning doctors are scheduled to arrive in Havana early Friday. A Cuban doctor holding Brazilian and Cuban flags takes a selfie before she and other Cuban physicians return home at the airport in Brasilia, Brazil, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Cuba announced it is recalling the physicians in the "More Doctors" program after Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro said the program could continue only if doctors get their full pay directly rather from the Cuban government and are able to bring their families with them. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) Cuban doctors stand with their luggage before they return home, at the airport in Brasilia, Brazil, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Cuba announced it is recalling the physicians in the "More Doctors" program after Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro said the program could continue only if doctors get their full pay directly rather from the Cuban government and are able to bring their families with them. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) Workers unload the luggage of Cuban doctors at the airport as they prepare to fly home, in Brasilia, Brazil, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Cuba announced it is recalling the physicians in the "More Doctors" program after Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro said the program could continue only if doctors get their full pay directly rather from the Cuban government and are able to bring their families with them. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) Cuban doctors holding Brazilian and Cuban flags takes a selfie before they and other Cuban physicians return home, at the airport in Brasilia, Brazil, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Cuba announced it is recalling the physicians in the "More Doctors" program after Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro said the program could continue only if doctors get their full pay directly rather from the Cuban government and are able to bring their families with them. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) An airline employee tags a Cuban doctor's bag for a flight back to Cuba, at the airport in Brasilia, Brazil, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Cuba is ending a program that sent government doctors to remote regions of Brazil in exchange for millions in badly needed dollars, which signals a sharp deterioration in relations between communist Cuba and Brazil. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) A Cuban doctor clutching a teddy bear prepares to depart the airport with her colleagues in Brasilia, Brazil, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Cuba announced it is recalling the physicians in the "More Doctors" program after Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro said the program could continue only if doctors get their full pay directly rather from the Cuban government and are able to bring their families with them. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) MUMBAI, India (AP) - Ten years ago, chef Raghu Deora stood face-to-face with death. He was in the kitchen of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel's private club, The Chambers, when four gunmen walked in with assault rifles and sprayed the guests and hotel staff with bullets. He tried to hide, but his efforts were for naught. "I was found out by the terrorists. They got me out. Me, along with two more guests, we were made to stand in line and we were shot point blank," he says. On Nov. 26, 2008, India's financial capital Mumbai was turned into a war zone by a group of Pakistani gunmen who launched coordinated attacks in the heart of the city. They targeted two luxury hotels, a Jewish center, a tourist restaurant and a crowded train station. Three days of carnage killed 166 people, including foreign tourists, and wounded hundreds more. The epicenter of the assault was the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel with its imposing, red-tiled dome overlooking the Gateway of India monument. Thirty-one people died inside the hotel, including staff trying to guide the guests to safety. Visceral images of smoke leaping out of the city landmark have come to define the 60-hour siege. Deora was shot in his abdomen and leg. The two guests with him were killed, but he was evacuated by hotel security and rushed to a hospital. It took him more than three months to recover. In this Nov 17, 2018, photo, a man feeds pigeons outside the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the epicenter of the 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai, India. Thirty-one people died inside the hotel, including staff trying to guide the guests to safety. Visceral images of smoke leaping out of the city landmark have come to define the 60-hour siege. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) The near-death experience has given the 44-year old chef a new perspective on the fragility of life and an easy sense of humor. "My entire family is from the army background and nobody's got shot other than me," he says with a laugh. Ten years on, there are few signs of the assault in the 115-year old hotel, which was left ablaze, its opulent interior destroyed. But the events are not forgotten. A minimally designed memorial for the victims greets visitors in the hotel lobby. A waterfall cascades down behind glass, alongside an installation with names of victims and a tree of life. "I don't think 10 years is long enough to forget if one was ever able to forget this dark moment in the history," says Puneet Chhatwal, managing director and CEO of The Indian Hotels Company, a Tata group subsidiary that owns the hotel. "Taj Mumbai is not just a hotel. It's a landmark, a monument in itself. It was an attack on Mumbai." India blamed the attack on the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, throwing relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors into a tailspin. Indian officials accused Pakistan's intelligence agency of working with the militant group to mastermind the attack - an allegation Islamabad denied. Even as the country grappled with the diplomatic aftermath of the attack, Taj Mahal Palace staff and management channeled their grief into getting the hotel back on its feet as quickly as possible. The ownership group also offered help to hundreds of survivors and victims' families through the welfare fund set up in December 2008. Parts of the hotel reopened within a month of the attacks. The heavily damaged palace wing was reopened in less than two years after a renovation that saw a bullet and grenade-scarred spiral staircase and the blood-splattered hallways repaired, and oriental carpets and precious artifacts put back in place. It is important to keep the memories of the attack alive to "demonstrate to the world that this should not happen again," Chhatwal says. Wearing his chef hat and a half-smile, Deora admits that life has changed post 26/11, as the attacks are known in India. He says the terror attacks have made Mumbai more security conscious and aware of its vulnerabilities. "I will look at the bags lying on a bench twice. Before I would not do that," he says. After the attack, the hotel upgraded its security with more private armed guards, sophisticated baggage and X-ray scanners and metal detectors at the entrance. "Post 26/11, we spent a lot of money with the help of an international organization in improving our security and safety standards," says Chhatwal. The man in charge of keeping the majestic building secure is 46-year-old Sunil Gajanan Kudyadi, who has been working at the hotel for 25 years. As the security manager on duty at the time of the attack, and someone who knew the building layout, he guided elite commandos as they chased the gunmen through intense gunfire and explosions. He also saved many lives, including Deora's. Making daily rounds of the very corridors where the gunmen held people hostage and killed them, the shy and soft-spoken Kudyadi says he doesn't let it cloud his memory. "Personally it's something that I've come to live with, come to terms with," he says. "We have got very formidable defenses and deterrence in place but nobody can be really prepared for such things." Banquet supervisor Mallika Jagad, who was 24 at the time of the attack, was clearly not prepared for what unfolded outside the first floor private dining room where she was supervising dinner for a group of business executives and their guests. When bullets started flying around them and the agitated executives wanted to run out, the young staffer took charge, quickly locked the doors and turned off the lights. "I was terrified. And you could hear grenades being thrown," she says. Still, she kept her calm and kept her petrified guests inside until it was safe to escape out of a window. Jagad was hailed as a hero for saving the lives of nearly 60 people under her watch that night. The trauma has taken its toll though. Jagad says initially she could not sleep with the lights out. And she cannot stand the sound of firecrackers. Jagad moved on to work with Tata Trusts and will soon be inducted into their disaster response management team. In November 2012, India hanged the lone surviving gunman from the attacks. India has repeatedly urged Pakistan to pursue the case more actively, demanding action against those it says are responsible. For most people affected by the events of 26/11, closure and justice is still a long way off. "You don't forget what happened," Jagad says. "But you can't let that bog you down." In this Nov 17, 2018, photo, tourists walk through a passageway of the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the epicenter of the 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai, India. Thirty-one people died inside the hotel, including staff trying to guide the guests to safety. Visceral images of smoke leaping out of the city landmark have come to define the 60-hour siege. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) In this Nov 17, 2018, photo, tourists look at photos of celebrities and politicians on display at the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the epicenter of the 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai, India. Thirty-one people died inside the hotel, including staff trying to guide the guests to safety. Visceral images of smoke leaping out of the city landmark have come to define the 60-hour siege. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) In this Nov 17, 2018, photo, two Muslim boys stand outside the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the epicenter of the 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai, India. Thirty-one people died inside the hotel, including staff trying to guide the guests to safety. Visceral images of smoke leaping out of the city landmark have come to define the 60-hour siege. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) In this Nov 17, 2018, photo, tourists take pictures of the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the epicenter of the 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai, India. Thirty-one people died inside the hotel, including staff trying to guide the guests to safety. Visceral images of smoke leaping out of the city landmark have come to define the 60-hour siege. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) In this Nov 16, 2018 photo, chef Raghu Deora works at the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the epicenter of the 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai, India. Deora was in the kitchen of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel's private club, The Chambers, when four gunmen walked in with assault rifles and sprayed the guests and hotel staff with bullets. He tried to hide, but his efforts were for naught."I was found out by the terrorists. They got me out. Me, along with two more guests, we were made to stand in line and we were shot point blank," he says. Deora was shot in his abdomen and leg. The two guests with him were killed, but he was evacuated by hotel security and rushed to a hospital. It took him more than three months to recover. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) In this Nov 17, 2018, photo, doves fly next to the dome of the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the epicenter of the 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai, India. Thirty-one people died inside the hotel, including staff trying to guide the guests to safety. Visceral images of smoke leaping out of the city landmark have come to define the 60-hour siege. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) In this Nov 17, 2018, photo, tourists walk through a staircase of the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the epicenter of the 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai, India. Thirty-one people died inside the hotel, including staff trying to guide the guests to safety. Visceral images of smoke leaping out of the city landmark have come to define the 60-hour siege. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) In this Nov 17, 2018 photo, the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the epicenter of the 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people, with its imposing, red-tiled dome, overlooks the Gateway of India monument, left, in Mumbai, India. Thirty-one people died inside the hotel, including staff trying to guide the guests to safety. Visceral images of smoke leaping out of the city landmark have come to define the 60-hour siege. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) In this Nov 17, 2018, photo, a tourist looks at a memorial for victims at the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the epicenter of the 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai, India. Thirty-one people died inside the hotel, including staff trying to guide the guests to safety. Visceral images of smoke leaping out of the city landmark have come to define the 60-hour siege. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) In this Nov 17, 2018, photo, doves fly next to the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the epicenter of the 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai, India. Thirty-one people died inside the hotel, including staff trying to guide the guests to safety. Visceral images of smoke leaping out of the city landmark have come to define the 60-hour siege. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) In this Nov 17, 2018, photo, the names of victims are written on a wall at a memorial at the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the epicenter of the 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai, India. Thirty-one people died inside the hotel, including staff trying to guide the guests to safety. Visceral images of smoke leaping out of the city landmark have come to define the 60-hour siege. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) In this Nov 16, 2018, photo, boats are seen through the window of a room at the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the epicenter of the 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai, India. Thirty-one people died inside the hotel, including staff trying to guide the guests to safety. Visceral images of smoke leaping out of the city landmark have come to define the 60-hour siege. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) In this Nov 17, 2018, photo, a waiter carries an order for customers in a corridor of the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the epicenter of the 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai, India. Thirty-one people died inside the hotel, including staff trying to guide the guests to safety. Visceral images of smoke leaping out of the city landmark have come to define the 60-hour siege. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) In this Nov 16, 2018, photo, a picture postcard of the hotel is kept on a table in a room at the iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel, the epicenter of the 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai, India. Thirty-one people died inside the hotel, including staff trying to guide the guests to safety. Visceral images of smoke leaping out of the city landmark have come to define the 60-hour siege. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) WASHINGTON (AP) - Incensed by a ruling against his migrant asylum policy, President Donald Trump demanded "some common sense" from America's judges and directed his ire at a liberal-leaning appeals court. He professed respect for Chief Justice John Roberts, with whom he is engaged in a startling public dispute over the independence of the judiciary, yet shrugged off the Republican appointee as someone who "can say what he wants." Trump, still seething over Monday's decision by a President Barack Obama-nominated judge, began his Thanksgiving Day by asserting on Twitter that courts should defer to his administration and law enforcement on border security because judges "know nothing about it and are making our Country unsafe." The president, spending the holiday in Florida, later told reporters that law enforcers and military service members he has sent to the U.S.-Mexico border "can't believe the decisions that are being made by these judges." Trump has gone after federal judges before who have ruled against him, but the current dustup is the first time that Roberts, the leader of the federal judiciary, has offered even a hint of criticism of the president. Roberts issued a strongly worded statement Wednesday defending judicial independence and contradicting Trump's claim that judges are partisans allied with the party of the president who nominated them. It is highly unusual for a president to single out judges for personal criticism, and a chief justice's challenge to a president's comments is unprecedented in modern times. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters following his teleconference with troops from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) In challenging a co-equal branch of government, Trump complains that his opponents file lawsuits in courts that are part of the liberal-leaning 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That's where an appeal of the recent asylum ruling would normally go. It's not unusual for those challenging a president's policies to sue in courts they consider likely to back their claims. "Everybody files in the 9th Circuit," he said with exaggeration. "I think we're going to have stop that somehow. The judges are going to have to get together or Congress is going to have to get together and stop it because they're taking advantage of our country." Trump did not elaborate. Conservative groups tended to bring challenges to Obama-era policies in Texas, part of the conservative-leaning 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. "I like him and I respect him," Trump said about Roberts, "but i think we have to use some common sense. The 9th Circuit, everybody knows that it's totally out of control." Trump began the holiday by tweeting that Roberts "can say what he wants, but the 9th Circuit is a complete & total disaster." He even raised the topic during his call to service members, saying the 9th Circuit "has become a big thorn in our side. ... It's a terrible thing when judges take over your protective services, when they tell you how to protect the border. It's a disgrace." With Roberts' court feeling the heat over the president's appointment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Roberts and several of his colleagues have gone out of their way to rebut perceptions of the court as a political institution divided between five conservative Republicans and four liberal Democrats. Trump's appointments to the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have themselves spurred charges that the courts are becoming more politicized. Roberts, as the justice widely seen as closest to the court's middle, could determine the outcome of high-profile cases that split the court. The new drama began with remarks Trump made Tuesday when he went after Jon S. Tigar, the San Francisco-based judge who had ruled against Trump's asylum order. The president claimed, not for the first time, that the 9th Circuit was biased against him. Roberts had refused to comment on Trump's earlier attacks on judges, including the chief justice himself. But on Wednesday, after a query by The Associated Press, he spoke up for the independence of the federal judiciary and rejected the notion that judges are loyal to the presidents who appoint them. "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges," Roberts said. "What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them." He concluded: "The independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for." Trump responded by questioning the independence of federal judges appointed by his predecessor and confirmed by the Senate. He especially criticized judges on the 9th Circuit. "Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have 'Obama judges,' and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country," the president tweeted. Trump has never been reticent about criticizing the judiciary. Last year, the president scorned the "so-called judge" who made the first federal ruling against his travel ban. During the presidential campaign, he criticized Roberts for the chief justice's decisive vote in 2012 to preserve President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. Trump also referred to an Indiana-born judge of Mexican descent, who was presiding over a fraud lawsuit against Trump University, as a Mexican who would be unable to rule fairly because of Trump's proposal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The president's remarks on Tuesday came when a reporter asked for his reaction to a ruling by Tigar that put the administration's asylum policy on hold. Under that new policy, Trump declared no one could apply for asylum except at an official border entry point. That tends to back migrants up for weeks if not months. A number of migrants remain in Tijuana after traveling in a caravan to reach the U.S. "Every case that gets filed in the 9th Circuit, we get beaten," Trump said. "And then we end up having to go to the Supreme Court, like the travel ban, and we won." The president went on to say about the asylum ruling: "This was an Obama judge. And I'll tell you what, it's not going to happen like this anymore. " The initial travel ban ruling in 2017 was issued by U.S. District Judge James Robart, an appointee of President George W. Bush in Washington state. Roberts, too, was appointed by Bush. The 9th Circuit is by far the largest of the federal appellate courts, covering Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. Some Republicans in 9th Circuit states have proposed splitting the circuit in two, but legislation has not advanced. The court has long had a majority of judges appointed by Democratic presidents, with the current breakdown at 16-7. But Trump has the opportunity to narrow that edge significantly because there are six vacancies, and he already has nominated candidates for five of them. ___ Colvin reported from Palm Beach, Florida. FILE - In this Sept. 27, 2017 file photo, Chief Justice John Roberts speaks during the Bicentennial of Mississippi's Judiciary and Legal Profession Banquet in Jackson, Miss. Roberts is pushing back against President Donald Trump's description of a judge who ruled against the administration's new asylum policy as an "Obama judge." It's the first time that the leader of the federal judiciary has offered even a hint of criticism of Trump, who has previously blasted federal judges who ruled against him. Roberts says Wednesday that the U.S. doesn't have "Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges." He is commenting in a statement released by the Supreme Court after a query by The Associated Press. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - Armed separatists stormed the Chinese Consulate in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi on Friday, triggering an intense hour-long shootout during which two Pakistani civilians, two police officers and all three assailants were killed, including one who was wearing a suicide vest, Pakistani officials said. The brazen assault, claimed by a militant group from the southwestern province of Baluchistan, reflected the separatists' attempt to strike at the heart of Pakistan's close ties with major ally China, which has invested heavily into road and transportation projects in the country, including in Baluchistan. The Baluch Liberation Army said it was fighting "Chinese occupation" and released photos of the three attackers. In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China would not waver in its latest big project in Pakistan - the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor - and expressed confidence that Pakistan could ensure safety. Still, China asked Pakistan to beef up security at the mission. Authorities said the dead civilians were a father and a son who were picking up their visas for China. The consulate's diplomats and staff were unhurt and were evacuated to a safe place, senior police official Ameer Ahmad Sheikh said. A spokeswoman at the Jinnah Hospital said a consulate guard was wounded and was being treated there. The attack began shortly after 9 a.m. when the consulate was open for business. The militants fired at consulate guards and hurled grenades, breaching the main gate and entering the building, said Mohammad Ashfaq, a local police chief. Pakistani troops move in the compound of Chinese Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Pakistani police say gunmen have stormed the Chinese Consulate in the country's southern port city of Karachi, triggering an intense shootout. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil) Pakistani security forces quickly surrounded the area. Local TV stations broadcast images showing smoke rising from the building, which also serves as the residence of Chinese diplomats and other staff. Multiple blasts were heard soon afterward but Sheikh could not say what they were. The shootout lasted for about an hour. "Because of a quick response of the guards and police, the terrorists could not" reach the diplomats, Sheikh said after the fighting ended. "We have completed the operation." He added that authorities would try to identify the assailants through fingerprints. Geng, the Chinese spokesman, said the attackers did not get into the consulate itself, and that the exchange of fire took place outside the building. The discrepancy with the Pakistani officials' reports could not be immediately reconciled. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi spoke to his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi by phone and assured him that a "thorough investigation will be carried out to apprehend the perpetrators their financiers, planners and facilitators" linked to the attack on consulate, according to a foreign ministry statement. It quoted Yi as saying that the attack was an attempt to impact Pakistan China relations and to harm the two countries' economic pact. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the attack and praised the Karachi police and the paramilitary rangers for their courage. He ordered an investigation and vowed that such incidents would never be able to undermine relations with China, which are "mightier than the Himalayas and deeper than the Arabian Sea." So far this year, the Baluch Liberation Army has claimed responsibility for 12 attacks against security personnel guarding projects linked to the Chinese Pakistan Economic Corridor and its infrastructure. In a letter dated Aug. 15, the group released a letter warning China against the "exploitation of Baluchistan's mineral wealth and occupation of Baluch territory." The letter was addressed to China's ambassador to Pakistan. Amir Rana, executive director of the independent Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, said he didn't think Friday's attack would have much of an impact on Chinese projects in Pakistan, as both countries have calculated the security risks. "These threats were already on Pakistan and China's threat radar," Rana said. Still, the attack will compel China to step-up security in Pakistan and increase cooperation with local authorities, said Zhao Gancheng of the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Studies. "As more and more Chinese people go abroad, and more and more Chinese investment goes overseas, the security situation of the destination countries has become a very important element for consideration," Zhao told The Associated Press. The Baluchistan separatists have for years fought a low-level insurgency in Pakistan, demanding a greater share of the province's wealth and natural resources. Karachi, the capital of Sindh province, borders Baluchistan and is home to several militant groups, including the Baluch separatists. In a rare statement about attacks in Pakistan, neighboring India condemned the assault on the Chinese Consulate, saying that "there can be no justification whatsoever for any act of terrorism." New Delhi also said "perpetrators of this heinous attack should be brought to justice expeditiously." Pakistan has long accused India of supporting Baluch separatists. The two countries have a history of bitter relations and have fought two of their three wars over the disputed region of Kashmir since gaining independence from Britain in 1947. Elsewhere in Pakistan on Friday, a powerful bomb at an open-air food market in a province that borders Afghanistan killed 35 people and wounded dozens, said police official Tahir Ali. Most of the victims in the attack in the town of Klaya in the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province were minority Shiite Muslims. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing. Orakzai has been the scene of several militant attacks in recent years, mostly by Pakistani Sunni militants, who revile Shiites as apostates. ___ Associated Press writers Munir Ahmed and Kathy Gannon in Islamabad, Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan; Christopher Bodeen in Beijing and Ashok Sharma in New Delhi contributed to this report. Pakistani troops move in the compound of Chinese Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Pakistani police say gunmen have stormed the Chinese Consulate in the country's southern port city of Karachi, triggering an intense shootout. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil) Volunteers wait outside the Chinese Consulate after an attack in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Pakistani police say gunmen have stormed the Chinese Consulate in the country's southern port city of Karachi, triggering an intense shootout. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil) Pakistani security personnel move in the compound of Chinese Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Pakistani police say gunmen have stormed the Chinese Consulate in the country's southern port city of Karachi, triggering an intense shootout. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil) Pakistani security personnel arrive at the Chinese Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Police say gunmen have stormed the Chinese Consulate in the country's southern port city of Karachi, triggering an intense shootout during which two police officers were killed. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil) Pakistani troops move in the compound of Chinese Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Pakistani police say gunmen have stormed the Chinese Consulate in the country's southern port city of Karachi, triggering an intense shootout. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil) Pakistani security personnel arrive at the Chinese Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Pakistani police say gunmen have stormed the Chinese Consulate in the country's southern port city of Karachi, triggering an intense shootout. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil) Pakistani security personnel move in the compound of Chinese Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Pakistani police say gunmen have stormed the Chinese Consulate in the country's southern port city of Karachi, triggering an intense shootout. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil) Pakistani security personnel stand guard at an entrance of the Chinese Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Pakistani police say gunmen have stormed the Chinese Consulate in the country's southern port city of Karachi, triggering an intense shootout. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil) Pakistani security personnel work in the compound of Chinese Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Pakistani police say gunmen have stormed the Chinese Consulate in the country's southern port city of Karachi, triggering an intense shootout. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil) Security officials gather outside the compound of the Chinese Consulate following an attack, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018, in Karachi, Pakistan,. Gunmen have stormed the Chinese Consulate in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi, triggering an intense shootout during which two police officers and all three assailants were killed. (AP Photo) Pakistani volunteers gather outside the Chinese Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Pakistani police say gunmen have stormed the Chinese Consulate in the country's southern port city of Karachi, triggering an intense shootout. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil) Pakistani security personnel move in the compound of Chinese Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Pakistani police say gunmen have stormed the Chinese Consulate in the country's southern port city of Karachi, triggering an intense shootout. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil) PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) - Tensions in Kosovo rose again Friday after police arrested three ethnic Serbs, including two police officers, on suspicion of involvement in the killing earlier this year of a leading Serb politician in the north of the country. The three men were arrested in the Serb-dominated town of Mitrovica, 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the capital, Pristina, as suspects in the January slaying of Oliver Ivanovic, police said in a statement. A fourth Serb was arrested for resisting police. A fifth person is still at large, police said. Police said they seized evidence for the investigation into Ivanovic's killing during raids in four locations. Police showed photos of a drone, automatic weapons and ammunition and other equipment found in the raids. Prosecutor Syle Hoxha said they have questioned more than 40 witnesses to date in the case. Nobody has yet been charged in the slaying. Thousands of Serbs protested in Kosovo towns, some blocking all main roads leading to Northern Mitrovica, as well as several border posts with Serbia. No violence was immediately reported. Kosovo's ethnic Albanians fought a bloody war with Serbia from 1998-1999 which ended with a 78-day NATO air campaign in June 1999. Police officers stand by the graffiti that shows Serbian coat of arms and silhouettes of people, reading: "... because there's no turning back", in northern Serb-dominated part of ethnically divided town of Mitrovica, Kosovo, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Kosovo police arrested three ethnic Serbs, including two police officers, early Friday on suspicion of involvement in the killing of a leading Serb politician in the north of the country. (AP Photo/Bojan Slavkovic) Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 which Belgrade still refuses to recognize. Earlier this week, tensions soared after Kosovo failed to become a member of the international police organization, Interpol, following intense lobbying by Serbia. Kosovo slapped a 100 percent tax on goods imported from Serbia in apparent retaliation. In Belgrade, Serbia President Aleksandar Vucic said the arrests were a "demonstration of force" that he said was designed to frighten the Serbs in Kosovo and avert attention from the taxes that Kosovo imposed in violation of a regional trade agreement. "We must prepare ourselves for long-term support for our people (in Kosovo) that won't be easy, simple or cheap," said Vucic. "Serbia will not agree to new rules and new blackmail against our country and our people." Vucic spoke after a meeting with the members of the Serbian government. He held meetings earlier on Friday with security officials and the ambassadors or Russia and China, Serbia's allies in its refusal to recognize Kosovo's independence. Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj's Cabinet appealed for calm and said the police operation was not linked to any political development. NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo, a force known as KFOR, also urged calm and said "there was no unlawful operation or military action and there has never been any threat to safety and security of the citizens." KFOR said in a statement that the situation "remains stable and under control on the ground," but acknowledged rising tensions "at political level due to some international and economic developments." Haradinaj met with ambassadors of Western powers including the United States, Britain, Germany, and France, for talks on the country's situation and to explain the tax on Serb and Bosnian goods. Ethnic Serb leaders in Kosovo also called for calm and asked Serbia and the international community to assist them. Goran Rakic, mayor of Northern Mitrovica, told The Associated Press that ethnic Serb leaders had formed a crisis center and called on the international community and Serbia for help. He said he had talked by phone with Vucic. Vucic's adviser Nikola Selakovic said the arrests of four Serbs in Kosovo were designed to "spread fear, intimidate and demonstrate force" against the Serbs in Kosovo. "This is a game of nerves, a walk on thin line. The goal is to provoke our reaction which would be immediately used for measures against us," Selakovic said. ___ Llazar Semini reported from Tirana, Albania. Dusan Stojanovic and Jovana Gec contributed from Belgrade, Serbia. Bojan Slavkovic contributed from Northern Mitrovica. He hosted a reception for visiting Saxon State Minister for Economic Affairs, Labour and Transport, and Deputy Premier of the Free State of Saxony Martin Dulig on November 22. Tuyen held that Ho Chi Minh Citys partnership with German localities has grown soundly with various activities of investment promotion. The city and Saxony are important economic hubs of Vietnam and Germany with many similarities, he said, asserting that the two sides can supplement each others strengths, especially when the free trade agreement between Vietnam and the EU takes effect. Lauding the experience of investors from Saxony in industry, information technology, electronics and vocational training, he called for their sharing with the city in the field. He said he hopes Saxonys prestigious firms will send experts to the city to share experience and discuss measures to deal with challenges facing the tertiary education in the city and Vietnam. For his part, Martin Dilig expressed his fine impression at the growth of Vietnam. In Ho Chi Minh City, Germany has built a German House and placed the headquarters of the German Business Association in Vietnam, as this is a dynamic city with abundant investment opportunities. He said that Saxony is strong in mechanics, machineries, and focusing on new technology industry, adding it also has many small- and medium-sized enterprises which are potential in energy and environment areas. The official expressed his belief that in the coming time, the city and Saxony will conduct more activities of cooperation in vocational training, thus contributing to promoting the Vietnam-Germany partnership.-VNA PARIS (AP) - African artworks held in French museums - richly carved thrones, doors to a royal kingdom, wooden statues imbued with spiritual meaning - may be heading back home to Africa at last. French President Emmanuel Macron, trying to turn the page on France's colonial past , received a report Friday on returning art looted from African lands. From Senegal to Ethiopia, artists, governments and museums eagerly awaited the report by French art historian Benedicte Savoy and Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr, and commissioned by Macron himself. It recommends that French museums give back works that were taken without consent, if African countries request them - and could increase pressure on museums elsewhere in Europe to follow suit. The experts estimate that up to 90 percent of African art is outside the continent, including statues, thrones and manuscripts. Thousands of works are held by just one museum, the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, opened in 2006 to showcase non-European art - much of it from former French colonies. The museum wouldn't immediately comment on the report. Among disputed treasures in the Quai Branly are several works from the Dahomey kingdom, in today's West African country of Benin: the metal-and-wood throne of 19th-century King Ghezo, the doors to the palace of Kign Gele, and imposing, wooden statues. A visitor looks at the wooden and metal throne of the King Ghezo of the Dahomey kingdom, dated 19th century, today's Benin at Quai Branly museum in Paris, France, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. From Senegal to Ethiopia, artists, governments and museums are eagerly awaiting a report commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron on how former colonizers can return African art to Africa. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) The head of Ethiopia's Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage, Yonas Desta, said the report shows "a new era of thought" in Europe's relations with Africa. Senegal's culture minister, Abdou Latif Coulibaly, told The Associated Press: "It's entirely logical that Africans should get back their artworks. ... These works were taken in conditions that were perhaps legitimate at the time, but illegitimate today." The report is just a first step. Challenges ahead include enforcing the report's recommendations, especially if museums resist, and determining how objects were obtained and whom to give them to. The report is part of broader promises by Macron to turn the page on France's troubled relationship with Africa. In a groundbreaking meeting with students in Burkina Faso last year, Macron stressed the "undeniable crimes of European colonization" and said he wants pieces of African cultural heritage to return to Africa "temporarily or definitively." "I cannot accept that a large part of African heritage is in France," he said at the time. The French report could have broader repercussions. In Cameroon, professor Verkijika Fanso, historian at the University of Yaounde One, said: "France is feeling the heat of what others will face. Let their decision to bring back what is ours motivate others." Germany has worked to return art seized by the Nazis, and in May the organization that coordinates that effort, the German Lost Art Foundation, said it was starting a program to research the provenance of cultural objects collected during the country's colonial past. Britain is also under pressure to return art taken from its former colonies. In recent months, Ethiopian officials have increased efforts to secure the return of looted artifacts and manuscripts from museums, personal collections and government institutions across Britain, including valuable items taken in the 1860s after battles in northern Ethiopia, Yonas said. In Nigeria, a group of bronze casters over the years has strongly supported calls for the return of artifacts taken from the Palace of the Oba of Benin in 1897 when the British raided it. The group still uses their forefathers' centuries-old skills to produce bronze works in Igun Street, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Eric Osamudiamen Ogbemudia, secretary of the Igun Bronze Casters Union in Benin City, said: "It was never the intention of our fathers to give these works to the British. It is important that we get them back so as to see what our ancestors left behind." Ogbemudia warned the new French report should not remain just a "recommendation merely to make Africans to calm down. "Let us see the action." ___ Elias Meseret in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Babacar Dione in Dakar, Senegal; Sam Olukoya in Lagos, Nigeria; Baba Ahmed in Bamako, Mali; Edwin Kindzeka Moki in Yaounde, Cameroon, and David Rising in Berlin contributed to this report. ___ Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa A visitors look at wooden royal statues of the Dahomey kingdom, dated 19th century, today's Benin,at Quai Branly museum in Paris, France, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. From Senegal to Ethiopia, artists, governments and museums are eagerly awaiting a report commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron on how former colonizers can return African art to Africa. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) FILE - In this Tuesday, Nov. 28 , 2017 file photo French President Emmanuel Macron, centre, shake hands with children during a visit to a school in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. From Senegal to Ethiopia, artists, governments and museums are eagerly awaiting a report commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron on how former colonizers can return African art to Africa. (AP Photo/Ahmed Yempabou Ouoba, File) FILE - In this Tuesday June 20, 2006 file picture French President Jacques Chirac looks at masks from Western Africa during the inauguration of the Primitive Art Museum in Paris, France. From Senegal to Ethiopia, artists, governments and museums are eagerly awaiting a report commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron on how former colonizers can return African art to Africa.(AP Photo/Francois Mori, File) A wooden door of the king's palace Gele of the Dahomey kingdom, dated 19th century, today's Benin, is displayed at Quai Branly museum in Paris, France, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. From Senegal to Ethiopia, artists, governments and museums are eagerly awaiting a report commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron on how former colonizers can return African art to Africa. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) - Kenyan authorities are optimistic they will find an Italian woman kidnapped by gunmen this week, the national police chief said Friday, citing "very valuable information" given by people in custody. Three "persons of interest" are among 20 people held as police investigate Tuesday's attack on a trading center in the coastal area of Kilifi, Joseph Boinnet told reporters. It was the first kidnapping of a foreigner in the East African nation in several years. "We have a significant measure of optimism that we should be able to find the lady within the shortest time possible," Boinnet said. But he noted that police "don't know as of now" who staged the attack and why. There has been no claim of responsibility. "We have heard folks who witnessed that incident happen (say) that they demanded money. So we don't know whether they were robbers," Boinnet said. At least three gunmen carried out the attack in which 23-year-old Italian Silvia Costanza Romano was kidnapped. Five others, including children, were wounded. A Kenyan police officer talks on his phone inside the compound of the command centre that is directing operations in the search for kidnapped Italian volunteer Silvia Costanza Romano, in Malindi, Kenya Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Gunmen firing indiscriminately on Tuesday kidnapped Romano, a 23-year-old volunteer working with Kenyan students, from the village of Chakama in Kilifi county. (AP Photo) Such attacks had become rare on Kenya's coast since 2011, when the country deployed forces inside neighboring Somalia in a bid to stop the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group from kidnapping foreigners along Kenya's coast. Romano had been working for the Italy-based humanitarian group Africa Milele, according to Boinnet and Italy's foreign ministry. The foreign ministry has not publicly commented on the kidnapping, and Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala told the news agency ANSA that the ministry " has asked for silence in this delicate phase." In one of her latest postings on Twitter, Romano said she was grateful to the children she was working with for showing her how to live without material things. ___ Associated Press writer Colleen Barry in Milan contributed. ___ Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa LONDON (AP) - Spain pushed Friday for a cast-iron guarantee of its say over the future of Gibraltar as a condition for backing a divorce agreement between Britain and European Union, as U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May battled to win approval for the deal from skeptical politicians and a Brexit-weary populace. Spain's leader warned he would oppose the deal, which lays out the terms of Britain's departure in March and sets up a framework for future relations, if language wasn't added on Gibraltar, the disputed territory at the tip of the Iberian peninsula. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez - who is due to join other EU leaders at a Brussels summit on Sunday to rubber-stamp the deal - tweeted that Britain and Spain "remain far away" on the issue and "if there are no changes, we will veto Brexit." Spain wants the future of the tiny territory, which was ceded to Britain in 1713 but is still claimed by Spain, to be a bilateral issue between Madrid and London. Last year's EU guidelines on the Brexit negotiations effectively gave Spain veto powers over future relations between the bloc and the British overseas territory. But Spanish officials are concerned that a key clause in the agreement referring to U.K.-EU negotiations on their future relationship makes no mention of Gibraltar. Spanish government spokeswoman Isabel Celaa said Spain required an "absolute guarantee" that any future agreement between the EU and the U.K. in matters regarding Gibraltar "will require the prior agreement of Spain." FILE - In this Wednesday, March 1, 2017 file photo, a Barbary macaque, the only free-roaming monkeys in Europe pauses, with the Rock of Gibraltar looming in the background, in the British territory of Gibraltar. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a press conference on Wednesday Nov. 21, 2018 that his government is "annoyed" that the divorce agreement being prepared for Britain's exit from the European Union doesn't specify that Gibraltar's future must be decided directly by officials in Madrid and London. (AP Photo/Daniel Ochoa de Olza, File) Spain doesn't have a veto on the withdrawal agreement, which doesn't have to be approved unanimously. But it could hold up a future free-trade deal between Britain and the EU, which would require the approval of all 27 EU nations. Spain's junior minister for the European Union, Luis Marco Aguiriano, said Friday that British authorities had made a commitment to address Spain's concerns on Gibraltar, but that he had not yet seen it in writing. "We have a promise, a commitment, from the British government saying they are ready to ... guarantee that they will go along with the clarification we have requested," he said. After a meeting in Brussels Friday of senior EU officials, the Spanish government said negotiations were continuing but not enough progress had been made to drop the veto threat. Britain and the EU say the withdrawal agreement won't be changed but haven't ruled out putting something in writing to allay Spain's fears. May said Friday that "we have been working with the government of Gibraltar and the government of Spain" on measures for Gibraltar. Chief Minister of Gibraltar Fabian Picardo criticized Spain's insistence on a written guarantee, saying Gibraltar - a largely self-governing British overseas territory - "has demonstrated that we actually want a direct engagement with Spain on issues." "Spain is the physical and geographical gateway to Europe for Gibraltar," Picardo told the BBC. "We recognize that and there is absolutely no need for us to be vetoed into being brought to the table." Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman said Germany believed outstanding questions would be cleared up in time for Sunday's summit to go ahead. "We assume that open questions can be cleared up by Sunday," spokesman Steffen Seibert said. "That is being worked on intensively, so the chancellor is preparing for the trip to Brussels." If EU leaders sign off on the deal, it needs to be approved by the European and British Parliaments - a tough task for May, whose Conservatives lack a majority in the House of Commons. May answered calls on a radio phone-in show Friday in a bid to win public support for the divorce deal, which has been slammed by pro-Brexit and pro-EU politicians alike. Brexiteers think the agreement will leave the U.K. tied too closely to EU rules, while pro-Europeans say it will erect new barriers between Britain and the bloc - its neighbor and biggest trading partner. May declined to say when asked by a caller whether she would resign if the deal was rejected by Parliament. "This isn't about me," she said. "I'm not thinking about me. I'm thinking about getting a deal through that delivers for this country." She warned that rejecting the deal would lead to "more uncertainty and more division" and could result in Britain crashing out of the bloc without agreement - an outcome feared by many businesses. "If this deal doesn't go through what happens is, we end up back at square one," May said. I don't think (the EU) are going to come to us and say, 'We'll give you a better deal,'" she added. ____ Hatton reported from Lisbon. Raf Casert in Brussels and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this story. ___ See the AP's Brexit coverage at: https://www.apnews.com/Brexit FILE- In this Sunday, Sept 10, 2017 file photo, people coming from Spain cross the airport of Gibraltar to take part at the National Day celebrations at the British territory of Gibraltar. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a press conference on Wednesday Nov. 21, 2018 that his government is "annoyed" that the divorce agreement being prepared for Britain's exit from the European Union doesn't specify that Gibraltar's future must be decided directly by officials in Madrid and London.(AP Photo/Marcos Moreno, File) Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives to make a statement outside 10 Downing Street, London, Thursday Nov. 22, 2018. Theresa May says Brexit deal's approval "is within our grasp" and she is determined to deliver it. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth) Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez looks up at the memorial of Cuban Independence Hero Jose Marti at Revolution Square in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Sanchez is on a two-day official visit to Cuba. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan) LONDON (AP) - The ambassador of the United Arab Emirates in London said Friday his government is studying whether to grant clemency to a convicted British academic sentenced to life in prison for espionage. Ambassador Sulaiman Hamid Almazroui said that academic Matthew Hedges' family has requested clemency and the government is considering it. He said the espionage case against the 31-year-old Hedges "was an extremely serious case" and that he had been convicted based on "compelling evidence" after a full and fair judicial process. "The crimes Mr. Hedges was accused of are extremely serious. For the UAE, like all countries, protecting our national security must be our first priority," he said. The ambassador denied claims that Hedges received only a brief court hearing before being convicted on very serious charges and said the British academic had proper legal representation in court. Hedges' wife, Daniela Tejada, issued a statement challenging the ambassador's claim that her husband has been treated fairly. She said he had been held in solitary confinement for more than five months without being charged or given access to a lawyer. FILE - In this undated family photo, showing Matthew Hedges with his wife Daniela Tejada. The 31-year-old British academic Matthew Hedges was arrested May 5, 2018, at Dubai Airport and subsequently convicted and sentenced to life in prison for espionage. The United Arab Emirates Ambassador in London Sulaiman Hamid Almazroui said Friday Nov. 23, 2018, that his government is studying whether to grant clemency to Hedges. (Daniela Tejada via AP, FILE) "The judicial system in the UAE and the UK cannot be compared," she said. "We have asked for clemency, we will wait to see what happens." The ambassador said he has met with British officials to discuss the case, which has threatened close ties between the two friendly countries. Hedges is a Ph.D. student who was arrested May 5 at Dubai Airport after a research trip to the UAE. Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a professor of political science in the UAE who is well-connected to Emirati officials, said he believes the government "must" have credible evidence against Hedges. "I think what they have probably against him is that he does work for a government, with probably name tag, with ranking, with evidence," he said. He said some sort of pardon is possible and that the case is unlikely to damage the "hugely important mutually beneficial relationship" between the UAE and Britain. The UAE is strategically located on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and the British military trains with UAE troops. The emirates of Abu Dhabi and Dubai are home to large numbers of British nationals who work in areas ranging from finance to sports, and thousands of tourists visit the country each year, attracted by sunny beaches, luxury hotels and theme parks. Ties also include lucrative defense contracts that are important to U.K. companies. ___ Malak Harb in Dubai contributed to this report. UAE Ambassador to UK Sulaiman Hamid Almazroui delivers a statement about the espionage case against 31-year old academic Matthew Hedges, at the UAE embassy in London, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Ambassador Sulaiman Hamid Almazroui said Friday his government is studying whether to grant clemency to convicted British academic sentenced to life in prison for espionage. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein) UAE Ambassador to UK Sulaiman Hamid Almazroui delivers a media statement about the espionage case against 31-year old academic Matthew Hedges, at the UAE embassy in London, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Ambassador Sulaiman Hamid Almazroui said Friday his government is studying whether to grant clemency to convicted British academic sentenced to life in prison for espionage. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein) UAE Ambassador to UK Sulaiman Hamid Almazroui delivers a statement about the espionage case against 31-year old academic Matthew Hedges, at the UAE embassy in London, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Ambassador Sulaiman Hamid Almazroui said Friday his government is studying whether to grant clemency to convicted British academic sentenced to life in prison for espionage. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein) Daniela Tejada, the wife of a British academic sentenced to life in prison for espionage in the United Arab Emirates, reads a statement as she leaves The Foreign Office after a meeting with Britain's Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, in London, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Matthew Hedges, a 31-year-old PhD student in Middle Eastern Studies at Durham University, was arrested at Dubai Airport on May 5 and sentenced to life in prison, but Daniela Tejada condemned the U.K. government on Thursday for putting diplomatic relations ahead of an innocent man's freedom.(AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth) THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - A Central African Republic militia leader and lawmaker who goes by the nickname Rambo told the International Criminal Court on Friday he was beaten and tortured after his arrest late last month in parliament. Prosecutors at the global court allege that 43-year-old Alfred Yekatom is responsible for crimes including murder, torture and using child soldiers during his country's bitter conflict. He allegedly commanded some 3,000 fighters in a predominantly Christian militia that killed Muslims in attacks between December 2013 and August 2014 in and around the capital, Bangui. At his first appearance before ICC judges since his transfer to the Netherlands over the weekend, Yekatom confirmed his name, age and that he had read the charges in his arrest warrant. He wasn't required to enter a plea at the 35-minute hearing. Defense lawyer Xavier-Jean Keita told Presiding Judge Antoine Mindua that Yekatom says he was beaten with a Kalashnikov rifle butt after he was arrested last month after firing gunshots in parliament. Keita also said Yekatom was held illegally following his arrest and before he was put on a plane to The Hague, where the court is based. "His fundamental rights were violated," Keita said. Mindua set April 30 as the date for a hearing at which judges will listen to prosecution evidence before considering whether to confirm the charges against Yekatom and order him to stand trial. Alfred Yekatom, a Central African Republic lawmaker and militia leader who goes by the nickname Rambo, appears before the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday Nov. 23, 2018. Prosecutors at the global court allege that 43-year-old Yekatom is responsible for crimes including murder, torture and using child soldiers during fighting in his country's bitter conflict. Yekatom has told the International Criminal Court that he was beaten and tortured after his arrest late last month in his country's parliament. (Piroschka van de Wouw, pool photo via AP) The Central African Republic has been plagued by interreligious and intercommunal fighting since 2013, when predominantly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power in the capital and mainly Christian anti-Balaka militias fought back. The violence left thousands of people dead and displaced hundreds of thousands more. The government asked the ICC in May 2014 to investigate crimes allegedly committed by both the Seleka and the anti-Balaka. So far, no Seleka fighters have been publicly targeted by the court's chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda. Yekatom's arrest warrant says he used "violent and inflammatory rhetoric" and ordered his forces to "kill Selekas and Muslims" and destroy their homes as well as a mosque. Human Rights Watch welcomed the case against Yekatom. Elise Keppler, associate director of the group's International Justice Program, said it "provides a chance for the International Criminal Court to do a more effective job in delivering justice for atrocities" in Central African Republic. She said the charges "should be the first among more involving crimes committed by all sides in the Central African Republic." ____ Hippolyte Marboua in Bangui, Central African Republic contributed. Alfred Yekatom, a Central African Republic lawmaker and militia leader who goes by the nickname Rambo, is flanked by security guards as he appears before the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday Nov. 23, 2018. Prosecutors at the global court allege that 43-year-old Yekatom is responsible for crimes including murder, torture and using child soldiers during fighting in his country's bitter conflict. Yekatom has told the International Criminal Court that he was beaten and tortured after his arrest late last month in his country's parliament. (Piroschka van de Wouw, pool photo via AP) Alfred Yekatom, center, a Central African Republic lawmaker and militia leader who goes by the nickname Rambo, appears before the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday Nov. 23, 2018. Prosecutors at the global court allege that 43-year-old Yekatom is responsible for crimes including murder, torture and using child soldiers during fighting in his country's bitter conflict. Yekatom has told the International Criminal Court that he was beaten and tortured after his arrest late last month in his country's parliament. (Piroschka van de Wouw, pool photo via AP) Alfred Yekatom, a Central African Republic lawmaker and militia leader who goes by the nickname Rambo, appears before the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday Nov. 23, 2018. Prosecutors at the global court allege that 43-year-old Yekatom is responsible for crimes including murder, torture and using child soldiers during fighting in his country's bitter conflict. Yekatom has told the International Criminal Court that he was beaten and tortured after his arrest late last month in his country's parliament. (Piroschka van de Wouw, pool photo via AP) Alfred Yekatom, a Central African Republic lawmaker and militia leader who goes by the nickname Rambo, appears before the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday Nov. 23, 2018. Prosecutors at the global court allege that 43-year-old Yekatom is responsible for crimes including murder, torture and using child soldiers during fighting in his country's bitter conflict. Yekatom has told the International Criminal Court that he was beaten and tortured after his arrest late last month in his country's parliament. (Piroschka van de Wouw, pool photo via AP) Alfred Yekatom, a Central African Republic lawmaker and militia leader who goes by the nickname Rambo, appears before the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday Nov. 23, 2018. Prosecutors at the global court allege that 43-year-old Yekatom is responsible for crimes including murder, torture and using child soldiers during fighting in his country's bitter conflict. Yekatom has told the International Criminal Court that he was beaten and tortured after his arrest late last month in his country's parliament. (Piroschka van de Wouw, pool photo via AP) Alfred Yekatom, left, a Central African Republic lawmaker and militia leader who goes by the nickname Rambo, appears before the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday Nov. 23, 2018. Prosecutors at the global court allege that 43-year-old Yekatom is responsible for crimes including murder, torture and using child soldiers during fighting in his country's bitter conflict. Yekatom has told the International Criminal Court that he was beaten and tortured after his arrest late last month in his country's parliament. (Piroschka van de Wouw, pool photo via AP) ICC's prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, right, and deputy prosecutor James Stewart, center, are seen as Alfred Yekatom, a Central African Republic lawmaker and militia leader who goes by the nickname Rambo, appears before the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday Nov. 23, 2018. Prosecutors at the global court allege that 43-year-old Yekatom is responsible for crimes including murder, torture and using child soldiers during fighting in his country's bitter conflict. Yekatom has told the International Criminal Court that he was beaten and tortured after his arrest late last month in his country's parliament. (Piroschka van de Wouw, pool photo via AP) DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was in the United Arab Emirates on Friday, on his first tour abroad since the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul. The prince, who arrived in Abu Dhabi late on Thursday, is also due to visit other Mideast countries, where he will be warmly received by Arab leaders who have stood firmly by his side amid international outrage over Khashoggi's horrific slaying. The crown prince will round off his tour with a stop in Argentina where he'll come face-to-face with world leaders on Nov. 30 for the two-day Group of 20 summit. Among those expected to attend that summit are President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has kept international pressure mounting on the kingdom in the wake of Khashoggi's killing. His tour abroad underscores the strong support the crown prince continues to have from his 82-year-old father, King Salman, and signals that he faces no immediate threats to his grip on power at home. Upon arrival to the UAE, Prince Mohammed was warmly embraced by Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. The two crown princes- who also command their countries' armed forces- are known to be close, with the more experienced Abu Dhabi crown prince reportedly offering his insights to the 33-year-old Saudi prince on past occasions. The UAE's state-run news agency, WAM, reported Friday that the two discussed "brotherly and strategic ties" in their talks, which were attended by a wide-range of Emirati officials, as well as a number of senior Saudi officials, including the head of general intelligence, the interior minister and key advisers. FILE - In this Oct. 24, 2018, file, photo, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attends the second day of the Future Investment Initiative conference, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince has begun his first tour abroad on Friday, Nov. 23, 2018 since facing international pressure over the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi.(AP Photo/Amr Nabil) Saudi Arabia and the UAE, at war in Yemen against Shiite Houthi rebels there since 2015, are also expected to take part in U.N.-led peace talks in Sweden next month. The two sides likely discussed Yemen, with the WAM news agency reporting that among those present for the bilateral talks was an Emirati official in charge of liaising with families of UAE soldiers killed in battle. Prince Mohammed is scheduled to visit Bahrain and Egypt next on his tour. He has faced intense criticism since the Oct. 2 killing of Khashoggi by Saudi agents inside the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul. Khashoggi's body was dismembered, and his remains have yet to be found. Intelligence officials and analysts say the operation to kill Khashoggi, who wrote critically of the crown prince for The Washington Post, could not have happened without Prince Mohammed's knowledge. The kingdom denies the crown prince had any involvement. Trump insists there's not enough evidence to blame the crown prince for Khashoggi's killing, despite a U.S. intelligence report's assessment to the contrary. Trump says the kingdom is an important ally that has helped to lower oil prices. Saudi Arabia initially said Khashoggi had walked out of the consulate before shifting its account of what happened amid Turkish intelligence leaks. Saudi Arabia is now seeking the death penalty for five of those accused in the killing. The U.S. has sanctioned 17 Saudis involved in the incident, including one of the crown prince's closest advisers who was fired from his post after fallout from the killing. On Friday, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the Saudi crown prince has requested to meet Erdogan on the sidelines of the G-20 summit. Turkey sees no "obstacle" for the meeting, Cavusoglu told Turkey's CNN-Turk television, but added that Erdogan would make the final decision. It would be the first meeting between the prince and Erdogan since the killing, though the two have spoken by phone once since then. Cavusoglu also criticized Trump, saying the U.S. leader appears to want to turn a blind eye to the killing. "Trump's statements amount to him saying 'I'll turn a blind eye no matter what,'" he said. "Money isn't everything. We must not move away from human values." ___ Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report. LONDON (AP) - The Latest on Britain's exit from the European Union (all times local): 3:25 p.m. Spain's junior minister for the European Union says British authorities have consented to Spanish demands granting Madrid prior approval on matters relating to Gibraltar. Luis Marco Aguiriano says "we have a promise, a commitment, from the British government saying they are ready to ... guarantee that they will go along with the clarification we have requested." Spain has threatened to block a Brexit agreement unless its demands on Gibraltar are accepted. Britain says the withdrawal agreement won't be changed but has not ruled out putting something in writing to allay Spain's fears. Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives to make a statement outside 10 Downing Street, London, Thursday Nov. 22, 2018. Theresa May says Brexit deal's approval "is within our grasp" and she is determined to deliver it. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth) Spanish private news agency Europa Press says Aguiriano told reporters in Brussels on Friday he can't announce yet that Spain is dropping its veto threat because he hasn't yet seen a written version of the British promise. He says Spain wants London to make the written promise public. After that, it will have to be endorsed by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. Britain says the withdrawal agreement won't be changed, but has not ruled out putting something in writing to allay Spain's fears. ___ 1:25 p.m. A Spanish government spokeswoman says Spain won't settle for anything less than veto power over any issue regarding Gibraltar in negotiations about Britain's departure from the European Union. Isabel Celaa said Friday that prior approval on matters involving Gibraltar is "decisive" for Madrid to approve the Brexit agreement on future U.K.-EU relations. She said after a weekly Cabinet meeting that Spain requires an "absolute guarantee" that any future agreement between the EU and the U.K. in matters regarding Gibraltar "will require the prior agreement of Spain." Spain has never relinquished its claim to jurisdiction over the British territory of 32,000 people on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula. ___ 1:15 p.m. British Prime Minister Theresa May has refused to say whether she will resign if her Brexit deal with the European Union is rejected by Parliament. The agreement has drawn strong criticism from lawmakers in May's own Conservative Party as well as from opposition parties, and she faces a struggle to get Parliament to approve it. Asked on a radio phone-in whether she would quit if the deal failed, May said: "This isn't about me." She said: "I'm not thinking about me. I'm thinking about getting a deal through that delivers for this country." EU leaders are due to meet Sunday to sign off on the deal. May said that once that happens she plans to tour Britain explaining the benefits of the agreement. ___ 11:50 a.m. A Spanish government official says the spat over Gibraltar can be resolved by modifying a single clause in the United Kingdom's divorce agreement from the European Union. Spain's junior minister for the EU, Luis Marco Aguiriano, said Friday that officials could tweak article 184 to make it clear that future relations between the EU and Gibraltar "will be negotiated with the U.K. with Spain's prior consent." He said in an interview with Spain's Onda Cero radio station that officials in Brussels were working on options to accommodate Spain's concerns about Gibraltar. He estimated there was a 60 percent chance of success. Madrid has never dropped its claim of sovereignty over the rocky outcrop at the tip of the Iberian Peninsula, which was ceded to Britain just over 300 years ago. ___ 11:45 a.m. Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman says Germany believes that outstanding questions about the Brexit deal will be cleared up in time for a special European Union summit to go ahead on Sunday. Spain has warned that it will oppose a declaration on future relations with Britain if it isn't guaranteed a say over the future of Gibraltar, though it doesn't have a veto on the actual withdrawal agreement. Asked Friday whether it's possible that the summit might not go ahead, Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert said: "We assume that open questions can be cleared up by Sunday. That is being worked on intensively, so the chancellor is preparing for the trip to Brussels." ___ 10:55 a.m. Germany's finance minister says Berlin still hopes for a regulated British exit from the European Union but that the country is also prepared for the possibility of a Brexit without a negotiated deal. Olaf Scholz, who is also the vice chancellor, was quoted by the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper Friday as saying that an unregulated Brexit would be bad for everyone, and hit the British the worst. But, he says, "we are preparing ourselves very carefully for both variants, the controlled and the uncontrolled Brexit. Both present us with challenges, but we can and will manage them." ___ 10:00 a.m. European Union diplomats are meeting to finalize the draft divorce agreement between Britain and the bloc, amid a warning from Spain that it will oppose the deal if it isn't guaranteed a say over the future of Gibraltar. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez tweeted that Britain and Spain "remain far away" on the issue and "if there are no changes, we will veto Brexit." Spain wants the future of the tiny British territory at the tip of the Iberian Peninsula to be a bilateral issue between Madrid and London. Spain doesn't have a veto on the withdrawal agreement, which does not have to be approved unanimously. But it could hold up a future free-trade deal between Britain and the EU, which would require approval of all 27 EU nations. MADRID (AP) - Some of Amazon's workers in Europe are protesting against what they call unfair work conditions, in a move meant to disrupt operations on Black Friday. Labor groups representing workers at Amazon Spain said that around 90 percent of workers at a logistics depot near Madrid joined a walkout Friday. Only two people were at the loading bay, said Douglas Harper of the CCOO trade union confederation. Amazon challenged the unions' walkout figures, saying in a statement that most staff had turned up for work at the depot. On a picket line, 38-year-old employee Eduardo Hernandez said the walkout intended to hurt the company financially. "It is one of the days that Amazon has most sales, and these are days when we can hurt more and make ourselves be heard because the company has not listened to us and does not want to reach any agreement," said Hernandez, who has worked for five years at Amazon. Unions in Britain said they would stage protests at five sites to complain about safety conditions. Amazon said the safety record at its warehouses is above the industry average. A picket stops a truck to speak with the driver leaving the main Amazon Logistics Center where goods are stored for distribution, on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain, Friday Nov. 22, 2018. Amazon workers are staging a 2-day strike coinciding with Black Friday over a labour dispute. (AP Photo/Paul White) In Germany, workers walked off the job at Amazon distribution centers in Rheinberg and Bad Hersfeld as part of a years-long push for higher pay, the ver.di union said. The union argues Amazon employees receive lower wages than others in retail and mail-order jobs. Amazon says its distribution warehouses in Germany are logistics centers and employees earn relatively high wages for that industry. While Black Friday discounts have traditionally been a U.S. retail event, companies have increasingly been offering discounts in other countries too. ____ This story has corrected to show that Harper is a trade unionist, not an Amazon spokesman. A picket climbs on a truck to speak with the driver leaving the main Amazon Logistics Center where goods are stored for distribution, on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain, Friday Nov. 22, 2018. Amazon workers are staging a 2-day strike coinciding with Black Friday over a labour dispute. (AP Photo/Paul White) Workers eat donuts outside the main Amazon Logistics Center where goods are stored for distribution, on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain, Friday Nov. 22, 2018. Amazon workers are staging a 2-day strike coinciding with Black Friday over a labour dispute. (AP Photo/Paul White) A striking Amazon worker stokes a brazier to keep warm outside the main Amazon Logistics Center where goods are stored for distribution, on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain, Friday Nov. 22, 2018. Amazon workers are staging a 2-day strike coinciding with Black Friday over a labour dispute. (AP Photo/Paul White) Police guard the entrance as workers stand outside the main Amazon Logistics Center where goods are stored for distribution, on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain, Friday Nov. 22, 2018. Amazon workers are staging a 2-day strike coinciding with Black Friday over a labour dispute. (AP Photo/Paul White) Police guard the entrance of the main Amazon Logistics Center where goods are stored for distribution, on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain, Friday Nov. 22, 2018. Amazon workers are staging a 2-day strike coinciding with Black Friday over a labour dispute. Banner reads ' Explotation without rights'.(AP Photo/Paul White) A security guard stands next to a truck behind a gate outside the main Amazon Logistics Center where goods are stored for distribution, on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain, Friday Nov. 22, 2018. Amazon workers are staging a 2-day strike coinciding with Black Friday over a labour dispute. (AP Photo/Paul White) BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) - Hungarian authorities will evaluate and give an opinion on the extradition request made by Macedonia for its fugitive former prime minister who has been given asylum in Hungary, the Hungarian prime minister said Friday. Viktor Orban said on state radio that Nikola Gruevski, who fled Macedonia last week to avoid serving a two-year prison term for corruption, is an ally of Hungary who deserves fair treatment. Orban, who had anti-migrant border fences built in 2015, said that without similar policies from Gruevski, who was prime minister between 2006 and 2016, "it would have been much more difficult, if at all possible, to protect the Hungarian border." "He was the first Balkan politician who built a fence," Orban said. "That is why we always thought of Macedonia and of his person as an ally. One treats one's allies fairly." After making his way out of Macedonia in still unclear circumstances, Gruevski made an asylum request at a Hungarian diplomatic mission in Albania last week. Later, he traveled through several Balkan countries in Hungarian diplomatic vehicles, escorted by Hungarian diplomats. Orban described Gruevski's journey through Balkans as an exciting "thriller" and insisted that the matter was a legal one, not a political one and that his government was not involved in the asylum decision. In this picture taken Dec 5, 2013, Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, left, talks to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, right, during their meeting in Skopje, Macedonia. Macedonia's fugitive former prime minister Gruevski said Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2018 he has been granted political asylum in Hungary, a week after he fled his country to avoid serving a two-year jail sentence for a corruption conviction. (AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski) Orban said it was "important" that the Hungarian government refrain also from commenting on Gruevski's conviction and the several other judicial cases pending against him in his homeland. "There are complicated political battles and games going on in Macedonia and the justice system is part of it," Orban said. "I myself don't know what is true and what is not true because it is practically impossible to decide." Like with much of the criticism coming his way on any issue, Orban sourced it in this case also to Hungarian-American billionaire and philanthropist George Soros, whom he considers an ideological foe and blames - despite repeated denials from Soros - for the migrant surge in Europe of recent years. Orban said the strongest criticisms of the Hungarian government in the Gruevski case were coming "all from Soros organizations." "Those in favor of immigration and those attacking the issue of the Macedonian prime minister are exactly the same people, both at the personal and organizational level," Orban said. In this picture taken May 12, 2011, Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, left, talks to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, right, during a welcome ceremony in Skopje, Macedonia. Macedonia's fugitive former prime minister Gruevski said Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2018 he has been granted political asylum in Hungary, a week after he fled his country to avoid serving a two-year jail sentence for a corruption conviction. (AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski) In this picture taken April 2, 2018, former Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, left, arrives at the criminal court in Skopje, Macedonia. Macedonia's fugitive former prime minister Gruevski said Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2018 he has been granted political asylum in Hungary, a week after he fled his country to avoid serving a two-year jail sentence for a corruption conviction. (AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski) FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) - Three people were shot to death and another two were critically injured in a possible Thanksgiving home invasion, and a suspect has been arrested, police in northeastern Indiana said Friday. Fort Wayne police said Kameron J. Joyner, 22, was arrested during a traffic stop and is being held at the Allen County Jail on five preliminary counts of aggravated battery. Police spokesman Officer Michael Joyner said police are looking for another 22-year-old man considered a person of interest in the attack, and that he is believed to be armed and dangerous. Joyner said detectives believe the shootings resulted from a home invasion. Officers called to the home on the south side of Fort Wayne about 10:30 p.m. Thursday found four victims inside and one outside. Two males and a female victim were pronounced dead at the scene, while two male victims were hospitalized. They remained hospitalized in critical condition Friday afternoon, Joyner said. In this Thursday, Nov. 23, 2018, photo police investigate after reports of a shooting in Fort Wayne, Ind. Several people were injured in a deadly shooting. A suspect has been arrested, police in northeastern Indiana said Friday. (Jamie Duffy/The Journal-Gazette via AP) Allen County Coroner Dr. Craig Nelson said autopsies would be performed Friday afternoon and the names of the deceased would be released once relatives have been notified. About 20 relatives and friends of the victims gathered across the street from the home, which was cordoned off by caution tape, The Journal Gazette reported. Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang's Regular Press Conference on November 23, 2018 2018/11/23 Q: According to reports, the Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi, Pakistan has been attacked today. Can you offer some details on what happened exactly? A: According to the information at my hand by far, at around 12:00 a.m. Beijing time, three illegal militants were caught by Pakistani police when they attempted to break into the Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi. All the three militants were killed and two Pakistani security personnel lost their lives in the shootout. All the staff of the Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi and their families are safe. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has sent condolences to the Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi. China strongly condemns any violent attacks against diplomatic and consular missions and has asked Pakistan to take concrete measures to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens and institutions in Pakistan. In the meantime, we mourn for the Pakistani security personnel who were killed in the line of duty and send condolences to the bereaved families and those injured. Q: The Baluchistan Liberation Army in Pakistan claimed responsibility for this attack on the Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi. How does China comment on this organization's record in the past and its claiming responsibility? Can you confirm that it is this organization that attacked the Consulate-General? A: As far as I know, the Pakistani side is conducting investigation into this incident. Q: Yesterday, you told us about the upcoming visit to China by a UN delegation comprised of permanent representatives of the Security Council members in your answer to a question raised by a journalist. Do you have more details on that? A: As the rotating Chair of the UN Security Council for November, China will invite the permanent representatives of all member states and the member states-elect of the UN Security Council, the main troop contributing countries of the UN peacekeeping operations and senior officials of the UN Secretariat to visit China from November 25 to 28. During the visit, Chinese leaders will meet with the delegation. The delegation will visit the China peacekeeping standby force and travel to Guangdong. It is believed that this visit will help the members of the Security Council to get a better understanding of China's development path and foreign policy and help Chinese people from various sectors to know better about the UN and its Security Council. It is also conducive to strengthening solidarity and cooperation between China and other Security Council members and enabling the Security Council to play a better role in international affairs. Q: Did the gunmen at any stage actually enter any part of the grounds of the Consulate? And also on Pakistan's television, there are images being shown of black smoke rising from the Consulate. Do you know what that black smoke is? A: According to what I have learned, the militants didn't enter the compound of Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi. The shootout happened outside the Consulate-General. Follow-up: So that black smoke would also possibly be outside and not inside the grounds of the Consulate? Is that right? A: The militants didn't enter the compound of Chinese Consulate-General. Q: Philippine Foreign Secretary said in an interview that the Philippine side was willing to disclose the contents of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Cooperation on Oil and Gas Development signed with China and would ask for China's approval for doing that. Do you have any information concerning this and what are your reactions to the remarks of the Philippine side? A: Many of our journalist friends are very interested in this issue these two days. Recently, during President Xi Jinping's visit to the Philippines, China and the Philippines signed the inter-governmental Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Cooperation on Oil and Gas Development as witnessed by the two heads of state. The cooperation on oil and gas development is an important consensus reached by the Chinese and Philippine leaders. China and the Philippines have all along maintained close communication on this matter. Early this year, the two sides set up an oil and gas task force under the China-Philippines Bilateral Consultation Mechanism on the South China Sea (BCM), exchanged views on cooperation on maritime oil and gas development for several times and had in-depth exchanges on the signing of relevant cooperation document at various levels. After communication and negotiations, the two sides reached agreement on signing relevant inter-governmental MOU and successfully inked it when President Xi Jinping visited the Philippines. All through the process, the two sides demonstrated pragmatic attitude and positive will to develop China-Philippines friendship and deepen bilateral cooperation. The signing of the MOU is a testament to the mutual respect, equal-footed negotiation and mutual trust between China and the Philippines. The MOU appraises the progress made by the two sides in exploring dialogue and consultation as well as practical cooperation in accordance with the UN Charter, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982 and the 2002 Declaration of Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, recognizes the important contributions the two sides have made to regional peace, stability and development through concerted efforts, and pledges to accelerate oil and gas development cooperation at sea with the principle of mutual respect, fairness and mutual benefit, flexibility and practical results and consensus and in line with international law. According to the MOU, the two sides will set up an inter-governmental joint steering commission and inter-enterprise working group and decide relevant cooperation arrangement at an early date. The relevant cooperation will not affect the respective legal stance of the two sides. China and the Philippines will continue to stay in communication on the implementation of relevant follow-up matters and strive for substantial outcomes in the joint maritime oil and gas exploration and development, so as to benefit the two countries and peoples. As to the question concerning the disclosure of the MOU, I already replied to that yesterday. Whether a MOU can be made public depends on the understanding reached between the two sides during the negotiation process and the relevant specific provisions in the text of the document itself. As far as I know, this MOU is not a confidential agreement. If the Philippines wants to disclose it, China is open to such arrangement. Q: According to Wall Street Journal, the US officials contacted the relevant government departments of Germany, Italy and Japan, saying that the US believes that using the devices produced by Huawei will pose risks to cyber security and that they should not purchase them. What is your comment? A: I am not aware of the specific case you mentioned. In principle, the Chinese side always encourages Chinese enterprises to conduct foreign investment and economic and trade cooperation on the basis of abiding by the local laws and regulations. Meanwhile, we hope that relevant countries can provide a fair, just and predictable environment for the investment cooperation carried out by the Chinese companies. Q: President Xi Jinping is going to visit Portugal next month. The high-level visits have been more frequent in the past few years and there have also been big Chinese investments in banking and energy in Portugal. Could we expect more investment in productive capacity that the Portuguese authorities have been pushing for? A: This morning, the Foreign Ministry held a press briefing on President Xi Jinping's upcoming state visits to Spain, Argentina, Panama and Portugal and his attendance at the 13th G20 Summit. Regarding President Xi Jinping's visit to Portugal, China and Portugal are located respectively at the eastern and western ends of the Eurasian continent. Although our two countries are geographically far away from each other, our two peoples have always held friendly feelings towards each other and their exchanges boast a long history. Since the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1979, the bilateral relations have maintained sound and steady development. In 1999, our two sides properly resolved the Macao issue through friendly consultations. In 2005, our two countries established the comprehensive strategic partnership, which opened a new chapter for the growth of bilateral ties. Now China and Portugal enjoy frequent high-level exchanges, strong political mutual trust, remarkable achievements in the practical cooperation in such areas as economy, trade and investment and ever-closer cultural and people-to-people exchanges. Next year we will mark the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Portugal, which will present rare opportunities for the growth of our bilateral relations. The Chinese side highly values its ties with Portugal and views Portugal as a good friend and partner in the European Union. We are willing to work with Portugal to take President Xi Jinping's upcoming visit as an opportunity to continuously deepen political mutual trust, expand the mutually beneficial cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, maintain close exchanges across the board, step up coordination in international and regional affairs and scale the China-Portugal Comprehensive Strategic Partnership to new heights. Q: Are you aware that were there any attackers who were not killed and got away? And also what is the impact on the operations of the Consulate? I assume that it is currently closed as the crisis is going on. Is that right? Do you know how long that might be the case? A: Just as I said, according to the information at my hand at this point, three illegal militants attempted to break into the Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi, and all of them have been killed. As far as I know, the Consulate-General is now closed. Q: The Pakistani security forces have responded very quickly and overcome the attack and killed all militants. How does China comment on the response of Pakistan? A: The Pakistani side took timely and effective measures to protect the safety of the premises and staff of the Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi, and the Pakistani security personnel even lost their lives in the shootout. We highly appreciate the efforts made by Pakistan, mourn for the Pakistani security personnel who were killed in the line of duty and send condolences to the bereaved families and those injured. Q: The 21st round of India-China border talks are due to start today. Can you just tell us have they started in Chengdu? What is the schedule like? A: I already talked about that the day before yesterday. I have no further details to offer to you at this point. After the meeting, we will release relevant information in a timely manner. Q: Can you confirm reports that China has resumed buying Iranian oil after the US waiver on sanctions? A: According to my information, the normal cooperation between China and Iran in energy and other areas has never been interrupted. Q: On the attack on the Consulate, will this have any impact on the Chinese investments in Pakistan and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor? A: China and Pakistan are all-weather strategic cooperative partners, and the practical cooperation across the board between the two sides has brought tangible benefits to the two countries and peoples. Building the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is an important consensus reached by the leaders of the two states, which is of key significance to promoting peace, stability, development and prosperity of the two countries and the region. It has won extensive support from the people of the two countries and is being advanced in an orderly way. China will continue to work with Pakistan to steadfastly promote CPEC and bring greater benefits to the people of the two countries and other countries in this region. Q: You said China and Pakistan will continue with the building of CPEC. Do you think there needs to be additional security measures, especially given that this is not the first attack by people saying that they want an independent Baluchistan? A: China highly appreciates the efforts made by Pakistan to safeguard CPEC and ensure the safety of Chinese citizens and institutes in Pakistan. We believe Pakistan will continue taking effective measures to ensure the development of CPEC in a safe and smooth manner. BEIRUT (AP) - Gunmen in Syria's rebel-held northwestern province shot and killed on Friday a prominent anti-government journalist who was also a sharp critic of Islamist militants. Raed Fares' U.S.-funded Radio Fresh station provides news of the conflict to Syria's northern provinces and is a source for international news outlets which have largely stayed away from the opposition-held areas amid rising lawlessness. Fares' killing was a blow to the few independent voices that have continued to promote nonviolence and democratic change in the war-torn country. In a June op-ed in The Washington Post, Fares lamented that the U.S. had cut funds to Syria's opposition areas, including the radio station he founded in 2013 in his hometown of Kafranbel in rebel-held Idlib province. He said such a move would only feed extremism. "As a journalist and activist, I felt I had a duty to counter the fundamentalist narratives that are spreading among people who have no other source for hope in our war-torn homeland," Fares wrote in the Post on June 28. His station provided training and jobs for hundreds of young activists and citizen journalists. "If it weren't for us and other independent voices, terrorists would be the only source of information about Syria locally and internationally. For that reason, the terrorist groups (and the regime) see us as a direct threat." In this photo undated photo released by the Syrian anti-government activist group Kafranbl News, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows a portrait of the anti-Syrian government activist Raed Fares, who was also a vocal critic of Islamic militants, killed on Friday, Nov. 23, 2018, by gunmen with his colleague Hammoud al-Juneid, in Kafr Nabl, south of Idlib. A war monitor and Syrian activists are reporting that masked gunmen in the country's rebel-held northwestern province have killed a prominent figure in Syria's anti-government movement who was also a sharp critic of Islamist militants. (Kafranbl News via AP) Fares survived an earlier assassination attempt in 2014 when he was shot in the chest by armed men. He was abducted by militants affiliated with an al-Qaida group and tortured. He criticized the militants' harassment of its critics. His radio station was raided by militants and bombed by government warplanes. Fares and friend Hammoud al-Juneid died of their wounds after three gunmen opened fire on their vehicle in Kafranbel. A third, Ali Dandouch, sitting in the backseat, ducked the bullets and survived, he later told The Associated Press. Dandouch said the gunmen fired at them from a moving vehicle. Social media sites were rife with the news of Fares' killing. "My last friend & hope 4 a better Syria has been killed (today) after being let down by" everyone, Zaina Erhaim, a U.K.-based Syrian journalist who left the country in 2016, wrote on Twitter. Fares gained fame during the Syrian uprising because of continued support for opposition protests even when the conflict took a violent turn. His town gained attention during weekly anti-government protests because of the humorous English-language banners he created for each rally. "Do not send money. Gold is not edible," one banner read, urging the world to free a besieged area instead of sending assistance. He organized protests to express support for the victims of the 2013 Boston bombings, which he called "a sorrowful scene of what happens in Syria every day. Do accept our condolences." Fares was also a vocal critic of Islamic militants, supporting rallies against them, and accusing them of silencing dissent. The Observatory reported that more than 390 people have been shot and killed since April in the rebel-held north amid a wave of assassination and lawlessness. In his op-ed in the Post, Fares said he had seen militants regrouping in the absence of support for the less radical opposition. "Syria's democratic future relies on our success," he wrote. Mohammed Katoub, a doctor who supports health facilities in rebel-held areas, said public figures and civil society activists are increasingly under threat in northwestern Syria by militant groups. He said at least 13 doctors have disappeared since 2018. "I think the targeted people are all public figures and community leaders who believe in the same values of humanity, dignity, justice and liberty," Katoub said. "You can't know (Fares) without loving him, his smile, his optimism, his hopes for Syria, (his) way of thinking and creativity." COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Larry Moore was watching "Ellen" in a South Carolina prison when he heard a scream. Fellow cellblock inmate Tommie Wilson was bleeding from his face and running, in vain, for his life. Another prisoner caught up to Wilson, stabbed him with a long knife and bashed him with a lock slung inside a sock at Tyger River Correctional Intuition in Spartanburg County, according to a State Law Enforcement Division report on the 2008 killing. Augustus Bookert, serving five years for armed robbery, was charged with murder, which carries 30 years to life. However, he accepted a deal, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and got just 12 additional years behind bars, according to court records. The deal fits a pattern in the cases of prisoners killed by other inmates in South Carolina over the past two decades: Prisoners who kill often face little additional punishment. Prosecutors likely have several high-profile prison killing cases to come. Two inmates are awaiting trial on accusations they killed four inmates in an attempt to get the death penalty. And while the investigation continues, criminal charges seem almost certain against prisoners who killed seven inmates in an April riot . They are among the 20 prison homicides in South Carolina since 2017. All 20 cases remain open. FILE - This April 16, 2018 file photo shows the Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, S.C. A review by The Associated Press has found prisoners who kill other prisoners behind bars in South Carolina often face little additional punishment. Prosecutors won convictions in 18 of 26 closed cases involving the deaths of inmates at the hands of fellow prisoners in the past 20 years. State agents are still investigating the deaths of seven inmates during an April riot at Lee Correctional Institution. No charges have been filed yet. (AP Photo/Sean Rayford, File) Several other Southern states, including Alabama, are also facing sharp increases of killings behind bars. While national statistics aren't kept on how prison killers are punished, experts said holding inmates who kill accountable through the legal system is crucial to keeping other prisoners safe. The Associated Press used an open records request to gather data on South Carolina prison homicides since 1997, then reviewed court records and its own news archive to learn the outcomes. Prosecutors won convictions in 18 of 26 closed cases involving the deaths of inmates at the hands of fellow prisoners in the past 20 years. More than half of the 18 convicted inmates got sentences of 20 years or less. Of those 18 convicted prisoners, only three received a life sentence and two were given the death penalty. At least six were already serving life without parole. The rest can still expect to be released one day if they remain healthy. At least six cases remain unsolved. Prosecutors face a persistent challenge: It's hard to find a deterrent when the prison killers are already serving lengthy sentences. One inmate made the problem painfully clear when he told the AP last year that after killing four inmates he was upset because he likely wouldn't get the death penalty he wanted. A former prison director said he understands that slain prisoners often make unsympathetic victims, and prosecutors have limited resources. "A solicitor looks at the case, the perp is already serving a life sentence and the victim is already a convicted felon - and more often than not, one of the 20 percent that are the worst folks behind bars," said Jon Ozmint, who directed the South Carolina Department of Corrections from 2003 to 2011. Bryan Stirling, the current director of South Carolina prisons is a former prosecutor. He understands why prosecutors would put more importance on a case where the killer who isn't convicted will walk free, as opposed to a case where the killer is already behind bars. But Stirling also understands the need to protect inmates behind bars and keep order. He has doubled the number of investigators in state prisons from 25 to 50, which can both help determine what caused the killings and other crimes and tamp down smaller conflicts before they turn deadly. And he said a prisoner who kills a fellow inmate will likely face consequences. "Even if they don't get more time, their stay changes dramatically. They can lose all their privileges. The housing unit can go from general population to a very restrictive unit where they are allowed out for only a short length of time," Stirling said. In Wilson's case, details of the decade-old killing were readily available. Twenty inmates, including Moore, identified Bookert as Wilson's killer. Many of them told the same story - that Wilson had either beaten up or accidentally hit a friend of Bookert's during a fight a few hours earlier on April 17, 2008, according to the investigative report. But the prosecutor who worked out the deal is no longer with the office, said Murray Glenn, a spokesman for the 7th Circuit Solicitor's Office. "It is difficult to speak about the sequence of events that led up to the 12-year prison sentence without having her perspective," Glenn said in an email. "Crimes that occur in prison are often difficult to prosecute because of a lack of credible witnesses. Some witnesses are reluctant to talk because of concerns over their safety and others are difficult to find when it is time to take a case to court." South Carolina prisons have only become more deadly in recent years. State agents are still investigating the deaths of seven inmates during an April riot at Lee Correctional Institution. No charges have been filed yet. And in April 2017, authorities said inmates Denver Simmons and Jacob Phillip lured four mentally ill inmates to their cell at Kirkland Correctional Institution and killed them one-by-one. Simmons told the AP he was already serving a life sentence for murder and hoped to get the death penalty. But afterward, he learned South Carolina has no lethal injection drugs and hasn't executed anyone since 2011. "I did it all, I did it for nothing," he said. "So that makes it especially bad for me, you know?" Simmons and Phillip are awaiting trial for the inmate killings. Prosecutors haven't decided whether to seek the death penalty. ___ Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP . Read his work at https://apnews.com/search/jeffrey%20collins . This Aug. 28, 2015 photo from the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows a booking photo of Augustus Bookert. A review of South Carolina prison homicides by The Associated Press shows that prisoners who kill often face little additional punishment. Bookert, serving five years for armed robbery, was charged with murder, which carries 30 years to life. However, he accepted a deal, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and got just 12 additional years behind bars, according to court records. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP) FILE These undated file photos provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows, from top row from left, Corey Scott, Eddie Casey Gaskins, Raymond Angelo Scott and Damonte Rivera; bottom row from left, Michael Milledge, Cornelius McClary and Joshua Jenkins. The seven inmates were killed, and at least 17 prisoners wounded, in a riot at the Lee Correctional Institution on early Monday, April 16, 2018, in Bishopville, S.C. An analysis of South Carolina prison homicides by The Associated Press shows that prisoners who kill often face little additional punishment. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP, File) NEW YORK (AP) - Behind every great book are the books which influenced it. The "micro-learning" app and platform blinkist.com has been compiling literary sources for such classics as "A Clockwork Orange," ''Oliver Twist" and "1984." Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" was inspired by each of her parents - William Godwin's "An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice" and Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Rights of Women." One of the defining novels of the Civil War era, Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," drew in part upon one of the defining memoirs, "The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave." Douglass' book, which remains standard reading in many schools, also was cited by Toni Morrison for her Pulitzer Prize winning historical novel "Beloved." "We were noticing the attention around the 200th anniversary of 'Frankenstein' and got to thinking about the nonfiction works which help author of fiction," says Blinkist writer-editor Tom Anderson. "We think of those books as the unsung heroes." Charles Dickens' portrait of extreme wealth and poverty in London in "Oliver Twist" was in part modeled on Edward Gibbon's "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Anthony Burgess drew upon fiction and nonfiction for his terrifying "A Clockwork Orange," his sources including Aldous Huxley's futuristic classic "Brave New World" and B.F. Skinner's landmark of psychology "Science and Human Behavior." Tolstoy's "War and Peace" reflected the author's reading of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, along with works about Napoleon and French history. According to Tolstoy scholar Ani Kokobobo, the author was "captivated" by Schopenhauer and his belief that "death is the only reality," a viewpoint expressed by the cerebral Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky in "War and Peace." Kokobobo also noted that "War and Peace" was a response in part to such French scholarship as Adolphe Thiers' "History of the Consulate and the Empire of France Under Napoleon," which Tolstoy believed exaggerated Napoleon's stature and military ideas. This combination photo shows covers of classic books, "War And Peace," by Leo Tolstoy, left, and George Orwell's "1984." Behind every great book are the books which influenced it. Tolstoy's "War and Peace" reflected the author's reading of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, along with works about Napoleon and French history. Orwell's "1984," the Dystopian political novel, reflects in part the British author's reading of James Burnham's "The Managerial Revolution" and Halford Mackinder's "Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction."(Knopf/Signet Classics via AP) "Tolstoy did not believe in this 'great man' theory, also propagated by Thomas Carlyle, and thought that victory and defeat were not determined by a sole heroic leader, but rather by the collective alignment of the will of thousands," said Kokobobo, editor of the Tolstoy Studies Journal. George Orwell's 1984, the Dystopian political novel which has become a best-seller again during the Trump administration, reflects in part the British author's reading of two nonfiction studies: James Burnham's "The Managerial Revolution" and Halford Mackinder's "Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction." In a recent telephone interview, Orwell's son, Richard Blair, said his father was "the most voracious reader" who "absorbed enormous amounts of books." Orwell Society committee member Les Hurst said that "1984" shows how Orwell adapted the ideas of others to his own. He noted a passage from the Mackinder book, which came out just after World War I: "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world." Orwell borrowed Mackinder's framing for one of the most famous epigrams from "1984": "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." "The Mackinder book sat in Orwell's mind for several years," Hurst said. "Orwell was able to translate those words, able to extend Burnham's concepts of power and power worship and to take ideals of geopolitics and perform this great imaginative leap, from geography and cast into the past and into the future. He takes something with two dimensions and turned it into something that is three dimensional." THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) - Senior officials from Greece and neighbor Macedonia said Friday that progress has been made in talks to revise school books in the two countries as part of an effort to end hostility between the two countries. The two Balkan countries are seeking to end decades of tension with an agreement that would see Greece's neighbor change its name to North Macedonia and both sides takes a series of actions aimed at refraining from hostile actions or rhetoric. Similar school-book initiatives have also recently been launched between Greece and Albania, and between Macedonia and Bulgaria. Progress was reviewed at a meeting Friday in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki where foreign ministers and Cabinet trade officials from Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Albania attended a one-day meeting. "History should be an opportunity to learn in schools and not be a (mental) prison," Greek Deputy Foreign Minister George Katrougalos said at the end of the meetings. Facing strong objections from opposition parties in both countries, the name deal would allow Macedonia to join NATO. But it still requires a constitutional revision in Macedonian and ratification by parliament in Greece. Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov answers a question during a joint news conference with his Danish counterpart Anders Samuelsen following their meeting at the foreign ministry in Skopje, Macedonia on Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. (AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski) The two countries have been at odds over Macedonia's name since the country declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Greece sees the name as a potential threat to the territory and ancient heritage of its own region of Macedonia. Under a provisional agreement reached in June, Greece and Macedonia also pledged to "take effective measures to prohibit any hostile actions or propaganda ... likely to incite chauvinism, hostility, irredentism and revisionism." That action includes removing references in school books that could cause offense, and the two countries set up a 14-member joint academic committee to review them. The committee held its first meet in Thessaloniki earlier this month. "They had a very constructive meeting ... they approved the methodology for their work and I think the tone and atmosphere of the meeting was very encouraging," Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov said. "This is not easy and it's no wonder that we call this a historic breakthrough." __ Follow Costas Kantouris at http://www.twitter.com/CostasKantouris GENEVA (AP) - Unlike other countries, Switzerland regularly gives its voters a direct say on issues large and small, and sometimes outlandish or quirky. Sunday's referendum on whether to subsidize farmers who don't de-horn their cows and goats might qualify among the latter. To get a referendum on the ballot requires lining up 100,000 signatures, and such votes can happen several times a year. Some proposals are the work of activist groups that seek to raise awareness, even if victory eludes them. Here's a look at some other eyebrow-raising and unusual referendums in Switzerland's recent history: GOING FOR GOLD In November 2014, more than three-fourths of voters rejected a proposal to require the Swiss central bank to hold a fifth of reserves in gold. FILE - In this Oct. 19, 2009 file photo cows_some with some without horns_stand in snow, at 1245 meters above sea level in Gaebris, Appenzell, Switzerland. Swiss will decide on Sunday whether to ban farmers from removing cow horns. (Ennio Leanza/Keystone via AP) That would have forced the Swiss National Bank to buy massive amounts of gold within five years - likely causing its global price to jump. ECOPOP That same month, the "Ecopop" initiative sought to limit immigration to 0.2 percent of the total Swiss population of about 8 million - about 16,000 immigrants a year, or about one-fifth of the annual inflow at that time. It also sought to force Switzerland to devote a large chunk of its foreign aid to programs aimed at reducing population growth in poor countries. That too was handily rejected by nearly three-quarters of voters. HANDOUTS FOR ALL In June 2016, voters decided on a proposal to ensure that all Swiss receive an "unconditional basic income" - guaranteed by the state. Experts estimated that a minimum of 2,500 Swiss francs ($2,560) per month was needed for an individual to make ends meet in wealthy Switzerland, where private-sector health insurance is required by law, and the cost of living is sky-high. Critics warned that the policy would explode the state budget, and they won: more than three-fourths of voters rejected the idea. Proponents acknowledged the idea was perhaps ahead of its time, and said they still got some momentum for a movement that could gain steam as robots and automation displaces human workers in the digital age. ANIMAL ADVOCATES In 2010, voters turned their paws down to a proposal to appoint special lawyers for animals that were abused by humans - extending nationwide a system in place in the largest Swiss city, Zurich. Proponents said it would have guaranteed representation for abused animals in court, and proper punishment for animal abusers. Foes cited cost concerns and already-tough Swiss laws on the matter. ENOUGH OF DEMOCRACY ALREADY! In 2012, voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to hold more even more referendums - specifically about international treaties. A nationalist group who pushed the idea wanted voters to have an automatic say each time the government signed an important international agreement - especially with the European Union. Three fourths of voters rejected that one, too. TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) - The mayor of Tijuana has declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and said Friday he was asking the United Nations for aid to deal with the approximately 5,000 Central American migrants, most of whom were camped out inside a sports complex. The comments by Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum came as city officials and volunteers worked together to assist the 4,976 men, women and children who had arrived after more than a month on the road. The Trump administration has spent weeks lambasting the caravan, which it said was filled with criminals, gang members and even - it insinuated at one point without any proof - terrorists. Manuel Figueroa, who leads the city's social services department, said Tijuana was bringing in portable toilets and showers, as well as shampoo and soap. It wasn't enough. "Because of the absence, the apathy and the abandonment of the federal government, we are having to turn to international institutions like the U.N.," Figueroa said. Rene Vazquez, 60, a Tijuana resident who was volunteering at the stadium, said Mexico's federal government ignored the problem by allowing the caravan to cross the country without stopping. Now the city of 1.6 million is stuck with the fallout. A man talks on his mobile phone as he looks across the border structure, in Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. The mayor of Tijuana has declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and says that he has asked the United Nations for aid to deal with the approximately 5,000 Central American migrants who have arrived in the city. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) "I don't have anything against the migrants, they were the most deceived, but this is affecting us all," Vazquez said. Gastelum vowed not to commit the city's public resources to dealing with the situation. On Thursday, his government issued a statement saying that it was requesting help from the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Vazquez, who plays on a soccer team that uses the sports complex, said Mexico should step up now and process humanitarian visas for the group so they can start looking for work. Meanwhile, since his soccer team can no longer practice at the complex, he was spending time passing out donated pizzas and roasted chicken to the migrants. The migrant caravan that left Honduras in mid-October was mostly well received by the towns it passed through along the way to the border. Even cities with few resources made sure the migrants had food and a place to rest. But in those places, the caravan stayed at most two nights - with the exception of Mexico City. In Tijuana, many of the migrants who are fleeing violence and poverty are seeking asylum in the United States and face the prospect of spending months in the border city before they have the opportunity to speak with a U.S. official. Gastelum said Friday that the Mexican government has talked about sending 20 tons of resources to Tijuana to help but that three-fourths consisted of materials to reinforce the border and only 5 tons were for the migrants. The mayor also criticized the federal government for not taking more seriously President Donald Trump's threat Thursday to shut down the border if his administration determined Mexico had lost "control" of the situation in Tijuana. "That's serious," he said. The migrants also were receiving support from local churches, private citizens who have been providing food, as well as various agencies of the Baja California state government, which says it identified 7,000 job openings for those who qualify. Adelaida Gonzalez, 37, of Guatemala City arrived in Tijuana three days ago and was having a hard time adjusting. She was tired of sleeping on a blanket on a dirt field, of waiting 30 minutes to go to the bathroom and again to get food and didn't know how much more she could take. "We would not have risked coming if we had known it was going to be this hard," said Gonzales, who left Guatemala with her 15-year-old son and her neighbor. She said she was considering accepting Mexico's offer to stay and work in Chiapas as a refugee. Some of the migrants staged a small demonstration at the city's Chaparral border crossing Thursday, and a few dozen spent the night there. Police cordoned off the streets around the crossing tangling traffic, but pedestrian traffic across the border continued uninterrupted Friday. Alicia Ramirez, 65, a Tijuana businesswoman, said she had been worried she wouldn't be able to make her annual Black Friday crossing to do her Christmas shopping, but had no trouble walking into California. About a dozen Mexican police stood by the crossing carrying plastic shields. Still, the threat of a border closure kept her daughters in Los Angeles from coming to see her for the holidays. "My daughters were worried, so they decided not to come," she said. __ AP writer Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed to this report. A young man arrives at a migrant shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. The mayor of Tijuana has declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and says that he has asked the United Nations for aid to deal with the approximately 5,000 Central American migrants who have arrived in the city. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) Street vendors stand at the U.S.-Mexico border structure in Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. The mayor of Tijuana has declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and says that he has asked the United Nations for aid to deal with the approximately 5,000 Central American migrants who have arrived in the city. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) Jonathan Torres, 11, stands next to his father after waking up early in the morning as Mexican riot police make their way to the Chaparral border crossing, in Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. The mayor of Tijuana has declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and says that he has asked the United Nations for aid to deal with the approximately 5,000 Central American migrants who have arrived in the city.(AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) Pedestrians cross the Chaparral border to the U.S. as migrants, foreground, begin to gather nearby, in Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. The mayor of Tijuana has declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and says that he has asked the United Nations for aid to deal with the approximately 5,000 Central American migrants who have arrived in the city. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) Migrants sleep under a bridge at the Chaparral border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. The mayor of Tijuana has declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and says that he has asked the United Nations for aid to deal with the approximately 5,000 Central American migrants who have arrived in the city. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) Migrants sleep on a street near the Chaparral border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. The mayor of Tijuana has declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and says that he has asked the United Nations for aid to deal with the approximately 5,000 Central American migrants who have arrived in the city. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) A migrant sits wrapped in a blanket at the Chaparral border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico, Friday early morning, Nov. 23, 2018. The mayor of Tijuana has declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and says that he has asked the United Nations for aid to deal with the approximately 5,000 Central American migrants who have arrived in the city. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) Steven Aguila, 2, from El Salvador, plays with a toy car at the Chaparral border crossing, in Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. The mayor of Tijuana has declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and says that he has asked the United Nations for aid to deal with the approximately 5,000 Central American migrants who have arrived in the city. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) PARIS (AP) - A French priest has been handed preliminary charges of raping minors in the latest blow to the Catholic Church in France. The regional prosecutor's office said the Rev. Robert Bonan was arrested Tuesday in the town of Lautenbach near the German border. The charges were based on multiple complaints, some dating to the 1980s. His archbishop, Monsignor Luc Ravel, called it a "disaster for humanity." In a diocese statement Friday, he praised those "who came forward, in great suffering." He promised the church would help seek justice for these "terrifying crimes" and urged other victims of priest abuse to step forward. Another French priest was sentenced to two years in prison this week for sexual abusing multiple children while his former bishop was convicted for failing to report the crimes. NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Congo's two leading opposition parties announced Friday they are joining forces for a run at the presidency after withdrawing from a wider pact to support a single contender against President Joseph Kabila's chosen candidate. Felix Tshisekedi with Congo's most prominent opposition party said he will represent his party as well as that of Vital Kamerhe with one month left before the long-delayed Dec. 23 vote in the mineral-rich Central African nation. This could be the country's first peaceful, democratic transfer of power. Last week saw the swift collapse of a deal in which Congo's major opposition parties had agreed to back legislator Martin Fayulu Madidi, significantly weakening efforts to defeat ruling party candidate Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary. Congo's election was meant to take place in late 2016. While Kabila this year said he would step aside, the opposition fears he will assert power behind the scenes if Shadary wins. Tshisekedi, son of the late opposition icon Etienne Tshisekedi, on Friday urged other opposition candidates to "join hands so we can win this election." The announcement means a three-way contest with Kabila's preferred candidate, the new Tshisekedi alliance and Fayulu, who has had the support of two opposition leaders barred by Congo's government from running: former vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba and Moise Katumbi, former governor of the copper-rich Katanga region. Felix Tshisekedi, right, of Congo's Union for Democracy and Social Progress opposition party, is congratulated by Vital Kamerhe, left, of Congo's Union for the Congolese Nation opposition party, after being endorsed Kamerhe at a press conference in Nairobi, Kenya Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Congo's two leading opposition parties announced Friday they are joining forces for a run at the presidency after withdrawing from a wider pact to support a single contender to take on President Joseph Kabila's chosen candidate. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis) The earlier announcement of Fayulu's candidacy prompted uproar among supporters of Tshisekedi's Union for Democracy and Social Progress party, prompting some to set tires ablaze in the capital, Kinshasa. Within 24 hours, Tshisekedi and Kamerhe, who came third in the 2011 presidential election, withdrew from the deal. The opposition parties have spent months trying to unify behind a candidate in an election that has caused significant concern in the international community about the possibility of a rigged vote. Congo has dismissed concerns about its groundbreaking use of voting machines that critics say could pose a technical nightmare in a sprawling nation of more than 40 million voters where infrastructure is dodgy and dozens of rebel groups are active. Kabila has been in power since 2001 and his mandate expired in late 2016. But he has remained in office while organizing elections, a move his critics say was aimed at maintaining his grip on power. The Common Front for Congo political platform created by Kabila for the election called Friday's announcement a "non-event." "With the opposition it is always the same thing, one does not know what they really want," lawmaker Pius Muabilu, a member of the campaign team, told The Associated Press. "The people will decide, and they know who loves the country and who does not." ___ Associated Press writers Saleh Mwanamilongo in Kinshasa, Congo and Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda contributed. ___ Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa Felix Tshisekedi, right, of Congo's Union for Democracy and Social Progress opposition party, shakes hands with Vital Kamerhe of Congo's Union for the Congolese Nation opposition party, after being endorsed Kamerhe at a press conference in Nairobi, Kenya Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Congo's two leading opposition parties announced Friday they are joining forces for a run at the presidency after withdrawing from a wider pact to support a single contender to take on President Joseph Kabila's chosen candidate. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis) Felix Tshisekedi, right, of Congo's Union for Democracy and Social Progress opposition party, stands with Vital Kamerhe, left, of Congo's Union for the Congolese Nation opposition party, after being endorsed Kamerhe at a press conference in Nairobi, Kenya Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Congo's two leading opposition parties announced Friday they are joining forces for a run at the presidency after withdrawing from a wider pact to support a single contender to take on President Joseph Kabila's chosen candidate. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis) Felix Tshisekedi, right, of Congo's Union for Democracy and Social Progress opposition party, hugs Vital Kamerhe, left, of Congo's Union for the Congolese Nation opposition party, after being endorsed Kamerhe at a press conference in Nairobi, Kenya Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Congo's two leading opposition parties announced Friday they are joining forces for a run at the presidency after withdrawing from a wider pact to support a single contender to take on President Joseph Kabila's chosen candidate. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis) Felix Tshisekedi, right, of Congo's Union for Democracy and Social Progress opposition party, stands with Vital Kamerhe, left, of Congo's Union for the Congolese Nation opposition party, after being endorsed Kamerhe at a press conference in Nairobi, Kenya Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Congo's two leading opposition parties announced Friday they are joining forces for a run at the presidency after withdrawing from a wider pact to support a single contender to take on President Joseph Kabila's chosen candidate. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis) Felix Tshisekedi, center, of Congo's Union for Democracy and Social Progress opposition party, walks with Vital Kamerhe, 2nd right, of Congo's Union for the Congolese Nation opposition party, before being endorsed Kamerhe at a press conference in Nairobi, Kenya Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Congo's two leading opposition parties announced Friday they are joining forces for a run at the presidency after withdrawing from a wider pact to support a single contender to take on President Joseph Kabila's chosen candidate. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis) Felix Tshisekedi, center, of Congo's Union for Democracy and Social Progress opposition party, walks with Vital Kamerhe, center-right, of Congo's Union for the Congolese Nation opposition party, before being endorsed Kamerhe at a press conference in Nairobi, Kenya Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Congo's two leading opposition parties announced Friday they are joining forces for a run at the presidency after withdrawing from a wider pact to support a single contender to take on President Joseph Kabila's chosen candidate. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis) PARIS (AP) - The Latest on the choice of host city for the 2025 World Expo (all times local): 5 p.m. Japan's Osaka has won the right to host the 2025 World Expo, beating out cities in Russia and Azerbaijan for an event expected to draw millions of visitors. The winner was chosen by the 170 member states of the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions on Friday. Past world's fairs brought the world such wonders as the Eiffel Tower, the Ferris Wheel and Seattle's Space Needle. Leaders in Osaka, Japan's third-largest city, are hoping the expo will revitalize a city that has lost much of its luster to Tokyo. Osaka proposed an expo on a man-made island on the theme of "Society 5.0" and how to leverage robotics and artificial intelligence for the public good. Members of Japanese delegation with Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura, second right, Japan's Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko, center, and Osaka Gov. Ichiro Matsui second left, arrives at the 164th General Assembly of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) in Paris, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Cities in Russia, Japan and Azerbaijan are about to find out whether they can host the 2025 World Expo, an event expected to draw millions of visitors and showcase the local economy and culture. The 170 member states of the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions are voting Friday on whether to hand the expo to Yekaterinburg, Osaka or Baku. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena) ___ 8 a.m. Cities in Russia, Japan and Azerbaijan are about to find out which one of them gets to host the 2025 World Expo, an event expected to draw millions of visitors and showcase the local economy and culture. World Expos are held every five years; Milan hosted the last one in 2015, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is set to host the next one in 2020. Cities also hold specialized exhibitions in the interim years. No U.S. city has hosted a world's fair since the 1980s. They can last up to six months and cost millions of dollars to host, but can help put a city on the global map by bringing in international visitors and attention. Japan's Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko, delivers a speech at the164th General Assembly of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) in Paris, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. Cities in Russia, Japan and Azerbaijan are about to find out whether they can host the 2025 World Expo, an event expected to draw millions of visitors and showcase the local economy and culture. The 170 member states of the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions are voting Friday on whether to hand the expo to Yekaterinburg, Osaka or Baku. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena) JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - A conservative writer and associate of Trump confidant Roger Stone said Friday that he is in plea talks with special counsel Robert Mueller's team. Jerome Corsi told The Associated Press he has been negotiating a potential plea but declined to comment further. He said on a YouTube show earlier this month that he expected to be charged with lying to federal investigators, though he said at the time that he was innocent of wrongdoing. Mueller's team questioned Corsi as part of an investigation into Stone's connections with WikiLeaks. American intelligence agencies have assessed that Russia was the source of hacked material released by WikiLeaks during the 2016 election that damaged Hillary Clinton's campaign. Mueller's office is trying to determine whether Stone and other associates of President Donald Trump had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks' plans. The confirmation of plea talks - first reported by The Washington Post - comes as Mueller's team has just received fresh information from Trump personally and as federal prosecutors in Virginia recently inadvertently disclosed the existence of sealed charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. It's unclear if the charges against Assange are related to Mueller's investigation, but WikiLeaks was singled out in an indictment last summer against a group of Russian intelligence officers accused of carrying out the wide-ranging hack of Clinton's campaign and other Democratic organizations. It's also not known if any plea by Corsi signals a new raft of charges by the special counsel or just that investigators are aggressively pursuing cases against people they believe made false statements to investigators. Mueller has brought such cases against four others, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn. FILE - In this Oct. 7, 2008, file photo, Jerome Corsi, right, arrives at the immigration department in Nairobi, Kenya. Corsi, a conservative writer and associate of President Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone says he is in plea talks with special counsel Robert Mueller's team. Jerome Corsi told The Associated Press on Friday, Nov. 23, 2018, that he has been negotiating a potential plea but declined to comment further. (AP Photo) ** KENYA OUT ** In a brief phone call with the AP, Corsi declined to elaborate on the details of any plea deal or say if a court hearing had been set. Corsi, the former Washington bureau chief of the conspiracy theory outlet InfoWars, has said he cooperated with the probe for about two months after he received a subpoena in August. As part of that cooperation, he turned over two computers and a cell phone and provided the FBI access to his email accounts and tweets. But he said earlier this month that talks with investigators recently had "blown up." "I fully anticipate that in the next few days, I will be indicted by Mueller," he said. The spokesman for the special counsel, Peter Carr, declined comment on Friday. Shortly after his YouTube show appearance, Corsi broke off a scheduled interview with NBC News and declined any other media interviews. His comments Friday were the first since then. Stone has denied being a conduit for WikiLeaks, which published thousands of emails stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta in the weeks before the election. Stone, who also has said he is prepared to be indicted, said earlier this month that he "had no advanced notice of the source or content or the exact timing of the release of the WikiLeaks disclosures." He told AP in a separate statement Friday, "It is clear from his recent videos and his recent interviews that my friend Dr. Corsi has been under a tremendous amount of pressure and it is beginning to affect him profoundly. He has stated publicly that he is being asked over and over to say things he simply does not believe occurred." ___ Follow Chad Day on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChadSDay BANGKOK (AP) All the usual rituals of international summits were there: the group photos, the gala dinners, the noticeably vibrant shirts leaders force themselves into. But eclipsing all of that at Asia's two big meetings was some unusually forthright criticism that exposed deepening divisions rattling the region. Front and center was the rivalry between the U.S. and China. The two countries are locked in a widening trade war and their representatives used the summits to exchange barbs and maneuver to expand their influence. Competition between the great powers is not new to the region. But over decades of war, financial crises and other setbacks, countries across Asia and the Pacific Rim have used these annual meetings to talk through such problems, usually opting to sideline disagreements in a show of unity. Consensus, not conflict, is typically the norm. This year is different. The clash between the world's two biggest economies is shaking the bedrock of regional amity and leaving some countries worried they will be forced to choose between Beijing and Washington. It also may bode poorly for compromise between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping when they meet this month at the Group of 20 gathering in Argentina. The antagonisms kicked off last week at a Southeast Asian summit in Singapore, where U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, standing in for Trump, declared that "empire and aggression have no place" in the region, a clear reference to Chinese expansion in the disputed South China Sea. The discord carried over to the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Papua New Guinea, where leaders failed for the first time in nearly 30 years of such gatherings to endorse a final joint statement. China apparently pushed back hard against U.S. demands for strong language against unfair trade practices. Pence and Chinese leaders sparred at both summits, with the vice president describing China's militarization and expansion in the South China Sea as "illegal and dangerous." He accused Beijing of threatening the sovereignty of many nations and said it "endangers the prosperity of the world." Chinese Premier Li Keqiang smacked back, urging fellow leaders to send a positive message to markets ruffled by the trade war, which has seen both sides imposing punitive tariffs on billions of dollars of each other's exports and has the potential to unravel supply chains across the globe. The acrimony may be somewhat less apparent at the G-20 gathering in Buenos Aeries, which will include leaders from across the globe and the focus will be global, not regional. But the strains between the U.S. and China were painful enough in Singapore that the gathering's urbane host, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, appealed for a bit less candor and greater camaraderie, saying it would be easier if everybody was "on the same side." Across Asia, countries worry they will have to "choose one or the other," he said. "I hope it does not happen soon." Most Asian nations are loath to make such a choice because they benefit from the rivalry, whether economically, militarily or both. For most, China is their largest trading partner. But they are wary of China's military might and see the U.S. and its presence in the region as a welcome counterbalance. China's footprint was everywhere in the Papuan capital, Port Moresby, from a showpiece boulevard and international convention center built with Chinese help to bus stop shelters sporting "China Aid" plaques. A huge billboard showed Xi gazing beneficently beside Papua New Guinea's leader. At that meeting, Pence took aim at China's global infrastructure drive, known as the "Belt and Road Initiative," suggesting that Beijing was drowning its partners in debt and infringing on their sovereignty. He also announced the U.S. would join ally Australia's plan to develop a naval base in Papua New Guinea. That followed a hush-hush working level meeting in Singapore of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which involves the U.S., Japan, Australia and India and is viewed as a challenge to China's expanding military reach. Xi, the Chinese president, suggested the U.S. was bending the rules of global institutions set up after World War II, such as the World Trade Organization, and using them for "selfish agendas." This year's friction wasn't confined to jousting between the U.S. and China. In Singapore, Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who usually is not put on the spot by the other leaders, appeared grim and weary after she was sharply criticized by Pence and by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed over the Buddhist majority-nation's treatment of ethnic Muslim Rohingya. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled killings and other violence in Myanmar and are crowded in dire conditions in camps in Bangladesh. True to form, China saw an opportunity and responded to the criticism by having Li reach out and reaffirm Beijing's support for Myanmar's efforts to maintain domestic stability. As China and the U.S. maneuver for influence across a region stretching from India to the tip of South America, the biggest worry is that the jousting could escalate into a full-blown confrontation as Chinese and U.S. warships and aircraft prowl the region. A near collision of a Chinese destroyer and the USS Decatur near a disputed reef in the South China Sea in late September added to those concerns. Still, the jostling for supremacy comes with mixed signals. The regional summitry over, two U.S. B-52 bombers on Monday flew over the South China Sea in what U.S. Pacific Air Forces said was a "routine training mission." But on Wednesday, the aircraft carrier USS Reagan docked in Hong Kong in what was viewed as a friendly gesture it required Beijing's approval. CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - Mars has a nasty habit of living up to its mythological name and besting Earth when it comes to accepting visitors. NASA's InSight is the latest spacecraft to come calling, with every intent of landing and digging deeper into the planet than anything that's come before. The lander arrives at Mars on Monday following a six-month journey. "We've had a number of successful landings in a row now. But you never know what Mars will throw at you," said Rob Grover, lead engineer for the landing team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Landing on Mars is always risky, Grover and other experts stress at every opportunity. "Our job on the landing team is to be paranoid about what could go wrong and make sure that we're doing everything we can to make sure things go right," he said, The numbers back him up. Only about 40 percent of all missions to Mars - named after the Roman god of war - have succeeded. FILE - This undated photo shows NASA's Viking lander in a Mars simulation laboratory. The two cylinders on the top of the Lander are survey cameras, and below the right hand camera is one of 3 rocket motors used during the final soft landing on Mars. Viking 1 was launched on Aug. 20, 1975 and arrived at Mars on June 19, 1976. Viking 2 was launched Sept. 9, 1975 and entered Mars orbit on Aug. 7, 1976. The twin Vikings were the first successful landers on Mars from planet Earth. (AP Photo) "Going to Mars is really, really hard," NASA's top science mission official, Thomas Zurbuchen, told reporters earlier this week. "As humanity, the explorers all over the world, we're batting about 50 percent - or less." The United States is the only country to successfully operate a spacecraft on the Martian surface. InSight represents NASA's ninth attempt to put a spacecraft on Mars; only one effort failed. The last one - NASA's Curiosity rover - is still on the move after six years, with more than 12 miles (20 kilometers) on its odometer. The space agency's older, smaller Opportunity was roaming around up there until June, when a global dust storm knocked it out of service. Flight controllers haven't given up hope yet that it will be revived. Humanity's nearly 60-year history of trying to get to Mars includes attempts to fly past the red planet for picture-taking without stopping, as well as the vastly more complicated efforts to put spacecraft into orbit around the red planet and to actually land. NASA's Mariner 4 performed the first successfully flyby of the red planet in 1965, sending back 21 photos. Mariner 9 made it into orbit around Mars and beamed back more than 7,000 photos. And NASA's Vikings 1 and 2 not only put spacecraft into orbit around Mars in 1976, but on the surface, too. The twin Vikings were the first successful landers on Mars from planet Earth. The 1990s weren't as kind for NASA. A humiliating English-metric conversion screw-up doomed the Mars Observer in 1993. Another U.S. orbiter later was lost, as well as a lander and two accompanying probes meant to penetrate the surface. Despite decades of trying, Russia, in particular, has had lousy luck at Mars. The then Soviet Union was the first to attempt a flyby of Mars, in 1960. The spacecraft never reached Earth orbit. After more launch failures and flight mishaps, the Soviets finally got a pair of spacecraft into Mars orbit in 1971 and got back real data. But the companion landers were a total bust. And so it's gone for the Soviets/Russians through their most recent attempt with China in 2011. The daunting goal was to land a spacecraft on Mars' moon Phobos to collect and return samples, and to put a second spacecraft into orbit around Mars. Neither made it out of Earth orbit. Europe also has been snake-bitten at Mars, as has Japan. While the European Space Agency has satellites working around Mars, both of its landing attempts have flopped. Just two years ago, its lander hit the surface so fast, it dug out a crater. Japan's sole Mars spacecraft, launched in 1998, didn't make it into orbit. India, meanwhile, has been operating a satellite around Mars for four years, its first and only shot at the red planet. There's a heavy European presence on NASA's InSight. Germany is in charge of the mechanical mole that's designed to burrow 16 feet (5 meters) into the Martian surface to take underground heat measurements, while France directs the lander's quake-monitoring seismometer. On the surface, Curiosity is the only thing operating on Mars. Currently in orbit: U.S. Odyssey since 2001, Europe's Mars Express (2003), U.S. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2006), U.S. Maven (2014), India's Mangalyaan orbiter (2014) and Europe's Trace Gas Orbiter (2016). ___ For AP's complete coverage of the Mars landing: https://apnews.com/MarsLanding ___ 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. This is the twelfth picture in a series of twenty-two that comprise the three-dimensional panorama of the planet Mars as seen from the Mars Pathfinder in this image released by NASA on Friday, July 11, 1997. NASA's InSight arrives at Mars on Monday, Nov. 26 following a six-month journey. (AP Photo/JPL) FILE - This combination of Thursday, July 31, 1997 color-enhanced images made available by NASA shows the sunrise on the planet Mars, taken by the Mars Pathfinder. (AP Photo/NASA TV) FILE - In this Feb. 4, 2004 file photo, Edward Tunstel Jr., left, a mobility engineer, briefs a reporter about the capability of the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity using this full-scale working version, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif. Mars has a nasty habit of living up to its mythological name and besting Earth when it comes to accepting visitors. NASA's InSight is the latest spacecraft to come calling, with every intent of landing and digging deeper into the planet than anything that's come before. The lander arrives at Mars on Monday, Nov. 26 following a six-month journey.(AP Photo/Ric Francis, File) FILE - In this June 26, 2007 file photo, a technician makes checks on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/Peter Cosgrove, File) FILE - In this Thursday, Aug. 2, 2012 file photo, Adam Steltzner, Mars Science Laboratory's entry, descent and landing phase leader at JPL uses a scale model to explain the process for the Curiosity rover during news briefing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. NASA's Curiosity rover is still on the move after six years, with more than 12 miles (20 kilometers) on its odometer. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File) FILE - This Sunday, Aug. 5, 2012 photo made available by NASA shows the Curiosity rover, bottom, and its parachute descending to the surface from the vantage point of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. NASA's Curiosity rover is still on the move after six years, with more than 12 miles (20 kilometers) on its odometer. (AP Photo/NASA) This composite image made from a series of June 15, 2018 photos shows a self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover in the Gale Crater. The rover's arm which held the camera was positioned out of each of the dozens of shots which make up the mosaic. A dust storm has reduced sunlight and visibility at the rover's location. (NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP) FILE - This composite image released by NASA shows a panoramic view of Mount Sharp, made from dozens of photos by NASA's Curiosity rover. (NASA via AP, File) HAVANA (AP) - A first group of Cuban doctors who treated impoverished patients in Brazil returned to Havana on Friday as both countries end a program that saw thousands of doctors dispatched to underserved areas. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel greeted 211 doctors who had worked in the South American country in exchange for hundreds of millions in badly needed hard currency given to the government. They were among the more than 8,000 doctors that Cuba has recalled after rejecting conditions imposed by far-right Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, who stipulated that doctors would need to directly receive their salaries from Brazil and be allowed to bring their families with them during their assignments, in addition to other conditions. The Cuban government generally keeps most of the salaries of state employees working abroad as part of the socialist state's "international missions." One of the doctors who returned from tending to patients along the Brazilian-Argentine border was 33-year-old Anisley de Arguelles. "It's hard. I'm returning to my house and my homeland, but my heart is tight because I already had a connection with those people," she told The Associated Press as she stood next to the Cuban president. "We were doing very beautiful work that unfortunately will remain incomplete." Cuban doctors assemble to meet Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel after landing in Havana, Cuba, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. The first group of departing Cuban doctors left Brazil Friday after Cuba recalled more than 8,000 doctors rather than meet conditions imposed by Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, who said the "More Doctors" program could continue only if doctors' pay isn't channeled through the Cuban government and if they could bring their families. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan) Some 40 flights are expected to bring back the Cuban doctors in upcoming days. Overall, roughly 20,000 doctors tended to nearly 113 million patients as part of the "Mas Medicos," or "More Doctors," program that began five years ago under leftist Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. Cuba announced last week that it was cancelling the program overseen by the Pan American Health Organization. Cuba still has similar missions in 67 other countries, but "Mas Medicos" in Brazil was considered one of the largest and most important, linking the cash-strapped island wit South America's largest economy. The end of the program signals a deterioration in relations between both countries and comes at a bad time for communist Cuba, which is facing its third year of slow growth. Productivity is low in nearly every government industry on the island, tourism has slowed under the Trump administration and key ally Venezuela has cut back on subsidized oil and other aid. Bolsonaro is offering asylum to Cuban doctors wishing to stay in Brazil and has called their work "slave labor." He has also questioned their professional backgrounds. Those comments riled 32-year-old doctor Aliuska Rodriguez, who worked in the Brazilian town of Minas Gerais for two years but returned to Cuba on Friday. "I don't consider myself a slave," she said. "We signed a contract before leaving." All Cuban doctors work for the state and virtually all receive salaries that are well below $100 a month, in addition to food and service subsidies. Practicing doctors and doctors with particular specialties are not allowed to leave Cuba without government permission, a control that was lifted for other Cubans five years ago. Participants in the program are also limited from bringing relatives with them, which critics say is designed to prevent doctors from emigrating. Many doctors hugged each other when they arrived in Havana on Friday and sang the national hymn as they were greeted by officials including Bruno Rodriguez, the minister of foreign affairs, and Jose Angel Portal, the health minister. "Cuban doctors have always been on the side of duty, even under the most complicated of circumstances," Portal said as he greeted them. Cuba's president said the doctors were performing a humanitarian duty that could not be compensated with all the money in the world. "The response we have given (Bolsonaro) is a worthy one, a courageous one that upholds the principles of the Cuban revolution," Diaz-Canel told doctors as they arrived. "It was impossible for a government with a huge neoliberal arrogance to understand that people like you go to a country to offer health services, to truly be doctors out of duty." Cuban doctors queue at immigration upon their return to Havana, Cuba, Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. The first group of departing Cuban doctors left Brazil Friday after Cuba recalled more than 8,000 doctors rather than meet conditions imposed by Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, who said the "More Doctors" program could continue only if doctors' pay isn't channeled through the Cuban government and if they could bring their families. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan) Cuban doctors holding Brazilian and Cuban flags take a selfie before they and other Cuban physicians return home, at the airport in Brasilia, Brazil, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Cuba announced it is recalling the physicians in the "More Doctors" program after Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro said the program could continue only if doctors get their full pay directly rather from the Cuban government and are able to bring their families with them. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) Cuban doctors wait to fly home at the airport in Brasilia, Brazil, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Cuba announced it is recalling the physicians in the "More Doctors" program after Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro said the program could continue only if doctors get their full pay directly rather from the Cuban government and are able to bring their families with them. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) SAO PAULO (AP) - Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro has appointed an ultraconservative philosopher to serve as education minister, apparently in a bow to his evangelical Christian backers. The selection of Ricardo Velez Rodriguez was announced Thursday night after the far-right leader's core backers criticized a more moderate candidate for the job. Rodriguez previously taught in military academies and currently teaches at the Federal University of Ouro Preto. He has written more than 30 books, mostly with anti-left outlooks. The philosopher said in a letter published on Friday that he wants to work "in the context of preservation of values that are dear to the Brazilian society, which is, in essence, conservative and against experiences that intend to ignore traditional values connected to the preservation of the family and the humanist morality." Colombian-born Rodriguez has written on his blog that Brazilians should "remember and celebrate" the 1964 military coup that put the South American country in a military dictatorship until 1985. He also has also said that corruption would not be endemic in Brazil if a monarchy had been put in place. Bolsonaro, who takes office on Jan. 1, has said he would like to promote a law forbidding "Marxist indoctrination" and gender-biased teachings at public schools. Rodriguez has expressed support for such a move, unlike another candidate being considered for the job: Mozart Ramos, a former state education secretary. FILE - In this Nov. 13, 2018 file photo, Brazil's President-elect Jair Bolsonaro meets with ministers from the Supreme Labor Court in Brasilia, Brazil. Bolsonaro, who takes office on Jan. 1, 2019, has appointed an ultra-conservative philosopher to serve as education minister, apparently bowing to pressure from his evangelical Christian backers. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File) Critics say such an initiative would roll back freedom of expression. But Bolsonaro's religious base insists public school teachers are trying to influence pupils against conservative values. Congressman Sostenes Cavalcanti, one of the leaders of the powerful evangelical caucus in Brazil's Congress, visited Bolsonaro's team as soon as Ramos' name was floated by allies of Bolsonaro as a possible education pick. "Our lawmakers reject that, and they reject it very much," said Cavalcanti, who is also a pastor. "Our president can get any other cabinet position wrong if he likes. But not the education ministry, that is of ideological importance for us." WASHINGTON (AP) - As California's catastrophic wildfires recede and people rebuild after two hurricanes, a massive new federal report warns that these types of disasters are worsening in the United States because of global warming. The White House report quietly issued Friday also frequently contradicts President Donald Trump. The National Climate Assessment was written long before the deadly fires in California this month and before Hurricanes Florence and Michael raked the East Coast and Florida. It says warming-charged extremes "have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration." The report notes the last few years have smashed U.S. records for damaging weather, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015. The recent Northern California wildfires can be attributed to climate change, but there was less of a connection to those in Southern California, said co-author William Hohenstein of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "A warm, dry climate has increased the areas burned over the last 20 years," he said at a press conference Friday. The report is mandated by law every few years and is based on more than 1,000 previous research studies. It details how global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas is hurting each region of the United States and how it impacts different sectors of the economy, including energy and agriculture. "Climate change is transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us," the report says. FILE - In this Nov. 9, 2018 file photo, firefighter Jose Corona sprays water as flames from the Camp Fire consume a home in Magalia, Calif. A massive new federal report warns that extreme weather disasters, like California's wildfires and 2018's hurricanes, are worsening in the United States. The White House report quietly issued Friday, Nov. 23 also frequently contradicts President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File) That includes worsening air pollution causing heart and lung problems, more diseases from insects, the potential for a jump in deaths during heat waves, and nastier allergies. "Annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century - more than the current gross domestic product (GDP) of many U.S. states," the report says. It'll be especially costly on the nation's coasts because of rising seas and severe storm surges, which will lower property values. And in some areas, such as parts of Alaska and Louisiana, coastal flooding will likely force people to relocate. "We are seeing the things we said would be happening, happen now in real life," said another co-author Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University. "As a climate scientist it is almost surreal." And Donald Wuebbles, a co-author from University of Illinois climate scientist, said, "We're going to continue to see severe weather events get stronger and more intense." What makes the report different from others is that it focuses on the United States, then goes more local and granular. "All climate change is local," said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Richard Alley, who wasn't part of the report but praised it. While scientists talk of average global temperatures, people feel extremes more, he said. "We live in our drought, our floods and our heat waves. That means we have to focus on us," he said. The Lower 48 states have warmed 1.8 degrees (1 degree Celsius) since 1900 with 1.2 degrees in the last few decades, according to the report. By the end of the century, the U.S. will be 3 to 12 degrees (1.6 to 6.6 degrees Celsius) hotter depending on how much greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere, the report warns. Outside scientists and officials from 13 federal agencies wrote the report, which was released on the afternoon following Thanksgiving. It was originally scheduled for December. The report often clashes with the president's past statements and tweets on the legitimacy of climate change science, how much of it is caused by humans, how cyclical it is and what's causing increases in recent wildfires. Trump tweeted this week about the cold weather hitting the East including: "Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?" Friday's report seemed to anticipate such comments, saying: "Over shorter timescales and smaller geographic regions, the influence of natural variability can be larger than the influence of human activity ... Over climate timescales of multiple decades, however, global temperature continues to steadily increase." Releasing the report on Black Friday "is a transparent attempt by the Trump Administration to bury this report and continue the campaign of not only denying but suppressing the best of climate science," said study co-author Andrew Light, an international policy expert at the World Resources Institute. During a press conference Friday, officials behind the report repeatedly declined to answer questions about the timing of its release and why it contradicts public statements from Trump. Report director David Reidmiller said questions about the timing were "relevant," but said what was in the report was more important. Trump, administration officials and elected Republicans frequently say they can't tell how much of climate change is caused by humans and how much is natural. Citing numerous studies, the report says more than 90 percent of the current warming is caused by humans. Without greenhouse gases, natural forces - such as changes in energy from the sun - would be slightly cooling Earth. "There are no credible alternative human or natural explanations supported by the observational evidence," the report says. ___ Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter: @borenbears . ___ 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. PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Thousands of demonstrators are clashing with police in Haiti's capital and demanding the ouster of President Jovenel Moise amid the sixth day of protests. Police on Friday fired tear gas at the crowd as people threw rocks, tried to loot stores and broke car windows in Port-au-Prince. One group hurled Molotov cocktails at a gas station, but the flames were quickly extinguished. At least 11 people have died in protests, including a man whose body was burning near a street barricade Friday morning. Another six people were killed Wednesday when a government car lost control. Schools and most government offices remain closed. Protesters accuse Moise of not investigating allegations of corruption in the previous administration over a Venezuelan subsidized energy program. Moise has said he will not resign. An armed civilian carries a weapon on during a shootout between rival gangs to take control of the Croix-des-Bossales market, on Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a main commercial artery, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. The fight for control of the market, where vendors pay the controlling gang regular payments, erupted amid days of protests and a strike against alleged government corruption. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) A demonstrator chants anti-government slogans during a protest demanding to know how Petro Caribe funds have been used by the current and past administrations, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sunday, Nov. 18, 2018. Much of the financial support to help Haiti rebuild after the 2010 earthquake comes from Venezuela's Petro Caribe fund, a 2005 pact that gives suppliers below-market financing for oil and is under the control of the central government. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) Police disperse the crowd with tear gas, away from the site where a car that careened out of control hit a group of persons in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. According to the police the car, that was set alight by protesters, lost a wheel when it lost control and killed six persons on the street. The deaths come as Haiti faces a fourth day of protests to demand that President Jovenel Moise resign for not investigating allegations of corruption in the previous government over Petrocaribe, a Venezuelan subsidized energy program. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) - The party of a radical Islamic cleric who disrupted daily life with rallies across Pakistan following the acquittal of a Christian woman in a blasphemy case says he has been arrested by police in the city of Lahore. In a statement, the Tehreek-e-Labbaik party said their leader, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, was arrested Friday. It also said police arrested scores of its supporters. The arrests came weeks after Rizvi's supporters held violent rallies against the Oct. 31 acquittal of Asia Bibi by the Supreme Court. Bibi had been on death row since 2010 on charges of insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad. It angered Rizvi and his supporters who rallied for three days. FILE - In this Nov. 24, 2017 file photo, the head of the Pakistani Tehreek-e-Labbaik radical religious party, Khadim Hussain Rizvi prays during a sit-in protest in Islamabad, Pakistan. The party of a radical Islamic cleric who disrupted daily life with rallies across Pakistan following the acquittal of a Christian woman in a blasphemy case says he has been arrested Friday, Nov. 23, 2018 by police in the city of Lahore. (AP Photo/B.K. Bangash, file) Rizvi ended the protest after authorities said Bibi would not leave Pakistan until a petition against her acquittal was reviewed. WASHINGTON (AP) - The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to issue an unusually quick ruling on the Pentagon's policy of restricting military service by transgender people. It's the fourth time in recent months the administration has sought to bypass lower courts that have blocked some of its more controversial proposals and push the high court, with a conservative majority, to weigh in quickly on a divisive issue. Earlier this month, the administration asked the high court to fast-track cases on the president's decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields young immigrants from deportation. Administration officials also recently asked the high court to intervene to stop a trial in a climate change lawsuit and in a lawsuit over the administration's decision to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 census. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a frequent target of criticism by President Donald Trump, is involved in three of the cases. Trump's recent salvo against the "Obama judge" who ruled against his asylum policy - not one of the issues currently before the Supreme Court - prompted Chief Justice John Roberts to fire back at the president for the first time for feeding perceptions of a biased judiciary. Joshua Matz, publisher of the liberal Take Care blog, said the timing of the administration's effort to get the Supreme Court involved in the issues at an early stage could hardly be worse for Roberts and other justices who have sought to dispel perceptions that the court is merely a political institution, especially since the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. At an especially sensitive moment for the Supreme Court, the Trump administration is "forcing it into a minefield that many justices would almost surely prefer to avoid," Matz said. The Supreme Court almost always waits to get involved in a case until both a trial and appeals court have ruled in it. Often, the justices wait until courts in different areas of the country have weighed in and come to different conclusions about the same legal question. So it's rare for the justices to intervene early as the Trump administration has been pressing them to do. One famous past example is when the Nixon administration went to court to try to prohibit the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. FILE - In this July 26, 2017, file photo, a supporter of LGBT rights holds up an "equality flag" on Capitol Hill in Washington, during an event held by Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass. in support of transgender members of the military. The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to fast-track cases on the president's decision to prevent certain transgender people from serving in the military. The administration asked the court on Nov. 23, 2018, to take up three cases on the issue. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File) In the immigration case, the administration told the high court it should step in and decide the fate of DACA ahead of an appeals court's ruling because the policy otherwise could be in place until the middle of 2020 before the justices might otherwise rule. The appeals court has since ruled, but the administration's request that the court hear the case stands. In the military case, the administration argued that the Supreme Court should step in before an appeals court rules because the case "involves an issue of imperative public importance: the authority of the U.S. military to determine who may serve in the Nation's armed forces." In a statement, Peter Renn, an attorney for Lambda Legal, which brought one of the challenges to the transgender military policy, called the Trump administration's action Friday a "highly unusual step" that is "wildly premature and inappropriate." The Pentagon initially lifted its ban on transgender troops serving openly in the military in 2016, under President Barack Obama's administration. But the Trump administration revisited that policy, with Trump ultimately issuing an order banning most transgender troops from serving in the military except under limited circumstances. Several lawsuits were filed over the administration's policy change, with lower courts all ruling against the Trump administration. Still ongoing in lower courts are the census and climate change cases. The Supreme Court for now has refused to block the climate change trial. In the census question case, the court has agreed to decide what kind of evidence a trial judge can consider and indefinitely put off questioning of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. But it rejected an administration request to delay the trial and allowed other depositions to take place. The court will hear arguments in the census question case in February. It's unclear when it will act on the administration's other requests. PARADISE, Calif. (AP) - The Latest on California wildfires (all times local): 2:45 p.m. Search teams have resumed looking for remains as rains let up in Paradise. A team from Orange County is among several teams conducting a second search of a mobile home park after a deadly wildfire torched part of Butte County in Northern California. Task force leader Craig Covey says his team is doing a second search because there are outstanding reports of missing people whose last known address was at the mobile home park. They look for clues that may indicate someone couldn't get out, such as a car in the driveway or a wheelchair ramp. Some workers comb through debris with shovels and rakes, while others lift back parts of burned houses to look for remains. National Urban Search & Rescue Response System Orange County CATF-5 team members take cover from the rain in Paradise, Calif., Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. High winds and heavy rains are temporarily halting the work of some search teams out looking for remains of people caught up in the deadly wildfire. The Camp Fire, which destroyed the historical mining town of Paradise, is the most deadly in state history, with 84 fatalities as of Friday, according to statistics from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. It's also the deadliest in the U.S. in a century. (AP Photo/Kathleen Ronayne) Search teams leave orange spray paint on asphalt to indicate an area has been searched, whether bodies were found and if a dog searched it. ___ 1:50 p.m. More residents in Southern California are going home after a deadly wildfire. Crews worked Friday to repair power, telephone and gas utilities following the 151-square-mile (391-square-kilometer) Woolsey Fire west of Los Angeles. About 1,100 residents are still under evacuation orders in Malibu and unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County, down from 250,000 at the height of the fire. Major roads were open but authorities urged the public to stay away. Southern California Edison said power had been restored to nearly 39,000 customers, leaving about 2,600 without electricity. The fire erupted Nov. 8 amid strong winds and burned through suburban communities and wilderness parklands to the ocean, leaving vast areas of blackened earth and many homes in ashes. Three people were found dead. Officials say 1,643 structures, most of them homes, were destroyed. ___ 1:35 p.m. The first winter storm to hit Northern California has dropped 2 to 4 inches of rain over the area scorched by a wildfire that killed at least 84 people. Craig Shoemaker of the National Weather Service says the rain has been steady, but forecasters expect the heaviest downpours in the leveled town of Paradise by Friday afternoon. Shoemaker says the rain is expected to subside by midnight, followed by light showers Saturday. The weather service issued a warning for possible flash flooding and debris flows from areas scarred by major fires in Northern California, including the fire in Paradise and surrounding communities. Two days of rain have helped nearly extinguish the blaze that ignited Nov. 8 and scorched 240 square miles (620 square kilometers). ___ 11:40 a.m. High winds and heavy rains are temporarily halting the work of some teams searching for remains in the aftermath of a deadly Northern California wildfire. Team leader Craig Covey said Friday that searchers in the town of Paradise and two nearby communities weren't instructed to stop but he's choosing to take a break for safety reasons. He says rain and wind are knocking over trees, raising the risk they could fall on search personnel. Covey says they'll resume looking for remains once the rain clears later Friday. He and his team are finding other ways to help, including bringing lunch to those who stayed in their homes to fight the flames. The Camp Fire has killed at least 84 people and destroyed nearly 14,000 homes since igniting Nov. 8. ___ 7:55 a.m. Officials in California say rain has helped nearly extinguish the nation's deadliest wildfire in the past century. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said Friday that the fire that's destroyed the town of Paradise is 95 percent contained. The agency says the massive blaze killed at least 84 people and destroyed nearly 19,000 buildings, most of them homes. Officials say the Camp Fire has destroyed more buildings than the worst eight fires in California's history combined, displacing thousands of people. The Butte County Sheriff's Office says more than 800 people are searching the soaked rubble for human remains. It says 563 people are still unaccounted for. National Urban Search & Rescue Response System Orange County CATF-5 team members Imelda Cordova, third from right, talks Andrew Ricker, and Craig Stevens, far right, as their team take cover from the rain in Paradise, Calif., Friday, Nov. 23, 2018. High winds and heavy rains are temporarily halting the work of some search teams out looking for remains of people caught up in the deadly wildfire. The Camp Fire, which destroyed the historical mining town of Paradise, is the most deadly in state history, with 84 fatalities as of Friday, according to statistics from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. It's also the deadliest in the U.S. in a century. (AP Photo/Kathleen Ronayne) NEW YORK (AP) - A New York judge has rejected a bid by Donald Trump's lawyers to throw out a state lawsuit that alleges the president disregarded the law in running his charitable foundation and instead used it as a wing of his presidential campaign. But, in the ruling posted Friday, State Supreme Court Justice Saliann Scarpulla reiterated that she would be forced to drop Trump from the lawsuit if a state appeals court weighing an unrelated case decides that a sitting president can't be sued in state court. In the meantime, Scarpulla said, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood's lawsuit alleging that Trump used the nonprofit Trump Foundation's money to settle business disputes and boost his political fortunes can move forward. The suit seeks $2.8 million in restitution, the foundation's disbandment and a 10-year ban on Trump running any charities. Scarpulla rebuffed the contention of Trump's lawyers that the lawsuit was politically motivated. Given the seriousness of the allegations, she said, there was no basis for finding that "animus and bias were the sole motivating factors" for the lawsuit. Underwood welcomed the ruling. President Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up as he has Thanksgiving Day dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) "As we detailed in our petition earlier this year, the Trump Foundation functioned as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump's business and political interests," Underwood said in a statement. "There are rules that govern private foundations - and we intend to enforce them, no matter who runs the foundation." Trump's lawyer, Alan Futerfas, said he's confident the president's side will ultimately prevail. "The decision means only that the case goes forward," Futerfas said in a statement. "As we have maintained throughout, all of the money raised by the Foundation went to charitable causes to assist those most in need." Former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman started investigating the Trump Foundation in 2016 after The Washington Post reported that its spending personally benefited the presidential candidate. Schneiderman ordered the foundation to stop fundraising in New York. Underwood was appointed to replace Schneiderman in May, when he resigned amid allegations that he physically abused women he dated. Schneiderman, a Democrat, has said he accepts "full responsibility" for his conduct and apologized "for any and all pain" he caused. Whether Trump remains a defendant in the Trump Foundation case hinges on how a state appeals court rules in former "Apprentice" contestant Summer Zervos' defamation lawsuit against the president. Trump's lawyers argue that a sitting president can't be sued in state court over conduct outside official duties, something Scarpulla and the trial judge in the Zervos case reject. Scarpulla wrote in her ruling that allowing the Trump Foundation case to proceed in state court is "entirely consistent" with the U.S. Supreme Court's 1997 ruling that forced then-President Bill Clinton to face a federal sexual harassment lawsuit concerning an alleged encounter while he was governor. If the appellate division were to side with Trump in the Zervos case, the Trump Foundation lawsuit could still proceed against the foundation and Trump's adult children, who were board members. __ Follow Sisak at twitter.com/mikesisak PHOENIX (AP) - Half a dozen families who were separated at the U.S.-Mexico border are still detained in Texas months after reuniting with their children. Immigrant advocates say the government has violated a longstanding legal agreement that bars it from detaining children past 20 days in unlicensed facilities like the South Texas Family Residential Center. The detention center in Dilley, Texas, had been holding about 40 families for four months following the court-ordered reunifications. About 30 of the families were just released last week. "We are still suffering because they don't want to set us free," said Wendy, a woman from El Salvador who arrived in the U.S. with her 9-year-old daughter in late May. Wendy, who did not want her full name used for fear of her safety, was separated from her daughter, then reunited after nearly two months. The Associated Press spoke with her in September, and it's not immediately clear if she's been released yet. Many families had spent months apart after President Donald Trump's administration launched a zero-tolerance policy requiring anyone who crossed the border illegally to face criminal charges. That meant parents had to go to court while their kids went to shelters for underage immigrants nationwide. FILE - This Aug. 9, 2018, file photo, provided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, shows a scene from a tour of South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. Half a dozen families who were separated from their children at the U.S.-Mexico border are still detained in Texas months after reuniting with their children. Immigrant advocates say the government has violated a longstanding legal agreement that bars it from detaining children in unlicensed facilities like the South Texas Family Residential Center past 20 days. (Charles Reed/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement via AP, File) The policy ended in the spring after worldwide uproar, but families with parents who failed their first screening as they sought asylum have remained in custody with their children. A decades-old agreement known as the Flores settlement dictates how long the government can keep children in unlicensed facilities. Generally, the rule has been that kids can't be kept past 20 days. Families still detained in Texas said in interviews with The Associated Press that they are desperate and that their kids are traumatized. One woman said she and her daughter kept getting sick during the rainy season because officials at the Texas center wouldn't let them change out of wet clothes. The dorms at Dilley are outside. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Dani Bennett said the agency takes the health, safety and welfare of immigrants in their care very seriously. She said the agency provides comprehensive medical care, including nurses, mental health providers, doctors, dental care and access to 24-hour emergency care. "Pursuant to our commitment to the welfare of those in the agency's custody, ICE spends more than $250M annually on the spectrum of health care services provided to those in our care," Bennett said in a statement. The families who remained detained long after reunification are asylum seekers who failed what's known as a "credible fear" interview - the first step in the process. An asylum officer interviews asylum seekers about why they fled their country, and if they can show they have credible fear of returning, they get a hearing before an immigration judge. A federal judge ordered the government to allow those families to redo their interviews after attorneys sued, saying parents didn't pass the initial screening because of the extreme stress of having their kids taken away. "Every step of the way, the government has really taken its time," said Katy Murdza, an advocacy coordinator with CARA Pro Bono, which provides legal services to hundreds of families detained in Dilley. "Meanwhile, there is more and more harm being done to these children." Bennett, the ICE spokeswoman, said the average length of a stay at the Texas center is 17 days. She said the length of some families' stay could be longer than 20 days depending on individual circumstances, like those who have final orders of removal from the U.S. Many of the families kept this long have such orders. They're likely to get another shot at staying in the U.S., though, because of the agreement that allowed them or their children to do another initial interview. "It's very traumatizing to be detained," Murdza said. "We start to see behavioral regression, wetting the bed, refusing to be separated to go to school." Inside Europe's "Terror Capital". Canadian journalists, Lauren Southern needed security to walk through Molenbeek, Belgium. Lauren Southern visited the neighborhood labelled Europe's 'Terror Capital' to find out what it was really like. She was shocked to find out that most of the immigrants and refugees there want to live under Sharia laws and refuse to adopt Western values. They come as "refugees" and then want to live under Sharia law. Shari'a laws are a set of laws that are based on the life of President Muhammad.Shari'a is not just a law but a way of life, ideology and political movement, according to the Sharia laws: There is no freedom of religion or freedom of speech. There is no equality between people (the non-Muslim is not equal to the Muslim). There are no equal rights for men and women. There is no democracy or a separation between religion and state politics.FGM, Acid attacks, honor killings, beheading and stoning.Sharia is incompatible with Christian values. Here is just a few examples of what is happening to women in Europe: In Austria: A 72-year-old grandmother was raped by an Afghan minor; as a result she lost the will to live [and died]. In Belgium: A young girl was drugged and raped by a migrant after she asked the way to the station. In France: Two teens were stabbed to death by a migrant in Marseille. In Germany: A 19-year-old student was raped and murdered by an Afghan migrant. In Germany: A 17-year-old girl was stabbed to death after quitting her relationship with a migrant. In Italy: A Polish woman was gang raped by four migrants in Rimini. In the Netherlands: A young girl was raped and almost drowned by an asylum seeker in Kampen. In Sweden: A girl was stabbed to death after rejecting an asylum seeker. In Sweden: A woman in a wheelchair was gang raped by a group of migrants.In the UK: Muslim Grooming gangs targeting young girls have been around for decades.Is this what multiculturalism looks like? Ikea has said 350 of its employees in the UK are facing redundancy as part of its global transformation plan. The Swedish home retailer expects 7,500 jobs to be cut across its operations as it simplifies the organisation. Javier Quinones, country retail manager for Ikea in the UK and Ireland, said the company had to make difficult decisions as it adapts to a fast-changing retail environment. Co-workers are at the heart of our business and throughout this transformation we will have an ongoing dialogue on how to navigate these changes, to ensure we do this in a way in line with our values and ensuring that our co-workers feel supported, he said. We are confident these changes will secure the future of Ikea and will benefit its customers and ultimately its co-workers. The company also said it will create 11,500 new jobs over the next two years through new openings and investment in delivery and digital operations. Ikea will cut 350 UK jobs (Handout) This includes 500 new jobs at the UKs newest store in Londons Greenwich, which is due to open in Spring 2019. The UK capital is also home to a new Planning Studio on Tottenham Court Road, as part of a push towards opening smaller format stores in city centres. However, in May the group ditched plans to build a store near Preston amid uncertainty on the British high street as retailers are hammered with soaring costs. Ikea had planned to open the store in 2020, creating 350 jobs. Jesper Brodin, chief executive of Ikeas global parent company Ingka Group, said the retailer had to adapt to changing customer behaviour. We will put greater emphasis on making our existing stores even better and taking the opportunity to renew and reinvent our business in a way that is inspired by our history, culture and values. Prime Minister Theresa May is battling to keep her Brexit deal alive as she readies to return to Brussels for last minute negotiations. Mrs May is set to hold more talks with European Commission president Jean-Claude Junker on Saturday in a down to the wire bid to try and secure a withdrawal agreement at an emergency EU summit scheduled for Sunday. In a surprise move after talks with Mr Juncker in Brussels on Wednesday night, Mrs May insisted she would press on to attempt to secure an agreement. The PM said: We have made further progress. And, as a result we have given sufficient direction to our negotiators, I hope, for them to be able to resolve the remaining issues. And that work will start immediately. I now plan to return for further meetings, including with President Juncker on Saturday to discuss how we can bring to a conclusion this process and bring it to a conclusion in the interests of all our people. The move came after reports from Brussels that the Sunday summit could be scrapped. As the countdown to the scheduled summit intensified, Chancellor Philip Hammond said that if the Brexit deal is rejected by Parliament it would unleash political chaos and could lead to EU withdrawal not happening. He told ITVs Peston: Its clear that if the deal is not approved by Parliament we will have a politically chaotic situation. And, we dont know what the outcome of that will be. And for those who are passionately committed to ensuring that we leave the EU on the 29th of March, 2019, one of the things that they are going to have to bear in mind is the possibility that, in that chaos that would ensue, there may be no Brexit. He added: It could be no deal, but it could be no Brexit, we just dont know. When we look at the economy, and the operation of the economy, getting a smooth exit from the European Union, doing this in an orderly fashion, is worth tens of billions of pounds to our economy. The PM faced a strong push back from Spain over the status of Gibraltar in the divorce deal. Mrs May spoke with her Spanish counterpart Pedro Sanchez on Wednesday evening to try and deal with the situation. (PA Graphics) A Downing Street spokesman said: She said there had been good engagement between the UK, the government of Spain and the government of Gibraltar in order to come to an agreement in the withdrawal agreement and associated package of memoranda of understanding relating to Gibraltar. She said that the UK and government of Gibraltar looked forward to these discussions continuing as we discuss the future relationship. The Prime Minister reiterated her commitment to agreeing a deal that works for the whole UK family including Gibraltar, the other UK overseas territories and the crown dependencies. Before the phone call, Mr Sanchez said his government was annoyed that the divorce agreement being prepared for Britains exit from the European Union doesnt specify that Gibraltars future must be decided directly by officials in Madrid and London. Mr Sanchez said the issue is a bilateral matter and is essential for Spain. He repeated his threat that Spain will vote against the planned agreement unless its interests are taken into account. Germanys economy minister Peter Altmaier told BBC2s Newsnight: There is a lot at stake. And therefore if it is possible to agree on Sunday we should do it. I know there are a lot of divergent interests still, but I believe these problems can be overcome. Meanwhile, it was reported that Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt had warned the PM that her Brexit proposals risked taking the UK into a Turkey trap. The Daily Telegraph said Mr Hunt told Mrs May the UK faced a situation similar to Turkey which has been negotiating its status with the EU for decades. The rising tide of obesity has led to thousands of youngsters having Type 2 diabetes, a charity has said. Diabetes UK said that the number of children and young people with diabetes is the highest it has ever been. The charity reported that 6,836 children and young adults have Type 2 diabetes in England and Wales, according to data from GP surgeries. It said that the main driver behind the figures was the rise in obesity. Other factors which could also play a part include a family history and ethnic background, it added. Type 2 diabetes is much more aggressive in youngsters and complications of the disease which can include blindness, amputations, heart disease and kidney failure can appear earlier. Diabetes UK warned that thousands more children and young people could be diagnosed with the condition over the coming years, as the latest figures on childhood obesity show that more than a third of children in England will be overweight or obese by the time they leave primary school. It has called for better specialist support for youngsters with the condition to help manage their illness and reduce their risk of serious complications. Meanwhile, it backed proposals for a ban on junk food TV advertising aimed at children before 9pm, and to restrict supermarket price promotions for unhealthy foods. Bridget Turner, director of policy and campaigns at Diabetes UK, said: Type 2 diabetes can be devastating for children and young people. To help shape a future where fewer children develop the condition, we need continued commitment across society to create an environment that reduces obesity. We need to encourage healthy living by providing clear and easy-to-understand nutritional information about the products we are all buying, and protect children from adverts for foods that are high in fat, salt and sugar. At the same time, we must look after those who already have the condition so they can avoid serious complications such as amputations, sight loss, stroke and kidney failure. Children and young people with Type 2 diabetes should have access to expert treatment by healthcare professionals trained to manage and research the condition and the challenges it presents. Type 2 diabetes is much more aggressive in youngsters (Peter Byrne/PA) Professor Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, added: For many children, the development of Type 2 diabetes can be prevented with lifestyle changes, but this isnt easy they need support. Thats why we were pleased to see the ambitious proposals set out in Chapter 2 of the Childhood Obesity Plan we urge the Government to maximise their impact by introducing them all and doing so quickly. A Department of Health and Social Care spokeswoman said: We are committed to halving child obesity by 2030 and will be launching consultations to restrict promotions in shops for sugary and fatty foods, as well as a 9pm watershed ban on advertising. The upcoming NHS long-term plan will have prevention at its core and build on our existing work to keep people healthy and well. The number of homeless people in Britain has risen to 320,000, half of them in London, as the nations housing crisis worsens, a charity has found. A new report by Shelter indicates the total increased by 13,000 in the past year and means one in 200 people are sleeping on the streets or in temporary accommodation. (PA Graphics) London reported the highest levels of homelessness with nearly 170,000 people roughing it in the capital, or one in 52 people. The rise was a result of a perfect storm of spiralling rents, welfare cuts and a lack of social housing, Shelter chief executive Polly Neate said. Shelter said the figures revealed the true scale of the UKs housing crisis, which was worsening despite Government pledges to tackle the problem. Its unforgivable that 320,000 people in Britain have been swept up by the housing crisis and now have no place to call home, she said. Record numbers of people are sleeping out on the streets or stuck in the cramped confines of a hostel room. A person sat on the pavement outside Victoria Station in London (PA/Victoria Jones) Shelter launched its winter appeal on Thursday to support front line staff who are helping desperate people to find or keep their home. Were asking the public to support us this winter so that we can answer as many calls as possible and have trained advisers on hand, Ms Neate said. Secretary of State for Housing James Brokenshire said the Government was determined to end homelessness but conceded more could be done. No-one should be left without a roof over their head, which is why we are determined to end rough sleeping and respond to the causes of homelessness, he said in response to the Shelter report. Our rough sleeping strategy, support for councils and those working on the front line are helping to get people off the street and into accommodation as we enter the colder winter months. He added: But we know that there is more that we need to do and were committed to working with Shelter and others to make a positive difference. Mr Brokenshire said 9 billion of funding was available in a programme to build affordable council homes across the country. Labours shadow housing minister Melanie Onn condemned the rise in homelessness. It is appalling that enough people to fill a city the size of Newcastle will wake up this Christmas without a home, she said. This is the outcome of eight years of austerity that even the United Nations say was designed to hurt the poor. Labour would do things differently. We would stop the roll out of Universal Credit, build a million new genuinely affordable homes and offer a new deal to renters with tenancy security at its heart to offer genuine hope to those facing homelessness. Shelters figures were based on Department for Communities and Local Government homelessness statistics, a freedom of information request and hostel figures from charity Homeless Link. The sound of huge explosions has been heard in south-east London after fire broke out at a bus depot. Dozens of firefighters were working hard to tackle the blaze, the London Fire Brigade (LFB) said. Eleven buses have gone up in flames so far at the garage at Farnborough Hill, Orpington. Eight fire engines are still at the scene of the #Orpington bus depot fire on Farnborough Hill. A number of busses are alight which is causing a lot of smoke, please avoid the area you can. can, More here: https://t.co/auAYX5JNRv pic.twitter.com/BTJ3q2Wa0I London Fire Brigade (@LondonFire) November 22, 2018 Locals reported hearing several loud bangs as the vehicles were engulfed in the early hours of Thursday morning. One wrote on Twitter: Woken up by 10 huge explosions and what looks like a big fire near Sevenoaks road in Orpington. The LFB said it was called to the scene at 3.36am. A fire at a bus garage in Orpington, Kent (London Fire Brigade) Around 60 firefighters are dealing with a bus depot that is alight on Farnborough Hill. #Orpington. A number of busses are alight. More to follow.. pic.twitter.com/s1HSgWTV1D London Fire Brigade (@LondonFire) November 22, 2018 Around 60 firefighters are dealing with a bus depot that is alight on Farnborough Hill, Orpington, the brigade said. Eleven buses are alight and Brigade control officers have taken around 40 calls to the incident which is very visible. Firefighters are working hard to tackle the blaze but travel in that area will be difficult due to the number of appliances in attendance, avoid the area if you can. Eight fire engines are in attendance from stations including Orpington, Bromley, Sidcup and Biggin Hill. Passengers putting their feet on train seats is a contentious issue whether its after a long day, long evening or were just relaxed, lots of us do it without thinking twice. In fact, two in every five people are guilty of putting their feet up during their journey (41%), according to a new survey. Loco2, a comparison and booking platform for train tickets in the UK and Europe, also looked into why people get the urge to put their feet up, and how they can resist. Lad must have had a tough old Monday...This rips ma knitting & must cost @on_lothianbuses a fortune on seat cover repairs. @FeetOnTheSeat pic.twitter.com/W9G1e5bWLe Cllr Swivel Eyed Broon (@Mr_Mark_Brown) March 20, 2017 The study of 500 UK adults highlighted other irritating behaviour commonly found on trains. According to the study, sneezing and coughing without covering the mouth is the most annoying habit (25%), followed by putting feet on seats (19%) and making loud phone calls (19%). The science of feet on seats Dr Sara Kayat, GP at GPDQ, the UKs doctor-on-demand app & ITVs This Morning Resident GP, says theres a reason why passengers get the urge to put their feet up on public transport. (Loco2/PA) Resting your legs on the opposite seat is undeniably comfortable, but also very disrespectful, unhygienic, and in fact illegal, she says. Few of us might know that theres a by-law that fines passengers 50 for having their feet on the seat and they can receive a police caution. So why do so many people do it without a second thought? Kayat claims biology is the answer. By elevating our legs, we improve the mobility of fluids in the body blood flow is increased, which reduces the work your body must do to pump the blood back up to the torso. After a long day at work, or a late night, our bodies need all the help they can get to ease the strain and alleviate any stiffness in our muscles. What can you do instead? My advice to anyone feeling the urge to put their feet on the seats is to listen to what your body is telling you, and move, says Kayat. Walk around and help your body pump blood back up to your heart quicker and more efficiently. If theres nowhere to walk, passengers can do some simple foot and ankle exercises and stretches such as circling the foot or tapping it up for 10 and down for 10, four or five times which will encourage blood circulation. Top 5 tips from Loco2 on passenger etiquette A group of friends getting on the train in Amsterdam (Loco2/PA) 1. Think about whether your actions would irritate you or cause you discomfort, if someone else did it. 2. Always bring a pocket size packet of tissues for your journey you never know when your nose will start running or if you need to sneeze (this will also reduce the amount of coughs and colds contracted on public transport). 3. Avoid eating pungent food such as fish, fried food, or fast food. Instead, pack snack bars, biscuits, fruit, and carry a water bottle for your journey. 4. Take responsibility for your own litter if youve finished eating a snack, put the wrapper in the nearest bin on the train, or carry it with you until you can dispose of it properly. 5. Keep personal grooming to a minimum remember its a public space. Its okay to do a quick fix of make-up on the train but try to avoid doing anything that can create a mess or leave anything behind, such as cutting nails, plucking eyebrows or applying powder. Five people have been killed and 18 injured as a car struck a crowd of children outside a school in north-eastern China, state media said. The driver was taken into custody after the collision in the coastal city of Huludao in Liaoning province, state broadcaster CCTV said. The cause is under investigation, according to the reports. Security camera footage showed a line of children crossing the street in front of the school when a car approaches, then changes lanes and swerves into a crowd of the children. At least half a dozen students appear to be hit. Wang Mingkuan, a cook at a nearby noodle restaurant, said he was making meals when the crash occurred. I ran out and saw about a dozen children lying on the ground, some of them bleeding, all about seven or eight years old. Two or three showed no signs of life, Mr Wang said. China (Julien Behal/PA) He added that ambulances and police cars rushed to the scene and officers blocked off the area and prevented people from filming. He said rumours about the driver included that he was drunk, fleeing police or deliberately targeted the children. While it was not clear if the crash was a deliberate attack, China has recently seen a number of such incidents. Last month, a knife-wielding man drove a vehicle into a crowd of pedestrians in the eastern city of Ningbo, killing two people and wounding 16. In September, 11 people were killed and 44 injured after a man drove a car deliberately into people at a plaza in the central province of Hunan, before jumping out and attacking victims with a dagger and shovel. The most common motivations are identified as mental illness, alienation from society or a desire to settle scores. Other deadly attacks have occurred at schools, including several in 2010 in which nearly 20 children were killed, prompting a response from government officials and leading many schools to beef up security. In June this year, a man used a kitchen knife to attack three boys and a mother near a school in Shanghai, killing two of the children. Last year, police said a man set off an explosion at the front gate of a nursery in eastern China, which struck as relatives gathered to pick up their children at the end of the day, killing eight people. The wife of a British academic jailed for life in the United Arab Emirates on an allegation of spying has accused the UK Government of putting relations with the Gulf state before her husbands freedom. Daniela Tejada condemned the Foreign Office over the handling of the case of 31-year-old PhD student Matthew Hedges, ahead of her meeting with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt on Thursday. Mr Hunt has threatened the UAE with serious diplomatic consequences if Mr Hedges, originally from Exeter, is not freed, saying he has seen absolutely no evidence to support the charge. The Cabinet minister is understood to have met with the UAE ambassador in London on Thursday morning and had a very frank conversation with him. But Ms Tejada, having landed back at Heathrow Airport, said the UK had failed to take a firm stance over the Durham University student from the start of his ordeal. I was under the impression they were putting their interests with the UAE above a British citizens rightful freedom and his welfare, she told BBC Radio 4s Today programme. They were stepping on eggshells instead of taking a firm stance. Health Secretary Matt Hancock defended the Foreign Office on the show for working behind the scenes to support Mr Hedges, with Mr Hunt appealing personally to the Crown Prince on November 12. Ms Tejeda, who was at the Abu Dhabi court when Mr Hedges was sentenced during a five-minute hearing on Wednesday, is expected to quiz Mr Hunt over what efforts the Government will make to secure Mr Hedgess release. She entered the Foreign Office at about 3.15pm where she is expected to quiz Mr Hunt over what efforts the Government will make to secure Mr Hedgess release. She has made it clear she believes the UK should stop at nothing to free the innocent Briton, who was jailed after the UAE presented completely fabricated evidence. Her calls for immediate action were echoed by Tory MP Johnny Mercer, who condemned the academics jailing and called for the Government to be resilient. He wrote on Twitter: This is ridiculous. Our Defence assistance, mentoring and intelligence relationships alone with this country should preclude absurd things like this happening. From a friend and partner, simply unacceptable. Consequences must be immediate until he is released. This is ridiculous. Our Defence assistance, mentoring and intelligence relationships alone with this country should preclude absurd things like this happening. From a friend and partner, simply unacceptable. Consequences must be immediate until he is released. Resilience required pic.twitter.com/ouvxfjJIBH Johnny Mercer (@JohnnyMercerUK) November 21, 2018 Mr Hunt said the UK will do everything we can to get him home over the charges he has seen absolutely no evidence for. He told Sky News: The UAE is supposed to be a friend and ally of Britains. Weve given them repeated assurances about Matthew. If we cant resolve this there are going to be serious diplomatic consequences, because this is totally unacceptable. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, asked if it was now time to reconsider the close military links the UK has with the UAE, said: The Foreign Secretary has already been out to the United Arab Emirates and he met the Crown Prince. Speaking on a visit to Tyneside, he said: I know that the Foreign Secretary and the whole Foreign Office, who are leading our efforts to make sure that Mr Hedges is released, are putting everything in that they can do to make sure that his release comes as early as possible. He will be co-ordinating that effort and the whole of Government will be supporting him in doing that. Mr Hedges, a Middle Eastern studies specialist, was arrested at Dubai Airport on May 5. A family representative said he had since been held in solitary confinement for more than five-and-a- half months, during which his mental and physical health seriously deteriorated. Matthew Hedges with his wife Daniela Tejada (Daniela Tejada/PA) Lawyer and human rights campaigner David Haigh said he was encouraged by Mr Hunts public stance, but warned that securing Mr Hedgess release quickly was important. He told the BBCs World Tonight: Its urgent. I know what he will be going through. Hell be in some form of national security jail and its horrific there. Mr Haigh, a former managing director of Leeds United, said he was tortured and raped while he was held in a Dubai jail over a fraud conviction. David Haigh (Martin Rickett/PA) Theresa May said she was deeply disappointed and concerned by Mr Hedgess jailing and told MPs the UK will continue to press this matter at the highest level with the Emiratis. Professor Stuart Corbridge, vice-chancellor of Durham University, said there is no reason to believe that Matt was conducting anything other than legitimate academic research. A Foreign Office spokesman did not say what form any possible diplomatic consequences could take, but said a number of options are available. Mr Hedges has 30 days to challenge the court ruling. Police want to trace a van driver after an elderly woman was killed in a hit-and-run. Doreen Williams, 80, was struck by a vehicle on the A9 near Perth on Sunday November 4. The pensioner had been walking south between Inveralmond and Broxden at around 2.15am. Police have appealed for the driver of a white Ford Transit van with Arnold Clark livery, pictured in CCTV footage, to come forward. (Police Scotland) Detective Inspector Ray Birnie said: We know that Doreen was struck by a vehicle having been walking along the A9 road. We know that this vehicle did not stop. Doreen died as a result of the injuries she sustained from the impact. We believe the driver of the vehicle pictured in the CCTV footage can assist with our investigation and anyone who recognises it is asked to come forward. Anyone with information is asked to contact police on 101, quoting reference number 672 of November 4, or call Crimestoppers on 0800 555111. A sculpture erected in Dublin to mark the armistice has been vandalised. Red paint was thrown over the Haunting Soldier in St Stephens Green overnight on Wednesday. The six-metre high artwork portrays a weary soldier returning from war. Cleaning work in St Stephens Green, Dublin (Niall Carson/PA) Designed by Dorset-based artist and blacksmith Martin Galbavy, it is made from scraps of metal including horse shoes, spanners, car jacks and brake discs. The sculpture was due to stand in the popular city centre park until November 26. Irish Culture Minister Josepha Madigan voiced disappointment about the attack. This installation honours all those who died in the terrible suffering of World War One, she said. It is incredibly moving and has been proved immensely popular. There is no bravery in throwing paint at a statue in the middle of the night. A laurel wreath left next to the sculpture (Niall Carson/PA) Workers from the Office of Public Works (OPW) were tasked on Thursday with cleaning up the sculpture. The Haunting Soldier is designed to evoke the fragility and suffering of those who survived the war and returned home to an uncertain and difficult future. The ghostly figure, which was constructed by Chris Hannam of Dorset Forge and Fabrication, was brought to Ireland by Dublin-based solicitor Sabina Purcell, who discovered she had a family connection to those who served in the war. The gravity of the existential threat we face from Islamic Jihad is truly of epic proportions. It is essentially a battle pitting free-civilized man against a totalitarian barbarian. What is at stake is the struggle for our very soul - namely who we are and what we represent. The lives that were sacrificed for individual rights and freedoms that we've come to cherish are being chiseled away from right under our noses by the stealth jihadists. And many of us are in denial and totally clueless. The left's appeasement and pandering to evil is nothing new. What makes their utopian delusions so infuriating and unpardonable is that it is not only they who will have to pay the consequences, and deservedly, so, they are thwarting and undermining our best efforts at resistance and are thus dragging us down in the process as well. By Peter Lancz,, the head of the Raoul Wallenberg World Campaign Against Racism. One in eight children and young people aged between five and 19 had a mental disorder in England in 2017, according to a major report. NHS Digital, which collected information from more than 9,000 youngsters, also found emotional disorders have become more common in five to 15-year-olds rising from 4.3% in 1999 to 5.8% in 2017. Looking at the five to 15-year-old age group over time, the report reveals a slight increase in the overall prevalence of mental disorder, increasing from 9.7% in 1999 and 10.1% in 2004, to 11.2% in 2017. (PA Graphics) When including five to 19-year-olds, the 2017 prevalence is 12.8%, but it said this cannot be compared with earlier years as it is the first time the survey has covered youngsters up to the age of 19. Previously it focused only on the five to 15-year-old age group. Meanwhile one in six (16.9%) 17 to 19-year-olds were found to have a mental disorder, with one in 16 (6.4%) experiencing more than one mental disorder at the time of the interview. Females aged 17 to 19 were more than twice as likely as males of the same age to have a mental disorder. Females aged 17 to 19 were more than twice as likely as boys to have a mental disorder. Find out more in our newest #MentalHealth of Children and Young People in England, 2017 report: https://t.co/uLsN7d0riy pic.twitter.com/TyhOMExyxl NHS Digital (@NHSDigital) November 22, 2018 One in 18 (5.5%) preschool children were identified as having at least one mental disorder at the time they were surveyed. Teenagers aged 14 to 19 years old who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or with another sexual identity, were more than twice as likely (34.9%) to have a mental disorder, as opposed to those who identified as heterosexual (13.2%). A quarter (25.5%) of 11 to 16-year-olds with a mental disorder had self-harmed or attempted suicide at some point, compared to 3% of those who were not diagnosed as having a mental disorder. In 17 to 19-year-olds with a mental disorder, nearly half (46.8%) had self harmed or made a suicide attempt. We welcome new insights from @NHSDigital into young people's #mentalhealth so that suicide prevention expertise and resources can be targeted at those most at risk. https://t.co/R1SFI6d13c Samaritans (@samaritans) November 22, 2018 Denise Hatton, chief executive of YMCA England & Wales, described the figures as a wake-up call. She said: These figures are shocking and while progress has been made to normalise conversations about mental health and successive governments have made additional funding for NHS services available, todays figures are a wake-up call that this clearly hasnt gone far enough. To end this crisis that is ruining young lives, its crucial that action and investment goes into preventing young people from experiencing poor mental health in the first place. From preventative youth and community services, to education in schools, mental health must be incorporated in every aspect of daily life to stop young people from reaching crisis point. Without preventative services and with the NHS struggling to cope, too many young people are still left alone to deal with their mental health difficulties by themselves, leading to a vicious circle of solitude and suffering. (PA Graphics) Lily Makurah, national lead for mental health at Public Health England, said: Its concerning to see children and young people facing mental health challenges. We know mental health influences childrens ability to cope with the normal stresses of life, to learn productively, to develop positive relationships and to make a contribution to our community. Were working with partners to minimise risks for children and young people and enhance factors that promote and protect positive mental health at key stages across a childs life. Young women aged 17 to 19 were identified as having higher rates of emotional disorder and self-harm than other groups. Nearly one in four (23.9%) had a mental disorder and 22.4% had an emotional disorder, the figures show. Sarah Hughes, from the charity Centre for Mental Health, said emotional difficulties have risen significantly since the last survey in 2004, while other conditions have remained stable. Todays survey results underline the case for a comprehensive approach to improving childrens mental health, she added. Childhood mental health difficulties are inextricably linked to social and economic inequalities, the adversities children encounter and the environments they live in. We know that poverty, inequality and housing insecurity are closely linked with childhood mental health difficulties so we need to see concerted action to reduce these nationwide. Todays survey shows that children in low-income households are more than twice as likely to have a mental health problem as those in higher income households. We need a whole Government strategy to bring about system change nationwide and support local authorities, the voluntary sector, schools, families and children and young people themselves to make a difference in their communities. The electoral rating of President Vladimir Putin has dropped below 60% for the first time in five years, a leading Russian polling agency has said. The survey by Levada Centre published on Thursday showed 56% of likely voters saying they would cast their ballots for Mr Putin in elections expected in 2024. That is 10% lower than a year ago. Vladimir Putin shakes hands with US first lady Melania Trump at commemorations marking the 100th anniversary of the November 11 1918 armistice in Paris (Ludovic Marin/AP) The last time electoral support for Mr Putin dropped below 60%, according to similar Levada surveys, was in 2013. Mr Putin, who has been ruling Russia since 2000, was re-elected for another six-year term in March. Unpopular changes to the pension system announced earlier this year have dented his popularity, while euphoria over the widely popular 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula has waned. Health teams working in the community are to get a multibillion-pound funding boost in a bid to prevent unnecessary hospital admissions, the Prime Minister has announced. Theresa May visited a health centre in north London on Thursday morning after pledging 3.5 billion a year in new real-terms funding for primary and community healthcare by 2023/24 as part of the forthcoming NHS long-term plan. It is hoped the boost will mean more patients are treated at home and in the community rather than being admitted to hospital. Mrs May said leaving the EU means Britain will no longer be sending vast sums of money to Brussels, and will have more money for domestic priorities like our NHS. Theresa May during a visit to Kentish Town Health Centre (Andrew Matthews/PA) Downing Street said the money represents a historic commitment to ensure a growing share of NHS spending is put into primary and community care. Part of the money will be spent on community-based rapid response teams. These 24/7 teams made up of doctors, nurses and physiotherapists can provide urgent care in the community as an alternative to hospital. As well as emergency care, they can also help patients recover closer to home. Alongside Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock, the PM met one team based at Kentish Town Health Centre. Theresa May is joined by Matt Hancock and local health officials (Andrew Matthews/PA) She spoke with doctors, nurses and paramedics about the way the teams operate, and heard how they helped one terminally ill patient fulfil her wish to die in her own home rather than be admitted to hospital. Mrs May said: Im sure she would have felt much more comfortable at home, and Im sure her family were much happier with that too. The PM later dropped in on a parent and baby class and confessed to screaming and screaming when she got her injections as a child. Sitting on the floor and chatting to one parent about having their babys jabs, she said: I have a vague memory of being in my mothers arms and just screaming. Meanwhile, there will be a national rollout of dedicated support for care home residents. A successful pilot saw healthcare workers including GPs assigned to care homes, where they get to know individual residents needs and provided tailored treatment. Speaking ahead of the visit, Mrs May said: Too often people end up in hospital not because its the best place to meet their needs but because the support that would allow them to be treated or recover in their own home just isnt available. Many of us might assume that hospital is the safest place to be but in reality many patients would be much better off being cared for in the community. The longer a patient stays in hospital, the more it costs the NHS and the more pressure is put on its hardworking staff. This needs to change. Thats why Im announcing a major boost in funding for community healthcare, which will give more patients a genuine and high-quality alternative to hospital. The new approach were setting out today will mean more people can leave hospital quicker or avoid being admitted in the first place, which is better for patients and better for the health service. Leaving the EU means taking back control of our money as we will no longer be sending vast sums to Brussels. This helps our public finances and means we have more money to spend on domestic priorities like our NHS. And weve been able to fully fund this historic commitment without raising taxes. Mr Hancock added: GPs are the bedrock of the NHS. To make the NHS sustainable for the long term we need more prevention as well as cure. So we will back our GPs, primary and community healthcare to help keep people healthy and out of hospital in the first place. Every patient deserves to receive care tailored to their needs. Yet too often our hospitals become the only place to turn for older people, often to the detriment of their health but no longer. Prime Minister Theresa May joins a parent and baby group during a visit to the Kentish Town health centre (Andrew Matthews/PA) Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, said: Everyone can see that to future-proof the NHS we need to radically redesign how primary and community health services work together. For community health services this means quick response to help people who dont need to be in hospital, as well as dissolving the 70-year-old boundary between GP practices and community nursing. But to will the end is to will the means. Thats why as part of the NHS long-term plan for the first time were going to guarantee that these services get a growing share of the growing NHS budget. Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, chairwoman of the Royal College of GPs, said: Any investment in patient care in the community is welcome, and its essential that general practice specifically is at the heart of these plans and a key recipient of this new funding. The Prime Ministers announcement demonstrates recognition at the highest levels that a strong general practice service is central to the long-term sustainability of the NHS and patient care. It is an important step forward to meeting our calls for our service to receive 11% of the overall NHS England budget as part of the forthcoming NHS long-term plan. Theresa Mays plan for Brexit has cleared another hurdle, after negotiators in Brussels agreed a text for the proposed political declaration on future EU/UK relations. European Council president Donald Tusk announced that the text had been agreed in draft form by EU and UK negotiators and agreed in principle at political level. The announcement clears the way for a special Brexit summit to go ahead in Brussels on Sunday, when leaders of the 27 remaining EU states are expected to give their stamp of approval to the declaration alongside the 585-page withdrawal agreement setting out the terms of the UKs departure. I have just sent to EU27 a draft Political Declaration on the Future Relationship between EU and UK. The Commission President has informed me that it has been agreed at negotiators level and agreed in principle at political level, subject to the endorsement of the Leaders. Charles Michel (@eucopresident) November 22, 2018 It follows a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday evening between the Prime Minister and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, and is the first indication that the pair reached political agreement in principle on the text. Downing Street has repeatedly made clear that agreement is needed on the future framework setting out aspirations in areas like trade and security co-operation and believed to run to a few dozen pages in order to press ahead with the legally-binding withdrawal agreement. In a tweet, Mr Tusk said: I have just sent to EU27 a draft Political Declaration on the Future Relationship between EU and UK. The Commission President has informed me that it has been agreed at negotiators level and agreed in principle at political level, subject to the endorsement of the Leaders. Just read Political Declaration. Lots of unicorns taking the place of facts about the future relationship. Fair play to the EU for pushing it as far as possible...but it adds up to a blindfold Brexit. Difficult issues unresolved - so extended transition/backstop almost certain. Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) November 22, 2018 Mrs May is to make a statement to the House of Commons on Thursday afternoon on the latest developments and was speaking to members of the Cabinet in a conference call ahead of that. There was speculation that the Prime Minister was struggling to keep her Brexit deal alive, after she announced following her meeting with Mr Juncker that she would return to Brussels on Saturday for further talks. Mrs May said after the meeting that she and the Commission president had given sufficient direction to negotiators for work to begin immediately on resolving remaining issues. It is believed that negotiators worked through the night to produce Thursday mornings breakthrough. The new text was dismissed by Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon as lots of unicorns taking the place of facts about the future relationship. Fair play to the EU for pushing it as far as possible, but it adds up to a blindfold Brexit, said Ms Sturgeon. Difficult issues unresolved so extended transition/backstop almost certain. It remains unclear whether further negotiation will be needed on Sunday to resolve tensions over elements of the separate withdrawal agreement, or whether the summit will be a simple rubber-stamping exercise The PM has faced a strong pushback from Spain over the status of Gibraltar in the divorce deal, while France is understood to have sought amendments to wording on fishing rights in UK waters. Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez has said his government is annoyed that the divorce agreement does not specify that Gibraltars future must be decided directly by officials in Madrid and London. He insists that the issue is a bilateral matter and has threatened that Spain could vote against the withdrawal agreement unless its interests are taken into account. Theresa May faced questions on Brexit at Prime Ministers Questions in the House of Commons on Wednesday (PA Wire/PA Images) Mrs May spoke with Mr Sanchez by phone on Wednesday evening to try to deal with the situation. A Downing Street spokesman said: She said there had been good engagement between the UK, the government of Spain and the government of Gibraltar in order to come to an agreement in the withdrawal agreement and associated package of memoranda of understanding relating to Gibraltar. She said that the UK and government of Gibraltar looked forward to these discussions continuing as we discuss the future relationship. The Prime Minister reiterated her commitment to agreeing a deal that works for the whole UK family including Gibraltar, the other UK overseas territories and the crown dependencies. As the countdown to the scheduled summit intensified, Chancellor Philip Hammond said that if the Brexit deal is rejected by Parliament it would unleash political chaos and could lead to EU withdrawal not happening. He told ITVs Peston: Its clear that if the deal is not approved by Parliament we will have a politically chaotic situation. And we dont know what the outcome of that will be. And for those who are passionately committed to ensuring that we leave the EU on the 29th of March, 2019, one of the things that they are going to have to bear in mind is the possibility that, in that chaos that would ensue, there may be no Brexit. Germanys economy minister Peter Altmaier told BBC2s Newsnight: There is a lot at stake. And therefore if it is possible to agree on Sunday we should do it. I know there are a lot of divergent interests still, but I believe these problems can be overcome. Meanwhile, it was reported that Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt had warned the PM that her Brexit proposals risked taking the UK into a Turkey trap. The Daily Telegraph said Mr Hunt told Mrs May the UK faced a situation similar to Turkey which has been negotiating its status with the EU for decades. Potential opportunities to stop the Manchester bombing were missed as a result of a catalogue of failings by security services, a major new report has concluded. A number of shortcomings in the handling of Salman Abedi before he launched a suicide attack at a pop concert in May last year, killing 22 people, were detailed by Parliaments Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). Abedi, 22, first came to the attention of MI5 in December 2010 and was briefly investigated by the agency in 2014. The ISC assessment said: Abedi visited an extremist contact in prison on more than one occasion but no follow-up action was taken by either MI5 or police; MI5 decided not to place travel monitoring or restrictions on Abedi, meaning he was allowed to return undetected to the UK in the days before he carried out the attack; MI5 systems moved too slowly after Abedis case had been flagged for review; Abedi was not at any point considered for a referral to the Prevent anti-terror scheme. ISC chairman Dominic Grieve said: What we can say is that there were a number of failures in the handling of Salman Abedis case and, while it is impossible to say whether these would have prevented the devastating attack, we have concluded that, as a result of the failings, potential opportunities to prevent it were missed. Mr Grieve said it was striking how many of the issues which arose in relation to the attacks last year had previously been raised by the committee in its reports on the 7/7 attacks and the killing of Lee Rigby. The Conservative MP said: We have previously made recommendations in all of these areas, yet the Government failed to act on them. He noted that both MI5 and counter-terror police have been thorough in their desire to learn from past mistakes, adding: The lessons from last years tragic events must now result in real action. Manchester Arena suicide bomber Salman Abedi (Greater Manchester Police) The ISC, which has access to top-level security officials and classified material, reviewed the five attacks that hit Britain last year. In total 36 innocent people were killed. In addition to the Manchester fatalities, five victims died in the Westminster attack in March, eight at London Bridge in June, and one at Finsbury Park in the same month. Then in September, a bomb partially exploded on a Tube train at Parsons Green, injuring 51 people. The events last year prompted intense scrutiny of Britains counter-terrorism apparatus after it emerged that in a number of cases, the perpetrators had previously appeared on the radar of agencies. Prior to his attack, Abedi had travelled to Libya. The ISC questioned the decision not to use travel monitoring and travel restriction capabilities in the case, adding: We recognise that there still may not have been sufficient time to identify or act on his attack planning. It would, nevertheless, have provided more of an opportunity. Mr Grieve said: MI5 have since admitted that given the information they had on Abedi, they should have done so, and they have now revisited their policies in this respect. The committee also said there appeared to have been fundamental failings in the way police and the Home Office handled Parsons Green attacker Ahmed Hassan. But Mr Grieve said the case was not fully examined in the assessment because the Home Office failed to provide full evidence in time despite multiple requests. The report found that the system for regulating and reporting purchases of ingredients used to make explosives was hopelessly out of date, and called on the business community to exert pressure on communications firms to stop their sites being used as a safe haven for terrorists. Security chiefs say they are operating at an unprecedented pace to head off the threat. Since March last year, 17 plots have been foiled, while police and MI5 are mounting a record 700-plus live investigations. There are around 3,000 active subjects of interest, plus more than 20,000 closed SOIs who have at some point featured in terrorism probes. Home Secretary Sajid Javid said: Following the attacks, the Government, police and MI5 undertook a series of rigorous reviews to ensure we are all doing everything we can to tackle the evolving threat of terrorism. As a result, we have updated our counter-terrorism strategy, introduced new legislation to allow threats to be disrupted earlier and have increased information sharing with local authorities. We are also ensuring technology companies play their part by stopping terrorists from exploiting their platforms. National head of counter-terror policing Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said: We would like to reassure the public that ever since the attacks of last year we have sought to learn from what happened before, during and afterwards, and improve our wider operating model and ways of managing and mitigating the risk from terrorism. Working evermore closely with the security service and learning our lessons, we will do everything we can to reduce the chances of this happening again. A jury has retired in the trial of a Labour MP accused of lying to avoid a speeding charge. Fiona Onasanya, 35, allegedly colluded with her brother Festus to escape prosecution for doing 41mph in a 30mph zone on July 24 last year. A Notice of Intended Prosecution (NIP) was sent back to authorities claiming a Russian man was behind the wheel of her Nissan Micra when it was clocked speeding in the village of Thorney, near Peterborough. But inquiries revealed he was in Russia with his parents at the time. Festus Onasanya pictured arriving at the Old Bailey during the trial (John Stillwell/PA) Festus Onasanya, 33, from Cambridge, has admitted three charges of perverting the course of justice, including over the July 24 incident. His sister, elected as Peterborough MP in June last year, denies one charge of perverting the course of justice. Judge Nichola Hilliard QC sent the 11-strong Old Bailey jury out to deliberate on its verdict just after 10.30am on Thursday. Increasing the number of hours of free early learning and child care provision will be absolutely transformative, Maree Todd has said. Under Scottish Government plans, by August 2020 every three and four-year-old in Scotland, and some two-year-olds, will be eligible for 1,140 funded hours per year. It is an increase on the 600 hours children are currently eligible for. However, concerns have been raised that partner providers could struggle with the increase. An annual survey by the National Day Nurseries Association indicated that many private nurseries do not feel confident that sufficient funding will be passed on to providers by local authorities to enable them to deliver the 1,140 hours. Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland on Thursday, the Minister for Children acknowledged the frustration over the process. The number of hours of early learning and child care provison will be increased by 2020 (Dominic Lipinski/PA) Ms Todd said: There had to be phasing we couldnt go straight from 600 hours to 1,140 hours overnight. I know that that phasing is causing challenges and I know that there are partner relationship issues in some parts of the country where folk have found it difficult to get information from the local authority. We are really working to improve that everywhere. There are some fantastic examples of really good partnership working around the country as well. Yes, I understand that theres frustration at the moment, but come 2020, when this is fully rolled out, it will be absolutely transformative for children. Partner providers are going to be absolutely crucial to the delivery of this ambition. An agreement was struck in April which means 990 million will be spent on day-to-day funding for the scheme by 2021 150 million more than the governments previous estimate. Earlier this year, Audit Scotland warned it would be difficult to increase the infrastructure and workforce to the levels required, in the limited time available, and noted a gap between council and government estimates of costs. Ms Todd said the new system would hand greater power to parents in choosing a nursery that best fits their needs. She said: When this full offering is available, there will be an option to choose a nursery with different hours, so long as it meets the national standard and so long as it has a place available, it would be an option to choose to put your child into a nursery that does suit the hours of work. We were very keen that the children who need this most benefit from it first. So we asked councils, and we made it very clear what we expected them to do is to phase first in the areas of highest deprivation and that has meant that largely, local authority nurseries have been the first to phase because its largely local authority nurseries that are operating in the areas of highest deprivation. Two train manufacturers targeting a contract for the HS2 line have pledged to build on their success in Italy. Bombardier Transportation and Hitachi Rail are developing a joint bid to win the 2.75 billion contract to build 54 trains for the first phase of HS2. The firms collaborated to produce the fastest European train Italys Frecciarossa 1000 and have declared their determination to take high-speed innovation to the next level. Their Italian train, known as the Red Arrow, was designed to achieve speeds of up to 249mph, although track limitations means it reaches 186mph. HS2 trains will operate at up to 225mph. When the Frecciarossa 1000 came into service in 2015 it had many groundbreaking features, such as increased accessibility for wheelchair users, unlimited free WiFi and three levels of air conditioning. It was designed to offer flexible interior layouts, with the Italian state railway opting for four passenger classes consisting of Standard, Premium, Business and Executive. The latter features a boardroom equipped with a meeting table and 32in monitor to display presentations. The interior of the Frecciarossa 1000 (Hitachi Rail/PA) In an interview with the Press Association at Hitachis factory in Pistoia, Italy, the firms head of very high speed Marco Sacchi said there is a really wide difference compared with rolling stock on the existing UK network. Some services in northern England still use Pacer trains, which many passengers complain are slow, noisy and have poor suspension. Train operator Northern has pledged to replace all Pacers which were built by mounting an old bus frame on to train wheels by the end of next year. If the Hitachi-Bombardier HS2 bid is successful the companies will deliver a very high-end solution which will be the next evolution of the Red Arrow, Mr Sacchi said. Bombardier UK managing director Phil Hufton described the firms record in high-speed rail projects as unrivalled. He added: Our bid team is now taking high-speed innovation to the next level by combining engineering excellence with the capacity to deliver cutting-edge passenger benefits. Phase 1 of HS2 will open between London and Birmingham in December 2026 before the railway is extended to Crewe, Manchester and Leeds. HS2 trains will also serve locations on the existing mainline network, such as Liverpool, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow. (PA Graphics) The growth of high-speed rail in Italy means many people travel between cities such as Milan, Venice, Rome and Naples by train rather than plane or car. Its like Italy is much shorter, Mr Sacchi said. In the past, most of the connections were made by car because trains took too much time. Now (the train) is the only way were moving. Manufacturing would be expected to be split between Bombardiers plant in Derby and Hitachis factory in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham. Four other bidders have also been shortlisted: Alstom Transport, Patentes Talgo, Siemens and CAF. The contract is expected to be awarded in March 2020. President Donald Trumps embrace of Saudi Arabia has exposed a foreign policy rift in the Republican Party, as some of his colleagues warn that not punishing the kingdom for its role in killing a US-based columnist will have dangerous consequences. Many Republicans, even senators Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul, who share their views on the matter with the president, have denounced Mr Trumps decision not to levy harsher penalties on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the death and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Wednesday he was astounded by Mr Trumps statement and likened it to a press release for Saudi Arabia. It is a delicate situation when we have a long-term ally that weve had for decades, but we have a crown prince that I believe ordered the killing of a journalist, Mr Corker told Chattanooga TV station WTVC in his home state of Tennessee. We dont have a smoking gun. Everything points to the fact that he knew about it and directed it. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended Mr Trumps decision, saying the US has already placed sanctions on 17 Saudi officials suspected of involvement in the October 2 killing of The Washington Post columnist, who had been critical of the royal family. I fully realize we have to deal with bad actors and imperfect situations on the international stage. However, when we lose our moral voice, we lose our strongest asset. Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) November 20, 2018 Weve sanctioned 17 people, some of them very senior in the Saudi government, Mr Pompeo said in a radio interview with KCMO in Kansas City, Missouri. We are going to make sure that America always stands for human rights. Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (Yui Mok/PA) Mr Graham is not convinced. When we lose our moral voice, we lose our strongest asset, he said. Members of both parties have accused Mr Trump of ignoring US intelligence that concluded, according to one official, that it was likely the crown prince ordered the killing. Several politicians have indicated that the US has no smoking gun that proves he was responsible, but they have called on the CIA and other top intelligence agencies to publicly share what they told the president about the killing. Hey @realdonaldtrump: being Saudi Arabias bitch is not America First. Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) November 21, 2018 In his statement on Tuesday, Mr Trump argued that punishing Saudi Arabia by foolishly cancelling Saudi arms deals worth billions of dollars to the US would only benefit Russia and China. Critics, including high-ranking officials in other countries, accused Mr Trump of ignoring human rights and giving Saudi Arabia a pass for economic reasons. It is America First, Mr Trump said. That unleashed a tweet on Wednesday from Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii who wrote: Being Saudi Arabias bitch is not America First.' A woman holds a poster with the image of murdered Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi (Emrah Gurel/AP) Mr Trump also said the US needs Saudi Arabias help to counter Iran in the region, fight extremism and keep oil prices steady. The US, Russia and the Saudis have boosted oil production in anticipation of sharply lower exports from Iran due to U.S. sanctions reinstated after Mr Trump exited the Iran nuclear deal. Mr Trump publicly thanked Saudi Arabia on Wednesday for plunging oil prices. However, Opec, the cartel of oil-producing countries, could announce production cuts at its December 6 meeting in Vienna, nudging prices upward. Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but lets go lower! he wrote from his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he is spending Thanksgiving. Criticism of the president will likely resume after the holiday when politicians return to Capitol Hill early next week. Three autonomous vehicle projects are set to receive backing from a share of a 25 million government fund on Thursday, as the UK edges closer to making self-driving cars a reality. Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark will announce the public trials in Oxford, after trying a self-driving vehicle firsthand, which is being tested around the city. Self-driving cars will revolutionise the way we move goods and people around the UK, Mr Clark said. Autonomous vehicle trials are already under way in parts of the UK (Dominic Lipinski/PA) These Industrial Strategy projects and investments are exciting examples of our long-term plan in action ensuring we build on our strengths to reap the rewards as we accelerate towards our ambition to have autonomous vehicles on UK roads by 2021. Autonomous vehicles and their technology will not only revolutionise how we travel, it will open up and improve transport services for those who struggle to access both private and public transport. The UK is building on its automotive heritage and strengths to develop the new vehicles and technologies and from 2021 the public will get to experience the future for themselves. The MP will be taken in a test vehicle run by autonomous vehicle software company Oxbotica, the first person outside its technical team to try the autonomous mode on the streets of the UK. Co-founder Paul Newman will travel alongside, explaining how the system works. All the projects will include social behavioural research, to understand how driverless technology can be seamlessly integrated into society, with the findings applied to the development for future autonomous service models. The Governments Centre for Connected Autonomous Vehicles was established in 2015, in a bid to make the UK a world leader in self-driving technology, with 250 million, match-funded by industry, being invested so far. Trials are already under way in parts of the UK, including Bristol, Coventry, Greenwich and Milton Keynes. The UK is a world leader in transport innovation, and our work on the Future of Mobility Grand Challenge will ensure this long continues, said future of mobility minister Jesse Norman. Automated driving technology is advancing rapidly, and the UK market for connected and autonomous vehicles is forecast to be worth up to 52 billion by 2035. This pioneering technology will bring significant benefits to people right across the country, improving mobility and safety, and driving growth across the UK. Since the mid-1980s, prolific filmmaker Spike Lee has been blowing our minds with films such as Shes Gotta Have It, Do The Right Thing, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, 25th Hour, Inside Man, and more recently Chi-Raq. Along the way, especially during the late `90s and early years of the 21st century, Lee stumbled a bit with films such as Girl 6, Bamboozled, Red Hook Summer and Old Boy. His 2018 feature film BlacKkKlansman (Universal/Focus/Legendary), now available on Blu-Ray+Digital, may be his best movie yet. As it says onscreen, the movie is based upon some fo real sh*t as well as the book by Ron Stallworth. In the early 1970s, at a time when the Colorado Springs police force was hiring, and minorities were encouraged to apply, Stallworth (portrayed by John David Washington), a young, hip, soul brother, did so and was hired. The job interview scene alone is worth the price of admission. As a rookie he is relegated to pulling files in the records room. But hes frustrated because he knows hes meant for better things. He gets his big break when he goes undercover to attend a speaking engagement by former Black Panther Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins), formerly known as Stokely Carmichael. Wearing a wire at the event, Stallworth meets and is smitten by Patrice (Laura Harrier), president of the Black Student Union at that college where Ture is speaking. Emboldened by the successful infiltration, Ron makes his next move. He calls the phone number listed in an advertisement by the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. When he gets a returned call and arranges to meet with the local chapter head Walter (Ryan Eggold), things get complicated, seeing as how hes black and all. Officer Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) is assigned to represent Ron in person while the actual Ron continues his phone relationship with Walter. Flips Ron is approved by Walter while the even more insidious Klansman Felix (Jasper Paakkonen) has serious doubts about him. Everything reaches its dramatic peak on the day that two important figures comes to Colorado Springs. Activist Jerome Turner (Harry Belafonte) comes to speak to the Black Student Union. The Klans national director David Duke (Topher Grace) attends the swearing-in ceremony for Flips Ron and others. On this day, Flips true identity risks being revealed while Felixs horrible wife Connie (Ashlie Atkinson) has been recruited to leave a bomb at Patrices residence. In the end everyone gets their comeuppance, including racist cop Landers (Frederick Weller). Especially poignant is the way that Lee incorporates footage from the August 2017 rally and protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, perfectly linking the past to the present. With Thanksgiving upon us, and political and racial tensions at their peak, this might not be the movie to watch with the family. But you should definitely see it, before or after the holiday. Blu-Ray+Digital bonus features include A Spike Lee Joint in which producer Jordan Peele and the cast, as well as the real-life Stallworth talk about the experience of working with director Lee, and the BlacKkKlansman extended trailer which features Princes Mary Dont You Weep. Rating: A- Women should not be put off joining the Metropolitan Police despite a recent violent attack in which a female officer was kicked, the deputy assistant commissioner has said. Lucy DOrsi said two suspects have been charged following the incident in which two police officers were assaulted in Merton, south London, on Saturday. Footage of the violent struggle, which was shared hundreds of times online, shows a male officer being dragged around the road, while his female colleague took a flying kick to the chest. Ms DOrsi was speaking as Scotland Yard marked a century of having female officers on the force, and launched a drive to recruit more women. Fortunately, I feel that extremity of violence is still rare. I would encourage people, and for it not to put them off joining policing, that is not what we are faced with all the time, she said. She stressed none of her colleagues within the force come to work and expect to be assaulted, condemning the attack as absolutely despicable. She added: That level of violence in my view is completely unacceptable. Lucy DOrsi joined the Met in 1992 and said she is not aware of her gender ever holding her police career back (Met Police/PA) It is also really disappointing that people chose to just film it or drive by, and for me it is important people do think about calling the police and try and get help for officers. A century ago on November 22, then commissioner Sir Cecil Macready officially announced the Met would employ female officers. Known as the women patrols, they took to the streets of London for the first time in February 1919. Almost 8,000 women now make up the force across a number of roles. But women account for just 27% of officers, and as the campaign was launched Commissioner Cressida Dick said the long-term aim is to reach a target of 50%. Ms DOrsi said she is optimistic the target is achievable. She said the range of opportunities for a fabulous career in policing is absolutely outstanding, adding that the campaign to diversify the Met is needed because the more the force represents the communities they serve, the better. Agreeing with Ms Dick that there is no better time for women to be in policing, Ms DOrsi stressed no roles within the force are closed to them. Policing, and specifically the Met, have very much led the way in terms of being accessible to women and all roles being accessible to women, she said. Highlighting the diversity within specialist roles, such as firearms, counter-terrorism and protection officers, she said there is a wealth of choice for women. We have been and will continue to be trailblazers in terms of the equality, she added. She said the force is keen to improve the representation of women within its firearms command, and admitted it has some way to go on the issue. Asked what she would say to those who believe women are not as physically capable as their male counterparts, she said that is absolute nonsense. She added: Ultimately this is about catching people that are intent on committing crime and harming people I think women are equally capable of that. Ms DOrsi joined Scotland Yard in 1992, and said she has never been conscious of being disadvantaged because she is female, and has not witnessed any overt discrimination. Describing the Met of today, she added: Male colleagues are as quick to call out unacceptable behaviour as female officers, and I think for me that is really refreshing. Bombardiers decision to axe almost 500 jobs at its site in Belfast is not a Brexit issue, Business Minister Richard Harrington said as he was blasted for saying the Government had no role to play in the matter. More than a tenth of core staff face redundancy under cost-cutting plans aimed at improving the Canadian-headquartered firms long-term competitiveness. Mr Harrington told the Commons that the decision was regrettable. He said: This is unwelcome news for the Belfast workforce and their families. Its regrettable that they face further uncertainty at this time of year, but Bombardier is a private company and the Government has no role in its commercial decisions. The minister also revealed that he had been assured by the firms president Michael Ryan that Brexit had not played a role in the decision. Business Minister Richard Harrington (Chris McAndrew/UK Parliament/PA) Shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner warned that there would be significant implications for the whole of the UK if the firm continued to downsize operations. He said: Bombardiers presence in Northern Ireland is vital to the economy there, representing 8% of Northern Irelands GDP and about 40% of the provinces manufacturing output. The company employs about 4,000 people across Northern Ireland as a whole, so this announcement will be a devastating blow not only to the 490 families who will be directly affected by it in the run up to Christmas but there are an estimated 20,000 jobs throughout the UK supply chain. This matter is therefore of national public policy importance, for the minister to say the Government has no role here is simply unacceptable. He added: These job losses are just the latest in a long line of redundancies at Bombardier, over 1,700 since May of 2015. Such huge cuts to the workforce so highly concentrated in one area will have devastating consequences to entire communities. Mr Harrington accused Mr Gardiner of talking down Northern Ireland with his questions, saying there was a lot of good news coming from the region. The minister added that he and his officials were having regular and ongoing discussions with Bombardier, trade unions and stakeholders in Northern Ireland. Mr Harrington later offered Speaker John Bercow a briefing about a reverse thrust project under consideration. Julian Lewis, Conservative chairman of the Defence Committee, said: If were in the business of reverse thrusts, can I suggest a bit of reverse thrusting be done in the direction of Bombardier because, although (Mr Harrington) is right in that its a private company and he has no power over it, he shouldnt underrate his own degree of influence. He is going to meet the company, as he says, let him do a bit of thrusting and let him thrust them in the right direction. DUP MP for Belfast East Gavin Robinson said: The workforce has been through an incredibly difficult period over those three years. This is a further disheartening blow for a workforce that saw the clouds shifting from above the plant in Belfast in Newtownards and Newtownabbey. Mr Robinson urged the Government to not only explore every avenue of financial support but also deliver for Northern Ireland. Labours Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) suggested Mr Harrington should not try and bamboozle the Commons, noting Bombardier is a damn good company, although he argued that the disturbance of us coming out of the European Union has a deep, deep effect. Health teams working in the community are to get a multibillion-pound funding boost in a bid to prevent unnecessary hospital admissions, the Prime Minister has announced. Theresa May visited a health centre in north London on Thursday morning after pledging 3.5 billion a year in new real-terms funding for primary and community healthcare by 2023/24 as part of the forthcoming NHS long-term plan. It is hoped the boost will mean more patients are treated at home and in the community rather than being admitted to hospital. Mrs May said leaving the EU means Britain will no longer be sending vast sums of money to Brussels, and will have more money for domestic priorities like our NHS. Theresa May during a visit to Kentish Town Health Centre (Andrew Matthews/PA) Downing Street said the money represents a historic commitment to ensure a growing share of NHS spending is put into primary and community care. But the Nuffield Trust said the cash will not lead to a big shift in services, saying the funding boost will simply allow GPs and community services to keep up with demand. The think tanks senior policy analyst Sally Gainsbury said it was broadly in line with the 3.4% overall that the NHS in England is getting over the next five years. She added: That means that, far from representing a big shift in funding towards out-of-hospital services, this money will simply allow GPs and community services to keep up with demand over the next five years. Thats important, but it means the new money announced today is not going to lead to a significant change in the way that people experience healthcare. Theresa May was joined by Matt Hancock and local health officials (Andrew Matthews/PA) Part of the money will be spent on community-based rapid response teams. These 24/7 teams made up of doctors, nurses and physiotherapists can provide urgent care in the community as an alternative to hospital. As well as emergency care, they can also help patients recover closer to home. Alongside Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock, the PM met one team based at Kentish Town Health Centre. She spoke with doctors, nurses and paramedics about the way the teams operate, and heard how they helped one terminally ill patient fulfil her wish to die in her own home rather than be admitted to hospital. Mrs May said: Im sure she would have felt much more comfortable at home, and Im sure her family were much happier with that too. The PM later dropped in on a parent and baby class and confessed to screaming and screaming when she got her injections as a child. Theresa May joins a parent and baby group (Andrew Matthews/PA) Sitting on the floor and chatting to one parent about having their babys jabs, she said: I have a vague memory of being in my mothers arms and just screaming. Meanwhile, there will be a national rollout of dedicated support for care home residents. A successful pilot saw healthcare workers including GPs assigned to care homes, where they get to know individual residents needs and provided tailored treatment. Speaking ahead of the visit, Mrs May said: Too often people end up in hospital not because its the best place to meet their needs but because the support that would allow them to be treated or recover in their own home just isnt available. Many of us might assume that hospital is the safest place to be but in reality many patients would be much better off being cared for in the community. The longer a patient stays in hospital, the more it costs the NHS and the more pressure is put on its hardworking staff. This needs to change. Thats why Im announcing a major boost in funding for community healthcare, which will give more patients a genuine and high-quality alternative to hospital. Mr Hancock said: Its all about a long-term plan to make the NHS sustainable, to try to address problems at source, in the community to address mental health problems rather than just keeping putting money into propping up our hospitals, and rather to support prevention than cure. I understand the pressures from modern life, that are coming at the same time as increase in mental health disorders for young people. Weve got to tackle that at source, and weve got to make sure that more support is available as part of the long-term plan for the future of the NHS. Were going to do that. A hospital is on lockdown after a woman was reportedly stabbed. The alarm was raised about the incident at Ailsa Hospital in North Ayrshire at around 10.05am on Thursday. The woman is being treated in hospital but her condition is not known. Due to an incident on the grounds of Ailsa Hospital earlier today, Ailsa Hospital and University Hospital Ayr campus are on full lockdown. No members of staff, patients or visitors will be able to leave the sites until advised. A further update will be given as soon as possible. NHS Ayrshire & Arran (@NHSaaa) November 22, 2018 NHS Ayrshire and Arran have put the premises on lockdown and a police helicopter is supporting officers in the area. A Police Scotland spokeswoman said: At around 10.05am on Thursday, police received a report that a woman had been attacked in the grounds of Ailsa Hospital on Dalmenington Road in Ayr. Emergency services are in attendance and the woman has been taken to hospital. The woman is being treated in hospital but her condition is not known (Andrew Milligan/PA) Local officers, supported by a police helicopter, are carrying out a search of the area. Enquiries are ongoing. We have received a report of a woman being attacked in the grounds of Ailsa Hospital this morning. Officers are conducting a search of the area and enquiries are ongoing. Ayrshire Police (@AyrshirePolice) November 22, 2018 Billy McClean, associate director for the health board, added: NHS Ayrshire and Arran is aware of an incident in the grounds of Ailsa Hospital this morning. We are assisting Police Scotland with their investigations, and to ensure the safety of staff, patients and visitors. We are unable to comment any further at this time. The number of children suffering from emotional distress is increasing exponentially, the chair of specialist taskforce reviewing mental health care for youngsters has warned. Dame Denise Coia said that combined with an increase in disorders such as autism and ADHD had resulted in a massive increase in referrals to Child and Adolscent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). While she said there had been no increase in the incidence of serious mental illness, she spoke about the number of youngsters who were left suffering because of anxiety and depression, bullying or issues with their body image. Dame Denise, who chairs a taskforce on children and young peoples mental health that was jointly set up by the Scottish Government and the council body Cosla, said there was complete consensus the problems with mental health in Scotland with children and young people are increasing exponentially. She added: Thats not related to the incidence or prevalence of serious mental illness, that is unchanged. The rise is in the emotional distress in young people at schools, so issues around bullying, body image, depression, anxiety, is really on the increased and has massively changed. Dame Denise Coia spoke about the number of youngsters who were left suffering because of anxiety and depression (Jon Challicom/NSPCC) She also spoke out about serious issues relating to how those with neurodevleopmental disorders, such as autism, Aspergers and ADHD are dealt with saying youngsters with these conditions were sometimes treated by CAHMS but in some places could be treated by paediatric services. She said: These two areas have grown significantly and that has accounted for the massive increase in referrals. Dame Denise was questioned on the issue by MSPs on Holyroods Audit Committee in the wake of a report by public spending watchdogs, which found specialist mental health services for young people were complex and fragmented, warning the system was under significant pressure due to a big increase in demand. NHS Scotland chief executive Paul Gray told the committee there had a been a 69% increase in CAMHS provision since 2007. And in her programme for government this year, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced an extra 250 million spending to improve mental health care with this including a 60 million pledge to recruit hundreds of school nurses along with counsellors for secondary schools, colleges and universities. But Dame Denise stressed the importance of authorities providing equal services for young people, with a third of Scotlands population under the age of 24. Providers have to make sure that they are giving equal priority to child and adolescent services and that is what we are not seeing going round the country, she told the committee. I think we live in an age of austerity, and were all grown ups in the age of austerity and we know that actually we have to all meet our commitments to try to live within our means. I think the issue for me is as we attempt to live within our means I think if the population, a third of them are under the age of 24, we actually have to make sure living within our means gives them a fair percentage of the resource we have that we dont prioritise other areas at the expense of children and young people. Dame Denise added: The Government is completely committed to CAMHS, I think there is cross party commitment to child and adolescent mental health. The policy is great, the commitment from the people on the ground delivering the service is great, but actually when the resource goes out and children are a third of the population of Scotland up to the age of 24 the resource has to be targeted at that group of individuals. And at the moment we have to really highlight the issue that mental health services, particularly child and adolescent mental health services, while everyone is taking cuts they are taking bigger cuts proportionately than everyone else. The vandalism of a sculpture erected in Dublin to mark the Armistice centenary has been branded an embarrassment to Ireland. The solicitor who spearheaded efforts to bring the Haunting Soldier artwork to the city said the attack would prove counterproductive, predicting even more people would go to pay their respects. Red paint was thrown over the six metre-high sculpture in St Stephens Green at around 2am on Thursday. Irish gardai are investigating. Remembrance wreaths and flowers laid at the base of the sculpture were also damaged, among them one laid by the New Zealand All Blacks ahead of their rugby match with Ireland last Saturday. The laurel wreath was in tribute to the first captain of the All Blacks, Dave Gallaher. Donegal-born Gallaher was killed in action at Ypres in 1917. Cleaning work in St Stephens Green, Dublin (Niall Carson/PA) Last months installation of the towering sculpture in a prominent city centre location was indicative of changing attitudes in Ireland to the tens of thousands of Irishmen who fought and died in the First World War. Soldiers once shunned by the state for fighting for British forces in the years just before Irish independence have been afforded greater recognition in the peace process era. A laurel wreath laid next to the sculpture by New Zealand All Blacks players (Niall Carson/PA) Sabina Purcell, who had the idea to bring the piece to Ireland for the 100th anniversary of the Armistice, securing a state grant and private sector sponsorship for the project, said she was very upset. This does not reflect who we are or what we have become and whoever did this is an embarrassment to us, she told the Press Association. This was given to us on loan as a gift and they just simply didnt seem to appreciate that or even care. If I had my time to do it again, I would do it all over again. Im not going to be dictated to by these people who did this. The people of Ireland have responded in their thousands coming to see it every day. Sabina Purcell (Niall Carson/PA) All Blacks stars Sam Whitelock, Liam Squire and Nepo Laulala laid wreaths at the foot of the sculpture last week. The artwork portrays a weary soldier returning from war. Designed by Dorset-based artist and blacksmith Martin Galbavy, it is made from scraps of metal including horse shoes, spanners, car jacks and brake discs. It has been loaned to Ireland and its final day in Dublin is Monday. Ms Purcell expressed anger that the All Blacks wreath had been damaged. Its very, very disrespectful, she said. But we are keeping it as a symbol, because its not who we are. The solicitor hailed the repair work carried out by the Office of Public Works (OPW) on Thursday morning. The OPW have done a marvellous job, they have more or less got it all back to how it was, she said. Its marvellous what they have done. Its spectacular and itll be here until Monday. She added: I am so honoured by the respect shown to it by the public that what this person did is just a nothing, because the respect and support and response has been phenomenal, and therell be even more visitors now, turning an horrendous negative into an absolute positive. So its been totally counterproductive. Irish Culture Minister Josepha Madigan voiced disappointment about the attack. Josepha Madigan (Niall Carson/PA) This installation honours all those who died in the terrible suffering of World War One, she said. It is incredibly moving and has been proved immensely popular. There is no bravery in throwing paint at a statue in the middle of the night. The Haunting Soldier is designed to evoke the fragility and suffering of those who survived the war and returned home to an uncertain and difficult future. The ghostly figure was constructed by Chris Hannam of Dorset Forge and Fabrication. Nissan Motor has confirmed that its board of directors voted unanimously to dismiss Carlos Ghosn as its chairman after he was arrested on suspicion of falsifying financial reports and other misconduct. The company said in a statement on Thursday that its aim was to minimise the impact from the case on its alliance with Frances Renault SA and smaller Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motor Corp. Carlos Ghosn (David Parry/PA) It said Mr Ghosn and another executive, Greg Kelly, were also dismissed as representative directors. Nissans board held an emergency meeting at the company headquarters in Yokohama on Thursday. The company said in a statement that the decision was made after the board reviewed a detailed report of an internal investigation into the alleged misconduct. Theresa May has declared that final agreement on Brexit is within our grasp following a breakthrough agreement on future relations between the UK and EU. Speaking outside 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister said a political declaration on post-Brexit relations agreed with Brussels is the right plan for the UK. She later told the House of Commons that the deal held out the prospect of a zero-tariff free trade area with the EU of a kind the bloc had never previously offered. And she said: The British people want Brexit to be settled, they want a good deal that sets us on a course for a brighter future, and they want us to come together as a country and to move on to focus on the big issues at home, like our NHS. The deal that will enable us to do this is now within our grasp. In these crucial 72 hours ahead, I will do everything possible to deliver it for the British people. As she addressed MPs, it emerged that a late change to the UKs draft withdrawal agreement would allow the 21-month transition period after Brexit day to be extended beyond the expected date of the next general election in June 2022. PA Graphics Where the agreement had offered the possibility of a one-off extension from December 31 2020 to December 20XX, it now reads for up to one or two years. This could mean the transitional period during which the UK must follow Brussels regulations while having no say over them could stretch until the end of December 2022, six months after the election date and six and a half years after the 2016 referendum. The draft political declaration was agreed in principle on Thursday morning, after negotiators worked through the night on new directions issued by Mrs May and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker when they met in the Belgian capital on Wednesday evening. The breakthrough cleared the way for a special summit in Brussels on Sunday, at which leaders of the remaining 27 EU states are expected to give their stamp of approval to both the future framework and a separate withdrawal agreement setting out the terms of the UKs departure. Two years of botched negotiations in which @Theresay_May's red lines have been torn up, Cabinet resignations have been racked up and Chequers has been chucked. pic.twitter.com/vQsbf1Ahli Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) November 22, 2018 Mrs May briefed members of her Cabinet on the new text in a conference call and was addressing MPs in a statement to the House of Commons later in the day. Speaking outside Number 10, she said: This is the right deal for the UK. It delivers on the vote of the referendum, it brings back control of our borders, our money and our laws and it does so while protecting jobs, protecting our security and protecting the integrity of the United Kingdom. Confirming that she would return to Brussels on Saturday for further talks with Mr Juncker ahead of the summit, she added: The British people want this to be settled, they want a good deal that sets us on course for a brighter future. That deal is within our grasp and I am determined to deliver on it. I have just sent to EU27 a draft Political Declaration on the Future Relationship between EU and UK. The Commission President has informed me that it has been agreed at negotiators level and agreed in principle at political level, subject to the endorsement of the Leaders. Charles Michel (@eucopresident) November 22, 2018 Agreement on the text was announced by European Council president Donald Tusk, who said in a tweet: I have just sent to EU27 a draft Political Declaration on the Future Relationship between EU and UK. The Commission President has informed me that it has been agreed at negotiators level and agreed in principle at political level, subject to the endorsement of the leaders. Downing Street has always stressed that the 585-page legally binding withdrawal agreement setting out the terms of the UKs departure from the EU including a divorce bill estimated at 39 billion can only be finalised alongside the shorter declaration setting out the two sides aspirations for their future relations. Mrs May will hope that the prospect of an ambitious free trade deal set out in the 26-page declaration will win over some of the Conservative MPs who have voiced deep misgivings about her plans. Theresa May faced questions on Brexit at Prime Ministers Questions in the House of Commons on Wednesday (PA Wire/PA Images) The new text calls for an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership covering trade, law enforcement, foreign policy, security and defence, which could take the form of a Ukraine-style Association Agreement. It confirms that the future relationship must respect the sovereignty of the UK and its right to develop an independent trade policy and end the free movement of EU nationals. And it leaves open the possibility of using technological solutions to keep the Irish border open after Brexit. But other elements of the declaration angered Brexiteers, including: Plans for a free trade area, combining deep regulatory and customs co-operation, building and improving on the single customs territory provided for in the withdrawal agreement; A commitment to work together on safeguarding workers rights and consumer and environmental protections; Provisions to ensure a level playing field on business competition, which could cover areas including state aid, climate change laws and tax; A role for the European Court of Justice in providing binding rulings on the interpretation of EU law in any disputes between the two sides. The document envisages negotiations beginning immediately after the formal date of Brexit on March 29 2019, with high-level conferences every six months. Agreements on equivalence of financial services regulations and access and quotas for fishing should be reached in time to come into effect at the end of the transition period on December 31 2020. Just read Political Declaration. Lots of unicorns taking the place of facts about the future relationship. Fair play to the EU for pushing it as far as possible...but it adds up to a blindfold Brexit. Difficult issues unresolved - so extended transition/backstop almost certain. Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) November 22, 2018 The new text was dismissed by Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon as lots of unicorns taking the place of facts about the future relationship. Leave-backing Tory MP Marcus Fysh said that the political declaration made Mrs Mays withdrawal agreement even more toxic. And a source from the European Research Group of eurosceptic Conservative MPs said: The political declaration is not legally binding, vague, aspirational and little more than a smokescreen to cover up the fact that the permanent relationship is the customs union backstop. The PM's proposed Withdrawal Agreement is terminally toxic to our democracy, and her proposals for the future relationship both make the Withdrawal Agreement even more toxic, and are as fanciful as they were at Chequers. #ChequersMeansCorbyn Marcus Fysh MP (@MarcusFysh) November 22, 2018 Opponents of Brexit were also critical of the new document. Conservative MP Philip Lee, who quit the Government in protest at its handling of Brexit, said it reads like a letter to Santa, while Labours Chuka Umunna, a leading supporter of the Peoples Vote campaign for a second referendum, said it was entirely aspirational and doesnt finalise anything. This is a terrible offer to the British people and one that the people should have the opportunity to turn down in favour of keeping our current deal as members with a say over decisions that affect our future, said Mr Umunna. It remains unclear whether further negotiation will be needed on Sunday or whether the summit will be a simple rubber-stamping exercise. The PM has faced a strong pushback from Spain over the status of Gibraltar, while France is understood to have sought amendments to wording on fishing rights in UK waters. Injuries sustained by a nurse after an attack at a hospital are not believed to be life-threatening, the Scottish First Minister has said. Emergency services were called to Ailsa Hospital in North Ayrshire at around 10.05am on Thursday after the female nurse was reportedly stabbed. She is currently receiving treatment in hospital after the area was on lockdown while Police Scotland continued their searches. Ayr MSP John Scott raised the incident at First Ministers Questions (FMQs) in the Scottish Parliament, saying: I understand a nurse has been stabbed by a patient. Nicola Sturgeon said she was receiving reports about the incident as she came into the chamber for FMQs. She said: Our understanding and let me stress this is our understanding, the first I will do when I leave the chamber will be to get a full update on this our understanding is that injuries sustained by a nurse are not life-threatening injuries and that police are fully involved in this incident. A police cordon at Ailsa Hospital in Ayr (Andrew Milligan/PA) Obviously, the safety of staff and patients is of the utmost importance. We have received a report of a woman being attacked in the grounds of Ailsa Hospital this morning. Officers are conducting a search of the area and enquiries are ongoing. Ayrshire Police (@AyrshirePolice) November 22, 2018 NHS Ayrshire and Arran earlier said no patients, staff or visitors would be able to leave the site but restrictions were relaxed around 1pm. A Police Scotland spokeswoman said: At around 10.05am on Thursday, police received a report that a woman had been attacked in the grounds of Ailsa Hospital on Dalmenington Road in Ayr. Emergency services are in attendance and the woman has been taken to hospital. Local officers, supported by a police helicopter, are carrying out a search of the area. Enquiries are ongoing. INCIDENT UPDATE University Hospital Ayr and Ailsa Hospital are no longer on lockdown. Movement around the site can be now be resumed, with the exception of the courtyard car park in front of Addictions Services. NHS Ayrshire & Arran (@NHSaaa) November 22, 2018 Billy McClean, associate director for the health board, added: NHS Ayrshire and Arran is aware of an incident in the grounds of Ailsa Hospital this morning. We are assisting Police Scotland with their investigations, and to ensure the safety of staff, patients and visitors. We are unable to comment any further at this time. Nicola Sturgeon has given a guarantee people across Scotland needing flu vaccinations will receive them without further delay after facing questions on waiting times for the vaccines. Scottish Conservative deputy leader Jackson Carlaw raised the issue at First Ministers Questions. He gave the example of an 85-year-old woman who had not yet been given a date for her vaccination and pressed the First Minister to confirm all over-75s would be vaccinated by the end of the month. He said: Were also being informed by GP clinics that many patients are having to wait potentially now until next month when the winter flu season will take hold. I remind the chamber that in Scotland you actually have to be over 75 to get the new aTIV vaccine this winter, not 65 as elsewhere in the UK. So how can it be acceptable that even under this Scottish Governments regime of restricted access it is being delayed to elderly patients who need it now? Nicola Sturgeon appealed for any local supply problems to be brought to the attention of the government so they can be addressed (Jane Barlow/PA) Earlier, the Scottish Government announced the aTIV vaccine would only be made available for people aged 75 with a different vaccine being used for those under this threshold. In Scotland, you actually have to be over 75 to get the new ATIV vaccine this winter not 65 as elsewhere in the UK. How can it be acceptable that even this Scottish Governments regime of restricted access is being delayed to elderly patients who need it now? #FMQs Scottish Conservatives (@ScotTories) November 22, 2018 Mr Carlaw said: Im raising this matter today because this is now a major concern to constituents of MSPs right across the chamber. Were entering the flu season and I raise it to get the reassurance from the first minister that NHS Scotland will ensure everyone who needs it receives this vaccine without yet further delay. The SNP leader said she would give that reassurance, adding the Scottish Government is not restricting access to flu vaccinations and every year local supply issues arise which are quickly dealt with. The vaccination programme is well under way, the vaccination programme is going well, there are adequate supplies of vaccine in Scotland overall, she said. It is not the case that there are large numbers of patients waiting for the vaccine. She appealed for any local supply problems to be brought to the attention of the government so they can be addressed. She added: This is an effective and robust programme and I would appeal to every member of the chamber, including Jackson Carlaw, not to inadvertently undermine public confidence in the programme because that would be worst thing any of us could do. Le Collectif Cheikh Yassine a organise un certain nombre dactivites et de festivites pour les enfants de Gaza sous le theme La joie des enfants de Gaza pour lAid . Ces activites ont commence le premier jour de lAid et continue jusquau 4eme jour de lAid dans la bande de Gaza. Plusieurs activites, ont ete organisees parmi lesquelles : des competitions recompensees par des prix, des jeux, des animations et des chants presentes par un groupe ainsi que des distributions de cadeaux et daides financieres. President Donald Trump has begun his Thanksgiving Day by resuming his public dispute with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts over the independence of the American judiciary. Mr Trump started the row this week with remarks critical of a judge who was appointed by President Barack Obama and who rejected Mr Trumps migrant asylum policy. Mr Roberts responded on Wednesday in a statement by saying there are no Obama judges or Trump judges but instead an extraordinary group of dedicated judges. Mr Trumps holiday criticism of the judicial branch of government takes aim at Californias Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals, which long has had a majority of judges appointed by Democratic presidents, with the current breakdown 16-7. Mr Trump tweeted that Mr Roberts can say what he wants, but the 9th Circuit is a complete & total disaster. If the nights drawing in is getting you down, spare a thought for the residents of Utqiagvik. The city in Alaska, which lies 320 miles (515km) north of the Arctic Circle, has just entered a 65-day polar night. So long Sun! The sun will rise in Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), Alaska at 12:40pm AKST (4:40pm EST) and will set 64 minutes later at 1:44pm AKST (5:44pm EST). Once the sun sets today, it won't rise again until January 22nd. That's 65 days without seeing the sun! #AKwx pic.twitter.com/7UdM1JeyWE Ed Piotrowski (@EdPiotrowski) November 18, 2018 The sun set on the citys 4,000 residents on Sunday and will not now reappear until January 23. Locals reported that, because of cloud cover, there wasnt too much of a sunset to see. Temperatures in the city, which was known as Barrow until two years ago when residents voted to return to the citys original Inupiaq name, are expected to fall to lows of around minus 30C (minus 22F) in that period. Over the coming weeks, a number of other towns and cities in Alaska including Kaktovik, Atqasuk and Point Hope will wave goodbye to the sun for varying lengths of time. Autonomous vehicle trials serving London and Edinburgh have received a funding boost from the Government as the UK ramps up its self-driving ambitions. Three pilots have been announced, ranging from self-driving taxis to autonomous buses, that will get a share of a 25 million grant in a bid to bring self-driving vehicles onto UK roads by 2021. An autonomous bus pilot in Edinburgh, known as Project CAV Forth, receives a 4.35 million slice of the fund, paving the way for a service running from the Forth Bridge into the city centre. Business Secretary Greg Clark is shown an autonomous car by Professor Pal Newman at Oxbotica (Aaron Chown/PA) Five single-decker manual buses will be converted as part of the pilot, carrying up to 42 passengers for 14 miles. In London, Project Apollo led by Addison Lee who is working with a number of software companies, will receive 8.84 million towards the development of autonomous taxis, building on its existing tests in Greenwich. A second pilot in the capital, ServCity headed up by Jaguar Land Rover, takes 11.15 million, as it develops a mobility service using six autonomous Land Rover Discovery vehicles. Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark announced the winning bidders in Oxford on Thursday, after trying a self-driving vehicle first-hand, which is being tested around the city. Today is very significant because it just shows that the decision that we took to have autonomous vehicles as the heart of our industry strategy is now paying fruits, Mr Clark said. We will see over the years ahead the use of these cars and vehicles right across the country, and so what were announcing today is that were going to have a pilot in Edinburgh for example, for a bus to drive autonomously into the city centre from outside. In London, were going to have Addison Lee cabs that are going to make use of the technology and further testing right across the country, so what was previously a rather futuristic hope has now become a reality. Business Secretary Greg Clark (Aaron Chown/PA) The MP was taken on a test vehicle run by autonomous vehicle software company Oxbotica, the first person outside its technical team to try the autonomous mode on the streets of the UK. Co-founder Paul Newman travelled alongside, explaining how the system works. All the projects will include social behavioural research, to understand how driverless technology can be seamlessly integrated into society, with the findings applied to the development for future autonomous service models. The Governments Centre for Connected Autonomous Vehicles was established in 2015, in a bid to make the UK a world leader in self-driving technology, with 250 million match-funded by industry, being invested so far. Trials are already under way in parts of the UK, including Bristol, Coventry, Greenwich and Milton Keynes. Richard Leonard says austerity measures are being imposed upon councils and schools in Scotland, after teachers rejected the latest pay offer from the Scottish Government. Speaking at First Ministers Questions, the Scottish Labour leader read out a letter from a teacher which asked why those in the profession were having to purchase school supplies for pupils out of their own pocket. On Tuesday, members of The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) and Scottish Secondary Teachers Association (SSTA) overwhelmingly rejected an offer of a headline 3% rise on teachers pay, with bigger increases for staff on lower grades. The unions had called for a 10% rise after years of pay restraint. The EIS and SSTA teachers unions have warned of industrial action if the pay offer is not improved (Andrew Milligan/PA) Mr Leonard said: This government has not only failed to stop Tory austerity, it has added to it and then imposed it on local councils and schools. The First Minister wants to be judged by her record on education, so lets examine that record its a record of austerity, which even SNP councillors now admit is going too far. It is a record of our teachers themselves having to buy pens, pencils, books for pupils because Scotlands schools are starved of cash. How can education be your top priority with underfunded schools and undervalued teachers? First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: Teachers are not undervalued, we highly value the work that teachers do and of course, we will continue to negotiate in good faith with teachers for a fair pay increase, just as we successfully did with nurseries and other healthcare workers, and of course with our police officers. As well as the real-term increases in local council budgets, delivered by the finance secretary (Derek Mackay) in the last budget, weve seen spending on schools by local authorities increase in each of the last three years. Weve also seen the pupil equity fund, which is delivering increased resources to schools. So we will continue to take the appropriate steps, make the appropriate decisions to support our teachers on the frontline, just as we do our nurses and other public sector workers. The Scottish Government has joined with higher education institutions and trade unions in a call to protect colleges and universities after Brexit. In a joint statement, they said that leaving the EU would create major issues for higher education in Scotland, significantly impacting staff and students. They also urged the UK Government to provide clarity on how leaving the EU, with or without a deal, could change funding and learning opportunities currently on offer. Scotland has proportionally more EU staff and students than the rest of the UK, with around 9% of all 241,935 university students who enrolled in Scotland in 2016-17 from EU countries. EU nationals accounted for more than 75,000 college enrolments between 2012 and 2017. There are concerns over what could happen to research funding and EU students post-Brexit at Scotlands universities and colleges (Jane Barlow/PA) SNP MSP Richard Lochhead said: Brexit is the single biggest risk to our colleges and universities, threatening the ability to attract and retain EU staff and students and continue vital research. I welcome this joint statement which, amid the current chaos, sends a clear, powerful message that colleges and universities will use their collective influence to press for much needed answers from the UK Government. We will also work to retain our historic links with our European partners and ensure they are in no doubt that Scotland continues to welcome EU citizens to study or work here. Professor Andrea Nolan, Universities Scotland, said: People have been top of our Brexit priorities since the referendum result came through. Thats still the case, whether the UK Government gets a deal or not. As Brexit reaches the final stages it is really important we continue to emphasise how much our staff and students matter to us and repeat the message that well keep working to secure the earliest guarantees of their rights. Europe is such an important partner for Scottish higher education and we want to secure the best possible ongoing relationship, whatever the outcome from Brexit. These relationships are central to the excellence of our higher education, bringing mutual and wider benefit to Scotlands society and economy. Ken Milroy, Colleges Scotland, added: We welcome the united approach from Scotlands tertiary education sector as the UKs withdrawal from the EU approaches. Collectively, we all share the same concerns and it is important that we continue to work closely together to mitigate the effects that Brexit will have on Scottish institutions, staff, students and the wider economy. The college sector is eager to ensure that whilst leaving the EU, we contribute to economic and individual prosperity by continuing to deliver high-quality and effective education and training to grow and maintain the skilled workforce required to increase Scotlands productivity. Theresa May is lining up Scotlands fishing sector to be used as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Europe post-Brexit, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was warned. The SNP leader accused the UK Government of preparing for another Tory sell out of Scottish fishermen after a political declaration on post-Brexit relations was agreed with Brussels. Mrs May has insisted the agreement reached is the right plan for the UK which will set the country on course for a brighter future. But Ms Sturgeon argued it included lots of unicorns taking the place of facts about the future relationship. The PM has fiercely resisted the efforts of EU States to make an explicit link between access to our waters and access to markets. We will negotiate and decide, as an independent coastal state, on access and quota on an annual basis just like Norway and Iceland do now 2/2 David Mundell MP (@DavidMundellDCT) November 22, 2018 She claimed the agreement left difficult issues unresolved and would lead to a blindfold Brexit, which could see Britain leave the European Union without knowing the full details of their future relationship will look like. With David Mundell having threatened to quit the Cabinet if the UK remains tied to Europes Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) after the end of the Brexit transition period, Ms Sturgeon said the Scottish Secretary would have forfeited forever any last remaining scrap of principle or credibility that he had if remained in his post. Scottish Tory MP Ross Thomson branded the political declaration unacceptable, as he said the UK must be a normal independent coastal state like Norway. He tweeted the political declaration commits UK to establish a new fisheries agreement on, inter allia, access to waters and quota shares and added: This means sovereignty over our waters sacrificed for a trade deal. But Mr Mundell said he was not taking lessons on standing up for fisherman from Nicola Sturgeon, saying SNP policy would keep the sector within the CFP. Scots Tory MPs letter to PM on 14/11 says specifically that access and quota shares cannot be included in the Future Economic Partnership. Political Declaration now agreed shows they have been. The 13 therefore cant support Mays #Brexit deal ( including @DavidMundellDCT ) pic.twitter.com/KpqFQ1oM9a Michael Russell (@Feorlean) November 22, 2018 Meanwhile the UK Government stressed the declaration text states explicitly that the UK will be an independent coastal state. However Ms Sturgeon mounted her attack at First Minister Questions, saying: The political declaration that has been agreed between he UK Government and the European Commission this morning represents another Tory sell out of Scottish fisher men. What we see is that the Scottish fishing industry will be used as a bargaining chip in wider trade talks. She recalled last week all 13 Scottish Tory MPs sent a letter to Mrs May, making clear that after Brexit the UK must be able to negotiate access and quota shares on an annual basis without any pre-existing arrangement being in force and this means that access and quota shares can not be included in the future economic partnership. But she said paragraph 75 of the declaration stated: Within the context of the overall economic partnership the parties should establish a new fisheries agreement on access to waters and quota share. She added: There is no mention of annual negotiations, which I happen to know the UK Government was trying to secure and they failed. In terms of David Mundells position I would simply say this his position is a matter for him but if David Mundell is still in office by the end of today in light of this political declaration he will have forfeited forever any last remaining scrap of principle or credibility that he had. Scottish Secretary David Mundell is facing calls to quit. (Victoria Jones/PA) Labours shadow Scottish secretary Lesley Laird also called for Mr Mundell to resign with immediate effect. But the Scottish Secretary insisted the political declaration was a good deal for the fishing industry, which would allow the UK to become an independent coastal state and leave the hated CFP. Speaking during a visit to an Edinburgh school, he said Britain would be able to negotiate its own agreement on access and quotas with the EU just as Iceland and Norway do at the moment. The Tory MP added: There will be no pre-existing arrangements in the political declaration. Quotas and access will be discussed but there will be no predetermined arrangements as to what those quotas and access will be. It will be decided annually. He said those negotiations would be tough but Mrs May had stood steadfastedly by fishing interests and future talks would be equally robust. Questioned on the First Ministers call for him to resign, he said: Nicola Sturgeons position is to create as much chaos and division in this country as she possibly can because she feels that thats best backdrop for her independence referendum agenda. She revels in the soap opera of resignations and division over Brexit, thats why shes proposing a no-deal Brexit so Im not going to take any notice of her calls in that regard because I remain committed to my overriding objective. Bertie Armstrong, chief executive of the Scottish Fishermens Federation, said: The declaration gives the UK the power to assert its position as an independent coastal state with practical sovereignty over our waters and natural resources. However we know that several EU nations will not give up their attempts to link access with trade in order to retain absolute rights to fish around our coastline. So we will continue to seek assurances from the UK Government that it will remain steadfast. We will not rest until the future arrangements are signed, sealed and delivered and we secure this critical control over access to our waters and who catches what stocks, where and when. Nissan Motor fired Carlos Ghosn as chairman in a dramatic end to the powerful executives nearly two decade long reign at the Japanese carmaker after his arrest for alleged financial improprieties. In an hours-long meeting, the companys board of directors voted unanimously to dismiss Mr Ghosn as chairman and as a representative director, Nissan said in a statement. It said its own internal investigation, prompted by a whistleblower, found serious misconduct including under-reporting of his income and misuse of company assets. It was a stunning downfall for one of the biggest figures in the car industry, a man who helped drive turnarounds at both Frances Renault SA and at Nissan and then managed an alliance between them that sold 10.6 million cars last year, besting its rivals. Carlos Ghosn (foreground), during a visit to Nissans Sunderland factory (Rod MInchin/PA) Nissan said in a statement filed to the Tokyo Stock Exchange that its investigation uncovered misuse of company investment funds and expense money for personal gain. Earlier this week, Renault voted to keep Mr Ghosn as its chief executive but appointed Thierry Bollore, its chief operating officer, as its interim chief. Another Nissan executive, Greg Kelly, was arrested on suspicion of collaborating in the wrongdoing and also will be dismissed as a representative director, Nissan said. Their replacements will be decided later, it said. Mr Ghosn, 64, is suspected of under-reporting 44.6 million US dollars in income from 2011 to 2015, according to Tokyo prosecutors. Nissans board consists of nine members, including Mr Ghosn and Greg Kelly. A security guard stands near the logo at Nissan Motor HQ (Eugene Hoshiko/AP) The seven other board members voted at the meeting, including two members from Nissan and two from Renault. Mr Ghosn and Mr Kelly will remain on Nissans board for now as that decision will be up to shareholders. No date has been set yet for a shareholders meeting. Mr Ghosn is also chairman at Mitsubishi Motors Corp, a smaller Japanese carmaker that is partnering with the Renault-Nissan alliance and plans to hold a board meeting next week. Mr Ghosn has been held since his arrest on Monday at a Tokyo detention centre, under the same Spartan conditions as other detainees, Tokyo deputy prosecutor Shin Kukimoto told reporters. The logo of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance (Thibault Camus/AP) He gave few details about the case. Under Japanese law, suspects can be held for 20 days per possible charge without an official indictment. Additional charges can be tagged on, resulting in longer detentions. Neither has been charged so far. The maximum penalty upon conviction for violating finance and exchange laws is 10 years in prison, a 10 million yen fine (69,000), or both. A French citizen born in Brazil, Mr Ghosn became something of a corporate superstar in Japan as he led Nissans revival from near bankruptcy after Renault sent him to help in 1999. Mr Ghosn served as Nissans chief executive from 2001 until last year. A general view of the Nissan Factory in Sunderland (Owen Humphreys/PA) He became chief executive of Renault in 2005, leading the two carmakers simultaneously. In 2016, he also became chairman of Mitsubishi Motors after Nissan took it into the alliance. Mr Kelly, 62, joined Nissan, maker of the Leaf electric car and Infiniti luxury models, in the US in 1988. He became a board member in 2012. His background is in human resources and alliance management. Analysts say the future of Nissans alliance with Renault may be at stake, though Nissans statement Thursday said the companys leadership was determined to minimise the impact from Mr Ghosns case on the partnership. People walk by Nissan Motor headquarters (Eugene Hoshiko/AP) Renault owns 43% of Nissan, and Nissan owns 15% of Renault. The longstanding alliance partnership with Renault remains unchanged, the Nissan statement in English said, stressing the alliance rather than the misdeeds. It also said the board will study setting up a third-party committee to beef up governance in management and compensation at Nissan. Chief executive Hiroto Saikawa, in a lengthy news conference on Monday, said too much power had been concentrated in Mr Ghosn, with too little credit given to the many others working for the companys success. Carlos Ghosn (Kin Cheung/AP) Janet Lewis, managing director and head of industrial research, Asia, at Macquarie Capital Securities in Tokyo, said in an interview that an adjustment was needed to give Nissan more say in the alliance with Renault. The partnership remains crucial for both companies, she said, since apart from financial ties the companies share technology and parts. The carmakers need to be more like roommates than a married couple, so they have to find a way to share their house and share all of their expertise because its very necessary in terms of new automotive technology, new platform development, Ms Lewis said. They need to figure out how they can continue this and still live happily together in the same house. Two of Polands most famous foes, former president Lech Walesa, and the countrys de facto leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, faced off in court on Thursday, exchanging wry comments. Mr Kaczynski, the powerful head of the ruling Law and Justice party, is suing Mr Walesa for blaming him in social media posts for the 2010 plane crash in Smolensk, Russia, that killed Mr Kaczynskis twin, then-president Lech Kaczynski, along with 95 others including top Polish political and military leaders. In one 2016 post, Mr Walesa alleged that Mr Kaczynski, guided by bravado, was on the phone pushing for the plane to land in heavy fog. Former Polish president Lech Walesa (Dominic Lipinski/PA) It is an allegation sometimes made by Mr Kaczynskis critics, but no evidence has ever emerged to prove it. Mr Kaczynski wants Mr Walesa to admit his words were untrue and that he be forced to pay 30,000 zlotys to charity. This is the latest in the long history of feuding between Mr Walesa, the 75-year-old founder of the 1980s Solidarity pro-democracy movement that peacefully ended communism in Poland, and Mr Kaczynski, his former ally and aide. Mr Kaczynski, 69, and his twin, who was a top Solidarity activist, promoted Mr Walesa to be democratic Polands first popularly chosen president in 1990. They became his closest aides, but soon bitterly fell out with him in still unclear circumstances. Mr Walesa has claimed that the brothers wanted control over him. The Kaczynskis alleged he had been a communist collaborator codenamed Bolek, which Mr Walesa denies and says documents suggesting that were forged. Mr Kaczynski insists that Polands transformation to democracy was imperfect and left a lot of political and financial influence in the hands of the former communist rulers. Outside the courtroom in Walesas hometown, the Baltic port city of Gdansk, the former allies-turned foes sparred verbally. Why did I ever make you my minister? Mr Walesa asked Mr Kaczynski as they stood together before entering the courtroom, calling him my great mistake. Law and Justice party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, second left, stands behind the Polish president(Alik Keplicz/AP) Why did I ever make you the president? Mr Kaczynski retorted, though both could be seen smiling. He also called Mr Walesa his great mistake and an embarrassment. Nowadays, Mr Walesa is a bitter critic of the government that Mr Kaczynski guides from behind the scenes, accusing it of eroding the democracy he helped bring to life. He arrived in court wearing a T-shirt with the word Konstytucja (Constitution), which has been a rallying cry of the anti-government opposition. Mr Kaczynski was dressed in a black suit and tie, the attire he has always worn publicly since his brother perished. Despite the courts encouragement, they failed to reach an agreement, so more court sessions will be held. Gibraltars chief minister Fabian Picardo has said he is willing to discuss directly with the Spanish government their bilateral relations after the United Kingdom leaves the European Union. But Mr Picardo warned on Thursday that the sovereignty of the British territory at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula is non-negotiable. Spain has never dropped its claim of jurisdiction over the rocky outcrop, and its government has baulked at the possibility of its post-Brexit future being decided between London and EU authorities without direct Spanish involvement. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez has threatened to vote against the planned Brexit agreement unless Spains misgivings are addressed. Mr Picardo told Gibraltars parliament that as long as issues such as sovereignty, jurisdiction and control of the territory are off the table, he is happy to discuss close cooperation with Madrid. The release of certain official records requested under Freedom of Information law in Northern Ireland has been suspended due to Stormonts power-sharing crisis. The UK Information Commissioners Office has told the Public Record Office for Northern Ireland (PRONI) it does not have the authority to release closed files, citing the absence of an elected minister in its overseeing government department the Department for Communities. The PRONI has sent letters to a number of FOI applicants, telling them while it has the papers requested it cannot now provide them. The move is likely to impact many relatives bereaved during the Troubles who are campaigning for fresh investigations. Lawyers acting for such families regularly use the PRONI to obtain coroners files from historic inquests and court papers from old criminal trials. Belfast law firm KRW Law is set to challenge the move in forthcoming judicial review proceedings linked to a Troubles killing. Historic files held in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (David Young/PA) Solicitor Kevin Winters asked why the move had come now, given the power-sharing impasse had been ongoing for almost two years. We had been getting the documents despite the impasse, he said. Now somebody has taken the view that has to change. He added: The letters from PRONI demonstrate that the Freedom of Information Act 2000 is de facto inapplicable to Northern Ireland in certain circumstances. Civil servants have been running public services in Northern Ireland since the Stormont executive imploded in early 2017. But there has been ongoing uncertainty as to how much authority they have to take significant decisions. Last month, Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley passed legislation designed to give greater clarity to their decision-making powers. Mr Winters said the ICO and PRONI had either misapplied that legislation or the law itself does not go far enough to fill the void left by the collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Department for Communities confirmed the move in a post on its website. In the absence of the appropriate Northern Ireland minister, PRONI does not have the authority to complete the consultation process required under the Freedom of Information legislation, it said. The temporary suspension applies to all transferred closed public records held by PRONI. The department said the suspension would last until the appropriate Northern Ireland minister takes up post. In regard to Ms Bradleys recent legislation, the department said it does not provide a legal basis for senior officers to allow the operation of FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) in respect of transferred public records. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 23) Mislatel Consortium says national security will not be compromised in its partnership with Chinese government-owned China Telecommunications (China Telecom). The assurance comes after China Telecom recently signed an agreement with the Department of Information and Communication Technology to lay submarine cables that will interconnect the country with Hong Kong. In an interview with CNN Philippines, Mislatel spokesperson Adel Tamano described their relationship with China Telecom. "We are a Filipino company. China Telecom is a strong partner, a great partner, but they're a minority. As Filipinos we will never let our national security be undermined," he said. He said the terms of reference on the third telco selection process highlighted the importance of national security. "It's very clear that the regulator wanted national security to be paramount," Tamano said, referring to the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) which facilitated the selection process. Should Mislatel, composed of Davao-based businessman Dennis Uy's companies led by Udenna Corp. and China Telecom, fail to achieve its commitments as a major telco player in five years, it would forfeit its P25-billion bond to the NTC. Tamano said Mislatel is open to partnering with other telecommunication service providers, including Converge and rival Philippine Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (PT&T). Converge had pulled out its bid from the third telco selection process. Meanwhile, PT&T has a pending case against the NTC after it was disqualified from bidding. "If you really want better telco services for Filipinos and for nation building partner with us. Competition is good," Tamano said. Mislatel still has a lot of requirements to comply with before it can offer commercial services. "Once we get our spectrum and our CPCN (certificate of public convenience and necessity) then hopefully by late 2019 or early 2020 we can finally have real commercial operations," Tamano said. Boris Johnson was paid almost 100,000 to deliver a two-hour speech to a hedge fund in New York earlier this month. The former foreign secretary earned more than his annual salary as an MP for the engagement, which was paid for by GoldenTree Asset Management. It was revealed in the latest update to the Register of Members Interests, in which Parliamentarians have to declare all outside work. Mr Johnsons most recent entry says he was paid 94,508 for the speech at the investment firms office in America on November 2. Travel and accommodation was also provided. The wages per year for an MP as of April 2018 are 77,379. This payment comes on top of the 23,000 he receives every month to write a weekly newspaper column. The register shows he also received almost 9,500 in book royalties in the past two months, to add to a total of 18,000 he has already been paid by publishers during 2018. Mr Johnson was also paid 2,000 for another column in a different paper, which helped his total earnings outside Parliament for 2018 reach around 244,000. (Karl Turner MP) In response, he was criticised by the Labour MP Karl Turner, who tweeted: Grotesque earnings. No wonder Tories are completely out of touch about whats going on in the real word. Asked if he could himself turn down such a large fee for a speech, he replied: Second jobbing should be banned. If youre an MP it should be full time. Second jobbing should be band. If youre an MP it is or should be full time. https://t.co/4vPaPOQPQP Karl Turner MP (@KarlTurnerMP) November 22, 2018 And when another user pointed out some MPs who are doctors keep on practising, the member for Hull East added: If a doctor wants to help out in their local A&E, in their own time, then I absolutely commend them for that. Boris isnt doing that though. Hes raking fortunes in when hes supposed to be working as MP. A spokesman for Mr Johnson declined to comment. Earlier today, it was revealed Mr Johnson faces a private prosecution over his famous claim plastered over a Vote Leave bus during the EU referendum that the UK sends 350 million a week to Brussels. Private prosecutor Marcus Ball said he notified the MP for Uxbridge, one of the most prominent pro-Brexit campaigners, on Saturday of his intention to bring a court case over alleged misconduct in public office. Backed by around 300,000 raised through crowdfunding appeals, and with the support of a team of lawyers, he now intends to lay an information at a magistrates court early in the new year. It is understood magistrates would then have to determine whether to allow the case to go ahead. The Royal Navy will be able to provide three times the protection to Britains fishing fleet post-Brexit after a decision to axe three ships was reversed, the Ministry of Defence has said. HMS Tyne, HMS Mersey and HMS Severn, which currently support the Fishery Protection Squadron, were in the process of being decommissioned. But, speaking during a visit to Tyneside, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said the Batch 1 Offshore Patrols Vessels (OPVs) will be retained for at least the next two years in a move the Ministry of Defence said would bolster the UKs ability to protect our fishing fleet as well as our shores. It said the Royal Navy currently provided around 200 days of fishery protection a year and the announcement meant the capacity would increase to 600 days a year if needed. Each ship will operate from its home city Newcastle, Liverpool and Cardiff to boost rapid response in British waters. The ships have also been used in anti-smuggling and counter-terrorism work, and frequently escorted foreign vessels, including those from Russia, through the English Channel. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson (David Cheskin/PA) Speaking on board HMS Tyne, Mr Williamson said: Britains patrol vessels are essential to protecting our waters, our fisheries and our national security. Safeguarding the future of these three ships in the Royal Navy will ensure we can respond quickly to incidents at any time, further protecting our waters as we exit the EU. By forward-operating these ships from their affiliated locations across the country, including the Tyne, it will not only allow them to react quickly, but also strengthen the bonds between the Royal Navy and local communities. Last month HMS Tyne monitored a Russian frigate as it passed through the English Channel and in 2017 HMS Mersey returned from a 48,000-mile deployment which included a 12 million drugs bust off Nicaragua. The announcement came during the Defence Secretarys visit to Newcastle, where he also revealed the name of the fifth frigate in Britains Type 26 class of anti-submarine warships as HMS Newcastle. Mr Williamson said: I am also delighted to be able to continue to strengthen the bond to Tyneside today, by announcing one of Britains future world-beating Type 26 warships will be called HMS Newcastle. It will be built on the Clyde and will protect the UKs nuclear deterrent and aircraft carriers. HMS Newcastle will also be joined by her sister ship HMS Sheffield, whose name was announced by Defence Minister Stuart Andrew. Asked if the announcement was a sign to the rest of Europe, pro-Brexit Mr Williamson said: Its a very clear message that Britain is an incredibly ambitious nation and our armed forces are incredibly ambitious. Were going to be protecting our interests thats why we have the patrol vessels but also we want to be expanding our interests and expanding our global presence. Thats why were going from three to eight. You couldnt have a more clear and significant increase. Police are hunting for a woman after a health worker was stabbed in a hospital car park. Emergency services were called to Ailsa Hospital in North Ayrshire at around 10am on Thursday after the 42-year-old community support worker was attacked. She is currently receiving treatment in hospital but her injuries are not thought to be life-threatening. Officers are now trying to trace a woman who left the area shortly after the stabbing. Superintendent Brian Shaw said: I am urging anyone who witnessed the attack to get in touch with us. I am particularly keen to hear from anyone who was in the area around 10am and has information about a woman who was seen leaving the area shortly after the 42-year-old woman was stabbed. It is important that the public is aware that the hospital is open as normal. Officers remain at the hospital and we have increased high-visibility patrols in the area to reassure patients, staff and the wider public. Officers are reviewing CCTV and carrying out door-to-door enquiries in the area in an effort to identify the woman responsible. The woman is described as being around 5ft 2in to 5ft 3in in height, slight build and pale complexion. She was wearing a dark woolly hat and a dark jacket. Police Scotland initially locked down the hospital and surrounding area while searches were carried out but the facility reopened around 1pm. Police Scotland initially locked down the hospital and surrounding area while searches were carried out (Andrew Milligan/PA) Ayr MSP John Scott raised the incident at First Ministers Questions (FMQs) in the Scottish Parliament, saying: I understand a nurse has been stabbed by a patient. Nicola Sturgeon said she was receiving reports about the incident as she entered the chamber for FMQs. She said: Our understanding and let me stress this is our understanding, the first I will do when I leave the chamber will be to get a full update on this our understanding is that injuries sustained by a nurse are not life-threatening injuries and that police are fully involved in this incident. Obviously, the safety of staff and patients is of the utmost importance. NHS Ayrshire and Arran earlier said no patients, staff or visitors would be able to leave the site but some restrictions were later relaxed. INCIDENT UPDATE University Hospital Ayr and Ailsa Hospital are no longer on lockdown. Movement around the site can be now be resumed, with the exception of the courtyard car park in front of Addictions Services. NHS Ayrshire & Arran (@NHSaaa) November 22, 2018 Billy McClean, associate director for the health board, added: NHS Ayrshire and Arran is aware of an incident in the grounds of Ailsa Hospital this morning. We are assisting Police Scotland with their investigations, and to ensure the safety of staff, patients and visitors. We are unable to comment any further at this time. A man has appeared in court charged with murder and attempted murder after a 10-year-old boy died and an eight-year-old girl was found seriously injured. Kane Morris died at the scene at a house in Union Street, Coupar Angus, in Perth and Kinross in the early hours of Sunday November 11. An eight-year-old girl was found with serious injuries. Andrew Morris, 37, was charged with murder when he appeared at a temporary court in Perth on Thursday. Kane Morris died following an incident in Coupar Angus on November 11 (Police Scotland/PA) He was also charged with assault to severe injury, permanent impairment, danger to life and attempted murder. The 37-year-old did not enter a plea and was remanded in custody. The case was continued for further examination. President Donald Trump has threatened to close the US border with Mexico for an undisclosed period of time if his administration determines that its southern ally has lost control on its side. Mr Trump cited the situation involving migrants camped in Tijuana, Mexico, after travelling in a caravan to reach the United States. Mr Trump called it a really bad situation there and said if we find that its incontrollable, then we will close entry into the country for period of time until we can get it under control. The whole border. Central American migrants gather at a temporary shelter, near barriers that separate Mexico and the United States, in Tijuana, Mexico (Rodrigo Abd/AP) The president also said he has given American troops at the border the OK to use lethal force against migrants if they have to. Mr Trump told reporters: I hope they dont have to, but he said: I have no choice because youre dealing with rough people. An MSP has called for a review of security measures at members homes after a man was arrested over broken windows at Ruth Davidsons constituency office. Police confirmed they arrested a 54-year-old man in connection with vandalism at the premises on Thursday morning. There were no injuries, although staff were said to be shaken by the incident, which reportedly involved rocks being thrown at the office used by the Scottish Conservative leader and fellow MSP Miles Briggs. The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body (SPCB), responsible for ensuring Parliament is provided with the property, services and staff it requires, took questions from members in Holyrood on Thursday afternoon. Scottish Labour MSP David Stewart asked if the SPCB would consider consider introducing measures to upgrade home security for members, if it was required. It follows action taken by Westminster and the Welsh Assembly to introduce home security arrangements for its members. An independent review of MPs personal home security was commissioned by a House of Commons joint-committee in August. Mr Stewart also urged his colleagues in Holyrood to activate their security systems at their offices if they had not already done so. Scottish Labour MSP David Stewart raised the issue of home security at Holyrood on Thursday (Andrew Cowan/PA) Scottish Conservative MSP Jackson Carlaw, the member for Finance and Security on the SPCB said the Corporate Body had considered the security of members at their homes. However following an assessment, he stated the Body had decided to focus on local offices and surgeries, as they were deemed to be of higher security risk. Mr Carlaw said: Members personal safety is an issue that the corporate body takes very seriously. Members can contact Police Scotland for an assessment of their home security Police Scotland will undertake a survey, similar to that provided at local offices, and will make recommendations to the member for simple measures that could be put in place to improve their home security. The corporate body does not at the moment provide a fund for members to access for implementation of any security measures that are recommended as home security, as its not currently assessed as being the main area of risk. Weve focused where we feel that the main areas of risk are and weve taken the advice throughout from Police Scotland on that. As I say, it doesnt preclude members from contacting Police Scotland or the security office to arrange a review of their home security if this would provide the member with additional reassurance. At this time, the SPCB would expect the member to meet the costs of upgrading their home security themselves, although where there are particular concerns for the members personal safety, the SPCB would naturally consider any applications for funding of home security in those particular circumstances. A wedding guest died after he fell from a hotel roof while smoking a cigarette. Cooper Riswick, 23, suffered fatal head and chest injuries in the fall after he climbed through a window at the top of the Vale Resort in the Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales. An inquest into his death in Pontypridd was held in private after his family in Ontario, Canada, decided not to attend. The coroners office instead released a statement saying Mr Riswick died on August 10 this year after attending a family wedding at the four-star hotel, where he had been drinking alcohol. A written record of his death said: The deceased died at the Vale of Glamorgan Hotel in Hensol park, Vale of Glamorgan, on August 10 2018. He was visiting the hotel with his family, who had been celebrating a wedding. In the early hours of the morning he climbed out of the hotel window on to the roof to smoke a cigarette. The inquest took place in Pontypridd (Adam Hale/PA) He fell from the roof, sustaining head and chest injuries from which he died at the scene. Coroner Andrew Barkley recorded a verdict of accidental death contributed to by alcohol. The wife of an academic jailed for life in the United Arab Emirates on a spying allegation said she has won assurances that the Government is now standing up for one of its citizens after meeting Jeremy Hunt. Daniela Tejada condemned the Foreign Office over the handling of the case of 31-year-old PhD student Matthew Hedges, ahead of her meeting with the Foreign Secretary on Thursday. Mr Hunt had threatened the UAE with serious diplomatic consequences if Mr Hedges, originally from Exeter, is not freed, saying he has seen absolutely no evidence to support the charge. However, Ms Tejada was critical of ministers, accusing them of putting relations with the Gulf state before her husbands freedom. But she left the Foreign Office seeming more confident the Government was working in their favour. I really appreciate the Foreign Secretary taking the time to meet me at this crucial point in Matts life, she said, reading from a prepared statement after an hour inside the building. Our thoughts are with Matthew Hedges, his wife Daniela and his family today. We will do everything we can to get him home as soon as possible pic.twitter.com/hE4systClL Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) November 21, 2018 He has assured me that he and his team are doing everything in their power to get Matt free and return him home to me. This is not a fight I can win alone and I thank the Foreign Office and the British public for now standing up for one of their citizens. Mr Hunt is understood to have exchanged very frank words with the UAE ambassador in London during a meeting earlier in the day. Ms Tejada, having landed back at Heathrow Airport in the morning, said the UK had failed to take a firm stance over the Durham University student from the start of his ordeal. I was under the impression they were putting their interests with the UAE above a British citizens rightful freedom and his welfare, she told BBC Radio 4s Today programme. They were stepping on eggshells instead of taking a firm stance. Matthew Hedges with his wife Daniela Tejada (Family handout/PA) Health Secretary Matt Hancock defended the Foreign Office on the show for working behind the scenes to support Mr Hedges, with Mr Hunt appealing personally to the Crown Prince on November 12. Ms Tejeda, who was at the Abu Dhabi court when Mr Hedges was sentenced during a five-minute hearing on Wednesday, believes the UK should stop at nothing to free the innocent Briton, who was jailed after the UAE presented completely fabricated evidence. Her calls for immediate action were echoed by Tory MP Johnny Mercer, who condemned the academics jailing and called for the Government to be resilient. He tweeted: This is ridiculous. Our Defence assistance, mentoring and intelligence relationships alone with this country should preclude absurd things like this happening. From a friend and partner, simply unacceptable. Mr Hunt earlier said the UK will do everything we can to get him home over the charges he has seen absolutely no evidence for. He told Sky News: The UAE is supposed to be a friend and ally of Britains. Weve given them repeated assurances about Matthew. If we cant resolve this there are going to be serious diplomatic consequences, because this is totally unacceptable. This is ridiculous. Our Defence assistance, mentoring and intelligence relationships alone with this country should preclude absurd things like this happening. From a friend and partner, simply unacceptable. Consequences must be immediate until he is released. Resilience required pic.twitter.com/ouvxfjJIBH Johnny Mercer (@JohnnyMercerUK) November 21, 2018 Mr Hedges, a Middle Eastern studies specialist, was arrested at Dubai Airport on May 5. A family representative said he had since been held in solitary confinement for more than five-and-a- half months, during which his mental and physical health seriously deteriorated. Theresa May said she was deeply disappointed and concerned by Mr Hedgess jailing and told MPs the UK will continue to press this matter at the highest level with the Emiratis. Professor Stuart Corbridge, vice-chancellor of Durham University, said there is no reason to believe that Matt was conducting anything other than legitimate academic research. A Foreign Office spokesman did not say what form any possible diplomatic consequences could take, but said a number of options are available. Mr Hedges has 30 days to challenge the court ruling, and Ms Tejada on Thursday started a petition on Change.org which quickly reached more than 100,000 signatures. She wrote: Matthew may be able appeal his sentence in one months time. Before then I am begging as many people as possible to back my petition calling on the British Government to do everything in their power to ensure the UAE let my husband come home. The more members of the British public that support us, the more we can hold the Government to account making it more likely that Matthew will come back to us. The Duchess of Cornwall has congratulated winners of The Queens Commonwealth Essay Competition at Buckingham Palace. Camilla told the young writers as she recounted the history of the royal residence: Well done to all of you. Never mind the past. Meeting you, I rather think the future is in good hands. The duchess spoke of how she wanted the competition to reach an ever-wider range of young people next year, adding: For 2019, we want to hear all young people, regardless of age, education or region. All stories and voices are very important. The Duchess of Cornwall congratulates @CWEssayComp winners and runners up, Zahra, Ng, Janine and Floria. The judges selected their essays from almost 12,000 entries which invited young people to share their ideas on the topic of Towards a Common Future pic.twitter.com/0caztNU5wD The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall (@ClarenceHouse) November 22, 2018 Camilla was joined at the event, which she hosted on behalf of the Queen, by author and comic actor David Walliams. Seventeen year-old Zahra Hussain from Pakistan won in the senior category with her piece Hues of Red. The Duchess of Cornwall at a reception for winners of The Queens Commonwealth Essay Competition at Buckingham Palace (Jeff Spicer/PA) It is described as a heart-breaking portrayal of child marriage and domestic violence in a traditional South Asian community which has an uplifting message of hope for a new generation. Ng Woon Neng, 16, from Singapore, was the runner-up with her story An Odd Company about the competing concepts of wealth, health, freedom and happiness. Listen to children's author @davidwalliams read an extract from 'An Odd Company' - an imaginative short story about Wealth, Health, Freedom and Happiness by @CWEssayComp runner up Ng Woon Neng from Singapore. Read all the 2018 winning entries here https://t.co/2X9b0tZkVx pic.twitter.com/FzeaKcoQ8i The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall (@ClarenceHouse) November 22, 2018 The junior winner was Janine Shum, 13, from Singapore, with Our Common Word: Two Voices which explores educational inequality through the voices of two 12-year-old girls one from Afghanistan and one from Singapore. Runner up was Floria Gu, 13, from Canada, with her poem Inheritance about a dystopian future of environmental devastation. Some 12,000 young people from across the Commonwealth entered the competition which is the worlds oldest and largest schools international writing contest. It was founded in 1883 to promote literacy, expression and creativity among young people throughout the Commonwealth. Camilla launched the 2019 contest during a recent royal tour to Ghana, declaring: I believe in the power of the written word. The Duchess of Cornwall also visited the Ghana International School to launch the Commonwealth Essay Competition prize. #RoyalVisitGhana pic.twitter.com/YDyGWoVE5n The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall (@ClarenceHouse) November 5, 2018 The theme of the 2018 competition was Towards a Common Future, and the theme of 2019s is A Connected Commonwealth. The father of a man killed in Edinburgh has called for a victims commissioner to be established to help people hit by crime as he held a meeting with Scotlands Justice Secretary. Kevin Woodburn said he wants the post to be created so victims going through the legal system have somewhere they can turn to for help and advice. He described his meeting with Scotlands Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf on Thursday as very productive, saying: Ive come away with an open mind that its still something that is on the table. Hugely encouraging meeting with @HumzaYousaf to make the case for a Scottish Victims Commissioner at the side of @kevinwoodburn . A man who has many reasons to be proud tonight. Delighted government set to look seriously at the issue again. Kezia Dugdale (@kezdugdale) November 22, 2018 Mr Woodburns son, father-of-one Shaun, 30, died after being attacked by a teenager outside Gladstones pub in the Leith area of Edinburgh in the early hours of January 1 2017. The teenager was sentenced to four years detention after being convicted of culpable homicide. Mr Woodburn said his experiences have led him to feel there was a lack of transparency within the overall legal system. Shaun Woodburn was killed on New Years Day last year (Police Scotland/PA) There was nobody to actually speak to about anything, he said. There was nobody to actually turn to to understand the legalities of the situation that we found ourselves in. He praised the work of victims support groups but said their expertise is in emotional, rather than legal, issues. In our situation, our case, we had nobody to turn to for help, to ask for advice, he said. I feel very strongly that a victims commissioner role is required, particularly when you look at England, Wales, Northern Ireland. London has its own victims commissioner, but we are lacking in that role. It was a very productive meeting. Nothing was out of bounds. Ive come away with an open mind, going forward, that its still something that is on the table and hasnt been taken off the table yet. Meeting the Woodburn family later today along with @kezdugdale - this protocol change is testament to the Woodburn family's tireless campaigning for positive change, after suffering such a tragedy. I know there are many more issues they wish to discuss - look forward to meeting. https://t.co/A5NwNuFQL9 Humza Yousaf (@HumzaYousaf) November 22, 2018 Labour MSP Kezia Dugdale, who has been supporting Mr Woodburn in his campaigns, also hailed the positive meeting with Mr Yousaf. She said: He sees a real role for the victims taskforce in considering whether a victims commissioner would be a helpful addition to it. I think he was quite persuaded by some of the arguments we offered. She described the role as an independent voice to help victims and added: Im utterly compelled by the arguments as to why a Victims Commissioner is long overdue. Mr Yousaf said: I was pleased to meet with Mr Woodburn this afternoon and Im grateful to him for sharing his experiences. We are committed to improving the experience of victims in Scotlands justice system and the new Victims Taskforce will strengthen the support available to those affected by crime and ensure that their voices are heard. Mr Woodburn has also welcomed recent changes to the rules surrounding post-mortems on the bodies of people who have been killed. Earlier this year, Mr Woodburn hit out at barbaric and medieval post-mortem rules and told how the familys plans to hold a funeral for his son were delayed when the defence requested a second post-mortem examination. The new protocol means examinations for the defence should only take place if absolutely necessary and the authorities should aim to hold a body for no longer than a month. Mr Woodburn said: Effectively youve now got a situation where second post-mortems are only ever going to be in exceptional cases. Its a major, major, major step forward. I cannot tell you how delighted I am that effective common sense has prevailed here. Describing the new rules as Shauns Law, he said it would be a fantastic legacy in his sons name. Mr Blobby made an explosive return to television with an appearance on Loose Women in which he pronounced his views on Brexit and predicted Theresa Mays future. Noel Edmonds former sidekick marked his arrival by tumbling over on set, and after discussing his old boss appearance on Im A Celebrity, the subject turned, naturally, to the biggest political issue in a generation. That was unexpected... Mr Blobby has gone rogue and taken over the #LooseWomen control room. 'Do not press that button Blobby' @andrea_mclean pic.twitter.com/ZemV2u2BfL Loose Women (@loosewomen) November 22, 2018 Journalist and panel member Jane Moore asked Mr Blobby for his thoughts on the removal of EU tariffs on trade in the event of a no deal departure, to which he replied thoughtfully: Well. Blobby, blob, blobby, blob. Blob, blob, blob, blob, blob, blob. Twitter users were in thrall at his insights. I mean this 100% unironically, Mr Blobby is genuinely more qualified to talk about Brexit than anybody else https://t.co/jRi3e0A0pb Chloe 'ChlOooh~e' Adams (@addamschloe) November 22, 2018 "what should the british public be doing about this?" mr blobby: *shrieks, pushes the hosts off their chairs, crashes into a studio camera and passes out* D C0mmissions Open! (@lustycomic_) November 22, 2018 Mr Blobby is a political commentator on Brexit and, somehow, 2018 keeps peaking further pic.twitter.com/PuKZ1hybzh Harry Crawford (@HarryFirebeard) November 22, 2018 The pearls of wisdom should really come as no surprise. Only last week, BBC reporter Chris Mason went viral for replying you might as well ask Mr Blobby when asked to explain what would happen next on Brexit. "I haven't got the foggiest idea" @ChrisMasonBBC beautifully sums up the complexities of #Brexit. pic.twitter.com/JJJ4E24VFx BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) November 12, 2018 After impressing with his take on EU trade, host Andrea McLean asked him whether Theresa May would still be in a job by Christmas. Mr Blobby, the character who shot to fame on Noel Edmonds House Party on BBC Television, celebrates in London, after hearing that he may topple Meat Loaf off the No. 1 spot, when the Top 40 singles chart is released. The answer could best be interpreted as: Errrrrrrrrrrrrr. If the PM does go, Twitter seems to have the perfect replacement lined up. The NHS will save almost 1 billion on medicines next year under a new scheme fast-tracking cutting-edge and best value medicines through the approval process, Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock has announced. The deal, which is being finalised with the pharmaceutical industry, will mean patients could have access to new medicines up to six months earlier. The new Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicines Pricing and Access will also lead to a more flexible and streamlined commercial process, which Mr Hancock said will make UK more attractive to investors. He said: This new deal will be good for patients, good for the NHS and good for the UK life sciences industry. Cutting-edge and best value medicines will be fast-tracked and we will cut our medicines bill by 930 million next year following tough but constructive negotiations with the pharmaceutical industry money we can redeploy into better NHS services, alongside the NHS long-term plan. The deal will also ensure the UK remains an attractive hub for research and investment so the next generation of ground-breaking treatments can be developed here with patients benefiting earlier. A member of nursing staff dispenses drugs from a trolley on a ward at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, Oswestry, as a deal is announced between the Department of Health and Social Care and the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), which will see patients have access to new medicines up to six months earlier. The scheme, which is expected to come into effect from January, will mean medicines are available on the NHS more quickly through better horizon scanning and early engagement with companies to ensure clinicians and the NHS are ready to use them more quickly. It will also lead to faster appraisals from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Health Minister Lord OShaughnessy said: The agreement is a vote of confidence for our world-leading life sciences sector and shows the NHS is ready to embrace innovation so that patients get the best medicines earlier. Small and medium-sized business in particular will be better supported through greater commercial flexibility, helping SMEs to bring their innovative treatments into the NHS. The chief executive of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), Mike Thompson, said: This agreement is a commitment by the Government and the NHS to work with us to support innovation for the benefit of patients. This means that people across the UK should see better and faster access to the most effective new medicines and vaccines. Under the scheme, the NHS will have absolute certainty that the sales of branded medicines will not grow by more than 2% in any of the next five years or industry refunds the money. This is a significant contribution by pharmaceutical companies to support the NHS. Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, said: The NHS has a growing track record of making innovative deals to provide access to the best value treatments, and this is another important step in that direction. Patients and taxpayers deserve access to the best medicines at fair prices, and this deal will help us deliver both. As the UKs position on Brexit is finalised, it is pleasing to be able to provide multiyear certainty to both the NHS and the life sciences sector given its importance to the British economy. The Great Pyramids and Sydney Harbour at night have been captured in the debut images released by the first all-British radar satellite. Launched into orbit in September, the NovaSAR spacecraft can take pictures of the Earths surface in all weather conditions including heavy cloud, day or night. The satellite, which looks a little like a cheese grater, has diverse applications such as ocean surveillance, oil spill detection, flood and forestry monitoring, disaster response and crop assessment. The Red and Bent Pyramids in Dahshur captured by the satellite at night (SSTL/PA) Backed by a 21 million Government investment, it was developed by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) of Guildford in collaboration with Airbus in Portsmouth. Its first images were released on Friday. Some of the pictures were taken over Sydney Harbour at night, capturing the famous bridge as well as boats crossing the water or moored nearby. An image of Cairo shows the River Nile flowing from Upper Egypt towards Beni Suef, with cultivation along the river and the non-irrigated desert areas distinguishable, while the Great Pyramids of Giza also stand out. Science and education minister Sam Gyimah visited SSTL on Friday to tour the satellite assembly and operations facilities and view the new images from NovaSAR. Today we're pleased to share the first images from our low cost S-Band SAR satellite, NovaSAR-1. Two images released: Sydney Harbour taken at night, and the Nile and Great Pyramids of Giza https://t.co/2i8gqVYUcL @CSIROnews @spacegovuk @isro @AirbusSpace @AirbusintheUK pic.twitter.com/9yjV331Iod Surrey Satellites (@SurreySat) November 23, 2018 Yet again we can see UK research and innovation that is truly out of this world, he said. This eye in the sky can capture an image a dozen times wider than the Strait of Dover and the data it provides can help crack problems from illegal shipping to alerting us to damaging pollution that needs to be countered. SSTLs director of earth observation Andrew Cawthorne said the team is delighted with the first images, adding the craft will continue to gather test images before it starts delivering services to partners in the near future. Great visit to @SurreySat to start the day - a truly impressive hub of world-leading engineering, high tech jobs & where 40% of all small satellites are made. Fascinating to hear about their plans to return to the moon & put the U.K. at the heart of a future off-planet economy. pic.twitter.com/fTFoHpBGYz Sam Gyimah (@SamGyimah) November 23, 2018 Over the coming weeks our spacecraft operators will continue to test the capabilities of the spacecraft as we task the satellite to image locations around the world, he said. A number of global agencies will partner with the NovaSAR, including the UK Space Agency, Australias Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, and the Indian Space Research Organisation. The radar satellite technology is a powerful tool for monitoring the Earth from space because it can see through clouds and monitor at any time of day or night. This enables the craft to spot illegal logging in high cloud-covered forests, such as the Amazon, and track suspicious shipping activity such as smuggling. A constellation of three NovaSAR satellites could image any point on the globe, every day, regardless of local time or weather, SSTL said. It is almost five years since Jonathan Trott last played for England as a number three batsman. In that time England have failed to find a permanent solution at first-wicket down but Jonny Bairstow may have ended the search after a classy century against Sri Lanka. Here, Press Association Sport looks at those who have tried in the position before the Yorkshireman, who was given the opportunity after losing the wicketkeeping gloves to Ben Foakes. Joe Root (23 matches, average 40.47) England captain Joe Root felt he was better suited to batting at four (Anthony Devlin/PA) The England captain is viewed by many as the most obvious solution and has occasionally performed well in the role during three separate stints, most notably scoring 254 against Pakistan in 2016. Yet he has gone on record with his preference for number four, particularly while leading the side, and sees his future there. Ian Bell (seven matches, average 31.10) The veteran batsman had several shots at nailing down the job over the years, including his final few games as an England player. By the time he struggled through against Pakistan in United Arab Emirates in 2015, the selectors were ready to move on. Gary Ballance (16 matches, average 46.44) Gary Ballance had the best average of those tried at three (David Davies/PA) The best average of the bunch and the most promising start a debut ton against Sri Lanka. There were three more of those, two at home versus India and one in the West Indies, before technical issues began to rear their head and saw him dropped in the 2015 Ashes. A brief second chance came to nothing. Nick Compton (seven matches, average 25.18) Axed from his previous opening role, Compton fought for a shot at three and won a place on the tour of his native South Africa in 2015. Innings of 85 and 49 in a low-scoring win at Durban earned him man-of-the-match honours but Trevor Bayliss subsequent comments about wanting more aggressive batsmen seemed to mess with his equilibrium and he faltered quickly thereafter. Tom Westley (five matches, average 24.12) A poor series against the West Indies denied Tom Westley an Ashes trip (Nigel French/PA) To the delight of his admirers on the county scene, the Essex man earned the opportunity he had long craved and began with a pleasing half-century against South Africa. His form nosedived sharply though, and a lean series against a modest West Indies cost him a dream Ashes trip last winter. James Vince (six matches, 30.54) He may wonder forever what might have been had he not been run out for 83 in the first Test of the 2017/18 Ashes at the Gabba. A century might have been his calling card at the highest level but instead his returns began diminishing amid a frustratingly-familiar sequence of dismissals. Moeen Ali (four matches, average 14.50) Moeen Ali flattered to deceive at first drop (John Walton/PA) Englands all-purpose sticking plaster was called on to plug yet another gap when Root dropped down the order at the back end of the summer. He appears a better, and happier, fit in the middle order and his double failure in Galle ensured a swift return there. Ben Stokes (one inning, average 19) England vice-captain Jos Buttler hinted he could be next in line to take the role but Stokes technique was deemed up to scratch against Sri Lanka at Kandy. He was given just the one innings, though squared up by Dilruwan Perera and trapped lbw for 19 as the tourists sent in nightwatchman Jack Leach to open second time around, with Keaton Jennings moving down to three. Dog welfare organisations have criticised the Scottish Government for failing to introduce an effective and prompt ban on electric shock collars for dogs. A statement signed by the Kennel Club, the Dogs Trust, Battersea Cat and Dogs Home and the Animal Behaviour and Training Council, among others, accuses the government of u-turning on its promised ban. A cross-party group of MSPs has backed a call by the SNPs Christine Grahame accusing the government of backtracking. The parliamentary motion notes calls for the devices to be banned unequivocally. In January, the Scottish Government said the devices will be outlawed through guidance issued under existing Holyrood legislation. Scottish Labour knows it is time to legislatively ban electric shock dog collars, needless devices that cause stress, emotional harm and pain to dogs. I tested a #ShockCollar out this morning - using only 1/3 of the strength - VERY painful. pic.twitter.com/myW3FgAO83 Claudia Beamish (@claudiabeamish) January 25, 2018 Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham said after listening to concerns she had decided to take steps to effectively and promptly ban the use of the collars in Scotland. Animal welfare groups accused the government of failing to ban electric shock collars for dogs (Clive Tagg/Dogs Trust/PA) She added: Causing pain to dogs by inappropriate training methods is clearly completely unacceptable and I want there to be no doubt that painful or unpleasant training for dogs will not be tolerated. She issued ministerial guidance for courts in cases involving the use of shock collars on dogs but last month her cabinet colleague Rural Affairs Minister Mairi Gougeon clarified the devices have not been banned. In response to a parliamentary question by Labours Colin Smyth, Ms Gougeon stated the the use of electronic training aids is not prohibited. She added the guidance issued means causing unnecessary suffering through the use of the collars may be an offence dependent on user knowledge. In a statement, the dog welfare organisations said: We are of the view that the Scottish Government has not delivered on its promise of introducing an effective and prompt ban on aversive training devices in Scotland. We no longer believe the guidance will be used effectively to educate dog owners that using unpleasant (aversive) stimuli or physical punishment, including electric shock collars to train a dog is not appropriate. We now call on the Scottish Government to introduce regulations to ban all aversive training devices as a priority. Scottish Conservative MSP Maurice Golden, who started a petition calling for a ban which gained 20,000 signatures, said he is disappointed by the governments backtracking. He said: The voices of thousands who have expressed a wish to ban electric shock collars should not be ignored. It is time for the Scottish Government to explain exactly their position as they are flip flopping on this issue while dogs suffer from these harmful devices. The UK Government announced plans in August to ban electronic shock collars for pets. A Scottish Government spokesman said: These claims are wrong our position on this issue has not changed. The principle of introducing guidance as a deterrent, and the wording of the guidance itself, was developed in consultation with the Kennel Club and a number of animal welfare organisations. It was also agreed we would review the effectiveness of the guidance after 12 months, and consider if improvements could be made. Criticism of the guidance at this stage would appear to be premature at best. We fully expect our guidance on electronic collars to be of real, practical benefit to dog owners in Scotland and those involved in the enforcement of the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006 on the ground. Two British brothers who were wanted in the UK over drug allegations have been arrested at a hotel in Thailand. Joseph Mulhare, 43, and Gregory Mulhare, 38, were arrested in a hotel room in Chon Buri, south east of Bangkok, by armed Thai officers earlier this week. Their arrest follows an appeal to the public from a British organised crime unit who could not locate the brothers, from Wirral. Merseyside Police on Friday confirmed the Mulhares had been arrested and are being deported to the UK but did not detail the allegations against them. We will be looking to speak to them when they return to the UK, a spokeswoman said on Friday. North West Regional Organised Crime Unit launched an appeal for the wanted brothers on November 14 as part of an investigation into the supply of Class A drugs. Undated handout photos issued by the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit (NWROCU) of Joseph Mulhare (left) and Gregory Mulhare, two Wirral brothers who were wanted in the UK over drug allegations, as they have been arrested in Thailand. The Bangkok Post reported the brothers were watched by a team of immigration and crime officers for days and had tried to throw police off their trail by taking a taxi to Suvarnabhumi airport only to leave and travel to Chon Buri. Gerry Adams has been given the go-ahead to challenge two historic prison escape convictions at the UKs highest court. The former Sinn Fein president claims two convictions received in 1975, relating to attempts to escape from the Maze Prison during the early 1970s, are unlawful because of flaws in the detention process. Lawyers for Mr Adams, 70, argue that, because the order used to intern him was not lawful, he should not have been prosecuted for trying to escape from what they assert was unlawful custody. In February, the Court of Appeal in Belfast rejected Mr Adams argument that the interim custody order (ICO) used to detain him had to be personally considered by the secretary of state for Northern Ireland. But, on Monday, the Supreme Court in London announced that Mr Adams had been granted permission to appeal against that ruling. The Louth TD was first detained in March 1972, but was released in June that year to take part in secret talks in London. He was rearrested in July 1973 at a Belfast house and interned at the Maze Prison, also known as Long Kesh internment camp. A stock picture of watch towers on the remnants of the former H Block Maze prison at Long Kesh (Niall Carson/PA) Mr Adams is challenging convictions handed down by two separate Diplock Court trials, cases tried by a single judge sitting without a jury, relating to two attempts to escape from internment. The Court of Appeal heard in February that, on Christmas Eve 1973, he was among four detainees caught attempting to break out of the Maze. His barrister Sean Doran QC said: A hole had been cut in the perimeter fence and all four were already through. The second escape bid in July 1974 was described as an elaborate scheme which involved the kidnap of a man who bore a striking resemblance to Mr Adams from a bus stop in west Belfast. The man was taken to a house where his hair was dyed and he was given a false beard, the court heard. The man was then taken to the Maze where he was to be substituted for Mr Adams in a visiting hut, however prison staff were alerted to the plan and Mr Adams was arrested in the car park of the jail, the court was told. Mr Adams was subsequently sentenced to 18 months in jail for attempting to escape. Mr Doran said that Mr Adams detention was unlawful because the ICO was signed by a junior minister at the Northern Ireland Office and not the secretary of state. But the Court of Appeal said it was satisfied that the ICO was valid having been made by the minister on behalf of the secretary of state and dismissed Mr Adams appeal. Internment was introduced in 1971 by former prime minister of Northern Ireland Brian Faulkner for those suspected of involvement in violence. The policy lasted until December 1975. During that time, 1,981 people were interned, 1,874 were nationalist and 107 were loyalist. It is understood Mr Adams instigated legal proceedings after the Pat Finucane Centre recovered a document from the British National Archives in London. No date for the Supreme Court hearing of Mr Adams appeal has been given. Theresa May has warned MPs unhappy with her Brexit deal that it is too late for the UK to go back to Brussels to re-negotiate the agreement. The Prime Minister is facing demands from MPs across the political spectrum to abandon her plan and go back to the negotiating table. However in a BBC phone-in as part of her drive to sell the agreement to the public, Mrs May insisted there is no mood on the EU side for fresh concessions. If we were to go back to the European Union and say People didnt like that deal can we have another one?, I dont think they are going to come to us and say We will give you a better deal. This is the deal that I think works for the UK, she said. Earlier, former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, a committed Leaver who quit last week over the Withdrawal Agreement, said he believes the terms are so bad the UK would be better off remaining in the EU. Im not going to advocate staying in the EU, he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. But if you just presented me terms, this deal or EU membership, because we would effectively be bound by the same rules but without the control or voice over them, yes, I think this would be even worse than that. With more than 80 Conservative MPs from both the Leave and Remain sides threatening to vote against the agreement, Mr Raab warned it is unlikely to get through the Commons and said ministers should consider leaving without a deal. We will, I think, inevitably see Parliament vote this deal down. And then I think some of those other alternatives will need to come into play, he said. Dominic Raab has claimed the UK will be worse off under Mrs Mays deal than if it stayed in the EU (Andrew Matthews/PA) Mrs May, however, warned rejection of her plan would lead to more uncertainty and division and that the public now wants the Government and MPs to get on and deliver Brexit. In Parliament theres a lot of focus on whos going to vote for the deal or not, and outside I think people are thinking Actually, lets make sure we can get this through and get on with delivering, she said. If this deal doesnt go through we are back at square one. What we end up with is more uncertainty and more division. Despite the turmoil, the Prime Minister again insisted that as far as she is concerned, Brexit will go ahead next year as planned. Personally there is no question of no Brexit because the Government needs to deliver on what people voted for in the referendum in 2016, she said. As far as I am concerned, the UK is leaving the European Union on March 29 2019. After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away. My Government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit. Pedro Sanchez (@sanchezcastejon) November 22, 2018 The latest clash came as Mrs May was warned she faces a battle to reach a final agreement on her deal at a special summit of European Union leaders on Sunday. Spanish premier Pedro Sanchez demanded last-minute changes to the deal to reflect Spains continuing concerns over the status of Gibraltar. Mrs May said she spoke to Mr Sanchez on Wednesday night and is confident on Sunday that well be able to agree a deal that delivers for the whole UK family, including Gibraltar. But in a late-night tweet on Thursday, Mr Sanchez said: After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away. My Government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit. Mr Sanchez cannot veto Brexit or the Withdrawal Agreement, but a refusal to co-operate will sour the atmosphere at a summit where leaders of the 27 remaining EU members are aiming for consensus. Spain has voiced concern over how the Brexit deal may affect the status of Gibraltar (PA) Marco Aguiriano, Spains state secretary for European affairs, said Madrid needs guarantees we can go on with this model. He told the BBC: We are asking for an article that is put on the table to be included in the Political Declaration on the future relations. Downing Street said it is not aware of any moves to add any appendix or addendum to the Withdrawal Agreement to deal with other nations concerns over issues including Gibraltar or fishing. A spokeswoman said: The Withdrawal Agreement isnt being reopened. Chief Minister of Gibraltar Fabian Picardo criticised Spains stance. He told the BBC: Spain doesnt need an article in the treaties, the future declaration, or indeed the Withdrawal Agreement, to bring Gibraltar to the table. Gibraltar has demonstrated that we actually want a direct engagement with Spain on issues. Paco Alcacer insists joining Borussia Dortmund is the right decision after signing with the Bundesliga leaders until 2023. The Spain striker originally arrived on loan from Barcelona in the summer, and Dortmund have now decided to buy the 25-year-old for a reported fee of 23 million euros (20.3million). Alcacer has scored nine goals in eight competitive matches for the German club so far this season. Speaking to the club website, he said: I am very happy in Dortmund, at BVB and in this wonderful team. Joining Borussia Dortmund was and is the right decision for me. I will do everything I can to say thank you for showing trust in me. New Borussia Dortmund signing Paco Alcacer is a Spain international (Mike Egerton/PA) Dortmund sporting director Michael Zorc said: Paco is wholeheartedly with us, he has quickly integrated and has become an integral part of our squad. We look forward to many more goals and assists from Paco in the coming years. The Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship was bolted into place on the International Space Station's Earth-facing port of the Unity module at 7:31 a.m. EST. The spacecraft will spend about three months attached to the space station before departing in February 2019. After it leaves the station, the uncrewed spacecraft will deploy several CubeSats before its fiery re-entry into Earth's atmosphere as it disposes of several tons of trash. The spacecraft's arrival brings close to 7,400 pounds of research and supplies to space station. Highlights of NASA-sponsored research to advance exploration goals and enable future missions to the Moon and Mars include: Sensory input in microgravity Changes in sensory input in microgravity may be misinterpreted and cause a person to make errors in estimation of velocity, distance or orientation. VECTION examines this effect as well as whether people adapt to altered sensory input on long-duration missions and how that adaptation changes upon return to Earth. Using a virtual reality display, astronauts estimate the distance to an object, length of an object and orientation of their bodies in space. Tests are conducted before, during and after flight. The investigation is named for a visual illusion of self-movement, called vection, which occurs when an individual is still but sees the world moving past, according to principal investigator Laurence Harris. The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) sponsors the investigation. Solidifying cement in space The MVP-Cell 05 investigation uses a centrifuge to provide a variable gravity environment to study the complex process of cement solidification, a step toward eventually making and using concrete on extraterrestrial bodies. These tests are a follow-on to the previous studies known as Microgravity Investigation of Cement Solidification (MICS), which studied cement solidification in microgravity. Together, these tests will help engineers better understand the microstructure and material properties of cement, leading to design of safer, lightweight space habitats and improving cement processing techniques on Earth. This investigation is sponsored by NASA. Investigations sponsored by the U.S. National Laboratory on the space station, which Congress designated in 2005 to maximize its use for improving quality of life on Earth, include: From stardust to solar systems Much of the universe was created when dust from star-based processes clumped into intermediate-sized particles and eventually became planets, moons and other objects. Many questions remain as to just how this worked, though. The EXCISS investigation seeks answers by simulating the high-energy, low gravity conditions that were present during formation of the early solar system. Scientists plan to zap a specially formulated dust with an electrical current, then study the shape and texture of pellets formed. Principal investigator Tamara Koch explains that the dust is made up of particles of forsterite (Mg2SiO4), the main mineral in many meteorites and related to olivine, also known as the gemstone peridot. The particles are about the diameter of a human hair. Growing crystals to fight Parkinson's disease The CASIS PCG-16 investigation grows large crystals of an important protein, Leucine-rich repeat kinase 2, or LRRK2, in microgravity for analysis back on Earth. This protein is implicated in development of Parkinson's disease, and improving our knowledge of its structure may help scientists better understand the pathology of the disease and develop therapies to treat it. Crystals of LRRK2 grown in gravity are too small and too compact to study, making microgravity an essential part of this research. Better gas separation membranes Membranes represent one of the most energy-efficient and cost-effective technologies for separating and removing carbon dioxide from waste gases, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions. CEMSICA tests membranes made from particles of calcium-silicate (C-S) with pores 100 nanometers or smaller. Producing these membranes in microgravity may resolve some of the challenges of their manufacture on Earth and lead to development of lower-cost, more durable membranes that use less energy. The technology ultimately may help reduce the harmful effects of CO2 emissions on the planet. On-Orbit Status Report Northrop Grumman 10 (NG-10): NG-10 Antares 230 Rocket successfully launched on Saturday, November 17 at 3:01AM CT from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Once in orbit, Cygnus S.S. John Young performed a series of phasing burns over the course of two days to rendezvous with ISS. The crew successfully captured Cygnus with the Space Station Remote Manipulation System (SSRMS) today at 4:28AM CT. Once captured, they handed off control of the SSRMS to ground Robotics Controllers who then maneuvered the vehicle to the Node 1 nadir Common Berthing Mechanism (CBM) interface where it was securely bolted to the ISS. Once the CBM bolting operations were complete, the crew and ground teams worked together to perform Node 1 CBM vestibule pressurization followed by hatch opening and ingress at 11:17 AM CT. NG-10 brings ~3266 kg of cargo to ISS. Progress (71P) Docking: Following Friday's launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome, 71P successfully performed a 34 orbit rendezvous with ISS and automatically docked to the Service Module Aft docking port on Sunday, November 18 at 1:28PM CT. The hatch was subsequently opened later that same day. 71P brings ~1404 kg of cargo to ISS. Probiotics: Today the crew collected samples in support of the ongoing Probiotics investigation. Some species of harmful bacteria such as Salmonella grow stronger and more virulent in the microgravity environment of space. At the same time, the human immune system is weaker in space, leading to increased health risks. The objective of the Probiotics investigation is to study the impact of continuous consumption of beneficial bacteria (probiotics) on immune function and intestinal microbiota in astronauts in a closed microgravity environment. The results of this investigation may be used to support improvements in crew members' intestinal microbiota and their immune function on long-duration space missions. Veg-03: The Veg-03 plants were checked for dryness, watered as necessary, and imagery was taken of the overall Veggie facility with the bellows up. Per recent reports from the team, there are currently have 3 healthy plants and 3 delayed plants growing in the 6 plant pillows. Veg-03G is currently in a 28 day growth cycle which began on October 25 for the Red Russian Kale and Dragoon Lettuce plants. The primary goal of the Veg-03 G/H/I testing is to demonstrate plant growth in the Veggie hardware using leafy green vegetables as a test crops. Completed Task List Activities: None Ground Activities: All activities are complete unless otherwise noted. Cygnus Berthing and CBM Operations Two Day Look Ahead: Tuesday, 11/20: Payloads: Probiotics (continuing) BCAT-CS all sample photo MERLIN4 status check Systems: Cygnus Cargo Operations Cygnus Emergency Review OBT Wednesday, 11/21: Payloads: At Home in Space MERLIN4 status check Nanoracks Platform 1 JEMAL/Loop Heat Pipe retrieval Probiotics (continuing) Veg-03 plant check Systems: Cygnus Cargo Operations Today's Planned Activities: All activities are complete unless otherwise noted. IMS Delta File Prep R PAO event report preparation Downlink Images of Berthing Cone Interior Surface ECON-M. Observation and Photography Maintenance Robotics Workstation (RWS) Configuration Cygnus PCS Command and C2V2 Link Verification Centerline Berthing Camera System (CBCS) Powerup USOS Window Shutter Close Cygnus/Node 1 Pressurization and Leak Check Preparation Robotic Workstation (RWS) High Definition (HD) Monitor Downlink Photo/TV Ghost Camera in Cuopla on SSC power recording Cygnus R-BAR Approach Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) Cygnus Capture Environmental Health System (EHS) - Formaldehyde Monitoring Kit (FMK) Deployment Operations Environmental Health System (EHS) Grab Sample Container (GSC) Sampling Operations Probiotics Item Gathering Probiotics Fecal Sample Operations Probiotics Fecal Sample MELFI Insertion Environmental Health System (EHS) Total Organic Carbon Analyzer (TOCA) Water Recovery System (WRS) Sample Analysis Ghost camera teardown in Cupola Node 1 Centerline Berthing Camera System (CBCS) Removal Cygnus/Node 1 Pressurization and Leak Check PHOTOBIOREACTOR. Visual Inspection with Photography PRODUTSENT. Installation and Activation of [-] Thermostat #2 at +29C Remote Workstation Monitor HD Video Downlink Deactivation RWS. Photo TV High Definition (HD) Cygnus Video Setup Photography of Traces Left by the Active Docking Mechanism Probes on the SM Aft Passive Mechanism Receiving Cone Node 1 Nadir to Cygnus Vestibule Outfitting, Part 1 Checking -2 Treadmill Carriage Position. Photograph [-2] Carriage Position Relative to the Pullout Roller by Lifting -2 Shield. Downlink Images Node 1 Nadir to Cygnus Vestibule Outfitting Part 2 PRODUTSENT. Retrieval from - #05 (+4) Thermostat and Transfer to - #02 (+29) Common Berthing Mechanism (CBM) Controller Panel Assembly (CPA) Rotation and Closeout PRODUTSENT. Photography of Bioekologiya Case in - #02 Thermostat Cygnus Ingress Air Sample Collection Using AK-1M Adsorber in Cygnus (NG-10) Prior to Air Duct Laying Progress 440 (DC1) Transfers of Priority and US Cargo Items, and IMS Ops Cygnus Cargo Photo VEG-03G Plant Check/Water Environmental Health System (EHS) Total Organic Carbon Analyzer (TOCA) Sample Data Record VZAIMODEISTVIYE-2. Experiment Ops Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook. Imagine you suddenly got rich this weekend. Not a little bit rich but properly money-to-burn and then so much more rich. Now imagine how you would toast this miracle. Surely youre realising your usual glass of sauvignon blanc or malbec just wont cut it? So here are five ways that magnificently minted and bang on trend connoisseurs are enjoying their drinks at the moment. Lets just say weve done the research to save you the hard work (because in this daydream, youll never have to work again). 1. Worlds most valuable gin (Harvey Nichols/PA) Luxury gin makers Jam Jar Gin have foraged leaves from a single ancient Mulberry tree to create this distinctive gin, which combines juniper forward, complex flavours with a woody sweetness. The hand-made porcelain jar is embossed and polished to a diamond matt finish and comes with an elegant stirrup cup, styled on the traditional British drinking vessel. Presented in a leather hide case, the Morus LX1V deluxe edition costs 4,000 from Harvey Nichols, in-store only. 2. Worlds most expensive cognac (M Restaurant/PA) Sniffter glasses at the ready, M Restaurants are offering guests the chance to try Rome de Bellegarde 1894, the most expensive cognac of its kind in the world. Crafted by Le Domaine de Rome de Bellegarde, a prestigious French house which caters to the rich and famous, the 1894 LEveil des Sens, is made from four fruit brandies, aged for more than 70 years. 10ml shot, 2,514, 1L decanter, 250,000. Available from November 27, M Restaurants. 3. A rare whisky (The Whisky Exchange/PA) A whisky thats worth the wait, Highland distillery released Dalmore 50 Year old, a single malt Scotch whisky and one of only 50 bottles, to celebrate master distiller Richard Patersons 50 years in the industry. The decanter was created by French crystal house Baccarat and each bottle is adorned with a solid silver stag designed by silversmith Hamilton & Inches. A mere snip at 60,000, The Whisky Exchange. 4. The ultimate champagne gift pack (Armand de Brignac/PA) No time to hold back, when you can drink in the glitz and glamour of rapper Jay Zs Ace of Spades champagne. One of only 300, who wouldnt want to hold the key to the new gift set from Armand de Brignac Deux Flutes dArmand De Brignac, 465, Harrods in-store only? The push lock opens to reveal a bottle of Brut Gold Prestige champagne with two signature tulip glasses inside a sleek, lacquered wooden case. 5. Couture cocktails (Mr Lyan/PA) Ryan Chetiyawardana, aka Mr Lyan and brains behind fashionable Dandelyan cocktail bar at the Mondrian London, has created the Time Capsules drinking experience: A bespoke service, by appointment, anywhere in the world, to have your own tailor-made bottled cocktail crafted by the worlds most awarded bartender. Using vintage and rare spirits, wines and liqueurs, along with unusual ingredients, Lyans tailor-made cocktails reflect each individuals palate and personality. Prices range from 10,000 (The Scarab), or 50,000 (The Sabretooth), or 100,000 (The Monarch) per experience. American dignitaries had a surprise on a trip to Belfast on Friday as their visit to City Hall coincided with a wedding party dressed entirely in onesies. US ambassador to the UK Robert Wood Johnson and lord mayor Deirdre Hargey were pictured alongside 20 guests dressed as animals, Simpsons characters and dinosaurs as the partygoers mingled with senior diplomats in the lobby. The ambassador showed his sense of humour, however, chatting with the revellers and telling the Press Association: Boy, I wanted to join that one I needed my costume. US ambassador to the UK Robert Wood Johnson chats with wedding guests in onesies at Belfast City Hall (Credit: David Armitage/PA) Belfast city councillor David Armitage caught the scene on camera as he was heading into City Hall. I turned around and saw the Simpsons wedding and thought this is going to be interesting, he said. Everything seemed to be very good-natured, though, and the ambassador took it in his stride. Asked if he had ever seen anything like it before, Mr Wood Johnson replied: No. Thats unique. I may do that myself, he added. Northern Ireland US Consul General Elizabeth Kennedy Trudeau, Belfast lord mayor Deirdre Hargey and the US ambassador to the UK Robert Wood Johnson outside Belfast City Hall (Credit: David Young/PA) Ms Hargey joked she timed the visit to coincide with the wedding. We said when you come to Belfast you can have a bit of banter and craic and no better way to do it than at a wedding, she said. More than 100 people had to be evacuated from an ice rink after a fire broke out. Avon Fire and Rescue were called to Icescape at the Tropicana in Weston-super-Mare shortly after 5pm on Friday. A spokesman for the service said about 120 people had to be cleared from the rink and surrounding area, including staff and families with children. Tropicana on fire! Praying no one is hurt! Just left having been ice skating with the girls. #Weston #Fire pic.twitter.com/OdVtd1W2Zf Craig Sinclair (@craigpsinclair) November 23, 2018 Six fire engines were sent to the scene and the blaze was put out within about 20 minutes of crews arriving, he added. The spokesman added the fire is believed to have been caused accidentally but had no further details. The fire service said one female was taken to hospital for smoke inhalation. Icescape at the Tropicana in Weston-super-Mare had to be evacuated due to a fire (Ben Birchall/PA) The fire at the Tropicana building is out. One person being treated on the scene for smoke inhalation. Fire contained to the 'Bear Grils' kitchen area. 6 engines in attendance. pic.twitter.com/DtFvRiYS8O Wsmtc (@WsMTC) November 23, 2018 South Western Ambulance Service said they had been told by a caller that a food van was on fire, while the town council said the blaze had been contained to the Bare Grills kitchen. The attraction is the UKs largest covered winter ice rink, according to its website. It is described as a spectacular winter wonderland, where friends and families can skate on the UKs largest covered winter ice rink, enjoy some delicious festive food and drinks, visit Santas Grotto and much more. The area was previously the site of Banksys dystopian, Disneyland-esque Dismaland theme park. Theresa May heads to Brussels on Saturday with her Brexit deal under threat at home and abroad. The Prime Minister will hold talks with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker before a summit of EU leaders on Sunday which is expected to endorse the deal thrashed out between negotiators from the two sides. But Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has threatened to veto progress without further guarantees for Madrid over the status of Gibraltar. Mrs May also faced domestic difficulties, with her relationship with the Democratic Unionist Party looking increasingly strained as Arlene Fosters party prepared for its conference in Belfast. DUP leader Arlene Foster warned that the confidence and supply deal propping up Mrs Mays minority administration would have to be revisited if her Brexit deal gets through Parliament. The DUP has strongly opposed the deal and the guest star at its conference will be Boris Johnson, a prominent critic of the Prime Ministers approach and a potential rival for the Tory leadership. DUP leader Arlene Foster and deputy leader Nigel Dodds have strongly opposed Theresa Mays deal (Brian Lawless/PA) The tensions over Gibraltar concern Spains demand that Gibraltars future is considered a bilateral issue between London and Madrid rather than between the EU and UK. Mr Sanchez has suggested that Sundays summit could be scrapped unless there is a breakthrough. After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away. My Government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit. Pedro Sanchez (@sanchezcastejon) November 22, 2018 Mrs May has insisted her deal is in the interests of the whole UK family including Gibraltar. The last-minute diplomatic spat comes as Mrs Mays critics laid bare the scale of their opposition to the Brexit plan. Former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, a committed Leaver who quit last week over the Withdrawal Agreement, said he believed the terms were so bad the UK would be better off remaining in the EU. Im not going to advocate staying in the EU, he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. But if you just presented me terms, this deal or EU membership, because we would effectively be bound by the same rules but without the control or voice over them, yes, I think this would be even worse than that. With more than 80 Conservative MPs from both the Leave and Remain sides threatening to vote against the agreement, Mr Raab warned it was unlikely to get through the Commons and said ministers should consider leaving without a deal. But if it did pass the Commons, the repercussions could bring down Mrs Mays Government, with the DUP hinting at withdrawing the support of its MPs. The DUPs 10 MPs have proved reluctant to vote with the Government since the terms of the Brexit deal became known and the termination of their Westminster arrangement would be a major blow to the Prime Minister. Mrs Foster told the BBC: If she is successful in Parliament, and there is no evidence that she is going to be successful in Parliament, then of course we will have to revisit the confidence and supply agreement. But Mrs May, who launched an effort to sell the Brexit deal directly to the public, insisted that there would be no changes to appease critics at this late stage. Our position on Gibraltar and its sovereignty has not changed, and will not change. Prime Minister Theresa May tells caller Laura-Beth the UK is working with the governments of Gibraltar and Spain in this phase of the negotiations.#BBCAskThis | @EmmaBarnett | @BBCNews pic.twitter.com/TVKshjhowz BBC Radio 5 Live (@bbc5live) November 23, 2018 In a BBC phone-in she said: If we were to go back to the European Union and say People didnt like that deal can we have another one?, I dont think they are going to come to us and say We will give you a better deal. This is the deal that I think works for the UK. She warned rejection of her plan would lead to more uncertainty and division and that the public now wanted the Government and MPs to get on and deliver Brexit. In Parliament theres a lot of focus on whos going to vote for the deal or not, and outside I think people are thinking Actually, lets make sure we can get this through and get on with delivering, she said. If this deal doesnt go through we are back at square one. What we end up with is more uncertainty and more division. Dominic Raab has claimed the UK will be worse off under Mrs Mays deal than if it stayed in the EU (Andrew Matthews/PA) Despite the turmoil, the Prime Minister again insisted that as far as she was concerned, Brexit would go ahead next year as planned. Personally, there is no question of no Brexit, because the Government needs to deliver on what people voted for in the referendum in 2016, she said. As far as I am concerned, the UK is leaving the European Union on March 29 2019. As if the coming together of arch rivals like the National Conference (NC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) wasnt surprising enough, the BJP added more heat to the politically charged atmosphere in Jammu and Kashmir by dragging Pakistan into it. Soon after the announcement of a grand alliance on November 21, local leaders of the BJP in the state made bizarre comments, saying the NC and PDP were apparently taking directions from across the border. Some even said that it was a result of the meetings held in Dubai. Nobody knows what meetings were being referred to. If this wasnt damaging enough, senior leaders such as Ram Madhav seemed to be towing the same line today. PDP&NC boycotted local body polls last month because they had instructions from across the border.Probably they had fresh instructions from across the border to come together & form govt.What they did prompted Guv to look into the whole issue: Ram Madhav on J&K assembly dissolved pic.twitter.com/f0wPQbzqrD ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2018 I dare you @rammadhavbjp ji to prove your allegation. You have RAW, NIA & IB at your command (CBI too is your parrot) so have the guts to place evidence in the public domain. Either prove this or be man enough to apologise. Dont practice shoot & scoot politics. https://t.co/KEbOo0z6O2 Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) November 22, 2018 All the hectic political manoeuvring that unfolded on Wednesday night in the state ended with Governor Satya Pal Malik ordering the dissolution of the J&K Assembly. To a lot of people, it seemed that the Governor and the Centre had no other option. The assumption holds ground simply because the same Governor just a few days back was heard hinting that there was no urgency to dissolve the Assembly. The sequence of events on Wednesday suggested that the BJP found the coming together of these three parties difficult to deal with particularly, when its own ally Sajad Lone was unable to cobble together a group with enough numbers to form the government. The PDP, NC and Congress appeared to have checkmated the BJP. But, with Malik dissolving the Assembly, these parties have ensured that there is no possibility of horse trading and splitting anymore. This has dashed the hopes of a BJP-propped third front. Many believe that since the BJP was taken by surprise, it didnt really know how to react. Invoking Pakistan seemed like an easy option. But it has actually proved counterproductive. Not only has it shown the BJP and its leaders in a bad light, but it has also raised some pertinent questions. Both the National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party have been BJP's alliance partners in the past. (Source: India Today) The biggest question that could be asked today is how come the same PDP, which was part of the government with the BJP till June this year, has suddenly become pro-Pakistan? The National Conference has also been part of the BJP alliance. So, the takeaway from these developments is that if you are not with the BJP, you are apparently anti-national and pro-Pakistan. The other aspect of this assertion by the BJP is graver. In the state of J&K, mainstream political parties like the NC and PDP are often criticised for peddling Indias agenda. In other terms, they are called 'pro-India parties' in the dynamics of the Kashmir conflict. These parties have been at the receiving end for quite some time. Many of their leaders and workers have been attacked and killed. Today, when the BJP says that these parties are working at the behest of Pakistan, isnt it also undermining the decades of consistent effort made to establish the mainstream in a vulnerable state like J&K? National parties such as the Congress and BJP are seen as outsiders for a long time, the NC and PDP have been part of the definition of 'mainstream' in Kashmir. So, is the BJP today pointing out that this mainstream is 'pro-Pakistan'? Also read: Why Rahul Gandhi and Mehbooba Mufti should thank Governor Satya Pal Malik for dissolving J&K Assembly Some stories need to be told when they resurface in testing times, opening doors to old memories, speaking to us, calling for new attention, while giving us a change and possible redemption for peace and prosperity. Sajad Lone: It is time to tell his story. (Source: PTI) 27 years later, one story has reemerged. Its protagonists have travelled enormous distances, from mainstream politics to separatism to struggles, and surfaced finally under Sajad Gani Lone's leadership. This story thus needs to be told now. But this story is not Sajad's. We must recollect instead the story of Sajad's father, Abdul Gani Lone a leader of substance. Lone Senior was a man of many parts. (Source: Twitter) Brought up in a humble background, where education would ordinarily have been beyond belief, Abdul Gani Lone was born in a forlorn hamlet, Dard Harai, in Kupwara district in North Kashmir. He was a tough character, whose trajectory could be summarised in multiple roles. First, he was a youngster, all set on his own, against all social constraints, in the pursuit of education he eventually succeeded with a degree in law from Aligarh Muslim University in 1957. His second role was as a budding lawyer, fiery and concerned for his people. In fact, his initial journey as a lawyer seems to have obsessed him as a saviour of people who were timid and voiceless which in turn brings out the central protagonist. We see a unconventional politician, at odds with the political dispensation of his times. Mr Lone began his political career, serving in the state assembly as a Congress candidate in 1967. He later joined the National Conference and Janta Party and also got to serve as a Cabinet Minister until he decided to start his own party and formed the Peoples Conference Party in 1978. He was seen as a vocal politician with clarity on the Kashmir dispute one who aspired for a political solution to the issue, with the people of J&K as its legitimate proprietors. One great thing about him was that he considered the movement to be inclusive of all the faiths representing the state of Jammu & Kashmir and he fiercely contested the role of any foreign involvement in the movement. He deeply detested the use of violence for achieving political aspirations. In his lifetime, he opposed the involvement of Pakistani militants in the Valley, often asking them to leave. Looking for a new approach, Mr Lone stressed dialogue and diplomatic consultation. He was shaking the separatist ground that had consolidated itself under the influence of Pakistan and religious passions. He was looking for a political breakthrough, so that violence was brought to an end and peace reinstalled in the Valley. Unfortunately, Lone was assassinated on 21 May, 2002. The incident is believed to have deeply impressed itself on Sajads political sensibilities. Nonetheless, even today, hardly anything has moved ahead. The Valley is still oscillating between war and peace. Its youth are still deprived of opportunities and are still vulnerable to violence. In the last couple of decades, from the beginning of the armed struggle to this very moment, the Valley has lost an entire generation of young men who cross the fault lines. The earth beneath our feet is drenched in blood and one cant breathe ignoring the smell of dead bodies. Who should be blamed? Is violence an extension to the aspiration of freedom or an obligation, a criterion to be fulfilled or just a prologue to our terrible history? After all, there must be an end to this unending mayhem. Even if we dont actualise our desires, why cant we make the mistake of trying again and again even at the expense of failing? At least we won't be accused of not trying and letting the status quo strangle our lives. How many Burhans and Manans shall desolate their existence, leaving a scar on the heart of a mother who is clueless about the reality of such 'martyrdom'? As these men are victims of violence, so could anyone else be even Sajad Lone lost his father in the quest to safeguard the Valley from its troubles. But Sajad, from being a rank outsider, one who was against the system, to being part of it now, is leading the people forward on a road of progress. His is a story to try and reinvent possibilities of peace in the Valley. The next generations success (or failure) will offer another script for winning one of the worlds most difficult battles. Kashmir won't be won or lost on just the political front, but in public health, in human welfare, in business, agriculture and education too. Lets always remember, the state of Jammu & Kashmir faces the same challenges as the rest of the country. Solutions have to be developed here answers to the most metaphysical questions about how our society should work and grow, and a birth of a new sense of an aspiring middle class, linked together by commerce, technology, common aspirations and ambitions and a common Indian dream. Young Kashmir: It is their story that must be written with bright new colours. (Source: Twitter) Pray that we all do this. And finally, have a new story to tell. Also read: How BJP has committed a self-goal by saying NC and PDP were taking instructions from Pakistan We have set an ambitious goal for ourselves the goal of providing access to 24x7power for all in the country. Access to power here represents not only the connectivity to the network but also includes availability of requisite infrastructure across the power sector value chain to ensure supply of quality and reliablepower. And we are well on our way to achieve our goal. And the scale of the transition is such as has not been seen anywhere in the world. The country achieved 100% village electrification on 28th April 2018, a major landmark towards universal electrification. It was not merely connecting the remaining 18,500 odd villages to the electricity network but to reach out to the poorest of poor who had remained in darkness for more than 70 years after independence. The challenges involved were huge these challenges had stood as a barrier to extending electricity to these villages for such a long period. Most of these villages were located in remote inaccessible areas with difficult terrain in hilly areas, forest areas, areas severely affected with LWE activities etc. and transportation of material/equipment and mobilisation of manpower for execution of works required determination and perseverance. The difficulty level kept on increasing as the work progressed further. About 350 villages in Arunachal Pradesh (272), J&K (54), Meghalaya (9) and Manipur(12) located in remote and difficult terrain required head loading of materials and trekking up to 10 days. Materials in somevillages of J&K and Arunachal Pradesh had to be transported by helicopter. In 2762 villages, extending grid network was not feasible due to remote and inaccessible locations, Solar based standalone systems were provided. Enormous challenges were confronted in electrification of 7614 LWE villages in Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha. The electrification of these remaining villages have paved the path for their socio-economic growth. We have the satisfaction of having achieved the target before the target date. This program has also set an example of effective cooperative federalism wherein Union Government, State Governments, Distribution Companies and administration synergised their efforts for common goal. The next step was to light up every household. The Prime Minister launched the Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana Saubhagya in Sept. 2017 with the aim to achieve universal household electrification. Achievement of this within targeted timeline of March 2019 is the challenge we have given to ourselves. As the name of the scheme itself suggests, it has inherent features of Sahaj i.e. Simple/Easy/Effortless and Har Ghar i.e. inclusive universal household electrification. A targeted program of such a scale has never been attempted in the world. The progress is again exemplary in terms of speed and innovation. We are lighting up an average of a hundred thousand houses every day. No country has witnessed anything on such a scale. The happiness on the face of the people when their houses are lighted up with electricity is something to be seen. I am sharing some photographs. We crossed the milestone of lighting the lights to 2 crore households under the Saubhagya scheme (which started in Oct. 2017) on the 19th of November 2018. In addition to providing last mile connectivity, strengthening of backup system network in distribution and sub-transmission segment along with metering, IT enablement and automation etc. is equally important to ensure supply of adequate power with desired quality and reliability. For this purpose also, Government of India has been providing financial assistance to the States under Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) and Integrated Power Development Scheme (IPDS) for rural and urban areas respectively. Projects worth Rs 1,40,000 Crore have been rolled out under these schemes. Under these schemes, creation of 1204 nos. of new sub-stations, augmentation of capacity in 1601 nos. existing sub-stations, erection of 1,61,101 nos. new distribution transformers, 1,11,734 Kms of HT lines and 98028 Kms of LT line has been completed. System strengthening works under these schemescoupled with reforms adopted under Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY) would facilitate 24x7 quality and reliable power supply for all in sustainable manner. UDAY interventions have resulted in (i) reduction in Aggregate Technical and Commercial Losses (AT&C) losses from 20.77% to 18.72% (ii) reduction in ACS-ARR (Average Cost of Supply - Average Revenue Realization) gap from 60 paisa/unit to 17 paisa/unit (iii) savings on interest cost of about Rs 31,800 crores to utilities/statesand reduction in losses from Rs 51575 crore to Rs 15132 crore. NTPC and other major Gencos need to be congratulated for keeping the power purchase costs almost constant in spite of increase in cost of coal, freight and other costs. The initiatives of the Government have helped our country in achieving 24th rank in 2018 on World Banks Ease of Getting Electricity in the world as against 111th rank in 2014. This is a quantum leap and shows the result oriented approach of the Government. At the backend of the power value chain, we have achieved One Nation One Grid. The pace of grid construction has been enhanced to an average of 24908 Kms per year in the last four and half years from an average of 4385 Kms in previous years. This ensures power transfers across the country. About 2.96 Lakh MVA transformation capacity has been added during the years 2014-18. Tariff based Competitive Bidding has brought in transparency and efficiency in the system. The huge addition in the consumer base at the rate of one lac per day, coupled with growth in the economy has meant that our electricity demand has been growing at the rate of more than 10% in these months. The change we are making are unparalleled in scale. But we have more to do. But our vision is clear. And our determination is firm. Our estimates are that the number of households left would be less than 50 lacs. At this rate, almost 50 more days required to achieve 100% household electrification. If we do it faster, less days to achieve the goal. The world has looked on our progress with amazement and admiration. The International Energy Agency has called it one of the greatest success stories of the year. In order to meet the growing demand of electricity in the country which is expected to increase further, addition to the generation capacity is important. During the last 4 years the total installed capacity has increased by 1 Lakh MW.This has helped in wiping out energy deficit from 4.2% to almost zero at 0.7%. India has for the first time become an exporter of electricity after meeting its internal demand. We have helped our neighbours like Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar by exporting 7203 MUs of electricity. In order to make our electricity clean and green, we have placed a roadmap to achieve 175 GW capacity in the renewable energy sector by 2022, which includes 100 GW of solar power and 60 GW of wind power. The overall installed capacity of Renewable Energy has been more than doubled in the last four and half years from 34,000 MW to 72,000 MW, solar capacity increased 8 times in last 4 years. We are on the way to achieve our commitment at international fora. While we continue to increase our capabilities for power generation, we recognize the need to explore avenues that promote energy efficiency. Concerted efforts are being made to efficiently use the energy in the demand side through various innovative and visionary policy measures. UJALA, Star labelling program, energy conservation building code, energy efficiency measures through Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT)are few initiatives in this area. The first cycle of the PAT for industry achieved savings of more than 8.6 million tonnes of oil equivalent which is almost 1.23 percent of primary energy supply of India.The second cycle is estimated to achieve even higher savings. (The writer is Minister of Power, Government of India. Views expressed in the article are personal.) Budget carrier SpiceJet on Friday launched a daily direct flight service to Hong Kong from New Delhi, seeking to tap the growing business and leisure travel demand, besides eyeing the Indian students community there. Following the introduction of the new service, SpiceJet offers over 2,500 seats per week on the Delhi-Hong Kong-Delhi route, which will be serviced by the latest 189-seater Boeing 737 Max plane, the airline said in a release. With this, SpiceJet has become the only domestic budget carrier operating a direct flight on the route, it added. We are delighted to launch our direct flight on the Delhi-Hong Kong route. We see tremendous potential in this sector. We have already witnessed a huge demand on this sector and foresee that this will only grow in the coming days, said Shilpa Bhatia, chief sales and revenue officer, SpiceJet. Words and phrases lose their meaning when repeated ad nauseam. Probably the word corruption too has been overused due to which it has lost its meaning and has become insignificant background noise In 1986, I went with a college friend to what was called Panorama Centre in Saddar, Karachi. Panorama at that time was a posh place with lavish offices and high-end clothing shops. When we were about to enter one of the elevators in the building, the door opened and a moustachioed man emerged carrying a five or six-year-old boy. They were followed by three more burly men who seemed to be his assistants. As they were stepping out of the lift, the child announced: Duniya gol hai (the world is round). The assistants smiled and clapped, saying zabardast, zabardast (wonderful). After few minutes of loitering on the second floor, we pressed the down button on the lift. The door slid open, and out came the same posse. Lo and behold, the kid announced: Duniya gol hai. Again, the assistants praised the kid. Some time later when we were about to exit the building from a glass door near a clothes outlet, we clearly heard it again: Duniya gol hai. It came from inside the shop. But this time it wasnt followed by any claps or praise. This irrelevant memory came to mind when recently I read Verbal Conditioning and Behaviour, a book by psychologist JP Das. According to Das, when a word or phrase is vigorously repeated, it loses its meaning to the listener, who then begins to perceive it as meaningless. In 1962, Leon James, a professor of psychology, called this phenomenon semantic satiation. Interestingly, though conducted decades ago, James work on the subject is only now being fully absorbed by an active service industry, which for years, underlined the importance of repeated messages. That industry is advertising. Author and journalist Zachary Petit, in his 2015 article for Mental Floss, wrote: Marketers are rethinking their sales ploys, thanks to Leons ideas. For example, the term Black Friday once held a unique meaning for shoppers, but according to Petit, thanks to its overuse, Black Friday is no longer the valuable hook it once was. Another interesting example can be the word revolution. In 1995, a journalist colleague of mine and I took up a project after noticing the frequency of the word revolution/revolutionary in Press ads. We scanned various editions of Dawn (at the dailys library) from 1950 till 1995. Our findings indicated that the word revolution was only sparsely used till the late 1960s, mainly for actual political revolutions. However, by the late 1960s, the word was frequently repeated by both, Left and Right mainstream political parties, and even some youth groups. Then in a mid-1970s edition of Dawn, we came across a Press ad of a furniture brand that claimed its office chairs were made with revolutionary Swedish technology. After that we came across ad after ad for electronics, medicines, chocolates, milk, cooking oils and detergent brands, all claiming that their ways of manufacturing were revolutionary. By the 1990s, not only the political context of the word revolution had disintegrated, so had its marketing context. It meant absolutely nothing. It had reached semantic satiation. There are three more words/phrases in the context of Pakistan, which I believe, have reached semantic satiation. The first is Islam khatre mein hai (Islam is in danger). This was repeatedly used during the 1946 election in British India in which the All-India Muslim League was contesting to claim a separate Muslim majority country. According to historian Dr Mubarak Ali, this phrase was first used during the Khilafat Movement (1919-1924) by Islamic activists trying to resurrect the Ottoman Caliphate. After the countrys creation, the Islam khatre mein haimantra became associated with religious parties who have often repeated it during various political and social episodes, such as Ayub Khans secular policies, the rise of Bhuttos socialist PPP, the emergence of ethno-nationalism in former East Pakistan, the election of Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister, the growth of pop music and concerts in the 1990s, all the way to the authoring of a National Action Plan (NAP) in 2015 and the alleged reforms suggested in the countrys blasphemy laws. Not only has the phrase lost its meaning, it has come down to evoke a comical image of an enraged and contradictory cleric, foaming at the mouth. The other term that has reached semantic satiation is, Pakistan aik naazuk morr par kharra hai(Pakistan is standing at a critical crossroads). It meant something when Ayub used it, after coming to power, because it directly alluded to the political chaos of the 1950s. It meant something when Bhutto used it in 1971, because East Pakistan had broken away after a civil war. But ever since Gen Zia used it to justify his reactionary 1977 military coup, the phrase has gradually lost its veracity. Almost every Pakistani ruler has used it, consequently detaching it from any convincing context other than one that has now become an unintentional self-parody. Corruption as a word, too, has been overused. Ever since the 1990s, it has been repeated so often that it now holds different meanings for different segments. In the 1990s, when it was repeatedly used by the PML-N, it meant the corrupt PPP. When used by the PPP, it meant the corrupt PML-N and now when used by the PTI, it means the corrupt PPP/PML-N mafia. When used by the PPP and the PML-N, it means the corrupt electables in the PTI. Semantic satiation is also a class thing. A friend was having tea at a trendy dhaba, which was situated right beside an actual dhaba. Incidentally, both had the same news channel on their TV sets. My friend said that when a clip came on of Prime Minister Imran Khan lamenting corruption, he noticed that some young people at the trendy dhaba raised their heads to casually watch, whereas the working-class folk kept having their tea without even glancing at the TV. Probably to them, the word corruption had lost its meaning. It had become insignificant background noise. The message to the world must be clear: Attempts to revive insurgency and terrorism in Punjab will be crushed At the time of writing, Bikramjit Singh alias Bikram, one of the two alleged perpetrators of the grenade attack on a Nirankari congregation which left three dead and 20 wounded in Amritsar on November 18, has been arrested. The other, Avtar Singh, remains at large, with security personnel assiduously looking for him. Simultaneously, efforts are reportedly afoot to squelch any attempt to revive the violence that terrorist groups, created, trained, armed and provisioned by Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), had unleashed to carve Punjab, and some adjoining territories, out of India and establish thereon a sovereign State called Khalistan (Land of the Pure). Those suspected of association with terrorist outfits are being questioned. Guest houses have been searched to ferret out suspicious new arrivals. Highway patrolling has been intensified, as has been surveillance of key installations and public places. All this is hardly surprising. The violence, that had raged for more than a decade, had consumed as many as 21,469 lives and plunged Punjab into a nightmare before being comprehensively defeated in 1993 by the Punjab Police under the inspirational leadership of its director-general, KPS Gill. There have, however, been credible reports over several years that the ISI was trying to revive Khalistani terrorism and link it with Pakistans unconventional war against India in Jammu & Kashmir. Indeed, shortly after the Amritsar outrage, Punjab Chief Minister, Captain Amarinder Singh had stated that it marked an attempt by the ISI to disturb the peace in the State. His statement gains credence from the fact that the Austria-made Arges Type 84 fragmentation hand grenade, used in the Amritsar attack, is widely used by the Pakistani army. Not just that, such a grenade was reportedly to be used in an ISI-backed terror attack which was foiled with the arrest on November 1, 2018, of one Shabnamdeep Singh alias Mohinder Lahoria. The grenade, reportedly provided by an ISI contact, was found in Lahorias possession. The latter, who had been asked to target police posts and public places, confessed to have been receiving instructions from his handlers in Pakistan. As pointed by Kamal Davar in Tryst with Perfidy: The Deep State of Pakistan, which provides a comprehensive overview of the ISIs activities in India, the outfit has been crafting its strategy for fanning secessionism in Punjab since decades and deviously tapping some politically disgruntled elements to forge them into a potent force. It stepped up its activities in the early 1980s when it began coordinating the Afghan jihad against the Soviet forces with funds and weapons received from the United States and Saudi Arabia. In Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, Yossef Bodansky, then Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare in the US, wrote, The ISI capitalised on the rapidly expanding and lavishly funded training and support system for the Afghan Mujaheedin as cover for expanded sponsorship of and support for other insurgent groups dedicated to subversive activities in India. Bodansky further stated, The main reason the ISI decided to keep the CIA out of the [training] camps was the extent of training and support non-Afghan volunteers and others were getting in these camps. Most numerous were the thousands of Islamist trainees from Indian Kashmir and to a lesser extent the Sikhs from the Punjab. He adds that in 1985 and 1986, as the quantity and quality of the weapons improved, Sikh terrorism and subversion in the Punjab and throughout India showed increased militarisation and radicalisation. The ISI did not abandon its sinister efforts even after the Khalistan movement was crushed in 1993. Its attempts, however, drew a blank for a long time as Punjab had enough of murder, forcible marriages, rape and extortion by the terrorists and the collateral consequences of the campaign against terrorism, including the virtual collapse of normal life. Things have been changing in the past several years. What warrants particular concern is the fact that the latest incidents are part of a continuum of the renewed terrorist violence in and flow of arms to Punjab since 2015. The arms seized include Chinese-made AK-47 and modified MP9 rifles, 7.62 mm pistols, .32 bore revolvers and hand grenades. Enormous quantities of ammunition have also been apprehended. There are also indications of an increase in support among people. The reasons include farmers discontent, perceived injustice to Sikhs and uneasiness over the rise of an assertive Hindu right. If all this facilitates the recruitment of militants, propaganda by pro-Khalistan groups flourishing in countries like Canada, the United States, Britain, Germany, Malaysia and Thailand, keeps the movement alive among the Sikhs of diaspora. To cite an example, a body which calls itself Sikhs for Justice organised in Trafalgar Square, London, on August 12, 2018, a rally demanding a global referendum among Sikhs in 2020 on the creation of a sovereign Khalistan. Funds from such elements, supplementing the massive amounts from the ISI, reach Khalistani terror groups in India, as does their anti-India and pro-Khalistan propaganda. These and those generated by the ISI and indigenous terrorist sources, spread rapidly through social media, particularly WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger groups, spurring separatism. The question is: What is to be done? The first and most important effort should be to address the genuine grievances and apprehensions Sikhs harbour. Only a few of those who murdered, maimed and looted during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots have been punished. The rest have to be brought to book. Serious attempts should be made to ameliorate the plight of farmers, which is acute in most parts of India and not merely Punjab. Equally, the spread of majoritarianism, intolerant of minorities and determined to smother Indias rich diversity and fit the entire country into the cultural straitjacket advocated by its protagonists, must be halted and reversed. Simultaneously attempts to revive terrorism and insurgency have to be defeated on the ground. Efforts to stanch the flow of funds and propaganda from abroad must be stepped up and pro-Khalistan propaganda abroad countered. The most important element here is intelligence without which no terrorist movement can be defeated. Efforts to further improve it must receive a thrust, as must those to enhance the ability of the security forces to act on the information received. Finally, terrorists must be firmly dealt with. The message to the world must be clear: Attempts to revive insurgency and terrorism in Punjab will be crushed. (The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author) Gokudo Hanover joined the ranks of Scott Di Domenicos stable last fall and quickly became one of the top horses in his barn. He won the local Open Handicap Pace at Yonkers twice and placed another two times over the winter. Di Domenico thought enough of the gelding to enter him in the first leg of the George Morton Levy Series March 17. However, the day before the race, Di Domenico found Gokudo Hanover in a state of shock. He jogged that morning and he was okay, Di Domenico said. Around lunchtime, he got violent. He was really uncharacteristically in pain and uncomfortable. Thats certainly not part of his temperament, so we shipped him immediately to the Mid-Atlantic Clinic. It was terrible, especially a horse of his personality. Hes very friendly, quiet, nice, real pleasurable horse. To see him up and down and in a lot of pain was certainly alarming. Gokudo Hanover suffered from an episode of colic and required emergency surgery. A portion of his intestine was removed, and surgeons also discovered and took out a non-cancerous tumor. Gokudo Hanover pulled through, but the budding pacing star went to the sidelines. He missed quite a bit of time. He was probably out two to three months just not doing much of anything. Just healing up and making sure everything was okay, Di Domenico said. It was a little bit questionable of how he was going to come back. It seems like most horses who have that dont come back quite as well as they did before they had it. When he started back to work and back on the track, he had no issues of any sort that would lead you to believe anything was out of the ordinary. He jogged back, trained back, did everything right." With a significant amount of money still on his card from his early-season success, Di Domenico had no choice but to bring Gokudo Hanover back in Open company, finishing off-the-board in two starts in the Great Northeast Open Series this August. The six-year-old posted two victories at Freehold in September before returning to Yonkers. The Cams Card Shark son worked his way back up the class-ladder, his comeback culminating with a pair of wins in the $35,000 Preferred and $44,000 Open Handicap Pace Nov. 10 and 17, respectively. We took him to Freehold and he kind of woke up down there and its been smooth sailing since, Di Domenico said. Its really gratifying to see where he was, to see how much fun we had early with him, then to the nightmarish day where he was in so much pain, shut him down, bring him back. Its fulfilling and most of all, to see the horse overcome such struggle is most gratifying. Gokudo Hanover left from post five in his latest win, but Techtor Hanover and Mach It So were faster into the first turn, leaving Gokudo Hanover parked outside in third. Dan Dube put the whip on Gokudo Hanovers tail and forged to the lead in :26.2. Gokudo Hanover sped through a half-mile in :55.1 and soon felt pressure from the looming first-over favourite Mach It So. Dube kicked out the plugs entering the backstretch and raised the lines high in his left hand as he urged the gelding on with the whip in his right. Mach It So reached Gokudo Hanovers wheel past three-quarters in 1:23 but wouldnt get any closer. Under a sustained drive, Gokudo Hanover turned back his rival and kicked away to a length win in 1:52. It was a big mile. The front end didnt hold up great Saturday night. He went some big fractions. Hes been really, really good, Di Domenico said. The other thing about that horse, hes one of the horses that just loves Yonkers. He really, really enjoys that track, he gets around it so handily and thats where he does his best work. Gokudo Hanover will try to double-up in the Open this week. He will start from post six as a 7-1 shot in the $44,000 feature. Bettor Memories was second in this race two weeks ago and is the 3-1 favourite from post four while last weeks Preferred winner Always At My Place is 7-2 from post five. Techtor Hanover, last weeks runner-up, drew post three and is 9-2. Theartofconfusion, Soho Lennon, Great Vintage, and Mach It So complete the lineup. I think hes up against it, Di Domenico said. Theres some speed inside of him, probably in a spot where he has to race from off the pace, but thats pretty common when you win the Open and you have to move to the outside. When youre racing for the kind of money they race for and have a horse of that caliber, you take everything in stride and just try to handle every week differently. Saturdays 12-race card also features a $44,000 Filly and Mare Open Handicap Pace and a $35,000 3- and 4-Year Old Open Handicap Pace. First post time is 6:50 p.m. (SOA of New York) After coming to know that six African nationals, including four Tanzanian women and two Nigerian men, were being harassed by a hostile crowd gathered outside their homes in Hari Vihar in Dwarka following rumours that they were cannibals and abducting children, police landed at the spot and rescued the embattled Africans, police said Friday. A call was made to the Police Control Room by the mother of a 16-year-old boy about his disappearance and subsequent fear that he was eaten by the Africans residing on rent for the last two months in the area. Polices timely intervention saved the situation from turning violent. During investigation, police found out that the woman, who had called up PCR alleging that her son was kidnapped by two Nigerians, lied to us, and the canabalism charge was nothing but a mischievous rumour. The woman turned off her phone after son was found in a hale and hearty condition, police said. Police said there was no evidence or information with the locals about the Africans involvement in the alleged kidnapping. Police dismissed allegations of foreign nationals being assaulted or mob vandalising their house and stated that no injury was reported on their rescue. After receiving five calls on the PCR, local police rushed to the spot. Although there was no assault on the foreign nationals, police brought them to police station for their safety. The rumour of kidnapping was later verified and found false, Deputy Commissioner of Police Anto Alphonse stated. No family members of the woman who complaint about kidnapping came forward to the police station to take cognizance of the PCR call. The Tanzanian women were identified as Assifa, Riziki, Fatima and Esta Joshva. The Nigerians are named Nwaogu (38) and Ogbuewu (34). Nwaogu does not possess an Indian visa, hence will be deported accordingly, said a police official. Though they do not want any case to be registered but we have decided to take suo motu action and lodge an FIR and investigate it, said Madhup Tiwari, Joint Commissioner of Police. We have in so many ways championed for society devoid of prejudices, it is disheartening to hear such occurrences. Although theres been a drastic fall in such cases, we believe there is need to do more. We appreciate the assistance of police, said Merveil Ntambwe Ngongo, president of Association of African students in India, Delhi NCR Chapter. The much-vaunted Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) is losing its appeal as the number of farmers under the scheme has fallen by 1.05 crore in BJP-ruled States Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The numbers of farmers who had availed the insurance cover stood at 5.7 crore in 2016-17, but it came down to 4.9 crore in 2017-18. Despite the fall in the number of farmers insured and coverage area, the profit of the insurance companies has not fallen. In 2016-17, these companies paid a compensation of Rs 17,902.47 crore and earned a profit of Rs 6,459.64 crore. In 2017-18, they paid over Rs 2,000 crore less in compensation. This made their profits swell to Rs 9,335.62 crore. The outgo in compensation during 2017-18 stood at just Rs 15,710.25 crore. For the 2017-18, as many as 3.73 crore farmers have applied under the PMFBY for the Kharif crops, while 1.52 crore farmers applied for rabi crops. According to a RTI reply by the Ministry of Agriculture, BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh witnessed the maximum fall in the number of beneficiaries, registering a decline of 40.47 lakh in 2017-18, followed by Rajasthan which saw reduction of 31.25 beneficiaries. Maharashtra registered a decline of 19.47 lakh, from 1.09 crore in 2016-17 to 89.53 lakh in 2017-18. Uttar Pradesh came next, where the numbers dipped by 14.69 lakh, from 37.17 lakh to 22.48 lakh during the time period. The RTI was filed by Jalandhar-based activist PP Kapoor. Officials of the Agriculture Ministry said the scheme suffered setback from waiver of farm loans in different States as the farmer who whose loans were waived did not insure their crops. The number of farmers also declined due to cumbersome process of settlement of insurance claims. Officials said time-taking process of physical verification of insured crop is the major reason which deprived the farmers of the benefit from the scheme. In many cases, insurance companies did not investigate losses due to a localcalamity, and therefore, did not pay claims. Another reason for the low claim settlement could be delay in States releasing their share of the subsidy. As per rules under the PMFBY, farmers need to be paid 12 per cent interest by insurance companies for any delay in settlement of claims beyond two months of the prescribed cut-off date, while States will have to pay 12 per cent interest for the delay in release of their share of premium beyond three months. This penalty provisions came into effect on October 1 and will be applicable for all seasons in the future. In Madhya Pradesh, the insurance companies had insured over 71.81 lakh farmers in 2016-17 and earned a profit of Rs 1,862.32 crore. The following year, over 2.90 lakh fewer farmers insured their crops and the profit of these companies plummeted to just Rs 39.21 crore. In Maharashtra, nearly 1.20 crore farmers were insured in 2016-17 and the companies made a profit of Rs 2,424.23 crore for the year. In 2017-18, only about one crore farmers were insured. Yet the companies made a profit of Rs 1617.94 crore. Gujarat was probably the only State where the number of farmers who insured their crops increased during these two years. In 2016-17, the figure was 5.20 lakh but it grew exponentially to over 17.63 lakh the following year. Simultaneously, the profits of the insurers also shot up from Rs 40.07 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 2,222.58 crore in 2017-18. The period also saw the number of farmers insuring their crops and profits of insurers rising in Haryana. While 13.36 lakh farmers had insured their cops in 2016-17, as many as 13.51 lakh got them insured the next year. The profits of the insurance companies rose even more sharply from 71.83 crore to Rs 95 crore in these two years. According to data, the number of beneficiaries under the PMFBY in West Bengal declined from 41.17 lakh in 2016-17 to 39.09 lakh in 2017-18. The net profit of insurance companies was Rs 321. 26 crore in 2016-17 which is rose to Rs 547.87 crore in 2017-18. In Tamil Nadu, insurance companies incurred Rs 2128 crore in 2016-17. The number of farmers under the scheme declined from 14.11 lakh in 2016-17 to 13.85 lakh in 2017-18. Despite decline of farmers, the insurance companies profit stood at Rs 1375 crore in 2017-18. The Ministry, in its replies, also revealed that along with the government-owned Agriculture Insurance Company (AIC) of India, 10 private insurance companies had earned Rs 15,795 crore in profit over a two-year period. In the year 2016-17, AIC alone earned a premium of Rs 7984.56 crore by insuring the crops of 246,83,612 farmers in 21 States. Chhattisgarhs State Forest Policy specifically recommends the use of Geographic Information System and remote sensing for fire control, a joint report titled 'Strengthening Forest Fire Management in India by Union Ministry of Forest, Environment and Climate Change and World Bank had stated. Standing instructions on Forest Fire Prevention and Management have also been issued by States from time to time. Again, the level of detail varies across states. In Chhattisgarh, these include clearing fire lines, carrying out controlled burning, ensuring Non Timber Forest Products collection without using fire, engaging fire watchers or Joint Forest Management Committee members to monitor forest areas adjacent to agricultural land and habitation, using fire watch towers, providing adequate firefighting equipment to field staff, and keeping water tankers ready, it stated. Tendu leaf collection was the second most important cause of fire named in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Telangana. It is also common in Odisha. Setting fire to stimulate the growth of new grasses and fodder in the forest for livestock was cited as a major cause of fire in Himachal Pradesh, Telangana, and Uttarakhand, the report stated. In addition to preventive measures such as control burning and clearing fire lines, the Himachal Pradesh Forest Sector Policy (2005) identifies strategies such as engaging fire watchers during the fire season, adopting efficient communication systems and quickly mobilizing adequate human resources with modern firefighting equipment and tools, particularly in fire prone forest divisions and ranges. Other strategies include developing incentives for Panchayats and communities to involve them in forest fire prevention and control, and providing educational, extension and training programmes to create awareness regarding the causes and ill effects of forest fires. In Madhya Pradesh, strategies for fire management that have been identified in the State Forest Policy (2005) include developing a new fire protection system after a detailed study of the effects of fire on forests in the State (including beneficial and harmful effects), as well as using modern techniques and equipment to control forest fires. This cyclical pattern of burning on small plots of forest is consistent with the practice of shifting cultivation (jhum) that is seen throughout the Northeast. By contrast, fires in other regions, particularly districts in Central and Southern India, are more expansive, it stated. Districts experiencing widespread and frequent forest fires include areas of dry and moist deciduous forest in the borderlands of Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Telangana that are affected by fire on a nearly annual basis . States that have explicitly incorporated aspects of FFPM into their overall forestry policies include inter alia Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Telangana. Each year, fires affect forests across much of India. According to satellite detections of forest fires by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, from 2003 to 2016, as few as 380 and as many as 445 of the countrys 647 districts experienced fires each year (i.e. at least in 59 percent, but as many as 69 percent of districts).15 Yet, some areas exhibit a much higher incidence of fire than others. Just 20 districts, representing 3 percent of the Indias land area and 16 percent of the countrys forest cover in 2000, accounted for 44 percent of all forest fire detections from 2003 to 2016. Similarly, the top-20 districts in terms of area affected by fire from 2003 to 2016 account for 48 percent of the total fire affected area,16 despite having just 12 percent of the nations forest cover in 2000 and 7 percent of its land area. The top-20 districts in terms of fire frequency are mainly located in the Northeast, while the top-20 districts in terms of burnt area are mainly in Central India, it stated. A Congress party team led by son of Raipur (Rural) candidate Satyanarayan Sharma, Pankaj Sharma on Friday went to inspect the Strong Room of the district situated at Government Engineering College premises at Sejbahar. Though, according to information, the candidates and their authorized agents have right to inspect the Strong Room, the security personnel deployed there returned them while asserting that they dont have any such orders from the office of Chief Electoral Officer of the State. Meanwhile the strong rooms all over the state have been put under heavy surveillance and a large number of security personnel have been deployed . The rooms are also being monitored through CCTV. To mark the launch of year-long celebrations of Guru Nanak Devs 550th anniversary, former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, Punjab Governor VP Singh Badnore and Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Friday laid the foundation stones for 26 development projects worth Rs 150 crore, including upgradation of infrastructure in three historic towns of Sultanpur Lodhi, Dera Baba Nanak and Batala. Capt Amarinder, who further announced projects and welfare schemes of Rs 3312 crore to facilitate pilgrims and to commemorate the historic occasion, also launched a tree plantation drive to plant 550 trees in every village throughout the state in the next one year at a total cost of Rs 10.50 crore. The cost for the same shall be met through greening Punjab Mission and maintenance shall be done through MNREGA. Indigenous variety of trees shall be planted at appropriate places in consultation with Gram Panchayats, said the Chief Minister, appealing to all Punjabis to plant at least one fruit tree each in their homes. Besides, the Chief Minister announced the release of 32 prisoners and remission of term for another 2,952 to mark the occasion. Punjab Government has decided to set up a Committee under Additional Chief Secretary (Home), with Principal Secretary (Jails), DG Intelligence and ADGP (Jails) as members, to review all cases of prisoners who have had good conduct and can be considered for early release. The Committee shall submit its report in 60 days. In addition, it is also proposed to build a Sri Guru Nanak Dev ji Marg, to be finalized by the Group of Experts from the Department of Religious Studies, which has been assigned the task to study and propose alignment for the same. The foundation stones laid relate to three high-level bridges and two Foot Over Bridges of Rs 24 crore, high level bridge on creek of river Beas (Rs 13 crore), New Rest House at Sultanpur Lodhi (Rs five crore), widening of plan roads (Rs 42 crores), special repair of plan roads (Rs 38 crores), which shall be completed by July 2019. Others are development projects being undertaken by Local Government Department for upgradation of civic infrastructure in Municipal Council, new bus stand and sewerage treatment plant (STP) and other sewerage works in Sultanpur Lodhi, besides upgradation of civic infrastructure in Municipal Council in Batala and Dera Baba Nanak. All three towns are associated with the first Sikh Guru. Chief Minister also announced Sarbat Sehat Bima Yojana, under which 43 Lakh families would be brought under insurance cover of Rs five lakh at a cost of Rs 371 crores from January 1, 2019. The State Government has also embarked upon an ambitious programme to spruce up the village infrastructure under Smart Village Campaign (SVC) in a phased manner, across the state, at a cost of Rs 1000 crore in the first phase. Wide variety of developmental works (like sewerage system, paving of streets, gym, parks, CCTV, village Secretariat etc) shall be taken up in these villages over the next 3.5 years. The projects aim is to make the villages self-sustaining by creating an environment to enable the local communities to achieve their capabilities through contextually appropriate technologies, systems, structures and processes, said the Chief Minister. Besides, 36 villages and 11 Nagar Panchayats visited by Guru Nanak Dev have also been identified for development at Rs 150 crore, announced the Chief Minister. Capt Amarinder also announced an Institute of Inter-faith Studies will be set up at GNDU, Amritsar at Rs 510 crore, while Pind Babe Nanak Da Museum will be established at Sultanpur Lodhi to commemorate the historic occasion. Bebe Nanki College for Girls in Mahablipur village, five km from Sultanpur Lodhi, in addition to a project for lining and cleaning of Kali Bein, to be undertaken in Sultanpur Lodhi in association with Sant Baba Balbir Singh Seechewal of Ek Onkar Charitable Trust through Kar Seva, he said. A sum of Rs 180 crore has been allocated for upgradation of roads and bridges to improve connectivity to Sultanpur Lodhi with Majha, Doaba and Malwa areas, to cater to huge rush of sangat expected to converge during the celebrations. These works in and around Sultanpur Lodhi Kapurthala shall be completed by September 30, 2019. A Government Medical College and Super-Speciality Hospital will be established at Kotli Nangal village in Gurdaspur district for Rs 400 crore, in PPP mode, to be completed by 2021, and Sri Guru Nanak Devji Centre for Invention, Innovation, Incubation and Training (CIIIT) will be established as a hub in main campus of PTU at Kapurthala, with a Spoke to be developed in Jabbowal village, Sultanpur Lodhi (total Rs 739 crore). A Guru Nanak Dev Ji Auditorium in PTU Kapurthala and a Bio-diversity Park and Village Kanjli, District Kapurthala are among the other projects announced by the Chief Minister. International Gita Mahotsav 2018 will be organised from December 7-23 in Haryanas Kurukshetra city. Announcing this, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal on Friday said for the first time, Gita Mahotsav will also be organized in Mauritius in the month of February 2019. Besides, Mauritius will be the partner country in the celebrations of upcoming International Gita Mahotsav 2018 at Kurukshetra, he said. The State Government's efforts to promote the teaching of sacred 'Srimad Bhagavad Gita' at the global level has started yielding fruitful results with countries showing interest to partner with Haryana for celebrations of Gita Mahotsav, Manohar Lal said while talking to the mediapersons at New Delhi. While national BJP President Amit Shah would be the chief guest on inaugural programme on December 13, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and former President Pranab Mukherjee would remain present on December 18. He said that the present State Government has been organising the Gita Mahotsav at international level since 2016. This, year, the International Gita Mahotsav -2018 to be organised from December 7 to 23, would have Mauritius as partner country and Gujarat as partner state. The International Gita Mahotsav, an annual event, is organized every year in collaboration with Kurukshetra Development Board (KDB) at Kurukshetra. On this occasion, he also greeted the people on the auspicious occasion of Kartik Purnima and 550th Prakash Parv of Guru Nanak Dev. He said the KDB who has been organizing programmes and events for the promotion of Gita has also completed its 50 years on November 23. The programme of Gita Jayanti started in the year 1989. Gradually, the Gita jayanti Mohtsav was started organizing at national level. However, the present State Government has been organizing Gita Mahotsav of international level since 2016, he added. The Chief Minister said that the main event would be organized from December 13 to December 18. Haryana Governor Satyadeo Narain, Tripura Governor Prof Kaptan Singh Solnaki, Odisha Governor Prof. Ganeshi Lal and other prominent personalities would also grace the event with their presence. He said that besides the Art and Culture Minister of Mauritius, the event would be attended by diplomats of 15 different countries. While underlining the significance of Gita in the mental and spiritual development of human being, he said that the Lord Krishna had delivered the celestial message of Gita on the holy land of Kurukshetra 5156 years ago. The episode was unique in itself as the battlefield saw simultaneous use of weapons and scripture. Various prominent personalities including the astronaut Sunita Williams has acknowledged the significance of this holy book, Manohar Lal said. The Chief Minister further said that the International Gita Mahotsav which would saw the participation from prominent saints like Shri Shri Ravi Shankar, Swami Ramdev, and Shankracharya and various social and religious organizations would also be organized at district and block level. For the first time, it has been decided to organize Gita Sansad in more than 30 colleges of the state in which discussion would be held on the sacred scripture so as to effectively disseminate the message of Gita among the students. Apart from this, to spread the message of global peace and harmony, Ashtadashi Shaloki Gita would be recited by 18,000 students simultaneously in Kurukshetra at 12 noon on December 18, he added. International Crafts and Saras Mela would be inaugurated on December 7 in which artist and artisans of national and international repute would add colour to the event. Similarly, Sant Sammelan would be organized on December 16 in which renowned saints from country and abroad would participate. Also, Gita quiz competition, essay writing and declamation contest would be organized. Online competitions would also be organized in which Gita followers of the country and abroad could participate. Paint the wall competition would also be organized in which about 200 prominent painters would paint the walls of Kurukshetra on the subject of Mahabharta. Haryana Pavilion would be set up showcasing the culture of Haryana. Apart from this, evening aarti and light and sound show at Brahamsarovar, cultural programmes by national and international artists on Kurukshetra, Gita, Krishna and Mahabharta and Gita Book Fair are the other event that would attract the people visiting the Mahotsav. Member of KDB Shyam Kishore informed that this year, Kumbh Mela would also be organized in Kurukhshetra for the first time from December 3 to December 7. Governors of Haryana and Himachal meet Chandigarh: Himachal Governor Acharya Devvrat on Friday called on Satyadev Narayan Arya, Governor of Haryana at Raj Bhawan Chandigarh. Officials said it was a courtesy call. SJVN conferred with Aqua Foundation Award - Shimla: SJVN has been awarded with Aqua Foundation Excellence Award 2018 in the category of Sustainable Development in Hydro Power Sector (Public Sector) during XII World Aqua Congress International Conference 2018. The award was given by UP Singh, Secretary, Union Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, in a function held at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. Nand Lal Sharma, chairman & managing director, said that hydro power is the core strength of SJVN and the company has the distinction of implementing Indias largest 1500 MW NathpaJhakri hydro power station in Himachal. PGIMER hosts SNMICON 18 Chandigarh: The Department of Nuclear Medicine, PGIMER is hosting SNMICON18, the annual conference of Society of Nuclear Medicine, India from November22-25. The 2nd day of the conference commenced with invited talks on thyroid cancer, radiopharmacy and radiation safety. Sessions on thyroid cancer were directed towards recognizing the disease early using the diagnostic tests so that early treatment can be initiated. Thyroid cancer is one of the cancers which has a significantly high survival rate, provided that the patients are managed properly and at an early stage. The talks, delivered by renowned national and international faculties stressed on the need to develop awareness regarding thyroid cancer and involvement of Nuclear Medicine physicians early in the management of these patients. Agri, food, dairy and livestock product at CII Agro Tech Chandigarh: The 13th Edition of the CII Agro Tech India this time has a lot of new agro and food products in store for the farmer community, which holds apt with its theme for this year, Technology in Agriculture: Increasing Farmers Income. CII Agro Tech India 2018, Indias Premier Biennial four-day Agri and Food Technology Fair, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) is being held from December 1 to December 4, at Parade Ground in Sector 17 here. The participating countries include Great Britain, China, Canada, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Spain. A number of first time launches would take place at the four-day fair. While Canada would be showcasing its products like swine genetics, grain handling and storage systems, instant quick freezers, etc. to name a few, the country would also be launching new technique for soil testing, ovine genetics, and bacterial treatment equipment. Khushian aapke dwar meditation begins today Mohali: Long cherished 'Khushian Aapke Dwar' Meditation Shivir (camp) would be inaugurated by 21 dignitaries like judges, senior administrators, doctors, industrialists, social leaders, political leaders, defence personnels, educationists, engineers, youth leaders and spiritualists etc. by lighting candles in Brahma Kumaris Complex, Sukh Shanti Bhawan, Phase 7 here at November 24, said Brahma Kumari Prem Lata, Director, Rajyoga Centres, Mohali Circle. While describing the objective of the Shivir Brahma Kumari, Prem Lata said that retreat will enable the participants to enjoy inner peace and happiness by making them disease free. Appreciating the goodwill gesture of Centre as well as the Pakistan Government towards construction of Kartarpur corridor, Punjab PWD Minister Vijay Inder Singla on Friday said that the Department will extend all out support to construct approximate two kilometer stretch of the corridor which falls in the Indian territory. He said that the roads of the historic and the sacred town of Sultanpur Lodhi will be upgraded by Public Works Department in a record time of 10 months. The Minister said that 19 roads have been identified for broadening and strengthening as per the survey of the departmental team and the input received from the local MLAs as well as public. An amount of Rs 90 crore would be spent in the first phase of the upgradation work, he said while informing that the tendering process has already been done and the work allocation will be done in a day or two. Work on ground will commence within a fortnight...I would personally oversee the entire work and deploy a dedicated team of officials departmental officials to ensure timely completion of the work for the convenience of the pilgrims, he said. Attacking the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, Shiv Sena Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Raut sought to know that at a time when the BJP held sway from Rashtrapati Bhawan to Lok Sabha, why there was inordinate delay in passing a law in favour of the construction of Ram temple at Ayodhya . Talking to mediapersons at Ayodhya on Friday, Raut said that the BJP was given four years to construct Ram temple but they did nothing. Now we will not give any more time and force them to bring about a legislation for the early construction of Ram temple at Ayodhya, the Sena leader said. Raut said that before the declaration of 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the path for the construction of Ram temple should be cleared. What is more intriguing is that when Shiv Sainiks could demolish the controversial Babri mosque in just 17 minutes, why was the Union government taking so long to enact a law even when it enjoys majority in the Lok Sabha and has its man in Rashtrapati Bhawan, he said. When told that the BJP and its allies were in minority in Rajya Sabha, Raut said that many parties were in favour of the construction of Ram temple. Whosoever opposes this legislation will be exposed. Leaders of that party will find it difficult in move across India as Shiv Sainiks will protest against them, he said. Incidentally, the statement was made a day before Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray is to visit Ayodhya for two days starting Saturday. Raut said that the visit of Sena chief was confirmed and now the Shiv Sena would not wait any further for Ram temple. All saints are ready to bless Uddhav Thackeray during his visit to Ayodhya on Saturday, he said. Thackeray will be reaching Ayodhya on Saturday and stay there till Sunday. He will meet saints and offer prayers at Ram Lalla temple. Meanwhile, a train load of Shiv Sainiks reached Ayodhya and another train with sainiks would reach the temple town on Saturday. When a trainer introduces his horses to a new track, he faces a number of challenges finding stall space and suitable personal lodgings, unfamiliarity with the local procedures and racing surface that can adversely affect on-track performance. Somebody forgot to warn Trent Stohler. Since the Markleville, IN-based Stohler began racing his stock at The Meadows following the close of the Hoosier Park meeting, hes compiled a sparkling .337 UTR through his first 67 starts, including 13 wins. Four Stohler charges will go forward Saturday: Superficial (race 6, post 7, Tony Hall); Hes A Popper (race 8, post 3, Hall; Blakemore (race 9, post 6, Hall), Ivegotagirlcrush (race 12, post 1, Jim Pantaleano). First post is 1:05 p.m. A 1991 graduate of Indiana State University with a degree in business management I wish it had been accounting, he jokes Stohler served four years as second trainer for Ernie Gaskin before launching his own stable, which numbers about 40. Of those, roughly 16 have been racing at The Meadows. Since 1995, hes earned more than $9 million in purses as a trainer and over $6.3 million as a driver. Even so, Stohler has yet to drive at The Meadows and doesnt expect to. Weve been lucky enough to get Dave Palone, Dan Rawlings, Hall or Pantaleano about 99 percent of the time, he says. Thats good enough. Stohler solved the stalls/lodging problem by shipping in the night before each race program and returning to Markleville at the conclusion of the card. Its a demanding 4-1/2-hour ship, but Stohlers staff is large enough that they can rotate the drives and keep fatigue at bay. As for knowing the track, Stohler raced such outstanding Pennsylvania-bred youngsters as Cult Icon and Glassine Hanover in sires stakes at The Meadows, helping him learn the lay of the land. I like the people there, the style of racing and the conditions of the races, he says. We have certain horses that fit certain classes. That helps, as does having the right drivers. Stohler has tried racing his stable in Ohio rather than western Pennsylvania during Indianas off-season, an experiment that cut his travel time and his earnings. I was getting my rear end kicked there pretty good, he said. Ive never done any good there. Also on Saturday, The Meadows is collaborating with Toys for Tots on a holiday collection. Patrons who donate a new toy will receive a $5 voucher (limit one per person). In addition, the Meadows Standardbred Owners Association (MSOA) is offering starting car rides, paddock tours, a Pick the Winners contest and a live radio broadcast from the Racebook. To register for any activity or for more information, stop by the MSOA table in the Racebook. (The Meadows) The state education department would soon appoint the guest teachers to fill the vacant posts of lecturers and lecturer teachers (LT) in the government schools. The department has started the process to appoint 5034 teachers under guest faculty purely on a temporary basis. In an order, the education secretary Bhupinder Kaur Aulakh said that the district- wise appointments would be made and the candidates would be given the option of choosing the district.The aspirants should be enrolled in the employment exchange of the state. A project management unit (PMU) headed by the education director would be constituted at the directorate level for overseeing these appointments which would be made district- wise. Apart from director education, the PMU would have the additional project director Mukul Kumar Sati as the nodal officer and two deputy directors of secondary education directorate as members. In the districts, a committee headed by the district magistrates would make appointments of the guest faculty. A stipend of Rs 15000 per month would be paid to the guest teachers and at the time of appointments, the candidates would have to submit an undertaking that they would not make any demand for permanent appointments.In the selection process, a provision of bonus marks has been made for the candidates who had worked as guest faculty in the past. In the government schools of the state, a total of 4200 posts of lecturers and 834 posts of lecturer teachers (LT) are vacant.The recruitment of the guest teachers had been done for the first time during the Harish Rawat government when about six thousand such teachers had been appointed in different schools in 2015. They had been appointed for a period of nine months or end of the academic session on purely contractual basis. When their contract had been terminated in March 2016 they had started a massive agitation which forced the then Congress government to reinstate their services. The order had however been challenged in the court which cancelled their reinstatement. The matter had then moved to the bench of HC which asked the state government to initiate a proper recruitment process to fill the vacant posts of teachers in the government schools. The court had meanwhile granted temporary relief to the guest teachers working on posts of LTs and allowed them to work till March 2018. Complying with the HC order, the state education department had terminated the contract of these teachers in March this year.The HC on August 14 had directed that the vacant seats in the department should be filled by the guest teachers within 15 days. But the procedural delay and the subsequent imposition of the model code of conduct in the state due to urban local body elections halted the process. China and Brazil will launch a new Earth resource satellite next year, according to an official with the China National Space Administration. "The new satellite, the China-Brazil Earth Resource Satellite-4A, or CBERS-4A, will be launched in the second half of 2019," said Li Guoping, the secretary-general of the China National Space Administration, reports Xinhua news agency. The CBERS satellites are Earth remote sensing satellites, specifically designed for Earth observation from orbit for non-military use, such as environment monitoring, meteorology and map making. According to Li, CBERS-4A, the new satellite to be launched, is assembled and currently going through tests in Brazil. It is set to replace CBERS-4. CBERS-4, launched in December 2014, is currently in great condition although under extended service. "The two countries will also start the final design and research of CBERS-5 and CBERS-6. The two satellites will be successors to CBERS-4A, which is designed to serve for five years," Li said. China and Brazil inked the agreement establishing the joint research and production of the CBERS series in July 1988. The Oxford English Dictionary has been made more colourful and richer with the addition of words that are Indian in origin The words of Indian origin in the Oxford English Dictionary span categories such as people and places, food, clothing and accessories, society, wildlife and nature, and so on. Some of the most commonly used Indian words are raita, pashmina, bhelpuri, dal and chutney among others. The British Council, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary, has released a list of 70 words of Indian origin in the Oxford English Dictionary. The occasion highlights how the English language has evolved with words of Indian origin ranging from a few words that date back to the pre-independence period and many that have been added recently (like bhelpuri, churidar). There are many points of connection over the centuries in which people, ideas, language, goods and services have moved between Britain and India. The British Council has been one such point and as we celebrate our 70th year, we are proud to say that we have been inspired by India everyday of those 70 years and hope that in a small way, we inspire young people in both our countries to imagine what the next 70 years could be. Our 70 Words is a momentary reminder of the layers of connection and fluid nature of the English language, said Alan Gemmell OBE, director India, British Council. For the cashmere we drape and pyjamas we sleep in; the bangles we wear; the shampoo that cleans our hair; the cheetahs we watch whose speed we admire; and, the curry and kedgeree we might eat on a verandah we thank the rich languages of India, and the people who have mixed and shared over the generations of those last four hundred years, he said. 5 killed as car rams into students in China Beijing: A speeding luxury car driven by the son of a provincial ruling Chinese Communist Party official rammed a group of students crossing a road in front of a primary school in Liaoning province, killing five of them and injuring 18 others. 8 die as gunmen attack French drilling camp Paris: Seven employees of a French mineral and water drilling firm and a local official were killed early on Thursday when gunmen attacked their site in southeastern Niger. US airstrikes in Somalia kill six extremists Nairobi (Kenya): The US military on Thursday announced the latest of several deadly airstrikes this week against al-Shabab extremists in Somalia as it targets a region well north of where the al-Qaida-linked fighters control large parts of the country. Paks Urdu writer Fahmida Riaz dies Lahore: Noted Pakistani progressive Urdu writer, poet Fahmida Riaz, who spent nearly seven years in exile in India, has died in Lahore following a prolonged illness. She was 73. Bank of Montreal provides diversified financial services primarily in North America. The company's personal banking products and services include checking and savings accounts, credit cards, mortgages, and financial and investment advice services; and commercial banking products and services comprise business deposit accounts, commercial credit cards, business loans and commercial mortgages, cash management solutions, foreign exchange, specialized banking programs, treasury and payment solutions, and risk management products for small business and commercial banking customers. It also offers investment and wealth advisory services; digital investing services; financial services and solutions; and investment management, and trust and custody services to institutional, retail, and high net worth investors. In addition, the company provides life insurance, accident and sickness insurance, and annuity products; creditor and travel insurance to bank customers; and reinsurance solutions. Further, it offers client's debt and equity capital-raising services, as well as loan origination and syndication, balance sheet management, and treasury management; strategic advice on mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, and recapitalizations, as well as valuation and fairness opinions; and trade finance, risk mitigation, and other operating services. Additionally, the company provides research and access to markets for institutional, corporate, and retail clients; trading solutions that include debt, foreign exchange, interest rate, credit, equity, securitization and commodities; new product development and origination services, as well as risk management advice and services to hedge against fluctuations; and funding and liquidity management services to its clients. It operates through approximately 1,400 bank branches and 4,800 automated banking machines in Canada and the United States. The company was founded in 1817 and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada. 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How an army of Torrance-area pet lovers came together to find Mr. Pickles, the wayward cat 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. 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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. 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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. 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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. Distil Plc, through its subsidiaries, markets and sells spirits. The company offers its products under various brands, including RedLeg Spiced Rum, Blackwoods Vintage Gin, Blackwoods Vodka, Blavod Original Black Vodka, TrAve Botanical Spirit, Diva Vodka, and Jago's Vanilla Cream Liqueur. It markets and sells its products in the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Spain, Australia, and Russia. The company was formerly known as Blavod Wines and Spirits plc and changed its name to Distil Plc in April 2014. Distil Plc was incorporated in 1999 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom. Read More 11 Wall Street research analysts have issued "buy," "hold," and "sell" ratings for Hugo Boss in the last twelve months. There are currently 6 hold ratings and 5 buy ratings for the stock. The consensus among Wall Street 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. Ibstock plc manufactures and sells clay and concrete building products and solutions primarily in the United Kingdom. Its principal products include clay bricks, brick components, concrete roof tiles, concrete stone masonry substitutes, concrete fencing, pre-stressed concrete, and concrete rail products. The company provides facing bricks, walling stones, architectural masonry products, cast stones, facade systems, and retaining walls, as well as lintels, sills, and arches; and cladding solutions; roof tiles, chimneys, soffits, and roofing accessories; and fencings, caps and copings, bollards, balustrades, path edgings, and urban landscaping products. It also offers floor beams, door steps, gully surrounds, screed rails, insulated floorings, and hollowcore products; and rail and infrastructure products, such as troughing, cable theft protection, boards, blocks, bases, catchpits, and inspection chambers. In addition, the company offers engraving, cutting, and bonding services; floor beam and block design, supply, and fitting solutions; bespoke concrete products; and staircases and lift shafts services. Its products are used in new build housing; repair, maintenance, and improvement; and infrastructure markets. The company sells its products under the Forticrete, Supreme, Anderton, and Longley brands to customers in the construction industry. Ibstock plc was founded in 1825 and is headquartered in Ibstock, the United Kingdom. Read More 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 About me I'm Avi Green From Jerusalem, Israel I was born in Pennsylvania in 1974, and moved to Israel in 1983. I also enjoyed reading a lot of comics when I was young, the first being Fantastic Four. I maintain a strong belief in the public's right to knowledge and accuracy in facts. I like to think of myself as a conservative-style version of Clark Kent. I don't expect to be perfect at the job, but I do my best. My profile Archives - Archives - July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 February 2010 March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010 August 2010 September 2010 October 2010 November 2010 December 2010 January 2011 February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011 July 2011 August 2011 September 2011 October 2011 November 2011 December 2011 January 2012 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Brazil Investment II LLC, Anadarko Canada E&P Limited, Anadarko China Holdings 2 Company, Anadarko Colombia Company, Anadarko Consolidated Holdings LLC, Anadarko Cote d'Ivoire Block 103 Company, Anadarko Cote d'Ivoire Company, Anadarko DBMOS Operator LLC, Anadarko Development Company, Anadarko Development Holding Limited, Anadarko E&P Onshore LLC, Anadarko Egypt Holdings Company, Anadarko Energy Holding Limited, Anadarko Energy Services Company, Anadarko Exploracao e Producao de Petroleo e Gas Natural Ltda., Anadarko Finance Company, Anadarko Gabon Company, Anadarko Ghana Mahogany-1 Company, Anadarko Global Energy S.a.r.l, Anadarko Global Funding 1 Company, Anadarko Global Funding II Ltd., Anadarko Guyana Company, Anadarko Holding Company, Anadarko International Development S.a.r.l, Anadarko International Energy Company, Anadarko International O&G Company, Anadarko International Trading Corporation, Anadarko Jordan Company, Anadarko Kenya Company, Anadarko LMM S.a.r.l, Anadarko Land Corp., Anadarko Mexico B.V., Anadarko Mexico S.a.r.l, Anadarko Midkiff/Chaney Dell BR Corp., Anadarko Midkiff/Chaney Dell LLC, Anadarko Natural Gas Company LLC, Anadarko New Zealand Company, Anadarko OGC Company, Anadarko Offshore Holding Company LLC, Anadarko Offshore Well Containment Company LLC, Anadarko Oil & Gas 5 LLC, Anadarko Peru B.V., Anadarko Petroleum, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, Anadarko Realty LLC, Anadarko Rockies LLC, Anadarko Royalty Holdings Company, Anadarko UK Corporate Limited, Anadarko US Offshore LLC, Anadarko USH1 Corporation, Anadarko Venezuela Company, Anadarko Venezuela LLC, Anadarko Venezuela Srl, Anadarko WCTP Company, Anadarko West Texas BR Corp., Anadarko West Texas LLC, Anadarko Worldwide Holdings C.V., Atlantic Rim Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Aventine LLC, Baseball Merger Sub 2 Inc., Bear Branch Exploration LLC, Big Island Trona Company, Bitter Creek Coal Company, Bravo Pipeline Company, Cain Chemical, Cain Chemical Inc., Carbon Finance Labs LLC, Concord Petroleum Corporation, Conn Creek Shale Company, D.S. Ventures LLC, DMM Financial LLC, Deerwood Exploration LLC, Downtown Plaza II, Elk Hills Field, FLAG Development LLC, FP Westport Commodities Limited, FP Westport GmbH, FP Westport LLC, FP Westport Limited, FP Westport Services LLC, FP Westport Trading LLC, Fosters Mill Exploration LLC, Glenn Springs Holdings Inc., Globrep Representaciones S.A., Grand Bassa Tankers Inc., Grupo OxyChem de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Headwater II LLC, Houndstooth Resources LLC, INDSPEC Chemical B.V., INDSPEC Chemical Corporation, INDSPEC Chemical Corporation, INDSPEC Chemical Export Sales LLC, INDSPEC Holding Corporation, Ingleside Cogeneration GP LLC, Ingleside Cogeneration Limited Partnership, Interore Trading Ltd., Joslyn Partnership, KERR-McGEE TT E&P LTD., KM BM-C-Seven Ltd., KM International Insurance Ltd., Kerr-McGee Corporation, Kerr-McGee Natural Gas Company Inc., Kerr-McGee Oil & Gas Onshore LP, Kerr-McGee Shared Services Company LLC, Kerr-McGee Stored Power Corporation, Kerr-McGee U.K. Energy Corporation, Kerr-McGee Worldwide Corporation, Kerr-McGee do Brasil Ltda., Kerr-McGee of Canada Northwest Ltd., Laguna Petroleum Corp., Laguna Petroleum LLC, Liwa Oil & Gas Ltd., MC2 Technologies LLC, Mariana Properties Inc., Marico Exploration Inc., Miller Springs Remediation Management Inc., Moncrief Minerals Partnership L.P., NGL Ventures LLC, Natural Gas Odorizing Inc., New OPL LLC, OEVC Energy LLC, OEVC Midstream Projects LLC, OIH LLC, OLCV CE Holdings ULC, OLCV CE US Holdings Inc., OLCV Net Power LLC, OLCV Services LLC, OOG Partner LLC, OOOI Chem Holdings LLC, OOOI Chem Sub LLC, OOOI Chemical International LLC, OOOI Chile Holder LLC, OOOI Ecuador Management LLC, OOOI Oil and Gas Sub LLC, OOOI South America Management LLC, OPM GP Inc., OPM Holdco LLC, OTCF LLC, OTH LLC, OXY CV Pipeline LLC, OXY Campus LLC, OXY Inc., OXY LPG LLC, OXY Libya E&P Area 103 BR4 B.V., OXY Libya E&P Area 35 Ltd., OXY Libya E&P Concession 103 Ltd., OXY Libya E&P EPSA 102 B.V., OXY Libya E&P EPSA 1981 Ltd., OXY Libya E&P EPSA 1985 Ltd., OXY Libya E&P NC 143 144 145 150 B.V., OXY Libya Exploration SPC, OXY Libya LLC, OXY Little Knife LLC, OXY Mexico Holdings I LLC, OXY Mexico Holdings II LLC, OXY Middle East Holdings Ltd., OXY Oil Partners Inc., OXY PBLP Manager LLC, OXY Support Services LLC, OXY Tulsa Inc., OXY USA Inc., OXY USA WTP LP, OXY VPP Investments LLC, OXY West LLC, OXY of Saudi Arabia Ltd., OXYCHEM (CANADA) INC., OXYMAR, Oakwood Exploration LLC, Occidental (Bermuda) Ltd., Occidental (East Shabwa) LLC, Occidental Advance Sale Finance Inc., Occidental Al Hosn LLC, Occidental Angola Holdings Ltd., Occidental CIS Services Inc., Occidental Canada Holdings Ltd., Occidental Chemical Asia Limited, Occidental Chemical Belgium B.V.B.A., Occidental Chemical Chile Limitada, Occidental Chemical Corporation, Occidental Chemical Export Sales LLC, Occidental Chemical Far East Limited, Occidental Chemical Holding Corporation, Occidental Chemical International LLC, Occidental Chemical Investment (Canada) 1 Inc., Occidental Chemical Receivables LLC, Occidental Chemical de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Occidental Chile Investments LLC, Occidental Chile Minority Holder LLC, Occidental Colombia (Series G) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series J) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series K) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series L) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series M) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series N) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series O) Ltd., Occidental Crude Sales Inc. (Canada), Occidental Crude Sales Inc. (International), Occidental Dolphin Holdings Ltd., Occidental Energy Marketing Inc., Occidental Energy Ventures LLC, Occidental Exploradora del Peru Ltd., Occidental Exploration and Production Company, Occidental Hafar LLC, Occidental International (Libya) Inc., Occidental International Corporation, Occidental International Exploration and Production Company, Occidental International Holdings Ltd., Occidental International Oil and Gas Ltd., Occidental International Services Inc., Occidental Joslyn GP 2 Co., Occidental LNG (Malaysia) Ltd., Occidental Latin America Holdings LLC, Occidental Libya Oil & Gas B.V., Occidental MENA Manager Ltd., Occidental Middle East Development Company, Occidental Midland Basin LLC, Occidental Mukhaizna LLC, Occidental Oil Asia Pte. Ltd., Occidental Oil Shale Inc., Occidental Oil and Gas (Oman) Ltd., Occidental Oil and Gas Corporation, Occidental Oil and Gas International Inc., Occidental Oil and Gas International LLC, Occidental Oil and Gas Pakistan LLC, Occidental Oil and Gas of Peru LLC, Occidental Oman (Block 27) Holdings Ltd., Occidental Oman Block 51 Holding Ltd., Occidental Oman Block 51 LLC, Occidental Oman Block 65 Holding Ltd., Occidental Oman Block 65 LLC, Occidental Oman Block 72 Holding Ltd., Occidental Oman Block 72 LLC, Occidental Oman Gas Company LLC, Occidental Oman Gas Holdings Ltd., Occidental Oman North Holdings Ltd., Occidental Oriente Exploration and Production Ltd., Occidental Overseas Holdings B.V., Occidental PVC LLC, Occidental Peninsula II Inc., Occidental Peninsula LLC, Occidental Permian Ltd., Occidental Permian Manager LLC, Occidental Permian Services Inc., Occidental Peruana Inc., Occidental Petrolera del Peru (Block 101) Inc., Occidental Petrolera del Peru (Block 103) Inc., Occidental Petroleum (Pakistan) Inc., Occidental Petroleum Corporation, Occidental Petroleum Corporation Political Action Committee, Occidental Petroleum de Venezuela S.A., Occidental Petroleum of Nigeria, Occidental Petroleum of Oman Ltd., Occidental Petroleum of Qatar Ltd., Occidental Power Marketing L.P., Occidental Power Services Inc., Occidental Qatar Energy Company LLC, Occidental Red Sea Development LLC, Occidental Research Corporation, Occidental Resource Recovery Systems Inc., Occidental Resources Company, Occidental Shah Gas Holdings Ltd., Occidental South America Finance LLC, Occidental Specialty Marketing Inc., Occidental Tower Corporation, Occidental Transportation Holding Corporation, Occidental West Texas Overthrust Inc., Occidental Yemen Ltd., Occidental Yemen Sabatain Inc., Occidental del Ecuador Inc., Occidental of Abu Dhabi (Bab) Ltd., Occidental of Abu Dhabi (Shah) Ltd., Occidental of Abu Dhabi Holdings Ltd., Occidental of Abu Dhabi LLC, Occidental of Abu Dhabi Ltd., Occidental of Bahrain Ltd., Occidental of Bangladesh Inc., Occidental of Colombia (Chipiron) Inc., Occidental of Colombia (Cosecha) Inc., Occidental of Colombia (Medina) Inc., Occidental of Colombia (Putumayo) Ltd., Occidental of Colombia (Teca) Ltd., Occidental of Colombia PUT-36 LLC, Occidental of Dubai Inc., Occidental of Iraq Holdings Ltd., Occidental of Iraq LLC, Occidental of Oman Inc., Occidental of Russia Ltd., Occidental of South Africa (Offshore) Inc., Occidental of Yemen (Block 75) LLC, Oceanic Marine Transport Ltd., Opcal Insurance Inc., Oryx Crude Trading & Transportation Inc., Oxy BridgeTex Limited Partnership, Oxy C & I Bulk Sales LLC, Oxy Canada Sales Inc., Oxy Carbon Solutions LLC, Oxy Carbon Storage LLC, Oxy Climate Ventures Inc., Oxy Cogeneration Holding Company LLC, Oxy Colombia Holdings LLC, Oxy Colombia TopCo Ltd., Oxy Delaware Basin LLC, Oxy Delaware Basin Plant LLC, Oxy Dolphin E&P LLC, Oxy Dolphin Pipeline LLC, Oxy Energy Canada Inc., Oxy Energy Services LLC, Oxy Expatriate Services Inc., Oxy FFT Holdings Inc., Oxy Holding Company (Pipeline) Inc., Oxy International Ventures Ltd., Oxy LPG Terminal LLC, Oxy Levelland Pipeline Company LLC, Oxy Levelland Terminal Company LLC, Oxy Low Carbon Ventures LLC, Oxy Midstream Strategic Development LLC, Oxy Oleoducto SOP LLC, Oxy Overseas Services Ltd., Oxy Permian Gathering LLC, Oxy Permian Plaza LLC, Oxy Petroleum de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Oxy Renewable Energy LLC, Oxy Salt Creek Pipeline LLC, Oxy TL LLC, Oxy Taft Hub LLC, Oxy Technology Ventures Inc., Oxy Transport I Company LLC, Oxy Vinyls Canada Co., Oxy Vinyls Export Sales LLC, Oxy Vinyls LP, Oxy Westwood Corporation, Oxy Y-1 Company, OxyChem Ingleside Ethylene Holdings Inc., OxyChem do Brasil Ltda., OxyChile Investments LLC, Oxychem Shipping Ltd., Permian Basin JV Tax Matters Member LLC, Permian Basin Limited Partnership, Permian VPP Holder LP, Permian VPP Manager LLC, Phibro, Placid Oil LLC, Ramlat Oxy Ltd., Rio de Viento Inc., Rodeo Midland Basin LLC, San Patricio Pipeline LLC, Scanports Shipping LLC, SequestCo LLC, Stetson Exploration LLC, Sun Offshore Gathering Company, Swiflite Aircraft Corporation, Transok Properties LLC, Troy Potter Inc., Turavent Oil GmbH [in liquidation], Tuscaloosa Holdings Inc., UP Petroleo III Ltd., Upland Industries Corporation, Venezuela US SRL, Vintage Gas Inc., Vintage Petroleum, Vintage Petroleum Argentina Ltd., Vintage Petroleum Boliviana Ltd., Vintage Petroleum International Finance B.V., Vintage Petroleum International Holdings LLC, Vintage Petroleum International LLC, Vintage Petroleum International Ventures Inc., Vintage Petroleum Italy Inc., Vintage Petroleum South America Holdings Inc., Vintage Petroleum South America LLC, Vintage Petroleum Turkey Inc., WGR Asset Holding Company LLC, WGR Canada Inc., Wardner Ranch Inc., Western Gas Resources Inc., Western Gas Resources-Westana Inc., Western Midstream Holdings LLC, Woodlands International Insurance Ltd., and YT Ranch LLC. 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The company's Personal & Commercial Banking segment offers checking and savings accounts, home equity financing, personal lending, private banking, indirect lending, mutual funds and self-directed brokerage accounts, guaranteed investment certificates, credit cards, and payment products and solutions; and lending, leasing, deposit, investment, foreign exchange, cash management, auto dealer financing, trade products, and services to small and medium-sized commercial businesses. This segment offers financial products and services through branches, automated teller machines, and mobile sales network. Its Wealth Management segment provides a suite of advice-based solutions and strategies to high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals, and institutional clients. The company's Insurance segment offers life, health, home, auto, travel, wealth, annuities, and reinsurance advice and solutions; and creditor and business insurance services to individual, business, and group clients through its field sales force, advice centers, and online, as well as through independent insurance advisors and affinity relationships. Its Investor & Treasury Services segment provides asset, cash management, transaction banking, and treasury services to institutional clients; correspondent banking and trade finance services for financial institutions; and short-term funding and liquidity management services. The company's Capital Markets segment offers corporate and investment banking, as well as equity and debt origination, distribution, sale, and trading services for corporations, institutional investors, asset managers, governments, and central banks. Royal Bank of Canada has a strategic partnership with Royal College Of Physicians & Surgeons Of Canada to support the needs of Canada's medical specialists. The company was founded in 1864 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Procter & Gamble: "Procter & Gamble Services" LLC, "Procter & Gamble" LLC, Agile Pursuits, Agile Pursuits Franchising, Arbora, Arbora & Ausonia, Arborinvest, Billie, Braun (Shanghai) Co., Braun GmbH, Braun-Gillette Immobilien GmbH & Co. KG, Celtic Insurance Company, Compania Procter & Gamble Mexico, Compania Quimica S.A., Corporativo Procter & Gamble, Cosmetic Products Pty. Ltd., Detergent Products B.V., Detergent Products SARL, Detergenti S.A., Eurocos Cosmetic GmbH, FPG Oleochemicals Sdn. Bhd., Fameccanica Data S.p.A., Fameccanica Industria e Comercio Do Brasil LTDA., Fameccanica Machinery (Shanghai) Co., Fater S.p.A., Fountain Square Music Publishing Co., Gillette (China) Ltd., Gillette (Shanghai) Ltd., Gillette Aesop Ltd., Gillette Australia Pty. Ltd., Gillette Canada Holdings, Gillette Commercial Operations North America, Gillette Diversified Operations Pvt. Ltd., Gillette Egypt S.A.E., Gillette Group UK Ltd, Gillette Gruppe Deutschland GmbH & Co. oHG, Gillette Holding Company LLC, Gillette Holding GmbH, Gillette India Limited, Gillette Industries Ltd., Gillette International B.V., Gillette Latin America Holding B.V., Gillette Management LLC, Gillette Nova Scotia Company, Gillette Pakistan Limited, Gillette Poland International Sp. z.o.o., Gillette Poland S.A., Gillette U.K. Limited, Gillette del Uruguay, Giorgio Beverly Hills Inc., Hyginett KFT, Industries Marocaines Modernes SA, LLC "Procter & Gamble Novomoskovsk", LLL "Procter & Gamble Distributorskaya Compania", Laboratorios Vicks, Liberty Street Music Publishing Company, Limited Liability Company 'Procter & Gamble Trading Ukraine', Limited Liability Company with foreign investments Procter & and Gamble Ukraine, MDVIP, MERCK KGAA NPV, Marcvenca Inversiones, Modern Industries Company - Dammam, Modern Products Company - Jeddah, New Chapter, New Chapter Canada Inc., Olay LLC, Oral-B Laboratories, P&G Distribution Morocco SAS, P&G Hair Care Holding, P&G Industrial Peru S.R.L., P&G Innovation Godo Kaisha, P&G Israel M.D.O. Ltd., P&G K.K., P&G Northeast Asia Pte. Ltd., P&G Prestige Godo Kaisha, P&G Prestige Service GmbH, P&G South African Trading (Pty.) Ltd., PGT Health Care (Zhejiang) Limited, PGT Healthcare LLP, PPI ZAO, PT Procter & Gamble Home Products Indonesia, PT Procter & Gamble Operations Indonesia, Phase II Holdings Corporation, Procter & Gamble (Chengdu) Ltd., Procter & Gamble (China) Ltd., Procter & Gamble (China) Sales Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble (East Africa) Limited, Procter & Gamble (Egypt) Manufacturing Company, Procter & Gamble (Enterprise Fund) Limited, Procter & Gamble (Guangzhou) Consumer Products Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble (Guangzhou) Enterprise Management Service Company Limited, Procter & Gamble (Guangzhou) Ltd., Procter & Gamble (Health & Beauty Care) Limited, Procter & Gamble (Jiangsu) Ltd. China, Procter & Gamble (L&CP) Limited, Procter & Gamble (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Procter & Gamble (Manufacturing) Ireland Limited, Procter & Gamble (Shanghai) International Trade Company Ltd., Procter & Gamble (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Acquisition GmbH, Procter & Gamble Administration GmbH, Procter & Gamble Algeria EURL, Procter & Gamble Amazon Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Amiens S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Argentina SRL, Procter & Gamble Asia Pte. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Australia Proprietary Limited, Procter & Gamble Azerbaijan Services LLC, Procter & Gamble Bangladesh Private Ltd., Procter & Gamble Blois S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Brazil Holdings B.V., Procter & Gamble Bulgaria EOOD, Procter & Gamble Business Services Canada Company, Procter & Gamble Canada Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Chile , Procter & Gamble Chile Limitada, Procter & Gamble Colombia Ltda., Procter & Gamble Commercial LLC, Procter & Gamble Commercial de Cuba S.A., Procter & Gamble Czech Republic s.r.o., Procter & Gamble DS Polska Sp. z o.o., Procter & Gamble Danmark ApS, Procter & Gamble Detergent (Beijing) Ltd., Procter & Gamble Deuttschland GmbH, Procter & Gamble Distributing (Philippines) Inc., Procter & Gamble Distributing New Zealand Limited, Procter & Gamble Distribution Company (Europe) BVBA, Procter & Gamble Distribution S.R.L., Procter & Gamble Eastern Europe, Procter & Gamble Ecuador Cia. Ltda., Procter & Gamble Egypt, Procter & Gamble Egypt Distribution, Procter & Gamble Egypt Holding, Procter & Gamble Egypt Supplies, Procter & Gamble Energy Company LLC, Procter & Gamble Espana, Procter & Gamble Europe SA, Procter & Gamble Export Operations SARL, Procter & Gamble Exportadora e Importadora Ltda., Procter & Gamble Exports, Procter & Gamble Fabricacao e Comercio Ltda., Procter & Gamble Far East, Procter & Gamble Finance (U.K.) Ltd., Procter & Gamble Finance Holding Ltd., Procter & Gamble Finance Management S.a.r.l., Procter & Gamble Financial Investments LLP, Procter & Gamble Financial Services Ltd., Procter & Gamble Financial Services S.a.r.l., Procter & Gamble Finland OY, Procter & Gamble France S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Germany GmbH, Procter & Gamble Germany GmbH & Co. Operations oHG, Procter & Gamble GmbH, Procter & Gamble Grundstucks-und Vermogensverwaltungs GmbH & Co. KG, Procter & Gamble Gulf FZE, Procter & Gamble Hair Care, Procter & Gamble Hellas Ltd., Procter & Gamble Holding (Thailand) Limited, Procter & Gamble Holding France S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Holding GmbH, Procter & Gamble Holding S.r.l., Procter & Gamble Holdings (UK) Ltd., Procter & Gamble Home Products Private Limited, Procter & Gamble Hong Kong Limited, Procter & Gamble Hungary Wholesale Trading Partnership (KKT), Procter & Gamble Hygiene & Health Care Limited, Procter & Gamble Inc., Procter & Gamble India Holdings, Procter & Gamble Indochina Limited Company, Procter & Gamble Industrial - 2012 C.A., Procter & Gamble Industrial Colombia Ltda., Procter & Gamble Industrial S.C.A., Procter & Gamble Industrial e Comercial Ltda., Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Costa Rica, Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Guatemala, Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Panama, Procter & Gamble International Operations Pte. Ltd., Procter & Gamble International Operations SA, Procter & Gamble International Operations SA-ROHQ, Procter & Gamble International S.a.r.l., Procter & Gamble Investment Company (UK) Ltd., Procter & Gamble Investment GmbH, Procter & Gamble Italia, Procter & Gamble Japan K.K., Procter & Gamble Kazakhstan Distribution LLP, Procter & Gamble Kazakhstan LLP, Procter & Gamble Korea, Procter & Gamble Korea S&D Co., Procter & Gamble Lanka Private Ltd. Sri Lanka, Procter & Gamble Leasing LLC, Procter & Gamble Levant S.A.L., Procter & Gamble Limited, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing (Thailand) Limited, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Belgium N.V., Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Berlin GmbH, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing GmbH, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Procter & Gamble Manufacturing SA (Pty) Ltd, Procter & Gamble Marketing Romania SRL, Procter & Gamble Marketing and Services doo, Procter & Gamble Maroc SA, Procter & Gamble Mataro, Procter & Gamble Mexico Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Mexico Inc., Procter & Gamble Middle East FZE, Procter & Gamble Nederland B.V., Procter & Gamble Netherlands Investments B.V., Procter & Gamble Netherlands Services B.V., Procter & Gamble Nigeria Limited, Procter & Gamble Nordic, Procter & Gamble Norge AS, Procter & Gamble Operations Polska Sp. z o.o., Procter & Gamble Overseas India B.V., Procter & Gamble Overseas Ltd., Procter & Gamble Pakistan (Private) Limited, Procter & Gamble Partnership LLP, Procter & Gamble Peru S.R.L., Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals France SAS, Procter & Gamble Philippines, Procter & Gamble Polska Sp. z o.o, Procter & Gamble Portugal - Produtos De Consumo, Procter & Gamble Product Supply (U.K.) Limited U.K., Procter & Gamble Production GmbH, Procter & Gamble Productions, Procter & Gamble Productos de Consumo, Procter & Gamble RHD, Procter & Gamble RSC Regional Service Company Ltd., Procter & Gamble Retail Services BVBA, Procter & Gamble S.r.l., Procter & Gamble SA (Pty) Ltd, Procter & Gamble Satis ve Dagitim Ltd. Sti., Procter & Gamble Seine S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Service GmbH, Procter & Gamble Services (Switzerland) SA, Procter & Gamble Services Company N.V., Procter & Gamble Services Ltd., Procter & Gamble Share Incentive Plan Trustee Ltd., Procter & Gamble South America Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Spol. s.r.o. (Ltd.), Procter & Gamble Sports and Social Club Ltd., Procter & Gamble Sverige AB, Procter & Gamble Switzerland SARL, Procter & Gamble Taiwan Limited, Procter & Gamble Taiwan Sales Company Limited, Procter & Gamble Technical Centres Limited, Procter & Gamble Technology (Beijing) Co., Procter & Gamble Trading (Thailand) Limited, Procter & Gamble Tuketim Mallari Sanayii A.S., Procter & Gamble UK, Procter & Gamble UK Group Holdings Ltd, Procter & Gamble UK Parent Company Ltd., Procter & Gamble Universal Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Verwaltungs GmbH, Procter & Gamble Vietnam, Procter & Gamble d.o.o. za trgovinu, Procter & Gamble de Venezuela S.C.A., Procter & Gamble de Venezuela S.R.L., Procter & Gamble do Brasil S/A, Procter & Gamble do Brazil, Procter & Gamble do Nordeste S/A, Procter & Gamble-Rakona s.r.o., Progam Realty & Development Corporation, Redmond Products, Richardson-Vicks Real Estate Inc., Richardson-Vicks do Brasil Quimica e Farmaceutica Ltda, Riverfront Music Publishing Co., Rosemount LLC, SPD Development Company Limited, SPD Swiss Precision Diagnostics GmbH, Scannon S.A.S., Series Acquisition B.V., Shulton, Surfac S.R.L., Sycamore Productions, TAOS - FL, TAOS Retail, Tambrands Inc., Temple Trees Impex & Investment Private Limited, The Art of Shaving - FL, The Dover Wipes Company, The Gillette Company, The Gillette Company LLC, The Gillette co., The Procter & Gamble Distributing LLC, The Procter & Gamble GBS Company, The Procter & Gamble Global Finance Company, The Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Company, The Procter & Gamble Paper Products Company, The Procter & Gamble U.S. Business Services Company, This is L., US CD LLC, Vidal Sassoon (Shanghai) Academy, Vidal Sassoon Co., WEBA Betriebsrenten-Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Walker & Company Brands, and iMFLUX Inc.. Sparton Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides design, development, and manufacturing services for electromechanical devices; and engineered products in electromechanical value stream worldwide. The company operates through two segments, Manufacturing & Design Services (MDS), and Engineered Components & Products (ECP). The MDS segment is involved in the contract design, manufacture, and aftermarket repair and refurbishment of printed circuit card assemblies, sub-assemblies, full product assemblies, and cable/wire harnesses, as well as development of embedded software and software quality assurance services in connection with medical devices and diagnostic equipment. This segment serves original equipment manufacturers and emerging technology customers serving the medical and biotechnology, military and aerospace, and industrial and commercial markets. The ECP segment designs, develops, and produces proprietary products for domestic and foreign defense, and commercial applications. It offers anti-submarine warfare devices for the U.S. Navy and foreign governments; rugged flat panel display systems for military panel PC workstations, air traffic control and industrial, and commercial marine applications; and high performance industrial grade computer systems and peripherals, as well as develops and markets commercial products for underwater acoustics and microelectromechanical based inertial measurement. This segment also performs an engineering development function for the United States military and prime defense contractors. Sparton Corporation was founded in 1900 and is headquartered in Schaumburg, Illinois. Read More 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. Bank of America Corp. is a bank and financial holding company, which engages in the provision of banking and nonbank financial services. It operates through the following segments: Consumer Banking, Global Wealth and Investment Management, Global Banking, Global Markets, and All Other. The Consumer Banking segment offers credit, banking, and investment products and services to consumers and small businesses. The Global Wealth and Investment Management provides client experience through a network of financial advisors focused on to meet their needs through a full set of investment management, brokerage, banking, and retirement products. The Global Banking segment deals with lending-related products and services, integrated working capital management and treasury solutions to clients, and underwriting and advisory services. The Global Markets segment includes sales and trading services, as well as research, to institutional clients across fixed-income, credit, currency, commodity, and equity businesses. The All Other segment consists of asset and liability management activities, equity investments, non-core mortgage loans and servicing activities, the net impact of periodic revisions Read More VanEck Israel ETF's stock was trading at $28.1454 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, ISRA shares have increased by 74.8% and is now trading at $49.1898. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, a diversified financial institution, provides various financial products and services to personal, business, public sector, and institutional clients in Canada, the United States, and internationally. The company operates through four strategic business units: Canadian Personal and Business Banking; Canadian Commercial Banking and Wealth Management; U.S. Commercial Banking and Wealth Management; and Capital Markets. The company offers chequing, savings, and business accounts; mortgages; loans, lines of credit, student lines of credit, and business and agriculture loans; investment and insurance services; and credit cards, as well as overdraft protection services. It also provides day-to-day banking, borrowing and credit, investing and wealth, specialty, and international services; correspondent banking and online foreign exchange services; and cash management services. The company serves its customers through its banking centers, as well as direct, mobile, and remote channels. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce was founded in 1867 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Read More Big Yellow is the UK's brand leader in self storage. Big Yellow now operates from a platform of 103 stores, including 25 stores branded as Armadillo Self Storage, in which the Group has a 20% interest. We own a further 11 Big Yellow self storage development sites, of which eight have planning consent. The current maximum lettable area of the existing platform (including Armadillo) is 6.0 million sq ft. When fully built out the portfolio will provide approximately 6.8 million sq ft of flexible storage space. Of the Big Yellow stores and sites, 98% by value are held freehold and long leasehold, with the remaining 2% short leasehold. The Group has pioneered the development of the latest generation of self storage facilities, which utilise state of the art technology and are in high profile, accessible, main road locations. Our focus on the location and visibility of our Big Yellow stores, coupled with our excellent customer service and our market leading online platform, has created the most recognised brand name in the UK self storage industry. Read More iShares MSCI EAFE ETF's stock was trading at $56.05 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, EFA shares have increased by 41.0% and is now trading at $79.02. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. Tableau Software, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides business analytics software products. It offers Tableau Desktop, a self-service, powerful analytics product with data; Tableau Server, a business intelligence platform for organizations; Tableau Online, a hosted software-as-a-service version of Tableau Server; Tableau Prep, a data preparation product for combining, shaping, and cleaning data; and Tableau Public, a cloud-based platform for analyzing and sharing public data. In addition, it offers Visual Query Language (VizQL) for databases, which is a computer language for describing pictures of data, including graphs, charts, maps, time series, and tables of visualizations; Live Query Engine that interprets abstract queries generated by VizQL into syntax understandable by database systems; and Hyper, an in-memory data engine technology that helps customers to analyze a range of data sets by evaluating analytical queries directly in the transactional database. Further, the company provides support, maintenance, training, and professional services. It serves organizations in various industries, including business services, energy and telecommunications, financial services, life sciences and healthcare, manufacturing and technology, media and entertainment, public sector, and education, as well as retail, consumer, and distribution industries. The company sells its products directly, as well as through indirect sales channels, such as technology vendors, resellers, original equipment manufacturers, independent software vendor, and distributors in the United States, Canada, and internationally. Tableau Software, Inc. was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Read More Brookfield Business Partners LP engages in owning and operating business services and industrial operations. It operates though the following segments: Business Services, Infrastructure Services, Industrial Operations, and Corporate and Other. The Business Services segment includes services such as residential mortgage insurance, healthcare, road fuel distribution and marketing, real estate and construction, entertainment, financing, and other businesses. The Infrastructure Services segment consists of services to the nuclear power generation industry and offshore oil production industry: and access, forming, and shoring solutions and specialized services. The Industrial Operations segment deals with automotive batteries, graphite electrode, and other manufacturing; water and wastewater services: natural gas production and well servicing; and a variety of other industrial operations. The Corporate and Other segment comprises cash and liquidity management, and activities related to the management of the partnership's relationship with Brookfield. The company was founded on October 1, 2015 and is headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda. Read More SPDR Nuveen Barclays Short Term Municipal Bond ETF's stock was trading at $49.33 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus (COVID-19) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, SHM shares have decreased by 0.3% and is now trading at $49.20. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. China Mobile Limited provides mobile telecommunications and related services in Mainland China and Hong Kong. The company offers local calls; domestic and international long distance calls and roaming services; and value-added services, such as caller identity display, call waiting, conference calls, and others. It also provides wireless Internet service, as well as digital applications comprising music, video, reading, gaming, and animation; wireline broadband services; and wireline voice services. In addition, it offers dedicated line and IDC services to corporate customers in a range of industry sectors; and basic corporate communication products comprising corporate VPMN and SMS, and tailor made solutions. Further, the company provides international telecommunications services, which includes IDD, roaming, Internet, MNC, and value added business services. Additionally, it offers telecommunications network planning, design, and consulting services; roaming clearance, IT system operation, and technology support services; value-added platform development and maintenance services; mobile data, and system integration and development services; network construction and maintenance, network planning and optimizing, and training services; electronic communication products design and sale of related products; and non-banking financial services. It also provides mobile cloud research and development services; call center services; e-payment, e-commerce, and Internet finance services; and mobile Internet digital content services, as well as operates a network and business coordination center. The company serves 950 million mobile customers and 187 million wireline broadband customers. The company was formerly known as China Mobile (Hong Kong) Limited and changed its name to China Mobile Limited in May 2006. The company was incorporated in 1997 and is based in Central, Hong Kong. China Mobile Limited is a subsidiary of China Mobile Hong Kong (BVI) Limited. Read More 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 Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 23) The bill lifting rice imports in exchange for tariffs hurdles the bicameral conference committee, two steps short of becoming a law. Senate agriculture committee chair Cynthia Villar told reporters senators and representatives adopted most of the provisions in the Senate version. The bill goes back to the Senate amd House of Representatives for ratification. It will then be submitted to President Rodrigo Duterte for signing into law. Villar said the bill established the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund, which would allot 10 billion yearly for assistance to rice farmers as they face competition from the opening of rice importation. The National Food Authority will be stripped off its regulatory powers over rice imports. "Based on study kaya hindi sila [the reason why they are not] (local rice farmers) competitive, mahal ang kanilang labor cost [their labor cost is more expensive] compared to Vietnam. So we are going to mechanize," Villar said. "So half, 5 billion of the 10 billion will go to mechanization so that they can compete. Because that is the highest cost difference, iyong [the] labor. And then 3 billion will go to seeds. Tuturuan silang maging [They will be taught to be] seed growers ng [of] inbred seeds ng PhilRice," she said. In certifying the measure as urgent in October, Duterte said the bill aims to "address the urgent need to improve availability of rice in the country, prevent rice shortage, reduce prices of rice, and curtail the prevalence of corruption and cartel domination in the rice industry." Once enacted, businesses and individuals can buy rice from foreign sources and just pay the 40 percent tariff. Tax proceeds will fund programs to help farmers such as mass irrigation, rice storage and research initiatives. Senate economic affairs committee chair Win Gatchalian previously told CNN Philippines' On The Record that the measure is expected to generate 10 billion in taxes for the government, which can support farmers. But farmers groups and think tank IBON Foundation warned that the measure would "displace rice farmers and worsen food insecurity without solving the problem of expensive rice." IBON added that the 10-billion rice competitiveness fund is insufficient to support farmers and pales in comparison to the industry support given to rice producers in Vietnam, the United States, Thailand, India, Japan and China. But Villar said farmers simply "did not read" the bill. She added that the mechanization of rice production pushed for in the bill would give farmers' cooperatives tractors, transplanters, harvesters, dryers and millers. "That means kung gusto na nilang i-turn ang kanilang produkto to rice, they can do it. And kung sa [cooperatives] ito ibibigay, iyong [cooperative] nila makipag-usap na sa retailers na diretso na sila. They will supply diretso sa mga consumer and retailer," Villar said. [Translation: That means if they want to turn their product into rice, they can do it. And if this is given to cooperatives, their cooperative would talk to retailers directly. They will supply directly to consumers and retailers.] Villar said she expects the Senate to ratify the committee conference report before Congress goes on a five-week break beginning Dec. 15. Once the report is ratified by both houses of Congress, it would be sent to President Rodrigo Duterte for his signature. Bicam panel OKs coco levy bill Meanwhile, Villar said the same panel also passed the Coco Levy Trust Fund bill for the second time, after senators scrambled to avert a veto from Duterte over his objection to the composition of the trust fund board. Under the bill, the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) would be reconstituted and would manage the coco levy fund. Presently, the PCA is composed of a Cabinet official, the Agriculture Secretary or his representative, two other government representatives, two members recommended by the Philippine Coconut Producers Federation and a member recommended by the United Coconut Association of the Philippines. The first version proposed that the PCA be composed of the Agriculture Secretary as chairman, the Finance Secretary as vice chairman, the Budget Secretary as administrator, another Cabinet member and six representatives of coconut farmers as members. Duterte rejected this as he wants more government representatives in the PCA, Senate Majority Leader Migz Zubiri said. Villar said under the revised bill, the PCA would be composed of eight representatives from the government-from the departments of Agriculture, Finance, Budget, Trade, Science and Technology, the National Economic Development Authority, Land Bank of the Philippines, Development Bank of the Philippines, and six coconut farmer representatives. The bill to distribute the coconut levy fund is one of Duterte's priority bills in his third State of the Nation Address. Villar said the coconut levy fund, which was taken from a tax imposed on coconut farmers during the Marcos regime, would be distributed to the farmers in tranches at 5 billion a year for the next 25 years. Coconut farmers would also get 10 billion a year in aid, she added. 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. DTE Energy Co. operates as a diversified energy company, which engages in the provision of electricity and natural gas sales, distribution and storage services. It operates through the following segments: Electric, Gas, Non-Utility Operations, and Corporate & Other. The Electric segment engages in the generation, purchase, distribution and sale of electricity to residential, commercial and industrial customers in south-eastern Michigan. The Gas segment engages in the purchase, storage, transportation, distribution and sale of natural gas to residential, commercial and industrial customers throughout Michigan and the sale of storage and transportation capacity. The Non-Utility Operations segment engages in gas storage and pipelines, power and industrial projects, and energy trading. The Corporate & Other includes various holding company activities, holds certain non-utility debt, and holds energy-related investments. The company was founded in January 1995 and is headquartered in Detroit, MI. Read More There is not enough analysis data for Eaton Vance Tax-Advantaged Global Dividend Income Fund. 4.3 Community Rank Outperform Votes Eaton Vance Tax-Advantaged Global Dividend Income Fund has received 115 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.) Underperform Votes Eaton Vance Tax-Advantaged Global Dividend Income Fund has received 65 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.) Community Sentiment Eaton Vance Tax-Advantaged Global Dividend Income Fund has received 63.89% outperform votes from our community. MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about Eaton Vance Tax-Advantaged Global Dividend Income Fund and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe ETG will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe ETG will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days. Previous Next Earnings Growth Earnings for Esterline Technologies are expected to grow by 1.73% in the coming year, from $4.62 to $4.70 per share. Price to Earnings Ratio vs. the Market The P/E ratio of Esterline Technologies is 29.37, which means that it is trading at a more expensive P/E ratio than the market average P/E ratio of about 15.70. Price to Earnings Ratio vs. Sector The P/E ratio of Esterline Technologies is 29.37, which means that it is trading at a more expensive P/E ratio than the Aerospace sector average P/E ratio of about 22.06. Price to Earnings Growth Ratio Esterline Technologies has a PEG Ratio of 2.78. PEG Ratios above 1 indicate that a company could be overvalued. 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 Richwood, TX (77531) Today A mix of clouds and sun during the morning will give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. High 79F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph.. Tonight Considerable cloudiness. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible late. Low 69F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. 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.. thyssenkrupp AG operates in the areas of automotive technology, industrial components, plant technology, marine systems, steel, and materials services in Germany, the United States, China, and internationally. The company's Automotive Technology segment develops and manufactures components and systems and automated production systems for the automotive industry. Its Industrial Components segment manufactures and sells forged components and system solutions for the resource, construction, and mobility sectors; and slewing rings, antifriction bearings, and seamless rolled rings for the wind energy and construction machinery sectors. The company's Plant Technology segment builds plants for the chemical, cement, and mining industries. Its Marine Systems segment provides systems in the submarine and surface ship building, as well as in the field of maritime electronics and security technology. The company's Materials Services segment distributes materials and offers technical services for the production and manufacturing sectors. Its Steel Europe segment provides flat carbon steel products, intelligent material solutions, and finished parts. thyssenkrupp AG was founded in 1811 and is headquartered in Essen, Germany. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of TransDigm Group: 1711 Waterview Pkwy LLC, ARA Deutschland GmbH, ARA Holding GmbH, Acme Aerospace, Adams Rite Aerospace GmbH, Adams Rite Aerospace Inc., Advanced Inflatable Products Limited, Aero-Instruments, AeroControlex Group Inc., Aerosonic, Aerosonic LLC, Air-Sea Survival Equipment Trustee Limited, Airborne Acquisition Inc., Airborne Global Inc., Airborne Holdings Inc., Airborne Systems, Airborne Systems Canada Ltd., Airborne Systems Group Limited, Airborne Systems Holdings Limited, Airborne Systems Limited, Airborne Systems NA Inc., Airborne Systems North America Inc., Airborne Systems North America of CA Inc., Airborne Systems North America of NJ Inc., Airborne Systems Pension Trust Limited, Airborne UK Acquisition Limited, Airborne UK Parent Limited, Aircraft Materials Limited, AmSafe, AmSafe Aviation (Chongqing) Ltd., AmSafe Bridport (Kunshan) Co. Ltd., AmSafe Bridport (Private) Ltd., AmSafe Bridport Ltd., AmSafe Global Holdings Inc., AmSafe Global Services (Private) Limited, AmSafe Inc., Angus Electronics Co., Arkwin Industries, Arkwin Industries Inc., Auxitrol SAS, Auxitrol Weston Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Auxitrol Weston Singapore Pte. Ltd., Auxitrol Weston USA Inc., Aviation Technologies, Aviation Technologies Inc., Avionic Instruments LLC, Avionics Instruments, Avionics Specialties Inc., AvtechTyee Inc., Beta Transformer Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Beta Transformer Technology Corporation, Beta Transformer Technology LLC, Breeze-Eastern Corporation, Breeze-Eastern LLC, Bridport Erie Aviation Inc., Bridport Holdings Inc., Bridport Ltd., Bridport-Air Carrier Inc., Bruce Aerospace Inc., Bruce Industries, CDA InterCorp LLC, CEF Industries LLC, CMC Electronics Inc., CMC Electronics ME Inc., Champion Aerospace LLC, Cobham, DDC Electronics K.K., DDC Electronics Ltd., DDC Electronics Private Limited, DDC Electronique S.A.R.L., DDC Elektronik GmbH, Darchem Engineering Limited, Darchem Holdings Limited, Data Device Corp., Data Device Corporation, Dukes Aerospace Inc., EST Defence Company UK Limited, Edlaw Limited, Electromech Technologies LLC, Elektro-Metall Export GmbH, Elektro-Metall Paks KFT, Esterline, Esterline Acquisition Ltd, Esterline Europe Company LLC, Esterline Foreign Sales Corporation, Esterline International Company, Esterline Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Esterline Services China Ltd., Esterline Technologies Acquisition Ltd, Esterline Technologies Corporation, Esterline Technologies Europe Limited, Esterline Technologies France Holding SAS, Esterline Technologies French Acquisition Limited, Esterline Technologies Global Limited, Esterline Technologies Holdings Limited, Esterline Technologies Management France SAS, Esterline Technologies SGIP LLC, Esterline Technologies Unlimited, Esterline do Brasil Assessoria e Intermediacao Ltda, Extant Components Group Holdings Inc., Extant Components Group Intermediate Inc., GQ Parachutes Limited, Guizhou Leach-Tianyi Aviation Electrical Company Ltd, Harco, HarcoSemco LLC, Hartwell Corporation, ILC Holdings Inc., Irvin Aerospace Limited, IrvinGQ France SAS, IrvinGQ Limited, Janco Corporation, Johnson Liverpool LLC, Jupiter SAS, Kirkhill Elastomers, Kirkhill Inc., Kunshan Shield Restraint Systems Ltd., Leach Holding Corporation, Leach International Asia-Pacific Ltd, Leach International Europe S.A.S., Leach International Mexico S. de R. L. de C. V., Leach International UK Ltd, Leach Technology Group Inc., MarathonNorco Aerospace Inc., McKechnie Aerospace, McKechnie Aerospace (Europe) Ltd., McKechnie Aerospace DE Inc., McKechnie Aerospace DE LP, McKechnie Aerospace Holdings Inc., McKechnie Aerospace US LLC, Mecanismos de Matamoros S.A. de C.V., Militair Aviation Ltd., Norco, Nordisk Asia Pacific Limited, Nordisk Asia Pacific Pte Ltd, Nordisk Aviation Products (Kunshan) Ltd., Nordisk Aviation Products AS, North Hills Signal Processing Corp., North Hills Signal Processing Overseas Corp., Norwich Aero Products Inc., Pascall Electronics Limited, Pexco Aerospace, Pexco Aerospace Inc., PneuDraulics, PneuDraulics Inc., Pressure Systems International Ltd, Racal Acoustics Inc., Racal Acoustics Limited, Rancho TransTechnology Corporation, Retainers Inc., SSP Industries, Schneller, Schneller Asia Pte. Ltd., Schneller LLC, Schneller S.A.R.L., Schroth Safety Products, ScioTeq LLC, ScioTeq Ltd., ScioTeq Pte. Ltd., ScioTeq SAS, ScioTeq bvba, Semco Instruments, Semco Instruments Inc., Shield Restraint Systems Inc., Shield Restraint Systems Ltd., Signal Processing Matamoros S.A. de C.V., Skandia, Skandia Inc., Skurka Aerospace, Skurka Aerospace Inc., Symetrics Industries, Symetrics Industries LLC, Symetrics Technology Group LLC, TA Mfg Limited, TDG ESL Holdings Inc., TDG France Ultimate Parent SAS, TDG Germany GmbH, TEAC Aerospace Holdings Inc., TEAC Aerospace Technologies Inc., TREALITY SVS LLC, TTERUSA Inc., Tactair Fluid Controls Inc., Takata Protection Systems, Technical Airborne Components Industries SPRL, Telair International, Telair International AB, Telair International GmbH, Telair International LLC, Telair International Services PTE Ltd, Telair US LLC, Texas Rotronics Inc., TransDigm (Barbados) SRL, TransDigm Canada ULC, TransDigm European Holdings Limited, TransDigm Ireland Ltd., TransDigm Receivables LLC, TransDigm UK Holdings plc, Transicoil (Malaysia) Sendirian Berhad, Transicoil LLC, Wallop Industries Limited, Weston Aerospace Ltd, Whippany Actuation Systems, Whippany Actuation Systems LLC, XCEL Power Systems Ltd., Young & Franklin, and Young & Franklin Inc.. 6 Wall Street equities research analysts have issued "buy," "hold," and "sell" ratings for Tullow Oil in the last year. There are currently 1 sell rating, 3 hold ratings and 2 buy ratings for the stock. The consensus among Wall Street equities research analysts is that investors should "hold" Tullow Oil stock. A hold rating indicates that analysts believe investors should maintain any existing positions they have in TLW, but not buy additional shares or sell existing shares. View analyst ratings for Tullow Oil or view top-rated stocks. New Delhi: While we all love winters, there are some who are left tormented by the allergies that are part and parcel of this season. For such people, the transition from autumn to the coldest season of the year is not a smooth one. Therefore, to avoid catching cold and flu, it is imperative to pay attention to your immunity and lifestyle habits, say doctors. "Winter is a time of allergies and some common allergens include dust and mites, pollen, pet dander, perfumes, and mold. The allergy can even continue for days and months causing runny nose, sneezing and sniffling, watery eyes, itchiness, and persistent cough," Dr KK Aggarwal, President, Heart Care Foundation of India told ANI. But, aren't allergens present in the air all round the year? "They are," said Dr Chanchal Pal of Moolchand Hospital. "But in winters, they tend to become more active since people shut all the windows and switch on their room heaters to avoid the cold. This warm temperature is ideal for the breeding of mold and mites." Not taking adequate precautions, according to Pal, can trigger severe broncho-constriction, especially in those with existing conditions like asthma. Padma Shri Awardee, Dr KK Aggarwal also stressed that such people need to be even more cautious in the winter season. "The situation can become worse for people with existing conditions such as asthma as it can worsen wheezing and other issues in them." Here are some precautionary measures that one ought to keep in mind: "Keep your house dust free. It is also a must to ensure that dampness is avoided as it can cause molds to grow inside the house," said Aggarwal. "While most nasal allergies can be cured with antihistamines, people with asthma or other ailments must use inhalers without fail and seek medical help in case the symptoms become worse. Also, to build immunity, eat foods rich in Vitamin C," he signed off. Pregnant women who consume caffeine - whether its from coffee or tea - have smaller babies than those who abstain from the stimulant during pregnancy, new research suggests. Even women who took in less than 200 milligrams of caffeine, the safe cutoff during pregnancy according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), had a significantly increased risk of delivering prematurely or having a low-birthweight baby. Based on the consistent associations we observed, and because many pregnancies are unplanned, we would recommend women who are pregnant or seeking to become pregnant to at least limit their intakes of caffeinated coffee and tea, lead study author Ling-Wei Chen, a researcher at University College Dublin in Ireland, said in an email. The study cannot prove cause and effect, he cautioned. But several previous studies have linked caffeine exposure in the womb to negative effects, Chen and his colleagues write in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In most of those studies, coffee was the main caffeinated beverage consumed. For the current study, Chens team looked at 941 mother-child pairs born in Ireland, where people drink more tea than coffee. Nearly half of the mothers in the study drank tea, while about 40 percent drank coffee. Every additional 100 milligrams of caffeine consumed daily during the first trimester of pregnancy was associated with a 72-gram (2.5 ounce) lower birth weight, as well as significantly lower gestational age, birth length and head circumference. Women who took in the most caffeine had babies weighing about 170 grams (6 ounces) less than those who consumed the least, the researchers found. Whether the caffeine came from coffee or tea made no difference to the results. High caffeine intake can result in restricted blood flow in the placenta which may subsequently affect fetal growth, Chen explained. Caffeine can also cross the placenta readily, and because caffeine clearance slows as pregnancy progresses, caffeine accumulation may occur in fetal tissues. One 12-ounce cup (355 ml) of brewed coffee contains about 200 mg of caffeine, but tea generally contains less caffeine and the amount can vary by type of tea and how long it was brewed. The Lipton Tea company, for example, says its black tea contains about 83 mg caffeine in a 12-ounce cup. The public doesnt seem to recognize teas caffeine content, said the studys senior author, Catherine Phillips, a researcher at University College Dublin. Thus, maternal intake of both tea and coffee need to be taken into account when trying to minimise overall caffeine intake during pregnancy. This is especially important where tea is the predominant caffeine source, she told Reuters Health by email. ACOG states that consuming less than 200 milligrams of caffeine per day in pregnancy does not appear to be a major contributing factor in miscarriage or preterm birth. The World Health Organization recommends that women consume less than 300 mg of caffeine daily in pregnancy. This paper and other papers show that this is likely too high, said Dr. De-Kun Li, a senior scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Northern California division of research in Oakland, who wasnt involved in the study. Epidemiological findings based on self-reported caffeine consumption are usually not very precise. Thus, any cutoffs chosen by ACOG and WHO can only be considered as rough reference points. Biologically, it is unlikely that 300 mg is risky while 299 mg is safe, Li said in a phone interview. The message to women I would prefer would be the less the better, Li said. Then the women can choose for themselves. Reports touting the health benefits of caffeine also need to include a caveat stating that it may be harmful in pregnancy, added Li, whose own research has linked caffeine consumption in pregnancy to miscarriage and childhood obesity. My advice would be try to reduce as much as you can, if you can totally quit that would be even better. ACOG told Reuters Health that it reviews all of its recommendations every 18 to 24 months, includes all new research in its reviews, and makes adjustments to recommendations as needed. Until that time, ACOGs current guidance still stands. Chennai: Following protests by thousands of students at the SRM Institute of Science and Technology in Kattankulathur demanding the arrest of a college staff worker who allegedly masturbated in front of a girl student inside the elevator on Thursday, Maraimalai Nagar police on Friday arrested a 28-year-old man. Read | Male staff masturbates in front of Chennai woman student in hostel lift The accused, identified as Arjunan Subramanian of Chetti Punniyam village was a worker who collects food waste from the college and canteen areas. According to sources, Reshma (name changed), a B-tech student from outside Tamil Nadu, had taken the elevator to reach her room on the sixth floor of the SRM Womans hostel at around 3 pm on Thursday. Arjunan, who was already inside the elevator, started masturbating in front of her. The girl immediately tried to stop the elevator and get out but the pervert blocked her path. She screamed and managed to run out only when the elevator stopped on the fourth floor. CCTV footage of the incident. The girl, accompanied by her friends, immediately reported the incident to the hostel warden, but she appeared to blame it on the way the girl was dressed, calling her dressing inappropriate. When the victim asked for the CCTV footage to identify the man, the Warden asked for a letter from the victim to access the footage. She accused us of wearing skimpy clothes implying that the girl deserved what she got, said the victim's friend. The warden had also hinted in an indirect way that this could have happened as the victim was a north Indian studying in south India. Angered by this, the students gathered in the campus grounds on Thursday night and demanded the arrest of the accused. Only after three hours of protests by more than a thousand students, did the officials and college management representatives come down to talk to the students. They were to assure the students that the accused would be arrested. On Friday morning, Maraimalai Nagar police arrested Arjunan based on the complaint registered by the senior hostel warden Sankari (48) of SRM Woman's hostel. The Registrar of the university on Friday said that the warden who allegedly victim-shamed the student has been suspended and if the allegations were found to be true her services would be terminated. In a statement released on Friday, N Sethuraman, Registrar of the university, expressed regret for the incident. He said that a committee had been set up to look into the incident. He also explained that the man who was accused of sexually harassing a student was an outsourced person who collects food waste from the mess and that he had breached security to enter the lift of the hostel building and that he is not an employee. Seeking the consent of the parents resulted in a slight delay in lodging a complaint with the police, during which the students became restless, he added. Meanwhile, ex-students of SRM university wrote several posts on the social media alleging that this is not the first time such an incident had taken place in the university. The police had received multiple calls against them including one that alleged that they have abducted a child. (Representational Image) New Delhi: Six Africans, including four Tanzanian and two Nigerian nationals, were attacked in Delhi on Thursday night amid rumours that they were child abductors. The African nationals were rescued from Kakrola area under Dwarka north police station limits. The police had received multiple calls against them including one that alleged that they have abducted a child. "No racial attack. We have received call that people were gathering. We reached there, dispersed crowd and rescued two Tanzanian women. Crowd had gathered following abduction rumours. Later we received a call of abduction. It was a hoax call. We rescued Tanzanian and Nigerian nationals," news agency ANI quoted Delhi police official as saying. Veteran journalist and editor of Rising Kashmir Shujaat Bukhari was killed outside his office in Srinagars Mushtaq Press Enclave on June 14. (Photo: File) Srinagar: A top commander of outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) allegedly involved in the murder of Rising Kashmir editor Shujaat Bukhari is among six militants killed on Friday in a fierce gunfight with security forces in Anantnag district of restive Jammu and Kashmir, the officials said. Srinagar-based defence spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia said that the exchange of fire between security forces and militants began in the early hours in Shalgund village of Bijbehara area of the district. Six terrorists eliminated in the encounter and arms and ammunition were recovered from the spot, he said. The police officials identified one of the slain militants as top LeT commander Azad Ahmed Malik. They claimed that Malik was among the militants who killed veteran journalist and editor of Rising Kashmir Shujaat Bukhari outside his office in Srinagars Mushtaq Press Enclave on June 14. J&K police had on June 28, two weeks after Bukhari was murdered, claimed that the conspiracy to kill him was hatched by LeT militants based in Pakistan and executed by its three cadres including two locals and a Pakistani national in Srinagar. Inspector General of Police (Kashmir range) SP Pani had told the media that before targeting Bukhari, a malicious campaign was spearheaded against him by the LeT through social media from the neighbouring country. He had also said that among the conspirators was Sheikh Sajjad Gul, a resident of Srinagars Zainakote area, who is now based in Pakistan and that the crime was executed by LeT operatives Azad Ahmed Malik alias Dada alias Zaid, Muzaffar Ahmed Bhat and Muhammad Naveed Jutt alias Abu Hanzalla. Also Read: J&K: Six militants killed in Anantnag encounter, weapons recovered Malik who was killed on Friday was a resident of Arwani village of Bijbehara and, as per police statement, had been active as LeT militant since December 2016 whereas Muzafar Ahmad Bhat alias Talha is from Sopat village of Qazigund area in neighbouring Kulgam district. Naveed Jutt, the third alleged executioner, is a Pakistani national from Sahiwal (Multan). He had on February 6 this year escaped after killing two J&K policemen who were escorting him to a hospital in Srinagar for medical check-up from a City prison and is since known to be active mainly in south Kashmir. He had been arrested by the Army from Kulgam in June 2014 and was lodged in Srinagars high security central prison. The police had constituted a Special Police Investigation Team (SIT) under Deputy Inspector General of Police (Central Kashmir) VK Virdhi to probe the gruesome murder of Bukhari. But it has, so far, not been able to file chargesheet against the accused in the court. The LeT had strongly denied its involvement in the journalists killing and in its counter charge blamed Indian intelligence agencies. The others killed with Malik on Friday were Basit Mir, Anees Ahmed, Aqib, Shahid and Firdaus Ahmed- all local Kashmiris. A senior Army commander termed the killing of the militants as a successful surgical operation. Lt. Gen AK Bhatt, the General-Officer-Commanding of Srinagar based 15 Army Corps told reporters in north-western town of Baramulla, It was a prompt, precise successful operation and the security forces didnt suffer any damage in it. Giving the details of the operation, a police spokesman said that a joint party of the Army's 3 Rashtriya Rifles, the counter insurgency Special Operations Group (SOG) of the J&K police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) launched a pre-dawn cordon-and-search operation in Shalgund-Satkipora in Dachnipora forest belt of Bijbehara following credible input about the presence of militants. As the operation was going on, the search party was fired upon by the militants. The fire was retaliated leading to a gunfight, he said adding that in the fire fight six militants were killed whose corpses were retrieved from the site of encounter. The police also said that incriminating materials including huge quantity of arms and ammunition were recovered from the site of encounter. Meanwhile, the security forces are reported to have launched another cordon-and-search operation at Gulab Bagh of Tral area in neighbouring Pulwama district following specific inputs about the presence of militants in the village. Separately, the militants targeted an Army camp in Kaimoh area of southern Kulgam district on Thursday evening, defence spokesman said. A girl in the adjoining area got injured in the indiscriminate firing by the terrorists. Alert soldiers retaliated immediately and the Quick Reaction Team was launched in the direction from which the firing had come. The terrorists however managed to escape taking advantage of the terrain and weather conditions, the spokesman said. Thiruvananthapuram: Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday lamented Centres indifferent attitude towards the state post flood rebuilding exercise. At a press conference here, the chief minister said the Centre had so far given only Rs 600 crore. As per the norms of Disaster Response Fund, the state had demanded Rs 820 crore for the losses suffered in the first calamity and Rs 4,796 crore for the massive devastation caused during monsoon. A total of `5616 crore. Besides the state had also sought a special assistance of Rs 5,000 crore. But what the Centre has sanctioned so far is not enough to even meet the losses of first calamity . The chief minister said detailed studies carried out by World Bank and UN had estimated Rs 31,000 crore losses. But the actual loss is much more and the state will have to raise an additional Rs 26,000 crore for the rebuilding exercise. n From Page 1 Thiruvananthapuram: I will hand over the resignation letter to the Chief Minister whenever he is available in Capital, " he said. The minister said that he was sad on not completing the full term. He refused to comment on the controversy over power sharing agreement. "I dont want to say anything since Deve Gowda has already made his stand clear. High court decision has no relevance once the Supreme Court issues a verdict. But the manner in which the developments unfolded has pained me. This is not the way parties associated with Left do things, he said. Krishnankutty who is also JD(S) state president said the decision was based on the agreement. At the state committee meeting held soon after the elections in 2016 to choose the party nominee for LDF Cabinet, it was decided that Mathew T Thoms would pave the way for Krishnankutty after two and a half years. Earlier, at the meeting in Bangalore a resolution was passed replacing the minister. A copy of the resolution would be submitted to chief minister soon. The JD(S) which has three MLAs, had been witnessing internal differences over the issue of replacing the minister. Krishnankutty faction had demanded his replacement on the basis of the agreement reached in 2016 that the minister would vacate the post after two and a half years. Though the demand was raised more than twice, the Mathew T Thomas faction had managed to delay the decision till now. The reshuffle comes close on the heels registration of a case against Mathew T Thoams's wife for allegedly hurling casteist insults on a former staff of the minster. A woman, a former member of the Mathews personal staff, had alleged that the ministers wife and some members of the personal staff had humiliated her by calling caste names. The Mathew Thomas camp alleged that complaint was part of the conspiracy against the minister. Hyderabad: Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) president and caretaker Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao is the front runner for betting agencies for the post of CM in the Telangana Assembly elections. Betting organisers based in Mumbai consider Mr Rao the hot favourite for the top post, but are not sure of his party, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), getting the majority to form the government on its own. As of today, for every one rupee bet placed on Mr Rao returning as CM, the return is one rupee. But for every one rupee placed on his not becoming the CM the return is Rs 1.50. In betting, the value of the hot favourite is less, and that is why the Mumbai-based organisers pay out less to punters who bet in favour of Mr Rao as CM. The bookies are predicting that Mr Rao will become CM again even if his party does not get a majority. For every one rupee placed on TRS getting a majority the return is 62 paisa and on every one rupee placed on the TRS not getting a majority, the return is 64 paisa. This changes every day depending on the public mood. About 300 persons from the Mumbai-based organisation who are experts in assessing the public mood are touring across the state, and every day they send back a report on the public mood to their Mumbai headquarters. Based on the reports the organisers change the betting ratio frequently. A betting expert said that the Mumbai-based organisers predictions had often come true. In the recent Karnataka assembly elections, they predicted that the BJP will emerge as the single largest party, which was true. In the Gujarat assembly elections they predicted that the BJP would form the government which also came true. He said that punters have a lot of confidence in the predictions of the Mumbai-based organisation. Another interesting point is that the people who are betting on KCR returning are mainly from Andhra Pradesh rather than Telangana. The betting habit is strong in AP, on every issue. When we asked a betting expert about KCR becoming the CM again if the TRS does not get the required majority, he said if TRS gets 45 to 50 seats, the MIM will support the TRS and KCR can get the remaining required MLAs. Keeping this in view, KCR has become the favourite of these Mumbai based organisers. KCRs statement made in Adilabad district on Thursday about in case of TRS defeat has not changed the betting ratio of the Mumbai syndicate but it has changed things for local bettors. Till yesterday, local bettors believed the TRS has a 60 per cent chance of winning and the Mahakutami has a 40 per cent chance. But after KCRs statement, the TRS and Kutami have an equal chance of winning according to local bettors. Hyderabad: TD supremo and AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Friday offered his support to Jammu and Kashmir-based Peoples Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti in her fight against the BJP in her state. Spoke with @Mehbo-oba Mufti ji over phone today. Expressed solidarity with all leaders fighting against injustice to save and protect democracy, Mr Naidu said in a Twitter post on Friday after speaking to Ms Mufti over phone. He said that the dissolution of the J&K Assembly without respecting the peoples mandate and democratic conventions was another example of misuse of power and subversion of democracy by the BJP-led NDA government. He said it mirrored the BJPs dictatorial and totalitarian attitude. Mr Naidu has been stitching up a national alternative to the BJP at the Centre. On Thursday, he criticised the BJP for interfering in the affairs of J&K using the institution of Governor. The Prime Minister said that no developmental work took place during the party's regime and it has left the state behind in terms of development. (Photo: File) Lunglei (Mizoram): Intensifying his attack against the Congress ahead of the assembly elections in Mizoram, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that the party's priority is grabbing power and not people of Mizoram. Taking a strong objection to Congress Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor's remark who had termed Naga headgear "outlandish", the Prime Minister accused the Congress of being least bothered about aspirations of Mizos. "In the last four years, the BJP government at the Centre has worked for greater recognition and spread of Indian culture and traditions, far and wide. I feel a deep sense of anguish when I see the leaders of the Congress party abuse the same traditions," Prime Minister Modi said at a rally here. "A Congress leader called the attire of the North-East as outlandish. Your hopes, ambitions do not matter to the Congress. Their priority is power and not the people of Mizoram," he added. While addressing a seminar in Thiruvananthapuram in August, Tharoor said: "Why does our Prime Minister, who wears all sorts of outlandish headgears wherever he goes around the country and around the world, always refuses to wear a Muslim skull cap? You see him in hilarious Naga headgears and feathers. You see him in various kinds of extraordinary outfits, which is a right thing for a Prime Minister to do. Indira Gandhi has also been photographed wearing various kinds of costumes. But why he always says no to one?" Further hitting out at the Congress for ignoring people's aspirations, the Prime Minister said that no developmental work took place during the party's regime and it has left the state behind in terms of development. He said, "The work culture of the Congress has caused many projects to be delayed leading to crumbling infrastructure in the state, whereas the neighbouring states have excellent roads." The Congress which once governed most Indian States, is now restricted to just two or three States, said Prime Minister Modi adding that the people of Mizoram now have a golden opportunity to get rid of the Congress culture. He emphasised that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has developed every region of the Northeast by pursuing 'Act fast for India's East' policy in the last four-and-half years. Prime Minister Modi observed that "the Northeast has moved past from bandh, guns and blockades. The people across Northeast are experiencing it." Transformation through transportation is BJP's mantra for North Eastern states, he emphasised. "To speed up the development of Mizoram and to provide a corruption free government in the State, the BJP seeks your blessings and your support," the Prime Minister wooed the voters. Further enticing the people of Mizoram, the Prime Minister said that the double engine of BJP governments in both the Centre and the state will take Mizoram reach new heights. A total of 209 candidates are contesting the state assembly elections which are slated to be held in a single phase on November 28. Of this, the ruling Congress has fielded 40 candidates while the BJP and Mizo National Front are contesting in 39 and 40 assembly seats respectively. In a bid to counter move to form govt by Congress-PDP-NC, Lone on Wednesday staked claim to form govt with the support of the 25-legislator strong BJP and over 18 other lawmakers. (Photo: ANI) New Delhi: Jammu and Kashmir People's Conference chairman Sajjad Gani Lone on Friday asserted that he staked claim to form the government in the state as he possesses the required number of legislators in the Assembly. "We staked the claim as we had the numbers. Had there been a floor test or had we been told to bring in the numbers, then what is within the purview of the constitution would have happened," Lone told ANI. In a bid to counter the move to form a government by Congress- Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)-National Conference (NC), Lone on Wednesday staked claim to form a government in the state with the support of the 25-legislator strong Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and more than 18 other lawmakers. The People's Conference Chairman dared the PDP to go to the court if they have the required numbers. "If they (PDP) are so aggrieved they can go to the court but they will not because they don't have the numbers," he said. Reacting to arch-rivals PDP and NC coming together with the Congress to stake claim to form a new coalition government in the state, Lone said, "We are happy that we got these dynastic parties together." A political tussle broke out in Jammu and Kashmir soon after Governor Satya Pal Malik suddenly dissolved the state assembly on Wednesday. Malik dissolved the assembly hours after PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti and BJP ally Sajid Lone of the People's Conference staked claim to form a government in the state. Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba had attacked Malik for dissolving the assembly shortly after she wrote a letter to him staking claim to form the government in alliance with the NC and Congress. Earlier on Wednesday, the PDP, NC, and Congress confirmed their alliance in a bid to preserve the state's special status (Article 370). Political drama began in the Valley after the BJP pulled out of its alliance with the PDP citing examples of growing acts of "terrorism, violence, and radicalisation" in the state over the past few years. WARANGAL: Telangana Rasthra Samithi President and caretaker Chief Minister Mr. K Chandrashekar Rao has intensified the party campaign while touring four places of the erstwhile Warangal district on Friday. He addressed impressive public meetings at Narsampet, Mahbubabad, Dornakal and Jangaon constituencies. Without mincing his words, he warned Congress and TDP leaders that he would not spare any scamsters in his next term. He alleged that enquiries had revealed that TPCC chief Mr. N Uttam Kumar Reddy was involved in a Rs. 5000 crore scam in the Indiramma housing scheme in Manthani. He asked the people to drive away the Congress and TDP parties from the State. He said both the parties had ruled the State for 60 years but were unable to bring development to Telangana. We need not be gulams of Delhi or Vijayawada. We will rule our own land, he declared. Addressing the tribals, KCR said the Modi government, which is biased against the Muslims, was obstructing the 12 percent reservation to the tribals in the State because the BJP had Hindu-Muslim disease. He said the TRS will fight for the tribals if elected to power in the upcoming parliamentary elections next year by sending 17 out of 17 TRS MPs to Delhi. He also assured them that the issues related to podu farming would be solved within six months of forming the government. He also announced that tribal panchayats would be formed in the State allowing the tribals to rule their own hamlets. Mr. KCR also addressed some of the long-standing demands in these areas. He said the State would work out a plan to set up the Bayyaram steel factory to Mahbubabad. He said the Central Government was non-cooperative in this regard and behaving as if it was spending from its own pocket. ANANTAPUR: Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu lashed out at YSRC and the Jana Sena parties not only for their alleged ties with BJP and TRS in Telangana but also their decision not to take part in the Telangana Assembly polls to be held on December 7. "They will have to answer the people who would ask why they did not contest in Telangana polls," Mr Naidu added. Reiterating that the alliance with Congress party was strategically important, the TD supremo said that his party had fought with the Congress for 40 years. The move to go for alliance now was in the interests of the country and the state. As a senior leader, it is my responsible to set right things for the public and try and protect them from the selfish motives of BJP that cheated people of AP and the country. I want to unite anti-BJP parties across the country, he said. The Chief Minister, as part of his two day visit in Anantapur district, on Friday offered Jalaharathi at Marala village in Bukkapattanam mandal that is part of the Handri Neeva Sujala Shravanthi Phase II. Speaking at the public meeting, Mr Naidu said that the TD government had taken the lead in developing the state in every way. Interlinking of rivers and HNSS project will irrigate backward Rayalaseema. Referring to the fact that technology had been making its impact felt in every household in AP, Mr Naidu said the future governance will be completely through 'mobile' phones. The government has been trying to speed up the process of providing internet facility to every house in the state. Naidu participated in Grama Darshini at Kappalabanda village in Bukkapattnam mandal where he interacted with farmers and beneficiaries of various schemes. During review with irrigation officials, the Chief Minister, accompanied by ministers Devineni Umamaheswar Rao and Kalava Sreenivasulu, directed the engineers of HNSS Phase II to speed up ongoing works including Kuppam branch canal, Madakasira branch canal, Perur project and BT project. Mr Naidu was expected to open Madakasira branch canal during his visit. The opening has, however, been postponed till next month due to delay in the works. Naidu will take part in various programmes in Anantapur headquarters. It does not matter if Peoples Democratic Party leader Mehbooba Mufti and National Conferences Omar Abdullah, both former chief ministers of the state, forced the hand of Jammu and Kashmir governor Satyapal Malik to dissolve the Legislative Assembly and call for elections by coming together along with the Congress to stake claim to form the government. Peoples Conference leader Sajjad Lone with his two-member party staking the claim to form the government as well is a part of the democratic high jinks, and it need not be condemned. What is of real significance in the latest development in the politics of J&K is that everyone has allowed the democratic logic to prevail, which is what the people of the state need. If the BJP had played a shabby game by walking out of the coalition government led by Mehbooba Mufti, then Prime Minister Narendra Modis government has done the right political thing by first discontinuing the tradition of retired Army generals as governors in the state and appointing a politician, Satyapal Malik, to the post. Second, whether it was the idea of the governor or that of the Narendra Modi government, the decision to call for elections was the sensible thing to do. If it was the idea of Mr Malik, then the Central government has done well to accept his decision. If it was the result of the consultations between the governor and the Central government, it deserves two cheers. On the face of it, the BJP-led NDA government has displayed political maturity of a rare kind. It may be the calculation of the BJP that it would win Assembly seats in the Jammu and Ladakh regions, and that its inability to win in the Valley will further sharpen the divisions in the state, which will be to its advantage. It can be said that it is a cynical perspective, and that accentuating divisions and differences in the trouble-torn state is not a good thing for the state or for the country in the long term. The partys partisan politics, with its tinge of Hindutva, are par for the course as long as it follows the democratic pattern. Similarly, the PDP too might hope to win the Valley and not bother about the other two regions in the state. That leaves the National Conference and the Congress, with their claim to represent all the three regions, and this is partly reflected in the seats they have won last time around. It is anybodys guess as to the outcome of the Assembly elections, which will most likely be held along with the Lok Sabha elections next summer. But it is clear that the PDP-NC-Congress alliance cannot last after the elections in the state if it even continues till election time. Each one has to go their own way. Their coming together will polarise the political space in the state between them and the BJP. It is a situation that the BJP is most likely to welcome. It could also pave the way for the three-party alliance to score a combined victory in all the three regions of the state. If that is indeed the case, then the political dynamics in J&K will synchronise with that of many other states, especially in northern India. This alliance is not immutable, and either the PDP or NC could come together to form a government either in the state or at the Centre, or both. One of the great concerns of secular elements was that the presence of the BJP in the state government, and the deterioration of the political situation in the state, especially with the security forces high-handedness in dealing with the stone-throwing teenagers, has irreversibly alienated political players and the people in the state. There is a grain of truth in the view, but it is not the whole truth. Mehbooba Mufti, when she was in office, recognised the necessity to deal firmly, and sometimes even harshly, with people who take to the streets, and who use children as proxy agitators. The PDPs position on J&K, where it firmly believes Pakistan has to be one of the parties in the negotiations, is an indication that it is not a pro-India party in the way the NC is. But even the PDP, when in power, had no option but to say that violent protests cannot be the path to a solution of the Kashmir question. If only the political parties, whether regional ones like the PDP and NC, and national ones like the BJP and the Congress, with a stake in power games, do not endorse violence on the streets, then the position would not carry conviction or legitimacy. But it is the majority of the people in the state, and in the Valley in particular, who want political normality in state and who are not hung up on the existential question about the status of the state in relation to India and Pakistan. A majority of them want to get on with their lives, and the youth in the state are looking for economic opportunities that an economically burgeoning India holds out. The dominant political players cannot any more set the agenda for the people and the state. It is the people themselves who are going to determine their stakes and goals, and political parties will have to reflect the aspirations of the people. This is what the democratic process does. It empowers people in umpteen indirect ways. An election is a means for the people to say what they want, and political players, with their ears to the ground, have no option but to listen to them and to change their words and deeds. United States President Donald Trumps latest salvo against Pakistan is yet another reminder that the two countries already uneasy relationship is getting nastier. It was not the first time that the President launched an outrageous broadside but the response from a Pakistani leader has never been so candid. The war of tweets threatens to completely derail a faltering association. Intriguingly, the Trumpian invective came at a time when it seemed that the two estranged allies could still work together for a negotiated political solution to the Afghan crisis. A series of recent senior-level interactions had raised hopes that the rocky relationship could be stabilised. The latest spat has made it more difficult to maintain even the illusion of meaningful alignment. It was certainly not a spontaneous bout of rage that drove an impulsive US President to make such humiliating remarks; it was a well-thought-out move to increase the pressure on Islamabad. The first volley of words came during an interview with Fox News, when out of nowhere Trump blasted Pakistan for not doing a damn thing for the US, despite receiving billions of dollars in aid. He taunted Pakistan for sheltering Osama bin Laden and insinuated that the latters presence in a high-security zone was known to Pakistani officials. One wonders why this issue has been raised now, while forgetting that it was as much a failure of US intelligence that the most-wanted terrorist leader managed to escape from Afghanistan despite the presence of American forces there. Moreover, there is no acknowledgement by the American President of Pakistans role in destroying the Al Qaeda infrastructure in the region. Pakistan may be blamed for not taking action against some militants operating from its soil, but holding it responsible for the US military debacle in Afghanistan is extremely unfair. Surely, it was not the first time that a US official alleged that Pakistan was playing a double game; however, Trumps tenor is becoming increasingly strident. He was equally harsh in his New Year tweet in which he accused Pakistan of lying and being deceitful. The hostility had seemed to lessen a bit in the past months. That, perhaps, prompted Pakistans foreign minister to claim that the US was willing to reset ties with Pakistan. One wonders what caused Shah Mehmood Qureshi to believe that the Trump administration could change tack. The latest episode has shattered the myth that relations were getting back on track. The tough response from the Pakistani Prime Minister did not come as a surprise. Imran Khan has been known for his strong views on Pakistans post-9/11 alliance with the US and his fiery anti-American rhetoric. Yet one cannot agree more with the PM that the US needed to examine the reasons for its failure in Afghanistan. Instead of making Pakistan a scapegoat for their failures, the US should do a serious assessment of why, despite 140,000 Nato troops plus 250,000 Afghan troops and reportedly $1 trillion spent on war in Afghanistan, the Taliban today are stronger than before, Khan said in a tweet. He further noted that Pakistan had borne the brunt of the American-led war on terror. Trump, perhaps, did not expect such a lashing from Pakistans PM and his tenor got harsher in a spate of Twitter replies. The message was clear: the US would further toughen its stance towards Pakistan. Trumps South Asia policy has brought Pakistan-US ties to a new low. It is even worse than what it was in the 1990s when Pakistan was under all kinds of US sanctions. The interaction between the two countries has been reduced to a low official level though military-to-military contacts may still have survived. While the illusion of any strategic convergence has been absent for long, even a transactional relationship is now hard to maintain. It is apparent that Islamabad is no more dependent on US aid, and the latest American measures are not likely to force it to comply with the US demand, though Islamabad would need to take some action in its own interest against the militant groups allegedly operating from its soil. The recent hostility is unprecedented. Trumps demand for unquestionable compliance is unacceptable to Pakistan. The US policy of using pressure tactics to bring Pakistan to its knees has not worked, and the latest Twitter war between the two leaders would have further widened the trust deficit. However, there is still some convergence of interest between the two countries with regard to Afghanistan. Intriguingly, Trump chose to up the ante at a time when his administration is engaged in direct talks with the Afghan Taliban. The US authorities acknowledge that the role of Pakistan would be extremely critical in any Afghan peace process. Pakistan has long advocated a negotiated settlement for Afghanistan and has shown willingness to cooperate in the effort. Last month, Islamabad released a number of high-level Taliban prisoners, including the movements co-founder, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. These prisoner releases are widely seen as a US-directed move aimed at encouraging the Taliban to participate in the talks. The US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has already held two rounds of talks with the Afghan Taliban representatives in Doha. After three-day-long parleys at the Taliban political office last week, Khalilzad appeared cautiously optimistic about reaching a peace agreement with the Afghan insurgents by April next year. I am talking to all interested parties, all Afghan groups... and I think there is an opportunity for reconciliation and peace, he told a news conference in Kabul. Such optimism may be premature, but any breakthrough in the talks should be welcomed by Pakistan. Notwithstanding these tensions, there is still some convergence of interest between the two estranged allies when it comes to ending the war in Afghanistan. But Trumps war of words will not help the two sides work together. By arrangement with Dawn The excitement of elections in democracies comes from the uncertainty of their outcomes. The Bangladesh general election due on December 30 was till two weeks ago expected to comfortably return the ruling Awami League to power. Recently, however, a number of developments have upped the excitement. There should be no reason for the Awami League to be nervous. Under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, Bangladesh has attained a robust 7.86 per cent growth rate. She is contesting on her development record and showcasing her mega-projects from the Padma Bridge, the Metro Rail project for Dhaka, the four-lane Dhaka-Chittagong Expressway and the proposed Dhaka-Chittagong bullet train project to the second unit of the Rooppur nuclear power plant. Exports are up, and so are investments in health and welfare. She has also effectively hobbled the rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) by removing its star campaigner, Begum Khaleda Zia, from the scene. Her long jail term debars her from contesting. Her son, Tarique Rehman, is in self-imposed exile in London. For what it is worth, the two big regional players India and China both want continuity in Dhaka. Indias goals are primarily security-related while Chinas business interests are significant. Sheikh Hasina has pulled off an amazing balancing act with the two regional adversaries. So why is the Awami League worried? Contrary to its own expectations, the Opposition appears to be gaining momentum. The BNP has not only decided to fight the elections without its two top leaders in the fray, but it has been instrumental in forming a joint Opposition front, the Jatiya Oikya Front. Most of its 18 constituent parties have also agreed to contest on the BNPs election symbol. The coming together of the Opposition parties has lifted the electoral battle from being a narrow partisan contest between two ambitious women, to something much larger. The leaders of the front, from its chairman, former law minister and veteran politician Kamal Hossain, to renowned freedom fighter Tiger (Abdul Kader) Siddique, bring their personal reputations to the electoral contest. The Awami League is also worried by the unprecedented rush for BNP nominations. Such was the crowd of nomination seekers at the BNPs Naya Paltan head office that the police fired rubber bullets to control the crowd. The government is also accused of attempting to disrupt Tarique Rehmans Skype interviews with potential nomination seekers from London. The Election Commission has, however, refused to intervene in this matter. Meanwhile, the government has also continued to arrest Opposition activists despite the election process being under way. A BNP leader going to file his nomination from Jashore disappeared en route to Dhaka. His body was found floating in the Buriganga four days later. Corruption cases pending against some Opposition leaders have also been suddenly resuscitated. The Awami League perhaps hoped that the BNP would not contest the election without Begum Zia. The party had boycotted the last general election in 2014. But the party seems to have also realised that it is a make-or-break election for it and for Bangladesh as a multi-party democracy. It could also be deregistered by the Election Commission for boycotting two elections in a row. Not that it will be an easy election for the Opposition. In South Asia, the democratic Opposition is always suspicious of the governing party rigging elections in its favour. Yet these fears may be overblown in Bangladesh this time around. Widespread rigging will be especially difficult as polling will take place on a single day, December 30. There are 300 seats of the Jatiyo Sangshad (Parliament), with 44,000 polling centres spread across the country. Moreover, this time at least some of the polling will be done through electronic voting machines. To prevent polling irregularities, the Jatiya Oikya Front has asked its constituents to create local groups to guard polling booths in each constituency. Should the state machinery be overstretched on polling day, then any attempt by the ruling party to use its muscle power will be countered by peoples power. Another concern for the Opposition is the timing of the election. The results could be out as early as January 1, but the life of the Parliament will continue till January 28 since in Bangladesh it is not dissolved before the elections. Sheikh Hasinas incumbent government can carry on for a while even if the election results are adverse. Apprehensive of possible foul play by the Awami League in such a scenario, the Opposition wants to shorten the time period between the declaration of results and the swearing-in of the new government. However, the Election Commission has refused to postpone the polling. India is concerned that the BNP, if voted to power, will renew its alliance with remnants of the banned Jamaat-e-Islami, a pro-Pakistan outfit. The BNPs protestations to its friends in India that its electoral compulsions should not be conflated with hostility to India may not cut much ice. The BNP is expected to part with 40 to 60 seats to its alliance partners, including Jamaat sympathisers. This fear has been the Awami Leagues trump card with India. The fact, however, is that in a predominantly Muslim country there are bound to be Islamic parties. Both the BNP and the Awami League would want to attract their voter base. Moreover, the Awami League has left the BNP far behind in befriending Islamic parties by courting Hefazat-e-Islam and adopting a part of its Islamisation agenda. This includes the recognition of its Qawmi Madrasa degree Dawra-e-Hadith as equivalent to a masters in Islamic and Arabic studies to allow students with no modern education to join the civil service, revising school textbooks to remove secular content, removing an un-Islamic statue of the Goddess of Justice from the premises of the Supreme Court (relocated after popular protests) and lowering the marriageable age of girls to 16 years to appear Islam-friendly. The month of December will clearly be crucial for both the Awami League and the Opposition. However, the Awami League cannot be entirely sanguine about its prospects or its grip over the bureaucracy. Like the electorate, the behaviour of the state machinery would also depend on the direction of the wind. John Allen ChauJohn Allen Chau reached the remote area after buying the help of local fishermen, breaching the blanket security that should be around the Andamans. (Photo: Instagram/@Johnachau) The death of a missionary committed to proselytising Sentinelese tribals ended in tragedy with the American being shot with arrows and killed in North Sentinel Island on November 17. No human should meet such an end, even if its hard to empathise with anyone whose mission is to market his God to those who wish to be left to their own devices as an ancient tribe of hunter-gatherers. The Sentinelese, whose numbers have dwindled to near extinction, believe in a primitive life and speak their own language, totally shun modernity and avoid contact with other humans. There was little need for this young man to paddle his own kayak to North Sentinel Island to reach out to these tribals. John Allen Chau reached the remote area after buying the help of local fishermen, breaching the blanket security that should be around the Andamans. Given a scenario where the Indian government itself doesnt venture to this particular island, to have a missionary slipping past the Coast Guard is disappointing. Will modern humans stay away from them, so that they dont pass on the diseases and microbes in them to this antediluvian setting of around one score people? President Donald Trump is punctilious in following his dictum: if its findings do not suit him, the CIA is wrong. He wants a second opinion on the agencys finding that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman most likely ordered dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggis murder. His own interests are coming into conflict with his handpicked CIA director, Gina Haspel, elevated despite an outranged Congress opposing her appointment. Her record was so steeped in torture and rendition as to be totally in violation of American values. Mr Trump, who knows all about American values, muttered on Live TV torture works, torture works. Nobody should now be surprised if even Ms Haspel is eased out of Mr Trumps revolving door to make way for someone who values the national interest above the mere disposal of a dismembered body, dissolved in acid and flushed down the Saudi consul-generals commode in Istanbul. It would be rank bad manners to liken the US President to Caligula, but theres a difficulty finding other comparables. Mr Trumps project of making America great depends, among other forms of plunder, to depleting MBS billions in exchange for all the wondrous weaponry to pulverise Yemen and, of course, for the Armageddon with Iran. The Kurdish enclave abutting Turkey is, in MBS strategy, a sensitive pressure point on Syrias Bashar al-Assad. Every time Mr Trump threatens to withdraw from the enclave, MBS turns up with bags filled with billions. What a murder this has turned out to be. MBS is probably washing his hands in the perfumes of Arabia, like Lady Macbeth, and blabbering to himself: Who would have thought the man to have so much blood in him. The toll taken by Khashoggi is fairly comprehensive. Rearguard action has come from embattled Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. He has come out unambiguously in favour of MBS (as the Crown Prince is known), without making any pretence to cover up his guilt. Time was when MBS, Jared Kushner (the US Presidents son-in-law) and Mr Netanyahu were the worlds most formidable trio. Alongside Mr Kushner, Mr Netanyahu too has his financial deals under scrutiny. And after Khashoggi, the third figure in the trio, MBS, is tilting at the windmills. The media is loathe to dwell on such truths, but Bashar al-Assad, by comparison, is looking secure and composed. Mr Netanyahus public utterances also betray a high level of nervous anxiety. Mistakes may have been made, he says, but Saudi Arabia must remain stable for the stability of the region and the world. With these words he hurtled headlong into lethal airstrikes against Gaza as a diversionary tactic, on MBS advice. This strategy is the brainchild of the new emergency task force set up by the Royal Palace to protect MBS. Gaza, Palestine, West Bank these were the concerns Jamal Khashoggi was most passionate about when I interviewed him in Jeddah a few months after 9/11. In this, he wasnt different from Prince Turki al Faisal, the former Saudi ambassador in London and Washington, and the countrys intelligence chief until a few days before 9/11. I mention Prince Turki in the same sequence as Khashoggi was a spokesman for him. In other words, there are in the kingdom powerful people holding views opposed to MBS. To recap history In February 2011, King Abdullah came out of convalescence in Europe and rubbed his eyes in disbelief. He found an altered West Asia, his friends Hosni Mubarak, Zine El Abidin Ben Ali toppled in Cairo and Tunis by the Arab Spring. He swore that no monarchies or friendly dictatorships would now be allowed to fall. The US, Britain, France, Israel, Qatar and Turkey, ostensibly responding to the Saudi initiative, fell upon Syria. Each one of the participants listed here have faced reversals. MBS then dragged the US into a brutal war against the poorest Arab country, Yemen. Besides killing thousands of civilians including children and displacing millions, the four-year war has achieved nothing except benefiting the American and British war industry. The Saudis had boasted the Yemeni port of Hodeidah would be in their control. This would be a direct threat to Iranian ships passing through the Red Sea. The Iran-backed Houthis have doggedly held on to the port. And now MBS is on notice from a somewhat fatigued US to end the Yemen operations in weeks. Meanwhile, the much-touted deal of the century for Palestine remains a pipedream. It led to a scare in Amman as there is a subterranean Israeli dream to incorporate Jordan into a two-state solution. After the recent Merkel-Macron-Erdogan-Putin summit in Istanbul, MBS, Donald Trump and Europe have cause for worry. Basically, the two European leaders implored Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan not to allow European militants, holed up in Idlib, to return via Turkish territory. Remember $4 billion was transferred to the Turks earlier to compensate Ankara for keeping 3.5 million Syrian refugees. This time Mr Erdogan is bargaining differently. He will seek autonomy of action on how he handles the Idlib militants provided he has a free run of the Kurdish enclave adjacent to Idlib and the Turkish border. This is anathema to the Saudis and Mr Trump. The Kurds in this enclave are US and Saudi assets, a pressure point on Bashar al-Assad. But Mr Erdogan holds the aces at this point if he doesnt get the deal he wants he can open the sluice gates for the European militants to go home. A Europe in convulsions on the immigration issue would be in a frenzy if Mr Erdogan carries out his threat. As someone who has visited the region several times, I cannot help but wonder at the turn of events. It is astonishing that Mr Assad in Damascus, Hassan Rouhani in Tehran and Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and even Mr Erdogan and Qatar have emerged from the seven-year-long mayhem with only curable bruises. It seems all those who stood by MBS when he was the shining new star in the West Asian firmament are now distancing themselves from him, despite his incomparable oil wealth. Today, he is certainly not on the winning side. Once Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh faith, went to a village along with his lifelong Muslim companion, Mardana. The people of the village were very rude and did not offer them food or shelter. The next morning while leaving the village, the Guru blessed them, May you always remain in this village. Guru Nanak and Mardana went to another village where people were very affectionate and welcomed them with open arms. They offered them food and requested them to stay in the village. While leaving the village, the Guru bless-ed them, May the people of this village scatter and leave this village. Mardana was surprised by Gurus words. He asked the Guru that why did he bless those who did not offer any food and cursed those who ser-ved him well. Why did he wish them to leave their village? Guru Nanak replied that the inhabitants of the first village were not good. Wherever they go they will spread only bad and negative values so it is better they rema-in confined to their own village. On the other hand the people of the second village were kind and helpful. Wherever they go they will propagate only good deeds. Hence, it is desirable that they should scatter and make others adapt these good values. Guru Nanak always laid tremendous stress on the character of a person. He strongly believed that it did not matter to which religion one belonged, but what really mattered was truthful living. Ethical conduct is regarded as the only true foundation of human life. Guru Nanak, the first Guru of the Sikhs, was born in 1469 AD in Talwandi who emphasised on the oneness of God. There is but one almighty Ik Onkar. He is the creator as well as the creation, hence where does the question of differentiation arise? The supreme being is present in the highest as well as the lowest. Guru Nanak never gave sermons and never asked the people to believe anything blindly. He would question, he would analyse and set an example through a practical approach. Guru Nanaks faith is based on love and simplicity. Hence he emphasised on nam simran, sharing (vand-chhakna) and honest labour (kirat-karni) along with seva or service. A Sikh must work to earn his living, share with others and always remember Waheguru. In 2018, Huawei-owned Honor has been on a roll and has been launching products that have received favourable reviews. It appears that Honors strategy to launch great handsets at attractive prices on a regular basis is to get as much penetration in the market as possible. And, this seems to be working in their favour. Now, Honor is all set to launch a follow-up to the Honor 7C in the form of the 8C and have announced that it will be an Amazon exclusive. As of now, there is absolutely no pricing available but the handset has been made available in China with the 4GB + 32GB version retailing for CNY 1,099 (about Rs 12,000) while the higher-end variant which packs 4GB RAM and 64GB storage costs CNY 1,399 (approximately Rs 15,000). Based on the prices available for China, we can expect Honor to price it similarly in India. The Honor 8C will come with a 6.26-inch IPS HD+ display and sport a resolution of 1520 x 720 pixels while featuring an aspect ratio of 19:9. This handset will be powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 SoC and as mentioned earlier, it will be paired with 4GB of RAM and 32/64GB of storage. This storage is expandable a further 256GB more by way of a microSD card slot. As far as optics go, the handset comes with a 13MP rear sensor featuring a f/1.8 aperture alongside a 2MP sensor with an aperture value of f/2.4. The front-facing selfie camera is rated at 8MP and comes with a soft LED flash paired with AI capabilities. Additionally, Honor has also thrown in AR enhancements such as filters in its camera app. The software found here is Android 8.1 Oreo with the EMUI 8.2 skin and the handset is kept alive by a 4000mAh battery. 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 compound of the Chinese Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan on Friday. (Photo: AP) Karachi: Three unidentified gunmen were killed by Pakistan security forces in an incident of firing near the Chinese Consulate in Karachi's Clifton area on Friday morning, reported Pakistan channel Geo TV quoting Karachi police chief. Geo TV also reported that a gunman's suicide vest had been recovered. Two Pakistani policemen were also killed and a security guard wounded during the attack, a doctor told Reuters. According to media reports, a blast and gunshots were heard. However, the motive of the attack is not clear or how close the gunshots were to the consulate. Geo TV broadcast images of a plume of smoke billowing into the air, apparently from the blast earlier. Roads leading to the Chinese consulate were cordoned off and the staff inside the Chinese consulate were evacuated to safety, Geo TV reported quoting security sources. South Korean officials on Thursday began to dismantle the country's largest canine slaughterhouse complex, as animal rights activists push to end the custom of eating dog meat. About one million dogs are eaten a year in South Korea, often as a summertime delicacy with the greasy red meat -- invariably boiled for tenderness -- believed to increase energy. But the tradition has earned criticism abroad and has declined as the nation increasingly embraces the idea of dogs as pets instead of livestock, with eating them now something of a taboo among young South Koreans. The Taepyeong-dong complex in Seongnam city, south of Seoul, housed at least six dog slaughterhouses that could hold several hundred animals at a time, and was a major source for dog meat restaurants across the country. It will be cleared over two days and transformed into a public park, Seongnam city officials said. Slaughterhouse operators reportedly used the site for decades without proper authorisations, and after a years-long legal battle a Seoul court ruled the city council could force out the businesses. Animal rights campaigners slammed the operators for mistreating dogs and killing them cruelly -- including electrocuting them before butchering them in the sight of other caged dogs. Activists found electrocution equipment in the complex and a pile of dead dogs abandoned on the floor when they visited the site on Thursday, according to US animal rights group Humane Society International. "This is a historic moment," Korean Animal Rights Advocates (KARA) said in a blog post. "It will open the door for more closures of dog meat slaughterhouses across the country, expediting the decline of the overall dog meat industry." According to a survey last year, 70 percent of South Koreans do not eat dogs, but far fewer -- about 40 percent -- believe the practice should be banned. It also found 65 percent support raising and slaughtering dogs in more humane conditions. There are currently no laws on how to treat or slaughter canines for meat in South Korea. While farmers have urged Seoul to include dogs under livestock welfare regulations, animal rights groups oppose doing so, seeking complete abolition instead. The Bhopal gas tragedy is an issue that no political party is willing to discuss nor does it find any mention in any partys manifesto, speeches or pamphlets. But even after 34 years, it haunts leaders as election campaign reaches a crescendo. On Thursday night a poster of a blinded girl child greeted Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan when he began his roadshow from DIG bungalow locality in Bhopal to seek votes for the BJPs lone candidate, Fatima Rasool Siddiqui. The poster, which also had two huge pictures of Chouhan, was a jarring reminder of the conflicting priorities. Jo muaawaja dilayega, vote wahi le jaayega; Bhopal gas piditon ki awaaj, pahle muaawaja phir party (Only one who gets us compensation will get votes; first compensation then the party is the call of Bhopal gas victims)," the poster read. Poster of Bhopal Gas Tragedy victims seeking compensation at the venue in Bhopal where CM Shivraj Chouhan began his road show on Thursday night. (DH Photo/Anand Mishra) The same day, leaders of four organisations of survivors of the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal held a press conference charging Minister of Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation, Vishwash Sarang, of deliberate inaction on the issue of criminal liability of Union Carbide Corporation (UCC). The organisationsBhopal Group for Information and Action, Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha, Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmchari Sangh and Children against Dow Carbide - alleged that not a single step has been taken by the minister in the last eight months to prevent UCC from escaping criminal liability for the disaster in 1984 that as per official records killed over 3700 people. Satinath Sarangi of Bhopal Group for Information and Action blames both the Congress and the BJP governments in the state for the apathy. Arjun Singh was the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh and Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister of India at the time of the incident. The organisations said that the Union Carbide Corporation, that is charged with culpable homicide and other grave offences, is fully owned by Dow Chemicals since 2001. Last year, Dow Chemicals merged with DuPont Inc and in February this year, Dow-DuPont Inc has announced plans to trifurcate in a manner that makes Union Carbide disappear after June 2019. While the Congress governments colluded with Union Carbide in the earlier phase of the Bhopal disaster, in the later years, the BJP governments outdid it. Since the BJP came to power at the Centre, five notices sent by the Bhopal District Court asking Dow Chemicals to explain why it is not making Union Carbide appear in the on-going criminal case on the disaster have been ignored. Nawab Khan, president of Bhopal Gas Pidit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha, says, By failing to act against the imminent disappearance of UCC, the BJP governments at the state and the Centre are repeating what they accuse the Congress party of. Our letter to the CBI, the prosecutors in the criminal case, got forwarded to the local police station. It is like history is repeating itself as farce. Meanwhile, several victims, backed by the organisations, have decided to seek written assurances from the candidates of various parties that they would ensure proper compensation. The compensation we got is a farce. As many as 94% victims have been paid only Rs 25,000 as compensation as they were declared temporarily injured and also because they went to a hospital only for a day. We are telling the victims that as voting is your right, so is compensation. Use your right to vote to get your right to compensation. There are 5.74 lakh victims and this is a huge number even electorally, the activists say. In some localities like JP Nagar, Blue Moon Colony, Kachchi Chhola and Cholla, women have come out in protests and asked for written assurances from candidates. Leaflets have also been distributed in some localities. And the politicians are also making promises as elections are around the corner. ALSO READ: Will Sartaj get the taj Campaigns: Eggs, chillies, Singham and Bahubali India issued a demarche to Pakistan on Friday protesting harassment of its consular officials who were not allowed to meet Indian Sikh pilgrims visiting two shrines in the neighbouring country on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. New Delhi alleged that Pakistan Government officials on Wednesday and Thursday had not allowed consular officials of the High Commission of India in Islamabad to meet Indian Sikh pilgrims visiting the Gurudwara Janam Asthan at Nankana Sahib and Gurudwara Sachcha Sauda at Farooqabad near Lahore in the neighbouring country. New Delhi issued the demarche to Islamabad just a day after the two neighbouring nations vied to claim credit for making the first move to set up corridors for Indian Sikh pilgrims to visit Gurudwara Darbar Sahib at Guru Nanaks final resting place in Kartarpur in Pakistan on the occasion of the 550th birth anniversary of the first Sikh Guru. Pakistan issued visas to over 3800 Sikh pilgrims from India to visit the shrines in the neighbouring country on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. The Gurudwara Janam Asthan is among the holiest for the Sikhs as it marks the place where the founder of Sikhism was born on November 29 in 1469 and started preaching. The Gurudwara Sachcha Sauda too has a special place in the history of Sikhism as it came up on the place where Guru Nanak fed some hungry ascetics. Islamabad issued visas to Indian Sikh pilgrims to visit the Gurudwaras in Pakistan in accordance with the 1974 bilateral protocol on visit to religious shrines. The Pakistan Government officials however denied consular officials of High Commission of India in Islamabad access to the shrines. As a result of such harassment, they were compelled to return to Islamabad without performing their diplomatic and consular duties vis-a-vis Indian pilgrims, the Ministry of External Affairs said in a press-release on Friday. We have shared our grave concern that this is the third consecutive visit of the Indian Sikh pilgrims when Pakistan has prevented the Indian High Commission officials from meeting the visiting Indian nationals on the pretext of security, MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said. New Delhi accused Islamabad of international legal instruments and conventions like the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961 and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963. This is also in breach of the letter and spirit of the 1974 Bilateral Protocol on visit to religious shrines and the Code of Conduct for the treatment of diplomatic or consular personnel in India and Pakistan, 1992, said the MEA spokesperson. New Delhi reminded Islamabad that the way consular officials of the High Commission of India in Pakistan had been denied access to the pilgrims from India was in contrast to the treatment met out to the High Commissioner of Pakistan in New Delhi and his consular officials who have been provided full access to meet the Pakistani pilgrims who are currently in India on pilgrimage to Kalyar Sharif. What also irked New Delhi are the reports that some posters criticizing Government of India and calling for secession of Khalistan from India have been put up around the Gurudwara Nankana Sahib ahead of the visits of the pilgrims from India. We have also expressed grave concern at the reports of attempts being made during the ongoing visit of the Indian pilgrims to Pakistan, to incite communal disharmony and intolerance and promote secessionist tendencies with the objective of undermining Indias sovereignty and territorial integrity, the MEA stated. New Delhi called upon Islamabad to take all measures to not allow its territory to be used for any hostile propaganda and support for secessionist tendencies against India in keeping with the commitments made under the Simla Agreement, 1972 and endorsed in the Lahore Declaration, 1999. Pakistan has been reminded that such actions are not in consonance with the stated intentions of Pakistan to facilitate the visits of Indian Sikh pilgrims, especially as we commemorate the 550th Birth Anniversary of Guru Nanak Devji, said Kumar. A day after recording the statement of a chief investigating officer in the Sohrabuddin Shaikh and Tulsiram Prajapati alleged fake encounter cases, the prosecution said on Thursday that it was closing its case. Special prosecutor B P Raju informed trial court judge S J Sharma here that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has completed the examination of all its witnesses. The prosecution examined 210 witnesses, of which 92 turned hostile. Its last witnesses were chief investigating officers Amitabh Chaudhary and Sandeep Tamgadge. Besides, the CBI examined about 40 other officials. Other key witnesses included Sohrabuddins brother Rubabuddin Shaikh and Azam Khan, an associate of Sohrabuddin and Tulsiram. Sohrabuddin Shaikh, a suspected gangster with terror links, was shot dead on November 26, 2005 while he was in the custody of Gujarat Police in an alleged fake encounter. His wife Kausar Bi was allegedly killed later. Prajapati, an aide of Shaikh who was said to be a witness to the encounter, was allegedly killed by Gujarat and Rajasthan police officials at Chapri in Gujarats Banaskantha district in December 2006. Of the 38 people charged by the CBI for the alleged fake encounters, 15, including BJP chief Amit Shah (who was minister of state for home in Gujarat then) and all senior police officials have been discharged. The judge will now examine the accused under Section 313 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Under this provision, the accused can personally explain any circumstances appearing in the evidence against him or her. Top Lashkar-e-Toiba commander Azad Malik, whom police claim was involved in the assassination of journalist Shujaat Bukhari, was among six militants killed in a gunfight with security forces in Bijbehara area of south Kashmir's Anantnag district on Friday. Police said the gunfight erupted during the wee hours in Sekipora village of Bijbehara, 50 kilometres from Srinagar, after the Army's 3 Rashtriya Rifles (RR), paramilitary CRPF and J&K police launched a cordon-and-search-operation (CASO) in the area, following specific information about the presence of a group of militants there. As the searches were going on, the search party was fired upon by the militants. The fire was retaliated leading to a gunfight. In the process, six Lashkar-e-Toiba militants were killed, and the bodies were retrieved from the site of the encounter, a police spokesperson said. Incriminating material including a huge quantity of arms and ammunition were recovered from the site of the encounter. All the terrorists were killed without any collateral damage. It was one of the most successful operations in recent years, he added. Two among the slain militants were identified as Azad Malik alias Dada and his associate Basit Mir. Police had accused Malik along with Naveed Jatt, a commander of LeT from Pakistan, of killing Shujaat Bukhari in Srinagars Press Enclave on June 14 this year. As a precautionary measure, authorities suspended mobile internet services in Anantnag. The killings triggered violent protests in parts of Anantnag district. Reports said that people took to the streets in Shalgund-Kanelwan village of Dachnipora belt of Bibehara where the gunfight took place earlier today. The valley has been witnessing a spurt in militant activities for the past few months. On Tuesday, four Hizbul Mujahideen militants and an Army paratrooper were killed in an encounter at Nadigam village of southern Shopian district. On November 18, two militants associated with Al-Badr outfit were killed in an encounter in Rebban area of Shopian. On the same day, a paramilitary personnel was killed after militants opened fire on a CRPF camp at Railway Colony in Pulwama's Kakapora area. Over 200 militants have been killed in Kashmir this year while 217 ultras were killed in 2017 which was the highest in the last nine years. However, despite an increase in encounters and militant killings, the Army maintains that recruitment of local youth into militancy has seen a decline in Kashmir during recent months. The recruitment of local youth into militant outfits has been persistent during past couple of years. However, we have seen a drop in it (recruitment) in the past two months, General-officer-Commanding (GoC) of Srinagar-based 15 Corps, Lt Gen A K Bhatt, recently said. Also read: Hizbul chief's pic near clock tower goes viral A 28-year-old worker with the SRM University on the outskirts of the city was arrested on Friday for allegedly masturbating before a girl student, hours after hundreds of students protested against the incident that took place inside the campus. S Arjuna, who was hired recently to clear waste food from the hostel mess, allegedly masturbated before a second-year undergraduate student inside an elevator in the university campus on Thursday evening. Though the girl student, according to students in the university, complained to the warden immediately, the administration kept quiet till the inmates erupted in protest. N Sethuraman, Registrar, SRM Institute of Science and Technology (SRMIST), said while the accused was arrested following a complaint, the warden has been placed under suspension. The culprit in question was an outsourced contractual employee who collects food waste from the mess. Having circumvented basic security provisions, he was in the lift when the incident occurred. As the hostel is well equipped with CCTV, it helped us identify the culprit quickly," he said in a statement. Admitting that there was a "slight delay" in filing a police complaint, he said a committee has been commissioned to look into the issue and strengthening the students' safety and security measures on the campus. Students close to the victim said the girl had taken the elevator along with the alleged accused at 4 pm on Thursday evening. They said while the victim wanted to go to the fourth floor, the man pressed the button to go to sixth floor. But he indulged in sexually inappropriate behaviour before her and stopped the lift only after the student screamed, a student said. Students who had protested inside the campus on Thursday night alleged that the warden and administration have blamed their dress instead of acting against the accused. The students had assembled in the hostel premises on Thursday night and held protest for a few hours. Police said Arjuna, who hails from a near-by village, was arrested on Friday morning based on a complaint from the university authorities. Sugar factory owners have sought time to amicably resolve the issue over the settlement of dues with farmers. This was the only conclusion that came out of Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamys four-hour-long meet with them on Thursday. Kumaraswamy held closed-door talks with owners of 31 sugar factories, which included former ministers S R Patil, Satish Jarkiholi, Murugesh Nirani, Umesh Katti, Balachandra Jarkiholi and a representative of the South Indian Federation of Sugar Factory Owners. This, even as a section of sugarcane farmers continued their protest in Belagavi. As per government records, sugar factories owe farmers Rs 35.67 crore based on last years fair and remunerative price (FRP) of Rs 2,550 per tonne. However, farmers say the dues are as high as Rs 450 crore as factories had not honoured oral price agreements. WATCH | Karnataka's sugarcane crisis explained Kumaraswamy asked the factories to settle the matter before the start of the winter session of the legislature in Belagavi on December 10. He insisted that factories had to pay whatever price that they agreed upon with farmers. The sugar barons explained their hardships, especially how the per-kg sugar price plummeted last year. The chief minister was also told that they had requested the Centre to set up a Sugar Stability Fund to help cover losses. Most factories in Belagavi district have paid farmers more than the FRP. However, nine factories have matched the FRP, but not the price that they had agreed to pay farmers. These owners said they would talk to farmers and settle the matter amicably. Sugar factories in Bagalkot district have agreed to pay farmers Rs 2,250 per tonne, excluding Rs 650 towards transportation and harvesting. All factories have told the chief minister that they will check their financial position and get back to him on settling the dues. The issue will need 15 days to get resolved. It will have to be resolved amongst factories and the farmers only, said Balachandra Jarkiholi, who runs the Ghataprabha Cooperative Sugar Factory in Belagavi. Kumaraswamy directed the factories to stick to the FRP of Rs 2,750 per tonne fixed for the standing sugarcane crop this year, to which factories agreed. Going forward, all factories must arrive at a consensus and fix a price that works for all. Competing with each other by offering farmers varied prices will result in this problem every year, Balachandra said. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 23) There was a plan to send a contingent of the Philippine Navy to Scarborough Shoal in 2016, but President Rodrigo Duterte warned against "overly celebrating" the Philippines' victory in the arbitration case against China. This was revealed by Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana in a forum on Friday. "A week before the ruling was announced, I got this call from [then] Defense Secretary (Ashton Carter) from the U.S. and what he said was the ruling will come out soon and we think it is in your favor. Please exercise restraint," Lorenzana recalled. He said the U.S. call for caution was "very significant." What he did next was to plan to retake Scarborough Shoal, also known as Panatag Shoal, one of the islets and reefs in the South China Sea that lie within the country's 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The Philippines lost control over Scarborough after a 2012 standoff with China, prompting Manila to file a case for international arbitration. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague largely recognized the Philippines' sovereign rights in its EEZ. But it did not rule on which country has sovereignty over Scarborough Shoal, which lies about 120 nautical miles off Zambales. It said because Scarborough is above water only at high tide, it generates an entitlement to a territorial sea, but not to an exclusive economic zone -- favoring a Philippine position. The ruling also recognized it as a common traditional fishing ground, and said China interfered with Filipinos' right to fish there by restricting access. China rejects the arbitral ruling and stands by its sweeping claim to almost the entire South China Sea. "So I talked to the Philippine Navy and asked them if we can field a small force maybe if we can drive away the Chinese then we can recover Scarborough Shoal," Lorenzana said. He did not explicitly say if he called off the plan to send forces to Scarborough, but recounted how Duterte asked Cabinet officials to keep the celebration down - to avoid tensions with China. "When this arbitral ruling was about to be announced, we were all in Malacanang. All the Cabinet members, we were there. So when it finally came out we had this meeting with the President. And it was decided that, he called it, 'let us do a soft landing and we should not be overly celebrating, because we might offend China'," Lorenzana said. He said this was the reason why then Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay "did not appear victorious" when he announced the international tribunal's decision. Critics slammed the Duterte administration for not rejoicing over the ruling. It was Duterte's first month in office. The President himself later declared that he will "set aside the arbitral ruling" and "will not impose anything on China." He also said the Philippines cannot afford to go to war against the East Asian giant, but promised to bring the ruling up with Beijing within his term, which ends 2022. Lorenzana: Only history can tell if Duterte's right Senator Koko Pimentel, a Duterte ally, said it was "a good call" by the President not to deploy troops to the contested waters after winning the arbitration case. "It was an understandable judgment call on the part of Pres. Duterte to show 'magnanimity in victory' and not do anything which might be misinterpreted by the other party as either a provocation or an attempt to enforce the decision," Pimentel said in a statement. "Otherwise tensions might have escalated to beyond a controllable point." Meanwhile, Lorenzana said "only history will judge" if the President's actions in the sea dispute were "the prudent ones" to take. Duterte draws flak for pursuing friendlier ties with China, which is now in talks with the government for a joint oil and gas exploration. The memorandum of understanding signed by the Philippines and China says it "will be without prejudice to the respective legal positions of both governments," but it has not specified where the development would be. SALT LAKE CITY The "t" in LGBT rights will be in the spotlight in 2019, as state lawmakers and courts across the country debate transgender rights and their impact on religious groups. Religious freedom advocates and LGBT rights activists say they want to avoid the acrimonious battles that often accompanied the national debate over same-sex marriage, which are still ongoing, and find ways to work together. But the two groups remain divided on the value of religious exemptions to civil rights laws and many people of faith argue the concept of gender identity isn't compatible with their faith. Four in 10 Christians say "society has 'gone too far' in accepting transgender people," according to Pew Research Center. "To scriptural literalists, transgender people are saying, 'I was created in the wrong body.' That asks someone who believes in the perfection of God's creation to accept that God made a mistake," said Rabbi Jack Moline, president of Interfaith Alliance, an organization that advocates for the freedom of conscience and separation of religion and government. Already, religious business owners and faith-based nonprofits have cited conscience rights to defend against allegations of transgender discrimination. Members of the LGBT community, as well as their supporters, argue that religious freedom doesn't include a right to discriminate, which complicates efforts to craft legislation protecting transgender people and conservative believers at the same time. Reducing conflict between the LGBT community and conservative people of faith and reaching compromises will be difficult, but a growing group of leaders is committed to the task, said Naomi Goldberg, policy and research director for the Movement Advancement Project, an independent think tank that does research and advocacy work on LGBT rights. "There's a lot of work being done in communities by people who are transgender. They're explaining what that means. In communities of faith, red states and blue states, there's a lot of really great work happening," she said. Legal and legislative trends Like gays and lesbians, one of the core concerns of the transgender community is securing nondiscrimination protections, LGBT rights activists said. So far, 20 states have passed legislation prohibiting gender identity discrimination in housing, hiring and public accommodations, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy organization focused on securing civil rights for the LGBT community. Utah prohibits it in housing and hiring. In 2018, 17 states considered 37 bills aimed at expanding nondiscrimination protections for the LGBT community, according to a Deseret News analysis. Only one bill passed, but supporters are going to keep trying, said Logan Casey, who works with Goldberg at the Movement Advancement Project. "People are supporting and passing nondiscrimination ordinances at the local level and state level," he said. "That's an ongoing effort." What complicates these policy efforts is that the concept of gender identity is relatively new in the legal and legislative world, noted Tim Schultz, president of the 1st Amendment Partnership. "Public policy has well-developed ways of thinking about sexual orientation. We have had related laws since the 1980s at least. Culturally, legally, we have ways of thinking about it. With gender identity we don't have the same extensive legal and cultural history," he said. For example, after the Obama administration released a "Dear Colleague" letter in May 2016 instructing schools to "treat students consistent with their gender identity," educators struggled to determine which students counted as transgender under the guidelines. Before such questions could be answered, President Donald Trump took office and rescinded the policy. Another challenge is that legal experts don't agree on what protections already exist. Groups like the ACLU, as well as members of the Obama administration, believe that federal statutes prohibiting sex discrimination, such as Title IX, also protect against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination. The Trump administration says those statutes can only be narrowly applied. "In October of 2017, (then-Attorney General) Jeff Sessions put out a memo directing Justice Department lawyers not to take the position that transgender discrimination is a form of sex discrimination," said Ria Tabacoo Mar, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU. The Supreme Court could rule on the scope of federal sex discrimination laws as soon as this term. On Friday, justices will meet to consider whether to hear one or more of three cases on this issue. R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission involves an allegation of transgender discrimination. Religious conflict Despite these complications, transgender rights advocates believe they've got momentum on their side. On Election Day, the LGBT community celebrated a win in Massachusetts, where two-thirds of voters said yes to Question 3, upholding gender identity nondiscrimination protections in public accommodations. This outcome is the latest in a series of legislative and legal victories, said Casey, who is a policy researcher. "Voters are affirming that they support transgender protections at the local and state level," he said. Voters are affirming that they support transgender protections at the local and state level. Logan Casey, who works with Goldberg at the Movement Advancement Project Although advancing LGBT rights is generally thought to be a liberal cause, Republican lawmakers have started joining with Democrats in some states to craft new protections for the transgender community. New Hampshire, which has a Republican-controlled legislature and a Republican governor, passed a law adding gender identity to its list of protected characteristics. "There are always going to be partisan differences on the issue. But, for the most part, what we're seeing is growing agreement in public opinion that LGBT protections are good for the country," Casey said. Overall, 4 in 10 U.S. adults say society has "not gone far enough" in accepting people who are transgender, according to Pew Research Center. Half of Americans (53 percent) oppose laws requiring transgender people to use the bathrooms that correspond to their sex at birth, Public Religion Research Institute reported in 2017. Although religious leaders were among the supporters of Question 3 in Massachusetts, many people of faith still struggle with the concept of gender identity, as Rabbi Moline noted. Only 28 percent of Christians say society has "not gone far enough" in accepting the transgender community, compared to 57 percent of religiously unaffiliated Americans, Pew reported. Gender identity is a theologically challenging concept, Rabbi Moline said. Conservative believers argue that God created the categories of male and female and that human beings have no right to blur the lines between them. "Every human being knows that there are important, and necessary, differences between men and women. Without such recognition, women are harmed and men are coarsened," wrote Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, last year. These religious teachings have come up in transgender discrimination cases. In its federal appeal, the owners of R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes argued that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act protected their ability to fire a transgender worker. But the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the claim, writing that accommodating a transgender worker does not substantially burden religious beliefs, that the government has a compelling interest in ending transgender discrimination and that there is no less restrictive means by which to protect transgender workers. In their appeal to the Supreme Court, attorneys for R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes narrowed the scope of their arguments, focusing on how to interpret Title VII, which prohibits employment discrimination. They argue that sex discrimination does not include gender identity discrimination. More recently, the Hope Center, a faith-based social services agency in Anchorage, Alaska, made a more compelling religious freedom argument in a federal lawsuit against the city's Equal Rights Commission, which is in the process of determining whether the Hope Center violated the law by turning a transgender woman away from their women's shelter. "Anchorage has come after the Hope Center and is now telling them they have to allow biological men into a women's-only shelter, even though doing so would be traumatic" for other clients, said Kate Anderson, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, the prominent religious liberty law firm representing the center. The freedom of religion is something we all care about very deeply. But the freedom of religion is different than the harms that come from religious exemption laws. Logan Casey, who works with Goldberg at the Movement Advancement Project Last year's legislative push to expand LGBT rights was mirrored by an effort to expand protections for conservative religious Americans, according to the Deseret News analysis. Six states considered bills that would prevent the government from penalizing people of faith who violated LGBT nondiscrimination laws. These bills, like most of the proposed LGBT rights protections, addressed the needs of one community, while mostly ignoring the needs of others. In 2015, Utah showed it's possible to bring conservative religious groups and LGBT rights activists together and work out a compromise, but few states have tried to follow its lead. Religious freedom advocates like Schultz believe balanced legislation aimed at protecting religious conservatives and members of the LGBT community at the same time can reduce the likelihood of lawsuits. However, religious exemptions are a hard sell for the LGBT community, as they have been since the legalization of same-sex marriage. "The freedom of religion is something we all care about very deeply," Casey said. "But the freedom of religion is different than the harms that come from religious exemption laws." He and Goldberg said religious exemptions to general laws hurt more than just the LGBT community, citing a recent conflict over faith-based adoption agencies in South Carolina seeking a right to only work with couples who share their religious beliefs. If the federal government protects the faith-based agencies, Jewish or Muslim parents could have as much trouble as gay parents finding an agency that wants to work with them, they said. Building understanding Even if legal and legislative clashes over transgender protections can't be avoided, LGBT and religious rights activists hope future debates will be more civil than battles over the rights of gays and lesbians. Some religious conservatives once villainized the gay community as "deviants and perverts" who didn't deserve a say in legislation, as the Deseret News reported in 2017. Rabbi Moline's organization released a statement in October defending transgender Americans after The New York Times reported the Trump administration was considering making gender unchangeable under the law. One of their goals is to "change the tone" of religious freedom debates, he said. "We can show the healing power of religion in society as opposed to the dividing power of religion," Rabbi Moline said. More conservative religious groups have also called for respect for transgender men and women. But sometimes it's done in a way that, counterintuitively, could lead to more outrage. Once I knew (transgender) people, thinking about them as children of God in the same way I think of myself and my family members was a no-brainer. Rabbi Jack Moline, president of Interfaith Alliance For example, in 2017, Moore wrote, "We should never mock or belittle those suffering gender identity disorders. These are our neighbors to be respected and served, not freaks to be despised." Transgender rights advocates have fought against using words like "disorder" to describe the experiences of transgender men and women. Rabbi Moline expects faith groups' approach to transgender issues to grow more nuanced as they learn more about the community's experiences. He went through this kind of evolution himself. "Once I knew (transgender) people, thinking about them as children of God in the same way I think of myself and my family members was a no-brainer," he said. Currently, only 21 percent of U.S. adults have a close friend or family member who is transgender, compared to 70 percent who are close to someone who is gay, according to Public Religion Research Institute. Members of the transgender community will become more visible in the months ahead, as they fight for new legislative and legal protections, Goldberg said. "More transgender people are sharing their lives and sharing what it means to be transgender with the public and with their communities," she said. "I think that builds understanding." OXFORD, England Three Protestant leaders were burned at the stake here after a "theological conversation" at the 1,000-year-old University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in 1555. The martyrs' deaths are memorialized by a stone cross set in the road on Oxford's Broad Street. An important Anglican chaplain mentioned that history Thursday during his unique public conversation with a Latter-day Saint apostle at the same church. "I hope that the outcome today will be a lot better for all of us," joked the Rev. Dr. Andrew Teal, chaplain and lecturer at Pembroke College. It was. The 90-minute conversation ended with Rev. Teal warmly embracing Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Standing between old stone walls on creaking wooden floors in the very room where Oxfam was founded in 1942, the two leaders plainly deepened a budding friendship. They found common ground, explored their ideas about frontier spirituality and discussed points of doctrine about the Trinity, temples, dancing, baptism for the dead, the Fall and priesthood ordination in an intimate back-and-forth before a full room of 50 theology faculty and students, the public and local Latter-day Saints. "There are lots of things to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day," Rev. Teal said to Elder Holland as day turned to night and the windows fogged. "It's fantastic to have you here." The beginnings of University Church date back more than 1,000 years. The room for Thursday's meeting once housed the first library at Oxford, the oldest university in the English-speaking world. Methodist founder John Wesley preached here. Legendary Anglican-turned-Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman was the vicar here when Joseph Smith organized The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830. Elder Holland delivered a candid explanation of Latter-day Saint theology that had echoes to his visit to the seat of British government on Wednesday. An online description of the sacred texts available for swearing in new members of the British Parliament lists a "Mormon Bible," a mistaken and anachronistic term for the Book of Mormon that would alternately amuse, frustrate or offend Latter-day Saints. Elder Holland visited the clerk who oversees the texts on Wednesday and presented her with a new, leatherbound copy of the book for the collection, a step toward clearing up confusion about the faith in the United Kingdom, where it has 186,000 members. On Thursday, he delivered a rousing defense of the Book of Mormon at Oxford, which has produced a dozen Catholic saints, 19 English cardinals and 20 archbishops of Canterbury. He said Latter-day Saints differ from 4th- and 5th-century Christianity in their belief in the teaching of Moses that "my works are without end, and my words never cease." "I, for one, would feel to walk on hot lava and chew broken glass," he said, "if I could find a document, any document anywhere, containing any new words of Christ 50 words, 20 words, one new word from the Son of God let alone hundreds of pages that record the appearance, teachings, covenants and counsel he gave to a heretofore unknown audience." He referred to the Fall as fortunate and redemption as universally inclusive, which led to follow-up questions from Rev. Teal about the Fall as an educational step and about baptism for the dead. Rev. Teal noted that the Oxford Movement, propelled by Newman in the very church where they stood Thursday, called for prayers for the dead. "Everyone is covered," Elder Holland said, "though it remains to be seen whether everyone cares. But if there is a failure to respond, it will not be because God did not try and Christ did not come. That is at the heart of what I have been introducing to you as the restored gospel." Rev. Teal, clearly interested in the persecutions of early Latter-day Saints, said humans are naturally "frontier creatures" and asked Elder Holland about "frontier spirituality." Elder Holland said his faith's pioneer heritage "had a binding, covenantal impact on us," creating an early heritage of service, care and watching out for each other as the pioneers were driving literally across the United States and eventually its borders. He described additional differences with creedal Christianity. "Restored Christianity," he said, is about the ancient church in what he called its New Testament purity: "So, if one means Greek-influenced, council-convening, philosophy-flavored Christianity of post-apostolic times, we are not that kind of Christian." He said God and Christ are separate, distinct beings "as all fathers and sons are" and said divine priesthood authority is "our most distinguishing feature." Rev. Teal responded by calling the Christian journey one with real tensions but said, "We are both determined to be aware that our history should not collapse into categories in which we label each other as distant." Elder Holland agreed: "We've let some differences, significant differences, get in the way of a larger, warmer, wonderful conversation." He praised Rev. Teal, who told the Deseret News that he has watched many of his new friend's talks online, for his preparation, saying he already knew more about Latter-day Saint theology than many of the faith's members. "I find him a wholesome, faithful and inspiring man," Rev. Teal told the Deseret News, "indeed, 'great' but lacking all pomposity of grandeur I love his humor and really respond to the 'gift of tears' which he so often receives and unashamedly shares. I hope that this is the start of a fruitful friendship." Rev. Teal, who became friends with Elder Holland's son Matthew Holland during the younger Holland's sabbatical at Oxford last year, said he intended Thursday's dialogue to increase collaborative understanding. "We need each others eyes to see ourselves," he said. "Theres something lively going on." He told the Deseret News he had a specific goal in mind. "Might it be possible to listen carefully, attentively and respectfully, to ask questions with integrity and intellectual honesty of one another, without defensiveness or tribalism?" he said in an email. "Well, only friends would know! I do hope that this is foundational in an appreciative understanding of the contribution of the Church of Jesus Christ's theology and community life to a vision of Christianity that is rich and nuanced." After the conversation and their embrace, Elder Holland sought to extend the dialogue. He extended an official invitation to Rev. Teal to speak at the church's flagship school, Brigham Young University in Provo. SALT LAKE CITY Two men wanted in connection with a pair of sex crimes investigations were booked into jail on Wednesday and Thursday. Steven Eric Graham, 28, of West Jordan, and Jon David Stephens, 49, of Riverdale, each had warrants out for their arrests in separate cases. A $250,000 warrant was issued for Graham, while a warrant with a $2.5 million bail was issued for Stephens. Bountiful police arrested Stephens Thursday and booked him into the Davis County Jail. Stephens, who is already on the Utah Sex Offender Registry for a prior conviction, was charged Tuesday in 2nd District Court with forcible sodomy and object rape, first-degree felonies, and two counts of forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony. He is accused of sexually assaulting a disabled woman in a house where he was supposed to be doing work for the woman's mother, according to charging documents. Stephens was convicted of lewdness involving a child in 1997, according to court records. He was convicted of sex abuse of a child in 2000 and was sentenced to one to 15 years at the Utah State Prison. Graham was also booked into the Salt Lake County Jail. On Monday, he was charged in 3rd District Court with enticing a minor and three counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, second-degree felonies; and sexual battery, a class A misdemeanor. He is accused of offering juvenile girls $70,000 to have his baby, according to charging documents. In September, police say Graham left a note on a car that four girls had just gotten out of. On the note, Graham also allegedly included his phone number. He is also accused of sexually assaulting a teenage co-worker in Riverton, and exchanging photographs "of a sexual nature" with teen girls using the apps Snapchat, KIK, Plenty of Fish and TEXTNOW, the charges state. On Wednesday, member of the Unified police's Major Investigations Unit learned that Graham was at his house. They positioned themselves outside and then called him out, according to a Unified police spokeswoman. Graham came outside and surrendered without incident. Google has reportedly rolled out its human-sounding AI Duplex to a small group of people whoc can now use the tech to make reservations at restaurants in select cities. VentureBeat says that these select cities could be New York, Atlanta, Phoenix, and San Francisco which are companys pilot areas. Google introduced Duplex at the I/O 2018 in May this year and during the demo, company CEO Sundar Pichai showcased how the AI called a barber shop to book an appointment for a haircut and the person on the other side couldnt figure out that he was talking to a programme. VentureBeat says that a spokesperson from Google has confirmed that Duplex is being rolled out to some users. Were currently ramping up the ability to book restaurant reservations through the Google Assistant over the phone using Duplex technology. To help deliver a good experience to Pixel users and to businesses, were starting with a slow rollout and will expand to more Pixel users as we continue to ramp up, the spokesperson was quoted as saying. The report also also claims that if youre not in the trusted tester group, youll get an error message saying, Sorry, I cant call to make reservations for you yet, but heres their phone number: [10 digits]. Note: VentureBeat was one of the lucky people who got the feature on their Pixel devices. Heres a video of them testing the feature. In June, a report said that Google is readying Duplex for testing with a limited group of trusted testers. The company announced that the rollout will be done in a phased manner and that Duplex calls will first start with making calls about opening and closing hours of a place, followed by restaurant reservations and lastly, haircut appointments. Google uses its Deep Minds Wavenet AI to generate a voice for Google Assistant that sounds intensely personal. It is trained to speak more naturally and can emphasise phrases based on the context, adjust the pitch and tone of its voice, and switch between seven diverse voices. Even though it sounds interesting, some critics have questioned the technology for allegedly being murky. A report even claimed that some large companies are in the early stages of testing this technology in call centres to answer customer service questions. If successful, Google Duplex could pose a threat to the jobs of employees working in the call centre business -- a scenario that the Mountain View-headquartered company has outrightly refuted. Google says that Duplex is designed to operate in very specific use cases, and currently it is focused on testing with restaurant reservations, hair salon booking, and holiday hours with a limited set of trusted testers. A few days after announcing the launch date of the ZenFone Max Pro M2, Asus has once again teased the smartphone, but this time it confirms that the handset will have a notch on the display. The tweet made by Asus in Indonesia also suggests that the device may have a large battery, an innovative camera and a powerful processor. When translated from Malay to English, the tweet reads - "Many are present with the label "Pro", but what's Pro? How is the battery strength? The screen is strong? Then the camera is great? And how does the processor perform?" The tweet could be seen as Asus taking a dig at the Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro and the Realme 2 Pro since the Max Pro M2 will possibly compete head-on with the two smartphones. Although, there is no official word on the specifications, previous teasers and leaks have suggested what hardware the smartphone may carry. The information comes following the companys previous tweet in which it announced the launch date of the smartphone. Previously, a low-resolution image of a smartphone with model name ASUS_X01BD_1 was leaked detailing the handsets specifications from the Google Play Console device catalogue. The Google Play Console notes that device specifications are provided by the manufacturer and have not been confirmed. the image showed the Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 wearing a similar to look as the companys Zenfone 5Z. The notch will house the front camera and other sensors, and if XDADevelopers is to be believed, the front shooter will be joined by a LED flash for better low-light selfies. The Max Pro M2 could also have stock Android but may not come under Googles Android One Program. A few days ago, tipster Roland Quandt tweeted out some specs of a smartphone claiming that they were for the Asus ZenFone Max Pro M2. He also mentioned that Asus may bring some India-centric features in special variants of the smartphones and could launch it in three variants with varying hardware capabilities. According to Quandts tweet the smartphone could run on Android Oreo instead of Pie. The Asus ZenFone Max Pro M2 (ZB631KL) could feature a 6-inch Full HD+ display and be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 SoC. It could feature 4GB RAM with options of 64/128GB of storage and is said to feature a triple rear camera setup. The other variant, the ZenFone Max M2 (ZB633KL), may also have same screen size but could be running on the Snapdragon 636 with 4GB RAM and 32/64GB of storage. This variant is could feature a dual rear camera setup. There are also reports of a non-Pro model dubbed ZB632KL (non-Pro) and a ZB634KL (Pro) variant which are speculated to be India specific. Again, there is no official confirmation on specs and well have to take this information with a pinch of salt. The next generation of American spacecraft and rockets that will launch astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) are nearing the final stages of development and evaluation. The maiden flight of the Crew Dragon capsule, called Demo-1, an uncrewed test mission to the ISS, is scheduled to launch on Jan 7, NASA has announced on its official website. The programme will return human spaceflight launches to Earth, providing safe, reliable and cost-effective access to low-Earth orbit on systems. SpaceXs Crew Dragon spacecraft will lift off atop the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which is a historic launch pad from where the rockets of Apollo moon missions have blasted off in the past. Originally, SpaceX is developing Crew Dragon to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS under a multibillion-dollar contract with NASA. As mentioned, this will be an uncrewed flight and the first crewed test flight of the capsule, known as Demo-2, is currently targeted for launch in June 2019. According to NASA, an in-flight abort test that proves out Crew Dragon's emergency-escape systems will take place between the two demonstration missions. Boeing is also a part of the testing and its uncrewed flight test, known as Orbital Flight Test, will shoot in March 2019. The crewed mission will take place in August 2019. Similar to SapceX, Boeings in-flight abort test will take place between these two demonstration missions. SpaceX also completed a pad abort test in 2015. Following the test flights, NASA will review the performance data and resolve issues as necessary to certify the systems for operational missions. Recently, NASA announced that they will be reviewing worker safety practices at SpaceX after the companys founder Elon Musk was seen smoking weed on the Joe Rogans Podcast in September. NASA has said that the audit will be conducted for both of its civilian contractors, SpaceX and Boeing. Vodafone-Idea and Bharti Airtel have reportedly decided to switch off the connection of subscribers with low Average Realisation Per User (ARPU). This is said to be because such users generate ARPU of around Rs 10, which reportedly generates about Rs 100 crores in monthly revenue for Airtel. If this was raised to Rs 35, the overall monthly revenue will go up to Rs 175 crores, reports Financial Express. This means that around 250 million 2G connections might soon be switched off if their users dont go for these higher priced plans. From these connections, Airtel is said to have about 100 million users that spend lower than Rs 35 per month, while around 150 million Vodafone Idea subscribers are said to fall under the same category. The telcos have reportedly scrapped their older plans that were below the ARPU and both, Vodafone Idea and Airtel, have released 5 and 7 plans starting at Rs 35 per month respectively and these packs are available pan India. We have about 330 million customers in wireless, but if you look at the pattern of consumption across the base you will find that there is a very large number of customers, some of whom we acquired from Telenor and some that we have ourselves, about 100 million customers with very low levels of Arpu. So, these Arpus are sort of low double-digit, Gopal Vittal, Bharti Airtel CEO and managing director was quoted saying. Vodafone Idea CEO Balesh Sharma was quoted saying, It was a substantial number that were using it either only for incoming or had got Arpus below that of the average or that of unlimited customers. The Arpu of non-unlimited is about a fourth of the Arpu of the customers who take the unlimited plan. Therefore, everybody who goes up the chain is an upside, even within the non-unlimited, because now he or she is paying a rupee in the Rs 35 a month package, so that is an upside versus those who were not paying us even a rupee, unless many of them choose instead to go to unlimited package which is also very good for us because then there is an Arpu that increases there. Sharma didnt share the total number of subscribers falling in Vodafones low Arpu category. If one uses an Airtel or Vodafone Idea SIM as a secondary mobile connection, chances are they are recharging with less than Rs 35 per month on an average. This second connection is generally used only for incoming calls and a base recharge of Rs 10 would ensure that the connection stayed active for the validity of the recharge. This move by the telcos is said to ensure that either their subscribers move to the higher priced plans of Rs 35 per month, or switch to their primary SIM operator. After 36 years, Peterson leaves AGC Journal Construction Editor By BENJAMIN MINNICK Journal Construction Editor Peterson Doug Peterson retired last month after 36 years at the Associated General Contractors of Washington. As director of labor relations, Peterson was best known for handling the sometimes-tense negotiations with unions that supply labor to AGC members. He led nine negotiations over the 23 years he held that position. Doug Peterson has been an excellent advocate for our contractor members in his long career with the AGC of Washington, said Bob Adams, senior vice president of Guy F. Atkinson Construction and 2002 AGC president. He and I worked together on master labor agreement negotiations since he assumed the role of director of labor relations in 1995. One of Peterson's last and toughest negotiations involved Local 302, the operating engineers' union. He worked over the summer trying to hammer out an agreement with union members, who turned down two contracts recommended by union leadership and ended up on strike for 17 days. It was frustrating that we could get to an agreement but not get it ratified, he said. That strike ended in September, after 75 percent of the rank-and-file members ratified a third offer. During the strike some contractors, mostly non-AGC members, signed an independent contract. Peterson said that was a result of several things including the strong economy, and some contractors who were under pressure due to construction fish windows or schools with set opening dates. He said some contractors couldn't withstand the strike financially. Peterson said having two contracts creates an unintended consequence: a small number of contractors signed the costlier independent contract, which under a new law prevails on all union jobs. Peterson also went a few rounds with former 302 business manager Allan Darr in 2006, when concrete plant operators went on strike for 25 days. Peterson said Darr wanted to get a different organization to negotiate the contract with, but an attorney ultimately forced Darr to negotiate with the AGC. Peterson said even non-AGC members backed the association during those negotiations. He did not like the AGC, Peterson said. They definitely were after us and we survived. Peterson said Darr was asked by the national union to forgo reelection following the 2006 negotiations. Darr retired in 2008 from the union. Some of the negotiations have been more contentious than others, but in each case, Doug has effectively utilized volunteers to represent our members' interests, Adams said. This strategy combined with his attention to detail have resulted in positive relationships with organized labor that are among the best in the nation. Peterson said those relationships have helped keep local union pensions well funded at a time when many union pensions across the country are in trouble. He said local pensions are funded at about 90 percent versus 60 percent nationally. Pension trusts are a 50-50 mix of employee and union representatives. It's a partnership between the employers and the unions, Peterson said. We have a good relationship with the unions here. We have our disagreements but on the whole, we have a good relationship. Peterson said the way contractors interact has changed over the years. When he first arrived, the AGC hosted big social dinners on the first Monday of each month. Now, contractors spend more time with family and only get together for a purpose, such as training. Meetings are more likely to be over breakfast than dinner. Peterson worked for the Peace Corps for two years after he graduated with a degree in civil engineering from Notre Dame. He worked 10 years for the federal government before joining the AGC. He said he doesn't miss the hour it can take these days to drive 3 miles from the AGC Building on South Lake Union to his home on Capitol Hill, where he has lived for 45 years. Next spring, he plans to visit Stockholm or Florence, Italy. Peterson and his wife rent a place in a 400-year-old building in Florence from a friend on Capitol Hill. Peterson said what he misses most in retirement is his relationships with contractors. I've really enjoyed working with the contractors, he said. This is pretty important stuff. Benjamin Minnick can be reached by email or by phone at (206) 622-8272. Subscriber content preview KETCHIKAN, Alaska (AP) Ketchikan officials have halted the contracting process for a proposed undersea fiber-optic cable linking the city to Canada after permits and funding were not secured. The Ketchikan City Council voted unanimously Monday to reject bids and cancel the proposed project contract, the Ketchikan Daily News reported. . . . Subscriber content preview ANCHORAGE (AP) The company behind a proposed copper and gold mine near a major salmon fishery in southwest Alaska has launched a new marketing campaign after voters defeated a ballot measure aimed at protecting salmon habitat and elected a Republican governor. The proposed Pebble Mine in the Bristol Bay region still faces opposition and regulatory hurdles, but Pebble Limited Partnership is seeking to reach out to residents, KTVA-TV reported. . . . Subscriber content preview SEATTLE King County Metro will soon begin testing 10 long-range battery-powered buses that can travel more 140 miles on a single charge. The latest models can travel nearly six times farther than the fast-charge buses Metro currently has in its fleet. At that distance, the battery-powered buses could adequately serve about 70 percent of Metro's bus routes. . . . Pak PM Imran Khan says terror won't scare Chinese investors Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan said todays assault on Chinas diplomatic mission in Karachi was a reaction to the unprecedented trade deals signed between the two nations earlier this month. "The failed attack against the Chinese Consulate was clearly a reaction to the unprecedented trade agreements that resulted from our trip to China, Khan said on Twitter. "The attack was intended to scare Chinese investors these terrorists will not succeed." Three suicide attackers stormed the Chinese consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi amid a series of gunshots and an explosion on Friday, but were killed before they could get into the building in a car packed with explosives, police said. At least two police officers were killed in the attack, which was claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a separatist insurgent group that opposes Chinese projects in the resource-rich southwestern province of Baluchistan. All Chinese staff at the consulate were safe, Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Chinas foreign ministry said. Four gunmen tried to enter the consulate but were stopped by security guards at a checkpoint, reports quoted police officials as saying. An exchange of fire resulted in the death of two constables and critically wounding another. The attackers escaped, but security forces have cordoned off the area and were conducting a clearing operation. Karachi, Pakistan's largest city and a financial hub, was for years rife with political, sectarian and ethnic militancy. Imran Khan has ordered an inquiry into the attack on China's consulate. "The Prime Minister has ordered a complete inquiry into the incident and has desired that elements behind this incident must be unearthed," Khan's office said in a statement, adding that the attack was part of a conspiracy aimed at undermining economic and strategic cooperation between the two nations. "Such incidents will never be able to undermine Pak-China relationship," the statement added. China is Pakistan's closest ally, ploughing billions of dollars in loans and infrastructure investments into the South Asian nation as part of Beijing's vast Belt and Road initiative. India among 7 Asian countries to win UN award for combating transborder environmental crime United Nation Environment has awarded the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) of Indias ministry of environment, forest and climate change with the Asia Environment Enforcement Awards, 2018 for excellent work done by the bureau in combating transborder environmental crime. Congratulating the bureau, union environment minister said the Asia Environmental Enforcement Award, recognises the excellent work done by government officials and teams from the bureau who are diligently involved in combating transborder environmental crime. The Asia Environment Enforcement Awards recognise and celebrate excellence in enforcement by government officials and institutions/teams combating transborder environmental crime in Asia. The awards are given to outstanding individuals and/or government organisations/teams that demonstrate excellence and leadership in enforcement of national laws to combat transborder environmental crime in one of the following eligibility criteria areas: collaboration; impact; innovation; integrity and gender leadership. Nine institutions and individuals from across Asia have been recognised by the United Nations, USAID, Interpol, and the Freeland Foundation for outstanding work in preventing transborder environmental crime in an annual award ceremony in Bangkok. Wildlife trafficking was in the spotlight as winners from China, India, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, Thailand and Vietnam accepted awards for disrupting international criminal networks that have laid waste to wildlife across multiple continents. Environmental crimes, which include illegal trade in wildlife, illicit trade in forests and forestry products, illegal dumping of waste including chemicals, smuggling of ozone depleting substances and illegal mining, comes at a hefty cost estimated at up to $258 billion per year. It is now the fourth largest illegal crime after drug smuggling, counterfeiting and human trafficking. Humanity is the guardian of the natural world, and these winners are at the tip of the spear. Without their commitment to justice, our environmental laws and safeguards are a paper tiger. And though their work may often go unrecognised, it is their qualities of courage, dedication and integrity we need to see more of to preserve our planet. said Dechen Tsering, UN Environment Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific. This years award winners are: Integrity: Le Thi Hang, Judge at Khanh Hoa Peoples Court, Nha Trang, Vietnam, has been awarded the Integrity Award for showing exceptional determination to bring justice to one of the most serious wildlife crime cases Vietnam has seen, after more than 7,000 dead sea turtles were discovered, fully or partially taxidermised, stacked from floor to ceiling at several warehouses near Nha Trang city. judge Hang accepted the case when no other judges in Nha Trang city would. Pillar 4: Central Investigation Bureau, Nepal Police has been awarded the Pillar 4 Award. Despite being a small team with limited resources, Pillar 4 of Nepal Polices Central Investigation Bureau was able to dismantle an international criminal network smuggling wildlife species, including black chimpanzees and exotic birds, from as far away as Nigeria. Special Commendation: Wichien Chinnawong, chief of the Thungyai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary, Thailand, has been awarded the Special Commendation for carrying out their duties as enforcers of the law even when it became clear that one of the members of the group was a renowned, wealthy and influential businessman in Thailand. Category: The Impact Award was awarded to Thailand Team, composed of the Thai Customs, the Royal Thai Police, and the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation for awarding 2-1/2 years jail term to wildlife trafficker. The individual was believed to head a large criminal network responsible for the trafficking of ivory and rhino horns from Africa to Asia Wang Wei, director of investigation II of Anti-Smuggling Bureau of General Administration of China Customs, played an instrumental role in Chinas National Sword enforcement campaign in the Anti-Smuggling Bureau of General Administration of China Customs to implement Chinas new waste import controls. The National Sword policy has changed the landscape of waste trade in Asia and is now being replicated in other countries. Innovation: Team of the investigation and suppression division III of the Royal Thai Customs, under the director Decha Wichaidit, adopted innovative risk profiling techniques to identify wildlife smugglers travelling to Thailand and Southeast Asia. Through the development of an advanced risk management system, Thai customs has been able to detect wildlife smuggling patterns for passengers travelling from Africa to Southeast Asia. International Investigation Division, Korea Customs Service designed a special enforcement strategy to fight illegal cross-border environmental crimes and established the environment enforcement team exclusively designated to tackle various types of cross-border environmental crimes such as illegal trade in controlled substances and protected wildlife species. They are also applauded for their collaboration efforts with other countries. The Wildlife Crime Control Bureau of Indias ministry of environment, forest and climate change adopted innovative enforcement techniques that have dramatically increased enforcement of transborder environmental crimes in India. Notably, it has developed an online Wildlife Crime Database Management System to retrieve real-time data to help analyze trends and devise effective measures to prevent and detect wildlife crime across India. Collaboration: Joil bin Bombon, former Department of Wildlife and National Parks Peninsular Malaysia and RS Sharath, former Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, India, after attending a regional meeting in Bangkok in 2016 began an intense exchange of information on cases of mutual interest. This cooperation intensified over time until turning into coordinated surveillance efforts and joint law enforcement cooperation. The year 1968 is very special. In France, Jean Baudrillard released The System of Objects with the publisher Gallimard. In Germany, Joseph Beuys wrote, "Everyone is an artist" (Jeder Mensch ist ein Kunstler). In the United States, John Cage posited how everything we do that makes sound is music. On the subject of conceptual art, the American art critics Lucy Lippard and John Chandler wrote The Dematerialisation of Art, suggesting that it comes forth from our need for something more essential. In the same year, Hans Hollein published the essay Everything is architecture(Alles ist Architektur) in Bau magazine, which he had founded. Illustrated by photomontages, its content echoed the writings of Marshall McLuhan ("the medium is the message") on the information age and the profound influence it would have on verbal culture. Hollein was the first to import these ideas into the world of architecture by proposing visual interdisciplinarity where reciprocal influences were essential to the evolution of thinking. This week, Gerry Adams spoke to the Dundalk Democrat about his latest book The Negotiator's Cookbook which has just been released. The light-hearted cookbook, with an introduction in both English and Irish, is a mix of traditional recipes such as soups, pies and desserts as well as stories which featured during the deeply historic period of the Irish peace process and the Good Friday Agreement. What motivated you to write the cookbook? Over the years many books have been written by journalists, academics, and some of the participants, including myself, about the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement. Who participated, who said what to whom, and when, and what was agreed and not agreed. The Negotiator's Cookbook was never intended to deal with that sort of detail. Its purpose is to tell the story of the best-kept secret of the peace process. That is how to feed a Sinn Fein negotiating team during the days or weeks of a negotiation? This is not a frivolous matter. Negotiators need their strength. Gerry also talked about his two companions on his cookbook writing journey, Ted Howell and Padraig Wilson. The Negotiator's Cookbook details the efforts of two of our team, Ted Howell and Padraic Wilson to sustain us with food good, nourishing, wholesome food - during the years of high level negotiations and it includes many of their recipes. Ted is a first class cook while Padraig Wilson is a master baker. Gerry continued by highlighting the success of the cookbook so far. It was intended as a bit of fun, if the positive response to the cookbook and the video we posted to launch it is anything to go by, then I think we have succeeded in that. How did you find the transition from TD to author, (if any)? The Negotiator's Cookbook is my 16th book. Over the years I have managed to juggle my writing efforts with the demands of being an elected MP, MLA and now TD for Louth. It can be difficult, especially when a political crisis and a deadline for delivering a manuscript collide. But thus far I have managed to navigate this successfully and I hope to continue to do this in the time ahead. I am currently working on a book of short stories. Do you think the cookbook will be popular among members of your constituency? I have discovered over the years that all sorts of people buy and read my books. Im pleased to say that I have developed a loyal community of readers a readership which I am very grateful for. That includes lots of people from Louth and East Meath. Have you received any feedback from the launch of the book so far, and how do you feel about it? The response thus far has been very good. It is always satisfying when something your write becomes a topic of conversation or a social media story. The little video has had lots of hits and people seemed to like it and thats good. We shouldnt take everything in our lives too seriously. There has to be humour and fun and laughter. How did you find writing a cookbook in comparison to your other, more factual books? I enjoyed writing the cookbook, my own favourite writing is fiction, like The Street. But writing stories takes a lot of time-space to day-dream. The Cookbook is meant to be quirky and practical. Adams went on to thank his team who contributed to the writing and editing of the cookbook. It is dedicated to the late Siobhan OHanlon and the Sinn Fein negotiations team, especially Ted and Padraic. It is a tribute to them. While the rest of us would go home and head to our beds for some sleep, Ted and Padraic would be in their kitchens preparing for the next day. So, thanks to both. And thanks also to all of those who helped in the compiling and publication of the Negotiators Cookbook. As its coming up to Christmas, who would you recommend getting the book for? Anyone who likes good food or likes to make good food will enjoy this book. Theres something in it for everyone. The recipes are simple but tasty. With it you have the opportunity to try out the recipes and the dishes that fed the Sinn Fein negotiating team. They would grace any dinner table. Where can anyone interested find this book? If youre interested in purchasing a copy for yourself or a copy for someones Christmas stockings it is available at www.sinnfeinbookshop.com The launch for The Negotiator's Cookbook, takes place at An Tain Arts Centre on Thursday December 6 at 7pm. All are welcome. A Cavan man has pleaded guilty before the non-jury Special Criminal Court on Friday morning to helping an unlawful organisation murder dissident republican Peter Butterly. Mr Butterly (35) from Dunleer was chased and shot outside a Meath pub - The Huntsman Inn in Gormanston - in view of students waiting for their school bus on the afternoon of March 6, 2013. Michael McDermott (59), of Riverdale House, Garrymore, Ballinagh, Co. Cavan admitted today (Friday) to knowingly rendering assistance to an unlawful organisation styling itself the Irish Republican Army, otherwise Oglaigh na hEireann, otherwise the IRA, directly or indirectly, in the performance or furtherance of an unlawful object, to wit, the murder of Peter Butterly, at diverse locations within the State, between March 3 and March 6, 2013, both dates inclusive. McDermott had originally pleaded not guilty at the three-judge court to the murder of Mr Butterly and the trial has been underway since the beginning of October. McDermott had also denied possession of a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol with intent to commit murder and possession of seven rounds of 9mm ammunition on March 5, 2013 at Blackthorn Apartments, Brackenwood Avenue, Balbriggan, Co. Dublin. Paul OHiggins SC, prosecuting, told the court this morning that McDermott was to be recharged on a scheduled offence under Section 49 of the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Act 2005. State Solicitor Michael ODonovan said the DPP had directed that McDermott be brought before the court and charged with this new offence which is contrary to Section 21a of the Offences against the State Act 1939. Detective Garda Brian McCarthy gave evidence that he met McDermott before the court sat this morning and handed him a copy of the charge sheet, explaining the charge to him. When the registrar put the new count to McDermott and asked him how he was pleading, he replied: Guilty. A book of evidence was then served on the defendant. Mr O'Higgins asked the court that a nolle prosequi be entered on the three charges which McDermott had originally been charged with. This means the State will not be proceeding with the prosecution in relation to these three other counts. Padraig Dwyer SC, defending McDermott, told the three judges that this was a fresh charge and his client had obviously entered an early guilty plea. Mr Justice Paul Coffey, presiding, said for an abundance of caution and incase the trial runs into the new term, he would fix a date for the final week of January. Mr Justice Coffey, sitting, with Judge Martin Nolan and Judge James Faughnan, remanded McDermott in custody until January 28 2019, when he will be sentenced. Hugh Hartnett SC, defending Frank Murphy, told the court that his client was not in attendance in court today but he had been released from hospital. Mr Hartnett said a similar situation will arise in respect of his client on Monday. Mr Murphy was taken from court in an ambulance yesterday morning after becoming unwell before the court sat. He was assessed by paramedics outside the courtroom and put on a stretcher before he was taken to the waiting ambulance. Frank Murphy (58), of McDonough Caravan Park, Triton Road, Bettystown, Co. Meath has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Butterly. Mr Murphy has also pleaded not guilty to possession of a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol with the intent to commit murder and possession of seven rounds of 9mm ammunition on the day of the killing itself. The prosecution said the trial will go on against Kevin Braney but certain issues needed to be raised. Bernard Condon SC, for Mr Braney, said he will be making an application for the court to discharge themselves as well as seeking an adjournment for the trial in light of what had happened this morning. Kevin Braney (43) with a last address at Glenshane Crescent, Tallaght in Dublin has also pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Butterly. Mr Braney also denies possession of a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol with intent to commit murder and possession of seven rounds of 9mm ammunition on March 5, 2013 at Blackthorn Apartments, Brackenwood Avenue, Balbriggan, Co. Dublin. Paul OHiggins SC, prosecuting, opened the trial, telling the judges that it was an unusual case because gardai were already keeping an eye on movements in the area that day as a result of certain suspicions. He said that Mr Butterly had driven into the carpark of the Huntsman Inn around 1.55pm. He had parked and remained in his car. He said that a black Peugeot 206 then drove into the carpark and parked for a few minutes. Its the States case that this car was being driven by Frank Murphy. It left shortly after 2pm and was followed by an unmarked garda car. It was around this time that a stolen Toyota Corolla was driven into the car park, he said. The car (Toyota) then stops in front of Mr Butterlys car and two shots are fired, one through the windscreen and one through the bonnet, said Mr OHiggins. Mr Butterly, who's on his own in the car, runs..., but he doesnt get very far. Mr OHiggins explained that two witnesses, who were waiting for their school buses, had stated that he was chased across the carpark and shot three times as he ran. The court heard that he fell and died almost immediately. The trial continues. 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. As part of the state visit to the Netherlands, Singapore president Ms. Halimah Yacob paid a visit to the iD-Lab of research institute Deltares, Delft, the Netherlands. In her company was Dutch king Willem-Alexander. At the iD-Lab shewas briefed by senior researcher Marjolijn Haasnoot on the latest predictions of sea level rise and the consequences for Singapore. Haasnoot told that her institute is now studying the options for additional sea defence measures in The Netherlands as predictions indicate sea level rise may occure faster. CEO Maarten Smits (right) of Deltares welcomed president Yacob (second left) and king Willem-Alexander (third left). Faster sea level rise According to Haasnoot, new insights on melting of land ice on the Antarctic cause a growing concern, as sea level rise may be on a faster pace than current models indicate. In case of a faster sea level rise, she explained to the Singapore president, sea defence measures will last less longer and new, higher, defences are needed quicker. Or, as an alternative, measures will have to be bigger to span a longer period of sea level rise, Haasnoot told. In the case of Singapore much of the mainland is high enough, but Singapore will notice that sand for beach reinforcement will become even more scare than it now already is, she warned. The president was shown a visualisation of the Aqua Monitor that illustrated the changing of Singapore's contour over the last 30 years. The island state grew over 30 percent because of land reclamations. A screenshot of the Aqua Monitor showing the changes in surface water over the past 30 years worldwide. Here seen Singapore with in green the land reclamation areas. First Singapore polder The shortage of sand was one of the main reasons for Singapore to step down from more its classical land reclamation and start to built its first polder. CEO Maarten Smits of Deltares reminded the president of the involvement of his institute in the initial decision making for this new type of land development for Singapore. Deltares has ever since been, and still is, a thrusted advisor to the Singapore government for the construction of the 810 hectare polder near Pulau Tekong that started earlier this year and is scheduled to be ready by 2020. The levee and the polder will be equipped with state-of-the-art measuring equipment, both for short-term early warning as well as monitoring long term developments. President Yacob meets Singapore state agency employees on course at Deltares. Speed course polder management At the end of her visit president Yacob met a group of Singapore employees of the governmental agencies involved in the construction of the polder. Deltares provides short courses for the employees over in the Netherlands to become familiar with the management of land that lies below sea level. The courses include visits to Dutch regional water authorities that have hundreds of years of experience in polder management. The Singapore agencies involved, are the Housing and Development Board (HDB), Public Utilities Board (PUB) and Building and Construction Authority (BCA). Read also on this website Singapore and Dutch ministries sign MoU for joint development of zero waste technology, 22 November 2018 Royal Boskalis to build 10 km levee around Singapores first polder, 3 April 2018 Deltares and NUS to develop centre on urban resilience in Singapore, 28 November 2016 Country: Singapore Expertise: Enabling delta life More information Deltares Delft, the Netherlands +31 88 335 8273 www.deltares.nl/en Onchan man jailed for money laundering An Onchan man has been jailed for three years and two months after being sentenced for money laundering offences. 59-year-old Elton Sheldon was sentenced yesterday after appearing at Douglas Courthouse. Mr Sheldon had tried to transfer 301,752.00 stolen from a company in France through a Manx bank account. He then tried to remove 230,000.00 of the funds from the Isle of Man to China. Sheldon was found guilty by a jury today of four counts under the Proceeds of Crime Act and one of demanding property on forged documents. Detective Constable Claire KEMP of the Economic Crime Unit said This has been a detailed and protracted investigation involving multiple jurisdictions over two and a half years." "The Isle of Man Constabulary will not tolerate the Isle of Man being used as a vehicle to launder money and as such treats offences of this nature extremely seriously." "The Economic Crime Unit will continue to investigate allegations of financial crime in order to maintain the confidence in the Islands financial and business community." Confessions of a female terrorist: There were rape and execution in Qandil Turkish national police have released a recorded testimony of an ex-terrorist to draw attention to sexual abuse in the PKK terror organization. A female PKK terrorist, who surrendered to Turkish security forces, confessed about the executions and rapes in the organization. According to the messages released in Turkish national polices social media accounts, the ex-terrorist H.K. (25) gave the following pieces of information: "I have joined the organization through a fellow citizen of mine. Throughout the time I stayed in Qandil, I witnessed two women who raped and pregnant were executed by gunfire. A female terrorist codenamed 'Asmin Evin' who got raped by the jailed PKK terrorist named K.C., committed suicide for fear of execution after her pregnancy was learned. The organization announced her death as if she martyrized in an armed conflagration." Turkey charged 28 people for the assassination of envoy An indictment on the assassination of Russias ambassador revealed an earlier attempt of the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) to murder the envoy. Turkish prosecutors have completed the investigation into the 2016 assassination of a Russian ambassador to Ankara, judicial sources said Friday. Twenty-eight suspects, including Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) leader Fetullah Gulen, were indicted, said the sources, speaking on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to the media. The indictment emphasized that the murder was committed by FETO to confront Moscow and Ankara, ahead of the defeated deadly coup attempt on July 15, 2016, and to create a chaotic environment in Turkey. It noted that the terror group planned another assassination about six months before the murder. The suspects are accused of violation of a constitutional order, being a member of an armed terror group, and deliberate killing with an objective of spreading terror. The indictment has been submitted to an Ankara court. Andrei Karlov was assassinated at an Ankara art gallery on Dec. 19, 2016, by Mevlut Mert Altintas, an off-duty police officer linked to FETO. Sociedad Los Testigos de Jehova se reunen con Bolanos y agradecen la acogida en Espana de miembros de su confesion perseguidos 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. Novembet 23, 2018 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE News from Florida reports that Willie Johnson, Jr. age 95, wandered away from his home. Another precious life at risk because of a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Wandering is a common aspect of Alzheimer's Disease. The costs and time of first responders who come to the rescue are in the thousands of dollars. Prayers go out to Willie and his family for a safe return. Recent news about Retired Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor's dementia diagnosis and health issues with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg bring attention to the health concerns of older adults. At what point, will these concerns be taken seriously, not only for individuals in government holding high offices, but for the general public diagnosed with memory loss. Research confirms that 50% of older adults over the age of 85 have a diagnosis of dementia but are undiagnosed by physicians. Poor self-reporting by older adults and a lack of reporting by family members are the reasons physicians cite for not being comfortable making the diagnosis. Should memory testing become part of all annual physicals beginning at age 65 for all adults? Should insurance companies be required to pay for this testing as part of chronic disease prevention, like testing for heart disease and other common diseases? Evidence exists that the signs of dementia are present 10 years prior to the diagnosis. Who is watching out for older adults? Another question is who is watching our government officials responsible for making decisions that effect the United States? Should safeguards for memory testing be in place for all individuals holding public office? Are government officials immune to the same health concerns as the general population. Should an age limit of 75, health, and cognitive testing instituted for Supreme Court Justices? Justices experience the same health declines as peers of the same age. Symptoms of dementia and Alzheimer's disease begin 10-12 years prior to a diagnosis. Concerns with walking, balance, and gait are early predictors of dementia. Other diagnoses like heart disease and diabetes contribute to a diagnosis of dementia. Retired Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, announced a diagnosis of dementia on October 23rd. She retired in 2006 at age 76. Current Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, age 85, was hospitalized on November 7th, diagnosed with 3 rib fractures. Ginsburg fractured 2 ribs in 2012 and has survived two episodes of cancer. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, 81, retired on July 31; current Justice Steven Breyer is 80. Cognitive functioning declines with age. 50% of adults over the age of 85 have undiagnosed dementia. Older adults are poor-self reporters of memory loss. Family caregivers do not recognize the signs of dementia. This combination results in doctors failing to diagnose or not wanting to tell a patient that dementia is a likely diagnosis. Supreme Court Justices hold the highest responsibilities in the United States legal system. What happens when Justices become aware of cognitive difficulties and fail to report to avoid a request to resign? President Ronald Reagan served as president from 1981 to 1989, taking office at age 70. The announcement of his diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease was made on November 5, 1994. Based on statistics, symptoms of the disease were likely occurring during his presidency. Estate planning, elder law, and probate attorneys are directed to follow Rule 1.14 and ABA Ethics Opinion 96-404 when working with clients they suspect may be incompetent. Attorneys are directed to obtain an evaluation and may petition for appointment of a guardian ad litem, guardian, or conservator. Serving as court appointed guardian for incapacitated older adults, I am very familiar with symptoms, diagnosis, and the necessary care oversight to avoid risks. Public officials have an ethical duty that includes: the duty of care, the duty of loyalty, duty of impartiality, duty of accountability, and duty to preserve the public's trust in government. The duty of loyalty specifically directs that the official is to put the public's interest before their own. Public officials also have a duty of transparency. Hiding health concerns from the public even though protected by HIPPA, (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), a U.S law to protect patients' medical records and other health information is contradictory to government ethics laws. Government laws should not protect government officials from acting ethically. Supreme Court Justices must be held to standards requiring reporting of cognitive declines. An excuse for not reporting may be the response that individuals who experience cognitive decline are unable to notice the decline. This concept supports required health and memory testing. Memory and related testing must be required for all Supreme Court Justices beginning at age 65. Earlier if suspicions exist about cognitive declines. Annual neuropsychological testing, PET scans of the brain, and bloodwork to confirm if the APOE-4 gene exists provide insight into cognitive deficits. Repeat testing on an annual basis will track progression of early concerns allowing proactive responses. According to the Alzheimer's Association, Symptoms vary among people with Alzheimer's dementia, and the differences between typical age-related cognitive changes and early signs of Alzheimer's dementia can be subtle. Typical age-related changes may be as simple as forgetting a name or an appointment but remembering the information later. Individuals with mild cognitive impairment are usually able to carry out day to day activities. 32% of individuals with mild cognitive impairment develop Alzheimer's dementia within 5 years with follow up. These facts support the need for both age limits and annual testing of health and memory for Supreme Court Justices beginning at age 65. At the time memory concerns are confirmed by impartial physicians', resignation is mandatory. The age limit of 75 will eliminate Justices serving beyond the point of potential health concerns resulting in an inability to ethically perform the responsibilities of their position. The statistics about Alzheimer's disease are sobering. According to the Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's disease is the 6th leading cause of death. Today, 5.7 million individuals in the U. S. are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. By 2050 this number will rise to 14 million. We can no longer ignore the effects of memory loss and chronic disease for individuals like Willie Johnson, Jr., or elected officials. It is time that Alzheimer's disease be recognized as a concern for regular screening by health insurance companies and the healthcare system. Amelia, Ohio - The giraffe was supposed to be long gone, but here he is, beaming on the cardboard displays inside a Kroger. He's right at home, surrounded by unblinking baby dolls and drones that are liable to break when little hands inevitably pilot them straight into the ceiling fan. Buckets of little green army men, waiting to be unleashed and eventually stepped on. Kids, bundled up and rosy-cheeked, bound toward the toys and circle the displays like predators. They paw at the boxes, leaving fingerprints on the plastic. Some clutch toys to their chests before they begin pretty-pleasing. Now Playing: Toys R Us investors are planning a comeback! Plus, Facebook says there is no evidence that hackers gained access to third-party apps. FOX's Tracee Carrasco joined us with the latest for our Business Beat. Video: Fox5DC "Mom," one boy with a buzz-cut yells, lofting an action figure. "Look, they have Venom!" "I am not talking about this right now," his mother says, but she mouths the name on the box and nods, before whisking her son toward the pharmacy. Parents pushing shopping carts rubberneck as they walk by the menagerie. Some smile in recognition. Others squint, eyeing the giraffe and his toys skeptically. That couldn't be, could it? It is. The beloved mascot, the array of toys, the bright, blocky lettering spelling out "Geoffrey's Toy Box" are all seeds of the complicated comeback of Toys R Us. - - - Toys R Us' fall was a long one, marked by a botched buyout, mountainous debt and a losing battle with big-box and online competitors. After filing for bankruptcy in September 2017, the toy store that had delighted kids for six decades announced in March it would be closing its doors, leaving 33,000 employees jobless. Then, as retailers geared up for the lucrative first holiday without Toys R Us, the company rose from the grave. The hedge funds that own its assets filed paperwork in October to hang on to the Toys R Us and Babies R Us brand names, Web domains and mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe while considering "a new, operating Toys R Us and Babies R Us branding company." A month later, Kroger announced it would partner with Geoffrey, the subsidiary for Toys R Us intellectual property, to bring pop-up toy shops to 600 of its stores through the holidays. The pop-ups carry 35 toys from 6 brands that were once exclusive to Toys R U.S., including Imaginarium, Just Like Home and Journey Girls. "I've never seen something in our stores that our customers are so excited about," said Erin Rolfes, a corporate affairs manager for Kroger. "It was disappointing for everyone to hear Toys R Us went bankrupt. And the idea of bringing it back in a hometown store like Kroger, well it gives a great sense of nostalgia and it's a good opportunity to introduce Geoffrey's Toy Box." But while some customers revel in this return, the news was far less welcome for legions of former employees. Seeing the brand resurrected while so many families struggle after losing their jobs is gutting, said Carrie Gleason, campaign manager for the worker advocacy group Rise Up Retail, which works with ex-Toys R Us employees. "It's hard to explain how it feels that the people responsible for liquidating the company are the ones that are doing this," said Anthony Kittleson, who was laid off, along with his fiancee, after years of working at Toys R Us. "It feels like a slap in the face." After he found out about the Geoffrey's Toy Box pop-ups, Kittleson and his family went to their local Kroger in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., to protest. Families in Arizona, Washington, Ohio and elsewhere in California have done the same, Gleason said. Kittleson propped his 7-month-old daughter Gemma up on the toy display with a sign that said, "I'll never get to be a Toys R Us kid because of Solus and Angelo Gordon," two of the hedge funds that now own the company. Solus Alternative Asset Management and Angelo Gordon & Company did not respond to a request for comment from The Post. "Putting my daughter's face in front of that display was kind of our way of saying, 'Hey, these are the people you hurt,'" Kittleson said. - - - While Geoffrey's Toy Box is notable for marking the possible comeback of Toys R Us, it's unlikely that it'll capture much of the holiday toy market because of its limited offerings, according to Linda Bolton Weiser, an analyst with D.A. Davidson. Kids are rigid about their Christmas lists and aren't usually interested in products they don't recognize. The brands Geoffrey's Toy Box is offering don't have much name recognition, Bolton Weiser said. "Kids are gonna want the Hot Wheels and Barbies and Nerf and other licensed products," Bolton Weiser said. Geoffreys' Toy Box "isn't carrying the products that would let them compete with the diversified retailers. It's immaterial in the whole retail landscape." The primary customer for the pop-ups will be "convenience buyers," Bolton Weiser said, who need something fast and aren't sure what to get. Sure, some customers will feel warm and fuzzy when they lay eyes on Geoffrey, but that probably won't be enough to drive significant sales. "Nostalgia only goes so far," Bolton-Weiser said. "It wasn't enough to keep Toys R Us in business." Tuesday night, in an eastern Cincinnati Kroger, Rosemary Voyles rifled through boxes of Journey Girls dolls. The 73-year-old didn't particularly care that the pop-up was Toys R Us-related (she had avoided it before because of the crowds and chaos). Now she was on the hunt for a cheaper substitute to the pricey American Girl Doll her granddaughter wanted. "I'm hoping she'll be satisfied if they have a doll named Amy," Voyles said. "That's her name." All the dolls were named Dana and Meredith, so she moved on. She wasn't looking for gifts for her older grandson, because she knew he wanted a particular name-brand model car that wasn't on the shelves here. But her 3-year-old grandson would be satisfied with anything that buzzed or moved, she reasoned. She picked up a blue plastic saw that boasted "realistic blade action" on the box. "This'll work well enough," she mused, and tossed it in her cart along with the fixings for Thanksgiving dinner. WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump, one of fossil fuels best friends, faces a backlash against his efforts to unravel government support for renewable energy in state capitols from Maine to Nevada. In January, Democrats who ran campaigns promising to transition their states away from oil, natural gas and other fossil fuels will replace Republican governors in six states that include Colorado, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Illinois. The election earlier this month did not deliver across-the-board victories for clean energy, with voters in Washington state rejecting a carbon fee and those in Arizona voting no on a referendum for 50 percent renewable energy. But the industry chalked up far more wins than losses. Those wins include Colorado Governor-elect Jared Polis, who pledged to help bring his state to 100 percent renewable energy by 2040. In New Mexico, one of the countrys largest oil producing states, Governor-elect Michelle Lujan Grisham says that state will reach 50 percent of its energy from renewables by 2030. At a recent event in Washington, lobbyists for the wind and solar energy industries predicted the election would accelerate growth, as this new wave of Democratic politicians put pressure on legislatures to increase renewable energy mandates in the decades ahead. This was a seismic shift, said Greg Wetstone, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, a Washington-based trade group. When you have pro-renewables governors in office things can happen very quickly. On HoustonChronicle.com: In Silicon Valley, power industry is next target for disruption The Democratic victory comes as the Trump administration continues to seek a government subsidy for coal and nuclear power plants, which, under pressure from cheaper natural gas and renewables, have closed at a fast clip across the country. Such proposals have drawn jeers, not only from clean energy advocates, but also the oil and gas industry. Pressure building The pressure on coal and nuclear, meanwhile, is only expected to increase. Technological innovation, along with a huge surge in output from Chinese manufacturers, has driven down the cost of renewables to the point they have made up the majority of new generation installed in the United States for five years running. A report by the investment bank Lazard released earlier this month found that even without government tax breaks, onshore wind turbines and solar panels generated electricity at the same price or lower than coal and natural gas plants in some markets. This [election] puts the brakes on any talk were going to take away support for renewable energy, said Amy Myers Jaffe, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank in New York. People are in favor of [climate change] solutions if they are sure it would work. States put in renewable energy and everyones light are still on. The continued rise of solar and wind energy presents an existential threat to the Texas oil and gas industry, which, facing forecasts of shrinking gasoline demand, is banking on selling more natural gas to power plants as world economies reduce carbon emissions Oil executives hope that the renewable pledges of the Democratic governors-elect are just campaign promises, not to be taken too seriously. And they take heart in politicians such as Polis in Colorado, who, despite his clean energy platform, also opposed a referendum putting restraints on oil and gas drilling in his state. They took on this platform, knowing it was an easy box to check given their base. But I wouldnt read too much into it, said Steve Everly, an energy consultant and spokesman for the advocacy group Texans for Natural Gas. Its easy if youre coming into an office, at most for eight years, and say this is what were going to do in 2050. Even if they do commit to renewables as pledged, the new governors will face a gauntlet of public utility commissions, state budget fights, shifting public opinion and an entrenched utility sector that commands tens of thousands of jobs around the country and spends heavily on lobbying legislatures and state-level political campaigns. . Already, fossil fuel interest are lobbying to roll back government support for wind and solar energy, setting up fights in Washington and state capitols including Austin. In Illinois, where Governor-elect J.B. Pritzker has called for 50 percent renewables by 2025, a large nuclear power sector along with ballooning public debt are likely to make meeting that target near impossible, said Colin Smith, an analyst with the research firm Wood Mackenzie. No guarantees The political landscape is improved for wind and solar, but its by no means a guarantee, he said. In a lot of these areas, 100 percent renewable targets might not be realistic. But at the very least were seeing a picture where theres going to be a lot of demand for additional renewables in these states. On HoustonChronivle.com: Is Houston missing the next energy wave? Already wind and solar developers in Texas are gearing up for a lot more work. In some ways, they say, the growth was inevitable. Falling costs of wind turbines and solar panels, along with increasing societal pressure on corporations to shift to cleaner energy, are driving demand for more solar installations and wind farms. And with advances in battery technology, the days of a cost competitive home battery system linked with rooftop solar are not far off, said John Berger, CEO of the Houston solar developer Sunnova. If that prediction proves out, that could move consumers to renewables long before the clean energy targets set by state governors. Those people who think batteries are 10 years away, I dont know if its going to take two years, Berger said. It really doesnt matter whos in the White House or Congress. Were going to win. james.osborne@chron.com Twitter: @osborneja Firefighters doused hot spots and smoldering flames Friday as a third day of rain allowed them to close in on fully containing the 2-week-old Camp Fire. The fire north of Sacramento has burned 153,336 acres since igniting on Nov. 8 and is 95 contained, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. The death toll in the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the states history stands at 84. This week, some residents were allowed to return to their homes or what was left of them in parts of Magalia, which is home to about 11,310 people. The town of Paradise, destroyed in the fire, remained under mandatory evacuation. Pat Bronson, who lives in upper Magalia, went back to her home just before Thanksgiving. The 66-year-old moved to Magalia from Santa Cruz County nearly two years ago for a slower pace of life, she said. The flames were a quarter mile from her home, but Bronsons house was unscathed by the fire. My heart just breaks for our community and the devastation and everybodys losses, Bronson said. Its just so hard to see. I know so many people that have lost everything. Over the past two weeks, Bronson has stayed with friends in Chico and said she plans to remain in Chico until more residents return and Skyway, the main thoroughfare leading into Paradise and Magalia, reopens. It seems like a ghost town, she said. Its an eerie feeling, its just not right. As the days have gone by this week, Bronson said shes noticed more and more cars parked in the neighborhoods leading toward herhome. Still, residents futures are uncertain. Its never going to be the same as before. Everyone has to start a new normal, Bronson said. Residents returning to their homes are advised against living on destroyed properties until they are cleared of waste, Butte County public health officials said. The debris and ash are still toxic, and properties may contain high levels of heavy metals, arsenic and other carcinogens, they said. A storm, the first of several expected throughout the region in the next few weeks, helped firefighters extinguish hot spots, and containment lines steadily held the flames from spreading, Cal Fire said. Crews continued working Friday in the devastated areas of Paradise, Magalia and Concow to clear debris and repair power lines. The Butte County Sheriffs Office said 475 people remain missing, and search-and-recovery teams are continuing to scour the areas for victims. The storm hampered efforts to find and recover bodies. A major focus Friday was taking down trees that threatened the burn scar areas, said Brigitte Foster, a fire prevention officer with the Lassen National Forest. There are still many trees within the fire area ... that have partially burned and need to be mitigated, she said. Crews are also looking for hazard trees that may have been missed days ago and trying to get rid of them. Heavy rain poses the threat of debris- and mudslides, according to the National Weather Service. So far, though, there have been no reports of mudslides. Its been hit or miss here with the rain, Foster said. We have some little dry spells and then a dusting of rain, and sometimes it will rain a little hard. Its not a consistent rain that we have been having. The rainfall earlier this week threatened the area with flooding, slick roads and falling trees. In preparation for the storm, crews in Paradise, Concow and Magalia used trucks to vacuum soggy debris off the ground to prevent or reduce damage from slides. Workers also set up hay bales and sandbags to prevent the chance of floods. So far, 18,733 structures have been reported destroyed in the blaze, including 13,672 single-family homes. More than 52,000 people remain displaced. By Friday night, 1,606 fire personnel were battling the blaze, along with 106 fire engines, five water tenders, five helicopters, 21 hand crews and 3 bulldozers. Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani Anna Harwin, Heidi Hunt and Julie Pace all math professors at Northwest Vista College know from experience that not enough teens are graduating from high school with the math skills required for college and many careers. The problem is worse in San Antonios low-income, predominantly Latino neighborhoods, where many parents also lack the math knowledge to help their young children with homework. Our underserved students do not have access to many professions that are mathematically based, Harwin said. There are so many programs that scratch at the surface of this, none of which can erase the lack of access. So, about a decade ago, Harwin began a quest for federal funding to improve math education for aspiring elementary school teachers, who would teach math to parents at community centers, improving their ability to tutor their children. The math professors reached their holy grail last month, when the U.S. Department of Education awarded them a $3.7 million grant for their Community Math Project. The initiative will start with Northwest Vista students pursuing an Associate of Arts in Teaching degree, who will be able to take a new and improved first-year math class and a learning mindset class with a revamped math curriculum. Related: SAISD to open cybersecurity early college high school on East Side If they transfer to the University of Texas at San Antonio, they can spend two years teaching math to elementary school parents in underserved communities. Eventually, the professors hope, some of the parents will be able to tutor other parents. Most elementary school teachers have bachelors degrees and certifications, but their certification exams require minimal math skills, Hunt said. Shes heard many education majors say, Im not good at math, so Im going to teach elementary school. As a result, the professors said, many elementary school teachers dont understand how children learn math and cant apply fractions or long division in different ways. Pace said her daughters fifth-grade teacher told her she wasnt going to teach fractions because she didnt understand them. That leaves the students at a disadvantage, Pace said. If you dont understand that sort of thing, youre so limited in your career choices, she said. Harwins daughter Alexandra conducted a study in 2010 that found tutoring by parents was significantly associated with college readiness in math for Latino students, but not for Anglo students. The Latino students relied on their parents more because their schools and communities had fewer resources and when parents cant help, it closes down a lot of options too early in an educational career, Anna Harwin said. The federal grant creates at least a dozen math fellows per year at UTSA, student teachers who will receive stipends to tutor parents. In addition to becoming better teachers, the math fellows will gain compassion for parents struggles and a better understanding of the communities they could end up working in, the Northwest Vista professors said. Related: San Antonio Youth Literacy mentors second-graders The federal funding pays personnel costs for Northwest Vista and UTSA employees who will manage the project, develop the curriculum and analyze the results. Dozens of other faculty members will be trained to implement the learning mindset component into their curriculum for student teachers. The grant also pays for materials at the community centers and summer stipends for the math fellows. Classes are already starting at the House of Neighborly Service Time Dollar on West Salinas Street. UTSA tutors taught math there until about eight years ago, when the program died for lack of support, Anna Harwin said. One mother, a student then who became a gifted tutor, is recruiting other parents to teach with funding from the grant, Harwin said. Once the UTSA math fellows are ready, the Northwest Vista faculty plan to expand the project to other West Side community centers as fast as they can. Harwin would like to see the program spread all over the city, improving math education in schools and homes everywhere. What I would like to see is the differential between Alamo Heights students and the rest of San Antonio be negligible, Harwin said. We are fixing the math trajectory at its root in San Antonio. Alia Malik covers several school districts and the Alamo Colleges District in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | amalik@express-news.net | Twitter: @AliaAtSAEN Beto ORourke exposed a blue spine in Texas politics that could remake the states congressional delegation and affect President Donald Trumps re-election prospects in 2020. By making a strong showing in the 21 counties along the Interstate 35 corridor from Laredo to the Oklahoma border, the U.S. Senate candidate from El Paso defied 30 years of political history in the Lone Star State. ORourke didnt just become the first Democratic Senate candidate in Texas to win the majority of votes along the corridor since the 1980s. He pounded U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz along the route, flipping counties that had not voted for a Democrat for statewide office since Ann Richards first ran for governor in 1990. Even in the counties ORourke lost, his defeats were often much narrower than those of past Democratic candidates. This is a major structural problem for the GOP going forward, said Jay Aiyer, a political science professor at Texas Southern University in Houston. A shift in demographics, and politics In 2018, the collection of counties along Interstate 35 voted for Democrats more than Republicans for the second straight election cycle. The two demographic trends with the largest impact in that region are increased diversity and a more educated populace. Non-white voters have been the base of the Democratic Party and, since 2016, progressives have found success pulling college educated voters away from the GOP. Amid rapid growth along Interstate 35 from 2010 to 2018, voter registrations went up accordingly and Democrats successfully turned out those voters in the midterm. Matt Dempsey See More Collapse Texas population growth has been dramatic in the urban and suburban communities along I-35, while areas that the GOP has long relied on in West Texas and East Texas are losing both population and voters. In other words, the Democratic base is expanding significantly, while the GOPs base is growing less or even shrinking, Aiyer said. Cruz narrowly won re-election by about 219,000 votes, out of more than 8 million cast, a margin of less than 3 percentage points, according to unofficial results. Thats the closest U.S. Senate race in Texas in 40 years. Republicans had won the last four Senate races in Texas by 1 million votes or more. Cruz hung on by running up big numbers in the Texas Panhandle, East Texas and the northern Houston suburbs. For subscribers: How Ted Cruz survived Beto ORourke and the blue wave But while Cruz stuck with a tried-and-true Republican playbook, ORourke revealed untapped opportunities for Democrats. Four years ago, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn won the I-35 corridor by nearly 350,000 votes over his Democratic opponent, David Alameel. But ORourke carried those same counties by more than 440,000 votes. That is a nearly 800,000-vote swing in just four years. And the impact of the blue spine went well beyond ORourkes race: Five Republican candidates for Congress in Texas, almost all of them big favorites, won with less than 51 percent of the vote. All five of their districts are along the I-35 corridor, making them all but certain to be targeted by Democrats in 2020. In the Texas House, Democrats flipped 12 seats previously held by Republicans. Ten of those districts are along I-35. In the Texas Senate, Democrats flipped two seats, both along I-35. And they nearly took a third seat north of Dallas, where Republican Angela Paxton won just 51 percent of the vote. Those results were no fluke, says Manny Garcia, deputy executive director of the Texas Democratic Party. He said even in 2016, Democrats could see how suburban and urban cores along I-35 were changing, which prompted the party to be more aggressive in recruiting candidates there, even in districts that were considered solidly Republican. The fundamentals of Texas are shifting, Garcia said. Whats changing I-35 is whats changing the state, said Aiyer. The state is growing more diverse and more urban. As major cities become more crowded and more expensive, people are moving to surrounding counties for cheaper housing and taking their political views with them, he said. There is a clear trend line since 2014. That year, Cornyn won the I-35 corridor by almost 350,000 votes. Two years later, Hillary Clinton won it by just over 115,000 votes. This year, ORourke won by an even bigger margin: 440,000. In 2014, 11 of the 16 congressional districts that touch I-35 were held by Republicans, including 10 in which the Republican won 60 percent of the vote or more. This year, only two of those 11 Republicans topped 60 percent. If Republicans are going to win along I-35 now, they will need to get away from their old strategy of pressing to the right and counting on their most loyal supporters to turn out in large numbers, said George Seay a Republican Party analyst and donor from Dallas. Seay says Republicans need to move toward the political center for broader appeal. This is a bugle call to all Republicans to start talking about the issues all Texans care about, Seay said. That means more focus on jobs, health care, transportation and education, and less on social and cultural issues aimed at core voters, such as same-sex marriage and immigration. Democrats new plays For decades the Democratic playbook in Texas was consistent: win big in the cities, drive up numbers in the Rio Grande Valley and try to minimize losses elsewhere. But ORourke, who refused to hire political consultants, took a different route. For sure, he mined votes in those traditional targets. But he spent a lot more time along I-35 in places such as Waco, San Marcos and Round Rock than past Democratic candidates. Over the last 12 days of the campaign alone, ORourke made at least 25 stops in counties along the corridor, compared to three for Cruz. And ORourkes campaign invested heavily in field staff to get out the vote along I-35. Chris Evans, ORourkes communications staffer, said the campaign didnt start out with that strategy, but it emerged as the candidate and his aides kept returning to places where they saw the most energy, such as Waco in McLennen County and Plano in Collin County. The campaign created what they called pop-up get-out-the-vote offices in Collin, Denton and McLennen counties, something that was unthinkable four years ago when Republicans trounced Democrats in all three. ORourke lost all three of those counties, but by dramatically smaller margins in two of them. In Denton County, ORourke did 50,000 votes better than Cruzs last opponent. In Collin, he fared almost 70,000 votes better. Fast-growing Williamson County, just north of Austin, has been Republican turf almost exclusively since 1990 when Richards won the county in her first race for governor. Cruz carried the area by 30,000 votes during his first campaign in 2012. But ORourke wiped out that deficit, winning there by nearly 6,000 votes. What ORourke did in San Antonio was equally impressive. Just four years ago, Cornyn carried the county by almost 40,000 votes. This year, ORourke won it by 110,000 votes, the most dominating performance for a U.S. Senate candidate in the Alamo City in decades. Between San Antonio and Austin, Hays County flipped big for ORourke. While Cruz and Cornyn both won the county easily by between 6,000 and 7,000 votes in 2012 and 2014, ORourke won it by about 12,000 votes. That surge in Hays County had a lot to do with new voters. No county in Texas saw a bigger jump in new voter registrations from the March primary elections to November. While counties such as Harris and Bexar saw a 2 percent jump in voter registrations, Hays County registrations went up 8 percentage points. The demographics here are massively changing, said Don Inbody, who teaches political science at Texas State University in San Marcos. The same is true in other counties along I-35, where U.S. census data show a shift toward an older, more diverse, better educated and wealthier electorate since 2010, changes that favor Democrats. Trouble for Trump? Down ticket, the blue spine shook up the congressional delegation. Some districts that havent been decided by less than 20 points in past cycles suddenly became the scene of tight battles. Seay said it had to be a startling night for a lot of longtime Republicans who have never seen a competitive race. I think the application of smelling salts to a lot of these guys isnt a bad thing, Seay said. In Williamson and Bell counties north of Austin, U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, had won his 2016 election by 22 percentage points. The Cook Political Report in Washington, D.C., which tracks all 435 House districts in the nation, didnt even list it among 82 potentially competitive seats. But then Air Force veteran MJ Hegar caught fire with a viral ad and an aggressive campaign that put Carter on the ropes. She quickly became one of the most well-funded Democrats in the state. Carter survived, barely, with 50.6 percent of the vote. Further north on I-35, U.S. Rep. Kenny Marchant, a Republican from the north Dallas and Fort Worth suburbs faced underfunded Democratic opponent Jan McDowell. She raised just over $100,000 in a district that Marchant had won easily every two years since 2004. But this year, Marchant won just 50.7 percent of the vote to earn a new term. If the Democrats had a stronger candidate, Dave Wasserman, an analyst for the Cook Political Report, said the party could have picked up another seat in a fast-changing district that he says is now majority non-white and that gave Trump just 51 percent of the vote in 2016. If Trump runs for re-election, hell likely have to pay more attention to Texas I-35 corridor and the suburbs. Where Cruz struggled, Trump is apt to struggle too, said Inbody. The problem the president has is in those counties up and down the corridor, he said. You get a few miles off the corridor and you get a whole different story. Inbody said that if Texas is at play in a presidential election, thats a big problem for Republicans. Reliably Democratic California and New York have a combined 82 electoral votes. Republicans need the combined 67 electoral votes in Texas and Florida to act as counterweights. If Democrats were to win California, New York and Texas, a presidential election would quickly become an electoral college landslide, even without Florida. Aiyer said there is no doubt Texas is still a red state, but it looks like something much more competitive than it was before. Matt Dempsey Andrea Zelinski contributed to this report. jeremy.wallace@chron.com Facing another month in technical training school, Airman Basic Warren Morrison awoke Thursday morning feeling a little down in the mouth. It was Thanksgiving and he was far from his familys traditional get-together in far-off Wolcott, Connecticut, and the chance to savor one more home-cooked meal and his favorite side, macaroni and cheese. I was kinda down. I wasnt going to leave the room, and my mom called me and she was just talking to me for an hour and a half, he said. She was just asking what I was going to do today and I was like, I dont even know, but Ill figure something out. Away from home for the first time, Morrison, 20, soon found the answer. He went to the Live Oak Dining Facility on Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland with his wingman, Airman Basic Jeffrey Timm, and enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving Day meal along with other troops in tech school. Some of the soldiers, sailors and airmen converging on the dining hall, the bases biggest, may have been surprised to see higher-ups including Brig. Gen. Laura Lenderman, commander of the 502nd Air Base Wing, dishing out turkey and all the trimmings from the other side of the serving line. Related: Far from home, GIs to mark Thanksgiving on the border Theyre usually giving the orders, after all, not taking them, but on this day it was all part of their ongoing journey into the brotherhood and sisterhood of military service. While around 5,000 military personnel left the base to have meals with San Antonio-area families as part of the 43rd annual Operation Home Cooking or were bussed out to feasts put on by organizations that included Valero Energy Corp., these troops stayed home. They arrived at the dining hall well before it opened at 11 a.m. Three soldiers dispatched to Texas among 5,800 assigned to the Southwestern border mission were among the first there, staking out their spot a few feet from the front door. When it opened, the GIs were the first in. Airman Basic Michael Matson, 21, wasnt far behind. In his 23rd day of a 13-week-long Security Forces training stint, he missed out on a traditional turkey day dinner with his mom, Esther, and six brothers in Salt Lake City. I do miss, like, being home and everything. I miss helping my mom cook all of Thanksgiving dinner, he said. I was pretty homesick during most of today and yesterday, said Timm, 18, of Newport News, Virginia. That changed, however, upon entering the dining hall, where NCOs and officers welcomed him with cries of Happy Thanksgiving! Related: Transgender airman reenlists despite scrutiny, uncertainty Seeing others in uniform smile, all of them also away from their families, made me happy, too, he said. It can be hard, Airman Basic Ilya Protasov, 20, said after mentioning the big family gathering he missed out on back in Solano County, California. I know when I joined the military I could be away from family a lot. Its kind of what I signed up for but, I mean, I knew at some point in my life I would have to eventually leave, so its not too bad. At least I feel like Im with good company here. Enter the brotherhood and sisterhood. Airman Basic Jaidelynn Butterworth, Airman 1st Class Ava Smith and Airman Basic Alise Gammalogrew close when they began basic training 2 months ago. Butterworth and Gammalo are in the same tech school, learning to specialize in airborne communications and electrical systems. They think of serving together on a future deployment, and all three would like to remain close over the years to come. Its, like, cool that we all ended up in the same spot, that were all still talking, said Gammano, 18, of Cleveland, Ohio. I dont think I feel homesick too bad right now because Im lucky enough to have friends here and I know that we kind of look out for each other, but theres a part of me that does miss being at home with my family, said Butterworth, 18, of Camas, Washington. Related: Will the troops be home for Christmas? Army backtracks on timetable Its not only her moms food or being with family. Theres also her 6-year-old beagle, Spencer. For Smith, the dining hall was a comfort zone, right down to the people. My family members arent here, but theres people who kind of act like them, so it almost feels as if theyre here. A lot of people are very similar to each other, Smith, 18, of Klamath Falls, Oregon, explained, noting that they talk a lot alike and even share an eating habit she considers strange. They put all their food together and eat it at the same time. They laughed while sitting at a table in the dining hall, which had emptied out after the lunch hour. It was a scene Lenderman, the 502nd Air Base wing commander, and Chief Master Sgt. Chris Lantagne might have recognized from their first Thanksgivings long ago. We were in North Dakota. That was our first assignment, Grand Forks, North Dakota, so not only were we far away from our family but it was a different environment, physically, the cold and kind of in a remote location, so thats when you turn to your Air Force family, said Lenderman, a 24-year veteran. Lantagne, the wings command chief, had just turned 18 when he observed his first Air Force Thanksgiving in 1990. I was always a pretty independent kid, so I was kind of excited to be on my own, away from home, seeing new things, he recalled, but noted others were homesick. I think we all made our own family atmosphere as friends and airmen, young kids away from home. That was the beginning of his brotherhood a sense of familiarity, sharing experiences that have grown over a 28-year career and marriage to Sara, a retired Air Force senior master sergeant. They have three grown children. To use the obvious, less than 1 percent of the American population ever serves in the military, said Chris Lantagne, a native of Sanford, Maine. So to be able to share that unique experience and the familiarity that comes along with it, thats what the brotherhoods about. Sara Lantagne, a 25-year veteran, recalled walking into a dining hall restroom one Thanksgiving and hearing another woman sobbing inside a stall. I dont want to be nosy, but are you OK? she asked the woman, a sailor. Yes, Lantagne said the sailor replied. Its my first Thanksgiving away from my family and Im really sad, the sailor told Lantagne. The sailor exited the stall and they began to talk. Lantagne said that when she asked the woman why she was at Lackland, her posture straightened and face brightened. The sailor told her how much she liked tech school and San Antonio. It just took off after that. She was telling me how proud she was. They laughed, swapped phone numbers and hugged. While leaving, the sailor wished her a happy Thanksgiving. She made my Thanksgiving, Lantagne said. sigc@express-news.net WASHINGTON - After tapping election season outrage over rising prescription drug costs, Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett and victorious House Democrats intend to move quickly in the new Congress with proposals to protect consumers from price spikes and ease the financial crush on Medicare. President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans say theyre open to drug-price legislation, but Democrats face the twin obstacles of a potent drug industry lobby and fear of putting the government deeper into the health-care business. With Democratic takeover of the House in the new Congress, Doggett will be in position to influence health-care policy as he did in 2010 in helping engineer passage of the Affordable Care Act. Doggett, whose district stretches from San Antonio to Austin, chairs a House Democratic task force on drug pricing and is in line to take over the Ways and Means health-care subcommittee next year. He is chief sponsor of far-reaching legislation giving Medicare authority to negotiate directly with drug-makers and is moving swiftly to consolidate support. The law would allow the government to negotiate on behalf of veterans. The Medicare prescription drug benefit in place since the George W. Bush administration forbids such negotiations. Doggett is hoping that Trump, who has accused the pharmaceutical industry of getting away with murder, will be an ally in lifting the prohibition. As much as I disagree with President Trump on just about everything, Im hopeful that we can find some common ground. Im hoping that on this issue he will begin acting more like candidate Trump, Doggett said. Related: How candidates cope with defeat: by baking, canning, changing diapers Doggett will be joined by fellow drug-industry antagonists. Maryland Democrat Elijah Cummings, who once spoke of very expensive champagne popping in drug industry board rooms, will chair the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. It was that committee that summoned Mylans CEO to explain the companys six-fold hike in the price of the EpiPen, an injector that wards off allergy attacks. The industry also can expect a less hospitable Senate even though it remains in GOP hands. Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, known for diverting drug-pricing proposals to the legislative graveyard as chair the Senate Finance Committee, is retiring. He will be replaced by no-nonsense Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who co-authored an investigation of Gileads decision to sell its hepatitis C drug for $84,500 per treatment. In the House, Doggetts Medicare negotiation bill has emerged as the Democrats main plan of action thus far, attracting 100 co-sponsors and scores of endorsements. Projected revenues of more than $350 billion in 2018 for the top ten drug manufacturers help to make his case. Studies show that prescription prices in the United States are more than twice as high as in other developed countries, according to comparisons published by Health and Human Services. One in four Americans say they have a hard time paying for their medicine, the Kaiser Foundations Health Tracking Poll found. Related: Ex-Mayor Castro 'hoping' to run for president Per capita drug spending grew at a slower rate recently after increases of up to 11.5 percent annually when an array of new specialty drugs came on the market. But the announcement by drug giant Pfizer last week that it will raise prices of 41 of its medicines on Jan. 15 likely will renew concerns and add pressure on Congress to act. For Medicare, the price hikes are draining. Medicares share of national health spending leapt from 2 percent to 29 percent over a decade, making Medicare the nations second biggest spender on drugs behind private insurance. Deploying government purchasing power would, reduce prices, save taxpayer dollars and lower seniors out-of-pocket costs, Doggett and his allies contend. The challenge is finding a price. What happens if that negotiation fails is what likely will trigger debate. The government could then issue a license allowing other manufacturers to produce the drug for Medicare with the goal of lower prices through competition. The legislation would give protection from price gouging, as Doggett puts it, by preventing Medicare from paying more than the average price in countries that resemble the United States economically. That provision resembles an election-eve plan spelled out by Trump that raised eyebrows given his criticisms of health-care systems in foreign lands. Calling it a revolutionary change, the president announced on Oct. 25 that an international pricing index will be used in a demonstration project to determine how much will be paid for drugs covered by Medicare Part B - the original Medicare part that covers services and supplies. Related: Two Texas Republicans join 17 newly elected military veterans heading for Capitol Hill Trumps proposal wouldnt take effect for more than a year and only as a demonstration project, rather than a regulation that prescribes policies. Nonetheless, it generated cries of price controls from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the industrys trade group in Washington. The industry is certain to wage an all-out effort against the Doggett plan. PhRMA has spent $21.8 million this year on lobbying, roughly 10 percent of the $216 million lobbying expenditures of the pharmaceutical and health products industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. A PhRMA spokeswoman, Holly Campbell, said by email that we cant speculate on what Congress may or may not do, but we remain focused on advancing market-based reforms that lower costs. She added that medicine prices increased just 1.9 percent last year even though patients out-of-pocket costs continue to rise. Dan Mendelson, a consultant who oversaw health-care issues in the Clinton administrations Office of Management and Budget, sees a difficult road for the Doggett bill. More likely, he said, are modest changes aimed at boosting competition among drug-makers and requiring more transparency in how they set prices. There is not consensus about the government setting limits on the cost of drugs and there is not consensus that government can do better than the private sector in negotiating the cost of drugs, he said. Mendelson also sees the electoral politics playing a role as Democrats lay the groundwork for wresting the White House from Trump in 2020. Theyre not going to want to put the question to bed, he said, referring to the likelihood of drug prices remaining a potent campaign issue in two years. Dr. Walid Gellad, director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Policy and Prescribing at the University of Pittsburgh, is less certain that Doggett faces insurmountable odds. A lot of people are writing it off. Im not so sure I would do that, he said. It would have lot of trouble in the Senate. But you never really know these days with this administration and what might happen in a deal. Dress for Success Executive Director Robbye Floyd calls it the transformational mirror. Bedecked with glittery gems, its where women see their self-image renewed by the type of stylish, professional ensemble they need to rock a job interview or get through the days or weeks before the first paycheck. A mirror in another room reflects the same for men referred to a newer and less-known program called Career Gear. The woman or the man who walks into the dressing room feeling like theyve got all these things going against them is a different person than the one who comes out of the dressing room in a suit or something professional-looking and sees themselves in the mirror, Floyd said. Its amazing, the transformation. And its not just physical, she added. They literally have a different posture and a different look in their face. They light up and their self-confidence is raised. And all of that helps them get jobs. Dress for Success has grown to become a global charity with more than 150 affiliates in cities across the United States and in 30 foreign countries. It got its start in 1997, when then-law student Nancy Lublin used a $5,000 inheritance to team up with nuns to collect high-quality clothing donations to help low-income women land their first job or return to the workforce. The program was launched in a Manhattan church basement. How to help Financial donations Helps pay for overhead, career assistance programs and clothing purchases Online:www.successfulconnections.org Mail: Send checks payable to organization to: Dress for Success San Antonio, 600 N Frio St. San Antonio, TX 78207 Phone: Call 210-737-1515, ask for Olivia and provide credit card information Clothing donations Drop off items at Frio site; 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays and 8:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Friday Frequently needed items include: Dress slacks or skirted suits: mostly plus sizes and sizes 0-6 Blouses New or very gently used shoes or handbags; accessories New lingerie and pantyhose or tights Coats and outerwear jackets See More Collapse San Antonios Dress for Success program started in 2002. It now operates at a location on North Frio, not far from the Haven for Hope homeless shelter that refers many of its clients. The approximately $1 million yearly budget relies largely on fundraising, grants and donations, with benefactors including some of the leading corporations in San Antonio. In the past 12 months, Dress for Success has served about 1,380 clients, two-thirds of them women. The organization provides more than just clothing. Theres an array of training and educational courses on the workplace soft skills that help people keep the jobs they land as well as career development services to help them grow. The agency works on an appointment basis, with referrals accounting for about 95 percent of its clients. Theyre referred to us by other agencies where theyre getting services for some issue on their life that is a barrier to employment, Floyd said. It could be substance abuse; it could be domestic violence, homelessness. We see a lot of veterans who are transitioning from the military world to the civilian. Some clients have only a grade-school education, others have earned doctorates. Some held lucrative careers that got derailed by a catastrophic illness or layoff. Most are single parents between 35 and 55, but they also are helping baby boomers returning to the workforce. Some know fully well how to put together an outfit but just dont have the money to buy clothes. Others have worked only in fast-food or other low-wage jobs with uniforms. Still others have never worked at all. Donated dresses, suit jackets, slacks and blouses line the walls of the boutique room, which looks a lot like a high-end shop. There are also shoes, bags and costume jewelry as well as a closet full of donated totes full of makeup and other girly stuff. The mens program started in 2009 and has slowly gained traction. Part of the problem is getting donations, Floyd said. Men are prone to hold on to items until theyre completely worn out, and there is a big need for mainstays like belts and shoes. On the womens side, there are never enough of the quality shoes, handbags and costume jewelry that pull together an outfit and are least likely to be part of a closet purge. Sizing is another problem, and Floyd wishes shed see more donations of both smaller and larger than average sizes. Its hard to suit clients who are size zeros or 5X, she said. Theres the same issue for men who are either small or big and tall. Basically when people ask us what we take, we tell them anything that you could see somebody else actually wearing it. It needs to be in good enough shape, she said. Floyd took over the agency in 2017, following a year as interim director. As a 35-year veteran of nonprofits shes worked as a substance abuse counselor, crime victim advocate and even a probation officer shes no stranger to people going through hard times. Its a mission I think everybody can agree with, she said of her current role. We all want to see people get to work or get back to work or get out of whatever situation that keeps them from working. And whatever is good for them is good for their families and their kids, she said. Even wider than that, its good for the local economy for people to be back to work. Lynn Brezosky is a San Antonio-based staff writer covering trade, agriculture and the economy. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | lbrezosky@express-news.net | Twitter: @lbrezosky When FBI agents raided San Antonio dog-training school Universal K9 earlier this year as part of a fraud allegations investigation into its owner, 26 dogs were seized by the the citys Animal Care Services because the school operator could not care for them anymore. ACS worked with rescue organizations and placed eight of the canines with Mission K9 Rescue of Houston, which helps find homes for retired working dogs. The organization, which has co-founders in Houston and San Antonio, has helped find homes for five of the dogs so far, after getting the animals treatment for serious health issues. When military working dogs are retired overseas, the federal government does not pay to bring them to the United States. Nonprofit organizations that include Mission K9 step in and help cover the cost of transporting the canines back and often reuniting them with their former handlers, some of them military veterans stationed at posts around the country that include Lackland, Fort Sam Houston and Fort Hood. The services provided by Mission K9, which was formed in 2013, can get expensive, and the nonprofit relies on donations to help accomplish its mission: To rescue, reunite and rehabilitate military working dogs, contract working dogs (not owned by the government) or other canines that fit within the organizations mission. We have rescued dogs from various situations, said Kristen Maurer, one of Mission K9s founders and president. In any industry, just like anywhere else, theres good and not as good (organizations). Some dogs come from amazing contract companies, and then theres others we get into our care and are in less than stellar condition. In the case of Universal K9, it was not under investigation for the treatment of its dogs, but over allegations that its owner misled a veterans commission and students about the qualifications or certification of its trainers, enabling Universal K9 to get more than $1 million in funds paid through the GI Bill. The owner has pleaded not guilty and is fighting the charges. The dogs from Universal K9 had hookworms and giardia, a parasitic abdominal infection that can be deadly if left untreated, Maurer said. Some had other issues such as bad hips. Every one of them had hookworm, Maurer said. That is a contagious thing as well, so we had to put them in isolation. These are things had they gone untreated, they wouldnt have made it. Most were underweight. At first glance, a couple looked healthy, but once into the vet we found some issues that wouldnt have been good. We get them treatment and it costs quite a bit of money to get them medically healthy, Maurer added about some of the other dogs theyve rescued. A lot of the things are hips and knees, cancers and skin conditions; and just in general, we have to make sure they are healthy before they can come into our facility. We dont want to contaminate our facility. Mission K9 is renowned for helping reunite retired military working dogs with their former handlers. It won the Helping Heroes award by the Petco Foundation in 2017 in recognition of the work it does. The dogs we reunite, we dont own those dogs, Maurer explained. Those dogs are owned by the Department of Defense, and handlers adopt them through Lackland and other (bases), and the handlers reach out to us for financial help for getting the dogs to them. Relying on donations, Mission K9 covers military dogs flights, which can range from $500 within the U.S. to $4,000 from overseas. Maurer said her group has reunited more than 150 canine-handler teams. And there is also a rehabilitation function. Working dogs can have anxiety and stress, just like their human colleagues, and those who have been in combat zones can suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. We get them ready for adoption, Maurer said. We call it unhandling. You have handlers who are training them. Were untraining them to be pets. Some of them come back and are ready to go into a home the next week. Other dogs might take longer to be ready for adoption. If they dont need anything and are emotionally stable, they are adopted out, Maurer said. But some stay six to eight months until they are ready to transition. Mission K9 looks for corporate and individual sponsors and donations from the public, but they also welcome other help. People can follow us on our Facebook page to see what our needs are, Maurer said. To help Mission K9 Rescue or to apply for adoption, go to the website, https://missionk9rescue.org/. 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 Months before their reign would begin, the Fiesta Especial royal court attended a fitting for capes that would display their individual personalities and likes. Lead volunteer Sandy Liwang snipped away at the shiny cloth for the royalty in a meeting room at Abiding Presence Lutheran Church on San Pedro Avenue. Sewing materials lined several tables as family members draped patterns over the shoulders of several court members. Previously, court members had identical capes, but this year, Liwangs daughter, Toria Wasik, designed the capes with input from the court and their families. One young lady fancied a 1950s vintage look. Others desired mermaids, anime cartoon characters, Ferris wheels. One young man had a hankering for rolling pins and a chefs hat on his cape. Its a cool way to remember their year on the court, said Liwang, 50. Theres something amazing working with someone with special needs; they just want to be accepted for who they are. RELATED: On a day to give thanks, thousands unite for annual Jimenez Thanksgiving Dinner Each one of the individuals, from 10 to 38 years of age, is raising money for organizations that help people with disabilities; a portion of the funds will go to support school trips for kids to Fiesta Especial. The event is an official Fiesta celebration for children and adults with cognitive, developmental and physical differences, and their family and friends. Sponsored by disABILITYsa, the event also includes a coronation event, Royalty Run 5K & Parade and Celebration Day at the Alamodome. For the past two years, Liwang has volunteered with disABILITYsa, a nonprofit that provides programs, resources and volunteer opportunities to improve the lives of people with disabilities in San Antonio. She was a Fiesta commissioner of another organization when she became involved with the nonprofit Fiesta Especial programs. She started out assisting with advice and connections to resources for supplies and volunteers before stepping into a leadership role this year. Liwang serves as the partner member organization commissioner for disABILITYsa with the Fiesta Commission and is involved in improving the Fiesta Especial Royal Court Leadership & Life Skills Development program. Melanie Cawthon, disABILITYsa co-founder and executive director, said Liwang has dedicated her time, talents, and resources to the groups efforts. She sets aside nights and weekends to help build the leadership skills and public appearance experiences for royal court participants. Were an extremely small organization with one member staff, she said. Without them, we wouldnt be able to offer the services and programs, it would be impossible. They are who make disABILITYsa a reality. Since the organization opened, we have had to fluctuate programs based on the ebb and flow of volunteers, so they really are the life of the organization. Cawthon, 42, said it takes more than 200 volunteers to put on events, including the nonprofits first abilitySTRONG Parade and the AccessAbility Fest. She said theres an opportunity for people with all degrees of time, talent and interest levels. The nonprofit began when Cawthon and her colleagues saw a need in the community to connect disability sectors together. They started the initiative in 2007 with disABILITY Fest, which led to the creation of disABILITYsa. In October 2016, the organization became an independent nonprofit. Cawthon started working in the nonprofit community in late 1999. Its where she found her biggest passion led her to getting involved with the Fiesta Especial program thats drawn thousands of visitors and become a fixture of Fiesta. In 2003, River City Christian School students founded the event when they realized there wasnt much during Fiesta for people with disabilities. The carnival became an official Fiesta event in 2006. Its my life work and it brings me great joy, she said. I get to make an impact on someones life and in the end what is there really? As long as the community believes in what were doing, well continue to do it. Liwang said shes seen more acceptance of independence in the last several years. Growing up in Kentucky, her parents raised her to do what she could to make the world a little bit better than she found it. She said at that time it wasnt unheard of for people with disabilities to be shut away. Now, Liwang is part of the network finding ways of inclusion and educating the community that disabilities are something that you cant always see. People who have a disability arent different than anyone else, they just have a different ability, she said. Theyre just part of the population that make San Antonio what it is. And after the cutting, sewing, and stitching is finished, Liwang will keep up with the royal court candidates as they await the festive days of Fiesta, ready to don their personalized capes for crowd-parting appearances. For more information about donating to Fiesta Especial and disABILITY, go to http://www.fiestaespecial.com/donate.html. To volunteer for events go to http://www.fiestaespecial.com/join-the-team.html. Vincent T. Davis is a reporter in the Greater San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | vtdavis@express-news.net | Twitter: @vincentdavis NEWS FLASH Emirates will be hiring cabin crew from Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Slovenia and Montenegro over the next four weeks. The recruitment drive involves seven cities in the five countries. Emirates will host an open day in Zagreb on November 28 at the Westin Zagreb (Izidora Krsnjavoga 1) starting at 08.00 local time. This will be followed by a recruitment event in Dubrovnik on December 21 at the Hilton Imperial Dubrovnik (Marijana Blazica 2). In Serbia, the Middle East's largest airline will host an open day in Belgrade on December 1 at the Falkensteiner Hotel (Bulevar Mihaila Pupina 10K) starting at 08.00. On December 26, it will hold an invitation only recruitment event in the Serbian capital, which requires interested candidates to register online, after which they will be invited to attend the recruitment process. On December 4, Emirates will be hosting an open day in Skopje at the Marriott Hotel (Plostad Makedonija 7) at 08.00. In Slovenia, the carrier will first hold an open day in Maribor on December 5 at the Hotel City Maribor (Ulica Kneza Koclja 22), followed by Ljubljana on December 7 at the Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel (Bratislavska cesta 8). Both events will start at 08.00. Finally, Emirates will be hiring Montenegrin cabin crew in Budva on December 23, with the venue for the open day yet to be announced. Crew requirements at Emirates include: at least 21 years of age at the time of joining, arm reach of 212 cm while standing on tiptoes, high school graduate, fluency in English (written and spoken), no visible tattoos while in Emirates uniform and the applicant must be physically fit to meet crew requirements. Those interested must bring with them their CV and one photo. If all requirements are met, final interviews will be scheduled over the course of the same week. Further details, as well as the application form, can be found here Benefits of working as Emirates crew include an approximate average monthly pay of 2.115 euros, layover expenses, free accommodation in Dubai, staff travel benefits, one firm free annual leave ticket to the country of origin and thirty days of annual leave. GREENWICH In its first defense of a case of alleged bullying against a teenager in Greenwich schools that led to his suicide, the towns legal team is denying most of the charges or claiming proof is needed for the lawsuit to proceed. In court papers filed last week, Harold Friedman, the attorney representing Greenwich, wrote that the town was not liable in the suicide death in 2013 of Bart Palosz, a 15-year-old student at Greenwich High. According to court papers, the town denies any liability and denies that plaintiffs are entitled to damages. The lawyer stated the town denies that Bartlomiej F. Palosz (Bart) was subjected to a years-long history of unremitting bullying in the Town of Greenwich school system. The long-running lawsuit has been tied up on procedural issues for three years. The state Supreme Court rejected a petition in mid-October to review the case on those procedural issues, regarding whether government employees or bodies can be sued in their official capacity. With that issue resolved, the town has submitted its first papers responding to the legal complaint, over the issue of whether educational authorities did not prevent bullying in the schools and were liable for the death of Bart Palosz. He shot himself in the head after the first day of his sophomore year at Greenwich High School in August 2013. His family said officials did not investigate or discipline students who had bullied their son, and they filed a suit against the town of Greenwich and the Board of Education. The towns motion is denying most of the claims in the lawsuit filed by the teens parents, contending that the school administrators were negligent. The towns legal motion, however, states there were some charges in the lawsuit that were true. It was true that concerns regarding Bart were communicated to ... assistant principals at Western Middle School while Bart was a student. The towns lawyer acknowledges that in October 2012, in Barts biology class, Barts cell phone was thrown on the ground. Another admission was correct, the court papers state, that a counselor at Greenwich High School sent an email out to teachers that stated, Please keep an eye out for Bart in your classrooms and let me know if you notice anything that I should be aware of. The motion by the town, filed last week in Superior Court, says the other claims in the lawsuit will have to be proven. The lawyers representing the Palosz family are seeking to proceed with the discovery phase, in which records and documents kept by the school district can be released and analyzed. The additional release of documents and other material in the school districts handling of the teens issues was delayed while the case went through various appeals on procedural issues. The lawsuit was filed against the town and the school board in August 2015. GREENWICH Once opponents but now allies, Greenwich resident John Blankley has joined the transition of team for new state treasurer-elect, Shawn Wooden. Blankley ran for the position, but he failed to muster the needed support at the Democratic Partys state convention last spring. Instead, Blankley threw his support behind Wooden, a former city council president in Hartford, in his successful Democratic primary against Greenwich resident Dita Bhargava. Wooden then beat Republican Thad Gray in the general election earlier this month. Now, as Wooden prepares to take office in January, Blankley is showing his support by joining the 10-person Transition Advisory Committee. As treasurer-elect, I am committed to attracting the best quality talent and ideas to my transition and my service, Wooden said in a statement to Greenwich Time. John and I were competitors early in the campaign, and I came to know and respect his extensive experience with finance, operations and investments. He is clearly dedicated to improving Connecticuts fiscal condition, and I am delighted he has agreed to serve my transition team. Wooden made the official announcements earlier this week. The committee is chaired by Hartford attorney Dan Papermaster, who has previously served on transition teams for U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman. Vonda Brunsting, Darrell Hill, Duane Hill, Jason Rojas, Linda Savisky, Ted See, Christine Shaw and Stacy Walsh make up the rest of the transition team. Blankley is a former high-ranking executive at several large corporations, including British Petroleum North America and Stolt Tankers and Terminals. He founded and still heads a successful IT company in Connecticut. His business experience was a major part of his campaign for state treasurer, and it is expected to be the basis of his work to help Wooden prepare to head a 130-member staff and more than $60 billion in assets. Those assets include the pension funds for more than 190,000 state employees and public school teachers across Connecticut. Much of the states deficit has been blamed on its unfunded liabilities with pensions. Solving that issue is expected to be a priority for governor-elect Ned Lamont and the state legislature. The transition team is split into three subcommittees: personnel, operations and policy recommendations. Blankley will be a member of both the operations and policy subcommittees. On Friday, Blankley said he was looking forward to the work. I am honored to have been invited to join treasurer-elect Woodens transition team, Blankley said. We represent a broad range of skills to meet our objective of ensuring a smooth handover from Treasurer Denise Nappier. (As part of the) operational and policy committees, my contribution will be my years of business experience to help the new treasurer address some of our states financial problems. I am looking forward to the challenge. In announcing his transition team, Wooden said, I look forward to serving the people of Connecticut by tackling some of the significant challenges we face while maximizing the opportunities we have to invest in the right priorities that will improve our state. I am honored to have this breadth and depth of experienced professionals to assist me in transitioning into this important office. Current State Treasurer Denise Nappier, who was the first African-American state treasurer in the nation, did not run for a new term. After 19 years in the job, she was the longest-serving treasurer in Connecticut since 1818. kborsuk@greenwichtime.com Contributed Photo / Contributed Photo A whopping 870 pounds of turkey and 1,500 pounds of cranberry sauce, along with green beans, mashed potatoes and other canned and packaged side dishes were delivered by ambulance to the Food Bank of Lower Fairfield County last week, compliments of a team effort by Stamford EMS, Stamford Paramedic Association and the families of Our Lady of Grace School in Glenbrook. We are thrilled to partner with the Stamford Paramedic Association and Our Lady of Grace School on this effort, said Patricia Squires, Stamford EMS Chief and CEO. It is the third annual holiday donation from all three organizations, and in the true spirt of Thanksgiving, we came together to make full dinners for those in need. FAIRFIELD The Fairfield Police Department is again participating in No Shave November, an annual fundraising and awareness effort during which participants from around the world, including many law enforcement agencies, have put down their razors to join the fight against cancer. Every dollar raised supports the efforts to fund cancer research and education, to help prevent the disease and aid those fighting the battle, according to a news release. Acting Police Chief Chris Lyddy has authorized members of the department to participate in this event and has waived the standard facial hair grooming policy during the month of November. This year, the department has joined the online fundraising efforts of The Connecticut Cancer Foundation by creating an online fundraising team, where they will be competing to raise funds against a number of other law enforcement agencies in Connecticut. Last year, the FPD raised over $3,000; it hopes to raise even more this year. All donations will go to Connecticut cancer patients. Town, chamber host annual Shop & Stroll FAIRFIELD For the sixth year, the town and Chamber of Commerce will host the Holiday Shop & Stroll on Dec. 6. Participating shops will stay open late and will offer an assortment of hors doeuvres and seasonal refreshments from 6 to 9 p.m., according to a news release. Traveling carolers and musicians from local schools will perform, and local restaurants will be offering dinner or drink specials. On Small Business Saturday, Nov. 24, a welcome station will be set up as part of the annual Santas Arrival, which takes place from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. on the historic Town Green in front of Old Town Hall, 611 Old Post Road. Manulife Financial Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides financial products and services in Asia, Canada, the United States, and internationally. The company operates through Wealth and Asset Management Businesses; Insurance and Annuity Products; And Corporate and Other segments. The Wealth and Asset Management Businesses segment provides mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, group retirement and savings products, and institutional asset management services through agents and brokers affiliated with the company, securities brokerage firms, and financial advisors pension plan consultants and banks. The Insurance and Annuity Products segment offers deposit and credit products; individual life, and individual and group long-term care insurance; and guaranteed and partially guaranteed annuity products through insurance agents, brokers, banks, financial planners, and direct marketing. The Corporate and Other segment is involved in property and casualty insurance and reinsurance businesses; and run-off reinsurance operations, including variable annuities, and accident and health. It also manages timberland and agricultural portfolios; and engages in insurance agency, portfolio and mutual fund management, mutual fund dealer, life and financial reinsurance, and fund management businesses. Additionally, the company holds and manages oil and gas properties; holds oil and gas royalties, and foreign bonds and equities; and provides investment management, counseling, advisory, and dealer services. Manulife Financial Corporation was incorporated in 1887 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Accenture: 2nd Road, 2nd Road Pty Ltd., ?What If!, ?What If! China Holdings Ltd, ?What If! Holdings Limited, ?What If! Innovation Singapore Holdings Pte, ?What If! Limited, ?What If! Shanghai Co. Ltd, ?What If! USA LLC, ACN Consulting Co Ltd, AD Dialeto Agencia de Publicidade SA, AD.Dialeto (Digital Agency acquired by Accenture), AGS Business and Technology Services Limited, ASM Research Inc., ASM Research LLC, ATAN, Accenture (Beijing) Mobile Technology Co Ltd, Accenture (Botswana) (Proprietary) Limited, Accenture (China) Co Ltd, Accenture (Shenzhen) Technology Co. Ltd., Accenture (South Africa) (Proprietary) Limited, Accenture (South Africa) Pty Limited, Accenture (UK) Ltd, Accenture 2 Business Process Services S.A., Accenture 2 LLC, Accenture A/S, Accenture AB, Accenture AG, Accenture AS, Accenture Africa Pty Ltd, Accenture Australia Holding B.V., Accenture Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, Accenture Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture Azerbaijan Ltd, Accenture BPM Operations Support Services S.A., Accenture BPM S.C.R.L., Accenture BV, Accenture Branch Holdings B.V., Accenture Bulgaria EOOD, Accenture Business Services for Utilities Inc, Accenture Business Services of British Columbia Limited Partnership, Accenture Business and Technology Services LLC, Accenture C.A, Accenture CAS GmbH, Accenture Canada Holdings Inc., Accenture Capital DAC, Accenture Capital Inc, Accenture Central Europe B.V., Accenture Chile Asesorias y Servicios Ltda, Accenture Cloud Services GmbH, Accenture Cloud Software Solutions Ltd, Accenture Cloud Solutions Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture Cloud Solutions LLC, Accenture Cloud Solutions Ltd, Accenture Cloud Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Co Ltd, Accenture Co Ltd., Accenture Communications Infrastructure Solutions Ltd, Accenture Company Ltd, Accenture Consulting Services Ltd Tanzania, Accenture Consultores de Gestao S.A., Accenture Consultoria de Industria e Consumo Ltda, Accenture Consultoria de Recursos Naturais Ltda, Accenture Credit Services LLC, Accenture Customer Services Distribution SAS, Accenture Customer Services Limited, Accenture Danismanlik Limited Sirketi, Accenture Defined Benefit Pension Plan Trustees Ltd, Accenture Defined Contribution Pension Plan Trustees Ltd, Accenture Delivery Poland sp. z o.o., Accenture Dienstleistungen GmbH, Accenture Digital France Holdings SA, Accenture Digital Holdings GmbH, Accenture East Africa Limited, Accenture Ecuador S.A., Accenture Egypt LLC, Accenture Enterprise Development (Shanghai) Co Ltd., Accenture Federal Services LLC, Accenture Finance (Gibraltar) III Ltd, Accenture Finance GmbH, Accenture Finance GmbH in liquidation, Accenture Finance II GmbH, Accenture Finance II GmbH in liquidation, Accenture Finance II Ltd, Accenture Finance Limited, Accenture Finance and Accounting BPO Services S.p.A., Accenture Finance and Accounting Services Srl, Accenture Flex LLC, Accenture GP LLC, Accenture Ghana Limited, Accenture Global Holdings Ltd., Accenture Global Services Ltd, Accenture Global Solutions Ltd, Accenture GmbH, Accenture HR Services Ltd, Accenture HR Services S.p.A., Accenture Healthcare Processing Inc., Accenture Holding GmbH, Accenture Holding GmbH & Co. KG, Accenture Holding GmbH in liquidation, Accenture Holdings (Iberia) S.L., Accenture Holdings B.V., Accenture Holdings France SAS, Accenture Holdings plc, Accenture Hungary Holdings Kft, Accenture Inc, Accenture Industrial Software Limited Liability Company (Accenture Endustriyel Yazylym Cozumleri Limited irketi), Accenture Industrial Software Limited Liability Company (Accenture Endustriyel Yazlm Cozumleri Limited Sirketi), Accenture Industrial Software Solutions Kft, Accenture Industrial Software Solutions SA, Accenture Insurance Services LLC, Accenture Insurance Services SAS, Accenture Insurance Services SpA, Accenture International BV, Accenture International Capital SCA, Accenture International LLC, Accenture International Limited, Accenture International Sarl, Accenture Japan Ltd, Accenture Korea BV, Accenture LLC, Accenture LLP, Accenture Lanka (Private) Ltd, Accenture Limited, Accenture Ltd, Accenture Ltda, Accenture Maghreb S.a.r.l., Accenture Managed Services SRL, Accenture Managed Services SpA, Accenture Management GmbH, Accenture Middle East B.V, Accenture Middle East BV, Accenture Minority I BV, Accenture Minority III Ltd, Accenture Mozambique Limitada, Accenture Mzansi (Pty) Ltd, Accenture NV/SA, Accenture NZ Limited, Accenture Newco LLC, Accenture Nova Scotia Unlimited Liability Co., Accenture OOO, Accenture Operations Sp. z o.o., Accenture Outsourcing SRL, Accenture Outsourcing Services, Accenture Outsourcing Services S.A., Accenture Oy, Accenture Panama Inc, Accenture Participations BV, Accenture Participations II Limited, Accenture Peru S.R.L, Accenture Peru S.R.L., Accenture Post Trade Processing SAS, Accenture Post-Trade Processing Limited, Accenture Process Ltd, Accenture Product Lifecycle Services, Accenture Properties, Accenture Pte Ltd, Accenture Puerto Rico LLC, Accenture S.A., Accenture S.C., Accenture S.L., Accenture S.R.L., Accenture SAS, Accenture SG Services Pte Ltd, Accenture SRL, Accenture Saudi Arabia Limited, Accenture Sendirian Berhad, Accenture Service Center SRL, Accenture Services (Mauritius) Ltd, Accenture Services AB, Accenture Services AG, Accenture Services AS, Accenture Services GmbH, Accenture Services Ltd, Accenture Services Morocco SA, Accenture Services Oy, Accenture Services Pty Ltd, Accenture Services S.r.l., Accenture Services SRL, Accenture Services Sp. z o.o., Accenture Services Sp. z.o.o., Accenture Services and Technology Srl, Accenture Services fur Kreditinstitute GmbH, Accenture Services s.r.o., Accenture Servicos Administrativos Ltda, Accenture Servicos de Suporte de Negocios Ltda, Accenture Solutions Co Ltd, Accenture Solutions Private Limited, Accenture Solutions Pte Ltd, Accenture Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture Sp. z o.o., Accenture Sp. z.o.o., Accenture SpA, Accenture State Healthcare Services LLC, Accenture Sub II Inc., Accenture Sub Inc, Accenture Sub LLC, Accenture Systems Integration Limited, Accenture Sarl, Accenture Tanacsado Kolatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Accenture Tanacsado Kolatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag KFT, Accenture Technologia, Accenture Technologia Consultoria e Outsourcing S.A., Accenture Technology Infrastructure Services Pty Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions (Dalian) Co Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions (HK) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (Thailand) Co. Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions - Solucoes Informaticas Integradas, Accenture Technology Solutions - Solucoes Informaticas Integradas S.A., Accenture Technology Solutions GmbH, Accenture Technology Solutions Oy, Accenture Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions S.A. de C.V., Accenture Technology Solutions SAS, Accenture Technology Solutions SRL, Accenture Technology Solutions Sdn. Bhd., Accenture Technology Solutions Slovakia s.r.o., Accenture Technology Ventures BV, Accenture Technology Ventures S.P.R.L., Accenture Uruguay SRL, Accenture Vietnam Co., Accenture Vietnam Co. LTD, Accenture Zambia Limited, Accenture do Brasil Limitada, Accenture plc, Accenture s.r.o., Acceria, Acquity Customer Insight Limited, Acquity Group, Adaptly LLC, Adaptly UK Limited, AddVal Technology, Adqptly, Advantium Inc., Agave Consultants Limited, Agilex Technologies Inc., Allen International, Allen International Consulting Group Ltd, Alnova Technologies Corporation S.L., AlphaBeta Advisors, Altima, Altima Asia Ltd., Altima SAS, Altitude, Altitude LLC, Analytics 8 LP, Analytics 8 Pty Ltd, Analytics8, Aorui Advertising (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Apis, Appaloosa Technology SAS, Arca, Ariba - BPO, Arismore, Aspiro Solutions (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Avanade, Avanade (Guangzhou) Computer Technology Development Co. Ltd., Avanade (Thailand) Co Ltd, Avanade Asia Pte Ltd, Avanade Australia Pty Ltd, Avanade Belgium SPRL, Avanade Canada Inc., Avanade Denmark A/S, Avanade Denmark ApS, Avanade Deutschland GmbH, Avanade Europe Holdings Ltd, Avanade Europe Services Ltd, Avanade Federal Services LLC, Avanade Finland Oy, Avanade France SAS, Avanade GZ Computer Technology Development Co. Ltd. (SH), Avanade Guangzhou, Avanade Holdings LLC, Avanade Hong Kong Ltd, Avanade International Corporation, Avanade Ireland Limited, Avanade Italy SRL, Avanade KK, Avanade Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avanade Netherlands BV, Avanade Norway AS, Avanade Poland Sp. z o.o., Avanade Poland Sp. z.o.o., Avanade Schweiz GmbH, Avanade South Africa, Avanade South Africa Pty Ltd, Avanade Spain SL, Avanade Sweden AB, Avanade UK Ltd, Avanade do Brasil Limitada, Avanade Osterreich GmbH, AvantBiz Consulting Limited, Avenai, Axia Ltd., BABCN LLC, BCT Solutions, BCT Solutions Pty Ltd, BPO Servicos Administrativos Ltda, BRIDGE Energy Group, Beacon Consulting Group Inc., Beijing Genesis Interactive Technology Co. Ltd., Benext, Bionic, Blue Horseshoe, Boomerang Pharmaceutical Communications, Boomerang Pharmaceuticals Communications Ireland Limited, Bow & Arrow, Brand Learning, Brand Learning Group Limited, Brand Learning LLC, Brand Learning Ltd, Brand Learning Partners Limited, Brand Learning Pte Limited, Bridge Energy Group LLC, Brightstep AB, Byte Prophecy, CAS, CRMWaypoint, CadenceQuest Inc., Capable Marketer Limited, Capgemini - North American health practice, Capital Consultancy Services Inc., Certus Solutions Consulting Services Ltd, Certus Solutions Ltd, ChangeTrack Research Pty Ltd., Chaotic Moon Studios, Chengdu Mensa Advertising Co. Ltd., Cimation, Cimation UK Limited, Cirruseo, Cirruseo SAS, Clarity Insights, Clearhead, Clearhead Group, Clearhead Group LLC, ClientHouse GmbH, Cloud Sherpas, Cloud Sherpas (GA) LLC, Cloud Sherpas (SN) (PTE.) Limited, Cloud Sherpas New Zealand Ltd., Cloud Talent Limited, Cloudsherpas, Cloudsherpas Inc., Cloudworks, Codagenic Pty. Ltd., Computer Research and Telecommunications LLC, Concrete Desenvolvimento de Sistemas Ltda., Concrete Solutions, Concrete Solutions Ltda., Context Information Security, Coritel S.A., Corliant Inc., CreativeDrive, CustomerWorks Europe SL, Cutting Edge Solutions Ltd, D5 Global Holdings LLC, DAZ Systems Inc, DAZ Systems LLC, DAZSI Systems (India) Pvt. Ltd., DMA Solutions Limited, Davies Consulting, DayNine Consulting, DayNine Consulting (Australia) PTY LTD, DayNine Consulting (Deutschland) GmbH, DayNine Consulting (New Zealand) Limited, DayNine Consulting France SAS, DayNine Consulting Japan K.K., DayNine Consulting LLC, Declarative Holdings, Declarative Holdings LLC, Defense Point Security, Deja vu Security, Design Strategy and Research de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Designaffairs LLC, Digiplug S.A.S., Digiplug SAS, Digital Consulting & Software Services LLC, Droga5, Droga5 LLC, Droga5 Studios LLC, Droga5 UK Ltd., Duck Creek Technologies, Duck Creek Technologies LLC, Deja Vu Security LLC, ESR Labs, Elcurator SAS, Enaxis Consulting, Enaxis Consulting L.P., End-to-End Analytics, Energuia Web, Energuia Web S.A., Energy Management Brokers Ltd., Energy Quote Private Ltd., EnergyQuote JHA, EnergyQuote JHA Ltd., EnergyQuote Trading Ltd., Enimbos, Enkitec, Enterprise System Partners, Enterprise System Partners B.V. , Enterprise System Partners Bilisim Danismanlik Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Enterprise System Partners Global Corporation, Enterprise System Partners Limited, Enterprise System Partners PR LLC, Enterprise System Partners S.A.S., Entropia, Epylon, Ethica Consulting Group, Evopro Group, Exactside Limited, Exton Consulting, Fairway Technologies Inc, Fairway Technologies LLC, Filmproduction ApS, First Annapolis Consulting, First Annapolis Consulting Inc., First Annapolis Consulting LLC, First Annapolis International, Fjord, Focus Group Europe, Focus Group Europe Limited, Formicary, Formicary Holdings Limited, Formicary Limited, FusionX, FutureMove Automotive, Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda., Genfour, Genfour Limited, George Group Consulting L.P., Gestalt LLC, Gestion Altima Canada Inc., Gevity, Global Public Firm S.L., GlobalView SAS, GoodFilm GmbH Filmproduktion Stuttgart, H.B. Maynard and Co. Inc., HRC Retail Advisory, Hagberg Consulting Group, Hangzhou Aiyunzhe Technology Co. Ltd., Happen, Hjaltelin Stahl, Hjaltelin Stahl K/S, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Hytracc Consulting UK Limited, Hytracc Holding AS, I-Faber S.p.A., IBB Consulting, IMJ Corp, IMJ Corporation, INCAD, INSITUM, IT One Company Limited, ITBS Servicios Bancarios de Tecnologia de la Informacion SL, Icon Integration, Imagine Broadband (USA) Ltd, Imagine Broadband USA LLC, Imaginea Inc, Industrie&Co, Infoman AG, Infoman Schweiz AG, Informatica de Euskadi S.L., Infusion Development Inc., Infusion Development UK Limited, InfusionDev LLC, Innoveer Solutions India Pvt Ltd, Insitum Consultoria Argentina SRL, Insitum Consultoria Brasil LTDA, Insitum Consultoria Colombia SAS, Insitum Consultoria Europa SL, Insitum Consultoria Peru SAC, Insitum Consultoria S.A. de C.V., Intrepid, Intrigo Systems Inc, Intrigo Systems India Pvt. Limited, Intrigo Systems LLC, Inventor Advertisement (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Inventor Technology Limited, InvestTech, Investtech Systems Consulting LLC, Javelin Group, Javelin Group (Bulgaria) EOOD, Javelin Group Limited (UK), Javelin Group SASU, K Comms Group Limited, KCS.net AG, KCS.net AG West, KCS.net Deutschland GmbH, KCS.net Holding AG, KCS.net Osterreich GmbH, Kaper Communications Limited, Karma Communications Debtco Limited, Karma Communications Group Limited, Karma Communications Holdings Limited, Karmarama, Karmarama Comms Limited, Karmarama Limited, Knowledge Rules Inc., Knowledgent, Knowledgent Group LLC, Kogentix, Kogentix LLC, Kogentix Ltd, Kogentix Singapore Pte. Ltd, Kogentix Technologies Private Limited, Kolle Rebbe, Kolle Rebbe GmbH, Kream Comms Limited, Kunstmaan, Kunstmaan NV, Kurt Salmon, Kurt Salmon Canada LTD, Kurt Salmon UKI, Kurt Salmon UKI Ltd., Kurt Salmon US LLC, LEXTA, LINKBYNET, LabAnswer, LabAnswer Government, LemonXL Limited, Logistics Market Place Limited (UK), Loud & Clear Creative Pty Ltd, MAXIM Systems Inc., MCG US Holdings LLC, Mackevision CG Technology and Service (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Mackevision Corporation, Mackevision Japan Co. Ltd., Mackevision Korea Ltd, Mackevision Medien Design, Mackevision Medien Design GmbH, Mackevision Singapore Pte. Ltd., Mackevision UK Ltd, Maglan, Maglan Information Defense Technologies Research Ltd., Maihiro, Matter, Matter Llc, Maud Corp Pty Limited, Maxamine International, Media Audits Ltd., Media Hive, Mediasenz Pty Ltd., Meredith Specialty LLC, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing Corporation, Meridian Informed Purchasing Ltd., Mindtribe, Mindtribe Product Engineering LLC, MobGen, MobGen Technology S.L, Moonrise NV, Mortgage Cadence, Mortgage Cadence an Accenture Company, Most Champion Ltd, Mudano, N3 LLC, NBS Marketing Inc., NYTEC, Nanjing Demeng Advertising Co. Ltd., Nashco Consulting, NaviSys Inc., NellArmonia, Neo Metrics Analytics S.L., Neo Metrics Chile, Neo Metrics Chile S.A., New Content, New Content Chile SpA, New Content Editora e Produtora Ltda., New Energy Aborda, New Energy Associates Ltd, New Energy Group, New Energy S.r.l., NewsPage, NewsPage (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, NewsPage China Ltd., NewsPage Pte Ltd, Nice Agency Limited, Northstream, Northstream AB, Northstream Holding AB, OCTO Technology, OPS Rules Management Consultants, Octagon Research Solutions Inc., Octo Technology LTDA, Octo Technology Pty Ltd, Octo Technology SA, Octo Technology SPRL, Octoman SAS, Odgaard ApS, Olikka, Openmind, Openminded, Operaciones Accenture S.A. de C.V., OpusLine, Orbium, Orbium Consulting Ltd, Orbium GmbH, Orbium Holding AG, Orbium Inc., Orbium International AG, Orbium International sp. z o.o., Orbium Licences AG, Orbium Limited, Orbium Pte. Ltd., Orbium Pty Ltd, Orbium Services sp. z o.o., Orbium Sarl, Origin Digital, PCO Innovation, PCO Innovation Canada Inc., PCO Innovation EURL, PIXO PUNCH Limited, PLM Systems S.r.l, POC Holdings, PRION GmbH, PT Accenture, PT Asta Catur Indra, PT Kogentix Teknologi Indonesia, Pach Invest SARL, Pach Invest SAS, PacificLink Group, PacificLink iMedia Ltd., Paja Finanssipalvelut Oy, Parker Fitzgerald Inc, Parker Fitzgerald Inc., Parker Fitzgerald International Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Limited, Parker Fitzgerald PTY Ltd, Parker Fitzgerald Services Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Solutions Limited, Partners Technology Mexico Holdings BV, Pecaso Ltd., Pegasus Production K/S, Perseroan Terbatas. Accenture, Phase One Consulting Group, Pillar Technology, Pollux, Pragsis Bidoop, Pragsis Bidoop UK Ltd, Pragsis Technologies S.L, PrimeQ, PrimeQ Australia Pty Ltd, PrimeQ Ltd, PrimeQ NZ Pty Ltd, Procurian Germany GmbH, Procurian Inc., Procurian International I LLC, Procurian International II LLC, Procurian LLC, Procurian Singapore Pte. Ltd., Procurian Switzerland GmbH, Procurian USA LLC, Proquire LLC, PureApps Ltd., Qi Jie Beijing Information Technologies Co Ltd, Radiant Services, Radiant Services LLC, Random Walk Computing Inc., Reactive Media Limited, Reactive Media Pty Ltd., Real Protect, Realworld OO Systems Ltd., Redcore, Redcore (Asia) Pte Ltd, Redcore (India) Private Limited (India), Redcore (New Zealand) Limited, Redcore Group Holdings Pty Ltd, Redcore Pty Ltd, Renacentis IT Services, Revolutionary Security, RiskControl, Rothco, Rothco Holdings Designated Activity Company, Rothco Unlimited Company, S.C. EnergyQuote S.r.l., S3 TV Technology Limited, S3 TV Technology Ltd., SEC Servizi, SEC Servizi S.p.A., SOPIA Corp., Sagacious Consultants, Sagacious Consultants LLC, Salt Solutions, Sanchez Capital Services Pvt Ltd, Schlumberger Business Consulting, Seabury Airline Planning Group, Seabury Aviation & Aerospace (UK) Limited, Seabury Aviation & Aerospace Asia (Hong Kong) Limited, Seabury Aviation Consulting LLC, Seabury Cargo Advisory B.V., Seabury Consulting, Seabury Corporate Advisors LLC, Seabury Human Capital LLC, Seabury Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Seabury Structured Finance LLC, Search Technologies BPO, Search Technologies BPO Inc., Search Technologies GmbH, Search Technologies International LLC, Search Technologies LATAM, Search Technologies LATAM S.A., Search Technologies LLC, Search Technologies Limited, Sente Partners LLC, Sentelis, Servicios Tecnicos de Programacion Accenture S.C., Shackleton, Shackleton Barcelona S.L., Shackleton Chile S.A., Shackleton Madrid S.L., Shackleton S.A., Shanghai Baiyue Advertising Co. Ltd., Shun Zhe Technology Development Co. Ltd., Silveo, Simian Pty Limited, SinnerSchrader, SinnerSchrader AG, SinnerSchrader Commerce GmbH, SinnerSchrader Content GmbH, SinnerSchrader Deutschland GmbH, SinnerSchrader Praha s.r.o., SinnerSchrader Swipe GmbH, Sistemes Consulting S.L., Solutions IQ, Solutions IQ LLC, SolutionsIQ, SolutionsIQ India Consulting Services Private Limited, Storm Digital, Storm Digital B.V., Structure Consulting Group, Structure Consulting Group LLC, Sutter Mills, Systor AG, TQuila Limited (UK), Tadata Creative Unlimited Company, Tara Insurance DAC, Tara Risk DAC, TargetST8, TargetST8 Consulting LLC, Tech - Avanade Portugal Unipessoal Lda, Tecnilogica Ecosistemas S.A., Tecnilogica Ltd., Tecnilogica, The Brand Learning Partners Limited, The Callisto Integration Corporation, The Monkeys, The Monkeys Pty Limited, The Myrtle Group, Total Logistics, Total Logistics Supply Chain Consultants Limited, Tquila, Trivadis AG, Troop Studios Pty Ltd, VanBerlo, Verax Solutions, Verax Solutions Corporation, Vertical Retail Consulting (Shanghai) Ltd., Vertical Retail Consulting Hong Kong, Vertical Retail Consulting Hong Kong Ltd., Vertical Retail Consulting Ltd., Vivere Brasil Servicos e Solucoes SA, Vivere Brasil Solucoes De Credito Ltda., Wabion GmbH, Weblinc Pty Ltd, Wire Stone, Wire Stone LLC, Wire Stone Sarl, Wolox, Workforce Insight, Yesler, Zag, Zenta, Zenta Global Philippines, Zenta Global Philippines Inc., Zenta Mortgage Services LLC, Zenta Recoveries Inc, Zenta US Holdings Inc., Zielpuls, Zielpuls (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zielpuls GmbH, avVenta, designaffairs, designaffairs Business Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., designaffairs GmbH, designaffairs group China Co. Ltd., dgroup, i4C Analytics, iDefense, and solid-serVision.com GmbH. The following companies are subsidiares of Yum China: AIR BP-PBF DEL PERU SAC, BELFAST STORAGE LTD, CANADIAN ULTRAMAR COMPANY, COLONNADE TEXAS INSURANCE COMPANY LLC, COLONNADE VERMONT INSURANCE COMPANY, DIAMOND ALTERNATIVE ENERGY LLC, DIAMOND ALTERNATIVE ENERGY OF CANADA INC., DIAMOND GREEN DIESEL HOLDINGS LLC, DIAMOND GREEN DIESEL LLC, DIAMOND K RANCH LLC, DIAMOND OMEGA COMPANY L.L.C., DIAMOND SHAMROCK REFINING COMPANY L.P., DIAMOND UNIT INVESTMENTS L.L.C., DSRM NATIONAL BANK, ENTERPRISE CLAIMS MANAGEMENT INC., GCP LOGISTICS COMPANY LLC, GOLDEN EAGLE ASSURANCE LIMITED, HAMMOND MAINLINE PIPELINE LLC, HUNTWAY REFINING COMPANY, MAINLINE PIPELINES LIMITED, MAPLE ETHANOL LTD., MICHIGAN REDEVELOPMENT GP LLC, MICHIGAN REDEVELOPMENT L.P., MRP PROPERTIES COMPANY LLC, NECHES RIVER HOLDING CORP., NORCO METHANOL LLC, OCEANIC TANKERS AGENCY LIMITED, PARKWAY PIPELINE LLC, PENTA TANKS TERMINALS S.A., PI DOCK FACILITIES LLC, PICKARD PLACE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION, PORT ARTHUR COKER COMPANY L.P., PREMCOR USA INC., PROPERTY RESTORATION L.P., PURE BIOFUELS DEL PERU S.A.C., PURE BIOFUELS HOLDINGS L.P., Parkway Pipeline, Premcor, Pure Biofuels Del Peru, SABINE RIVER HOLDING CORP., SABINE RIVER LLC, SAINT BERNARD PROPERTIES COMPANY LLC, SUNBELT REFINING COMPANY L.P., THE PREMCOR PIPELINE CO., THE PREMCOR REFINING GROUP INC., THE SHAMROCK PIPE LINE CORPORATION, TRANSPORT MARITIME ST. LAURENT INC., ULTRAMAR ACCEPTANCE INC., ULTRAMAR ENERGY INC., ULTRAMAR INC., Ultramar Diamond Shamrock, V-TEX LOGISTICS LLC, VALERO (BARBADOS) SRL, VALERO (PERU) HOLDINGS GP LLC, VALERO (PERU) HOLDINGS LIMITED, VALERO ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO ARUBA ACQUISITION COMPANY I LTD., VALERO ARUBA FINANCE INTERNATIONAL LTD., VALERO ARUBA HOLDING COMPANY N.V., VALERO ARUBA HOLDINGS INTERNATIONAL LTD., VALERO ARUBA MAINTENANCE/OPERATIONS COMPANY N.V., VALERO BROWNSVILLE TERMINAL LLC, VALERO CANADA FINANCE INC., VALERO CANADA L.P., VALERO CAPITAL CORPORATION, VALERO CARIBBEAN SERVICES COMPANY, VALERO COKER CORPORATION ARUBA N.V., VALERO CUSTOMS & TRADE SERVICES INC., VALERO EAST BAY LLC, VALERO ENERGY (IRELAND) LIMITED, VALERO ENERGY ARUBA II COMPANY, VALERO ENERGY INC., VALERO ENERGY LTD, VALERO ENERGY PARTNERS GP LLC, VALERO ENERGY PARTNERS LP, VALERO ENERGY UK LTD, VALERO ENTERPRISES INC., VALERO EQUITY SERVICES LTD, VALERO FINANCE L.P. I, VALERO FINANCE L.P. II, VALERO FINANCE L.P. III, VALERO FOREST CONTRIBUTION LLC, VALERO GRAIN MARKETING LLC, VALERO H2 PIPELINE COMPANY LLC, VALERO HOLDCO UK LTD, VALERO HOLDINGS INC., VALERO INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS INC., VALERO LIVE OAK LLC, VALERO LOGISTICS UK LTD, VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY (PANAMA) LLC, VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY COMPANY, VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPY INTERNATIONAL LTD., VALERO MARKETING IRELAND LIMITED, VALERO MKS LOGISTICS L.L.C., VALERO NEDERLAND COOPERATIEF U.A., VALERO NEDERLAND COOPERATIEF U.A., VALERO NEW AMSTERDAM B.V., VALERO OMEGA COMPANY L.L.C., VALERO OPERATIONAL SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO OPERATIONAL SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO OPERATIONS SUPPORT LTD, VALERO PARTNERS CCTS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS CORPUS EAST LLC, VALERO PARTNERS CORPUS WEST LLC, VALERO PARTNERS EP LLC, VALERO PARTNERS HOUSTON LLC, VALERO PARTNERS LOUISIANA LLC, VALERO PARTNERS LUCAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS MCKEE LLC, VALERO PARTNERS MEMPHIS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS MERAUX LLC, VALERO PARTNERS NORTH TEXAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS OPERATING CO. LLC, VALERO PARTNERS PAPS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS PORT ARTHUR LLC, VALERO PARTNERS SOUTH TEXAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS TEXAS CITY LLC, VALERO PARTNERS THREE RIVERS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS WEST MEMPHIS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS WEST TEXAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS WYNNEWOOD LLC, VALERO PAYMENT SERVICES COMPANY, VALERO PEMBROKESHIRE LLC, VALERO PEMBROKESHIRE OIL TERMINAL LTD, VALERO PLAINS COMPANY LLC, VALERO POWER MARKETING LLC, VALERO RAIL OPERATIONS DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO RAIL OPERATIONS DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO RAIL PARTNERS LLC, VALERO REFINING AND MARKETING COMPANY, VALERO REFINING COMPANY-ARUBA N.V., VALERO REFINING COMPANY-CALIFORNIA, VALERO REFINING COMPANY-OKLAHOMA, VALERO REFINING COMPANY-TENNESSEE L.L.C., VALERO REFINING-MERAUX LLC, VALERO REFINING-NEW ORLEANS L.L.C., VALERO REFINING-TEXAS L.P., VALERO RENEWABLE FUELS COMPANY LLC, VALERO SECURITY SYSTEMS INC., VALERO SERVICES INC., VALERO SKELLYTOWN PIPELINE LLC, VALERO TEJAS COMPANY LLC, VALERO TERMINAL HOLDCO LTD, VALERO TERMINALING AND DISTRIBUTION COMPANY, VALERO TERMINALING AND DISTRIBUTION DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO TEXAS POWER MARKETING INC., VALERO ULTRAMAR HOLDINGS INC., VALERO UNIT INVESTMENTS L.L.C., VALERO WEST WALES LLC, VRG PROPERTIES COMPANY, VTD PROPERTIES COMPANY, WARSHALL COMPANY LLC, and ZELIG COMMERCIAL INC.. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 23) At least three senators want the government to protest the barring of a TV crew from filming in Scarborough Shoal, an area within the country's 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone. Senators Kiko Pangilinan, Antonio Trillanes IV and Joel Villanueva said the government should file a diplomatic protest against China after its coast guard personnel was shown telling the crew of GMA-7's Reporter's Notebook that they cannot conduct an interview in the area. "The Philippine government should file a diplomatic protest and not simply be as meek as a lamb in the face of these assaults on our sovereignty," Pangilinan said. "This is a good opportunity for us to emphasize our claims to the West Philippine Sea," Villanueva said. For his part, Senator JV Ejercito said he is "not smiling" about China's latest display of aggression in the West Philippine Sea. In a video posted Thursday, a Chinese coast guard is seen holding a megaphone, telling a Filipino TV crew that "without the permission of China, you cannot carry out the interview." "If you don't leave here, we will make a forced manner," the coast guard said. While the Duterte administration has asserted that it has filed a number of diplomatic protests against China, it has taken a softer stance against Beijing compared to the administration of then President Noynoy Aquino. Speaking to CNN Philippines' The Source on Tuesday, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teddyboy Locsin descibed the country's position in its protests against the regional power. "Don't you think within a period of time, considering we don't have the firepower to do anything about it, the accumulation of note verbales becomes really evidence of the facts of life? That we are powerless and they are indifferent," Locsin said. While saying that it is not ignoring reports of harassment in Philippine waters, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) refused to comment on the issue. "This has to be addressed by an interagency effort and the Armed Forces fo the Philippines is just one of them," AFP spokesperson Col. Edgard Arevalo said Friday. "I would like to defer to the Department of Foreign Affairs upang sila mismo ang magbigay ng comment sa bagay na 'yan." [Translation: I would like to defer to the Department of Foreign Affairs so they themselves could comment on those things.] In June, after video showing Chinese coast guard taking Filipino fishermen's catch was published, the government asked China to address the issue. The Asian giant said it would punish those involved. During his state visit to the country this week, Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed to push for a "maritime mechanism" that makes sure fishermen will not be harassed in the South China Sea, Senate Majority Leader Migz Zubiri said. CNN Philippines' Joyce Ilas and Xave Gregorio contributed to this report. iShares Russell Mid-Cap Value ETF's stock was trading at $73.54 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, IWS stock has increased by 65.0% and is now trading at $121.36. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. Tahoe Resources Inc., together with its subsidiaries, acquires, explores for, develops, and operates mineral properties in the Americas. It explores for silver, gold, lead, zinc, and copper deposits, as well as precious metals assets. The company holds interest in the La Arena gold mine located in the Huamachuco district of northern Peru; Shahuindo mine located in the province of Cajabamba in northern Peru; and La Arena II, a copper-gold porphyry deposit located in Peru. It also holds interest in the Timmins mines, including the Bell Creek and Timmins West mines, the Fenn-Gib project, the Juby project, the Vogel project, and the Gold River project located in Timmins, Ontario. The company was formerly known as CKM Resources Inc. and changed its name to Tahoe Resources Inc. in January 2010. Tahoe Resources Inc. was incorporated in 2009 and is headquartered in Reno, Nevada. Read More There is not enough analysis data for Botswana Diamonds. 4.1 Community Rank Outperform Votes Botswana Diamonds has received 231 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.) Underperform Votes Botswana Diamonds has received 140 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.) Community Sentiment Botswana Diamonds has received 62.26% outperform votes from our community. MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about Botswana Diamonds and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe BOD will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe BOD will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days. Previous Next Centrica plc operates as an integrated energy company in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, North America, and internationally. The company operates through British Gas, Energy Marketing & Trading, Centrica Business Solutions, Bord GAis Energy, and Upstream segments. It supplies gas and electricity to residential customers, as well as offers energy-related services; and generates power from combined cycle gas turbines and nuclear assets. The company also provides installation, repair, and maintenance services for domestic central heating, plumbing and drains, home electrical, and gas and kitchen appliances; and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning equipment, as well as offers breakdown services. In addition, it is involved in the procurement, trading, and optimization of energy; procurement and sale of LNG; and supplies energy efficiency solutions and technologies to residential customers. Further, the company produces and processes gas and oil; develops new fields to maintain reserves; constructs, owns, and exploits infrastructure; and engages in the social enterprise investment fund activities. Additionally, it provides vehicle leasing, commercial, and insurance services, as well as energy management products and services; and operates a gas storage and franchise network. The company was formerly known as Yieldtop plc and changed its name to Centrica plc in December 1996. Centrica plc was incorporated in 1995 and is based in Windsor, the United Kingdom. Read More Valley National Bancorp is a bank holding company, which engages in the provision of retail and commercial banking services. It operates through the following segments: Consumer Lending; Commercial Lending; Investment Management; and Corporate and Other Adjustments. The Consumer Lending segment consists of residential mortgage loans, automobile loans and home equity loans, as well as wealth management and insurance services. The Commercial Lending segment includes the floating rate and adjustable rate commercial and industrial loans as well as fixed rate owner occupied and commercial real estate loans. The Investment Management segment refers to investments in various types of securities and interest-bearing deposits with other banks. The Corporate and Other Adjustments segment represents the income and expense items not directly attributable to a specific segment. The company was founded on November 12, 1982 and is headquartered in New York, NY. Read More Everest Re Group Ltd. is a holding company, which engages in the provision of reinsurance and insurance services. It operates through the following segments: U.S. Reinsurance, International, Bermuda, and Insurance. The U.S. Reinsurance segment writes property and casualty reinsurance and specialty lines of business, including marine, aviation, surety, and accident and health business, on both a treaty and facultative basis, through reinsurance brokers, as well as directly with ceding companies primarily within the U.S. The International segment offers foreign property and casualty reinsurance through Everest Re's branches in Canada and Singapore and through offices in Brazil, Miami, and New Jersey. The Bermuda segment comprises reinsurance and insurance to worldwide property and casualty markets through brokers and directly with ceding companies from its Bermuda office and reinsurance to the United Kingdom and European markets through its UK branch and Ireland Re. The Insurance segment writes property and casualty insurance directly and through brokers, surplus lines brokers, and general agents within the U.S., Canada, and Europe. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartere Read More Guyana Goldfields Inc. provides exploration and production of gold. It engages in the acquisition, exploration, development, production, and operation of gold mineral properties. The company also owns and operates gold drilling rights. The company was formerly known as Chiboug Copper Company Limited and changed its name to Guyana Goldfields Inc. in January 1995. Guyana Goldfields Inc. was incorporated in 1994 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. As of August 25, 2020, Guyana Goldfields Inc. operates as a subsidiary of Zijin Mining Group Company Limited. Read More iShares MSCI Switzerland ETF's stock was trading at $35.66 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, EWL stock has increased by 38.8% and is now trading at $49.50. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. Embraer SA engages in the design, manufacture, and sale of aircraft and its parts for commercial, defense, and executive aviation sectors. It operates through the following segments: Commercial Aviation, Defense and Security, Executive Jet Business, Service & Support and Others. The Commercial Aviation segment is involved in the development, production, and sale of commercial jets; and the provision of support services to regional aviation and aircraft leasing. The Defense and Security segment engages in research, development, production, modification, and support for defense and security aircrafts, as well as other integrated products and solutions including satellites and information and communication systems. The Executive Jet Business segment deals with the development, manufacture, and sale of executive jets. The Service & Support segment provides after-service solutions and support to its customers through a comprehensive portfolio of innovative and competitive solutions to ensure operational efficiency of products manufactured by Embraer and by other aircraft manufacturers, extending the useful life of commercial, executive and defense aircraft. The Others segment refers to Read More 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). Ormat Technologies, Inc. operates as a holding company. The firm engages in the provision of geothermal and recovered energy power business. It operates through the following segments: Electricity, Product and Energy Storage. The Electricity segment focuses in the sale of electricity from the company's power plants pursuant to PPAs. The Product segment involves in the manufacture, including design and development, of turbines and power units for the supply of electrical energy and in the associated construction of power plants utilizing the power units manufactured by the company to supply energy from geothermal fields and other alternative energy sources. The Energy Storage segment consists of battery energy storage systems as a service and management of curtailable customer loads under contracts with U.S. retail energy providers and directly with large commercial and industrial customers. The company was founded in 1965 and is headquartered in Reno, NV. Read More Merck & Co., Inc. pays an annual dividend of $2.60 per share and currently has a dividend yield of 3.18%. Merck & Co., Inc. has been increasing its dividend for 10 consecutive years, indicating the company has a strong committment to maintain and grow its dividend. The dividend payout ratio of Merck & Co., Inc. is 91.87%. Payout ratios above 75% are not desirable because they may not be sustainable. Based on earnings estimates, Merck & Co., Inc. will have a dividend payout ratio of 39.16% next year. This indicates that Merck & Co., Inc. will be able to sustain or increase its dividend. View Merck & Co., Inc.'s dividend history. The draft political declaration on the future relationship between the EU and the UK falls short of guaranteeing frictionless trade. The 26-page political declaration, which is not legally binding, sets out how UK-EU trade will work. It has been agreed in principle, the European Council states. It will need to be approved by the EU Member States at a Brexit summit scheduled to take place on Sunday (25 November). The document states that both the UK and EU envisage having a trading relationship on goods that is as close as possible, with a view of facilitating the ease of legitimate trade. However, there is no reference to a common rulebook for both the EU and the UK to avoid barriers to trade. Despite this, both sides are aiming for comprehensive arrangements that will create a free trade area, with the UK and the EU trading without tariffs. The farming industry has repeatedly warned the Government that it must continue to have frictionless, tariff-free access to the EU market after Brexit. Farming unions say farmers, processors and the wider industry must know what markets are open to them after Brexit day so business decisions are set in stone. The EU, taken as a whole is the UKs largest trading partner. In 2017, UK exports to the EU were 274 billion (44% of all UK exports). UK imports from the EU were 341 billion (53% of all UK imports). Wales, followed by the North East of England, had the highest percentage of goods exports going to the EU of all the countries and regions in the UK in 2017. Agri-food trade with Wales and the EU is highly important. For example, a third of Welsh Lamb is exported; of those exports the EU is the destination of over 90% of the lamb and beef going from Wales overseas. 'Farmers want clarity' Prime Minister's Theresa May's Brexit deal will now go to parliament in the coming weeks and the four heads of the farming unions in the UK say it is an opportunity to be taken. Following the publication of the draft Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and the outline of the political declaration, the presidents of the four UK farming unions have issued a joint statement. The statement says: Farmers want clarity on the future trading relationship with Europe. We have argued for free and frictionless trade with the EU to continue, with no tariffs or non-tariff barriers. The default of trading with the EU under WTO rules alone is unacceptable and would decimate our industry. The draft Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, while not perfect, will ensure that there are no hard barriers on the day we leave the European Union, and will allow trade in agricultural goods and UK food and drink to continue throughout the transition period largely as before. This opportunity needs to be taken. The unions add: British farmers produce food to some of the highest production and animal welfare standards. The food and farming industry continue to urge government to protect these standards and maintain high levels of trade in agricultural goods between the UK and EU, our largest export market. Farmers are calling on consumers to put a stop to their obsession with using large eggs and instead use a range of sizes. The public are being urged by free range egg farmers to mix up egg sizes as the traditional religious observance Stir-Up Sunday approaches on November 25. On Sunday, bakers across the country will put on their aprons to carry out a British tradition dating back to the Victorian era, when families would gather together to make their festive pudding. But this year farmers are calling on consumers to quit their obsession with using large eggs in the recipe and instead buy a box of mixed weight to support what hens lay naturally; a range of egg sizes. James Baxter, a free range egg producer and chairman of the British Free Range Egg Producers Association (BFREPA), said: British consumers have a love affair with large eggs and we dont really know why. Its a relatively new phenomenon which is probably driven by a perceived sense of value and modern recipes insisting on large eggs when traditionally size wasnt specified. We want consumers to understand that hens lay a range of sizes from small to large and we would love to see shoppers choosing mixed weight or medium eggs which are just as nutritious and tasty. 'Bigger is not always better' Only half the eggs an average hen lays in its lifetime will be large, with the rest being medium or small. Eggs are graded by weight and the increase in size is more attributable to the quantity of white rather than the amount of yolk where the lions share of nutrition is found. BFREPA says bakers should follow the Womens Institute a global authority on baking which has many Christmas pudding recipes using medium eggs or where size is not stipulated. About 13bn eggs are eaten in Britain every year and BFREPA says shoppers prefer to buy large or very large eggs rather than medium or mixed weight boxes, and too often recipes are misleading when they state the size of the egg needs to be large. Mr Baxter added: We want to consumers to know that bigger is not always better. In the run-up to Christmas, we would love to see more consumers buying medium or mixed weight boxes of eggs which contain medium and large eggs its better for the hens and supports what they lay naturally. The plea by farmers follows the Central Egg Agency saying it is swamped with eggs and struggling to find buyers for medium and small sizes. More than 3,500 people have signed a petition calling on a council to ban non-stun Halal meat being served in local schools. Schools in West Yorkshire are served meat from animals that have been slaughtered while fully conscious, suffering unnecessary pain and distress, the petition says. It is a legal requirement that animals must be humanely stunned before slaughter, but non-stun slaughter is still permitted for some religious communities. However, the RSPCA says for slaughter to be humane, it's essential that animals are effectively stunned. The British Veterinary Association, representing 17,000 British vets, believes that all animals should be stunned before slaughter to render them insensible to pain and highlights that scientific evidence supports the use of pre-stunning to improve animal welfare. Both organisations have previously highlighted their concerns around figures which show an increase in non-stun slaughter. The petition states: We the undersigned call on Kirklees Council to uphold animal welfare standards and only supply meat from animals that were stunned before slaughter. Kirklees Council has been serving non-stunned halal meat in 42 schools without the knowledge or consent of the majority of pupils and parents. In some schools all of the meat served is non-stunned and there is no alternative option for pupils. The council has refused to say which schools are affected, the petition says. There is no need for the council to supply non-stunned halal meat when the majority of halal meat is pre-stunned. Most Muslims are content with stunning. Other councils have stated there is no need to serve non-stunned meat in their schools and have introduced more ethical catering policies. Lancashire County Council recently decided to stop serving most non-stunned meat by an overwhelming majority. The petition adds: Everyone has the right to observe and practice their religion in a free society, but it is clearly unethical for Kirklees Council to serve non-stunned meat to public schoolchildren. Our council has a duty to treat animals in a more humane way. It comes as research from the National Secular Society shows that at least 18 councils in the UK are supplying non-stunned meat to schools most of which are not Islamic faith schools. The UK organic sector is well behind its counterparts in Europe and must now unite to capitalise on the growth of organic food. Delegates of the UK Organic Congress were told that British consumers are increasingly moving towards organic food. However, the sector remains behind counterparts in Europe and across the world, having been through a difficult period since the recession. Co-organised by several leading organic organisations including the Organic Research Centre (ORC), OF&G (Organic Farmers & Growers), the Soil Association and the Organic Trade Board (OTB), the event held in Warwickshire conveyed a sense of opportunity. Nic Lampkin, CEO of the ORC, opened the event, saying: The UK led the global movement for organic but were now well behind our counterparts. As a sector, weve been through a difficult period since the recession but were now moving in an upward direction, with the domestic market estimated to be worth 2.2 billion and growing. He challenged the sector to create a transition to move things forward: 20% of land is organic in some countries and 10% of the food market, this should be the vision for the UK. 'Huge opportunity' Sue Hayman, Shadow Defra Secretary, gave the opening address and said the development of the new Agriculture Bill brings opportunity for organic. The Agriculture Bill provides a huge opportunity to integrate environmental and food benefits. We know theyre compatible, and we must make sure policy supports this, said Ms Hayman. She said there are clear benefits to organic methods of farming and questioned why Government has failed to recognise the merits of organic, unlike other countries. The development of a post-Brexit UK agricultural policy is a seminal moment and talking proactively is very important. Sustainability must be at the forefront of a thriving British farming, food and drink sector, said Ms Hayman. Shifting public support from land-based payments to the delivery of public and environmental benefits is a welcome move, but theres a need for a strategy that also safeguards food security. Organic in Denmark The scope for growth in UK organic was reinforced by Paul Holmbeck, Political Director of Organic Denmark, who presented progress of the organic sector in Denmark. Organic food now accounts for 13.3% of the total food market in Denmark and over 30% of the total market for eggs, milk, flour and bananas. More than 90% of public procurement of food in Copenhagen is now organic, with 60% an overall target for the country, said Mr Holmbeck. Roger Kerr, CEO of OF&G, concluded the closing plenary by calling for more efforts for greater unity in the UK, and for the achievements of organic farming to be emphasised without denigrating others. A farmer has taken to social media to find the culprits who spray painted his sheep and goats purple. The vandals entered Old Bells Farm, a therapy farm in the New Forest, and used purple antiseptic spray on livestock. They also vandalised trees, wrote their own names on the wall of a barn and scared horses. The names 'Chris W, Darren and Lez' were spray-painted on the wall. Gregory Finch, who co-runs the Hordle-based farm which provides care for people with learning difficulties, called the incident disgusting. The incident happened in the morning or afternoon of Sunday 18 November. He said on Facebook: We are asking for information from anybody whose kids have come home with purple on their hands, or your friends at school or if you hear about people boasting about their fun weekend abusing animals. Police said they were investigating the incident as criminal damage. 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 Deepika - Ranveer Reception: Deepika wears her mothers special saree in Reception; Video | FilmiBeat Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone's wedding has been the talk of the town for all its grandeur and royalty. Away from the prying eyes of the paparazzi, the lovebirds opted for a destination wedding at Lake Como in Italy in the presence of their close friends and family. Their wedding was a two-day affair with a Konkani wedding on 14th November, followed by a Sindhi wedding on 15th November. After returning from Italy, the newlyweds hosted a wedding reception in Bengaluru on 21st November. Deepika's looks from all the three ceremonies left everyone mesmerized and her bridal outfits were a topic of discussion. Deepika chose a traditional Kanjivaram sari for her Konkani wedding and a gold Kanjivaram sari for her Bengaluru reception, both from the label known as 'The House of Angadi'. A source told Zoom, "The sarees were selected by Deepika and her parents jointly. She was personally at the store and tried out the saris. As is the case in most South Indian weddings, the selection of the bride's trousseau is a family affair but since tradition demands that the sari be gifted from mother to daughter, technically it was a 'gift'." Deepika's Sari From Her Konkani Wedding Was A Limited Edition Like any South Indian bride, Deepika's first choice was Kanjeevaram. Zoom quoted a source, "The designs were chosen from the limited edition series given the bride's need to stand out and wear something truly exclusive." The Kanjivaram Sari Carried A Special Symbolism For Her Married Life The sari which Deepika wore for her Konkani wedding was pure gold zari Kanjivaram brocade Silk, with Gandaberunda (two-headed bird) motif. Zoom quoted a source, "The body design is the Gandaberunda (or two-headed bird) the mythological figure which is representative of the state of Karnataka. The two-headed bird represents prosperity and wisdom i.e material wealth and spiritual wealth. It is very symbolic for the bride to have chosen this sari." Deepika's Attire For Her Sindhi Wedding Deepika's bridal outfit for the Sindhi wedding, too, had a special wish for the newlyweds. The border of her dupatta had, 'Sada Saubhagyavati Bhava' written in gold. The Sanskrit quote means, 'May you always be lucky as a married woman'. Decoding Deepika's Kanjivaram Sari From Her Reception For her wedding reception in Bengaluru, Deepika picked up an Advaya pure zari gold Kanjivaram silk saree, designed by K Radharaman. A source told Zoom, "The saree worn in her reception is an Advaya tissue brocade saree and is a Pure Zari Kanjivaram. The body is embellished with a beautiful all over Jaal and the Pallav is closely woven." Meanwhile, which one out of these three looks of Deepika Padukone is your favourite? Let us know in the comment section below. Appointment of Independent Director Calgary, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2018) - Wilton Resources Inc. (TSXV: WIL) (the "Corporation") announces it has accepted the resignation of Mr. Allen Emes as a director and Chief Financial Officer of the Corporation. The Corporation would like to thank Mr. Emes for his service. The remaining directors of the Corporation have appointed Mr. Gerald Roe to fill the vacancy on the board of directors created by the resignation of Mr. Emes until the next annual general meeting of the shareholders of the Corporation or until he otherwise ceases to hold office or his successor has been elected. Mr. Roe's appointment is subject to review and approval by the TSX Venture Exchange Inc. ("TSXV"). Mr. Roe has been a director of Tenth Avenue Petroleum Corp. since May 2011 and a director of ExGen Resources Inc. since October 2003. Prior thereto, Mr. Roe served as a director for GASFRAC Energy Services Inc. from May 2006 to April 2014 and as the Chief Operating Officer of Canadian Overseas Petroleum Limited from May 2009 to April 2011. Appointment of CFO The Corporation also announces that Manjeet Dhillon has been appointed as the Chief Financial Officer of the Corporation. Mr. Dhillon is a chartered accountant with over twenty years' experience in financial reporting and related financial matters. Mr. Dhillon's appointment is subject to review and approval by the TSXV. Changes to Board Committees The Corporation also announces that it has re-constituted its Audit Committee to ensure that it is composed of a minimum of three members of the board of directors of the Corporation. Accordingly, the members of the Audit Committee are Gerald Roe, Stuart McDowall and Darryl Raymaker. For Further Information Please Contact: Wilton Resources Inc. Richard G. Anderson Chief Executive Officer and President (403) 619-6609 Additional information regarding Wilton Resources is available online on www.sedar.com FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking information. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words "could", "intend", "expect", "believe", "will", "projected", "estimated" and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on the Corporation's current beliefs or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. Actual future results may differ materially. In particular, this press release contains forward-looking information with respect to the appointments of Mr. Roe and Mr. Dhillon. Various assumptions or factors are typically applied in drawing conclusions or making the forecasts or projections set out in forward-looking information. Those assumptions and factors are based on information currently available to the Corporation. The material facts and assumptions include obtaining approval of the Exchange of the proposed appointments of Mr. Roe and Mr. Dhillon. The Corporation cautions the reader that the above list of risk factors is not exhaustive. The forward-looking information contained in this release is made as of the date hereof and the Corporation is not obligated to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. Due to the risks, uncertainties and assumptions contained herein, investors should not place undue reliance on forward- looking information. The foregoing statements expressly qualify any forward-looking information contained herein. 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. Not for distribution to U.S. Newswire Services or for dissemination in the United States. Any failure to comply with this restriction may constitute a violation of U.S. Securities Laws. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES - Embracing Carers is helping carers in the UK to recognise their role and seek support - By Day, By Night initiative designed to help individuals reflect and recognise their caring role - UK chapter of Global State of Care Report highlights legislative support and resources available to carers in the UK FELTHAM, England, Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Merck, a leading science and technology company, today announced that its Embracing Carers initiative has launched a new campaign to help individuals in the UK reflect and recognise their unpaid caring role sooner with a view to them accessing available support and resources faster. Developed by Merck and guided by Carers UK and other leading international carer organisations, Embracing Carers is a global movement to highlight the important role of carers in society. With up to 6,000 people a day in the UK becoming carers1, it has launched the "By Day, By Night initiative". The campaign aims to help individuals reflect on their daily lives and help those in the UK recognise their role as a carer. To provide all UK carers with information on the support and resources available, the International Alliance of Carer Organizations (IACO) with the support of Embracing Carers developed a Global State of Care Report that includes a UK chapter identifying current legislation to benefit carers, best practice and opportunities to increase support across the country. "Carers across the UK play a crucial role in the lives of loved ones and there is a strong need to help individuals reflect on their daily caring activities to help them recognise this," says Emily Holzhausen, Director of Policy and Public Affairs, Carers UK. "One of the key goals of Embracing Carers is to help support carers in recognising their own role. By doing this, it not only lets those individuals know that they are not alone, but helps to bridge the gap between carers and the resources they need. As a strategic advisor to Embracing Carers, Carers UK welcomes these ambitions, helping to improve the recognition and quality of life for carers in the UK and worldwide," added Holzhausen. A staggering 6.5 million (around 10 per cent of the UK population)2 are carers and the majority of carers take a long time to recognise their caring role. Research by Carers UK shows that over half (54%) of carers in the country took over a year to recognise their caring role and nearly a quarter (24%) took over five years to recognise their role as a carer.3 "Many of us have experienced, or will experience, what it is like to be a carer," said Belinda Byrne, Medical Director, Merck UK & Ireland. "As a company, Merck is committed to highlighting the unique needs of carers, both in the UK and around the world, to identify the necessary resources and support they need to take care of their own health. Caregiving needs to be made a public health priority and we hope that by helping individuals recognise their crucial role as a carer sooner, that they will be able to access support and resources faster," added Byrne. Notes to editors About Embracing Carers Launched in 2017, Embracing CarersTM is a global initiative led by Merck in collaboration with leading carer organisations around the world to increase awareness and discussion about the often-overlooked needs of carers. Carer organisations collaborating with Merck include the Caregiver Action Network, Carers Australia,Carers Canada, Carers UK, Carers Worldwide, Eurocarers, National Alliance for Caregiving, International Alliance of Carer Organizations(IACO) and Shanghai Roots & Shoots, China. About Merck Merck is a leading science and technology company in healthcare, life science and performance materials. Around 50,000 employees work to further develop technologies that improve and enhance life - from biopharmaceutical therapies to treat cancer or multiple sclerosis, cuttingedge systems for scientific research and production, to liquid crystals for smartphones and LCD televisions. In 2016, Merck generated sales of 15.0 billion in 66 countries. Founded in 1668, Merck is the world's oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company. The founding family remains the majority owner of the publicly listed corporate group. Merck, Darmstadt, Germany holds the global rights to the "Merck" name and brand except in the United States and Canada, where the company operates as EMD Serono, MilliporeSigma and EMD Performance Materials. References 1 Carers UK. About Us. Accessed 24 October, 2018. https://www.carersuk.org/about-us/why-we-re-here 2 Embracing CarersTM Global State of Care Report. Accessed 24 October, 2018 3 Carers UK. Missing out: the identification challenge, November 2016. Accessed 6 November, 2018 Agreement to reduce pension scheme deficit Capita plc ('Capita' or the 'company') announces that it has agreed a deficit recovery plan with the Trustees of the Capita Pension and Life Assurance Scheme ('Scheme'). This deficit recovery plan is in line with the commitment made by the company in January 2018 to reduce the pension deficit over the medium term as a priority. The actuarial deficit at 31 March 2017, the date of the last triennial valuation, was 185m, before any effect from the recent High Court ruling on Guaranteed Minimum Pension equalisation, which is not expected to have a material impact. The agreed deficit recovery plan, with payments totalling 176m, aligns with Capita's transformation programme, reflects the higher than expected proceeds the company received in 2018 from its disposal programme and incorporates steps to continue to lower the level of investment risk in the Scheme, benefiting the Scheme and Capita. The expected pension deficit recovery plan payment schedule is: 2018 2019 2020 2021 Total 42m 71m 59m 4m 176m Jon Lewis, Chief Executive Officer, Capita said: "This agreement is an important milestone in Capita's transformation and a further reflection of the importance we place on good corporate responsibility. I made a commitment to our stakeholders to address our pension deficit shortly after I joined Capita and I am pleased that our financial strength and successful disposal programme have allowed us to deliver on this." - End - For further information: Capita plc: Investor enquiries Andrew Ripper, Head of Investor Relations Fiona O'Nolan, Investor Relations Director Tel: 020 7654 0220 or 020 7654 2281 IRTeam@capita.co.uk Media enquiries: Capita Press Office 020 7654 2399 media@capita.co.uk Powerscourt Tel: 020 7250 1446 capita@powerscourt-group.com Victoria Palmer-Moore, Mazar Masud Capita is a leading provider of technology enabled business services, operating across five key markets: Software; People Solutions; Customer Management; IT Services and Government Services. Working across the UK, Europe, India and South Africa, we use our expertise, talent and technology to partner with our clients to transform services and add value for all their stakeholders. Capita is quoted on the London Stock Exchange (CPI.L). Further information on Capita can be found at: http://www.capita.com LEI no. CMIGEWPLHL4M7ZV0IZ88. EAST JERUSALEM, PALESTINE / ACCESSWIRE / November 23, 2018 / Palestine as a nation is always in the news but mostly for the wrong reasons. The focus of every news story about Palestine is the conflict, however, there is a lot more to the country than what is being covered by the media. Just like any other country, there exists immense scope & opportunity for economic & social upliftment. All that it needs is a framework of rewarding entrepreneurs and clever business concepts which are able to bring new technology & jobs to Palestine. Even some of the basic businesses that most of the developed & developing nations currently enjoy are absent in Palestine like cab hailing services, mobile wallets, communication apps etc. The situation can be changed with a little bit of effort. There can be an explosion of economic well being & jobs in Palestine with the proper bureaucratic & legislative backup. Once a few businesses start flourishing it will create an example for the rest of the world to invest in the country. In order to reach peace in the Middle East, we must encourage entrepreneurship in Palestine. The people there are well-educated, motivated and with the right mentorship and guidance they can have the potential to change the world. According to Forbes, the West Bank is home to ten different colleges 2,000 engineering and computer students graduating every year however the technology sector in the country can only employ 4,500 individuals in total forcing many Palestinian engineers to look for opportunities abroad and can potentially create entrepreneurs out of necessity.To build a healthy business ecosystem, there must be support structures to help the entrepreneurs and Startups succeed at every stage. Mentoring from experienced entrepreneurs & businessmen is the primary push that the young population of a country needs for developing confidence in their ideas & learning how to build successful companies from scratch. EL Group International INC, A venture company aims to bring their very successful Startup Incubator program called the Startup Studio to the Palestine. Their goal is to change the current environment of the country by shifting the focus to growth and progress through helping and nurturing young aspiring entrepreneurs. They take up raw ideas and structure them by contributing with almost all the necessary resources. Their focus is to build world class products and educate budding minds to produce smart entrepreneurs. The Founder Mr. Evan Singh Luthra takes the ideas he feels that will make a big impact and positive change through the Startup Studio program. After the ideas are developed he plans to use his brand and connections in the industry to get investors from all around the globe invest in these ideas. Startup Studio will help change the economic condition of the country by bringing in foreign investments to Palestine.The Startup Studio program boasts of a very impressive portfolio. Startups from some of the major business centric countries have been associated with them and continue to reap of the benefits of the Startup Studio brand. EL Group, through its various startups has a combined market cap of over 1 Billion USD and now will be taking over the the entrepreneurial scene in Palestine with an intention of making the country a hub for developing and promoting new ideas. Let's all make this world a better place to live. Source: EL Group International View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/528860/Palestine-Entrepreneurs-get-a-Silver-Lining-of-Foreign-Investment-TITLE SpendEdge, a global procurement market intelligence firm, has announced the release of their Global Oilfield Services Category Procurement Market Intelligence Report. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181123005084/en/ Global Oilfield Services Category Procurement Market Intelligence Report (Graphic: Business Wire) The market of oilfield services is subject to a string of factors that invite extreme volatility in the dynamics of this market. Despite ample of opportunities of growth, the uneven nature of this market of oilfield services has been negatively impacting the business structure of many companies. In a bid to address the most common and other unique quests pertaining to the market of oilfield services, SpendEdge' procurement experts have worked in close quarters to the core market sectors of regions across the globe. This has enabled them to get in-depth insights of the critical cost drivers and other disruptive factors that are either promoting or inhibiting the growth of the oilfield services category. Get your free sample reportto gain a comprehensive overview of the market of oilfield services and the critical supplier selection insights. According to this procurement market research report, the gradual recovery of the oil and gas prices will majorly contribute to the demand of the oilfield services. In addition, innovations done to improve the safety and efficiency in the deployment of the oilfield services will drive the category demand during the forecast period. Request a personalized guidance towards creating a tangible category management strategy that can be readily adapted with the changing trends of the market of oilfield services. "Efficiency and experience of personnel such as mud engineers, motormen, and drillers play and crucial roles in fostering an effective utilization of the oilfield services procured. Their expertise sheds light on the service provider's operational procedures and optimal response to emergencies during drilling operations," says SpendEdge procurement expert Tridib Bora. In-depth research of the market of oilfield services has revealed the factors which will have prominent effect on the growth of this market and will simultaneously guide the buyers and the suppliers in shaping their procurement strategy: Increase in shale gas exploration activities will drive the demand for oilfield services Decreasing demand influence in Europe due to the growing focus on the development of renewable energy sources will impact demand of the oilfield services. Get the full report to gain more actionable insights into market of oilfield services SpendEdge is now offering limited-time discounts on report purchases. Buy two reports and get the third one for free SpendEdge's procurement market intelligence reports for the chemicals category provide detailed information on the major costs and volume drivers that impact category growth. Such information will help procurement managers as well as the suppliers to determine the total cost of ownership and change their procurement strategies accordingly. Additionally, SpendEdge's reports provide insights into the sustainability and procurement best practices for the category. Report scope snapshot: Market of oilfield services Cost-saving opportunities Supplier side levers Buyer side levers Quantifying cost-saving opportunities Interested to know more about the scope of our reports? Download a FREE sample Best practices Procurement excellence best practices Procurement best practices Sustainability practices Want customized information? Get in touch Category pricing insights Total cost of ownership analysis Overview of pricing models Comparison of pricing models To view this report's complete table of contents, Download a FREE sample Do you purchase multiple reports in a year? Our subscription platform, SpendEdge Insights, provides ready-to-use procurement research reports for multiple categories. Now access latest supplier news, innovation landscape, markets insights, supplier tracking, and much more at the click of a button. Start your 7-day FREE trial now Related Reports: Global Fertilizers Category Procurement Market Intelligence Report Global Helium Category Procurement Market Intelligence Report About SpendEdge: SpendEdge shares your passion for driving sourcing and procurement excellence. We are the preferred procurement market intelligence partner for 120+ Fortune 500 firms and other leading companies across numerous industries. Our strength lies in delivering robust, real-time procurement market intelligence reports and solutions. To know more, https://www.spendedge.com/request-free-proposal View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181123005084/en/ Contacts: SpendEdge Anirban Choudhury Marketing Manager US: +1 630 984 7340 UK: +44 148 459 9299 https://www.spendedge.com/contact-us BlackRock Emerging Europe plc LEI - 549300OGTQA24Y3KMI14 Result of General Meeting BlackRock Emerging Europe plc announces that, at the General Meeting held today, the Special Resolution was duly passed on a show of hands. Votes For % Votes Against % Votes Withheld Special Resolution 23,735,165 99.96 9,596 0.04 8 The full text of the resolution can be found in the Notice of General Meeting set out in the Circular dated 19 October 2018, which has previously been submitted to the National Storage Mechanism and is available for inspection at:http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/NSMProxy votes received in respect of the resolution were as follows: 23 November 2018 The global bipolar devices and micro scissors market 2019-2023 is expected to post a CAGR of more than 11% during the forecast period, according to the latest market research report by Technavio This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181123005032/en/ Technavio predicts the global bipolar devices and micro scissors market to post a CAGR of more than 11% by 2023. (Graphic: Business Wire) A key factor driving the growth of the market is the increasing number of surgical cases. With the rise in the prevalence of chronic conditions, there has been an increase in the number of surgical procedures. Owing to the presence of MI surgeries, surgical procedures are becoming less painful for patients, which allow them to get back to the normal life faster than the traditional surgical procedures. In such cases, healthcare facilities are focusing on adopting bipolar devices and micro scissors, which can lead to surgical efficacy. With the growing number of ophthalmology procedures, cancer procedures, and soft tissue procedures, the adoption of bipolar devices and micro scissors is increasing, which will boost the market growth. This market research report on the global bipolar devices and micro scissors market 2019-2023 also provides an analysis of the most important trends expected to impact the market outlook during the forecast period. Technavio classifies an emerging trend as a major factor that has the potential to significantly impact the market and contribute to its growth or decline. This report is available at a USD 1,000 discount for a limited time only: View market snapshot before purchasing In this report, Technavio highlights the presence of online sale as one of the key emerging trends in the global bipolar devices and micro scissors market: Global bipolar devices and micro scissors market: Presence of online sales The rising popularity of microsurgical instruments, owing to the growing adoption of MI surgeries and laparoscopic surgeries, will lead the vendors to innovate and expand their product lines and remain competitive in the market. Companies are focusing on selling their products through online platforms, which help the end-users to select bipolar forceps and micro scissors from a single manufacturer. "E-commerce platforms and companies like Amazon, eBay and R.K. surgical industries sell bipolar devices, micro scissors and bipolar forceps with cables. Companies are also selling their products through their websites. Also, healthcare product distributors such as Bowers medical supply accept online orders to sell Medtronic's bipolar forceps. Thus, online sales of bipolar devices and micro scissors will drive the market growth," says a senior analyst at Technavio. Global bipolar devices and micro scissors market: Segmentation analysis This market research report segments the global bipolar devices and micro scissors market by product (bipolar forceps and micro scissors) and geographical regions (APAC, EMEA, and the Americas). The Americas led the market in 2018 with a market share of 42%, followed by EMEA and APAC respectively. The dominance of the Americas can be attributed to the high prevalence of diseases that require surgeries, the presence of global and local vendors, increasing number of product launches, and growing adoption of bipolar forceps and micro scissors. Looking for more information on this market? Request a free sample report Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report such as the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more. Some of the key topics covered in the report include: Market Landscape Market ecosystem Market characteristics Market segmentation analysis Market Sizing Market definition Market size and forecast Five Forces Analysis Market Segmentation Geographical Segmentation Regional comparison Key leading countries Market Drivers Market Challenges Market Trends Vendor Landscape Vendors covered Vendor classification Market positioning of vendors Competitive scenario About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 10,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181123005032/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media Marketing Executive US: +1 844 364 1100 UK: +44 203 893 3200 www.technavio.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. Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - November 23, 2018) - KWG Resources Inc. (CSE: KWG.A) (CSE: KWG) (OTC: KWGBF) (FSE: KW6) ("KWG") applauds Chief and Council of the Marten Falls First Nation for their leadership in assuming proponency of the Environmental Assessment for transportation infrastructure in their traditional territory. They made the following announcement yesterday afternoon: THUNDER BAY, ON, Nov. 22, 2018 /CNW/ - Marten Falls First Nation and Ontario announced the agreement to study a long-awaited community access road on August 21, 2017. Since then, Marten Falls has entered into a voluntary agreement with the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MOECC) to conduct an Individual Environmental Assessment (EA) and Preliminary Design (PD) for the proposed community access road from Marten Falls First Nation going south to existing provincial highways. The First Nation has established a project team and conducted one field season of baseline surveys; but to carry out the full suite of technical services and studies, and other steps within the EA process, Marten Falls has brought on AECOM. This global engineering firm provides design, consulting, construction, and management services. AECOM will consult with Marten Falls and neighbouring communities, perform data collection, prepare technical studies and all documents associated with the project, to complete the EA process. Chief and Council are pleased to be working with AECOM and are confident that this project will deliver good outcomes for the community and the region. Chief Achneepineskum said, "We are very pleased to note that AECOM brought a consortium of sub-consultants together to form a world-class team that includes local consulting firms as well who have recently worked successfully with First Nations to deliver similar all-season community access roads in other provinces. This project is an opportunity to move forward on addressing many socio-economic needs of the community, including access to more affordable food and housing, access to training, education, health-care and employment and access to neighbouring communities." As the project progresses, Marten Falls will begin a process of collaborative planning with neighbouring First Nations and communities to ensure that the project incorporates their thoughts and ideas in a meaningful way. In the future, the all-season road to the community also has the potential to be extended to the Ring of Fire so that Marten Falls First Nation, and other surrounding communities, can participate in and benefit from natural resources development. Marten Falls also looks forward to working collaboratively with Premier Doug Ford's government towards the development of the region. "The Ring of Fire development is not going to happen without it being welcomed by the people in whose lands it was found," said KWG CEO Frank Smeenk. "This step is one where they are leading the way towards that development! It is a historic breakthrough in how this process is properly performed, by those whose land is affected being the proponents of its improvement. The significance of this cannot be overstated and Ontario's leadership is to be commended for supporting this most enlightened evolution of our engagement with its First Nations. One might well venture to say that the cloud on mineral title in Ontario is perhaps now showing some early signs of dispersing." About KWG: KWG is the Operator of the Black Horse Joint Venture ('JV') after acquiring a vested 50% interest through Bold Ventures Inc ('Bold') from Fancamp Exploration Ltd ('Fancamp'). KWG funds all JV exploration expenditures and Bold is carried for a 20% interest in KWG's interest. KWG also owns 100% of Canada Chrome Corporation which has staked claims and conducted a surveying and soil testing program, originally for the engineering and construction of a railroad to the Ring of Fire from Aroland, Ontario. KWG subsequently acquired intellectual property interests, including a method for the direct reduction of chromite to metalized iron and chrome using natural gas and an accelerant. KWG subsidiary, Muketi Metallurgical LP, has received a patent for the direct reduction method in Canada, South Africa and Kazakhstan and is prosecuting remaining patent applications in India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Turkey and the USA. It has also received a USA patent for production of low carbon chromium iron alloys and a corresponding Canadian patent application is expected to issue soon. For further information, please contact: Bruce Hodgman, Vice-President: 416-642-3575 ~ info@kwgresources.com Forward-Looking Statements: Information set forth in this news release may involve forward-looking statements under applicable securities laws. The forward-looking statements contained herein are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements included in this document are made as of the date of this document and KWG disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable securities legislation.Although management believes that the expectations represented in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy any securities that may be described herein and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. LONDON, October 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Yesterday, VIP guests joined renowned actor, writer, director and producer Stanley Tucci as Johnnie Walker celebrated the unveiling of Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ghost and Rare Port Ellen with an exclusive 'REAWAKENED' event in London's beautiful Welsh Chapel; shining a light on the rarity, depth of character, and rolling waves of flavour found in some of Scotland's rarest whiskies. (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/774783/Stanley_Tucci.jpg ) (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/774784/Johnnie_Walker_Guests.jpg ) (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/774785/Blue_Label_Ghost_and_Rare_Port_Ellen.jpg ) At the event, Tucci entertained the audience with an unforgettable performance of 'Borealis on the Bay', an ode created for the occasion by Scottish poet Jon Plunkett that pays homage to the history and spirit of Kilnaughton Bay, the home of Port Ellen, the world famous 'ghost' distillery which shut its doors in 1983, and the hero of this latest release in the Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ghost and Rare series. Stanley Tucci said: "It's been a wonderful experience for me to be part of the launch of the new Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ghost and Rare release today. I'm thrilled to have been able to explore the story of Port Ellen and combine my passion for language and performance with my love of whisky." On arrival, guests at 'REAWAKENED' were invited to go on a sensory journey of discovery to explore the hidden depths of the Scottish Highlands and Kilnaughton Bay before enjoying a menu created by acclaimed chef Mark Moriarty; each course exploring the layers of flavour found in Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ghost and Rare Port Ellen Johnnie Walker Master Blender Jim Beveridge then led an exclusive tasting of the new limited edition release - crafted from eight treasured whiskies drawn from the four corners of Scotland, including five incredibly rare single malts and three irreplaceable whiskies from now-closed 'ghost' distilleries, with the highly sought-after Port Ellen single malt at its heart. Every attendee took home their own piece of rare craft in the form of a personalised ode - written on the night - as well as a copy of 'Borealis on the Bay' and their own taste of Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ghost and Rare Port Ellen. VIP GUESTS INCLUDED:Stanley Tucci, Jeremy Irvine, Jade Parfitt, Sam Rollinson, Damson Idris, Heida Reed, Matt Richardson, Nick Hendrix, Charlotte Wiggins, Betty Bachz, Jessica Ellerby, Nell Hudson, Filippo Cirulli, Filippo Fiora, Vicky Lee, Florrie Thomas, Anna Vitiello, Danielle Copperman, Harvey James, Sam Ritzenberg, Leo Thompson, Margaret Clunie. THEY ENJOYED: An exclusive tasting of Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ghost and Rare Port Ellen Johnnie Walker Blue Label Old Fashioned: Johnnie Walker Blue Label, honey, Angostura bitters, lemon peel Johnnie Walker Blue Label Whisky Sour: Johnnie Walker Blue Label, lemon juice, sugar syrup, egg white A bespoke menu including: Celeriac baked in malted barley, toasted hazelnut, brown butter and truffle beurre nantais / Hay smoked scotch beef short rib, seaweed mustard and artichoke / Brown butter pudding, citrus and whisky caramel and salted milk sorbet. Enjoy Johnnie Walker responsibly. Visit http://www.DRINKiQ.com The best bang for your buck! This option enables you to purchase online 24/7 access and receive the Sunday, Tuesday & Thursday print edition at no additional cost * Print edition only available in our carrier delivery area. Allow up to 72 hours for delivery of your print edition to begin. Print edition not available for Day Pass option. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 23, 2018) - Delrey Metals Corp. (CSE: DLRY) (FSE:1OZ) ("Delrey" or the "Company") announces that, effective November 23, 2018, its board of directors has appointed Alastair Brownlow as the Company's new Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Brownlow succeeds Ming Jang who has resigned from his positions as director and Chief Financial Officer of the Company. The Company wishes to thank Mr. Jang for his service and contributions as the former CFO and as a director of the Company. Mr. Brownlow is a Chartered Professional Accountant and a U.S. Certified Public Accountant (Washington) with significant public company experience who has specialized in the mineral exploration and development field in Canada and throughout the world. Mr. Brownlow also previously worked as an auditor in the British Virgin Islands specializing in financial and regulatory reporting of public and private fund and trust companies. Prior to this, Mr. Brownlow worked for a Canadian chartered accountant firm where he specialized in the mining industry, gaining significant accounting experience auditing mineral exploration and development companies in Canada and throughout the world. Mr. Brownlow has a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with first class honours from Simon Fraser University. About Delrey Delrey is a mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition, exploration and development of mineral resource properties, specifically in the strategic energy minerals space. The Company has an option agreement to purchase a 100% interest in the highly prospective Sunset property situated in the Vancouver Mining Division and located near Pemberton, British Columbia. Delrey is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and is listed on the CSE under the symbol "DLRY". ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD "Morgan Good" Chief Executive Officer Tel: 604-620-8904 Email: morgan@delreymetals.com www.delreymetals.com The CSE has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Earlier this year, the government formed an inter-ministerial panel to look into various issues, including how to put a check on wilful defaulters fleeing the country. New Delhi: To check wilful defaulters and fraudsters from fleeing the country, the government has now authorised CEOs of public sector banks (PSBs) to make a request for issuance of look-out circulars (LOCs) against suspects. The move comes against the backdrop of defaults by Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi and thereafter, fleeing the country. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) recently made changes in the circular by including CEOs of PSBs in the list of officials who can make a request for issuance of LOCs to the ministry. The inclusion by MHA was done following the recommendation of an inter-ministerial panel under Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar that made a case for empowering the heads of PSBs to request for the opening of LOCs. When asked about the changes made in the circular of MHA, Kumar said it was a continuation of the governments clean-up drive of the banking sector. Soon after the emergence of the Pujab National Bank (PNB) fraud and perpetrator Nirav and his uncle Choksi fleeing the country, the Finance Ministry asked PSBs to collect passport details of all those borrowers, who have borrowed loans of more than Rs 50 crore. However, possession of mere passport detail was not enough but this circular has empowered banks to take a decisive action against wilful defaulters and fraudsters by requesting for issuance of LOC by the concerned authority, thereby thwarting any move by them to flee the country, Kumar said. It will act as a big deterrent for wilful defaulters and also bring about fundamental change in the creditor-debtor relationship, Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar said. The Department of Financial Services has also issued advisory to heads of all PSBs to take note of the changes in the circular and act as and when required in the specified manner. Pursuant to the amendment of the MHA circular last month, the list now includes the chairman or managing director and CEO of all PSBs, the circular said. Thus, the heads of PSBs have now been empowered to issue requests of an opening of LOCs for wilful defaulters as per the above-mentioned guidelines of MHA against whom an FIR is yet to be filed, it said. Earlier this year, the government formed an inter-ministerial panel to look into various issues, including how to put a check on wilful defaulters fleeing the country. Mallya had fled the country in March 2016 after defaulting on loans given to Kingfisher Airlines, which was promoted by his group. Moreover, Parliament passed the Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill, 2018, giving authorities powers to attach and confiscate the proceeds of crime and properties of economic offenders, like bank fraudsters or loan defaulters fleeing the country. The law is aimed at quickly recovering losses to exchequer or PSBs in cases of frauds. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had in his Budget speech for 2018-19 said the government was considering bringing a new law to confiscate assets of such absconders. PARIS (Reuters) - Nissan's board ousted Chairman Carlos Ghosn on Thursday following the auto industry star's arrest in Japan over financial misconduct allegations, ushering in a period of uncertainty for its 19-year alliance with Renault. Ghosn was the architect of an alliance that has become one of the world's leading automotive groups PARIS (Reuters) - Nissan's board ousted Chairman Carlos Ghosn on Thursday following the auto industry star's arrest in Japan over financial misconduct allegations, ushering in a period of uncertainty for its 19-year alliance with Renault. Ghosn was the architect of an alliance that has become one of the world's leading automotive groups. But his ouster has laid bare tensions that run deep in France and Japan. Here's why the relationship has not been an easy one: HOW WAS RENAULT-NISSAN FORMED? In 1999, Nissan was near bankruptcy. Renault bought a 36.8 percent stake in the Japanese carmaker for 5 billion euros. Carlos Ghosn, then second-in-command at Renault and dubbed "Le Cost Killer", was sent to Tokyo to turn Nissan around. Ghosn cut more than 20,000 jobs, abandoning unprofitable car models, cutting adrift suppliers, and shutting down plants. Nissan returned swiftly to profit and the young CEO became an industry icon, unleashing a wave of "Ghosn mania" in Japan. In 2002, Renault raised its controlling stake to 44.4 percent, while Nissan took a 15 percent reciprocal holding in Renault - stripped of voting rights. Ghosn returned to Renault in 2005 as chief executive, and also remained at the helm of Nissan. Renault's stake in Nissan currently stands at 43.4 percent. THEN WHAT? Nissan outgrew its French parent, in part by building sales in North America and China, the world's biggest auto markets, while Renault remained largely absent from both. The financial meltdown of 2008 and the euro-zone debt crisis that followed also hit Renault's domestic European markets hard. In 2015, Nissan accounted for two thirds of combined alliance vehicle sales and a bigger share of profit. The gap has since narrowed, but remains considerable. ARE THESE TENSIONS NEW? No. The Renault-Nissan alliance has wrestled intermittently since its 1999 inception with plans for full mergers The last major flaring of tensions came in 2015, when the French government surprised the alliance by raising its Renault stake in order to block the carmaker opting out of new legislation granting double voting rights to long-term investors. The move horrified Nissan, which feared coming under direct French government influence via Renault's controlling stake. It triggered a boardroom crisis at Renault and badly strained relations between Nissan and France's then economy minister Emmanuel Macron, now the French president. HOW DID THE SHOWDOWN END? Renault agreed to limit formal control of its larger partner in a shareholder pact to defuse the stand-off. The deal, reached in December 2015, when Macron was secretly preparing to launch the political movement that would propel him to the Elysee - effectively weakened Renault's control over Nissan while avoiding the political humiliation of an immediate re-sale of the government's extra Renault shares. In November 2017, the French government sold down its Renault stake, paring the holding back to its historic 15-percent level. COULD THAT CONCESSION IMPACT RENAULT TODAY? Potentially, yes. By relinquishing the ability to impose decisions on the Nissan board, Renault will be weakened should a power struggle break out. (Reporting by Michel Rose and Laurence Frost; Editing by Richard Lough and Mark Potter) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. BERLIN (Reuters) - The heads of Volkswagen , BMW and Daimler are ready to attend a meeting at the White House with the Trump administration, but have not yet received a formal invitation, industry sources said on Thursday. BERLIN (Reuters) - The heads of Volkswagen , BMW and Daimler are ready to attend a meeting at the White House with the Trump administration, but have not yet received a formal invitation, industry sources said on Thursday. The Handelsblatt newspaper on Wednesday cited industry and diplomatic sources as saying the meeting could possibly take place as soon as next week. The paper said it was not known whether U.S. President Donald Trump would attend the meeting. "It's clear that the meeting is planned, and that the CEOs will attend," said one industry source. A second industry source confirmed plans for a meeting in Washington, but said details were still being worked out and the CEOs would make clear they could not negotiate on behalf of the European Union. Trump has threatened for months to impose tariffs on all European Union-assembled vehicles, a move that could up-end the industry's business model for selling cars in the United States. But he has refrained from imposing car tariffs while the United States and European Union launch negotiations to cut other trade barriers. Sources at the carmakers said no formal invitation had been received and no travel arrangements had been made. They said the meeting could take place at short notice, possibly next week. The companies declined to comment publicly. A German government spokesman said the chancellery was familiar with the idea of such a meeting, but said European Union officials were responsible for all trade negotiations. One industry source said the invitation put the companies in an awkward position, given the EU's responsibility for trade matters. At the same time, they did not want to turn down the opportunity to engage in dialogue. "What matters is that we find a solution," said one source, adding that it was critical for the German car industry to maintain access to the U.S. market, the second largest behind China. Bernd Westpahl, business policy spokesman for the Social Democrats, junior partners in the German coalition government, said the invitation offered an opportunity to make progress. "It is a good - and perhaps the last - opportunity to convince the U.S. president to back away from punitive tariffs," he said. Handelsblatt said Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, had relayed the invitation to the car companies. Grenell also met with the German car bosses in July. An embassy spokesman referred all questions to the White House. No immediate response was available, given the U.S. Thanksgiving Day holiday. The United States currently imposes tariffs on cars of 2.5 percent, compared to 10 percent tariffs in the EU. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal, Jan Schwartz, Andreas Rinke and Rene Wagner. Editing by Jane Merriman) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. The government will give a subsidy of 5 percent for non-basmati rice exports for the four months to 25 March, 2019, the trade ministry said in the order dated 22 November. Mumbai: India, the worlds biggest rice exporter, will give incentives for non-basmati rice shipments to help boost flagging overseas sales, the government said in an order reviewed by Reuters. The government will give a subsidy of 5 percent for non-basmati rice exports for the four months to 25 March, 2019, the trade ministry said in the order on Thursday. The subsidy will help accelerate exports in the next few months, Nitin Gupta, vice president of the rice business at Olam India, told Reuters. Indias non-basmati rice exports have weakened this year despite a weaker rupee that makes the grain cheaper for holders of other currencies. Indias rice exports fell 9.6 percent to 5.8 million tonnes in the first six months of the financial year that began in April, according to official government data, as Bangladesh, a leading buyer, cut purchases due to a bumper harvest. The decision to give financial support for non-basmati rice exports would also help keep local prices steady, especially when new-season supplies tend to drag prices down, said BV Krishna Rao, president of the Rice Exporters Association. New-season rice supplies have already started arriving in the local market. PARIS (Reuters) - PSA Group and Toyota have decided to end their joint production of small cars by 2021 but will add cooperation in light commercial vehicles, French newspaper Les Echos reported on Thursday. Toyota will acquire PSA's stake in the joint venture created by the two carmakers and will integrate the Czech plant of Kolin into its industrial apparatus, the newspaper reported, without citing sources PARIS (Reuters) - PSA Group and Toyota have decided to end their joint production of small cars by 2021 but will add cooperation in light commercial vehicles, French newspaper Les Echos reported on Thursday. Toyota will acquire PSA's stake in the joint venture created by the two carmakers and will integrate the Czech plant of Kolin into its industrial apparatus, the newspaper reported, without citing sources. The two groups will expand their cooperation in the production of light commercial vehicles in France and Spain, Les Echos added. PSA will go on assembling commercial vehicles for Toyota at its Sevelnord plant in northern France, while the group's Spanish factory in Vigo will produce new Toyota vehicles, the newspaper reported. (Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain; Editing by Laurence Frost) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. By Tom Arnold DUBAI (Reuters) - A proxy war between the United Arab Emirates and Qatar is being played out at banks in the UAE which have Qatari shareholders, weighing on their business and raising questions about their future. Some banks and other businesses had been warned by the UAE government against entering into deals with Qatari companies, since the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt began a boycott of Qatar in June 2017, sources including a senior UAE banker and a UAE business official told Reuters. By Tom Arnold DUBAI (Reuters) - A proxy war between the United Arab Emirates and Qatar is being played out at banks in the UAE which have Qatari shareholders, weighing on their business and raising questions about their future. Some banks and other businesses had been warned by the UAE government against entering into deals with Qatari companies, since the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt began a boycott of Qatar in June 2017, sources including a senior UAE banker and a UAE business official told Reuters. As a result, some UAE companies and banks have shied away from business with United Arab Bank (UAB), Commercial Bank International and Al Khaliji France, sources said. And while Doha denies allegations that it has supported terrorism, Qatari nationals face UAE travel restrictions, making it hard for them to manage their investments in the emirates. Since the boycott of Qatar, commercial ties have been scaled back and some UAE banks pulled deposits and loans from their Qatari counterparts, while Qatar's Doha Bank, is cutting its exposure to the UAE via asset swaps with UAE banks. But Qataris, previously big investors in UAE real estate and other industries, are still the largest shareholders in UAB, 40 percent owned by Commercial Bank, and CBI, 40 percent held by Qatar National Bank (QNB). UAB and CBI are the only banks of the 15 largest listed lenders in the UAE to experience a fall in assets, customer deposits and loans since the start of the crisis. "CBI and UAB both previously benefited from their respective ownership by Qatari banks, and now this benefit is far less obvious," Redmond Ramsdale at Fitch Ratings said. Al Khaliji France, which operates in France and UAE and is wholly owned by Qatar's Al Khalij Commercial Bank, has seen a drop off in demand among its Qatari clients and has not grown its balance sheet, a source familiar with the matter said. Unlisted Al Khaliji France's latest full year financial disclosures shows its assets, customer deposits and loans and advances fell between 2016 and 2017. UAB and CBI have been cleaning up their balance sheets since before the regional dispute began, after a build up of bad debt, mainly from SME customers hit by a soft economy. "CBI has been reducing the unsecured lending portfolio in its retail banking business," a bank spokesperson said, adding that with lower funding needs it had also reduced its deposits. UAB, Al Khalij and the UAE Central Bank did not respond to requests for comment. DISPUTED DEPOSITS A UAE business official, who declined to be named, said at least one UAE bank with a Qatari shareholder had seen a withdrawal in some government-linked deposits. However, sources close to the banks said they had not seen any significant outflow in government-linked deposits, adding that they had never been large in any case. UAB and CBI have had to diversify their funding sources since the dispute as some Abu Dhabi banks are wary about engaging with them, two sources said. While Qatari banks Commercial Bank and Al Khalij have both attempted to exit their holdings in the UAE banks, partly as a result of the row, sale talks also failed in part because of the dispute. Commercial Bank said in June it had ended talks with UAE-based Tabarak Investment to buy its UAB stake, with a source close to the talks saying Tabarak was unable to secure funding. And Al Khalij said in September that it had dropped the sale of Al Khaliji France. A source familiar with both sales processes said some of the offers received by both banks were below market value "seeking to take advantage of the political situation". QNB has previously ruled out any sale of its stake in CBI. (Reporting by Tom Arnold; Editing by Alexander Smith) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Railway workers decided to refuse all overtime in a call for 'work-to-rule' protest from 11 December to protest the Railway Ministry's refusal to meet their demands. New Delhi: Railway workers will do no more than the minimum required by the rules of their contract from 11 December and refuse all overtime in a call for 'work-to-rule' to protest the Railway Ministry's refusal to meet their demands, a statement from the All India Railway Men's Federation said on Thursday. The statement alleged that Railway Minister Piyush Goyal's negative comments on the demands of the union at its 70th annual meeting held from 15-17 November has led to this decision. Work-to-rule is an industrial action in which employees do no more than the minimum required by the rules of their contract. They follow all safety or other regulations which are prescribed in their manuals which may cause a slowdown or decrease in productivity, as they refuse to work during breaks or during unpaid extended hours and weekends. Such an action is considered less disruptive than a strike or lockout, and obeying the rules is less susceptible to disciplinary action. "This means that the workers will work only according to the manual. If there is some repair work needed, the worker will only do the work if he has the equipments, tools and working conditions as prescribed in the manual. "Similarly, a goods train driver will not drive a passenger train even if there is shortage of staff. No one will work beyond prescribed work hours," Shiv Gopal Mishra, the general secretary of the All India Railway Mens' Federation, said. The unions are scheduled to meet the Railway Board on 5 December over demands to revoke the National Pension Scheme, increase in running allowance and incentives and improvement of working and living conditions. Director General of WTO Roberto Azevedo said the report's findings should be of serious concern for G20 governments and the whole international community New Delhi: The G20 economies, a group of developed and developing countries, have imposed as many as 40 new trade-restrictive measures such as high customs duties and import bans between 16 May and 15 October this year, according to a WTO report. This represents an average of eight restrictive measures per month, which is higher than the almost six measures recorded during the previous review period (mid-October 2017 to mid-May 2018), it said Thursday. "A total of 40 new trade-restrictive measures were applied by G20 economies during the review period, including tariff increases, import bans and export duties," the report said. Director General of Geneva-based World Trade Organisation (WTO) Roberto Azevedo said the report's findings should be of serious concern for G20 governments and the whole international community. "Further escalation remains a real threat. If we continue along the current course, the economic risks will increase, with potential effects for growth, jobs and consumer prices around the world," he said. He added that the WTO is taking steps to support efforts to de-escalate the situation, but finding solutions will require political will and it will require leadership from the G20. The report too stated that the proliferation of trade restrictive actions could place economic recovery in jeopardy. It also said that these countries continued to initiate a higher number of new trade remedy investigations, including anti-dumping probe compared to the number of such terminated by them. However, it said that these nations implemented 33 new measures, including eliminating or reducing import tariffs and export duties to facilitate trade during the review period. The G20 economies are India, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, UK, the US, and the European Union. Doval and Wang are the designated special representatives for border talks between India and China. Beijing: National Security Advisor Ajit Doval arrived in China on Friday for the 21st round of border talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during which they would also review the progress in bilateral ties since the Wuhan Summit in April. Doval and Wang will meet on Saturday in the picturesque Dujiangyan City in southwestern China's Sichuan province. They are the designated special representatives for border talks between India and China. Wang earlier this year succeeded Yang Jiechi as the state councillor, a rank higher than the foreign minister in Chinese government's hierarchy. This will be his first round of border talks. Announcing the talks on 21 November, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang presented an upbeat picture of the bilateral ties saying, "We have properly managed the differences through dialogue and consultation. The border areas on the whole maintained stability." Officials maintain that this round of talks may focus more on reviewing the progress on trade and maintenance of peace at borders than movement towards a solution to the border dispute as India is headed for general elections next year. Since the first-ever "informal summit" between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan, the two countries have launched a dialogue between trade officials to enhance India's exports to China to address the over $51-billion trade deficit. Since then, progress has been made towards increasing India's export of rice, sugar and pharmaceuticals. This is expected to come under review at Saturday's talks, officials said. Negotiations between the special representatives are regarded highly significant by both the countries as they cover all aspects of bilateral ties besides making efforts to resolve the vexed border dispute. The India-China border dispute covers 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control. China claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of southern Tibet. The last round, held in New Delhi between Doval and Yang, took place in the backdrop of the 73-day standoff between the two militaries at Doklam over Chinese army's plan to build a road close to India's strategic "Chicken's Neck" corridor connecting the north-eastern states. The standoff ended after the People's Liberation Army halted the plans to build the road. Officials on both sides say a lot of spadework has been done to ensure peace and tranquillity at the border, though the solution to the border dispute is still elusive even after 20 rounds of talks. Senior defence officials of India and China have held the 9th India-China Annual Defence and Security Dialogue in Beijing on 13 November after a one-year gap due to the Doklam standoff. During the meeting, both sides agreed to enhance defence exchanges and interactions. A non-cognisable case was filed against a woman on a complaint by Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, but was later closed after a brief probe. Bengaluru: A non-cognisable case was filed against a woman on a complaint by Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, who recently quit as the group CEO over allegations of "serious personal misconduct", but was later closed after a brief probe, a senior police official said on Friday. Bansal had alleged in his complaint that the woman was sending threatening mails to him, the official told PTI on condition of anonymity. The firm owner Walmart Inc had announced on Tuesday last that Bansal had resigned as the group chief executive officer after an independent probe into allegations of "serious personal misconduct". Repudiating the charges, Binny, 37, had said that he was "stunned" by the allegations and added that he would, however, continue to remain a large shareholder and board member of the company that he had co-founded 11 years ago. "The Koramangala police had filed a non-cognisable case against a woman. Bansal had alleged that the woman was sending threatening mails to him," the officer said. The complaint, after a few days of investigation, was closed, the officer said, but declined to disclose further details. Non-cognisable offence refers to an offence in which the police has no authority to apprehend a person for crime on their own. Under this law, the police require a warrant to arrest an accused and a court's prior approval to begin investigation. Bansal's exit came just months after Flipkart was acquired by Walmart. He was serving as group CEO after Walmart's mega $16 billion investment in the Bengaluru-based company. Walmart, in its statement, had said Binny's decision to step down followed an independent investigation done on behalf of Flipkart and Walmart, even though the probe "did not find evidence to corroborate the complainant's assertions" against him. The company, however, did not provide details of the nature of misconduct or the findings of the probe for which it had engaged a global law firm. The probe that began in July did not involve an employee of Flipkart, according to sources which had indicated that the complainant was associated with the firm a few years ago, but was now running her own venture. The matter is in "personal realm," they added. This, however, could not be independently ascertained. Binny had co-founded Flipkart with his IIT-Delhi batchmate Sachin Bansal in 2007. Sachin (not related) left the company, selling his entire 5.5 percent stake to Walmart, as part of the mega $16-billion deal with the US retail behemoth in May. The over 30,000 tribals now lodged in refugee camps in Tripura for over 21 years, demanded setting up of polling stations near them so that they could cast their votes. However, the Mizoram government wants them to travel to Mizoram and exercise their franchise. The exit polls for Mizoram Assembly elections on 7 December predicted a win for the Mizo National Front (MNF), unseating the ruling Congress party. According to the surveys, MNF, Congress main rival, could make inroads into the 40-member Assembly, bagging 16-20 seats. Ahead of the polls, the place of voting for members of the Bru community has been the most controversial topic, triggering various protests in the Congress-ruled state. The issue led to the appointment IAS officer Ashish Kundra as the new chief electoral officer (CEO), in place of SB Shashank just two weeks before the polling. The demand of the Brus Following ethnic tension in 1997, thousands of Bru (or Reang) families fled Mizoram and have since been staying in Tripura's Kanchanpur and Panisagar sub-divisions. Over 30,000 tribals have been lodged in Tripura refugee camps for over 21 years, and have demanded setting up of polling stations near them so that they could cast their votes. However, the Mizoram government wants them to travel to Mizoram and exercise their franchise. A total of 11,232 Bru tribals are eligible to cast their votes in the 28 November polls. Why did they flee? According to The Indian Express, the Young Mizo Association and Mizo Students Association had sought the removal of Brus from the electoral rolls in 1997, alleging that they weren't an indigenous tribe. Militant outfit Bru National Liberation Front was formed in response, and on 21 October, 1997, a Mizo forest official was killed allegedly by the front's militants. This led to retaliatory violence, following which many Bru families fled to north Tripura. Problems faced by the community A report by National Commission for Protection of Child Rights based on research conducted by Quality Council of India noted that the families living in the camps do not have access to necessities of life such as clean drinking water, sanitation facilities, and electricity. When households were surveyed, most of respondents (77%) said that they do not have Aadhaar cards which prevents them access to financial and banking services among others. "The residents of the camps are not receiving any benefits of various state subsidised schemes and programs, such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MNREGA) etc. Several members of the community do not have proper identification documents such as Aadhaar card, voter ID card, birth certificate etc. due to which they face various problems in their daily lives and in accessing financial and banking services," the report said. Access to healthcare facilities is also an issue at the refugee camps. According to the report, only two primary health centres are functional and available for the total population of the community living in all six camps of north Tripura. Majority of the parents are unskilled, and work as daily wage labourers or rely on the forests for their livelihood, while almost one in every 10 children is consuming alcohol, tobacco, and in some cases, even drugs, said the report. The repatriation process The agreement to repatriate the total 32,876 people belonging to the Bru community, who have been living in relief camps in Tripura was signed by the Centre and the governments of Mizoram and Tripura on 3 July. Only 40 of the 5,407 Bru refugee families returned to Mizoram from the six refugee camps in Tripura during the stipulated one month of repatriation process that ended on 30 September. The Mizoram chief minister, however, wrote to Home Minister Rajnath Singh, alleging that vested interests in Tripura camps had dissuaded people from repatriating. Bru members, however, cited "unsatisfactory repatriation package" as reason for not returning to their home state. A voting space for Brus The Election Commission will set up polling stations at Kanhmun, a village along the Mizoram-Tripura border, to facilitate voting by the tribal refugees. The refugee leaders, however, said that they would discuss the Election Commission's decision (to set up polling stations at Kanhmun village) on 23 November and take the final decision whether to cast votes in the new locations. "We have been asked by the Election Commission to set up 15 polling stations at compact locations at the border village Kanhmun inside Mizoram territory under Mamit district," Mizoram's Joint Chief Electoral Officer Zorammuana told IANS. He said: "Tripura government would be requested to provide security and transportation to ferry the refugee voters to Kanhmun village from the six refugee camps. We would bear the expenditure of the vehicles." The new CEO Ashish Kundra visited the Kanhmun village on 20 November to assess the arrangements for the voting by the refugees. With inputs from agencies According to reports, a staffer in SRM, probably a 'garbage man' (as described by the students) masturbated at a second-year student inside a lift in the women's hostel, but instead of taking action against the culprit the hostel warden took to moral policing and told the students that such things happen to 'North Indian' girls. The Chennai Police arrested an employee of the SRM University at Kattankulathur area in the city on charges of sexual harassment, hours after student protests broke out inside the campus. The students were protesting against the university's alleged inaction in the case despite a sexual harassment complaint by a woman student. The accused, identified as 26-year-old Arjun, a staff worker who clears out food waste from inside the canteens and mess halls, has been arrested by the Maraimalai Nagar police, The News Minute reported. "The hostel warden filed a complaint against the man and we have arrested him. An FIR has been registered under sections 294(b) (sings, recites or utters any obscene song, ballad or words, in or near any public place) and 354 (Assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) of the IPC and we will be remanding him immediately," a police officer said. According to reports, Arjun masturbated at a second-year student inside the women's hostel lift, but instead of taking action against the culprit the hostel warden took to moral policing and told the students that such things happen to 'North Indian' girls. According to the students of the SRM University, the incident happened around 3 pm on Thursday and the protests went on till almost 11.30 pm when the police came and forced the students to disperse. The students were angry about the college authorities' 'indifferent attitude' towards the incident and demanded that the college file a complaint against the culprit. According to another protester, the hostel warden purposely delayed giving access to the CCTV footage of the elevator and the registering of a complaint by over two hours. "The employee was identified by the student in the CCTV footage. However she was asked to stay mum about the incident by the authorities," the protester said, adding that the hostel authorities allegedly blamed the victim. SRM University vice-chancellor Sandeep Sancheti, denied the allegations of inaction and said the administration would look into the student's complaint. "Students are discussing with us. Whatever the matter is, it will be taken care of. If there is a matter, it will be inquired," Sancheti told PTI. With inputs from PTI The Prime Minister and other Central Ministers concerned need to visit the affected regions, rather than the chief minister of the affected state visiting Delhi, Haasan said. Tiruchirappalli: Actor-politician Kamal Haasan Thursday said the amount sought by the Tamil Nadu government as central assistance towards rehabilitation activities in Cyclone Gaja-hit districts seems to be an "arbitrary figure." The Makkal Needhi Maiam founder wanted the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and central ministers to visit the affected areas for an on-the-spot assessment. During his meeting with Modi in New Delhi Thursday, Chief Minister K Palaniswami sought Rs 15,000 crore as central assistance towards relief and rehabilitation activities in Cyclone-hit districts in the state. "The quantum of funds being requested from Centre seems to be an arbitrary figure. No information has been released about Post Disaster Need Assessment for this disaster which is the basis to determine the required amount of funds," Haasan said in a statement. The Prime Minister and other Central Ministers concerned need to visit the affected regions, rather than the chief minister of the affected state visiting Delhi, Haasan said. Haasan said his party had collected relief material worth Rs 1.2 crore and dispatched it to the affected areas in 60-70 vehicles Thursday alone by party members. Waiver of crop loans for the affected farmers and grant of crop insurance award at the earliest were some relief measures suggested by the party. The leader of the Opposition in Tamil Nadu demanded that Chief Minister E Palaniswami convene a meeting of stakeholders from the region to take forward the relief activities in an effective manner. Chennai: DMK President MK Stalin Friday alleged the relief activity was "not satisfactory" in the Cauvery delta areas that were ravaged by Cyclone Gaja last week. The leader of the Opposition in the state assembly demanded that Chief Minister E Palaniswami convene a meeting of stakeholders from the region to take forward the relief activities in an effective manner. He also said Palaniswami should stay put in the delta region to oversee the relief work. "The people in the delta region have lost their livelihood. The relief work is not satisfactory for them. Palaniswami should actually stay there and expedite and regulate the relief activities," he told reporters in Chennai. Further, Palaniswami should convene a meeting of stakeholders in the delta region farmers' and political parties' representatives and welfare organisations, and discuss further streamlining and expediting the relief and rehabilitation efforts, he added. Cyclone Gaja had crossed the Tamil Nadu coast between Nagapattinam and Vedaranyam on November 16, claiming 63 lives and leaving behind a trail of destruction, severely affecting the farming, fishing and power sectors. Nagapattinam, Thanjavur, Tiruvarur and Pudukottai districts had suffered the worst damage. Tamil Nadu government has already released Rs 1,000 crore as interim measure to aid the relief and rehabilitation efforts, even as Palaniswami met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi on Thursday seeking a Rs 14,910 crore relief package. An operation was launched based on inputs about the presence of militants in a forest area in Bijbehara. As a precautionary measure, authorities have suspended mobile internet services in Anantnag. Six militants were killed in an ongoing encounter with security forces in Sekipora area of Bijbehara in South Kashmir's Anantnag district on Friday. According to reports, arms and ammunition were recovered from the spot. Indian Army's 3 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) and police are jointly conducting the ongoing operation. The operation was launched based on inputs about the presence of militants in a forest area in Bijbehara. As a precautionary measure, authorities have suspended mobile internet services in Anantnag. More details of the ongoing encounter are awaited. The valley has been witnessing a spurt in terror activities for the past few months. On Tuesday, five people, including four Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists and a paratrooper from the Indian Army, were killed in an encounter at Nadigam village of Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district. On 18 November, two terrorists associated with terror outfit Al-Badr were killed in an encounter in Rebban area of Shopian district. On the same day, a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawan lost his life after terrorists opened fire on a CRPF camp at Railway Colony in Pulwama's Kakapora area. With inputs from agencies The Thrissur archdiocese maintained its support for rape accused Franco Mulakkal by featuring the bishop in the official calendar for 2019 The featuring of the photo of rape accused former Jalandhar Catholic bishop Franco Mulakkal on the official calendar of Thrissur archdiocese for 2019 has not raised any eyebrows in his home state of Kerala. Mulakkal, who is accused of raping a 44-year-old nun from Missionaries of Jesus congregation under his authority, is now out on bail. The prelate is forbidden by the court from entering Kerala except to appear before the investigating officer once in two weeks, but he is kept in the prayers of faithful Christians by the Thrissur diocese by including his picture in its calendar. The calendar, which is printed and published every year by the Catholicasabha, the mouthpiece of the archdiocese, features pictures of all bishops hailing from the archdiocese. Mulakkal's photo appears in his birth month of March. The move has not surprised those supporting the survivor since it is in line with the patronage the church has been extending to Mulakkal. The church had tried to cover up the crime and shield the accused when the nun from the Kuravilangad convent in Kottayam district took her complaint to the church authorities. When the nun moved the police after failing to get justice from the church, the supporters of the bishop tried to influence the survivor and the witnesses by offering money and institutional protection. They also threatened the nun and resorted to character assassination when she did not yield to the pressure tactics. While some witnesses have bowed under pressure, a prime witness has died under mysterious circumstances leaving the case weak. Activists who are still standing behind the survivor are now being intimidated. The church is even trying to remove a senior priest belonging to Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese, who has been spearheading a movement to bring justice to the nun. Fr Augustine Vattoly, who heads the Save Our Sisters (SOS) action council, has been served with a notice to explain his actions allegedly against the church. The notice was served by Jacob Manthodath, the apostolic administrator of the archdiocese, after the priest led a protest at the state capital of Thiruvananthapuram on 14 November demanding cancellation of the bail granted to the bishop and a timely investigation into the death of Fr Kuriakosoe Kattuthara, the prime witness in the case. The SOS has been demanding cancellation of Mulakkals conditional bail in the light of the continuing threats to the rape survivor and the nuns supporting her as well as and the Mulakkals failure to hand over his laptop that investigators believe could provide key evidence in the case. The bishop, who has been maintaining innocence, has missed two deadlines given by the police. The police believe that the device could support his defence if he is innocent as he claims. However, Mulakkal has been reluctant in handing over the computer to the police. Meanwhile, the bishops office has informed the police of its inability to hand over the laptop, sayin that it can't identify the particular laptop as all devices in his office were upgraded recently. Though the last deadline passed on 5 November, the police have not verified the claims so far. SOS leaders believe that the bishop would produce the computer if the police initiate the process for cancelling the bail. They feel that the reluctance on the part of the police could be due to pressure from politicians supporting the bishop. Earlier, the polie and the government were heavily criticised for their delay in arresting the bishop. Though the nun had lodged the complaint in April 2018, the police arrested him only after the nuns hit the streets in Kerala. Leaders of SOS feel that the government may have tied the hands of the police since the bishop is highly influential not only in the church but also in the political establishment, which has its eyes on the Christian vote bank. Political leaders are overwhelmed by the open support extended to the bishop by the church and its various organisations. The church continued the support even after the police found him prima facie guilty and arrested him. While bishops and priests made a beeline to the jail where he was lodged after the arrest, special prayers for the accused were organised in many churches across the state. The support grew after the bishop was granted bail by the Kerala High Court. People waited in large numbers outside the jail to see the bishop come out of the prison. He was also given a heros welcome when he went to Jalandhar. Official bulletins of various dioceses in the state and even outside came out in support of the bishop. Many of them reprimanded the nuns and priests who led the protests for the arrest of Mulakkal. Christward, the official bulletin of Jalandhar diocese, alleged that the arrest was due to pressure from the media. The bulletin described the situation after the bishops arrest as the suffering church. The Missionaries of Jesus, to which the rape survivor belongs, has also been consistently backing the bishop. The congregation claimed that the nun who raised the rape allegation against Mulakkal was in an illicit relationship with one of her relatives, and accused the bishop for 'acting upon the complaint' lodged by the relatives wife. They condemned the protest by five nuns seeking justice for a fellow nun saying they were trying to destroy the church. A delegation of nuns from Jalandhar even met Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and accused the police of arresting the 'innocent' bishop without any reason. Meanwhile, church authorities have defended the publication of Mulakkals photo on the calendar saying that it was printed since he is still a bishop despite the fact that he was temporarily relieved of his pastoral responsibilities by Pope Francis in September. Joseph Thaliyath, former chief editor of Catholicasabha, said that printing pictures of bishops belonging to the diocese in the calendar was practice followed by the magazine for a long time. The pictures of the prelates are published against the date of birth or their feast day. He said that the publication could not omit Franco Mulakkal as he is still a bishop. The positions and titles in the church are not like that of peoples representatives and officials which cease to exist once they demit office. The position of the clergy remains the same as long as they are alive. They cannot be removed even if they are suspended or dismissed from the service, Joseph said. The magazine, he says, could not remove the picture of Mulakkal also because he is still an accused. The magazine cannot consider him guilty unless a court of law convicts him. Joseph alleged that the media was raking up the controversy without knowing the rules and procedures followed by the church. After senior journalist Swati Chaturvedi received a tweet which said 'One more Gauri Lankesh in the making' on Wednesday, no action has been taken against the possible threat or Twitter user even on Friday. One more Gauri Lankesh in the making that's what a tweet from one @Mitra_Cariappa, which has A Proud Hindustani in its bio, tweeted to senior journalist Swati Chaturvedi on Wednesday. Swati reported it to Twitter and also filed a police complaint on Thursday evening, however, authorities haven't taken any action so far. "Even though the tweet was deleted, there are screenshots of it. Other people have also reported the user going by the handle '@mitra_cariappa', but there has been no response," said Swati Chaturvedi, who is a resident of Delhi. Swati recently won the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Award for Courage on 9 November. A journalist with over 20 years of field experience, Chaturvedi has reported on the Jain Commission, the Rafale deal, the CBI controversy, among other stories. "I have been in this profession for 20 years, but have only started receiving such threats for the last four years and eight months. Now, I get at least a dozen such threats every week. It's evident where they are coming from and what they mean, but the Centre is not even pretending to investigate such instances anymore," Chaturvedi adds. Ever since the editor of Lankesh Patrike Gauri Lankesh was shot outside her residence in Bangalore on 5 September 2017, journalists writing critiques of the BJP government have been vary with increasing instances of censorship and vitriol directed at them, especially on social media platforms like Twitter. Chaturvedi explains, "Trolls followed by (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi on Twitter feel they have immunity and can get away with murder." Chaturvedi also says that she has "done everything" she is "supposed to do" in such a situation. "I have reported the tweet to the authorities in charge, but the government or police have not bothered to do anything about it." In its annual World Press Freedom Index released on 25 April 2018, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders organisation said that India was ranked 138th in the world out of 180 countries measured, down two positions since 2017 and lower than countries like Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Myanmar. When the index was started in 2002, India was ranked 80th out of 139 countries surveyed. A Reuters report quoted Reporters Without Borders as saying that with Hindu nationalists trying to purge all manifestations of anti-national thought from the national debate, self-censorship is growing in the mainstream media and journalists are increasingly the targets of online smear campaigns by the most radical nationalists, who vilify them and even threaten physical reprisals. The group also said that hate speech targeting journalists is shared and amplified on social networks, often by troll armies. Spokesmen for the government declined to comment on the accusations by the organisation. They did not immediately respond to the Reporters Without Borders report, Reuters said. A Hindustan Times report quoted Lankesh about the exponentially unsafe atmosphere for journalists, if they opposed "the ideology of the party in power". Just months before she was assassinated, Lankesh had said, Let me assure you, they are keen to somehow shut me up too." Lankesh, 55, the editor of Lankesh Patrike, was shot dead outside her residence in the city's suburb by unidentified assailants on 5 September, 2017. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh filed an additional chargesheet in the case on Friday against 18 accused, ANI reported. The SIT submitted the 9,235-page charge sheet under Karnataka Control of Crimes Act (KCOCA) to a special court. They team also sought permission to conduct further investigations. Lankesh, 55, the editor of Lankesh Patrike, was shot dead outside her residence in the city's suburb by unidentified assailants on 5 September, 2017. In August, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is probing the murder of Pune-based rationalist Narendra Dabholkar established links between the two murders. Though the two high-profile murders were committed four years apart, in both these cases, the long-suspected alleged role of certain right-wing activists, including those associated with Sanatan Sanstha and others, emerged. The SIT invoked the stringent KCOCA as it believed there existed a larger conspiracy behind the murder. KCOCA is the Karnataka version of MCOCA, the law in place in Maharashtra to curb underworld activities. Eighteen people have been arrested in the case. The SIT filed its first chargesheet on 30 May. With inputs from agencies Germany handed over the report on the Mysore-Bengaluru-Chennai bullet train corridor to Railway Board chairman Ashwani Lohani New Delhi: Germany on Thursday submitted its final feasibility report for the 435-kilometre high speed rail (bullet train) corridor between Mysore-Bengaluru-Chennai to the Indian Railways. The report was handed over to Railway Board chairman Ashwani Lohani by German Ambassador to India Martin Ney at the railway ministry in Delhi. Speaking about the report, the German ambassador said: "The key results of the study is that the high speed railways on the route is not only feasible but also manageable." He said the report was completed in 18 months and is fully funded by the German government. Lohani said the report is doable but before taking further steps, it will be studied. According to Railway ministry officials, the estimated cost of the 435-kilometre route will be around $16 billion (about Rs 1 lakh crore). The officials said out of 435 kilometre, about 84 percent of the track would be elevated while 11 percent will be in a tunnel. "Rest five percent will be on grade," Lohani added. "The bullet train will take about two hour and 25 minutes to travel the 435-kilometre distance between Chennai and Mysore at maximum speed of 320 kilometre per hour," he said. The ULFA(I) militants' grenade exploded at a hardware shop in the Demow Chariali area of Assam's Sibsagar district, killing a customer, Anup Gupta, and the shop owner, Kamal Agarwal. Guwahati: Two people were killed and several more injured in a grenade attack by suspected ULFA(I) militants in Sibsagar district of upper Assam on Thursday evening, police said. The grenade exploded at a hardware shop in the Demow Chariali area of the district, killing a customer, Anup Gupta, and the shop owner, Kamal Agarwal, they said. Several bystanders also suffered minor injuries. The ULFA(Independent) had allegedly served an extortion notice on the shop owner a few days ago, police said, adding that the militants had also hurled a grenade at his shop about three years ago. The ULFA(I) has stepped up its activities in upper Assam districts, and during the recent past, there has been a spurt of killings and kidnappings attributed to the outfit, including the killing of five people at Dhola in Tinsukia district. Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal condemned the incident and said the culprits would be brought to book. Sonowal, who is currently in New Delhi, directed Director General of Police Kuladhar Saikia to take immediate measures to nab those involved in the incident. He termed the attack an "act of cowardice" and expressed his deepest sympathy to the bereaved families, an official release said. Noting India's vibrant democracy the Madras High Court judge observed if media is stifled then India will become a Nazi State and the hard labour of our freedom-fighters and makers of our Constitution will go down the drain. If the press is gagged for publishing news, democracy in this country will be in utter peril and India will become a Nazi State, the Madras High Court observed while quashing a defamation case filed against a magazine by the AIADMK government in 2012. Justice PN Prakash allowed two petitions filed by the management of India Today Tamil Magazine challenging the prosecution proceedings initiated against it before the Principal Sessions Court, Chennai. Ruling that the proceedings before the lower court were an abuse of process of law, the judge said the the court will be failing in its duty if such attempts by the "mighty State" to "trample the press for no good reason" are not resisted. The matter relates to an article published by the magazine dated 8 August, 2012, in which it was alleged that at the instance of VK Sasikala the then chief minister J Jayalalithaa removed KA Sengottaiyan as minister, following which the city public prosecutor filed a defamation case. "For publishing news, if the press is gagged, democracy in this country will be in utter peril," the court observed, "India is a vibrant democracy and the fourth estate is indubitably an indispensable part of it. If the voice of the fourth estate is stifled in this manner, India will become a Nazi State and the hard labour of our freedom-fighters and makers of our Constitution will go down the drain." "There may be some occasional transgressions by the press. However, in the larger interest of sustaining democracy, those aberrations deserve to be ignored," Prakash said. In his order, the judge said, "On a reading of the aforesaid portions, this court is not able to find even an iota of material to show that there is any imputation intending to harm the reputation of Jayalalithaa, the then chief minister." The judge refused to accept the arguments of public prosecutor A Natarajan that on reading of the entire article, the public could draw an inference that Sengottaiyan was removed from ministership only at the instance of Sasikala and this would amount to imputation. "Nobody is invited with platters for coming into public life. Therefore, after voluntarily coming into public life, one cannot be heard to feign sensitiveness and trample the press for no good reason. "This constitutional court will be failing in its duty if such attempts by the mighty state are not resisted," the judge said in his order last week. Prakash said even on a reading of the entire article, "the court is not able to draw such an inference as argued by the public prosecutor. Further, it is not open to this court to strain the language employed in the article or to read between the lines, for arriving at such an inference." "That apart, for maintaining a complaint of defamation via section 199 (2) to (4) CrPC, the imputation should be in respect of the conduct of the public servant in the discharge of his public functions," he judge added. "The impugned paragraphs extracted from the article only refer to the gaining of influence by Sasikala in the party affairs after a brief period of hibernation and coming back into the party fold," the judge said. Madras High Court's bold observations This is not the first time that the Madras High Court has made controversial comments in its judgments. On Friday, the court also noted that doling out "freebies" to all sections of people have made people "lazy" and that free Public Distribution Scheme (PDS) rice given to ration card holders should be restricted only to families below the poverty line. In August this year, The Times of India had reported that the court had warned the National Highway Authorities of India to rectify the issue of separate toll lanes for VIPs and judges as it was "embarrassing for VIPs and sitting judges to have to wait at toll plazas and display identity documents," a division bench of Justice Huluvadi G Ramesh and Justice MV Muralidharan said. In October 2015, the court had called for a consideration of the castration of people convicted for child sex abuse in a strongly worded order. The court's remarks came in response to a plea filed by a British national accused of pedophilia for quashing of the charges against him. In July 2015, the court had made headlines after it granted interim bail to a rape accused on the condition that he go to the mediation centre attached to the high court to settle the matter with the victim, who was a minor, under the Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR). However the Supreme Court severely criticised the Madras High Court for its order. In September 2014, the court had suggested that couples should undergo medical examinations to check for impotency or sexually transmitted diseases before marriage. This was while the court was hearing a case under the Domestic Violence Act and its interim ruling on the potency test was aimed at cases where couples were seeking divorce on the grounds of impotency, particularly cases in which men deceived their brides by hiding the fact of their condition prior to marriage. With inputs from PTI It is not only the widows who suffer, but even their children also go through various hardships. For Asha Doiphode, a 35-year-old widow and a resident of Sarola village, Osmanabad district in Maharashtra's Marathwada region life has become a cauldron of challenge. Abandoned by her in-laws at a time when she is facing an acute financial distress, Asha, a farm labour is burdened with the repayment of a Rs 6 lakh loan which her husband took from a bank and a private lender but failed to repay ultimately leading to his suicide. Asha's father-in-law is not ready to transfer two acres of land to her. Her in-laws don't want her to stay in their house after their sons death. They blame her for his suicide and often harass her forcing her to live separately nearby. She also did not get the Rs 1 lakh compensation from the government that the widows of farmers who commit suicide are entitled to. Asha has no clue if the bank adjusted the amount against the existing loan. The monthly pension of Rs 600 she gets is irregular compunding her woes. However, Asha is not alone in this struggle as many others share the same plight. From 1995 till 2015, 65,000 farmers have committed suicide due to farm distress in Maharashtra. As 90 percent of them are men, the untimely death is often followed by an uncertain future for their families. What is worse is not only mere survival becomes a daunting task for the affected families, the widows are routinely neglected by their in-laws and deprived of the land holdings and houses they are legally entitled to. They also become vulnerable to sexual abuse. Since 2005, the state government has issued 24 government resolutions for the benefit of farmers but it means little for these bunch of hapless women. Mahila Kisan Adhikar Manch (MAKAAM), a network working for women farmers, in September and October conducted a survey of widows of farmers who have committed suicide between 2012 and 2018. The respondents are from all castes and religion and from 11 districts of Marathwada and Vidarbha and were surveyed by 19 organisations associated with MAKAAM. According to the study, only 34 percent women got the government pension of Rs 600 approved and the remaining women could not get it as they were either unaware or their applications got rejected. They give pension once in two-three months and officials often take Rs 100 as a bribe, said Asha. The survey also found that 29 percent women did not get land and 43 percent did not get a house. Rani More, a 33-year-old widow from Osmanabad, said, My in-laws are not ready to transfer land in my name after my husband committed suicide three years ago. They take all government grants and subsidies meant for lands in the drought-affected area. At least, they allowed me to cultivate crop so that I can take care of my two kids. Only 52 percent of these widowed women possess independent ration cards although the rules permit them to own independent ration cards without any kind of documentation. However, officials often throw the norms to the bin and deny ration cards to these women citing lack of documents. It is not only the widows who suffer, but even their children also go through various hardships. The survey found that out of 355 children from class I to XII, only 12 percent got a fee concession and 24 percent received material help like uniform and books. Sangita Kokare, another widow said, she had to marry off her four daughters once they entered teenage as she could not afford their education. Though government hospitals and clinics provide free healthcare to members of suicide affected families the reality on the ground is quite opposite. Since October 2016, 69 families had done surgeries and a whopping 49 percent of then were not aware of the scheme. Among those who knew 19 percent could not get the benefits and 22 percent had to pay bribes to officials to avail them. According to the report, since 2015 despite the Prerna Scheme for Mental Health, 61 percent of the 137 families who have issues of mental health did not avail free treatment under the scheme. While 28 percent of them went to government hospitals, a majority of them still had to shell out money on medicines and treatment from private doctors. Savita Shelar from Kalamb Taluka in Osmanabad said, Since my husband died my parents-in-law harass me saying my husband died because of me and keep abusing me all the time. If I talk to neighbours they ask me not to talk to them. My maternal side is equally poor and cannot support me. They have cut my electricity connection and if I take a sub-connection from my neighbour, they threaten me with a police complaint. To respect the farmers who were forced to end their lives due to farm distress, MAKAAM also held a condolence meeting at Azad Maidan in Mumbai on 21 November. The ex gratia amount of Rs 1 lakh should be increased to Rs 5 lakh. Pension should be doubled and should be given on time. Children from suicide affected families should get a free education. These women should gean t independent ration card. The ]gGovernment hospitals and clinics should provide them with free health care. A special campaign should be carried out, said Seema Kulkarni of MAKAAM. They should get employment under the employment guarantee scheme and benefits of schemes for sustainable farming like irrigation should be given to them. A special campaign should be taken to conduct the hearing of violence and sexual violence against them and a mechanism like grievance committees and vigilante committees should be in place. And a dedicated helpline for women should be started, said Seema. The MEA said consular officials of the Indian High Commission were 'harassed and denied access' to meet pilgrims at Pakistan's Gurudwara Nankana Sahib and Gurudwara Sacha Sauda on 21 and 22 November. New Delhi: India Friday lodged a strong protest with Pakistan over the alleged harassment of Indian High Commission officials in Islamabad and the denial of access to Indian Sikh pilgrims visiting that country. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said consular officials of the Indian High Commission were "harassed and denied access" to meet Indian pilgrims at Gurudwara Nankana Sahib and Gurudwara Sacha Sauda on 21 and 22 November. It said the access was denied despite the Pakistan Foreign Ministry granting them prior travel permission. In a statement, the MEA said India has also expressed grave concern at the reports of attempts being made during the ongoing visit of the Indian pilgrims to Pakistan, "to incite communal disharmony and intolerance and promote secessionist tendencies with the objective of undermining India's sovereignty and territorial integrity". There were reports that pro-Khalistani banners were shown to the Indian pilgrims in Pakistan. It said Pakistan has been called upon to take all measures to not allow its territory to be used for any "hostile propaganda" and support for "secessionist tendencies" against India. Two officials of the Indian High Commission in Pakistan were stopped from entering two gurdwaras by their administration, which was upset over the screening of a film in India that they claim has hurt sentiments of the Sikh community. Lahore: Two officials of the Indian High Commission in Pakistan were stopped from entering two gurdwaras by their administration, which was upset over the screening of a film in India that they claim has hurt sentiments of the Sikh community. The officials Aranjeet Singh and Sunil Kumar were barred from entering the Gurdwara Nankana Sahib on Wednesday night and Gurdwara Sachcha Sauda on Thursday. Both the gurdwaras are in Punjab province of Pakistan. They were stopped from entering the gurdwaras by their administration, which said that the Indian government has hurt the sentiments of Sikhs by allowing the screening of the film 'Nanak Shah Fakir'. Indian officials barred from entering gurdwaras in Pakistan; officials say film Nanak Shah Fakir hurt Sikh sentimentsThe Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) said that the Pakistan Gurdwara Pharbhndik Committee (PGPC) officials have stopped the Indian officials. The visiting officials were heard saying in a video that "No Sikh was stopped from entering the house of the Guru. We are wondering as why you are stopping us." The PGPC officials however kept saying that they should better leave the premises. "We had written to the Indian High Commission asking it not to send its officials to any of the gurdwara since the release of the film," ETPB Secretary Tariq Wazir told PTI. He said the Indian officials ignored their advice. The officials reported to have visited the Sachcha Sauda gurdwara to exchange greetings with the visiting Indian Sikhs, who are here to take part in festivities related to the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. "We request the officials of the Indian High Commission not to visit any gurdwara without permission of the board as we have to security measures for them," Wazir said. In June, the PGPC officials had barred Indian High Commissioner Ajay Basaria and his wife from entering the Gurdwara Panja Sahib at Hassan Abdal, Rawalpindi. The elephants, in general, are facing threat to their existence and one of the prime reasons for this is the continuous shrinking of their habitat and corridors. Even as India makes giant strides to upgrade its economy and infrastructure at breakneck speed, it is the environment that's paying the price particularly its wild animals. The elephant is no different as hordes of them die in different circumstances as the burgeoning human population and the facilities they use shrink the space for elephants. On 15 November, an elephant died after coming in contact with a high tension powerline at Sansaraposi village in Mayurbhanj districts of Odisha. The sad news comes in just after a few days of a similar incident which claimed lives of seven pachyderms in the state. On 26 October, a herd of seven elephants was moving towards a canal from a nearby paddy field when it came in contact of a sagging 11-KV power line in the Dhenkanal forest range. This was the highest casualty of elephants reported in a single incident. While fingers are often pointed at the forest department, the onus of this kind of incidents doesnt lie with it alone. The failure of the power department to act despite several reminders from the forest department to fix a hanging transmission line cannot be ignored here. As per the Indian Electricity Rules (1956) and Rule 58 of Central Electricity Authoritys Regulations 2010, the height of overhead line should be no less than 4.6 meters and for high voltage lines over 11,000 volts, it should be 5.2 meters. The average height at the shoulder of an Indian or Asian elephant is between 2 to 3.5 metres. Had the power department responded to the call with alacrity such a tragic outcome could have been prevented. Biswajit Mohanty of Wildlife Society of Odisha is extremely upset with these deaths. He said, We have done various surveys before the October incident and have written several letters to the power department about the sagging power line in Dhenkanal district. But it was of no use. The electrical company (CESU) is not working in compliance with the Indian Electricity Rules (1956). Last Sunday also, we have done a survey and still there are a lot of sagging lines which can become a reason for another accident in the district." Sandeep Kr Tiwari of IUCN Asian Elephant Specialist Group said, The prime reason for incidents such as these is the lack of coordination between various departments. The accidents involving electrocution are generally of two types. One is the live wire traps which are often used for thoughtful or deliberate electrocution, as in the in the cases of retaliatory killings or poaching and the other is the accidental which is mainly due to sagging power lines. In 2010, after the death of six elephants raised a furore in the state, a four-member expert committee was formed under the guidance of AK Biswal, the then conservator of forest to ensure the safe future of elephants. The report submitted to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has a list of recommendations such as the increase in patrolling during the harvest season, strengthening and maintaining of minimum ground clearance for power lines, fitting spikes on to electric poles, removing defunct solar fencing, directing electric companies to fix circuit breakers etc. But it seems the state has learned too less from these recommendations. With the recent deaths, the total count of electrocution deaths (since 2010) in the state stands at 91. Besides electrocution, the other prime reasons for the death of elephants are train accidents, poaching and poisoning. In April, Odisha lost four elephants including a tusker and a calf when it got hit by a speeding train in Jharsuguda district. According to wildlife experts, India has the highest number of train accidents involving elephants in the world. The sorry state of affairs is not confined to Odisha, alone. Between 1987 and 2010, 150 elephants died across the country while crossing railway tracks but this number has increased sharply in the last eight years. The data from the environment ministry shows that in the period between 2009 and 2017, India has lost 655 elephants out of which 120 passed away due to railway accidents. What is forcing elephants out of the jungles? The elephants, in general, are facing a threat to their existence and one of the prime reasons for this is the continuous shrinking of their habitat and corridor. Now, what is a corridor and how its destruction is claiming the lives of our elephants? To understand this, there is a need to learn the basic characteristics of elephants, which are migratory animals and do not stick to one place. In search of green pastures and water, they move from one place to another. And for this, they use age-old routes which are known as elephant corridors, but these routes are now either blocked or fragmented. Upasana Ganguly of Wildlife Trust of India said, "To define an elephant corridor you first need to define an elephant and for that you need to learn the four words. The first is Big and because it's big it needs more food and therefore its a Nomad means its a migratory animal. An adult elephant needs around 200 kilograms of food every day and for that it needs to move from one habitat to another and if it doesn't do that it will end up eating a particular forest. The third is Intelligent. The elephants are very close to humans in terms of memory and so they follow ancient paths to migrate. The last word is 'Social'. Now, those narrow strips of land that connects one habitat with another are called elephant corridors. " Wildlife Trust of India and Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change have identified 88 elephant corridors across India in 2005 but thanks to the pace of development, the mushrooming of towns, the elephant habitat and corridors are further fragmented. Another survey done by the Wildlife Trust of India and Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change between 2013-15 identified a total of 101 elephant corridors in the country and seven corridors identified in 2005 have been found impaired due to developmental activities and land use changes. The past decades have seen rapid growth in infrastructure and the presence of linear infrastructure elements such as roads, railway lines, canals in the corridors is one of the major reason for fragmented corridors. It either blocks an elephants route or become the reason for their deaths. Almost 66.3 percent of the corridors have highways passing through them. Twenty out of 101 corridors have a railway line passing through them and in another four, a railway line is under construction. Another threat to elephant corridors comes from illegal encroachments, which further becomes a major reason for man-elephant conflict. The continuous destruction of forests has pushed elephants closer to human habitations. Among the identified corridors in India, 28.7 percent have been encroached upon. In northeastern India, 69.6 percent of corridors are affected by encroachment, 44 percent in Central India and 54.5 percent in northwestern India. So, does it mean that as a country we should stop the expansion to save our elephants? No, of course. But does that mean the progress at the price of Indias heritage animal? Wildlife Trust of India is working hard to make these data accessible to the state governments having elephant corridors so that in the future the development plans are made accordingly, Ganguly said. For the states where the linear infrastructure already exists, departments other than forest have to work in coordination with each other. The forest department alone cannot do this. It needs support and synchronisation from departments such as power, railways, road, local authorities etc. The way out The Uttarakhand railway track which connects the holy city of Haridwar with Dehradun was once known as the Killer Track for elephants. This is because it cuts through the Rajaji National Park which is an important elephant corridor that connects Chilla-Motichur ranges. But for 10 years that is from 2003-13 it has not seen even a single elephant death. How has it been achieved? After a gruesome incident which claimed the life of a young calf on this track in 2001, the state forest department organised a workshop for government officials and NGOs. Tiwari, who was a part of the project from Wildlife Trust of India, said, It was learned that there were steep curves along the track. Another reason was ecological when during certain months the waterholes get dried up and then the animals have to often cross these tracks to reach the water holes on the southern side. The pantry section of different trains used to dispose of food on the railway track and this used to attract elephants on the railway track. Based on this findings, mitigation measures were put on the track such as cutting the vegetation on both sides to increase the visibility especially at the curves, sensitisation workshops were taken up with the railway staff and signs have been put along the tracks for train drivers so that they keep on honking while passing through this stretch and minimize speed at certain points. There is continuous night patrolling and new waterholes were created. It was a coordination, cooperation and hard work of all the departments -- the forests, the railways and Wildlife Trust of India that made it a success." In view of Kusher's visit from 22 to 25 November, security arrangements have been beefed-up in the city. 'Additional force has been deployed with trained commandoes and advanced weapons for private visit of the US president's son-in-law,' a police officer in Jaisalmer, Jagdish Chandra Sharma, said. Jaipur: US President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, arrived in Jaisalmer in Rajasthan Thursday to attend a wedding, a police official said. Kushner arrived on a chartered flight in the evening, amid tight security. "US president son-in-law Jared Kushner has arrived in Jaisalmer alone. He is here to attend a wedding ceremony of an industrialist friend who studied with Kushner, Additional Superintendent of Police Rajeev Dutta told PTI. Police officials said Kushner was attending the wedding ceremony of a New Delhi-based industrialist. Earlier, there was speculation that he will be visiting 'Sun City' along with his wife Ivanka Trump, but he arrived alone. In view of the visit from 22 to 25 November, security arrangements have been beefed-up in the city. "Additional force has been deployed with trained commandoes and advanced weapons for private visit of the US president's son-in-law," a police officer in Jaisalmer, Jagdish Chandra Sharma, said. Azad Ahmad Malik was accused by police of being involved in the assassination of prominent journalist Syed Shujaat Bukhari, editor of Srinagar-based English daily Rising Kashmir. Before dawn broke on Friday, an intelligence input pointed a joint team of police and Indian Army to the edge of an orchard in Sekipora area of south Kashmirs Bijbehara. The intelligence called for prompt action and forces zeroed in on a tin shed that sheltered six militants: Four from Hizbul Mujahideen and two from Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Within minutes, after some exchange of gunfire, all militants were dead. The easiest to identify was Azad Ahmad Malik, who was accused by police of being involved in the assassination of prominent journalist Syed Shujaat Bukhari, editor of Srinagar-based English daily Rising Kashmir. Three unknown gunmen assassinated Shujaat outside his Press Enclave office in Srinagar on 14 June when he'd boarded his vehicle and was about to leave for home to break his Ramazan fast. Two policemen guarding Shujaat were also killed in the attack. Malik, 27, a former Sumo driver and district commander of the Pakistan-based LeT for Kulgam, was classified as an A++ category militant from south Kashmir, and perhaps the only man whom security forces acknowledge is close to Naveed Jutt, a Pakistani national, who dramatically escaped police custody at a Srinagar hospital on 6 February. Rumours that Jutt was killed in the encounter led to protests and clashes across south Kashmir. We have suspended mobile internet in Anantnag as a precautionary measure, a senior police officer said. According to sources, security forces arrived in this sleepy village on the Bijbehara-Pahalgam road pre-dawn and zeroed in on the orchard. The six militants were hiding in the tin shed built deep inside the orchard where the visibility was low due to early morning smog and the cover of apple and pear trees, the officer said. When a column of Jammu and Kashmir Police and 3 Rashtriya Rifles from Victor Force closed in, the militants fired. The next fifteen minutes saw a fierce exchange of gunfire. No one heard anything. The orchard is on the edge of the village and the firing was over in few minutes, said Tariq Ghulam Ahmad, 35, a resident of Sekipora. Six militants were killed, and weapons and warlike stores were recovered, Indian Armys Srinagar spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia said. Malik, alias Dada, a resident of Arwani village of Bijbehara, was a close aide of Jutt, who intelligence officials say does not trust local militants. He has also been named in the assassination of Shujaat. The Jammu and Kashmir Police released on 28 June the list of four suspectsSajad Gul, a resident of Srinagar who is now based in Pakistan, Azad Ahmed Malik, Muzafar Ahmad Bhat and Naveed Juttblamed for the killing of Shujaat. When Inspector General of Police SP Pani named Malik among the three assassins in a press conference on 28 June, many were surprised. He said while a Srinagar resident based in Pakistan started an online campaign against the slain journalist, three Lashkar militantsJutt, Muzaffar and Azadcarried out the killing. "Now, we have the evidence to confirm the identity of these three individuals as Azad Malik, Muzaffar Ahmad (both residents of south Kashmir) and Naveed Jutt. These three are now wanted by law," Pani had said. The IGP said there was tangible evidence to establish that the conspiracy to kill Shujaat was hatched by LeT in Pakistan and three cadres of the banned outfit including Naveed Jutt, executed the plan. Malik was the district commander of LeT in Kulgam. His father, Nazir Ahmad Malik, said recently in an interview recently that his son left home after an encounter in which Majid Zargar, a Lashkar operative, was killed on 10 December, 2016, in Bijbehara town. Malik was earlier arrested by police on many occasions when he was a Sumo driver, and would ferry passengers from Bijbehara to Srinagar and some times to Ananatng district. He had been, according to police, in touch with Zargar for a long time and would ferry weapons. When Zargar died in an encounter on 10 December, Malik left home. Six days later, a picture of him appeared online showing him holding an American M27 automatic rifle. He was a Sumo driver and somehow got involved (in militancy). The police would ransack our house and beat us all. And one day, he left, his father said. Malik was fourth among the eight siblings. His brother Mubashir, was also killed by forces in an encounter seven years ago. Their event will apparently explore what they say are western preoccupations with Sharia Law, Hijabs, and segregation and: look at the ways Islam is pitted against secularism in the name of womens rights, equality and democracy, and utilised and weaponised by the State against Muslim communities and other minorities to promote nationalist narratives. Of course, Inclusive Mosque claims it is not interested in taking sides on whether one should or should not be secular and is merely addressing secularisms apparent mobilisation for violence and power. In light of the fact that religion in power has set the world on fire, targeting, murdering, disappearing, terrorising and silencing women, secularists and dissidents, the Inclusive Mosques anti-secular stance further targets dissenters and conveniently ignores how Sharia, the hijab and segregation are key pillars of the Islamist project to manage and control women. Convenient, of course, since Inclusive Mosque is in the business of opposing secularism and selling Islamic feminism a hard sell given that the womens liberation movement has always been a struggle, in particular, against religions control of women and her body. The promotion of Islamic feminism in the era of religious fundamentalisms is a defence not of womens rights but of religion and the far-Right. In fact, Inclusive Mosques position is in line with State policy that appeases religious fundamentalisms at the expense of womens rights and the nationalist narrative that promotes a clash of Islamic versus Christian civilisations, cultural relativism and an identity politics of superiority and difference (two sides of the same double-edged sword). Even their branding of secularists as western is no different to what Islamists have been saying for years. Since Inclusive Mosque seems to pride itself on inclusivity, though, we hope the conference will at the very least be a much-needed reminder that there are countless individuals from Muslim backgrounds who are secular, including believers, agnostics and atheists. Labelling secular activists, western, feeds into the Islamist narrative, negates history and erases the long and ongoing struggle of women in Muslim-majority countries and the Diaspora for citizenship rights and equality before the law, irrespective of background and beliefs. Maryam Namazie is a political activist and write. She is also spokesperson for the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. Follow Maryam Namazie on Twitter @MaryamNamazie The Inclusive Mosque Initiative is organising Beyond the Promise of Secularism in response to our 25 November International Conference on Sharia, Segregation and Secularism Given the Inclusive Mosques confusions, I hope our conference and its 38 speakers from 24 countries and the Diaspora, may assist them in understanding what secularism is before they venture beyond secularism. Leading activists in the fight against the far-Right including religious fundamentalisms of all stripes from Algeria, Bangladesh, Europe, India, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Kurdistan, Morocco, Pakistan, Poland, Russia, Serbia to Sudan, Tunisia and the United States will reiterate the importance of secularism and universal values for womens rights.We can only hope that our conference will enable Inclusive Mosque to finally grasp that secularism is merely a framework that separates religion from the state to ensure that religion cannot influence the state and public policy and impose itself on private lives. After all, not everyone in a given society is a believer and even if they are, they dont usually want the state to tell them how to believe. And what about the persecuted atheists and agnostics, like ex-Muslims, or minorities like the Christian Asia Bibi in Pakistan or Bahais in Iran or LGBT in Somalia and UAE?Only a secular framework can ensure the equal rights of all citizens before the law and not different rights for different categories of communalised groups. It is only a secular framework that can ensure one law for all via changeable laws made by people versus unchangeable divine laws imposed by clerics. It is a secular framework which can allow for multi-ethnic, multi-religious and plural societies and is a minimum precondition for the rights of women and minorities. It is a secular framework that can ensure freedom of conscience, including freedom of and from religion. Which is why there is no Inclusive Mosque let alone a Council of Ex-Muslims in places like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Iran.In the age of religious fundamentalisms, whether Islamism, Hidutva, the Buddhist-, Christian- or Jewish-Rights, the insistence on and defence of religion in womens lives is no defence of women at all. It is rather an insistence on secularism, universal values and our common humanity that is the urgent need of our era, particularly for those living under the boots of the theocrats.Maybe if Inclusive Mosque spent more time defending womens rights rather than acting as an Islamist echo chamber, it would begin to comprehend this historical task and necessity. One can only hope, though I for one will not be holding my breath. IAS officer and Nashik Municipal Commissioner Tukaram Mundhe has been transferred to the Maharashtra government secretariat in Mumbai, his third posting in just two years. Mumbai/Nashik: IAS officer and Nashik Municipal Commissioner Tukaram Mundhe has been transferred to the Maharashtra government secretariat in Mumbai, his third posting in just two years. Mundhe, known for his uprightness and integrity, has been appointed Joint Secretary (Planning) at Mantralaya (secretariat), according to an order issued Thursday by Sitaram Kunte, Principal Secretary (General Administration Department) in Mumbai. Mundhe's abrupt transfer, announced Wednesday, triggered a protest in Nashik, where a large number of people gathered in front of the Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC) headquarters Thursday demanding cancellation of his transfer order. The protesters shouted slogans against Maharashtra Water Resources Minister Girish Mahajan, who is also the Guardian Minister of Nashik district, local BJP MLA Balasaheb Sanap and Mayor Ranjana Bhansi, holding them responsible for Mundhe's transfer. When Mundhe was Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation Commissioner, the NCP-headed civic body had passed a no-confidence motion against him in October 2016. Soon after taking over as the Navi Mumbai civic chief, the bureaucrat had ordered action against unauthorised constructions in the satellite city. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had suspended the civic body's decision against Mundhe, known for his no-nonsense approach towards issues of public interest. In early 2017, he was transferred from Navi Mumbai and posted as Chairman and Managing Director of Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Ltd (PMPML). In February this year, Mundhe took charge as the Nashik civic commissioner. The 2005-batch IAS officer is said to have been transferred nearly a dozen times in the last 13 years. Meanwhile, the protesters, who gathered in front of the NMC office under the banner of `Amhi Nashikkar' (We are Nashikites), hailed Mundhe as an able administrator. They said soon after taking charge as the NMC chief, the IAS officer had ensured discipline and accountability in functioning of the civic body. According to the protesters, Mundhe had launched a drive against encroachments in Nashik and punished erring civic employees, among other things. Mundhe had started a public contact programme, `Walk With Commissioner' - held every Saturday - where he would interact with the people of Nashik and address their grievances. This had made him popular among local residents. Osmanabad Collector Radhakrishna Game has been named the new NMC commissioner. As India marks the 10th anniversary Monday of the Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, five survivors recall their ordeal and reflect on how it has impacted their lives. As India marks the 10th anniversary Monday of the Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, five survivors recall their ordeal and reflect on how it has impacted their lives. 'I gave birth in silence' Viju Chavan went into labour at the Cama and Albless Hospital on the night of 26 November, 2008, as two armed gunmen stalked the building's corridors. As eight other attackers laid siege to India's commercial capital outside, Chavan quietly gave birth to a girl, Tejaswini, who was immediately nicknamed "Goli", which means "bullet" in Hindi. "We heard the sound of bullets. We were very scared and my four-year-old son was shivering with fear. My husband and I thought we wouldn't make it home alive," recalls Chavan, 38." "We couldn't make any noise so I delivered silently in pain. The nurses took care of us very well. They used beds to shield patients from getting hit by any stray bullets." "Every time I look at 'Goli' I think of 26/11. She was born amidst so much tragedy. On her birthday we cut a cake and remember all the families that suffered." 'I got married with shrapnel in my brain' Nirmala Ponnudurai was on her way to get married when two attackers unleashed a barrage of bullets and hand grenades at Mumbai's main railway station, killing 52 people. "It feels like it happened yesterday, it is that fresh in my memory," says Ponnudurai. "It sounded like firecrackers. I felt a tremendous heat come into my body and blood all over my face. There was so much smoke and chaos." "A kind man put me and an elderly person on a wooden handcart and pulled us to hospital. I had pieces of shrapnel in my head, including one in my brain." "I wanted my wedding to go ahead so I flew to Chennai, got married on 30 November with shrapnel in my brain and was operated on afterwards. My face was paralysed for about six months." "Today I am much stronger and more independent. I live for right now. I don't give the anniversaries much importance because if I do, then I'm giving importance to the terrorists." 'TV news reported me dead' Sourav Mishra was enjoying a beer with friends at Leopold Cafe when two gunmen lobbed grenades inside and opened fire, killing 10 people, including some foreigners. "The atmosphere in the restaurant was very happy and positive. Then suddenly there was a blast and people started screaming and howling," says the 39-year-old. "I could hear the "ta-ta-ta" of a machine gun and realised I'd been hit. People dived under tables but for some reason I stood up and stumbled out onto the street." "In the taxi to the hospital I thought I was going to die and started thinking about life and whether I'd been a good person," he said. "The bullet touched but didn't puncture my lung and I was operated on to remove it immediately. In the hospital there were dead bodies everywhere. I appeared on a deaths list and many TV channels reported that I had died. My parents got a shock when a journalist came to interview them." "I used to get angry around the anniversary because it brought back traumatic memories, but you can't keep brooding about the experience. You have to move on and heal yourself. I was one of the lucky ones." 'We tried to protect every guest' Hemant Oberoi was head chef at the five-star Taj Palace Hotel where militants set off explosions, took hostages and shot dead more than 30 guests during a three-day siege. Staff, including Oberoi, helped save dozens of lives by leading guests to safety. "It had been a normal night with lots of functions on when the gunmen suddenly barged in," recalls the 64-year-old. "We tried to protect every guest as if they were in our own home. We knew the routes better than anybody else so we tried to bring them into one area. "We then blocked it so we could take guests out. We were evacuating until the gunmen forced their way into the area." "It was good enough that we were able to rescue most of the guests but some of my brave colleagues were shot and killed when the gunmen barged into kitchens," he said. "Going from one funeral to another was such a difficult time. After 10 years when the flashbacks come we still remember them and their sacrifices." 'My father died fighting the terrorists' Divya Salaskar was 21 when her policeman father Vijay Salaskar, a seasoned crime fighter, was shot dead while chasing the militants. He was posthumously awarded India's highest military award for acts of bravery in peacetime. "He wasn't just my father, he was my best friend and my mentor. I would share everything with him," says Salaskar. "Initially I couldn't digest that he was no longer around; I was angry with the world but slowly, slowly I've been growing over the past 10 years. "He died fighting terrorists. I live the loss of him not being with me every day, but at the same time I think that if someone has to pass over this is one of the best ways to go, because you'll always be remembered forever." "I am extremely proud of my father and I miss him terribly." Delhi Police rescued four Tanzanian women and two Nigerian men from Dwarka after they were attacked by mobs in different locations following rumours of cannibalism. Delhi Police on Thursday rescued four Tanzanian women and two Nigerian men from Dwarka after a hostile crowd gathered outside their homes following rumours of cannibalism. The Tanzanian women were identified as Assifa, Rizika, Fatima and Esta, while the two Nigerian nationals were identified as Nwaogu and Ogbuewu, Republic reported. According to Times Now, the police had received six calls between 7 and 7.30 pm on Thursday about an altercation with a foreigner. When the police reached the spot, they found a mob in front of a house. The police also received calls regarding a "missing" 16-year-old boy from a family in Dwarka area and rumours spread that some people from African countries had kidnapped the child. Later, a police investigation revealed that no one from the family was kidnapped. The Delhi police denied the incident being a racist attack and told ANI: "We received a call that people are gathering. We reached there, dispersed crowd and rescued two Tanzanian women. The crowd had gathered following abduction rumours. Later we received a call of abduction. It was a hoax call. We rescued the Tanzanian and Nigerian nationals." The police have not made any arrests yet, but several people from the mob who participated in the attack have been detained and will be questioned, reported CNN-News18. Seeking a solution for massive protests that have prevented women devotees from entering the Sabarimala shrine so far, four women have moved Kerala High Court petitioning that two days in the puja season should set aside for women devotees. Seeking a solution to the massive protests that have prevented women devotees from entering the Sabarimala shrine so far, four women have moved Kerala High Court petitioning that two days in the puja season should set aside for women devotees. The women also sought police protection for devotees who will attempt to pray at the Lord Ayyappa shrine. The court is yet to grant a hearing to the petition. The idea of setting aside specific days exclusively for women first came from the Kerala government. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that "we're holding discussion with concerned authorities that whether specific days can be set for women devotees alone," CNN-News18 reported. The Ayyappa temple was opened on 16 November for the over-two-month-long pilgrimage season amid tension. Though it is 55 days since the Supreme Court delivered its verdict, no women in the traditionally barred age group of 10-50 years has made it to the temple. Meanwhile, in a related but separate development, Kerala government has filed an affidavit in Kerala High Court in connection with the incidents of violence outside Sabarimala Temple. The government in its reply regarding the alleged police excesses outside the shrine, 'There was no police provocation in Sabarimala. Only criminals who created issues in Sabarimala were arrested." Following this, the Kerala High Court observed that the authorities cannot be blind to the vested interests creating disturbance in the area. "Some have vested interests in Sabarimala and we cannot be blind to it. The peaceful situation at the shrine should be restored and all should co-operate for it," the Kerala High Court observed while considering a petition for performing sayanaprathakshinam in Sabarimala The court had, on Thurday said that the imposition of Section 144 was meant for smooth movement of pilgrims, and since going to the temple in groups and chanting keerthanam are part of the pilgrimage, the police cannot prevent devotees from doing that. It is up to the police to take action if there are protests, the court held. The state government also made it clear in the court that the base camp for the pilgrims undertaking the trek to Sabarimala has been shifted to Nilakkal only due to the lack of facilities, following devastating floods in the state. The Left front government stated that the decision to move the base camp had no connection with the Supreme Court verdict allowing women aged between 10 and 50 years, entry into the shrine. The Supreme Court had on 28 September allowed women of all age groups to offer prayers at the shrine. With inputs from PTI Four women had filed a plea in the Kerala High Court seeking two days to be set aside only for women devotees to visit the Sabarimala temple. The Kerala High Court told the state government to file a report, within a week, on the possible options to facilitate the entry of women into the Sabarimala temple. According to CNN-News18, the state attorney told the court the government is of the opinion that an option of providing two days for women devotees could be considered. Earlier Friday, four women filed a petition in the high court seeking police protection for visiting Sabarimala shrine and sought directions from court for the state government to ensure the protection. The petitioners also demanded that particular days be reserved only for women's entry in the temple, ANI reported. Ever since the Sabarimala temple opened for devotees, massive protests have prevented women from entering the shrine. Though 55 days have passed since the Supreme Court delivered its verdict allowing women of all ages entry into the shrine, no women between the ages of 10 and 50 have made it to the temple. The idea of setting aside specific days exclusively for women first came from the Kerala government. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said:"We're holding discussion with concerned authorities that whether specific days can be set for women devotees alone." The Ayyappa temple was opened on 16 November for the over two-month-long pilgrimage season amid tension. The external display of support for inclusion and defence of Jack Dorsey 'smashing Brahminical Patriarchy', tried to conceal a modern day story of privileged voices having access to most relevant spaces and discourses. The past week has seen a raging controversy playing out on Twitter over its CEO Jack Dorsey holding a poster saying, 'Smash Brahminical Patriarchy'. While a group of netizens found the idea violent and targeted against a community, others defended it as a legitimate advocacy against a caste order which discriminates against Dalit women. There are three arguments to be made about the case. The first is about the semantics of the term 'Brahminical Patriarchy' without in any way invalidating the experiences of Dalit women who face the multiple burdens of their caste and their gender. The second is the tone deafness of Twitter and its CEO, to make a selective statement on patriarchy by positioning Brahmins and by extension, Hinduism as the root of discrimination against women. And importantly the third, which is the elitism and exclusionary nature of the event itself. Let us begin from the third point. In various clarifications and articles circulated on social media, a number of the women journalists, activists and change makers invited to the closed door meeting have said that the meeting was an extremely important space to make Twitter a safe space. The women shared the ways in which they have survived abuse on Twitter and have used the medium to initiate change in the society. But it is a known fact that all the invited women belonged to the same political persuasion and espoused the same type of social activism. While the claim was to represent 'all' the voices of women, there was little diversity among the women themselves. They are not the appointed gate-keepers of all women using Twitter as a platform, to be able to comment on the unique experiences of multitude of women who are regular users. Twitter is supposed to be the disruption that smashes monopoly of opinions and discourse, which has been the stronghold of a few privileged women. Much like the smashing of 'Brahmanism' which most of these activists considered to be by-product of a small group of people alienating and discriminating others through rigid definitions of purity and pollution. Why could Twitter, for instance, not invite the some of the women who have used Twitter to lead an organic movement in Kerala on the issue of Sabarimala. Or the women influencers with a stated right wing ideology who face the same if not more abuse on a regular basis. Surely, their voices and their experiences matter too and they also deserve to be heard. Twitter neither felt the need to make the space more accommodative of women with a different voice or a different politics nor did the privileged women consider what truly would count as inclusion of 'all' women. The external display of support for inclusion and defence of Jack Dorsey 'smashing Brahminical Patriarchy', tried to conceal a modern day story of privileged voices having access to most relevant spaces and discourses. Now, let us move to the first two points. There is no denying of the fact that there is an insidious way in which caste intermingles with gender to push Dalit women towards multiple marginalisation. If we look at the roots of the word, it is Brahmanical Patriarchy and not Brahminical Patriarchy which indicates that it is a commentary on the larger question of caste in the Hindu community and the way it intermingles with gender primarily through endogamy. Brahmanism The Indian identity and the Hindu identity can be considered one and the same and hence, it is beyond doubt that the religion should also be held to scrutiny when it comes to issues like caste and gender. Therefore, the interrogation is not misplaced. But there are a few issues to be highlighted here which could serve as a criticism of both the construct and the controversy. Firstly, the poster in the hands of Jack Dorsey said Brahminical and not Brahmanical Patriarchy. A reading of the works of Dalit feminists like Uma Chakravarty and Sharmila Rege would clearly point out the word used is Brahmanical. So, the argument that Brahminical Patriarchy has nothing to do with Brahmins is completely false. The makers of the poster certainly have the knowledge that they are putting the value imputation on the Brahmin community and not the entire Hindu caste order through their choice of words. It implies that the burden of caste solely rests on the Brahmin community and as an extension invalidates the caste struggles within other communities. It is not the simple case of alternate spellings but a loaded statement of how caste equations are pondered upon. This negates or at least diminishes the patriarchal structure in other caste and religious groups because the onus of caste and gender struggles is presented as originating and sustaining solely because of the efforts of the Brahmins. It is like terming Racism as Whitism, which would imply that Blacks, Hispanics and Asians are not racist towards each other. The second issue is the chasm between academic parlance and popular usage of certain terms. There is a necessity to acknowledge the many slips that could happen in lifting academic terms as they are used in sanitized settings and throwing them at an uninitiated audience. Twitter is not an academic medium and the nuances of Brahmanical Patriarchy would be lost on people who have not ventured into the work of Dalit feminists. But the same point could have been as easily made by not placing a community at the centre of both caste and gender discrimination in India. For instance in academic parlance, Sharmila Rege is her paper argued about the 'Masculinization of Dalithood' which could easily be worded as Dalit patriarchy. But if such a term was used minus the nuance in a public and non-academic setting, it would meet with the same kind of backlash. Advocacy sheltered by academia reduces itself to a small hole in the wall as it has a very legitimate concern of communication. There are many positions by many Dalit feminists and academics which would not be acceptable to a large section of women and if the CEO of a leading organization takes such a stand without any context, it is bound to invite criticism. The third aspect is of the trivialisation of the word Brahmanical which has now extended from everything from Patriarchy to Rasam and from Coffee to Gulab Jamun. Such a discourse seems distanced from reality and only a reserve of academics and activists, who would have difficulty in being taken seriously in any non-academic setting. If there is a possibility of getting micro-aggressed by every single thing which is shared by a Brahmin and call for its denouncement, it would only increase the backlash on a community for a historical wrong. Caste atrocities are present between all groups, yet the gaze is fixated on one community. In a closed, elitist and privileged event which selected women with homogenous view points and discarded others are dispensable, the talk of inclusion and marginalisation needs a critical internal gaze. Privilege like power is not static and changes across social settings and time periods. Twitter is wrong is not just realizing the relevance of power and privilege in the setting and the product created by them but they are also wrong in not questioning or at least interrogating the many nuances of the controversial poster that they chose to display. For a business organization to so clearly make a selective political statement and not understand the multiple views around it, could only come from the fact that they have never made the effort to be truly accessible to diverse actors. Maybe that is the first point of inclusion that they should look at. Protests erupted at Chennai's SRM Institute of Science and Technology on Thursday night after a second year student was masturbated at by a staff inside a lift in the girl's hostel Protests erupted at Chennai's SRM Institute of Science and Technology on Thursday night after a student was sexually harassed in the institute's women's hostel. According to reports, a staffer, probably a "garbage man" (as described by the students) masturbated at a second year student inside a lift in the women's hostel, but instead of taking action against the culprit the hostel warden took to moral policing and told the students that such things happen to 'North Indian' girls. A few instagram profiles have identified the culprit, however, Firstpost could not independently verify it. According to students at the SRM University, the incident happened at around 3 pm on Thursday and the protests went on till almost 11.30 pm when the police came and forced the students to disband the protests. According to the students, the aggrieved girl has not filed a complaint with the police yet. BREAKING:2nd Year Girl Sexually Abused By A Worker Inside Hostel Elevator In SRM University.Students Protest As College Is Trying To Suppress The Matter To Save Its Image. Warden Allegedly Blamed The Girl For Wearing Short Clothes. #Chennai #SRMUniversitypic.twitter.com/gZagApYIfG Sir Jadeja (@SirJadeja) November 22, 2018 The students, reports said, are angry about the college authorities indifferent attitude towards the incident and demanded that the college file a complaint against the culprit. A girl, from srm university ktr, chennai was sexually assaulted in the lift of the girls hostel. A mess worker started jerking off when she entered the Lift. What is worst is that the college management and Chancellor and people running the college are trying to shush the matter. pic.twitter.com/douiBBZpjT Tanya (@Tanya73299126) November 22, 2018 "One of the first things that the warden told us was to change our clothes. She accused us of wearing short clothes implying that the girl deserved what she got. In fact the first response when we went to file a complaint was to go to our room, change our clothes and sleep. How can they be this insensitive?" a friend of the survivor told NewsMinute. According to reports, the survivor was inside the lift when, to her shock, the worker started masturbating at her. When she tried to escape, the man blocked her path. When the lift reached the fourth floor, she ran out screaming. "She had pressed the 4th floor button and he, the 6th. But the man moved the lift to the 8th floor. He did not let her go until she screamed," a student told NDTV. The incident took place on Thursday afternoon. In multiple posts on Facebook and Instagram, students from the college alleged that the hostel warden, with whom the students had first raised the matter, tried to sush the matter, and even delayed access to the CCTV footage to identify the culprit. And even though the survivor had identified the worker by going through the CCTV footage in the hostel, no action was taken against the culprit, they alleged. "She was told to stay mum about the matter and not publicise it by the hostel management. However, despite this being a criminal offence, the police has still not been notified about the event," a student of the college posted on Facebook. Videos of agitated girl students inside the campus were shared on social media showed hundreds of students gathered at a ground inside the college campus and raising slogans against the college administration. The students were demanding that the college file a complaint against the culprit. "It is the belief of all the girls in the hostel that the management is responsible to file an FIR against the said man," the post said. SRM University Vice Chancellor Sandeep Sancheti, however, has denied the allegations of inaction, News18 said. "Students are discussing with us. Whatever the matter is, it will be taken care of. If there is a matter, it will be inquired," Sancheti was quoted by the News website. News18 said that a picture of the accused titled He is the Culprit is being circulated on WhatsApp groups. Chennai's SRM Institute of Science and Technology was in turmoil on Thursday as protests erupted after a student was sexually harassed in the institute's women's hostel. Chennai's SRM Institute of Science and Technology was in turmoil on Thursday as protests erupted after a student was sexually harassed in the institute's women's hostel. According to reports, a staffer masturbated at a second-year student inside a lift in the hostel, but no action was taken against the culprit until the protests broke out. The students became furious after a varisty official made a moral policing comments and said that such incidents happen to "North Indian girls". On Friday, a 14-point statement was released anonymously on behalf of the student body as a whole, which clarified the events from the incident of sexual harassment at 3 pm on Thursday to the filing of an FIR by the survivor later that night. The statement describes the chaos as students jostled for an appropriate response from authorities and demanded justice for the girl. They claimed that while the varsity appeared reluctant to act against its officials and wardens who tried to hush up the issue, the college did support the girl in filing an FIR later. Accusing the authorities for initial inaction and victim shaming, the students claimed that no disciplinary action was taken against the wardens who locked up all the girls inside hostel blocks and refused to provide dinner. The students claimed that SRM vice-chancellor Sandeep Sancheti blamed the girl for creating "an issue out of nothing", and when girls started complaining about other security issues like workers peeking into their rooms, they weren't given a definitive response. This perhaps further angered the students, who had gathered to support the survivor. Detailing the chronology of the events, the statement said, "The incident occurred between 2.30 and 3.00 pm in the lift of the women's hostel." They said that at first, the authorities did not take the incident seriously and the girl was simply told to write a letter detailing the harrowing experience. But the culprit had already left the campus by this time. The accused, however, was arrested by the police on Friday. The statement of the SRM students further detailed that it was around 7 pm when the registrar of the institute arrived as the crowd of students swelled. The registrar's attempt to handle the situation "in a proper manner" failed and "people started gathering around and shouting". The statement adds, "There had been no comment (on north Indian girls) at this time by the Registrar. The 'North-South' comment was made by the wardens, whose details were taken down by the registrar. The students were informed that specific action will be taken against them (the wardens)." After this the registrar left the hostel premise. This angered the students and even though the hostel gates were shut since it was post the regular curfew hours, the girls started climbing over the walls in an attempt to stop the registrar. "But he was scared and left," the statement added. After this, the students went to the house of the Director of Campus Life. "As the survivor's complaint was being pushed away, everyone went instead to the the Director of Campus Life. They gathered near his house and wanted to talk in a rational manner. However this was proving unsuccessful due to the surge of the crowd, thus a suggestion was made that everyone should go to the auditorium and talk it out peacefully." The guards at the gate volunteered to escort the director, but in the process some "outsiders" managed to enter the campus. "Outsiders were able to enter and cause extra chaos for their own benefit," the statement said. This is when chaos broke out. "While the Director was on his way to the auditorium, he was jostled by the crowd trying to reach him." This was the part that was captured on video, and was subsequently reported by a section of media. "At this point, the director got annoyed and asked why the students were attacking him. He said that he was not the ultimate authority and just wants to help," the statement said. The mob quickly became restless and this is when some people apparently tried to hit the director. "The senior students tried to shield him from the crowd as he was old, and they also wanted the matter to be handled in a civil manner," the statement said. This is the point when the director lost his cool and "started abusing" the mob. He made some controversial comments. "Why do you wear short clothes," the director reportedly yelled after which the students became "enraged." "After the situation broke down into chaos and the director took shelter in a security room. This is allegedly when he made the north Indian girl comment," the student body said, adding that this was said "out of fatigue." The statement enraged the students and triggered violence. "The security room was attacked after this and the glass window was broken. The students keeping him safe somehow found a way to escort the director through the rear entrance." As the situation worsened, the Director of Student Affairs (DSA head) arrived at the college. "She waited and listened to all the complaints, and not just the survivor's. " But tempers were running high and the DSA got into a heated argument with the students over an unknown issue, the statement said. Eventually, the survivor was asked to file an FIR by the Director and to "write it in her own words". The statement said she had not done so until then "for personal reasons". "Maybe because she wanted to wait for her parents, the actual reason is unconfirmed." The statement concludes, "It was said that going forward, precautions will be taken so that such an incidents don't occur. Meanwhile, vice-chancellor Sancheti, denied the allegations of inaction. "Students are discussing with us. Whatever the matter is, it will be taken care of. If there is a matter, it will be inquired," Sancheti was quoted as saying by CNN-News18. A three-judge Supreme Court bench rejected the PIL, which highlighted the vulnerability of EVMs over ballot paper, saying that every system and machine is capable to be used and misused. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday turned down a petition which sought the Election Commission of India (ECI) to be directed to hold 2019 Lok Sabha elections as well as state Assembly polls using the ballot system instead of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). The three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, and Justice MR Shah rejected the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by an NGO Nyaya Bhoomi. The apex court said it did not find any merit in the petition, henceforth dismissed it. The petition stated, "Every system and machine is capable to be used and misused. Doubts will be everywhere." In the past, representatives of several opposition parties including the Indian National Congress, Janata Dal-Secular (JD(S)), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Samajwadi Party (SP) and several others, even National Democratic Alliance (NDA) ally Shiv Sena also stressed on EVMs vulnerability. In August, the demand for replacing the EVMs by paper ballots dominated the meeting of all national and state recognised political parties with the Election Commission. The poll panel invited seven national and 51 regional parties, of which 41 representatives came to the meet. Sushma Swaraj held wide-ranging discussions with Saleumxay Kommasith covering cooperation in agriculture, trade and investment, defence, education, culture, Information Technology, energy and mining. Vientiane: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday met her Laotian counterpart Saleumxay Kommasith and held wide-ranging talks to enhance cooperation in key areas like defence, trade, energy and agriculture. Swaraj, who is in Laos on a two-day visit, co-chaired the ninth Joint Commission Meeting with Kommasith as the two leaders laid out the roadmap for cooperation and partnership. The ministers held wide-ranging discussions covering cooperation in agriculture, trade and investment, defence, education, culture, Information Technology, energy and mining, external affairs ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said. Swaraj and Kommasith had constructive discussions during the meeting, he said in a tweet. EAM @SushmaSwaraj & FM Kommasith had constructive discussions during the 9th India-Lao PDR #JCM. EAM offered to share Indias expertise & experience towards supporting developmental needs of Lao PDR, taking the total offer of grant and LoC proposal to $ 250 mn. pic.twitter.com/ZjWNMGVTyt Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) November 23, 2018 On Thursday, she attended an Indian community event here and interacted with participants. During her two-day visit, Swaraj also called on Laos prime minister Thongloun Sisoulith. Just a portion of plants that the Nursery at Dickson can accommodate. Right: Andrew Hadley, Manager of St. Vincent Cocoa Company, is confident that the nursery will provide only plants that yield the highest quality of cocoa. The Cocoa Nursery at Perseverance in Dickson, in the North Central Windward District on mainland St. Vincent, is where the heartbeat of the St. Vincent Cocoa Company lies. Last Friday, when a party of government officials, headed by Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, and media persons visited the Nursery, there were as many as 45,000 plants on the compound. Thats less than half of the plants capacity. The St. Vincent Cocoa Company has about 450 acres under cultivation plus 400 acres leased. Farmers have 100 acres in private cultivation. Most of the production is on the Windward coast, but Manager of the St.Vincent Cocoa Company - Andrew Hadley is optimistic about the expansion to the Leeward coast. He anticipates an expansion in operation with the setting up of a nursery to cater for those on the Leeward district will drive that expansion, Hadley agrees, but vouched for the high quality of plants that will be available regardless of where they come from. Hadley noted that one of the factors contributing to the ongoing yield is the type of plants. "All the plants are grafted, Hadley indicated as he traced the process with seedlings given a three-month span and a similar period at the nursery. The Company has perfected the art of grafting and Nursery Manager Dane McMillan is playing a major role in this regard. Farmers have full assurance that plants provided by the St Vincent Cocoa Company are of the highest yielding brand. The delicate nature of the crop was outlined, with Hadley pointing to the production of cocoa pods within three years. Intercropping with a mixture of trees suitable for the shade for the younger cocoa plants, is promoted as a vital aspect of the productivity. In addition to the nursery at Dickson, there is the Processing Plant. Hadley outlined the stages with the Cascade Fermenter System in full operation. Pods spend ten days in the drying process, which he regards as the "most important factor. Steps are taken to comply with the strictest standards, to make sure that best pods are provided for manufacturers. "It is hard for a factory to make chocolate from bad cocoa, Hadley quipped. The incident in Delhi on Thursday was by no means the first time that people from African nations faced violence after being accused of cannibalism. Four Tanzanian women and two Nigerian men were rescued by the police after a hostile crowd gathered outside their homes in Delhi's Dwarka area on Thursday night. The incidents brought the focus on racist attitudes in the capital city against people from African nations. The six people were accused of being cannibals possibly the most toxic of numerous stereotypes against people from the continent. The rumours had surfaced after the police received calls about a "missing" 16-year-old boy. Later, a police investigation revealed that no one from the family was kidnapped. However, this was by no means the first time that people from African nations faced violence after being accused of cannibalism. A similar assault had taken in May 2017 after a high-school student went missing, sparking rumours of cannibalism against people from African countries. While the student reappeared a day later, three men from African countries were attacked by mobs over the rumours, Al-Jazeera reported. Along with "cannibalism", several other racist stereotypes have also fueled violence, often sanctioned by politicians. In 2014, AAP leader Somnath Bharti had led a "raid" on the private residence of three Ugandan women in the Khirki extension, vowing to end the "sex and drugs racket" that he insisted was taking place there. While several people pointed out that this was vigilantism, the AAP had rallied behind Bharti and staged a one-day dharna demanding strict action against those heading drug and prostitution rackets in the city. According to a Firstpost report, a resident's welfare association (RWA) had published a pamphlet proclaiming that along with their successful installation of CCTV cameras on the streets and the cleaning of sewer lines, they had managed to "cleanse" the streets of transgenders and Africans. The report also cited an incident from 2011, when an underground bar run by Africans, and said to be unauthorised, was ransacked by supporters of a vigilante right-wing group. A BJP worker from Malviya Nagar was quoted as saying that the bar was a den of anti-social elements. In 2014, an NIIT student of computer science from Burkina Faso, along with two of his friends, was attacked by a mob at Delhi's Rajiv Chowk metro station. This was after they objected to a person taking photos of them and making fun of them. The student was quoted as saying, We do not live in India, we survive here. People in the national capital treat us as if we are not human beings. While authorities in India have frequently denied that such attacks had a racial angle, diplomats from African nations do not share the same view. After a series of attacks on Nigerian students in 2017, the African Heads of Mission had said the attacks were "xenophobic and racial", as reported by BBC. The envoys had also said that authorities in India had failed to "sufficiently condemn" the incidents, or take enough visible steps aimed at deterrence. And when public representatives in India have sought to make protestations about people not holding racist attitudes, they have at times made things worse. A case in point is Tarun Vijay, who said that Indians are not likely to be racist, as they are used to living "among black people" referring to people in South India. He was quoted as saying, "If we were racist, why would... all the entire South you know, Kerala, Tamil, Andhra, Karnataka why do we live with them? We have blacks... black people around us," he said. As the only woman among the Vaishnavite saint-poets, Andal has been a subject of great intrigue to historians as well as feminist writers. The poet-saint is also the subject of Sharanya Manivannan's new book, The Queen of Jasmine Country Editor's note: Writer's Room is a new books column, curated by Krupa Ge along with 15 writers across India. The column seeks to introduce new works as well as allow a peek into the writer's studio, accompanied by recordings of book readings. *** As the only woman among the Vaishnavite saint-poets, Azhwars, Andal, or Kodhai as she was called, has been a subject of great intrigue to historians as well as feminist writers. For in Andal's bhakti poetry there was plenty of room for the sensual too, as she pined for her Lord, shunning mere mortal men. Andal has also in recent times, unfortunately, become the subject of a deeply polarising debate in Tamil Nadu. In a speech, Vairamuthu (the Tamil lyricist who was also recently in the news when several women accused him of sexually harassing them as part of the #Metoo movement) quoted an American scholar who said that Andal belonged to a Devadasi community. The Vaishnavite community in Tamil Nadu took offence and a nasty war of words broke out over a course of several weeks. Did this debate play a part in Sharanya Manivannans new book, her debut novel? I was really heartbroken by the controversy. It was so clear that the people who were upset were not engaging with the literature. Not only that, the misogyny was also so palpable. But if someone had said to me while this debate was going on if I would like to write a novel about Andal before the next margazhi I would have said no, Manivannan says. In the Tamil month of margazhi (mid-December), Andals Thiruppavai is recited by Hindus, especially Vaishnavites in Tamil Nadu, in the wee hours of the morning either at temples or in homes. Entrances to homes and temples bear large, spectacular kolams during margazhi as a mark of the months spiritual significance. Like many people, I too read Andal. I knew her as a reader. I discovered her in my teens, at the same time that I discovered Sangam poetry and bhakti poetry in general. At that time there was a book, which is out of print now, For the Love of God... Manivannan says speaking of her introduction to Andals work. In the book, Kodhai thinks (of) these lines, as a reflection perhaps of the unsavoury debate around her origin: In the worst of moods, someone would call me an illegitimate child, or a prostitute that word used by those who do not believe a woman owns her own body, or her own self and, inevitably, of unknown and therefore untouchable caste that concept for those who believe God ordains their superiority at the expense of all humanity. In The Queen of Jasmine Country, the young Andal is Kodhai (the name given to her by the parents who adopt her), telling her story, in her own words. This effective call allows the reader to understand her, a young girl on the cusp of womanhood, with dreams and desires, and later a woman waiting for love, in an intimate manner, instantly. In a tongue that is sensual and rooted, Manivannan invokes the imagery of someone who is both young and unsure, while also being gifted. She transports readers to an era vastly different from ours. Yet, theres something in there thats universal and continues to be relevant for women, who yearn, to break free from the shackles that family, caste and life, in general, bind them with, and to be the masters of their own destinies. To choose for themselves whom to love and how. Manivannan weaves an impressive story that feels new while drawing from the familiar. Little is known about the everyday lives of women from these times from historical accounts, but that does not stop the writer from dreaming up a beautiful array of scenes that fill Andals days and nights inspired by Tamil Sangam poetry. Manivannan, who usually works on multiple manuscripts simultaneously had a couple of dreams in 2014 that first planted the seeds of this novel in her. In 2014, I had dreamt about Andal. In one of those dreams, I dont remember anything except that she said write a novel about me. In the year before I had done a lot of kalyana venduthal (prayers for marriage), all of which failed. Thankfully! I was 27, and my parents wanted this. I think I was in that particularly vulnerable moment that a lot of women find themselves in, in their late 20s. It wasnt something I wanted but pressure and loneliness made me think, you know what I will try anything. In the second dream I had, I made a venduthal (prayer) at her temple. I went up to the sanctum and was holding this tray, like a good girl [laughs]. The moorthy (statue) came alive. She looked at me and she looked at the crowd around me which was mostly composed of men and she rolled her eyes. If these are your options, no she said. It was funny and cute. I didnt think of it as particularly a divine message or anything like that, but in retrospect now, when I think back on those two dreams I had four years back, I think it definitely had an impact on me. Manivannan, who has written two collections of poetry, one short story collection and a book for children before, usually works on books for five to nine years but completed this in six weeks. This is a book that is really about reading and writing, she says, It is really about creative engagement. I was familiar with her poetry but I went back to it while writing this book and looked at it very carefully. I followed the poems very closely to develop a plot. Even the dates are controversial. I based it around the time of Srimara Srivallabha, a Pandya king, whose name is found in the hagiography of Periazhwar (Vishnuchittan) who is supposed to have been Andals father. Andal was found by Vishnuchittan in a basil grove, who then brought her up and eventually married her away to the Lord himself according to legend. Manivannan also relied on Dennis Hudsons Tantric Rites in Andals Poetry. Dr Hudson wrote in this paper that there is a very distinct shift in tone between the Tiruppavai and Nachiyar Tirumozhi by Andal. In the Tiruppavai she is so girlish. She is joyous, asking and expecting that her demands will be met. She is like a teenager girl. In the Nachiyar Tirumozhi she is harrowed, in anguish and the work becomes sexually explicit and very dark. She talks about no longer fitting into society. (I begin to fade. I begin to fray like the thatching on roofs after too many seasons. My moon blood becomes scant. I want to pluck these useless breasts of mine, untouched, and fling them at his own chest, and see then what he will see of me blood and fire, worn down to bone, weakened to ash.) Manivannans Kodhai is also deeply aware of the inequities around her and it appears that at times she is struggling to find the balance between the inequality and her faith. All of the bhakti poetry has that kind of complexity. There are so many questions and demands and theres so much to grasp at times. There was confusion. This is a Kodhai who is a devotee and a skeptic at once. Like all of the other poets of her time. There are also things that mark her as an outsider. Why was she not married off in childhood? How was she literate? What would it have been like, being a teenager in Puduvai, unmarried, literate, and theres no one like you around you. There must be some loneliness. Kodhai wonders early in the book: Maybe everywhere there are those like me people who smoulder sun-like but singe as easily as feathers. But I know of no one else who is fevered by a secret so large. And later on: Sometimes I sit on our thinnai as dusk descends and wonder if, anywhere in the world, there is another like me. Manivannan also writes a scene in which a young, starry-eyed Andal meets Manickavasagar who appreciates her poetry. I wrote that for her. I wanted her to be appreciated in her lifetime. I wanted somebody to look her in the eye and acknowledge her. Otherwise, theres a loneliness to being a writer anyway, but its compounded by the fact that shes a woman writer in that time. The authors call for the ending of this book is an interesting one that lends Kodhai agency, while also hinting at immortality. In the little over four years that the NDA has been in power, the Congress party and the Opposition have been charged with lacking a coherent narrative. In the little over four years that the NDA has been in power, the Congress party and the Opposition have been charged with lacking a coherent narrative. A clutch of political scientists believe people are still trying to decipher the political agenda of the Opposition, six months before Lok Sabha elections. I dont think they can walk very far with remove Modi, says Neera Chandhoke, professor, political science, Delhi University, referring to the perception created by Congress president Rahul Gandhis attacks on Narendra Modi. The Opposition needs a sharp, motivated buildup considering how popular the prime minister is. Many experts note Congress focus on economic issueslevelling corruption charges against Modi, criticising hastily-implemented GST, farm distress, demonetisation and conflicts in institutions including SC and CBI. But they say it is shying away from addressing social conflicts that have accompanied the rise of BJP. They are criticising the government and out of that, issues are arising, says Sudha Pai, retired professor, Center for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Instead of challenging identity politics, Congress is veering into soft Hindutva, she says. In 2005, Congress expanded the rural food-for-work program MG-NREGA and in 2011, issued a Rs 60,000 crore farm-loan waiver against a backdrop of agrarian distress. Now, it is promising One Rank One Pension to cover excluded ex-servicemen. They need to offer clearer alternatives to BJPs programmes, Pai says. Arguably, Indian elections typically invoke negative campaigns, like Congress strong opposition to BJPs India Shining campaign in 2004. That clicked because voters sensed disconnect between claims of the ruling party and their experiences. Neither in 2004 nor 2014 were governments replaced because the Opposition offered positive agendas, says Sanjay Kumar, director, Center for the Study of Developing Societies. In 2014, charges of corruption and price rise uprooted UPA. The difference in 2014 was the positive attraction of BJP, says Kumar. Anti-government rhetoric matters because they get debated in publicthey become narratives. Narratives can be set by elites or the common man, says AK Verma, who runs an electoral research outfit in Kanpur. The latter kind matter if people understand a subject like Bofors. Its very apparent that the Congress is trying to develop a narrative similar to Bofors on the Rafale deal. But Rafale is extremely complicated. It also goes to Modis credit that the charge isnt sticking, says Verma. When in the 80s Jan Morcha leader VP Singh challenged Congress over Bofors, he called it topekhane mein choritheft in the armory. The pointed message struck home. Even BJP allies agree the public expects a counter-narrative, which isnt forthcoming. Any government would leave promises unfulfilled. The Oppositions task is to build a narrative and take it to an organisational plane, says Pavan K Varma, ex-Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament with Janata Dal (United), a NDA ally. In the 2015 Bihar Assembly elections, JD(U), Rashtriya Janata Dal and Congress contested the 243-seat Assembly together. That required vast grassroots mobilisation, coordination, micro-detailing and sacrifices, Varma says. The combination formed the government in 2015, though JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar later switched to NDA. The former allies named all candidates simultaneously. Its leaders presented a united public front. Thats what you call Opposition unity, Varma says. By contrast, the national Opposition appears like a motley group united against one leader. So voters feel like they have to choose between the known (Modi and his team) and the unknown, Varma says. To be fair, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Mizoram and Chhattisgarh election results will determine bargaining powers of regional stalwarts vis a vis Congress. The Opposition has a marginal, slim agendato save democracy, says Rooprekha Verma, former vice-chancellor, Lucknow University. On the other hand, the BJP has a dangerous agenda and theyre resolute. Congress isnt offsetting BJPs Ram Temple or reclaiming composite culture against Hindutva because of corruption charges against it, she feels. This was apparent when the AAP provided Carnatic musician TM Krishna a platform after right-wing activists forced cancellation of his concert. Also, Congress harps on the "idea of India" but that isnt a fixed idea all share. It has also been damaged. As we saw when Mughalsarai and Allahabad were renamed, there was no public outcry, says Pai. People dont seem to be hating BJPs politics, says Kumar of CSDS. And theyre unprepared to accept liberal ideas of dangers to democracy while Congress battles perceptions that it "cares more about Muslims." Grassroots political workers say people repeatedly ask about Opposition alliance plans. Still, the narrative for 2019 will remain mysterious until two months before polls. At an election rally at Lunglei, Modi also said that the country has understood the 'divide and rule' policy of the Congress and that is the reason the party was just confined to two to three states. Lunglei: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said he felt a deep sense of anguish at the Congress "abusing" North East culture and calling its dress "outlandish". Coming down heavily on the rival party at an election rally at Lunglei, he also said that the country has understood the "divide and rule" policy of the Congress and that is the reason the party was just confined to two to three states. Mizoram in the North East is the last bastion of the Congress. Election to the 40-member assembly is scheduled for 28 November. "The Congress party, which once governed maximum number of states, is now restricted to just two or three states. Now, the people of Mizoram have a golden opportunity to rid themselves of this Congress culture," Modi said. The priority for Congress is not the people of Mizoram, it is fighting to gain power, the prime minister charged. "I feel deep sense of anguish when I see a Congress leader abused traditional dress of northeast states, calling them outlandish. Your hopes, ambitions do not matter to the Congress. Their priority is power and not the people of Mizoram," he stated. In the last four years, the BJP government at the Centre, has worked for greater recognition of Indian culture and traditions, far and wide, Modi asserted. Congress leader Shashi Tharoor had in August stated that Prime Minister Modi wears "outlandish" headgear. I ask you why does our Prime Minister wear all sorts of outlandish headgear wherever he goes around the country or around the world? Why does he always refuse to wear a Muslim skull cap? Tharoor had stated. "You see him in Naga headgears with feathers. You have seen him in various kinds of extraordinary outfits which is a right thing for a prime minister to do. Indira Gandhi has also been photographed wearing various kinds of costumes. But why he still always says no to one?, Tharoor had stated. The prime minister said, "Through its 'Act, East, Act Fast' policy, the BJP has, in the last 4.5 years, developed every region of the North East". The double engine of the BJP governments in both the Centre and the State will take Mizoram to new heights, he added. Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan criticised the stand of various Hindu organisations on Ayodhya temple dispute Rampur: Samajwadi Party leader and former Uttar Pradesh cabinet minister Azam Khan on Thursday criticised the stand of various Hindu organisations on Ayodhya dispute, saying, "when power becomes the law, the law is reduced to nothing." Commenting on the resolution passed during a congregation of saints in Delhi last month, he said, "When a Sant Sammelan was organised in Delhi they proclaimed that they would no more request but are ready for a fight. We said that we are nowhere in this fight. On 6 December 1992 also we were not part of the struggle and had called for obeying the law. But at that time no law could help, so what law will obstruct construction of the temple now. When power becomes the law, the law is reduced to nothing in front of such power. And this is what leads to dictatorship." Reacting to Shivpal Yadav's recently floated party 'Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia)', Khan said, "There is only one Samajwadi Party and it has only one national president, Akhilesh Yadav. Any other party is entirely a different thing." Replying to a question about various Muslim communities supporting the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya, he said, "The issue of construction of the temple is pending with the Supreme Court. We have faith in the apex court but if someone wants to bring forward a solution even before the decision of the court that is also fine. But the atmosphere that was created during the Ram Janaki Rath Yatra must not be repeated because it harms the country." On being asked about law and order situation under the incumbent government led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Khan said, "The government is good. If someone has death written in his or her fate, Yogi cannot do anything about it. If children are destined to die, Yogi ji can't do anything about it as he had already told them to get better treatment. He is busy worshipping the God for as much as 23 hours 45 minutes a day. He should not be blamed." Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Sakshi Maharaj on Friday made a bid to stir the communal cauldron, as he called for the demolition of the Jama Masjid in Delhi. Bharatiya Janata Party MP Sakshi Maharaj on Friday made a bid to stir the communal cauldron, as he called for the demolition of Delhi's Jama Masjid. He said that he would be ready to be hanged if idols are not found below the staircase of the mosque, The Indian Express reported. The MP from Unnao said that the Mughals played with the sentiments of the Hindu community and built more than 3,000 mosques after demolishing temples. He further said this was his first statement when he entered politics, and he continues to stand by it. With these comments, the controversial saffron leader appears to be seeking to outmaneuver his party's ally, the Shiv Sena, which has been stepping up pressure on the BJP on the issue of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. In one of the Shiv Sena's most strident comments on the issue, its leader Sanjay Raut asked the government as to how long it will take to bring an ordinance to build temple at the site where the Babri mosque was "demolished in 17 minutes by Ram bhakts". "How long does it take to prepare papers... to bring ordinance... from the Rashtrapati Bhawan to Uttar Pradesh Assembly. They are all BJP governments," the Shiv Sena leader said. Sakshi Maharaj has been an outspoken face of the BJP on a number of issues, including the Ram temple. On some occasions, he has also adopted a somewhat critical stance with respect to the Centre, an instance of which was when he said, "When an ordinance can be brought against triple talaq, why not on the Ram temple?" Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray will visit Ayodhya on Saturday amid a clamour among Hindu outfits for bringing an ordinance to build Ram temple. However, Yogi Adityanath has denied him permission to hold any public gatherings, citing concerns that provocative remarks could stoke tensions. On Sunday, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is planning to organise a Dharam Sabha, an initiative which has been backed by the RSS and the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas, as reported by Hindustan Times. With inputs from PTI Computer Baba had organised 'Narmade Sansad', a gathering of like-minded religious leaders from various states including Uttar Pradesh, in Jabalpur on Friday to decide which party they should support in the polls. Jabalpur: A group of religious figures led by godman Computer Baba on Friday declared support to the Congress for 28 November Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh. It marks a radical change in the political stand of Swami Namdev Tyagi, popularly known as Computer Baba, who had been anointed as a minister of state by the BJP government. Computer Baba had organised 'Narmade Sansad', a gathering of like-minded religious leaders from various states including Uttar Pradesh, in Jabalpur on Friday to decide which party they should support in the polls. "The saints will support the Congress," he said at the gathering. "When we can give fifteen years to them (the Bharatiya Janata Party), then we can surely give five years to Congress," he said. "If Congress upholds dharma, we will go with them in future or else we will withdraw the support," he said. In April, the BJP government in the state accorded him the status of Minister of State alongwith five others by appointing him on a committee for conservation of the river Narmada. Before that, he had announced a 'yatra' (procession) to expose illegal sand mining in the Narmada. He resigned in October, accusing Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan of being a hypocrite and not fulfilling the promises made to him. The BJP government did little to stop illegal mining in the river, he alleged. Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala also accused the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh of misleading people on the investment attracted by the state from 2007 to 2016. Bhopal: The Congress on Friday alleged Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not able to get rid of his "childhood habit" of telling lies after he claimed that the Karnataka government was arresting indebted farmers. Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said at a press conference in Bhopal that it hurts when a person holding the prime minister's post lies. "Modi has a bad habit of speaking lies. It seems he is not able to get rid of his childhood habit," he said, when asked about Modi's allegation. The prime minister, addressing campaign rallies in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, had pooh-poohed Congress chief Rahul Gandhi's promise of farm loan waiver in the two states. He claimed the party had made the same promise during the Karnataka polls but did not fulfil it. The coalition government consisting of Congress in Karnataka was, instead, issuing warrants and arresting farmers for defaulting on loan repayments, the prime minister alleged. Surjewala asked about the loan waiver that was announced by the BJP-led government in Maharashtra. "About 50,000 farmers marched to Mumbai asking the Devendra Fadnavis government what happened to loan waiver promise. The implementation of loan waiver in Punjab and Karnataka (where the Congress is in power) has set an example. The prime minister should visit these areas," Surjewala said. He alleged the Modi-led government had written off loans worth Rs 2.63 lakh crore of industrialists but had refused relief to indebted farmers. The Congress spokesperson also accused the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh of misleading people on the investment attracted by the state from 2007 to 2016. "The Shivraj Singh Chouhan government held 12 investor meets during this period and declared that investment of Rs 17.49 lakh crore has been made. But according to experts, proposals of only Rs 50,000 crore materialised," he alleged. CP Joshi's utterances on Hinduism and the argument that only a Congress-led government can build a Ram Temple at Ayodhya may, of course, have been a manifestation of his subconscious desire to catch the attention of the Congress president, give words to the partys current drive to embrace soft Hindutva. CP Joshi must be really good at hopping around on one foot. This can be safely presumed because his one foot is invariably stuck in his mouth that is used to uttering words that either lead to avoidable controversies or win him a loyal battalion of enemies. It is a pity that Joshi suffers from the foot-in-mouth syndrome because his mentor, former Congress chief minister Mohan Lal Sukhadia, was the perfect practitioner of the art of not saying a word, something that he achieved by always stuffing his mouth with paan. Remember Pankaj Kapoor in Maqbool advising a politician, "gillory khaya karo, miyan, zubaan kaboo main rehti hai?" The problem with Joshi is that he likes to think aloud, sometimes forgetting that what should remain in the private recesses of his mind should not be uttered in public. But Joshi, who loves the sound of his own voice, is fascinated by the self-presumed brilliance of his own logic and believes that everyone other than him is in dire need of being educated by him. So, give him an audience, put him up on a stage and Joshi would just let his tongue loose. Thats exactly what has happened with his recent lecture on Hinduism at an election rally in Rajasthan. Those who know him can safely wager he was overawed by the occasion and blurted out specious arguments like: Only Brahmins and intellectuals can talk about Hinduism; that people like Uma Bharati had no business talking about the religion because they are, unlike him, not Brahmins. The impromptu lecture, like all of Joshis soliloquies, must have been an impulsive thought donated for public consumption because of his compulsive desire to sound pedagogic. Joshi, dont forget, is a former university teacher. And, as they say, you can make a politician out of a professor but you can never take the professor out of a politician. Also, Joshi is a worshipper of Che Guevara and considers himself a revolutionary in the same mould. This contradictory mishmash of Brahminical upbringing in a holy city Nathadwara, penchant for teaching and Marxist moorings often makes Joshi sound a confused philosopher who speaks too much for his own good. Just like Mani Shankar Aiyyar, another Congress leader with a misplaced sense of entitlement and the hubris typical of those who believe themselves to be twice born once as themselves and the second time as self-styled beacons of intellect. Joshis problem is that his penchant for speaking too much in his trademark style that makes him sound angry and arrogant even when he is not, has made his career look like a game of snakes and ladders. Just a few months ago, he was Rahul Gandhis trusted lieutenant, a powerful general secretary in charge of key states. Before that, even though he was a first-term parliamentarian, Joshi was inducted as a Cabinet minister in UPA-II, a privilege accorded to him because of the belief that Rahul Gandhi was learning the art and craft of politics under Joshis tutelage. But, just as his career was hovering near the peak, he was bitten by the proverbial snake. Today, he is on the margins, stripped of power in the Congress and relegated to backbenches in Rajasthan Congress, where he was once seen as potential chief minister. His utterances on Hinduism and the argument that only a Congress-led government can build a Ram Temple at Ayodhya may, of course, have been a manifestation of his subconscious desire to catch the attention of the Congress president, give words to the partys current drive to embrace soft Hindutva. But, it is quite likely that he made these pronouncements without weighing his own logic, misled by the tragic belief that everything coming out of his mouth is profound and deeply philosophical. The reporter had once asked Joshi which is his favourite song and film. He said the Uttam Kumar classic Amansush is the closest to his heart and its immortal song, Dil Aisa Kisi Ne Mera Toda, his favorite. He then quickly clarified that it wasnt because his heart was broken irreparably in youth but only because of the quality of the film and the lyricism and poetry of the song. Now, that he has created an unnecessary controversy by arguing for Brahminical superiority, released the djinn of Ram Mandir from the Congress bottle, Joshi would have many reasons to sing his favourite song. His dreamhe still had an outside chanceof becoming the next chief minister is now gone, something that will shatter his heart. He would be lucky if his words do not end up breaking the heart of Rahul Gandhi by letting the BJP turn Joshi into the Aiyyar of Rajasthanthe man who shot his own party from the lip. CP Joshi's straight-out casteist remark against Narendra Modi and Uma Bharti has given ammunition to the BJP that might prove fatal for the Congress in upcoming polls CP Joshi's straight-out casteist remark against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union minister Uma Bharti implying that because of their low caste origins, they didn't qualify to be from the Hindu community, never mind speak about Hinduism has given ammunition to the BJP that might prove fatal for the Congress in the Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan Vidhan Sabha elections. The former Union minister and one of the Congress' contenders for the chief ministerial berth in Rajasthan may end up earning the distinction of creating a "Joshi moment" for these elections just as there was or a Sonia Gandhi "Maut ka Saudagar" moment the in 2007 Gujarat election or a Mani Shankar Aiyar "Neech" Modi moment in the 2017 Gujarat election or a Mohan Bhagwat moment in the 2015 Bihar election that tilted the outcome of the election. Although Joshi has some competition from within the Congress Kamal Nath allegedly telling Muslim community leaders in a closed-door meeting that if 90 percent of Muslims didn't vote for the Congress, the party would suffer immense damage and Raj Babbar dragging Modi's mother into the election campaign, the Rajasthan leader's remark towers over everything else. Let's revisit what Joshi said at an election rally in Rajasthan: "What is Uma Bharti's caste, does anybody know that? What is Ritambhara's caste? If anyone knows about dharma in this country then it is a Pandit. A Pandit is Brahmin. It has turned bizarre in this country. Bharti is from the Lodhi caste (an OBC), but she will speak about Hindu dharma; Sadhvi (Rithambhara) may be from any religion but she will speak about the Hindu religion. Modijis religion may be anything but he will speak about the Hindu religion. Does the Brahmin have no work?" Joshi, a Brahmin is questioning Modi and Bharti's right to speak about Hinduism because the two belonged to the category of Other Backward Castes. He clearly forgot the famous couplet by the 15th Century poet and saint Kabir, "Jati na puchhoo Sadhu ki, pooch lijiye gyan (Don't ask the caste of seers, ask for their knowledge)". Bharti and Rithambhara are sadhvis and have been reciting religious discourse since childhood. Modi, born in a humble OBC family, has risen through the ranks due to sheer personal grit and hard work, and many take him as the biggest Hindutava leader of modern times, as also as a 'Hindu Hriday Samrat'. The BJP could not have let this issue go. It quickly turned it into a major electoral issue, holding a series of press conferences, referring to it at a public rally and commenting on it on social media in a big way. Amit Malviya tweeted: "Shameful statement by Congress Leader CP Joshi. Implies what does a lower caste person like Modi know about Hinduism as only Brahmins are true custodians of Hinduism". He also attached a 25-second video of Joshi's remarks. The Congress now realises the damage potential of Joshi's statement and Rahul Gandhi swung into action to issue a clarification of the party's position: , Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) November 23, 2018 Joshi expressed regret and for the Congress, the issue ended there. Joshi didn't say sorry. He only expressed regret if his statement had hurt sentiments of any section of society: Dr. C.P. Joshi (@drcpjoshi) November 23, 2018 The Congress has for some time been trying to reclaim the Brahmanical position for the Congress by painting Rahul as a "Janeudhari Brahmin". The Congress thus far was trying to push soft Hindutva. But what Joshi has said looks like a strong advocation of Hindutva: First, claiming that the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya could only be built by the Congress and its prime minister. He based his claim on a contentious fact that Rajiv Gandhi had the locks of Babri Masjid broken in 1986 (in the portion where the statue of Ramlala was installed in December 1949) and now claims that only a Brahmin like him could talk and define Hinduism. The problem for Congress is four-fold: First, since Joshi has named Modi to claim that his caste disqualifies him from talking about Hinduism, he has handed the BJP an emotive issue on a platter. Second, Brahmins are important social constituents, but unlike as in Uttar Pradesh, in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, they are not going to be the key decisive factor in the electoral outcome. Third, most Brahmins have long shifted their preference from the Congress to the BJP. Despite the Congress trying hard to establish Brahmin credentials for Rahul, given his lineage as the grandson of Indira and Feroze Gandhi and son of Sonia and Rajiv Gandhi, his caste credentials are a matter of public debate. Four, when one party aggressively tries to woo one dominant caste and community, there is the possibility of other castes and communities becoming polarised in favour of the other party. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 23) The South Korean government said it would take back the approximately 5,100 tons of trash shipped in container vans from South Korea to Mindanao in July. "The Government stated that it would take measures to have the wastes in question be brought back to Korea as soon as possible," a statement from the Korean embassy Tuesday said. The Korean Embassy said their Ministry of Environment and their Customs Service also inspected the exporter of the waste shipment in Pyeongtaek City on November 16. The embassy added the wastes were different from what the exporter declared, and that the documents required for export were forged. A Verde Soko Industrial Corporation was discovered as the shipment's consignee. The firm earlier said the container vans carried soft plastic and not garbage, claiming that the plastics are raw materials for furniture reprocessing. Upon checking, however, the shipment contained illegal and hazardous waste materials such as used intravenous lines, light bulbs, and old batteries. "The Korea Customs Service is investigating the exporter in question for the possibility of its exporting of wastes with illegitimately prepared export documentation. The Customs Service also took a step to forbid the shipment of goods in question waiting to be shipped," the statement added. Waste and pollution watch group The EcoWaste Coalition lauded the South Korean government's efforts. "This early, we say 'kamsa hamnida (thank you)' to Korea for doing the right thing and for respecting our nation's right not to be treated as their waste bin," said Aileen Lucero, the group's National Coordinator. When one looks at a painting, an image becomes evident. The depth from which the image speaks, however, could be lost if the onlooker simply chooses to admire the shape, colours and other components used in the composition, without going beyond so as to extract other hidden narratives that may be skilfully wrapped in the piece of art before him. And so it is with the work of caroline boops sardine, artist extraordinaire, who pours her soul into her creations, whether in her paintings or mixed media on canvas or board, or in her extraordinary assemblages. On Saturday, 17th November, at the Grand View Hotel in Villa Point, twenty-five phenomenal pieces of carolines work were showcased in an art show curated by Alexandra Grant. The artists work Upon entering the foyer of the hotel, one was greeted by a reverence of creativity stemming from strategically positioned art, complemented by well-angled lighting that gave just the right amount of exposure. Even as the demure artist mixed and mingled, patrons poured over her pieces; many staying their ground, some in awe, some in honour, of what they were experiencing. To top it all off, the sheer size of major pieces commanded the attention of their onlookers. Curator Alexandra Grant was the voice for caroline as she gave insights into the artists inspiration and rationale. Receiving much attention was, you are deee soundtrack of my heeelinnn. Mixed media on canvas, she dealt with finding that space where could be one, thereby craving connections with people: mental, physical, cultural, spiritual. Here, a variety of smaller symbolic images were crafted in to draw lines across the narrative. Another attention grabber was bad feeelinnns, where two separate canvases told a complementary story. It depicted a physical representation of that emotional state with a hint of optimism on the canvas on the right coming from a collage of the artists dissected recipes. These were meant to supply "a recipe for healing along with the bees factored in. In a general sense, carolines signature is her deliberate distortion of words and ideas. These are the very foundation of her work, so upon viewing her pieces, the onlooker must dig deep. That was the very reason why some patrons lingered over time, some even returning to catch that little tidbit that would have escaped the eye during a first look. The collaboration riiite siiide uppp was the second collaborative showing involving caroline and artist and fashion designer Jeremy Payne of Fashion is Payn. In 2016, they collaborated to show their extraordinary pieces of art work in a show dubbed "Inside Out also curated by Alexandra Grant and mounted at the historically significant Cigarette Factory in Arnos Vale. Inside Out showcased to raving review. riiite siiide uppp continued that collaboration, but this time it was carolines pieces that took centre stage. Jeremys introduction of his performance art piece called Rituals: These Glorious Things, simply upped the ante of the activity. *(See story on page 15) The venue As in their 2016 art show, the riiite siiide uppp venue the Grand View Hotel - also held great historic importance. Known as Wilkies Battery in the 18th century, it functioned as the corresponding battlement to Fort Duvernette. In the 19th century, a large house for drying cotton was built and remained until the 1940s, when the property was purchased by Frank Sardine. It was then architecturally altered by C.F. Richardson who converted the building into a family dwelling. In 1964, it was converted into the hotel it is known for today. The Grand View Hotel, therefore, was a unique spot for showing off the unique talents of two unique, daring-to-be-different artists. HD Kumaraswamy, who has often hit out at the media for 'misinterpreting' his comments, said he would 'limit the media to what I speak from the stage.' Bengaluru: Days after accusing the media of misconstruing his remark against a woman farmer, an upset Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy on Thursday said he would not address the press hereafter "for any reason." The chief minister, who has often hit out at the media for "misinterpreting" his comments, said he would "limit the media to what I speak from the stage." "From here on, I will limit the media to what I speak from the stage. I have decided. I will not address the press for any reason. If you want, write or else, leave it," he said. Addressing an event in Bengaluru, he alleged that his words were often interpreted differently, "so these days, I don't understand what to speak. I may in the future have to speak, based on the suggestions made by a committee that will be formed about what chief minister has to speak. I'm in such a situation,"Kumaraswamy said. "An advisory committee should be formed consisting of media friends. It will be good. On the suggestion that they give, I will speak. I'm ready for that. With great pain I'm saying all this," he said. Since coming to power, Kumaraswamy has repeatedly blamed the media for "misinterpreting" his statements and "misleading" the people. Recently, during the sugarcane farmers' protest too, he had accused the media of instigating protesters and blamed the scribes for wrongly interpreting his statement against a woman farmer. Kumaraswamy had earlier courted controversy following his government's decision to impose certain restrictions on the entry of visitors, including the media, to the Vidhana Soudha, the seat of state legislature and secretariat. He had cited police inputs regarding security as also increase in the number of people visiting it everyday besides complaints about inconvenience caused to ministers and officials to carry out their work as reasons for the move then. Hitting back at state BJP chief BS Yeddyurappa, who had Wednesday said his party would fight till the Kumaraswamy-led administration is brought down and people get justice, the chief minister said he was ready to face the saffron party leader during the Winter Session of the Assembly at Belagavi commencing from 10 December. He said, "I will not run away. I and my government have that strength and moral right." Asserting that he was honestly working for the people of the state and would not run away from the responsibility fearing criticism, Kumaraswamy said he would stand strong and was ready for anything. "I will stand strong, I may have 38 MLAs. Because 80 MLAs under the leadership of Parameshwara (Deputy Chief Minister) have supported me, Governor has called me (to form the government) and manage the affairs of the state," he said. "Until I'm there without any compromise, I will work honestly....let the 6.5 crore people of the state decide in the future," he added. Noting that power was not permanent for anybody, Kumarswamy said, 22 people "have come and gone as chief minister." He said, "Parameshwara and MLA friends from his party (Congress) have given support and cooperation, until I enjoy their confidence I will be (in the post). I will work from this position until the time god has written it in my fate." K Chandrashekar Rao, the caretaker chief minister, lashed out at the Centre for keeping on hold a decision on raising reservations for Muslims and Scheduled Tribes from 4 to 12 percent and 6 to 10 percent in state government jobs and educational institutions despite the state Assembly passing a resolution. Hyderabad: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP are afflicted with a "disease" that has caused "communal madness" and prompted them to block enhanced job quotas for Muslims in Telangana, TRS chief K Chandrashekar Rao said Friday, as poll-time rhetoric got shriller and nastier. Rao, the caretaker chief minister, slammed the Centre for keeping on hold a decision on raising reservations for Muslims and Scheduled Tribes from 4 to 12 percent and 6 to 10 percent in state government jobs and educational institutions despite the state Assembly passing a resolution. "Narendra Modi and the BJP have a disease...In everything they see, they see Hindu-Muslim (divide). They don't see anything else and so they did not do it (raise the quotas)...they have kept it pending," he told an election rally at Narsampet. Addressing another election meeting in Mahabubabad, the TRS president repeated his charge and accused the Centre of "religious madness". "Narendra Modi government has a disease. That is minorities (versus) Hindus....they are in that state of 'mataparamaina pichi' (communal madness)). It is because of this they blocked reservations for STs and Muslims," he said. Rao said he will ensure that the demand for raising the quotas was accepted if people elected TRS candidates from all the 17 Lok Sabha seats of Telangana in 2019. "Not only the Assembly elections...with kindness, help us win all 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana. Only if we win can we make Delhi bend its neck. We will get our ST reservation, we will get our Muslim reservation," he said. The TRS leader claimed both the BJP and the Congress wanted to exercise complete control over the states. "It doesn't matter which of the two parties forms the government at the Centre. Their attitude is the same. Both Congress and the BJP want to concentrate all powers over states into their hands. This is their culture," he said. Rao once again batted for a non-Congress, non-BJP "federal front" government at the Centre to end that culture. The TRS chief, who has been assailing the Congress-led Opposition coalition that includes Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu's TDP, asked people at his Narasampet rally whether Telangana needed Naidu. He has been accusing Naidu of stalling the development of Telangana when it was part of undivided Andhra Pradesh. He hit out at the Congress for merging the Telangana region with Andhra against the wishes of the people of Telangana. He also accused the Congress government of suppressing the agitation for a separate Telangana in 1969. Rao said Congress leaders were silent when "injustice" was being done to Telangana region in undivided Andhra Pradesh and were trying to bring Naidu back to Telangana now. Addressing campaign rallies for the 28 November Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rahul said the situation now is such that whenever the word 'chowkidar''is uttered, people say 'chor hai' (is a thief). Vidisha/Mandideep: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of bringing ignominy to all "chowkidars" (watchmen) in the country. Addressing campaign rallies for the 28 November Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rahul said the situation now is such that whenever the word "chowkidar'"is uttered, people say "chor hai" (is a thief). "Wherever you go, as you pronounce the word "chowkidar" comes a reply "chor hai". I want to apologise to the chowkidars of the country. It is not your mistake, you all are not thieves, you all are honest. Only one person has brought ignominy to you. The country's prime minister has defamed all its chowkidars," he said. Before coming to power in 2014, Modi used to talk about combating corruption, unemployment and farmers' welfare but is now mum on these issues, Rahul said. The sentiment across the country is that he broke their trust, he added. When Modi gave the "acche din" (good days) slogan ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, people would respond to the catch-phrase, saying "aayenge" (will come), he said. The promised "acche din" were not meant for the people but for some top industrialists, Rahul said. Good days have come for industrialists like Nirav Modi, Anil Ambani and Vijay Mallya, he added. Modi, in his election campaign in 2014, had said he wanted to be the country's chowkidar, not the prime minister. "People had then reposed faith in him. The youth were assured two crore jobs, farmers were assured minimum support price for their produce, the entire India was assured that Rs 15 lakh would be deposited in the bank account of each citizen. People believed this then," he said. "Why has this changed? In four years, people found that these (promises) were false. Narendra Modi speaks lies. This is the sentiment in the country, because he has broken the (people's) trust," Rahul said. A "Congress wave" would sweep Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram and Telangana, he said. The BJP-led government waived loans worth Rs 3.5 lakh crore of the rich, but did not write off farmers' debts, he said. The previous Congress-led UPA government, on the recommendation of the Indian Air Force, decided to purchase 126 Rafale fighters at a cost of Rs 526 crore per plane with the stipulation that the state-owned aerospace company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) would make them in India, the Congress chief said. "But Modi went to France and conveyed to the French government that each Rafale jet will be purchased for Rs 1600 crore. He told them to give the contract to (Anil) Ambani instead of giving it to HAL," he said. There was no immediate reaction from the BJP on the allegations. The ruling party has dismissed the charges in the past. The Congress president asked his party men to stand at polling booths and not back off "even an inch" to convey a message to the BJP that people of Madhya Pradesh are now with the principal Opposition party. Rahul, who faces a defamation suit for claiming that Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's son was named in the 'Panama Papers', said, "I spoke mistakenly that Shivraj ji's son was named in Panama Papers, actually it was Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh's son. Shivraj ji threatened me of filing defamation suit." "But when I talk about scams like e-tendering, Vyapam, illegal mining and mid-day meal scam, he (Shivraj) doesn't speak a word, he doesn't threaten to file defamation. What does it mean," he said. Chouhan "stole" people's money in Vyapam, the entrance examination, admission and recruitment scam unearthed in Madhya Pradesh in 2013, he said. With less than a week to go for the Madhya Pradesh Vidhan Sabha elections, political heavyweights, including Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi, have reached the state. With less than a week to go for the Madhya Pradesh Vidhan Sabha elections, political heavyweights have reached the state to address election rallies in strategic Assembly constituencies. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address a rally in Mandsaur, BJP president Amit Shah will address a gathering in Chhindwara, while Congress president Rahul Gandhi will hold three back-to-back rallies in Vidisha and Sehore, considered as the home turf of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Mandsaur had been the epicentre of the farmers agitation and mob violence in June 2017, that led to the death of six farmers in police firing. The protest by farmers has come as a challenge for Chouhan, who calls himself a "gareeb kisan ka beta" (poor farmers son). While the state BJP hopes that Modi's visit will boost its chances, the state Congress has questioned the prime minister's visit by asking, Where was Modi when Mandsaur was on fire and six farmers were killed? Does he have the right to ask for votes from the people of Mandsaur? On the other hand, Amit Shah will hold a rally in Chhindwara the parliamentary constituency and pocket borough of MPCC president Kamal Nath, from where he has been elected to the Lok Sabha ten times. A Congress stronghold, Chhindwara has seven Assembly seats. According to political analysts, while this election would prove to be the toughest for the ruling BJP in the last 15 years, it will be equally crucial for the Congress, which has been out of power since 2003. On Friday, Rahul will hold three back-to-back public meetings at Basoda in Vidisha district, at industrial town Mandideep in Raisen, and Nasrullaganj in Sehore. The Vidisha Lok Sabha constituency has eight Assembly segments Budhni, Vidisha, Ichhawar, Silwani, Basoda, Khategaon, Bhojpur and Sanchi. During the last election, Chouhan won both from Vidisha and Budhni (Sehore district), and retained the latter. However, of late, the chief minister has been facing the heat from the voters of Budhni. Recently, when Chouhans wife Sadhna Singh visited Budhni, she had to face the ire of the locals, who complained to her about the lack of basic amenities like drinking water, etc in the area. The state unit of the Congress is expecting that Rahuls visit to Basoda in Vidisha and Nasrullaganj, which is in Budhni (Sehore) will turn the tables in favour of the party. The importance of Budhni cannot be underestimated as Arun Yadav, former MPCC president and Union minister of state during the UPA-I regime, has been pitted against Chouhan. Besides Madhya Pradesh, Rahul will also address a public meeting at Medchal in Telangana. However, for the Congress in Telangana, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi's rally on Friday at the same place will be the most important one. Her visit will be the first since the state was formed in June 2014. Telangana is important for the Congress, as it was the UPA which had approved the bifurcation of the state of Andhra Pradesh, when Sonia was the Congress president. She had played a vital role in the creation of the state. The Telangana Congress will also release its peoples manifesto on Friday. The Congress has forged a grand alliance 'Prajakutami' with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS) and CPI to take on the TRS in the 7 December elections to the 119-member Telangana Assembly. Goa Forward Party chief and Agriculture Minister Vijai Sardesai suggested on Thursday that the ailing Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar wanted to resign, but the BJP high command vetoed it. Panaji: Goa Forward Party chief and Agriculture Minister Vijai Sardesai suggested on Thursday that the ailing Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar wanted to resign, but the BJP high command vetoed it. "He wanted to give up the chief minister's post altogether. He had even shown inclination to give away his portfolios (to other ministers) when he was admitted to a hospital during Ganesh Chaturthi festival," Sardesai said here. "But then several things happened. BJP high command stepped in....it (to resign or not) is not in his (Parrikar's) hands entirely," Sardesai told reporters. Parrikar, 62, has been recuperating at his residence here since he was discharged from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi on October 14. He is suffering from a pancreatic ailment. Asked about independent MLA and Revenue Minister Rohan Khaunte's remark that the administration has become sluggish in Parrikar's absence, Sardesai said, "I have always been saying that CM's ill-health has had some sort of impact, and it is showing." To a question on another alliance partner Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) filing a petition against two former Congress MLAs who joined the BJP, the minister said it was surprising. MGP has moved the Goa Bench of Bombay High Court, seeking to disqualify Subhash Shirodkar and Dayanand Sopte, former Congress MLAs who recently joined the BJP. "It is a matter between two constituents of the alliance -- BJP and MGP. So we are not concerned with it," Sardesai said. "As far as MGP is concerned, its decision to go to the court is surprising....I can believe it is a preemptive move, they (MGP) have not lost anything, Congress has lost two MLAs," Sardesai said in a cryptic remark. Speculation was rife earlier that MGP MLAs might join the BJP which does not have a majority on its own in Goa Assembly. BJP spokespersons were not available for comment on Sardesai's remarks. Congress president Rahul Gandhi shared a news report alleging that the Rafale deal was against the defence ministry's interests. New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, alleging that he created a cobweb just like the Bollywood villain Mogambo to "loot" the armed forces and that the Rafale scam is one of his many adventures which will be exposed soon. Rahul shared a news report alleging that the Rafale deal was against the defence ministry's interests. "The Rafale scam is only a glimpse of Modiji's adventures. To loot the armed forces, he created a cobweb just like Mogambo of selected officers, ministers and industrialists. The threads of this cobweb to make the armed forces hollow from inside are connected to Modiji and his industrialist friends. Now many masks would be exposed," he said in a tweet in Hindi. The Congress party and its chief have launched an offensive on Modi and his government, alleging corruption and favouritism in the Rs 58,000-crore fighter jet deal for purchase of 36 Rafale aircraft from France's Dassault Aviation, a charge the government has strongly denied. Mogambo, essayed by Amrish Puri, was the villain in the 1987 Hindi film 'Mr India'. Congress president Rahul Gandhi said the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government in Madhya Pradesh destroyed the education sector with Vyapam, the entrance examination, admission and recruitment scam unearthed in 2013 Vidisha: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday said Indians have realised that there is no substance in what Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks, adding that the latter is mum on the issues he spoke about before the 2014 elections. Addressing a campaign rally in Vidisha for the 28 November Madhya Pradesh Vidhan Sabha polls, Rahul said that Modi's speeches used to be about corruption, farmers and unemployment. "Today, he doesn't say anything on these issues. People of the country have realised that there is no substance in what Modi speaks. All his assurances are false," Rahul added. "Before 2014, Modi had promised loan waiver, bonus and better price for farmers' produce; I want to ask him why were the assurances not fulfilled," he said. "When the Congress forms the next government in Madhya Pradesh, the chief minister will work for 18 hours a day to provide employment to the youth, Gandhi further said. "Unemployment and farm crisis is rampant in all the poll-bound states," he said, adding the government has told the Parliament that only 450 youth get jobs per day in India, as against 50,000 in China in the same period. The Congress chief promised loan waiver to farmers "within 10 days of coming to power" in Madhya Pradesh and making the state an "agriculture hub" of the country. Rahul said the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government in the state destroyed the education sector with Vyapam, the entrance examination, admission and recruitment scam unearthed in Madhya Pradesh in 2013. On the Rafale deal, he said that Modi gave Rs 30,000 crore benefit to industrialist Anil Ambani by taking away the contract from the state-owned aerospace company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). "Even BJP leaders Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie have said due processes were not followed in the Rafale deal. The CBI director was about to start a probe into the Rafale scam but he was removed from his post at 2 am," the Congress chief said. "If a probe is carried out, only two names, that of Modi and Anil Ambani, would figure in it," he said. Gandhi said, "Modi speaks of surgical strikes. The fighter aircraft used in the strikes were manufactured at HAL, while Ambani doesn't have any experience of making aircraft". "Ambani has a debt of Rs 45,000 crore and is yet to repay the money given to him by public sector banks, he said. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday expelled 11 rebel leaders from the primary membership of the party for six years. The action has been taken against these leaders for contesting against the official party candidates in the upcoming Rajasthan assembly elections. Jaipur: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday expelled 11 rebel leaders from the primary membership of the party for six years. The action has been taken against these leaders for contesting against the official party candidates in the upcoming Rajasthan assembly elections. Two leaders each have been expelled from Churu, Jaipur and Pali districts of the state. Whereas one leader each from Sri Ganganagar, Alwar, Bikaner, Banswara and Dungarpur has been expelled for fighting against party's official candidate. After the announcement of the candidate list, many BJP leaders have shifted camps. On 18 November, BJP sitting MLA from Ramgarh constituency Gyandev Ahuja had resigned from the party and later announced to contest as an independent candidate after the party declined to give him ticket. Last Wednesday, former BJP legislator Habibur Rahaman Ashrafi Lamba joined the Congress party. Rahman had tendered his resignation on 12 November to state BJP chief Madan Lal Saini after he found his name was missing from the party's first list. Rajasthan will go to polls on 7 December, and results will be declared on 11 December. Rajasthan Assembly Election 2018: The Meo Muslims in Alwar haven't forgotten the the mob lynchings at the hands of self-styled gau rakshaks, and neither have Dalit protesters who faced police heavy-handedness for protesting against dilution of SC/ST act Alwar: Alwar district in Rajasthan seems to be slipping away from the BJP, which had won 10 of the 11 seats in last Assembly election. The polarisation of the SC/STs and Muslims against the BJP is expected to erode the party's numbers considerably on 7 December when the state goes to polls. The Meo Muslims haven't forgotten the the mob lynchings, which took the lives of Pehlu Khan, Umar Khan and, Rakbar Khan, or the continuing harassment that they faced at the hands of self-styled gau rakshaks. That the state government failed to take action against these perpetrators, further deteriorated the Vasundhara Raje government's image. As for SC/STs in Alwar, the ruling party's attempt to amend the SC/ST Atrocities Act didn't bode well with the community. The death of Dalit youth Pawan Kumar Jatav in police firing during the Bharat Bandh of 2 April earlier this year, and the heavy-handed police action against protesters when angry mobs burnt police vehicles and attacked several police stations Over 3,000 FIRs were filed against protesters in Khairthal, a small town in Alwar district rankles deeply in the community. 'Looking at Congress' The cow issue has created a wall between the Hindu and Muslim communities, said Pappu Khan, a Meo Muslim who resides in Nasopur, Ramgarh. He adds, "The Meo community nurtures cows in a large number and are scared of going into the fields with their cows for fear of being mistaken as cow slaughterers." Hakamuddin, a resident of Chandpur, echoes similar sentiment. A rift has been created between Hindus and Muslims in Alwar due to several mob lynching cases, he says, adding, "People in the region are now looking at the Congress for support." There is also a growing feeling among the Meo Muslims that the BJP does not consider the community as its vote bank despite being the largest voters group in Ramgarh Assembly constituencies. "The BJP has not done anything for us in the last five years, said Khan. Dalits and Meos together comprise 7.5 lakh voters in Alwar district. The number goes up to 9 lakhs if other SC/ST communities are included. Support from these communities is crucial to any partys electoral performance in this region. The overall caste distribution of the population in Alwar is 4.5 lakh SCs, 3.6 lakh Yadavs, three lakh Brahmins, 3.5 lakh Meos, 2.1 lakh Jats, 2 lakh Meenas, 1.7 lakh Vaishyas, 1.3 lakh Malis, one lakh Sikh-Punjabis and Gujjars each, 60,000 Rajputs, and 1.5 lakh other voters, according to sources. Besides Ramgarh, Dalits and Meo communities form major vote bank in Alwar Rural, Kishangarh Bas and Tijara constituencies. Dalits remain angry with the BJP in all these constituencies. The BJP had conspired to suppress the community, said Rattiyam, a villager belonging to the SC community. FIRs were lodged against people from SC/ST communities and they are being tortured. BJP had assured to take back the cases but nothing has been done, he added. BJP looking for alternatives Jitendra Singh, former minister of state, who also represented Alwar Lok Sabha constituency as a Congress MP, says the BJP works towards dividing the public in the name of caste and religion. "This is why the party has made efforts towards creating tussles among communities, and thereby, spoiling the harmonious relationship. BJP has not done anything for the development of the region and Congress promises to stand by the residents of Alwar during all situations." The BJP is aware that it's facing a double blow of anti-incumbency and non-performance of sitting MLAs in the district. "Some resentment is always there and we are trying to address this, said BJP district president Sanjay Naruka. We want to include everyone and I am sure people will realise this and vote for us," he adds. The BJP's candidate list indicate that the party is looking for alternatives to current leaders as a repair measure. Two key BJP Hindutva leaders and sitting MLAs, Gyan Dev Ahuja and Banwari Lal Singhal, both known to spread antipathy against the Meo community, have been denied tickets, probably to tone down the Hindutva stance. If the party has denied me a ticket because of the voice I have raised to protect Hindutva, then I must tell the party that I will keep fighting for the interests of Hindus, says Singhal. I respect the partys decision to not give me a ticket, he adds. Gyan Dev Ahuja, however, resigned from the party and is not contesting in this election. The author is a freelance writer and a member of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters Despite the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dropping ample hints that it will favour a tie-up with Shiv Sena in the upcoming polls, the Maharashtra-based party seems to have little regard for saving the Sena-BJP alliance. Despite the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dropping ample hints that it will favour a tie-up with Shiv Sena in the upcoming polls, the Maharashtra-based party seems to have little regard for saving the Sena-BJP alliance. That, or either BJP's 'natural ally' is ready to put everything on the line to see how far it can go with the saffron party, which is jittery of losing another NDA ally before 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Because nothing else explains Uddhav Thackeray's misadventures in challenging Narendra Modi and the BJP in their stronghold of Uttar Pradesh, and more specifically the small town of Ayodhya. The two parties have been bickering over myriad issues for quite some time, but they still shared the common Hindutva plank. But this time around, swords are drawn over the Ram temple issue, something that has primarily been BJP's signature, and also the reason it rose to prominence in the national political scene. Shiv Sena chief Thackeray is headed to Ayodhya with full might. As announced during his Dussehra rally, Thackeray is set to pay a two-day visit to Ayodhya on Saturday-Sunday and take a darshan of 'Ram Lalla' there. He will be accompanied by around 3,000 of Shiv Saininks who left for Ayodhya in two special trains from Thane and Nashik on Thursday. Moreover, apart from arriving in Mumbai, several thousand of party activists are expected to join Thackeray from the rest of Maharashtra, Gujarat, and other parts of India. The politically significant visit by Thackeray is expected to build pressure on its ruling ally, Bharatiya Janata Party, to expedite the construction plans for the proposed Ram Temple there as a run-up to the upcoming 2019 Lok Sabha elections. However, contrary to speculation, Thackeray will not hold a political rally in Ayodhya, but will conduct a dialogue with the people and prominent citizens of the holy town. The Sena, which announced earlier this year that it will contest all future elections independently, has been sharply critical of the BJP and Modi for his "failure" to construct the Ram Temple though it has been in power for over four-and-a-half years now. On several occasion, Thackeray has demanded that Modi declare the Ram Temple promise was a jumla to the Hindus and his party would take the lead to build it, claiming its priority was "temple before government". But sharpening his attack further on Friday, an editorial in Sena mouthpiece Saamna accused BJP of putting unnecessary terms and conditions on the Sena chief's 25 November visit when the BJP does its religious pitch be it in "Nepal or in Varanasi" without any fuss. With this new line of attack, what Sena is telling the BJP is that you try and upend our support base in Maharashtra, and we will challenge you on the Hindutva front. By turning up the heat on Ayodhya issue, the Shiv Sena does not hope to make a significant mark in Uttar Pradesh politics, and any direct electoral gain from the move is also highly unlikely. But what it does seeks to achieve is simple and quite doable: To expose BJP's duplicity when it switches over to the Hindutva track every election season. That coming from an pro-Hindutva ally of the BJP is likely to do more harm to the party than Congress antiques. The proof for this lies in the fact that the two parties have been in a political pact in Maharashtra for 25 years, but the animosity dates back to the time since BJP started emerging stronger in Maharashtra polls. Traditionally, the Shiv Sena has always been the big brother of the alliance, keeping a larger share of seats for itself. But after its resounding victory in the 2014 national election, and the death of Gopinath Munde the de facto peace broker between the two allies the squabble grew over seat-sharing, which eventually led to the two parties contesting the last Assembly polls alone and later forging a post-poll alliance. What followed was constant bickering between the two allies. From harsh comments on BJP's Achilles heel, demonetisation to criticism of party's pet schemes, the Sena constantly and steadily upped its ante. Another blow to the decades old pact came when the two parties failed to reach an understanding over the Palghar bypoll candidate, and fielded separate candidates against each other. It marked the first time that Shiv Sena fielded a candidate against the BJP in any Lok Sabha election since they came into an alliance. Not only that, the Sena added salt to the injury by fielding the son of late BJP MP Chintaman Vanga as its candidate who lost the seat by a slim margin. Shiv Sena's decision to field the late BJP MP's son gave BJP a chance to say that Shiv Sena backstabbed them and didn't follow courtesy of ruling coalition. However, that is not to say that the BJP has not tried to mend ties with the Sena. From Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis dropping favourable hints to sending party president Amit Shah with olive branch, BJP has been rather large-hearted in pacifying its bitter ally. However, its ruthless election machinery which was subsequently at work to win the Maharashtra bypolls and local body elections at the cost of Sena, has been rather counterproductive in its effort to buy truce. Another blow to the reconciliation efforts from the BJP camp was Sena's unrelenting attack on Maharashtra Forest Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar following tigress Avni's killing. Sena chief Thackeray himself had opened attack against Mungantiwar following Avni's death demanding a probe in the incident. A hurt Mungantiwar pulled back from the reconciliation efforts, saying he was hurt by his 'friend' Uddhav's stance. The Sena has already made it clear several times that in future it will contest all elections solo, but Mungantiwar was among the handful of BJP leaders hopeful of cobbling up a pre-poll partnership, unlike the 2014 Assembly polls which they had fought separately. The development came barely days ahead of the upcoming Winter Session of Maharashtra Legislature next week, when the Opposition plans to politically batter Mungantiwar over the raging Avni killing controversy. Meanwhile, reports suggest that Sena too is in a dilemma as many of its members believe that an alliance with the BJP will be favourable for their party, while contesting against the party will only benefit Congress and NCP. Speaking to Livemint off the record, two Shiv Sena Lok Sabha MPs and a Sena minister in Maharashtra said that an internal assessment has revealed bleak prospects for a majority of sitting Sena MPs in the absence of an alliance with the BJP, which boasts of a huge posse of ground workers in Maharashtra, thanks to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Sena MP Arvind Sawant also sought to play down his party's constant criticism of the BJP, hinting that all might not be lost for the BJP-Sena alliance. "We view the criticism as our duty to bring an erring friend back on the right track," he said. However, in a party run with an iron hand by the Thackerays traditionally, it remains to be seen whether Uddhav changes his mind ahead of the 2019 polls. If Randolph Pinchum George had one thing going for him, it was his attire both off and on the job as a Sanitation Worker. The days of Randolph Pinchum George cleaning the roads, gutters and drains of Kingstown are over. George, known moreso as Pinchum, has embarked on a period of pre-retirement leave to run for a month and once that is over, he will be officially retired as one of this countrys sanitation workers, after 26 years on the job. He explained that he worked "on and off as a sanitation worker here before migrating to Trinidad back in 1982. Upon his return in 1992, he was re-hired and eventually became a permanent employee of the Sanitation Department. His assigned areas of work were primarily the suburb areas, including Sion Hill, Murrays Village, Montrose and Kingstown Park; but he was also deployed in around the citys centre. Pinchum is perhaps known for adorning a tie as part of his workman uniform. He was soon to be dubbed the Best Dressed sanitation worker. "I always take pride in my work, he said. "The workmen is who make me do it. Some of the workers working in garbage and looking like it, and I never like that, so I started off putting on a tie, Pinchum told THE VINCENTIAN. Adjusting to a quiet life with "nothing to do, will be difficult, he admitted, adding that he will miss work. "I wake up the same hours as when I used to go to work, he said. Pinchum said that he will still feature around Carnival, particularly the Calypso season, as a member of The Calypso Grudges. In terms of plans for the future, Pinchum said that he always wanted to be a baker and operate his own bakery. Therefore, once he finds a suitable location and everything falls into place, he intends to pursue that dream. And who knows, he could well become The Best Dressed Baker. THE VINCENTIAN wishes him all the best, especially in his quest to begin a whole new career. (DD) Sonia Gandhi is widely acknowledged to have been instrumental in getting statehood for Telangana. This obviously gives the Congress good reason to be proactive.. United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi stepped out of her electoral hibernation on Friday evening to reclaim the lost ground in Telangana. Although the Congress had helped create the state in 2014, it is now out of power. In Telangana, electoral equations have changed tremendously since the party was last in power. The state goes to the polls on 7 December to elect a new Assembly. Addressing a huge rally at Medchal in Medchal-Malkajgiri district on Friday evening, Sonia reminded the people that it was the Congress party that had given birth to the state of Telangana. She appealed to the large gathering at the NJR KLR Ground at Medchal to vote for the Congress and the allies which are a part of the mahakutami. There is no doubt that without the Congress, the formation of Telangana state could not have been realised... It was only the Congress which prepared and got the Bill passed in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, she had said. Even Telanganas first (and present) chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao, better known as KCR, has been on record giving credit to the Congress and Sonia Gandhi for the creation of Telangana. He had made this statement in the first Assembly session of the new state on 13 June, 2014. It is a different story, though, that the two turned bitter rivals soon thereafter. Reiterating the fact at the rally, Sonia said that the state, unfortunately, had not been developed as expected a reference to KCR, whose party, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) holds 63 seats in a 119-seat Assembly. If the Congress wants to increase its numbers in the Assembly, it needs to tread with caution. Given the present electoral equations, in which the scales are heavily tipped in favour of the ruling TRS, the Congress cannot hope to achieve success on its own. It will have to align with Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidus Telugu Desam Party (TDP). The two parties made an announcement about their faith in each other at the national level, when Naidu met Congress president Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi as part of his ongoing attempt to form a "mahagathbandhan" (grand alliance) against the BJP ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election. In Telangana, the two parties are part of the "mahakutami", which also includes the Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS) and Communist Party of India Recently, after the TRS alleged that the Congress might compromise with the TDP and do injustice to the state, the Telangana Congress had made it clear that it would not compromise with Naidu. Making the party's stand clear, former Union minister S Jaipal Reddy said on Thursday that the party would not compromise with Naidu, especially on the river water issue. Therefore, Naidu was conspicuous by his absence from the dais at Sonias rally. This may have been done to avoid any possible backlash. It could be an indication that the perceived gains for the mahakutami may have been over-hyped. However, the Congress also appears to be making an attempt to keep Naidu in good humour, as it has been seeking a mahagathbandhan with the TDP as one of its partners. During Friday's rally, the UPA chairperson said, "It was the UPA government that had decided to give Andhra Pradesh special category status after the bifurcation. The Congress is still committed to its promise. The significance of Sonia Gandhis rally Sonia Gandhi addressing a political rally a fortnight before the Assembly elections is significant, as the UPA chairperson has stayed away from campaigning for the party till now in this election season. Before the rally on Friday, Sonia had not addressed even a single public gathering in any of the poll-bound states. The last rally that she addressed was in May this year in Karnataka after a gap of almost two years. She had skipped campaigning in all state elections in 2017, after she was forced to call off a road show in Varanasi midway due to ill health on 2 August, 2016. This is Sonia Gandhis first visit to Telangana after the state was formed on 2 June, 2014. She had last addressed a rally in the state in Karimnagar on 15 April 2014, during the last elections. Sonia is widely acknowledged to have been instrumental in getting statehood for Telangana. This obviously gives the Congress good reason to be proactive in this election, and to remind the people of Telangana about Sonias initiative. The fact that Sonia has entered the Congress' electoral campaign shows the partys seriousness in reclaiming the state where it was last in power between 2004 and 2014. While Amit Shah had the BJP machinery supporting him during this arduous process, he did lose his liberties for a long period of time readers may remember he was exiled from Gujarat before he was ultimately absolved of all charges against him. Sandeep Tamgadge, an officer probing the fake encounter case of Tulsiram Prajapati has reportedly told a special court that BJP president Amit Shah and three IPS officers of the Gujarat cadre were the principal conspirators in the alleged fake encounter of Prajapati. Tamgadge alleged that there was a politician-criminal nexus in play, The Indian Express reported. Tamgadge named IPS officers Dinesh MN, Rajkumar Pandiyan and DG Vanzara, apart from Shah in his statement. Unsurprisingly, Congress party president Rahul Gandhi latched on to this report in a bid to attack the BJP. The goal of our criminal justice system is to ensure justice for the victims of a crime. That involves not only identifying the culprits, but also ensuring that those innocent do not suffer loss of liberty and reputation in this process. While Shah had the BJP machinery supporting him during this arduous process, he did lose his liberties for a long period of time readers may remember he was exiled from Gujarat before he was ultimately absolved of all charges against him. The Congress partys motive behind the anything-that-can-stick approach is not justice. It never was, as is clear from the judgment by special CBI Judge MB Gosavi dated 30 December, 2014 wherein he found substance in Shahs contention that he was dragged in the fake encounter cases by the CBI for political reasons. In his testimony, Tamgadge relies solely on the fact that the call data records between Shah who then was the Gujarat Minister of State for Home Affairs and the other accused IPS officers established that they conspired to commit the offence. The special CBI judge rubbished this contention stating that, in times of heightened security and constant fears of terrorism, there was nothing adverse about a home minister keeping track of the work of police officers. Unsatisfied with this order, and unsurprisingly so, Harsh Mandar, a former member of the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC), filed a petition in the Bombay High Court to challenge the special court judgment. The Bombay High Court dismissed Mandars challenge stating that it indicated a "lack of bonafides." The high court further observed, in paragraph 42 of its order, that "criminal law cannot be permitted to be used as an instrument to wreck vengeance due to personal or political grudge or to spite the accused for any other oblique purpose." Mandar's petition wasn't merely called out for addressing his political grudge. The Bombay High Court noted that, while several other accused were also discharged by the special CBI judge, Mandar sought to only challenge the discharge of Shah. The "social interest and responsibility" proclaimed by Mandar, as per Bombay High Court [Paragraph 42], was restricted only to Shah and not to others. The Bombay HC judgment, which is worth a read to understand the motives of the Congress party and its ecosystem to somehow nail Shah, can be found here. Mandar then filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the Bombay High Court. The apex court rejected the arguments made by senior Congress leader and advocate Kapil Sibal, who was representing Mandar in the case. The court said it saw no reason to entertain this petition. Media reports have attempted to portray deposition given by Tamgadge as if Shah is still not absolved of these accusations. Furthermore, this deposition is a part of an ongoing trial against three other IPS officers Ashish Pandya, NH Dabhi and GS Rao who continue to face trial. Given the fact that Tamgadge was a part of the probe team which filed a chargesheet against Shah and the IPS officers during UPA rule in 2012 when the CBI was famously referred to as a caged parrot it is obvious that he will continue to maintain the same stand so as to not contradict himself. However his stand, by any stretch of imagination, is not conclusive evidence of guilt. Indeed, in a democratic system, a court of law weighs evidence against the defence proffered by the accused to adjudicate guilt. The fact is that Shah and a few IPS officers, initially accused, have been absolved not merely by the CBI special court, but attempts to reopen that acquittal have been thwarted by the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court of India. The desperation shown by the Congress party by regurgitating allegations which have attained judicial finality shows that the goal of this political witch-hunt is to somehow hope for something to stick, either in the judicial process or in the minds of voters. Instead of being a force to reckon with as an Opposition party in view of BJPs electoral dominance over the past five years, the Congress party resorts to recycled lies and fabrications. That the intensity of its clinging to the most absurd and stale allegations is directly proportional to its fading electoral fortunes speaks volumes about the state of the Opposition today. The Shiv Sena in the Saamana article claimed that the party is not travelling to Ayodhya from Maharashtra and the rest of the country for politics. It is instead going with the same reverence that Narendra Modi has when travelling to Nepal's Pashupati temple. The Shiv Sena on Friday launched a fresh attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party over the Ram temple issue, and asked the saffron party to reveal the construction date of the Ram temple in Ayodhya instead of using the Sena's visit to the city as a distraction. In an article titled, ' ?, (Why don't you tell us when you are going to construct the Ram Mandir? We are on our way to Ayodhya)', which was published in the Sena mouthpiece Saamana, Sena accused its ally of putting unnecessary terms and conditions on party chief Uddhav Thackeray's 25 November visit when the BJP does its religious pitch be it in "Nepal or in Varanasi" without any fuss. The article noted that the BJP should stop raising questions about the Sena's intentions, and accused the BJP of conspiring against its ally. The Sena claimed that the party is not travelling to Ayodhya from Maharashtra and the rest of the country for politics. "Begging for votes in the name of Ram and chanting 'Jai Shri Ram' just as election season rolls around such tricks are not in our blood." The party also claimed that it is not sloganeering 'Chalo Ayodhya', but has called everyone to the city for Ram darshan. "We are going to Ayodhya with the same reverence with which Prime Minister Narendra Modi goes to Nepal's Pashupatinath temple, and Varanasi's Ganga aarti," it said. Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray in October had announced, during the Shiv Sena's Vijayadashmi rally, that he will visit Ayodhya on 25 November and "question" Modi on the construction of the Ram temple. The announcement and the visit itself has put pressure on the Centre, which has promised a temple, but has not yet announced a date by when it will start construction. Since the announcement, the walls of cities and districts in and around Ayodhya have been plastered with saffron-coloured posters, saying, Chalo Ayodhya (Let's go to Ayodhya) with an image of Lord Rama standing with a bow and arrows. Some posters also call for Shankhnaad (war cry) against the idleness of governments for Ram Temple construction. The party on Tuesday had said there will be no public rally in the state, but reports have said that this is because the Uttar Pradesh government has not yet granted the Sena permission for it. Thackeray's close aide Harshal Pradhan, however, announced on Wednesday that the Sena chief will take part in rituals near the Sarayu river and address sainiks and others present at the venue. Pradhan said that Thackeray will also carry soil from Shivneri fort, the birthplace of Maratha warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji, to Ayodhya during his visit. "Shivaji Maharaj is an idol not only for the Sena but for the entire country. Balasaheb Thackeray (late Sena patriarch) had always striven to work in accordance with his ideals, which Uddhav continues to do now. Uddhav will carry the soil from Shivneri fort with him in an urn to Ayodhya as Chhatrapati Shivaji's blessings and also because the issue of Ram temple is very close to his heart," he said. Indo-Asian News Service Human rights activists have slammed social networking giant Facebook for failing to remove a post in which a South Sudanese man auctioned his 17-year-old daughter to the highest bidder as a child bride, the media reported. At least five men, including the region's deputy general, participated in the bidding of the teenager, the Inquisitr reported on Thursday. A man with eight other wives won the bid and paid the girl's father 500 cows, two luxury cars, two bikes, a boat, mobile phones and $10,000 in cash. "A 16-year-old South Sudanese girl was sold off for marriage to the highest bidder on Facebook in November and a businessman from #SouthSudan outbid four others - which included a senior Sudanese government official," the AfricanFeminism said in a tweet late Wednesday. The viral Facebook post was "the biggest test of child abuse, trafficking and auctioning of a human being", said Philips Anyang Ngong, a human rights lawyer who tried to stop the girl's sale. He called for all of those involved, including Facebook, to be held responsible. Human rights organisation Plan International South Sudan has also condemned the use of the social media site for the girl's auction, and compared it to modern-day slavery, the report said. "This barbaric use of technology is reminiscent of latter-day slave markets," George Otim, the organisation's director for South Sudan, was quoted as saying. "That a girl could be sold for marriage on the world's biggest social networking site in this day and age is beyond belief." The Human Rights Watch in a 2015 report, noted that 40 per cent of girls in sub-Saharan Africa marry before they turn 18. It added that 15 of the 20 countries with the highest rates of child marriage are in Africa. The rates are especially high in some countries, with 77 per cent of girls in Niger being married before they are 18 and 60 percent in Central African Republican and Chad. "Without significant actions to curb the practice, the number of girls married as children is expected to double by 2050," the report noted. Earlier this month, Facebook was accused of encouraging grooming by offering teenage girls middle-aged men as 'friend suggestions'. Teenage girls, as young as 13-year-olds, who join the social network are given up to 300 suggestions for who they can add as friends, some of which include middle-aged men who are topless in their profile photos. Facebook has said that was not a typical experience for teenagers for signing up for the service and that it has safeguards built into its recommendation system. The Associated Press Facebooks outgoing head of communications is taking the blame for hiring Definers, the public relations firm doing opposition research on the companys critics, including billionaire philanthropist George Soros. In a Facebook post that went up late Wednesday, Elliot Schrage said the responsibility to hire Definers rests with him and that he approved the decision to hire it and similar firms. Schrage provided his explanation in a message sent Tuesday to Facebooks employees, but the company waited until late Wednesday to publicly share it at a time when most people in its home country were focusing on the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also didnt mention Schrages role in hiring and working with Definers in an interview with CNN aired late Tuesday. Definers link to the Menlo Park, California, company was exposed in a story published by The New York Times earlier this month. Schrage has been at Facebook for a decade and announced his departure in June. In the post, he acknowledges that Facebook asked Definers to do work on Soros after he called Facebook a menace to society in a January speech. Definers also helped respond to what Schrage described as unfair claims about the company. Even so, Schrage conceded that Definers got carried away in its work to discredit Facebooks critics. The system he set up on the companys communications team failed here and Im sorry I let you all down, he wrote. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebooks chief operating officer, followed up with Schrages note of contrition with one of her own, acknowledging her responsibility for overseeing Facebooks communications team. Like Schrage, Sandberg was a top executive at Google before coming to Facebook a decade ago. Sandberg said she did not remember Definers when she the Times article, but said she then asked employees to double check if she had ever been notified about the firm. Some of their work was incorporated into materials presented to me and I received a small number of emails where Definers was referenced, Sandberg wrote. Zuckerberg, who is Facebooks controlling shareholder as well as its CEO, is standing behind Sandberg, despite the backlash caused by the companys retention of Definers and its campaign against Soros. He told CNN on Tuesday that he hopes to work with Sandberg for decades to come. Facebook stopped working with Definers after the New York Times investigation unveiled its tactics. Press Trust of India Xiaomi Thursday said rupee's slide against the US dollar is adding to pricing pressure for the Chinese tech major in India, particularly in the handset market that is witnessing stiff competition. Xiaomi, earlier this month, hiked prices of two of its handsets Redmi 6 and Redmi 6A as well as that of power banks and some television sets on account of the depreciation of the rupee against the greenback. "The rupee has depreciated by about 15 percent since the beginning of the year. While we do make our phones and power banks in India but raw material and PCBA (printed circuit board assembly) is bought in dollars. "This (depreciation) is adding pressure on us... we want to continue to offer 'honest' pricing to customers," Xiaomi Vice-President and India Managing Director Manu Jain told reporters here. To offset the impact, prices of various products were raised ranging from Rs 100 to Rs 2,000 with effect from 11 November. In April this year, Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun had said the company will keep its net profit margin at under 5 percent to earn the "long-term support" of its customers. India is a key market for Xiaomi and the company is aggressively ramping up its product portfolio and offline presence (through Mi Homes, Mi Preferred Partners and Mi Stores) as it aims to continue its dominance in the Indian market. As per research firm IDC, Xiaomi led the intensely competitive Indian smartphone market with 27.3 percent share, followed by Samsung (22.6 percent share), Vivo (10.5 percent), Micromax (6.9 percent) and Oppo (6.7 percent). Xiaomi Thursday launched its Redmi Note 6 Pro -- priced Rs 13,999 onwards -- that features artificial intelligence-powered quad-camera setup. Successor to its Note 5 Pro, the latest device comes with 6.26-inch display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 octa-core processor, 64GB internal memory and 4,000 mAh battery. It will come in two variants 4GB and 6GB RAM. "With each generation, we have improved the overall smartphone experience and brought the best specs together be it battery, camera or performance. Redmi Note 6 Pro provides meaningful upgrades to the bestselling Redmi Note 5 Pro," Xiaomi India Chief Marketing Officer Anuj Sharma said. Reports have suggested that the attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi was targeted, as three to four suspected terrorists were seen trying to enter the building, and are suspected to still be inside. The police have cordoned off the entire street. Two policemen were killed and one was severely injured near the Chinese consulate at Clifton Block 4 in Pakistan's Karachi after armed gunmen tried to storm the premises, according to media reports on Friday. Deputy Inspector General (DIG) South Karachi Javed Alam Odho told Geo News that three terrorists were also killed in the attack. An explosive vest was recovered from one of the terrorists, he added. The Chinese foreign ministry condemned the attack and said that all staff working in Chinas consulate are now safe. India's Ministry of External Affairs also did the same and tweeted: "we condole the loss of lives in this dastardly attack. There can be no justification whatsoever for any act of terrorism." Three to four gunmen tried to enter the consulate but were intercepted by security guards at a checkpoint, Odho told AFP. There was a severe gunfight which resulted in "killing two of our constables and critically wounding another", he said. He added that the group "ran away" but did not confirm if the attack was over, saying the area had been cordoned off and security forces were conducting a clearing operation. Assistant superintendent of police Suhai Aziz Talpur was among the first to rush to the Chinese consulate, Geo News reported. The attack was claimed by a separatist militant group from Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan, which is at the centre of a major Chinese investment project in the country. "We have carried out this attack and our action is continuing," the spokesman for the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), Geand Baloch, told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location. The BLA is just one of the militant groups operating in Balochistan, Pakistan's largest and poorest province, which is rife with ethnic, sectarian and separatist insurgencies. The attack comes days before IDEAS, an annual defence seminar and exhibition in Pakistan which will be held from 27 to 30 November this year in the port city. Politicians condemn attack Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan took to Twitter to condemn the attack. I am absolutely clear both these attacks are part of a planned campaign to create unrest in the country by those who do not want Pakistan to prosper. Let there be no doubt in anyone's mind that we will crush the terrorists, whatever it takes. https://t.co/AhPpjsUGEq Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) November 23, 2018 Sindh chief minister Syed Murad Ali Shah also took notice of the attack, and directed authorities to ensure the security of the consulate staff, Geo News reported. Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi also spoke to media, and said all staff members of the Chinese consulate are safe. The country's foreign office condemned the attack on Twitter. We condemn the attack on #Chinese Consulate in Karachi. Security forces took charge. 3 terrorists killed. All Chinese safe. #Pakistan #China #LonglivePakistanChinaFrienship Dr Mohammad Faisal (@DrMFaisal) November 23, 2018 Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf leader Faisal Vawda also visited the site of the incident. Potential inks to CPEC Khan said that the attack is a reaction to the unprecedented trade agreements that came of his trip to China. The failed attack against the Chinese Consulate was clearly a reaction to the unprecedented trade agreements that resulted from our trip to China. The attack was intended to scare Chinese investors and undermine CPEC. These terrorists will not succeed. Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) November 23, 2018 Foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Opposition Leader in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif said on Friday that the attack was perpetrated by elements who wanted to sabotage Pakistan-China relations and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Qureshi and Sharif were speaking on the floor of the National Assembly following the attack. This project (CPEC) is providing economic activity which is not bearable for many. They do not want peace and economic prosperity in Pakistan, Qureshi said, adding: I want to tell those elements that Pak-China friendship is strong and we have the will and capability to tackle their nefarious designs." Qureshi also paid tribute to the two policemen who were martyred foiling the attack. According to the foreign minister, two other attackers were killed by snipers before they could enter the consular section. The terrorists wanted to create a hostage situation but their plan was foiled. There were about 21 Chinese staff members at the consulate and they are all safe and shifted to a safe location, Qureshi told the National Assembly. China, one of Pakistan's closest allies, has poured billions into the South Asian country in recent years as part of a massive infrastructure project that seeks to connect its western province Xinjiang with the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar. The project, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, is one of the largest projects in Beijing's "One Belt One Road" initiative, comprising a network of roads and sea routes involving 65 countries. But for Pakistan, participating in the project presents an enormous challenge in a country plagued by weak institutions, endemic corruption and a range of insurgencies in areas slated to host the corridor. The subject of economic dividends from CPEC is extremely sensitive in some of the areas the corridor will run through particularly in resource-rich Balochistan. Since the beginning of the project militants have repeatedly attacked construction sites and targeted Chinese workers. Karachi, Pakistan's largest city and a financial hub, was for years rife with political, sectarian and ethnic militancy. A crackdown in the city by security forces in recent years has brought a lull in violence, but scattered attacks still take place. With inputs from agencies By Ori Lewis JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Lawyers launched a class action lawsuit in Israel on Thursday against Airbnb, accusing the company of 'outrageous discrimination' and demanding monetary damages after it withdrew listings of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The San Francisco-based company said this week it was removing listings of around 200 homes in settlements after hearing criticism from people who 'believe companies should not profit on lands where people have been displaced. Through her attorneys, Ma'anit Rabinovich from the West Bank settlement of Kida, who offers guest room rentals, said the move 'represents especially grave, offensive and outrageous discrimination.' Rabinovich claimed 15,000 shekels ($2,573) in personal damages By Ori Lewis JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Lawyers launched a class action lawsuit in Israel on Thursday against Airbnb, accusing the company of "outrageous discrimination" and demanding monetary damages after it withdrew listings of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The San Francisco-based company said this week it was removing listings of around 200 homes in settlements after hearing criticism from people who "believe companies should not profit on lands where people have been displaced. Through her attorneys, Ma'anit Rabinovich from the West Bank settlement of Kida, who offers guest room rentals, said the move "represents especially grave, offensive and outrageous discrimination." Rabinovich claimed 15,000 shekels ($2,573) in personal damages. The class action lawsuit would seek an as yet unspecified sum on behalf of others in the same situation, according to court papers presented at Jerusalem District Court. "The company's decision is in effect directed solely against Israeli citizens living in the settlements, the petitioner claims, and this is severe, especially outrageous discrimination," Rabinovich's lawyers said in a statement. "(It is) part of the long war being conducted by organisations (of which a clear majority are anti-Semitic) against the State of Israel in its entirety, and against Israelis living in settlements in particular." Palestinians who want to establish an independent state taking in the West Bank have welcomed Airbnb's move. Most world powers view Israel's construction of settlements on occupied Palestinian land as a violation of international law, and Palestinians say it is wrong for companies to profit from them. "Airbnb took a decision in the right direction to stop dealings with Israeli settlements, consistent with international legitimacy," Wasel Abu Youssef, a senior official with the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organisation, told Reuters. Representatives of Airbnb were not immediately available for comment on the lawsuit. In a statement emailed to Reuters on Tuesday, Chris Lehane, Airbnb's global head of policy and communications, said: "Israel is a special place and our over 22,000 hosts are special people who have welcomed hundreds of thousands of guests to Israel. "We understand that this is a hard and complicated issue and we appreciate everyone's perspective." Airbnb's delisting applies only to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, where Palestinians have limited self rule under Israeli military occupation. It does not apply to Israel itself, or East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, territories Israel has annexed without international recognition. Israel withdrew settlers from another Palestinian territory, the Gaza Strip, more than a decade ago. Israel strongly objects to international boycotts, including boycotts of the settlements, which it views as discriminatory. A 2017 Israeli law empowers courts to award cash compensation to claimants who prove they have been denied goods or services because of where they live. (Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Peter Graff) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. India has the option of raising the issue in a very big way at international forums, and in a sustained manner. One-off support only worsens the situation Breaking news indicates that the Chinese embassy in Karachi was attacked by three fighters of the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) who, at of the time of writing, killed at least two policemen guarding the embassy and were killed themselves by alert security guards. The BLA has long been engaged in a fight against Chinese occupation of its land, and in a statement released after the attack, the group warned against Chinese expansionist endeavours on Baloch soil. Prime Minister Imran Khan unsurprisingly called it a conspiracy against Pakistan-Chinese friendship. Its not that simple. And it is unlikely that Beijing will see it in quite so linear a fashion either. A brief recap is in order for those who have only a smattering of facts about the whole situation. The Baloch have been angry for some time, some seven decades in fact. The insurgency began in 1947, when Pakistan forcibly took over the state of the Khan of Kalat, after promising them special status and freedom. The Baloch flag flew for 227 days before a Pashtun Major General of the Pakistan Army brought it to heel. Four other iterations of insurgency followed, indicating that the Baloch were far from being broken. The ongoing fight is sometimes called the Fifth Insurgency, though it could well have its own period, given a shift in character to a more popular, less clan-based fight. The insurgency has always been about freedom from Punjab-dominated Pakistan, and in more recent days about the Chinese occupation of large parts of the province through the mega project that is the Gwadar Deep Sea port. This project, which includes an entire city, highways and parallel infrastructure has not benefited the Baloch at all. With poor education facilities, they dont have the capability to compete for even mid-level jobs, let alone the plum posts. Of the $46 billion so often talked about as China-Pakistan Economic Corridor investments, a mere Rs 200 million has been allotted for a water desalination plant, which has yet to start. Promised hospitals with an allocation of Rs 100 million are also yet to take off. The fisherfolk who lived here had to leave their homes to make for the new facilities. Its no wonder then that the Baloch see the Chinese as colonisers. Theres more. Balochistan is not just the largest, but also the richest in terms of resources. Apart from the Gwadar port, the 770-kilometre coastline is home to three more ports, including the Naval installations at Ormara and Pasni. The province also holds the countrys largest gas reserves with just one, the Sui gas fields alone producing some 18 percent of total production. But heres the rub. The province consumes about 1.5 percent of all this largesse. Baloch leaders have cried in vain for a share of their own riches. The UNDP Human Development Index cites the province as far, far below the standards of Punjab or Sindh, with all but three districts falling under the low or very low category of development. Balochistan is valuable to Pakistan in other ways. It is home to Pakistans nuclear warhead and missile testing centres at Chagai and Wazir Khan Khosa test site, and the Somniani test range among others. Even more interesting, there are several tunnels dug deep into the rugged mountains of the Ras Koh range. Here, several hundred kilometres from the Indian border are hidden Pakistans warhead storage sites. One would think that a province that holds such riches would receive some care and attention from Islamabad. What it receives instead is a series of bloody counter-terrorism operations in which hundreds of Baloch youth have simply disappeared. That knock in the night is a very real fear in Baloch lands. The resistance is formed of at least five different groups, of whom one is the BLA. The best word for BLA is amorphous. No one really knows who the leaders are, though names like that of Jeeyand Baloch, cited as a spokesperson, and anonymous Twitter accounts like that of Jahan Baloch are the only evidence of the groups activities. One earlier video showed a pathetically bespectacled youth with a weapon, waving goodbye before he launched an attack on a Pakistani Army convoy. Its hard not to sympathise. Which is what Indians have always done. In his Independence Day speech however, Prime Minister Narendra Modi openly thanked the Baloch for their good wishes. That riled Pakistan no end. The Chinese know all this and more. Particularly since there have been 12 attacks this year against CPEC related projects. The group has also addressed a letter to the Chinese ambassador, warning him against exploitation of Balochistan. The trouble is that the province is important to the Chinese too. Without the access to the sea through Gwadar, the CPEC makes little sense: after all, a corridor cant lead to a dead end. Beijing has since adopted three different strategies. First, it has leaned heavily on the Pakistanis, leading to some 17,000 security personnel being deployed to guard the Chinese. In July, army chief Raheel Sharif promised 4,000 more. Second, rumours have it that the Chinese ambassador insists on extraordinary access to official meetings discussing terrorist threats. Better to be warned, than sorry. Third, the Chinese very typically, do their own reaching out to all sides wherever it sinks in money. This has ensured them a degree of protection so far. Clearly, that period is now over. Islamabad is in for a bad time, since Beijing is likely to view the attack on its embassy very seriously, and demand better protection. Pakistani intelligence will do their very best to blame it on Indian interference, and such accusations can be expected over the next few days. Neither is likely to give a thought to addressing the very real tragedy that is Balochistan. New Delhi may as well keep silent. The Baloch have time and time again appealed for help and received nothing much in return. India has the option of raising the issue in a very big way at international forums, and in a sustained manner. One-off support only worsens the situation, with more Baloch being arrested as Indian agents. Meanwhile, there is some light ahead. Just a week ago, Pashtun students, also fighting the brutal tactics of the Pakistan Army, swore to support their Baloch brethren in their fight. If this fructifies, things can only get more interesting. Finally, the Baloch may not be alone. Attorney General Jaundy Martin delivering remarks at the Bar/Medical Associations sponsored symposium in which he made a startling revelation about professionals here. There are professionals in the country who are not paying the required annual fee that allows them to practise in their respective fields. This was disclosed by Attorney General Jaundy Martin on Friday 16h November, as he addressed the opening ceremony of a two-day (Nov.16, 17) symposium on sexual assault in the region, organized by the SVG Medical and Bar Associations. The symposium was held at the National Insurance Services (NIS) conference room in Kingstown. According to Martin, the law requires professionals to pay an annual fee; however, the records show that this is often not paid. This non-compliance, he proffered, could be as a result of the state treating the licencing fee as a revenue measure, rather than as a requirement for the continuation of practice. "In Barbados, to continue to receive recognition as a practitioner, this fee must be paid, and the individual receives a certificate that qualifies you to continue to practise, the AG continued. Rene Baptiste, former Government Minister, Attorney and President of the SVG Bar Association, while saying that she was not prepared to make a formal statement on the AGs comment, confirmed that under the Professions Licensing Act, all professionals were required to pay a fee. This, she said, ranged between EC$600 and $1,080 annually, and covers all professionals including accountants, architects, engineers. Even auctioneers were subjected to paying a fee under the Act, Baptiste added. The observation of the Attorney General came more than a year after Prime Minister and then Minister of Finance Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, in delivering his 2017 Buidget Address, appealed to professionals to pay their annual licence fees, and reminded them that failure so to do was an offence punishable by imprisonment. The appeal came on the heels of an increase in the VAT registration threshold to $300,000 which, according to Dr. Gonsalves, meant that many professionals who are required to pay the licence fee in accordance with the Professions Licensing Act (Cap 377), will not have to charge VAT on services they deliver to their clients. In that light, Dr. Gonsalves said it was simply the right thing to ask these professionals to cushion the revenue loss that would be occasioned by the increase in the VAT registration threshold. He proceeded in that Budget to increase the fees payable under the Professions Licensing Act by 20%. And in emphasising the importance of compliance with the dictates of the Professions Licensing Act, the Prime Minister promised then that Government will introduce legislation "to initiate a process leading to the possible suspension of the licence of persons who refuse to pay the licence fee or are in arrears in excess of one year. It appears, against the backdrop of what the Attorney General said, that the situation remains as it was in 2017. KINSHASA (Reuters) - Candidates launched their campaigns on Thursday for a Dec. 23 election that could usher in the first democratic transfer of power in the Democratic Republic of Congo. KINSHASA (Reuters) - Candidates launched their campaigns on Thursday for a Dec. 23 election that could usher in the first democratic transfer of power in the Democratic Republic of Congo. President Joseph Kabila, who has ruled the vast country since his father's assassination in 2001, is backing his former interior minister Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary in the presidential race against a fractured opposition. "We are sure we will win, by what margin is up to the people. It is enough to look at our adversaries to understand we will win for sure," government spokesman Lambert Mende said. Campaigning officially kicked off at midnight, after which Kabila, Shadary and coalition members held a meeting at the president's farm outside the capital, Kinshasa, on Thursday. The election had been meant to happen before Kabila's mandate expired in 2016, but has been delayed for so long that many doubted it would ever take place. Questions remain over how it will be conducted. Opposition groups have harshly criticised a new system with electronic voting machines, which they say are more vulnerable to vote-rigging than paper and ink and could be compromised by the unreliability of Congo's power supply. On Thursday, the head of the electoral commission (CENI) said 70 percent of the "kits and electoral material" had reached their destinations and that the rest were expected to arrive no later than Dec. 7. The opposition is in disarray after a deal to support a single candidate collapsed last week as a result of two opposition leaders, Felix Tshisekedi and Vital Kamerhe, pulling out. Those two are expected to announce a joint candidacy between their parties in coming days. Remaining members of the opposition are backing businessman Martin Fayulu. Speaking at the airport on his return to Kinshasa on Wednesday, Fayulu reiterated his opposition to the new voting system. "Our objective is to achieve credible elections, that is elections with paper ballots without voting machines, with a clear and clean electoral list so that ... results are in accordance with (the people's) vote," he told a cheering crowd. On his way into town later he was welcomed by thousands of supporters. Over 46 million people are registered to vote, but nearly seven million of these have been disbarred over issues with their credentials, the CENI said on Thursday, without giving further details. The electoral campaign will officially end at midnight on Dec. 21. (Reporting by Giulia Paravicini; Editing by Alessandra Prentice and Andrew Roche) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Trump also said the US is currently in 'very, very strong negotiations' regarding Afghanistan. 'We are talking about peace,' he said, without explicitly confirming if those talks were directly with the Taliban. Palm Beach: US President Donald Trump has hinted he might soon visit American troops in Afghanistan for the first time. Addressing service members in a Thanksgiving telephone conference on Thursday, the president told one colonel deployed to the country: "I'll see you back when you're in the United States or maybe I'll see you over there." Questioned later by journalists on whether he would make the trip, the president simply said: "At the appropriate time, we'll be doing some very interesting thing." While 14,000 US military personnel remain deployed in Afghanistan 17 years after the war began in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks, the Republican president has yet to make a visit after nearly two years in office. Presidential trips to conflict zones are usually kept secret until the last minute. Trump also said the US is currently in "very, very strong negotiations" regarding Afghanistan. "We are talking about peace," he said, without explicitly confirming if those talks were directly with the Taliban. "If something happens, that would be a great thing. I would be very happy about that," he added. The Taliban say they have had at least three meetings with US officials in Qatar in recent months, but the US has neither confirmed nor denied these direct talks. The US special adviser to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, said recently he was cautiously optimistic about the possibility of a peace agreement ahead of the country's election on 20 April. CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt revealed on Thursday that it was holding the daughter of Muslim Brotherhood leader Khairat al-Shater and five other people, three weeks after family members say they disappeared in a new government crackdown. The state security prosecutor ordered Aisha al-Shater and the other five to be held for 15 days pending an investigation on charges including membership in a terrorist organisation, state news agency MENA said CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt revealed on Thursday that it was holding the daughter of Muslim Brotherhood leader Khairat al-Shater and five other people, three weeks after family members say they disappeared in a new government crackdown. The state security prosecutor ordered Aisha al-Shater and the other five to be held for 15 days pending an investigation on charges including membership in a terrorist organisation, state news agency MENA said. Human Rights Watch said on Sunday that Egyptian police and security forces had conducted a mass arrest campaign, rounding up at least 40 political activists, lawyers and human rights workers since late October. Security forces carrying out the arrests presented no warrants, and families were not told where the detainees were being held, the New York-based rights watchdog said. Among the others whose detentions were revealed on Thursday along with Shater was Hoda Abd al-Moneim, a 60-year-old lawyer and Brotherhood member. Her family said in a statement they saw her early on Thursday at the state security prosecution office "after 21 days of enforced disappearance by the Egyptian authorities". Her daughters were "shocked to find that Hoda, a 60-year old mother and grandmother, was in a dire health condition with clear signs of weight loss, psychological trauma, severe signs of instability and shock," the statement said. "She couldn't give a reason for her condition to her family members." The interior ministry was not immediately available to comment. Abd al-Moneim's daughter Gihad Badawy told Reuters earlier this month that security forces took her mother away without presenting an arrest warrant, and that the family had no idea where she was being held. The lawyer had previously had a blood clot in her leg but was not allowed to bring her medicine with her when she was detained. The six people will now be held in custody for the next 15 days. After that, they could either be held longer or released. The Brotherhood, a decades-old Islamist political movement with a mass following, won the first free elections after the 2011 uprising that ended autocrat Hosni Mubaraks 30-year rule, but was toppled by the army after a year in power. Since then, the group has been banned and hundreds of its followers have been jailed. The Brotherhood says it is a non-violent movement and denies any relationship to violent insurgencies waged by al Qaeda and Islamic State militants. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's supporters say a government crackdown on his opponents aims to keep Egypt stable after years of political and economic turmoil following the 2011 revolt. (Reporting by Amina Ismail, Ahmed Mohamed Hassan and Haitham Ahmed; Writing by Lena Masri; Editing by Peter Graff) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. LONDON (Reuters) - Britain and the European Union agreed a draft text setting out a close post-Brexit relationship, though wrangles over fish and the future of Gibraltar must still be settled before leaders meet on Sunday. Below are initial reactions from lawmakers who are unhappy with the deal within Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative Party and the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) which props up her minority government: Former foreign minister Boris Johnson in parliament: 'Nothing in this political declaration changes the hard reality of the withdrawal agreement, that gives the EU a continuing veto over the unilateral power of the entire United Kingdom to do trade deals or take back control of our laws. 'We should junk forthwith the backstop, upon which the future economic partnership.. LONDON (Reuters) - Britain and the European Union agreed a draft text setting out a close post-Brexit relationship, though wrangles over fish and the future of Gibraltar must still be settled before leaders meet on Sunday. Below are initial reactions from lawmakers who are unhappy with the deal within Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative Party and the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) which props up her minority government: Former foreign minister Boris Johnson in parliament: "Nothing in this political declaration changes the hard reality of the withdrawal agreement, that gives the EU a continuing veto over the unilateral power of the entire United Kingdom to do trade deals or take back control of our laws. "We should junk forthwith the backstop, upon which the future economic partnership... is to be based and which makes a complete nonsense of Brexit." Former Brexit minister Dominic Raab in parliament: The backstop ties the UK to the customs union and single market rules with no voice and an EU veto over our exit while paragraph 23 of the political declaration makes that the starting point for future relations to build on. "The top reason people voted to leave the EU was to take back democratic control over our laws. Isnt it the regrettable but inescapable reality that this deal gives even more away?" The DUP's Jeffrey Donaldson said in parliament: "There are alternative arrangements that can be put in place without the need for the backstop. "If she wants to have the support of my party for the withdrawal agreement, then we need to see an end of the backstop, and those alternative arrangements put in place." Conservative lawmaker Andrea Jenkyns on Twitter: "The British people are not stupid. There will be a backlash if we deliver a deal such as this." Conservative lawmaker Priti Patel: "Everything the EU wanted from the negotiations has ended up in the Withdrawal Agreement which is a legally enforceable international treaty. "Thats why were going to stay in the EU customs union, remain subject to judgments of the European Court, imperil our Union and allow the EU to have a veto over when we can leave the backstop. "Everything the UK wanted has been put in an unenforceable, meaningless declaration. And its cost us 39 (billion pounds). "This is a costly surrender by the UK Government. Conservative lawmaker Ranil Jayawardena: "This isn't a settlement; it's a surrender. "Instead of taking back control, we will be abandoning control over vast swathes of our social and economic policy - and we will be simply unable to agree the trade deals of tomorrow with the rest of the world. This 'deal' stops us seizing the benefits of Brexit, whilst shackling us to the worst parts of the EU." Conservative lawmaker Marcus Fysh on Twitter: "The PM's (Prime Minister's) proposed Withdrawal Agreement is terminally toxic to our democracy, and her proposals for the future relationship both make the Withdrawal Agreement even more toxic, and are as fanciful as they were at Chequers." Conservative lawmaker Sheryll Murray: "Lets be clear. This is a betrayal of Brexit. "In the EU referendum people voted to taken back control of our fish. Yet now the prime minister wants to commit us to stay in the Common Fisheries Policy in all but name. She seeks to enter a new fisheries agreement on access to waters and quota shares." Conservative lawmaker Conor Burns on Twitter: "Sadly the greatest mistake since June 2016 was charging people who didn't believe in Brexit with delivering Brexit. With great sadness I do not believe what is on offer is reconcilable with what people voted for. This is a bleak day for our country." (Reporting by William James and Kylie MacLellan; editing by Stephen Addison) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. By Gabriela Baczynska BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Here are key elements of a 26-page Political Declaration on EU-UK ties after Brexit, due to be approved by leaders on Sunday. The full text is here: https://www.consilium.europa.eu//media/37059/20181121-cover-political-declaration.pdf INTRODUCTION * The EU and UK aim for 'ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security ... By Gabriela Baczynska BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Here are key elements of a 26-page Political Declaration on EU-UK ties after Brexit, due to be approved by leaders on Sunday. The full text is here: https://www.consilium.europa.eu//media/37059/20181121-cover-political-declaration.pdf INTRODUCTION * The EU and UK aim for "ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security ... based on a balance of rights and obligations." They also commit to "safeguard the rules-based international order" -- a nod to challenges to global institutions from U.S. President Donald Trump and others -- as well as democracy, workers' rights and consumer and environmental protection. DATA PROTECTION Both commit to accept each other's data protection standards before transition ends in 2020 so as to maintain free data flow. EU PROGRAMMES Britain should be able to pay to take part in EU science, education, culture, defence and space programmes. The EU will look at its call to work with the European Investment Bank. BORDERS Customs procedures are inevitable but "comprehensive arrangements ... will create a free trade area, combining deep regulatory and customs cooperation, underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition." This language echoes British calls for open borders but also EU insistence that nothing can be as smooth as EU membership. "The Parties recall their determination to replace the backstop solution on Northern Ireland by a subsequent agreement that establishes alternative arrangements." "Facilitative arrangements and technologies" to be looked at to avoid a "hard border" between Ireland and Northern Ireland. No tariffs or quotas and "ambitious customs arrangements" to build on initial plan for Britain to stay in the EU customs union, which avoids the need to check where goods were made. "Liberalisation in trade in services well beyond the Parties' World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments and building on recent Union Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)." * Should "cover sectors including professional and business services, telecommunications services, courier and postal services, distribution services, environmental services, financial services, transport services and other." Equivalence arrangements for financial services regulation. Fair and equal access to each other's telecoms networks. Free movement of capital and payments. As Britain ends free movement for EU citizens, mobility to be regulated on reciprocal basis, with possibilities for easy border crossing, social security and family law coordination. TRANSPORT Plan for a deep accord on air passengers and cargo, comparable market access for road transport operators. ENERGY Considering cooperation on carbon pricing by linking a UK emissions trading system with the EU's ETS. FISHING Plan for a new fisheries agreement on access to waters and quota shares by July 2020. LEVEL-PLAYING FIELD * "Provisions to ensure this should cover state aid, competition, social and employment standards, environmental standards, climate change, and relevant tax matters." TRANSITION PERIOD * Separately, EU and UK would agree that the post-Brexit transition period could be extended once "for up to one or two years" and Britain would have to go on contributing to the bloc's budget accordingly. * The text also makes clear that Britain could choose to prolong its post-Brexit adaptation by any number of months within the two-year limit, not just by 12 or 24 months. SECURITY * EU, UK want "broad, comprehensive and balanced security partnership". * EU states and Britain will remain solely responsible for their own national security. OTHER * The sides want to ensure "passenger and cargo air connectivity" and provisions to mutually protect intellectual property rights. They want to grant visa-free travel rights on mutual basis for short trips. * The text does not mention the word "Gibraltar" at all. It will be covered in a separate statement at the summit. (Editing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Robin Pomeroy) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. A 34-year-old Indian-origin man based in Australia has been jailed for three weeks here for molesting a Singaporean cabin crew member on board a Singapore-bound flight, a media report said Friday Singapore: A 34-year-old Indian-origin man based in Australia has been jailed for three weeks here for molesting a Singaporean cabin crew member on board a Singapore-bound flight, a media report said Friday. Paranjape Niranjan Jayant, who works for a logistics firm, pleaded guilty to two charges of molestation of the 25-year-old flight attendant in August and had one charge taken into consideration for sentencing. During the eight-hour flight from Sydney to Singapore, Jayant approached the flight attendant a few times to ask for her phone number, but she ignored him. The business class passenger on board a Scoot flight also caressed the attendant's left hip, 'The Straits Times' reported. "Subsequently, during the flight, the accused went up to approach the victim at the front galley a few times to request the victim's phone number. The victim ignored these requests," said Deputy Public Prosecutor James Chew. The attendant moved away from him and he told her she was beautiful before returning to his seat. About an hour before landing, Jayant approached the woman and molested her again, the report said. The woman immediately alerted her supervisor. She later lodged a report at the Changi Airport Terminal 2 police post. Jayant, who was unrepresented, told District Judge Lim Tse Haw that he was intoxicated when he committed the offence and added, "I can't handle my drink". He also said he was remorseful and pleaded for leniency. For each count of molestation, he could have been jailed for up to two years and fined or caned. US President Donald Trump has said that the CIA did not blame Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for ordering the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Washington: US President Donald Trump has said that the CIA did not blame Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for ordering the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi was murdered on 2 October in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Officials told US media such an operation would have needed the prince's approval. "They didn't conclude," Trump said on Thursday when asked about the CIA's evaluation by reporters at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, BBC reported. "They have feelings certain ways. I have the report, they have not concluded, I don't know if anyone's going to be able to conclude the crown prince did it," he said. The president has repeatedly stressed the importance of Saudi Arabia to the US following the killing. Earlier this week, Trump released a statement suggesting that the crown prince "could very well" have known about the incident. His statement said: "(It) could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event - maybe he did and maybe he didn't!" On 17 November, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters that Trump had confidence in the CIA following conversations with Director Gina Haspel and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the Khashoggi murder. Sources quoted in the US media at the time stressed that there was no single piece of evidence linking the crown prince directly to the murder, but officials believed the killing would have required his endorsement. Saudi Arabia called the claim false and insisted that the crown prince knew nothing about plans for the killing. The Gulf kingdom's public prosecutor says Khashoggi was killed as a result of a "rogue operation". However, the Hurriyet newspaper reported on Thursday that Haspel told Turkish officials last month the CIA had a recording in which the crown prince gave instructions to "silence" the Saudi writer as soon as possible. When asked about the claims by reporters, Trump said: "I don't want to talk about it. You'll have to ask them." The Saudi crown prince left on a visit to "brotherly Arab states" on Thursday, Saudi state media reported, beginning a regional tour with the United Arab Emirates. It will be his first official trip abroad since Khashoggi was killed. The crown prince is also expected to participate in a G20 meeting of world leaders in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at the end of the month that will be attended by leaders from the US, Turkey and a number of European countries. Meanwhile, France has announced that it is imposing sanctions on 18 Saudi nationals the same individuals targeted with sanctions by the US, UK and Germany - allegedly linked to the Khashoggi murder. Their list of individuals does not include the crown prince, a spokesperson for the French ministry of foreign affairs said. By Ahmed Kingimi and Paul Carsten MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Militants killed around 100 Nigerian soldiers in an attack on an army base on Sunday, security sources said on Thursday, blaming Islamic State West Africa. The toll is among the highest since President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015 and it could raise pressure on him ahead of an election in February, not least because he has claimed victory over the nine-year insurgency. The insurgents attacked the base in the village of Metele in northeastern Borno state, the epicentre of a revolt by Boko Haram and its Islamic State splinter group. By Ahmed Kingimi and Paul Carsten MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Militants killed around 100 Nigerian soldiers in an attack on an army base on Sunday, security sources said on Thursday, blaming Islamic State West Africa. The toll is among the highest since President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015 and it could raise pressure on him ahead of an election in February, not least because he has claimed victory over the nine-year insurgency. The insurgents attacked the base in the village of Metele in northeastern Borno state, the epicentre of a revolt by Boko Haram and its Islamic State splinter group. "The insurgents took us unawares," said an officer who requested anonymity. "The base was burned with arms and we lost about 100 soldiers. It is a huge loss." Many troops are missing, the sources said. One soldier said more troops were killed on Tuesday when an attempt to recover bodies from the initial attack was ambushed. "We all flew because we didn't know where the bullets were coming from," he said. "They killed some of us who went to evacuate the bodies of the killed soldiers." "We left our amour, tanks and weapons. They were all there. The village is still under their control." Four security sources said around 100 died in Metele and the death toll was not final. The fifth said 96 died in the northeast in recent days, mostly in Metele. The senate, which is controlled by the opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP), on Thursday suspended its session in honour of what it said were 44 dead soldiers after the Metele attack. Opposition presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar, who is Buhari's main rival, called on the government to support the families of dead soldiers. A presidency spokesman said the military would issue a statement. Military spokesmen did not respond to requests for comment. The government and military often decline to acknowledge the scale of losses in the northeast. Militants have killed hundreds of soldiers in the region in recent months. (Reporting by Ahmed Kingimi in Maiduguri, Paul Carsten in Abuja; Additional reporting by Ola Lanre in Maiduguri and Camillus Eboh and Felix Onuah in Abuja; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Justice Brian Cottle made known to Antonio Que Pasa Gellizeau, that this recent delay was solely because of his appeal to the Privy Council. Confiscation proceedings against businessman Antonio Que Pasa Gellizeau have been further delayed, occasioned by an appeal to the Privy Council, through which Gellizeaus lawyers are challenging the decision of the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal to uphold his convictions on two money laundering charges. At a High Court hearing on Tuesday, Justice Brian Cottle granted an adjournment, requested by Gellizeaus lawyers, in relation to the confiscation matter. The fixing of the date for those proceedings will be determined by what transpires at the Privy Council in relation to Gellizeaus appeal in the criminal matter. Sonya Young, then Chief Magistrate, had committed Gellizeau to the High Court for sentencing after convicting him at the Serious Offences Court, March 2012, for bringing into the country, on the yacht Jotobin, April 2008, US$1.73 million in cash (approx. EC$5 million), the proceeds of his criminal conduct. Young also found him guilty of concealing the cash. Gellizeau was sentenced by the High Court on July 22, 2013, to ten years in prison on each charge, to run concurrently. He was released from prison November 8 this year after completing his sentence. Following the convictions in 2012, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in conjunction with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) prepared and filed an application for a confiscation order in relation to some EC$10 million assets, believed to be Gellizeaus proceeds of criminal conduct. The assets include cash, yachts, houses and vehicles. The confiscation matter was to form part of his sentencing hearing. However, Gellizeau had appealed his convictions, and that appeal was dismissed April last year by the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal, following which Gellizeau began efforts to challenge that decision, through the Privy Council. When the confiscation matter came up at the High Court on Tuesday, Trinidad and Tobagos Senior Counsel Gilbert Peterson, appearing for the Prosecution, told the Court, "Our Inquiries are that there are certain things to be done, and the Privy Council is requesting that they be done, and that has not been forthcoming by the other side. Samantha Robertson, instructing lawyer for Gellizeau, indicated that the application before the Privy Council was lodged since May this year, but the Privy Council requested additional documentation. When Justice Cottle inquired as to whether the Prosecution was informed that the application needed additional documentation, Robertson said all that was needed was some photo copies, and those will be filed this week. Cottle, however, questioned why it took so long for the Court to realize that the application was not properly before the Privy Council, and that other documentation was needed. "Somebody got the ball wrong, Robertson responded, adding, "We would have filed an application for an adjournment in this matter yesterday (Monday) substantiated by an affidavit. After granting the adjournment, Justice Cottle explained to Gellizeau that the necessary delay in the confiscation proceedings was based on his appeal to the Privy Council. Ousted Sri Lankan prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's alliance on Friday won control of a powerful panel in Parliament, dealing a major blow to President Maithripala Sirisena and his prime ministerial appointee Mahinda Rajapaksa. Colombo: Ousted Sri Lankan prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's alliance on Friday won control of a powerful panel in Parliament, dealing a major blow to President Maithripala Sirisena and his prime ministerial appointee Mahinda Rajapaksa. Sirisena's party members walked out of Parliament, which resumed its session on Friday after being adjourned on Monday, protesting against Speaker Karu Jayasuriya's move to appoint five members of the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) which is led by the President. The Speaker named five members from the United National Front (UNF) of Wickremesinghe, and one each from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). This is in continuation of the political unrest plaguing the country since 26 October. Both Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa claim to be the prime ministers. Wickremesinghe says his dismissal is invalid because he still holds a majority in the 225-member Parliament. Jayasuriya, at the start of the session, announced that following a meeting of all party leaders which ended without an agreement over the composition of the committee, he had decided to grant five members each to the UPFA and the UNF. The committee would comprise 12 members, he said. Senior UPFA member Dinesh Gunawardena slammed the speaker's conduct as biased. "I urge you to recognise us as the government and give us the majority in the select committee. "We have precedents that even during the minority governments in the past the government had been given majority in the select committee," he said. Lakshman Kiriella on behalf of the ousted government said that Jayasuriya has declared the members based on two previous votes that there was no government and the purported government does not exist. Wimal Weerawansa, another Sirisena backer, said that if Jayasuriya was not recognising the government, they would not recognise Jayasuriya as the Speaker. "We will leave the chamber allowing you to conduct a meeting of the United National Party," Weerawansa said and led Sirisena's side out of the chamber. Jayasuriya then proceeded to take a vote on his decision on the select committee composition after a vote was moved by JVP's Vijitha Herath. The proposal was adopted with 121 votes for and nothing against. The members of the UNF, Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and the Tamil National Alliance voted in favour. Sri Lanka is witnessing a political crisis since President Sirisena abruptly sacked Wickremesinghe on 26 October. Sirisena later dissolved Parliament, almost 20 months before its term was to end, and ordered snap election. The Supreme Court overturned Sirisena's decision to dissolve Parliament and halted the preparations for snap polls. Speaker Jayasuriya then ordered a floor test in the 225-member assembly to end the ongoing political crisis, a move which invited the wrath of the government of Rajapaksa. The UNF has already moved two motions of no trust against Rajapaksa and they are to move a third vote again, perhaps Friday. Rajapaksa, however, has refused to step down. On Wednesday, Wickremesinghe's party handed Parliament another motion, demanding suspension of funds of all ministry secretaries whom they claim had been illegally appointed since 26 October. Prince Mohammed will visit a 'number of brotherly' Arab states at the request of his father, King Salman, the royal court said in a statement Dubai: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has embarked on a regional tour starting with the United Arab Emirates, his first official trip abroad since critic Jamal Khashoggi's murder tipped the country into crisis. Prince Mohammed will visit a "number of brotherly" Arab states at the request of his father, King Salman, the royal court said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, without naming the countries. Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed welcomed him on his first stop in the UAE on Thursday, a close ally that is part of a Saudi-led coalition battling Iran-aligned Huthi rebels in Yemen, according to the Emirati state news agency WAM. The prince is also set to travel to the Tunisian capital on Tuesday, a presidential source in Tunis told AFP. The regional tour, just before the crown prince is expected to attend the G20 summit in Argentina next week, comes as international pressure has mounted on Riyadh over the grisly murder of Washington Post columnist Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October. The Saudi insider-turned-critic was killed and dismembered in what Saudi Arabia said was a "rogue" operation, but CIA analysis leaked to the US media pointed the finger at Prince Mohammed. US President Donald Trump on Tuesday glossed over the CIA's reported conclusion that the crown prince, the kingdom's de facto ruler, had authorised the killing. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could meet with Prince Mohammed on the sidelines of the G20 summit, according to Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin. Such a meeting would be the first face-to-face encounter between the two since the killing that has tainted the image of both the crown prince and the kingdom. Erdogan has said the order to murder Khashoggi came from "the highest levels" of the Saudi government but has stopped short of directly blaming Prince Mohammed. Saudi authorities are seeking the death penalty against five men over the killing, but international attention remains focused on the crown prince despite an official insistence that he was not involved. The European Union on Thursday called for those "really responsible" to be held to account. Calling for a "completely transparent and credible investigation", the EU's top diplomat Federica Mogherini said: "For us accountability does not mean revenge." Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Wednesday said criticism of Prince Mohammed is a "red line", and that calls for him to be held accountable for the murder would not be tolerated. Separately, the French foreign ministry said on Thursday that it would impose sanctions against 18 Saudi citizens over Khashoggi's murder. A Turkish newspaper reported on Thursday CIA director Gina Haspel signaled to Turkish officials last month that the agency had a recording of a call in which Saudi Arabia's crown prince gave instructions to 'silence' Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi Istanbul: A Turkish newspaper reported on Thursday CIA director Gina Haspel signaled to Turkish officials last month that the agency had a recording of a call in which Saudi Arabia's crown prince gave instructions to "silence" Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Asked about the report, a Turkish official told Reuters he had no information about such a recording. Saudi Arabia has said Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had no prior knowledge of Khashoggi's killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul six weeks ago. When asked about the recording by reporters in Florida, US President Donald Trump said, "I don't want to talk about it. You'll have to ask them." The CIA declined to comment when asked about the report. "There is talk of another recording," Hurriyet newspaper journalist Abdulkadir Selvi wrote in a column, saying the purported call took place between Prince Mohammed and his brother, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington. "It is being said that CIA chief Gina Haspel indicated this during her visit to Turkey," he wrote, adding that they had discussed Khashoggi, a critic of the kingdom's de facto ruler. "It is being said the crown prince gave orders to 'silence Jamal Khashoggi as soon as possible'," in a call which was monitored by the U.S. agency, he said. Khashoggi was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October in an operation that Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan has said was ordered by the highest level of Saudi leadership. After offering numerous contradictory explanations, Riyadh said last week Khashoggi had been killed and his body dismembered when negotiations to persuade him to return to Saudi Arabia failed. Trump said the CIA had not definitively concluded that the crown prince was responsible, and said he would stand by Saudi Arabias leadership because it was a key US ally. We want low oil prices and Saudi Arabia has really done a good job in that respect, Trump said. "I hate the crime. I hate what's done. I hate the cover up. And I tell you what: the crown print hates it more than I do," Trump said, without providing further detail. The Pentagon has finally floated an estimate for how much it will cost to set up Space Force. The amount is good news for supporters of President Donald Trump's plan to create a sixth branch of the armed forces. Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan on Nov. 15 told reporters that his team estimates the start-up costs for Space Force would be in the "single-digit" billions, and "could be" lower than $5 billion. That seems like a lot of money, but the estimate is well below Air Force projections for $13 billion in start-up costs. There is reason to be skeptical about any start-up cost estimate, and the administration has ample motivation to downplay the cost. The question of whether a Space Force is even needed is expected to be taken up by Democrats now in control of the House of Representatives. For defense investors, the update is a step in the right direction. While the cost and exact structure of Space Force is still up in the air, it seems increasingly likely that some sort of a new, space-focused organization will emerge from the effort. Shanahan said the Pentagon is already in the process of creating a unified Combatant Command for space and a development agency, with plans to pick leaders for the two groups in the months to come. Battling for turf The Air Force's initial estimate was greeted with significant skepticism when it was made public, as the Air Force today is where much of the Pentagon's space activities currently reside. The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center in southern California currently oversees about 85% of Department of Defense space procurement, including satellite acquisition and launches. Air Force officials including Sec. Heather Wilson have defended their estimate, saying that sum is what would be needed to realize the full scope of what President Trump has discussed. But critics note the estimate also includes a newly constructed headquarters and a total head count of about 13,000 highly paid engineers and support staff. Todd Harrison, director of budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., during a Sept. 20 news conference called the $13 billion figure "the highest estimate I think you could possibly come up with," noting it assumes building all new infrastructure and hiring a massive support staff from day one. The Air Force's goal in trumpeting a high cost figure is to point out that much of what Space Force is meant to accomplish could instead be done by existing organizations. Wilson seemingly has a sympathetic ear in Rep. Adam Smith, the Washington Democrat set to chair the House Armed Services Committee, who has said that the U.S. must expand its military capability in space but has questioned whether the creation of a new bureaucracy is necessary. Shanahan told reporters on Nov. 15 that his team is working to send a Space Force proposal to Congress by February that will "withstand the cost-scrutiny question." What's an investor to think? It's tempting to say the budget debate doesn't matter, because regardless of what becomes of Space Force, as Rep. Smith notes, space is going to be an area of priority for the Pentagon for years to come. The fiscal 2019 defense budget includes $9.3 billion for space programs, a jump from $7.8 billion in 2018, and top space contractors including Boeing (NYSE:BA), Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT), Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC), Raytheon (NYSE:RTN), and Harris (NYSE:LHX) should all benefit. It's also important to note that the divergent estimates are likely comparing different things. Wilson's is more of an all-in total, while Shanahan is likely excluding ancillary agencies, including the command and development agencies. But costs do matter. Every dollar that goes toward constructing a headquarters building or staffing a new bureaucracy is a dollar that can't go toward research and development or procurement. With the 2020 Pentagon budget expected to be flat at best, the industry has to worry about Defense officials borrowing from other areas to fund Space Force start-up costs. There is a risk that the creation of a new space-focused branch would temporarily depress procurement spending as the government focuses on getting the branch up and running. The best hope is that the public nature of this debate will increase scrutiny on Pentagon officials tasked with creating Space Force and help keep start-up spending to a minimum. This turf war is no reason for investors to avoid exploring space, because long term, the sector is a winner. Just be wary of wild estimates as the battle plays out. By Trend It is important to convert dollar funds accumulated in Azerbaijani banks into manats, Chairman of the Association of Banks of Azerbaijan (ABA) Zakir Nuriyev said at the 9th Azerbaijan Microfinance Conference in Baku on Nov. 22. Nuriyev said that it is also possible to conduct relevant swap operations. Presently, excessive liquidity in the Azerbaijani banks reaches about five billion manats, but there are difficulties with investing these funds in the development of the economy, he added. He also noted that conducting swap transactions, taking into account other factors, will be crucial in this direction. The 9th Azerbaijan Microfinance Conference took place in Baku on Nov. 22. By Azernews By Laman Ismayilova Rustam Huseynov is a truly extremely talented soul and this comes out through his works. Azerbaijani photographer successfully represented the country at Busan International Environment Arts Festival. The event displaying eco-friendly artwork brought together world-famous art professionals. Both works devoted to contemporary trends in visual art, as well as works on historical topics related to current events in different parts of the world. "The festival is one of the largest international festivals in Asia in the field of visual art," Rustam Huseynov told Azernews. The photographer brilliantly captured beautiful moments showing the wondrous diversity of old and new trends. "My work made a great impression, as it reflects the tendency of combining historical heritage and modernity, which is now popular around the world, including South Korea", said the photographer. His impressive works showcases his incredible talent, as well as his keen eye for capturing the captivating colors. So, there was no doubt that the works of national photographer would cause a great success among art connoisseurs. The art festival in the beautiful port town of Busan made a deep impression on him. The festival impressed the photographer with a huge number of participating countries. Undoubtedly, Rustam Huseynov took home wonderful memories from the festival. "The most pleasant impression for me was the exhibition catalogue, where my work looks both as an object of digital art and as a historical miniature at the same time," he said. Earlier, Rustam Huseynov presented his works at the exhibition "European architectural heritage of Baku" at Center of Contemporary Art. The exhibition combined in the greatness of the Western styles has always coexisted with the elegance of the East for centuries. By Azernews By Abdul Kerimkhanov Uzbekneftegaz and Russian oil and gas company Tatneft will jointly conduct research work on the development and production of shale oil and gas, bitumen and heavy oil, as well as monitoring geodynamic changes using satellite observation systems, the press service of the Uzbek oil and gas company said on November 23. This was announced during a meeting in Uzbekneftegaz between Deputy Prime Minister of Uzbekistan Alisher Sultanov and Tatneft CEO Nail Maganov, which was also attended by the leaders of Uzbekneftegaz, industry enterprises and organizations. Tatneft is one of the leading partners of Uzbekneftegaz JSC. Cooperation between the parties is developing dynamically. Strengthening ties is facilitated by regular meetings at which prospects for bilateral cooperation, including the joint implementation of investment projects are discussed. The parties discussed partnership in such areas as mechanical engineering, petrochemicals, geological exploration, field development and enhanced oil recovery, exchange of experience and training. At present, of particular interest to the parties are the localization of the production of chain drives (PC-22) at Uzbekhimmash together with the Tatneft Bugulma mechanical plant, the development of fields, including the Pritashkent investment block, the creation of a joint venture in the future. The Uzbek oil and gas company offered Tatneft to participate in the operation of the Fergana refinery and expressed willingness to consider mutually beneficial forms of cooperation. Representatives of Tatneft, in turn, expressed interest in participating in the project and organizing joint visits to the production sites of the plant. Following the meeting, the parties agreed to develop a roadmap for long-term cooperation and create a coordinating council to promote the development of bilateral relations in all areas. Huawei, a global ICT solutions provider, has signed 22 commercial contracts for 5G, said the companys executive director and president of Carrier BG Ryan Ding. Ding was delivering a keynote speech delivered at the Global Mobile Broadband Forum (MBBF) in London, UK. During his speech titled "5G is ON, Taking Mobile to New Horizons", Ding noted that 5G is ushering in a new era for ICT and has the potential to increase connection capabilities by ten-fold. 5G will bring unprecedented opportunities to the mobile industry. Release 15 the first 5G specifications focuses on enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and will encourage individual users to consume more data, because they can do more with their connections. 5G will provide high bandwidth for households and make WTTx connections the first choice for broadband. It will also enable new capabilities, including massive connections, superfast speeds, and ultra-low latency that will reshape business models and create enormous business value for carriers. Leading carriers are moving quickly toward 5G commercial deployment, because first movers will benefit first. The development of 5G is picking up speed thanks to two factors. First, major countries are among the first adopters of 5G, and together they represent one-third of the global population a scale of adoption that is larger than the first waves of commercialization seen in 3G and 4G. The second enabler of 5G is the device industry. 5G smartphones will be available in 2019, including 5G foldable phones that will create whole new experiences for users. Leading phone makers will launch budget phones (priced around US$100) soon after the commercial roll-out of 5G networks, driving the 5G industry forward. "Every new generation of network comes with new challenges, and this applies to 5G commercial deployment, too," said Ding. "We take complexity and deliver simplicity. That means we will provide innovative solutions to address challenges in 5G commercialization. Our close collaboration with carriers will help them find the easy way to 5G." During his speech, Ding introduced Huawei's innovative solutions that can facilitate carriers' 5G commercial deployment. Huawei's highly compact Massive MIMO solution is the world's lightest and smallest AAU and is strong enough to perform reliably even during level-15 typhoons. Given that existing sites are very crowded, Huawei's 1+1 simplified antenna solution can keep sites clean and simple, and reduce rental costs for carriers. Huawei also provides an uplink and downlink decoupling solution that can achieve co-coverage of 4G and 5G C-band, delivering seamless coverage to users. Huawei's innovative 5G power solution and microwave solution help carriers build 5G faster and easier, with lower cost. Huawei is also using AI to help carriers simplify O&M and slash their OPEX. "Actions speak louder than words", said Ding. "5G is ON. Huawei has earned customer recognition for our leading 5G end-to-end capabilities and innovative products and solutions. So far, we have signed 22 commercial contracts for 5G, and we are working with over 50 carriers on 5G commercial tests. Through heavy investment and continuous innovation, we are committed to helping carriers deploy 5G networks easily, rapidly, and cost-effectively. And we are ready to work with all stakeholders to drive robust development of the 5G industry." TradeArabia News Service Galveston, TX (77553) Today Clouds and some sun this morning with more clouds for this afternoon. High 78F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph.. Tonight Cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible late. Low 71F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Al Futtaim, a leading UAE diversified company, said its home improvement and lifestyle brand, Homeworks, has launched a new sales offer on a wide range of outdoor furniture and lifestyle products in Saudi Arabia till December 4. The company unveiled its Price Crash promotion with an aim to make home improvements and lifestyle products more affordable to its Saudi customers, said a statement from Al Futtaim. As part of the strategy, customers can now avail amazing discounts and offers on outdoor furniture when shopping at Homeworks outlets at Riyadh and Jeddah till December 4 and also get an opportunity to win a dream holiday for two to Sri Lanka, said a company spokesman. "The new range of outdoor furniture from Homeworks includes stylish patio sets starting from SR299 ($79.6), sofa sets starting from SR449, dining table set from SR799. There is also a range of new gazebos, available in a variety of designs starting at SR499 and swings and hammocks, which start as low as SR599," he stated. Homeworks provides a wide selection of products in four main areas: DIY (Do it yourself) and hardware, outdoor living, home improvement and home living, he added.-TradeArabia News Service 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. Bridges, there are thousands of them throughout the world! Although many of them are pretty normal and are just used for traffic, some of them can be distinguished by their surprising shape or functionality, which is especially the case for this bridge in Uruguay. Lets explain. A new shape! Rafael Vinoly, an architect from Uruguay, has built this completely novel bridge, in a circular shape. Located in the south of Uruguay, it was built in the heart of the Laguna Garzon (Garzon Lagoon) and connects the towns of Rocha and Maldonado. An appropriate shape when you think about it: The concept of the Puente Laguna Garzon was to transform a traditional vehicular crossing into an event that reduces the speed of the cars, to provide an opportunity to enjoy panoramic views of an amazing landscape explains the architect. A bridge accessible to everyone: This bridge is also equipped with room for pedestrians who want to walk and admire the Lagoon. It is very similar to the Veluwemeer Aqueduct in the Netherlands, which stretches below sea level, but can also be used by pedestrians who wish to walk across it. If you decide to travel to South America, you now have a new place to discover! We really want to take a walk over this bridge sometime soon Travelstart, a provider of simple and secure travel search tools, has announced an integration with Google Flights, an online flight booking search service, becoming the first online travel agency (OTA) in the Middle East to do so. Travelstarts Paulina Klotzbucher said: In addition to offering a data-rich and intuitive flight booking experience, Google Flights is the ideal platform as it helps us reach those customers who begin their journey by searching for flights directly from Google. Google Flights is a powerful flight search engine that helps travellers find and book flights. It displays results for open-ended flight searches based on criteria such as budget, luggage allowance, time of departure and arrival and number of stops. As the first OTA in the Middle East to embrace Google Flights we anticipate serving new customers and giving them the best prices, ease of booking and support throughout their journey, Klotzbucher said. Travelstart is growing in the Gulf and delivers a localised version of the website in several countries including United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In addition to being key markets for Travelstarts operations in the Middle East, Google Flights is currently available to users residing in those countries. TradeArabia News Service (CNN) An unprecedented drought in Afghanistan has led to families selling their children just to be able to feed their households. CNN has spoken to multiple families around the western city of Herat who have been forced from their homes because of a record dry spell that, according to the United Nations, has forced more people from their homes in 2018 than the record violence afflicting the country. The UN estimates that over 275,000 people have been displaced by the drought, 84,000 of them in the city itself, and 182,000 in the region of Badghis. Four years of failed rains have savaged the agriculture of the region, and even caused the opium crop to fall by a third this year, despite record output in 2017. The extreme weather conditions are causing concerns that global climate change is having a severe impact on the world's most fragile country, where decades of war have ground the economy and society to dust. Outside Herat, in a refugee camp, a CNN cameraman met Mamareen, who has lost her husband to the war, her home to the climate and now her daughter to the urgent need to feed her other children. Akila, 6, is now, under the warped economy of this tent city, the possession of another family. Mamareen sold Akila for $3,000 to Najmuddin, who has promised her to his 10-year-old son, Sher Agha. "I fled my village with my three children because of severe drought," she says. "I came here thinking that I will receive some assistance, but I got nothing. To avoid starvation among my children, I gave my daughter to a man for about $3,000, but have only got $70 so far. I had no money, no food and no breadwinnermy husband was also killed." Asked if Akila knew her fate, she said: "She doesn't know that I have sold her. How would she know? She is a child. But I had no other choice. Whether in tears or laughter, she will have to go. Who would sell a piece of her heart unless they really have to?" A charitable act? Her fate lay meters away, in another, richer tent in the camp, with Najmuddin, her purchaser. Part of this transaction is cultural part of the mores of a society where girls have long been traded for dowries rather than being asked for consent. But to Najmuddin, this was an act of charity. "Her family didn't have anything to eat. They were hungry," he said. "I know I am also poor, but I am sure I can pay it off slowly... in two to three years." The Afghan cameraman asked, aren't they children? "It doesn't matter. These things happen here. Even an old man marries a young girl. It happens." Najmuddin is victim of the same drought that has destroyed worlds across western Afghanistan, which was once the breadbasket of the war-torn, landlocked nation. He said: "The wheat crop failed, we couldn't grow melonsall the other crops failed because of drought. We lost our livestock. The sheep, cows and goats all died of hunger as there wasn't fodder for them." This was not an isolated case. A man who refused to give his name discussing the sale of his 4-year-old daughter said: "I had no other choice, I had no money and no source of income. The man came here and gave me two options: either to pay back his money or to give him my daughter. I went with the latter." These devastating decisions come at a time when Afghanistan is reeling from a series of superlatives. Record Taliban control or influence of territoryat 45% according to the US inspector into the warand record civilian casualties. And a very high, yet undisclosed number of Afghan security force deaths, the actual figure being classified by the US and Afghan governments. This story was first published on CNN.com, "In parched Afghanistan, children are being sold for survival." Airbus Bizlab India has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the government of the Indian state of Kerala to help establish an aerospace-focused innovation centre in Thiruvananthapuram. The Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) is aimed at fostering and nurturing an enabling ecosystem for aviation startups in the state. The move highlights Airbus Indias continued commitment to the Startup India mission. Under the MoU, Airbus Bizlab India will coordinate with global Airbus teams and startups to develop Proof of Concepts with the support of different public agencies in Kerala. Upon successful demonstration of the Proof of Concepts by Airbus teams and startups, the innovation centre will help them set up partnerships and deploy the chosen technologies in the state. The Government of Kerala will provide the space for the centre as well as logistical support to manage and run the programme. The mission has been envisioned for a year to begin with. We are confident that this partnership with Airbus Bizlab will help embed innovation in the industrial ecosystem of Kerala. It will up-skill the local youth and will enhance employability, said Chief Minister of Kerala Pinarayi Vijayan. The initiative aims to foster local talent in the aerospace domain and help promising startups to contribute towards shaping the future of flying not only in India but the world, said Anand E Stanley, president and managing director, Airbus India and South Asia. We are building this partnership on the strong foundation that Airbus Bizlab already has in India. This is a big step in supporting the Startup India initiative as Airbus teams, startups and the Government of Kerala will work together towards developing and deploying cutting edge aerospace technologies, said Siddharth Balachandran, Bizlab India leader Airbus BizLab is a global aerospace business accelerator where startups and Airbus intrapreneurs speed up the transformation of innovative ideas into valuable businesses. Since its inception in 2015, Airbus BizLab has accelerated 50 startups and 40 internal projects, which have raised a combined 19.5 million. TradeArabia News Service TCN News: The Aligarh Muslim University Alumni ( AMUAAB) celebrated their Founder Sir Syed Ahmed Khans 201st Birthday on 16th Nov 2018 at Golden Tulip Hotel, Bahrain. The function was presided over by shura council member H.E. Dr Fatema Abduljabbar AlKooheji with Mr Anubhav Sinha, director, producer and writer of Hindi film industry (Bollywood). Support TwoCircles Dr Fatema Abduljabbar AlKooheji. while paying tributes to Sir Syed Ahmed suggested expanding the institution to other parts of the world mainly middle east particularly Bahrain. The Chief Guest Anubhav Sinha, himself an alumnus of the prestigious Aligarh Muslim University said that the years he spent at the university have been the best part and most cherished and memorable part of his life. Preceding the function ,drawing ,pencil sketching and general knowledge competitions for kids of various age groups were conducted by Cultural Secretary Mr Babu Khan. Treasur Mr Yunus Parvez announced the top three winners in each category who were felicitated during the event. The event was attended by over 275 people and is supposed to be biggest gathering of AMU alumni in Bahrain till date. The function ended with rendering of University Tarana followed by dinner . Flipkart Terrific Tablet Day Sale: Discounts on tablets from Apple, Samsung, Lenovo and more Features oi-Harish Kumar Flipkart now comes with yet another scheme called "Terrific Day Sale" which provides great discounts on tablets from Apple, Samsung, Lenovo and many companies. The tablets can also be availed with plenty other exciting deals. Even these products come with some amazing features which can really make your purchasing fantastic. The shopping platform comes with lots of exciting deals which are no const EMI with better EMI rates, great exchange offers, great Exchange offers, 10% instant discount on Mastercard for first online payment, extra 5% off with Axis Bank Buzz Credit card, and more. Take for instance, you can purchase Apple iPad (6th Gen) 32 GB with 10% off, Samsung Galaxy Tab A T355Y with 21% off, iBall Brisk 4G2 16 GB 7 with 25% off, and more. In addition, you can get a warranty of one year on such devices, and 6 months Manufacturer Warranty for In-box Accessories Including Batteries from the Date of Purchase. You can get complete mobile protection plan of one year. 10% off on Lenovo Phab 2 Plus (Offer: No Cost EMI) Buy This offer on Flipkart Key Specs 6.4-inch (1080 x 1920 pixels) Full HD 2.5D Curved Glass display 1.3 GHz octa-core MediaTek MT8783 processor with Mali-T720 GPU 3GB RAM 32GB internal memory expandable memory up to 128GB with microSD Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) OS with Vibe UI Hybrid Dual SIM (micro + micro / microSD) Dual 13MP rear cameras with LED Flash 8MP front-facing camera 4G LTE / 3G 4050mAh battery Alcatel A3 10 (MRP: Rs 11,999, After Discount Price: Rs 10,999) Buy This offer on Flipkart Key Specs 10.1-inch (1280 x 800 pixels) multi-touch display 1.1 GHz quad-core MediaTek MT8735B processor 3GB RAM 32GB internal storage expandable memory up to 128GB with microSD Android 7.0 (Nougat) OS 8MP rear camera 5MP front-facing camera 4G LTE (with voice calling 4600mAh battery Alcatel Pop 4 (MRP: Rs 11,999, After Discount Price: Rs 10,999) Buy This offer on Flipkart Key Specs 10.1-inch (1920 x 1200 pixels) WUXGA Fully Laminated display 1.4 GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 430 Mobile Platform with Adreno 505 GPU 2GB RAM 16GB internal memory expandable memory up to 32GB with micro SD Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) OS Single Micro SIM 8MP rear camera 5MP front-facing camera 4G LTE (with voice calling) 5830mAh battery Apple iPad Pro (MRP: Rs 50,800, After Discount Price: Rs 46,999) Buy This offer on Flipkart Key Specs 9.7 Inch Retina LED Backlit IPS Display 32GB Storage A9X Chip With 64-Bit Architecture And M9 Motion Coprocessor WiFi Ac Bluetooth 4.2 Four Speakers 12MP ISight Camera With Dual Tone LED Flash 5MP FaceTime Camera. 11% off on Honor MediaPad T3 Buy This offer on Flipkart Key Specs 9.6 Inch IPS HD Touchscreen Display 1.4GHz Snapdragon 425 Quad-Core Processor 2/3GB RAM With 16/32GB ROM Single Nano SIM 5MP Auto Focus Rear Camera 2MP Front Camera WiFi Bluetooth 4.1 4G VoLTE 4800 MAh Battery 10% off on Apple iPad (6th Gen) 32 GB 9.7 inch with Wi-Fi Only (Space Grey) Buy This offer on Flipkart Key Specs 9.7-inch capacitive touchscreen with 2048 x 1536 pixels resolution 8MP primary camera and 1.2MP front facing camera iOS v11 operating system with 2.34GHz A10 Fusion chip with 64-bit architecture Embedded M10 quad core processor 2GB RAM and 32GB internal memory Upto 10 hrs battery life on a single charge,3500mAH lithium-polymer battery 21% off on Samsung Galaxy Tab A T355Y 16 GB 8 inch with Wi-Fi+4G Tablet Buy This offer on Flipkart Key Specs 20.32 cm (8 inch) Full HD Display Only 7.5 mm thick and just 320 g, the Galaxy Tab A provides you with unbeatable portability, as well as a firm, secure grip 4:3 aspect ratio screen is ideal for reading books, magazines and newspapers, as well as surfing the net Auto focus feature makes it easier for you to take clearer pictures and videos 2 GB RAM 16 GB ROM Expandable Upto 128 GB 5.0 MP Primary Camera Android 7.0 (Nougat) Battery: 4200 mAh Voice Call (Single Sim) 25% off on iBall Brisk 4G2 16 GB 7 inch with Wi-Fi+4G Tablet (Cobalt Blue) Buy This offer on Flipkart Key Specs Full Capacitive Multi-Touch,17.78cm (7.0") Display, IPS HD(1024*600) Screen 5MP AF Rear Camera with LED Flash 2MP Front Camera with LED flash Android 6.0, Marshmallow,Quad Core 1.0GHz ARM Cortex A53 64bit Processor,Mali -T720 GPU 3GB RAM 16GB Built-in storage; 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Allow Notifications Apple to slash iPhone XR price and resume iPhone X production after underwhelming sales News oi-Vishal Kawadkar Apple isn't happy with the sales of its newly launched iPhones. Apple is reportedly planning to offer a discount for the iPhone XR model. The first market to get the discount could be Japan offering subsidies to the native carriers. The iPhone XR will be available at a discounted price starting next week. The device was originally priced at $749 but didn't really get an overwhelming response as other Apple devices to get from the consumers. It's very rare to see Apple slash the price of a product just one month of the launch. The report is follow up to the earlier reports where Apple canceled the additional production of the iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max due to low demand. Additionally, the Apple iPhone 8 continues to be the popular choice in Japan, thanks to its low price, adds to the misery of the company. Moreover, the company has also reportedly asked its suppliers to resume the production of the iPhone X which the company discontinued after the latest iteration hit the market shelves. But, the supply chain sources have claimed that the production of the iPhone X is due because of the shortage of OLED panels that the company outsources form Samsung. The hefty price of the new iPhone models is cited as the biggest reason for the lower sales numbers. The new iPhones pack top-notch specs alongside brilliant camera performance. If the company would have priced these devices appropriately, the devices would continue to shatter the sales record like their precursors. It seems that the company has already started working on the next version of the iPhone. Apple recently filed a new patent with the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO), which details a device with a camera and the sensors placed under the screen. The USPTO summarizes the patent as "Apparatus, systems, and methods for camera integration with a cover glass and for processing cover glass to provide a camera window for an electronic device are disclosed." Leveraging the new tech, Apple could launch a smartphone that features a full-screen edge-to-edge design in the coming days. The device is said to use Corning's DVTS glass technology. 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 Huawei to bring its foldable smartphone under the Mate moniker: report News oi-Vishal Kawadkar Huawei to bring its foldable phone under its flagship branding. Huawei is said to be considering four different names for its upcoming foldable phone. According to a report by Android Headlines, the company is planning to name the device as Mate F, Mate Flex, Mate Flexi, or the Mate Fold. The company has also moved to trademark all the names in several jurisdictions but it's not clear which one of them would be the first choice of the company. This will only be cleared only when the company takes the wraps off the device, or just weeks prior to the launch. The fact that Huawei's first bendable smartphone will come under the Mate series is a good sign. The smartphone, despite is unique display will pack in some top-of-the-line features, including the newest Kirin 980 chipset from Huawei's subsidiary HiSilicon. Besides, Samsung is also planning to launch its foldable smartphone soon. Regardless of which manufacturer wins the race to launch the first bendable phone, the new design isn't expected to gain popularity for at least several more years. Besides, Huawei CEO, Richard Yu told CNBC that the company is also working on a smart voice assistant and is set to launch in the global market soon. It will go head to head with already dominating Google Assistant, Apple Siri, and Amazon Alexa which are already available across the globe. "In the beginning, we are mainly using Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa" for its smartphones and other smart products, Yu said. "We need more time to build our AI services...later, we will expand this outside of China." Huawei already has a voice assistant called Xiaoyi, however, it is only available for the Chinese market, and only speaks and understands the native language. There's no word whether the new assistant will be a version of Xiaoyi or a new product altogether. Yu also stated that Huawei will continue to work with Google and Amazon for voice assistant integration in its products. There's no timeline provided for the release of Huawei's new assistant, but it seems that we might soon see the launch of the new voice assistant. 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 LG G7 ThinQ next in line to receive Android Pie update News oi-Sandeep Sarkar Android Pie update for the LG G7 ThinQ will be released in the coming few weeks in Korea which will be followed by a global rollout. The Android 9 Pie stable update was announced only a few months back and since then, several smartphone manufacturers have started rolling out the latest Android version for their respective devices. While Essential Phone and Nokia were the first smartphone brands to release the Android Pie update, the other manufacturers took no time to announce the update for their devices. LG, the South Korean tech giant has also promised the latest Android Pie update for some of its smartphone. We already know about the LG G7 One which is the first LG device to receive the Android Pie update. Considering that the G7 One comes under the Android One program, it comes as no surprise that the device was first in line to receive the Android Pie update. Now, it appears that the next LG smartphones which are lined-up to receive the Android Pie update are LG G7 ThinQ and LG V40 ThinQ. We already have covered in one of our previous articles that the LG V40 ThinQ is expected to receive the Android Pie update. Now, it's the G7 ThinQ which comes next in line to receive the Android Pie update. This was suggested by the beta program which had been rolled out in Korea yesterday. The Android Pie update will be rolled out for all G7 ThinQ devices and it will bring along all the new improved features which the Android Pie update brings along with it. Besides, it is expected that the stable Android Pie update for the LG G7 ThinQ will be released in the coming few weeks in Korea which will be followed by a global rollout. This means we can expect an Android Pie update for both the G7 ThinQ and V4o ThinQ in the coming days. Just to recall, the LG G7 ThinQ is powered by an octa-core Snapdragon 845 processor paired with Adreno 630 GPU to render the graphics. The Snapdragon processor on the LG G7 ThinQ is further clubbed with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. The native storage is further expandable up to 2TB via microSD card. This will take care of the space crunch issue on the device. 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 Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro sold-out within minutes on the first sale News oi-Vivek Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro comes with four cameras Update: Xiaomi has claimed that the company has sold more than 600,000 units of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro, and the company is having a second sale at 3:00 PM on Flipkart and Mi.com. 6 Lakh units of #RedmiNote6Pro! Mi Fans! We had 600,000+ units of 'Quad Camera all-rounder' for 1st sale. Went out of stock in mins on @Flipkart & https://t.co/lzFXOcYa5q! If you did not manage to buy one, don't worry. We are getting more stock. Next sale @ 3pm today. pic.twitter.com/8IsQnupEYo Manu Kumar Jain (@manukumarjain) November 23, 2018 We are not new to the "Out of Stock" scenario on the flash sales of the Xiaomi Redmi smartphone, and now the Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro has been sold-out within minutes on both Flipkart and Mi.com. At the time of launch, the head of the Xiaomi India's head Manu Jain confirmed that the company has enough stock for the first sale. Still, the company is not able to meet the demand on the first sale. One more reason for this massive response is the fact that the Redmi Note 6 Pro was available at a discounted price of Rs 12,499 for the 4 GB RAM and 14,499 for the 6GB RAM model, which makes it one of the best smartphone in the market. Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro specifications The Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro comes with a 6.26-inch IPS LCD screen with 2.5D curved Corning Gorilla Glass protection, offering a 2280 x 1080p resolution with a notch cut out. This is the second Redmi smartphone to launch in India with a notch display. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 SoC powers the smartphone with 4/6 GB RAM with 64 GB internal storage with a microSD card slot for additional storage expansion. The smartphone has a hybrid SIM slot, which accepts two SIM cards or a SIM and a microSD card. The Redmi Note 6 Pro is also the first Redmi smartphone to offer a total of four cameras. The smartphone has a dual rear-facing camera with a 12 MP primary RGB sensor with an f/1.8 aperture and 1.4-micron pixels size and a 5 MP depth sensor. The selfie camera also has a dual camera setup with a 20 MP primary RGB sensor with an f/2.0 aperture and a 2 MP depth sensor. Keeping up with the Redmi Note's standards, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro comes with a massive 4000 mAh Li-ion battery with support for Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 fast charging support via micro USB port with a 3.5 mm headphone jack. The phone offers MIUI 10 skin on top of Android 8.1 Oreo with a bouquet of features like full-screen gesture support, AI camera with screen detection, and faster app opening. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro will go on sale probably in the next week, and we expect a similar "Out of Stock" situation. Best Mobiles in India BSNL offers 2GB data for 10 days at Rs. 78 News oi-Priyanka Dua The new plan will compete with private telecom players like Vodafone and Airtel's Rs 65 and Rs 95. The tariff war is going to get more aggressive as State-run telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has come up with new plan for its prepaid users of Rs 78. Under this new plan, the company is providing 2GB daily data, unlimited calling and users are allowed to made calls to the number in Delhi and Mumbai circle, Telecomtalk reported. According to a report the plan is valid for 10 days that means 20 GB data and it is valid in 20 circles where the telco is operating. The new plan will compete with private telecom players like Vodafone and Airtel's Rs 65 and Rs 95. Meanwhile, the company has extended the validity of Bumper Offer till January 31, 2019. However the plan is applicable to the following unlimited plan vouchers - Rs 186, 429, 485, 666, and 999 as "Festive tohfa" for 60 days for new customers, while existing BSNL users will get this data offer on these unlimited STVs - Rs 187, 333, 349, 444, and 448. The company has also announced that it is providing connectivity for first Multi-modal Waterways Project. The project aims to develop the stretch of the river between Varanasi and Haldia (main port) for navigation of large vessels. BSNL was associated with the project by providing leased circuits connectivity (River Information Service) at different locations en-route. The objective of the project is to provide inland waterways as an economical and environment-friendly means of transportation, especially for cargo movement. BSNL was asked to provide Telecom interconnectivity between different ports for smooth operations in a time-bound manner. Best Mobiles in India 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. ALFA Romeo Australia has announced a $149,900 plus on-road costs pricetag for its spicy Stelvio Quadrifoglio performance SUV that rolls into dealerships in mid-January. The Quadrifoglio or Q for short is the high-performance flagship of the Stelvio range that launched into Australian showrooms in March this year. As previously reported, it is powered by a Ferrari-built 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6 petrol powerplant that pumps out 375kW at 6500rpm and 600Nm from 2500-5000rpm, paired with an eight-speed automatic transmission. Alfas pricing means the SUV is $6000 more than the Giulia Q sedan thats priced from $143,900 and shares the same Ferrari-developed V6 engine. It also undercuts the Mercedes-AMG GLC63 S SUV that uses a 375kW/700Nm V8 and is priced at $164,530 before on-roads. The Stelvio Q is pricier than Porsches 294kW/550Nm AWD Macan Turbo ($133,100), Jaguars 280kW/460Nm F-Pace S AWD petrol ($104,827) and Audis 260kW/500Nm SQ5 ($99,240). Another future rival, BMWs upcoming X3 and X4 M twins, are yet to be revealed, but pricing is expected to be higher than the current performance flagships, the X3 and X4 M40i which are $99,529 and $109,900 respectively. Alfa Romeo Australia CEO Steve Zanlunghi said the go-fast SUV would attract more people to the Alfa brand Down Under. We are excited to offer the hotly anticipated all-new Stelvio Quadrifoglio SUV at such a competitive price and look forward to attracting new fans to the brand in search of a practical SUV without comprising on performance and driving excitement, he said. The arrival of the Stelvio Quadrifoglio marks the next step in the local expansion of Alfa Romeo with a model mix that provides an option to suit every customers needs. The Stelvio Q can sprint from zero to 100km/h in a blistering 3.8 seconds onto a top speed of 283km/h. In 2017, the Stelvio set a new lap record for an SUV at the Nurburgring Nordschleife circuit, completing it in 7 minutes and 51.7 seconds eight seconds fast than the previous production SUV record. However, its crown has this week been nabbed by Mercedes-AMGs GLC 63 S, which completed the circuit in 7:49.369. Unlike the Giulia Q, the Stelvio is fitted with Alfas Q4 all-wheel-drive system paired with a torque vectoring system. In normal conditions the Q sends most of the torque to the rear axle, but when required, the system delivers up to 50 per cent of the torque to the front axle via the transfer case, which Alfa says ensures best-in-class control. Alfa Romeos DNA drive mode selector is standard and is offered with Dynamic, Natural and Advanced Efficiency modes, as well as a special Race mode that improves the performance characteristics of engine power delivery, gearshifts, suspension and the stability program. The Italian car-maker says the 1830kg Stelvio Quadrifoglio has the best-in-class power-to-weight ratio of 4.88kg/kW. The bodykit includes bonnet vents, side skirts, enhanced wheelarches, quad exhaust tips, 20-inch forged aluminium alloy wheels and red brake callipers. The Stelvio Q comes standard with dual-mode exhaust system, leather and Alcantara seats, carbon-fibre interior trim, reversing camera, front and rear parking sensors, an 8.8-inch Connect infotainment system with 3D satellite navigation, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity, and a Harmon/Kardon sound system. It also features aluminium pedals, special door scuff plates, eight-way power front seats, ambient interior lighting, Quadrifoglio floor mats, the ALFA rotary controller and a heated leather steering wheel. Safety wise it gains adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, blind spot monitor with rear cross-traffic alert, a forward collision warning with autonomous emergency braking and a tyre pressure monitor. The Road to Recovery podcast series (CNN) U.S. President Donald Trump struck a nakedly political tone during a Thanksgiving call with U.S. service members stationed around the world as he steered the conversation toward controversial political topics. Speaking with a U.S. general in Afghanistan, Trump likened the fight against terrorists to his efforts to prevent a group of migrants from illegally entering the United States, and he assailed federal judges who have ruled against his administration. The President also pressed the commanding officer of a Coast Guard ship in Bahrain on trade before touting his trade policies and arguing that "every nation in the world is taking advantage of us." U.S. Presidents have traditionally called troops stationed abroad during the holidays to boost morale and remind the country of their service, making Trump's rhetoric yet another striking break from the norms of presidential behavior. After the call wrapped, Trump entertained more than two dozen questions from reporters and once again discredited a CIA assessment about the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. "This was, sadly, predictable and avoidable," said retired Rear Adm. John Kirby, a CNN military and diplomatic analyst. "The President's conduct on that call, the manner in which he politicized it, demonstrated an utter and complete disregard for what military service means." Trump has not shied away from politicizing the military in the past, and on Thursday, he drew on U.S. men and women in uniform to justify his controversial deployment of nearly 6,000 US troops to the southern border. Without evidence, he painted Air Force Gen. David Lyons as a proponent of his hardline immigration policies after Lyons said US troops are fighting in Afghanistan to prevent terrorists from reaching "our shores again." "Large numbers of people are forming at our border and I don't even have to ask you, I know what you want to do, you want to make sure that you know who we're letting in. And we're not letting in anybody essentially because we want to be very, very careful," Trump said, speaking to Lyons over the phone. "You're right, you're doing it over there. We're doing it over here." The topic brought Trump to another familiar airing of grievances, as he complained over the phone to the general that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has "become a big thorn in our side." "It's a terrible thing when judges take over your protective services, when they tell you how to protect your border. It's a disgrace," Trump said. "It's a disgrace." Earlier this week, a judge from the Northern District of California -- where cases get appealed to the 9th Circuit -- issued a temporary restraining orderblocking the Trump administration from barring migrants who cross into the US illegally from seeking asylum. After the call wrapped, Trump continued to focus on the 9th Circuit and his administration's efforts to prevent the group of migrants -- many of whom are seeking asylum -- from crossing into the US illegally. As he continued to lambaste 9th Circuit rulings that have skewed against him, Trump called on Congress to "get together and stop it." And he threatened to shut down the entire US-Mexico border over the approach of the few thousand migrants. "If we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or our people are going to get hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control," Trump warned. "The whole border." Trump also once again undermined the CIA's assessment that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was responsible for the murder of Khashoggi, insisting the agency did not conclude bin Salman was responsible. "They have not concluded. Nobody's concluded. I don't know if anybody's going to be able to conclude that the crown prince did it," Trump said. "They said he might have done it. That's a big difference." Trump continued to defend his decision not to blame the crown prince or issue more severe punishments on a series of false or unsubstantiated claims, suggesting diminished relations with Saudi Arabia would cause "a global depression," result in the loss of "hundreds of thousands of jobs" and leave Israel defenseless. Trump also defended his daughter, Ivanka, after it emerged earlier this week that she had used a private email account to discuss or relay official White House business, a practice evocative of the one for which Trump harshly criticized Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. He called her use of personal email -- which appears to have violated federal records laws -- "very innocent" and dismissed the comparison to Clinton, saying his daughter's private emails contained no classified information and were never deleted. At one point, Trump was asked what he was most thankful for on this Thanksgiving. "For having a great family and for having made a tremendous difference in this country," Trump said. "I've made a tremendous difference in the country. This country is so much stronger now than it was when I took office that you wouldn't believe it." This story was first published on CNN.com, "Trump politicizes Thanksgiving call with troops to attack migrants, judges." GREENWICH Sometimes it feels that nothing can be done to help those who have been imprisoned around the globe after advocating for human rights. But one group of friends at St. Saviours Episcopal Church in Old Greenwich is putting pen to paper this month as part of Amnesty Internationals worldwide Write for Rights campaign to support 10 human rights defenders and persuade their governments to release and protect them. Its a noble cause, said Helen Rasmussen, who helped start the letter-writing campaign at her church several years ago. I think its a good thing to do. Each Sunday through Dec. 9, church members and interested members of the public meet in the church hall after weekly services to craft letters to 10 women and others Amnesty has identified as under threat this year. They also write to government officials in the womens home countries, urging them to free those they believe have been unjustly imprisoned. This years letter recipients come from all walks of life. Geraldine Chacon has been imprisoned and banned from leaving Venezuela for her work to empower young people in her home city, according to Amnesty. Nonhle Mbuthuma of South Africa is leading the fight for her community against a mining company that wants to mine titanium on her ancestral land. She has been harassed and threatened and survived an attempt to kill her, Amnesty says. Atena Daemi was sentenced to seven years in prison - after a 15-minute trial - for opposing Irans death penalty through leaflets, peaceful protests and social media posts. Amnesty had planned to encourage letters in support of an 11th woman, Me Nam of Vietnam, also known as Mother Mushroom. In June 2017, she was sentenced to 10 years in jail, accused of conducting propaganda through her influential blog. She was released in October, possibly due to the threat of the letter-writing campaign, Rasmussen said. They get thousands of letters, she said of the countries highlighted in the campaign. Its an international campaign. They come from all over. The St. Saviours campaign begins each Sunday around 11 a.m. Participants can write two letters or 20. The church, located at 350 Sound Beach Ave., provides stationery, envelopes, sample letters and photos of the incarcerated people. The church will take care of mailing the letters. Letter writers are welcome to attend church services, but it is not required. The 2018 campaign started with a small group on Nov. 18 and Rasmussen expects about 15 to 20 people will participate each Sunday. The effort leads up to the United Nations Human Rights Day on Dec. 10. For more information on Write for Rights, visit https://write.amnestyusa.org/. "The world is a very dangerous place!" Thus President Donald Trump begins the statement in which he seeks to justify accepting what he had previously called unacceptable: the state-sponsored murder of Jamal Khashoggi. He is right: The world is dangerous and always has been. But his craven capitulation to Khashoggi's murderers will make the world more dangerous, not less. This is not a case in which tender concern for human rights must be weighed against U.S. strategic goals. On the contrary, what Trump presents as hardheaded realism is, in fact, a grave attack on U.S. national interests. We say this not simply because Trump's justifications are factually fraudulent. He wildly inflates the amount of business Saudi Arabia has sent America's way. He falls for royal flattery and fatuously allows himself to be lied to. He fails to see that Saudi Arabia is far more dependent on the United States than the reverse. He neglects the plain fact that every major action taken by the reckless crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, even before this murder, has harmed U.S. interests: his disastrous war in Yemen, which has redounded to Iran's benefit; his failed effort to subjugate the small neighboring nation of Qatar, a U.S. ally; and his bizarre kidnapping of the Lebanese prime minister, also a U.S. ally. No, Trump's strategic blindness runs far deeper than just misreading this alliance. He is also undermining the basic understanding that has worked to the United States' advantage since World War II under presidents both Republican and Democratic. Those leaders all accepted that, with less than 5 percent of global population but more than 20 percent of the global economy, the United States, more than any other nation, depends on and benefits from predictable rules. It needs a world where business executives can go forth and come home without fear of kidnapping, where ships can ply the oceans without armed escorts, where contracts are honored and disputes fairly adjudicated. It needs a world where journalists can report and inform Americans on the true conditions on the ground. Previous presidents understood that the way to achieve such a world was to enlist allies who would live by the United States' rules in return for protection - safe in knowledge that the United States would not use its preeminence to squeeze them for every last dollar. They would go along because the United States stood not just for itself but for rules that benefited everyone and for values they cherished, as well: freedom, human dignity, the rule of law. By championing good - albeit imperfectly and inconsistently - the United States did well. Now comes Trump, in all his obtuseness, to announce that this has been a sucker's game. He will squeeze every other country as hard as he can. He cares not a fig for American values. He will no longer pledge U.S. forces to maintain world order. And if he can sell one or two more fighter jets, who cares if a journalist is murdered? The result will be not only moral abdication but diminished prosperity, too. No corner of the world will be safe - not Salisbury, England, where Russian President Vladimir Putin feels liberated to send his agents with poisonous weapons; not Thailand, from where China feels free to kidnap a Swedish citizen; not Istanbul, where Saudi Arabia will defile what should be the sanctuary of a diplomatic compound with the premeditated murder and dismemberment of a respected journalist. Anti-Americanism will grow as people overseas see the United States wielding power for purely selfish motives. Nations will find alternatives to the U.S. dollar rather than accepting it as international currency. And, as the United States pulls back from support of democracy, stability and development, pirates will reclaim the sea lanes; poverty and mass migration will rise; and terrorism and extremism will follow. What Trump proposes, in short, is to destroy the American brand, and the Khashoggi case crystallizes the danger. The post-truth approach he has brought to domestic governing - lying about everything from crowd sizes to climate change - he now introduces to foreign affairs. "Maybe he did and maybe he didn't!" he writes, with respect to the crown prince's knowledge of the plot. "That being said, we may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Jamal Khashoggi." But the facts are knowable and mostly known. A truly hardheaded president, mindful of U.S. interests, would insist on accountability for those who planned and committed the murder. He would understand that the U.S.-Saudi relationship, which is indeed important, cannot and does not depend on any single person. He would understand that U.S. standing in the world- and, therefore, U.S. influence and prosperity- will dwindle if the United States offers no objection to the murder of a peaceful, 59-year-old resident of Northern Virginia who was trying to bring a bit of light into a confusing world. This president does not understand any of that. It falls to Congress, therefore, to decide. It can follow Trump down the path of phony realism, and decline; or it can take a stand to help defend American values - and interests. Vice President Mike Pence was not planning to meet with the leaders of Russia or China during his Asia trip last week, but they sought him out anyway. In several conversations with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Pence delivered messages on election interference, North Korea and the trade dispute, and also set the stage for big showdowns next week when President Donald Trump meets the same leaders in Argentina. Pence stood in for Trump at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Singapore and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders meeting in Papua New Guinea. The trip was billed as a reassurance tour wherein the vice president would reinforce with allies the Indo-Pacific strategy Trump announced at these events last year. The meetings with Russian and Chinese leaders were impromptu encounters but had real substance. Pence and Putin had three short conversations in Singapore. First, they exchanged pleasantries at the ASEAN gala dinner. (Putin arrived late.) The following day, before the plenary, Putin tapped Pence on the shoulder as he walked to his seat. The press, still in the room, caught Pence looking sternly at Putin for the minute or so they talked. Putin offered Russian help to fight the California wildfires. Pence confirmed to Putin that Trump would meet him at the upcoming Group of 20 meeting in Argentina. When the plenary ended, the two men huddled in the corner for about 15 minutes as staff, security and translators swarmed around them. Pence decided to confront Putin about Russia's interference in U.S. democracy. "So I looked at him and I said, 'We know what happened in 2016,' " Pence told me in an interview. "And I said, 'As the president has told you, we're not having it.' " Putin denied that Russia had done anything wrong, but Pence stuck to his guns. "And I said, 'Mr. President, I'm very aware of what you've said about that, but I'm telling you we're not having it,' " Pence said. "I wanted to reiterate what the president has said. I thought it was important he hear that from the vice president, too." Pence then told Putin it was extremely important that Russia enforce U.N. sanctions on Pyongyang in the crucial period before the next U.S.-North Korea summit. Putin raised several issues he wants to discuss with Trump in Argentina, including Syria and the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which Trump has said the United States is withdrawing from. Later that day, Chinese Premier Li caught Pence while the two were walking off stage after taking the ASEAN "family photo." Li wanted to talk about the ongoing U.S.-China trade war. Li told Pence to remember that China is a "developing nation," meaning it should get special treatment on trade. "And we got down to the corner, and we just stopped for a minute, and I just looked at him and said, 'Things have got to change,' " Pence told me. Li was taken aback, with a look of surprise on his face. Pence then delivered the same message he had told me at the start of the trip: that the G-20 was China's best (if not last) chance to come to the table with a real offer to end its unfair trade and industrial practices. "You should encourage President Xi to take full advantage of the opportunity in Argentina," Pence said he told Li. Pence delivered a similar message directly to Xi on Saturday night in Papua New Guinea, when the two leaders were seated near each other at the APEC gala. "I said, 'The president asked me to tell you he hopes you can have a conversation about opening markets,' " Pence told me. Pence walked a fine line when dealing with the leaders of Russia and China. He had to deliver tough messages clearly, keep the door open for dialogue and progress, and not show any daylight between himself and his boss. Throughout the trip, whenever Trump spoke about China, Pence's staff quickly incorporated those remarks into Pence's speeches. "Pence did what President Donald Trump rarely does: stay on message, calm nervous security partners and clearly lay out a vision for American foreign policy," wrote Bloomberg's Toluse Olorunnipa. "While Asian leaders listened closely to Pence, many were waiting to see if Trump would do something to contradict him." Everybody talking to Pence understood that he represented only what Trump's position was that day and that Trump could change his mind the following day for any reason. There's a level of Trump's unpredictability that even Pence's Spartan-like discipline can never overcome. But don't believe reports that world leaders were upset Trump wasn't there. They were fine dealing with Pence, and Pence was in his element. Trump sees the boring work of diplomacy as a nuisance. Perhaps sending Pence in his place is a win-win arrangement for both of them - and the country as well. The contested re-election of Rep. Philip Young, D-Stratford, who won a close election in a district where some voters were given the wrong the ballot on Nov. 6, must be resolved by a bipartisan committee of the General Assembly and not by a judge, Youngs lawyer said in a legal brief filed Friday. In a lawsuit filed last week, Republican Jim Feehan asked a Superior Court judge to order a special election in the 120th House District, where Republicans say it appears 76 voters were mistakenly given a ballot for the 122nd House District. A recount showed Feehan losing to Young by 13 votes. It is impossible to determine the identity or intent of the approximately 76 voters whose votes were improperly cast for the wrong district, wrote Feehans lawyer, Proloy K. Das. The only recourse, he wrote, is a new election. But William M. Bloss, who represents Young, countered that the Connecticut Constitution, two centuries of case law, a relevant historical summary by the late Antonin Scalia, and statements by Republicans prominent in politics all point to one conclusion: The courts have no power to order a new election. The Connecticut Constitution is crystal clear: each House of the General Assembly has the exclusive authority to review election returns and to decide whether a candidate was validly elected, Bloss wrote. Plaintiff seeks relief in the wrong place from the wrong branch of government. By seeking relief here, plaintiff seeks an order plainly barred by the Constitution. This Court lacks jurisdiction. He is not saying Feehan has no cause to complain only that his recourse is with the General Assembly, not the courts. Under a policy adopted in 1987, contested elections are to be resolved by a committee of four House members, two from each party. Prior to 1987, such disputes were resolved by a three-member committee, with two members from the majority party. Bloss said every state has a similar constitutional provision, and the historical basis for such provisions were summarized by Scalia in 1986, when he was an appellate judge about to join the U.S. Supreme Court. If [the power to judge elections is] lodged in any other than the legislative body itself, its independence, its purity, and even its existence and action may be destroyed or put into imminent danger. No other body but itself can have the same motives to preserve and perpetuate these attributes; no other body can be so perpetually watchful to guard its own rights and privileges from infringement, to purify and vindicate its own character, and to preserve the rights and sustain the free choice of its constituents. A response brief by Feehans lawyer, who could not be reached Friday, is expected over the weekend. Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis could decide as soon as Monday as to whether to dismiss Feehans suit or grant an injunction blocking Secretary of the State Denise Merrill and other state officials from certifying the results of the election. If Bloss prevails on Monday, Feehan still can appeal to the state House of Representatives, where Democrats currently hold an 80-71 majority. On Nov. 6, Democrats won at least 91 seats, not counting the 120th House race. Under House rules, any appeal by Feehan would be resolved in January by the new General Assembly, Bloss wrote. Bloss noted that Republicans agreed with that approach in 1984, when Democrat Joan Hartley of Waterbury won a House seat by just two votes. Boosted by Ronald Reagans landslide victory, Republicans won an 85-66 majority. It was the last time the GOP controlled the House. The new Republican speaker, R.E. Van Norstrand, appointed a committee of two Republicans and one Democrat to review claims of voting irregularities. They voted to seat Hartley, now in her 34th year as a state legislator, most recently as a state senator. In Stratford, where voters from two House districts vote at the same school, the wrong packet of ballots was used until the mistake was discovered at midday in Stratford. There was a similar case in 1994, when Connecticut still voted by machine: The wrong voting machine was delivered to one precinct in the 20th House District, and it appeared that at least 15 people cast votes before the mistake was discovered. Republican Allen Hoffman defeated Democrat Richard Mulready by just 13 votes. Mulready considered asking the House for a review, though he apparently never made a formal request. Bloss says there was little or no question that the House was the appropriate place for appeal. Bloss quoted a Hartford Courant news story: Its the new legislature that decides its own membership, said Peter Zarella, West Hartford Republican Town Committee chairman. Its not the old legislature deciding the makeup of the new legislature. Zarella later became a justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court. Asus Indonesia tweeted out an official teaser for the Zenfone Max Pro (M2), which is slightly misleading and tries to suggest that the phone has a triple camera, even though it doesnt. We saw as much in the leaked video review. Official Asus Zenfone Max Pro (M2) teaser The second generation Pro will be unveiled on December 11 and the tweet makes a big deal about the battery. It also promises a gaming flavor with a hint of a more performant chipset. It even goes as far as using a #NextGenerationGaming hashtag. The notch has officially landed on Asus mid-range series, previously used in the premium Zenfone 5 duo. Interestingly, front camera will be joined by an LED flash, which will help out in late night selfies. The Asus Zenfone Max Pro (M2) will be unveiled on December 11 with stock Android (but not Android One). Source 1 | Source 2 With a rumored price of 1,500, there was little danger that the foldable Samsung Galaxy F would be a mass market device. Rumor has it that UK carrier EE is in talks with Samsung for an exclusivity deal, which will help spread out the cost by splitting it into monthly installments. SIM-free units will be available from EE and also from Samsung stores, the exclusivity is only for phones on contract. However, with no contract youll have to pay the full price up front and the top-specced version of the Galaxy F is said to reach 2,000. Naturally, EE has made no official comments on the potential exclusivity deal while Samsung only reiterated its expectation to build at least 1 million units. Source Haiti - FLASH : Statement of the United States Embassy on the situation in Haiti Following the demonstrations and violence since November 18, which caused numerous casualties, and the paralysis of activities in the capital and the disturbances reported in the major cities of Haiti, the United States Embassy accredited to Port-au-Prince has issued a statement that we invite you to read. "The United States, a longtime partner and friend of Haiti, shares Haitis desire for a better future for its people. The United States supports the human rights of people everywhere to freely express themselves and peacefully protest, and supports the Haitian government as it safeguards both those rights, and the security of public and private property. We encourage meaningful dialogue to address points of disagreement and find lasting solutions without violence. We urge all parties and leaders to work together to move the political dialogue forward in ways that advance the interests and aspirations of the Haitian people. We would like to commend the professionalism demonstrated by the Haiti National Police in maintaining security and preserving public order on November 18, and in the days before and after. We offer our condolences to the families and friends of the victims who have lost their lives. The United States recognizes the democratic legitimacy of the government of Haiti, its elected institutions, and elected officials. We urge the Haitian government to continue its efforts towards strengthening the rule of law, good governance, and anti-corruption efforts to ensure political and economic stability. The United States will continue to work with Haiti toward a safer, more secure, and prosperous country for all Haitians. We note that Haiti will be preparing for legislative elections next year. We hope all Haitians agree that those can only take place in a climate of peace, tranquility, transparency and in accordance with Haitian law." See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26191-haiti-tourism-the-demonstrations-endanger-the-tourism-sector.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26188-haiti-security-attempts-of-fire-and-destruction-of-edh-facilities.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26186-haiti-flash-message-to-the-nation-of-president-jovenel-moise.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26185-haiti-news-zapping.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26178-haiti-security-the-ministry-of-health-condemns-attacks-against-ambulances.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26176-haiti-flash-the-national-palace-deploys-its-special-unit-equipped-with-weapons-of-war.html https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-26173-icihaiti-insecurity-2-foreign-tourists-injured-by-bullets.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26169-haiti-politic-management-of-the-crisis-a-failure-of-the-government.html https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-26157-icihaiti-security-michel-ange-gedeon-congratulates-the-police-officers.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26156-haiti-flash-dead-and-wounded-across-the-country-partial-assessment.html HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - Diplomacy : The International Community rejects violence in Haiti The Core Group created in 2004 to promote dialogue with the Haitian authorities and to contribute to the effective action of the international community in Haiti, composed of Mrs. Helen Meagher La Lime, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General in Haiti, Ambassadors of Brazil, Canada, France, Spain, the United States of America, of the European Union and the Special Representative of the Organization of American States (OAS), "strongly rejects the acts of violence perpetrated on the sidelines of demonstrations in recent days. The members of the Group are deeply saddened by the loss of life and offer their sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims. The Group recalls that acts of violence seeking to provoke the resignation of legitimate authorities have no place in the democratic process. It welcomes the Executive's commitment to continue the dialogue and calls for an inclusive dialogue between all the actors of the national life to get out of the crisis that the country is going through and to meet the expectations of the population." See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26196-haiti-flash-statement-of-the-united-states-embassy-on-the-situation-in-haiti.html HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - Economy : Jamaica is interested in the potential of the Haitian market At the last quarterly press conference of the Association of Manufacturers and Exporters of Jamaica (JMEA) in Kingston, Metry Seaga, the President of JMEA encouraged local manufacturers and exporters to explore existing untapped markets in neighboring countries, particularly in Haiti "Jamaica and our region remain untapped markets, as can be seen on the local and regional shelves. We recently learned at COTED (Council for Trade and Economic Development) that by October 2019, Haiti will put in place the administrative and legislative framework for duty-free trading of goods [...] This is an opportunity that must not pass us. Haiti is a big market that's right next door to us. We must use this opportunity as business people, as manufacturers, to get in there early and start to sell our goods and services." In addition, Metry Seaga recalled "Jamaica is already on the right path to exponential export growth; however, there is much work to be done. The country's total exports of goods were recorded at approximately US$1.3 billion in 2017, 12.46 per cent more than the previous year and the highest it has been since 2008. While this is a commendable feat, it is still a far cry from the National Export Strategy II (NES II) target of $2.5 billion by 2019." S/ HaitiLibre Haiti - News : Zapping... 5th day of blocking and demonstrations Thursday morning in the capital, the situation had not changed much, the streets of Port-au-Prince were little frequented and important police presence was visible, while demonstrations continued to require the resignation of the Head of State but people stayed at home fearing for their lives. Wednesday, the message to the nation by President Jovenel Moise https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26186-haiti-flash-message-to-the-nation-of-president-jovenel-moise.html did not had effects on the opposition that rejected the call for dialogue (Day of demonstration this Friday, 23). Nevertheless various businesses whose banks and public transport began to operate more or less normally, but schools still remain closed. A new demonstration was held Thursday in the capital, always to demand the resignation of President Moise. "Moise chose the path of confrontation" dixit Andre Michel In response to the message to the Nation of President Moise (Wednesday https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26186-haiti-flash-message-to-the-nation-of-president-jovenel-moise.html), the Radical opposition activist Me Andre Michel said "Jovenel Moise did not announce his resignation as the Haitian people want, when he lost control of the country completely. He therefore chose the path of Confrontation. " Crisis : Canada is very concerned "Canada is very concerned about the current situation. We encourage all stakeholders to engage in an open dialogue to find constructive solutions. We will continue to monitor the situation closely "Marie-Claude Bibeau, Canada's Minister for International Development. Bahamas : resumption of activities According to a statement from the Chancellery of the Bahamas, the Embassy of the Bahamas accredited in Port-au-Prince resumed normal activities after a short closure due to riots in Port-au-Prince. In addition, Bahamasair has also announced the resumption of flights to Haiti. Young Bar under pressure The Observatory of Haitian Youth gives its full support to the lawyers of the Anti-Corruption Commission of the Young Bar of Port-au-Prince and request the opening of an investigation on the pressures and the acts of intimidation which are the object the lawyers of this Commission. Very positive meeting in the Bahamas Thursday, November 22, a delegation of the Embassy of Haiti in the Bahamas had a very positive meeting with Brent Symonette the Minister of Finance, Trade & Industry and Immigration in the Bahamas around some issues concerning the Haitian community and illegal in the Bahamas. HL/ HaitiLibre By Emily Mayer The end of the War to End All Wars didnt mean life immediately went back to the way it was before the United States entered the war. Life forever changed worldwide, in some ways for the better, in others not so much. It was estimated it would take a year to bring all American troops back home, and it would take a while for cropland and livestock herds in Europe to replenish and for communities to rebuild. United States Food Administrator Herbert Hoover announced we would be feeding the hungry in Europe for at least the next year, due to the loss of lives and therefore workforce and the devastation of cropland, some of which would never return to production. Citizens knew the work wasnt done yet, with an announcement in the Plaindealers Nov. 16, 1918, edition stating Montana Must Raise Over Two Million in War Saving Stamps. A fifth Liberty Loan drive was also being planned. Almost immediately, however, some food restrictions were eased. In the Nov. 16, 1918, edition of The Havre Plaindealer, an ad at the top of the page from the United States Food Administration stated sugar rations were being increased from two pounds to three pounds per person per month and a whole months supply could be purchased at once, however, extra sugar for canning purposes was not allowed due to the increase; use of wheat for feeding poultry was being allowed with all restrictions being cancelled; and dairy owners could now sell sweet cream with no restrictions. From corsets to farm implements, other restrictions were being lifted. The Plaindealers Nov. 23, 1918, edition included a recipe for a sugarless pumpkin pie, stating doing so was nothing new. It was made that way in our grandmothers day, and even when our mothers were young. The recipe called for 2 cups of cooked pumpkin; 1-2 cups molasses or sorghum; 1 teaspoon of cinnamon; 1-2 teaspoons of ginger; 1-2 teaspoons of salt; 2 eggs; 2 cups of milk. All this just in time for Thanksgiving! The holiday almost assuredly was highly emotional for our grandparents and great-grandparents. The relief the war was over and loved ones were coming home; for some it was the grief of permanent loss over a loved one who would never come home. The Spanish flu was rampant throughout the country, and Havre was no exception. The Plaindealer had a short article on the front page of its Nov. 9, 1918 edition stating the epidemic was subsiding, but the big gathering in downtown Havre to celebrate the end of the Great War certainly set that back. The article in the Nov. 16 edition stated Situation Not Improving as Rapidly as Expected. The following week, on Nov. 23, the Plaindealer ran an article that stated the epidemic was subsiding again and hopes were high that the bans of public gatherings would be lifted in a few days so schools, churches and other places could open again. The flu epidemic affected everything, even the funeral of the Rev. T. J. Moody, pastor of the Presbyterian churches at Cottonwood, Grain Belt and Mountain View. He died at his Havre home due to a stroke and his funeral service was a quick one at his gravesite at Grain Belt, with a memorial service to be held later when the necessity for avoiding indoor assemblies shall have passed. Local attorney L. E. Choquette was ordered to Camp Fremont, California, and his wife and children planned to visit his parents in Massachusetts, but due to the flu epidemic not easing both there and here, the trip was postponed. Mr. Choquette, however, was due to be in California by Nov. 20. The Spanish flu wasnt just cramping peoples lifestyles with the sniffles. It was deadly and did not discriminate. It claimed the lives of young and old, newcomers and old-timers. One of those old timers in Havre was Robert Barnes. ROBERT J. BARNES IS LAID TO REST On Tuesday afternoon occurred the funeral services over the remains of Robert J. Barnes of this city. Mr. Barnes was taken to Sacred Heart hospital on Friday suffering with influenza, which developed into pneumonia, resulting in his demise on Sunday. Mr. Barnes had been a prominent member of Havre Aerie of Fraternal Order of Eagles for about 12 years, during which time he was one of the most faithful members. Mr. Barnes had been in poor health for the past year and when attacked by the influenza he had not the strength to withstand the disease. Mr. Barnes was in the service of the United States for five years, being stationed at Fort Keough and later at Fort Assinniboine. He leaves to mourn his loss a wife and three children, the son who is with the American forces in France and two daughters, one of whom resides at Los Angeles, California, with whom the wife is now living. The funeral services were held under the auspices of the Eagles lodge. The funeral procession starting from Holland and Sons chapel the remains were conveyed to Highland cemetery where the last rites of the order were performed, assisted by Rev. L. J. Christler. More war and Spanish flu epidemic news in next weeks column. The Plaindealer had a very lengthy article regarding the local flax mill. Titled Flax Mill Enterprise Appears at Standstill was followed by the bi-line Promising Industry Hampered by Lack of Interest. One of the flax mills founders was former Havre mayor Louis Shorty Newman, and he had invested heavily in the project. At the time the flax mill was organized, one of the leading crops in Hill County was flax. The war changed that, with more farmers planting wheat instead of flax at the urging of the government. Crop failures starting in 1917 werent helping, either. Lack of local interest wasnt just for the flax mill. That issue was cited in an editorial in the Plaindealers Nov. 23 edition regarding the upcoming water bond election. A $75,000 bond issue was to be voted on by the property owners in Havre to enlarge and improve the citys water supply. Only 200 of the citys property owners had registered to vote in the upcoming issue. Nearly 200 men in Hill County had boarded the train to Nitro, West Virginia, to work on constructing a manufacturing plant at the request of the U.S. government. This is quite the story, so next weeks column will include the answer to the call to service and all the drama that went along with it. Folks, suffice it to say, November 1918 was a hectic and historic one! I hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and safe travels to all arriving and departing our fair city! Press release Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks will be hosting a series of public meetings to hear input on replacing the current Automated License System. FWP will be requesting permission from the Legislature to replace the system. The purpose of the meetings is to understand how the current system is meeting user needs and how it can be improved. The meetings are open to anyone who is interested and FWP is hoping to have a diverse group that represents a variety of outdoor interests and perspectives. The session will include opportunities for small group discussions that will help FWP gather input on expectations, values, needs, priorities and perceived issues and challenges related to the ALS and Campsite Reservation System. A meet-and-greet will kick off the evening at 5:30 p.m. with pizza provided by FWP. The meetings will run from 6 to 8 p.m. The meetings will take place at FWP regional offices. The schedule of the public meetings is: Nov. 27: FWP Headquarters in Helena, 1420 E. 6th Ave. Nov. 28: Region 4 office in Great Falls, 4600 Giant Springs Road. Nov. 28: Region 6 office in Glasgow, 1 Airport Rd (via video conference.) Nov. 29: Region 2 office in Missoula, 3201 Spurgin Road. Dec. 4: Region 3 office in Bozeman, 1400 South 19th. Dec. 5, Region 5 office in Billings, 2300 Lake Elmo Drive. Dec. 5, Region 7 office in Miles City, 352 I-94 Business Loop (via video conference.) Dec. 10, Region 1 office in Kalispell, 490 North Meridian Road. FWP ensures its meetings are fully accessible to those with special needs. To request arrangements, call FWP at 406-444-3186. Lizzy Haney, 13, serves a piece of pumpkin pie to Cynthia Bryson during the Havre Community Thanksgiving Dinner in St. Jude Parish Center Thursday in Havre. Throughout the day, serving and cleaning up was a group effort by the many volunteers who waited on more than 400 poeple who ate in the center. Volunteers also helped prepare for the meal Wednesday and to package and deliver more than 450 meals to people in their homes Thursday morning. Havre's Community Thanksgiving Dinner stretches farther than just Havre, and welcomed people from near and far to join in the festivities Thursday at St. Jude Parish Center. Linda Finke of Big Sandy and her husband Fred and daughter Grace have volunteered at the community Thanksgiving dinner for six years. Linda Finke said there are a lot of people in need every year, be it a need of a hot meal or a place to spend the holidays, and it becomes very prevalent this time of year. "It makes a person humble," she said. She added that she loves events like the community dinner and enjoys seeing people. Her daughter Grace, 17, said she has volunteered with her parents every year. She added that she was having fun at the event and likes to be able to see the joy on people's faces. "It's something that a community can bond over," she said. Grace Finke added that the most rewarding part of volunteering was seeing the joy in the community. Linda Finke said it is great when a community gets together to give rather than receive. She added that six years ago, Debi Rhines, the event organizer, told them about the event and got them interested in volunteering. It's a place to give thanks, Finke said, and makes a person appreciate what America is about. Welcoming all walks of life to come together, "break bread and thank the Lord," she added. Some of the younger volunteers at the event were sister and brother Lizzy, 13, and Grady Haney, 9. They both said they liked to help out. Lizzy Haney said this was their first year volunteering at the event and they were both having a lot of fun. "I like putting whip cream on the pies," she said. She added that her and her brother will probably want to volunteer again in the future. Robert and Edna Kuhn of Havre said this year was a great dinner. Robert Kuhn added that events like the community dinner are important for a community. People can see other people whom they never usually see, he said. "People grow into the woodwork," he said. He added that people don't always live far away but throughout the year people can forget that they are there, right next door. The community dinner provides a place to converse with their neighbors and celebrate the holidays with the community, Kuhn said. Ken and Stella Tyler of Havre said it is nice seeing people chatting together and great to see people coming together and helping each other out. Ken Tyler said he and his wife moved to Havre from Washington State four years ago and events like this are important to a community because it helps bring people together. Stella Tyler, who was taking a tally at the front door of people attending, said she watched people come in throughout the day and something she has noticed was that they come in happy. She said she counted 306 people who attended the event and wished more people came and it is important that everyone can get a hot meal. Head Chef Peter Bruni said he has been a volunteer with the community dinner since 2009. Bruni said he was a chef in the military for 20 years before coming to Havre to work as the executive chef at the Duck Inn. He added that he also designed the menu for Murphy's Irish Pub for the old location as well as for its present location. He said he enjoys giving back to the community and seeing and meeting all the people that come through and volunteer. Havre Daily News/Ryan Berry Ronnie Joe Skidmore, 5, anxiously awaits her Thanksgiving dinner as volunteers fill her plate with food at St. Jude Thaddeus Parish Center Thursday, November 22, 2018 in Havre, Mont. Free meals were given out from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. as part of Havre's annual community Thanksgiving dinner. Bruni said he has also streamlined the process for the dinner to efficiently serve everyone who attends. He added that they also delivered 467 Thanksgiving dinners to people around town in addition to more than 400 dinners served at the parish center. He said many things have to be done to make the dinner but he likes cooking it all. Bruni said he even does a special gravy for the event to make it just a little more special. They cut 39 turkeys for the dinner this year, he added, each turkey being close to 10 pounds, equalling about 390 pounds of turkey alone. Debi Rhines has been in charge of organizing the event since 2011. She said Thursday was a beautiful day for this year's event and everything was very calm. She said the fellowship people give one another as a community is a very positive thing. "People taking care of each other," she said. The dinner is important to the community, Rhines said, because it brings community spirit, laughter and love to everyone. She added that all of the left-overs from the dinner this year will go to the Feed My Sheep Soup Kitchen. Leo Martin Faber, 89, passed away due to natural causes on Saturday, November 17, 2018, at the Big Sandy Care Center. Funeral services will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Friday, November 30, 2018, at St. Margaret Mary's Catholic Church. Burial will follow in the Big Sandy Cemetery. Leo's family has suggested memorial donations be made in his name to the Big Sandy Volunteer Fire Department, Big Sandy Medical Center, or St. Margaret Mary's Catholic Church. Holland & Bonine Funeral Home has been entrusted with services and arrangements. Please visit Leo's online memorial page and leave a message of condolence for his family at http://www.hollandbonine.com. Leo was born October 11, 1929, in Havre to Theodore and Mary (Kane) Faber. He was named after a close friend and neighbor, Leo Black, who died in a horse accident. Leo's mother found out she had breast cancer at the time Leo was born, so his grandmother Faber and great-aunt Katherine Pepin cared for him for many months while Mary received treatment and surgery. Mary entered the hospital for a year when Leo was 8 years old, and died at the age of 37. Leo's dad had bought the Black ranch southeast of Big Sandy in 1932 and carried on caring for Leo and his older brother Lawrence. Ted worked long hours paying off the mortgage on the ranch and the many bills, cooking meals, making bread, and doing the laundry the hard way with no electricity, telephone, or indoor plumbing. From the age of 8, Leo spent summers at his grandmother Faber's on the Box Elder Creek along with many cousins and his special Uncle Joe, who started him on his many years of trout fishing. Leo attended Catechism classes at the Faber School down the road. Leo attended the Dog Creek School for eight years, often along with his brother Lawrence riding horses to school. He went to high school in Big Sandy, staying in the dormitory and graduating in 1947. Leo met Beverly Bull at a country dance at Warrick in December of 1947, and they started dating late in 1948. The couple married September 9, 1950, and after a short trip to Glacier Park were at home in the same house that they now reside. Leo's dad, who had purchased the McMillan ranch near Warrick in 1948, lived with Leo and Bev, along with brother Lawrence and Ben McConkey. There was a fresh supply of elk meat in the woodshed every year, compliments of Leo. In June of 1951, son Gene was born. In 1953, the young family moved off the ranch and Leo worked for various Chevrolet dealerships in Big Sandy, Havre, and Great Falls. Three more sons were added, with another on the way, when son Gene died of Leukemia in October of 1956. In 1960, the growing family moved back to the ranch where Leo worked hard putting up hay, feeding the cattle, calving, fencing, and building a new barn. By 1966, they had nine children, which, along with hired help, kept them busy and provided ranch help. Sometimes Leo would take all of the kids fishing, later doing the same with the grandkids. At times in later life, he would go alone to catch brook trout for supper. In 1965, Ted Faber, Lawrence, and Leatrice and family had moved to a newly purchased ranch near Cleveland. In 1967, Leo and Beverly purchased the ranch from the family partnership. Leo belonged to the Big Sandy Fire Department for years, and with his State Land fire truck was often the first responder in the rural neighborhood and the last to leave. The fire department crew came to the Faber ranch many years to get a large Christmas tree for Big Sandy. "Leo Trees" were also provided for all the school rooms to decorate along with the trees for the Catholic Church. In 1988, Leo and Bev started an outfitting business. Leo was a member of the Montana Outfitters and Guides Association. Hunters came from many states, many of whom became lifelong friends. During these years, Leo and Bev traveled through many states and Europe. Leo is survived by his wife of 68 years, Beverly; children Jerry Faber of Havre, Dana Faber, Patrick (Lana) Faber of Helena, Tim Faber of Big Sandy, Mary (Bryan) Anderson of Minneapolis, Ann Faber of East Helena, Mike (Lisa) Faber of Cut Bank, Steve (Tracy) and Chris (Janna) Faber of Havre; and 20 grandchildren. Every month, food pantries, meal programs and other partners of the Montana Food Bank Network distribute over a million pounds of food to those who are struggling in our communities. The impact of these programs is immediate and enormous, helping to keep food on the table for Montana families, seniors, underemployed workers, individuals with disabilities and anyone else in need of a helping hand. While much of this food comes from the generous support of donors, a substantial portion also comes through The Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP. With so much food moving through our do... In a world where it seems the only thing humanity has in common is our divisiveness, scientists from around the globe have met and shown the world that people of the human race come together in one voice to tell the world they can accurately measure the weight of their nerdiness. Its the astounding news you likely A) didnt know happened, and B) didnt know affected your everyday life: Scientific and policy-making representatives from more than 60 nations voted unanimously Friday to redefine the definition of a kilogram. This monumental moment has been reported by news agencies aro... While the gender pay gap report is limited in what it can show about Shells treatment of females, it reveals women are still concentrated at the bottom of the organisation. Less than a third of its senior leaders in the UK are female and the majority of experienced hires in the country are men, the report said. Improving the gender balance is fundamental to the continued success of our business, Sinead Lynch, Shell UK Country Chair, said in an emailed statement. We need to attract the best minds and build a culture where every voice can speak up and every voice is heard. Shell is one of the first companies to report its 2018 gender pay data. UK law mandates firms with more than 250 employees in Britain release this years figures by April 2019. Last year was the first time the reports were released, and an analysis from more than 10,000 companies showed median pay for female full-time employees in the UK was 8.6% less than for men. Though Shells gap is more than double that level, its figures are slightly better than its competitors in the oil business. The Anglo-Dutch oil major attributes the lack of women in petroleum engineering and trading roles to the stark pay difference. Those specialist jobs often come with outsized salaries and bonuses, it said. The family of slain businesswoman Celine Cawley will today speak out against a gap in the law that allows killers to inherit the assets of their victims. They will call for urgent legislation, saying other families should not have to go through the ordeal they suffered. Ms Cawley (46), a former model and Bond girl who ran a successful film production company, was bludgeoned to death by her husband, Eamonn Lillis, 10 years ago next month. Complex Her family says the intervening years have been taken up with costly "complex and emotionally draining" court cases. They arose after Lillis (61), despite being convicted of manslaughter, maintained he was entitled to assets he jointly held with his wife - including the family home in Howth, Co Dublin, and a home in France. The killer ultimately won the right to a 50pc share of Irish assets following a High Court ruling here. However, a French court found he had no right to a share in the home in France. As a result of the Irish ruling, Lillis held on to around 500,000 in assets. Ms Cawley's siblings, Chris and Susanna, want the loophole in the Irish law closed. In a speech to be delivered today at a Women's Aid event at the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, the Cawleys will detail the legal battles they felt compelled to pursue to ensure Celine's daughter, Georgia, was properly provided for. In the speech, Chris and Susanna say the absence of relevant laws in Ireland supported not just Lillis's sense of entitlement to the assets but his actual entitlement to them. "The effect of this was that although her killer was convicted and serving a jail sentence, he had an automatic right personally to inherit all their joint assets," they say. "Additionally, he made no financial provisions for their daughter. We decided to fight for the principle of social justice and the common good." They say that in Ireland High Court proceedings lasted four years and seven months, with legal costs coming to 187,000. In comparison, the French proceedings took one year and seven months with legal costs of just 16,000. "It seems that in France the common good and principles of social justice are upheld. It seems to us this is not the case in Ireland," they will say. Remission Lillis was sentenced to six years and 11 months in 2010 but with remission was freed in 2015. He hit his wife over the head with a brick in a row at their home. He told gardai he found an intruder attacking his wife and even gave detectives the name of a local man as a suspect. Detectives were suspicious and found clothing covered in Ms Cawley's blood in a suitcase. Gardai and OPW staff team up to clean The Haunting Soldier statue after the attack in St Stephen's Green Gardai are investigating after a statue to commemorate the ending of World War I was vandalised with red paint in the early hours of yesterday morning. Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Minister Josepha Madigan expressed her "disappointment" about the attack on The Haunting Soldier sculpture, which she unveiled in St Stephen's Green earlier this month. "This installation honours all those who died in the terrible suffering of World War I," Ms Madigan said. "It is incredibly moving and has proved immensely popular. "There is no bravery in throwing paint at a statue in the middle of the night. Damage "My department has been in touch with the OPW in relation to the damage and I understand that the installation will be cleaned up today." A team of cleaners was yesterday morning tasked with removing the paint from the sculpture. They used solvents, brushes and power-washers to scrub off the gloss paint, which cannot be removed by water alone. Gardai also remained at the scene yesterday morning. The sculpture is made from scrap metal, including horseshoes, spanners, car jacks and brake discs. It was brought to Ireland by Dublin solicitor Sabina Purcell, who discovered that she had a family connection to soldiers who had served in the Great War. This led her to explore how the nation could remember and commemorate the troops from Ireland who gave their lives in World War I and also those who survived and returned home. The six-metre-high sculpture was erected in St Stephen's Green park on November 4. The imposing figure, depicting a weary soldier returning from battle, was designed by Martin Galbavy and constructed by Chris Hannam at Dorset Forge and Fabrication in the south of England. A garda spokesperson confirmed that officers were investigating criminal damage to the sculpture. "Gardai are investigating criminal damage caused to a statue in the St Stephen's Green area of Dublin on November 22 at approximately 2am," the spokesperson said. "No arrests have been made at this stage. Centenary "A scene is currently in place at the statue. Investigations are continuing." A spokesperson for the Office of Public Works (OPW) said the statue would remain in St Stephen's Green until Monday as scheduled, coinciding with the centenary commemorations to mark the ending of World War I. "OPW staff are in the process of removing the red paint from The Haunting Soldier which was vandalised overnight and this should be completed shortly," the spokesperson said. "The statue will remain on display in St Stephen's Green Park until Monday evening before heading back to the UK." Victim was living in New York A manhunt is under way in the US after an Irishman was killed outside a New York bar in a one-punch assault. The 21-year-old was struck following a dispute outside the Gaslight Bar on Queens Boulevard at around 3.45am yesterday. Detectives are investigating if the victim - whose identity has not been released - was punched once before hitting his head off the pavement. It is understood the man is originally from Longford but had been living in the New York borough for some time. A homicide investigation has been launched by the NYPD, which is attempting to track down the suspect. A spokesman confirmed that the man died after being assaulted outside the Gaslight Bar. "Police responded to a 911 call of a male assaulted in front of 43-17 Queens Boulevard, the Gaslight Bar, located within the confines of the 108 Precinct," the spokesman told the Herald. "Upon arrival, officers observed a 21-year-old male lying on the ground, with trauma to the head. "Emergency medical serv- ices also responded to the location and transported the male to Elmhurst Hospital Centre, where he was pronounced dead. "A preliminary investigation determined that the male was punched in the head by an unknown male in front of the location, who then fled the scene on foot." Footage No arrests have yet been made and investigations are ongoing, the spokesman added. CCTV footage from nearby bars is expected to be reviewed in a bid to identify the killer. Separately, an Irishman has died suddenly in Perth, Australia. The Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed last night that it was aware of both deaths and was providing consular assistance to the families of the two men. What will fit in a million-square-foot warehouse? Hint: It's a lot "We've done a 12,000-square-foot house. At a million square feet, you could fit a lot of them in there," said architect Scott Bowen Happy Thanksgiving... From me, my family and especially from my grandson, ZACHARY, a great guy. He is so kind and helpful to his "aging" granny and also very musically talented. (Forget the aging part!) And staying on that happy holiday thought... I was watching television recently and saw a talent that almost blew me away! His name is Jim Bailey, a male female impersonator who did impressions of Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Phyllis Diller, to name a few. Not only did he look like them, he sounded just as fabulous! Unfortunately, he has passed away but you can still Google him and be blown away also! On that same show was a favorite of mine, and a member of our tribe. I'm referring to LAINIE KAZAN whose real last name is LEVINE. She is still performing, and like my children, is half Sephardic and half Ashkenazi, and like me, she was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. As well as performing, she teaches acting at UCLA and is a member of several Boards, including B'nai Brith. Hooray for Israel's security... The World Jewish Congress (WJC) applauded the adoption by the U.S. Senate of the U.S.-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2018, S.2497. This bipartisan legislation seeks to ensure that Israel has the means to defend itself against increasing threats, including Iran's growing presence close to Israel's northern border. It authorizes increases in security assistance to Israel as well as new cooperation between the U.S. and Israel in advanced technological areas, including cyber security and anti-drone and space technology. S.2497 would also authorize continuing U.S. security assistance to Israel for 10 years, helping to ensure Israel's qualitative military edge in the Middle East. Rabbi JOEL MEYERS, chairman of the WJC United States, said: "The reality today in the State of Israel indicates growing security threats, including the growing presence of Iran and its proxies on Israel's northern border with Syria, increased terrorist attacks on the border with Gaza, and a necessity for Israel to defend itself against terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and others. He continued: "We welcome the bipartisan support demonstrated by the United States Senate for the strong and vital U.S.-Israel relationship and its dedication to ensuring that Israel will have the necessary means to defend itself against these threats. We are deeply appreciative of the fact that this legislation signifies the continued commitment of the United States to Israel's security, recognizing that Israel is our most reliable democratic ally in the Middle East." (This act was really both parties working together. Senator BOB CORKER, a Republican, Senator ROBERT MENENDEZ, a Democrat, Senator MARCO RUBIO, a Republican and CHRIS COONS, a Democrat, worked together. (See, IT CAN BE DONE!!) A wonderful night of wonderful guys... The second Men's Night Out, held recently, was a great success. It took place at Congregation Ohev Shalom and all the camaraderie benefited Jewish education. Organized by local synagogues' men's clubs and supported by the Jewish Federation, Men's Night Out raised funds to support religious schools, Jewish education, Jewish camps and youth groups, and trips to Israel, which are life-defining Jewish experiences. (Okay, when's the Gal's Night Out??) The Roth Family JCC... On Sunday, Nov. 25, New York Times bestselling author BRIAN KILMEADE will be at the JCC in Maitland at 5:30 p.m. to sign his latest book, "Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans." The book is now available in paperback. JCC39ers Meet & Mingle Mondays... On Nov. 26, beginning at 1 p.m. in the Roth Family JCC, Maitland Senior Lounge, there will be a "Cogniciti Brain Health Workshop. (IT'S NOT DEDICATED TO ME!) Refreshments will follow. Lainie (Levine) Kazan One for the road... Abe comes home one day and finds his wife Esther in tears. "Darling, what's the matter?" "Oh Abe," cries Esther, "Doctor Cohen says I have tuberculosis." "What! A big healthy woman like you has tuberculosis? Ridiculous," says Abe, "I'll call Doctor Cohen and get this sorted out right now." So Abe calls his doctor. "Doctor, Esther says you told her she has tuberculosis." The doctor says something to Abe and with that, Abe begins laughing. "So what's so funny about my having such a dreadful disease?" asks Esther. "Esther, Doctor Cohen didn't say 'tuberculosis', he said 'too big a tuches'! (JNS)-After Israeli and Armenian flags were torn down and other items were thrown to the ground by anti-Israel protesters at an event in May at the University of California, Los Angeles, the school's Students Supporting Israel chapter gave a list of demands to the UCLA administration to protect the pro-Israel community. SSI at UCLA is on the front lines fighting against the annual National Students for Justice in Palestine Conference, which UCLA is slated to sponsor from Nov. 16-18. For pro-Israel students by pro-Israel students, SSI is one of the many organizations on college campuses nationwide that face hostility in working towards supporting the State of Israel. But it is distinguishable from other such groups, as one of its founders called it Students for Justice in Palestine's "proper opponent." SSI president and founder Ilan Sinelnikov told JNS that SSI, which was established by three students in March of 2012 on university grounds, is "a registered student group on campus," which can be in the know "before the news travel outside of campus to other community organizations or organizations that work with students." "Our students are the front line of knowing what is happening on campus before any professional in the field can know. SSI is a campus-based and student-led organization," he elaborated. "The difference is that only a student group can book a room for an event, be involved in student [government] and invite their friends to join our organization. No outside of campus organization could do it all, simply because they aren't the students. SJP that is a national student movement finally has a national pro-Israel student movement to face." "Therefore, we registered on campus as a student group, got going, and we never imagined that our work will spread all over the country," he continued. "While most of the other pro-Israel organizations were not started by students, and operate from outside of campus, Students Supporting Israel is the only organization that was born on the campus grounds, and due to the high need, spread from one campus to another over the years. Approximately 700 to 800 participants participate across 45 SSI chapters nationwide, according to Sinelnikov. "For years, we had one national student movement that operated against Israel-SJP-united under one name and one goal all over the country. In the Israel arena, each campus was operating [individually] running many pro-Israel student organizations with different names and no unity," explained Sinelnikov. "This is when SSI was born-a campus-based organization that is organic to campus, and works under one name and one goal all over the country. SJP now doesn't need to fight outsiders or local pro-Israel cells." 'Zionism is nothing to be ashamed of' Melech Lapson, a junior and president of the SSI chapter at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, called Illini Students Supporting Israel (ISSI). He initially had no interest in getting involved with on-campus Israel advocacy until he saw speakers brought by ISSI, and seeing the opposition and how they dehumanized anyone who disagreed with them, he explained. "Only then did I decide to be involved in spreading the truth about Israel to others," he said. He said the dehumanizing "came in forms of protesting speeches-comparing Israel and Zionists to Nazis-and hateful sitting, such as 'from the river to the sea Palestine will be free,' implying the riding out of all Israelis." ISSI has invited numerous prominent speakers over the past year and have more planned for this year, he added. "We try to bring in a wide variety of speakers and panels to help our campus understand all the different sides of Israel," said Lapson. "We go further than just the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict; we dive into Israeli culture and history." Speakers have included Israeli reservist soldiers; Hen Mazzig, a humanitarian activist and journalist; and Ben Blackwell, a popular Israeli rapper. Additionally, "We also have [an] eight-week student-led discussion, in its ninth semester, where we help educate 20 of our fellow students in the history of the conflict and Israeli culture, while also opening the floor for discussion for people to present their views on the incidents in Israel's past," said Lapson. Lapson said that due to the discussion, "students report that they feel more comfortable discussing Israel and several join the ISSI board afterwards." Asaf Romirowsky, executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, said "student groups vary from campus to campus. Campuses differ politically and culturally; there is no cookie-cutter model." "Of all the many groups, one of the newer ones is SSI, a group that is proudly and openly Zionist, and has taken a pro-active political stance of rightly advocating for Israel as they have done at Columbia and on other campuses," he added. Moreover, Romirowsky said that "Zionism is nothing to be ashamed of." "It is Jewish nationalism," he stressed, "and to that end, our students need to feel a sense of pride in their own Jewish identity, which incorporates Zionism-something that groups like SSI do and should be commended for." Asaf Romirowsky, executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. The Friends of the Israel Defense Forces invites the community to a special performance by the IDF musical ensemble to celebrate Israel's 70th anniversary and 70 years of Heroes and Hope. The ensemble will perform popular and traditional Israeli songs, including special songs for Chanukah. The event co-chairs are Burt and Barbara Chasnov. The event will be held on Dec. 9, at 2:30 p.m., at Congregation Ohev Shalom, 613 Concourse Pkwy S., Maitland. There will also be a former IDF combat soldier and current IMPACT! scholarship recipient at the event to speak about her service and how the scholarship program has impacted her life. The IMPACT! scholarship program provides 4-year academic scholarships to combat and combat support veterans in-need, allowing them to continue to give back to Israel long after their military service is over through a higher education, as well as through a community service commitment. Ticket prices are: $180, Guardian of Israel (includes a private lunch with the soldiers); $90, Patron VIP seat; $36, Preferred seats; $18, General Admission seats; $10, Students (Ages 13-21); Free, Children 12 and under. To join the festivities and learn about sponsorship opportunities or to purchase tickets please call the FIDF office at 305-354-8233. You can also visit https://www.fidf.org/events/2018-greater-orlando-fidf-solidarity-event. (JNS)-Israel's Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman abruptly resigned his post and removed his Yisrael Beytenu Party from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition less than a day after Israel reportedly agreed to a ceasefire with Hamas. During the announcement at a meeting of the Yisrael Beytenu Knesset faction on Wednesday, Lieberman also called on Netanyahu to call early elections and not to "paralyze the country in the long term." "I have tried to remain a faithful member of the Cabinet and to make heard another view, even at a great electoral and political price," Lieberman stated, adding that the ceasefire announcement "cannot be interpreted in any way other than a surrender to terror." "This will severely harm our security in the long term," he said. "The response that we gave to the 500 rockets shot from Gaza was not enough, to say the least. The south should come first. Our weakness is being broadcast to other fronts." Speaking of Hamas's intentions during the flare-up, Lieberman said: "Hamas isn't talking about coexistence and recognition of Israel. They don't want to reduce unemployment in Gaza." According to Israel's Channel 10 news, at least four senior ministers opposed the ceasefire during a seven-hour cabinet meeting on Tuesday. Lieberman, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Bayit Yehudi-Jewish Home), Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Bayit Yehudi-Jewish Home) and Environmental Protection Minister Ze'ev Elkin (Likud) disagreed with the prime minister's decision to de-escalate the conflict following a severe, 25-hour pounding of Israel's south by Hamas with more than 450 rockets and mortar shells. Housing Minister Yoav Galant (Kulanu) said the security cabinet ultimately accepted Netanyahu's decision, though Netanyahu reportedly did not put the decision to a vote. Initial reports following the ceasefire announcement claimed Lieberman, Bennett, Shaked and Elkin had voted in favor of the initiative, but Lieberman and Bennett's offices both issued statements vehemently denying any support for the ceasefire. Lieberman's move to pull his six-member Yisrael Beytenu Party out of the government leaves Netanyahu with the slimmest of ruling majorities, with a coalition of only 61 members out of 120. A ruling majority is not mandatory to maintain power, though any "no confidence" motion can collapse a government in Israel's parliamentary system. At a memorial event for Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, and his wife, Paula, Netanyahu defended the ceasefire announcement, claiming that Hamas "begged" Israel for the ceasefire. "In times of trial, Ben-Gurion made fateful decisions," said Netanyahu. "Sometimes, he did so contrary to popular opinion, but over time, these decisions turned out to be correct." "In routine times, a leader has to be attentive to the feelings of the people, and we are a wise nation. But in times of crisis, at a time of fateful decisions regarding security, the public at times cannot be a partner to decisive considerations that must be hidden from the enemy," he added. "At these times, leadership is not doing the easy thing, but the right thing, even if it is hard," he said. "Leadership is standing up to criticism when you know things that are secret and sensitive, and which you cannot share with the citizens of Israel and in this case the residents of the south, whom I love and greatly appreciate." It remains unclear whether Netanyahu will send the country into early elections, or who will receive the post of defense minister. (Chabad.org/News via JNS)Voices filled with emotion, Chabad rabbis from across California made clear their determination to help people in need while dealing with the ongoing devastation that uncontrollable blazes have wrought on their hometowns. Paradise is a part of our community, said Rabbi Mendy Zwiebel of the town in Northern California where more than 30 people have been killed as the Camp Fire decimated all of structures in its path. We had people over for Shabbat who lost everything. This wasnt expected. On Thursday morning, we woke up and heard [about the fire]. In just a few hours, the whole town was wiped out. One woman told me that she grabbed her siddur and her chumash, and drove through the flames to escape the fire, the rabbi continued. He believes that some 20 members of his community have lost everything. As many as 8,000 firefighters are reported to be battling the wildfires as of Monday, when the death toll also surpassed 40, with some 200 people still considered missing. More than 250,000 evacuated their homes in the past few days. And as of Tuesday morning, a reported 6,800 homes have been destroyed by the fires. The city of Chico opened their doors to their neighbors, and everyone who evacuated found places to stay at friends house. People donated clothing and food, and the Red Cross is helping out. For the time being, peoples needs are being dealt with, said Zwiebel, adding that those who are staying with friends and family will be doing so for the long term. They cant move back home tomorrow; theres nowhere to move back to, he said. Nearly 500 miles to the south, residents of Malibu, Thousand Oaks, Oak Park, Calabasas, Westlake Village and other nearby towns are waiting for word about when they can return home, and if they still have a home as the Woolsey Fire, which began on Thursday, is still burning. As of Sunday afternoon, the fire had taken two lives, destroyed some 177 homes and burned 83,400 acres. With a Red Flag Warning in effect and heavy winds expected over the next 36 hours, the danger is far from over. Most people are in total shock right now, said Rabbi Levi Cunin. It takes just a few minutes for a house to be completely burned down. We had some parents in our preschool whose homes have completely burned down, so we are working to get their basic needs taken care of to lessen the devastation. Cunin himself hasnt been home in days. He and his family left on Friday when a mandatory evacuation order was put into place. Taking the congregations Torah scrolls with them, he and his family have been staying at Chabad of Pacific Palisades just a few miles down the road. Its really devastating, but we are praying for the best, said Cunin. Ive been here 24 years, and theres never been anything close to this. And its not just the flames that remain a concern. He explained that had just come from visiting a city councilman who was hospitalized for smoke inhalation and was in the ICU. Its just not safe to be in Malibu, he said. When asked how people can help or what they can do, Cunin said he is sure that in the coming days, fundraising efforts will be set up to help those in need, but right now, its just too early. We just dont know what will be. Its a living situation right now. An antidote to pain and despair The communities of Thousand Oaks and adjacent Westlake Village were still grappling with last Wednesday nights deadly mass shooting of a dozen people at a local bar, including a sheriffs officer and many young adults, when police began driving around with bullhorns ordering people to evacuate. Rabbi Yitzchok Sapochkinsky, co-director of Chabad of Westlake Village with his wife, Brocha, said his family was evacuated at 2 a.m. on Friday morning, just hours after hosting a conference call for teens in the area to give them support and guidance. My daughter Mushkie, who runs our teen programs with her husband, Rabbi Mendy Friedman, arranged the call where we talked about Torah and emunah (faith). We read tehillim together, and we gave tzedakah together. I shared some words of chizuk (support). Though people cant understand why the massacre happened or why the fires are burning, Sapochkinsky told the teens: G-d is in charge of the world, and our concern needs to be love and tolerance. I encouraged the kids to show indiscriminate love. Though Sapochkinsky and his family are far from homethey are staying with family in Rancho Mirage some 140 miles away, as the evacuation order remains in effect for Westlake Villagehe believes that both his familys home and the Chabad House are OK. Shula Bryski, co-director of Chabad of Thousand Oaks with her husband, Rabbi Chaim Bryski, noted that dark times really highlight the important message of the Lubavitcher RebbeRabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory. In the ugliest of times, when you see the worst of human nature, for instanceor through the devastation of firesyou also begin to see the most beautiful parts of human nature, she said. Somehow, they work in tandem. Thats what Gd expects of us, Bryski continued, adding, it is almost a cliche to say we are supposed to fight darkness with light, but we when we think about it, our job is to uplift the people around us with goodness. Its an incredible antidote to pain and despair. With the mandatory evacuation order for their neighborhood lifted, the Bryskis went home to Thousand Oaks to lend a hand to those in need. Residents not surprised by the help That they returned so quickly to help the community isnt a surprise to Thousand Oaks resident Cathy Cole, who works as an oncology nurse in the Los Robles Regional Medical Center. Ive known Rabbi Bryski for 18 years and rely on him every day, she said. I dont think hes slept in days. I told him to go home and sleep for a while, but hes always there for us. Cole said the last few days have been extremely tough on people in her town. I think we are all in shock, she said, noting that one of her colleagues lost a son, Jacob Dunham, in the Nov. 7 mass shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill. We are not used to this violence or having back-to-back crises. Its been very difficult for the families to memorialize their loved ones or plan funerals because of fires that began on Thursday afternoon. Still, like others, Cole said shes seen good come from the bad. Everyone is asking, whether you are in a store trying to buy groceries or at work, How are you? Is your house OK? Do you need anything? Everyone is going out of their way to help strangers. In our faith, she continued, we are adding kindness, listening to the Rebbes words and doing mitzvot. Despite the devastation, Rabbi Bryski feels Gd is watching out for people. For instance, he said, the Ventura County fire chief, Mark Lorenzen, put on tefillin for the very first time in his life just hours after the deadly massacre and just hours before the start of the fire. I feel like Gd set it up that he should have success and that no lives should be lost here, said Rabbi Bryski, adding that in the last few days, hes seen how much goodness there is in this country. People are providing food for people [they dont know], helping people, sheltering peoplethey are living the message of Avraham Aveinu [the patriarch Abraham] from the Torah reading about hachnasat orchim [welcoming guests], said the rabbi. The Chabad Center of Agoura Hills will be opening its doors to provide materials, gift cards and other necessities to people who have lost their homes, regardless of their religious affiliation. This story originally appeared on Chabad.org/News. (Israel Hayom via JNS)-If there is one American politician who has made support for Israel a daily agenda item, Florida governor-elect Ron DeSantis is that person. DeSantis, a Republican who for six years served in the U.S. House of Representatives, has his name on a series of legislative initiatives in Congress aimed at protecting and strengthening Israel, the highlight of which was his relentless push to relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Even after U.S. President Donald Trump made the historic decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's official capital, DeSantis continued to act to implement that move on the ground, arriving in Israel in order to examine possible sites for establishing an embassy in Jerusalem. During his final term as congressman, DeSantis pushed for U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Coming up on the end of his third term as congressman, DeSantis resigned from the position and decided that he would run for governor of Florida-one of the most important states and one with a heavy and growing Jewish population. His opponent was Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, a man perceived by many to be a rising star in the Democratic Party. Tuesday night was a nerve-wracking one for the 40-year-old DeSantis, as he watched and waited for the results in the race to lead this important state of more than 20 million people. He wound up beating Gillum by a few tenths of a percent. On Wednesday, DeSantis spoke with Israel Hayom in what was his first foreign media interview as governor-elect. If there's one takeaway from this interview, it is that, beginning in January 2019, Israel will have friend in the Florida Governor's Mansion. Q: What was the first thing that entered you mind when you learned you had won the election? Well, [I was] somewhat relieved just because we worked very hard for it, and we had a huge number of people who were volunteering to help us, who were praying for us. And I really wanted to make sure that we came through and won for them, and I didn't want to let them down. And so I was just real, real happy that, you know, we came through when it counted and brought home a good victory. Q: At what point did you realize you were winning the race? I would say this morning, when you know, we were getting reports of really just historic voter turn-out. We had gone into the election-Republicans had turned in 20,000 fewer ballots than Democrats had, which is basically an 80,000 vote improvement over what Trump had going into his election, so I knew if our voters came out, you know, and turned out that there would be enough votes there for me to win. It just seemed like that was happening by 10 a.m., we were very optimistic that we would win. Q: What do you believe helped you cinch the race? This was a highly contested race up until the very last moment. Was it the Jewish vote or a specific segment of the population? I think we're going to have to sift through the numbers to see exactly how all that shook out. I can tell you, though, that I think that there was a big divide in the race between, you know, me being a very pro-Israel candidate with a record of strong leadership, and my opponent who just wasn't, had been aligned with groups that are very left-wing and hostile to Israel, and so it was definitely something that I stressed throughout the campaign. And as governor, I'm in charge of the anti-BDS list, so when there are boycotts of Israel, I can unilaterally put these companies on Florida's list so that they can't do business with the state of Florida. And I'll be very aggressive in doing that, and I think that will help combat BDS [the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement]. My first foreign trip as governor is going to be to Israel. I want to obviously develop additional economic relationships, want to make sure we continue to have direct flights from south Florida to Ben-Gurion [International] Airport. And I also want to establish working relationships between some of the universities and researchers and innovators in Israel with people in Florida, because we have different problems, like red tide [harmful algal blooms], and I think if we're able to work constructively with Israelis, we probably could develop solutions much quicker. So I think that there's going to... open a lot of possibilities for us. Q: Picking up on what you said about BDS, would that be a top priority for you? I believe there's another Senate bill that would make it punishable to be part of BDS. Would you push for such legislation? I don't know exactly which bill, but I would say I'm definitely in favor of strengthening our tools to fight BDS. For sure, we will be aggressive in supporting that. I've done that in the Congress for six years. In fact, I was the first one to hold an anti-BDS hearing years ago on my subcommittee, so we're going to be very aggressive on that, and part of that is, you know, Florida's a really big, diverse state. But yet it doesn't matter if I'm in Boca Raton or Pensacola-people in Florida are pro-Israel, and they want to make sure that we are standing with them. Q: Can you tell us more about the Jewish population's efforts to make Israel a central campaign issue? How much did the campaign ultimately focus on Israel? I would say Israel was a bigger issue in this governor's race than it has been in other governor's races. Part of it is because you had a contrast with the two candidates, and then part of it is just within the last few years, states have been active in fighting things like BDS. And so there's more of a role for a governor, you know, now than there may have been 20 years ago in terms of the relationship between the U.S. or individual states and Israel. And so it's great to be able to have that ability to really push back. And as governor, I'll obviously do that very quickly. Q: You were one of the first people to push for the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. As governor, how will you advance similar efforts, whether regarding the Golan Heights or issues concerning Israel? Well, I want to make sure when we're doing trading with Israel, I don't draw any distinctions like the State Department would between an Israeli Jewish community in Tel Aviv or Jewish communities in the Golan Heights or Judea and Samaria, and I view it all as basically the same. There shouldn't be a distinction. I do think that [President Donald] Trump should recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. When I do travel to Israel, I will make that case and urge him to do it just like I urged him to move the embassy when I was over there in 2017. So, yeah, look, I think when you lead with purpose and conviction like Trump did when he moved the embassy-look, good things happen as a result of that. I think the same [is true] with the Golan Heights. I mean there's no way that [that territory] should ever be transferred to anybody in Syria, whether it's [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, whether it's Hezbollah, you know, ISIS [the Islamic State terrorist group]. I mean it's a disaster. So it's very important strategic ground, and we want to make sure that Israel keeps that and that should not be subject to further dispute. Q: Did you speak with either with President Trump or Mr. Gillum after the results were announced? Yes, Andrew Gillum called me and was very gracious. He conceded the race. And I called, after he called me, I spoke with the president and just let him know that, because I don't think the networks had called it yet, but I said I just want to let you know that [Tallahassee] Mayor Gillum did concede, and we won and thanks for your help. So he was pleased to hear that. I didn't talk to him in-depth because he was busy. He had a lot of folks in the White House I think. So I'll probably follow up with him sometime today. Q: Is there anything you would like to say regarding 2020? What direction do you think the United States is headed? Well, look, these political seasons have gotten more and more nasty in the United States. I mean, I think 2020, you know, if President Trump continues what he's doing, I think he's going to go into 2020 with a really strong record of success. If you look at our economy, you look at the bold foreign policy moves he's made-not just like putting the embassy in Jerusalem, but by nuking the Iran deal and now imposing more sanctions on Iran-I mean that is very, very popular in Florida, and it's popular throughout the country and it's the right thing to do, the judges that have been put on [the Supreme Court]. There are a lot of achievements, and so I think he's going to be in a strong position to win re-election. I think the fact that the Democrats took the House of Representatives last night, I think that's probably going to help Trump get re-elected because I think what you're going to see is [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi just over-reach. I think that she's going to be driven by all the left-wing crazies, and I think it's going to be a good foil for the president. So, he's probably not going to be able to get as much done with her as speaker, but, you know, the flip-side of that is I do think it positions him better for re-election. And I think Pelosi's over-reaching will probably help ensure that Trump is in fact re-elected. A police officer stands guard outside Temple Sinai in Pittsburgh, Nov. 2, 2018. The synagogue is a half-mile away from the Tree of Life Congregation, which was attacked by a lone gunman less than a week earlier. By Ben Sales NEW YORK (JTA)-After a mass shooting in a heavily Jewish area shocked the nation, Rabbi Yakov Saacks felt like his Long Island congregation was at risk. So the rabbi installed 17 cameras on the synagogue's exterior that can zoom in to read numbers on license plates, as well as indoor cameras at each entrance. He began covering the windows with Kevlar, at around $800 each, making them shatterproof in case vandals hit them with rocks. And he hired armed security guards to protect the Hebrew school and Shabbat services. When the sanctuary is especially crowded-on the High Holidays, for example-as many as three guards will patrol the building carrying guns and communicating by radio. That was after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, nearly nine months ago. Following the attack last month on a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Saacks said he feels vindicated in beefing up security. And he's not done. In addition to protecting the rest of his windows, he is planning to install a metal detector at the building entrance as well as a double-door vestibule called a "mantrap." "What can we do? What can we do?" said Saacks, whose Chabad synagogue, the Chai Center, occupies an acre and a half in the upscale suburb of Dix Hills. "This doesn't make me happy. It doesn't warm your heart. We still try and maintain its openness, but what happened in Pittsburgh can happen anywhere." The added measures have changed Saacks' budget, of course. He estimates that all of the physical protections will cost $150,000 in total. That does not include some of the window and camera costs, which he paid for partly out of a $50,000 grant from New York state. And the armed guards, contracted from a private security company at $40 an hour each, cost about $360 per week. It's a cost more synagogues are considering after a gunman entered the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh two weeks ago and killed 11 worshippers. Since that shooting, the risk of a violent attack has felt all too real for synagogues. Thomas Ruskin, who runs the CMP Group, a private security company, already provides security for a handful of Jewish institutions in the New York City area. Since the Pittsburgh shooting, he says, dozens more have inquired about his services. "Part of this has to do with the religious organizations' budgets," said Ruskin, a former New York police officer who is Jewish. "They've never put money aside or had a fund for just this purpose. ... We never really had to worry about this. We always knew there was anti-Semitism, but we never knew someone would come into a shul in an upscale suburban community and shoot people in their backs." Ruskin charges $500-$1,000 for a written threat assessment and security recommendations; the price is deducted off the final cost if Ruskin's team is hired to provide security. For more than a decade, the federal government has provided funding to help synagogues bolster their security. The Nonprofit Security Grant Program and a related program run by the Department of Homeland Security have provided a total of more than $269 million to secure houses of worship and other institutions. The money has gone largely to Jewish institutions, according to the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, which lobbies for the grants. In addition, in October 2017, New York state announced $25 million in grants to help secure private schools and other nonprofits. Rounds of funding awarded this year in Brooklyn and Long Island went largely to Jewish organizations. Since 2004, Jewish institutions have received resources and guidance from the Secure Community Network, an organization co-founded by the Jewish Federations of North America that oversees the community's security needs and liaises with law enforcement. Paul Goldenberg, the network's former chief, said that a close relationship with local law enforcement can help synagogues be prepared when attacks happen. He cautioned against turning houses of worship into fortresses, noting that many synagogues in Europe have an intense security presence along with tight restrictions on who can enter and exit. "Security has come with a tremendous cost to the Jewish community, not only here but abroad," said Goldenberg, now a senior fellow for the Rutgers University Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience. "Our institutions should not be surrounded by copper tin wire and bars." Still, some synagogues are opting for private security on-site. A consortium of 30 Chabad congregations on Long Island hopes to raise $1 million to provide armed guards once a week for a period of three years at an estimated cost of $50 an hour. Union Temple, a Reform synagogue in Brooklyn, decided to increase its security after it was vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti this month. It has hired a second security guard and is requiring visitors to sign in and show ID. It is also making its windows shatterproof. "We want to be warm and welcoming, we don't want to live in a police state, but that's the line you have to find," said Union Temple President Beatrice Hanks. "The parents have been most concerned about this... They'd rather be slowed down at the drop-off than not have security." Other synagogues have opted for volunteer security guards recruited from their own pews. The Community Security Service, a Jewish nonprofit founded in 2007, has trained 4,000 volunteer security guards for synagogues, teaching them how to spot and respond to threats. Jason Friedman, its executive director, estimates that 75 of its trainees are actively guarding their synagogues on any given week. For a synagogue with 500 member units, CSS asks for a suggested donation of $1,800. Even if synagogues opt for a paid guard, he said, a community member should accompany them in order to help identify congregants and provide a reassuring face at the door for the people who are supposed to be there. "Everyone in the Jewish community is thinking about security now," said Friedman, who has also received a flurry of inquiries since the Pittsburgh shooting. "That couldn't be said a few weeks ago. If their options are a guard or nothing, definitely go with the guard, but you have to give that guard a chance to be successful. That means pairing them with someone from your institution." Romemu, a Jewish Renewal congregation in Manhattan, has gone all in on security in the weeks since the Pittsburgh shooting. In addition to increasing the number and hours of its armed guards (the congregation's executive director, Jeff Cahn, did not want to specify those figures), it has tripled its security budget and plans to apply for the state and federal security grants. To maintain a friendly exterior, however, the congregation makes sure its security guards dress in business-casual attire, don't conspicuously show their weapons and greet regulars as an usher would. "They are not menacing. They are very friendly people," Cahn said. "They welcome everybody with a hearty 'Shabbat shalom' and know everybody's names. They are part of our family." Even without armed guards, Ruskin said, there are basic steps a synagogue should take to secure itself, from locking the doors to having an evacuation plan. If a shooter encounters a locked door-let alone an armed guard-he may decide to go somewhere else, Ruskin said. And building staff should know some basic pieces of information-like the building's address. "When you have to call the police, 911, you need to know your address," he said. "You'd be surprised how many educators, staff, even clergy don't know the address." Synagogues may forgo an armed guard in order to maintain a welcoming atmosphere. Many were put off by President Donald Trump's initial comments on the shooting at the Pittsburgh synagogue, which did not have a guard. "If they had an armed guard inside, they might have been able to stop him immediately," Trump told reporters. "Isn't it a shame that we even have to think of that, inside of a temple or inside a church? But certainly the results might have been far better." Critics charged that Trump was blaming the synagogue to deflect from the gun control debate, although it was the rare synagogue that didn't start thinking about its security in the days that followed. Still, some activists say that while having armed security makes some congregants feel safe, it may make others feel under threat. "Investing in increased police presence and security will militarize our community spaces," reads a statement by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a progressive activist group. "It will make synagogues and Jewish communal spaces less safe for Jews of color, trans Jews, Jews with disabilities, and other beloved members of our communities." But those who are hiring the guards see security as a threshold issue. Rabbi Tuvia Teldon, director of Chabad Lubavitch of Long Island, who is spearheading the $1 million campaign, said that after the Pittsburgh shooting, he wants to make sure one of his affiliate synagogues isn't next. "They want to know there's someone there who's going to be watching out for them," he said. "You need to have someone there who's on the ground. We want to put up a sign in every Chabad house that this is not a soft target. There are armed guards here." Chabad of Altamonte Springs is hosting a grand Chanukah celebration on Tuesday, Dec. 4, at 5:30 p.m. in front of the Embassy Suites at Cranes Roost Park. There will be hot sizzling latkes, delicious donuts, dreidel giveaways, gelt, childrens crafts and more fun for the whole family. In addition to celebrating Chanukah, Chabad of Altamonte Springs will honor and recognize the communitys heroic fire department as they treat those in attendance with the Great Gelt Drop. It will rain down chocolate gelt as firemen drop the candy down from ladder trucks. This event is just one of the many Chabad Chanukah celebrations that are being held throughout Central Florida. The event is free, but please feel free to make a donation or consider being a sponsor for $180, $360 or $540. For more information, call 407-280-0535 or visit http://www.jewishaltamonte.com. The smoke plume from the fast-moving Woolsey Fire encroaching on Malibu on November 9, 2018, as residents evacuate along the Pacific Coast Highway. (JTA)-The death toll and damage continue to rise in California in the wildfires ravaging the state. More than 6,400 homes have been damaged and at least 31 people have been killed, according to CNN. Like other Californians, Jewish residents are evacuating their homes and dealing with the devastating fallout of the fires. Synagogues, camps and a day school have all sustained damage. Here are two remarkable stories of people coming together as a result of the fires, including a rabbi who ran into a synagogue to save its four Torah scrolls and a synagogue that helped ensure a family from an evacuated congregation was still able to celebrate their son's becoming a bar mitzvah. Rushing to save a synagogue's Torah scrolls At 3 in the morning Friday, a neighbor roused Rabbi Barry Diamond from sleep to let him know that their Southern California neighborhood had been given a voluntary evacuation order. About 20 minutes later the rabbi arrived at Temple Adat Elohim, the Reform synagogue in Thousand Oaks where he works, to see fire surrounding the area by the building. "There's a hill right across the street from our temple-it was fully engulfed-and there was a raining down of sparks onto our property," he told JTA on Monday. But that didn't deter Diamond, 56, from dashing into the synagogue to save his congregation's holiest objects. Setting off an alarm, he entered the sanctuary and grabbed two of the congregation's Torah scrolls: One had survived the Holocaust, the other was dedicated only six months earlier. He then ran in a second time and, with the help of the synagogue president, Sandy Greenstein, brought out the remaining two scrolls as well as the Book of Esther scroll traditionally read on Purim. "I would say I was a cross between nervous and determined to get these out," Diamond said. "Sometimes you just have to put your head down and do the work and worry about your feelings later." As he loaded the Torahs into his car, Diamond looked back and saw that plants behind the sanctuary were ablaze. A photo taken of Diamond shows a wall of red-tinted smoke behind a nearby stand of trees. Diamond and his wife, as well as most of his congregants, have had to evacuate their homes. As far as he knows no one has been hurt, but the synagogue has sustained damage. The fires hit the community at an especially trying time: Only a day earlier, congregants learned that a deadly shooting at a nearby bar left 12 people dead. Diamond said two congregants were at the bar at the time of the shooting and know people who were killed. The rabbi is trying to be there for congregants affected by either or both tragedies. "There are people who lost their homes, there are people who are displaced, and we have to acknowledge and recognize them and be there and support them," he said. "And there were a number of families who just suffered terribly because of this horrible act, and I don't want their pain to be eclipsed because there's a broader disaster that we're living through." A change of bar mitzvah plans with only hours notice On Friday morning, everything seemed to be set for Jace Kletter's bar mitzvah the following day. The 12-year-old was planning to read from the Torah and then have a party at the Malibu Jewish Center, the Reconstructionist congregation to which his family belongs. "The DJs, the caterers, the security guards-we had it all planned," Jace's father, Jeff, told JTA on Monday. "And then on Friday morning, we get a mandatory evacuation call." Jeff, his wife Josie and their three kids quickly left their home, but they did not realize how long they would be gone. "We've always dealt with fires in Malibu, but you're back in an hour," Jeff said. "There's no issue because they put it out, but this one was a raging fire." The next morning, it seemed unclear if Jace's bar mitzvah could still take place. Then the family got a call from their rabbi, who told them that a different synagogue had offered to host the service and party. Everyone quickly scrambled to reorganize the entire party. Josie wasn't able to get in touch with the caterer, so she ordered food from a local cafe instead and supplemented it with wine and desserts from Costco. The family had left their formalwear behind, so they ran to a department store to pick up new outfits. And though many of the guests weren't able to make it, "a very small, meaningful group of 26 people" showed up, Jeff said. The service was held that afternoon at Kehillat Israel, a Reconstructionist synagogue in Pacific Palisades. The synagogue was also hosting a bar mitzvah of its own, so two services were held in adjacent rooms. Jace said that he was happy with how his bar mitzvah turned out despite the last-minute changes. "It did look different, and there were definitely a lot less people who showed, but it was still very meaningful," he said. The event served as a much-needed distraction both for the Kletter family and attendees who had to evacuate their homes. "The people who did make, it was a cathartic release for them, too, to not think about the fires for a few hours and just relax," Jeff said. As of this writing, he still didn't know what had happened to the family's home. Cantor Chayim Frenkel of Kehillat Israel said the clergy had not hesitated to offer up their space to the Kletter family as well as other Malibu Jewish Center congregants. "[There] wasn't even a second thought," Frenkel said. "Of course you can come to synagogue and have services." JERUSALEM (JTA)Palestinian terror groups in Gaza reportedly have agreed to commit to a cease-fire of hostilities that have seen more than 400 rockets bombard southern Israel in a 25-hour period. Four mediatorsEgypt, the United Nations, Norway and Switzerlandhelped achieve the cease-fire, according to reports. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad said in a joint statement, according to reports, that they are committed to the cease-fire as long as Israel doesnt break it and doesnt attack the Palestinian people. The terms were negotiated to go into effect earlier Tuesday afternoon, but rockets continued to be fired from Gaza. Since the announcement by the Gaza groups later on Tuesday, rockets have not been fired. An unnamed senior Israeli official told the local media that Israel maintains its right to act. Requests from Hamas for a cease-fire came through four different mediators. Israel responded that the events on the ground will decide whether there will be a cease-fire, the official said. The announcement came shortly after Israels Security Cabinet emerged from a seven-hour meeting and released a short statement saying that the Israel Defense Forces was instructed to continue its strikes as needed. Four government ministers were reported to be opposed to a cease-fire, the Israeli media reported, naming them as Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party; Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked of the Jewish Home party; Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who heads Jewish Home; and Environmental Protection Minister Zeev Elkin of the Likud party. Among the some 460 rockets fired by Palestinian factions in Gaza, more than 100 were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system, according to the Israel Defense Forces. In response, the IDF struck 160 targets belonging to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations, as well as four government installations used for military purposes. Several of the targets were six- and seven-story buildings, which had a very significant effect on the other side, a senior Air Force officer said in an IDF statement. One person was killed and dozens injured in the rocket attacks from Gaza, more than 100 Israelis were injured and several homes and buildings were hit by the rockets. Seven Palestinians were reported killed in the Israeli attacks on Gaza terror sites. LOS ANGELES (JTA)-The Woolsey Fire, which began late last week and engulfed a massive swath of Southern California, has killed at least two people, burned nearly 100,000 acres and ravaged hundreds of structures-including several touchstones of Jewish life in this city. Three historic Jewish sleep-away camps and a Jewish retreat center, all nestled in the Malibu hills, were consumed. A Jewish community day school lost three of its buildings, and several synagogues have smoke damage. Many families, including that of the new rabbi at Malibu Jewish Community & Synagogue, lost homes and nearly all their belongings. Here are some stories about what was lost and what remains. 'Where I forged my path as a Jewish person' Tens of thousands of Jewish youth, spanning three generations, have spent summers at Camp Hess Kramer and its smaller sister camp, Gindling Hilltop. By late Saturday, with the Malibu hills near the campgrounds aflame, more than 200 current and former campers, together with their families, gathered for an impromptu Havdalah service to mark the end of the Sabbath. "Even though we didn't know the extent of the damage, we knew we had been affected-and we knew the community was in need of some healing," said Ari Kaplan, the assistant director of the camps, both of which are affiliated with the Reform Wilshire Boulevard Temple. At the service, held at the Temple's West Los Angeles campus and watched via live stream by some 13,000 people, "it was mostly singing, people holding each other-we passed around a box of tissues," Kaplan said. "People wanted to share what camp meant to them." In the days since, the extent of the damage has become clear: It's catastrophic. The fire burned roughly 90 percent of the campgrounds, destroying all but two cabins there, Kaplan said. Rebuilding is likely to be a years-long process, but the camp is already scouting temporary locations for next summer. So, too, is the Shalom Institute, a popular Jewish retreat center and home to the 67-year-old JCA Shalom summer camp. The grounds were all but razed in the fire. "We're moving fast, and hope to make some announcement [about a venue] before Thanksgiving," said Rabbi Bill Kaplan, the institute's executive director. "It's heartbreaking, but we're camp people-that's what we do." In the meantime, the institute has set up shop in office space provided by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. The federation has been hosting daily calls with affected Jewish organizations and arranging support services from trauma counseling to legal assistance. Michelle Rosenbloom-Quirsfeld, who attended Hess Kramer in the 1980s and later became a counselor there, said the destruction of the Malibu campgrounds is devastating. It's a major loss, she said, noting Hess Kramer was where she first learned to sing and pray as a Jew, "to respect Shabbat," and to do traditional Israeli folk dances. "It's not a loss of life, but it's a loss of part of my identity," said Rosenbloom-Quirsfeld, now 46 and a schoolteacher in Northern California. "It's where I forged my path as a Jewish person." 'Like a kibbutz' Yuri Hronsky was watching the local news on Friday when cameras panned to fires burning at the Ilan Ramon Day School in Agoura Hills. "It's as powerless as you can feel," Hronsky, who has led the Jewish community day school since 2010, said of seeing the campus in flames. Hronsky and the school's board members surveyed the damage on Tuesday. Three buildings at Ilan Ramon-housing administrative offices, a computer lab and bathrooms-were destroyed. The classrooms remain intact, but most of their contents will have to be purged due to smoke. "There was immense sadness," he said, "and immense gratitude." Sadness for the school community, whose members would have to endure destruction and displacement. Sadness for what had been lost, including memorabilia from Hronsky's 18 years at the school. And gratitude for the firefighters who kept the flames from engulfing the whole campus. Even the class pets-rabbits, birds and turtles-survived the ordeal. Nate Akiva, a board member, said Ilan Ramon-a school formerly known as Heschel West, and since renamed after the late Israeli astronaut-is "like a kibbutz," small and tight-knit, a place where everyone feels like they have a stake in one another's well-being. When some school families were forced to evacuate, others took them in. Akiva said he was relieved that the damage wasn't more extensive and confident that the school would rebuild what was lost. His daughter, a first-grader at the school, has needed more reassurance. "She was very nervous that her art projects were gone, that her school supplies were gone, that they didn't have a place to go," he said. Where they will go now is not yet clear, though Ilan Ramon has fielded multiple offers from synagogues and other schools offering space while its campus is being cleaned and rebuilt. To that end, the school launched a GoFundMe campaign and is selling "IRDS Strong" T-shirts to help offset any out-of-pocket costs associated with getting the campus up and running. Hronsky said the school is hoping to reopen in a temporary location as soon as Friday, "so we can spend Shabbat together." 'Everyone is so aware of what's important' The Lodmer family seders are like no other. For one, there is always a theme-"Star Wars" one Passover, "Harry Potter" another. "Jeopardy!" The "Wizard of Oz." "Name That Tune." The dinner guests wear costumes, read from bespoke Haggadahs that weave together the evening's more contemporary theme with that of the age-old story of the Jewish Exodus. These epic seders would take place, year after year, at the home of Emily and Sheldon Lodmer. The couple put down roots in the seaside city of Malibu, California, more than four decades ago, when property there was still relatively affordable. It's where they raised their children, Abby and Zack, and welcomed grandchildren. It's where family and friends and friends of friends gathered for holidays. Last weekend, the house burned to the ground. "I keep finding myself thinking about the little things," Zack Lodmer, 38, who works at the Los Angeles Jewish federation and founded Om Shalom, which offers Jewish yoga programming. "Parking in the driveway, the way the grass felt on my feet, the way the sunlight hit the mirrors, the way the books were positioned on the shelf-the general hum of energetic family life." When the roads reopen, the family plans to travel together to what's left of their home. "I think that's when it will really hit us, but it will also be a powerful bonding moment," said Abby Lodmer, 42, a comedian in Seattle. "We've seen pictures. But we haven't seen the mangled remains of our childhood, the mangled remains of the lives my parents built there from nothing." The Lodmer family's house in Malibu burned down entirely. The Lodmers are among at least 13 families at the Malibu Jewish Center & Synagogue whose homes were destroyed. Rabbi Michael Schwartz has been tending to his congregants there-even as his own house went up in flames. On his way out of the burning town, Schwartz, who has led the synagogue since February, packed the congregation's five Torahs into his Toyota Camry. The fire came within 20 feet of the synagogue came within 20 feet of the synagogue, but the building was not consumed. "One member said to me, 'Now we really get what Sukkot' is about-to experience the reality that everything is fragile and transient, that we have to be grateful and count our blessings," recalled Schwartz, referencing the harvest holiday when Jews build temporary outdoor shelters. "Everyone is so aware of what's important." (JNS)-Actors Alyssa Milano and Debra Messing are being applauded for speaking out against anti-Semitism associated with the Women's March movement, with the former announcing that she will not speak at next year's march and the latter backing the decision. The Zioness Movement, which attended the Women's March in 2017, said it "applauds Alyssa Milano and Debra Messing for calling out the leaders of the Women's March for their hateful rhetoric and their continued association with bigots and anti-Semites like Louis Farrakhan." Messing, who is Jewish, was raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., and attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. "Zioness rejects the divisive examples of Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory and others who claim to be 'leaders' of women, while they continue to support anti-Semitic, homophobic figures like Farrakhan and make consistent efforts to demonize the Jewish community in progressive spaces. We refuse to be intimidated by their attempts to exclude progressive Zionists from spaces like the Women's March," added the group. Milano told The Advocate a few weeks ago: "I would say no at this point. Unfortunate that none of them have come forward against him at this point. Or even given a really good reason why to support them." I stand with you @Alyssa_Milano https://t.co/FKN31ApXnU - Debra Messing (@DebraMessing) November 9, 2018 Regarding the leaders of the Women's March who have refused to denounce Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitic and other bigoted remarks, Milano said that "any time that there is any bigotry or anti-Semitism in that respect, it needs to be called out and addressed. I'm disappointed in the leadership of the Women's March that they haven't done it adequately." TEL AVIV (JTA)Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signaled that he supported a Palestinian state-minus, wherein Israel would maintain a military presence across Israel and the West Bank. Netanyahu also said in a question-and-answer session Wednesday at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America that he suspended the compromise over the egalitarian section at the Western Wall last year because otherwise it would have meant the collapse of his government. Near the end of his remarks, he cited an op-ed published in JTA. The prime minister responded to a question about the two-state solution by saying I dont believe in labels. He said that in any future scenario, Israel would not give up security control of all of the territory west of the Jordan Riveran area that encompasses Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. A potential solution is one in which the Palestinians have all the powers to govern themselves but none of the powers to threaten us, he said. West of the Jordan, Israel and Israel alone will be responsible for security... Its not just a question of hot pursuit. Its also having the ability to be there all the time. It is what it is. You can give it any name you want: state-minus, autonomy-plus, autonomy plus-plus ... Were not going to imperil the life of the state [of Israel], you know, for a label or a good op-ed. Netanyahu opposed a Palestinian state for much of his career before endorsing the idea in a 2009 speech at Bar-Ilan University. He backtracked in 2015, pledging before his re-election that a Palestinian state would not be established in his coming term. Earlier in the session, he said that the compromise over the Western Wall (it would have expanded the non-Orthodox prayer area at the site) was frozen last year because haredi Orthodox parties in his governing coalition threatened to leave the government over a section of the agreement that implied tacit recognition of non-Orthodox Jewish movements. Netanyahu said that faced with the choice of reneging on the deal or losing his government, he opted for the former. He added that construction of the non-Orthodox prayer area is continuing apace, even as the agreement itself was suspended last year. It was challenged immediately by the ultra-Orthodox street and they basically said, choose: You can have a government, no government, he said. This is the reality. So rather than cancel this agreement because of this explanatory note, I said, no, were not going to cancel it, were just going to suspend it, keep it there. Dont cancel it but move with what the agreement actually says it will do, which is refurbish the plaza. The frozen Western Wall agreement has been a point of contention between Israel and the non-Orthodox movements in the Diaspora, along with haredi Orthodox control of conversion and other Jewish lifecycle events. Smoothing out disagreements between Israel and the Diaspora was the central theme of this years General Assembly Near the end of the event, Netanyahu said what worried him more than the Western Wall was loss of Jewish identity outside of Israel. He cited an op-ed in JTA by Reform Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch to illustrate his point. What concerns me in terms of the Jewish people is one thing, and thats the loss of identity, he said. Its not the question of the wall or conversion. I read an article by Rabbi Hirsch, I think it was published in the JTA, and there was a line that said, Those who are not concerned with Jewish survival will not survive as Jews. Theres some basic truth to that. The line in the op-ed read: In the modern world, those who are not committed to Jewish survival will not survive as Jews. Hirsch, senior rabbi of Manhattans Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, was among a small group of rank-and-file North American rabbis who were invited to meet last week with Netanyahu, who reportedly has been frustrated with criticism coming from the leadership of the Reform and Conservative movements. The scene where a house was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon on Nov. 13, 2018. (JNS)-Jewish and pro-Israel groups are reacting to the latest round of violence in Gaza after Hamas launched nearly 400 rockets into Israeli civilian areas since Sunday, following the death of an Israeli special-forces soldier. On Monday night, one man was reported killed and two women injured in the city of Ashkelon when a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit their apartment building. In response, the Israel Defense Forces reacted by striking 20-plus Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza, including terror compounds, observation posts and rocket-launching squads. The IDF also blew up Hamas' main TV channel, Al-Aqsa TV. On Tuesday, the IDF began amassing troops along the border with Gaza ahead of a possible escalation. "We are in the midst of a wide-scale process of accumulating more infantry, armored and other forces to the area adjacent to the Gaza Strip, and we are mobilizing reserves for Iron Dome operations and the Home Front Command," said IDF Spokesperson Brig.-Gen. Ronen Manelis. The U.S. State Department has condemned the actions of Gaza terrorist groups and reaffirmed that Israel has the right to defend itself. "We are aware of reports of ongoing rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza against targets in Israel," a State Department official told JNS on Monday. "We condemn these attacks and call for their immediate halt. We stand with Israel as it defends itself against these attacks." 'Send a message: Such behavior does not pay' Arthur Stark, chairman, and Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman/CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said in a statement: "We condemn in the strongest terms the attack by Hamas, firing rockets, mortars and anti-tank missiles from Gaza against the towns and residents of the south of Israel. Hundreds of rockets have been fired indiscriminately towards population centers in the last hours." "These attacks specifically target civilians, and a number of Israelis have been injured and property damaged. No country can or should have to tolerate such attacks across an internationally recognized border," they continued. "Israel must do whatever it deems appropriate to safeguard its citizens and borders, and the international community must not only denounce such attacks in unambiguous terms, but they also must help prevent the weapons flow, technical support and assistance that enables these attacks to continue." B'nai B'rith International CEO Daniel Mariaschin echoed that sentiment. "We are outraged by the rocket attacks from Gaza on Israeli cities and towns. It underscores again Hamas's incessant objective of carrying out acts of terror by the random firing of rockets," he told JNS. "Israel is absolutely justified in carrying out a forceful, decisive response in order to send a message that such behavior does not pay." CUFI founder and chairman Pastor John Hagee, who is currently in Israel with several hundred members of his ministry, said the actions by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are "abhorrent." "They are actively seeking to murder innocent Israelis and force Israel into a full-scale military confrontation. The world must unequivocally stand with Israel, as the Jewish state does what it must to protect those that Hamas and its ilk seek to kill and maim," he said. "Weeks like these highlight the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship," said representatives of the Israeli-American Council for Action. "U.S. support for joint missile-defense projects, like the Iron Dome, have undoubtedly saved countless lives by shooting down many missiles targeting Israeli population centers." Mort Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, called for "stronger action." "It's time for Israel to finally take much stronger action to end the intolerable barrage of Hamas rocket assaults that critically injured Israeli civilians, and have made life unlivable for the people and children of southern Israel," he told JNS. "Israel must stop worrying about world and media reaction, and respond the way any normal country would to protect its citizens." "We deplore ongoing Hamas attacks against civilians; each Hamas missile directed against Israeli communities is a separate war crime, and the lack of international outrage is evidence of the anti-Semitic double-standard that Israel faces," Yaakov Menken of the Coalition for Jewish Values told JNS. He added that "as a matter of policy, we do not believe it is appropriate for American groups, including Jewish organizations, to intervene in Israel's internal affairs, or to presume to know Israel's security needs better than her democratic government and defense forces." The American Israel Political Affairs Committee also expressed their outrage over the missile and rocket attacks from Gaza. "No country can tolerate such assaults on its population. Hamas and all terrorist organizations must immediately halt these unconscionable attacks. Israel has the responsibility and absolute right to defend its citizens," AIPAC told JNS. However, the left-wing group J Street called for both sides to exercise restraint. "At this time, our thoughts are with the residents of southern Israel, with the IDF forces working to keep them safe and with civilians on both sides of the divide," the organization said in a statement. "We fear that, as has been the case so many times in the past, civilians will be engulfed in a rapid escalation of violence-causing mass devastation and ending in a stalemate that will only set back Israel's long-term security and exacerbate the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Gaza." "It is frustrating and troubling that this new escalation of violence has come just as the parties were reportedly making major progress toward a diplomatic breakthrough," added J Street. "We urge all parties to take immediate steps to restore calm. (JNS)As the latest attacks against Israel from Hamas have taken place in Gaza, the U.S. State Department condemned the terrorist group and reaffirmed that Israel has the right to defend itself. We are aware of reports of ongoing rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza against targets in Israel, a State Department official told JNS on Monday. We condemn these attacks and call for their immediate halt. We stand with Israel as it defends itself against these attacks. According to the Israeli Defense Forces, at least 300 rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip at southern Israel on Monday amid renewed tensions following the death of an Israeli special-forces soldier earlier in the day, with the Iron Dome missile-defense system intercepting dozens of them, while others have struck Israeli homes and buildings near the border, or have landed in open areas. In response, the IDF said it has hit 20-plus Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza, including terror compounds, observation posts and rocket-launching squads. The IDF also destroyed Hamas main TV channel, Al-Aqsa TV. Terrorists in Gaza are again attacking Israel with tools of war, tweeted Jason Greenblatt, the Trump administrations Special Representative for International Negotiations. These rocket & mortar attacks on Israeli towns must be condemned by all. Israel is forced once again into military action to defend its citizens. We stand with Israel as it defends itself against these attacks. He continued, saying Hamas activities continue to prove they dont really care about the Palestinians of Gaza & their only interest is to use them for political purposes. Even Palestinian lives seem not to matter to Hamas. The world has grown tired of Hamas violence and the violence of other bad actors in Gaza, he added. This violence prevents any real help for the people of Gaza. Terrorists in Gaza are again attacking Israel with tools of war. These rocket & mortar attacks on Israeli towns must be condemned by all. Israel is forced once again into military action to defend its citizens. We stand with Israel as it defends itself against these attacks. Jason D. Greenblatt (@jdgreenblatt45) November 12, 2018. (JNS)The U.S. Department of State announced on Tuesday rewards of up to $5 million each for information or identification leading to the capture of the following terrorist figures: Hamas leader Saleh al-Aruri, and Hezbollah leaders Khalil Yusif Mahmoud Harb and Haytham Ali Tabatabai. Aruri is a deputy of Hamass political bureau and a founder of the groups military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades. He is currently living freely in Lebanon, where he reportedly is working with Qasem Soleimani, leader of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force. Aruri funded and directed Hamas military operations in the West Bank and has been linked to several terrorist attacks, hijackings, and kidnappings, according to the State Department. Our country is not immune. In 2011, the Qods Force allegedly was involved in a plan to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States at a restaurant in Georgetown, Nathan Sales, ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on Tuesday. And just this past August, the FBI arrested two people for allegedly surveilling Bahai and Jewish facilities in the United States. Theyre also suspected of collecting information about Americans who belong to an Iranian opposition group. Harb is a close adviser to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and has served as the organizations chief military liaison to Iran and to Palestinian terrorist groups. He has commanded and supervised Hezbollahs military actions in the Palestinian territories and in several Middle Eastern countries. The State Department on Tuesday also officially designated Nasrallahs son, Jawad, along with the Al-Mujahidim Brigades, as terrorists, subjecting them to the toughest sanctions. Tabatabai is a crucial Hezbollah military leader and has commanded Hezbollahs special forces in both Yemen and Syria. Tabatabais actions in those places are part of a larger Hezbollah effort to provide training, materiel and personnel in support of its destabilizing regional activities, according to the State Department. As of 1997, both Hamas and Hezbollah are U.S.-designated terrorist entities. Three minutes. That is all the time it took for an Arab terrorist to stab to death Michal Salomon's husband, Elat, his sister Chaya, and father, Yosef. The story of her family's tragedy was covered by many news sources as the Neve Tzuf massacre worldwide in July 2017. Salomon calmly recounted the events at a gathering held at the Roth Family JCC last Wednesday evening. She lived because she rushed her three children upstairs to a bedroom where her twin babies were sleeping. The terrorist, Omar al-Abed of nearby town Kobar, chose the home in Halamish where he "heard laughter." The family was celebrating Shabbat and the birth of another grandchild for Yosef and Tovah. Michal stood in the bedroom pressed against the door. Her children-ages 11, 9 and 5 at the time-sat quietly, not making a sound. After a few minutes, she heard gunfire and then nothing. She cautiously went downstairs and saw Elat breathe his last breath. Her father-in-law and sister-in-law were dead in the kitchen where a wounded al-Abed was being held until security officers could arrive. A neighbor, an off-duty IDF soldier, who heard the screams came running over to the house and shot al-Abed through the window. Asked how she could remain so calm and at peace as she spoke, Michal explained that she realized that she was suddenly left to raise five children on her own without her husband of 13 years beside her and knew she had to raise her children to be "normal." "I chose to focus on my children and my life and not that person," she said. Michal has been sharing her story for almost a year now to help bring awareness to the incredible Rescuers Without Borders-the Hatzalah-of Judea and Samaria. She travels with Natalie Sopinsky, director of Development of Hatzalah. Together, the women share the miraculous stories of the more than 800 volunteer medics, paramedics and physicians on call throughout Judea and Samaria who work hand-in-hand with the Magen David Adom, and in coordination with the IDF. Here in Central Florida, we have hospitals every 10 miles, interspersed with urgency care centers. A call to 911 is responded to quickly. In Israel, first responders come quickly if one lives in a big city. In Judea and Samaria it is a different story because the towns are small and scattered about, often with Arab villages surrounding them. Michal praised Rescuers Without Borders for saving her mother-in-law's life. Rescuers arrived quickly and treated her stab wounds before rushing her to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem-a 40-minute drive from Halamish. Had there not been volunteer first responders, Tovah probably would not have made it. Rescuers Without Borders is a volunteer organization. While they operate throughout Israel, they concentrate in areas of conflict such as Judea and Samaria and the towns near Gaza. Volunteers train for 15 hours a week for six months-this is in addition to the 40-hour week jobs many hold. The group was founded in 2000 during the Second Intifada by security officers who with MDA started asking for volunteers to train as medics. "We are not going to run away. We are here to stay," said Sopinsky. "This is one way we fight back." RWB is not government-funded. It is privately funded, which actually allows the group more freedom of movement. More than 1,000 lives are saved annually. RWB was on the scene immediately after Ari Fuld was stabbed; a rescuer responded to a call from a woman in labor on the way to the hospital on a dangerous road in Samaria, and delivered a healthy baby boy; a small child was severely burned by a Molotov cocktail thrown at her family's car. Rescuers prompt arrival saved the child's life. These are only three stories of the daily instances of emergency help provided by these volunteers. The pair spoke in New York where they also met with Israeli Consul Danny Dayon to discuss the important work carried out by Rescuers Without Borders, and Miami where they spoke before more than 1,000 women at the Miami Federation Women's Brunch. Dr. Daniel and Staci Layish hosted the pair here to share about RWB and its "wish list." Philanthropist Alan Ginsburg, who attended the meeting, was asked if he planned to donate to RWB, he responded "Yes I am!" In addition to needing more Jews to come live in Israel, Sopinsky said the most important need is a security room. Every yishuv (settlement) in Judea and Samaria has a security chief and a first response team made up of civilians of the yishuv. Some yishuv have only one responder, some have several. The security room serves as a surveillance station and communications center. The cost is $50,000 for a fully equipped room. Other needs include: Ambulance, $120,000 Advanced Life Saving Kits (which include resuscitation kit, a burn kit and a defibrillator), $3,600 per unit Basic Life Saving Kits, $1,200 per unit Defibrillator, $1,800 per unit Armored Medic Vests, $1,200 Rescuers Without Borders is directly coordinated with the national emergency services. If someone is injured he can dial the national emergency number (101) and the RWB volunteers are the first to arrive. To donate to Rescuers Without Borders, checks made out to Hatzalah Yehuda and Shomrom, can be mailed to 492 Cedar Lane #184, Teaneck, NJ 07666, or in Israel, Givon 108/3 P.B. 10053, Givat-Zeev, Israel 90917 or visit http://www.hatzalah.org.il/en/donate. Hatzalah Yehuda and Shomrom is a 501 (3) US nonprofit charitable organization; tax ID 31461. (JNS)In a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, 69 organizations asked for assurances that taxpayer dollars will not be used toward supporting the BDS movement. The letter was prompted by two pro-BDS events recently hosted by academic departments at the University of Michigan and New York University that are part of the Department of Education-designated Middle East Studies National Resource Centers. The event sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies at Michigan was held 48 hours after a gunman shot and killed 11 Jews in Tree of Life*Or LSimcha Synagogue in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27, leaving six others injured, including four law-enforcement officers. In an email sent to that departments faculty and students on Tuesday, department director Samer Mahdy Ali said the event, which was organized on short order in response to the current crisis, featured a 45-minute-long teach-in portion that is decidedly pro-BDS. Speakers included Anna Baltzer, director of organizing and advocacy at the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and Huwaida Arraf, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movementboth professional BDS advocates. NYUs Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies hosted an event titled The Assault on the Right to Boycott that was explicitly intended to support faculty members right to implement an academic boycott of Israel at NYU and elsewhere, according to the letter. Additionally, a BDS resolution was introduced last week in the NYU student government. NRCs obtain millions of taxpayer dollars to promote access to research and training overseas, including through linkages with overseas institutions. The letter notes: NRCs were established by Title VI of the Higher Education Act in order to equip university students and faculty with a full and unbiased understanding of regions and countries vital to U.S. security. The federal legislation providing these NRCs with millions of taxpayer dollars stipulates that the funding is specifically intended to promote access to research and training overseas, including through linkages with overseas institutions. We want to emphasize that we do not intend in any way to impede or suppress a faculty members freedom of speech or right to engage in a personal boycott, adds the letter. But were a faculty member to take steps to obstruct or prevent others from accessing opportunities to engage with overseas institutions through research or training, it would clearly violate the stated purpose of the law. Finally, the letter stated that no area studies program should receive federal funding if its director or faculty members engage in behavior that thwarts the very purpose of that funding. The Zionist Organization of America has condemned the anti-Israel record of newly elected Member of Congress Ihlan Omar and is seeking to alert the public to her record of hostile, anti-Israel extremism. Omar, a Muslim refugee from Somalia, was elected in the 2018 midterm elections to replace Rep. Keith Ellison (DMI) in the states 5th Congressional District, a solidly Democratic seat. The ZOA has also called upon the Democratic Party and the media to criticize her anti-Israel extremism, something which reportage on her campaign and victory has totally ignored. Omar ran for Congress on a platform of Medicare for all and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Now that she been elected, Omar has confirmed to the website Muslim Girl that she also supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement which, as openly admitted by its originators, seeks to delegitimize, economically harm and ultimately eliminate the Jewish state of Israel by criminalizing business relations with Israeli Jews. Her campaign told the website that, Ilhan believes in and supports the BDS movement, and has fought to make sure peoples right to support it isnt criminalized. She does however, have reservations on the effectiveness of the movement in accomplishing a lasting solution. Following her being elected, Omar told Muslim Girl magazine that she believes in and supports the BDS movement, adding that she has fought to ensure others are also able to openly support the movement. Omar is first Member of Congress to openly support BDS. Omar has clearly performed a bait-and-switch, since, when asked in August during a primary debate at a synagogue to specify exactly where you stand on BDS, Omar said that BDS was not helpful in getting that two-state solution without, however, telling anyone that she nonetheless supports BDS. Omar was the first Muslim elected to Congress. Her campaign spoke with Muslim Girl in a feature published on Sunday. PJ Medias David Steinberg has identified 105 news stories written in the immediate aftermath of Omars victory, not a single one of which one mentioned her extreme statements crediting Israel with apartheid and hypnotizing the world while concealing its evil doings. Nor did anyone call upon the Democratic Party to distance itself from this rhetoric. Ihlan Omars record includes the following: In 2012, in a tweet which followed Palestinian terrorists firing 150 rockets into Israel, Omar labeled Israel an apartheid Israeli regime, saying Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and see the evil doings of Israel. Challenged about this tweet, Omar doubled down and attacked the questioner, saying, Drawing attention to the apartheid Israeli regime is far from hating Jews. You are a hateful sad man, I pray to Allah you get the help you need and find happiness. In 2017, as a Minnesota state legislator, Omar was one of only two legislators who voted against a bill aimed at denying life insurance payments to any person convicted of aiding or committing terror acts. (The bill ultimately passed and was signed into law). Omar did not offer an explanation for her vote when approached for comment in August by the Washington Free Beacon. In 2017, Omar voted against a bill that would bar the state of Minnesota from contracting with companies that engage in BDS that passed with large bipartisan majorities and was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton. Extraordinarily, considerable evidence exists to demonstrate that Omar might have married her biological brother, thereby committing marriage and immigration fraud. (They divorced in December 2017, in proceedings in which Omar appears to have lied under oath). ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, Ihlan Omar is not only the first Member of Congress to support BDS, but she appears to have deliberately misled Jewish constituents on her position regarding BDS prior to the election. This is simply scandalous. Omars reservations regarding the effectiveness of BDS does not help her anti-Israel bonafides. Consider: all she is really saying is that she doubts how useful BDS might prove to be in demonizing, ostracizing and harming Israel. this implies that, if BDS were highly effective at these things, she would support it even more wholeheartedly. Rep. Omars record is deeply worrying. Why would she have been in a minority of merely two opposing a bill denying life insurance payments to terrorists, like the state law that was actually passed in Minnesota with an overwhelming bipartisan majority? As for her unscrupulous defaming of Israel as an apartheid state, David Harsayni, a senior editor at the Federalist, has rightly observed that for Omar to accuse the only democratic state in the Middle East, which grants more liberal rights to its Muslim citizens than any Arab nation, of being an apartheid regime is, on an intellectual level, grossly disingenuous or incredibly ignorant. It is deeply worrying and symptomatic of the present day that Rep. Omars extreme hostility to Israel and vicious statement about Israeli evil were are ignored wall-to-wall in media reportage. It is as if her hatred of Israel is simply so unimportant that it does not bear mentioning. Why did no journalist reporter hostility? Isnt this an aspect of her record and views the public are entitle to know? And why did no-one in the Democratic Party take a stand and criticize her? Where were the pro-Israel Democratic legislators? Rep. Omars emergence is a warning to the Democratic Party that radicals who oppose the partys traditional support for Israel and the US/Israel relationship are making inroads. (JNS)Who is the most evil: the Nazis or followers of radical Islam, white supremacists or Louis Farrakhan and Linda Sarsour? This is the great American Jewish debate. The not-so-hidden rationale for this passionate debate is to justify loyalty to one political party and slam the other. Truth: They are all horribly evil. The question remains: Is finger-pointing where American Jews should spend their angst and energy? In lieu of this waste of time, allow me to propose four very basic steps to fight Jew hatred. Pick any one of them or all of them, but please get busy and dont become complacent as the memory of Pittsburgh fades. Fight the incitement. The Nazi who murdered our brothers and sisters in Pittsburgh did not just wake up and become a murdering Nazi. Louis Farrakhans followers had never equated Jews and termites until he spoke those words. Ari Fulds murderer wasnt born a radical Islamic Jew-hater. In Israel, we understand the incitement challenge only too well. We are blessed to have the incredible Israel Defense Forces and other security forces. Yet the core problem is still certain Arab political and radical Islamic leaders educating people to hate and inciting them to kill Jews. (The result is that more than two-thirds of Palestinians polled believe that it is perfectly fine to murder Jews.) Unfortunately, the Anti-Defamation League has lost its political objectivity and the focus on its core mission. As an example, recently they filed litigation challenging one states adoption procedures. Fortunately, there are other organizations that are having tremendous impacts with very limited budgets. One example is theycant.com. Whether its radical Muslims dehumanizing and inciting violence against Jews in Israel or Nazis broadcasting their propaganda in the United States, theycant.com fights the battle over the Internet with great success in having thousands of Jew-hating incitements removed from social media. And they fight the battle in several languages. Protect yourself physically. Israel has had few mass shootings of late, thank G-d. One reason is there are plenty of Jews in Israel who are armed who are generally in close proximity. There is no honor in being a victim if it could have been prevented. Do many of us wish gun laws were a little stricter in the United States regarding who can own a gun as they are in Israel? Sure. But this is the situation. American Jews need to buy guns for protection, get trained on using them and apply for carrying permits. They also need to make sure that schools and synagogues are better protected. Protect yourself spiritually. If youre going to persist in self identifying as a Jewand be hated for whatever reason the anti-Semites can come up with this yearwhy not better understand what you are fighting for? What does it mean to be a light unto the nations as individuals or as the nation of Israel? Why not use this as an opportunity to delve a little deeper? If we want our children to persist in the battle, why is it worth their effort? By contrast, in the book The Pity of It All, we see how the Jews of Germany for two centuries prior to World War II wanted to show how they could out-German the Germans. They declared Berlin is our Jerusalem. One can feel the irresistible force of assimilation throughout the book. The antidote is to strengthen our families spiritually. We need to strengthen our connection to Judaism and our understanding of Judaism, so that we know why we are fighting and can explain it to our families. Strengthen your connection to Israel and our people. We arent just a religion, we are also a nation and a people. More than half of us now live in our historic homeland. We have limited time. Yes, it is important to spend time caring for others including other minorities and in fact it is our mission. But please spend time with our own familyyour Jewish family. Most importantly, please understand and support what your brothers and sisters are doing to protect and strengthen our homeland, Israel. Theres a lot of inaccurate and heavily biased reporting on Israel particularly in the major media outlets. Look for truth in finding ways to support Israel. EMET, the Endowment for Middle East Truth (emetonline.org), is a great place to start. Explore our connection to Eretz Yisrael through sites such as thelandofisrael.com. Best of all, come visit and visit often. Finally, please understand where we appear to be in the history of our people, our nation and our land. It seems that by remarkable coincidence systematically, nation by nation, somehow Jews from around the globe have returned to our homeland; most, not by choice. Do we really think that America will be different? G-d willing, American Jews will not face what Jews in other lands have faced. Nevertheless, there are clouds on the horizon. We are blessed by God to have a homeland. Please consider Israel in your plans. While many American Jews have family obligations, kiruv obligations or would have challenges making a living in Israel, many more should be making plans to come home. Israel awaits you. So American Jews: Dont be complacent as the memory of Pittsburgh fades. Please stop finger-pointing... and get busy! Gary Schiff is a new immigrant living to Israel who has written for the American Thinker and Times of Israel on issues related to Israel, Judaism and natural resources. He and his family live in eastern sections of Jerusalem bordering several Arab villages. (JNS)In the summer of 1993, I found myself at one of the most unsettling dinner engagements that I have yet experienced. I was a young journalist writing about the war in Bosnia, and a friend of mine in London who was working as an aide to Haris Silajdzic, the Bosnian foreign minister at the time, called one day with an invitation to sneak into a private dinner Silajdzic was attending in the British capital that same evening. Sure, I enthused. Where? South Kensington, my friend laughed. The Iranian Embassy. I went along. Under a huge portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini, I sat silently at the opposite end of the dinner table, glued to the rather stiff conversation between Silajdzic, who wore a perpetual frown, and his Iranian hosts. As a waiter served a hefty-looking sponge cake for dessert (Look, they didnt even defrost the bloody thing! my friend whispered to me,) the ambassador began talking about the supposed commonalities between the war in Bosnia and the struggle in Palestine. I dont remember the precise words of Silajdzics response, but I do remember being profoundly moved by what he said. Bosnia was the home of a precious Jewish community that has been with us for 500 years, he reminded the Iranian regimes envoy. He then added that he was not prepared to alienate Bosnias Jews by pronouncing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; in any case, it was hardly the most pressing matter facing his ravaged country. I recalled that particular evening after reading the script of Looking for Europe, the one-man play performed in New York earlier this week by the well-known French-Jewish public intellectual, Bernard-Henri Levy. While the play is a sharply written reflection on the current state of politics in both America and Europe, the Bosnian war of two decades ago, which was a seminal experience for Europe as a whole, still looms large. Much as he is doing with the Kurds now, back in the 1990s Levy was an outspoken advocate of decisive action to stop the genocide in Bosnia, becoming a regular thorn in the side of a Franco-British-Russian alliance that effectively shored up the gains of the Serbian separatist militias. Levy is also known for his writings on Judaisms intellectual achievements down the ages, as well as his stalwart opposition to anti-Semitism and his deep love of Israel (if not its current government). So Judaism and the challenges faced by Jews globally also loom large in his play. At various points in the play, Levy speaks about the symbiosis between Bosniaa resolutely multicultural society with a largely secular Muslim majorityand its Jewish community, who fled the Inquisition in Spain for a country that at the time was a province of the Ottoman Empire (my maternal grandfather, incidentally, was born in Travnik, a city that served as the Ottoman regional capital for two centuries.) For anyone who was in besieged Sarajevo during the war, Levys emotional plea to heed the bells... the voices... the prayers of that great city, accompanied by the sounds of Christian, Jewish and Muslim supplications, is extraordinarily haunting. Echoing Haris Silajdzics words at that monstrous dinner at the Iranian Embassy in London, in Act 3 of the play, Levy remarks wryly that Sarajevo offers another non negligible advantage: You encounter fewer anti-Semites here than in France and in the United States. Although that observation can be critically scrutinizedas my surviving relatives told me, Bosnian Jews feared the local Ustase and Handzar collaborators sometimes more than the Germans during the war, while the present-day community is tinyLevy is absolutely correct that hostility to Jews continues to plague the larger nations on both sides of the Atlantic. It is at this juncture that Levy attacks U.S. President Donald Trump in terms that will outrage his supporters. Baby Trump, as Levy calls him, has set loose the demons of far-right anti-Semitism in America, and with it the devastating massacre of 11 Jews at prayer in Pittsburghs Tree of Life*Or LSimcha Synagogue on Oct. 27. The French philosopher is not the first person to have expressed that view, but in this case, he does so as a warning to his fellow Jews not to be seduced by Trump or by other populist politicianslike the new Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro, a fervent supporter of Israel, but also a man who said that he would rather his own son died than come out as a gay man. But Levy is not someone who believes in ideological purity over pragmatism. If the Jews are to thrive, he says, they must absorb what he says are two golden rules crystallized by Jewish history. First, facing externally, strategic prudence ... To save his brothers, Joseph may forge an alliance with Pharoah. But only if he does not forget that a new Pharoah is always around the corner in Egypt. Second, looking inwards, a metaphysical rule... We are the descendants of a people who survived across the centuries for a single reason. We held fast to a body of thought. Faith in our political skills, confidence and pride in our intellectual and spiritual heritage, and cognizance that not every place in the world can be a Sarajevothis is Levys message to Jews and by extension, non-Jews. At a time when many European intellectuals depict Israel as a reincarnation of Nazi Germany and dismiss accusations anti-Semitism as a political smear whose goal is to further empower the Zionists, the significance of that message cannot be overstated. Ben Cohen writes a weekly column for JNS on Jewish affairs and Middle Eastern politics. His writings have been published in Commentary, the New York Post, Haaretz, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications. When it comes to Jews and Israel, the Boston Globe has a habit of inverting reality in the nastiest ways imaginable. Decades ago, the Globe reported on a Palestinian who had been arrested after the bomb he was making blew up and blinded him. The Globe headline? Israelis Arrest Blind Palestinian. Really. For years on the holiest Jewish day of Yom Kippur, when Jews repent for their personal sins, the Globe published op-eds by an anti-Israel Jewish activist who hectored Bostons Jews to repent for oppressing the Palestinians. And then there were all those articles through the years explaining that the Palestinians murdered Jewish people simply because they had no other choice. So now comes Tom Mountain, a Jewish Massachusetts Republican official who, on Friday, Nov. 2, was blocked from his own office by a group of Democrats wearing Jewish prayer shawls while chanting that Republicans are the party of White Nationalism and are responsible for the mass murder of Jews in Pittsburgh. Mountain, understandably annoyed, told reporters that these people were a disgrace to the Jewish people and an embarrassment to this country. The mob of Democrats refused to let him through and the police had to physically haul them off. Globe headline? Mass. GOP official calls Jewish protesters a disgrace and an embarrassment. Had the Globe any integrity at all, they would have reportedin either the headline or the ledethat Mountain himself is a Jew. Instead, the Globe downplayed that fact by obliquely referring to him later in the article as the vice chair of the state GOPs Jewish Committee. That way, the story line the Globe aimed forGOP vs Jewswas what came across to readers. In fact, what was being played out at the Republican Partys Boston office was a seriously important story: the long-simmering American Jewish internal conflict about Israel and anti-Semitism seems to be going public. Jewish leftists who are politicizing everything, even the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, are being criticizednot lionizedin Jewish media outlets. And of course the Globe is ignoring the bigger picture in all this: that while the murders of Jews in Pittsburgh were done at the hand of a classical anti-Semitewho declared, by the way, that he loathed Trump because Trump was surrounded and controlled by Jewsin fact, the much larger danger to Jews comes a newer form of anti-Semitism which portrays the Jewish state, not Judaism, as the prime evil. The Jews of Europe are fleeing the continent not because the mobs that menace them cry out Christ-killer! as in days of old. The surge in Jewish emigration is caused by vicious left-wing anti-Zionist universalists who hate Jews because of Jewish particularism, and who hate all Western nationalismsbut not Palestinian nationalism. These radical leftists are joined in their animus against Jews by violent Islamist immigrants to Europe whose hate for Jews seems historic and theological. Were seeing this even here from some of the newly elected Democratic congresswomen. Jew-haters of every type have always desired to eliminate Judaism or Jews. Christian and Muslims wanted Jews to convert, Nazism wanted Jews to die, Communism wanted Jews to be liberated from their heritage, and like the Nazis, todays jihadis seek the destruction of the Jewish people. So under the guise of human rights, all of these seemingly divergent groups have adopted Palestine as their cause. All libel Israel as the Jew among the nations. All promote the apartheid state of Israel as their meme. All mobilize their bases with the call for the destruction of the only Jewish state. In America, too, the increasingly dangerous hostility to Jews on campus comes from the ideology of anti-Zionism, the belief that the Jewish state, among all others, is uniquely evil. There are no human rights protests against Iran, Saudi Arabia or China on American campuses. There is no campus movement to free black slaves from Muslim masters in Africa, or to rescue the Middle East Christians targeted for extinction by the Jihad. There might not be any neo-Nazi professors or classically anti-Semitic student groups on American campuses, but there is a plethora of anti-Israel student organizations that focus enmity on the Jewish state, and professors who use their podia to defame Jewish nationalism are a dime a dozen. The Boston Globe, a progressive communication organ, follows this general anti-Israel script, as meticulously documented in studies by CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. Finally, an honest newspaper reporting on the Democrat siege and harassment of a Jewish Republican, would have examined the nature and motives of the group that went after Tom Mountain. For the record: IfNotNow protests Jewish cultural events, such as Celebrate Israel festivals in Boston and New York, because 50 years of Occupation is nothing to celebrate. Tom Mountain is only the latest Jewish victim of its blockade tactics; it has pulled similar stunts against both the ADL and AIPAC, and tried to shout down New York Times columnist Bret Stephens inside a San Francisco synagogue. But the Globe (Pravda-on-the-Charles) has a political agenda: It deplores Trump and swoons over Israel-hating Jewish Democrats. A good argument can be made that, like him or not, President Trump has done more for Israel than any other president: not renewing the Iran deal, which would have assured that Iran would indeed obtain a nuclear weapon and use it to complete the Holocaust; and recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel when three previous presidents had promised but failed to do so. And Trump did something that no other American president ever did. In response to the murder in Pittsburgh, the president said, Through the centuries, the Jews have endured terrible persecution... and those seeking their destruction, we will seek their destruction. Compare this statement with FDRs perfidy during the mass slaughter of Jews. So, Tom Mountain, the Globe smeared you as White Republican man denigrates innocent, lovely Jews, exactly like they nailed those Israelis who arrested that poor, innocent blind Palestinian. Not to fret: its just the Boston Globe being the Boston Globe. Charles Jacobs is president of Americans for Peace and Tolerance. Originally published in The Times of Israel. By Andrew Silow-Carroll (JTA)My father, whose own father changed his unpronounceable last name to Carroll when he came to America, would often tell a story about job hunting in the late 1940s and 50s. It was only after the interview that the men across the desk would ask, And all we need now is a recommendation from your clergyman. I knew what you are asking, Dad would tell them. And yes Im Jewish He suspects he lost out on a lot of jobs, although somehow he became what he thinks was the first Jewish high school principal on Long Island. My mother enlisted in the Navy during World War II under the name Naomi Green. Why not Greenberg, her maiden name? You cant be too careful, shed say. Ambiguous last names and tales of casual slights may be the most benign legacies of the institutionalized American anti-Semitism of the last century, but they show how pervasive bigotry was and how insecure Jews felt in this country. Also familiar are stories of college quotas, restricted clubs and neighborhoods, beatings at the hands of neighborhood thugs and the broadcasts of demagogues like Father Coughlin, railing against an international Jewish banker conspiracy. Prior to World War II, Jews were blocked from entire industries, and anti-Semitism manifested itself at every level of society and across the country, the Princeton historian Julian Zelizer wrote last week. Its important to recall that history in the wake of the horror in Pittsburgh, where 11 Jews were gunned down in synagogue by a loner drunk on anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic propaganda. The shooting has inspired a spate of It canand didhappen here essays and reporting, suggesting that Jews are learning that their safety is an illusion, and that the anti-Semitism that had seemed to lie dormant has erupted again, like a chronic disease. There is a lot of truth to that perception. You dont need a study to remind you about the toxic sludge that regularly pours forth from the Internet and social media. The alt-right puts Jews at the center of their master narrative of white nationalism under threat. The idea of a Great Replacementthat people of color are displacing the white race, aided and abetted by Jewish liberals like George Soroshas made the leap from the Charlottesville march to the political mainstream. Despite having Jewish grandchildren, the president often appears loath to separate himself from some of the ghouls who believe this stuff. And whether thats because he believes it himself or is constitutionally unable to reject the support of a single voter, it doesnt really matter. College campuses have seen anti-Israelism shade too often into anti-Judaism. We saw it last week when some pro-Palestinian activists asked Jews in mourning to account for Palestinian suffering. But it is important to note that despite all these ominous signs, the lived experience of American Jews is not one of fear and vulnerability, certainly when you compare it to 50 and 100 years ago, and even if you dont. Thats what made the Pittsburgh attack doubly shockingit is simply not the daily experience of American Jews to feel under physical threat. That is not because they are deluded or complacent. It is because Jews are at home in America, and the vast majority do not experience anti-Semitism as a functional or impeding factor in their lives. Perhaps the leading indicator of this is the rate at which Jews marry non-Jewsover 70 percent according to recent numbers. That is not only a sign of wide acceptance, but it also means that Jews are woven into the family trees of more and more people of different faiths. You might be inclined to argue that Trump proves how slender a reed that argument is, but even in his case reports suggest that, after Pittsburgh, Jared and Ivanka guided him to do and say the right things. At the very least, Trump finds it important to clarify that he is the least anti-Semitic person that youve ever seen in your entire life. In the reporting around Pittsburgh, many have noted the Anti-Defamation Leagues report of a 57 percent rise in acts of anti-Semitism in 2017. That comes to 1,986 acts in 2017, compared to 942 in 2015 and 1,267 in 2016. The trend is alarming, and every threat or act of violence is one too many. But that statistic also includes more than 160 bomb threats sent to Jewish community centers and other institutions by a disturbed young Jewish man living in Israel. Those threats were deeply unsettling and sure felt like anti-Semitism, but his acts shouldnt be included when talking about a trend. I dont mean to trivialize the hatred expressed when someone scrawls a swastika, or retweets a vicious anti-Jewish meme, or spews bile at a Jewish journalist. Recent attacks on Orthodox Jewish men in Brooklyn were despicable. The demonization of George Soros is ominous. The Pittsburgh massacre has shattered the illusion that our synagogues are havens from an ugly, dangerous world. But we shouldnt grant more power to the hate-mongers than they deserve. The coast-to-coast gestures of solidarity and acts of kindness that followed the Pittsburgh massacre are far more typical of America than the acts of a deranged subculture. The Pittsburgh massacre is not a sign that Jews have lost their bargain with America, but that hatred by a disgruntled and alienated minority has been encouraged and allowed to festerby cynical politicians, by feckless social media companies, by apologists who are willing to condone bigotry so long as it is directed at groups they dont like. Often when I raise this issue, someone will ask, But what about Europe? Jews in many European countries feel under siege, both from a resurgent right and from Islamists. Jews in Belgium and Paris were targets of vicious anti-Semitic terrorism in recent years. European Jews will tell you that if they dont yet plan to emigrate to Israel, they are keeping a bag packed. Or theyll say that they dont dare wear their yarmulkes on the street. But thats the point: The United States is not Europe. American Jews dont live their lives that way. America has not broken its promise, and saying so is a misdirection. If you throw up your hands and say its 1939 all over again, if you tell your own story as one of siege and constant threat, you might reach for the very worst remedies. Youll overlook the advantages, political and cultural, that actually give you the power to fight not just anti-Semitism, but bigotry in all its forms. For example, perhaps what we can offer Jews in Europe is that America has flourished because it encourages the integration of people of different faiths and colors and national origins. If anti-Semitism is a chronic disease, it is one that we can fight whenever it erupts. But that means looking for the right treatment. Andrew Silow Carroll is editor in chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Few people recognise the conflict that education in a society like ours necessarily involves. The Constitution of India carries a transformative vision of society, implying a major change in the values and behaviours embedded in culture. Many of these values and behaviours impinge on religious beliefs. They are not compatible with the fundamental values, such as equality and justice, enshrined in the Constitution. The State is supposed to play a negotiating role, reconciling and mitigating the conflict between Constitutional values and those entrenched in culture. The States institutional apparatus, including schools and universities, are directly involved in this difficult task. Any number of examples can be given to explain this conflict between Constitutional values and the values entrenched in culture. Take untouchability. As a behaviour, it has been outlawed in the Constitution. As a practice, it derives its cultural legitimacy from the caste system. It is also closely tied to religious beliefs and rituals. Temples were a major site where untouchability was practised. That is why Ambedkar made temple entry a major campaign in his politics. For long-term change on this front, education was expected to play a major role. The success achieved in this regard is not total. We still hear about untouchablity being practised in schools, around the drinking water tap and at the time the midday meal is served. But these stories are not as common today as they were two generations ago. Gender is another important area in which education was supposed to make a dent. The enrolment of girls in schools was widely perceived as a remedy for gender disparity and discrimination. No state aroused greater expectations in this matter than Kerala where schooling and literacy spread across different sections of society earlier than anywhere else in India. Recently, after the Supreme Courts Sabarimala verdict, I felt disappointed with Keralas inability to accept and implement it. Despite the verdict, womens entry into the Sabarimala temple remained contentious. Apparently, universal education has not sufficed to remove all misogynistic beliefs. This is hardly surprising as a lot of people feel that neither courts nor schools should interfere with cultural practices and the beliefs on which they are based. If we accept that position, education will be reduced to transmit inert information. Education has a role in creating the capacities that a participatory democracy demands. To fulfil this role, schools must train the young to think critically. Our education system is quite weak in this respect. Cultural topics are usually taught without any interrogation. That is why the impact of education on the sociocultural milieu remains limited. Of course, it is not easy for teachers to handle cultural issues rooted in custom or religious belief. In India, most teachers prefer to stick to the prescribed textbooks, and textbooks usually avoid controversial aspects of culture. The individuals involved in the preparation of textbooks in the states and the private sector often lack the skills required for sophisticated handling of contentious issues. The Sabarimala controversy can be a good topic for encouraging critical pedagogy in a senior secondary class, but the treatment of such a topic in a school textbook must be nuanced and capable of engaging the young. The ultimate test of the maturity of an education system is whether teachers are able to handle such a topic with care in the classroom. Critical pedagogy is a fine idea, but it cannot be practised by poorly trained teachers. Professional confidence and a supportive environment are necessary for teachers to deal with sensitive cultural issues. Both are rare in our system. Teachers perceive their job as that of compliance with whatever the authorities want. That is why they prefer to follow the textbook mechanically and avoid training the students to interpret. Only a few make an attempt to encourage reflective study of a topic. They depend on the principals support for such an attempt, especially if parents are sceptical or uncooperative. Language and literature constitute a crucial area for the schools success in dealing with cultural matters in a mature manner. It is in the language class that children learn the skills required for critical analysis and coherent discussion. Literature offers the opportunity to relate to social and cultural history and its contemporary manifestation in a contemplative manner. Unfortunately, both language and literature, along with other subjects belonging to the humanities, are getting marginalised in the current social environment. Neither parents nor school authorities seem to recognise the importance of humanities and the social sciences. Krishna Kumar is former director, NCERT The views expressed are personal The launch of what is the largest public health coverage scheme in the world has put India at the centre of attention. Along with Ayushman Bharat, India has a lot else going for it that can put the nation on the centre stage of global health care. We have a young, progressive population that is skilled, aspirational and ambitious. Given its technology talent pool, India has a lot to offer in the domain of health care technology and preventive health and predictive analytics. With deep penetration of smartphone technology and internet, IT-enabled health care solutions have enormous potential to change the health care landscape. There are numerous startups which have the scope to scale up innovation in these pockets. These startups are redefining and transforming existing industries with innovative approaches and business models that target some of the problems of our everyday lives. With transformative development of cognitive robotics, immersive reality, AI and connected devices, there is a new and fascinating technological sophistication making inroads in the physical world of health care. India is doing many things right in health care. The four important Cs in health care Clinical care, Costs, Connectedness and Compassion which are pivotal to a successful and sustainable health care model, are the countrys strength. In health care, first, the quality of care is non-negotiable. The second and equally pivotal aspect is that of costs. As per an OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) study, the treatment cost for major surgeries and procedures in India is only a fraction, and in most cases, a tenth the cost in developed countries. These costs can be further reduced through regulatory changes with regard to import duties and taxation. Cost is essential for health care to be equitable and inclusive as also critical for viability and sustainability. India can use its capability to devise out-of-the-box solutions for conventional problems to improve health care delivery and lower costs. India is in need of innovations such as low cost diagnostic kits for rural households or low-cost dialysis. This will enable India to lead and offer cost-effective solutions to a world that is grappling with rising costs of health care. A paramount aspect in the journey of healing is accessibility and connectedness. Being connected is critical to inculcate health awareness, to encourage screening, facilitate early detection of disease, provide post-operative assistance, and monitor well-being for pregnant women and young mothers and also senior citizens. Connectedness is also valuable to provide Continuous Medical Education to doctors and medical staff across geographies. Indias demographic dividend with more than 40% of the population at the median age of 25 years can be used positively to give a right impetus to health care through gainful employment. According to a recent report, titled Indias New Opportunities-2020 by the AIMA, BCG and the CII, more than 40 million new jobs are expected to be generated by 2020, a huge increase from the five million people employed by the health care industry today. This creation of jobs would be the silver bullet to solving Indias many developmental challenges with families becoming incentivised to invest in education. The rewards can be substantial. In a globalised world, Indian human health resources have the potential to serve multiple nations across continents which are grappling with a population that is growing older. Critical to this is an ecosystem that fosters a culture of innovation and nurtures innovators to take health care innovation to the next level. With all things falling in place, there is no doubt that India will be a global role model for health care. Preetha Reddy is executive vice chairperson, Apollo Hospitals Group The views expressed are personal Over the last few days and weeks, the Rafale hearing in the Supreme Court has been the subject of much discussion and debate. The apex courts hearing of the case has raised questions over whether, and to what extent, the governments entering into defence deals can be the subject of judicial review; and matters came to a head last week when, in the course of the hearing, the Chief Justice summoned officers from the Indian Air Force to court, to interact with them. This action of the Chief Justice has raised eyebrows, with some people questioning whether it undermines the principle of civilian supremacy. The mere fact that the officers of the Indian Air Force were asked to participate in the proceedings, however, is not a matter of constitutional concern. In India, no individual is above the law, and if it is the Courts view that the testimony of Air Force officers is indispensable to deciding the case fairly, then the Court is entitled to ask them to participate in the proceedings. What is of concern, however, is the manner in which the Court did so: it is reported that the Chief Justice and his brother judges had an oral interaction with the officers, putting a series of questions to them, and hearing their answers. To understand why this is a problem, we need to begin by understanding that India follows an adversarial system of justice: the determination of truth in a courtroom is based upon a clash between two rival narratives, adjudicated by the court. For this reason, there is a very detailed process contained in the Evidence Act that is set out for determining when, how, and what kind of evidence a court can take into account when determining truth. At the heart of this process is the principle of cross-examination: a witness account, ultimately, cannot be deemed worthy of credence until the other sides advocate has had a chance to test it in all its details, both for internal coherence, and for how well it matches with external, known facts. Through a cross-examination, the witness has a chance to defend her version against the most sustained and intensive questioning, while the opposing side has every opportunity to demonstrate why the account should not be believed. It is only after having been put through the rigours of the cross-examination, that a witness account can be said to be trustworthy, and can a court place reliance upon it. An interaction of the kind that the court conducted with the Air Force officers during the Rafale hearing does not come anywhere close to the kind of cross-examination that the adversarial legal system requires (and, unsurprisingly, people have already alleged that the court was misled during the interaction). Technically, the testimony of the Air Force Officers who were not sworn in as witnesses, and did not (it appears) submit a written affidavit has no standing in law; it seems, however, that the Supreme Court will rely upon this interaction in at least some relevant way while coming to its decision. That, however, means that the court will effectively be bypassing the core principles of the Evidence Act and the adversarial legal system, in coming to its decision. And this is not simply hair-splitting: rules of evidence and process matter because they serve the vital function of ensuring that judicial discretion is cabined and constrained within a defined set of parameters parameters that have stood the test of time. It is this that separates the proceedings of a constitutional court from that of a durbaar, where the monarch decides who gets to be heard, how truth is to be determined, and how justice is to be administered. It is these rules that, ultimately, constitute the fundamental distinguishing feature between a government of laws and a government of men. Particularly, in matters of great public interest where the allegation is about government corruption in defence deals following due process to the letter matters even more than in ordinary cases. The court did not have to hear the Rafale case, and it did not have to hear from the Air Force officers. However, once the court did take those two decisions, then it was incumbent upon it to ensure that the testimony it was going to be relying upon met the basic threshold requirements of the legal process. To give a go-by to those processes in the name of efficiency or quick decision-making serves neither the cause of efficiency, nor the cause of truth. Gautam Bhatia is an advocate in the Supreme Court The views expressed are personal Last week, a senior forest official Parveen Kaswan tweeted: If you havent noticed #Gaja, on western coast of #India, is the 13th tropical #cyclone or heat engine developed in ocean this year. The highest number in last 26 years. If you still think #climatechange is a hoax and we will survive without paying any attention to it. There is strong evidence that climate change may be responsible for the recently observed increase in the intensity, as measured by wind speeds and central pressure, of tropical cyclones, such as Gaja. Despite such repeated warnings, considerable scientific research output and impacts ---- the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a new record last year with emissions showing no sign of slowing down, the UN World Meteorological Organization said on Thursday -- and anecdotal evidence, it would not be wrong to say that the general public is not paying required attention to climate change. Prof Corinne Le Quere, of the University of East Anglia, told The Guardian that she was not surprised by the new record levels of greenhouse gases. It seems the urgency and extent of the actions needed to address climate change have not sunk in, she said. The result of this casual attitude on the problem: we continue to pollute, ravage and deplete the earth, and mess with its natural systems. CLIMATE COMMUNICATION One reason why the issue is not getting the required traction could be the gap that exists between the world of scientists and the general public. Second, one of the best group of public communicators ---- politicians --- are still not making this a part of their electoral agenda though the impact of debilitating climate can be seen everywhere. Unfortunately, the climate issue has become a seasonal issue: if winter is about pollution, summers are for drought. Third, the lack of interest on the part of the public is also galling. Is it possible to make them environment-friendly, especially the urban set? One way would be to start teaching the nuances of environment early in life. It is true that schools in India do have something called environmental studies but most children forget what they learnt by the time they clear school. It is true climate change messaging is not reaching students, says Navin Menon, Editor (Publications) at Childrens Book Trust. Our textbooks need to rewritten, and we must dovetail the issue of environment into other subjects. She has a point. For example, why cant children be taught about water conservation when they read history? After all, all Indian forts had elaborate water harvesting methods. There are progressive/experiential schools that do take that step but such schools are exceptions, says Menon. At the same time, schools also need to ensure that they re-educate the parents. You cant teach water conservation and waste management when at home a child sees her parents wasting water, or using plastic plates and glasses for birthday parties. What schools and parents need to teach children is this: Less is more. @kumkumdasgupta Over the last few weeks, Professor Sarah Kenderdine, an art & design scholar from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), has been visiting remote places across Madhya Pradesh, Pune, and Aurangabad, clicking photos and doing research for a one-of-a-kind multimedia atlas of maritime Buddhism. We are driving and flying with a small team to take images across Nalanda, Sanchi, Junnar caves, Pitalkora caves and Ajanta caves. Weve completed five other countries, including Myanmar and Sri Lanka, but India is the source of the story and an integral part of the narrative, says Kenderdine, who is from New Zealand. Footage from the shoot in Myanmar. (Courtesy: Sarah Kenderdine) The atlas that she envisages is a large-scale artefact offering a 360-degree, 3D panoramic view. We are working across 24 sets of monuments and hundreds of individual sites. The project spans 12 countries and hundreds of sites. We are shooting with a rare stereoscopic film camera to make 3D panoramas of the landscape. The images will be augmented with models of Buddhist iconography from statues and artefacts, she says. The exhibit is tentatively planned for 2019. Once it is ready, Kenderdine intends to tour with it and showcase it at prominent museums around the world. The exhibit will also feature as a permanent installation at the Fo Guang Shan monastery in Taiwan. Sarah Kenderdines 2015 exhibit, Look Up Mumbai, was an installation at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), Mumbai, where visitors could look up into a dome to view images of ceilings of buildings across Mumbai. (Courtesy: Sarah Kenderdine ) The inspiration for the atlas came from an earlier interactive project she did on the Dunhaung caves in China. Dunhaung is a world heritage site, and a focal point on the Silk Road. The maritime Silk Road completes the Great circles of Buddhism balancing the overland Silk Road, which is well-known, with this new story that has not yet found its way into the public domain, she says. Kenderdine has worked in India in the past as well. In 2012, she designed the PLACE-Hampi museum, where visitors engage in sensorial and experiential encounters with Hampi as a historic place and a living cultural landscape. Her 2015 exhibit, Look Up Mumbai, was an installation at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), Mumbai, where visitors could look up into a dome to view images of ceilings of buildings across Mumbai. Professor Kenderdine during a shoot in Sri Lanka. (Courtesy: Sarah Kenderdine) The artwork is based on a series of gigapixel images of important heritage buildings and some contemporary buildings, including Terminal 2. It uses a computer vision algorithm that selects an image randomly and creates a unique transition between that image and the next every time. So, the idea is you could lie and look up all day and you will never see the same image again, she explains. As part of her job, Kenderdine gets to visit lots of museums across the world. She recently worked at the National Museum of Qatar, which is currently under construction. Her personal favourites, she says, are the CSMVS in Mumbai, National Museum and the NM Institute in Delhi, the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania (MONA), Sir John Soanes Museum and The Wellcome Collection in London, Naoshima in Japan, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and the Rietberg Museum in Zurich. To learn more about the project, visit sarahkenderdine.info Rajasthan Congress president Sachin Pilot, a two-time member of Parliament from Dausa and Ajmer, is confident that the party will win a resounding mandate in the upcoming assembly elections. For the first time, Pilot is contesting an assembly seat, Tonk, where his main rival is Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate and Rajasthan cabinet minister Yunus Khan, who has shifted from his constituency Deedwana at the behest of his party. In an interview to Sachin Saini, Pilot talks about his candidacy and vision for the constituency. Tonk is a new constituency for you. How do you plan to campaign? The decision to contest the assembly election, and from where, is the partys decision. Its an area I have had a very long association with, and I am very honoured and delighted that I got a chance to be the Congress candidate from there. Tonk, I think, doesnt need a candidate whos a Hindu or a Muslim, forward or a backward (caste). It needs a person who can really deliver development to the constituency... I have had the good fortune of being an MP from the adjacent constituency of Ajmer. Tonk, I think, looks forward to someone who can usher in a new era of development. Congress has been fielding Muslim candidates in the last many elections from Tonk, but this time the BJP has fielded a Muslim. How do you see this? The narrative of our election debate should not come down to such a level where we are looking at everything through the prism of religion. I am sad to say that the gentleman who is fighting against me he is now the number two minister in chief minister Vasundhara Rajes cabinet. He was elected from Nagaur three times. I am told that the BJP is keen to replicate the Uttar Pradesh template in Rajasthan (of fielding no Muslim candidates). Now, I am also pleased that my candidature has meant the BJPs attempt to replicate the UP template has fallen aside... the only reason he (Khan) has been given ticket from Tonk is not because the people of that area wanted him or BJP workers wanted him or he wanted to contest (from there). He was very reluctant, he said it on record, but only reason they gave him ticket at the last moment was because of his religion... Also read | Rajasthan assembly elections 2018: PM Modi to hold multiple rallies to give BJP a boost Traditionally, Muslims are seen as Congress supporters. How will Muslim politics play out? Thats a wrong assumption. The Congress has been winning elections for the last 70 years and we have been winning elections not because of one community, religion or section of society but (because) entire India has voted for us many times over, including as recently as in 2009. It is true that in 2014, we didnt do well but every section of the society has equal space in Congress and that is really one of the hallmarks of the party - that we are truly representative. So, it is wrong to be binary in focus by saying this religion, that caste. We represent everybody. Why do you think the party chose Tonk as your electoral battleground? I think the thinking behind the decision of the party, perhaps, would be that my candidature will yield maximum political benefit for the party. I had left the decision to the Congress president (Rahul Gandhi) and it is he who asked me to contest elections. I came here five years ago as party president and my singular job was to make sure that the party gets revived and rebuilt and we have built the party brick by brick. And now where to contest from, I think, also must have influenced the partys decision in terms ofwhich area my candidature brings the most benefit to the Congress. Besides being a candidate, you are also state party chief and required to campaign across Rajasthan, but your opponent will be in Tonk all through. Do you see it as a challenge? I have fought many elections before and I am confident that every single constituency where I am required to go, I will go. I have worked five years as party president and I will give everything that I have to this campaign. I am leaving no stone unturned to reach out to the farthest corner of the state. My being candidate will have absolutely no bearing in terms of the time that I will give to campaign (for)...my candidates. You worked hard in the state for the last five years and as state party chief you must have been instrumental in the selection of candidates. What is your prediction in terms of numbers? I cannot predict numbers and candidate selection was not by one or two persons; the entire party sat together and we had consensus. I am happy to say that all 200 (candidates) given nomination are my and the Congresss candidates. But I do have a sense that the mood is in our favour and people will give us a resounding mandate and we will get numbers that no survey has predicted because groundswell of emotion is in favour of Congress party. You may also like | Rajasthan assembly election: 613 nominations rejected after scrutiny Director Abhishek Kapoor is finally set to witness the release of his film Kedarnath on December 7. The trailer of the film, which had to deal with several controversies and production hassles, has been received well by the audiences. With the holy pilgrimage of Kedarnath as its setting, the film also tells the love story of a Muslim porter and a Hindu tourist during the devastating 2013 Uttarakhand floods. In an exclusive interview with Hindustan Times, Abhishek spoke about how difficult was shooting the film, its holy setting and launching star kid Sara Ali Khan. Excerpts: Saif Ali Khans daughter Sara marks her debut with Kedarnath. So how it is to work with a newcomer, especially a star kid? She is a kid, thats what it is. It doesnt matter whose kid you are. When you come to a set, you have a craft and a job at hand. I have worked with newcomers before. She had no experience in acting, and the kind of film it is, there were some serious responsibilities and a very important backdrop. The cast and crew were all professionals. So to get her to that level was a task in itself but she was very determined and has worked very hard. I am very proud of her. You directed Sushant Singh Rajput in his debut film Kai Po Che. You have worked with him after five years. What major change you noticed in him as an actor. In the case of Sushant, when I first worked with him, he brought another experience. On the first day of the shoot, he was a pro. He was from TV and was a big name. He was a 100% professional actor the first time around. This time, if he can keep his nuances intact was the biggest challenge. To still be curious about your craft when you are at the top of your game is what matters. I think he is in great form. How much of the film has been shot in real locations. Half the film has been shot at the location. This is a very difficult backdrop to execute, for which I got a fabulous team. I got some technicians flown from abroad for the action sequences. A lot of live action happened when we were shooting the flood scenes. So we built a massive set in a 120 feet long water tank for the sequences. Sushant Singh donated around Rs 1.25 crore for the Nagaland flood victims. How the film has changed you as a person. Somewhere along the line, he has shot his own film. He would feel what kind of devastation these floods can create. What we have seen with our own eyes can change the way we look at the world. Somewhere in his heart, he understood that pain and knows what he is doing. It is a noble gesture. As far as I am concerned, I have lived this devastation for almost two years now. I have seen how it has damaged the place. I have seen the people who have suffered and have lost their dear ones in the floods. There is lot of loss and a lot of feeling. That is one of the reasons we have made the film. Does the film have a message? I am a big believer in Lord Shiva. He is so many things for so many people. The greatest of thinkers can write books on him. The simplest and the most important part about having a Shiva quality is -- if you have a desire to sacrifice for your fellow human beings. No matter if you are a Hindu or a Muslim or a Christian, if you have a sense of kindness, Shiva resides in you. Har Har Mahadev means Shiva is in each one of us. This is the core of our film. Some bodies had asserted that it promotes love jihad. We had put out a 1-minute teaser and people felt so strongly about it. I think the reactions came out of fear. Someone must have heard about the ideology before and said that someone is going to hurt something. Otherwise there was no reason to behave like that. I would like to assure that I have handled a film like Kai Po Che before, which dealt with a sensitive matter. I have been quite measured and very sensitive to how we feel about these issues. Follow @htshowbiz for more. Actors Neha Dhupia and Angad Bedi were seen for the first time with their newborn daughter Mehr on Friday. The two were spotted outside the Womens Hospital in Mumbai with her parents as they prepared to leave for home. Neha was seen in a blue dress and white shrug as she cradled her baby in her arms. Husband Angad also kept a protective arm around his girls and posed for pictures with the two. Check out their pictures: Neha gave birth to her daughter on November 18 and revealed her name to the world two days later. Neha on Thursday tweeted: Our hearts are filled with joy as we Thank you all for all the love that has poured in for our little girl... I just whispered in her ear that everyone says welcome to the world and she smiled back... She sends you all lots of love. Neha shared a photograph of her babys feet wearing booties. The booties read: Hello world. The 38-year-old captioned the photograph: Mehr Dhupia Bedi says hello to the world. Angad on Tuesday morning tweeted a health update of the mother-daughter duo. The last two days have been very overwhelming. Neha and me have been blessed with a beautiful baby girl. Thank you all for your wishes and love that is coming our way. Both my girls are doing really well, he wrote. Neha and Angad surprised everyone with their hush-hush wedding in May this year. They confirmed Nehas pregnancy in August, a little over three months after their wedding. Follow @htshowbiz for more It is only natural that all the focus would be on Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh during their wedding and post-wedding festivities. All through the various ceremonies, viewers have been witness to the beautiful clothes worn by the couple. Deepikas Bengaluru reception sari was a gift from her mother Ujjala Padukone and was styled by fashion designer Sabyasachi while Ranveer Singhs clothes were done by designer Rohit Bal. Looking dapper in a rich embroidered black sherwani and matching black pants, Ranveer pulled of the classy look with elan. Looks like not just Ranveer, his entire family including mother Anju, father Jagjit and sister Ritika were dressed in Rohit Bals creations. Sharing a picture of the family, Rohit wrote on Instagram: Ranveer Singh and his beautiful family all dressed in ROHIT BAL COUTURE God Bless the beautiful couple and may the families stay blessed with Love , Peace, Happiness , Prosperity and above all Good Health . Love and hugs. In the picture, we see all four of the family, dressed in shades of black and gold. While Jagjit went all black, Ritikas dress has a pinch of orange as well. Ranveer and Deepika hosted a lavish reception in Bengaluru on November 21 and will follow it up with two receptions in Mumbaione on November 28 and other on December 1 for their industry friends. The couple left for Mumbai on Thursday and were spotted at the Bengaluru airport, twinning in pink. The celebrity couple got married at Italys Lake Como on November 14 and 15 in Konkani and Sikh traditions. Follow @htshowbiz for more Nissans former chairman Carlos Ghosn under-reported his income by a total of $71 million -- much more than initially suspected -- Japanese media reported Friday. The Brazil-born tycoon is now reportedly set to face a new charge from prosecutors after he was sacked as Nissan chairman Thursday to top a spectacular fall from grace for the once-revered boss whose fall has stunned the business world. Prosecutors arrested Ghosn on Monday, accusing him and fellow executive Greg Kelly of understating the former chairmans income by around five billion yen ($44 million) between June 2011 and June 2015. But Ghosn is now suspected of under-reporting his earnings by another three billion yen for the following three fiscal years, the Asahi Shimbun and the Nikkei business daily reported. Prosecutors are now planing to re-arrest him on charges of understating his income by a total of eight billion yen ($71 million) since June 2011, the Asahi said. Immediate confirmation of the reports was not available. Under Japanese law, suspects in jail can face additional arrest warrants, which can impose heavier charges. Ghosn is also suspected of failing to report a profit of four billion yen through stock appreciation rights -- a method for firms to give management a bonus on strong earnings, the Nikkei said. Separately, the Kyodo news agency has reported that Nissan had paid $100,000 a year since 2002 to Ghosns sister who had no record of doing advisory work for the group. Deputy chief prosecutor Shin Kukimoto said the Ghosn case is one of the most serious types of crime under Japans Financial Instruments Act, and Ghosn could face a 10-year prison sentence. His ouster is an astonishing turnaround for a titan of the auto sector who revived the Japanese brand and forged an alliance with Frances Renault as well as domestic rival Mitsubishi Motors. The French and Japanese finance ministers reiterated their strong support for the alliance at a meeting in Paris on Thursday. In a joint statement, Bruno Le Maire and Hiroshige Seko said they both wanted to maintain this winning cooperation. Asked about the fate of the alliance, Seko told reporters in Paris: It is important for people concerned to deal with it after they agree and fully understand. Renaults board has so far stood by Ghosn -- naming his deputy Thierry Bollore to handle day-to-day business. Bollore on Thursday pledged to stay focused on our mission to preserve the interests of Renault and the sustainability of the alliance. The board of Mitsubishi Motors was reportedly set to meet on Monday to discuss Ghosns future. Relations with Pakistan cannot be normalised so long as it denies responsibility for sponsoring terrorism against India. No meaningful dialogue can take place if it does not curb support for jihadi organisations active in J&K, or claims that it is only giving moral and diplomatic support to freedom fighters and not terrorists in J&K. Or even, that extremist violence in Kashmir is a result of Indias policy failures and its human rights violations. If it continues to believe that by accusing India of terror activities in Pakistan -- including the Peshawar school attack -- and presenting dossiers to the United Nations will shift attention away from its own conduct and make the debate on terrorism in the sub-continent less one-sided, it will not make the policy changes required to open a dialogue with India. Pakistans anti-terrorism credentials are hollow. Despite exhortations from many quarters, it has not tried those responsible for the Mumbai massacre. It allows Hafiz Saeed, a UN designated terrorist, to spout jihadi venom against India. It has not proceeded against those responsible for the Pathankot attack despite unprecedented Indian cooperation. Pakistan has also used China to block the designation of Masood Azhar as an international terrorist by the UN Security Council. Imran Khans government has allowed the ordinance that listed Hafiz Saeeds Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation (both on the UN terrorist list) as banned outfits, to lapse. Its inscription on the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has not induced Pakistan to weed out terrorist organisations from its soil despite its dire financial situation. The mounting radicalisation of Pakistani society, reflected in the demonstration of the street power of extremist outfits in locking down Islamabad in 2017 and forcing the governments hand again in Asia Bibis case, the mainstreaming of extremist parties in the last elections, and the Islamisation of the judiciary, bode ill for our future relations with Pakistan. India is right in insisting that dialogue and terrorism cannot co-exist. Previous dialogue rounds have been disrupted by terrorist attacks: in 2008 after Mumbai and, despite our delinking dialogue from terrorism in 2009 at Sharm el Sheikh and resuming talks in 2011, by subsequent killings on the Line of Control and attacks against our military installations. Those calling for an uninterrupted and uninterruptible dialogue-- a formula now appropriated by Pakistan -- should explain how any government can politically justify talks when Indian citizens get killed in cross-border attacks. Such a policy would also imply that India has no answer to Pakistans state-sponsored terrorism and, worse, would politically legitimise its use as a negotiating instrument against us. The example of US-Vietnam talks is inapposite because, unlike us, the US was not fighting for its territorial integrity. It was planning withdrawal from a distant conflict, and while talking, was raining bombs on Vietnam. Dialogue cannot always solve problems, as the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Russia-Japan territorial dispute, the Northern Cyprus issue and our own border differences with China show. Several unsuccessful rounds of negotiations were held on Kashmir even before the composite dialogue in 1997. A new round will also fail without Pakistan abandoning its endemic hostility towards India. A change in government in Pakistan does not mean a change in Pakistans entrenched policies towards India. Imran Khan has not campaigned for improved relations with India in his political career. Rather, he lambasted Nawaz Sharif for friendly overtures towards India. Imran Khans closeness to the army means greater limits on his margin of maneuvers rather than new openings. His statements on Kashmir have been hardline, calling for self-determination in accordance with UN resolutions, condemning human rights violations there and making progress on other aspects of relations, including trade, contingent upon a resolution of the Kashmir issue. Not content with the crucial geopolitical gain of having a direct border with China through illegal occupation of POK and denying us contiguity with Afghanistan, Pakistan seeks to further change the status quo at Indias expense. Imran Khans own Islamic leanings are well-established. His call for resuming political-level talks is a propaganda ploy to make him look like a peacemaker and India a rejectionist. He now intends making a fresh offer of dialogue after Indian elections in 2019, but to achieve what? Why he has to wait till 2019 to act on terrorism, when he can act now and open the road for a dialogue is unclear. The impasse in India-Pakistan relations can be broken, if India makes territorial concessions, or if Pakistan, in its own interest, recognises the futility of its inimical policies towards India and eliminates terrorism from its soil. Neither will happen. China will also impede any possible breakthrough in India-Pakistan relations in order to preserve its rising strategic stakes in Pakistan. Kanwal Sibal is former foreign secretary. If youre known by the company you keep, Islamabad has excellent companions, in the sense of earning a Twitter tirade from the 45th president of the United States. Countries that have been abused by Donald Trump on social media could easily make for a quorum in the United Nations General Assembly, and they range from China to those in Central America and Africa, as well as Americas allies of the pre-Trump era, like Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Unlike the others, though, Pakistan has often been in Trumps sights, from before he became president. Once in the Oval Office, he has acted in culling aid to Islamabad. For years, India has complained about this form of bribe to keep Rawalpindis generals behaviour merely bad, rather than worse, but Washington always retorted that New Delhi shouldnt view that as a zero sum game. Well, the sums involved were humongous, by Trumps reckoning, $33 billion over 15 years. While traditional allies of the US may have distanced themselves from many of Trumps tactics, Pakistan may not get a pass. And the reason is that Islamabad is being judged by the company its keeping on a different front: China. The West increasingly recognises that Beijings global ambitions and territorial greed outweigh the trade potential it presents, particularly as its economy sputters. Its meddling in local politics from Australia to Canada and even the US has added to the simmering disquiet caused by the Belt and Road Initiative and internal quashing of human rights the way only an autocracy can accomplish. In Western capitals, Pakistan is, for obvious reasons, being viewed as a client state of China. Which, in itself, is an ironic position for Islamabad. It once operated in just that capacity vis-a-vis the US as Afghanistan became a theatre in the 1980s for the Cold War going hot, by proxy. Decades later, its Beijings baby and China just doesnt have the kind of influence the US possesses to insulate Pakistan. Pakistans Prime Minister Imran Khan may protest being made a scapegoat, especially after it played its usual hand of offering up an Al Qaeda figure, as it does periodically to curtail criticism, but the wares it had peddled so successfully for decades may finally be reaching their expiry date. Much could still change, depending on whether the US proceeds with its foolish gambit of making peace with the Taliban to ensure Trumps objective of exiting Afghanistan. But Pakistans days of being a dishonest broker in similar undertakings in the past may be ending. Even if there are periods of renewed patronage, the process of the country turning collateral damage in the 21st century version of the Cold War appears irreversible. Although the American President is apt to change his mind as often as he disses CNN, this may finally be when the Twitter tigers snarl may not be lacking teeth. Anirudh Bhattacharyya is a Toronto-based commentator on American affairs The views expressed are personal Fresh details are emerging in the case of a 16-year-old girl from Jharkhand, who was declared murdered in May but returned to her native home alive on Monday. The girl told Jharkhand police that she had seen a news channel flashing her photo in a news about her murder at a house in Noida, where she was working as a domestic help.She had told her employer about this news and sought his help in informing the police about it. However, the employer did not alert the police. It seems that the employer feared that the police would book him for employing a minor girl, said Vikas Kumar, in-charge of Latung police station in Ranchi. The Jharkhand police have informed the Delhi police team, which is camping in Ranchi to reinvestigate the six-month-old murder case of Soni Kumar. The city police are now trying to identify the girl, whose dismembered body parts were found stuffed in a black bag near a drain in outer Delhis Mianwali Nagar on May 3. They said they will verify the girls claims and also question her employer in Noida to corroborate her statement. Manjeet Karketa, 30-year-old owner of a placement agency, and two other persons were arrested and jailed after they confessed to the killing of Soni Kumari, who was lured to Delhi three years ago by Karketa and his associate, Rakesh, on the pretext of providing a job. Police said the arrested persons told them that they killed the girl and chopped her body into 12 pieces at a house in Nangloi because she was demanding her salary, around Rs 2 lakh, that she had earned working as a domestic help. They stuffed the body parts in a travel bag and dumped it in the drain in Mianwali Nagar. Joint commissioner of police (western range) Madhup Tiwari said the brother of the girl, who has now returned home alive, was brought to Delhi and he had identified the body as that of her missing sister. The body parts were not decomposed. The girls brother had identified her. The accused were arrested and they also confessed to killing Soni Kumari. Prime facie, it appears that the dead girls name was also Soni Kumari. It could be a case of mistaken identity, he said. According to the Latung police station in-charge, the girl in her statement did not recognise the three persons arrested by the Delhi Police and claimed that she had never seen them. The girls family members told the local police that she was taken to Chandigarh in July 2017 by the members of a human trafficking racket. The girl has told her family members that the traffickers employed her as a domestic help at a businessmans home in Chandigarh. She fled after a few months and came to Delhi but again landed in the trap of some racketeers who employed her at a home in Noida, added Kumar. Police said the girls employer fired her after which she decided to return to her hometown but lost her way. She was spotted at a railway station and was sent to a shelter home run by an NGO in Haryana. On November 19, she reached her home with a member of the NGO. Joint CP Tiwari said the investigating team has got some clues about the dead girl and she will be identified soon. The Delhi High Court on Thursday sought to know the stand of the city police, chief secretary (CS) Anshu Prakash and the state government on a plea by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia, seeking to challenge their prosecution in the alleged assault of the CS during a midnight meeting on February 19. The Aam Aadmi Party has denied the assault, and accused the Delhi Police of launching a witch hunt against it. According to Irshaad, an advocate who represented the two, justice Najmi Waziri asked the counsels of both the parties to seek an adjournment in the case proceedings on the next date of hearing at the trial court. The matter, in the lower court, is scheduled to be heard on December 7. At the hearing on Thursday, there was a verbal spat between the lawyers appearing for the Delhi government and the Delhi Police over representing the police force in the matter. Even as Delhi governments standing counsel Rahul Mehra said that he was the assigned person to represent the Delhi Police in the high court, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Aman Lekhi and the Central governments standing counsel Anil Soni contended that they had been authorised by the Delhi governments Deputy Secretary (Home) to represent the police in the matter. Mehra strongly objected to Lekhis appearance, contending he (Mehra) had been duly appointed through a notification to represent the Delhi Police. Justice Waziri said the ASG would have to make a case for himself to argue the matter, and listed the matter for hearing on January 17. Kejriwal and Sisodia, named as accused in the CS assault case, have also challenged the order, permitting two other advocates to conduct the prosecution on behalf of the officer of the Delhi Police, instead of a regular public prosecutor attached to the court concerned. Appearing for the CM, senior advocate N Hariharan said a special public prosecutor (SPP) could be appointed under Section 302 of the CrPC, but there have to be special circumstances, and there was nothing special here. He said 10 other cases were pending against the chief minister before the same trial court judge and they were being tried by the regular cadre public prosecutor, in which the complainant was either the state or government officials. Strong winds since Wednesday night may have helped the air quality improve significantly in the national capital, but pollution levels are expected to spike again by the last week of November, government agencies have warned. As a combat measure, a government task force on pollution has recommended a ban on industrial and construction activities in Delhis pollution hotspots Wazirpur, Mundaka, Narela, Bawana and Anand Vihar, among others, if pollution breaches the severe level. The Supreme Court-appointed body Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA) will take a final call. We have been informed that there could be another spike in pollution in the last week of November. Air quality could deteriorate between November 26 and 29 because the ventilation index could drop, Sunita Narain, member of EPCA, said. Delhi needs a minimum wind speed of 10km/hour and a ventilation index of 6,000sqm/sec for dispersing the local pollutants. The ventilation index determines how fast pollutants can disperse. When asked whether the EPCA would consider rolling out the odd-even plan, a road rationing scheme, or ban private vehicles if the air quality enters the severe zone, Bhure Lal, EPCA chairman, said, We have not received any such recommendation from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). Decisions will be taken depending on the situation. Scientists from the Delhi environment department said the spike is expected mainly because of adverse weather conditions. According to forecasts, the wind speed and ventilation index are expected to drop by November-end. This could push up pollution levels in Delhi as pollutants emitted by local sources such as vehicles, industries and construction activities wont get dispersed. They would start accumulating over Delhi, a scientist from the Delhi environment department said. The task force, headed by the CPCB, has recommended that industrial and construction activities be banned in pollution hotspots, when pollution enters the severe category, a senior CPCB official said. EPCA had banned construction activities in Delhi-NCR and industrial activities in Mundka between November 1 and November 12, when the pollution had spiked to severe category. The condition worsened particularly during the post-Diwali period. Entry of trucks was also banned between November 8 and 12. The SC-appointed body had even warned of putting a ban on private vehicles or roll out the odd-even scheme if the pollution worsened. On Thursday, Delhi saw a substantial improvement in air quality. After hovering in the very poor category for four days, pollution levels dropped to the poor category. The Air Quality Index (AQI), as recorded by the CPCB, was 273 on Thursday. On Wednesday it was 373. On a scale of 0 500, an AQI value between 201 and 300 is considered poor, while a value between 301 and 400 is considered very poor. Vijay Dev, a 1987 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the AGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh,Goa, Mizoram, Union Territories) cadre, will be the next chief secretary of Delhi. Dev will succeed Anshu Prakash, who was transferred to the Union ministry of telecommunications on November 17. The appointment was confirmed by a senior official in the Union ministry of home affairs (MHA). Dev , an electrical engineer, is currently posted as the chief electoral officer (CEO) of Delhi, his second stint as the top official in the national capitals poll panel. Before being appointed CEO, Delhi, in March 2016, Dev was posted as the advisor to the then administrator of Chandigarh Kaptan Singh Solanki since December 2014. The administrator in Chandigarh, a union territory, is the governor of Punjab and Haryana. The elected Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government of Delhi led by Arvind Kejriwal has been at loggerheads with outgoing chief secretary Prakash. The relationship between Prakash, who was appointed as Delhi chief secretary in December 2017, and the AAP government took an ugly turn on February 29 when he was allegedly assaulted by AAP legislators at chief minister Kejriwals residence during a midnight meeting. Prakash filed a complaint with the police, alleging that he was beaten up by party MLAs in front of Kejriwal and deputy CM Manish Sisodia -- a charge the party and the elected government denied. A charge sheet has been filed against 11 AAP leaders -- including Kejriwal and Sisodia -- by the police. The party describes it as bogus. The integration of Indias three services has been a can kicked around for decades. Today, it is an imperative with the adoption of network-based weapon systems across the world. The Indian Chief of Air Staff, B S Dhanoa, has joined a line of distinguished voices in arguing for joint planning between the air force, army and navy as soon as possible. There are arguably fewer military reforms that would so greatly enhance Indias fighting capability than the full operational integration of its warships, fighters, tanks and other platforms. Joint planning would only be the first step towards this target. All the soldiers and weapons on land and sea, in air and space, are points in a three-dimensional space. If they are collectively able to detect targets and direct firepower or detect shipwreck survivors or tsunami victims in the case of humanitarian actions they become much more effective and accurate in everything they do. Todays internet centric technology connects all these elements together and shares what each point knows with the other. The fog of war is greatly reduced in such a situation and provides a tremendous advantage in battle. A primitive example: World War II aerial bombing had about a 1% accuracy against individual targets while todays guided missiles boost that figure to nearly 100%. A smaller but smarter military can defeat a larger foe simply because it sees the battlefield better, makes fewer errors and makes each blow count. Unsurprisingly, China has already integrated its military services into five theatres. In comparison, India currently has 17 single-service military theatres. The Andamans are its only integrated command. A series of expert committees going back years have called for the creation of an Indian equivalent of integrated military command and a joint chiefs of staff. However, inter-service rivalry has so far put the idea on ice. Ultimately, it is an abdication of responsibility for the government to wait for a consensus within the military. This is fundamentally a political decision and it is time for the central government to accept military integration as a national security necessity. Buying weapons and amassing troops is only a small part of warfare. The strategies and means by which they are deployed are even more important. Few reforms would do as much to shift the Indian defence system into the 21st century and help compensate for its undersized squadrons and under-equipped divisions. Unity in diversity is not merely a political concept. It applies just as much to military effectiveness. The row over Dolce & Gabbanas video campaign, which showed a Chinese model struggling to eat spaghetti with chopsticks, shows how far luxury brands still have to go to respond to the cultural sensitivities and changing attitudes of consumers. Thousands of the Italian fashion houses goods have been pulled from Chinas biggest shopping websites after the video campaign was branded racist and insensitive. As an own-goal, it was remarkable, but the company isnt alone in struggling to recognize this shift the whole industry will need to adapt or risk alienating customers. Luxury and premium fashion brands will have to embrace a more inclusive outlook if they are to continue to tempt customers to spend on their handbags, shoes and watches. That means not just greater diversity and cultural sensitivity in their marketing, but also providing garments for different ages, body shapes and those who want less revealing fashion. Some firms messages are increasingly jarring. At Victorias Secret Lingerie where parent L Brands Inc. recently installed a new CEO as it battles declining sales its Amazonian models sporting skimpy underwear look incongruous with the broader narrative around empowering women. Other labels have recognized the need to change. Breitling, the watch brand acquired by private equity firm CVC Capital Partners last year, has ditched its dated ads featuring male pilots being fawned over by attractive women. Fashion needs to get this right because clothing is such a big way for consumers to express their personal identity. With the rise of social media, particularly Instagram, there are signs this relationship is under threat: what individuals do, where they go, and what they eat can say as much about them as their outfits. Thats both a threat to luxury, and an opportunity for the brands to reshape their images. The industry can get it right. Kering SAs Gucci label has embraced a diversity of races and ages in its marketing. This nimbleness may well have helped to fuel the brandss extraordinary growth in recent years. For some time, the industry has featured older models. It was a canny move. Not only did it demonstrate a broader appeal, it spoke to a sub-sector of shoppers with money to spend. But increasingly it is younger consumers who are driving luxury growth and they have different views on the world. According to a recent study from Bain & Co., generations Y and Z consumers under 35 will account for all of the growth in the luxury market this year, compared with 85% in 2017. More inclusive fashion will represent about 20% of womens ready-to-wear this year, according to Bain. Luxury brands are producing more one-size garments, targeted at curvy or plus-sized consumers, larger sizes and clothing with a looser fit. Increasingly some consumers want clothing that isnt as revealing of the body as much traditional designer fashion. So-called modest fashion will account for 40% of luxury womenswear in 2018. This includes Muslim-specific garments, as well as items that cover more of the body. The stakes could not be higher for luxury brands. After two years of strong growth, investors are becoming more concerned about a slowdown in sales. At the top of the worry list is China, which has turbo-charged demand since it recovered from the lean years of 2015 and 2016. Consumers there account for a third of all luxury spending, according to Bain. Dolce & Gabbanas blunder therefore looks particularly ill-timed. Follow more stories on Facebook and Twitter The 20-year-old serial rapist-killer, Sunil Kumar, on Thursday told investigators that he had raped and murdered six minor girls in the city. Based on his confession, the police claimed to have solved six cases of rape and murder, including the sexual assault on a five-year-old girl who had to undergo several reconstructive surgeries for her brutally injured private parts five years ago. The girl was found near Sikanderpur Metro station on June 15, 2013 after she was lured from Bristol Chowk, the police said. According to the police, the 2013 case was purportedly his first in Gururgam. Usha Kundu, assistant commissioner of police who is now heading the special investigation team (SIT) formed on Thursday, said the accused was not aware that the minor he raped in 2013 is the lone survivor of his brutality. Sunil told the police that he had killed the girl before dumping her near the Metro station. The minor was allegedly lured away by Sunil who offered to give her food during the community kitchen organised near Bristol Chowk on June 15 which the victim had visited along with her cousin brother. We will meet the family members and the boy, who is the girls cousin and had seen the accused that day when he lured the victim on pretext of getting her sweets. The statements of the cousin, who was 12- years- old then, and the victim, are most important in this case, said Kundu. The police said they could not get any leads in the 2013 case despite announcing a reward of Rs 50,000 for giving information about the suspect. Sunil was arrested on Monday from Uttar Pradeshs Jhansi for the rape and murder of a three-year-old girl in Gurugrams Sector 66 earlier this month. According to the police, the accused has confessed to his involvement in 15 cases of rape and murder, which he allegedly committed in Gurugram, Delhi, Gwalior and Jhansi and have shared crucial details of the cases where he followed same modus operandi. However, the police are suspecting his involvement in more cases. Investigators said the accused struck in the city after almost every six months. He has also confessed to raping and murdering four minors each in Gwalior and Jhansi. We will take him to the locations for evidence and to check the case details as the cases registered there are of same modus operandi. He has shared the details of the cases which will help crack them. A team of Gwalior police is also reaching here on Friday as they have similar kind of cases registered against an unidentified person, said Kundu, who took over the investigation after the transfer of Sumit Kuhar, deputy commissioner of police who has been posted to Panipat. A five-member team will take the accused to Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station in Delhi where he allegedly changed his clothes before boarding a train to Gwalior. He said he had thrown his clothes near the station and had changed his clothes after he ate at a community kitchen from where he got a pair of clothes being distributed for orphans, said Kundu. The police said the first time he committed such a crime was in his native place Mahoba village in Uttar Pradesh seven years ago, but he had not been identified then. A case was registered against an unidentified person. He had fled from the village immediately after that incident and since then just visited once a year, said the police, adding that they will visit his village with him to identify the location of the crime. He may have been a juvenile at that time as police, in their records, mentioned his age as 20 years. But the police suspect he could be older as they found his Aadhaar card on Thursday which mentions that he was born on January 1, 1995. The police refused to share where they got the card from. It has been a bizarre trial for the seven people charged with planning, financing and supporting one of the worst terrorist carnages in recent decades the main accused fathered a child while in jail, the judge has been changed nine times, and a dogged prosecutor was assassinated in mysterious circumstances. The twists and turns witnessed since Pakistani law enforcement agencies arrested in December 2008 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and six others Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hammad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Younus Anjum for alleged involvement in the Mumbai attacks and put them on trial behind closed doors have been mind-boggling. As India prepares to mark the tenth anniversary of the carnage that claimed 166 lives, the trial of the accused in a Pakistani anti-terror court is nowhere near conclusion, despite an order from the Islamabad high court in April 2015 that it should be wound up in two months. After initially denying the involvement of any of its nationals in the coordinated attacks on Indias financial hub between November 26 and 28, 2008, Pakistans security forces rounded up the seven suspects when India and western nations, especially the United States and the United Kingdom, provided evidence of the involvement of the LeT. Lakhvi was captured during a dramatic raid by the army on a LeT facility in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir while the others were rounded up in Punjab and other parts of the country. The trial began in Pakistan in 2009 but the first charge-sheet filed by the Federal Investigation Agency in November of that year made no mention of the alleged role of LeT founder Hafiz Saeed, even though there was considerable evidence that he had been in contact with the attackers, including Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist who was captured alive in Mumbai. Over the years, the case has been transferred between judges of anti-terrorism courts in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, with proceedings being held in-camera at the high security Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi. With every change, the presiding judge has had to go through the process of acquainting himself with the case, which observers said had resulted in unnecessary delays. Lakhvi, who was freed on bail in April 2015, fathered a child around 2010 while he was still in prison as his youngest wife was allowed to visit him in jail, according to Abu Jundal, an LeT operative extradited to India by Saudi Arabia. Even in jail, Lakhvi and the six suspects had access to several rooms next to the jailers office, equipped with television, mobile phones and internet access, where they entertained dozens of visitors every day. Lakhvi also remained in charge of the LeTs operations and Pakistani authorities refused to deny him access to mobile phones even after the matter was taken up by the US. In May 2013, Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali, a dynamic criminal lawyer who doggedly pursued the prosecution of the accused in the Mumbai attacks case and the suspects in the 2007 assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated in Islamabad as he was driving to court. At the time, Ali had initiated a move to arrest former president Pervez Musharraf in the assassination trial and some reports suggested that his murder was linked to that case. Others, however, believe Ali may have been killed by the LeT as his death came soon after the crucial testimony by witnesses about the boats used in the Mumbai attacks and the money trail in the financing of the attackers. Then there is the curious factor of 20 unnamed suspects who figured in several of the five Pakistani charge-sheets to this day, it is not known whether the Pakistani authorities have managed to identify or detain any of them. A senior Indian official who has closely tracked the Pakistani trial, and spoke on condition of anonymity, said that out of the seven suspects, barring Lakhvi and two others, the rest were of no consequence. Former FIA chief Tariq Khosa, in a piece written for Dawn newspaper in 2015, argued: The trial will not be over with the disposal of those under arrest or on bail. Other missing links need to be uncovered after the absconders arrest. As things stand, the case is hanging in balance, with Pakistani authorities saying they cannot move forward since 27 Indian witnesses have not recorded their statements in the court. They have also claimed more evidence is needed from India . The anti-terror court has recorded the statements of all the Pakistani prosecution witnesses. The judge, in May this year, sought a report from the interior and foreign ministries on the status of the Indian nationals who are supposed to record evidence. At the time, the judge remarked that the case was in its final stages and it was imperative to know whether the Indian witnesses would be able to record their statements. In an interview, defence counsel Raja Rizwan Abbasi blamed India for the delay in the case: India is using the case as a diplomatic tool to malign Pakistan since the first day. It is responsible for the delay in the trial. Its non-cooperation is very much apparent. Abbasi added, India has not been sending witnesses for the last two years and an earlier request by Pakistan to constitute a joint investigation team had also been declined. He said that the trials conclusion is not in sight anytime soon. Special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, who handled the prosecution of Kasab and was part of an Indian team of legal experts that visited Islamabad in 2012, said the case in Pakistan related to a criminal conspiracy hatched on Pakistani soil and the training and support of the attackers. The Indian witnesses, including forensic experts and police officials, could only provide evidence related to the attacks and not the conspiracy. We have said there is no objection from our side to the Indian witnesses testifying in the Pakistani court, and this can be done via video link or by sending a Pakistani judicial commission to India to examine them, he said. If Pakistan is really serious about tackling the criminal conspiracy, they should examine David Headley, who has already given evidence in a US court and given an undertaking that he will provide evidence via video link to Indian and Pakistani courts. Why is Pakistan afraid to take his evidence? Nikam said, referring to the Pakistani-American national who played a key role in conducting surveillance of the targets in Mumbai. A damning expose Former Federal Investigation Agency chief Tariq Khosa, in an article written for Dawn newspaper, highlighted some key findings by Pakistani investigators: - The investigators established Ajmal Kasab was a Pakistani national, traced his residence and place of initial schooling, and confirmed he had joined a banned militant group. - The investigators located the training camp at Thatta in Sindh province where the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists were trained and launched by sea. Casings of explosive devices used in Mumbai were found in this camp and matched. - The Pakistani trawler used by the terrorists to hijack an Indian trawler to sail to Mumbai was found by investigators and connected to the accused. - The Japanese engine of a dinghy abandoned by the terrorists near Mumbai was traced to Lahore and then to a Karachi shop, from where an LeT-linked terrorist purchased it along with the dinghy. The money trail for the purchase was linked to the accused. - The operations room in Karachi, from where the attacks were directed, was identified and secured by investigators, who also uncovered communications via Voice over Internet Protocol. After surviving Cyclone Gaja and several other challenges, Indian Armys first-ever Indian Peninsula Wind Sailing Expedition entered its final leg after reaching the Goa coast . The voyage aboard 44-feet-long German-built SV Frama was kicked off on October 21 from Haldia Port near Kolkata, and will end on November 30. From Goa, it will head for Porbandar in Gujarat, the final destination. The penultimate leg of the journey was flagged off from Goa by Brigadier A K Sharma the commander of the Goa-based Signals Training Centre on Thursday. The final two legs will take the sailors to Mumbai and from there to Porbandar in Gujarat. The expedition of officers from the Electronics and Mechanical Engineers wing of the Army which set off from the Haldia in West Bengal on October 18. Major Alok Kumar Yadav who is leading the expedition, said they hope to inspire the spirit of adventure among younger enthusiasts in the Indian Army, besides being the first team to achieve the feat. It is the first time someone is attempting the feat on a sailboat. We began the expedition at Haldia which is 21 degree North latitude and hope to complete the journey at Porbandar which is also 21 degree north latitude, Maj Yadav said. The trip is not one continuous sail as it involved nine port calls including Visakhapatnam, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Mangalore. A total of 55 officers have taken part in the sailing. With the tumultuous Bay of Bengal behind them and the final two legs involving the calmer Arabian Sea, the team expects it will be a smooth sail. We negotiated and had to avoid three cyclones including most recent one Cyclone Gaja. The East Coast has fewer natural harbours and the weather is rough with cyclones throughout the year..., said Major Yadav. Andaman officials on Friday said restrictions on entry of foreigners, tourists and research officials were still in place near North Sentinel Island, where American citizen John Allen Chau was killed on November 16, though a home ministry notification had exempted foreigners from a restricted area permit (RAP) in June this year. Andaman and Nicobar Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation (1956) is the principal law that protects aboriginal tribes of the Andaman and Nicobar islands. This law restricts any kind of visit to North Sentinel Island and similar islands unless the trip is cleared by the highest authority, said C Raghu, head of the regional office of the Anthropological Survey of India in Port Blair. Dependra Pathak, director general of police of the union territory, said there were additional restrictions under the Indian Forest Act, 1927, that provides for imprisonment for entering a forest area without requisite permission. The tourism industry, tour guides and tourists of Indian and foreign origin have to follow rules and restrictions under Andaman & Nicobar Islands Tourism Trade Regulation, 2017. These laws cover all islands in the region. Foreign nationals require a RAP to visit the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which is available from the immigration department on arrival at Port Blair and at Indian foreign offices in several countries. The permit is valid for 30 days and can be extended by 15 days. Citizens of Afghanistan, China and Pakistan are required to seek permission from the Union home ministry to visit the Andamans. Another police official requesting anonymity said Chau knew about the restrictions and, therefore, bribed fishermen to take him to the island. Chau carried an abdominal pad, a chest shield, vitamins and a medicine that would help clot blood quickly, according to his journal that police recovered from the fishermen. The 26-year-old was killed during his second visit to the island allegedly by the Sentinelese, the last uncontacted tribe in the world. Well, I have been shot by the Sentinelese probably by a kid about ten years old. The teenager was short compared to those who looked like adults, Chau said in an entry dated November 15, 13.40 hours, South Cove of the North Sentinel Island. On Friday, a team of officers from Andaman police and the Coast Guard surveyed the island from a distance. Till Friday evening, they had not spotted any islander on the beach, a police officer said, adding that they had taken with them one of the arrested fishermen who accompanied Chau to the island and had seen the tribals bury him. We wanted the fisherman to show us the exact spot where Chau was taken and buried, Pathak said. Investigating officers found Chaus 13-page handwritten note from the fishermen and are analysing it to understand the events leading to his death in the island in the wee hours of November 17. He knew he would be shot and thus carried the first aid. From his notes, we can say that Chau thought he would be able to cure himself if he was attacked. His judgement was totally wrong, a senior investigating officer, who did not want to be named, said. From Chaus notes, police have also found that some of the items he carried as gifts for the islanders were scissors, tweezers, fishing line, hook, rubber tubes, cordage, safety pin and new towels. On Friday, a team of officers from Andaman police, Coast Guard conducted a recee of the island from a distance. The team visited near the North Sentinel Beach and stayed there until Friday evening but could not see any islander in the beach. UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, who visited Telanagana for the first time on Friday, called upon the people of the countys newest state to teach a fitting lesson to Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) for completely shattering their hopes and aspirations in the four-and-a- half years of its rule. Addressing a rally at Medchal on the outskirts of Hyderabad, she said, It is an emotional moment for me, as I feel like a mother who is meeting her children after several years, amidst loud cheers from the public. Gandhi said she had to undergo a lot of difficulties while taking a decision on granting statehood to Telangana. It was no easy decision, as I had to keep in mind the sentiments and feelings of people from both Andhra and Telangana regions. But, having witnessed the agitations of the people of Telangana and understood their aspirations, I had decided to carve out Telangana state, thanks to the support extended by all my colleagues, including then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi, she said. She reminded the people that the Congress had to pay a heavy price for its decision to grant Telangana state. Politically, it was a big loss for the party. Yet, we had taken the decision in the larger interests of the people of Telangana, she said. Read more: Vote share of parties in 2014 elections The UPA chairperson also sought to reach out the people of Andhra who were angry over the bifurcation of the state. While passing the bifurcation bill in Parliament, we had promised to take care of all the interests of Andhra Pradesh, including granting of special category status. We are still committed to this promise and once the Congress comes back to power at the Centre, we shall grant special category status to Andhra Pradesh, she asserted. Gandhi said she was very much pained to see the plight of the Telangana, even after four and a half years of the formation of new state. Every mother wants her children to grow stronger and have a bright future. But I am able to see how you are still struggling with lack of development even after four years. The dreams you had when the Telangana state became a reality were totally shattered. The issues water supply to parched lands, allocation of funds to every sector and filling up of jobs to eradicate unemployment remained unfulfilled, she alleged. Read more: Win map of Telangana in 2014 Also alleging that farmers suicides were on the rise in the last four years, she also accused the TRS government of setting aside the central land acquisition act, 2013, brought in by then UPA government to forcibly acquired their lands. Meanwhile, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was completely ignored, unemployed youth became desperate and self-help group women had become helpless, she added. When I used to visit other states in the past, I used to proudly mention about the welfare schemes being implemented in Andhra Pradesh. Now, there is no such opportunity. Every section SC, ST and other backward classes are totally frustrated. While students and unemployed youth are agitating, only one family (of Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao) is happy, she said. Gandhi said the time had come for the people to show their anger at the TRS government. This is the excellent opportunity for you to come out of all your troubles and lay the path for the progress of the state for a better future of the people. Understand the power of the vote and teach the TRS government a fitting lesson by voting for the Congress and its allies, she said. For full coverage, click here In his brief address, Congress president Rahul Gandhi said the time had come for the people to show their gratitude towards Sonia Gandhi who was responsible for achieving statehood to Telangana. She is very much concerned about the new state and the welfare of the people of all sections. She stood with you and understood your struggle for a separate state, he said. He said the Congress had joined hands with other like-minded opposition parties to form an alliance to fulfill the dreams of all sections of people including farmers, students, youth and women. We must end the dictatorship and single family rule in the state, he asserted. Leaders of parties in the Congress-led grand alliance - M Kodandaram of Telangana Jana Samithi, Telugu Desam Partys Telangana president L Ramana, Communist Party of India state secretary Chada Venkat Reddy - as well as state Congress chief N Uttam Kumar Reddy, also addressed the rally. A youth, who was earlier a special police officer, was abducted and killed by suspected militants in Jammu and Kashmirs Shopian district on Friday. Two other abducted youth were, however, released unharmed. Police said that militants today kidnapped three young men - Reyaz Ahmad, Zahid Ahmad and Basharat Ahmad, all residents of Reban Shopian. The first two were set free but police found Basharat Ahmads body from village Nikloora in Pulwama, a police spokesman. The body was handed over to his family after completion of medico-legal formalities. According to locals, Basharat was earlier working as SPO. A case has been registered in the police station concerned and investigation initiated, police in the matter. Last week, two out of the seven civilians abducted by suspected militants in the district were found killed. While an 18-year-old was shot dead on November 15 night, a 19-year-old was found with his throat slit on November 17 as Hizbul Mujahideen commander Riyaz Naikoo issued an audio threat against police and army informers. Naryoli, the only one among Sagars eight assembly seats reserved for scheduled castes (SC), takes its name from an eponymous village, to reach which you take a narrow approach road off a state highway. On this day, a group of young residents are sprawled around a tree. Ask them about the chunaavi mahaul (election environment) in their neighbourhood ahead of the November 28 Madhya Pradesh elections,and there is an almost unanimous response from the all-Dalit group: Badlaav, there will be change. It is this word that has come to increasingly define the pre-election mood across districts in the Bundelkhand and Vindhya regions of Madhya Pradesh where the common refrain is that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Partys tally looks likely to dip and the Congress set to increase. Bundelkhand has seven districts and fills 26 seats in the MP assembly, out of which the BJP won 20 in 2013 and the Congress six. Vindhya is home to seven districts as well and sends 30 representatives to the assembly. The last time around, BJP won 16 seats, Congress 12 and others the remaining two. So, from these two regions, the BJP had won 36 seats and the Congress exactly half five years ago. The desire for change could be traced to local fatigue after a decade and a half of BJP being in power in MP, disillusionment and anger against the local MLAs, a backlash after ticket distribution; anger among various groups - farmers, small traders, the young - over policy failures, Dalit alienation and the state governments inability to convert its welfare schemes into political support; and the limited, almost non-existent, impact of Narendra Modis persona in these elections, in this region in particular. Also read | Madhya Pradesh assembly elections: BJP banks on welfare schemes to retain core voters The BJP believes it can override all the challenges with three elements - by playing on memory, math, and the continued support of the formidable, heterogeneous, Other Backward Classes (OBCs) . Back in Naryoli village, Lalit Kumar Chaudhary, who belongs to the Schedule Caste Ahirvar community, and works in a medical shop in the town of Sagar, argues that it is time for change. BJPs Pradeep Lariya has been an MLA for a decade from this constituency. I agree the BJP has given roads and electricity, but it does not mean they should be in power forever. Our village road is still not done and it is difficult for us to walk in the monsoon, Chaudhary explains. If Congress comes to power now, they too will have to do more than BJP -- otherwise they will not return. He says the BJP must also be judged on its policies. Who did demonetisation harm? The poor or rich. It is the poor. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) had made everything more expensive for the poor, he said. Bijay Chaudhary is riding with a BJP flag on his motorcycle. He is at first hesitant to put forth his point of view, but then opens up. You may also like | In Madhya Pradeshs opium hub, farm distress trumps all You have to see that they (BJP) are trying to take care of everything from birth to death. A pregnant woman is given an allowance; students are given facilities; electricity is subsidised for labourers and small farmers; even when a person dies, an allowance is given. Isnt this good? Chaudharys voice appears to be an isolated one, in this village at least. Anti-incumbency brewing against BJP Gulganj is a bazaar in the Bijawar assembly segment of Chhatarpur district. In 2013, Pushpendranath Guddan Pathak of the BJP won this seat. But the going may get tough for him if one goes by the voices of people across castes at a local tea shop in the main bazaar. A farmer, Puran Singh, complains that farmers in this region did not get the drought relief that had been promised to them in the past. The nearest Mandi (farm market), where we are told we can get benefits from the governments Bhavantar scheme, is 50 km away. How can a farmer with limited means go all the way, come back when you dont even get immediate cash payment nowadays? Pathak has done nothing to raise our voices. The Bhavantar scheme was introduced by the government to meet the gap between market price and the federally fixed minimum support price, but the need to pass quality tests, long waits at the mandi, delays in payment and the perception that traders have benefited more than farmers from it have diluted its impact in this belt. The BJP is aware that local candidates will matter significantly. It is to offset local anti-incumbency that it made some changes - though not to the extent that many had expected - by dropping around 30 candidates. This has had a mixed impact. In Chhatarpur districts Bada Malhera assembly segment, Munni Lal Yadav is a BJP supporter and flies the party flag over his house in the Rajpura village. He feels the party will win but only because it changed the local MLA. Rekha Yadav was the winner last time. She did nothing for the constituency and even supporters like us could not have helped her win. But the party has now given the ticket to Lalita Yadav who was the MLA from Chhatarpur -- and she has a good reputation. Also read | Madhya Pradesh assembly elections 2018: BJP did nothing for farmers, says Rahul Gandhi He ironically uses the word used by Congress supporters - badlav - and says, This change will help us win again. But intra-party change is not easy either. In Vindhyas Shahdol district, it may have backfired. Even as Prime Minister Modi addressed a rally in the district on November 16, the BJP leader who won the Jaisinghpur seat in 2013, Pramila Singh, shifted to the Congress because she had been denied a ticket. This is reflective of a larger issue the Bharatiya Janata Party is confronting, with over 50 rebel candidates in the fray. Sagars Surkhi seat witnessed a close contest in 2013, where the BJPs Parul Sahu just edged past Congress Govind Rajput, an influential local leader. This time around, the BJP has put up the Sagar MPs son, Sudhir Yadav. But if the mood in Rahatgarh bazaar of the constituency is anything to go by, Rajput could just win this time around. And that is because of the restlessness even among the BJPs traditional voters. Rup Chand Jain, who sells agri-implements and fertiliser, complains that small traders like him still suffer from the impact of demonetisation and the introduction of GST. BJP got arrogant. We have always been with them. But they need to learn a lesson. And that can only happen with a jolt. Badlav will be good. For full coverage on Madhya Pradesh assembly elections 2018 click here The European Commission has taken the first step towards sanctioning Italy over its national budget in an ongoing row over the country's finances. BBC reports in its article Italy budget 'sleepwalking into instability' that in October, the EU executive body rejected Italy's draft budget and told it to make changes - an unprecedented event in European politics. Italy, however, said it would stick to its high-spending goals. On Wednesday, the Commission said formal proceedings that could bring financial sanctions were "warranted". Its report cited a "particularly serious non-compliance with the fiscal recommendation for 2019", and Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said: "With what the Italian government has put on the table, we see a risk of the country sleepwalking into instability." He said that the EU's disciplinary measure known as "excessive deficit procedure" (EDP) was now appropriate. Italy's populist-led government had already been told by the Commission to revise its budget, because of the high level of national debt, which eurozone officials worry could cause instability for the entire bloc. But the Rome government failed to make significant changes, putting the country on a collision course with Brussels. Under the rules of the sanction procedure, potential consequences include a fine of 0.2% of GDP - which for Italy's economy would cost billions of euros - and a halt on the payment of any development funds. However, the process could take a long time, and Mr Dombrovskis said he was still open to talks with Italy on how to address the disagreement. Italy's deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, told reporters he remained convinced about his government's budget plans. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said he would meet Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Saturday to highlight the budget's "solidity and effectiveness". How did we get here? Italy's current government took office in June 2018 and is a coalition of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and right-wing League. Widely seen as a populist coalition, the first national budget of new government was hammered out in September, The problem for EU officials was its high cost for a country facing massive debts. The government planned to rack up a budget deficit of 2.4% of GDP to finance its plans. The Commission had hoped for a lower budget cost as the previous government's plans were for a 0.8% deficit. Italy is the third-largest economy in the eurozone, but has more than two trillion euros in debt - which is 131% of the country's entire economic output. To put that in context, it is second only to Greece (178%), and far higher than the UK (88%) or Germany (64.1%). The debt is equivalent to about 37,000 for every person in Italy. The government argues that additional investment is needed to kick-start the sluggish Italian economy, which has still not recovered from the financial crisis of a decade ago. Italy's statistics agency Istat forecast on Wednesday that the economy would grow by 1.3% in 2019, and 1.1% in 2018. While it said the budget would help boost demand in the Italian economy, its 2019 estimate is below the government's figure of 1.5%. Shortly before the League-Five Star government came to power, Istat forecast a growth figure of 1.4% for 2018, and it said on Wednesday that growth was slowing in comparison with 2017. Why is Italy's budget so expensive? Italy's government hailed the budget as one that would "end poverty". The draft budget included the fulfilment of election promises, such as reversing plans to raise the retirement age and a guaranteed basic income of 780 (700; $890) for poor families. Those two plans alone were expected to total about 0.7% of Italy's GDP. It also included tax cuts and reforms. Recent bad weather in Italy has also added major infrastructure projects to the government's priorities - including the aftermath of the Genoa bridge collapse in August, which raised concerns over the country's ageing public works. Walls constructed in Bemetara, Chhattisgarh, for security of EVMs Walls have been constructed in Bemetara, Chhattisgarh, for security of EVMs following assembly elections, reports ANI.Collector says, Counting will take after 20 days. Security forces and CCTVs are also there. Gates are locked, but wall is an added precaution. Chhattisgarh: Walls have been constructed in Bemetara for security of Electronic Voting Machines following assembly elections.Collector says, "Counting will take after 20 days. Security forces & CCTVs are also there for security. Gates are locked, but wall is an added precaution" pic.twitter.com/z69Fjpc3bo ANI (@ANI) November 23, 2018 We will work for farmers, women and youth: Rahul Farmers, women and youth will be benefitted if we come to power: Rahul Only one person ruled Telangana and benefitted his family: Rahul We will fulfil the dreams of people. Only one person ruled Telangana and benefitted his family. Our govt wont work for any one family but for the people: Rahul TRS rule is going to end: Rahul Telangana was formed by the blood and sweat of people. Sonia Gandhi had a big hand in creation of Telangana. TRS rule is going to end.And to end that rule, we have come together with TDP, CPI and TJS: Rahul Gandhi Amit Shahs road show in MPs Katni Rulers of Telangana only took care of themselves: Sonia Rulers of Telangana took care of themselves but not the people. Elections are a time when we can get rid of these problems. Congress has announced welfare schemes for every section of society: Sonia TRS govt destroyed co-operatives: Sonia Co-operatives are being destroyed by TRS govt. Co-operatives benefitted women highly: Sonia Farmers are committing suicides: Sonia Farmers are committing suicides. There is lack of water. TRS govt did not adhere to Land Acquisition Bill. People could not avail benefits of MGNREGA. Lack of employment among youth: Sonia Lack of development in Telangana: Sonia I am sad at the state of affairs in Telangana. The development this state should have seen is nowhere. The dreams you saw when Telangana was formed, how much has been fulfilled in last four years?: Sonia We had to pay the price for dividing AP: Sonia We had to pay the price for dividing the state. We wanted to give special category status for Andhra Pradesh. I want to assure the people of AP that we are still firm on that: Sonia Not easy for us to carve out Telangana: Sonia It was not easy for us to carve out Telangana. We had to think of the welfare of both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, says Sonia Gandhi. Sonia Gandhi welcomed by Telangana Cong leaders Sea of crowd gathered at Medchal, waiting to hear Smt Sonia Gandhi. #TelanganaKosamSoniaAmma pic.twitter.com/3bLFlbZ3oH Telangana Congress (@INCTelangana) November 23, 2018 Sonia Gandhi to address public meeting in Medchal soon Sonia Gandhi to address public meeting in Medchal, Telangana, soon. Glimpses from PM Modis roadshow in Aizawl Mizoram is all set to vote for the BJP. #MizoramWithModi pic.twitter.com/k2nsor0ub2 BJP (@BJP4India) 23 November 2018 Modi govt stopped black marketing of urea: Amit Shah Modi govt stopped black marketing of urea. Now farmers dont have to stand in queue to get urea: Amit Shah Chouhan govt ensured power supply in MP: Amit Shah During Congress rule, electricity was a major problem in MP. Shivraj Singh Chouhan govt ensured electricity reaches every house: Amit Shah in Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh. Demonetisation was to convert black money into white: Rahul Demonetisation was not a fight against black money, but it was to convert black money into white. Farmers of MP will not forget Mandsaur (police firings): Rahul Truth in my allegations: Rahul By mistake, I said Chouhans son was named in Panama papers. I was threatened with defamation. But when I speak of Vyapam, midday meal scam, I am not threatened with defamation. This means there is truth in what I say: Rahul. So many scams in MP: Rahul HAL choppers were used in Kargil and surgical strike. But contract was given to someone who opened a company 10 days back. Vyapam, e-tendering scam, midday meal scam and many scams took place here. Students know they cant get jobs through fair means but have to pay money for it: Rahul. Rahul targets Modi over Rafale again Air Force wanted 126 aircraft. UPA said aircraft will be built in India and we will give Rs 526 crore. PM Modi goes to France. French President says PM Modi told him HAL wont get contract, aircraft will be built in France at Rs 1,600 crore: Rahul. Cong will revive industrial belt: Rahul Five years later, you wont go to other states in search of jobs, but for tourism. We will revive industrial belt: Rahul. Food processing plant in every district: Rahul Loan waiver in 10 days. Food processing plant in every district. Ketchup factory where tomatoes are grown, chips factory where potatoes are grown, soya bean oil where soya bean is grown: Rahul Gandhi. Land forcibly taken away from farmers: Rahul We introduced Land Acquisition Bill. Farmers would get four times the price. But PM Modi and CM Chouhan did away with that Bill. Land is being taken away forcibly: Rahul gandhi. Centre and MP govt do not care for farmers: Rahul In Delhi, PM Modi makes promises that he will deposit Rs 15 lakh in every bank account, give jobs to 2 lakh youth every year, waive loans for farmers. In MP, Shivraj Chouhan made 20,000 announcements. Farmers commit suicide, they plead, but there is no one to listen to them: Rahul Gandhi. Rahul addresses meeting in MPs Sehore Congress president Rahul Gandhi addresses public gathering in Sehore, Madhya Pradesh. PM Modis roadshow in Aizawl Rahul Gandhi stays less in India and more in foreign countries: Chouhan Where will Rahul Gandhi be seen after November 28 (polling day in MP)? He stays less in India and more in foreign countries: Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Satna, reports ANI. Our aim is to use your money for your own welfare: Rahul Gandhi Our aim is to use your money for your own welfare. We dont want to use your money to make the future of industrialists. Thats the difference between us and the BJP, said Rahul Gandhi After Haryana and Punjab, now MP will feed the country: Rahul Gandhi After Haryana and Punjab, now Madhya Pradesh will feed the country. We want to make the state the centre for agriculture, said Rahul Gandhi NRC helped identify intruders: Amit Shah Under Congress rule, intruders kept on entering the country as the party would see vote bank in them. Our party came to power in Assam and brought NRC which identified 40 lakh intruders, said Amit Shah. Rahul Gandhi corners Centre over Rafale The CBI director wanted to probe Rafale, which is why he was ousted by the government, alleged Rahul Gandhi. When I talk about Vyapam or midday meal scam, no one talks about issuing a defamation notice against me: Rahul Gandhi When I speak about Vyapam scam, illegal mining scam, e-tendering scam, mid-day meal scam, no one talks about slapping a defamation notice. What does it mean?, questions Rahul Gandhi. Congress will waive farms loans within 10 days of coming to power in MP: Rahul Gandhi In just a few days, Congress is going to form government in MP. And, I believe the farmers of Madhya Pradesh will make Congress win. Congress will waive farms loans within 10 days of coming to power in MP. BJP govt is buying farmers crops with support price: Amit Shah The BJP government is buying farmers wheat, rice and other grains with support price, said Amit Shah in Madhya Pradeshs Seoni. Rahul Gandhi addresses public gathering in MPs Raisen Congress president Rahul Gandhi is addressing a public gathering in MPs Raisen. Want to listen your mann ki baat and develop MP I dont want to share my mann ki baat, instead I want to hear your mann ki baat and develop Madhya Pradesh, said Rahul Gandhi. This country is not formed by a person or a political party, its formed by its people This country is not formed by a person or a political party, the country is formed by its people, its farmers and its small businessmen, said Rahul Gandhi We will create a web of food-processing factories in MP: Rahul Gandhi We will create a web of food-processing factories in Madhya Pradesh. This will generate more jobs in the state, said Rahul Gandhi. Rahul Gandhi confident of forming govt in MP Its guaranteed. Congress is going to form government in Madhya Pradesh, said Rahul Gandhi Rahul Gandhi criticises government over Rafale contract Rahul Gandhi alleges CBI director was ousted as he was going to probe Rafale. PM took Rafale contract from HAL and gave it to Anil Ambani: Rahul Gandhi PM Modi took the contract of Rafale from Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) and gave it to Anil Ambani, said Rahul Gandhi. Rahul Gandhi addresses public gathering in MPs Vidisha Congress President RahulGandhi is addressing a public gathering in Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh. Congress President @RahulGandhi is received with love & warmth ahead of his public rally in Basoda, Madhya Pradesh. #WaqtHaiBadlavKa pic.twitter.com/vuXofDkuVs Congress (@INCIndia) November 23, 2018 Double engine of BJP govts in both Centre and state will take Mizoram to new heights:PM The double engine of BJP governments in both the Centre and the State will take Mizoram to new heights, said PM Modi. Transformation through Transportation is our mantra for northeast: PM Transformation through Transportation is our mantra for the North Eastern states, said PM Modi. Work culture of the Congress has caused many projects to be delayed: PM The work culture of the Congress has caused many projects to be delayed, leading to crumbling infrastructure in the state. However, the neighbouring states have excellent roads, said PM Modi. Indias development is possible when northeast is developed:PM Indias development is possible when this region is developed.BJP is dedicated to development of northeast.Were focussing on connectivity, highway, railway, airway&waterway. Transformation through Transportation our agenda for this regions development, said PM iModi n Lunglei, Mizoram Congress doesnt bother about Mizoram: PM Due to the Congress govt in Mizoram, people arent able to benefit from it. In fact, the Congress govt doesnt bother about Mizoram, said PM Modi. Railways development work grown three times under our govt: PM BJP govt works towards both - the pace and the development. The development work of the Railways has grown three times during our govt, said PM Modi. Northeast has moved past from bandh, guns and blockades: PM The Northeast has moved past from bandh, guns and blockades. The people across Northeast are experiencing it, said PM Modi. By working on Act fast for Indias East, we have developed every region of the Northeast: PM Modi By working on Act fast for Indias East, in the last 4.5 years, we have developed every region of the Northeast, said PM Modi Mizoram has a golden opportunity to rid themselves of Congress culture: PM Congress party which once governed most Indian States, is now restricted to just two or three States. Now, the people of Mizoram, have a golden opportunity to rid themselves, of this Congress culture, said PM Modi. Always a pleasure to visit this part of the country: PM It is always a pleasure to visit this part of the country. In the last four years, I have travelled to different States of the North-East 27 times, said PM Modi. PM Modi addresses public rally in Mizoram PM Narendra Modi is addressing a public rally in Mizorams Lunglei Ayodhya turned into a virtual fortress on Friday ahead of VHPs Dharam Sabha with the state police beefing up security of the temple town, particularly at the disputed site, but allowed the devotees to have darshan at the makeshift temple in small batches. Faizabad district administration has imposed prohibitory orders (Section 144) in the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Majid premises, a senior officer said. Notably, thousands of Kar Sevaks had uprooted barricades and razed the disputed structure in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. The Uttar Pradesh Police has sounded a statewide alert amid apprehension of trouble during the Dharam Sabha being organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) in Ayodhya on Sunday. Over one lakh people are expected to attend the rally. A day before its first ever show of strength in Ayodhya, Shiv Sena claimed that more than 400 members of Parliament cutting across party lines will support ordinance for the construction of Ram temple. The Babri mosque was demolished in 17 minutes...How long does it take to prepare papers... to bring ordinance... from the Rashtrapati Bhawan to Uttar Pradesh assembly...They are all BJP governments, PTI quoted Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut as saying. Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav demanded that the Supreme Court should take note of the prevailing situation in Ayodhya and consider deploying Army to maintain peace and ensure security of the people. Apprehending a repeat of 1992 in Ayodhya, convener of the Babri Masjid Action Committee Zafaryab Jilani on Friday reposed faith in the states administrative machinery to ensure compliance of courts order on the disputed site saying the states political leadership could not be trusted. A large contingent of police force, including the Border Security Force (BSF), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and Rapid Action Force (RAF), has been deployed in the temple town along with 70 companies of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC), Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) and 4,000 personnel of civil police to maintain law and order. The police force deployed in Ayodhya has been directed to remain on high alert. The entire district has been divided into eight zones and 16 sectors to strengthen security, a senior officer said. Amid reports that members of the minority community had started shifting to nearby towns and villages fearing violence, the district administration has deployed additional force in Muslim-dominated areas. Iqbal Ansari, a party to the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute case in Supreme Court, said: The district administration should ensure the safety of Muslims in view of the programmes organised by VHP and Shiv Sena. ADG (law and order) Anand Kumar said the state government had prepared a security scheme for Ayodhya and police force has been deployed accordingly. The ADG said the Supreme Court order for the acquired area would be implemented and devotees would be allowed in batches for darshan at makeshift temple. National Conference (NC) spokesperson Sameer Kaul said in an interview with Padma Rao Sundarji on Thursday that the coming together of three mainstream political parties in Jammu and Kashmir, if only briefly, sets an example for the rest of the country to follow in Lok Sabha elections next year. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Wednesday staked a claim for forming a new government in J&K with the support of its arch rival NC and the Congress. The claim didnt pass muster, with Governor Satya Pal Malik dissolving the assembly, in suspended animation since June, late on Wednesday night. Edited excerpts from an interview with Kaul: The NC agreed to support political rival, the PDPs bid to form the government in J&K yesterday. That unlikely alliance doesnt exist today. The governor cited the impossibility of parties with opposing political ideologies forming a stable government. Surely theres an element of truth to what he said? The mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) that took place in Srinagar yesterday is an example to the country ahead of the Lok Sabha elections that if this can happen in Jammu and Kashmir, it can happen anywhere in the country. The lesson for the BJP is this : dont take things for granted. Yes, The NC and PDP have never been in an alliance. They have attacked each other consistently. And yet, all that was set aside for the larger purpose of calling the Centers bluff. J&K, including the Jhelum Valley and the Pir Panjal division, do not like the kind of badgering that was at the core of the brand of politics being practiced in the state by the Modi-Shah combine: continuous attacks on the states special status, a complete disconnect between the mainstream political system and J&K, and so on. In that sense, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee era was different. We want moralistic politics. Engineering defections and heaping pressure on J&K will not be tolerated. But NC-PDP kinship was a brief marriage of convenience. Surely not the best example of moralistic politics for the country? Sure, two rival parties came together for a particular purpose. That purpose has been achieved, so there is no alliance as such, any more. But who knows what the future holds? As for the BJP heaping ridicule on the NC and the PDP as being too disparate to ever stick together, the assumption is not necessarily true for all times. You never know what can happen when people get pushed against a wall. Are you saying then that the NC and the PDP may well align again? At the moment, there is no such discussion. The Kerala government on Friday told the high court that two days can be kept exclusively for women devotees to pray at Sabarimala, so as to implement the Supreme Court order allowing women of all ages into the hilltop shrine. The government made the suggestion as the court heard a plea of four women seeking security while trekking to the temple. Earlier at least 18 women had tried to enter Sabarimala after the Supreme Courts September 28 verdict, but had been foiled by devotees protesting breach of the traditions of the temple where the deity is in celibate state. In their plea, the four women said that they were forced to seek security as some political outfits have publicly announced their plans to prevent entry of women of productive age. The petitioners said after the apex court 28 verdict, they were observing the mandatory fast but could not fulfill their desire for darshan due to the volatile situation at the hilltop. When the court sought its opinion, the government said specific dates can be allotted to women after consultation with the Travancore Devasom Board which runs the temple. Earlier in the all-party meet also before the the temples annual three-month-long pilgrimage season began, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had mooted such an idea but it was rejected by both Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party, which are backing the devotees. The court will take up the womens plea again on November 28. A 58-year-old farmer committed suicide after Cyclone Gaja uprooted hundreds of coconut trees in his farm in Tamil Nadus Thanjavur district, police have said, as farm leaders blamed the state government for offering a paltry compensation of Rs 1,700 against the loss. Police said Sundar Raj from the districts Sozhagankudikadu village allegedly consumed pesticide. As he had lost around 250 coconut trees, aged more than 25 years, in his five-acre land due to the cyclone, he looked dejected since last Thursday. Sundar Raj, who went to his devastated coconut farm on Wednesday night, did not return home till the morning. On a frenetic search, relatives found his body at a nearby graveyard in the village, an inquiry officer said while speaking to the Hindustan Times. Police have recovered an empty bottle of pesticide from near Rajs body. They sent the body to the Orathanadu Government Hospital for an autopsy. This is the second such suicide by a farmer in the state in the aftermath of the cyclone. A banana grower had ended his life on Wednesday. PR Pandian, president of Federation of TN Farmers Associations, slammed the state government for announcing a paltry amount as compensation for coconut farmers. It takes nearly seven years for a coconut tree to start yielding. As such, the CM should have announced at least Rs 25,000 for per coconut tree that was uprooted. The announcement of an insignificant amount as compensation had driven Sundar Raj to death, he said while speaking to HT. Farmers say a coconut farm with 500 trees, aged more than 20 years, in the fertile Cauvery Delta region yields nearly Rs 15 lakh-Rs 20 lakh a year. According to them, apart from coconut, other byproducts like the palm and the pulp used as raw material in the coir and paper industry also fetches them very good returns. The coir board units procure them in large quantities, they added. With relief seemingly low and yet to reach them, farmers are now a worried lot. Over 40 % posts in forensic laboratories are vacant, the Centre informed the Supreme Court on Thursday. Forensic labs under the central government, too, are facing acute manpower shortage, the affidavit submitted to the court said. The data was placed before a bench of justices MB Lokur and Deepak Gupta, which was hearing a matter related to deficiencies in jails as highlighted by two apex court judges (one of them retired) during their visit to Faridabad jail and an observation home in June this year. Delay in receiving forensic reports is one of the reasons why criminal trials drag on for years. At the last hearing, the bench had asked the Centre to place before it the status of vacancies in forensic departments across the country. As per the government submission, there are six Central Forensic Science Laboratories -- in Bhopal, Chandigarh, Guwahati, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Pune. As many as 164 posts are lying vacant against the sanctioned strength of 450. At the Delhi forensic lab, 67 posts are vacant. Thirty-one units operate under state forensic laboratories where 3,685 appointments are yet to be made. The sanctioned strength is 7,582. Shocked at the alarming number of vacancies, the judges took a dig at the Centre and states. We are sure these vacancies are not at lower position but at the higher level...Peons are always appointed on time because one officer needs at least three peons to work for him. When you sanction posts then money is not a problem because its part of planned expenditure, justice Gupta said. Additional solicitor general Aman Lekhi said the process to make appointments in these labs would not be a time-bound one since the top court is seized of the matter. At this justice Lokur said: The process is underway for 20 years. How do we have speedy trial? The problem is that everybody is with us (in view) but nobody does anything. The judges read the state-wise breakup and pointed out how the lab in Rajasthan was working with just 50 per cent strength. In Uttar Pradesh, 830 of 1,100 posts are vacant while in Bihar, only 65 of 191 positions are occupied. Similarly in Gujarat, 384 of 931 posts are vacant. Lekhi admitted that the state of affairs was dismal. Advocate Guarav Agarwal, assisting the court in the case, suggested that the court take up a batch of five states and summon their officials to know the progress of appointments. But justice Lokur said: If they are summoned, they will take their travel allowance and simply come and say that they are looking into it. The court was also informed that 20 states had chosen not to apprise the Centre about the installation of video-conferencing facilities in their juvenile justice homes. Of the ones that shared the details, only Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh have provided the facility. The SC gave the Centre one week to collate the data from states and scheduled the next hearing on November 29. On November 26, 2008, 10 terrorists landed in Mumbai via the sea and unleashed mayhem and bloodshed over the next two days, that left 166 people dead and 238 injured. A decade later, many of the injured still live with the scars -both physical and mental . HT spoke to three survivors. Excerpts: MOHAN SHINDE, 58 Assistant sub-inspector (retd) I was a head constable at the Azad Maidan police station and part of a small team led by the then additional commissioner, Sadanand Date, who, armed with small firearms, engaged Abu Ismail and Ajmal Kasab at Cama hospital for over 35 minutes. One bullet hit the lift and then got lodged in my abdomen. I fired two rounds but couldnt lift my hand after I got hit. Two colleagues, constable Vijay Khandekar and sub-inspector Prakash More, were killed. The terrorists managed to escape after injuring all of us and killing ATS chief Hemant Karkare, PI Vijay Salaskar and additional commissioner, Ashok Kamte. ANAMIKA GUPTA, 34 Beautician I was with my friends at Leopold Cafe. A gunman entered the cafe, put his bag down, pulled out hand grenades and threw them. He then pulled out a gun and started firing indiscriminately with his eyes closed as if he did not want to see people dying. I managed to crawl outside the cafe and hid below a taxi. I saw this man still firing at people and wanted to push him down but I could barely move. Over an hour later a man picked me up in his arms and took me to St. George hospital. I had three bullet injuries, one near my kidney, second in the belly and a third near my windpipe. It took me three years to get back on my feet. BHARAT GUJAR, 43 Kitchen supervisor at Colabas Leopold Cafe While I was at the restaurant, I heard a loud sound. I was injured in a grenade attack and was hospitalised for 18 days. I remember lying on the floor and people taking me to hospital while there was chaos all around. The explosion was huge and I witnessed glass flying and diners getting injured along with the employees. As dust enveloped the cafe, I heard the screams of people crying for help. After the attack, blood started oozing from my stomach and I remember people running helter-skelter. I cant forget that night. It was very frightening. Indian national security advisor (NSA) AK Doval and Chinese foreign minister Wang Yis visit to Mount Qingcheng near Chengdu city in southwest China after the 21st round of border talks on Saturday will be symbolic of the issue they discuss. The 4000-feet mountain is closely associated with Taoism, a set of ancient beliefs and philosophy recognised as a religion in China, with its chief focus being unity between opposites, the complementary nature of Yin and Yang and the harmonious existence between light and dark. India and China have been searching for the same elusive harmony in their bilateral ties, which are heavily burdened by the weight of the 3488 km of disputed border stretching from Jammu and Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh. A solution continues to elude the two countries after nearly 45 rounds of talks since 1960. Both Doval and Wang may know that the 21st round of talks between the Special Representatives (SR) of India and China on the Boundary Question the current mechanism -- is unlikely to take the protracted negotiations very far. The search for harmony on the border will continue; lets keep the peace and maintain tranquility until then could be the focus. This will be Wangs first talks as Chinas designated SR and the fourth for Doval. The mechanism was put in place in 2003 with the mandate of achieving a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution for the India-China border question at an early date. With India gearing up for general elections in about six months and decision making in New Delhi expected to slow down this meeting will be more about carrying on the continuity of the talks under the SR mechanism and the positive rhythm at least on the surface -- in the current status of ties. It will be another important tick in the box of a series of high-level bilateral meetings that have marked the fairly remarkable turnaround in ties since the Doklam (Donglang) military standoff ended last year. Importantly, it is the first one after the informal summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in April. Modi and Xi had announced there will be guidelines to ease tension along the border to prevent any repeat of a Doklam-type standoff. Foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale had, however, made it clear that the SR mechanism will continue unabated to find a permanent solution to the dispute. While one of the areas of focus was to maintain peace and tranquility (on the borders), I think the work of the Special Representatives (SRs) on finding a solution to the boundary question will continue unabated, Gokhale had then said. One reason for the importance of the talks is that over the years they have evolved to include discussions between the SRs on a range of issues. The evolution of the talks was mentioned by former Chinese State Councillor and long-time SR, Dai Bingguo in his memoir last year. I said the last 10 years is a decade that the China India boundary question SR mechanism went from being established to developing, this mechanism has become a high-level political channel and to a certain degree a strategic dialogue, he wrote. China hopes that the SR will exchange in-depth views on border issues, bilateral relations and international and regional issues of common concerns in a friendly atmosphere so as to push forward Sino-India relations along the track of sound and stable development, the foreign ministry told HT in an emailed statement on Friday. The SRs are likely to discuss the security environment in the region and beyond especially in Afghanistan. The officials will likely review the progress of the ongoing India-China-Afghanistan project focussed on training Afghan diplomats. As Dai mentions in his book, it is also an occasion for top bureaucrats to convey their leaders message to their counterparts; Dai in his 15 talks as SR says he conveyed five messages from the Chinese leadership to his Indian counterpart. Talks under the SR mechanism were preceded by as many as 15 rounds of negotiations under the JWG mechanism between 1988 and 2003 itself preceded by another set. The talks were rebooted to the current SR mechanism in 2003 after then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayees China visit. India on Friday lodged a strong protest with Pakistan after two officials of the Indian high commission in Islamabad were reportedly humiliated and barred from entering gurdwaras in the neighbouring country. India lodges strong protest with Pakistan government that despite being granted prior travel permission by Pakistans MFA (ministry of foreign affairs), high commission of India in Islamabads consular officials were harassed and denied access on 21 and 22 November at Gurudwara Nankana Sahib and Gurudwara Sacha Sauda to Indian pilgrims, the ministry of external affairs said, according to news agency ANI. Aranjeet Singh and Sunil Kumar were not allowed to enter Gurdwara Nankana Sahib on Wednesday night and Gurdwara Sacha Sauda on Thursday, saying that the Indian government has hurt the sentiments of Sikhs by allowing the screening of the film Nanak Shah Fakir. Both the gurdwaras are in Punjab province of Pakistan. As a result of such harassment they were compelled to return to Islamabad without performing their diplomatic and consular duties vis-a-vis Indian pilgrims, the ministry said. We have also expressed grave concern at reports of attempts being made during the ongoing visit of Indian pilgrims to Pakistan to incite communal disharmony and intolerance and promote secessionist tendencies with the objective of undermining Indias sovereignty and territorial integrity, the ministry said. The Pakistan Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (PGPC) had barred Indian high commissioner Ajay Basaria and his wife from entering Gurdwara Panja Sahib in Rawalpindis Hassan Abdal in June this year. India on Friday lodged a strong protest with Pakistan after Indian diplomats were harassed and denied access to Indian Sikh pilgrims visiting the neighbouring country to mark the start of celebrations of the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, which falls next year. The fact that pro-Khalistani posters, banners and slogans were raised near the holy shrines Gurdawara Nanakana Sahib and Gurdawara Sacha Sauda only added to Indias anger. The efforts to promote secessionist tendencies to undermine Indias sovereignty and territorial integrity is of grave concern, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) said in New Delhi. Refused access and prevented from entering the shrines, Indian diplomats returned to Islamabad without performing their diplomatic and consular duties vis-a-vis Indian pilgrims, the MEA said. This is the third time in a row that Indian diplomats in Pakistan have been harassed and not allowed to meet Sikh pilgrims citing security reasons, it said. The spat came just a day after New Delhi and Pakistan decided to develop a corridor on their respective sides of the border to let Sikh pilgrims visit the historic Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur on the banks of river Ravi in Pakistan. The incident is an indication of the fragile relationship between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. It is not surprising that this happened. Pakistan is using Khalistan issue like before. Now, of course, with elements from Canada and the UK, Pakistan is trying to rekindle the issue. Pakistan provides support to these people in the gurdwaras, then prevents our diplomats from getting access to the gurdwaras and pilgrims, said Kanwal Sibal, former foreign secretary. Recently, in Amritsar another holy site for the Sikh faith grenades were launched at a religious congregation, killing three people and injuring several others. Later, investigations by the Punjab police showed the grenades were Pakistani-made. The attack, Punjab police said, had been instigated by Pakistans spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and leftover pro-Khalistan elements sheltered by Pakistan. Interestingly, among those who prevented Indian diplomats was the controversial figure Gopal Singh Chawla, who has earlier been seen with Hafiz Sayeed of the Jammat-Ud-Dawa who is wanted in India for several terror strikes, including the November 26, 2008 Mumbai terror strikes in which 166 people were killed and over 300 were injured. India has today lodged a strong protest with the government of Pakistan that despite having been granted prior travel permission by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan, the Consular officials of the High Commission of India in Islamabad were harassed and denied access on November 21 and 22 at Gurudwara Nankana Sahib and Gurudwara Sacha Sauda, the MEA said in a statement. New Delhi also said that Pakistan has been called upon to take all measures to not allow its territory to be used for any hostile propaganda and support for secessionist tendencies against India in keeping with the commitments made under the Simla Agreement, 1972 and endorsed in the Lahore Declaration, 1999.. The Indian pilgrims are visiting Pakistan under a bilateral protocol. Pakistan has been reminded that such actions are not in consonance with the stated intentions of Pakistan to facilitate the visits of Indian Sikh pilgrims, especially as we commemorate the 550th Birth Anniversary of Guru Nanak Devji, the MEA said. The MEA called the denial of access an attempt to deflect attention from Pakistans violation of international legal instruments and conventions like the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Pakistan has been reminded that this is in contrast to the treatment meted out to their high commissioner and the consular officials in New Delhi who have been provided full access to meet the Pakistani pilgrims who are currently in India on a pilgrimage to Kalyar Sharif, the MEA said. The trade war between the main global economies, triggered by rising import tariffs decided by Donald Trump since June, had an unexpected impact on Romania: its exports to the US market rose by 21 percent this year, while imports from the US declined by 21 percent. Business Review reports in its article Trumps trade war makes Romania great again: Exports to the US boomed since June, while imports from the US slumped that during the first eight months of this year, Romanian companies have exported in the United States goods totaling EUR 851.1 million, up 21 percent compared with January-August 2017, according to a fresh National Institute of Statistics (INS) report. This increase rate compares with a growth rate of Romanian exports to the US of 12.3 percent during the first five months of this year, just before the moment when US imposed tariffs on EU imports showing the Romanian-US trade picture just before the beginning of the trade war. On June 1, 2018, US President Donald Trump ended exemptions for the EU, Canada and Mexico from tariffs of 25 percent for steel and 10 percent for aluminum. The European Commission launched a legal challenge against the US tariffs at the World Trade Organization and hit back with duties of 25 percent on bourbon, jeans, motorcycles, orange juice and a variety of steel products made in US, ratcheting up a transatlantic trade conflict. At the same time, Romanias imports of goods from the US declined by 21.1 percent year-on-year during the first eight months of this year to EUR 603.8 million. During the first five months, the US exports to Romania declined on a much slower pace of 11.3 percent, official data reveal, suggesting that the decline accelerated after the US imposed trade tariffs on EU including Romanian imports. These data indicate that Romanian exports to the US accelerated following the beginning of the trade war, while imports from the US declined at faster pace. But this could be only the first phase of a larger trade war between the global economies. An internal memo circulated among EU governments shows that the global trade war is about to get worse and the rules-based system of international commerce is expected to revert to an environment where the strong impose their will upon the weak. Many experts believed that Romania, a member of one of the largest global economies the European Union -, could feel the impact of this trade war through several channels. The main obvious channel is the trade balance, even if the United States is not a large trading partner for Romania. In 2017, Romania exported goods of EUR 1.1 billion to the US market or 1.8 percent of total exports, the US being only the 14th main foreign market for Romania and has imported from the US goods of EUR 1.09 billion 1.4 percent of total imports, according to official data consulted by Business Review. However, Romania risks being hit harder through other channels, and one of them is the indirect trade with the US. Romanias main export market is Germany, which buys almost one quarter of its exported merchandise. Romania supplies Germany mainly with spare parts for its best-selling cars, and many of these German cars are exported to the US market. Germanys exports of high value-added cars to the US market was one major argument for Donald Trump to support his decision to end tariff exemptions for the European Union. If the export of German cars to the US market are declining, Romania risks being hit as well, as a supplier of Germanys car manufacturing industry. But Romania could also be hit through other channels. Central banks experts say that higher import prices could put pressure on production prices and reduce the purchasing power of households, especially if imported goods cant be substituted by domestically produced goods. Indian and Pakistan armies on Friday held a brigade commander-level meeting at a border crossing in Jammu and Kashmirs Poonch sector to adhere to ceasefire, a defence official said. The flag meeting comes in the wake of several ceasefire violations by Pakistan in the past over one month, during which five Indian security personnel were killed and seven others injured. The Indian delegation was led by Brigadier VS Sekhon, and Brigadier Qaiser led the Pakistani side. They met at the Poonch-Rawlakote crossing point on the Line of Control (LoC), Public Relation Officer (PRO), Defence, Jammu, Lieutenant Colonel Devender Anand, said. The delegation had discussions on augmenting confidence building measures, maintaining peace along the LoC and preventing infiltration from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, he said. The meeting came on a day when security forces shot dead six Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militants during an encounter in a forested area in Jammu and Kashmirs Anantnag district. The brigade commander-level flag meeting was held between the Indian and Pakistani armies at 1100 hours at the Poonch-Rawlakote Crossing Point, Anand said. The meeting was held in a cordial and friendly atmosphere, and ended with both sides assuring to adhere to norms of the 2003 Ceasefire agreement and the Director-General of Military Operations (DGMO) level talks of May 29, he said. The armies also decided to work towards improving the situation along the LoC, the PRO said. On a day when both India and Pakistan made progress on building Kartarpur corridor, two officials of the Indian High Commission in Pakistan were reportedly humiliated and barred from entering gurdwaras in the neighbouring country. The officials, Aranjeet Singh and Sunil Kumar, were not allowed to enter Gurdwara Nankana Sahib on Wednesday night and Gurdwara Sacha Sauda on Thursday, saying that the Indian government has hurt the sentiments of Sikhs by allowing the screening of the film Nanak Shah Fakir. Both the gurdwaras are in Punjab province of Pakistan. The Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) said the Pakistan Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (PGPC) officials have stopped the Indian officials. The visiting officials were heard saying in a video that No Sikh was stopped from entering the house of the Guru. We are wondering as why you are stopping us. The PGPC officials, however, kept saying that they should better leave the premises. We had written to the Indian High Commission asking it not to send its officials to any of the gurdwara since the release of the film, ETPB secretary Tariq Wazir said, adding that the Indian officials ignored their advice. The officials were reported to have visited the Gurdwara Sacha Sauda to exchange greetings with the visiting Indian Sikhs, who are here to take part in festivities related to the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. We request the officials of the Indian High Commission not to visit any gurdwara without permission of the board as we have to security measures for them, Wazir said. In June, the PGPC officials had barred Indian high commissioner Ajay Basaria and his wife from entering Gurdwara Panja Sahib at Hassan Abdal, Rawalpindi. (This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.) Two officials of the Indian High Commission in Pakistan were stopped from entering two gurdwaras by their administration, which was upset over the screening of a film in India that they claim has hurt sentiments of the Sikh community. The officials -- Aranjeet Singh and Sunil Kumar -- were barred from entering the Gurdwara Nankana Sahib on Wednesday night and Gurdwara Sachcha Sauda on Thursday. Both the gurdwaras are in Punjab province of Pakistan. They were stopped from entering the gurdwaras by their administration, which said that the Indian government has hurt the sentiments of Sikhs by allowing the screening of the film Nanak Shah Fakir. The Union government, meanwhile, has lodged a strong protest with the Pakistani government that despite being granted prior travel permission by Pakistans MFA, High Commission of India in Islamabads consular officials were harassed and denied access on November 21 and 22 at Gurudwara Nankana Sahib&Gurudwara Sacha Sauda to Indian pilgrims The Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) said that the Pakistan Gurdwara Pharbhndik Committee (PGPC) officials have stopped the Indian officials. The visiting officials were heard saying in a video that No Sikh was stopped from entering the house of the Guru. We are wondering as why you are stopping us. The PGPC officials however kept saying that they should better leave the premises. We had written to the Indian High Commission asking it not to send its officials to any of the gurdwara since the release of the film, ETPB Secretary Tariq Wazir told PTI. He said the Indian officials ignored their advice. The officials reported to have visited the Sachcha Sauda gurdwara to exchange greetings with the visiting Indian Sikhs, who are here to take part in festivities related to the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. We request the officials of the Indian High Commission not to visit any gurdwara without permission of the board as we have to security measures for them, Wazir said. In June, the PGPC officials had barred Indian High Commissioner Ajay Basaria and his wife from entering the Gurdwara Panja Sahib at Hassan Abdal, Rawalpindi. Hopping from one rally to another across western Madhya Pradesh, BJP president Amit Shah on Friday exhorted people to chant Bharat Mata ki Jai, cracked jokes and took jibes at the Congress for what he called its misgovernance and dynastic rule. As poll campaign heated up in Madhya Pradesh in the run-up to the November 28 assembly election, Shah stepped up his offensive against the Congress, taking potshots at its president Rahul Gandhi and former chief minister Digvijay Singh. Addressing multiple rallies on a day of hectic electioneering across Chhindwara, Balaghat and Jabalpur regions, capped with a road show in Katni, Shah exhorted people in his meetings to raise slogan of Bharat Mata Ki Jai in such a loud voice so as to reach Prime Minister Narendra Modi campaigning in distant Mizoram in the Northeast. As he travelled from one rally to another, Shah waved at people from his chopper, cavalcade and dais, cracked jokes in his speeches, targeted the dynastic rule by four-and-half generations of the Gandhi-Nehru family, and mocked Rahul Gandhis efforts to rise to power now. He peppered his scathing attack on the Congress with jokes and light-hearted banter. While seeking vote for BJP candidates in the region, he once asked one candidate to come forward and not hide behind, saying it was his area and he was the most important person at the moment. You may also like | Madhya Pradesh assembly elections 2018: Computer Baba presses refresh button, to back Congress He also hit out at Rahul Gandhi, repeatedly calling him Rahul Baba and said he was also flying here and there, somewhere nearby, referring to the Congress leaders campaign in the area on the same day. Declaring that Shivraj Singh Chouhan is the BJPs chief ministerial candidate, Shah asked Gandhi who was his partys candidate. They dont have a leader whom people of the state will accept, Shah said, while making fun of the Congress saying it was very brave of its leaders to aspire forming a government. I heard Rahul Baba saying they will form the government. I checked whether its day or night and found it was day only. I said Rahul Baba, dreams should come during night only, Shah said, leaving people in a peel of laughter. He listed all the states where the Congress was ousted from power and the BJP formed the government. He asked tribal residents at one rally whether Bijli Rani (power) used to come to their homes when Diggy Raja was in power, alleging there was no electricity during former Congress government headed by Digvijay Singh, the last chief minister of the grand old party in this vast state. Also read | Rajasthan assembly elections 2018: PM Modi to hold multiple rallies to give BJP a boost Shah said the BJP government has ensured there is 24/7 power supply now. He said farmers are now getting loans without any interest as against whopping 18 per cent during the Congress rule. On questions being raised by Rahul Gandhi seeking a report card of the Modi government, Shah said even a Yuva Morcha leader of the BJP would be good enough to answer the Congress leader. Shah also talked about surgical strike on terror launch pads across the Line of Control (LoC) as he listed out achievements of the Modi government and referred repeatedly to former prime minister Manmohan Singh as Mauni Baba, mocking his reticent nature. At his rally in Balaghat, Shah apologised for the delay in his arrival and making the people wait. For full coverage on assembly elections 2018 click here But soon he was back at attacking the Congress. Whenever elections come Rahul Baba starts talking about farmers but as soon as elections are over, he leaves for foreign vacation. Promising to come back to talk in detail, Shah also reeled out figures about the central assistance and other development works done by the BJP governments at the Centre and in the state for the people. He accused the Congress government of scams worth Rs 12 lakh crore covering all aspects of the universe -- from space, sky, land, seas to pataal. He also hit back at Congress leaders for their chowkidar chor hai barb at Prime Minister Modi, saying people are smart enough and they dont believe these thieves who have come together in the name of maha gathbandhan or grand alliance. Also read | Madhya Pradesh assembly elections 2018: BJP did nothing for farmers, says Rahul Gandhi For full coverage on Madhya Pradesh assembly elections 2018 click here Goa Forward Party chief and agriculture minister Vijai Sardesai suggested on Thursday that the ailing chief minister, Manohar Parrikar, wanted to resign, but the BJP high command vetoed it. He wanted to give up the CMs post altogether. He had even shown inclination to give away his portfolios (to other ministers) when he was admitted to a hospital during Ganesh Chaturthi festival, Sardesai said in Panaji. But then several things happened. BJP high command stepped in....it (to resign or not) is not in his (Parrikars) hands entirely, Sardesai told reporters. Parrikar, 62, has been recuperating at his residence in Panaji since he was discharged from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi on October 14. He is suffering from a pancreatic ailment. Asked about independent MLA and Revenue Minister Rohan Khauntes remark that the administration has become sluggish in Parrikars absence, Sardesai said, I have always been saying that CMs ill-health has had some sort of impact, and it is showing. To a question on another alliance partner Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) filing a petition against two former Congress MLAs who joined the BJP, the minister said it was surprising. MGP has moved the Goa Bench of Bombay High Court, seeking to disqualify Subhash Shirodkar and Dayanand Sopte, former Congress MLAs who recently joined the BJP. It is a matter between two constituents of the alliance -- BJP and MGP. So we are not concerned with it, Sardesai said. As far as MGP is concerned, its decision to go to the court is surprising....I can believe it is a preemptive move, they (MGP) have not lost anything, Congress has lost two MLAs, Sardesai said in a cryptic remark. Speculation was rife earlier that MGP MLAs might join the BJP which does not have a majority on its own in Goa Assembly. BJP spokespersons were not available for comment on Sardesais remarks. Muslims will find it hard to bury their dead in the national capital in a year from now, since there will be no space left in the graveyard which are already out of free space, says a report compiled by the Delhi Minority Commission. Released by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday, the report said there are approximately 13,000 Muslim funerals in a year on average and there is a space for only 29,370 in Delhi, as per their data collected in 2017. This means that at the present pace, there will be no space left after only one year from now (2018) unless some remedial strategies are adopted, said the report. As one of its remedial strategies, the Commission suggested using kaccha graves that allow re-burial in the same space after a few years and freeing land from encroachers for building of new graveyards. There are 704 Muslim graveyards in the national capital, as per the report. Also read | Living in company of the dead: In this Kerala village, families took refuge in cemetery Out of these existing graveyards, only 131 are functioning now and even out of these, a total of 16 graveyards are under litigation and therefore they are not functioning. These also include 43 graveyards which have been encroached upon by various entities. Most graveyards are small, measuring 10 bighas or less; 46 per cent have five bighas or less, it read. You may also like | Mob surrounds houses of 6 Africans over cannibal rumours, cops intervene A militant accused of killing journalist Shujaat Bukhari was among the six operatives linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen who were killed on Friday in a gun battle with security forces in Jammu and Kashmirs Anantnag district, officials said. Azad Malik has been accused in editor-in-chief of Rising Kashmir Bukharis murder, police said. The 50-year-old editor was attacked by three motorcycle-borne gunmen while he was entering his car on June 14, the eve of Id-ul-Fitr, in Srinagar. Two of his security guards were also killed in the incident. We have recovered war-like stores from encounter site, army spokesperson Rajesh Kalia said. The other militants killed in the gun battle in Bijbehera area in south Kashmir were identified as Unais Shafi, Shahid Bashir, Basit Ishtiyaq, Aqib Najar and Firdous Najar, all local residents. All 6 were wanted for their complicity in a series of terror crimes, police said. Officials said they had information that six or seven militants were hiding at Seikpora village and when search and cordon operation began in early hours it turned into an operation. On Tuesday, four militants were killed in neighbouring Shopian district in a similar operation. A petition was filed in the Supreme Court on Thursday seeking lodging of an FIR and court-monitored probe by an independent agency into the alleged physical and sexual abuse of inmates in 14 shelter homes in Bihar as highlighted in a report. The Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS) report was submitted to the Bihar government and it has highlighted gross violations of human rights of inmates in 15 shelter homes in the state, including the Muzaffarpur shelter whose affairs are now being investigated by the CBI. The plea filed by journalist Nivedita Jha through advocate Fauzia Shakil has sought registration of FIR and independent investigations or court monitored probe into the affairs of these 14 (other) shelter homes in Bihar mentioned in the TISS report. It also sought direction to the authorities to look into the aspect of rehabilitation of the victims of alleged sexual and physical abuse in these 14 shelter homes and to pay compensation to them. The plea has alleged that the Bihar government has not conducted any probe into the allegations of irregularities, sexual and physical abuse in the 14 shelter homes highlighted in the TISS report. No FIR has been lodged and no investigation/enquiry has been undertaken by any authority into the glaring irregularities and instances of sexual and physical abuse of the residents. It is most respectfully submitted that as per the information received from the members of the civil society, most of these 14 shelter homes are still functioning in the same way, it said. The plea, while referring to the media reports, said without conducting any probe into the allegations of sexual and physical abuse, the state was in the process of taking over the management of these shelter homes. It is pertinent to point out here that the TISS report highlighted instances of sexual abuse in the children homes run by the state government in Araria and Bhojpur (Ara) districts of Bihar. Thus an inference can be drawn that children homes managed by respondent state are no-better managed than the other shelter homes administered by these NGOs, it claimed. The plea said that the investigation into the Muzaffarpur shelter home has shocked the nation and has exposed the ghastly nature of sexual and physical abuse in which hapless minor girls were subjected to including instances where minor girls were drugged and raped. It has brought to light the involvement of senior politicians and bureaucrats including the members of the child protection units, said the petition, which is likely to be taken up for hearing by the court next week. It said the delay in arresting former minister Manju Verma in the state in a connected matter exposes the deep police-politician nexus in Bihar and there are several instances of inaction by police and members of the state administration. Verma has surrendered before the district court in Begusarai on November 20 in connection with an Arms Act case. On November 12, the top court had said it was quite shocked that the Bihar police was unable to trace and arrest Verma, who had stepped down from the cabinet in the wake of the Muzaffarpur shelter home scandal, in a case related to alleged recovery of illegal ammunition from her house. Verma had resigned as the social welfare minister after it came to light that her husband Chandrashekhar Verma had spoken to Brajesh Thakur, the prime accused in the Muzaffarpur case, several times between January and June. Thakurs NGO was running the shelter where several women inmates were allegedly raped and sexually abused. On October 31, the apex court had expressed displeasure over the failure of the police in arresting Manju Verma, whose anticipatory bail plea was dismissed by the Patna high court on October 9. Manju Vermas husband had earlier surrendered before a court in Begusarai in connection with the case related to recovery of ammunition. The top court had last month directed that Thakur be shifted to the high-security jail in Punjabs Patiala from a jail in Bihars Bhagalpur. An FIR was lodged on May 31 against 11 people, including Thakur, following the TISS report. The probe was later taken over by the CBI and so far, 17 people have been arrested. Congress chief Rahul Gandhi on Friday strongly disapproved party leader CP Joshis reported statement that appeared to suggest that only Brahmins could speak about Hindus. CP Joshis statement, Gandhi said, was against the ideals of the Congress party and told him to express regret. Party leaders should not give any statement that hurt any section of the society... I am sure Joshi ji will realise his mistake, keeping partys principles in mind, Gandhi said on Twitter. The apology came soon after. Joshi, who had accused the BJP of twisting his statement and condemned its fabricated use, also tweeted his regret. The Congress presidents swift and public censure for his senior Rajasthan leaders statement is grounded in the assessment that it could give the ruling BJP a handle to target the Congress in the middle of the Rajasthan campaign that goes to polls on December 7. Dr. C.P. Joshi (@drcpjoshi) November 23, 2018 Ahead of the 2014 elections, a comment by Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar deriding Narendra Modi as a tea seller had contributed significantly to PM Modis sweep. Last year too, BJP had turned Aiyars reference to the PM as a neech aadmi into a campaign around Gujarats pride. Gandhis reproach for the former Rajasthan Congress chief came after a video of Joshi surfaced on Thursday in which he is heard saying that only pandits and brahmins knew about Hinduism and were learned enough to speak about it. They say a Congressi cant be a Hindu, who gave them the authority to issue certificates? Have they opened a university? If anyone knows about religion then its pandits/brahmins. They are just misguiding the people by such moves. Uma Bharti is a Lodhi, and she talks about Hinduism, Modi ji talks about Hinduism. It is only Brahmins who dont talk about it. The country is being misled. Religion and governance are two different things. Everyone has the right to practice their religion, he said while addressing a public gathering in his hometown Nathdwara on Wednesday, according to news agency ANI. A professor of psychology who turned to politics, CP Joshi was credited with contributing to the party winning the December 2008 Rajasthan assembly elections. The special investigation team (SIT) probing the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh, who was gunned down outside her Bengaluru house in September 2017, today filed an additional charge sheet against 18 accused. The SIT had invoked the Karnataka Control of Organised Crime Act (KCOCA) in the case in August, claiming that an unnamed organisation had carried out the murder, angered over Lankeshs rationalist ideals. In a statement issued after filing the charge sheet in the special KCOCA court, the SIT said it submitted a 9,235 page long additional charge sheet against 18 accused persons and sought the courts permission to investigate further. The deadline for filing the charge sheet was November 27. Lankesh was gunned down at her house on September 5, 2017, as she was returning home from her office. The incident had been captured on a CCTV camera placed at her door. However, as the shooter had worn a helmet, the police could not identify him. It was only in February that the police made the first arrest in the case after it nabbed KT Naveen Kumar, who was allegedly given the task of procuring a gun and bullets for the crime. He was held, the police said, just as the group was allegedly plotting the murder of rationalist KS Bhagwan. Subsequently, the SIT hit upon the plot and with this breakthrough, was able to arrest Sujith Kumar alias Praveen, who then led it to the alleged masterminds Amol Kale and Amit Degwekar, both from Maharashtra, a police officer said. Also apprehended was Manohar Edave, a resident of Vijayapura, who allegedly played a key role in recruiting the killers. In June, the SIT arrested Parashuram Waghmare, who it believes, shot Lankesh. The others key accused arrested are Amit Baddi and Ganesh Miskin, who are suspected to have ferried Waghmare to her home on a two-wheeler, and Rakesh Bangera, who allegedly trained the shooter. While the police matched the bullets recovered from the crime scene with those recovered from the house of rationalist MM Kalburgi, who was also shot dead at his home in Karnatakas Dharwad in August 2015, it is still not in possession of the gun used to commit the crimes, according to a senior official of the SIT, speaking on the condition of anonymity. However, we are now in possession of the two-wheeler used in the commission of the crime, the officer said. Around 80% of the investigation is complete at this stage. Lawyers for the accused said they had only just heard that the charge sheet had been filed and were not in possession of the document. A Vedamurthy, advocate for Naveen Kumar, said he would have to go through the document before he could comment on the matter. The award ceremony of the 8th National Geographic Traveler Awards 2018 took place in Moscow at Volkhonka Mansion. The open online voting for the best tourist destinations and services took place from June 22nd to October 12th in 25 nominations. In the nomination Sightseeing holiday Azerbaijan hit the top three most popular among Russian tourists countries, beating the UK and Portugal. National Geographic Russias chief photographer Andrei Kamenev told Vestnik Kavkaza the following: At last, we finally reached Azerbaijan. In my youth, 25 years ago, I was in Azerbaijan, but since then a lot has changed. First what impressed me is, of course, Baku. The city has become unreal and looks so beautiful and unusual that it is just a pure delight. I have long dreamed of visiting mud volcanoes, almost since my childhood. Finally, this dream has also come true. The tour guides impressed me much, especially the one who drove us through Old Baku and told the stories about oil kings who lived at the beginning of the century. It was such an engaging tour! It lasted more than six hours, and at the end, I, frankly, could not stand - just sat down on the steps or on the asphalt and listened. But it was impossible to break away. According to the results of the voting, Azerbaijan was also among the top 3 popular destinations for gastronomic tourism among Russians. Students of SRM University at Kattankulathur area in the outskirts of Chennai staged a demonstration inside the campus Thursday night, alleging inaction by the administration on a sexual harassment complaint by a woman student of the varsity. SRM University Vice Chancellor Sandeep Sancheti, however, denied the allegations of inaction and said the administration would look into the complaint. Students are discussing with us. Whatever the matter is, it will be taken care of. If there is a matter, it will be inquired, Sancheti told PTI. According to a third year software engineering student who took part in the protest, a second year undergraduate student of the university was allegedly sexually harassed by a male sanitation worker inside a womens hostel lift on Thursday afternoon around 3 pm. The man masturbated in front of the woman student in the hostel lift, following which she reported the issue to the authorities, the student told PTI. According to another protester, the hostel warden, with whom the student had raised the issue, allegedly delayed access to the CCTV footage of the elevator and the registering of a complaint by over two hours. The employee was identified by the student in the CCTV footage. However she was asked to stay mum about the incident by the authorities, the protester said, adding that the hostel authorities allegedly blamed the victim. Local police officials who reached the protest spot told PTI that the protesters dispersed after assurances from the university administration to look into the matter. However, they added that no complaint had been registered yet. A 28-year-old sanitation worker was Friday arrested for the alleged sexual harassment of a woman student of SRM University following a complaint by the varsity, the police said. The students had Thursday protested inside the university, located at Kattankulathur on the outskirts of Chennai, alleging inaction on the part of the administration despite the victims complaint. University Vice-Chancellor Sandeep Sancheti, however, denied the allegations. According to a student, the victim, a second-year undergraduate, was sexually harassed inside the womens hostel lift at around 3 pm Thursday. The man masturbated in front of the student in the hostel lift, following which she reported the issue to the hostel warden, the student, who did not wish to be identified, said. However, the hostel warden brushed her concern aside and instead indulged in victim-shaming by questioning the clothes that the victim was wearing, the student, who took part in the protest, said. Soon, the information spread across the campus triggering a massive protest, videos and pictures of which went viral on the social media. I studied up to fourth standard at a Government Primary School. After leaving school in 2000, I went to Lahore and stayed with my brother Afzal. I did menial jobs at different places till 2005. During that period, I used to visit my native place. In 2005, I had a quarrel with my father and left home. I went to a home in Lahore where run-away boys like me are housed. From there, the boys are sent to different places for employment. One day, a person named Shafiq came there and took me with him. He was in the catering business and I started working with him for 120 per day. While I was working with Shafiq, I came in contact with Muzaffar Lal Khan. We decided to carry out dacoities to earn more money and so moved to Rawalpindi. My journey into jihad started soon after. While we were in search of firearms, we saw some Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) stalls at Rawalpindis Raja Bazaar on Eid al-Adha. We thought, why not join them and learn how to operate guns. We soon made our way to the Lashkar headquarters in Muridke, where it has its training camp. I first met the Lashkars Amir, Hafiz Saeed, at Muridke while I was undergoing the 21-day Daura-e-Sufa (preliminary training) between December 2007 and January 2008. A batch of 30 recruits was explained the meaning of jihad. The batch was introduced to Hafiz Saeed and the operation commander, Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi. Saeed addressed the batch, saying, You mujahedeen have to fight to liberate Kashmir, and Lakhvi said, Ab jihad ka waqt aa gaya hai (the time for jihad has come). We now have to wage a war to get Kashmir. Are all of you ready for this battle? We are planning to target big cities to weaken India. The batch was then inducted for the Daura-e-Khas (advanced training) at a fortified Lashkar camp in Muzaffarabad, where we were trained to use Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers, pistols and grenades. We were also familiarised with the use of GPS navigation devices and map-reading and were given survival training how to cope with hunger and how to climb mountains while carrying heavy backpacks. During the course of this training, an unknown man was also present. At that time, Hafiz Saeed and Lakhvi came there and met and hugged the unknown man, who was referred to from then on as Major General. The Major General supervised the eight-week long training that made us into pucca jihadis. Hafiz Saeed chose the final 10 who were sent via sea to Mumbai. He also gave us new names. I was named Abu Mujahid. We then came back to Muridke for Daura-e-Ribat (intelligence training) in August 2008. The Major General visited the group again to motivate us and asked me if I knew how to swim. In September 2008, we were taken to Karachi by train and kept at a house in Ajizabad locality. After two days, we were taken out to sea in two boats and then transferred onto a motorboat for three days during which we were trained to use GPS devices. On our return, we were taken to the Beit-ul-Mujahideen camp where Saeed and Lakhvi personally questioned us about our sea training. Lakhvi said that Mumbai would be the target and that we would be going to Mumbai via sea. The Major General came to this camp and after hugging Saeed and Lakhvi, took them aside for a private chat. When the trio returned, Lakhvi said that the Major General wanted to test our preparedness. The Major General told Hafiz Saeed, Saeed saab, aap target lagao. Saeed told Kafa (the course commander) to place 10 targets and said, When I say fire, all of you should fire single shots and when I say fire twice, open rapid fire. As per cue, all 10 fired and hit the target. The group was then introduced to Zarar Shah, the computer and media expert. Soon after, Saeed broke the group of 10 up into five pairs and said, We now have to hijack an Indian boat to go from Karachi to Mumbai. A lot of foreign tourists come there and they have to be targeted and killed to embarrass Hindustan. Saeed, Lakhvi and Zarar Shah then took the group to a big hall which Shah called the media room. Here, we were shown CDs of CST train station and Malabar Hill. The CDs also contained detailed information of which roads and routes to take to CST from Badhwar Park. Finally, we were asked to shave our beards. Mobile phones with Indian SIM cards and watches set to Indian time were given to us and we were also asked to tie a red thread around our wrists, so as to pass off as Hindus. The group was ready to set sail for Mumbai. Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Friday upped the pressure on the BJP-led national coalition for an ordinance to build a Ram temple. It took only around 17 minutes for us - the Ram bhakts - to bring down the Babri Masjid... So, how long should it take to bring an ordinance? Sanjay Raut told news agency ANI, scaling the rhetoric to demand for an executive order to build the temple. The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, the BJPs ideological mentor, has already joined the chorus from Hindu groups for an ordinance to build the temple rather than wait for a ruling from the Supreme Court that is set to start holding the last round of hearings in the case from early next year. The government, however, has not articulated a firm stand on the demand. The Sena leaders statement comes just a day ahead of the first-ever show of strength in Ayodhya organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. This is expected to be the largest congregation in Ayodhya since 6 December 1992 when the 16th century mosque was demolished by a mob. A decade later again, Ayodhya had seen thousands of people in March 2002 when carved stone pillars for a proposed Ram temple on the site were handed over to an emissary of the central government in a symbolic move. Sanjay Raut underlined that there was no reason why the ruling BJP could not enact the law. From Rashtrapati Bhavan to Uttar Pradeshs Vidhan Sabha, it is the Bharatiya Janata Party that is in power, he said. At a media conference earlier, Raut had argued that the law would get support from non-BJP lawmakers too. More than 400 members of Parliament cutting across party lines will support ordinance for the construction of Ram temple, Raut told a media conference in Ayodhya where he has been camping for days to prep for party boss, Uddhav Thackeray. The effort to scale up the demand for an ordinance is seen as an effort to set the tone for elections in five states this year and the Lok Sabha polls that follow. The demand for a law is a departure from the earlier narrative of waiting for a judicial solution to the dispute. Also read | MP Assembly Election 2018: Congress never opposed Ram temple, says Raj Babbar There is silence in most parts of the Ramanagara silk cocoon market, about 60 kilometers from Bengaluru. The e-auctioning of cocoons is underway in Asias largest silk cocoons market. Hundreds of farmers from across Karnataka and the rest of India have brought their produce to be sold through bidding. Having emptied their cocoons onto the markets tables, they stand next to their produce. Dozens of reelers those who reel the cocoons together to produce silk threads have come to the market to buy cocoons. The four warehouses in the market are choc-a-bloc with loads of silk cocoons of various grades and qualities. Reelers make their way around the market, observing the quality of cocoons and silently making their bids over a mobile phone app. Most of the farmers look forlorn. The reelers dont seem too happy either. Were not even making the costs of production nowadays, how can we be happy, says Ashok Hanabaretti, a farmer who has come from Belgaum, 530 kilometers from Ramanagara. Severe price drop In the last few months, the price for cocoons has gone as low as it was in 2015 when ten farmers committed suicide because they couldnt repay their debts, says Gautam Gowda, silk farmer and president of the Ramanagara District Sericulture Farmers Welfare Association. Gowda, like countless others, comes to the Ramanagara silk market every month to sell his produce. The average price of the two most sold silk cocoon types, Bivoltine silk and Cross Breed silk, were Rs 360 and Rs 290 respectively at the end of September as compared to Rs 491 and Rs 395 last year, as per Karnatakas Department of Sericulture. The government needs to intervene and assist us, otherwise we will fall into debt, says Gowda. In July, silk farmers marched to Freedom Park, Bengaluru, to protest the fall in prices. They were hoping that the state legislative assembly elections in May would bring about proactive changes in sericulture but to no avail. In fact, upon coming to power, SR Mahesh, the incumbent minister for sericulture, announced that Mysuru silk saris would be sold at half the price by the Karnataka Silk Industries Corporation (KSIC). His half-price offer was withdrawn a month later after multiple disturbances outside silk stores across the state. The ministers announcement turned out to be premature as the state lacked the capacity to back his promise. The state seems to be doing only foolish things and the centre is supporting only weavers and traders, most of who are in the north, in places like Varanasi. Who do we go to with our issues? asks Shanta Kumar, a silk farmer from Karnatakas Davanagere district. India is the second largest producer of silk in the world. Half of Indias silk is produced in Karnataka. Heavy rain in silk producing districts of Ramanagara, Mysuru, Chikballapur and Kolar have filled the silk cocoons filled with moisture. The cocoon needs to be dry and soft and not hard like this, KM Jaffar, a reeler, tells us, pressing a cocoon from a farmers produce. Well need up to 10 kilograms of such substandard cocoons to produce one kilo of pure silk. This is leaving us with no profit, he says. Another reason attributed to the low prices is the five per cent GST on silk yarn and fabric. Farmers and reelers say this is passed down the supply chain, because of which they have to bear extra burden. Farmers also say that silk yarn imported from China is preferred by weavers for its low price and this has put the domestic market in further peril. A temporary setback The State Department of Sericulture and the Central Silk Board (CSB), a statutory body under the Union Ministry of Textiles, say this is only a temporary setback. The CSB is a research and development organisation whose mandate is to provide technical and technological support to the silk industry. We are constantly working to improve productivity and reduce risk factors and believe the rates should improve again soon, adds the official. KS Manjunath, commissioner for sericulture development, Karnataka, says that the decline in prices is the result of surplus in supply as well as the excessive rains. As more and more farmers are getting into sericulture there is a lot of supply of silk cocoons. Silk farmers are getting eight to ten crops in a year now. Were providing subsidies to farmers for setting up rearing houses, medicines for plants and other equipment and are ready to help them in any other way we can, he says. Heavy rain and increasing competition from Chinese silk have drastically affected the prices of cocoons this year. (Arijit Sen/HT Photo) Munshi Basaiah, deputy director of sericulture in Ramanagara, concedes that low rates have led to low profit margins for the farmers. This is where farmers from all over the country get the best prices for their cocoons between February and May, and then August through October. We have sanctioned 52 automatic silk reeling machines which produce world-class silk. Once these machines are up and running, the quality of the silk thread will also improve and both reelers and farmers should get better profits, he says. Meanwhile, inside the Ramanagara market, the bidding had come to a close. M Manu, a farmer from Maddur, has sold Bivoltine silk, which usually fetches at least Rs 400 per kilo, for only Rs 250 per kilo. He says, We had no choice but to sell it for such a low price as there were no better offers. My family and I dont know what to do if this situation continues. Facing the challenge of holding Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackerays Ashirwad Sammelan on the eve of VHPs massive rally Dharam Sabha in Ayodhya on November 25, the Shiv Sena leaders are pulling out all the stops to make its event successful. The party lacks infrastructure and support base at the ground level as well as assistance of the present dispensation headed by chief minister Adityanath Yogi. Shiv Sena hardly enjoys any support outside Maharashtra. It was way back in 1991 that Shiv Sena had an MLA, Pawan Pandey, in Uttar Pradesh. Pandey left Shiv Sena after completing his tenure as legislator and has since been shifting loyalties to various political parties to contest elections. In the absence of a credible face and cadre in UP, the Shiv Sena is largely importing support from Maharashtra from where its cadre is expected to form the crowd in Ayodhya. Fearing low turnout, the Shiv Sena on Wednesday also cancelled its proposed public rally on November 24 at the Lakshman Quila ground. Thackeray will now only attend Ashirwad Sammelan to seek the blessings of saints and participate in Saryu aarti on November 24. The next day, he will leave for Mumbai after offering prayer at the makeshift Ram temple in Ayodhya. Just a day after Shiv Senas show of strength in untested territory, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) will organise Dharam Sabha which has the backing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas (RJN) a powerful body of saints that has been spearheading the temple movement across the country as well the ruling party ministers and legislators. The VHP and RSS volunteers have fanned out in various parts of the state to mobilise over a lakh people to give a push to the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya. Shiv Sena spokesman and Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Raut, a close aide of Thackeray, is camping in Ayodhya for the last one week and has been shuttling between Ayodhya and Lucknow to prepare the ground for Thacekrays visit. Shiv Sena minister in the Maharashtra government Eknath Sambhaji Shinde and two party MPs are also staying in Ayodhya to make preparations for the event. However, it will not be easy for the Shiv Sena to get the support of local saints. Prominent saints of Ayodhya, associated with the Mani Ram Das Chhawni Peeth and Digambar Akhara have refused to share platform with Thackeray. A day after refusing to attend Thackerays programme, Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas chief Mahant Nritya Gopal Das on Thursday evening agreed to it after much persuasion. Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut met the Mahant at Mani Ram Das Chhavni Peeth on Friday evening to request him to attend the Ashirwad Sammelan. Raut also conveyed Uddhav Thackerays personal message to Das requesting him to attend the event. Das had on Wednesday refused to attend the event saying the VHPs rally was planned much before the Senas programme. The Shiv Sena had announced Thackerays Ayodhya visit after Ram Janmabhoomi Trust chief Janmejay Shaeranji Maharaj met the Sena chief at the partys headquarters in Mumbai on October 3 to extend invitation to him to visit Ayodhya. The Ram Janmabhoomi Trust is a parallel body pitched against the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas but the latter is more powerful. According to people familiar with the developments, the Shiv Sena has also sent feelers to a former BJP MP from Uttar Pradesh who was at the forefront of the Ram temple movement but has now been sidelined in the party. The Sena wanted this former BJP MP to head its Uttar Pradesh unit but did not get positive response from him. Giving signals that he was fully in support of his son and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav on Thursday skipped his (Mulayams) birthday celebrations organised by the Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia), the party floated by his brother Shivpal Yadav. While Shivpal waited for his elder brother in Saifai, where a dangal (wrestling) competition had been organised, Mulayam celebrated his birthday with the SP workers at the party headquarters in Lucknow. The PSP (L) had organised programmes throughout the state on Mulayams birthday as Secularism Day. Addressing workers, Mulayam apparently targeted Shivpal and his associates for trying to divide the SP. When everybody thought that the Samajwadi movement was over, I founded the SP in 1991. Some said Mulayam is a leader of one or two districts. We formed the government four times and were a part of the central government twice. But some leaders tried to divide the party, indulged in discrimination and got isolated, Mulayam said. Mulayam also asked the partymen to work out his plan for campaigning thereby giving signals that he would be canvassing for the SP in Lok Sabha elections. My birthday will be successful when you aim for grabbing power in New Delhi. The government will be formed in Delhi when you stay united and Uttar Pradesh votes, he said. Mulayam reached the SP headquarters straight from his residence after Akhilesh reached there to wish him on his birthday. Akhilesh stayed at Mulayams residence for about an hour. In the recent past, Mulayam had been sending confusing signals to SP workers by attending programmes organised both by Akhilesh and Shivpal. But will Mulayam distance himself from the PSP (L) now? Former head of the department of political science at Lucknow University SK Dwivedi said, Mulayams stand is unpredictable. Lets watch him for some time. It is high time he clarified his stand as his association with the PSP (L) has adversely affected the SP. In a tweet, Akhilesh said: I congratulated Netaji (Mulayam) on his birthday. He has taught us to follow the path of truth and non-violence shown by Mahatma Gandhi. He also taught us Dr Ram Manohar Lohias ideals that one has to identify the evil to end it and that the faith is the biggest asset of human relations. Mulayam appeared upbeat on seeing the gathering of young party workers at the SP headquarters and praised the young crowd and said with such members, the SP would never get old. Youths are in good number. They are well-educated and know how to deliver a speech. We do not want the SP to be an old party. This is the party of the youth and 90 per cent of the crowd is young here, he said. Induct more women and girls. They (women) should be assured that they are safe here. Once women are here, no one can stop the SP from coming to power. No one should get hurt by your behaviour, Mulayam added. You should stand up and leave seats for seniors. Dont think that by leaving your seat you are only giving respect. It is bringing respect to you as well. There should not be any discrimination on caste, religion or gender basis, he said. PSP (L) spokesman Deepak Mishra confirmed Mulayam did not attend the partys programme at Saifai. We organised programmes throughout the state in the honour of Mulayam, he added. Even as Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Shiv Sena mobilized supporters for Sundays Dharm Sabha as well as Ashirwad programmes in Ayodhya, the district administration on Thursday imposed prohibitory orders in the disputed area (acquired area) in Ayodhya. Additional superintendent of police, Faizabad, Sanjay Kumar said section 144 CrPC has been imposed in the disputed area, which prohibited assembly of more than four people. The organizer of Dharm Sabha, to be held outside the disputed area at Bada Bhakt Mala ground, had been given permission by the district administration, he said. Along with the civil police, the district administration had deployed 10 companies Central Paramilitary Forces (CPMF) and 68 companies of Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) to maintain law and order, he said. Extra police force had been rushed to Ayodhya from adjoining districts as well, Kumar said. The district administration had also planned to install CCTV and use drones to monitor the movement of people arriving in Ayodhya to participate in the Dharm Sabha. The Flood unit of the PAC equipped with boat will organize regular patrolling in the Saryu. Also, the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) commandoes as well as anti-sabotage team and bomb disposal squad will be deployed in the temple town, said a district administration officer. A meeting of the district administration and police officers was held under the chairmanship of divisional commissioner Manoj Mishra on Thursday to review the preparation for the Kartik Mela as well the programme to be organized by the VHP and the Shiv Sena. Leave of all the administration and police officers have been cancelled till November 26, he said. The Supreme Court order regarding the disputed area will be strictly implemented and policemen had been directed to screen the people visiting the Ram Janambhoomi area for dharshan of Ram Lalla, he said adding suspicious person will be not allowed entry in the area. Additional district magistrate PD Gupta said order had been passed that people visiting the acquired area of Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid will enter through the route fixed by the administration. The time of darshan too has been fixed by the administration. People will be not allowed to enter the area with fire arms, inflammable matter, sticks, mobile, electronic gadgets and camera. Video graphy and photography of the acquired area has been prohibited, he said adding the order will remain in force till January 17 next year. Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of remaining silent over his governments failure to do anything substantial for farmers and the poor in the past four-and-half years. Speaking at the rally in Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, Gandhi reiterated that the PM did not respond to his question as to why the central government did not waive off loans of poor farmers. In Madhya Pradesh, there is no scarcity of funds. The government could have easily provided relief to farmers. I personally questioned Modi ji on why he doesnt waive off farmers loans when he waived off loans worth Rs 3,50,000 crore of corporate tycoons. He remained silent. This country is not formed by a person or a political party, the country is formed by its people, its farmers and its small businessmen, Gandhi said. He added,Modi ji wants you to listen to his mann ki baat. We do not want to do that. We want to listen to your (peoples) voice and take Madhya Pradesh on the path of progress. Read more: Vote share in MP in 2013 The Congress president assured that his government will install food processing plants in each block if voted to power. Farmers are selling vegetables, fruits, grains in the markets but are unable to get correct minimum support price (MSP). The 48-year-old leader also touched upon the issue of unemployment saying, The Congress will prioritise generating employment for the youth. Young minds from Madhya Pradesh want to be educated but there is no opportunity here. Read more: Win map of MP in 2013 Criticising the central government over the Rafale fighter jet deal, Gandhi said, PM Modi took the contract of Rafale from Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL). The CBI director was ousted as he was going to conduct a probe into the Rafale deal. Modi ji talks about surgical strike but he should know that the helicopters used during the surgical strike were manufactured by HAL. Then why was Rafale deal taken away from HAL? he said. Elections to the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly will be held on November 28 to elect 230 members. The result will be declared on December 11. For full coverage on MP elections, click here. A solemn ceremony of awarding the winners of the National Geographic Traveler Awards 2018 took place in Moscow yesterday. The National Geographic Traveler magazine opened the voting for the best tourist destinations among the most popular leisure activities in 25 main nominations on June 22: 'Russian adventure recreation', 'Russian ethnic recreation', 'Russian excursion holidays', 'Russian ecological holidays', 'Russian alpine ski holidays', 'Russian wellness holidays', 'Russian gastronomic tourism', 'Russian resort hotel', 'Best Russian airlines', 'Beach vacation', 'Family vacation', 'Excursion vacation', 'Alpine ski vacation', 'Rural tourism', 'Gastronomic tourism', 'Adventure vacation', 'Discovery of the year', 'Wellness Vacation', 'Exotic vacation', 'Best international airline', 'Best resort hotel', 'Best cruises', 'Best Internet service', 'Best travel program' and 'Best travel blogger'. The voting ended on October 12. National Geographic Traveler editor-in-chief Olga Yakovina told Vestnik Kavkaza about tourism innovations. - It wasn't your first vote. Have any significant changes been noticed? - The biggest changes concern, first of all, the number of participants, the number of voters. Every year it substantially increases. Changes also concern the number of nominations. For example, if initially there were only three nominations about leisure activities in Russia, then now we have nine of them. The number of nominations is increasing, because the number of travels increases and people become more sophisticated in this issue. There are much more categories in which they want to express their opinions. - Do you mean that domestic tourism is growing? - Both domestic and foreign travel - all types of tourism are growing, people like to travel despite any crises, and I understand them perfectly. - What new directions in Russia and abroad have appeared recently? -We have a nomination 'Discovery of the Year'. This year Iceland won it, which was discovered by many people indeed. There are some quite low cost flights now. This country, which has always been very exotic and inaccessible, was a 'bomb' this year. Iceland won with a crushing score. In general, new nominations, new directions appear constantly, because our world is huge, and one life isn't enough to see everything. And that's great. - Do you have any surprise winners? - Of course. This year, for example, we were greatly surprised by the winner in the 'Gastronomic tourism' nomination - Uzbekistan. It won in a landslide. It came as a surprise to us that so many people visited and appreciated merits of this country. Another surprise was the winner in the 'Russian ski vacation' nomination. Sochi has been winning for many years. It was difficult to compete with it. But this year Sheregesh won, and by a significant margin. Everyone who visited it last season rushed to vote for this ski resort. - We, as Vestnik Kavkaza, would like to know about the Caucasus. - Tourism has being actively developed there. People travel a lot to health resorts and ski resorts, and just for the weekend. They travel to Baku a lot. Baku was on the cover of the last issue of our magazine. Our guide to this city was prepared by insiders and city experts. This suggests that people like to go there, and we really like to write about these places. - Have you been to Baku? - Yes. And I would love to come back, I really liked it. - How do you assess the tourism potential of Azerbaijan as a whole? - It's huge. And it's just a beginning. There are so many unique opportunities in Azerbaijan! If we talk about Baku, this is an incredible combination of the old city of Icheri Sheher with modern, really cool architecture. Modern buildings designed by Zaha Hadid and other architects have changed the city greatly. Baku is constantly changing. Every time it's like you visit a new city. It has incredible opportunities for wilderness trips. Azerbaijan's nature is extraordinary. In terms of SPA, naphthalan resorts are completely unique, there is not more of that in the world. Alpine skiing tourism is developing. Not to mention the Azerbaijani cuisine! I'm getting hungry when I think about it. A group of religious figures led by godman Computer Baba on Friday declared support to the Congress for the November 28 assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh. It marks a radical change in the political stand of Swami Namdev Tyagi, popularly known as Computer Baba, who had been anointed as a minister of state by the BJP government. Computer Baba had organised Narmade Sansad, a gathering of like-minded religious leaders from various states, including Uttar Pradesh, in Jabalpur on Friday to decide which party they should support in the polls. The saints will support the Congress, he said at the gathering. When we can give 15 years to them (BJP), then we can surely give five years to Congress. Read more: Win map of MP in 2013 If Congress upholds dharma, we will go with them in future or else, we will withdraw support, he said. In April, the BJP government in the state accorded him the status of minister of state along with five others by appointing him on a committee for conservation of the river Narmada. Before that, he had announced a yatra (procession) to expose illegal sand mining in the Narmada. He resigned in October, accusing chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan of not fulfilling the promises made to him. The BJP government did little to stop illegal mining in the river, he alleged. For full coverage of MP elections, click here Meghalaya chief minister Conrad Sangma-led National Peoples Party (NPP) is trying to woo the tribals and Christians in poll-bound Mizoram , hoping to make inroads into another state in the countrys northeast. Christians account for 87% of the states population, while as many as 39 of the 40 seats in Mizoram are reserved for scheduled tribe (ST) candidates. The NPP is contesting nine seats in the state, which goes to polls on November 28. It hopes to emerge as a kingmaker like it did in Manipur in 2016 and Nagaland in 2018. The NPP is part of coalition governments with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party in the two states. Sangma said his party is the only one working for tribespeople and Christians. We are a party for the tribals and are working hard to restore our identity as one voice from the northeast. There is a need for all tribals in the region to come together under the NPP banner, Sangma, who belongs to Meghalayas Garo tribe, told a rally in Mizoram on Wednesday. The NPP has emerged as the biggest regional force in the northeast over the last five years. The party is in power in Meghalaya besides being part of coalition governments in Nagaland, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh. Read more: Vote share of political parties in 2013 Late former Lok Sabha speaker, P A Sangma, founded the NPP in 2013 as a Meghalaya-centric party. Sangmas sons, Conrad and James, now helm the NPP, which does not have much of a presence in Mizoram. NPP leads Meghalayas ruling coalition with 20 seats. It won four seats in Manipur and two in Nagaland. In July, seven of the Peoples Party of Arunachals nine lawmakers joined the NPP in Arunachal Pradesh and the party became a part of the BJP-led government in the state. Mizoram has always been NPPs focus for nearly two years now. We have got a very good response, especially from youths. It seems Mizoram will have a hung assembly this time and in that scenario, we will play a key role, said NPP national general secretary and Mizoram in-charge, Lalrintlunga Jahau. Read more: Win map of Mizoram in 2013 Congress and the Mizo National Front are locked in a direct fight for power in Mizoram. It has never had a hung assembly since the state was formed in 1987. The BJP too, is hoping to make inroads into Mizoram. It has become the biggest political force in the northeast in the last two years. From being a marginal player, the party has formed governments in four states in the region Tripura, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and Manipur. It is part of the ruling coalitions in Meghalaya and Nagaland. Like BJP, NPP does not have any roots in the state. If any of their candidates win, it would be purely on the basis of that persons abilities , not due to the party, said Mizoram University political science professor J Doungel. For full Mizoram coverage, click here Days after the terror attack that targeted Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) on November 26, 2008, the Indian Railways reviewed the security of railway stations in the city. After the inquiry revealed huge security gaps, the Railways introduced an Integrated Security System (ISS), aimed at improving the safety at stations through upgraded technology and infrastructure. However, 10 years later, the ISS is yet to be completely installed and there are regular security breaches at railway stations. After 26/11, 17 railways stations on Central Railway (CR) and 30 on Western Railway (WR) including CSMT, Kurla, Thane, Dadar, Lokmanya Tilak Terminus, Kalyan, Pune, Bhusawal, Nagpur, Mumbai Central, Bandra Terminus and Andheri were identified as crucial stations which would have ISS installed in them. Under ISS, so far, 2,000 closed circuit televisions (CCTV) have been installed at important railway stations in Mumbai. Other security equipment includes handheld devices, door frame metal detectors (DFMD), under vehicle surveillance scanners (UVSS) for vehicles and baggage scanners at the stations. Introducing CCTV cameras at the stations has helped not just in solving railway crimes, but also in solving crimes, which have occurred outside railway premises. ISS at railway stations had a deterrent effect as with the help of it, criminal profiling is also being undertaken. UVSS on important stations including CSMT helps us in identifying every vehicle and in a complete inspection of the vehicles entering the stations, said Sachin Bhalode, senior divisional security commissioner, CR. However, bomb detection and disposable squad (BDDS) teams, which were to be located at the stations identified as crucial, are yet to be formed. Every station also does not have the promised control room, which was termed as crucial under the ISS. A senior railway official blamed the delay on tedious procurement procedures. The delay is introducing the system entirely is because of the lengthy procedure of procurement. Further, a lot of aspects also involve infrastructural changes. Formation of BDDS teams is underway and training of our personnel will soon start. Personnel working alongside the dog squad will also be trained, said a senior Railway Protection Force (RPF) official. Passengers have pointed out that many of the machines introduced for security at stations are non-functional most of the time. DFMD and baggage scanners at railway stations most of the times do not work. Despite the presence of metal detectors, metal objects are taken inside local and outstation trains, said Subhash Gupta, president of Rail Yatri Parishad. Even as the first phase of ISS is underway at suburban railway stations in Mumbai, Indian Railways has now started working on phase two. This includes controlling access points to railway stations. The deadline to complete the survey of access points is March 2019. The railways is also working on syncing bio metric and bio data of anti-social elements from Government Railway Police (GRP) and city police. A possible threat from an anti-social element entering the railway station from anywhere is much higher at this point as there are multiple entry and exit points to the stations. Limited access and control for the access points will help in improving the safety of the stations in the city. Maintaining a similar data base will help in identifying anti - social elements faster when they enter railway station. Synchronizing work is going on, said an RPF personnel. My life is over was the last phone message 40-year-old Ashwin Lalit Jain, a gold businessman, sent to his friends before allegedly shooting himself inside his Maruti Wagon-R car at Sai Baba Marg in Parel on Friday. According to the police, a local resident found Jains body in a pool of blood in the back seat and a revolver in his right hand around 1.30 pm, following which he informed the Kalachowki police. The police have registered a case of accidental death. We think Jain shot himself on the right temple. It looks like the body was found around 12 hours after he shot himself, said a police officer. The revolver Jain used was a licenced weapon that belongs to his father, added the officer. According to officers, Jains wife and other family members said he could have taken the extreme step as he was in debt. The police said that Jain, a resident of Khatau building in Parel, left his home on Thursday afternoon. When he did not return by night, his father, Lalit, also a gold businessman approached the Kalachowki police around 10pm and filed a missing persons complaint. According to the complaint, Jain left at 2pm and his mobile phone was switched off. He had also left his gold ornaments and other valuables at home. A friend of Jain, who was at his residence on Friday evening, said, We have a WhatsApp group of school friends, created about three months ago. Since Thursday there were messages posted in the group about Ashwin missing from his home. We thought he would return, but I was shocked when I saw the message about Ashwin having shot himself. A forensic team and the police have collected evidence from the spot, which was on the lane near Jains home. The body was sent to Sir JJ Hospital for post-mortem. The Bombay high court (HC) came down heavily on the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the special investigation team (SIT) for delaying the investigation into the murders of activists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare. The HC said on Thursday that the CBI and Maharashtra Crime Investigation Department (CID) should make sincere efforts to trace the accused and directed that CBI and SIT give an undertaking by December 14 on when the investigation will conclude. The world is watching how India is putting efforts to implement the constitutional values and ideals enshrined in the constitution, said justice SC Dharmadhikari. The division bench of justices SC Dharmadhikari and Bharati Dangre were reading a confidential progress report, submitted by the CBI through additional solicitor general Anil Singh. The report on the investigation into the murders of Dabholkar and Pansare stated that the CBI was awaiting approval from the state government to prosecute some persons arrested in connection with the murders under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). Advocate Ashok Mundargi, appearing for SIT, informed the court that they had custody of Amol Kale, allegedly the mastermind of journalist Gauri Lankeshs murder. Mundargi said the investigation would take another seven to eight days to be completed. However, the court was not satisfied with this progress report. What are the steps taken to trace other accused persons? You must make more sincere efforts to trace other accused persons. You have dedicated teams to investigate both the cases and therefore, more is expected out of you, the bench said. The court has asked the CBI and SIT to give an undertaking after consulting all other agencies on how soon the investigation may be completed. The undertaking should be submitted in court by December 14. The prosecution should impress upon the higher authorities that this court is monitoring the investigations presently and has expressed its anxiety that it should be brought to a closure soon, said justice SC Dharmadhikari. Dabholkar and Pansare were both shot dead in 2013 and 2015 respectively. (with PTI inputs) The deadly terror attacks in Mumbai on November 26, 2008, forced a family that had lived in Nariman Point for four generations to pack up and move to Navi Mumbai in search of peace. A decade on, Sanjay Kathar goes back to the area now and then, and revisits the haunts he and his friends would frequent. One of those spots was affected by the attack, and Kathar, who was 20 years then, remembers the dark night he was injured by a grenade and saw his classmate get killed by a bullet. Now a real estate consultant, Kathar remembers growing up in the area, visiting the bakery opposite his house and staying out late with friends around the Shiv Sena office. He vividly remembers how the attacks unfolded. I was watching India win a test match against England, when the lights in our apartment suddenly went off, Kathar says. His family and their neighbours first thought a gang war had broken out. But, that seemed unlikely as the area had never seen any such incident before, Kathar said. To find out what was going on, Kathar stepped out and met his friends near the Shiv Sena office as usual. When they heard terrorists had attacked Mumbai, Kathar called his two brothers and asked them to rush home. He started making his way back too, when he was thrown off by a grenade attack at the Nariman House. A few metres away, he saw his classmate get shot dead. Kathar was lucky to survive, with 25 stitches around his abdomen. The story seems right out of a film, but for me it is real life. It was my destiny that I was there. If not me, it would have been someone else. The fact that I am alive today is more than enough, Kathar says, but points out how, like any other Mumbaiite, he too had to move forward. All those who continue to live around Nariman House function the same way they did 10 years ago, Kathar said. Those who lost their loved ones moved out; others have moved on. Gujarat Fortunegiants ended their home leg of Pro Kabaddi League season 6 with a comfortable 40-31 win over Haryana Steelers in Ahmedabad on Thursday. Sachin led the scoring charts with 10 points while defender Parvesh Bhainswal achieved another high five and scored six tackle points. Monu Goyat had an indifferent first half but ended up being the top scorer for Haryana Steelers with 10 points. Gujarats top raider Sachin also hit the 100-point landmark in this edition of Vivo Pro Kabaddi League. Gujarat are now top of the table in Zone A with 58 points from 14 matches while Haryana are fifth in the table with 26 points from 14 matches. READ: MS Dhoni reveals why he promoted himself in ICC World Cup 2011 final Mahendra Singh Rajput got Gujarat off to a flying start as he made a super raid in the first minute. Haryana Steelers composed themselves and forced a super tackle in the third minute to trail 2-5. Haryana got their first raid points in the fifth minute when Anand Tomar got a two-point raid. Gujarat inflicted the first all out of the match in the seventh minute to lead 11-4. Vikas Kandola got a two-point raid in the ninth minute as Haryana Steelers trailed 6-13. Monu Goyat, who had a quiet first half, came to life in the 17th minute to come up with a super raid for Haryana Steelers. Sachin got a two-point raid for Gujarat in the 18th minute as Gujarat went into the break leading 21-15. The second half saw Gujarat not relenting under Haryanas pressure. In the 27th minute Haryana suffered another all out as Gujarat threatened to run away with the match. With less than 10 minutes to go Gujarat held a nine-point advantage as they led 30-21. Parvesh continued his fine form as he put in a strong tackle in the 34th minute to give Gujarat 33-22 lead. Sachin and Monu got a couple of raid points for their teams as Gujarat led 35-25 with less than five minutes to go. Launching the partys poll campaign in Rajasthan BJP National president Amit Shah on Wednesday said the 2018 polls were a fight against Congress partys policy of casteism, dynastic politics and appeasement. Addressing a gathering of youth here, Shah said the BJP had defeated these three evils in 2014 but they are rearing their heads ahead of the 2018 polls. The 2018 election is a fight against casteism, dynastic politics and appeasement and the battle cannot be won without the Rajasthan youth, said Shah. Shah was taking part in the BJPs Yuva Ri Baat Amit Shah Re Saath programme here in which he interacted with 200,000 youth as part of the partys outreach. Youth from all seven divisions of the state Jaipur, Ajmer, Bharatpur, Kota, Udaipur, Jodhpur and Bikaner -- gathered at venues in their respective locations and asked Shah questions via two-way communication facility at the venues. The main event was held at a school in Jaipur. The BJP hopes to get a large chunk of votes from the youth who voted in large numbers for the BJP in the 2013 and 2014 elections. Shah took questions from youth from Jaipur, Kota, Bhilwara, Jodhpur and Bharatpur. A participant from Bharatpur district asked about dynastic politics and what was the BJPs agenda for youth. Shah said the worst example of dynastic politics was seen from a Congress candidate from Rajasthan. Some of his supporters were chanting slogans of Bharat Mata ki Jai. The candidate stopped a supporter and whispered in his ear and then they started chanting Sonia Gandhi ki Jai. This is the worst example of dynastic politics. He said those who hesitate to say Bharat Mata ki Jai have no right to partake of food grown on this land. BJP made a chaiwala prime minister of the worlds largest democracy. Is it possible in the Congress? he asked. I want to tell the youth in Rajasthan that a party which has no internal democracy how can it save the countrys democracy. I appeal to the youth that they should give a resounding defeat to the Congress party. Also Read: Congress rule marked by corruption, nepotism, says Piyush Goyal in Rajasthan A participant from Bhilwara asked if the BJP was committed to build the Ram temple in Ayodhya. Shah said the BJP is committed to build the temple at the spot where the idol of Lord Ram is situated. He said the BJP is hopeful that the case will be resolved in the supreme court soon. On GST, Shah admitted that it had caused difficulties to small traders and businesses and said they apologized for it but it would ultimately prove good for the country. Its an effort to speed up and take forward the countrys economy. had to face difficulties initially. But that difficulty is like the quinine tablet taken to cure Malaria. Ultimately traders will benefit. The Modi government has never taken populist decisions, we have taken decisions that are good for the people, he said. Also Read: Rajasthan CM Raje prevails in fight for minister, it is Yunus Khan vs Pilot in Tonk Speaking before Shah, chief minister Vasundhara Raje said while the BJP had take steps to eradicate poverty, Congress had given empty slogans. Congress said the more poverty there is, the more we will benefit, the more votes we will get. She said in five years of her government Rajasthan had jumped from a Bimaru state to the best performing state in the country. Both Shah and Raje listed several welfare schemes of the state and central governments such as Ujjwala, housing scheme, toilets, Rajshri, Bhamashah and incentives to students which they said have beneftted the people. Shah said Rajes biggest achievement is that in her government each person in the state has got something from the government. From Jaipur, Shah left for Bikaner where he held a road show in support of all seven contestants from Bikaner district. Congress spokesperson Archana Sharma said it is the BJP government that is corrupt and is spreading the evil of casteism and communalism. She said BJP is promoting dynastic politics and they are doing appeasement by denying tickets to minorities The Congress on Thursday accused the BJP government in Rajasthan of failing to address the farmers grievances and unemployment, and released what it called a charge sheet listing the alleged failures of the Vasundhara Raje-rule to deliver on the promises. Two weeks ahead of the assembly elections, the Congress released the 21-page charge sheet (aarop patra) against the Raje rule. The charge sheet covered economy and budget; agriculture and farmers; women security; electricity; roads; education; tourism; industry; and corruption. Addressing newspersons, state Congress president Sachin Pilot said when the Raje government started its Gaurav Yatra, the Congress asked 37 questions but none of them was answered. This charge sheet reveals misgovernance which brought losses to the people. The BJP received mandate in the state and at the Centre, but despite that it failed to fulfil the promises made, he alleged. Pilot said Raje promised that a permanent system would be set up for purchase of crops on MSP (minimum support price), but 90% of the produce did not get price protection and more than 100 debt-ridden farmers committed suicide. In last five years, over 100 farmers in Rajasthan committed suicide but people in government are not accepting it. Maximum such cases happened in Jhalawar, Baran, Kota and Bundi, the region from where the CM is being elected. He alleged that the chief minister failed to fulfil her promises for 15 lakh jobs, 24-hour single-phase power supply, and corruption-free government. In 2013 assembly elections, the BJP made 600 small and big announcements. The reality is that the BJP cannot now claim that they were implemented across the state. Click here for the schedule of Assembly Elections 2018 When the BJP government was formed after the last polls, the debt on state was Rs 1.9 lakh crore, but it has mounted to Rs 3.10 lakh crore around three times, Pilot said. Despite that the CM says the state is out of BIMARU states. The state government has almost intentionally winded up MNREGA the number of families to complete 100 days has reduced to 2.40 lakh annually from 4.69 lakh. In 2018-19, wages are being delayed for six months, he said. The law and order situation is deteriorating; be it dacoity, abduction, rape, burglary or murder, the numbers have increased many folds. Over 5000 villages in the state are supplied water through tankers, which shows mismanagement. Even in the CM constituency, over 100 villages get water through tankers, Pilot said. In the name of Resurgent Rajasthan, crores were spent; 470 MoUs worth Rs 3.38 lakh crore were inked, of which 200 were dropped and 78 are stuck between the government and investors, or pending in court, he alleged. On the remaining 192 proposals, only Rs 10125 crore was spent, which is disappointing. Reacting to the charges, BJP spokesperson Mukesh Pareek said the Congress has no right to talk of scams and corruption for which they were known. He said the Congress lost peoples mandate in last assembly and Lok Sabha polls because of corruption. All the allegations are baseless. The Congress for last five years did not even hold an agitation over peoples issues or scams. If they have proof, why didnt they approach court? Pareek asked. With elections nearing, they (Congress) are spreading lies. It would have been better had they played the positive role of an opposition. Meanwhile, AICC chief Rahul Gandhi will visit Rajasthan on November 26. He will visit Brahma temple in Pushkar and Dargah in Ajmer, and address public meetings at Pokhran (Jaisalmer), Jalore and Jodhpur, Pilot said. For complete coverage of Rajasthan Assembly Election 2018, click here Amid talks at the national level to forge unity among Opposition parties to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), is looking at the Congress as its key rival in the Rajasthan election. The communists have fielded 28 candidates for the election in Indias largest state and hope to win at least three to five seats. The candidates are fielded in areas of Sikar, Ganganagar, Nagaur, Churu, Jhunjhunu, Jaipur rural, Dungarpur, Udaipur, Bikaner and Kota. The party has no representative in the current assembly but had three members in assembly during 2008-2013. Yes, we will be primarily fighting in Congress strongholds in Rajasthan. The situation in this state is different. In last five years, our main fight was against the Congress than the BJP. We actually played the opposition role. The Congress did not support our demands. They just sit and wait to return to power, said CPI(M) politburo member Hannan Mollah. Read more: Vote share of political parties in 2013 Mollah is in charge of Rajasthan where the party has led several protest movements in the last few years. According to a CPI(M) member with knowledge of the matter, there are at least seven seats where we will manage to get more than 10,000 votes. In other seats, we can get 2,000-3,000 votes easily. A senior Congress leader who did not want to be named, however, rejected the CPI(M) charges and said, They are a marginal force in all places except Kerala. They wont be able to dent our support. Party leaders say that they fought for water for farmers in the states nauhar (irrigation) belt of Ganganagar, Hanumangarh and Bikaner last year. Then, they forced the government to intervene when mustard, groundnut and onion price fell. Read more: Win map of Rajasthan in 2013 The party also organised farmers to block highways for 8-9 days in Churu against non-availability of crop insurance claims and finally the farmers got 300 crore as insurance. The party is also resting its hopes on its fight against the states power tariff hike, which resulted in the government withdrawing it. This benefitted many farmers, as there are 12 lakh tubewells that run on power in areas like Sikar, Churu, Nagaur. To celebrate this victory, the CPI(M) organized a victory rally in Jaipur this year. Other party members also say that in areas where the party organization doesnt exist, leaders are spreading the message to support any force capable of defeating the BJP. A solemn ceremony of awarding the winners of the National Geographic Traveler Awards 2018 took place in Moscow yesterday. This year the applicants strove for victory in 25 nominations. In two of them - 'Russian Ethnic Leisure' and 'Exotic Leisure' - the main prize was presented by a traveling journalist and TV presenter Timofey Bazhenov. On the sidelines of the ceremony, he told Vestnik Kavkaza about modern tourism in the Caucasus. - What do you think about the development of tourism in the North Caucasus? - In my opinion, domestic Russian tourism is developing very well, primarily due to the Caucasian republics. If we talk about ski tourism, then, of course, Ingushetia, Armkhi should be noted. You can't find more beautiful mountains than in the Caucasus. You can believe me, because I visited all the mountains of the world with my film crew. Our Caucasian mountains are good not only because its a wonderful beauty, not only because its a wonderful air, but first of all because wonderful people live there. I can't say that any my friend from the Caucasus is stupid or a bad person. They are all great people. You can share a foxhole with each of them, each of them can be trusted with a secret, you can talk about the most intimate things with each of them and know that you will be understood. If we are talking about tourism, it is worth mentioning such a concept as hospitality. The Caucasian hospitality ranks second to none. No wonder they say that the guest brings a thousand joys to the house, and takes away a thousand troubles. People from every Caucasian home want you to visit them and literally drag you to their house. Every traveler in the Caucasus can be sure that nobody will ask him questions, they will feed him with the best food, give the best place to seat and the best bed to sleep. And in my opinion, the Caucasus is the best place for tourism. - What about the South Caucasus? - In Azerbaijan it is, of course, Naftalan. Its healing oil is not suitable for making gas from it, but it heals people from severe illnesses. Excellent doctors work there. Azerbaijan is called the Land of Fire, because it is the only place where you can look at the ever-burning land. And, of course, Gabala. This place should be visited by everyone who wants to visit the most interesting places in the world. Beautiful mountains, wonderful landscapes, wonderful bison. It has a very good nature reserve, paragliding opportunities, wonderful hotels. Azerbaijan is a great place which is worth visiting. For more effeminate tourists, we can recommend Baku. Indeed, this country and its capital Baku is not inferior, for example, to the United Arab Emirates in terms of comfort. It has air-conditioned stops, the great Flame Tower, the beautiful promenade. Baku is a luxurious city with very tasty cuisine. - How attractive are Georgia and Armenia as tourist destinations? - Armenia is a beautiful singing, male choirs, khachkars, native for us people, not least because of the faith. Travelers from Russia are comfortable there. As for Georgia, I visited it quite recently, and I can say that it is still attractive, but, unfortunately, not just like it used to. The fact is that the desire of Georgian leaders to get closer to the European Union affected their cuisine. Now it's very difficult to find traditional dishes because they are oversaturated with fats and cholesterol. But wine is still wonderful and Tbilisi is interesting. I am very sorry that young residents of Georgia forget how to speak Russian, or, perhaps, did not even know it. But my peers speak Russian and they are much more welcoming than young people. Georgia is still a wonderful place, but we should not forget about South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which must be visited by any inquisitive tourist. Those interested in life should definitely come to Sukhum and Tkuarchal, taste Khachepur there. Georgians pronounce 'khachapuri', and the Abkhaz -'khachapur'. If you want to see burning water spring, that is, water that you can drink, wash yourself, but you also can set it on fire and, for example, boil potatoes on it, then you should go to Ossetia, it has such a place, not far from the capital. - What distinguishes the Caucasian mountains from others? - The Caucasus mountains are very comfortable, they allow you to rest almost anywhere wherever you go. Climbing high peaks often means that a person simply has no place to rest for even a minute. You must constantly climb, cling, freeze your fingers, break nails, breathe through the device. It is quite difficult. The Caucasus mountains, even the most impregnable, allow you to walk quite comfortably. In addition, they are really the most beautiful. The perception of the human eye clearly tells me that the Caucasus mountains should be chosen. The Election Commission today issued notice to senior Congress leader C P Joshi on a complaint by the BJP against for his reported remarks appearing to suggest that only Brahmins could speak about Hindus. At a poll meeting in Rajasthan on Thursday ahead of the December 7 assembly elections, Joshi had reportedly said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union minister Uma Bharti and Hindu activist Sadhvi Ritambhara are from lower castes and know nothing of Hinduism. He had also said it is the Brahmins who are learned and know of Hinduism. Though Joshi on Friday apologised for his comments after party chief Rahul Gandhi expressed his disapproval and asked him to express regret, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rejected his apology for insulting the Hindu religion and dared Gandhi to expel him from the party. It also filed a complaint with the poll panel. The comments made by the Congress leader (Joshi) based on caste, section and religion in an election rally are violation of the model code of conduct. So, a complaint has been lodged with the Election Commission, BJP Rajasthan election cell convenor, Nahar Singh Maheshwari, said in a statement. There is fear of social unrest and hatred in society due to Joshis comments, so the Election Commission should take strong action (against him) for making such a statement, he said. Accusing of Joshi of having insulted the Indian culture as well as the Hindu religion, BJP national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi accused the Congress of dividing every religion for power. The statement of Congress leader (Joshi) is baseless, wrong and condemnable. It reflects that the Congress doesnt know the history of Indian culture and Hindu religion, he said at a press conference in Jaipur. The returning officer in Nathdwara sought Joshis reply to the charges made against him by the BJP by November 25, said chief electoral officer Anand Kumar The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) expelled 11 leaders, including four ministers in the Vasundhara Raje government, for six years for contesting against party candidates in the December 7 Assembly election, said a release from the party on Thursday night. State party president Madan Lal Saini issued the order for expulsions of these 11 leaders last night after the last day for withdrawal of nominations. The expelled leaders include public health engineering department minister Surendra Goyal, general administration department minister Hemsingh Bhadana, devasthan minister Rajkumar Rinwa and junior panchayati raj and rural development minister Dhan Singh Rawat. The four were denied tickets by the BJP and they filed nominations as Independent candidates. The other leaders who faced the axe are Laxmi Narayan Dave from Marwar Junction, Radhyeshyam Ganganagar from Sriganganagar, Rameshwar Bhati from Sujangarh, Kuldeep Dhankad from Viratnagar, DD Kumawat from Phulera, Kisnaram Nai from Sridungargarh and Anita Katara from Dungarpur. Earlier, the BJP and the Congress managed to persuade several rebels to withdraw from the contest. However, several of them continue to be in the fray to queer the pitch of the authorised party candidates and to make the contest triangular and quadrangular in some constituencies. The BJP MLAs who did relent after the partys overtures and withdrew their candidature after speaking to senior party leaders are Bhawani Singh Rajawat, Gyandev Ahuja and Anita Singh. Rajawat met party national vice-president and MP Om Mathur while Ahuja met national president Amit Shah on Wednesday and yielded. Ahuja who was contesting from Sanganer was made party vice-president. Prachi Dixit, who had filed her nomination from Kota, and Champa Lal Gedar from Bikaner also withdrew their names. Gedar met Shah in Bikaner on Wednesday and then agreed to withdraw his name. Also Read: BJP, Cong put faith in family, 26 sons and daughters in fray Among the Congress rebels, two former ministers, Mahadev Singh Khandela and Babulal Nagar, remain in the fray. In addition to them, six former MLAs, CS Baid from Taranagar, Sanyam Lodha from Sirohi, Nathram Sinodia from Kishangarh, CL Premi from Keshoraipatan, Bhimraj Bhati from Pali and Haji Abdul Kayum from Masuda, are also contesting as rebels. Meanwhile, on the last day of withdrawal on Thursday, total 570 candidates withdrew their names. This number is till 6pm on the website of election department. According to the website, total 3,293 candidates filed their nomination from November 12 to 19, while 420 nominations were rejected in the scrutiny on November 20 and there were 2,873 candidates in the fray. In two days of withdrawal on Wednesday and Thursday, 570 candidates withdrew their names and now 2,303 candidates are contesting the assembly elections. Watch: List of Crorepati MLAs in Rajasthan Assembly Maximum withdrawal of nominations was 22 from Adarsh Nagar assembly constituency, followed by 12 from Jaisalmer constituency and 10 each from Hawa Mahal, Degana and Siwana assembly constituencies. Out of 200 assembly constituencies, there were 33 assembly constituencies where there has been no withdrawal. The polling in the state will be on December 7 from 8am to 5pm and counting of votes will take place on December 11. For complete coverage of Rajasthan Assembly Election 2018, click here Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday laid a foundation of City Gas Distribution (CGD) projects in 129 districts including five in Jharkhand through video-conferencing from Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi. Jharkhands five districts-Bokaro, Hazaribag, Ramgarh, Giridih and Dhanabd had been picked in the ninth round of CGD bidding. Gas infrastructure is being strengthened in the country. The National Gas Grid project, Jagdishpur-Haldia, and Bokaro-Dhamra will give a new lease of life to Sindri (Dhanbad), Gorakhpur and Barauni fertilizer plants, PM Modi said. Ministry of state for civil aviation, Jayant Sinha attended the programme in Hazaribag while Jharkhand urban development minister CP Singh did the same in Dhanbad. Speaking on the occasion at St. Columbas College Ground, Hazaribag, Jayant Sinha said, The project will accelerate the development of Hazaribag. People will get natural, clean, pollution-free energy through PNG connections. He said several development projects have been launched in Hazaribag including railway and road projects for the development of the district in last four years. Hazaribag will also get air connectivity very soon, he said. Indian oil corporation limited (IOCL) will lay the infrastructure for piped natural gas (PNG) and compressed natural gas (CNG) in Bokaro, Hazaribag, Ramgarh, while the GAIL Gas Limited will do the same in Dhanbad and Giridih. Addressing the GAIL Gas limiteds (GGL) function in Dhanbad, state urban development minister said residents of Dhanbad and Giridih would get clean energy through PNG connections. Sindri fertilizer factory would also be benefited from the project. According to a press communique of IOCL, over 1.29 lakh domestic PNG connections and 129 CNG stations would be installed in five districts during a period of eight years up to September 2026, in addition to 1950 inch-km of steel pipeline. Talking to media in Dhanbad, GGL chief general manager, MP Mahto said, Besides industrial supply, the company will also provide PNG to 50,000 households under city gas distribution (CGD) project to Dhanbad and Giridih. GGL is hoping to begin supply of PNG to households by end of 2019. Besides, the company would also start 30 CNG stations in two districts. On supply to Sindri fertilizer plant, Mahto said, The upcoming fertilizer plant would require gas by 2021-22. A separate pipeline and gas stations would be set up for the purpose by that time. The 10th CGD bidding round, which was launched by the Prime Minister on Thursday, would cover Jharkhands Chatra, Palamu, Seraikela-Kharsawan, West Singhbhum, Deoghar, and Koderma districts, IOCL officials said. He has received requests from at least 100 candidates to campaign in their constituencies in Telangana, thanks to his oratorial skills. Anumula Revanth Reddy, the firebrand Congress working president in the state, draws huge crowds to his public meetings across Telangana, where has emerged as the partys star campaigner. Assembly election will be held in the state on December 7. Political analysts say he is a man to watch in Telangana politics. In an interview to Aurangzeb Naqshbandi, the 49-year-old Revanth Reddy, a former Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) activist and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) legislator, says chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) behaves like the owner and not custodian of Telangana. He is confident that the Congress will oust the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) from power in the December 7 state elections. You came to the Congress from the TDP and now the two rival parties have joined hands in Telangana. Why did you opt for the Congress? Perception is reality and reality is politics. It is a perception that TDP was formed on an anti-Congress plank. The situation demanded so. In fact, the two parties have done business in the past as well. The situation in the country is such that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and KCR are siblings in attitude, approach, decision-making and their mindset is dictatorial too. It is very unfortunate and dangerous to democracy. Our country is the largest democracy in the world. Modi and KCR both are a threat to democracy. On the other hand, Congress president Rahul Gandhi has emerged as the leader of the Opposition parties who is trying to do his best for all sections of the society and for the nation. He is not biased or power-hungry. And since we are more or less of the same age and our mindset is similar, I joined the Congress. I also wanted to take KCR head-on and for that the best platform is Congress, which gave Telangana (by pushing through the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh when it was in power) and respected the sentiments of the people. Critics call the TDP-Congress alliance unholy. Do you think it is good for Telangana? Definitely. I took the initiative for this alliance. In fact, I wanted to join hands with Rahulji and (TDP chief) Chandrababu Naidu in the national interest. From day one, I have not commented against TDP and Naiduji and am trying to ensure that the alliance succeeds. Read: Congress promises to waive crop loans, fill 1 lakh government jobs in a year in the state Are you confident that the Congress will upset the TRS calculations? There are only two players in Telangana. One is KCR and his friends BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM). The other platform is headed by Congress and this time there is no division or confusion among the voters. I am 100% confident that we will win the elections. What are your key campaign talking points? The basis of the Telangana movement was self-rule, self -respect, social justice and fair share of representation of all sections of the society. None of these exist in the KCR rule. Only one person and one family are ruling the state. Key portfolios are held by the KCR family members and his relatives are heading all the key departments. Telangana has been at the centre of many revolutions and movements and hence people keep a close eye on the top leadership. KCR thinks Telangana is his fiefdom with him as the king and his son the prince. He is arrogant and for the last 52 months, he came to the secretariat only 5-6 times. In the last three years, he has not gone there. KCR is behaving as the owner of the state. He is not accessible to even his cabinet colleagues, leave aside the people. Most of the time he stays in his farm house. He forgets that he is not the owner but a custodian of the state. Also Read: KCR promises pension hike if TRS retains power in Telangana But you have worked with him also. That time, we ignored some of his weaknesses simply because of the Telangana movement. We were not in politics then but mentally, emotionally and ideologically associated with the movement only and such things did not cross our minds. You called MIM a friendly party of TRS but the same MIM was also a part of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance. So, it is fine when you are with Congress but an enemy when you join a rival camp. There is no straight alliance in Telangana but strategic. MIM is supporting TRS, which is sailing with the BJP. KCR supported BJP on all crucial issues such as Goods and Services Tax (GST) and demonetisation besides presidential, vice-president and Rajya Sabha deputy chairman elections. Asaduddin Owaisi is asking Muslims to vote for TRS. When KCR is sailing with Modi, why is Owaisi supporting TRS? People have to think about it. Is Rahul Gandhi ready to lead the opposition in 2019? Definitely. It is the public demand. People need a strong leadership committed to social justice and development of the country with a vision for the nation. Modi is destroying all the institutions and it is time for Rahulji to take him head-on. Only he can bring all the opposition parties on one platform and lead them effectively. To know about election dates, major candidates and crorepati MLAs in Telangana, click here Is Congress united in Telangana? There might be different opinions but the ultimate goal and destination is one. Are you in the race for the chief ministers post? You can ask that to the Congress president and the state unit chief (N Uttam Kumar Reddy). I am a party loyalist. The Congress high command will take a call. We have 20-30 potential chief ministerial candidates. We have Jaipal Reddy, Jana Reddy, Uttam Kumar Reddy, Damodar Raja Narasimha, all deserving and eligible candidates, unlike TRS, which has only the KCR family. For complete coverage of Telangana Assembly Election 2018, click here BJP national general secretary P Muralidhar Rao on Friday attacked TDP president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu calling him anti-Telangana, while also slamming the Congress-TDP coalition for the December 7 state polls. The BJP leader alleged Naidus influence in any manner in Telangana is going to hurt the states development. In 2014 itself, the BJP understood the way he (Chandrababu) was functioning, that he is working against Telangana... we have suffered because of that and immediately we have distanced unilaterally and came out of that partnership, Rao told reporters in Hyderabad. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) had an alliance with the BJP during 2014 elections in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Read more: Vote share of parties in 2014 Attacking the Congress-TDP alliance, Rao said, Definitely, it will have serious implications and negative consequences for Telangana and its people. The BJP wants Chandrababu Naidu-mukt Telangana... we have become free from his influence... and we want to retain it. We will not allow any kind of this influence coming into Telanganas governance. The Congress has become covert to Chandrababu Naidu. For the BJP, the upcoming assembly elections in Telangana are very important in the context of the south, Rao said, adding We have a kind of ambition to expand in the south. We have an abiding commitment for development of Telangana. Rao also accused the TRS of failing to fulfil its promises and said anti-TRS campaigns will be taken up extensively by the partys national leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah, central ministers, chief ministers of BJP-ruled states, and over 100 public meetings will be organised in the coming days. The TRS and Congress are family first parties, while the BJP stands for nation first, he claimed. Read more: Telangana win map of 2014 Earlier, TRS president and caretaker CM K Chandrasekhar Rao had met Karnataka CM HD Kumaraswamy, and later Chandrababu and other Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) leaders also met Kumaraswamy. Tomorrow, if needed, they will come together. Vote for Congress is vote for TDP and TRS... all are one. BJP is the only party which has a distinct and uncompromising stand against TRS, the BJP leader said. For full coverage of Telangana elections, click here. The Congress party has focused on farmers and employees of the state government and is likely to promise regulation of liquor sale, ban on marriages of girls below 18 years of age, free electricity to places of worship in its manifesto for the December 7 assembly elections in Telangana. The 116-page manifesto will be formally released by former Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi at the public rally to be held at Medchal on the outskirts of Hyderabad on Friday. Former deputy chief minister and Pradesh Congress Committees manifesto committee chairperson Damodar Raja Narasimha said the manifesto would highlight 36 major promises to different sections of people. Waiver of all crop loans up to Rs 2 lakh in one spell, filling up one lakh government jobs within a year and an increase of retirement age of state government employees are some of the promises made by the party in its manifesto. Also Read: Telanganas Grand Alliance under strain as parties violate seat sharing deal They also include reimbursement of interest on loans taken from cooperative societies, financial assistance of Rs 5,000 per acre to each farmer twice a year towards agricultural investment, provision of minimum support price to 17 different produce, payment of allowance of Rs 3,000 per month to all those without a job and declaration of a calendar for recruitments through public service commission. The next Congress government vows to free people from the addiction of liquor. It is proposed that all liquor shops and pubs, permit rooms and belt shops will be regulated and controlled as per rules, according to a copy of the draft manifesto accessed by HT. Toddy will be encouraged to provide employment to toddy tappers and stern action will be taken against those involved in sale of Gudamba (locally-distilled illicit liquor), adulterated liquor and drugs, it said. The Congress is also likely to promise amending the Child Marriages Act, 2006 to ban marriage of girls below 18 years of age. The Congress will take all measures to protect the sanctity of all temples in Telangana. Small temples will be developed to provide all facilities to the devotees, the draft manifesto said, adding there is a need to take special care of priests through a comprehensive plan. The Congress also promised a payment of Rs 10 lakh to the families of those who had lost their lives during the second phase of the struggle for a separate statehood and pension to their eligible family members. The grand old party will also earmark 20% of the state budget to the education sector, implement a scheme to reimburse tuition fee to poor students and provide an assistance of Rs 5 lakh to eligible households towards housing and Rs 6 lakh to those from Scheduled Caste (SC) and Schedule Tribe (ST). Also Read: Pawan Kalyans Jana Sena not to contest Telangana polls It also promised to increase the retirement age of employees from 58 to 60 years, restoration of the old pension scheme in place of the contributory pension scheme and granting of weekly-offs to all police personnel in the state. The Congress has forged a grand alliance Peoples Front, or Maha Kootami, with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS) and Communist Party of India (CPI) to take on K Chandrashekhar Raos TRS in the December 7 elections to the 119-member assembly. Counting of votes will take place on December 11. For full Telangana elections coverage, click here The Congress on Thursday approached the Election Commission (EC) seeking withdrawal of pink ballot papers pasted on EVMs for the Telangana Assembly polls contending that the colour was associated with the ruling TRS and voters may get influenced. In its memorandum to the EC, the Congress pleaded for withdrawal of a direction to procure 9 lakh pink ballot papers for the December 7 Assembly elections. Pink is the official colour of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), it is synonymous with the party. The usage of pink coloured ballots without doubt, will give the TRS an undue advantage over other contesting parties, the Congress said in the memorandum. The EC is tasked with the conduct of free and fair elections under the Constitution. We are certain that it will agree as this is an important issue that needs immediate redressal. Party colours are of great significance for representation and its ideologies, inter alia, they also create a bias in the mindset of the voters, it said. Read more: List of Crorepati MLAs in Telangana The party also pointed out that during the recently concluded Greater Hyderabad Municipal polls, TRS had objected to the proposal of electronic voting machines having a pink button to designate the NOTA or None of the Above category vote, saying their voters would mistake the button for the TRS and press the NOTA button inadvertently. So great is the TRS association with the colour that they acknowledged the electoral harm that any confusion would cause them, said the Congress seeking immediate withdrawal of the direction to procure pink ballot papers. The state Congress has also challenged the decision before Chief Electoral officer Rajat Kumar. However, the states top poll panel official has said the pink-ballot papers pasted on EVMs were in accordance to the provisions of the Representation of People Act. A suicide bomb attack on a crowded festival and market in northwest Pakistans northwest killed at least 35 people on Friday and wounded 20, police said. The blast occurred at around the same time that three attackers tried to storm the Chinese consulate in Karachi. Two policemen and the three attackers were killed. The Karachi attack was claimed by a separatist insurgent group called the Balochistan Liberation Army, and did not appear to be connected to the attack on the market in the northwestern region of Orakzai. In Orakzai, a suicide bomber drove a motorcycle into a crowd attending a festival and market that attracts people from different religious communities, before detonating his explosives. No group claimed responsibility. Read: 3 suicide bombers attacked Chinese consulate in Karachi, killed It was a suicide blast at the festival that takes place every Friday, said Abbas Khan, the assistant commissioner of the district, told Reuters. Khan said that among the 25 dead were three members of the minority Sikh community and two security officials. The Geo television channel showed footage of military officials cordoning off the bomb site. Orakzai was formerly a semi-autonomous part of Pakistans ethnic Pashtun tribal area along the Afghan border. The region was for decades a refuge for Islamist militants fighting in Afghanistan, and more recently against the Pakistani state. The Pakistani military stepped up operations along the border in 2009 and has managed to clear some areas of militants. The tribal areas were incorporated into the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in May. President Donald Trump called on lawmakers to fund his proposed wall along the Mexico-U.S. border, a day after he said hed ordered parts of it closed. Republicans and Democrats MUST come together, finally, with a major Border Security package, which will include funding for the Wall, Trump said Friday on Twitter from his Palm Beach, Florida, club, where hes spending the weekend. The comment comes a day after the president said hed signed an order to close the U.S. border with Mexico, adding that hes authorized U.S. troops to use lethal force against migrants who attempt to enter the country. Also read | World is accountable, vicious place: Donald Trump disputes Saudi prince role in Khashoggi killing The White House hasnt released the order and Trump wasnt clear about what the directive entails. Before the midterm elections, in which Republicans lost control of the House, Trump ordered the military to reinforce the U.S.-Mexican border, and repeatedly warned voters about a so-called caravan of migrants making its way from Central America to the U.S. His critics called the deployment of thousands of troops a political stunt. You may also like | Thank you, but lets go lower, says Donald Trump as Saudi Arabia lowers oil prices Alex Wong/Getty Images(PALM BEACH, Florida) -- On Thanksgiving morning, President Donald Trump expressed his gratitude for American troops but also aired some of his political grievances. Sitting at a desk at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump spoke to leaders from all branches of the military in locations around the world. "Melania and I want to express our gratitude for the sacrifices you make to defend your nation while you are away from your family and loved ones. I hope you will take solace in knowing that all of the American families that you hold close to your heart are all doing well," Trump said. "The nation is doing well economically, better than anybody in the world. We are the hot nation of the world. Nice to know you are fighting for something that's doing well, and that's our country." The president teased a potential visit to Afghanistan during his call with troops there now and touted the work of troops deployed at the U.S. border with Mexico -- a deployment that has been criticized. "We have the military at the border for the first time. I don't know if it's ever or certainly there's never been a presence like this, but we have a very powerful border right now. We have the fencing and things people don't even believe. We took old broken wall and we wrapped it with barb wire," Trump said. "I guess you could really call it barb wire plus. This is the ultimate. Nobody is getting through these walls." While still on the phone with the troops in Afghanistan, the president called the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals a "thorn in our side" for blocking his administration's efforts to deny migrants if they seek asylum after entering from outside formal points of entry. "It's a terrible thing when judges take over your protective services, when they tell you how to protect your border. It's a disgrace," Trump said. Later, Trump told reporters he has a lot of respect for Chief Justice John Roberts, who criticized the president over his comments about the judiciary and faced a string of angry tweets from the president about the 9th circuit, but added "we have to use some common sense." After his calls, the president took questions from reporters on several topics, including Saudi Arabia and the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Just days after releasing a statement in support of Saudi Arabia in the wake of Khashoggi's death, the president continued to call Saudi Arabia a "strong ally" and said the CIA did not make any conclusions about whether or not Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the journalist's murder. "Nobody has concluded. I don't know if anybody is going to be able to conclude that the crown prince did it. But I will say this. I don't know. I don't know. But whether he did or whether he didn't, he denies it vehemently. His father denies it, the king, vehemently. The CIA doesn't say they did it. They do point out certain things. And in pointing out those things, you can conclude that maybe he did or didn't," Trump said. The president said he's not concerned with the message his arms deal with Saudi Arabia sends in the wake of Khashoggi's death and pointed to oil and the potential defense contracting jobs created by the deal. "Do people really want me to give up hundreds of thousands of jobs? And frankly, if we went by this standard, we wouldn't be able to have anybody as an ally because look at what happens all over the world," Trump said. "I hate what's done. I hate the cover-up. And I will tell you this. The crown prince hates it more than I do. And they have vehemently denied it. The CIA points it both ways. And as I said, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. I will say very strongly that it's a very important ally. And if we go by a certain standard, we won't be able to have allies with almost any country." Congress is demanding his administration provides an answer. On Tuesday, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, and Sen. Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey, sent a letter to the White House Tuesday evening to officially trigger an investigation into whether the young crown prince ordered the plot. The move sets up a showdown between Capitol Hill and the White House as members of both parties in Congress call on Trump to be tougher on Saudi Arabia. Copyright 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Armenias acting Minister of Culture Lilit Makunts will be dismissed in the near future, media reported. According to the Iravunk newspaper, the Armenian authorities have decided to first get rid of Lilit Makunts in the newly forming government, in case of successfully holding the snap parliamentary elections. "Moreover, they have in this position a more prepared new candidate, who has already begun to study the domain," the newspaper wrote, adding that the last hope of Makunts remains to become an MP, for which she has been nominated as a candidate. Turkey on Friday said US president Donald Trump intended to turn a blind eye to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggis murder after he said it would not affect Washingtons ties with Riyadh. Trumps backing of Saudi Arabia, his key ally against Iran, comes despite global outrage over the grisly October 2 killing that has tarnished the image of both the kingdom and its de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In one sense, Trump is saying I will turn a blind eye no matter what happens, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with CNN Turk broadcaster. This is not the right approach. Money doesnt mean everything, Cavusoglu said, referring to Trumps continued support for Saudi Arabia, which has committed billions of dollars in US weapons contracts. Trump on Tuesday glossed over the Central Intelligence Agencys reported conclusion that the crown prince had authorised the killing. Maybe he did and maybe he didnt! Trump said, implying Prince Mohammeds culpability in Khashoggis killing in the Saudi mission in Istanbul. Trump was widely pilloried for what critics called his mercantile priorities that made him appear more like a lobbyist for Riyadh. A former Saudi royal insider who became a critic of the crown prince, Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in what Riyadh -- after weeks of denial -- said was a rogue operation. The 59-year-old had gone there for documents he needed to marry his Turkish fiancee. Saudi Arabia has held 21 people in custody over the murder but shielded the powerful crown prince. Washington earlier this month placed sanctions on 17 Saudis, which also targeted the two top aides to the crown prince by freezing assets under US jurisdiction and forbidding US companies from doing business with them. The killing and Riyadhs explanations have angered its Western partners. Germany on Monday said Berlin would bar 18 Saudis from entering its territory and Europes Schengen passport-free zone over their alleged links to the murder. In October, Germany called for EU countries to follow its lead and suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, prompting a dismissive response from France, the kingdoms second-biggest customer after India. But Denmark on Thursday followed suit, freezing all sales of weapons and military equipment to Riyadh. Cavusoglu said artificial measures would not help solve the crisis. They (Europe) say they dont want to upset ties with Saudi Arabia. We do not want to upset our relations either, he said, but added Ankara would do anything to shed light on the murder. No obstacle Turkey insists the murder was premeditated, sharing evidence with Riyadh as well as with the US and Western allies but stops short of pointing the finger of blame at the prince. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the order came from the highest levels but not from King Salman. Ankara has not ruled out the possibility of a meeting between Erdogan and Prince Mohammed on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Argentina next week. We dont see any obstacle to a meeting with the crown prince, Cavusoglu said. If there is a request, there could be a meeting but our president will decide. The two men spoke on the phone in late October but that would be the first face-to-face encounter since the murder. Prince Salman on Thursday embarked on a regional tour starting with Riyadhs close ally United Arab Emirates, his first official trip since the killing. The prince is also set to travel to the Tunisian capital on Tuesday. Turkish pro-government media, which has often provided gruesome details of what happened to Khashoggi in a series of leaks maintaining pressure against Riyadh, speculated further on what happened to Khashoggis body. Sabah newspaper reported Khashoggi was first strangled using a bag over his head before Salah Muhammed Al-Tubaigy, a lieutenant-colonel in the Saudi forensic department, drained his blood in the bathtub before dismembering him. At least two policemen were killed when unidentified gunmen stormed the Chinese consulate in the Pakistani port city of Karachi on Friday, officials said. Karachi police chief told Reuters that three suicide bombers have also been killed in the attack, adding the Pakistani bombers used explosive filled vehicle in the Chinese consulate attack. A separatist militant group from the Pakistani province of Balochistan has claimed responsibility for the attack on the Chinese consulate, its spokesman told AFP on Friday. We have carried out this attack and our action is continuing, the spokesman for the Balochistan Liberation Army, Geand Baloch, told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location. Read: 17 killed in bomb blast in Pakistans Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, say police The group is at the centre of a major Chinese investment project in the country. The BLA is just one of the militant groups operating in Balochistan, Pakistans largest and poorest province, which is rife with ethnic, sectarian and separatist insurgencies. Up to four gunmen tried to enter the consulate but were intercepted by security guards at a checkpoint, senior local police official Javaid Alam Odho told AFP. An exchange of fire resulted killing two of our constables and critically wounding another, he said. He added that the attackers ran away but did not confirm if the attack was over, saying the area had been cordoned off and security forces were conducting a clearing operation. Police and Rangers have reached the site, added senior police official Pir Muhammad Shah. Pictures posted on social media purportedly of the attack showed smoke rising from the area. Karachi, Pakistans largest city and a financial hub, was for years rife with political, sectarian and ethnic militancy. A crackdown in the city by security forces in recent years has brought a lull in violence, but scattered attacks still take place. China, one of Pakistans closest allies, has poured billions into the South Asian country in recent years as part of a massive infrastructure project that seeks to connect its western province Xinjiang with the Arabian Sea. The project, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, is one of the largest projects in Beijings One Belt One Road initiative, comprising a network of roads and sea routes involving 65 countries. But for Pakistan, participating in the project presents an enormous challenge in a country plagued by weak institutions, endemic corruption and a range of insurgencies in areas slated to host the corridor. The subject of economic dividends from CPEC is extremely sensitive in some of the areas the corridor will run through -- particularly in resource-rich Balochistan. Since the beginning of the project militants have repeatedly attacked construction sites and targeted Chinese workers. Karachi, Pakistans largest city and a financial hub, was for years rife with political, sectarian and ethnic militancy. A crackdown in the city by security forces in recent years has brought a lull in violence, but scattered attacks still take place. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A fearless woman officer of Karachi Police, who was once abandoned by relatives in her village for joining a private school, on Friday saved the lives of many Chinese diplomatic staff when heavily-armed terrorists stormed the mission in the Pakistani city. Senior Superintendent Police Suhai Aziz Talpur led the security operation that foiled the brazen attack by members of the Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, in Karachi. She ensured the terrorists, armed with nine hand-grenades, assault rifles, magazines and explosives, did not reach the diplomatic staff inside the consulate building. Police said the terrorists were carrying food supplies and medicines, suggesting they had planned to take hostages. But as soon as they reached the gates of the consulate, the police team took positions and retaliated. Two police officials were killed in the gunfight in which all the attackers were also neutralised. Suhai hails from a lower middle-class family of Bhai Khan Talpur village in Tando Muhammad Khan district of Sindh province. She joined the police force after clearing elite Central Superior Services exam in 2013, The Express Tribune reported. Also read | Terror attack on Chinese consulate in Pak; Beijing sends strong message Family had to leave town When my parents decided to enrol me at a school, most of our relatives started taunting my family. So much so, that my family had to leave our village and move to a nearby town, she told the daily. Her father Aziz Talpur, a political activist and writer, always dreamt big for his daughter. My relatives cut off ties with me because I wanted Suhai to study as they were only in favour of religious education, Aziz told the daily. But I vowed to provide my daughter quality education. Suhai started her primary education at a private school in Tando Muhammad Khan and joined Bahria Foundation for her intermediate studies. Her educational path then led her to pursue B.Com from the Zubaida Girls College, Hyderabad in Sindh province. My family wanted me to become a chartered accountant but I found the job to be very dull as it had no social value, she said. That is when I appeared for CSS and cleared it in the first attempt. She credited her success to hard work and her upbringing. My parents are nationalists. As a child, they used to emphasise that I memorise Sindhi poetry. This developed my interest in literature and history, leading me to secure top marks in both the subjects in the CSS (Central Superior Services) exams. You may also like | 3 suicide bombers who attacked Chinese consulate in Karachi killed: Police Sri Lankan lawmakers opposed to new Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa took control of parliaments main committee on Friday after his supporters walked out, saying the house speaker was biased. Since his surprise appointment last month, Rajapaksa has twice lost confidence votes in parliament to lawmakers backing his predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has challenged his ouster as illegal. Wickremesinghe has refused to vacate the prime ministers official residence, while Rajapaksa, a former president who won a civil war against Tamil separatists rebels, has moved into the prime ministers office. Wickremesinghe loyalists have moved a motion to slash Rajapaksas budget on the grounds that his administration was illegitimate. On Friday, they insisted on a vote to approve a 13-member parliamentary committee that would conduct further business of the house. The Committee on Selection takes key decisions of the house and appoints other committees in the legislature that could determine the fate of the motion to curb Rajapaksas office expense. Lawmakers loyal to Rajapaska said the formation of the committee was illegal and they accused Speaker Karu Jayasuriya of being biased against them. They walked out of the chamber just as the composition of the committee was put to vote, leaving Wickremesinghe to win by a margin of 121 votes to nil in the 225-member house. The speaker is biased and he has disregarded all the parliament conventions, Wimal Weerawansa, a Rajapaksa loyalist. told the parliament before the group walked out of the chamber. Udaya Gammanpila, another Rajapaksa loyalist, said their party would refuse to accept Jayasuriya as the speaker. The political stalemate has dragged on for nearly a month since President Maithripala Sirisena sacked Wickremensinghe and appointed Rajapaksa in his place. Last week, lawmakers supporting Rajapaksa threw books, chili paste and water bottles at the speaker to try to disrupt a confidence vote. A vote on the motion to remove funding for staff salaries in Rajapaksas administration and other costs is set for November 29. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday ordered an inquiry into the attack on Chinas consulate in the coastal city of Karachi in which two policemen were killed. The Prime Minister has ordered a complete inquiry into the incident and has desired that elements behind this incident must be unearthed, Khans office said in a statement, adding that the attack was part of a conspiracy aimed at undermining economic and strategic cooperation between the two nations. Such incidents will never be able to undermine Pak-China relationship, the statement added. Neighbouring China is Pakistans closest ally, ploughing billions of dollars in loans and infrastructure investments into the South Asian nation as part of Beijings vast Belt and Road initiative. Saudi Arabia on Friday dismissed as baseless reports about torture and sexual harassment published by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia categorically and strongly denies the allegations made by them. The wild claims made, quoting anonymous testimonies or informed sources, are simply wrong, the ministry of media said in a statement. The rights groups accused Saudi Arabia on Tuesday of abusing several activists, including some female human rights defenders detained since May. The May arrests followed an earlier crackdown on clerics, intellectuals, and activists last year in an apparent bid to silence potential opponents of Saudi Arabias de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The torture allegations come with Saudi Arabia facing an international outcry over the killing last month of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Armed separatists stormed the Chinese Consulate in Pakistans Karachi on Friday, triggering an intense hour-long shootout during which two police officers and all three assailants were killed, Pakistani officials said. The brazen assault, claimed by a militant group from the southwestern province of Baluchistan, reflected the separatists attempt to strike at the heart of Pakistans close ties with major ally China, which has invested heavily into road and transportation projects in the country, including in Baluchistan. All the Chinese diplomats and staff at the consulate were safe and were not harmed during the attack or the shootout, senior police official Ameer Ahmad Sheikh said. Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the attack, describing it as part of a conspiracy against Pakistan and Chinas economic and strategic cooperation. Khan lauded the Karachi police and the paramilitary rangers, saying they showed exceptional courage in defending the consulate and that the nation salutes the martyrs. Khan ordered an investigation and vowed that such incidents would never be able to undermine relations with China, which are mightier than the Himalayas and deeper than the Arabian Sea. The attackers stormed the consulate shortly after 9 a.m., during business hours. They first opened fire at consulate guards and hurled grenades, then managed to breach the main gate and enter the building, said Mohammad Ashfaq, a local police chief. Pakistani security forces quickly surrounded the area. Local TV broadcast images showing smoke rising from the building, which also serves as the residence of Chinese diplomats and other staff. Multiple blasts were heard soon afterward but Sheikh could not say what they were. The shootout lasted for about an hour. Because of a quick response of the guards and police, the terrorists could not reach the diplomats, Sheikh said after the fighting ended. We have completed the operation, and a search is still underway to trace and capture all suspects. He added that one of the attackers was wearing a suicide vest and that authorities would try and identify the assailants through fingerprints. Dr Seemi Jamali, a spokeswoman at the Jinnah Hospital, said the bodies of two police officers were brought to the hospital morgue while one of the consulate guards who was wounded, is under treatment. Elsewhere in Pakistan on Friday, a powerful bomb at an open-air food market in the Orakzai region of the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan, killed 25 people and wounded at least 30, said police official. Most of the victims in the attack in the town of Klaya were minority Shiite Muslims. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing. Orakzai has been the scene of several militant attacks in recent years, mostly by Pakistani Sunni militants. In its claim of responsibility for the Karachi consulate attack, the Baluch Liberation Army, said it was fighting Chinese occupation and released photos of the three attackers. This was the second attack this year by Baluch separatists in Pakistan. Karachi, the capital of Sindh province, which borders Baluchistan, has a presence of several militant groups, including Baluch separatists. In August, a suicide bomber rammed into a bus ferrying Chinese workers to the Saindak mining project in southwestern Baluchistan, wounding five workers. The project is controlled by the Chinese state-owned Metallurgical Corporation of China. And in May , gunmen opened fire on two Chinese nationals in Karachi, killing one and wounding the other. Fridays attack was a brazen uptick in the level of violence perpetrated by the Baluch separatist, said Amir Rana, executive director of the independent Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies. So far this year, the Baluch Liberation Army has claimed responsibility for 12 attacks against security personnel guarding projects linked to the so-called Chinese Pakistan Economic Corridor as well as to the infrastructure. In a letter dated Aug. 15, the group released a letter warning China against the exploitation of Baluchistans mineral wealth and occupation of Baloch territory. The letter was addressed to Chinas ambassador to Pakistan. But, Rana said, both China and Pakistan have calculated the security risks, which include the threats from the Baluch separatist. I dont see that this will have any impact on the Chinese projects in Pakistan. These threats were already on Pakistan and Chinas threat radar, he said. China is a longtime ally and has invested heavily in transport projects in Pakistan. The two countries have strengthened ties in recent years and China is currently building a network of roads and power plants under a project known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC. The Baluchistan separatists have for years fought a low level insurgency in Pakistan, demanding a greater share of the provinces wealth and natural resources. Police say three people were killed and two others critically wounded in a late night shooting at a house in northeast Indiana. Officers who were called to the home on the south side of Fort Wayne about 10:30 pm on Thursday found four victims inside and one outside. Police spokesman Jason Anthony told The Journal Gazette that two males and a female victim were pronounced dead at the scene, while two male victims were taken to a hospital in critical condition. Authorities have not released the victims names. Police have not publicly identified any suspects in the shootings. About 20 relatives and friends of the victims gathered across the street from the home, which was cordoned off by caution tape. The house is located immediately south of Towles Intermediate School. The "flag" of the Karabakh occupants' puppet regime (so-called 'NKR') was removed from the Armenian stand at the 26th International Travel Show TT Warsaw. Thus, the anti-Azerbaijani provocation, aimed at presenting the occupied Azerbaijani territories as part of Armenia, was prevented. Visitors of the exhibition told Vestnik Kavkaza that the provocative 'NKR flag' was placed on the Armenian stand yesterday. The Azerbaijani Embassy in Poland was informed of the provocation. As you can see at the new photo of the stand, the 'flag' was removed. Vestnik Kavkaza recalls that any visit without the consent of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the occupied regions of Azerbaijan is considered as a violation of sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Azerbaijan and as a breach of national legislation, as well as relevant norms and principles of international law. Persons who enter these territories will be permanently banned from entering Azerbaijan and will be included on the list of "undesirable people." European politicians who think that days of liberal values are over are the biggest threat to the European Union, European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen said. "The rule of law and liberal democracy is under threat at the moment," Katainen said, calling it Europes "biggest internal threat." He added that todays populism is "not just normal populism." "I know there are people who think it is, but its not. Liberal democracy has never been under such attack since the collapse of the Soviet Union," Politico cited the European Commission Vice President as saying. France said on Thursday it had imposed sanctions, including travel bans, on 18 Saudi citizens linked to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and said more could follow depending on results of an investigation, The Globe and Mail reported. The foreign ministry did not name the individuals but said in a statement that the move was in coordination with European partners, notably Germany. Berlin on Monday also banned 18 Saudis and moved to halt all arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The bans bind all members of the European Unions passport-free Schengen zone, it said. The murder of Mr Khashoggi is a crime of extreme gravity, which moreover goes against freedom of the press and the most fundamental rights, the ministry statement said. France expected a transparent, detailed and exhaustive response from Saudi authorities, it said. These are interim measures that may be reviewed or extended depending on the progress of ongoing investigations, it said. Pipeline 20 November 2018 ONYX Hospitality Group, one of the region's leading hotel management companies, has a management agreement with Laos-based Asia Investment, Development & Construction Sole Co,Ltd. (AIDC), to develop a new-build Amari hotel in the city centre of Vientiane, the capital city of Laos. AIDC is an investment and construction joint venture led by Tang Charoen Group, developer of Amari Vang Vieng which opened early this year. Amari Vientiane will occupy a central Mekong Riverside location at the intersection of Quai Fa Ngum and Khun Bu Lom Roads, a short stroll to the city's popular 'night market street' and the Chao Anouvong Park. Vientiane's other top city centre attractions including the Patuxay Victory Monument, Lao National Museum and Wat Si Saket are easily accessible on foot or by tuk tuk or fixed-route shared jumbos. Featuring 250 rooms and suites in a 15-storey building, Amari Vientiane will offer all the key Amari brand signatures including service from Amari Hosts, the street market-style Amaya Food Gallery, Breeze Spa, creative meetings facilities and generous indoor and outdoor space thoughtfully designed for sharing and informal gatherings. Other facilities include a specialty restaurant, an outdoor pool and fully equipped fitness centre. JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. You should upgrade or use an You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.You should upgrade or use an alternative browser WWE's "Road to Wrestlemania" won't officially begin until after the Royal Rumble PPV in January, but the seeds have already been planted for some marquee matches come April. Among those is the champion vs champion bout between Ronda Rousey and Becky Lynch, which was originally scheduled to take place at Survivor Series last week. Lynch was pulled from the Survivor Series card after suffering a "broken face" at the hands of Nia Jax during SmackDown Live's staged invasion of Monday Night Raw. As a result, Charlotte Flair faced off against Rousey and the Lynch feud was put on the back burner for the time being. That said, the two champs have continued their war of words on social media, and now UFC star Conor McGregor has gotten into the mix. McGregor tweeted at his fellow Irish sister, "Call me when you need Proper back up." Lynch responded: "Cheers, Conor. Im carrying two divisions at the moment, but you know exactly how that is. I hear New York is nice in the spring, though." Of course, Wrestlemania 35 will be held at MetLife Stadium in 2019, which is why Lynch made sure to mention "New York is nice in the spring." As of now there are no official plans for the two Irish stars to team up at Wrestlemania, but this isn't the first time that McGregor has flirted with the idea of being involved in a WWE story line. At the very least, it wouldn't be surprising if he's ringside or even in Becky's corner for her rumored Wrestlemania showdown against Rousey. https://twitter.com/_/status/1065644632921513990 https://twitter.com/_/status/1065701948475752452 https://twitter.com/_/status/1065752262599942144 Lil Pump has a preferred wardrobe. It regularly consists of a Gucci tracksuit, lots of ice, and a bad attitude. Much like the majority of people living in the United States, the "Gucci Gang" star was celebrating Thanksgiving last night but instead of being grateful for his family, friends, or anything of the sort, he decided to shout out all of his ice, his stacks, his tracksuit, and eventually he got to his fans. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bqf8syxDFye The Florida native posted up in the bathroom as he yelled at the camera, wishing all of his supporters a happy Thanksgiving. As he held a blunt in his hand, he proclaimed, "I'm thankful for my Patek, I'm thankful for this chain with my face on it, I'm thankful for these shoes I got, I'm thankful for this Gucci suit I got on, I'm thankful for my 'Drug Addicts' chain, I'm thankful for these pounds I got on me, b*tch, I'm thankful for having you guys!" It seemed as though he might just run through all of his material possessions but finally, he got to something that actually matters: his fans. Pump may have been feeling a little sugar rush from the pumpkin pie before coming to his senses. The artist spent some time at a recent concert to advocate for 6ix9ine's release from prison, leading fans in a "Free 6ix9ine" chant. Unfortunately, Tekashi didn't get to spend the holiday with his daughter last night as he remains locked up. Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images If you compile a list of your favorite rappers, there's a very strong chance that the majority of them do not support Donald Trump or his politics. The current President of the United States has been the victim of much scrutiny in the hip-hop community as Ice Cube has released "Arrest The President" and YG dropped "FDT." It's safe to say that Trump is not loved by the music community. When it comes to Snoop Dogg, he hasn't been very secretive about where he stands in his politics. He does not like Trump and his most recent post goes to prove that fact even further. A few weeks ago, he was yelling outside of the White House as he smoked a blunt, sending a message to the most powerful man in the country. Now, he's taking a similar approach but he's ashing out his blunt on a statuette of Mr. 45. "My new ash trash," captioned the West Coast legend as he showed off his new possession: a miniature representation of Donald Trump that he's using to ash his blunts. His fans seem to find it amusing, praising him in the comments. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bqf7GNoBdyb The Doggfather recently received his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (it's about time!) thanking himself during his acceptance speech. What do you think of his Trump ashtray? You have $20 in your pocket and you can only take one rap album home with you. Which one will it be? Were a long way from where the days where one would have to line up outside record shops to grab the latest offerings in rap music. The biggest rap album battles found a way to transform their release dates into Major Events. Its a fascinating way to track the evolution of rap through history, some of these release dates forever serving an entry point of discussion amongst rap fans. Culled from thirty years of data, we present to you the ten most stacked release dates in rap album history...so far. June 28, 1988 - Public Enemy vs. Big Daddy Kane It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back / Long Live The Kane album covers Public Enemy and Big Daddy Kane were clairvoyant. Their 1988 releases It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back and Long Live The Kane predicated the future of rap by taking it into new directions unfathomed by fans and practitioners of the genre. Public Enemy looked to create a raucous document of their politicized rebel rousing, fueled by the Bomb Squad and Chuck Ds booming lyricism. Meanwhile, Kane transformed himself into your rappers favourite rapper: a smooth player who could rhyme like butter, a huge step beyond the schoolyard rhyme boasts from Run-DMC and LL Cool J and the next step towards modern rap acts such as Drake and Kendrick Lamar, showing just what the influence of great albums can do. September 13, 1988 - Ice-T vs. Eazy-E Eazy-Duz-It / Power album covers Besides Public Enemy and Big Daddy Kane, 1988 was a pivotal rap year thanks to NWA, Slick Rick, Eric B. & Rakim, Boogie Down Productions and Too $hort and far more. NWAs success meant more eyes would be focused on Eazy-Es first solo album Eazy-Duz-It, produced and written largely by his NWA bandmates, but Ice-Ts second album Power also showed just what the West Coast was like in 88. Both albums, featuring songs like Boyz-n-the-Hood, Im Your Pusher, and Ruthless Villain, showcased an aggressive Los Angeles with both Ice-T and Eazy-E scoring massive wins from fans and critics alike for their uncompromising portrayals of their worlds. November 24, 1992 - The Pharcyde vs. Kool G. Rap & DJ Polo Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde / Live and Let Die album covers Both of these albums came before a major shift in rap: namely, the release of the Chronic in December 92. In hindsight, Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde feels like a bizarre take on West Coast rap, sounding honest but goofy and refusing to be pigeonholed in any distinct trend going on at the time. Live and Let Die, on the hand, was a mafioso album through and through: its album cover as chilling as the lyrical content within. November 9, 1993 - Wu-Tang Clan vs. A Tribe Called Quest 36 Chambers / Midnight Marauders album covers In his book Mo Meta, Mo Blues, Questlove mentions the day he bought both 36 Chambers and Midnight Marauders, describing it as the end of rap's "innocence...and the last pure, unadulterated moments in the genre. In a lot of ways, he wasnt wrong Midnight Marauders signaled a sea change for rap and a temporary closing of the curtains for the Native Tongues ensemble: Tribe, De La Soul, Pharcyde and others all took a bow on high. Meanwhile, the rise of Wu Tang predicated the beginnings of a raw and revitalized New York sound. Capturing lightning in a bottle, 36 Chambers was a dense, chaotic piece of work, leagues different from the jazz rap Q-Tip, Phife Dawg and Ali Shaheed Mohammed was perfecting elsewhere. February 13, 1996 - 2Pac vs. Fugees All Eyez On Me / The Score album covers Were you a Killing Em Softly person or a California Love person? Both albums dropped by Fugees (The Score) and 2Pac (All Eyez On Me) were huge: the latter a massive comeback after Pacs 1995 prison sentence and the former released in response to the middling critical reception towards the Fugees first album Blunted on Reality. They were superstar statements with superstar hits The Score scored a Grammy for Best Rap Album while the sprawling force that was All Eyez On Me eventually went diamond. September 29, 1998 - Jay-Z vs. Outkast vs. A Tribe Called Quest vs. Black Star vs. Brand Nubian Vol 2... Hard Knock Life / Aquemini/ Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star / Foundation / The Love Movement album covers The day Jay, Outkast, Tribe, Black Star and Brand Nubian went head-to-head has been considered by some fans as one of - if not the sole - greatest release dates in rap history. It was the last release date record stores could probably enjoy before the Internet changed everything. Tower Records employees treated it like the second coming of Titanic. Then there were the albums themselves; Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star, the beloved underground act making a major splash. Jay had released Vol 2... Hard Knock Life, cementing his place in the upper echelons of rap superstardom. Meanwhile, Outkast had dropped Aquemini, which pushed their progressive. Both acts signified a transition into a new era where rap albums were treated with as much attention and reverence as blockbuster pop releases. It helped that aging acts such as Tribe (The Love Movement) and Brand Nubian (Foundation) were by no means ready to let go of the spotlight, both releasing albums that made strong arguments for their continued success. September 11, 2007 - Kanye West vs. 50 Cent Graduation / Curtis album covers This matchup between Kanyes Graduation and 50s Curtis was big enough that both ended up in Rolling Stone about it (its worth noting that both Jay-Zs The Blueprint and Fabulous Ghetto Fabulous dropped on this day six years earlier), vowing for supremacy with their first week numbers. Both rappers had no problem playing up the stakes, with 50 going as far as threatening to quit entirely if he didnt win. The reality is both rappers won. Certainly, Graduation felt incredibly futuristic but Curtis was street music done well and while Ye snagged first place with a first week result of 957,000 copies sold to Fif's 691,000 copies, both rappers understood the merits of making it feel more than just a release date. In many ways, this match-up is the start of fandoms obsession with first-week sales numbers truly began; 50 and Kanye weaponized one of the ways fans debated about rap albums. June 18, 2013 - Kanye West vs. Mac Miller vs. J. Cole Yeezus / Born Sinner / Watching Movies with the Sound Off album covers Kanye spared no turn with promoting Yeezus, his first proper solo album in three years; premiering new music on building projections across the country, appearing on Saturday Night Live, even going as far as recording American Psycho homages. Coming off debut Cole World: The Sideline Story, J. Cole was eager to throw himself into the fracas, pushing his album release date back and even going as far as mentioning it in song, telling people it was less about the disrespect and more about making a statement. In hindsight, he had nothing to worry about: Born Sinner made it to 2 on the Billboard 200, only falling short by an estimated 40,000 copies to Yeezus. Meanwhile, Mac Millers Watching Movies With The Sound Off comfortably slid into third. December 9, 2016 - Ab-Soul vs. J. Cole vs. Post Malone vs. Tech N9ne Do What Thou Wilt. / 4 Your Eyez Only / Stoney / The Storm album covers July 2015 saw a pivotal change album release dates were shifted from Tuesdays to Fridays on a global basis. Fridays began to feel like blockbusters as acts major and underground alike battled for attention with their slate of new releases. One night in December saw the releases of new projects by Ab-Soul (Do What Thou Wilt.), J. Cole (4 Your Eyez Only), Tech N9ne (The Storm) and an emerging Post Malone (Stoney). (Honorourable mention goes to Odd Future lieutenant Hodgy who dropped the formidable Fireplace: The NotTheOtherSide.) And with Injury Reserve, Kid Cudi and T.I. following closely the next week and a Yasiin Bey project, that winter was a great one for rap fans. August 3, 2018 - Mac Miller vs. Travis Scott vs. YG Astroworld / Swimming / Stay Dangerous album covers June 2018 was stacked thanks to a slate of blockbuster rap releases the run of G.O.O.D Musics Wyoming albums, Drakes Scorpion and for a brief flash, so did the Carters with Everything is Love. Its wild to suggest that we would have to wait just another month for anything closely resembling it but August 3 felt like a gasp of breath thanks to three monster releases from YG, Travis Scott and Mac Miller. Fans had been waiting on Astroworld for years and Travis Scotts acid-soaked tribute to Houston seemed fitting. Every YG release feels like a triumphant celebration and thanks to reuniting with DJ Mustard, Stay Dangerous succeeded at being an engaging callback to YGs mixtape era. Then theres Swimming - a now bittersweet note for Mac Miller but an enlivening one nevertheless. What epic rap album release dates were you most excited for? Bob Patel, chairman and CEO of Houston petrochemicals maker LyondellBasell, joined the company in 2010 after 20 years at Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. At the time, LyondellBasell had been in bankruptcy for more than a year, fighting to restructure after a leveraged buyout in 2007 that merged Lyondell Chemical of Houston and Basell of the Netherlands. He helped consolidate and reorganize operations in the U.S. and Europe as the company worked to boost the capacity of its plants along the Gulf Coast as hydraulic fracturing in West Texas took off, unleashing a steady stream of low-cost natural gas feedstock for petrochemicals production. When he became chief executive in 2015, he crafted a more ambitious growth strategy to answer the key question on the minds of the companys board and shareholders: Whats next? The plan crossed a major milestone this year with the companys $2.25 billion purchase of Ohio plastics maker A. Schulman, its first major acquisition since the bankruptcy. It also began construction on a $2.4 billion plant in Channelview, its largest to date. Q: What were some of the challenges of rebuilding this company after it emerged from bankruptcy? A: It was a ton of risk I took at the time to join a bankrupt company. I didnt know when we would emerge. We had a lot of restructuring work to do, but we were able to complete the restructuring fairly quickly. We could see shale gas coming and asked ourselves how we could take advantage of it. To build new plants was not possible, so we chose incremental de-bottlenecks to increase production capacity at our existing plants. If you fast-forward to January of 2015, when I became CEO, we were a very successful company, but at the time, we still didnt have the capability to build or buy. We worked to build up the resources to build new plants. We also didnt have any active M&A projects. We have tons of experience in that, but we needed experience in the front end of the transaction in putting a deal together. Q: LyondellBasell is now building major projects in La Porte and Channelview, and its considering building another along the Gulf Coast in the coming years. Do you see physical expansion as a key part of the companys growth strategy? A: Were doing this because it will make us a stronger and more competitive company for the long term. Were not doing it just so we can get bigger; bigger doesnt necessarily make you better. But when you invest based on having a technology advantage, or a feedstock advantage, and you build where you have existing infrastructure, then you start to become more competitive. When I became CEO, I wanted to make sure we had a strategy where we were going to build new plants very regularly. If we were only going to do one or two, thats not something you want to staff up for and then have to demobilize on the other side and have a bunch of layoffs. Having a multi-decade strategy with a steady pace of organic growth was very critical. My first 18 months was about that, making sure we developed a thoughtful strategy. Then it was about getting the stakeholders to agree on that long term plan. Q: Whats your strategy when it comes to M&A? A: M&A is opportunistic by its very nature. First of all, it has to fit our strategy. We are a commodity chemical company, and we are not confused about that. Sometimes, a company want to be in specialties and commodities, and for us, what weve concluded is you cant really do both well. We are very comfortable with competing in the commodity chemicals space, but what that takes is a very intense operational focus. You have to have best safety record, youve got to have great operational reliability, and youve got to watch your costs all the time because its a cyclical business. If you know what it takes to be a winner in the space, then the opportunistic part of M&A becomes more clear. You know what youre solving for. Then I ask myself, after all of the strategic questions, can we run the assets better than the current owner? We want what I call good bones. We want really good assets. Q: How do you expect the the trade war with China, as well as the tariffs on aluminum and steel imports, to affect your industry? A: You can think about it in two time frames. In the near to medium term, I think the impact will be minimal. Trade patterns could shift. For example, if one of our products is being exported from here to China and that product will now have a 25 percent tariff, it could be that the customer in China will import it from somewhere else. If they go to another source, theyll likely have to pay more. I think that one of the implications here is that the cost of some these things in China will go up incrementally. Longer term, as we think about building new plants here in the U.S., I think one of the things we have to factor in is if were building for exports and the drive for global demand is coming from China, we would consider whether this is the right place to build for the next plant. Steel costs will also rise as a result of the tariffs. If our plant costs 3 to 5 percent more to build because of the higher costs of steel, we have to factor that into our thinking. One of my concerns longer term is that the tariffs could offset some of the advantage we enjoy with cheap natural gas in the U.S. It could sort of normalize that, and all of a sudden, its not as much of an advantage. No one calls Pablo Picasso or Mark Rothko men artists. So why classify Louise Nevelson and Dorothy Hood as women artists? The same goes for Elsa Gramcko, Mercedes Pardo, Gego, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Leslie Hewitt, Suzan Frecon, Niki de Saint Phalle and more than a dozen other artists whose work is hanging this season in shows at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston or the Menil Collection. Not that this signifies some year of the woman. More needs to be done; but its progress. At a number of museums across the U.S., art by women has a stronger presence this season, part of a concerted effort by curators to build a more true, complete and inclusive narrative of art history than the version dominated by white men that has persisted for centuries. Theres been a flurry of retrospectives featuring women in their 60s or older as well as historical figures, especially at small and mid-size museums. Kindred Spirits: Louise Nevelson and Dorothy Hood at the MFAH is not that; its more narrowly focused on affinities between two powerhouses one a sculptor, the other a painter who struggled to be recognized. Although Nevelson was 20 years older, she got a later start, so their careers dovetailed. Both were interested in the spiritual values of art, delving into concepts about shadowy voids. Both adapted Surrealist and Cubist influences into high Modernism. Both spent time in Mexico and knew Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Hood will never have a retrospective on the scale of 2016s The Color of Being in her hometown of Houston. That show filled almost every gallery of the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi. But Kindred Spirits illuminates her work in other ways, and the show is dominated by her large canvases, if you dont count Nevelsons monumental Mirror Image I, which the museum commissioned in 1969 when it gave a 70-something Nevelson one of her first retrospectives. The ambitious Hood was teaching then at the museums school and likely studied Mirror Image I closely. I wish I could find a snapshot of Hood standing next to it. That would make my day, curator Alison De Lima Greene said. In the shows wall text, Greene describes Hood and Nevelson together as independent women, ardently committed to assuming leading roles at the forefront of the American vanguard. Greene said she wanted to juxtapose Hood with another artist to place her work in a larger and more elevated context. Hood, the queen of Houstons art scene from the 1960s to the 1980s, could never get the traction she wanted nationally, but Greene said she didnt want to present her as a frustrated woman. She did voice her frustrations often. She wanted to know why she didnt have a solo show at MoMA that she deserved. But she accomplished so much, and I wanted that to be the story. Hood once complained that shed never get out of the basement at the MFAH, where the school was then located. Some of her fans have sniped that Kindred Spirits keeps her there; the show resides downstairs in the Beck building, across from the MFAH Cafe. Oh, please, Greene said. The video show in here had 90,000 visitors. We can count on a minimum of 30,000-40,000 with every show we put in here. Greene has maintained a balanced viewpoint throughout her long career at the MFAH, championing women somewhat quietly, inserting them where she could without making a fuss. She points to recent acquisitions of major works by Wangechi Mutu, Julie Mehretu, Kara Walker and Magdalena Abakanowicz. Greene said when shes weighing additions to the museums collection, A lot of times I first think artist and then look at the second level of questions. But one could count Greene among the nations first curators schooled in feminist art history. She was a student at Vassar College in the early 1970s when professor Linda Nochlin, whom she calls her greatest mentor, wrote the seminal essay Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? That essay illuminated a plethora of institutional barriers women faced from the 16th to 19th centuries they were not allowed to take nude-figure-drawing classes at academies, for example, which cut them out of the most basic schooling and it remains a foundation of discourse in art history. That fired up the conversation, and thereve been waves of it ever since, Greene said. Its that kind of moment now, with the shifting political landscape. Upstairs at street level in the Beck building, curator Mari Carmen Ramirez proudly pointed out that the list of 40 artists in her show Contesting Modernity: Informalism in Venezuela, 1955-1975 includes a number of women thats extraordinary by any standard of the period. I counted eight, which is less than a fourth of the shows artists. But their works make up about a third of a show thats groundbreaking for multiple reasons.Contesting Modernity is devoted to the richly expressive Informalist art movement that has been virtually unknown outside Venezuela. These artists worked during a tumultuous time of social repression and violence, when oil-rich Venezuela was transitioning from a dictatorship to democracy; but they also shared post-war existentialist angst with others across the international art world, Ramirez said. This new generation was rebelling against rationality and order, trying to redefine the mediums of painting, drawing and other forms into something else. The surface of the work became the battleground. Though the show is arranged thematically, one of the five sections is devoted to the rediscovery of a single, largely self-taught artist Elsa Gramcko, whose timeless and evocative work with found materials such as car parts puts her in a class of her own. Gramcko, who died in 1994, clearly deserves a place among the Nevelsons and OKeeffes. Next spring, the MFAH celebrates a great living female artist with a solo show for photographer Sally Mann. A mile or so away at the Menil Collection, which unveiled its newly redone galleries in September, senior curator Michelle White has significantly equalized the displays, aiming to put works by powerhouse women on equal footing with the giants of the male canon. Though the Menils curators respect founder Dominique de Menils ethos, for about five years now they have been intent on correcting for her prejudice against collecting works by women. When they conducted an internal assessment of the museums modern and contemporary art collection in 2013, they found that the museum owned only 74 works by women. Propelled by recent acquisitions, that number now stands at 233 objects. Granted, thats still less than a tenth of the collections objects by men, but its progress and the disparities dont look so obvious in the galleries. Leslie Hewitt gets a room to herself as the first solo artist featured in the Menils Contemporary Focus room, where Mineko Grimmer will also be featured soon. Dorothea Tanning will soon have the solo spotlight of the Collection Close-Up room, which opened with a show of Claes Oldenburgs Maus projects. Roni Horn will have the second show at the new Menil Drawing Institute gallery, which opened with Jasper Johns. And four of the six major exhibitions coming between next fall and 2022 include or are singularly focused on work by women. Major museums farther up I-45 have been more proactive than Houstons, generally. Last weekend, the Dallas Museum of Art unveiled the first solo museum show for Ida Ten Eyck OKeeffe, Georgias neglected sister. It recently featured a show by the Guerrilla Girls, and has two other shows coming soon: Women Artists in Europe from the Monarchy to Modernism opens in December. Berthe Morisot, Woman Impressionist arrives in late February, just before the MFAH presents a big, crowd-pleasing Vincent Van Gogh show. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth has a major survey by Laurie Simmons up through late January. It wasnt yet open when I visited in early October, but numerous masterpieces by modernist women populated the walls of the permanent collection galleries. Locally, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston has been the most inclusive since its inception about 70 years ago, also highlighting many artists of color and queer artists. In January, the CAMH presents a survey of works by contemporary multimedia artist Cheryl Donegan. And earlier this year, the Station Museum of Contemporary Art gave a major posthumous show to underknown Cuban printmaker Belkis Ayon. With all of this brewing, last week I posed the question, Are museums doing enough for women artists? on Facebook. About a dozen members of Houstons art community responded, pretty fervently, No. Sculptor Cindee Klement was among them. Her final project this fall for the two-year Block program at the Glassell School of Art was the large-scale piece Its a Movement, which consists of about a dozen overlapping figures headless, modern ballerinas rendered in wire designed to cast shadows so that they appear to be multiplying and marching off the wall. As a sort of performative gesture, she also distributed an infographic published by the National Museum of Women in the Arts a page of disturbing statistics from various sources. They havent been updated in a while, but one of the most telling is this nugget from the Art Newspaper: Of 590 major exhibitions by nearly 70 institutions in the U.S. from 2007-2013, only 27% were devoted to women artists. Its a Movement is the third piece Klement has created about womens marches since she happened upon some worn leather side-saddle parts at a Houston antiques shop several years ago and cast them in bronze. She never intended to make political art, she said, but at 61, Im just trying to go with what comes to me. On the plus side locally, a majority of Houston art leaders are women, including Menil director Rebecca Rabinow, DiverseWorks Xandra Eden, Lawndale Art Centers Stephanie Mitchell, Art League Houstons Jennifer Ash, the Moody Centers Alison Weaver and Mitchell Centers Karen Farber. (The CAMH and Blaffer Art Museum are currently searching for new directors.) Eden, speaking in general terms, said some museums are doing a much better job than others. It amazes me that we havent moved the needle forward much in my lifetime, she said, despite all that I and my colleagues have done to encourage change. Museum shows take years to materialize. But Greene suggested that at least todays artists dont have the time-consuming burden of becoming fascinating figures on top of producing great art. Hood, Nevelson, Kahlo and even Georgia OKeeffe cultivated larger-than-life personalities out of necessity, she said. And thats still part of their mystique. The Brooklyn Museums 2017 show Living Modern illustrated how OKeeffe used her lifestyle to craft her public persona. Greene sounded indignant, remembering it. Can you imagine a show of clothes worn by Arthur Dove or Al Stieglitz? molly.glentzer@chron.com Georgia's Patriarch Ilia II urged two presidential candidates to worthily meet victory or the failure in the second round of elections. "I am happy that I see ministers, presidential candidates in the cathedral on the Saint Georges day," Agenda.ge cited him as saying. The Georgian Patriarch expressed confidence that presidential candidates will meet both victory and failure similarly. "The one who will win should not think that he/she is better than others. I am sure that you will stand together and help each other," Ilia II said and handed the icons of Saint George to the candidates. The presidential election runoff is scheduled on November 28. The Georgian Dream endorsed presidential candidate Salome Zurabishvili and the opposition candidate Grigol Vashadze will run in the second round of elections, as none of them were able to receive more than 50% of votes in the first round on October 28. It all started with a news headline. It was back in 2013, and the Lone Star State had just hit a morbid milestone, executing its 500th inmate in the modern era of capital punishment. Mark Menjivar, then living in San Antonio, saw the story forwarded by a friend, and it shook him. So he started exploring the topic, reading more and figuring out how to fashion the darkest parts of criminal justice into meaningful art. Now, five years later, hes done a handful of projects, exhibitions and displays about capital punishment. Most recently, hes completed a pair of archival pieces, including one currently on display in the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston exhibit Walls Turned Sideways. That piece, DLP, is a photographic ode to a death row inmate whos since been executed. Mounted on the wall below a listing of items, the piece shows all of the objects left behind in condemned killer David Lee Powells cell after his 2012 execution. As a complement to that, Menjivar also put on a one-night artistic event, dubbed Open Letters. There, to a small crowd at Rothko Chapel, the San Antonio-based artist read a letter from a current death row prisoner Rickey Cummings. Afterward, he asked the audience to respond, discuss and share feedback in a recorded conversation he had transcribed and sent to Cummings. While he works to replicate the Open Letters project elsewhere in the coming months, Menjivar took time to talk with the Chronicle about the art event and the news stories behind it. Q: So first of all, what got you started on the path to this project? A: The thing that really started it for me was when in 2013 the state of Texas executed its 500th person. I was just really shocked and moved by that number, and I had two young sons and it was like, How do I explain capital punishment to them? And I had a lot of questions but I didnt feel like I knew a lot about it. So I reached out to the International School of the Americas and started working with 30 high school students for one year and really looking at capital punishment from diverse perspectives. Q: But it was a few more years before you actually got started on what became your latest project and I understand this part of the story involves some inspiration from Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Elsa Alcala? A: It does. There was an article in the Austin American-Statesman in 2015 that quoted her basically saying that she was really troubled by capital punishment in the state of Texas. Sorry, it was in 2016 and in the end of the article, there was a quote where she said she would just deal with cases as they come but that she wouldnt let any political pressure influence her in any way, and she said she wanted, basically, for people to think about the death penalty because its complicated and requires deeper thought. That article kind of really spurred me on to jump back in, and thats when I reached out to the Texas After Violence Project, and Im actually an artist-in-residence with them. Q: And in the course of all this, you developed two archival projects, including the one on display at CAMH can you tell me about those? A: The Execution Files has over 900 execution files for everybody on death row from 1922 to 1985, and they were compiled for a book, The Rope, The Chair, The Needle. And I have created a traveling exhibition from that archive. And the second is the Powell cell. Its a kind of portrait of David, if you think of an unconventional portrait of somebody. You can see the things David lived with for 32 years hes the longest person to be on death row thats been executed. Q: How did all that lead up to the Rothko Chapel event? A: As I was spending time with these objects of people who had been executed, the question that came into my head was: What would these people say if they were still with us? I quickly realized we have over 200 people currently on death row so I wrote prisoners on death row and asked them to write open letters to the public. Q: Have you gotten feedback from victims families? A: I have not. My intent is not in any way to be disrespectful to victims families and the trauma that theyve experienced. But I think that that is separate from the execution and what happens there. Q: In the years that youve been doing this capital punishment-focused work, have you seen any shift in public attitudes toward it or level of interest in it? A: Im an artist Im not a survey taker or politician. I find that most of the time when I talk to people, I find that they havent thought that deeply about it. Q: What, of the things youve learned in looking at the death penalty, has surprised you the most? A: One of the most surprising things about writing with individuals on death row was realizing how complex their lives are Rickey and I have exchanged probably four different letters just about patriarchy and what does it mean to be a male in society and to raise boys in society. Those were not the kind of conversations I was expecting to be having. keri.blakinger@chron.com If anyone dreams in glittery color, its Johnson Hartig, the founder and creative director of Libertine. Hartig launched the quirky Los Angeles-based fashion brand in 2001. His ready-to-wear collections are bright, creative, crazy and fun, mixing art and graphics into wearable art. His celebrity fans include everyone from Anna Wintour and Karl Lagerfeld to Cher and Taylor Swift. He even created an affordable collection for Target in 2007. Next year, hes set to create a luxury-apparel line to honor late guitarist Jimi Hendrix to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the musicians Electic Ladyland album. The apparel will be sold at Los Angeles Fred Segal Sunset. On a recent visit to Neiman Marcus Galleria, Hartig talked about the growth of his cult brand, his love for rescue dogs and how he comes up with his wacky color and print mixes. Q: Ive heard your clothes described as joyful clothes. Do you agree? A: I hear that a lot, too, and Im really glad to have the clothes associated with joy. I get told all the time from customers that even on the dreariest days, they sort of uplift your spirit. They are also great for starting conversations, which often lead to new friendships, which is joyful. Yeah, theyre colorful, theyre shiny, theyre interesting, theyre witty, theyre smart and all of those things. And I do think they are joyful. Q: Would you call yourself a designer or an artist? More Information Theme song: " Smash it Up" by The Dammed See More Collapse A: I guess Id call myself both. I studied painting and drawing in school, and I could have gone in lots of directions, but fashion is what I fell into. I am a designer, but I am still an artist in my heart. I still practice my art all the time. Q: How did you decide on the name Libertine? A: I was watching a documentary on PBS about Mozart, and at one point, the emcee said, Mozart was a true Libertine. And I thought, Oh, perfect name. Its free thinking and sexual deviant. All the things we love. (Editors note: By definition, libertine means one who acts without moral restraint, a dissolute person or freethinker.) Q: Is there a pattern or color that you wont put together? A: No. Weve done this for 17 years now, mixing the craziest things together. Its a trend now, but its in my DNA. I always say my fashion education was Style with Elsa Klensch on CNN in the 80s. And my favorites were always Christian Lacroix and Emanuel Ungaro, who were called the mix masters. They put patterns and colors together that clashed, and I think, really, I learned from the best. Q: Not everyone can pull off the mixes, so who is your client? A: My client is older than one would expect. The clothes are very expensive and prohibitive to some. Very sophisticated, world travelers, major art collectors and women who appreciate having something that theyre not going to see themselves coming and going. Our production is tiny compared to a corporate designer. Were a small boutique company, and we have the most discriminating, chicest women in the world as our clients, so were so lucky. Q: How do you keep it fresh and evolving? A: Its hard. I travel a lot. Im inspired by different cultures, and by the planet, and by nature, and by art. I take three major trips a year. My last one was to China and Tibet. Im going to Myanmar next month, and London and Bath this month. If I have to be somewhere like Paris on business, Ill add on Cairo, Egypt. Ill add on Uzbekistan. Im dying to get to Uzbekistan to see their handcrafted textiles. Thats how I keep it fresh. Q: With the holidays, many people try to find ways to give back. How do you do it? A: We have a program at Libertine where we bring a group of kids in from underserved communities and tour them through Libertine and hopefully get them excited about their creativity. They all do a painting or silkscreen a shirt that they get to take home with them. Its one of the joys to be able to give back the creativity that if I had had as a kid, maybe this all would have happened earlier for me. Q: What has been the best advice youve received? A: Just trust my instincts and know that I have something really important to offer. It took me a long time to understand that. I didnt always have a lot of confidence. But Ive seen every major brand be inspired by my little brand now. I know that Im onto something and that I have the most loyal devoted customers of any brand that I know. Ive tapped into a little niche market, and I am a really lucky person because it doesnt happen to very many of us. Q: What brings you joy? A: Rescue dogs. We do a lot with rescue dogs. joy.sewing@chron.com This months midterm elections resulted in the election of more openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people than ever before. But for Cross Coburn, who served as an openly gay councilman in a small Texas city, it was a day of bitter defeat. He was ousted in a recall election on Nov. 6, nine months after he was told that City Hall had received an anonymous package of nude photos that Coburn had sent in private messages on a dating app. Those photos were later sent to the local news media, after which supporters of a petition to remove him questioned whether he fit the moral standards of the city. I regret that it got out, but I will never regret being human, said Coburn, who served about one year of a two-year term. I do not believe that me having consensual conversations with another adult has any merit to how I can perform my duties. Coburn, 19, ran uncontested for the nonpartisan position last year and supported liberal policies in Groves, Texas, a conservative community of about 16,000 people near the Louisiana border. I did want to give back to this place that raised me, Coburn said. He said he had encountered sexual bias while growing up in Groves and was regularly bullied by other children. As the petition and recall campaign against him built, Coburn said, he thought he was being targeted by religious conservatives because of his sexuality. Chuck Smith, chief executive of Equality Texas, an advocacy group focusing on LGBT issues, said the recall result was sad, especially in contrast to the success of LGBT candidates nationwide. Someone organized the equivalent of a tar-and-feathering to get him removed from office, Smith said. Sex scandals, particularly those involving explicit photographs, have long led to the downfall of politicians. Eric Greitens, the former governor of Missouri, resigned earlier this year after he was accused of taking an explicit photograph of a woman he was having an affair with without her permission, and threatening to make the photograph public if she told anyone about him. Last year, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, announced that he would not run for re-election this year after a sexually explicit photograph of him was posted by an anonymous Twitter account. At the time, Barton suggested he was a potential victim of a crime under the states revenge pornography law. Coburn is now formally challenging the outcome of his recall election, filing a complaint in the District Court of Jefferson County that alleges, in part, that some signatures on the petition were forged. He has also asked the state attorney general to look into that allegation; a spokeswoman for the office said she could neither confirm nor deny an investigation. He said he believed he had been blackmailed through the dating app, and that Mayor Brad Bailey and Councilman Kyle Hollier helped orchestrate the recall effort. Bailey did not respond to requests for comment about Coburn. I think you should be held to a higher position up here and his track record speaks for itself, he told reporters in September, according to Texas Monthly. Reached by email, Hollier said his only comment was the voters of Groves have spoken. Coburn was elected to the City Council in 2017 after the incumbent councilman unexpectedly withdrew from the race, saying that a contested election would be too costly for the city, according to The Port Arthur News. Nothing seemed amiss during his first few months in office, he said, but in February he was summoned to a meeting with Bailey because of a personal matter. At that point I was confused, Coburn said. I was a little shocked. I didnt know what he meant. At the meeting, Coburn said, Bailey produced a manila envelope that he said had been anonymously mailed to City Hall. It contained screenshots of a conversation Coburn had with another man on the dating app Grindr, along with nude photos of Coburn. Coburn said that he does not know who received the photos he had sent on Grindr, and that any identifying information on the screenshots received by the city had been edited out. According to Coburn, Bailey indicated that he could choose to resign, or that the city could initiate an unspecified investigation. Days later, the mayor directly asked Coburn if he would resign. He said no. Soon Coburn started getting calls from the local news media. Someone had sent them the photos. Coburn found himself on the defensive, and he apologized. At this point I dont know what I apologized for, Coburn said. It was on a private dating app. I really dont have anything to apologize for. But I was apologizing that it was brought up in the first place. According to Texas Monthly, the photos were sent to the news media shortly after the city attorney had suggested in an internal email that only citizens could remove Coburn, via a recall election. A resident soon started the petition, which received more than 900 signatures. In the recall election on Nov. 6, just over 2,400 Groves residents voted in favor of removing Coburn, about 62 percent of the total votes cast. Bailey was narrowly re-elected in his race. On Friday, Coburn said the fight was far from over, pointing in part to his complaint, but also to what he called a renewed political vigor from the experience. It has given me a sense of duty, he said. This article originally appeared in The New York Times Overruling a Kerr County judge in a decision issued on Wednesday, the state's highest criminal court rejected an appeal from a death row inmate who was the getaway driver in a botched robbery. Jeff Wood never fired a shot during the 1996 Texaco heist, but he was still sentenced to die under the controversial law of parties, which holds non-shooter accomplices just as criminally liable as the triggerman. In recent years, both prosecutors and a trial court said that he at least deserved a chance at a lesser punishment. While Kerr County District Attorney Lucy Wilke wanted to spare him by getting the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant him clemency, the county court thought he deserved a new trial. But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals this week said even if the false testimony claims in his appeal were valid concerns, they weren't enough to make a difference in the outcome of the case. READ MORE: Court findings offer hope for death row inmate in case tainted by 'Dr. Death' One justice called the false testimony "troubling" but instead of greenlighting the appeal, suggested that Wood should instead wait for an execution date to be set so that he can ask the parole board for clemency, a reprieve rarely granted. The defense team denounced the ruling, pointing out that Wood was outside in the car at the time of the slaying, and that jurors were misled by testimony from a discredited psychiatrist when they decided the intellectually impaired man could pose a future risk if not sentenced to die. "The decision to let stand a death sentence based on false expert testimony can only erode public confidence in Texas's criminal justice system," said attorney Jared Tyler with Texas Defender Services. "This is particularly so given that all the parties agree that Mr. Wood's death sentence is disproportionate." The now-45-year-old was convicted in the killing of gas station worker Kriss Keeran. Wood waited outside while Daniel Reneau ran inside to rob the place, shooting Keeran in the process. Reneau was executed in 2002, but Wood has spent more than two decades fighting his case. Though he's not contesting his involvement in the robbery, his current appeal argues that he shouldn't have been sentenced to die based on testimony from Dr. James Grigson - a forensic psychiatrist also known as "Dr. Death" for his damning words used to show future dangerousness in more than 100 capital cases. Though he claimed complete accuracy in his predictions, Grigson didn't always personally interview the convicted killers he testified about, a pattern that prompted reprimands and later expulsion from the American Psychiatric Association. But the Court of Criminal Appeals in its majority opinion wrote that even without Grigson's testimony there were plenty of other indicators that Wood could pose a future threat, citing bad behavior in jail. Judge David Newell offered a similar take - including the suggestion that Wood aim for clemency - in a concurring opinion, while Judge Elsa Alcala penned a four-page dissent. "In cases such as the instant one, in which the prosecutors today acknowledge that the death sentence assessed against applicant is inappropriate, this Court should hold that it would violate the Eighth Amendment to execute applicant," she wrote. "The imposition of the death penalty against a defendant cannot be considered reliable when even the State considers its imposition to be unwarranted and unjust." The email from a federal agent in Dubai about her jet-set affair with a suspected Middle Eastern terrorist could have been torn from a supermarket paperback. I cant stop thinking aboutyou. I havent slept for days, Leatrice Malika De Bruhl-Daniels wrote, according to federal court documents. Im deeply attracted to you and I cant think about you like that. Dont worry, I will still fight for your visa situation as much as I can. As U.S. officials continued to investigate the Syrian businessman whod thrown the federal agent a lavish birthday bash and helped treat her to a Greek vacation, she reportedly texted him, I dont want to think u hv lied to me since I put my neck out there for u. De Bruhl-Daniels, 45, a career federal law enforcement officer from the suburbs of Washington, D.C., is now facing federal charges in Houston of hampering the FBIs counterterrorism investigation of 46-year-old Nadal Diya, and Diya has been charged with using fake travel documents. Both face a mid-December trial date that is likely to be postponed. Its a rare case that falls into a unique category criminal reckonings for federal law enforcement officials accused of abusing their access to top-secret information. Cases involving misconduct prompted by romantic attachments are even more unusual. I can probably count on the fingers of one hand how many times thats happened, said Mervyn M. Mosbacker, Jr., a former U.S. attorney who has defended several federal agents. You dont go into a job like that unless you are really committed to the goals of the agency. Agent denies guilt De Bruhl-Daniels, who is free on bond and awaiting trial at her mothers home in Charlottesville, Va., appeared briefly before a Houston magistrate in late October where she pleaded not guilty to attempting to obstruct, influence or impede justice. She and her federal public defender have declined to comment about the case. Jeff Houston, a spokesman for the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, or NCIS, said De Bruhl-Daniels has been on indefinite suspension since May without access to secure material. He declined to comment further. Prosecutors are seeking extradition of Diya, who is free on bond in Toronto, on charges that he used fraudulent Guatemalan and Argentinian passports in Texas and Louisiana. Three other co-defendants, in Houston and Montgomery County, also face prosecution for passport and tax fraud. De Bruhl-Daniels met Nadal Diya while she was stationed in the United Arab Emirates as a special agent with the NCIS. During their affair, she provided him warnings that he was being investigated as a possible terrorist and could be arrested, according to court documents. Prior to her indictment, NCIS officials clearly considered De Bruhl-Daniels to be an exemplary employee. She invested a good portion of her life in federal service, working at the FBI as an investigative specialist and then for eight years as a special agent with NCIS, a federal agency charged with protecting Navy and Marine Corps secrets that inspired a popular CBS procedural drama. The agency handles criminal, terrorism and intelligence investigations in ports around the world. While De Bruhl-Daniels was based at the agencys office in Norfolk, she was NCIS spokesperson for a crime reduction program aimed at reducing sexual assault in the Department of the Navy. She is quoted in a 2012 Defense Department press release explaining, Drugs and alcohol will impair a persons judgment and may increase sexual desire. She is also quoted advising fellow employees to do what is right morally. Met the businessman in Dubai In 2015, De Bruhl-Daniels was dispatched to the U.S. Consulate in Dubai as a liaison on criminal, counterintelligence and counterterrorism investigations at the booming commercial port of Jebel Ali. It was there she met Diya in June 2016 through a friend at the consulate, according to documents. Diya mentioned he did not know why the State Department had refused to renew his U.S. visa, and De Bruhl-Daniels used her top-security clearance to ask officials what was holding up the process. She learned that Homeland Security investigators thought Diya might be connected to an illegal shipment of oil equipment from the U.S. to Iran. In February 2017, she made further inquiries with the State Department and Homeland Security Investigations or HSI about his visa, documents show. A State Department staffer wrote back saying Diyas entire family had set off red flags for counterterrorism officials. On a secure video call on March 9, 2017, an HSI agent and a Commerce Department agent in Houston warned De Bruhl-Daniels once again to avoid contact with Diya. However, De Bruhl-Daniels did not tell them that by then she had a personal relationship with him, according to their account. Court filings indicate that this was when romance began to blossom between the agent and the suspect. On March 29, Diya hosted a catered birthday bash for De Bruhl-Daniels at his Dubai residence that was attended by NCIS, State Department and Naval staff. He hired a D.J. and paid for special lighting. Witnesses told investigators the whole event likely cost tens of thousands of dollars. In May, records show De Bruhl-Daniels approached investigators again, suggesting to the FBI that Diya would make a good confidential source. This time a legal attache told her to keep her distance and warned her not to tell him about the investigation. In late June, De Bruhl-Daniels sent herself an email with the subject line Thoughts to ND, musing that the smell of his cologne made her forgetful, so she wanted to write down her thoughts. Im deeply attracted to you and I cant think about you like that. Its not right, she wrote, according to court records. The NCIS agent promised to work on fixing her boyfriends visa situation and noted she was looking forward to Greece where they would have the best time ever, according to documents. In mid-July, an FBI agent in Houston informed De Bruhl-Daniels that both Diya and another suspect were still under scrutiny. The FBI agent asked for a full accounting of her encounters with Diya, and De Bruhl-Daniels said she would consult with her supervisor about it, according to court documents. Prosecutors contend that shortly after that call, possibly on the same day, the federal agent disclosed to Diya that he and another suspect were the target of an FBI probe, court records allege. She warned him if he traveled to the U.S. he would probably be arrested. The couple then left for a nine-day holiday in Greece, paid for in part by Diya, who, she later told authorities, gave her $1,400. Following the trip, De Bruhl-Daniels saved a transcript of texts between the two of them on her iPad. The document included the statement, (Its) poss ur phones are being monitored, according to evidence. The iPad log also included a message that if agents suspected her of acting as some sort of dbl agent, he should tell them they were just friends. Whatever they hv on u is more than just suspicion so its serious, the transcript says, They know stuff and if u lie u may never see American soil! De Bruhl-Daniels alerted prosecutors of the existence of this transcript, records indicate. When federal agents interviewed her in December 2017, she did not mention that she had been romantically involved with Diya, that hed given her gifts or that shed warned him not to enter the U.S., documents show. De Bruhl-Daniels also failed to mention that her 23-year-old son had taken a paid job with Diya, according to allegations. In the meantime, Diya is now charged with attempting to use fake foreign passports in Houston, Conroe and Lake Charles, Louisiana. A few federal agents have been charged in similar cases Others agents who have become entangled in similar situations over the years include James J. Smith, a special agent with the FBIs Los Angeles bureau who was convicted in 2004 after admitting a 20-year affair with a double agent for the Chinese government. Theres also the case of Richard Miller, another FBI agent in Los Angeles, who was sentenced to prison for espionage and bribery after becoming involved with a KGB spy. An FBI agent in Manhattan was convicted in 2011 of lying about an affair with a confidential source in an identity theft investigation. And in 2009 an FBI agent in Phoenix admitted he attempted to influence a criminal case in which hed become romantically involved with the wife of a suspected gang leader. But Mosbacker, a defense attorney and who was U.S. Attorney based in Houston during the Clinton Administration, said such liaisons are rare. By and large, federal agents are really good at what they do and they do things by the rules, he said. gabrielle.banks@chron.com A federal audit found that Lone Star College improperly disbursed close to $14 million in grants and federal loans to ineligible students over a four-year period, the school system said this week. A Department of Education program review discovered that from 2012 to 2016, the Houston-area career training college gave out $13.8 million in Pell, Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants and federal loans to students who shouldnt have received them, according to a Lone Star College news release. The audit found that the money went to students from ineligible high schools, and that the institution didnt prevent students with unsatisfactory academic progress from receiving aid, under certain regulations. In all, the improperly distributed funds accounted for 2 percent of the $663 million awarded over the same time period, according to the news release. Chancellor Stephen C. Head said the college, which enrolls 99,000 students per semester, is cooperating with the Department of Education. "I'm obviously disappointed in the findings. We take great pride in our business practices and our obligations to the community, Head said in a news release. We take full responsibility for implementing the appropriate actions to ensure we adhere to best practices moving forward." In response to the audits findings, Head has launched a full audit of the colleges financial aid practices, with assistance from outside specialists. The Houston Chronicle has contacted the Department of Education and Lone Star College for comment. It's unclear how the audit's findings will affect the students who shouldn't have received the funds. Lone Star College operates six college campuses, eight centers, two university centers, Lone Star Corporate College and LSC-Online. Rasim Ojagov was a key component of the Renaissance of Azerbaijani cinema and one of the most important directors of Soviet cinema in general, the directors, actors and film critics told the correspondents of Vestnik Kavkaza, paying tribute to the great director, who would have turned 85 years old yesterday. "Without a doubt, Rasim Ojagov is one of the outstanding directors of Soviet cinema. His contribution to the development of Azerbaijani cinema is still underestimated, I think - in my view, he was part of the Renaissance period of Azerbaijani cinema.Being active in developing national cinema, Rasim Ojagov was also a prominent representative of the Soviet cinema as a whole," director and expert on Azerbaijani cinema Oleg Safaraliyev said. "In a professional's opinion, each of his movies was some step on the way to understanding a person and his inner world," Oleg Safaraliyev noted. "His film 'Birthday', which received the State Prize of the Azerbaijan SSR was a real discovery for the Soviet cinema and one of the first films where he sensed this priority. Further, his key themes were developed in 'Before the closed door' and 'Interrogation'," the director said. Director and screenwriter Rustam Ibrahimbekov stressed that its impossible to imagine Azerbaijani cinema without Rasim Ojagovs films. "There are not so many filmmakers in Azerbaijan who worked at the level of world standards, and Rasim Ojagov certainly was one of them. We made 7 or 8 films together, and all of them form a story about the life of Baku and Azerbaijan for decades. From time to time I present these films in different cities, and everywhere they are perceived as works of a high level, emotional, touching and truthful," he said. "Rasim Odzhagov was an outstanding master of cinema," Rustam Ibragimbekov added. Director Yuli Gusman shared his memories of Rasim Ojagov, who worked with him at the Azerbaijani film studio. "I remember him not only as a director who has created wonderful films, which made it to the history of cinema. I remember him as a lean, short, fast and energetic man, who didn't look like a classic successful director. He was open and simple, like we all are in the Caucasus when dealing with people, and always caused a general acceptance," Yuli Gusman noted. "Driving the 'filmmaking' ship with an iron hand, being a stern captain, he remained a sweet, approachable, intelligent and delicate person. This combination of a reckless bravery of an artist and modest and his majestic manners made Rasim Ojagov a universal favorite and kept him not only in amazing films, but also in the hearts of all friends, acquaintances and admirers, those who knew him and will always remember him," the director concluded. Rasim Ojagov was born on November 22, 1933 in Shaki, Azerbaijan SSR. After graduating from local school in Sheki in 1951, he attended film Institute in Moscow. In 1951-1956, he studied at camera operator faculty of VGIK. In 1965, he studied at director faculty of Azerbaijan Theatrical Institute. In 1956, he worked as camera operator-director at Azerbaijanfilm and in 1973, as a director. In 1964, he conferred Honoured Art Worker of Chechen-Ingush ASSR. In 1950s, a new generation of directors, including Mukhtar Dadashov, Teyyub Akhundov, Alisattar Atakishiyev appeared. In these years Rasim Ojagov began his career. 'Her great heart' film was the first film Ojagov. He was considered a professional in describing of psychological scenes. The director was a laureate of the State Prize of the Azerbaijan SSR, a laureate of the USSR State Prize. Rasim Ojagov passed away on July 11, 2006 in Baku, Azerbaijan. The lunch rush at The Afghan Village came a little late on Thursday, but when it showed, it was quintessential Houston for a Thanksgiving Day. An Asian couple sat waiting for their food as two African-Americans in the next booth finished up, tossing a it was wonderful in unison toward owner Omer Yousafzai on their way out the door. A trio of friends seated nearby caught up with each others lives. His to-go order bundled up, another diner said goodbye in Persian to Yousafzai, just a few minutes after former city councilman M.J. Khan stopped by to chat. Houston is so open to everybody, Yousafzai said later, standing in the grocery he opened next door to the restaurant, also bustling with holiday shoppers. It is why so many people from other places come here. Its why Houston is a place where on a uniquely American holiday, couples can share a basket of tandoori naan and a kofta plate in a strip mall along Hillcroft, in a space that used to be a taqueria. Home for Yousafzai and much of his family has two meanings. Theres Afghanistan with its centuries of culture, enticing foods and instability after years of war. Then theres Houston specifically Gulfton where Yousafzai, 41, and other Afghans prosper and start new lives, but also where he opened a private security company where he saw a need for local watchmen. Thanksgiving also has that duality, because of the many journeys it took for Yousafzai to get from there to here. He followed an older brother to America where Yousafzai worked and then attended law school Southern Methodist University. By 2005, he was back in Afghanistan working for a military contractor recruiting Afghanis to work with Americans on the ground as translators. He bounced from coast to coast, but nothing felt right. Once Houstonian, always a Houstonian, Yousafzai laughs. Yousafzai opted to open the restaurant with a partner, born from a passion for cooking and desire to bring Afghanistan to America. The business boomed, and became in some ways a center of the community. People stop by to ask for advice over some green tea. Importantly, he said, he has his family around him. Three young children, his parents, and two brothers that live in the Houston area. We are more thankful we can sit together, said Essa Yousafzai, Omers younger brother. Still, there is uncertainty, both acknowledge. Fewer Afghans are coming to America following tighter restrictions on immigration from the country and six others with majority Muslim populations. Omer Yousafzai says military avenues have also tightened, according to what he has heard from former translators and their families. Even those hear keep an eye on the developments, especially since their own status leaves them in limbo when it comes to traveling abroad. They fear they might not be allowed back. People are scared, he said. Even the people who are special immigrants here. Essa Yousafzai agreed, but suspected many can separate the political tension around Muslim immigration with the holiday traditions they are embracing, such as Thanksgiving. They can differentiate, so they are always thankful, Essa said. Many, including Omer, also consider that among all the things they have to be thankful for, there is more they want to be thankful next year. This Thanksgiving I cannot visit the homeland I was born in, Omer Yousafzai said, noting how conditions have worsened in some ways in Kabul, the Afghan capital. Tuesday, a suicide bomber targeted a gathering of Sunni Muslim clerics, killing at least 55 people in one of the deadliest bombings recently in the country. That is kind of demotivating everybody, Yousafzai said. I wish there was a better day for Afghanistan. Thursday, he settled for pleasant weather and family and friends in Gulfton. Standing in the market, a stream of shoppers came through, stopping to greet Omer. As he checked in on the restaurant, Maryem Malekzadah, 34, picked up some halal-prepared goat meat from the refrigerated case. Along with some beef and rice, she was planning a goat stew, bringing an Afghan flavor to her first Thanksgiving on American soil. Yousafzai ducked into the kitchen for a moment. On the stove was a big pot of goat karhai, a traditional stew thats a menu at the restaurant. In the oven, the turkey for the workers holiday meal was browning nicely. The smell of citrus and tandoori filling the air. Just as two places can be home, a holiday meal can be two things at once. dug.begley@chron.com twitter.com/DugBegley Joseph Garcia met George Rivas back in the summer of 1999, eight months before they started plotting their escape. They were doing time together on the Connally Unit, counting out their days in the heat of a Texas prison. Garcia was locked up on a murder charge, a crime hes long maintained was self-defense. Rivas, on the other hand, was a convicted kidnapper, violent and full of charisma. They both had decades of time in front of them. But Rivas had better plans. Around lunchtime on Dec. 13, 2000, they broke out of the maximum security prison south of San Antonio, bringing along five confederates as they made good on an intricate plot culled straight from the pages of a novel. They took hostages, burst into the prison armory, stole weapons and stormed out in a prison truck, making for the biggest escape in Texas prison history. After pulling off two robberies in the Houston area, they headed to the Dallas suburbs, hoping to get as far as they could from the bloodhounds and helicopters hunting them down. There, on Christmas Eve, the men held up a sporting goods store and made off with bags of cash and dozens of guns. On the way out, they ran into a cop. In a chaotic scene, five of the men started firing, some at each other and some at the lawman. When it was over, Officer Aubrey Hawkins lay dead in the Oshmans parking lot, shot 11 times and dragged 10 feet by an SUV as the panicked prisoners fled. After a six-figure reward and a spot on Americas Most Wanted, the wanted men were finally captured in Colorado more than a month later, living in a trailer park and posing as Christian pilgrims. One killed himself rather than be captured, and the other six were sent to death row. It wasnt supposed to happen, Garcia told the Houston Chronicle in a recent death row interview. I wish I could take everything back. Three have been executed and now a fourth Garcia is scheduled to die Dec. 4. Its a case thats galvanized outcry from activists, since its not clear that he ever shot anyone. Though hes consistently admitted to his role in the break-out and robberies, hes long maintained that he never fired his gun and never intended to kill the officer. Even so, he was sentenced to death under the controversial law of parties, a Texas statute that holds everyone involved in a crime responsible for its outcome. Its the thing that put him on death row, but now its also a key part of the desperate inmates last-ditch efforts at appeal and pleas for clemency. Whatever the law, it all feels too long for the slain officers friends and family. Were coming up on 18 years since the incident, said Sgt. Karl Bailey, a Seagoville policeman and longtime family friend. Its a long time not to get closure and it wears on you. **** The law of parties has long been baked into the Texas criminal code. Its a statute thats broader and used more frequently in death penalty cases than in many other states, according to Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center. The requirements are simple: The state must show only that an accomplice to one felony may have anticipated another felony could occur. So, if a three-man robbery crew hits a convenience store and one person kills the clerk, all three of them are guilty of capital murder even if the other two never fired a shot. And, if theres a getaway driver waiting outside, he can be responsible as well, even if he never got out of the car. In some cases, the actual shooter might manage to net a life sentence and be eligible for parole, while non-shooter accomplices face the death chamber. In some states its known as vicarious liability. Nationally, its not clear how many people are on death rows across the country under such laws, but the Death Penalty Information Center counts only 10 clear cases of non-shooter accomplices whove been executed, including five from Texas. Theres this borderline area between common and uncommon and I dont think its either of the two, Dunham said. But its applied much more frequently in Texas than in similar circumstances in other states. ****** Rivas and Garcia became friends because of a prison gang war. It was a feud between the Mexican Mafia and La Raza Unida that sparked a unit-wide lockdown, Garcia told the Chronicle, and the men met up in the dayroom where they bonded over a poor mans spread of prisoner-made food. The lockdown ended and they went their separate ways, but a few months later, Garcia spotted Rivas standing by his cubicle talking to another man, Larry Harper. Garcia was already frustrated, only four years in and not sure he could really do all the time stretched out in front of him. He still felt like he wasnt supposed to be there. And now, he wanted to steal back the life he thought the state had stolen from him. Something told me it was time, he told the Chronicle. So I walked up and said, Whatever youre talking about, count me in. Then, he turned and walked away. The next morning, Rivas woke him up, wanting to know if he was serious. He was. So they hatched a plan, inspired by a book Rivas had read. It was slow going, but one thing they knew from the start: they didnt want to go over or under the fence. That would mean getting shot at. Instead, they wanted to drive out through the gate, like free men. First, they had to pick a crew. Harper and a man named Randy Halprin were already on board. Then, according to Garcia, they learned Donald Newbury was planning an escape of his own, so they invited him along. And they found Michael Rodriguez, whose father was willing to supply a getaway car. Finally, there was Patrick Murphy, a wood shop worker who could help build a false bed for the prison truck they planned to steal. For each and every one of us, we all brought something to the table, Garcia wrote the Chronicle in a letter. Some more than others. It would have to start, they decided, with figuring out a way to take control of the maintenance shop. Rivas already worked there as a clerk. He was a smooth talker, so he schmoozed the guards into getting his friends assigned there, too. It wasnt a hard sell; supplies went missing all the time, and his friends, he promised, would make sure that didnt happen. They did, but putting a stop to the booming thieving business was not a popular move among inmates. I was surprised we didnt get jumped, Garcia said. At the same time, they started false rumors among the staff, got intel on officer training, stocked up supplies and memorized security routines. The night before, Garcia said, they shared a meal and prayed. On Dec. 13, they stayed behind at lunch to wax the floor, then overpowered staff, officers and inmates as they returned to maintenance, according to testimony at the mens trials. Two of the gang dressed up as prison workers to sneak into the armory and take control of the guard tower. Others took the keys to a maintenance truck and loaded it with provisions and guns before they all fled, with some of the escape artists stowed away under the false bed in the pick-up. They were free, but they didnt have a long-term plan. Garcia had envisioned a quiet life; maybe theyd fade into the woodwork and get jobs. He knew, on some level, that was never possible. Surely, the long arm of the law would come grasping at seven high-profile escapees. ****** The law of parties has been a perennial source of controversy, sparking editorials, rallies and bills to end it every legislative session. One of the regular bill-filers is state Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston. Since 2003, he said, hes consistently proposed legislation to end vicarious liability. We shouldnt use the law of parties to convict anybody of capital murder, he said. I think we ought to reserve that for the person who actually did the murder. Some states have already stepped back from the law of parties. Earlier this year California narrowed its felony murder law, revising the statute to require major participation in the crime or at least the intent to kill. So, simply intending to rob a store wouldnt be enough to net a murder conviction anymore, even if the store clerk gets killed in the process. But to Toby Shook, the former Dallas County prosecutor who handled all six of the trials, the Texas 7 case is a perfect example of why the statue is necessary. This case clearly demonstrates why they need the law of parties, he said. This is a group of very violent men who broke out of prison and planned out elaborate robberies. They acted as a group and they murdered a police officer in a group and they acted as a team. **** Once they got beyond the razor wire, the fleeing prisoners soon realized their supplies werent enough. Its not like in the books, Garcia said. You dont know people underground selling IDs and birth certificates. After pulling off two robberies one at a Radio Shack and one at a Western Auto the crew decided to head north. They needed to pick up some cold-weather gear, and maybe some more guns, so they scoped out a sporting goods store in the Dallas suburb of Irving. But first, they got a copy of the newspaper and cut out the picture of a Scholastic Award winner, then glued his image to a WANTED poster. Dressed as ADT security guards and toting their cobbled-together poster as a prop, Rivas and Harper went in just before closing time to ask if anyone had seen the supposed smash-and-grab suspect or if hed been caught on security cameras. It was all a plot to get into the surveillance room and figure out how much of the store was on camera. Once they did that, Rivas calmly announced it was a robbery. The escapees scattered in different directions, each tending to their assigned tasks. Garcia was supposed to go to the clothes and shoes, but there were more customers more hostages than theyd expected. So instead, he went to help Newbury tie people up in the breakroom. Theyd only halfway finished when Garcia heard Rivas across the radio. It was time to go. As Garcia remembers it, he was still inside the store when he heard the first shots. Halprin recalled it differently, testifying that they were all outside when the patrol car pulled up and blocked them in by the loading dock. Rivas thought they were all already in the getaway car. In a stand-off with the young officer, five revolvers fired shots. Rivas admitted in court that he shot Hawkins repeatedly. And everyone agrees Rodriguez fired a shot and Murphy was out front as the lookout guy. The rest was chaos and crossfire. Afterward, they fled and ended up back at an EconoLodge where theyd been staying, trying to parse what had happened and who shot whom. I think I killed him, Rivas said, according to trial records. Everyone fell silent. The next day they left for Colorado. ****** Since he was sent to death row, Garcia has renewed his relationship with God, written a book and waged almost two decades of appeals. Hes raised a slew of claims about bad lawyering during trial and earlier in the appeals process, but the courts have denied them all. Last month, he put in a long-shot plea for clemency to the Board of Pardons and Paroles, laying out his violent childhood with a drug-addicted mother who died of AIDS, his stint in the Coast Guard and evidence that he was not one of the shooters. At the same time, in a Bexar County petition now in front of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Garcias attorneys Mridula Raman and a team of public defenders argue that the initial stabbing that landed Garcia in prison was actually self-defense, and his lawyer at the time just failed to show it. If true, that could pose problems for the capital case where prosecutors pointed to the earlier murder as evidence of future dangerousness a requirement for a death sentence. There are significant legal issues before the courts that have not been presented until now because of procedural technicalities and bad lawyering, Raman said. It is important for a court to step in now and give Josephs case the consideration it deserves. And, in a separate appeal of his death sentence in Dallas County, lawyers raised concerns about the use of the Bexar County conviction, ineffective lawyers, an allegedly racist trial judge, and the constitutionality of executing someone the state never proved was a shooter, ever intended to kill anyone, or was even outside at the time of the slaying. They were all tried under the law of parties, Shook said, so it really doesnt matter if he was out there or not but I firmly believe he was. Garcia maintains otherwise. I am on death row because of the actions and intent of others and because I am one of the Texas Seven, case closed, he wrote in a letter. Is it right that I should be murdered for something that I did not do? If his appeals fail, hell be the 12th Texas prisoner executed this year. One more is scheduled for the week after. WASHINGTON - Winning a Houston congressional district that had been in Republican hands for more than half a century, Lizzie Pannill Fletcher arrived in Washington this month as something of a dragon slayer. But in politics, the hunter sometimes becomes the hunted. The 43-year-old Houston lawyer, having unseated nine-term Republican John Culberson, already has a target on her back as she negotiates the newly-empowered Democratic House majority as a pragmatic centrist. Fletcher has cast herself as roll-up-her-sleeves lawmaker who would rather lean into the minutiae of Houstons transit and flood control problems than bicker over the daily partisan skirmishes of Congress. I think thats a huge part of the message of the incoming class. People want us to move forward and they want Congress to actually work, instead of fight and debate and not advance the ball on anything, Fletcher said last week during her initial orientation session. There are a whole lot of places where there are non-controversial problems that need to be fixed. But her first decision as part of the incoming Democratic majority in the House was one that could again be weaponized against her in 2020, regardless of the outcome of the internal contest over making party leader Nancy Pelosi House Speaker. After remaining uncommitted during her campaign to unseat Culberson, Fletcher threw her support behind Pelosi after her first week in Washington, adding momentum to the California Democrats quest to regain the gavel she gave up when Republicans took control of the House after the 2010 midterm elections. The Harris County GOP pounced immediately on Twitter: Remember when @Lizzie4Congress said I won't take orders from @NancyPelosi? That wasn't true at all. Republican National Committee regional spokeswoman Christiana Purves also fired a warning shot, noting that Fletcher and other swing district Democrats like her faced the wrath of the likely Speaker if they joined the handful of Democratic dissidents trying to unseat Pelosi. Not the best way to start out a congressional term, Purves said. Unlike some other incoming freshman, Fletcher did not vow to oppose Pelosi. She says that voting for Pelosi for speaker is hardly the same thing as taking orders from her. One lesson Fletcher and many of her allies took away from the race with Culberson was that millions of dollars spent by Republicans seeking to tie her to Pelosi did not work. In a district that was once represented by George H.W. Bush, and which was considered at best a 50-50 shot for Democrats to flip in 2018, Fletcher ended up winning by 5 points, a relative landslide. Fletcher said a key to her support for Pelosi now is the current leadership teams commitment to allow Democrats from centrist or swing areas like the Seventh Congressional District in west Houston and Harris County to represent their local constituencies. Incoming freshman Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York, who has vowed to push the party leftward, have received much more national press. But moderates like Fletcher will likely be more important for Democrats to hold their majority in 2020. Its so important to remember that so many freshmen in this class are people who came from districts just like mine, Fletcher said. And I think thats where so many people in the country are - in the middle. For some in the left wing of the Democratic Party, Fletchers hand to Pelosi could also be a reminder of the dramatic gambit by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which unleashed a rare primary attack against Laura Moser, Fletchers primary opponent, before the Democratic primary in March. Recruiting the most electable general election candidates turned out to be one of the lynchpins of Pelosis strategy to win back control of the House. But if the episode marked Fletcher as the establishment candidate, that did not seem to hurt her in a historically Republican district where old-line, traditional conservatives and suburban women disillusioned with President Donald Trump were looking for a moderate Democratic alternative. That is the space Fletcher intends to hold in Congress. In her first week in Washington to prepare for new members swearing in on Jan. 3, Fletcher met with and joined the New Democrat Coalition, a group of centrist, pro-business Democrats who are vying for influence in the new Democratic majority. One major area of alignment: The group remains focused on stabilizing the health care markets and shoring up the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, rather than pushing for a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system favored by the partys left wing. One of the groups leaders, U.S. Rep. Pete Aguilar of California, joined with Texas Republican Will Hurd earlier this year to push legislation that would use technology to strengthen the U.S.-Mexico border and give legal protections to so-called Dreamers, young immigrants who entered the country illegally as children. With divisions on immigration hardening in Congress, there has been no consensus on the Hurd-Aguilar compromise or any other immigration or border proposal. Despite the polarization, Fletcher, who will be under a political microscope in Houston for the next two years, is banking on a Democratic majority to make way for a wave of bipartisan energy. Absolutely I think theres space to work in this Congress as a moderate, she said. I think we will have a lot of influence in this Congress. Strengthening that conviction is the political reality that with continued Republican control of the Senate, there is little prospect or any major legislative initiative in the next two years that doesnt have significant bipartisan support. But continued gridlock is also a distinct possibility. Analysts close to Fletchers district say that her best bet of maintaining her foothold in an increasingly diverse but historically Republican district is to focus on local issues and emphasize constituent service. There will always be the big, sexy national issues, but at the end of the day, you know the old Tip ONeill saying, all politics is local, said former Democratic candidate James Cargas, referring to the legendary Reagan-era Democratic House Speaker from Massachusetts. Cargas, an assistant Houston city attorney who ran and lost three times to Culberson, sees the district as a natural GOP target - if not in 2020, then in a 2022 redistricting effort by Republicans in Austin after the next national census in 2020. They could redo the lines in 22 and make it even more challenging (for a Democrat), Cargas said. But despite being in GOP hands since Bush won it in 1966, Texas Seventh has become a classic swing congressional district, according to Cargas. This district is not a crazy tea party area, he said. There are moderate, business-oriented Republicans. There are a lot of Democrats. But folks in the middle will determine the future of the district. Others who watched Fletchers campaign close up say she laid the groundwork with a relentless emphasis on flood control and mass transit, issues on which she faulted Culberson to be slow to deliver. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, as well as Culbersons often fraught relationship with Houstons METRORail system, some see Fletcher as a good candidate for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, where she can help guide federal dollars home. Shes going to stick to those core issues that are relevant to the district, and not get sidetracked by things that arent in her wheelhouse, said Jay Kumar Aiyer, an assistant professor of public policy at Texas Southern University. Shes certainly not going to be a liberal firebrand. Shes going to have to stay true to herself. Fletcher has vowed to dedicate congressional staff to flood control and infrastructure issues, and to hold regular town hall meetings open to backers and detractors alike. She says she will be looking for consensus. There are common problems, she said. I dont care if youre a Republican or a Democrat, if your house flooded, you need help with FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), you need to make sure we keep the National Flood Insurance Program. But the challenge as Congress inevitably clashes on the big ideological issues of taxes, spending, health care and immigration, will be finding middle ground in an increasingly divided nation. Fletcher believes the ground is there - if Democrats can move past the House leadership question. There are a lot of things we can accomplish, she said. I feel like this is not what we should be talking about right now. Lets just move on. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that Russia and Ukraine are parting completely and irrevocably. "By fixing in the constitution, the obligatory course towards joining NATO and the European Union, we are sending a message to Moscow: we are parting completely and irrevocably," the UNIAN news agency cited Poroshenko as saying. "Russia, being an aggressor state, does not have and will not have a veto on our accession to either NATO or the European Union." He stressed that this is the sovereign right of Ukraine as a country, "which confidently walks its own path." Poroshenko was speaking before lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill in its first reading to alter Ukraines constitution to include as the countrys strategic goal membership in the EU and NATO. Houstonians know what it feels like to lose a home. We know the devastation of leaving behind everything and returning to find nothing. Over the years we have learned when to hunker down and when to evacuate. After surviving Hurricane Harvey, Houstonians can understand the horrors endured by the 250,000 California residents under evacuation orders in the face of the deadliest wildfires in the states history. The death toll approaches and by some measures surpasses Harvey levels. Hundreds are still missing. More than 10,000 homes have been destroyed. Natural disasters on this scale, whether brought on by unrelenting floodwaters or uncontrollable flame, can no longer be considered mere regional tragedies. The Camp, Woolsey and Hill fires are, just like Harvey, national crises that demand a national response. Houston, weve been here before, and recently. Thats why Texans need to lead the call for a national recovery effort in California. It means hearing survivors stories and sharing in their pain. It means donating to charities like the California Fire Foundation or the United Way of Northern California, or even by texting buttefire to 91999 on a mobile phone. And, most important , it means supporting a robust congressional recovery package. The need is intense and it is immediate. Entire towns have been reduced to ash and rubble. Shelters are already full, and many whove fled their homes have nowhere to go. Too many renters had their entire worldly possessions destroyed only to learn their insurance didnt cover fire a tragedy Houstons apartment dwellers learned about flood coverage. The scale of destruction is difficult to fathom. California Gov. Jerry Brown has compared it to a war zone. Photographs depict an eerie, apocalyptic landscape. Survivors describe running on foot through a freeway paralyzed with traffic to escape the approaching wall of fire. (Anyone who tried to evacuate during Hurricane Rita can imagine what that must have been like.) Texas and California enjoy a heated and sometimes humorous rivalry. Now is no time for such games. Californias struggle is our struggle literally. And in Texas, we know that only a federal response can offer the resources California needs right now. More than a year has passed since Harvey, and Texas still requires further federal funding to help us recover and rebuild a truly resilient Gulf Coast. Any California recovery bill will provide an avenue for more funds. And, in the long run, all these disasters point to the need for a national effort to harden our communities in the face of climate change. After Harvey, the Houston delegation had to fight uphill to get our package to the presidents desk. We shouldnt want California or anyone to face the same barriers. No American should have to fight Congress to get what they need after a disaster. A black mother living in Houstons 77026 ZIP code has a baby. Here are the odds facing the mother and her child: Infants born to black mothers in that northeast Houston neighborhood have a nearly 3 percent chance of dying before turning 1 year old , and mom has only a 12-in-100 likelihood of earning a college degree. These circumstances are not isolated to a single ZIP code. In Texas, black women are twice as likely to die during childbirth as white women. They are also 40 percent more likely to have a preterm birth than white women. The last 70 years have produced life-saving technologies such as obstetric ultrasound, incubators and ventilators, which have played a significant role in reducing maternal and infant mortality rates in the United States. We cannot, however, solve the complex technical and social challenges of maternal and newborn health when the people most affected women, especially those of color - continue to be vastly underrepresented in engineering. Even as health care improves overall in the United States, maternal mortality and preterm birth rates are rising. Preterm birth is the worlds leading cause of death for children under 5. Each year, more than 1 in 10 babies around the world are born too soon, and approximately 1 million babies die because of complications of preterm birth. Growing inequities in newborn and maternal health require the talents and voices of a diverse group of engineers. Yet, our educational system is not meeting this challenge. In 2017 nearly 125,000 students received a bachelors degree in engineering from a U.S. university, according to data from the American Society for Engineering Education. Black women accounted for just 1,102 of those degrees less than 1 percent. Progress to address this lack of gender and ethnic diversity in engineering is stalled. The fraction of engineering degrees awarded to black women dropped by 50 percent from 2004 to 2017. Just 1 in 5 engineering degree recipients in 2017 were female, the same as in 2001. Throughout the world, including Texas, the communities suffering from the highest rates of mortality and preterm births rarely experience the full benefits of our technological marvels. It is naive to imagine small and sick newborns can survive without access to quality care and effective technology. Engineers must do their part to make sure that technologies are available to all the worlds families. How can we recruit and support a diverse group of engineers dedicated to the cause? Part of the solution is to make the social impact of engineering more visible. A recent national survey of 6,550 college students showed that students who perceive an association between engineering and improving quality of life and saving lives are about twice as likely to pursue the profession; the association is stronger for female students. National organizations such as Engineers Without Borders-USA, a nonprofit with a focus on engineering service projects for developing communities, are helping to make the humanitarian impact of engineering more visible. More than 40 percent of EWB-USAs 13,000-plus student and professional members are female. A recent survey asked more than 500 members to select characteristics of their peers;. Motivated, humanitarian and passionate were the top responses for males and females, but significantly more females chose all three themes. Last spring, women received 37 percent of the bachelors degrees in engineering conferred at Rice University, thanks in part to strong programs in bioengineering and environmental engineering. Over the last five years, women comprised over two-thirds of recipients of Rices minor in Global Health Technologies. But Rice, like many other institutions, falls short for women of color: Only 2 percent of engineering undergraduate degrees were awarded to black women in 2017. Until diverse groups of women have a seat at the technology design table, the health challenges they and their newborns face will not receive the attention they require, putting at risk decades of hard-won progress to improve maternal and newborn health. Richards-Kortum, the first Houston scientist to win a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, is a Rice University bioengineering professor and founder of the Rice 360 Institute for Global Health. DesRoches is dean of Rice's George R. Brown School of Engineering. The talent acquisition function at Dell is facing some daunting challenges. The biggest challenge were facing is one thats facing the entire tech sector, and that is that the demand for tech talent including sales talent is very much outstripping the supply, Moynihan says. One of the reasons for that is that most companies across all sectors now are going through a massive digital transformation of their core product and service offerings, so they are competing alongside the tech industry for this limited pool of talent. The hurdles dont end there. Moynihan says the industry is evolving at such a rate that many of the required skills are brand new, and the education sector is struggling to keep pace. Data scientists, cybersecurity specialists, user experience designers these are roles that didnt exist 10 years ago. Now these skills are in high demand, but the talent isnt necessarily there, she says. The third key challenge is that the pool of candidates is not as diverse as companies like Dell would ideally like. Seventy percent of employees who work in the tech sector today are men, so we really need to see more girls opting to take STEM-related subjects at university so they can move into the talent pool later on. That is a big issue, and its really not changing at a fast rate, says Moynihan. A plan of attack So how is Dell tackling these issues? Moynihan says that, firstly, the company knows what candidates are looking for in this sector. She cites research from the likes of LinkedIn, which paints a clear picture of what people want from their workplace. A picture is worth a thousand notes. Just look at a band's album art, music video, Instagram feed or live show, and it will become clear that visuals have taken on a more pronounced role in the era of streaming music. So I was excited to learn more from Robby Morris, who oversees releases by Bon Iver, Angel Olsen and The War On Drugs as Creative Director at Secretly Group. Here's our chat: Danny Ross: Why are visuals so important in music right now? Robby Morris: If you hear a band on Spotify, it comes with an image sitting right alongside it. So it's more and more important for that image to be the best representation of your artistry. It's the first thing listeners will see. There are no rules to what makes a good cover. You don't want to put out a bright, flashy image just to catch somebody's eye. But there has to be a certain immediacy of voice not an immediacy of aesthetics. Ross: When does that visual element carry over into socials like Instagram? Morris: After you stream a song, then you go to social media to see how the band expresses themselves. That's the second layer of discovery for both A&R people and for fans. How you interact with your fans is important, you don't want to force it. You don't need to be oversharing some artists aren't good at it! If you look at Ryley Walker, his socials are just a pure expression of who he is. Its brash and hilarious, that's just him expressing himself. Ross: So what is a Creative Director exactly? Morris: Creative Directors, in a traditional sense, exist at ad agencies working on visual elements of a campaign. That's a big part of what I do. The music is obviously the most important thing, but secondarily is the visuals. It's my job to help bridge the gap between the music from an A&R level, to how the band wants to represent themselves visually. And to understand how that informs marketing. How do they want to express that music in a live setting? Through packaging, press photos, music videos, Instagram and online representation? Its my job to elevate that. One artist I jumped right into was serpentwithfeet. We worked closely on a music video with director Andrew Thomas Huang. Then Red Bull Music Academy Festival New York help put all these ideas on stage at the Reliquary at the High Line Hotel. So I got to help him build his world, put it on camera and on stage. And we were lucky enough to run a cover feature with Fader,which is an amazing coup for a debut artist. YOU MAY ALSO LIKE Ross: In the streaming age, are indie labels still looking for the next cool band? Morris: Always! That's what keeps us going. It's fantastic working for great bands over decades, but none of these labels could function if they weren't bringing in bands for the next twenty years. Were looking for an artist that has a voice and can express themselves in an independent spirit. We're not looking for something cookie-cutter, or previous examples of bands that were successful. It's largely about finding something that's new that we believe the rest of the world should be paying attention to. There's a lot more music now because of the ease in which artists can make it and put it up. But I don't think that makes it a harder playing field there's just more to discover. Ross: Since streaming has helped to blur genre lines, many indie acts are now working with pop artists and songwriters. Do you view that as a positive change? Morris: If you have the opportunity to work in pop, then you should do it. Working with an outside writer, or getting into a fancy studio is an expansion of your toolkit, not necessarily a resignation from lack of good ideas. Indie and pop tend to be separated because there are different motivations, but sometimes those things intersect. We can make great art that's also Grammy-worthy. Ross: You work at The Secretly Group, which is an umbrella company for several indie record labels. How does that work? Morris: Secretly includes Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar and Secretly Canadian. The three labels all have distinct voices and individuals behind them. And their rosters reflect their taste artistically and musically. The umbrella model allows fluidity and access. The labels have such a like-minded artist-friendly approach, that it pushes community to develop. You could take a huge band like Bon Iver to help a smaller band like Shame. You can have Julien Baker open for Belle and Sebastian, and then start a new band with Phoebe Bridgers called boygenius. Ross: And how did you first get your start in the industry? Morris: My entree into music was WNYU, the student radio station. It was great getting weird records from experimental labels, and learning what music meant as a business and community. It was 20 kids who were offered guest list spots at shows, and got into clubs under 21. The fact that you could be a college kid obsessed with music, set up a drum kid and a microphone in a classroom and have a band perform for you was incredible. I got to set up interviews and sessions with Holly Golightly and Genesis P-Orridge from Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV. Ross: Speaking of which, how do you feel about the state of music in New York City right now? Morris: Im optimistic. There were a lot of people who were reticent about getting involved with music because the industry was collapsing. But now that things are turning around, people are excited and ready to start labels and bands. A lot of venues in New York were closing a few years ago, but new amazing ones are opening like Elsewhere. Ross: And when did you make the transition into A&R? Morris: Matador Records brought me in as an A&R scout, but I was reticent. You read about A&R guys up all night at clubs, flying around the world. That's not really my personality. I'm not that guy making the rounds at the shows, I prefer to stand in the back and enjoy the band. But I think that's maybe what they were looking for. It was this total dream job. Matador never had A&Rs before in their history but they decided to bring in someone who had ears on the ground, could go out to shows more often and expand their scope. So I was there for eight years, helping to work bands that were on the label for decades like Yo La Tengo while also helping to sign someone like Julien Baker. Ross: How did you come across Julien Baker? Morris: That was a quick one! I heard some of her music on a blog, got in touch with her manager and went down to Philly to see her play. Her show was just so incredible. You hear about the "pin-drop" shows there were no glasses at the bar clinking, no one coughed. She held the room. I went to shake her hand after the show, and this cloud of people started gathering around us. These people just had their lives changed and they wanted to meet her and take a photo. She was so warm and gracious. That's an amazing formula to go back to your bosses and say there's something special going on here. Ross: And you were also instrumental in breaking out Perfume Genius. How did that come about? Morris: Mike Hadreas recorded his first record on his computer, lost the hard drives and only had the mp3s. We mastered those mp3s and that was the first album called Learning. We fell in love with this record which was this deep, wrenching piano-based music about trauma and addiction, but it was also kind of funny. He was growing as a performer, writing and directing incredible videos. By the time of his last record, he knew exactly what he wanted. Mike met with Blake Mills and said, This is the guy. Ross: Wrapping up, what advice would you give to up-and-coming musicians? Morris: On a practical level, I don't think there are any tricks. I don't know if sending a demo works anymore maybe it does. Make sure you put your email on your Bandcamp so that you can be found. Artists also have to be the kind of people an office can work with to do this magnification and projecting. Maybe have a savvy friend help to make sure all your visuals look neat on a platform. Having some momentum helps, but it shouldn't be a reason to sign a band. Sometimes with synchs or breakout singles, its about a YouTube algorithm getting picked, getting lucky on a playlist, or an editor hearing your song out of the blue. There's not a science to it, and that's a good thing. The age-old tenants still hold true. If artists are truly self-possessed, play as much as possible and put their music out into the world, it's a sure-fire way of getting noticed. At the end of the day, the music has to be something that can inspire and change lives. Page Content The upcoming Second ICAO Next Generation of Aviation Professionals Global Summit (NGAP/2) will receive vital support from China, following the recent signing of a tripartite cooperative agreement by Dr. Fang Liu, Secretary General of ICAO, Mr. Lou Heru, Deputy Director-General of the Transport Commission of Shenzhen Municipality, and Mr. Yao Junchen, Secretary General of the Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics (CSAA). The CSAA and the Municipality of Shenzhen will host NGAP/2 from 12 to 14 December 2018. A key objective of the event is to ensure that qualified and competent aviation professionals are available to operate, manage and maintain the future international air transport system. Thanks to the generous support of Shenzhen and the CSAA, the Summit will comprise a forum on the future of aviation development, an aviation education session to enhance networking among aviation-focused universities, and a Model ICAO Forum which will provide students with an opportunity to work with aviation leaders to develop innovative approaches to emerging challenges relating to aviation security, air cargo, economic development challenges, and emerging drone operations. Registration for NGAP/2 is currently open and can be completed here. ICAO will also be reporting on the event at unitingaviation.com. iciHaiti - MUNC 2018 : A delegation from the Infotronic School of Haiti, in Montreal Jonathan Sasson, Secretary General of the Haiti School of Infotronics (ESIH), at the head of a delegation composed of Miss Germila Saint-Jean, James Declerus and Hewing Gerald Dorvellus, took part in Montreal, at the 6th session of the the Montreal United Nations Conference (MUNC 2018). Recall that this annual 3-day conference is a simulation of international relations for students from around the world. It brings together more than 500 students from around the world who have debated world issues and the world's most complex issues. The ESIH is proud to promote the 3 young Haitian "leaders" of his delegation, who despite a very worrying political, social and economic context, continue to defend the possibility of a better Haiti in a better world. IH/ iciHaiti iciHaiti - Politic : The Protestant Federation calls for dialogue and overcoming The Protestant Federation of Haiti (FPH) encourages dialogue between the various sectors of the country in order to avoid a worsening of the socio-political crisis that Haiti is currently experiencing. It calls on the social, political and economic actors to "show maturity" in getting up and "going beyond themselves", while opening a space for the search for a consensual solution. In a statement, the Religious Federation said that "a common strategy would allow the country to recover its social cohesion and stability, and especially avoid again the shame of foreign interference." The FPH criticizes the deterioration of the socio-political situation in which the country is plunged since the failure of the rise of the price of gasoline last July, which led to the resignation of former Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant and which could, if it continues to "lead to the collapse of the nation-state". The FPH believes that the current political situation "shows the extent of social and regional fragmentation of the country" emphasizing the need for a national dialogue. IH/ iciHaiti NGOs call for disinvestments in biodiversity destruction by Rabiya Jaffery November 22,2018 | Source: IPS A discussion held earlier this week at the ongoing Convention of Biodiversitys (CBD) Conference of Parties in Egypt highlighted that grants to curb deforestation in the Amazon are not enough if they are accompanied with investments that increase the loss of biodiversity. Parties are talking about investing in biodiversity, but we need to talk about divesting from biodiversity destruction, stated Isis Alvarez of the Global Forest Coalition (GFC), a worldwide coalition of NGOs and Indigenous peoples organizations from 60 different countries striving for rights-based, socially just forest conservation policies. Meat and soy are the top two contributors to deforestation, we must eliminate financial and other support for these sectors. Incentives to produce and export meat and soy in major producer countries like Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina or the United Soy Republic according to GFC are a leading cause of deforestation and biodiversity loss, according to a briefing document prepared by GFC for the discussion at the ongoing Convention. Originally launched in 1992 as part of the Rio Earth Summit, the Convention on Biological Diversity is a global agreement among 196 nations that represents the growing global commitment to sustainable development. In the next two years it aims to define a post 2020 global framework on biodiversity to be adopted in Beijing in 2020 much as the Paris Agreement did in 2015 for climate change. UNCBDs Aichi Targets that were set out in 2010 to be phased out in the next 10 years, states that incentives, including subsidies, that are harmful to biodiversity, need to be eliminated, phased out, or reformed in order to minimize or avoid negative impacts, while positive incentives are developed to support alternatives. GFC highlights that, while grants are being provided in efforts to conserve biodiversity of the Amazon, the livestock and feedstock industry (mainly soy) are continuing to receive significant incentives, including subsidies and tax cuts. Isis Alveraz, along with multiple other sources and scientific reports, state that at the current rate of deforestation, the worlds rainforests could diminish and virtually vanish within the next 100 years The biggest driver of deforestation is agriculture. Farmers cut forests to provide more room for planting crops or grazing livestock, says Alvarez, a Colombian biologist and member of the GFC. Plant-based agriculture used to feed animals bred for food drives up the amount of resources consumed by crops. Intensive livestock production requires large quantities of harvested feed which, in turn, requires substantial areas of land while grazing animals such as cattle place additional stress on the state of Earths forests especially the Amazon. GFC states that the Paraguayan Chaco region is being deforested at the rate of 1,000 hectares per day due to cattle ranching and soy monocultures, the highest rate of deforestation in the world while meat and soy companies here are receiving multiple tax incentives. Brazil, for example, continues to be one of the countries with the highest deforestation rates on the planet. Between 2005 and 2015, the Brazilian government invested $3.18 billion in the livestock industry 90% of which went to just three corporations. In 2017, $48 billion went to agribusiness companies in the form of cheap credit while only $115.6 million was allocated to combatting deforestation and forest degradation. Deforestation in Brazils Amazon has also jumped by almost 50% during the three month electoral season that brought Jair Bolsonaro to power, according to preliminary official figures. Between August and October, nearly 1, 674 square km (an area more than double the size of New York City) of forest was converted to pasture making the deforestation rate go up to 273%. To put it in perspective, the rate stood at 114% during the same period last year. And while experts observe that deforestation usually increases in Brazils electoral years amid promises from local politicians they tp open up protected land or make environmental legislation more flexible, far-right candidate and now president-elect Bolsonaro has added a powerful permissive voice to agribusiness, land-grabbers, illegal gold miners and loggers. Aside from deforestation, reports show that the livestock industry is also causing significant negative impacts on local communities, animal welfare, and the environment. Much of the land for livestock in Paraguay was acquired via land grabbing, while wages paid by ranching operations are a third of the national minimum wage, says Miguel Lovera of GFCs Paraguay hub. The discussion at the Convention proposed that alternatives to support biodiversity conservation the paper proposed a rapid reduction in meat and dairy consumption and incentives for small-scale, localized, and ecologically sound food production as well as community conservation initiatives. 2018 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved. Theme(s): Others. World Fisheries Day -- Statement from Pietro Parravano, President of the Institute for Fisheries Resources November 22,2018 | Source: ICSF World Fisheries Day -- Statement from Pietro Parravano, President of the Institute for Fisheries Resources As we celebrate World Fisheries Day on November 21, we are reflecting on the values that connect us with the Oceans and fishermen. It is a day that commemorates the creation of a global organizationthe World Forum of Fish workers and Fish harvesters (WFF) that was started in New Dehli, India on November 21, 1997. On November 21, 1997, fishermen from eighteen countries left their boats and traveled to New Dehli, India. Strangers, bonded by the Oceans, met to establish a new organization. The creation of the WFF was founded on the common principles of sustaining the fisheries; sustaining the fishing communities; advocating for social justice and preserving the cultural history of fish harvesters and fish workers. Fishing representatives from 18 countries signed a declaration advocating for a global mandate of sustainable fishing practices and policies. The representatives from the United States that participated in this milestone event were Angela Sanfilippo from Gloucester, MA; Barbara Stickel from Morro Bay, CA and myself. The values that are expressed by the Oceans and fishermen have an extremely significant influence on the quality of life for humans. These values also have an equally significant role in the success of the numerous ocean networks and natural ocean cycles that provide life for the fisheries. Cultural values are based on the knowledge and skills that have been traditional for generations. These values have evolved into customary practices. Cultural values are the foundation for the existence of coastal communities. Religious values are based on the religious beliefs that exist in coastal communities. In many coastal communities, religion is an important factor with providing food for the community and respecting the fisheries. There are many examples of religious traditions found in the scriptures. The economic values are determined by the benefits that are provided by the fisheries. The benefits produced by economic values vary from community to community. Some are measured by financial values and some are measured by reliance on nutritional values. Environmental values are necessary for the future of the fisheries, fishing families and coastal communities. Sustaining environmental values for the fisheries and Oceans are extremely essential. Without this value, all other values become more difficult to achieve and maintain. These values are still the core of the principles that created World Fisheries Day in New Dehli, India. Fishermen navigate the Oceans using these values to bring us a valuable, natural resourceseafood. Understanding and respecting these values and each other are vital for the celebration of World Fisheries Day. Theme(s): Others. The Iranian authorities may change their position the 2015 nuclear deal if the republic's people believe that the JCPOA is not conducive to their economic interests, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said. Zarif said while he was certain that Europe would be able to guarantee the deals future, Iran was not going to wait long. "As I said we rely on our people and that is where the red line is. If our people believe that the deal is not conducive to their economic interests then we will have to respond to the will of our people," he stressed. "We spent two-and-a-half years, this is not a two-page document, this is not a picture opportunity. This is a 150-page document," the Iranian PM said of the JCPOA, suggesting that U.S. President Donald Trump's objection to deal was mainly because of his hatred for the things his predecessor, Barack Obama, had accomplished. "Why should we resume another talk just because somebody doesn't like it, just because somebody hates his predecessor? That's not the reason you engage in diplomacy, diplomacy is a serious game and we are ready for a serious game," IRNA cited Zarif as saying. Iran has no intention of renegotiating the 2015 nuclear deal, as demanded by the United States, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said. Speaking at an international conference in Rome, Zarif said the Iranian people will endure U.S. sanctions, Reuters reported. U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May, branding the deal to restrict Irans nuclear work a "disaster." Today marks nine years since the single deadliest attack on journalists. On November 23, 2009, 32 journalists were among 58 people brutally massacred in Mindanao in the southern Philippines. Since the Ampatuan Massacre, over 100 people have been charged, but not a single person has been prosecuted for the murders. Nonoy Espina, chairperson of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines asks when the anniversary will be a date to celebrate justice for the victim's families. A priest blesses the graves of the Ampatuan Massacre victims, at the ninth anniversary and memorial of the massacre in Mindanao, the Philippines. Credit: Nonoy Espina When will we will we ever gather not in mourning and rage, but in celebration? This was the thought that crossed my mind as I watched vans unloading more than 200 people - officers and members of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, other colleagues, and the families of many of the 58 victims, 32 of them media workers, of the November 23, 2009 Ampatuan massacre at the very place where it happened nine years ago. Every year since the slaughter, the NUJP had accompanied them as they made the annual pilgrimage to this hilltop in Sitio Masalay, Barangay Salman in Ampatuan town, Maguindanao to remember and mourn the fallen, and to demand justice and rage against a system that appeared to have stacked the odds against their ever receiving it swiftly, as they should. As the victims families once again prepared for the mass and program, I realized with horror how tired I had grown of this annual rite of sorrow and anger and remembrance and not much else. After all, hadnt the legal experts we consulted soon after the massacre predicted that, with the government of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo choosing to file a case designed to fail - charging more than 190 persons instead of concentrating first on the principal suspects, key members of the her closest allies, the Ampatuan clan - the earliest conviction could be expected in 10 years? This year was one shy of that forecast and there had, as yet, been no indication that the prediction might come true. But the years of heartache and frustration, of letdowns and broken promises had clearly not broken the spirits of the families of the 32 media victims. This year, they had come armed with banners declaring, Justice Now - which also happens to be the name of the organization they had formed a year after the massacre - and Convict Ampatuan. And this year, in an augury that things could be looking up, they were joined by several families of the non-media victims, including those of members of the Mangudadatu clan who had organized and led the convoy that was supposed to file the candidacy for governor of Maguindanao of Esmael Toto Mangudadatu. It was this act, seen as a brazen challenge by the clan that had wielded almost absolute power they wielded over the province for a decade, which led them to plot and commit mass murder. Ayesha Dilangalen, daughter of Bai Eden Mangudadatu, one of six women of the clan who perished on that day, noted, it was the first time in many years that they - the families of the media and non-media victims - had held the remembrance and, more significantly, called for justice together. She suggested that this was how it should be from now on. As I watched them and listened to their speeches and the songs of the orphans, I told myself, Yes, I am tired but I have no right to be tired. Not when THEY HAVE NOT TIRED of seeking justice for their loved ones. And definitely not when we have yet to claim justice not only for the Ampatuan 32 or, rather 58, but for the more than 100 other journalists murdered in this country since 1986. Two days after the observance of the massacres ninth anniversary, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra told media that the court trying the multiple murder case against the suspects in the massacre might reach a verdict soon, probably early next year, on principal accused Andal Datu Unsay Ampatuan Jr., the man accused of personally leading the gunmen who carried out the mass murder. Hopefully, we may yet meet in Sitio Masalay, Barangay Salman, Ampatuan next year, this time to celebrate justice delayed but not denied. Not that that would mean rest for the NUJP. The struggle for genuine justice and press freedom is far from over. Imperial Valley News Center Two Defendants Sentenced to Prison For Roles in Alien Harboring Scheme Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Defendants Michael Wood, 54, and Mary Wood, 46, of Mullica Hill, New Jersey, were sentenced Monday in federal court to 20 months in prison and ordered to pay $46,320 in restitution to the victim in this case. A jury convicted both defendants of harboring an alien for financial gain and conspiracy to harbor an alien on June 6, 2017. Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband of the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division and Special Agent in Charge Marlon V. Miller of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Philadelphia announced the sentences. According to evidence presented in court and other court documents, in August 2005, the defendants recruited a young Kenyan woman to care for their minor children in New Jersey and arranged for her to enter the United States illegally using a fraudulent British passport. The defendants required the victim to perform domestic work and childcare at their home seven days a week, paying her a mere $200 a month. To conceal the victims immigration status from authorities, the defendants prohibited her from leaving their house, except to walk the children to school, and instructed her not to talk to anyone outside of the house and defendants family. In June 2006, members of defendant Mary Woods family moved the victim to their homes, where they continued to harbor her and exploit her domestic labor, until the victim managed to leave in 2011. The defendants exploited the domestic labor of a young Kenyan woman, for minimal pay, circumventing immigration law, said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband. Todays sentences demonstrate the Department of Justices commitment to seeking justice for vulnerable individuals across the country and holding defendants who commit these despicable and unconscionable crimes accountable. The sentencing of Mr. and Mrs. Wood emphasizes the severity of crimes that oppress victims of unconscionable domestic labor practices, said Special Agent in Charge Marlon V. Miller, HSI Philadelphia. Homeland Security Investigations vigorously pursues those who take advantage of vulnerable victims of forced servitude for their own personal gain. This case again underscores the importance of educating the public on these schemes, seeking justice for victims and holding violators accountable. Six additional defendants, including members of defendant Mary Woods family who harbored the victim from 2006 to 2011, previously pleaded guilty in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and were sentenced for their roles in the continuing alien harboring and labor exploitation scheme. The defendants were also ordered to pay more than $233,000 in combined restitution to the victim. The case was investigated by ICE Homeland Security Investigations Philadelphia and prosecuted by Trial Attorneys Anita Channapati and Shan Patel of the Civil Rights Divisions Criminal Section and Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit. Imperial Valley News Center Venezuelan Billionaire News Network Owner, Former Venezuelan National Treasurer and Former Owner of Dominican Republic Bank Charged in Money Laundering Conspiracy Miami, Florida - A Venezuelan billionaire who owns Globovision news network was charged in an indictment unsealed Wednesday for his role in a billion-dollar currency exchange and money laundering scheme. A former Venezuelan national treasurer and a former owner of Banco Peravia bank in the Dominican Republic each pleaded guilty in proceedings unsealed Tuesday for their roles in the scheme. Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Departments Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Ariana Fajardo Orshan of the Southern District of Florida, Special Agent in Charge Mark Selby of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Miami Field Office, Special Agent in Charge Mark B. Dawson of HSI Houston Field Office, Special Agent in Charge George L. Piro of the FBI Miami Field Office, Special Agent in Charge Peter C. Fitzhugh and Inspector General Jay N. Lerner of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporations (FDIC) Washington, D.C. Office made the announcement. Raul Gorrin Belisario (Gorrin), 50, a Venezuelan citizen with a residence in Miami, Florida, was charged in an indictment filed on Aug. 16, 2018 in the Southern District of Florida with one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and nine counts of money laundering. The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge William P. Dimitrouleas of the Southern District of Florida. Alejandro Andrade Cedeno (Andrade), 54, a Venezuelan citizen residing in Wellington, Florida and a former Venezuelan national treasurer, pleaded guilty under seal on Dec. 22, 2017 before U.S. District Judge Robin L. Rosenberg of the Southern District of Florida to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Gabriel Arturo Jimenez Aray (Jimenez), 50, a Venezuelan citizen residing in Chicago, Illinois and former owner of Banco Peravia bank, pleaded guilty under seal on March 20, 2018 in the Southern District of Florida before Judge Rosenberg to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Charges against Andrade and Jimenez were unsealed today. The indictment alleges that Gorrin paid millions of dollars in bribes to two high-level Venezuelan officials, including Andrade, to secure the rights to conduct foreign currency exchange transactions at favorable rates for the Venezuelan government. In addition to wiring money to and for the officials, Gorrin allegedly purchased and paid expenses for them related to private jets, yachts, homes, champion horses, high-end watches and a fashion line. To conceal the bribe payments, Gorrin made payments through multiple shell companies. Gorrin allegedly partnered with Jimenez to acquire Banco Peravia, a bank in the Dominican Republic, to launder bribes paid to Venezuelan officials and proceeds of the scheme. As part of his guilty plea, Andrade admitted that he received over $1 billion in bribes from Gorrin and other co-conspirators in exchange for using his position as Venezuelan national treasurer to select them to conduct currency exchange transactions for the Venezuelan government. As part of his plea agreement, Andrade agreed to a forfeiture money judgment of $1 billion and forfeiture of all assets involved in the corrupt scheme, including real estate, vehicles, horses, watches, aircraft and bank accounts. His sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 27. As part of his guilty plea, Jimenez admitted that, as part of the scheme, he conspired with Gorrin and others to acquire Banco Peravia, through which he helped launder bribe money and scheme proceeds. His sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 29. HSI Miami, HSI Houston, HSI Boston, FBI Miami, and the FDIC D.C. investigated this case. This case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorneys Vanessa Sisti Snyder, Paul A. Hayden and John-Alex Romano of the Criminal Divisions Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael B. Nadler and Nalina Sombuntham of the Southern District of Floridas Criminal Division. The Criminal Divisions Office of International Affairs provided significant assistance in this matter. The Policia Nacional (Spanish National Police) also provided significant assistance. Imperial Valley News Center Justice Department Files Statement of Interest in First Amendment Case Washington, DC - The Justice Department Tuesday filed a Statement of Interest in U.S. District Court in South Carolina supporting a churchs claim that the Town of Edisto Beach violated its rights under the First Amendment when the town barred it from renting space at the Towns Civic Center. "The Constitution protects the right of individuals and groups to exercise their religion without discrimination because of their religion, said Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker. The First Amendment requires that religious individuals and groups have the same opportunity to rent public facilities as other members of the community. The Department of Justice is committed to protecting the First Amendment rights of Americans, including fostering the religious expression of members of all faiths. The case, Redeemer Fellowship of Edisto Island v. Town of Edisto Beach, involves a small Christian congregation that sought to rent space for Sunday worship in the Civic Center, which is available for rental by community groups to hold events and activities. The town responded by enacting a policy barring worship services at the Civic Center, citing separation of church and state concerns. The town claimed that it wanted to avoid appearing as though they endorsed a religious group. As a result, the church filed a First Amendment lawsuit to allow it to rent space at the facility. The Constitution requires that churches be allowed to rent facilities on an equal basis with other community groups. The Supreme Court held in the landmark case of Widmar v. Vincent (1981), that a university could not discriminate against student groups and speakers based on their desire to use a generally open forum to engage in religious worship and discussion. The United States Statement of Interest argues that allowing equal access to all groups, including the church, is required by the First Amendment. Allowing equal access, the United States argues, ensures the government neutrality toward religious expression that the Constitution requires. California Resident Pleads Guilty to Filing False Tax Returns Which Failed to Report Secret German and Israeli Accounts Los Angeles, California - A Beverly Hills, California, resident pleaded guilty Monday to filing false tax returns which did not report his offshore accounts in Germany and Israel and did not report the income earned on those accounts, announced Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Richard E. Zuckerman and U.S. Attorney Nicola T. Hanna of the Central District of California. According to the plea agreement and related court documents, Teymour Khoubian pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns for tax years 2009 and 2010 that failed to report foreign financial accounts in Germany and Israel, and failed to report income earned on those accounts. Between 2005 and 2012, Khoubian jointly owned multiple accounts at Bank Leumi in Israel with his mother that held between $15 million and $20 million. Additionally, since at least 2005, Khoubian also owned a foreign account at Commerzbank AG in Germany. Despite his ownership interest in these accounts and a legal requirement to declare all offshore accounts containing $10,000 or more, Khoubian prepared false tax returns for tax years 2005 through 2011 that did not fully disclose his foreign accounts, nor report all the interest income earned on those accounts. For instance, Khoubians Bank Leumi accounts generated interest income in excess of $4 million between 2005 and 2010, none of which was reported to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The total tax loss associated with the Bank Leumi accounts is approximately $ 1.2 million. At least since 2009, Khoubian was aware of the IRSs Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (the OVDP). The OVDP allowed U.S. taxpayers to voluntarily disclose their previously unreported foreign accounts and pay a reduced penalty to resolve their civil liability for not declaring foreign accounts to U.S. authorities. During 2011 and 2012, Bank Leumi requested that Khoubian sign a Form W-9 for U.S. tax reporting purposes. In an August 13, 2012, recorded telephone conversation with a banker at Bank Leumi, Khoubian stated that the reason he did not want to sign a Form W-9, was "because you have to pay half of it." In 2012 and 2014, Khoubian knowingly made multiple false statements to IRS special agents investigating his foreign accounts, including falsely stating that the Bank Leumi accounts were not in his name, that he did not own a bank account in Germany from 2005 to 2010, that he closed his German bank account and moved all of that money to the United States, and that none of the money in his German bank account was moved to Israel. As part of the plea agreement, Khoubian agreed to the entry of a civil judgment against him for an FBAR penalty in the amount of $7,686,004. Khoubian further agreed to pay an additional $612,310 in restitution to the IRS. Khoubian faces a maximum of three years in prison for each of the tax counts to which he pleaded guilty, as well as monetary penalties and a period of supervised release. This case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorneys Christopher S. Strauss and Ellen M. Quattrucci of the Justice Departments Tax Division, with the assistance of Assistant United States Attorney Robert Conte of the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Central District of California, and was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation. Governor Brown Grants Executive Clemency Sacramento, California - Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. Wednesday announced that he has granted 38 pardons and 70 commutations. Individuals who have been convicted of a crime in California may apply to the Governor for a pardon. Those granted pardons all completed their prison sentences years ago and the majority were convicted of drug-related or other nonviolent crimes. Pardons are not granted unless they are earned. A gubernatorial pardon may be granted to individuals who have demonstrated exemplary behavior and have lived productive and law-abiding lives following their conviction. The process includes eligible individuals obtaining a Certificate of Rehabilitation, which is an order from a superior court declaring that a person convicted of a crime is now rehabilitated. When a pardon is granted, the California Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are notified so that they may update their records on the applicant. The pardon is filed with the Secretary of State and the Legislature, and it is a public record. Individuals currently serving a sentence for a conviction by the California courts can petition to have their sentence reduced by applying for a commutation. In the majority of these commutations, the individuals have been granted the opportunity to make their case before the Board of Parole Hearings, which will determine whether they are ready to be paroled. Copies of the gubernatorial pardons and commutations can be found here. Convicted Rapist Arrested by Border Patrol Calexico, California - El Centro Sector Border Patrol agents arrested a convicted sex offender at 4:50 a.m., Monday. Luis Rangel-Rea, is a convicted sex offender. He faces criminal prosecution for his illegal re-entry into the United States. Agents assigned to the area, approximately three miles east of the Calexico Port of Entry, observed a man running north from the international border fence. Agents approached the man and determined that he was illegally present in the United States. Agents arrested the man and transported him to the El Centro Station for processing. Record checks revealed that the individual, Luis Rangel-Rea, a 57-year-old Mexican national, is a convicted sex offender. Rangel-Rea had a felony rape conviction from 2008 in Santa Rosa, California. He was sentenced to 32 months in jail. Record checks also revealed that Rangel-Rea was previously removed in December of 2015. Thankfully we were able to apprehend this man before he made it to the interior of the United States, said Chief Patrol Agent Gloria I. Chavez. Our agents are keeping heinous criminals like Rangel off the streets. The man will be criminally prosecuted for Re-Entry after Removal as a convicted sex offender. In fiscal year 2019, El Centro Sector Border Patrol agents have arrested and removed six convicted sex offenders attempting to enter the United States illegally. Border Patrol Arrests Sex Offender with Gang Affiliations Calexico, California - Border Patrol agents assigned to El Centro Sector arrested a convicted sex offender and gang member Sunday afternoon. Border Patrol agents arrested Antonio Villasenor Nunez, who is a convicted sex offender and gang member. The incident occurred at approximately 4:15 p.m., after agents assigned to the Calexico Station arrested a man near the Calexico Port of Entry for illegally crossing the international border. Agents determined the man was a citizen of Mexico illegally present in the United States. Border Patrol agents conducted record checks, which revealed that 34-year-old, Antonio Villasenor Nunez, had a previous criminal record. In 2005, Villasenor was convicted for sexual battery and was sentenced to 60 days in prison. In 2007, Villasenor was convicted of vehicle theft and sentenced to six months in prison. In 2009, Villasenor was convicted of false identification to peace officers and was sentenced to 20 days in prison. In 2012, Villasenor was convicted of robbery and was sentenced to two years in prison. Additionally, Villasenor previously removed from the United States 2007 by an immigration judge. Villasenor is a member of the Paisa prison gang, and will be held pending criminal prosecution for his illegal entry into the United States. Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek. It's an American tradition. You get up early on Black Friday morning and you go and find the sort of deals that you only wish America would make with the rest of the world. Yes, many retailers have moved the experience to Thursday evening, testing the pie-loyalty of the nation's grateful. I'd heard, though, that Friday morning might reveal a few more bargains, ones that were a little more under the radar. So there I was, at precisely 8 a.m on Black Friday, arriving at a Walmart in Tempe, Arizona. There were quite a few cars in the parking lot. The barricades, however, were leaning neatly against a wall, unwanted. I could see no bloodstains on them. Perhaps the previous night had been orderly. As I moved toward the door, a man rushed out. He was pushing a trolley, inside which were many bulky purchases, including two microwaves. My shoulders tensed a little. I'd have to be on my toes. I'd have to be prepared for at least a little pushing, shoving and grabbing of bargains. And then I was struck by a bizarre emptiness. Not merely inside my stomach, but there in this Walmart. It was as if the party was over and all that was left were a few people with a hangover. Every single shopper I saw was alone. Save, that is, for a woman who had brought both her dogs. "I'm training one of them," she told me. It seemed like a good time to train the dog how to maneuver around the cosmetics aisle. It was eerie wandering down the aisles, trying to find something resembling a bargain. The most attractive, perhaps, was a sweatshirt adorned with the words Get Blitzed. What was so special about this shirt? It had a pouch at stomach-level where you could put you beer. I resisted. I wandered to the electronics department. There, a Walmart employee was recovering from the previous evening. "No more bargains," he said. "No more $99 TVs. One guy last night took four of 'em." "Is that allowed?" I asked him. "It says limited numbers. It doesn't say any number limited to one person." "But were those TVs any good?" "Me, I buy one $400 TV and it's great. That's all I need," he replied. What were all these lone individuals walking slowly about the store looking for? Or was this actually their normal Friday ritual? What could they possibly hope to find at 8 in the morning? Or was this just something to do because they were alone? At the checkout, I asked another Walmart employee how Thanksgiving Night had treated her. "It was OK," she said. "Nothing like the past. When I started here five years ago, there were lines all around the store. We had to close every aisle and the police were controlling who could go where." "Last night wasn't like that? What about all those barricades outside?" "Didn't need 'em. It's the internet," she explained. Yes, one man had got his four $99 TVs, but there'd been no stampede, no fights, no real rush at all. What people really wanted, they bought online. Unless, perhaps, they wanted one of those bargain loss leaders and they wanted it now. Black Friday at Walmart used to be a Friday thing. Then it became a Thursday night thing. Now it just isn't a thing anymore. I walked out of the store, a touch disillusioned. Donald Trump has ranged himself against his own intelligence community, disputing that the CIA has concluded that Mohammed bin Salman was responsible for the death of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, The Guardian writes. The president spoke a week after the Washington Post first reported that the agency had assessed that the Saudi crown prince did order the murder. They didnt conclude, Trump insisted, asked about the CIAreport when peaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. No no, they didnt conclude. Im sorry. No they didnt conclude. They did not come to a conclusion. They have feelings certain ways. I have the report they have not concluded, I dont know if anyones going to be able to conclude the crown prince did it. I will say this: I dont know, I dont know. But whether he did or whether he didnt, he denies it vehemently. His father denies it, the king, vehemently. The CIA doesnt say they did it, they do point out certain things and in pointing out those things you can conclude that maybe he did or maybe he didnt. Trump said media were guilty of false reporting on the issue, and claimed the CIA had said Prince Mohammed might have done it, which is a big difference. One of the wackiest tales to hit our screens is actually based on real events, and, what is more, these real events intimately affected the life of the lead actor. Thus bear with me Ruth Wilson stars as her own grandma, Alison Wilson, in Mrs Wilson. When Mr Wilson (Alec) dies suddenly in 1963, a whole army of skeletons tumble out of the closet, much to the distress of all concerned. Its an involving drama, because you share with Mrs Wilson that sense of devastating, unbelieving bewilderment when, after a quarter of a century and a couple of kids, you discover that the man you shared a life and a bed with isnt what you thought he was. To say the least. Yet when hes gone, hes gone, and there are no answers to the questions he leaves behind. Anyway Ruth Wilson, I suppose naturally, makes an excellent job of her grandmothers predicament, as a young bride and as a widow, while Iain Glen carries off the rare quality of credible insouciance that only a truly outrageous cad possesses. And Patrick Kennedy is also excellent as a further casualty of Alecs unusual way of life, while Keeley Hawes pops out of the woodwork too. Maybe one day her characters will settle down and meet nice boys. While Hollywood had Lara Croft/Angelina Jolie, Channel 5 makes do with Baldrick/Tony Robinson in Egyptian Tomb Hunting. Well, not Baldrick that would be asking too much but it is a very promising documentary series, and further proof that Channel 5, from rather unlikely origins, has converted itself into some sort of documentary powerhouse. Those old pharaohs were around for quite a while, so theres more than enough for a couple of hours of light factual content. So Tony, were promised, enters tombs that have been sealed shut for thousands of years, meets mummies, holds a prime ministers heart in his hands (no jokes, please), and discovers hieroglyphs only seen by the ancient Egyptians who created them. Egyptian Tomb Hunting joins Our Yorkshire Farm, Inside Russias Toughest Prisons, Eight Years Old and Smuggling Drugs, all new on Tuesday alone. Ive no idea whether Channel 5 will have more luck than it enjoyed in previous incarnations, but it is certainly a welcome move. I hope Tony didnt pick up any pharoaic curses while he was down Cairo way. BBC1s The Little Drummer Girl reaches its penultimate episode on Sunday, and this I can recommend as wholeheartedly as all the prior episodes. This dramatisation of the Le Carre novel lives up to the original elegant, intricate and taut. Its old-fashioned, in the sense that there are some longeurs, but I find the pacing much preferable to six hours of non-stop car chases, shagging and bombs going off (though they do that too). Plus the music, the performances (Michael Shannon in particular as Israeli spy chief Kurtz) and the breathtaking attention to detail all add to the sense of occasion. This week were lucky enough to have Charles Dance turn up as a crusty old British spymaster, about as far away from George Smiley as you can be and still inhabit the same corridors of the British securitariat. Charles Dance joins the cast of BBC spy drama The Little Drummer Girl (BBC) Ive always enjoyed my stays at fancy country house hotels, mainly because, as a journalist plot spoiler here Ive rarely had to incur much expense. So I find myself in a privileged position, and maybe a bit less interested in enjoying them vicariously. A recent series (Amazing Hotels) featuring Giles Coren and Monica Galetti was simply international hotel porn and, even if that is the point of that sort of Sunday colour supplement telly, not for me. Anyway thats a very roundabout way of mentioning that A Very British Country House arrives on Channel 4, checking into the famous Cliveden House joint in Bucks, while BBC1 opts for A Hotel for the Super Rich & Famous, which means the Corinthia hotel in London, which is a very nice spot, I can tell you, and unfairly overshadowed by some more storied names. Im not sure what to make of the return of Vic and Bobs Big Night Out. Theyve had their ups and downs since they first launched their sense of humour on a mainly student audience in the 1990s, and all those physics and psychology students are well in their middle age now. Vic and Bob too, of course, whose faces inevitably tell a few surreal tales of their own. My recommendation would be to keep the recipe as before, but try to ration the smut, or else the boys will just end up looking like a pair of dirty old blokes, and that really would be a shame. Ill admit that Im still inclined to place Jon Pertwee (1970 to 1974) and Tom Baker (1974 to 1981) in prime spot in the Whovian pantheon (Im allowed to have opinions), but Jodie Whittaker is definitely what industrialists would describe as a competitive product. How charming it is that she has landed in 17th-century Lancashire to interrupt a witch hunt and take theological advice from King James I (of England) and VI (of Scotland) he of Bible special edition fame. Alan Cumming is the Stuart. Access unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Amazon Prime Video Sign up now for a 30-day free trial Sign up Jodie Whittaker in the latest terrifying Doctor Who adventure (BBC) Louis Theroux seems to have recovered some of his old journalistic form with Louis Therouxs Altered States on BBC2, so a bit less faux naivety and slightly more actual concern with the nominal subjects of his explorations. Knocking around America, as he does, means he is less likely to be rumbled for his shtick, and has a larger reservoir of, erm, human experience to draw upon. This Sunday hes in Texas surveying the open adoption business. Like Louis, Ill not be judgemental. Curiosity compels me to mention that, if youre really hard up for distractions, Vice TV are premiering a new series of The Therapist, this week featuring one time Sex Pistol (and actually decent guitarist) Steve Jones. Apparently, he is going to tell us all about his addiction to, and his inability to develop, intimate relationships. No further questions mlud. Mrs Wilson (BBC1, Tuesday 9pm); Egyptian Tomb Hunting (Channel 5, Tuesday 9pm); The Little Drummer Girl (BBC1, Sunday 9pm); A Very British Country House (Channel 4, Sunday 9pm); A Hotel for the Super Rich & Famous (BBC1, Thursday 9pm); Vic and Bobs Big Night Out (BBC4, Wednesday 10pm); Doctor Who (BBC1, Sunday 6.30pm); Louis Therouxs Altered States (BBC2, Sunday 9pm); The Therapist (Vice, Thursday 10pm) Following in the footsteps of Boxing Day, the January sales are now upon us, and there are many deals to be had. While some people use this month to recover from overindulging, for others, its an opportunity to grab a bargain. Whether youre after a new television, a laptop or the best Amazon bargain, we have created dedicated guides for a range of products and retailers so you can get your hands on the best deals as the holiday season draws to a close. As well as finding the best deals, weve also created the ultimate guide on which retailers are taking part below, with insight on their latest deals, what else they are expected to offer, and when. You can trust our independent reviews. We may earn commission from some of the retailers, but we never allow this to influence selections, which are formed from real-world testing and expert advice. This revenue helps us to fund journalism across The Independent. Januray Sale Quick Links Top picks Whatever youre looking for this January, youre sure to find it. Here are our top picks of the current deals: Smart speaker deals Amazon Echo Dot (3rd Gen) Smart speaker with Alexa was 49.99, now 29.99 Buy now from Amazon Apple HomePod was 319, now 279 Buy now from Currys Sony LF-S50G Wireless Smart Sound Speaker was 149.99, now 99 Buy now from Currys Sonos One Voice Controlled Smart Speaker with Amazon Alexa was 199, now 179 Buy now from Amazon TV deals Laptop deals Asus 15.6 Gaming Laptop, Intel Core i5, GeForce GTX 1050 Graphics, 8GB RAM was 849.99, now 649.99 Buy now from Very Apple MacBook Air 13.3 Intel i5 8GB RAM , 256 GB SSD (2017) was 1,049, now 949 Buy now from Currys Asus 12.5 360 Degrees Rotatable Full HD Touchscreen Chromebook, Intel Core M3-6Y30 Processor, 4 GB RAM was 499, now 499 Buy now from Amazon Apple MacBook Pro 13 Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD (2017) was 1,799, now 1,599 Buy now from John Lewis & Partners Game console deals Kitchen appliance deals Tablet deals Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.1 Tablet 32 GB was 229.99, now 159 Buy now from Currys All-New Fire HD 8 Tablet with Alexa, 8 HD Display, 16 GB was 79.99, now 59.99 Buy now from Amazon Apple 9.7 iPad 32 GB, Space Grey (2018) was 299, now 289 Buy now from Currys Furniture deals Which stores are taking part? Heres our roundup of some of the retailers to watch out for and quick links to their pages: Amazon The online giant was one of the biggest retailers taking part in discounts for Boxing Day and for January it continues to offer major reductions on everything from electronics to this years must-have toys, games, fashion, jewellery and beauty products. You can find the latest Amazon deals here. AO You can expect this online electrical retailer to offer a wide range of deals on its products, from appliances and TVs to smart home products. You can find the latest AO deals here. Argos You can expect to see deals appearing online across technology, home and toys. You can find the latest Argos deals here. Apple The tech giant Apple has traditionally resisted partaking in sales but we predict that there will be great savings on iPhones, iPads, Macbooks and accessories. Currys PC World This January, we expect Currys to offer exciting deals across top brands including Hoover, Dyson, Samsung and HP. You can find the latest Currys PC World deals here. Habitat Homeware company Habitat traditionally launched its winter sale just ahead of the Christmas holidays and continues to offer discounts on upholstery, occasional furniture, storage and rugs. You can find the latest Habitat deals here. John Lewis This year, John Lewis clearance sale began online on Christmas Eve. The retailer is expected to price match rivals on popular tech, home and fashion lines thanks to its Never Knowingly Undersold tag line. You can find the best John Lewis deals here. Very With discounts on fashion, home, tech and gifts, Very should be on your list this January. Find the latest Very deals here. How can you get the best deals? When it comes to making the most of the January sales, preparation is key and, with many of us now shopping online, thats where you can expect to find the very best deals. But, whether youre shopping in-store or bargain hunting from the comfort of your sofa, its important to shop around and research items you want to buy well in advance rather than splashing out on a whim. We suggest sticking to a shopping list of items that you know you actually want, setting yourself a budget and watching out for additional discount codes online. Its also a good idea to check retailers returns policies before buying and to check terms and conditions for sites youve not used before. 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. London school pupils mingled with Hollywood stars at a party to celebrate the success of our Learn to Live campaign. Children from the four schools at the heart of the campaign spent time with actors Carey Mulligan and Vanessa Kirby before Evening Standard and Independent owner Evgeny Lebedev invited them on a tour of the newsrooms. Through Learn to Live, run in partnership with the charity War Child, the youngsters have spent months corresponding with children affected by war in Jordan, Iraq and the Central African Republic. Some fled Syria, and others are living in camps after enduring life under Isis or being displaced during the civil war. All the children struggle to get a full education or receive the mental health support they need following traumatic experiences. Thanks to our twinning programme, the children in London and abroad have exchanged homemade games, video messages, letters and details of their lives to form firm friendships. They have also have affected real change through writing more than 700 letters to the prime minister to demand increased funding to support their new friends. This week the government announced an 11m boost towards mental health support for children affected by conflict around the world. Recommended Melanie C joins students to talk about inspirational child refugees More than 500 British schools have joined the campaign to link with schools in war zones and deprived areas. Mr Lebedev said: Newspapers can be a great force for good and I am so proud to see how the Learn to Live campaign has demonstrated that. Not only has it successfully made the government focus on the issue of children in combat zones, and helped the work of a great charity in War Child, but it has also linked children across London, like the ones here today, with kids the same age abroad who have experienced the realities of war firsthand. The way they have embraced each other, and learned that they are all the same but just living in different circumstances, is extremely moving. Newspapers can be a great force for good and I am so proud to see how the Learn to Live campaign has demonstrated that Evgeny Lebedev, owner of The Independent War Child global ambassador Mulligan said: The campaign has had tangible results, which is incredible. The UK government has given us extra funding but its more than that. Its just put these stories into peoples lives, particularly forgotten conflicts that arent in the news cycle, like in the Central African Republic. They have come back to the fore by people reading about them on the Tube every day on their way home from work. My favourite part of today has been speaking to the girls from Hornsey [School for Girls]. One girl, Harriet, said, These girls in Syria are just like us, and that was the point of this whole campaign. Honey Hargreaves, 13, a pupil at Hornsey, said: I think we have achieved so much, and we are going to carry on sending them videos. London schoolchildren met Carey Mulligan (L) and Vanessa Kirby, and were given tours of the Evening Standard and Independent offices by owner Evgeny Lebedev (ESI media) Classmate Lola Langham, 13, said: We started off the project with none of us really knowing what to expect, and we have learned how far the girls [Syrian refugees living in Zaatari camp in Jordan] have come. Learn to Live: Sharing my story with Londoners has inspired me to tell the world, says Syrian refugee Vanessa Kirby, star of Netflixs The Crown, who is also a War Child ambassador, has been visiting children at Betty Layward Primary School in Stoke Newington and helped them write letters to Theresa May. On Thursday, she said: I first saw them months ago when they were starting, and to see the pictures of the kids they have been writing to, and the letters between them, its amazing. Frances Barber Pupil Referral Unit was twinned with a school in the Central African Republic. Kira, 14, a pupil at Francis Barber, said: They are very brave children. It has been a very interesting subject, as has visiting The Evening Standard and Independent. Black Friday, the annual scramble for discount Christmas presents, takes place in shopping centres around the world this year on 23 November. A media favourite for the outbreaks of chaos that commonly erupt in the aisles as squabbling bargain-hunters engage in tugs-of-war for flat screen TVs and step over their grandmothers to snatch a cut-price XBox, the day unofficially marks the beginning of the festive retail season. Whatever you think of it, Black Friday has become an annual fixture and looks here to stay. Dozens of Brazilians ride the chaos in Sao Paulo (EPA) The phrase Black Friday has been used around the world since at least the mid-19th century to refer to days of national calamity. Perhaps the most famous examples of this are the Black Friday of 10 November 1910, when 300 suffragettes marched on the Houses of Parliament in London to call for the right to vote and were violently beaten back by the Metropolitan Police and the Black Friday of 25 October 1929, following Black Thursday, when the New York Stock Exchange collapsed, bringing about the Great Depression. In Britain, it has commonly been used by the emergency services to refer to the final Friday before Christmas, when the majority of office parties take place. The reason the modern discount bonanza has been given the same sinister moniker is that it always takes place the day after the Thursday of Thanksgiving, when workers would frequently call in sick to secure a four-day weekend, a calamity for the US economy only alleviated if families used their additional leisure time to hit the stores. The first recorded use of the term to identify this annual phenomenon appeared in the November 1951 issue of the industrial trade journal Factory Management and Maintenance, so Black Friday as we understand it today can be traced back at least that far. The phrase gradually caught on and by November 1975 it was being used by The New York Times to refer to the atrocious traffic congestion seen in Philadelphia as shoppers raced out for bargains in the hope of spreading the cost of Christmas over a broader period. Recommended Best Black Friday deals 2018 An alternative explanation offered by accountants is that the day is the moment at which stores make so much money they cease operating at a loss and move from the red into the black. But Black Friday has only really caught on as a label within the last 20 years, as retailers have become more strategic about their approach to the day, offering major sales promotions and extending their opening hours, often to midnight. Amazon has been credited with bringing this very American event to the UK since it first began offering Black Friday deals in 2010. Asda, owned by US giant Walmart, followed suit in 2013 and the craze has snowballed from there. Previously Brits enjoyed smugly watching the hyper-capitalist carnage unfold in Target, Radio Shack and Toys R Us megastores on YouTube. Now weve been drawn into the thick of it on our own high streets and the grins have been definitively wiped from our faces. Some UK chains have moved to distance themselves from Black Friday in the wake of the particularly raucous scenes that unfolded in 2014, which led to in-store security finding themselves overwhelmed and the police having to intervene. The day has meanwhile been criticised in the US for the strain it places on staff at the big stores, the safety risks associated with large-scale crowd management and the occasional shady business practices involved. Black Friday 2017 in pictures Show all 8 1 /8 Black Friday 2017 in pictures Black Friday 2017 in pictures Shoppers reach out for television sets as they compete to purchase retail items on Black Friday at a store in Sao Paulo, Brazil Reuters Black Friday 2017 in pictures Dozens of Brazilians reach for television sets in a store in Sao Paulo, Brazil EPA Black Friday 2017 in pictures Dozens of Brazilians reach for television sets in a store in Sao Paulo EPA Black Friday 2017 in pictures Brazilians reach for television sets in a store in Sao Paulo EPA Black Friday 2017 in pictures People wait outside a department store in Thessaloniki, Greece AFP/Getty Black Friday 2017 in pictures People wait in line outside of Best Buy in Norwalk, Connecticut November 23, 2017 for the store to open at 5PM on Thanksgiving Day to take advantage of the Black Friday sales AFP/Getty Black Friday 2017 in pictures People shop at Macy's department store on Thanksgiving Day. Some stores began their 'Black Friday' sales earlier than the usual date Getty Black Friday 2017 in pictures Shoppers are seen queuing for the opening of a Game discount store on 'Black Friday' at a shopping mall in Umhlanga, KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa Reuters This last might include stores artificially inflating prices on goods in advance, only to then slash the cost back down to its original value or temporarily laying on inferior products just to meet the ravenous feeding frenzy for loot. The madness has nevertheless spread around the world. France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Brazil, Nigeria and South Africa have all embraced the mania in recent years. With Cyber Monday taking place today, many people may find themselves asking what the difference is between the day of online shopping and Black Friday. Both days place a great emphasis on post-Thanksgiving discounts, in the US and around the world. Despite the fact that many savings being offered on Black Friday may still be available a few days later on Cyber Monday, there are slight distinctions between the two. While Black Friday has been widely recognised as an annual shopping season for decades, the conception of Cyber Monday came far more recently. So how did Cyber Monday begin, where does the term come from and how is it different to Black Friday? Heres everything you need to know: When is Cyber Monday? Cyber Monday is taking place this year on Monday 26 November. The annual shopping event always falls on the Monday after Thanksgiving, and so usually takes place in November. The first Cyber Monday took place in 2005, after a press release by consumer website shop.org was released by Ellen Davis and Scott Silverman with the headline: Cyber Monday quickly becoming one of the biggest online shopping days of the year. Where did the term come from? Ellen Davis, senior vice president of the National Retail Federation, coined Cyber Monday with her colleague Scott Silverman 13 years ago. The day was conceived following on from research conducted in 2004, which found that the Monday after Thanksgiving was supposedly one of the biggest online shopping days of the year. Black Friday 2018 in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Black Friday 2018 in pictures Black Friday 2018 in pictures Brazil People buy televisions at a supermarket during a Black Friday sale in Sao Paulo EPA Black Friday 2018 in pictures US Black Friday sales event at Macy's flagship store in New York Reuters Black Friday 2018 in pictures Greece Customers wait at the entrance of a Nike sportswear store in Thessaloniki AFP Black Friday 2018 in pictures US People shop during a Black Friday sales event at Macy's flagship store in New York Reuters Black Friday 2018 in pictures UK People queue up outside Foot Locker before opening during the Black Friday sales in Oxford Street, London EPA Black Friday 2018 in pictures US People shop during a Black Friday sales event at Macy's flagship store in New York Reuters Black Friday 2018 in pictures South Africa Members of the public stand in a long queue as they wait to shop at department stores in the Woodmead Value mart EPA Black Friday 2018 in pictures Brazil People buy televisions at a supermarket during a Black Friday sale in Sao Paulo EPA Black Friday 2018 in pictures US People line up to pay for their purchases in Kansas AP Black Friday 2018 in pictures Spain Shoppers queue during Black Friday sales in Barakaldo, near Bilbao Reuters Black Friday 2018 in pictures US A woman smiles while shopping during a Black Friday sales event at Macy's flagship store in New York REUTERS Black Friday 2018 in pictures Germany A poster with the letters 'Black Weekend' hangs on a shop window at a store in Stuttgart EPA Black Friday 2018 in pictures Brazil People buy televisions at a supermarket during a Black Friday sale in Sao Paulo EPA Black Friday 2018 in pictures UK People queue up at the HMV store before the opening during the Black Friday sales in Oxford Street, London EPA Black Friday 2018 in pictures US People shop during a Black Friday sales event at Macy's flagship store in New York Reuters Black Friday 2018 in pictures US People wait in line for a Best Buy store to open for an early Black Friday sale in Kansas AP Black Friday 2018 in pictures Brazil People buy televisions at a supermarket during a Black Friday sale in Sao Paulo EPA Black Friday 2018 in pictures US Reuters Black Friday 2018 in pictures US People shop at the Herald Square Macy's Flag ship store in New York Getty Black Friday 2018 in pictures US People wait in line for a Best Buy store to open for an early Black Friday sale in Kansas AP With this in mind, David and Silverman decided to create a marketing campaign in which they would encourage consumers to shop online on the Monday after the national holiday, hence the term Cyber Monday. How is Cyber Monday different to Black Friday? Despite the fact that a lot of Black Friday shopping takes place online, Cyber Monday is perceived as the online counterpart to the frenzied post-Thanksgiving day of retail. Cyber Monday deals are available exclusively online, while many Black Friday deals can be purchased online and in-store. Cyber Monday is also seen as a great opportunity for smaller retailers to promote their products, as they may not have been able to compete with the larger retailers on Black Friday. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Many Black Friday deals from retailers such as Amazon will continue all the way through until Cyber Monday. For all the best Cyber Monday deals from speakers to mattresses, click here. A group of women have been marching in the streets of Dublin wearing nothing but underwear to demand rape trial reform in Ireland. The protest follows a recent rape trial in Cork, during which a 17-year-old girls underwear was used against her as evidence in court. During the trial, senior counsel Elizabeth O'Connell told the jury that they should consider the underwear that the teenage girl was wearing during the alleged rape. "Does the evidence out-rule the possibility that she was attracted to the defendant and was open to meeting someone and being with someone?" she said, according to The Irish Examiner. "You have to look at the way she was dressed. She was wearing a thong with a lace front." Noeline Blackwell, head of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, commented on the case, stating: "The reference to the girl's underwear and the assumption and inference that the jury was being invited to draw - that because she was dressed like that she was asking for sex - does not surprise us." Many have condemned the way in which the rape trial was conducted, with critics accusing the barrister of victim blaming. Stacie Ellen Murphy, Alanna Cassidy and Lena Seale marching in Dublin (PA) Following the trial, 26-year-old campaigner Stacie Ellen Murphy launched a protest in an effort to reform the way in which rape trials are conducted by walking through the streets of Dublin in her underwear. The Dubliner has vowed to continue doing so until she can get 50 more people to join her. On Thursday 22 November, Murphy, Alanna Cassidy and Lena Seale braved the cold Dublin weather wearing underwear with the phrase this is not consent written on their skin. Stacie Ellen Murphy has vowed to continue marching until she can get 50 more people to join her in her fight for rape trial reform (PA) Im not going to be stopping until I get a change, Murphy said, according to Press Association. Until its talked about in the Dail. Until I get to the Dail. Until changes are made. Im not going to stop until Ive got a crowd of 50 people walking toward me every single day doing this walk, until theres a change in the judicial system about underwear being brought up in a case or court trial. On Monday 19 November Murphy headed to the courts of Dublin in her underwear. As she stood on the steps outside, Murphy hugged a rape survivor whose attacker had just been sentenced to jail in court. Over the weekend, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told RTE 1's This Week In Politics show that he had asked an "eminent person" to investigate the way in which evidence is assessed in court. "Whether you are a man or a woman, if you are a victim of rape or sexual assault, you are never to blame for it," he said. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events "It doesn't matter what you wear, where you go, who you go with or whether you have taken alcohol or drugs - no one asks to be raped." In response to the trial of alleged rape in Cork, women in Ireland have been posting photos of their underwear on social media with the hashtag "#ThisIsNotConsent". Earlier this month, a protest was held in Cork city centre over the use of the teenage girl's underwear as evidence in court. Shares in Flybe soared 71 per cent on Friday as Virgin Atlantic confirmed it was considering a bid for the struggling British regional airline. Flybe shares were up 6.9p to 16.6p but remain a tiny fraction of the 2.95 at which they floated in 2010. Last week, the carrier announced it was putting itself up for sale as financial problems mounted. Flybe is expected to lose tens of millions of pounds over the winter, at an average rate calculated by The Independent of 7,000 per hour. Ryanair and easyJet have both said they have no interest in buying Flybe but Virgin Atlantic is now in talks over a bid. Virgin Atlantic has a trading and codeshare relationship and confirms that it is reviewing its options in respect of Flybe, which range from enhanced commercial arrangements to a possible offer for Flybe, a spokesperson said. Flybe confirmed the talks but cautioned that, there can be no certainty that an offer will be made, nor as to the terms on which any offer will be made. Flybes domestic network could be used to integrate more customers into Virgins international services. Virgin runs long-haul routes mainly serving the US, the Caribbean and Asia, while Flybe operates from smaller UK airports, including London City, Southampton and Norwich, and flies to destinations across the UK and Europe. Another potential buyer is believed to be transport company Stobart Group, which backed out of a bid in March. Any successful suitor is likely to have to inject tens of millions of pounds into Flybe, which saw half-year profits plunge from 16.1m to 7.4m. Revenues fell 10 per cent to 409.2m after it cut capacity by 9 per cent. Flybe, which began as Jersey European in 1979, has 78 planes and carries about eight million passengers a year. The airline has been troubled ever since it floated on the stock market eight years ago and has been hurt recently by falling demand, rising fuel costs and the weak pound. Trade unions have already raised concerns over the impact of a sale on the carriers 2,300 employees. The latest takeover rumours come after it emerged this week that Flybes new route between Cornwall and Heathrow will be subsidised by taxpayers. The Department for Transport and Cornwall Council will each pay up to 1.7m for the route, representing a subsidy of 5 per passenger or 10 for a round-trip. Carmaker Vauxhall is to cut more than 200 jobs at its Ellesmere Port plant. The company said it is planning a phased reduction of 241 jobs, and is aiming for all redundancies to be voluntary. Production line workers staged a walkout when the cuts were announced, according to reports. Vauxhall said the job losses were part of a restructuring that is critical to ensure that the Ellesmere Port plant develops its competitiveness during this difficult time within the industry. The restructuring is necessary to make it a competitive plant when compared to the benchmark, the group said. The news follows a report last week that the firms French owner, PSA, is considering shutting down one of its two UK plants after Brexit. Sources said the manufacturer was reviewing how it will respond to the post-Brexit market, and said Vauxhall was also considering stockpiling parts to avoid shortages and bringing forward a summer shutdown. The UK motor industry has struggled in recent months, with many companies issuing strong warnings about Brexit. Jaguar Land Rover was forced to stop production at its Solihull plant for two weeks in October, and has put workers at its Castle Bromwich plant on a three-day week until Christmas. Meanwhile, Toyota has said a no-deal Brexit would lead to a temporary stoppage in production and hurt UK investment, and BMW is planning to bring a maintenance stoppage at its Oxford plant forward to coincide with the beginning of Brexit. Unite regional coordinating officer Mick Chalmers said: Vauxhalls Ellesmere Port workers have made huge sacrifices and worked hard to ensure the carmaker recently returned to profit for the first time in two decades. Further job losses will come as a sickening blow for them and their families in the run up to Christmas and will further heighten the anger over the uncertainty surrounding the future of the plant. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Mr Chalmers said the union would be pressing for guarantees of no compulsory redundancies and urgent assurances. The union has also called on PSA to remove the uncertainty surrounding the plant by committing new models to Ellesmere Port beyond 2021. PSA should be clear. Unite will not tolerate the death by a thousand cuts of Ellesmere Port and will leave no stone unturned in securing the future of the plant and its skilled workforce, added Mr Chalmers. For more than five decades, Evelyn Davis was corporate Americas most notorious scourge a Dutch-born Holocaust survivor who travelled the country to attend dozens of shareholder meetings each year. Wearing hot pants or stripping down to a swimsuit to attract attention, she berated chief executives such as Lee Iacocca of Chrysler (he needed to lose weight, she said); or Frank Blake of Home Depot (a phoney). Institutional investors get treated like royalty, she proclaimed, individual investors like peasants. Davis, who died aged 89, championed transparency in corporate governance, boardroom accountability, reduced compensation for chief executives and, she acknowledged, her own public image as the self-anointed queen of the corporate jungle. While annual shareholder meetings are typically staid affairs in which stockholders, executives and board members discuss and vote on company issues, the presence of Davis could turn them into something close to a circus act. Davis in 1973 (Washington Post/Linda Wheeler) At one AT&T meeting in the mid-1970s, she was photographed front and centre in the audience, decked out in a construction workers hard hat and a pair of riding breeches. At other meetings, she told officials at The Washington Post Co and Gannett, the publisher of USA Today, that she wasnt receiving enough coverage in their newspapers. Chief executives and board members were the target of harangues over company policies, exorbitant spending and allegations of impropriety, which alternately drew cheers and jeers from her fellow shareholders. At an Eastern Air Lines meeting in 1977, according to one account in The Washington Post, an irate stockholder knocked her to the floor, causing an ear injury that required five stitches. An hour later, she was back in action at the annual meeting of The New York Times Co. The US's People magazine dubbed her the nations most obstreperous corporate gadfly; Vanity Fair called her arguably the most famous and least loved shareholder activist in the country, and in 1993 Washingtonian magazine enshrined her name on its list of 25 most annoying Washingtonians. Her influence far surpassed her portfolio, which was relatively modest in 2002, she told Vanity Fair she owned stock in about 86 corporations, worth more than a million dollars but sizeable enough that she was permitted to submit proposals at shareholder meetings. Among her causes was an effort to increase board accountability by electing directors annually, rather than in a staggered system that was used to ward off corporate raiders such as billionaire Trump ally Carl Icahn. A representative of pharmaceutical firm Bristol-Myers Squibb said in 2003 it had adopted the annual election policy as a result of Daviss 18 years of lobbying. She was also credited with successfully pushing for an anti-greenmail policy in 1990 at General Motors, which had paid former presidential candidate Ross Perot $700m (545m) to convince him to leave its board. She is full of mischief infuriating, outrageous, and unstoppable, Stephen Norman, corporate secretary of American Express, told Vanity Fair. Without any staff or legal establishment helping her, she has resolutely survived four decades of corporate opposition. Youve got to be obsessive and single-minded to do that ... She can be cruel, vulgar, hurtful and self-aggrandising, but she is unbowed, and I respect her for that. From 1965 to 2011, Davis also published an annual newsletter, Highlights and Lowlights, that covered corporate meetings, shareholder proposals and most anything else on Daviss mind. The price varied, but lingered around $600 and Davis required that her customers, mainly chief executives, buy no fewer than two copies per order. In one item, she wrote: The corporate secretary at Safeway is no longer there, thank goodness!!! We dont care whether she got fired, quit or retired. She is gone hoorah!!! For another: When in Europe there are many cities with VERY similar names, sometimes in the SAME country. Be sure YOU go to the one you intend to go to. Critics, including fellow activist shareholders John J Gilbert and Nell Minow, called the publication a form of blackmail for CEOs, who subscribed in an effort to silence Davis at shareholder meetings. Davis denied that it was anything but a serious business newsletter. Still, she told People in 1996, advancing corporate democracy and educating her readers were not her sole mission, or even her primary objective. The main thing, she said, is to keep my name out in front. I always say about gadflies: a gadfly does get the animal to move, said Minow, vice chair of ValueEdge Advisors, a shareholder consulting firm. Do I think she accomplished very much? No. Her flamboyant manner made it too easy for people to dismiss her as a kook. Even when she was right about the issues, she was not willing to go in and talk to management and say, Lets come up with a compromise, the way todays shareholders do. She could have been more successful than she was, Minow added, by caring about the issues more than she cared about the notoriety. The younger of two children, Evelyn Yvonne DeJong was born in Amsterdam, on what she called the wrong side of the ocean but the very right side of the tracks. She grew up in a home outfitted with 12 rooms, two maids and one French governess, with a mother who worked as a psychologist and a father who was a prominent neurologist. He was lecturing in the US when the rest of the family, which was part Jewish, was arrested by the Nazis and sent to concentration camps. Evelyn was scarred by a piece of shrapnel that struck her right calf during a mortar attack at one camp; at another, she cut mica in a factory. Her parents divorced after the war, and when her father took a job teaching at Johns Hopkins, she joined him in the Baltimore suburb of Catonsville, Maryland, where she graduated from high school in 1947. She studied at Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College) and George Washington University but did not receive a degree, dropping out to work as a stenographer. After her father died, in 1956, she moved to Manhattan, began to invest her inheritance in corporations, and founded Shareholder Research out of a hotel room near the United Nations. In 1963, she was arrested in that same room, and subsequently convicted of offering to commit lewd and indecent acts in a room ... which she had equipped with market charts, financial reference books and a bed, according to the New York World-Telegram. Davis received a 30-day suspended sentence and later declined to talk about the conviction, saying in 2003 it was a vicious corporate frame-up, an effort to silence her at shareholder meetings. She moved to Washington in the early 1980s, where she received a White House press pass through her newsletter and became a staple of press briefings during the Ronald Reagan administration. Davis also established the Evelyn Y Davis Foundation, donating to arts museums and journalism schools with the stipulation, she said, that they mount and polish a plaque bearing her name, so long as the institution continues to exist. Her four marriages to William Henry Davis III, whose name she kept after their marriage in 1957 and divorce one year later, and to Marvin Knudsen, Walter Froh Jr and James Patterson ended in divorce. Despite being single, she told The Post she preferred the title Mrs. Ive had three husbands, she said in 2003, before marrying her fourth. Ms is for a woman who cant even get one husband. She has no immediate survivors. She had secured a cemetery plot three decades before her death and erected an eight-foot granite tombstone and memorial that christened her Queen of the Corporate Jungle, 1929-Forever. The grave bears the inscription, Power is greater than love, and I did not get where I am by standing in line, nor by being shy. Davis told The Post in 1995: Every now and again, Ill ask the stonecutter to carve in a new detail. Rather than leave the design to my estate, I do it myself. That way I get what I want. Evelyn Y Davis, shareholder activist, born 16 August 1929, died 4 November 2018 Washington Post Nearly 18 months after the Grenfell Tower fire, 96 per cent of council tower blocks in London do not have sprinkler systems, according to research by the Labour Party. Figures from local councils showed more than 800 high-rises in the capital did not have the fire protection method, leading the opposition party to say council tenants had been betrayed by the government. In the aftermath of the inferno that killed 72 people, Theresa May vowed to do whatever it takes to keep our people safe. Housing minister Kit Malthouse said the government had taken steps to ensure the immediate safety of all high rise buildings, pointing out sprinklers were only one of a host of possible measures that can protect a buildings occupants from fire. Sprinklers were fitted in 32 of 837 blocks that rise higher than 98ft across the capital, figures provided by 29 of 33 councils showed. Nine of those with sprinklers had them before the blaze and 23 have had the systems fitted in the months since, according to the data seen by The Independent. Since 2007, new blocks over 30 metres tall must be fitted with sprinklers, but the law does not apply retrospectively. After the 2009 Lakanal House fire in Southwark that killed six people, a coroner recommended retrofitting sprinklers in existing high-rise residential buildings. The National Fire Chiefs Council, the London Fire Brigade Commissioner, the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service and the London Assembly, have also called for the systems to be retrofitted. Calling on the government to set up a fire safety fund to help cash-strapped councils pay for the protection systems to be fitted, shadow housing minister Sarah Jones said she knew of 10 councils that had requested funding support specifically for sprinklers, but the government had refused. Other councils had told the Croydon MP they had been discouraged from requesting funding after the governments refusals of other councils were made public. Not a single council surveyed had been granted a funding application for sprinklers, she said. Councils and social housing tenants have been betrayed by this government who promised to do whatever it took after Grenfell to make tower blocks safe, and has since backtracked, said Ms Jones. Its simply contradictory for ministers to say that sprinklers arent essential in older buildings while requiring them for new buildings. It creates a two-tier system which disproportionately impacts social housing tenants. Why should certain people be entitled to safer housing than others? Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began Show all 18 1 /18 Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began Kitchen in flat 16 where the fire started Grenfell Tower Inquiry/PA Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began The kitchen from flat 16 ReutersGrenfell Tower Inquiry/Reuters Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began The kitchen from flat 16 PA Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began Hallway in flat 16, leading to the kitchen where the fire started Grenfell Tower Inquiry/PA Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began The kitchen from flat 16 Grenfell Tower Inquiry/PA Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began The kitchen from flat 16 PA Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began Bedroom in flat 16 Grenfell Tower Inquiry/PA Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began Living room in flat 16 Grenfell Tower Inquiry/PA Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began Toilet in flat 16 Grenfell Tower Inquiry/PA Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began Living room in flat 16 Grenfell Tower Inquiry/PA Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began Bedroom 2 of flat 16 Grenfell Tower Inquiry/Reuters Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began Bedroom in flat 16 Grenfell Tower Inquiry/PA Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began Bedroom 2 of flat 16 Grenfell Tower Inquiry/Reuters Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began The kitchen from flat 16 Grenfell Tower Inquiry/PA Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began Kitchen in flat 16 where the fire started Grenfell Tower Inquiry/PA Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began Door to flat 16 from the lobby on floor 4 Grenfell Tower Inquiry/PA Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began Living room in flat 16 Grenfell Tower Inquiry/PA Grenfell Tower Inquiry: photos of inside the flat where fire began Hallway in flat 16 Grenfell Tower Inquiry/PA A London Fire Brigade spokesperson said: Sprinklers save lives, reduce injury and protect property and we have long been urging the government to take action on sprinklers. We believe building owners should retrofit sprinklers in tower blocks, especially in the homes of those who would find it difficult to escape a fire such as those with mobility problems and we have also been calling for sprinklers to be mandatory in all new school builds and major refurbishments. They are the only fire safety system which detects a fire, suppresses a fire and raises the alarm. Mr Malthouse said: Since the tragic events at Grenfell Tower, we have taken steps to ensure the immediate safety of all high rise buildings. We are going to fully fund the removal and replacement of unsafe cladding, like the type used on Grenfell Tower, on high rise buildings owned by councils and housing associations, estimated at 400m. Sprinklers can be effective, but they are one of many fire safety measures that can be adopted. If local authorities have concerns about the costs of essential fire safety measures, they should contact us to discuss their position and any flexibilities we can offer. The United States urges Russia to use its influence on Damascus and Tehran to withdraw Iranian troops from the country, U.S. Special Representative for Syria Engagement James Jeffrey said. "We do urge the Russians to use whatever influence they have with the Syrian government and with the Iranians to effect the removal of all Iranian commanded forces from the entirety of Syria as part of a solution that would have all foreign forces other than the Russians leave and return to 2011," the State Department envoy said in an interview with RIA Novosti and the Kommersant newspaper.. Jeffrey added that Washington had talked to Russia about it but what will that require is another question. The British public would again vote to leave the EU if another referendum is held on Brexit, Diane Abbott has said. Labour's shadow home secretary said her party could end up backing calls for the public to be given the final say on the terms of Brexit but predicted that Leave would again win the poll. MPs pushing for a fresh vote should therefore be "careful what they wish for", she said. Ms Abbott told the BBC's Political Thinking podcast: First of all, Im saying a second referendum is not off the table for the Labour Party. We passed that as a resolution at conference as one of a series of options. Recommended Theresa May casts doubt over her future if MPs vote down Brexit deal "But yeah, people should be careful what they wish for, because my view is that if we had a second referendum tomorrow, Leave would win again and not only would Leave win again but Leave voters would say 'What didnt you understand about Leave the first time?'." A growing number of MPs have voiced support for another public vote on Brexit amid parliamentary deadlock over Theresa May's planned deal. Labour has said it will push for a general election if the agreement is voted down. If it cannot secure one then it will consider other options, including the possibility of a People's Vote. The Independent's petition in favour of a fresh referendum has been signed by more than a million people. Ms May faces an uphill battle to convince the Commons to approve her deal, with as many as 80 Tory MPs threatening to vote against it. DUP MPs, whose votes the prime minister relies on to maintain her governing majority, have suggested they will not support the government until she ditches the customs backstop she has agreed with the EU. The plan could see Northern Ireland being governed by different regulations to the rest of the UK. 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 Ms Abbott suggested Labour could work with the Northern Irish party to oust the Conservative government. She said: We would only want to ally with a group of MPs who agreed with us on the issues at stake. At this point, we dont agree with the DUP on the issues at stake, but in this sort of parliamentary turmoil you cant necessarily rule anything our. I always say to my MP colleagues that the people of Hackney send me to Parliament to get rid of the Tories. And if its all about getting rid of this Tory government you do what it takes." Dominic Raab has said that Theresa May's Brexit blueprint is "even worse" than remaining in the European Union amid pressure on the prime minister from all sides. The ex-Brexit secretary said MPs would "inevitably" vote down the deal, as more than 80 Tory MPs have publicly declared their opposition to the draft deal ahead of a Commons showdown next month. Ms May is stepping up efforts to sell her Brexit agreement to the public before heading out to Brussels for a crunch summit on Sunday, where EU leaders will be asked to approve the plan. But she faced a fresh headache overnight when leaked internal emails from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) cast doubts on the body's public support for the draft Brexit deal. The CBI, which represents more than 190,000 firms, expressed private concern that the blueprint is "not a good deal", despite publicly showing support for Ms May. Asked if the draft deal was worse than remaining in the EU, Mr Raab told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I'm not going to advocate staying in the EU. "But, if you just presented me terms, this deal or EU membership, because we would effectively be bound by the same rules but without the control or voice over them, yes, I think this would be even worse than that." Mr Raab, who resigned from the cabinet in protest at the deal, said MPs were unlikely to support the plans. "We will, I think, inevitably see parliament vote this deal down," he said. "And then I think some of those other alternatives will need to come into play." The final part of the draft agreement was agreed by negotiators in Brussels and London, setting out the "political agreement" for the future relationship with the EU. Senior Tories lined up to rubbish the plans during a tensee Commons statement on Wednesday, where the prime minister told MPs that a good Brexit deal was "within our grasp". Ex-foreign secretary Boris Johnson described the plan as "complete nonsense" and Iain Duncan-Smith, former Tory leader, said it was not "at all workable" in its current form. However education secretary Damian Hinds defended the plan, telling the Today programme that support would grow in parliament as MPs considered the prospect of leaving the EU without a deal. "The deal that we have on the table is a strong deal. It is a good, balanced deal. As people reflect on what the alternatives are, I think people are going to come to see this is a very good deal for Britain," he said. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Ahead of the summit, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez threatened to "veto Brexit" over the issue of Gibraltar, the disputed British territory. Spain says the future relationship to be negotiated between the EU and UK should not apply to Gibraltar and that it should be only decided bilaterally between itself and Britain. But Theresa May has rejected this idea and has said the plan must apply to the whole United Kingdom family a group which apparently includes the British Overseas Territory. Close Theresa May faces public interrogation in live radio phone-in as Brexit negotiations with Europe continue Theresa May refused to say her Brexit deal was better than staying in the EU when she answered questions from the public on live radio. The prime minister also dodged a question on whether she would resign if MPs voted against the agreement, but insisted that Brussels would not offer better terms. She appeared on BBC Radio 5 Live on Friday afternoon a few hours after former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab hit out at the deal, branding it as "even worse than remaining." EU diplomats are meeting to finalise the draft divorce between Britain and the bloc, with Spain threatening to oppose any deal that does not give it a say on the future of Gibraltar. Please allow a moment for our liveblog to load I understand Pedro Sanchezs threat to veto Brexit was met with some mirth in Westminster. The Spanish prime minister, of course, cannot singlehandedly stop the UKs exit from the bloc and he doesnt even have a veto on signing the withdrawal agreement. With those facts in mind there is a temptation to think Mr Sanchez has overplayed his hand, and looks silly. Spain will inevitably have to climb down at some point before or during Sundays summit or slink away. Seen from Brussels, though, it feels too early for the Brits to start laughing just yet. Spain, like every other European Union country, does have a veto in one area of Brexit: on the planned free trade agreement between Britain and the EU. Arlene Foster has suggested her Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) could revisit its confidence and supply agreement with the Conservative Party if Theresa May's Brexit deal passes through parliament. The Northern Irish party has said it will not be able to support Ms May's deal unless she ditches the proposed backstop, which would see increased regulatory checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Speaking ahead of the DUP's annual conference this weekend, Ms Foster warned that the EU Withdrawal Agreement will not get the support it needs from MPs and instead of "wasting time" on the agreement, she said Mrs May should try to secure a better deal. "If this is not going to deliver on Brexit then of course that brings us to the situation of looking again at the confidence and supply deal," she told the BBC. "But we are not there yet." The uncertain future of the confidence and supply agreement, introduced after Ms May lost their parliamentary majority at the 2017 general election, raises fresh questions over the ability of the government to pass crucial legislation. Under the terms of the deal, the DUP agreed "to support the government on all motions of confidence, and on the Queen's Speech, the Budget, finance bills, money bills, supply and appropriation legislation and Estimates". Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, met with Ms Foster and her deputy Nigel Dodds in Belfast ahead of the DUP party conference. Mr Hammond said that the government was considering providing extra border backstop assurances to the DUP to ensure their support. He said that ministers have a number of choices through the parliamentary process, which includes extending the Brexit implementation period ahead of the permanent relationship. Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Show all 13 1 /13 Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Esther McVey Britain's Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey arrives to attend the weekly meeting of the cabinet at 10 Downing Street in London. - Britain's Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey resigned from the cabinet over draft Brexit deal AFP/Getty Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Dominic Raab British Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab give a press conference at the end of the final round of talks in Brexit negotiations at the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium EPA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Rehman Chrishti Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party Rehman Chrishti tendered his resignation letter this afternoon PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Anne-Marie Trevelyan Parliamentary private secretary in the Department of Education Anne-Marie Trevelyan resigned stating that she cannot support the deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Sam Gyimah Universities minister Sam Gyimah resigned on November 30, claiming the government's decision to pull out of the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system as a deciding factor PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Shailesh Vara Shailesh Vara who has quit as Minister of State for Northern Ireland, saying he cannot support Theresa May's Brexit agreement, which he said "leaves the UK in a halfway house with no time limit on when we will finally be a sovereign nation" PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Suella Braverman Brexit minister Suella Braverman has resigned, stating It is not what the British people, or my constituents, voted for in 2016. Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Ranil Jayawardena Parliamentary private secretary to the ministry of justice Ranil Jayawardena resigned as he could not back the deal "in good conscience" That could avoid having to use a backstop, in which the UK would continue to follow EU regulations relating to trade across the Irish border - a solution which is adamantly opposed by the DUP. Earlier in the week the DUP raised questions about the future of the confidence and supply agreement after MPs pulled their support by abstaining on a number of key budget votes. All eight of the party's MPs present in the Commons abstained on three votes, and even joined forces with Labour to support one amendment relating to child poverty. Pedro Sanchez, Spains prime minister, has publicly warned he will veto Brexit over the issue of Gibraltar and warned Sunday's EU summit may be called off if no agreement is reached. Spain says the future relationship to be negotiated between the EU and UK should not apply to Gibraltar and that it should only be decided bilaterally between itself and Britain. But Theresa May has rejected this idea and said the plan must apply to the whole United Kingdom family a group that apparently includes the British Overseas Territory. After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away. My government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit, Mr Sanchez said. He later added: "If there is no deal, it's obvious that what will happen is that the European Council will most likely not take place." The Spanish government does not have the power to veto the UKs departure from the European Union, nor can it single-handedly block the withdrawal agreement. It can vote against the withdrawal agreement, but would require support from other countries to block it because the deal will be approved by a qualified majority voting at the European Council. The one area where Spain can cause significant problems for the UKs departure, however, is in the case of the future trade agreement which Ms May says should be signed within the 21-month transition period that starts next March. Every national legislature and government in the EU would have to agree to such a trade deal. There is plenty of precedent for this: in the past EU-wide deals have been blocked by entities including the parliament of Wallonia, a Belgian region. The UK has held Gibraltar since 1704 and it was formally ceded as territory in a treaty in 1713. It is a self-governing British overseas territory. The Gibraltar issue is controversial with the Spanish public, with successive governments benefiting politically by grandstanding on the matter. It became an official policy of the Spanish government to regain control of the rock during the dictatorship of General Franco, and it has been so ever since. People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal Show all 30 1 /30 People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal Rex People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal AFP/Getty Images People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal A young protestor shouts as she takes part in the People's Vote demonstration against Brexit Getty Images People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal Reuters People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal EPA People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal A protester's pro-EU t-shirt EPA People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal EPA People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal AFP/Getty Images People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal EPA People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal AFP/Getty People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal EPA People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal Gina Miller and Caroline Lucas EPA People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal EPA People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal EPA People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal Tens of thousands of people march through London EPA People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal EPA People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal Demonstrators at the People's Vote March Getty People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal 'Two months too young to decide on my future' REUTERS People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal PA People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal A young girl joins in the march PA People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal An EU flag is draped across the statue of Winston Chruchill in Parliament Square REUTERS People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal AFP/Getty Images People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal Vince Cable MP, Pro-EU campaigner Gina Miller, Tony Robinson and Caroline Lucas MP join with crowds PA People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal PA People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal Crowds gather on Pall Mall PA People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal A man resembling Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, joins EU supporters Reuters People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal Reuters People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal People gather in Trafalgar Square REUTERS People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal Pro-EU campaigner Gina Miller and Tony Robinson PA People's Vote march demanding vote on final Brexit deal EU supporters, calling on the government to give Britons a vote on the final Brexit deal, participate in the 'People's Vote' march REUTERS Polls and referendums have repeatedly shown Gibraltans are overwhelmingly in favour of staying tied to Britain. The upsurge in interest in the Gibraltar issue could be down to the fact that the Spanish region of Andalusia has local elections scheduled for 2 December just a week after the final Brexit summit. Andalusia borders Gibraltar and includes the county of Camp de Gibraltar or countryside of Gibraltar. About 10,000 Spanish people cross the border into the British overseas territory every day to work, so their livelihoods are connected to Brexit talks. Theresa May has cast doubt over whether she will carry on as prime minister if MPs vote down her Brexit deal, as she warned her critics that the EU will not offer further concessions on the current plan. The prime minister repeatedly dodged questions during a radio phone-in on whether she would resign if Tory MPs follow through on their threats to block the proposed withdrawal agreement. She also refused to say that the deal would be better for the UK than the status quo of EU membership. Ms May is preparing to travel to Brussels for a special European Council meeting at which the other EU member states will decide whether to sign off the proposed withdrawal agreement. She will also hold last minute-talks on Saturday with Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission. The prime minister was dealt a fresh blow ahead of the summit when Dominic Raab, who resigned as her Brexit secretary last week, said the proposed exit deal was worse than remaining in the EU. Despite the growing backlash from her own backbenchers, the prime minister told a BBC Radio 5 Live phone-in that she remain determined to ensure the deal is approved by the Commons. Asked whether she might resign if the plan is rejected, she said: Im focused on actually ensuring that we do get this deal through parliament, because I believe that this is absolutely the right deal for the UK. Pushed on whether she could resign, she added: This isnt about me. As Im sitting here, Im not thinking about me, Im thinking about getting a deal through that delivers for the people of this country. Thats what drives me and that is whats at the forefront of my mind. Asked for a third time if she might quit, she said simply: My focus is on getting this deal through. The prime minister also refused to say definitively that she believes her Brexit deal is better for the UK than remaining in the EU. She said: I honestly believe that Im getting a good deal for the UK. I recognise that there were aspects of being in the European Union that caused people real concern, and free movement was one of those. Ms May said that, despite having campaigned for Remain, she wasnt one of those who said that if we leave the EU, it will be really bad for the UK I actually said the sky wont fall in. She said Brexit would create a different world, but it will be a good one, adding: I genuinely believe theres a bright future for this country and our best days lie ahead of us. Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Show all 13 1 /13 Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Esther McVey Britain's Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey arrives to attend the weekly meeting of the cabinet at 10 Downing Street in London. - Britain's Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey resigned from the cabinet over draft Brexit deal AFP/Getty Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Dominic Raab British Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab give a press conference at the end of the final round of talks in Brexit negotiations at the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium EPA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Rehman Chrishti Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party Rehman Chrishti tendered his resignation letter this afternoon PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Anne-Marie Trevelyan Parliamentary private secretary in the Department of Education Anne-Marie Trevelyan resigned stating that she cannot support the deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Sam Gyimah Universities minister Sam Gyimah resigned on November 30, claiming the government's decision to pull out of the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system as a deciding factor PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Shailesh Vara Shailesh Vara who has quit as Minister of State for Northern Ireland, saying he cannot support Theresa May's Brexit agreement, which he said "leaves the UK in a halfway house with no time limit on when we will finally be a sovereign nation" PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Suella Braverman Brexit minister Suella Braverman has resigned, stating It is not what the British people, or my constituents, voted for in 2016. Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Ranil Jayawardena Parliamentary private secretary to the ministry of justice Ranil Jayawardena resigned as he could not back the deal "in good conscience" Pressed again on whether she was confident the UK would be better off under the terms of her deal than under EU membership, she said only: I think we will be better off in a situation, which well have outside the European Union, where we have control of all those things and are able to trade around the rest of the world. Its different. You said better off but actually its a different sort of environment and a different approach that well be taking to things. Asked again if her deal would be better than the status quo, she said: Its going to be different and I believe we can build a better future outside the European Union. Earlier in the day, Mr Raab said MPs would inevitably vote down Ms Mays plan, which he claimed was worse than EU membership. He told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: Im not going to advocate staying in the EU. But, if you just presented me terms, this deal or EU membership, because we would effectively be bound by the same rules but without the control or voice over them, yes, I think this would be even worse than that. Ms Mays talks with Mr Juncker are likely to focus on how the EU could help her sell the deal at home, but UK and EU leaders will also need to ensure it receives the backing of the 27 other member states. The Spanish government is threatening to oppose the proposal unless changes are made in relation to Gibraltar. Up to 80 Conservative MPs have also threatened to vote against Ms Mays proposed agreement when it is put before the Commons, casting doubts over her ability to get it through parliament. Some MPs believe she would then have to return to Brussels to negotiate a different deal. Former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab has said Theresa May's EU withdrawal proposals are worse than staying in the EU However, the prime minister warned her critics that the EU will not offer further concessions. She said: If we were to go back to the European Union and say, People didnt like that deal, can we have another one? I dont think they are going to come to us and say, We will give you a better deal. This is the deal that I think works for the UK. And she warned MPs that rejecting her plan would lead to more uncertainty and division and insisted the public wants politicians to deliver Brexit. She said: In parliament theres a lot of focus on whos going to vote for the deal or not, and outside I think people are thinking, Actually, lets make sure we can get this through and get on with delivering. If this deal doesnt go through we are back at square one. What we end up with is more uncertainty and more division. More rain is forecast for northern California over the weekend after helping firefighters nearly fully contain one of the state's deadliest wildfires, which has killed at least 84 people. After a particularly rainless year, the so-called Camp Fire has ravaged most of the town of Paradise and left hundreds still missing. An inch and a half of rain graced the area on Wednesday, helping to nearly extinguish the blaze which is now 95 per cent contained. Rain also helped reduce the Woolsey fire in Southern California - which has killed three people. That blaze is now reported to be 100 per cent contained. Recommended Rescue of people stranded by California wildfires caught on camera Between one to three inches (2.5-7.5cm) of rain is expected to fall between Friday and Sunday, adding to the three inches that already fell this week, the National Weather Service (NWS) said. "Flash floods and debris flows will be a particular threat in the wildfire burn areas," the NWS said in a notice warning of the risk of flash floods through Friday. "Heavy rainfall at times is possible over the burn areas with the greatest threat expected today." Fire scars leave land with little to no vegetation to stem potential flooding, rock slides, mud slides, and debris flows. Wildfires spread across California in pictures Show all 32 1 /32 Wildfires spread across California in pictures Wildfires spread across California in pictures Firefighters battle a blaze at the Salvation Army Camp in Malibu Getty Wildfires spread across California in pictures Flames from the Camp fire burn near a home atop a ridge near Big Bend AFP/Getty Wildfires spread across California in pictures Cathy Fallon (centre) who stayed behind to tend to her horses during the Camp Fire, embraces Shawna De Long (left) and April Smith who brought supplies for the horses Reuters Wildfires spread across California in pictures A helicopter drops flame retardant on a wildfire in Malibu Getty Wildfires spread across California in pictures An air tanker drops water on the fire along the Ronald Reagan Freeway in Simi Valley AP Wildfires spread across California in pictures An abandoned car from fleeing residents of Paradise in the Pentz road area EPA Wildfires spread across California in pictures A firefighter tackles the fire along the Ronald Reagan Freeway in Simi Valley AP Wildfires spread across California in pictures A Jack In The Box fast food restaurant burns as the Camp fire moves through Paradise, California AFP/Getty Wildfires spread across California in pictures Yuba and Butte County Sheriff officers label a body bag AFP/Getty Wildfires spread across California in pictures Firefighters hose down trees on Bell Canyon Road, near Malibu AFP/Getty Wildfires spread across California in pictures A fire burns at the Salvation Army Camp Getty Wildfires spread across California in pictures A firefighting DC-10 makes a fire retardant drop over a wildfire in the mountains near Malibu Canyon Road AP Wildfires spread across California in pictures A house burns in Paradise, California AFP/Getty Wildfires spread across California in pictures Bins have melted and ballooned in the heat in Magalia, Butte County EPA Wildfires spread across California in pictures Satellite image taken on 8 November shows plumes of smoke from the Camp Fire stretching across portions of Northern California AFP/Getty Wildfires spread across California in pictures Firefighters battle the Camp Fire AP Wildfires spread across California in pictures Firefighters battle the Woolsey Fire Reuters Wildfires spread across California in pictures Deputy Coroner Justin Sponhaltz, of the Mariposa County Sheriff's Office, recovers human remains found at a home destroyed by the Camp Fire AP Wildfires spread across California in pictures Buildings burn in Paradise, California EPA Wildfires spread across California in pictures Local residents bring their horses to Zuma Beach and away from the Woolsey Fire in Malibu Reuters Wildfires spread across California in pictures A used car dealership burns in Paradise, California Reuters Wildfires spread across California in pictures Yuba and Butte County Sheriff officers inspect a burned vehicle after discovering remains nearby in Concow AFP/Getty Wildfires spread across California in pictures Firefighters battle the flames in Thousand Oaks Reuters Wildfires spread across California in pictures A house burns in Paradise, California AFP/Getty Wildfires spread across California in pictures A house burns in Paradise, California AP Wildfires spread across California in pictures Search and rescue teams work to evacuate patients from the burning Feather River Hospital in Paradise, California AFP/Getty Wildfires spread across California in pictures Embers blow in the wind in Paradise, California AFP/Getty Wildfires spread across California in pictures In Butte County, the sky is filled with the smoke of the Camp Fire EPA Wildfires spread across California in pictures Firefighters at work in Thousand Oaks Reuters Wildfires spread across California in pictures A house burns in Paradise, California AP Wildfires spread across California in pictures The burned remains of a house and car are left after the Camp Fire in Paradise, California AFP/Getty Wildfires spread across California in pictures A shop burns in Paradise, California AFP/Getty As many as 560 people are still unaccounted for. That number has fluctuated widely over the past week, hitting a high of more than 1,200 over last weekend. Many of those missing are believed to be aged 65 and over. Rain has the potential of complicating rescue and recovery efforts as well. Firefighters and rescue workers have to deal with muddy and unstable ground. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also issued a flash flood watch warning and wind advisory for Butte County and other areas that the Camp Fire have affected. That risk is low for thousands of evacuees who have fled the Camp Fire and are sheltering outside areas prone to mudslides. Reuters contributed to this report Donald Trump has threatened to close the whole border with Mexico if illegal immigration gets uncontrollable. If we find that it gets to a level where were going to lose control or people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control, Mr Trump said after a Thanksgiving phone call with the US military at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Were either going to have a border or were not, the president said after stationing nearly 6,000 US troops on the border to combat migrants crossing the border without proper documentation. Recommended Judge blocks Trump refusing asylum to immigrants on southern border Mr Trump has been railing against a caravan of approximately 7,000 people slowly making their way towards the US-Mexico border as they flee rampant gang violence and poverty in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. While answering questions from journalists, Mr Trump claimed he had already closed the border before and would do so again - even if meant Mexico could not sell automobiles to American customers. The US recently signed a new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, known as the USMCA, to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and included provisions about automobile sales, but the president did not address in that moment. Donald Trump: immigrants to 'present themselves legally' at border or void asylum claim Two days ago, we closed the border. We actually just closed it. We said, Nobodys coming in. Because its out of control, the president said. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said a few traffic lanes in the port of San Ysidro near San Diego, California, had been shut down because a group of migrants were planning to rush the border. The lanes were, however, opened again later that day. Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Show all 14 1 /14 Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Immigrant children, many of whom are separated form their parents, are housed in Texas' tent city Reuters Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border A two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker cries as her mother is searched and detained near the US-Mexico border Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Undocumented migrants ride on the top of a freight train referred to as the beast, or La Bestia Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border A cage inside a US Customs and Border Protection detention facility in Texas Reuters Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border US Border Patrol Academy All new agents must complete a months-long training course at the New Mexico facility before assuming their posts at Border Patrol stations, mostly along the US-Mexico border Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border US-Mexico border fence A group of young men walk along the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border fence in a remote area of the Sonoran Desert Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border US-Mexico border fence in the US Man looks through US-Mexico border fence into the US in Tijuana, Mexico Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border US-Mexico border fence US Border Patrol agent Sal De Leon stands near a section of the US-Mexico border fence while stopping on patrol on in La Joya, Texas Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border US Border Patrol Academy US Border Patrol instructor yells at trainees after their initial arrival to the academy Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Memorial service in Guatemala Families attend a memorial service for two boys who were kidnapped and killed in San Juan Sacatepequez, Guatemala. Crime drives emigration from Guatemala to the United States, as families seek refuge from the danger Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Arrests on the border Undocumented immigrants comfort each other after being caught by Border Patrol agents near the US-Mexico border Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Detention holding facility A boy from Honduras watches a movie at a detention facility run by the US Border Patrol Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Mexican farm workers Mexican migrant workers harvest organic parsley at Grant Family Farms in Wellington, Colorado Getty Undocumented immigration across the US-Mexico border Mexican family in Arizona A Mexican immigrant family sits in the living room of their rented home in Tuscon, Arizona. The family that Arizona's new tough immigrant law had created a climate of fear in the immigrant community. Getty Mr Trump said on Thanksgiving: "You're dealing with a minimum of 500 serious criminals [among the migrants], so I'm not going to let the military be taken of advantage of. I have no choice. Do I want that to happen? Absolutely not. You're dealing with rough people. No evidence has been made public that any of the migrants attempting to enter the US are actually criminals. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Some of these migrants are seeking asylum in the US and, per US law, must set foot on US soil in order to do so. Mr Trump also took the opportunity at Mar-a-Lago to continue his Twitter rant about the federal appeals court in San Francisco, which ruled against his asylum policy and said the administration must allow all those seeking the protected status to apply regardless of where they came from or how they entered the country. The court in question has blocked a number of border and immigration orders from Mr Trump during his presidency and the president had previously tweeted that "judges must not legislate security ...They nothing about it and are making our country unsafe." He said that such decisions would only lead to "bedlam, chaos, injury and death". He later called the ninth circuit court "a big thorn in our side" and said "judges or Congress need to do something to stop it". Gunmen have attacked the Chinese consulate building in Karachi, Pakistan, killing two civilians, two policemen and injuring a security guard. The civilians were a father and son visiting the consulate to pick up visas for China, police said, adding that all three of the gunmen were killed by security forces in a gun battle that lasted about an hour. Smoke was seen rising from the building and pictures of the aftermath showed two burnt-out vehicles at the front gate, which was itself badly damaged. There were conflicting reports about how far into the compound the gunmen managed to reach, though no Chinese diplomats or officials were injured in the attack. The attack has been claimed by the insurgent Balochistan Liberation Army, a militant group which seeks self-determination for the Baloch people in Pakistan. A spokesperson for the group told Al Jazeera that three of its fidayeen meaning those who sacrifice themselves had carried out the attack armed with guns and grenades. Two police officers killed after gunmen storm Karachi Chinese consulate Police said at least one of the attackers was wearing a suicide vest, and that a vehicle laden with explosives was also used. Mohammad Ashfaq, a local police chief, said the attackers first opened fire on consulate guards and then hurled grenades, shortly after the consulate had opened for business. He said the gunmen managed to breach the main gate and enter the building. Because of a quick response of the guards and police, the terrorists could not reach the diplomats, senior police official Ameer Ahmad Sheikh said after the fighting was over. We have completed the operation. In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said the attackers hadnt managed to get into the consulate itself, and that the exchange of fire took place outside the building. It wasnt clear what led to the discrepancy between his account and that of local police. The brazen attack reflects attempts to drive a wedge between the Pakistan government and its major ally China. The Reuters news agency quoted a spokesman for the Balochistan Liberation Army that accused China of exploiting our resources. China has funded development of a number of major projects, including a deepwater port, in Balochistan. The province is Pakistan's poorest but has rich mineral and natural gas reserves. The prime minister, Imran Khan, ordered an immediate inquiry into the attack, calling it part of conspiracy against Pakistan and China economic and strategic cooperation. The Chinese governments top diplomat, Wang Yi, said he was shocked by the incident and urged Pakistan to prevent any more attacks. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Nonetheless when Mr Geng was asked if the attack would affect Chinese investment in Pakistan, he said China would continue unswervingly to work with Pakistan to develop joint projects. Elsewhere in Pakistan on Friday, a powerful bomb at a market in the Orakzai region of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan, killed 35 people and wounded at least 50. As of Friday evening, no group had claimed responsibility for the market attack, but police said most of the casualties were Shia Muslims. Mr Khan also condemned that bombing, referring to it as an act of terrorism. More European governments have imposed an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia in response to the countrys on-going killing of civilians in Yemen. The British government has so far resisted joining international efforts to stem the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe, which the UK has sold 4.7bn worth of arms to fuel since 2015. The Danish, German, Dutch and Finnish governments have now joined other countries in halting the sale of weapons to the autocracy, as the UN warns of the worst famine in the world in 100 years. Saudi Arabia is intervening on the side of the Yemeni government against Houthi rebels, who control a large part of the country. The countrys internationally-recognised leadership no longer holds the capital and its opponents are backed by Saudis regional rival, Iran. The United Nations says the bombardment is causing a humanitarian catastrophe, in addition to repeated and well-documented attacks on civilian targets, including schools, school buses, hospitals, food supplies, water infrastructure, and weddings. The conflicts death toll is thought to be at least 10,000, with the famines far outnumbering that. Save the Childrens largest estimate is that 85,000 children under five have starved to death in the country. The UN says by far a disproportionate number of civilian casualties are caused by Saudi coalition forces and that 22 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, as well as eight million at dangerous risk of starvation. The brutality of the conflict appears to be escalating, with 500 civilians killed just in the first nine days of August, according to figures released by the International Rescue Committee. The UK has licenced 2.7bn worth of aircraft exports to the regime since the bombardment began, and 1.9bn worth of bombs and explosives. There is also on-going controversy about the extent of the direct role of British military advisors in the conflict. MPs on the House of Commons International Development Committee, as well as the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, both called for an embargo in 2016 but were ignored by the government. The European parliament voted a month ago to back the embargo, which is also being supported by the governments of Austria, Belgium, Switzerland and Norway. Sweden has said it will end the sale of arms but has not yet done so. Britains vocal opposition to an embargo puts it in the same camp as Spain, which U-turned on a previous commitment to end the sale of arms after protests by workers at shipyards that would lose out from contracts. Starvation is being used as a weapon of war in the country, according to Save the Children, which says 400,000 children are at risk of malnutrition (AFP/Getty) (AFP/Getty Images) Conservative MEPs abstained on the European parliament vote on an embargo, which was carried by a large majority. International pressure on the Saudi regime has increased significantly since the apparent torture, murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in one of the countrys consulates. Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen Show all 17 1 /17 Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen Doctors take some blood of Yemeni Yousef Abdullah Bakhit Ali, 13, suffering from severe acute malnutrition. With ongoing and unending conflict in Yemen, humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate across the country Unicef/Huwais Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen A doctor weighs Yemeni baby Yahya Hamoud Ali Al Huzef, 9 months suffering from malnutrition Unicef/Huwais Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen Ali Mohammed Ahmed Jamal,12 years old and suffering from severe acute malnutrition. He arrives with his family at a Unicef supported treatment centre in a hospital in Sanaa Unicef/Huwais Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen A doctor measures the arm of Yemeni Ali Mohammed Ahmed Jamal, 12, who is suffering from malnutrition at a treatment centre in a hospital in Sanaa Unicef/Huwais Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen There are over 400,000 severely malnourished children in need urgent lifesaving assistance in Yemen Unicef/Abdulhaleem Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen Ali Mohammed Ahmed Jamal is weighed Unicef/Huwais Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen A doctor measures the arm of baby Yahya Hamoud Ali Al Huzef Unicef/Huwais Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen Unicef are currently working to reach 275,000 malnourished children with critical life-saving supplies and care for over 5 million people with safe and clean water to stop the spread of life-threatening diseases Unicef/Huwais Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen Yahya Hamoud Ali Al Huzef with his family in his house in the outskirts of the capital Sanaa Unicef/Huwais Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen The country is on the brink of famine and children's chances of survival are becoming slimmer by the day Unicef/Abdulhaleem Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen Ali Mohammed Ahmed Jamal has his arm measured Unicef/Huwais Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen Unicef are currently working to provide nearly 1 million children with vaccines and healthcare Unicef/Huwais Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen Unicef/Huwais Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen Unicef are working with partners around-the clock to save children suffering from malnutrition and disease Unicef/Abdulhaleem Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen Unicef are currently working to provide 9 million people with emergency cash assistance to help families buy basic commodities so they can survive Unicef/Huwais Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen Ali Mohammed Ahmed Jamal is suffering from malnutrition Unicef Children suffering from acute malnutrition in Yemen Unicef/Abdulhaleem Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said: These arms sales should never have been allowed in the first place. However, if these governments stick to their promises then it could set a major precedent and help the drive for peace in Yemen. There must also be action from countries like the US and the UK, which have licensed billions of pounds worth of arms to the Saudi regime, including the fighter jets and bombs that are playing a central role in the destruction. After almost four years of war, the need for a political solution could not be greater. The humanitarian crisis is the worst in the world and Yemen is on the verge of famine. It is time for all governments to push for a ceasefire and to stop prioritising arms sales over the rights and lives of Yemeni people. At around 6am last Friday morning, seven men in plainclothes and two wearing simple vests identifying them as Turkish police officers banged on the front door of the Istanbul residence of Yigit Aksakoglu, 42, a consultant and civil society activist who gained a small measure of fame by taking part in anti-government protests more than five years ago. Yigit Aksakoglu (Bernard Van Leer Foundation) Mr Aksakoglu put on his clothes and said goodbye to his 7-year-old and his 2-and-a-half-year-old, who were in tears as he was hauled away. No, papa dont go, his wife, Unzile, recalls her children crying out after him. I told them, They need your dad to do some work, but he will come back soon. A week later, Mr Aksakoglu still has not come home. The London School of Economics graduate remains in jail, transferred to Istanbuls Silivri Prison as the only person still locked up from among 14 scholars and civil society figures gathered up by Turkish authorities. They are accused of participating in an effort to overthrow the government five years ago, during the 2013 unrest over Gezi Park. Many are baffled as to why, suddenly, Turkish authorities have chosen to resurrect tensions over the uprising at Gezi Park. The protest movement began over President Recep Tayyip Erdogans plans to develop green space in central Istanbul but soon mushroomed into broader protests across Turkey against the countrys leadership. The new arrests have dampened hopes that Mr Erdogan would ease up on a widespread crackdown against political foes following his victory in general elections this year. Authorities a year ago arrested businessman and philanthropist Osman Kavala, a prominent figure during the Gezi protests and chairman of an organisation called Anatolia Culture, which says it promotes cultural diversity and human rights. Authorities have been holding Mr Kavala without charge for a year, and are now accusing Mr Aksakoglu and the others of being part of a broad foreign-backed conspiracy to topple the government during the Gezi protests. The person, who financed terrorists during the Gezi incidents, is currently in prison, Mr Erdogan said this week in reference to Mr Kavala. And who is behind him? The famous Hungarian Jew George Soros. This is a man who was assigned to divide nations and shatter them. He has so much money and he is spending it in these ways. Theres no evidence Mr Soros, a Hungarian-born banker and philanthropist, had anything to do with the Gezi protests. But Mr Kavala is an advisory board member of Mr Soros Open Society Foundation, which advocates the kind of non-violent civil disobedience tactics used by the Gezi protesters. Mr Soros has become a frequent target of leaders facing discontent across the world. Protesters dance in Gezi park in 2013 (Reuters) Mr Aksakoglus lawyer and advocates say his participation in the Gezi protests was never secret or conspiratorial. A fluent English speaker, he appeared frequently on international television broadcasts including BBC News and CNN and organised meetings discussing nonviolent action in public parks. Although he travelled in the same circles as Mr Kavala, he never met him, much less collaborated with him to overthrow the government, say his advocates. Osman Kavala (Anadolu Kultur) (Anadolu Kultur) Asli Kazan, a member of Mr Aksakoglus legal team, says the prosecutor has not yet given her the chance to confer with her client. She does not have access to the case file, but the indictment suggests the case was based on intercepted phone calls and other surveillance in the six months after the Gezi protests. He is accused under an article of the Turkish legal code reserved for a violent attempt to overthrow the government, even though prosecutors acknowledge that he took part only in meetings to discuss non-violent protest. This investigation is really old, says Ms Kazan. The file was shelved at prosecutors office. It was a dead investigative file. The detentions risk damaging relations with Europe at a key moment when Turkey is seeking to smooth relations in an effort to restore investor confidence after months of financial turmoil. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini discussed the issue in a tense moment in Ankara this week after her office issued a statement immediately following the arrests. Detentions of critical voices and the continued widespread pressure on civil society representatives run counter to the Turkish governments declared commitment to human rights and to fundamental freedom, it said. Police fired teargas and water cannons at protesters in 2013 as they tried to prevent them gathering in Gezi Park (EPA) Opponents of the government, including opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, have accused the government of trying to take revenge for Gezi by painting it as a coup attempt. Some worry the arrests of people who had done little more than speak their minds marks yet another erosion of free expression in Turkey. Mr Erdogan has championed the cause of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi even as human rights and press monitors have criticised declining Turkish media freedoms in the last few years. People will stay even more clear of gathering and speaking among themselves, wrote Nevsin Mengu, a columnist for the leftist Evrensel newspaper. But in recent years Mr Aksakoglu has been keeping his head down, like many activists of the Gezi era, focusing his efforts on his children and his work. He now serves as an advocate for post-natal and toddler education as an employee of the Bernard Van Leer foundation. He broadly works on human rights and education and is rather effective, says Emma Sinclair-Webb, of Human Rights Watch. All of this innocuous activity is suddenly under scrutiny and being criminalised. This is just criminalising any sort of legitimate, human rights and civil society work even when its explicitly peaceful. Even some pro-government figures were miffed by the handling of the case. I cannot understand why these people were detained in dawn raids when they could instead have been called in to testify, wrote Ardan Zenturk, a columnist for the pro-government Star newspaper. A Paris taxi driver who was filmed demanding 247 from a couple and refusing to let them out until they paid has been sentenced to eight months in prison. Two Thai tourists posted a video online showing the man demanding the eye-watering fare after he drove them from Charles de Gaulle Airport to the city, despite the fact this journey is set at a flat rate of no more than 55. The clip, which showed him driving around without stopping while the couple phoned the police, quickly went viral online, used as a cautionary tale for tourists to ensure they get in a legitimate, licensed Paris taxi. The police found the man who featured in the video through his registration and licence plate details, which are on display in the footage, reports Le Parisien. The man, identified as Enock C., was charged with extortion by violence, threat or coercion, as well as for illegally practising as a taxi driver, on Thursday 22 November. He was sentenced to one year in prison, including a four-month suspended sentence, without a warrant. Enock, resident of Saint-Gratien, tried to explain his actions to the court, responding to the question of how much he thought the journey was worth: I do not know. Its the application Im using that decides. The 25-year-old defendant claimed he never stopped the tourists from getting out of the car and that they left without paying after protracted discussions and negotiations. However, video evidence disputes his claim, showing him saying: You pay, you go. You no pay, you no go. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Enock said he did not find the fare expensive and claimed that he had not been on duty at the time of the offence. One of the victims of the scam, Charkrid Thanhachartyothin, said they wanted the video to be a case study for other Thai people or travellers to be conscious while they are travelling. He told Le Parisien at the time: The doors were locked, and we had all our luggage in the trunk. He did not want to let us out, and kept driving while [supposedly] phoning his company to find a compromise. So, we decided to pay 200 to get out. Scottish passengers could be the first in the world to experience autonomous buses. The government has said that self-driving buses will be shuttling across the Forth Road Bridge in Scotland by 2021, carrying half a million passengers a year. The Department for Business is pumping 4.35m into a 6m project that will see five single-decker buses, each carrying 42 passengers, running on a 14-mile journey. Recommended I experienced a driverless car and it was very underwhelming The vehicles will link Fife with Edinburgh Park, the tram and rail interchange on the west side of the city. It offers a train journey of 10 minutes or less to Waverley station in the Scottish capital. The bus service will operate every 20 minutes, and the weekly ridership is expected to be 10,000. Since the Queensferry Crossing opened in 2017, the 1964 Forth Road Bridge has been mainly restricted to buses and taxis. Bus drivers need not start looking for alternative employment; to comply with safety legislation, each vehicle will have a driver on board. Driverless trains have been operating on the Docklands Light Railway in east London since 1987. But there is a huge difference between trains running on tracks on a closed system and buses driving on the open road. Autonomous vehicles are fitted with sensors to detect other road users, with the control system responding by changing speed and direction. Plans are also under way for a private hire pilot scheme in the London borough of Greenwich, where Addison Lee will deploy a fleet of 15 self-driving Land Rover Discovery vehicles. Initially they will feed the Tube station at North Greenwich Station. Next, they will connect transport hubs in the borough that do not currently have a link. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events The third stage is a restricted on-demand service. The final aim: a go anywhere in borough service. There are also plans for a project called ServCity which will offer a premium mobility service across four Greater London boroughs, though details are sketchy. The business secretary, Greg Clark, said: Autonomous vehicles and their technology will not only revolutionise how we travel, it will open up and improve transport services for those who struggle to access both private and public transport. Self-driving cars will revolutionise the way we move goods and people around the UK. From 2021 the public will get to experience the future for themselves. In the US, the ride-sharing firm, Uber, has teamed up with Toyota in a $500m (390m) project to develop autonomous vehicles. Uber halted an autonomous taxi pilot in Arizona in March 2018 after a car operated by the firm struck and killed a pedestrian. When a majority of the British people voted to leave the EU in 2016, I was struck by the similarity between the Brexiteers plans for their perilous voyage and those of Edward Lears characters in The Jumblies as they set to sea in their sieve. The analogy became more apt as the proponents of Brexit showed that they did not know nor care very much about the nature of the world into which they were proposing to sail other than to hope that everything would be alright on the night. The Jumblies, like the Brexiteers, were swift to dismiss critical comment predicting a disastrous end to their venture, saying: Our sieve aint big / But we dont care a button, we dont care a fig! / In a sieve well go to sea! The water did indeed come in, but the Jumblies were not downhearted because they wrapped their feet / in pinky paper all folded neat. For extra safety, they pass the night in a crockery jar where they sang of their wisdom as they set their pea-green sail for lands where, among other things, they secured an owl, a pig and some green-Jack-daws, and a lovely monkey with lollipop paws. The Brexiteers alternative to the EU is just as imaginary as that described by Lear as a habitation for the Jumblies. The reason why the Leavers have failed to negotiate the sort of settlement they said they wanted from the EU is simple: what they said in 2016 was based on the proposition that the EU got more out Britain than Britain got out of the EU. Had this been true, the British departure would be easy enough, because Britain could genuinely have threatened to walk away. But because Britain needs the EU more than vice versa, the outcome of the negotiations were always going to be heavily skewed in favour of Brussels. Yet this simple proposition evidently eluded Dominic Raab, David Davis, Boris Johnson and the other Leavers who departed from the cabinet claiming that Britain was being blackmailed and bullied into submission. Successful negotiations always reflect the balance of power between the negotiating parties and it is puerile to believe that the settlement, which the EU leaders will or will not agree to in the next few days, was determined by a failure of will by Theresa May or subtle treachery by Remain-sympathising civil servants. It is easy and right to deride the Leavers for their wishful thinking and inability to calculate the true balance of power between Britain and its neighbours. This is the same ruinous mistake made by so many populist-nationalist leaders down the decades. The great flaw of nationalists everywhere is an assumption that their nation has greater political, economic and military potential and their rivals less than is really the case. Exaggerated ideas of national superiority have fuelled the most self-destructive policy mistakes of modern European history. They led to France declaring war on Prussia in 1870 and Germany choosing to fight wars on two fronts in both World Wars. American and British leaders blithely intervened in Afghanistan and Iraq this century in total ignorance of the real odds against their success. Such military examples are apposite because Britains withdrawal from the EU is the equivalent of a major defeat in war. Suppose, hypothetically, that Britain fought and lost a military conflict with a rival European power, then the departure of Britain from the EU might well be demanded by the victor as a way of ensuring that Britain was permanently weakened. What foreign enemies failed to accomplish against the British state for centuries may soon be inflicted by the modern day Jumblies. Negotiations now completed are at best an attempt to mitigate the extent of the British loss and all scenarios point to a country less well-off and influential than if it had stayed in the EU. The best argument for Brexit has little to do with political power or economic success. The demand for national self-determination has been behind the most progressive developments in the world over the last century since the break-up of the German, Austro-Habsburg and Ottoman empires after 1918, and the British and French empires after 1945. Newly emergent nation states invariably blame former imperial masters for their economic, political and social troubles. Usually there is a lot in this claim, though not as much as the claimants pretend. In this context, there is nothing surprising in the fact the British complaints against Brussels echo those made by the Irish and the Indians against London when they fought, with rather more reason, for their independence. This comparison will not appeal to hardcore Leavers because of their nostalgia for a state of the world at home and abroad that, if it existed at all, was briefly present in the 1950s. British society of that era may have some aspects that were superior to the present, as well as many that were worse, but in either case they lie in the past and cannot be recreated. One of the many weird characteristics of the Leave leaders is their frequent references to a mythical version of British history, featuring vassalage and humiliating treaties signed by King John at the beginning of the 13th century. One Brexiteer even attacked the proposed EU agreement as the most humiliating since Charles II agreed the Treaty of Dover with Louis XIV in return for a heavy subsidy in 1670. But these historical nuggets are really only there for adornment. For all the talk about Britain standing alone, Britain invariably made every effort to do no such thing. British success against Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler were based on the Royal Navy preventing defeat, while Britain built up overwhelmingly powerful alliances against the enemy of the day. The last time the country was as bereft of continental allies as it is today was during the American War of Independence at the end of 18th century. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Contemporary English populist nationalism has much in common with similar movements in Europe and the US: hostility to immigrants and minority communities combined with a sense of lost identity and control, which seems to be the inevitable consequence of globalisation. For globalisation in this century is turning out to be as destructive to the political and social status quo as the Industrial Revolution was in the 19th century. Metropolitan areas, primarily urban, that are plugged into the global economy do well, while everybody else falls behind or does badly. The same pattern is repeated everywhere from Arkansas to the Isle of Thanet and from Saxony and the rural hinterland of Damascus. In one respect, the Brexiteers are more revolutionary and perhaps more dangerous than Donald Trump. Despite his foaming rhetoric, Trump has done little for his acolytes and has instead implemented a traditional, if toxic, Republican programme of reducing taxes on the rich, deregulating Wall Street and business, and targeting minorities and the poor. Only in Britain has the populist-nationalist surge, almost by accident, come close to producing revolutionary change by propelling the British state in directions so new and uncharted that even the Jumblies might have been deterred from going there. Well get him for this, a Jeremy Corbyn aide snapped angrily when Keir Starmer defied the Labour leader by telling the partys September conference that Remain would be on the ballot paper in any Final Say referendum. The shadow Brexit secretary, deliberately going beyond the speech approved by Corbyns office, won an ovation in the hall, which showed where Labour members stand. His defiance, and the furious reaction in Team Corbyn, shows that divisions over Brexit are far from confined to the Conservatives. Corbyn has done a pretty good job of masking Labours splits. His constructive ambiguity, designed not to alienate Remain or Leave voters, also helps to hold his party together. Its easier in opposition than government, of course. Corbyn can dodge questions that ministers cannot. On Thursday, he rightly criticised the political declaration on future UK-EU relations as vague and waffle, but Labours position is open to the same charge. Corbyn can hardly be blamed for wanting to let the Tories stew in their own juice; why throw your drowning enemy a lifeline? However, he will soon have to come off the fence. His decisions will matter and, rarely for an opposition, could determine the countrys future. The vast majority of Labour MPs will obey the party whip and vote against Theresa Mays deal in just over two weeks. When it is rejected (its a when, not an if), they will unite in opposing a no-deal exit next March and voting for a general election. But the Tories and Democratic Unionist Party will reject Corbyns call for an election. So the really big question is not what Labour does after the first Commons vote, but in the second one held after, as even her own ministers now assume, May returns from Brussels with some cosmetic changes to her deal and stakes all on getting it through as the clock ticks down to March. A sizeable number of Labour backbenchers, seeing turmoil on the financial markets, feeling pressure from business and fearing a no-deal departure, might then switch sides and rescue May. They would argue that they had put the party first in the first Commons vote, but now had to act in the countrys interests. There are even rumours at Westminster that, if Mays tweaks shifted the deal in Labours direction, the Opposition might abstain, allowing the agreement to win a Commons majority. I doubt that would happen Corbyn would face a revolt from party members, and many Labour MPs would still vote against the deal. But I suspect Corbyn might not lose much sleep if 30 to 40 Labour MPs backed a revised deal and the UK left the EU on schedule on 29 March. Constructive ambiguity survived an election last year but would not survive another referendum. Corbyn would be relieved to see the back of Brexit, and return to the comfort zone of domestic policy. Labours conference agreed that, if Mays deal and an election are rejected, the party would support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote (Team Corbyn didnt want to call it a peoples vote because the Peoples Vote campaign has several refugees from Corbyn Labour on its staff, and is seen by Labour figures who oppose a referendum as an embryo centre party). It is obvious from his words and body language that Corbyn does not want a referendum. It would kill us in the north, one ally said, predicting a backlash among Labour supporters who voted Leave in 2016. But there is growing evidence that opinion has changed since then, as the cold reality of Brexit bites. Jeremy Corbyn say he does not know how he would vote in fresh EU referendum On the eve of Labours conference, Corbyn promised he would be bound by its decision. After championing internal democracy, he could hardly say anything else. But some Labour members claim his recent media interviews he told Der Spiegel Labour could not stop Brexit were not aligned with party policy and are urging him to keep his promise. One route for Labour would be to join forces with other opposition parties and some Tories in supporting a Norway option of European Economic Area membership, topped up with Labours policy of a permanent customs union. MPs in all parties believe there is a natural Commons majority for this. It could pass Labours deliberately flexible six tests if the leadership wanted it to. Yet its hard to see May going down this road voluntarily. She will plough on, and enough Tory and Labour MPs might eventually be dragooned into backing her revised deal. But with even Dominic Raab, the former Brexit secretary, admitting today that Mays deal is worse than our current EU membership, Corbyn should not connive in allowing it to be implemented. He should honour his promise to Labour members, stick to his partys policy and back a Final Say referendum. Labour must be careful not to be embroiled with those who wish to reverse the result of the EU referendum by telling the electorate to vote again in a manner reminiscent of Marie Antoinettes telling the French people to eat cake. Marie Antoinette had her head chopped off at the guillotine; Labour will be slaughtered at the polls. The 2016 referendum gave parliament one simple task: get the UK out of the EU. So far it has done its job. Article 50 has been triggered, the EU Withdrawal Act has been passed and a date set for leaving the EU. For a parliament with a majority on the Remain side, this is truly impressive. If MPs fail to complete the task by ensuring we leave on 29 March next year, and Labour has a central role to play in this, the whole Westminster setup will be brought into disrepute. Peoples revenge will be subtle, but it may not be pretty. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the proposed withdrawal agreement leaves a number of loose ends or that its accompanying political declaration is couched in inspirational language but they do not constitute a reason to reject the deal. The purpose of a deal at this stage is to provide us with the best possible start after we leave the EU. After more than 40 years of being entrapped within the EU and its institutions, itll not be possible to break out in one single giant leap; at the present time, a deal is but a first step, not the end result. Fawzi Ibrahim London NW2 Why waste more time? If, as seems almost certain, neither Mays deal nor a no-deal Brexit will get sufficient support in the Commons, why waste more time in useless politicking? Why not have the parliamentary vote next week? If parliament then concludes that the only way out of the impasse is a second referendum with a simple choice of leaving the EU on Mays terms or remaining, then at least we have a plan. A second referendum certainly does not need another 10 weeks of campaigning. Those with fixed views will vote as they did before; those on either side, who have taken an intelligent interest in the debate and have now changed their mind, do not need any more hot air from campaigners and the press. We will make our choice, the vote may well again be close, but no one can then argue that the public was ill-informed. Please let us now just get on with it, so that governments both here and in the EU can get back to the important business of tackling serious domestic problems. Gavin Turner Norfolk Pressing questions need answers Instead of appearing on BBC 5 to answer a few questions, wouldnt it be better for the prime minister to answer the public call for a final say on her Brexit deal with the EU? It is also imperative to know whether Brexit would lead to more antisemitism, Islamophobia, nationalism, populism, racial, discrimination, xenophobia and afrophobia? And why does she use European citizens as a bargaining chip in her negotiations with the EU? Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob London NW2 Listen to the people The prime minister rejects a second referendum on the basis that the first one must be respected. If the House of Commons rejects her Brexit deal, will she similarly respect this vote too and deny any rerun? As they have had longer to reflect upon their original decision, it is the people and not parliament who should be allowed a second vote. Peter Mendenhall Nottingham A worrying issue That 22 per cent of young women aged 17 to 19 have an emotional disorder is yet more evidence of a growing crisis in girls and young womens mental health. This serious and accelerating deterioration should concern us all. It is not enough to blame body image and social media. While they are rightly cited as possible explanations, they are not the full story. The sexualisation of girls, the pressures they face around sex and particularly the alarming levels of sexual and other forms of violence they experience must be a key part of the conversation. It is important to recognise the different drivers and experiences of poor mental health among girls and boys so that we can respond appropriately. It is vital we see investment in mental health support that takes into account girls needs and experiences, including the impact of violence and abuse, in both schools and the community to ensure they get the support they need, when they need it. Jemima Olchawski Chief executive of Agenda, the alliance for women and girls at risk Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events We all have the right to die when we want I agree with Angela Washington (letters) that the time for legislation on assisted dying is overdue. But is it not time to extend this to cover those who are not terminally ill? It should be recognised that not all of us find life wonderful. Some, maybe even a majority of people who take their own lives, do it for rational reasons. How much better it would be for all concerned if they could plan their exit and go gentle into that good night. We should all be able to imagine circumstances where we would no longer wish to be here, perhaps as the result of a terrible lifechanging event. Someone jailed for life, for good reason, might like to opt to end it if allowed to go with dignity. We can admire those who survive adversity and have great lives thereafter, but those who have had enough of life should be respected and not expected to accept that things will get better for them. We all die. Carol Wilcox Christchurch The United Arab Emirates' sentencing of Durham university PHD student Matthew Hedges to life imprisonment for spying on behalf of the British government has sounded alarm bells and called into question the level of trust between the United Kingdom and one of its historically close allies. The fallout may result in a downgrade in diplomatic ties between the two nations. Hedges and his academic supervisor at Durham say that he was researching civil-military relations in the UAE since the Arab Spring. His research is said to have touched on the thorny issue of the UAE's military presence in Yemen. The Saudi-led war in Yemen is a controversial topic because of the thousands of civilian casualties, hundreds of alleged war crimes and dire humanitarian situation the United Nations recently stated that half the population is at risk of famine. The UAE is careful to uphold a positive international image and surely would not want to fuel the fire and incriminate itself further in such a devastating conflict. Despite countless democratic allies, a modern facade and glossy veneer of openness with western academic institutions and businesses franchising or expanding into the wealthy Gulf nation the UAE is notorious for forced confessions, unfair trials and little tolerance for freedom of speech. Recommended Jailed British academic in UAE having panic attacks The UAE alleges that espionage material was found on Hedges' laptop and since May this year he had been detained in solitary confinement in an Abu Dhabi prison in degrading conditions, sleeping on the floor and unable to have a shower during his first month of imprisonment. His sentencing verdict was delivered during a five-minute court session without the presence of his lawyer. Hedges denies the allegations against him, although Emirati prosecutors claim that he confessed while under questioning. The move by Emirati authorities to allege espionage and impose such a steep punishment on a British citizen might be viewed as a sign of the diminished value the nation places on its ongoing economic and diplomatic ties with the UK, preferring to reorient its alliances elsewhere. This summer the UAE ramped up political, security and economic relations with Russia, signing a new Declaration of Strategic Partnership. However, Emirati state media has also been touting the opportunities for enhanced trade with the UK, post-Brexit. The UAE's ambassador to the UK Sulaiman Al Mazroui stated earlier this year that he firmly believes a global Britain is a key partner for the UAE. He has also said on Friday that he hopes the UAE can reach an "equitable conclusion" regarding Hedges' sentencing, but the outcome remains to be seen. Hedges' wife Daniela Tejeda met with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt on Thursday who tweeted that evening, I've just had a constructive conversation with UAE FM [Foreign Minister] Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed. I believe [and] trust he's working hard to resolve the situation asap. We've a close partnership with UAE which will help us take things forward. Despite the susceptibility to arbitrary detention, human rights abuses and skirmishes in the past involving the imprisonment of British citizens for not adhering to the country's strict laws which are based on its moral code, the UAE has hitherto been considered a safe and desirable country for Brits both to visit and to relocate to. A souring or even severing of ties between the nations could have a devastatingly negative effect on more than 100,000 British nationals living and working in the Gulf state. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that an oppositional stance from the British government over Hedges' judgement might jeopardise the futures of British expats in the UAE last summer's Saudi-led boycott of Qatar led to the expulsion of all Qataris residing in the country, painfully disrupting the transnational familial and tribal ties of the Gulf region. The UK and UAE (formerly known as the Trucial States and under a British protectorate until 1971) have very deep and long-established political, security and economic ties with a historically strong trading relationship. Bilateral trade doubled between 2009 and 2016 and is now at nearly 15bn with a target of reaching 25bn by 2020. This ranks the UAE as the UK's 12th largest trading partner and sixth largest outside of Europe. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Tejeda told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Thursday morning that the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office had been stepping on eggshells instead of taking a firm stance and said she thought they were putting their interests with the UAE above a British citizen's rightful freedom and welfare. American president Donald Trump's support for Saudi Arabia after the murder of its journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which evidence suggests was perpetrated by the Saudi state, demonstrates that in the current climate trade and economics are valued above justice and human rights. Amid mounting public pressure, Jeremy Hunt recently visited Iran to plea for the release of jailed Brit Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is also accused of spying. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are regional hegemons frequently operating from their own playbooks. Is the UAE exhibiting the paranoid tendencies of entrenched sclerotic regimes? Or is this harsh sentencing signalling that it too can flex its muscles as one of the powerful Gulf States that doesn't kowtow to Western human rights demands? For whatever aim, the UAE is perhaps taking advantage of the instability of Britain's political and economic climate and the intense pressure on the government to negotiate a deal out of the European Union. The UAE knows that at such uncertain times, the loss of an important and strategic economic partner is a great risk. Prime Minister Theresa May says shes deeply disappointed by the life sentence a United Arab Emirates (UAE) court has just handed to British academic Matthew Hedges. Hedges was given a life sentence for spying by a court in Abu Dhabi during a trial that lasted less than five minutes, during which Hedges had no access to a lawyer. May has vowed to raise his case at the highest level. Perhaps she will tackle the UAE regime at the next Defence and Security Equipment International arms fair where UK weapons manufacturers, helped by the British government, sell their wares to any despot with an open cheque book. British arms sales to repressive regimes in the Middle East have soared to 5bn since the 2017 election. The UAE is the second largest importer of weapons in the Middle East and was listed as the worlds third largest importer of weapons between 2012 and 2016. The sale of UK cyber surveillance technology and weapons to the UAE leaped by 94 per cent in 2017. And according to Department for International Trade figures, UK military sales to Saudi Arabia increased by two-thirds in 2017 year on year, with the UK issuing 126 export licences, relating to military goods, to Saudi Arabia with a value of 1.129bn. Both Saudi Arabia and UAE are using the weapons sold to them by the UK on the people of Yemen. Charity Save the Children estimates 84,701 children have died since a Saudi Arabian-led coalition began its war on Yemen in 2015. The UN say more than 1.3 million Yemeni children have been affected by severe malnutrition since the conflict began, and 14 million people now face famine there. This is of little interest to May, who has played a very active role in promoting UK arms sales to the Gulf states. In 2017 she insisted that: Gulf security is our security and Gulf prosperity is our prosperity. No doubt May sees the children of Yemen and Matthew Hedges incarceration as an irrelevance that mustnt be allowed to stand in the way of our prosperity. Sasha Simic London N16 Durham University is at fault for allowing PhD student Matthew Hedges to put himself in harms way by going to the UAE in search of sensitive information on the effect of the Arab Spring on its security and foreign policy. Its widely known the UAE took the Arab Spring extremely seriously and prosecuted en masse 94 government critics who called for reform. It beggars belief he thought he could interview with impunity senior figures about state security. The first requirement for an academic undertaking research in the UAE is surely fluency in Arabic. It might have stopped him signing a confession in Arabic that he had knowingly jeopardised the states military, political and economic security. Rev Dr John Cameron St Andrews Anne Hegerty and bush tucker trials Much as I appreciate the sympathetic feelings expressed towards Anne Hegerty and her courage in Im a Celebrity, I am still appalled by the callous cruelty of the public who voted for her as a candidate for a trial in the programme. Christine Oram Hove Out-of-hospital care is more crucial than ever Im writing in response to your article titled Theresa Mays 3.5bn for out-of-hospital care revolution not enough to deliver significant changes, experts warn. The important role rapid response teams play in helping to reduce emergency admissions to hospital isnt news to us. At Marie Curie, we provide hands-on nursing care for people living with a terminal illness, and already work closely with other local providers to effectively operate rapid response teams in the UK. The availability of this service means patients and their families are able to access information and advice over the phone, and urgent hands-on care in their homes, any day of the week. Working as a clinical nurse manager for the charity, I see every day how our service helps prevent people being unnecessarily rushed to hospital, which can be a very traumatic experience for everyone involved. We can already see increasing need for our service in the community and know that the demand for such services will continue to rise. We know that people who had care from the Marie Curie nursing service in the community were three times less likely to have an emergency admission, so they could spend their final days in their own home surrounded by their loved ones. Making end-of-life care in the community a greater priority would ensure that more people can die where they want to, which for most is not the hospital. Jayne Unwin, clinical nurse manager at Marie Curie Address supplied Leave Theresa May alone Some of your correspondents are being a mite overcritical of Theresa May. She has in fact performed a great public service by demonstrating conclusively that the best deal she could negotiate is infinitely inferior to remaining in the European Union. The interesting question, for historians and psychologists, is whether she did this intentionally or by accident. Philip Goldenberg Woking Spain is forgetting its own territorial history I see that, once again, Spain is bringing its territorial dispute with the UK over Gibraltar as a reason for its proposed veto. Why is it that Spains territory in Morocco, Ceuta, is rarely acknowledged? Theres also no mention made of Melilla, the disputed Spanish town of Olivenza on a disputed section of the border with Portugal, or the Spanish exclave of Livia. Is there not some hypocrisy here from the Spanish government? Brian Donnellan Huddersfield A second referendum is anything but undemocratic I keep hearing the argument against having a second referendum, citing it to be undemocratic and often sarcastically questioning whether it would lead to a best of three contest. I would argue we are in an unlimited contest. Democracy did not end after the first vote. We shouldnt even be thinking of this as a second referendum. It would be a completely separate referendum, based on a whole different set of facts and considerations for the voter, which were nowhere near the table last time around. After we have this mess sorted out, we could then move onto more second referendums. Fox hunting, anyone? Marc Cutworth Cambridgeshire Britains greatness ended a long time ago I regret that a substantial minority of the entire British public are willing to swim against the tides of history, seeking to divorce the UK from mainland Europe. Britain was great in 1908 when the sun never set on our empire, when our Royal Navy ruled the waves, when British coal supplied energy running much of the northern hemisphere, and when our fortress island homeland could not be destroyed by a few intercontinental nuclear missiles. 110 years later, there are too many fools in British politics who cannot accept that such greatness is now forever gone. Their wishful thinking cannot restore it. Ted Batty Selby, Yorkshire A controversial president is in the Whitehouse. Americas largest oil supplier is a monarchy, which is also the USs largest arms customer. And American foreign policy in the Middle East is almost entirely dictated by its one-sided relationship with this oil-rich monarchy. While this sounds much like a description of Americas slightly unnatural relationship with the Wahhabi Saudi Arabia today, it is also an exact description of the relationship between the US and the Iranian Shah in the 1970s. And look how well that ended. Recommended Denmark suspends weapon approvals to Saudi over Khashoggi murder It seems like the US has a habit of becoming infatuated with Middle Eastern monarchies and forming unhealthy relationships with them that end in tears, drunken tweeting and foreign policy disaster. Lets go back half a century. In the 1960s the British empire was gently disintegrating and London realised it could no longer afford many of the things it used to. These things included battleships, cigars and the ability to keep a permanent military presence in the Persian Gulf. America was nervous. It had become deeply dependent on oil from the Middle Eastern region to fuel the constant growth on which US hegemony was built. But now that its bankrupt ally could no longer afford to keep the peace (or ensure an ongoing supply of cheap oil), a strategic problem had emerged. It was then that America met their prince the handsome, carefully coiffed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. His family had ruled Iran for 2,500 years. Yes, thats right: 2,500 years. The nations alliance had got off the ground under president Truman after the Second World War and was based on the principle that the US would guarantee Irans security in exchange for oil. The massive growth in the US economy after the war meant that its oil requirements had ballooned, and Iran needed a muscular friend to help it survive in a rough neighbourhood. Initially, arms sales were limited but by the 1960s Iran was the biggest buyer of US military hardware in the world. The Shah used smooth talk and guile to wrap the US around his finger. America was aware of the deeply undemocratic and brutal nature of his regime, but he wooed them with oil and scared them with pillowtalk about the Soviet and Arab nationalist threat to his rule, and thus to their oil supply. He could do no wrong. The guns kept coming, and with it the implicit promise that the US would defend him from any threat. But he was going down a dark road. And the US cheerily skipped down that road with him. Eventually the Shah had managed to make enemies of the Islamic clerical hierarchy, the socialist left and the nationalists. Making enemies of all these groups was quite an achievement and meant that, even with US support, he could no longer survive. The fall of his unlovely regime may not have been hugely significant but what was significant was the fact that, as his devoted friend with benefits, the United States had now inherited all his enemies. Thanks to its blind devotion to their handsome prince, the US had made enemies of almost everyone in the region. By allowing him and his oil to have undue influence, they found themselves in possession of a foreign policy that made no sense to America and did not serve its interests. The disaster was so enormous that it triggered a hostage crisis, a brutal war between Iran and Iraq, and 40 years of hostility between Iran and America. It was the ugliest breakup imaginable. Basically the US was like someone who falls into an unhealthy relationship, gets a weird tattoo, ends up compromising far too much, lets their partner make all the decisions, loses every friend they have and then has to pay their exs gambling debts when it ends. Sensible people learn from relationships like this, and take care not to fall into another one just like it. The US, however, has not been so careful. With the Arab nationalists and the Ayatollah (who, thanks to the public bromance between the Shah and America, now hated the US) controlling much of the Middle Easts oil, America needed a new friend. A friend with lots of oil, who needed protection. Saudi Arabia was that friend. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Just like it did with the Shah, the US has completely compromised itself for the sake of this relationship. The US has ignored gross human rights abuses, turned its back on moderate Muslim governments and allowed the most extreme wing of Sunni Islam to proliferate. The nation has even ignored the fact that Saudi money seems to have funded the Taliban and 9/11 attacks, which Saudi Arabia has long denied. And now the US president has officially stated that even if Saudi Arabias de facto head of state ordered the murder of a Washington Post journalist (which is vehemently denied by Saudi Arabia), it isnt really that big a deal. It is another deeply unhealthy relationship that is sure to end badly. In a shameless attempt to throw a cloak of decency over his countrys discredited judicial system, the UAE ambassador to London yesterday had the gall to compare it to the one we have in Britain. Sulaiman Hamid Almazroui said both nations had an independent judiciary where the government does not dictate verdicts. He then had the temerity to tell us that Matthew Hedges, 31, has been found guilty because of compelling evidence, without even detailing any of what that was. Recommended UAE considering clemency for UK man jailed for life on spying charge Whereas Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt says he has seen absolutely no evidence that the Durham PhD student was a spy. If this compelling evidence is no more than Hedges signature on a piece of paper in Arabic, which he does not understand, then it is obviously worthless. The ambassadors claim that the government does not dictate the courts rulings is also tosh. A report in 2010 by the watchdog, Freedom House, found the judiciary is not independent, with court rulings subject to review by the political leadership. All the judges and lawyers are political appointees. So, ambassador Almazroui, where are the reporters who sit in on your court hearings or ask you questions the end of your press conference where you just read out a prepared statement? As Matthews wife, Daniela Tejada, said afterwards: The judicial system in the UAE and the UK cannot be compared. She also pointed out that her husband had been held in solitary confinement for more than five months without charge or a lawyer, and when he did receive consular access he was not able to talk openly. Thankfully, such an abject failure of an open, fair and transparent system of justice is not tolerated in Britain. Which makes it all the more surprising that the judicial system in the United Arab Emirates is stuffed with British judges, one of whom still sits in the House of Lords. Bear in mind that the UAE has a toxic human rights record, a country where domestic violence against women is legal and regime critics are tortured and jailed without trial. So what on earth is Lord David Hope of Craighead, head of the Crossbench peers in the House of Lords, doing out there apart from making a tidy sum of money? Ditto the Hon Sir Jeremy Cooke, Sir Richard Field, Sir David Steele, William Stone QC, the Hon Lord James McGhie, Sir Michael Burton and the Hon Sir Andrew Smith. Last month Dame Elizabeth Gloster who presided over the 2011 Abramovich-Berezovsky hearing became the UKs first female judge at the Abu Dhabi courts, following the retirement of Lord Saville. All these people, either coming to the end of their careers or already retired, are registered to sit as judges in the financial courts either of Dubai or Abu Dhabi. Lord McGhie was even registered to sit in the UAE while presiding over the Court of Session in Edinburgh, and Lord Hope has been appointed chief justice of the Abu Dhabi Global Market Courts. Matthew Hedges was found guilty at Abu Dhabis Federal Court of Appeal and has the right to appeal before the Federal Supreme Court for re-trial. But they are all part of the same discredited judicial system. By having the cream of the British legal establishment running their courts, the Emiratis are able to present a fake cloak of respectability to the outside world. Its a bit like the authorities in Bahrain appointing UK-trained and 5m UK-funded torture investigation units while continuing to sentence hotel workers to death on the basis of forced confessions. It presents a veneer behind which the same atrocities are able to continue because it allows the Bahraini authorities to turn to their critics and say: Well, the UK is keeping an eye on us now so how we can be misbehaving while continuing to do so. By propping up the UAEs judicial system, British judges are doing exactly the same disservice to people like Matthew Hedges. Their presence means that people like Almazroui can turn and say: Cmon, our justice system is just like yours! When he was at his lowest ebb in a Dubai prison, David Haigh reportedly wrote to one of the British judges, setting out the abusive treatment he was receiving. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events After all, the former Leeds United boss thought, dont judges have a legal and moral imperative to investigate allegations of mistreatment? Surely, he thought, a fellow Brit and a judge would help me out? His cries for help were apparently ignored. As he wrote afterwards: Even as I was commencing a hunger strike, there was no recognition at all. Instead my torture continued, leaving me with fractured bones, teeth and eye damage and with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Shame on those who ignored his pleas, and who work for a system which jails academics simply for asking uncomfortable questions. Anthony Harwood is a former foreign editor of the Daily Mail Opening the door: UK Prime Minister Theresa May prepares to greet Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz at 10 Downing Street yesterday. Photo: Jack Taylor/Getty Images The political declaration between the EU and the UK outlines the general parameters of the future relationship. It is non-binding and will form the basis of the next stage of Brexit negotiations, provided Theresa May can convince Westminster to ratify the withdrawal deal agreed in recent weeks. We look at the key points in the declaration: Laying the groundwork The declaration lays the groundwork for a future relationship between the EU and the UK which it says will be an "ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership" based on "a balance of rights and obligations". The document also says negotiations may end up seeing additional areas of cooperation beyond what is laid out in the declaration. Level playing field The EU and the UK have agreed a "level playing field" will be built on in the future relationship to ensure "open and fair competition". This will cover "state aid, competition, social and employment standards, environmental standards, climate change, and relevant tax matters". Northern Ireland and the Irish Border There is a renewed commitment to set up a Peace Plus programme (which will receive continued funding from both the UK and the EU). There are also pledges to protect the Good Friday Agreement. On the question of a hard border, the political declaration appears to leave the door open to "max fac", or maximum facilitation. This was pursued by some Brexiteers during the negotiations. Max fac would see technological solutions to track goods rather than needing to install infrastructure along the Border. This has previously been shot down by the EU and Ireland on the basis that the technology is not yet advanced enough to do this. However, the declaration says: "Facilitative arrangements and technologies will also be considered in developing any alternative arrangements for ensuring the absence of a hard border on the island of Ireland on a permanent footing." The declaration underlines the "determination" to replace the backstop with an alternative arrangement. It also says preparatory work on a number of areas will begin as soon as the exit deal is ratified. Trade The two sides have pledged a "free trade area as well as wider sectoral co-operation". Both the EU and the UK "envisage comprehensive arrangements that will create a free trade area, combining deep regulatory and customs co-operation, underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition". Both have pledged to promote the "avoidance of unnecessary barriers to trade in goods". The declaration also references an "independent trade policy". Customs and regulation The declaration signals plans to build on the shared customs territory provided for in the withdrawal agreement. The text notes the economic partnership "should ensure no tariffs, fees, charges or quantitative restrictions across all sectors". There will be ambitious customs arrangements that "build and improve on the single customs territory provided for in the Withdrawal Agreement which obviates the need for checks on rules of origin". Immigration and travel The declaration notes that free movement to the UK will end. New laws will be drawn up to allow visa-free travel for short-term visits. Any changes to immigration laws will be "without prejudice" to the maintenance of the Common Travel Area between Britain and Ireland. The maintenance of the CTA has already been left as a matter between Ireland and the UK under the withdrawal agreement. Conditions will also be considered to allow travel for the purposes of research, study, training and youth exchanges. Planes, trains and roads A Comprehensive Air Transport Agreement will be drawn up to maintain open skies, while both "should ensure comparable market access for freight and passenger road transport operators". "Complementary" arrangements to address travel by private motorists should also be looked at according to the document. Bilateral arrangements will be put in place to keep cross-border train lines open - including the Belfast-Dublin Enterprise line. Fishing Regaining autonomous control of the UK's waters is one of the key aims of Brexit. Mrs May has insisted that this deal will give the UK back control of its waters in the face of opposition from the Labour Party. The text recognises the UK as an "independent coastal state" and a new fisheries deal will be pursued in the hope of signing it by July 2020. Security co-operation There are parameters set out in the declaration for significant continued co-operation on the area of crime, security and counter-terrorism. The document also commits both sides to tackling illegal immigration. Financial services Both sides have committed to completing equivalence assessments by the middle of June 2020. Our EU partners have "taken Ireland's concerns to heart" all through the marathon Brexit negotiations which are now close to conclusion, European Affairs Minister Helen McEntee has said. Opening a debate on the draft EU-UK Brexit deal in Seanad Eireann, Ms McEntee said the draft deal allowed a transition period up to at least December 2020. This timeframe, which can be extended, would allow London and Brussels to work out a new, long-term relationship on trade and other issues. The minister said she was optimistic about the long-term relationship. "We hope it will be as deep, strong and comprehensive as possible," she said. She paid tribute to the other EU governments and institutions, adding: "They took Ireland's concerns to heart and made them European concerns and priorities." Ms McEntee said that UK Prime Minister Theresa May had three times stood over her commitment first made in December last year on the Irish Border backstop. She said Dail Eireann's endorsement of the draft deal on Wednesday night was an important signal ahead of Sunday's special EU leaders' summit that is set to endorse it. European Union negotiators from the 27 states remaining after Brexit were unable to agree on Gibraltar during talks on Friday, diplomatic sources said of the outstanding issue before Sunday's summit of the bloc's leaders to seal the deal. Sterling fell a quarter of a percent on Friday as Spain's eleventh-hour objections over Gibraltar before a Sunday summit to endorse the Brexit deal prompted some traders to take profits after an overnight rally. The British currency briefly rallied more than a percent on Thursday on news that Britain and the European Union had agreed a draft text setting out a close post-Brexit relationship, bringing relief to companies and investors after months of tense negotiations. It ended up 0.8 percent on the day, scoring its biggest daily rise in 10 days. "The Spain news is keeping sterling subdued even though broad expectations are for the deal to be agreed on Sunday but there are bigger tests ahead before the currency can rally meaningfully," said Morten Helt, a senior FX strategist at Danske Bank. Against a broadly subdued dollar, the British currency fell 0.3 percent to $1.2838 while it was broadly flat against the euro at 88.57 pence. Spain has asked for changes to the withdrawal treaty and its Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said he will veto the draft deal on Britain's exit from the EU if no changes are made. Though the British currency is trading at the lower end of recent trading ranges and remains one of the most undervalued currencies on a trade-weighted basis, investors are wary of buying the pound at these levels on political concerns. "While the EU appears practically certain to accept it, the same cannot be said for UK lawmakers, as nearly every faction of Parliament including Labour, Tory Brexiteers, pro-EU moderates, and the DUP has threatened to vote it down," said Marios Hadjikyriacos, an analyst at broking firm XM.Com. Despite a recent drop in short sterling positions, overall bets remain large at $3.8 billion. Earlier, Gibraltar's chief minister said they have worked with Spain to reach agreement over its place in the Brexit withdrawal agreement, adding that any revision of the enclave's place in the deal would reopen the whole agreement to renegotiation. "We've worked very hard and have in fact reached agreement with Spanish colleagues in respect of Gibraltar's role in the withdrawal process... in good faith, we've worked together and we've delivered," Fabian Picardo told BBC radio, adding that Spain did not need to use a "veto" to bring Gibraltar to the table. "If (the withdrawal agreement is) opened for one comma or one full-stop on Gibraltar, it's going to be re-opened on any of the other issues." The IFA and ICMSA have hit out at the possibility of carbon taxes being introduced to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The farm organisations' comments follow warnings from Richard Bruton, the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and the Environment, that Ireland is "far off course" in achieving its CO2 reduction targets. Ireland is facing massive fines because of its failure to meet strict EU targets, and Minister Bruton said that imposing carbon taxes will be among a suite of measures aimed at controlling emissions. However, ICMSA president Pat McCormack said the reality of farming's importance to the rural economy must be given equal consideration to the "scientific and environmental reality" of climate change. "Farming and food production is not just a part of the rural economy; to a huge degree it is the total of our rural economy, and undermining it through fuel tax hikes will simply destroy the only meaningful economy in whole swathes of the state outside the cities and larger towns," said Mr McCormack. IFA environment chairman Thomas Cooney said farmers were totally opposed to carbon taxes on the sector, which he said would directly impact on "farming's competitiveness without reducing climate emissions". "Farmers in Ireland have a proud record as carbon-efficient food producers. We can and will do more, particularly in the resource efficiency and renewables areas. "However, this depends on strong Government support and a fully funded CAP to meet the increased environmental and climate requirements," Mr Cooney said. Cross-sectoral implementation As part of a series of measures to tackle climate change the IFA has called on the Government to: * Establish a cross-sectoral implementation group, including the IFA, to mobilise Government departments and the State's advisory, scientific and economic development agencies to maximise the delivery of the emissions reductions identified by Teagasc in their recent climate abatement report; * Work with EU leaders to introduce a carbon tariff on all less climate-efficient imports into the EU from South America and other regions to incentivise carbon-efficient food production; * Regarding the calculation of greenhouse gas emissions: - Re-examine the climate metrics applied when calculating methane, given the short-lived behaviour of methane in the atmosphere. - C02 emission reductions through natural carbon sinks, such as forests and permanent pastures, should be included in the overall measurement of the contribution of emissions from the sector; * On community and farm-scale renewables: - The introduction of a guaranteed feed-in tariff model. - Increased grid access, at node and substation level. - Crowdfunding legislation and platforms. - The development of regional biomass trade and logistic centres. Police in eastern China have detained 29 suspects linked to an abattoir that pumped up to 120 liters of water over a 12-hour period into cattle to inflate their slaughter weight before being carved up and sold, state media reported on Wednesday. The reports did not specify what crime the suspects were being held for, but the case has provoked outrage on social media over the cruelty inflicted on the animals as images of their ghastly ordeal emerged. From 7:00 pm till dawn, workers at the slaughterhouse would slowly pump water into cattle through tubes inserted into their nostrils before they were slaughtered for the market in nearby Nanjing, a provincial state-controlled TV broadcaster reported. Stills from a video clip shot by an undercover reporter from the broadcaster showed a swollen cattle on its knees with tears in its eyes. Workers whom the reporter spoke with said the process was cruel, though the foreman of the abattoir said the process was painless. A number of social media users said the abattoir foreman should be pumped full of water instead. Cattle deserve to be treated with dignity too. Think about it, we should be grateful for their selflessness, which has helped fill our bellies, one social media user wrote. Beef from the slaughterhouse had been popular due to its prices, which averaged 30 yuan ($4.32) a kg, about 10pc cheaper than its competitors, according to the broadcaster. Consumption of beef in China is growing faster than for other meats. But with limited land to produce big herds to meet rising beef demand, China has been stepping up imports. Last year, China shipped in almost 700,000 tonnes of the red meat worth about $3.3 billion. Dublin and the commuter belt are now swallowing up more than 60pc of new jobs. While the country is continuing to edge towards full employment, a major urban-rural divide is developing. An analysis of the latest figures suggests the recovery is heavily weighed towards the capital, which also takes 61pc of new tech jobs. And writing in today's Irish Independent, Rural Affairs Minister Michael Ring admits: "Ireland is imbalanced." Mr Ring accepts large numbers of people living in rural communities are being forced to travel long distances for work. "This imbalance impacts on everyone's quality of life," he said. The Government yesterday unveiled details of their 'Future Jobs' programme, which will replace the 'Action Plan for Jobs' set up during the recession. And it will today launch a 1bn fund for investment in rural towns and villages with a population under 10,000 over the next 10 years. Expand Close An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar opens the Future Jobs Summit at the Aviva Stadium. Photo: Tony Gavin / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar opens the Future Jobs Summit at the Aviva Stadium. Photo: Tony Gavin But there is growing concern that international investors are focused primarily on the east coast, with limited interest in the regions. Business Minister Heather Humphreys said three out of five jobs are now being created outside of Dublin. According to CSO statistics, the numbers in employment actually fell in the Border region and remained unchanged in the mid-west over the past year. Fianna Fail has warned the new jobs plan is likely to be an "optical illusion" unless it urgently addresses the two-tier recovery. Expand Close Qualified: Anna-Maria Golm graduated with a BA Hons in Business Studies from Griffith College, Cork. Photo: Darragh Kane / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Qualified: Anna-Maria Golm graduated with a BA Hons in Business Studies from Griffith College, Cork. Photo: Darragh Kane The party's business spokesman Billy Kelleher said the 66,700 jobs created in the 12 months to the end of September was "good news". But he warned that there was a "worrying trend emerging". There was an annual increase in employment of 3pc, or 66,700, in the year to September, bringing total number in employment to a record 2,273,200. However, a review of data supplied by the Central Statistics Office shows that, when the Mid-East region and Dublin are counted together, they absorbed more than 60pc of the new jobs. The Mid-East region, as defined by the CSO, consists of Kildare, Louth, Meath and Wicklow. Fianna Fail's business spokesperson, Billy Kelleher warned: "Alarmingly, Dublin accounted for nearly half of total employment gains and the Greater Dublin Area accounting for over 60pc. "This is clear, unambiguous evidence that the two-tier recovery is still being experienced by regional and rural Ireland," he said. Of the positions created in the past 12 months, 59,100 jobs were in the services sector, including ICT, transport, hospitality, food and administration. On a regional basis, Dublin accounted for 45pc of all these jobs and the 64pc when the Greater Dublin Area is counted. Mr Kelleher noted that the European Commission has already warned about regional imbalances in terms of investment, economic growth and competitiveness. The Cork TD added that looking solely at the top-level figures is "short-sighted and harmful to thousands of communities up and down the country". In an article for this newspaper today, Rural and Community Development Minister Michael Ring, accepts that large numbers of people living in rural communities are being forced to travel long distances for work. "This imbalance impacts on everyone's quality of life," he said. However, Mr Ring says the Government "has decided that it is time to redress the balance by strategically directing a greater proportion of growth and investment to our regions and our rural communities". Along with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, he will today launch a 1bn fund for investment in rural towns and villages with a population under 10,000 over the next 10 years. Mr Ring has said the money is "unprecedented and will be a game-changer for rural communities". More than 290 rural communities have applied for funding from the first tranche of money. Mr Ring said the investment can be used by people to re-imagine how their towns and villages. He noted that one major threats facing rural Ireland is changing consumer habits. The Minister also said "people increasingly choose to shop in out of town retail outlets and supermarkets, as opposed to in their local main street". "The misleading and often politically motivated narrative which suggests a neglect of our rural communities fails to take into account the fundamental shifts in consumer behaviour which are changing the face of our main streets and town centres," he said. Mr Ring adds that it is in everybody's interests to "re-balance growth away from our cities". Speaking at the launch of the Future Jobs plan yesterday, Mr Varadkar said towns that would benefit from automation and big data were not necessarily those that are doing well today. "In the same way that the invention of the spinning jenny and mechanised textile production changed the world of work forever - automation, the internet of things, advanced robotics, artificial intelligence and big data will transform our century," Mr Varadkar said. "History is littered with examples of regions that thrived economically at one time or another, but were complacent, assumed their competitive advantage would last forever, and fell into decline." Mr Varadkar acknowledged that economic improvements were putting pressure on certain parts of the economy, "notably on housing, on our transport infrastructure and there are recruitment challenges now across all sectors." Where work was created Overall, a total of 66,700 jobs were created nationally in the 12 months to the end of September this year. The regional breakdown based on Central Statistics Office data shows: Dublin: + 32,900 jobs South-west: + 15,100 Midlands: +7,900 Mid-east: +7,300 West: +5,100 South-east: + 600 Mid-west: No change Border: Minus 3,100 Other facts: OVER 55,000 state pensioners are set to get a hike in their payments in the wake of a bonkers budget cut early next year. Minister for Social Protection Regina Doherty confirmed that her department has written to 79,000 people affected by cuts that had a major impact on women who opted out of the workforce. Around 8,000 individuals living outside the state will receive letters next week. She said about 70pc of these people will get increases and she expects the payments to have been made by the end of March next year. Changes to how pension entitlements were calculated in 2012 particularly impacted on women who opted out of work to raise their families. Last year, the cuts were described as bonkers by Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe when tackled by a caller on an RTE radio show the day after the budget. The government has since offered these 79,000 pensioners a new way of assessing their pensions, known as a total contributions approach. Its in and around 70pc it may be a little more or a little less, she said, when asked how many of those affected will get increases. Well do that (assessments) over the course of the couple of weeks after Christmas and were employing some new people so that it wont be a lengthy process and hope to have it completed by the end of quarter one, with payments made, backdated, and everyone on their new payment. However, she said there are no figures available on what the average payment will be. She also said new legislation to help workers on precarious contracts is likely to come into effect from early next year. What it will mean is that people who are on precarious contracts, who don't know from one week to the next whether theyre going to be called in or not called in or if they are called in, sent home with no money, all of that will change. She said workers will be put on a band of hours that reflects what they actually worked over the previous 12 months to give them consistency in their weekly hours. If they are not called into work, they will have to be paid three hours compensation for not being given the work. Im told its groundbreaking, she said. Its certainly a long time in the making. There are far too many people waiting for it. She said there is also a need for more inspections by labour inspectors to tackled bogus self employment following 1,000 inspections last August. The Electric Ireland freeze will apply until the end of February, when energy use in homes is at its highest. Stock photo: Getty Images The largest energy supplier in the State is bucking the trend of raising prices. State-owned Electric Ireland will freeze electricity and gas prices this winter. It comes after five suppliers announced winter price rises and followed a string of hikes announced earlier in the year. The move by Electric Ireland will put pressure on Bord Gais, another large player in the market. It has yet to say whether it is increasing or freezing prices. BEenergy and PrePayPower have also yet to indicate if prices will rise. The Electric Ireland freeze will apply until the end of February, when energy use in homes is at its highest. Expand Close Marguerite Sayer: Electric Ireland director backed the price freeze. Photo: Steve Humphreys / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Marguerite Sayer: Electric Ireland director backed the price freeze. Photo: Steve Humphreys The company, the largest supplier in the State, has 1.1 million electricity customer and 138,000 gas customers. Electric Ireland executive director of customer solutions Marguerite Sayers said: "We are conscious of the pressures facing our customers, especially in the run-up to Christmas, and we are committed to keeping prices as low as possible for as long as possible." Last week, Energia became the fifth supplier to announce a winter price rise. And householders were warned to expect more energy price rises. Energia said it would raise the cost for consumers getting electricity, gas and dual fuel from it with effect from the start of next year. Electricity prices will go up by 5.5pc, in a move that adds 62 to the annual cost for a typical household. Energia gas prices will be 6.3pc more expensive, adding 56 to the cost for an average household. The move comes after price rises were also announced recently by SSE Airtricity. It is to increase its household energy prices from the start of December. Its standard price of electricity will increase by 1.18 per week, which adds an extra 61 to annual bills. Pinergy said its electricity prices would rise by 7.89pc from next month, in a move that will add an 66 to bills. It comes after Flogas and Panda Power announced price increases in the past few days for the winter. Consumers are taking out insurance on their mobile phones but then forget to cancel it when they get a new device. This means they end up paying for cover on something they no longer use. Central Bank research also found that people are confused about what is covered by gadget insurance, often leading to claims being denied. Almost half of those who take out gadget insurance mistakenly believe it will cover wear and tear on their device. Some 440,000 people have gadget insurance, which is mainly sold to them after they buy a device, the Central Bank found. The research, which included a consumer survey and a thematic inspection of insurers, found the majority of people did not understand the cover and thought it covered more than it did. Some 45pc expect wear and tear to be covered, with 77pc expecting to be offered a new device when it needs to be replaced. One in five failed to cancel a previous policy after taking out a new one. This means they are paying for cover they no longer need. Few people surveyed were familiar with the exclusions and excess on the policies. Exclusions list claims that will not be covered, while the excess is the amount the consumer has to meet before a claim will be paid. People felt the policy terms were unfair as the excess was often a higher figure than the cost of the repairs. Device owners were also unaware that there is sometimes no cover for under 18s, and restrictions on the age of the gadget and the place of purchase. Many people have a claim declined after having a mobile phone stolen. This is because they have failed to report the loss of the handset to gardai or to the insurer within the timeframe specified in the policy. Patients are being forced to pay towards meeting the cost of medical procedures despite having health insurance, an industry expert has warned. Dunraven Health Services said there had been a huge rise in rejected, or partially paid, claims for treatments. Dr Brian McManus, of the Dublin firm, which negotiates on behalf of hospitals, said one in 10 bills is not being paid, or only being partially paid. This meant both public and private hospitals then had no choice but to bill the patients, he said. "One in 10 claims is being pended, rejected or partially paid," Dr McManus said. That comes after Blackrock Clinic chief James O'Donoghue said insurers were challenging patients' policies, the length of time they were spending in hospital, as well as pre-existing illnesses, in order to reduce their exposure to claims. Mr O'Donoghue said private hospitals had traditionally absorbed the cost when insurers wouldn't pay the amount being sought. But the figures under dispute between the clinic and insurers had risen 300pc and this was "not sustainable", he added. "Should this continue, we cannot guarantee that customers will not be forced to negotiate with their insurers about shortfalls following treatment." He said he believed payment refusal was an issue for other private hospitals and that they too may be forced to pass costs on to patients. Asked for a comment, Vhi, Laya and Irish Life Health all referred to a statement from their representative body, Insurance Ireland. It said when there is a disputed claim, this is settled directly between health insurers and health care providers, and customers should not be involved or affected. "If there is a question of eligibility, each health insurer is guided by their expert-led medical advisory teams in validating and assessing the claim in line with clinical governance and medical best practice," the insurance body said. Insurance Ireland said insurers work to ensure customers get appropriate care in an appropriate setting, and if customers have queries on their cover, they should contact their health insurer. In addition, private hospitals have admitted there is a problem with patients being hit for bills, because they are realising too late that they have to make co-payments for treatment, alongside their insurers' contribution. A spokesman for the Private Hospitals Association said most health insurance members were not being forced to pay any aspects of bills for hospital treatments. But it added: "The association and its 19 members are, however, very concerned that privately insured patients lack adequate cover in the key treatment areas of cancer, cardiology and orthopaedics. "More and more patients are realising too late that their cover is falling short, and then face additional co- payments." More than 3,000 victims of the tracker-mortgage scandal are still waiting for compensation, but Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe cannot say when they will receive it. The householders are among those who were wrongly pushed by their bank to switch away from a low-rate tracker mortgage in the wake of the economic crash. About 580m has been returned to people so far and those affected are eligible for compensation - but for 10pc the timeline for redress remains unclear. "I cannot give an exact time by which everybody will have his or her money back, but I want it to happen as soon as possible," Mr Donohoe said. He said there was a "cohort of cases" that would be "more difficult and even more demanding". The minister was replying to questions from Fianna Fail's Michael McGrath, who said the 3,000 customers were known to the banks "yet they remain unpaid and out of pocket to this day, which is not acceptable". "We and, more importantly, the people who were affected need the minister and the Central Bank to inform them when they will get their money back," he said. Mr McGrath said that the scandal must "be brought to an end". "It is bad enough that this happened in the first place, but the way in which it has been handled and the fact it has been allowed to drag on while people continue to be out of pocket is not acceptable," he added. Separately, Mr Donohoe has indicated Nama could remain in operation for up to a year longer than previously believed. The National Asset Management Agency - the country's bad bank - will not now be wound up at the end of 2020. The agency was set up after the economic crash to buy up risky property loans from Irish bailed-out lenders. Unions have urged members who have not claimed tax breaks to seek their entitlements, after it was revealed a Revenue review would end reliefs on work expenses for thousands of workers. Mandate sent a message to its 40,000 members urging them to apply for the entitlements for the last four years, before Revenue removes them. It said the accumulated benefit could be up to 640 for a pharmacist, 320 for an assistant pharmacist, 193 for a shop assistant and 148 for a bar worker. The Government was forced into an embarrassing climbdown this week after being accused of "clobbering workers". Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe announced that the review would be parked for a year. It was originally set to affect an initial 80,000 workers from January 1. The tax grab was revealed as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was promising tax cuts over the next five years if re-elected. But the U-turn followed, with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions warning it will mount a campaign if there are future moves to axe the reliefs. "The fact that they've decided not to proceed with this is to be welcomed as it would mean a significant reduction in earnings for some of the lowest paid people," said a spokesman. :: In a graphic 'Cutting tax reliefs' published in the Irish Independent on Wednesday, November 21, several incorrect figures were listed. This was due to a production error. We are happy to clarify that the correct figures should read: bricklayers (175), electricians (153), bus, rail and road operatives (160), park rangers employed by OPW (77), driving instructors (125), fishermen (318), pharmacists (400), plumbers (177) and guidance counsellors (518). Google has announced record revenues of 32.2bn for 2017 in its Irish accounts, a rise of 5.9bn due to the scale at which it is cornering the advertising market. However, it only paid 171m in tax here because its declared profit in Ireland was just 1.16bn out of 32.2bn in sales. The slim profit is a result of Google ascribing 21.9bn to administrative expenses, including ordinary business costs and money paid to related companies offshore. The figures show that between them, Google and Facebook are now obliterating all other online rivals for advertising, including media companies. Google says that it now supports 8,000 employees in Ireland, divided between permanent staff and contractors. Its country manager and vice president, Fionnuala Meehan, said that 2018 has been the companys its most successful hiring year in Ireland. Last year we saw an 8pc increase in employment here in Dublin with over 258 new direct jobs created across all our operations including sales and marketing, engineering and administration, she said. The success of Google in Dublin has seen us grow, including the establishment of a new Google Cloud team; in 2017, we acquired the lease on the Velasco building on Dublins Grand Canal which gave us an additional 51,000 sq ft of office space for this division. Googles cost of sales increased to 9bn, an increase of 2.1 billion on 2016. This was made up primarily of traffic acquisition costs, said the company, which consist of both the amounts paid to distribution partners who make Google search available as well as amounts based on revenue share arrangements under which the company pays its Google Network Members and other partners a portion of the fees it receives from advertisers. Building on the foundations of our growth in 2017, we have continued our investment programme in 2018, said Ms Meehan. As we celebrate 15 years in Ireland this year, we are continuing to invest in our operations and in our local community. We want our city to share in our success and we recently launched our biggest ever initiative to support local communities throughout Dublin. The Google.org Dublin Impact Challenge is a new 1m fund to support non-profit innovators and social entrepreneurs whose innovative ideas for change are making an impact locally. The number of jobs being created through renewable energy is on the increase, according to a report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena). Last year, global renewable energy employment reached 10.3 million, a 5.3pc increase on the previous year. While an increasing number of countries are deriving socio-economic benefits from renewable energy, employment remains highly concentrated in a handful of countries, including China, Brazil, the US, India, Germany and Japan. Employment trends in the renewable energy sector are being shaped by a wide range of technical, economic, and policy-driven factors, the report found. China, in particular, is forging ahead and accounted for almost half of all renewable energy jobs last year. Its share of employment is especially high in solar heating and cooling (83pc) and in the solar photovoltaic (PV) sector (66pc). A factor behind the growing level of employment in Asian countries - which accounted for 60pc of renewable jobs in 2017 - is down to growing domestic deployment, as well as strong manufacturing capabilities, which are supported by government policies such as feed-in tariffs, auctions, and preferential credit and land policies, according to Irena. PV was the largest employer, with 3.4 million jobs, up 9pc. Expansion in the PV sector took place in China and India, while the US, Japan and the EU lost jobs. At home, analysis published by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland suggests we will achieve between 12.7pc and 13.9pc renewable energy by 2020 - falling short of the 16pc target. In a "worst-case" scenario this will involve Government having to purchase renewable credits at a cost of some 90m or more. The State also risks being hit with fines by the European Commission for failing to meet legally binding climate change targets. Meanwhile, in 2016 the UK ranked second in Europe, behind Germany, for the number of workers employed in renewable energy jobs Overall, approximately 118,000 British people were employed in the sector in 2015/16, according to the Renewable Energy Association. The largest renewable employer in the UK is the area of wind power, followed by solar photovoltaics. France completed the top three European countries for creating jobs, with 107,000 people employed in 2016. The report finds that jobs in the sector could rise to 23.6 million by 2030, and 28.8 million in 2050. "The role of renewables in the global energy system keeps expanding," Irena said. "This process is key to stabilising the global climate, avoiding employment degradation, and improving human health. "As the global transition towards a more sustainable energy system unfolds, the world's renewable energy workforce will continue to expand." Nissan's board voted unanimously to oust chairman Carlos Ghosn yesterday after the shock arrest of the industry heavyweight, ushering in a period of uncertainty for its 19-year alliance with Renault. The Japanese firm said its board also voted to remove Greg Kelly - who, like Mr Ghosn, has been arrested after allegations of financial misconduct - from his post as representative director. The moves, which leaves the chairman position vacant, came despite Renault urging Nissan's board before its meeting to delay removing Mr Ghosn, sources close to the matter told Reuters. The Franco-Japanese alliance, enlarged in 2016 to include Japan's Mitsubishi Motors, has been rattled to its core by the arrest of the 64-year-old Mr Ghosn in Japan on Monday. He had shaped the alliance and was pushing for a deeper tie-up, including potentially a full Renault-Nissan merger at the French government's urging, despite strong reservations at the Japanese firm. Japanese prosecutors said Mr Ghosn and Mr Kelly conspired to understate Mr Ghosn's compensation at Nissan over five years from 2010, saying it was about half the actual 10 billion yen (77m). Shin Kukimoto, deputy public prosecutor at the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, said on Thursday that court approval was received a day earlier to detain Mr Ghosn for 10 days but he could not comment on whether he had admitted to the allegations. Nissan executives have five seats on the nine-member board, Renault loyalists have two seats and the remaining two are held by unaffiliated outside directors, a former bureaucrat and a race driver. With Mr Ghosn and Mr Kelly still in detention, neither of the men were able to vote or defend themselves at the meeting. Renault has refrained from firing Mr Ghosn as chairman and CEO. Reuters Trade tensions between the United States and China are likely to dominate the G20 summit of the world's 20 biggest economies next week, according to a senior European Union official who said the EU was keen to act as a bridge-builder. The United States and China have been imposing tariffs on each others goods in an escalating dispute over market access, forced technology transfer, intellectual property rights and state subsidies to certain sectors that distort competition. The European Union, Canada and Japan are also involved because of US tariffs on steel and aluminium products imposed by Washington earlier this year. "The success of the G20 summit this year will be measured by its capacity to de-escalate the current trade tensions," the EU official, involved in preparations for the talks, said the officials. The official said the EU shared many of the US concerns over China's trade practices, but favoured a different approach. While Washington pursued unilateral actions, the EU wants to deal with them in the World Trade Organisation. The US is sceptical, saying the WTO is not equipped to deal with the new trade challenges. "The aim of the EU is to really now engage in the reform of the WTO, to provide political impetus through the G20 for the reform and get an update on progress at next year's G20 summit under the Japanese presidency," the official said. Reuters Angelina Jolie has spoken about sexual violence in her role as UN envoy. (Yui Mok/PA) American actress Angelina Jolie has spoken out against sexual violence in global war zones during a Government film event in London. Held at the British Film Institute, 38 movies and documentaries are being shown as part of a festival enabling survivors to tell their stories. The United Nations envoy spoke at the event, which aims to tackle rape and sexual violence in conflict zones. Jolie welcomed the work of the festival, which was attended Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt. She said: I want to thank the British Government for hosting this festival and for recognising the power of storytelling as a tool to enhance empathy and understanding. I welcome that the Foreign Office is supporting art and artists, putting the issue of sexual violence in conflict forward as an urgent international issue.@Refugees Envoy Angelina Jolie opens film festival to raise awareness of sexual violence in conflict#TimeToAct pic.twitter.com/jaP6PQdJ2o Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (@FCDOGovUK) November 23, 2018 I welcome what it says, that the Foreign Office is supporting art and artists, putting the issue of sexual violence in conflict forward as an urgent international issue, allowing the voices of that set the agenda to be those of the survivors themselves. Art highlighting the horrors of sexual violence in conflicts across the world was displayed in addition to the screenings. The event included the unveiling of a code to set the standard for evidence-gathering for investigating sexual violence in war zones and was backed by Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon, who is the UK Governments special representative on such violence. With @Refugees envoy Angelina Jolie at #PSVI film festival to discuss new Murad Code, named after Nobel Peace Prize laureate @NadiaMuradBasee. Code will set standard for gathering evidence of sexual violence in conflicts. There must be justice for survivors! @end_svc #TimeToAct pic.twitter.com/E33R4VxskX Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) November 23, 2018 Video of the Day Hunt tweeted about the event, writing: With @Refugees envoy Angelina Jolie at #PSVI film festival to discuss new Murad Code, named after Nobel Peace Prize laureate @NadiaMuradBasee. Code will set standard for gathering evidence of sexual violence in conflicts. There must be justice for survivors! The code is named after Nadia Murad, a Yazidi human rights activist who was kidnapped at the hands of Islamic State. SONS of a charity worker who was tragically killed in South Africa have paid heartfelt tributes to their dad, saying the world needs more like John Curran. In a memorial service for Mr Curran (60) who was stabbed to death in Cape Town earlier this month, hundreds filled the public theatre at Trinity College to celebrate his life. Mr Curran was remembered as a visionary teacher who was way ahead of his time - one that was a leader rather than a boss. He was described as a loving father and grandfather who would do anything for his kids. Expand Close John Curran. Photo: Irish Primary Principals' Network/PA Wire / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp John Curran. Photo: Irish Primary Principals' Network/PA Wire The 60-year-old retired principal was found with multiple stab wounds at his apartment in Buitengracht Street, Cape Town. In the first eulogy of the service, Mr Currans son, Darragh told how his dad was the type of father to encourage and teach his children to use their head and to think. He spoke of the youthfullness of his father. Its not even that long ago that on a night out he was mistaken for my brother, Darragh said. His brother Donal remembered how he and his siblings would always have a list of things for their dad to do around their houses, something which he loved doing. He said moments with his family - no matter how boring or exciting - were like cash in the bank to his father. Mr Currans love of coffee was also highlighted by many speaking at the fitting service. Tributes came in from people from across all organisations Mr Curran was involved in throughout his life. The Cantando Choir - who John had sang with for many years - performed a number of fitting songs in his memory. Earlier in the service, a video was also played from Mellon Educate in Cape Town with some of the pupils speaking of how Mr Curran had inspired him during his two years in South Africa. Representatives from the Irish Primary Principals Network and Mellon Educate were amongst the many to pay a personal tribute. The Cantando Choir concluded with the Beatles classic All You Need is Love, before a slideshow of photographs were shown on a screen in the room. A mother from Cork, who cares for her son with a rare genetic condition, has been named 2018s Carer of the Year. Brenda OConnell from Charleville was among 31 carers who were honoured for their selfless devotion to their loved ones as part of the CarePlus Carer awards in Dublin today, hosted by RTE stars Marty Whelan and Mary Kennedy. Brenda cares for her young son Fionn (4) who has NACC1, a rare genetic mutational condition. Fionn is the only known person in Europe with this diagnosis. Having been extremely ill at three months old Fionn spent the first two years of his life in and out of hospital. He stopped feeding and would cry for 20 hours a day in excruciating pain, leading to a nasal gastro tube and peg feeding. But Brenda and her husband Trevor refuse to give up hope for a day when Fionn doesnt suffer. The mum of one also has a highly debilitating illness called Systemic Lupus and has undergone chemotherapy treatment to alleviate the pain. She also cares for her mother who was recently diagnosed with cancer. Despite all of this, Brenda managed to fundraise locally to adapt their home in order to make it suitable for providing 24/7 care. "There are so many other heartbreaking stories and I thought there wasnt a hope that our story would be the winning one," she said. But everyone in Ireland who is a carer has their hearts broken night and day. All we do is fight and advocate for the people were caring for. I think I can speak for everyone when saying all we need to help and support from the services we have to fight tooth and nail for. There are so many services that are not available and we need to fight continuously everyday of the week. This year Fionn has started getting respite but unfortunately the medication he's been using since September is not being administered to him anymore. Were hoping that we can get it back because this medication is the only thing that has stopped his screaming. He has been screaming since he was born for about 18 hours a the day. Catherine Cox, head of Communications at Careplus said that Brenda will be a fantastic ambassador for the 355,000 family carers across Ireland. "These awards serve to highlight the work of Irelands hidden army and give them the recognition they deserve, particularly the five young carers who received awards today," she said. "This is our 12th year running these awards and our message is unfortunately still the same. Family carers are continuing to prop up an inadequate health system at a high personal cost physically, emotionally and financially." Meanwhile, ten-year-old Sean Ryan was the youngest person to be honoured at the awards. The fourth class pupil from Portlaoise helps to care for his twin brother Liam who has severe Quadriplegic Cerebral Palsy and as a result is a full-time wheel chair user. He also has many other complex medical needs. Sean helps by bringing Liam's food to his mother Niamh, getting a clean bib and stops Liam's feeding tube when it's finished. The young carer told Independent.ie that he has a really strong bond with his brother and knows all the signs when Liam is getting upset or is feeling unwell. He even raised 675 for Laura Lynn Children's Hospice to say thanks for their support to his family. A DUP councillor has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a nursing colleague. A court yesterday backed claims that Ian Stevenson deliberately squeezed the woman's breast at a care home in Co Antrim before joking that he would "grope anything". District Judge Amanda Henderson said: "I found the injured party to be credible in her testimony." Stevenson, a 49-year-old nurse and former mayor of Ballymoney, will now be sentenced next month. Belfast Magistrates' Court heard he allegedly asked for a hug while talking to the woman on a corridor in April 2017. She claimed that after raising her arms Stevenson, of Headlands Avenue in Ballymoney, grabbed her breast. "He actually squeezed when he did it," the woman said in evidence. During the trial she described responding by pushing him away and telling him "no", adding that the encounter left her shocked and frightened. "He just basically tried to laugh it off and made the joke 'You know me, I would grope anything... well, not anything'," the woman claimed. The court was told she later sent Stevenson a Facebook message, expressing her "disgust" at what allegedly happened. Asked how the incident has affected her, she replied: "It makes me nervous that somebody in that position could take such an advantage." With Stevenson emphatically denying the sexual assault charge, it was put it to the woman that her allegations were inconsistent and false. Defence counsel argued it was unbelievable that a public figure and nurse of 22 years standing would carry out the alleged act in the middle of a care home. It emerged in court that Stevenson has since been dismissed from his nursing position - an action which is to be challenged at a tribunal. The defendant, a representative on Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council, has also reportedly been suspended by the DUP pending the outcome of the case. He claimed it was the woman who offered him a hug when he told her he was going to lay a wreath on a friend's grave. At no point did he grab or touch her breast, he insisted. Questioned about his alleged comments, he told the court: "Anybody that knows me, anybody in the political sphere, knows that I have never cursed in my life, which might seem a bit incredible, and I certainly would not say anything like that." Stevenson rejected prosecution contentions that he "took a chance" by overstepping the boundaries and grabbing the woman's breast. "It's not my nature, it's not me," he maintained. But delivering judgment today, Mrs Henderson said the woman's testimony was consistent with her complaint following the alleged incident. The content of her Facebook message also supported her assertion of sexual touching, the judge held. She said Stevenson had failed to provide an explanation for why the woman would fabricate the incident after they had previously been on good terms. Accepting he had allegedly remarked that he would "grope anything", Mrs Henderson confirmed: "He did the act deliberately and I convict." Stevenson will return to court in four weeks time to be sentenced. Stephen Hyland (centre) with his parents Mary Hyland & Syl Hyland at the Coroners Court inquest into the death of Stephen's wife Nora Hyland at Store Street, Dublin. Photo: Gareth Chaney Collins The husband and son of a woman who died at the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) hours after undergoing an emergency caesarean section have settled their High Court action for nervous shock for 650,000. Nora Hyland (31), who is originally from Malaysia, of Charlotte Quay, Dublin, died on the operating table at the NMH, Holles Street, Dublin, on February 13, 2012, within three hours of undergoing an emergency caesarean to deliver her son Frederick. Liability was not admitted and the hospital denied the claims. An inquest later returned a verdict of medical misadventure in the case of the first time mother who had to wait almost 40 minutes for a blood transfusion after she suffered severe bleeding following an emergency birth. Dublin coroner Dr Brian Farrell found the cause of death was a cardiac arrest as a result of severe post-partum haemorrhage. However, he said that he was not able to say the delay in Mrs Hyland receiving blood was a "definite" risk factor in her death. The inquest also heard a labelling error in the laboratory contributed to a 37-minute delay in Mrs Hyland receiving a blood transfusion. No emergency supply units of O-negative, the universal blood type, were kept in operating theatres at the NMH at the time. On Friday, Mr Justice Kevin Cross approved the 650,000 settlement on behalf of Nora's husband, Stephen Hyland, and their son Frederick. The Hylands' counsel, Sasha Louise Gayer, told the court the settlement was without admission of liability. She said the Hylands were satisfied with the settlement but were too upset to attend court. Counsel said Frederick, their first child, was delivered successfully but Ms Hyland began to lose a lot of blood. Steps were taken in theatre and a request for blood was made just after midnight. A blood transfusion took place around 40 minutes later. At the inquest, counsel said, the hospital indicated new protocols were were later put in place in relation to blood supply stock. Mr Hyland, (42) Station Road, Portmarnock, Co Dublin had sued the NMH for nervous shock over the traumatic circumstances leading to and surrounding the death of his wife. It was claimed the medical records report that no blood was given to Ms Hyland until 12.40am when she had her first transfusion of the O negative blood. She had several more units of blood but she went at 1.45 am Ms Hyland went in cardiac arrest and efforts to resuscitate her were unsuccessful. Mr Hyland claimed he suffered severe and profound nervous shock , upset and mental distress as a result of what happened. At the time of the inquest in 2014, Mr Hyland paid tribute to his late wife whom he met while travelling in Malaysia. They were together for eight years and married for three-and-a-half before her death. Nora was the most gentle, kindest, warm-hearted, beautiful little lady that I ever met. I fell in love with her the very first time that I saw her. She was just full of life, loved nature, loved animals, he said. Their son Frederick was full of health, full of life," he said. "He is making me laugh and smile and every time I see him, I see Nora." Former Ireland international rugby player Mick Galwey took an article comparing a former junior minister to a highway robber to be a "complete joke", the High Court heard. Mr Galwey will be giving evidence in the defamation case taken by Fine Gael Senator Paudie Coffey against Iconic Newspapers, the publishers of the 'Kilkenny People'. Senator Coffey claims an article published by the newspaper in January 2016 caused him to be ridiculed and damaged his reputation. Iconic Newspapers denies the claims. The article quoted verbatim a press release from Senator Coffey's Kilkenny FG colleague John Paul Phelan TD, who claimed the then TD and junior minister was trying to "rob" part of Kilkenny with the support of then environment minister Alan Kelly. Mr Phelan said an 18th-Century highwayman who hid in the Comeragh Mountains was known as "Crotty the Robber" and his colleague was now "Coffey the Robber", the headline used for the article. The article was first brought to Mr Coffey's attention by a cousin who received an email from mutual friend Mick Galwey with a picture of the newspaper page and the comment: "Is this the best headline ever in the 'Kilkenny People' this week, class, not even the Bomber will get ye out of this!!!!!!" Mr Coffey also complained Mr Galwey used the words "here comes Coffey the robber" when the pair met among friends at a Thomond Park rugby match shortly afterwards. It was that incident which finally prompted him to bring legal proceedings. At the end of a day-long cross-examination by Rossa Fanning SC, for Iconic, it was put to Senator Coffey that Mr Galwey will say "he took it as a complete joke". Mr Coffey replied: "I did not take it as a joke when my name was called out in a crowded area and my name was being pulled into the muck." Counsel showed the court a photo of Mr Galwey at the same rugby match in Thomond Park with Mr Galwey in the middle and his arms around Mr Coffey and the senator's cousin. When counsel put it to him it didn't look like Mr Galwey didn't want to be associated with him and would say it was "all banter", Mr Coffey replied that it was causing hurt to him. "I want to suggest all this meant you are taking it all too seriously and taking yourself too seriously," Mr Fanning said. "You might think its a joke and Mick Galwey might think it a joke," Mr Coffey replied. "The match where that photo was taken was just one of many incidents where people consistently referred to me as a robber as a result of that article and I was highly embarrassed." The case continues. A woman whose ex-partner attacked her, breaking several bones in her face and tearing out clumps of her hair has told a court that the "terror and torture" she suffered would be with her forever. John Brennan (44) of Dun Emer Place, Lusk, Dublin, was sentenced to three years in prison with the final 12 months suspended yesterday. The father-of-one pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assault causing harm of his then girlfriend at his home on August 31, 2014. He has one previous drink driving conviction. The court heard that Brennan hit the woman after a verbal disagreement. She tried to take refuge in his car, but he struck her head off the steering wheel, dragged her by her hair from the car, back inside the house, and continued to punch her in the face until she managed to escape. In a victim impact statement read out in court on her behalf, the woman said she remembered the first punch to her face as clearly as if it were yesterday. I remember the bones in my face cracking and the blood rushing, I was in agony and could hardly move, she said. She said that afterwards she couldn't eat for months due to her broken facial bones and the stitches in her mouth, and was completely dependent on the care of her son. The woman said she was once a strong, independent person who raised her three children alone and worked as a nurse caring for sick people, but that now she was on medication and couldn't make plans. She said she just gets through each day, one at a time. I really thought he was going to kill me, she said. Judge Melanie Greally set a headline sentence of four years but reduced it on account of Brennan's early guilty plea, his previous good character, his expressions of remorse and his good employment record. The judge pointed out that due to an administrative error on the part of the gardai, there was a significant delay in bringing the case to court, leaving Brennan with a reasonable expectation that no action was going to be taken. Judge Greally said it was unfortunate that the victim was subjected to a lengthy and anxious wait for court proceedings and she hoped the conclusion of the case would help in her recovery. The judge noted that while the woman still had some residual physical consequences including back pain, the most lasting and serious effect had been on her mental health. The court heard that the woman suffers from severe anxiety, panic attacks, night terrors and flashbacks where she remembers being punched and hearing her bones crack. She lives with those memories and finds it extremely difficult to shed them, said the judge. Evidence Garda Leona Lennon told Dean Kelly BL, prosecuting, that the injured party was in Brennan's house when he began singing along to rebel songs and shouting Brits dead, Brits should be dead. Brennan told the woman he would put a gun to the head of her son, who was a member of the British Army. She turned off the music and he slapped her across the face. The woman left the house and attempted to get into Brennan's car, but he prevented her by grabbing hold of the door. He punched her twice in the face and pulled her out of the car by her hair. Brennan dragged her back into his house and began punching her in the face as she lay on the ground. She eventually escaped the house and neighbours allowed her to stay in their house until gardai arrived. She sustained three fractures to her eye socket, nasal bone and cheekbone, which had to be fitted with a plate during surgery. The woman also suffered a black eye, bruising on her face, finger and lower back, and tufts of her hair were pulled out. The court heard that Brennan accepted responsibility for the injuries but provided an alternative narrative. He told gardai he thought the woman was going to drive off and he feared for her safety and that of others. I banged her head off the steering wheel out of frustration, it all happened in a flash, he told gardai. Patricia Wilson BL, defending, said her client had apologised to the woman by text shortly after the incident and was very remorseful. She said he had made an offer of compensation of 10,000, the maximum he could get on loan from the bank, but accepted that he would need to be at liberty in order to repay the loan. The court heard that Brennan has worked in the same position as a dispatch manager for 24 years and has a five-month-old son with a new partner. The judge refused compensation and ordered Brennan to be of good behaviour for the suspended portion of his sentence. The daughter of Noel 'Duck Egg' Kirwan - who was murdered in the driveway of his Dublin home - has told the Special Criminal Court that the "only thing" her dad was guilty of was "showing his respect" at a childhood friend's funeral. "People like this should remember it's not the people who are killed that suffer, it's the families who are left behind," she said. Donna Kirwan described her dad as a "grafter" and while some of his friends chose to make money the easy way by selling drugs, her father chose to work for a living because that was how he was raised. The three-judge court also heard Mr Kirwan's son and daughter had talked about ending their lives in the aftermath of their father's death. The testimony was heard as part of a victim-impact statement read on behalf of Ms Kirwan to the court during Jason Keating's sentence hearing. The non-jury court also heard Keating was present at the scene of the shooting in Clondalkin, had a role of "real significance" and had facilitated the man who discharged the firearm. A Gotek7 tracking device was put under Mr Kirwan's car in the weeks leading up to his killing and this could be linked to Keating in the days preceding the murder. Mr Kirwan was sitting in his new Ford Mondeo on December 22, 2016, when a gunman shot him six times with a Makarov handgun which was recovered at the scene. The 62-year-old, a "long-time" friend of Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch, suffered eight wounds in total to his head, right arm, chest and abdomen. Mr Kirwan's murder arose from a "notorious feud" between two criminal factions but the deceased had no connection with either side. Jason Keating (27), of Lower Main Street, Rush, Co Dublin, admitted last month to participating in or contributing to the murder of Mr Kirwan at St Ronan's Drive, Clondalkin, Dublin 22, between December 20 and 22, 2016. Keating was on trial for the murder of Mr Kirwan but midway through his trial on October 18 he pleaded guilty to facilitating a criminal organisation in committing murder. Ms Kirwan said in her victim-impact statement December 22 started as a normal day for the family but turned into their "worst nightmare". "We have been stripped of everything. We are a shell of the people we both once were. It has destroyed us," she said. Defence counsel Michael Bowman SC, said Keating had been on the periphery of crime in the past and was not known to be a person associated with any criminal organisation. Mr Justice Hunt, presiding, with Judge Sinead Ni Chualachain and Judge Cormac Dunne, remanded Keating in custody until December 12, when he will be sentenced. A Brazilian student has described how an attack by a serial sex offender she met on Tinder destroyed her dream of learning English here. Patrick Nevin (37) was convicted last December of sexually assaulting a Brazilian student whom he had met for a first date, after they contacted each other via Tinder in July 2014. Last June Nevin pleaded guilty to raping a second woman and sexually assaulting a third victim. These attacks also took place in July 2014 and also involved Nevin meeting the women on Tinder and then picking them up at their home in his car. Nevin, with former addresses of Mounttown, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin and Castlebellingham, Co Louth, then drove the women to secluded locations and attacked them. After a trial in late 2017 a jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court found him guilty of sexually assaulting the Brazilian woman on UCD campus, south Dublin on July 23, 2014. His lawyers told the court this morning, that Nevin continues to deny the charge. The Brazilian woman, aged 36, told the court that it had been very hard for her to travel back here for the trial last year and to see her attacker. Expand Close Patrick Nevin / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Patrick Nevin Becoming tearful at times and flanked by the investigating garda, the woman said when the jury returned a guilty verdict, she felt a freedom she hasn't felt for a long time. She said that she the attack forced her to change her plans to learn English here and and she was only able to find work as a cleaner. She said she was working alone most of the time so the only words she learned were related to cleaning. She said she still dreams of returning to Ireland to live here. Patrick McGrath SC, defending, told the court that his client does not accept the verdict of the jury. Judge Cormac Quinn adjourned sentence to next Tuesday. Nevin is due to be sentenced in another court next December for the rape offence and the other assault. The woman told the trial that she thought he was taking her for a coffee when he picked her up in his car. She said he drove her to a secluded field on UCD campus and his demeanour changed completely and he became like a monster. She said he attacked her and she was in fear of her life. After deliberating for around 90 minutes, the jury of six men and six women returned a unanimous verdict of guilty on the single count. After the jury left the court room, Nevin told his lawyers, I don't accept that verdict. The woman said that she had come to Ireland to learn English and had arrived the previous month. She said she was using Tinder as a way of meeting people and practicing speaking English. After some weeks of communicating with the accused on the Tinder dating programme and on Whatsapp, she arranged to meet him. She said she believed they were going for a coffee, but the man later told gardai that he saw the date as a hook up for sex. He picked her up in his car, a blue BMW, and drove her to a secluded field on UCD campus. The woman said that he then changed completely, becoming aggressive and sexually assaulting her. After his arrest, Nevin told gardai that while in the car he leaned in to kiss the woman and that she pushed him away and he moved away. He said she then became hysterical and freaked out before jumping out of the car. He then drove off. Investigating gardai put it to the man that nobody would react like that over a kiss. They asked him if he had lost it and got angry because she had knocked him back. Paul Burns SC, prosecuting, told the jurors that simply agreeing to meet someone does not make them fair game. He said the complainant was not looking for sex and at no stage did she show an interest in meeting the man for sex. Everyone has the right to say no to sexual advances. No-one is entitled to force themselves on another, to kiss or force themselves on another, he said. He said there was no reason for the woman to lie and it was highly unlikely that a woman would travel here, three years after the events in question, to mislead or make false allegations. He asked why someone would subject themselves to what she had undergone in the courtroom, unless she was telling the truth. Mr Burns said that despite a lengthy and gruelling cross-examination, her core testimony had not been shaken by the defence. Two young Irish men have died in the US and Australia. A manhunt is under way in New York today after Danny McGee (21), from Drumlish in Co Longford, died following an assault outside a bar in Queens. Mr McGee passed away after he was assaulted outside the Gaslight Bar in Queens, in a suspected one-punch attack in the early hours of Thanksgiving. The incident occurred at approximately 3.45am local time. Mr McGee had been living in New York for more than a year and had celebrated his 21st birthday in January. He was originally from the Drumlish area of Longford and was described as a well-liked and popular young man. Detectives are trying to track down the unidentified suspect, who fled the scene after punching Mr McGee. A spokesman for the NYPD said that investigations have begun into the fatal assault. "Police responded to a 911 call of a male assaulted in front of 43-17 Queens Boulevard, The Gas Light Bar, located within the confines of the 108 Precinct. "Upon arrival, officers observed a 21-year-old male lying on the ground, with trauma to the head," the spokesman told the Irish Independent. "EMS [Emergency Medical Services] also responded to the location and transported the male to Elmhurst Hospital Centre, where he was pronounced dead. "A preliminary investigation determined that the male was punched in the head by an unknown male in front of the location, who then fled the scene on foot," he added. No arrests have yet been made and investigations are continuing. CCTV footage from bars in the area is expected to be reviewed in an effort to identify the person who carried out the fatal assault. The Department of Foreign Affairs is aware of the death and that it is providing consular assistance to the family of the deceased. He was last night described as coming from a highly respected family, and was a popular young man. Local Fine Gael councillor Martin Mulleady expressed his shock at the news of the killing and expressed his sympathies with Mr McGee's family. "I knew him very well. He was very well liked and comes from a highly respected local family," he said. "It's awful, awful news to get and my heart goes out to his family at this time," Mr Mulleady said. In a separate tragedy yesterday an Irishman died suddenly in Perth, Australia. It is understood that the deceased was due to return home to Ireland over the Christmas period. The Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed that it was aware of the tragedy and that it was providing consular assistance to the dead man's family. The circumstances surrounding the man's death were not immediately clear last night. It was just like any other Friday on one of Dublins main shopping streets early this morning, with no visible queues ahead of shops opening for Black Friday. While the American-style Black Friday sales appeared to get off to a slow start on the high street this morning, some consumers still chose to hit the shops early. Sadhbh Dolan from Stillorgan, a regular Black Friday shopper, hit Henry Street shortly after 8am this morning, preferring to grab an in-store bargain. Ive been doing this for the last few years and I prefer coming into town, having a look and spotting things that I might not have seen online, Ms Dolan told Independent.ie. I think for the retailers, Black Friday gets people out. Particularly with high street retailers, they have to compete with online and they need people to get out, so its good for business and getting people into town. According to Retail Ireland, shops are becoming increasingly wary of the benefits of having big Black Friday sales. Consumers are now expecting deep discounts of as much as 50pc on a wide range of products, said Retail Ireland Director Thomas Burke. But retailers are increasingly reluctant to engage in such deep discounting for fear that they are merely displaying sales that would otherwise happen later in the Christmas shopping period at more normal price levels. Expand Close Shops preparing to open for Black Friday 2018 on Henry St in Dublin. Pic:Mark Condren / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Shops preparing to open for Black Friday 2018 on Henry St in Dublin. Pic:Mark Condren Local market sellers on Henry Street said they had noticed that traffic was less busy this morning compared to previous Black Friday events, crediting online shopping for the physical absence on the streets. While Black Friday might not have the same impact for retailers in Ireland as it does in the US, many Irish retailers will find themselves gearing up for a leg of digital shopping after the weekend on Cyber Monday. Online is the fastest growing retail channel at present and while it still only accounts for a small portion of total retail sales, retailers are increasingly looking to it to drive growth in their businesses, Mr Burke said. Irish consumers spent 4.6 billion online in the last quarter, and full year online sales are likely to top the 15.8 billion spent in 2017. Expand Close Black Friday 2018 sale shoppers on Henry Street, Dublin. Pic:Mark Condren / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Black Friday 2018 sale shoppers on Henry Street, Dublin. Pic:Mark Condren The recent announcement by Enterprise Ireland of a 1.25 million support scheme aimed at supporting small retailers establish and upweight their online presence was most welcome, but more must be done to support indigenous businesses move into the online world. Promoted: See the latest offers and deals on Independent Discounts Jacob Kellett from Lucan, who was out shopping in Dublin this morning, said hes noticed that some products are cheaper online during the sale week. Im a shopaholic, I shop all the time anyways, Id shop in both online and in shops, he said. Depending on what people are looking for, you can get some things cheaper online in places that you cant in town. But its handier to go into shops sometimes because you dont have to wait for shipping. Plans for a drug rehabilitation centre connected to the Church of Scientology have received a set-back with An Bord Pleanala ruling it is not exempt from planning permission. Construction works are nearing completion on the controversial development in the Co Meath village of Ballivor. The centre had received an exempted development declaration from Meath County Council on plans submitted by Narconon - on off-shoot of the church - in October 2016. However, An Bord Pleanala has overturned this decision. The ruling was made in response following two appeals from the Ballivor Community Group and Trim Municipal District Council. The development had been approved for a 54-bed nursing home. Meath County Council deemed a change of use from a nursing home to a residential drug rehab facility was not a material change of use and was an exempted development. An Bord Pleanala has ruled it is not exempt, and there were different planning considerations to consider when compared to a nursing home. In its decision, An Bord Pleanala stated that a drug rehabilitation centre would have "different patterns of traffic, and pedestrian activity/movement, a different service to a different user group, including a population with a broader age profile and who are drug dependant and with limited interaction with the local community, and is, therefore a material change of use, and is development". "Common sense has prevailed at last. It's a good day for Ballivor. It's a good day for Ireland," said local Fine Gael councillor Noel French. Narconon Ireland said it was seeking legal advice: "Meath County Council granted Narconon planning permission in 2016. "The building is nearly completed. We adhered to planning laws from start to finish. "We are surprised by this decision from An Bord Pleanala more than two years later and we are seeking legal advice." Up to 20 more victims of alleged abuse involving scouting organisations have come forward in less than two days. Scouting Ireland is at the centre of controversy after a review of historical allegations of abuse found evidence of 71 suspected perpetrators and 108 victims. Fears have been raised that the number alleged abuse victims could grow substantially after the revelations at the Oireachtas Children Committee on Wednesday. Scouting Ireland has been contacted by several more possible victims in the less than 48 hours since. The organisation said it has been "busy but not overwhelmed" by calls and also said it did not have the resources to fund a potential redress scheme. Most of the alleged abuse cases date from the 1960s to 1980s. Scouting Ireland said none of the alleged abusers were still working with the organisation and most were deceased. Reports have been made to the Garda and Tusla in relation to alleged abusers. A statement from the organisation added that "all contacts are being responded to immediately". The statement also said: "In terms of a redress scheme, Scouting Ireland as a voluntary organisation does not have the resources to fund such a scheme". It said the organisation had "ring-fenced funds to provide counselling support to alleged victims". Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said: "We've been involved in the review right from the beginning. "Obviously, the figures are in the public domain, but inevitably there will be more victims than what is already recorded. "The experience in our jurisdictions is that there will be multiple victims who are considering now whether to come forward or not. "I wish to encourage them to come forward and make contact with our protective services and review team. We'll then follow through and investigate these allegations. "If complaints are made they will be investigated and followed through. We have invested in our protective services review so that there are specialist offices well equipped and trained to deal with these sorts of incidents." The alleged abuse cases were raised in the Dail by Fianna Fail TD Dara Calleary. "They were much younger when they suffered the initial abuse, but may not have come forward with their story and are holding on to what happened to them," he said. "Indeed, they have held on to it for many years." He said having support, including access to counselling, would help people come forward. Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan said he was "appalled at the allegations of historical abuse allegations that have emerged at Scouting Ireland". "The appropriate authorities will engage in the necessary investigative work." Scouting Ireland announced a helpline, at freephone 1800 22 11 99. Emails can be sent to safeguarding@scouts.ie. The organisation's new chairperson, Aisling Kelly, previously issued an apology for the hurt caused by some past members of Scouting Ireland and preceding organisations. Parents should set rules to stop their teenagers from drinking alcohol until they are at least 18, a psychiatrist has advised. Dr Gerry McCarney, consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, said: "Trying to chat about 'big' things like alcohol or drugs with your teenager can feel very difficult. "It is tough to find ways to stay close to your child at a time when it may feel like they're pushing you away, but feeling loved and connected makes a huge difference to them." Teenagers need their parents to steer them in the right direction, which means having conversations about these topics, he said. Research shows teens who get permission to drink from their parents experience more alcohol-related harm, because they tend to give themselves greater permission to drink more than their peers. Dr McCarney was speaking at the launch of the HSE's new guidebook, 'Alcohol and Drugs: A Parent's Guide'. "This guide will help you to decide what's OK and what's not OK in your family, and how to let your child know. "Teenagers can put up a good argument, but you still have the right to set the rules and say that you don't want them to drink until at least 18." The guide can be downloaded or ordered at www.ask aboutalcohol.ie/parents/ Castle Park this weekend becomes the first new development in a decade to launch in the border county of Monaghan, where the recovery in the property market lagged other counties after the crash. The Castleblayney scheme, which will comprise 60 three and four-bed houses when it's finished by Meegan Builders, is aimed at buyers living in Co Monaghan and Co Louth who commute to Dublin because they are priced out of the capital. Dublin Airport is a 50-minute drive from Castleblayney. Castle Park is situated in Killycard, which is within walking distance of Castleblayney town and is just off the N2 Dublin to Derry route. The first release at the scheme is made up of 20 properties, with prices starting at 219,000 for a three-bed terraced house measuring 1,334 sq ft. Prices for the end-of-terrace, semi-detached and detached styles, which also span 1,334 sq ft, are 225,000, 229,000 and 239,000, respectively. A 1,431-sq ft four-bed semi, meanwhile, is priced from 249,000. Inside, there is a fitted kitchen, and tiled flooring to the entrance hall, kitchen/diner and guest WC. The main bathroom and ensuite also has tiling. The houses are A3-rated. Viewings of the showhouse will be held between 2pm and 4pm tomorrow and Sunday. No other Irish city has anything close to the variety and frequency of international flights into the capital. Photo: PA Tech companies are driving much of the country's jobs growth at present. Unfortunately, most won't consider anywhere outside Dublin. There are three reasons for this, according to what I've learned from years of asking senior executives about it. The first is a mass concentration of skills in the capital. Companies thinking of setting up shop in Ireland, whether they come from abroad or are homegrown, know that there's a much better chance of hiring qualified professionals around Dublin. That's because Google, Facebook and dozens of other firms - employing tens of thousands of highly prized people - are already here. Several bosses in recently arrived US tech companies have said this over and over: they need to be around Dublin to poach crucial staff from the big players. A second reason that Dublin almost always wins in jobs contests is infrastructure, including air travel and broadband. No other Irish city has anything close to the variety and frequency of international flights into the capital. For big companies with dozens (or hundreds) of weekly travellers, this is very important. It also makes Dublin a much easier sell to important prospective staff they need to relocate to Dublin from other European cities. One flight home, operating daily, is a far more effective sales pitch than two flights, or one flight a week, or a flight and a bus. Then there is broadband. Let's be blunt: there are no broadband worries in Dublin. In almost every other region, it's a concern. Venture 8km outside Limerick, Cork or Galway and you're in the communications Stone Age with sub-standard internet connectivity and weak, patchy mobile signals. While the Government has promised a National Broadband Plan to ameliorate this, there are signs it may not be delivered for a while yet. If you're setting up a tech firm, why take a chance? Lastly, there's the allure of the bigger city for young people. It's just a fact of life that bigger, more cosmopolitan places appeal to young, single professionals. The rate of new cancers diagnosed in Ireland this year may be the second highest in the EU - although it is important to also highlight more people are surviving the disease. Obesity has taken over, where a fall in smoking has left off, as one of the risks. But as we get older as a nation, so too will our cancer rates. The OECD says that three million people in the EU will be told they have the disease in 2018. In Ireland, around 40,570 new patients will be informed they have cancer, and the risk is slightly higher for men than women. We cannot help the inevitable rise in odds of developing cancer as we age. But clearly we must do more to reduce the danger by exercising, maintaining a healthy weight, protecting ourselves from the sun and drinking less alcohol. However, given the results of the recent Healthy Ireland survey, the prevention messages are being ignored by large swathes of the population. It might take the impact of a report like this, showing Ireland so high on the cancer league table, to persuade more to change their ways. The report also sounded a warning about a slowdown in the rate of increase in life expectancy. We have been celebrating the increase in people living well past pension age in this country compared to their grandparents . The number of over-65s is rising by 20,000 a year. But in countries like France, the improvements in lifespan are tapering off. Life expectancy for men and women went up by less than a year for those born between 2011 and 2016 in the UK, Germany and Italy. Life expectancy across the EU averages at 81 years and is not increasing in western Europe as fast as it was. Obesity and unhealthy lifestyles have again been blamed. Women in the EU live on average five-and-a-half years longer than European men. The gap between the sexes is continuing to narrow. Although women live longer, the gap in "disability-free years" between men and women in the EU is narrow at 81pc and 77pc. Men in the EU are 80pc more at risk of dying from heart disease than women due to their smoking and eating habits. There has also been a slowing in heart disease-related deaths over five years. It continues to be the leading cause of death accounting for 1.9 million deaths in the EU in 2015. Interestingly, the report says that changing trends in life expectancy could also be influenced by the increase in the number of elderly people dying from flu since 2010. Priority The report also stresses the need to improve people's mental health and said this needs to be a Europe-wide priority. Ireland has one of the highest rates of reported mental illness in the EU, but this could partly be due to the work of recent years in helping to de-stigmatise the problem, encouraging more people to come forward for help. Across the EU in 2015, there were 84,000 deaths due to mental illness or suicide. Depressive disorders affect 21 million people. The report has not just one, but several "wake-up" calls in its findings. However , the concern is that in five years' time the picture of health it captures will not just have changed, but deteriorated unless warnings are heeded. The impact of obesity and lifestyle habits, in particular, on cancer rates and life expectancy, is clear. It has gone beyond a threat and is a present danger. A quick read of the document sketching potential EU-UK links after Brexit leads to one sinking conclusion: this issue will be with us for quite some time to come. Barring the failure to resolve last-minute strops by Spain, France and others, the larger text - a 585-page, legally binding treaty - will be signed by all the EU leaders in Brussels on Sunday morning. This is essentially the divorce settlement fixing the terms of the UK's departure once Brexit happens on March 29 and after all subsequent transition grace periods expire. The EU leaders are also expected to endorse a smaller document, originally running to 15 pages and now bulked out a little to 26. This is a general political declaration which is to inform the big-picture EU-UK talks on a post-Brexit relationship which is to include a major trade deal. How long will that take? Depends who you ask. Some people point out it took seven years to do the recently concluded EU-Canada deal. Others say it could be done much quicker than that, given that negotiations would be about adapting a relationship going back almost 46 years. But the level of detail is mind-blowing. Try this from the document opening stages: "This declaration establishes the parameters of an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security and defence and wider areas of co-operation." Irish readers will of course go straight to the stuff that concerns us: the Border, and future trade with the UK which is likely to have an impact on jobs. It has been clear that some form of customs procedures are inevitable - mainly between Ireland and Britain once the transition period ends either in December 2020 or some time later. But this document commits to "comprehensive arrangements" which ultimately "will create a free trade area, combining deep regulatory and customs co-operation, underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field for open and fair competition". This is of course yet another huge exercise in can-kicking down that road. The language speaks to British calls for open borders, and also the EU's ongoing insistence the UK cannot leave and then also claim the same trade access as before. Then enter our now well-known buddy the "backstop" with a reminder that it is only an insurance policy for use in extremis. "The Parties recall their determination to replace the backstop solution..." it states. And watch for a recurrence of talk about that old British claim that a revived Irish Border would be hardly noticed thanks to technology. This so-called "maximum facilitation" - or "max fac" in the jargon - hangs in for the future. The document includes a reference to "facilitative arrangements and technologies" to be looked at to avoid a "hard border" between Ireland and Northern Ireland. From a Dublin point of view, this tells us that the battle is won - but the war will continue. Ireland is imbalanced. The Greater Dublin Area generates an astonishing 45pc of Ireland's GDP and is home to 40pc of the population of the State. Meanwhile, people living in our rural communities often face travelling long distances to access services and work. This imbalance impacts on everyone's quality of life. The Government has decided it is time to redress the balance by strategically directing a greater proportion of growth and investment to our regions and our rural communities. This is a cornerstone of Project Ireland 2040, the 20-year planning and investment strategy. By 2040, our national population will have increased by a million. As set out in Project Ireland 2040, half of that growth will take place in rural Ireland - outside the five main cities. Today in Co Sligo I will join An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar TD in announcing the first successful recipient towns and villages under the Government's Rural Regeneration and Development Fund which is part of the Project Ireland 2040 initiative. This fund will see 1bn invested in towns and villages with populations of under 10,000 over the next 10 years. This level of funding for our rural towns and villages is unprecedented and will be a game changer for rural communities. The potential of the fund is endless and will be driven by the vision and initiative of the applicant communities. The types of supports are wide ranging and could include, for example: turning vacant buildings into community spaces such as digital hubs; transforming public areas such as parks and town squares; investing in sporting and recreational facilities; and repurposing heritage buildings so they serve as vital community facilities. Crucially, we are also providing seed capital for applicants to develop more ambitious, larger scale proposals to be rolled out on a multi-annual basis. This is where, in my view, the truly transformative potential of this fund will be realised. More than 290 rural communities have applied for the first tranche of funding and we will today announce the first group of successful communities to receive this for 2019. More announcements will follow shortly. In total, 55m has been allocated for 2019. Over the next four years, 315m will be invested through the fund. Rural communities were significantly affected during the recession. And yes, it did take longer for the recovery to reach rural Ireland. But the rural recovery is now real. Latest CSO figures show employment has grown in every region in the country. By midway through this year we had already comfortably surpassed the Government objective to support the creation of 135,000 jobs outside the Dublin region between 2015 and 2020. Changing consumer habits are creating challenges for our town centres, not just in rural areas but in our cities and their suburbs. This year Irish consumers will spend 8bn online, much of it with overseas retailers. People increasingly choose to shop in out-of-town retail outlets and supermarkets, as opposed to in their local main street. The misleading and often politically motivated narrative which suggests a neglect of our rural communities fails to take into account the fundamental shifts in consumer behaviour changing the face of our main streets and town centres. The Rural Regeneration and Development Fund provides the impetus for the transformation of hundreds of rural towns and villages over the next 10 years. It is an unprecedented investment by the State in our rural towns and villages and is clear, incontrovertible evidence of the Government's commitment to rural Ireland. This fund is built on a solid foundation of increased government investment in our towns and villages, especially in the last two years. For example, since 2016 the Town and Village Renewal Fund and the CLAR programme have provided significant investment in and improvements to over 1,700 rural communities. This increased investment has been made possible by prudent and sustainable management of the economy. It is an often overlooked fact that the first act of our Taoiseach was to create a Department of Rural and Community Development. He did this in order to provide a focus, both political and financial, for the regeneration of rural communities. The next phase of rural regeneration is built around a strategy for significant growth in our rural population, backed up by targeted government investment. It will harness the talent and entrepreneurial spirit of communities and the potential offered by modern technology. Broadband is key to realising rural Ireland's potential. It will enable businesses to develop and thrive and for people to work close to or within their communities, including from home - an arrangement which is increasingly desirable for employers. Since the formation of this Government in 2016, the percentage of people that can access high speed broadband has increased from 52pc to 75pc. High-speed broadband is having a transformative effect on communities and we need to see it rolled out throughout rural Ireland. Project Ireland 2040 is an opportunity to shape the future of our rural communities. That future is positive and exciting. It's in everyone's interests to re-balance growth away from our cities. I firmly believe rural Ireland will increasingly offer a quality of life which can more than compete with larger population centres. Princess Charlene of Monaco (L) and Princess Caroline of Hanover takes part in the celebrations marking Monaco's National Day at the Monaco Palace in Monaco, on November 19, 2018. (Photo by ERIC GAILLARD / POOL / AFP) Princess Charlene of Monaco (L) and Princess Caroline of Hanover takes part in the celebrations marking Monaco's National Day at the Monaco Palace in Monaco, on November 19, 2018. (Photo by ERIC GAILLARD / POOL / AFP) Prince Albert II of Monaco and his wife Princess Charlene take part in the celebrations marking Monaco's National Day at the Monaco Palace in Monaco, on November 19, 2018. (Photo by ERIC GAILLARD / POOL / AFP) Pierre Casiraghi of Monaco (L) and his wife Beatrice Casiraghi pose upon their arrival at the 2nd Monte-Carlo Gala for the Global Ocean 2018 held in Monaco on September 26, 2018 issue calling for immediate and collective action. (Photo by Valery HACHE / AFP) (Photo credit should read VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images) Pierre Casiraghi of Monaco (L) and his wife Beatrice Casiraghi arrive at the 2nd Monte-Carlo Gala for the Global Ocean 2018 held in Monaco on September 26, 2018 Prince's Albert II of Monaco, Princess Charlene of Monaco, Prince's Jacques of Monaco and Princess Gabriella of Monaco appear on the balcony of the Monaco Palace during the celebrations marking Monaco's National Day, on November 19, 2018 in Monaco. (Photo by VALERY HACHE / AFP) Beatrice Borromeo (2ndL) appears on the balcony of the Monaco Palace during the celebrations marking Monaco's National Day, on November 19, 2018 in Monaco. (Photo by VALERY HACHE / AFP) (From L) Princess Charlene of Monaco, Princess Gabriella of Monaco, Prince's Jacques of Monaco and her father Michael Wittstock appear on the balcony of the Monaco Palace during the celebrations marking Monaco's National Day, on November 19, 2018 in Monaco. (Photo by VALERY HACHE / AFP) Prince's Albert II of Monaco, Princess Charlene of Monaco, Prince's Jacques of Monaco and Princess Gabriella of Monaco appear on the balcony of the Monaco Palace during the celebrations marking Monaco's National Day, on November 19, 2018 in Monaco. (Photo by VALERY HACHE / AFP) Prince's Albert II of Monaco waves and Princess Charlene of Monaco blows a kiss as they appear on the balcony of the Monaco Palace during the celebrations marking Monaco's National Day, on November 19, 2018 in Monaco. (Photo by VALERY HACHE / AFP) Prince's Albert II of Monaco and his Princess Charlene of Monaco wave at the crowd as they appear on the balcony of the Monaco Palace during celebrations marking Monaco's National Day in Monaco on November 19, 2018. (Photo by VALERY HACHE / AFP) Princess Charlene of Monaco appears on the balcony of the Monaco Palace during the celebrations marking Monaco's National Day, on November 19, 2018 in Monaco. (Photo by VALERY HACHE / AFP) Prince's Albert II of Monaco and Princess Charlene of Monaco appear on the balcony of the Monaco Palace during the celebrations marking Monaco's National Day, on November 19, 2018 in Monaco. (Photo by VALERY HACHE / AFP) (L-R) Princess Stephanie of Monaco,Princess Charlene of Monaco and Princess Caroline of Hanover attend Monaco National Day Celebrations on November 19, 2018 in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images) Princess Caroline of Hanover,Andrea Casiraghi, Princess Alexandra of Hanover and children India Casiraghi and Alexandre Casiraghi attend Monaco National Day Celebrations on November 19, 2018 in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images) (L-R) Princess Alexandra of Hanover, Princess Caroline of Hanover, Pierre Casiraghi and Andrea Casiraghi attend Monaco National Day Celebrations on November 19, 2018 in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images) Princess Caroline of Hanover (3rdR), her son Pierre Casiraghi (2ndL) with his wife Beatrice Borromeo and son Stefano (L) appear on the balcony of the Monaco Palace during celebrations marking Monaco's National Day in Monaco on November 19, 2018. (Photo by VALERY HACHE / AFP) Princess Caroline of Hanover appears on the balcony of the Monaco Palace during the celebrations marking Monaco's National Day, on November 19, 2018 in Monaco. (Photo by VALERY HACHE / AFP) Princess Caroline of Hanover (3rdR), her son Pierre Casiraghi (2ndL) with his wife Beatrice Borromeo and son Stefano (L) appear on the balcony of the Monaco Palace during celebrations marking Monaco's National Day in Monaco on November 19, 2018. (Photo by VALERY HACHE / AFP) Princess Caroline of Hanover (3rdR), her son Pierre Casiraghi (2ndL) with his wife Beatrice Borromeo and son Stefano (L) appear on the balcony of the Monaco Palace during celebrations marking Monaco's National Day in Monaco on November 19, 2018. (Photo by VALERY HACHE / AFP) Princess Charlene of Monaco and Prince Albert II of Monaco attend a Gala during Monaco National Day on November 19, 2018 in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by PLS Pool/Getty Images) Beatrice Casiraghi and Princess Caroline of Hanover attend a Gala during Monaco National Day on November 19, 2018 in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by PLS Pool/Getty Images) (From L) Pierre Casiraghi, Beatrice Borromeo and Princess Alexandra of Hanover arrive at the cathedral to attend a mass as part of the celebrations marking Monaco's National Day, on November 19, 2018 in Monaco. (Photo by VALERY HACHE / POOL / AFP) Beatrice Borromeo (2ndL) appears on the balcony of the Monaco Palace during the celebrations marking Monaco's National Day, on November 19, 2018 in Monaco. (Photo by VALERY HACHE / AFP) Princess Caroline of Hanover (3rdR), her son Pierre Casiraghi (2ndL) with his wife Beatrice Borromeo and son Stefano (L) appear on the balcony of the Monaco Palace during celebrations marking Monaco's National Day in Monaco on November 19, 2018. (Photo by VALERY HACHE / AFP) (L-R) Beatrice Casiraghi, a guest, Princess Caroline of Hanover, Andrea Casiraghi, Princess Charlene of Monaco and Prince Albert II of Monaco attend a Gala during Monaco National Day on November 19, 2018 in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by PLS Pool/Getty Images) Princess Caroline of Hanover (3rdR), her son Pierre Casiraghi (2ndL) with his wife Beatrice Borromeo and son Stefano (L) appear on the balcony of the Monaco Palace during celebrations marking Monaco's National Day in Monaco on November 19, 2018. (Photo by VALERY HACHE / AFP) The fascination into Monaco's royal family dates even farther back than Grace Kelly's introduction in the 1950s, but their modern appeal shows no sign of waning. On Monday, the ycelebrated the principality's National Day where they brought out all the high-ranking members to mark the occasion led by Prince Albert, his wife Princess Charlene and their boisterous three-year-old twins Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella. Like all parents who need their children to behave for just a few minutes, the pair were happily playing with toys on the balcony of the Monaco Palace before dropping it to the ground to the waiting crowds. It's rare that (nearly) all of the family gather together publicly in Monte Carlo, especially given that most have real jobs outside the palace, which makes this occasion all the more interesting. Albert who is one of the worlds wealthiest royals, led the festivities alongside his young family, while also joined by his sisters Caroline and Stephanie and their children, and grandchildren. Caroline made an increasingly rare public appearance yesterday with three of her four children: Pierre Casriaghi and wife Beatrice, Andrea and wife Tatiana Santo Domingo and 19-year-old Princess Alexandra from her third, and current marriage. Expand Close Beatrice Casiraghi attends Monaco National Day Celebrations on November 19, 2018 in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Beatrice Casiraghi attends Monaco National Day Celebrations on November 19, 2018 in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images) Beatrice, an Italian aristocrat who works as a journalist, beamed as she joined her husband of three years and their two baby boys Stefano and newborn son Francesco, after adopting a significantly lower profile during her second pregnancy. Her sister-in-law Charlotte, who recently welcomed her second child, was absent from the occasion. Tatiana Santo Domingo, an American-born socialite who wed Andrea in 2013, opted for a chic navy ensemble with dramatic embellished net hair piece, as she tended to her children Alexandre and India. Children between 10 and 12 years of age are accessing pornography, which is affecting young people's attitudes to sex. Some of this was accidental "or they were unwillingly exposed to it", according to a survey carried out to find out what supports youth workers required on the ground. Youth workers reported that "young people are engaging in riskier sexual behaviours by mimicking the pornography they have seen". This included "not using contraception and engaging in sexual acts that they are not comfortable with, but which have been normalised by porn". The respondents highlighted the consequences for young people of accessing this kind of material, including that pornography gives young people "an unrealistic representation of sex and sexual relationships". They reported that some young men's attitudes and behaviours towards women have been noted as "disrespectful and sometimes aggressive". Expectations around sexual performance and body image are skewed as young people try to emulate what they see on screen, the respondents pointed out. The findings were unveiled as the Minister of State for Health Catherine Byrne officially launched a strategic plan on behalf of the National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI). This will focus on areas such as the nationwide provision of training and resources for those working with young people. A lack of training and resources for the youth sector had been identified in the survey as the largest barriers to addressing the issue of porn with young people, and these issues will be tackled under the new strategy. The National Youth Health Strategic Plan 2018-2022 will target people working with youngsters in an out of the school setting. Video of the Day "We have the youngest population in Europe and our young people are full of potential," Ms Byrne said. "Working in partnership across all sectors, our shared goal must be a healthier Ireland. This begins with our children and young adults." The NYCI represents youth organisations working with over 380,000 young people. The seahorses have been named after the Strictly couple to remember their time in Blackpool (Dave Nelson/PA) Strictly Come Dancing stars Lauren Steadman and AJ Pritchard have had a pair of seahorses named in their honour. Paralympian Steadman and her professional partner found themselves bottom of the leaderboard during last weeks Blackpool special. But their spirits will have been lifted by the news that two seahorses at the seaside resorts Sea Life aquarium have been named after them. Steadman, 25, and Pritchard, 24, were filmed practising their steps in one of the aquariums tanks ahead of the shows special broadcast last week, which came live from Blackpools famous Tower ballroom. But their Argentine tango left them at the bottom of the leaderboard, earning them just 25 points though they were saved in the public vote. However, the duo have been offered consolation in the form of the two seahorses, named by the aquarium to mark their visit to the site. AJ said: I loved my time in Blackpool last week and its good to know I made such an impact that I will be in the town on a more permanent basis I didnt think that would be in a fish tank, but what an honour regardless. A boss at the aquarium said it is fitting that the seahorses had been named after the pair because the creatures are the ballet dancers of the ocean. Expand Close AJ Pritchard and Lauren Steadman danced underwater at Sea Life Blackpool ahead of their live Strictly performance (Guy Levy/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp AJ Pritchard and Lauren Steadman danced underwater at Sea Life Blackpool ahead of their live Strictly performance (Guy Levy/PA) Matthew Titherington, general manager at Sea Life Blackpool, said: We were absolutely delighted to host Lauren and AJ last week for filming ahead of the Blackpool Tower ballroom broadcast. They were lovely and had great fun snorkelling with an array of sea creatures as well as practising their dance moves underwater, where movement is more difficult. We thought it would be very fitting to name two of our graceful seahorses, who are like the ballet dancers of the ocean, after the couple to bring them extra good luck for this weekends dance. All the team here will be rooting for them. American dignitaries had a surprise on a trip to Belfast on Friday as their visit to City Hall coincided with a wedding party dressed entirely in onesies. US ambassador to the UK Robert Wood Johnson and lord mayor Deirdre Hargey were pictured alongside 20 guests dressed as animals, Simpsons characters and dinosaurs as the partygoers mingled with senior diplomats in the lobby. The ambassador showed his sense of humour, however, chatting with the revellers and telling the Press Association: Boy, I wanted to join that one I needed my costume. Belfast city councillor David Armitage caught the scene on camera as he was heading into City Hall. I turned around and saw the Simpsons wedding and thought this is going to be interesting, he said. Everything seemed to be very good-natured, though, and the ambassador took it in his stride. Asked if he had ever seen anything like it before, Mr Wood Johnson replied: No. Thats unique. I may do that myself, he added. Ms Hargey joked she timed the visit to coincide with the wedding. We said when you come to Belfast you can have a bit of banter and craic and no better way to do it than at a wedding, she said. Opportunities to stop the Manchester bombing were missed as a result of a catalogue of failings by security services, a major new report has concluded. A number of shortcomings in the handling of Salman Abedi before he launched a suicide attack at a pop concert in May last year, killing 22 people, were detailed by the UK parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). Abedi (22) first came to the attention of MI5 in December 2010 and was briefly investigated by the agency in 2014. The ISC assessment said: - Abedi visited an extremist contact in prison on more than one occasion but no follow-up action was taken; - MI5 decided not to place travel monitoring or restrictions on Abedi, meaning he was allowed to return undetected to the UK in the days before the attack; - MI5 systems moved too slowly after Abedi's case had been flagged for review; - Abedi was not at any point considered for a referral to the prevent anti-terror scheme. ISC chairman Dominic Grieve said: "What we can say is that there were a number of failures in the handling of Salman Abedi's case and while it is impossible to say whether these would have prevented the devastating attack, we have concluded that, as a result of the failings, potential opportunities to prevent it were missed." He noted that both MI5 and counter-terror police have been "thorough in their desire to learn from past mistakes", adding: "The lessons from last year's tragic events must now result in real action." The report also found that the system for regulating and reporting purchases of ingredients used to make explosives was "hopelessly out of date". Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021] FILE PHOTO: People arrive at the memorial site of the former concentration camp Mauthausen ahead of the commemoration ceremony of liberation, Mauthausen, Austria May 06, 2018. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner/File Photo A 95-year-old man has been charged with more than 36,000 counts of being an accessory to murder on allegations that he served as a guard at the Nazis' Mauthausen concentration camp, prosecutors in Berlin said. Hans Werner H, whose last name was not released because of German privacy regulations, is accused of serving as an SS guard in the camp in northern Austria from mid-1944 to early 1945. During that time, 36,223 people were killed at Mauthausen, primarily by gassing, but also by lethal injection, shooting, starvation and exposure, prosecutor Martin Steltner said. The suspect is not accused of a specific killing, but prosecutors argue that as a guard he helped the camp function. Overall, 95,000 people are believed to have died in the Mauthausen camp system, including 14,000 Jews, along with Soviet prisoners of war, Spaniards who had fought against General Franco, and others. "With his service as a guard he aided or at least made easier the killing of many thousands of inmates," Mr Steltner said, adding that the suspect denies the charges. Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, noted that Mr Wiesenthal himself was an inmate at Mauthausen when it was liberated by Americans in May 1945. Mr Wiesenthal died in 2005 after devoting his life to tracking down Nazi war criminals so they could be brought to trial. "In a sense it gives a certain very nice closure that someone like this is brought to justice, which I'm sure would have been Simon's dream," Mr Zuroff said. The 95-year-old man is accused of serving as an SS Rottenfuehrer, roughly equivalent to corporal, in the outer perimeter of the camp and inside, as well as guarding prisoner work details at a nearby quarry. Mr Steltner said he is alleged to have "known about the various methods of killing as well as the disastrous living conditions of the imprisoned people". As such, he is alleged to have "been aware that a large number of people were killed with these methods and that the victims could have only been killed with such regularity if they were being guarded by people such as himself", he added. A court must review the charges and determine whether the suspect is fit for trial. Mr Steltner said his office considers him able to stand trial. New legal reasoning in Germany advanced in recent years holds that former Nazi camp guards can be charged with accessory to murder even if there is no evidence they participated in a specific killing. The argument has been upheld by the country's highest criminal court and has led to a string of prosecutions, including an ongoing case at the Muenster state court where a 94-year-old former SS guard at the Stutthof concentration camp, Johann Rehbogen, is being tried on hundreds of counts of accessory to murder. Friedrich Merz is one of three contenders to succeed Merkel. Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images The issue of migration took centre stage in the race to succeed Angela Merkel yesterday after one of the front-runners called for the right to asylum to be changed in the German constitution. Friedrich Merz, one of three contenders to succeed Ms Merkel as leader of the Christian Democrat party, called an amendment. "I share your anger when there is talk of loss of control over migration," Mr Merz told a party hustings on Wednesday night. "For a long time now I have thought that we should be prepared to talk openly about the right to asylum and whether it can continue if we seriously want a European migration and refugee policy." Mr Merz's remarks were condemned by Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, one of his main rivals for the party leadership. By-laws: Tourist walk across the Piazza San Marco in the shadow of Saint Marks Basilica and the San Marco Campanile in Venice. Photo: MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP/Getty Images Police in Venice have been accused of heavy-handed behaviour after fining a four-year-old boy nearly 70 for riding his scooter in St Mark's Square. The little boy was riding his scooter when he was stopped by police, who issued his father with a fine for 67. Toy scooters and roller skates are banned from being used in the area under by-laws. The father was accused of allowing his son to use a "velocity accelerator" in the Piazzetta dei Leoncini - an open space adjoining the main part of St Mark's Square, known for its two red marble lion statues. The sanction sparked outrage on social media, with Venetians accusing the police of lacking all sense of proportion. Venice fights a constant battle against loutish and inconsiderate behaviour by tourists, from jumping into canals to eating snacks in public places, but locals said the crackdown on a child was taking zero tolerance too far. "How sad. Miserable coppers," said one woman on Facebook, using a Venetian dialect nickname, "ghebi", for the police. Another local wrote that police should have just given the father a verbal warning. "The fine seems to me to be absurd, over-the-top," said Monica Sambo, a city councillor from the centre- left opposition Democratic Party. "St Mark's Square cannot be allowed to become a playground, but what harm was this child doing?" The boy's father said he would seek legal advice and lodge an appeal against the fine. Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021] The head of Russia's military intelligence agency that the West has blamed for a string of brazen attacks died on Wednesday after "a serious and long illness", the Russian defence ministry said, hailing him as a "true son of Russia." The Ministry of Defence heaped praise on Colonel-General Igor Korobov (62) who had run the spy agency, best known as the GRU, since 2016, saying he had been made a Hero of Russia for his service in the post, the highest state award. "The loving memory of this wonderful person, a true son of Russia, a patriot of the Fatherland Colonel-General Igor Valentinovich Korobov will always be in our hearts," the ministry said in a statement. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, expressed his condolences to Korobov's relatives, while state news agency TASS cited a military source as saying Vice-Admiral Igor Kostyukov, the agency's first deputy head, had been standing in for Korobov during his illness and was the favourite to formally take over his role. Britain has accused the GRU of attempting to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter with a nerve agent, the Netherlands has accused it of trying to hack the global chemical weapons watchdog, and US intelligence agencies say it tried to hack the 2016 presidential election. Russia denies all those allegations. Speculation about Korobov's fate had been growing since an unconfirmed media report that Putin had summoned him after the Skripal affair and severely criticised the operation which left the Skripals alive and the GRU a target of mockery in the Western media. Mr Korobov was absent from a ceremony in Moscow this month where Mr Putin and other officials celebrated the centenary of the GRU, with the Russian leader praising its skill and "unique abilities." Mr Korobov's death paves the way for Mr Putin to appoint a successor to head an agency that intelligence experts say has stepped up its covert missions as tension mounts between Russia and the West, which has imposed sanctions on Moscow over its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea. Asked last month if there would be a shake-up at the defence ministry in the aftermath of the Skripal affair, the Kremlin said the low quality of the allegations levelled at GRU did not justify such changes. Mr Korobov was a Soviet military veteran who served in the air force and began working for the GRU in 1985. The last head of the GRU, Igor Sergun, also died at a relatively young age. He was just 58 when the Kremlin said in 2016 he had died unexpectedly. The CIA has a recording of a phone call in which Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gave instructions to "silence Jamal Khashoggi as soon as possible", a Turkish news website has reported. Gina Haspel, CIA director, is said to have revealed the existence of a wiretapped call between Prince Mohammed and his brother Khaled bin Salman, who is Saudi's ambassador to the US, to Turkish officials during a visit to Ankara last month, according to 'Hurriyet'. Expand Close Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Photo: Bandar Algaloud/Courtesy of Saudi Royal Court/Handout via REUTERS / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Photo: Bandar Algaloud/Courtesy of Saudi Royal Court/Handout via REUTERS "It is said that the crown prince gave an instruction to silence Jamal Khashoggi as soon as possible and this instruction was captured during the CIA wiretapping," 'Hurriyet' columnist Abdulkadir Selvi wrote yesterday. "The subsequent murder is the ultimate confirmation of this instruction." The brothers are reportedly heard talking about the "discomfort" caused by the 'Washington Post' columnist's criticism of the kingdom's administration. A Turkish official contacted by Reuters said he had no information about such a recording. If confirmed, the wiretap could call into question Washington's official claim that they have found no evidence to support accusations the murder was ordered by the prince, Riyadh's de-facto leader, himself. The leak comes days after American President Donald Trump signalled his support for Prince Mohammed, in a statement which declared he would not further punish Saudi for the murder. In an extraordinary statement subtitled "America First!" Mr Trump said on Tuesday that "our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event - maybe he did and maybe he didn't!" He has since faced calls from members of his own party to re-evaluate ties with the ultraconservative kingdom, but Mr Trump has said the benefits of a good relationship outweigh the possibility its own prince ordered the killing. The Turkish media has published a drip-drip of leaks of information since the news of the Mr Khashoggi's death in early October, designed to put pressure on both Riyadh and the US to respond. Riyadh initially remained silent about the 59-year-old columnist's disappearance, before claiming that he left the consulate after a short meeting with officials. They then changed their story several times, later claiming that Khashoggi was killed by mistake in a "fistfight" gone wrong. They admitted earlier this month that he was killed and dismembered after attempts to persuade him to come home failed. Saudi yesterday warned criticism of the prince was a "red line". Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told the BBC that calls for MBS, as he is nicknamed, to be held accountable for the killing, "would not be tolerated", nor would discussion of "anything disparaging". Federica Mogherini, the EU's top diplomat, said yesterday all those "really responsible" for the murder of Mr Khashoggi have to be held accountable. Mr Trump's stance has exposed a foreign policy rift in the Republican Party, as some of his colleagues warn that not punishing the kingdom for its role in killing a US-based columnist will have dangerous consequences. Many Republicans, even senators Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul, who share their views on the matter with the president, have denounced Mr Trump's decision not to levy harsher penalties on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the death and dismemberment of Mr Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Wednesday he was "astounded" by Mr Trump's statement and likened it to a press release for Saudi Arabia. Aid: Yemeni mother Nadia Nahari holding her son Abdelrahman Manhash (5), who is suffering from severe malnutrition and weighing 5kg, at a treatment clinic in the western province of Hodeidah. Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES Some days, as I get ready to go to work here in Sana'a, Yemen, I hear the deep drone sound of fighter jets from the Saudi-Emirati-led coalition (SELC) fly overhead. While I make my coffee and plan for the workday ahead, the pilots are busy with their own morning routine: slicing through the sky above my head and often dropping the bombs that shake the ground beneath my feet. Since the escalation of the current conflict in 2015, Medecins Sans Frontieres/ Doctors Without Borders (MSF) medical facilities have been hit by airstrikes several times, with deadly and life-changing consequences for patients, staff, and the communities that depend on the services. MSF staff have been detained and shot at. An explosive device has been planted in one of our hospitals, and in perhaps the most egregious attack, armed men entered an MSF supported hospital and shot at a patient while he was lying on the operating table. Miraculously he survived. Recently, we took the difficult decision to close one of our projects in the governorate of Ad Dhale, southern Yemen. The decision was taken after a string of issues, which culminated in a targeted attack on our staff house and a subsequent attack on our supported hospital days after. Far from being unique, these incidents are simply further examples of the most vulnerable populations in Yemen being denied the lifesaving aid they need. MSF significantly increased its work in Yemen at the escalation of the conflict. As of today, we have treated some 110,000 patients for cholera, delivered nearly 60,000 babies and provided medical care to more than 800,000 emergency room patients. We have been responding to the needs of the population as best as we can but the medical humanitarian gap that exists in the country is huge - even in comparison to other conflicts to which we have responded. Working right across the country - and on both sides of the frontline - the medical concerns we see are either a direct result, or a consequence of this brutal and under- reported conflict. Since fighting began, the public health system in Yemen has essentially collapsed. Public medical facilities have an extremely limited supply of medicines, and salaries for medical staff have largely not been paid since August 2016. It is difficult to comprehend the scale of the crisis, but picture the Health Service Executive (HSE) unable to pay its staff for nearly three years and you can better imagine the current state of medical care in Yemen. And healthcare is only one of the essential services upon which the population depends for survival that has been degraded by the conflict. This degradation is having a devastating impact on the health of Yemen's 27 million people and is a result of Yemen's ongoing conflict, embargo, attacks against medical facilities and an economy pushed into freefall - from both internal and external forces. As a result, the medical consequences of the conflict we witness in our hospitals are not ordinary - but they are relatively predictable in such a situation. We see a resurgence in deadly vaccine preventable diseases (cholera, measles and diphtheria), a monumental gap in maternal and paediatric care, acute hunger, and an urgent need for an increase in care for war-wounded patients. This is without even considering the lack of capacity to adequately treat non-communicable and chronic illnesses requiring treatment such as cancer, diabetes and dialysis. MSF can only monitor and treat these diseases as best we can, all across the country. Although these outcomes are comparable to what we witness working in other conflict zones, the scale of their impact is further compounded by the practical disregard of International Humanitarian Law by all parties to the conflict here in Yemen. There is the need for a massive scale-up of humanitarian aid. There needs to be a massive increase in quality, independent, primary healthcare in Yemen. We have been calling for this over the past three years, yet we still do not witness the type of improvement needed on the ground. What we do see is that humanitarian actors are facing obstructions in their work from all parties and at all levels. Organisations operating in Yemen are often constrained by 'administrative' hurdles in assessing locations and providing relief in many parts of Yemen. This results in an inability to adequately monitor and assess the impact of their programmes across the country. Another dilemma faced in Yemen is that the main parties in the conflict, Saudi Arabia, UAE, USA and the UK, are also the main donors of humanitarian assistance via the UN - providing some 71pc of the relief assistance in 2018. Bombing hospitals with one hand and writing the cheque to rebuild them with the other distorts the perception - and security - of aid and independent humanitarian organisations in Yemen like ourselves. States not linked to this conflict should further increase their humanitarian funding to respond to this crisis. Because of these challenges and complexities, Yemen is utterly deserving of our full attention. Ireland, in its bid to win a rotating seat on the UN Security Council in 2021, can be the loudest voice calling for a massive upscale of medical care and humanitarian assistance in the country. Ireland should not forget this man-made humanitarian crisis and call out all parties to the conflict who so brazenly flout International Humanitarian Law. Alex Dunne is humanitarian affairs officer for Medecins Sans Frontieres in Sana'a, Yemen The first significant rain in months in northern California all but extinguished the deadliest wildfire in the state's history but also raised risks of flash flooding that could hinder teams searching for human remains. Between 4-6 inches of rain was expected to fall over the weekend in areas around the town of Paradise, the community of nearly 27,000 people 280km northeast of San Francisco that was largely incinerated by the wildfire. The blaze killed at least 83 people and 563 remain unaccounted for, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said. "The rain is a concern for us and there is the potential for mudflows," Honea said. Searchers would be pulled out of areas threatened by mudslides, he said. The storm added to the misery of evacuees camped out in a Walmart parking lot in nearby Chico. Mitchell Manley was cold and wet but thankful he persuaded his elderly mother to evacuate. He said most of the dead were retirees who thought they could ride out the flames in their homes. "I was lucky, she was going to sit it out," said Mr Manley, who was camping at Walmart while he waited to go back to his home in Concow. Warehouses were opened in Chico to provide evacuees protection from the cold and rain as celebrity chef Jose Andres prepared to cook hundreds of Thanksgiving meals for evacuees. The rains, which in some areas were likely to be accompanied by winds of up to 72kmh, raised risks of ravines turning into rivers of mud. The fire has burned across 153,336 acres of the Sierra foothills and is 85pc contained. "There's no vegetation to hold the earth and there's a risk it could just start moving, with mud carrying everything in its path," National Weather Service forecaster Johnnie Powell said in Sacramento. Firefighters installed straw tubes known as wattles to stop hillsides being washed away. The death toll has been rising steadily, and now stands at 83 people, with 58 of them tentatively identified, Mr Honea said. Love is not what you read in your Mills & Boon or watch on the big screen, where Aditya meets Geet, only to fall in love and save each other. Real love is about commitment, investing in each other and making promises that are not just about words, but actions. Even though the definition of love varies from person to person, the real meaning of it remains pretty much the same-making a promise to stay with each other forever, no matter what life throws at you. One love story that has definitely made many hearts happy is of Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone. The year started with a blockbuster for the actors and looks like it is ending with another blockbuster of their real life-their wedding. Instagram/Ranveer Singh While the wedding lasted for three days in Italy as a very private family affair, all of us were connected with them as we collectively gushed over the pictures that had 'love' written all over them. They are not just another power Bollywood couple that you usually talk about. They are two strong individuals who fell in love, dated for six years before solemnizing their affair with a wedding that was nothing short of an epic fairy-tale. But why is the country going gaga over their love? Why their photo-spam from the wedding doesn't feel like one? Instagram We decoded their relationship to find an answer why the #DeepVeer hoopla is much more than what you see on social media. 1. For gracefully safeguarding and keeping their relationship private (As much as possible) for six years Viral Bhayani Even though they made frequent appearances together and always sparked rumors, the way they gracefully handled their relationship is commendable. Everyone knew that they are a couple but they never confessed or denied their relationship status. Their silence and protective nature for each other was the answer to all the rumors and questions. While everyone knew that #DeepVeer was an actual thing, they were private about their meetings and holidays. 2. For inspiring and accepting each other-despite being of contrasting nature (Opposites attract? Yes, for sure) Twitter He is outspoken, selectively bizarre and expressive. She on the other is poised and graceful. They might not have matching traits but they still made their relationship work out and how. From accepting each other to loving each other in all highs and lows of their career, theirs is a relationship that very rarely exists and sustains in an industry where everything changes every day. 3. They make each other feel like home. Because relationships are supposed to be like that, no? Pinterest Ours is a generation that heavily depends on apps for ordering a pizza or selecting a date. Our partners change faster than our hair color, proving that we love the luxury of choices. To see a love like that, it makes our hearts so full and happy. In fact, Raveena Tandon took to Twitter to share how during a long flight with DP years ago, she told him how Ranveer makes her feel like 'home'. Today, here we are: celebrating their union and cheering for them. 4. Even though they belong to the same industry, they are not competitive or egoistic. Rather, they celebrate each other's successes and inspire each other to conquer new heights BCCL I still remember the day when Deepika and Ranveer won awards for their respective films at Filmfare awards. Ranveer was seen greeting and meeting her family who had accompanied her. The way they showcased their emotions of being proud of each other proved just one thing: This was the kind of love that is meant to last forever. This was followed by something more emotional that happened during IIFA. The couple greeted media and during a long chit-chat, what we saw was Ranveer constantly looking at Deepika like he's seeing her for the first time-emotional and proud. From setting her hair right to revealing how he is mesmerized with the way Deepika talks, they won us all over with their PDA (Not an intended one) 5. The level of emotional security that they both extend to each other will teach you a thing or two about modern-day relationships and how they should unfold Love isn't just about romantic dates and international holidays. Even though with all the madness that tags along in their life with their stardom and star status, we have seen Ranveer being supportive of Deepika and vice-versa. During a recent interview, when Deepika was asked to comment on how her life will change after marriage, she said, "I am excited but my life wouldn't change." In fact, both will resume work soon after completing their marriage rituals and social obligations. So if you meet Deepika, never ask her: So will you continue to work after marriage? 6. They have redefined couple goals and how! From turning into her bodyguard to taking care of her Saree Pallu, Ranveer Singh is the sort of companion that every woman deserves Viral Bhayani We live in a world where men think it's not okay to be emotional or cry. Ranveer Singh is a man whose emotions heavily dictates his life and nothing ever has stopped professing him from showcasing his love and admiration for DP. 6. Their wedding was a private affair but their whole team was invited to Italy to be a part of their big day. From Deepika's bodyguard Jalal (Who she even ties Rakhi on Raksha Bandhan) to their drivers, everyone was a part of their celebrations in Italy. Apart from Deepika and Ranveer's entourage that consisted of their stylists and Makeup-Hair artists, everyone close to the couple and who made them what they're today were invited. 7. 'Khaana Kha Ke Jaana'- Ranveer Singh constantly reminded the paps who flew down to Bengaluru to cover their reception to eat before they leave. It was their day. They looked ethereal and royal. Apart from posing for paps and greeting-meeting them, Ranveer Singh was seen repeating the same line to paps-"Thank you. Please khana kha ke jana' proving that even though he is one of India's most popular stars, he has his feet on the ground. Even Deepika was seen interacting with the paps and asking them where her chocolates are! She greeted and bowed down as she posed for the paps. They are two celebrities who indeed have their hearts in the right place. This year, Karan Johar's popular chat show Koffee With Karan is all about revelations. After Sara Ali Khan-Saif Ali Khan's grand debut together on national television, KJo confirmed that Brothers Shahid Kapoor and Ishaan Khatter too have shot for an episode that will be aired this season. Sharing the news with the world, Karan shared a photo with the caption, Brothers in arms!. Shahid and Ishaan shared another photo with the captions Baby boy I always got your back. and Your wingman for life. Ishaan too had earlier confirmed that he will be a part of the show this time. He was quoted in media reports as saying, Yes, I will be a part of the show with Shahid Kapoor. I am extremely excited. Come on, did you see the hamper. Who would not be excited for that? Dont be surprised if we do. There is no such plan but yes, you never know. Just to jog your memory a little, Shahid Kapoor is one of the most popular guests of KJo's show as this will be his sixth appearance. However, for Ishaan who made his grand debut with Dharma Productions' Dhadak, this will be a first. Both Ishaan and Shahid have time and again spoken about mutual admiration and respect they have for each other and this will be the first time that viewers will get a closer glance at their relationship. It'll be fun to see the brothers taking over the show and spilling out each other's secrets over a steaming cup of coffee! (Also read: Things She Hate About Ranveer Singh To His Best Qualities, Deepika Padukone Gushes About Her Husband-To-Be Over 'Koffee') There are regular people and there are monks but Kodo Nishimura proves that you can be both of these all at once. Kodo's story is rather unconventional and also inspiring at the same time because it proves that you don't need to stick to just one thing in life. You can be whatever you want to be. He's managed to merge his quest for spirituality and his love for makeup in world that is quick to put you in a tiny box. Raised in a Buddhist temple back in Japan, Kodo probably never really imagined that he'd become a makeup artist even though he was inclined towards it since he was a child. It wasn't until he moved to the US that he truly started exploring his love for makeup and even experimenting with it. Dominic Phua We ask him what exactly sparked his interest in makeup and he told us his beautiful story of overcoming his insecurities and emerging as a strong, confident individual: It was when I first saw the movie Princess Diaries in which a nerdy looking girl transforms into a gorgeous princess. I used to feel under confident about myself for having narrow eyes and eczema. Also because of my sexuality, I used to close my doors due to fear. I was often lonely in school too. Later I moved to Boston, where I thought I could be me and express my opinions. Still, I felt inferior for having different features from people around me in the U.S. Then I read a book about Miss Universe Japan through which I learnt that makeup can accentuate my features and boost my confidence. I first picked up an eyeliner and mascara to accentuate my eyes. Later, I had an opportunity to help my friend with makeup. When I did makeup on her, her face lit up. We couldn't believe the amazing magic makeup brought to us. I could feel the boost of confidence in her. I experienced the limitless possibility of makeup and decided to study makeup and make a career in it. To me, it is also a way to cheer people, because the happiness reflects onto me. Dominic Phua Nishimura was slightly worried about his parents reaction to him choosing to be a makeup artist, but they turned out to be pretty supportive. However, something must have felt a little amiss to him because he moved back to Japan in order to connect with his spiritual self. He felt like there were a lot of physical questions he had that he needed answers to and in an attempt to find these answers, he decided to go back to his roots. Talking about his journey to becoming a monk, he told Indiatimes: I became a monk because I had questions, such as why do we have to pray, or why are we alive, or why do I have to be nice to others? Also, I wanted discover my roots since I grew up in a temple, and discover what Buddhism is. I decided to participate in the training, which took me two years. There were around 90 other participants from 18 to 60 years old. We were put under high pressure and learned discipline. After all this, I learned to be grateful through meditation. I experienced that gaining emotional intelligence can make my life calm. Kodo Nishimura/Facebook One might wonder how he manages to be a monk and a makeup artist at the same time. After all, both these roles are poles apart. Kodo has a very thoughtful answer to this one: It is not difficult, because being a monk is not a job, but a lifestyle for me. I try to inspire people to balance their hearts, be grateful and cherish themselves everyday. Not only personally, but also on social media and through interviews. Although it may seem quite contrasting, both roles are similar because I am helping people. If I do makeup on somebody, I'm helping them in becoming a better version of themselves. I can be generous and nicer to others when I am happy from within. But if I feeling a sense of lack, or negativity, it is harder for me to treat others nicely. So I think that feeling great and beautiful benefits everyone in the end. Kodo Nishimura Kodos life choices to be makeup artist and a monk at the same time are rather unconventional. Moreover, his is open about his sexuality and stands strongly for the rights of the LGBTQA community. We asked him about what the monk community thinks of the other parts of his personality. His answer is a lesson in acceptance and is extremely heartwarming: "I was afraid to be a monk and offend my community at first. But at the end of my training, the master personally told me, "If wearing makeup and heels can help you spread the message of "everybody can be equally saved by Amida Buddha," it is alright to wear what you want. Japanese monks wear casual clothes when they are not doing ceremonies, so what is the difference? I felt liberated and validated of my existence, also I felt my mission to contribute in my own way. After I became a monk, I feel cherished by my community, because I can share my unique opinions and experiences, so that they have a better idea about the LGBTQ community. The sense of LGBTQ is pretty new to many Japanese people. I actually contributed to a book by my denomination to write an essay, which was distributed to the entire temple of our denomination in Japan. They are eager to learn and respect all people. Ignorance is the main reason for misunderstanding of diverse people. I want to educate people, so that nobody is unfair discriminated anymore. To my community, I tell that Buddhism is a hope for many people who feel limited or restricted, because our Buddhism treat all people equally, and all can be equally saved no matter who you are, and what you did. Kodo Nishimura/Facebook What Kodo is doing is extremely difficult. Merging his three identities, that of a monk, makeup artists and an LGBTQA activist, is tough but he's doing an incredible job. His heartwarming story of struggle and eventually overcoming it is an inspiration for everyone. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's statue is the tallest in the world and while the nation is still celebrating the 'Statue Of Unity,' it is already facing challenge as other states are also building statues. Joining the league of another tall structure is the proposed plan of Andhra Pradesh's new assembly. In what seems like a neck and neck competition between states to outdo each other, Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu has given a bit of a mind-boggling proposal for a new assembly. The Andhra Pradesh Assembly building at Amaravati will be taller than the Statue of Unity by 68 metres. Once completed, this will be the tallest structure in the country. The Statue of Unity stands at 182 metres, states the proposal. While you may think, it's a joke, the design is almost finalised! The blueprint will be submitted to the state government by UK-based architects Norma Fosters. The new assembly will be constructed with three floors and a tower spiralling 250 metres into the sky, reports TOI. bccl While Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has announced that he will build a Ram statue that will be 201 metres tall, the Karnataka government is keen to build a statue of Mother Cauvery which will be 125 feet tall. This 'tall construction spree' has quite obviously left people miffed: #1 Is there a competition going on , why focus on building Hospitals , Universities etc Andhra Pradeshs new assembly to be taller than Statue of Unity | India News - Times of India https://t.co/EUnAlcY8sF Keep Smiling (@upma23) November 23, 2018 #2 Andhra Pradeshs new assembly to be taller than Statue of Unity | Jealousy kicking in Naidu gaaru ? Weren't you the ones who were questioning the need of that statue. Why now wag Ur tail and become a meow meow cat ? https://t.co/9qC1Iqwihr sensibleindian (@donotreply2384) November 23, 2018 #3 Chandra babu have enough money to build the tallest assembly structure in India,so why crying special status center may already given enough money to andhara,may be Naidu not want to repeat 2004 story But he going loose again in 2019 https://t.co/LAtVWHwwAm via @timesofindia Vijaysingh (@vj1106) November 23, 2018 #4 What a stupid comparison between the proposed Assembly Budding & the Statue of Unity. While the former will be place only for the elected representatives, which will witness Fights & Filth, the latter forms a tourist attraction & an income Generator. https://t.co/ScMn1qFOmV Nava Mohan Rao.... (@iamnavamohan) November 23, 2018 bccl The structure that Naidu plans to build will be shaped like an upside-down lily flower, said minister for municipal administration P Narayana. The government would call for tenders by November end and the process will be completed in two years. The new Assembly building will also have two galleries the first one at 80 metres accommodating 300 people and the second one at 250 metres accommodating 20 people and will give a view of Amaravati city. bccl The second gallery will be wrapped in glass and will have elevators. The building will be cyclone and earthquake resistant, the minister said. Narayana added that the chief minister suggested minor changes to the design and this will be ready in a couple of days. Naidu also cleared designs of the five buildings of the secretariat. He directed the AP Capital Region Development Authority officials to prepare draft tender notifications. Sydney militant Ahmed Merhi is pleading Australia to rescue him after he was sentenced to death by hanging in Iraq for having connections with terror group ISIS. Merhi, 27, has been convicted for being a member of Islamic State in the Central Criminal Court in Baghdad. He travelled to Syria in 2014 or 2015, says a report by Daily Mail. He claimed that he travelled to the war-torn country for relief but the judge rejected his claims. Daily Telegraph He told NewsCorp that he wanted to come back home to Australia and argued that he had been wrongly convicted. Merhi said Iraq had no right to prosecute him as there was no justice and no evidence or witnesses. 'I'm a good person,' Merhi told NewsCorp. He has pleaded Australia to intervene and help him in getting justice and released. He previously shared numerous photos to his social media accounts displaying weaponry and dressed in military uniform. Nov 23, 2018 | By Thomas 3D Systems has partnered with OpHeart, a nonprofit organization that work to provide medical treatment to children born with life-threatening heart defects, by providing pediatric heart surgeons with the 3D-printed tools needed to prepare and rehearse complex surgeries. The use of detailed anatomical models prior to surgery, which typically involves reconnecting vessels as thin as a human hair in hearts the size of a strawberry, is a "vital aid" to surgeons in their preparations for complex, delicate congenital heart disease surgery (CHD). In addition, the models are used by medical teams to explain the surgery to patients families in an effort to keep them fully informed of the upcoming procedure and what to expect. Feedback from the surgeons weve worked with through OpHeart is that our anatomical models are tremendously helpful to them in delivering successful patient outcomes, said Katie Weimer, vice president, medical devices, 3D Systems. We are grateful for the opportunity to communicate the benefit of 3D printed surgical models. The models we create for OpHeart clearly demonstrate the power of 3D printing. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, one percent of all children are born with Congenital Heart Defects (CHDs), making it the most common birth defect. 3D Systems works directly with Anne Garcia, who founded OpHeart in 2015, six months after her own daughter, Ariana, was born with a life-threatening heart defect. 3D Systems announced its participation in OpHearts Heart-in-Hand Pledge, whereby any requesting doctor or parent will receive a 3D printed model of their CHD patients heart in anticipation of surgery or catheterization, regardless of the familys or hospitals ability to pay. We fiercely believe that the ability to 3D print a replica of a CHD patients heart is an invaluable tool that can, to put it bluntly, save lives, said Garcia. We want every child with a life-threatening heart defect to benefit from this technology. The technology involves segmenting 2D imaging data to create a 3D digital model, which is then 3D printed. 3D Systems creates the 3D-printed models through a combination of its D2P software, ProJet CJP 660Pro 3D ColorJet printer and VisiJet materials. The companys team of expert biomedical engineers convert the 2D MRI or CT scan data of the heart into a 3D model using the D2P stand-alone modular software package, which is designed to address and consolidate all 3D model preparation steps. It relies on automatic segmentation tools that minimize the effort and time associated with the creation of a digital patient-specific model. Once created, the digital model can be exported to the 3D Systems ProJet CJP 660Pro to create a full color model of the heart, which can be shipped worldwide. Full color models allow the anatomy to be selectively colored which enables surgeons to easily identify and focus on specific portions of the model during consultations with other surgeons and also better communicate the surgical plan with patients families. From a surgeons perspective, the incorporation of 3D printing into our craft is enabling tremendous breakthroughs, said Dr. Jorge Salazar, chief of pediatric and congenital heart surgery at Childrens Memorial Hermann Hospital (Houston, Texas), and a member of the OpHeart Board of Directors. The full color 3D printed models provided by 3D Systems have enabled us to achieve outcomes previously considered unobtainable. Their expertise and technology are helping us advance treatment and improve patient outcomes. The Heart-in-Hand initiative is of utmost importance in saving childrens lives, as there is no insurance reimbursement for these tools. It is our hope that as more surgical teams work with OpHeart to employ 3D Systems anatomical models in their CHD surgeries, we will be able to definitively demonstrate what is common sense- providing doctors the ability to better prepare for complex surgeries makes a meaningful, measurable difference in the lives of these children, added Garcia. Hopefully, they will become the standard of care, as insurance companies recognize their value and reimburse for their use. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: Two Indian High Commission officials were stopped from entering two gurudwaras in Pakistan by their administration, which was upset over the screening of movie Nanak Shah Fakir in India. The film has been in controversy for hurting sentiments of the Sikh community. The officials Aranjeet Singh and Sunil Kumar were barred from entering the Gurdwara Nankana Sahib on Wednesday night and Gurdwara Sachcha Sauda on Thursday. Both the gurdwaras are in Punjab province of Pakistan. They were stopped from entering the gurdwaras by their administration, which said that the Indian government has hurt the sentiments of Sikhs by allowing the screening of the film 'Nanak Shah Fakir'. AP The Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) said that the Pakistan Gurdwara Pharbhndik Committee (PGPC) officials have stopped the Indian officials. The visiting officials were heard saying in a video that "No Sikh was stopped from entering the house of the Guru. We are wondering as to why you are stopping us." The PGPC officials, however, kept saying that they should better leave the premises. "We had written to the Indian High Commission asking it not to send its officials to any of the gurdwaras since the release of the film," ETPB Secretary Tariq Wazir told PTI. He said the Indian officials ignored their advice. The officials were reported to have visited the Sachcha Sauda gurdwara to exchange greetings with the visiting Indian Sikhs, who are here to take part in festivities related to the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. "We request the officials of the Indian High Commission not to visit any gurdwara without permission of the board as we have to security measures for them," Wazir said. In June, the PGPC officials had barred Indian High Commissioner Ajay Basaria and his wife from entering the Gurdwara Panja Sahib at Hassan Abdal, Rawalpindi. A Bollywood movie is all set to start production in Jerusalem due to the efforts by both governments. The Israeli government has committed to partially funding the project. The move is part of the efforts made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to tighten the bonds between the film industries of the two countries. The aim is to have a Bollywood-made feature film that would showcase the landscape of Jerusalem. According to reports, a Bollywood producer has already arrived in Israel and was examining potential filming locations. It is not yet clear which film will be shot in Israel. There have been several attempts to bring Israeli and Indian cinema closer together, under the wing of several government ministries. A video clip of movie Drive was already filmed in Israel and is set to be released soon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Deputy Minister Michael Oren's visited Bollywood film set in Mumbai during the official visit to the country. Plastic is one of the biggest issues facing the environment because it doesnt decompose and its particles have toxic elements that pollute the ground resources. Its disposal therefore is a huge problem. Mumbai and Uttar Pradesh earlier this year banned complete use of plastic and asked local vendors and governments to promote the use of paper and jute bags as an alternative. However, Kolkata has a much better solution. They are going by the mantra, if you cant beat it, better use it! The city of joy has decided to experiment with plastic to make roads better in the city. The Times of India reported that the Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO) has agreed to the use of plastic waste for establishing a kilometre of bituminous road stretch beside City Centre and New Town as an experiment. Photo: BCCL/ Representative Image The use of plastic in laying roads is expected to make its surface tougher and enhance its life span. However, the question that remains is this; Will the plastic-bended surface stand its test against the forces of nature, like rain? HIDCO authorities will also hold a meeting with the apex body of road-construction engineers, Indian Roads Congress as well as the Indian Plastic Federation. The Corporations Chairman, Debashis Sen even told TOI, that the meeting will be aimed at deriving a plan to use plastic waste in laying down the road. Using the outcomes of this experiment, they will decipher if they can use the same method elsewhere for road repairs. Though, plastic pieces or its shredded pieces can be mixed with bitumen at very high temperatures, whether this technology is commercially viable or not is yet to be proven. Photo: BCCL/Tarred road surface The corporation even looked at the use of jute in the construction of roads but that didnt really take off. Premier institute of Kharagpur, IITs civil engineering department carried out an experiment in their laboratory. The main problem is the proper mixture of plastic waste and bitumen. A certain amount of crushed plastic waste will be first melted in high temperature, after which the melted plastic will be blended with the bitumen aggregator. This bituminous layer, blended with melted plastic waste will be used in the top layer of the road. said a road construction expert. Usually polymer-modified bitumen is used for repairing important road stretches but since it is expensive therefore, it isnt used extensively. Polymer-modified bitumen is a costly material and thus it is not used extensively for repairing city roads. It, however, gives more strength and normally lasts at least 10 to 15 years more than the normal bitumen-layered roads, the expert added. Using plastic is not only beneficial in reducing environmental pollution but it also minimises damage caused by heavy rains. Plastic is water-resistant and having it mixed with bitumen will strengthen the roads. A bullet train may soon run between Chennai and Bengaluru, covering the distance in Just two hours and twenty-five minutes as against a Shatabdi which currently is the fastest train on this route, taking seven hours for the journey. On November 22, Martin Ney, German Ambassador to India handed over the final feasibility report on the Chennai-Bengaluru-Mysuru bullet train to Railway Board Chairman Ashwani Lohani. Also Read: PM Modis Much-Hyped Bullet Train Project Hits A Roadblock Due To Fruit Growers' Protest The key finding of the study is that the high-speed train on the route is not only feasible but also manageable, said Ney. Lohani said the report will be studied before further steps are taken over the 435-km high-speed rail (bullet train) corridor. The bullet train can reach a maximum speed of 320 kilometres per hour. An official said out of 435 km, about 84 per cent of the track would be elevated while 11 per cent will be in a tunnel, while the rest will be on grade. Also Read: With This New Bullet Train, Soon It Will Take Just A Few Hours To Reach China From Kolkata Welcoming the proposal, Bhaskar Y, a techie said, This can do wonders as thousands of people travel between the three cities. While the traffic on Bengaluru-Mysuru stretch is ever-increasing, the train travel time between Bengaluru and Chennai is anywhere between five and seven hours, forcing many people to fly. Representational Image According to the Press Information Bureau (PIB), the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Rail Corridor is the only sanctioned High-Speed Rail Project in the country as of now and implemented with the technical and financial assistance of Government of Japan. President Donald Trump has disputed that US intelligence officials had concluded that the de facto leader of American ally Saudi Arabia ordered the killing of a US-based journalist critical of the kingdom's royal family. Citing vehement denials by the crown prince and king that they were involved, Trump said on Thursday "maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a vicious place. The world is a very, very vicious place." Critics in Congress and high-ranking officials in other countries are accusing Trump of ignoring human rights and giving Saudi Arabia a pass for economic reasons, including its influence on the world oil market. afp Trump said this week he would not impose harsher penalties on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the death and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month. "My policy is very simple: America first, keep America great again and that's what I'm doing," Trump told reporters after a Thanksgiving Day telephone call with members of the military. The crown prince and his father, King Salman, said they did not commit "this atrocity," Trump said. "It's a terrible thing. I dislike it more than you do. But the fact is ... they create tremendous wealth, really tremendous jobs in their purchases and very importantly, they keep the oil price down." ap American intelligence agencies have concluded that the crown prince ordered the killing in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, according to a US official familiar with the assessment. The official was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Others familiar with the case caution that while it's likely that the crown prince was involved in the death, questions remain about the extent of his culpability. Several lawmakers have indicated that the US has no "smoking gun" that proves the crown prince was responsible. They have called on the CIA and other top intelligence agencies to share publicly what they told the president about the slaying. "I hate the crime," Trump said while on vacation in Florida. "I hate what's done. I hate the cover-up and I will tell you this the crown prince hates it more than I do." He said the CIA "points it both ways and as I said, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But I will say very strongly that it's a very important ally and if we go by a certain standard, we won't be able to have allies with almost any country." He also has pushed back on the idea that his refusal to punish the Saudis more will embolden other governments to go after journalists and commit other human rights abuses. reuters Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has noted that the US has imposed sanctions on 17 Saudi officials suspected of involvement in the killing. "We've sanctioned 17 people some of them very senior in the Saudi government," Pompeo said Wednesday in a radio interview with KCMO in Kansas City, Missouri. "We are going to make sure that America always stands for human rights." Saudi prosecutors have said a 15-man team sent to Istanbul killed Khashoggi with tranquilizers and dismembered his body, which has not been found. Those findings came after Saudi authorities spent weeks denying Khashoggi had been killed in the consulate. Some lawmakers have triggered investigations into Khashoggi's death and specifically whether the crown prince was responsible. The investigations were requested under provisions of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. The act requires the president to report back to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee within 120 days in this case by February 7 on whether the crown prince was responsible for an extrajudicial killing, torture or other gross violation of internationally recognised human rights against someone exercising freedom of expression and the administration's decision on whether sanctions are warranted. The worst nightmare for any woman taking public transport like an auto is to see the driver taking a route that's unfamiliar. With the rising case of sexual assault and rape across the country, women are forced to be extra vigilant, but sometimes things get out of control. Reuters This woman Kolkata fell victim a terrifying incident of sexual assault. According to a TOI report, the 28-year-old woman had boarded the auto from the Salt Lake area and was on her way home to Kestopur. Also Read: Mumbai Male Dog Brutally Gang Raped By 4 Low Lives Dies After Fighting For His Life But somewhere along the way, the driver swerved and took her to a dark and desolated place. Had Ajay Naskar, Jalal Ali Mollah and Sabed Ali Mollanit not arrived at the spot in the nick of time things would have taken a turn for the worst. The three friends were at tea shop when Naskar first heard muffled screams and decided to walk towards the end of the road. He walked back and insisted that his friends also take a look. On reaching the place, they caught hold of the suspect named Subhajit Nag. Completely taken aback, Nag tried to brush it off as an argument over auto fare. But Naskar said that woman was distraught and choking after the ordeal she went through. Picture for representation Nag pleaded and asked the men to release him, but the three men called up the police and handed him over. While cases of rape and molestation never seem to die down, we can only hope that our streets remains safe with people like Naskar, Jalal and Sabed around. ALSO READ: Women Post Photos Of Panties In Protest After Teenagers Thong Used Against Her In Rape Trial We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form Manoj Saxena, executive chairman of CognitiveScale and founding director of the Saxena Family Foundation, announced a $1 million gift to Michigan State Universitys Eli Broad College of Business. Seen here with Saxena (center) is Prof. Glenn S. Omura (left) and dean Sanjay Gupta. The Indian American entrepreneur and philanthropist earned his M.B.A. from MSU in 1991. (CognitiveScale photo) Speedcast will work with MYTV on three-year project Michael Chan, CEO, MYTV, and Pierre-Jean Beylier, CEO, Speedcast, at the Signing Ceremony in Kuala Lumpur on 21st of November, 2018. Kuala Lumpur, Nov 23, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Speedcast International Limited ( ASX:SDA ) ( OTCMKTS:SPPDF ), the world's most trusted provider of remote communication and IT solutions, today announced it will play a key role in Malaysia's effort to switch from analogue TV to digital TV through a Direct To Home (DTH) solution. Speedcast has partnered on the three-year project with MYTV Broadcasting Sdn Bhd (MYTV), the common integrated infrastructure provider providing free digital terrestrial television in Malaysia.MYTV will be responsible for operating the infrastructure and network facilities for Digital Terrestrial TV (DTT) services throughout the country and will work with Speedcast to extend its coverage via DTH satellite services. Speedcast expects this contract to contribute to its Enterprise & Emerging Markets Division revenue from mid-November 2018.The shift from analogue to digital in Malaysia is in line with a larger digital shift in the ASEAN region to bring the latest digital content to people around the region. The Malaysian Ministry of Communications and Multimedia commissioned the project, which will be supervised by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission."Migrating an entire country from analogue to digital TV is no small task," says Pierre-Jean Beylier, CEO, Speedcast. "We're looking forward to working with MYTV on this project to bring high-quality digital TV services to Malaysians throughout the country. For this project Speedcast will use technology from the partnership with In Aria Networks announced in September. Speedcast sees significant growth potential in the media business globally and the project with MYTV is another proof point of our increasing relevance in this fast-growing market segment.""We look forward to the partnership with Speedcast to deliver this key national Digital TV project," says Michael Chan, CEO, MYTV Broadcast Sdn Bhd. "Now that DTH is switched on, MYTV's service is available to 100% of the Malaysian population."About Speedcast International Ltd Speedcast International Ltd (ASX:SDA) is the world's most trusted communications and IT services provider, delivering critical communications solutions to the Maritime, Energy, Mining, Media, Telecom, Cruise, NGO, Government, and Enterprise sectors. With more satellite capacity than any other provider, Speedcast enables faster, seamless pole-to-pole coverage from a global hybrid satellite, fiber, cellular, microwave, MPLS, and IP transport network with direct access to public cloud platforms. The company also integrates differentiated technology offerings that provide smarter ways to communicate and distribute content, manage network and remote operations, protect and secure investments, and improve the crew and guest experience. With a passionate customer focus and a strong safety culture, Speedcast serves more than 3,200 customers in over 140 countries. Learn more at www.speedcast.com. Indian American Congressman Rep. Ro Khanna (left) Nov. 14 introduced legislation to award the Congressional Gold Medal to civil rights icon the Rev. James Lawson (right), who celebrated his 90th birthday earlier this year. Also seen here is one of the more than two dozen co-sponsors of the bill, U.S. Rep. Karen Bass. (Twitter photo) Denmark seeks support to reintroduce face mask use AP - 14 minutes ago COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) Denmark's government said Wednesday it would seek support in parliament to reintroduce mandates for wearing face masks in public places amid a rise in cases, officials said... $SPX : 4,690.75 (unch) $DOWI : 35,742.02 (-0.20%) $IUXX : 16,304.05 (-0.02%) Happy Thanksgiving Eve. The Corn & Ethanol Report 11/24/2021 The PRICE Futures Group - 59 minutes ago We start off this busy report day with MBA Mortgage Index (19/Nov), MBA Mortgage Refinance Index (19/Nov), MBA Purchase Index (19/Nov), MBA Mortgage Applications (19/Nov), and MBA Mortgage Rate at 6:00... US jobless claims hit 52-year low after seasonal adjustments AP - Wed Nov 24, 8:24AM CST WASHINGTON (AP) The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits plummeted last week to the lowest level in more than half a century, another sign that the U.S. job market is rebounding rapidly... $SPX : 4,690.75 (unch) $DOWI : 35,742.02 (-0.20%) $IUXX : 16,304.05 (-0.02%) Sentiment Speaks: The Market Does Not Like 'Build Back Better' ElliottWaveTrader.net - Wed Nov 24, 7:45AM CST The market remained flat after the passage of the Build Back Better bill in the House on Friday. Since the market is primarily driven by endogenous factors, it should not be a surprise that the bill had... Once settled into the new role, the Atlanta-based successor not only will liaise with her team in the US and the UK but will also meet brokers and partners across Beazleys global footprint. We are very excited that Lou Ann is joining Beazley, bringing with her a wealth of experience in product design and delivery and extensive market knowledge, commented chief executive Andrew Horton. Layton, who started her career in insurance as a management liability lines underwriter, will be part of the executive committee at Beazley. Im also grateful that Dan will be staying on with us until next summer, added Horton. Dan has been instrumental in the growth of our business and in building our brand. His strong relationships and knowledge of our brokers and clients has enabled us to build successful strategic partnerships in the US and beyond. Jones joined as a non-executive director in 2006 before becoming Beazleys first head of broker relations and marketing about four years later. Free to customers, the scheme is embedded across the company and has seen investments directed to a wide range of projects including ones that aid renewable energy and water conservation as well as others that address homelessness or support at-risk families. Premiums4Good is a significant milestone for QBE and were delighted to be recognised as one of five leaders at the Impact Investment Awards, said Phil White, QBEs chief customer officer of credit lines. We currently have 34 investments globally that are in the Premiums4Good pool with a value of around US$470 million, and were on track to deliver solid growth in this sector, he added. The scheme won Impact Asset Owner of the Year 2018 at the inaugural awards, which aims to recognise outstanding efforts in the local impact investing ecosystem. The judges noted that Premiums4Good is an innovative way of mobilising capital for positive impact and said QBE served as a prime example of how large institutional investors can have a substantial impact portfolio driven by customers, where social value is integrated with business value. We really believe in the positive change this program is contributing to communities here and around the world, said White. QBE is committed to finding opportunities that deliver a financial return, but also deliver social and environmental benefits to the communities in which we operate. Typically invested in social impact bonds, green bonds, developing renewable energy resources, and providing water and energy to remote communities, QBE has committed a minimum of $100 million in 2018. One of the insurers local investments is the Aspire Social Impact Bond, which funds the Aspire Program an Adelaide-based homelessness services specialist. The Hutt Street Centre, which operates the program, partners with community housing providers to offer a Housing First program for up to 600 people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Improves Acquisition Terms for Inabox Group Business Sydney, Nov 23, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - On the 8th of October 2018, MNF Group Ltd announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire the Wholesale and Enablement Business from Inabox Group Ltd ( ASX:IAB ).On the 15th of November 2018, IAB advised MNF that it had received a notice from SB&G Consortium, that its subsidiary, SB&G (Telecoms) Pty Ltd, intended to make an all cash offer to acquire all of the shares in IAB Group, through a conditional off-market takeover bid at a price of 90 cents cash per IAB share.Having reviewed and updated our analysis, the MNF Board are of the view that the MNF agreement announced on 8th October 2018 would ultimately still provide better value to IAB shareholders. However, as a result of the simplicity offered by SB&G's proposal, and to put matters beyond doubt for IAB shareholders, MNF has agreed to revise the terms of acquisition, as set out below.MNF will now pay IAB $34.5m in cash for the same business assets, subject to approval at an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) of IAB shareholders. MNF has simplified its terms by making completion payment conditional only on a majority of IAB shareholders voting in favour of the MNF transaction at IAB's adjourned EGM, which is scheduled to re-convene on the 7th of December 2018.IAB have stated in their announcement "The Inabox board believes the Improved MNF Transaction provides shareholders with greater certainty and a higher return than the SB&G Offer. The Inabox board unanimously recommends shareholders vote in favour of the Improved MNF Transaction in the absence of a superior proposal, and take no action in respect to the proposed SB&G Offer when it is made."IAB has announced that the improved MNF Transaction will allow IAB to return to its shareholders 90 cents per share, comprised of a capital sum and a fully franked dividend, delivering a superior financial outcome to IAB's shareholders. IAB indicated that grossed up to include the value of franking credits, the distribution increases to $1.02 per share pre-tax. Many IAB shareholders may benefit from the franking credits and any capital losses incurred. IAB shareholders should discuss the tax implications of these distributions with their tax advisers.About Symbio Holdings Limited Symbio Holdings Limited (ASX:SYM) is one of Asia-Pacific's fastest growing technology companies. Listed on the ASX since 2006 and twice winner of the Forbes Asia-Pacific "Best under a Billion" award. Headquartered in Sydney, Australia, the company has over 500 people located across Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America. Symbio develops and operates a global communications network and software suite enabling some of the world's leading innovators to deliver new-generation communications solutions. As the world moves to IP, Symbio is building the brands, services, network and technology to lead the way. According to Kelmans complaint, she was disabled in October 2016. She then filed a claim for disability benefits with the defendants, only to be informed in September 2017 that her claim had been denied. The plaintiff argued that the defendants wrongfully failed to conduct a proper investigation and review of her claim before refusing it. Northern California Record reported that Kelman is seeking judgement against the defendants for benefits, declaratory and injunctive relief, interest, restitution, attorneys fees, costs and expenses, as well as other relief as determined by the court. Related stories: Brown & Brown faces off against its former executives in legal dispute County appeals against insurer in $28 million case Theresa May has now presented the results of her two-year Brexit negotiation to Parliament. Next month shes set to ask lawmakers to approve the deal. And everyone except perhaps the prime minister agrees that shell probably lose the vote. What no one agrees is what happens the next day. Heres where it could end up: Go Back to Parliament This is the deal. Its not changing. And the alternative is No Deal. The prime minister might hope that an adverse market reaction would help to scare lawmakers into line. But many of them seem very determined. Go Back to The EU Parliament wants more, so the prime minister asks for more. Its quite possible that the wily negotiators in Brussels have a little sugar they could put somewhere on the deal to make it slightly more attractive, but it seems unlikely they have enough to shift many votes in Parliament. She could keep putting it to Parliament until lawmakers give in. May Quits Shes finally had enough, and shes off. The Tories hold an instant leadership election, at the end of which the winner is faced with much the same options as defeated their predecessor. May has made plain this isnt her plan. Conservative Confidence Vote She wont quit, but Tories try to get rid of her. If they succeed, they have a leadership election. If they fail, May is strengthened. But in terms of Brexit and Parliament, nothing has changed. Government Confidence Vote The Fixed Term Parliaments Act says that if the government loses a confidence vote in Parliament, it has 14 days to win one, or theres a general election. Government officials have said in the past that if they lost the Brexit vote, they could call a confidence vote. Brexiteers have said in response that theyre quite happy to vote the deal down but not the government. But it only take seven Tories to rebel or the Democratic Unionist Party to vote against the government and the government falls. Second Referendum If Parliament cant decide, then let the people! The problem here is getting the legislation through Parliament. If this isnt government policy, it wont happen even a weak government has enough control over the legislative process to block this. Mays officials said Thursday that there will not be a second referendum while she is prime minister. Even if it did become government policy, it would still take months to pass the relevant bill and hold the vote. So the EU would need to extend Britains negotiating time. Britains Parliament would also need to revoke various processes that would otherwise take the U.K. out anyway. All that could be vulnerable to Brexiteer resistance in Parliament. Go for No Deal If you dont like the deal, then its No Deal. The problem is that No Deal is very hard to sell politically witness former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab squirming when asked if it would lead to people dying. Theres no evidence that the country is ready for shortages of food and medicine, or even large traffic jams. Lawmakers on both sides including new Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd regularly assert that Parliament wont allow No Deal to happen, without explaining how it would be prevented. One possibility is that if anti-Brexit Conservative politicians think the prime minister is serious, they decide their duty to the nation is to declare no confidence in the government and force a general election. Short of that or a controversial extension to the negotiating deadline its not clear how No Deal would be stopped. Go For Norway Parliament doesnt want No Deal, so lets got for the closest possible relationship to the EU instead. Some Tories are offering this as an interim step to a final, more distant relationship. Others see it as a plausible end state. Theres a majority in Parliament for something like this, but is there time to negotiate it with the EU? The problem again is that only seven Tories need to declare no-confidence to bring the government down. There are definitely seven Brexiteers who would risk expulsion from the Conservative Party to stop a Norway-style deal. Call a General Election Theres already legislation to facilitate a general election, so its at least possible to call one. But Tories, who once mocked Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, now live in fear of him. Its hard to see how most of them would choose a general election over anything else. The likeliest route to an election is a government no confidence vote. Government of National Unity There is a comfortable majority in Parliament for a minimalist Brexit. The problem is that its spread across different parties. Could the europhiles come together? For many of them, it would mean being expelled from their parties, meaning theyd be likely to lose their seats in a future general election. And who would lead them? And what position would they unite around softening Brexit, or blocking it? Related: EU, UK Agree Draft Text for Post-Brexit Ties Although Some Wrangles Remain Copyright 2021 Bloomberg. Topics Legislation Europe Uk Brexit Ricoh has been named Company of the Year at the Ireland Japan Business Awards 2018, hosted by the Ireland Japan Chamber of Commerce. In February 2017, the company opened its new Irish HQ in Dublin on the back of a 6.5M investment. This is allowing Ricoh Ireland to more than double its workforce to 190 by 2020 and increase revenues to 32M in the same period. Akira Oyama, Corporate Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Sales and Marketing Group, Ricoh, said This award reflects the wealth of symbiotic economic opportunity that lies in Irish-Japanese relations. Since the 1980s Ricoh Ireland has gone from strength to strength and as it grows, so too does the local teams impact on the Irish economy. We are consistently impressed with how the team there is extending the Ricoh ethos and values to benefit the greater community, too. We are committed to profitable growth and see our partnership with Ireland as integral to this. Ricoh Ireland is a great success story for us on both sides of the globe and we will continue to invest in our Irish team as the market grows. In the last year alone, the company has donated 175,000 worth of managed document services technology to Temple Street Childrens Hospital and 30,000 worth of collaborative technologies to FoodCloud, the platform that allows businesses to donate unsold fresh food produce to local charities. Phil Keoghan, CEO, Ricoh Ireland & UK, said: This is a tremendous honour for the team in Ricoh Ireland and is testament to the great work that they do not just for the company, but for the community around them. Ricohs relationship with Ireland started in the 1980s when 34 Irish graduates joined Ricoh in Japan through the Irish Governments FAS training scheme. Almost four decades on, Ricoh Ireland has become a shining example of the positive impact that global organisations can have on the communities in which they operate. President of the Ireland Japan Chamber of Commerce Paul Gilsenan took the occasion to hail the trading relationship between the two countries. Despite their positions on the world map, Ireland and Japan have a long history of doing business together and these awards celebrate that. Companies like Ricoh show that distance is not a barrier to business. It perfectly demonstrates how enterprises in our two countries are working in harmony to benefit not just one anothers economies, but the people living in them, too." Planning permission has been granted for the first school on a planned education campus at a former Dublin greyhound stadium which was the subject of a controversial 23m purchase by the Department of Education. The department has secured five-year approval for a temporary primary school building on part of the Harolds Cross site in Dublin 6 on the southside of the city. It is eventually intended to open a primary school for 624 pupils and a 1,000-student second-level school on the grounds. The revelation of the sale price raised questions last year, as the 23m which the department agreed to pay matched almost exactly the outstanding debts of the Irish Greyhound Board (IGB). The cancellation of racing at Harolds Cross earlier last year drew protests from participants in the industry, leading to losses of revenue as racing at its landmark Shelbourne Park stadium in Dublin was disrupted. It emerged last month that a valuation carried out for the IGB had put a market value of barely half the price eventually paid. It said it was worth 12m if the land could be developed for housing, or just 6m if it remained with a planning zoning for recreational use. Before the purchase was finalised in April, the Department of Education succeeded in getting members of Dublin City Council change the sites zoning to allow for educational uses. It then applied to the council in December for permission for a 12-classroom school on a car park inside the southside of the grounds. It proposed that 52 pupils would be enrolled each of the five years for which it wants the permission to last. The proposed provision of a pedestrian access to the temporary prefabricated school building from Grosvenor Lane prompted objections from residents concerned about the impact on access and traffic issues. Within a week of receiving permission from Dublin City Council in April, then minister Richard Bruton had his officials sign contracts for the site acquisition. The local authority decision was subsequently appealed to An Bord Pleanala, with concern around the pedestrian access being the main issue raised. The board has now upheld the councils approval and has granted planning permission subject to revised conditions, after the issues were considered by a planning inspector. Following renewed controversy over the sale price last month, Education Minister Joe McHugh had his department publish the Valuation Offices original April 2017 report and an update it has provided on current values in the area. The minister acknowledged in the Dail that the 3.8m per acre was a high price, but the Valuation Office update says there has been a number of 6m-per-acre transactions in Dublin 6 and Dublin 8 in the past year. Planning permission for one of the countrys largest solar farms has been approved for a site in North Cork, despite strong objections from the local community. An Bord Pleanala upheld the recent decision of Cork County Council to permit the development of a solar farm on a 68-hectare site, comprising around 20 different existing fields at Fiddane, near Ballyhea. The project proposed by UK-based energy firm IGP Solar provides for the construction of a solar farm which would have a capacity of 30.6 megawatts. The company claims the solar farm, which is to consist of over 87,500 individual solar panels up to 2.1m in height as well as 14 transformer stations, will generate enough electricity to provide energy for almost 5,000 households. The development was opposed by the Fiddane Solar Action Group which criticised the lack of national, regional, and local guidelines on the development of solar farms. The group, consisting of around 40 local residents, also raised a variety of concerns in relation to the environmental impact of the project as well as the negative impact it claimed the solar farm would have in terms of traffic, road safety, glint and glare, and property values in the area. It also expressed concern that the solar farm posed an increased risk of flooding and fire. An Bord Pleanala said it concluded the proposed solar farm would not seriously injure the visual amenities of the area or the residential amenities of property in the vicinity. The planning board also found that the development would be unlikely to have a significant effect on the environment or the ecology of the area. In addition, it said the project would be acceptable in terms of traffic safety and convenience. The board said it had completed an appropriate assessment screening exercise to examine if the solar farm would have any potential effects on habitats protected under EU legislation and was satisfied that it was unlikely. It attached 15 conditions to the granting of planning permission for the solar farm, including the establishment of buffer zones around a local ring fort and other monuments during the construction phase. It also reduced the duration of the original permission from 30 years to 25 years. To date, Cork County Council has granted planning permission for around a dozen solar farms in the county, with a similar number under consideration. Gardai are to adopt a risk assessment tool to help them identify women most in danger from domestic violence and put together security and social supports to protect them. The tool, currently being piloted in two divisions, is to be evaluated by Trinity College Dublin with the intention of rolling it out nationally by the end of the year. It is one of a number of measures Garda Commissioner Drew Harris pledged to implement to tackle domestic violence-related injuries and murders after figures were released showing more than half of women who die violently in Ireland are killed by their current or former husband or partner. The Womens Aid Femicide Watch report for 2018 shows 225 women have died violently here since 1996, including seven to date this year, while 16 children were also killed alongside their mothers. In 56% of cases, the perpetrator was an intimate partner of the victim, while an additional 11% of victims were killed by a male relative and a further 20% by a man known to them. Mr Harris told the reports launch event that the new risk assessment tool, devised with the help of police in Sweden, New York, Northern Ireland, and England, was designed to be easily usable at 2am on a Saturday morning. He said it identifies victims most at risk and the most high-risk perpetrators and establishes the risk posed and what our support can be together with multi-agency supports. Protective Services Units, currently in place in four divisions, would be in six more by the end of the year and in all divisions by the end of next year, he said, and this would give extra support to local officers and raise the standard of their approach to domestic violence. He also said training is underway on evidence-gathering in preparation for the newly created offence of coercive control and a public information campaign would tell victims and the wider public how to get help and assist investigations. We need to ensure that we respond effectively and efficiently but also with empathy and professionalism to domestic violence incidents and I am determined in this regard that we will improve our service, he said. The service that we improve makes a difference in terms of preventing really serious crimes, up to and including femicide and the murder of children, and what more important work have I or any of the staff under my control to do? Womens Aid is calling for domestic homicide reviews (DHRs) to be carried out jointly by Gardai and other support agencies after every femicide to look at the background and identify patterns that may assist in devising preventative strategies. Minister for Social Protection Regina Doherty said she completely supported the idea but Mr Harris said legislation may be needed. We need to be clear about what a DHR would concentrate upon and how agencies co-operate and share information, he said. There is a lot of nervousness around data protection. In some ways, its misplaced because we have an obligation to share information if it will save lives. Womens Aids 24-hour help-line is 1800 341 900. The Womens National Helpline responds to 50 calls a day. Calls from women from across the country. Women who feel this is their time to speak, women who need urgent help, women who need someone to listen to their fears and concerns. We are at the end of the line 24/7. #WOTYA18 pic.twitter.com/dBBuF8hyQY Women's Aid Ireland (@Womens_Aid) October 20, 2018 The Survivor It was Christmas Eve 2015 when Jessica Bowes had reconstructive surgery on some of the multiple facial fractures her ex-partner had inflicted on her but she checked herself out of hospital as soon as she came round so she could be home with her children for Santa. Days earlier she had come home from her work party to find her ex, once again ignoring her barring order, waiting for her. He smashed the taxi windscreen, assaulted the driver, punched Jessica so hard hit the ground, and continued to hit and kick her until her skull, both eye sockets, her nose and cheekbone were fractured. Jessica Bowes "I told him he was going to kill me," she says. Her fears were justified for it had been coming a long time - long after she'd lost count of the attacks on her, long after she'd stopped involving her family because of his threats to harm them, long after she'd given up pleading for gardai to arrest him. Somehow, she got to her neighbours' house. "Only for they let me in I believe he would have killed me that night," she says. Her ex was arrested that night, and later jailed, but he got bail before then on the grounds that he would go to a residential addiction treatment centre - from which he was free to leave at night and free to turn up at her door again, which he did. Jessica is campaigning for, among other things, risk assessments for domestic abuse victims, changes to bail conditions, better garda responses and therapy for women and children left traumatised by abuse. The Bereaved Next month marks 10 years since Chris and Susanna Cawley lost their beloved sister Celine and seven years since they lost the battle to stop the man who killed her, her husband, asserting his inheritance rights over the family home. They did secure a partial victory in that he was only awarded his half-share of the once jointly owned home - he had wanted it all for himself with no regard for his grieving daughter - but that battle, against an outdated Succession Act deemed flawed by the High Court judge who ruled against them, cost 187,000 in legal fees. Suzanna and Chris Cawley By contrast, when they went to France to stop him inheriting the house he and Celine also owned there, the French legal system charged 16,000 and transferred the house wholly into Celine's estate for her daughter. Despite their years of campaigning, a bill to change the Succession Act to prevent killers benefitting from the legacy of those they kill, is only now going through the Oireachtas. "How is it that private citizens, who are already trying to process the distress and sadness of their sister's homicide, must take on such an onerous role in trying to get the State to respond to what is so manifestly in the interest of the common good and principles of social justice?" they ask. With 59% of femicides in Ireland carried out by the victim's husband or partner and 95% of family homes jointly owned, they want the bill passed urgently. "We do not want any more families to go through what we experienced." A Cavan man has pleaded guilty before the non-jury Special Criminal Court this morning to helping an unlawful organisation murder dissident republican Peter Butterly. Mr Butterly (35) was chased and shot outside a Meath pub - The Huntsman Inn in Gormanston - in view of students waiting for their school bus on the afternoon of March 6, 2013. Michael McDermott (59), of Riverdale House, Garrymore, Ballinagh, Co. Cavan admitted today to knowingly rendering assistance to an unlawful organisation styling itself the Irish Republican Army, otherwise Oglaigh na hEireann, otherwise the IRA, directly or indirectly, in the performance or furtherance of an unlawful object, to wit, the murder of Peter Butterly, at diverse locations within the State, between March 3 and March 6, 2013, both dates inclusive. McDermott had originally pleaded not guilty at the three-judge court to the murder of Mr Butterly and the trial has been underway since the beginning of October. McDermott had also denied possession of a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol with intent to commit murder and possession of seven rounds of 9mm ammunition on March 5, 2013 at Blackthorn Apartments, Brackenwood Avenue, Balbriggan, Co. Dublin. Paul OHiggins SC, prosecuting, told the court this morning that McDermott was to be recharged on a scheduled offence under Section 49 of the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Act 2005. State Solicitor Michael ODonovan said the DPP had directed that McDermott be brought before the court and charged with this new offence which is contrary to Section 21a of the Offences against the State Act 1939. Detective Garda Brian McCarthy gave evidence that he met McDermott before the court sat this morning and handed him a copy of the charge sheet, explaining the charge to him. When the registrar put the new count to McDermott and asked him how he was pleading, he replied: Guilty. A book of evidence was then served on the defendant. Mr O'Higgins asked the court that a nolle prosequi be entered on the three charges which McDermott had originally been charged with. This means the State will not be proceeding with the prosecution in relation to these three other counts. Padraig Dwyer SC, defending McDermott, told the three judges that this was a fresh charge and his client had obviously entered an early guilty plea. Mr Justice Paul Coffey, presiding, said for an abundance of caution and in case the trial runs into the new term, he would fix a date for the final week of January. Mr Justice Coffey, sitting, with Judge Martin Nolan and Judge James Faughnan, remanded McDermott in custody until January 28, 2019, when he will be sentenced. Hugh Hartnett SC, defending Frank Murphy, told the court that his client was not in attendance in court today but he had been released from hospital. Mr Hartnett said a similar situation will arise in respect of his client on Monday. Mr Murphy was taken from court in an ambulance yesterday morning after becoming unwell before the court sat. He was assessed by paramedics outside the courtroom and put on a stretcher before he was taken to the waiting ambulance. Frank Murphy (58), of McDonough Caravan Park, Triton Road, Bettystown, Co. Meath has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Butterly. Mr Murphy has also pleaded not guilty to possession of a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol with the intent to commit murder and possession of seven rounds of 9mm ammunition on the day of the killing itself. The prosecution said the trial will go on against Kevin Braney but certain issues needed to be raised. Bernard Condon SC, for Mr Braney, said he will be making an application for the court to discharge themselves as well as seeking an adjournment for the trial in light of what had happened this morning. Kevin Braney (43) with a last address at Glenshane Crescent, Tallaght in Dublin has also pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Butterly. Mr Braney also denies possession of a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol with intent to commit murder and possession of seven rounds of 9mm ammunition on March 5, 2013 at Blackthorn Apartments, Brackenwood Avenue, Balbriggan, Co. Dublin. Paul OHiggins SC, prosecuting, opened the trial, telling the judges that it was an unusual case because gardai were already keeping an eye on movements in the area that day as a result of certain suspicions. He said that Mr Butterly had driven into the carpark of the Huntsman Inn around 1.55pm. He had parked and remained in his car. He said that a black Peugeot 206 then drove into the carpark and parked for a few minutes. Its the States case that this car was being driven by Frank Murphy. It left shortly after 2pm and was followed by an unmarked garda car. It was around this time that a stolen Toyota Corolla was driven into the car park, he said. The car (Toyota) then stops in front of Mr Butterlys car and two shots are fired, one through the windscreen and one through the bonnet, said Mr OHiggins. Mr Butterly, who's on his own in the car, runs..., but he doesnt get very far. Mr OHiggins explained that two witnesses, who were waiting for their school buses, had stated that he was chased across the carpark and shot three times as he ran. The court heard that he fell and died almost immediately. The trial continues. Agreement Over Wiluna West Gold Project Perth, Nov 23, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Blackham Resources Limited ( ASX:BLK ) ( OTCMKTS:BKHRF ) (Blackham or the Company) is pleased to advise it has executed a binding Heads of Agreement with the GWR Group Limited ( ASX:GWR ) with respect to the Wiluna West Gold Project. GWR's gold project lies approximately 40km west by road of Blackham's treatment plant. The Wiluna West Gold Project has defined free milling gold resources with a combined inventory of 254,000 ounces.Highlights- A binding Heads of Agreement ("HoA") has been executed between Blackham Resources Limited ( ASX:BLK ) and GWR Group Limited ( ASX:GWR ) for the exploration, development, mining and processing of gold resources from GWR's Wiluna West Gold Project providing access to additional free milling inventory.- The mineral processing Joint Venture Arrangement is a 65% (BLK) and 35% (GWR) profit share.- An existing resource of 254,000 ounces is located 40km by road from the Wiluna processing plant.- Under the HoA, GWR is responsible for drilling deposits to JORC (2012) Indicated Resource category at their cost.- Blackham will conduct Feasibility Studies, and if positive, undertake mining, transport and processing of gold ore. All costs after the feasibility studies will be shared in proportion to ownership.- Initial focus will be on Golden Monarch, Emu and Eagle deposits with approval processes well advanced with mining potentially commencing in mid-2019.The Mineral Resource Estimate for the Wiluna West Gold Project was originally published in GWR's ASX announcement dated 14 June 2010 and was prepared and first disclosed under the JORC Code 2004. A JORC 2012 Mineral Resource estimate for the Golden Monarch gold deposit of 747,000 tonnes at 2.2 g/t Au for 52,400 oz using a 0.5 g/t lower cut off within a 0.5 g/t wireframe was announced on the 31st October 2017.Blackham Managing Director, Bryan Dixon said "This GWR Agreement represents an opportunity to partner with an emerging junior in the Wiluna District for the benefit of both parties and is consistent with Blackham's strategy of strengthening and lengthening its free milling reserves within trucking distance of its Wiluna Gold Plant. The agreement applies to 25km of prospective strike of free milling mineralisation with existing resources that has had limited drilling over the past 15 years."A joint venture agreement is planned for execution in December 2018 defining the comprehensive agreement terms outlined in the HoA. The key terms are:- GWR will be responsible for drilling the separate gold deposits to JORC (2012) compliant level with a minimum Indicated category at their cost. GWR will also be responsible for initial metallurgical test work and approvals associated with the deposits.- Blackham will undertake Feasibility Studies to determine the economic potential of the deposits. Upon completion of a positive Feasibility Study, Blackham can elect to schedule the commencement of mining and processing of the ore reserves.- Blackham will commit to be the manager of the Joint Venture, which includes the predevelopment/mine setup, mining operations and processing the gold ore from the Wiluna West Gold Project through the Wiluna Gold Plant.- Once mining commences all costs will be shared in proportion to the JV ownership (BLK: 65%, GWR: 35%) with the bullion produced shared under the same ratio.GWR has recently completed additional resource definition drilling and is undertaking the necessary ancillary studies to facilitate mining approvals. The first planned deposits to be mined are Golden Monarch and Eagle/Emu. Further details are provided in GWR's ASX release dated 22 November 2018.To view figures, please visit:About Wiluna Mining Corporation Ltd Wiluna Mining Corporation (ASX:WMC) (OTCMKTS:WMXCF) is a Perth based, ASX listed gold mining company that controls over 1,600 square kilometres of the Yilgarn Craton in the Northern Goldfields of WA. The Yilgarn Craton has a historic and current gold endowment of over 380 million ounces, making it one of most prolific gold regions in the world. The Company owns 100% of the Wiluna Gold Operation which has a defined resource of 8.04M oz at 1.67 g/t au. In May 2019, a new highly skilled management team took control of the Company with a clear plan to leverage the Wiluna Gold Operation's multi-million-ounce potential. A leading yachtsman hopes that whoever buys his magnificent yacht Irelands de-facto national sail training vessel will continue her legacy of inspiring a new generation of mariners. Respected sail training instructor Oliver Hart, who runs Oysterhaven Marine in Cork, said there is an opportunity for the State to consider buying his 70ft steel schooner The Spirit of Oysterhaven which filled the vacuum left after the sinking of the former national sail training vessel, Asgard II, in the Bay of Biscay in 2008. It also featured each week in the late Derek Davis-presented Out of the Blue TV series. Mr Hart, who was on board for four of its six transatlantic voyages, said it was a difficult decision to put it up for sale. It would only take a modest investment from stakeholders in the maritime industry port authorities, shipping companies, the National Maritime College of Ireland and of course the Irish Naval service all of whom need to be encouraging marine participation among the young people they anticipate employing. For an island nation this should go without saying, he said. Designed by Frederick Parker and built in the Hamble in 1972, Spirit was fitted out in the style of an Edwardian classic gentlemans ocean-going yacht, featuring Burma teak panelling, walnut doors, teak and holly sole boards and burnished brass. Originally named Senouire, it was used for private cruising and charter, before changing hands. Mr Hart spotted it for sale in Kinsale in 1997, and it has been a key part of his operation ever since. Pic: Spirit of Oysterhaven website In her busiest year, when she completed a circumnavigation of Ireland, Spirit took as many trainees on board as Asgard did in a season, he said. The voyage programme, which was developed under the auspices of Sail Training Ireland and with the support of many port authorities around the country, encouraged the participation of disadvantaged or marginalised groups of young people in a life-changing and affirming experience. The success of the enterprise demonstrated how such a cost-effective regional model of sail training operation could be replicated around the country. Oliver Hart at the helm Mr Hart said she is fast, responsive and competitive in her class having sailed in Antigua Classic Regattas in the Caribbean and Tall Ships Regattas in the Mediterranean, with her long keel and 50 tons displacement providing stability and speed in wild Atlantic waves. Buyers will need 345,000 (ex Vat) to buy her and a chunk of savings to keep her afloat. She is on the hard in Varadero Do Xufre in Galicia, Spain, for viewings, by appointment only, ahead of test sails next spring. Staffing levels at the countrys six Sexual Assault Treatment Units are scandalous according to the CEO of Dublins Rape Crisis Centre. Noeline Blackwell told Newstalk Breakfast that frequently the largest unit at Dublins Rotunda Hospital, which covers one third of the country, cannot operate at weekends because of a lack of staff. In one case a victim of sexual assault in Dublin had to wait five hours for examination at the unit in Mullingar during which time she could not wash, eat, drink or use a bathroom. The staffing problems come at a time when the countrys sexual assault units have seen a 20% increase in the number of people attending them since 2015. Ms Blackwell said the situation is now desperate and she is concerned that victims of sexual assault will not receive the care they need and that evidence needed for a trial will not be gathered. Forensic evidence is needed for trials. Think of the shock and trauma the victims have to go through. They report an assault to Gardai, they are taken seriously, but in order to take evidence they have to go to Mullingar in a squad car, or any car. She explained that the staffing of the sexual assault units is the responsibility of the HSE, but that there is a crisis in recruitment and retention. People need to be properly trained to take evidence and to deal with people in distress. Ms Blackwell said there are only six staff working full time in the six sexual assault units around the country. They need more part time staff on call. There are not enough of them. It takes a year to train a nurse in forensic care, she said. At present there is a group who commenced training last September, but they will not be qualified until late next September. For the moment were very stuck. Its a scandal. Dublin is the biggest city in the country and it cant give care to victims. There is always a danger that staff wont be available this weekend which will add to the horror of anyone who is assaulted. These crimes are intimate assaults and they require an intimate investigation. While theyre waiting they cant eat or drink. Its desperate. A Midleton man caught with child pornography has been given a two-year suspended jail sentence. Judge Sean O Donnabhain imposed the entirely suspended sentence on the accused man who pleaded guilty recently at Cork Circuit Criminal Court. Eric Tynan of 27 Forest Hill, Midleton, County Cork, admitted the offence of possession of the child pornography related to October 1 2015 at his home where he had 34 pornographic images of children on one laptop, four images on another laptop and two images on an iPhone. He also admitted that on the same date and place he did knowingly produce child pornography in respect of a single image on his phone where for he superimposed his face in an image of child pornography. Although the wording of that charge refers to production for the purpose of distribution, it was stressed yesterday at the sentencing hearing that there was no distribution. John Devlin barrister emphasised this point and the investigating officer, Det. Sergeant Sean Leahy agreed there was no distribution of any image. The detective said gardai obtained a warrant to search the defendants home three years ago and seized two laptops and a mobile phone. He said there were 34 grade-two images and six grade-one (the most serious grade of images) on one computer. There were four category-two images on the second computer. The manipulated child pornographic image was on his phone. Det. Sgt. Leahy said the accused man was otherwise of good character and had no previous convictions of any kind and had not come to the attention of gardai since this case was investigated. Harry, 13, and Molly Flynn, 11, are the best big brother and sister in the country - they helped their younger sister Isabelle, aged seven, who was told she would never walk, to not only crawl, but to dance too. The pair has also saved their sister's life a number of times. "Isabelle has a condition called apnoea (as well as cerebral palsy), where she stops breathing during the day and night, and the first time it ever happened was when she was first born, and I was holding her and feeding her her bottle in the sitting room and she just started crying and then she just stopped and I noticed her lips were going blue. "I had been in the Red Cross for a while so I knew she wasn't breathing so I tapped her on the foot to try and wake her up, so then I blew into her mouth, which made her have enough oxygen to regain her colour in her mouth again," explains Harry, who was only six at the time. Congratulations to our five CarePlus Young Carers of the Year 2018!! Well done to Sean Ryan (Leinster), Harry & Molly Flynn (Munster), Alanna Connolly (Connacht/Ulster) and Shauna Tighe (Dublin)!! pic.twitter.com/c18VV91N5b Family Carers Ireland (@CarersIreland) November 23, 2018 Harry and his sister Molly have been awarded the CarePlus Young Carer of the Year Award. Molly wants to tell any other brother or sister, who might worry about their sibling, that helping someone is fun. "I was in the hall and I was trying to play a game with Isabelle and I said: 'I'm going to try and get her to crawl,' and me and Harry went crawling down the hall, and Isabelle went following us. "And I helped her dance and sing," says Molly, "and I helped her eat and talk properly," adds Harry, who both say simultaneously that "it's fun" helping Isabelle. "It's not hard to save lives, anyone can do it too," says Harry. "It's not scary you just do it and that's it," adds Molly. Meanwhile, Brenda O'Connell-Barry from Charleville, who was featured in today's Irish Examiner, won the overall CarePlus Carer of the Year Award. Brenda and her husband Trevor care for their 4-year-old son Fionn, who has an extremely rare genetic condition, called NACC1. Fionn is the only known person in Europe with the condition. Congratulations to Cork's Brenda O'Connell Barry who is the overall winner of the @CarePlusIreland Carer of the Year Awards 2018!! Brenda cares for her son Fionn who has very complex medical needs and a life limiting illness. pic.twitter.com/cSQs16pPXH Family Carers Ireland (@CarersIreland) November 23, 2018 "I compare it to like someone being at war, you know like soldiers the way they get post-traumatic stress? That's what it feels like. "Sometimes he can scream for nine days constantly, day and night, and we'll just be taking turns trying to see how long can you last and take a little break and come back to it again and see if you can comfort him and sometimes you can't comfort him, you just have to hold him and rock him," explains Brenda. However, despite her son's condition, she still has to fight for State support - something she hopes to change now that she has won the award. As the Sweat in Sir Henrys marks 30 years, author Lisa McInerney recalls the fun of her formative years in the legendary Cork club LANDED in Cork a month after Id turned 17. Id only gone and done something stupid: the Leaving Cert at 16. UCC apparently liked the cut of my jib, and Cork was the obvious choice for me, anyway. I had cousins in Carrigaline and had spent parts of my childhood summers arsing around Mountrivers, so if I got up to no good there was an aunt 10 miles down the road to catch me by the ear. This was important, because the Freshers Ball that year was held in Sir Henrys, and sure that was it, I was lost to decent society forever. I missed Henrys mid-90s glory days. I turned 18 just before the millennium, so I experienced what youd call Henrys swan song. That first Freshers Ball was in 1998 and Im almost sure Whipping Boy played, though I can find no confirmation online nor in the excruciating journals I used to keep. After the rockers rocked off, the beats began proper, and I thought, Im home. This was around the time that dance culture had reached saturation point, so its not as if I hadnt heard house music till I went along to Sweat. Ministry of Sound compilation CDs were sold in Virgin Megastore in Queens Old Castle for a steep twenty pounds, there was a Mixmag or a Muzik magazine every couple of weeks, Deleriums Silence hit No 1 and Johnny Moy was the coolest man in Ireland. Everyone was going to Ibiza for the summer to contract something horrible at a foam party. Yokes were still yokes and not head-splitting chemical abominations designed by flinging a handful of alphabet magnets to a fridge door. On the stereo at my desk on Highfield Avenue I had a choice between Radio Friendly and Kiss FM Radio Friendly being the connoisseurs choice and Kiss the boy racers. I had a tank top with a diamante Cream logo on the front. The counterculture had become pure commercial. Though the dance scene was rooted in youth culture, anti-establishment display and festive socialism, it was a substantial movement so it couldnt help but attract entrepreneurs, and egos, and as its stature grew, so did the cover fees. That dance music was crossing a threshold into the mainstream wasnt lost on any of us and Im pretty sure we knew we were losing more than we were set to gain. Not that Henrys was prohibitively expensive, or in any way mercenary. In terms of status, wed proudly state it was up there with Berlin nightclub Berghain. Henrys felt like dance culture done right it felt like dance culture done right up to the night it closed its doors, which was maybe why it closed its doors. Not pure commercial, just pure. Too pure for this world, to use a cliche. I didnt get to go to Henrys half as much as I wanted to. There was the age problem, for a start, though I was good at looking cool yet unthreatening and usually found a way past the bouncers. There was also that aforementioned purity: Henrys was all about debauchery and not at all interested in decadence and if you were the kind of reveller who couldnt stand condensation, Carling XL or air-chewing, shirtless wonders giving it absolute welly on the floor, youd be wondering why you couldnt go somewhere nice instead. Like Gorbys. Or Club FX. On this issue I very much stood alone. My pals were mostly other students from West Cork and Kerry, and they didnt have any interest in yokes, Romanthony, or making friends in toilets with wild-eyed young wans wearing combats. They didnt know why youd go clubbing if you couldnt wear heels and theyd ask what was the point in getting all dolled up only to be trod, dripped or sweated on in some cowshed on South Main St. My love for the place was fervent and, to the girls from West Cork and Kerry, off-putting. I tricked people into it, but usually they werent tricked twice. They just didnt get it the way I did. Im still very sore about it. CLAIM TO FAME Lisa McInerney in 1999, when she mixed college with clubbing in Cork. As far as I was concerned, Henrys was always worth it. You never came away from the place without a story. I recall meeting a fella from Waterford who couldnt find his way out at the end of the night. I escorted him through the Annex and in impassioned gratitude he pulled out a nodge from his sock and closed my hand around it. I fell down those death-trap stairs to the Back Bar and only when I was a jumble of sticky limbs on the floor did the bouncer stationed at the bottom say, Watch your step, without turning around. I met a boyfriend there, a lunatic from Kilkenny whose pulling ploy was to get me to hold his Carling XL while he went to the toilet. His claim to fame was throwing a bottle of water in his own face in an MTV Ibiza broadcast, so obviously I was very impressed. I met another fella there who swore blind Judge Jules was his half-brother, came home with us, stole a tea-towel from the kitchen and tried to offer it to the girls in a gaff five doors down in exchange for a fag. He was from Bishopstown and absolutely on the wrong kind of drugs. These are only pixels of a bigger picture. They fall far short of illustrating the importance of Sir Henrys in terms of Cork Citys character, at least in the way that character made itself known to kids like me, on the cusp of adulthood and therefore the cusp of selfhood, figuring out our place in a changing Ireland. In Henrys you were naturally one of a swell and not some awkward langer desperately and conspicuously trying to fit in. Cork City was a richer place for Sir Henrys. Having a club like this, dedicated to a specific aspect of subculture, a specific genre of music and a specific expression of identity, made Cork feel more welcoming, more accepting of difference. This was a city bursting with life, boisterous, permissive and a small bit mad. Social conservatives will likely disagree, but the popularity of empathogens particularly MDMA had a profound affect on society in the 80s and 90s. The rise in recreational drug use meant a rise in government-issued woe betides and sensationalist claims. The sheer numbers of people partaking in a yoke or two of a Saturday night was its own remonstrance, which meant a lack of faith in government directives and traditional wisdom for a significant proportion of my generation. Fellow clubbers were easily befriended, and even connections forgotten about in the cold light of day had a cumulative effect on the clubber; we were all the same; the revellers were levellers. Most of the clubbers I knew were open-minded, adherent to a live- and-let-live approach. We could argue whether this was down to the prevalence of empathogens or the hedonistic atmosphere in the clubs, but each strand is knotted to the other. Then there was the sense of connection to the citys recent past. Half of Cork wanted you to know that they remembered Sir Henrys when it was but a biker bar, or that they were there for the Sonic Youth/Nirvana double bill. There was a time there you couldnt have a simple night on the tear without ending up in a heart-to-heart with someone who once shifted your grandmother. To be a regular in Henrys, or even in regular proximity to Henrys, became a kind of shorthand for being of the rebel city; for a time it felt like this was a club that could be passed down from mother to daughter. But it wasnt to be. I left Cork in the year 2000, deferring the third year of my degree so I could figure out what in the name of God I was going to do with it, and returned to Galway, where I met a Corkman. It turned out he remembered Henrys when it was a biker bar; it was love at first bluster. END OF AN ERA Luke OBriens picture shows the DJ box in Sir Henrys, which was located above the bar. Being in Galway, we were caught by surprise when Henrys closed. We had taken it for granted that itd still be there when we returned. There were plenty of ways to make do in its absence. We came back in 2007 and reconnected with friends, all of whom still seemed to be DJs. The lads ran a couple of independent club nights. They were dynamite on the decks and tireless promoters, but breaking even wasnt couldnt be expected. The ravers who came to the gigs were the most winsome hedonists you could ever hope to meet; there just werent enough of them. Cork had moved on. Its hard to say why, except that this is what happens with culture, and whats resonating today could fade to silence by tomorrow. No cultural movement is separate from the society; its the wider world that feeds, indulges and tires of it. A night out became prohibitively expensive, particularly during the crash. The drugs werent as good, though admittedly its an important milestone in raverhood that once you hit thirty you start telling anyone wholl listen that the drugs arent as good. People got tired of partying in cowsheds. Those who were regulars at Henrys are in their 30s, 40s and 50s now and are in need of comfortable seating with lumbar support. Carling XL is no longer on the market. Pity. I remember it being palatable gatt, though I was 17 and usually extremely thirsty and therefore probably not the best judge. Dance music (not that EDM abomination, thank you very much) is in fine fettle. Its just that the setting in which we partake of it has changed, become glossier, savvier, more decadent and, I suspect, less debauched. Ive moved on. Im far too busy these days to risk falling to two-day hangovers. When I talk about culture now Im usually expected to stick to literature. When I talk about counterculture Im probably going on about transgressive fiction and Hubert Selby Jr. Our only child is almost 17 and has no interest at all in hedonism, being of the age of social media and its associated self-surveillance. I am certainly pleased that we didnt have camera phones when I was churning around the floor in the main room, my jaw doing the parallel mambo as my butterfly clips slid off my head. My life is considerably tamer, as is right and proper. On occasion I stick on a mix or go through my old Henrys flyers, which used to be Blu Tacked to my bedroom door. But theres residue. I see it most obviously in the currents that run through my fiction; I always seem to be writing about Corkonians who know their own minds and who have strong senses of rhythm, whose politics, like my own, are shaped by early morning declarations at after-parties on the Northside. I say I was born in Galway but made in Cork and when I say I was made in Cork I mean informed by a very particular translation of the place and encouraged to look at my country from a very particular angle. Its all about the places you find a home in when youre 17, isnt it? The small histories you were lucky enough to be part of. The pictures on this page of Sir Henrys in the late 1990s are by Luke OBrien, and come from an exhibition at the BDSM bar on North Main St, Cork. They can also be seen via OBriens Facebook page: lukesphotographycork Sweat: A little bit of history Peoples Republic of Cork spoof character Tommy Mitsu mourns the end of Sweat at the door of Sir Henrys. Sorting out Cork people for ages... Im afraid I bought a Carlow reg BMW in a moment of weakness. The price was nice and low and I thought it was fantastic value until I arrived back in Blackrock and no one would talk to me. (I was actually asked to stop driving into Cork Constitution RFC in my shit car.) I dont want to be too harsh on Carlow, but the place is a dump and nothing good ever came out of it except maybe Kathryn Thomas. (The bikinis she used to wear on No Frontiers, happy days.) Anyway, would it be alright if I just removed the W from the CW on my licence plate? Martin, Ballintemple, Im getting sick of my own company. Im not surprised. I asked my Posh Cousin, whats the story with driving a car from one of the not-Cork counties. She said my main advice would be never drive a car with a Kerry reg. I said why? She said its impossible to get the smell of goat out of the back seat. My daughter is planning to disgrace our family. She wants to stand on Oliver Plunkett St on Saturday in her underwear, with this is not consent written all over her body. Ive no problem with this as such, but she is refusing to wear Brown Thomas knickers. (Imagine.) In fact, she is insisting on wearing Penneys knickers to show that she is no better than women from the northside. (Imagine.) This public display of solidarity with the less well-off is more than enough to get me kicked out of the WhatsApp group, Douglas Women Who Know What you Earn. What would you advise, to spare our family looking poor? Monica, Douglas, I was thinking of standing next to her in a fur coat. Fantastic idea. If nothing else, it will get you into the Out and About section in next weeks Examiner. My aunt is Corks leading expert on tasteful boasting. (Shes from the Model Farm Road.) I said, is there anything worse than standing on Oliver Plunkett St in cheap knickers? She said there is and its standing on Oliver Plunkett St in no knickers. I said stop right there, Im getting flashbacks of my hen. (Im basically a different person after the 16th rum and Coke.) Im a qualified sex therapist, practising in Kinsale. (The phone never stops ringing.) I genuinely dont mind telling you that Im one of the richest people in Munster, nothing in my living room cost less than five grand, except for the au pair, when I let her in to do the bit of cleaning. My problem is Ive started fantasising about a client, a local mechanic with erectile dysfunction. I realise this is highly inappropriate, because he obviously didnt go to Pres. Is there anything to be said for a quick bang-bang just to get him out of my system? Tanya, Kinsale, Ive no way of telling if he fancies me. Aint that the truth. Sorry now, but fantasising about a man with erectile dysfunction is extremely deviant, even for Kinsale. I mean, Id say something if he was rich. (Such as, Why dont you whisk me off to Paris, Ill drink loads of champagne and ignore the fact that youre Frankie Flaccid?) I was sitting in the dentists the other day when I spotted something called the Evening Echo. (I believe its read by people who work with their hands.) I was amazed to see a headline saying that Ballincollig and Carrigaline have been identified as burglary hotspots. Far be it from me to lecture the criminal classes, but why are they trying to nick stuff from people with nothing? Sorry if this makes me sound like a snob, but Ballincollig and Carrigaline are shorthand for fur coat and no knickers. Its time someone told the robbing fraternity there is no point trying to steal from the nouveau riche. Could you pass that on to them? Noelle, Lee Road. My Conors sister is in the Guards. I said, I need to get a message to the criminals. She said, dont you know any yourself? I said no, Ive never even met someone involved in white collar crime. She said, I thought you lived in Ballinlough! (We like our flights to Jersey in fairness.) Hello old stock. Theyre organising the Christmas party here in work and HR called me in for a little chat. Basically, Im not allowed to bring my best friend Hoggy as my plus 1, after a misunderstanding at last years event. (One or two of the chicky babes completely misinterpreted his Full Monty.) Ive come up with an ingenious solution. This year, Hoggy can go as Hannibal Lecter tied to a hand-trolley and Ill feed him the bevvys through a straw. Do you think HR will go for it? Reggie, Blackrock. Ive heard some terrible ideas in my time. (I worked as a PR consultant for the Patricks Street Traffic Ban.) But your Hoggy plan is about as likely to work as a hospital consultant over Christmas. Meghan may have had surgery to remove her bony bumps but before you go under the knife there are simpler and cheaper options to consider, writes Deirdre Reynolds. SHE may have the world at her feet, but it seems even Meghan Markle cant escape bunions. Rumours are afoot that the Duchess of the Sussex may have gone under the knife in pursuit of perfect feet. Mum-to-be Meghan ditched her Manolos to go barefoot at a traditional Maori ceremony in New Zealand earlier this month. And a tiny scar on the 37-year-olds pedicured left foot didnt go unnoticed by experts. Meghans scar is 100% due to open bunion surgery, claims Kumar Kunasingam, consultant trauma and orthopaedic surgeon for BMI Shirley Oaks Hospital in Surrey. Harry and Meghan during their royal trip to Fraser Island, Queensland last month. Picture: Kirsty Wigglesworth Its nice that Meghan can humanise the condition and show even royalty can get them. Otherwise people suffer in silence and it can be debilitating both physically and mentally. With a designer shoe collection to make Carrie Bradshaw weep, already the Markle effect has seen a pair of 287 Stella McCartney sneakers and 216 Sarah Flint sandals worn by the royal influencer sell out. The Markle Sparkle could trigger a rise in so-called Cinderella surgery among women too. Contrary to popular belief, wearing skyscrapers doesnt necessarily cause the conditions, but can exacerbate them, while surgical advancements mean women no longer have to hang up their heels afterwards either. Our approach to bunion surgery is to maintain flexibility of the big toe joint as this allows patients to wear a wider range of shoes, explains consultant podiatric surgeon Claire OKane. 86% of patients can return to wearing high heels following surgery. In the past, the big toe joint was often fused in order to correct the bunion which may limit the height [of heel] that the patient could wear. The biggest advancement has been the development of internal fixation (screws), which means that patients do not need to be put in plaster of paris after surgery. Patients need to rest for two weeks, but most can return to driving and wearing runner-type shoes after this. Botox to stop the feet from sweating and swelling and plumping fillers to prevent pain in the balls of the feet are among the more extreme options for dancing queens this party season. Simply stuffing the toe of your shoe with cotton wool, removing it later on in the night when your feet start to swell, is perhaps a less eye-watering and cheaper trick of the trade. It could certainly explain why expectant mum Meghan appeared to be wearing a pair of navy Manolo Blahniks that were too big for her at Princess Eugenies wedding recently. After developing a bunion, London-based businesswoman Lisa Kay went one step further, creating Sole Bliss (solebliss.com), a range of footwear especially for ladies with bunions and wide feet. Women with bunions can wear heels if they wear the right type, she advises. Get rid of the shoes you know are too narrow and cut across painful foot joints, instead opting for styles that offer a lot of room at the front of the shoe so that your bunions can breathe. All of our shoes are cut high up on the topline to avoid aggravating painful joints, and they all have a deceptively wide and deep toe box for maximum comfort, whilst still holding the heel in place securely. The demand from Ireland has been phenomenal. We have everything from young women in their early 20s who have already developed bunions through to more mature ladies who are looking for something elegant to wear to their grandchildrens weddings. With LBD season well and truly under way, elsewhere at Achilles Foot Clinic in Cork, corns, calluses and ingrown toenails are some of the most common complaints among heel-loving ladies. Yet brogues, ankle boots, and ballet flats are equally on-trend this season, with Kendall Jenner and Bella and Gigi Hadid all stepping out in flats lately. Inspired by the ongoing athleisure phenomenon, sales of high heels fell 12%, according to US market researchers the NPD Group, while womens sneaker sales went up by 37%. Footwear is a huge factor [in foot health], says podiatrist Lorcan ODonaile (achillesclinic.ie). Women tend to prioritise, understandably, fashion over comfort, and that doesnt always play out well in the long term. At the same time, were realistic with patients we dont expect them to wear runners all the time, so what we do is we compromise. Short term, we get them to wear footwear that gives [the foot a chance to recover]; once we get them educated on what to do long-term, theres no reason why people cant go back to wearing fashionable shoes. The key thing is to make sure the sizing is appropriate, he advises. And replace your footwear when it gets worn. When youre cutting your toenails, follow the curve of the nail like you would with your fingernails, rather than cutting them straight across. At home, regularly scrubbing and moisturising is the secret to doing your best Strictly impression on the dancefloor this Christmas, according to Emma Murphy of Polish Hand and Foot Spa in Dublin (polishspa.ie). Our most popular foot treatment is the OPI Pedicure (50), which includes hard skin removal, scrub, and a massage, says the beauty therapist. If somebody has corns, bunions, or specific areas of hard skin, then wed recommend the callus peel pedicure (65) or MediPedi (90). Usually when somebody comes in getting a pedicure, we assess why they have hard skin in the first place. It could be genetic, [that they] have areas of bone that create friction in their shoes, no matter what shoes they wear, or they could be wearing the wrong footwear or on their feet all day. If youre looking for an effective treatment, the important thing is to have hard skin removed, good cuticle work, [with] the cuticles pushed back and clipped, and a perfect paint. When youre doing your own treatments at home, I would recommend using a nice scrub and particularly a moisturiser. I wouldnt recommend hard skin removal using a pumice or a file yourself at home because a lot of times you can create a problem if youre filing an area that doesnt need to be filed it stimulates hard skin to grow. Above all ODonaile urged fashionistas to put their best foot forward this winter. One of the best things to do is to maintain your general health, he explains. Put on good footwear, get out, keep mobile and flexible. Do yoga, do Tai Chi, do dancing, but if something is troubling you, or youre at all concerned, go and see your local podiatrist. It doesnt mean you cant wear nice shoes of course you can. Our goal, at the end of the day, is to help patients have a quality of life, and part of that is that they look nice and feel nice. BODY & SOUL: FIVE OF THE BEST FOOT-FRIENDLY HEELS 1. Evans Extra Wide Fit Black Sequin Heel Sandals, 40 2. Sole Bliss Brooke Red Ankle Boots, 225 3. Joe Browns Dance til Dawn Velvet Slingbacks, 53.95 4. Dorothy Perkins Wide Fit Sequin Block Heel Sandals, 35 The shopping habit Irish shopping habits are changing, bringing value for some and penury for others, writes Rita de Brun IRELAND was once a nation of saints and scholars. Today its a land of spenders and shoppers with online shopping increasing fivefold since 2007, while accounting for 5bn of our spending last year. For most, shopping brings a pleasant, feelgood thrill, one we enjoy whenever we indulge. For others misers aside spending brings a compulsive buzz; one thats hard to shake off and harder still to admit. The psychology behind spending is complex. Research published this year by Northwestern Universitys Kellogg School illustrates the impact of lighting on consumer choice. In dim light were likely to choose the more self-indulgent consumer options; the ones that bring us most pleasure. While the closets of shopping addicts are usually crammed to over-flowing, thats precisely the place in which many guilt-ridden over-shoppers hide, rather than seeking help for their out-of-control spending. For them, their shopping habit is cloaked in secrecy. Describing some of the more common triggers for shopping addiction, chartered counselling psychologist, Dr Colin ODriscoll, reveals it can be linked to stress, difficult relationships, and chronically low self-esteem. Asked how prevalent a problem it is in Ireland, he replies: We dont have figures, but I know from my work and anecdotally, that its rocketing here. Often these shoppers seek help only when family or employers discover the debts, confront them about their spending and insist they call a halt to it. Explaining the chemical drive behind a shopping compulsion he says: The spending spree brings a dopamine high. With that, theres a craving for a sense of well-being. But after the buzz comes a fall, a come down that can be hard to manage. Happily, for most, shopping is in no way harrowing, being either a joy at best, or a necessarily evil at worst. At his Cork-based shop, Pinocchios Toys and Gifts, Wyon Stansfeld sees the whole gamut. At Christmas, panicked shoppers are often the ones who, the previous year, were entirely organised by October, he says. Describing how he recognises their panic, he reveals: The facial expression resembles that of a rabbit caught in the headlights. When I see that look, I know they need advice. Husband and wife team Wyon and Christel Stansfeld in their shop Pinocchio Toys and Gifts While toy shopping might do that to an adult, men scouting for intimate apparel for their women need little advice according to Susan Hunter who runs a lingerie shop that bears her name, off Dublins Grafton St. Men are savvy shoppers, she says. Before going shopping, some take a photo of their partners undergarment in a drawer. That way they cant forget the size. With the vital statistics to hand, bolder males let loose in a lingerie store might be tempted to buy the garments of their choice, but Hunter says they dont, that they buy with the womans preferences in mind. When I wonder whether this classy ladys presence in her store keeps the shopping choices of her wilder and bolder male customers in check when it comes to buying intimate apparel for a lover, she sets me straight: Men tend to be classical in their taste. They go for beauty. While they may select a silk bra and matching briefs for a partner, women are more likely to buy the reds and the slightly sexy stuff. As for the female approach to buying boozy gifts for men, Julian Alubaidy of Bubble Brothers wine merchants in Cork is an expert. Wives shop, knowing that the husband likes to drink a particular thing, he says. For them, only that particular thing will do. Julian Alubaidy of Bubble Brothers wine merchants. Even so, not all are forthright enough to come out and say what they want: Some are vague as to what they want to buy. Some have a hidden agenda. Its up to me to find out what that is. Im intrigued, so he continues: Some might want to buy a Chateauneuf-du-Pape or another expensive bottle, but they wont say that. They want me to suggest the purchase to them. While that somewhat puzzling dynamic doesnt perturb Alubaidy in the least, some shopping habits cause him concern: Pre-Christmas, we see lots of poor old folk spending an awful lot of money buying one of our best cases of wine as a gift for their doctors and consultants, who Im sure, do wonderful work. Even so, the presents going out to hospitals and clinics are pretty eye-watering, as is the related expense. Given that eye-watering expense is something with which most consumers are all too familiar, it makes sense to shop smart. To do that, Susan Hunter believes women could learn a lot from their menfolk. When men see what they want, they buy it, she says. They make an immediate decision and go for it; 99% of the time, they make the perfect choice. Thats because the first instinct is usually correct. In his 2015 book Faith versus Fact, the biologist and polemicist Jerry Coyne launched one of his many attacks on religion in the name of science: science and religion, he wrote, are incompatible in precisely the same way and in the same sense that rationality is incompatible with irrationality. These sorts of generalities have been quite common down the years, often reinforced by references to the condemnation of Galileo by the Roman Catholic Church in 1633 or the altercation in Oxford in 1860 between T H Huxley and bishop Samuel Wilberforce over evolution. These sorts of statement can also have repercussions in public life. On September 16 2008, Professor Michael Reiss, an evolutionary biologist, resigned as director of education for the Royal Society. What brought about his removal were observations hed made about how science teachers should treat questions about origins in schools. He is reported to have said: Creationism is best seen by scientists not as a misconception, but as a world view. Shortly before Reiss turned in his resignation, the Nobel Prize winner Sir Richard Roberts had written to the president of the Royal Society, Sir Martin Rees, demanding that Professor Reiss step down, or be asked to step down, as soon as possible. We gather Professor Reiss is a clergyman, which in itself is very worrisome, the letter went on: Who on earth thought that he would be an appropriate Director of Education, who could be expected to answer questions about the differences between science and religion in a scientific, reasoned way? Commenting on the whole episode in the New Scientist, Sir Harold Kroto, another Nobel laureate, observed: There is no way that an ordained minister for whom unverified dogma must represent a major, if not the major, pillar in their lives can present free-thinking, doubt-based scientific philosophy honestly or disinterestedly. Complications Enshrined in these assertions is the assumption that science and religion are inescapably at war. And yet we must ask whether this assumption can possibly do justice to the great diversity of ways in which the relations between science and religion have been understood. There are many sciences, many religions. A scientific innovation problematic for one religious tradition may be irrelevant to another. One science may pose a threat to religious beliefs when other sciences do not. Arguing for an essential conflict between science and religion fails because, as the philosopher John Gray has written, terms such as religion and atheism have no essence. Clerks studying astronomy and geometry. Wikimedia Commons The sciences may sometimes provide answers to questions once asked within the faith traditions but they also leave space for religious enquiry and commitment. How do we prioritise competing scientific research projects? With limited resources we must ask what is more important for humankind. But these are not scientific questions as the historian Noah Yuval Harari identifies in his best-seller Sapiens, only religions and ideologies seek to answer them: Scientific research can flourish only in alliance with some religion or ideology. Because science and religion can complement one another as well as come into conflict, the story of their interrelations is complex. Flash points and trading zones Looking back over history, we certainly find many occasions when science and religion have been in conflict. Call these flash points. Among these is the rejection of miracles by those convinced that nature is bound by unbreakable natural laws. Or the denial of human freedom by those who see the human mind as nothing more than the workings of brain chemistry. In the early 17th century some Catholics found new theories of matter disturbing because of the challenges they posed to their understanding of the Eucharist. For some Jews, the ban on astrology between 200AD and 500AD stifled astronomical inquiry. For biblical literalists, Darwinian evolution routinely provokes an oppositional stance. On the other hand, we can identify many points of conciliation and enrichment. Think of these as trading zones. Take the biblical idea that all humankind is descended from a single source. This belief inspired the search for the beginnings of human language and for the routes by which early humans diffused across the globe. In the 17th century, scientific instruments such as the telescope and microscope were conceived as ways of reversing the effects of Adams fall from grace. Scientific methods and instruments were devised as a means for ameliorating the damage to human cognitive powers and sensory apparatus believed to have been brought about by human sinfulness. Or consider the whole matter of design in the world. This idea was fundamental to the development of the science of ecology. Key early works of natural history which stressed the intimate connections between organisms and their environments were motivated in good part by a belief that God had fitted animals and plants to the environmental regimes in which they were located. A 40-foot telescope constructed by W Herschel. Wellcome Collection, CC BY In our own day, there may well be benefits to be derived from a dialogue between theological anthropology and those advocating transhumanism. New technological possibilities are raising profound questions about what it means to be human, a subject on which theologians have had much to say. At the very least, theology might prove to be a useful conversational partner in articulating values by which to adjudicate among the human capacities that might be prioritised for enhancement. The survival of religion With their different sources of authority, the potential for tension, divergence, even animosity between representatives of scientific and religious communities will always be there. But tension, divergence, animosity even conflict are not the same as inevitable warfare. Many religious people have been indifferent to science. Many scientists have experienced alienation from religion. Mutual suspicion is not uncommon. But, again, indifference, alienation and suspicion are not the same as warfare. The very words science and religion have undergone profound changes of meaning. Not until the second half of the 19th century did science become a convenient umbrella to capture an expanding range of specialised empirical enquiries, supposedly but not always actually united by a common scientific method. Can religions survive in technological societies? They already have and for an important reason. They confer identity and seek to find meaning in events, to interpret the universe, not primarily to explain it. As Terry Eagleton memorably put it: The blunder of believing that religion is a botched attempt to explain the world is like seeing ballet as a botched attempt to run for a bus. This article was written by David N Livingstone of Queen's University Belfast and John Hedley Brooke of the University of Oxford and was originally published on The Conversation Read the original article here. Deepfake technology means video can be fabricated of anyone doing and saying anything, write Michael Chertoff and Eileen Donahoe The election interference tactics originally deployed by Russia against the US and Europe are now global. Hackers across the democratic world have exploited weaknesses in campaign email servers, probed electronic voting machines for vulnerabilities, set up troll farms to spread highly partisan narratives, and employed armies of bots to distort the truth online. Tech experts in countries such as Iran and Venezuela have borrowed these tactics and joined efforts toward the same goals: To erode confidence in electoral processes and in democratic governance. Aggressive monitoring by social media companies blunted some of the disinformation campaigns ahead of the recent, congressional midterm election. But these disinformation tactics are just the beginning of global vote-meddling. As we look to the future especially the 2020 US presidential election there will be a far more dangerous interference tool, one that will be available not only to malign governments, but individual actors: Deepfake video. Deepfake technology will enable users anywhere to fabricate video of anyone, doing and saying anything. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), the technology allows users to combine and super-impose images onto existing source video. It lets them go a step beyond the crude technique, first seen on Reddit, of making it seem that celebrities had appeared in porn movies, by placing images of their heads onto the bodies of adult film actors, allowing them to make convincing facial and voice manipulations. Currently, a credible deepfake video is not easy to make, and only a few countries have both the advanced technology and the specialists. However, video- and audio-manipulation technology is progressing quickly and becoming easier to use, thereby giving less tech-savvy actors access to deepfake tools. By the next US presidential election, these tools will likely have become so widespread that anyone with a little technical knowledge will from the comfort of their home be able to make a video of any person, doing and saying whatever they want. Deepfake videos have the potential to do tremendous harm. If they can be easily fabricated to show candidates making inflammatory statements or simply looking inept, civic discourse will further degrade and public trust will plummet to new depths. Deepfake technology could take a bogus conspiracy theory like Pizzagate, which falsely claimed that a Washington DC pizzeria was the centre of a child sex ring operated by Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman and make it appear even more credible, confusing the media and voters alike and sowing further discord among political parties, constituents, and even families. This means deepfakes could transform not just election interference, but politics and geopolitics. There are several measures that everyone who cares about democracy should take to prepare for this next wave of disinformation and election interference. First, we must use AI to identify and stop deepfake videos, before they spread. AI can use machine-learning classifiers (similar to those used to detect spam emails) to sniff out imperfections in manipulated video invisible to the human eye. It can detect otherwise invisible watermarking algorithms and meta-data built into authentic video, but tell machines whether the video has been tampered with. Governments and tech companies need to work together to develop this detection technology and make it widely available. Second, social media and digital information companies in the private sector should turn their R&D fire on to this threat, before it spirals out of control on their own platforms. Facebook has recently built a machine-learning model to detect potentially fake material, which it then sends to fact-checkers, who use a variety of techniques to verify the content. All social media platforms should embrace this challenge and treat it as a shared public-interest priority. However, even action from social media companies will not be enough to contain deepfakes. Everyone working on election integrity has a responsibility to educate the public about the existence of these fraudulent videos and how to spot them and prevent them from spreading. Without greater public awareness of the danger, deepfake technology has the potential to cause electoral chaos and geopolitical instability. Our leaders and innovators must get ahead of this new weapon. Developing detection technology and educating the public about deepfake disinformation must be priorities, if we hope to face down this threat to democracy. Michael Chertoff was US secretary of Homeland Security, 2005-2009. Eileen Donahoe is executive director at the Global Digital Policy Incubator, Stanford Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Both writers are members of the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity, which unites political, tech, media, and business leaders to tackle election interference across the democratic world. Up to than two thirds of cars in the UK are likely to be equipped with dashcams over coming months with a fifth (20%) of drivers already owning one while another half (51%) thinking about doing so, 16% seriously, according to an AA-Populus study.* Drivers have often found difficulty in submitting dash-cam evidence of poor or dangerous driving to local police forces although in 2016, North Wales Police launched its Operation Snap** dashcam video portal to accept such evidence. The scheme has seen a large number of fixed penalty notices, retraining courses and prosecutions take place as a direct result of this evidence and it has now been extended to cover the whole of Wales. However, only 2% of drivers say their prime reason for installing a dashcam is to record evidence of bad driving. Nevertheless, the success of the North Wales Police initiative suggests that if drivers happen to record a motoring offence, they are prepared to submit that evidence. The chief reason for dashcam ownership is concern about establishing liability in the event of a crash (60%), or to protect against cash-for-cash fraudsters (25%). Janet Connor, the AAs director of insurance says: Data is king in the event of a collision and dashcam footage provides proper, reliable evidence that can establish fault. Whats more, it can and, based on the Operation Snap evidence does, lead to prosecution of dangerous drivers. So government funding to enable police to analyse dashcam evidence submitted by the public, whether from a dash-cams, cyclists helmet-cams or smartphone footage is to be welcomed it helps to improve road safety and the North Wales police initiative suggests that it does. Similarly, dash-cam evidence submitted to insurance companies can be decisive in ensuring that fault can be properly attributed where otherwise, circumstantial evidence and witness statements may suggest a different outcome. On the Bikeability training suggestion, Conner says: Clearly any initiatives that improve road safety are welcome. The suggestion that cycle Bikeability training of drivers could offer an opportunity to discount car insurance is interesting and we need to study the detail to see whether it would have any meaningful impact on premiums. According to ABI figures, fewer than 0.1 motor claims involved cyclists last year. Car insurance is based the evidence of claims risk based on driving behaviours. Drivers who use dash-cams are already more likely to drive in a responsible manner and be more observant of all road users whether on two legs, two wheels or four. Thats because they know evidence from a dash-cam can be self-incriminating in the event of a collision. In a crash, police already routinely take dash-cam footage in the same way they check to see whether a mobile phone was being used at the time. If as a result of increased dash-cam use and better cycle awareness fewer claims are made, then premiums for everyone will come down. Reasons for buying a dashcam To use as evidence to prove fault in a possible collision is the overwhelming reason why people have bought one: 60% overall (60% men; 68% women); with similar results across all age groups and regions West Midlands drivers are most likely to be concerned about possible cash for crash fraud attempts (29%) compared with 25% overall. Women are also slightly more concerned about potential cash for crash attempts (26% saying this compared with 25% of men). Other reasons for buying a dashcam include: Reduce my insurance premiums (5%); because I like gadgets (1%); to record possible thieves or collisions while parked (3%) to record bad behaviour of other drivers and publish online (2%) Its not often trades unions and employers are equally worried about an issue threatening workers rights. But recently, the UKs Trades Union Congress and the main body that represents British businesses, the CBI, have both voiced concerns about the budding practice of implanting employees with microchips, writes Shainaz Firfiray. Initially, the chips are being used in place of ID cards as a way of opening secure doors. But theres good reason to think the use of implants could expand to more sinister purposes, giving employers much greater control over their workers and raising serious concerns over issues related to human dignity, ethics and health. Businesses often do need some way to monitor employees to be sure they are completing their work and how much they should be paid. But in recent years, weve seen some more extreme monitoring methods that push at the boundaries of personal privacy. These include surveillance of employee emails, wearable technology that can track employee movements, and radio tags on factory products that allow bosses to monitor how fast workers on an assembly line are operating. But implanting microchips in employees creates a new level of monitoring and control simply because workers cant easily remove them or turn them off. Microchip implants are typically the size of a grain of rice inserted under the skin between the thumb and the forefinger. They can allow people to enter buildings or use vending machines with just the swipe of their hand. Proponents say this makes life more convenient as employees dont have to carry ID badges or key fobs. Organisations that deal with sensitive information also say that such chips allow them to set restrictions on who can access this information. Not so innocuous Most companies using these chips present them in this fairly innocuous way and think the fear surrounding their use arises from misplaced suspicions. But too much monitoring can make employees feel spied on, damaging their productivity, creativity and motivation as well as their personal well-being. Some research also suggests that implanted chips are susceptible to security risks and increase the potential for identity theft given that it is relatively easy to hack a microchip implant. So employees could be subjected to something that actually threatens their personal security. Whats more, employers motivations for introducing chip implants are unlikely to be entirely altruistic. There is nothing to stop them from using the technology to track employees whereabouts or activities outside work. The chips can be reprogrammed while inside the body, modifying their use and purpose from what might have initially been agreed between the employer and the employee. And this ability to track an employees location without their knowledge raises serious ethical concerns regarding their right to privacy. Workers are increasingly monitored, tracked and surveilled. Vasin Lee/Shutterstock. Weve already seen how employers can use data ostensibly gathered for benign purposes to discriminate against workers. For example, personality tests designed to assess what job someone is most suited to have come under scrutiny for discriminating against people with mental health issues. Microchip implant data recording where employees go outside of work could be used to discriminate in similar ways. Even if implants are technically voluntary, its not hard to imagine situations where employees might feel pressured to accept the chips by their managers or warned of unfavourable consequences if they dont agree. Other increasingly intrusive forms of monitoring are already seen as an inescapable reality within many workplaces. For example, remote access to emails means some workers are expected to be on call at any time. This increases pressure on employees to work longer hours at the expense of their private lives, as well as creating another way for employers to track their activities. Employees who choose to opt-out of company monitoring programs can also suffer real financial costs. In 2013, a pharmacy company launched a controversial health-screening program that allegedly required employees to disclose personal information to their insurance provider and threatened to charge them US$600 a year if they refused. This kind of pressure can mentally condition workers to think that constant monitoring is the way forward. Health risks There is also limited information about the safety and health risks associated with the use of chip implants. As well as potential physical health risks, it is equally important for employers to understand the risks that microchip implants might pose to mental health. Employees receiving an implant might feel coerced to modify their usual behaviours because they know they are always being monitored and so experience high levels of stress and anxiety. Plus we dont know very much about what kind of surgical intervention might be required to safely remove a chip, especially if it moves away from its initial implant site. The good news is that in many developed countries, companies are expected to afford employees some level of privacy. In the EU, new data protection legislation (GDPR) means employers are expected to conduct privacy impact assessments when they engage in processes that represent a high risk to the rights of data subjects. Covert monitoring should only be carried out in exceptional cases when there is no other reasonable way to monitor employees. This means that due to the concerns about the risks to privacy as well as health and security posed by chip implants any attempt to introduce them on a larger scale would likely face strong legal challenges. But that probably wont stop some employers seeing what they can get away with at a time when its increasingly common to let private companies know almost everything about us. This article was written by Shainaz Firfiray of Warwick Business School, University of Warwick and was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article here. It is no wonder that a prison officer used a sworn affidavit to make his claims about the handling of deaths in custody, writes Special Correspondent Michael Clifford The claims of malpractice made by a prison officer published in the Irish Examiner over the last two days require serious consideration. This man is alleging that covert surveillance was carried out within the prison service without the attendant legal requirements. He claims that conversations between solicitors and prisoners were monitored, that private cars and prison service vehicles had tracking devices fitted in a covert manner. And he claims that much, if not all, of this was carried out by a rivate detective agency. In the Dail yesterday, Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan announced that he was asking the Inspector of Prisons, Patricia Gilheaney, to conduct a preliminary inquiry into the allegations about covert surveillance. Ms Gilheaney may have another matter to include in her examination, one that is close to her own office. This concerns contacts the prison officer had with her predecessor, the late Judge Michael Reilly, over a number of years. Today, the Irish Examiner publishes the prison officers claims that deaths in custody have not been handled properly. All of these claims are contend in the sworn affidavit furnished as part of an industrial dispute this man is engaged in with his employer. Frequently over the years, Judge Reilly raised concerns about the handling of deaths in custody. In August, the Irish Examiners Joe Leogue revealed that, in two thirds of the cases examined in Inspector of Prisons reports between 2012-2018, there had been shortcomings identified in investigations. The Irish Examiner report said: In his 2013/14 annual report, the late Judge Michael Reilly noted how one prison officer said that, in training, staff are told when it comes to report writing they are to keep it short and cover your arse. Last March, Judge Reillys successor, Helen Casey, published a report on the death of Prisoner A on January 3, 2017, in Cork Prison. Ms Caseys review of CCTV footage found that on the night he died, Prisoner A a 52-year-old married father serving a six-month term was left unchecked for more than the standard 15 minutes on six occasions, including one period that lasted one hour and 42 minutes. The records, however, stated that he was checked every 15 minutes. Ms Casey noted that the records provided to her by Cork Prison are misleading in content and that she would have accepted that staff had complied with protocol but for the CCTV footage viewed. That is the background against which the prison officer has revealed his concerns about deaths in custody. He claims that he met Judge Reilly on a number of occasions to discuss his concerns. The last alleged meeting occurred a few months before Judge Reillys death in November 2016. In all likelihood, Judge Reilly must have recorded the fact and the content of the meetings in his notes. In the ordinary course of events, any such notes would be retrievable in the inspectors office. These are issues that the current Inspector of Prisons could unearth with a minimum of fuss. Another element of the allegations could also be stood up in a preliminary form at least. A cursory examination of the internal accounts of the Irish Prison Service should establish if a private detective agency has been retained and for what purpose. For instance, the allegations would involve a considerable number of man (or woman) hours being dedicated to monitoring devices. That does not come cheap. If a large sum of money was paid out to any agency, it should be easy to establish whether the fees are accountable. The request by the Justice Minister for the Inspector of Prisons to investigate these matters is curious. The inspector has limited powers. This was demonstrated in the years that Judge Reilly occupied the office, in that there was no force of authority to ensure his recommendations were followed, or his concerns addressed. As such, it is unlikely that the inspector will be in a position to declare anything more than that the allegations have at least some prima facia evidence. For instance, a central feature of the prison officers claims is the retention of a private investigation company. The Inspector has no powers to compel a private citizen to answer questions or produce any documentation. The format in which the allegations were made is telling in this respect. The Irish Examiner understands that the prison officer was advised within the prison service that the route he should take was to make a protected disclosure. He rejected this idea on the basis that he had no confidence that a protected disclosure would be dealt with thoroughly or with any urgency. His concern is understandable. Just last week, another prison officer gave evidence in private to the Public Accounts Committee about what he alleges was unfair treatment after he made a protected disclosure. The prison service initially refused to classify his claims as a disclosure. Judge William Early upheld this mans appeal on the matter. In another entirely separate case last year, a protected disclosure was made about how a complaint of sexual harassment was handled, including the award of a financial settlement to a prison service employee. That disclosure was made in September last year but nothing was done about it until details were published in the Irish Examiner two months later. The matter was then handed to solicitors McCann Fitzgerald to investigate. Now, nearly a year later, the investigation is reportedly completed but no final report on the matter has yet been written. With a record like that for handling protected disclosures, is it any wonder that this prison officer used the legal mechanism of a sworn affidavit to make his claims? Also in 1847, Ottoman Sultan Abdulmecid I personally offered 10,000 in aid to Ireland, but British diplomats advised him that it would be offensive to offer more than Queen Victoria, who had only donated 2,000. It was suggested that he should donate 1,000. Genuine humanitarian efforts recognise no ethnic or religious divides. Why then is Ireland doing so little to address the suffering of the Yemeni people who are undergoing a similar famine caused by foreign aggressors? Up to 85,000 children under-five have starved to death in Yemen, yet Ireland and the international community have stood idly by and continue to support oil-rich Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE) who are perpetrating violence and famine on the Yemeni people. In February the UN Security Council renewed sanctions against Yemen exacerbating the famine, which is further exacerbated by a blockade enforced by Saudi Arabia and UAE, yet no sanctions have been imposed on main perpetrators, Saudi Arabia and UAR. Houthi rebels in Yemen are defending their people against internal corruption and external aggression, yet because they are Shia Muslims they are being attacked by their more powerful Sunni Muslim neighbours. The answer as to why the Irish Government is doing so little to help starving Yemeni people is probably that we do a lot of trade with Saudi Arabia and UAE and none with Yemen. Ireland is also complicit in these famine deaths by allowing US military to resupply Saudi munitions through Shannon airport. Edward Horgan Castletroy Limerick A new poll has revealed that it is unlikely that Donald Trump will face a serious threat from a Republican looking to take on the president in a primary election ahead of 2020. While Trump outlasted the rest of a crowded field to get the Republican nomination en route to the presidency in 2016, a poll from The Hill shows that any possible challenger Trump may face from within the GOP will be easily dealt with. Possible challengers to Trump from within his party include Ben Sasse and Jeff Flake, who are both vocal critics of the president. Flake recently opted not to seek re-election in Arizona while Sasse's term ends in 2020. Another who is being touted as a potential challenger is John Kasich, the Governor of Ohio. However, none of those three would come close to defeating Trump, according to this poll. Also in the poll was Nikki Haley, who announced her resignation as UN Ambassador last month. While she was a vocal critic of Trump during the 2016 election cycle, Three who performed better in the poll (but who are still a long way off reaching the general election ahead of Trump) are 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney (19%), his vice-president pick from six years ago, Paul Ryan (20%) and Ted Cruz (17%). 2020 National Republican Primary: Trump 69% (+50) Romney 19% . Trump 66% (+49) Cruz 17% . Trump 65% (+45) Ryan 20%@Harris_X_/@HillTVLive 11/16-17https://t.co/7dhSx1InPB Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) November 23, 2018 Of the three, Ryan performed best but the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who opted not to seek re-election this month so will leave the post at Christmas, is still 45 percentage points behind the president. After citing family reasons for not standing for election in 2018, it is unlikely that Ryan will jump straight back into politics immediately. Romney was just elected into the Senate in Utah and Cruz survived a close call to keep his seat in Texas. Meanwhile, it looks like it will be a crowded field to try to win the Democratic nomination. It is expected that challengers will begin to throw their hats in the ring publicly in the coming months, with Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris in the early front-running with O'Rourke, who lost his Senate election to Ted Cruz also popular among many Democrats. The American Government has ramped up its campaign against Chinese telecommunications equipment maker Huawei Technologies, briefing officials in so-called "friendly countries" to try and get them to stop using equipment from the Chinese vendor. Washington may also consider providing aid to countries that give up the use of Chinese equipment, so that they can develop their telco infrastructure, The Wall Street Journal claims. The countries which the US has approached include Germany, Italy and Japan. But one big Italian telco was said to have refused to stop using Huawei equipment, with a board member of the unnamed telco telling the newspaper that while he was aware of the claimed risks, the company planned to continue using equipment from Huawei. The US has since 2012 been claiming that Huawei equipment can be used to spy if the Chinese Government asks the company to do so. Huawei has denied ever being involved in such activity. With the impending arrival of 5G, the US calls for a Huawei boycott have become that much more strident. Australia has responded and banned Huawei, and its Chinese counterpart ZTE Corporation, from any role in 5G networks. The WSJ report claimed that 5G radio access networks could be used to attack the core of the network, a claim that has been shown to be false by Huawei itself which demonstrated the separation of the two components in Auckland on Wednesday, in a trial carried out with NZ telco Spark. The trial used a Huawei 5G NR (New Radio on both the C-band and mmWave) and a 4G Radio Access Network, both of which were deployed by using dedicated hardware connected to the Cisco Evolved Packet Core, with each component isolated. The WSJ report was published a day after British Telecom's chief architect Neil McRae was quoted as saying that "there is only one true 5G supplier right now and that is Huawei the others need to catch up". McRae made the statement at Huawei's Global Mobile Broadband Forum event in London on Wednesday, adding, "The other suppliers need to learn from Huawei the others are held back by old telco issues." Contacted for comment, a Huawei spokesperson said: "Huawei's products and solutions are widely used in more than 170 countries worldwide, serving 46 of the world's top 50 operators, Fortune 500 companies and hundreds of millions of consumers. So many companies and consumers choose Huawei because they trust fully and recognise the value Huawei delivers. "Huawei is shocked by the behaviour of the US Government detailed in the article. If a government's behaviour extends beyond its jurisdiction, such activity should not be encouraged. "Huawei firmly believes that our partners and customers will make the right choice based on their own judgment and experience of working with Huawei. We will continue to serve our global customers with our innovative solutions." Listed Australian data centre provider NextDC has introduced a new internal company policy that offers paid leave to victims of domestic violence, as part of its support for the White Ribbon Australia program to stop mens violence against women. Announced on Friday in support of White Ribbon Day and in alignment with the companys corporate social responsibility programs NextDCs new internal policy is available for employees suffering domestic violence to make arrangement for safety or alternative accommodation, access support services, attend to personal matters or to attend court hearings. At NextDC, we have introduced Family and Domestic Violence Leave to support any of our employees who may be experiencing domestic violence, said Fiona Notley, chief people and culture officer. By offering paid leave to our permanent employees, we hope to mitigate the stress and financial worry that people in these terrible situations may be facing. Knowing the horrendous statistics of violence towards women in our country that one in three women experience some form of domestic abuse in Australia, and that on average one woman per week in Australia is killed by their partner or former partner empowered us to better support the women in our work environment and our local communities. I encourage other companies in the private sector to follow suit and provide support for those who need it most in our communities. NextDC (ASX:NXT) said in Fridays announcement that the policy for employees would be available for those in need to take steps to minimise harm and to deal with the impacts of the violence. Such time may be required in order to make safety or alternate accommodation arrangements, or for medical, police or legal assistance, court hearings or counselling. The abuse may be actual or threatened, and may be physical, sexual, emotional or psychological. For permanent employees and fixed-term contractors, employees are eligible to take up to 10 days per annum of special paid leave, to avoid needing to use sick leave, holiday leave or leave without pay. Additional amounts of special leave are available an as-required basis appropriate to the specific circumstances. Furthermore, confidential counselling services are provided free of charge through our NextDC Employee Assistance Program, NextDC said. David Soldani: "I'm sure there will be enough business around the world in the coming years for all vendors to be successful." Intelligence agencies in Australia have insisted that 5G core and radio access networks cannot be clearly separated, even though recent technical demonstrations have shown this not to be the case. This alleged lack of separation was advanced as the reason for banning Chinese companies from playing a role in rolling out Australia's 5G networks. David Soldani, the chief technology officer of Chinese telecommunications equipment maker Huawei, said he was unsure as to why such claims had been made. "You will have to ask the government," Soldani, who has been deeply involved in the process of planning the specifications for 5G, told iTWire during an interview. The claim about the core and the radio access network was made by Australian Signals Director chief Mike Burgess last month. The distinction between core and edge collapses in 5G networks. That means that a potential threat anywhere in the network will be a threat to the whole network, he was quoted as saying in The Australian. But on Wednesday, this claim was put in serious doubt when Huawei New Zealand and NZ telco Sparka live multi-vendor 5G trial network built to the full 3GPP Release 15 global industry standard. The trial used a Huawei 5G NR (New Radio on both the C-band and mmWave) and a 4G Radio Access Network, both of which were deployed by using dedicated hardware connected to the Cisco Evolved Packet Core, with each component isolated. Soldani said 5G would offer a number of security enhancements over 4G. "5G will double the encryption key length for the airlink protection, and will protect the subscriber identifier," he said. "It will provide enhanced interconnection security and a more effective framework for unified authentication and key management." Asked about claims that the lower frequencies to be used for 5G could have a deleterious effect on human skin, he said more studies were needed before any definite pronouncement could be made. "There are many studies and opinions on types of radiation and skin or cell damage, but the overall conclusion is that more scientific rigour is required in the experiments for their results to have any relevance to cell phone use," he said. "For example, the US National Cancer Institute advises: 'although many studies have examined the potential health effects of non-ionising radiation from radar, microwave ovens, cell phones, and other sources, there is currently no consistent evidence that non-ionising radiation increases cancer risk in humans'." The 5G radio access network has an increased number of interfaces, making it possible for equipment from different vendors to be used. Asked how costs would be affected if there were equipment from different vendors, Soldani said this was a question that operators could answer much better. "There are two RAN configurations: non-standalone and standalone. The vast majority of carriers are at this time planning to deploy non-standalone configurations," he said. "While some of the interfaces in both the 4G and 5G RAN are standardised, some are proprietary. There are additional interfaces to consider in 5G. Given this question is about multi-vendor, it is one that is best posed to an operator rather than a single vendor." He gave a similar answer when asked whether it would be more expensive to use equipment from one or two vendors: "You will have to ask the carriers." As to whether vendors who had used equipment from one manufacturer would have to replace it in toto in the event that they were going to change manufacturers, Soldani said this would depend on the Australian Government's security stance. "Currently, when upgrading from Vendor A 4G to Vendor B 5G (in non-standalone mode), the carrier does not switch equipment but adds an additional Vendor B 5G baseband unit to the existing 4G configuration," he said. "You will need to ask the government whether the original Vendor A 4G equipment (and routers etc) has to be replaced with Vendor B's 4G equipment in addition to installing Vendor B's 5G. This is part of the government's national security policy position." Any carrier who persisted with the same vendor for 5G as for 4G would enjoy several advantages. "An existing relationship, an understanding of each others' policies and procedures, training and safety requirements, smooth equipment integration and less disruption to services," Soldani said. "Additionally, in some cases the cost would be lower if they retained a cost-effective vendor." He was somewhat dismissive when asked whether the claim being made in some circles, that whoever ruled 5G would rule the world, had any merit. "I'm sure there will be enough business around the world in the coming years for all vendors to be successful," he responded. "It is highly unlikely that anyone will exclusively rule." A United Nations envoy met Yemens rebel chief Thursday to nail down details of peace talks expected in December, a day before a planned visit to the battleground port city of Hodeida. Martin Griffiths, who arrived in the rebel-held capital Sanaa on Wednesday, is pushing for negotiations early next month in Sweden to help end years of conflict that have left Yemen facing famine. The diplomats visit to Hodeida on Friday is aimed at encouraging Iran-aligned Huthi rebels and government forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition to keep a lid on hostilities ahead of the talks in Stockholm, a UN source said. The conflict in Yemen, which escalated when the Saudi-led alliance intervened in 2015, has killed thousands and left up to 14 million Yemenis at risk of starvation according to UN agencies. Both sides have in the past week expressed support for the envoys mission to hold discussions, and violence in the Red Sea city of Hodeida has diminished despite intermittent clashes. The port city has a crucial role as the entry point for nearly all of the countrys imports and humanitarian aid. Griffiths and Yemeni rebel chief Abdulmalik al-Huthi during their meeting addressed what can facilitate new discussions in December, rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdelsalam said on Twitter. Abdelsalam said that included procedures needed to transport injured and sick for treatment abroad and bring them back, a key sticking point during a previous failed attempt at talks in September. Mohammed Ali al-Huthi, head of the rebels Higher Revolutionary Committee and an influential political figure, said the rebels were ready for peace. We support peace. We are ready for peace if that is what they (the Saudi-led coalition) want, he said after also meeting Griffiths. Humanitarian organisations are desperate to see the current peace push translate into a more permanent halt to the bloodshed. The heads of the UNs humanitarian and childrens agencies said the recent de-escalation in fighting in Hodeida is providing a desperately needed respite to hundreds of thousands of civilians. We urge all parties to maintain it, a statement by Mark Lowcock and Henrietta Fore said. Fully on board United States Defence Secretary Jim Mattis confirmed on Wednesday peace discussions between the Huthis and the internationally-recognised government look set for very, very early in December. He said Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates which is also a key member of the military coalition supporting the loyalists were fully on board. Kuwaits Deputy Foreign Minister Khalid al-Jarallah said that the talks may happen on December 3. He added that his country which is currently a non-permanent UN Security Council member will offer logistical support at Swedens request, without elaborating. Mattis last month made a surprise call for a ceasefire in Yemen and urged warring parties to enter negotiations within the next 30 days. The US has been providing bombs and other weapons, as well as intelligence support, to the Saudi-led coalition backing President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, but recently ended its refuelling support for Saudi warplanes. The murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabias Istanbul consulate has increased scrutiny of Western support for the coalition, and ramped up pressure on Riyadh. On Monday, Britain presented to the UN Security Council a draft resolution urging an immediate truce in Hodeida. The draft, circulated to the 14 other council members, and seen by AFP, sets a two-week deadline for the warring sides to remove all barriers to humanitarian aid. UN peace efforts The current peace push by Griffiths is the biggest effort in two years to end the war. In September, a previous round of UN-led peace talks faltered when the Huthis refused to travel to Geneva, accusing the world body of failing to guarantee their delegations return to Sanaa or secure the evacuation of wounded rebels to Oman. Previous talks broke down in 2016, when 108 days of negotiations in Kuwait failed to yield a deal and left rebel delegates stranded in Oman for three months. A UN panel of experts has accused both the Huthis and the Saudi-led coalition of acts that could amount to war crimes. According to the World Health Organization, nearly 10,000 people have been killed in the conflict, though some rights groups estimate the toll could be five times higher. Finland announced late on Thursday it will block new arms export licences to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, citing the murder of a Saudi journalist and the countries role in Yemens humanitarian crisis. The suspension mirrors earlier decisions by Denmark, Norway and Germany to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia for the time being over the killing and over the kingdoms part in Yemens war which has left 14 million people facing starvation, according to the UN. The situation in Yemen was behind this decision, but of course (the murder of Khashoggi) was part of the overall rationale, Prime Minister Juha Sipila told state broadcaster Yle. A Saudi and Emirati-led coalition has been conducting air strikes on Yemen since 2015. UN investigators have accused the regimes of possible war crimes, including killing thousands of civilians, torturing detainees and recruiting child soldiers. In September the website News Now Finland uncovered video evidence that Finnish-made armoured vehicles, some fitted with Russian heavy weapons, were being used by Emirati forces in western Yemen, the scene of some of the wars fiercest fighting. Finland had claimed that all weapons exports to the region were in line with EU rules. Finnish arms exports to Saudi Arabia totalled 5.3 million euros in 2017, down considerably from 51.4m of sales in 2014, according to the think tank SaferGlobe. On Thursday Sipila described the situation in Yemen as catastrophic. Any existing licences (in the region) are old, and in these circumstances we would absolutely not be able to grant any new ones, he said. Unlike Finland, Germanys suspension announced in October includes revoking existing arms licences to Saudi Arabia. At the time, Berlin called for EU countries to follow its lead, prompting a dismissive response from French President Emmanuel Macron. On Monday, Germany decided to bar 18 Saudis from entering its territory and Europes Schengen passport-free zone over their alleged links to the murder of the US-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi, who wrote for The Washington Post and had been critical of Prince Mohammed, was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, killed and reportedly dismembered. After lengthy denials, Saudi authorities admitted responsibility and said 21 people had been taken into custody. However, a CIA analysis leaked to the US media went further, reportedly pointing the finger at the crown prince. UPDATE: Officials say they've determined the cause of death of a 27-year-old woman whose body was found by joggers at the bottom of an embankment. The Oregon State Medical Examiner's Office tells The Oregonian/OregonLive in a story on Friday that Meighan Cordie died of blunt force trauma. But Yamhill County Sheriff's Office spokesman Capt. Chris Ray says the investigation is continuing into what led to her death and how she was injured. Cordie's body was found Thursday. The Clackamas woman was last seen Aug. 18 eight miles south of Dayton when she left a car after an argument with her mother without her shoes or cellphone. She had attended a wedding on Grand Island earlier that day. DAYTON, Ore. (AP) -- Authorities say a woman's body, found by joggers in Dayton, is likely Meighan Cordie, a 27-year-old who's been missing since last weekend. The Yamhill County Sheriff's Office said Thursday the body was spotted down an embankment around 10 a.m. The department says the woman's description and clothing matched those of Cordie. The Clackamas woman was last seen Aug. 18 eight miles south of Dayton when she left a car after an argument with her mother without her shoes or cell phone. She had attended a wedding on Grand Island earlier that day. Megan Spencer, a friend of the family, works at a store near where Cordie was last seen. Spencer remembers her coming into the store that afternoon before the wedding. She came in and she was in a floral pant suit, and I remembered it because we do have weddings down here, but it's not overly common to see a bunch of people dressed up," Spencer recalled. "So I said, Oh that's really pretty. She said, Thank you.'" Spencer said for someone unfamiliar with the area, it would be easy to get lost at night. Well, if she was barefoot and it's 10:30 p.m., 10:00 p.m. at night, it's pitch black down there, there's no street lights, no nothing, Spencer explained. Cordies aunt posted flyers around the area, hoping someone who knows something will come forward. Loving, caring, she's a mother, she has a small child at home, so that's why we're desperately also searching for her, said Meighans aunt, Tracy Cordie. "She's our family, so of course we want her home." Tracy Cordie said it is not like her niece to take off like this without contacting anyone for so long. Shes always the one thats made me laugh, so its hard to come out here and cry tears looking for her and to be put in this position, Tracy Cordie explained. Shes always made people smile and laugh and she's done silly things like that for us, so we just want to smile again and see her face. The area where she went missing is mostly farm land surrounded by forest and close to the Willamette River, police say. Yamhill County Search and Rescue has joined air and marine patrol support in the search. Authorities declined to release any more information about the body's discovery. GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- Neighbors told NewsWatch 12 that there are a lot of kids that live in the apartment building where the deadly shooting took place. We talked to a few neighbors that told me that they have never heard of something like this happening at Harbeck Village Apartments. Tom Vinson lives ther with his three kids and told us that he has always felt safe in his neighborhood and has never heard of any conflict. "Everybody looks out for each others kids here, everyone gets along. There's never any bickering or arguments between one tenant to another. Everybody gets along and they watch out for each others kids real well," says Tom. The complex has a park and a basketball court and a lot of porches had toys and bikes on them. Tom says that after the shooting, he will make sure his kids play closer to his apartment so he can keep a better eye on them. Multiple neighbors expressed concern about the safety of neighborhood kids. Police have now released the names of both the men who died in a shooting in Grants Pass Friday morning. Christopher Lyon, 42, and Justin Scott, 38, were shot and killed outside Harbeck Village Apartments around 3:00 a.m. Police arrested Trevor Gilmore, 44, on two counts of aggravated murder and unlawful use of a firearm. Gilmore is currently in Josephine County Jail. (Updated 11/23/18 1:43 p.m.) A Grants Pass man is being charged in the murder of two men found dead outside Harbeck Village Apartments Friday morning. Police believe Trevor Gilmore, 44, shot and killed the two men around 3:00 a.m. Gilmore is facing two counts of aggravated murder and unlawful use of a firearm. He's currently in Josephine County Jail. This is a developing story. We will continue to post updates throughout the day. (Updated 11/23/18 11:54 a.m.) Police says two men died in a shooting in Grants Pass Friday morning. Justin Severnak, 38, is one of the men who died. Police say the other man is a 42-year-old white man. They're withholding his name until his family is notified. A third man is still being interviewed at this time. Police say he is involved in the incident. This is a developing story. We will continue to post updates throughout the day. (Updated 11/23/18 9:18 a.m.) Oregon State Police Forensics and Crime Lab are investigating after two bodies were found dead outside the Harbeck Village Apartments in Grants Pass. It appears that both victims were shot. Grants Pass Department of Public Safety is reporting that around 3:04 a.m. they received a report of the bodies outside the complex. Police have not confirmed if the victims live in the complex. (Updated 11/23/18 7:20 a.m.) CRESWELL, Ore. -- Around 3:30 Friday morning, the Lane County Sheriff's Office, along with Oregon State Police, responded to a home on North Harvey Road. KEZI 9 News Reporter Jessica Babb and Photojournalist Scott Dodge immediately responded to the scene, but investigators wouldn't confirm any information until just before 6:30 a.m. Investigators on scene said a man was injured with an ax. The victim is expected to survive. The Lane County Sheriff's Office said this is an active investigation. Refresh this web story to check for updates. Daithi manages Stathams Bar by Pembroke Kilkenny. Originally from Ferrybank, County Waterford, he has being living in Kilkenny for seven years. After working in a variety of New Yorks best bars, Daithi brings his unique skills to Kilkenny creating one of the best cocktail experiences Kilkenny has ever seen. What's your idea of a perfect day, or perfect weekend out in Kilkenny? I love a good dry day walking around the Castle grounds and just seeing everyone sit around enjoying the weather and the grounds. I often sit on the parade listening to the buskers and I enjoy the tourists reaction to the various acts you can find there. I like to drop in to meet a few locals normally in Louies backyard to have an auld argument over hurling or the fact that Ferrybank is in Waterford not Kilkenny. Who has made the greatest contribution to Kilkenny in you lifetime- and why? Im sure there has been many great contributions made in this city through out the years but in my short time here, Ive noticed first hand the great work of the blue light committee. If anyone ever has the chance to attend the blue light ball, it shows just how much work they put into different causes around the county. What's your first Kilkenny memory? My first memory of Kilkenny is hearing my father, a Waterford man, say Next year well beat them. Heard that for a lot of years unfortunately! What's your favourite part of the county- and why? My favourite place in Kilkenny is Gowran Park. Im a keen race goer and its a terrific track thats extremely well run. I get the free shuttle bus from the castle and I personally love the evening meetings during the summer. Its such a lovely setting out there. What do you think gives Kilkenny its unique identity? One of the first things I noticed when I came here was how strong the local business networks are. It was almost a shock to me to see. To see every kind of business come together and say how can we showcase Kilkenny and how can we create business is fantastic. Do you have a favourite local writer or author? As for authors, when Im not looking for new and inspiring cocktail recipe books, I am into my crime novels. I have nearly every John Grisham book out there! What's the biggest challenge facing the county today? With tourism being so influential to this city, the new tax rates are going to have some serious implications on businesss both in the city and county. The next couple of years will be testing for all in the service industry. If you had the power to change one thing in, or about Kilkenny, what would it be? If I had the power, there would be less roadworks on Patrick Street and a suitable secure bus park for all the coaches that come into the city. Chief Superintendent Dominic Hayes took to the stage in the evening. He spoke of how the gardai in Kilkenny require community engagement to protect the elderly. He stressed the importance of the Text Alert schemes across the county, saying they are an important initiative within any community, where everyone is looking out for each other. Hayes proved the success of Text Alert by sharing a story with the attendees of how the Text Alert in Bennettsbridge led to the arrest of two scamming roofers travelling Ireland, and saved an elderly Bennettsbridge woman over 1,000. The two men arrived at the womans house, looking for an extortionate amount of money to repair her roof. Thankfully, the womans daughter had been notified by her local Text Alert group that two travelling criminals were making the rounds in Kilkenny. This alert saved her mother a lot of trauma. The Chief Superintendent also identified travelling criminals and phone scammers as the key threats to older people in Kilkenny. He encouraged people young and old across the county to contact Gardai immediately if they see anything suspicious. Never be worried that youre putting us out or annoying us. Its our job. Were here to protect you Hayes told the forum. He advised them to be especially proactive in the coming winter months, as treacherous weather conditions may leave older people at risk. Hayes believes that Gardai and community interaction has improved immensely over the past few years. He credits the high levels of community engagement for a reduction in crime in Kilkenny, which saw 800 less burglaries in the county this year than there had been just five years previous in 2013. In our eyes, one burglary is one too many. One theft is one too many the Garda said. Hayes also encouraged the various senior forums to visit Kilkenny Garda Station. These guided visits are a regular service available in the station, which Hayes says can be very worthwhile. Seeing the various protections Gardai have in place secures people in the knowledge that they are being well covered. It gives people a kind of solace Hayes advised. The challenges posed by Brexit to the veterinary profession and public were amongst the topics under the spotlight at the Veterinary Ireland Annual Conference & AGM on Friday 23rd November, 2018 in Lyrath, Kilkenny. The Annual Conference & AGM was officially opened by Andrew Doyle T.D., Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine. David MacGuinness, incoming President of Veterinary Ireland, paid tribute to the role of Temporary Veterinary Inspectors who work in Irish meat plants all over the country, describing them as the cornerstone of the Irish meat export industry. "The TVI inspection certified by veterinary surgeons provides important consumer assurances around animal welfare and food safety. This, together with the excellent herd health and disease control on Irish farms, gives Irish meat products an important edge over our competitors in the global market place," said David. The Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine stopped recruiting for TVI panels in 2012. At its Annual Conference & AGM in Kilkenny, Veterinary Ireland called on the Department to re-open TVI panels, based on ensuring that the correct operational procedures are in place across all meat plants; and based on offering new Temporary Veterinary Inspectors who join the panel, the same employment terms and conditions as all existing TVIs. Veterinary Ireland President David MacGuinness also highlighted concerns that a blanket recruitment drive for veterinary surgeons to maintain potential Brexit border checks could drain professionals from veterinary practices who provide important services to farmers, pet owners and sectors such as the equine industry. "The future of Brexit is totally unpredictable at present," said David MacGuinness. "If Brexit does occur and border checks of any form are required for animal movement, we would encourage the Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine to consider a structure such as the TVI workforce be mobilised, to help permanent Department of Agriculture Food & the Marine officials to carry out their duties." David MacGuinness explained that a TVI- type structure would alleviate the need for the Department to employ more permanent veterinary staff. "This expert veterinary workforce could work in conjunction with private veterinary practice, reducing the potential drain of veterinary surgeons from important practice work throughout the regions to service the Brexit border checks for animal movement." Simon Doherty is President of The British Veterinary Association (BVA), which represents over 16,000 veterinary professionals throughout the UK. At the Veterinary Ireland Annual Conference, he described how the BVA has looked at the potential implications of Brexit for the veterinary profession and the agricultural and animal health industries. The British Veterinary Associations approach to Brexit is that existing animal health, animal welfare, public health, veterinary medicines, workforce and environmental protection standards must at least be maintained at the same level, or a level equivalent to current EU standards. The extensive BVA report on Brexit and the Veterinary Profession sets out some 52 recommendations. This includes the need for DAERA and Department of Agriculture Food & the Marine co-operation across the border to continually improve animal health and welfare with an all-island approach. Simon Doherty described the representation that BVA has given in response to numerous Brexit-related consultations. The BVA recommendations deal with wide-ranging issues such as veterinary surveillance and disease notification, food hygiene standards, access to veterinary medicines, maximum residue limits, research standards, equine identification, the Pet Travel Scheme and recognition of veterinary qualifications. More recently, the BVA has sought to respond in the event of a no deal Brexit, where there was a clear impact on the veterinary profession, animal health or animal welfare. The widespread potential issues range from the UK losing access to the EU disease surveillance system, restrictions to the movement of horses and the trade impact on animals and animal products moving from the UK to the single market such as physical checks, Export Health Certificates and Border Inspection Posts. Also discussed on the day was the veterinary role in protecting consumer health. The Food Safety Authority of Irelands (FSAI) vision of safe and trustworthy food for everyone can only be achieved by working with everyone in the food chain. This includes working in partnership with the veterinarians who contribute every day to protecting consumer health through the work they do, said Dr Pamela Byrne, Chief Executive, Food Safety Authority of Ireland. Speaking at the Veterinary Ireland Annual Conference about Public Health and Food Safety in Ireland, Dr. Byrne said that veterinarians are required to be competent in a number of fields, including the identification of food hazards, risk assessment procedures, food safety controls, system audits, laboratory testing methods and legal issues. The FSAI looks forward to continuing to build on our partnerships with the veterinary profession and other stakeholders to achieve our vision and ensure that we all recognise the value of working in a One Health approach to protect consumers. Local TD Kathleen Funchion, who is a member of the Dail Joint Committee on Education and Skills, has added her voice to those insisting on the implementation of the Report on Positive Mental Health in Schools. The Sinn Fein TD says it is a topic that often fails to get the coverage and attention it warrants. If the proper care, attention and facilities are provided at the early and critical stages it can do so much to prevent and/or alleviate future problems, she said. Deputy Funchion told the the Dail that Ireland not only needs services for crisis situations, but also requires counsellors and play therapists in schools to assist those affected by the stresses, and anxieties attached to schools, some of which are the result of bullying. Schools involved in the School Completion Programme already provide some of these services, but this needs to be expanded, she said. Preventative measures are also critical. Each student in school needs to be encouraged to develop their own particular talents and strengths , said the Sinn Fein TD. Also, non-academic achievements, could be taken into consideration for college entry. We must take the stress out of school and ensure that all the focus is not on academic achievement. It cannot be the case that one is only seen as a fantastic student if one gets all A's because students might have other skills and that must also be encouraged. These children must realize that they are just as valuable as those who are good at mathematics. The local TD said that most children in junior and senior infants love going to school, but as time goes on they encounter difficulties. At some point in the system they feel they are not good enough and they lose confidence and self-belief, she said. That is where mindfulness, coping skills and emotional resilience come into play. These need to become part of the school routine along with the academic considerations. In addition, Deputy Funchion said she had a concern with the level of homework especially in secondary schools, and the stress and worry that causes. There is a need to change the mindset not only of the school, but also of parents and society, she said. All need to see that the emotional and mental health side is as important as the academic side, she said. Children need to know it is okay to be different and it is okay not to fit in with everybody else. There is also a need to teach children how to cope when things go wrong or something does not go their way. The Sinn Fein TD concluded her remarks by calling attention to the plight of children attending school from emergency accommodation in hotels and bed and breakfasts. They have gone from having a certain routine and familiarity to a situation of upheaval and living in one room with all of the family, she said. We need to put supports in place for these students and their teachers. It is time for this excellent report to move from theory to reality and so really improve the mental well being of future generations. CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) Two Iowa men who unwittingly sold elephant tranquilizers that looked like prescription painkillers have been sentenced to prison. Cameron Lensmeyer and Evan Sage, both 20 and residents of Waverly, were sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids. Prosecution and defense attorneys agreed the two didn't know what the pills contained when they obtained and sold them. Officers who searched their home in June 2017 also initially thought they had seized 800 oxycodone pills. The pair sold hundreds of pills they obtained from a darknet connection. The pills looked like those containing the painkiller oxycodone but were really made of the opioid carfentanil an elephant tranquilizer. Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Chatham said carfentanil is 100 times more powerful than fentanyl, which is more powerful than heroin. "Just one slight miscalculation and you have a dead body on the other side," Chatham said. Sage and Lensmeyer apologized during the sentencing hearing. Sage's attorney, Jill Johnston, said Sage was surprised when he discovered what the pills contained and was thankful nobody died. But Judge Linda Reade told the two that "ignorance of what you are selling is no defense." She sentenced Lensmeyer to more than four years in prison and Sage to just over seven years. Lensmeyer had pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute carfentanil and marijuana, while Sage had pleaded guilty to possession for sale of carfentanil, cocaine and marijuana and to a weapons charge. CLEAR LAKE, Iowa- This weekend is not only one of the biggest days of the years for shopping, but also for local Christmas tree sellers. Mark Fisher, owner of Fishers Tree Farm in Clear Lake and Forest City said they are expecting hundreds to come out and either cut down or pick out a tree. He said his whole family comes out to help this weekend because of how busy it can get. With how much rain our area saw this year Fisher said it did have an impact on some of his trees, but that they are still ready for people to come out and have a good time this weekend. The wet weather that hit all of us this year hurt the trees a little bit, he said. Im actually losing a few of the frasier firs that are about five to six feet tall, almost ready to sell. Some of the areas where it was really wet the trees are starting to die. Fisher said the frasier firs are his most popular because they dont lose their needles as easily. CLEAR LAKE, Iowa - Various communities across the area hosted Thanksgiving meals, including the Open Bible Church in Clear Lake. Around 280 meals full of turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, green bean casserole, homemade gravy, dinner rolls and plenty of pies were served to those who came through the doors Thursday. Peggy Davis co-organized the dinner. She's helped served at other church dinners, and says that she's noticed more people in need. "I think it's probably growing because we have a more elderly population and their kids are going different places now, so there's more people that are maybe home alone or not feeling prepared or able to prepare a meal." While the church has done meals for RAGBRAI riders in the past, this is the first time they've hosted this type of event inside their building. She says there's a plan to host more dinners in the future through a partnership with other churches. "It'll rotate from church to church, so we won't be doing this next year because another church will, that's within that group. But it'll continue to be in the Clear Lake community, and then they'll also be doing something. We won't have this year for Christmas, and Christmas in a couple years we'll be doing it here." Leftovers are being donated to the men's and women's shelters in Mason City. The Bermuda-incorporated miner, now owned by Canadas Trimetals Mining , had asked for $385.7 million in compensation after the Andean nation revoked its concession on the Malku Khota mine project. But the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled Bolivia should pay South American Silver only $18.7 million, Bolivian Attorney General Pablo Menacho told reporters on Thursday. "Bolivia did not violate its obligation to provide full protection and security to foreign investment," Menacho said. "This is an outright victory for Bolivia." The sprawling silver-indium-gallium deposit was expected to produce some 13.2 million ounces of silver a year. South American Silver charged that Morales government failed to protect its investments and had unjustly expropriated its concession. The miner had previously rejected an $18 million offer from Bolivia to buy out its rights. TriMetals Mining could not be immediately reached for comment. Bolivia has contended the Canadian miner had violated the countrys environmental rules and incited unrest among its indigenous neighbors. In 2012, Morales signed a deal with protesters concerned about the environmental impacts of the project, stipulating that the government take back all the concessions granted to South American Silver's local subsidiary. At the time, South American Silver, which said it had invested $16 million in the project since 2007, vowed to seek recourse using any legal and diplomatic means available. Mining has played a key role in Bolivia's economy since the colonial era. The Andean nation mainly produces tin and silver, but also is home to the world's largest undeveloped lithium and potassium resources. Moralesgovernment has previously overhauled mining laws to bolster the state's role in the industry and give it a bigger slice of the sector's profits. (Reporting by Daniel Ramos Writing by Dave Sherwood Editing by Bill Trott) BEIJING (Reuters) - Trade talks between the United States and China should be equal and mutually beneficial, Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen said on Friday, adding that he hoped the two countries can find ways to manage their differences through dialogue. U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are expected to hold talks during the G20 summit in Buenos Aires next week as trade ties between the worlds two largest economies become increasingly fraught. We hope that, on the basis of equal consultations, mutual benefits and trust, we could make common efforts to manage differences and find ways to resolve problems, Wang told a news conference in Beijing, the capital. Officials of both countries were in close contact, instructed by their leaders, he added. Washington wants Beijing to improve market access and intellectual property protections for U.S. firms, cut industrial subsidies and slash a $375-billion trade gap. Trump has imposed tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese imports to force concessions. The U.S. tariff rate on $200 billion in Chinese goods is set to increase to 25 percent from 10 percent on Jan. 1. Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on all remaining Chinese imports - about $267 billion more in goods - if Beijing fails to address U.S. demands. Trump said on Thursday he hoped he could make a deal with China when he meets Xi. I can say this, China wants to make a deal very badly - because of the tariffs, Trump told reporters in the town of Palm Beach in Florida. China wants to make a deal; if we can make a deal, we will, he said. The high-stakes meeting comes as the Trump administration shows little sign of backing down in its demands and rhetoric. Washington said on Tuesday China had failed to alter its unfair practices at the heart of the dispute, in an update of the U.S. Trade Representatives Section 301 investigation into its intellectual property and technology transfer policies. RISING PROTECTIONISM China hopes the G20 meeting could uphold its stance against protectionism, at a time of slowing growth in global trade and declining foreign direct investment. On Tuesday, a top Chinese diplomat said an APEC summits failure to agree on a communique resulted from certain countries excusing protectionism, a veiled criticism of Washingtons tariffs. Currently, global trade faces a complex situation, unilateralism and protectionism are rising fiercely, adding to big uncertainties for global economic development, Wang said. We hope the summit could further strengthen consensus of all sides on supporting multilateralism. China supports reform of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to boost its effectiveness and authority, he added. China rejected the fresh U.S. accusations of perpetuating unfair trade practices and urged Washington to stop provocations. Chinas commerce ministry said it was deeply concerned by the report the U.S. administration issued this week. Citing security concerns, the U.S. government on Monday also proposed stepping up scrutiny over technology exports in 14 key areas, including artificial intelligence and microprocessors, a move many analysts view as directly targeting China. A 30-day public consultation period on plans to wrap those sectors in its broader export control regime ends on Dec. 19, the U.S. governments Federal Register shows. Xi will visit Argentina, Panama, Portugal and Spain from Nov. 27 to Dec 5. (Kitco News) - Gold prices are moderately down and silver prices are sharply lower in early U.S. trading Friday, pressured by a firmer U.S. dollar index on and sharply lower crude oil prices. December gold futures were last down $5.60 an ounce at $1,222.40. December Comex silver was last down $0.257 at $14.245 an ounce. Nymex crude oil futures prices are sharply lower today and hit 13-month low of $51.73 a barrel. The steep drop in oil prices has world stock market traders uneasy, despite the fact lower retail gasoline prices will boost consumer spending, especially in the U.S. The other key outside markets today find the U.S. dollar index trading higher and not far below this months 1.5-year high. European stock markets were mixed overnight, while Asian equities were mostly down. Japans markets were closed for a public holiday. U.S. stock indexes are pointed lower at the New York opening. Recent losses have wiped out this years gains in the U.S. stock indexes. It appears the U.S. stock indexes have put in major market tops. Stronger selling pressure in the U.S. equities today would likely prompt some safe-haven buying interest in the gold and silver markets. The U.S.-China trade war is not improving and could be escalating. Reports say the U.S. is talking to its allies regarding boycotting a Chinese technology firm due to cybersecurity risks. This news followed the mid-week report from the U.S. Trade Representative that accused China of continued theft of U.S. technology and espionage. U.S. President Trump and Chinese President Xi are scheduled to meet face-to-face in Argentina next week. History shows today is likely to see a very quiet trading session in the U.S., following the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday. Many U.S. markets close early today. Friday is the Black Friday U.S. sale affair that finds many traders and investors out for the day, shopping for Christmas gift deals. U.S. economic data due for release Friday is light and includes the U.S. flash services and manufacturing PMIs. Technically, gold bears have the overall near-term technical advantage. Bulls next upside price objective is to produce a close in December futures above solid resistance at the November high of $1,239.30. Bears' next near-term downside price breakout objective is pushing prices below solid technical support at the September low of $1,184.30. First resistance is seen at this weeks high of $1,230.90 and then at the November high of $1,239.30. First support is seen at this weeks low of $1,218.50 and then at $1,213.70. Wyckoff's Market Rating: 3.5 December silver futures bears still have the solid overall near-term technical advantage. Silver bulls' next upside price breakout objective is closing prices above solid technical resistance at $14.50 an ounce. The next downside price breakout objective for the bears is closing prices below solid support at $13.50. First resistance is seen at this weeks high of $14.54 and then at $14.775. Next support is seen at this weeks low of $14.205 and then at $14.00. Wyckoff's Market Rating: 2.0. The banning of the Police wearing uniforms at the Auckland Pride Parade has come about due to capture by an activist group called People Against Prisons Aotearoa. Now their agenda is not just banning of Police uniforms at the Pride Parade. They are at what is basically the lunatic end of the political spectrum. Dont take my word for it. Read their manifesto. Highlights are: child sexual abuse not to be a criminal offence the state criminalises, but dealt with by mediation and a conversation between the rapist and the child victim. Yes, they really are that bonkers. Dissolve the Governments non-public sex offender register Ban the Police using tasers, guns and even dogs! Not allow anyone aged under 18 to be charged with a criminal offence, even murder or rape Defund and then abolish the NZ Police No imprisonment for breaching bail or parole conditions Make it illegal to discriminate against convicted criminals in employment decisions Decriminalise welfare fraud Close the NZ court system Defund the Department of Corrections and then abolish all prisons A minimum wage for prisoners who do work set at the median wage for that industry Now this is the group that the Auckland Pride Board are pandering to, and allowing them to dictate to the rest of the community that the Pride Parade must be exclusionary, not inclusive. They want victims of pedophiles to sit down and have a conversation with their rapist about how being raped made them feel. They want to abolish the Police, the courts and prisons. Now theyre entitled to their views, but that doesnt mean the rest of the community needs to respect their views let alone let them impose their values on everyone else. Share this: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Reddit WhatsApp More Pinterest Print Tumblr By Jung Da-min North Korea is strengthening ideological education, particularly for workers and students, in a move to promote the country's new economic strategy declared last April. Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of the ruling Workers' Party, on Thursday carried a front-page editorial emphasizing the three revolutions ideological, technical and cultural saying the socialistic ethics toward collective work, in particular, should be strengthened to implement the country's five-year strategic economic plans. "Our party initiated a new strategic route to concentrate our efforts on building a socialist economy last April," the editorial said, referring to the party plenum where North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un declared a new strategic line on the economy. "Every department and unit should carry out the three-revolution movement in close relation with the great march of building the economy." Rodong Sinmun has recently been publishing articles on strengthening ideological education at every production unit in the country. On Thursday, the paper's first page also carried an article about intensive lecture and promotion activities in Kangwon Province. According to the article, the propagandists encouraged workers through "incendiary" speech, as they received special education from the party's provincial committee. They also provided supporting goods to a construction site in Kosong County, Kangwon Province. North Korea's external propaganda outlet Uriminzokkiri on Thursday also published an article emphasizing the "sensational leap" in the economy amid "tenacious" sanctions imposed on the regime by "hostile forces." "We never thought of building the economy with the help of others," it said. "Nothing has stopped us from advancing and our republic has turned into a strong, self-reliant country." Kendallville, IN (46755) Today Mostly sunny this morning then becoming cloudy during the afternoon. High 47F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph.. Tonight Cloudy skies with periods of rain late. Low 42F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Brexit: May agrees democracys death sentence Its not yet a crime to hate Brexit or the EU. It will be, of course. Hating most things is a crime. Most of us dont rate the Brexit deal Theresa May wants to sign off. But many Leavers and Remainers hate it. The newspapers pick up the scent. They are full of Brexit news. The Daily Mail sums up best: Lets just get on with it. Most of us just cant wait to get it done and dusted. But what it is is up for debate. Can it be right that May has delivered a deal worse than no deal? The Guardian says the fight continues. The Telegraph focus on the backstop, a melting fudge designed by the EU to stop other countries they have borders, right to never leave the group. And the Sun says its all just dire. Tellingly, the Mirror cant lead with Brexit because the party it supports, the mess masquerading as Labour, has all positions covered. Their plan is to scupper Mays deal, encourage the great unwashed to vote for Labour in a General Election and then, well, just you want and see. Itll be great. Jeremy Corbyn, a man who has pushed for Brexit pretty much all his adult life, now says hes not all that into it and will every bit Remain by another name as May, the arch Remainer pretending to deliver Brexit . That 17.4 million of us voted for Brexit in the great rebellion is a minor irrelevance to the powers that be. Robert Tombs, professor of French history at St Johns College, Cambridge, gives a view that pretty much sums things up: Mays deal seems to mean the most extraordinary set of constitutional innovations. It would give, for an indefinite period, power over a large part of our economy and legislation not only to a foreign power but also to an unelected committee. The EU will have the power to decide upon and implement a whole load of laws and regulations. We will be required to accept them and we will have to pay for the pleasure we are putting ourselves in a position where we will have to depend on the goodwill of a body that hasnt been conspicuous in goodwill since June 2016. The EU has openly said it wants to make life more difficult for us. It has pushed us far enough already. It has made demands that have been accepted by a weak government. Im sure even the EU could not have expected this at the beginning of these negotiations. What the EU is clearly and openly worried about is disunity among its members and the possibility of other countries following in our footsteps. We would be voluntarily putting ourselves under the control of people whose interest is to make sure that we are not seen to prosper after Brexit. It is so stupid, it is almost unbelievable. Spotter: Spiked Anorak Posted: 23rd, November 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians Comment | TrackBack | Permalink US Military Cancels 300 Million USD Financial Aid to Pakistan. (Photo Credit: ANI) Kathmandu, Nov 22 (PTI) An overcrowded bus rolled down a mountain highway in Nepal on Thursday, killing at least 16 people. The accident occured at Raduwa in Dadeldhura district, police said. Ten people died on the spot while other six persons succumbed to injuries while undergoing treatment at the Dadeldhura District Hospital, it said. More than 20 passengers were also injured in the accident. According to police, the over-crowded bus was en route to Doti from Dadeldhura. Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Dambar Bahadur KC said the ill-fated bus was carrying revellers returning home after attending a fair at Ugratara Temple in the area. Road accidents are common in Nepal due to pathetic road conditions, poorly maintained vehicles, mountain terrain roads, poor executions of traffic rules and sheer negligence of drivers. PTI (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) La Paz (Bolivia), Nov 23 (AP) A Peruvian Airlines Boeing 737 suffered a collapsed landing gear when it arrived at an airport in Bolivia, forcing closure of the runway for 10 several hours. Officials say none of the 122 passengers or five crew members was hurt. Officials say that they were unable to move the plane, prompting a 10-hour closure that delayed several other flights into and out of the El Alto airport near the Bolivian capital on Thursday The plane was arriving on a flight from Cuzco, Peru. The airline said in a statement that the cause of the incident is under investigation. (AP) MRJ (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Port-Au-Prince (Haiti), Nov 24 (AP) Thousands of demonstrators are clashing with police in Haiti's capital and demanding the ouster of President Jovenel Moise amid the sixth day of protests. Police on Friday fired tear gas at the crowd as people threw rocks, tried to loot stores and broke car windows in Port-au-Prince. One group hurled Molotov cocktails at a gas station, but the flames were quickly extinguished. At least 11 people have died in protests, including a man whose body was burning near a street barricade Friday morning. Another six people were killed Wednesday when a government car lost control. Schools and most government offices remain closed. Protesters accuse Moise of not investigating allegations of corruption in the previous administration over a Venezuelan subsidized energy program. Moise has said he will not resign. (AP) MRJ (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) (ANSA) - Rome, November 23 - The United States has asked its allies including Italy not to use Huawei's products because of cybersecurity risks, the Wall Street Journal said Friday. Huawei said it was "surprised" at the US action. A spokesman said "if the conduct of a government extends beyond its jurisdiction, such activity should not be encouraged". Chennai, Nov 22 (PTI) Students of SRM University at Kattankulathur area in the outskirts of Chennai staged a demonstration inside the campus Thursday night, alleging inaction by the administration on a sexual harassment complaint by a woman student of the varsity. SRM University Vice Chancellor Sandeep Sancheti, however, denied the allegations of inaction and said the administration would look into the complaint. "Students are discussing with us. Whatever the matter is, it will be taken care of. If there is a matter, it will be inquired," Sancheti told PTI. According to a third year software engineering student who took part in the protest, a second year undergraduate student of the university was allegedly sexually harassed by a male sanitation worker inside a women's hostel lift on Thursday afternoon around 3 pm. "The man masturbated in front of the woman student in the hostel lift, following which she reported the issue to the authorities," the student told PTI. According to another protester, the hostel warden, with whom the student had raised the issue, allegedly delayed access to the CCTV footage of the elevator and the registering of a complaint by over two hours. "The employee was identified by the student in the CCTV footage. However she was asked to stay mum about the incident by the authorities," the protester said, adding that the hostel authorities allegedly blamed the victim. Local police officials who reached the protest spot told PTI that the protesters dispersed after assurances from the university administration to look into the matter. However, they added that no complaint had been registered yet. (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) New Delhi, November 23: The Government of India on Friday registered strong protest with the Government of Pakistan on the issue of the Consular officials of the High Commission of India in Islamabad harassed and denied access on 21 November and 22 November, 2018, at Gurudwara Nankana Sahib and Gurdwara Sacha Sauda to the Indian pilgrims who visited Pakistan under the Bilateral Protocol. The MEA, in a press release, said that the diplomats were meted out the treatment and denied entry to Sikh Gurdwaras despite been granted prior travel permission by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan. The MEA informed that the Indian High Commission officials in Pakistan were forced to return to Islamabad and could not fulfill their diplomatic and consular duties as a result of the harassment. MEA Hits Back At Pakistan PM Imran Khan For Blaming Indian Forces For 'Killing of Innocents' in Kashmir. The MEA in its protest highlighted the fact that this was the third consecutive time when the the Indian High Commission officials were prevented from meeting Indian Sikh pilgrims by Pakistan on the pretext of security concerns. The MEA highlighted that this attempt by Pakistan is in breach of the letter and spirit of the 1974 Bilateral Protocol on visit to religious shrines and the Code of Conduct for the treatment of diplomatic/consular personnel in India and Pakistan, 1992. The MEA leveled serious charges on Pakistan of "trying to incite communal disharmony, intolerance, and promoting secessionist tendencies with the objective of undermining Indias sovereignty and territorial integrity" on the ongoing visit of the Indian pilgrims to Pakistan. The MEA reminded Pakistan of keeping the commitments made under the Simla Agreement, 1972 and endorsed in the Lahore Declaration, 1999 of Pakistan to "take all measures to not allow its territory to be used for any hostile propaganda and support for secessionist tendencies against India." (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 23, 2018 01:04 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). Mumbai, November 23: An 18-year-old woman with an intellectual disability has been raped for the fourth time in as many years, said Dindoshi police on Thursday. Earlier she has been raped three times and all the 11 accused have been put behind bars. The police have nabbed one Raju Puransingh, 25, for the latest incident, who raped the Malad-based teenager after marrying her. The police said that the case came to light after the teenager disappeared. Her family stated that she disappeared on November 14 and was untraced. Though being approached to police for help, the family members were turned down stating that she might have be at her relatives home. Serial Rapist Used to Break Legs of Victims to Get Aroused Before Rape: Gurugram The family members then took her photograph and searched for her in the Aksa-Dana Pani beach locality, as she was previously raped near the area, but was not found there. The police finally registered the complaint on November 21 and launched a massive manhunt to find her near Aksa beach, Madh and their surrounding areas. The police, however, after a long search traced her at Versova as they got the tip that she was last seen near the Madh Bhati village. They scanned CCTV footage of the area and saw that she was moving towards Versova. After a long search, a local informed them that the teenager was last seen near the Madh Bhati village. On the basis of that tip, cops scanned CCTV footage of the area and saw that she was moving towards Versova. She was found her sitting outside a temple on Wednesday night and then taken to the Dindoshi police station. Initially she was not in a condition to reveal anything, but later she told her elder sister about the horrific incident. Based on her sisters statement, police registered the FIR. He sister informed the police that she met Raju who took her to his Versova home for few days. He married her later at a temple and the couple headed to Juhu beach. She even made a tattoo on her arm. Later in the night she was raped at his house and after a day, he snatched her mangalsutra and threw her outside the house. With the inputs in hand, the police arrested Raju and booked him under kidnapping and gang rape sections of the Indian Penal Code and the POCSO Act, and Raju has been for Section 376 (rape). Informing more, Senior police inspector from Rajaram Vhanmane from Dindoshi police station said, as Mid-Day quotes, "The accused arrested on Thursday, Raju Puransingh, resided in Versova in a rented flat and worked at a private company as a caretaker. He has been booked and arrested under the charges of rape and would be produced before the court on Friday." Stating the medical condition of the victim, another police officer said, "The teenager is intellectually disabled. After the first incident, we'd suggested her parents to send her to the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) or some other NGO for better treatment and also suggested several private centres in Matunga, Bandra and other government centres in Dongri. But her parents refused to send her there and even gave the same in writing. After that, we requested CWC officials to counsel her at her home. Several officers counselled her for many months." (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 23, 2018 02:26 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). Jaipur, November 23: With two weeks remaining for the Rajasthan Assembly elections, the Congress campaign has taken a seemingly casteist undertone. Senior Congress leader CP Joshi attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) asking them as to what authority did they hold to issue certificates of Hinduism. He also raked up the issue of Brahmins and included Uma Bharti and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his speech. Soon after the statement, the Congress released the full video in defence of CP Joshi. The party said that Joshi didnt attack any 'jaati' and in the new video Joshi can be heard questioning who is BJP give a certificate. Addressing an electoral rally in Nathdwara on Wednesday, Joshi questioned BJP knowledge of Hindu religion. He said, They say a Congressi can't be a Hindu, who gave them the authority to issue certificates? Have they opened a university? Joshi even claimed that the only people who have the knowledge of Hinduism are pandits or Brahmins. He said, If anyone knows about religion then its pandits/Brahmins. Rajasthan Assembly Elections 2018: BJP Expels 11 Rebels From Party For Six Years Raking up the issue of caste on politics, the Congress leader stated the be it Uma Bharti or Prime Minister Narendra Modi, all talk about Hinduism, but the its only Brahmins who don't talk about it. He was of the opinion that the country is being misled. Joshi said, Uma Bharti is a Lodhi, and she talks about Hinduism, Modi ji talks about Hinduism. Its only Brahmins who don't talk about it. The country is being misled. Religion and governance are two different things. Everyone has the right to practice their religion. Ending the speech on making another controversy, Joshi stated that the relation between former PM Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was cordial and misinformation is being spread by BJP for political gains. He said, Sardar Patel ji was in Pt Nehru's cabinet. Patel ji's unifying India project had support of Pt Nehru, he never did anything without Pandit Nehru's nod. But these people today spread misinformation that both of them did not get along. The Assembly elections for 200 seats in Rajasthan will take place on December 7 and the results will be announced on December 11, along with the fate of four other states. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 23, 2018 09:19 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). Hyderabad, November 23: Telangana Chief Minister and TRS chief K. Chandrashekar Rao on Friday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi stating that the later has a 'Hindu-Muslim disease'. The Telangana Rashtra Samithi chief made these comment after taking a jibe at BJP and Congress where he said that both are brothers who cannot be trusted. It is to be known that ahead of the first Assembly elections in the state, the TRS supremo had promised to give 12 percent reservations to the Muslim people of the Telangana, but couldnt fulfil it as the Centre never gave a green signal to it. Telangana Assembly Elections 2018: Independent Candidate Akula Hanumanth Hands Slippers to People During Campaign, Watch Video The CM accused the BJP-led Central government of delaying the issue, even after writing several mails to PM Modi. Accusing the Premier of not responding back to the letter, CM KC Rao said that the PM Modi is obsessed with the debate surrounding the topics of Hindus and Muslims. KCR said, as reported by Times Now, I have written 30 letters and handed them over to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But he has the 'Hindu-Muslim' disease. Also, Rao was of the opinion that the PM Modi doesnt have a heart to treat everyone equally. He said, He doesn't have the heart to treat everyone equally. The PM lacks compassion. We will form federal government and we will force the central government to bend before us and give us our rights. The Assembly elections in the state for 119 seats will take place on December 7 and the results will be declared on December 11, along with the fate of four other states. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 23, 2018 05:01 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). Two teenagers thought their plans were taking wings when they stole a small aircraft in Utah, USA, but it was shortlived. The boys were arrested near the Vernal Regional Airport after flying the aircraft for 15 miles, the police said. They gained access to a tractor and drove it to a private airstrip on Thanksgiving. They stole a fixed-wing single-engine aircraft from there and flew it. According to a statement shared by the Uintah County Sheriff's Office, investigators believe that two boys aged 14 and 15 carried out the theft. In a statement, the police said, "At this time, investigators believe the boys, ages 14 and 15, left a group home on the Wasatch Front earlier this week and made their way to eastern Utah, where they have been staying with friends in the Jensen area." Uintah County Sheriff's Office's released a statement on the incident along with pictures of the retrieved aircraft. It says, "The plane was witnessed flying very low along US-40 near Gusher, Uintah County, about 32 miles west of Jensen." While according to their initial plans they were to return to the starting point, the boys changed their minds. The Facebook post reads, "Based on information obtained by investigators, the teens mentioned flying back towards the Wasatch Front, but decided not to and returned to Vernal where they landed at the airport." Here is the Facebook post: The boys were staying with friends in the Jensen area before they flew the aircraft. The incident is being investigated and the boys are held in the Split Mountain Youth Detention Center in Vernal on multiple charges. As the Facebook post went viral, netizens exclaimed how two young boys had managed to steal an aircraft. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 23, 2018 05:13 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). Kabul, November 23: In a major terror attack in Afghanistan on Friday, at least 26 were killed and over 50 injured after a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a mosque located in nation's eastern province of Khost. The casualties are feared to rise as several of the injured victims were rushed to the nearest Army hospital in a critical condition. The fidayeen strike was carried out inside the mosque located in Afghan National Army camp, based in Mandozair district of Khost. At the time of blast, hundreds of security personnel had gathered at the mosque to attend the Friday congregational prayers. Over 40 Were Killed in Kabul in Blast on Eid-e-Milad. Army spokesperson Captain Abdullah issued a statement confirming that the blast was carried out by a suicide bomber. Although no group has claimed responsibility of the attack so far, the role of the prime insurgent group - Taliban - has not been ruled out. Another security official, while speaking to Reuters, confirmed the death toll as 26, whereas, those the number of those injured has cross the 50-mark. The attack comes two days after a suicide bomber detonated himself at a congregation of Muslims who had gathered in Kabul for a religious event. The attack left at least 40 dead and over 72 wounded. While no group took responsibility of terror assault, the Taliban had issued a statement denying their involvement. The attack, on the holy day, had drawn condemnation from heads of states across the world. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had issued a statement condemning the bloodshed and extending condolences to the bereaved families. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 23, 2018 04:58 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). Islamabad, November 23: While, the Guru Nanak Jayanti being celebrated across the globe, protests were organised in Pakistans Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Sri Guru Nanak Dev by Pro-Khalistan groups. Posters demanding Referendum 20-20 were also seen in the area. Pakistan based terror outfits are backing Khalistan Sikh Militants to launch a proxy war against India. Earlier, in April, photographs of Jammat-Ud Dawah (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed and Sikh Militant Gopal Singh Chawla surfaced in media. The JuD chief believed to have met Chawla in Lahore. Pro-Khalistan SFJ Meet in London: Despite India's Objection, UK Reiterates People Can Demonstrate Views Within Law Meanwhile, on the occasion of Baisakhi this rear, when India Sikh pilgrims visited Pakistan, Chawla, under the instructions from the Pakistani authorities, stopped Indian officials from entering Gurudwara Panja Sahib. Supporting Pakistan's anti-India propaganda, the Sikh militants also placed posters of Sikh Referendum 2020 in Parikarma of Gurudwara Panja Sahib. Similarly, in June, the Indian High Commissioner in Pakistan Ajay Bisaria and his wife were again not allowed to enter the Panja Sahib Gurudwara. Yesterday also Indian officials were denied access to Indian pilgrims in Nankana Sahib. India lodged strong protests with Pakistan over harassment High Commission officials. It is the third time in six months when Indian officials were barred from entering gurudwaras in Pakistan. Earlier in the day, Pakistan Prime Minister has Imran Khan invited Punjab Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu for the opening ceremony of the Kartapur Corridor. Yesterday, a day before the 549th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev, both India and Pakistan agreed to build the corridor so that Sikh pilgrims of India could visit easily visit the holy shrine of the first Guru of Sikhs, where he spent last years of his life. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 23, 2018 06:55 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). UNs special envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths met with Houthi rebel chief Abdel-Malik al-Huthi on Thursday in the capital city Sanaa to discuss the upcoming peace talks in December. The meeting came after a halt in fighting between Houthi rebels and the Saudi-led coalition forces. The two men addressed "what can facilitate new discussions in December and procedures needed to transport injured and sick for treatment abroad and bring them back," Huthi spokesman Mohammad Abdel-Salam said on Twitter. Martin Griffiths is spearheading the biggest push in two years to end the war in Yemen, which has resulted in what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis. He also visited Hodeidah which has seen fierce fighting in recent months as Saudi-forces attempt to capture the port city to cut off access for food and medicine for Houthi rebels. The planned talks, to discuss an extended ceasefire will be held in Sweden in December, a rebel spokesman said. The rebel chief urged the UN to remain "balanced and neutral in its work to find a political solution", Abdelsalam added. The UN envoy has his task cut out as one round of talks collapsed in September as Houthi rebels failed to show up in Switzerland as they feared for their security. The push for talks is being backed by Saudi Arabias biggest ally the U.S. which gave out a warning to warring parties to come to a ceasefire within 30 days. US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis has been increasingly firm on trying to push Saudi Arabia to hold talks and the US announced its decision to stop refueling Saudi-warplanes deployed in the Yemen war. "All parties must not delay talks any longer, or insist on travel or transport conditions that call into question good faith intentions to look for a solution or to make necessary concessions," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement. He also called for: "In addition to this, Hodeidah port must be turned over to a neutral party to accelerate the distribution of aid to address the acute humanitarian crisis, and to prevent the port from being used to smuggle weapons and contraband into the country or to finance the Huthi militia," Nauert said. But this will only be possible if the parties show up for talks in December and they agree to an extended ceasefire. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 23, 2018 05:00 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). (ANSA) - Rome, November 23 - The Bank of Italy said Friday that foreign capital was pulling out of BTP State bonds at a similar rate to the height of the eurozone crisis in 2012. The central bank reported "large sales by foreign investors" of Italian bonds in a report. It said the disinvestment led to the quota of bonds in foreign hands to by three percentage points to 24%. It said that was the biggest drop since the second quarter of 2012. It said this trend continued in the third quarter "albeit at a more moderate pace". The average value of BTP bonds has fallen 9% since May because of budget uncertainty, the Bank of Italy said. The fall in BTP State bonds "has determined a reduction in the value of households' financial wealth," the Bank of Italy said, adding that if the spread rises 100 points it means a 30-point rise in mortgage rates The high bond spread also spells less capital and less liquidity for Italian banks with the smaller institutes impacted the most, it said. (ANSA) - Rome, November 23 - Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero said Friday that the kidnapping by gunmen in Kenya this week of Silvia Costanza Romano, a 23-year-old Italian volunteer working for a NGO, was a "terrible episode". "We have been following it from the start with the foreign ministry's crisis unit," Moavero told State broadcaster RAI. "The Kenyan authorities are working hard and we are following events very, very closely". Editor's note: Yusuf Msheliza, the spokesman for Peace and Rehabilitation Initiative, Maiduguri writes on the controversial report on National Emergency Management Agency by lawmakers of the House of Representatives. Msheliza in this piece said alleges that the reports emanating from the House of Representatives on the activities of NEMA are nothing but a concoction of half-truths and a smear campaign against the present administration. 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. The era of fake news is here again. I recalled I jumped out of my seat when the House of Representatives Committee on Emergency and Disaster Preparedness stated that the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) abandoned about 6,779 metric tons of rice donated by the Chinese government for distribution to Internally Displaced Persons in the northeast. The first thing that came to my mind is that Yakubu Dogara is at work again. Maybe he is still rueing his loss at the scheme of affairs in his home state. Just maybe he has vowed to take his pound of flesh from anything related to the Governor of Bauchi state. But the question is, do we throw decorum in the wind because we want to settle political scores? Do we cast aspersions on the personalities of people just only because of their affiliations? In my opinion, the attitude of the enemy of my friend is my enemy must stop if we are desirous of making progress as a people and as a country. I say this for the apparent fact that the news and reports emanating from the House of Representatives on the activities of NEMA are nothing but a concoction of half-truths and a smear campaign to rubbish and give the dog a bad name so that it can be hanged. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda I dare to say that I am a stakeholder holder in the humanitarian sector in Nigeria and I say without fear or favour that the humanitarian efforts of NEMA under Engr. Mustapha Maihaja in the last two years is unparalleled. This much other critical stakeholders can attest to. And so to think or imagine that the House of Representatives has been mentioning and misleading the general public on the activities of NEMA is uncharitable, as well as it is unimaginable. So much so that everything now smacks of a mockery. However, I must add that if care is not taken, the House of Representatives might lose its credibility in the court of public opinion if it continues on the wild goose chase because as it stands, everyone can easily decipher that the House of Representatives is pushing a personal agenda on NEMA. And the reason as I have always stated merely is that the Speaker of the House of Representatives detests the Director General of NEMA because he is friends with the Governor of Bauchi state who Yakubu Dogara has disagreed with politically. Now, does this not amount to an abuse of office? Is this attitude not unbecoming of the Office of the Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives? Sincerely, I am at a loss as to how we can make progress in this country. The first giveaway of possible partisanship is during the public hearing, the committee refused to admit the testimony of a representative of Maersk Lines, Blessing Ebri, who stated that six months after the arrival of the donation at the Nigerian port, no agency of government came to claim or clear it and that it was not until NEMAs intervention in January 2018 that the rice began to be cleared and distributed to the victims of insurgency in the North East. She said: we had to write to the shipper, which is the Chinese Government, that no one is coming forward. READ ALSO: Probe bishop over alleged death rumour of Buhari - Presidency writes DSS, police The shipper approached us on January 30, 2018, and linked us with NEMA. NEMA later negotiated based on the fact that the rice was for emergency and it was agreed that N200 million flat fee be paid by NEMA, excluding the standard charge. Also, the representative of APM Terminals, Daniel Odibe, said 271 containers passed through their port facilities and due process was followed by NEMA. Given these mentioned above, I am at a loss on why the House of Representatives has decided to go the haul on spreading the fake news on NEMA. On the other accusations, I recall that the Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, and the chairman of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, absolved the NEMA Director-General, Mustapha Maihaja, of any wrongdoing in the utilization of the N5.8 billion for relief materials in the North East. But the House of Representatives would hear none of that. The Accountant General of the Federation stated that the need to release funds was as a result of the scaling down of funding by international agencies operating in the region, which could jeopardize the lives of the people of the region. I stand to be corrected, the activities of NEMA since Engr. Mustapha Maihaja assumed leadership had witnessed a progressive leap. Those in the humanitarian industry can attest to this. Only recently, Engr. Mustapha Maihaja bagged the Humanitarian Service Icon award for his sterling performance at NEMA as well as the reforms he brought into the establishment upon appointment. PAY ATTENTION: Download our mobile app to enjoy the latest news update The award organizers also stated that the selection of the NEMA boss took into consideration many issues including the creation of an enabling environment for citizens to recover from natural disasters like flood, and insurgency and communal clashes that have ravaged the country and her citizens in recent times. At this point, I do not know what the House of Representatives wants Nigerians to believe. I am also at a loss if indeed those characters there understand that they are representatives of the people. And if as representatives of the people, they cannot join hands with an agency as critical as NEMA in easing the burden of humanitarian disasters in the country, then it is a big shame. And for the Speaker of the House of Representatives, it is a bigger shame on him as the promoter of fake news on NEMA. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng We have upgraded to serve you better. Nigeria Street Gist - Ezekwesili to Become Nigerias First Female President. Yay or Nay? | Legit.ng TV Source: Legit Newspaper - A poll has predicted that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar will win the 2019 presidential elections - The poll was conducted on popular micro-blogging app, Twitter - The PDP presidential candidate scored 98% of the votes as against President Muhammadu Buharis 2% A poll has predicted that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar will win the 2019 presidential elections. Legit.ng checks revealed that the poll was conducted on popular micro-blogging app, Twitter. At the conclusion of the poll, Atiku scored 98% of the votes as against incumbent and All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buharis 2%. Former governor of Cross River state and presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Donald Duke scored 0% while presidential candidate of Allied Congress Party, who is also and former minister of education, Dr Oby Ezekwesili polled 0%. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda An analysis of the total votes cast of 12,496 showed that Atiku secured 10,286, Buhari; presidential candidate of APC came second with 2,090 votes while Duke and Ezekwesili got zero votes. The poll was conducted by Buhari42019 under the Twitter handle of @buhari42019. Online voters were asked If elections are today, who would you vote? It also generated 3,300 likes and 2,300 retweets. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Meanwhile, Atiku has awarded scholarships to five children of the victims of a recent attack on 157 Task Force Battalion in Metele, Borno. Abubakar made the declaration in a statement personally signed by him on Wednesday, November 21, in Abuja. The former vice president also called on those who desired to celebrate his birthday to donate their gifts and money to the widows and orphans of the fallen military heroes. Adamawa-born Atiku was born on November 25, 1946. He will be 72 on Sunday. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng. We have updated to serve you better. OBJ Endorsement Of Atiku; Sign Of Good Tidings? - Nigeria Street Gist | Legit TV Source: Legit.ng News - PDP has reacted to President Muhammu Buhari's meeting with southeast leaders - The party's spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan, said that Nigerian were no longer interested in fake promises ahead of 2019 elections - He said that the APC is jittery over southeast endorsement of Atiku Abubakar for 2019 elections The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has told President Muhammadu Buhari that Nigerians are no longer interested in fake promises and false performance claims, now that elections are around the corner. Legit.ng reports that in a statement issued by Kola Ologbondiyan, its national publicity secretary, on Thursday, November 22, in Abuja, the party posited that the attempt by the Buhari presidency to lure the southeast geo-political zones into supporting his second term fell like a pack of cards as the people have resolved not to follow any leader who can not deliver on his promises. The party observed that President Buhari and the APC have been jittery since the southeast and other geo-political zones across board expressed an overwhelming acceptance of the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, due to his proven competence, respect for equity and all-inclusiveness in governance. PAY ATTENTION: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda The statement read: Instead of accepting his failure, which is manifest to all, President Buhari, who is reputed for not fulfilling campaign promises, is busy making a fresh list of fake promises to Nigerians. In this desperation, Mr President fails to understand that the people of the South East, just like other Nigerians, are too sophisticated to fall for gimmicks, false promises and ethnic politics, and as such cannot be swayed from their resolve to rally with Atiku Abubakar to rescue our nation from the shackles of misrule. Nigerians have since seen through President Buharis bouquet of failures and fake promises, which in any case, cannot heal the wounds of marginalization, nepotism, inequity, disregard for federal character principle and harsh economic policies, including obnoxious foreign exchange regulations and heavy taxations of his administration, which are killing businesses and plunging families into extreme poverty. Nigerians, including those in the South East, know that President Buhari does not keep promises. They know that he has not fulfilled any of the promises he made during the 2015 campaign. As such, they cannot fall to the same old trick ahead of the 2019 general election. Moreover, President Buhari is yet to apologise to the Southeast and other geo-political zones over his administrations indictment for human rights violations, extra-judicial killings, illegal arrests, arbitrary detention, torture and reported disappearances, as detailed in the reports by the United States Department of State, Amnesty International (AI) and Transparency International (TI). Instead of clutching on straws and seeking to beguile Nigerians with fake promises, blame game and false performance indices, President Buhari should come to terms with the fact that there is no way Nigerians can change their minds about voting in Atiku Abubakar as his inevitable replacement come February, 2019. The PDP therefore commended Nigerians across board for their boldness in confronting President Buhari with his failures and their resolve not to be beguiled again in the 2019 elections. READ ALSO: Obasanjo denies meeting with Osinbajo, demands withdrawal of report Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday, October 13, met with southeast governors, representatives of Ohanaeze Ndigbo and other leaders of the region. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng We have updated to serve you better. Nigeria Latest News: Buhari vs Atiku - 2019 Elections | - on Legit TV Source: Legit.ng The Nigeria Police Force (NPF), in the evening of Thursday, November 22, gave details about the death of Michael Adikwu, the prime suspect in the Offa, Kwara state, bank robbery some months ago The NPF, through its spokesperson, Jimoh Moshod, also said the death of Adikwu does not vindicate the president of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, as the law must be mad to take its full course. A statement by the police spokesperson obtained by Legit.ng said Adikwu, 30 years old, was not murdered, but died after he slumped in detention while investigation was ongoing. There is a post-mortem examination result in respect of the death of Michael Adikwu M 30Yrs, Jimoh Moshood said. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda Read the full statement below: RE- OFFA BANK ROBBERY: SARAKI DEMANDS PROBE OF DEATH OF PRINCIPAL SUSPECT All five (5) suspects that indicted and implicated Senator Bukola Saraki, Senate president Federal Republic of Nigeria in the Offa bank robbery are alive and now in court The death of Michael Adikwu M 30Yrs (a dismissed policeman and an ex-convict) a sectional gang leader who confessed to have killed twenty two (22) persons including pregnant women and nine (9) police personnel during Offa bank robbery cannot vindicate the Senate president, Senator Bukola Saraki, the law must take its course. Evidence from the five (5) suspects now in court are enough to prosecute the Senate president, Senator Bukola Saraki The attention of the Nigeria Police Force has been drawn to the innuendo in the media on the death of a sectional gang leader Michael Adikwu M 30 yrs (a dismissed policeman and an ex- convict) who confessed to have killed twenty two (22) persons including pregnant women and nine (9) police personnel and carted away of twenty two (22) AK 47 rifles at the Offa police divisional headquarters during Offa bank robbery on the 5th April, 2018, it is therefore, imperative that the Nigeria Police Force respond to the publication and set the record straight. 2. The Nigeria Police Force is conversant and mindful of contempt of court in commenting on cases already before the court of competent jurisdiction, however, the force is constraint and compelled to respond to the statement from Mr Yusuf Olaniyonu, special adviser (media and publicity) to the Senate president, Senator Bukola Saraki, and not on the court processes and proceedings on the case of Offa bank robbery for which five (5) principal suspects are now standing trial in a state high court in Ilorin, Kwara state. 3. For avoidance of doubt, and to correct the insinuations and wrong impressions created by the statement from Mr Yusuf Olaniyonu, special adviser (media and publicity) to the Senate president, Senator Bukola Saraki in the minds of members of the public over the indictment and involvement of the Senate president, Senator Bukola Saraki in the case of the Offa bank robbery of 5th April, 2018, from the confessions of the five (5) gang leaders namely; Ayoade Akinnibosun, Ibukunle Ogunleye, Adeola Abraham, Salawudeen Azeez, Niyi Ogundiran arrested for direct involvement and active participation in the Offa bank robbery and the gruesome killing of THIRTY THREE (33) innocent persons, the Senate president, Senator Bukola Saraki was indicted by the five (5) suspects who admitted in their confessional statements to the police investigators that they were political thugs of the Senate president, Federal Republic of Nigeria, Sen Bukola Saraki and the executive governor of Kwara state, Alh Abdulfatah Ahmed. 4. The five (5) gang leaders further confessed during investigation that they are political thugs under the name Youth Liberation Movement a.k.a Good Boys they also admitted and confessed to have been sponsored with firearms, money and operational vehicles. i. Lexus RX 300 Jeep with Reg. KWARA, KWA 143 RM with inscription SARAKI on a sticker attached to the vehicle ii. Mercedes Benz compressor Reg. LAGOS, LT 496 KJA, these two (2) vehicles were used for the Offa bank robbery by the five (5) gang leaders. The first vehicle was later registered after the Offa bank robbery to divert attention while the suspects were in detention. These confessions were made before the media and the public on the 3rd of June, 2018. It is therefore, evidently clear that the Senate president, Sen. Bukola Saraki has case to answer in the whole matter. 7. It was also discovered during investigations that three (3) gang leaders who participated actively in the Offa bank robbery (i) Ayoade Akinnibosun aka AY (ii) Ibukunle Ogunleye aka Arrow and (iii) Adeola Abraham followed the Senate president, Sen. Bukola Saraki to Oloffas palace when the Senate president paid a condolence visit to Offa after the bank robbery. 8. Further investigation into the matter revealed that all the five (5) gang leaders namely; Ayoade Akinnibosun, Ibukunle Ogunleye, Adeola Abraham, Salawudeen Azeez, Niyi Ogundiran have direct connection to the Senate president, Sen. Bukola Saraki as a picture of one of the five (5) gang leaders when paraded by the police was in Aso Ebi (trouser) used during the Senate president daughters wedding. The five (5) gang leaders further admitted that they attended the Senate president daughters wedding held in Abuja. 9. Consequent on all the above, a thorough and discreet investigation was concluded by the police into the matter and all the five (5) gang leaders namely; Ayoade Akinnibosun, Ibukunle Ogunleye, Adeola Abraham, Salawudeen Azeez, Niyi Ogundiran arrested for direct involvement and active participation in the Offa bank robbery that indicted and implicated Senator Bukola Saraki, Senate president Federal Republic of Nigeria in the Offa bank robbery are alive and now in court. 10. Michael Adikwu M 30Yrs (a dismissed policeman and an ex-convict) who confessed to have killed twenty two (22) persons including pregnant women and nine (9) police personnel and carted away of twenty two (22) AK 47 rifles at the Offa police divisional headquarters during Offa bank robbery on the 5th April, 2018 was among the three (3) gang leaders captured on CCTV footage and later arrested. Michael Adikwu M 30yrs was not paraded along with the five (5) gang leaders now standing trial because he was taken out to arrest other members of the gang and recover the twenty two (22) AK 47 rifles carted away during the Offa bank robbery. 11. Michael Adikwu M 30Yrs was not murdered but slummed and died in detention while investigation into the Offa bank robbery was ongoing. It is also important for the public to know that the deceased Michael Adikwu M 30yrs was not among the five (5) gang leaders that indicted and implicated the Senate president, Senator Bukola Saraki, therefore, his death cannot in anyway vindicate Senator Bukola Saraki. There is a post-mortem examination result in respect of the death of Michael Adikwu M 30Yrs. 12. The indictment of the Senate president, Senator Bukola Saraki from the confessions of the five (5) gang leaders namely; Ayoade Akinnibosun, Ibukunle Ogunleye, Adeola Abraham, Salawudeen Azeez, Niyi Ogundiran arrested for direct involvement and active participation in the Offa bank robbery was not politically motivated as alleged by Mr Yusuf Olaniyonu, special adviser (media and publicity) to the Senate president, Senator Bukola Saraki to the media, but purely criminal case. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app 13. It should be of serious concern to all, that human life is sacrosanct and where investigation has been concluded and suspects arraigned in court, judicial process must be exhausted and not hindered for the law to take its course in ensuring justice for the families of more than thirty three (33) innocent persons including pregnant women that were gruesomely murdered in cold blood by Michael Adikwu and the five (5) gang leaders Ayoade Akinnibosun, Ibukunle Ogunleye, Adeola Abraham, Salawudeen Azeez, Niyi Ogundiran arrested, investigated and currently standing trial for direct involvement and active participation in the Offa bank robbery, than for any individual(s) or any group to attempt futile efforts and desperate distractions to pervert the end of justice is most unfair to the families of the deceased, the state and the society at large. Legit.ng reported that five of the six Offa bank robbery suspects appeared before an Ilorin high court on Wednesday, November 21, without the prime suspect, Michael Adikwu. The lead prosecuting counsel who is also the Kwara state attorney-general and commissioner for justice, Kamaldeen Ajibade, told the court that the police headquarters revealed that Adikwu is dead. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng. We have upgraded to serve you better. Robbers Return Firearms to Nigerian Police (Crime News in Nigeria) | Legit TV Source: Legit.ng - Nigeria's former president Goodluck Jonathan has revealed why he refused to visit Chibok after the abduction of about 276 girls from Borno state - Jonathan said he had planned to pay an unannounced visit but had to cancel it after information about the visit was leaked to the foreign media - The former president also dismissed claims that his administration was slow in responding to the Chibok incident Former president Goodluck Jonathan in his book, My Transition Hours, revealed why he refused to visit Chibok after the abduction of about 276 girls from Government Girls Secondary School Chibok in Borno state. Legit.ng gathered that Jonathan said he had planned to pay an unannounced visit to the community but he had to cancel after information about the proposed visit was leaked to the foreign media. The former president also dismissed the claim that several local government areas were under the control of the insurgents when he handed over power to the President Muhammadu Buharis administration. He said: Again, I was accused of not visiting Chibok immediately after the abduction of the girls. A lot of assumptions were made. What was not countenanced was the fact that a President moved with security advice from experts because he ceases to be a private citizen the moment he wears the powers of state. READ ALSO: Presidency floors Jonathan over claim on corruption in Buhari's govt For the avoidance of doubt, let me state that I had made up my mind to visit Chibok even against the advice of my Service Chiefs and sent an advance party to the area in preparation for my visit. It was meant to be an unannounced visit. However someone in the know, most likely a saboteur, leaked the information to the Western media and they reported it. Of course when it became public knowledge that I planned to visit Chibok, the security chiefs requested the trip to be cancelled. Their advice was germane and regrettably, my visit had to be cancelled. Sometime, in the heat of the moment, one got the impression that I was being goaded to appear there in the great expectation of something untoward happening to me. I was to access Chibok in a helicopter that would have flown over Boko Haram infested areas. This wave of misinformation on the kidnap of the Chibok girls is similar to the malicious propaganda still being spread by those who saw nothing commendable in all we did to curb the Echo Haram situation in the North East. On if he was slow in his response to the abduction, Jonathan said: The criticism over alleged slow response was one of those absurd injections into the discourse, but when it comes from eminent persons who were supposed to be circumspect; it began to look more plausible to observers. My administration was not slow in responding to the Chibok incident. How could response have been slow in a military occupied zone? Before the Presidency was alerted by the intelligence services, the military were already on it. As soon as I got the intelligence report, I summoned the service chiefs for briefing. I was informed that the Air Force was already using several surveillance aircraft to search the area. On efforts made to rescue the girls, Jonathan said he did everything humanly possible to rescue the girls. We did everything humanly possible to locate the girls. I wrote letters to the Presidents of the United States, Barack Obama, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, President of France, Francois Hollande as well as leaders of China, Israel and our neighbouring countries for help. They supported the search in their different ways and capacities but until I left office, it was all to no avail. On several occasions when raids were conducted and news of rescue of hostages filtered in, my hopes were raised but almost immediately dashed when victims were processed and none of the Chibok girls were among those rescued. As an aside, while thanking the men and women of the US security services who were deployed to Nigeria and toiled day and night in the Northeast in search of the Chibok Girls, my surprise at the role played by the then US. President Barack Obama, still calls to doubt his genuine intentions for Nigeria. Jonathan also blamed former US president Barack Obama for the low success recorded in the fight against Boko Haram. For some strange reasons, the Obama administration had tactically penciled Nigeria and my administration for failure. Amongst many manoeuvres, was the refusal to provide any real military backing to Nigerias Armed Forces. President Obama and his security adviser, Susan Rice, bluntly refused to sell any military hardware including jet fighters and attack helicopters to Nigeria. Obama cited the Leahy Law as the reason his regime prevented the American Government from supporting Nigeria in providing weapons to fight Boko Haram. Even when the State of Israel expressed the willingness to sell attack helicopters to Nigeria, the gesture was frustrated by the Obama administration that kept waving the same Leahy Law like a banner. PAY ATTENTION: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda My administration, including a team of international partners with their respective governments, devoted considerable amount of resources in the search and rescue of the girls." Legit.ng previously reported that Borno state governor, Kashim Shettima, criticised former president Goodlucks new book, My Transition Hours, barely a day after its public presentation in Abuja, describing it as elementary and containing fiction. Governor Shettima alleged that the former president lied about the issue of the Chibok schoolgirls, who were abducted in 2014. The Chibok issue was included in the content of the new book. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng We have upgraded to serve you better Bring back our girls - 3 year anniversary #BBOG | Legit TV Source: Legit.ng News - Lawali Dogonkade has been sentenced to four years in prison for fraudulently benefiting from a N31.2 million contract meant for the purchase of medical equipment - A Zamfara high court later awarded a fine of N120,000 to Dogonkade, a serving member of the state House of Assembly, after pleading guilty to the fraud - The judgement followed a request by Dogonkades lawyer that his client should be pitied being a first time offender A Zamfara state High Court that on Thursday, November 22, sentenced Lawali Attahiru Dogonkade to four years in prison after pleading guilty to the fraud on a N31 million contract awarded a fine of N120,000 to him. Premium Times reports that Dogonkade, a serving member of the state House of Assembly, admitted that he was fraudulently benefiting from the funds meant for the purchase of medical equipment. This is contained in a statement from the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commissions spokesperson, Rasheedat Okoduwa. Lawali Attahiru Dogonkade, a serving member of Zamfara state House of Assembly. Photo credit: Google Source: Depositphotos READ ALSO: Police replies Saraki over death of Offa robbery prime suspect Okoduwa said The convict, representing Kauran-Namoda local government in the Zamfara state House of Assembly, was accused of using his position to confer corrupt advantage upon himself in a N31,290, 000 contract meant for the supply of medical equipment to the state government in violation of Sections 10, 12 and 19 of the corrupt practices and other related offences Act, 2000. He said Dogonkade allegedly prompted the managing director of a pharmacy known as Madaci Pha*rmacy to part with N4.5 million as percentage gratification, in relation to the said contract. According to him, the accused confirmed commission of the offences and was later sentenced to a four-year term in prison, or a fine of N30, 000 for each of the four counts, making a total of N120,000. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda The statement read: the judgement followed a request by Dogonkades lawyer that his client should be pitied being a first time offender. His counsel, Abubakar Junaidu, then pleaded with the court to be lenient with his client considering the fact that he was a first time offender with a large family and dependents who solely rely on him for their livelihood. Following his guilty plea, the Counsel to the Commission invited the court to convict him in line with the provisions of 274 (2) of Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015. The court thereupon convicted the accused person as charged and sentenced him to four years imprisonment or payment of fine of N30, 000 on each of the counts totalling N120, 000. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app The statement did not indicate the name of the judge who granted the controversial ruling. It also did not state whether the diverted fund would be refunded to the states treasury. Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that a high court in Zamfara granted an interim order restraining all parties involved in the state APC primaries tussle to stay action as controversies continue on whether the party would field candidates for 2019 elections or not. The judgment was handed down by justice Mukhtar Yushau of high court IV, Gusau, Zamfara state. Barrister Sani Katu, counsel to the plaintiffs who are card carrying members of the party and some senatorial aspirants in the state, said the order implied that the national headquarters of the APC, INEC, the national vice chairman of the party in the northwest and their agents could not take any further action. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng. We have upgraded to serve you better. Top 5 the Richest People of Nigeria: The Luxury of Corruption on Legit.ng TV: Source: Legit.ng - 37-year-old lady, Amarachukwu Chineke, has been accused of defrauding a House of Representatives member - The lady has been arraigned before an Igbosere magistrates court in Lagos for the alleged crime - She is facing a three-count charge bordering on conspiracy, obtaining under false pretense and stealing A 37-year-old lady, Amarachukwu Chineke, has been arraigned before an Igbosere magistrates court in Lagos for allegedly defrauding a member of the House of Representatives, Emmanuel Egwu. Egwu, representing Idah Federal Constituency in Kogi state was said to have lost $49,800 (over N15 million). Chineke, whose residential address was not given, is facing a three-count charge bordering on conspiracy, obtaining under false pretence and stealing preferred against her by the police, Vanguiard reports. The prosecutor, Sergeant Friday Mameh, told the court that the defendant and others who are still at large, committed the alleged offence on Wednesday, September 19, at Abraham Adesanya Street, Lekki Lagos. READ ALSO: OPINION: Investing in Nigeria is risky, by Priti Patel According to him, Chineke obtained the money under the false pretence that she was in a position to exchange the said sum to its naira equivalent of N15,438,000. He said the offence committed is contrary to and punishable under Sections 411, 314 (3) and 287 (5) (a), of the criminal laws of Lagos state, 2015. However, the defendant pleaded not guilty to the charge against her. Consequently, Chief Magistrate Folashade Botoku granted her bail in the sum of N2million with two sureties in like sum. The magistrate said the sureties must show evidence of tax payment to the Lagos state government and have their addresses verified. The case was then adjourned till Monday, December 10, for trial. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Meanwhile, an aspirant of All Progressives Congress (APC) in the just concluded party primaries for the House of Representatives, Aisha Augie-Kuta, has called for adequate women and youth participation in Nigeria's politics. Augie-Kuta, the senior special assistant on new media to the governor of Kebbi state, said the involvement of women and youth in politics would make government more accountable. An award winning photographer, filmmaker and a media consultant turned politician, Augie-Kuta, while addressing journalists in Abuja said the more Nigerians ask questions the more things will improve positively in the nation. Should the Nigerian Senate be scrapped? - on Legit.ng TV Source: Legit.ng (ANSA) - Rome, November 23 - Thousands of operations slated for Friday in Italian hospitals are set to be postponed due to a 24-hour strike called by 120,000 doctors and veterinarians. Those on strike are demanding more funds for the public healthcare sector, which unions have said is "on the verge of collapse", as well as the renewal of the collective sector contract, which has not been updated for 10 years. Minister of Health Giulia Grillo said that "there are enough resources to honor the pledges made for the 2019-2021 contract renewals". - Dino Melaye and Rotimi Amaechi met on a show to discuss the possibility of Muhammadu Buhari returning as president in 2019 - Amaechi argued that President Buhari passes laws in the interest of Nigeria and its citizens - Melaye argues that the president does not have the capacity to return in 2019 The senator representing Kogi west district at the National Assembly, Dino Melaye, has reportedly clashed with the minister of transport, Rotimi Amaechi, over the re-election bid of President Muhammadu Buhari. While Melaye does not want Buharis return to the seat of power in Aso Rock, Abuja with the argument that he is not physically equipped to govern Nigeria, Amaechi has expounded some reasons why the president should return in 2019. While speaking at The Osasu symposium in Abuja on Thursday, November 22, The Cable quotes Melaye as absolving the National Assembly of any blame over delays in the passage of budgets in the country. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda The senator claimed the blame should go to the executive arm of government. Earlier, Amaechi reportedly said Buhari signs laws in the interest of Nigerians. He also argued that any law the president rejects is in the interest of the country. In response, Melaye said Nigerians know that Buhari should not return in 2019. I know Honourable Rotimi Amaechi very well, and he is my brother, he is my friend. Normally, he is more eloquent than this, normally, he would speak with precision than this. But you know when you are not saying the truth, it will never flow. The issue of the budget as raised by Honourable Rotimi Amaechi, I am happy that he was a legislator, and he was a presiding officer at the state house of assembly. The truth will remain the truth. At what point did you bring the budget? If you will all recall that the president of the senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives, had to write Mr President, accusing leaders of MDAs for refusing to come and defend their budget. The president had to order his ministers to go to the national assembly and defend their budgets before they came. The truth is, all political appointees, including Rotimi Amaechi must become born again, if we want to move this country forward. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app In whether the president reads these laws or not, all Nigerians, we know ourselves; you cannot give what you dont have. President Muhammadu Buhari is not intellectually, emotionally, physically, mentally, equipped to govern this country, Melaye said. Legit.ng earlier reported that Senator Ali Ndume recently said that the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, would be a walkover for Muhammadu Buhari in the 2019 general elections. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng. We have upgraded to serve you better. Between Buharis Next Level And Atikulate - Nigerians React| Legit TV Source: Legit.ng - Over 50 staff of the Nigerian High Commission in London have been laid off - The staff were dismissed and asked to accept a letter dated Thursday, November 23 - The letter of termination came due to continual outcry from staff members of the commission demanding their salary arrears A report by Vanguard indicates that over 50 staff of the Nigerian High Commission in London have been dismissed. According to the report, the staff were dismissed and asked to accept a letter dated Thursday, November 23. Before now, staff of the commission have reportedly been working all year (2018) with months of no pay, while the letter of termination came due to continual outcry from staff members of the commission demanding their salary arrears. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app In the letter signed by one Helen Nzeako on behalf of the Nigerian High Commission UK, she said the termination of employment is as a result of restructuring of the organization and due to budgetary constraints. The dismissed staff members of the commission however say the plot by the management to disengage them was to pave way to employ their friends and family members into their positions. The letter of termination, however, instructed staff to reapply for the same job if they so wish. We want the world to see how we are been ill-treated just because we asked for our salaries. This is so unfair and an injustice to democratic rule, a displaced staff of the commission was quoted as saying in the report. The aggrieved staff also called on President Muhammadu Buhari and the federal government to look into the matter. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda Meanwhile, a former secretary of state for international development in the United Kingdom, Priti Patel, has warned foreign investors to be wary about investing in Nigeria. Patel in an opinion piece, stated specifically that the Nigerian government has disrespect for international law and convention, and court decisions. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng. We have upgraded to serve you better. 'Nigeria Needs a Leader That is Not Bigger Than the Country' - Nigeria Street Gist | Legit TV Source: Legit - A mother of nine has dumped her husband to tie the knot with her Gambian lover - The woman who ran off with her Gambian lover also converted to Islam - It was gathered that the 45-year-old ran off with a 32-year-old Gambian man Heidi Hepworth, a mother of nine, has dumped her husband to run off with her Gambian lover who she met online. The 45-year-old woman also converted to Islam in other to marry her African lover. The woman reportedly eloped with Gambian man identified as Mamadou Salieu Jallow in November, 2017. According to DailyMail, Hepworth is planning her wedding in a mosque in Gambia. The woman left her husband and nine children behind to marry Jallow. UK 45-year-old mother of 9 dumps husband, converts to Islam to marry Gambian lover (photos Photo: UGC Source: DailyMail Source: UGC READ ALSO: I never liked him - Lady shares amazing love story after meeting her hubby on Facebook In an interview with the Sun, Hepworth noted that the majority Muslim nation is a happier and more caring place than Britain. However, the woman's former husband of 23 years came at his wife in February, claiming that she had been brainwashed by 32-year-old Jallow. The 45-year-old woman who now wears a hijab and prays in the mosque everyday, however, says she is very happy. She said: "No-one imagined this would last but we love each other and are making plans to marry." PAY ATTENTION: Read best news on Nigeria's #1 news app Hepworth also claimed that she popped the question to Jallow. She also revealed that she plans to move to Gambia fully after their wedding next year and her divorce is finalised. In an interview with ITV programme, the woman revealed that she did not leave her children behind. The woman converted to Islam to marry Gambian lover Photo: UGC Source: DailyMail Source: UGC She said: "I've got three children that were under 16. The holiday was planned for three months. They're all 28 to six. There were only three of them left behind who I would have loved to take. They were left with my older daughter, she's 28. I went for a month. They went to school from home and stayed in their own home. It was planned for months." According to her, her former partner knew she was going to meet Jallow and drove her to the airport and put her on a plane, telling her to be careful. PAY ATTENTION: Get your daily relationship tips and advice on Africa Love Aid group Hepworth said: "We fell in love. I met him on Facebook. Salieu contacted me out of the blue. We got talking, just chit chat. Just a friend request. We just chatted for three or four months. My marriage was over. The marriage had many, many turns in the road as it went down that straight, as marriages do, you separate. It went stale." However, the woman's ex-husband claimed that Jallow is with the woman just for her money. He said: "We found a receipt from moneygram where she's sent him money from. It was in her bag, it was 65 in one week. That was when she was still with me. She must have started hiding them after that. She's in denial over everything. Everyone knows the truth." "People have contacted us saying he's fleeced other women. Four different people, we know he's already fleeced, contacted us over it." NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng We have upgraded to serve you better Be honest, can you give up your religion for $5m? - on Legit TV Source: Legit - The National Emergency Management Agency has received a fresh batch of 174 stranded Nigerians from Libya - The returnees arrived at the MMIA Cargo Wing by 1.10am on Friday, November 23 - A total of 61 female adults, four female children, eight female infants and others returned The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) on Friday, November 23, announced that it has received another batch of 174 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 1.10am. They were brought back in an Al Buraq Airlines Boeing 737-8000 aircraft with registration number 5A-DMG by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the European Union (EU) under the Assisted Voluntary Return Programme. READ ALSO: I made up my mind to visit Chibok but the trip was cancelled because information was leaked - Jonathan The returnees were received by officials of NEMA and other government agencies including the Nigeria Immigration Service, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, the Nigeria Police Force and the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons. The acting zonal coordinator of NEMA, south west zonal office, Segun Afolayan, said after profiling the returnees that they included 61 female adults, four female children and eight female infants. Afolayan said there were also 91 male adults, six male children and four male infants, along with an unaccompanied male child, among the returnees. He said the returnees included 10 families, three minor medical cases and three pregnant women. Afolayan advised Nigerians to be wary of traffickers who lure them into perilous journeys with false messages of getting rich quick outside the country. One of the returnees, 30-year-old Chukwudi Onyemechie, from Anambra state, told newsmen that he was a successful auto tyres dealer at Ladipo Market, Lagos, before he was fooled by the promise of a better life in Europe. Onyemechie said a man convinced him to travel to France via the Libya route and he eventually sold off his wares and proceeded to Benin Republic where he began the unfortunate journey. He said: I was told that the journey would be by road but I never knew that it was a deadly and dangerous route. I entered Libyan town where I was taken to a camp controlled by Nigerians where I spent three months in detention. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda My trafficker organised my detention in order that I would be forced to pay him money. He asked me to pay some amount to a connection man who denied that I didnt pay. and my trafficker claimed he settled the man and I had to double the amount. I left Nigeria in June 2017. I experienced unstable and dangerous life over there. After struggling to cross but unsuccessful, I was helped to get to IOM office in Libya, who helped me back to Nigeria today. Onyemechie advised Nigerian youths who were thinking of going to Europe through Libya to jettison such plan, stressing that it was better for them to make the journey in a regular manner and with adequate information. Another returnee, Kikelomo Ajasa, a mother of one from Ibadan, Oyo State, said she left Nigeria in 2016 with the hope of getting a better job abroad, with the encouragement of her husband. Ajasa, who holds a National Diploma in Hotel and Tourism, said she left Nigeria because of the various challenges that her family was facing. She said: I got to Libya with God as my saviour but the racial discrimination by the Libyans is too bad. If youre unfortunate to enter bus and sit beside a Libyan, throughout the journey, the Libyan will not want your body to touch his own and he will cover his noise throughout. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Though, some of them are very nice and good, majority, especially the youths, dont wish the blacks well. Ajasa said she got a housemaid job where she was being paid 6,000 Dinars, equivalent to about N60, 000. If I want to send N20,000 to Nigeria, I must part with N40,000 or N50,000 before my family will get the N20,000.There is no banking system there. Nigerians who had settled down are the launderers. They have their Nigerian bank accounts. Once, we pay them there in dinars, we dont know how they transmit the money, but our families will receive what we agreed on their bank accounts here in Nigeria. I am not happy for the wasted years. If I had stayed back, I could have been more settled and successful. Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that the National Emergency Management Agency announced that they on Thursday, November 8, received a fresh batch of 120 stranded Nigerians from Libya. The returnees were received by the acting zonal coordinator of NEMA, Segun Afolayan and other federal government agencies. The agency said the returnees that arrived at the MMIA Cargo Wing at about 9:15 pm via AL Buraq Air were brought back with the help of the International Organisation for Migration. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng We have updated to serve you better. Mass deportation: Tales of woes from Libya - on Legit.ng TV: Source: Legit Nigeria Earlier, Legit.ng shared lovely photos from the special proposal oyinbo man identified as Christopher Chestnut gave his Nigerian sweetheart, Leah Athaliah Amishe, at Jos airport. Interestingly, he made the bold move on his first visit to Nigeria, gaining the internet's attention with his sleek proposal to his African queen. As wedding bells are ringing and the couple are to tie the knot, they recently released their pre-wedding photos. Athaliah and Chestnut are to walk down the aisle on November 24, at ECWA Church in Jos. Many social media users have sent good wishes their way as they begin another chapter in their lives and build a family. A lot of people can't get over how adorable they look together. The groom who hails from Philadelphia joined his bride-to-be in wearing Nigerian traditional wedding attires with his wife. READ ALSO: 12 stylish photos that display the true beauty of northern women Here are more photos below: Congratulations to the couple! Did you know? NAIJ.com (naija.ng) is now-> Legit.ng We have updated to serve you better. PAY ATTENTION: Read best news on Nigeria's #1 news app Can You Take a Blood Oath With Your Partner? on Legit TV: Source: Legit - President Muhammadu Buhari has sent the minister of defence, retired Brigadier General Mansur Dan-Ali, to Chad - Dan-Ali would be meeting with President Idris Deby of Chad over the porosity of Nigeria-Chad border - Recall that no less than 44 soldiers were killed by the Islamic West Africa Province at Metele, a remote village bordering Nigeria and Chad President Muhammadu Buhari has dispatched the minister of defence, retired Brigadier General Mansur Dan-Ali, to Chad for an emergency meeting with the Chadian president, Idris Deby, on the deterioration of security at the Nigeria-Chad border. The News Agency of Nigeria reports that Dan-Ali had on Thursday, November 22, briefed President Buhari on security development across the country. Legit.ng gathers that he also briefed him about the recent killings of some Nigerian soldiers by the Islamic West Africa Province, a breakaway Boko Haram sect, operating along Nigeria-Chad border. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda Security sources on Wednesday, November 21, said no less than 44 soldiers were killed during the attacks, which occurred at Metele, a remote village bordering Nigeria and Chad. Diplomatic sources, however, said that the minister of Defence would also be meeting his Chadian counterpart during his mission in Chad, to identify what had led to the recent increase in Boko Haram terrorism in the area. The sources, who preferred not to be named, said: Nigeria has a Chad problem in the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) put together to secure the Lake Chad Basin area and repeal the Boko Haram terrorism attacks against all the countries neighbouring the lake. According to the sources, Chad is believed to have its own internal security challenges and this has reportedly forced them to pull away their troops manning their own border around Lake Chad. The sources said: That lacuna is being exploited by the Boko Haram terrorists, who go in and out of Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon to launch terrorist acts. This is a clear illustration of the fact that terrorism is beyond national borders." When contacted, the senior special assistant to the president on media and publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, said he was aware that the defence minister would be going to Chad, but said: Im unaware of his mission there. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and former vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, on Friday, November 23, reacted to the death of 44 soldiers who were recently killed by Boko Haram insurgents at the Nigerian Army base in Borno state. Atiku in a tweet on his official Twitter page called for the support and prayers of all Nigerians for the military in the war against ISWAP and Boko Haram. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng We have updated to serve you better Nigerian Air Force Operations Against Boko Haram | Legit TV Source: Legit - African countries have been calling for the restitution of their artworks stolen by European countries - France has finally agreed to return 26 African artworks claimed by Benin - President Emmanuel Macron of France had said in Burkina Faso in 2017 that "Africa's heritage cannot just be in European private collections and museums" President Emmanuel Macron of France has agreed to return 26 African artworks claimed by Benin. The president's office on Friday, November 23, said Macron agreed to return without delay 26 disputed artworks to Benin, Punch reports. Legit.ng gathers that President Macron made the decision after experts he commissioned to study the issue of African treasures held by French museums presented the findings of their report to him. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda In a previous report by Legit.ng, Oba of Benin, Oba Ewuare, asked Prince Charles of Wales to support the agitation for the return of ancient Benin artifacts which were taken in 1897. According to the monarch, the return of these artifacts would enable his kingdom establish Oba Palace Museum, which would assist the promotion of tourism in Benin City, Edo state. He made this demand during a closed door meeting with Prince Charles at the UK high commissioners residence in Maitama, Abuja on Tuesday, November 6. Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that in its bid to quench the wild fire of fake news during the coming European parliamentary election campaign, the French National Assembly passed two bills against the dissemination of false information across the country. With three months left to the national election, the new law would guarantee political parties in the country the open way to challenge any perceived fake news against them. The bills were approved following the majority consent of the French lawmakers on Tuesday evening, November 20. The new law, which was initiated by President Emmanuel Macron, would help checkmate the spread of untrue rumours and opinion that are capable of damaging global reputation of the country. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Candidates vying for the European parliamentary election would be able to apply to a judge for an emergency injunction to remove fake news for three months before the firsts round of the election. The new law has also placed a subtle control on paid political expression on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and micro-blogging. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng We have updated to serve you better Which country would you leave Nigeria for? | Legit TV Source: Legit.ng Bethlehem Township police arrested an Easton man after two heroin deals were arranged in the city's West Ward, court papers say. William Anthony Reid, of Easton, is charged by Bethlehem Township police in a drug case. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com) A confidential informant told township police that a man named "Stacey" gave the informant four bags of heroin to sample, according to township police Investigator Edward Fox, who is also a member of the Northampton County Drug Task Force. In early October and then again in recent days the informant made a phone call to arrange a buy from the man and then was provided by police with prerecorded cash to purchase heroin from that person in the 700 block of Northampton Street and then on South Warren Street, Fox said. The first sale in the informant's car was witnessed by police and the heroin was recovered from the informant, Fox said. The second agree-upon deal resulted in the informant driving the suspect and ended up in a traffic stop, where more heroin, two cellphones and $909 in cash were found, Fox said. The drugs field tested in both instances for heroin, Fox said. "Stacey" turned out to be William Anthony Reid, 33, of the first block of South Warren, Fox said. After Reid was read his rights, he admitted he was meeting with the informant to sell heroin, Fox said. Reid was arraigned Wednesday afternoon before District Judge Daniel Corpora on two counts of possession with intent to deliver drugs, two counts of using a cellphone in a criminal act and one count of possession of a controlled substance, records show. Reid was sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $50,000 bail. He remained jailed on Friday morning, records show. Court papers don't list an attorney for Reid. His preliminary hearing is tentatively scheduled 9 a.m. Dec. 5 in Corpora's court on Easton's South Side. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. PHILADELPHIA -- The Eagles ruled out five players on Friday for their Week 12 matchup against the Giants. The team may be without its top four active cornerbacks due to injuries on Sunday. Cornerbacks Jalen Mills (foot), Sidney Jones (hamstring) and Rasul Douglas (knee) and safety/cornerback Avonte Maddox (knee) failed to practice throughout the week. Jones, Maddox and Douglas were injured during the Week 11 loss to the New Orleans Saints. Mills was injured during the Week 8 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars. Mills, Jones and Maddox were ruled out on Friday. Douglas was given a "questionable" tag. Joining the defensive backs on the "out" list were linebacker Jordan Hicks (calf) and running back Darren Sproles (hamstring). Hicks was also injured against New Orleans in Week 11. Sproles hasn't played in a game since Week 1. Here are three thoughts on how the injury report impacts the Eagles heading into the Week 12 matchup against the Giants: 1. The secondary is depleted. The Eagles will probably need to rely on De'Vante Bausby, Chandon Sullivan and Cre'Von LeBlanc at cornerback. Corey Graham and Tre Sullivan form an underwhelming fill-in duo at free safety. Malcolm Jenkins is the only true starter remaining in the defensive backfield. This week's matchup will be tough with Odell Beckham Jr., Sterling Shepard and Evan Engram coming to town. 2. The linebacker position will have a "last year" feel. The Eagles lost Hicks early on in their run to the Super Bowl last season. Nigel Bradham moved from outside to middle linebacker and played well. He is likely to do the same on Sunday against the Giants. Kamu Grugier-Hill and Nathan Gerry will look to fill the Hicks void elsewhere. There will be an emphasis on tackling in this game. 3. Sproles absence doesn't mean much anymore. The veteran running back has been a "no show" pretty much all season and the team has basically filled his roles with other players. Golden Tate is now the punt returner and Corey Clement is the change-on-pace back. At this point, it's unclear when Sproles will return. Mike Kaye may be reached at mkaye@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @Mike_E_Kaye. Find NJ.com on Facebook. The Gardai should investigate the alleged use of tracking and listening devices claimed were deployed by prison management to clamp down the smuggling of drugs in jail according to the Irish Prison Officers Association. In a statement issued in the wake of revelations which are now the subject of investigation the union said it is in the process of writing to Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan. "(We are) asking if he can provide further details on these most serious allegations being made by the whistle-blower, as reported in a national newspaper "We are asking for a response as a matter of urgency, as we would be deeply concerned about any practice that could impact on the safety and security of our members. "We are surprised that the Minister has asked the Inspector of Prisons to investigate this matter. We believe that such a serious security matter should be investigated by An Garda Siochana and we have outlined this view to the Minister in our letter," said a statement The association added that a similar security matter did emerge in the past regarding the installation of covert CCTV equipment in a Dublin Prison. Afterwards, they claim to have received assurances by the Director General of the Irish Prison Service that there would be no repeat of the practice. They said a complaint was made to the Data Protection Commissioner at that time and this led to the assurance from the Director General of the Irish Prison Service. (ANSA) - Rome, November 23 - The United States has asked its allies including Italy not to use Huawei's products because of cybersecurity risks, the Wall Street Journal said Friday. A 20-year-old man who drove dangerously through Stradbally after taking cannabis and cocaine, colliding with a parked vehicle and forcing traffic to take evasive action, has been sentenced to six months in jail and banned from driving for six years. Calvin Cullen (20), 47 Greenhills Athy, Co. Kildare, was charged with drug possession, no driving licence or insurance, and four counts of dangerous driving, on September 11 this year. Garda evidence outlined that on that date, an unmarked patrol car observed the accused in a BMW exiting a garage and the gardai noticed that there was no insurance on the vehicle. The accused then took off at speed up Stradbally Main Street, forcing traffic to take evasive action, before it performed a handbrake turn. The car then mounted the footpath and hit a jeep, causing 50 of damage, before he went back out onto the main road forcing more cars to take evasive action. The BMW then went through a no entry sign and careened down onto Main Street, again forcing other vehicles to take evasive action. When the accused was finally stopped, the gardai found 20 of cannabis. A blood sample revealed a large amount of cocaine and cannabis in his system. The garda said that the accused was five times over the limit for cocaine and ten times over for cannabis. The accused had previous convictions, including dangerous driving and drugs, and had just that week received a 22-month prison sentence for road traffic offences. Defence for the accused said that Cullen had a difficulty with drug use and psychiatric matters. At the time, he stopped taking his medication and self-medicated, said defence. After hearing that the accused has a two-year-old child, Judge Catherine Staines asked: How would you feel if someone drug driving killed your child? Its incredible that no one was killed. Your life would be destroyed if you lost your little baby. Judge Staines imposed six months in prison, and a number of driving disqualifications ranging between two years and six years. The landmark Emo Court is in line for a 'major upgrade' to make it a 'must see' Laois destination following the award of 1.2 million. The majestic Georgian house is among the first successful applicants under the Governments 1 billion Rural Regeneration and Development Fund, which aims to breathe new life into Irelands smaller towns and villages. The Department of Rural and Community Development described the work to be carried out. "The funding will provide a major upgrade of the Emo Court Estate, which will celebrate 25 years in public ownership in 2019. "Work will include the opening of two extra floors to the public, an event and exhibition space, and enhancements to the grounds. Will provide a must-see tourist attraction for the region," said a statement. The project will include the opening of the first floor to the public, which will provide a walk-in-the-shoes experience documenting the houses 20th-century history. The basement of the property will house a recreation of an 18th-century kitchen. Laois TD and Minister for Justice & Equality, Charlie Flanagan, confirmed and welcomed the additional funding. This is really good news for Emo Court. Emo Court is now seen as a major tourist attraction and is experiencing unprecedented popularity. According to figures provided by the OPW, visitor numbers to the House are over 13,000 and 290,000 to the grounds annually, he said. This Gandon-designed house was once the seat of the Earls of Portarlington. After being used as a secondary school by the Jesuits it was purchased by Major Chomley Chomley Harrison. The Rural Regeneration and Development Fund aims to rejuvenate smaller towns, villages and rural areas, generate job opportunities in rural areas, and help communities to improve their quality of life. More than 290 projects applied for this first stage, with the focus in this round on heritage and tourism, infrastructural improvement, economic development, and rural regeneration. Over the next four years, 315 million is earmarked for rural communities through the Fund. An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar TD said he was struck by the dynamism of the ideas that were submitted. "Projects involving heritage, regeneration and the public realm, greenways, telecommunications, tourism, environment, enterprise, and public transport. Some, however, stood out from the pack and they are the ones being awarded today. "They are projects that have significant potential to improve rural Ireland and to do so quickly; these projects will hit the ground running and I look forward to seeing the results, he said. Commenting on todays funding allocation, the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Michael Ring TD, said the funds would be transformative. "The Rural Regeneration and Development Fund will provide the impetus for the transformation of hundreds of rural towns and villages over the next ten years," he said. Emo and 17 projects to be supported in 2019, totalling 24.4 million. 55 million in total has been allocated to the Fund for 2019 and further announcements of projects to be funded in 2019 will follow shortly. Diamonds really are a girls best friend as artist and DJ Mo Kelly stressed when she launched The Jack & Jill Childrens Foundation Christmas Gift Ideas for 2018. Read also: Kildare crafters showcase designs at Gifted "In true Marilyn style Mo modelled one of the two real diamond pendants to be found in Jack & Jill Candles this Christmas. The candles are made in Ireland by Celtic Candles and are available in two delicate fragrances - Red Dahlia or Coconut, Water and Lime," said the Jack & Jill Foundation. "Every candle has a sparkling costume pendant in the base and two will have a real diamond pendant. Loyes Diamonds of Baggot Street, Dublin have generously donated two new necklaces, after the original diamonds were found by two lucky purchasers; one of whom was given the candle as a Christmas present last year. The candles are available for 19.95 on www.jackandjill.ie or in Jack & Jill Charity Boutiques in Naas, Newbridge and Crookstown." Jack & Jill must raise 3.5 million annually to provide it's home nursing care and respite service and is reliant on the generosity of the public especially as the year comes to a close. "There are many ways to support the charity with every 16 raised providing one hour of care and helping to keep sick children at home this Christmas. Jack & Jill currently cares for 12 children in Co. Kildare," it said. Other gift ideas can be found on www.jackandjill.ie including the following: New for 2018 wrap up for Jack & Jill This year for the first time we have specially designed Jack & Jill Christmas wrapping paper at a cost of 6 for a pack of 12 sheets (4 x 3 types) accompanied with matching gift tags. Gift Certificates for Teachers Jack & Jill personalised Gift Certificates for children to give their teacher. We will provide a personalised gift card with the teachers name and the name of the family/child. Jack & Jill Christmas Cards Christmas Cards retailing at 4 per pack There is a choice of a traditional selection or contemporary cards with Christmas illustrations from 6 leading Irish illustrators Steve Simpson, Peter Donnelly, Chris Judge, The Project Twins, Martin Beckett and Derry Dillon. 191 Volkswagen Golf Car Raffle Be in with a chance to win a brand new 191 Volkswagen Golf 5 door car. An idea stocking filler with tickets priced at 5 each or 20 for a book of 5 (1 free ticket). Car kindly donated by Steeltech Sheds. Tickets available from the office on 045894538 or the Jack & Jill website. Other gift ideas include tickets to the Lord Mayors Charity Ball in the Mansion House in January, Christmas books, Santas Magical Trail at the Clanard Court, Athy, and a festive CD with Celine Byrne, Soprano, performing O Holy Night. Two Romanian women appeared at Naas District Court last Thursday, November 22 charged with permitting their home to be used as a brothel. Prosecuting the case, Sgt Brian Jacob told Judge Desmond Zaidan that Ana Tomascu, 20, and Adrina Podaru, 25, both with an address listed as an apartment at 6 Canning Place, Newbridge, would face charges relating to managing a brothel at their home address. Their appearance before the court came as a result of Operation Quest, a joint Garda and PSNI anti-prostitution operation. Operation Quest seeks to secure convictions against people involved in organised prostitution, brothel keeping, and associated offences including money laundering. The court heard that the two women have been in Ireland for the past two years. Sgt Jacob said that it was possible there could be further charges before the court and that it was quite a complex matter. And he applied to the court for a lengthy adjournment while he awaited the DPP directions. Judge Desmond Zaidan was surprised to hear that the two women continued to live at the address they were allegedly using as a brothel. Its a private apartment, the Sgt told the court. Its a private dwelling. The Judge was also surprised to hear the womens solicitor Timmy Kennelly applying for legal aid. Well theyre not working Judge, Mr Kennelly told the court. The Gardai closed them down! The matter was adjourned to March 21, 2019 for DPP directions. Leitrim County Council says connection to the public sewer system is the best method of resolving the problematic on-site package waste water treatment system that serves residents of Osprey Park Housing Estate, Rooskey. Cathaoirleach, Cllr Sean McGowan asked the council for the up to date position with regard to connecting the estate to public sewerage. The council replied that they have in conjunction with Irish Water designed a route for the proposed connection, tendered for the installation of the pipework and decided upon a contractor to undertake the works. At this time there are certain issues relating to lands and the amount of the financial contribution that must be paid by the homeowners that require finalisation. Once the issues are resolved the works will commence as soon as is practicable, Leitrim County Council stated last week. Cllr McGowan said he was happy to hear it is going in the right direction. He added he hopes the situation will be resolved by Christmas. Dangerous moss on pathway Leitrim County Council said they will power wash a pathway on the Shannon side of Rooskey Bridge after calls for the moss to be removed. Cllr Des Guckian said 600 metres of the pathway is quite dangerous and someone has already injured themselves after falling on dangerous moss. This motion was supported by other councillors who also heard from locals about this slippy section of path. Also read: Injunction sought preventing Rooskey hotel being used as accommodation for asylum seekers LifeStyle The best Lifestyle shows are right here, from Australia and around the world. Catch up with the experts on home design and interiors, food and cooking, the property market, and get fresh ideas with the savviest of renovators. Whether you need inspiration for cooking up a storm, to refresh a tired room, or tips to sell your property, Foxtel Lifestyle will always something new for you to watch. Enjoy your favourite experts like Andrew Winter and Neale Whitaker, or Shaynna Blaze and Jamie Oliver live or On Demand. A MUM with four previous convictions for no insurance was up in Kilmallock Court for two more insurance offences. Leanne McNamara, aged 31, of James Connolly Park, Tipperary Town was stopped by Garda John Ryan at Garranemore, Pallasgreen on May 6, 2017, and in Moanoola, Oola on April 8, 2017. Garda Ryan said on May 6, Ms McNamara was driving at 82kms in a 50km zone. There were two children not wearing seat belts, said Ms McNamara, who was also up in court for no insurance, driving licence and non display of tax disc. Ms McNamara also faced no insurance, driving licence, and non display of tax disc counts on April 8. The court heard Ms McNamara has four previous convictions for no insurance. Ted McCarthy, solicitor for Ms McNamara, said at the time his client was living a chaotic lifestyle. She was living in Tipperary but her family were in Limerick. There has been a big change in her circumstances. She has moved back to Limerick. She doesnt have a vehicle. She has a history of drug addiction but is in rehab. She is rearing two children on her own. One has special needs, said Mr McCarthy. Judge Marian OLeary asked why she shouldnt send Ms McNamara to jail. She is in a much, much better place, said Mr McCarthy, who asked if the Probation Services could be involved. Judge OLeary ordered a pre-sanction report from the Probation Services and adjourned the case until February. A LIMERICK TD has described three cars being set alight at the same time in a county village as a very sinister development". The arson attacks occurred in Cappamore in the early hours of Sunday morning. A garda spokesperson said three incidents of criminal damage by fire occurred in Towerhill, Turagh Crescent and Mullally Lawn. The cars were burnt out at around 2am on Sunday, November 18. According to local sources, the cars belonged to members of one family who are not originally from Cappamore. Gardai and Cappamore Fire Service units responded to the scene. The vehicles were taken away by gardai for forensic examination. The garda spokesperson said: Gardai are appealing for anyone who witnessed anything suspicious in the Cappamore area between 1.30am and 2.30am in the early hours of Sunday morning to contact Bruff garda station on 061 382940. Deputy Niall Collins received a number of calls from concerned residents who were woken up by the commotion. It is a very sinister development. This appears to be a very well planned crime to set fire to three cars at the same time. Somebody is obviously sending a message, said Deputy Collins. Cappamore is a very tight-knit community. They are very worried about this. I urge anyone who has any information to contact gardai. The spate of hay barn fires in east Limerick of a couple of years ago are still very fresh in people's memories and the last thing they want to see is more arson attacks starting, said Deputy Collins. It is understood there is no connection to a hay barn fire just outside the village in September. EXCITING plans have been unveiled for the multi-million new central library, which is being described as the third space between home and the workplace, at the heart of Limericks Project Opera. The Limerick Leader can this week reveal new artists renderings on how the citys new 21st century library will appear. It comes as Limerick Twenty Thirty seeks the input of the public on the 180m Project Opera development which at its heart will contain the new library ahead of a planning application by Christmas. Public consultations will take place on December 4, 5, 6, and 7, at various locations in the city and Dooradoyle. As well as Irelands most technologically driven library, Project Opera will see a vast area behind the junction of Patrick Street, Rutland Street and Bank Place transformed into a development of offices, houses, an apart-hotel, a new city library, cafes and restaurant, delivering up to 3,000 jobs. We are at a really exciting stage now for the project, revealed David Conway, the chief executive of Limerick Twenty Thirty. Some 27m was been put aside in last weeks budget for the new library, which will also serve as a civic centre, with digital spaces, meeting rooms and areas to socialise. Metropolitan mayor Daniel Butler said: It will create more of a living space within the city centre, a space that is open to a community in the city centre. Hopefully having a space like this will encourage people to live in the centre. The central library, which will spill into a public square, is being billed as a living room for Limerick, a vibrant destination and one of Limericks most important social hubs and meeting spaces. Across four floors, the building will see a games lab allowing students to take a break from their studies. A workshop will offer three-dimensional fabrication, while there will be digital storytelling walls, plus an editing suite utilising green screen technology. The complex will also include a massive video wall and meeting rooms for local communities. Overall, the building will be divided into eight zones: a digital zone, a community space, a reading zone, with 25,000 books, a multi-purpose exhibition area, and a knowledge zone, which will see public access computers. On top of this, there will be media studios, a supportive learning zone and a family zone, allowing space for interactive play areas for kids, and a chill out area for adults accompanying children. A cafe will be located in the basement, the proposals show. Cllr Butler added: It was always envisaged this would be a civic space, but as the times have developed and submissions have been made, there has become a need for a much broader space which can be flexible in its use and incorporate not just library space, but artistic purposes and other things. The public will have a chance to view the layout of the library and the rest of the Project Opera development at four separate consultations. These take place on Tuesday, December 4, at Limerick Twenty Thirtys offices in Patrick Street from 5pm to 7pm. The following day, also between 5pm and 7pm, an information session takes place at City Hall in Merchants Quay. The existing city library plays host to a session on Thursday, December 6, between 5pm and 7pm. And the final consultation is on Friday, December7 between 5pm and 7pm in the council offices at Dooradoyle. Speaking about what will be one of the largest urban developments outside Dublin, Mr Conway said: Before we submit the planning application, we want to give the public one last opportunity to make submissions. After some disappointments in the past when the site was in private ownership, we are now finally about to see one of the most eagerly awaited developments in the state. 77% of French back Saturday protest in Paris 2,800 police to be deployed on the streets (ANSAmed) - PARIS, NOVEMBER 23 - Some 77% of French citizens back the call to halt everything in Paris on Saturday as part of a protest by the 'yellow vest' movement, according to a survey conducted by the Odoxa institute for Le Figaro and France Info. This is 3% higher than the first protest last Saturday. Meanwhile, the leader of the Rassmeblement National, Marine Le Pen, has suggested on Twitter than the movement against rising fuel prices wanted by President Emmanuel Macron and a general decline in living standards could protest on the well-known Paris boulevard now lit up with Christmas lights between the Arc de Triomphe and Place de la Concorde and very close to the presidential palace, whereas the government would like to limit it to Champ-de-Mars, the large green area around the Eiffel Tower. BFM-TV reports that about 2,800 members of the security forces will be deployed to ensure security during the protests. (ANSAmed). A DIRECTOR of a company which has been refused permission to a open a new pub in Rathkeale says he feels discriminated against because he is a member of the Travelling community. Patrick Kealy says hes disappointed with the decision of Judge Eoin Garavan to refuse the application for a declaration of suitability which was made under Section 18 of the Intoxicating Liquor Act. I dont feel great at all, I feel very bad about it, I feel was discriminated against, he told the Limerick Leader adding that he is unlikely to appeal the decision and will instead let out the premises which is located at Main Street, Rathkeale. I dont know what I will do but I will probably leave it a couple of years, he said this Wednesday. Gardai had strongly opposed the application which was made by a limited company Five Lamps Inn Public House Limited which has a registered address at Fairhill, Rathkeale. The company was established in May 2017. The former hardware store, which is owned by Mr Kealy, was bought for 200,000 more than 20 years ago and 100,000 has been spent refurbishing the premises. The directors of the company are Patrick Kealy and his wife Breda Kealy. Both are members of the Travelling community and live at Red Brick House, Fairhill, Rathkeale when they are in Ireland. Mr Kealy, who also has an address in the UK, has been described as a respected international antique dealer and a shrewd businessman. Concerns relating to the suitability of the premises, fire safety concerns and the character of the companys directors were all raised by the State as part of its objection. During a lengthy hearing, Judge Garavan was told a named woman would be hired to manage the pub as the directors of the company, who have no experience in the pub trade, would not be running it on a day-to-day basis. Arrangements were also in place to retain the services of a security company in the event of the pub opening. It was alleged by State solicitor Aidan Judge during the hearing that Patrick Kealy is the Patriarch of the Kealy family which is involved in a long-running feud with a number of other Traveller families in the Rathkeale area. This has been disputed by Mr Kealy who told the court the feud has been resolved and that there are no ongoing difficulties between the families. Handing down his ruling last week, Judge Garavan noted the concerns of gardai in relation to the applicant company, the premises and the potential impact of the granting of the licence. He indicated he was rejecting the submission that there are already an adequate number of pubs in Rathkeale to cater for the local population which is set to grow by around 3,000 in the coming weeks. During the substantive hearing, Superintendent Eamon ONeill described the situation in Rathkeale as a powder keg saying there was a risk of a step backwards to future lawlessness. Judge Garavan said he would not comment on the garda concerns but noted they had been expressed by the superintendent in charge of the Newcastle West district. He noted that Mr Kealy has outstanding tax liabilities of more than 100,000 and commented that he had failed to rebutt some of the allegations put forward by the State. While Mr Kealy did not comment as he left the courthouse, licencing consultant JJ Bunyan said while the decision was understandable, he was disappointed with the ruling. Its difficult to see how the premises would not measure up, its fitted out to the highest standards that I have ever seen, it has the capability to be an Airbnb and possibly a hotel, he said. Mr Bunyan, who has worked as a consultant in the licencing trade for more than 30 years, says he has some sympathy for his client. This was a massive investment for Pat Kealy potentially 400,00 which was not taken lightly, he said adding that any new entrants to the trade have a lot of hurdles to jump. Mr Bunyan said he questioned some of the concerns which were expressed by gardai regarding potential violence and public order issues in Rathkeale. I believe, from what I read in the papers, that Rathkeale will be the safest town in Ireland between now and early next year, he said. THE GOVERNMENTS spending watchdog has called on the University of Limerick to clarify the current employment status of staff members who first raised concerns about financial practices at the University. The chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has asked UL president Dr Des Fitzgerald for his candour and openness when providing the full details of the current employment status of staff and former staff members who raised concerns at the university. As previously reported by the Limerick Leader, just one staff member who had a grievance with the university has settled with UL since an apology was issued by Dr Fitzgerald following the publication of the Thorn Report in November 2017. It is all well and good apologising to staff and former staff, but what is the current position? Saying I am sorry is fine, but has anything been done in practice? I want to know the current status of the staff to which Dr. Fitzgerald referred, PAC chairman Sean Fleming TD told the committee. They may have been whistleblowers. Without identifying them by name, we need a note on their current employment status and how that apology was given practical effect. If it has not been given proper legal effect, it is only words. In a letter sent to PAC, Dr Fitzgerald outlined the steps he has taken to address matters of concern since he took up his position in May 2017. I will continue to work to resolve these legacy issues and it is of serious concern to me that these efforts be relayed to the PAC. I want to emphasise that I believe the senior officials of the Department of Education and Skills and the Higher Education Authority and the university have worked constructively together since my appointment to address the mistakes of the past. I have met with the DES and HEA on ten occasions, together and separately, since the publication of the Thorn Reports to brief them on the steps taken to address the findings of the reports. A restructuring of the HR Department and Finance Department and a review and restructuring of other divisions including the presidents office has taken place following various reports, Dr Fitzgerald added. Meanwhile, a special report focusing on the handling of remuneration for certain senior UL staff must be published by the Department of Education by the end of the month. Comptroller and Auditor General Seamus McCarthy told the PAC a special report carried out by his office must be published by Saturday week. It will provide further context for the letter, he said. LIMERICK is to receive 7,167,477 for projects in the first tranche of funding under the Rural Regeneration and Development Fund (RRDF). Michael Ring TD, Minister for Rural and Community Development confirmed that the approved projects are Great Southern Greenway (2,724,657), Murroe Community Hub (3,816,451) and the Local Hub in Glenbrohane (626,369). The funding announcement this Friday morning for Limerick forms part of the Governments investment under Project Ireland 2040. Senator Maria Byrne welcomed the announcement the that Community Field Project in Murroe has received the highest allocation of funding under the Rural Regeneration Development Fund. I wish to pay tribute to the Community Council in Murroe and compliment them on their foresight and professional manner in which they put together this project, said Senator Byrne. I was delighted to come on board with this project and to work with the Community Council to ensure this funding was delivered. This is the largest amount of funding being announced today in the country and Murroe is certainly going to benefit from this welcome windfall. The Community Field Project is going to be a major asset to the community in Murroe and surrounding areas once completed. Limerick TD and Minister Patrick ODonovan said he was delighted with this massive investment by the Government in County Limerick, one of the largest allocations across the Country. The Government has made a long-term commitment to rural regeneration and development since 2012 and we have been investing in our rural communities under a number of different headings. Minister Ring has also informed me that further shovel-ready projects will be announced for funding early in 2019, and funding will also be made available for projects which require further development to make them ready in time for further calls for applications under the fund. Minister Ring has told me that he intends to make further announcements early in the New Year, and this is obviously important for communities not included in this round. Kurz call on Kosovo's government to break down tariffs Austrian Chancellor on Twitter asks for respect of Cefta (ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, NOVEMBER 23 - "We need to break down barriers rather than invent new ones", wrote the Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on Twitter referring to the ongoing crisis between Kosovo and Serbia after the Pristina government's decision to set tariffs to 100% on imported goods from Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Kurz "regrets" the decision and pointed out the need for the Western Balkans to "commit on the regional cooperation and the Cefta free trade agreement, which the entire region benefits from". Austria currently holds the rotating EU presidency. (ANSAmed). In Mediterranean, 104,506 arrivals and 2,075 deaths in 2018 According to IOM in Geneva (ANSAmed) - GENEVA, NOVEMBER 23 - At least 104,506 migrants and refugees have arrived in Europe by sea thus far in 2018 as of November 21, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which announced the figures on Friday in Geneva. It said at least half of this year's arrivals went to Spain, which has surpassed the 50,000 mark and currently stands at 50,962 arrivals thus far this year. IOM said at least 631 people have died trying to reach Spain by sea since the start of 2018, and 2,075 migrants have died at sea since the start of the year on all three Mediterranean migrant routes combined. In addition to the 631 deaths on the Western Mediterranean route, another 1,277 men, women, and children have died on the Central Mediterranean route to Italy and 167 on the Eastern Mediterranean route to Greece and Cyprus. With the colder weather as winter approaches, the sea crossing to Europe becomes increasingly lethal, IOM said. In recent days, at least nine people have died on the Western Mediterranean route.(ANSAmed). Tensions between Italy and France on Da Vinci at Louvre Le Monde says relations reduced to a minimum (ANSAmed) - PARIS, NOVEMBER 23 - Friday's edition of French daily Le Monde highlighted tensions between Italy and France over Leonardo Da Vinci, following statements made by Italian Deputy Culture Minister Lucia Borgonzoni of the League party, who wants to revise an accord between the two countries over the loan of various Da Vinci works from Italy to the Louvre Museum in Paris. The museum has scheduled an exhibition in Paris in fall 2019 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the artist's death. In the accord, which was signed by former Culture Minister Dario Franceschini, Paris agreed to loan certain works by Raphael for an exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome in 2020, coinciding with the 500th anniversary of Raphael's death. Le Monde said the Da Vinci exhibition has "caused serious tensions between France and Italy" as well as "friction" in diplomatic relations between the two countries, relations that it said are currently at a bare minimum. The traditional annual summit between the two countries, which would normally be held in Rome this year, has disappeared from official agendas, it said. Le Monde cited a source who said that negotiations are underway, but that France still hasn't received an official invitation.(ANSAmed). As it gets colder and we start bundling up in jackets and earmuffs, most of us tend to stop thinking about our sun exposure. After all, how much damage can the weak winter sun cause if you're already covered up from head to toe? But the sun's rays can be just as harmful when it's cold and cloudy outside. "Any exposed area of your body can still get sunburned," Dr. Apple Bodemer, an associate professor of dermatology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Live Science. Whether you spend a day on the slopes, skating on a pond or shoveling snow out of your driveway, your face is still getting exposed to the sun's radiation in the form of ultraviolet (UV) light, according to Bodemer. When those UV rays penetrate deep into your skin cells, they can cause DNA damage, she said. [Do Animals Ever Get Sunburned?] The sun's long ultraviolet A (UVA) waves can cause premature aging, sunspots and wrinkles, while its short ultraviolet B (UVB) rays are notorious for causing skin reddening and burns. (Ultraviolet C, or UVC rays are a third and even shorter type of ultraviolet radiation that is mostly absorbed by the Earth's ozone layer). Skin damage caused by UV exposure increases over time. "Your skin is like the meter in a taxi cab," said Dr. Darrell Rigel, a clinical professor of dermatology at New York University. "As you get more radiation, the meter goes forward, and the more that happens, or the stronger the radiation, the faster the meter goes." Eventually, UV-related skin damage can lead to skin cancer. It's the most common type of cancer in the United States. About 3.3 million Americans are diagnosed with basal and squamous cell skin cancers each year, according to the American Cancer Society. Snow and ice can also make sun damage worse. They reflect up to 80 percent of UV rays that reach the ground, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation. That means that you get hit from two angles: first from the sky and second from the ground, as the rays rebound. And skiers and snowboarders increase their risk of getting sunburned even more because UV exposure increases at higher altitudes. "Our atmosphere helps scatter some of the UV radiation," Bodemer said. "When you're up at a high altitude, there's not as much atmosphere and you will get more intense UV radiation exposure." The overall amount of UV rays decreases slightly in the winter because of the angle that the sun's rays hit the Earth, Bodemer said. But people who are exposed to the winter sun especially those who are prone to burning in the summer are still at risk of getting a sunburn, she said. Certain creams and medications, such as retinol products and chemical peels, can also make the skin more photosensitive. Rigel told Live Science. And even tetracycline-based antibiotics, including those prescribed for treating acne or a cold, can increase your sun-sensitivity. "In general, the biggest factor for sun-sensitivity is how pale your skin is," he said. "But, the reality is that even the darkest [skinned] individual can get sun damage. They might not get it as quickly because they have more natural protection, but even dark-skinned individuals get skin cancer." Luckily, the solution for protecting your skin is simple: Wear sunscreen every day. Rigel recommended using sunscreen with a sun protection factor (SPF) of at least 30, and going higher if you're planning a vacation at high altitudes. As a rule of thumb, SPF 30 will block 97 percent of UVB rays; SPF 50 will block 98 percent of UVB rays; And SPF 100 will block 99 percent of UVB rays, Dr. Steven Wang, the director of Dermatologic Surgery and Dermatology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, told the Skin Cancer Foundation. And, no matter what kind of sunscreen you use, it's important to apply SPF about once every 2 hours, Wang added. Rigel also suggested looking for sunscreens labeled "broad spectrum" to protect against both UVB and UVA rays as well as sunscreens that are water resistant for up to 80 minutes. That way, you can go about your day without it wearing off too quickly. You don't have to hibernate indoors as long as you protect yourself when you go out, Rigel said. "It always pays to protect yourself." Original article on Live Science. As part of his soil mechanics experiments, Buzz Aldrin took these pictures of his bootprint in the powdery and soft lunar soil. Fifty years ago, NASA launched America into the space race with the birth of the Apollo program an 11-year initiative that sent 33 spaceflights to the moon, six of which deployed landers that visited the lunar surface. That incredible story comes to light in a new book, "Mission Moon 3D: A New Perspective on the Space Race" (The MIT Press, 2018), offering a fresh view of the decades-long challenge that galvanized space agencies in the U.S. and the former Soviet Union and brought the first people to the moon. And it does so with a unique and extensive collection of archival photos featuring astronauts, cosmonauts, spacecraft and moon landscapes, presented in stereo pairs so the images can be viewed in 3D. [See Spectacular Lunar Mission Images in 3D (Photos)] Written by David Eicher, editor of Astronomy Magazine, the book brings together numerous astronauts' recollections for the first time. And, intriguingly, the book includes tales from Soviet cosmonauts many of which were not previously available for much of the past 50 years, Eicher told Live Science. "The Soviets had an aggressive lunar landing program of their own that petered out because of some tragedies: an explosion on the launch pad, some key deaths of very important engineers," Eicher said. "By the time Apollo 8 was happening our lunar fly-around the momentum for the Soviet program had really stalled out. But we tried to tell the story from both sides," he said. "Moon Mission 3D" gathers together the largest collection of stereo images of the race to space. (Image credit: The MIT Press) Alongside the descriptions of space travel, images in "Mission Moon 3D" offer an astronaut's-eye-view of 3D moonscapes. Many of the book's stereo photos are extremely well-known and iconic even in 2D, such as Buzz Aldrin's footprint pressed into lunar soil an image that is often mistakenly thought to represent Neil Armstrong's footprint, Eicher said. NASA astronauts were trained to take stereo photographs while in space, and the Apollo missions' photo archives were brimming with 3D photos, Eicher said. Image selection for the book was organized and overseen by astrophysicist and Queen guitarist Brian May, who has long been an aficionado of stereoscopy. For decades, May collected vintage stereoscopic cards and captured his own stereo photos, and since 2006 he has served as the director of the London Stereoscopic Co., which provides information and resources for fans of modern and historical stereo photography. "Moon Mission 3D" even includes a 3D stereoscopic viewer of May's own design, called the Lite Owl. "My geekiness is bottomless when it comes to stereo," May told the Telegraph in 2014. The 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing was arguably one of the most dramatic and memorable moments in the history of space exploration. And yet, it was the later trips to the moon that delivered the most interesting discoveries, Eicher said. Analysis of moon rocks collected in the final missions revealed similar isotopes to those in Earth rocks, suggesting that the moon originated from broken bits of debris floating around Earth after a massive impact, Eicher explained. "That came out of the Apollo program. The analysis of the moon's history, its origin all that stuff happened later in the program with the last mission," he said. A closer view of astronaut Charlie Duke's sample collecting at Plum Crater shows the reflected image of fellow astronaut John Young in Duke's visor, taken during the 1972 Apollo 16 mission. (Image credit: London Stereoscopic Co.) Fifty years have flown by since the start of the Apollo program, and recent NASA missions have seen uncrewed spacecraft rocketing far beyond the moon, with New Horizons rocketing all the way to Pluto and past the boundaries of our solar system. However, there is still much that can be learned about the future of space exploration by revisiting its history especially when it comes to missions that will include human crews, Eicher told Live Science. "We can learn a lot about what it's going to take to go onto the next step a return to the moon or a mission to Mars, which is a quantum leap beyond the moon in terms of ambition, danger and expense," he said. "It's going to take international cooperation between nations and between governments and private companies all together to take the next step out into the solar system." "Mission Moon 3D: A New Perspective on the Space Race" is available to buy on Amazon and at other booksellers. Apollo 8: NASA's First Crewed Trip Around the Moon in Pictures 20 Most Marvelous Moon Missions The Best Space Photos Ever: Astronauts & Scientists Weigh in Originally published on Live Science. STRASBURGO - Spain should take advantage of a review underway of a 2015 security law to modify parts of it that made it possible to violate freedom of expression and protest, urged Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic. She added that it should also modify parts concerning migrants entering Spanish territory from Ceuta and Melilla. On November 15, Mijatovic had alerted Italy about the negative effects that its new security law would have on the rights of migrants and asylum seekers and the entire reception system. In a letter sent to the speakers of the two houses of the Spanish parliament, the commissioner stressed that the vagueness of the 2015 text gave security forces too much discretionary power, enabling them to limit the freedom of expression and protest in an arbitrary and disproportionate manner. To back her claim, Mijatovic cited the thousands of fines imposed on peaceful protestors as well as journalists for having filmed members of the security forces without permission. The commissioner also asked to introduce guarantees against push-backs of migrants arriving in the Spanish enclaves Ceuta and Melilla. What is something you never thought you would hear anyone say ever? There are not enough lawyers. Yet that is exactly the situation that has developed in Houston and Dallas. Large and midsized corporate law firms in Texas suddenly face a shortage of experienced high-quality business attorneys to handle the growing legal needs of their clients, according to The Texas Lawbook, which interviewed 16 law firm leaders in Texas. Compounding the problem, legal industry analysts say, is the invasion of dozens of national and regional law firms into Texas, which has severely fractured a relatively modest-sized business law community that witnessed little to no growth in its overall lawyer count since the Great Recession nearly a decade ago. There are too many law firms dividing up too few lawyers, and it is truly limiting the growth potential of many law firms here in Texas, says Yvette Ostolaza, a partner at Sidley Austin, which has offices in Houston and Dallas. The bottom line: We need more lawyers. The 16 corporate firm leaders told The Texas Lawbook that the shortage of talent is one of the biggest challenges they face in expanding their operations, and it is driving the price of legal services up. We have an abundance of legal work from our clients, says Andy Calder, managing partner of the Houston office of Kirkland & Ellis. As crazy as it sounds, we need more lawyers to do the work we have, and we are struggling to find the right people here. More than 60 national or regional law firms have opened operations in Texas during the past five years and up to a dozen more are reportedly looking to launch new offices, but the number of business lawyers practicing in the state has remained relatively flat since 2010 and the end of the Great Recession. Texas Lawbook data show that there were 7,003 lawyers employed in the Texas offices of the 50 largest corporate law firms operating in the state in 2017 a 0.5 percent increase over 2016 and only 1 percent more than 2015. In 2009, the top 50 law firms in Texas had a headcount of 7,140 attorneys, according to a review of data published by The Texas Lawyer in May 2010. Hilda Galvan, a partner at Jones Day, which has offices in Houston and Dallas, points out that a couple of dozen companies have relocated their headquarters to Texas during the past couple years, which means more sophisticated legal work for attorneys here. We have actually brought two lawyers from Jones Day offices in other cities to Dallas, Galvan says. We need more lawyers in the region to meet this growth. We are getting stretched very thin. There is especially a real demand at the associate level. But the biggest reason for the increased demand for legal services is traced to the oil patch. Energy companies large and small, upstream and midstream have expanded significantly through acquisitions, joint ventures and mergers in recent years. At the same time, private equity firms have poured billions of dollars in investment cash into the oil and gas industry. The legal work these clients needed was sophisticated and high-dollar, which attracted dozens of national law firms to open shop in Houston and Dallas. The legal world woke up one day and realized that Houston is the energy capital of the world, says Jackson Walker Managing Partner Wade Cooper. But the legal market came directly on the heels of the Great Recession, when corporate law firms trimmed staffs and hired fewer lawyers. At the same time, Texas law schools significantly reduced their acceptance and thus graduation numbers. Texas is witnessing an increased demand for a limited number of lawyers, says Kent Zimmermann, a law firm consultant at Zeughauser Group. As more and more law firms move into Texas, the law firms get more aggressive in competing for legal talent. The result is that law firms pay more for the talented lawyers who then charge more to their clients and the price of legal services goes up. Many corporate law firm leaders say the influx of national law firms should slow soon. It is getting incrementally harder and harder for out-of-state firms to attract a large enough group of lawyers to make an impact, Latham & Watkins Managing Partner Tim Fenn in Houston says. It is the same supply, but much more demand. If the pool of experienced business lawyers doesnt get larger in the near future, according to Fenn and others, some national and regional firms will never get above 15 or 20 lawyers, and that is not a large enough team to justify having an office here. When opening new offices, national and regional firms have been hiring lawyers already practicing at other firms in Texas to staff their operations. Traditionally, when companies move to a new headquarters, they relocate their most talented and successful leaders to the new location, Zimmermann says. Law firms dont do that. As a result, fixing this problem is not so simple. For a longer version of this article, go to TexasLawBook.net. If youre done shopping, its time for another post-Thanksgiving tradition in San Antonio: the Christmas tree lighting and holiday river parade. Click through the slideshow for details on those events and more: WRECKED An IQ Novel By Joe Ide Mulholland. 343 pp. $27 --- Joe Ide was 58 when he published his first novel "IQ" two years ago. Before that he'd been a schoolteacher and a screenwriter. Being a novelist suits him well. "IQ" won the Anthony, Macavity and Shamus awards for outstanding crime-fiction debut. Ide is a Japanese American who grew up in an African American section of South Central Los Angeles. He has said this experience helped him create his main character, Isaiah Quintabe (IQ), a young black man who after an interlude of youthful crime, became a private detective. In "Wrecked," the third installment of the IQ series, Quintabe is back, slowly building his business in Long Beach, Calif., when an attractive young woman named Grace asks his help in finding her mother, whom she hasn't seen for ten years. Grace is a penniless artist who can't pay him, but Isaiah likes her too much to refuse her, even after he learns that her mother, Sarah, is in deep trouble with a group of ex-military men, led by Stan Walczak, the founder of a global security firm (think Blackwater). Sarah and Walczak were once lovers. Sarah has incriminating evidence from Abu Ghraib that proves that he and his colleagues tortured prisoners there. She's demanded $1 million for it. Walczak could pay her but would rather kill her. He summons four ruthless cronies from Abu Ghraib to do just that. Despite the danger, Isaiah takes the case and falls for Grace although he's never had a white girlfriend and fears rejection. As it turns out, Grace is unconcerned about race - she likes IQ a lot - but she's wary of involvement and wants only to find her mother. Nonetheless, their growing attraction inspires a touching portrait of love and its discontents. Grace's life has not been easy. In a flashback we see her at age 15 when she was sent to live with foster parents. There was a lecherous foster father who wouldn't leave her alone. One day when his wife was away he told the girl he had $5,000 in cash and that they could run off to San Francisco and have some fun. Instead, Grace threatens to call the police and denounce him as a pedophile. Soon she goes forth to make her way in the world with that $5,000 in hand. Isaiah's love is sorely tested when he's captured by Walczak's gang and tortured. He won't talk, even during abuse and pain that are brilliantly described and agonizing to read. In a more enjoyable episode, written with equal skill, Ide has Walczak and his thugs pursue Isaiah and Grace through the Burning Man extravaganza in the Arizona desert. Ide delights in injecting moments of humor into his tale of crime and violence. Isaiah's friend Dodson, having survived a life of crime, is cursed with the mother-in-law from hell: "You were a useless bum before and now you're a useless bum with a bullet hole in you." Strange creatures appear: "Sylvia knew instantly that in a prior life, she and Chester had been vampires together in New Orleans." A woman looks around a bar and declares she's "seen better faces in a fish tank." If I had any complaint about "Wrecked" it was that its abundance of characters and subplots sometimes felt like too much of a good thing. But I came to accept Ide's excesses as the result of his ambition, his urge to share all that he has seen and felt and known. The wonder of love, the cruelty of war, the black world he knows well, the music he loves (Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, George Shearing) - all the beauty and cruelty and craziness he filed away in his mind before he began writing these novels. With "Wrecked," Ide confirms that he's among the most original new voices in today's crime fiction. --- Patrick Anderson reviews thrillers and mysteries regularly for The Washington Post. Handsome Johnny The Life and Death of Johnny Rosselli: Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Asssassin By Lee Server St. Martin's. 544 pp. $29.99 --- Johnny Rosselli was one of those people who navigated the world by charming everyone in their path, including gangsters such as Al Capone and Frank Nitti, Hollywood censor Joseph Breen, union boss Willie Bioff, Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn, Howard Hughes, Frank Sinatra and President John Kennedy. The wealth of stories in Lee Server's biography, "Handsome Johnny: The Life and Death of Johnny Rosselli, Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Assassin," is undoubtedly worth the price of admission. Rosselli was born Filippo Sacco in 1905, and he and his family moved from Italy to Massachusetts when he was a boy. Rosselli's initiation into criminal activity was not much different from other immigrant kids who fell into the life. Enduring instability at home, the boy sought refuge in the streets of Boston. Quickly finding himself too close to a murder investigation, he fled to Chicago and changed his name. It was in the Windy City that he would solidify his dapper demeanor, eventually given the nickname "Handsome Johnny." It was also during this time he met the infamous Capone. Rosselli did not know Capone well but would stay in contact after moving to Los Angeles. Rosselli's rise in the criminal underworld paralleled the rise of moviemaking in Hollywood. The City of Angels was largely off the mob's radar - which is partly why movie moguls set up shop there. When Rosselli arrived, bootlegging was the top game in town, and he thrived by negotiating with law enforcement, buddying up with politicians and schmoozing anyone necessary to land influential friends. During his tenure in L.A., Rosselli connected with people you would expect to see with the "gentleman gangster," such as mob boss Jack Dragna - who later authorized the hit on the notorious Bugsy Siegel. However, one of the most unlikely friendships came with the film industry's chief censor, the staunch Catholic prude Breen. Rosselli was not only friends with Breen but was close with his entire family. Breen fought against depictions of crime, vice and sexuality on the big screen during the day only to dine with their human manifestation by night. Rosselli's connections to the film industry didn't end there. He worked closely with Hollywood leaders to help mobster Bioff extort the studios throughout the 1930s. Bioff's racket was to control the trade unions and demand regular payoffs from the studios to avoid strikes. It was a simple shakedown, and it worked well - at least until a handful of studio executives testified against him. Moving deeper into Hollywood, Rosselli spent a brief time as a producer for a small production company named Eagle Lion Films. He first served as a producer on the 1948 prison break film "Canon City." The next film, "He Walked by Night," released the same year, was based on the true story of William Erwin Walker, who committed a series of crimes around Los Angeles including the murder of a police officer. Rosselli also found himself working out a predicament in Hollywood surrounding the hit television show "The Untouchables," produced by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's Desilu Productions. Many mobsters detested the show's use of Italian stereotypes. Frustration rose to the point that crime boss Sam Giancana put out a hit on Arnaz. Rosselli stepped in, stopped the hit and suggested Arnaz cast Italian actor Paul Picerni as one of the Untouchables. Arnaz's life was spared, and Picerni landed a lead role on the show. As Rosselli continued to work in and around Hollywood, the gangster eventually got to know Sinatra and Kennedy, who was soon to be president. In the most fascinating section of this engrossing book, Server details how Rosselli was recruited for a secret plot to assassinate Fidel Castro in Cuba. After multiple failed attempts, Castro eventually learned that the plots came from Kennedy; some believed that the president's assassination was retaliation. While the JFK murder has long been fodder for overzealous conspiracy theorists, Server carefully rolls out the details of this provocative plot. In the end, Rosselli's life of crime caught up to him in 1976 when he was found stuffed into a 55-gallon drum off the coast of Florida. There were certainly old scores to be settled, not unlike the recent hit on elderly mob boss Whitey Bulger. Nevertheless, Johnny Rosselli lived like a gangster from the movies - only he was real. Server's biography not only provides a window into Rosselli's life but also contextualizes it at a time when Hollywood, politics and organized crime were inextricably linked. --- Yogerst is the author of "From the Headlines to Hollywood: The Birth and Boom of Warner Bros." His next book is a study on the 1941 Senate attack on Hollywood. AFTER EMILY Two Remarkable Women, and the Legacy of America's Greatest Poet By Julie Dobrow Norton. 495 pp. $27.95 --- Emily Dickinson famously wrote "tell all the truth but tell it slant." A characteristically enigmatic phrase, it's both striking and open to multiple interpretations. Still, it might suggest that biographies and works of scholarship should approach their subjects from unexpected angles. Did Julie Dobrow, then, deliberately or unconsciously compose her mesmerizing account of the discovery, publication and afterlife of Emily Dickinson's poetry so that it comes across as a multigenerational soap opera? Just giving a precis of her book "After Emily: Two Remarkable Women and the Legacy of America's Greatest Poet" will show what I mean: In late 1870s Washington, the flirtatious, self-centered Mabel Loomis was courted by David Todd, a young astronomer working at the Naval Observatory. The 20-year-old beauty married him, despite his confession of past sexual "indiscretions." An ardent diary-keeper, Mabel was soon using special symbols to mark their sexual activity, and in 1880, she gave birth to a little girl, Millicent, who was almost immediately foisted on her mother's parents. When David accepted a teaching position at Amherst College, the young couple moved to Massachusetts - initially without the baby - and soon became friendly with the town's leading family: lawyer Austin Dickinson, his wife, Susan, and their three children, including a shy and epileptic 20-year-old son called Ned. Before long, Ned fell in love with now 25-year-old Mabel, who did little to discourage his attentions. At this time, the Todds also came to know Austin's two younger sisters, Emily and Lavinia. When Mabel visited their home to play the piano, she occasionally glimpsed a flitting swirl of white in the next room, sometimes even received a note of thanks for calling, but she never actually spoke with the reclusive, almost spectral Emily. Meanwhile, during trips to observe solar eclipses or attend conferences, David regularly succumbed to further "indiscretions." For her part, Mabel felt more and more drawn to Austin Dickinson, 27 years her senior. They took carriage rides together, Ned grew jealous of his father, Susan became suspicious, the town began to whisper. After Austin and Mabel surrendered to something bigger than both of them, the couple sometimes met secretly at the home of Emily and Lavinia. Still, they denied that theirs was a run-of-the-mill adultery - each believed such a soul-stirring love must be heaven-ordained. David even condoned the affair. However, the stern-looking patriarch never left his wife and family. Then, in 1886, at age 55, Emily died. Sometime after the funeral, Lavinia unlocked a drawer brimming with scribbled-on paper scraps, many sewn together in little packets. Over the years Emily had frequently shared poems - at least 250 of them - with Susan, who had been her close, perhaps more than close, friend before marrying Austin. But here were hundreds and hundreds more. Lavinia then asked her sister-in-law to oversee the publication of this treasure trove, but Susan demurred. So did critic Thomas Wentworth Higginson, with whom Emily had corresponded: Despite many arresting phrases, he pointed out, nothing scanned or rhymed properly. Finally, Lavinia turned to Austin's artistic and literary "friend." For the next two years, Mabel carefully transcribed Emily's originals, making no changes to them. But when she and Higginson, who had finally been persuaded to join the project, assembled a selection of poems, they added titles and changed the occasional word to render the work more conventional. Published in 1890, "Poems" by Emily Dickinson proved to be a surprise success and ran through multiple printings. A second, then a third selection was brought out, as well as a gathering of letters. Though doing none of the work, Lavinia - perhaps through prodding by the betrayed Susan - started to feel wrongly overshadowed by the industrious Mabel. There were squabbles about royalties and other matters. When Austin died in 1895, leaving his lover shattered and unprotected, the entire Dickinson clan quickly attacked her on several fronts, culminating in a trial over a land-gift, which she lost. Angry and heartbroken, Mabel managed to keep her priceless Dickinson material locked away in a camphor wood box for nearly three decades. During those years, David started trying to communicate with imaginary beings on Mars until he was finally confined to an asylum, probably suffering from insanity brought on by syphilis. By this time, little Millicent has grown up, thoroughly puritan and emotionally ambivalent about her vivacious mother. She married at 40 in 1920, first telling professor of psychology Walter Bingham that she didn't love him. He didn't care. With the death of Mabel in 1932, Millicent Todd Bingham bowed to her destiny, producing a further edition of Emily's poems ("Bolts of Melody" in 1945), as well as a book about a putative romance between the poet and an older family friend, Judge Otis Phillips Lord. There were also additional legal skirmishes, first with Susan's daughter Mattie and later with a bullying Harvard University, which acted with shameful ruthlessness in its pursuit of her Dickinson material. Resisting considerable pressure, Millicent instead willed it all to Amherst College, then died in Washington in 1968. Such is a bare-bones outline of "After Emily," albeit one that conveys nothing of the viciousness and passion in this decades-long fight between two enemy camps, both zealously committed to Emily Dickinson's legacy. Nor does it do justice to years of research by Dobrow, a professor of human development at Tufts. Some of the book's interpretive chapters do grow repetitive, however, and one or two points are overemphasized, notably that Mabel and Millicent's private traumas helped them to better appreciate Emily's poetry. No matter. If you're interested in "America's greatest poet," intellectual property issues or juicy behind-the-scenes literary history, "After Emily" is your book. --- Michael Dirda reviews books each Thursday in Style. There are many reasons that people woke up early to run several miles on Thanksgiving morning. To make room for turkey; to gather with family, friends and co-workers; to do something good for the community; and tradition. Over 450 people signed up for the Jr. Hands Across South Texas Annual Thanksgiving 10K 5K Run/Walk. Every year, proceeds go to the Casa de Misericordia, Laredos shelter for victims of domestic violence. Delia Nenita Mendez is the force behind Jr. Hands Across South Texas and the race. Eleven years ago, she said, she was inspired to establish a Thanksgiving race that would give to a charity. There were 69 runners our first year. Last year we grew past 500 runners, Mendez said. We really love helping the cause battered women and children, and the shelter. And so this is what we do. And we did it just to make a difference. Its Thanksgiving it just fit perfectly. Specifically, Mendezs goal is to help break the cycle of abuse through education. A portion of the money raised for Casa de Misericordia will go toward scholarships for the women and children who utilize the shelter and its services, she said. Sister Rosemary Welsh gave as an example a young girl, a DACA recipient, who stayed at Casa de Misericordia and wanted to be a dental assistant. She had $200. Casa de Misericordia was able to raise the rest of the money to pay for her education at Laredo College, Welsh said. Casa de Misericordia is also using these funds to continue their primary abuse prevention program at Lamar Middle School and Los Obispos Middle School. We need to get to the kids when theyre younger and say, Even though you see it, thats not something you have to choose, Welsh said. Peter Sepulveda won the 10K race on Thursday with a time of 33:49. Sepulveda is from Laredo and now runs cross country at UTSA. He said this is the fourth time running the Jr. Hands Across South Texas 10K. He does it for the love of running and for the cause, Sepulveda said. Julia Wallace may be reached at 956-728-2543 or jwallace@lmtonline.com In a recent news conference at Texas A&M International University, Congressman Henry Cuellar announced more than $3.1 million in federal funds in two separate grants for TAMIU. TAMIU received a grant of $1,937,380 as part of the Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program for ADVancing the Instruction of Science Educators Project and a $1,169,368 grant for its Advance Nursing Education Sexual Assault Nursing Examiner Program. The ADVISE Project The Hispanic-Serving Institutions grant, which comes from the U.S. Department of Education, will help TAMIU expand educational opportunities and improve the attainment of Hispanic students. It is aimed at increasing the pool of Hispanic science teachers committed to teaching high-need schools in both rural and urban school districts in Webb County. Over five years, it will prepare 60 qualified, state-certified general science teachers who will be employed primarily at Laredo and United Independent School Districts. TAMIU has a 94 percent Hispanic and 79 percent low-income student population. The funding is for five years covering annual budget costs ranging up to $424,052. Cuellar said the program provides tremendous opportunity to students and long-term benefit. The ADVISE Program will afford Webb County Hispanic students, regardless of their economic background, the opportunity to participate in general science higher education curriculums. This year, through the House Appropriations Committee, I was able to secure $157 million in funding, a $15 million increase from FY17, for the Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program. This will continue to provide funding for migrant workers and their children, so that they can pursue college or training for jobs. TAMIU President Pablo Arenaz concurred. As we look forward to the future, we know that it will surely be measured in science-driven innovation. The TAMIU ADVISE program will help to ensure that we empower a talented pool of qualified, State-certified general science teachers who can educate and lead the next generation of scientists. Those young scientists will lead discovery and innovation for generations to come. We are gratified that Congressman Cuellar shares in this expansive vision of a world made better by science education, Arenaz said. Michael Kidd, chair of the College of Arts and Sciences department of biology and chemistry and principal investigator for the TAMIU ADVISE program, said the potential long-term impact of the grant is substantial. There is no greater long term impact that a University can have on a community than by producing talented and dedicated teachers. For me, as a former high school science teacher and as a current father of a son in the Laredo school system, my desire for outstanding science teachers is both personal and selfish. The ADVISE program will increase the pool of highly qualified Hispanic science teachers committed to teaching in high-need schools in the Laredo area by increasing the collaboration between the faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Education and developing an extensive outreach and advising web to promote science education as a profession, Kidd said. Advance Nursing Education Sexual Assault Nursing Examiner Program Funded by the Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration, the ANE-SANE Program will fund advanced nurse education to help increase the number of forensic nurses trained and certified as sexual assault nurse examiners. The program seeks to provide better physical and mental health care for survivors, better evidence collection and higher prosecution rates. The program goal is to train 54 predominantly Hispanic registered nurses over the next three years. This includes faculty nurses who are actively practicing their profession. Funding is for an anticipated three year budget at approximately $390,000 annually. Although the U.S. Census data shows that Webb County has an estimated 274,794 residents, there is only one active SANE trained nurse in the target area. A recent report from the Laredo Police Department indicates that so far in 2018, only 8 percent, or seven out of 79 sexual assault victims, were taken to the emergency room for forensic evaluation. Cuellar said the program will strategically serve a medically underserved region. The ANE-SANE Program will utilize the actively practicing nursing faculty at TAMIU and expand their numbers, in order to better service this medically underserved region. These services need to be provided directly to our local residents by our local practitioners. This network will ensure that victims no longer need to be transferred to a SANE facility outside of Webb County due to a lack of SANE nurses in the area, Cuellar said. Arenaz said the university is proud to be the lead agent in addressing the shortage of SANE nurses. Once again, the university, in partnership with ... Cuellar, proudly steps forward as the lead agent in forging a solution to a troubling problem: the chronic shortage of SANE nurses here. In doing so, we fulfill our mission of creating programs responsive to local needs and, through strategic community collaborations, deliver needed healthcare specialists to our service region, Arenaz said. Dean of the TAMIU College of Nursing and Health Sciences Dr. F.M. Canseco School of Nursing, Dr. Glenda Walker, principal investigator for the grant, said its funding represents a true source of collaborative and personal pride. I have been working on providing support to victims of sexual violence for most of my lifetime. Ive built programs for other institutions, but consider the funding of this grant to be one of my proudest collaborative achievements. I am so appreciative of our partners who worked so diligently to get this grant completed. I know that it will have a dramatic impact on our community, region and nation. It will establish the College of Nursing and Health Sciences Dr. F. M. Canseco School of Nursing as a leader in sexual assault health care, Walker said. ROME - Israeli Knesset Speaker Yuli-Yoel Edelstein said on Friday at the Med Dialogues in Rome that Israel will "under no circumstances allow an Iranian presence in Syrian territory, and the Russians know it". Edelstein said Israel hopes Russia "can be our partners in this effort". "When the Syrians shot down a Russian aircraft, things became more complicated, but accidents can happen," Edelstein said. "We're trying to ensure things calm down," he said. "It's every government's responsibility to protect its own borders. We will continue to do what we need to to protect our borders," he said. BEIRUT - One of Syria's most famous activists was assassinated by gunmen, according to associates, underscoring the mortal threats facing a dwindling pool of dissidents who still openly oppose government and extremist forces there. Raed Fares, 46, was the founder of Radio Fresh, a channel broadcasting news across Syria's once sprawling opposition-held areas to warn of incoming airstrikes and counter the messages of militants who had come to dominate areas that fell from government control after a 2011 uprising. For this, he had become a hunted man. Writing in The Washington Post earlier this year, Fares said that he had survived at least one assassination attempt. He had also been abducted by al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate on multiple occasions. "But we haven't given up. We're still broadcasting our independent coverage of the Syrian revolution, countering terrorism and advocating tolerance," he wrote. Photographs shared online Friday showed the activist's body lying on a hospital stretcher. An eyewitness said that armed men had sprayed bullets into his car as it stopped outside an apartment block in Kafranbel, a town in the opposition enclave of Idlib, killing Fares and a colleague, Hammoud al-Juneid. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed during Syria's seven-year war, and proponents of peaceful change have been targeted by all sides. Inside government jails, thousands of them have died as a result of execution, torture or neglect. Extremist groups have also attacked or arrested activists who contradict their narrative and oppose their tactics. As the Trump administration pared back spending on Syria, initiatives such as Radio Fresh had also lost crucial funds. "Recent history has shown us again and again that enduring peace depends on the existence of a vibrant civil society and free political discourse, a marketplace of ideas where new voices can challenge dictatorship and terrorism," Fares wrote in June. "Without groups like Radio Fresh to provide alternative messages, another generation will take up arms." The identities of his killers were not immediately clear Friday, but the attack intensified a growing climate of fear in Idlib, Syria's most northern province and the country's final rebel bastion. Hundreds of people have been killed in recent months as armed groups turn on each other and activists are targeted for their work, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group. Ali Dandoush, an activist who worked with Fares and Juneid, said that their car had been followed from the Radio Fresh office to a friend's apartment. As they pulled up, so did three gunmen. "They just started shooting," he said. "We tried so hard to get them to the hospital but Juneid had already stopped breathing. Fares died as we arrived." Colleagues said that Fares received so many death threats in recent months that he had stopped sleeping, as he had for years, at the radio station's office, and instead retreated at night to more rural areas. Friends said they had begged Fares to leave. "Tens of times I've asked him," wrote Fadel Abdul Ghany, chairman of the Syrian Network for Human Rights monitoring group, on Twitter on Friday. "He would simply answer: 'What can they do? Kill me? [Well] let them kill me. I'm not going to leave and leave them the country.' " - - - - Th Washington Post's Zakaria Zakaria contributed to this report from Istanbul. Plymouth, Mass. Thanksgiving is nothing to celebrate for Native Americans, who are gathering in the town where the Pilgrims settled for a solemn National Day of Mourning observance. Thursday's noon gathering in downtown Plymouth, Mass., will recall the disease, racism and oppression that the European settlers brought. It's the 49th year that the United American Indians of New England have organized the event on Thanksgiving Day. Moonanum James, a co-leader of the group, says: "Native people have no reason to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims." Participants will beat drums, offer prayers and make public speeches. They'll also express their solidarity with refugees from Latin America who are being denied entry to the U.S., and condemn pipeline projects and fracking that they say needlessly and recklessly degrade the environment. Troy Cold turkey took on a whole new meaning Thursday morning in downtown Troy. A temperature of 8 degrees and a wind chill near zero greeted the more than 6,400 runners from 40 states who participated in the 71st Troy Turkey Trot. "You have earned the bragging rights," Mayor Patrick Madden told the 1,563 runners who started the 10k at 8 a.m. "This is the coldest Turkey Trot ever." It didn't seem to slow down the 10k winner, former University at Albany track athlete Ryan Udvadia. His winning time of 31:43 was 35 seconds ahead of runner-up Gregory Mariano of Alexandria, Va., and a full minute and 25 seconds faster than last year's winning time. "This might be the coldest day I've ever run," said Udvadia, a volunteer assistant coach for UAlbany until he gets his degree next month. "A year ago I ran the cross country reginoals in Buffalo, and it was close to this. It was a couple of degrees warmer. This is the coldest I've run." For the third time in four years, Karen Bertasso of Albany won the women's division. "This is our first blast of cold," she said. "After getting a couple of weeks of it, you can get a little acclimated, but right now no one's used to this at all. It's early in the year. Hopefully it doesn't predict the rest of the winter." Click through the slideshow to see photos from this year's race, and see photos from warmer races of years past. The 5k run, which drew more than 4,000 (the exact figure wasn't immediately available), was won by Kyle Gronostaj of East Greenbush in 14:55, beating three-time defending champion Jonathan Aziz of Boulder, Colo., by 19 seconds.Gronostaj was two seconds off the course record Aziz set three years ago under much warmer temperatures. Hannah Reinhardt, a runner at UAlbany from Clarence (suburban Buffalo), won the women's 5k in 16:41, 49 seconds than the winning time of a year ago. Udvadia's victory came in his first try at the Troy race. "I saw there was prize money," said Udvadia, 22, who won $300. "That was a little motivation, but I run every single Thanksgiving. I'm from Long Island, so each year I run the turkey trot there. Not running a turkey trot on Thanksgiving is like not eating turkey on Thanksgiving for me." He didn't have anyone running with him after the first couple of miles. "Today is a training day," he said. "The idea today was supposed to be like a tempo run, and it worked out like that, with a little kick at the end." Bertasso, 34, had her slowest time among her three victories, but that was no surprise given the conditions and her schedule. She ran last month's Hartford Marathon in 2:43:46, qualifying her for the U.S. Olympic Trials. "It wasn't about time today," she said. "I ran my marathon last month for time and had just been relaxing and not doing too much. It was more about trying to win regardless of time. I'm happy that I got the win. I'm very thankful for that." There also were 397 children in the grade-school walk, and 431 participants in the one-mile Turkey Walk.More than $15,000 was raised in support of the Turkey Trot's charities. MEN 1. Ryan Udvadia (Albany) 31:43 2. Gregory Mariano (Alexandria, Va.) 32:18 3 David Richards (Selinsgrove, Pa.) 32:28 4. Jon Lindenauer (Albany) 32:47 5. Nick Marcantonio (Glens Falls) 33:16 6. Anthony Giuliano (Niskayuna) 33:49 7. Bradley Lewis (Troy) 34:48 8. Jake Stookey (Clifton Park) 35:01 9. Joe Geurds (North Bennington, Vt.) 35:31 10. Mike Rossi(Manhattan Beach, Calif.) 36:06 WOMEN 1. Karen Bertasso (Albany) 37:34 2. Danika Simonson (Coralville, Iowa) 38:43 3. Courtney Breiner (Troy) 39:43 4. Christa Fusco (Troy) 41:12 5. Meghan Landymore (Pasadena, Md.) 41:12 6. Maddie Leopold (Pawling) 41:20 7. Meghan Mortensen (Glenville) 42:06 8. Meghan Louden (Clifton Park) 42:10 9. Kerri Thomas (Middle Granville) 42:21 10. Kimberly McBride (Troy) 42:27 pdougherty@timesunion.com 518-454-5416 @Pete_Dougherty ROME - Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday said Russia supports Italy's initiative on Libya. Speaking at a press conference at Villa Madama with Italian Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi, Lavrov said Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev spoke with his Italian counterpart Giuseppe Conte on the matter at the Palermo summit. "All of Libya's problems are linked to the behavior of NATO," Lavrov said. "We need to find solutions to the crisis, but without forgetting the causes that have thrown this region into the abyss and stimulated the intensity of terrorist activity and the wave of migrants," he said. "We are for the involvement of everyone, to start a dialogue and national reconciliation," he said. "Unilateral support for this or that player is not a solution to the crisis. That is why Italy had great success with the Palermo conference," Lavrov said. Lavrov at Med Dialogues, Russia doesn't support politician in Syria Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday during a panel discussion at the Mediterranean Dialogues in Rome that Russia doesn't support any political figure in Syria. Lavrov was responding to a question on the future of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. "We respect the security council resolution; the method is intrinsic in the resolution: elections," he said. "Russia, together with the other guarantor countries in the Astana Process (Turkey and Iran), is working on the formation of the constitutional committee," he said, according to a report by Interfax. Turkey FM criticizes Mogherini's call for Demirtas release European human rights court 'politicized' (ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, NOVEMBER 23 - Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Friday in an interview with CNN Turk that EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini overstepped bounds in calling on Turkey to release Kurdish political leader Selahattin Demirtas. She had asked that Turkey comply with a European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decision to release the politician, who has been jailed for over two years. ECHR urged Turkey on Tuesday to swiftly process the legal case of the former head of the pro-Kurdish opposition, stressing that his time in pre-trial detention was already longer than could be justified. Cavusoglu and Mogherini had already had a lively exchange in an Ankara press conference as part of a high-level EU-Turkey political dialogue meeting. Cavusoglu said that the Strasbourg-based court had become ''politicized'' and that the decision had been politically and not legally motivated. He also noted that Turkey has the right to appeal the decison. (ANSAmed). The countdown to Black Friday, arguably the biggest shopping day of the year, has officially begun at Maxi Zoo. Its the perfect opportunity for customers to get their hands on their favourite products at phenomenal prices, while treating their pets without breaking the bank. ALSO READ: Christmas shopping experience in Longford kicks off with 'Black Friday' promotion Anthony Cremin, Marketing Manager at Maxi Zoo said the companys stores nationwide were preparing for a bumper sales period full of fantastic bargains for Irish pet owners. We were conscious that not all customers can visit us on Black Friday so our offers will run from November 19-25, he added. Products like food, toys, bedding and pet essentials will be on offer with some products reduced by up to 80%. We are expecting our stores to be extremely busy for the promotion and stocks are limited so we are urging customers not to miss out, and get to their local shop early to avoid disappointment. Meanwhile, Maxi Zoo employs 160 people throughout their 19 stores in Ireland, located in Dublin, Cork, Kildare, Wicklow, Tipperary, Limerick, Longford, Carlow, Waterford and Wexford. The company recently celebrated a significant milestone in the growth of the Maxi Zoo group opening their 1,500th store in Europe in October. The Department of Foreign Affairs is providing consular assistance to the family of a Longford man who has died suddenly in Australia. The Leader understands the man, who is aged in his 30s and from the Clondra area, died suddenly at his his home yesterday. He had been living in Australia for a number of years, but had been intending to come home to Longford for Christmas. The Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed they are aware of the case and are providing consular assistance to the family of the deceased. Local Councillor Seamus Butler expressed his sympathy to the family of the man, adding the timing of the tragedy so soon to Christmas made it all the more agonising. "It's terrible news, it really is," he said. "To lose a son is unimaginable but when it happens the other side of the world, it just adds to the tragedy." Details of the man's sudden passing comes just hours after news broke surrounding the tragic circumstances into the death of 21-year-old Drumlish man Danny McGee. ALSO READ: North Longford man killed in row outside New York bar A Cavan man has pleaded guilty before the non-jury Special Criminal Court this morning to helping an unlawful organisation murder dissident republican Peter Butterly. Mr Butterly (35) was chased and shot outside a Meath pub - The Huntsman Inn in Gormanston - in view of students waiting for their school bus on the afternoon of March 6, 2013. Michael McDermott (59), of Riverdale House, Garrymore, Ballinagh, Co. Cavan admitted today (Friday) to knowingly rendering assistance to an unlawful organisation styling itself the Irish Republican Army, otherwise Oglaigh na hEireann, otherwise the IRA, directly or indirectly, in the performance or furtherance of an unlawful object, to wit, the murder of Peter Butterly, at diverse locations within the State, between March 3 and March 6, 2013, both dates inclusive. McDermott had originally pleaded not guilty at the three-judge court to the murder of Mr Butterly and the trial has been underway since the beginning of October. McDermott had also denied possession of a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol with intent to commit murder and possession of seven rounds of 9mm ammunition on March 5, 2013 at Blackthorn Apartments, Brackenwood Avenue, Balbriggan, Co. Dublin. Paul OHiggins SC, prosecuting, told the court this morning that McDermott was to be recharged on a scheduled offence under Section 49 of the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Act 2005. State Solicitor Michael ODonovan said the DPP had directed that McDermott be brought before the court and charged with this new offence which is contrary to Section 21a of the Offences against the State Act 1939. Detective Garda Brian McCarthy gave evidence that he met McDermott before the court sat this morning and handed him a copy of the charge sheet, explaining the charge to him. When the registrar put the new count to McDermott and asked him how he was pleading, he replied: Guilty. A book of evidence was then served on the defendant. Mr O'Higgins asked the court that a nolle prosequi be entered on the three charges which McDermott had originally been charged with. This means the State will not be proceeding with the prosecution in relation to these three other counts. Padraig Dwyer SC, defending McDermott, told the three judges that this was a fresh charge and his client had obviously entered an early guilty plea. Mr Justice Paul Coffey, presiding, said for an abundance of caution and incase the trial runs into the new term, he would fix a date for the final week of January. Mr Justice Coffey, sitting, with Judge Martin Nolan and Judge James Faughnan, remanded McDermott in custody until January 28 2019, when he will be sentenced. Hugh Hartnett SC, defending Frank Murphy, told the court that his client was not in attendance in court today but he had been released from hospital. Mr Hartnett said a similar situation will arise in respect of his client on Monday. Mr Murphy was taken from court in an ambulance yesterday morning after becoming unwell before the court sat. He was assessed by paramedics outside the courtroom and put on a stretcher before he was taken to the waiting ambulance. Frank Murphy (58), of McDonough Caravan Park, Triton Road, Bettystown, Co. Meath has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Butterly. Mr Murphy has also pleaded not guilty to possession of a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol with the intent to commit murder and possession of seven rounds of 9mm ammunition on the day of the killing itself. The prosecution said the trial will go on against Kevin Braney but certain issues needed to be raised. Bernard Condon SC, for Mr Braney, said he will be making an application for the court to discharge themselves as well as seeking an adjournment for the trial in light of what had happened this morning. Kevin Braney (43) with a last address at Glenshane Crescent, Tallaght in Dublin has also pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Butterly. Mr Braney also denies possession of a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol with intent to commit murder and possession of seven rounds of 9mm ammunition on March 5, 2013 at Blackthorn Apartments, Brackenwood Avenue, Balbriggan, Co. Dublin. Paul OHiggins SC, prosecuting, opened the trial, telling the judges that it was an unusual case because gardai were already keeping an eye on movements in the area that day as a result of certain suspicions. He said that Mr Butterly had driven into the carpark of the Huntsman Inn around 1.55pm. He had parked and remained in his car. He said that a black Peugeot 206 then drove into the carpark and parked for a few minutes. Its the States case that this car was being driven by Frank Murphy. It left shortly after 2pm and was followed by an unmarked garda car. It was around this time that a stolen Toyota Corolla was driven into the car park, he said. The car (Toyota) then stops in front of Mr Butterlys car and two shots are fired, one through the windscreen and one through the bonnet, said Mr OHiggins. Mr Butterly, who's on his own in the car, runs..., but he doesnt get very far. Mr OHiggins explained that two witnesses, who were waiting for their school buses, had stated that he was chased across the carpark and shot three times as he ran. The court heard that he fell and died almost immediately. The trial continues. Pets & Animal, Local News, Crime, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: November 23 2018 Officials: Jose Borgos, 52, allegedly kept the 21 Rottweilers in his backyard. Rocky Point, NY - November 23, 2018 - Suffolk County Police today arrested a Suffolk County Police today arrested a Rocky Point man who left more than 20 dogs outside in freezing temperatures on Thursday, November 22. Seventh Precinct Police Officer Karen Grenia was on patrol when she heard dogs barking at approximately 9:55 a.m. and discovered 21 Rottweilers in the backyard of a residence on Broadway. Nine of the dogs were found in travel crates in a shed. Jose Borgos, who indicated he is a breeder, was charged with 21 counts for violating the New York State Agriculture and Markets Law pertaining to Appropriate Shelter for Dogs Left Outdoors. He was also charged with 21 counts of violating Suffolk County Code on Outdoor Restraint of Animals, which prohibits a dog from being tethered when the temperature is below 32 degrees. Borgos, 52, who lives at the home, was scheduled for arraignment at later date. The Town of Brookhaven Animal Control responded and will determine placement of the dogs. It's no secret that the Hip-Hop community (bar Kanye) aren't the biggest fans of anything to do with Donald Trump. The current POTUS has faced a whole lot of scrutiny from rap's biggest names, from Ice Cube dropping his diss "Arrest The President" to YG's FTD (F**k Donald Trump) track, Trump gets no love from the culture. One of the big orange cheeto's biggest critics and self-proclamied haters is none other than Big Snoop Dogg, who has been very vocal in his hate for the current president since day 1. A few weeks ago he was yelling outside of the White House as he smoked a blunt, sending a message to the most powerful man in the country. And now he's stuck to that theme with a new Donald Trump ashtray, which he uses to ash out his blunts. "My new ash trash," captioned the West Coast legend as he showed off his new possession: a miniature representation of Donald Trump that he's using to ash his blunts. His fans seem to find it amusing, praising him in the comments. WEST SPRINGFIELD -- Krista Comee, of Agawam, planned what she thinks of as a relaxed shopping day on Black Friday -- starting at about 7 a.m. and wrapping up at about 9 p.m. That time accounts for a leisurely lunch, she said while picking up a cart in the parking lot of the Kohl's on Riverdale Street in West Springfield. "The sales are good," she said. "It's tradition. It's always a chance to get away from the kids and go out shopping." But she acknowledged the same deals are usually also available online, a fact retailers, especially locally owned ones, know they have to counteract. The National Retail Federation said retail sales for November and December will total $721 billion. That's not counting cars, gasoline and restaurant meals. It's an increase of 4.8 percent over 2017. But online shopping is growing faster. As of 5 p.m. Thursday, shoppers spent $1.75 billion online, according to Adobe Analytics via the AP. That's a nearly 29 percent increase from a year ago. Adobe Analytics expects $38 billion will have been spent online between Nov. 1 through Thursday, a nearly 19 percent increase from a year ago. Mark Wineburg, owner of Yes Computers in Northampton, said he conducts his business knowing that computers and electronics are sometimes available cheaper online. "If we did nothing but sell 'things,' we would be in trouble," he said. "You kind of want some assisted selling and some advice. You need some help picking out a computer. And you definitely need some help when it comes to moving around your data. So that's what we provide for people." Yes Computers gave up the super-early opening hours about three years ago and now opens 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday, and extends sale prices through the weekend. The weekend after Thanksgiving is the second-busiest time of the year at Yes, Wineburg said, behind only Massachusetts' tax-free weekend in August, which always coincides with back-to-school shopping. Highland Hardware & Bike Shop in Holyoke wasn't very busy Friday morning, but saw a mid-afternoon surge with customers coming in for Christmas decorations, bird feeders and other gift items. "Everybody is either at the mall or home eating turkey sandwiches (and shopping) on their computer," owner Harry Craven said of the morning lull. He said Saturday will be even busier for the annual Small Business Saturday promotion by American Express that encourages folks to shop at local businesses. "I think its starting to catch on," Craven said. "I'm getting more people who come in on that day and say 'I'm glad you're here. I want to support small business.'" Highland Hardware will get a lot of neighborhood business as folks complete chores around the house in the next few days, he said. And customers will come in for Christmas decorations and the like. "We are going to draw them in for miles around for the bike shop," he said. "As it gets closer to Christmas, we are going to get a little more busy." Made in Massachusetts is an ongoing feature taking you inside the products made right here in the Bay State and the people who make them. __________ Judi Vaillancourt always loved Christmas, so when her husband bought her three antique holiday chocolate molds for her birthday in 1984, the Sutton-based artist was quick to begin experimenting with them. "She brought them home and said, 'They're boring,'" her husband, Gary, recalled. "Then she started to pour them and discovered there was a lot of detail on the inside." Vaillancourt first used beeswax, which melted everywhere, and then chocolate, which her two sons quickly discovered. Then, she found success filling the molds with liquid chalk - an adaptation of the Victorian art form of chalkware. Vaillancourt painted fine details on the figurines using oil paint, creating Santa Clauses, rabbits and other holiday-themed artwork. Her newfound hobby quickly became a full-blown business when Vaillancourt's designs began selling out at folk art craft fairs around the country. She and her husband would pack their family into the car and travel as far as Texas for shows. Eventually, Gary quit his job in high-tech and the family ran the business from their first home - a 1700s house in Sutton. "At one time we had 18 people in our cellar, my father would wrap on my bed - it was the shipping room. The dining room was the painting room," Gary Vaillancourt said. "It's a true family business, all of our parents worked here at one time and all of our relatives." Gary had been working for Xerox at the time, running the company's northeast sales operation. He traveled five days a week for two years, so when the opportunity to help his wife run the business presented itself, Gary said he leapt at the chance to become more involved with his family. "My wife and I have always been in the role of if we want to do something, we do it, and we've lived our life that way," he said. "I no longer was making the big dollars, I was no longer dealing with the chairman of the board of Rockwell, I was dealing in the basement with my staff. It really allowed us to focus on family, which was really the best thing in the world." A few years later, the Vaillancourts realized they needed more space and purchased an 1820s farmhouse a few miles away, which housed the company's headquarters, studios and a retail store. The family soon discovered that a large percentage of its sales were going to stores and gradually shifted their business model from retail to wholesale. But the Vaillancourts' work soon caught the eye of manufacturers overseas. Knockoffs began to surface in the early 1990s, but Judi's solution wasn't to lower her prices; instead, she increased quality. "Initially, the painting detail was fairly basic, but what happened was we were knocked off heavily in China and Judi, who is not a marketing person, said, 'I'm going to double and triple the quality and double the prices,'" Gary Vaillancourt said. "As a marketing person, it sent shivers up my spine. But what she did was she created a product of such fine detail that the Chinese marketplace wasn't interested in doing it. It also separated us at the higher end of the Christmas marketplace, so it only appeals to a specific audience." Their business was thriving, and then 9/11 happened. Of the 1,000 stores that carried Vaillancourt Folk Art, 80 percent went out of business. So the Vaillancourts adapted, shifting their focus to custom work for museums and department stores. A few years later, their son, Luke, joined the family business with a focus on e-commerce. "We would've been out of business had we not adapted, we would've been out of business had Luke not joined us," Gary Vaillancourt said. Around the same time, the family moved its business - which had yet again outgrown the Vaillancourts' home - to a historic textile mill in Sutton. The building now houses the businesses' entire operation, including a retail store, artist studios and offices. Philanthropy has also been an important part of the Vaillancourts' business. For 29 years, the business has held a Starlight Santa event to benefit UMass Memorial Children's Medical Center. "Christmas is for kids, we're in a Christmas business and that's where we do all of philanthropy," Gary Vaillancourt said. A decade ago, the Vaillancourts met Gerald Charles Dickens, an actor and the great-great grandson of famed author Charles Dickens. Each winter since, Dickens has traveled to Sutton to perform a one-man version of "A Christmas Carol." "To have one man do a show and (play) 14 parts, hold your attention, it's a standing ovation at every show," Gary Vaillancourt said. Throughout the company's 34 years, the family has watched its customers' children grow up and bring in families of their own. "We've created a product, but what we've created is part of family traditions," Gary Vaillancourt said. "On Christmas mornings when we're opening our presents, I'll inevitably say to my wife, 'Do you know how many people are giving presents that we made in our studio?' It makes it pretty special, it's not just a product ... You cannot be in a more magical business." Pope Francis named the Vatican's top sex abuse investigator and a close U.S. ally to an organizing committee for a February abuse prevention summit that has grown even more high stakes after the Holy See blocked U.S. bishops from taking action to address the scandal. Abuse survivors and women working at the Vatican will also contribute to the preparatory committee. Notably absent from the lineup announced Friday was Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who heads the pope's sex abuse advisory commission, though one of his members, the Rev. Hans Zollner, is the point-person for the group. In addition to Zollner, the committee includes Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, for a decade the Vatican's sex crimes prosecutor, Francis appointee Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich and Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias, a member of Francis' key cardinal adviser group. Francis summoned leaders of the world's 130 bishops' conferences to the Vatican Feb. 21-24 after the abuse scandal erupted again in his native South America and the U.S. and he himself botched the case of a Chilean bishop implicated in cover-up. The stakes of the meeting grew exponentially after the Vatican told U.S. bishops earlier this month not to vote on proposed new measures to investigate sexual misconduct or cover-up within their ranks. The Vatican still hasn't explained why it blocked the vote on a U.S. code of conduct for bishops and a lay-led board to investigate them. The head of the U.S. bishops conference, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, said the Holy See wanted to delay any vote until after the February global summit. However, it is unlikely that such a diverse group of churchmen, some representing national churches that continue to deny or downplay the scandal, will over the course of four days come up with any universal proposals that come close to the accountability norms that U.S. bishops were seeking. Cupich has said he was disappointed by the Vatican's decision, but at the time of the U.S. bishops' meeting, he proposed they go ahead and debate the measures and even came up with a revised proposal himself. ''Pope Francis is calling for radical reform in the life of the church, for he understands that this crisis is about the abuse of power and a culture of protection and privilege, which have created a climate of secrecy, without accountability for misdeeds,'' he wrote in a blog post Thursday. ''All of that has to end.'' Zollner, who heads a safeguarding institute of study at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, acknowledged that the expectations were high going into the meeting. ''And it's understandable that they are high, given the gravity of the scandal that has shocked and hurt so many people, believers and not, in so many countries,'' he told Vatican Media. Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said Francis' decision to host the meeting at all showed he considered protection of minors a ''fundamental priority for the church.'' The involvement of lay experts in the preparatory work, Burke said, ''can help address especially what needs to be done to ensure transparency and accountability,'' he said. Connecticut State Police have closed Interstate 91 southbound just past the Massachusetts line because of a serious car crash. The crash is located in the area of exit 49. State police advise southbound traffic to find alternative routes No information was provided about the crash itself. It is not clear when the highway will be reopened. Traffic on I-91 south as of noon was backing up into Longmeadow. SPRINGFIELD -- The outdoor skating rink at MGM Springfield was launched Friday in olympian fashion as famed figure skater Nancy Kerrigan took the first spin before a crowd of adoring fans. Kerrigan, the Massachusetts native who rose to fame with an amateur career that earned her a silver medal in the 1994 Olympics and carried her to the figure skating Hall of Fame, was selected by MGM to help break the ice, so to speak, at the new rink. It seemed like old times for the now-retired star as she gracefully circled the ice, finishing with an upright spin in the center. It was a simple routine, maybe 15 or 20 seconds, but Kerrigan appeared winded as she took to the microphone. "Skating outside, you get winded pretty quick in this cold," she said. "At least it was warmer than yesterday. Not a lot but a little." She would say afterward that she doesn't skate much since she retired. Years of skating, and falling, have taken their toll on her back, she said. "It wasn't the years of skating, it was the falling," she said. Kerrigan thanked the crowd for their warm welcome on the coldest of days. "Thank you so much. I appreciate all the applause all these years later." MGM President Mike Mathis said the opening of the ice rink marks the beginning of the casino's first Christmas in Springfield. For the casino and for the city, he said, it's "a really special time." "When we came out from Las Vegas we knew we had something special with all these buildings and beautiful downtown," he said. The rink, located at the site of the former South End Community Center, will be open through March 3. Anyone can rent time on the ice for $12 for adults and $8 for children. Skates are available for $5 a pair. Members of the casino's M life rewards program get a discount. Mayor Domenic Sarno thanked Mathis for fulfilling his promise to build an outdoor rink in downtown Springfield. "I always wanted to have a skating rink in downtown Springfield," Sarno said. "Dreams do come true." Sarno ticked off the list of events planned downtown on Friday alone: the Parade of the Big Balloons, the new skating rink, the tree lighting at the Quadrangle, the MGM community tree lighting and the Thunderbirds game. "All of that in the city of Springfield," he said. "I deeply appreciate your belief in the city of Springfield and I wish you a joyous holiday season." Kerrigan, who skated years ago in the MassMutual Center while touring, and who has been to the city off and on over the years from her native Stoneham, said even she has noticed the change in the downtown. "It is a great honor to be a part of something new. We come to Springfield every year (and) you transformed it," she said. "This is so nice. I hope all of you come out to enjoy the skating rink this winter because it's so nice to skate outside," she said. If Kerrigan was the first to take to the new ice, let the record show that Anastasia Anderlonis of Philadelphia was the first to plant on it. Helping her nephew Tyler get his bearings on his skates, Anderlonis lost her's and, to make a long story short, gravity happened. "Oh, it felt great!" she said. Visiting her family for Thanksgiving, she said the new rink is great way to get people downtown, and to get children outside. EASTHAMPTON -- The INSA Inc. company that operates medical marijuana dispensaries here and in Springfield gave over 80 winter coats donated by patients and staff to the Springfield Rescue Mission this month. "We understand the added burden that the cold winter months put on shelters in the area. We're here to give back to a community that means so much to so many of the people here at INSA," company CEO Mark Zatyrka said Friday. INSA collected coats of "all sizes and colors" at its dispensaries Oct. 28 to Nov. 3, he said. INSA opened a dispensary here at 122 Cottage St. in February. An INSA dispensary in East Springfield at 506 Cottage St. began operating in May. INSA is poised to begin selling marijuana for recreational use at the Easthampton facility thanks to recent approval granted by the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission. "We don't have a specific date at this time, but we are hopeful we will be open in the next two to three weeks," Zartyka said. INSA's would be the second facility authorized to sell marijuana for recreational use in Western Massachusetts and the third in the state. Recreational pot sales began Tuesday at New England Treatment Access (NETA) at 118 Conz St. in Northampton and at Cultivate Holdings LLC in Leicester, which is in Worcester County. The Springfield Rescue Mission is a private, nonprofit organization that serves the poor and homeless on Mill Street in Springfield. "The goal of the Springfield Rescue Mission, since 1892, is to meet the physical and spiritual needs of the hungry, homeless, addicted and poor by introducing them to Christ and helping them apply the word of God to every area of their lives," the organization's website said. SPRINGFIELD -- The Massachusetts Animal Coalition has awarded $185,000 generated by the sale and renewal of special license plates to 25 animal control centers statewide. The revenue from the "I'm Animal Friendly" license plate grant is dedicated annually to spay/neuter programs conducted at animal shelters, rescues, and municipal animal control agencies. The "I'm Animal Friendly" license plates have been raising funds since 2003. "The more people who purchase and renew the the 'I'm Animal Family' plate, the bigger the difference we can make for local animals," said Anne Lindsay, the founder and president of the Massachusetts Animal Coalition. In Springfield, Mayor Domenic J. Sarno praised the coalition and the license plate program. The municipally operated Thomas J. O'Connor Animal Control and Adoption Center, overseen by executive director Pamela Peebles and serving Springfield, Chicopee and Holyoke, received a $12,000 grant. "Pets are a part of our lives... our families," Sarno said. "Pam, her dedicated staff, and volunteers work so hard to stretch a dollar, so we're appreciative to the MA Animal Coalition's (MAC) generosity and welcome their continued efforts." The following awards were announced for 2018: Ahimsa Haven Animal Rescue, Inc. $5,300, Templeton Animal Rescue League of Boston Community Cat Initiative, $2,000, Boston Belchertown Animal Control, $3,700, Belchertown Berkshire Humane Society, $18,000, Pittsfield Charles River Alleycats, $8,000, Cambridge Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts, $10,000, North Grafton Dakin Human Society $15,000 Springfield Friends of the Scituate Shelter, Inc., $3,000, Scituate Here Today Adopted Tomorrow Animal Sanctuary, Inc., $3,000, Brimfield House Rabbit Network, $5,000, Woburn HUBCATS/FERAL CAT FUND OF BOSTON, $5,000, Boston Humane Coalition for Animals of Greater New Bedford, $7,000, New Bedford It's All About The Animals, $2,000, Rochester Medfield Animal Shelter, $2,000, Medfield Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society, Inc., $7,000, Salisbury MSPCA -- Pit Pals Program, $10,000, Boston MSPCA-- Boston Adoption Center, $10,000, Boston MSPCA -- Cape Cod, $8,000, Centerville Merrimack Valley Spay/Neuter Initiative, $16,000, Lowell PittieLove Rescue, $3,000, Framingham Second Chance Animal Shelter, $15,000, East Brookfield South Shore Humane Society, $4,000, East Bridgewater Thomas J. O'Connor, $12,000, Springfield Town of Dartmouth Animal Control, $5,000, Dartmouth Town of Westport Animal Control, $6,000, Westport The "I'm Animal Friendly" license plates can be ordered for use, and as gifts, by going to the web site, found here. The plates are tax-deductible. BOSTON - The 18-year-old man who was critically injured a week ago when dragged from a speeding vehicle has died, and the two men who had been arrested for robbery now face murder charges, according to the Massachusetts State Police. Kemoni Miller died Wednesday morning at Boston Medical Center after having been on life support for four days, said state police spokesman David Procopio. He was dragged about a half mile and suffered a critical head injury when he finally fell from the car. Dejon Barnes, 18, and Kenneth Ford, 23, who had been arrested Sunday night and charged with unarmed robbery in connection with the incident. Procopio said state police and Suffolk County District Attorney John P. Pappas will now seek murder charges against Barnes and Ford. The two had pleaded innocent to the unarmed robbery charge at their arraignment earlier this week. They were ordered held on $100,000 bail. Arraignments on the new charges have not been scheduled. Each is due in court on Dec. 4 According to police, Miller had been in communications with Barnes about selling him an iPhone XS smartphone, and the two had agreed to meet Nov. 16. Prosecutors say that instead of buying the phone, Barnes and Ford tried to steal it. They grabbed the phone from Miller and rolled up the car window, in the process trapping him by the arm, and then sped off. Miller was found lying unconscious on Gallivan Boulevard in Dorchester that night. Procopio said police investigators were able to follow a trail of cell phone records, text messages, witness statements, video footage and other evidence to identify Barnes and Ford as participants. Ford was identified as the driver of the car. Each was arrested at a house party on Sunday morning. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Journalists should not pursue problems to solve some issues, new media just need to be a mean of making the information more available to the people. Journalists should not enter into a political field and engage in the campaign activities, media-expert, information security specialist Samvel Martirosyan said during a media forum titled The Role of Media in a Changing World, reports Armenpress. Obviously, the new media created major problems in connection with journalism. There was a great deal of excitement when the new media were created since everyone understood that the freedom of speech receives a huge opportunity which didnt exist previously. However, when several years have passed, it turned out that the campaign and manipulations received the opportunities they never had before. Some of the people think that the new media is on the democratization path, and some of them think these are a path to total control. Its still unclear which one is right, it will be clear in several years as the stage of transformation is still in process, Martirosyan said. He said first problems in journalism appear when reporters start solving some issues, such as national preservation, prosperity of the country and etc. The new media must just be a mean to become more available, more vertical and create more loyal audience, he said, adding that at the moment the greatest problem in Armenia is that the reporters have entered into the political field. Samvel Martirosyan said there is a problem of demilitarizing the social media, social platforms and making them just a platform for contact. The restoration was supposed to be finished Oct. 1, well in time for a dedication ceremony scheduled for Veterans Day on Nov. 11. But a contractor hired to work on the World War I Memorial in Worcester's Green Hill Park missed that October deadline. Then Veterans Day came and went. Now Empire Design and Construction Co. of Gloucester is being fired by the city of Worcester after it failed to meet deadlines and a planned dedication ceremony is being moved to Memorial Day. Councilor-at-Large Gary Rosen on Tuesday told the council that the city should have known better. "From what I've read about this contractor ... there have been at least two major projects in Massachusetts towns where the contract was ended with him and other contractors were brought in to finish the job," Rosen said. Empire Design and Construction owner Mike Corsetti told MassLive Friday the project is 80 to 90 percent complete, that he battled "unforeseen conditions" on the project and that the city council did not hear all the facts this week. His attorney is in the process of drafting a letter to the city, he said. Robert C. Antonelli Jr., assistant commissioner for Worcester Parks disuputes Corsetti's estimate, saying the project is only about 50 percent complete. "He can't finish this job in this year and this job was supposed to be done on Oct. 1," Antonelli said. But Rosen questioned whether Corsetti was qualified for the project and asked why the city went with the lowest bidder for the project. "We do have discretion," Rosen said. "We have to choose among the qualified and responsible bidders the lowest one in that group. I maintain that Empire Design and Construction was not among the group of qualified and responsible bidders." Rosen was referring to Massachusetts General Laws, which stipulate that for municipal contracts above $30,000 the city follow a public bidding process that requires "the procurement officer shall award the contract to the lowest responsible and responsive bidder." The "responsible" part gives the city some leverage in choosing contractors. "There's a reason this company was the lowest bidder," Rosen said. "And that's the reason we should have avoided this company." Corsetti denied he was not qualified for the project. "We're completely qualified," he told MassLive. "There's no qualifications to help change the weather." City Manager Ed Augustus Jr. said the city would remove the developer from the project and find someone else to finish it. "Let me assure folks that I was as disappointed as anyone as that was a project we wanted to have delivered on the 100th anniversary," Augustus said. Nov. 11 this year marked 100 years since the armistice that ended World War I. Augustus said the city does not always chose the lowest bidder for projects. "We are discerning, but we're not perfect," he said. Antonelli said the city is going through the process now of firing Empire Design and Construction and finding a new contractor. "We've been giving him weekly notice for the past month and a half that he's late, that he's not fully there, Antonelli said. With winter upon us, weather could further complicate completion, he said. Corsetti said his attorney will be contacting the city after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. The construction site at the memorial remained uncompleted and fenced off on Friday with some construction equipment left sitting out around the site. Temperatures may be dipping, but Worcester's Lock 50 restaurant has a solution for those who don't want to give up on outdoor dining just yet. The upscale restaurant in the city's Canal District has added five heated igloos to its outdoor patio for the winter season. The colorful plastic structures seat either groups or multiple smaller tables. So far, owner Ed Russo said the response from patrons has been overwhelming. "They're wicked cool," owner Ed Russo said. "The plan is they will be up all winter long, we'll only close them if there is a state of emergency." Customers can dine in the igloos on a first come, first serve basis. They can also be rented out in advance for $50 an hour, but Russo said Lock 50 is not taking normal reservations for the igloos. The restaurant is in the process of building out an additional patio on the lower outdoor level that will be covered in AstroTurf and open year-round. Russo said four more igloos will be added in that area within a week or two. "It's been overwhelming," he said. "The demand has been huge." Russo said he decided to invest in the structures after a friend told him about the outdoor igloos on the roof of the Envoy Hotel in Boston. Each igloo seats six comfortably, Russo said, but parties of eight have decided to squeeze in. Lock 50 is located at 50 Water St. in Worcester. A crash on Thanksgiving Day took the life of a young woman and seriously injured others. Massachusetts State Police were called to a report of a crash on Old Turnpike Road in Oakham around 5:20 p.m. Thursday. Troopers at the scene determined a 21-year-old man operating a 2014 Toyota Corolla lost control of his vehicle and struck a 2015 Honda CRV traveling in the opposite direction. A preliminary investigation revealed that speed was a likely factor in the crash. "The collision resulted in fatal injuries of the passenger of the Toyota Corolla, a 21-year-old woman from New Bedford," Massachusetts State Police said. "The driver of the Honda CRV, a 51-year-old woman and a passenger, a 89-year-old man, both of Ware, were transported by ambulance with serious injuries to UMass Worcester. The driver of the Toyota was also transported with serious injuries to UMass Worcester." The closing of any major department store is a sign of changing American shopping habits, but it's also a moment for retrospection and sadness as well. Such is the case with Sears, which is ending 39 years of business at the Holyoke Mall at Ingleside Mall with its Thanksgiving weekend closing sale. "Everything must go" is the slogan for such close-outs, because soon, the store itself will go - a thriving center of commerce for decades, relegated to a set of memories that fade with time. It wasn't that long ago that the notion of the closing of a single Sears - let alone the shuttering of dozens of outlets as the company has gone bankrupt - was unimaginable. That was before online shopping came to dominate the merchandising world, much as malls had driven countless smaller Main Street stores out of business two generations previously. To think any chain, even including the legendary Sears brand, was untouchable turned out to be unrealistic. In the modern history of the developed world, the growth and impact of the Internet will take its place among creations that changed human habits in more ways than can be counted - including the fundamental practice of purchasing needed goods. The challenge for malls today is not just attracting new stores, but finding creative ways to replace the big-box anchors that are vanishing. The case of Sears is especially poignant because of its place as one of the original outlets of the Holyoke Mall. The Ingleside mall's opening in 1979 dramatically transformed the local economy. It brought the concept of the sprawling mall to a previously untapped level. The list of original anchors is in itself a walk down Memory Lane: G. Fox, JC Penney, Sears, Service Merchandise and Steiger's. Shoppers arrived not just from Western Massachusetts but from up and down Route 91, and with easy east-west access from the Massachusetts Turnpike as well. The Ingleside location was a regional merchandising hub, as it still is with 1.6 million square feet. Sears was a vital part of that from the very start. In its final days, shoppers were greeted with sharply marked down prices for a variety of goods. Not all of the available apparel was in season. Much of the inventory was cleaned out. Such is true when any store's days of operation are numbered in single digits. What happens to the surviving locations of Sears and Kmart, which are owned by the same company, remains to be seen. The bankruptcy scale-down has meant the closing of operations in Holyoke, Enfield and the Eastfield Mall among dozens of others. Some analysts say the remaining chain stores can survive the bankruptcy proceedings. Others are much less sure. Whatever happens, the closing of Sears at the Holyoke Mall is a seminal moment in local merchandising. Springfield shoppers of a certain age still remember with fondness and nostalgia the heyday of Steiger's, Forbes & Wallace and Johnson's Bookstore, and many still feel a tinge of emptiness by their demise. To more recent generations, Sears falls into that category as it, too, moves from a place of prominence to one of memories as a busy store that served us well. House Republicans have called on former FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch to testify behind close doors before Democrats take control of the chamber in January. The former Justice Department officials received subpoenas this week to appear before the House Judiciary Committee and Oversight and Government Reform panel for respective closed door testimony on Dec. 3 and Dec. 4. The subpoenas came shortly after Republican U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the Judiciary Committee's chairman, hinted that he would order Comey and Lynch to testify as part of an investigation into their handling of issues relating to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email server and alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Comey, who announced his subpoena as part of a Thanksgiving message posted on Twitter, said while he's "still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions," he will resist efforts to have his testimony take place behind closed doors. "I will resist a 'closed door' thing because I've seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion," he tweeted. "Let's have a hearing and invite everyone to see." Happy Thanksgiving. Got a subpoena from House Republicans. Im still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a closed door thing because Ive seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion. Lets have a hearing and invite everyone to see. James Comey (@Comey) November 22, 2018 Republicans have suggested that Comey and Lynch allowed Clinton to avoid prosecution for her use of a private email server as secretary of state. They have also raised questions about the investigation into alleged connections between Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia -- a probe the president has repeatedly cast as a "witch hunt." Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a long-awaited report in June that offered sweeping criticisms of Comey's handling of the high-profile investigation into Clinton's private email server. The 500-plus page report took issue with Comey's decision to "deviate" from DOJ and Federal Bureau of Investigation procedures and norms and instead engage in "his own subjective, ad hoc decision-making." The DOJ watchdog, however, said investigators believe Comey largely based his decisions on what he thought was in the FBI's institutional interests and what would allow him to continue to effectively lead to agency. Horowitz also took issue with Lynch's decision to meet privately with Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, on an airport tarmac during the email server investigation. Despite those concerns, Horowitz's report did not find any evidence of bias or take issue with the Clinton email investigation's outcome. Jerome Corsi, a conservative writer and associate of President Donald Trump and GOP operative Roger Stone, is reportedly in plea negotiations with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, sources said Friday. A person with knowledge of the alleged talks told The Washington Post that Corsi has been working with Mueller's team, which is investigating alleged collusion between Trump's presidential campaign and Russian officials, on a possible agreement that could lead him to plead guilty in exchange for leniency. The newspaper noted that the reported talks could help Mueller determine whether Trump or other campaign advisers had any ties to WikiLeaks' 2016 release of hacked Democratic emails. Corsi's attorney David Gray and a spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment on the reported negotiations, as did an attorney for Trump, the newspaper reported. Corsi, who provided research to Stone during the 2016 campaign, said on a recent livestream that he expected prosecutors working for Mueller to indict him on a charge of lying to investigators, according to The Washington Post. He noted that he had turned over computers, emails and other communications to the special counsel in addition to sitting for several interviews. Corsi, the newspaper said, added that Mueller's team had said he would be criminally charged. "I'm going to be indicted. That's what we've been told. Everyone should know that," he reportedly said. Corsi, meanwhile, told The Daily Caller that prosecutors were focused on whether he had a source with inside information about WikiLeaks' plans to release the emails. He told the news outlet that in August 2016 he thought, but did not know, that WikiLeaks had the emails -- a theory he reportedly shared with Stone. Stone has denied speaking with Corsi about the emails. Mueller has also reportedly been looking to whether Stone has possible ties to WikiLeaks. National organizations focused on reforming criminal justice systems have highlighted Massachusetts as a top state in the country in significantly reducing the rate of people returning to prison. "Massachusetts has been a leader in this, really taking advantage of a groundswell across the nation of general support for good reentry (programming)," said Nicole Jarrett, director of the National Reentry Resource Center. The National Reentry Resource Center and The Council of State Governments Justice Center calculated the three-year recidivism rates for prisoners in several states over around a decade, although the exact years differed by state. Of 11 states included in their most recent brief, Massachusetts had the largest drop in its recidivism rate. Earlier briefs examined different states, and although the methods and numbers are not exactly comparable, the figures put Massachusetts toward the top of the pack nationally. According to the report, Massachusetts lowered its recidivism rate by 28 percent, from 44 returns to prison within three years per 100 people released in 2005 to 31.6 returns to prison per 100 prisoners released in 2014. The figures represent the number of prisoners who return to state prison within three years of being released. They do not include county jails. The Council of State Governments Justice Center recently conducted an extensive study of recidivism in Massachusetts. It made recommendations related to programming and supervision, many of which were adopted in legislation signed in April. These figures predate that work. The National Reentry Resource Center and The Council of State Governments Justice Center are using the figures to prove that states can lower recidivism rates, as a federal program that provides grants to reduce recidivism is up for reauthorization. The Second Chance Act, signed by President George W. Bush in 2008, has provided grants since 2009 to support state and local efforts to reduce recidivism. U.S. Senators Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, this month introduced a bill to reauthorize the law and fund it through 2021. Congress is also considering a larger effort to improve criminal justice policy, which could involve funding various local and state programs. "We think the federal investment is really important," Jarrett said. "The way that it's structured, it really allows jurisdictions to come up with solutions that make sense for their locality and state." In Massachusetts, the state got a federal grant through the Second Chance Act to help people with substance abuse and mental illness reenter society, with services like peer support and transitional housing. Massachusetts has used grants to pay for community-based mentoring and service programs for young adults released from prison. The Department of Youth Services funded training to ensure that schools and probation officers properly handle students who are on probation. Hampden County Sheriff Nick Cocchi worked for former sheriff Michael Ashe for 24 years and saw how Ashe implemented some of the country's leading reentry programs. Between 2005 and 2014, the Hampden County recidivism rate dropped from 48.3 percent to 35 percent. Cocchi emphasizes Hampden County's opening of an aftercare center in 1996, where ex-inmates could receive case management, mental health counseling, crisis intervention services and referrals to community organizations. Cocchi attributed the drop to aftercare and a focus on "starting reentry services on day one of incarceration." This includes stabilizing individuals in jail with mental health counseling and substance abuse services, then helping them after release to find jobs, maintain housing and get wraparound services. The Hampden County Sheriff's Department got a $327,000 Second Chances Act grant in 2010 to pay for a regional reentry task force. The federal money, Cocchi said, "gives people the opportunity to experiment and do things they normally don't have funds to do." UTEC, a Lowell-based program that offers reentry services to men under 25, received $300,000 from the Second Chance Act in 2014 to 2016, and got $1 million in 2017 for another three-year period. In fiscal 2018, 88 percent of UTEC participants had no new arrests while they were enrolled in the program, not counting technical parole violations, like missing a probation appointment. In comparison, 51 percent of 18 to 24 year-olds incarcerated in county jails are not re-arraigned within a year. Director Gregg Croteau said UTEC sends counselors to build relationships with young people from the beginning of their incarceration. That means when a prisoner is released, they have someone they trust to connect them to services, like job placement or counseling. "For us, being able to do work behind the walls, the work we can do post-release becomes much stronger," Croteau said. Croteau said working with 18 to 24-year-olds is key, since they are the most likely to reoffend. Data show that recidivism naturally declines when someone hits their mid-20s as their brain develops. The White House asked the U.S. Supreme Court Friday to immediately consider legal challenges that have halted President Donald Trump's efforts to ban transgender individuals from military service. Solicitor General Noel Francisco requested that the court consider whether a lower court "erred" in preliminarily instructing the military against implementing a policy, which the administration argued would have allowed transgender individuals to serve in their biological sex, but barred those with "a history of a medical condition called gender dysphoria ... unless they meet certain conditions." Francisco further asked the court to consolidate challenges to the administration's policy and rule on the issue before its term ends. The challenges, which have found success in lower courts, seek to block the administration's push to roll back an Obama-era policy that allowed transgender men and women to openly serve in the military and access funding for sex-reassignment surgery. Francisco, who filed a petition for a writ of certiorari on behalf of Trump Friday, raised concerns about the Obama administration's policy, argued that it "posed too great a risk to military effectiveness and lethality." Without prompt intervention, he offered, "it is unlikely that the military will be able to implement its new policy any time soon." "The government is filing this petition and two other petitions for writs of certiorari before judgement to the Ninth and D.C. Circuits, which have before them a total of three injunctions enjoining the military from implementing the Mattis policy nationwide," the solicitor general contended. "The decisions imposing those injunctions are wrong, and they warrant this court's immediate review." Francisco asked that the Supreme Court "consolidate the cases for decision and consider this important dispute this term." Human Rights Campaign, a national lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer civil rights organization, condemned the Trump administration's filing. " It is clear that the Trump-Pence administration's desperate desire to discriminate against transgender service members knows no bounds. The administration is in a rush because they know that every day that transgender people continue to enlist and serve with distinction is another day that the courts and the public see this irrational policy for what it is," the group tweeted. "There is simply no reason to circumvent the traditional judicial process in pursuit of banning qualified, patriotic Americans from serving their country." 4/ There is simply to circumvent the traditional judicial process in pursuit of banning qualified, patriotic Americans from serving their country. #ProtectTransTroops Human Rights Campaign (@HRC) November 23, 2018 Trump announced in a series of July 2017 Twitter posts that the U.S. government would not accept or allow transgender Americans to serve in the military. "After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military," he tweeted at the time. "Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you." In March, Trump released a new version of the order, which banned most transgender individuals from military service except in "limited circumstances" -- a policy released after his initial effort was blocked by various legal challenges and three federal court rulings. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the new policy would "enable the military to apply well-established mental and physical health standards -- including those regarding the use of medical drugs -- equally to all individuals who want to join and fight for the best military force the world has ever seen." This is a breaking news story and will be updated. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS.Acting Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan attended a workshop entitled Current Challenges and Strategic Directions of Armenias Economy Development. The forum kicked off with speeches on Armenias current socio-economic development status, ARMENPRESS was informed from the official website of the Prime Minister of Armenia. Nikol Pashinyan listened to the speakers reports on raising the level of constitutionality in Armenia, the improvement of the public administration system, the new public contract, the institutional transformation and the current state of the economy and the development of the issues, following which the participants presented their positions on the topics discussed and the questions around. Referring to the issues discussed in the reports and summarizing the discussion within the framework of the first part of the conference, Nikol Pashinyan said he was inspired by its results. In fact, at the very least, the first 5 reports outline the logic and priorities of our steps, what we do in the course of this time, we try to do and try to do better. For example, after the revolution, when we were constantly questioning economic issues on political platforms, first of all we underlined the importance of constitutionalism in the country. Everyone was saying that this is a political issue and we should talk about the economy. We were saying that the most important thing for the economy is legitimacy, the equality of all before the law, the formation of an environment of justice. The next problem we encountered and quickly recorded is the extreme ineffectiveness of the public administration system. We have formulated this as a political issue, which will inevitably be the case in 2019. we will talk about it, that is, I hope we will get a vote of confidence in the elections and after all, we will focus on that topic. The Acting Prime Minister spoke about those issues raised in the report on the new social treaty, including the opportunities created by the revolution, the criticism of the government, and the governments actions. In my opinion, this perception is the inertia of the old political system, because if the government takes up all levers and gives all solutions, then it should naturally be held responsible for everything else. This is nonsense, but it is what we used to have. Everyone wants the government, moreover, the prime minister go into the details of micro-management. The governments task is not to check the workings of every single cell, but to ensure the healthy functioning of the body itself. Here the most important thing is to formulate an accurate diagnosis and take steps to that effect. Our ideology today is as follows: there is possibility for different layers of society to assume a role and responsibilities for solving issues. During our political activities, at least since 2015, when we formulated our political vision, the individual effort has been crucial to resolving all public issues and we believe that these opportunities have been created today. The most important task is to change peoples behavior, and in fact, the revolution took place only because of the change in the citizens behavior, the Acting Prime Minister said. According to Nikol Pashinyan, there has been a change in political behavior and this has solved the problem of political revolution. With the change of economic behavior we will be able to solve the problem of economic revolution, depending on how taxpayers understand their fiscal liabilities: a burden, a sentence, or as participation in our countrys economic, political and social development? Changing the taxpayers behavior and the public perception of businessmen is a top priority that needs to be addressed today. We must admit that for a long time there used to be a negative attitude toward business with few exceptions. The point is that they were permanently involved in political processes, and the government was interested in their involvement in political processes. Things have changed today. For instance, the number of business-related candidates in the upcoming parliamentary elections is at record low. But I do not want it to be interpreted as kind of downgrading or humiliation for business people. This is the opposite process, and I think that as a result, a businessman should mean much more than a deputy, because the businessman is the person who creates a product, who provides jobs, who pulls the locomotive of the state revenue, and as a result, we all have the opportunity to form the platform where economic, political and international geopolitical changes should take place in our environment, Nikol Pashinyan underscored. The issue of improving the demographic situation has been touched upon at the conference. The Acting Prime Minister said in this connection: It is our most important task, if we put the solution to the logic of natural growth, and even if we have a lot of success now, it will be resolved in 15-20 years, because the babies born within a year will not come of age but in 18 years the earliest. In this regard, we really value the idea of immigration. By saying immigration, we do not mean just the physical transfer of people. We hope that by saying immigration, we can witness influx of capital and new culture, because we are global nation, and the idea that I like is the following: I imagine that our country, the Republic of Armenia, must become an object of immigration from different communities of the world, where people may come and bring in new culture, new understanding, a new look, new ideas so that we could say that while 1000 years old, we are a newborn and reborn nation. In his speech, Nikol Pashinyan touched upon the current situation in the universities, the educational system and the effectiveness of research centers. Nikol Pashinyan noted that an incomprehensible institution of state and departmental universities has emerged in Armenia and this is also a matter of the efficiency of public administration. We spend so much money on education, but we are actually spending much more, because there are agencies that finance their own universities. And as a result, we have the following situation: when graduates go to a government office for a job, they are told that their diploma is worth nothing as they had to study at the affiliated institution. This approach is definitely unfair and unacceptable to me. Institutions should be combined and harmonized, and we should set science, research and education on the same rails, the Acting Prime Minister said, attaching importance to the science-economy-government-community active communication. Many great discoveries and advances in the modern world have been made on the ideas found in student essays. And how many students are today writing essays? Walking in the city center one can see more essay selling kiosks than cigarette sellers. It seems that this has nothing to do with ourselves, but the decay goes right there. We need to raise the standards and take steps to internationalize our universities, Nikol Pashinyan said. Regarding the prospects of Armenias economic development, Nikol Pashinyan said: Our economy and politics should first of all serve our strategic needs. In this regard, we should not forget that security is one of our strategic priorities. We have the potential and possibility to build such an economic environment. We must agree that the lack of rule of law in our country, the lack of democracy should not be conditioned by the security environment. 2. We should not justify the development of our economy with the overall security environment, because we have different possibilities in the 21st century. Today, economic development is mainly associated with the development of human capital. Human and intellectual capital is our greatest value, and everything must begin from here. Our goal is to ensure our citizens freedom, happiness and prosperity, and that is a political issue that we must address together. The Acting Prime Minister said with satisfaction that during the discussion he did not hear any sentence with which he could not agree. This makes me happy, because it means that we have a sense of public consciousness about what we have to do. We have communicated with some of those in attendance during this period, while we have not yet talked to others, but what can be the next important outcome of our revolution is perhaps the restored feeling of our common values. As we are facing the same realities, we can come to the same conclusions and draw the roadmap of future action, Nikol Pashinyan said. Stressing the need for holding similar meetings as they help generate and implement ideas, work out roadmaps, find solutions and listen to each other, Nikol Pashinyan said he was open to such discussions and ready to meet again. Market Highlights Primary and precise diagnosis of malaria is essential for both fast and effective disease management and observation. Superior quality malaria diagnosis systems are important in all settings as misdiagnosis or misinterpretation can result in substantial morbidity and mortality. World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a quick malaria diagnosis either by microscopy or malaria rapid diagnostic test (RDT) in all patients with suspected malaria before treatment is being administered. Diagnostic testing improves the overall management of patients with febrile illnesses and may also help to decrease the emergence and spread of drug resistance by storing antimalarials for those who have the disease. The scope of malaria diagnostics is growing rapidly with technological advancements and a growing number of investments. Also, growth in a number of hospitals and healthcare facilities, and initiatives taken by the government are the major factors driving the growth of the malaria diagnostics market.The malaria diagnostics market is expected to grow at 4.6% CAGR during the forecast period GET SAMPLE REPORT @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/6432 However, the dearth of appropriate monitoring standards at the country levels particularly in developing markets hinders the growth of the market. The weak regulatory framework and lack of awareness across the emerging nations is also a prime concern for the manufacturers and healthcare providers. Segmentation The global malaria diagnostics market has been segmented on the basis of technology and end-user. On the basis of technology, the market has been classified as rapid diagnostic tests, microscopy, and molecular diagnostic tests. The molecular diagnostics tests are segmented into polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). On the basis of end-users, the market has been classified as hospitals, clinics, community healthcare, and others. Regional Analysis The Americas is projected to lead the malaria diagnostics market in the forecast period. Increasing healthcare awareness, advancement in technology, medical tourism are some other factors that boost the growth of the market. The European market is expected to hold the second largest market share. The European market is projected to grow because of the malaria cases brought in the European region by tourists and refugees. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, stats reported a range of 5000 -7000 cases of malaria from 2008 to 2012. Asia-Pacific is projected to be the fastest growing region for the global malaria diagnostics market in 2018. The market is expected to witness growth owing to the rising patient population, changing lifestyle, and growing elderly population. This is expected to provide favorable backgrounds for the market to grow. The diagnostic testing market, by volume, in India is controlled by microscopy testing. With increasing awareness and growing funding from care-based surveillance systems, private sectors and national governments the necessity for diagnostic testing procedures are projected to rise, thereby boosting the market development. The Middle East and Africa accounts for the least share due to stringent government policies and low per capita income. Southeast Asia accounted for about 10% of the global cases, however, the death rate was around 7% in the same year. Key Players Some of the key players in the global malaria diagnostics market are Access Bio. Inc., Abbott Laboratories, Premier Medical Corporation Pvt. Ltd, Sysmex Partec GmbH, bioMerieux, Beckman Coulter Inc., Siemens Healthineers, Leica Microsystems GmbH, Nikon Corporation, Olympus Corporation and Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc. Table of Content: Key Points Chapter 1. Report Prologue Chapter 2. Market Introduction Chapter 3. Research Methodology Chapter 4. Market Dynamics Chapter 5. Market Factor Analysis Chapter 6. Global Malaria Diagnostics Market, By Technique Chapter 7. Global Malaria Diagnostics Market, By End-Users Chapter 8. Global Hemostats Market, By Region Continued ACCESS REPORT @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/malaria-diagnostics-market-6432 Contact Info: NORAH TRENT sales@wiseguyreports.com Ph: +1-646-845-9349 (US) Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK) Get in touch: LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/4828928 Twitter: https://twitter.com/WiseGuyReports Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Wiseguyreports-1009007869213183/?fref=ts Analyzing the market structure, this report evaluates the future growth potential of the market. It observes the strategies of the key players in the market and follows the competitive developments such as joint ventures, new product developments, mergers and acquisitions, research and developments (R & D) in the market. The global medical sensors market is growing steadily and have a bright future. The significant technological advancement and demand for smart medical devices is the primary reason for the growth of this market. The Global Medical Sensors Market has been segmented on the basis of application, sensor placement, types, and lastly region. The application-based segmentation segments this market into diagnostics, fitness, imaging, medical therapeutics, monitoring, and others. Based on sensor placement, the market has been segmented into implantable sensors, ingestible sensors, invasive/non-invasive sensors, strip sensors, and wearable sensors. By types, the market has been segmented into blood glucose sensors, blood oxygen sensors, Electrocardiography (ECG) sensors, image sensors, inertial sensors, motion sensors, pressure sensors, and temperature sensors, and others. Get Sample Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2038 Medical Sensors Market Competitive Landscape Some of the leading market participants discussed in MRFRs report include Medtronic Plc. Measurement Specialties Inc. NXP Semiconductors N.V. Smiths Medical Given Imaging, Inc. GE Healthcare First Sensor AG Honeywell International, Inc STMicroelectronics N.V. Philips Healthcare STMicroelectronics Medical Sensors Market Industry Trends and News LifePlus, a healthcare startup has recently revealed what the company believes is the world-first noninvasive continuous blood glucose monitoring multi-sensor wearable. The company has named the device LifeLeaf, which will be part of the companys effort to capitalise on the growing medical wearables category. Apart from monitoring blood glucose, the devices will be capable of tracking blood pressure, track heart rate, oxygen saturation and respiration rate. Leading wearable technology company Fitbit is reportedly going to leverage Googles new Cloud Healthcare API to increase its healthcare-centric capabilities. With the help of Cloud Healthcare API, the company will be able to connect its devices to EMRs and provide clinicians and patients a more complete view of the patient profile. Medical Sensors Market Regional Outlook On the basis of region, the market is North America expected to remain highly attractive throughout he reviews period. High healthcare expenditure and presence of prominent healthcare focused tech firms in the regions is supporting the growth of the market in North America. The region is expected to be followed by Europe and Asia Pacific (APAC) respectively. During the forecast period, the APAC medical sensors market is projected witness a relatively higher CAGR. Browse Complete 80 Pages Premium Research Report Enabled with Tables and Figures @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/medical-sensors-market-2038 Major Table of Content Chapter 1. Report Prologue Chapter 2. Market Introduction 2.1 Definition 2.2 Scope of the Study 2.2.1 Research Objective 2.2.2 Assumptions 2.2.3 Limitations Chapter 3. Research Methodology 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Primary Research 3.3 Secondary Research 3.4 Market Size Estimation Chapter 4. Market Dynamics Continued. About Market Research Future: At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services. In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members. Contact: Market Research Future Office No. 528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar, Pune 411028 Maharashtra, India +1 646 845 9312 Email: salesteam@marketresearchfuture.com Test Strip is a type of diagnostic devices which is the most important tools in Point of Care (POC) diagnostics. These test strip helps to achieve rapid diagnosis of various critical diseases such as urinary tract infection (UTI), liver disease, kidney diseases, diabetes test, ophthalmic disease and others with precsion. Test strips are widely used for monitoring the blood glucose level in the diabetic patients. As per world Health Organization (WHO), it was estimated that in 2016, 420 million adult population is suffering from diabetes all over the world will and the number is expected to reach 625 million till 2040. The Global Test Strip Market is growing with the dynamic pace. The global test strip market is expecting a sound growth at a CAGR of 12.8% during the forecasted period. Increasing prevalence of diabetes, and other urinary tract diseases has supported the growth of this market. According to a recent study report published by the Market Research Future, the Global Test Strip Market is booming and expected to gain prominence over the forecast period. The market is forecasted to demonstrate a spectacular growth by 2023, surpassing its previous growth records in terms of value with a striking CAGR during the anticipated period (2017 2023). The market is expected grow with the same trends during the forecast period. The major drivers supporting the growth of the market will be presence of huge diabetic patient population in Asia Pacific region like India and China. According to WHO (2014), 60% of the worlds total diabetic population lives in Asia region. Moreover, the global test strip market is driven by rising geriatric population, and rapid development in the test strips has driven the growth of the market. Moreover, changing lifestyle, and government initiatives for encouragement for the research & development has fueled the market growth. On the other hand, availability of alternative methods for diagnosis like saliva collection devices has restrained the growth of global test strip market. Get Sample Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/672 Global Test Strip Market Segmentation MRFR has segmented the report into four key dynamics: Product Types: Comprises Diabetic Strips, Urine Test Strip and Fluorescein, among others. By Applications: Diagnosis (Urinalysis, Blood Glucose Analysis, and Ophthalmic Diagnostic, others). Pregnancy Test, and Disease Diagnosis (UTI, Liver & Kidney Diseases, Diabetic Test, others) among others. By End-Users: Hospitals, Consumers, Clinics, Institutes & Research Laboratories, and Diagnostic Laboratories. By Regions: North America, Europe, APAC and Rest of the World. The Diabetic Strips segment is expected to witness high growth rate due to rising government initiatives and concerns for diabetics across the globe. The end-users segment is driven by the rising demand for point of care (POC). Global Test Strip Market Key Players Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd (Switzerland), Siemens Ltd. (Germany), Abbott (US), B. Braun (Germany), LifeScan, Inc. (US), Chiltern MediCare Ltd. (US), Henry Schein, Inc. (US), Lifeassay Diagnostics (South Africa), Siemens Healthcare Private Limited (Germany), ARKRAY Inc. (US), Ascensia Diabetes Care Holdings AG. (Switzerland), TaiDoc Technology Corporation (Taiwan), Teco Diagnostics (US) are some of the prominent players at the forefront of competition in the Global Test Strip Market and are profiled in MRFR Analysis. Industry/ Innovations/ Related News: June 5, 2018 Waters Corporation (US), a publicly traded Analytical Laboratory instrument and software company launched its new user-friendly lateral flow zearalenone strip test The Zearala-V AQUA. Eliminating the for organic solvents using a water-based dilution-free extraction the Zearala-V AQUA test strips use the proven sensitivity and selectivity of VICAMs monoclonal antibodies to accurately detect and measure zearalenone at levels as low as 0.1 ppm and as high as 5.0 ppm. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Swiss multinational healthcare company focuses on the development and distribution of test strips. For this, in June 2017, Roche has acquired mySugr to form a leading open platform for digital diabetes management. Hence, the growing mergers and acquisitions, new product launches in the field of test strip has upsurge the growth of the market. Global Test Strip Market Regional Analysis Globally, the North America market dominates the Test Strip market. Factors such as rising incidences of UTIs, diabetes and other chronic diseases such as liver & kidney disease, and ophthalmic disease among others, and the augmenting demand for a faster diagnosis drive the market growth in the region. Simultaneously, well-spread awareness among people towards the advantages of test strips and the presence of the leading global players in the region are some of the key factor substantiating the growth of the regional market. Witnessing a widening uptake across the region, the North America market for Test strip is likely to continue its dominance throughout the assessment period. The Europe market accounts for the second-largest market for Test Strip owing to the proliferation of healthcare sector, the presence of well-established players and growing healthcare expenditures in the region. Certainly, the resurging economy is the main driving force increasing the market value in the region. The Asia Pacific Test Strip market emerging as the fastest growing market accounts for a substantial market share on the global platform. Factors such as the proliferation of healthcare sector in populous countries such as India and China substantiate the market growth in the region. Browse Complete 150 Pages Premium Research Report Enabled with Tables and Figures @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/test-strip-market-672 Major Table of Content Chapter 1. Report Prologue Chapter 2. Market Introduction 2.1 Definition 2.2 Scope of the Study 2.2.1 Research Objective 2.2.2 Assumptions 2.2.3 Limitations Chapter 3. Research Methodology 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Primary Research 3.3 Secondary Research 3.4 Market Size Estimation Chapter 4. Market Dynamics Continued. About Market Research Future: At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services. In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members. Contact: Market Research Future Office No. 528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar, Pune 411028 Maharashtra, India +1 646 845 9312 Email: salesteam@marketresearchfuture.com by Larissa Faw , November 23, 2018 NYC & Company is refreshing the city's tourism digital outreach with initiatives that include artificial intelligence and a new travel booking component. The "Famous Original New York City" campaign, developed in-house, suggests ways travelers can curate their own experiences under the tagline: Welcomes You. Always." A new tool will now allow visitors to the travel website NYCgo.com to immediately book (if theyre spontaneous travelers) or bookmark items for later reference, including attractions, museums, restaurants, shopping, tours and editorial packages, as well as specially-designed themed Secret, Classic and Glamorous itineraries. Users who have favorite items can then build custom profiles, based on personal, saved interests through the AI-informed, travel-planning tool UTrip. A Facebook and Instagram partnership will reach users who have shown intent to travel via Facebooks beta trip consideration platform with targeted content messaging. advertisement advertisement Digital, in-kind and partner media contribute to an approximate campaign value of $15 million, with promotions running globally across 17 countries through summer 2019. The campaigns refreshed website is designed for global use, as the landing page, nycgo.com/famousoriginalnyc. It is accessible in English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. Out-of-home advertisements will appear in New York City, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and San Juan. Internationally, the campaign will appear in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom and first-time markets Colombia, India and Peru. Additional strategic collaborations have been struck with Aeromexico (Mexico), British Airways (UK), Copa Airlines (Chile), Porter Airlines (Canada), TUI (Germany) and TripAdvisor, with further partnerships to follow, says a campaign spokesperson. Last year, New York Citys travel and tourism sector saw a record-breaking year, with 62.8 million visitors, $44 billion in direct visitor spending and $66 billion in total economic impact. The visitor forecast for year-end 2018 is 65.2 million visitors, comprising 51.6 million domestic and 13.5 million international visitors. by Alex Weprin , November 23, 2018 In the fight to secure streaming video subscribers, Hulu may have just made the most aggressive move yet. On Friday, the video service unveiled a special offer for new subscribers, letting them buy into its base ad-supported tier for $0.99 per month for one year. The base tier normally costs $7.99 per month after a short introductory period. After the one year is up, the price will revert to the normal monthly price. The steep discount only available through Monday is part of Hulus efforts to aggressively grow market share and keep pace with Netflix. Netflix has more than 58 million subscribers, while Hulu has more than 20 million subscribers. Hulu has generally been more experimental with its subscription offerings. The companys less expensive ad-supported tier is a point of differentiation from ad-free Netflix. Also, it has partnered with Spotify to launch discounted bundles. advertisement advertisement Verified students can receive a subscription to Hulus ad-supported tier and Spotify Premium for $4.99 per month. For non-students, a bundle was available for $12.99 per month. Still, even that pales in comparison to one year at $0.99 per month. Is this a sign of strength or weakness? Never seen Netflix discount in any form this is like literally giving Hulu away, wrote BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield on Twitter, after seeing the deal. Hulu, like Netflix, is losing money as it chases scale. The hope is that once it is big enough, it can reduce its investments and start monetizing more efficiently. With a combination subscription-ad model, Hulu also has more opportunities to do so. While Netflix also has a large head start, Disney CEO Bob Iger told analysts recently that Hulu will start launching in international markets shortly after Disney assumes operational control of the company next year. Mrs. T is still in the hospital in Connecticut, and Im still visiting her there every day. Some of my visits, however, are easier than others. I got caught in a blizzard driving home from the hospital last week, and even now I get scared thinking about it. Ive never driven through anything like it in my lifeat one point I was sure Id be spending the night in my carand as I inched down the road, I found myself thinking, unlikely as it may sound, of Calvin and Hobbes. Id long since stopped reading the funny pages by 1985, the year in which Bill Watterson launched his now-defunct comic strip, and it wasnt until February of 2016, when I stumbled across a Twitter feed devoted to old strips, that I became a belated fan. It happens that Calvins passion for snow is one of my favorite aspects of Calvin and Hobbes. I felt the same way as a child, perhaps because we didnt get nearly as much snow in Smalltown, U.S.A., as I would have liked. As I explained in this space three years ago: The word snow appears no more than a half-dozen times in the memoir of my childhood and youth that I wrote not long after moving to New YorkIt was in part because of their rareness that I treasured the days when enough snow fell on Smalltown that my brother and I could stay home from school and play in it. My parents, bless them, had the goodness not to tell us that such days were pleasurable only to children. How sad it would have been to know too soon that a time was to come when I would go to considerable trouble to flee them. Now, though, Im a man on the far shores of middle age who is married to a woman with a serious respiratory disease, and I find it hard to think of snow as anything other than a potentially lethal nuisance. I wouldnt trade Mrs. T for all the snowmen in the world, and I miss being a snowbird in south Florida far more than I long for the white Christmases of my youth. Alas, we cant go back to Sanibel Island until she gets a new pair of lungs. Thats why shes in the hospital, doing battle with a stubborn staph infection, and why Im spending two hours each day driving there and back until her doctors decide that shes ready to go home. As pleasant as Mrs. Ts room is, its still a hospital room, and shes still eating hospital food. For this reason, I decided to take matters into my own hands and make sure that she had a proper Thanksgiving dinner. A kind friend told me that Flemings Prime Steakhouse in West Hartford, which is a ten-minute drive from UConn John Dempsey Hospital, was a first-class restaurant that served Thanksgiving dinners, and a phone call established that theyd be glad to pack one up for her. I drove to Flemings yesterday afternoon, collected a big brown paper bag full of carefully packed food, and brought it back to Mrs. T. She cleaned her plate. The TV channels available to Mrs. T in her hospital room are severely limited, enough so that we were forced after dinner to resort to watching The Godfather on AMC in a censored version replete with commercials. But we also listened to two episodes of Theme Time Radio Hour, the delightfully eccentric and eclectic radio show that Bob Dylan hosted on Sirius XM from 2006 to 2009, on my MacBook Air, and considered ourselves well and truly entertained. (If youve never heard Theme Time Radio Hour, this column that I wrote for The Wall Street Journal in 2008 will tell you what youve been missing.) This is no vacation, not for Mrs. T and not for me. Ive already written a couple of columns in her hospital room, and expect to write a couple more there next week. Nor have I stopped going to shows: Ill be driving from UConn to New York tonight to catch a Saturday matinee of Bertolt Brechts The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, then returning to the hospital after the show. Im as eager for Mrs. T to return home as she is, but so long as shes in the hospital, theres nowhere else I want to be. It took us long enough to find one another, and now that were together, our plan is to spend as much time together as we can, even if I have to eat hospital food, watch movies with commercials, and drive through blizzards. As far as Im concerned, when it comes to happiness, it takes two. A brain abscess is a collection of pus that develops in response to an infection or trauma. It remains a serious and potentially life-threatening condition. In the past, a brain abscess was invariably fatal, but researchers writing in 2014 noted that progress in diagnosis and treatment have significantly increased the chances of survival. The effects vary, depending on the size of the abscess and where it forms in the brain. Between 1,500 and 2,500 cases occur each year in the United States. Brain abscesses are most likely to affect adult men aged under 30 years. Among children, they most commonly develop in those aged 47 years. Newborns are also at risk. Vaccination programs have reduced the incidence of brain abscesses in young children. Symptoms The signs and symptoms of a brain abscess are as follows: Share on Pinterest Headache is a common symptom of a brain abscess. a headache (6970 percent of cases) a fever (4553 percent) seizures (2535 percent) nausea and vomiting (40 percent) A seizure may be the first sign of an abscess. Nausea and vomiting tend to occur as pressure builds inside the brain. Pain usually starts on the side of the abscess, and it may begin slowly or suddenly. Changes in mental status occur in 65 percent of cases, and they may lead to: confusion drowsiness and lethargy irritability poor mental focus poor responsiveness slow thought processes coma (possibly) Neurologic difficulties affect 5065 percent of people with brain abscesses. These issues often follow a headache, appearing within days or weeks, and they can include: muscle weakness weakness or paralysis on one side of the body speech problems, such as slurred speech poor coordination Other symptoms may include: a stiff neck, back, or shoulders blurred, double, or graying vision The symptoms of a brain abscess result from a combination of infection, brain tissue damage, and pressure on the brain, as the abscess grows to take up more space. If the headache suddenly becomes worse, it may mean that the abscess has burst. In two-thirds of cases, symptoms are present for as long as 2 weeks. On average, doctors diagnose the issue 8 days after symptoms start. Causes A brain abscess is most likely to result from a bacterial or fungal infection in some part of the brain. Parasites can also cause an abscess. When the bacteria, fungi, or parasites infect part of the brain, inflammation and swelling occur. In these cases, the abscess will consist of infected brain cells, active and dead white blood cells, and the organisms that cause the problem. As the cells accumulate, a wall or membrane develops around the abscess. This helps to isolate the infection and keep it from spreading to healthy tissue. If an abscess swells, it puts increasing pressure on surrounding brain tissue. The skull is not flexible, and it cannot expand. The pressure from the abscess can block blood vessels, preventing oxygen from reaching the brain, and this results in damage or destruction of delicate brain tissue. How infection enters the brain Brain infections are fairly uncommon for several reasons. One reason involves the blood-brain barrier, a protective network of blood vessels and cells. It blocks certain components from the blood that flows to the brain, but it allows others to pass through. Sometimes, an infection can get through the blood-brain barrier. This can happen when inflammation damages the barrier, leading to gaps. The infection enters the brain through three main routes. It may: come through the blood from an infection in another part of the body spread from a nearby site, such as the ear result from a traumatic injury or surgery Infection from another area of the body If an infection occurs somewhere else in the body, the infectious organisms can travel through the bloodstream, bypass the blood-brain barrier, and enter and infect the brain. Between 9 and 43 percent of abscesses result from pathogens that traveled from another part of the body. Many bacterial brain abscesses stem from a lesion somewhere else in the body. It is crucial to find that primary lesion, or there may be a repeat infection in the future. A person with a weakened immune system has a higher risk of developing a brain abscess from a bloodborne infection. A person may have a weakened immune system if they: have HIV have AIDS are infants under the age of 6 months are receiving chemotherapy are using long-term steroid medication have had an organ transplant and take immunosuppressant drugs to prevent organ rejection The most common infections known to cause brain abscesses are: endocarditis, an infection of the heart valve pneumonia, bronchiectasis, and other lung infections and conditions abdominal infections, such as peritonitis, an inflammation of the inner wall of the abdomen and pelvis cystitis, or inflammation of the bladder, and other pelvic infections Direct contagion Share on Pinterest An untreated middle ear infection can lead to a brain abscess. An infection can spread from a nearby area, and this accounts for 1458 percent of brain abscesses. If an infection starts inside the skull, for example in the nose or the ear, it can spread to the brain. Infections that can trigger a brain abscess include: otitis media, or a middle ear infection sinusitis mastoiditis, an infection of the bone behind the ear The location of the abscess may depend on the site and type of the original infection. Direct trauma A brain abscess can result from trauma, such as from neurological surgery or a penetrating brain injury. An abscess can result from: a blow to the head that causes a compound skull fracture, in which fragments of bone are pushed into the brain the presence of a foreign body, such as a bullet, if someone does not remove it a complication of surgery, in rare cases Diagnosis To diagnose a brain abscess, the doctor will evaluate signs and symptoms and look at the patients recent medical and travel histories. They will need to know whether the individual: has had an infection recently has a weakened immune system Symptoms can be similar to those of other illnesses and conditions, so it may take time to confirm a diagnosis. The diagnosis will be more straightforward if the doctor can pinpoint exactly when symptoms started and how they progressed. Tests may include : a blood test to check for high levels of white blood cells, which can indicate an infection imaging scans, such as an MRI or a CT scan, in which an abscess will show up as one or more spots a CT-guided aspiration, a type of needle biopsy, which involves taking a sample of pus for analysis The number of fatalities from brain abscesses has fallen in recent decades, due to the increasingly routine use of CT and MRI scans in detection. Treatment Treatment will generally involve surgery and medication. Share on Pinterest Recent developments in medicine and technology mean that the chance of recovering from a brain abscess is much higher now than in the past. Usually, if a doctor suspects a brain abscess, they will immediately prescribe wide-spectrum antibiotics, because an abscess can be life-threatening. If tests show that an infection is viral rather than bacterial, the doctor will alter the treatment accordingly. The effectiveness of the treatment will depend on: the size of the abscess how many abscesses there are the cause of the abscess the general state of the persons health If the abscess is smaller than 1 inch across, the person will probably only receive intravenous antibiotic, antifungal, or antiviral medication. However, a doctor may need to drain a smaller abscess to determine which antibiotics will be best. If an abscess is bigger than 1 inch across, a doctor will need to aspirate it, drain it, or cut it out. If there are several abscesses, cutting them out may be too risky. The surgeon will recommend aspiration. The person will also need treatment for any primary infection, for example in the lungs, abdomen, or nose. Surgery A person may need surgery if: pressure in the brain continues to build the abscess does not respond to medication there is gas in the abscess there is a risk that the abscess might burst A craniotomy is a procedure in which the surgeon makes an opening in the skull. The steps are as follows: The surgeon will shave a small area of the scalp. They remove a small piece of bone, to gain access to the brain. They can either remove the abscess or drain the pus, possibly with the aid of a CT scan. They replace the bone and stitch the skin. Medication A short course of high-dosage corticosteroids may help if there is increased intracranial pressure and a risk of complications, such as meningitis. However, doctors do not prescribe corticosteroids as a routine measure. A doctor may prescribe anticonvulsants to prevent seizures, and a person who has had a brain abscess may need to take anticonvulsants for up to 5 years. Researchers conclude there is no proof that low-level radiation from medical imaging such as X-ray and computed tomography scans causes cancer. They say it is time to throw out an unproven, decades-old theoretical model that has led many people doctors and regulators included to believe otherwise. Share on Pinterest The researchers say the model that is used to estimate the potential cancer risk of low-level radiation from medical imaging machines such as this CT scanner is wrong and should be abandoned. Writing in the American Journal of Clinical Oncology, the researchers describe how the linear no-threshold model (LNT) first proposed over 70 years ago is used to estimate cancer risks from low-dose radiation, such as medical imaging. But say James Welsh, a radiation oncology professor in the Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University, Chicago, IL, and colleagues risk estimates based on the LNT model are only theoretical, and, as yet, have never been conclusively demonstrated by empirical evidence. They say persistent use of the LNT model by regulators and advisory bodies leads to unfounded fears and money being wasted on unnecessary safety measures. As a result, many doctors are averse to recommending and using the most appropriate imaging procedures for their patients, and many patients are unnecessarily scared to undergo them. Model ignores that human body repairs low-dose radiation damage The LNT model maintains there is no safe dose of radiation no matter how low the dose. It says you can work out the cancer risk of very low-dose radiation exposure by simply continuing in a straight line from the well-established, undisputed effects of high-dose radiation. But such a model ignores the fact that the human body is able to repair damage caused by low-dose radiation something that has evolved over millennia in humans and other organisms that are continually exposed to naturally occurring radiation in the environment. The authors note: We are literally bathed every second of every day in low-dose radiation exposure due to natural background radiation, exposures that vary annually from a few mGy to 260 mGy, depending upon where one lives on the planet. They go on to explain how no associated health effects as a result of being exposed to this background radiation have been documented anywhere in the world. In fact, people in countries like the US are living longer than ever likely because of improvements in medical care that involve exposure to radiation from diagnostic equipment e.g. X-rays or computed tomography (CT) scans at doses well below those of the background radiation. In their paper, the authors describe how they revisited the studies from over 70 years ago that led to widespread use of the LNT model. Tetanus is a rare but potentially dangerous disease that causes stiffening and tightening of the muscles. The tetanus vaccine protects people who may come into contact with the bacteria that cause the disease. As with any vaccine, it can lead to the possibility of some side effects. Tetanus occurs as a result of a bacterial infection. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), tetanus kills one out of every ten people who contract the disease. The bacteria that cause tetanus may be most common in substances such as dust, soil, or manure. They often enter the body through injuries that include scratches or cuts. Side effects Share on Pinterest People who may come into contact with the bacteria that cause tetanus should get a vaccine. Vaccines are a type of medication and, just as with other medicines, there is always the possibility of side effects. With that said, most people who get a tetanus shot will not experience any symptoms. The most common side effects of a tetanus shot include: redness and swelling at injection site body aches fever a headache tiredness or feeling weak Serious side effects are not common but may still occur in certain people. Common side effects Below, we list some of the more frequent side effects people may experience after a tetanus shot: Pain at the injection site The most common side effect is pain at the site of the injection. According to the CDC, this occurs in about eight in every 10 people. This pain is a persons body having a mild reaction to the injection, and it should fade within a few days. Redness or swelling Some people may experience a slightly more intense reaction from the injection, causing their skin around the injection site to become red and swollen. The CDC say that one in four people will experience redness or swelling. Over-the-counter (OTC) medicines for pain, including ibuprofen (Advil) or acetaminophen (Tylenol), may help. Mild fever Although it is rarer than the other common side effects, some people may develop a low-grade fever in response to the tetanus vaccine. The fever should subside without intervention, but, again, OTC medication may help ease symptoms. Headache Some people experience a headache after a tetanus injection. This side effect is usually nothing serious, and OTC drugs may help ease symptoms. Tiredness or fatigue People receiving a tetanus shot may feel tired or have general fatigue afterward. This is typically a response to the vaccination as the body pools its energy to build up its immunity. The CDC estimate that one in four people will experience tiredness. It may be best for a person to let these symptoms run their course, and to get as much rest as possible. Sore joints or chills The Tdap vaccine, which protects against tetanus, diphtheria, and whooping cough, is sometimes given as an alternative to the tetanus and diphtheria vaccine and may also cause a person to experience sore joints or chills over their body. The CDC estimates this may occur in about one in every 10 cases, but the symptoms usually do not interfere with everyday life. OTC medications may help in these cases as well. Moderate side effects Some side effects are classified as moderate, meaning they may interfere with someones daily activities, but they do not need medical intervention. Fever It is possible for people to experience a fever as a reaction to the tetanus vaccine. The CDC consider this a relatively rare occurrence, however. Though the symptom may make someone feel unwell, they do not generally require medical attention. Drinking plenty of fluids and getting rest should help to speed up recovery. Nevertheless, anyone with a fever that lasts more than a couple of days or who has signs of dehydration should seek medical attention. Nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea Share on Pinterest Some forms of the tetanus vaccine can cause nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea. Some forms of the tetanus vaccine, such as the Tdap, may cause gastrointestinal symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea. The CDC estimate that one to three people in 100 will have moderate gastrointestinal symptoms after the Tdap vaccine. The best course of action is to drink plenty of fluids, rest, and eat plain food to avoid aggravating the gastrointestinal system any further. The symptoms will usually subside with time. Rash or swollen glands Occasionally, a person may develop a rash or other skin reaction from the tetanus shot. The glands in their body may swell up as a response to the injection. This side effect is not common and tends to go away on its own. Swelling of the arm Some people may experience more extensive swelling in the arm where they received the injection. The CDC estimate that one in every 500 people may experience swelling of their entire arm after an injection of the Tdap vaccine. However, it describes this as a moderate effect, which does not typically need medical intervention. Serious side effects Below are some more severe side effects that can result from the tetanus shot and may need medical attention. Swelling and severe pain, redness, or bleeding In rare cases, swelling, redness, and severe pain may occur after the injection. The skin may break and bleed as a response to the vaccine. This occurs around the injection site and requires medical attention. Severe allergic reaction There is also a rare possibility of a person having a severe allergic reaction to the vaccine. The CDC estimate that this form of reaction happens in less than one in every 1 million cases. Symptoms of an allergic reaction include: difficulty breathing or swallowing itchy throat, feet, or hands hives swelling in the face, eyes, or airways sudden severe fatigue rapid heartbeat The reaction would start to happen between a few minutes to a few hours after receiving the injection, and it requires immediate medical attention. Does the tetanus vaccine cause autism? The tetanus vaccine does not cause autism. While people express concerns about the potential for serious side effects from vaccines, this worry may come partly from misinformation. As the United States Department of Health and Human Services state, research shows vaccines do not lead to autism. Medical researchers monitor vaccines constantly, and any evidence that linked vaccinations to severe disabilities or other health problems would lead to medical authorities taking swift safety measures. Types of tetanus shot available There are several different types of tetanus shots available. Producers often package the tetanus shot with other similar vaccines, so that it works to prevent more than one type of disease. These vaccines may be as follows: Tdap: The Tdap vaccine prevents tetanus, while also working to prevent diphtheria and pertussis, or whooping cough. DTaP: The DTaP vaccine is the form doctors often use for very young children. It prevents tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis. Td or DT: The Td and DT shots prevent tetanus and diphtheria, and doctors use these as tetanus booster shots. A period of 10 years is the longest a person should go without a tetanus booster. Who should avoid tetanus shots? Share on Pinterest Anyone who has had severe pain after a previous tetanus vaccine should discuss their options with a doctor. Some people should avoid the tetanus shot. Anyone who has ever had a severe allergic reaction to tetanus vaccines in the past should avoid having the tetanus shot again. Most people get a tetanus shot as a child, and so it is helpful if people are aware of any reactions they had when they were young. Anyone with experiences of serious complications from a childhood dose of the tetanus shot, such as seizures or a coma, should avoid the tetanus shot in the future. People with certain conditions may also want to be wary when looking to get a tetanus shot and should talk to their doctor to discuss their options. People should be cautious if they have ever had: severe pain or swelling from a tetanus vaccine seizures nervous system conditions Guillain Barre syndrome where the immune system attacks nerve cells Some tetanus vaccines may pose a risk to the health of people with any of these concerns. Doctors can advise them on how they should take care to avoid the diseases a vaccine would protect against. People should always discuss any health concerns or conditions they have with a doctor before having any vaccine. Before we delve into this, first, I need to get something out of the way. NAAAAAAAAAAAAAINSGONYAMABAGITHIBABA. Okay. I had to do that. Anyone who has watched the nineties classic 'The Lion King' knows that this powerful opening Zulu chant, with the rising sun in the backdrop, calling out to all the animals in Pride Lands, is nothing short of perfection. I still get goosebumps. At one point, it even was my alarm back in college! I still remember the first time I saw the movie. I was 6 and I had gone to spend the holidays at my aunt's place in Bangalore. I was particularly out of control that day and my aunt, who was on the verge on losing her mind, plonked me down in front of the TV and popped a videotape into the VCR, asking me to quietly watch the 'cartoon'. The 'word' cartoon was enough for me to shut up and fix my complete attention on the giant Onida TV. I will never forget how my heart started beating faster when the Zulu chant began and I saw all the animals wake from their slumber and make their way to Pride Rock to meet their future king. I was only 6 and this was my first Disney movie, so obviously I was not ready for the avalanche of emotions that this movie engulfed me in. I still remember how Mufasa's death destroyed me and how the tears wouldn't stop, as I watched little Simba desperately try to wake his dad up by tugging his ear okay, I need a momentsorryI can't. If you are with me so far, you know how much this movie means to us nineties kids. It opened us up to the world of Disney and introduced us to the magic of animation. When I was a child, I wouldn't eat unless my parents played Lion King. Seeing the new trailer filled me with childhood nostalgia, said my 25-year-old junior from college, Jacinth Miriyam. Which is why it goes without saying that the people most excited for the live-action remake of the classic movies, even more so than kids, are adults, and here's why: 1. A Throwback To Our Golden Childhood So, when the trailer dropped today and I heard James Earl Jones' magnificent, sonorous Mufasa voice saying Everything the light touches, is our kingdomit was like someone had pressed a button in my brain and I was 6 all over again. This movie signifies a time gone by, a time of innocence, a time when childhood meant watching animated movies with our mouths hanging open, marvelling at a whole another world. For me, The Lion King instantly represents my childhood. It was my favourite movie ever at that time. It made me laugh, cry and feel anger at the same time. I think this movie teaches resilience in all of its purity, and that's what makes it immortal and so loved, my friend Chiara Lana from Italy told me when I asked her what she felt about watching it again. 2. Watching It On The Big Screen After Almost 20 Years I am not among the lucky ones who got to see this movie on the big screen (my first movie in a theatre was 'Hum Aapke Hain Koun'!). So, watching it in a live-action format on a giant screen will not only make this special, but in a way, I will be able to make up to my little self who missed this marvel on a big screen. Watching movies in halls was still a novel concept back in the day, at least for my family. So now that I get to see it again, even though in a different format, somehow I feel like I have honoured my childhood by catching up on what I missed out all those years ago.- James Matthew, my 28-year-old buddy from school. 3. A Need To Remember All The Emotions We Felt When We Saw It The First Time I was only 6, so obviously I was not prepared for so many things. The hurt I felt at Scar's betrayal, the devastation at Mufasa's death, the joy at Simba re-uniting with Nala and his mother, the horror at watching Simba and Scar fight, and the exhilaration at Simba finally climbing up Pride Rock to take his placeit was a roller-coaster that a tiny little me did not see coming. I will never forget how I ran up to my aunt after the movie ended and demanded some serious answers from her, especially as to how could a lion kill his own brother? I will never forget her face when I asked her Will you do this to me too, auntie? My 29-year-old friend from college, Shruti Menon, echoed the same sentiments, Mufasa's death was so unpredictable and heartbreaking especially when you're watching as a kid. It really shook me as a child and still does, to be honest. But when you grow older, you do realise there's so much strength and beauty to the story, to remember who you are and where you come from. After all, it's the circle of life. 4. The Beautiful Soundtrack I am pretty sure this is going to be a sing-a-long movie, as 90 per cent of the people in the hall will be comprised of adults, who already know all the songs from the movie by-heart! I'll be lying if I tell you that I'm not going to brush up on my lyrics before I catch the movie. Oh, I just can't wait to be kiiiiiiiiiiiiing. 5. Timon And Pumba They were, still are, and always will be my favourite set of friends/sidekicks in a Disney movie (Mushu from 'Mulan' coming in second). I mean, come on! They are basically the life of the movie and I have never seen anything like them till date in a film. From finding a half-dead Simba as a cub, to raising him and teaching him to find the joys of life, to ultimately watching him transform from their goofy friend to the mighty King of the Jungle, Timon and Pumba are the epitome of true friendship and by God, I wanted a pet pig after watching the movie back then. The new trailer that was dropped today has left nineties kid across the planet screaming. Baby Simba looks so freaking cute! It is so satisfying in every way and each and every CGI animal looks like perfection. Honestly, even if this movie had dropped when I was like 50 or something, my excitement levels would still have been the same. This movie is a representation of my glorious childhood, which I am proud to say that kids these days will never, ever get to experience, no matter how much they try. It goes without saying that 'The Lion King' is going to be a success as there is no chance of failure anywhere. The cast itself is nothing short of iconic and has my Goddess BEYONCE in it as Nala! So, all I can do now is mentally prepare myself for next year, so that I still have my sanity intact by the end of the movie, and am not left a crying, quivering, destroyed mess of a woman! UPPER THUMB Greenleaf Township officials are being sued for allegedly violating Michigan laws that require public bodies conduct business in the open during a meeting. Sanilac County resident Grant Toner initiated a lawsuit charging township Clerk Judy Keller and the township with seven alleged violations regarding the Open Meetings Act and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that reportedly happened at the July 19 meeting. Toner hired Hemlock-based attorney Philip Ellison to file a civil lawsuit in Sanilac County Circuit Court. The lawsuit is against Keller as the township clerk and her personally, and against the township itself. The suit claims the way business was conducted violated the Michigan's Open Meetings Act and FOIA. One of the problems we are running into is trying to investigate how this township operates. There are numerous examples of the township operating inconsistent with their legal obligations under Michigan law, said Ellison. I expect this to be just the opening lawsuit in possibly several more. Toners suit was filed Oct. 12. It was just served. Mrs. Keller was dodging the process server, Ellison contends. She was served on Nov. 11. According to Keller, she just recently received the notice of the lawsuit and has not had time to review it to comment. Supervisor Robert Delong also said he has not reviewed the lawsuit. I missed the last meeting, he said. And, because of that, I cannot comment at this time on it. If I said anything, it would be misinformation because I dont know what the suit says. Toner is accusing the township of going into a closed session to discuss a legal issue that should have been discussed in a public meeting. And, if it was indeed a legitimate reason for a closed session, the closure should have been done with a roll-call vote rather than just a voice vote. The suit is seeking various remedies for the violations of the Open Meetings Act and the Freedom of Information Act. Mostly from July 19 to current, Ellison said. The counts include six violations of Michigan's Open Meetings Act and one FOIA violation. My office is continuing to investigate the townships practices, and the township has a lot of problems operating properly and transparently as required by Michigan Law, Ellison asserted. A court date has not been set yet for the civil suit in Sanilac County. Then, the court generally sets an initial conference between the attorneys. I have not been contacted by the townships attorney or know who it will be at this point, noted Ellison. The issue is the way that the board went about hiring the attorney for the federal lawsuit. It went against the Open Meetings Act. They conducted deliberations on the attorney they hired in closed session, which is a violation of the Open Meetings Act, he explained. Toners suit challenges the necessity of the closed meeting to discuss hiring new counsel related to a federal court case. His lawsuit contents that is not a permissible basis under the Open Meetings Act. Toner filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the information discussed in the closed session that he contends was illegal and therefore the information is public. At the core of this behind the legal aspects the township has been acting in secrecy and behind closed doors on a number of legal and political issues that require to be dealt with publicly, Ellison said. They have not been conducting their business publicly so the citizens know what is going on; and not just with the lawsuit, but everyday business. Many decisions are being made without the public knowing. According to the lawsuit, on Aug. 15, attorneys Lawrence Opalewski and Daniel P. Dalton filed to appear on behalf of defendants, and others in the federal lawsuit, but a search of over two years of township meetings minutes showed no public deliberation or decision to hire them for that. This is not the only legal entanglement the township is facing. There is also a federal lawsuit pending in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan Southern Division. The federal civil lawsuit deals with township officials allegedly assaulting another person. The plaintiffs in that care are Shelly Cook and Christina Gibbard and the defendants are Keller, Randell Schuette, and Rosie Quinn. They are each charged as an official and as an individual. Editors note: This feature story is one of many that will run this week in anticipation of Small Business Saturday. UPPER THUMB Because small businesses are the backbone of the economy, they are being recognized this week ahead of Small Business Saturday. Small Business Saturday is celebrated the Saturday that is after Thanksgiving. It is the trifecta of three shopping days Thanksgiving, after Black Friday and before Cyber Monday. The event is designed to encourage people to patronize small, brick and mortar businesses by shopping local and buying local. There are several small businesses scattered throughout the Thumb area. Jenness Farms, at 5901 Ritter Road, Cass City, is one of them. Joe Jenness and his family operate a pure maple syrup and raw apple cider vinegar on a 20-acre farm. Making apple cider vinegar is a tradition that has been handed down in the family. I learned how to do that from my grandfather. Ive been making vinegar for about 40 years from what he taught me, said Jenness, who explained he started out making vinegar on the family farm in Illinois for family and friends. He moved to the Thumb about four years ago when he had the opportunity to buy a maple syrup business. However, the farm doesnt have an orchard, so he buys his apples from the Amish in the area. I was interested in having a maple syrup business for a long time, and an opportunity opened here to do that, he said. His syrup is 100 percent maple syrup without additives. Some commercial maple syrups actually uses corn syrup with artificial flavoring and coloring. Maple sap is collected from the trees. The sap from the woods is moved to the sugar shack for processing. At the shack, the sap is boiled for hours using wood fire for heat to evaporate the water that is in it. As the water evaporates, the sap thickens and the sugar caramelizes. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup, he said. Jenness Farms is in the process of building a new syrup shack where the newest and most efficient equipment will be used next season to make the highest quality syrup. And, they also make raw, undiluted, fermented apple cider vinegar. There are a lot of health benefits from using 100 percent maple syrup and from apple cider vinegar. They are each a good source of nutrients and vitamins. Also, Jenness provides the maple syrup that is used for the pancake breakfast during the Family Days at the Thumb Octagon Barn. He also sells his syrup and cider at farmers markets in the Thumb, and on the internet. For more information, call 989-872-2002 or visit www.jennessfarms.com. YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan -- USS Antietam sailors' advancement exams that had gone missing while en route to a Florida grading center were found Friday in western Tokyo, the Navy said. Navy Fleet Mail Center Yokohama sent sailors to Yokota Air Base on Friday morning to search for the missing packages of completed exams, Capt. George Kessler, the guided-missile cruiser's commander, said in a statement. Kessler first told sailors Wednesday the exams had gone missing in the mail on the way to Naval Education Training Professional Development Center in Florida for processing. They had been received at the Camp Walker Post Office in South Korea and on Thursday were tracked on a flight from Osan Air Base to Yokota. That's where sailors ultimately found the packages Friday. They were then given to the Fleet Mail Center's mail clerks to be sent by express mail to Florida on Saturday, Kessler said in the statement. The shipment is expected to arrive at the grading center on Wednesday, but Kessler told sailors he would "get the tracking information to verify that once it departs Yokohama." "Moving forward, we will work with NETPDC to determine the timeline for grading and publishing the results of your Fall Advancement Exams," he told sailors in the statement. The Navy advancement exam is made up of 175 questions --150 of which relate to the exam-taker's rating and another 25 regarding professional military knowledge. If the tests had not been found, sailors would have had to take another advancement exam in the spring, Kessler said in a post on the Antietam's official Facebook page. Kessler said in his Friday statement that his command would "continue to update [Antietam sailors] on the way forward as exams arrive in Florida." The Marine Corps Rapid Capabilities Office (MCRCO) wants the defense industry's help to develop biometric sensor technology to monitor the mental and physical health of Marines on the battlefield. The request for information (RFI) is one of four focus areas the office has identified for fiscal 2020, according to an Oct. 31 solicitation posted on the federal contracting website FedBizOps. The MCRCO "is seeking industry input to identify potential sources for a Biometric Sensor capable of aiding in warfighting functions through physiological metrics such as mental and physical fatigue, hydration levels, heart rate, temperature, nutrition level, impact forces, etc.," the solicitation states. The Marine Corps has used biometric sensors to collect data from persons of interest, including fingerprints, iris and facial images. Late last year, the Corps completed fielding a handheld biometric sensor to help deployed Marines track the movement of suspicious individuals they encounter on the battlefield, according to a December 2017 Marine Corps press release. For the new biometrics focus area, the MCRCO plans to conduct a limited Rapid Capability Assessment using sensor prototypes to inform concepts of employment and capability requirements, according to the solicitation. The sensor prototypes should be: able to be worn with or integrated into individual equipment loads. able to accept/integrate with government-owned command-and-control systems and architectures and be managed from a common tablet. capable of collecting and exporting real-time or near real-time data. Interested companies have until Nov. 26 to respond to the RFI. The MCRCO has also identified focus areas to develop capabilities in power foraging, enhancing personal equipment and power management. As with the biometric sensor focus area, the MCRCO plans to conduct limited assessments of prototypes to guide how the technology could be used in the future, as well as inform future requirements, the solicitation states. -- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com. China's Sub Force Is Growing More Powerful. This Is What the US Navy Needs to Do to Stay Ahead Key Select Mineral List Type Standard Detailed Gallery Strunz Dana Chemical Elements Gallery: References Sort by Year (asc) Year (desc) Author (A-Z) Author (Z-A) Bradbury & Guild (Publisher) (1851), Hudson River and the Hudson River Railroad Bristow, W.H. (1861), Glossary of Mineralogy, London, 420 pg. Kunz (1892), Gems & Precious Stones of North America: 133. Valiant, W.S. (1900), The Lewis C. Beck Mineral Collection, The Mineral Collector, Vol. 7, no. 3, pg 37-40. Manchester, J.G. (1931), The Minerals of New York City & Its Environs, New York Mineralogical Club Bulletin: 3(1): 69. Nightengale, S.L. and Wilson, W.E. (2016), The Tilly Foster iron mine, Southeast Township, Putnam County, New York, The Mineralogical Record: 47(6): 671-730. Localities in this Region Cold Spring is located about 2 3/4 miles south of the northern edge of the Hudson Highlands, a sub-region of the Reading Prong. The Reading Prong is an elongate area, stretching from western-most Connecticut to near Reading, Pennsylvania, underlain by mid Proterozoic igneous rocks and granulite facies gneisses along with minor post orogenic granites and pegmatites.The rocks of the Reading Prong were folded and subjected to both ductile and brittle fracturing during the Paleozoic. One prominent feature are the complex imbricate thrust faulting which in some areas placed Proterozoic metamorphic rocks on Paleozoic sediments. In the Cold Spring area such a shuffling of the deck did not occur.A great deal of geologic work has been done in the Reading Prong, most of it west of the Hudson River, especially in New Jersey. There is surprisingly little modern geologic work published for the Cold Spring, NY area, the West Point 7.5' quadrangle, or for the eastern Hudson Highlands generally. A look at the references in an extensive and recently published paper on the Tilly Foster Iron Mine (Nightingale and Wilson, 2016), located about 20 miles east of Cold Spring, is instructive on this point.By far the most interesting mineral species reported from the Cold Spring area is an axinite-group species. It appears that axinite was found in the Cold Spring area only once and, although a few specimens are preserved in museum collections, the circumstances of its discovery are largely unknown. The locality was mentioned in mineralogy books at least as early as 1861 (Bristow, 1861). Valiant (1900), gives an extensive discussion of the collection, at Rutgers University, of Lewis Beck. Beck had written a treatise on the mineralogy of New York in 1842 with no mention of axinite. However, Valiant (1900)notes that his collection included 2 specimens of axinite from Cold Spring, apparently obtained before his death in 1853. It is interesting to note that in the interim the Hudson River Railroad was built through the area in the late 1840's. A travelogue published in 1851, notes that "The (rail)road passes directly through the village of Cold Spring, where two formidable rock cuts were encountered."A specimen of axinite from Cold Spring, in the NY State Museum, does not include any of the country rock but does contain some tourmaline and actinolite. Two other small specimens in the collection of the Peabody Museum at Yale are accompanied by records indicating that they were sent to Prof. George Brush by Silas R. Horton. Horton lived near Goshen, NY, about 25 miles west of Cold Spring. He was a very active field collector for many years, focused on Orange County, NY, his home area. Horton supplied many specimens of various minerals to Brush over many years in the mid 19th century and also to others including Beck. It is not known if Horton was the original collector but he's certainly a prime candidate.The northwestern margin of the Reading Prong highlands is the site of eight documented alpine cleft type mineral occurrences that contain axinite-group minerals. This grouping does not include the axinite-Mn found in the Franklin, NJ zinc orebody. Nor does it include the axinite-Fe at the Tilly Foster iron mine near Brewster, NY whose age and mode of occurrence have not been investigated in any detail. All the better documented axinite localities along the northwest margin of the Reading Prong highlands are found in a narrow, well defined set of circumstances. All are alpine cleft type veins in calcium rich gneiss (amphibolite, skarn) or in pegmatite closely associated with marble. The axinite-group mineral bearing veins are situated near, but not within, major faults and are in close proximity to Paleozoic rocks. In the Cold Spring area calcium-rich lithologies appear to underlie significant areas. The mineral assemblages given in Mindat for all three sub localities listed under Cold Spring suggest a calcic environment. The metamorphic rocks of the area are cut by a number of larger faults and minor brittle fracturing is common in some intervening areas. The occurrence of epidote, a mineral commonly associated with axinite at other localities in the region, at the Mount Taurus Quarry is given, in Mindat, as druses of microcrystals in calcite-filled vugs. This is very reminiscent of axinite-bearing veins elsewhere in the region. Similar vuggy, epidote-bearing veins are not rare in parts of the Cold Spring area (Hershel Friedman, personal communication, 2017). Proximity to Paleozoic sedimentary rocks at the time of mineralization is unknown but separation was probably not that great.The criteria that indicate favorable conditions for the occurrence of axinite in alpine cleft type veins are all present in parts of the Cold Spring, NY area. The axinite found near Cold Spring in the mid nineteenth century likely represents the 9th such occurrence in the region. That it is represented by a single find is typical since most of the occurrences in the region are very small. The Padres have released infielder Cory Spangenberg on the heels of this weeks DFA, as first reflected on the MLB.com transactions list. Hes now a free agent and is eligible to sign with any team. The 27-year-old former first-round pick (No. 10 overall, 2011) debuted with the Friars back in 2014 and has spent parts of the past five seasons in the San Diego infield mix. However, after a mostly promising start to his career .274/.330/.408, 107 OPS+ in 410 plate appearances from 2014-15 Spangenbergs bat has fallen off. Hes batted .251/.312/.384 (88 OPS+) through 868 big league PAs from 2016-18. The 2018 season, in particular, was tough on Spangenberg, as his OBP dipped below .300 and his strikeout rate soared to 32.8 percent. Spangenberg has more than 1000 innings of MLB experience at both second base and third base, though he hasnt graded out as a plus defender at either. Both Defensive Runs Saved and Ultimate Zone Rating peg him as roughly a scratch defender at second but a below-average third baseman. The left-handed-hitting Spangenberg has been a solid bat against right-handed pitching throughout his career (.271/.331/.423), and paired with his respectable glovework at second base, he could at the very least function as a useful platoon piece in that role. Spangenberg wont turn 28 until next March, though, so its certainly not out of the question that a change of scenery could help him tap into the potential he demonstrated earlier in his career. Any team that signs Spangenberg could control him through the 2020 season if hes able to bounce back next year, as hed remain arbitration-eligible next winter. DETROIT -- Don Carey was re-signed by the Lions on Tuesday. He led the team out of tunnel on Thursday, then played the second-most special teams snaps. And then he was cut on Friday. Detroit announced it has been awarded defensive back Marcus Cooper off waivers from the Bears, and parted with Carey in the corresponding move. Cooper, a seventh-round pick of the 49ers in 2013, wound up carving out a role for himself with the Chiefs. He played in 29 games his first two seasons in the league, and started 10. His best season came with Arizona in 2016, when he finished with 69 tackles, 11 passes defended and four interceptions. He started 13 games that year. But he started just four games for the Bears last year, then played in two games this year before getting cut this week. The 6-foot-2, 197-pounder could provide some depth in the back end of a secondary that has reeled from the loss of Jamal Agnew to injury, as well as the fall of Teez Tabor. As for Carey, he played 18 special teams snaps in his return to the Lions on Thanksgiving. He didn't have a tackle -- the first time in his career that happened against Chicago -- but did down Sam Martin's first punt in the 23-16 loss. ANN ARBOR, MI - Mark Kassa has been coming to Ann Arbor to buy records for decades. It started in the 1980s, when his friends attended the University of Michigan, and the guitarist in Detroit rock band Slight Return still makes the drive from West Bloomfield for his vinyl runs. He picked up Jimi Hendrix's "Hear My Music" Tuesday, Nov. 20 at Underground Sounds on East Liberty Street, a place he frequents for its selection of new albums. "Plus (owner Matt Bradish) knows his customers, which is more important than anything," Kassa said. "I want to walk in and support an independent business. I want to see brick-and-mortar survive." Local retailers tout personal connection with customers as their edge over online shopping and big box stores. But as downtown Ann Arbor store owners head into the busiest stretch of the retail season, some are wondering if those personal connections are strong enough to keep their sales rising with their rent. People's Food Co-op in Kerrytown is considering relocating after seeing a drop in customers since 2016. Low sales contributed to Common Language Bookstore on Braun Court and Aunt Agatha's bookstore on South Fourth Avenue is closing this year. The Bead Gallery and Adorn Me abandoned their brick-and-mortar store on East Liberty Street after 32 years in business in June, and PJ's Used Records lost its lease on Packard Street - just outside the downtown district - in July after 36 years there. More people live downtown now, but the increase in potential shoppers hasn't been enough to offset the growing preference for online shopping, said Frances Todoro-Hargreaves, executive director of Ann Arbor's State Street District association "Had we not put all those new people downtown, I think it would be even worse," she said. More downtown residents, fewer customers Downtown Ann Arbor's population has grown much faster than the city as a whole, and the 7,670 people living downtown tend to be younger and richer than the average Ann Arborite. The 271-acre downtown district has seen an 11-percent increase in residents since 2010, compared to the city's 1-percent growth, according to the Downtown Development Authority's 2017-18 count. Since 2000, the downtown population has grown by 174 percent, compared to an 8-percent increase in the city's population overall, according to the DDA. This graphic from the Downtown Development Authority shows the demographics of downtown residents in 2017-18 compared to the city as a whole. (Courtesy of DDA) Even as more people have moved downtown, the retail sector has remained largely the same size, accounting for 12.2 percent of downtown commercial spaces in 2017-18 and 13.2 percent five years ago - the earliest that information is available from the DDA. Some downtown retailers are trying to grow their online presence, offer expedited shipping, promote their products on social media and hold special shopping events to counteract declining foot traffic. So far this year, foot traffic for Ten Thousand Villages on South Main Street is down 15 percent compared to last year, which manager Cathy Marks attributes to ongoing construction on Main Street and the loss of longtime downtown retailers. "We hear from shoppers -- although our store has a pretty loyal following -- that the Main Street area is not the shopping destination it used to be," Marks said. Mix boutique relies on University of Michigan events for most of its foot traffic, said co-owner Theresa Salah. The store hasn't seen an increase in shoppers in its five years in Nickels Arcade that correlates with the growing number of downtown residents. "Being a local business owner is very challenging," Salah said. "There's no predicting (sales)." On Tuesday, Salah chatted with Ann Arbor native and downtown resident Stan Baker about the falcon feathers on his homemade hat as he browsed the racks. Baker, who shops at Mix at least every other month to pick out items for his girlfriend, is no stranger to downtown Ann Arbor's competitive retail scene. He was one of 21 artists who owned the cooperative Clay Gallery that closed its doors on South Main Street in 2014 after 30 years in business and became an online-only store. Pangborn Collection opened in the former Clay Gallery space in 2014, and the store closed in April. The storefront at 335 S. Main St. is now available to lease for $42.75 per square foot per year. Average downtown retail rent is $35.90 per square foot, up from $34.70 in 2016, according to the DDA. "It just cracks me up that people complain about these places closing, but they only go in them once a year," Baker said. "If you want downtown to thrive, you have to come down and buy things and not just at Christmas." People's Food Co-op on North Fourth Avenue is re-evaluating its offerings in an effort to bring in more shoppers. With grocery store chains offering more organic food, the co-op has shifted its inventory to include more meat, prepared foods and alcohol - which are popular with customers - and it plans to add a custom sandwich counter in the cafe in 2019. "We're looking for every corner and every opportunity to provide more service and to move the dial all the way to profitability," said General Manager Angie Voiles at the co-op's Nov. 13 member-owner meeting. Brick-and-mortar vs. online shopping Amazon looms large in the minds of local retailers. Bradish said he understands that online shopping can be more convenient for the holidays, but he's tired of people using Underground Sounds as a "showroom," where they browse and then tell him they'll order the album on Amazon. "It's kind of like spitting on the floor in someone's house," he said. "It's extremely rude." Bradish is grateful to his loyal customers, but he saw a dip in sales at the end of 2016 - a drop he attributed to locals being depressed after the election more than an indicator of persistently lower year-end sales. Vicki Honeyman, owner of Heavenly Metal in Kerrytown, asks customers to tag her gift shop on social media when they opt to share a photo of something rather than buy it. Honeyman has been a small business owner in Ann Arbor for 33 years, and she opened Heavenly Metal on North Fourth Avenue in 2016. She sees shopping local as a chance to support business owners who are passionate about Ann Arbor and love what they do. "Online shopping has definitely changed the way people view the shopping experience," she said. "We want to remind people that we actually offer a very unique experience." FLINT, MI -- City council has postponed discussions and a vote to award an additional $1.1 million to AECOM's service line management contract. The decision to postpone the resolution to add $1.1 million to AECOM's $5 million contract was made at a Tuesday city council finance committee meeting. Several council members raised concerns about AECOM's lack of communication and that the engineering firm didn't meet the obligations of its contract. "Here's my problem with this, our contracting with them was to do 6,000 service line replacements, not to dig 8,000 holes, and basically they want to get paid for digging 8,000 holes," 4th Ward Councilwoman Kate Fields said. AECOM began managing the city's FAST Start service line replacement program in December 2017. The additional money is for managing the additional exploratory water line replacements that are being done, according to a resolution by city administrator Steve Branch. AECOM oversaw 2,846 homes excavated in addition to the 6,000 digs required of its contract. The city reached 6,000 digs in September, First Ward Councilman Eric Mays said. Director of public works for the city, Rob Bincsik, said city officials didn't think it would look good to stop work in September to negotiate a change in the contract. Rather, Bincsik said he and the chief financial officer for the city, Hughey Newsome, negotiated the change work with AECOM as they explored 2,846 more homes without consulting city council. There was one representative from AECOM at the meeting -- Ron Simon who works for the company's Southfield office. Simon was unable to answer any of council's questions in regard to Phase 5 of its service line replacements. Fields and 7th Ward Councilwoman Monica Galloway were frustrated with AECOM's lack in communication during Phase 5 of replacements. AECOM's former manager Alan Wong no longer works for the engineering firm and Fields raised questions about the assistant manager, Ed Tharp. Simon couldn't name the point person for the company. A spokesperson for AECOM, Michael Chee, told the Flint Journal, MLive Tharp is still overseeing the FAST Start Program for Flint. "We're not able to communicate with you guys," Galloway said. "The display you rolled out to this community in the beginning was grand, you did a great job with all the PR, but the followup you promised to this community, that was not done." Galloway said if her constituents from the 5th Ward were to give AECOM a report card, they would have graded them low. Fields also raised concern about the methodology AECOM is using to find lead service lines, mentioning the ongoing exchange of letters between the state and city over reimbursements of a $97 million settlement. In 2017, the city was given $97 million in a settlement after social groups like the Concerned Pastors for Social Change and the Natural Resources Defense Council demanded enough funding to replace the estimated 18,000 hazardous lead and galvanized steel pipes in Flint. On Nov. 1, the state sent the city a letter stating it would no longer reimburse the city for its service line replacements unless what they claim are violations to the settlement are resolved. Fields stated council needs to take a larger role in ensuring AECOM is using the best practices for find and removing lead service lines. "Council needs to give AECOM specific directions about its methodology, such as using the U of M predictability model to prioritize where lead lines are most likely to be rather than where copper lines are more likely to be," Fields said. AECOM's current method has a 21 percent success rate for finding lead, which contrasts with last year's success rate of 80 percent. Last year, FAST Start was able to replace about 6,200 hazardous water pipes and check over 8,000 homes. This was done by utilizing a computer model built by researchers to plan which homes had a higher risk of having lead pipes and should be checked first. The predictive model was built pro-bono by researchers Eric Schwartz from the University of Michigan and Jacob Abernethy from Georgia Tech after learning Flint was having trouble finding lead lines in 2016. AECOM isn't using the computer model to find these lead or steel pipes because the model has a 94 percent success rate, Wong previously said. They want a 100 percent success rate. City council will decide on moving the additional $1.1 million to AECOM's contract in a vote at a Monday, Nov. 26 special affairs committee taking place at 4:30 p.m. at City Hall. If council decides move to the resolution forward, they will vote on it at 5:30 p.m. following the special affairs committee meeting. LAKE MICHIGAN - The U.S. Supreme Court says it will wait until Jan. 11 to decide if it will hear the case of an Indiana couple who own waterfront property on Lake Michigan and believe their rights extend to the water's edge, which would effectively ban beach walkers. It means a possible revival of a closely-watched case that could have ramifications for all Lake Michigan property owners and beach goers - and extend to those groups across all the Great Lakes. An interesting quirk in the case? The couple pushing the case are from Long Beach, Ind., the hometown of Chief Justice John Roberts. It was the justice's childhood hometown in the 1960s until he left for Harvard in 1973, the Associated Press reported. The U.S. Supreme Court has given the Indiana Attorney General's office a couple extra months to craft a response to Don and Bobbie Gunderson's request that the highest court in the land review their Lake Michigan waterfront rights case. They are trying to appeal the Indiana Supreme Court's unanimous decision in February that Lake Michigan's shoreline is open to all. That 4-0 ruling was considered a big win for beach walkers, and a slap to the beachfront home owners who had wanted the law to grant them exclusive use of the beach area from their home to the water The Indiana court's decision set the ordinary high water mark as the dividing line between the state-owned land under the lake, and what private property owners can claim. What's the high water mark? It's the line on the shore created by the water's fluctuating levels. In Michigan, this issue was decided in 2005 in favor of beach walkers. The Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the public has a right to walk along the lakeshore, as long as they stay below the lake's high-water mark. The Indiana case started when the Gundersons claimed their lakefront property rights extended to the very edge of the water, and that no one could walk on the beach near their home without permission. After the Indiana Supreme Court ruled in the public's favor, the couple now wants the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn that, and set the water's edge as the property boundary for waterfront land on all five Great Lakes, according to The Northwest Indiana Times. This type of ruling would mean there is no requirement to provide public access to beach walkers. The couple claims the Indiana court's recent ruling - and the Michigan Supreme Court ruling in 2005 - goes against a longtime understanding in Great Lakes states that waterfront land ownership extends to the water's edge, the Times reported. What do you think? Should the public have the right to walk along the beach near the water's edge? Take our poll and let us know. JACKSON, MI - A woman who was not allowed to claim her role in a murder nine years ago in Jackson County was involuntary as a defense will soon have her argument decided by the highest court in the state. The Michigan Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case against Tiffany Lynn Reichard, 27, who is charged with one count of open murder for the violent death of Matthew Cramton, 56, who was found stabbed to death in his home Jan. 29, 2009. The court issued an order, Nov. 21, stating it will hear arguments and decide if she will be allowed to argue her actions participating in Cramton's death were made under duress as a defense at trial. Her then co-defendant, Michael Beatty, confessed he killed Cramton, stabbing him 91 times during a botched robbery. He was sentenced to life without parole Sept. 19, 2017. Reichard, who was in a relationship with Beatty, is accused of aiding in the attempted robbery and helping Beatty destroy evidence of the murder, prosecutors said. Reichard's attorney Andrew Kirkpatrick has argued responsibility for the murder rests on Beatty and that Reichard's actions alongside Beatty were made under duress. Circuit Judge Thomas Wilson previously granted Kirkpatrick's request to argue during trial that Reichard was under duress when the murder took place. Prosecutors appealed the ruling and the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed the Circuit Court decision. "What is lost in this case is that the real issue is not whether defendant was acting under duress, but whether she actually aided and abetted a criminal homicide," the Michigan Court of Appeals wrote in its decision April 17. The Jackson County Prosecutors Office must file its argument with the Michigan Supreme Court defending the appellate court decision by Jan. 2. The case is expected to be heard sometime in early to mid-2019. Reichard was 17 at the time of and there is no indication she participated in the stabbing itself, records show. Prior to her arrest in August 2016, Reichard told police she picked Beatty up from Cramton's home and he was covered in blood, records show. She later changed her story, admitting she helped plan to rob Cramton, believing he had money and drugs. She told investigators she parked near Cramton's home and, with the intent to rob, she was to knock on the door to get Cramton to open it so Beatty could rush in wearing a mask, demand money and drugs while she was to be a look out, court records show. Reichard then told police after the murder she poured perfume on Beatty's clothes and burned them in a grill, records show. Cramton was known as an empathetic, light-hearted soul who would sell goofy hats and painted balloons at the Jackson County Fair every year, said Martin Wolkens, a friend of Cramton who found him stabbed to death. Cramton was unmarried and lived alone in the small two-story house he was killed in, police said. An open murder charge allows a jury to decide between a first-degree or second-degree murder conviction. If convicted of first-degree murder, Reichard will serve a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole. Second-degree murder is punishable by up to life with parole being possible. Reichard is currently lodged in the Jackson County Jail with bond set at $100,000. We pit the latest Japanese ADV against the modern Italian alien! The 2019 Kawasaki Versys 1000 comes with a host of both design and mechanical changes to give the venerable soft roader a much-needed makeover. While Kawasaki has used their Ninja-H2-ZX-10R-inspired design genes here as well, we arent exactly fans of how it looks on an ADV. Design is subjective, nonetheless. The motorcycle now gets an all-LED lighting system and a redesigned front fairing. It now looks similar to the Ninja 400 / ZX-6R. The rear looks similar to the older-gen motorcycle but gets slightly longer bodywork and the panel runs down the sides, nicely bridging with the design of the frontal portion. In its 2019 iteration, the Ducati Multistrada 950 inherits side wings from the Multistrada 1260. This gives the side fairing a slightly more aggressive and aerodynamic look. The rear of the motorcycle has remained more or less unchanged. While the Versys gets an analog-digital instrument cluster, the Multistrada comes with a full-digital unit. The Multistrada looks a lot more sleeker than the Versys, especially at the rear. However, the Versys does get a practical, well-cushioned pillion seat. Displacing a bit more than 100cc over the Multistrada, the Kawasakis engine makes more power and torque, but the Ducati isnt too far behind either. Interestingly, both bikes output is in the same ballpark despite the fact that the Versys uses two cylinders more. The Versys comes with electronic cruise control, Kawasaki Cornering Management Function with cornering ABS, traction control and power mode selection. Cornering ABS considerably improves the bikes handling as it takes into account the lean angle of the motorcycle too when braking. The Italian on the other hand comes with riding modes, power modes, Ducati Traction Control and Bosch cornering ABS as well. It also features self-cancelling indicators and Vehicle Hold Control, which should be a godsend when parking on sloped surfaces. Cruise control is optional for the Multistrada. Both bikes get a quickshifter (up and down) as optional fitment. As far as suspension is concerned, the two bikes come with fully adjustable front and rear units. The Ducati gets considerably longer travel than the Versys though. This should make the motorcycle much more stable while riding on bad roads. The two ADVs feature semi-active electronic suspension in the higher-end variants. When it comes to braking, the Multistrada seems to be slightly better equipped thanks to its larger front and rear discs. It also uses a bigger front wheel, which should improve off-road dynamics of the motorcycle. The Ducati rides on Pirelli Scorpion Trail II tyres while the Kawasaki uses Bridgestone Battlax. These two bikes are essentially soft-roaders because of the tyre type and the fact that they both use alloy wheels. The Ducati however comes with spoke wheels as an option, along with optional Pirelli Scorpion Rally tyres. The Versys 1000 is considerably heavier thanks to its bigger engine and bulkier chassis. Despite the visual mass, the Versys actually has slightly shorter wheelbase than the Multistrada. Both bikes should have commendable riding range because of the large fuel tanks. Seat height also remains the same for the two motorcycles. Ducatis accessory low seat brings the height down to 820mm. Interestingly, the optional low seat for the Versys is both narrower and lower by 20mm. The Ducati Multistrada is ideal for those who are looking for a relatively light softroader ADV. The Kawasaki on the other hand is more pillion-friendly and offers slightly better grunt too. Bookings for the new Versys is open in India for a token amount of Rs 1.5 lakh. The bikes will be delivered in April 2019. While pricing hasnt been revealed, we expect this motorcycle to cost around Rs 11 lakh. The 2019 Multistrada is expected to be launched in the first half of next year. Ducati already sells the 2018 model at Rs 12.8 lakh (all ex-showroom, pan-India). With this collaboration, the promoters of wind projects in India will benefit from long-term low cost financing. Funding clean energy projects in Asia since 1993, EIB has supported with EUR 7 billion in the last 25 years. New Delhi: The European Investment Bank (EIB) Friday said it will increase its support for India's wind energy projects by expanding the existing lending programmes with SBI. EIB and SBI have agreed to cooperate on financing renewable energy and providing new support for wind energy projects across India by expanding the ongoing financing initiative in the field of onshore wind projects, EIB said in a statement. With this collaboration, the promoters of wind projects in India will benefit from long-term low cost financing under the dedicated EUR 600 million renewable energy financing programme that is already supporting large-scale solar investment across the country. EIB has also approved a new line of credit to Yes Bank to boost private investment in clean energy projects. EIB will provide USD 100 million line of credit to the private sector lender in the coming months. Last year, Yes Bank has already utilised a USD 100 million funding from EIB towards solar power projects and wind farms across India, said an official from Yes Bank. "Following the progress in allocating this financing, a second renewable energy credit is being finalised and expected to be rolled out in the coming months," EIB said. Scaling up renewable energy investment is crucial for economic growth, improving access to energy and addressing climate change, said Andrew McDowell, Vice President of the EIB responsible for Energy in South Asia. Support for renewables is a key priority for EIB here in India, he said. "We look forward to broadening cooperation with Indian partners to support new renewable energy projects in the months ahead and enabling offshore wind to contribute to clean power generation in the country," McDowell said. Funding clean energy projects in Asia since 1993, EIB has supported with EUR 7 billion in the last 25 years, he said. Trade talks between the United States and China should be equal and mutually beneficial, Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen said on November 23, adding that he hoped the two countries can find ways to manage their differences through dialogue. U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are expected to hold talks during the G20 summit in Buenos Aires next week as trade ties between the world's two largest economies become increasingly fraught. Wang, speaking at a press conference in Beijing, said he hoped both sides could move in the same direction and find ways to resolve their problems. Officials from both countries are in close contact under guidance from their leaders, he added. Washington wants Beijing to improve market access and intellectual property protections for U.S. firms, cut industrial subsidies and slash a $375 billion trade gap. Trump has imposed tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese imports to force concessions. The U.S. tariff rate on $200 billion in Chinese goods is set to increase to 25 percent from 10 percent on Jan. 1. Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on all remaining Chinese imports - about $267 billion more in goods - if Beijing fails to address U.S. demands. Trump said on November 22 that he hoped he can make a deal with China when he meets Xi. "I can say this, China wants to make a deal very badly - because of the tariffs," Trump told reporters in Palm Beach, Florida. "China wants to make a deal; if we can make a deal, we will," he said. The high-stakes meeting comes as the Trump administration shows little sign of backing down in its demands and rhetoric. Washington said on Tuesday that China has failed to alter its "unfair" practices at the heart of the U.S.-China trade conflict, in an update of the U.S. Trade Representative's "Section 301" investigation into China's intellectual property and technology transfer policies. China rejected the fresh U.S. accusations of perpetuating "unfair" trade practices and urged Washington to stop making provocations. The Chinese commerce ministry said on November 22 that it was deeply concerned by the report issued by the U.S. administration this week. Citing security concerns, the U.S. government on Monday also proposed stepping up scrutiny over technology exports in 14 key high-tech areas including artificial intelligence and microprocessor technology, a move that many analysts view as directly targeting China. A 30-day public consultation period on the proposal to include those sectors in its broader export control regime is underway and will end on Dec. 19, according to a document published on the U.S. government's Federal Register. Demonetisation and faulty implementation of the GST have caused a loss of Rs 4.75 lakh crore to the country's economy, West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra said on Friday. He also criticised the Centre's initiative to extend up to Rs 1 crore loan to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in 59-minutes, saying it was just a gimmick and he has not come across anyone who has received a loan through the portal. As a result of the faulty implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the states earned Rs 78,929 crore less revenue since July 2017, which has been compensated by the Centre as per compensation law of the new indirect tax regime, he said. "The government at Centre believes in chest thumping, hit and miss decision making, disastrous decision making and failure decision making ... There is an economic uncertainty in the minds of small businesses," Mitra said addressing a press conference at the India International Trade Fair (IITF) here. Speaking about demonetisation of high-value currency notes on November 8, 2016, Mitra said it has hit farmers and unorganised sector of the economy badly since their business mode was cash dependent. He said even developed countries like Japan and Switzerland have higher cash to GDP ratio than India. "How much GDP has been lost to India due to demonetisation and GST? It is Rs 4.75 lakh crore," Mitra said, he said that economic growth has slowed down from 2015-16 onwards and to achieve that high level of growth India would need at least four years. India's GDP growth declined from 8.2 per cent in 2015-16 to 7.1 per cent in 2016-17 and further to 6.7 per cent in 2017-18. The economic growth is expected to improve to 7.4 per cent in the current fiscal which ends in March 2019. Mitra said that even consuming states are suffering revenue loss on account of GST implementation. Since there is no matching of invoices in GST, people are falsely generating invoices and claiming input tax credit, leading to hawala transactions. Earlier this month, the government launched a portal to sanction loans of up to Rs 1 crore in just 59-minutes to GST-registered MSMEs. "I have not heard of anybody who has got loans from that portal. In fact, MSMEs are worried that if they go through the portal, they will be chased later. They are suspicious about it. If the scheme means only giving in-principle approval, then how does it benefit the MSMEs," Mitra said. Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) data suggest that 1.6 crore jobs were created during 13 months period till September, according to CSO data. Meanwhile, new subscribers joining its health insurance scheme (ESI) dipped 5.2 per cent to 11.51 lakh in September. As many as 12.14 lakh new member had joined the Employees' State Insurance Scheme (ESI) in September, stated the report of Central Statistics Office (CSO) based on the payroll data of retirement fund body Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO, ESIC and National Pension Scheme (NPS). According to the report, 1.57 crore new members joined the social security scheme of the EPFO during the 13 month period till September this year, but 1.02 crore member exited the subscription of the retirement fund body. However, 24.25 lakh member who had exited from the EPFO subscription joined back again in the 13 month period. Thus net new members addition or job created during the 13 month period was 79.48 lakh. Job creation more than doubled to 9.73 lakh in September, the highest monthly addition since September 2017, compared to 4.11 lakh in the same month last year, as per the EPFO payroll data. The estimated total number of new NPS subscribers during the period September, 2017 to September, 2018 is 8,13,937, the report added. The CSO said that the present report gives different perspectives on the levels of employment in the formal sector and does not measure employment at a holistic level. Since April, 2018 the Ministry of Statistics has been bringing out the employment related statistics in the formal sector covering the period September 2017 onwards, using information on the number of subscribers, who have subscribed under three major schemes, namely, the Employees' Provident Fund Scheme (EPF), the Employees' State Insurance Scheme (ESIC) and the National Pension Scheme (NPS). The country's foreign exchange reserves rose by USD 568.9 million to USD 393.580 billion in the week to November 16, mainly due to a spurt in foreign currency assets, according to RBI data. In the previous week, reserves had declined by USD 121.2 million to USD 393.01 billion. In the reporting week, foreign currency assets, a major component of overall reserves, increased by USD 506 million to USD 368.541 billion, as per the RBI data. Expressed in US dollars, foreign currency assets include the effect of appreciation or depreciation of non-US currencies such as the euro, the pound and the yen held in the reserves. Forex reserves had touched a record high of USD 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 USD 31 billion. Gold reserves rose by USD 73 million to USD 20.961 billion, the data showed. The special drawing rights with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) declined by USD 5.7 million to USD 1.453 billion. The country's reserve position with the IMF also dipped by USD 4.4 million to USD 2.623 billion, the apex bank said. Members of the media, wearing protective suits and masks, walk after they receive briefing from Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) employees (in blue) in front of storage tanks for radioactive water at TEPCO's tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan February 10, 2016. REUTERS/Toru Hanai - D1BESMFAYHAA The land acquisition process for the 9900 MW nuclear power plant in Jaitapur, about 600 kilometres from here, has been completed, Maharashtra Energy Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule said. In a written reply to a question by Congress MLC Anant Gadgil in the Maharashtra Legislative Council Thursday, Bawankule added the state government was assisting the Centre to acquire land for the project. "The land acquisition process is complete," Bawankule stated in his written reply. Responding to the Congress MLC's query on whether the project faced opposition from local residents, Bawankule answered in the affirmative. Local residents as well as parties like the Shiv Sena have been opposing the project citing safety concerns. The project is being undertaken by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) and the Electricite de France (EDF), a French power utility firm. The Jaitapur nuclear power plant comprises six reactors with a combined capacity of 9900 MW. An Industrial Way Forward Agreement for the implementation of the project was signed on March 10 this year between NPCIL and Electricite de France. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday said his government plans to complete the construction of 30,000 kilometres of rural roads by June next year. He was speaking at the inaugural function of the Indian Road Congress being held here. He said these roads were being built under the aegis of the Mukhyamantri Gram Sadak Yojana and 10,000 kilometres had already been completed out of the 30,000 km planned. "The Asian Development Bank (ADB), which was assessing the quality of roads, gave 95.5 percentage grading to these (rural) roads, indicating best quality," Fadnavis told the gathering. Speaking on the Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Corridor, Fadnavis claimed it would be the smartest expressway in the world and among the longest in the country. The Rs 49,250-crore Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Mahamarg, alternatively referred to as a Super Communication Expressway, will be 700 kilometres long and will pass through 392 villages, spread over 11 districts. "We are trying to make 22 smart cities along this expressway which will provide a huge boost to economic growth. Moreover, this expressway will connect 24 districts to the Jawaharlal Nehru Port near Mumbai," Fadnavis said. He said work on the 22-kilometre long Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL) between the metropolis and neighbouring Navi Mumbai had begun and it would be the longest sea bridge in the country. "We expect to finish the project in four years," he added. He said the state government is also working on building a coastal road from Nariman Point to Worli and a sea link from Versova in Mumbai to Virar in neighbouring Palghar district. Fadnavis cited a Deutsche Bank report which said that 51 per cent of all big infrastructure projects currently being executed in the country are located in Maharashtra. Manoj Jain Prices of Brent crude recovered from a record 6 percent fall on Tuesday, getting support from an unexpected decline in US weekly inventory and a rise in Indian oil imports. But the current recovery in oil prices looks temporary and prices will fall more in coming weeks. There are a number of factors that are driving crude oil prices in the international market and we have to analyse both sides of the coin. Looking at the production side, global oil production reached a record level as US crude oil production jumped by almost a quarter this year to a record 11.7 million barrels per day, largely because of a surge in shale output. Production by Saudi Arabia and Russia has also witnessed an increase this year. Recently, US exempted eight countries from its sanctions on importing crude from Iran. These included India and China - the two biggest oil-consuming countries. The supply from Venezuela and Libya has also been restored. Looking at the supply side, global supply seems to be higher than the consumption. This has led to OPEC countries planning a cut in production by 1.4 million barrels per day from next month. Secondly, India's oil import reached the highest recorded level of 5 million barrels per day. These two are key factors supporting prices at the moment. Markets are also eyeing the forthcoming OPEC meet on December 6 at Vienna, which will help them take a consensus on oil production cuts. Looking at the comfortable supply situation, higher US oil production, concern on global consumption growth (down to 1 percent from 1.3 percent earlier), Brexit deal and Italy budget issues, we expect crude oil prices to remain under pressure in the coming weeks. Last but not least, the risk premium of Brent crude will also narrow as compared to WTI in the coming weeks as possible geopolitical tensions ease off and could also affect the risk premium of Brent adversely. Any 'dead cat' bounce in the prices toward $66-67 will be a great opportunity to go short again in Brent for a possible downside target of $60-58. Technical view Brent prices were in an upward trend since June 2017 as it rallied by about 97 percent from a low of around $44 to a high of almost $87 in the international market. Brent was in an upward trend for the last 16 months. In the month of October 2018, prices corrected almost 30 percent from the recent peak of $87. Looking at the monthly chart of Brent, the downside in the prices are still not over and long-term trend of the chart still looks bearish. We expect a dead cat bounce from the current level, which could last till $66-67 levels. If it hits $66-67, it will be a great opportunity to go short in crude oil prices with a tiny stop loss of $69.20 on a closing basis for the downside target of $60-58. Brent will show strength only if it closes and sustains above $70 levels but and in that case, it is expected to test $76-77 levels again but chances are remote. Recommendations Sell Brent crude on the rise around $66-67 | Stop loss $69.20 (Closing basis) for targets of $58-60. The author is Director Commodity & Currency, IndiaNivesh Commodities. The views and investment tips expressed by investment expert on moneycontrol.com are his own and not that of the website or its management. The views in the column are authors personal view and need not guarantee any kind of profits. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions. Neha shared the news through Instagram by posting the picture of the babys feet that said, Hello World. The newbie parents, Neha Dhupia and Angad Bedi were blessed with a baby girl on November 18 at Womens Hospital, Khar. (Photo: Mrugesh Bandiwadekar) The newbie parents, Neha Dhupia and Angad Bedi were blessed with a baby girl on November 18 at Womens Hospital, Khar. Neha shared the news through Instagram by posting the picture of the babys feet that said, Hello World. However, the actress got discharged from the hospital on Friday afternoon and was welcomed by the paparazzi. Neha and Angad revealed the name of their baby on the social media platform and captioned it as, Mehr Dhupia Bedi says hello to the world. New father Angad also shared the same picture, and wrote, Waheguru MEHR Kare @nehadhupia. Mehr is a Persian name, which means blessing. The Surajpur district sessions court on November 23 said it will hear the bail plea of Sonia Dhawan on December 4, her lawyer Satish Kumar told Moneycontrol. The family had moved the court for Dhawan's bail after almost three weeks of judicial custody. Earlier this month, her husband Rupak Jain's bail appeal was rejected by the court. The family will now have to move the Allahabad High Court for Jain, who was arrested along with Dhawan for allegedly being a part of an extortion plot. The family had consciously taken a decision to file separate bail applications for them. This is the first bail appeal filed by the family for Dhawan in the district court. Before this, they had appealed for bail from the chief judicial magistrate immediately after the arrest which was rejected. Dhawan and Jain along with an admin resource of Paytm were arrested on September 22 for allegedly trying to extort a sum of Rs 20 crore from Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma. While Dhawan, a long-time secretary of Vijay Shekhar and the Vice President, corporate communications of the online payments firm, was arrested from Paytm's office in Noida in October, her husband was arrested from the house. Ajay Shekhar Sharma, brother of Vijay Shekhar had earlier told Moneycontrol that a person [Rohit Chomal] from Kolkata had tried to extort Rs 20 crore by threatening to leak out "some photos and personal financial details" of his brother. Chomal had also taken the names of Dhwan, Jain and Kumar following which the arrests happened. JLR live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has unveiled a new compact luxury SUV, designed, engineered and manufactured in Britain, as a sign of its commitment to the UK car industry. The new Range Rover Evoque, dubbed a "baby" Range Rover, which had its world debut in London on Thursday comes with a one-billion-pound investment to support its production. The new model, described as a technology revolution by JLR, is priced from around USD 41,000 and will hit the roads next year. "Our commitment to UK production remains firm and the new Evoque benefits from a one-billion-pound investment. With this, we are introducing new technology and Range Rover refinement into the luxury compact SUV segment that the original model created," said JLR CEO Ralf Speth. "The Range Rover Evoque has been a fundamental driver in Jaguar Land Rover's global success. Since it first rolled off the Halewood production line, we have exported 80 per cent of all we have made," he said. Order books for the new Range Rover Evoque opened this week, with first deliveries to customers in the UK, Europe and the US beginning in the first months of 2019. Over 4 billion pounds worth of contracts have been placed with UK companies to support production of the new Evoque, which JLR said was a testament to its continued confidence in the competitiveness of UK suppliers. The company's one-billion-pound investment in the new Evoque covers research, development, design, advanced technology engineering and manufacturing. The company said the new Evoque joins the Range Rover family with a choice of petrol, diesel and hybrid electric engines, enabled by an all-new Premium Transverse Architecture. From 2020, every new Jaguar and Land Rover will have the option of electrification and, in a first for the compact luxury SUV segment, the Range Rover Evoque will be electrified with a 48-volt mild hybrid system from launch. It will also be available with a line-up of efficient four-cylinder diesel and petrol engines and, 12 months later, a three-cylinder plug-in hybrid engine. "The new model's compact footprint, at just 4.37-metres-long, will make the new Range Rover Evoque the go-to luxury city SUV," JLR said. "An entirely new architecture delivers Range Rover refinement, with agile on-road handling and world class off-road capability," it added. The original Evoque is celebrated as JLR's greatest sales success story. With over 217 international accolades since it was launched, it is also the most awarded Land Rover. With its resulting new body style, vehicle architecture, emissions reduction technologies including hybrid-electric, and design features such as deploying door handles, the latest Range Rover is a sophisticated evolution of the original, the Tata Group company said. "Enhancements to develop state-of-the-art flexible manufacturing for the new Evoque at Halewood, Merseyside, comprise a new stamping line and hybrid-electric assembly technology, alongside significant extensions and upgrades to existing facilities. Production overseas will meet local market demand for the latest addition to the Range Rover line-up," JLR said. The new Evoque launches with innovations such as ClearSight Ground View and ClearSight Rear View. Vodafone Idea (Representative Image) live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Vodafone Idea is in the process of reducing the number of its distributors by 16,000 and branded stores by 2,000 by the end of this fiscal, a company document said. The company plans to reduce the number of its distributors from around 43,000 to 27,000 by December. Vodafone Idea has around 6,000 branded retail stores, which it plans to cut to 4,000 by March 2019, the document said. The company also plans to reduce the number of its call centres to 38 from 82 at present by March 2019 as part of its integration plan. Vodafone Idea expects to achieve business integration by March 2021. While Vodafone Idea is the largest telecom operator in the country, it continues to be under debt burden of around Rs 1.2 lakh crore and has been losing mobile customers. The company reported a consolidated loss of Rs 4,973 crore for the September quarter in its maiden financial results after the merger. The merger of Vodafone India with Idea Cellular was completed on August 31. Passengers of an IndiGo flight from Hyderabad to Port Blair experienced anxious moments on Tuesday as the A320 neo aircraft tilted mid-air, according to a senior regulatory official. Aviation regulator DGCA has started a probe into the incident, which is the latest in a series of issues involving IndiGo's fleet of A320 neo planes powered with Pratt & Whitney engines. After it tilted to one side mid-air, the pilot managed to balance the aircraft, a senior DGCA official told PTI. An IndiGo spokesperson said the pilot observed a minor engine sensor issue that did not warrant any automated caution and that the plane made a normal landing at Port Blair. The number of passengers on board could not be ascertained. A320 neo plane has more than 180 seats. The A320 neo aircraft suffered "yawing" and the regulator might also ask for the flight's DFDR (Digital Flight Data Recorder) to assess the angle of tilt and fix responsibility for the incident, the official said. Generally, yaw motion is side-to-side movement of an aircraft's nose and can result in asymmetrical lift on the wings. "The pilot's report says the aircraft yawed. Now, the angle or the degree of the yaw is to be determined and that would reveal the seriousness of the matter. We have already started our investigation," the official noted. Further, the official said that after gathering the requisite data, the DGCA will be able to find out whether the incident happened due to lapses at the end of engineers or pilots. In a statement, the IndiGo spokesperson said that neither its Hyderabad-Port Blair flight, 6E-293 had any emergency landing nor was there any mid-air engine failure. "The pilot observed a minor engine sensor issue which did not warrant any automated caution. Hence, the pilot continued the flight and made a normal landing at Port Blair," it said. As per live flight tracking website Flightradar24, the snag-hit plane remained grounded in Hyderabad for more than 48 hours after performing the return flight from Port Blair on November 20. Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmer Welfare and convenor of Rajasthans Election Management Committee, spoke to Moneycontrol in an exclusive interview. Shekhawat is confident about the BJP government in Rajasthan under the leadership of Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje. He talked about significant increase in procurement from farmers in the last five years. Q. During our interaction with the farmers of the state, we were told that the government has increased Minimum Support Price (MSP) but they are not procuring commodities on MSP. What's your take? A. See, there are different mechanisms for rice and wheat from the Ministry of Food and the Food Corporation of India. Remaining crop cereals and oilseed crop are procured by NAFED and other agencies with bank guarantees given by the central government. During Congress government's rule between 2004 and 2014, total trade guarantee given to NAFED started at Rs 1,350 crore and escalated to Rs 2,350 crore. But interestingly, Congress never used this trade guarantee fully in any season, they never used more than Rs 200 to Rs 250 crore for procurement all over the country. When we formed the government, we immediately increased every interval start with Rs 4,500 crore to Rs 7,500 crore. Later, we increased it to Rs 19,500 crore and it now is Rs 45,000 crore. So, I disagree with the statement that procurement is not happening. Rs 7,500 crore worth of procurement is done only from Rajasthan. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi increased MSP, in Rajasthan alone we are doing procurements worth over than Rs 5,000 crore. On one hand, the Congress guarantees Rs 2,300 crore but that's never happened in the entire country while on the other hand, Rajasthan alone sees procurement worth Rs 5,000 crore. Q. When we travelled to the western part, we got to know that the government has set a limit of 25 quintals for groundnut per farmer. On the other hand, average acreage of groundnut is 100 to 150 quintals. A. We have to understand the framework for MSP. This mechanism is mainly for small farmers who have small land bank. And the main motto of this policy is that most farmers get maximum benefit of MSP. Q. Water is essential for farming, but farmers have been facing the problem of polluted water. Even the National Green Tribunal court has put a penalty. How will you ensure it does not happen in the future? A. It is a seriously challenging situation, and even the Supreme Court has given a verdict on this issue. I remember how Sriganganagar (Rajasthan District) mein nirmal jal hota tha. But now in Punjab, industrial waste and sewage water gets mixed in this water, which is painful for us. The Punjab government must take immediate steps and ensure it does not happen again. We sympathize with the farmers. Even Vasundhara Raje has said this act is inhuman and unethical. The Rajasthan canal gives water for farming and drinking for the western part of the state. Q. Let's talk about the politics of Rajasthan, In 2014, the BJP slogan was Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas'. But the party has given an election ticket to only one Muslim candidate this election. Dont you think such acts will push the minority voters away? A. It is not right to use 'Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas' in the context of ticket distribution. The prime minister is aiming at 100% electrification of the country. We ensured that every house has their own toilet. We worked for the poorest of the poor. Economy has improved and we are like hot cakes now for the entire world. We have jumped in the index of Ease of Doing Business and a large number of foreign direct investments were attracted during the BJP tenure. This is Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas. Q. Moneycontrol has travelled across Rajasthan and we gauged that there is high anti-incumbency against Vasundhara Raje. Yet, you projected her as the chief ministerial candidate. How will you tackle this issue? I dont agree with your point and we are working as a family. We are confident that we will form the government under the leadership of Vasundhara Raje. telangana,telangana assembly polls 2018,tdp,assembly elections 2018,tdp telangana manifesto BJP national general secretary P Muralidhar Rao on Friday attacked TDP president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu calling him anti-Telangana while also slamming the Congress-TDP coalition for the December 7 state polls. The BJP leader alleged Naidu's 'influence' in any manner in Telangana is going to hurt the state's development. "In 2014 itself, the BJP understood the way he (Chandrababu) was functioning that he is working against Telangana...we have suffered because of that and immediately we have distanced unilaterally and came out of that partnership," Rao told reporters here. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) had an alliance with the BJP during 2014 elections in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Attacking the Congress-TDP alliance, Rao said, "Definitely, it will have serious implications and negative consequences for Telangana and its people. The BJP wants Chandrababu Naidu-mukt Telangana...we have become free from his influence...and we want to retain it. We will not allow any kind of this influence coming into the Telangana governance. "It is the Congress which has to take a decision... the Congress has become covert to Chandrababu Naidu," he alleged. For the BJP, the upcoming Assembly elections in Telangana are very important in the context of the south, Rao said, adding "We have a kind of ambition to expand in South. We have an abiding commitment for development of Telangana." Rao also accused the TRS of failing to fulfill its promises and said anti-TRS campaigns will be taken up extensively by the party's national leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah, central ministers, chief ministers of BJP-ruled states and over 100 public meetings will be organised in the coming days. The TRS and the Congress are "family first" parties while the BJP stands for nation first, he claimed. "Earlier, TRS president and caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had met JD(S) President and Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy and later Chandrababu and other 'Mahagathbandhan' (grand alliance) leaders also met Kumaraswamy. Tomorrow if needed they will come together. Vote for Congress is vote for TDP and TRS...all are one. BJP is the only party which has a distinct and uncompromising stand against TRS," the BJP leader asserted. Farmers' "unrest" in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh will hurt the BJP's poll prospects in these states, senior CPI(M) leader Hannan Mollah claimed Friday. Elections in BJP- ruled Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh are scheduled to be held on December 7 and November 28, respectively. The CPI(M)'s in-charge for Rajasthan, Mollah, also claimed that since the BJP came to power in these states, there has been "agricultural distress". "Farmers' unrest in both Rajathan and Madhya Pradesh will hurt BJP's electoral prospects in the assembly poll. "Farmers in both the state are angry over agricultural policy decisions adopted by the BJP governments. There has been agricultural distress in both the BJP ruled states in last five years," said Mollah, who also general secretary in the All India Kisan Sabha. The Mandsaur police firing incident in which five protesting farmers were killed in Madhya Pradesh was a turning point and a political set back for the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government, he told PTI. "The Mandsaur incident had fuelled farmers' protest across Madhya Pradesh. The Chouhan government had a tough time to pacify the framers. The farmers anger continues against the BJP government in the state for not fulfilling the electoral promises made by it," Mollah said. These protests led to the formation of All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC), a conglomerate of 206 farmers bodies, in which Mollah is a convenor. "In Madhya Pradesh, loan waiver, crop insurance and water supply for irrigation are the three main issues of farmers. The demands of farmers are genuine but the Shivraj Singh government failed to solve all the three key farmers' issues due to its apathetic attitude towards the farming community," he alleged. Mollah claimed that the Vasundhara Raje government's attitude towards solving common peoples' problem particularly those of farmers, has invited trouble for the BJP government in India's largest state. "The Raje government's failure to solve farmers' issues will rout BJP in rural Rajasthan. Raje in her tenure as chief minister rarely bothered about farmers' problem," the CPI(M) leader said. KASHMIR, INDIA - AUGUST 15: Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) soldiers stand alert during the official celebrations for India's Independence Day at Bakshi Stadium in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian administered Kashmir on 15 August 2017. (Photo by Faisal Khan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) The security establishment is viewing the developments in Jammu and Kashmir as positive and as a way to increase "politician-to-people contact", according to a report by The Indian Express. Governor Satya Pal Malik had dissolved the Assembly in the state on November 21, after PDP-NC-Congress and Sajad Lone-BJP had staked claim to form the government in the state. The report states that the Centre's representative in the state, Dineshwar Sharma had, in fact, suggested the move to the government on the day that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) withdrew from their alliance with PDP in June. However, according to a security establishment official, the government did not act on the suggestion since it felt that "speedy economic development through a political governor who could also engage with stakeholders would work better". "We believe the dissolution of the Assembly makes way for elections in the next six months. That means parties will hit the ground and there will be more politician-to-people contact," the official added. "In a democracy, that helps bring down anger. One would hope that if things move smoothly, we should have a better summer next year," the official told the newspaper. Sources cited by the newspaper said that the move has worked in favour of the security establishment since anger on the street was directed against the state government. "However, the continuance of the Assembly under a Governors Rule was increasingly seen by Kashmiris as a way of ruling in the Valley for the next two-and-a-half years through mandarins in Delhi. That is not something Kashmiris appreciate much. Also, any mistake is directly blamed on Delhi," the official told the newspaper. An intelligence official quoted by the paper also said that the low turnout in the recent local body polls is "not such a bad thing." "Post 1990s, turnout in the Valley increased from 6-7 percent during the peak of militancy to 20-30 percent. At no point did the Hurriyat and militants not make calls to people to not vote. Yet, people kept coming out to engage democratically," the officer said. "This happened because parties mobilised people. The moment they boycotted an election, turnout fell to 4 percent. This shows democracy is alive in the Valley," the officer said, reasoning that an assembly election with National Conference (NC) and People's Democratic Party (PDP) participating would "help ease the situation" and enable people to "vent anger through the ballot." NC and PDP had boycotted the local body polls, citing the central government's ambiguous stance on Article 35-A. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi (C) congratulates Maldives President elect Ibrahim Mohamed Solih next to Maldives former President Mohamed Nasheed (front 2nd L), Sri Lanka's former President Chandrika Kumaratunga (L) and Maldives former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom during the swearing-in ceremony in Male, Maldives November 17, 2018. REUTERS/Ashwa Faheem - RC1697CE67A0 Frank Rausan Pereira On September 23, the people of the Maldives gave New Delhi an early Diwali gift. The exceedingly pro-China strongman Abdulla Yameen was ousted in the presidential election, making way for Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, someone who had repeatedly said would work towards better ties with India. The fear then was whether there would be a smooth transition of power between the outgoing and the incoming. Also, what would China do to give Yameen a fillip to stay in power? The media in India was on the edge, skeptical about what may happen between September 23 and November 17 the day Solih was to be sworn in as President of the Maldives. Two months later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the only head of state to attend Solih's oath-taking ceremony. The joint statement and the images of the two leaders sharing a cordial meeting was a welcome relief for India, which was just three months ago facing unprecedented opposition in the archipelago. The developments in Male are indeed a positive sign for New Delhi, but it would be silly for us to take the foot off the pedal, now that things have fallen in place. We need to mend our ways. The need of the hour for the Maldives is economic stability and better infrastructure. India has had a presence and has been carrying out projects in the Maldives for several decades now. However, implementation has been our Achilles heel. Projects taken up by Indian companies are seldom completed on time, the deadlines are often extended and costs usually escalate manifold. In comparison, the Chinese got a foothold in the archipelago only in 2011, but have already delivered several projects. An example will be the China Maldives Friendship Bridge which opened to traffic on August 31, less than three years after work began. China is certainly a challenge for India in the region and the new government in the Maldives has been striking the right chords as far as India is concerned. The Maldives foreign minister is expected to visit Beijing before the end of the year to renegotiate the archipelago's Chinese debt. The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with China is something former President Mohamed Nasheed wants to scrap. Nasheed also happens to be the adviser to the current President; Nasheed is extremely influential in the Maldivian political circles and, more importantly, a close friend of India. As much as the new government would like to stay away from Beijing, keeping China at bay is going to be a Herculean task. The biggest problem being the Maldives' debt to China, which according to the Maldives Monetary Authority is $1.5 billion; which is around 33 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP). Therefore, in all likelihood, the Maldives is likely to go the Sri Lanka way. There was euphoria in India when Mahinda Rajapaksa was ousted from power in Colombo in 2015 and an India-leaning establishment headed by Maithripala Sirisena took over. Despite that, the Chinese could not be pushed out. Instead, in 2017, much against Indias wishes, Sri Lanka and China signed the Hambantota Port Concession Agreement effectively converting Colombos loans from Beijing for the development of the port into equity. The Maldives could also follow suit, unless New Delhi does something to help Male financially. The question is: in an election year, does New Delhi have the stomach to dole out the much-needed cash to Solih and his government? Also, do we have deep pockets like Beijing has? The answer is simple NO. In all of this, we should also consider another aspect. The present government in the Maldives is an amalgamation of not like-minded individuals, but the glue that binds them together is the anti-Yameen factor. With Yameen out of the way, how long will the coalition last? Again, look at Sri Lanka. The recent developments in Colombo are a prime example of what China can do. It not only has a heavy hand but also knows how to be subtle when needed. Hence, it is important for India to be cautious, concentrate on what we are good at and get rid of the red tape literally and figuratively. Frank Rausan Pereira is senior anchor, Rajya Sabha TV. Twitter: @frp09. Views are personal. Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik addresses the media in Jammu. (Image: PTI) Ali Ahmed Four years into the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre, it is clear that its actions need to be examined in relation to its election agenda. With general elections coming up in a few months time, all its actions are geared to ensuring that the BJP comes back to power at the Centre. The dissolving of the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) assembly on November 21 must be viewed against this backdrop. It would be naive to continue expecting the ruling party to place national interest above party interest. The ruling partys non-performance on development appears to have left it with little but polarisation to fall back on to woo the electorate and keep its voter base together. Muslim-bashing by itself has had diminishing returns since the last elections the elections that had succeeded in pushing the Muslims decisively on to the ropes. The Ram mandir issue is close at hand, to be trotted out some time early in the coming year, once the Supreme Court currently engaging with it has ruled on it. In the interim, J&K serves to keep polarisation ticking. The challenge to the special status of the state, specifically Article 35A is at the Supreme Court. The BJP wishes to capitalise on the special status issue with an eye on its polarising possibilities. Another indicator of polarisation informing the calculus is the manner Ram Madhav, national general secretary of the BJP overseeing its strategy for J&K, alleged that the incipient alliance between the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the National Conference was instigated by Pakistan. He has since withdrawn the comment. However, the mention of Pakistan was to legitimise the miscarriage of democracy in the dissolution of the assembly just when the two major parties in the state joined hands to steer it back to democracy. The governor had earlier indicated that the assembly would continue in a suspended state over the transition from governors rule to Presidents rule. As it turned out, this was to buy time for the BJP-backed challenger Sajjad Lones Peoples Conference (PC), with two members in the assembly, to stake claim, with support from the BJP and after poaching dissidents off the PDP. In the event, the PDP-NC attempt at forming a coalition government supported by the Congress, under PDPs Mehbooba Mufti, pre-empted Lone. Though Lone was pipped at the post by the PDP-NC, the governor chose to dissolve the assembly. The dissolution provides the BJP an opportunity to return to power through the coalition route after fresh elections, to progress its wider game plan of diluting Article 35A and Article 370. Preventing this had been the impulse behind the getting together of arch foes, the NC and the PDP. The events of November 21 have given the impression that the governor has acted on behalf of the ruling party at the Centre. History shows that such interventions have dire consequences. Three decades back, Governor Jagmohan was appointed by Indira Gandhi with a mandate to remove the NCs Farooq Abdullah, who was then hobnobbing with the national opposition parties. The fallout of Jagmohans interference in state politics is rather well known. It eventually led to the rigged elections of 1987 and, as they say, the rest is history with the official count of conflict dead nearing 50,000. This precedence suggests the national security relevance of the governors decision. It required consultation with the national security apparatus headed by Ajit Doval. There is also a minister of state-ranking special representative, Dineshwar Sharma, for engaging with interlocutors of all shades and opinion in J&K. That both did not sound the alarm on the national security implications suggests either they were not consulted or were likeminded. This gives the impression that the national security apparatus, which played along with this decision, has been partisan. The dissolution of the J&K assembly can only firm up a negative view held by many in Kashmir on Indias democratic bona fides when it comes to the Kashmir question and its militarised handling of the troubles in Kashmir. The perception can be expected to feed the ongoing alienation and exacerbate violence. This puts paid to one of the governor's four reasons for the dissolution, of enabling anti-militancy operations in a stable and supportive environment, presumably better under President's rule than a democratic one. The advantage here for the ruling party is that it allows an unmitigated militarised template to persist. The turmoil can be projected as Pakistan-fuelled Muslim angst, posing a threat to national security. This gives the BJP an opportunity to project itself to the electorate as the only party that can deal with the situation, with a strong man prime minister at its helm. (Ali Ahmed is a strategic analyst and a blogger. Views expressed are personal.) The African nationals were rescued from Kakrola area under Dwarka north police station limits. The police had received multiple calls against them including one that alleged that they have abducted a child. (Representational Image) New Delhi: Six Africans, including four Tanzanian and two Nigerian nationals, were attacked in Delhi on Thursday night amid rumours that they were child abductors. The African nationals were rescued from Kakrola area under Dwarka north police station limits. The police had received multiple calls against them including one that alleged that they have abducted a child. "No racial attack. We have received call that people were gathering. We reached there, dispersed crowd and rescued two Tanzanian women. Crowd had gathered following abduction rumours. Later we received a call of abduction. It was a hoax call. We rescued Tanzanian and Nigerian nationals," news agency ANI quoted Delhi police official as saying. The opposition parties are trying to forge state-specific anti-BJP alliances and not a grand coalition at the national level, NCP president Sharad Pawar said on Friday. Earlier this month, Telugu Desam Party supremo Chandrababu Naidu had met Pawar and National Conference president Farooq Abdullah in Delhi, as part of his efforts to build a pan-India alliance to take on the BJP in 2019 Lok Sabha polls. "We are not trying to make a nationwide mega alliance. Our effort is to form state-wise alliances, giving primacy to the major political party in every state. "For this, we are going to meet in Delhi on December 10. The issue of use of electronic voting machines (EVMs) would also be discussed in the meeting," he said. Some opposition parties have expressed reservations about the use of EVMs, alleging that they can be tampered with. Asked about the decision of the West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh governments to withdraw the "general consent" to the CBI, Pawar said, "If the BJP-led central government continues misusing the CBI, then other states may also follow the suit." Speaking about the country's economy, he said the situation was grave. "The economy is in a dire condition due to the unwise decisions taken by this government....Policy of encouraging foreign firms to produce defence equipment is also dangerous," Pawar, a former defence minister, said. On the issue of Ram temple, he said, "There is no development to speak of, so the BJP is trying to use the temple card in the upcoming elections. Congress President Rahul Gandhi Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, alleging that he created a cobweb just like the Bollywood villain Mogambo to "loot" the armed forces and that the Rafale scam is one of his many adventures which will be exposed soon. Gandhi shared a news report alleging that the Rafale deal was against the Defence Ministry's interests. "The Rafale scam is only a glimpse of Modiji's adventures. To loot the armed forces, he created a cobweb just like Mogambo of selected officers, ministers and industrialists. The threads of this cobweb to make the armed forces hollow from inside are connected to Modiji and his industrialist friends. Now many masks would be exposed," he said in a tweet in Hindi. The Congress party and its chief have launched an offensive on Modi and his government, alleging corruption and favouritism in the Rs 58,000-crore fighter jet deal for purchase of 36 Rafale aircraft from France's Dassault Aviation, a charge the government has strongly denied. Mahasamund: Congress President Rahul Gandhi addresses an election rally at Bemcha in Mahasamund district of Chhattisgarh, Tuesday, Nov 13, 2018. (PTI Photo) (PTI11_13_2018_000042B) Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of bringing ignominy to all chowkidars (watchmen) in the country. Addressing campaign rallies for the November 28 Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Gandhi said the situation now is such that whenever the word chowkidar is uttered, people say "chor hai" (is a thief). "Wherever you go, as you pronounce the word "chowkidar" comes a reply "chor hai". I want to apologise to the chowkidars of the country. It is not your mistake, you all are not thieves, you all are honest. Only one person has brought ignominy to you. The country's prime minister has defamed all its chowkidars," he said. Before coming to power in 2014, Modi used to talk about combating corruption, unemployment and farmers' welfare but is now mum on these issues, Gandhi said. The sentiment across the country is that he broke their trust, Gandhi added. When Modi gave the "acche din" (good days) slogan ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, people would respond to the catch-phrase, saying "aayenge" (will come), he said. The promised "Acche Din" were not meant for the people but for some top industrialists, Gandhi said. Good days have come for industrialists like Nirav Modi, Anil Ambani and Vijay Mallya, he added. Modi, in his election campaign in 2014, had said he wanted to be the country's chowkidar, not the prime minister. "People had then reposed faith in him. The youth were assured two crore jobs, farmers were assured minimum support price for their produce, the entire India was assured that Rs 15 lakh would be deposited in the bank account of each citizen. People believed this then," Gandhi said. "Why has this changed? In four years, people found that these (promises) were false. Narendra Modi speaks lies. This is the sentiment in the country, because he has broken the (people's) trust," Gandhi said. A "Congress wave" would sweep Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram and Telangana, he said. The BJP-led government waived of Rs 3.5 lakh crore loans of the rich, but did not write off debts of farmers, he said. The previous Congress-led UPA government, on the recommendation of the Indian Air Force, decided to purchase 126 Rafale fighters at a cost of Rs 526 crore per plane with the stipulation that the state-owned aerospace company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) would make them in India, Gandhi said. "But Modi went to France and conveyed to the French government that each Rafale jet will be purchased for Rs 1600 crore. He told them to give the contract to (Anil) Ambani instead of giving it to HAL," Gandhi said. There was no immediate reaction from the BJP on the allegations. The ruling party has dismissed the charges in the past. The Congress president asked his party men to stand at polling booths and not back off "even an inch" to convey a message to the BJP that people of Madhya Pradesh are now with the principal opposition party. Gandhi, who faces a defamation suit for claiming that Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's son was named in the 'Panama Papers', said, "I spoke mistakenly that Shivraj ji's son was named in Panama Papers, actually it was Chhattisgarh CM's son. Shivraj ji threatened me of filing defamation suit." "But when I talk about scams like e-tendering, Vyapam, illegal mining and mid-day meal scam, he (Shivraj) doesn't speak a word, he doesn't threaten to file defamation. What does it mean," he said. Chouhan "stole" people's money in Vyapam, the entrance examination, admission and recruitment scam unearthed in Madhya Pradesh in 2013, he said. Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma hit back at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday for accusing the opposition party of practising "dynastic" politics, saying he needs a "crash course" on the country's history. Sharma alleged that the prime minister has not kept the dignity of his office and is making "frivolous" statements. "It is unfortunate that the prime minister is making such statements. The prime minister is less literate in history, geography and economics," he said. "Regarding using word dynasty and democracy, PM Modi needs a crash course. Advise him to read the objectives resolution moved by Pt. Nehru in the constituent Assembly on December 13, 1946, which laid the foundation of a robust democracy," Sharma said. "On dynasty, Modiji must know that after Rajiv Gandhi's oath in 1985, no member of the family took oath even as a minister. Rahul Gandhi was MP since 2004 but declined ministerial office. The PM is running scared as people are angry and the BJP is headed for a big defeat," the former Union minister said. The Congress leader's strong remarks came after Prime Minister Modi attacked the Congress and its leadership during election rallies over dynastic politics. Sharma tweeted, "Sad that PM Modi will not keep his office's dignity while making frivolous statements. We understand his discomfort with Nehru-Gandhi family who fought for India's Freedom and made supreme sacrifices including martyrdom of Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. Regional political parties are getting innovative in their efforts to reach to out to voters in large numbers. While national parties usually rely on mainstream social media mediums like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, their regional counterparts are using ShareChat to reach maximum voter base, reports The Economic Times. ShareChat is a unique platform with its core focus on regional language users who are early adopters of the internet. Our audience is distinctive, and form the core voter base who will be exercising their vote, said a ShareChat spokesperson. "Political parties have understood this USP of our platform, and we are not surprised that these parties are keen to join the platform and woo voters, he added. Parties like YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh, Jana Sena Party in Telangana and Andhra, Telangana Rashtra Samiti and Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Kerala are all active users of ShareChat. ShareChat is popular in the South. The platforms 2 million and 4.5 million daily users (according to industry sources) among Telugu language speakers validates this. As social media is the biggest weapon for our party, we decided to be active on all social media platforms. This includes ShareChat, Helo and even short video app Samosa. He adds, All these local apps are to reach out for local language speaking people. And since our party is active in both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, and since the language is the same, it helps us, Gnana Varsha, a member of Jana Sena Partys Shatagni (social media cell) team, told the paper. Apart from regional political parties, national parties too have a presence on ShareChat. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the most popular leader on the platform. However, Modi has not yet joined ShareChat. The platform has become a significant medium to share political content like propaganda in the form of images portraying leaders larger than life. These pictures are accompanied with texts either favouring a particular party or leader or are against it. ShareChat was first used for political activity by Hardik Patel, Jignesh Mewani and Alpesh Thakore to reach out to their base during last years Gujarat polls. The platform currently claims to have a registered user base of over 50 million users. Out of this it has 11 million as its daily active user (DAU) base, the company said. Representative Image Shiv Sena supremo Uddhav Thackeray is scheduled to participate in 'maha aartis' and 'deep puja' on November 24 at the banks of Sharayu River in Ayodhya for the cause of building the Ram Mandir. Meanwhile, the party plans to hold 'maha aartis' across Mumbai to mark the occasion "for those who cannot be in Ayodhya." "The maha aartis are planned for those who wish to show their commitment to the Ram Mandir cause but cannot be in Ayodhya to do so," a party worker told Moneycontrol. "All the party workers have been told to gather at designated spots around the city at around 6:30 pm... those coming in from afar have been told to come in at 5 pm. The local corporators would be present for them," the party worker said, adding that once the aartis are done, the participants will have to sign in a register "so that Shakha Pramukhs know how many people turned up." Shiv Sena Andheri (East) MLA Ramesh Latke confirmed that the party is planning to organise 'maha aartis' across the city. "There are around 50 maha aartis planned for tomorrow across the city, and we are expecting a good turnout, thousands will come out in support," Latke told Moneycontrol. "There is, however, no reason to be concerned about the traffic snarls, we have taken all the precautions," Latke added. Thackeray will visit Uttar Pradesh between November 24 and 25. He is scheduled to visit the controversial Ram Janmabhoomi site on November 25. The Sena chief had earlier slammed the Narendra Modi government for failing to fulfill its promise of building the Ram Mandir, and had announced during the annual Dusshera rally that he will visit Ayodhya and address a rally there. The saffron party has been organising 'maha aartis' for several reasons. The party had first organised such events during the 1992 Ayodhya agitation and the riots in Bombay. telangana,telangana assembly polls 2018,tdp,assembly elections 2018,tdp telangana manifesto The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) has promised a slew of welfare programmes for the people of Telangana in its manifesto ahead of the Assembly elections. In the manifesto, released by party's Telangana unit president L Ramana in Hyderabad on November 21, the party has promised to turn the official residence of Chief Minister (now caretaker CM) K Chadrashekar Rao into a public hospital, if voted to power. The residence, known as Pragathi Bhavan, was built during the TRS rule and KCR moved into it on November 24, 2016. It is said to be a swanky and Vaastu-compliant building, spread over an area of 8.9 acres and has an official construction cost of Rs 33 crore. According to some media reports, the sprawling residence has many security features such as bulletproof bathrooms and windows. However, there is no official word on this. The TDP has further announced other schemes to woo the voters in the upcoming polls. Here are the key highlights of the manifesto: Farm sector The party promised waiver of up to Rs 2 lakh agricultural loans. Farmers would be given an annual investment support of Rs 10,000 per year per crop. Employment The manifesto said one lakh jobs would be filled up in the first year, after coming to power. Efforts would be made to upgrade the skills of unemployed youth. Unemployment assistance of Rs 3,000 per month would be given to unemployed youth. Also read: KCR announces partial manifesto for Telangana polls: Here are some of the promises Students Free laptops to be distributed to all students, from Class XI to university level. Cycles would be distributed free of cost to girl students of Class VIII to Intermediate. Others A house, financial assistance of Rs 10 lakh and a job would be provided to the families of 1,200 "martyrs" who sacrificed their life to achieve separate statehood for Telangana. A permanent memorial would be built for these "martyrs". Financial assistance of Rs 5 lakh would be extended to those building houses on their own land as part of efforts to provide housing for all. The party has created a poll alliance in the state with the Congress, the Telangana Jana Samithi and the Communist Party of India. (With PTI inputs) A security officer investigates the crime scene after a suicide blast in Lahore, Pakistan July 24, 2017. REUTER/Mohsin Raza - RTX3CP8D A powerful bomb blast ripped through a busy market outside a religious seminary in Pakistan's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Friday, killing at least 30 people and injuring over 40 others, officials said. The explosive material was planted in a bike in the Friday Market (Juma Bazar) near an imambargah, a Shia religious place, in Orakzai tribal district's Kalaya area. People were buying warm clothes when the bomb went off, officials said. At least 30 people were killed while more than 40 others injured, Geo news quoted district administration officials as saying. Officials said that most of the victims were minority Shia Muslims, who in the past were also targeted in the area. "Three children were among those killed. The remote-controlled bomb was attached to a motorcycle," officials said. The area has been cordoned off and investigation into the incident is under way. An emergency has been declared in the region's hospitals to handle the situation. Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari blamed the US failure in Afghanistan for the attack and warned Pakistan to be prepared for more such incidents. Condemn the horrific terror attack in Orakzai tribal area. "As the US fails in Afghanistan, Pakistan shouldd be prepared for fallout and we must ensure greater security for our tribal areas especially protection of our people," she said tweets. No group claimed responsibility of the attack but the Taliban militants often carry out such attacks. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police are on high alert following the Orakzai blast and a separate attack on the Chinese Consulate in Karachi on Friday morning. "Our enemies are not happy with peace in the province," provincial Chief Minister Mehmood Khan said after the attack. It was the second attack on Friday as security forces foiled a bid by militants to enter the Chinese consulate in Karachi and killed three attackers. Iran sees no point in fresh nuclear talks with the US without guarantees it will not renege on any deal made, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on November 22. US President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May, branding the deal to restrict Iran's nuclear work a "disaster". Iran continues to stick to the terms of the deal, and European nations also continue to support it and engage with Iran. But Zarif said that without guarantees, Trump's US could not be trusted for any further talks. "If we are to make an agreement with the United States, what is the guarantee that the agreement will last after the flight? You remember Canada?" he said, referring to Trump's withdrawal of his signature from a G7 summit closing statement in June after his plane left host Canada. "How are we to be confident that the signature stays on the paper?" Zarif told the MED Dialogues conference in Rome. Sweeping new American sanctions against Iran, which came into effect on November 5, have raised fears about whether the deal can survive. Iran has said the future of the JCPOA would be called into question if it no longer received the economic benefits of the deal. The deal envisaged sanctions on Iran being lifted in return for it accepting IAEA inspections and limits on its nuclear activities. "We spent two-and-a-half years, this is not a two-page document, this is not a picture opportunity. This is a 150-page document," Zarif said of the deal, suggesting that Trump's objection was based on his "hatred" for former president Barack Obama. "Why should we resume another talk just because somebody doesn't like it, just because somebody hates his predecessor? That's not the reason you engage in diplomacy, diplomacy is a serious game and we are ready for a serious game." The remaining five signatories to the JCPOA -- Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia -- have backed an EU effort to set up a special payment system in an attempt to continue trade and business ties with Iran. However, some European companies have already pulled out of Iran. Earlier this month senior EU officials admitted that the mechanism was proving difficult to set up. Qatar's foreign minister said on November 22 that "whoever is responsible" for the murder of prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi should be held accountable. Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani also told an international conference in Rome that his country saw no thaw in its bitter dispute with Saudi Arabia and would maintain its ties with Iran after the United States reimposed sanctions on Tehran. "Whoever is responsible for Khashoggi needs to be held accountable, whoever he is," the Qatari minister said. "We have to wait for the investigation to be concluded." Saudi Arabia is facing its worst political crisis in decades over the killing of Khashoggi at Riyadh's consulate in Istanbul early last month, which has damaged the kingdom's standing and strained its ties with the West. Sheikh Mohammed said the refusal of Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies to end a 17-month political and economic boycott of Qatar was "recklessness" that risked regional security. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut trade and transport ties with Qatar in June 2017, accusing it of supporting terrorism and their foe Iran. Doha denies the charges and says the boycott aims to impinge on its sovereignty. "We still see them (Saudis and Emiratis)continuing with the same behaviour, continuing not to be responsive to any attempt of the international community" to end the conflict, he said. The United States has increased pressure on Riyadh to end its protracted dispute with Qatar following Khashoggi's killing to restore Gulf unity, which Washington sees as essential to containing Iranian influence in the region. Shiekh Mohammed said Qatar would continue to deal with Iran, which helped Doha secure supplies when the boycott was first imposed, and was ready to mediate between Washington and Tehran. "There is this dispute between U.S. and Iran, it's putting us in a situation in which we see a disagreement between our strongest ally and our neighbour, which is not comfortable," he said. "There should be a way to find a bridge to mediate this problem, if Qatar can provide this bridge, why not?" In 2014, the BSP had not won even a single seat but ranked second in 32 seats. Lucknow: Keeping her party in a state of indecision regarding the alliance with Samajwadi Party for the upcoming 2019 Lok Sabha is weighing heavy on Ms Mayawatis shoulders. Apart from claiming that she was ready for an alliance in UP but only if her party was given a respectable number of seats, Ms Mayawati has not bothered to clarify the number of seats she considers respectable. Sources, in both the parties, say that the BSP has agreed to around 47-50 seats and the Samajwadi Party is ready to let Ms Mayawati take the lions share. However, the numbers would then leave no room for Congress and RLD unless they agree to two seats each. In 2014, the BSP had not won even a single seat but ranked second in 32 seats. The Samajwadi Party won five seats in 2014 and ranked second in 31 seats. Ms Mayawati has also not yet given her list of the constituencies where her party would be contesting and this is delaying the selection of candidates in BSP. Candidates are unwilling to contribute to the party fund until their names are cleared. Besides we do not even know whether our seat is in the BSP list or not. This is very unlike Ms Mayawati because she is known to finalize her candidates almost a year ahead of the elections so that the candidates get ample time to tour his constituency, assuage the feelings of disgruntled workers and even identity the trouble spots, said a ticket seeker in the BSP. The U.N. special envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, arrived on November 23 in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, witnesses said. Hodeidah is a battleground between the Iran-aligned Houthi group, which controls the city, and pro-government forces backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Griffiths told the U.N. Security Council last week that Yemen's parties had given "firm assurances" they were committed to attending peace talks he hopes to convene in Sweden before the end of the year. A police trooper mans a machine gun mounted on a patrol truck at the site of a car bomb attack outside the Finance Ministry offices in the southern port city of Aden, Yemen. (Reuters) Three heavily-armed suicide bombers on November 23 stormed the Chinese consulate in Pakistan's largest metropolis Karachi, killing two policemen before being shot dead by security forces which foiled the daring attack in the high-security zone, authorities said. The consulate, located in the posh Clifton area, came under attack early morning. Three suspected suicide bombers were killed before they were able to enter the facility as forces successfully foiled the attack, Karachi Police Chief Amir Shaikh said. Nine hand grenades, Kalashnikov bullets, magazines and explosives were recovered from the possession of the terrorists, Geo news quoted police officials as saying. "Food supplies and medicines were also recovered from their possession," officials said. "We have received two dead bodies of policemen and an injured Chinese security guard who is under treatment," said Seemi Jamali, the executive director at Jinnah Hospital. The Sindh government and the Inter-Services Public Relations Wing (ISPR) confirmed that three terrorists were killed in the operation. The heavily guarded E Street neighbourhood, which is considered a red zone, is home to a number of upscale restaurants, diplomatic missions and schools. The Bilawal House of Pakistan People's Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is also in the area. Schools and eateries have been locked down until a clearance operation is concluded. Residents said they first heard firing and explosions around 9.30 AM (local time). "The terrorists first attacked the checkpost outside the consulate and detonated a hand grenade in the area," Shaikh said. Shaikh said the attackers had parked their vehicle at some distance from the consulate before moving towards it. Defence analyst and security contractor Ikram Sehgal, whose company's guards have been posted at the consulate, said that the attackers had first engaged in an exchange of fire with policemen. After the policemen were killed, he said, the attackers proceeded towards the gate of the consulate. However, the guards were quick to usher civilians with consular business into the building and shut the gates behind them. Chinese staff at the mission were taken to the main building, Sehgal said. The paramilitary rangers than reached the spot and engaged the attackers, leaving three of them killed. Weapons and explosive materials were recovered from the attackers, he said. Sheikh said that all Chinese staffers "are safe and secure". The security situation has been brought under control and all areas will soon be cleared, he said, adding that a team of police has been deployed inside the consulate. The Foreign Office spokesman said that Islamabad is "in touch with the relevant agencies and will react quickly" to ascertain the facts. Shaikh said he would be able to provide a clearer account of the attack later. The area, considered a red zone, is heavily guarded. Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah contacted the Chinese consul general and assured him that the situation will be taken under control. The S&P BSE Sensex will include HCL Technologies and Bajaj Finance in place of Wipro and Adani Ports from December 24. In the latest rejig of the indices on the exchange, Edelweiss Financial Services entered the S&P BSE 100 index, replacing Power Finance Corp, said a BSE notification on Thursday. Similarly on the Sensex 50 index, Bharti Infratel, Lupin and Hindustan Petroleum would made way for Bajaj Finserv, Britannia Industries and JSW Steel. Besides, the Asia Index Pvt Ltd, a 50-50 partnership company between S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and BSE also made 13 changes in the BSE 500 and three in BSE 200. In addition, with the inclusion of Bajaj Finance in Sensex, the share of the financial sector rose in the index to nine of the 31 companies. All changes on the BSE would be effective from December 24. In a report submitted to the Central Information Commission (CIC) in the first week of November, it has been found that over 85% of the public authorities (PAs) have been reluctant to ensure mandatory disclosures under Section 4 of the RTI Act, which includes crucial information that needs to be suo motu transparent like budget and programme, publicity and public interface and E-governance. The study which the CIC outsourced to AN Tiwari & MM Ansari pertained to `Transparency Audit of Disclosures u/s 4 of the Right to Information Act by the public authorities. As per this study, out of the 838 public authorities that were studied in this report, for different grades of transparency, 158 of them, that is 19%, fell in the 90 to100% transparency category; 157 of them, that is 19%, into the 80% to 89 % category, 118 of them, that is 14%, in the 70% to 79 % and 113 of them, that is 13% of them, that is 60%, to 69 % category and 292 of them, that is, 60% into the 35% category. The objective of this exercise was to make a thorough assessment of voluntary disclosures and to indicate the areas and directions for increasing transparency in PAs. This included taking stock of, and assessing quantitative and qualitative compliance by PAs of the mandated suo motu disclosures under Section 4 of the RTI Act; identifying areas for improvement in information disclosure by PAs; and, suggesting measures for improving the content and quality of the disclosures. The revelation in this report is shocking as practically all information that PAs have to voluntarily disclose under Section 4 is missing, as this includes: Decision-making process; The delegation of powers, duties, and responsibilities of officials and the system of compensation paid to them; Information relating to consultation with public on the proposed major policy decisions; Minutes of meetings of various committees and boards; Details of the relevant Acts, rules, instruments, manuals, office orders, custodians of various categories of documents held by the organization; Policy on transfer and posting of senior officers deployed at important and sensitive places; RTI applications and appeals received and their responses; Details of public information officers, appellate authority, nodal officer and other facilities available to citizens for obtaining information; Details of domestic and foreign visits undertaken by the senior officials; Details of the mechanism to redress grievances of affected persons, mainly employees, clients, and customers; Discretionary and non-discretionary grants and details of the beneficiaries of subsidy; Criteria/ guidelines for allocation and utilization of corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds by the public sector enterprises; Sources and methods of funding political parties or identification of donors; and Details about public-private partnerships and outcomes of such ventures. As for the recommendations, the report states that: A full-fledged transparency audit of all public authorities only can determine their transparency preparedness but since the audit of that scale and content needs huge preparation and is a formidable task, the first step should be evaluation of the websites of the public authorities to determine their compliance with the mandated provisions of section 4 of the Right to Information; Comprehensive information disclosures on websites of PAs, which are carefully designed and regularly updated, will, doubtless, make a significant difference in terms of the public authoritypublic interface Regularity of website auditthe audit of public authorities websites should not be sporadic but regular. CIC will need to play a key role in ensuring this. These audits should become a firm basis for progressive and incremental changes in the design and the content of the websites indicating the public authoritys seriousness about mandatory disclosures CIC and Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) may consider setting up a web-based mechanism to: (a) note all updated dates of the websites, (b) send out advance reminders to Pas website managers, or nodal officers, regarding the approaching update the dates, and (c) pursue defaulting PAs to effect updates and demand compliance from their nodal officers CIC/DoPT may consider setting up a separate dedicated unit for website monitoring and auditing Caution should be exercised to ensure that website audits are done only under the supervision of a central authority such as the CIC and not by any organisation which wants two minutes of fame under the RTI sun The website audit should be done through a predetermined methodology approved by the central authority such as the CIC either directly or through a peer group created for this purpose In order to ensure that the audits are not slipshod or non-serious, the choice of auditors must be made carefully by the central authority/CIC The services of the nodal officers can be usefully requisitioned for monitoring the websites and keeping them updated A scheme of incentives should be put in place to encourage PAs to take interest in the design and the content of the websites. The nodal officers should be similarly incentivised for exceptional work and dedication. Disney has just given us our first look at the brand new Lion King live-action remake. The trailer showcases the absolutely stunning CGI graphics that Disney have worked on and gives us a sneek peak to the film, which is said to follow closely along to the 1994 original. The movie is to hit cinemas in July 2019 and features a star-studded cast. Jon Favreau is directing this, after successfully helming 2016's smash-hit adaptation, The Jungle Book. Like his first live-action Disney film, Favreau's Lion King will use CGI to bring an entirely animal cast to life in a realistic-looking format. Shrine across the border is final resting place of Guru Nanak. New Delhi: In a major breakthrough, both India and Pakistan will create a corridor in their respective territories for Indian pilgrims from Dera Baba Nanak (in Gurdaspur district of Indias Punjab) to the famous Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara (close to the international border in Pakistans Punjab), where the founder of Sikhism and the first guru of the Sikhs, Guru Nanak, had spent the last years of his life in the first half of the 16th century. The move holds special significance for Indian Sikh pilgrims as the corridor will enable easy and smooth travel to Kartarpur Sahib for the 550th birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Nanak that will take place in November next year. Both countries also seemed eager to take credit for the corridor in their respective territories. New Delhi said the Indian government has already decided to build the corridor from Dera Baba Nanak to the international border with all modern amenities on our side, while Pakistan said it had already conveyed its decision to India that it would set up a corridor on the Pakistani side, adding that Pakistan PM Imran Khan would perform the ground-breaking ceremony for the corridor and facilities for Kartarpur on November 28 this year. While Islamabad tried to claim credit, saying New Delhi had endorsed Pakistans proposition, New Delhi had set the record straight a few months ago, noting that it was Pakistan which had stonewalled Indias suggestion in this regard on two previous occasions in 1999 and 2004-05. New Delhi on Thursday said it had urged the Pakistan government to build a corridor across the border in Pakistani Punjab to facilitate easy and smooth visits of pilgrims from India to Kartarpur Sahib (Gurdwara) throughout the year. Pakistan, meanwhile, hailed Thursdays developments as a victory of the peace lobby in both countries, adding it hopes such steps encourage the voice of reason and tranquility on both sides of the border. According to media reports over the past few months, Pakistan had been considering giving Indian Sikh pilgrims visa-free access to Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara through the creation of a corridor, provided they return the same day. But it is yet to be seen whether Islamabad will eventually allow visa-free access or insist on visas. On Thursday, Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi tweeted: Pakistan has already conveyed to India its decision to open Kartarpura Corridor for Baba Guru Nanaks 550th birth anniversary. PM Imran Khan will do break ground at Kartarpura facilities on 28th November. We welcome the Sikh community to Pakistan for this auspicious occasion. Trying to claim credit, Pakistan I&B minister Chaudhry Fawad Hussain tweeted: The Indian Cabinet endorsement of Pakistans proposition on #KartarPurBorderOpening is victory of peace lobby in both countries, its a step towards right direction and we hope such stepsll encourage voice of reason and tranquility on both sides of the border. On Thursday, New Delhi said: In keeping with the resolution adopted by the Cabinet today to commemorate the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev ji in 2019, we have approached and urged the Pakistan government to recognise the sentiments of the Sikh community and build a corridor with suitable facilities in their territory to facilitate easy and smooth visits of pilgrims from India to Kartarpur Sahib throughout the year. The Government of India has already decided to build the corridor from Dera Baba Nanak to the international border with all modern amenities on our side. Pakistani diplomatic sources had earlier said in September that Islamabad planned to make the much-awaited offer to India at the then proposed meeting in New York of the foreign ministers of the two countries. The offer was reportedly to have been made by Pakistans foreign minister to external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj had the two ministers met at a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September this year. The meeting was planned but later cancelled by India over the killing of three Kashmiri policemen by terrorists in J&K and also the killing of a BSF soldier by Pakistani troops. Explaining the issue in great detail in September, MEA spokesman Raveesh Kumar had then said: I can confirm the matter was taken up with the Pakistani side several times in the past. You may be aware about this 1974 protocol between India and Pakistan on visits to religions shrines. I think under this protocol there are 15 shrines... Kartarpur Sahib is not part of this list... I will have to go back to 1999 when during the visit of then Prime Minister (Atal Behari) Vajpayee to Lahore, this issue was raised and this was to consider a visa-free visit to the shrine, but there was no response from the Pakistani side. We have lowered our fair value estimates for the frac sand companies we cover to reflect recent industry developments, most notably deteriorating pricing in the face of continued low-cost sand additions. Our fair value estimate for U.S. Silica (SLCA) moves to $15.50 per share from $24.50, for Covia (CVIA) to $7 per share from $15.75, for Smart Sand (SND) to $3 per share from $6, and for Hi-Crush Partners (HCLP) to $8.50 per unit from $11.50. Our no-moat rating for all of these companies remains in place. We also increased our fair value uncertainty rating for U.S. Silica to extreme. After the revisions, each company looks approximately fairly valued, in our view. The lower fair value estimates are the result of lower long-term frac sand pricing forecasts. Our midcycle (2022) Northern White mine-gate price is now $26 per ton, down from $28 per ton previously, reflecting a lower marginal cost of production due to a reduction in our midcycle Northern White supply forecast to 36 million tons from 40 million tons. The reduction in Northern White supply is caused by an increased forecast for lower-cost regional sand supply. In an astounding reversal of the situation several years ago, when Northern White supplied around 75% of all North American frac sand demand, we expect it to supply less than 30% of our total midcycle forecast frac sand demand of about 128 million tons. An observable decline in ownership rates along with the ever-increasing pressure from the affordability crunch has pushed a significant proportion of Canadians towards rental residences and they deserve as much security and agency as home owners, according to a Vancouver-based advocacy group. Generation Squeeze argued that renters are not second-class citizens, and that the government should focus on developing more purpose-built, affordable rental housing to accommodate the needs of this growing segment of the consumer base. Policy makers should also incentivize the development of more rental buildings to make the segment competitive with condos especially since the goal would be to establish that being a fiscally responsible Canadian does not rely on home ownership alone. Mufti also hit out at the BJP leader for questioning the credentials of former allies of the saffron party. The war of words began with Ram Madhav alleging that Omar Abdullah's National Conference and Mehbooba Mufti's PDP had joined hands on instructions from 'across the border'. (Photo: ANI/ PTI) Srinagar: BJP general secretary Ram Madhav on Thursday withdrew his words after a furious former Jammu and Kashmir chief Minister and National Conference (NC) leader Omar Abdullah dared him to prove his allegations or be man enough to apologise for his comment that there is Pakistani hand in alliance between his party and Mehbooba Muftis Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Ms Mufti also hit out at the BJP leader for questioning the credentials of former allies of the saffron party. Addressing a press conference here, Mr Abdullah said, Its unfortunate that a senior BJP leader has said we have got instructions from Pakistan. I challenge Ram Madhav sahib and his associates to prove this with evidence. You are disrespecting sacrifices of my more than 3,000 party colleagues who refused to dance at Pakistans instructions and were killed. If you have courage Ram Madhav, bring the proof of your accusation to the peoples court. Let us see where you stand. Stop this politics of cowardice. We have seen a lot of people like you who indulge in shoot-and-scoot politics. You level baseless allegations and then lie low. You should either give proof of allegations or apologise, said Mr Abdullah. Mr Abdullah also took to micro-blogging site and said, I dare you @rammadhavbjp ji to prove your allegation. You have RAW, NIA & IB at your command (CBI too is your parrot) so have the guts to place evidence in the public domain. Either prove this or be man enough to apologise. Dont practice shoot & scoot politics. Former chief minister and PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti also hit out at the BJP for alleging that regional parties were working at Pakistans behest, saying credentials of the NC and the PDP were not questioned when they were in alliance with the saffron party. Both PDP and NC have been allies of BJP at some point. Strange that our credentials werent questioned then. But just because our MLAs had enough integrity to stand up to your (BJPs) failed attempts of defection, they are now anti nationalistic? she tweeted. Leaders from both the NC and the BJP exchanged sharp words on Twitter through the day and dissected governor Satya Pal Maliks decision to dissolve the 87-member Assembly and pushing the state towards fresh polls which are likely to be held before May 2019. Mr Madhav asked Mr Abdullah to fight the next polls together with the PDP if genuine love between the two parties promoted a failed government formation attempt. The BJP leader, in a tweet, said, Just take it in your stride Omar Abdullah. Not questioning your patriotism at all. But the sudden love between the NC and the PDP and the hurry to form government leads to many suspicions and political comments. Not to offend you. In the tweet, he added an emoji with a toothy smile. Mr Madhav had earlier alleged, PDP&NC boycotted local body polls last month because they had instructions from across the border. Probably they had fresh instructions from across the border to come together & form govt. What they did prompted Guv to look into the whole issue. In another tweet, the Mr Abdullah wrote, No, misplaced attempts at humour wont work. You have claimed my party has been acting at the behest of Pakistan. I dare you to prove it! Place the evidence of your allegation of NC boycott of ULB polls at Pak behest in public domain. Its an open challenge to you & your govt. ODESSA -- For the fourth consecutive year, Curbside Bistro served a free Thanksgiving meal to Odessans in need. Owner and chef Alejandro Barrientos said he got the idea while working at an internship doing grunt work for a prestigious Austin restaurant. He said he witnessed an encounter that had lasting effects. A father and son had walked into the restaurants kitchen looking for free Thanksgiving sandwiches. The restaurant had provided Thanksgiving sandwiches the previous year, but the chef said they werent giving away sandwiches that year because of money, Barrientos said. I was like, Man this is so crazy, working for this chef we have thousands of dollars in the walk-in., Barrientos said. And he cant give away some turkey sandwiches? He went back to the hotel and told his wife, Stephanie, what had happened. We could do something about that, Barrientos said he told his wife. RELATED: Midland veteran receives home upgrades with help from community The first year, 2015, the couple served the Thanksgiving meal out of their food truck. I made a promise: If God gives me a place where I can give away the food legally Im going to do it every Thanksgiving, Barrientos said. Barrientos said the community has rallied around the event by providing donations of food and clothing. Winter coats, blankets and hygiene kits are provided for people who come to the Thanksgiving meal. A lot of the items for this years Thanksgiving meal were donated by Flowback Energy Group, he said. A chefs goal is to make people feel comfortable and eat our food, Barrientos said. We are here to cook you food for your heart, for your belly, for your soul. He said there was a lot of excitement going into this years event, which gets bigger year after year. We are in an oil boom, but people dont see the downside of it, Barrientos said. Rent has gone up like crazy, all that money you have extra, supposedly, goes to your rent or car or child care. Curbside Bistro frequently partners with the West Texas Food Bank said Barrientos, who mentioned food bank statistics about the number of children who go hungry. I think people are still struggling to find food, Barrientos said. This year, Curbside Bistro prepared about 36 smoked turkeys and about 30 glazed hams for the Thanksgiving meal. Barrientos also cooked mashed potatoes, cornbread stuffing, green bean casserole and cranberry sauce. The local Sams Club donated pumpkin and pecan pies and the Cake Company donated more desserts. Barrientos started cooking turkeys at around 6 p.m. Wednesday and stayed all night at the restaurant watching over the barbecue pits and the smoking turkeys. Im here all night making sure the turkeys dont burn, Barrientos said. I have a lot of friends that stop by and hang out with me for a couple of hours. The chef said that his friends and family have been supportive of the Thanksgiving meal, despite some initial hesitation. This is our Thanksgiving meal, too, Barrientos said. After this, Im burned out, and I want to go to sleep. The most important part of Thanksgiving isnt the food, Barrientos said. Its not about how great the food tastes, but who is at the table with you, he said. THE IMPROBABLE WENDELL WILLKIE The Businessman who Saved the Republican Party and His Country, and Conceived a New World Order By David Levering Lewis Liveright. 400 pp. $28.95 --- For Americans who even know the name, Wendell Willkie is the answer to a trivia question - the third of four Republicans who lost presidential elections to Franklin D. Roosevelt. The election of 1940, when recalled at all, invokes the norm-shattering third term Roosevelt won. Willkie hardly merits a mention. Yet to ignore that election and the man who lost it is to miss a vision of American politics that might have been. So argues David Levering Lewis, a history professor emeritus at New York University and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, in "The Improbable Wendell Willkie." With meticulous attention to detail, Lewis recounts the life story of an intriguing character: a longtime Democrat who retained his Midwestern affect as he scaled the heights of corporate and political power - thus mocked by Interior Secretary Harold Ickes as a "simple, barefoot Wall Street lawyer." This biography is one part political yarn, one part love letter to an extinct creature: the liberal Republican. Willkie himself lost the White House in a blowout and died, unexpectedly at age 52, shortly before Roosevelt's final reelection in 1944. Nonetheless, the author argues, Willkie's embrace of internationalism and acceptance of the New Deal recalibrated the Republican Party and reshaped postwar American politics. Those who long for a Republican Party committed to international engagement, civil and human rights, and a reasonable debate about the role of government in economic life will find much to cheer in Lewis's portrait. Willkie was an anti-racist candidate who cultivated support from African American voters and, in 1942, persuaded the Republican National Committee to support racial integration - years before most national politicians. Willkie the policy pragmatist backed a regulated market economy, collective bargaining rights and Social Security - "virtually a point-for-point endorsement of the New Deal," his conservative critics fumed. And most important, Willkie the internationalist bucked his party's isolationists in the lead-up to World War II, cementing American support for besieged Britain. Deeply researched and engagingly paced, the book weaves Willkie's life into the fabric of U.S. history. With attention that borders on reverence, Lewis introduces the young populist raised in the Democratic traditions of both William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson. As the 1920s roared, the young lawyer established himself in Democratic politics in Akron, Ohio, attending, in 1924, the first of four nominating conventions for the party he would eventually run against. Meanwhile, he made his fortune. A heavy smoker whose only exercise involved slowly sauntering outside for a few minutes each day, Willkie found that "recreation was directorships and multiple board memberships." On the eve of the Great Crash in 1929, Wall Street beckoned, and Willkie moved to Manhattan as legal counsel to a utility holding company. He soon became its president. As the public face of the utilities industry, Willkie began his slow transformation from corporate Democrat to Republican challenger. The government-run Tennessee Valley Authority threatened to out-compete local monopolies like Willkie's. Faced with anti-TVA activism, Roosevelt pushed for "the abolition of the evil of holding companies" in 1935, and Willkie gained national fame as a leader of the opposition over the next several years. Moderate Republicans saw potential and nominated him to take on the president. To the chagrin of many Republicans, candidate Willkie explained that his opposition to government economic programs was limited, and that he agreed that Wall Street malfeasance had caused the Depression. The challenge, as he saw it, was to preserve democracy from the threat of a third-term presidency. "The creed of liberalism he embraced opposed equally unregulated wealth and unlimited government power," Lewis writes. What really defined Willkie's legacy, however, was his opposition to isolationism. Accepting the nomination as Adolf Hitler's armies swept across Western Europe, Willkie passionately championed the Anglo-American alliance. On the campaign trail, he refused to attack Roosevelt's Lend-Lease program or the draft. His repudiation of anti-Semitic right-wing isolationists such as Charles Lindbergh and the America First Committee diluted their political potency. Any other Republican candidate, Lewis concludes, would have obstructed the president, strengthened the already-strong isolationist factions on the right, and left Britain to its fate. For years after the campaign, when he learned of Willkie's death, Roosevelt affirmed the candidate's importance, giving him credit for Lend-Lease and the draft. "He was a godsend to this country when we needed him most," Roosevelt declared. In 1942, as a private citizen but titular head of the "loyal opposition," Willkie undertook a seven-week airplane journey around the world. He visited nine countries and met with world leaders including Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Madame Chiang Kai-shek. The trip cemented his devotion to liberal internationalism and Roosevelt's fledgling plans for what would become the United Nations. His travel report, published as "One World" in 1943, offered a new vision of anti-imperialist and democratic global order. In the end, though, Lewis's subtitle - "The Businessman Who Saved the Republican Party and His Country, and Conceived a New World Order" - promises more than Willkie's too-short life delivered. Certainly, old-fashioned isolationism declined after the United States entered the war, and for a brief moment in the mid-1940s, a new global order rooted in national self-determination and Roosevelt's "four freedoms" seemed in the offing. Yet Lewis's claim that Willkie saved the Republican Party from corrosive illiberalism of isolationists, racists and imperialists goes too far. In hindsight, his was at best a stopgap measure. In the postwar period, Lewis admits, the GOP embraced "a more belligerent anti-communism that became indistinguishable from imperialism in all but name." The very term "one world," coined by Willkie, became an epithet of illiberal politics, the precursor to today's anti-Semitic slur "globalists." In the same vein, Willkie did not ensure a permanent accord between the GOP and New Deal liberalism. Some corporate liberals accepted economic regulation in the public interest, but a growing and well-funded subset of executives, lobbyists and activists did not. Eventually, they would recapture the party in the name of "free enterprise." It is clear that Willkie's vision of liberal Republicanism was short-lived. But it is impossible to say how, had he lived, he might have shaped the struggle over liberal capitalism that defined midcentury America. History can be fickle like that. --- Benjamin C. Waterhouse is an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of "Lobbying America: The Politics of Business from Nixon to NAFTA" and "The Land of Enterprise: A Business History of the United States." The district has been divided into sectors and each sector will be headed by a gazette officer. Lucknow: The Yogi Adityanath government has beefed up security for the proposed VHP and Shiv Sena programmes to be held in Ayodhya on Sunday. The VHP is organising a Dharam Sansad to demand legislation for construction of Ram temple and claims to have invited over two lakh persons to the event. Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray is also visiting Ayodhya on Sunday and special trains are bringing Shiv Sainiks from Maharashtra for the proposed rally that will be addressed by Mr Thackeray. The state government has made elaborate security arrangements in the Ayodhya district and anti-terror squads, paramilitary forces and drone cameras will be deployed to ensure peace in the holy city on Sunday. The Shiv Sena, meanwhile, has decided not to hold rally but Mr Thackeray will meet saints and seers, attend the Saryu aarti and offer prayers at the makeshift Ram temple during his two day visit. UP DGP O P Singh said on Thursday that all security arrangements have been made in the district and steps are being taken to ensure that the Supreme Court order to maintain peace in the area is implemented. The district has been divided into sectors and each sector will be headed by a gazette officer. ADG Lucknow zone and IG Lucknow will be camping in Ayodhya on November 24 and 25. The DGP said that no mass movement of people would be allowed towards the makeshift temple. Prohibitory orders have also been imposed in Ayodhya to prevent congregation of people at any spot. SSP Ayodhya, Joginder Singh said that 20 companies of PAC and two companies of RAF will arrive shortly in Ayodhya. What the Hell Do You Have to Lose? Trump's War on Civil Rights By Juan Williams PublicAffairs. 310 pp. $27 --- During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump liked to point out that under the Obama administration, black Americans had to contend with bad schools and high rates of crime and unemployment. In soliciting their votes, he asked, "What the hell do you have to lose?" In his new book, journalist Juan Williams discusses the Trump administration's efforts to undermine the gains made by African Americans, but his major focus is on black achievement in employment, education, housing, public accommodations and voting rights over the past half-century. Each chapter features a biographical essay about a prominent male activist, a questionable choice given the centrality of women to the black freedom struggle. In his introduction, Williams cites examples of Trump's racial attacks on President Barack Obama, including the charge that Obama was not born in the United States and was thus ineligible for the White House, a fanciful story that few pundits took seriously early in Trump's 2016 campaign. Williams also calls attention to Trump's refusal to condemn the perpetrators of violent demonstrations in Charlottesville in 2017, particularly the Ku Klux Klan and members of the alt-right faction. Trump's racist behavior is not of recent vintage, and grew over many decades. Williams's most effective chapter, "Housing," examines the Trump family's long history of denying blacks access to their apartment buildings and houses, beginning with Fred Trump's construction projects in Brooklyn and Queens after World War II. Young Donald continued his father's discriminatory policies when he took over the operation in his late 20s, and a later court ruling banned the Trumps from discriminating against people of color in their business. As president, Trump has opposed aid for low-income housing, recommended huge cuts in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and wants to eliminate Choice Neighborhoods, an Obama program that revitalizes poor neighborhoods. The last half of this chapter analyzes the federal government's housing programs, beginning with New Deal public housing projects that segregated blacks and whites. There follows a long autobiographical essay about Robert Weaver, an African American leader who played a major role in the government's elimination of discriminatory programs in housing and championed positive programs, including the Fair Housing Act of 1968. In a public career that spanned nearly four decades, Weaver became the first secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1966. Unlike most of the other men profiled in this book, Weaver remains relatively unknown, and Williams has done us a service by calling our attention to his many achievements. The rest of the book follows the same format, with less than satisfactory results. The first chapter, "Voting Rights," briefly summarizes efforts by the Trump administration to suppress the black vote. Williams devotes the next 35 pages to the voting rights campaign in Mississippi in the early 1960s, relying on secondary accounts and a couple of biographies of activist Bob Moses of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, whose life is profiled. There is not much new here, even for the nonspecialist. Williams ignores earlier struggles across the South to gain the vote, and has nothing to say about the battles in Congress over passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The section "Education" again zeroes in on Mississippi. After discussing Trump's unwillingness to promote educational opportunities for blacks, exemplified by his choice of Betsy DeVos for education secretary, Williams spends nearly half the chapter rehearsing James Meredith's successful attempt to desegregate the University of Mississippi in 1962 (an event he covered in detail in his earlier book, "Eyes on the Prize"). In focusing on institutions of higher learning, he omits coverage of the courageous attempts of black parents and their children to integrate previously all-white elementary schools in the immediate aftermath of the 1954 Supreme Court decision in (BEGIN ITAL)Brown v. Board of Education(END ITAL), and the often violent responses of Southern whites to this invasion of one of their most cherished institutions. In the chapter titled "Black Voices," Williams contrasts Trump's black supporters, such as the Rev. Darrell Scott and rapper Kanye West, who were "neither experienced at Washington politics nor wise about policies dealing with black Americans," with African Americans such as Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice, who served in the administration of George W. Bush. Much of the chapter replays the contentious meeting in May 1963 between Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and a group of black activists brought together by James Baldwin, who forms the biographical subject of this section. Totally unprepared for the acrimonious debate that ensued, Kennedy never resolved his differences with Baldwin. However, Williams gives the attorney general credit because, unlike Trump, he at least listened to his black critics. The chapter "Employment" contains useful information about the economic gains blacks have made, and concludes with a long biographical profile of black labor leader A. Philip Randolph. Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the subject of the "Public Accommodations" chapter. Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois is profiled here, a curious choice. Dirksen was able to deliver the Republican votes in the Senate necessary to break the Southern filibuster, but he was hardly a civil rights activist, and the person most responsible for moving the bill through Congress, Lyndon B. Johnson, gets short shrift. The president's dedicated efforts on behalf of the bill receive little attention, and the only significant mention of LBJ occurs earlier, when Williams criticizes him for his civil rights stance when he was Senate majority leader in the 1950s. "What the Hell Do You Have to Lose?" is directed toward the general reader. Although parts of the book are of interest, Williams covers familiar territory, and several of the long biographical sections come across as, well, padding. Those who wish to learn more about the struggles and achievements of African Americans over the past half-century will be disappointed, and any concerned citizen who reads a newspaper or watches cable (other than Fox News Channel) is well aware of Trump's almost daily outbursts concerning racial matters. Williams's topic is certainly timely, but the book promises more than it delivers. --- John Dittmer is professor emeritus of history at DePauw University and author of "Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi," which won the Bancroft Prize in American history. 'E-levy is retrogressive, can't be used ... Top LeT commander Azad Ahmed Malik, who killed journalist Shujaat Bukhari, was among 6 terrorists killed in encounter. Veteran journalist and editor of Rising Kashmir Shujaat Bukhari was killed outside his office in Srinagars Mushtaq Press Enclave on June 14. (Photo: File) Srinagar: A top commander of outlawed Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) allegedly involved in the murder of Rising Kashmir editor Shujaat Bukhari is among six militants killed on Friday in a fierce gunfight with security forces in Anantnag district of restive Jammu and Kashmir, the officials said. Srinagar-based defence spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia said that the exchange of fire between security forces and militants began in the early hours in Shalgund village of Bijbehara area of the district. Six terrorists eliminated in the encounter and arms and ammunition were recovered from the spot, he said. The police officials identified one of the slain militants as top LeT commander Azad Ahmed Malik. They claimed that Malik was among the militants who killed veteran journalist and editor of Rising Kashmir Shujaat Bukhari outside his office in Srinagars Mushtaq Press Enclave on June 14. J&K police had on June 28, two weeks after Bukhari was murdered, claimed that the conspiracy to kill him was hatched by LeT militants based in Pakistan and executed by its three cadres including two locals and a Pakistani national in Srinagar. Inspector General of Police (Kashmir range) SP Pani had told the media that before targeting Bukhari, a malicious campaign was spearheaded against him by the LeT through social media from the neighbouring country. He had also said that among the conspirators was Sheikh Sajjad Gul, a resident of Srinagars Zainakote area, who is now based in Pakistan and that the crime was executed by LeT operatives Azad Ahmed Malik alias Dada alias Zaid, Muzaffar Ahmed Bhat and Muhammad Naveed Jutt alias Abu Hanzalla. Malik who was killed on Friday was a resident of Arwani village of Bijbehara and, as per police statement, had been active as LeT militant since December 2016 whereas Muzafar Ahmad Bhat alias Talha is from Sopat village of Qazigund area in neighbouring Kulgam district. Naveed Jutt, the third alleged executioner, is a Pakistani national from Sahiwal (Multan). He had on February 6 this year escaped after killing two J&K policemen who were escorting him to a hospital in Srinagar for medical check-up from a City prison and is since known to be active mainly in south Kashmir. He had been arrested by the Army from Kulgam in June 2014 and was lodged in Srinagars high security central prison. The police had constituted a Special Police Investigation Team (SIT) under Deputy Inspector General of Police (Central Kashmir) VK Virdhi to probe the gruesome murder of Bukhari. But it has, so far, not been able to file chargesheet against the accused in the court. The LeT had strongly denied its involvement in the journalists killing and in its counter charge blamed Indian intelligence agencies. The others killed with Malik on Friday were Basit Mir, Anees Ahmed, Aqib, Shahid and Firdaus Ahmed- all local Kashmiris. A senior Army commander termed the killing of the militants as a successful surgical operation. Lt. Gen AK Bhatt, the General-Officer-Commanding of Srinagar based 15 Army Corps told reporters in north-western town of Baramulla, It was a prompt, precise successful operation and the security forces didnt suffer any damage in it. Giving the details of the operation, a police spokesman said that a joint party of the Army's 3 Rashtriya Rifles, the counter insurgency Special Operations Group (SOG) of the J&K police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) launched a pre-dawn cordon-and-search operation in Shalgund-Satkipora in Dachnipora forest belt of Bijbehara following credible input about the presence of militants. As the operation was going on, the search party was fired upon by the militants. The fire was retaliated leading to a gunfight, he said adding that in the fire fight six militants were killed whose corpses were retrieved from the site of encounter. The police also said that incriminating materials including huge quantity of arms and ammunition were recovered from the site of encounter. Meanwhile, the security forces are reported to have launched another cordon-and-search operation at Gulab Bagh of Tral area in neighbouring Pulwama district following specific inputs about the presence of militants in the village. Separately, the militants targeted an Army camp in Kaimoh area of southern Kulgam district on Thursday evening, defence spokesman said. A girl in the adjoining area got injured in the indiscriminate firing by the terrorists. Alert soldiers retaliated immediately and the Quick Reaction Team was launched in the direction from which the firing had come. The terrorists however managed to escape taking advantage of the terrain and weather conditions, the spokesman said. The police officials identified one of the slain militants as top LeT commander Azad Ahmed Malik. Villagers carry the body of a militant killed in an encouter with security forces in J&Ks Anantnag district on Friday. (Photo: AP) SRINAGAR: A top commander of outlawed Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) allegedly involved in the murder of Rising Kashmir editor Shujaat Bukhari was among six militants killed Friday in a fierce gunfight with security forces in Ana-ntnag district of restive Jammu and Kashmir, the officials said. Srinagar-based defence spokesman Col. Rajesh Kalia said that the exchange of fire between the security forces and militants began in the early hours in Shalgund village of Bijbehara area of the district. Six terrorists were eliminated in the encounter and arms and ammunition were recovered from the spot, he said. The police officials identified one of the slain militants as top LeT commander Azad Ahmed Malik. They claimed that Malik was among the militants who killed veteran journalist and editor of Rising Kashmir Shujaat Bukhari outside his office in Srinagars Mushtaq Press Enclave on June 14 evening. The J&K police had on June 28, two weeks after Bukhari was murdered, claimed that the conspiracy to kill him was hatched by LeT militants based in Pakistan and executed by its three cadres, including two locals and a Pakistani national, in Srinagar. IGP (Kashmir range) S.P. Pani had told a press conference here that before targeting Bukhari, a malicious campaign was spearheaded against him by the LeT through social media from the neighbouring country. He had also said that among the conspirators was Sheikh Sajjad Gul, a resident of Srinagars Zainakote area, who is now based in Pakistan and that the crime was executed by LeT operatives Azad Ahmed Malik alias Dada alias Zaid, Muzaffar Ahmed Bhat and Muhammad Naveed Jutt alias Abu Hanzalla. Malik, who was killed on Friday, was a resident of Arwani village of Bijbehara and, per per the police statement, had been active as a LeT militant since December 2016, whereas Muzafar Ahmad Bhat alias Talha is from Sopat village of Qazigund area in the neighbouring Kulgam district. Associated Press Writer They met in their early 70s at their small town's dance for senior citizens, and they fell in love. Married five years ago, James and Ullain Christmas enjoyed playing dominoes, attending church and fishing. They celebrated last Thanksgiving with family and went back to their house in Bowie, their little dog waiting for them. That was the last time their relatives saw them alive. The next day, 76-year-old James Christmas was shot in the chest and his 79-year-old wife was hit in the head 15 times with the shotgun. Authorities found a human arm and head protruding from a dirt mound at the back of the couple's property outside Bowie, where the couple sometimes stayed on weekends. "Two police officers on their hands and knees dug, one slow handful of dirt at a time," Montague County District Attorney Tim Cole told jurors Monday. "These two folks had been thrown in a shallow grave, like discarded trash." Charles William Jordan, whose capital murder trial began Monday, faces the death penalty if convicted of the slayings that authorities say happened after the couple tried to kick him out of their house on the land. But defense attorneys said Jordan, also charged in the Jan. 28 Montague County Jail break that triggered a nationwide manhunt, hit the woman a couple of times after she went berserk upon seeing her husband die from the shot Jordan claims was accidental. "We're not talking about a gentle, cookie-baking grandmother," Ron Poole told the jury. The trial was moved to Fort Worth because of publicity in Montague, about 100 miles to the northwest. Testimony was to resume Tuesday. James Christmas had recently allowed his teen grandson Willie Christmas and two friends, including Jordan, to stay in his house in the county while the trio looked for work, Cole said. But after complaints from neighbors about rowdy behavior, the Christmases decided to ask the three to leave. The couple stopped at a Dairy Queen on the way to the property, several miles from their Bowie home, and said they were going to make sure the trio were moving, Charlie Boyett testified Monday. After the murders, the trio were captured in Washington, where Jordan approached officers and confessed, Cole said. Jordan, 30, told police he acted alone, but Willie Christmas helped bury the bodies and Chrystal Gale Soto cleaned the bloody house, Cole said. Soto, 22, and Willie Christmas, 18, were indicted on charges of theft and tampering with evidence. They had been charged but were not indicted for murder. Willie was expected to testify against Jordan, but Soto was not. Soto, was part of the group that overpowered two Montague County jailers, stole a vehicle and remained on the lam for 10 days. The four were captured at an Ardmore, Okla., convenience store. The other two escapees were Curtis Gambill and Joshua Bagwell, serving life sentences for the 1996 murder of a Waurika, Okla., high school cheerleader, Heather Rich. The two had been in the Montague County Jail several weeks for further proceedings in that case. The corridor is planned as part of celebrations for the 550th birth anniversary next November of Guru Nanak. New Delhi: In a fresh strain in bilateral ties, India on Friday lodged a strong protest with Pakistan against harassment of officials of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad and denying them access to Sikh pilgrims from India visiting Nankana Sahib Gurudwara and the Sacha Sauda Gurudwara across the border. New Delhi also accused Islamabad of attempting to promote secessionist tendencies among Indian pilgrims. According to sources, Pakistani security agencies have been trying to spread pro-Khalistan propaganda and harass innocent Indian Sikh pilgrims by denying them consular access. There were reports that pro-Khalistani banners were shown to Indian pilgrims while they were on their way to the two Sikh shrines. This is the third consecutive visit of Indian Sikh pilgrims when Pakistan has prevented the high commission officials from meeting them on the pretext of security, the ministry of external affairs said. In a statement, the ministry said, Consular officials of the High Commission of India in Islamabad were harassed and denied access, on November 21 and 22 at Gurudwara Nankana Sahib and Gurudwara Sacha Sauda, to the Indian pilgrims visiting Pakistan under the bilateral protocol. As a result of such harassment they were compelled to return to Islamabad without performing their diplomatic and consular duties vis-a-vis Indian pilgrims. The MEA called the denial of access by Pakistan a violation of international legal instruments and conventions like the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. We have also expressed grave concern at reports of attempts being made during the ongoing visit of the Indian pilgrims to Pakistan, to incite communal disharmony and intolerance and promote secessionist tendencies with the objective of undermining Indias sovereignty and territorial integrity, the ministry said. New Delhi also said that Islamabad has been called upon to take measures to not allow its territory to be used for any hostile propaganda and support for secessionist movements against India. Pakistan has been reminded that this is in contrast to the treatment meted out to their High Commissioner and the consular officials in New Delhi who have been provided full access to meet Pakistani pilgrims who are currently in India on pilgrimage to Kalyar Sharif, the ministry said. Indias protest came a day after the two countries agreed to develop a corridor on their respective side of the border to link a historic Sikh shrine in Kartarpur in Pakistan. The Indian corridor will be in Punjabs Gurdaspur district and help pilgrims reach the shrine which is on the banks of the Ravi in Norawal district of Pakistan Punjab. The corridor is planned as part of celebrations for the 550th birth anniversary next November of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, who lived in undivided Punjab in the 15th and 16thcentury. Nighttime Adult Education classes for High School Equivalency Certificate (formerly called the GED) started Sept. 4. Night classes will be from 5-8 p.m. Monday and Tuesdays at the Plainview Adult Learning Center, 1407 W. Fifth St. in the South Plains Community Action Office. Subjects covered include math, reading/language arts, science and social studies. It's a self-paced program. Daytime classes are offered 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Call Sue at 806-296-5459 for more information. Doing some spring cleaning? Unger Memorial Library accepts donations of books and magazines all year. Bring your items to the library at 825 Austin St., Monday through Friday. For more information call 296-1148. Hale County farmers and landowners that need areas sprayed by the Noxious Weed Control District should either visit the board's website at halecountynoxiousweeds.com or contact Lewis Senter, board supervisor, at 806-292-4750 Show your patriotism by having a U.S. flag displayed outside your home or business on eight holidays throughout the year with the Kiwanis Club's flag program! The club works with PHS Band Boosters, PHS Jr. Navy ROTC, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and Elks Lodge. Proceeds benefit local scholarships. Cost is $30. Make checks payable to the Plainview Kiwanis Club, P.O. Box 684, Plainview, Texas 79073. The South Plains AA Group meets at 803 S. Columbia in Plainview. A Big Book Study (open meeting) is held from 6-7 p.m. Monday. Closed meetings are held at 6 p.m. Tuesday, 6 p.m. Thursday and 10 a.m. Sunday. Friends of Music, C.K. Bryan Instrument Loaner Program for middle school band students is accepting donations of instruments as well as funds for repairs of instruments. Contact Wayland School of Music at 806-291-1076 for information. Office hours for the Hale County Veterans Service Office, staffed by Karla Glowicki, is 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday. The office is at 111 W. Sixth, in the northwest corner of the Courthouse Annex. Call 806-291-5301 or email kglowicki@halecounty.org. Fitness for Life, a program of Paragon Healthcare, offers a fitness class for senior adults at Covenant Hospital every Wednesday from 10-10:45 a.m. in the Max Gabriel Room. The class is free of charge and is open to all ability levels, including those with walkers and wheelchairs. Free ESL classes are held Monday through Thursday at The Hale County Literacy Council. Contact 806-293-6186 for more information. Plainview Habitat for Humanity is a Christian, nonprofit housing organization that seeks to put God's love into action by building homes, communities and hope. It is currently accepting applications. Visit www.plainviewhabitat.org for application criteria and information. To contact its team, email plainview_habitat@yahoo.com or write Plainview Habitat for Humanity, PO Box 1125, Plainview, TX 79073. Covenant Health Plainview hosts the cancer survivors prayer support group "We Fight to Live" from 7-8 p.m. the first Tuesday of each month in Room B. The sessions will consist of a monthly topic and presenter, and a structured segment, allowing time for group sharing. The support group is open to those with a cancer diagnosis and anyone affected by their diagnosis. The group is led by Andrea Ingram, a cancer survivor, as well as Sherry Wall, hospital mission services. There is no charge for the group. For more information contact Andrea Ingram at 806-293-7614 or Sherry Wall at 806-291-3364. The Salvation Army of Plainview is serves hot meals and offers hot showers Monday through Friday from 5:30-6:30 p.m. at the Center of Hope, The Salvation Army community center. The center is located at 201 Ash. There are no cost, income, family size or age restrictions. Those interested in helping The Salvation Army of Plainview can email michelle.rutherford@uss.salvationarmy.org or call (806) 296-6375. The YMCA will start hosting noon lap swim Mondays through Fridays from 6-7:30 a.m. and Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from noon-1:30 p.m. Wayland Baptist University will host a Focus on Your Health seminar every second Monday of the month through May. Each event will be from 6-7 p.m. at the Pete & Nelda Laney Center in room 208. The talks are free to attend. Here is a list of dates and topics: Dec. 10: Vitamins, Minerals and Supplements: What to take...or NOT! Jan. 14: Signs, Symptoms & Treatment for Depression: When to take action! Feb. 11: Getting to the HEART of the matter: The ABC's of Heart Disease? (free blood pressure check) March 11: Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month: How to go about getting tested. April 8: Polypharmacy, What's in YOUR medicine cabinet? May 13: Protecting yourself from Mosquito Bites: A message from the CDC. Free Bible Study classes at First Christian Church are open to anyone interested. The study will be led by Pastor Richard Dye at 7 p.m. Tuesdays starting Oct. 9. This is a six-week study, on Tuesday nights. Materials will be provided free of charge. Study topic is Old Testament texts regarding the Advent season leading to Christmas. Go into the north door of the fellowship hall or call 293-2521 for info. The next performance in the 74th series of Plainview Community Concerts is set for Jan. 18. A news release from the Plainview Community Concerts describes the productions as follows: --"Vocal Trash" Jan. 18 Glee meets Stomp --"Five Sax" Feb. 21 international band of saxophone players --"Master Illusionist Brad Ross" March 14 believe in magic again Each concert will be at Harral Auditorium at the Wayland Baptist University campus at Seventh St. and Utica. Season tickets are still available and is good for all Plainview shows and free admission at Community Concert shows in Pampa and Borger, according to a news release from Plainview Community Concerts. Prices for season tickets are $45 for an individual pass, $10 for students, $100 for a family pass and $55 for single-parent families. There will be special pricing for single-show tickets, which will be offered based on availability. For additional information, call 292-8088 or email liveinplainview@gmail.com. The Texas Tech Museum is hosting a "The Red That Colored the World" exhibition through Jan. 17. According to a news release from Tech, the exhibition "combines new research and original scholarship to explore the history and widespread use of art in cochineal, an insect-based dye source for the color red." A bereavement support group will be offered beginning Oct. 10 at First United Methodist- Church, 1001 West 7th Street. Enter the "Office" door under the covered portico on the south. There will be six sessions with sessions running from 5-6 p.m. each Wednesday. There is no charge, and all are welcome. For more information call Carole Bell at 292-0134. The Wayland Baptist University Abraham Art Gallery is hosting a showcase of Ellie and Lynwood Kreneck's artwork. The artwork will be on display at the LRC Library Building on the WBU campus through Dec. 7. Rosa Fuentez was recently diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Her family has set up an account at Happy State Bank under "Rosa Fuentes" for donations to go toward medical costs. Silvia Rosalez said her mother was diagnosed on Sept. 28 following bad back pain. Fuentez spent two weeks in the hospital and is now on hospice care. The Floyd Country Christmas Ball is set for Nov. 30 at the Floyd County Friends Unity Center. Tickets for the ball can be purchased at Payne's Pharmacy of Floydada or D&J Gin of Lockney. Those interested in learning more can call Dustee Sollis at (806) 983-6228. The family of Rocky Rosas will host its 11th annual Thanksgiving Dinner on Nov. 21 from 6 p.m. until the food runs out. The free event will be at 615 Ash St. and is open to the community. A bounce house will be available for the kids. For additional information, call Rosas at (806) 200-4444. Happy State Bank is selling raffle tickets for FISH 1 ticket for $1 or 6 for $5. Drawing will be Nov. 21. Pictured are Ron Warren FISH and Willis McCutcheon HSB. Christmas parade entries and guidelines are available at the Plainview Chamber of Commerce. This year's theme is "T'was the night before Christmas". The parade of lights will be Thursday, Dec. 6, at 6:30 p.m. The parade route starts at Broadways Street park & goes to the Train Depot. Santa and Mrs. Claus will be arriving on Dec. 1, for the annual "Breakfast with Santa" at the Ollie Line Center, from 9 a.m. 10:30 a.m. The cost is $5 per child and includes a gift sack filled with goodies. The event will include games and giveaways. Parents are encouraged to bring their own cameras. Tickets may be purchased at the door or in advance at the RSVP office at 825 Austin (basement of Unger Library). This event is sponsored by the Runningwater Draw RSVP and Hale County 4-H Members. Call 291-1223 for information. RSVP is sponsored by the City of Plainview. The Radar Foundation will host a Sensory Santa event specifically for children with autism, kids with sensory processing disorders and any child with a disability. The event will allow these kids to meet Santa in a sensory-friendly environment with dim lighting, no music, less of a crowd and a soft-voiced Santa. There will be other sensory-friendly activities at the event. The meet and greet with Santa will be from 5-7 p.m. at First Baptist Church in the Pastor's Class Building on Eighth St. and Broadway on Dec. 6 right before the Christmas Parade. To submit This and That items: phnews@hearstnp.com Minister Vijai Sardesai said 'several things happened' and said resigning was not in 'his (Parrikar's) hands entirely'. Parrikar, 62, has been recuperating at his residence in Goa since he was discharged from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi on October 14. He is suffering from a pancreatic ailment. (Photo: File) Panaji: Goa Forward Party chief and Agriculture Minister Vijai Sardesai suggested on Thursday that the ailing Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar wanted to resign, but the BJP high command vetoed it. "He wanted to give up the CM's post altogether. He had even shown inclination to give away his portfolios (to other ministers) when he was admitted to a hospital during Ganesh Chaturthi festival," Sardesai said. "But then several things happened. BJP high command stepped in....it (to resign or not) is not in his (Parrikar's) hands entirely," Sardesai told reporters. Parrikar, 62, has been recuperating at his residence in Goa since he was discharged from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi on October 14. He is suffering from a pancreatic ailment. Asked about independent MLA and Revenue Minister Rohan Khaunte's remark that the administration has become sluggish in Parrikar's absence, Sardesai said, "I have always been saying that CM's ill-health has had some sort of impact, and it is showing." To a question on another alliance partner Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) filing a petition against two former Congress MLAs who joined the BJP, the minister said it was surprising. MGP has moved the Goa Bench of Bombay High Court, seeking to disqualify Subhash Shirodkar and Dayanand Sopte, former Congress MLAs who recently joined the BJP. "It is a matter between two constituents of the alliance -- BJP and MGP. So we are not concerned with it," Sardesai said. "As far as MGP is concerned, its decision to go to the court is surprising....I can believe it is a preemptive move, they (MGP) have not lost anything, Congress has lost two MLAs," Sardesai said in a cryptic remark. Speculation was rife earlier that MGP MLAs might join the BJP which does not have a majority on its own in Goa Assembly. BJP spokespersons were not available for comment on Sardesai's remarks. City health inspectors cited several San Antonio-area restaurants this week for storing raw chicken or meat above ready-to-eat foods in cold storage areas, but another issue many eateries faced was an accumulation of greasy build-up and food debris on their walls. A total of 30 restaurants scored 89 or below due to several common problems including dead roaches or pests, uncovered lids and containers, improper hair and beard restraints and the ever-present expired food handler's certificate. LAST WEEK'S INSPECTIONS: Nov. 16, 2018 This week's highlight goes to a West Side food mart that an inspector noted used a bucket to contain a Pepsi machine leak, prompting the health inspector to write that it was "harboring a large number of flies." To make the Express-News' list of dirtiest restaurants, an establishment must score 89 or below or anything less than an "A" during a random city health inspection over the past week. The San Antonio Express-News examines hundreds of restaurant inspections each week conducted by the San Antonio Food and Environment Services division to bring you the eateries with scores of 89 or below. Check out the slideshow above to see which San Antonio restaurants were cited by health inspectors this week. Restaurants are graded on a 100-point system where "100" is a perfects score, and demerits are based upon the number of violations found during a regular food establishment inspection. There are three categories of demerits and each is assigned a demerit score of 3, 2, 1 points, according to the health division. Scores and demerits listed are only representatives of the state of the restaurant at the time of the inspection and establishments are surveyed at random. If you have questions about inspections or complaints about a food establishment, contact the Metropolitan Health District office by calling 3-1-1 or 210-207-6000. Be prepared to provide the name, location, date of incident and details of the incident. WASHINGTON - The three District of Columbia high school seniors had a whirlwind of a summer. First, they had a private meeting with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Or was it Microsoft chief Satya Nadella? They can't quite remember. But they know they loved it all. Google sent them to Flint, Michigan, to distribute clean water. They traveled to Seattle to participate in a computer programming event, and to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. They received fan mail from Girl Scouts. They met black female scientists who offered career advice. Colleges called, swaying them to apply to their campuses. And Lester Holt featured them on "NBC Nightly News." Their story tread an all-too-familiar path in our epoch: from inspiring to dismaying and back to inspiring. "A lot has transpired," said Bria Snell, one of the high-schoolers. Mikayla Sharrieff, India Skinner and Snell - all 17 years old and students at Banneker High - were finalists in a prestigious NASA high school competition. The trio were the only all-black, female team to make it that far. But during the online voting portion of the competition, users on 4chan - an anonymous Internet forum where users are known to push hoaxes and spew racist and homophobic comments - tried to ensure the students wouldn't win. They hacked the voting system, erasing votes, and told others not to support the teens because of the color of their skin. A Washington Post article about the incident led politicians, business leaders and scientists to connect with the three students. For the NASA competition, they had developed a method to purify lead-contaminated water in school drinking fountains, and D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser awarded them a $4,000 grant to further their invention. Six months later, the teens - now seniors applying to college - say the encounter with racism left them undeterred. They still plan to be doctors and scientists and know that, as black females in these male-dominated fields, they almost certainly will encounter discrimination again as professionals. "Looking back at it, in a way, I'm glad I experienced it at such a young age because I'll know how to handle it when I encounter it again," Sharrieff said. "I know I'll hit more bumps in the road and, after experiencing this, I can speak up." The teens said the hacking wasn't completely unexpected. When they posted about their competition on Twitter, some people criticized them. The anonymous posters used racial epithets, argued that the students' project did not deserve to be a finalist and said the black community was voting for the teens only because of their race. The students suspected that one of these people could take more drastic measures to thwart their chances. When they saw their vote count in the NASA competition plummet, their fears were confirmed. "To be told we were at an advantage because of our skin, it was confusing," Snell said. "Why can't we just win because we worked hard? It seems they can't see past the color of our skin." "If a panel of NASA judges could see something in our projects, why couldn't the world see that?" Sharrieff asked. After the attempted hacking of the competition was confirmed, Marissa Jennings - an African-American woman and their adviser in the competition - invited the teens to her office to try to unpack what happened but struggled to have the conversation. "That was a moment I will never forget. Having to tell these 17-year-olds that something that they worked so hard for got stopped dead in its strides," Jennings said. "At their best, they have to face the world telling them, no, you're not the best." She said the students remained determined and decided they would set an example for girls of color across the country hoping to pursue careers in science. Each time they received an invitation to meet with people or participate in an event, they decided together whether they would attend. The invitation to meet with DeVos generated the most discussion. The teens said they heard about the controversies surrounding the education secretary and feared she didn't support young women who were interested in science and who attended the traditional public school system. But they thought meeting with her was an important opportunity to advocate for science education. They said DeVos appeared genuinely interested in hearing their suggestions about how the country could encourage more female students to get excited about science. DeVos's office did not respond to an inquiry about the meeting. "We told her that within public schools, we need more programs for young girls" in science, technology and engineering, Sharrieff said. "We looked at this as an opportunity to say what we need for us and other girls who look like us but won't have this opportunity." The teens are completing the first semester of their senior year at Banneker, a selective high school in the traditional public school system that serves mostly black students. They have applied to their top college choices, which include Spelman College, Northwestern University and Louisiana State University. Anita Berger, the principal at Banneker, said she was proud of the students for remaining determined in the wake of the racism they encountered in the NASA competition. She said the student body was aware of what happened, and some teachers had discussions about it in their classrooms. "It opened their eyes to the real adversity in the world," she said. "It could have taken them down, but they didn't fall." The trio said they are still focused on improving their invention to ensure that children have clean water in school. They received advice from scientists and are using the grant they received from the mayor to update the parts used to build the contraption. They've also been more engaged in activism, working to promote science to young girls - especially girls who look like them. "People are stuck in their own prejudices and in their own heads," Skinner said. "They can't see what's going on in the world. It's becoming more diverse and inclusive." An emergency room physician in Rhode Island said one of her own had been "murdered" and vowed to fight. A Baltimore trauma surgeon proclaimed that "Gun Violence is not just a statistic," and named the police officer, physician and pharmacy resident who were killed Monday at Mercy Hospital & Medical Center in Chicago. REPEAT: After school shootings, NRA pins blame on familiar list Physicians and nurses from Atlanta and Chicago to New York and Washington and even abroad expressed anger and anguish after another instance of gun violence - one that an emergency physician said "hits too close to home." They called out the National Rifle Association for having told them to "stay in their lane." They called on colleagues to speak out about gun violence. "No one should have to fear for their life in a hospital (or anywhere) because of guns," one physician tweeted. Another asked: "Are you really still asking if @ThisIsOurLane?" "Hospitals are supposed to be places of healing, not death. Schools are supposed to be places of learning, not death. Churches are supposed to be places of worship, not death," Eugene Gu, a surgeon and scientist, tweeted late Monday, following the deadly shooting at the hospital in Chicago. "Our country is supposed to be the United States of America, not a war torn battlefield. Of death." The calls to action come after the NRA told doctors to "stay in their lane" earlier this month, suggesting that gun policy is the NRA's domain. It sparked a backlash from medical professionals across the United States and abroad, voicing their disdain on social media with the hashtag #ThisIsOurLane. The Chicago shooting further fueled the flames, prompting medical professionals to voice their opinions. As The Washington Post's Frances Stead Sellers reported: The NRA tweet was spurred by a position paper from the American College of Physicians posted on Oct. 30 by the Annals of Internal Medicine and titled "Reducing Firearm Injuries and Deaths in the United States." The ACP recommended "a public health approach to firearms-related violence and the prevention of firearm injuries and deaths," saying the medical profession has a "special responsibility" to speak out on the prevention of such injuries and supporting "appropriate regulation of the purchase of legal firearms," among other measures. "The College acknowledges that any such regulations must be consistent with the Supreme Court ruling establishing that individual ownership of firearms is a constitutional right under the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights," the paper said. The NRA lashed out, first with a Nov. 2 editorial saying that the ACP paper "reflects every anti-gunner's public policy wish list, save for the outsized role given to doctors," and accusing the group of being "only interested in pseudoscience 'evidence' that supports their preferred anti-gun policies." Then on Nov. 7, just hours before 28-year-old former Marine Ian David Long launched his attack at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, the NRA put out its provocative tweet. "Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control. Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves." The Annals of Internal Medicine responded in kind. In an editorial published Tuesday in the prominent academic medical journal, physicians said that the NRA "does not believe firearm-related injury and its prevention is within the purview of physicians." "We could not disagree more," they wrote. "If you are unconvinced and need examples of why firearms are a health issue, here are a few. People with accidental gun-related injury nearly always require acute medical care, and many go on to have chronic injury-related health issues. Almost 40 percent of individuals who commit suicide are seen by their primary care provider within the preceding month. Firearms are a frequent and very effective means of suicide. Thus, talking with patients at risk for suicide about their access to firearms is clearly 'in our lane.' " The editorial also stated that physicians and nurses are responsible for performing surgeries to try to save the lives of victims in such situations, and informing the families when they still die. "These responsibilities are not only in doctors' lane, they are our job," the physicians wrote. "Consequently, so is advocating for policies that reduce firearm injury and conducting research to better inform policies to keep our patients safer." The NRA did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Washington Post. After the Chicago shooting, the medical community returned to Twitter, extending prayers and pledging to fight. The victims were identified as Chicago Police Officer Samuel Jimenez; an emergency room doctor Tamara O'Neal; and a first-year pharmacy resident, Dayna Less, according to the Chicago Tribune. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers said Wednesday that they intercepted a significant amount of narcotics with an estimated street value of more than $296,000. The seizure occurred Tuesday at Juarez-Lincoln Bridge when a CBP officer referred a 2012 Mitsubishi LGT driven by a 28-year-old female U.S. citizen. The San Antonio resident was directed to secondary examination. A 19-year-old man accused of fatally shooting a woman Tuesday on the Southeast Side was arrested Thursday night after a high-speed chase, police said. John Michael Zimmers Jr. faces charges of murder, drug possession and evading arrest. He remains in the Bexar County Jail. Zimmers is accused of killing Gloria Stephanie Rodriguez at about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday near Pecan Valley Drive and Pyle Street. Rodriguez was walking down the sidewalk when Zimmers shot her and fled, police said. According to a San Antonio police sergeant, street crimes officers were searching for Zimmers when a helicopter unit spotted him at about 11:45 p.m. Thursday near Pecan Valley Drive. An officer attempted a traffic stop. Zimmers did not pull over and a chase ensued, police said. RELATED: SAPD searching for a juvenile male in connection to a Thanksgiving day shooting Police said the chase reached speeds of 90 mph. Bexar County deputies joined in before Zimmers smashed into a civilian's vehicle near Goliad Road and Pecan Valley Drive, authorities said. After the collision, Zimmers darted into a nearby auto repair store, where he was detained by police, officials said. Paramedics took him and a woman who was a passenger in his car to a local hospital for minor injuries. There were four people in the civilian vehicle Zimmers crashed into, including two children. The children were unharmed, but paramedics took the two adults in the vehicle to a hospital for non-life threatening injuries. Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com Caleb Downs covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County. Read him on our breaking news site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com | cdowns@mysa.com | @calebjdowns She reiterated that official processes were duly followed while sealing the deal. Bhopal: Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday took a potshot at Congress president Rahul Gandhi for raising the Rafale aircraft deal issue frequently even after being given clarifications to all his charges by the Centre. Mr Gandhi seems to be confused on Rafale deal. The Centre has given clarifications to all his charges he had made in connection with the deal. But, still he is repeating the same charges, she told reporters here. It is a deliberate design by the Congress to misguide people by making fabricated charges on the deal, Ms Sitharaman, who was in the state to campaign for the BJP ahead of the November 28 Assembly polls in the state, said. She reiterated that official processes were duly followed while sealing the deal. The NDA government at the Centre brought into force the same process that was followed by UPA while negotiating the deal, while sealing Rafale jet deal with France. She lauded Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for ushering in development in all fields in the state. The chief minister transformed Madhya Pradesh from a bimaru or sick state to a developing one, the Union defence minister said. A woman was arrested early Friday after she allegedly crashed into a motorcycle, killing one person and injuring another, while intoxicated, San Antonio police said. The driver was traveling in a Ford Ranger pickup truck at about 3:40 a.m. on Interstate 10 near La Cantera Parkway when they slammed into the motorcycle, which was carrying a male driver and female passenger. Two days after allegedly killing a woman with a stolen vehicle in New Braunfels, the hit and run suspect turned himself in to Austin police, according to the department. Austin Taylor Meade, 26, walked into an Austin fire station Friday at 10:22 a.m., and was taken into custody. Meade was charged with murder. When I was a little kid I passed through a ghost forest in Montana, the blackened, standing skeletons of the largest wildfire in recorded American history. That was the Big Burn of 1910, which torched an area nearly the size of Connecticut in a weekend. What remained of that blowup told a story: of hurricane-force winds, of 100-foot trees that crushed firefighters, of a land so scorched by intense heat that it was decades before seedlings sprouted in some places. But at least life returned. And over the last century, a healthy forest emerged along with a consensus political view that wild land was essential to our national character. Today, walking over the ashen floor of another spectral land, Im struck by how naked everything looks in the worlds largest urban national park. Almost 90 percent of the federal land in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area was burned in this months Woolsey Fire. The smell alone is mournful. The story it tells is grim, a portent of nature altered and convulsive. Its not just that this audacious experiment a huge parkland on the doorstep of a metro area of 13 million people is now on life support. Its that, as we are the first species to radically disrupt the world that gave us life, much of that world may soon be unsafe for human habitation. California used to have distinct fire seasons. Now the storms of flame and smoke are year-round, and all of the nations most populous state is a fire zone. One in eight Americans lives in a land that could turn catastrophic on any given day. Last year it was the wine country north of San Francisco and the mountains above Santa Barbara. This year its the area around Yosemite National Park, the peopled canyons of the northern part of the state, and this last best open space on the shoulders above Los Angeles. In the north, the town of Paradise was essentially wiped off the map, with more than 13,000 homes gone, more than 80 people killed, hundreds still missing, thousands homeless the deadliest fire in state history. Its a human tragedy. In the south, its almost 100,000 acres put to flame in the mountains that meet the sea, with deer left charred in their tracks, an iconic Western-set movie ranch burned into black and white, the sweet-scented chaparral and sage highlands all of a moonscape. Its a tragedy of nature. The two, wild and urban, have long had a tenuous coexistence in the Golden State. Of late, its reached a breaking point, with climate change happening at an accelerated pace the new abnormal, as Gov. Jerry Brown calls it. But which is more of a threat to our existence: a natural world that is symptomatic with the sickness of excessive human intervention, or the people who deny the change the willfully ignorant in charge of the federal government? We witnessed the worst of reality-avoidance when President Donald Trump visited the fire zones a few days ago. After a drive-by look at the wastelands, he suggested raking the forest floor, as he imagined they do in Finland. He said he wanted to make climate great. The Finns set him straight. The world laughed. Trump has a crackpot for acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, a man associated with a company that promoted time travel and Bigfoot. And yet the president denies the peer-reviewed, consensus driven evidence on climate change. Our A-plus president didnt even have enough of a presidential grip to get the name of the ruined town of Paradise right. (He repeatedly called it Pleasure.) Nor does he pretend to know the difference between sub-Arctic Finland and arid California. His administration blamed radical environmentalists for the fires. But it wasnt environmentalists who kicked up 50-mile-an hour winds in a state that had seen barely a whisper of rain over the last six months, hot gusts that bounced through canyons thick with man-made combustibles. The national parks, oft-called Americas best idea, were created by people who looked beyond their own lives. Those people made great ancestors benevolent, farsighted, selfless. What they protected were islands of diversity that humans were fast destroying. Climate change has put these parks in real peril. Shed a tear for the Santa Monica mountain wonderland. The dozen or so mountain lions, and maybe a couple of the bobcats that have been collared and tracked, are still alive. But what of all the other species staggering among the black sticks of charcoal in the park? Fires that used to happen every 100 years here now occur every 20. From the crests of its highest peaks to the Malibu shore, you take in a sweep of devastation. This bleak vision of tomorrow is not inevitable. It took guts and real political courage to hold this mix of public and private land in trust for the public, back when Congress worked for the common good, in 1978. It will take even more courage and farsightedness to save it. My fear is that the view today is just a preview of coming destruction. THE MDC leadership will today square off at the national council meeting where a faction linked to party leader Nelson Chamisa is reportedly trying to embarrass secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora, who is allegedly plotting to challenge him for the presidency at the upcoming congress. Mwonzora has denied that he is eyeing the post in several interviews with NewsDay. On the other hand, Chamisas supporters are actively ring-fencing his position, fearing that Mwonzora could challenge him and want his wings clipped before the congress. According to sources, Mwonzora will be charged with indiscipline and undermining the party leadership with hope of recalling him from Senate and subsequently weakening him. However, according to insiders, there is likely going to be strong opposition to the Mwonzora push as some members say it would not be strategic, particularly at a time when the party needs unity of purpose. Party spokesperson Jacob Mafume said they could discuss the issue of discipline at todays national council, but said it will be the prerogative of the chairperson to zero down on the national leadership, if at all there is a case against them. The issues of discipline in a big party as ours are always a standing order item. Specifics of the item will depend on the reports of various organs that are tasked with dealing with discipline, particularly the national chairpersons office, Mafume said. According to sources, Mwonzoras accusers were working on a constitutional clause that says the national council has the power to remove any member if there was secondment from a two-thirds majority. The standing committee will hint on his disciplinary action and will resolve to take the matter to the national council. Already there is a crack team in the national council that will second the motion and will anonymously agree to deal with Mwonzora. Those people are there and they are known, a standing committee member who refused to be named, said. They want to remove him as soon as possible and replace him with Giles Mutsekwa. To them, it will be a done deal and he will not resurrect at congress. However, the main problem is that Mwonzora himself seems to be playing to the gallery and there are many people sent to ensure that he is caught offside. He must at least stop mobilising at the moment because surely those people want him out. However, this will not be good for the party at all and a number of level-headed people will try to stop it. The only problem is that the environment at Harvest House (Morgan Tsvangirai House) doesnt have room for that. Mwonzora and vice-president Elias Mudzuri are accused of undermining the party leadership by going to apologise to Chief Justice Luke Malaba who was jeered by opposition MPs. NewsDay Breaking News via Email Loading... Related Zimbabwe Latest News Combative Vice President, Rtd General Constantino Chiwenga, is reportedly on his way to become president of the country and first secretary of the ruling Zanu PF party before the next election slated for July 2023, Spotlight Zimbabwe, can exclusively reveal. According to two current serving cabinet ministers and high level military sources, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, is unlikely to stay longer in office anymore and finish his first term, as a coterie of securocrats backing Chiwenga want him to take charge by 2021, in a bid by the army to finally run the presidency and have Chiwengas potential successor from the military ranks ready to take up one of the VP slots come 2023. As matters stand, Mnangagwa and Chiwenga although putting up a united front in public, are drifting apart from each other with growing mistrust among the two comrades, who became political rockstars around this time last year, after successfully ochestrating a scheme to dislodge former leader, Robert Mugabe, from power through a cunning military putsch. Mnangagwas supporters insist that he is already Zanu PFs uncontested presidential candidate for 2023, and that the former state intelligence czar must be allowed to run for two full terms, to realise his 2030 vision to transform the country into middle-income status. However, sources say Mnangagwa will be forced to step down in three years time, and allow Chiwenga to finish off his remaining two years in office. Some generals (names supplied) loyal to Chiwenga want him to now have his turn, said one of the ministers who requested anonymity as he was delving into national security issues. They feel that the general (Chiwenga) has earned it, after inviting Mnangagwa from exile last year to come back home and be the countrys leader, when he could have easily declared himself president. In their eyes the top commander risked a lot in removing Mugabe, as one mistake could have seen him being arrested for treason. Spotlight Zimbabwe has also gathered that not everyone in military circles was happy with what appeared to be Mnangagwa stripping Chiwenga of his military powers, when he repealed Statutory Instrument 96 of 2018, which assigned functions to the VP to be responsible for the Ministry of Defence and War Veterans, after appointing his new cabinet. A lot is going on in terms of power struggles in the presidium, but Im not authorised to talk to the press, said a senior official with the defence ministry. You need to talk to minister Muchinguri, noone else can talk to your publication, not even the public relations department. What I can say however is that the VP still has a lot of support and respect of the defence forces. He is credited with saving this administration from poll humiliation in July. So the talk going around is that he is ripe to be president before 2023, and that is in our favour. Muchinguri-Kashiris mobile phone kept going to voicemail the whole day yesterday when we tried reaching her for official comment. Another minister said it must not take the nation by surprise if Chiwenga becomes president in 2021, as former leader Mugabe himself openly preferred Chiwenga to takeover the country as president instead of Mnangagwa, during negotiations after the November 2017 coup. The minister also said Mugabe was suspicious of Mnangagwas soft spot for the countrys enemies and that he would reverse indigenisation and black empowerment laws. One example cited is the Marange diamonds saga where, Mnangagwa is said to be crafting a whole new diamond policy that will give China unperturbed economic access to the mineral without having to cede the previous Mugabe administrations mandatory 51 percent nationalisation equity regime. In recent times, the media has reported about a succession brawl inside Zanu PF to find Mnangagwas successor, as there are doubts the artful politician will stay long in power, due to health concerns following the ice-cream poisoning he suffered last year. Early this month, we reported that Mnangagwas presidency could be on the line, as the opposition and his closest internal party foes intend to topple him from power Mugabe-style, via a Ukrainian Orange Revolution like protests campaign. Skip to 7:14min Renowned political commentator on Zimbabwe, Professor David Moore, from the Faculty of Humanities Department of Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Johannesburg, told South African television station eNCA in an interview on Zimbabwe in August, that Mnangagwa will be lucky to remain in office for the next five years. Zanu PF too is going to be regrouping by October, because remember Mnangagwa himself thinks he might be impeached because theres subterranean G40 people who are there, said Moore. Mugabe could hold his factions together. Morgan Tsvangirai at times he could, but at another times he couldnt. You know Thokozani Khupe that whole thing. If Emmerson Mnangagwa can do a Mugabe for the next five years even, hell be very lucky. Spotlight Zimbabwe Breaking News via Email Loading... Related Zimbabwe Latest News Member of Parliament for Buhera South Joseph Chinotimba has accused administrators at Parliament of fuelling the current price madness in the economy, the Daily News can report. This was after the prices at which the lawmakers buy soft drinks and the staple sadza within the Parliament Building went up by significant margins. On Wednesday, the Buhera South legislator took up the matter to applauses from virtually all MPs across the board. Parliament is selling the soft drink Coca-Cola for a $1 and yet Delta did not increase anything. In the hotels also where MPs are staying, those same Coca-Cola drinks are being sold at $4 yet again Delta did not increase the price of its products so I lay the blame squarely on the administration of Parliament especially those who are in the administration of (the) welfare of parliamentarians, Chinotimba. Again, here at our members dining, we are buying sadza for $3 and Coca-Cola for $4. As Parliament, we are the perpetrators of the increase of these prices. I am begging you to protect MPs, he pleaded with National Assembly Speaker Jacob Mudenda. In major retail outlets, a 300 ml bottle of coke goes for anything between 50 cents and 60 cents including the cost of an empty bottle. Chinotimba suggested that Parliament do away with those running canteen services at Parliament if they do not revise their prices downwards. It is either that we provide our own food or we get alternative service providers, he said. Mudenda, however, advised the MPs to put across their complaints through the committee responsible for legislators welfare. When we want to discuss issues of welfare of MPs, we do that in the Speakers Office, Mudenda said. Those issues are purely administrative; therefore if you have queries, come to the Speakers office and address all these issues under the Committee of Standing Rules and Orders, he advised. Mudenda was apparently unhappy with the applause that Chinotimba received from the House prompting him to lecture them on issues of procedure. Some of you are applauding Chinotimba for his contribution but we need to read our Standing Rules and Orders because if you bring that as a motion, it would be rejected because that problem is affecting every Zimbabwean. The issue should be brought to the welfare committee and through the Speakers office, he said. The allegations come as government is in a desperate bid to contain a potentially worsening economic crisis when it convened an emergency meeting with captains of industry to try and find solutions to the price hikes. Addressing the media soon after a closed door meeting, Industry and Commerce minister Mangaliso Ndlovu said government was worried by the recent price increases that have resulted in panic buying and ultimately shortages in the country. The main reason for meeting today was to try and interrogate the issue of pricing; we are worried as government that there are numerous price increases from the manufacturer to the consumer. What came out from the deliberations is that there are fundamental issues that have to be addressed within the economy. The discussions were frank and open whereby all stakeholders had a chance to make their contributions and we have agreed to convene a similar meeting in the near future. We are very worried on the effect of this on the consumer so its a myriad of issues that we need to address collectively and we believe in the near future we will be able to come up with a solution, said Ndlovu. DailyNews Breaking News via Email Loading... Related Zimbabwe Latest News THE stage is set for a bruising turf war between Zanu PF leader Emmerson Mnangagwa and his ambitious deputy Constantino Chiwenga at the ruling partys annual conference to be held in Esigodini, Matabeleland South province, next month, as their rival camps sharpen daggers ahead of the high-stakes showdown. Mnangagwa and Chiwenga are locked in a battle to control the party and the state, a year after the two protagonists joined forces to topple former president Robert Mugabe. In recent years, the Zanu PF annual conferences became platforms for factional fights among party leaders. Despite their public posturing meant to paint a picture of unity and harmony, Mnangagwa and Chiwenga have been fighting each other behind the scenes, including through proxies. One of the manifestations of that has been the ongoing battle to control the state media platforms, critical platforms for the control of the narrative and information dissemination. A tug of war has erupted between Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa as well as permanent secretary Nick Mangwana, on one hand, and deputy minister Energy Mutodi on the other, over the removal of current Zimpapers editors and appointment of new ones. The ongoing clashes are fuelled by personal, policy and political differences among the players involved. The fight between Mnangagwa and Chiwenga is also playing out among war veterans amid an attempt to boot Mutsvangwa out the association. Mutsvangwa is in Mnangagwas faction. According to senior Zanu PF officials who spoke to the Zimbabwe Independent this week, the Esigodini conference is likely to be an explosive affair, especially in light of recent thinly veiled verbal exchanges between Mnangagwa and Chiwenga. Chiwenga, who was the face of the military coup which ousted former president Robert Mugabe last year, harbours presidential ambitions and wants Mnangagwa to relinquish the post before 2023 to pave way for his ascendancy. Mnangagwa has, however, moved to consolidate his power base by, among other actions, removing Chiwenga from the Defence ministry and his backers from government, leaving him exposed and vulnerable. Chiwengas allies are particularly peeved by Mnangagwas backers who recently launched a new slogan #ED2023 pfee, which is a clear indication that they want him to run for another term. The slogan was launched at a Zanu PF Youth League conference held in Harare late last month. This has caused great friction in the party and considering that plenary discussions at the congress will debate issues around the state of the party, it could really be interesting because the other side is not taking it lying down, one source said. Party insiders also said Chiwengas supporters were getting increasingly concerned that Mnangagwa was moving to limit Chiwengas influence in Zanu PF and the government. In the first place, Mnangagwa realised that he was brought into power at the back of the coup which Chiwenga led and he therefore owed him some respect that is why he gave him too much room to exercise authority in the period before elections. But since then, things have drastically changed for him, an official said. Also in respect of that, there appeared to have been a solid understanding between the two when they ganged up against Mugabe but it is turning out that what bound them then was a common adversary in the form of the former president and his wife. You will remember that from 2015, Mugabe had started to criticise the army generals, warning them that they should stop interfering in political activities. He clearly pronounced this at the Victoria Falls conference in December of that year. It was well-known and thus it is now clear that Chiwenga had his own ambitions as much as Mnangagwa had his own. They came together because they had a common agenda to remove Mugabe. When it came to the actual removal, Chiwenga played a key role as he controlled the instruments of state coercion. He could however not take the presidency himself because there was a need to bring in a civilian face for legitimacy purposes and thats where Mnangagwa was useful, the source said. Chiwenga made his mind publicly known during a meeting with senior party members at his home in Hwedza where he subtly warned he would not allow people to personalise the party and the state, warning that doing so was very dangerous. Mnangagwa took advantage of officiating at the Zanu PF youth conference to, also subtly, hit back saying he knew of some leaders who were gathering people around and saying things that are not acceptable. He warned the party would not hesitate to discipline or expel such people. However, Zanu PF spokesperson Simon Khaya Moyo denied rifts in the party. That is wishful thinking, he said. Preparations for the conference are going on very well and we will be having the mother of all conferences. Anyone anticipating drama will be disappointed. Zimbabwe Independent Breaking News via Email Loading... Related Zimbabwe Latest News Sources said the RSS sought review of poll strategy by the party following negative feedbacks received from some Assemby constituencies. Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhans late night meeting with madhya pranta mukhya of RSS Deepak Vispute on Thursday has sparked speculations on partys prospects in the November 28 assembly elections in the state. Mr Singh dropped at the local RSS headquarters here late in the evening of Thursday and held discussions with Mr Vispute till 1.30 AM on Friday, Sangh sources told this newspaper here. It was an unscheduled meeting that was arranged when the chief minister was in the midst of his road show in Bhopal on Thursday evening. The chief minister had to wind up the road show held to campaign for the party candidates in two assembly constituencies here, hurriedly at around 10.30 in the night to attend the meeting, sources revealed. Sources said the RSS sought review of poll strategy by the party following negative feedbacks received from some Assemby constituencies. Feedbacks received from around 50 Assembly constituencies were found to be not encouraging, said the RSS source. Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) Commissioner-General Godwin Matanga is reported to have been forced out of the police force. This is according to exiled former Cabinet Minister and G40 kingpin Professor Jonathan Moyo. Godwin Matanga, Commissioner General of Police, has been sent on leave pending redeployment as an ambassador. This paves the way for the elevation of Deputy Commissioner General Stephen Mutamba, now Acting CGP. Changes at ZRP since the coup, have been dramatic & controversial! said Moyo. The all-powerful Matanga was one of the key members who masterminded the November 2017 coup that ended Robert Mugabes 37 years of oppressive rule. This report has led to many Zimbabweans speculating that the redeployment may have been necessitated by the statement he gave while testifying before the Kgalema Motlanthe violence commission. Appearing before the Commission of Inquiry into the Harare shootings, Matanga said he gave the final command to have the army deployed and was on top of the situation when the shootings happened. My understanding of the law is that the president did actually approve the deployment of the members of the defence forces to come income in support of the Zimbabwe Republic Police said Matanga. Asked on whether he is the one who gave the final order for the deployment of the army, he said; I cant run away from the fact that it was me (who ordered the deployment of the army). The deployment of the army was to make sure that these demonstrators would not run over the Rainbow Towers, which was accommodating the Zimbabwe Electoral Commissions (ZEC) command centre added Matanga. He said after the approval by the president, the ZNA was under the order of the National regulatory Authority. When the situation had gone out of hand, I alerted my then Minister Dr. Obert Mpofu that there was no time to meet and discuss the situation but it was time for action. My minister then invited assistance from his counterpart from the Ministry of Defense Vice President Constantino Chiwenga and within a short space of time consultations were made. My minister phoned back and said permission to invite members of the Zimbabwe Defense Forces had ben granted, He , the Minister,asked me to get in touch with the Commander ZDF Philip Valerio Sibanda who in turn advised me to directly discuss the nitty gritties of the operation with the Commander Zimbabwe National Army Lieutenant-General Edzayi Chakanyuka Chimonyo. I talked with the Commander ZNA that the normal process was not going to be followed because there was no time for that, said Matanga. Matanga also told the commissioner that the reason why he has not arrested MDC President Nelson Chamisa over the August 1 killings was because Mnangagwa had extended as hand to the opposition leader to join him in government as the official Leader of Opposition. Breaking News via Email Loading... Related Zimbabwe Latest News Ancient mammal cousin looked like cross between a rhino and a turtle Science Wealthy nations fall short of climate funding pledge FT Why do billions of people still lack basic sanitation? BBC Nissan to Seek Review of Renault Shareholding Structure Bloomberg Carlos Ghosns downfall lays bare Nissans board problem FT. The company had literally no governance structure, said Koji Endo, head of the equity research department at SBI Securities. Everything is like CalPERS. 1 big thing: Facebook admission caps year from hell Axios. Be smart: Facebook seems to be adding a new realism to its founding idealism. Oh. I live with Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri. Heres which you should pick. WaPo. From the Jeff Bezos Daily Shopper. Ottawa County courts piloting robot greeter Holland Sentinel. Ottawa County, Michigan. Brexit As the toffs began to retreat LRB What do yellow vest protesters have in store for Paris on Saturday? The Local Italy to resist budget pressure ahead of EU elections Reuters How Greece Is Scrambling to Save Its Banks Again Bloomberg Berliners have shown how to stop the march of the far right Guardian The euro must be fixed or dropped Handelsblatt Syraqistan China? Southeast Asia digital economy smashes expectation with $240 billion valuation Asian Correspondent Trump Transition Democrats in Disarray Scared to Death: the Dominion of Fear in Politics by Richard Sale Sic Semper Tyrannis Why the Announcement of a Looming White Minority Makes Demographers Nervous NYT. 2044 2018 = 26 years is a long time in politics. One might almost think this entire discourse is tendentious. Health Care Class Warfare The science of self-care: How climate researchers are coping with the U.N. report Grist Conviviality (MR): People ask me a lot about how we celebrated holiday in prison. Needless to say, its not very festive. But heres a thread about jailhouse holiday cooking and small miracles behind bars. Keri Blakinger (@keribla) November 21, 2018 French parents know how to teach their kids to love food without overeating Quartz. Smaller portions would help the climate. But youve got to catch em young. Antidote du jour (via): Bonus antidote: Linda, a stray dog in Turkey, comes to the same car wash a couple times a week to use the automatic petting machine. (Dogan News Agency) pic.twitter.com/qFyAgFWJG5 Clint Falin (@ClintFalin) November 18, 2018 See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here. By Lambert Strether of Corrente. I decided to write this post a little off-topic for Thanksgivng, I grant simply because I was out walking and it suddenly occurred to me that I didnt know how many town halls Senator Bernie Sanders had done since the 2016 election. Hence this inventory. The object of inquiry, the town hall, is a little fuzzy round the edges, but at least one key element is constituent participation with a politician, generally in the form of questions. To this I would add that the town hall must be labeled a Town Hall, be national in scope, and that the audience be large. (This rules out book tours, rallies, and small town halls designed for the state and local levels.) The inventory wasnt all that easy to do; I suspect the only complete listing is on Sanders Facebook page, but (a) Facebook and (b) not doing the Facebook infinite scroll, sorry. So I went with the Google. For each town hall I give the online venue (including a link to the complete video), the location, and some descriptive material, often in the form of represenative Sanders quotes. (Representative is not hard, because Sanders is relentlessly on message.) Where available, I give press releases from Sanders office. After the inventory, Ill draw some conclusions. Herewith the list of Sanders Town Halls, in reverse chronological order. * * * (1) Climate Change Solutions: December 2, 2018 (to come) Press Release: Announcment (2) CEOs vs Workers: June 28, 2018 Press Release: Announcement Online venue: Live stream with media partners Location: Washington, DC From Jacobin: Monday night, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders hosted a live-streamed town hall with five low-wage workers one each from Amazon, American Airlines, Disney, McDonalds, and Walmart. The workers sat on one side of the stage, while on the other idled five empty chairs, each emblazoned with the name of an absent CEO. Sanders had invited the executives to participate in the discussion, but none had agreed. I guess they didnt show up, Sanders said, gesturing to the vacant chairs. We made a sincere effort, because I think it wouldve been an extraordinary discussion for them to defend the kind of compensation they get in contrast to the people who work for them. An empty chair for your opponent is the oldest trick in the book, but that doesnt mean its not effective! (3) Breaking the Deal: The Aftermath of Trumps Decision on the Iran Nuclear Agreement, May 14, 2018 Press Release: Announcement Online venue: Live stream with media partners Location: Capitol Visitor Centers Congressional Auditorium, Washington DC The Bennington Banner: Sanders, who was criticized during his 2016 presidential campaign for a dearth of foreign policy experience, moderated the panel of four experts in an hour-long conversation that focused on American foreign policy in the Middle East. I think that in American politics there is not the full degree of understanding in terms of what the implications of foreign policy are, Sanders said. While issues like health care and education feel immediate to Americans, United States foreign policy often seems a little bit distant, he said. However, Sanders contended, the amount the country spends on the military makes overseas relations with other countries directly pertinent to domestic issues. That brings the issue of foreign policy kind of back home in terms of our national priorities, he said. The event attracted a smaller audience than his previous two town halls. Some 600,000 tuned in online, according to Sanders staff, less than half of the 1.7 million viewership of his last event on economic inequality in March. Note the smaller audience; Sanders instincts to focus on universal concrete material benefits may be politically sound. Note that this is really a panel discussion; the Sanders press release bills it as a Town Hall even though theres constituent participation, which could be taken to show a lack of confidence on Sanders part. (4) Inequality in America: The Rise of Oligarchy and Collapse of the Middle Class: March 19, 2018 Press Releases: Announcement; recap Online venue: Live stream with media partners Location: Capitol Visitor Centers Congressional Auditorium, Washington DC Boing Boing: [Y]esterday, 1.7 million people tuned in to watch Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Moore, and a panel of experts discuss inequality. It was 90 minutes of wonkish, measured expert discussion of substantive matters of economics and policy, with special emphasis on the racial dimension of structural poverty, in webcast form. HuffPo: The result, Sanders said in his introductory remarks, is a country where the top 10th of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. In recent years, we have seen incredible growth in the number of billionaires, while 40 million Americans continue to live in poverty and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth, he continued. A prominent feature of the evenings analysis that Sanders critics have sometimes accused him of downplaying was an explicit breakdown of the racial roots of American poverty. WAMC: [SANDERS:] There is something very wrong when young people have got to go to Germany in order to get a higher education. Theres something wrong when people have got to go across the Canadian border to get affordable prescription drugs. Theres something wrong when the in greatest nation in the history of the world, the most wealthy nation, our infrastructure is collapsing and weve got 40 million people living in poverty. Note that this format, too, is a panel discussion: Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and filmmaker Michael Moore interview subject matter experts. (5) Medicare for All: January 23, 2018 Press Releases: Announcement; recap Online venue: Live stream with media partners Location: Capitol Visitor Centers Congressional Auditorium, Washington DC Wisconsin Gazette: A national town hall on Medicare for all hosted by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. and digital media outlets The Young Turks, NowThis and ATTN: drew nearly 1.1 million live viewers Jan. 23. The number rivals the viewership of cable news in prime time. And, mid-day Jan. 24, more than 1.6 million views had accumulated on the town hall video across platforms. Sanders comments: [SANDERS:] Far too often corporate television limits the nature of what we see and the discussions we have. This event will not be interrupted by commercials from drug or insurance companies or Wall Street. In These Times: Sanders noted that the event was the first nationally broadcast town hall taking place outside the corporate media. This is, I think, kind of revolutionary, is it not? he said to YTN host Ana Kasparian in a pre-town hall interview. This could be the very first step in bringing millions of people into serious discussion about the serious issues facing our country. Here we have Sanders moderating a discussion among experts; again, no constituent participation, unless via chat in the live stream. (6) Tax Reform (Sanders, Cruz): October 18, 2017 Online venue: CNN Location: Washington, DC From the transcript: In two minutes, Senator Cruz is going to tell you that if we give tax breaks to the billionaires like George W. Bush did, like Ronald Reagan did, were going to create zillions of jobs and youre all going to become very, very rich, that we have a trickle-down economic theory, tax breaks for the wealthiest people, the largest corporations, and, whoa, everything is good. That is a totally fraudulent theory. Here is the reality of American society today. For 40 years, the middle class of this country, the great middle class has been shrinking. And what we have seen is a massive transfer of wealth from working families to the top 0.1 percent, trillions of dollars because of cooperate greed and an unfair tax system. And then the other thing they do, in order to pay for [n-o-o-o-o-o] their tax breaks, you know what they do? They cut Medicaid over a 10-year period by $1 trillion, throwing 15 million Americans off of the health insurance they have. They cut Medicare by $470 billion. (7) Tax Reform (Sanders, Cruz, Cantwell): November 28, 2017 Online venue: CNN Location: Washington, DC CNN: [SANDERS:] The tax bills in both the House and the Senate give the lions share of tax breaks to the top 1% Thank you, Occupy (though I prefer the precision of 0.1%, as in the quote above). (8) Graham-Cassidy Health Care Bill (Graham, Cassidy, Sanders, Klobuchar): September 25, 2017 Online venue: CNN Location: Washington, DC The Bustle: from a human point of view weve heard some of that discussion tonight understand what it means when people who are struggling with cancer, heart disease, diabetes suddenly get the word that that legislation passed and they lose the health insurance they have. That is their lifeline for literally staying alive. Our job as a humane society is to do a couple of things. Its not to throw 30 million people off of health insurance. Its to do what every other major country on Earth does, guarantee health care to all people as a right. Thats what we should be doing. And second of all, what we have got to be doing is come up with short- term solutions. And I think Amy mentioned some of them. Why dont we make sure that in every state in this country there is a public option, a strong set of benefits, and an affordable course to compete with private insurance? I think thats a very, very good idea. Some want to do it through a Medicare option; some want to do it through a Medicare option. But people should have the option to go beyond the private insurance company in their own community. I think that would be a successful effort, and I would hope that you would support us on that. The trouble with short-term solutions is that they open the door to yet another liberal Democrat bait-and-switch operation, exactly like the so-called public option, which Id speculate is exactly what Pelosi and Schumer are scheming to do. If theres going to be a short-term solution, then make it part of a phase-in to HR-676 or S-1802. Otherwise, were just kicking the can down the road for another couple of election cycles. (9) Health Care, August 22, 2017 Online venue: Facebook Location: Fellowship Chapel Church, Detroit, MI Detroit Metro Times: Im concerned with the quality of life [in Detroit]. Nationwide its not so much [racial/identity politics anymore] because we are all suffering. This is a class situation, said Sharon, an African-American woman in her late forties standing in line. Decked out in pins for Coleman Young IIs mayoral campaign, she was adamant that the era of Clintonism wasnt sustainable for the Democratic party and had to come to an end. Using public assistance and stuff to try and make ends meet the living conditions are just getting worse and worse and I see two different Detroits and I dont like that, she said. These sentiments from Sharon regarding the present situation in America, and Detroit in particular, becoming ever more untenable were echoed by many others at the event. (10) Bernie Sanders Speaks, August 22, 2017 (10:30AM) Online venue: YouTube (partial) Location: Shawnee State University, Portsmouth, OH WSAZ: [SANDERS:] I fully understand that Donald Trump won this county. I am here because I am an old-fashioned guy who does not believe in red states and blue states. Dayton Daily News: [SANDERS:] I am in Trump country because I think the issues you face here in southern Ohio are not any different than in Vermont or California or any other state, he said. Trump won 65 percent of the vote in Scioto County. I think its high time we focus on the most important issues facing our country and do not allow people to divide us up based on the color of our skin, our sexual orientationWe have to be smarter than that. Daily Independent: As human beings and Americans we are entitled to certain rights.we have a whole lot of freedomsand I would add to those rights the American people are also entitled to certain economic rights. At the top of that list is the right to healthcare, whether we are rich or poor. (11) College For All, October 17, 2017 Online venue: From the live stream Location: Castleton University, Castleton, VT Vermont Biz: And let me be very clear. I am not just talking about 4-year universities and colleges. I am talking about community colleges. I am talking about vocational schools. I am talking about apprenticeships. We desperately need highly trained and highly skilled electricians, welders, plumbers, mechanics, pipefitters and health care workers of every kind. This is not a radical idea. A number of nations around the world are doing just that, investing in their young people so that they will have an educated workforce that isnt burdened with enormous student debt. In Germany, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden public colleges and universities are tuition free. In Germany, public colleges are free not only for Germans, but also for international students, including some 11,000 from the United States of America. (12) Bernie Sanders in Trump Country, March 13, 2017 Online venue: MSNBC Location: Welch, West Virginia (McDowell County) Metro News. On coal miners: These guys are heroes, Sanders said. I grew up in a rent-controlled apartment house in Brooklyn, New York, and I will never forget the piles of coal. I dont know if it came from here or where it came. You kept my house warm. Thank you, the senator said Bustle: Sanders asked a West Virginian coal miner if [America] should join other countries and guarantee healthcare as a right? to which he replied, Yes, I think every American citizen should have healthcare. The miners response, along with the crowds thunderous applause, demonstrate the complicated nature of the relationship among GOP voters, Trump and his campaign promises, and healthcare. (13) Sanders vs. Cruz: The Future of ObamaCare, February 2, 2017 Online venue: CNN Location: George Washington University, Washington, DC CNN: LaRonda Hunter, who owns five hair salons in Texas, said she cant afford to provide coverage to her employees because of low profit margins and that the Obamacare rule is preventing her from growing her business. Sanders responded with what he prefaced would be an answer you will not be happy with. Im sorry, I think that in America today, everybody should have health care. And if you have more than 50 people, you know what, I think Im afraid to tell you, but I think you will have to provide health insurance, Sanders said. Cruz shot back that Democrats have turned small businesses into a bad actor. Millions of businesses are being told by Democrats: tough luck, Sanders said. Its one of the most damaging things about Obamacare. (14) Senator Bernie Sanders Town Hall, January 9, 2017 Online venue: CNN Location: George Washington University, Washington, DC CNN: [SANDERS:] We just cannot allow this culture of corporate greed, which results in the very, very rich becoming much richer, a middle class shrinking, and 43 million people living in poverty. Somebody has got to stand up to these billionaires and say You know what? Enough is enough. You cannot have it all. I want an economy that belongs to all of us works for all of us. People forget, Chris, we are the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. And our job now is to create a government which represents all of the people; not just the one percent. * * * Considering the technical aspects of the Town Halls, the contrast between 2017 and 2018 is interesting. In 2017, Sanders barnstorms so-called Trump Country (I assume proving to himself that he can win those votes). The CNN format pits him against other candidates, but also allows constituent participation. In 2018, the format changes to me, disappointingly to a panel discussion format, with streaming to media partners. (The Sanders digital media operation is very effective, and disseminates millions of clips from the live streams.) We also have press releases starting in 2018 there are none before that date which suggests the Sanders operation is tightening up perhaps anticipating a 2020 run? Looking at the topics covered, Mr. Counter-suggestible sees some weaknesses. First, foreign policy. Sanders really needs to subject himself to constituent participation, here. I feel strongly that if Sanders did a foreign policy town hall in Trump Country, which tends to have higher battlefield casualties than the average, he would meet with a very favorable reception were he to advocate for an end to our endless wars (as Trump, in his crude way of speaking the unspeakable truth, did successfully in 2016). Second, there are two systemic issues that are critical to conveying concrete material benefits: (1) the voting system, and (2) MMT. The first is needed to make sure electoral gains for the left are not undone by crooks, whether liberal or conservative. The second is needed, ideologically, to get the country out of the austerity box. I would suggest Atlanta, GA as a suitable location for the first topic, and the University of Kansas City at Missouri for the second. And again, and bring back constituent participation maybe from online viewers? Lets not send the message that professionals, even subject matter experts of integrity, are the only people listening to, mkay? My bottom line: I think this series of Town Halls shows that Sanders is in a class by himself as politician, and not just because hes an Independent. What Democrat politician let alone a potential 2020 candidate is barnstorming the country with this level of intensity? What Democrat politician has such a structural critique? What Democrat politician has such a focus on universal concrete material benefits, especially for the working class? Above all, what other politician besides Trump on Twitter is disintermediating the political class by speaking directly with millions of constituents? Brussels On 20 and 21 November 2018, the Committee of the Chiefs of Military Medical Services (COMEDS) convened at NATO HQ for its plenary session. The COMEDS was addressed by the Director General of the NATO International Military Staff (DGIMS), Lieutenant General Jan Broeks, who praised the Committee for its outstanding contribution in developing and coordinating military medical matters, and for providing medical advice to the NATO Military Committee. The agenda of the 50th plenary of NATOs Committee of the Chiefs of Military Medical Services (COMEDS) focused on research and innovation, enhancing medical capabilities, opportunities for interoperability and the necessary generation of medical capacity to support NATO's future needs. During the COMEDS Plenary meeting, Dr. Richard Thomas, president of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU), received the Dominique-Jean Larrey Award, NATO's highest medical honour, for long lasting medical contribution to NATO. The award recognizes exceptional performance in a multi-nationality environment, to improve interoperability and the provision of health care in NATO missions. For example, the USU-support was critical to the success of the medical element of the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan, by providing the framework for a postgraduate medical residency programme in public health for the Afghan National Army and Ministry of Health. Before handing the gavel to his successor, Major General Bernier was addressed by DGIMS, who complimented him on his clear medical vision, his new approach for COMEDS, the presence of COMEDS in the NATO Headquarters and his efforts to intensify relations with the Military Committee and the International Staff. Your efforts to improve the importance of COMEDS cannot be underestimated You were the driving factor to provide the best medical service for NATOs military all over the world, stated Lt General Broeks.. The Canadian Major General Jean-Robert Bernier who chaired the committee for three years, then handed over the Chair COMEDS hammer to his successor, the Czech Brigadier General Zoltan Bubenik, M.D. The COMEDS and the NATO strategic-level Medical Advisors work together to improve medical support in a multinational dimension. COMEDS, NATOs senior body on military health matters, steers Allied medical doctrine, interoperability and capability development within NATO and its member countries. It does this in collaboration with the NATO Standardization Office (NSO), and through several working groups and panels that are populated by national subject-matter experts from both Allied and Partner countries. The NATO Deputy Secretary General, the Honourable Rose Gottemoeller, will travel to Berlin on Monday, 26 November and Tuesday, 27 November 2018. During the visit, Ms. Gottemoeller will meet with a number of senior officials from the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as with Members of the Bundestag. On 27 November, Ms. Gottemoeller will participate in a panel discussion at the Berlin Foreign Policy Forum, organized by the Korber Foundation. More information about the Forum is available here. The event will be web streamed live on the Korber Foundation website. Still pictures will be available on the NATO website after the events. Follow the Deputy Secretary General on Twitter (@Gottemoeller). Also follow us at @NATOPress. Iron Wolf 2018, a Lithuanian-led multinational exercise, wrapped up in Pabrade on Monday (19 November 2018), with a live-fire demonstration. The exercise, which began on 4 November, mobilised around 3,500 troops from 13 NATO Allies and partner nation Ukraine. It provided an opportunity for forces to enhance their readiness, and train with one of four NATO battlegroups in the region. The exercise was designed to test the battlegroups readiness to plan and conduct defensive operations, together with a battalion of the Lithuanian Iron Wolf Brigade. The battlegroup also tested its military mobility en route to the exercise. In less than 24 hours, 10 convoys with around 350 vehicles deployed from their garrison to the exercise. Around 1,400 soldiers from six nations were involved. This was the largest single movement of military vehicles Lithuania has seen for years. "We conduct exercise Iron Wolf to train and evaluate the ability of our units to quickly redeploy forces to any place in Lithuania and to carry out multinational defensive operations. This is the biggest exercise this semester together with our allies. We will train mobility, the ability to quickly reach any area to defend it against any enemy in the territory in Lithuania," said Colonel Mindaugas Steponavicius, Commander of the Lithuanian Mechanized Infantry Iron Wolf Brigade. Meeting with Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis in Brussels today, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg thanked Lithuania for hosting the exercise. Such exercises are part of the Alliances strengthened defence and deterrence, he said. On 20 and 21 November 2018, the NATO Joint Intelligence and Security Division welcomed to the NATO Headquarters Intelligence experts from Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania and Morocco to the 16th Annual NATO-Mediterranean Dialogue Conference. The two-day event provides a forum for participants to exchange their views and insights to broaden the understanding of the challenges in the Mediterranean region. The conference aims to reinforce the interaction between NATO and Mediterranean Dialogue Nations in the field of intelligence, building personal links and relationship within the intelligence community. Both participants from NATO Allies and from the 6 Partner Nations were invited by Major General Raul Escribano, Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Intelligence to reflect on the challenges and threats emanating from NATOs Southern Flank. In his Opening Remarks, Major General Escribano encouraged participants to share their perspectives and unique regional knowledge and expertise. This is an opportunity to see the region, for a time, through different eyes. We know that solutions to complex problems are hard to define but conferences like this one, bring us closer to a solution. NATO understands that Transatlantic and Mediterranean security are inextricably linked. The Alliance is determined to implement a 360-degree approach to security. In addition to measures to reinforce the Alliances Eastern Flank, NATO has also strengthened its efforts in projecting stability and the fight against terrorism. It contributes to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS with AWACS intelligence flights and training for Iraqi forces. The Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan will be reinforced with three thousand more trainers and the financial support to the Afghan Security Forces will be extended through 2024. NATO works with Partners in the region by providing advice, support and training. Beyond the operational response, NATO has significantly improved its intelligence sharing to take into account all of NATOs areas of concern including terrorist threats. In 2017, NATO established the Joint Intelligence and Security Division to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the interaction between NATO and the Intelligence and security communities. NATO also created the Hub for the South in Naples to help better monitor regional threats and coordinate efforts. But direct accounts of the experiences and views of partner countries affected by terrorism add greatly to help NATO refine the contribution that it makes to the global approach. NATOs Mediterranean Dialogue programme began in 1994. It brings together NATO Allies and Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg visited the Allied Joint Force Command in Naples on Friday (23 November 2018). He was welcomed by Admiral James Foggo, Commander of JFC Naples, and met other senior officers. The Secretary General took part in a medal ceremony before visiting NATOs Regional Hub for the South, based at the Joint Force Command. Mr. Stoltenberg was given a briefing about the work of the Hub and met staff in the facility. At the Brussels Summit in July, NATO leaders declared our Hub for the South fully operational. It helps the Alliance to improve its awareness and understanding of challenges from the South, and to work with NATO partners to counter those challenges through information sharing and assessments of potential threats. The Hub cooperates with different groups, including non-governmental organisations and academic institutions. During his visit to JFC Naples the Secretary General was also given an update by NATO commanders about the Western Balkans and NATOs new training mission in Iraq. (Natural News) Medical marijuana is a booming industry, and the use value of cannabis just continues to expand as we learn more about this heavily prohibited, but clearly medicinal, plant. While CBD (cannabidiol) has been stealing the show, with its ability to help treat seizures, there is a new, non-psychoactive, medicinal plant compound in town: Terpenes. Terpenes are another class of beneficial compounds, found in an array of strong-smelling plants. Terpenes can be found in citrus fruits, rosemary, frankincense, and of course, cannabis. Plants actually use the pungent odors produced by terpenes to ward off pathogens and predators. It is no wonder, then, that terpenes offer a number of health benefits to the humans who consume them. Terpenes in cannabis fight cancer There are over 200 different terpenes found in the cannabis plant. Most healing plants, like lemon, only have one or two terpenes to offer. This alone is a strong indication of the healing power found within cannabis, but as Natural Health 365 explains, terpenes also play a role in the plants entourage effect. Cannabis contains a bevy of compounds and substances, including cannabinoids like CBD and THC, esters, lactones, ketones, and fatty acids. These compounds, along with terpenes, interact with each other. The synergy of cannabis compounds is credited with making the whole plant a much more potent medicine than any of Big Pharmas concoctions. As Natural Health 365 reports: These interactions produce what is now known as the Entourage Effect of Cannabis Therapy. The term was first coined in the late 1990s by Israeli scientists S. Ben-Shabat and Raphael Mechoulam of Hebrew University in Jerusalem and refers to how terpenes and cannabinoids in cannabis combine and interact for the treatment of specific disease conditions. Indeed, terpenes found in cannabis have much to offer in terms of health benefits. Terpenes like limonene and pinene have both been found to have powerful anti-cancer effects. Limonene has been shown to actually reduce tumor size, and can reduce the risk of some cancers by up to 50 percent. At least 15 different terpenes found in the cannabis plant have been credited with an array of benefits, including reducing inflammation and decreasing stress in addition to fighting cancer. Cannabis fights cancer in many ways Cannabis has been found to help prevent and even treat cancer through a number of avenues. Current research has shown that the compounds in cannabis can actually help jump-start the immune system, too. A German research team, led by Professor Burkhard Hinz, recently concluded that cannabis compounds can fight cancer. The team, from Rostock University Medical Centre in Germany, analyzed over 100 different studies on cannabis, and ultimately concluded that an assortment of compounds found in the plant contribute to its anticancer activity. In this context accumulating data from preclinical models suggest that cannabinoids elicit anti-cancer effects on several levels of cancer progression, Hinz commented. In addition to a growing body of clinical research, there are many anecdotal accounts of cannabis curing cancer when conventional medicine failed. Fifty-two-year-old Joy Smith, of the United Kingdom, recently came forward and revealed she had cured her terminal cancer with cannabis oil. Smith was given six weeks to live after being diagnosed with stomach and bowel cancer. Smith tried cannabis oil as a last resort, after chemotherapy failed her. Though skeptical at first, Smith says she is certain it saved her life. Cannabis oil should be legalised for medical purposes people are dying and the chemotherapy isnt curing them, she contended. Stay up to date with the latest research on medical cannabis and more at CBDS.news. Sources for this article include: NaturalHealth365.com ProjectCBD.com This debate reflects the circumstances specific to India that prevail on Twitter, and how regressive voices attack activists especially women. As Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey got roundly trolled for hate mongering against a community, many believe the micro-blogging platform got a taste of its own medicine. For any Indian citizen with liberal views being trolled online is far from surprising, but when the company CEO Jack Dorsey held a poster calling out to Smash Brahminical Patriarchy, trolls, abusers and bigwigs flocked to vent ire for targeting a particular community. This debate reflects the circumstances specific to India that prevail on Twitter, and how regressive voices attack activists especially women. A closed door meeting was held on the matter with not a detail coming out save for one picture which was approved by Twitter. Even before Twitter could gather its thoughts, the so-called flag bearers of the Brahminical Patriarchy started deliberating on what went on in the meeting, even digging up the history of the people who attended the meeting to attack them. They even compared Jack with the East India Company that came to trade but ended up ruling the country. Activists who have been trolled online by the brashest voices, always took a stand and abided it, but the microblogging platform conceded defeat to one side. By disassociating itself with the poster, Twitter pulled off a cowardly act. Twitter spokesperson told this paper, The purpose of the discussion was to get feedback on how our recent policy and product changes in the areas of safety were impacting users in India. Twitter kept iterating that the meeting was not in support of any specific external campaign or cause and disowned a movement. Then, more hypocrisy by Twitter came out with legal head Vijaya Gadde saying sorry to the loudest voices. Attendees have called out Twitter for its pretence and failing to brief its higher officials on caste and poster in itself. They called on twitter to step up and not capitulate to bigotry, disinformation and bullying. Even Journalist Anna MM Vetticad who posted the picture said, You are throwing us under the bus to save your skin. Retorting that with such bigoted behavior Twitter was being dishonest to its platform users, journalist Barkha Dutt felt that it was blaming the women who attended the session. She noted that a Dalit activist spoke of how caste slurs were not part of Twitters Report Abuse parameters and that Caste was to India what Race is to America. During the meeting activist Sanghapali Aruna also asked why Twitter did not see caste slurs as abuse following which its legal head Vijaya Gadde burst into tears and apologised to her. Journalists Ritupurna Chatterjee, Nilanjana S. Roy and Anna Vetticad and Sanghapali released a statement objecting to Twitters stand and said, This is also in sharp contrast to Twitters stand in favour of women and marginalised communities in other countries. Twitters misrepresentation and half-truths are the only reason why we have felt compelled to take the unusual step of issuing this statement. Twitter reassured that the platform was sincere in its effort. Thier spokesperson said, During the discussion, panelists asked Vijaya if caste was covered by Twitters policies. Vijaya indicated that she needed to check on this, and the following information was shared with the panelists via email next day. In an email to invitees, they said, We do currently prohibit abuse based on caste, even though its not specifically called out in our hateful conduct policy. Abusing people on the basis of caste would be a type of intra-religious distinction. It would fall under our hateful conduct policies, prohibiting the targeting of people based on their membership in a religious group. However, based on the useful feedback Vijaya received on this trip, she is going to discuss with the team whether this should be called out more explicitly. A word of caution I am not sure if Jack Dorsey purposefully promoted anything. I dont think he understands the Caste system in India. However, neither do most Indians. Our country is not as simple as many others, and many Indians have trouble in comprehending the nation fully. Even in Hinduism, rituals a Sounth Indian family follows might not be the same as a North Indian family. So I believe that everyone, be it Indian or foreigner, should pause and think before making any kind of comment on the cultural threads of India. It might offend many, as it did in this case. Manu S. Pillai, author and historian A dose of its own medicine What angers me is lies by Twitter: Vijaya Gadde apologised & cried for being tone deaf on caste bias; in public her apology was the exact opposite. She says photo private. Photo taken and mailed to us by Twitter. Twitter fails to brief Jack, then transfers blame to women invited. SHOCKING! Finally Jack and Vijaya you got a taste of what many, strong, opinionated women go through every day. Unlike some of us who stand up to bullying, you guys played all sides and were truthful to none. Nice you got a taste of your own meds. Barkha Dutt Twitteratis take a jibe at Jack Akash Banerjee: Dont understand what this whole fuss is about?? @jack came to India to get a first hand experience of what ails twitter. Hes been served a full course meal on how twitter is a toxic, non-nuanced, troll driven, insult laden platform. Jayashree Ravis: And talking of Brahmin do u know why most Brahmins leave the country because of the hate pelted towards them. We are hardworking and honest that is why you see us at top position... its because we work hard for it not come to us because of our caste. We were poor or middle class. We questioned but didnt send hate messages. What Jack and the SC/ST lady did was sending hate message to others. Lets know the difference Akki: Jack is the CEO of twitter,with his position,he cant become a poster boy for any ideologies...this doesnt look good for Twitters image for being neutral and apolitical platform..and patriarchy has been a universal issue not limited to certain community only Truth Hurts: @jack hold a placard given to him by his @TwitterIndia team promoting hate against a minority section of Hindu putting their life in danger! Since long @twitter India team promoting leftist terrorist Islamist ideology taking political biased stand! Harish Iyengar: This jackass got a taste of the new assertive India where misplaced, incorrect & stereotypical views about our Hindu society will not be meekly accepted. They will be robustly challenged & demolished with facts & data. HardFacts: This hatred towards brahmins have caused their genocide from Kashmir to Pakistan to Banglades and has reduced them to minority. For abrahamic forces, smashing Brahmins is the most potent weapon to finish Hinduism. These forces has finished natives in all continents. The so-called Camp Fire in Northern California in many ways has become the worst wildfire the history of a state whose topography and climate have long made it ripe for devastating blazes. With terrain ranging from steep, tree-topped mountains to dry, brush-covered hillsides, and matched with a climate that frequently varies from light rainy seasons to drought years, California has been home to deadly, destructive wildfires since record-keeping began in the early 20th century. Figuring out just how bad a wildfire is requires taking into account several statistics, including not only lives lost and homes destroyed but other buildings burned and the amount of forest, timberland and brush laid to waste. A look at what makes for the worst wildfire and where the most recent blaze falls in those categories: DEADLIEST CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES The Camp Fire, which destroyed the historical mining town of Paradise, is the most deadly in state history, with 84 fatalities as of Friday, according to statistics from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. It's also the deadliest in the U.S. in a century. With hundreds of people still reported missing, the death count is likely to rise. The state's second-deadliest wildfire, Los Angeles' 1933 Griffith Park blaze, killed 29 people, most of them workers hired under a Depression-era Works Progress Administration program to widen roads and build trails in the sprawling wilderness park on the edge of downtown Los Angeles. Those workers had no experience fighting fires and no water readily available when flames erupted. They became trapped in a canyon when they tried to stop it with shovels and their feet by stomping on hot spots. The Tunnel Fire of 1991 killed 25 when it roared down the densely populated hillsides of Oakland, trapping people in homes and on narrow, winding streets. This third-deadliest wildfire began as a small blaze that firefighters thought they had contained, only to see it roar back to life when smoldering embers ignited other brush as fierce winds erupted. LARGEST CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES The Mendocino Complex Fire last year blackened more than 459,000 acres , or 717 square miles, much of it in the Mendocino National Forest, making it the largest in state history, state statistics say. That's nearly triple the size of the Camp Fire that has consumed more than 153,000 acres, or 240 square miles. But only one person died in the 2017 blaze. Last year's Thomas Fire, which scorched about 440 square miles in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, is the state's second largest. It killed two people. The Cedar Fire, which roared across about 427 square miles in 2003, was the largest in state history at the time and is now the third largest. It is also the fifth deadliest. The blaze, which began in the Cleveland National Forest, killed a firefighter and 14 other people. Most were residents of a rural San Diego County canyon who didn't have time to outrun the wind-driven flames. Currently the Camp Fire is 16th on this list. MOST DESTRUCTIVE CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES This statistic is based on total structures destroyed, including homes, businesses and other buildings. The Camp Fire is far and away the leader with nearly 19,000 buildings lost, including 13,954 homes. Last year's Tubbs Fire, which burned through California wine country, is a distant second at 5,636 structures. It's also the state's fourth-deadliest wildfire, having claimed 22 lives. The third deadliest, Oakland's Tunnel Fire, is also the third most destructive, claiming 2,900 buildings. ARE CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES GETTING WORSE? Statistically, it would appear so. Fifteen of the 20 most destructive California wildfires have occurred in the past 20 years. During that same period, 10 of the state's 20 deadliest wildfires have broken out, including four in just the past two years. Sixteen of the state's 20 largest wildfires have erupted since 1998. Crews in Massachusetts battled a massive fire at a multi-family home that spread to two other multi-family homes, leaving 25 people homeless on Thanksgiving night. Lowell fire officials say two homes are a total loss, while a third one was moderately damaged in the fires that started on Arthur Street and then spread to nearby Shaw Street after burning embers were picked up by winds and landed on the buildings. "It appears as if the fire may have started in the back of one house and just spread to the other house," Lowell Fire Chief Jeff Winward said. A firefighter was treated for smoke inhalation, but is expected to recover. Frozen hydrants and slip and falls were also issues for responding firefighters, officials said. Red Cross staff responded to the scene along with State Fire Marshal officials. Twenty-five people were displaced by the fire, and a dog is missing, according to officials. A woman told NBC10 Boston she was getting ready to go to her fiance's house for Thanksgiving dinner when she had to run out of her home to escape the fire. "While I was in the bath, I heard all this commotion going on. I ran out of the bath tub with no clothes, unfortunately soaking wet. I run to look out the window, sirens and fire trucks," Easter Thomas said, who managed to safely escape. It's unclear how the fire started, and the investigation into the blaze is ongoing. NBC10 Boston's Chris Gloninger reported winds were gusting at more than 20 mph at the time the fire broke out, causing frigid temperatures in the teens to drop to single digits and making conditions tough for firefighting. According to data from the National Fire Protection Association, there are more in-home fires during the holiday season than at any other time of the year, and Thanksgiving is the single worst day for fires. Kemoni Miller, the victim of a robbery who was dragged by a car on Nov. 16 Boston, has died from injuries he sustained in the incident. Now the two men who allegedly caused the injuries, Dejon Barnes and Kenneth Ford, are facing murder charges. The men were previously charged with unarmed robbery. Miller, 18, was planning on selling his iPhone to Barnes. He went to meet with Barnes, 18, and Ford, 23, on Gallivan Boulevard, when they allegedly grabbed the phone from Miller and closed the window on his arm. They proceeded to allegedly drag Miller for about half a mile, causing him to sustain a life-threatening head injury. Miller was transported to Boston Medical Center, but never regained consciousness. Barnes and Ford were arraigned on Nov. 19 on their original charges and were being held on $100,000 cash bail. Their arraignments for murder charges have not yet been scheduled, but they are scheduled to be back in court on Dec. 4. From the malls to the big box stores, even up against the bitter cold, Black Friday shoppers turned out for the deals in droves. Westfarms started its Black Friday shopping Thursday night, with nearly a dozen stores staying open throughout the night. A lot of the shoppers told NBC Connecticut they werent going to let a little sleep get in their way of cashing in. Some of them started even before all the doors had opened at Westfarms. We started at 9 p.m., said North Haven resident Amanda Montano. She said shes been making the rounds across Connecticut. We started at Clinton Crossing then we went to Westbrook outlets and then we went to Walmart, she said. These shoppers were all in search of Black Friday steals and deals. We did turkey in New York then we drove home and now were here, said Francoise Leger of Hartford. For Leger, shopping is also an excuse for quality time with her girls. They are visiting from college we do this every year. Its a little tradition. Karen Ross waited in line for Legos. Got to make sure that we get everything so this makes me happy that we got this. I feel like Im already now for Christmas and we got that checked off the list right there, Ross said. Matthew Quintana put on a show as his mom and others braving the bitter cold lines at Best Buy. Yea I do it for fun its going on Snapchat, he explained of his dancing, which entertained the shoppers. A discount dance to keep warmwhile others opted for lots of layers. I have wool socks knee-high socks, boots my jacket, another jacket or a sweatshirt or long sleeve shirt gloves to hats and a hood, said Bristol resident Alana Levesque. Westfarms is open until 10 p.m. Friday. Even if youre not big Black Friday shopper those deep discounts are expected to continue until Monday. Watertown police have arrested a Litchfield man accused in a violent home invasion. Police said 30-year-old Adam Benet broke into a home on Cherry Avenue around 3 a.m. Thursday and attacked a person inside, kicking and punching the victim. When officers responded to investigate, they found fence leading to the homes backyard broken and the locked rear glass door broken. Benet was charged with home invasion, first-degree burglary, third-degree assault, breach of peace and criminal mischief. He was released on a $50,000 bond and is due in court on Dec. 4. Police said this was a targeted attack and there is no threat to the neighborhood. Police are investigating after a child shot himself in the hand Thursday afternoon in Hartford. According to police, a four-year-old child went into an older sibling's room on Van Block Avenue, found a small handgun, and shot himself. The child is being treated at Connecticut Children's Medical Center where he is listed in stable condition, police said. Hartford Police Major Crimes Division Detectives are investigating and everyone involved is cooperating, according to police. Connecticut State Police are trying to identify a man who used someone elses name during an arrest in October. Police said the man pictured above used someone elses identity when he was arrested in Norwich. He is believed to be living somewhere in New London County. Anyone who recognizes the suspect is asked to contact Trooper Brennan at 860-848-6500 ext. 5126. The Cowboys pulled off a huge 31-23 victory against Washington Thanksgiving night, bringing Dallas to a three-game winning streak to grab a share of 1st place in the division. Just outside AT&T stadium, some Cowboys fans chose to ditch the turkey dinner for a Thanksgiving at Texas live! It was a true celebration and a new way to holiday. It was a different kind of family table on display at Texas Live and among the folks choosing to spend their holiday in a nontraditional way, NBC 5 found a few groups redefining what family can be. There's the family you're born with. "He was awake for the whole game, then he took a nap and now he's just partying it up!" said Yesenia Cortez of her 18-month-old son. Then there's the family you choose. One group of friends has made the trip from Memphis four years in a row, ditching their traditional family ties for a 'Friendsgiving' with the Cowboys. "I have seven brothers and five sisters and we all get together on Thanksgiving, but the past four years, I have put them down, literally put them down," Josie Williams joked. Her friend Kevin Gaines added, "Just something different, very exciting and we enjoy coming every year." There was even room at their table to root for different teams, with one friend sporting full Redskins gear. "We just want to come together, have a good time with everybody, enjoy themselves and enjoy life in general," Gaines said. And just a few tables over, was the family you didn't know existed. "We just got a message on social media, said Oscar Solis. They were looking for my father and we tried to connect the dots and it turned out that they were family that we had been looking for, for quite a while." It was the first ever Solis family reunion, a long lost connection uniting an uncle, nephew and cousins through Ancestry.com and social media. "I'm thankful for getting to know each one of them and hopefully we get to hang out more and have many more Thanksgivings together," Solis said. And what better way to break the ice than with a huge Cowboys win! Because when you're celebrating in Cowboys Nation, everyone is family. Texas Live just opened in August, several fans NBC 5 talked to said they're already planning to spend Thanksgiving there again next year. Traders body CAIT has urged Union home minister Rajnath Singh to bring an ordinance to provide relief to people hit by the sealing drive. New Delhi: Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Thursday that the BJP should end its stunt and theatrics over the sealing issue, and immediately bring an ordinance to maintain status quo and provide relief to lakhs of people. His comments came hours after the Supreme Court closed contempt proceedings against BJP MP Manoj Tiwari for breaking the civic agencys seal at an establishment in the city in September. The apex court, however, slammed the Delhi BJP chief for levelling frivolous allegations against the court-mandated committee, saying it shows how low he can stoop. If BJP is done wid its stunts and theatrics, the people of Delhi urge BJP to immediately bring an ordinance now to maintain status quo, provide relief to lakhs of people and save their jobs (sic), Mr Kejriwal tweeted. The apex court also said that misplaced political propaganda has no place and such practices should be deprecated. Later, Mr Tiwari claimed that the court had noted his concerns over the pick and choose policy in the ongoing sealing drive in the national capital. In his statement, Mr Tiwari said, The pick and choose policy of the Monitoring Committee and the illegal sealing actions which have been highlighted by us have been taken note of by the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, traders body CAIT has urged Union home minister Rajnath Singh to bring an ordinance to provide relief to people hit by the ongoing sealing drive, officials said on Thursday. In a statement issued here, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT ) said it has sent a letter to Singh urging him to bring an ordinance to stop sealing in Delhi or categorically declare that the central government was not bringing any ordinance. CAIT secretary-general Praveen Khandelwal said a letter has been sent to the home minister in this regard. People who beat the crowds to do holiday shopping online face another kind of challenge...package thefts. The Glenn Heights Police Department in Dallas County has a plan to prevent package thefts this holiday. It's letting residents ship their holiday deliveries to the police department for safe keeping. "Last year we had a handful of thefts from doorsteps, but a handful is still too many," explained Glenn Heights Deputy Police Chief V.E. Dooley. "As Amazon and these big retailers increase the business of online shopping, this is one of the those crimes that could increase." The perk is available to Glenn Heights residents between now and December 22. Residents must show ID to claim their packages, which can't weigh more than 50 pounds. "They can easily mail their Christmas packages to our police department and we'll receive those packages and hold them safe until they're able to come pick them up," said Dooley. "It's not just to keep thefts down. It's to connect with the community. When they come up to pick up their holiday package, we can talk to them about their holiday plans, maybe even offer them Christmas cookies or something like that, and you just don't get that in bigger cities sometimes." Information about the delivery drop-off can be found on Glenn Heights Police Department's Facebook page. The police department in Hutchins is offering a similar service. Close to 400 refugee families shared a traditional Thanksgiving dinner in Dallas on Thursday. The Gateway of Grace Ministry has hosted the dinner for eight years. Founder Samira Page remembers how lonely the holidays were when her family first came to America. When you are new to a country and dont have any friends or anywhere to go, this is a big deal, said Page. I know from my own experience and my familys experience to have somewhere to go is amazing. Page started the tradition with a small group of refugee families around her dinner table. Years later, the dinner has swelled to around 400 attendees. For some of our families this is their first Thanksgiving, said Page. We are so excited to introduce them to Thanksgiving while for others, this has become a tradition. Thursdays celebration, served at St Matthews Cathedral in Dallas, included dozens of volunteers who helped cook and serve the food. Our refugee families, they are just families with hopes and dreams and struggles, said Page. If you dont know one just come and visit us, visit with one of the families and get to know them. Police are searching for a trio of young men seen running away from a deadly shooting near a school in Dallas. It happened on Thanksgiving morning at about 9:30 in the 4900 block of Lomax Drive, next to Skyline High School. When officers arrived to the scene, they found 17-year-old Felipe Hernandez lying on the street with a gunshot wound. Hernandez was transported to Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas where he later died. Witnesses told police they saw three young, black males running toward the school after the shooting. Dallas police are asking that anyone with information regarding this incident contact Det. McDaniel with the Dallas Police Department Homicide Unit at 214-671-4236, or tonya.mcdaniel@dallascityhall.com. Please reference case #252052-2018. Crime Stoppers will pay up to $5,000 for information called into Crime Stoppers that leads to the arrest and indictment for this felony offense. Call Crime Stoppers at 214-373-TIPS (8477), 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The California Highway Patrol will be ramping up patrols throughout the Thanksgiving holiday weekend to ensure that drivers travel safely. All available officers will be observing drivers for speeding, distracted driving, signs of driving impairment and seat belt violations during the agency's maximum enforcement period, according to CHP. Of the 46 people killed in collisions within the agency's jurisdiction during last year's maximum enforcement period, 27 people were not wearing a seat belt, CHP said. "Whatever your destination this Thanksgiving, remember to buckle up and avoid distractions while driving and give yourself plenty of time for your trip so you and your passengers can arrive safely," CHP Commissioner Warren Stanley said in a statement. The extended holiday weekend is known as one of the busiest travel times throughout the country. In 2017, the Automobile Club of Southern California reported that an estimated 5.37 million Californians were planning to travel by car during this Thanksgiving holiday. The devastation in a Northern California town left by the state's deadliest and most destructive wildfire can be seen through drone images released by authorities this week. The Camp Fire, which ripped through the town of Paradise in Butte County, has left at least 83 people dead and hundreds of others unaccounted for. On Thursday, Cal Fire officials said the blaze has charred over 150,000 acres and is 90 percent contained. View what's left of Paradise after the Camp Fire in the map below. Click on the blue arrow on the bottom right to navigate between drone images, 360 images, evacuation maps and structure status via Cal Fire. Rain fell across Southern California on Thanksgiving morning, but by afternoon the moisture had passed, and despite fears of mudslides or rockslides in the recent Woolsey Fire burn area, no significant problems were reported. A flood advisory issued for much of Los Angeles County was allowed to expire at 3 a.m. Before that, sandbags and sand were made available to all residents at Los Angeles County and Ventura County fire stations and officials in Los Angeles and Ventura counties were in an emergency response mode preparing for potential debris, mud and rock slides, especially in the Malibu area along Highway 1 and the canyon roads. Downtown Los Angeles saw about a half-inch of rain Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Firefighters increased containment of the Woolsey Fire to 100 percent Wednesday, helped by the favorable weather conditions. Since erupting Nov. 8 in Ventura County and quickly spreading into Los Angeles County, the fire charred 96,949 acres, destroyed 1,643 structures in both counties and damaged 364 others. The announcement of full containment came a day earlier than the most recent estimate issued by the Unified Command. About 215 firefighters remained assigned to the fire, officials said. The death toll stands at three civilians, and three firefighters have been injured. Officials have gradually allowed residents to go home as utilities are restored and areas deemed safe. On Thanksgiving morning, Los Angeles County officials opened an area along Corral Canyon and the Newell neighborhood just north of Malibu city limits, east of Solstice Canyon Road and Roberts Road and west of Las Virgenes Road and Malibu Canyon Road. Although most residents who had been under mandatory evacuations have been allowed to return, about 4,000 remained evacuated in Malibu and nearby unincorporated areas, officials said. Natural gas service has been restored in areas deemed safe, including the Peter Strauss Ranch community, the Oak Forest Mobile Home Park, the Seminole Mobile Home Park, and the vicinity of Morning View Drive and Bonsall Drive in Malibu, according to the Southern California Gas Company. Residents were urged not to try to restore their gas service but to contact SoCal Gas or certified contractors to do it. They also were cautioned to watch out for workers restoring services. Malibu Creek State Park, Solstice Canyon, Upper Solstice Canyon, and Castro Crest will remain closed to all pedestrian and vehicle traffic indefinitely. "Many known and unknown hazards exist following an intense fire," Deputy Armando Viera Jr. of the Sheriff's Information Bureau wrote in an advisory. "This includes fire weakened or dead trees that can fall without warning, burned out stumps creating holes under trails, damage to parking areas and roads, and damaged or destroyed structures." "Crews remain diligent in providing public service to residents as they return to their homes," according to a Unified Command statement issued late Wednesday afternoon. "Structures destroyed and damaged have been validated by damage assessment teams." The entire burn area has been assessed, officials said. "Unified Command will prepare for potential rain and have a contingency plan for mud and debris flow," officials said. Some road closures remained in effect in the Malibu and unincorporated county areas. Disaster Assistance Centers were opened to help residents affected by the blaze. They will be closed Thanksgiving but reopen Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. They are located at the former Malibu Courthouse at 23525 Civic Center Way, and at the Conrad L. Hilton Foundation, 30440 Agoura Road, in Agoura Hills. Residents with proper photo ID can pickup their mail at the USPS Facility at 7101 S. Central Ave. in downtown Los Angeles between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. on Friday. Malibu schools were expected to remain closed at least through the Thanksgiving weekend. Officials of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District said specialists will begin cleaning the schools so they are ready to reopen after the holiday. Additional fire information for Los Angeles County can be found at www.lacounty.gov/woolseyfire. Malibu also has a website with updated fire information at www.malibucity.org/woolsey.ncop. What to Know The crash is the worst airline disaster in Indonesia since 2014 Lion Air said the plane was carrying 181 passengers, including one child and two babies, and eight crew members Some 300 people including soldiers, police and local fishermen are involved in the search for survivors Rescuers in inflatable boats retrieved human remains, pieces of aircraft and personal belongings from the Java Sea on Monday after a new-generation Boeing jet operated by an Indonesian budget airline crashed minutes after takeoff, killing all 189 people on board. Distraught family members struggled to comprehend the sudden loss of loved ones in the crash of the 2-month-old Lion Air plane with experienced pilots in fine weather. They gathered at crisis centers set up by the authorities at airports, hoping desperately for a miracle. But a top search official, citing the condition of the remains recovered, said no survivors are expected. The disaster is a setback for Indonesia's airline industry, which just emerged from decadelong bans by the European Union and the U.S. over safety concerns. President Joko Widodo ordered an investigation and urged Indonesians to "keep on praying." The crash of the Boeing 737 Max 8 is the latest in a series of tragedies that have struck Indonesia this year, including earthquakes and a tsunami that killed several thousand people. An air transport official, Novie Riyanto, said the flight was cleared to return to Jakarta after the pilot made a "return to base" request two to three minutes after taking off. It plunged into the sea about 10 minutes later. Weather conditions were normal but the plane, which Lion Air received in August, had experienced an unspecified technical issue on its previous flight. Relatives and friends wept, prayed and hugged each other as they waited at Jakarta's airport and at Pangkal Pinang's airport on Bangka island off Sumatra where the flight was headed. Some including Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani headed to the search and rescue agency's headquarters in Jakarta for information. About 20 ministry staff were on the flight. Latief Nurbana said he and his wife Yeti Eka Sumiati stayed up late Sunday talking to their 24-year-old son Lutfi Nuramdani, squeezing every moment they could from his weekend visit to Jakarta to catch up on his life in Pangkal Pinang. Nurbana said they talked until falling asleep and Sumiati woke up early to take their son, a post office worker, to the airport. "Last night, we were chatting together about his wife who is now seven months' pregnant, his plans and his dreams with his own small family until we fell asleep," he said as his wife wept and clung to him. "Now he's gone. We can't believe that he left us this way, we can't believe that his plane crashed. That's something we only see on TV news, now it happened to my son," Nurbana said. "We want to see his body, his face, his remains." More than 300 people including soldiers, police and fishermen are involved in the grim search, retrieving aircraft debris and personal items such as a crumpled cellphone, ID cards and carry-on bags from the seas northeast of Jakarta. Search and Rescue Agency chief Muhammad Syaugi said he's certain it won't take long to locate the hull of the aircraft and its black box due to the relatively shallow 25 to 30 meter (100 to 115 foot) depths of the waters it plunged into. Three specialized search ships, including one from Singapore, were headed to the crash location. The jet, on a 1-hour flight, was carrying 181 passengers, including one child and two babies, and eight crew members. Lion Air said there were two foreigners on the plane: one of the pilots, Indian national Bhavye Suneja, and an Italian citizen. Friends and relatives gathered at the pilot's family home in New Delhi to comfort his immediate family. "His father is stunned and not in a condition to talk or do anything. Sister and mother have not come out. They are distressed," said family friend Anil Gupta. The pilot of Flight 610 had more than 6,000 flying hours while the co-pilot had more than 5,000 hours, according to Lion Air. The Transport Ministry said the plane took off from Jakarta at about 6:20 a.m. and crashed just 13 minutes later. Data from FlightAware showed it had reached an altitude of only 5,200 feet (1,580 meters). Boeing Co. said it was "deeply saddened" by the crash and was prepared to provide technical assistance to Indonesia's crash probe. The 737 Max 8 was leased from China Minsheng Investment Group Leasing Holdings Ltd., according to the official China News Service. Malindo Air, a Malaysian subsidiary of Lion Air, was the first airline to begin using the 737 Max 8 last year. The Max 8 replaced the similar 800 in the Chicago-based plane maker's product line. Lion Air president-director Edward Sirait said the plane had a "technical problem" on its previous flight from Bali to Jakarta but it had been fully remedied. He didn't know specifics of the problem when asked in a TV interview. "Indeed there were reports about a technical problem, and the technical problem has been resolved in accordance with the procedures released by the plane manufacturer," Sirait said. "I did not know exactly but let it be investigated by the authorities." The crash is the worst airline disaster in Indonesia since an AirAsia flight from Surabaya to Singapore plunged into the sea in December 2014, killing all 162 on board. Indonesian airlines were barred in 2007 from flying to Europe because of safety concerns, though several were allowed to resume services in the following decade. The ban was completely lifted in June this year. The U.S. lifted a decadelong ban in 2016. Lion Air, a discount carrier, is one Indonesia's youngest and biggest airlines, flying to dozens of domestic and international destinations. Earlier this year it confirmed a deal to buy 50 new Boeing narrow-body aircraft worth an estimated $6.2 billion. It has been expanding aggressively in Southeast Asia, a fast-growing region of more than 600 million people. In a record transaction, Lion Air signed a deal to buy 230 Boeing jets for $21.7 billion during a visit by then-President Barack Obama in November 2011. AP journalists Elaine Kurtenbach, Shonal Ganguly, Achmad Ibrahim and Ali Kotarumalos contributed to this report. 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." It's Black Friday! Either you're too full to move from Thanksgiving Day (#foodie) or you're already up and scoping out the best deals. On the forecast, it will be a partly cloudy Black Friday skies with temperature highs in the low 80s and low rain chances. 6 Things to Know 1. 1 Teen Dead, 2 Others Injured in Alabama Mall Shooting One teen is dead and two others have been injured following a shooting at an Alabama mall prior to Black Friday shopping. Authorities say the shooting happened about 9:30 p.m. 2. Teen Injured in Officer-Involved Shooting at Leisure City Home A 15-year-old boy was injured after a Miami-Dade police officer discharged his firearm Thursday at a home in Leisure City. 3. Crash in southwest Miami-Dade A person is in the hospital after a car collision in southwest Miami-Dade left the victim trapped inside a car and had to be cut out. Two others were treated at the scene. 4. Amazon Facility in South Florida Shopping giant Amazon opened a delivery center in Sunrise. The fully staffed facility will speed up deliveries in the area. 5. Black Friday Shopping Underway Stores and malls throughout the United States are opening early for Black Friday shopping. In South Florida, Dadeland Mall opened at 6 a.m. and will close at 10 p.m.; Sawgrass Mills Mall and Aventura mall will both open at 7 a.m. and close at 10 p.m.; and Dolphin Mall will open at 8 a.m. and close at 11 p.m. 6. Small Business Saturday Saturday has become known as Small Business Saturday as communities shop to support local restaurants and businesses not tied to major corporations. Santas Post Office Its about time to get started on your holiday shopping list, but dont forget the little ones have a list, too. Santas Post Office at Brickell City Centre has opened its doors on the third-floor. Kids will be able to write down there Christmas wish list and send it straight to Santa in the North Pole. Beginning December 1st, Santa will make his way to the Centre every Saturday and Sunday. More details here: Harry Potter Meets the Symphony Harry Potter fans will be able to fight a dragon, swim with merpeople, and soar on a broomstick during a Qudditch match in concert. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire comes to the Adrienne Arsht Center with a full symphony orchestra. The magical film will be projected in HD on the big screen, while the symphony performs the unforgettable score live. Ticket details here. After Black Friday, Shop Small Saturday If you want to skip Black Friday shopping, why not Shop Small Saturday? The Wander Shop is hosting a Shop Small block party starting at 6 p.m. during Fort Lauderdales Art Walk. In Miami-Dade, the Wynwood shop has planned festivities for everyone. Guests can peruse over 40 venders, enjoy snacks, and get a free Shop Small tote by presenting an RSVP. The events will also feature live music, art and a henna station. Click here for more info. The Nightgarden Experience A never-before-seen, illuminated playground comes to life at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. Beginning this weekend, guests of all ages can journey through spectacular lighting displays, illuminated mazes, state of the art holograms, and so much more. The Nightgarden Experience is now open and runs through January 6th. This immersive night attraction blends enchanting entertainment and unique photo opportunities, and will surely be a favorite for locals and visitors this holiday season. More info here. Pick and choose policy in sealing drive noted by SC: Manoj Tiwari. Delhi BJP president Manoj Tiwari reacts while talking to the media at the Supreme Court after he was acquitted in a sealing case on Thursday. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari on Thursday said that the Supreme Court, which closed contempt proceedings against him, had noted his concerns over the pick and choose policy in the ongoing sealing drive in the national capital. Earlier on Thursday, the apex court dropped the contempt case against the Northeast Delhi MP, but deprecated his action of breaking a civic agency seal at a premise in his constituencys Gokalpur area. In a statement, Mr Tiwari said, The pick and choose policy of the monitoring committee and the illegal sealing actions, which have been highlighted by us, have been taken note of by the Supreme Court. The court observed that as an elected representative, Mr Tiwari should have exercised restraint and pacified the mob rather than taking the law in his own hands. A bench headed by Justice Madan B. Lokur said the court was extremely pained by Mr Tiwaris behaviour. The BJP leader had already stated in his affidavit that the situation at the spot required an affirmative action and he broke the seal as a symbol of protest, the statement said. The need of the hour was such where a symbolic seal breaking action had to be done in view to protect and maintain the law and order situation on ground at that particular moment, it said. Mr Tiwari, accompanied by his supporters, had broken the seal in September put by the veterinary department of the East Municipal Corporation of Delhi (EMCD). An FIR was registered against him and a Supreme Court mandated monitoring committee referred the matter for contempt proceedings against him. The committee is supervising the ongoing sealing drive against violations of Delhis Master Plan, undertaken by the municipal corporations since last year. What to Know Pal Caneiro's attorney says his client is not guilty of setting his own home on fire, along with 'any other potential charges' It comes after his brother and his entire family was killed and their Colts Neck mansion set on fire. Prosecutors say the blaze was intentionally set; father Keith Caneiro was shot and his wife and two children were stabbed, sources say The brother of one of the four homicide victims found at a burning New Jersey mansion is innocent of setting fire to his own house and of "any other potential charges," his lawyer said. Paul Caneiro is charged with setting fire to his home Tuesday in Ocean Township. Hours later, the blaze at the home of his brother Keith was reported about 12 miles away in Colts Neck. Keith Caneiro and his family were found dead, and officials say all were slain before the fire. Authorities said they could not confirm or deny that Paul Caneiro was a suspect in the slayings. "My client maintains his innocence on this charge and any other potential charges," Caneiro's attorney Robert Honecker told CNN this week. "His family fully support his defense of this charge. No evidence has been produced that suggests a reason why he would engage in such conduct. He fully expects to be vindicated when this case finally resolves." At the mansion, Keith Caneiro, 50, was found shot to death on the lawn. Inside, authorities found the remains of his 45-year-old wife, Jennifer Caneiro, and their children, 11-year-old son Jesse and 8-year-old daughter Sophia. The bodies of the mother and children were badly burned. Medical examiners had not determined causes of death for them as of midweek. All four members of Keith Caneiro's family were "victims of homicidal violence," the prosecutor said, adding there was no indication of suicide. Paul Caneiro was accused of using gasoline to set his home on fire while his wife and two daughters were inside. No one was hurt in that blaze, which was reported at 5 a.m. Tuesday. Paul Caneiro has been charged with aggravated arson and has not yet made a court appearance. Keith and Paul Caneiro were partners at a technology firm in Asbury Park called Square One. A man who passengers said made anti-Semitic statements aboard a Delta Air Lines flight was arrested. Police arrested 37-year-old David Toaff of Washington, D.C., Wednesday after his flight from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport arrived in Atlanta at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. WXIA-TV reports officers met the plane just before 8 p.m. and Toaff was charged with obstructing police and disorderly conduct. Passengers said Toaff, who is Jewish and was wearing a Jewish prayer shawl when he was arrested, began making statements against Jews during the flight and demanded that all Jews raise their hands so he could identify them. Preliminary information indicates that while in flight to Atlanta, a male began uttering anti-Semitic words to passengers aboard the aircraft, police said in a statement. When the flight arrived at the gate, the male continued the disturbance and refused to provide officers with identification. At least one onlooker posted a video of Toaff's arrest to social media. He can be heard repeatedly asking what he did wrong and saying he was terrified. Today a man on my plane went on an anti-Semitic tirade and demanded all Jews raise their hands so he could indentify them. Later, during the arrest he protested and resisted arrest. Incredible work by Atlanta police, I highly recommend watching the whole video. pic.twitter.com/1BQif8Cvfk Jordan Dale (@JordanDale9) November 22, 2018 Atlanta-based Delta confirms police met the flight "due to a customer's behavior on board the flight." Records show Toaff remained jailed Thursday morning in Clayton County. It was unclear if he had a lawyer. Earlier this month, the family of a D.C. man suspected of being a white nationalist reported the man to authorities, according to the FBI. He is facing gun charges. An FBI affidavit says Clark admitted he was a member of white nationalist groups and told investigators he had contact with Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooting suspect Robert Bowers on the social media site Gab, praising him as a hero. What to Know Charles McDowell was arrested by sheriffs deputies in Lee County, Alabama early Wednesday morning. A man whose mugshot photo went viral over the size of his neck following an arrest in North Florida has been arrested again. Charles McDowell was arrested by sheriffs deputies in Lee County, Alabama, early Wednesday morning, according to NBC affiliate WPMI-TV. The 31-year-old was taken into custody after allegedly attempting to elude officers, facing charges that include reckless driving, driving with a revoked license and possession of marijuana. McDowell was booked into the Lee County Detention Facility and later released after posting $5,400 bond. McDowell came into the spotlight following his arrest less than two weeks ago in Escambia County, Florida, on several charges that included possession of meth, cocaine and marijuana with the intent to distribute or sell. He posted $57,000 bond in that case. The original photo from McDowells Nov. 14 arrest has been shared over 265,000 on Facebook. Betraying no trust in an independent judiciary, President Donald Trump is using a federal appeals court in San Francisco as a punching bag for his frustrations about not getting his way on border security. He's spreading misinformation in the process and appearing to misunderstand how appeals work. Trump drew an unusual rebuke from the nation's chief justice, John Roberts, earlier in the week after the president assailed the judge who rejected his migrant asylum policy as an "Obama judge." Roberts rejected the insinuation that judges are beholden to the presidents who nominate them. On Thursday, Trump was still venting on Twitter. "Justice Roberts can say what he wants, but the 9th Circuit is a complete & total disaster. It is out of control, has a horrible reputation, is overturned more than any Circuit in the Country, 79%, & is used to get an almost guaranteed result." Trump is wrong in suggesting that rulings by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals are reversed by the Supreme Court more frequently than those of any other federal appeals court. And his description in an earlier tweet of the "shocking" number of overturned cases in the 9th Circuit belies the nature of the appeals system. When the Supreme Court hears a case, it is more likely to overturn it than not. It does so about two-thirds of the time. In the last term, the Supreme Court overturned 100 percent of the decisions of the 1st Circuit in Boston, the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia and the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati. For the 9th Circuit, 86 percent were overturned. Over the past five years, the Supreme Court overturned a greater percentage of rulings from the 3rd Circuit (92.3 percent), the 6th Circuit (85.1 percent) and the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit (81.8 percent) than from the 9th (77.4 percent), according to The Associated Press' analysis of statistics from the legal website Scotusblog. The 9th is by far the largest of the 13 federal courts of appeals, covering Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. That means that in raw numbers, more cases are heard and reversed from the 9th year in and year out. But that does not make it the most frequently overturned. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar, who'd been nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, temporarily barred the Trump administration from refusing asylum to immigrants who cross the southern border illegally. Any appeal is likely to go to the 9th Circuit. "It would be great if the 9th Circuit was indeed an "independent judiciary," but if it is why ... are so are so many opposing view (on Border and Safety) cases filed there, and why are a vast number of those cases overturned. Please study the numbers, they are shocking." Trump tweeted Wednesday. It's not unusual for those challenging a president's policies to sue in courts they consider likely to back their claims, and it's true that the 9th Circuit is a liberal-leaning court. Conservative groups tended to bring challenges to Obama-era policies in Texas, part of the conservative-leaning 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. But "judge shopping," as Trump put it when railing against court decisions on immigration last year, is not that straightforward. At the time, Trump was upset about a federal district judge who blocked his order to penalize cities that don't cooperate with U.S. immigration officials. It was the third time in two months that a federal judge had knocked down a Trump order dealing with immigration. But the two local governments that sued to block Trump's order, San Francisco and Santa Clara County, are in California and therefore routinely file in the court in their neighborhood. And they don't get to choose a judge; that's assigned through a system that resembles a lottery. The 9th Circuit has 16 judges appointed by Democratic presidents, seven by Republicans and six vacancies. Trump has nominated candidates for five of the openings. He is likely to tilt the ideological balance of that court, as well as others. But he can't count on them being "Trump judges." It was Roberts, a nominee of Republican George W. Bush, who was the decisive Supreme Court vote preserving Obama's health care overhaul. And it was U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly who granted a temporary restraining order restoring access to the White House for CNN reporter Jim Acosta after the White House had pulled his credential. Kelly was put on the bench by Trump. Two Kansas water park workers were acquitted Thursday of impeding an investigation into the 2016 death of a 10-year-old boy who was decapitated while on a ride that had been billed as the world's tallest waterslide. David Hughes and John Zalsman were found not guilty of obstruction of justice in connection to the death of Caleb Schwab, the son of a Kansas legislator. The boy was killed while on the 17-story Verruckt waterslide at the Schlitterbahn water park in Kansas City. Zalsman's attorney called the prosecution "sloppy" and accused the attorney general of overreaching in an attempt to push innocent men to turn on employees higher up in the company. The attorney general's office did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Hughes and Zalsman, both maintenance workers, were the first employees to stand trial in the death. Others have also been charged, including one of Schlitterbahn's owners and the designer of the slide, who have both pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder. The since-closed waterslide used rafts that made the 17-story drop at speeds of up to 70 mph (110 kilometers per hour), followed by a surge over the hump and a 50-foot (15-meter) descent to a finishing pool. Caleb was in a raft that went airborne and slammed him into a metal pole that supported a net meant to keep riders from flying off the slide. Two women on the raft also were injured. Prosecutors alleged that Hughes and Zalsman failed to replace a brake mat that fell off the slide two weeks earlier but told investigators that the mat had only been on the slide during testing phases. Video evidence showed that the mat was used after the ride opened to customers in 2014, prosecutors said. "This was not a mistake, this was intentional calculated conduct," said Adam Zentner, assistant Kansas Attorney General. The defense said prosecutors didn't understand how the slide functioned and questioned the testimony of Jason Diaz, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent who interviewed the defendants. The defense also noted that another Schlitterbahn employee who made false statements to investigators wasn't charged. "These are just two good old boys, they're hard working guys and because they're the only two adults in the room they get singled out and have to get charged ," said Scott Toth, defense attorney for Hughes, as he addressed jurors. Diaz said he didn't believe the other employee had intentionally misled him. Schlitterbahn has said the company had no reason to believe any employee obstructed justice. "We have maintained our belief in the integrity of our staff and respect the process and decision by the jury," Winter Prosapio, spokeswoman for Texas-based Schlitterbahn, said in an email after the verdict. The most serious charges in Caleb's death have been filed against one of Schlitterbahn's owners, Jeff Henry, Verruckt designer John Schooley and general contractor Henry & Sons Constructions. Each is charged with second-degree murder, which carries up to 41 years in prison; aggravated battery; and aggravated endangerment of a child. Another employee is charged with involuntary manslaughter. They have all pleaded not guilty. Their trials have not yet been scheduled. The slide was shut down after Caleb was killed. The boy's father, state Rep. Scott Schwab, a Republican from the Kansas City suburb of Olathe, had no immediate comment after being informed of the verdict Thursday. His son's death prompted Kansas legislators to strengthen the state's relatively lax oversight of amusement park rides. Their 2017 law required amusement park rides to be inspected every year by qualified inspector after previously allowing the parks to do their own. The law also mandated that parks report injuries to the state. But lawmakers quickly delayed criminal penalties for violations and then this year loosened rules further for county fairs and other short-term, one-location events run by nonprofit groups. They also exempted attractions such as hay-rack rides. The Schwab family will receive nearly $20 million in payments from legal settlements from companies associated with Schlitterbahn, the general contractor, the raft manufacturer and a company that consulted on the waterslide. The elder Schwab is the Republican nominee for Kansas secretary of state. Firefighters are battling a 2-alarm fire in Lynn, Massachusetts, Thursday night. The fire started at triple decker on Grover Street. All residents have been accounted for, according to fire officials. One firefighter suffered a minor foot injury. It's unclear how many people were displaced by the fire. Frigid temperatures and wind made battling the flames tough, according to fire officials. Video from the scene shows fire coming through windows and the roof of the triple decker. The investigation into the fire is ongoing. There are more in-home fires during the holiday season than at any other time of the year, according to data from the National Fire Protection Association. Two other fires were reported Thanksgiving evening in Massachusetts. One fire was in Medford, while another fire in Lowell started at one home, then quickly spread to two other homes. A Massachusetts woman was killed in a head-on crash Thursday afternoon, state police said. A trooper responded to the scene of the crash on Old Turnpike Road in Oakham, where the trooper found that a 21-year-old Franklin man who had been driving a 2014 Toyota Corolla had apparently lost control of his car and hit a 2015 Honda CRV that had been traveling in the opposite direction. The crash killed a passenger in Corolla, who has only been identified as a 21-year-old woman from New Bedford. The 51-year-old woman who was driving the Honda and her passenger, an 81-year-old man, were taken by an ambulance to UMass Worcester with serious injuries. The driver of the Toyota was also taken to the same hospital with serious injuries. Their current conditions are unclear. The name of the deceased woman has not been released pending family notification. Police say they believe speed played a role in the crash. The crash remains under investigation. Demonstrators have gathered outside the home of a Massachusetts sheriff to protest arrests his department has made to assist federal immigration authorities. About 20 protesters rallied in frigid temperatures Thursday morning outside the Dartmouth residence of Bristol Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, a Republican known for his hardline stances on immigration. They held banners that read, "Sheriff Hodgson, Stop Separating Families" and "Bristol County, End Your Agreements with ICE." Police said the protest was peaceable and no arrests were reported. Hodgson has been criticized for cooperating with the federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency by ordering his deputies to detain people targeted by ICE for deportation. In June, he was named in a federal lawsuit. The protest was organized by a Rhode Island-based group which carries out nonviolent social justice actions. What to Know President Donald Trump threatened to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border He also said he gave troops at the border "OK" to use lethal force against migrants "if they have to" Trump spoke after sending holiday wishes to troops serving overseas President Donald Trump used a Thanksgiving Day call to troops deployed overseas to pat himself on the back and air grievances about the courts, trade and migrants heading to the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump's call, made from his opulent private Mar-a-Lago club, struck an unusually political tone as he spoke with members of all five branches of the military to wish them happy holidays. "It's a disgrace," Trump said of judges who have blocked his attempts to overhaul U.S. immigration law, as he linked his efforts to secure the border with military missions overseas. Trump later threatened to close the U.S. border with Mexico for an undisclosed period of time if his administration determines Mexico has lost "control" on its side. The call was a uniquely Trump blend of boasting, peppered questions and off-the-cuff observations as his comments veered from venting about slights to praising troops "You really are our heroes," he said as club waiters worked to set Thanksgiving dinner tables on the outdoor terrace behind him. And it was yet another show of how Trump has dramatically transformed the presidency, erasing the traditional divisions between domestic policy and military matters and efforts to keep the troops clear of politics. "You probably see over the news what's happening on our southern border," Trump told one Air Force brigadier general stationed at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, adding: "I don't have to even ask you. I know what you want to do, you want to make sure that you know who we're letting in." Trump also continued to rail against the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which he said has become "a big thorn in our side." "It's a terrible thing," he said, when judges "tell you how to protect your border. It's a disgrace." Later, Trump asked a U.S. Coast Guard commander about trade, which he noted was "a very big subject" for him personally. "We've been taken advantage of for many, many years by bad trade deals," Trump told the commander, who sheepishly replied that, "We don't see any issues in terms of trade right now." And throughout, Trump was sure to congratulate himself, telling the officers that the country is doing exceptionally well on his watch. "I hope that you'll take solace in knowing that all of the American families you hold so close to your heart are all doing well," he said. "The nation's doing well economically, better than anybody in the world." He later told reporters "nobody's done more for the military than me." Indeed, asked what he was thankful for this Thanksgiving, Trump cited his "great family," as well as himself. "I made a tremendous difference in this country," he said. "This country is so much stronger now than it was when I took office and you wouldn't believe it and when you see it, we've gotten so much stronger people don't even believe it." But Trump continued to warn about the situation on the southern border as he took questions from reporters, pointing to the caravans of Central American migrants that have been making their way toward the U.S. and warning that, "If we find that it gets to a level where we lose control or people are going to start getting hurt, we're going to close entry into the country for a period of time until we get it under control." He said he had the authority to do so by executive order and claimed he'd already used it earlier this week. "Two days ago, we closed the border. We actually just closed it, said nobody's coming in because it was just out of control." By no means did he seal the border with Mexico. Officials did shut down one port of entry, San Ysidro, in California, for several hours early Monday morning to bolster security because of concerns about a potential influx of migrant caravan members. They closed northbound lanes into the U.S. and reopened most of them before the morning rush. Trump's border threat came days after a federal judge put the administration's attempts to overhaul asylum rules on hold. Courts have also blocked several versions of the president's travel ban as well as his attempt to end a program that allows young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children to live and work in the country. Trump probably could close the entire southern border by order, at least temporarily, invoking national security powers. Doing so could cause extraordinary damage to bilateral relations as well as to cross-border commerce between the U.S. and Mexico, its third largest trading partner. It would not necessarily stop migrants from coming; Trump would have to contend with the same asylum laws already vexing his efforts to harden the border. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo echoed the president's message in a statement Thursday, saying: "The caravans will not be permitted to enter the United States. There are real dangers to the safety and human rights of migrants from those who would prey on them." Among other subjects the president touched on in his question-and-answer session with the press: Trump disputed reports the CIA has concluded that Saudi Arabia's crown prince was responsible for journalist Jamal Khashoggi's killing. "The CIA points it both ways," said Trump. "Maybe he did, maybe he didn't." Asked who should be held responsible for killing, Trump responded that, "Maybe the world should be held accountable 'cause the world is a vicious place." Trump said he'd be interviewing candidates for potential openings in his administration but wouldn't say for what positions. "I'm very happy with my Cabinet and the people working for me and for us. ... They're absolute stars." But, he said, "there's always a lot of change. I'll probably be changing a couple." Trump would not discount the possibility of a partial government shutdown over lawmakers' refusal to allocate billions of dollars for his promised border wall. "Could there be a shutdown? There certainly could, and it will be about border security, of which the wall is a part," Trump said Trump said he'd spoken with his daughter Ivanka following news she'd sent hundreds of emails from a private address while serving as a senior White House adviser. Trump said she was "very innocent" and that situation was very different from the one he's said his 2016 rival Hillary Clinton should be in jail for. He defended his acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, calling him "a highly respected person" whom the press had treated nastily. The records show there are 704 Muslim graveyards in various parts of Delhi, out of which only 131 are functional. The study, Problems and Status of Muslim Graveyards in Delhi, was conducted by the commission through the Human Development Society in 2017. New Delhi: A Delhi Minorities Commission (DMC) report has warned that there will be no space left for Muslim burials in the national capital after a year. The report, released by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, has sought remedial measures like allocation of land and provision of temporary graves. Quoting a study conducted by the commission, the report pointed out that against an average of 13,000 Muslim funerals every year in the city, there were 29,370 vacancies in existing graveyards till 2017. This means that at the present pace, there will be no space left after one year from now unless some remedial strategies are adopted, the report said. The records show there are 704 Muslim graveyards in various parts of Delhi, out of which only 131 are functional. Out of the functioning 131 graveyards, 16 are not operational due to litigation while 43 others have been encroached upon by different entities, the report said, adding, Most graveyards in the city are small, measuring 10 bighas or less and 46 per cent of them measure five bighas or less. The report said, Very few graveyards were developed in the recent past despite the growing need due to the increase in population, which is a result of natural growth and immigration from other parts of the country. The study, Problems and Status of Muslim Graveyards in Delhi, was conducted by the commission through the Human Development Society in 2017. According to the report, the findings of the study have been presented to the Delhi government, various departments, and organisations to plan a remedy. The study has recommended kutcha (temporary) graves, which allow re-burial in the same space after a few years, and development of new graveyards by removing encroachments. It also called for allocation of new land for graveyards as well as taking steps like building boundary walls and appointing guards to prevent encroachment of the existing graveyards. AWE admits breaching health and safety rules after worker burned his arm THE Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) has been fined 1m after admitting health and safety breaches. An employee suffered burns to his arm while conducting routine testing at AWE Aldermaston in June 2017. The incident was a conventional health and safety matter and there was no radiological risk to workers or the public. AWE was also ordered to pay costs of 26,096.88 during a sentencing hearing at Reading Magistrates Court. The prosecution was the result of an investigation into the incident by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), the UKs independent nuclear safety regulator. AWE had pleaded guilty to the offences at Reading Magistrates Court in September. The ONRs deputy chief inspector and director of operating facilities regulation, Donald Urquhart, said: We welcome the outcome, which recognises that AWE fell short in its duty to protect a worker. This related to a conventional safety hazard and should have been avoided and indeed would have been had the right procedures and processes for safety been in place. Fortunately, in this case the individual involved was not seriously harmed, but easily could have been. ONR as an independent regulator needs to hold dutyholders to account on behalf of workers and the public and that is what weve done in this instance. Im pleased to say that AWE has shown commitment to make substantial improvements on its side as regards electrical safety. I have a team that inspects the site and they will monitor progress towards achieving the standards we expect. AWE was fined following a guilty plea to offences under Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act (1974). The establishment, which manufactures and maintains the UKs nuclear deterrent Trident, said it deeply regretted that the incident had occurred. AWE said that a robust internal investigation was carried out into the incident and the findings were shared with the ONR. A full review of electrical safety processes and systems across the AWE sites was carried out and action taken to minimise the risk of recurrence. Chief operating officer Haydn Clulow said: We always take our health and safety responsibilities extremely seriously and have co-operated fully with the ONR throughout the course of this investigation. AWE continues to operate safely and remains committed to achieving the highest standards in safety performance, working collaboratively with our regulators, contractors and partners. On Wednesday, the organisation said over 30,000 people were expe-cted to attend the Bhima Koregaon Sangharsh Mahasabha. Pune: Dalit outfit Bhim Army ann-ounced that its founder Chandrashekhar Azad alias Ravan would addr-ess a rally in Pune on December 30, ahead of the 201st anniversary of the Battle of Bhima Koregaon on January 1. On Wednesday, the organisation said over 30,000 people were expe-cted to attend the Bhima Koregaon Sangharsh Mahasabha. The rally will be held on SSPMS grounds here and besides Mr Azad, several other leaders of the outfit would be present for the event. Datta Pol, the district president of Bhim Army, said that during the three-day programme, Mr Azad would address the rally on December 30 and interact with some students of the Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) the next day. He would visit the memorial at Bhima Koregaon on January 1, Mr Pol said. On Janu-ary 1, Mr Azad will first visit the obelisk at Bhima Koregaon and la-ter shower flowers on it from a helicopter, he said. Mr Pol added that they had applied to the city and rural police for permission to hold the Mahasabha in Pune and also for the visit to the memorial. We are confident that we would get permissions... there is no reason for the police to deny permission for the events, he added. FAIRFIELD - Tara McKenna and Mark Marston had something extra special to be thankful for on Thursday. At the finish line of the 41st Annual Pequot Road Runners Thanksgiving Day five-mile race, Marston got down on his knee and proposed to McKenna. The Greater New Milford Chamber of Commerce will hold its annual tree lighting ceremony Nov. 24 at 5:30 p.m. on the Village Green. This year marks the 52nd anniversary of the lighting of the trees on the Green. The event will coincide with Small Business Saturday, a day that encourages people to shop at small businesses. Highlights will include the lighting of the Christmas trees on the Green and visits with Santa. The tradition of the trees on the Green was started by Walter Schutte in 1967 and the practice continues in his memory. Over the years, many people have come from near and far to view the trees. Members of the New Milford United Methodist Mens Club and other church members donate their time and effort to cut the trees down, place them on the Green, string the wires and the lights, and take them down shortly after New Years. Contributions for lights and other essentials help to keep this tradition alive. Donations may be made to the New Milford United Methodist Men Club, 68 Danbury Road, New Milford, CT 06776. The New Milford United Methodist Men's Club also sells Christmas Trees at the church during the month of December. Funds raised help support local scholarships, mission projects and local community agencies. The judges asked the agencies to file further progress reports on December 14. Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Thursday directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Maharashtra Crime Investigation Department (CID) to take concrete steps to trace the absconding accused in connection with the killings of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and activist Govind Pansare. The division bench of Justice S.C. Dharmadh-ikari and Justice Bharati Dangre issued this direction when both the probe agencies submitted their respective progress repo-rts in sealed envelopes before the court on Thursday. What are the steps taken to trace other accused? You must make more sincere efforts to trace other accused persons. You have dedicated teams to investigate both the cases and, therefore, more is expected out of you, the bench said. The judges asked the agencies to file further progress reports on December 14. While the CBI is investigating the murder of Dabholkar, the CID is probing the case Pansares killing. The bench observed that since the CBI and the CID had dedicated teams to investigate the murders of Dabholkar and Pansare, they must make a major headway in the cases in a time-bound manner. Meanwhile, additional solicitor general Anil Singh, on behalf of the CBI, informed the court that one of the reasons for the delay in the probe is that the agency was waiting for a prior sanction from the state government to prosecute some persons in the case under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). CID counsel Ashok Mun-dargi told the bench the state agency had secured the custody of Amol Kale and officers are interrogating him. According to him, Kale is one of the alleged key conspirators in the murders of anti-superstition activist Dab-holkar and journalist Ga-uri Lankesh on November 15 this year. Kale is also an accused in the Pansare murder case. A new report has shown that one fifth of all girls aged between 17 and 19 years and a tenth of boys in the same age group in England are suicidal or have tried to harm themselves. This report comes after a 13 year long study that is one of the largest. Several issues including social media abuse, sexual violence and pressure to appear good and happy have come up in the survey that experts have said are worrying. Image Credit: Wrangler / Shutterstock The report was generated by the NatCen Social Research, the Office for National Statistics and Youth in Mind. A total of 9,711 participants were scanned during this study. This latest study is government sponsored and has also found that mental health disorders are on the rise. Even among toddlers aged 2 to 4 years there is a 5.5 percent prevalence of mental health disorders. This is the first study to have gathered data on children of such a young age group. The report released by the NHS Digital has revealed that one in eight of 11 to 19 year old children had some form of mental ailment in 2017. Mental health survey was last carried out in 2004 among children aged 5 to 15 years of age. It was seen that among these children the prevalence rose from 10.1 percent in 2004 to 11.2 percent in 2017. This small rise was surprising considering that there are a large number of young girls who have tried to self harm or commit suicide. It was seen that 21.5 percent of the girls aged between 17 and 19 years have attempted suicide or tried to self-harm. Girls of this age had a high prevalence (23.9 percent) of mental health disorders, the report found. Most of the cases were anxiety and depression, the study noted. Similarly boys of this age group had a prevalence of 9.7 percent who tried to commit suicide or attempted self-harm. According to Emma Thomas, the chief executive of the charity Young Minds there are several factors that could be contributing to such worrying numbers. Pressure to do well at school, college or university, difficulty finding work or starting a new job, and moving to a new area all help explain the widespread anguish among them. Social media, she said was used to compare themselves with others and the number of likes or comments often determined the popularity. Jemima Olchawski, the Chief Executive of Agenda that campaigns for girls and women at risk of mental health problems, said that not all blame can be placed at the doors of body image and social media. She blamed sexual influences, pressures and sexual violence among teenage girls and young women. Sue Rogers, the services manager at Action for Children said that sleep problems, behavioural problems, excessive crying and eating difficulties may be the clues that toddlers and children give out if there is a problem. Prof Tamsin Ford, one of the studys co-authors who focuses on child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Exeter did not agree that excessive use of gadgets and phones were responsible for these numbers. University College London psychiatrist Dr Michael Bloomfield in a statement said, Adolescence is a critical period for a person's development, particularly as our brains go through important changes during our teenage years. Since prevention is better than cure, it is really important for all of us in society to understand together why this is and start reducing the rates of mental disorders in young people. Some of the highlights of the report;; Rates of mental health disorders were One in 18 among 2 to 4 year olds One in 10 among 5 to 10 year olds One in 7 among 11 to 16 year olds One in 6 among 17 to 19 year olds The prevalence was higher among boys aged 2 to 10. Prevalence was similar among 11 to 16 year olds and rose among girls aged 17 to 19 years (23.9 percent in girls versus 10.3 percent among boys) Highest rate of mental health disorders was seen among youngsters in East England (15.6 percent) and lowest rates were seen in London (9 percent) The prevalence was 15 percent among white British children and lowest at 5.2 percent among children of Asian/Asian British origin. A quarter of the participants identified themselves as non-heterosexual. Of these 35 percent had a mental health disorder. Of the three quarters of the participants who were heterosexual, 13.2 percent had a mental health disorder. It was noted that 31.8 percent of children and youngsters with a parent receiving disability benefits suffered from a mental health disorder. Only a part of the children who are affected are receiving attention finds a Children's Commissioners analysis of NHS figures from 2017-18 which shows that 325,000 children received treatment via community services and 5000 received treatment at the hospitals. This makes less than 3 percent of the population states the report. The figures also reveal that one third of the young people who were referred to the services were turned down. The main reason for refusal could be because these individuals could be treated via school charities and social care systems. According to the Commissioner only around Around 700m is spent on child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) and eating disorders support and this is inadequate. On the other hand adult mental health disorders receive fifteen times the funds. It is interesting to note that children form 20 percent of the population. The commission has called for an additional 1.7bn in support of mental health problems for children and adolescents. According to Claire Murdoch, NHS Englands national clinical director for mental health, the government is set to bring in new measures to look after mental health of the young and improve awareness and services provided. She said, Everyone who works with children and young people, whether in the public, private or voluntary sector, has to play their part if we are to protect young people's mental wellbeing. A world-renowned expert on brain cartography has announced the discovery of a hidden brain region in humans that may be what differentiates humans from monkeys and other animals. 80's Child | Shutterstock The discovery could help scientists in their search for treatments to cure diseases such as Parkinsons and motor neuron disease. The region is located near the brain-spinal cord junction and was identified by Professor George Paxinos from Neuroscience Research Australia. Paxinos has named the new region as the Endorestiform Nucleus. Paxinos had already suspected the existence of the region for decades, but only now have staining and imaging techniques become advanced enough to enable its visualization. Having now been able to identify the region, Paxinos likens the discovery to uncovering the existence of a new star. What is so intriguing about the brain region, says Paxinos, is that it has not been found in studies of monkeys and other animals: This region could be what makes humans unique besides our larger brain size." The Endorestiform Nucleus lies within the inferior cerebellar peduncle, a part of the brain that integrates sensory and motor information and enables refined posture, fine motor movements, and balance. I can only guess as to its function but given the part of the brain where it has been found, it might be involved in fine motor control. Professor George Paxinos, Lead Author Over the last 100 years, a detailed understanding of brain architecture and connectivity has been at the center of most major discoveries in the field of neuroscience. Heralded as the most accurate brain atlases available, the maps created by Paxinos are used by neuroscientists to explore and identify brain structures and potential treatments for brain disorders and diseases. They are also used as a guide in neurosurgery. Paxinos is the author of the most cited articles published in the field of neuroscience and is also the author of 52 books providing intricate brain atlases. Detailed descriptions of this latest discovery can be found in the most recent book by Paxinos, entitled Human Brainstem: Cytoarchitecture, Chemoarchitecture, Myeloarchitecture. The widows of these farmers had been sitting in protest and seeking justice. Mumbai: The Opposition on Thursday cornered the chief minister Devendra Fadnavis-led Maharashtra government over protests by farmers and tribals. As soon as the state Assembly gathered, the Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, raised the issue of the farmers and tribals who had marched to Mumbai. Mr Vikhe-Patil demanded that the business of the day be suspended and that the farmers march issue be taken up for discussion under Rule 57 of the Vidhan Sabha. Mr Vikhe-Patil said that following the farmers protest in March this year, the government promised that it would resolve all issues raised by them within six months but failed to fulfil their demands which is why they were forced to organise a protest march. This clearly showed the failure of the government, he said. Echoing similar sentiments, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar told the House that 26,000 farmers had committed suicide but the state government had helped the families of only 13,000 farmers. The widows of these farmers had been sitting in protest and seeking justice. Replying to the queries raised by the Opposition in the lower House, Mr Fadnavis said that there were certain issues with the forest lands. He said that 32,000 claims with respect to forest lands had been disposed of in one district. The government had passed an Act for forest lands in 2005. The objections had been raised over claims after 2005. Only those claims had been pending. There were certain errors with settled cases. The lands, which had been given to the tribals by the forest department were less than what they originally had. Therefore, they were demanding all land belonging to tribals within an area of five hectares. The court will hear the arguments on this application on November 26. Pune: The Pune police Friday filed an application before a Pune court, seeking extension of time to file a chargesheet against activists Sudha Bhardwaj, Varavara Rao, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira. The court will hear the arguments on this application on November 26. After producing the accused before the court, the Pune police Friday filed an application before the special court of K.D. Vadane, asking for an extension for filing the charge-sheet. The police is supposed to file a charge-sheet against the accused within the stipulated time of 90 days from the date of arrest. The 90-day period is getting over on November 25 as these accused were arrested on August 28. Bhardwaj, Gonsalves and Ferreira are currently in judicial custody at Yerwada Jail while Rao is in police custody. The Pune police arrested them on August 28 for being active members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). The Supreme Court the next day while hearing the plea of Romila Thapar remanded them to house arrest for four weeks and again extended their house arrest for a further four weeks, allowing them time to apply for bail. However, the Pune court refused their bail applications and Bhardwaj, Gonsalves and Ferreira were arrested again on October 27, while Rao was arrested on November 17. Sorry! This content is not available in your region On August 21, a fire had gutted the 17-storey building in Parel, killing four and injuring 16 others. Mumbai: The Mumbai sessions court has granted bail to Abdul Razak Ismail Supariwala, a builder and accused in the fire incident of Crystal Plaza building in Parel. The court directed him to furnish a personal bond of Rs 25,000 and also asked him not to enter the building premises or leave the country. On August 21, a fire had gutted the 17-storey building in Parel, killing four and injuring 16 others. The very next day, the police arrested Mr Supariwala who allowed residents to live in the building without receiving an occupational certificate (OC). Mumbai Fire Brigade had filed police a complaint against the builder. According to the complaint, builder sold flats without getting OC and he also failed to install fire safety equipments in the building. The prosecution argued before the court that builder has not only violated fire safety norms but also there was an illegal construction on the eight floor of the building, which was later demolished by the BMC. Advocate Shyam Dewani represented Supariwala in the court. He contended before the court that since 2012 builder was asking the residents to form a committee but they did not. Advocate Dewani further argued that it was society members responsibility to form a committee and install fire safety equipments in the building. He o argued that since 2012 builder was running behind the BMC to receive Occupational Certificate (OC) but it hasnt been issued to him till today. New Delhi: After former Congress MP CP Joshi, another party leader Raj Babbar kicked up a controversy on Friday when he compared the rupee's falling value against the US dollar to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's mothers age. The BJP was quick to hit back, demanding an apology from the actor-turned-politician and his party Congress president Rahul Gandhi. "(Before becoming the prime minister) Modi used to say that compared to the (US) dollar, the value of the rupee has fallen to a level where it is almost the same as the age of the then Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh)," Babbar, the Uttar Pradesh Congress chief, said at a rally in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh's Indore city. The state goes to polls on November 28. "Mr Prime Minister, at that time, you had not taken his (Manmohan Singh) name out of respect. Although our tradition does not allow this, we wish to say that now the value of the rupee has fallen to the age of your respected mother," he added. The rupee has witnessed to continued to fall against the US dollar this year, hovering a little over the 70-mark on Friday. Modi's mother Hiraba is a nonagenarian. Also Read | CP Joshi apologises after Rahul Gandhi asks him to 'express regret' over casteist remarks on PM Modi, Uma Bharti Demanding an apology from Babbar and Gandhi, BJPs national spokesperson Sambit Patra said it was not proper to use unparliamentary words or drag any person's mother into politics. "But the Congress' attitude against the prime minister's mother has been improper from the beginning and such language was used even against the prime minister," he claimed. "Rahul Gandhi should apologise and he should clarify whether he endorses such controversial statements," Patra told reporters in Indore. Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said the Congress was frustrated as it was losing public support, and Babbars comment was out of that frustration. Also Read | Madhya Pradesh Elections: Modi dares Congress to declare CM candidate; Rahul Gandhi targets PM on demonetisation "Congress leaders are stooping very low and making such repulsive comments. In politics, people need to behave responsibly. I condemn Raj Babbar's remark," he told reporters in Ahmedabad. Congress is stooping low, below its dignity & making nasty comments. One should maintain dignity in politics. I condemn this. Comparing RupeeVSDollar to the age of Modi ji's mother shows his (Raj Babbar) mentality. He should immediately issue an apology: Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani pic.twitter.com/Ctk3Ulehgu ANI (@ANI) November 23, 2018 "Comparing the value of the rupee against the (US) dollar with Modiji's mother (age) shows his (Babbar) cheap mentality. Since the Congress is losing people's support and losing elections, their leaders are making such comments out of frustration." Earlier in the day, senior Congress leader from Rajasthan Joshi apologised for his casteist remarks after Gandhi disapproved his comments and asked him to express regret. Gandhi also asked other party leaders to refrain from making such statements which hurt any segment of society. The BJP, however, rejected Joshi's apology, saying the remarks "insulted" Indian culture and the Hindu religion, and dared Gandhi to expel him from the Congress. Addressing a poll meeting in poll-bound Rajasthan on Thursday, Joshi had reportedly said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP MP Uma Bharti and Hindu activist Sadhvi Ritambhara are from "lower castes" and know nothing of Hinduism. He had said it is the Brahmins who are learned and know of Hinduism. "Respecting the principles of the Congress party and the sentiments of party workers, I feel sorry if my statement has hurt the feelings of any section of society," Joshi said in a tweet in Hindi. (With PTI inputs) There was little need for this young man to paddle his own kayak to North Sentinel Island to reach out to these tribals. The death of a missionary committed to proselytising Sentinelese tribals ended in tragedy with the American being shot with arrows and killed in North Sentinel Island on November 17. No human should meet such an end even if its hard to empathise with anyone whose mission is to market his God to those who wish to be left to their own devices as an ancient tribe of hunter-gatherers. The Sentinelese, whose numbers have dwindled to near extinction, believe in a primitive life and speak their own language, totally shun modernity and avoid contact with other humans. They may be a strange anachronism in these times, but they have been known to harm only those who try to break into their secluded lives. There was little need for this young man to paddle his own kayak to North Sentinel Island to reach out to these tribals. John Allen Chau reached the remote area after buying the help of local fishermen, breaching the blanket security that should be around the Andamans, which is the base for the Tri-Services Command. Indias blue-water navy is headquartered in Port Blair and may have assisted the nuclear-powered submarine Arihant on its recent historic mission that completed Indias nuclear triad. Given a scenario where the Indian government itself doesnt venture to this particular island, to have a missionary slipping past the Coast Guard and trying to make contact with the Sentinelese is disappointing. Will modern humans stay away from them, so that they dont pass on the diseases and microbes in them to this antediluvian setting of around one score people? New Delhi: Six African nationals, including four Tanzanian women and two Nigerian men, were rescued by the Delhi police from Dwarka on Thursday night following rumours that they were cannibals and abducting children. According to the police, while the women were rescued after the police received multiple calls informing them that they had an altercation with the locals, the Nigerian nationals were locked inside a room by the locals after there were rumours about them also being cannibals. The police said they received five calls at the police control room within in just 41 minutes -- between 6.57 pm to 7.38 pm on Thursday. They were informing that about the altercation involving the four Tanzanian women in Kakrola area of Dwarka. When police teams reached the area, they found that a crowd had gathered in front of the women's house and there were allegations that they had killed a child and eaten his flesh. Also Read | South African fined for racist remarks against Hindus The police, however, dismissed the reports that claimed the foreign nationals were assaulted by the locals, saying they were baseless. Subsequently, the police claimed to have received a sixth call was at 7.40 pm by a woman who alleged that her 16-year-old son had been kidnapped by the Nigerian men. Investigations, however, showed that it was a false charge and the caller's phone was also switched off. The police added that the African nationals were sleeping when some people came and locked their room from outside. One of them does not possess Indian visa, and will be deported, they added. Also Read | African students call for dismantling of stereotypes related to Africa The Delhi Police denied the incident being a racist attack. In a statement, the Delhi Police said: "There was no racial attack. We received a call that people were gathering. We reached there, dispersed the crowd and rescued two Tanzanian women. The crowd had gathered following abduction rumours. Later, we received a call of abduction, which turned out to be a hoax. We rescued the (remaining) Nigerian and Tanzanian nationals. (With agency inputs) New Delhi: Two bike-borne medical students were killed when their motorcycle rammed into a divider on the newly inaugurated Signature Bridge in Delhi early on Friday morning, the police said. The police received a PCR call at 8.50 am regarding the incident, however, the exact sequence of the event is yet to be ascertained. The deceased have been identified as Satya Vijay Shankaran (23) and Chandra Shekhar, they added. Shankaran, who hailed from Ranchi, was interning with the Hindu Rao Hospital and Shekhar, a resident of Khanpur in south Delhi, was a second year MBBS student of Hindu Rao Medical College, the police said. Delhi: Two bike-borne persons died when they fell off their motorcycle after it rammed into a divider at Signature Bridge, earlier this morning. ANI (@ANI) November 23, 2018 Initially, it was suspected that the victims were performing stunts. However, the have ruled out that angle. Being a left turn, the possibility that they were performing stunts has been ruled out, a senior police officer said. The Signature Bridge was inaugurated by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on November 4. Built over river Yamuna, Signature Bridge is said to reduce the travel time between north and northeast Delhi, also sharing the traffic burden of the Wazirabad bridge. It offers a panoramic view of the city and has designated selfie spots. This is the first such accident on the Signature Bridge since its inauguration. Read More | Signature Bridge inaugurated by Kejriwal; five interesting facts about the 575-metre suspension structure The two were coming from the northeast district and were probably heading towards Majnu Ka Tilla, the officer said. The accident occurred on the left turn loop of the Signature Bridge after the two motorcycle riders, apparently driving at high speed, hit the divider following which the two fell down the bridge, a senior police officer said. Both the injured were rushed to a hospital where they were declared brought dead by doctors, he said. Based on the registration number of the motorcycle, police is trying to establish the identify of the victims, the officer said. Once the bodies have been identified, they will be sent for a post-mortem examination. Also Read | 'AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan pushed me': Manoj Tiwari after chaos at Delhi's Signature Bridge inauguration There's a lot of excitement among the people of Delhi to visit the newly opened Signature Bridge. The eagerness, however, turned risky on November 9 night, when people got out of their vehicles and stood on the suspension cables to get their pictures clicked. Some could be also seen hanging out from their moving cars to click selfies. Announced in 2004, the bridge has missed several deadlines since 2011. The proposal for the bridge, mooted in 2004, received approval of the Delhi Cabinet in 2007. It was initially expected to be completed at a modified estimate of Rs 1,131 crore for the Commonwealth Games, held in Delhi in October 2010. In 2015, the cost of the project rose to Rs 1,594 crore. Reportedly, the bridge was proposed for the first time as early as in 1997 at an initial cost of Rs 464 crore. New Delhi: After the Pune Municipal authorities decision to introduce a unique and harsh punishment for those who spit in public places, Kolkata is following suit in city hygiene. However, for citizens of Pune who have to shell out Rs 100 if found spitting, the dumping ground rules for Kolkata come with a pricier fine. Citizens may now have to shell out a maximum fine of Rs 1 lakh for littering in public places. The West Bengal Assembly have passed a Bill to enhance the penalty for offenders through an amendment to section 338 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (second amendment) Act on . This initiative to keep the city clean is said to have come on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjees express of concern. The chief minister had attended the Dakshineshwar skywalk for its inauguration when she was taken aback by betel juice stains on the walls of the skywalk. Also Read | Parrikar wants to resign, but BJP won't let him, claims Vijay Sardesai Earlier law had stipulated that a fine of Rs 50 and a maximum of Rs 5,000 when found guilty of dumping wastes. However, the new stringent bill passed will impose a minimum fine of Rs 5,000 and a maximum penalty of Rs 1 lakh fine on polluters. It also came on a day, state Urban Development Municipal Affairs Minister Firhad Hakim was elected the new mayor of Kolkata after the exit of Sovan Chatterjee on the directions of Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee. Also Read | Sajad Lone dares PDP to move court, says they dont have the numbers To implement the rules, Banerjee had formed an 11-member committee on to check spitting and littering in public places. Hakim said, he will take up a major awareness drive to keep the city clean. A senior citizen, who did not wish to be named, said "The city had earlier failed to impose a fine of Rs 50 for littering, I am not sure how effective it will be this time." New Delhi: IAS officer and delhi Chief Electoral Officer Vijay Kumar Dev has been appointed as the new Delhi Chief Secretary. The order of his appointment has been issued by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs. A copy of the letter has been sent to the office of the Delhi Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal. His predecessor Anshu Prakash has been appointed as additional secretary in the Department of Telecommunications, under the government of India . An 1987-batch IAS officer from the AGMUT cadre (Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram and Union Territories), Vijay Kumar Dev, in his most recent appointments, served as the Deputy Election Commissioner in the Election Commission of India, Chandigarh, and as Additional Secretary to the Government of India. Read More | Delhi Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash, who was allegedly assaulted by AAP leaders, transferred His predecessor, Anshu Prakash, had allegedly been attacked by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislators at a meeting held in Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence on February 19, in Kejriwal's presence. The incident had triggered a bitter power tussle between the Delhi government and its bureaucrats earlier this year. Also Read | Delhi CM Kejriwal, Dy CM Sisodia, 11 AAP MLAs get bail in chief secretary assault case Both Kejriwal and Sisodia are among the 13 people named in the 1,300-page the Delhi Police submitted in the case. The other 11 are all AAP MLAs. However, Kejriwal, Sisodia and nine other AAP MLAs were granted bail in the case by a Delhi court in October. The next hearing in the case is slated for December 7, 2018. For all the Latest Cities News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Centre has issued a Letter of Intent (LoI) to grant the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) a deemed university status five years after the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry first mooted the proposal of developing into an institute of national importance. With the tag of a deemed university, IIMC which presently offers postgraduate diploma courses in journalism, advertising and public relations, would also be able to launch courses at the post-graduate level and award MPhil and PhD degrees. It could also advise the government in framing media and communication policies and develop a wing that can function as a think-tank, an official said as reported by the Economic Times. ALSO READ | IGNOU December 2018 admit card released, download at ignou.ac.in "China also has a national media university, this move could be a game-changer in media education. This can really help students to take academics in media seriously," said IIMC Director General KG Suresh. The I&B Ministry had started working out the modalities and the draft bill to establish IIMC as an Institute of National Importance in 2013. The efforts were intensified in 2017, when in May, the institute sent an application to the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry, following which the ministry had sent it to University Grants Commission (UGC) for its advice. In the letter of intent issued to IIMC on November 15, the HRD ministry said that an expert committee visited IIMC and its regional campus in Dhenkanal in May 2018and assessed information about the other four campuses through PowerPoint presentations, after which it recommended the letter of intent to be issued. The report of the UGC expert committee was placed before the commission in which it was decided to recommend IIMC to be a deemed university under the de-novo ('De Novo' refers to an institution which focuses on teaching and research in emerging areas of knowledge) category. ALSO READ | CTET Admit Card 2018 released on ctet.nic.in; All you need to know For the institute to be a deemed university, IIMC has to upgrade its campus to start at least five PG departments in emerging areas of knowledge within three years and also have to submit details about the syllabi for the proposed courses, research programmes and recruit adequate faculty members and create necessary infrastructure such as a central library, sports areas according to UGC regulations, the note from IIMC said. New Delhi: Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh are leaving no stones unturned to make their wedding last in the memories for a lifetime. The couple gave their wedding guests giveaways that are too adorable to look at and impeccably considerate. The company, which designed their wedding giveaways, took to their Instagram account to share a glimpse of the gift. The star couple apparently gifted beautiful silver plated photo frames to their guests, along with handwritten notes. Also Read | #MeToo case: IFTDA to deliver its findings about Sajid Khan, Alok Nath in a week Along with the picture, the company wrote, Beauty is in minimalism, but that's also what's challenging. It was a pleasure fabricating Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh's wedding giveaways." For the representative purpose, they used a picture of the newlyweds, but the original giveaways consisted of handwritten notes by the duo. The couple, after their extravagant and glamorous nuptials, grabbed all the eyeballs, is now planning to hold multiple receptions. While Deepika and Ranveer garnered the show buzz attention at their Bengaluru wedding reception, invites for their upcoming celebrations have already left everyone in awe of them. The Ram Leela actors have a lot more in store for family, friends, and fans. Following Bengaluru reception, the newlyweds will head to Mumbai for the other reception ceremonies to be held on November 24, November 28 and December 1. Also Read | Disney classic The Lion King remake is out and we cant hold back our excitement; Watch the trailer here Here are the wedding pictures of the Ram Leela stars: New Delhi: Comedian Kapil Sharma is all set to make his return on small screen with the second season of his popular chat show The Kapil Sharma Show but one of his co-star Sunil Grover, who was a part of the team on his previous ventures will be missing from the new season. As per some reports, Sunil is returning with another show titled Kanpur Wale Khuranas which will start from December 15 on Star Plus. There were even reports that Salman Khan is playing the role of peacemaker between Sunil and Kapil so that both the comedian can patch things up and return together again on the popular show. Sunil said, Ive been busy with Bharat which has taken up most of my dates. Since my show is for a limited tenure, I could squeeze in the shoot in the gap in my schedule. His is a long-running show and Im not part of the it so far. Also Read | Zero first song: Shah Rukh Khan as Bauua Singh tries to impress Anushka in Mere Naam Tu Talking about his upcoming project, he revealed that the show will highlight current topics and will focuses on relationship, I have some saalis and a saala played by Kunal (Kemmu). My character is a pampered jijaji who gets respect because of his position in the family. In most shows people cast me as a man and a woman and some believe I already have a wardrobe ready catering to both. Kanpur Wale Khuranas will also feature Ali Asgar, Sugandha Mishra, Upasna Singh and some other new names as well. There are also actors whom Im working with for the first time, Sunil added. Also Read | Disha Patani sets internet on fire with THIS picture on Instagram It will be interesting to see how the fans receives and greets Sunils new show which will commence before the launch of Kapils show. Apart from Kanpur Wale Khuranas, Sunil Grover will be seen in Salman Khan starrer Bharat which will also feature Katrina Kaif, Disha Patani and Jackie Shroff. New Delhi: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday said that that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had no role in the dissolution of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly by Governor Satya Pal Malik on Wednesday evening. The BJP has no role. It is unfortunate that some section is trying to drag the BJP into this, Rajnath Singh told the Hindustan Times. ALSO READ | Jammu and Kashmir: 6 terrorists killed in Anantnag encounter The governor of Jammu and Kashmir took the decision after considering the political situation there; he reached to a conclusion that government formation was not possible in the state, Rajnath Singh said. It was a decision taken by the governor. The BJP has no role. It is unfortunate that some section is trying to drag the BJP into this, he said. The home minister questioned former chief minister Mehbooba Muftis claim of having secured the support of the Congress. Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad has made a statement that suggests his party had not supported PDPs bid to form the government. Why did he make that statement if Mufti was right, Singh asked. The state has been under governors rule since June. The governor, it looks, felt there was not a situation where any party had the numbers to form the government, he said. Jammu and Kashmir witnessed an intense political drama on Wednesday after Mehbooba Mufti claimed to form a coalition government with sworn enemies, the National Conference and the Congress finally resulting in the dissolution of the state Legislative Assembly by Governor Satya Pal Malik. ALSO READ | Pakistan: Indian diplomats stopped from meeting Sikh pilgrims in Lahore gurdwara Mehbooba Muftis efforts to form a government got a boost after former deputy chief minister and senior Peoples Democratic Party leader Muzaffar Hussain Baig openly supported the third front. I would leave the party if the third front emerges, Baig said addressing a press conference in Srinagar on Tuesday. According to Baig, the PDP failed to live up to its vision. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: With 2019 Lok Sabha elections and crucial state polls knocking on the doors, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has extended its base across India by leaps and bounds. As per the latest data, released by the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), the Saffron party has been ranked as India's leading television advertiser, placing ahead many popular brands like Netflix, Trivago, Amazon, Vimal Pan Masala, Hindustan Liver and more. According to the BARC TRP report, the BJP's ad aired on television 22,099 times between November 10 and November 16 followed by Netflix, a distant second at 12,951 times in week 46 ratings. The Congress, however, does not feature even in the top 10 list. Read | Bhima Koregaon case: Pune police seek 90-day time to file charge sheet against 4 accused arrested in August The top ten advertisers in the week 46 chart, include BJP, Netflix, Trivago, Santoor Sandal, Dettol Liquid, Soap, Wipe, Colgate Dental Cream, Dettol Toilet Soaps, Amazon Prime Video and Roop Mantra Ayur Face Cream. Meanwhile, the Narendra Modi-led BJP government has been evoking a wide condemnation from across party lines for investing a stupendous amount of Rs 5,000 crore for its publicity rather than concentrating on social schemes. There are also reports that the ruling BJP had hired Soho Square, a subsidiary of O&M to plan its entire general election campaign, leading to cuts in the allocation of money for welfare of the society. The Modi government is said to have spent about Rs 5,000 crore on advertising since 2014, an amount spent during the 10-year-long term of Manmohan Singh government. Read | Shujaat Bukhari's murderer among 6 terrorists killed in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag encounter While Lok Sabha elections is slated for April next year, polling in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Mizoram will be taking place over the next few days. Chhattisgarh has already voted in two phases on November 12 and November 20. The counting of votes will take place across the five states on December 11, 2018. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: In yet another major development in senior journalist Gauri Lankesh murder case, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Friday filed a 9,235-page additional charge sheet against 18 accused in the same. Lankesh was shot dead by unknown miscreants outside her residence in Bengaluru on September 5, last year. She was the editor of the Gauri Lankesh Patrike, a tabloid known for 'anti-establishment' views. "Today SIT submitted additional charge sheet against 18 accused persons to Special Court for KCOCA (Karnataka Control of Crimes Act). It is 9235 pages. We've also sought permission to probe further. More details will be given later: Special Investigation Team on Gauri Lankesh case," the news agency ANI reported. Today SIT submitted additional chargesheet against 18 accused persons to Special Court for KCOCA (Karnataka Control of Crimes Act). It is 9235 pages. We've also sought permission to probe further. More details will be given later: Special Investigation Team on Gauri Lankesh case ANI (@ANI) November 23, 2018 Read | Shujaat Bukhari's murderer among 6 terrorists killed in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag encounter While filling the charge sheet in a special court for KCOCA, the SIT has also mentioned about the involvement of Sanathan Sanstha, a controversial right wing organisation, in Lankesh's murder. The last date for filling the charge sheet was November 27. The SIT has in August 2018 invoked the KCOCA in the case as it believed that Lankesh's murder was a part of larger conspiracy followed by the killing of rationalist and author Narendra Dabholkar on 20 August, 2013 in Pune. The attack on Dabholkar follows the assassination of two more rationalist thinkers senior Communist Party of India (CPI) leader Govind Pansare on 16 February 2015 in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, and MM Kalburgi on 30 August 2015 in Dharwad, Karnataka. Read | Hit by arrows, half buried in sand: American killed by uncontacted humans in Andaman During the course of investigation into the Gauri Lankesh murder case, SIT also found that several other rationalist thinkers were in the hit-list of such right wing organisations. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. The iPhone maker will offer subsidies to mobile network operators in Japan to boost the sales of iPhone XR. Apple had cut production orders in recent weeks for all three iPhone models launched in September. Major Japanese wireless carriers are planning to cut the price of Apple Incs iPhone XR as early as next week, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The iPhone maker will offer subsidies to mobile network operators in Japan to boost the sales of iPhone XR, the Journal reported. Apple did not respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours. Earlier this week, the WSJ reported that Apple had cut production orders in recent weeks for all three iPhone models launched in September. Apple shocked investors a few weeks ago with a sales forecast for the Christmas quarter below Wall Street expectations, prompting certain suppliers to issue warnings that pointed to weakness in new iPhone sales. The company started selling its latest generation of phones, the iPhone XS and XS Max, in September and the XR model in October. New Delhi: As many as six terrorists were killed after an encounter broke out between terrorists and security forces in the Bijbehara area of Jammu and Kashmirs Anantnag district on Friday morning, news agency ANI reported. "Six terrorists have been killed in the encounter. Arms and ammunition recovered. Operation continues," ANI tweeted. Anantnag encounter #UPDATE: Six terrorists have been killed in the encounter. Arms and ammunition recovered. Operation continues #JammuAndKashmir pic.twitter.com/AwZ2fM90HF ANI (@ANI) November 23, 2018 ALSO READ | Rajasthan Elections 2018: BJP expels 11 rebel leaders from primary membership of party "Based on a credible input about the presence of terrorists, a cordon and search operation was launched jointly by Police and security forces at the onset of dawn today inside a jungle area of Sekipora at Bijbehara in District Anantnag. As the searches were going on, the search party was fired upon by the terrorists. The fire was retaliated leading to a gunfight," Police said in a statement. "In the process six terrorists were killed and the bodies were retrieved from the site of encounter. Their identities and affiliation are being ascertained. Incriminating materials including huge quantity of arms and ammunition were recovered from the site of encounter. Police has registered a case and initiated investigation in the matter," the police said. On Thursday, a civilian was injured during an exchange of fire between security forces and terrorists in the Khudwani area of Jammu and Kashmirs Kulgam district. The exchange of fire began after terrorists fired upon an Army camp. Earlier, an Army jawan was killed and four terrorists were gunned down in an encounter between security forces and terrorists in the Nadigam area of Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district. ALSO READ | Farooq Abdullah takes a dig at Ram Madhav, asks if PDP was terror-friendly or not in pact with BJP Last week, two terrorists were gunned down by security forces in an encounter in Shopian. The security forces began a cordon and search operation in the Rebban area of Zainapora after receiving credible inputs about the presence of terrorists. The terrorists fired on the search party following which security forces retaliated leading to an encounter. Arms and ammunition were recovered from the site of encounter. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: American national John Allen Chau, who was allegedly killed and buried by Sentinelese people -- members of a protected tribe -- in the Andamans, had survived an arrow attack a day before his death as it hit the Bible he was carrying, his diary noting has revealed. "I'm scaredWatching the sunset and it's beautiful - crying a bit . . . wondering if it will be the last sunset I see," a note in the diary of the 26-year-old American from Washington State reads. Chau had reportedly travelled to the island on a clandestine mission to convert its inhabitants to Christianity. The hand-written notes of Chau, who was killed when he tried to enter the prohibited North Sentinel Island, mention that he wanted to acquaint the tribespeople with the message of Jesus Christ. Chau "appeared to be a staunch believer" (of Christianity), Director General of Police, Andaman and Nicobar, Dependra Pathak, said. The 13-page notes of Chau, handed over to the police by his local contact Alexander who has been arrested in connection with his killing, also show that he knew his mission was illegal. He wrote of maneuvering to avoid the Indian authorities who patrol the waters near North Sentinel Island. "God Himself was hiding us from the Coast Guard and many patrols," he stated in a description of the boat journey. The notes written in incongruent sentences in English throw light on his misadventure. The DGP said that as part of the probe, a police team on Friday made a trip towards the Sentinel island with Alexander, whom they have taken on remand. Chau, an avid traveller who graduated from Oral Roberts University, had visited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands four times before. He was killed possibly with arrows. But Andaman Police PRO Jatin Narwal had said on Wednesday that it was a subject of probe. He had maintained that the death was caused by traditional weapons, adding that it cannot be specifically said whether he was killed by arrows or spears. According to the DGP, on November 17 the fishermen, who had taken Chau near the island, saw a dead person being buried at the shore which from the silhouette of the body, clothing and circumstances appeared to be the body of the American national. The US national, who according to the DGP, had paid around Rs 25,000 to local fishermen to take him to the island, wrote that god sheltered him from the coast guards and the Navy. Chau in his notes dated November 16 narrated that around 4.30 am, standing near the shore of the Sentinel island he saw two persons as the sun rose. He told them that he too has two legs. He further recounted that he was inches from an "unusual guy about 5 ft 5" and as they got bunched together he gave them some gifts. But, the short-statured man "shot me with an arrow that directly hit the Bible which I was holding near my chest", he wrote. Who are Sentinelese people? # The Sentinelese people are among the tribes that survived the tsunami of 2004 without any help from the outside world. # For the 2011 Census, enumerators could locate only 15 Sentinelese people - 12 men and three women. However, their numbers could be anything between 40 and 400, according to experts. # In 2006, two Indian fishermen were killed when their boat broke loose and drifted onto the shore. (With PTI inputs) For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Cabinet on Thursday approved the building and development of the Kartarpur corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Punjabs Gurdaspur district to the International Border (IB) with Pakistan. The corridor will facilitate Sikh pilgrims from India to visit Gurdwara Darbar Sahib at Kartarpur on the banks of river Ravi in Narowal District of Punjab in Pakistan. The project with all modern amenities and facilities will be implemented with the central government funding. The decision was taken at a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to commemorate 550th Birth Anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev. Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi also agreed to India's decision to open the Kartarpur corridor on Thursday and said that Prime Minister Imran Khan would break ground to develop a passage between Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur and the shrine on November 28. Read More | Pakistan agrees to open Kartarpur corridor for Sikh pilgrims Heres all you need to know about the historic Kartarpur Darbar Sahib gurdwara: Guru Nanak is believed to have spent the last 18 years of his life in the Kartarpur Sahib gurdwara. The gurudwara was built at the site where Guru Nanak died on September 22, 1539. It was at this place that Guru Nanak settled and assembled members of the Sikh community after his missionary visits. The Kartarpur Sahib gurudwara is a historic Sikh pilgrimage on the banks of river Ravi, 120 km from Lahore, in the Narowal district Pakistan's Punjab province. The gurudwara is visible from the Indian side of the border and several pilgrims gather at the border for 'darshan'. Pakistani authorities often cut elephant grass, which otherwise obstruct view from India. The Ministry of Electronics and IT will install a high-powered telescope in India for the devotees to view Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan. The Railways Ministry will run a train, which will pass through places associated with the Sikh guru. The development of Kartarpur corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district to the International Border will facilitate pilgrims from India to visit Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The security forces on Friday gunned down six Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists, including one, who was accused of killing Rising Kashmir editor-in-chief Shujaat Bukhari, in a gun battle in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district, according to officials. The accused has been identified as Azad Malik and was eliminated in Sekipora area of Bijbhera at the wee hours of Friday. The operation was jointly conducted by Indian Army's 3 Rashtriya Rifles (RR), 166 battalions of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the police force of the state Jammu and Kashmir. The other terrorists killed in the ensuing encounter were Unais Shafi, Shahid Bashir, Basit Ishtiyaq, Aqib Najar and Firdous Najar. The security forces launched a cordon and search operation following specific inputs about the presence of terrorists in the wopods of Sekipora. The operation turned into a gun battle after terrorists opened fire on the forces. Read | Jammu and Kashmir: Let PDP go to court, I will prove my numbers, says Sajjad Lone Apart from the gunning down, weapons were seized in large quantity, including a massive number of arms and ammunition at the site of encounter. Besides, five AK-47 rifles and one INSAS rifle were recovered by the forces. We have recovered war-like stores from encounter site, army spokesperson Rajesh Kalia told reporters. Bukhari was attacked by three motorcycle-borne gunmen while he was leaving his office in Press Enclave at Srinagar's Lal Chowk for an iftar party on June 14. Two of his security guards were also killed in the incident. Bukhari is survived by his wife and one son and a daughter. Read | Jammu and Kashmir: Mehbooba, Omar take digs at Governor's fax machine Earlier, Bukhari survived three assassination attempts and had been under police protection since 2000. Bukhari is the fourth journalist to be killed by militants in the nearly three-decade-long violence in Kashmir. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Just when India is about to observe a two-minute silence in the remembrance of 166 people slayed by Pakistani terrorists in Mumbai on November 26, 2008, the killing of three people in a grenade attack on a Nirankari sect congregation in Rajasansi close to Amritsar has once again exposed the dastardly acts of Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence-backed anti-India forces. Investigations carried out by the Punjab Police so far suggest that the grenade used by terrorists to attack the congregation was similar to the ones being manufactured by the Pakistan Army Ordnance factory. Undoubtedly, without Pakistans ISI or Armys involvement, no grenade or ammunition can be obtained from that countrys ordinance factory. That means Pakistans quartetterrorists, Islamic hardliners, ISI and Armyinvolved in perpetrating one of the monstrous attacks 10 years ago in Mumbai, is still active. Worse, these anti-India forces are trying to replicate Jammu and Kashmir-like terrorist attacks in Punjab. Read More | Amritsar attack accused arrested: Punjab CM Amarinder Singh Such fear may not be wrong since the HG-84 grenade used by terrorists in Rajasansi was earlier recovered by the Punjab Police from a terror module present in the state. In June, the Punjab Police arrested two students from Jammu and Kashmir who were studying in a college in Jalandhar. They told their interrogators that they were trained by the terrorist outfit under the control of ISI. These students had also admitted that they had links with Zakir Musa, an Al Qaeda commander who wants to set up his base in Punjab. Musa had come to study BTech at a private engineering college in Mohali in 2010, but he left it in 2013 without passing the exams. Suspected to be behind attack the Nirankari congregation, Musa is said to have several contacts in Punjab. Although probe is in the early stage, it is a fact that Pakistan has tried several times in the past to revive terrorism in Punjab. After Pakistan burnt its finger in Punjab where terrorism was mercilessly crushed in the 1990s, Islamabad took drugs route in Indias Northern state to harm the countrys interest by making youth drug addict. But since the past two years illegal drug consumption in Punjab has been on the decline, frustrated Pakistan is at its nastiest form: It wants to push J&K militants and the pro-Khalistani group into terrorism again. Dhariwal-based Bikramjit Singh, who has been arrested by the police for the Rajasansi attack, is suspected to be an operative of the Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF), while Avtar Singh, who is still absconding, is the son of Gurdial Singh who reportedly deserted the Indian Army after the 1984 Operation Blue Star. In the course of his interrogation by the NIA and the local police, Bikramjit Singh reportedly confessed that the terror attack was carried out in connivance with the ISI and the Pakistani establishment. Also Read | Amritsar Nirankari Bhawan Attack: Akali Dal blames Punjab government for suspected terror strike The ongoing probe has further revealed that Gopal Singh Chawla, a pro-Khalistani group leader who is currently in Pakistan, has been plotting terrorism in Punjab for a long time. Security agencies have inputs on Chawlas activities. They say the pro-Khalistani leader remain in touch with ISI and banned Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed. His inflammatory posts on social media have been a cause of concern for Indian security establishment. In the course of their investigations in the murder of eight RSS workers in Punjab in 2017, the NIA officials have stumbled upon some sensational discoveries on coming together of pro-Khalistani leaders, Pakistan-based terrorist groups the Pakistani establishment to resuscitate terrorism in Punjab. By doing so, Pakistans objective is to keep India burning. It is the only country in the world where terrorists are considered as tools to serve its strategic interests. It has been put in the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a Paris based inter-governmental body which promotes effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering and terrorist financing. A team of FATF officials, which visited Pakistan in August, expressed its unhappiness over Islamabads performance on terror financing. FATF officials feared that Pakistan-based non-profit orgnisations, brokerage houses, exchange companies donations of corporate houses and religious entities are still channeling their funds to Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hafiz Saeed-headed Jammat-ud-Dawa which is a front of terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba and others. Warning has been served to Pakistan that it will have to face the toughest international scrutiny leading to accessing overseas funding, including remittances sent by Pakistani workers would be very difficult if it failed to stop terror financing. Deep in economic problem, Pakistan, it seems, is not serious to listen to FATF warning as the countrys Army and the ISI fears that they will lose their tactical assets that terrorists are for them if monetary resources are choked. The Pakistani establishment knows it well that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and iron friend China will come to its rescue if international community through instruments like FATF tries to screw it up on the terrorism issue. Frustrated over Pakistans ineffective move in combating terrorism, US President Donald Trump has already suspended its $1.66 billion security assistance to Islamabad. Earlier, mincing no words against Pakistan, the US President said 9/11 mastermind and Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad under the protection of its military. We paid Pakistan Billions of Dollars & they never told us he was living there. Fools! Trump wrote on his Twitter handle. Also Read | Click here to know all about Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib Pakistans Army Generals might be laughing at the worlds lone superpowers frustration. Given the situation at the United Nations Security Council where China is using its veto power to defeat any terrorism-related censure against Pakistan, these Generals might feel more encouraged to sponsor terrorism. Spurt in terrorism in India should be seen in this background. But the need of the hour is, India should understand that no terrorism sustains without the support from locals. Radicalisation of youth in Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir or other parts of the country needs to be stopped at any cost. New Delhi: At least three terrorists were killed after an exchange of fire with security personnel near the Chinese consulate at Karachi in Pakistan on Friday morning. Two policemen were also killed in the attack which began with a loud explosion near the Chinese consulate at around 9:30 am. After the explosion, the terrorists opened fire and attempted to enter the consulate building in the heavily-guarded red zone in the Clifton area. Geo TV broadcast images of a plume of smoke billowing into the air, apparently from the blast earlier. Several other media reported gunfire by the consulate. Read More | Click here to know all about Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib According to a defence contractor who provides armed guards to the Chinese consulate, the attackers attempted to enter the consulate building after killing the two policemen. "They proceeded towards the gate of the consulate. However, the guards quickly closed the gate, civilians with consular business were ushered inside and the Chinese staff were taken to a safe location," Ikram Sehgal, the contractor, told DawnNewsTV as quoted by India Today. Three suspected suicide bombers were killed before they were able to enter the facility as forces successfully foiled the attack, Karachi Police Chief Amir Shaikh said. Nine hand grenades, Kalashnikov bullets, magazines and explosives were recovered from the possession of the terrorists, Geo news quoted police officials as saying. Food supplies and medicines were also recovered from their possession, officials said. We have received two dead bodies of policemen and an injured Chinese security guard who is under treatment, said Seemi Jamali, the executive director at Jinnah Hospital. The Bilawal House of Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is also in the area. Schools and eateries have been locked down until a clearance operation is concluded. Residents said they first heard firing and explosions around 9.30 AM (local time). The terrorists first attacked the checkpost outside the consulate and detonated a hand grenade in the area, Shaikh said. Shaikh said the attackers had parked their vehicle at some distance from the consulate before moving towards it. Also Read | Pakistan has done nothing for US, aid to remain suspended, says Trump Condemning the attack, the Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement that read, "India strongly condemns terrorist attack on Chinese Consulate in Karachi. We condole loss of lives in this dastardly attack.There can be no justification whatsoever for any act of terrorism. The perpetrators of this heinous attack should be brought to justice expeditiously." India strongly condemns terrorist attack on Chinese Consulate in Karachi. We condole loss of lives in this dastardly attack.There can be no justification whatsoever for any act of terrorism. The perpetrators of this heinous attack should be brought to justice expeditiously:MEA ANI (@ANI) November 23, 2018 (With agency inputs) For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: At least 25 people were killed and 30 others injured when a powerful bomb blast ripped through a busy market outside a religious seminary in Pakistans Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Friday, officials said. The explosive material was planted in the Friday Market (Juma Bazar) in the Aurakzai tribal districts Kalaya area. At least 17 people were killed while more than 30 others injured, Geo news quoted district administration officials as saying. The blast occurred outside the door of a religious seminary, it said. Read More | Pakistan: 3 terrorists, 2 cops killed in Chinese consulate attack We are trying to ascertain the nature of the blast in Kalaya, a town in Orakzai agency, senior local official Khalid Iqbal told AFP. A second official confirmed the toll. Orakzai is one of seven restive semi-autonomous tribal regions on the Afghan border, an area that has long been a focal point in the global war on terror. The blast occurred in the same time when three suicide bombers attacked the Chinese consulate in Karachi. Three terrorists and two policemen were killed in the attack. Three suspected suicide bombers were killed before they were able to enter the facility as forces successfully foiled the attack, Karachi Police Chief Amir Shaikh said. Nine hand grenades, Kalashnikov bullets, magazines and explosives were recovered from the possession of the terrorists, Geo news quoted police officials as saying. Food supplies and medicines were also recovered from their possession, officials said. We have received two dead bodies of policemen and an injured Chinese security guard who is under treatment, said Seemi Jamali, the executive director at Jinnah Hospital. Also Read | Click here to know all about Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib The Bilawal House of Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is also in the area. Schools and eateries have been locked down until a clearance operation is concluded. Residents said they first heard firing and explosions around 9.30 AM (local time). The terrorists first attacked the checkpost outside the consulate and detonated a hand grenade in the area, Shaikh said. Shaikh said the attackers had parked their vehicle at some distance from the consulate before moving towards it. Condemning the attack, the Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement that read, India strongly condemns terrorist attack on Chinese Consulate in Karachi. We condole loss of lives in this dastardly attack.There can be no justification whatsoever for any act of terrorism. The perpetrators of this heinous attack should be brought to justice expeditiously. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Trump on Thursday threatened to close the border altogether, having previously deployed nearly 6,000 troops. Trump had earlier ordered to erect concrete barriers and razor-wire fences to deter what he has called an 'invasion'. (Photo: File/AFP) Tijuana: Tension mounted as hundreds of Central American migrants massed at a Mexican border town headed for a bridge crossing to the United States as President Donald Trump renewed his threats to repel them. With US helicopters hovering overhead, a group made up mostly of men headed just after midday from the shelter they have been staying at since last week to the El Chaparral bridge around a kilometer (half a mile) away in Tijuana, just across the border from San Diego, California. Trump on Thursday threatened to close the border altogether, having previously deployed nearly 6,000 troops to erect concrete barriers and razor-wire fences to deter what he has called an "invasion." "If we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control," Trump told reporters, before firing a warning to Mexico. "The whole border. I mean the whole border," he said, adding that "Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the United States." Tensions rose at the border when a local official and a human rights activist tried to convince the migrants both of the benefits of remaining in Mexico, and to submit their US asylum requests through official channels. "We don't want to!" shouted the migrants before continuing on to the bridge. "Let us cross now, we're already desperate, we've left family in Honduras, we need to work," said a man called Wilson. Authorities in Tijuana set up a job fair in an attempt to recruit skilled workers amongst the migrants for the benefit of local companies, while Mexico's migration agency has offered them temporary residency papers. Some have taken advantage of the offers but others are simply determined to reach the US. Since setting out more than a month ago, mostly from from Honduras, thousands of migrants - including many women and children - have covered about 4,400 kilometers (2,700 miles), either walking or hitchhiking, before the first groups began reaching Tijuana at the end of last week. But there have been tensions since they started arriving at the border town, particularly in the shelter housing around 4,500 Central Americans. The migrants are mostly fleeing poverty and unrest in Central America's "Northern Triangle" - El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, where gang violence has fueled some of the highest murder rates in the world. It's that time of year again. Santa is making his rounds in southwestern Connecticut. The legend of Santa Claus can be traced back hundreds of years to a monk named St. Nicholas. According to History.com, "it is said that he gave away all of his inherited wealth and traveled the countryside helping the poor and sick." The federal government on Friday released a long-awaited report with an unmistakable message: The effects of climate change, including deadly wildfires, increasingly debilitating hurricanes and heat waves, are already battering the United States, and the danger of more such catastrophes is worsening. The report's authors, who represent numerous federal agencies, say they are more certain than ever that climate change poses a severe threat to Americans' health and pocketbooks, as well as to the country's infrastructure and natural resources. And while it avoids policy recommendations, the report's sense of urgency and alarm stand in stark contrast to the lack of any apparent plan from President Donald Trump to tackle the problems, which, according to the government he runs, are increasingly dire. The congressionally mandated document - the first of its kind issued during the Trump administration - details how climate-fueled disasters and other types of worrisome changes are becoming more commonplace throughout the country and how much worse they could become in the absence of efforts to combat global warming. Already, western mountain ranges are retaining much less snow throughout the year, threatening water supplies below them. Coral reefs in the Caribbean, Hawaii, Florida and the United States' Pacific territories are experiencing severe bleaching events. Wildfires are devouring ever-larger areas during longer fire seasons. And the country's sole Arctic state, Alaska, is seeing a staggering rate of warming that has upended its ecosystems, from once ice-clogged coastlines to increasingly thawing permafrost tundras. The National Climate Assessment's publication marks the government's fourth comprehensive look at climate-change impacts on the United States since 2000. The last came in 2014. Produced by 13 federal departments and agencies and overseen by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the report stretches well over 1,000 pages and draws more definitive, and in some cases more startling, conclusions than earlier versions. The authors argue that global warming "is transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us." And they conclude that humans must act aggressively to adapt to current impacts and mitigate future catastrophes "to avoid substantial damages to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades." ALSO Fungus lovers face future with fewer truffles "The impacts we've seen the last 15 years have continued to get stronger, and that will only continue," said Gary Yohe, a professor of economics and environmental studies at Wesleyan University who served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed the report. "We have wasted 15 years of response time. If we waste another five years of response time, the story gets worse. The longer you wait, the faster you have to respond and the more expensive it will be." That urgency is at odds with the stance of the Trump administration, which has rolled back several Obama-era environmental regulations and incentivized the production of fossil fuels. Trump also has said he plans to withdraw the nation from the Paris climate accord and questioned the science of climate change just last month, saying on CBS's "60 Minutes" that "I don't know that it's man-made" and that the warming trend "could very well go back." Furthermore, as the Northeast faced a cold spell this week, Trump tweeted, "Whatever happened to Global Warming?" This shows a misunderstanding that climate scientists have repeatedly tried to correct - a confusion between daily weather fluctuations and long-term climate trends. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday's report. However, the administration last year downplayed a separate government report calling human activity the dominant driver of global warming, saying in a statement that "the climate has changed and is always changing." Given that history, some of the hundreds of scientists and federal officials who spent months working on the detailed document were frustrated, but not surprised, that the administration chose to release it on the day after Thanksgiving - typically one of the slowest news days of the year. Several people involved in the report said its release originally had been planned for early December, but after a behind-the-scenes debate in recent weeks about when to make it public, administration officials settled on Black Friday. Several federal experts who participated in a media call after the release of the report on Friday were repeatedly asked about the timing of its release on a day when the country's attention is likely elsewhere. For the most part, they demurred, saying that in part the report was finished early and that they wanted to make sure it was out ahead of both an American Geophysical Union gathering next month, as well as a major international climate conference in Poland around the same time. Rather, they implored reporters to focus instead on the contents of the report, which they said had not been tinkered with by administration officials. "This report has not been altered or revised in any way because of political considerations," Monica Allen, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), told reporters. She said the decision on when to release it had been made during the past week, but added, "It's not as significant as the content of what's in the report." Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said the report shows how climate change will affect all Americans. "No matter how hard they try, the Trump administration can't bury the effects of climate change in a Black Friday news dump - effects their own federal government scientists have uncovered," he said in a statement. "The president says outrageous things like climate change is a hoax engineered by the Chinese and raking forests will prevent catastrophic wildfires, but serious consequences like collapsing coastal housing prices and trillions of dollars in stranded fossil fuel assets await us if we don't act." That report is striking in its clear statement that climate change is not only already affecting the U.S., but that the effects are getting worse. "This report draws a direct connection between the warming atmosphere and the resulting changes that affect Americans' lives, communities, and livelihoods, now and in the future," the document reads, concluding that "the evidence of human-caused climate change is overwhelming and continues to strengthen, that the impacts of climate change are intensifying across the country, and that climate-related threats to Americans' physical, social, and economic well-being are rising." The report finds that the continental United States already is 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it was 100 years ago, surrounded by seas that are on average nine inches higher and being racked by far worse heat waves than the nation experienced only 50 years ago. But those figures offer only the prelude to even more potentially severe impacts. The report suggests that by 2050, the country could see as much as 2.3 additional degrees of warming in the continental United States. By that same year, in a high-end global-warming scenario, coral reefs in Hawaii and the U.S. Pacific territories could be bleaching every single year - conditions in which their survival would be in severe doubt. A record-warm year like 2016 would become routine. Key crops, including corn, wheat and soybeans, would see declining yields as temperatures rise during the growing season. The city of Phoenix, which experienced about 80 days per year over 100 degrees around the turn of the century, could see between 120 and 150 such days per year by the end of the century, depending on the pace of emissions. And those who face the most suffering? Society's most vulnerable, including "lower-income and other marginalized communities," researchers found. In another major step, the authors of the new report have begun to put dollar signs next to projected climate damage, specifically within the United States. In a worst-case climate-change scenario, the document finds, labor-related losses by the year 2090 as a result of extreme heat - the sort that makes it difficult to work outdoors or seriously lowers productivity - could amount to an estimated $155 billion annually. Deaths from temperature extremes could take an economic toll of $141 billion per year in the same year, while coastal property damage could total $118 billion yearly, researchers found. Of course, mitigating climate change would also mitigate this damage, by as much as 58 percent in the case of high-temperature related deaths, the report finds. The categorical tone of the new assessments reflects scientists' growing confidence in the ability to detect the role of a changing climate in individual extreme events, such as heat waves and droughts. At the same time, increasingly sophisticated computer simulations now allow them to project future changes in highly specific regions of the country. For many Americans, however, no simulations are necessary. The effects of climate change are already playing out daily. "We don't debate who caused it. You go outside, the streets are flooded. What are you going to do about it? It's our reality nowadays," said Susanne Torriente, who also reviewed the report. She is chief resilience officer for Miami Beach, which is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to adapt to rising sea levels. "We need to use this best available data so we can start making decisions to start investing in our future. . . . It shouldn't be that complicated or that partisan." The report is being released at the same time as another major federal climate study that, in contrast, reaches a more positive conclusion - at least with respect to what can be done about climate change. The Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report, which examines all of North America (not just the United States), finds that over a decade, greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil fuels declined by 1 percent per year. The result is that while North America emitted 24 percent of the world's emissions in 2004, that was down to 17 percent in 2013. This occurred in part thanks to improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency, the growth of renewable energy and the swapping of coal-burning for natural gas. "For the globe, we're still going up, but regionally, there have been these changes in how humans have been acting that have caused our emissions to go down," said Ted Schuur, a Northern Arizona University expert on permafrost carbon who contributed to the report, the follow-up to an initial effort released in 2007. The report concludes that it appears possible to for economies to grow - at least in the United States, Mexico and Canada - without increasing overall emissions of greenhouse gases. That would be an important signal for the ability of the world to slow climate change over the course of the century. However, it does not mean any lessening of climate-change impacts within the United States. As long as global emissions continue, the risk of impacts here continue, because carbon dioxide circulates around the globe. The release of the National Climate Assessment comes on the heels of other recent global warnings, most notably a report by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finding that the world would have to make unprecedented changes in the next decade to remain below 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) of total warming above preindustrial levels. The last time a U.S. National Climate Assessment was published, in 2014, Obama administration officials took the document seriously, with top policymakers heralding its release and embracing its findings. "These tailored findings help translate scientific insights into practical, usable knowledge that can help decision-makers and citizens anticipate and prepare for specific climate-change impacts," White House science adviser John Holdren and NOAA head Kathryn Sullivan wrote at the time. On the other side of the country from Washington, at least one well-known atmospheric scientist this week was wrestling not with the contents of a climate report but with the changing view from his window. "Normally, I can see San Francisco Bay from my home," said Ken Caldeira, a senior researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science. "Today and for the past few days, I could not see the bay for all the smoke from the Paradise fire. Fires that approach the size of the Paradise fire are most common in the hot dry years - the kind of years that we are likely to see many more of." "We are trained to be skeptical and resist jumping to quick conclusions," he said. "But looking at the smoke, I could not help but think: 'This is climate change. This is what climate change looks like.' " Hourly workers play a significant role in today's economy -- from running operations at restaurants, to transporting goods from one place to another, to getting people to their destinations. Companies from Amazon, Uber and Instacart to local retail, food and logistics businesses are raising wages and offering better benefits in order to attract and retain hourly workers. At the same time, the demand for hourly workers has increased significantly, as the number of job openings in the United States has exceeded the number of job seekers. Related: As Restaurant Chains End 'No-Poach' Policies, How Will Franchisees Retain Trained Employees? At the same time, companies face the challenge of high turnover of hourly workers for their businesses. In a survey of 1,200 hourly workers by FSG and Hart Research Associates, the majority of respondents wanted to leave their current positions within less than 12 months. The average cost of a turnover in the company includes the cost of interviewing and screening, the cost of on-boarding, cost of training and lost productivity and engagement of current employees, which can be significant. Therefore, it is important for business owners and entrepreneurs to recognize the importance of engaging hourly workers, to reduce turnover and to increase productivity. Therefore, in this publication, I hope to offer some tips to reduce the turnover of hourly workers for your business. 1. Start with a great onboarding process. Onboarding is a prime opportunity for employers to win the hearts and minds of new employees. It is important to have a well-structured onboarding process to provide employees with the information to succeed in their work, and to also integrate them into the culture of the company. The few weeks before employees start and after employees join is the best time to engage with new hourly workers, as they are most receptive to new structure, processes and ideas. As an employer, it is important to come up with a well-structure onboarding process to share the values, mission and processes of the company and to ensure that each manager reinforces them. Hourly workers who experienced a robust onboarding process are more likely to stay with the company for a longer period of time and also exhibit higher productivity. Related: 5 Affordable Franchises You Can Start for Less Than $10,000 2. Offer professional development opportunities. Many hourly workers may only have finished high school or community colleges and are often eager to learn new skills, obtain new knowledge and broaden their horizons. One example is Starbucks' College Achievement Plan, which was introduced in June 2014 in partnership with Arizona State University, to create an opportunity for all eligible employees in United States to earn their bachelor's degree with full tuition covered. On a smaller scale, local businesses can offer mentoring sessions with managers, or provide opportunities for hourly workers to go to community classes on sales, marketing or communication skills. They could also turn to online courses such as Coursera or Khan Academy, where employees will be able to access resources from leading universities at minimal or no cost. 3. Offer flexibility in work scheduling. With the growth of on-demand companies like Uber, DoorDash, Instacart and more, it has become increasingly important for companies to be able to offer the flexibility that the gig economy presents. Uber drivers are able to have complete flexibility in their schedule with a few clicks on the mobile app, and hence the trend has evolved that employees value their control over their time allocation. Therefore, business owners and entrepreneurs should adopt scheduling software to increase efficiency and allow employees to readily select the time slots that may best fit their weekly schedule, increasing loyalty and engagement. Related: Why This Franchisor Invests in Franchisees Who Have No Experience 4. Work toward inclusion, not just diversity. Hourly workers come from many different backgrounds and having a more inclusive work environment and hiring for a more diverse team will benefit the company significantly. In order to attract more talent and reduce turnover, it is important to work toward both inclusion and diversity to better engage hourly workers. One of the leaders in this is Gap, which created a program called "This Way Ahead," which helps younger workers who face employment challenges. Coming up with programs and career initiatives focused on a wider range of people is also an effective talent strategy for companies as different demographics of workers may have lower turnover rate, and hence be a better source of talent pipeline. 5. Communicate with your team by having periodic check-ins. It is important for managers and owners to have periodic check-ins with their employees of all levels and backgrounds. Hourly workers increasingly seek engagement and having a clear line of communication is essential. Many hourly workers are not satisfied with their work because they do not feel supported or recognized in their workplace. In a Randstad report, 27 percent of employees surveyed said that a lack of recognition is what causes they to leave the company. The more engaged workers are, the more committed they will, in turn reducing the turnover of hourly workers for companies. Related: The 7 Best Ways to Find Hourly Workers For Your Business 6. Provide a clear path to progression and promotion. Local businesses should have an employee of the month in place to increase competition, to motivate employees and to reward the ones who excel. Hourly workers want to have a clear path to progression and promotion, and there should be a clear career road map. In the case of a restaurant, hourly workers should have the opportunity to progress from a server, to team lead, to manager and to other functions within the company. Employers can further break down the different role hierarchies to allow more space for employees to progress in their work. Companies can also tie annual bonuses to the performance of employees, and incentive schemes like this can greatly motivate hourly workers. High turnover for a business is detrimental and can significantly impact the morale, productivity and operations of any company. As the competition for good hourly workers increases, it has become ever more important for companies to focus on increasing engagement for their entry-level workers, to further motivate them and to reduce the turnover for workers. Companies need to take a more structured approach to communicating with entry-level workers, to better onboard them and to better reward them. Lower turnover will lead to a higher output for businesses, and benefits created from reducing turnover will surely outweigh the costs and resources allocated to it. Related: 5 Reasons Why Entrepreneurs Should Promote Themselves Reduce Turnover of Hourly Workers With These 7 Tips 5 Smart Ways for Companies to Simplify Employee Commute Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Two Pakistani policemen were also killed and a security guard wounded during the attack, a doctor told Reuters. The compound of the Chinese Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan on Friday. (Photo: AP) Karachi: Three unidentified gunmen were killed by Pakistan security forces in an incident of firing near the Chinese Consulate in Karachi's Clifton area on Friday morning, reported Pakistan channel Geo TV quoting Karachi police chief. Geo TV also reported that a gunman's suicide vest had been recovered. Two Pakistani policemen were also killed and a security guard wounded during the attack, a doctor told Reuters. According to media reports, a blast and gunshots were heard. However, the motive of the attack is not clear or how close the gunshots were to the consulate. Geo TV broadcast images of a plume of smoke billowing into the air, apparently from the blast earlier. Roads leading to the Chinese consulate were cordoned off and the staff inside the Chinese consulate were evacuated to safety, Geo TV reported quoting security sources. Researchers reviewed all lofting technologies that seem plausible as methods to put 100,000 tons per year of sulphur to an altitude of up to ~20 km in 2033. The program then scales to 5 million tons per year. Their main research involved engaging directly with commercial aerospace vendors to elicit what current and near-term technology platforms can achieve at what cost. We have met or corresponded directly with: Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, Gulfstream, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman; GE Engines, Rolls Royce Engines; Atlas Air, Near Space Corporation, Scaled Composites, The Spaceship Company, Virgin Orbit, and NASA, the latter in respect of its high-altitude research aircraft fleet. They eliminated aerostats and hoses because the technology is not ready or untested. Modified business jets, noted prominently in McClellan et al (2010, 2012) study, are incapable of reaching altitudes above ~16 km. High payload, high altitude aerostats have been hypothesized but not yet successfully tested, and in all events, are operationally fragile, unable to operate in adverse weather conditions. Tethered hoses are even less technologically mature and to-date untested. Military fighters such as the F-15 have reached altitudes of ~18 km in the context of record-setting ballistic climbs in ideal conditions, but they are incapable of either sustained flight or regular operations at such altitudes. They estimate total development costs of $~2 billion for a special airframe, and a further $350 million for modifying existing low-bypass engines. These numbers are toward the lower end of McClellan et al (2010, 2012) range of $2.1 to $5.6 billion and significantly below the TU Delft students estimates of $14 billion for its purpose-built Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering Aircraft, or SAG. The required SAIL plane is equivalent in weight to a large narrow-body passenger aircraft such as the A321, or in Boeing terms, sized between the 737800 and the 757200. In order to sustain level flight in the thin air encountered at altitudes approaching ~20 kms, SAIL requires roughly double the wing area of an equivalently sized airliner, and double the thrust, with four engines instead of two. (While maximum thrust requirements of most aircraft are defined by takeoff, SAILs engines are configured to perform at high altitudes.) At the same time, its fuselage would seem stubby and narrow, sized to accommodate a heavy but dense mass of molten sulfur rather than the large volume of space and air required for passenger comfort. SAIL would therefore have considerably wider wingspan than length. Its compact fuselage, however, would sit behind a conventional manned cockpit. While it is easy to imagine SAIL migrating to unmanned cockpits over time, under current certification rules, it would be substantially faster and therefore cheaper to certify the aircraft with onboard pilots. The preliminary design for SAIL calls for a length of ~46 m, a wingspan of ~55 m, and a wing area of ~250 m2, with an aspect ratio of ~12:1. The maximum structural payload would be ~25 t, with maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) of ~100 t, operating empty weight (OEW) of ~50 t, and maximum fuel load of ~32 t. The aircraft would have 4 wing-mounted low-bypass engines, modified for high-altitude operations with an aggregate take-off thrust of ~2530 t and a thrust-to-weight ratio of ~30%. (GE Engines considers its F118 engine adequate, noting that it powers the NASA Global Hawk aircraft to similar altitudes; its Passport 20 engine may similarly be capable. Rolls Royce suggests its BR710 or BR725 engines.) The design will require a smaller fifth centerline auxiliary power unit for bleed air and onboard combustion of the molten sulfur payload. Environmental Research Letters Stratospheric aerosol injection tactics and costs in the first 15 years of deployment Researchers reviewed the capabilities and costs of various lofting methods intended to deliver sulfates into the lower stratosphere. They lay out a future solar geoengineering deployment scenario of halving the increase in anthropogenic radiative forcing beginning 15 years hence, by deploying material to altitudes as high as ~20 km. After surveying an exhaustive list of potential deployment techniques, they settle upon an aircraft-based delivery system. They conclude that no existing aircraft designeven with extensive modificationscan reasonably fulfill this mission. However, they also conclude that developing a new, purpose-built high-altitude tanker with substantial payload capabilities would neither be technologically difficult nor prohibitively expensive. They calculate early-year costs of ~$1500 per ton of material deployed, resulting in average costs of ~$2.25 billion per year over the first 15 years of deployment. They further calculate the number of flights at ~4000 in year one, linearly increasing by ~4000 per year. They conclude by arguing that, while cheap, such an aircraft-based program would unlikely be a secret, given the need for thousands of flights annually by airliner-sized aircraft operating from an international array of bases. EAST HAVEN The town ended the 2018 fiscal year with a surplus of more than $400,000, according to a release from Mayor Joseph Maturos office. An assessment of initial closeout figures showed that the community ended the year $409,376.00 in the black the seventh straight year the town has ended up in positive territory, according to the release. This past budget was, without a doubt, the most difficult in my 17 years as mayor due to the loss of over $1.2 million dollars in funding from the State of Connecticut, Maturo said in the release. Nevertheless, thanks to our conservative fiscal policies, we are projecting a modest but strong surplus... despite losing that funding, we didnt eliminate programs. We tightened our belts, found savings in other departments, and stepped in to make up the $1.2 million dollar shortfall from the state. Maturo said ended up with such a surplus was an incredible accomplishment, given the size of the loss in funding. The surplus monies will be sent to the towns fund balance, which will increase to approximately $5.84 million, according to the release. Finance Director Paul Rizza noted in the release that amount represented 6.37 percent of the towns operating expenses above the 5 percent mark recommended by credit rating agencies. The industry gold standard is 10 percent, Rizza said and the community is well on its way to that mark. Maturo said the town would strive to continue to pay off long-term debt and invest in infrastructure. But further diminishment in state aid could prove challenging as the community works toward a budget for the 2020 fiscal year, he said. Since 1997, my administration has charted a steady fiscal course for our community, a course which has enabled the town to preserve and expand vital services for our residents despite the States fiscal mess, Maturo said in the release. Moving forward, we will continue our efforts to limit borrowing, improve our infrastructure, and increase services while doing our best to keep taxes low and stable for the benefit of all of our taxpayers. EAST HAVEN Union representatives plan to file a grievance on behalf of 11 public works employees suspended by Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. following a Nov. 15 snowstorm. We will grieve all of the suspensions, Larry Dorman, public affairs coordinator of AFSCME Council 4, said Friday. We feel that the mayor did not act in a fair and just fashion. Maturo previously announced in a news release that he had suspended 11 employees who refused or failed to respond to the request to return to work for snow removal. I am very concerned (about) the employees concerted efforts not to return to duty for the emergency snow removal, Maturo said in the release. In times of snow storms, the safety of our residents and businesses are a priority! Maturo declined to comment to the Register or share the towns release Friday. Union representatives provided a copy of the release. Dorman said no employees refused to return to work during the snowstorm, which brought between 4.5 and 6.5 inches of snow to the area. More News Snowfall totals for southwestern Connecticut He said they were offered the chance to work overtime, declined, and went home. By the time the town issued a call for employees to return to work, the roads were bad some workers tried to return to work but were unable to, while others chose not to pick up the overtime work. They were not required under the contract between AFSCME Local 1303-119 and the town to do so, Dorman said. Contractual language distinguishes between a standard and a draft call for overtime work. The former does not require employees to come in, while the latter, enacted if the town does not get a sufficient number of staffers to take up the overtime, does. No draft call was issued, Dorman said. Dorman said he took exception to Maturos insinuation that the employees did not have the safety of town residents at heart. He said the union would seek back pay for the employees. The employees we represent are hard-working, dedicated people, said Dorman. They do their jobs well. Editors note: This story has been updated to reflect that drivers did not choose to go home. They were sent home abd bad roads prevented some from returning to work once they were called back in. william.lambert @hearstmediact.com HAMDEN Dale Kroop recently signed a new, two-year contract to continue overseeing economic development in town, seizing the chance to carry on with a job that remains fresh and interesting after nearly 20 years. Its a good opportunity to be part of the long-range change of the community, said Kroop. Kroop, a New Haven native and graduate of Southern Connecticut State University, said Friday he took on the role in July 1999 expecting to serve in an interim capacity. But Kroop said he found it to be to his liking. He had been traveling a lot for his previous job; his second child had just been born; he liked the people he was involved with. He and his wife had moved to town in 1993, settling in Spring Glen. His skillset, which included experience wearing several hats, from grant-writing to engineering, was a good fit. He has stayed on, through five mayoral administrations, working to create economic development which is focused on the needs of community residents as a whole, not just businesses, he said. People think economic development is about helping businesses, said Kroop. Its really about creating economic prosperity for all residents and businesses. By allowing him to work as a contract employee, Hamden has provided long-term stability and creative latitude, Kroop said. Before he started the role, Kroop said, the job often was tied to the mayor, with changes in power typically prompting a new hire six people served in the role in the nine years before he started. But thats ill-suited for economic development work, which often requires long-term planning, Kroop said. Kroop said he continues in the job because it provides fresh and interesting challenges, as the needs of the community and economic conditions shift and change. I consider myself a lifelong learner. ... Theres always new things to learn about (in this job), said Kroop. It can never get boring. The town will likely will launch a tax abatement and business incentive program in mid-December, he said. He then plans to bring forward the next three-year economic development plan for Hamden, with an aim of creating long-term, lasting change to better the community for example, hed like to bring high-speed Internet access to all residents in town. We really wanted to take it from a more transactional approach to a more transformational approach, said Kroop. Its really like setting the stage for Hamden 2025, Hamden 2030. The contract was approved by the Legislative Council Nov. 14. Kroop said he signed it this week. Kroop is scheduled to be paid $100,000 annually under the agreement, which changes his title to director of economic and neighborhood development. Mayor Curt B. Leng, in a release, lauded Kroop for his work in the community, from redevelopment of the Home Depot/Pathmark Plaza to the remodeling of Rochford Field and Villano Park. Mr. Kroop brings a level of competence, vision, and experience to the table that is rarely matched in his field. Our Town has numerous ongoing multi-year, large investment projects, redevelopment and brownfield work, including the former vacant Hamden Middle School project which will deliver Hamdens first true Youth Center and the Hamden Business Incubator, which is sure to expand our tax base while making serious investment in a revitalizing neighborhood, Leng said in the release. Extending Director Kroops contract to ensure these projects are effectively completed is the right move for Hamden and a demonstration of our commitment to successful, ongoing economic development. william.lambert@hearstmediact.com HAMDEN The Legislative Council recently accepted a $15,000 grant to fund ongoing and future Click It Or Ticket seat belt law enforcement programs in the community. The funding was provided to the community by the Connecticut Department of Transportation for two sessions of the enforcement effort one that began Nov. 19 and will run through Nov. 26, the other to span May 20 through June 2, 2019, according to documents submitted to the council. The grant funding will pay for the entirety of the effort, Acting Chief John Cappiello and Mayor Curt B. Leng said in letters to the council. In addition to regular patrols, officers will work eight four-hour overtime shifts during three days of the November enforcement period, with the cost defrayed through the grant, according to the grant application submitted by the Hamden Police Department. During the 2019 enforcement effort, officers will work eight overtime shifts on four days, according to the application. Hamden Police will conduct enforcement at various locations, including Mix Avenue, State Street, Washington Avenue and Whitney Avenue, according to Capt. Ronald Smith. The Hamden Police Departments goal is that these enforcement efforts help to educate the motoring public of the importance of wearing a seat belt. It could save your life. Cappiello said he was pleased the department could take part in the effort. It definitely saves lives, wearing seatbelts, said Cappiello. Its one of those you feel like youre doing something good. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration administers the Click It or Ticket mobilization campaign annually. According to the NHTSA, 13,941 lives were saved by seat belts in 2015 but that number could have been higher. However, 2,804 additional lives could have been saved if everyone had buckled up, officials said on the NHTSA website. We have made enormous progress in increasing seat belt use, but far too many people are still dying because they are not buckled up during crashes. Before you even turn the key, you and everyone in your vehicle should be buckled upevery trip, day and night. william.lambert@hearstmediact.com The three suspected suicide bombers were killed by security forces before they could enter the consulate, located in the posh Clifton area. Pakistani investigators look at the belongings of attackers, including grenades, outside the Chinese consulate after an attack in Karachi on Friday. (Photo: AFP) Karachi: Three heavily-armed suicide bombers on Friday stormed the Chinese consulate in Pakistans largest city of Karachi, killing four people, including two policemen and two civilians a father and his son before being shot dead by security forces which foiled the daring attack in the high-security zone, police said. The attack was soon claimed by the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) which said it would not tolerate any Chinese military expansionist endeavours on Baloch soil. Resource-rich Baloc-histan is at the heart of ambitious China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The three suspected suicide bombers were killed by security forces before they could enter the consulate, located in the posh Clifton area. Pakistans Prime Minister Imran Khan said Fridays assault on Chinas diplomatic mission in Karachi was due to trade deals signed between the two nations earlier this month. The failed attack against the Chinese Consulate was clearly a reaction to the unprecedented trade agreements that resulted from our trip to China, Mr Khan tweeted. The attack was intended to scare Chinese investors these terrorists will not succeed. The incident is the second major attack this year on Chinese officials in Pakistan that is one of the key partners in Chinas Belt and Road initiative. In February, gunmen killed Chen Zhu, a shipping executive, in Karachis posh Zamzama district. The violence has raised concern in Beijing, which is financing infrastructure projects valued at about $60 billion across Pakistan. NEW HAVEN When Demethra Telford sees the street sign honoring her son Tyrick Keyes, who was shot to death last year, it reminds her of all the goodness the 14-year-old had shared before his life was cut short. A street sign honoring Tyrick, a city resident who died on July 20, 2017, was installed recently on the corner of Newhall Street and Bassett Street Park - where Keyes was shot multiple times on July 16, 2017, by a still unknown shooter. Police believe Tyrick was shot in a case of mistaken identity. The intersection was renamed Tyrick B. Keyes Corner in November. One side of me was sad because it brought so many memories, but then I looked at the sign, and all I saw was goodness that my son had done, said Telford, describing how she felt seeing the sign for the first time. It made me proud because hed done a great job to be so young, and the memory behind the street showed everything hes done. It will show the story behind him that he was a great kid, and he deserves it. Telford said that to get a sign installed in her sons name, she first had to collect signatures, and in the end it turned out that she gathered more than 200 signatures. Other people from other places wanted it because they knew my son was helping them, said Telford. Even people that didnt know him, they heard about him. Some people didnt know he was my son. Telford said even then it wasnt an easy process for her to get the sign installed. I had to fight very hard. He had to have done something for the community, which he had done, said Telford. He was in a program, Stop the Violence. He was just one of those kids that would feed anybody; bring them to the house. He was an awesome kid. He still is my awesome kid. Alder Delphine Clyburn, D-20, represents Telfords ward. She met with Telford after hearing of Tyricks shooting. She also assisted in getting the street sign installed. My job is to OK the street sign, and make sure it gets to through committee, said Clyburn. My aide helped with the write-up, then we made sure the money was paid for it. The chief of police (Anthony Campbell) paid for it, $250. Telford gives credit to those who helped make the street sign possible. The alderman, Delphine. Id like to give my thanks to her because she stood behind me all the way. The mayor, the chief of police. Theyre still standing behind me, said Telford. Telford said she plans to have a ceremony at the street sign when the weather gets warm. Its going to be wonderful. He has a lot of people that love him, said Telford, referring to her late son. Tyrick was the youngest of five. Telford said no suspect has been caught yet, and there still is a $50,000 reward in place. She still stays in constant contact with the New Haven police, and no longer resides in the neighborhood where Tyrick was shot. Despite the reward and a continuing investigation by city police, who have interviewed witnesses to the shooting, no one has identified the gunman. NEW HAVEN As the State Department of Education continues contributing turnaround grant funds to some of the school districts lowest-performing schools, school administrators are pitching contracts that will target some of those schools weak areas. The Commissioners Network program is a state education reform effort that provides underperforming schools at least three years of grant funding to launch a new instructional model. Five New Haven schools have been accepted to the program since it launched in 2012; Wexler-Grant Community School was selected for the grant this year, joining Clinton Avenue School and Lincoln-Bassett School as the three city schools receiving funding from the program this year. One of the things we wanted to do at Wexler-Grant was increase after-school programs, said new Wexler-Grant Principal David Diah at Mondays Board of Education Finance Committee meeting. Diah presented the schools turnaround plan for the first year of the Commissioners Network program, which carries a $750,000 grant from the state. Committee Chairman Jamell Cotto was the only school board member present. With that grant, Diah proposed an $80,000 contract with the Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology for fourth through eighth grades and a $70,000 contract with Kids Kraze for kindergarten through third grade. ConnCAT has been a partner to Lincoln-Bassett in its Commissioners Network programming, something that nearly held up the appointment of ConnCATs CEO Erik Clemons to the State Board of Education in 2016. For its turnaround, Wexler-Grant is adopting a service-based model of learning, described in the schools grant application as giving students skills and knowledge to address needs in their community. This model emphasizes real-world application of knowledge, the grant application said. One recurring theme identified as a challenge for the school in the grant application is that students are not engaged in learning. Teachers are leading classroom discussions without input from students and, according to state data, more than one in five students have missed more than 10 percent of all school days every year since at least 2013-14. Cotto passed the grant on for the full boards consideration Monday without making any recommendation. Kristina DeNegre, principal of Clinton Avenue School, proposed three professional development contracts at the same meeting to be paid through Commissioners Network funds. In describing $41,800 worth of professional development contracts, DeNegre said the school is looking to continue the work it does with the Connecticut English Language Proficiency standards. Superintendent of Schools Carol Birks was complimentary of Clinton Avenue Schools administration during the turnaround effort. I would like to commend them for the work theyve done as a Commissioners Network school, Birks said. Clinton Avenue, which adopted a project-based learning model for its turnaround, has an English learner population of about 39 percent. In the schools 2016 grant application to the Commissioners Network, much of the listed growth areas pertained to the impression that class sizes were too large and instruction at the school was inconsistent and not aligned to any coherent standards. According to state data, in the schools first year of the grant, chronic absenteeism fell nearly four points, from 18.7 percent to 14.9 percent. However, in the 2017-18 year, chronic absenteeism rose to 18.2 percent. The rise was sharper among English learner students, more than one-fifth of whom were chronically absent that year versus 13.7 percent of their non-English learner peers. Earlier this month, Lincoln-Bassett Operations Supervisor Stephanie Skiba presented a $121,000 contract with the Boys & Girls Club of New Haven for an after-school program, to be paid through the schools $415,000 in Commissioners Network funds for this year. Skiba said the contract was a continuation of the schools partnership with the Boys & Girls Club, but this year the contract would be costlier as the school would turn to its staff of certified teachers to turor students in math. That rate, per the most recent union contract, would be $32 per hour for every teacher tutor. Our scores went down, so our target is (grades) three through six, Skiba said. Our scores dropped, so thats why were pushing certified teachers in. Cotto asked Skiba whether college tutors could do the same work for what likely would be half the cost, but Skiba was adamant that the certified teachers, who already know the students, would add needed efficiency to after-school tutoring. According to state data, only 7.8 percent of students in the school met or exceeded their grade-level goal in math on the standardized Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium exam in 2017-18, a 21 point decline from the prior year, when the school was heralded as a turnaround success story. brian.zahn@hearstmediact.com On Thanksgiving Day in 1945, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower testified before Congress on why fighting hunger is critical. Europe was suffering with post-war food shortages. Eisenhower told Congress that funding for the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration had to be increased. Eisenhower said, There are few places in Europe today where people are not cold, hungry and apprehensive of the future....the ravished nations of the world are looking to UNRRA for their relief. Congress approved the budget increase. The American public got involved too with fundraisers for charities fighting hunger in Europe including Save the Children, CARE and Catholic Relief Services. This generosity was essential for saving and rebuilding Europe and Asia after the war. There would have been mass starvation without American food aid. Food saves lives and is vital to building peace. Like Eisenhower, we should also make a powerful statement for feeding the hungry. Today, there are 821 million people suffering in hunger around the globe. They are war victims in Yemen, Syria, the Sahel of Africa, South Sudan and other impoverished nations. Afghanistan, a country where peace remains elusive, hunger is escalating because of conflict and drought. There will be no peace if Afghanistan is without food. In Yemen, a civil war between a Saudi led coalition and the Houthi rebels has placed that country on the brink of famine. More than 2/3 of Yemens population lives in hunger. Some Yemeni children are starving to death. The Rhode Island nonprofit organization Edesia has sent life-saving food for 200,000 children in Yemen. It is an enriched peanut paste called Plumpysup which the UN World Food Program distributes. Navyn Salem, owner of Edesia, wants many people to get involved in ending the hunger crisis in Yemen. Salem pleads, My team at Edesia works 24 hours a day to supply our humanitarian partners with the food that is necessary to give life. Now, tell me, who else is willing to bear this responsibility? Dont close your eyes, dont look away, take action, and help us make this suffering end. Yemen needs an immediate ceasefire to allow humanitarian agencies to bring food to all war victims. Much more funding is needed for relief agencies so they can provide this aid. Yemen is a massive humanitarian operation. The Congress must increase the budget for our Food for Peace program, which was started by Eisenhower. Food for Peace recently donated to the WFP in Central African Republic so they can provide school meals to children. This fights hunger and keeps children in class learning. But so much more aid is needed in the Central African Republic, one of the lesser known hunger emergencies. The American public, like Eisenhower, should testify in support of increasing Food for Peace funding everywhere its needed. The McGovern-Dole global school lunch program also needs expanding. Let your representatives know that food matters. We have to meet the challenge of hunger today so countries can have food security and peace tomorrow. We should strive to end hunger everywhere, whether at home or abroad. William Lambers is an author who partnered with the UN World Food Program on the book Ending World Hunger. Lameness prevention: it's all in the head An understanding of how cows think, how they see the world and how they move is essential for lameness prevention. A British researcher studying the effects of the Arab Spring on security policies gets life in prison for espionage". Foreign academics, intellectuals and scholars have been expelled owing to their critical views. For RsF, the UAE "is a master of online surveillance of journalists. Abu Dhabi (AsiaNews) The recent conviction of 31-year-old British researcher Matthew Hedges, who was sentenced to life in prison for espionage, shows how the authorities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are putting more and more pressure on foreign universities and institutes. Local sources note increasing monitoring of academic work at the local branches of prestigious Western universities, like the Sorbonne of Paris and New York University. Hedges, a doctoral student at Durham University in north-eastern England, was sentenced to life in prison by a federal court in Abu Dhabi last Wednesday, a ruling that triggered an angry British reaction with the Foreign Office citing possible repercussions" against the small Gulf emirate. The researcher was studying the effects of the Arab Spring on the countrys security policies and law enforcement. According to the prosecution, he provided "confidential" information to British intelligence (M16) and was arrested as a result on 5 May. Mr Hedges was formally indicted on 10 October and convicted two days ago. The verdict is not final and Hedges' family and lawyers can still appeal to the federal Supreme Court, hoping for an acquittal on all charges, especially since the trial was reached in five minutes and no defence lawyer was present in the courtroom. Speaking to French newspaper La Croix, a representative for the Middle East Studies Association, a learned society dedicated to the study of the region, said that the case of the British PhD student is further confirmation of the growing repression in the Emirates. For some time now, the authorities have been closely monitoring academic work and research activities and expulsions of foreign scholars, academics and intellectuals expressing critical opinions are not rare. Last March, economist and human rights advocate Nasser bin Ghaith was sentenced to ten years in prison for criticising government officials on social media. Activist Ahmed Mansoor and journalist Tayseer al Najjar were also arrested for slamming the authorities. In addition, The United Arab Emirates is a master of online surveillance of journalists who often fall victim to its 2012 cyber-crime law, writes Reporters without Borders (RsF) on their website. Citizen-journalists and bloggers are usually targeted for criticizing the regime, and are accused of defamation, insulting the state, or posting false information with the aim of damaging the countrys reputation. Derby Mayor Richard Dziekan, an Air Force veteran, knows firsthand how comforting it can be to receive some cheer from the home front when youre thousands of miles away. Stationed in Germany in the 1980s, Dziekan recalled how wonderful it felt to receive mail or a package from his hometown. It was always greatly appreciated to receive a check from the residents of Derby as way to thank the men and woman serving this great county, near and far, said Dziekan. And now, as mayor, Dziekan is continuing the citys annual tradition of giving back to the men and women of the military, by seeking monetary donations and names of active personnel for its annual Christmas check fund. Valley leaders in neighboring Ansonia and Seymour also are calling upon residents to help make the holidays a little brighter for local military. In Derby, residents can make monetary contributions to the Derby Servicemen and Womens Fund, which is also supported by the Catholic War Veterans St. Michaels Post 152. Contributions can be made by check payable to Derby Servicemen and Womens Fund and sent to Mayor Richard Dziekan, Servicemen and Womens Fund, Derby City Hall, 1 Elizabeth St., Derby, CT 06418. In addition to monetary donations, Derby also is seeking names and addresses of residents who are current members in the armed forces . If you are aware of a Derby serviceman or woman serving at home or abroad, contact Dziekans office at 203-736-1450 or email pgagliardi@derbyct.gov. In nearby Ansonia, Mayor David Cassetti is hoping to send $100 checks to Ansonia residents currently serving in the military. For more than 40 years, the Comcowich-Carver Post 597, VFW Ansonia has sent holiday greetings and a monetary gift to all Ansonia natives on active duty. The city, in 2002, at the request of the Post membership, took over the tradition so Ansonia could continue to spread cheer to military personnel unable to make it home for the holidays. Cassetti is asking residents to submit names, rank, branch of service and service address of any known active duty service personnel from Ansonia and mail to: Ansonia City Hall, c/o Mayor David Cassetti, 253 Main St., Ansonia, CT, 06401; or email Greg Martin at gmartin@ansoniact.org or call 203-736-5900. Monetary donations are also greatly appreciated. Any possible way to make a positive connection and bridge the distance between our brave men and women in the armed forces helps reinforce how much we miss them, how much we value them and how we are always thinking of them, said Ansonia aldermanic President Lorie Vaccaro. This is a small way to send that message to them. Nearby Seymour is continuing its longstanding tradition of mailing Christmas checks to local military through its Richard R. Pearson Memorial Fund. The town clerks office is requesting complete names and service addresses of residents on active duty, along with their home address and name and telephone number of the person submitting the request be sent to Seymour Town Clerks Office, 1 First St., Seymour, CT 06483. The deadline for submittals is Dec. 10. The tradition in Seymour started more than 50 years ago by former Town Clerk Richard Pearson. Several local organizations, including American Legion Emil Senger Post 10, the Seymour Pumpkin Festival Association, Seymour Lions Club and residents, make annual contributions to the Pearson Fund to ensure the tradition continues. jean.sos@snet.net "Jersey Shore" star Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi had some happy news to report for Thanksgiving: she has a bun in the oven. Polizzi, who turns 31 on Friday, lives in Florham Park. She's expecting her third child with husband Jionni LaValle. The couple, who got married in 2014, are parents to Lorenzo, 6, and Giovanna, 4. The reality star shared a photo on Instagram of her children holding a framed sonogram image (and another in which Lorenzo appears to be yelling and Giovanna has her head buried in her lap next to the sonogram). "What I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving," she posted, with heart and prayer-hands emojis and the hashtag #family. In the latest episode of "Jersey Shore Family Vacation," MTV's "Jersey Shore" revival that premiered in April, Polizzi was seen taking a pregnancy test after she became nauseated. She said in the episode that she had been trying for a third baby. Polizzi's first pregnancy in 2012 came with an announcement that she had gotten engaged to LaValle, and seemed to herald the end of "Jersey Shore." The show saw its last episode in December of that year. "Jersey Shore Family Vacation," which welcomed back nearly all of the cast, is now in its second season. Four cast members -- including Pauly "DJ Pauly D" DelVecchio, Ronnie Ortiz-Magro and Jenni "JWoww" Farley -- now have children. A third child isn't the only baby Polizzi is expecting. On Sunday, she's hosting the grand opening of The Snooki Shop, her boutique in Madison (Polizzi is having a VIP event there on Saturday). Polizzi's latest pregnancy announcement follows a major life event for another member of the "Jersey Shore" cast. Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, 36, who has to report to prison on January 15 to start his eight-month sentence for tax evasion, married longtime girlfriend Lauren Pesce in Pompton Plains on Nov. 1. Almost the whole original cast was in attendance for the Long Branch resident's nuptials, including Jackson's Deena Nicole Cortese, who joined the show to replace Angelina Pivarnick (who returned for the revival). In December, Cortese, 31, is expected to give birth to her first child, a boy she says she will name Christopher John (her husband's name is Christopher Buckner). In addition to "Jersey Shore" and "Jersey Shore Family Vacation," Polizzi starred in the MTV spinoff series "Snooki & JWoww" with Toms River's Jenni "JWoww" Farley. In her 2014 pregnancy book titled "Baby Bumps: From Party Girl to Proud Mama, and All the Messy Milestones Along the Way," Polizzi said her first pregnancy thwarted her producers' plans to have Snooki and JWoww "destroy Jersey City" (the duo lived in a former firehouse in the city). Farley, 32, recently filed for divorce from Roger Mathews, her husband of three years. They have two children, Meilani, 4, and Greyson, 2, who was recently diagnosed with autism after a speech delay. Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook. The West New York Planning Board will consider a resolution on Monday that would review the town's master plan, a move some residents say is aimed at green-lighting a massive apartment tower in one of the county's most densely populated towns. While the planning board said the review of development regulations is merely routine, some residents said that Monday's meeting is an attempt to amend the current master plan to allow a 15-story, 109-unit high-rise apartment building at 6605-15 Kennedy Blvd. East overlooking Manhattan. "The area is so congested with people that every morning, there's a line to get onto the bus to (New York City)," said Eric Goldberg, a West New York resident who lives at Halifax Hall near the proposed development. "Now you're adding a 15-story building right into the heart of that ... the area isn't zoned for that kind of building." The project's application calls for 112 off-street parking spaces. The residential project, proposed last year by Novus Landmarks West New York, would need three different variances -- exemptions from the laws regulating issues such as height and density -- to be built in the mid-density zone. The Zoning Board would have to approve the height, density and floor area ratio variances for the proposed apartment tower. Under the current master plan, nothing higher than five-story elevator apartment buildings can be built in a mid-density zone, with some exceptions. It would be unusual for that high number of variances to be granted, "so the only work-around that is to get the master plan changed," Goldberg said. Officials with Novus Landmarks West New York did not return multiple calls for comment. But Robert Ferraro, the planning board attorney, told The Jersey Journal that Monday's meeting is not at all related to the proposed development. "We have a lot of new members on the board, and the board wants to discuss the master plan because we're obligated to do it periodically," Ferraro said. "In order to do that, we need a planner, and we need funding for the planner to do a study." Ferraro added that Monday's meeting will discuss the budget for a study, which would begin a conversation about the review of the master plan, a process required every 10 years. A master plan is a policy document used to guide future decisions regarding land use and community development. The current master plan was adopted in January 2015. Other residents said they are concerned about the hit their quality of life will take if the proposed development gets the go-ahead. "My number one concern right now is, as always, the loss of light and air in the neighborhood," said Rianna Bryceland, a resident of the 22-story Versailles apartment building across the street from the proposed development site. "It's the overcrowding ... New Jersey Transit is already stretched to the limit." Bryceland added that even though the current zoning guidelines don't allow for the construction of the proposed tower, Monday's master plan review could reverse that. "It's going to be quite a fight," said Bryceland, who has lived in West New York for nearly 20 years. Amy Orlando, also a resident in The Versailles apartment building, said she is pro-development that makes sense, and the proposed one doesn't. "It's preposterous ... I don't think this is the right location for a building like this," said Orlando, who's been living in West New York for 15 years. She said while the project is "wonderful" for the developer, it's detrimental to the neighborhood. "The whole thing doesn't make sense to me," Orlando added. The planning Board meeting is on Nov. 26 at 6 p.m. in the Municipal Court Chambers, located at 428 60th St. in West New York. Aya Elamroussi may be reached at aelamroussi@jjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @aya_elamroussi. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook. The lawyer for the New Jersey man whose brother was among four slain at their sprawling Colts Neck mansion earlier this week, which was set ablaze in a suspicious fire, said his client would ultimately be exonerated. Paul Caneiro, police photo Paul Caneiro, 51, of Ocean Township, has been charged with aggravated arson for allegedly setting his own Ocean Township home on fire early Tuesday morning with his wife and two daughters inside, according to the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office. His wife and two daughters were unharmed. Hours later, however, firefighters rushed to a raging fire at the Colts Neck home of Paul Canerio's bother, Keith, who was found dead of gunshot wounds in the front yard. His wife and two kids were dead inside. All four were killed - murdered - before the fire was set, authorities have said. However, despite mounting suspicion, Paul's lawyer proclaimed his client's innocence. "His family fully supports him ... It is our firm belief that my client will be exonerated when the case is finally resolved," said Ocean Township-based defense attorney Robert A. Honecker Jr., a former top prosecutor in the Monmouth prosecutor's office. Paul, who has not been charged in the homicides but charged for aggravated arson in the fire at his own home, remains in the Monmouth County jail in Freehold. He is scheduled to appear at a detention hearing on Wednesday, according to Honecker. Honecker said at the hearing, he will ask the judge to release Paul. "The only charges that are currently pending in the aggravated arson of his own residence," Honecker said. "There are no charges that are filed against him in any other matter, and any connection to what happened in Colts Neck is pure speculation." Honecker said that anyone who knew Paul "would attest that he loved his brother and would not do anything to harm to him." "They were best friends ... his brother was his best man at his wedding, and they talked to each other every day," he added. Keith, 50, was found shot to death in the yard of his property on Willow Brook Road after firefighters rushed to the raging fire at the home midday Tuesday. His wife, Jennifer Caneiro, 45, and the couple's children, Jesse, 11, and Sophia, 8, were found killed inside the residence. No charges have been filed in the homicides as detectives investigate. Meanwhile, a GoFundMe page, "Helping the Caneiro Family," has been created, apparently by a friend of one of Paul Caneiro's daughters. It says that while the killings are making national headlines, "What you have not heard about is the state that the rest of the family has been left in as a result of this tragedy." "The surviving Caneiro family has lost their family members that they loved dearly...Not only are they dealing with the tragic loss of their family, they also have nothing and nowhere to go. They have lost their home and all of their belongings. The news doesn't cover the fact that the family is on their own right now." The page's creator did not immediately respond to a message through the site. The detention hearing Wednesday for Paul Caneiro will be before Monmouth County Superior Court Judge James J. McGann. 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 This morning, three bombers tried to break into the diplomatic mission, located in the Clifton district. There are no victims among the employees. The Pakistani Foreign Minister praises the timely response of the agents. The city is the commercial heart of Pakistan and a strategic route for Beijing's goods. Karachi (AsiaNews) - Three bombers attempted to break into the Chinese consulate in Karachi, southern Pakistan, around 9:30 am (local time), but were arrested and killed by local police. Two policemen also died in the shootout with the terrorists. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the attack, while Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi praised the timely response of the agents who foiled the attack. Speaking to AsiaNews Fr. Saleh Diego, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Karachi, condemns "in the name of the whole Catholic Church the act of the attackers, who have taken the lives of innocent people. We pray for our country, so that peace and harmony may prevail ". According to agency sources, all the employees of the consulate, which is also the residence of the Beijing diplomats in Pakistan, are doing well and are safe. As soon as the shots were heard, Consul General Wang Yu and all the staff were transferred to the main compound building. At the end of the armed confrontation, the security forces seized a large quantity of ammunition and explosives. Also Fr. Diego confirms that the attack "remained confined in the enclosure and now the situation has returned to normal". The three men opened fire on one of the entrances to the compound, located in the Clifton area, home to various diplomatic missions, foreign schools and luxury restaurants. There are no official claims of responsability yet, although the New York Times reports that a Twitter account close to the Baluchistan Liberation Army, wrote that three of its members "have embraced martyrdom in an attack against the Chinese consulate ". The attack assumes significant importance in the economic relations between China and Pakistan. The city of Karachi, with its 15 million inhabitants, is the largest in the country and also its commercial heart. Located on the coast, it takes on strategic importance in Beijing's commercial projects, which is sponsoring a series of development programs and infrastructures for the Chinese New Silk Road. Together with the port of Gwadar, the terminus of the Sino-Pakistani Economic Corridor (Cpec, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor), the city is among the first beneficiaries of the 62 billion dollars allocated by China for its initiatives. Three people were killed in a head-on crash in south Mississippi Thanksgiving morning when a minivan driving the wrong way on Interstate 59 hit two oncoming vehicles, Mississippi media outlets reported. WLBT, a Jackson television station, reported that a Dodge Caravan minivan was headed northbound in the southbound lanes of the interstate in Pearl River County around 10:26 a.m. Thursday (Nov. 22) when it crashed head-on into two southbound vehicles. Two more southbound vehicles then crashed into the wrecked vehicles. Three people were pronounced dead on the scene, the news reports said. Three others went to nearby hospitals with minor injuries, WLBT reported. New Orleans Saints defensive tackle Tyeler Davison said he suffered a broken hand in the teams win over the Cincinnati Bengals, but hes played through the injury the past two games. After the Saints' 31-17 win over the Atlanta Falcons on Thanksgiving, Davisons hand appeared to be significantly swollen, but he said its improved a lot since he had surgery the day after the Bengals win. According to Davison, the surgery two Mondays ago involved doctors inserting a metal plate and 10 screws into his left hand, and he credited the teams trainers for having him ready to play last Sunday against the Eagles and Thursday against the Falcons. I didnt want to miss (any) games and whatnot, so they really helped me doing a lot of treatment, trying to get the swelling down, Davison said. That metal thing in there is keeping the bones from moving around. Davison has worn a splint on his hand the past two games, and he still had stitches in from the surgery, though he expects to have those removed Friday. In Thursdays win, Davison had a pass defensed that resulted in an interception by linebacker A.J. Klein, but Davison batted the ball with his healthy right hand. Saints defense stands strong in Thanksgiving win vs Falcons In Malaysia, race and religion are official bureaucratic terms on the national identity papers of all citizens over the age of 12. Each ethnic groups rights and duties are laid out in the Constitution on the basis of a pre-independence "social contract" between ethnic Malays (60 per cent), Chinese (23 per cent) and Indians (7 per cent). Kuala Lumpur (AsiaNews/Agencies) The Malaysian government will not ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), the Prime Ministers Office announced today. The government will continue to defend the Federal Constitution in which is enshrined the social contract that was agreed upon by the representatives of all the races during the formation of the country, the statement read. The "social contract" was a pact made by the leaders of its Malay majority and minority Chinese and Indian groups regarding their rights and privileges as citizens, prior to independence from Britain in 1957. Over time, the government adopted an affirmative action policy to benefit the Malays, who form 60 per cent of a population of about 32 million, after deadly race riots in the late 1960s. Ethnic Chinese are estimated at 23 per cent and ethnic Indians comprise about 7 per cent, government data shows. In Malaysia, race and religion are official bureaucratic terms included in the national identity papers of all citizens over the age of 12. The concepts of Malay supremacy and Muslim supremacy (Ketuanan Melayu and Ketuanan Islam) are closely linked, since ethnic Malay are legally required to be Muslims. Last Sunday, Prime Minister Mahathir said that it would be almost impossible for the government to ratify the ICERD since changes to the Federal Constitution require a two-third majority in parliament. However, in early September, Mahathir had told the UN General Assembly that Malaysia would ratify each of the six human rights conventions still not adopted, including the one on racial discrimination. The proposed ratification sparked criticism and protests in the government and opposition, as well as among non-governmental organisations. Many feared that its implementation could undermine the privileges status for Malays in the Constitution. The Islamist Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) and the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), both opposition parties, had planned a protest on 8 December. Yesterday, some NGOs claimed that the approval of the Convention was part of the Democratic Action Partys (DAP) secret agenda to abolish the special privileges of the Malay Muslim community. DAP secretary-general and Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng, an ethnic Chinese, responded to the allegations by insisting that the party had never raised the issue. He also urged the coalition to apologise and withdraw the statements and allegations against him or face legal action. by Nirmala Carvalho The Global Council of Indian Christians reports two incidents that occurred on the same day in two different states. In Uttar Pradesh four Pentecostal pastors were arrested (and later released); in Maharashtra an evangelical meeting was cancelled. For Sajan K George, Christians are treated as second-class citizens". Mumbai (AsiaNews) In India "hostility against the Christian faith is increasing," said Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC). Speaking to AsiaNews, he cited the latest two incidents to illustrate the anti-Christian trend in two separate states, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. In his view, the fact that the cases occurred on the same day is no coincidence but "a sign of the growing hostility". Both incidents happened on 14 November. In the first one, police in Uttar Pradesh arrested four Pentecostal pastors on charges of "Promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion and Injuring or defiling place of worship with intent to insult the religion of any class. The four arrested Pastors Lalji, Radheshyam, Munna and Ramsukh who were released on Tuesday, were leading a prayer meeting in the village of Chaphar, when some villagers abruptly interrupted the event, harassed the faithful and tore to pieces images of their own deities in order to blame the Christians of desecration and forced conversion. The second incident comes from Maharashtra when the protest by group of Hindu radicals led to the cancellation of an event organised by evangelical Christians titled City of Hope (picture 2), at the Acharya Atre Theatre, which is owned by the municipal corporation of Kalyan-Dombivali. According to the GCIC president, "the vulnerable Christian minority is under surveillance by the [Hindu] majority in secular India. Christians are not doing anything illegal or criminal; yet they are constantly accused of forced conversions. We have constitutional guarantees; yet, harassment and intolerance are becoming a reality. It is as if the members of the Christian community are second-class citizens." Nov 22, 2018 KRR Actor Rajkummar Rao has completed shooting of director Mikhil Musale's Made in China. Announcing the schedule wrap, Rajkummar on Wednesday took to Twitter and wrote: "Schedule wrap for 'Made in China'. What a fun shoot, can't wait to share it with you guys on the big screen." Along with the tweet, he also shared an image with his team. The film is a hilarious take on a struggling Gujarati businessman (Rajkummar) and the bizarre journey he undertakes to become a successful entrepreneur. Actress Mouni Roy plays Rajkummar's wife in the movie, which is produced by Dinesh Vijan of Maddock Films. Also featuring actor Boman Irani, "Made in China" is scheduled to release in August 2019. Click the Movie button below for more info: Made in China Mbs visits Emirates in first foreign trip since the murder of the Saudi dissident journalist. He should also participate in the G20 in Argentina later this month. Abu Dhabi confirms the alliance with Riyadh, which has "firm and deep roots". Turkish sources: the CIA has a recording in which the crowned prince gives orders to "silence" Khashoggi. Riyadh (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Saudi hereditary prince Mohammed bin Salman last night arrived in the United Arab Emirates (Eau), the first stop on an economic and diplomatic tour that will touch different nations of the Arab world. For the second most powerful man in the Wahhabi kingdom, it is the first trip abroad since the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, killed last October 2 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, many believe on (Mbs) in orders despite of the official denials of Riyadh. Bin Salman is also expected in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where at the end of the month a meeting of G20 leaders is scheduled with the most important heads of state and government. However, murder six weeks ago of the Washington Post editorialist has exacerbated more than one relationship between the West and Riyadh, which can count on the all-round defense of the White House. On the eve of the departure King Salman asked the heir to the throne to undertake a tour "based on his ability" in knowing how to "strengthen the regional and international bonds of the kingdom". The official Saudi news agency reports that the Crown Prince will visit "a series of [Arabian] friendly states", without specifying them. Abu Dhabi's counterpart Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nayhan, a close ally of Mbs, welcomed the crowned prince at the airport. "We are proud - he said - of our relationships whose roots are strong and deep. For our countries we are planning a close collaboration and a fruitful partnership ". The two leaders will discuss "regional and international" issues and the "challenges and threats that affect the Middle East region". Meanwhile, inquiries into murder of Khashoggi, which throws more than a shadow on the diplomatic tour and foreign trade of bin Salman. Yesterday a Turkish newspaper reported a telephone call in October between CIA director Gina Haspel and some senior Turkish officials, in which the US intelligence agency claims to have a "registration" in which Mbs gives instructions to "silence" the Saudi dissident journalist. Riyadh has repeatedly denied that bin Salman has no direct knowledge of Khashoggi's death. When asked about the (presumed) registration, US President Donald Trump on a visit to Florida did not want to release official comments, reserving the right to speak directly with the CIA leaders. If, on the one hand, the Allied Arab nations of Riyadh run to the defense of bin Salman, Qatar - for over a year protagonist of a harsh confrontation with Saudi Arabia - states that "whoever is responsible" of the journalist's murder dissident must be punished. On an official visit to Rome to attend a conference, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani added that Doha does not see an improvement in relations with the Saudis and will maintain close ties with Iran, in spite of US sanctions. FRIDAY PUZZLE One of the best ways to recover from a turkey coma, in my opinion, is to rev up the brain with a challenging crossword puzzle. Of course, that doesnt account for leftovers, but at least you have something to do while theyre heating up. Today, we welcome a new constructor, Temple Brown, who is not only making his New York Times Crossword debut, but also his debut as a crossword creator . And Mr. Brown is off to a good start. His fill is mostly clean and his triple stacks of 10s are mostly interesting (ABOMINATES as a verb jolted me a bit), although I did look up SQUILLIONS to verify that it was a real thing. It is. Of course, Mr. Brown used to be an investment banker, so (Warning: totally benign and humorous joke about pay differentials ahead) he might be more familiar with the term for a very large number than a lowly journalist would. Tricky Clues 11A: We earthlings have this fantasy that alien spaceships are disc-shaped, so the clue Foreign dishes? hints at UFO. [What you need to know to start your day: Get New York Today in your inbox.] Suspicion has swirled around the brother of a New Jersey man killed with his wife and two children on Tuesday at their home, which erupted in a large, suspicious fire. But a lawyer for the man, Paul J. Caneiro, defended his client on Thursday, and said he was at home when his brother was killed and his house went up in flames. He loved him, the lawyer, Robert A. Honecker Jr., said in an interview. And he would not do his brother any harm. Mr. Caneiro was charged with setting two predawn fires on Tuesday at his Ocean Township home while his wife and daughters were inside. No one was injured in those blazes. Mr. Peralta was first elected to the State Senate in 2010 in a special election, defeating Hiram Monserrate, who was expelled from the Senate after being convicted of assaulting his companion. As a lawmaker, Mr. Peralta was a champion of the Dream Act, legislation that would allow undocumented immigrants to qualify for college tuition assistance. He also introduced bills to legalize hoverboards in the city and to extend the time that speed cameras are used in school zones. [What you need to know to start your day: Get New York Today in your inbox.] Mr. Peralta, a resident of Queens for three decades, began his political career there as a community liaison to the State Assembly, the legislatures lower house. He went on to win a seat in that body and served there for eight years. Mr. Peraltas campaign to become Queens borough president was derailed in 2013 when he was recorded by a state legislator in her role as an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The legislator, Shirley L. Huntley, was under investigation for corruption and hoped that cooperating with the F.B.I. by recording public officials whom she suspected were corrupt would help her case. Mr. Peralta was not charged or accused of wrongdoing. Jose Rafael Peralta was born on Nov. 10, 1971, in New York City to parents who had emigrated from the Dominican Republic. He attended public schools in Queens and graduated from Queens College, where he studied psychology and sociology and served as student body president. In the nearly three years since the Pentagon allowed women to join front-line combat units, questions about the policy have not gone away. Two former Marines Owen West, now an assistant secretary of defense, and his father, the military writer Bing West said women in the infantry would swiftly reduce combat effectiveness. In The American Conservative, Scott Beauchamp could see no benefit in bringing women into combat roles and suggested that the Pentagon was cynically trying to bolster recruiting during ill-conceived wars. And even the man who is overseeing gender integration, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, recently expressed a surprising level of ambivalence about the policy, saying that there are still too few women in the infantry to determine whether having them fight in close quarters is a strength or a weakness. Yet women have joined combat units at Fort Campbell, Ky.; Fort Hood, Tex.; Fort Bragg, N.C.; and other bases. And several countries have allowed women into combat units for years, including Canada, Israel, Norway and Sweden. The evidence does exist, and is growing, that gender-integrated combat teams are effective. Recently I visited Sweden to talk with conscripts in mechanized infantry, artillery and army ranger units. I learned that the performance of women in those units was not at issue. What was, at times, was the ability of their male peers to accept them. Businesses like Amazon will invest in rich places like New York and Northern Virginia, but they wont invest much in working-class communities in Ohio or Kentucky. Universities, religious organizations and activist groups will recruit from the affluent suburbs and serve those in dire poverty, but they barely touch the working class. What you get is a layer of society that has been denuded of institutions and social bonds. Working-class men have been dropping out of the labor force at alarming rates. A generation ago, working-class families were about as likely to be part of religious communities as affluent Americans, but now their participation rates have plummeted. A generation ago, working-class families were nearly as likely to be married as affluent people, but now only half the children in working-class families will be raised in adolescence by stably married parents. From the 1970s to the 2000s, the share of working-class people aged 25 to 60 who were involved in a neighborhood organization fell from 71 percent to 52 percent. As the authors of the Opportunity America report lay out the evidence, you see how the debate has evolved over the past few years. First, there used to be relatively little research attention paid to the working class at all. Now its the epicenter. Second, there used to be a silly debate over whether economics or culture explained social breakdown. Now these two elements are woven seamlessly together. Third, geography plays a much bigger role. Social problems are concentrated in specific places. The authors of this report dismiss the policy slogans coming from the extremes. Building a wall is not a policy. Universal basic income degrades the work ethic that is at the core of working-class life. Free college is a massive subsidy for the upper middle class. Instead, the authors come up with a broad left/right agenda that 70 percent of Republicans and Democrats could support: wage subsidies, improved parental leave, work requirements for some federal benefits, child care tax credits. I especially like their point that we have overemphasized four-year colleges as the only route to success. In 2016, the federal government spent $139 billion on post-secondary education and training. Only a sliver, 14 percent, went to career education and training. Private sector employers fetishize the college degree even where its unnecessary. Two-thirds of the job postings for production supervisors now require a college degree. But only 16 percent of the people currently holding those jobs have such a degree. One of the core questions before us is this: Who is going to lead this country? Is it perpetual outsiders like Trump, with no governing or policy competence, who say the establishments have forfeited all credibility? Or are there enough chastened members of establishments, who have governing experience, who acknowledge past mistakes, who take the time to reconnect with the country and apply their expertise in new ways? I dont know about you, Ill take a chastened establishment any day. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. Under international law and the precepts of basic human decency the nearly one million Rohingya people driven out of their homeland in Myanmar and crammed into refugee camps in Bangladesh ought to be able to return home. But simply pushing them back across the border, as Bangladesh and Myanmar tried to start doing last week under pressure from China , was wisely suspended. The United Nations and dozens of rights groups dealing with the long-suffering Rohingya objected to the plan because it lacked any assurances that the returnees, members of a Muslim minority in Myanmar who had been the targets of a murderous campaign of ethnic cleansing, would be treated any better than before they fled. The United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, said that sending the refugees to Myanmar at this point effectively means throwing them back into the cycle of human rights violations that this community has been suffering for decades. Nobody asked the Rohingya about the repatriation plan, and they understandably panicked when Bangladesh troops entered their camp and told the first group of 2,200 to get ready to move. With one voice, young and old alike shouted, We wont go! Mercifully, Bangladesh which has been lauded for providing refuge to the Rohingya relented. Over 15 months , more than 700,000 Rohingya fled a systematic campaign of killings, rapes and torched villages that the United Nations said undoubtedly amount to the gravest crimes under international law. Crowding into refugee camps in Bangladesh, they joined more than 200,000 Rohingya who had fled earlier waves of violence. The multimillion-dollar churn of top-end art auctions sometimes seems as predictable as a washing machine: Each load has its differences, but they can be difficult to discern when the cycle remains the same. Last week in New York, Christies, Sothebys and Phillips made a combined $2.1 billion from their twice-yearly auctions of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art. The total was higher than the $1.9 billion achieved at equivalent sales in May, though down from the $2.3 billion made last November, when Leonardos Salvator Mundi sold for $450.3 million. For these marquee New York sales, $2 billion seems to have become the figure that reassures a wider world that top end of the art market is humming, if not actually booming. Last week, that feel-good figure was achieved with the help of material not normally seen in Impressionist, modern and contemporary sales. Prices were also propped up, wherever possible, with hundreds of millions of dollars in financial guarantees. The Myanmar government has said that it is ready for repatriation, but Bangladesh has postponed the process to the end of December. The desperation of refugees has revived human trafficking. The first boat to leave Bangladesh was intercepted in the Bay of Bengal. Rohingya were arrested and sent back after they were found adrift off Yangon. Sittwe (AsiaNews/Agencies) The 5,000 Rohingya or more refugees living in camps built on the "zero line", a buffer zone on the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh, refuse to take part in the repatriation process organised by the two governments. Bangladeshi authorities and international humanitarian organisations now fear that refugees, dreaming of a new beginning, will become victims of human traffickers. For this reason, security forces have boosted monitoring and patrols in order to intercept fishing boats. The Rohingya repatriation operations was scheduled to start on 15 November with the transfer of the first 2,260 refugees who had fled between 2016 and 2017. However, no one wants to go back, at least not until Myanmar authorities can guarantee them "security and citizenship rights". Although the Myanmar government has said that it is ready to welcome returning refugees, Bangladesh has postponed the start of the operation to the end of December. Mohammad Hussin, 60, a community leader at the refugee camp in That Kal Pyin camp hear Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State, said that refugees dont want to leave Bangladesh because we have been living here (government camps) for years and we have not been resettled or returned to our villages since they fled since 2012. Given the refugees desperate situation, human trafficking seems to be back. During their visits to refugee camps, officials with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC) have been warning people of the problem, stressing that traffickers on board rickety fishing boats take advantage of peoples desperation. In exchange for money, they take them on a dangerous journey in Southeast Asia. This month, police intercepted the first boat in the Bay of Bengal after it left Bangladesh for Malaysia since the end of the monsoon. Officials warn however that others will follow. Ikbal Hossain, deputy police chief in Cox's Bazaar, said that coastguard patrols have been stepped up to prevent trafficking towards Malaysia, a route that was shut down in 2015. On 16 November, Myanmar authorities intercepted Rohingya on a boat adrift in the waters off Yangon. The group had escaped from Rakhine in 2012. With a promise of work in Malaysia, home to one of the largest Rohingya communities (about 150,000 people), the refugees left Sittwe on 25 October. The trip cost between 400,000 and 500,000 kyat (US$ 250--315). Once rescued, the refugees were arrested (pictured) and two days were returned to their villages in Rakhine. Balanchine's Nutcracker (1954) returns this week to the repertory of New York City Ballet, through Dec. 30. This waltz, one of his all-female numbers, includes both pointwork and upper-body luxuriance. Something new happens several times a minute; no structural device lasts longer than 20 seconds. Watching other choreographers productions of The Nutcracker, you learn theres no number so hard to sustain as this waltz, in which the music never deviates from the basic one-two-three waltz beat for more than five jubilant minutes. Balanchine, by contrast, doesnt just rise to the challenge he seems released. Patterns, lines, directions, focus keep changing: Its a kaleidoscope. Witness this sequence, which begins only 15 seconds after the previous one. As it starts, the 12 dancers of the corps are traveling in a revolving ring while their two lieutenants are traveling in front. Yet no sooner does the eye gets used to that shape than a new formation starts to coalesce. A lot goes into casting the role. Size, for one. Will the boys fit the costume? Also, Ms. Abergel said, focus and learning are important. The ballet masters need to know that the kid is not going to freak out on the stage, she said. It is so much material. But you get the feeling that these two wont crumble under pressure. What follows is an edited conversation with the princely pair, who were captured by the photographer Vincent Tullo as they went about their lives in the days leading up to the first performances. Why did you start studying ballet? Tenzin Niles I need to move my body always. So I went to a classical Indian dance class and I really loved it, but I wanted more, so my dad signed me up for ballet. It was a small studio and they were learning a dance from Frozen and the teacher just gave me a part the day I got there. Oh, to be a boy in ballet What about you, Athan? Athan Sporek My grandmother used to show me videos of [Mikhail] Baryshnikov. I was really obsessed with how high he jumped and how many turns he could do. My grandmother was like: You should go and train. You could be as good as him. I thought it was impossible, but it was worth a shot. Do you get picked on being a boy in ballet? Tenzin I thought I would. A lot of my friends come and see me in The Nutcracker, and they see that ballet isnt just little girls in tutus twirling around. Its a very serious art form. So I think a lot of them respect what I do. Athan I havent gotten picked on for being a boy dancer. It really helps that I go to a performing arts school and everyones linked in the arts. Bruegel himself made changes to his own compositions that might give us clues about his perspective. Like other 16th-century masters, he constructed his paintings painstakingly on wood panels, layer by layer. He started with a light-colored foundational surface, known as the ground, made of chalk and animal glue, on which he would sketch out his composition. Later, he would paint using oils. In the center foreground of the painting, The Battle Between Carnival and Lent we see festivalgoers celebrating on one side and pious observers of lent on the other. They are engaged in a kind of jousting match. A rotund man holding a pig on a stick faces off with an austere penitent, holding a bakers peel on which there are two fish. If we look at an image of this painting made with infrared rays, though, we see that instead of the two fish, Bruegel painted a cross a symbol of the church. He later removed the cross and added the fish, a traditional food served during the festival of Lent. But fish are also symbols of Christ, so it could just be a more subtle reference to the church. How does this dance and the rest of The Nutracker compare with Tchaikovskys other ballet scores? Its his last ballet. He didnt really like the idea of the project, but he obliged. And it ended up being one of his most successful pieces. Its ironic that it was approached with such reluctance. So often that seems to happen in history. The Sleeping Beauty is the ultimate dancers ballet. But musically, it perhaps doesnt have the inventiveness that The Nutcracker does. Its also an hour longer. When a composer has a smaller template, it forces an inventiveness. Waltz of the Flowers may be the longest number, and its under six minutes. I put the Waltz of the Flowers up against any waltz written by anybody. Its certainly one of the top five waltzes of all time, and I include all of the Strauss family in that sweeping statement. And the great theme of the pas de deux, which might be lost on the children, was written on a dare. Someone said, I bet you cant write a melody thats just a scale. But there it is; its incredible. We also have his Russianness coming out in the Trepak. And the overture is not for the whole orchestra; its for the upper strings. By doing that, he takes us into this world of tiny tots. Theres a lightness to it. A total lightness, which is a brilliant idea. Then, as soon as the curtains up, we see grown-ups the parents, the grandparents. So its back to normal orchestration. Its a genius stroke. How is it different to play to a younger audience? There are hazards. There was a performance last year where a little child sat on his grandfathers lap right behind me. He had this huge bag of M&Ms. The whole time I could hear this chomping. You cant say, Please stop eating those. Then I kept thinking: Surely, thats enough. Hes going to be sick. Oh no, hes going to be sick on me. So, its a little distracting. The ballerinas look at the conductor, and they were all distracted, too. Normally that just doesnt happen. Theres crying, but this is the piece for it. You dont bring kids to Mahlers Ninth. One of the mantras of classical music is that theres no new audience. Well, we get one every season with this piece. Every child from New York, every child who visits, experiences this if theyre lucky. Its so fun to go out every night and know youre going to reach some of these little kids. Some of them will squirm through it. But some will be transformed by it. Rupert Grint stars in the British series Sick Note on Netflix. And an episode of Vices HBO show looks at the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Whats Streaming SICK NOTE on Netflix. The Harry Potter alum Rupert Grint and the English funnyman Nick Frost lead this very dark, very British comedy series. American audiences have yet to see the show, which debuted last year in Britain on Sky One and recently concluded its second season there. Americans will get both at once on Netflix. Grint plays Daniel Glass, a young man with a job he hates (his boss is played by the Miami Vice actor Don Johnson) and a fondness for marijuana and video games. At the beginning, an oncologist (played by Frost) tells Daniel, erroneously, that he has terminal cancer. Daniel realizes that being sick has its perks, so when he learns about the mistake, he doesnt share the information. The situations that grow out of that fib become progressively more absurd. In Season 2, Lindsay Lohan joins the cast. While men are an increasing part of the market, the beauty pressure is aimed mostly at women. K-pop stars who often get extensive cosmetic surgery are held up as the standard. YouTube celebrities with millions of followers offer elaborate tutorials on how to apply makeup. Women are bombarded with ads across buses, in subways and on TV. Born pretty? reads one in the Seoul subway. Thats a big fat lie. We go through 12 steps just to put on the basic products before we even apply makeup, said Ms. Kim. That basically defines the problem. Women are now pushing back. This summer, tens of thousands gathered to protest against sexual assault, the proliferation of spy cameras taking voyeuristic videos of women and the harsher standards they face in other aspects of society, from beauty to the law. Political and economic disparities fuel the anger. South Koreas wage gap is the highest among countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Women hold just one-sixth of the seats in the National Assembly and one-tenth of corporate management positions. [music] michael barbaro From The New York Times, Im Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, from the start, the Trump administration has tried to dismantle regulations aimed at curbing climate change. Now, in its latest attack, the administration is trying to dismantle climate science. Its Wednesday, May 29. Coral, tell me about what happened in November of last year. coral davenport In November of 2018, the federal government put out whats known as the National Climate Assessment. This is a huge, sweeping comprehensive assessment of the impact of climate change on the U.S. Its over 1,000 pages long. Its prepared by 13 federal agencies. It takes about four years to prepare. Its a huge deal every time one of these comes out, because it is absolutely considered the most up to date, comprehensive, authoritative understanding of the impact of climate change on the U.S. And its a big deal when it comes out in the U.S. Its a big deal around the world, because its also considered one of the most authoritative climate science documents in the world. michael barbaro So this is kind of like the Bible of U.S. climate science? coral davenport Yes, exactly. michael barbaro Coral Davenport covers environmental policy for The Times. coral davenport And so what the Trump administration decided to do with this is essentially to bury it. They are mandated by law to put it out. Theres a law that says the agencies have to put it out every four years. But they decided to put it online at about 2:00 or 3:00 PM on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. [music] michael barbaro So at a moment when just about everybody is either literally on vacation or on some vacation of the mind? coral davenport Yes. The people who were not on vacation were climate journalists. archived recording 1 When most Americans are tucking into turkey leftovers and waiting in line for Black Friday sales, the government has released a huge report on the impact of climate change. coral davenport The strategy of trying to bury it didnt work at all. archived recording 2 The report wasnt expected to be made public until next month, leading some to wonder if Fridays release was an attempt to bury the story. coral davenport Mainly because it had such kind of stunning and deeply researched conclusions. archived recording 3 A dire new forecast, more frequent and more devastating weather crises on the horizon. archived recording 4 For the southeast, stronger hurricanes and more frequent flooding. The Midwest, agricultural catastrophe, extreme heat destroying crops. And in the west, increased fire danger. archived recording 5 That predicts hotter temperatures will kill more people. Crop yields will decline dramatically. And ocean acidification will cause millions of dollars in losses to the seafood industry. According to those findings, rising sea levels will threaten public infrastructure and real estate along U.S. coasts. coral davenport And the impacts of that could be devastating specifically to the United States economy. archived recording 6 The report states if greenhouse gases continue to rise, the country will see labor-related losses of $150 billion a year by 2090. Damage to coastal property due to the rise in sea levels and storm surges could reach nearly $120 billion a year. coral davenport And the report actually found that these impacts could knock as much as 10 percent off the U.S. G.D.P. by the end of the century, which is a huge economic hit. And I think that was the kind of thing that really sort of stunned the administration. Essentially, the conclusions of this report totally undermine the policy agenda, the regulatory agenda of this administration. This administrations policy agenda, very specifically, is about, literally, emitting more greenhouse gas emissions. archived recording (donald trump) Were eliminating unnecessary regulations so we can create more jobs and wealth right here in America. Ive ended the Obama administrations war on coal. And were putting our wonderful coal miners back to work, producing beautiful clean coal. coral davenport Under President Trump, we have seen the rollback of a couple of key greenhouse gas emissions regulations that were put in place in the Obama administration. One is a major E.P.A. regulation on greenhouse gas pollution from vehicles. archived recording 1 Regulations put in place by the Obama administration call for new vehicles to get 36 miles per gallon by 2025. The Trump administration says thats too high. coral davenport Theres another major E.P.A. regulation from the Obama administration that would have drastically reduced greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants, leading to shutdown of power plants, freezing construction of future power plants. The Trump administration is rolling that back. archived recording 2 Presidents move ends a moratorium on coal mining on federal land and eases restrictions on coal-fired power plants. coral davenport And the interior department is rolling back protections on public lands and federal waters in order to not just allow but aggressively promote the exploration and extraction of more fossil fuels, more oil, more gas, more coal, with the specific intent of driving the consumption and the burning of more fossil fuels, producing more greenhouse gases. I mean, this is a very explicit policy agenda. And this report says the results of this policy agenda are going to devastate the U.S. economy. I mean, these two sets of facts are in total conflict. michael barbaro So not only does this report make the case that these policies will worsen carbon emissions and therefore be bad for the environment, but this report is suggesting that these policies that are meant to strengthen the U.S. economy will, because of the environmental damage that they will inflict, actually hurt it. coral davenport Precisely. michael barbaro So what happens after this, for the Trump administration, pretty embarrassing report comes out? coral davenport Well, at first, the White House and the president slammed it. archived recording (donald trump) I dont believe it. archived recording 1 You dont believe it? archived recording (donald trump) No, no. I dont believe it. coral davenport And then kind of tried to move on from it. And that was kind of what happened with the public face at the White House. In the background, its important to remember that this is kind of a moment where there was a transition happening among top Trump environmental officials. Previously, we had seen top officials like Scott Pruitt, who was the first head of the E.P.A. under Trump who had spent his tenure pretty much constantly fighting off accusations of scandal and corruption. Or Ryan Zinke, the former Secretary of the Interior, same thing, was forced to resign after multiple allegations of scandal as well. These guys had been these big, high-profile, very politically flashy officials. They had left. And their replacements were these two senior officials who were much less flashy, much less scandal-plagued, much less in the headlines, not public figures, but really, really smart at the inside Washington game. The new head of the E.P.A. is Andrew Wheeler, who is a former coal lobbyist who has also worked as a senior official on the Hill, also worked in the E.P.A. in the George W. Bush administration. David Bernhardt is the new Secretary of the Interior. He used to be an oil lobbyist. Used to work at the Interior Department under the George W. Bush administration. These are guys who arent trying to pursue political careers in a big way. They do know how to pull the levers and get policy done. These guys and some of the other top officials look at this report and say, theres a bigger problem here. This is not just embarrassing. This is not just a couple of bad headlines for us. And this is why. Lawyers looking to fight these Trump regulatory rollbacks can use this document in court, in the Supreme Court, essentially saying, look, if your own administration says adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere hurts the U.S. economy, how can you make the legal justification to put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The law says you cant do these regulatory changes if theyre going to substantially hurt the economy. Theres a very clear legal argument to be made. And so these guys are kind of realizing this is a big problem for us, the fact that this thing is out there and exists, and were trying to do this policy agenda. This is more than just embarrassing. michael barbaro So in other words, theyre seeing this report as a potential legal blueprint for their opponents to challenge their policies in court. coral davenport Opponents of these policies have already said explicitly that once these regulatory rollbacks are done and they go to court, they absolutely intend to use this report to challenge them all the way up to the Supreme Court. michael barbaro Hmm. So they will take this giant climate report, the one that the Trump administration doesnt like but know by law it has to put out. And they will introduce this as evidence that these regulatory rollbacks should be invalidated? coral davenport Exactly. michael barbaro So what do these officials in the Trump administration do once they realize that this legal exposure exists? coral davenport Well, they cant do anything about the current report. Thats out there. Thats done. [music] coral davenport But they start thinking, all right, well, work on the next report, which is coming out in four years, has just started. And they can change the outcome, they think, of the next scientific report. michael barbaro Well, how exactly does that work? Because you cant exactly change climate science. coral davenport Right. And theyre not saying were going to fundamentally change the methods by which we do climate science, because, keep in mind, its not just the National Climate Assessment. Thats the major report thats put out by the federal government. But the federal government does climate science reports across the agencies. So they are having a discussion that asks the question, how much information can we leave out. How much does the public really need to know? michael barbaro Well be right back. So Coral, what does the Trump administration decide to do to limit what makes it into these official government reports on climate science? coral davenport Theres a couple of different ways that this is happening. In one agency, the U.S. Geological Survey, all they do is scientific reports. Theyre inside the Interior Department. There is a new policy in place already happening that all of that climate science and all their reports have to include some element of how climate change impacts public lands and waters and the different things that they do. Theres a new policy that climate projections cant go past the year 2040. michael barbaro Whats significant about that? coral davenport If you look at a climate science model, a projection, whats going to be the impact of the warming planet. If you look at those, the worst impacts, the biggest difference all happen past 2050. After 2050, thats when you start to see the really dramatic bad impacts of a lot more greenhouse gases. So this policy of saying, our climate science is not going to include any projections after 2040 creates, essentially, scientists say, a falsely optimistic, falsely positive idea. It doesnt show you the bad stuff that happens if we keep polluting. michael barbaro So the worst this, the worst impacts of the emissions policies that are currently being pursued by the Trump administration would make themselves apparent in projections after 2040. And what this proposal would do is just keep those projections before 2040 and therefore keep the worst, most dire predictions out of these reports? coral davenport Precisely. And this isnt a proposal. This is already happening at the U.S. Geological Survey, which is a scientific agency inside the Interior Department. michael barbaro O.K., so what else is the administration doing to limit the publics exposure to this information in these reports? coral davenport So theres another major proposal, and this is more of a proposal. This hasnt happened yet. Specifically focused on the National Climate Assessment. In these big climate science reports, theres usually a range of options based on how much greenhouse pollution goes into the atmosphere. Theres a worst case scenario, things get really hot, things get really bad. And then theres a best case scenario, we keep the worst of it under control, we just warm up a little bit, things arent so bad. And then theres usually a couple of middle scenarios. So the proposal is essentially: dont include the worst case scenario. michael barbaro Just lop it off? coral davenport Lop it off. michael barbaro With the goal, once again, of shielding people from the worst case scenarios of what these policies might do? coral davenport Precisely. And whats really remarkable about this proposal is that the scenario that theyre proposing to lop off is the most likely scenario, given that this administration is putting in place policies that will specifically lead to the business as usual, higher greenhouse gas emissions outcome. michael barbaro So the administration is figuring out a way to make the science obscure the long-term realities of climate change? coral davenport Yes. Ive been reporting on climate policy for over 10 years. And a story that weve written a lot is, despite the fact that President Trump has mocked climate science, withdrew from the Paris Accord, wants to roll back these regulations, weve actually written a lot of stories that say, you know what, they havent messed with the science. And we wrote that story when they put out the National Climate Assessment last fall. They tried to bury it. They made fun of it. But they didnt mess with the science. And so this is something really new. And I talked with a scientist who had worked on the National Climate Assessment who said, what is really concerning here is that the numbers put out by the U.S. government should be absolutely reliable, whether theyre about the economy, whether theyre scientific reports. They should be so reliable as to almost be boring. And what this scientists said to me is, in totalitarian regimes, in the Soviet Union, when governments put out reports and numbers, people kind of laugh at them, because they know theyre just sort of cooked up to support a political agenda. And he said, I see the very, very beginnings of that here in a way that we have not seen before. michael barbaro So Coral, how openly is the Trump administration pursuing this strategy? Because trying to hide science doesnt seem like something that any government agency would do very publicly. coral davenport And yet, Michael, surprisingly, theyre pretty open about it. Trump administration officials have publicly criticized these climate models. Theyve called the worst case scenarios highly unreliable and inaccurate. So they are sort of standing up for what theyre doing and saying, no, this will lead to more accurate, more careful, more thoughtful climate science reports, even though these are statements highly at odds with a vast consensus by the actual climate science community. But interestingly, theyre pretty open about it. They dont seem to be running away from it. michael barbaro Coral, what are the implications of the changes that youve just laid out, to shift the way we present science and, I suppose, even collect it? coral davenport So the first is that, if these reports start to come out this way, with big blocks of information that have been cut out, the reports will present a falsely optimistic picture of what the future will look like, despite the increase of planet warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Thats the first step. The second step though, is that they will be so at odds with the rest of climate science being produced in academia and around the world that we will start to see U.S. science discredited. michael barbaro But what about the whole reason this strategy exists, which is an attempt by the Trump administration to limit the legal exposure that you describe, to make it harder for people to challenge their policies by putting out less climate science data? coral davenport Michael, that absolutely is the strategy. Im not sure how well it will work. And the reason is if they put out reports that present a picture that is misleading, that is falsely optimistic, and it is totally at odds with the vast majority of other climate science being produced around the country and the world and that is not considered valid, Im not sure how good of a legal weapon these new reports will be. It is very much the thinking that this will be their defense. But I dont know how far you get when youre messing with science. michael barbaro I feel like beyond the legal implications, this presents a number of interesting questions. For example, if the U.S. government stops reporting certain pieces of climate science, does that mean that it stops collecting it? Does that mean that it gets harder and harder to create objective comparisons over time, because what was in the report four years ago isnt in the next one? And does it just create greater skepticism of climate science if the government is no longer considered the great authority on this? coral davenport I think, yes, it will create greater skepticism of climate science. The U.S. government is one of the greatest research bodies in the world. And so if the U.S. government is not doing this research, its not that it wont get done. It will continue to be done by universities. It will be continued to be done by other governments around the world. But this is some of the best and most authoritative research. Reports like the National Climate Assessment are used and evaluated by scientific agencies and governments all around the world. If the U.S. government is not creating these scenarios, is not collecting climate data, then, yes, there will start to be much bigger holes in our understanding. It will just mean we wont have this data. michael barbaro I wonder then, is it possible, Coral, that the point of this is just kind of dead simple, that the Trump administration is trying to make this problem of climate change seem not so bad so that it can push its policy agenda through without much opposition from the public. coral davenport I think thats right, Michael. I mean, yes, the idea is these are big reports that get a lot of attention and heighten this intense sense of urgency. And when the last Climate Assessment report came out last fall, it absolutely fueled climate activism. And I think the thinking is, well, when we put out the next one, lets have it not do that. [music] coral davenport I mean, in some ways, it is very simple. If theres not as much of a problem, then what were doing is fine. michael barbaro Even if it fundamentally changes our ability to understand the actual science of climate change? coral davenport I think that this is not an issue that senior officials in the Trump administration are losing any sleep over. And in fact, thats exactly what the Secretary of the Interior department David Bernhardt said when he was recently asked in congressional testimony about his agencys role in dealing with climate change. He told members of Congress, Im not really losing any sleep over it. archived recording 1 I was reading the newspaper this week. And it hit the headlines two days ago that carbon dioxide levels hit 415 parts per million, which is the highest in human history, the highest in 800,000 years. And that was, of course, when there were no humans, the last time it hit that kind of level. And so my question for you is, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most concerned, whats your number for how concerned you are about us hitting 415 parts per million of carbon dioxide? archived recording (david bernhardt) I havent lost any sleep over it. michael barbaro Coral, thank you very much. coral davenport Michael, thank you so much. [music] michael barbaro Theres also the issue of noise. WhatsApp users in India are well known for sending a constant stream of daily Good Morning! messages, jokes and videos, regardless of their relevance. Mr. Naik said he has had to remove several people from his group for flooding the chat with emoticons and greetings. Users have also complained to him that all the chats, photos and videos consume too much of their phones memory. A few have deleted the group because their memory was getting full, and they were unable to use their phone for anything else, he said, while others have upgraded to a new phone just to stay in the group. Mr. Bandawane said he doesnt like the 256-person limit on the group sizes, given the huge number of farmers across India interested in joining. Kaushik Ramasway, 40, a caterer in New Delhi, said he preferred promoting his business on Instagram rather than WhatsApp. A message popping up on WhatsApp saying, Buy my aloo chokha seems a bit intrusive, he said. Instagram is what culinary artists and restaurants and caterers have used from the very beginning to promote their food. But Ms. Tanya, the Goya Journal co-founder, remains optimistic about WhatsApps impact on Indias food culture. She recalled interviewing Ummi Abdulla, an expert on the Muslim cuisine of Malabar, in Kerala, for an article. Ms. Abdulla, 84, is known for cooking traditional food, but for Ms. Tanya, she made this dish that was so innovative and out of the box: It was homemade bread in the shape of a cone, stuffed with minced mutton. What had inspired such creativity? Ms. Abdulla was frank: She had seen the dish on WhatsApp. The following reports compile all significant security incidents confirmed by New York Times reporters throughout Afghanistan. It is necessarily incomplete as many local officials refuse to confirm casualty information. The toll here does not generally include claims of insurgents killed by the government, because of the difficulty of verifying such claims. Similarly, the reports do not include attacks on the government claimed by the Taliban. Both sides routinely inflate casualties of their opponents. The greatly decreased death toll among security forces, 42, indicated that clashes between the insurgents and the government decreased in the past week, but a larger number of civilians, 73, lost their lives particularly due to a massive bombing in the capital, the first major attack in more than a month. Most of the reported attacks were small in scale, also unlike previous weeks, with few casualties. The heavy fighting in Jaghori and Malestan districts in Ghazni Province also quieted, with the situation apparently stalemated there. Most businesses and schools remained closed, and residents who fled have not returned. But the Taliban did not continue to push to overrun the districts, which are populated by the Hazara minority. Heavy government reinforcements were sent in but apparently did not yet go on the offensive. Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the American commander, visited Ghazni city on Wednesday and a rocket was fired into the city while he was meeting the governor. Officials said it landed far from the meeting place. They say, Dont work with kids and animals because you know theyre going to steal the show. Nobodys going to give a [expletive] about what me and Mark are doing. Theyre just going to be like, Oh my God, that girls heartbreaking. And [Tig and Octavia were] hysterical. And also, so weird. Tigs dry and straight, and Octavia has such a kind of explosive energy, and it was very authentic, their chemistry. Somewhere between Damages and Bridesmaids, you became a comedian to reckon with. When did you realize you were funny? I by no means knew. I think like any actor, I was just craving to do something to show different sides of myself. Ive been so lucky because youre only as good as the company you keep, no? And so being paired with Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy [in Bridesmaids] and Seth Rogen [in Neighbors] and Tiffany Haddish, who Im working with in Limited Partners shes fierce and shes magical I feel incredibly lucky. Im just trying to keep up with them. Thats awfully self-deprecating. [Laughs] Yeah, its so boring to be so self-deprecating. Its such an Australian quality. But I look at [them], and its effortless, and for me it doesnt feel that effortless. Also, the catch with comedy is if youre funny in real life it doesnt mean youre funny onscreen. Comedians are often very serious and dark but hysterical in their characters. The stakes are higher. You appeared in Louis C.K.s I Love You, Daddy, which was shelved after the sexual misconduct allegations against him surfaced. Was that difficult? Of course. You go in with such great intentions, and Louis was very sweet with me, and I had a very respectful experience. But its obviously very complicated, and I stand with the women who came forward. But yeah, it is conflicting when you commit to something, just from my experience of, Wow, this is a really weird, dark story Im intrigued by it. And then it becomes a much bigger thing than what it is. I think it will be a while before that film can be seen, and I think thats right. by Vladimir Rozanskij Shinzo Abe seems to want to extend a hand to Vladimir Putin over the islands, a decades long dispute between Russia and Japan. But accord is far broader: Tokyo could get to review the historic military agreement with the United States. Internal opposition weighs on both leaders. Moscow (AsiaNews) - Since last November 16, when President Putin met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Singapore, a debate has been taking place in Russia on the possible "peace agreement" that closes the seventy-year dispute over the 60-archipelago Kurili islands, suspended at the northern limits of the Pacific between Russia and Japan. Indications point to a possible signed agreement by June 2019, when Putin will travel to Japan for the G-20 meeting, even if pessimists believe that the signing will take place much later, at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 . After the meeting with Putin, Shinzo Abe himself declared that he was ready to conclude the process begun with the Soviet-Japanese joint declaration of 1956. In it the USSR undertook to give two islands, Habomai and Shikotan back to the Japanese; Japan later also demanded the return of two other islands, Kunashir and Iturup, and the agreement remained frozen. Now the Japanese premier is also willing to make an official visit to Russia. Shinzo Abe reportedly assured Putin that NATO bases will not be installed in Kurils, a fundamental condition posed by the Russians, after the rumors began circulating in 2016 following some statements by the Japanese security secretary Siotaro Ati. Abe would have explained that in the agreements between the USA and Japan there was no obligation for military bases without Tokyos consent. In reality, the peace agreement does not seem to be the real priority of this rapprochement between Russia and Japan, given the great distance from the war (for example, there are no peace agreements between Japan and China and South Korea ). Japan could still obtain a territorial advantage, based on the promises of Khrushchev in 1956, then denied by the aggressive positions of the Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kisi, the grandfather of Shinzo Abe himself. The grandson could make up for the lacunae of his progenitor, or better relations with a neutral state, since the failure of the agreement was the cause for the military alliance between Japan and the United States, until then the deadly enemy of the second World War. Even today about a hundred American military installations are located in Japan. Tokyo also today supports the anti-Russian initiatives of Americans and Europeans, from the sanctions to the signing of documents of the G-7 condemnation of Moscow, the installation of new technologies of the global American defense system, and the participation in the NATO maneuvers in the Baltic countries, which irritate the Russians so much. Abe's promise not to "arm" the Kuriles against the Russians could imply a large Japanese disengagement from the NATO defensive system, and above all the offer to the Russians of a possible way out of the grip of sanctions. In Russia, however, the Putin openings to the Japanese have aroused considerable reactions, especially among the inhabitants of the Sachalin islands (the Russian islands north of Kurili), who even took to the streets to demonstrate against the president, collecting signatures to block the agreement. The Russians of the Sachalin and Kurili claim that the territorial changes, according to the law of 1990, must be subjected to a referendum among the population of the territories concerned, and they build on the example of the Crimea in 2014, when the Russians themselves - violating the international conventions - "solicited" the referendum that led to the annexation (and Western sanctions). It is the same official doctrine of Pointillism that is being questioned at this juncture, where the "sovereign" superiority of internal laws and of the popular will is claimed on every type of agreement or external legislation. Moreover, there have been strong negative reactions among the opposition parties in Japan, who have called the prime minister to explain to Parliament the terms of the agreement that is being prepared. In general, the perplexities about possible new relations between Russia and Japan are strong in all Japanese public opinion. [What you need to know to start your day: Get New York Today in your inbox.] The news on a federal level was no better. Democrats claimed victory over three Republican House incumbents, including Representative Dan Donovan of Staten Island, leaving New York City without a single Republican representative. All told, 21 of the states 27 House members will be Democrats, as are both of its senators. (Senator Kirsten Gillibrand easily won her second full term on Election Day.) And one of the six Republican House members Chris Collins of the Buffalo area is under federal indictment. Such a wipeout, and the prospect of a long stay in the political wilderness, has left Republican loyalists trying to find a way forward and the state party chairman, Edward F. Cox, trying to explain his, and his partys, dismal performance. It was a bigger wave than anyone expected, Mr. Cox said in an interview last week. There were red swaths across the state. But in the suburbs and the city, we really got hit. Indeed, the states electoral schism looks much like that of the nation as a whole, with every urban and many suburban areas solidly blue, and rural districts a deep red. But the math of that divide is bad for the Republicans: Residents of New York City, for example, which is overwhelmingly Democratic, make up about 40 percent of the states voters, spelling almost certain doom for Republicans running statewide in any year in which Democrats turn out. That geographic split also prompted questions about whether the leader of Albanys upper chamber, Senator John J. Flanagan of Long Island, could maintain his position amid calls for new leadership from upstate members and support for Senator Catharine M. Young, from western New York. We are going to see manufacturers fail, said Mr. Bowles, of the Center for an Urban Future. The global competition is intense. But at the same time, I feel more optimistic about manufacturing today, more than at any time in a while. The optimism can be found in the amenities slowly developing around the terminal, including a deli and two day cares. A GrowNYC Fresh Food Box pop-up operates weekly on the grounds. During the summer, Swale Barge, a floating food forest, docked near the ferry landing. But it still feels empty. Most of the common areas are sparse, with halls that can feel barren, and grounds that are largely vacant. On a map, it looks like its five million miles away, said Mr. Masci of Lowercase, who has struggled to convince customers to come to the factory for demonstrations and showings. It feels really far and isolated. Mr. Masci said the city tried to bring food trucks out to the property, but without enough foot traffic, they didnt last long. By comparison, Industry City has a tenant lounge with a coffee bar and billiard table, a tenant gym, and a five-acre courtyard where tenants can mingle. But for smaller manufacturers looking to grow, the bells and whistles take a back seat to affordable rent and plenty of space. Its more and more difficult for those types of companies to operate in many neighborhoods in New York. Where can you move your truck around or will you be ticketed? How do you move goods? asked Ben Margolis, the executive director of the Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corporation, which runs a job placement center in the terminal. To have a place in New York thats a dedicated workplace is just essential. [What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.] A state judge ruled on Friday that a lawsuit by the New York State attorney general could proceed against President Trump and the Trump Foundation over allegations of misused charitable assets, self-dealing and campaign finance violations during the 2016 presidential campaign. Mr. Trumps lawyers had argued that the court did not have jurisdiction over Mr. Trump, as president, and that the statutes of limitations had expired in the case of some of the actions at issue. They also contended the attorney generals office suffered from a pervasive bias against Mr. Trump. In her 27-page ruling, Justice Saliann Scarpulla disagreed. I find I have jurisdiction over Mr. Trump, she wrote. Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for the Trump Foundation, said in a prepared statement: The decision means only that the case goes forward. As we have maintained throughout, all of the money raised by the Foundation went to charitable causes to assist those most in need. As a result, we remain confident in the ultimate outcome of these proceedings. Olivia Hooker, who after surviving a race-related attack on a black section of Tulsa, Okla., in 1921 went on to become the first black woman to enlist in the Coast Guard and a distinguished psychology professor at Fordham University, died on Wednesday at her home in White Plains, N.Y. She was 103. The Coast Guard announced her death on Twitter. Dr. Hooker was 6 when white mobs stormed through the Greenwood District of Tulsa, destroying homes and businesses in a wave of violence often labeled the Tulsa race riot, although that term has fallen into disfavor among many. Dr. Hooker, in an oral history recorded in 2015 for the White Plains Public Library, instead called it the terrible catastrophe in Tulsa. Other people call it the Tulsa riot, she explained. It really wasnt a riot we were the victims. Ms. Merkel similarly stumbled over her governments decision to endorse the United Nations Global Compact for Migration, which calls on signatories to help migrants integrate into their societies while also improving conditions in the migrants home countries. It is a defensible position, but also one that, Ms. Merkels advisers said, could easily be twisted and exploited by populists (and one that even some Christian Democrats disagreed with). Rather than using the position as an opportunity to rally her party and the country, Ms. Merkel did next to nothing to explain her agreement to the document. Predictably, the Alternative for Germany Party ignited a fiery debate in the German Parliament on the issue, leaving members of Ms. Merkels party to struggle, leaderless. In a rare and short outburst of passion in the Bundestag this week, Ms. Merkel did give the right answer to the A.f.D.: It was pure nationalism, she said, to believe Germany could go it alone on the migrant question, whereas it was patriotic to create a win-win situation with other countries. But her intervention in the debate was symptomatic of her overall oratorical record: way too little, far too late. Why does Ms. Merkel fail to see that unusual times need unusually good rhetoric? Why does she not offer decisive leadership when voters turn to radicals, who offer easy answers? One reason might be that the chancellor has become a victim of an unusually broad popularity; for almost a decade, she was hailed worldwide as the de facto leader of Europe. At home, she enjoyed a cozy relationship with the two groups who should normally be holding her to account, the press and the center-left Social Democrats, who have spent most of her term as the junior partner in a coalition with the Christian Democrats. During the euro crisis, then later during the Ukraine conflict and the refugee crisis, almost all the important media outlets cheered Ms. Merkel. While the applause was mostly justified in substance, it was unhealthy for the structures of democracy. It left the impression that the establishment, whether in media or politics, thought alike, an impression that over time strengthened the political fringe. As more and more Germans vented their discontent on social networks, as the country got louder and louder, the chancellor kept her voice low furthering the notion that she just shrugged at critics. Its a common secret in Berlin that Ms. Merkel felt obligated to stand for another term in the last years general elections. Had it not been for the election of Donald Trump and the growing threat to multilateralism, she might have preferred to stand down sooner. Noble as her motives might have been, a sense of duty is not a sufficient motivation to run a country. Others in her party first and foremost Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer, whom Ms. Merkel would certainly prefer as her successor have the passion, the prudence and the talent for communication the country needs know. Ms. Merkel can feel safe leaving the ship. Jochen Bittner is a political editor for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit and a contributing opinion writer. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. This article is part of the Opinion Today newsletter. You can sign up here to receive the newsletter each weekday. Today is Americas national day of shopping. For anyone who plans to spend some money, I have a suggestion: Subscribe or donate to a media organization that covers your local area. The New York Times doesnt count, even if you live in New York. Nor does The Washington Post or any other national publication. All those organizations have a relatively large market of potential subscribers and advertisers. Im talking instead about local-only news organizations. They are vital to democracy to holding accountable government agencies, businesses, schools and other institutions. And many local news organizations are struggling to survive, because their old business model, which revolved around print advertising, has been undermined by the internet. As a result, many local news organizations have shrunk or disappeared. AGOURA HILLS, Calif. When I was a little kid I passed through a ghost forest in Montana, the blackened, standing skeletons of the largest wildfire in recorded American history. That was the Big Burn of 1910, which torched an area nearly the size of Connecticut in a weekend. What remained of that blowup told a story: of hurricane force winds, of 100-foot trees that crushed firefighters, of a land so scorched by intense heat that it was decades before seedlings sprouted in some places. But at least life returned. And over the last century, a healthy forest emerged along with a consensus political view that wild land was essential to our national character. Today, walking over the ashen floor of another spectral land, Im struck by how naked everything looks in the worlds largest urban national park. Almost 90 percent of the federal land in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area was burned in this months Woolsey Fire. The smell alone is mournful. The statistics are as dispiriting as they are familiar: One in three Americans cant name a single branch of government, nearly three in four dont know that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and 10 percent of college graduates think Judge Judy is a member of the Supreme Court. How can we expect the public to support the judiciary and the Constitution and the rule of law when they know so little about it? Judge Katzmann asked, sitting in his 24th-floor chambers before heading downstairs to meet the students. There needs to be a shared understanding of the principles underlying our governmental system, he told me. If that is lost, then what I worry about is that our support for our institutions will go under. The damage is already being done, thanks in part to a president who reacts to court rulings he doesnt like by mocking and threatening individual judges and the court system as a whole. The center, the first of its kind in the federal court system, isnt Judge Katzmanns first attempt to make the courts more accessible. In 2014 he started the Immigrant Justice Corps, a fellowship program that matches recent law school graduates with immigrants in need of legal help. That project was the result of years of watching immigrants lose in court for no reason other than not having a lawyer, but it was also inspired by Judge Katzmanns personal connection to the immigrant experience his grandparents on his mothers side emigrated from Russia, and his father fled Nazi Germany . After the students finished their tour, Judge Katzmann told them about his family, and about his own experience growing up in the city, attending public schools in Queens and commuting by bus and subway, just as they do. He was joined by Victor Marrero, a senior district judge and co-chairman of the civic-education initiative, who attended public school in the Bronx; and Richard Sullivan, who had been confirmed as a judge for the appeals court only days before, and whose parents grew up a block apart from each other in Queens. And people do just that. Those who cant afford to buy bottled or filtered water drink whatever comes out of the nearest tap, source or pond and leave the rest to the doctor they cant afford either or to Allah, whom everyone can afford. Anyway, those of us who can pay for water may only be buying some of the poison that the water were paying for was supposed to save us from. Earlier this year, the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources announced that at least eight brands of bottled water brands with fancy names like Aqua Fine, Pure Aqua, Aqua Gold, Pure 18 and Aab-e-Noor (Water of Light) were contaminated. Even when that little plastic bottle contains clean water, it isnt saving us from death or disease so much as condemning us to a future where we cant even think of public access to drinking water as everyones birthright. Increasingly, both in Pakistan and elsewhere, when you go to a public event as a speaker or a panelist, the first thing that appears in front of you is a bottle of water. Sometimes you hold onto it as if it might save you from the wrath of the audience. I have heard of writers demanding warm raki at their event, but never of a writer saying, Can you please take this bottle away and give me some tap water instead? When hotels automatically stock your room with a complimentary bottle and restaurants greet you with Still or sparkling? asking for tap water would mean outing yourself as a miser or a fusspot. I know that people have refined tastes, including for this or that healthy mineral in their water. But the array of bottled waters available on the market is a testament to the fact that humans can be conned into buying anything. And this con may be the most basic one in the world: I steal your water and then I sell it to you. And youll buy it because, surely, you dont want your children to die a painful death. By now, people who want to help solve this problem seem hopelessly earnest. The Supreme Courts chief justice has asked banks, the media and the government to help him raise funds for his dams. He has ordered some petitioners in his court to contribute. There are ads on the radio and TV that go Ao Dams Banain Hum (Lets Build a Dam). Building a big shiny structure that makes a mark on the scenery probably seems like making history. But beyond the inherent absurdity of crowdfunding what should be a public infrastructure project as one critic has said, the state cannot be run like a charity it would be cheaper than building those dams to make existing water supplies drinkable and disease-free. Yet theres little discussion about that. In 2010, I witnessed the devastation caused by floods in Sindh, a southern province. The civic-minded went out there to help the affected, and the first thing they did was to throw truckloads of bottled water at the people who had nothing left no home, nothing to eat or drink except the tattered clothes on their bodies. It was a perfect image for a planet in its death throes. And the people fleeing the deluge took the little plastic bottles of water, as much for the bottles as for the water. Well, it happened. There you were, strolling through the aspirationally wealthy and problematically gentrified neighborhood in which you sometimes brunch, a few minutes early to meet the adult women you call the girls. Having already purchased a coffee and made an Instagram story of some flowers, you popped into a little shop just to browse, just to pass the time. Youre an employed human of moderate means; surely you deserved a little look around. The holidays are coming, for one thing, and anyway you are still figuring out what to do about the new pant shape, and its always useful to do some reconnaissance in case it has changed again. From the outside, the store looked exactly like the ones in your own neighborhood, from which you might purchase a cardigan or crystal with ease. But before the door was shut, you could tell something was off. The air smelled too good; there were too few items on the shelves. By the time youd touched the first wafer-thin turtleneck, you knew: This is a too-expensive shop. What should you do now? The first thing is not to panic. Its an understandable error: Rich-people stuff looks a lot like regular stuff these days; it just feels infinitely better to the touch and doesnt break right away. Take a few steps inside, focusing intensely on whatever items are in front of you. Best not to look directly at the shop owner. Her haircut will be wild and she will be named after French produce, and the whole thing will only make you feel bad. Quickly scan your person for the most luxe item in your outfit, then sort of flash it in the direction of the shop owner. There is a small chance Aubergine might ask about it. No matter what the question, say, I got it in Paris. (They have Zara in Paris, its fine.) A simpler option is to gesture to your outfit and say, Sorry Im such a mess, just coming from the studio. Do not describe what kind of studio it is or what you were doing there. Something continues to nag at me about the midterm elections. Its the way we in the news media too often allowed ourselves to be manipulated by President Trump to heighten fears about the immigrant caravan from Central America so as to benefit Republican candidates. Obviously there were many journalists who pushed back on the presidents narrative, but on the whole Im afraid news organizations became a channel for carefully calculated fear-mongering about refugees. We in the media have, quite rightly, aggressively covered the failings of Facebook and other social media in circulating lies that manipulated voters. Thats justified: We should hold executives feet to the fire when they pursue profits in ways that undermine the integrity of our electoral system. The problem is that too often we in the media engage in the same kind of profit chasing. The news business model is in part about attracting eyeballs, and cable television in particular sees that as long as the topic is President Trump, revenues follow. So when Trump makes false statements about America being invaded by Central American refugees, he not only gets coverage, but also manages to control the media agenda. At a recent Trilateral Commission conference in Silicon Valley, there was discussion of the irresponsibility of internet companies in modern democracy but also tough words about the role of the mainstream media. Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford law professor and elections expert, told me that in 2016, Russians used mainstream media to manipulate voters even more successfully than they used Facebook. Well. Our picture of Sheryl Sandberg has just gotten a bit more complicated, has it not? Until not that long ago, she was Sandberg the feminist icon. As chief operating officer of Facebook and author of Lean In, she encouraged women to belly up to the table, to know their worth, to march into negotiations with smiles on their faces and steel sheathing their nerves and eyes implacably trained on the C-suite. When her husband, David Goldberg, died in 2015, her inspirational appeal only grew, and she became an authority on personal growth as well. She openly shared her grief. She showed us how to talk to the bereft. In the book she co-wrote, Option B, she explained how to find meaning after loss and rebuild a broken self. She was a feminist leader, corporate path-breaker and spiritual superempath all rolled into one. A Gloria Steinem-Amelia Earhart-Oprah Winfrey Thanksgiving turducken. But now, we are seeing (not for the first time, but perhaps without the benefit of the full Photoshop experience?) Sandberg the shrewd, intensely political chief operating officer a woman who, according to a recent story in The Times, worked to minimize findings that the Russians had taken up residence on Facebook in 2016 in order to sow disinformation in the run-up to the American presidential election. This was not the intrepid Wonder Woman wed been reading about. This was a person who was easily rattled and consumed with both her reputation and her companys. When Facebooks security chief, Alex Stamos, told the board that the company had yet to contain Russias meddling, the board lit into Sandberg, who in turn screamed at Stamos the following day for humiliating her. (You threw us under the bus! she reportedly said.) The eastern section of Antarctica is buried beneath a thick ice sheet. Some scientists simply assumed that under that cold mass there was nothing more than a frozen tectonic block, a somewhat homogeneous mass that distinguished it from the mixed up geologies of other continents. But with the help of data from a d iscontinued European satellite, scientists have now found that East Antarctica is in fact a graveyard of continental remnants. They have created stunning 3-D maps of the southernmost continents tectonic underworld and found that the ice has been concealing wreckage of an ancient supercontinents spectacular destruction. The researchers, led by Jorg Ebbing, a geophysicist at Kiel University in Germany, reported their discovery earlier this month in Scientific Reports. The findings relied on data from the Gravity Field and Steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite, which orbited Earth just 155 miles above the surface until late 2013, when it re-entered the atmosphere at the end of its mission. Called the Ferrari of space, this sleek instrument could measure the gravitational fields weaving through Earths crust and mantle. Its no secret that makeup artists and beauty enthusiasts have long swiped sheer lipstick on eyelids, cheeks and even temples as well as lips. The effect is a diffused rosy glow thats an easy-to-achieve, yet slightly more polished, alternative to the no-makeup look. But lipsticks can also be sticky or hard to blend in, problems that a new wave of multipurpose balms are formulated to solve. In both pot and stick form, the latest tinted salves glide on effort-free and melt into the skin to provide a subtle flush of color. I think a sheer wash of monochromatic color over lips, cheeks and even eyes is very flattering, says the Australian makeup artist Rosie Jane Johnston, who created her line of Cheek & Lip Balms ($22) as a better substitute to the lip glosses she formerly pressed on her clients skin for dewy shine. Perfecting the texture took time: Johnston recently reformulated the tint which comes in three plant-based shades and contains a base of organic shea butter, rose-hip oil and white tea to seal in hydration and provide a pop of healthy color no matter where you place it on the face. I like to gently dab it with my fingertips to blend it allows for more control and sheer coverage, she notes. The New York-based makeup artist Gucci Westman specifically developed her new Westman Atelier Baby Cheeks Blush Stick ($50) to go beyond the cheek zone she also likes to swipe it on her eyelids and lips for an outdoorsy flush. Rather than stick to one shade, she combines two: Dou Dou, a berry hue with a bluish undertone, and Petal, a mauve with a brownish undertone, similar to a burnt rose, for a balanced result that adds dimension. The British makeup artist Alice Lane pats the face with a single shade: a peachy or apricot tint a look that she says references the work of the 18th-century French artist Francois Boucher, who often depicted subjects with what Lane describes as a juicy and fluffy glow in his paintings. For a casual and contemporary vibe, apply generously. If you put on a tiny bit, it will look like a mistake, Lane says, explaining that with the semi-translucent nature of todays balms, the skin still shines through so you can use them over a larger area. Her favorite is Tata Harpers Volumizing Lip and Cheek Tint ($39). [Update: The 21-year-old black man fatally shot by a police officer on Thursday was most likely not the gunman in an Alabama mall shooting, the authorities now say.] A gunman who shot another man during a fight at an Alabama mall late Thursday night as thousands got an early start on their holiday shopping was fatally shot by the police, the authorities said. The gunfire, which sent shoppers fleeing for cover into stores and stockrooms, also injured a 12-year-old girl, a police captain said at a news conference early Friday. The girl was said to be conscious, and the police said her injuries were not life-threatening. The episode rattled the crowded Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, about 10 miles south of Birmingham. Video posted on Twitter showed people sprinting down the malls corridor in a panicked stampede. Vilma Carrillo was one of a group of migrant women flown to Texas in July from a detention center in Georgia to be reunited with their children, who had been separated from them as part of the Trump administrations clampdown at the border. Over the next several days, she watched as immigration officials paged one mother after another and took them to meet their children. I was never called, Ms. Carrillo said. Her heart in tatters, the 38-year-old Guatemalan woman was sent back to the Georgia detention center without her daughter, Yeisvi, 11. The others got their children back, she said, I was left with my despair. She hasnt seen her daughter since they were separated in May, but they talk on the phone twice a week. Ms. Carrillo has been caught at the intersection of several Trump administration policies intended to make it harder for Central American migrants to settle in the United States. Her case is more serious than what thousands of other migrant families have faced: Because her daughter is an American citizen, Ms. Carrillo has been told that she could lose custody. Bernie Sanders can still get a crowd. At rallies across the country before the midterms, from South Carolina to Michigan to Nevada, people came to see the Brooklyn-timbred senator from Vermont. They rattled the rafters in Wichita, Kan. They screamed his name in Iowa. Yet as Mr. Sanders ponders another presidential run, what is not clear is whether he can still get the votes. It is a question that has taken on new relevance as attention turns to the presidential election two years away: While the list of possible Democratic candidates seems to expand every day, political prognosticators have long assumed there would be a Bernie 2.0. But if Mr. Sanders, 77, was a sensation in 2016, electrifying crowds and awakening fervor on the far left, he is no longer a singular figure among Democrats. Outflanked on the left by rising stars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Beto ORourke, his stronghold on the partys progressive wing has weakened. Many of his key policy positions, including Medicare for All and tuition-free public college, have been embraced by others a victory for him, he would argue, but one that makes his agenda seem less novel. WASHINGTON When a former C.I.A. officer was detained overseas recently, Montenegrin officials thought the answer to a question that their country has been obsessed with for two years might be within reach: How did Russia try to topple Montenegros government? On the eve of a parliamentary vote in 2016 viewed as a referendum on membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Montenegrin police broke up what they claimed was a Russian-backed coup. The investigation and court proceedings over the ensuing two years have riveted the country, including the sensational, and head-scratching, allegation that the coup backers recruited a former C.I.A. officer to help ferry its plotters out of Montenegro. The former officer, Joseph Assad, insisted it was all a huge mistake. He denied knowing of any Russian involvement in Montenegro and said he was only advising a friend hired as the oppositions campaign adviser. The Montenegrin controversy is a prime example of the sort of mistrust, suspicion and, sometimes, paranoia, that has arisen in the wake of Russias campaigns to meddle in European and American elections. Current and former Montenegrin opposition officials argued that government officials paranoia has them seeing Russians hiding behind every tree and prompted them to wrongly tie Mr. Assad to the alleged plot. WASHINGTON Jerome Corsi, a conspiracy theorist and ally of the former Trump campaign adviser Roger J. Stone Jr., is in plea negotiations with prosecutors working on the special counsel investigation into Russias interference in the 2016 election. A person familiar with the talks said that the prosecutors had presented Mr. Corsi with evidence that he had not been truthful when investigators asked him whether he knew beforehand that WikiLeaks was going to publish emails stolen from Democratic computers during the campaign. The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and his team are trying to discover whether anyone connected with the Trump campaign knew of or cooperated with the Russian intelligence operatives who hacked the Democratic systems and funneled the emails to WikiLeaks in an attempt to undercut Hillary Clintons presidential campaign. Although Mr. Corsi apparently had no direct connection to the Trump campaign, he was in touch with Mr. Stone, a former campaign adviser who communicated with senior campaign officials through the election. Mr. Stone claimed during the campaign that he had a back channel to WikiLeaks, but now says he was merely bluffing to unsettle Mrs. Clintons team. Mr. Stone also communicated with Guccifer 2.0, the online persona used by one or more Russian intelligence operatives who hacked the Democratic systems. It is not like the chief justice of the nations highest court to rebuke a sitting president. But it happened on Wednesday, when Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. a conservative not known for being publicly outspoken pushed back on comments made by President Trump. Mr. Trump had called the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit a disgrace after a federal judge, Jon S. Tigar, ordered the administration to accept asylum claims from migrants no matter how they entered the United States. Mr. Trump called Judge Tigar, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, an Obama judge. We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges, Chief Justice Roberts said in a statement. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for. The president has criticized judges and courts he disagreed with on many occasions, often in partisan terms that have rankled judges and legal scholars. But Mr. Trumps own judicial nominations have been a boon to conservatives: Dozens of federal judges and two Supreme Court justices have taken their seats during his administration. That legacy could last for decades. My mother made me promise to look after her face when she was no longer able to. After menopause, she kept regular electrolysis appointments, hoping to permanently eradicate each new chin hair as it appeared. She said her greatest fear was being one of the little old bearded ladies in the nursing home. Of course, this was a proxy for other fears: being helpless, at the mercy of others compassion and care; the bodys incessant and inevitable failure; and death itself. I swore to be the caretaker of the chin hairs. I was her only daughter, after all. When she declined suddenly, one summer into fall, then at a slower but relentless pace for another year, I did more than that. Helping her shower, I needed to become acquainted with just about every fold and crevice that was my mother. I mapped and logged the bruises caused by the blood thinners, changed and cleaned up after the adult diaper, soaped between the misshapen toes and underarms, and dried the small whorls of ears. I became the brusher of the dentures when she forgot how to, the learner of the little trick of where to place my thumbs to break the suction of the denture plate from the roof of her mouth. I combed the beautiful fine silver hair, trying to create a little lift over the pink of the scalp showing through. I massaged the cramped calf. I came to feel as tenderly toward her body as I had toward the infant bodies of my sons the one responsible for its suit of skin, its excretions, the support of its unseeable organs. This article was updated on Nov. 29. Wa-ka, wa-ka is the sound of the first riffs that open up Bob Marleys Stir It Up. Sister Nancys Bam Bam begins with slow-paced horns that give way to her cool cadence. Drums pause with the guitars at the top of Peter Toshs Legalize It. Its reggae: smooth, lovely, cool, collected, classic. Jamaica, where the sound first gave a voice to the oppressed and the hopeful, applied to add reggae to Unescos list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity, and the genre received the honor on Thursday, along with several other new additions. KHOST, Afghanistan A bombing deep inside an army base in Afghanistan during Friday prayers at a mosque killed at least 27 soldiers and wounded dozens, officials said, once again highlighting the vulnerability of the countrys security forces. The attack was inside the headquarters of the Afghan Armys 1st Brigade, 203rd Corps, in the southeastern province of Khost, said Capt. Abdullah Sargand, a brigade spokesman. A senior official said at least 27 soldiers had been killed and an officer inside the base said more than 20 died. But other officials gave varying accounts of the casualty toll, some lower. The explosion happened when army personnel were getting ready to pray, Captain Abdullah said. Gul Mohammad-din Mohammadi, the deputy head of Khosts public health department, said 79 wounded soldiers had been taken to hospitals. Jawed Ghafoor, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense, said helicopters had reached the base to evacuate the wounded. HONG KONG It was meant to be a peoples bridge a catalyst for Chinas efforts to draw Hong Kong and Macau closer to the mainland. But for the residents of the quiet Hong Kong suburb of Tung Chung, the initial fanfare following the opening of the worlds longest sea bridge last month has quickly given way to frustration. Its an early sign that it will take more than a 34-mile megastructure to overcome the resentment that is festering between Hong Kong residents and mainland Chinese. Nearly a million mainland tourists have crossed the new bridge into Hong Kong in the month since it opened. Most of these tourists have then poured out of buses in Tung Chung, a mostly residential town close to the port with a population of about 45,000, for a quick shopping stop before returning home. The sudden influx of mainland Chinese has sparked a litany of complaints among Tung Chungs residents. Amir Jan, a driver who had been washing his car near the consulate, said he saw three men with Kalashnikov assault rifles move toward the consulate around 9:15 a.m. He said one threw a grenade before they all opened fire. Officials later said that two Pakistani civilians, a father and son who had come from Quetta to get Chinese visas, were also killed in the attack. Prime Minister Imran Khan issued a statement on Twitter insisting that such attacks could not shake the relationship between China and Pakistan. He said the strike had clearly been intended to scare Chinese investors and came as a result of trade agreements announced during his trip to China this month. The Chinese Embassy in Islamabad, the capital, later issued a statement extending condolences over the deaths and expressing faith in Pakistani security. We believe that the Pakistani side is able to ensure the safety of Chinese institutions and personnel in Pakistan, the statement said, adding that any attempt to undermine the countries relationship was doomed to fail. After the attack in Karachi, another bombing this one in the Orakzai region of northwestern Pakistan showed the continuing threat posed by militants on a separate front. At least 30 people were killed and 40 or more wounded when a bomb blast ripped through a fruit and vegetable market in the Hangu district there, officials said. The market was near a seminary for Shiite Muslims, a minority in Pakistan that is frequently targeted by extremist Sunni groups. The dead include Sunnis, Shiites and a couple of Sikh community members, said a local official, Mutahir Zeb Khan. We are identifying the dead. PRAGUE A billionaire turned politician sweeps to power by tapping into deep public disgust with a system that many believe is rigged against them. Even before taking office, he has been hounded by controversy about conflicts of interest related to the company he ran for decades. Opponents threaten to remove him. If some of that sounds familiar, Andrej Babis, prime minister of the Czech Republic and its second-richest person, has long been compared to Donald J. Trump for his populist politics, bombastic style and exuberant wealth. He has also been similarly besieged by opponents he accuses of being part of an organized cabal out to bring him down. On Friday, those tensions hit another high point when lawmakers held a vote of no confidence seeking to end Mr. Babiss government, the second time they have done so since he came to power more than a year ago. Though Mr. Babis survived the challenge, all sides agree that the conflict has become so venomous that it has paralyzed the politics of this small Central European country at a critical moment when populist forces are threatening to tear apart the democratic gains made since the fall of communism almost 30 years ago. ATHENS, Greece A prosecutor on Greeces Supreme Court is set to intervene in a case of educational fraud that has roiled the country and united political parties, labor unions and rights groups: A 53-year-old cleaner is serving 10 years in prison for falsifying her primary school diploma to get a public sector job. An initial court ruling two years ago handed the woman a 15-year prison term for defrauding the public; the sentence was reduced this month, and she has been in Thiva prison in central Greece ever since. An online petition for her release had drawn more than 20,000 signatures by Friday afternoon. This decision is not simply inhumane, the Hellenic League for Human Rights said of the decision to sentence her to jail for 10 years. It is another very indicative sign of permanent ailments in the criminal justice system. The unidentified cleaner had worked at a state kindergarten in Volos, in central Greece, for 18 years, until a review in 2014 revealed that she had doctored a certificate to show she had completed six years of primary education (roughly elementary level) instead of only five. Six years is the required term for primary school students to complete their education. ROME When Hillary Clinton warned in an interview this week that Europes centrist leadership needed to get a handle on migration, or risk further fanning the flames of populism, some wondered where she had been the last few years. We already did this, said Italys former center-left interior minister, Marco Minniti, when asked about the comments. She is talking about another era. Unauthorized migration to Europe has already fallen by around 90 percent since the height of the Continents refugee crisis in 2015, when more than a million asylum seekers, mainly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, crossed into Greece and Italy. That precipitous drop is due in large part to Europes centrist leadership. On Friday, facing some backlash for her remarks, Mrs. Clinton said in a series of tweets that it was precisely a centrist approach that she was advocating. Since weathering a bumbling leadership challenge from proponents of a clean split from Europe within her Conservative Party, Mrs. May has seen her popularity rebound. More people backed her staying on as prime minister than standing down in a YouGov poll this week, a reversal of the results from a week earlier. But the draft deal itself remains deeply unpopular, with only 23 percent of people saying in a YouGov poll this week that they supported it, and only 3 percent saying they did so strongly. Mrs. May ducked the thorniest questions put to her by radio callers on Friday, in a preview of what looked likely to be a week of public campaigning for the deal after European leaders vote on it in Brussels on Sunday. She refused to discuss a backup plan if lawmakers in Parliament were to reject the draft deal in a vote expected by mid-December. She refused to say whether she would resign in that case. And she groped for a response to one of the most provocative questions conservative lawmakers have been wrestling with in recent days: Would the country be better off under Mrs. Mays plan or if it never left the union at all? What will make us better off is not so much about whether were in the European Union or not, she finally said. Its about what we can do for our economy; its about what we can do for our prosperity. LONDON The British police officer who was poisoned in a nerve agent attack on a Russian former spy has said that he and his family had to abandon all their belongings because of possible contamination not just their home and cars, but every item in them, from family mementos to their childrens toys. We lost all of our possessions, including the kids everything the kids own, we lost all that, Detective Sgt. Nick Bailey told the BBC in an interview broadcast on Thursday. It was his first public account of his experiences since the March 4 attack in Salisbury. We lost everything, he said. Its been very difficult to come to terms with that. British news media have reported that the government will compensate Sergeant Bailey and the other victims of the attack, which used a Soviet-developed Novichok nerve agent, but this has not been officially confirmed. In all, the attack killed one person and sickened four others, who may have suffered lasting physical harm. News was received in Paris last evening that King Albert re-entered his capital yesterday at the head of the Belgian troops, of whom he had taken command for the occasion. The King, who was accompanied by Queen Elizabeth and Princes Leopold and Charles and Princess Marie-Jose, received an enthusiastic welcome from the people of Brussels, who lined the route of the procession. The programme of the day included a session of Parliament, the entry of the Sovereigns into the Palace and a reception in the afternoon at the Hotel de Ville. With the Belgian troops marched a detachment of French troops which had fought during long months on the Belgian front. Generals Degoutte and Davignon were at the head of these troops, who shared fully in the welcome accorded to King Alberts own soldiers. New York to Celebrate Deliverance of Brussels NEW YORK The mayor has proclaimed next Saturday for observation of the restoration of Belgium, and the triumphal entry of the King and Queen of Belgium into Brussels. There will be a big parade to open the ceremonies, in which the Army, Navy, Boy Scouts, school children, foreign relief workers, the British, French, Italian, Polish and Belgian contingents will be seen, the foreign organizations to be costumed in native dress. The Allied consuls have been invited as special guests of honor. The New York Herald, European Edition, Nov. 23, 1918 ROME The Houthi rebels who control the key Yemeni port of Hudaydah have agreed to enter talks about handing some control to the United Nations, its envoy to Yemen said during a visit to the city on Friday. The initiative, although tentative, added to momentum for peace talks expected to start in the coming weeks, when the Saudi-led coalition and its Houthi foes are to meet in Sweden as a humanitarian crisis threatens to tip millions of Yemenis into starvation. Hudaydah has been engulfed in fighting in recent weeks as the Saudi-led coalition has stepped up its assault there, partly surrounding it from three sides. That has prompted fears that the port, a major channel for food and fuel imports, could be cut off. The United Nations sees a deal on Hudaydah as an important first step toward ending the war. But any arrangement to turn the port over to international supervision would also need approval from the United Arab Emirates, the Saudi ally leading the military assault. This is Zora. It may not look like much more cute toy than futuristic marvel but this robot is at the center of an experiment in France to change care for elderly patients. When Zora arrived at this nursing facility an hour outside Paris, a strange thing began happening: Many patients developed an emotional attachment, treating it like a baby, holding and cooing, giving it kisses on the head. Zora, which can cost up to $18,000, offered companionship in a place where life can be lonely. Families can visit only so much, and staff members are stretched. Patients at the hospital, called Jouarre, have dementia and other conditions that require round-the-clock care. The nurse at Jouarre who oversees Zora controls the robot from a laptop. He often stands out of view so patients dont know its him at the controls. The robot can have a conversation because the nurse types words into a laptop for the robot to speak. Some patients refer to Zora as she, others he. Zora often leads exercises and plays games. Not everyone is enamored. Robotics still has a long way to go before theres a realistic chance of having a humanoid nurse. Zora doesnt dispense medicine, take blood pressure or change bedsheets. At Jouarre, Zora was viewed by some as a superfluous tool that just keeps the patients busy, according to a nurse, Sophie Riffault. Another nurse, Nathalie Racine, said she wouldnt let a robot feed patients even if it could. Humans shouldnt delegate such intimate moments to machines. Nothing will ever replace the human touch, the human warmth our patients need, she said. The experience at Jouarre provides a window into a future when we will rely more on robots to help care for loved ones as they age. Zora Bots, the Belgium-based provider of the robot at Jouarre, says it has sold over 1,000 of the robots to health care facilities around the world, including in the United States, Asia and Middle East. It is part of a growing emphasis on robotics focused on care. A robot dog made by Sony has been marketed as a companion for older adults. We need to help with loneliness, said Tommy Deblieck, the co-chief executive of ZoraBots. Giving robots more responsibility to care for people in the twilight of their lives may seem like a dystopian prospect, but many see it as an inevitability. In nearly every country, the population of older adults is rising. The number of people over 60 will more than double to 2.1 billion by 2050, according to the United Nations. The figures point to an emerging gap. There simply wont be enough people for the required health care jobs. Proponents argue new technology must be created to help fill the void. The challenge is particularly acute in France, where hospitals have been facing a national crisis, with health care professionals striking and protesting budget cuts and staff shortages. A rise of suicides of nurses and doctors has made national headlines, and Frances health minister acknowledged that the hospital system was running out of steam. The challenge will be creating machines capable of doing more complex jobs. Lifting a patients mood with a song is different from providing health care. The French hospital, which bought the robot with the help of a charitable grant, brings out Zora just a few times a month. In Australia, a hospital using a Zora robot studied the effects on patients and staff. The researchers found that it improved the mood of some patients, and got them more involved in activities, but required significant technical support. The experience of the French hospital staff has been similar. Staff members have been continually surprised by how attached patients have become. One nurse, Mickael Feret, said some patients get jealous of others spending time with Zora. Patients have told the robot things about their health they wouldnt share with doctors. A woman who had bruises on her arms wouldnt tell hospital staff what had happened, but shared with Zora that shed fallen out of bed while sleeping. It puts some cheerfulness in our lives here, says Marlene Simon, 70, who underwent a tracheotomy and has been in the hospital for more than a year. We love her, and I miss her when I dont see her. I actually think about her quite often. When we visited Jouarre in late August, it had been a long day for Zora. The machine visited individual patients in the morning, and then was needed to help with group exercises and other areas later in the day. Eventually it was put away in the small suitcase where it lives at night, stored away inside a closet in the secretarys office. The Shawnee High School Mixed Choir poses at the Little Dixie contest in Ada during fall 2017. OBU Students and Faculty to Host Benefit Recital Nov. 27 for Shawnee Choir Program November 23, 2018 The Warren M. Angell College of Fine Arts Division of Music will present a special benefit concert, The Classroom Partners Benefit Piano Recital. The recital will be held Tuesday, Nov. 27 at 7:30 p.m. in Raley Chapels Yarborough Auditorium. All proceeds will benefit Shawnee Middle and High School Choir Programs and donations will be accepted at the door. Those interested may also give to benefit the Shawnee Choir Programs by visiting the OBU giving page or by clicking the Give button at the top of the website. On the giving page, choose the designation, OBU-Shawnee Chorale Benefit Concert. Shawnee Forwards Classroom Partners began in 2018. Partners are paired with classrooms in Shawnee and are able to support them by meeting critical needs for their students. This program allows a business and individual to see the impact they have made in the classroom first hand. Bradley Hetherington, senior piano performance major, began preparations for this recital with a few other students in the Division of Music of the College of Fine Arts. The idea came from several different people, Hetherington said. Some of my fellow classmates have always talked about doing a fun piano recital. This dream became a reality this summer when Hetherington reached out to the Shawnee Forwards Classroom Partners program and was then put in contact with choir directors at Shawnee High School and Shawnee Middle School, Justin and Melissa Lee. The Lees are both OBU alumni. Since the Lees came to Shawnee, they have revived the program, growing the choirs in number and accolades. With numerous students making all-district and all-state honor choirs, with their choral groups achieving high ratings in regional and state competitions, and with enrollment in their programs exploding over the last five years, the Shawnee Choir program is seeing tremendous success under their leadership and is poised for a great future. Opportunities continue to grow for their students, and the high school choir is taking a group to New York in late May to perform at Carnegie Hall, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The program also founded the Shawnee Choirs Booster Club this year, an organization created to help raise funds for the program in order to offer the most outstanding choral music education experience possible for students in the middle school and high school choirs. With the growth of the program and with reductions in state funding for education over the last several years, it is critical for the choirs to raise funds to pay their expenses for contest entry fees, travel expenses, music expenses, and more. Hetherington is excited to play a role in raising funds to help the program continue to grow and offer life-changing opportunities for these students. After thinking about it [a benefit recital] for a while, I decided to explore the options of making it a reality, Hetherington said. Many great opportunities are merely talked about, and I wanted this to actually happen. I want the community to know that OBU cares. Hetherington, whose mother is a school teacher at a public school in Oklahoma, has grown up around education. He also fondly remembers his time in choir in middle and high school. He wanted to do everything he could to help choir students in the Shawnee Public School system have a similar experience. I knew that I wanted to show the love of Christ to the community somehow, he said. I knew that I wanted to impact the music community in Shawnee. Senior vocal performance major Julie Welch also played a big role in making this event a reality. She believes in this recital and hopes to raise funds and support for the choir programs of Shawnee. I think it is important to support music education in our public schools, Welch said. Music is universal, its powerful, relatable, raw, and its a creation that comes from the soul. She also expressed her interest in this recital becoming an annual event. This would allow for music students in Shawnee to benefit for years to come from all of the hard work OBU students have put into this recital. Ultimately, our goal with this event is to share the love of Christ through music, she said. If someone in the future wants to take it on, Bradley has already made the connections. The recital will feature many OBU students along with past and present OBU faculty. Performers include Dr. Michael Dean, professor of music; Dr. Abigail Mace, assistant professor of music/director of preparatory department; Dr. Louima Lilite, associate professor of music; Dr. Christopher Mathews, dean of the Warren M. Angell College of Fine Arts; Dr. Keith Whitmore, former assistant professor of instrumental music and staff accompanist; Dr. Carol Bell, retired professor of piano; Dr. Ron Lewis, professor emeritus of music; Dephanie Lilite, Anastasia Abu Bakar, Bradley Hetherington, Rachel Foote, Rachel Darvin, Mitchell Manlapig, Emilie Griffin and Landon Johnson. All proceeds will benefit Shawnee Middle and High School Choir Programs and donations will be accepted at the door. Those interested may also give to benefit the Shawnee Choir Programs by visiting the OBU giving page at www.okbu.edu/giving or by clicking the Give button at the top of the website. On the giving page, choose the designation, OBU-Shawnee Chorale Benefit Concert. Security review in J&K is message to Pak not to use Taliban win in Kashmir 200 and counting: Bijbehara encounter against terrorists, most successful one this year India oi-Vicky Nanjappa Srinagar, Nov 23: It was just last week that the security forces had announced that they had gunned down 200 terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir, this year alone. However today was a big day in the war against terror after six terrorists were gunned down by the security forces at Bijbehara in Anantnag District. The encounter took place in a jungle area of Sekipora after terrorists fired at the security forces. This led to a gun fight and in the process, six terrorists were killed. Incriminating materials including huge quantity of arms and ammunition were recovered from the site of encounter. Police has registered a case and initiated investigation in the matter. Pertinently no collateral damage took place in this incident. The Jammu and Kashmir police said that the terrorists killed were from the Lashkar-e-Tayiba. It was one of the most successful operations undertaken this year, the police also added. Army hits a double century in J&K, but there is a long way to go The news relating to the death of these terrorists comes just a week after security forces said that this year alone the number terrorists has exceeded 200. Statistics available until the mid of November state that 109 were killed in the terrorist hub of South Kashmir, the rest were reported from the other parts of the state. In addition to this the forces have also apprehended 50 terrorists belonging to various outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Hizbul Mujahideen. Among the 200, the Army has managed to kill some Grade A++ terrorists as well. They include the likes of Sameer Tiger, Abu Maviya, Abu Qasim. Another top terrorist to be killed was Usman Haider, who was the nephew of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief, Maulana Masood Azhar. Incidentally Haider is the second nephew of the Jaish chief to be killed in the Valley. Last year in November, the Army had gunned down Talha Rashid at Pulwama. The high rate of terrorists killing has been attributed to perfect coordination between the Army, Intelligence and more importantly the local police. Army officials say that while the number of terrorists deaths is high, there is also the other issue of a high number of terrorists waiting to infiltrate at the border. Waiting to infiltrate: Lt. Gen. Singh, who has served in all three regions of Jammu and Kashmir, said, "140 to 160 terrorists at different locations in Pakistan are being pushed into the state." "The terror infrastructure is intact, and Pakistan's intentions have not changed. The Pakistan Army and the ISI's complicity in planning infiltration and terror attacks is evident and it continues," the officer, who has a vast experience in high-altitude warfare, said. Jaish chief reserves best weapons for his nephews, while rest fight with SLRs To a question on the situation along the LoC, he said ceasefire violations have abated after the DGMO-level talks. "For troops on the LoC, there is no ceasefire... though periodic unprovoked firing by the Pakistan Army and attempts to cause harm to forward posts continue. We do not initiate fire, but we give it back in adequate measure. There is no let up on preparedness and our counter-infiltration grid is strong to deal with infiltrators," he said. Talking about challenges during winter, Lt Gen Singh, who is part of the elite Parachute Regiment (Special Forces), said the Army anticipates that Pakistani troops will make an attempt to push infiltrators through heavy snow-bound areas and non-traditional routes. "We have all contingency plans ready. We have coordinated with all security agencies, and plans are being implemented smoothly," said Lt Gen Singh, who commanded a special forces' battalion that participated in the surgical strikes after the attack on an Army brigade in Uri in 2016. Big concern raised in Valley after terrorists resort to sniperattacks Referring to the recent incident of firing of 107-mm rocket on the Poonch brigade, he said, "Despite Director General of Military Operations-level talks in May during which the two countries agreed to abide by the 2003 ceasefire agreement, Pakistani troops targeted these locations." "In response, we conveyed that Pakistan must exercise caution before indulging in any misadventure," Lt Gen Singh said. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 12:30 [IST] Delhi: 4 Tanzanians, 2 Nigerians attacked in Dwarka, accused of being 'cannibals' India oi-Madhuri Adnal New Delhi, Nov 23: In a suspected racist attack, four Tanzanian women and two Nigerian men were attacked by a mob at Dwarka in Delhi. The victims were accused of being cannibals. The Delhi Police rescued six victims. They received five PCR calls from 6:57 pm to 7:38 pm regarding a quarrel with a foreigner in Kakrola area of Dwarka North PS. Upon reaching the spot, police found a gathering of about 200-250 persons in front of a house. Delhi government spends Rs 46.64 out of Rs 706 crore earmarked for Mohalla Clinic India oi-Vinod Kumar Shukla New Delhi, Nov 23: Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain is planning to go to Australia to tell people of the country about the Delhi government's flagship scheme Mohalla Clinic along with his OSD and two doctors however the government has just spent Rs 46.64 crore out of Rs 706 crore earmarked for Mohalla Clinic and Poly Clinic in 2018-19 financial year. Sources said that Satyendra Jain will go to Australia on November 26 and he will remain there till November 30, 2018. In this official visit of the minister to Australia, two doctors who are well aware and know about Mohalla Clinic will also accompany along with Jain's OSD. The Delhi government looks at Mohalla Clinic as big project and there was a plan to open 1000 Mohalla Clinic across Delhi. Delhi: 2 arrested for killing 19-year-old man over parking issue Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is also holding meetings with the Metro officials to open Mohalla Clinic along the recently inaugurated Metro Rail route between Noida and Janakpuri. Despite the government failing to spend money in 208-18 financial, the government is planing to increase the budget of Mohalla Clinic for the next financial year that is Rs 836 crore. Meeting has started for the budgeting of the next financial year in the finance department of the Delhi government. Delhi: Cong carries out protest march against AAP, BJP G B Pant, super specialty hospital of the Delhi government, has been allocated 364 crore for 2018-19 in which just Rs 177 crore has been spent. Lok Nayak Hospital has been allotted Rs 530 crore in this financial year out of which Rs 256 crore has been spent till September. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 12:34 [IST] Dilli Gupshup: Is Delhi CM looking for Z+ security cover so chilly drama enacted? India oi-Vinod Kumar Shukla New Delhi, Nov 23: Security of Delhi chief minister was breached and he was attacked. This is really a matter of concern so he needs a better security cover. Chilly powder attack may help getting him better security cover. There is an embarrassing moment for BJP and one of its general secretaries so he is advised to be careful but senior BJP leaders are already cautious before speaking to any platform of media. The popularity of UP CM is becoming eye in the storm for many so rumor about him being removed becomes a regular feature. So some gupshup from the power corridor... Is Delhi CM looking for Z+ security cover so chilly drama enacted? Chilly powder drama enacted in Delhi in which Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal was attacked had some bigger game plan behind the move, if grapevine is to be believed. Actually the way Kejriwal was humiliated in Haryana where he had gone to visit a dispensary of the state government and was hooted out. So if he is given Z+ security or anything better what he has at the moment would help him to go to such places without any obstacle. It is being said that the person who had allegedly attacked Kejriwal was facilitated entry on the instruction of someone from the party only. So it was planned and done that way. BJP general secretary gets a dressing down for his comment on twitter An important general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party has backtracked his statement against former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister when he dared him to get the Pakistan connection investigated with all intelligence apparatus at his disposal. But it is not that better sense prevailed on him by its own but he got a dressing down not only from the organisation but also from the government. The all powerful generally secretary has embarrassed the party on quite a few occasions. So rumor is abuzz that he has been asked to be careful before making such comments. No need to go overboard! Time to speak with caution even for senior BJP leaders Even senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders are afraid of speaking their mind in public and they are not ready to answer anything before looking at the questions being asked. Young leaders' predicament is understood who still have to go a long way before call it a day but senior leaders who don't have much political career left are shying away difficult questions is really a new thing in the party as they accept it. At least this is what could be guessed from the answers given by two senior leader who have once been institutions in themselves. One of them clearly said ask spokespersons for official comment. Someone rightly said time and tide wait for none. Yogi makes enemy within the party for his popularity With UP CM Yogi Adityanath's demand in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections increasing, he is rumored to be around till Lok Sabha elections by a certain section of the BJP leadership who are very apprehensive especially those who were looking to grab some space after Modi-Shah regime. But the way Modi-Shah double has turned into a trilogy with Yogi in it, many people in the party are vary of their future. Yogi's popularity has transcended beyond Uttar Pradesh as he is able to pull crowd. So it seems a new leader is born in UP and threat to many in the BJP. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 22:35 [IST] Family of erstwhile Nawab of Tonk comes out in support of Sachin Pilot India oi-Vinod Kumar Shukla New Delhi, Nov 23: Rajsthan Pradesh Congress Committee chief Sachin Pilot is contesting from the Tonk Assembly constituency but he will be facing a stiff challenge from rival Bharatiya Janata Party candidate and a very important minister in the Vasundhara Raje government Yunus Khan. Khan has been fielded against Pilot who had actually replaced the earlier announced candidate to take on Pilot from Tonk. Rajasthan BJP suspends 11 senior leaders for rebellion Tonk is a constituency with sizable Muslim population. This has been the reason that several time the constituency was represented by Muslim representatives and the BJP denied sitting BJP candidate to replace him with a Muslim candidate Yunus Khan. But the family of the erstwhile nawab of Tonk has come out in support of Sachin Pilot. Chief of the nawab family Aftab Ali Khan has made an open announced supporting to vote for Sachin Pilot. Though the family of former nawab of Tonk keeps distance from politics but this year they have come out in open to support Pilot. As per a claim there are around 8500 registered members in the family. Chief of the Tonk Royal Family and Anjuman Khandan e Amiria Tok Aftab Ali Khan said that the city does not have basic amenities like education, industry and unemployment galores in the area. "So I feel Pilot could be the best possible candidate to deal with such issues. He understands the city, region and its problem. So he must be supported," he said. This society is the official unit of the nawab family. Ten important Assembly seats in Rajasthan where important leaders fielded against each other Tonk has sizable Muslim, Scheduled Castes and Gujjars votes but interestingly in the last six elections, the BJP has won the seat four times. In 2013, the party won by a margin of over 30,000 votes. Geographically Tonk is close to Pilot's Lok Sabha constituencies - Ajmer and Dausa - from where he won in 2004 and 2009 respectively but lost the last elections to BJP's Sanwar Lal Jat in 2014. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 17:06 [IST] BJP wants Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, says Shah; asks other parties must make stand clear on the issue Goa: Manohar Parrikar wanted to resign, BJP didnt let him, says minister India oi-Madhuri Adnal Panaji, Nov 23: Goa Forward Party chief and Agriculture Minister Vijai Sardesai on Thursday claimed that the ailing Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar wanted to resign, but the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) high command vetoed it. "He wanted to give up the CM's post altogether. He had even shown inclination to give away his portfolios (to other ministers) when he was admitted to a hospital during Ganesh Chaturthi festival," Sardesai said here. Hundreds march to Manohar Parrikar's home demanding his resignation within 48 hours "But then several things happened. BJP high command stepped in....It (to resign or not) is not in his (Parrikar's) hands entirely," Sardesai told reporters. Parrikar, 62, is currently recuperating at his residence in Goa after undergoing a month-long treatment at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi. He returned from the national capital on October 14 and has been at his private residence ever since. He has been in and out of hospitals in Mumbai, Goa and New York since this February. Last month, state Health Minister VIshwajit Rane had admitted that Parrikar was suffering from pancreatic cancer. Recently, another BJP ally, Deepak Dhavaliakar, President of the ruling alliance party Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), had stated that ailing Parrikar should hand over his charge as the administration has been "paralysed" for eight months under his leadership. The BJP had slammed the Congress for demanding Parrikar's resignation, saying that India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was ill too in his last years in office. 'Goa CM Manohar Parrikar's condition is stable' "Our late Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, in the last three years of his tenure, was ill. He was suffering from paralysis and could not function as a Prime Minister ought to. At that time, our leaders, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee, or the Jan Sangh did not take out a morcha to his house and demand his resignation, as we saw in Goa," state BJP President Vinay Tendulkar said at a press conference in Panaji. (with PTI inputs) For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 9:28 [IST] Prime Minister Narendra Modi attends Guruparb Kirtan Darbar at SAD President Sukhbir Singh Badal's residence in Delhi There was a huge rush of devotees since early morning at the 'Harmandar Sahib' in Amritsar, popularly known as the Golden Temple. A security ring was enforced around all leading Sikh shrines in both the states, including Chandigarh, officials said. In Haryana, devotees thronged gurdwaras at various places, including Karnal, Ambala and Yamunanagar while there washugerush of devotees at Sector 34 Gurdwara in Chandigarh. Manmohan Singh at Sukhbir Singh Badal's residence in Delhi Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, was born in 1469 at Nankana Sahib near Lahore, now in Pakistan. Earlier this week, over 3,000 Sikh pilgrims had left for Pakistanto take part in festivities ahead of the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, with the main function being held on the occasion at Gurdwara Janam Asthan in Nankana Sahib. Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and his Haryana counterpart Manohar Lal Khattar had extended greetings to people on the occasion of Gurpurab. Fireworks at the Golden Temple in Amritsar Addressing a gathering at historic town of Sultanpur Lodhi in Kapurthala district, where the first Sikh Guru spentconsiderablepart of his life,Singh launched Friday the year-long celebrations of the 550th 'ParkashPurb' (birth anniversary) of Guru Nanak Dev, calling upon all people to set aside their religious and political differences to join his government in making the commemorative events memorable. Golden Temple decked up for Gurpurab On Thursday, Singh had exhorted the people to embrace the ideology propounded by Guru Nanak Dev in its true spirit. "The message of love, compassion, equality, peace and brotherhood thatguru jipromoted all his life holds extreme relevance even today and the year-long celebrations will help in disseminating the same among the youth, in particular," Amarinder said. "Let us on this day, vow to come together in the spirit of harmony and humility, as preached by the great guru, to create a peaceful and equitable society," he said. Hizbul claims it held Command Council meeting, releases image as proof India oi-Vicky Nanjappa Srinagar, Nov 23: The Hizbul Mujahideen has claimed that it held its Command Council meeting in Srinagar on November 21. A photograph of the outfit's commander Umar alias Abu Hanzalla posing in front of the Ghanta Ghar (Clock Tower) at Srinagar was released. The police however contended that the picture appears to be doctored. A couple of days back the Hizbul Mujahideen had issued a statement in which it said that it would be holding its Command Council meeting at Srinagar on November 21. This year the meeting would be presided over by our senior member from Shopian, the letter written by the outfit's field commander, Muhammad Bin Qasim read. Days after escape, Abu Hanzala's picture surfaces on social media We by the grace of God are challenging India and its stooges to stop us. The command council will hold deliberations on various issues and future course of action. Some minutes of the meeting will be made public after the completion of the meeting, the statement further read. Abu Hanzalla, one of the most wanted terrorists in the Valley is accused of killing seven persons including five policemen at Kulgam. Srinagar attack: Hanzala is safe, has reached destination says Hizbul Another statement said that the Hizbul Mujahideen had conducted the meeting at Lal Chowk. A picture has been released as proof in which Hanzalla is seen posing near the Ghanta Ghar, Lal Chowk in Srinagar. India accuses Pakistan of inciting secessionist tendencies during ongoing visit of pilgrims India oi-Vinod Kumar Shukla New Delhi, Nov 23: On one hand people are rejoicing about decision taken that a corridor will be built for Sikh pilgrims to pay their obeisance to their most sacred places in world that are in Pakistan on the other Pakistan is continuing with its vicious moves by not allowing officials of Indian consulate to meet Sikh pilgrims in the country. Pakistan attempts to make hostile propoganda during the visit of Indian Sikh pilgrims to Pakistan. India has lodged a strong protest with the government of Pakistan that despite having been granted prior travel permission by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan, the consular officials of the High Commission of India in Islamabad were harassed and denied access on November 21 and November 22, 2018 at Gurudwara Nankana Sahib and Gurudwara Sacha Sauda to the Indian pilgrims visiting Pakistan under the bilateral protocol. Pak to open Kartarpur Corridor for Pilgrims, Imran Khan to break ground Due to such harassment they were forced to return to Islamabad without performing their diplomatic and consular duties vis-a-vis Indian pilgrims. "We have shared our grave concern that this is the third consecutive visit of the Indian Sikh pilgrims when Pakistan has prevented the Indian High Commission officials from meeting the visiting Indian nationals on the pretext of security in order to deflect attention from Pakistan's violation of the international legal instruments and conventions like the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961 and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963," said spokesperson of ministry of external affairs. He said that this is also in breach of the letter and spirit of the 1974 bilateral protocol on visit to religious shrines and the code of conduct for the treatment of diplomatic/consular personnel in India and Pakistan, 1992. Pakistan has been reminded that this is in contrast to the treatment met out to their High Commissioner and the Consular officials in New Delhi who have been provided full access to meet Pakistani pilgrims who are currently in India on pilgrimage to Kalyar Sharif. "We have also expressed grave concern at the reports of attempts being made during the ongoing visit of the Indian pilgrims to Pakistan, to incite communal disharmony and intolerance and promote secessionist tendencies with the objective of undermining India's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Pakistan has been called upon to take all measures to not allow its territory to be used for any hostile propaganda and support for secessionist tendencies against India in keeping with the commitments made under the Simla Agreement, 1972 and endorsed in the Lahore Declaration, 1999," said the spokesperson. "Pakistan has been remined that such actions are not in consonance with the stated intentions of Pakistan to facilitate the visits of Indian Sikh pilgrims, espeially as we commemorate the 550th Birth Anniversary of Guru Nanak Devji," he said. Strategic experts said that this will not help better relation between both the country rather further deteriorte it but nothing better can be expected from Pakistan which is a well defined rogue state. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 12:00 [IST] US designates Pakistan, China as countries of particular concern for religious freedom violation Pakistan to allow India to send wheat to Afghanistan through its territory: PM Imran Khan India strongly condemns attack on Chinese Consulate in Karachi India oi-Chennabasaveshwar P New Delhi, Nov 23: India strongly condemned the terror attack on Chinese Consulate in Karachi on Friday. Two policeman and three terrorists were killed after gunshots, possible explosion were reported from high security Clifton area in Karachi. Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said, "India strongly condemns terrorist attack on Chinese Consulate in Karachi. We condole loss of lives in this dastardly attack. There can be no justification whatsoever for any act of terrorism. The perpetrators of this heinous attack should be brought to justice expeditiously." Pakistan: Three terrorists killed in firing near Chinese Consulate in Karachi's Clifton area "Such terrorist attacks only strengthens the resolve of the international community to combat terrorism in all its forms and manifestations." Heavy contingents of police and paramilitary forces have been deployed in the Clifton area in Karach after an exchange of fire between a security guard and unknown assailants. The area, considered a red zone, is heavily guarded. Nearby schools and eateries have been locked down until the area is cleared. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 12:58 [IST] US designates Pakistan, China as countries of particular concern for religious freedom violation Pakistan gives Kulbhushan Jadhav right to appeal against death sentence Pakistan to allow India to send wheat to Afghanistan through its territory: PM Imran Khan BSF lodges protest with Pakistan over IB violation by drones in Jammu India strongly protests with Pakistan for denial of access to Gurudwara Nankana Sahib India oi-Chennabasaveshwar P New Delhi, Nov 23: India lodged strong protest with Pakistan government for harassing and denying access to Indian diplomats at Gurudwara Nankana Sahib on November 21 and 22. A day after India approved for Kartarpur Corridor, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) stated that as a result of such harassment Consular officials were compelled to return to Islamabad without performing their diplomatic and consular duties vis-a-vis Indian pilgrims. "We've also expressed grave concern at reports of attempts being made during the ongoing visit of Indian pilgrims to Pakistan, to incite communal disharmony&intolerance & promote secessionist tendencies with objective of undermining India's sovereignty and territorial integrity, " stated MEA. Indian officials barred from entering Gurdwaras in Pakistan again The officials -- Aranjeet Singh and Sunil Kumar -- were barred from entering the Gurdwara Nankana Sahib on Wednesday night and Gurdwara Sachcha Sauda on Thursday. Both the gurdwaras are in Punjab province of Pakistan. More details awaited. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 11:54 [IST] The inside rot: How govt employees are abetting terror in Jammu and Kashmir Appeasement vs national security: Forests of South India are breeding grounds for terrorists, naxalites Cleaning up the inside rot: The importance of gunning down Kashmirs white collared terrorists J&K: Six terrorists killed in Anantnag encounter India oi-Madhuri Adnal Srinagar, Nov 23: Six terrorists were killed in an encounter between security forces & terrorists in Sekipora area of Bijbehara in Anantnag district, Jammu and Kashmir on Friday. The terrorists have been identified as Azad Malik, Unais Shafi, Shahid Bashir, Basit Ishtiyaq, Aqib Najar and Firdous Najar. Terrorist Azad Malik was wanted in Journalist Shujaat Bukhari's murder too. J&K: 4 terrorists killed, para commando martyred in Shopian encounter The team began a cordon and search operation on the basis of a tip about the presence of terrorists in the area. Businessman in Kolkata shot at after his car was stopped by 18 men Kolkata gets its first Muslim mayor post-Independence in minister Firhad Hakim India oi-Shubham Ghosh Kolkata, Nov 23: Minister in West Bengal government Firhad Hakim has been named as the new mayor of Kolkata after the sudden ouster of Sovan Chatterjee who also quit as a minister from the government. Hakim is currently the minister for municipal and urban development affairs. It was said that Hakim's experience in matters related to the municipal affairs helped him to emerge as a frontrunner for the top civic post. Chatterjee resigned as the minister on Tuesday, November 20, following which he was also asked to step down from the post of the mayor by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Chatterjee is having a torrid time on his home front which the party - Trinamool Congress - was seeing as a threat to its own image. Kolkata: 72-year-old man sentenced to imprisonment for molesting minor Hakim was named for the plum post after a bill was passed in the state Assembly on Thursday that would enable a non-corporator to be appointed as a mayor of the corporation - a post which was once held by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. Hakim, known to be a Mamata loyalist, has to get elected as the corporator within six months. Hakim also became first Muslim mayor of the centuries-old metropolitan after Independence. There were also speculations that his name was floated ahead of the Lok Sabha election to appease minority feelings. Ban on motorcycle sale to those without driving licence: HC orders partial stay Atin Ghosh, a corporator from North Kolkata, was named as the deputy mayor. Elections to the civic body are due in 2020. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 6:40 [IST] Sabarimala temple in Kerala to open for monthly rituals from July 16; Conditions apply for devotees How to Book Sabarimala Virtual Q Tickets Online 2021? Know Date, Price and Other Details What is Sabarimala Thantri's view over use of halal jaggery to prepare prasadam: plea in Kerala HC 'No police provocation in Sabarimala violence, ' clarifies Kerala govt affidavit India oi-Chennabasaveshwar P Trivandrum, Nov 23: Kerala Government on Friday filed an affidavit in the High Court in connection with the incidents of violence outside Sabarimala Temple. The affidavit stated 'There was no police provocation in Sabarimala. Only criminals who created issues in Sabarimala were arrested'. Sabarimala row: Prohibitory orders extended by four days The state government also made it clear in the court that only due to lack of facilities the base camp has been shifted to Nilakkal and it has no connection with the Supreme Court verdict. The Kerala High Court took suo motu cognisance of the violence that broke out at the Sabarimala temple earlier in November against the entry of women to the shrine. The high court had also directed the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), which manages the Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala, to give an explanation on the violent incidents there after the shrine was opened for a special puja. VHP threatens nation-wide protest on Sabarimala if state govt continues right violations The temple was opened on November 5 for rituals for the second time since the Supreme Court, in September, passed an order overturning the ban on entry of women between the ages of 10 and 50. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 14:28 [IST] 80 feet Buddha statue planned in Gujarat: Sanghakaya Foundation, a non-profit Buddhist organisation, said on Thursday that it has demanded land from the government for installing an 80-feet high statue of Lord Buddha in Gandhinagar district. It has roped in Ram Sutar, the sculptor behind the Statue of Unity, for the project, it said. About Statue of Unity: 597 feet The Statue of Unity which is at a height of 597 feet, inaugurated in Narmada district of the state on October 31, is the tallest statue in the world. The imposing monument is twice the height of the Statue of Liberty in the US and is built on an islet, Sadhu Bet, around 3.5 km downstream from the Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat's Narmada district. Andhra Pradesh assembly higher than Statue of Unity: 820 feet Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has proposed the Andhra Pradesh Assembly in Amaravati to be 68 metres taller than the 182-metre high Statue of Unity that was built as a sign of respect towards the 'Iron Man of India' Sardar Vallabhai Patel. Naidu has reportedly finalised the design of the proposed structure and the blueprint will soon be submitted to the state by Britain-based architects Norma Fosters, according to the Times of India. Chhatrapati Shivaji statue in Maharashtra: 695 feet The Maharashtra government has claimed that the statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji, the Maratha ruler will have a height of 212 metres, surpassing the height of the Sardar Patel statue in Gujarat. The state Government has said that the statue of Shivaji to be built at a cost of Rs 3800 crores would be ready by 2021, as per a report in inkhabar. The Chhatrapati Shivaji statue would be called Shiv Smarak or Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Memorial once built. World's tallest Shiva Murti in Rajasthan: 351 feet The construction of the massive Shiva Murti, to be built at a height if 351 feet, will be completed by 2019 at Nathdwara in Rajasthan. As per reports, nearly 85% of the work on the huge statue has been completed so far, and the statue is likely to be inaugurated by March 2019. Upar Wala Sab Dekh Raha Hai: An image released by commercial satellite services company Planet shows that India's edifice to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel can be seen from space and though it doesn't mention from how high up, it's probably safe to assume it's from a low-Earth orbit. Only Brahmins understand meaning of Hinduism, says Congress leader C P Joshi India oi-Madhuri Adnal New Delhi, Nov 23: Days after a video surfaced showing Kamal Nath saying that Congress would be doomed if Muslims do not vote en-masse for the party, another Senior Congress leader CP Joshi has triggered a fresh controversy saying that only Brahmins understand the meaning of religion in India. His controversial remarks have been caught on a camera. The Congress veteran made these remarks while addressing a gathering in Sema village in Khamnor on Thursday. Congress embarrassed and speechless after Kamal Nath's video on Muslims goes viral The video shows, Joshi saying as ''They say a Congressi can't be a Hindu, who gave them the authority to issue certificates? Have they opened a university? If anyone knows about religion then its pandits/brahmins.'' ''Uma Bharti is a Lodhi, and she talks about Hinduism, Modi ji talks about Hinduism. Its only Brahmins who don't talk about it. The country is being misled. Religion and governance are two different things. Everyone has the right to practice their religion,'' he further said. Madhya Pradesh elections: BJP seeks action against Kamal Nath for his "communal" appeal Earlier, Joshi had claimed that if there was anyone who could fulfil the promise of Ram Temple, it was a Congress Prime Minister. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 8:57 [IST] Pakistan's radio channel warfare: A nefarious design to fuel anti-India sentiments in border areas India oi-Vikas SV New Delhi, Nov 23: Pakistan knows it very well that it cannot defeat India in a conventional war, so it resorts to unscrupulous tactics to inflict damage on India. Be it sending terrorists across LoC or supporting the insurgency in sensitive areas, Pakistan to hell-bent to bleed India with a thousand cuts. What has now come to fore is that Pakistan has set up at least 15 round-the-clock FM stations along to border to fuel anti-India sentiments. According to research conducted by Rajesh Bhat, who is currently working in the Policy Division of the Directorate of All India Radio, these stations devote a good chunk of time to religious broadcasts. These broadcasts can be clearly heard in Poonch, Rajouri, Nowshera, RS Pura and Jammu city, besides the border areas of Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Ferozpur and Fazilka in Punjab. Some of the broadcasts spew venom against India and make attempt to rouse an anti-India sentiment in some communities, a report in Defencenews.in said. [Why has Pakistan developed tactical nuclear weapons? Major Gen PK Sehgal explains] The report also mentioned how Radio Pakistan and 'Azad Kashmir Radio' acted as a bridge between the infiltrators and their masters and helped establish communication channels for them. All this is part of psychological warfare which appears to be the latest tool being used by Pakistani agencies to fuel tension in India. Not only along India's Western border, the Pakistani agencies are active even in Bangladesh where they support some radical groups. Bangladesh is aware of ISI's nefarious designs. Dhaka fears that the ISI will use the Rohingya refugees to prop up the Jammat-e-Islami, Bangladesh and other associated political groups to foment trouble. Bangladesh Government believes that the Pakistan High Commission in Dhaka has emerged as a centre of anti-government activities as well as activities against India too. In Nepal, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is establishing itself and is plotting to launch attacks on Indian soil. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 5:10 [IST] Rajasthan cabinet reshuffle: BJP hits out at Congress over absence of women in new team Rajasthan BJP suspends 11 senior leaders for rebellion India oi-Chennabasaveshwar P Jaipur, Nov 23: In a bold political move ahead of assembly elections, the Rajasthan BJP has suspended 11 senior leaders, including four ministers in Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje's cabinet, for refusing to withdraw their nominations in favour of alternative candidates picked by the party. A press release issued by the party on Thursday stated that the 11 rebels have been dropped from the party's primary membership for six years. Only Brahmins understand meaning of Hinduism, says Congress leader C P Joshi They were identified as Surendra Goyal, Lakshminarayan Dave, Radheshyam Ganganagar, Hemsingh Bhadana, Rajkumar Rinava, Rameshwar Bhati, Kuldeep Dhankad, Deendayal Kumavat, Kishanram Nai, Dhansingh Rawat and Anita Katara. 11 rebel leaders of Rajasthan BJP have been expelled from the primary membership of the party for 6 years for contesting against the official party candidates in the upcoming #RajasthanAssemblyElection2018. pic.twitter.com/e4SWHAmkkd ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2018 Many rebels from the party filed their nominations for the December 7 polls, a number of MLAs resigned from the party after being dropped. The Vasundhara Raje-led BJP is seen to be facing a massive anti-incumbency sentiment in Rajasthan this time round, and dissent in the camp is unlikely to help its case. BJP and Congress field SC/ST candidates on general seats to win over community votes Voting for all 200 seats in Rajasthan assembly is set to take place on December 7. The counting of the votes will be done on December 11. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 10:53 [IST] Telangana suffered under TRS rule, KCR cared only for family: Sonia Gandhi India oi-Vikas SV Hyderabad, Nov 23: In a blistering attack on the TRS, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Friday said K Chandrashekar Rao-led government in Telangana had neglected dalits, adivasis, minorities, backward classes, women and students. She said KCR only cared about himself and his family. Sonia Gandhi, on her maiden visit to Telangana after the formation of the state in June 2014, recalled the problems the Congress party faced due to its decision to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh. She also seemed to take credit fot hte creation of Telangana. Now, KCR has also been doing the same, he has claimed in the past that it was due to agitation by him that the then UPA government at the Centre agreed for the creation of Telangana. [Times Now-CNX Pre-Poll Survey: TRS set to form govt in Telangana, Mahakootami to emerge second] "Chief Minister Rao has cared only for himself and his own people leaving the child (Telangana) to suffer. Dalits, adivasis, minorities, backward classes, women and students were all neglected. The chief minister should tell us what promises he made to them and he kept," she said, while addressing a public meeting at Medchal on the outskirts of Hyderabad. "While passing the bifurcation bill in Parliament, we had promised to take care of all the interests of Andhra Pradesh, including granting of special category status. We are still committed to this promise and once the Congress comes back to power at the Centre, we shall grant special category status to Andhra Pradesh," she asserted. Farmer suicides were taking place and agriculturists were still facing water scarcity, the UPA chairperson said. Congress chief Rahul Gandhi attacked Chandrashekar Rao, saying "only one man ran Telangana for the last five years. He did whatever came to his mind for his family". "I am asking what did the TRS government do for Dalits, tribals, backward classes...what promises were fulfilled?" he said and predicted that the TRS rule was all set to end. He said the Congress had joined hands with other like-minded opposition parties to form an alliance to fulfill the dreams of all sections of people including farmers, students, youth and women. "We must end the dictatorship and single family rule in the state," he asserted. Leaders of parties in the Congress-led grand alliance - M Kodandaram of Telangana Jana Samithi, Telugu Desam Party's Telangana president L Ramana, Communist Party of India state secretary Chada Venkat Reddy - as well as state Congress chief N Uttam Kumar Reddy, also addressed the rally. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Saturday, November 24, 2018, 0:51 [IST] Ten important Assembly seats in Rajasthan where important leaders fielded against each other India oi-Vinod Kumar Shukla New Delhi, Nov 23: Canvasing for Assembly elections in Rajasthan is in full swing but there are at least 10 seats in the state that have caught eyeballs of not only people of the state but also people of the country. These seats have become all the more important to be discussed as they have broken the tradition of giving walkover to senior leaders by fielding small time leaders against them. Out of these 10 seats, six are considered to be hot seats. Actually focus of people is more on Jhalnapatan seat represented by chief minister Vasundhara Raje where she is challenged by Manvendra Singh, son of former Union minister Jaswant Singh. He is fielded by the Congress. This is for the first time big leaders are pitted against each other. On Sanganer seat, once a big leader of the BJP and the worst critique of the CM is contesting as Bharat Vahini Party candidate of his own against BJP's mayor Ashok Lohati and Congress's Pushpendra Bharadwaj. The seat with triangular contest makes it interesting. BJP and Congress field SC/ST candidates on general seats to win over community votes Congress general secretary and former CM Ashok Gehlot is contesting from Sardarpura seat and BJP failed to win this seat from past two decades. The BJP has once again fielded Sambhu Singh Khetasar who had won this election in 1998 but this contest is not as interesting as others. This is the seat where Gehlot has a clear edge. Rajasthan home minister Gulab Chandra Katariya is contesting against senior Congress leader Girija Vyas. Both of them had been president of their respective parties making the contest really interesting. Dalpat Surana is trying to make the contest triangular. Senior Congress leader C P Joshi missed the chance of becoming the CM when he has lost election by just one vote who is contesting from his traditional Nathdwara seat against Mahesh Pratap Singh. The BJP is targeting Rajput votes and Mahendra Singh switched side from the Congress to the BJP. Tonk is another seat where Congress president Sachin Pilot is against minister in the Vasundhara Raje government Yusuf Khan. With sizable number of Muslim population on this seat, the contest becomes very interesting. Modi, Yogi in maximum demand from BJP while Rahul from Congress; Sonia may address 4 rallies Mahuva seat is also interesting with Rajendra Meena contesting on an unreserved seat with fiercest rival of Meena Om Prakash Hudla too contesting as independent candidate. Congress has Ajay Bohra on this seat. On Anta seat, contest is between Prabhulal Saini and Pramod Jain both are senior leaders of their respective parties. Sapotra is the constituency where the election is the most interesting with Golma Devi wife of Kirori Lal Meena and deputy leader of opposition in Rajasthan Assembly Rajesh Meena in the fray. Deeng-Kumbher seat of Bharatpur district too have senior leader and sitting Congress MLA Bishweshwar Singh once again in the field and his arch rival late Digamber Singh's son Shailesh Singh is the BJP candidate against him who is contesting his first election. So sympathy may work for Shailesh. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 10:40 [IST] Where is Peng Shuai? Missing Chinese tennis star safe, will appear in public soon: editor of Global Times Alibaba supermarket under fire after staff seen replacing food item production date labels International oi-Shubham Ghosh Shanghai, Nov 23: The general manager of Hema Fresh Shanghai was terminated on Wednesday, November 21, after an employee of the Alibaba Group food retailer was seen replacing production date labels on food items with current ones to show that they are fresh, Shanghai TV reported. The CEO of the outlet, Hou Chi, later tendered an apology and said all outlets of the food retailer were inspected to improve its operations. His apology was posted in an open letter on Weibo, China's microblogging website. He also said sternest of punishments will be given for any sort of violations against the customers. He also said Hema Fresh will recruit customers as its service inspectors in the wake of incident, the report added. Jack Ma's successor chosen; Daniel Zhang to lead Alibaba The food retailer faced the risk of being punished over suspected consumer fraud, an official with Jing'an District market watchdog said. "The punishment will be imposed for suspiciously providing commodities with fraudulent means which infringe consumers' rights based on the Shanghai consumer rights protection regulations," Shanghai TV quoted Wang Zheng, deputy director of the Jing'an District Market Supervision and Management Bureau, as saying on Wednesday. The incident made the headlines after a shopper, surnamed Fang, told Shanghai TV that he saw an employee at the Daning store tearing off labels off carrots showing production dates of November 9, 10 and 11 with ones showing November 15, the current date. China: Woman postpones surgery because she did not want to miss Singles Day shopping carnival Fang immediately brought the matter to the notice of the outlet authorities. It was even reported that the man was offered a bribe of 1,000 yuan to withdraw his complaint which he refused and he approached the Jing'an bureau immediately after. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 9:54 [IST] Talks with China will not help says USA NSA on situation on Ladakh Childhood cancer survivors reunite at same hospital after years and get married International oi-Shubham Ghosh Memphis, Nov 23: It will take some real effort to beat this story while looking for the best Thanksgiving tale this year. Lindsey Wilkerson and Joel Alsup are both cancer survivors as children at a hospital here and then decades later, they reunited as employees of the same hospital and eventually accepted each other as the life partner. According to TODAY, the couple recently tied the knot at the very St Jude Children's Research Hospital which had once saved their lives and where they are employees now. TODAY carried the story as part of its "Thanks and Giving" series. World COPD Day 2018: All you need to know about Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Alsup was a sports-loving boy from Tennessee who had once started having a problem using his right hand. There was a tumour and after consulting many doctors, his family took him to St Jude for treatment. In rural Missouri located far away, Wilkerson was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia but St Jude came to the rescue of that family as well, even telling the family that they never charge the family for treatment, housing and fooding. Both the kids received intense treatment at the facility. Alsup's right arm was amputated to save his life while Wilkerson had nearly three years of chemotherapy. In between, they developed a friendship with each other. However, they left the hospital after the treatment and took their respective paths and didn't have an iota of idea of what destiny had in store for them. Wilkerson moved to Memphis after taking a job at St Jude's fundraising and awareness organisation to pay back the favour she received from the life-saving institution. Alsup also landed up at the hospital, at its video production unit. The two saw their old friendship thriving again and soon it became something deeper and special. US: Mother runs through 51 national parks to honour daughter who died of cancer They got married, giving the perfect finishing touch to their fairy tale. They are now part of St Jude Life Program that tracks childhood cancer survivors. They also are raising Wilkerson's two kids from a previous marriage. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 10:34 [IST] Where is Peng Shuai? Missing Chinese tennis star safe, will appear in public soon: editor of Global Times China plans to build its first undersea tunnel for high-speed train International oi-Shubham Ghosh Beijing, Nov 23: China never falls short of ideas to startle the world. After planning a new moon and also setting up an 'artificial sun' which is many times hotter than the actual one, it has now revealed its plan to build its first undersea tunnel for high-speed rail connecting two cities in the eastern province of Zhejiang, Xinhua cited local authorities as saying. The railway project, connecting the city of Ningbo with Zhoushan, the island city located in east Zhejiang, is almost 71 kilometre long with the undersea section extending over 16 km, as per the construction plan, the report added. China completes world's longest bullet train tracks Trains on this route are designed to run at a speed of 250 km per hour, reducing the trip between the two cities from one-and-half hours to below half an hour, Xinhua added. The high-speed railway in China has reached a distance of 25,000 kilometres which accounts to over 60 per cent of the world's total. Zhejiang was among the earliest provinces of China to build high-speed railway. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 10:15 [IST] Kabul: The ISIS-ISI bonhomie was spoken about in this 2019 IB report Indian officials barred from entering Gurdwaras in Pakistan again International oi-Madhuri Adnal Lahore, Nov 23: Two officials of the Indian High Commission in Pakistan were stopped from entering two gurdwaras by their administration, which was upset over the screening of a film in India that they claim has hurt sentiments of the Sikh community. The officials -- Aranjeet Singh and Sunil Kumar -- were barred from entering the Gurdwara Nankana Sahib on Wednesday night and Gurdwara Sachcha Sauda on Thursday. Both the gurdwaras are in Punjab province of Pakistan. They were stopped from entering the gurdwaras by their administration, which said that the Indian government has hurt the sentiments of Sikhs by allowing the screening of the film 'Nanak Shah Fakir'. Cabinet approves Kartarpur Sahib Corridor, to ask Pakistan to cooperate The Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) said that the Pakistan Gurdwara Pharbhndik Committee (PGPC) officials have stopped the Indian officials. The visiting officials were heard saying in a video that "No Sikh was stopped from entering the house of the Guru. We are wondering as why you are stopping us." The PGPC officials however kept saying that they should better leave the premises. "We had written to the Indian High Commission asking it not to send its officials to any of the gurdwara since the release of the film," ETPB Secretary Tariq Wazir told PTI. He said the Indian officials ignored their advice. The officials reported to have visited the Sachcha Sauda gurdwara to exchange greetings with the visiting Indian Sikhs, who are here to take part in festivities related to the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. Also Read | India gives nod to Kartarpur Sahib Corridor construction: What's it about? "We request the officials of the Indian High Commission not to visit any gurdwara without permission of the board as we have to security measures for them," Wazir said. No info on Pak's Kartarpur invite, Manmohan Singh unlikely to go, says Congress sources Pakistan gives nod to Kartarpur Sahib Corridor, agrees to open border next year International oi-Vikas SV Islamabad, Nov 23: The Pakistan government on Friday agreed to open its border to facilitate the visit of pilgrims to Kartarpur Sahib, a Sikh place of worship where Guru Nanak spent his last 18 years. This comes a day after India announced that it will start construction of the Kartarpur corridor up to the international border. Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur is 120 km from Lahore. It is built on the historic site where Guru Nanak settled and assembled a Sikh community after his travels. The present gurdwara is built on the site where Guru Nanak died, on 22 September 1539. "Pakistan has decided to open Kartarpur Corridor for the 550th Birth Anniversary of Baba Guru Nanak in 2019. Pakistan PM will inaugurate the groundbreaking ceremony of the facilities at the crossing on the Pakistan side, on 28 November 2018," ANI quoted a Pakistan government's statement as saying. The Union Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Thursday approved the development of the Kartarpur corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Punjab's Gurdaspur district to the International Border. [Cabinet approves Kartarpur Sahib Corridor, to ask Pakistan to cooperate] The government had also urged Pakistan to recognise the sentiments of the Sikh community and develop a corridor with suitable facilities in its territory as well. India has announced that President Ram Nath Kovind and Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh will lay the foundation stone for the proposed corridor two days earlier, on November 26. Why is Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur significant: The shrine is located on the bank of River Ravi and is around 120 kilometres northeast of Lahore. Guru Nanak had lived here for 18 years till his death in 1539. The shrine is visible from the Indian side and a number of Indian Sikhs gather to get a view of the pilgrimage site. Binoculars are also installed at Gurudwara Dera Baba Nanak for viewing the sacred place. [India gives nod to Kartarpur Sahib Corridor construction: What's it about?] The Gurudwara was opened for pilgrims' sighting after it was repaired and restored in 1999. One of the positive outcomes of former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's bus diplomacy with Pakistan the same year was this. Demand for the corridor: The demand for the corridor to facilitate the pilgrims' arrival to the shrine has been a long one. The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee and political leaders have been demanding the pathway bordered by barbed wire to allow the pilgrims to enter Pakistan and visit the shrine and return the same day. For the purpose, a bridge has to be constructed over the river. Last year, a parliamentary standing committee visited Dera Baba Nanak. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 21:52 [IST] Did you know why China shuts Tibet for foreigners? Hint: its not about media freedom Only those who say Bharat Mata Ki Jai can live in India Religious freedom in China, India under attack because of aggressive ultranationalism: Report International oi-Shubham Ghosh Beijing, Nov 23: Religious freedom is coming under increasing threat in one of every five nations in the world with two of the biggest economies China and India featuring in the list and the partial reason of this phenomenon is the rise in "aggressive ultranationalism", a Catholic NGO has said in a report on Thursday, November 22, AFP reported. The body, Aid to the Church in Need, has spotted incidents of religious persecution in as many as 21 countries in two years till June 2018 and China and India are among them. Karachi attack: China asks Pakistan to take 'practical measures' On the other hand, acts of discrimination were reported from 17 other nations and they include Russia, Turkey and Algeria. The report was the 14th edition of the group which covered all regions in 196 countries and the report is carried every two years with the help of independent journalists. "We've observed a trivialisation of attacks on religious freedom," Marc Fromager, head of the NGO's French chapter, was quoted as saying at a press conference in Paris. Fromager said of the 38 countries where freedom is imperilled, the situation has worsened in 18 and they include the two most populous nations - China and India. "This hostility toward minorities has worsened to the point that we can qualify this as aggressive ultranationalism," he was quoted as saying. Attack outside Chinese consulate: Pak-China relations can never be undermined, says PM Khan Talking about China, Fromager said while churches have been destroyed and the Uyghur Muslims have been barred from observing Ramadan - their holy month - Tibetan Buddhists continue to face the wrath. In India, too, attacks on religious minorities have become a routine affair and that even includes attacking them over rumours of consumption of beef. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, November 23, 2018, 17:13 [IST] Delhi: 28-yr-old man arrested for killing tea vendor New Delhi oi-Vikas SV New Delhi, Nov 23: Delhi Police on Friday said that a 28-year-old tailor was arrested for allegedly killing a tea vendor in the national capital's Karol Bagh area. On October 26, the body of a 55-year-old man was found lying in a pool of blood, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (central) Amit Sharma said. The deceased was identified as Ranjan Biswas, a tea vendor. CCTV footage of the area was analysed and the accused was identified as Bishu Saha, a native of Kolkata, Sharma said. Police traced the accused and arrested him from Bidhan Nagar in Kolkata, he said. During interrogation, he said he worked as a tailor and knew Biswas since they lived in the same locality at Karol Bagh, Sharma said. Saha revealed that he had grudges against Biswas as he used to interfere in his family matters a lot, the officer added. OneIndia News with PTI inputs 2008-2021 One News Page Ltd. All rights reserved. One News is a registered trademark of One News Page Ltd. High Hotel Rates 'Not an Issue' in The Riviera Nayarit Toronto, Canada - If you're waiting for Riviera Nayarit's tourism scene to explode the way Cancun and Riviera Maya's did, you'll be waiting a long time. According to Richard Zarkin, Public Relations Manager for the Riviera Nayarit Convention Visitors Bureau, the 307-kilometer "tourism corridor," now in its 12th year as an official destination, isn't looking to reach the same arrival numbers as their counterparts in Mexico. Instead, the region, which is bordered by the states of Sinaloa and Jalisco, is going niche, with luxury clientele in mind. Due to the region's topography, hotel development must be kept to a minimum, which Zarkin tells Travelweek suits the destination just fine. "Right now, we have about 15,500 rooms, and in 10 years we probably won't have more than 20,000," he says. "We're not like the Caribbean where you have a lot of rooms at low rates. We don't do that we have a good product, with a lot of repeat clients." Instead of dropping prices to the bare minimum like other Sun destinations, Riviera Nayarit's hotels are swinging the other way, by actually increasing hotel rates by as much as 30%. The trend started two years ago in Compostela and San Blas as a way to spread economic wealth among locals. "We don't want 100% occupancy, we're happy with 85% at higher hotel rates," he adds. "With a lower density of rooms, yes, occupancy levels go down but this isn't a bad thing. We noticed that occupancy for three- and four-star hotels went down, but at five-stars they actually went up. It's been a good way for us to target the luxury market." High-end hotel names like Four Seasons, Auberge, Secrets and W have either already opened or will open in the next couple years, lending their names to a region growing in the ranks among luxury clients. At Four Seasons Punta Mita Resort, which ushered in the luxury era with its opening in 1999, a standard room during the high season can go upwards of US$1,200 per night. "Elevating rates has not been a big issue. With hotels constantly reinvesting in their properties, clients are still paying and booking and getting the ultimate luxury experience," says Zarkin. In 2017, Riviera Nayarit welcomed 2.7 million tourists, and 2018 is on track to record a 3% increase by year's end. Canada is among its strongest markets, with 21% of market share, compared to the United States' 22% and Mexico's 52%. From January to September 2018, Zarkin says numbers from Air Canada, WestJet and Transat were all up due to an increase in capacity. "Airlift from Canada is good, we've got great hotels and beaches," he adds, citing 10 certified beaches and three blue flag recognitions in the region. "Plus, we're always working towards sustainable practices, which a lot of luxury travellers want nowadays." Next year, the Riviera Nayarit plans to eliminate the use of plastic straws, plastic bags and Styrofoam. Some hotels in the Banderas Bay region are already using bio-degradable straws made of avocado seeds. And what does Zarkin want travel agents to keep in mind going into the busy winter 2018-2019 season? For one thing, Riviera Nayarit was largely spared from Hurricane Willa, which hit Mexico's Pacific coast last month. "The northern region was badly hit, but none of the tourist areas was damaged," he says. Also, agents are reminded to check Riviera Nayarit's official website at rivieranayarit.com to sign up for webinars and newsletters in order to stay on top of the latest news and learn more about the destination. As Zarkin says, Riviera Nayarit, with its 23 unique coastal developments, is like an ice cream store. "You have to come and try all the flavors." Xem them ... Tin bai cuoi cung Khong con du lieu e load AN agreement by Papua New Guinea, China and Thailand was signed in Port Moresby yesterday to develop an integrated agriculture business worth K3.4 billion in the Abau district of Central.The project called Cocoland Sugar Development Ltd (CSDL) is a joint venture by the three countries and is expected to create 64,000 jobs for Papua New Guineans and bring in a total of K3.4 billion in export revenue every year after completion, a company spokesman said.CSDL executive director Chalee Wanchai said that the project comprised four elements sugarcane plantations of 156,000 hectares, sugar mill processing 3.6 million tonnes every year, infrastructures like ports, wharves and roads built and a power plant to produce clean and cheap electricity using by-products from the sugar mill.The sugar farm has already started and we are looking at investing US$500 million (K1.7bil) for phase 1, US$250 million (K842mil) each for phase 2 and 3, so its a US$1 billion (K3.4bil) project to be implemented over 10 years.Wanchai is also the executive director for Thailand-based sugar milling firm Mitr Kasetr Industry Company Limited (MKICL), a major partner in this project. Wanchai said for each phase, 52,000 hectares of sugar cane will be planted every three years starting this year until 2028 when a total of 156,000 hectares will have been planted.The sugar mill is the same, its 20,000 tonnes per day processing plant for each phase and after 10 years, it will be 60,000 tonnes per day.On the employment, we are looking at creating 65,000 direct employments and in terms of revenue, we are looking at generating around US$300 million (K1bil) from the first phase, another US$300 million (K1bil) when phase two comes in and another US$350 to US$400 million (K1.2bil-K1.35bil) from phase 3.So its around US$1 billion (K3.4bil injected annually into PNG economy and circulated every year which will add to PNGs GDP, Wanchai said. Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia: US investment house Cooper Creek Partners has launched its long-running North America Long Short Equity fund on MontLake's Ucits platform. The employee owned hedge fund manager said that with assets in excess of USD110 million at launch, North America Long Short Equity Ucits fund will be one of the largest Alternative UCITS Fund launches year-to-date. The MontLake UCITS Platform is the flagship fund structuring offering of ML Capital. It has been designed to provide investors with direct access to traditional and alternative investment fund expertise through a regulated and transpare...................... To view our full article Click here B.G., Opalesque Geneva: The Merchant Commodity Fund, a commodity hedge fund run by Doug King, was up 16% in October according to figures seen by the Financial Times. According to the paper, the $147m fund made its returns last month through three main trades: betting against the oil price, trading the spread between diesel and gasoline, and taking bullish positions on stronger US natural gas prices. That left it up 15% YTD. The fund has had ups and downs since its launch in 2004 by King and Mike Coleman. In early 2013, the managers cut a third of the staff after two consecutive years of losses during which assets under management slumped almost 90%. The fund gained almost 60% in 2014 when crude went from above $100 to below $50. It then lost money in 2015 when commodities slumped. This piece of news comes as Brent crude oil prices tumbled down. After reaching a high of more than $86 a barrel in early October, Brent crude fell as low as $59.26 a barrel on Friday, a level last seen in October 2017, ...................... To view our full article Click here Load Balancer Market to 2023 - F5 Networks, Citrix, A10 Networks, Radware, Brocade, Kemp Technologies, Riverbed Technology, Sangfor, Fortinet, Barracuda, Array Networks, Hangzhou DPtech Technologies Co., Ltd. https://bit.ly/2qYe0OI https://bit.ly/2Tydx2Z This research report is equipped with the information categorising Global Load Balancer Market by parameters such as players, brands, regions, types and application. The report also details the information about the global market status, competition landscape, growth rate, future trends, market drivers, challenges, opportunities and porters forces analysis with respect to these elements.This report also covers the study relating to the key regions for the global market size for the Load Balancer such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, South America, Middle East, Africa etc and focuses on the consumption of Load Balancer in these regions.You can get the sample copy of this report now @Scope of the Report:You get the detailed analysis of the current market scenario for Load Balancer and a market forecast till 2023 with this report. The forecast is also supported with the factors affecting the market dynamics for the forecast period. This report also details the information related to geographic trends, competitive scenarios and opportunities in the Load Balancer market. The report is also equipped with SWOT analysis and value chain for the companies which are profiled in this report.Top Key Players:- F5 Networks, Citrix, A10 Networks, Radware, Brocade, Kemp Technologies, Riverbed Technology, Sangfor, Fortinet, Barracuda, Array Networks, Hangzhou DPtech Technologies Co., Ltd.Types:- 40 Gbps Type.Application:- IT & Telecom, BFSI, Government, Others.Geographical Regions of Load Balancer Market: United States of AmericaCanadaMexicoRest of North AmericaBrazilArgentinaRest of South AmericaChinaJapanIndiaRest of Asia-PacificUnited KingdomGermanyFranceRest of EuropeUAESouth AfricaSaudi ArabiaGet 10% Discount @Overview of the chapters analysing the global Load Balancer market in detail :-Chapter 1 details the information relating to Load Balancer introduction, Scope of the product, market overview, Market risks, driving forces of the market, etcChapter 2 analyses the top manufacturers of the Load Balancer market by sales, revenue etc for the period 2013 to 2018.Chapter 3 throws light on the competition landscape amongst the top manufacturers based on sales, revenue, market share etc for the period 2013 to 2018.Chapter 4 analyses the global market by regions and their market share, sales, revenue etc for the period 2013 to 2018.Chapters 5 to 9 analyse the key regions with key countries based on market share, revenue, sales etc.Chapter 10 and 11 contain the information about market basis type and application, sales market share, growth rate etc for the period 2013 to 2018.Chapter 12 focuses on the market forecast for 2018 to 2023 for the Load Balancer market by regions, type and application, sales and revenue.Chapter 13 to 15 contain the details related to sales channels, distributors, traders, dealers, research findings, research findings, and conclusion etc for the Load Balancer market.Reasons why you should buy this report- Current and future of Load Balancer Market outlook in the developed and emerging markets- Highlights key business priorities in order to assist companies to realign their business strategies- The segment that is expected to dominate the Load Balancer Market- Regions that are expected to witness the fastest growth during the forecast period- Identify the latest developments, Load Balancer Market shares, and strategies employed by the major market players- Save and reduce time carrying out entry-level research by identifying the growth, size, leading players and segments in the global Load Balancer Market- Develop/modify business expansion plans by using substantial growth offering developed and emerging marketsAbout Us:Reports Intellect is your one-stop solution for everything related to market research and market intelligence. We understand the importance of market intelligence and its need in today's competitive world.Our professional team works hard to fetch the most authentic research reports backed with impeccable data figures which guarantee outstanding results every time for you.So whether it is the latest report from the researchers or a custom requirement, our team is here to help you in the best possible way.Contact Us:sales@reportsintellect.comPH - + 1-888-259-6883US Address:225 Peachtree Street NE,Suite 400,Atlanta, GA 30303 Cancer Biomarkers Market to Witness Huge Growth in 2025 | Key Player Analysis: Agilent Technologies, Qiagen NV, Merck & Co., Inc., Hologic,Inc., Novartis AG, BioMerieux SA, Genomic Health, Inc., Affymetrix Inc. Cancer Biomarkers Market https://www.inforgrowth.com/samplerequest/r/43831/global-cancer-biomarkers-market-insights-forec https://www.inforgrowth.com/customizationrequest/r/43831/global-cancer-biomarkers-market-insights-forec This report researches the worldwide Cancer Biomarkers market size (value, capacity, production and consumption) in key regions like North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (China, Japan) and other regions.This study categorizes the global Cancer Biomarkers breakdown data by manufacturers, region, type and application, 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.Get Exclusive Sample of Report on Cancer Biomarkers market having 119 pages, profiling Leading Market PlayersThe Cancer Biomarkers market report covers major regions 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, Rest of South America, Middle East & Africa, GCC Countries, Turkey, Egypt, South Africa, Rest of Middle East & Africa.The Cancer Biomarkers market by Manufacturers: Abbott Laboratories, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Illumina,Inc., Agilent Technologies, Qiagen NV, Merck & Co., Inc., Hologic,Inc., Novartis AG, BioMerieux SA, Genomic Health, Inc., Affymetrix Inc., Roche Diagnostics Ltd.Market Segment by Type like Protein Biomarkers, Genetic Biomarkers, Others and by Application Breast Cancer, Lung Cancer, Colorectal Cancer, Melanoma, Blood Cancer, Prostate Cancer, Ovarian Cancer, Stomach Cancer, Liver Cancer.FOR ANY CUSTOM RESEARCH ON THIS TOPIC OR ANY RELATED TOPICS, SHARE YOUR SPECIFIC INTEREST FOR CUSTOM-REPORTS BY CLICKING HEREInitially report provides information about Cancer Biomarkers Market Landscape, Industry History, Development Prospect, Relevant Policy and Trade Overview to current demand, investment and supply in the market. It also shows future opportunities for the forecast years 2018-2025.Industry chain structure is analyzed by demand of Cancer Biomarkers and suppliers along with Cost Analysis, Channel Analysis and technology used for Cancer Biomarkers. Market Dynamics gives data about Latest News, Merger and Acquisition of major players, Planned or Future Projects about Cancer Biomarkers and Policy Dynamics. Report continues with Import-Export data and country wise market analysis.The Cancer Biomarkers industry development trends are studied through both Secondary and Primary sources. Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects are assessed and overall research conclusions offered.The study objectives of this report are:To study and analyze the global Cancer Biomarkers 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 Cancer Biomarkers market by identifying its various sub-segments.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 Cancer Biomarkers 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 Cancer Biomarkers with respect to individual growth trends, future prospects, and their contribution to the total market.To project the value and volume of Cancer Biomarkers 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.Major Points from Table of Contents1 Study Coverage2 Executive Summary3 Market Size by Manufacturers4 Cancer Biomarkers Production by Regions5 Cancer Biomarkers 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 AppendixAbout 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: sales@inforgrowth.comPhone: +1-909-329-2808 Optoelectronic Components Market 2024 | Nichia Corporation (Japan), Avago Technologies (U.S.),Vishay Intertechnology, Inc.(U.S.), Cree, Inc. (U.S.), EPISTAR Corporation (Taiwan), OSRAM (Germany), https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/upsample/120124571/Optoelectronic-Components-Market https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/TOC/120124571/Optoelectronic-Components-Market https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/upcomming/120124571/Optoelectronic-Components-Market https://www.researchreportinsights.com Consumer electronics is one of the biggestgrowing industries in the world today, and also a leading end user of optoelectronic components. The growing use of image sensors, laser diodes, and most importantly LED drivers and ICs is expected to boost the revenues and manufacturing rates of optoelectronic components. Optoelectronic components have the wherewithal to source, identify, distinguish, and control light. The interaction of these components with light makes them optimal to be used in a wide range of applications. These components are primarily used in field of automatic control systems, aerospace and defense, telecommunications, and healthcare among others.Growing application crosswise different industry verticals primarily owing to its low power utilization, accuracy, scalability, and performance is inflaming the demand of optoelectronic components globally. Rising usage of LED Driver and IC, OLED, image sensor, infrared componentsoverall in telecommunication, medical devices and security systems is expected to fuel the growth of optoelectronic components market over the forecast period. Comparatively high price of raw materials, requirement of huge capital investments for developing energy efficient LED displays and niche nature of application of some of the optoelectronic components are major curbing factors for the market. These factors are expected to hinder growth of optoelectronic components market during the forecast period.Request For Report Sample:Accessibility in terms of application of infrared components in consumer electronics and automotive industry is one of the torch bearer factors fueling the growth in adaptation of optoelectronic components across different countries. Growing demand of infrared LEDs in consumer security cameras is one of the major driving factors contributing to the positive growth of this market globally. Each of these cameras contains a number of rings of infrared LEDs, which offer night vision effectiveness. Infrared LEDs are used in handheld devices for identity verification and attestation of monetary transactions. Furthermore, procreation of applications in telecommunication and industrial set ups spurs demand for optoelectronic components at the global level.Request For Report TOC :Optoelectronic Components Market :SegmentationGlobal Optoelectronic Components Market (By Components)LED Driver and IC - General LED,HV LED,OLED,Image Sensor,CMOS Image Sensor, CCD Image Sensor & Others; Infrared Component - Infrared Emitting Diode,Irda Transceiver,Infrared Detector,Optocouplers,4 Pin Optocoupler,6 Pin Optocoupler,High Speed Optocoupler,IGBT Gate Driver, Isolation Amplifier &Others.Laser Diode - Near Infrared,Red Laser Diode,Blue Laser Diode, Green Laser Diode &Others.Global Optoelectronic Components Market (By Geography)North America,U.S.,Rest of the North America,Europe,U.K.,Germany,Italy,France,Rest of Europe,Asia Pacific,China,Japan,India,South Korea,Rest of Asia Pacific,Rest of the World (RoW),Latin America,Middle East and Africa.If Segmentation is considered then, by components, the market can be divided into LED Driver and IC (General LED, HV LED), OLED, Image Sensor (CMOS Image Sensor, CCD Image Sensor, Others), Infrared Component (Infrared Emitting Diode, Irda Transceiver, Infrared Detector), Optocouplers(High Speed Optocoupler, 4 Pin Optocoupler, IGBT Gate Driver, 6 Pin Optocoupler, Isolation Amplifier, Others), Laser Diode (Near Infrared, Red Laser Diode, Blue Laser Diode, Green Laser Diode) and others. Regionally, the optoelectronic components market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). The scope of the report offers an insight into optoelectronic components market in these regions based on revenue (USD billion).Our research report also includes cutthroat profiling of leading companies in the industry and their market position to compensate in critical decision making. The market attractiveness analysis and patent analysis included in the report provide insight into market dynamics, future research scope, industry competition and strategies adopted by market leaders.The report also gaps down and reviews the various factors impacting the market growth, which can be appropriately described as market drivers, restraints, and opportunities. These factors help to determine the various existing trends and their impact on the market growth. Overall, taking into consideration the various factors affecting the optoelectronic components market, the report includes a holistic analysis of the global optoelectronic components market, and provides an estimate of growth for the period 2015 to 2023.Some of the major companies operating in the optoelectronic components market are Nichia Corporation (Japan), Avago Technologies (U.S.),Vishay Intertechnology, Inc.(U.S.), Cree, Inc. (U.S.), EPISTAR Corporation (Taiwan), OSRAM (Germany), Royal Philips Electronics (Netherlands), Renesas Electronics Corporation (Japan), Toshiba Corporation (Japan), ROHM Semiconductor (Japan), Finisar Corporation (U.S.), Sharp Corporation (Japan), NXP Semiconductors N.V. (Netherlands), STMicroelectronics N.V. (Switzerland), Infineon Technologies AG(Germany), Diodes, Incorporated (U.S.), Sony Corporation (Japan), Maxim Integrated Products Inc. (U.S.), Fairchild Semiconductor (U.S.), Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd (South Korea), Panasonic Corporation (Japan), Maxwell Technologies, Inc (U.S.) and Texas Instruments, Inc. (U.S.).Report Analysis:About UsResearch Report Insights (RRI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver a host of services including custom research reports, syndicated research reports, and consulting services which are personalised in nature. RRI delivers a complete packaged solution to clients; this combines current market intelligence, technology inputs, statistical anecdotes, valuable growth insights, 360-degree view of the competitive framework, and anticipated market trendsContact Us:Research Report Insights (RRI42 Joseph StreetPort carling P0B 1J0Muskoka, Ontario1Phone - +1-631-721-4201Website:Email: sales@researchreportinsights.com Healthcare PMMA (Polymethyl Methacrylate) Market 2024: The Dow Chemical Company, Arkema, Lucite International, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Compendia Bioscience), Globe Scientific, Intuitive and Thomas Scientific Healthcare PMMA (Polymethyl Methacrylate) market https://www.graphicalresearch.com/request/1094/sample https://www.graphicalresearch.com/request/1094/inquiry-before-buying https://www.graphicalresearch.com/industry-insights/1094/healthcare-pmma-market https://www.graphicalresearch.com/industry-insights/1105/north-america-concrete-floor-coatings-market https://www.graphicalresearch.com/industry-insights/1091/waterproofing-membrane-market https://www.graphicalresearch.com/ Graphical Research presents a most up-to-date report on Healthcare PMMA (Polymethyl Methacrylate) Market Size by Applications (Medical Ware, Pharmaceutical Handling, Laboratory Ware), Regional Trends (U.S., Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, China, India, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, UAE), Growth Trends, Competitive Landscape & Forecast to 2024.Request for a sample of this research report @Increasing healthcare expenditure has enhanced the medical devices market size which accounted for approximately USD 360 billion in 2015. This will stimulate the demand for Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) in the medical device industry, on account of its properties such as UV tolerance, resistance towards lipids and phthalates, reliability, and biocompatibility. Geriatric population will play a major role in PMMA market, owing to their heavy contribution towards the rising healthcare expenditure.Favorable regulations by various agencies such as FDA and REACH to ensure non-hazardous polymer usage in the healthcare space will further catalyze PMMA industry size. In addition to this, initiatives by NCI (National Cancer Institute) and The Academies to create awareness among patients and practitioners about the harmful petrochemical use in the medical industry will further enhance PMMA market share over the coming years.Geographical segmentation includes North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and MEA.US PMMA market is forecast to dominate the global landscape with revenue estimations of exceeding USD 80 million by 2024.Strong geriatric population base coupled with stringent regulations to minimize the hazardous plastic content in the medical industry will stimulate the regional demand.PMMA healthcare applications segment comprises Medical Ware, Laboratory Ware, and Pharmaceutical Handling.Medical ware dominated the PMMA healthcare application landscape with a revenue of over USD 60 million in 2017, and is estimated to be a lucrative application segment over the coming years. The growth can be attributed to the surging demand for medical ware products such as incubators, bone cements, dentures, and intraocular lens.High prevalence of eye ailments such as myopia, cataract, etc., increasing orthopedic fractures among the old age population, and growing global healthcare expenditure will fuel the demand for these products over the coming years. This will in turn stimulate the PMMA market size in the medical ware industry, which is anticipated to reach a volume of over 16 kilo tons by 2024.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @Key Healthcare PMMA market players are Evonik Industries, Dow Chemical, Arkema, PolyOne Corporation and Lucite International. Other PMMA industry participants sharing the medical device business space are BrandTech Scientific, Inc., Fisher Scientific Co., Duro-Med Industries, Bel-Art Products, Globe Scientific, Inc., Intuitive Surgical, Inc., Thomas Scientific, and Dentsply International.Segments We Cover:Healthcare PMMA (Polymethyl Methacrylate) Market Analysis, By ApplicationMedical wareLaboratory warePharmaceutical HandlingThe above information is provided on a regional and country basis for the following:North AmericaU.S.CanadaMexicoEuropeUKGermanyFranceItalyRussiaAsia PacificChinaIndiaSouth KoreaMalaysiaIndonesiaThailandJapanAustraliaLatin America (LATAM)BrazilMiddle East & Africa (MEA)Saudi ArabiaSouth AfricaUAEBrowse more insights from report @Browse Related Reports:1.North America Concrete Floor Coatings Market Size By Product, Application, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook, Growth Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2018 20242.Waterproofing Membrane Market Size By Application (Sheet Membranes, Liquid Applied Membranes), By End-Use (Building Structures, Roofing, Walls, Landfills & Tunnels), By Product (Polymers, Polymer Modified Cement, Bitumen), Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Austria, Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Poland, China, India, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, South Korea, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, South Africa), Growth Potential, Price Trend, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2018 2024About 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: HCIT Consulting Services Market to Witness Huge Growth in 2025 | Key Player Analysis: Koninklijke Philips N.V., Cerner Corporation, NTT DATA Corporation, IBM Corporation, McKesson Corporation, Global HCIT Consulting Services Market Analysis to 2025 http://bit.ly/2Q9yFdP http://bit.ly/2TaAnNR http://bit.ly/2SuutXC The "Global HCIT Consulting Services Market Analysis to 2025" is a specialized and in-depth study of the HCIT Consulting Services industry with a focus on the global market trend. The report aims to provide an overview of the Global HCIT Consulting Services Market with detailed market segmentation by type, and end users. The Global HCIT Consulting Services 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. It also provides market with respect to five major regions, namely; North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South & Central America.The healthcare it solutions & services, automate, manage and control the different tasks and processes in healthcare organizations. Healthcare IT services is a new wave focused on improving clinical efficiency, quality of care, affordability, and fee-for-value. healthcare IT exceeds expectations in the healthcare IT consulting Services / staffing field This market growth is attributed to the rising demand for patient safety & data accuracy, need to limit healthcare cost, and execution of various healthcare policies promoting the use of HCIT in healthcare facilities.Get HCIT Consulting Services Market report sample @The HCIT consulting services market is anticipated to grow with a significant rate in the coming years, owing to factors such as, adoption of cloud technology in HCIT services, Increased digitization in healthcare are driving the growth of this market Due to cloud consulting, increasing consolidation in the healthcare industry, opportunities in small rural hospitals and need for healthcare IT consultants in emerging economies, such as India, China, Japan are expected to offer growth opportunities for the players operating in the HCIT consulting services market.Profiles of Key HCIT Consulting Services Manufacturing Companies:1. Koninklijke Philips N.V.2. Cerner Corporation.3. NTT DATA Corporation4. IBM Corporation5. McKesson Corporation6. Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation7. Accenture PLC.8. Infosys Ltd.9. General Electric (GE) Company10. Siemens Healthcare GmbHThe "Global HCIT Consulting Services Market Analysis to 2025" is a specialized and in-depth study of the medical device industry with a focus on the global market trend. The report aims to provide an overview of global HCIT consulting services market with detailed market segmentation by type, end users, and geography. The global HCIT consulting services 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.The HCIT consulting services market report provides a detailed overview of the industry including both qualitative and quantitative information. It provides overview and forecast of the global HCIT consulting services market based on type, and end users. It also provides market size and forecast till 2025 for overall HCIT consulting services market with respect to five major regions, namely; North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South & Central America. The HCIT consulting services market by each region is later sub-segmented by respective countries and segments. The report covers analysis and forecast of 13 counties globally along with current trend and opportunities prevailing in the region.Inquire about this Report at:Scope of the Report:This report categorizes the global market into following segments and sub-segments:Global HCIT Consulting Services Market, By Type Regulatory compliance HCIT strategy and project/program management healthcare system security set-up and risk assessment healthcare enterprise reporting and data analytics healthcare application analysis design and development healthcare business process management HCIT integration and migration production go-live/post go-live support HCIT change management other consulting servicesGlobal HCIT Consulting Services Market, By End User healthcare payers healthcare providers other end usersThe segment of healthcare payers is further classified into, public payers and private payers. Based on healthcare providers, again the market is segmented as, ambulatory care centers, hospitals, physician groups, and integrated delivery networks (IDNS), home healthcare agencies, nursing homes, diagnostic and imaging centers, and other healthcare providers, and other end users.Also, key HCIT Consulting Services 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.Table of Contents:1. INTRODUCTION1.1. SCOPE OF STUDY1.2. THE INSIGHT PARTNERS RESEARCH REPORT GUIDANCE2. KEY TAKEAWAYS3. HCIT CONSULTING SERVICES MARKET LANDSCAPE3.1. MARKET OVERVIEW3.2. MARKET SEGMENTATION3.2.1. HCIT Consulting Services Market - By Type3.2.2. HCIT Consulting Services Market - By End User3.2.3. HCIT Consulting Services Market - By Region3.2.3.1. By Country3.3. PEST ANALYSIS3.3.1. North America - PEST Analysis3.3.2. Europe - PEST Analysis3.3.3. Asia Pacific - PEST Analysis3.3.4. Middle East and Africa - PEST Analysis3.3.5. South and Central America- PEST Analysis4. HCIT CONSULTING SERVICES MARKET - KEY INDUSTRY DYNAMICS4.1. KEY MARKET DRIVERS4.2. KEY MARKET RESTRAINTS4.3. KEY MARKET OPPORTUNITIES4.4. FUTURE TRENDS4.5. IMPACT ANALYSIS5. HCIT CONSULTING SERVICES MARKET - GLOBAL ANALYSIS5.1. GLOBAL HCIT CONSULTING SERVICES MARKET OVERVIEW5.2. GLOBAL HCIT CONSULTING SERVICES MARKET REVENUE FORECASTS AND ANALYSIS (US$ MN)5.3. PERFORMANCE OF KEY PLAYERS5.4. EXPERT OPINIONSBuy the complete report with Comprehensive table of contents @About UsThe 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 committed to providing highest quality research and consulting services to our customers. We help our clients understand key market trends, identify opportunities, and make informed decisions by providing market research solutions at an affordable cost.Contact usThe Insight partners,Phone: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@theinsightpartners.com Know in detail about Global Social Media Management Software Market trends, future growth along with key players such as SPRINKLR, Teepa, Tweet Deck, Soho Social Global Social Media Management Software Market https://www.researchnreports.com/request_sample.php?id=143676 https://www.researchnreports.com/ask_for_discount.php?id=143676 https://www.researchnreports.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=143676 Social media management software is used to update social media advertising tasks. It provides functions for management social media books and social media posts as well as to schedule social media posts. Social media organization software is used primarily by the marketing and infrastructures departments of a company. Governments adopt social media management solutions because of their rewards such as better use of social media analytics, better organization of dashboards, and availability of data recording facilities.Global Social Media Management Software Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of +14.57% during the forecast period 2018-2023.The report exhibits a statistical surveying outline of the competitive landscape of the Global Social Media Management Software Market, along these lines helping associations comprehend the potential risk and opportunities that merchants in the market are dealt with. It likewise incorporates nitty-gritty business profiles of some of the significant manufacturers in the market.For sample request:Key players:The key players in the Global Social Media Management Software Market are Agora Pulse, Buffer, Hootsuite Media, Sprout Social, Crowd booster, Facebook, IFTTT, Lithium Technologies, NUVI, Outpost, Roeder Studios, Sensible, Social Board, Social Flow.one of the major drivers for this market is the use of social media management software to increase brand awareness. Companies consider social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Snapchat as efficient platforms to promote themselves, build their brands, and reach out to larger audiences or consumer bases. Finding the time to update the profiles and blogs can be a challenge for companies, which release several products in a month.Market segmentation:The report exhibits a statistical surveying outline of the competitive landscape of the Global Social Media Management Software Market, along these lines helping associations comprehend the potential risk and opportunities that merchants in the market are dealt with. It likewise incorporates nitty-gritty business profiles of some of the significant manufacturers in the market.Ask for discount on premium report:Analysis tools such as Porters five forces analysis and SWOT analysis have also been utilized for analyzing the market data. The major strategies adopted by the already established players for a better penetration in the Global Social Media Management Software Market also form a key section of this study. These approaches can be utilized by the imminent vendors for a better infiltration in the market.Table of ContentsChapter 1 Global Social Media Management Software Market OverviewChapter 2: Data AnalysisChapter 3: Technical Data AnalysisChapter 4: Government Policy and NewsChapter 5: Global Social Media Management Software Market Manufacturing Process and Cost StructureChapter 6: Productions Supply Sales Demand Market Status and ForcesChapter 7: Key ManufacturersChapter 8: Up and Down Stream Industry AnalysisChapter 9: Market AnalysisChapter 10: Global Social Media Management Software Market Development Trend AnalysisChapter 11: New Project Investment Feasibility AnalysisFor more enquiry:About 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.Mr. Sunny DenisContact No. +1-888-631-6977sales@researchnreports.comResearch N Reports ASEAN engineers celebrate outstanding engineering achievements and commit action in various initiatives at CAFEO 36 14 November 2018Media ReleaseASEAN engineers celebrate outstanding engineering achievements and commit action in various initiatives at CAFEO 36Minister of State Zaqy Mohamad confers the IES Lifetime Engineering Achievement Award 2018 on Er. Chang Meng TengIES awards 10 engineers in Transportation with the Chartered Engineer certificationThe Institution of Engineers, Singapore (IES) celebrated the outstanding achievements of engineers at its 52nd Annual Dinner jointly held with the closing banquet of the 36th Conference of the ASEAN Federation of Engineering Organisations (CAFEO 36) at Resorts World Convention Centre. Mr Zaqy Mohamad, Minister of State, Ministry of National Development & Ministry of Manpower graced the event as guest-of-honour attended by close to 1,700 conference delegates, IES members and industry guests.The event was preceded by the signing of the Singapore Declaration by member organisations of the ASEAN Federation of Engineering Organisations (AFEO) to show commitment in promoting railway and transportation connectivity, urban sustainable solutions, the Vision Zero movement to realise injury-free workplaces, sharing of project knowledge, start-up incubator development and excellence in engineering education.Inauguration of First Batch of Assessors in Transportation EngineeringAt the dinner, in recognition of their professional competence, IES presented Chartered Engineer certification to 10 outstanding local transportation engineers who have made significant contributions in their practice. These Chartered Engineers will also form part of the Assessment Panel to certify more engineers in accordance with IES Competency Standard & Assessment Statement.Launched in 2013, the Chartered Engineer (Singapore) Registration aims at raising the status and profile of the engineering profession. It recognises qualified engineers across all sectors, particularly in fields that do not require registration as Professional Engineers.IES also hopes that its efforts in enhancing professional recognition of local engineers will contribute to AFEOs goals of facilitating mobility engineers within ASEAN, to enable them to practice out of their home countries.Lifetime Engineering Achievement Award 2018 Winner Er. Chang Meng TengIn recognition of his outstanding leadership and the profound impact of his contributions to the engineering industry and community, Er. Chang Meng Teng became the sixth winner of the IES Lifetime Engineering Achievement Award - the topmost honours accorded to engineers in Singapore.An electrical engineer by training, Er. Chang devoted his career to Singapores infrastructural development across the public and private built environment sectors. Apart from playing key roles in the development and expansion of power distribution networks in Singapore when he was with the Public Utilities Board, Er Chang also spent 20 years as Managing Director of Squire Mech Pte Ltd, completing residential, commercial, institutional and industrial developments with engineering excellence.Er. Chang directed many successful high-profile projects during his career including the intelligent Republic Plaza a multiple award-winning project with an advanced communications network distribution facility and integrated building management systems.I am deeply honoured to be receiving the Lifetime Engineering Achievement Award. I would like to thank all my fellow Professional Engineers, clients and peers for their generous support throughout my career. The 21st century has brought many challenges to the world and our human race. I hope our younger generation of engineers will achieve new heights and carve out new possibilities and solutions for our future, said Er. Chang.Er. Chang is an exemplary engineering leader who has made significant contributions to the built environment. IES hopes that his achievements will inspire our young engineers to deliver innovative solutions and contribute to the well-being of our economy as well as improving our quality of life, said Prof. Yeoh Lean Weng, IES President.ASEAN Outstanding Engineering Achievement Awards and AFEO Honorary AwardsOther awards presented at the dinner are the ASEAN Outstanding Engineering Achievement Awards given to 18 projects and six individuals from Indonesia, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand for making significant contributions to advancing engineering and improving quality of life amongst the ASEAN countries; and the AFEO Honorary Awards presented to 87 individuals for rendering exemplary services to the engineering profession.On 13 November 2018, Prof Yeoh as AFEO Chairman also presented the AFEO Distinguished Honorary Patron 2018 honour to Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad at a separate ceremony.IES-Yayasan MENDAKI ScholarshipsMr Muhammad Hudzaifah Bin Sulaiman from the National University of Singapore and Mr Mohamed Taufik Rahim from Temasek Polytechnic received the 2018 IES-Yayasan MENDAKI Scholarships for achieving excellent academic results. This annual award is given to tertiary Muslim students to encourage and support them in furthering their engineering studies or pursuing an engineering career.- END Notes to media:Chinese GlossaryEnglish Terms Chinese TermsASEAN Federation of Engineering Organisations (AFEO)Conference of ASEAN Federation of Engineering Organisations (CAFEO)The Institution of Engineers, Singapore (IES)Prof. Yeoh Lean Weng, President, IES President, Chartered EngineersIES Lifetime Engineering Achievement Award Er. Chang Meng TengAbout The Institution of Engineers, Singapore (IES)The Institution of Engineers, Singapore was formally established on July 1966 as the national society of engineers in Singapore. IES is the premier engineering Institution in Singapore and is often called upon by the Government to provide feedback on professional engineering matters.IES is well represented among the faculty members of the major engineering institutions of higher learning in Singapore. Through close collaboration with the local universities and polytechnics, IES organizes courses, seminars and talks for engineers and IES members to advance the continuous development of engineers.The Institution maintains close links with professional organisations of engineers regionally and throughout the world. These include organisations in Australia, China, Japan, United Kingdom and the United States. The Institution also represents Singapore in the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO), ASEAN Federation of Engineering Organisations (AFEO) and the Federation of Engineering Institutions of Asia and the Pacific (FEIAP) in promoting goodwill and fellowship among all engineers in the region and internationally.Through its Engineering Accreditation Board (EAB), IES obtained full signatory status in the Washington Accord (WA) in June 2006. The entry grants IES the authority to represent Singapore, the first country within the ASEAN region which has obtained full signatory status in the WA, to vet education systems under the WA mutual recognition framework.- End -MEDIA CONTACTDesmond TeoPublications ManagerThe Institution of Engineers, SingaporeDID : (65) 6461 1229Email : desmond@iesnet.org.sgKathlyn LokeAssociateThe Right Spin Public RelationsDID : (65) 6325 5927Email : kathlyn@therightspin.com.sgEsther LimAssociateThe Right Spin Public RelationsDID : (65) 6325 5935Email : esther@therightspin.com.sgAbout The Institution of Engineers, Singapore (IES)The Institution of Engineers, Singapore was formally established on July 1966 as the national society of engineers in Singapore. IES is the premier engineering Institution in Singapore and is often called upon by the Government to provide feedback on professional engineering matters.IES is well represented among the faculty members of the major engineering institutions of higher learning in Singapore. Through close collaboration with the local universities and polytechnics, IES organizes courses, seminars and talks for engineers and IES members to advance the continuous development of engineers.The Institution maintains close links with professional organisations of engineers regionally and throughout the world. These include organisations in Australia, China, Japan, United Kingdom and the United States. The Institution also represents Singapore in the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO), ASEAN Federation of Engineering Organisations (AFEO) and the Federation of Engineering Institutions of Asia and the Pacific (FEIAP) in promoting goodwill and fellowship among all engineers in the region and internationally.Through its Engineering Accreditation Board (EAB), IES obtained full signatory status in the Washington Accord (WA) in June 2006. The entry grants IES the authority to represent Singapore, the first country within the ASEAN region which has obtained full signatory status in the WA, to vet education systems under the WA mutual recognition framework.The Institution of Engineers, Singapore70 Bukit Tinggi RoadEmail: ies@iesnet.org.sg Cyber Insurance Market Size, Share, Growth| Mojar Key Players Company American International, Chubb, Zurich Insurance, XL Group, Berkshire Hathaway, Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty, Munich Re, Lloyds Cyber Insurance https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/cyber-insurance-market?utm_source=OpenPR https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/1705?utm_source=OpenPR https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/1705?utm_source=OpenPR https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com Cyber Insurance Market Report, published by Allied Market Research, forecasts that the global market is expected to garner $14 billion by 2022, registering a CAGR of nearly 28% during the period forecast 2022. North America constituted the largest cyber insurance market share in 2015 and it would continue to dominate the market during the forecast period. Growth in the region is supplemented by enforcement of data protection regulations in U.S. Moreover, increase in levels of liability and legislative developments accelerate the market growth.Access Full Report Summary:Increase in awareness about cyber risks from boardroom to data centers owing to the rising number of cyber-attacks in the past 23 years is the prime factor that drives the market. However, complex and changing nature of cyber risks limits cyber insurance market growth. Low market penetration of cyber insurance policies in developing countries offers promising business opportunity for market players.The global cyber insurance market is segmented based on industry verticals, company size, and geography. Based on industry verticals, the market is segmented into healthcare, retail, financial services (BFSI), information technology and services, others (utilities, energy, manufacturing, construction, and transportation). BFSI and information technology sector were the early adopters of cyber liability insurance policies to protect their data. Although, as per the study, Healthcare vertical generates around one-third of the premium as these companies possess huge third-party data such as personal details of consumers, employment details and cyber criminals can easily misuse this data to make money. For instance, in U.S., around 78% of hospitals are secured under cyber insurance.Based on revenue generated by companies, cyber insurance market is categorized as very small-sized (2.5 million to 99 million), small-sized (100 million-299 million), medium-sized (300 million to 1billion), and large companies (1 billion and above). Despite the fact that cyber security and cyber risks are acknowledged as serious threat, several companies do not purchase cyber insurance policies. However, the market has witnessed a change in the scenario. Companies of all sizes tend to purchase cyber insurance policies, owing to legal developments. Large companies contribute significantly, i.e., around 70% of the overall cyber insurance market in 2015, as loss of any kind of data has negative repercussions on their businesses.North America dominates the cyber insurance market and accounts for around 87% of the overall cyber insurance market in 2015. Mandatory legislation regarding cyber security in several U.S. states has led to higher penetration of cyber liability insurance policies. The U.S. cyber insurance industry has become mature, and growth of the cyber insurance industry is projected to decrease owing to rising adoption of cyber liability insurance policies. Europe has very less penetration of cyber insurance liability policies as compared to that of the U.S. The European council has recently passed regulations regarding data protection and security, which are projected to be brought into effect in 2018. These regulations would oblige companies to purchase cyber insurance policies. Though Asia-Pacific accounts for negligible percentage share, it is expected to grow at a significant CAGR during the forecast period owing to a significant increase in ransomware attacks.Download Sample Copy Here:Key Findings of the Cyber Insurance Market:North America generated highest revenue in 2015 and will continue to lead the market during the forecast period.Europe is projected to grow at the highest rate.Large companies contribute significantly in generation of cyber insurance premium.Healthcare industry was the major buyer of cyber insurance policies in 2015 and will continue to lead the market during the forecast period.Key companies profiled in the report are American International Group, Inc. (U.S.), The Chubb Corporation (U.S.), Zurich Insurance Co. Ltd (Switzerland), XL Group Ltd (Republic of Ireland), Berkshire Hathaway (U.S.), Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (Germany), Munich Re Group (Germany), Lloyds (U.K.), Lockton Companies, Inc. (U.S.), and AON PLC (U.K.).Enquiry Report:Allied Market Research, a market research and advisory company of Allied Analytics LLP, provides business insights and market research reports to large as well as small & medium enterprises. The company assists its clients to strategize business policies and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.Allied Market Research provides one stop solution from the beginning of data collection to investment advice. The analysts at Allied Market Research dig out factors that help clients to understand the significance and impact of market dynamics. The company amplies clients insight on the factors, such as strategies, future estimations, growth or fall forecasting, opportunity analysis, and consumer surveys among others. As follows, the company offers consistent business intelligent support to aid the clients to turn into prominent business firm.Contact:David Correa5933 NE Win Sivers Drive#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesToll Free (USA/Canada):+1-800-792-5285, +1-503-894-6022, +1-503-446-1141UK: +44-845-528-1300Hong Kong: +852-301-84916India (Pune): +91-20-66346060Fax: +1855550-5975help@alliedmarketresearch.comWeb: Spinal Bulbar Muscular Atrophy Treatment Market To Increase at Steady Growth Rate 2018-2028 https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=1221 https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=RC&rep_id=1221 https://www.factmr.com/report/1221/spinal-bulbar-muscular-atrophy-treatment-market www.factmr.com/ www.linkedin.com/company/factmr/ Spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy is also called Kennedy disease. It is a disorder of the nerve cells that control muscle movement. These nerve cells are present in the brainstem. Spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy mainly occurs in males, and is characterized by atrophy that usually arises in adulthood. Spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy results in cramping and leg muscle weakness. The bulbar muscles are also affected, which causes disruptive problems regarding swallowing and speech. Fasciculations, unusual breast development, and infertility are also observed in this disorder. Spinal bulbar muscular atrophy has been diagnosed in the U.S., Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia. The Japanese population is shown to have a very high occurrence. There is no known cure for spinal bulbar muscular atrophy. Physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy are usually used to maintain individual skills. Braces and wheel chairs are used for ambulation. For breast reduction physicians prefer surgery.Spinal Bulbar Muscular Atrophy Treatment Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe growing number of incidences of spinal bulbar muscular atrophy is driving the growth of the market. Rapid turnaround time and lower cost of this procedure over conventional methods are also fueling the growth of the spinal bulbar muscular atrophy treatment market. A reimbursement process is also available in many regions like the U.S., Europe, and Japan. However, the global market for spinal bulbar muscular atrophy treatment is expected to be deterred by the limited number of drugs available that inhibits in hormone level on the market. Dutasteride and leuprolide are two drugs which are currently present around the world for spinal bulbar muscular atrophy treatment.Spinal Bulbar Muscular Atrophy Treatment Market: SegmentationTentatively, the spinal bulbar muscular atrophy treatment market has been segmented on the basis of drug class and distribution channel.Based on drug class, the spinal bulbar muscular atrophy treatment market is segmented as:5-Reductase Inhibitors (5-ARIs)Gonadotropin-releasing Hormone (GnRH) AgonistsBased on distribution channel, the spinal bulbar muscular atrophy treatment market is segmented as:HospitalsOrthopedic ClinicsAmbulatory Surgical CentersSpinal Bulbar Muscular Atrophy Treatment Market: OverviewThe occurrence rate of spinal bulbar muscular atrophy is around 1 per 100,000 individuals, and high incidences are observed in Finland. From the 20052006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey using a sample of 1480 men with a mean age of 53.2 years (range 3779) with spinal bulbar muscular atrophy disorder were obtained for the hormonal profile, healthy control mean values and standard errors and according to the Oxford University Press, in 2006 a study followed 223 Japanese spinal bulbar muscular atrophy patients for a number of years, and among them, 15 died, with a median age of 65 years. A common cause of death for spinal bulbar muscular atrophy patients was pneumonia and respiratory failure. The increasing number of patient visits for spinal bulbar muscular atrophy treatment and the growing demand for the same exhibit lucrative growth opportunity for companies investing in the spinal bulbar muscular atrophy treatment market.Claim Sample Report For FREE:Spinal Bulbar Muscular Atrophy Treatment Market: Regional OutlookA geographic condition regarding spinal bulbar muscular atrophy treatment market, it has been segmented into seven key regions: North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, Japan, and the Middle East & Africa. North America is expected to represent huge contribution under spinal bulbar muscular atrophy treatment by revenue generation. Quickened development on the improvement of new items and high spending on innovative work in Europe demonstrates the elevation of the spinal bulbar muscular atrophy treatment market. With ascending in standards of health care services and increase in mindfulness towards the medications in India and China is relied upon to support the market for spinal bulbar muscular atrophy treatment in general Asia Pacific area.Spinal Bulbar Muscular Atrophy Treatment Market: Key PlayersSome of the players identified in the spinal bulbar muscular atrophy treatment market include GlaxoSmithKline plc., AbbVie Inc., Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Century Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Johnson & Johnson, Astellas Pharma, Pfizer Inc., Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH, and Sanofi.The spinal bulbar muscular atrophy treatment market report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, and inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides an in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators, and governing factors, along with market attractiveness as per segment. The spinal bulbar muscular atrophy treatment market report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.Share Your Requirements & Get Customized Reports:The report covers an exhaustive analysis on:Market SegmentsMarket DynamicsMarket SizeSupply & DemandCurrent Trends/Issues/ChallengesCompetition & Companies InvolvedTechnologyValue ChainRegional analysis of the spinal bulbar muscular atrophy treatment market includes:North America (U.S., Canada) Spinal Bulbar Muscular Atrophy Treatment MarketLatin America ( Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Rest of LATAM) Spinal Bulbar Muscular Atrophy Treatment MarketEurope (Germany, Italy, UK, Spain, France, Russia, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Poland, Ukraine, Czech Rep, Rest of Europe) Spinal Bulbar Muscular Atrophy Treatment MarketAsia Pacific Excluding Japan (India, Australia & New Zealand, Greater China, S. Korea, ASEAN Countries, Rest of APEJ) Spinal Bulbar Muscular Atrophy Treatment MarketJapan Spinal Bulbar Muscular Atrophy Treatment MarketCIS & Russia Spinal Bulbar Muscular Atrophy Treatment MarketMiddle East and Africa (GCC, Turkey, Iran, Israel, South Africa, Rest Of MEA) Spinal Bulbar Muscular Atrophy Treatment MarketSpinal Bulbar Muscular Atrophy Treatment Market: Report Highlights:Detailed overview of parent marketChanging market dynamics in the industryIn-depth market segmentationHistorical, current and projected market size in terms of volume and valueRecent industry trends and developmentsCompetitive landscapeStrategies of key players and products offeredPotential and niche segments, geographical regions exhibiting promising growthA neutral perspective on market performanceMust-have information for market players to sustain and enhance their market footprintReport Overview atAbout FactMRFactMR 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 UsFactMR11140 Rockville PikeSuite 400Rockville, MD 20852United StatesEmail: sales@factmr.comWeb:Follow Us on Linkedin: EDA Tools Market for IC Industry is Expected to Reach US$ 3,031.7 Mn by 2026: https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=27110 https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=27110 www.transparencymarketresearch.com According to a new market report published by Transparency Market Research, the global EDA tools market for IC industry is expected to reach a value of US$ 3,031.7 Mn by 2026, supported by rising adoption of compliance initiatives, improved operational efficiency, and controlled workflow. The market is projected to expand at a CAGR of 6.8% during the forecast period from 2018 to 2026.The highly competitive environment has compelled players to focus on efficient manufacturing techniques. In addition, rising penetration of VLSI (Very-large-scale integration) is boosting the global demand for advanced and sophisticated EDA tools. Asia Pacific is anticipated to be the fastest growing region for the market during the forecast period which is expected to be followed by Europe. The EDA tools market is experiencing flourishing growth in terms of adoption across different industry verticals around the globe. Increasing implementation of Big Data analytics and artificial intelligence by vendors is further contributing to the growth of the EDA tools market for IC industry.Request a PDF Sample of EDA Tools Market -Growing list of EDA tools vendors likely to boost the growth of the market over the forecast periodThe growth of EDA tools is directly or indirectly related to the growth of E-CAD (Electronic Computer Aided Design), as most vendors offer EDA tools as an add-on feature to their overall E-CAD solutions. Adoption of EDA tools by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is increasing mainly due to cost efficiency as well as limited capital investment required for subscription based (cloud) services. Adoption of cloud based EDA tools in an organization for cost cutting and time savings (process optimization) is fuelling the growth of the market substantially with the trend expected to be maintained during the forecast period.EDA Tools Market for IC Industry: Scope of the ReportThe EDA tools market for IC industry has been segmented on the basis of parameters such as component, application, deployment, and geographical regions. In terms of component, the market has been segmented into solution and services. The solution segment has further been segmented into bundled and standalone while the services segment has been classified into managed and professional services. Based on application, the market has been divided into design, verification, and simulation. In terms of deployment, the market has been segmented into cloud and on-premise.The cloud segment has further been classified into private cloud, public cloud, and hybrid cloud. The report covers the analysis of these segments across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and South America, along with the qualitative analysis of market estimates supplementing the growth of the EDA tools market for IC industry during the forecast period. Private and hybrid cloud segments are anticipated to experience lucrative growth opportunities in the market. In terms of adoption of EDA tools, the private cloud segment is projected to expand at a CAGR of approximately 7.6% during the forecast period from 2018 to 2026.Get Sample Copy of this report @North America and Europe collectively accounted for more than 50% of the global market share in 2017, with North America holding larger share of the market. Technological developments and relatively higher maturity in terms of technology penetration are major drivers of the EDA tools market for IC industry in North America. Within the Europe EDA tools market for IC industry, Germany held the largest revenue share in 2017, closely followed by the U.K. The market in Asia Pacific, which includes China, India, Japan, and Rest of Asia Pacific, is expected to witness the fastest growth during the forecast period attributed to rapid technological developments in various industry verticals across different countries. Moreover, several emerging economies in the region experiencing growth in their infrastructure which covers the government sector, IT sector, law firms, chemical industry, and others, is further supporting the growth of the EDA tools market for IC industry in this region.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendationsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Light Sensors Market Global Players are Ams AG, Avago Technologies, Elan Microelectronics Corp., Everlight Electronics Co., Heptagon, Maxim Integrated Products Inc., ROHM Co., Ltd., Sharp Corporation, Sitronix Technology Corp Light Sensors https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-sample/1845 The light sensor converts light input into corresponding electrical output. It is used in automatic street light system, automatic brightness control in mobile, and security devices in home and offices, which helps in minimizing the power consumption of the devices. Most commonly used light sensors are based on photo resistors, which control flow of current using sensed light energy. These are known as Light Dependent Resistors (LDRs).Major Factor attributing to growth of the market is increasing usage of portable consumer electronics, such as laptop, smartphones, and tablet which inadvertently affects the battery life of the product. For instance, according to Coherent Market Insights analysis, the total number of smartphones users in 2016, were 2.2 billion and it increased to 2.4 billion in 2017, worldwide. Therefore, prolong on-screen time on smart phone enforced manufacturers to introduce light sensors in these devices, which improves the battery life of device by consuming less power.Request PDF Brochure @By incorporating the light sensors in the smartphones it automatically adjust the brightness of the screen depending on the ambient light, which further help in reducing the power consumption of devices limited to less than 10 Mw. Furthermore, light sensors reduce the power consumption required in the keypad backlighting, which in turn helps in increasing the battery life of the smartphones. Therefore, aforementioned factors are fueling growth of the global light sensors market.Low capabilities of light sensors in case of long distance is major factor restraining growth of the market. These sensors cannot perform well apart from the specified range of 3 lx (lux) to more than 30,000 lx (lux), which is expected to hamper the growth of the market.North America accounted for the largest share in the global sensor light sensor market in 2016, and it is expected to dominate the global market by 2026. Increasing adoption of sensors in various fields such as medical, consumer electronics, and automotive is one of the major factors driving growth of the market in this region. For instance, light sensors are widely adopted by automotive sector in this region, owing to reduction of road accidents.According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in the U.S. the total number of people died in the road accident was 35,485 in 2015, and it grew up to 37,461 in 2016. Thus, in order to minimize the case of road accident and increase the safety of the passengers, automotive manufacturer are incorporating ambient light sensors in the vehicle for driver assistance and driver safety, which is propelling the growth of light sensors in the automotive sector.The vehicle equipped with light sensors detect the brightness ahead of the vehicle and the headlights are turned on and turned off automatically. This system allows the driver to control the turning on and turning off of the headlights with more accurate timing based on the driving situation. Therefore, all these factors are expected to drive regional market growth of light sensors in automotive sector, which in turn help in propelling the growth of the light sensors market in this region.Major players operating in the global light sensors market include ams AG, Avago Technologies Inc., Elan Microelectronics Corp., Everlight Electronics Co., Heptagon, Maxim Integrated Products Inc., ROHM Co., Ltd., Sharp Corporation, Sitronix Technology Corp., and STMicroelectronics NV. Market players are adopting growth strategy such as merger and acquisition for increasing the product portfolio and maintain leading position in the market.For instance, in July 2017, ams AG, a leading provider of high performance sensors and analog ICs, acquired the CMOS Sensor Business from NXP Semiconductors. The acquisition help in expanding the existing environmental sensor technologies and is a synergistic addition to chemical sensor capabilities and smart lighting solutions. This portfolio makes ams AG the one-stop shop for environmental sensors. The newly enlarged line of ams AG environmental sensors provide the growth opportunities for smart phones, wearable, and other mobile devices as well as for smart buildings and the industrial, medical, and automotive markets.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 Pentane Market Key Players : Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Phillips 66 Company, ExxonMobil Corporation, TOP Solvent Co., Ltd., Haltermann Carless UK Ltd., Pentane Market https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/4606 https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com The global pentane market size was valued at $97.2 million in 2016, and is anticipated to reach $128.0 million by 2023 at a CAGR of 4.1% during the forecast period. In terms of volume, the global pentane market production is estimated to reach 123.9 kilotons by 2023, registering a CAGR of 3.4%.The prominent players operating in the global pentane market have strategically focused on product launch as their key strategy to gain significant share in the market. The key players profiled in the report include Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Phillips 66 Company, ExxonMobil Corporation, TOP Solvent Co., Ltd., Haltermann Carless UK Ltd., INEOS AG, LG Chem Ltd., SK Innovation Co., Ltd., Yeochun NCC Co., Ltd. and Maruzen Petrochemical Co., Ltd.Get Sample PDF Brochure :Pentane is an organic compound having a chemical formula of C5H12, which consists of five carbon atoms that are linked together to form a single bond. It is a hydrocarbon, which possesses a gasoline-like odor and is burnt as a fuel. Pentane has several industrial uses, such as it is used to create blowing agent to further form a polystyrene.The growth of the global pentane market is driven by increase in demand for pentane from various end-user industries, low cost of pentane, and its beneficial chemical properties, such as higher strength as compared to other alkanes and superior volatility. Moreover, increased usage of pentane in fuel blending and formulation is expected to create opportunities for the end-user industries to generate more polystyrene to make insulation materials. However, the implementation of stringent regulations towards usage of pentane hampers the global pentane market.The global pentane market is segmented on the basis of type, application, and geography. Based on type, the market is classified into n-pentane, isopentane, and neopentane. n-Pentane generated the maximum revenue in 2016, and is expected to remain dominant throughout the analysis period, as it is widely used in various personal care and industrial aerosol products as an aerosol propellant. Moreover, it serves as an essential blowing agent for polyurethane and expanded polystyrene foams. The applications covered in the study include blowing agent, electronic cleansing, chemical solvent, and others.Geographically, is the market is analyzed across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA. North America accounted for the highest revenue in 2016, owing to rise in production transportation vehicles in the U.S., which in turn is anticipated to fuel the demand for pentane-based foams. Moreover, surge in adoption of polymer foams in large end-user industries and high demand for blowing agents in the manufacturing of PU foam are anticipated to accelerate the growth of the North American market.Key Benefits This report provides an extensive analysis of the current trends and future estimations in the market. In-depth analysis of the global pentane industry is conducted through market estimations of key segments from 2017 to 2023. Comprehensive analysis of factors that drive and restrain the growth of the pentane market is provided in the report. Extensive analysis of the pentane industry is conducted by following key product positioning and monitoring the top competitors within the market framework. The key players are profiled along with their strategies to determine the competitive outlook of the market.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.David C5933 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: Medical Polymers Market Booming With DSM, Du Pont, Solvay, Eastman Chemical, Evonik Industries, HEXPOL TPE, ExxonMobil, Formosa Plastics: Analysis By 2015-2025 Medical Polymers Market https://www.inforgrowth.com/samplerequest/r/51451/global-medical-polymers-market-study-2015-2025 https://www.inforgrowth.com/customizationrequest/r/51451/global-medical-polymers-market-study-2015-2025 InForGrowth has recently broadcasted a new study to its broad research portfolio, which is titled as Global Medical Polymers Market Study 2015-2025 provides an in-depth analysis of the medical polymer with the forecast of market size and growth. The analysis includes addressable market, market by volume, market share by business type and by segment (external and in-house). The research study examines the medical Polymer based on several criteria, such as the product type, application, and its geographical presence.Get Sample of this report spread across 87 pages and 19 Companies atGlobal Medical Polymers Market report provides a detailed market overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications, challenges, competitive scenario and industry chain structure. The report also analysis the Medical Polymers Market verticals and horizontals, Market Size and CAGRcomparison by region.The study objectives are to provide the Medical Polymers market trends, future opportunities, SWOT analysis, development, key drivers, top players and their analysis etc. Major regions covered in this report are as United States, Europe, Central & South America, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India.The Global Medical Polymers Market focuses on global major leading industry players providing information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and its Competitors. Upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis is also carried out.Key Players covered in this report are BASF, Bayer, Celanese, DSM, Du Pont, Solvay, Eastman Chemical, Evonik Industries, HEXPOL TPE, ExxonMobil, Formosa Plastics, INEOS, Dow, Victrex, Colorite Compounds, Raumedic, Kraton, Tianjin Plastics, Shanghai New Shanghua.Medical Polymers Market is analyzed by product types like Medical resins and fibers, Medical elastomers, Biodegradable plastics, Others and analyzed by demand coverage Medical devices and equipment, Medical packaging, Others (Including tissue engineering and cardio stents)CONNECT WITH OUR EXPERT RESEARCH TEAM TO BUILD CUSTOM RESEARCH ON THIS TOPIC BY CLICKING HEREThe study objectives of this report are:To analyze global Medical Polymers status, future forecast, growth opportunity, key market and key players.To present the Medical Polymers development in various regions like United States, Europe and China.To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their development plan and strategies.To define, describe and forecast the market by product type, market and key regions.The Medical Polymers Market report provides Market Effect Factors Analysis such as Technology Progress/Risk, Substitutes Threat, Customer Preference Change, Economic and Political Environmental Change. 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.Table of Contents:1 Industry Overview2 Medical Polymers Market by Type3 Global Market Demand4 Major Region Market5 Major Companies List6 ConclusionAbout 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: sales@inforgrowth.comPhone: +1-909-329-2808 Global Fiber Optics Market 2018 | Major Kay Players Corning, Furukawa Electric, Optical Cable, Prysmian, Sterlite Technologies, YOFC, Fujikura, FUTONG Group, General Cable Fiber Optics Market https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/3543876-global-fiber-optics-market-research-report-2018 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/3543876-global-fiber-optics-market-research-report-2018 www.wiseguyreports.com WiseGuyRerports.com Presents Global Fiber Optics Market Research Report 2018 New Document to its Studies DatabaseThis report studies the global Fiber Optics market status and forecast, categorizes the global Fiber Optics 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 reportCorningFurukawa ElectricOptical CablePrysmianSterlite TechnologiesYOFCFujikuraFUTONG GroupGeneral CableRequest For Sample Report @Geographically, 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 intoSingle-Mode FiberMultimode FiberOtherOn 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, includingHouseholdIndustrialCommercialOtherThe study objectives of this report are:To analyze and study the global Fiber Optics capacity, production, value, consumption, status (2013-2017) and forecast (2018-2025);Focuses on the key Fiber Optics 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.Complete Report Details @Table Of Contents:1 Fiber Optics Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Fiber Optics1.2 Fiber Optics Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Fiber Optics Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2013-2025)1.2.2 Global Fiber Optics Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20171.2.3 Single-Mode Fiber1.2.3 Multimode FiberOther1.3 Global Fiber Optics Segment by Application1.3.1 Fiber Optics Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2013-2025)1.3.2 Household1.3.3 Industrial1.3.4 Commercial1.3.5 Other1.4 Global Fiber Optics Market by Region (2013-2025)1.4.1 Global Fiber Optics 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 Fiber Optics (2013-2025)1.5.1 Global Fiber Optics Revenue Status and Outlook (2013-2025)1.5.2 Global Fiber Optics Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2013-2025)2 Global Fiber Optics Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Fiber Optics Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.1 Global Fiber Optics Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.2 Global Fiber Optics Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.2 Global Fiber Optics Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.3 Global Fiber Optics Average Price by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.4 Manufacturers Fiber Optics Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Fiber Optics Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Fiber Optics Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Fiber Optics Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion..7 Global Fiber Optics Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 Corning7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 Fiber Optics Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 Corning Fiber Optics Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Furukawa Electric7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 Fiber Optics Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 Furukawa Electric Fiber Optics Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 Optical Cable7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 Fiber Optics Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 Optical Cable Fiber Optics Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.4 Prysmian7.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.4.2 Fiber Optics Product Category, Application and Specification7.4.2.1 Product A7.4.2.2 Product B7.4.3 Prysmian Fiber Optics Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.5 Sterlite Technologies7.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.5.2 Fiber Optics Product Category, Application and Specification7.5.2.1 Product A7.5.2.2 Product B7.5.3 Sterlite Technologies Fiber Optics Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015-2018)7.5.4 Main Business/Business OverviewContinued.CONTACT US:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)ABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.Address:WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India Kaolin Market 2023 Global Key Player; Thiele Kaolin Company, Imerys, I-Minerals, Inc., BASF SE, Quarzwerke GmbH, KaMin LLC., Sibelco, LB MINERALS, LTD, Kaolin AD and AKW Ukrainian Kaolin Company https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/5865 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/kaolin-market-5865 The vast availability of kaolin reserves coupled with their broad application range is expected to add an optimistic outlook on the market growth. Market reports associated to the chemicals and materials industry have been made available by Market Research Future who issues reports on other sectors that have been presently published along with a report on this industry. The market is projected to achieve a high CAGR rate while grossing elevated revenue levels in the forecast period.The stable demand from the paper industry is powering the demand for the kaolin market in terms of new product development. The easy availability of kaolin has enabled competitive pricing for kaolin products which is spurring further expansion of the market. The growing environmental concerns and the requirement for reduction of carbon emissions have influenced the use of biodiesel, which has augmented the market development.Segmental AnalysisThe segmentation of the kaolin market is segmented on the basis of grade, type, and application. On the basis of grade, the market is segmented into hydrous, calcined, pulverized, surface modified, and others. The kaolin market is segmented on the basis of the type into synthetic and natural. On the basis of application, the kaolin market is segmented into ceramics, paper, fiberglass, paints & coatings, pharmaceuticals, construction, plastics, rubber, and others.Get Sample Copy@Detailed Regional AnalysisThe kaolin market is segmented into regions such as Latin America, North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East & Africa. The Asia Pacific region is responsible for the principal market portion both in terms of volume and value owing to the high use of the product especially in the paper industry for packaging. The high export level and packaging of electronics, automotive, and consumer goods have augmented the market development in the region. The growing demand for kaolin from the cement manufacturing industry and pharmaceuticals sector is another driver of the market development globally. The high penetration of the paints & coatings industry in countries such as Japan, China, India is likely to provide a positive stimulus to the market growth. The North American region is the subsequent major region in the kaolin market on account of increased demand for kaolin from the paper packaging industry. The widespread use of kaolin for cement manufacturing is expected to motivate the product demand for the construction sector in the North American region. The demand for kaolin in the European region is growing due to the manufacture of concrete, biodiesel, and paints & coatings. The increasing rate of construction activities in the Latin American region is anticipated to drive the kaolin market in the forecast period. The ongoing infrastructural activities in the GCC nations are motivating the development of the kaolin market in the Middle East region.Competitive AnalysisThe growth trends have been revised in tandem to the customer tastes to achieve major development, and in the long run, productivity. The variation in the services and products is the chief factor intensifying the market's efficiency and controlling the trends that are acquiring distinction in the market. The variety witnessed in terms of strategy creation and execution is changing the development pace of the market. The influential success factors and players preferences are slowly but surely mounting by the strategies being used by market contenders. The state of affairs regarding growth plans has stimulated the market for potential new entrants. The expansion of the market is based on the drivers that are drastically altering the market backdrop.Competitive Analysis Thiele Kaolin Company Imerys I-Minerals, Inc. BASF SE Quarzwerke GmbH KaMin LLC. Sibelco LB MINERALS, LTD Kaolin AD AKW Ukrainian Kaolin CompanyIndustry Updates:Mar 2018 Kaolin which is a wholly-owned Bulgarian subsidiary of Germanys Quarzwerke GmbH, has planned to invest 30 million euro in establishing up a new processing plant in the town of Dulovo, in the country's northeast region. The plant's construction will commence in 2019 and will be completed in 2 years.Intended Audience Kaolin Manufacturers Traders and distributors of kaolin Research and development institutes Potential investors Raw material suppliers Nationalized laboratoryGet Complete Report @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), 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 FutureOffice No. 524/528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com Automotive Tail Light Market Scenario Highlighting Major Drivers & Trends, 2017-2022 | Key Players are Robert Bosch Limited, OSRAM Licht AG, Koninklijke Philips N.V., Valeo SA, etc. https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=3 https://www.factmr.com/report/3/tail-light-market https://www.factmr.com/checkout/3/S https://www.factmr.com/ https://factmrblog.com/ In order to study the various trends and patterns prevailing in the concerned market, Fact.MR has included a new report titled Automotive Tail Light Market Scenario Highlighting Major Drivers & Trends, 2017-2022 to its wide online database including upcoming trends and growth factors. This research assessment offers a clear insight about the influential factors that are expected to transform the global market in the near future. The report studies the Automotive Tail Light Market worldwide, especially in North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, India and Other Regions with production, size, growth, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions. The intelligent report also anticipates that the market would grow at a constructive CAGR until 2022.Request 100 Page Sample Report from Here -Ever-evolving consumer preferences, coupled with increasing mandates from governmental regulatory bodies, are pushing the incorporation of advanced technology solutions into automobiles attracting automakers and technology giants alike. Growing consumer demand for sleek, lightweight, and functional vehicles is fueling innovations in each structural and functional vehicular component, including automotive tail light. With the functionality as well as design becoming imperative to automotive product offerings, manufacturers of automotive tail lights have started to shift their focus from only design and aesthetics to enhanced functionality.Over the five-year assessment period, the global market for automotive tail light has been projected to follow a passive growth curve at a CAGR of 3.8%, reaching the value in excess of US$ 12 Bn by 2022 end.As indicated by the global market intelligence on automotive tail light that has been recently published by Fact.MR, the global market for automotive tail light is among those auto components that is yet to discover its complete functional and aesthetic applicability beyond conventional functional utilities in the automotive space, which will continue to influence the performance of the global automotive tail light market throughout the forecast period.Although tail lights hold a limited application base in the automotive industry, their vital function continues to enable them to remain a key auto component. With rapidly growing efforts by both automakers and automotive tail light manufacturers to dig deeper into the next-generation applicability of automotive tail light, Fact.MR estimates that the market for automotive tail light will possibly witness a series of new growth opportunities over 2017-2022.To View Full Global Market Research Report Click Here -FMRs research report on the global automotive tail light market analyzes the prospects for the overall performance of the automotive tail light market during the examination period, providing pragmatic insights on the scenario of global market for automotive tail light. The key objective of the report on automotive tail light market is to help participants in the global automotive tail light marketplace devise and execute informed developmental strategies through thorough understanding of the automotive tail light space.Automotive Tail Light: Market DefinitionAn automotive taillight is a rearward-facing red light mounted on the back of an automotive. Working in a relay with head lights, automotive tail lights serve a primary function of maintaining the safety aspect of vehicles. With escalating incorporation of advanced technologies in automobile components, automotive tail lights have been undergoing innovation over the past decade creating a slew of potential growth opportunities for automotive tail light manufacturers in the upcoming few years.Competition Analysis: Automotive Tail Light MarketA majority of automotive tail light manufacturers are focusing on tail light functionality improvement by adopting the latest technologies such as LED and OLED. Embracing the technological advances will additionally help manufacturers of automotive tail light achieve attractive design, appealing aesthetics, and avant-garde functionality of automotive tail light.Recently, Hella the electronics and lighting expert, announced the integration of the OLED technology into the rear combination lamps of Audis new flagship car- A8. This innovation involves four upright OLED tail lights in each unit, and serves distinctive attributes for vehicular manufacturers (VMs) with sophisticated lighting functions. According to the lighting technology experts at Hella, the vehicular lighting technology can eliminate the need for additional optics, reflectors, and light guides post adoption of the new OLED technology.Buy Useful Figures about Global Market Report from 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 400, Rockville, MD 20852United StatesEmail: sales@factmr.comWeb:Blog: Diabetic Macular Edema Market Growth By 2027 | Novartis AG, Bayer AG, Allergan Plc., F. Hoffman-La Roche Ltd., Alimera Sciences Inc. https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2697 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/customization-available/rep-gb-2697 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/diabetic-macular-edema-market https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ The global diabetic macular edema (DME) market is projected to register a sluggish expansion at 1.1% CAGR through 2027, according to a report by Future Market Insights (FMI). The report estimates the market to reach US$ 3710.2 Mn in 2017; by 2027 this number is expected to surpass US$ 4,000 Mn.To know key findings Request Sample Report @:An Uptake of Intravitreal Implants by Patients to Drive Growth of the Market in North AmericaNorth America will remain dominant in the global diabetic macular edema market. An uptake of intravitreal implants by new as well as existing patients, who do not show any improvement post-treatment with intravitreal injections, is expected to sustain growth of the market in this region.Although control of diabetes is a health priority in developed North American countries, such as the U.S., less attention is given to DME management, with diabetes-related caregivers tending to focus on treatment of diabetic complications. A major reason behind this is lack of effective treatment for DME in North America. In addition, an error exists between industry sponsored and independently run clinical trials. Most of the independent clinical trials for DME treatment lack long-term results pertaining to safety and efficacy of new combination therapies for DME. These factors are likely to inhibit growth of the market in North America.Diabetic Macular Edema Market in Western Europe to Register the Highest CAGR through 2027The diabetic macular edema market in Western Europe is expected to register a comparatively higher CAGR than other region segments through 2027. Pharmaceutical companies in this region are making substantial investments in research and development, new technologies, and infrastructure in order to capture a market share in the surging burden of eye diseases. This is expected to retain growth of the market in Western Europe.However, patients in Western Europe resist the intake of intravitreal injections of anti-VEGF drugs, which leads to an instant increase in intraocular pressure causing severe pain in the head or eyes. This a major factor impeding growth of the diabetic macular edema market in Western Europe.Request for Report customization @:Anti-VEGF will Remain Preferred Product in the Global Diabetic Macular Edema MarketAnti-VEGF will remain preferred product in the market, with sales estimated to expand at 1% CAGR through 2027. Eylea will continue to be the most lucrative anti-VEGF drug in the market. However, demand for corticosteroids will remain comparatively lower than anti-VEGF during the forecast period.By product form, intravitreal injections will continue to be sought-after in the market, with sales poised to surpass US$ 4,000 Mn by 2027-end. Sales of intravitreal implants will register a comparatively higher CAGR than intravitreal injections through 2027.Hospital pharmacy is estimated to remain the largest distribution channel in the market, as majority of countries across the globe dispense intravitreal injections and implants to outpatients by hospital pharmacies. Retail pharmacy, which mainly provides aliquots of off-label indications such as Avastin prescription, will register a comparatively low CAGR than hospital pharmacy in the market through 2027.Get access to full summary @:Key market players identified in FMIs report include Novartis AG, Bayer AG, Allergan Plc., F. Hoffman-La Roche Ltd., Alimera Sciences Inc., Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. (Bausch & Lomb Inc.)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: Connected Drug Delivery Devices Market Outlook 2017-2027 by Leading Key Players OPKO Health Inc., Bayer AG, 3M Company, West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc., and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2755 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/customization-available/rep-gb-2755 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/connected-drug-delivery-devices-market https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ The market for connected drug delivery devices is foreseen to witness a stellar growth rate of 25.6% from 2015 to 2027 rising to a valuation of US$ 1,304.7 Mn from US$ 132.2 Mn in 2017. According to the analyst of Future Market Insights (FMI), the leading manufacturers of connected drug delivery devices are focusing collaboration with the software companies to assess the cloud data system in their devices. Moreover, it helps the manufacturer to launch the product more conveniently and to enhance their distribution channel. Manufacturers of inhalers to treat asthma and chronic lung disease are racing to develop a new generation of smart devices with sensors to monitor if patients are using their puffers properly. The companies operating in the global connected drug delivery devices market are OPKO Health Inc., Bayer AG, 3M Company, West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc., and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., among others.To know key findings Request Sample Report @:Rapidly evolving technologies, for instance, cloud-based computing models, are enabling the healthcare industry towards a transition to a new architecture. Cloud technology along with advances in mobility and telepresence solutions is expected to create new unwired business models capable of providing healthcare anywhere. The use of cloud technology will increase, aided by the proliferation of mobile health applications to collect and send vital signs from wireless and wired remote patient and personal health monitoring devices. Cloud-based platforms and new IT service models will fundamentally change the healthcare business equations and create opportunities for new players to enter the industry.Growing Demand for Injectable Drug Delivery to Aid Market GrowthThe rising preference for injectable drug delivery is anticipated to drive the market for sterile drugs globally. Self-administration of drugs through usage of pre-filled syringes is one of the ways that can help patients to save the fees given to a caregiver. There is an increased demand for large molecule drugs in pre-filled syringes as compared to small molecule drugs in pre-filled syringesRequest for Report customization @:Following this opportunity, the manufacturers are expected to cash in on profits through introduction of smart injectable drug delivery mediums among their portfolio. The progress is expected to be more prominent in the allergic reactions (Anaphylaxis) indication segment. Further, an upsurge in the number of large molecule drugs that need to be manufactured in injectable format is expected to fuel the growth of the market. Likewise, data generated by bioavailability studies is proving to present a definitive relation between pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics for such sterile drugs, which is also expected to offer support to the growth of the market.Mobile applications are also being used for the treatment of patients suffering from Alzheimer, Diabetes, COPD or Asthma. Mobile applications with the use of GPS help to track the patient location. If the patient is travelling away from the home, the caretaker can track the exact location of the patient and also track the consumption of dosage by using mobile application. Most of these applications have been developed for the cloud. Placing the wireless solution on a cloud storage system helps with connectivity issues and makes it easier to communicate across different information regimes.Get access to full summary @:Limited Knowledge and Adoption Rate among Patients to Hinder Growth RateThe deployment of connected drug delivery devices is not yet widely promoted within the public health system. This is attributed to the high cost of the product, limited reimbursement, and dearth of awareness among the patients regarding the technology. Moreover, complexity and limited availability of the device further reduces penetration. For instance, interpretation of insulin delivery trend for analysis, is considered to be useful however, because of the complicated user interface, the patients cannot interpret them smoothly. As per the current scenario, such obstacles might directly have an adverse effect on the overall growth of the connected drug delivery devices market.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: Global Mobile Advertising Software Market growth at a CAGR +15 % during forecast period 2018-2022 https://www.researchnreports.com/request_sample.php?id=190588 https://www.researchnreports.com/ask_for_discount.php?id=190588 https://www.researchnreports.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=190588 www.researchnreports.com Mobile networks identify related mobile profiles and preferences and displays corresponding advertisements when consumers download and uses data services like games, applications (apps) or ring tones. Mobile advertising means transferring of digital advertising content to mobile device users. It is cost-effective and highly targeted towards a specific group of mobile users. Mobile Advertising Software Market have realized the opportunities to use the mobile channel to reach the mass audience or an individual virtually from anywhere and anytime. Further, it enables advertisers to personalize and customize advertising for mobile users.The Mobile Advertising Software Market is expected to reach USD +217 billion by the end of 2022 with +15 % CAGR during forecast period 2018-2022.Get Sample Copy of this Report @Importance is given to the studies of global regions, such as North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Japan, China, and India, to elaborate on the scope as well as on the competitions at a worldwide level. Future of the industries is predicted on the basis of the current scenario, profit, and growth opportunity. To enlarge the businesses rapidly, it focuses on global competitors such as Mobile Advertising Software Market.Top Key Vendors in Market:Marin Software, DoubleClick, Sizmek, Kenshoo, Choozle, MediaMath, AdRollAsk for discount@Global Mobile Advertising Software Market by Devices, smartphone segment holds the largest share due to high penetration rate of smartphone devices across the world. The smartphone segment is also expected to be fastest growing segment in the forecast period due to increasing adoption rate of smartphones in the emerging economies such as India and Brazil. The search advertising type is majorly preferred by the sectors such as BFSI, telecommunication and IT, and FMCG.The business and financial overview of various companies such as Mobile Advertising Software Market have been analyzed. In addition to this, it gives more focus on different government policies and political stability around the Mobile Advertising Software. It includes commercial factors, which are responsible for the growth of the businesses.Table of Content:Mobile Advertising Software Market Research Report 2018-2022Chapter 1: Mobile Advertising Software IntroductionChapter 2: Mobile Advertising Software Market OverviewChapter 3: Global Mobile Advertising Software Analysis by Key PlayersChapter 4: Global Market Size and Type by ApplicationChapter 5: Global Mobile Advertising Software Market Development StatusChapter 6: Mobile Advertising Software Effect Factors Analysis.Chapter 7: Production, Revenue by RegionChapter 8: Mobile Advertising Software Market ForecastChapter 9: Distributor Analysis of Global Software MarketChapter 10: Mobile Advertising Software Market Industry 2018-2022Chapter 11: Telemetry Monitoring System Market with Contact InformationChapter 12: Feasibility Analysis of Mobile Advertising Software MarketFor more Information@About Research N Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Where counting on a legitimate board company for your selections will become critical. Research N Reports specializes in enterprise evaluation, marketplace forecasts and as a result getting great reports overlaying all verticals, whether be it gaining angle on modern market situations or being in advance inside the cut throat Global opposition.Contact:(Research N Reports)10916, Gold Point Dr, Houston, TX, Pin - 77064,Sunny Denis(Sales Manager),+1-8886316977,sales@researchnreports.com Mohawk Industries, Inc. (U.S.), Shaw Industries Group (U.S.), Lowes Companies, Inc. (U.S.), Taekett S.A. (France), Home Depot, Inc. (U.S.) are the Renowned Players in Carpets & Rugs Market - Report by MarketsandMarkets Carpets & Rugs Market, Carpets & Rugs https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/carpet-rug-market-62048331.html https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=62048331 https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsampleNew.asp?id=62048331 According to recent research "Carpets & Rugs Market by Type (Tufted, Woven, Needle-punched, Knotted), Material (Nylon, Polyester, Polypropylene), End-use Sector (Residential, Non-residential, Automotive & Transportation), and Region - Global Forecast to 2022", published by MarrketsandMarkets, The carpets & rugs market size is projected to grow from USD 91.60 Billion in 2017 to reach USD 112.69 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 4.2%.Browse 156 market data tables and 33 figures spread through 193 pages and in-depth TOC on "Carpets & Rugs Market - Global Forecast to 2022"Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.The carpets & rugs market is growing rapidly in accordance with the growth in the residential and non-residential sectors, globally. Factors such as rise in renovation & remodeling activities, growth in interest of consumers toward interior decoration, and rapid urbanization & globalization are largely contributing toward the growth of the carpets & rugs market. The carpets & rugs market has been classified on the basis of type, material, end-use sector, and region. It has experienced continuous progress with regard to acquisitions and expansions, to expand its geographical reach in the interior decoration segment of the construction industry. According to MarketsandMarkets, the global market for carpets & rugs, in terms of value, is projected to reach USD 112.69 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 4.2%.The growth of carpets & rugs market was largely influenced by acquisitions and expansions, in the past six years. The years between 2011 and 2017 witnessed a large number of acquisitions adopted by top players in the market. Expansions also formed an essential part of their strategies, which led to the flow of considerable income within the company. These strategies formed an important part of growth in emerging markets. The major players include companies such as Mohawk Industries, Inc. (U.S.), Shaw Industries group (U.S.), Lowes Companies, Inc. (U.S.), Taekett S.A. (France), and Home Depot, Inc. (U.S.). The other prominent players in the market include Interface, Inc. (U.S.), Dixie Group, Inc. (U.S.), Orientals Weavers Company for Carpets (Egypt), Tai Ping Carpets International Limited (China), and Victoria PLC (U.K.).Download PDF Brochure@Mohawk industries, Inc. (U.S.) held the leading position in the global carpets & rugs market in 2016. The company has maintained its leadership position through its strong distribution network across Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Americas, and emerging markets. Mohawk industries, Inc. (U.S.) is among the leading manufacturers of carpets & rugs for many of the markets it operates in. Its operations are divided into three business sectors, namely, Flooring NA, Global Ceramic, and Flooring RoW. The company caters to varied application sectors such as housing, education, healthcare, offices, retails & hospitality, and sports. Also, it develops eco-friendly products and solutions in the carpets & rugs market that are skid-free and easy to maintain.Shaw Industries Group (U.S.) is a global provider of carpets & rugs solutions. The company manufactures and supplies flooring products for various applications. Shaw Industries Group adopted expansion as its key strategy to gain a competitive advantage in the market. In December 2016, Shaw Industries Group, Inc. (U.S.) constructed a new carpet tile manufacturing facility in Adairsville, Georgia with an investment of USD 85.0 million. This expansion helped the company to expand its geographical reach and enhance its production capacity.Request Sample@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.MarketsandMarketss flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "Knowledgestore" 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.Mr. Shelly SinghMarketsandMarkets INC.630 Dundee RoadSuite 430Northbrook, IL 60062USA: 1-888-600-6441newsletter@marketsandmarkets.com Lung Cancer Surgery Market Growing Rapidly Due to The Increase in Lung Cancer Patients: Global Key players (Covidien PLC, Ethicon US LLC, AngioDynamics Inc., Intuitive Surgical Inc., Accuray Inc) https://www.reportconsultant.com/request_sample.php?id=2879 https://www.reportconsultant.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=2879 https://www.reportconsultant.com/ask_for_discount.php?id=2879 www.reportconsultant.com The increase in death in Cancer mainly attributed to Lungs Cancer. The tumor is formatted due to the uncontrolled growth of cells in lungs tissues. This will lead to lungs Cancer. Two types of lungs cancers are there as: Non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC) and Small cell lung cancers (SCLC). NSCLC occurs 80% of total shares and SCLC has 20% of the shares.87% of lungs cancers occurs due to tobacco, smoking, passive smoking, and inhalation. This is the main factor of increase in growth of the Lung Cancer Surgery MarketMarket is anticipated to reach USD +29 Billion at a CAGR of +6% during the forecast period.Request FREE PDF: @The Major driving factors of the Lung Cancer Surgery Market are inherited genetic predisposition and inhalation of carcinogenic substance. Tobacco, arsenic, radiations such as X-rays and UV rays, and asbestos are some of the examples of carcinogens.The Key regions for the market are North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa.The Highest incident of lung cancer is observed at North America followed by Asia Pacific.By End-User Market segmentation as Hospitals, Adult Lung Cancer Surgery Centers, Ambulatory Surgical CentersMajor Key players which are leading the global Lung Cancer Surgery Market are Covidien PLC, Ethicon US LLC, AngioDynamics Inc., Intuitive Surgical Inc., Accuray Inc., Teleflex Inc., Scanlan International Inc., Olympus Corporation, KARL STORZ GmbH, Ackermann Instrumente GmbH, and Trokamed GmbHRequest for CUSTOM Report: @Engrossed market research procedures help organizations in clearly evaluating the most decisive stakes in the market that need to the measured for effective decision making. With the wide-ranging market data relating to the vital rudiments and segment of the Lung Cancer Surgery Market that can influence the growth of the market.Table of Contents:1. Lung Cancer Surgery Market Overview2. Up Down Stream Industry Analysis3. Market Analysis4. Productions Supply Sales Demand market Status and Forecast5. Key Manufacturers Analysis6. Industry Development Trend7. Channels Development Proposals Analysis8. Market New Project Investment Feasibility Analysis9. Lung Cancer Surgery Market Research Feasibility AnalysisAvail A Discount Up To 50%:If you need anything more than these then let us know and we will prepare the report according to your requirement.About Company:Report Consultant, The Global Ruler in Analytic, Research and Advisory which will encourage you to renovate your business and reshape your approach. With us you can take courageous decision for your business. Using variety of methods and experienced skills we provide you the appropriate analysis figures.You will have a great experience of innovative solutions and outcomes with our Reports. Our Business is spreading all over the world with our Market Research reports and Digital Transformation skills. Thus, we provide greater value for clients by presenting advanced opportunities in the Global Market.Contact us:Rebecca Parker(Report Consultant)Akasaka biz tower,5-3-1 akasaka minato-ku,Tokyo, JapanContact No- +81-368444299sales@reportconsultant.com Blockchain Identity Management Market SWOT Analysis with Amazing Growing CAGR +83.2% and Industry Competitors (IBM, Amazon Web Services, Civic Technologies, Bitfury, Oracle, Microsoft, Evernym, Inc,) https://databridgemarketresearch.com/request-a-sample/?dbmr=global-blockchain-identity-management-market https://databridgemarketresearch.com/toc/?dbmr=global-blockchain-identity-management-market https://databridgemarketresearch.com/inquire-before-buying/?dbmr=global-blockchain-identity-management-market https://databridgemarketresearch.com/speak-to-analyst/?dbmr=global-blockchain-identity-management-market http://databridgemarketresearch.com/reports/global-innovation-management-market/ Blockchain Identity Management Market 2018 Global Industry report provides the latest market statistics, industry growth, size, share, trends, as well as driving factors. The Blockchain Identity Management report further covers the extensive analysis of the upcoming progress of the Blockchain Identity Management Market. The detailed overview of the market segments, product description, Blockchain Identity Management applications is presented in this report.The global blockchain identity management market is expected to reach USD 7308.4 million by 2025, from USD 57.6 million in 2017, growing at a CAGR of 83.2% during the forecast period of 2018 to 2025.For In depth Information Get Sample Copy of this Report@TABLE OF CONTENTSPART 01: EXECUTIVE SUMMARYPART 02: SCOPE OF THE REPORTPART 03: RESEARCH METHODOLOGYPART 04: MARKET LANDSCAPE Market ecosystem Market characteristics Market segmentation analysisPART 05: PIPELINE ANALYSIS Pipeline analysisPART 06: MARKET SIZING Market definition Market sizing Market size and forecastPART 07: FIVE FORCES ANALYSIS Bargaining power of buyers Bargaining power of suppliers Threat of new entrants Threat of substitutes Threat of rivalry Market conditionPART 08: MARKET SEGMENTATION Segmentation Comparison Market opportunityPART 09: CUSTOMER LANDSCAPEPART 10: REGIONAL LANDSCAPE Geographical segmentation Regional comparison North America South America Europe MEA APAC Market opportunityPART 11: DECISION FRAMEWORKPART 12: DRIVERS AND CHALLENGES Market drivers Market challengesPART 13: MARKET TRENDSPART 14: VENDOR LANDSCAPE Overview Landscape disruptionPART 15: VENDOR ANALYSIS Vendors covered Vendor classification Market positioning of vendorsPART 16: APPENDIX List of abbreviationsSee the complete table of contents and list of exhibits, as well as selected illustrations and example pages from this report.FULL READY TOC | AVAILABLE AT :Top Key Players: IBM Amazon Web Services Civic Technologies Bitfury Oracle Microsoft Evernym, Inc., KYC-Chain Factom NETKI ShoCard Nodalblock BTL Group (interbit) BITNATION Edge BlockVerify OriginalMy Blockchain Neuroware Coinfirm uPort Peer Ledger Inc. Tradle, Inc. - KYC on blockchain Cambridge Blockchain, LLC UniquID Inc among others.Global Blockchain Identity Management Market By Provider (Application Provider, Middleware Provider, Infrastructure Provider), By Vertical (BFSI, Government, Healthcare and Lifesciences, Real Estate), By Geography (North America, South America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa) Industry Trends and Forecast to 2025Complete report on Global Blockchain Identity Management Market Research Report 2018-2025 spread across 350 Pages, profiling Top companies and supports with tables and figuresMarket Definition: Global Blockchain Identity Management MarketBlockchain identity management is the technology which manages a large amount of data in the organisations. It helps in providing people more proactive controller over their data. There are various benefits of block chain identity, such as it controls personal data, verifies data by various counterparties, reduces time to manage large amount of data from data ware houses and others. There are various applications of blockchain identity management in our life, such as voting system in election time, online money transfer, digitally data identification, updating stock marketer and others.According to an article published in 2015 by Solutions Review., Microsoft (U.S.) Company had announced to developed block chain identity system. It provides decentralized identity management platform to get better secure users digital identities. Furthermore it also provides third-party apps along with providing services to control over access users data.Hence, due to various advantages it will affect the growth of market in future.Major Market Drivers and Restraints: Increasing demand for self-sovereign identification Growing demand for blockchain identity solutions across industry verticals Extensive applications of blockchain identity solutions in banking, cybersecurity, and iot Increasing demand for self-sovereign identification concerns related to the authenticity of usersKey Insights in the report: Historical and current market size and projection up to 2025 Market trends impacting the growth of the global Blockchain Identity Management market Analyze and forecast the Blockchain Identity Management market on the basis of applications and reactor type Trends of key regional and country-level markets for applications and reactor type Company profiling of key players which includes business operations, product and services, geographic presence, recent developments and key financial analysisInquire Before Buying @Customize report of "Global Blockchain Identity Management Market" as per customers requirement also available.Market Segmentations:Global Blockchain Identity Management Market is segmented on the basis of Provider Vertical GeographyMarket Segmentations in Details:By Provider Application Provider Middleware Provider Infrastructure ProviderBy Vertical BFSI Government Healthcare and Lifesciences Real EstateBy Geography, North America South America Europe Asia-Pacific Middle East & AfricaCompetitive Analysis: Global Blockchain Identity Management MarketThe global blockchain identity management market is highly fragmented and the major players have used various strategies such as new product launches, expansions, agreements, joint ventures, partnerships, acquisitions, and others to increase their footprints in this market. The report includes market shares of blockchain identity management market for global, Europe, North America, Asia Pacific and South America.Speak to Author of the report @Other ReportGlobal Innovation Management Market Industry Trends and Forecast to 2024Global Innovation Management Market, By Geography; Type (Software, Services); Organization Size (Large Enterprises, Small & Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs)); Deployment Model (On-premises, Cloud); Application (Product Research & Development Platforms, Marketing, Design, Idea Platforms, Collective Intelligence & Prediction Platforms, Human Resource & Freelancers Platforms); Vertical (Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, IT, Media & Communication Technology, Aerospace & Defense, Public Sector & Education, Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals, Retail & Consumer Goods, Automotive & Manufacturing, Transportation & Logistics) Industry Trends and Forecast to 2024Report Access:About Data Bridge Market Research:Data Bridge Market Research set forth itself as an unconventional and neoteric Market research and consulting firm with unparalleled level of resilience and integrated approaches. We are determined to unearth the best market opportunities and foster efficient information for your business to thrive in the market. Data Bridge endeavors to provide appropriate solutions to the complex business challenges and initiates an effortless decision-making process.Contact:Data Bridge Market ResearchTel: +1-888-387-2818Email: sopan.gedam@databridgemarketresearch.com Fiber To The Premises Market 2018 : Top Key Players Like Cincinnati Bell (U.S.), Cellular South Inc. (U.S.), Verizon Wireless (U.S.), AT&T Inc. (U.S.), Cox Communications (U.S.) https://www.reportconsultant.com/request_sample.php?id=2594 https://www.reportconsultant.com/ask_for_discount.php?id=2594 https://www.reportconsultant.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=2594 www.reportconsultant.com Report Consultant publicizes the addition of a new research report, titled Global Fiber To The Premises Market Report. This study presents a wide-ranging summary of the global market and throws light on the projected growth rate, and expected size of the market. The current trends, liking of consumers, and key prospects in the market have also been summarized in this study. Fiber optic cables are made of one or more optical fibers, which are designed to carry light. Fiber to the Premises runs over a fiber-optic cable from the telephone exchange, all the way to inside your property.The global fiber to the premises market which was represented a CAGR of approximately +14% in the midst of the estimate time span of 2018-2023.Request A Sample Copy Of Report: Click HereAbout Fiber To The Premises:FTTP, also called Fiber to the Home (FTTH) is a pure fiber-optic cable connection running from an Internet Service Provider (ISP) directly to the user's home or business. Fiber optic cables are made of one or more optical fibers, which are designed to carry light. Fiber to the Premises runs over a fiber-optic cable from the telephone exchange, all the way to inside your property. The fiber from the exchange is normally terminated on the outside wall of a home and a short fiber lead run inside to the fiber modem, which then offers an Ethernet connection to a broadband router.Top Key Players:Cincinnati Bell (U.S.), Cellular South Inc. (U.S.), Verizon Wireless (U.S.), AT&T Inc. (U.S.), Cox Communications (U.S.), 3M (U.S.), CenturyLink Inc. (U.S.), Cisco Systems Inc. (U.S.), Corning Incorporated (U.S.) among others.Segment By Regions/Countries, This Fiber To The Premises Market Report Covers United States Europe China Japan Southeast Asia IndiaThe competitive landscape of the Global Fiber To The Premises Market has been scrutinized on the basis of market share exploration of key players. Thorough market data about the factors is evaluated to help merchants take premeditated decisions that can reinforce their positions in the market and lead to more active and greater stake in the global market. Assessing and cost teardown exploration for products and service offerings of key players has also been commenced for the study. The report studies the global market, evaluates and examines the progress status and estimate the same in North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East & Africa and Latin America.Get Upto 60% Discount: Click HereThe report drafts the important market players which are thriving in thisGlobal Fiber To The Premises Market. Moreover, it offers extensive information about decisive firms and its business outline, product description, financial overview, current growths, and contact information. The complications antagonized by the companies, the development helping them to accomplish the highest level in the market, and the strategies executed by each of the market players to promote their products have been given. With the assistance of such data, an investor or an embryonic player in the Global Fiber To The Premises Market is fortified to make considerate decisions leading to their advantage or profit.Market Segment By End Users: Personal Commercial SMEs Large EnterprisesMarket Segment By Type: Broadband PON (BPON) Gigabit PON (GPON) Ethernet PON (EPON)Market Segment By Verticals: IT & Telecommunication Government Transportation Industrial Aerospace & Defence OthersFor More Information: Click HereIn This Study, The Years Considered To Estimate The Market Size Of Fiber To The Premises Are As Follows:History Year: 2015-2018Base Year: 2018Estimated Year: 2018Forecast Year 2018 to 2023Table Of Content:The Global Fiber To The Premises Market Report Contains:1. Global market overview2. Global market competition by manufacturers, type and application3. USA/China/Japan/Europe/India and Southeast Asia are the regional analysis of fiber to the premises (volume, value and sales price)4. Analysis of global market by manufacturer5. Fiber to the premises manufacturing cost analysis6. Industrial chain, sourcing strategy and downstream buyers7. Marketing strategy analysis, distributors/traders8. Market effect factors analysis9. Global market forecast (2018-2023)10. Conclusion of the global fiber to the premises market11. AppendixAbout Us:Report Consultant - A global leader in analytics, research and advisory that can assist you to renovate your business and modify your approach. With us, you will learn to take decisions intrepidly. We make sense of drawbacks, opportunities, circumstances, estimations and information using our experienced skills and verified methodologies.Our research reports will give you an exceptional experience of innovative solutions and outcomes. We have effectively steered businesses all over the world with our market research reports and are outstandingly positioned to lead digital transformations. Thus, we craft greater value for clients by presenting advanced opportunities in the global market.Contact us:Rebecca Parker(Report Consultant)Akasaka biz tower,5-3-1 akasaka minato-ku,Tokyo, JapanContact No: +81-368444299sales@reportconsultant.com Global Organic Ice Cream Market 2018 Key Players: Amul, Danone, Arla Foods UK Plc., Dairy Farmers of America Inc., Parmalat S.P.A. Organic Ice Cream Market https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/3543736-global-organic-ice-cream-market-research-report-2018 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/enquiry/3543736-global-organic-ice-cream-market-research-report-2018 Organic Ice Cream Market:WiseGuyReports.com adds Organic Ice Cream Market 2018 Global Analysis, Growth, Trends and Opportunities Research Report Forecasting 2025 reports tits database.Executive SummaryThis report studies the global Organic Ice Cream market status and forecast, categorizes the global Organic Ice Cream market size (value & volume) by manufacturers, type, application, and region. This report focuses on the top manufacturers in North America, Europe, Japan, China, and other regions (India, Southeast Asia).The major manufacturers covered in this reportAmulDanoneArla Foods UK Plc.Dairy Farmers of America Inc.Parmalat S.P.ADean Foods CompanyGroupe Lactalis SAFonterra Group Cooperative LimitedKraft FoodsMeiji Dairies Corp.Megmilk Snow BrandOrganic ValleySancor Cooperativas Unidas LimitedRoyal FrieslandCampina N.V.Geographically, 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 intoWhole MilkSkimmed MilkCreamSweetening & Flavoring AgentOn 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, includingHypermarket & SupermarketFood & Drink SpecialistsConvenience StoresRequest Sample Report @The study objectives of this report are:To analyze and study the global Organic Ice Cream capacity, production, value, consumption, status (2013-2017) and forecast (2018-2025);Focuses on the key Organic Ice Cream 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 Organic Ice Cream 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 StakeholdersOrganic Ice Cream ManufacturersOrganic Ice Cream Distributors/Traders/WholesalersOrganic Ice Cream Subcomponent ManufacturersIndustry AssociationDownstream VendorsAvailable CustomizationsWith the given market data, We 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 Organic Ice Cream market, by end-use.Detailed analysis and profiles of additional market players.Table of ContentsGlobal Organic Ice Cream Market Research Report 20181 Organic Ice Cream Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Organic Ice Cream1.2 Organic Ice Cream Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Organic Ice Cream Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2013-2025)1.2.2 Global Organic Ice Cream Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20171.2.3 Whole Milk1.2.4 Skimmed Milk1.2.5 CreamSweetening & Flavoring Agent1.4 Global Organic Ice Cream Segment by Application1.4.1 Organic Ice Cream Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2013-2025)1.3.2 Hypermarket & Supermarket1.3.3 Food & Drink Specialists1.3.4 Convenience Stores1.5 Global Organic Ice Cream Market by Region (2013-2025)1.5.1 Global Organic Ice Cream Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2013-2025)1.5.2 North America Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.5.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.5.4 China Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.5.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.5.6 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.5.7 India Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.6 Global Market Size (Value) of Organic Ice Cream (2013-2025)1.6.1 Global Organic Ice Cream Revenue Status and Outlook (2013-2025)1.6.2 Global Organic Ice Cream Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2013-2025)2 Global Organic Ice Cream Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Organic Ice Cream Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.1 Global Organic Ice Cream Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.2 Global Organic Ice Cream Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.2 Global Organic Ice Cream Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.3 Global Organic Ice Cream Average Price by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.4 Manufacturers Organic Ice Cream Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Organic Ice Cream Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Organic Ice Cream Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Organic Ice Cream Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Organic Ice Cream Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2013-2018)3.1 Global Organic Ice Cream Capacity and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.2 Global Organic Ice Cream Production and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.3 Global Organic Ice Cream Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.4 Global Organic Ice Cream Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.5 North America Organic Ice Cream Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.6 Europe Organic Ice Cream Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.7 China Organic Ice Cream Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.8 Japan Organic Ice Cream Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.9 Southeast Asia Organic Ice Cream Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.10 India Organic Ice Cream Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)4 Global Organic Ice Cream Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2013-2018)4.1 Global Organic Ice Cream Consumption by Region (2013-2018)4.2 North America Organic Ice Cream Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.3 Europe Organic Ice Cream Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.4 China Organic Ice Cream Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.5 Japan Organic Ice Cream Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.6 Southeast Asia Organic Ice Cream Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.7 India Organic Ice Cream Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)5 Global Organic Ice Cream Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Organic Ice Cream Production and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)5.2 Global Organic Ice Cream Revenue and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)5.3 Global Organic Ice Cream Price by Type (2013-2018)5.4 Global Organic Ice Cream 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 Industrial Waste Management 2018 Global Market Key Players Casella Waste Systems, Waste Connections, Clean Harbors, Perma-Fix, Suez Environnement, Progressive Waste Solutions Analysis And Forecast To 2023 Industrial Waste Management Market 2018 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/2482809-global-industrial-waste-management-industry-market-research-report https://www.wiseguyreports.com/enquiry/2482809-global-industrial-waste-management-industry-market-research-report Industrial Waste Management Market 2018Wiseguyreports.Com Adds Industrial Waste Management Global Market Demand, Growth, Opportunities, Analysis of Top Key Players and Forecast to 2023 To Its Research Database.Description:Based on the Industrial Waste Management industrial chain, this report mainly elaborate the definition, types, applications and major players of Industrial Waste Management market in details. Deep analysis about market status (2012-2017), enterprise competition pattern, advantages and disadvantages of enterprise Products, industry development trends (2017-2022), regional industrial layout characteristics and macroeconomic policies, industrial policy has also be included. From raw materials to downstream buyers of this industry will be analyzed scientifically, the feature of product circulation and sales channel will be presented as well. In a word, this report will help you to establish a panorama of industrial development and characteristics of the Industrial Waste Management market.The Industrial Waste Management market can be split based on product types, major applications, and important regions.Major Players in Industrial Waste Management market are:Casella Waste SystemsWaste ConnectionsClean HarborsPerma-FixSuez EnvironnementRepublic ServicesProgressive Waste SolutionsRumpkeWaste Management Inc.TradebeUS EcologyStericycleHeritage Environmental ServicesVeolia EnvironnementRequest for Sample Report @Major Regions play vital role in Industrial Waste Management market are:North AmericaEuropeChinaJapanMiddle East & AfricaIndiaSouth AmericaOthersMost important types of Industrial Waste Management products covered in this report are:TransferLandfillCollectionMost widely used downstream fields of Industrial Waste Management market covered in this report are:Metal MiningPetroleumPrimary MetalsChemicalsEnquiry before Buying @If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Table of Content:Global Industrial Waste Management Industry Market Research Report1 Industrial Waste Management Introduction and Market Overview1.1 Objectives of the Study1.2 Definition of Industrial Waste Management1.3 Industrial Waste Management Market Scope and Market Size Estimation1.3.1 Market Concentration Ratio and Market Maturity Analysis1.3.2 Global Industrial Waste Management Value ($) and Growth Rate from 2012-20221.4 Market Segmentation1.4.1 Types of Industrial Waste Management1.4.2 Applications of Industrial Waste Management1.4.3 Research Regions1.4.3.1 North America Industrial Waste Management Production Value ($) and Growth Rate (2012-2017)1.4.3.2 Europe Industrial Waste Management Production Value ($) and Growth Rate (2012-2017)1.4.3.3 China Industrial Waste Management Production Value ($) and Growth Rate (2012-2017)1.4.3.4 Japan Industrial Waste Management Production Value ($) and Growth Rate (2012-2017)1.4.3.5 Middle East & Africa Industrial Waste Management Production Value ($) and Growth Rate (2012-2017)1.4.3.6 India Industrial Waste Management Production Value ($) and Growth Rate (2012-2017)1.4.3.7 South America Industrial Waste Management Production Value ($) and Growth Rate (2012-2017)1.5 Market Dynamics1.5.1 Drivers1.5.1.1 Emerging Countries of Industrial Waste Management1.5.1.2 Growing Market of Industrial Waste Management1.5.2 Limitations1.5.3 Opportunities1.6 Industry News and Policies by Regions1.6.1 Industry News1.6.2 Industry Policies..8 Competitive Landscape8.1 Competitive Profile8.2 Casella Waste Systems8.2.1 Company Profiles8.2.2 Industrial Waste Management Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.2.2.1 Product Introduction8.2.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.2.3 Casella Waste Systems Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.2.4 Casella Waste Systems Market Share of Industrial Waste Management Segmented by Region in 20168.3 Waste Connections8.3.1 Company Profiles8.3.2 Industrial Waste Management Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.3.2.1 Product Introduction8.3.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.3.3 Waste Connections Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.3.4 Waste Connections Market Share of Industrial Waste Management Segmented by Region in 20168.4 Clean Harbors8.4.1 Company Profiles8.4.2 Industrial Waste Management Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.4.2.1 Product Introduction8.4.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.4.3 Clean Harbors Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.4.4 Clean Harbors Market Share of Industrial Waste Management Segmented by Region in 20168.5 Perma-Fix8.5.1 Company Profiles8.5.2 Industrial Waste Management Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.5.2.1 Product Introduction8.5.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.5.3 Perma-Fix Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.5.4 Perma-Fix Market Share of Industrial Waste Management Segmented by Region in 20168.6 Suez Environnement8.6.1 Company Profiles8.6.2 Industrial Waste Management Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.6.2.1 Product Introduction8.6.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.6.3 Suez Environnement Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.6.4 Suez Environnement Market Share of Industrial Waste Management Segmented by Region in 20168.7 Republic Services8.7.1 Company Profiles8.7.2 Industrial Waste Management Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.7.2.1 Product Introduction8.7.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.7.3 Republic Services Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.7.4 Republic Services Market Share of Industrial Waste Management Segmented by Region in 20168.8 Progressive Waste Solutions8.8.1 Company Profiles8.8.2 Industrial Waste Management Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.8.2.1 Product Introduction8.8.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.8.3 Progressive Waste Solutions Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.8.4 Progressive Waste Solutions Market Share of Industrial Waste Management Segmented by Region in 20168.9 Rumpke8.9.1 Company Profiles8.9.2 Industrial Waste Management Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.9.2.1 Product Introduction8.9.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.9.3 Rumpke Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.9.4 Rumpke Market Share of Industrial Waste Management Segmented by Region in 20168.10 Waste Management Inc.8.10.1 Company Profiles8.10.2 Industrial Waste Management Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.10.2.1 Product Introduction8.10.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.10.3 Waste Management Inc. Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.10.4 Waste Management Inc. Market Share of Industrial Waste Management Segmented by Region in 20168.11 Tradebe8.11.1 Company Profiles8.11.2 Industrial Waste Management Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.11.2.1 Product Introduction8.11.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.11.3 Tradebe Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.11.4 Tradebe Market Share of Industrial Waste Management Segmented by Region in 20168.12 US Ecology8.12.1 Company Profiles8.12.2 Industrial Waste Management Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.12.2.1 Product Introduction8.12.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.12.3 US Ecology Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.12.4 US Ecology Market Share of Industrial Waste Management Segmented by Region in 20168.13 Stericycle8.13.1 Company Profiles8.13.2 Industrial Waste Management Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.13.2.1 Product Introduction8.13.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.13.3 Stericycle Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.13.4 Stericycle Market Share of Industrial Waste Management Segmented by Region in 20168.14 Heritage Environmental Services8.14.1 Company Profiles8.14.2 Industrial Waste Management Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.14.2.1 Product Introduction8.14.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.14.3 Heritage Environmental Services Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.14.4 Heritage Environmental Services Market Share of Industrial Waste Management Segmented by Region in 20168.15 Veolia Environnement8.15.1 Company Profiles8.15.2 Industrial Waste Management Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.15.2.1 Product Introduction8.15.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.15.3 Veolia Environnement Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.15.4 Veolia Environnement Market Share of Industrial Waste Management Segmented by Region in 2016Continued..Contact US:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)About Us:Wise Guy Reports Is Part Of The Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. And Offers Premium Progressive Statistical Surveying, Market Research Reports, Analysis & Forecast Data For Industries And Governments Around The Globe. Wise Guy Reports Features An Exhaustive List Of Market Research Reports From Hundreds Of Publishers Worldwide. We Boast A Database Bikinis Pantiesnning Virtually Every Market Category And An Even More Comprehensive Collection Of Market Research Reports Under These Categories And Sub-Categories.Addres:: Wise Guy Research Consultants Pvt Ltd: Pune 411028: Maharashtra,: Ph: +91 841 198 5042 Lung Cancer Therapeutics Market Latest Development By - Eli Lilly and Company, Sanofi, Pfizer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Pfizer, Celgene, GSK, Roche, AstraZeneca, Array BioPharma Inc., Agennix, Lung Cancer Therapeutics Market https://databridgemarketresearch.com/request-a-sample/?dbmr=global-lung-cancer-therapeutics-market https://databridgemarketresearch.com/speak-to-analyst/?dbmr=global-lung-cancer-therapeutics-market https://databridgemarketresearch.com/toc/?dbmr=global-lung-cancer-therapeutics-market https://databridgemarketresearch.com/inquire-before-buying/?dbmr=global-lung-cancer-therapeutics-market There are several global sectors which are best in making the best revenue for Lung Cancer Therapeutics market in the industry and several top players are dominating the market with the help of their skills and knowledge in the Lung Cancer Therapeutics market. This report gives a same amount of knowledge in about market definition, classifications, applications, and engagements or be it the top players moves like their recent product launches, their researches, joint ventures, merges, and accusations. By the help of SWOT analysis this report provides with a comprehensive insight about the Lung Cancer Therapeutics markets restrains and drivers all the keeping the report systematic and providing with the company profiles.For In-Depth Review | Get Sample Copy@Lung Cancer Therapeutics Market is expected to growing at a CAGR of 12.5% during the forecast period of 2018 to 2025. The upcoming market report contains data for historic years 2014 & 2015, the base year of calculation is 2016 and the forecast period is 2018 to 2025.Market Key Developments:In April 2018:- AstraZeneca announced that US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Tagrisso for the 1st-line treatment of patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumours have epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations, (exon 19 deletions or exon 21 L858R mutations), as detected by an FDA-approved test. The approval is based on results from the Phase III FLAURA trial, which were presented at the European Society of Medical Oncology 2017 Congress.Analysis of Lung Cancer Therapeutics Market:Production Analysis: Lung Cancer Therapeutics Market covers the piece of the overall industry share, different, regions, types and applications.Segmentation and Sub-Segmentation Analysis: Lung Cancer Therapeutics Market targets the right product to the right customers at the right time and gives the marketers the knowledge of the target audiences requirement.Production Analysis: It covers the market share of the product, production process, different regions, types and applications as well as product specification and price analysis of Lung Cancer Therapeutics Market key players.Trends in the Lung Cancer Therapeutics Market: It determines developing trends and important changes of a market in the given time. The trends are classified into long-time, medium time, and short time frames.Supply and Consumption: The Market section specifies the gap between supply and consumption. In addition, it also figures outs import and export.Major Players of Lung Cancer Therapeutics Market: Profiles of various leading players of the industry with respect to their company profile, product portfolio, capacity, price, cost and revenue are discussed in this report.Speak To Industry Experts, Request For Details Report@Market key Players: Roche, AstraZeneca Plc, Agennix AG, Eli Lilly and Company, Merck, Sanofi-Aventis, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, Hoffman-La Roche, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, Pfizer Inc., Sanofi-Aventis, Celgene Corporation, Sanofi, Merck & Co., Inc among others.Competitive Analysis:The global lung cancer therapeutics market is highly fragmented and the major players have used various strategies such as new product launches, expansions, agreements, joint ventures, partnerships, acquisitions, and others to increase their footprints in this market. The report includes market shares of lung cancer therapeutics market for global, Europe, North America, Asia Pacific and South America.Table of Contents : Market Overview: Lung Cancer Therapeutics Introduction Market Analysis by Type Market Analysis by Applications Manufacturers Profiles: Roche, AstraZeneca Plc, Agennix AG, Eli Lilly and Company, GlaxoSmithKline, And Others Global Lung Cancer Therapeutics Sales, Revenue, Market Share and Competition by Manufacturer (2015-2018): Sales and Market Share by Manufacturer (2015-2018) Revenue and Market Share by Manufacturer (2015-2018) Market Concentration Rate Global Lung Cancer Therapeutics Market Analysis by Regions North America Lung Cancer Therapeutics by Countries Europe Lung Cancer Therapeutics by Countries Asia-Pacific Lung Cancer Therapeutics by Countries South America Lung Cancer Therapeutics by Countries Middle East and Africa Lung Cancer Therapeutics by Countries Global Lung Cancer Therapeutics Market Segment by Type Global Lung Cancer Therapeutics Market Segment by Application Lung Cancer Therapeutics Market Forecast (2019-2025) Sales Channel, Distributors, Traders and Dealers Research Findings and ConclusionToc continued!Get Full TOC @Market Drivers and Restraints: Increasing incidences of lung cancer due to rising smoking population. Players are adopting various strategies to expand their product portfolio Growing demand for targeted therapies, presence of highly efficient drugs, increase in geriatric population, and rise in the prevalence of unhealthy lifestyles. Poor cancer diagnostic facilities in many developing countries. Limited options for treatment, and the vast unmet requirement for diagnosisMarket Segments:On the basis of Disease Type the global lung cancer therapeutics market is classified into: non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), small cell lung cancer (SCLC).On the basis of Type of Molecule the market is segmented into: small molecules, biologics.Based on geography: North America & South America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East & Africa.Note: If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Make an Inquiry for Discount On this Report@About Us:Data Bridge Market Research set forth itself as an unconventional and neoteric Market research and consulting firm with unparalleled level of resilience and integrated approaches. We are determined to unearth the best market opportunities and foster efficient information for your business to thrive in the market. Data Bridge endeavors to provide appropriate solutions to the complex business challenges and initiates an effortless decision-making process.Contact:Data Bridge Market ResearchTel: +1-888-387-281Email: sopan.gedam@databridgemarketresearch.com Cancer Tissue Diagnostics Market will Register an Exponential Expansion US$ 9648.9 Mn By 2026 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-4191 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-4191 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/cancer-tissue-diagnostics-market https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ The National Cancer Institute (NCI), which is a part of National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US estimated 1,685,210 new cases of cancer in the country in 2016. In the same year, NCI also projected 595,690 deaths due to carcinogenic ailments. Cancer research activities have surged rapidly over the past few years, which has led to more product approvals for cancer diagnostic and treatment purposes. A recent study conducted by Future Market Insights (FMI) reveals that the global cancer tissue diagnostics market, which is currently valued at over US$ 4345 Mn, will expand at a healthy CAGR of 8.3% during the forecast period (2016-2026). During these ten years of the forecast, the global demand for cancer tissue diagnostics is expected to grow by leaps and bounds as diagnostic technologies will continue to get more efficient and credible.Request to View Sample of Research Report @FMIs report titled Cancer Tissue Diagnostics Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 20162026 also cites that North America represents the most lucrative market for cancer tissue diagnostics, followed by Europe and APAC. In 2016, North America accounted for more than 36% share of the global market. The cancer tissue diagnostics market in this region is expected to reach a valuation of US$ 4,017.7 Mn towards the end of 2026. This growth is primarily attributed to factors such as the constantly extending list of cancer biomarkers and the presence of advance healthcare infrastructures in the region. Meanwhile, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) is also anticipated to witness a strong growth of its market over the next couple of years. By 2026-end, the regions market is expected to reach US$ 1,107.7 Mn in terms of revenue.The report further projects that in situ hybridization will continue to be the leading cancer tissue diagnostics type. In terms of revenue, in situ hybridization tests are projected to account for the largest share of the market during the assessment period. Cases of breast cancer have been quite high amongst all the cancers type of late. Hence, procedures for breast cancer diagnostics are expected to remain relatively higher than for other cancer types in 2017 and beyond.Key Factors Boosting the Global Cancer Tissue Diagnostics Market Include:Inclusion of cancer screening tests in national cancer screening programs in various countries.Havier discretionary funding for cancer research that is resulting in the development of more efficient diagnostic procedures.Arrival of revolutionary second and third -generation diagnostics platforms that are quickly gaining popularity in the market.Novelty in imaging techniques and availability of affordable diagnostics.Request Report for Table of Contents @Abbott Laboratories, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Ventana Medical Systems, Inc, Bio Rad Laboratories Inc., Enzo Life Sciences, Inc., Abcam plc., BioGenex, Cell Signaling Technology, Inc., Agilent Technologies, Inc., PerkinElmer Inc. are some of the prominent companies operating in the global market for cancer tissue diagnostics. Many of these market players are implementing merger and acquisition strategies to increase their market presence. Furthermore, cancer diagnostic assay kits developers, instrument manufacturers and technology license providers are also partnering with each other in order to increase their consumer base.PAGE REPORT @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.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: Dental Caries And Endodontic Market will Register an Exponential Expansion US$ 40,000 Mn By 2027 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1416 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-1416 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ Market leaders in the global dental caries and endodontic market are actively making acquisitions for expanding their product and services platform. Acquisition of leading regional players by global industries has resulted into consolidation of dental caries industry. The global dental caries and endodontic market is projected to register 5.5% CAGR during the forecast period 2017 to 2027, according to a report by Future Market Insights (FMI). In 2017, the market was evaluated at revenue worth US$ 24,334.5 Mn; by 2027 this number is estimated to surpass US$ 40,000 Mn.Dental Reconstruction to Remain Dominant Product in the MarketOn the basis of product type, dental reconstruction will remain dominant in the market, expanding at 5.8% CAGR through 2027. Crowns sub-segment of dental reconstruction product is estimated to reach US$ 8,380 in revenue Mn by 2027-end. Dental restoration is expected to be the second largest product in the market, with sales anticipated to surpass US$ 7,000 Mn in revenue by 2027-end.Request to View Sample of Research Report @Although specialised dental hospitals will remain the most attractive end-user in the market, dental clinics are expected to witness fastest growth in demand by 2027-end. Revenue generated by specialised dental hospitals is expected to reach US$ 9,334.7 Mn in 2017. Dental clinics are expected to exhibit 6.7% CAGR in the market through 2027.North America to be Most Attractive Region in Global Dental Caries and Endodontic MarketNorth America is expected to register the highest CAGR in the global dental caries and endodontic market, to reach revenue worth US$ 17,278.3 Mn by 2027-end. Following North America in terms of CAGR are Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ) and Latin America. Western Europe is expected to be second largest region for growth of the market. Revenue from market in this region is expected to reach nearly US$ 11,000 Mn by 2027-end.CAD/CAM technology is being gradually implemented into dentures and implants in North America, improving accuracy of manufacturing and offering output with an increased efficiency. In addition, number of trained dentists for implant placement is growing significantly in this region. Expanding patient volume in this region has driven demand for high-margin dental consumables including dental implants, endodontic, caps and bridges. These factors are expected to drive market growth in North America.However, factors such as constantly evolving dental care technology attributed to rapid changes in dental care practices and size of local dental care market is making patient decisions complicated. In addition, ban on advertisements of dental products makes it difficult for patients in searching for better products in the market. Such factors are expected to hinder market growth in North America.Growth of In-bound Dental Tourism Expected to Propel Market Growth in Western EuropeIncreasing awareness about oral health in Western Europe is leading toward increasing per capita dental expenditure, even though public healthcare coverage from dental services is decreasing. Dental tourism is considered to be an imperative sector of the expanding medical tourism industry. In-bound dental tourism is witnessing a rise in Western Europe, These factors are driving market growth in this region. However, uncertainties in European Unions economic conditions has reduced the number of dental procedures in Western Europe. Moreover, entry of low-cost competitors in European market has compelled manufacturers in lowering the cost of their products. Such factors are expected to restrain growth of the dental caries and endodontic market in Western Europe.Request Report for Table of Contents @Key players identified in FMIs report include Dentsply Sirona Inc., 3M Company, Coltene Group, SHOFU Inc., Essential Dental Systems Inc., Danaher Corporation, Zimmer Biomet Dental, Straumann AG, Henry-Schein Inc., Altatec Medizintechnik GmbH & Co. KG, Essential Dental Systems, Inc., O.M.S. SpA, Alpha Dent Implants Ltd, HI-TEC IMPLANTS LTD, Conmet LLC, DiaDent Group International, J. Morita Corporation, IDS Co., Ltd., Shofu Inc., Hiossen Inc.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.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: French-door-style Refrigerators Market 2018 Analysis By Key Players Haier, Whirlpool, Electrolux, Midea, Samsung, Bosch, LG, Meiling, Panasonic, Arcelik A.S. https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/3372802-global-french-door-style-refrigerators-market-insights-forecast-to-2025 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/enquiry/3372802-global-french-door-style-refrigerators-market-insights-forecast-to-2025 This report studies the global market size of French-door-style Refrigerators in key regions like North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Central & South America and Middle East & Africa, focuses on the consumption of French-door-style Refrigerators in these regions.This research report categorizes the global French-door-style Refrigerators 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.In 2017, the global French-door-style Refrigerators market size was million US$ and is forecast to million US in 2025, growing at a CAGR of from 2018. The objectives of this study are to define, segment, and project the size of the French-door-style Refrigerators market based on company, product type, application and key regions.The various contributors involved in the value chain of French-door-style Refrigerators include manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, intermediaries, and customers. The key manufacturers in the French-door-style Refrigerators includeHaierWhirlpoolElectroluxMideaSamsungBoschLGMeilingPanasonicArcelik A.S.SharpRequest a Sample Report @Market Size Split by TypeUnder 15 cu.ft.15 - 20 cu.ft.20 - 25 cu.ft.Above 25 cu.ft.Market Size Split by ApplicationOn-lineOff-lineMarket 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 French-door-style Refrigerators 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 French-door-style Refrigerators 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 French-door-style Refrigerators manufacturers, to define, describe and analyze the sales volume, value, market share, market competition landscape, SWOT analysis and development plans in next few years.Table of Contents1 Study Coverage1.1 French-door-style Refrigerators Product1.2 Key Market Segments1.3 Key Manufacturers Covered1.4 Market by Type1.4.1 Global French-door-style Refrigerators Market Size Growth Rate by Type1.4.2 Under 15 cu.ft.1.4.3 15 - 20 cu.ft.1.4.4 20 - 25 cu.ft.1.4.5 Above 25 cu.ft.1.5 Market by Application1.5.1 Global French-door-style Refrigerators Market Size Growth Rate by Application1.5.2 On-line1.5.3 Off-line1.6 Study Objectives1.7 Years Considered2 Executive Summary2.1 Global French-door-style Refrigerators Market Size2.1.1 Global French-door-style Refrigerators Revenue 2016-20252.1.2 Global French-door-style Refrigerators Sales 2016-20252.2 French-door-style Refrigerators Growth Rate by Regions2.2.1 Global French-door-style Refrigerators Sales by Regions2.2.2 Global French-door-style Refrigerators Revenue by Regions3 Breakdown Data by Manufacturers3.1 French-door-style Refrigerators Sales by Manufacturers3.1.1 French-door-style Refrigerators Sales by Manufacturers3.1.2 French-door-style Refrigerators Sales Market Share by Manufacturers3.1.3 Global French-door-style Refrigerators Market Concentration Ratio (CR5 and HHI)3.2 French-door-style Refrigerators Revenue by Manufacturers3.2.1 French-door-style Refrigerators Revenue by Manufacturers (2016-2018)3.2.2 French-door-style Refrigerators Revenue Share by Manufacturers (2016-2018)3.3 French-door-style Refrigerators Price by Manufacturers3.4 French-door-style Refrigerators Manufacturing Base Distribution, Product Types3.4.1 French-door-style Refrigerators Manufacturers Manufacturing Base Distribution, Headquarters3.4.2 Manufacturers French-door-style Refrigerators Product Category3.4.3 Date of International Manufacturers Enter into French-door-style Refrigerators Market3.5 Manufacturers Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion Plans........11 Company Profiles11.1 Haier11.1.1 Haier Company Details11.1.2 Company Description11.1.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of French-door-style Refrigerators11.1.4 French-door-style Refrigerators Product Description11.1.5 Recent Development11.2 Whirlpool11.2.1 Whirlpool Company Details11.2.2 Company Description11.2.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of French-door-style Refrigerators11.2.4 French-door-style Refrigerators Product Description11.2.5 Recent Development11.3 Electrolux11.3.1 Electrolux Company Details11.3.2 Company Description11.3.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of French-door-style Refrigerators11.3.4 French-door-style Refrigerators Product Description11.3.5 Recent Development11.4 Midea11.4.1 Midea Company Details11.4.2 Company Description11.4.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of French-door-style Refrigerators11.4.4 French-door-style Refrigerators Product Description11.4.5 Recent Development11.5 Samsung11.5.1 Samsung Company Details11.5.2 Company Description11.5.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of French-door-style Refrigerators11.5.4 French-door-style Refrigerators Product Description11.5.5 Recent Development11.6 Bosch11.6.1 Bosch Company Details11.6.2 Company Description11.6.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of French-door-style Refrigerators11.6.4 French-door-style Refrigerators Product Description11.6.5 Recent Development11.7 LG11.7.1 LG Company Details11.7.2 Company Description11.7.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of French-door-style Refrigerators11.7.4 French-door-style Refrigerators Product Description11.7.5 Recent Development11.8 Meiling11.8.1 Meiling Company Details11.8.2 Company Description11.8.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of French-door-style Refrigerators11.8.4 French-door-style Refrigerators Product Description11.8.5 Recent Development11.9 Panasonic11.9.1 Panasonic Company Details11.9.2 Company Description11.9.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of French-door-style Refrigerators11.9.4 French-door-style Refrigerators Product Description11.9.5 Recent Development11.10 Arcelik A.S.11.10.1 Arcelik A.S. Company Details11.10.2 Company Description11.10.3 Sales, Revenue and Gross Margin of French-door-style Refrigerators11.10.4 French-door-style Refrigerators Product Description11.10.5 Recent Development11.11 SharpContinuedMake an enquiry of this Report @ABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.ADDRES:WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India Current FDA Trends in Inspection and Enforcement Related to Regulated Computer Systems www.edupliance.com Edupliance announces webinar titled, Current FDA Trends in Inspection and Enforcement Related to Regulated Computer Systems The Webinar will focus on the importance of ensuring that electronic record/electronic signature (ER/ES) capability built into FDA-regulated computer systems meets compliance with 21 CFR Part 11. The event goes LIVE on Tuesday, December 04, from 01:00 PM to 02:30 PM, EST / 10 AM to 11:30 AM PST.In this webinar join expert speaker Carolyn Troiano, where she will cover the key aspects of complying with 21 CFR Part 11 in both validating systems and maintaining them in a validated state throughout their entire life cycle.The 90-minute webinar will be conducted by Carolyn Troiano has more than 35 years of experience in computer system validation in the pharmaceutical, medical device, tobacco and other FDA-regulated industries. She is currently an independent consultant, advising companies on FDA compliance, computer system validation and large-scale IT system implementation projects. Carolyn participated in the Industry/FDA partnership that developed 21 CFR Part 11, the FDAs guidance on electronic records and electronic signatures (ER/ES).Webinar attendees will learn:The most proactive methods for getting ahead of the curve and avoiding computer system validation pitfallsUnderstand Computer System Validation (CSV) and the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) MethodologyLearn how to document CSV efforts related to GxP systems Good Manufacturing, Laboratory and Clinical Practices (GMPs, GLPs, GCPs)Learn about 21 CFR Part 11, Electronic Records/Electronic Signatures (ER/ES) DocumentationUnderstand Data Archival to ensure security, integrity and complianceUnderstand how to effectively document the process of computer system validation, and maintain current information about the systems in your organization and how they are maintained in a validated stateEdupliance is an online information provider which offers webinars (Live and On-Demand), DVDs and downloadable resources that cover concurrent topics pertaining to various industries. With an expert panel of guest speakers, Edupliance brings state-of-the-art virtual technology solutions and industry-leading training sessions that are easy to learn, easily accessible and cater to people with varied interests. Edupliance is privately held and located in Hillsboro, Oregon.For more information, visitMedia Inquiriessupport@edupliance.comT: 1 844-810-1151A:- Edupliance - #101, 4660, NE Belknap Court, Hillsboro, OR 97124 | Adoptive cell therapy for cancer treatment Market Poised for Steady Growth in the Future https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3569 https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3569 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.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.Request Sample Report@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.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.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705 Smoking Tobacco Market Begins To Take Bite Out Of Versioned Long Term Growth | Imperial, BAT, PMI Smoking Tobacco Market https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/1461587-smoking-tobacco-in-germany-2018 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=1461587 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/enquiry-before-buy/1461587-smoking-tobacco-in-germany-2018 https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/1461587-smoking-tobacco-in-germany-2018 https://www.linkedin.com/company/13388569/ https://www.facebook.com/htfmarketintelligence/ https://twitter.com/htfmarketreport https://plus.google.com/u/0/+NidhiBhawsar-SEO_Expert?rel=author HTF Market Intelligence released a new research report of 90 pages on title 'Smoking Tobacco in Germany, 2018' with detailed analysis, forecast and strategies. The study covers important players such as Imperial, BAT, PMI, Poschl, JTI, HvL, Van Horsen, Santa Fe, Von Eicken, STG, Planta. "Smoking Tobacco in Germany, 2018", is an analytical report by HTF that provides extensive and highly detailed current and future market trends in the German tobacco market. It covers market size and structure along with per capita and overall consumption. Additionally, it focuses on brand data, retail pricing, prospects, and forecasts for sales and consumption until 2025.Request a sample report @The German market for tobacco products is the largest in Western Europe with total volumes of 109,112 tons in 2017. Smoking tobacco forms the second largest sector of the German tobacco products market with 25.2% of volumes. Sales were 27,503 tons in 2017 compared with 23,990 tons in 2007.There has been a notable shift away from factory-made cigarettes to other tobacco products in recent years, notably fine cut and more recently pipe tobacco.Scope- The German market for tobacco products is the largest in Western Europe with total volumes of 109,112 tons in 2017.- Smoking tobacco forms the second largest sector of the German tobacco products market with 25.2% of volumes. Sales were 27,503 tons in 2017 compared with 23,990 tons in 2007.- Overall FCT volumes are thus forecast to fall 15.6% between 2017 and 2027 to 20,500 tons. Annual per capita consumption of FCT is forecast to fall 13.7% to 260g in 2027, which is high by international standards.Buy this report @Reasons to buy- Get a detailed understanding of consumption to align your sales and marketing efforts with the latest trends in the market.- Identify the areas of growth and opportunities, which will aid effective marketing planning.- The differing growth rates in regional product sales drive fundamental shifts in the market.- This report provides detailed, authoritative data on these changes - prime intelligence for marketers.- Understand the market dynamics and essential data to benchmark your position and to identify where to compete in the future.Companies Mentioned in the Report:ImperialBATPMIPoschlJTIHvLVan HorsenSanta FeVon EickenSTGPlantaMake an enquiry before buying this Report @Table of ContentsIntroductionExecutive summaryDefinitionsMarket contextTobacco products market, tons,%, 2007 & 2017Tobacco products market, tons, 2007-2017Market size and structureConsumption of smoking tobacco, 2007-2017Per capita consumption, grams, 2007-2017fSmoking tobacco: market segmentation, 2007-2017Total & per capita consumption of FCT, 2007-2017 ContinuedView Detailed Table of Content @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 LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA 08837Phone: +1 (206) 317 1218sales@htfmarketreport.comConnect with us at Tissue Engineering Market 2022 Top Key Players are Cook, Acelity, Baxter, DePuy Synthes Companies, Medtronic, Zimmer Inc., and Stryker Tissue Engineering Market https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2134 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/tissue-engineering-market-2134 Market Research Future has a cooked research report on the Global Tissue Engineering Market. The Global Tissue Engineering Market is growing continuously and expected to grow at a Significant CAGR from 2017 to 2022.SegmentationTissue Engineering Market has been segmented on the basis of materials, which comprises of biomimetic materials, nano-fibrous materials, composite materials, and nano-composite material.On the basis of applications, the market is segmented into orthopedics, musculoskeletal and spine, skin/integumentary, cancer, dental, cardiology, urology, neurology, cord blood & cell banking, GI & gynecology, and others.Get Tissue Engineering Market Premium Sample Copy @Major Players in Tissue Engineering MarketCook, Acelity, Baxter, DePuy Synthes Companies, Medtronic, Zimmer Inc., and StrykerMarket Highlights:The Global Tissue Engineering Market has been evaluated to grow at a steady pace and expected to reach at a high growth figures over the reviewing period.The Global Tissue Engineering Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17.22% during the forecast period.Tissue engineering is the use of combination of cells, engineering materials, and suitable biochemical factors to improve or replace biological functions in an efforts to repair damaged tissues and organs.Neurology segment is one of the fastest growing owing to the increasing research & development and increasing cases of disorder related to nervous system. For instance, in March 2016, In the University of Alabama researchers found a reprogramming factor, which could increase the efficiency of Human induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (HiPSCs) and are generated without destroying the human embryo. These are major factor responsible for the growth of the market during forecast period.Key Findings:The global tissue engineering market is expected to reach USD 48,017.5 million by 2022 at CAGR of 17.22%.Nano-fibrous material segment on the basis of material holds the largest share to reach USD 13,279.2 million by 2022 from USD 4,155.8 million in 2016.The Americas holds the largest share of tissue engineering market and is projected to reach USD 17,889.6 million by the end of the forecast period.Asia Pacific is the fastest growing region across the globe and expected to grow at a CAGR of 15.24% during the forecast period.Regional Analysis:The global tissue engineering market consists of four regions: the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East & Africa.The Americas dominates the global market, particularly, North America due to growing developments in the field of regeneration surgeries, particularly stem cell research has created new opportunities for the global tissue engineering market. Additionally, continuous technological development methods and the presence of global market leaders contribute to the market growth.Europe accounts for the second largest market due to availability of funds for research & development activities, and increasing government support for life sciences domain. Furthermore, industries are continuously focusing and upgrading the 3D technology and thereby offering better and enhanced organ and tissue printing methods.Asia Pacific is the fastest growing market, whose growth is attributed to the improved economic conditions in healthcare domain, the government focus on research & development in healthcare sector. Moreover, increasing adoption of technological development in healthcare resulting in improvement of healthcare facilities expected to drive the market growth during the forecast period.The Middle East & Africa is expected witness limited growth due to limited access to the healthcare resources and lack of advanced medical facilities and less government encouragement in healthcare sector.TABLE OF CONTENTS1 Report Prologue2 Market Introduction2.1 Introduction 132.2 Scope Of Study 132.3 Research Objective 132.4 Assumptions & Limitations 142.4.1 Assumptions 142.4.2 Limitations 142.5 Market Structure 153 Research Methodology: Tissue Engineering Market3.1 Research Process 163.2 Market Size Estimation 173.2.1 Market Share Analysis 183.3 Forecast Model 19Browse Full Reports @4 Market Dynamics4.1 Drivers 204.1.1 Reliable Supply Of Functional Tissues 204.1.2 Use Of Tissue Engineering Can Replace The Animal Testing Model 204.1.3 Approaching Towards Its Cost-Effectiveness 204.2 Barriers 214.2.1 Shortage Of Donor Organ 214.2.2 Scaling Up Of A Specific Cell 214.3 Opportunity 214.3.1 Growing Geriatric Population Presents Significant Growth Opportunity 214.3.2 High Demand Of Tissue Engineering In Cosmetic And Reconstructive Surgery 214.4 Mega Trends 224.5 Macroeconomic Indicators 225 Market Factor AnalysisContinued!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 Contactless Payment Terminals Market to Witness Huge Growth from 2018-2025 and Focusing on Top Key Players - Wirecard AG, On Track Innovations Ltd, ShopKeep, Clover Network Inc, Ingenico Group, etc. Contactless Payment Terminals Market https://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00012326237/sample https://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00012326237/discount https://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00012326237/buying Overview of Contactless Payment Terminals MarketThe contactless payments with the help of the PIN terminal and a chip are the new trend which is preferred by the customers for making payments. The chip and antenna are embedded in the card which enables the customers to make payments by waving their cards or their smartphones over the reader machine present at the POS terminal.The report covers the present and past market scenarios, market development patterns, and is likely to proceed with a continuing development over the forecast period. The Global Contactless Payment Terminals Market research report offers an in-depth analysis of the global market, providing relevant information for the new market entrants or well-established players. Some of the key strategies employed by leading key players operating in the market and their impact analysis have been included in this research report.Check out For Download Sample Report Here:Top Key Players in the Contactless Payment Terminals Market: -Wirecard AG, On Track Innovations Ltd, ShopKeep, Clover Network Inc, Ingenico Group, Chip & PIN Solutions Ltd, Heartland Payment Systems Inc, Castles Technology, PoyntCo, iZettle AB, internalDrive, Inc, Verifone,Firstly, the report provides a basic overview of the industry including its definition, applications and classifications. Then, the report explores the international and regional major industry players in detail. In this part, the report presents the company profile, product specifications, capacity, production value, and market shares for each company. Through the statistical analysis, the report depicts the global and regional total market of Contactless Payment Terminals industry including capacity, production, production value, cost/profit, supply/demand and import/export details.The scope of Contactless Payment Terminals Market:This report focuses on the Contactless Payment Terminals in global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Major Types of Contactless Payment Terminals Market covered are:InfraredNear field communicationBluetoothRadio-frequency identificationCarrier-based mobileMajor Applications of Contactless Payment Terminals Market covered are:HealthcareBFSIRetailTransportOthersGo For Interesting Discount Here:Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers:North America (United States, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Table of Content1 Report Overview1.1 Study Scope1.2 Key Market Segments1.3 Players Covered1.4 Market Analysis by Type1.5 Market by Application1.6 Study Objectives1.7 Years Considered2 Global Growth Trends2.1 Contactless Payment Terminals Market Size2.2 Contactless Payment Terminals Growth Trends by Regions2.3 Industry Trends3 Market Share by Key Players3.1 Contactless Payment Terminals Market Size by Manufacturers3.2 Contactless Payment Terminals Key Players Head office and Area Served3.3 Key Players Contactless Payment Terminals Product/Solution/Service3.4 Date of Enter into Contactless Payment Terminals Market3.5 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion Plans4 Breakdown Data by Product4.1 Global Contactless Payment Terminals Sales by Product4.2 Global Contactless Payment Terminals Revenue by Product4.3 Contactless Payment Terminals Price by Product5 Breakdown Data by End User5.1 Overview5.2 Global Contactless Payment Terminals Breakdown Data by End UserGet More Details @Lastly, this report covers the market scene and its development prospects over the coming years, the Report likewise short manages the item life cycle, contrasting it with the significant items from crosswise over ventures that had just been popularized points of interest the potential for different applications, examining about late item advancements and gives a diagram on potential territorial pieces of the pie.About ReportsWeb:ReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.com Iot Sensors Market Application, Opportunities, Technology & Witness Huge Growth from 2018-2022: Top Key Vendors- Linear Technology, Silicon Laboratories, Semtech, Microsemi, LORD Corp, Texas Instruments, Fujitsu etc. Iot Sensors Market https://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011451853/sample https://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011451853/discount https://www.reportsweb.com/global-iot-sensors-industry-market-research-report Iot Sensors MarketLatest Research Report on Global Iot Sensors Market Added by Reports Web which covers Market Overview, Future Economic Impact, Rising Technology, Competition by Manufacturers, Application, Opportunities & Challenges. A number of analysis tools such as SWOT analysis and Porters five forces analysis have been employed to provide an accurate understanding of this market. Factors that are boosting the growth of the market, and giving a push to thrive in the global market is explained in detail. The fundamental purpose of Iot Sensors Market report is to provide a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the related industry.Download a Sample Report @The rising technology and developments taking place in the Iot Sensors market is also depicted in this research report. This study report on global Iot Sensors market throws light on the crucial trends and dynamics impacting the development of the market, including the restraints, drivers, and opportunities. There are a number of players operating in the market and this research report gives readers overview of the various factors that govern their performance.Major Players in Iot Sensors market are:Linear Technology, Silicon Laboratories, Semtech, Microsemi, Analog Devices, LORD Corp, Texas Instruments, Fujitsu, Renesas, Millennial Net.Most important types of Iot Sensors products covered in this report are:Pressure Sensors, Temperature Sensors, Light Sensors, Others.Most widely used downstream fields of Iot Sensors market covered in this report are:Consumer Electronics, Healthcare, Automotive, Industrial, Building Automation, Retail, Other.Major Regions play vital role in Iot Sensors market are:North America, Europe, China, Japan, Middle East & Africa, India, South America, Others.More detailed information, please feel free to contact:Global Iot Sensors market research report is split into different chapters for user's better understanding:1.The first chapter covers very primitive elements such as Iot Sensors market overview, market analysis by geographical zones, product types and applications, market dynamics, market opportunities, market risk and driving factors.2.The second chapter gives a clear idea about competitive manufacturers profile, their sales, revenue, and market share.3.The third and fourth chapter deals with market share and revenue of emerging regions along with their sales, profit generated and volume of Iot 4.Sensors industry over the forecast period from 2018 to 2022.5.Fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth chapter allows users to understand and have comprehensive knowledge about Iot Sensors market shares, by applications and product types.6.Ninth, the tenth and eleventh chapter compares traditional and modern innovations, market sales of Iot Sensors industry and market trends over the period from 2018 to 2022.7.Twelfth, thirteenth fourteenth, and fifteen chapter display research findings, sales channel, conclusions, data sources, and appendix.Key questions answered in this report:1.What will be the market size by the end of the forecast period?2.What are the factors driving the growth of the market?3.What are the trends and developments that are likely to drive the growth of the market?4.Who are the key players operating in the market?5.What are the challenges, threats, and opportunities faced by the leading players?6.What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key players of the market?Access Full Report Description, TOC and Table of Figure @About ReportsWeb:ReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.com Lingerie Market 2024 | , Jockey International Inc. (Kenosha, Wisconsin, U.S), Hanes (North Carolina U.S.), Groupe Chantelle (Cachan, France), LVMH (Boise U.S), L Brands Inc. https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/sample/110114599/Lingerie-Market https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/discount/110114599/Lingerie-Market https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/rd/110114599/Lingerie-Market https://www.researchreportinsights.com/ Lingerie market has occupied a significant position in the apparel industry in recent years as it not only serves its functional benefits but also is considered as an basic necessity to every woman. The the global lingerie market has been bifurcated on the basis of product types into bras, knickers and panties, lounge wear, shape wear and others which includes baby doll, corsets, chemises and chemisoles among others. Bra as an essential necessity and also a fashion accessory to every women and it has captured the largest market share in 2015. Knickers and panties also occupied a significant position in the same year, thus contributing significantly to the overall market size of the lingerie industry.The market is further segmented on the basis of distribution channel into online stores and storefront. Online stores captured the largest market in 2015 due to high penetration of internet services and rapid advancements in the field of technology, thus creating a strong platform for the manufacturers of lingerie Further, the e-commerce giants are engaged in strong promotional activities due to which they provide with continuous discount options and various other offers which attract both consumers and manufacturers to avail this platform.Request For Report Sample:Females in the developing countries are experiencing latest trends towards carrying themselves in public. They are changing their outlook towards accepting innerwear as a casual affair and take time to choose and make a purchase. The outerwear of women has undergone a dramatic change and due to this women prefer selecting inner wear, especially bras that can match with their attire. They try to purchase lingerie depending on the occasion or event, such as there are special sport wear bras for gymnasium purpose. It can be demonstrated from the product differentiation brought by the lingerie manufacturers over online and retail stores. Thus this is a key factor complementing the growth of the global lingerie market.Lingerie has witnessed a rapid acceptance in the fashion industry. Women from all backgrounds want to try out the latest trends in the inner wear segment. Most of the large brands have exclusive stores in shopping malls or independent stores. In developing countries like India and China, brands like Jockey try to reach out to customers through small roadside innerwear shops. Additionally, lingerie is available at stores as well as online. Brands like Victoria Secret have country specific websites for easier transactions and shipment.However, the lingerie wear maintains high cost for advertisement and other marketing promotions. This is due to the cost of celebrities or models that are hired for being featured in the photo shoots. Moreover, the destination or location cost of the photo shoot depends and therefore larger brands do not compromise in keeping high cost for their lingerie wear. Therefore, this factor is majorly hindering the growth of the market and the impact of the same is likely to reduce by the end of the forecast period.Moreover, the global lingerie market is experiencing moderate growth in the apparel segment as nowadays individuals are more inclined towards branded items, most of which are usually priced on the higher end. People from all backgrounds and income group want to avail a comfortable and lasting inner wear that can be fashionable as well as skin-friendly. There are many local brands or companies that manufacture cheap quality products to cater to the wide population in the under developed or developing countries. Mergers and acquisitions are a strategic way of entering the market and understanding the current needs and preferences of the population. Through this, the large companies will benefit in capturing the market and at the same time, will enable the small companies to fight for a better position in the market..Moreover, in this report the study provides different countries included in different regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East and Africa. North America includes U.S. and Rest of North America. Europe includes U.K., Germany, France, Russia, Italy and Rest of Europe. Asia Pacific includes countries such as India, China, Japan and Rest of Asia Pacific. In addition, Middle East and Africa includes country such as UAE, South Africa and Rest of Middle East and Africa. Latin America comprise of countries such as Brazil and Rest of Latin AmericaAsia Pacific is anticipated to witness the fastest growth during the forecast period. Transition in the lifestyle of the consumers which is backed by rapid urbanization and increasing purchasing power is a major factor behind the high growth of this market in Asia Pacific. Further, consumer exposure to the same by way of advertisements through televisions, and print media among others is another key factor responsible for the growth of the Lingerie Market in this region.Some of the major key players operating in the global contact lens market are, Jockey International Inc. (Kenosha, Wisconsin, U.S), Hanes (North Carolina U.S.), Groupe Chantelle (Cachan, France), LVMH (Boise U.S), L Brands Inc. (Columbus, Ohio), MAS Holdings Limited (Colombo, Srilanka), Ann Summers (London, U.K.), Marks and Spencer (London U.K), PVH Corporation (New York, U.S) among others.Request Report Discount:The report analyzes the factors that are driving and restraining the growth of the lingerie market. This report will help manufacturers, distributors and suppliers to understand the present and future trends in this market and formulate strategies accordingly.The global lingerie market can be segmented as follows;-Global Lingerie Market, by Type Bra Knickers and Panties Lounge wear Shape wear OthersGlobal Lingerie Market, by Distribution Channel Online Stores Store FrontGlobal Lingerie Market, by Geography North America U.S. Rest of North America Europe U.K. Germany France Italy Rest of Europe Asia Pacific China Japan India Rest of Asia Pacific Latin America Brazil Rest of Latin America Middle East and Africa UAE South Africa Rest of Middle East & AfricaReport Analysis:About Us:Research Report Insights (RRI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver a host of services including custom research reports, syndicated research reports, and consulting services which are personalised in nature. RRI delivers a complete packaged solution to clients; this combines current market intelligence, technology inputs, statistical anecdotes, valuable growth insights, 360-degree view of the competitive framework, and anticipated market trends.Contact Us:Research Report Insights (RRI)42 Joseph StreetPort carling P0B 1J0Muskoka, Ontario1Phone - +1-631-721-4201Website:Email: sales@researchreportinsights.com Dry Eye Syndrome Treatment Market 2022 | Allergan, Novartis AG., Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Valent Pharmaceuticals, Johnson and Johnson Vision, Acadia Pharmaceuticals, Allostera Pharma, I-Med Pharma Inc. https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/sample/110114612/Dry-Eye-Syndrome-Treatment-Market https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/discount/110114612/Dry-Eye-Syndrome-Treatment-Market https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/rd/110114612/Dry-Eye-Syndrome-Treatment-Market https://www.researchreportinsights.com/ Global Dry Eye Syndrome Treatment Market: OverviewDry eye syndrome (DES) is also known as keratisis sicca and kerato-conjunctivitis sicca. People suffering from DES show damage to the ocular surface, instability in the tear film, and visual disturbance. Tear film covers the ocular surface, which is made up of three intertwined layers, a superficial lipid layer, produced by meibomian glands assist in reducing tear evaporation and uniform tear spreading, middle thick aqueous layer produced from lacrimal glands, and the innermost hydrophilic mucin layer produced from goblet cells of conjunctiva and epithelium of ocular surface.The two most common types of DES are DES associated with Sjogren syndrome (SS) and DES unassociated with SS. DES can also be classified as aqueous deficiency dry eye and evaporative dry eye disorder. According to TearScience Inc., in 2012, around 86% of the patients in Europe and the U.S. were suffering from DES showed symptoms of Meibomian Gland Dysfunction (MGD, blockage of meibomian glands). The blockage causes less secretion of oil in the tears, which results in evaporation of tears too quickly.Request For Report Sample:The global dry eye syndrome treatment market is primarily driven by growing geriatric population coupled with high prevalence of dry eye syndrome and growth in awareness about the diagnosis and treatment of the disease. However, the stringent drug approvals, expirations of the blockbuster drugs patents, and lack of skilled ophthalmologists are restraining the growth of DES market. According to National Health and Wellness Survey in 2013, approximately 16.4 million people are suffering from DES, which accounts for 6.8% of the total population of the U.S. Prevalence of DES increases with age, 2.7% for 18 - 34 age group and 18.6% for more than 75 age group were reported to be suffering from DES. The prevalence of DES is higher in women (8.8%) as compared to men (4.5%). According to the National Eye Institute, in the U.S the annual cost of treating DES including prescription drugs is US $3.84 billion.Global Dry Eye Syndrome Treatment Market: SegmentationBy Product TypeCyclosporineOral CorticosteroidArtificial TearsOmega SupplementsPunctual BagsRemovable BagsDissolvable BagsBy Disease Type:Evaporative Dry Eye SyndromeAqueous Dry Eye SyndromeBy ProductLiquid DropsGelLiquid WipesEye OintmentBy Distribution ChannelRetail PharmaciesHospital PharmaciesOnline PharmaciesHigh healthcare expenditure and increasing R&D activities in the DES treatment market is expected to propel growth of DES market in North AmericaGrowing geriatric population coupled with high prevalence of dry eye syndrome owing to lifestyle disorders are contributing factors for the growth of DES market in the North America region.Request Report Discount:Asia Pacific region is emerging in DES treatment market due to large pool of patient population. According to the regional population based study published in All India Ophthalmological Society, in 2012, the prevalence of DES was 40.8% with mild symptoms and 31.7% with MGD.Global dry eye syndrome treatment market is oligopolistic in nature with few players holding majority of the share. Various strategies are adopted by market players such as new product launches, acquisitions, and agreements in order to retain market position. In September, 2017, Johnson and Johnson Vision, acquired TearScience Inc., a medical device manufacturer for treating MGD. This acquisition expanded the companys eye health portfolio. In April 2017, Allergan received marketing approval from FDA for its TrueTear Intranasal Tear Neurostimulator.Some of the major players operating in the global dry eye syndrome treatment market are Allergan, Novartis AG., Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Valent Pharmaceuticals, Johnson and Johnson Vision, Acadia Pharmaceuticals, Allostera Pharma, I-Med Pharma Inc., Santen Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd., AFT pharmaceuticals, Novaliq GmBh, and Auven therapeutics.Report Analysis:About Us:Research Report Insights (RRI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver a host of services including custom research reports, syndicated research reports, and consulting services which are personalised in nature. RRI delivers a complete packaged solution to clients; this combines current market intelligence, technology inputs, statistical anecdotes, valuable growth insights, 360-degree view of the competitive framework, and anticipated market trends.Contact Us:Research Report Insights (RRI)42 Joseph StreetPort carling P0B 1J0Muskoka, Ontario1Phone - +1-631-721-4201Website:Email: sales@researchreportinsights.com Frozen Finger Chips Market Key Players : McCain Foods Limited, Simplot Foods, Alexia foods, Lamb Weston Holdings, Farm Frites, Aviko, Agrarfrost GmbH & Co. KG, Agristo, American Lorain Company, and Balle Bros Group Ltd Frozen Finger Chips https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-toc-and-sample/3460?utm_source=as_op https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/3460?utm_source=as_op https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com Finger chips are some of the most readily available foods prepared by either frying or baking. Frozen finger chips are available in a various shapes, sizes, and flavors. Most of the producers offer certified organic and sweet potato varieties, which are popular trends in the market. Frozen finger chips offer convenience, ease of storage, and long shelf life. Moreover, these help with portion control, because after using the required size portion the remaining content can be stored in frozen state. Currently, frozen finger chips have replaced freshly cut potatoes, as they are convenient and offer consistent quality and taste.The frozen finger chips market is driven by increasing popularity of western style cuisine, change in lifestyle, and increase in urbanization. Moreover, growing popularity of fast food chains is expected to provide substantial growth opportunity in the near future. However, most of the frozen fingers producers use trans fats and palm, which affect heart health. This could hamper the consumption of frozen finger chips in the near future.Download report sample at:The global frozen finger chips market is segmented based on end-use and geography. On the basis of end-use, it is divided into food service and household. Geographically, it is analyzed across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA.Comprehensive competitive analysis and profiles of major market players, such as McCain Foods Limited, Simplot Foods, Alexia foods, Lamb Weston Holdings, Farm Frites, Aviko, Agrarfrost GmbH & Co. KG, Agristo, American Lorain Company, and Balle Bros Group Ltd. are provided in the report.Key Benefits:The study provides an in-depth analysis of the global market along with the current trends and future estimations to elucidate the investment pockets.Comprehensive analysis of factors that drive and restrict the growth of the market is provided in the report.The report provides a quantitative analysis to assist stakeholders to capitalize on the prevailing market opportunities.Extensive analysis of various segments facilitates in understanding the trending products across the industry.The key market players and their strategies are analyzed thoroughly to understand the competitive outlook of the market.For purchase enquiry at:Frozen Finger Chips Market Key Segments:By End UseFood ServiceHouseholdBy GeographyNorth AmericaoU.S.oCanadaoMexicoEuropeoRussiaoUKoDenmarkoItalyoNorwayoRest of EuropeAsia-PacificoChinaoIndiaoIndonesiaoMalaysiaoAustraliaoRest of Asia-PacificLAMEAoBraziloNigeriaoKSAoRest of LAMEAAbout 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: +1-800-792-5285UK: +44-845-528-1300Hong Kong: +852-301-84916India (Pune): +91-20-66346060Fax: +1?855?550-5975help@alliedmarketresearch.comWeb: Zika Virus Testing Market Technological Enhancement in Medical Sector with Usage, Dosages, Side Effects, Types, Forecast till 2023 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/5662 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/zika-virus-testing-market-5662 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/check-discount/5662 Zika Virus Testing Market had held over the populace in recent past has a far-reaching impact on governments in terms of initiatives undertaken. FDA had recently made it mandatory for zika virus testing of all the blood testing done across the U.S. in hospitals and laboratories just to keep the virus at bay. Borne by Aedes genus of mosquitoes, this disease can be easily transmitted to another person even via sexual intercourse and pregnant women, if affected, can forward that to her newborn child as well.Prominent companies playing a significant role in the zika virus testing market are Luminex Corporation, ARUP Laboratories, Roche Molecular Systems, Hologic, and Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics.The World Health Organization (WHO) is also quite aware of the impacts of the virus and has taken steps accordingly. For instance, in 2016, it had declared a health emergency in the Americas, where the disease was spreading its wings. Subsequently, testing kits for the disease found a significant market and started growing in leaps and bounds. These precautionary decisions can act like a global market booster for the zika virus testing.Get Sample Copy of Research Report:The market is witnessing constant evolution owing to companies launching innovative technologies to detect the virus and cure the effects. However, collaborations are also abounding such as technology firm Inovatechs collaboration with Sao Paolos Research Foundation.Few among many clinical symptoms of this disease are myalgia, headache, fever, maculopapular rashes, and arthralgia. Only upon further diagnosis and confirmation, are the treatments recommended to patients. Sometimes, similar symptoms can be mistaken for other illnesses. Thus, its best to go to the doctors and have it ruled in/out.These initiatives have resulted in the growth of zika virus testing market, and the market is all set to witness a considerable hike during the forecast period (2017-2023), asserts Market Research Future (MRFR) in an extensively analyzed report. FDA and the U.S. government have taken considerable steps to outclass this disease by having it properly tested and developing drugs that can contain the virus. The outcome is quite overwhelming.The global zika virus testing market can be segmented by tests and end-users.By tests, the market can be further sub-segmented into serological/Zika virus antibody and molecular/nucleic acid amplification. The latter is the most commonly used test for zika virus detection.Based on end-users the market includes diagnostic units, hospitals, pathology labs, and others.Industry Trend:Researchers from Brigham and Womens hospital have recently come out with their discovery where they have used nanotechnology and digital health systems to detect zika virus. In the process. They have involved smartphones as necessary equipment for the testing. The method is known as nanomotor-based bead-motion cellphone (NBC) system, which can have considerable impacts in afflicted regions.Technology firm Inovatech, in collaboration with the Sao Paulo Research Foundation, developed a test at the Butantan Institute that can detect antibodies against zika virus in samples with great precision to declare infection, if any, caused by the virus previously.Browse Complete Premium Research Report Enabled with Respective Tables and Figures at:Significant investments by the FDA and US government to introduce Zika testing in the hospitals and banks of the United States would also drive market sales in the near future. Moreover, attempts by vendors and producers to come up with Zika virus testing will assist the market in gaining more traction.Most of the demand for these tests are predicted to stem from Florida. The citys burgeoning Zika-affected population will contribute to the same. Wrong results from faulty diagnostic procedures and shortage of awareness across emerging nations can negatively impact the Zika virus testing market.Region-specific analysis of the global market has regions Asia Pacific (APAC), Europe, Americas, and the Middle East and Africa (MEA) under its coverage.The Americas are in-charge of the market and Latin American countries, where the outbreak of the disease hit massively, are contributing more than the regions far in the distance. Projects initiated by Health and Human Services (HHS), and Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to deter the disease from further growth and cure the affected populace can be seen as a market influencer. Brazils National Development Bank (BNDES) has also infused USD 136.6 million for further researches that can help the market grow considerably.Inquire for Discount at:About Market Research Future: MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Office No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar, Pune+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com DIZAIND wants to support the fashion revolution, fight climate change, and empower diversity in fashion through their new vegan collection of bags and accessories. Zurich, October 16, 2019 - DIZAIND, the Swiss brand of bespoke bags and accessories, launches a new crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. After four years of creating ethical and sustainable bags, DIZAIND wants to further their commitment to sustainable fashion by introducing an accessories range made from recycled HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania A top executive with the company some Oregon families blame for serious harm to loved ones with mental illness said she's empathetic to their concerns but defended the company's work. "Any time there's disruption or change, there's going to be turmoil," said Meghan Harris, chief operating officer for Kepro, a national company that reviews Medicaid eligibility. "Kepro is clearly a part of that system and is facing pressure to get it right." The Oregon Health Authority hired Kepro in 2016 to determine which Oregonians with mental illness could be moved into lower levels of care as part of its effort with the U.S. Department of Justice to transform the state's mental health system. Advocates, families and healthcare providers have accused Kepro of being too aggressive in disqualifying people Medicaid coverage to stay in specialized facilities for people with severe mental illness. The newsroom found three cases of serious harm to people after they moved out of a facility. The health authority has many concerns of its own with the program, most of which center on the design and implementation of its contract with Kepro. The state pays the company to determine which people with mental illness were eligible for Medicaid to pay for their stay in a specialized facility. Among the health authority's concerns is a contract provision that offers Kepro a $1,000 bonus for people moved out of locked residential facilities following a Kepro denial of care. In an interview at the company's headquarters this week, Harris said the company's efforts are entirely in line with what the health authority asked it to do. She said the company follows state guidelines and its medical experts are in no way motivated by the bonus when deciding who needs what level of care. Harris said she feels for the families who need to transition out of a facility they're used to. But it's up to Oregon to ensure that transition goes smoothly, she said. "We trust that the state has the services to support them," Harris said. "I'm sure there's different opinions on that." The health authority found in January that there wasn't enough housing to accommodate the people being told they didn't qualify for care in a facility, state records show. The state has opted to pay out of pocket to keep many in facilities. The troubles facing the health authority stem from a years-long effort to move people out of facilities and into more independent settings. A 1999 Supreme Court ruling ruled that to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, states had to ensure people weren't locked up unnecessarily. Seventeen years later, the U.S. Department of Justice came to an agreement with Oregon on a slew of targets to help the state achieve that. To help it get there, the health authority hired Kepro. The company has comparable contracts in 20 states, Harris said, about five of which involve behavioral health. Kepro also contracts with the federal government to determine what care people on Medicare need in 33 states and the District of Columbia. Oregon's efforts have run into numerous problems, some unrelated Kepro's work. The health authority recently found that hundreds of notices it sent out, informing people they didn't qualify for their existing level of care, violated federal law because they didn't have enough information about why a person was being denied care. And the agency also found that some of those notices were going to the mentally ill people themselves, not their guardians. A key health authority employee, who managed the state's contract with Kepro, is under investigation and is on administrative leave. That employee, in turn, is claiming the state is retaliating against him for repeatedly bringing up concerns about the program. Advocates and the state have zeroed in on a provision in the Kepro contract that promises the company $1,000 in performance pay per person who is moved out of a locked residential facility. Advocates have said it could create an incentive for the company to make medically inappropriate decisions. The health authority's director Patrick Allen said his agency is revisiting the wisdom of that provision. Harris said the incentive has no impact whatsoever on the company's decisions, and said her company has no qualms should the state decide to remove the performance pay. "They can take it out of the contract," Harris said. "It's not a motivator for us." Kepro has made at least $215,000 so far in performance pay. Its contract is worth $27 million. Harris also defended the company's role in a case in Illinois, where the state used Kepro's determinations to tell 175 children they didn't qualify for all the in-home nursing care they were getting. A federal judge ordered the state to reinstate all of the hours Kepro had found unnecessary. The company was not a defendant in the suit. As in Oregon, Harris said, Kepro was following state guidelines and a state tool to determine medical necessity when making decisions about patients in Illinois. Have a tip about Oregon's mental health services? Get in touch. -- Fedor Zarkhin desk: 503-294-7674|cell: 971-373-2905|@fedorzarkhin To block caller ID, first dial *67 The 2018 Costco Black Friday sale lasts from Nov. 23 to Nov. 26. It mainly features electronics but also includes food, clothing and furniture. Check out some highlights from the eight-page ad: $50 off the Fitbit Versa. $100 off the Xbox One S Minecraft Creators bundle. 40-inch Vizio Class 1080p LED LCD TV for $199.99. $30 off the Google Home Mini three pack ($69.99). Up to $620 off a Whirlpool washer-dryer set. $100 off the Nikon D3500 DSLR camera 2-lens bundle ($499.99). $300 off the HP Pavilion 15.6-inch 1080p touchscreen Windows 10 professional laptop ($799.99). $35 off the Instant Pot Nova Plus 6-quart 9-in-1 pressure cooker. Visit NerdWallet to view the full Costco Black Friday ad. Costco Black Friday deals 2017 Costcos 2017 Black Friday sale started on Thanksgiving online and at 9 a.m. Black Friday in stores. The deals featured discounts on a range of home electronics. Heres a quick look back: $50 off the Google Home Voice-Activated Speaker. $100 off the DJI Mavic Pro Aerial Drone Camera Bundle. $80 off the Xbox One S Bundle. $100 off the Playstation 4. --NerdWallet The Oregon Department of Transportation on Friday opened a six-mile section of the Historic Columbia River Highway that had been closed since the Eagle Creek Fire in September of 2017. The section of road is between Bridal Veil and Ainsworth State Park. Drivers had to wait so long because it was necessary to remove 9,000 trees that could have fallen into the road and install 3,000 feet of protective fencing, a press release said. This means the popular scenic route to get to Multnomah Falls is accessible again. Bethany Barnes bbarnes@oregonian.com Updated 7:03 p.m. A man detained by officers and sent to the hospital died on Thanksgiving after people reported the man yelling and running in the streets, the Portland Police Bureau said in a press release. Portland State University police responded to calls about the man around 8:19 p.m. and located him near Southwest 6th Avenue and Southwest Mill Street. They called the Portland Police Bureau for backup after a struggle with the man, the release says. Officers restrained the man, who police identified Friday night as 52-year-old Richard A. Barry, and called for an ambulance "based on his behavior." Recent records show Barry listed his address as a homeless housing shelter downtown. "At this time investigators believe the man suffered a medical event and died while receiving treatment at a Portland hospital," the Portland Police Bureau release says. During the struggle, a Portland State police officer was injured, according to a statement from the university. The nature of the officer's injury was not stated but the officer was treated at the hospital and released. Homicide detectives along with the bureau's professional standards division are investigating the incident, the results of which will be reviewed by the Multnomah County District Attorney. An internal review will also go before the Police Review Board. The Oregon State Medical Examiner's Office on Friday began an autopsy on Barry to determine the cause of death, police said. Police did not know when the autopsy investigation would be complete. The two Portland police officers who responded are on paid administrative leave, per policy, while the investigation is underway. They were identified Friday night as Officers James DeAnda, a 1-year veteran of the bureau, and Jared Abby, who joined the force 11 months ago, authorities said. The four campus police officers who responded are also on paid leave per policy and the university is cooperating with the investigation, according to the university. They have not been identified. Portland State police were involved in another death earlier this year. In that matter, police shot and killed a 45-year-old Navy veteran who was visibly armed while trying to break up a fight, according to witnesses. -- Bethany Barnes bbarnes@oregonian.com Update: A man died on Thanksgiving after being detained by police and sent to the hospital after people reported the man was yelling and running in the streets, according to a Portland Police Bureau press release. Police closed a four-block section of downtown Portland Thanksgiving night but would not disclose why detectives spent hours scouring the scene. Their investigation was centered at Southwest Sixth Avenue and Mill Street, the northeast edge of Portland State University. Officers first responded to a request for a welfare check at 8:21 p.m. The scene remained cordoned off as of midnight. A streetcar line runs through the intersection, and police blocked at least one streetcar from driving west onto Sixth Avenue. Several plain-clothes police officers arrived at the scene around 10 p.m. One officer guided a woman away from the intersection. Red and blue police lights illuminated the otherwise quiet campus. The scene is surrounded by two Portland State buildings, St. Mary's Academy and a AAA office. Police blocked access to the intersection from one block in every direction, from Fifth Avenue to Broadway and from Market to Montgomery streets. Officers guarding the perimeter said they did not know what happened, and a police spokesman could not be reached Thursday night. Portland State Police Sgt. Willie Halliburton said he could not comment because of the ongoing investigation. A Portland State police dispatcher, reached at 10 p.m., said there was no active threat to the campus. The university did not issue any statements on social media regarding the investigation. -- Molly Young myoung@oregonian.com The Bridge Food Center recently presented about the center at the Midland Noon Rotary Club. Club members brought what amounted to two grocery carts of food to be given away as part of the bonus section at the food center to help others in the community. The Bridge Food Center, 1539 Washington St., is celebrating its two-year anniversary in December. It is a volunteer-run grocery store, designed to assist households making less than $56,000 per year and is open to families from all areas. A variety of foods and household items are offered including meat, soups, fruits, vegetables, pastas, paper, cleaning and personal care items, along with a bonus section. The 12th annual Project Blue Light ceremony will take place at 6 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 2 at Memorial Presbyterian Church, 1310 Ashman St. "We take this time to honor the first responders who have died in the line of line of duty or while employed, and take time to think of those who served and passed away," said Mary Fisher, who organizes the local ceremony. Deputy Earl Martindale of Coleman was the only Midland law enforcement officer to die in the line of duty, but Officer Henry Ross died as a result of an injury received while working. Midland Firefighters Capt. John Boice, Firefighter Charles G. Finney, Firefighter David White, Firefighter Bruce Tigner, Fire Truck Operator Michael Draves and Lt. Rodney Sweet also died in the line of duty. Deputy Kevin Sherwood, born and raised in Midland, was also killed in the line of duty serving in Clare County. The ceremony will feature speaker John Person, who is a DNR conservation officer. "It is also the time to remind our community to put a blue light in their Christmas decorations, their window or porch light," Fisher said. "This serves as a reminder to those who sacrifice so much to keep us safe that they are greatly appreciated for what they do, and that we honor the fallen. Blue is symbolic of peace." Project Blue Light began in 1986 when Dolly Craig wrote to Concerns of Police Survivors. Her son-in-law, Daniel Gleason, a Philadelphia police officer, had been killed in the line of duty, and two years later her daughter, Pam, his wife, was killed in a car accident. Craig told COPS that she was putting two blue lights in her windows that year, one for Dan and one for Pam, in remembrance. The idea took off and blue lights began appearing in Christmas decorations across the country, and now even porch lights are blue. The lights remind officials that people appreciate the sacrifice they make each day to keep them safe, and that people remember their fallen brothers and sisters, Fisher said. To take part in the ceremony or if you have any questions, contact Mary Fisher at 989-859-6086. Jenee Velasquez, executive director of the Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation, will deliver the keynote address to graduates during commencement exercises at Saginaw Valley State University. Velasquez, who also serves as chair of SVSU's Board of Control, will speak at both ceremonies at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 14 and at 11 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 15 in O'Neill Arena of the Ryder Center. The graduating class totals 623 individuals expected to complete degree requirements, including 553 graduating students who plan to don regalia and march in their respective ceremonies. Commencement exercises for graduates in the colleges of Business and Management, and Health and Human Services will take place Friday evening. Students completing degrees in the colleges of Arts and Behavioral Sciences; Education; and Science, Engineering and Technology will take part in the ceremony scheduled for Saturday morning. As is tradition, SVSU President Don Bachand will congratulate each graduate as he or she crosses the stage. Velasquez has served as executive director for the Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation since 2005. Prior that appointment, she served Midland County's economic development corporation in two capacities: first as manager of economic development services and then as its chief executive officer. Velasquez has maintained strong ties to the community. Beyond her board service at SVSU, she served as campaign co-chair for SVSU's Talent. Opportunity. Promise. private fundraising campaign, which raised $28 million, including a $5 million gift from the Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation to create the STEM Scholars Network, which provides funding to support SVSU student and faculty research, as well as outreach efforts. In addition, Velasquez serves as a board member of Michigan Non-Profit Association, MidMichigan Health, Michigan Municipal League Foundation, Chemical Bank Advisory, and many others. Numerous organizations have recognized Velasquez for her service to the community. In 2018, she was inducted into Junior Achievement of North Central Michigan's Hall of Fame. In 2016, she was named by Crain's Business Detroit to its 100 Most Influential Women in Michigan. In 2013, she received the YWCA Women of Achievement Award for Community Leadership, and in 2012, she received the Great Women of the Great Lakes Bay Region Award and Margaret Ann "Ranny" Riecker Meritorious Service Award. Velasquez completed a bachelor's degree in business administration from Kansas State University and a master's degree in business administration from Michigan State University. She also completed an executive education course at Harvard University's John. F. Kennedy School of Government. Ive been invited by the good folk at Two Truths to provide a series of talks and conversations on Zen meditation with an emphasis on koan introspection, as well as guiding experiences of actual Zen practices as part of a larger experience of Buddhist Asia. Along with an investigation of Zens teachings and spiritual practices, well also explore the culture and spirituality of Bhutan. Me, Ive never been to Bhutan, and am very excited. At the Two Truths website were told: Situated in the Himalayas, in between Tibet and India, is the last intact Buddhist Kingdom: Bhutan. Guru Rinpoche, the emanation of the Buddha, flew on the back of a Tigress in the 8th Century to bring Tantric Buddhism to this remote kingdom, the size of Switzerland. Today 750,000 Bhutanese live in this pristine jewel-box of old growth forests that cover 85% of the kingdom, a primarily agricultural, rural society, where yaks and cattle occupy the one-lane national highway. It is here that the enlightened 4th King committed his people to gross national happiness and sustainability, instead of gross national product, and mindless consumerism. When Bhutan is making business decisions, the worlds youngest democracy consciously considers each projects potential impact on the environment and its bio-diversity. Business proposals are screened for their value of enhancing or detracting from the well-being of their people. The Bhutanese government has a keen recognition of the interdependence of people and natural systems. They have first-hand experience of the impact from glacial melting devastating whole villages with torrential flooding. Bhutan has killed a gold mining operation. Killed it, for the same reason that tourists and mountaineers are not permitted to climb its lofty, sublime peaks, among the highest in the world. In a word: respect for the environment and a clear-eyed recognition of the interdependence of all things. It is a playbook for the planet. At a time when the World Wildlife Funds (WWF) 40 year study of 3,000 animal species, recently found a shocking 52% decline in animal populations, Bhutan is a shining example of respect for bio-diversity. There are many lessons to be gained from this tiny Kingdom. The profound respect for the interdependence of all things and beings resides deep in the Bhutanese culture. So I know in addition to being able to share my love of and experiences with Zen, I expect to learn a lot on this adventure of a lifetime. Perhaps youd be interested in coming, as well. For more information please contact the tours co-leaders, Charles Simmons and Marla Perry, via telephone or email. Phone: 520-331-8338 Email: charles@twotruths.org Heres a slideshow about Bhutan I found on the inter webs. And, Anthony Bourdains visit from the last season of his show before his death Two days after a couple and their two young children were found slain and their sprawling Colts Neck mansion set ablaze, the mystery of who killed the family continues, with no public signs of a possible motive. Keith Caneiro, 50, was found shot to death in a yard on his property after firefighters rushed to a raging fire at his $1 million-plus Willow Brook Road home early on Tuesday afternoon, authorities said. His wife, Jennifer Caneiro, 45, and the couple's children, Jesse, 11, and Sophia, 8, were found killed inside the residence. The mystery deepened Wednesday when authorities charged Keith's brother, Paul, with aggravated arson for setting his own Ocean Township home on fire early Tuesday morning. At the time he set the fire, Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni has charged, Caneiro's wife Susan and his two daughters were inside house. Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni offered no possible motive and declined to identify any potential suspects in the horrific killings, which has stunned the wealthy suburb. It is still unclear if the fire at Paul Caneiro's home was related to the homicides some ten miles away. Members of the Caneiro family could not be reached Wednesday. Neighbors could offer no explanation for the arson, painting a portrait of Paul Caneiro as friendly and low-key. Who is Paul Caneiro? Paul Caneiro doesn't have any previous criminal convictions, according to court records. Neighbors described the family as nice and sociable. One neighbor also said Paul was a gun owner who sometimes visited the shooting range at the Old Bridge Rifle and Pistol Club. No one answered the phone at the club Wednesday morning. Three neighbors outside the Caneiro home Wednesday said they were shocked by the charges filed against Paul. "I mean, we're all shocked," said one neighbor, who did not want to be named. "This is unexpected." Another neighbor, who also asked not be named, said Paul Caneiro and his wife, Susan, were at the home early Tuesday shortly after the predawn fire. Paul appeared to be upset and left later in the morning, the neighbor said. "He said it must've been a gas leak, he had tears in his eyes," another neighbor said. "Susan was devastated. He said, 'I'm in complete shock I can't believe this is happening to me.' They were here until about noon." It's unclear where Paul Caneiro went after leaving his house. What is known is that he was charged around 5 a.m. on Wednesday with the aggravated arson offense and then booked at the Monmouth County jail. A first court appearance for Caneiro has not yet been set. In a statement to CNN, Paul Caneiro's attorney, Robert Honecker, said: "My client maintains his innocence on this charge and any other potential charge. His family fully support his defense of this charge. No evidence has been produced that suggests a reason why he would engage in such conduct. He fully expects to be vindicated when this case finally resolves." What was the relationship between the two brothers? A picture has begun to emerge of two brothers from Brooklyn who lived a more-than-comfortable life with their families near the Jersey Shore, where they managed several businesses together. The office space occupied by Square One and EcoStar Pest Management. (Sophie Nieto-Munoz | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com) Keith Caneiro is listed as the owner of both the technology firm, Square One, and EcoStar Pest Management in Asbury Park, working both businesses with his brother. Both firms are housed in office space above The Speakeatery restaurant, in a stately brick building updated with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Cookman Avenue. Two small signs placed next to a door to the office space are the only indicators of the businesses' presence in the building. Keith had operated Square One since 1987, according to his LinkedIn profile. Notably, however, the technology company has a limited online presence and no active website. Also unexplained is why both businesses seem to have few, if any, other employees other than the Caneiros. A profile of the business in the Asbury Park Press said Paul Caneiro was his brother's first employee and eventually become the company's director of technical services. Jared DeVincenzo, who works at Marketing Genome on the floor above the pest business and Square One, said Paul Caneiro was helpful when they suffered a break-in last year -- but he too offered little hint at a possible motive for the arson or if there was any trouble between the brothers. "Paul was very nice with helping us with the recovery but other than that he's pretty quiet," DeVincenzo said Tuesday. Paul Caneiro's house in Ocean Township. (Sophie Nieto-Munoz | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com) What happens next? In Colts Neck, hundreds gathered Wednesday night to mourn the family. The same evening, the prosecutor's office confirmed the medical examiner office had positively identified the remains of the two children found in the house as those of Jesse and Sophia Caneiro. A source told NJ Advance Media that federal officials are currently not involved in the investigation, although ATF's Newark Division indicated on social media that its arson investigators were assisting with the Willow Brook Road fire probe. County and local investigators were still combing through the scene in Colts Neck as of Thursday morning. While the medical examiner has conclusively pinpointed multiple gunshot wounds as the cause of Keith Caneiro's death, which has been ruled a homicide, investigators have yet to determine how Jennifer Caneiro and her children were killed. At least one of the children had stab wounds, a law enforcement source told NJ Advance Media, but as of Wednesday night no weapon had been recovered from the scene. If additional state charges are filed in the case, any defendants charged would not make an initial court appearance any earlier than Friday, as state courts are closed Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday. Vinessa Erminio, Ted Sherman, Noah Cohen and Thomas Moriarty contributed to this report. By Pam Kragen, The San Diego Union-Tribune SAN DIEGO Ray Chavez, widely recognized as the oldest surviving veteran of the attack on Pearl Harbor, died Wednesday at the age of 106. Kathleen Chavez, who had been her fathers live-in caregiver for more than 20 years, said he passed away peacefully in his sleep in the predawn hours Wednesday. His health had declined in recent weeks and he was on hospice care when he passed. Memorial services are pending, but Kathleen said her father had asked to be buried at Miramar National Cemetery. Chavez surged into national prominence three years ago when Pearl Harbor veterans recognized him as the oldest survivor of the 1941 Japanese attack that ushered the U.S. into World War II. Since 2015, hes been an invited guest at the White House, at numerous commemorative events in California and Hawaii and a frequent local parade grand marshal. The soft-spoken Chavez often said he was overwhelmed by the media attention but he was proud to represent his country. Ray was the epitome of the greatest generation, said Richard Rovsek, a trustee of the nonprofit Spirit of Liberty Foundation in Rancho Santa Fe. He was always proud to be an American and proud of the military. Chavez was born in San Bernardino in 1911 and grew up in San Diegos Old Town and Logan Heights communities, where his large family ran a wholesale flower business. In his early 20s, he married and had a daughter. Then in 1938, at the age of 27, he joined the Navy and was assigned to the minesweeper USS Condor at Pearl Harbor. At 3:45 a.m. Dec. 7, 1941, Seaman 1st Class Chavezs crew was sweeping the east entrance to the harbor when they spotted the periscope of a Japanese midget submarine. After depth charges were dropped to sink the sub in 1,500 feet of water, the rest of the morning passed uneventfully. He told the San Diego Union-Tribune that he was asleep at home in nearby Ewa Beach when the Japanese bombing raid began at 8:10 a.m. My wife ran in and said, Were being attacked and I said, Whos going to attack us? Nobody. She said that the whole harbor was on fire and when I got outside I saw that everything was black from all the burning oil. He spent the next nine days on continuous duty in and around Pearl Harbor and said the scenes he witnessed left deep emotional scars. Over the next four years he rose to the rank of chief, serving on transport ships that delivered tanks and Marines to shore in eight Pacific battles. Although he wasnt injured during the war, he retired from the Navy in 1945 with psychological wounds from the terrible things he witnessed. He said that after a couple of the battles he saw, he started to shake, Kathleen said. First it was his hands, then it was his arms, then it was his whole body. By the time the war was over, his whole body shook. During his exit physical, a doctor wanted Chavez to spend some time recovering in a mental health clinic, but he feared it would impact his future job opportunities. He declined the offer and moved back to San Diego, where he got a job at a nursery. After two years of working outdoors in the fresh air, he got better, Kathleen said. Then in the 1950s, he and his wife, Margaret, suffered an unimaginable blow when their daughter, son-in-law and 18-month-old granddaughter were killed in a car accident. To mend their broken hearts, the Chavezes adopted 5-year-old Kathleen from a San Diego orphanage in 1957. She, too, served in the Navy, from 1974 to 1991 and was recognized as the Navys first woman jet engine mechanic. She had lived with her father since her mothers death in the mid-1980s. Chavez spent 30 years as a groundskeeper at the University of California, San Diego, then ran his own landscaping and groundskeeping business in the Poway area until he finally retired at age 96. Kathleen said her father never spoke about his war service or his Pearl Harbor experiences until 1991, when he was invited to attend the 50th anniversary memorial in Hawaii. It was such a moving experience that he and Kathleen went back to Hawaii for the 55th, 60th and 65th anniversaries and recently theyve gone every year as the number of survivors has dwindled. We went last year and if he was still alive, we were going to go back again next month, Kathleen said. I think he enjoyed the experience but he never saw himself as any different from the other men. Hed always say: Im no hero. I just did my job. Two people were injured and a third killed when gunfire erupted Thanksgiving night at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover. An 18-year-old male was shot and was rushed to UAB Hospitals Trauma Center where he was in serious condition. A 12-year-old girl was also shot and wounded. Authorities said she is believed to alert and conscious at Childrens of Alabama. A 21-year-old Hueytown man, whose name has not been released, was shot and killed by Hoover police. The shooting happened while thousands were getting an early start at the Galleria, the largest mall in Alabama and a popular Black Friday destination for shoppers from around the state. The gunfire inside the mall sent shoppers scurrying for cover and city officials described the scene as chaotic. (Update: The Galleria re-opened at 6 a.m. today according to the malls security office. Hoover police said they found a handgun on the ground in Santas Village when the mall reopened Friday but said they cant confirm its related to the Thursday-night shooting) Lexi Joiner said she was shopping with her mother when the gunfire erupted between J.C. Penney and Foot Action on the malls second floor. She said she heard six or seven shots ring out and was ordered, along with other nearby shoppers, into a supply closet for cover. It was terrifying, Joiner said. Several shoppers were seen with their guns drawn. One eyewitness was leaving the mall and entering the parking deck when he heard multiple shots, he ran to his car as people were fleeing the entrance by Journeys. He heard tires squealing as people tried to flee. "This was my first Black Friday, the high schools senior said. I knew it would be crazy, just not this crazy. Hoover police already had a heavy presence both outside and inside the mall. They quickly secured a perimeter and worked methodically to evacuate shoppers. We have a plan and our plan works, said Hoover Police Chief Nick Derzis. Hoover police Capt. Gregg Rectors said the shooting happened at 9:52 p.m. We received a call of shots fired outside of Foot Action. We already had multiple officers working at the mall for traffic control and police presence inside, he said. Earlier information, he said, is that two adult males one of the 18 years old got into a physical altercation in the mall area. At least one of those individuals exchanged gunfire with the other, Rector said. The 18-year-old was struck. He was taken UAB with at least one wound. We believe he is in serious condition. After the initial gunfire, Rector said the person who shot the 18-year-old was fleeing the area when he was confronted by two Hoover police officers, who were in uniform. One of our officers did engage that individual and shot him, Rector said. He was dead on the scene. The Hoover police officer actually was running to the scene, he heard gunshots, he was obviously very near the scene, he actually shot and killed the person who injured the other person, Rector said. He said they do not know what started the initial fight. We know they got into physical altercation. We know the deceased was armed with a handgun and we know he shot the person who was transported to UAB, Rector said. The 12-year-old bystander was also hit, but police arent yet sure at what point she was shot. Witnesses said she was shot in the back, but police have not confirmed that information. She was taken to Childrens of Alabama. She was alert, conscious and talking and maybe going to surgery, Rector said. Thought there were reports of other people injured as they were fleeing the mall, Rector said authorities had not been made aware of any other injuries. At least several bystanders took photos and videos of the incident inside the mall and those photos which included a graphic picture of the dead man quickly made the rounds on social media. Friends of his mother and other family members were pleading for the sharing of the images to stop. Rector said police had a solid protection plan for the Galleria beginning Thanksgiving night, as they do every year. This is a big shopping day for us as it is for everybody across the country, Rector said. We always gear up for extra manpower starting on Thanksgiving afternoon, we do that throughout Christmas. Obviously our officers are well-trained and they go through different types of training throughout the year and they always do a good job responding, he said. We were fortunate enough to have two officers near an active shooting scene and those officers rushed to that scene and encountered an individual who just shot someone, so we were fortunate that Hoover officer was where he needed to be and we believe he prevented further injuries. Rector said it is always a tough situation when an officer has to shoot someone. Its obviously going to be a difficult situation and were fortunate its something that doesnt happen often, he said. Jefferson County District Attorney Mike Anderton and District Attorney - Elect Danny Carr both responded to the scene. The Jefferson County Sheriffs Office was asked to lead the investigation into the officer-involved shooting. We will be looking at every possible means to gather the evidence of what happened, Rector said. We want it to paint a very clear picture of what happened tonight. Rector and other police and city officials said they believe the Galleria is a safe shopping destination, despite what happened Thursday night. The Galleria has been here about 33 years now and I could probably count the number of people who have actually been shot on this property on one or two hands, he said. Its one of the safest shopping destinations. Unfortunately, if you get thousands and thousand of people together in any venue, occasionally youre going to have violence. Chief Derzis agreed. Its a sad day in hoover tonight, Derzis said. We have been working this mall for over 20 years, with additional officers inside and outside. Unfortunately this took place tonight here, he said. Im very very proud of the Hoover police officers who were on the scene. Thank God we had our officers very close. They heard the gunfire, they engaged the subject, And they took out the threat, he said. That threat could have materialized into a lot more people being injured. Thank goodness that did not happen. On Thanksgiving night 2017, Hoover police and firefighters responded to the shopping center after 11 p.m. on at least one fight in a store on the malls second floor. Reports of gunfire quickly spread on social media, but authorities said reports of shots fired were not confirmed and no one was shot. If you look nationally at all nonsense, and I call it nonsense, that happens, for some reason people think that when they engaged in some sort of altercation, its Ok to pull out a gun and shoot somebody. Its not, the chief said. Thank God we dont have it often. I would hope people were coming out on a holiday night to enjoy themselves and not engage in the type of nonsense we had tonight. Derzis said investigators would like work overnight at the mall. It wasnt immediately clear what time it would reopen. Hopefully by tomorrow (Friday) everything will be back to normal for people who want to come out and shop, he said. We want people to feel safe, and I hope that they will. Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato said he believes the Riverchase Galleria is still one of the safest places in America. Im just grateful for the rapid, professional response of our police officers. They acted with such heroism, he said. They acted appropriately and quickly. Its already a bad situation, but it could have been worse. They took a situation that was very grave and chaotic and neutralized it an got under control quickly, Brocato said. This was an isolated incident. Unfortunately, it happens all of the country. You just dont bring guns to a crowded mall and thats what happened tonight. @spann @AEO Thank you to the employees at American Eagle for keeping us safe tonight during such hysteria. pic.twitter.com/BMAkBUzAsV Caitlin King (@CaitoPotato) November 23, 2018 #BREAKING Shopper Debby Woods talks about what she heard at the scene of a shooting in the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, Alabama, pic.twitter.com/wGEVHXnwJt WPEC CBS12 News (@CBS12) November 23, 2018 Jefferson County Sheriffs Office will investigate the officer-involved shooting part of the Galleria incident. Their detectives en route carol robinson (@RobinsonCarol) November 23, 2018 Footage from inside of the Galleria Mall shooting just minutes ago. pic.twitter.com/MHw4BgWB6g Austin Smith (@Aus10Smithh) November 23, 2018 Lexi Joiner said she was inside the mall when she heard 6 or 7 shots fired. Workers ordered them into supply closets for cover. It was terrifying pic.twitter.com/0pLwbKIWmw carol robinson (@RobinsonCarol) November 23, 2018 The shooting happened inside the mall between JC Penney and Foot Action. Witnesses say 3 hurt or worse but police have not confirmed carol robinson (@RobinsonCarol) November 23, 2018 Hoover police confirm the shooter is dead in an officer involved shooting. Still dont have number of injuries carol robinson (@RobinsonCarol) November 23, 2018 A 28- to 56-year prison sentence isnt too severe for a Dauphin County man convicted of twice trying to kill his girlfriend, a state Superior Court panel has ruled. It isnt vindictive, either, Judge Anne E. Lazarus concluded in the court opinion dismissing the appeal by 55-year-old Christopher Lee Gessner. Christopher Gessner A county jury convicted Gessner in August 2015 of trying to kill his girlfriend Teresa Lindt in July 2011 and June 2014. First, he set fire to his Washington Township mobile home while Lindt and her dogs were inside. Lindt escaped with severe burns. Her dogs died. While in prison awaiting trial on an attempted murder charge for that arson, Gessner tried to hire his cell mate to kill Lindt and make his original charges go away. Gessner only challenged the length of his prison term in his appeal to the Superior Court. He claimed county Judge Deborah E. Curcillo didnt fully consider his rehabilitation needs in imposing the penalty. Also, Gessner argued that Curcillo shouldnt have given him consecutive prison terms for each attempted murder conviction. His sentences should have been run concurrently because both homicide attempts were part of a single crime spree, he contended. We disagree, Lazarus wrote. The fact that it was the same victim in both cases does not, by that fact alone, make this a crime spree. The crimes did not occur in one continuous spree or episode; they were committed almost three years apart. She pointed as well to Curcillos observations that the crimes were heinous, that Lindt was victimized twice over, and that Gessners rehabilitation was likely to be a long and difficult road. Black Friday might be causing a fuss at the stores, but its not jamming up the roads. Emergency dispatchers in Dauphin and Cumberland counties reported around noon that there have been no traffic problems attributable to this pre-Christmas shopping extravaganza. Shoppers heading to the King of Prussia Mall should expect some delays as PennDOTs 511 website shows heavier traffic around the shopping center. KYW Newsradio in Philadelphia also reports heavier traffic around the shopping center and near the Philadelphia Premium Outlets. A federal appeals court panel has shot down an appeal by a Lehigh University professor who was convicted and jailed for lying to get a $700,000 grant from NASA. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit means Yujie Ding will continue to be saddled with wire fraud convictions, a 1-year prison term, a $3,000 fine and an order to pay $72,000 in restitution. Dings convictions and penalty are justified even though the work funded by the grant was performed for NASA, Judge Morton I. Greenberg found in the appeals courts opinion. The case centers on grant funding obtained by Arklight, a company owned by Ding, an electrical engineering prof, and his wife Yuliya Zotova, a scientist with the doctorate in nonlinear optics and optoelectronics. NASA awarded a Small Business Innovation Research grant to Arklight to develop a sensor to detect atmospheric gases in space. Only for-profit firms with fewer than 500 workers are eligible for such grants, Greenberg noted. Large entities such as universities are ineligible. Grant recipients must perform the majority of the work themselves. Ding stated on Arklights grant applications filed in 2009 and 2010 that Zotova would be the principal on the project and that a small part would be subcontracted to a research lab Ding headed at Lehigh University, Greenberg noted. The evidence showed, however, that Zotova did little or no work for Arklight, the judge wrote. Instead, graduate students and research fellows at Dings lab performed almost all of the work to develop the sensor. Federal investigators concluded that violated the grants terms and charged Ding with 10 counts of wire fraud for submitting what they claimed were false documents. A jury convicted Ding and Zotova on six of those charges. Zotova didnt appeal her 3-month prison sentence. Ding claimed in his appeal to Greenbergs court that the entire case should have been tossed for lack of evidence of any intended fraud. Greenberg found the evidence against Ding to be sufficient. Most of the grant money was used to develop the sensor, the judge conceded, But we still have no trouble finding that there was ample evidence of Dings intent to defraud. After all, Ding was seeking a source of funds for his research and his misrepresentation made this possible. To the government, it was highly material who would perform the work, Greenberg concluded. This is the weekend where we teeter between enjoying turkey leftovers and gazing a month into the future. The exception to this rule, of course, consists of deer hunters. Theyve filled their bellies and set their sights on Monday. Well excuse them from our conversation today. The rest of us, well most of us anyway, are focused on what to buy and how to fit everybody into our shopping budgets. For some folks that means waiting in lines for stores to open. For others, including me, it involves checking prices on the Internet, searching for stores with free shipping and hitting the buy button. I used to love going to the stores. For years, I shopped with my Mom. Shopping was her hobby, and nothing pleased her more than going with me. We took occasional bus trips to New York City to admire Rockefeller Center and the store windows. We fought our way through the crowded aisles in Macys, always careful to keep each other close. My Mom loved stores, any stores. She would explore them all. I remember how excited she was when Korvettes opened in Camp Hill. We lived in Lancaster, but the drive wasnt too far if a bargain was involved. For a while, the hot spot was the Reading Outlets. Back then they were old factory buildings, short on charm but piled with low-priced items. We could spend hours in Vanity Fair, which I enjoyed, but Mom also liked wandering through the china outlet. I confess that was never my cup of tea. That she was a born shopper is certain. When she was a teen, she would arrive home with tidbits she had picked up on her shopping adventures. This led my Uncle Walter to dub her Mrs. Woolworth, a title that lasted throughout her life. For many years, my parents would meet my Aunt Marguerite and Uncle Walter in Peddlers Village in Bucks County, a place they determined was halfway between their two homes. Every month or so, they would eat at the inn and then the ladies would shop, wandering in and out of gift shops and specialty stores. Dad and my uncle would move from bench to bench along their shopping route, looking bored. True to her name, Mrs. Woolworth always went home with a tchotchke or three. Of course, not all of her money was spent out of town. She loved Park City, and had no problem, even in her later years, walking up and down all the rows extending out from the center. Watt & Shand was one of her favorites, and she remained loyal even when it became The Bon-Ton in the 1990s. Not long after my Mom died, I drove past Bon-Ton with my Dad. He was surprised, he joked, that the store wasnt creped in black to mark the loss of its faithful customer. Im not sure when shopping in stores began to feel like a chore to me. The final straw, I think, came one Thanksgiving when I went shopping with my granddaughter to buy something that was important then, although what it was Ive now forgotten. The store was packed. Shopping carts were non-existent. The two of us were juggling piles of I know not what. The line to check out stretched to the back of the store. As we edged toward the registers, wed pass merchandise and pick up this for that person and that for this person. I was hot. I was tired. I was cranky. Thats when I decided Christmas shopping in stores is a young persons game. If I go now, and I do occasionally, its weekday afternoons when most shoppers are other senior citizens. The rest of the time, give me a computer and a credit card. Ive got a month. Ill get it done. Nancy Eshelmans latest book, More Pieces of My Mind, can be found on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1724139576 NANCY ESHELMAN: columnist1@verizon.net State police in Adams County are searching for a person of interest who may be connected with the suspicious death of a woman. According to a news release, state police in Gettysburg are investigating the death of 87-year-old Virginia Barbour, who was found dead Wednesday in a home on the 100 block of Peach Glen Idaville Road in Huntington Township, Adams County. According to police, troopers were called to the home to conduct a welfare check, and, when they arrived, they found Barbour dead inside. Police then conducted an investigation and determined that unknown actors entered the home and then fled the scene. State police said the womans death was the result of a criminal homicide. An updated news release Friday indicates at least six long guns, a .44 caliber pistol, and $1,600 in statehood rolled quarters were taken from the residence. A silver 2012 Chevrolet Impala with Pennsylvania registration HYJ-4804 was also taken. State police have released a number of photographs of an individual theyre trying to identify. Anyone with information pertaining to the whereabouts of the vehicle, or who can identify the person of interest, is asked to contact the Pennsylvania State Police Gettysburg Station at 717-334-8111. A Middleburg woman faces criminal charges after police said a 3-year-old girl almost shot another child. Ashley L. Hodowanes, 27, was arrested Nov. 5 after the incident on Renninger School Road in Center Township, Snyder County, according to a Thursday news release from state police. Police said they were called after a man reported that his 3-year-old daughter found a loaded pistol and shot it near the face of a 4-year-old child. In the Thursday evening news release, police did not indicate how Hodowanes was involved in the incident or why she was charged. Online court documents show that Hodowanes faces two counts each of misdemeanor simple assault, recklessly endangering another person and endangering the welfare of a child. She also faces a single charge of misdemeanor tampering with evidence. She is to appear for a preliminary hearing at 11 a.m. Dec. 13 before Magisterial District Judge Lori R. Hackenberg. Never before has a president endured such hateful, onerous daily attacks, and yet, still make good on the promises he made to the people. Never before has irrational hate found its way into the hearts of so many for the loss of a presidential election. And never before did principled federal entity heads join in an unlawful conspiracy to destroy a president. The hate is institutionalized in the Democratic party, mainstream media, Hollywood, and is even bipartisan among some establishment members of Congress. Why is it so? Are they upset that an outsider overcame insiders? Are they upset that he beat all odds using their own game of ridicule? Does his ego and do his retorts madden them? Do his successes belittle their past ineptness? Are they hopeful that his domestic and international endeavors fail even if it means a failure nationally? Too many elected and hopeful politicians have adopted a mantra of greed and power rather than the good of the people. Its time the media and actors guild stand down their hate. And, its time the Congressional Democrats join their Republican colleagues and the President to bring about affordable healthcare, comprehensive immigration reform and nationwide infrastructure repair. T he people were swayed by those issues in the midterms. Make it happen Washington! GERRY DONATUCCI, Lower Allen Twp. 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Like our standard RESET Helmet; it will be available in 7 sizes from three separate shells from XXS to XXL, the Reset MIPS will fit riders of nearly all-ages with exceptional comfort. MIPS E2 Brain Protection System - low friction layer designed to reduce rotational motion transferred to the brain from angled impacts to the head. Lightweight ABS shell Large angular vents increase cold air intake and heat exhaust flow through Large sculpted eyeport for great vision and goggle fitment Complies to standards: CPSC, CE: 1078, AS/NZS 2063 Sizes XXS-XXL (48 - 64cm)The H2 smart direct drive trainer is the perfect addition to any athletes arsenal. The heart of the H2 is its ability to replicate real world inertia better than anyone else thanks to it its massive, 20-pound precision-balanced flywheel, while its soul is its impressive electrical prowess, complete with integrated cadence, speed and power data. From mountain bikers to weekend warriors, the American-made H2 can help push any training regimen to the edge. Compatible with Boost, 142mm, 135mm, and 130mm axle spacing PowerTuned using PowerTap technology for up to +/- 2% accurate power readings. Electromagnetic resistance provides a precise and controlled workout every time. Direct drive design features stable base and quiet performance. Integrated cadence, speed and power data no external sensors needed. Seamlessly connects to virtual training apps with dual ANT+ FE-C and Bluetooth standards. Zwift certifiedYour attitude toward riding is defined more by whats possible rather than the other way around; choices are key to unlocking adventure. Or maybe you like winning, like the European Downhill Championships or the Enduro World Series, where Mirandas XMOD crankset could be seen in 2018 on the winning bikes of Tiago Ladeira and Karim Amour. XMOD is the worlds first totally modular crankset that allows you to choose the spindle, spider, and crank arms independently for a fully customized crankset specific to you. Together with clever chainring design that locks flush with right crank arms, the resulting reinforced fit extends the life of both cranks and chainrings. XMOD allows you almost limitless crankset combinations for enduro, downhill, and XC.The Silicone Grip Perfected! Simply put, not all grips are created equal. Manufactured in the USA with the highest grade vibration damping and weather resistant silicone compound, combined with our proprietary extrusion process makes RedMonkey Sports klampz silicone lock-on grips the most comfortable lock-on grip on the market. Designed for comfort and produced with a tacky texture, they can be used with or without gloves, limiting hand and arm fatigue on all types of terrain! RedMonkey Sports is also proud to donate a portion of sales to various cycling charities. Dual locking clamp design Tacky no-slip texture Weather resistant silicone High vibration damping compound Fits Mountain Bike bars 22.2 mm Outside diameter: 35mm Approx. 113 grams per set including bar endsGive the gift of traction. The new DebonAir air spring upgrade kit reduces friction from every single moving part, improving bump absorption and response under load, and drastically reducing rider fatigue. New friction-reducing DebonAir air spring delivers the most responsive forks in RockShox history, maintaining traction in more conditions than ever before. Available for RockShox Lyrik, RockShox Pike, RockShox Revelation and RockShox Yari. Quick and easy install.Since its inception, our beloved Aircraft helmet has been on a tear, tackling wins around the world in both downhill and enduro mountain bike races. Our pilots, Sam Hill and Loic Bruni, have been wearing the precision engineered full face helmet with a Carbon/Kevlar composite shell for an ultra-lightweight feel and have proved the Aircraft to be the winningest MTB helmet since it first was worn. Riders trust the Aircraft for safety and comfort as the MIPS equipped helmet is one of the best ventilated helmets on the market with 25 different channels to manage airflow. Ultra-light design featuring aerospace Carbon/Kevlar composite shell MIPS technology adds more protection against rotational violence to the brain caused by angled impacts Active cooling system maximizes airflow with 25 vents and channels. More ventilation than any other helmet Washable, antibacterial comfort liner, cheek pads and chin strap covers Emergency release cheek pads and integrated release system compartment for quick, safe removal Titanium D-Ring buckle provides a secure fit while saving weight Engineered with 2 shell sizes and 3 EPS sizes to achieve the perfect fit Adjustable visor with machined light-weight aluminum screws Durable helmet case with integrated goggle pocket includedThe perfect travel bike maintenance gifts from Feedback Sports to take you and your bike wherever you want to go.Equipped with a digital display, easy air bleed button, and foldable design, FOXs digital pump gives you an exact pressure setting to make suspension and seatpost setup easier and repeatable every time. The gauge accurately reads up to 300 PSI, refining displaying pressures in 0.5 PSI increments through the 0-100 PSI range. 0-300 PSI in 0.5 PSI increments Reads in PSI, BAR, KG/CM2 Replaceable batteryThule Vital packs are constructed with a low center of gravity and optimal weight distribution for cross-country and trail riding. With its lightweight, ventilated materials offering the ultimate in comfort on any terrain, the 3L, 6L, and 8L options are available for quick rides or longer all day journeys. The unique jersey-style pockets allow quick access to items without slowing down, while the organizational pockets inside keep all your essentials where you need them. Equipped with HydraPak bladder systems, the Thule ReTrakt hydration hose keeps your hands on the bars and your focus on the trail as it automatically returns to the shoulder strap and stays in place using magnetic strips.LEV CI takes rhythm from the trail and injects it straight into your soul. 65-175 millimeters of perfect drop are just enough to turn your ride up to eleven. A full unidirectional carbon mast routes our Recourse II Ultralight Cable System directly through your frame to our KGSL lightweight remote a combination saving over 50g compared to our KG ALLOY remote and standard shift cable. The result is clean lines for you and your bike. High compression molded carbon fiber head micro adjustable with titanium bolts Up to 175mm of infinitely adjustable travel Adjustable air sprung hydraulic cartridge Black hard anodized stanchion Black laser etched seal collar Patented one-way roller-clutch bearing One-piece molded unidirectional carbon fiber mast User-friendly cable interface specifically designed for internal frame routing Compatible with all Southpaw, KG and Westy style remotesThe HT ANS10 Supreme, designed in conjunction with the super stylish Swedish giant Martin Soderstrom, the ANS10 Supreme offers the perfect amount of traction, platform and feel. Used by numerous FMB riders including FMB champion Brett Rheeder it goes without saying that the ANS10 stands up to the hardest of use. Pedal Weight (pair): 368 g Size: 100 x 100 x 16.6 mm Body Materia: aluminum extruded / CNC machined Spindle: CNC machined Crmo Pedal Bearings: sealed bearings / IGUS bushings Pins: replaceable SAP (1/8"" x 9 mm) pins / 1 mm washerBuilt for hitting the berms and brewing up a post-ride coffee, the Callaghan is patterned for the bike and the apres-trail hang out with a relaxed fit that smoothly transitions from ride to recovery.Made with soft, comforting merino on the inside and trail-resistant polyester on the out, the Callaghans dual-fabric construction balances your temperature whether youre working hard on the bars, or sitting back to enjoy the descent. And thanks to the legendary anti-odor properties of merino, you can ride and repeat without fear of upsetting your bunkmate during extended trips away.Trimmed with an easy pull full-length zipper, the Callaghan includes dual front pockets, one of which is finished with an internal phone security sleeve to prevent cellular slip-outs.The most celebrated feature of the iconic Split Roller 110L travel bag is the divided top and bottom compartments which allows for the ultimate in organization and access. The interior organizational benefits include a large main compartment as well as individual divided sections all separated with see-through mesh dividers to keep clean separate from dirty, or adventure and sports gear separate from clothing. The ingenious Split-Wing collapsible brace allows the travel bag to fold flat conserving your valuable storage space when not in use. This stylish rolling luggage is not your father's suitcase. Limited Lifetime Warranty Price varies by fabric Split level design allows for easy access and organization Split-Wing Collapsible Brace (pat. pending) provides great stability and folds flat for storagelockable YKK main zippers Interior see-through mesh dividers Weight: 11 lbs. (5kg)HERO7 Black introduces HyperSmooth, TimeWarp, Live Streaming and SuperPhoto, while also delivering 12MP photos, 4K60 and 1080p240 video, and built-in, gimbal-like stabilization. Its rugged and waterproof to 10m without housing and compatible with all existing GoPro mounts.Goggle inspired coverage, sunglass inspired performance. Charge any trail in the Wildcat - Smith's full coverage, hybrid construction, cylindrical lens sunglass. Constructed from durable TR90 and flexible TPU used in Smith goggles, the Wildcat provides coverage and protection like a goggle with the airflow and comfort of a sunglass. Equipped with two-position nose pads, megol temples for no-slip fit, the Wildcat also comes with a bright light ChromaPop lens, and a secondary clear lens for low light overcast days, or rides with heavy tree canopy.Head to our online Merch Store for exclusive Pinkbike apparel that will keep you looking sharp on or off the trails! We have the ideal gifts for the mountain bikers in your life including hoodies, sweaters, T-shirts, socks, the 2019 calendar and more! Incoming House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) announced that his committee would be investigating Trumps ties to Saudi Arabia. Rep. Schiff told Greg Sargent The Washington Post: Certainly, we will be delving further into the murder of Khashoggi, and I want to make sure that the committee is fully debriefed on it. We will certainly want to examine what the intelligence community knows about the murder. . Well look at what the intelligence community assessments are at any given time.Then it will be quite clear whether the president is relying on the intelligence community and our best source of information or whether the president is representing something very different. . There are a whole set of potential financial conflicts of interest and emoluments problems that Congress will need to get to the bottom of. Certainly, if foreign investment in the Trump businesses is guiding U.S. policy in a way thats antithetical to the countrys interests, we need to find out about it. Trumps Thanksgiving Day Rant Has Led To A Black Friday For The White House Trumps bizarre statement defending the Saudi murder of Khashoggi had already raised alarm bells, but his rant defending the regime on Thanksgiving day sealed the deal on a House investigation. House Democrats could spend the next two years investigating Trump every day, and they wouldnt get through half of the aspects of the president, his family, and his administration that are worthy of investigation. Just like Trumps constant support of Putin, his behavior likely is related to personal financial interests. Democrats are coming, and if US foreign policy is being made based Trump financial ties, it is a national security crisis that will zoom to the top of the list of potential Democratic investigations of this president. Black Friday just got a lot darker for Trump thanks to Adam Schiff and House Democrats. For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group. Follow Jason Easley on Facebook. 512 SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard Migrants seeking asylum are being stopped at the southern border and forced to stay in Mexico until they pay money to Mexican officials, the Los Angeles Times has reported. Asylum seekers are being funneled to border bridge crossings and are being blocked from approaching the U.S. side, the Times said. These poor migrants, who have traveled long distances to get to the border, are being forced onto waiting lists that are overseen by Mexican authorities. Immigrant-rights advocates say that this is a very dangerous situation for the asylum seekers. They are now at risk of extortion, discrimination and deportation. They say that Mexican officials demand money to let them pass and if they dont have money, they have to stay in Mexico. In Matamoros, Mexico, the list is kept on a clipboard on one of two border bridges. Mexican officers maintain the list but U.S. officials tell them how many asylum seekers can cross the bridge each day. The Times said that an anonymous individual familiar with the Mexican immigration system reported that U.S. officials choose which migrants cross into the U.S. based on their nationality and other characteristics. The asylum seekers have been camping at the foot of the bridge for weeks, waiting for their turn to cross. Those who cant pay money are at the top of the waiting list but watch others (who pay the bribes) jump ahead of them. Under U.S. law immigrants seeking asylum may present themselves at border crossings or inside the country. But last week President Trump announced he would not follow U.S. law. He said he was implementing a new policy so that those crossing illegally into the U.S. would be denied asylum. A federal judge in San Francisco blocked Trumps policy, however, because it was not in compliance with the asylum laws. One thing the judges ruling did not address, however, was stopping asylum seekers at the border bridges before they enter the United States. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say they have no more space to process asylum seekers at border holding areas. As a result they are now placing their officers on the bridges to stop the migrants from entering the U.S. This policy requires that the migrants add their names to the waiting lists maintained by Mexican border guards in Mexico. Immigrant advocates have sued in federal court to change this system, arguing that the waiting list process illegally blocks people from entering the U.S. to seek asylum. As the lawsuit is pending, U.S. immigration officials have expanded the waiting list system to all busy border crossings in Arizona, California and Texas. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it processes undocumented persons as expeditiously as possible, and denied it was involved in selecting who enters from the lists. Nationality has absolutely no bearing on the processing of asylum seekers, and those on the lists are processed on a first-come, first-serve basis, the agency said. The agency said it does take into consideration persons with medical emergencies, unaccompanied alien children, the disabled, and gives priority as we can, bearing in mind the day-to-day availability of resources, case complexity, holding space, port volume and enforcement actions. But Jessica Zamora, an 18-year-old Cuban who is seven months pregnant, has been waiting at the foot of the Matamoros bridge for several weeks with two other pregnant women. We wait here while others pass because we dont have money, Zamora said. 2.7k SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard A Turkish newspaper reported yesterday that the CIA has a smoking gun recording of a phone call which proves that Saudi Arabias crown prince ordered the murder of exiled Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Turkeys Hurriyet Daily News reported that The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is in possession of a phone call recording of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in which he is heard giving an instruction to silence Jamal Khashoggi as soon as possible. The Turkish newspaper also reported on Thursday that the CIA Director told Turkish officials during her trip to Turkey in October that the agency was in possession of the wiretapped phone call. CIA Director Gina Haspel signalled during her trip to Ankara last month the existence of the wiretapped phone call between Crown Prince Mohammed and his brother Khaled bin Salman, who is Saudi Arabias ambassador to the United States. The two Saudi officials are heard in the CIA recording discussing the discomfort created by Khashoggis public criticism of the kingdoms administration. Turkish officials said that they have no information about such a recording. The government of Saudi Arabia has said that the crown prince had no prior knowledge of Mr Khashoggis killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul six weeks ago. According to The Hurriyet Daily News: It is said that the crown prince gave an instruction to silence Jamal Khashoggi as soon as possible and this instruction was captured during the CIA wiretapping. The subsequent murder is the ultimate confirmation of this instruction. An international investigation into the murder, if opened, can reveal more jaw-dropping evidence, as CIA has more wiretapped phone calls at hand than the public knows about. The Turkish paper said that CIA chief Haspel met with Turkish government officials during her visit to Turkey and they discussed Khashoggis death. Khashoggi had been banned from writing in his home country and was a critic of the Saudi government as well as Donald Trump. Turkeys President Tayyip Erdogan has publicly stated that Khashoggis killing was ordered by the highest level of Saudi leadership which means the crown prince. On Wednesday Erdogan criticized President Donald Trumps statement about Khashoggi, saying it was comic. He also accused the United States of turning a blind eye to the murder of the Saudi journalist. After offering numerous contradictory explanations, Riyadh said last week Khashoggi had been killed and his body dismembered when negotiations to persuade him to return to Saudi Arabia failed. 829 SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard President Donald Trump on Thursday again threatened to close the southern border if the Mexican government doesnt do more to provide border security. If we find that its uncontrollable, if we find it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control, the president said to reporters during his Thanksgiving vacation at his Florida palace, Mar-a-Lago. He then added that he would shut down the whole border I mean, the whole border. Trump said he wants Mexico to do much more to secure the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border from San Diego, California to Brownsville, Texas. We are either going to have a border, or were not, he remarked. When they lose control of the border on the Mexico side, we just close the border. Once again, Trump is making grand pronouncements to get media attention but has not considered the ramifications of his threatened actions. Closing the Mexican border would cause massive economic damage throughout the country and especially in the border states. According to a U.S. State Department estimate nearly $2 billion in goods and services legally cross the border each day. On top of that hundreds of thousands of people also legally cross the Mexican border every day. Trumps threats yesterday followed an unhinged tweet storm last month where he threatened to close the border if the governments of Mexico and Central America did not control the migrant caravan heading toward the United States. Trump also said on Thursday that there could be a government shutdown next month. He said he could hold up a funding deal with Congress if they dont authorize money for a wall on the Mexican border. Could there be a shutdown? There certainly could and it will be about border security, of which the wall is a part, Trump commented while talking to reporters. Congress has a deadline in December to fund parts of the federal government and avoid a possible showdown. Democrats have never said they would agree to meet Trumps wall demands, and the Republicans currently in charge of Congress cant agree among themselves. Most people know that when Donald Trump issues threats like closing the border or shutting down the government he is just blowing hot air. Still, his irresponsible statements to reporters yesterday are sure to cause headaches and heartburn among Republican members of Congress who actually are running the U.S. government. During Russian President Vladimir Putins two-day state visit to Singapore, where the two countries are marking 50 years of diplomatic ties, Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov gave an exclusive interview to Television Rain, in which he spoke about the need for the importance of maintaining trade ties with the United States. When the topic turned to U.S. and Western sanctions against Russia, Peskov took issue with the word "sanctions." "Sanctions conform to international law. In this case, we dont recognize those unilateral restrictions as legitimate sanctions because we deem them to be illegal, he said. So it will probably be more correct to say limitations or restrictions, but not sanctions. Russia is currently facing a series of sanctions from the U.S. and its allies over the annexation of Crimea, military involvement in Eastern Ukraine, the death of Sergei Magnitsky, interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election and the deployment of a military grade nerve agent Novichok in the attempted assassination of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England. Those sanctions target dozens of individuals and entities, taking aim at specific sectors of the Russian economy, including armaments and energy, with an eye towards restricting access to Western capital markets and dual-use and other sensitive technologies. The sanctions effectively freeze financial assets of the sanctioned entities on U.S. territory and ban U.S. individuals and groups from engaging in business transactions with named Russian individuals and groups. The European Union has currently enacted sanctions against 155 people from Russia and Ukraine as a result of Russias 2014 seizure of Crimea and military involvement in Eastern Ukraine, which the U.S. State Department calls forcible control by Russia. The EU has also frozen the assets of 44 entities from both countries, with sources in Brussels telling Radio Free Europe five more individuals were set to be sanctioned over separatist-organized elections on November 11 in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk Peoples Republics, which the United States, France and Germany have called a sham and illegal. Peskov and other Russian officials have previously attempted to portray such sanctions as illegal. As Polygraph.info reported in August 2017, Andrey Klimov, Deputy Chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee, Federation Council, similarly argued the sanctions are illegal because the only sanctions recognized by international law are those of the UN Security Council. Russia and other parties have also contested the use of unilateral sanctions, citing the World Trade Organizations General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which, among other things, includes the right to trade without discrimination. Bill Browder, the U.S. born British financer who spearheaded the Magnitsky Act, which bans Russian officials suspected of human rights abuses from stepping foot on U.S. soil, freezes their assets, and bars U.S. firms from carrying out financial transactions with them, told Polygraph.info there is no truth to Peskovs statement. The sanctions that are currently in place are travel bans and asset freezes in the countries where this is happening and its not a function of international law, its a function of domestic law. The United States has a right to deny entry to anyone it wants Its a privilege to travel to the United States, not a right. And furthermore, its a privilege to use the U.S. banking system, Browder said. The only thing he can say is the UN cant sanction anybody but individual member states can do anything they want, he added. Ambassador Daniel Fried of the Atlantic Council mirrored Browders comments. U.S. sanctions are legal under U.S. law because the U.S. jurisdiction over its own banking system and currency, he said. Any company or financial institution, U.S. or not, that seeks the benefits of or access to the U.S. financial system or U.S. markets needs to comply with US laws. He also noted that sanctions against Russia itself came as the result of violations of international law, noting the invasion and occupation of Ukraine and annexation of its territory. And, Moscow itself has been no stranger to imposing unilateral sanctions despite claims they must be sanctioned through the UN Security Council. As for Russian claims that sanctions are valid only with UN authorization, I dont recall any such restraint when it came to Russias sanctions against imports from the EU, its sanctions against Ukraine, or its sanctions against Georgia, Fried said. In January 2009, then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree banning exports of military and dual purpose products to Georgia in a bid to restrict military cooperation with the small Caucasian state following the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. Countries or individuals found to be in breach of Russias unilaterally imposed regulations faced economic and financial sanctions, RIA Novosti reported at the time. Earlier this month, Russia drew up counter sanctions against Ukraine, targeting 322 individuals and 68 businesses. As a result of the Ukraine crisis, in 2014 Moscow announced counter sanctions against 10 American citizens, and banned 10 Canadian officials from entering Russia. Russia also recently marked the four-year anniversary of its import ban on certain Western products in response to Ukraine-related sanctions, which targeted the United States, the EU, Norway, Canada and Australia. Those sanctions resulted in highly publicized scenes of Russian authorities bulldozing tons of foodstuffs. Regarding claims the sanctions violate GATT, Article XXI, of the agreement covers Security Exceptions, which legalizes the right of any nation to impose unilateral sanctions against another country when essential security interests are involved, Polygraph.info previously reported. While the text of GATT has been reviewed and amended several times since its creation shortly after World War II, Article XXI has never been amended. A number of scholars, however, do lay out rather stringent criteria for the imposition of sanctions, which provide room for debate over the extent of sanctions but not their legality. Ruth Wedgwood, a law professor at Johns Hopkins University, told Polygraph.info that the U.S. government cannot arbitrarily target entities of a foreign government but said that suspicions of illicit activity may provide it with sufficient grounds for assets freezes. Michael Reisman, a professor of international law at Yale Law School, said that in the event of sanctions, the measures should be proportional, that sanctions should be necessary to achieve an explicit and lawful objective, and differentiate between the elite who are responsible for the offensive behavior and the rank-and-file. Russia itself has a complex relationship with international law. From its occupation of Georgian, Ukrainian and Moldovan territory, annexation of Crimea, multiple alleged assassinations on English soil, alleged war crimes in Syria and use of its own unilateral sanctions. Peskovs appeal to international law to counter Western sanctions is at best misleading. Based on the available evidence, Peskovs claim that such measures dont conform with international law are false. Rep.-elect Joe Cunningham, D-S.C., holds his son Boone, arrives for orientation for new members of Congress, Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018, in Washington. AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations. The Post and Courier provides a forum for our readers to share their opinions, and to hold up a mirror to our community. Publication does not imply endorsement by the newspaper; the editorial staff attempts to select a representative sample of letters because we believe its important to let our readers see the range of opinions their neighbors submit for publication. Lt. Governor Ray Tenorio issued a statement this afternoon accepting defeat after the Guam Election Commission certified the general election results. Tony and I thank all our supporters, families and all those who participated in the 2018 election. We especially congratulate all those elected into offices and pray our Lords blessings on them and our island. I thank the people of Guam for the honor to have served them as their lieutenant governor the past eight years. We sincerely rally behind Lou and Josh now as we wish them the very best in their leadership to improve our people and their future. God bless Guam, Tenorio stated. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. The Democratic gubernatorial team of Lou Leon Guerrero and Joshua Tenorio widened its lead after absentee and provisional ballots were counted earlier today. In the senatorial race, Democrat Jose Terlale secured the 15th seat. Terlaje received 11,930 votes over fellow Democrat Celestin Babauta's 11,876. While most government of Guam workers are off today, the Guam Election Commission will be finalizing the count for the general election. The last remaining absentee ballots were received Wednesday afternoon. A recount is expected in the senatorial race between the 15th- and 16th-place finishers. GEC also is expected to certify the general election results. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. Democrats Lou Leon Guerrero and her running mate, Josh Tenorio, are presumed to be Guam's next governor and lieutenant governor. However, the Republican team of Lt. Gov. Ray Tenorio and Tony Ada have not conceded, pending certification. Working today, during the Black Friday holiday, is expected to cost GEC about $2,587, including retirement and Medicare, on top of normal pay. In total, the holiday will cost the commission about $4,600. On Nov. 16, Gov. Eddie Calvo declared Black Friday a GovGuam holiday. The Judiciary of Guam and Legislature followed suit shortly after. The holiday will cost line agencies about $150,000 extra in holiday pay, according to Department of Administration Director Edward Birn. The total personnel cost may be around $1 million. A Bureau of Budget and Management Research fiscal note included in Public Law 32-145 found that the total cost of one day for personnel paid through DOA in 2014 was about $810,000. Of that amount, about $545,000 came from the general fund, including salaries and benefits. The rest came from special or federal funds. The former project coordinator for Guam Resource Recovery Partners said discussions are underway to remove Wagdy Guirguis as president of the company now that he has been convicted of tax fraud. "GRRP is a partnership and there are other people involved," David Sablan said. "It's very probable and maybe highly probable at this point that Guirguis would be removed from the partnership." Sablan said he no longer has any formal business relationship with Guirguis. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. "I haven't been working with him for six years now." However, Sablan said others in GRRP have been discussing Guirguis' position and they have kept him informed. "I'm sure there is movement now to get him out," Sablan said. On Tuesday, a federal jury found Guirguis guilty of conspiracy to defraud the United States in a scheme to divert funds from his business entities for his personal benefit and to avoid the payment of federal employment and income taxes, according to a release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Guirguis has a number of business interests in Hawaii, the Federated States of Micronesia and Guam. Waste-to-energy project "I feel sorry for him and his family," Sablan said. But despite Guirguis' conviction, Sablan said he remains a strong supporter of the waste-to-energy plant GRRP still wants to build on Guam. "I strongly believe it's beneficial for Guam," said Sablan. The project "is too important of an issue to keep Guirguis involved in light of what's happened now and his conviction." In 1996, the government of Guam granted an exclusive license to GRRP to build a facility in Guatali that burns garbage to produce electricity. The project has been blocked by a Guam law that forbids trash-burning incinerators. However, in July 2015, Guirguis and Gov. Eddie Calvo signed an agreement that would allow GRRP to build the plant as long as the Legislature approved an exemption to the law. The governor said he signed the agreement in hopes of settling a $20 million claim GRRP filed against GovGuam over the stalled project. In November 2017, GRRP sought an order from the Superior Court of Guam to enforce the 2015 agreement and the court-approved mediation between both parties. However, in July, Attorney General Elizabeth Barrett-Anderson stated there's no reason to go into mediation on the claim because burning garbage to produce electricity is still illegal and should not be an issue for mediation. President Kennedy, in discussing U.S. policy towards Latin America, reportedly described three types of regimes: democracy, dictatorship, and communist. He explained that the U.S. prefers the first, but is willing to accept the second in order to avoid the third. Nearly two decades later, Jeane Kirkpatrick, one of the architects of President Reagans foreign policy, distinguished between traditional authoritarian governments on the one hand, and revolutionary autocracies and totalitarian regimes on the other. Like Kennedy, she considered the former clearly preferable to the latter, in part because they are more compatible with U.S. interests. (Kirkpatrick was a leading neo-conservative, which gives the lie to the stereotype of neo-conservatives as mindless promoters of democracy above all other interests). Kirkpatrick criticized the Carter administration for failing to recognize this reality in its approach to Nicaragua and Iran. The pragmatism of Kennedy and Kirkpatrick has guided U.S. post World War II foreign policy for 70 years. The only major exceptions were the Carter and Obama years. Yet the Washington Post, in a hissy fit of an editorial, advances the absurd claim that President Trump, by not scuttling relations with the current Saudi regime over the slaying of one regime opponent, has undermin[ed] the basic understanding that has worked to the United States advantage since World War II under presidents both Republican and Democratic. Because Trump hasnt insisted on accountability for those who planned and committed the murder of the Posts man Jamal Khashoggi, the editors warn that U.S. standing in the world and, therefore, U.S. influence and prosperity will dwindle. The Post thus ignores 70 years of history. During this span, we have backed ruthless dictators and turned a blind eye to their worst excesses in exchange for their support in various forms. Saudi Arabia is a paradigm case. The Post itself has shown that the murder of Khashoggi is just an usually gruesome continuation of Saudi practices by past governments, including those Khashoggi served as a mouthpiece. This approach has rarely backfired. Its true that the Iranian regime dines off of the fact that the U.S. supported the Shah. However, Iran is almost unique in this regard (Cuba is the other major example). Moreover, the mullahs real quarrel with America isnt our support for the Shah. Its the incompatibility between our way of life and the ideology they espouse (so too with Castros Cuba). Trump, then, is not destroy[ing] the American brand through its approach to the murder of Khashoggi. Hes basically just applying the pragmatic approach that has animated U.S. policy throughout his lifetime. Michael Doran and Tony Badran provide a good defense of that pragmatism in a New York Times op-ed. The Post editorial conflates two prongs of Trumps foreign policy his pragmatic approach to friendly dictatorships and his aggressive approach to our non-dictatorship allies. As we have seen, the former approach is consistent with our post-World War II tradition. The latter, fussing with our allies, is something of a departure. The Post isnt wrong when it says that previous presidents understood that the way to [best advance U.S. interests in an orderly] world was to enlist allies who would live by the United States rules in return for protection safe in knowledge that the United States would not use its preeminence to squeeze them for every last dollar. (Emphasis added) Nor is the Post wrong when it notes that Trump seems to be adopting a somewhat different understanding. I assume its referring mainly, but not exclusively, to trade policy. But whatever one thinks of Trumps trade policy towards the EU, Mexico, Japan, it has nothing meaningful to do with our policy towards Saudi Arabia in the Khashoggi affair. The Post conflates the two hoping to enhance its grievance over the fate of its former op-ed writer. Yes, both policies can lumped together, superficially, under the slogan America First. But our Saudi Arabia policy is an unexceptional example of traditional realism. Trumps trade policy, for better or for worse, breaks with tradition to some degree. One can easily support Trumps handling of the Khashoggi matter and still question aspects of both his trade policy and his overall approach towards our democratic allies. The Posts desire to merge the two issues is as cynical as it is unpersuasive. PR-Inside.com: 2018-11-23 01:17:09 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 488 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 Did You Know that Approximately 90% of the Table Tomatoes We Eat are Imported? Tomatoes Transported from Mexico and Even as far as Israel Cannot be Picked Ripe; that Impacts Their Flavour and Nutrition.DAUPHIN, MB / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2018 /Vermillion Growers, a women-led, family run company out of Manitoba want to change Canada's food sovereignty and food quality by building Manitoba's first large-scale greenhouse to grow local, delicious, ripe tomatoes that can be in stores within the day. Canadians deserve fresh, ripe, locally grown produce on our grocer's shelves it's better for our health and our sovereignty. Vermillion Growers is on a mission to make that happen.Maria Deschauer, Vermillion Grower's Managing Director commented, "We want to make a stand for the humble tomato. In North America, we each eat 16 lbs of table tomatoes every year, and just like the French's vs Heinz debate last year, tomato sovereignty is important to Canadians. We can grow tomatoes on the vine in Manitoba, and the weather is no obstacle for year-round nutritious, delicious produce. In fact, our high-tech greenhouses benefit from the cool weather as it is easier to heat than cool down, and we can provide complete traceability which is why we say we are growing food, growing people, growing community. That's also why we are opening up the investment to the community, so people can benefit not just from the hundreds of jobs we will create, but also from investing in the business." Vermillion Growers has partnered with FrontFundr, Canada's largest investment crowdfunding platform, to raise the final sums required to build the 5 acres of greenhouses. Their equity crowdfunding campaign launched on the site today and their first crop is planned before the end of 2019. Canadians passionate about food can invest from $250 on the platform.Key DataAn estimated 90% of table tomatoes in Canada are imported. Vermillion Growers aim to displace importers, not existing local growers. Tomatoes are the largest imported greenhouse vegetable commodity.MexicoIsrael73, 400 metric tonnes (161,819,300 lbs.)38 metric tonnes (83,776 lbs)The United StatesSpain10,133 metric tonnes (22,350,464 lbs.)33 metric tonnes (72,753 lbs.)"Statistical Overview of the Canadian Greenhouse Vegetable Industry 2016"Report prepared by the Government of Canada Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada November 2017About Vermillion Growers?Vermillion Growers will be Manitoba's first large scale greenhouse supplying Central Canada with fresh, local tomatoes and eventually a range of vegetables. Our high-tech greenhouse is designed to benefit from the hot summers while efficiently protecting against the cold winters on the Canadian Prairies. We are a family business led by three generations of women who value growing local to grow the community in Dauphin, Manitoba. Growing Food, Growing People, Growing Community.For more information, images, video or to arrange an interview contact Victoria Bennett victoria@ bmwconsults.com (403) 589 7992Full details of the offering can be found in the Offering Memorandum. This document is for information purposes only. Please consult your finance professional before making an investment.With imagesSOURCE: Vermillion Growers PR-Inside.com: 2018-11-23 02:55:02 Is Bibox Bringing the Dream Solution Into Reality? Media contact Company Name: Bibox.Technology City, State, Country: Tallinn, Estonia Address: Narva mnt 9C, Tallinn 10117, Estonia Contact Person: Xiang.Christina Tel: +86-15810610960 E-mail: media_ia_release@bibox365.com Website: https://www.bibox.com/ Bibox, the steady-pacing top-tier digital asset exchange, is celebrating its one year anniversary. News has been leaked that Bibox is planning its launch of BIX Bonds and opening up bond trading section on the platform itself. Would it be the ignition of a revolution in the bearish crypto market? With a total market capitalization of $823.8 billion at its peak, the crypto market went through bull- and bear- runs and has gotten everyones gaze upon itself. The faded craze of ICO and the controversial opinions of the crypto industry call for practical innovation. BIX Bonds, issued by Vocean, a platform where financial contract is decentralized which was incubated by Bibox. With blockchain technology put in the right spot, the upcoming BIX bonds will be the first to test the waters of a yet unsaturated market. Issued through the platform where a complete cryptocurrency financial contract infrastructure and supporting facilities are built, theres no doubt that the BIX Bonds will bring the market long lost excitement and possibly point out a new direction. In the traditional financial market, theres $80 trillion worth of global equity assets, while the low-risk fixed income credit assets comfortably hold $100 trillion. Comparing this market to the current crypto market, well see a huge market for crypto bonds. Furthermore, the circulation of bonds relies on the credit endorsement from regulators and intermediaries. In addition to regulatory approval, the bond issuance shall involve underwriters, auditors, legals, third party credit rating agencies, custodians, registrars, and settlement agencies with large cost involved. Every step of which could be a possible risk. Those intermediaries involved can always lead to information asymmetry and insider tradings, and financial systems isolation. The BIX Bonds would be the one with anticipated combination of current value and future potential as an accessible product. The innovation and practicality of the product along with the reputation and history of the establishment works together envisioning this promising revolution. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181122005 PR-Inside.com: 2018-11-23 07:37:01 LayerStack Strengthens its Southeast Asia Network for the Expansion in APJ LayerStack Jimmy Wai, 36553851 LayerStack today announced its expansion in Asia Pacific Japan (APJ), performs an infrastructure and network upgrade of all the cloud servers hosting and network equipment at the Tier3+ rated Equinix data center in Singapore. The expansion of SG1 data center reinforces Singapores position as Asia-Pacifics network hub and meeting the future bandwidth requirements of the Southeast Asia (SEA) market. It will bring a significant bandwidth increase that connect to Singapore data center, benefiting both existing and new customers at no extra cost by facilitating network speed and scalability. LayerStack Singapores network enhancement with PCCW Global, Telstra, Cogent, NTT Communications and Singapore Internet Exchange (SGIX) connects more than 3000 cities across 150 countries, provides greater access to the SEA users, and focuses on improving its network resiliency, capacity and reducing the latency of the critical SEA backbone infrastructure. SGIX also operates as a distributed peering network platform with the presence in Equinix data centers in Singapore. Hence, LayerStack and its customers can enjoy better network performance from any locations island-wide. The upgrade will allow LayerStack to support the surge of high-bandwidth applications such as video conferencing, disaster recovery, VoIP (Voice-over Internet Protocol), etc. Since January, LayerStack has launched 4 data centers across 3 locations in Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan to serve its growing base of customers. In the future, LayerStacks footprint will continue to expand around the world and will strengthen its ability to help global companies direct access to their servers. For more information, please visit www.layerstack.com About LayerStack LayerStack brings innovative cloud solutions to market that help IT specialists to effectively solve their persistent challenges. LayerStack is committed to maintain a simple, scalable and stable cloud environment with the aim of providing multiple solutions for the cloud deployment. The company is headquartered in Hong Kong, with multiple datacenters in Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181122005 LayerStack Strengthens its Southeast Asia Network for the Expansion in APJ PR-Inside.com: 2018-11-23 18:37:01 HAMILTON, Bermuda, Nov. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The UKs Chris Holmes, Lord of Richmond MBE, and Bermudian Chief Executive of American International Group, Brian Duperreault, will join Premier David Burt in fireside chats during next weeks multi-industry events in London organised by the Bermuda Business Development Agency (BDA). The conversations are part of a packed two-day agenda at the ME London hotel showcasing the Bermuda markets range of global industries and expertise. On Tuesday, November 27, a chat moderated by BDA Director and EY Bermuda Partner Jessel Mendes between the Premier and Holmesa fintech champion in the House of Lords who belongs to several related All-Party Parliamentary Groupswill launch that days cross-sector Bermuda Executive Forum. On Wednesday, November 28, a similar discussion between the Premier and Duperreault, moderated by BDA Interim CEO Sean Moran, kicks off a dedicated Bermuda Fintech Forum in the morning, followed by Beyond Convergence in the afternoon, a seminar focused on insurance-linked securities hosted by ILS Bermuda. The upcoming events give us an opportunity to meet with stakeholders in the London market and highlight the business benefits of Bermuda, said the Premier. Its a significant opportunity to promote Bermudas value to overseas markets and investors and attract new business that can help grow our economy and create jobs. I look forward to dynamic discussions with both special guests, Mr. Duperreault and Lord Holmes. Well discuss Bermudas synergies with London, the legacy and foundation our market affords both established companies and startups, as well as Bermudas regulatory leadership and innovative culture, which pioneered a legislative framework around fintech this year. Holmes is a former Paralympic swimmer and nine-time Games gold-medal winner who has focused on technology and digital opportunities since entering the House in 2013. He is vice-chair of the Parliamentary Groups on Assistive Technology, Fintech, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and the 4th Industrial Revolution. He has also served as a member of House of Lords Select Committees on Artificial Intelligence, Digital Skills, Social Mobility and Financial Exclusion. Notably, Holmes has been supportive of Bermudas recent progress in fintech regulation, speaking on Parliamentary Group roundtables and in other national discussions. Duperreault was appointed President, CEO, and a Director of American International Group, Inc (AIG) in May 2017. Previously, he was Chairman and CEO of Bermudas Hamilton Insurance Group, which he established in 2013. He spent 30 years working in Bermuda and the United States in senior executive roles at Marsh & McLennan Companies, ACE, and AIG, where he started his career. Tuesdays complimentary full-day forum marks the fourth such BDA event, following successful multi-sector summits in London a year ago, in New York this springat which Duperreault was keynote speakerand in Miami last month. Each drew impressive turnouts of between 200 and 300 industry professionals, and proved a catalyst for on-site meetings, new-business inquiries, and Bermuda incorporations. Along with Holmes and Duperreault, next weeks events will also feature Euan Davis, of the Center for the Future of Work Europe at Cognizant Technology Solutions. Davis, the lunchtime keynote at Tuesdays forum, will examine how work is changing as new technologies, business practices and workers emerge over the next decade. Were pleased to be heading back to London for our final forum of the year, said the BDAs Moran. Not only do we have an expert line-up of speakers representing the full range of Bermudas established industries, but we are equally pleased to highlight the emerging business we have begun to usher in. A lot has happened in the fintech space in 2018 and we intend to put the spotlight on those developments. Our forums provide us an excellent opportunity to encourage investment by demonstrating what makes Bermuda unique and sets us apart from other jurisdictions, Moran added. Its significant to come full circle and reconnect with London business leaders, while also reaching out to new companies and individuals looking to enter the Bermuda market. Some 50 senior industry representatives will join Bermuda government and regulatory leaders at next weeks events to showcase the island as a financial centre of excellence. Ten presentations and panel discussions will highlight investment and business opportunities available in Bermuda, while underscoring synergies shared by the Bermuda and London markets. Experts will cover the gamut of Bermudas industries, including re/insurance, asset management, high-net-worth services, family offices, long-term life & annuity insurance, captive insurance, bio-med, shipping, ILS, fintech and virtual assets business. The Bermuda Tourism Authority (BTA) will partner with the BDA on a networking reception that concludes the event. To register for the November 27 Bermuda Executive Forum, click here. To register for the November 28 Bermuda Fintech Forum, click here. To register for Beyond Convergence, click here. MEDIA CONTACT: Rosemary Jones Head of Communications & Marketing rosemary@bda.bm 441 278-6558 441 337-4696 CONNECTING BUSINESS The BDA encourages direct investment and helps companies start up, re-locate or expand their operations in our premier jurisdiction. An independent, public-private partnership, we connect you to industry professionals, regulatory officials, and key contacts in the Bermuda government to assist domicile decisions. Our goal? To make doing business in Bermuda smooth and beneficial. Two photos accompanying this announcement are available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7db01e02-888b-47f4-a3b7-97ba09c63562 http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/2ea617d5-5169-4418-b742-2ad5490a1049 PR-Inside.com: 2018-11-23 13:21:22 Press Information DigitalServer Palma Cocotero 310A, Las Palmas, ZIP 29040. Mexico Jezreel Juarez Morales Jezreel Juarez Morales 01-800-9990-966 email https://www.digitalserver.com.mx/certificados-ssl.shtml # 418 Words Palma Cocotero 310A, Las Palmas, ZIP 29040. MexicoJezreel Juarez Morales01-800-9990-966 21st November 2018 - Digital Server provides trustworthy services and information for search engine secure functioning. 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The ssl security guarantees you better web positions in internet search engines and security in payment transactions and personal and sensitive information that your customers or visitors sent through your website. The ssl certificates encrypt the connection between your visitors computer and your website. A site without SSL security provides less confidence and therefore generates less sales and revenue. For a better and a more qualitative experience with your particular website, it is more than required for you to choose an option of securing the platform. The Digital Server company can assure you the right security policy, and also some SEO integrated advantages. If you are not sure how it actually works, do not hesitate to contact the Digital Server representatives. You will be provided to choose from the 4 standard existing options, or create a personalized plan for your case.About Digital Server:Digital Server is a security providing platform, that deals with transactions between customers and a website. Visitors that access your web platform always trust you and need some security options, for their data and others. For the purpose of making these services a bit more reliable, the Digital Server company comes with a great solution. Do not wait to access their official page and get the needed information.Contact:Company: DigitalServerContact Name: Jezreel Juarez MoralesAddress: Palma Cocotero 310A, Las Palmas, ZIP 29040. MexicoE-mail: ventas@ digitalserver.com.mx Phone: 01-800-9990-966Website: https://www.digitalserver.com.mx/certificados-ssl.shtml PR-Inside.com: 2018-11-23 15:01:12 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 709 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / November 23, 2018 / Spectrum Global Solutions, Inc. (OTC PINK: SGSI), a leading provider of telecommunications engineering and infrastructure services across the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Guam and Caribbean, today announced that it will be presenting at the 11th annual LD Micro Main Event.President, Keith Hayter will be presenting on December 5 at 2:30 PM PST / 5:30 PM EST and meeting with investors throughout the event. For more information about the conference or to schedule a one-on-one meeting with management, please contact the Company at Inquiries@ SpectrumGS.com . During the session, Mr. Hayter and CEO Roger Ponder will be able to discuss the Companys recently filed third quarter 10Q as well the Companys plans for 2019."Internally, our entire year leads up to the Main Event. It has become the 'one thing' everyone in the small and micro-cap world knows us for. Also, free mints," stated Chris Lahiji, while enjoying a mint. "Even though LD has emerged as one of the largest and most influential organizations in the space, our focus has never deviated from showcasing some of the most interesting businesses in the world to our ever-growing community." The LD Micro Main Event will take place December 4th, 5th, and 6th, in Los Angeles at the Luxe Sunset Bel Air Hotel, will feature 250 companies, and will be attended by over 1,200 individuals.View Spectrum Global Solutions, Inc. profile here: https://www.ldmicro.com/profile/SGSI Profiles powered by LD Micro - News Compliments of AccesswireAbout Spectrum Global SolutionsThrough our Subsidiaries, AW Solutions, Inc., AW Solutions Puerto Rico, LLC., Tropical Communications, Inc., ADEX Corporation and ADEX Puerto Rico, LLC, we are a leading provider of comprehensive outsourced services and solutions for the deployment and maintenance of next generation and legacy wireless and wireline telecommunication networks and infrastructure. We provide our services directly to carriers, aggregators, enterprise, PMO and OEM clientele.About LD MicroLD Micro was founded in 2006 with the sole purpose of being an independent resource in the microcap space. What started out as a newsletter highlighting unique companies has transformed into several influential events annually (Invitational, Summit, and Main Event). In 2015, LDM launched the first pure microcap index (the LDMi) to exclusively provide intraday information on the entire sector. LD will continue to provide valuable tools for the benefit of everyone in the small and micro-cap universe. For those interested in attending, please contact David Scher at david@ ldmicro.com or visit www.ldmicro.com for more information.Forward-looking statements:The above news release contains forward-looking statements. The statements contained in this document that are not statements of historical fact, including but not limited to, statements identified by the use of terms such as "anticipate," "appear," "believe," "could," "estimate," "expect," "hope," "indicate," "intend," "likely," "may," "might," "plan," "potential," "project," "seek," "should," "will," "would," and other variations or negative expressions of these terms, including statements related to expected market trends and the Company's performance, are all "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. These statements are based on assumptions that management believes are reasonable based on currently available information, and include statements regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of the Company and its management. Prospective investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performances and are subject to a wide range of external factors, uncertainties, business risks, and other risks identified in filings made by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements. The Company expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to update or revise any forward-looking statement contained herein to reflect any change in the company's expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances upon which any statement is based except as required by applicable law and regulations.CONTACT:Investor RelationsSpectrum Global Solutions, Inc.561-672-7068SOURCE: Spectrum Global Solutions, Inc. via LD Micro U.S. president, Donald Trumps comments on the investigation into the killing of Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, show that he will turn a blind to the incident no matter what, Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said on Friday. On Tuesday, Mr Trump vowed to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia in spite saying that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman may have known about the plan to murder Khashoggi in October. Speaking to broadcaster CNN Turk, Mr Cavusoglu also said the U.S. had not informed Turkey of an audio recording regarding Mr Khashoggis killing, a day after a Turkish daily reported that the CIA was in possession of a recording in which the Crown Prince ordered to silence Khashoggi. He also said there was no reason the president, Tayyip Erdogan and the crown prince could not meet during a visit to Argentina for the G20 summit, adding the final decision was Mr Erdogans. A Turkish newspaper reported on Thursday that CIA director, Gina Haspel, signalled to Turkish officials in October that the agency had a recording of a call in which Saudi Arabias crown prince gave instructions to silence Mr Khashoggi. Saudi Arabia has said the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, had no prior knowledge of Mr Khashoggis killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. When asked about the recording by reporters in Florida, U.S. President Donald Trump said, I dont want to talk about it. Youll have to ask them. The CIA declined to comment when asked about the report. There is talk of another recording, Hurriyet newspaper journalist, Abdulkadir Selvi, wrote in a column, saying the purported call took place between Prince Mohammed and his brother, Saudi Arabias ambassador to Washington. It is being said that CIA chief, Gina Haspel, indicated this during her visit to Turkey, he wrote, adding that they had discussed Mr Khashoggi, a critic of the kingdoms de facto ruler. It is being said the crown prince gave orders to silence Khashoggi as soon as possible, in a call which was monitored by the U.S. agency, he said. Mr Khashoggi was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, in an operation that Turkeys President, Mr Erdogan, has said was ordered by the highest level of Saudi leadership. After offering numerous contradictory explanations, Riyadh said last week Mr Khashoggi had been killed and his body dismembered when negotiations to persuade him to return to Saudi Arabia failed. Mr Trump said the CIA had not definitively concluded that the crown prince was responsible, and said he would stand by Saudi Arabias leadership because it was a key U.S. ally. I hate the crime. I hate whats done. I hate the cover up. And I tell you what: the crown prince hates it more than I do, Mr Trump said, without providing further detail. (Reuters/NAN) A new report, Knowledge is Power, has revealed that an estimated 9.4 million people who are infected with HIV virus are not aware. According to the report, released by UNAIDS, 75 per cent of all people living with HIV or 27 million people, know their HIV status. The report called for increased efforts to reach the 9.4 million people living with HIV who are not aware that they are living with the virus and the estimated 19.4 million people living with HIV who do not have a suppressed viral load. The new report from UNAIDS showed that intensified HIV testing and treatment efforts were reaching more people living with HIV. To remain healthy and to prevent transmission, the HIV virus needs to be suppressed to undetectable or very low levels through sustained antiretroviral therapy. According to the executive director of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibe, to effectively monitor viral load, people living with HIV need access to viral load testing every 12 months. Viral load testing is the gold standard in HIV treatment monitoring. It shows that treatment is working, keeping people alive and well and keeping the virus firmly under control, Mr Sidibe said. The report outlined that access to viral load testing was mixed; in some parts of the world, getting a viral load test is easy and fully integrated into a persons HIV treatment regime, while in others, there may be only one viral load machine for the entire country. Mr Sidibe stressed: Viral load monitoring needs to be as available in Lilongwe as it is in London. HIV testing and viral load testing should be equal and accessible to all people living with HIV, without exception. The report showed that one of the biggest barriers to HIV testing was stigma and discrimination. Studies among women, men, young people and key populations revealed that fear of being seen accessing HIV services, and if the person is diagnosed, fear that this information would be shared with family, friends, sexual partners or the wider community, was preventing them from accessing HIV services, including HIV testing. According to UNAIDS, however, access to HIV testing is a basic human right, and the UN HIV/AIDS agency said it was calling for a global commitment to remove the barriers preventing people from testing for HIV. The barriers include eliminating HIV-related stigma and discrimination, ensuring confidentiality in HIV testing and treatment services, and deploying an optimal mix of HIV testing strategies to reach the populations most in need. Others are integration with other health services, removing policy and legal barriers hindering access to HIV testing and treatment, expanding access to viral load monitoring in low- and middle-income countries and ensuring access to early infant diagnosis for newborns. The report demonstrated that implementing these measures would hugely advance progress towards ensuring that all people living with and affected by HIV have access to the life-saving services they need. (NAN) The delay in amending the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) enabling Act, 2006 is responsible for the non-payment of entitlements to depositors of funds trapped in liquidated banks in the country, Managing Director of the Corporation, Umaru Ibrahim, has said. Mr Umaru said depositors of Savanah Bank, Fortis Micro-Finance Bank, and Aso Savings & Union Homes are suffering because they have not been able to recover their monies trapped in the banks since they were liquidated. He said the suffering of the depositors would continue unless the NDIC enabling Act was speedily amended by the National Assembly. Citing the defunct Savanah Bank as an example, the MD said the NDIC Act, as presently enacted, inhibits the corporation from reimbursing depositors since their bank licences were yet to be revoked due to protracted litigation. The NDIC boss on Tuesday, therefore, appealed to the chairman, Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions, Rafiu Ibrahim, to do all within his capacity to ensure the NDIC Act was speedily amended. On the recent activities of the corporation, the MD provided updates including NDICs revocation of the licences of 153 Micro-Finance Banks (MFBs) and six Primary Mortgage Banks (PMBs) by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Members of the Senate committee were informed the corporation had already commenced the payment of depositors of 25 MFBs and the deposits verification of 50 others. He listed the challenges encountered by MFBs in particular to include non-performing loans, insider credit and abuse, non-compliance with extant regulations on their establishment and the overbearing indulgence in other fringe operations, along with poor earnings. The NDIC boss also informed members of the committee of the strong resolve and commitment of the corporation to assist in the investigation and prosecution of all those who contributed to the collapse of the defunct Skye Bank. Chairman of the Senate committee, Mr Ibrahim, said the committee was committed to the accelerated amendment of the NDIC Act, 2006, to eliminate the gaps hindering the full realisation of the public policy objectives of the implementation of the Deposit Insurance System (DIS) in Nigeria. The chairman made the remark during his visit to the corporation on Tuesday with his team on an oversight assignment. The committee chairman commended the NDIC for the excellent quality of its reports on the supervision of banks, which have become the benchmark in the industry. He however expressed concerns over the recent CBN policy, which raised the minimum capital requirements for Microfinance Banks in Nigeria from N20 million to N200 million, and N100 million to NI billion, and N2 billion to N5 billion for unit, state, and national MFBs respectively. The policy, he said, would be inimical to the objectives of the financial inclusion strategy. The committee reaffirmed its resolve to work with NDIC to confront emerging issues in the industry, such as block-chain Technology, financial Inclusion, cybercrime, digital banking, consumer protection and provision of credits to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). The governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, on Thursday gave reasons why it took the apex financial industry regulator almost nine years to uncover alleged systematic repatriation out of Nigeria of over $8.134bn profits by MTN Nigeria. Mr Emefiele, who spoke on Thursday at the end of the monetary policy committee (MPC) meeting in Abuja, rejected accusations the CBN neglected its monitoring and regulatory role and allowed the illegal transfers by the South African telecoms firm to fester. Last August, Mr Emefiele announced CBNs decision to impose various sanctions totalling about N5.87 billion against four banks accused of flagrant violation of foreign exchange regulations. The banks, namely, Standard Chartered, Stanbic-IBTC, Citi and Diamond, were alleged to have facilitated remittances of foreign exchange using irregular Certificates of Capital Importation (CCIs) issued on behalf of some offshore investors of MTN Nigeria Communications Limited. The transactions, which occurred between 2006 and 2015, were never reported by the CBN until this year. As part of the sanctions, MTN Nigeria was asked to reverse the transaction by returning to CBN the $8.134bn repatriated without final approval and follow the due process in repatriating such funds. Announcing the sanctions against the four banks in August, the CBN spokesperson, Isaac Okorafor, said investigations were ordered in March 2018 after the banking supervision department of the apex bank discovered a trail of the alleged illegal transactions more than two years earlier. Last week, the US Consul General, John Bray, and British Deputy High Commissioner to Nigeria, Laura Beaufils, passed scathing criticisms of CBNs handling of the matter. Describing CBNs decision to sanction MTN Nigeria and the banks as rash and damaging to prospective investors in Nigeria, the two envoys indirectly accused the CBN of neglecting its regulatory responsibilities over the matter for almost nine years. However, the CBN governor in answering reporters questions on the matter at the end of the MPC meeting, said it was better to go about it slowly, considering the sensitive nature of the matter. It is better to be slow in taking some of these decisions; to be sure (that) when (they are) taken, you know they are potent and there are rationales for those decisions, Mr Emefiele said. In the case of MTN and the four banks, he said there were sufficient rationale and justification for CBN to have taken the actions it took against these entities. Apart from alleged illegal issuance of CCIs beyond the 24 hours approved by law and several others issues, there was also the issue of illegal repatriation of $8.134bn, which he noted appeared to have generated some attention the CBN did not anticipate. There was rationale for the decision we (CBN) took. We expected certain documents (from MTN and the banks) to be submitted, that never came, he said. The CBN governor said after meetings with the managements of both the banks and MTN Group from South Africa, those documents have now been submitted, which are currently being reviewing by the auditors and bank examiners. We are in the process. We can say the matters will soon be resolved. We are at the verge (it is as good as announcing the resolutions). But, please spare me the stress of not talking about what the agreements are at this time. At the appropriate time, this will be announced. Regardless, Mr Emefiele re-emphasized the sanctity of the CCIs issued by Nigerian banks to foreign investors, saying they remain sacrosanct. He said the CBN would never compromise on the enforcement of their regulatory requirements. Although the matter with MTN was being resolved, he said it did not mean the company did not have issues. When we say the issues have been resolved with MTN, it does not mean there are no issues. Yes, there are issues. But, the point is they are being resolved. These issues will be resolved equitably and amicably, to the benefit of all. The Senate President, Bukola Saraki, has accused the Nigerian police of diverting the attention of Nigerians from the death of the principal suspect of the April 5 deadly bank robbery in Kwara State. He stated this barely 24 hours after he called on the presidency to institute a judicial inquiry into how and when the suspect died. Kwara State Commissioner for Justice, Kamal Ajibade, on Wednesday told the State High Court in Ilorin during the arraignment of five of the robbery suspects that the principal suspect, Michael Adikwu, has died in police custody. The police commissioner did not disclose the nature of the death, the justice commissioner said. He also sought an adjournment to enable the prosecution amend the charges and remove the name of the deceased suspect. Mr Saraki said the disclosure by the police vindicated his earlier claim that the suspect had been murdered in police custody and that the investigation was politically motivated to implicate him, Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed and a few others. The police on Thursday, however, released a statement saying Mr Adikwu simply slumped and died. The police also said his death does not absolve Mr Saraki and Mr Ahmed of any alleged role in the April fatal bank robbery in Offa. The police said Mr Saraki was still being investigated and that the other five suspects being prosecuted were the ones who mentioned the senate president as their sponsor. In another statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Yusuph Olaniyonu, on Friday, Mr Saraki said the response of the police to his call for an inquiry into how the suspect died was a mere diversionary tactic aimed at evading the serious issues of human rights abuse, extra-judicial killing and politicisation of criminal investigations. He explained that when he mentioned that he had been vindicated, he was not referring to the outcome of a case which is just about to commence but rather he was pointing to the belated admission by the police that Mr Adikwu died in custody, a fact the police initially denied when Mr Saraki raised it a few months ago. He said the police in a cover-up of its mishandling of the investigations and their politicisation of the process have continued to make inconsistent statements and commit more blunders. The police while reacting to our disclosure that the prime suspect had died in custody, caused their spokesman, Moshood Jimoh, to respond that: Michael Adikwu is in police custody in one of the South-west stateshelping in the investigation. The same Police (have) equally documented the claim that the suspect died during arrest. What a contradiction! It is surprising that the Police which initially allowed the said Adikwu to grant interviews to several national newspapers while in custody refused to inform the public that the suspect had died until the Attorney General of Kwara State mentioned it on November 21, 2018 in the course of his address to the High Court in Ilorin while applying to amend the charge sheet, he said. The lawmaker also stressed that President Muhammadu Buhari needs to institute an inquiry into the death of Mr Adikwu because it has several implications for the countrys legal system and its engagement with the international community which has consistently cited the issues of human rights abuse and extra-judicial killing by security forces as major reasons for their reluctance to sell arms to Nigeria in the fight against Boko Haram. One of the key issues those of us who have been engaging with the international community on the need for them to support Nigeria in the fight against terrorism in the North-east region through supply of arms, provision of training and other technical aid have been confronting is that of the flagrant abuse of human rights and extra-judicial killing by our security agencies. This is an instance of what these international partners complain about. The Presidency should make a point that the present government does not tolerate human rights abuses; extra-judicial killings; politically-motivated criminal investigations; and refusal to comply with global best practices by security agencies by instituting an inquiry into the case of the death of this suspect, he stated. Senate President, Bukola Saraki He called for the diligent prosecution of the Offa robbery case so that justice can be done to the innocent victims, the suspects facing trial and the state whose peace was disturbed by the incident. The Senator representing Bayelsa East constituency and chairman of the Senate Committee on Privatization, Ben Murray-Bruce, will deliver the keynote speech at the 13th Founders Day ceremony of the American University of Nigeria. The event is scheduled for Saturday at the Lamido Aliyu Musdafa Commencement Hall on the main campus of the university in Yola, the Adamawa State capital. An American tradition, the annual Founders Day celebrates the vision, progress and development strides of the American University of Nigeria, which graduated its first set of students in 2009. The AUN learning community, including its growing student members who come from all the 36 states of Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon, and around the world, will join the universitys global faculty and staff to reflect on the impact of the universitys Development and Entrepreneurship mantra on the Nigerian and African societies. They will also share experience on the unparalleled commitment to education, entrepreneurship, and community development motivation of the founder and former Nigerian vice president, Atiku Abubakar. In conferring on the AUN Founder the first Global Citizenship Award on its 50th anniversary in 2011, the United States Peace Corps spoke glowingly of his generosity to the cause of education: No private businessman in Africa has worked harder for democracy or contributed more to the progress of higher education than Atiku Abubakar, Mr Abubakar is currently contesting for the Nigerian presidency under the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party in the 2019 election. Connecting from their various locations around the world, AUNs emergent alumni kicked-started the celebrations with a series of colorful weeklong Homecoming events underlining the strong bond they proudly share with their alma mater. Dawn Dekle, the AUN president, expressed excitement at the choice of Mr Murray-Bruce as the universitys keynote speaker. As a learning community, AUN is honored to have a statesman, media mogul, and the distinguished Senator Ben Murray-Bruce, OON, as keynote speaker, she said. Ms Dekle said Mr Murray-Bruce is the ideal speaker for this years occasion given his background in entrepreneurship, corporate governance, and resource management and also against the university managements policy push toward greater sustainability. Past speakers at the AUNs Founders Day ceremonies since 2006 have included the late Hamidu Alkali; Charles Soludo; Tulane Universitys Professor William Bertrand; Matthew Hassan Kukah; former US Ambassador to Nigeria Robin Sanders; former EU ambassador to Nigeria David McRae; Ibrahim Gambari; Colombian educationist Vicky Colbert; and former Ugandan vice president, Gilbert Bukenya. Three persons suspected to be involved in Wednesdays robbery attack on Editor-in-Chief of Guardian Newspapers, Debo Adeshina, have been apprehended. Commissioner of Police in Lagos State, Imohimin Edgal, made this known on Friday in Lagos while briefing journalists. Mr Edgal said the suspects were arrested by the commands Rapid Response Squad, Riders Unit, posted to Oshodi-Oke Pin-Down Point, on Wednesday, at about 6.30 p.m. According to Mr Edgal, the suspects allegedly attacked and robbed the Guardian Newspapers Editor-in-Chief on Wednesday, at about 5.30 p.m. and one hour after the attack, they were arrested. The suspects were nabbed following a tip off received from commuters that hoodlums who specialised in snatching phones and robbing innocent citizens of their belongings during traffic at Oshodi-Oke were in operation. Armed with the information, I directed the officer in charge of RRS to deploy a team of police riders to Oshodi Bridge. On getting there, the men swung into action and arrested the suspects. They were subsequently searched and a Samsung X8 phone belonging to the Guardian Newspaper Editor-in- Chief was recovered from them. Other items belonging to the journalist, recovered from the thieves include Guardian I.D Card bearing the name of Debo Adesina and four ATM Cards, he said. The police boss said the suspects confessed to the crime and were giving useful information to the police, adding that he had directed the SARS unit to take over the investigation. He said all items recovered from the suspects would be presented to Mr Adeshina soon. The commissioner also disclosed that the command on Thursday, nabbed 40 crime suspects during a raid of some black spots at Oshodi area. He said the command was screening the suspects before charging those involved in crimes to court. (NAN) The privatization and commercialisation process has freed up over three billion dollars consumed by Public Enterprises (PEs) annually in terms of subventions, waivers and unpaid taxes, the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) says. Alex Okoh, the Director-General, BPE, said this in a statement issued by Amina Othman, Head, Public Communications, on Thursday in Abuja. According to the statement, Mr Okoh said this at the dinner/award night in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of reform, commercialisation and privatisation in Nigeria. He said that the BPE, in the execution of its mandate, was reforming and privatising for the benefit of Nigerias economic recovery and the social wellbeing of the people. He said that the private sector has been positioned through these reforms to become the engine room of economic activities and infrastructural development, while the government focuses on governance and creating an enabling environment for businesses to thrive. He added that the programme was not designed to share the countrys national assets to a few rich people as erroneously believed. We are not replacing public monopolies with private monopolies. Rather, in our determination to be unyielding and uncompromising in the pursuit of the best interest of this country, we are removing the financial burden which these enterprises constitute on the public purse and releasing resources for the essential functions of government. This essentially is the mandate given to BPE, to pursue this vision, thereby contributing to the socio-economic development of Nigeria. According to him, a less known but very important aspect of the BPE programme with far-reaching impact is the reform of sectors to provide the enabling environment for the private sector to thrive. The bureau has initiated and executed far-reaching reforms in telecommunications, pensions, seaports, debt management and solid minerals. Most recently, it executed the power sector reform that led to the successful unbundling, privatisation and in some cases, concessioning of the successor companies created out of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria. The Director-General said the programme consists of reform, commercialisation and privatisation in various sectors of the economy including aviation, development finance, postal sector, downstream oil and gas and other initiatives. It also consists of major infrastructure areas like roads, railways, airports, national inland waterways and the special economic or free-trade zones, he added. He said that the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) and the BPE were pursuing the current transactions with renewed vigour, confidence and in a more responsible manner. He added that the BPE had a new vision for the future that was based on rediscovery and repositioning. This has put the bureau on a path of disciplined and responsible reform, an effective post-privatisation management regime and a pivot to addressing the infrastructural deficit by tackling the defective Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP) framework currently in place in Nigeria. Okoh lamented that the PPP governance framework as currently structured was complex and a disincentive to attracting reliable and big pocket private sector investors to the infrastructure market. This, he said, was in spite of the development of a PPP policy in 2009, the establishment of Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) and creation of PPP units in nearly all the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). He, however, said that the BPE had been repositioned to play a major role in coordinating and driving the process. We are well-equipped from our track record and robust processes to provide a one-stop-shop for prospective investors under a consistent, fair, equitable and transparent process. However, we can only achieve this expeditiously if the present ambiguities in coordination, governance and institutional framework for infrastructure development through PPP are addressed. This will give confidence to private investors in both the integrity of the process and protection of investments. This is the role we have set our minds on and we are determined to see it through with the support and collaboration of key stakeholders. Mr Okoh thanked the Vice President and Chairman of the NCP, Yemi Osinbajo, for his guidance and support. He also commended members of the NCP, its standing committees and ministers, for their cooperation and direction which have made the remarkable achievements possible. (NAN) President Muhammadu Buhari, says leaders who undermine the economy by denying workers their benefits, while stuffing personal accounts with public funds will not escape the current anti-corruption dragnet. The president stated this when he received All Progressives Congress (APC) delegation from Benue State, led by George Akume, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. Mr Buhari said the federal governments bailout to states and Paris Club funds were basically to alleviate the sufferings of the people, describing misappropriation as unjust and unfair to workers. He said: I honestly dont know how people sleep when workers have not been paid. The workers have to pay rent, buy food, send their children to school and they have health care to take care of. I assure you that my main interest is all Nigerians in all parts of the country. Therefore, if anybody who tries to create any impression that I prefer any group across ethnicity or religion let him dare me by being caught red handed stealing public funds. I will deal with him. The president told the APC delegation that the Federal Executive Council had been monitoring the plight of workers across the country and utilisation of the bailout and Paris Club funds by some states. I thank you for your courage to come and see me. This visit has resuscitated our morale, he said. Mr Buhari said the federal government had made significant progress in diversifying the economy, by investing in agriculture and encouraging more individuals and entrepreneurs to go into farming. He expressed optimism that Nigeria would soon become self-sufficient in feeding its citizenry. We are proud of what we have achieved with resources at our disposal, he added. The president listed ongoing road, rail, seaport, airport and power projects as hallmarks of his administrations commitment to improving lives. According to him, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Central Bank of Nigeria will be further motivated to work together and support all interested Nigerians to take up farming on commercial scale. He noted that the killings across the country, including in Benue, Zamfara and Taraba, were carried out by ungodly people who had no religious or ethnic inclination. We know about herders. The ones we knew carried sticks, and sometimes cutlasses to cut foliage for their cattle. We now have people who carry AK 47s and pretend they are herdsmen. We are working hard to secure our borders. We are going to see how the old cattle routes can be opened. We will control movement. Please beg our people to be patient, he said. The president pointed out that security personnel were already uncovering the network of the killers and arresting them. In his remarks, the leader of the delegation, Mr Akume, a senator and former governor of the state, said the narrative in the state about the federal government was fast changing for the positive. He revealed that more people had since discovered the good intention of Mr Buhari to secure lives and property, and alleviate poverty. Your Excellency, Mr President, we know your commitment to Nigeria. We know how much you love the country and will be ready to die for the good cause, Mr Akume said. Mr Akume told the president that APC members had started sensitisation and mobilisation of voters for the 2019 elections, noting that more had accepted the party and its manifesto in the state. He commended the president for the flag-off of the dualisation of the Abuja-Keffi-Lafia-Makurdi road, urging more attention on the Makurdi-Otukpo road and the water projects in Gboko and Otukpo. You have worked hard to stop herdsmen and farmers clashes in Benue. It is important to note that many people used religion and ethnicity to score cheap points. Religion was used in Benue for sinister purposes, he added. On corruption, Mr Akume said the president had made significant difference by tackling perpetrators. (NAN) Governor Ibrahim Dankwambo of Gombe State has approved the sponsorship of no fewer than 225 persons for 2018 pilgrimage to Israel. Joseph Bega, the State Executive Secretary, Christian Pilgrims Welfare Board, disclosed this in an interview with journalists in Gombe on Friday. He said at the state level, Mr Dankwambo approved 200 seats and 25 for the local government level. According to him, so far there are six self-sponsored, while more are expected before the closing date. The executive secretary said the screening exercise would hold from November 29 to December 1, while the list of intending pilgrims would be sent to Abuja for visa after the screening. We thank his Excellency for the sponsorship of this years pilgrimage. All the committees are on ground for a successful exercise, he said. Mr Bega advised all the intending pilgrims to be law abiding and be good ambassadors of the state and the country. (NAN) The All Progressives Congress (APC) has condemned moves by the senate to investigate the situation surrounding the recent Kwara State by-election. The party, in a statement on Friday by its publicity secretary, Lanre Issa-Onilu said this is an abuse of power, as the senate is nott an election tribunal. The senate on Wednesday directed its Committee on Police Affairs to investigate the alleged harassment, intimidation and molestation by security, before, during and after the Kwara House of Representatives by-election, last Saturday. This directive came after the senator representing Kwara South Senatorial District, Rafiu Ibrahim, drew the senates attention to the roles allegedly played by the police in the poll. According to Mr Ibrahim, The harassment, intimidation, and arrest of prominent members of the Peoples Democratic Party before, during and after the election created tension and fears in the minds of the electorate. Majority of the eligible voters decided to stay away when the harassment was too much. That is why only about 40, 000 out of the over 168, 000 registered voters, participated in the election. The senate president, Bukola Saraki, in reaction to this, gave the directive, noting that it is the responsibility of the senate to ensure the electorate is not harassed and intimidated before, during and after the next years general election. Any attempt to involve the police actively in elections is an invitation to anarchy and violence, he said. The APC who won the election, however, questioned this move as it believes the investigation was to focus on how the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lost the election, since it is the home town of the senate president. The questionable decision by the senate to investigate the circumstances leading to the Peoples Democratic Partys (PDP) loss in last Saturdays House of Representatives by-election in Kwara State must be seen for what it is an abuse of the powers of the legislative arm of government to pursue selfish political ends. While the All Progressives Congress (APC) condemns this curious Senate investigation of the by-election which took place in the home state of the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, we also find it curious that other by-election conducted in Katsina and Bauchi States have not received similar attention from the Senate. The APC said it is clear that the the sweet victory by its House of Representatives candidate, Raheem Olawuyi-Ajuloopin, has hit the overrated federal lawmakers from Kwara State, badly. According to the statement, the PDP is not pretending to have learnt any lessons from its past anti-democratic practices and those occupying the Senate leadership seat have no other intentions other than to manipulate state institutions in pursuit of personal interests and massage battered ego. When has it become the responsibility of the legislative arm of government to constitute itself into an election tribunal? The party questioned. Turning the Senate into an electoral tribunal only shows Nigerians that the PDP has not changed from its odious practice of compromising the system to promote illusionary ambitions. The party believes Kwara State and the rest of the country has seen enough of impunity and misrule represented by the self-serving leaders of the PDP. The APC therefore advised leaders of PDP in Kwara State and elsewhere in the country to get used to losing elections as the Nigerian electorate have tasted the benefits of good governance in the last three and half years of the Muhammadu Buhari-led APC government and would not go back to PDPs 16 years of waste and misrule. Elections have been won and lost. A new and progressive Kwara State beckons. Through their votes, the Kwara electorate have spoken clearly on the new political direction in the State. Kwara State has suffered enough of the selfish machinations of a self-appointed leader. The will and wishes of the good people of the state must prevail now, in the 2019 elections and beyond. The Nigeria Police Force said it had arrested a suspected kidnapper, Sani Rabiu, 30, with four AK 47 rifles in Zamfara. Jimoh Moshood, an acting deputy commissioner of police and Force Public Relations Officer, disclosed this while addressing journalists on the arrest on Friday in Abuja. He said other items recovered from the suspect were four empty Ak 47 rifle magazines, a Boxer motorcycle and some charms. Mr Moshood said the suspect who shuttled between Sokoto and Zamfara States, was arrested by the I-G X-Squad attached to the police special intervention teams deployed in Zamfara. He said the suspect was arrested along Gusau-Keita-Tsafe road in Keita village, Tsafe Local Government Area of Zamfara. Mr Moshood said on interrogation, the suspect confessed to be working with other armed bandits terrorising villages in Sokoto and Zamfara. He said further investigation revealed that the suspect belonged to notorious and vicious gang of armed bandits and kidnappers responsible for several attacks in both states. Speaking to journalists, the suspect who said it was the first time he was doing such business, revealed that the rifles were sent to him by one Danjuma who was at large. In a related development, Mr Moshood said the police command in Zamfara State had arrested 65 armed bandits in the state few weeks after attacks on villages in the state. He said the command also foiled armed bandits attacks on Hayim-Alhaji village in Tsafe area and recovered two live grenades. Mr Moshood said the command equally recovered 24 firearms comprising five AK-47 rifles, 17 locally made firearms and 120 AK 47 ammunitions. He said other items recovered included 269 cattle and 109 sheep in Tsafe, which had been handed to their owners. Mr Moshood said the operation was ongoing and efforts were being intensified to arrest other members of the armed bandit. He said all suspects would be arraigned on completion of investigation. (NAN) The Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly cannot implement a court order asking it to stay an order sacking a state lawmaker who defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC), an aide to the governor, Udom Emmanuel, has said. A lawmaker, Idongesit Ituen, who represented Itu State Constituency in the assembly, was sacked by a November 14 ruling of the Uyo Division of the Federal High Court. But the court, acting on an application by Mr Ituen, later halted its earlier decision and then asked the assembly not to declare the lawmakers seat vacant. I am satisfied that there is merit in this application (and) that an order staying execution of the judgment of this Honourable Court delivered by Hon. Justice F. O. Riman, sitting at Federal High Court No 2, Uyo Judicial Division on the 14 November 2018, pending the hearing and determination of the Applicants Appeal at the Court of Appeal is hereby granted as prayed, the judge, Fatun Riman, said on Wednesday, while ruling in favour of the lawmaker. The snag, however, is that the speaker of the assembly, Onofiok Luke, had on Monday declared Mr Ituens seat vacant before the latest order by the federal court. The governors aide, Ndem Andem, said the order for a stay of execution came a little too late. Mr Andem, who is a special assistant to the governor on legal matters, spoke on Monday on the crisis rocking the state assembly when he appeared as a guest on a live radio programme, Akwa Ibom Rising, on Inspiration 105.9 FM, Uyo. Stay of execution cannot be granted on an action that has already been carried out, said Mr Andem, a lawyer. The seat has already been deemed vacant, and stay of execution means that the status quo remains. What is the status quo? The status quo is that the seats had on Monday been declared vacant as provided by the constitution of our country. Mr Idongesit Ituen, and his co-travellers remain former members of the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly, except a higher court gives a contrary ruling in their favour, he said. Apart from Mr Ituen, the speaker, Mr Luke, had on Monday declared vacant the seats of four other lawmakers who also defected from the PDP to the APC, even though the court was yet to rule on their cases. The other four lawmakers are Nse Ntuen, Essien Udim State Constituency; Gabriel Toby, Etim Ekpo/Ika; Otobong Ndem, Mkpat Enin; and Victor Udofia, Ikono. Mr Andem said there was no crisis within the PDP to justify the defection of the lawmakers as required by the constitution. He said the APC lawmaker in the state, Asuquo Archibong (Urue Offong/Oruko State Constituency), who defected to PDP last year did so because, according to him (Andem), there was division in the APC. No APC member challenged the defection of Hon Archibong because it was difficult for any of the factions to lay claims on him, he said. The sacked lawmakers, five of them, held their own sitting on Monday and, in turn, removed Mr Luke from office as speaker, and then elected Mr Ntuen as the new speaker. The APC leadership in the state, while throwing its weight behind the five lawmakers, said on Wednesday it no longer recognises Mr Luke as the speaker of the assembly. Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly consists of 26 members. The Nigerian constitution says a speaker or deputy speaker can only be removed from office by a resolution of House of Assembly by the votes of not less than two-third majority of the members of the House. It would, therefore, require the votes of 17 lawmakers, at least, to remove Mr Luke as the speaker of the Akwa Ibom House of Assembly. There has been tension in the oil-rich state because of the crisis in the state assembly. Some youth, who are members of the APC, on Monday protested at the assembly complex over the sacking of Mr Ituen. The Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly was sealed off on Wednesday morning by the police in the state, following the crisis. A new commissioner of police has been appointed for Akwa Ibom state. He is Musa Kimo, the spokesperson of the police in the state, Odiko MacDon, said in a statement on Friday. Mr Kimo takes over from John Abang, whose transfer is linked to the crisis in the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly. Five lawmakers who were suspended by the Assembly later announced the controversial removal of the assembly speaker. The five lawmakers and their supporters accused Mr Abang of taking sides in the crisis rocking the assembly which led to the seal off of the building by the police. Before Akwa Ibom, Mr Kimo served as police commissioner in Adamawa, Ebonyi, and Rivers states. He also served as commissioner of the dreaded federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), Abuja. The new police chief holds a B.sc degree in political science from the University of Sokoto. He joined the Nigeria police as a cadet assistant superintendent of police in 1986. Mr Kimo is the 25th commissioner of police in the state. The crisis rocking the Ondo State House of Assembly may have worsened as the two factions have refused to embrace any terms of peace despite the interventions of the vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, and the governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi. Mr Fayemi reportedly had a peace meeting with the warring factions on Wednesday in Akure with a view to restoring normalcy to the state legislature, but the conflict has not abated. It was gathered that the vice president had also shown interest in the matter and had counselled the parties to embrace peace. The impeachment of Bamidele Oleyelogun as speaker and his deputy, Iroju Ogundeji on Friday, November 9, sparked a crisis that is threatening not only the assembly, but also the fragile peace within the All Progressives Congress (APC) with the elections few months away. A group of 18 lawmakers had signed a notice of impeachment against Mr Oleyelogun and consequently announced his removal, but the action attracted the consequence of an attack by political thugs loyal to the state governor, Rotimi Akeredolu. Before the attack, they had elected Olamide George and Abimbola Fajolu as speaker and deputy respectively. The lawmakers who carried out the impeachment were attacked and fled the state for fear of further attempt on their lives. Their absence paved the way for the Mr Oleyelogun and eight other members to assume the reigns of authority at the house and consequently suspended other members involved in the impeachment. Nine of the 26 member house then passed a revised 2018 appropriation law, the action which had been criticised by the majority faction, declaring it as an illegality. However, with the intervention of the APC party leaders, the nine members, led by Mr Oleyegun on Thursday passed a resolution, lifting the suspension on Mr George and his 16-member faction. Presiding over plenary, Mr Oleyelogun said the suspension was lifted as a result of the intervention of the stakeholders and notable leaders within and outside the state. Mr Oleyelogun noted that the decision was reached at the parliamentary session held by members before the plenary sitting. He also directed the Clerk of the House to immediately process all the entitlements of the affected lawmakers. But the other faction has rejected the lifting of the suspension, saying that Mr Oleyelogun and his colleagues lacked the authority to issue a suspension in the first place, let along lifting it. They also held that their impeachment of Friday, the 9th of November, stands, having lost the confidence of majority of the members of the house. A statement on Thursday by the majority leader, Araoyinbo Olugbenga, who speaks for the Olamide Georges faction, said at no time was there any agreement that Messrs Oleyelogun and Ogundeji would continue to preside as speaker and deputy of the house during the interventions. He said they had agreed to return to the house following the intervention of the vice president and Mr Fayemi, but not under the leadership of the removed speaker and his deputy. Mr Olugbenga also stated that the lawmakers who earlier claimed that their signatures were forged, had admitted that the signatures on the Impeachment Notice were theirs, saying that they would approach a court of law for appropriate redress for defamation of their character. At the meeting with Governor Fayemi yesterday, we canvassed many positions, all of which seemed abhorrent to our Governor Akeredolu, he said. We suggested that being clear that the erstwhile speaker and deputy speaker had lost the confidence of the majority of members, it is morally indefensible for them to remain in office and we therefore suggested that they be given a chance to resign honourably in the interest of the state. Rotimi Akeredolu tests positive for COVID-19 Again, and contrary to all democratic ethos, ethics and practice, we suggested that the governor should nominate from amongst us a new leadership with whom he can be comfortable as most of us had expressed our unwillingness to be led by the duo. Yet again, he refused. We suggested that the entire House be dissolved and we be given a chance to vote in our new leaders since only 13 members had sat to elect the duo ab initio. This was also rejected by the governor. The governor, however, did say that every action taken by the impeached leadership since the beginning of this impasse must of necessity be deemed null and void. He opined that there was no clime where the minority would be competent or empowered to discipline the majority. And of course, all Bills passed into law as well as all their resolutions will ipso dixit suffer the same fate. We further reminded Mr Governor that as per procedure and conventions of the House from which the embattled duo had benefited and which he had ratified in the past, the duo had been properly impeached and the onus lies on them to go and prove the contrary in a court of law. However, as earlier mentioned, we agreed to return to Parliament to seek ways in which we can have a final resolution in a Parliamentary meeting to be headed by the Majority Leader, Hon Araoyinbo Olugbenga Joseph. The governor did agree that we could ensure and compel their resignation. He gave assurance that Idajo and his thugs will be withdrawn from the House and the security of all members will be guaranteed, although he was silent on the criminal nature of the first invasion of the State Assembly by Idajo and his army. It is with a rude shock that we heard of the hard line stance maintained by the Oleyelogun-led faction at their illegal sitting of today, the 22nd November, 2018 and their reiteration of their claim to have suspended some of us earlier on. This, to us, further underlines our conviction that they are not men of honour and integrity and are therefore not capable of leading the House. We wish to state that we are committed to the ideals of democracy and are committed to ensuring that the great people of Ondo State are not short-changed in their just desire and expectation for the good things of life. We however maintain that the impeachment of Friday 9th November, 2018 was duly and properly carried out as even their criers of forgery have been caught in their lies. The onus lies on those who maintain to the contrary to approach the courts of law. We respectfully stand upon this conviction. The Ooni of Ife, Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, has said that the African continent remains one big family, despite the boundaries between her countries and communities. The African foremost monarch said this on Thursday at his Ile-Oodua palace in Ile Ife while playing host to the immediate past President of Ghana, John Mahama, who led his team on a courtesy visit to the Ooni. Before the advent of the Western civilization, there were no boundaries between the African nations and communities. We are one big family, he said, in a press statement signed by Moses Olafare, director, media & public Affairs, Oonis Palace, which was made available to PREMIUM TIMES. But it gladdens my heart that with committed individuals like President Mahama, we have remained that united big family working together for the progress of the African continent. Accompanied by his wife, Silekuola Naomi Ogunwusi, Mr Ogunwusi, who is a co-chairman of National Council of Traditional Rulers of Nigeria, prayed for the former president. He also called on the Isoros (Custodians of the 201 deities of Ile Ife Kingdom), who jointly offered spiritual blessings to Mr Mahama, lauding the former president for exhibiting humility and simplicity. When I was in Ghana to honour Mr President two years ago, he was in power. To the glory of God, he displayed humility and simplicity. He didnt even wait for any aide to do anything for me. He did it by himself. He made tea and offered me by himself. There is no difference between when he was in power and when he was not. Thats humility and simplicity, the Ooni said. Earlier on his speech, Mr Mahama thanked the Ooni for the warm reception, describing the Ife kingdom as the root of the rich African culture. I am overwhelmed by the welcome I got and the current atmosphere since I stepped out of the car. The drums, dance, songs, dressing and others are indeed wonderful, he said. As a student of history, I have read and studied that Ile-Ife kingdom, as the cradle of human race, and the kingdom, occupies a high position in the global history. Ooni hosts former President Mahama of Ghana Ooni hosts former President Mahama of Ghana Ooni hosts former President Mahama of Ghana Ooni hosts former President Mahama of Ghana Ooni hosts former President Mahama of Ghana I have come to return His Imperial Majestys visit to the Republic of Ghana two years ago, especially to encourage him in his efforts of unifying the African continent. I am impressed, and I appreciate everything done in my honour. The visiting former president of Ghana had once hosted the Ooni and his entourage while the African foremost was on a five-day working visit to Ghana in 2016. The former Ghanaian leader was accompanied by his elder sister, Sherifat Dundu, and her husband, Bisi Dundu, among other dignitaries. 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. Zhang Jianqiu, CEO of Yili Group, shared practices and experience in its protection of biodiversity with the guests and announced the "Annual Report on Biodiversity Protection of Yili Group", the first ever of its kind in the world. Business development is closely bound to responsibilities. As the leader of China's dairy production, the Group has witnessed steady growth in revenue and net profits over the years. As of the third quarter of 2018, the Group has rung up sales of RMB61.327 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 16.88%, thereby proving themselves a leader in the industry. For the Group, being "first" means not only operations but also the assumption of social responsibilities. Zhang Jianqiu notes that, apart from development, Yili is going ahead with the idea of "Green Leadership" proposed by Group Chairman Pan Gang and is pushing forward with the strategy "Green Industrial China." It is on this basis that the "Chinese Sample" of biodiversity protection has been produced gradually, characterized by "Disclosure, Management and Popularity" over the years. The 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity will be held in China for the first time in 2020. Yili sincerely hopes that more and more Chinese enterprises will join hands with them to protect biodiversity. Image Attachments Links: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=325062 http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=325081 http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=325082 SOURCE Yili Group MYTV will be responsible for operating the infrastructure and network facilities for Digital Terrestrial TV (DTT) services throughout the country and will work with Speedcast to extend its coverage via DTH satellite services. Speedcast expects this contract to contribute to its Enterprise & Emerging Markets Division revenue from mid-November 2018. The shift from analogue to digital in Malaysia is in line with a larger digital shift in the ASEAN region to bring the latest digital content to people around the region. The Malaysian Ministry of Communications and Multimedia commissioned the project, which will be supervised by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission. "Migrating an entire country from analogue to digital TV is no small task," says Pierre-Jean Beylier, CEO, Speedcast. "We're looking forward to working with MYTV on this project to bring high-quality digital TV services to Malaysians throughout the country. For this project Speedcast will use technology from the partnership with In Aria Networks announced in September. Speedcast sees significant growth potential in the media business globally and the project with MYTV is another proof point of our increasing relevance in this fast-growing market segment." "We look forward to the partnership with Speedcast to deliver this key national Digital TV project," says Michael Chan, CEO, MYTV Broadcast Sdn Bhd. "Now that DTH is switched on, MYTV's service is available to 100% of the Malaysian population." About Speedcast International Limited Speedcast International Ltd (ASX: SDA) is the largest provider of remote communications and IT services in the world. Speedcast's fully-managed service is delivered via a leading global, multi-access technology, multi-band and multi-orbit network of 70+ satellites and an interconnecting global terrestrial network, bolstered by extensive on-the-ground local support from 40+ countries. This global "network of networks" allows customers to fully rely on the most robust, integrated infrastructure available in the market for their mission critical applications. Speedcast is uniquely positioned as a strategic business partner, tailoring communications, IT and digital solutions to meet unique customer needs and enable business transformation. Speedcast extends its managed services through differentiated technology offerings including cyber-security, crew welfare, content solutions, data and voice applications, and network systems integration services. With a passionate customer focus and a strong safety culture, Speedcast serves more than 2,000 customers in more than 140 countries in sectors such as Maritime, Energy, Mining, Enterprise, Media, Cruise, NGOs and Government. Learn more at www.speedcast.com. Speedcast is a trademark and registered trademark of Speedcast International Limited. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective owners. 2017 Speedcast International Limited. All rights reserved. Contact Information: Toni Lee Rudnicki Vice President, Global Marketing Speedcast International Ltd [email protected] +1-832-668-2634 SOURCE Speedcast International Limited Related Links http://www.speedcast.com ZHANJIANG, China, Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- On November 22, the sixth China Marine Economy Expo (CMEE), jointly held by the government of Guangdong and China's Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR), kicked off in Zhanjiang, a coastal city of Guangdong, China. Guangdong's provincial governor Ma Xingrui declared the Expo open, and Wang Hong, member of the party leadership group of the MNR and director-general of the State Oceanic Administration, addressed the event. Wang Hong said that over the past 40 years of reform and opening-up, China has continuously enhanced its marine resources development and utilization and ecological environmental protection capabilities, improved its scientific and technological innovation level, and the marine economy has continued to grow. The blue marine has become an important space for building a modern economic system in the new era. It is expected that the platform of the CMEE will be fully utilized and, with the joint efforts of all parties, a more intensive, comprehensive and pragmatic cooperation will be carried out to create a mutually beneficial and bright future. After the opening ceremony, Ma Xingrui, Wang Hong and other leaders visited the exhibition area. During a cordial exchange with representatives of exhibiting companies, Ma said that at present, Guangdong is fully committed to promoting the construction of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and striving to build a modern coastal economic belt and a strong marine province. It is hoped that exhibiting enterprises will seize opportunities, deepen exchanges and cooperation, strengthen R&D and innovation, and jointly promote the development of the marine economy and the marine industry. Guangdong will create a more advantageous business environment for enterprises in Guangdong. Ma also called for further improvement of the CMEE, to be more internationalized, specialized and market-oriented and become a window to showcase the achievements of China and the world's marine economic development, a high-end platform for economic cooperation in marine industry and a grand event for exchanges in marine science and technology innovation. Under the theme "Leading Cooperative Sharing in Blue Marine", the CMEE 2018 displays innovations in various industries, central to that are marine engineering equipment, marine energy and technology, port logistics, coastal tourism, biomedicine and modern marine services. According to the Preparatory Committee of the event, 2,400 companies from 72 countries participated in the exhibition, including a whole host of marine business giants, such as BASF SE, China Merchants Group, China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, China State Shipbuilding Corporation Limited, China Communications Construction, State Power Investment, CNOOC, Guangzhou Shipyard International. At the event, paths to innovative development for the marine economy are discussed, China's marine economy development index released, and 11 marine-related forums and various relevant business activities held. Located at the southernmost tip of Chinese mainland and surrounded by the sea on three sides, Zhanjiang is a prefecture-level city with the longest coastline in China. It has unique geographical advantages and abundant marine resources. As a model city for innovation and development of China's marine economy, Zhanjiang has continuously renewed its development mode in recent years and achieved rapid development. As a result, the CMEE, an annually event started in 2012, has been permanently settled in Zhanjiang since 2014. The past five editions have witnessed a total of 83 participating countries and 11,000 enterprises, with a total transaction volume exceeding 200 billion yuan (USD 28.85 billion). SOURCE The Preparatory Committee of the China Marine Economy Expo HOUSTON, Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- American Gilsonite Company (the "Company" or "AGC"), the world's principal commercial miner and processor of uintaite, the unique mineral marketed under its trademark name "Gilsonite," today announced that it posted financial and operating results for the quarter ended September 30, 2018 to the Company's Intralinks site on November 14, 2018. The Company will host a conference call for holders of its Subordinated Notes and holders of the Company's common stock on Wednesday, November 28, 2018 at 10:00am ET. David G. Gallagher, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Steven A. Granda,Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will discuss the Company's financial results and answer questions from the investment community. A rebroadcast of this conference call will also be available through December 23, 2018. The dial-in information for both the conference call and the rebroadcast has been be posted to the Company's Intralinks website. Participants for the conference call are requested to dial in five to ten minutes prior to the scheduled start time. Holders of the Company's Subordinated Notes and holders of the Company's common stock who have executed the Stockholders Agreement can request access to the Company's Intralinks site by contacting Peter Hill by email at [email protected] or by phone at 212-521-4800. About American Gilsonite Company (www.americangilsonite.com) AGC operates as an industrial minerals company and is the world's primary miner and processor of uintaite, a variety of asphaltite, a specialty hydrocarbon which AGC markets to industrial customers under its registered trademark name "Gilsonite". Gilsonite is a glossy, black, solid naturally occurring hydrocarbon similar in appearance to hard asphalt and is believed to be found in commercial quantities only in the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah. Because of its unique chemical and physical properties, Gilsonite has been used in more than 160 products. The Company sells its products to customers in four primary markets: (i) oil and gas, (ii) inks and paints, (iii) foundry and (iv) asphalt. AGC is headquartered in Houston, Texas. Contact Peter Hill Kekst and Company 212-521-4800 [email protected] SOURCE American Gilsonite Company Related Links http://www.americangilsonite.com Second Quarter 2018 Results will be Released After Market on Thursday, November 29, 2018, Followed by the Company's First Ever Conference Call on Friday, November 30, 2018 at 11:00 A.M. EDT TORONTO, Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Beleave Inc. (CSE: BE) (OTCQX: BLEVF) ("Beleave" or the "Company") announces that its second quarter 2018 results will be released after market on Thursday, November 29, 2018 and will be followed by the Company's first ever conference call on Friday, November 30, 2018 at 11:00 a.m. (Eastern Time). The call will be hosted by Andrew T. Wnek, Chairman and CEO, Bojan Krasic, President and CFO and select members of the senior management team. The November corporate presentation will be available on the Company's website prior to the call, which can be accessed at www.beleave.com. Investors and stakeholders are invited to participate using the following dial-in numbers: Participant Number (North American Toll Free): 1 866 303-2360 Participant Number (North American Toll): 1 857 600-3028 Participant Number (USA Toll Free): 1 866 236-8237 Participant Number (Standard International Access): +44 (0) 208-610-0161 Participant ID: 1556811# Questions may be submitted in advance for the Q&A session by emailing Kevin Keagan, Chief Communications Officer at [email protected]. A replay of the conference call will be available shortly after the call has concluded and will be available until 11:59 p.m. (Eastern Time) Friday, December 14, 2018. ABOUT BELEAVE INC. Beleave is a vertically-integrated Canadian cannabis company headquartered in Oakville, Ontario, that operates streamlined facilities throughout Canada to cultivate high-quality cannabis flower, oil, and extracts with funded capacity in excess of 150,000 kg per year. Fully-licensed to cultivate and sell medical and recreational cannabis, Beleave is leading the way through research partnerships with universities to bridge the gap between science and tradition and to develop pharma-grade extracts and derivatives. Beleave is currently developing new product lines for October 2019 as the recreational market is expected to allow for food and beverage-based cannabis products. Beleave is growing its storefront and online sales presence rapidly through its wholly-owned subsidiaries, Beleave Kannabis Corp. and Seven Oaks, which are licensed for medicinal and recreational sales respectively. The company's first retail location is opening this fall in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan. Beleave has also developed a network of medical cannabis clinics in Ontario and Quebec under the Medi-Green banner. Through its majority ownership of Procannmed S.A.S., Beleave has access to 27 hectares of outdoor grow space and is fully licensed to cultivate, produce, extract and distribute medical cannabis in Colombia to capitalize on exports and the expanding Latin American market. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law ("forward-looking statements"). The use of any of the words "plan", "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur are intended to identify forward-looking information. These statements are only predictions. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking information is based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking information because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking information addresses future events and conditions, by its very nature it involves inherent risks and uncertainties. This information speak only as of the date of this news release. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks including various risk factors discussed in the Company's disclosure documents, which can be found under the Company's profile on www.sedar.com. SOURCE Beleave Inc. CHICAGO, Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- As the trend of giving continues to spread, GiveCentral yet again extends its support to #GivingTuesday by offering tools and services for a smoother fundraising. GiveCentral aims at contributing to the amplification of year-end fundraising efforts for nonprofits and charities, this is to initiate the linking of individuals with noble causes and to further strengthen a community of givers. Fundraising for nonprofits on this global day of giving requires strategic planning and real time tracking of funds; GiveCentral provides just that. On a day like Giving Tuesday, our partners undoubtedly generate huge funds. A number of churches and nonprofits choose GiveCentral as their fundraising platform because of the services and softwares that we provide. For example, GiveCentral Community is a simple donor management software that allows maximum transparency; it consolidates collection, fundraising and communication activities all in one convenient place. The database has been designed to provide tools that will help in making smarter fundraising decisions, thus saving time and effort. It also enables sending newsletters, tax information, emails and even text updates to your donors. Apart from GiveCentral Community, there are services like GiveCentral Go, GiveCentral Connect and GiveCentral Texting that help nonprofits to carry out and maintain a hassle-free fundraising. GiveCentral's mobile giving is one of our most popular tools. About GiveCentral GiveCentral is a web based donation platform designed to help nonprofits raise more funds. By consolidating all collection, fundraising and communication activities into one place, GiveCentral makes it easier for donors to give, for nonprofits to connect, and for administrators to save time on accounting and data management. With over 450 nationwide nonprofits that have put their trust on us, we look forward to grow and expand our horizons. Nonprofits can sign up with us on our website and our trusted experts will guide them through creating accounts, launching campaigns and gathering funds. About #GivingTuesday It is a global movement built by individuals, families, and communities in all 50 states of the U.S and in countries around the world. #GivingTuesday has only grown bigger and better since its inception in 2012, it is an official kick off for the end-of-year giving season. It is a movement that inspires people to inspire and get inspired, and to give back in smarter ways; this year, #GivingTuesday falls on November 27. Feel free to contact us for any query. Contact Dina Hadziselimovic Phone: 312.929.2306 Website:https://www.givecentral.org/ Email id: [email protected] SOURCE GiveCentral Related Links http://www.givecentral.org PETALUMA, Calif., Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Most people's split-second choices are made at a subconscious level, often driven by deep-seated beliefs and ideas developed by experiences in the past. These decisions can reveal patterns of thinking and behavior that may not truly benefit a person's life or business and can even be destructive. An entrepreneur may have an amazing head on their shoulders, only to keep making the same bad choices the wrong business partner, the wrong products, the wrong priorities. Brandon Frere, successful entrepreneur and CEO of Ameritech Financial and other ventures, believes it's possible to break these frustrating patterns in order to make better choices in both life and business. "The success of your company relies on sound decisions," said Frere. "It can be hard to identify whether it's a sound decision in the moment, but by identifying your personal patterns you can increase the odds of better split-second choices." Examining the past and decisions that were made can be frustrating but necessary in order to recognize patterns of thinking and behavior; without the ability to identify these detrimental patterns, there's no ability to readjust for positive patterns that allow for decisions that are more in line with business goals. Successful leaders have the ability to reflect on their past and the decisions that led to certain outcomes, as well as how the decision continues to play out. Doing a self-aware inventory of past decisions can allow an entrepreneur to start connecting the dots and discover patterns of thinking and behavior. To start a self-aware reflection, focus on one specific pattern that isn't beneficial (or may even be harmful) to business decisions. Reflect on why that thing whether it's a strategy, a product, or business partner was chosen. After identifying the why, focus on the where: where have these types of decisions occurred in other areas of life? Are these patterns still playing out currently in some way? Consider how the patterns might be changed. For example, if new employees are only hired during desperate times, resulting in poor hiring choices, perhaps candidates can be researched and found before the need is quite so dire. This type of self-awareness can also translate to other decisions made in life, granting more control and self-agency on a personal and professional level. "Self-awareness and personal growth don't start and stop at your professional life," said Frere. "Practicing both in all avenues of life makes you a stronger person, a sounder decision-maker, and a more successful entrepreneur." 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 business-owner-facing-difficult.jpg Business Owner Facing Difficult Decision Credit: vchal/Bigstock image2.png Related Links Brandon Frere website SOURCE Brandon Frere Related Links http://brandonfrere.com VANCOUVER, Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Namaste Technologies Inc. ("Namaste" or the "Company") (TSXV: N) (FRANKFURT: M5BQ) (OTCMKTS: NXTTF) is pleased to announce that the Company's wholly-owned subsidiary, Cannmart Inc. ("Cannmart"), has signed a Product Acquisition Agreement (the "Agreement") with Weed Me Inc. ("Weed Me"), whereby Cannmart will purchase medical cannabis from Weed Me to offer in its online platform. Subject to the terms of the Agreement, Cannmart has placed its first order with Weed Me that includes a variety of pre-rolled products in several strains. By creating a unique offering of strains and products sourced from multiple producers, Cannmart offers medical patients more variety of high-quality cannabis products through a single platform. Cannmart has been focused on securing additional products, and in expanding its product categories to include pre-rolls. The Company looks forward to nurturing a long-term supply arrangement with Weed Me, and securing additional supply from their future production. The Company's goal is for Cannmart to become the leading online marketplace for medical cannabis in Canada by offering the largest selection of product and in offering excellent customer service. With Namaste's technology and Cannmart's platform, the Company believes it is well-positioned to offer significant value as a sales-channel to a broad range of licensed producers across Canada. Namaste's management team is confident in its ability to set itself apart as a true innovator in the cannabis e-commerce space. Management Commentary Sean Dollinger, President, and CEO of Namaste comments: "We're pleased to announce this Agreement with Weed Me. We've secured supply from their first production and will look forward to offering their product to our patients. By leveraging our technology platforms, expertise in e-commerce and incredible customer service, we intend on improving the buying experience for medical patients and becoming Canada's leading online platform for medical cannabis sales." About Weed Me Inc. Weed Me, established in April 2016, is a leading Canadian Licensed Producer that has the exclusive Canadian rights to Dutch Passion genetics. Weed Me's vision is to enhance lives through the provision of high quality medical and recreational cannabis. Located in Pickering Ontario the company focuses on developing unique formulations and cannabis strains that meet the needs of recreational and medical users. Weed Me leverages the company's production facilities and clinical data to minimize operating costs while developing unique strains and formulations. About Namaste Technologies Inc. Namaste Technologies is Your Everything Cannabis Store. Namaste operates the largest global cannabis e-commerce platform with over 30 websites in 20+ countries under various brands. Namaste's product offering through its subsidiaries includes vaporizers, glassware, accessories, CBD products, and medical cannabis in the Canadian market. Namaste has developed and acquired innovative technology platforms including NamasteMD.com, Canada's first Health Canada compliant telemedicine application, and in May 2018 the Company acquired a leading e-commerce AI and Machine Learning Company, Findify AB. Findify uses artificial intelligence algorithms to optimize and personalize a consumer's on-site buying experience. Namaste is focused on leveraging its cutting-edge technology to enhance the user experience throughout its platforms. Namaste will continue to develop and acquire innovative technologies which will provide value to the Company and to its shareholders as well as to the broader cannabis market. On behalf of the Board of Directors "Sean Dollinger" Chief Executive Officer Direct: +1 604-355-6100 Email: [email protected] Further information on the Company and its products can be accessed through the links below: NamasteTechnologies.com NamasteMD.com NamasteVapes.ca Everyonedoesit.ca FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION This press release contains forward-looking information based on current expectations. These statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those implied by such statements. Although such statements are based on management's reasonable assumptions, Namaste assumes no responsibility to update or revise forward-looking information to reflect new events or circumstances unless required by law. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. These statements speak only as of the date of this press release. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks including various risk factors discussed in the Company's disclosure documents which can be found under the Company's profile on www.sedar.com. This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The TSXV has neither reviewed nor approved the contents of this press release. SOURCE Namaste Technologies Inc. MERCERSBURG, Pa., Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is focusing weekly on champions who are advancing local ordinances to legalize Community Rights in the face of state preemption and to amend state constitutions. They are defending democracy against corporate profit demands in courts. And they are advocating Rights of Nature around the globe. Week 1: Nov. 26-30 New Hampshire Opening the Dam Nearly a dozen local communities adopted local bills of rights over the past decade. They're working toward a state constitutional amendment giving all communities the same authority. Monica's Story: We Don't Want Any of the Harm In Newmarket, "ground-zero" for two pediatric cancer clusters, a mother urges town council to pass a local bill of rights protecting water. Week 2: Dec. 3-7 Pacific Northwest Pod in Peril: A Comprehensive Cure The journey of Orca J-50, carrying her dead calf, captured the world's sympathy and prompted efforts to protect the Salish Sea pod. Legalizing Rights of Nature promises a cure. Easement in Eden One person CAN make a difference. We highlight a champion who took landmark action preserving a portion of Kauai's paradise in perpetuity. paradise in perpetuity. Banishing the Fog Forty-five years after publication of "A Bitter Fog," Carol Van Strum helps enact an aerial spray ban in her Oregon home county. Week 3: Dec 10-14 Ohio BOR vs BOE Communities qualified their bills of rights initiatives, but were stricken from the ballot. They're not giving up on legalizing local democracy. Dr. Ray: The Heart of a Champion Dr. Ray Beiersdorfer was the heart of the Youngstown community's multi-year effort to bring local bills of rights to a vote. The seeds he planted are growing. was the heart of the community's multi-year effort to bring local bills of rights to a vote. The seeds he planted are growing. Growing Roots and Rights Ohio Community Rights Conference, held this fall, brought together seemingly disparate groups who learned, in Maya Angelou's words, "We are more alike, my friend, than we are unalike." Week 4: Dec. 17-21 Pennsylvania The "Right" to Profit Grant Township is being punished by the courts and the state for daring to say "no" to injection wells. is being punished by the courts and the state for daring to say "no" to injection wells. Profaning the Sacred A religious community grows into an activist community as they fight to halt a pipeline. Circling Back Todd Township is halting a factory farm. As the effort toward constitutionalizing local democracy begins in Pennsylvania , Keystone State legislators are connecting with their New Hampshire counterparts. Each of these stories will be posted on our website, celdf.org, and may be republished. Media Contact: Sue Lincoln (225) 978-9438 [email protected] SOURCE Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund Related Links https://celdf.org DUBAI, UAE, November 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The largest conference for alternative investment in the Middle East and North Africa will host more than 500 investors overseeing in excess of US$10 trillion in assets The seventh edition of the Alternative Investment Management (AIM) Summit will be held in Dubai on the 26th and 27th of November. The focus of this year's event will be 'The Shifting Paradigm of Alternative Investments'. Attendees, including prominent family offices, investment professionals, and business leaders from all across the globe will discuss the upsurge in volatility throughout 2018 and the investment outlook for 2019 and beyond. Topics on the agenda include crypto-economics, the future of venture capital, the rise of algorithmic trading at hedge funds, and the state of the distressed debt market. The evolution of venture capital and private equity across the MENA region is high on the agenda at this year's summit. After MENA startups raised $560 million in 260 deals last year, investors are bracing for bigger startup deals in the region throughout 2018 and 2019. "Shareholder protection is arguably the last major challenge to receiving VC funding," says Sabah al-Binali, CEO of Universal Strategy. "Developing the right development plans is arguably the last major challenge to deal sourcing." Sabah al-Binali will deliver a keynote speech on these essential topics. "The AIM Summit will provide a stage for high profile debate. Key business leaders from across the Middle East and around the globe will attempt to make sense of what is an increasingly challenging global investment landscape," says Raha Moradi, AIM Summit Conference Director. "We are looking forward to what we expect to be one of the most interesting and well-attended AIM conferences in our history." A number of speakers at the summit will address the emerging asset class of cryptocurrencies and blockchain tokens. While the outlook for VC deals in 2019 remains as bright as ever, investors are keen to understand how initial coin offerings (ICOs) could disrupt or augment the industry. Several speakers at the summit will compare the VC landscape with the emerging ICO/STO scene, attempt to classify some digital assets as a new asset class, highlight how Distributed Ledger Technology enhances existing asset classes, and delve into cryptocurrency price dynamics. Navin Gupta, Ripple's Managing Director for Asia and the Middle East, will represent the company behind the world's third largest cryptocurrency XRP. Gupta's keynote will delve into deeper economic theory on tokenization, distributed ledgers (DLT), and the viability of digital currencies issued by central banks. "Distributed ledger technology is changing the ways that financial institutions and governments around the world look at moving money across borders," says Gupta. "Remittances in particular are a game-changing use case, as DLT can reduce much of the friction and cost of sending money internationally." Another speaker addressing the same topic is the founder of DIFC-based hedge fund Dalma Capital Management, Zachary Cefaratti. "Crypto assets have become increasingly attractive to institutional investors in the past year," he says. "Security tokens are on the rise, with the opportunity of traditional investment classes and private placements to enjoy the benefits of tokenization, including increased transparency and liquidity. At the same time, non-security crypto-asset markets such as cryptocurrencies, stable-coins, utility tokens, platform/protocol tokens and infrastructure tokens have matured substantially, addressing issues of scalability and weeding out problematic vapor-ware offerings as investors have become more sophisticated." Hosted at the Ritz Carlton, Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), the summit will feature 75 noteworthy speakers, including Christof H. Ruhl, Head of Global Research at Abu Dhabi Investment Authority; Dr. Fahad M. Alturki, Chief Economist & Head of Research at Jadwa Investments; Henry Sender, Chief Correspondent at the Financial Times; Sabah al-Binali, CEO of Universal Strategy and Vice Chairman of the Board at The National Investor; and Fiona Treble, Director and Head of Membership at AIMA. About the AIM Summit Annual AIM Summits are exclusively for business leaders and key decision makers at leading firms. It is the largest conference for alternative investment in the Middle East and North Africa. Each year it welcomes more than 500 investors and investment managers overseeing in excess of US$10 trillion in assets. Participants include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, hedge funds, private equity managers, private debt managers, venture capitalists, endowments, foundations, pension funds, digital asset and blockchain innovators, investors and disruptors. This year's event in Dubai will feature over 75+ eminent speakers and investors from across 50 countries. To attend the event kindly visit www.aimsummit.com. Media Contact Raha Moradi, Conference Director, United Arab Emirates, [email protected] SOURCE AIM Summit DUBLIN, Nov 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global IoT in Agriculture Market: Focus on Systems (Sensing, Communication, Cloud Computing, Data Management), Applications (Precision Crop Farming, Indoor Farming, Livestock Monitoring, Aquaculture)- Analysis and Forecast (2018-2023)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. Global IoT in Agriculture Market to Reach $28.65 Billion by 2023 Over the last decade, the global agricultural industry has witnessed a massive transformation owing to the increasing demand for sustainable farming practices. Rising global population and high-income growth have resulted in growing concerns of food security across the world. Various agricultural start-ups and technology innovators are developing numerous sustainable farming systems. One of the most disruptive technologies in the field of smart agriculture has been the internet of things (IoT) due to its increasing role in the field. Agriculture industry's interest in IoT based farming has been evolving rapidly with applicability in various verticals, such as crop farm management, livestock monitoring, indoor farming, and aquaculture. The advantages of the IoT technology for agriculture are wide-ranging from farmers to equipment manufacturers to internet service providers. Adoption of IoT technology in the farming industry results in increased agricultural productivity and sustainability. The IoT technologies have completely transformed the agriculture sector by providing decision support systems, supported by real time data that is gathered by utilizing the most modern technologies. IoT in agriculture is an ecosystem comprising wide-ranging components. It enables the user to gain a multifaceted view of the farming operations and also contributes to decision making. IoT technologies actively assist in collecting data regarding crop and soil behavior, animal/cattle conditions & their locations, agricultural machines, and inventory status, among others, with the combination of different technologies such as sensors, cloud computing, RFID tags, and data management software, in one system. With the rapid introduction of information and communication technologies (ICT) since 2008, the farming industry has been witnessing another revolutionary phase. Integration of sensing systems into farming equipment has led to the generation of large amounts of data that can be analyzed using software tools, providing farmers with valuable insights to promote yield growth. Moreover, incorporation of navigation systems into agricultural machinery and equipment has led to their precise movement and application in the field. Earlier, the use of IoT in agriculture was restricted to large farm operations that could invest in the IT infrastructure and other technology resources. However, with the rapid advancements in technology, the application of IoT in agriculture sector has gradually moved to farming cooperatives and small-scale farms, from 2013 to till now. The IoT in agriculture market includes a wide array of systems, such as sensing, communication, cloud computing, and data management. Sensing systems encompass a broad range of systems including different sensors, GPS devices, and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). Addition of sensing and navigation capabilities makes it even more promising. Site-specific farming and variable rate application are two of the major applications of IoT based solutions; and sensing and navigation components are two of the most critical contributors for its execution. Major application areas of IoT in agriculture technologies include precision crop farming, livestock monitoring and management, indoor farming, and aquaculture, among others. Precision crop farming represents the most significant application in the market for the IoT based technologies. Precision crop farming has the capability to efficiently utilize water by finely matching irrigation inputs to yields in each area of a field. During the forecast period, application areas, such as aquaculture and indoor farming are expected to display the maximum growth, owing to the high possibilities of value addition in these application areas. Livestock monitoring and management applications also present colossal market growth opportunities. With the globally growing demand for livestock products, innovative techniques and systems are employed to aid in the monitoring and management of herds. Automated infrastructure, livestock monitoring equipment, and various other management technologies have enabled livestock enterprises to manage large herds with reduced manual labor requirements and have ensured high productivity. These technologies have given rise to several livestock monitoring and management applications to simplify the complexities of herd management and improve performance. The report answers the following questions about the IoT in agriculture market: What is the IoT in agriculture market size in terms of revenue from 2017-2023, and what is the expected growth rate during the forecast period 2018-2023? What is the revenue generated from the different applications, such as precision crop farming, livestock monitoring and management, indoor farming and others? What are the key trends and opportunities in the market pertaining to the Global IoT in the agriculture industry? What are the key systems covered in the IoT in agriculture market? How attractive is the market for different stakeholders present in the industry on the basis of the analysis of futuristic scenario of the Global IoT in agriculture industry? What are the major driving forces that are expected to increase the demand for Global IoT in agriculture market during the forecast period? What are the major challenges inhibiting the growth of the Global IoT in agriculture market? What kind of new strategies are adopted by the existing market players to expand their market position in the industry? What is the competitive strength of the key players in the Global IoT in agriculture market on the baiss of the analysis of their financial stability, product offerings, and regional presence? Key Topics Covered: Executive Summary 1 Market Dynamics 1.1 Market Drivers 1.1.1 Increasing Demand for Data Management in Agriculture Industry 1.1.2 Increasing Concerns over Global Food Security 1.1.3 Favorable Government Initiatives and Investments 1.2 Market Restraints 1.2.1 High Initial Investment 1.2.2 Lack of Awareness and Infrastructure in Emerging Economies 1.3 Market Opportunities 1.3.1 Increasing Growth Opportunities in Developing Countries 1.3.2 Need of Increased Cloud Security 1.3.3 IoT based Smart Automation Using Drones in Agriculture Industry 2 Competitive Landscape 2.1 Key Market Developments and Strategies 2.2 Market Share Analysis 2.2.1 Market Share Analysis of Global Precision Crop Farming Vendors in IoT in Agriculture Market 3 Industry Analysis 3.1 Key Venture Capital Investments 3.2 Emerging Trends in the IoT in Agriculture Market 3.2.1 Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Agriculture Industry 3.2.2 Securing the Agriculture Value Chain with Blockchain Technology 3.3 Industry Attractiveness 3.4 Opportunity Matrix 4 Global IoT in Agriculture Market 4.1 Assumptions and Limitations for Analysis and Forecast of the Global IoT in Agriculture Market 4.2 Market Overview 4.3 Regional IoT in Agriculture Market, by Devices Shipped 5 Global IoT in Agriculture Market (by System) 5.1 Market Overview 5.2 Sensing Systems 5.3 Communication Systems 5.4 Cloud Computing 5.5 Data Management Systems 6 Global IoT in Agriculture Market (by Application) 6.1 Precision Crop Farming 6.1.1 Yield Monitoring and Farm Mapping 6.1.2 Crop Scouting 6.1.3 Weather Tracking and Forecasting 6.1.4 Irrigation Management 6.1.5 Other Precision Crop Farming Applications 6.2 Livestock Monitoring and Management 6.2.1 Milk Harvesting 6.2.2 Animal Health Monitoring and Comfort 6.2.3 Feeding Management 6.2.4 Heat Stress and Fertility Monitoring 6.2.5 Other Livestock Management Applications 6.3 Indoor Farming 6.3.1 Climate Control Management 6.3.2 Lighting Management 6.3.3 Plant Development Monitoring 6.3.4 Others Indoor Farming Applications 6.4 Aquaculture 6.4.1 Feed Monitoring 6.4.2 Aquatic Species Tracking and Navigation 6.4.3 Water Quality Management 6.4.4 Others Aquaculture Applications 6.5 Others 7 Global IoT in Agriculture Market (by Region) 8 Company Profiles AKVA Group ASA AeroFarms Afimilk Ltd. Ag Leader Technology Allflex USA Inc. Inc. Boumatic LLC Cowlar DICKEY-John DeLaval Deere & Company Eruvaka Technologies OSRAM Licht AG PrecisionHawk Inc. Proagrica Raven Industries Smartcultiva Corporation Topcon Corporation Trimble Inc. For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/w5t7j8/global_iot_in?w=5 Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. 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, Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global IoT in Manufacturing Market- Market Share and Industry Forecast to 2024" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. Global IoT in manufacturing market is expected to grow with an impressive CAGR of 29.4% during the forecast period 2017-2024 IoT is transforming the way organizations operate and manage their business. IoT in manufacturing enables collection of data from different things about production, quality, operations, quality and consumption, and use it to streamline and refine the business process. Industrial IoT has emerged as an important tool with corresponding implications for data analytics in manufacturing. One of the key trends in the market is the rising adoption of IoT in manufacturing and industrial sector considering its benefits such as its capacity to receive, gather and send information, embed connectivity and intelligence into devices and set up processes and applications in order to analyse data and automate manufacturing processes. As per the company sources, on May 2017, Mitsubishi and KUKA AG agreed for a partnership with SAP to get IoT applications. This partnership would help both the companies to access IoT applications such as connectivity management, remote device and predictive maintenance which also shows the rising adoption of IoT in manufacturing and industrial sector. Furthermore, IoT in manufacturing market is experiencing a boom owing to the convergence of IT (Information Technology) and OT (Operational Technology) and rising adoption of the cloud environment which is anticipated to boost the global IoT in manufacturing market across the globe. Some of the notable strategic initiatives adopted by key market players are merger & acquisition and partnership. For instance, in 2016, IBM signed a multi-year strategic partnership agreement with Schaeffler (Germany), an automotive industry company, to promote the digital transformation of customer solutions and its all operations by tapping IBM's Watson IoT technologies. Furthermore, improving manufacturing sector in emerging economies, such as India, China, etc., is anticipated to provide huge growth prospects for global IoT in manufacturing market. Convergence of IT and OT: Major Growth Promoter The convergence of IT and OT is likely to rise the growth of the IoT in manufacturing market across the globe. Government of Europe has introduced an initiative named Industry 4.0 initiative in 2011 that emphasizes on the use of automated machines and use of IoT efficiently to predict failures and autonomously trigger maintenance processes. The Industry 4.0 initiative is adopted throughout Europe. With the help of Industry 4.0 initiative, the integration of OT and IT is possible to monitor processes, events and devices. OT's transformation through IT integration brings with it the required consideration of security. For instance, Chinese government focus on the development of standards along with the converging establishment of an IoT standards association in the country. As per the Chinese government, the government has selected 202 cities in the year 2014 to pilot the city projects. The urban and metro cities of China which includes mainly Beijing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Shanghai have established extensive database and sensor networks integrating IOT to collect, store and analyse the information and data related to transportation, public safety, electricity and public safety. Similarly, a program named Things Connected is an innovation support program set up by the Digital Catapult in United Kingdom with an aim to help UK's small & medium enterprises and business to bring low power WAN based solutions faster to market. Remote accessibility for many operational technology systems is now possible with the help of the IT integration considering the risks of connectivity were also not considered before. With the advent of Industry 4.0 initiative, the gap between IT and OT is reduced, and manufacturers have started realizing the benefits of bringing IT and OT together in the connected factory as it enables to speed up production, reduces the cost of monitoring asset and also minimizes energy and time consumption in any manufacturing process. Further, emphasize is also on self-organized logistics that have the ability to respond to unexpected changes such as mishandling of load, etc. in production. Hence, rising adoption of industry 4.0 initiative has given a huge boost to the convergence of IT and OT which positively influence the growth of the IoT in manufacturing market during forecast period 2017-2024. North America: The most lucrative region The North America dominates global IoT in manufacturing market owing to the deployment of advanced IoT technolgies such as Industry 4.0 initiative, augmented reality and virtual reality. Additionally, increasing digitization in manufacturing by large organizations and growing number of SMEs have also positively influenced the growth of the North America IoT in manufacturing market. Similarly, region holds the leading postion in market owing to the well-established economies, encourging them to promote R&D activities to adopt IoT in manufacturing sector. Furthermore, the dominance of key market players in this region such as Cisco Systems (U.S.), IBM (U.S.), PTC (U.S.) and General Electric (U.S.) is also influencing the growth of its IoT in manufacturing market. Key Topics Covered: 1. Introduction 1.1. Executive Summary 1.2. Estimation Methodology 2. Market Overview 2.1. Global IoT In Manufacturing Market: Evolution & Transition 2.2. Market Definition & Scope 2.3. Industry Structure 2.4. Regulatory Framework 2.5. Total Market Analysis 2.5.1. Top 5 Findings 2.5.2. Top 5 Opportunity Markets 2.5.3. Top 5 Companies 2.5.4. Top 3 Competitive Strategies 2.6. Estimation Analysis 2.7. Strategic Analysis 2.7.1. Investment Vs. Adoption Model 2.7.2. 360-Degree Industry Analysis 2.7.3. Porter's 5 Force Model 2.7.4. See-Saw Analysis 2.7.5. Consumer Analysis And Key Buying Criteria 2.8. Competitive Analysis 2.8.1. Key Strategies & Analysis 2.8.2. Market Share Analysis & Top Company Analysis 2.9. Strategic Recommendations & Key Conclusions 2.9.1. Investment Opportunities By Regions 2.9.2. Opportunities In Emerging Applications 2.9.3. Investment Opportunity In Fastest Growing Segment 3. Market Determinants 3.1. Market Drivers 3.1.1. Rising Adoption Of Cloud Environment 3.1.2. Rise In Number Of Intelligent, Cost-Effective Connected Devices 3.1.3. Convergence Of Operational Technology (OT)/Information Technology (IT) 3.1.4. Demand-Driven Supply Chain And Connected Logistics 3.2. Market Restraints 3.2.1. Data Security And Privacy Concerns 3.2.2. Lack Of Standards For Interoperability And Interconnectivity 3.3. Market Opportunities 3.3.1. Content Maturity Model 3.3.2. Improving Manufacturing Sector In India And China 3.4. Market Challenges 3.4.1. Data Migration Challenges 3.4.2. Inconsistent Business Semantics And Conflicts Related To Data Ownership 4. Global Iot In Manufacturing Market By Solution 4.1.1. Market Definition And Scope 4.1.2. Decision Support Database & Estimation Methodology 4.1.3. Comparative Analysis Across Market Segments 4.1.4. Opportunity Matrix 4.1.5. Market Segmentation 4.1.5.1. Global Network Management Market 4.1.5.2. Global Data Management Market 4.1.5.3. Global Device Management Market 4.1.5.4. Global Application Management Market 4.1.5.5. Global Smart Surveillance Market 5. Global Iot In Manufacturing Market By Platform 5.1.1. Market Definition And Scope 5.1.2. Decision Support Database & Estimation Methodology 5.1.3. Comparative Analysis Across Market Segments 5.1.4. Opportunity Matrix 5.1.5. Market Segmentation 5.1.5.1. Global Device Management Platform Market 5.1.5.2. Global Application Management Platform Market 5.1.5.3. Global Connectivity Management Platform Market 5.2. Global Iot In Manufacturing Market By Service 5.2.1. Market Definition And Scope 5.2.2. Decision Support Database & Estimation Methodology 5.2.3. Comparative Analysis Across Market Segments 5.2.4. Opportunity Matrix 5.2.5. Market Segmentation 5.2.5.1. Global Managed Services Market 5.2.5.2. Global Professional Services Market 6. Global Iot In Manufacturing Market By Appication 6.1.1. Market Definition And Scope 6.1.2. Decision Support Database & Estimation Methodology 6.1.3. Comparative Analysis Across Market Segments 6.1.4. Opportunity Matrix 6.1.5. Market Segmentation 6.1.5.1. Global Predictive Maintenance Market 6.1.5.2. Global Business Process Optimization Market 6.1.5.3. Global Asset Tracking And Management Market 6.1.5.4. Global Logistics And Supply Chain Management Market 6.1.5.5. Global Real-Time Workforce Tracking And Management Market 6.1.5.6. Global Automation Control And Management Market 6.1.5.7. Global Emergency And Incident Management And Business Communication Market 7. Global IoT In Manufacturing Market By Vertical 7.1.1. Market Definition And Scope 7.1.2. Decision Support Database & Estimation Methodology 7.1.3. Comparative Analysis Across Market Segments 7.1.4. Opportunity Matrix 7.1.5. Market Segmentation 7.1.5.1. Global Energy And Utilities Market 7.1.5.2. Global Automotive Market 7.1.5.3. Global Food And Beverages Market 7.1.5.4. Global Aerospace And Defense Market 7.1.5.5. Global Chemicals And Materials Market 7.1.5.6. Global High-Tech Products Market 7.1.5.7. Global Healthcare Market 7.1.5.8. Global Others Market 8. Competitive Landscape 8.1. Key Strategies 8.1.1. List Of Mergers And Acquisition 8.1.2. List Of Joint Ventures 8.1.3. List Of Product Launches 8.1.4. List Of Partnerships 9. Geographic Analysis 10. Company Profiles Bosch ( Germany ) ) Cisco Systems (U.S.) CSC (U.S.) General Electric (U.S.) Hitachi Data Systems (U.S.) Huawei (China) IBM (U.S.) Microsoft (U.S.) PTC (U.S.) SAP ( Germany ) ) Schneider Electric ( France ) ) Siemens ( Germany ) ) Verizon (U.S.) Wind River (U.S.) For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/vzqtlb/global_iot_in?w=5 Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. 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 JACKSON, Miss., Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Thousands of Mississippians will have more than shopping on their minds this Black Friday as they gather across the state for a historic drive to get out the vote. The drive is being coordinated by dozens of organizations and faith-based communities as part of a statewide coalition called Mississippi (MS) Rising. Logo for statewide coalition of grassroots groups "We are so proud to be kicking off the Central Mississippi drive at the historic M.W. Stringer Masonic Temple this Saturday," says LaTosha Brown, co-director of Black Voters Matter and an organizer of the statewide drive. "More than a century of Black organizing has happened within these walls. Fannie Lou Hamer and others organized major voter drives and launched the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party right here in this building. MS Rising draws upon this powerful legacy as we stand for our right to full participation in the decisions that affect our lives." The canvass is expected to draw thousands of young people due in no small part to the work of MS Votes director Arekia Bennett who is also part of MS Rising's leadership. "As young people, we have a real stake in this election. We are inspired by the history and by our power to shape the future. We care about the economy, about education, about everything that affects our future. We are here and we will be heard." Rukia Lumumba, co-leader of the Movement 4 Black Lives Electoral Justice Project, another anchor organization in the coalition, sees this effort as part of a longer-term strategy for making Mississippi a more democratic and participatory place. "My father, the late Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, had a vision of the entire state becoming a place that was known for its democratic principles and participatory governance. For more than a century, Mississippi was known as a place that disenfranchised large numbers of its residents and privileged some residents' voice and power over others. We are organizing for a new Mississippi where all residents have voice, where all residents are heard. Mississippi Rising is what democracy is all about." Black Voters Matter will be moving through the state in its distinctive GOTV bus supporting the canvass with special events statewide. Dr. William Barber, co-director of the Poor People's Campaign, is among the special guests joining the tour this week. Many of these events will include community food shares featuring produce from Black farmers a feature that Carol Blackmon, a coalition leader from the Southern Rural Black Women's Initiative and CB Enterprises, applauds. "I'm so proud that Mississippi Rising will be partnering with Black farmers to support this vitally important part of our state's economy," says Blackmon. "Together we are helping more Mississippians access fresh foods and critical voter information." On Sunday, faith-based communities will participate in the coalition's Souls to the Polls events to promote voter education and awareness. For more information on the weekend's events or to join the bus tour media corps, please contact Iya H. Omobola at [email protected]. If you are an organization or faith-based institution wanting more information on how to get involved with MS Rising, please visit us online. Our Partners ACLU of Mississippi, Black Women's Roundtable MS, Indivisible No More, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement MS, Mississippi Rising Coalition, MS Move, MS Votes, MS Poor People's Campaign, MS Rising Coalition, Mississippi Conference NAACP, One Voice, People's Advocacy Institute, X the X, Southern Echo, Black Voters Matter, Electoral Justice Project, Movement for Black Lives Action Fund, Red to Blue, Working Families Party MEDIA CONTACT: Iya H. Omobola Mobile: (601) 885-3240 Email: [email protected] Related Images mississippi-rising-logo.jpg Mississippi Rising Logo Logo for statewide coalition of grassroots groups ms-rising-rally-november-20.jpg MS Rising Rally November 20 Crowd shot of MS Rising Voter Education rally featuring Dr. William Barber in Biloxi dr-william-barber-co-chair-poor.jpg Dr. William Barber, Co-Chair, Poor People's Campaign Dr. Barber speaking at a MS Rising rally in Biloxi, MS. SOURCE Mississippi Rising Coalition CALGARY, Nov. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Horizon North Logistics Inc. ("Horizon North" or the "Corporation") (TSX: HNL.TO) announced today that its Industrial Services division has recently been awarded several camp service contracts for customers in Alberta and British Columbia. New Contract in Fort McMurray Region South of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Horizon North's Sekui Limited Partnership with the Chipewyan Prairie Dene First Nation has been awarded a contract for the provision of hospitality and janitorial services at an existing facility in the area. Revenue over the 36-month term of the contract is expected to be $26.2 million based on projected occupancy and utilization levels, with minimal capital requirements in order to execute the contract terms. "This contract is a confirmation of the effectiveness of Horizon North's strategy for the oil sands and SAGD regions north and south of Fort McMurray, which focuses on a commitment to quality services delivered through an efficient platform," says Rod Graham, President and Chief Executive Officer of Horizon North. "It is also a notable achievement for our Sekui Limited Partnership and continues to confirm the belief of Horizon North and our customers that strong relationships with the Aboriginal communities who call our operating regions home are vital." "This contract award is another step forward for our Sekui Limited Partnership and demonstrates the significant benefits it can bring to our community," says Chief Vern Janvier of the Chipewyan Prairie Dene First Nation. "Financial prosperity, job opportunities and growth for our membership continue to be made possible through projects like this." New Contract in Prince Rupert Region As previously released in the Corporation's 2018 third quarter results, Horizon North has been awarded a new contract for camp services on Watson Island near Prince Rupert, British Columbia to support development in the region. The contract terms provide for an anchor tenant for a 150-person open camp with executive-style rooms which will be supplied and installed by Horizon North. The Corporation will also provide ongoing catering and hospitality services at the facility. Revenue over the contract's 24-month term is expected to be $9.8 million, based on committed occupancy and utilization levels. The camp units will be comprised entirely of existing fleet, with minimal capital required to mobilize and maintain the facility. The capital requirements are included in the Corporation's 2018 capital plan. "We are pleased by the recent announcement from Horizon North," says Lee Brain, Mayor of Prince Rupert. "Through our discussions with their leadership and their work with us to date, we know Horizon North to be a strong supporter of each of the communities where they work. We look forward to their continued involvement in the City of Prince Rupert and our surrounding areas, and to exploring future development opportunities with their team." Contract Extension in Grande Prairie Region Horizon North has been awarded an extension of a contract for continued turn-key camp services in the Wapiti area near Grande Prairie, Alberta. The Corporation will provide rental, catering and hospitality services for the client for an additional 17-month term beginning in February 2019. Revenue over the term of the contract extension is expected to be $10.6 million based on projected occupancy and utilization levels. No additional capital requirements are expected to execute the terms of the contract extension. "Horizon North's customers are among the most sophisticated in the industry and they appreciate our high-quality turn-key camp, catering, and hospitality offerings," says Mark Becker, President, Industrial Services of Horizon North. "An extension such as this is a testament to our flexible, customer-focused delivery providing what our customers need to be successful. The Montney/Duvernay remains a key strategic region for our Industrial Services portfolio." "Our service, our commitment to relationships with the Aboriginal communities where we work, and our world-class safety record continue to be key reasons why our customers choose to do business with Horizon North," adds Rod Graham. About Horizon North Horizon North is a publicly listed corporation (TSX: HNL.TO) providing a full range of industrial, commercial, and residential products and services. Our Industrial Services division supplies workforce accommodations, camp management services, access solutions, maintenance and utilities. Our Modular Solutions division integrates modern design concepts and technology with state of the art, off-site manufacturing processes; producing high quality building solutions for commercial and residential offerings including offices, hotels, and retail buildings, as well as distinctive single detached dwellings and multi-family residential structures. As a result of our diverse product and service offerings, Horizon North is uniquely positioned to meet the needs of our customers in numerous sectors, anywhere in Canada. Corporate Information Additional information related to Horizon North, including the Corporation's annual information form, press releases, financial statements and MD&A are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com Forward-looking Statements This news release contains certain statements or disclosures relating to Horizon North that are based on the expectations of its management as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to Horizon North which may constitute forward-looking statements or information ("forward-looking statements") under applicable securities laws. All such statements and disclosures, other than those of historical fact, which address activities, events, outcomes, results or developments that Horizon North anticipates or expects may, could or will occur in the future (in whole or in part) should be considered forward-looking statements. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of the word "will", "expected", "continues", "future", "opportunity", "believe" and similar expressions. In particular, but without limiting the foregoing, this news release contains forward-looking statements pertaining to the following: camp services contracts, including the provision of services thereunder, expected revenue therefrom and the capital requirements thereof; the benefits to local communities of camp services contracts; customer demand for the Corporation's products and services and future development opportunities; and the Corporation's growth strategy. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release reflect several material factors and expectations and assumptions of Horizon North including, without limitation: that Horizon North will continue to conduct its operations in a manner consistent with past operations; the general continuance of current or, where applicable, assumed industry conditions; availability of debt and/or equity sources to fund Horizon North's capital and operating requirements as needed; and certain cost assumptions. Horizon North believes the material factors, expectations and assumptions reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable at this time but no assurance can be given that these factors, expectations and assumptions will prove to be correct. The forward-looking statements included in this news release are not guarantees of future performance and should not be unduly relied upon. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements including, without limitation: general economic, market and business conditions; the camp services may not be provided in the timelines anticipated, in the manner anticipated or at all; the delivery of and demand for the Corporation's services and products may not have the results currently anticipated by Horizon North; reliance on industry partners; and certain other risks detailed from time to time in Horizon North's public disclosure documents including, without limitation, those risks identified in this news release, and in Horizon North's annual information form, copies of which are available on Horizon North's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive and are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date hereof and the Corporation undertakes no obligations to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws. SOURCE Horizon North Logistics Inc. Related Links www.horizonnorth.ca SHENZHEN, China, Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Huntkey, a leading global power solutions provider, will have new deals on Amazon for the upcoming Black Friday. https://en.huntkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/amzon-product-collection.jpg Black Friday is one of Huntkey's biggest sales days, and as an added incentive for electronics customers, they have updated their Amazon pages to reflect their Black Friday offers running from November 23th to 28th. To celebrate Black Friday, Huntkey is inviting everyone to visit its Amazon shop and read their recommendations for various electronic needs. https://en.huntkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/cubic-surge-protector.jpg Huntkey's cubic surge protector is one of the most recommended products. It is designed with 3 USB charging ports and 4 AC outlets and can charge 7 devices at the same time. Compared with normal power strips, the cubic surge protector is visually appealing and is perfect for travel: https://www.amazon.com/Huntkey-Protector-Adapter-Charging-SMC007/dp/B07F2TDBQX?ref_=bl_dp_s_web_9457209011 The second recommendation is a wall mount power strip set. It is designed with 2 AC outlets and 2 USB chargong ports. The cat ear shape cradle makes it stand out: https://www.amazon.com/Huntkey-2-Outlet-Cradle-Charging-SMD407/dp/B01ALHQQU4?ref_=bl_dp_s_web_9457209011 The third recommendation is a wall mount power strip with 6 AC outlets and 3 USB charging ports that can charge 9 devices at the same time. It is suitable for TV, PC, notebooks, smart phones, tablets, and more: https://www.amazon.com/Huntkey-Outlets-Protector-Charging-SMD607/dp/B06XHBMV8K?ref_=bl_dp_s_web_9457209011 Another recommendation is a wall mount power strip with Nightlight on the top. It is designed with 3 AC outlets and 3 USB charging ports, which can charge 6 devices at the same time: https://www.amazon.com/Huntkey-3-Outlets-Sensor-Night-Light-SMD307/dp/B06W2GT3J5?ref_=bl_dp_s_web_9457209011 About Huntkey Huntkey, founded in 1995 and headquartered in Shenzhen, is a member of The International Power Supply Manufacturer's Association (PSMA) and a member of The China Power Supply Society (CPSS). With branch companies in the USA, Japan and other areas, and cooperating factories in Brazil, Argentina, India and other countries, Huntkey has specialized in the development, design, and manufacturing of PC power supplies, industrial power supplies, surge protectors, adapters and chargers for many years. With its own technologies and manufacturing strength, Huntkey has served Lenovo, Huawei, Haier, DELL, ZTE, Bestbuy and many other large enterprises for years, and has received unanimous recognition and trust from most of its customers. For more information about Huntkey, please visit: https://en.huntkey.com/ http://www.facebook.com/HuntkeyGlobal/ Contact: Ferris Liao +86-0755-89606658 [email protected] SOURCE Huntkey Related Links http://www.huntkeydiy.com TORONTO, Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The International Alliance of Carer Organizations (IACO) is releasing a landmark report "The Global State of Care" at the International Forum on Care and Caregiving: Research, Policy and Practice in Toronto, Canada. Supported by Embracing CarersTM, the "Global State of Care Report" describes the financial and supportive programs available for unpaid carers (also known as carers and family caregivers) in nine countries Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Spain, UK, and the United States. Providing the first of its kind comparison of global initiatives to support carers, the report addresses one of the most impactful public policy issues of our time. With an aging global population, OECD member countries and BRIICS (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa) are experiencing similar health and social care challenges to each other. Public spending on health and long-term care (LTC) across the world is under pressure, with its expenditure projected to more than double over the next 50 years.[i] Unpaid carers have become the backbone of any LTC system. Across the OECD, over 10% of adults over 50 years of age are carers, with approximately two-thirds are women.[ii] "The Global State of Care report sets out a clear framework for policy makers, governments and health organizations to support carers," said Nadine Henningsen, IACO Board Chair, CEO of Carers Canada and the Canadian Home Care Association. "Through the sharing of carer-friendly policies and practices across the globe, IACO stimulates discussion and facilitates learning from best policy and practice examples toward achievable goals in addressing the vital needs of carers around the world." Four key components make up the framework for this global advocacy resource, including: Country Carer Practices provide an overview of both current practices and opportunities for governments to increase assistance to carers provide an overview of both current practices and opportunities for governments to increase assistance to carers Global Advocacy Priorities highlight five key priorities that serve as a reference for the development of legislation and policy highlight five key priorities that serve as a reference for the development of legislation and policy Case Studies showcase innovative practices making a positive impact for carers that could be replicated in other regions and countries around the world showcase innovative practices making a positive impact for carers that could be replicated in other regions and countries around the world Carer Support identifies opportunities to increase support of unpaid carers across the world through societal change Carers are gradually being recognized for the invaluable role they play in global health and social care systems. Carer organizations around the world are advocating for governmental policy changes that better support unpaid carers' needs and the challenges they face. "EMD Serono is proud to serve as a collaborator in the creation and development of the Global State of Care Report through Embracing CarersTM," said Lynn Taylor Head of Healthcare Global Government and Public Affairs. "We're committed to working with the advocacy community to develop meaningful solutions that make a difference in the lives of both patients and carers, and an important part of fulfilling our commitment is contributing to data generation and public awareness." "The Global State of Care Report provides a foundation for the development of country specific strategies to support carers and improve their quality of life", stated Ara Cresswell, IACO Vice Chair and CEO Carers Australia. "IACO is committed to taking a leadership role in coordinated global actions to address the needs of millions of unpaid carers around the world." In our continued effort to elevate caregiving as a global health priority, IACO will also be launching Innovative Carer Practices (ICP) from France, Ireland, Taiwan and the United Kingdom throughout 2018 and 2019. ICPs are knowledge tools showcasing evidence-informed practices that address carers' need through integrated health and social care. Through the identification and sharing of leading practices around the world, countries can learn from each other and stimulate the development of effective carer policies and programs as they relate to their respective health and social care systems. To access the Global State of Care Report and Innovative Carer Practices visit www.internationalcarers.org and for more information on Embracing Carers visit www.embracingcarers.com Join the conversation @IACO_Carers, #EmbracingCarers For more information, please contact: Claire Hall Nick James Communications and Engagement Lead Cullari Communications Global Canadian Home Care Association & Carers Canada Tel: +44 207 947 9640 Tel: 905-567-7373 ext. 205 Mobile: +44 7776 258 990 [email protected] [email protected] About the International Alliance of Carer Organizations (IACO) Incorporated in 2012, the International Alliance of Carer Organizations (IACO) is a global coalition of 15-member nations committed to building a global understanding and respect for the vital role of family carers. Recognized as an official NGO by the United Nations, IACO works to improve the quality of life and support the needs of carers, through international partnerships and advocacy that strengthens and honors the voice of carers. To learn more, visit www.internationalcarers.org. Embracing Carers Launched in 2017, Embracing CarersTM is a global initiative led by EMD Serono - the biopharmaceutical business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, in the U.S. and Canada - in collaboration with leading carer organizations around the world to increase awareness and discussion about the often-overlooked needs of carers. Embracing CarersTM advisors include the Caregiver Action Network, Carers Australia, Carers Canada, Carers UK, Carers Worldwide, Eurocarers, National Alliance for Caregiving, International Alliance of Carer Organizations (IACO) and Shanghai Roots & Shoots, China. International Forum on Care and Caregiving (Nov 22, 2018) Hosted by the Canadian Home Care Association, Carers Canada, University of Sheffield (UK) and Centre for Global Social Policy at University of Toronto, the Forum draws on world-class research, highlights innovative policies and puts a spotlight on practical solutions that address care and caregiving. i De La Maisonneuve, C. and J. Oliveira Martins, 2013, "A projection method for public health and long-term care expenditures", Economics Department Working Papers No. 1048, OECD, Paris ii Colombo, F., et al. (2011), Help Wanted?: Providing and Paying for Long-Term Care, OECD Health Policy Studies, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264097759-en. SOURCE International Alliance of Carer Organizations (IACO) Related Links http://www.internationalcarers.org BEIJING, Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Jianpu Technology Inc. ("Jianpu," or the "Company") (NYSE: JT), a leading independent open platform for discovery and recommendation of financial products in China, today announced its participation in the following investor conference: Morgan Stanley Seventeenth Annual Asia Pacific Summit, November 28, 2018 , at Mandarin Oriental Singapore Management will meet with institutional investors throughout the event. For additional information, please contact your respective institutional sales representative at the sponsoring bank. About Jianpu Technology Inc. Jianpu Technology Inc. (NYSE: JT) is a leading independent open platform for discovery and recommendation of financial products in China. By leveraging its deep data insights and proprietary technology, Jianpu provides users with personalized search results and recommendations that are tailored to each user's particular financial needs and credit profile. The Company also enables financial service providers with sales and marketing solutions to reach and serve their target customers more effectively through online and mobile channels and enhance their competitiveness by providing them with tailored data, risk management and end-to-end solutions. The Company is committed to maintaining an independent open platform, which allows it to serve the needs of users and financial service providers impartially. For more information, please visit http://ir.jianpu.ai. Safe Harbor Statement This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," "confident" and similar statements. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about the Company's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement, including but not limited to the following: the Company's goal and strategies; the Company's future business development, financial condition and results of operations; the Company's expectations regarding demand for, and market acceptance of, its solutions and services; the Company's expectations regarding keeping and strengthening its relationships with users, financial service providers and other parties it collaborate with; general economic and business conditions; and assumptions underlying or related to any of the foregoing. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in the Company's filings with the SEC. All information provided in this press release is as of the date of this press release, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law. For investor and media inquiries, please contact: In China: Jianpu Technology Inc. Oscar Chen Tel: +86 (10) 6242-7068 E-mail: [email protected] The Piacente Group, Inc. Ross Warner Tel: +86 (10) 5730-6202 E-mail: [email protected] In the United States: The Piacente Group, Inc. Brandi Piacente Tel: +1-212-481-2050 E-mail: [email protected] SOURCE Jianpu Technology Inc. Related Links http://ir.jianpu.ai DENVER, Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Mexico announced approval for the importation and sale of cannabis products in pharmacies and retailers across the country. Seven hemp companies were granted distribution licenses by the Mexican Government, including CBD Life. While this is big news for Mexico, it's also a major development for CBD Life's U.S. partner and exclusive manufacturer of hemp products, Green Lotus Hemp. "This partnership with CBD Life, along with our growing domestic sales volume, will make us one of the largest hemp products companies in the world," said Green Lotus CEO, Carlos Frias. And with the CBD industry expected to reach $1.2 billion by 2020, being the largest will be no small venture. Of the thirty-eight product licenses distributed, twenty-one went to CBD Life, making them the leading beneficiary in this groundbreaking move to create the world's first nationally recognized cannabis market. This decision will make cannabis products like hemp-derived CBD available on the shelves of general retailers across the nation. With 40,000 points of sale in its current distribution channels, CBD Life is set to immediately distribute to over 4,000 of Mexico's top retailers and pharmacies. What to expect from quality hemp-derived cannabinoid products: Certified organic hemp Farm Bill compliant Accredited university partners GMP manufacturing Third party lab testing Vertical integration Online and in-store sales About Green Lotus Hemp: Green Lotus is a vertically integrated Colorado-based cannabinoid brand started by Texas natives in 2016. Led by CEO and Marine Corp. veteran Carlos Frias, their mission is to spread education, awareness and accessibility of responsibly made cannabis products to the world. As cultivators of natural and organic hemp-derived CBD products, Green Lotus is committed to providing a full spectrum of remedies for life. Media Contact: Clay Thomas Email: [email protected] Investment Contact: Carlos Frias Email: [email protected] Related Files GreenLotus_PressRelease_MexicoApprovesImports.docx GreenLotus_PressRelease_MexicoApprovesImports.pdf Related Links Website Politico.mx Related Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ4Toj6lga4 SOURCE Green Lotus Hemp The "10%" indicates $230 million is ten percent of the record-setting $2.3 billion Congress recently gave NIH for this year of Alzheimer's research. Based on past patterns, little would be spent investigating the role of bacteria, viruses and other infectious agents. "In the past twelve months many top scientists have told me the hottest new leads are that Alzheimer's is triggered by infectious agents. But investigators are stalled because the NIH won't fund this research to a significant extent," he says. "This is a roadblock because the NIH has a virtual monopoly on big dollars for Alzheimer's research. Its budget this year is $2.3 billion, while the runner-up, the Alzheimer's Association, awards only $40 million. That NIH research money is 57.5 times greater and is 98.3 percent of their combined total." Dr. Norins says another problem is a judging mismatch. He offers a baking analogy. "Experts on judging ryebreads are not expert at judging wedding cakes." He explains, "Until now, most scientists on NIH's Alzheimer's grant judging panels have been experts on the old suspects, the brain proteins amyloid and tau. Let's call those ryebreads. Few have expertise in judging infectious agents, which I'll call wedding cakes. So, of course excellent wedding cake proposals have not been awarded grants, because they're not ryebreads." He says NIH must promptly assemble an Alzheimer's judging panel expert in evaluating "wedding cakes", i.e., grant proposals to investigate infectious agents. Disburse $230 million, ten percent of the $2.3 billion budget, to meritorious ones. "That still leaves NIH 90 percent, a comfortable $2.1 billion, for research on the traditional subjects it has favored." "Change must come from the top," Dr. Norins says, pointing to Congress and the NIH director. He says, "At lower levels the cult of amyloid/tau is entrenched, and it will not add infectious agents research without insistence from the higher-ups." Dr. Norins urges concerned citizens and patients' families to email their Congressperson and the NIH director, Dr. Francis Collins, to demand allocating the $230 million. An explanatory video and a national advertisement have also been released. Alzheimer's afflicts an estimated five million Americans, and 303 die from it every day. Its cause is unknown and there is still no cure, 112 years after Dr. Alois Alzheimer first described it. Alzheimer's Germ Quest, Inc. is a public benefit corporation headquartered in Naples, Florida. It sponsors the $1 million Challenge Award for the scientist who provides proof a germ triggers Alzheimer's disease. Donations are neither solicited nor accepted. SOURCE Alzheimer's Germ Quest, Inc. Related Links https://alzgerm.org VANCOUVER, Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Pacton Gold Inc. (TSXV: PAC, OTC: PACXF, FSE: 2NKN) (the "Company" or "Pacton") is pleased to announce that further to its news release of October 11, 2018, it has entered into a Tenement Sale and Purchase Agreement (the "Agreement") to acquire a 70% equity interest in the Hong Kong project (the "Hong Kong Project") from Clancy Exploration Ltd ("Clancy"), an Australian Securities Exchange Listed exploration company. The Hong Kong Project consists of a single granted exploration license covering 40.15 km2 and directly adjoins the Friendly Creek and Golden Palms projects held by Pacton. Under the terms of the Agreement, the Company will pay CDN$175,000 and issue 3,780,613 common shares of the Company. Upon completion of the acquisition, Pacton's wholly-owned Australian subsidiary, Pacton Pilbara Pty Ltd ("Pacton Pilbara") and Clancy will enter into a joint venture, with Pacton Pilbara acting as operator of the Hong Kong Project. A minimum of CDN$500,000 must be spent by Pacton Pilbara within two years of completion of the transaction. Clancy will be free carried with respect to expenditures until a decision to mine is made unanimously by both parties. A finder's fee will be payable to Geonomics Australia Pty Ltd. in respect of the transaction as permitted by the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange. This transaction is subject to the acceptance of the TSX Venture Exchange. About Pacton Gold Pacton Gold (PAC: TSXV; PACXF: US) is a well-financed Canadian junior with key strategic partners focused on the exploration and development of conglomerate-hosted 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 This news release contains or refers to forward-looking information based on current expectations, including, but not limited to the Company acquiring an interest in the Hong Kong Project and completion of the proposed transaction described herein, the prospect of the Company achieving success in exploring the Hong Kong Project and the impact on the Company of these events, including the effect on its share price. Forward-looking information is subject to significant risks and uncertainties, as actual results may differ materially from forecasted results. Forward-looking information is provided as of the date hereof and we assume no responsibility to update or revise such information to reflect new events or circumstances. 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. SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the global leader in CRM, today announced that Salesforce executives will participate in the following investor events: Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2018 : Keith Block , co-CEO, will participate in a fireside chat at the Credit Suisse Technology, Media & Telecom Conference at 7:45 a.m. (PT) / 10:45 a.m. (ET) in Scottsdale, AZ. : , co-CEO, will participate in a fireside chat at the Credit Suisse Technology, Media & Telecom Conference at / in Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018 : Mark Hawkins , President & CFO, will participate in a fireside chat at the Wells Fargo Tech Summit at 6:45 a.m. (PT) / 9:45 a.m. (ET) in Park City, UT . : , President & CFO, will participate in a fireside chat at the Wells Fargo Tech Summit at / in . Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018 : Keith Block , co-CEO, will participate in a fireside chat at the Barclays Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference at 4:00 p.m. (PT) / 7:00 p.m. (ET) in San Francisco, CA. : , co-CEO, will participate in a fireside chat at the Barclays Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference at / in Friday, Dec. 7, 2018 : David Havlek , EVP & Deputy CFO, will participate in a FBN Securities hosted bus tour at 3:00 p.m. (PT) / 6:00 p.m. (ET) in San Francisco, CA. Audiocasts will be available on Salesforce's website at www.salesforce.com/investor. About Salesforce Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. Salesforce has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM." For more information about Salesforce, visit: www.salesforce.com. SOURCE Salesforce Related Links http://www.salesforce.com The signing ceremony for the "Rebirth of Luzia - The Digital National Museum of Brazil" was held at the Brazilian embassy in Beijing on November 16, 2018 (local time). Marcelo Azevedo, Head of the Creative Industries Section of the Embassy, Alexander W. A. Kellner, Director of National Museum of Brazil, and Ye Jun, Vice President of Tencent's mobile browsing products, were present at in the ceremony. With existing digital content of the museum, Tencent will build an online museum using Tencent Lens, an image recognition feature of its QQ Browser. Visitors will be able to read information of the artifacts by scanning images with Tencent Lens or Mr. Bowu, a mini program of Tencent. Audio guides and images of the National Museum of Brazil can also be accessed through the mini program. Tencent and the National Museum of Brazil will also invite Chinese tourists to share images, videos or other records they have made during their previous visits to the museum, in order to help restoring the cultural relics. QQ Browser will showcase the valuable content with the public in future. Mr. Ye said, "The National Museum of Brazil is the most important protector of cultural heritage and relics in Latin America. We are devastated by the losses in the fire. Tencent is committed to using advanced technologies to help Brazil rebuild a digital national museum." Mr. Kellner noted, "We are trying everything to minimize the losses of the fire and Tencent's support in helping us locate more digital records is very meaningful to us." Tencent and the National Museum of Brazil are planning to launch the campaign in 2019. SOURCE Tencent DALLAS, Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The rule of law and the independence of the judiciary are fundamental, guiding principles of our historic, constitutional system of the separation of powers, created through the genius of our founding fathers, and so admired throughout the world. Our founders purposely designed the judicial branch to be apolitical. Judges are governed by the rule of lawnot partisanship or shifting political winds. Partisan assaults based on supposed political affiliation because of which administration nominated a judge perpetuates a troubling misperception of the role of our courts and their constitutional judicial independence. Attacks on specific judges or specific appellate courts and threats to break up the courts are inappropriate and undermine the institutional credibility of our judicial system. As stated by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch during his confirmation hearings last year, these kinds of attacks are "demoralizing and disheartening." We applaud United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts for stating that: "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for." The American Board of Trial Advocates fully supports Chief Justice John Roberts' statement and we give thanks for an independent judiciary. Cynthia McGuinn National President, American Board of Trial Advocates About the American Board of Trial Advocates Founded in 1958, ABOTA is an invitation-only national association of experienced trial lawyers and judges. ABOTA and its members are dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the civil jury trial right provided by the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. ABOTA membership consists of more than 7,600 lawyersequally balanced between plaintiff and defense and judges in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. For more information contact: Brian W. Tyson at (800) 932-2682 [email protected] SOURCE American Board of Trial Advocates Related Links http://www.abota.org KISSIMMEE, Fla., Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Former Toys-R-Us staff and major toy companies are uniting, helping the Ohr Meir Foundation maintain a tradition of taking children to a branch of the now-defunct toy store in Florida. The surprise toy store visit has long been a popular highlight of the foundation's annual 4 day trip to Disney World, organized for children with cancer aged from 4 to 19. Established by his parents Ari & Idy Friedman in 1994 in memory of 10 year old Meir Friedman's loss to leukemia, you can visit www.ohrmeir.org to see pictures from previous trips and activities. Remember the Children? As others talked about Black Friday, online competition and watching KB Toys fighting Family Dollar over vacant retail space, the non-profit Ohr Meir foundation was in deep despair. In the past, the Millennia Mall branch of Toys-R-Us in Orlando always went above and beyond the call of duty, helping Ohr Meir to spring a "mind blowing" surprise-party in their store. The awe-struck children could keep the toys they picked, in a colorful, fun-filled frenzy of music, dancing and genuine children's laughter. This year the Millennia Toys-R-Us store, like 700 others, was bankrupt, the gray shutters pulled down and padlocked. "Those Toys-R-Us staff and the toy-store experience were part of this dream-making magic, part of this energy. They had these kids, some in-between chemo treatments, literally dancing in the aisles. How to reproduce that? We can't exactly take our sick kids to Amazon.com" said Meir's older brother, Steven Friedman, now 36. "The toy store experience is vital to their memories, to give these kids their childhood back." "Dreams Happen" Entire Toys-R-Us Staff Reunited The foundation, motto "Dreams happen" and famous for springing happy surprises on children, refused to give up but were themselves shocked by the support they were about to receive. Steven, who today is the spokesman for the Ohr Meir Foundation, wondered if it was possible they could somehow re-open the store, just for one day? "It sounded like a desperate long-shot, but the second I reached out everyone was excited, everyone wanted to be part of it again." said Friedman. 18 people, the entire staff of the old store, including recent manager Victor Perez and previous manager John Locke, have all volunteered to take an off-day from their new employment to serve the children. On Monday the 26th of November gondola shelving and furniture will be used to recreate the fantasy toy store experience in the Park Inn Hotel, just half a mile from the gates of Disney World. The store will be called, appropriately, the 'Magical Toy Store'. A new toy store needs toys "Practically all the popular toy companies are participating, said Ari Friedman. "I've organized dozens of these trips, but right now I'm in tears. I can't believe how big this is growing." For a full list of this event's sponsors and participants, or further information on Ohr Meir's activities, you can contact Steven Friedman, download our Press Kit or visit www.ohrmeir.org ABOUT OHR MEIR - The Ohr Meir Foundation, a 501(c) 3 non for profit organization is dedicated to bringing a feeling of joy and hope to sick children by giving them a break from their rigorous treatment schedules with magical trips. SOURCE Ohr Meir Foundation Inc Related Links http://www.ohrmeir.org SHENZHEN, China, Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- X Financial (NYSE: XYF) (the "Company"), a leading technology-driven personal finance company in China, today announced that it has been recognized as a fast-growing high-tech company at Deloitte's 2018 China Technology Fast 50 & China Rising Star Award Ceremony, which was held on November 20, 2018 in Beijing, China. Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Program (the "Program") started in 1995 and first entered into China in 2005. The Program ranks fast growing technology companies based on strict selection criteria including proprietary technology, revenue and growth rate, three years' continuous audit reports and other criteria. Candidate companies must meet certain technological and financial performance indicators in order to be eligible. This program is considered a benchmark for fast growing technology companies across the globe by international media and the cradle of Tomorrow's Star. In the recently released X Financial's 2018 third quarter results, revenue for this quarter was RMB 829 million, representing an 83% growth year over year; Non-GAAP net income was RMB 248 million, a 120% growth year over year. X Financial ranked third within the finance category, which demonstrates increasing industry recognition of X Financial's innovative entrepreneurship and robust growth momentum as a leading technology company. Mr. Justin Tang, Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of X Financial commented, "I'm extremely excited to have been recognized as a fast-growing company by a respected institution such as Deloitte. Being named among the China Technology Fast 50 & China Rising Stars is an honor, and I believe it demonstrates the enormous potential that China's online consumer finance industry presents and how we are uniquely positioned to benefit from its explosive growth." Mr. Simon Cheng, President added, "It's a great honor to be recognized by Deloitte as one of the fastest growing technology companies in China following our receipt of the China Rising Star Award last year. These awards are a testament to our technological and financial innovation capabilities. Our cutting-edge internet-based financial and big data analytical systems have great potential to meet the under-served demand for personal finance in China. We will continue to innovate new financial services for both individuals and small-to-medium-sized enterprises as we generate sustainable and healthy growth and long term value for our shareholders." About X Financial X Financial (NYSE: XYF) (the "Company") is a leading technology-driven personal finance company in China focused on meeting the huge demand for credit from individuals and small-to-medium-sized enterprise owners. The Company's proprietary big data-driven risk control system, WinSAFE, builds risk profiles of prospective borrowers using a variety data-driven credit assessment methodology to accurately evaluate a borrower's value, payment capability, payment attitude and overall creditworthiness. X Financial has established a strategic partnership with ZhongAn Online P&C Insurance Co., Ltd. in multiple areas of its business operations to directly complement its cutting-edge risk management and credit assessment capabilities. ZhongAn Online P&C Insurance Co., Ltd. provides credit insurance on X Financial's investment products which significantly enhances investor confidence and allows the Company to attract a diversified and low-cost funding base from individuals, enterprises and financial institutions to support its growth. X Financial leverages financial technology to provide convenient, efficient, and secure investment services to a wide range of high-quality borrowers and mass affluent investors which complements traditional financial institutions and helps to promote the development of inclusive finance in China. Safe Harbor Statement This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These forward-looking statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," "potential," "continue," "ongoing," "targets," "guidance" and similar statements. The Company may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its periodic reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), in its annual report to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Any statements that are not historical facts, including statements about the Company's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements that involve factors, risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Such factors and risks include, but not limited to the following: the Company's goals and strategies; its future business development, financial condition and results of operations; the expected growth of the credit industry, and marketplace lending in particular, in China; the demand for and market acceptance of its marketplace's products and services; its ability to attract and retain borrowers and investors on its marketplace; its relationships with its strategic cooperation partners; competition in its industry; and relevant government policies and regulations relating to the corporate structure, business and industry. Further information regarding these and other risks, uncertainties or factors is included in the Company's filings with the SEC. All information provided in this announcement is current as of the date of this announcement, and the Company does not undertake any obligation to update such information, except as required under applicable law. For more information, please contact: X Financial Ms. Jennifer Zhang E-mail: [email protected] Christensen In China Mr. Christian Arnell Phone: +86-10-5900-1548 E-mail: [email protected] In US Ms. Linda Bergkamp Phone: +1-480-614-3004 Email: [email protected] SOURCE X Financial PRAGUE, November 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Zentiva and PHOENIX joined forces this week for an inaugural Annual Partnership meeting in Prague to kick off a strategic partnership between the two healthcare companies in Europe. (Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/788903/Zentiva_Logo.jpg ) "At PHOENIX group we believe that Zentiva is an excellent fit for partnering at European level, thanks to their strong heritage, broad portfolio of generics and OTC medicines and presence in a large number of European markets," says Nemanja Jankovic, Head of Partnerships at Corporate Pharma Services & Sourcing, PHOENIX group. The first projects to commence under the strategic partnership are being rolled out in certain Central & Eastern European (CEE) markets. "In PHOENIX we are confident that we have found the right partner for distribution and commercial activities. We are looking forward to expanding our collaboration to benefit even more markets in the future," says Robert Storch, Head of Trade & Revenue, Zentiva Group. The companies will be working at strategic partnership level on commercial opportunities to provide better access to Zentiva products for the benefit of patients across Europe. About PHOENIX group | http://www.phoenixgroup.eu The PHOENIX group, headquartered in Mannheim, is a leading pharmaceutical trader in Europe. Active in 27 countries, the company offers unique geographical coverage throughout Europe, making a vital contribution to comprehensive healthcare with more than 36,000 employees. The PHOENIX group's vision is to be the best integrated healthcare provider - wherever it is active. The PHOENIX group considers itself to be a link between manufacturer and patient. Pharmaceutical manufacturers, pharmacies, doctors, hospitals, health insurance funds, and patients across Europe can benefit from our service offering. With our European value-adding service brand "PHOENIX All-in-One", we provide services for pharmaceutical companies in all 27 countries along the entire value chain, from production to point of sale generating more revenue at multiple different stages. All-in-One cuts complexity and allows our industry partners to concentrate on their core business. The service portfolio ranges from Clinical Trial Supply Services, Market Potential Insight, Market Access Services, Healthcare Logistics, Access to more than 16,000 pharmacies and to millions of patients in Europe via the pharmacy channel. About Zentiva | http://www.zentiva.com At Zentiva we aspire that healthcare should be a right and not a privilege. More than ever, people need better access to healthcare. Today, the everyday solutions that we all depend on truly count as a vital foundation of healthy living. Zentiva works for the people living in Europe. Standing side-by-side with healthcare professionals, pharmacists and Health System decision-makers, we have the same sense of social obligation to help lower costs and improve access to healthcare. With more than 2,500 people across Europe and 2 production sites in Prague and Bucharest we strive to be the champions of Generics and OTC medicines to better support people's daily healthcare needs. Contact: Ines WINDISCH Head of Corporate Affairs Zentiva Group Phone: +420-601-341-444 [email protected] U Kabelovny 130 102 37 Prague, Czech Republic SOURCE Zentiva Washington, Nov 23 : US President Donald Trump has renewed a threat to shut down the entire US border with Mexico as part of his administration's efforts to deter the entry of Central American migrants. "If we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control," Trump told reporters on Thursday in Palm Beach, Florida, where he is spending the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Xinhua reported. "I mean the whole border," he said. "Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the US where they make so many cars." A group of migrants, many of whom say they are fleeing persecution, poverty and violence in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, are making their way through Central America towards the US border for weeks. Many of them want to claim asylum. More than 1,000 migrants have arrived in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, according to reports. Thousands of US troops have been deployed along the country's southern border with Mexico to help strengthen border security while offering only engineering, logistic and medical support. However, Trump said on Thursday he has given the troops the "OK" to use lethal force against migrants "if they have to". Washington, Nov 23 : US President Donald Trump has said that the CIA did not blame Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for ordering the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi was murdered on October 2 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Officials told US media such an operation would have needed the prince's approval. "They didn't conclude," Trump said on Thursday when asked about the CIA's evaluation by reporters at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, BBC reported. "They have feelings certain ways. I have the report, they have not concluded, I don't know if anyone's going to be able to conclude the crown prince did it," he said. The President has repeatedly stressed the importance of Saudi Arabia to the US following the killing. Earlier this week, Trump released a statement suggesting that the crown prince "could very well" have known about the incident. His statement said: "(It) could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event - maybe he did and maybe he didn't!" On November 17, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters that Trump had confidence in the CIA following conversations with Director Gina Haspel and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the Khashoggi murder. Sources quoted in the US media at the time stressed that there was no single piece of evidence linking the crown prince directly to the murder, but officials believed the killing would have required his endorsement. Saudi Arabia called the claim false and insisted that the crown prince knew nothing about plans for the killing. The Gulf kingdom's public prosecutor says Khashoggi was killed as a result of a "rogue operation". However, the Hurriyet newspaper reported on Thursday that Ms Haspel told Turkish officials last month the CIA had a recording in which the crown prince gave instructions to "silence" the Saudi writer as soon as possible. When asked about the claims by reporters, Trump said: "I don't want to talk about it. You'll have to ask them." The Saudi crown prince left on a visit to "brotherly Arab states" on Thursday, Saudi state media reported, beginning a regional tour with the United Arab Emirates. It will be his first official trip abroad since Khashoggi was killed. The crown prince is also expected to participate in a G20 meeting of world leaders in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at the end of the month that will be attended by leaders from the US, Turkey and a number of European countries. Meanwhile, France has announced that it is imposing sanctions on 18 Saudi nationals -- the same individuals targeted with sanctions by the US, UK and Germany - allegedly linked to the Khashoggi murder. Their list of individuals does not include the crown prince, a spokesperson for the French ministry of foreign affairs said. Washington, Nov 23 : US President Donald Trump has threatened to close the whole US-Mexico border, including halting trade with Mexico, if the arrival of migrants from central America leads to disorder. He also said on Thursday that he had given troops at the border the go-ahead to use lethal force if needed, BBC reported. On Monday, the US briefly closed a busy crossing to install new barriers. Thousands of migrants are at the border after travelling more than 4,000 km from Central America. They say they are fleeing persecution, poverty and violence in their home countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Trump has deployed about 5,800 troops to the border and has previously described the migrants as an "invasion". "If we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control," he told reporters. "The whole border. I mean the whole border. Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the US where they make so many cars," he added. Trump's reference to lethal force came after Defence Secretary James Mattis said military police at the border would be unarmed. "They don't have guns in their hands, there is no armed element going in," he told reporters on Wednesday. On Thursday, Trump also warned that the US government could shut down next month if no more money was provided for a wall between the US and Mexico. "Could there be a shutdown? There certainly could and it will be about border security, of which the wall is a part," he said. He has renewed his attacks after earlier saying a federal judge who blocked his executive order to deny illegal migrants the right to seek asylum was an "Obama judge". "Judges must not legislate security and safety at the border. They know nothing about it and are making our country unsafe," he said in a tweet. It comes after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts took the unusual step of rebuking Trump's criticism, and said that "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges". New Delhi, Nov 23 : Senior Congress leader C.P. Joshi on Friday apologised for his remarks a day after a video surfaced of him saying "only brahmins know and can talk about Hinduism". "Respecting the ideals of the Congress and the sentiments of the party workers, I express remorse for my statement if it caused any hurt to the sentiments of any section of the society," he said in a brief statement. In the video, he was heard saying that only pandits and brahmins knew about Hinduism and were learned enough to speak about it. "Does anyone know what is the caste of Uma Bharti? What is the caste of Sadhvi Ritambhara? In this country, if anyone knows about religion, it is the pandits and the brahmins," he said. Joshi's apology came after the Congress on Friday distanced itself from his statement with party President Rahul Gandhi asking him to apologise. Beijing, Nov 23 : China on Friday condemned the terror attack at its consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi and asked Islamabad to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens in the country where it has multi-billion dollar investments. "China strongly condemns any violent attacks against diplomatic missions and have asked the Pakistani side to take measures to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens and organisations in the country," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said. Geng said three men tried to barge into the consulate who were later killed by Pakistani policemen. The spokesperson said that the Consulate staff were safe and condoled the death of the two Pakistani policemen. Asked about the Balochistan Liberation Army, a separatist group that has reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack, he said: "According to my information, the Pakistan side is conducting an investigation." Beijing has invested millions of dollars and building a $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). It connects China's Kashgar in Xinjiang with Pakistan's restive province Balochistan where locals and separatists are against the project. China has been expressing concern over the security of citizens working on the CPEC and other Chinese projects. In August, there was a suicide attack on a bus ferrying Chinese workers in Balochistan. In another incident, gunmen shot dead one Chinese national in Karachi in May. Last year, China had told Pakistan to ensure the security of its envoy following threats to his life by a terror outfit - East Turkistan Islamic Movement. Asked if the attack will affect the Chinese investments and the CPEC in the country, Geng said both countries have the strong resolve to advance the project. "China and Pakistan are all-weather strategic partners. Advancing the CPEC is also a consensus reached by the two leaders (Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and Chinese President Xi Jinping) and it is of great significance to promote the development and prosperity of the two countries." New Delhi, Nov 23 : That the nation is embodied in the Prime Minister is the telling similarity between the Emergency of 1975-77 under Indira Gandhi and the contemporary state of affairs in India under Narendra Modi. But unlike the former, Modi's "authoritarian governance" is not based on "the assumption of emergency powers by the executive", says Gyan Prakash, a professor of history at Princeton University and author of several highly acclaimed books, including "Mumbai Fables", which was adapted for the film "Bombay Velvet", and the just-released "Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy's Turning Point". In his latest book, that has just hit the stands with glowing endorsements by the likes of Sunil Khilnani and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Prakash, who was a member of the influential Subaltern Studies Collective until its dissolution in 2006, is quite vocal when it comes to drawing a comparison between the regimes of Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi. He contends in the book that "Hindutva is fundamentally anti-democratic", adding that "Hindutva ideologues target dissent as anti-national". Asked what made him reach this conclusion and what was its likely impact on Indian democracy, Prakash said that the two situations are not exactly the same but both the similarities and differences are revealing. Modi's authoritarian governance, Prakash said, is by a combination of two factors. "First, the BJP government uses and abuses the centralising powers of the state to weaken institutions and stifle dissent by terming it anti-national. Second, unlike Indira Gandhi's Emergency, which never enjoyed popular support, Narendra Modi's government is able to deploy Hindutva forces on the ground to intimidate the opposition. In addition, it enjoys support from the corporate media, particularly electronic media," Prakash told IANS in an email from New Jersey, recalling that there was no private electronic media during the Emergency, and the government-controlled media never enjoyed the reach and influence that the media does today. "For these reasons, authoritarian power is far more ominous for democracy today," he maintained. He said that the gatekeepers of democracy are its institutions -- political parties, the rule of law, an independent press, and avenues to express dissent. "You cannot realise democracy's substantive promise of equality without its institutions. Centralisation of power in one person or one office damages the health of these institutions. There were some people in India who welcomed the BJP victory in 2014 even if they didn't agree with its Hindutva ideology. They thought that because the BJP was a proper political party with seasoned national and regional leaders, and not beholden to one family like the Congress, it would respect and strengthen democratic institutions. But the stunning depletion of its leadership to one oversized personality has meant that the space for the expression of multiple and divergent views in the party has contracted almost overnight. So has the possibility of the BJP playing its role, as a political party, as a gatekeeper of democracy," he said. In the book, published by Penguin Random House India, Prakash argues that the surge of Hindu nationalism has catapulted Narendra Modi into the kind of position that Indira occupied only with Emergency. Asked if he was suggesting that there is an undeclared emergency kind of a scenario in contemporary India, he said the term conjures up a false and misleading similarity. "The Emergency was a very specific state action, a lawful suspension of the law. But Indira's draconian laws and abuse of authority could never summon foot soldiers on the street to back her power. The very fact that she had to formally silence the press, meddle with the judiciary, and place over a hundred thousand people in prison were signs that her power lacked the force of popular support. The deployment of coercion to implement the 20-point programme, sterilisation drives, slum clearance campaigns, and efforts to break through the controlled economy, signified that all was not well with her regime at the ground level. This is why she resorted to the Emergency to salvage her regime and its policy agenda," Prakash explained. He said the situation today is very different. "Today we witness an unprecedented combination of state power and populist mobilisation in the name of development and the nation. Yes, there is a growing centralisation of power, and attacks on institutions, abuse of authority, etc., but what makes the current context radically different is that moves at the top are joined by mobilisation from below. This coordination between state and society -- deliberate or not -- threatens democracy in a fundamental way, one that is not captured by the term 'undeclared Emergency'," Prakash maintained. He said the Congress has never come to terms with the legacy of 1975-77, and needs to address it squarely, not with half apologies and part justifications. "But more important than apologies and acknowledgments is to recognise the Indian political system's deeper and continuing failure to realise the promise of democracy," he said, pointing to several chapters in "Emergency Chronicles" that are devoted to describing how popular discontent with the shortcomings in this regard found expression in the JP movement. "This is necessary to demolish the comfortable myth that permits us to believe that nothing is fundamentally amiss in India's experience with democracy, and that all the problems began and ended with Indira," he said. Priced at Rs 699, the 439-page book is available both online and at bookstores. (Saket Suman can be contacted at saket.s@ians.in) New Delhi, Nov 22 : As Kerala struggles towards normalcy post devastating floods which left scores dead, AIIMS, New Delhi employees on Thursday donated their one-day salary towards Kerala Flood Relief Fund. The employees at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), new Delhi including faculty members, residents, nurses and officers collected Rs 1.77 crores. The check was handed over to Kerala minister A.C Moideen by AIIMS DElhi Director Randeep Guleria. "It will take a lot of time, efforts and resources and support, small and big, from one and all, to rebuild Kerala, "AIIMS, New Delhi solicit itsfull support in thie effort and is ready to extend all support," said a statement from AIIMS. New Delhi, Nov 22 : Sulabh International on Thursday said it will remove obscene graffiti from all its public toilets situated inside the Delhi Metro stations and issue an advisory to lavatory attendants to keep a watch on the vandals and scrub off any noxious text the moment they come across them. The social service organisation, which is contracted by the Delhi Metro Rail Corp (DMRC) to run the public toilets inside its stations, agreed to wipe out obscene scribbling after complaints were raised with it of women falling victim to the pernicious activity. A woman (name witheld on request) has been getting calls for the last six months from men, most of whom abruptly ask her: "How much does she charge?". It was quite sometime before she forced one of the persistent callers to tell her from where he got the number. "It so happened that some man, possibly in an act of revenge, wrote my name and number inside the public washroom at one of the metro station, linking me to prostitution. I have been getting these calls for months now. I have no option but to change my number," she told IANS. She said along with her name, there was a list of numbers with other women's names, all were linked to the same trade. Though these fake 'calling cards' inside the public washrooms should not come as a surprise to most of us, since they are so common, what ruinous effects such mischief can lead to should be alarming. A spokesperson for Sulabh International said he will issue an advisory immediately to the staff who attend the public toilets at metro stations. "I will issue order immediately to clean all such texts inside the toilets. They will all be cleaned within two-three days. I will also issue an advisory to the staff on how to be vigilant against these acts," Kashi Nath Jha said. He also spoke about limitations one is faced with when one considers possibility of punitive action against the culprits, one of which is to identify them. "We cannot install CCTV cameras inside the washroom," he said, describing it as the main handicap. The DMRC said all walls and doors at the station washroom where the defamatory content was written was cleaned up immediately after the complaint. "DMRC takes all possible care to ensure that the toilets within its compund are clean and free of any unwarranted grafitti or writings. Whenever any such thing is noticed, it is immediately removed. "The Sulabh and other staff at the toilets are also instructed accordingly. At the same time, we would also request the users to refrain from writing on the toilet walls. Such misconduct would be liable for stern action," Anuj Dayal, Executive Director, Corporate Communication, DMRC, said. Of more than 200 stations on Delhi Metro network, Sulabh has its facility at 196 of them. (Vishal Narayan can be contacted at vishal.n@ians.in) New Delhi, Nov 22 : India's decision on Thursday to build a corridor from Gurdaspur in Punjab to Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan for the Sikh pilgrims ahead of the 550th birth year celebrations of Sikhism founder Guru Nanak next year is not in response to any proposal from Islamabad. The Union Cabinet passed the resolution on the Kartarpur corridor project after many weeks of internal consultations and preparations within the government. Official sources said this was in an apparent bid to scotch reports that the government initiative came after Punjab Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu's recent visit to Pakistan, where he had raked up the issue. The resolution is a comprehensive document that contains detailed information on the plans for the celebrations of the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, not just on the corridor. "Any suggestion that the corridor or the celebrations are being planned as a response to a Pakistani proposal is not only preposterous, but hurtful to the sentiments of the Sikh community," the sources said. Following India's decision, Pakistan Information and Broadcasting Minister Fawad Chaudhry said New Delhi's move was an endorsement of Islamabad's proposition on the issue. "It is a step in the right direction and we hope such steps will encourage voice of reason and tranquility on both sides of the border," Chaudhry tweeted. The proposal for a corridor to Kartarpur Sahib, the place where the holy gurdwara, built on the site where Guru Nanak died in 1539, is located, has been a longstanding demand from India for 20 years, but Pakistan refused to acknowledge this all these years. Earlier in the day, India urged Pakistan to complete construction of the corridor on its side with suitable facilities. Islamabad, Nov 23 : At least five people including two policemen were killed on Friday in a terrorist attack near the Chinese Consulate in Pakistan's port city of Karachi, police and hospital officials said. Deputy Inspector General of Police of Karachi South Region Javed Alam confirmed that two policemen and three other unidentified persons were killed when a group of terrorists opened fire at them near the consulate in the diplomatic zone where several other foreign missions are located in Clifton area of Karachi. Around three to four terrorists reached the area and started firing and hurled a couple of hand grenades at the police personnel deployed for security in the area. Director of the Jinnah Hospital Karachi Seemi Jamali told media that overall five bodies and one injured have been shifted to the hospital. Two of the deceased were recognized as police personnel but the others have not been identified yet, said the hospital director. Soon after the firing began, police, security forces and commandos of the Pakistan Army rushed to the site and cordoned off the area. Karachi's police chief Amir Sheikh said at least three terrorists have been killed in the shootout with the security forces. Two suicide jackets were also recovered from the killed terrorists, the police chief said. The firing has stopped and security forces and police are conducting a search operation, the police chief said. The bomb disposal squad is clearing the area and is defusing the explosive devices planted by the terrorists, police said. All roads leading to the diplomatic enclave have been closed for public and media. A state of emergency has been declared in all the hospitals in the city. A separatist group, the Balochistan Liberation Army, reportedly claimed the attack but there was no official confirmation about it. Prime Minister Imran Khan "strongly condemned the firing incident " saying it was part of a conspiracy against the Pakistan and China economic and strategic cooperation. "However, such incidents will never be able to undermine Pakistan-China relationship that is mightier than Himalaya and deeper than Arabian sea," Khan said. Beijing, Nov 22 : China and Brazil will launch a new Earth resource satellite next year, according to an official with the China National Space Administration. "The new satellite, the China-Brazil Earth Resource Satellite-4A, or CBERS-4A, will be launched in the second half of 2019," said Li Guoping, the secretary-general of the China National Space Administration, reports Xinhua news agency. The CBERS satellites are Earth remote sensing satellites, specifically designed for Earth observation from orbit for non-military use, such as environment monitoring, meteorology and map making. According to Li, CBERS-4A, the new satellite to be launched, is assembled and currently going through tests in Brazil. It is set to replace CBERS-4. CBERS-4, launched in December 2014, is currently in great condition although under extended service. "The two countries will also start the final design and research of CBERS-5 and CBERS-6. The two satellites will be successors to CBERS-4A, which is designed to serve for five years," Li said. China and Brazil inked the agreement establishing the joint research and production of the CBERS series in July 1988. New Delhi, Nov 22 : Just as the Indian art circuit gathers for a domestic art festival at the Thyagaraj Stadium here starting Thursday, at least three booths break away from the convention to display works by Tihar inmates, visually impaired children and an artist with hearing disability. The fourth city version of India Art Festival (IAF), presenting over 3,500 artworks by 35 art galleries and 550 artists, was inaugurated by Lalit Kala Akademi chairman Uttam Pacharne, Prasar Bharti Additional DG Raj Sekhar Tyagi and Tihar Jail Superintendent Rajesh Chauhan. "It started with four-five Tihar inmates sketching and drawing, when they were spotted by the jail administration. To encourage them, the Superintendent contacted instructors who teach them. "Now, there are over 200 inmates who learn painting, and over 20 have mastered it in less than two years" Suraj, who teaches art at Tihar, told IANS. Pointing to beautifully done Buddha, Ganesha and Saraswati paintings and sketches, Suraj said the artworks are also exhibited in an in-house gallery in west Delhi-based Tihar Jail. "These festivals come handy because it's important to exhibit the art outside the Tihar gallery," the former College of Art student said. Another booth catching the eye is one by non-profit trust Inside Me, that has on display drawings and crayon works by young visually-impaired school children. "They have geometry classes, but what a circle and a triangle is, that concept is absent in the children," arts trainer and the trust's founder Shivani Bhardwaj told IANS. "Many of them hold crayons for the first time. For drawing faces, they just know we have two eyes and one nose and mouth each. Sometimes, they ask me how eyes look like." Bhardwaj, who teaches over 40 blind children, uses paper and embossed surfaces for a a tactile way of learning. What's interesting is that she has priced them as low as a rupee, so that the drawings reach more living rooms. Another participating artist in the fair is Apoorv Om, whose pencil colour works depict Swami Vivekananda, PM Narendra Modi and many Indian architectural marvels. Om, a speech-and hearing-disabled artist can speak faintly. His voice may not stand out among the galore of exhibits, but his zeal does. The art festival, featuring 124 booths, is expected to cross the previous visitor count of 30,000 people, festival director Rajendra said. He added that the festival gives equal space for galleries and an artists' pavillion, given the soaring numbers of people taking to art. The four-day festival concludes on Sunday. The entry is free for the public. New Delhi, Nov 22 : The Supreme Court on Thursday set aside the Madras High Court judgement granting 196 marks to each of the 24,000 candidates who took NEET-UG exam in Tamil language as some of the questions were wrongly translated. Setting aside the judgement by which the court gave four marks each for 49 questions, the bench of Justice S.A. Bonbde and Justice L. Nageswara Rao said the "method adopted by the High Court is manifestly arbitrary and unjustified and cannot be sustained." The court directed that from "the year 2019-20 onwards, the NEET-UG Examination would be conducted by the National Testing Agency and the bilingual exam will be conducted after the question paper is translated" as per the instruction mentioned in the October 22 affidavit filed by the Director, NTA. The court noted that out of 13,23,672 lakh students, who appeared for the exam, approximately 10.5 lakh took it in English, around 1.5 lakh chose a regional languages and of these, nearly 24,000 took the exam in Tamil language. The court said the list of the candidates who appeared for NEET-UG in Tamil after adding 196 marks to each one of them is "startling". "For instance, a student who got 260 marks has been awarded a total of 456 marks. Even students who got 21 marks are entitled to 217 marks", the court noted. "It is clear the High Court lost sight of the primary duty in such matter that is to avoid arbitrary results", the judgment pronounced by Justice Bobde said. "The High Court has made no attempt to see whether the students have in fact attempted answers to the questions, which were claimed to be imperfectly translated." The top court order came on a plea by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) challenging the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court judgement on July 10 awarding the additional marks. The High Court's order was in response to a PIL by Communist Party of India-Marxist leader T.K. Rangarajan. The top court had stayed the operation of the High Court order on July 20. Chandigarh, Nov 22 : Former Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Thursday welcomed the initiative of the NDA government to build and develop a modern and state-of-the-art corridor to facilitate pilgrims to offer prayers at the Kartarpur gurdwara in Pakistan where the first Sikh guru, Nanak Dev, spent the last 18 years of his life. "This is indeed a befitting tribute to the great Guru Nanak Dev ji's cosmic vision transcending all kinds of barriers among human beings of different castes, creeds and countries," Badal, who has been Punjab chief minister five times, said in a statement. Badal said the NDA government's formal request to its Pakistani counterpart "should decisively remove all hurdles in the path of fulfilling the long-cherished dream and the daily prayers of every Sikh to pay obeisance at the historic gurdwara". Thanking Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Badal said: "This is their historic and unprecedented tribute to the Sikh sentiments contained in our daily 'ardas' seeking unrestricted 'darshan deedar' and 'seva sambhal' of all historic shrines from which the Sikh community was weaned away following the Partition of India in 1947." Badal also appealed to the Government of Pakistan to reciprocate the Indian government's initiative and respect the sentiments of the Sikhs. Badal recalled that in 1999, then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had taken up the matter regarding the Kartarpur corridor with the Pakistan government but did not get a response. On Thursday the Union cabinet had approved construction and development of Kartarpur corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district to the international border with Pakistan. Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh also welcomed the centre's decision to celebrate the 550th Birth Anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev. "The move would facilitate lakhs of pilgrims desirous of visiting the Kartarpur gurdwara. Hoping that the Pakistan government would also supplement the effort by opening the corridor on its side of the boundary," Amarinder said in a statement here. Amarinder also expressed happiness at the cabinet's decision to develop the historic town of Sultanpur Lodhi, associated with the life of Guru Nanak Dev, as a heritage town, on the lines of a Smart City. Chennai : Chennai Nov 23 (IANS) Back from a visit to some of the worst-affected parts of the cyclone-ravaged districts in Tamil Nadu, Tamil superstar Kamal Haasan on Friday appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit the state and see for himself the sufferings wrought on the people so that the Centre can come out with massive assistance to the state. Haasan, who has entered politics recently by floating the Makkal Needhi Maiyam (MNM), went on a whistlestop tour of a few hundred kms of Thanjavur and Nagapattinam districts and Vedaranyam town, which bore the brunt of Cyclone Gaja, on Thursday and described the situation there as "pitiable and abysmal". He accused the state government of being lax and not making a proper assessment of the destruction of homes and crops in vast swathes of land in these affected areas. Haasan questioned the hurry with which Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswamy rushed to Delhi on Thursday and presented a memorandum to Modi seeking relief of Rs.15,000 crore. "It (rushing to Delhi) was a knee-jerk reaction under criticism from political parties in the state of the state government's inaction," he told IANS in an interview. The Chief Minister should have done more extensive visits to the affected areas and made a proper assessment instead of doing a half day tour before rushing to Delhi. The actor said a visit by the prime minister would infuse new hope in the affected people and galvanise the machinery into doing relief work efficiently. "The cyclone has been a great leveller. It has affected the rich and the poor equally without caste and religious discrimination. They are looking for succour. And the help is slow in coming. Food is being given to the affected only once a day and that too the quality is poor," he said. The state government gives an appearance of doing some work but it is confined mainly to highways and main roads where accessibility is relatively easy. Power is being restored mainly on the arterial roads, he said. Haasan said the two districts he visited were a scene of total disaster with cash crops like tamarind, mango, jackfruit, cashew and palm trees laid waste by the cyclone while the state government was talking of only damage to coconut trees. The farmers have to be supported in a big way by the governments to get them back on their feet after the great losses they have suffered, he said. He said while the local officials claim that about 2,50,000 people have been affected by the cyclone, his own estimate from various sources put the figure of those displaced and homeless at around 4,00,000. The sea has eroded into the towns in various places and at one place 400 fibre boats have been pushed far into the woods by the tidal waves. The damage has been huge to the fishermen and they needed urgent help to restore their lives. He said his concern was also about the fear of epidemics spreading in these places which the government should attend to. Haasan also said there is some kind of healthy competition among political parties to reach aid to the people. He expressed confidence that they would cut across lines and help the people and government in a difficult time. He said activists of his own outfit have rushed 60 truck loads of food and other materials worth over Rs.1.2 crore to the needy. FALLSINGTON >> The public is invited to join Fallsington Friends Meeting, Force for Good Music and Films and Citizens Climate Lobby for a free interactive screening and discussion on Climate Change and subsequent positive actions on December 9 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Fallsington Meetinghouse, 9300 New Falls Road, Levittown. The event will also be live online via... Chennai, Nov 23 : Multi-brand car servicing major Mahindra First Choice Services is getting into servicing two wheelers while expanding its current network and looking out for capital infusion of about Rs 100-125 crore for business from a strategic partner, said a top company official. The company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd., is also planning to have a presence in petrol bunks offering minor repair services and a tie-up has been made with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd., he added. "We are getting into servicing multi-brand two wheelers and a pilot project is underway in Bihar. The business offers good potential as only 30 per cent of the after sales service in the case of two wheelers are with the authorised service centres and the remaining is with the unorganised segment," Y.V.S. Vijaykumar, Chief Executive Officer said here. He said, in December, the company will be launching the two wheeler servicing business nationwide and the target is to have about 2,500 service centres under its brand by 2023. Vijayakumar said, Mahindra First Choice Services has already launched private label parts for two wheelers. On the four wheeler segment, the company is targeting to increase its network from the present 330 to 1,000 by 2023. "We have good traction in the C and D level cities where original or quality parts and good service are not available. The company has 35 warehouses across the country supplying spare parts to the service centres," Vijayakumar said. He said the focus is on servicing cars rolled out by large volume players like Maruti, Hyundai, Tata Motors, Mahindra and Mahindra, Ford and others. He said the company is hoping to up its revenue by 50 per cent as compared to previous fiscal's turnover of Rs 91 crore. "In two years time our target is to touch a turnover of Rs 300 crore," Vijaykumar said. The revenue stream for the company is the joining fee and annual royalty paid by the franchisee and also the sale of annual maintenance contracts, extended warranties, sale of spare parts, providing garage management software as a service and others. According to Vijayakumar, getting spare parts from the vehicle manufacturers is not a problem nowadays. Shillong, Nov 23 : Thousands of indigenous Khasi and Pnar youths, elderly men and women attired in traditional dress took to the streets in this mountainous state capital of Meghalaya proclaiming the dignity and solemnity of the indigenous Khasi faith and culture on occasion of the annual Seng Kut Snem on Friday. The colorful procession projected the diverse and rich Khasi tradition through folk music and tableaux depicting various facets of the simple yet rich and colorful indigenous life-style. The procession which started from Madan Iewrynghep and culminated at the Weiking Ground, where traditional dances were held and special prayers were offered. The annual Seng Kut Snem festival is celebrated to commemorate the Seng Khasi Movement to preserve, protect and uphold indigenous Khasi religion and culture. This year the festivities marked the 119th anniversary of the Seng Khasi Movement. It was on August 23, 1899 that 16 brave and nationalist Khasi youths formed the Seng Khasi to protect their indigenous religion, rich culture and unique language in the face of British onslaught. Since then, the movement has gained momentum imbibing a sense of pride in the Khasi youths in their rich heritage which is unique in the world. "On April 4,1829, U Tirot Sing Syiem, the king of Nongkhlaw took on the might of the aliens by leading an attack on the British Garrison at Nongkhlaw and inflicting major casualties'', said Sumar Sing Sawain, an elderly member of theASengAKhasi. This marked the beginning of a bitter four-year long conflict between the uncompromising Khasi soldiers under the leadership of Tirot Sing and the British culminating in Tirot Sing's martyrdom at Dacca. "The second uprising in Ri Hynniewtrep (Khasi nation) began from December 28, 1861 under the leadership of the legendary U Kiang Nongbah of the Jaintia Hills who waged a war with the British after the aliens desecrated an indigenous Khasi religious ceremony at Ialong. The third historical movement of the people of Ri Hynniewtrep against suppression of their age-old faith and culture begun from April 23, 1899 through the organisation of the Seng Khasi which is the torch-bearer of the Khasi religion -'Niamtre' and the traditional culture. Shillong, Nov 23 : A 38-year-old coal merchant, wanted in the murder attempt on Meghalaya's frontline women's rights activist Agnes Kharshiing and her aide, was arrested from Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport in Assam on Friday, police said. "The special team of Meghalaya Police picked up Showmewell B. Kyndait from Guwahati airport following intelligence input that he was attempting to fly to New Delhi to evade police arrest in connection with the attack on the two women's activists," Sylvester Nongtnger, the district police chief of East Jaintia Hills, told IANS. Kyndait, a resident of Shangpung village, was arrested by Khliehriat police after he told his interrogators that "he was one of those people" who brutally assaulted Kharshiing and her aide Amita Sangma on November 8 at Tuber Sohshrieh area in East Jaintia Hills district, police said. With the arrest of Kyndait, the total number of people arrested in the case has risen to seven, including a 44-year-old woman Skhemlang Dkhar on Wednesday from Jowai, the district headquarters of West Jaintia Hills. "Search is on to arrest the other accuses in the case. We are hopeful to arrest them," Nongtnger said. Nongtnger said that police officer of the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police is investigating the entire case, even as police have registered case vide Khliehriat PS case No 195(11) u/s 307/392 Indian Penal Code which is attempt to murder and robbery. Meanwhile, Additional Deputy Commissioner of East Jaintia Hills district, S.S. Syiemlieh has issued an order directing Kharshiing and Sangma to appear before him at North East Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health Medical Sciences (NEIGRIHMS) hospital for deposition of statement in the interest of the inquiry to ascertain facts and circumstances leading to their assaults. Kharshiing along with Sangma were brutally assaulted by a group of people after the activist lodged a complaint on illegal mining and transportation of coal in the district. The National Green Tribunal had ordered an interim ban on "rat-hole" coal mining in Meghalaya from April 17, 2014, after the All Dimasa Students' Union and the Dima Hasao District Committee filed an application before it, alleging that the water of the Kopili river was turning acidic due to coal mining in the Jaintia Hills. The Meghalaya High Court has asked the investigating officer to file the status report of the investigation and to remain present in the Court along with the case diary on November 27. Mumbai, Nov 23 : An "unexpected de-growth" during the festival season this year has shocked the automobile industry with consumers "postponing" purchase of both two and four-wheelers, a top industry official said here on Friday. During the festival season Navratri to Diwali, the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (FADA) recorded a dismal decline in sales of two-wheelers and four-wheelers, barring three-wheelers like commercial vehicles and autorickshaws. In fact, this is the first time in the past five years or so that FADA has notched a negative growth during the auspicious festival season of around 42 days, when thousands flock to book or purchase vehicles. "We had not witnessed such a dull festival season... Many negative factors came into play during this season. It's a matter of deep concern for the dealership community," FADA President Ashish H. Kale told IANS. According to Kale, four-wheelers or passengers vehicles recorded a steep decline of 14 per cent in the prime time between September 21-November 20 this year, compared to the same period in 2017. This came to actual sales of 287,717 passenger vehicles this season, down from last (2017) season's 333,456, he said. In the two-wheelers segment, the decline was equally sharp at 13 per cent during the same period, recording 15,83,276 two-wheelers sold compared to 18,11,703 last season, Kale said. Incidentally, four-wheelers have notched an overall decline of 1.4 per cent from April to November this year, or 16,26,555 passenger vehicles sold compared to 16,49,650 sold during the same period in 2017. The only silver lining for FADA was the 10 per cent growth in the three-wheelers and commercial vehicles categories. For three-wheelers, the sales figure this year was 58,801 (53,457 last year) and commercial vehicles it was 119,597 (103,370 last year). "Dealer inventory in the two and four-wheelers has risen substantially due to this and is a matter of great concern for us," Kale said, of the FADA's move to release independent figures for the first time in view of the grim situation. The "negative factors" which slashed sales this year include the fuel prices which were on the upward swing till October-end, and although the petrol-diesel prices started going downwards, the damage was done. Adding to the negative sentiments was the ongoing Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFC) liquidity issue which hit buyers, especially those opting for two-wheelers and commercial vehicles. Kale hoped that the recent liquidity measures initiated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the government, the banks and automobile NBFCs would help the automobile industry grow in the days ahead. "We request the government and RBI to further ease the liquidity for auto NBFCs which operated in a less riskier business environment compared to infrastructure and housing NBFCs due to short repayment cycle and mobility of the assets," Kale said. On the positive side, he said that customer enquiries did not fall this festival, but they failed to materialise into transactions on expected lines due to "postponement" of decisions, and is optimistic the trend could reverse in the next four months. Chandigarh, Nov 23 : Punjab Cabinet Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu on Friday welcomed the Central government's move to construct the infrastructure for the Kartarpur corridor in Punjab. He also urged the Centre to initiate steps with the Pakistan government on working out visa formalities once the corridor is completed. "It fills my heart with joy unspeakable on learning that the Government of India has agreed to build a corridor for pilgrims to visit Kartarpur Sahib on 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev ji. "As a Sikh devotee and as a man committed to the cause of Punjab and its people, I am extremely grateful and indebted for the steps initiated by the Government of India," Sidhu said in a letter to Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. He said the move will "write a new chapter of faith and love for the region" and "will act like a soothing balm for two neighbouring countries". This has been a long standing demand of the Sikh community across the globe and a step in this direction has brought a new ray of hope among pilgrims who are anxiously waiting for paying obeisance at the historical Gurudwara Sahib across the border, Sidhu said. The Kartarpur corridor will enable pilgrims from India to visit the Sikh shrine located in Pakistan, close to the international border with India. President Ram Nath Kovind and Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh will lay the foundation stone of the project in Dera Baba Nanak area of Punjab's Gurdaspur district on Monday. Mumbai, Nov 23 : Mumbai's Chabad House in the Nariman House Colaba, one of the bloody targets of the 26/11 terror strikes, will be renamed as 'Nariman Light House' on the 10th anniversary of the attacks and 10 months after Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit, official sources said on Friday. The present rabbi, Israel Kozlovsky, said the rechristening ceremony will be organized on behalf of the Chabad of India Trust on Sunday afternoon, the eve of 26/11 attacks, at the main Jewish social-cultural-religious hub in the fashionable Colaba, south Mumbai. The event will mark the unveiling of a memorial on the Nariman House terrace, making it the only place in Mumbai to honour all the 166 victims of the terror strikes, besides plans to reconstruct the heavily damaged fourth-fifth floors will be announced by Rabbi Kozlovsky and other officials. The Nariman House, housing the Chabad House, was one of the main targets of 10 Pakistani terrorists who sneaked in through the Arabian Sea route and disembarked at a Colaba fishing jetty, barely a stone's throw. Among the victims brutally killed in the indiscriminate firing and grenade attacks were the then Nariman House Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his pregnant wife Rivka, and two other Israelis, an American and a Mexican, all Jews, besides Indian security officials. However, their two-year-old old toddler son, Moshe was saved by his Indian nanny, Sandra Samuels, and a few days later they were flown off to Israel. On January 18 this year, Moshe, now a shy, bespectacled 12-year-old boy, joined Netanyahu and other dignitaries at the Chabad House, along with his grandfather, Shimon Rosenberg and grandmother. It was the first-ever visit by any high-ranking Israeli dignitary to Chabad House, which reopened in 2014, and is now considered a 'Living Memorial' to the November 26, 2008 carnage. London, Nov 23 : Premier League (PL) side Liverpool and Senegalese winger Sadio Mane reached an agreement to extend Mane's contract with the Reds, the club announced on Friday. The new contract is to link Mane, who landed at Anfield stadium in the summer of 2016 coming from Southampton, with Liverpool until 2023, reports Efe news. "It is a great day for me," Mane said, adding, "I've always said, when I knew I had a chance to come here I didn't have to think twice." Mane has taken part in a total of 89 matches wearing the Reds' jersey, scoring 40 goals. The 26-year-old was also a part of the Liverpool team that made it all the way to the UEFA Champions League final last season. Liverpool aims to top the Premier League for the first time since the Reds' last title in 1990 with the team presently holding the second spot in the overall PL standings with 30 points, just two points behind leader and defending champion Manchester city. Srinagar, Nov 23 : Gunmen on Friday abducted a former special police Officer (SPO) from south Kashmir Shopian district. Police said Basharat Ahmad was abducted from Reben village. Efforts are on to trace the abducted former SPO, police said. In the last fortnight, gunmen abducted nine people from south Kashmir areas. Seven of those abducted were released while two were killed. Kolkata, Nov 23 : A person was on Friday arrested from West Bengal's Murshidabad district for trying to smuggle a rare species of takshak snake (gecko) worth Rs 9 crore, police said. "A man named Isha Seikh was arrested near Murshidabad district's Farakka area with a rare species of takshak on Friday morning during checking. The snake is of a rare species and costs around Rs 9 crore in the illegal market," an officer from Farakka police station said. Police said Shiekh caught the creature from a forest in Malda district's Kaliachawk and was supposed to deliver it to two smugglers from Jharkhand. "The snake has been handed over to the local forest department. It is in stable condition," the officer said. "The accused has been arrested and produced to Jangipur sub-divisional court. He would be interrogated about his association with wild animal smuggling rackets," he added. Pune, Nov 23 : In a close contest, Bengal Warriors held their nerves to edge out Bengaluru Bulls 33-31 in a Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) match here on Friday. Bengal's Maninder Singh had an excellent game and scored 14 points, while Mahesh Goud was a fine supporting act for Singh as he chipped in with 6 crucial raid points. Pawan Sehrawat got yet another super 10 for Bengaluru Bulls but his effort went in vain. Bengaluru Bulls' defence was the biggest reason for their downfall as they could muster just three tackle points in the match. Rohit Kumar and Maninder Singh got a couple of raid poinst each for their teams as both teams were neck to neck after three minutes of play. Mahesh Goud's raid in the fourth minute gave Bengal a chance to level it at 4-4. In the 7th minute, Kashiling Adake made a successful raid to level the score at 6-6. There was little to separate the two teams as both refused to give an inch. Rohit made a two-point raid in the 13th minute to give Bengaluru Bulls little breathing space as they led 11-9. Bengal fought back as they inflicted an all out in the 15th minute to lead 13-11. It was a closely fought encounter but Bengal went into the break holding a four point lead with the score reading 18-14 in their favour. Maninder Singh continued his fine raiding form with a point at the start of the second half. He followed it up with a two-point raid in the 23rd minute as Bengal led 23-15. Bengaluru fought back in the next few minutes as they cut the deficit to five points in the 29th minute. Pawan came with a moment of brilliance as his two-point raid led to an all out and Bengaluru Bulls tied the match at 26-26 in the 33rd minute. In the next minute, Maninder responded with a super raid to give Bengal 29-26 lead. The last five minutes were a tense affair but Bengal refused to panic. Kashiling got two raid points in the last couple of minutes of the match to keep Bengaluru within touching distance. It was Maninder yet again, who scored a raid point in the 38th minute to give Bengal Warriors 33-28 lead as they were assured of full points in the match. Bengaluru picked three points in the dying moments but fell short narrowly to lose the contest. Bengaluru/Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 23 : The national leadership of the Janata Dal (S) on Friday decided to replace Mathew T. Thomas, State Minister for Water Resources, with party veteran K. Krishnankutty, said a national leader of the party in Bengaluru. Speaking to the media in Bengaluru, party general secretary Danish Ali said he has informed the Left Democratic Front convenor A. Vijayaraghavan that an official statement would be issued soon. "Thomas has accepted the decision of the national leadership," said Ali. The JD (S) is the third largest ally of the CPI-M-led government and has three legislators Thomas, former State Minister C.K. Nanu and K. Krishnankutty. However, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told the media in the state capital that he too has heard the news of this on the TV. But Thomas said that he was pained by the decision of the national leadership. "I always functioned in the most proper way even though I faced personal attacks. Yet I will always be with the party," said Thomas. JD (S) National President and former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda has called his three legislators to Bengaluru yesterday, but Thomas did not turn up and the meeting with the others took place on Friday when the decision was taken. The present impasse in the JD (S) began when the Pinarayi Vijayan government completed its two-and-a-half years in office. Nanu had earlier told the media in Bengaluru that the national leadership had told them there was an agreement that Thomas would relinquish the ministership in Krishnankutty's favour once the government completed the half-way mark of its 5-year term. Speaking to the media in Bengaluru, minister-designate Krishnankutty said all the things have been sorted out and that he will always take the help of Thomas. "There are no major issues in the party and things are fine. I will seek his help when I become a minister ," said Krishnankutty. New Delhi, Nov 23 : Former Vice President Hamid Ansari on Friday said among the identified issues faced by the Muslim community, education has been the most important one and is neglected by all the segments of the community. "We have identified the issues (faced by the Muslims) a number of times. The issue is of identity and security, it is also of education. And I feel education is the most important issue," Ansari said during the 12th Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer Memorial Lecture On 'Muslims of India: Past and Present'. Education, according to him, "has been neglected by all segments of the community and it has only confined to a small section of the community". "Delhi has a large number of Sikhs and most of them were refugees. They have not only rehabilitated themselves but have also set up their religious institutions as well as their educational institutions. If a small community can do that, why can't a much bigger community," he asked. He also said that, "190 million (of population) is not a minority except in terms of legal technicality". He also suggested that, "interacting on a continuous basis with the wider community of fellow citizens is the answer" to remove the mental barriers. "It (the interaction) does not have to confine to our idioms and our manner of behaviour. If I interact with another person, I will do it on the level of equality not on saying my way is the only way." He also said this formula (of interaction) has worked in different parts of the world, and he does not see any reason why it will not work in the country. The lecture, dedicated to Indian reformist-writer and social activist, was organised by the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism. Delivering the lecture, A.G. Noorani, Advocate, Supreme Court and Constitutional Expert, advised the Muslims to involve themselves in national issues. He also said "denying the discrimination is to denying the truth". "There is a form of agitation among the Muslims and that can only be controlled through secularising the identity and by including them," he said. New Delhi, Nov 23 : Delhi Police have arrested former legislator of Gujarat BJP for sexually assaulting a woman in west Delhi last year, an officer said, adding that the accused was arrested from Ahmedabad. The victim, a widow from Gujarat, alleged in her complaint that she had met Chhabil Patel in 2017 at a social event in Gujarat. "Patel told her that he donates 20% cent of his income to the welfare of widows and that he wants to help her in opening an NGO," the FIR said. "For the NGO business meeting, Chabbil Patel took the victim to an apartment in Delhi's Dwarka where he served her tea laced with sedatives. When the victim lost consciousness, Patel sexually assaulted her," it said. "Patel also clicked her nude pictures, threatening her to make them viral on social media if she did not comply with his orders. He sexually assaulted the victim on many occasions," the FIR said. The woman took up her case with the local police against Patel, who had fled to Gujarat from Delhi, police said. "The accused did not cooperate with Delhi Police whenever he was called to join the probe. Police teams on November 10 had gone to Sola (Ahmedabad) and camped there to nab him. During a raid, Patel had managed to escape from his residence," a senior police officer said. "He was later arrested from his hideout in Ahmedabad," he said, adding Patel also took Rs 7 lakh from the victim in the name of NGO. Hope Island is set to host a new store from the famous American restaurant chain Carls Jr. The store will be in the $65 million Hope Island Marketplace, which is set to open in December. The chain is known for its burgers, chicken strips and ice cream shakes. Franchisor the Bansal Group will open the stores doors on December 6 at 8.30am, with an eat free for a year voucher offer for the first 50 customers. The shopping centre is located at the intersection of Broadwater Avenue and Mervyn Drive. Carls Jr. is a household name in America and love for the brand is growing in Australia, so were thrilled to have the next restaurant opening here at Hope Island Marketplace, said developer Lennon Lin. The centres opening celebration will be on Saturday 8th December from 10am. ANZ have revised their forecast for the housing markets and now see prices falling as much as 20 percent in Sydney and Melbourne. They previously predicted 10 percent falls peak to trough on their second forecast revision back in June. The ANZ said expect Sydney house prices to return to 2015 levels, with the current weakness running through to 2020. They now forecast declines between 15 to 20 percent. Scammers have succeeded in securing $90,000 in proceeds from the recent sale of a $1.2 million Gold Coast investment property by Ray White Mermaid Beach. The sale included a $120,000 deposit put in a trust account managed by the agency. With the sale proceeding, the agency took its $30,000 commission and then told the client to email them his bank account details. The client, Andrew Buckley, the former chief executive officer of the engineering firm Cardno, did so, but soon after, another email was sent purportedly from him. The false email had requested the money be sent to a different, fake bank account. The agency sent the $90,000 to that fake Westpac account, with the proceeds having not been recovered. Buckley told the Courier Mail he was "flabbergasted" that no one called him from Ray white to check the new bank account details were true. As far as Im concerned this (email with a fake account) is a well-known scam, he said. The Ray White agency, in a letter to Buckley, pinned the blame on him. The fact that it has now come to light that it was not Mr Buckley who sent those written directions is as a result of Mr Buckleys own failure to ensure the security of his email account, its letter said. Buckley acknowledged his email might have been hacked, but also it could have been a hacking on Ray Whites side. Ultimately, he said this issue was irrelevant as he argued the real estate agent had a responsibility to verify details, especially with cash held on trust. Youre looking after someone elses money, he said. The agency declined to answer questions from the Courier Mail, saying it was fully co-operating with investigations under way. Ray Whites head office last month told agents to never accept a change in bank account details via email without confirming its legitimacy with your client. Rigaku MiniFlex Benchtop X-ray Diffraction (XRD) Spectrometer Featured at the event will be the sixth generation Rigaku MiniFlex benchtop X-ray diffraction instrument. Rigaku Corporation is presenting its diverse lines of X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and Raman spectroscopy instrumentation at the 2018 MRS Fall Meeting and Exhibit, Sunday November 25 to Friday, November 30, 2018. The event is organized by the Materials Research Society and will be held at the Hynes Convention Center and adjacent Sheraton Boston Hotel.in Boston, Massachusetts. Rigaku, a global leader in X-ray analytical instrumentation, will be exhibiting at the event at booth #416. The conference highlights cross-disciplinary worldwide activity in materials research, gathering researchers from all scientific fields, backgrounds and employment sectors to exchange technical information, engage in broader impact programming, network, and contribute to the advancement of materials research. Large-scale exhibits are featured, as companies from around the world present innovative products and services to the scientific community, and gather information to develop new products and partnerships that drive innovation. Rigaku provides the worlds most complete line of X-ray analytical instruments and components, including XRD and XRF systems, X-ray optics and detectors. Materials analysis instrumentation from Rigaku ranges from benchtop devices, suited for researchers employing X-ray techniques, to high-end instruments with advanced analytical capabilities. Featured at the event will be the sixth generation Rigaku MiniFlex benchtop X-ray diffraction instrument. The MiniFlex is a general purpose X-ray diffractometer that can perform qualitative and quantitative analysis of polycrystalline materials. The instrument is designed to deliver speed and sensitivity through innovative technology enhancements, such as the HyPix-400 MF 2D hybrid pixel array detector (HPAD) coupled with a 600 W X-ray source and new 8-position automatic sample changer. More information about Rigaku solutions for materials science applications is available at https://www.rigaku.com/industry/materialsscience. About Rigaku Since its inception in Japan in 1951, Rigaku has been at the forefront of analytical and industrial instrumentation technology. Rigaku and its subsidiaries form a global group focused on general-purpose analytical instrumentation and the life sciences. With hundreds of major innovations to their credit, Rigaku companies are world leaders in X-ray spectrometry, diffraction, and optics, as well as small molecule and protein crystallography and semiconductor metrology. Today, Rigaku employs over 1,400 people in the manufacturing and support of its analytical equipment, which is used in more than 90 countries around the world supporting research, development, and quality assurance activities. Throughout the world, Rigaku continuously promotes partnerships, dialog, and innovation within the global scientific and industrial communities. For further information, contact: Michael Nelson Rigaku Global Marketing Group tel: +1. 512-225-1796 michael.nelson@rigaku.com We will unveil our new Biordi branded experience and exciting new artisan collections at the celebration to be held on November 24th and 25th from 12:00 5:00 at 412 Columbus Avenue in San Francisco, California." stated Deborah Baldini, Biordi Art Imports Owner We will unveil our new Biordi branded experience and exciting new artisan collections at the celebration to be held on November 24th and 25th from 12:00 5:00 at 412 Columbus Avenue in San Francisco, California. Stop in to meet us, greet your Biordi friends, and immerse yourself in the joy of the Italian culture at holiday. Come and celebrate the Biordi Legacy. said Deborah Baldini, owner. Special holiday offers will be available in store during the celebration. Enter to win a $500 gift certificate and enjoy free gift wrapping and free ground shipping on purchases over $100. The Biordi Legacy In 1946, Emilio Biordi a native of the Abruzzi region of Italy, opened Biordi Artigianato Italiano, on Columbus Avenue in San Franciscos North Beach neighborhood. North Beach, an Italian village within the City limits of San Francisco became home to Emilios store at 412 Columbus Avenue, where You will find us today. Emilio featured a broad range of Italian Handicrafts and Products including espresso machines, ravioli cutters, rolling pins and pasta machines -- ceramics were tucked away in every corner. Locals and Visitors came from far and wide on the spreading word of the beautiful Italian Majolica Ceramics available at Biordi. Chuck Williams of Williams- Sonoma was known to purchase items from Biordis, including the famed Etruscan Chicken pitcher. While Emilio was building Biordi as a business, Gianfranco Savio, who would eventually become Emilios successor, was absorbing the glorious Renaissance art and architecture of his native City. Arriving in San Francisco in his early 30s, Gianfranco taught Italian at Holy Names University in Oakland and worked for an Italian bank as He longed for a career that connected more intimately with Italian culture. Hearing that Emilios Biordi Art Imports business was for sale in 1977, Gianfranco met Emilio who was then 75 and ready to retire. He discovered a kindred spirit in Emilio leading to Gianfrancos 42-year ownership of Biordi Art Imports. Emilio, for a full year following Gianfrancos purchase, mentored and guided Gianfranco in every aspect of the business and His place in the North Beach neighborhood. Gianfranco traveled throughout Italy in search of the finest artisans establishing long-lasting relationships with many artisan families represented in the store today. After a lifelong dedication to Italian Arts and Culture, successfully establishing Biordi Art Imports as the premiere retailer for high quality, original Majolica in the United States, Gianfranco now slowly retiring, has placed the future of Biordi in the hands of Michael and Deborah Baldini, ensuring that the Biordi legacy continues. Like Emilio Biordi in the past, you will many days find Gianfranco at the store, welcoming customer friends and visitors alike. The Baldini Family passionately accepts the tremendous honor leading Biordi Art Imports into the future! Gianfranco Savio and Emilio Biordi before him, have built the Biordi brand into an internationally-renowned retail business. We have been so touched by your love for Biordi and your support for us as we embark as curators of the Biordi retail legacy. There is nothing better than hearing the ooohhs and ahhhs as you are enveloped in the beauty of our featured Italian artisans creations. Long-time Biordi customers, we, are the third Italian family to hold the Biordi passion for Italy and Italian majolica ceramics. Our Families, of Italian descent are of the Earth -- Agriculture and Viticulture. We have an appreciation of the Italian clay earth from which emerges Italian Majolica, Wine and Culinary delights, soothing our soul, warming our hearts and teasing our sensibilities A visit to Italy; a step through the open door of Biordi, strolling through our North Beach neighborhood and you will find yourself inquiring of your parents, checking family histories to confirm what you feel is true Sono Italiano! Biordi is about Family! Valeria Hall is one of the Family joining us as owner and contributor, she is Italian in every way, passionate and welcoming! Come in and say Ciao, Ciao, as you recognize the familiar faces of the knowledgeable and helpful team at Biordi as you explore your inner Italian. We are grateful to our many employees that share our passion -- We are so fortunate to have Igor Bertolucci, a tremendous asset to the business, continuing as General Manager. Our hopes are to increase the awareness of Biordi Art Imports to a broader audience ensuring that collectively we can sustainably support the incredible Italian artisan families that create the art Biordi presents, ensuring this centurys old handcrafted Art legacy continues for the generations to come. Thank you for your enthusiasm and support! We look forward to meeting you soon when you are in North Beach of San Francisco! Grazie mille. A presto a Biordi Art Imports! Michael and Deborah Baldini "Thanksgiving for Thousands has blossomed over the past five years, and were proud to be a part of its growth, said Pete Bugas, Sales and Commercial Director for Greencoat and Mechanical Packaging for DS Smith North America Packaging and Paper. DS Smith North America Packaging and Paper is proudly assisting long-time partner Mountaire Farms in their efforts to provide Thanksgiving meals to over 50,000 residents in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. Mountaires Thanksgiving for Thousands program, launched 24 years ago, fosters community spirit by bringing together employees, local charities and other contributors all along the Delmarva Peninsula. In more recent years, the program has expanded to Lumber Bridge and Siler City, NC where each year thousands are provided Thanksgiving meals. Thanksgiving for Thousands has blossomed over the past five years, and were proud to be a part of its growth. We worked with Mountaire to create a special themed box that ensures that the food inside arrives as intended and can be reused by the recipient. Its a win-win for everyone involved, said Pete Bugas, Sales and Commercial Director for Greencoat and Mechanical Packaging for DS Smith North America Packaging and Paper. Hundreds of volunteers, including employees from Mountaire, DS Smith and many local groups worked together in Selbyville, DE and Lumber Bridge, NC to pack nearly 10,000 dinner boxes in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. Every box distributed will provide all the necessary ingredients to cook a nutritious Thanksgiving dinner for up to six people. These ingredients include a Mountaire roaster, corn, string beans, yams, stuffing mix, gravy, cranberry sauce and brownie mix. The dinner boxes will be distributed during the Thanksgiving week to food pantries, governmental agencies, churches, and shut-ins. DS smith facilities in Cambridge, MD and Reading, PA have worked closely with suppliers Mark/Trece, Inc. and Stafford Cutting Dies, Inc. to produce and donate the corrugated boxes needed for this food drive and other Mountaire initiatives throughout the year. Mountaire Farms & DS Smith: A History of Innovative Partnership Mountaire and DS Smith have joined forces before to benefit a wider community. In 2009, DS Smith Packaging Cambridge collaborated with Mountaire Farms to develop Greencoat, an innovative alternative to traditional wax boxes. Greencoat boxes have significantly reduced Mountaire Farms carbon footprint and streamlined its supply chain. The FBA-certified, 100% recyclable, repulpable and compostable box can be used to pack poultry, meat, seafood, fresh produce, floral, and stone products. Over the last five years, 377,469 tons of Greencoat wax replacement boxes were recycled instead of the same number of wax-coated boxes, which has significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions. About DS Smith DS Smith has 23 manufacturing facilities in the United States and operates in more than 37 different countries with over 28,000 employees. The innovation and knowledge our employees bring to every project enables us to provide our customers with strategic support across their entire packaging supply cycle. DS Smith North America Packaging and Paper produces Greencoat for poultry, produce and other applications where adverse conditions require moisture and temperature-resistant packaging, and as a part of DS Smith worldwide, is a leading provider of sustainable corrugated packaging solutions. | BY Lynchy | TBWA\Singapore has appointed Leigh Arbon as Head of Digital, reporting directly to Managing Director, Ara Hampartsoumian. Arbon (pictured) will be responsible for delivering digital integration across the company, whilst identifying new cutting-edge marketing needs and developing TBWAs capabilities to meet these needs. With an education in software development, he began his career at IBM, before joining TBWA\Melbourne to work on digital creative solutions for brands including ANZ, Australian Government, Origin Energy and Mimco. He has remained with the network since, and joins TBWA\Singapore from Nissan United New York the networks dedicated unit handling Nissans global marketing business where he managed global social media, global digital campaigns and provided strategic and creative direction for regional campaigns. Were very excited Leigh is on our team as we continue to develop more agile yet holistic approaches to brand marketing. Hell play a big part in evolving and growing our expertise to ensure we continue to create the most culturally impactful work for our clients in this ever transforming digital landscape, said Hampartsoumian. Goway is offering savings on its popular South African Sampler for 2019. This comfortable trip nonetheless offers Globetrotters the opportunity to explore Africas wilder side and see the Big Five. Goway Travel have announced 2019 departures for their 15-day South African Sampler . This fully-guided experience that takes in some of South Africas most spectacular scenery, with trips into neighboring Swaziland and Lesotho enhancing the journey. South Africa is a vast, beautiful land packed with diverse experiences. Globetrotters who book by November 27, 2018 will also enjoy a saving of $1,500 per couple, and receive a complimentary city tour of Cape Town. Coupling carefully selected accommodations with fine local dining, this comfortable trip nonetheless offers Globetrotters the opportunity to explore Africas wilder side and see the Big Five African elephants, Cape buffalo, leopards, lions, and elusive black rhinos. Africa is the only continent where big game still roam freely in such great numbers. This trip also takes Globetrotters to Blyde River Canyon, one of the natural wonders of Africa, Kruger National Park, an internationally renowned game reserve of nearly 2 million hectares supporting Africas largest variety of wildlife species, and to a real Chiefs village, where they can experience just a taste of traditional Swazi culture. Other highlights include the magnificent Southern Drakensberg Mountains, the Tsitsikamma Forest, a visit to a well-known aloe factory in Albertinia, a guided tour of a working ostrich farm, the famous Cango Caves, and some time in cosmopolitan Cape Town, where the famous Table Mountain rises as one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature. The South African Sampler gets top marks from Goways Globetrotters, including Themba Ndayi, who said What I liked most is the contrasting experiences. Every day that you wake up is a different experience. Goway is operating 4 exclusive departures of this tour, 10 Feb, 12 May, 07 Jul and 08 Sep 19. Included are sightseeing and entrance fees as per the itinerary but Globetrotters also enjoy the option to pre-book a number of additional activities to enhance their trip. These include: Game Viewing Boat Cruise in St Lucia Sani Pass 4x4 Adventure Kaapse Stories Dinner Full day Peninsula tour Full day Winelands tour Since 1970, Goway has been providing unforgettable travel experiences to Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Central & South America, Idyllic Island destinations and Europe. Today Goway is recognized as one of North America's leading travel companies for individuals, families and groups to select exotic destinations around the globe. Goway has offices in Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Manila, and Sydney, Australia. For reservations and information, visit http://www.goway.com, or call 1-800-387-8850. Demand the NIH allocate at least 10% of its $2.3 billion budget for Alzheimer's research to other deserving scientists who are investigating the role of bacteria, viruses and other infectious agents. This is a roadblock because the NIH has a virtual monopoly on big dollars for Alzheimers research. Alzheimers Germ Quest, Inc., an independent Alzheimers disease research advocacy organization, has launched 10% for Germs, a grassroots citizens, patients, and caregivers campaign to demand the National Institutes of Health (NIH) immediately allocate $230 million for research grants to determine the roles of germs in causing Alzheimers, announced its CEO, Leslie Norins, M.D, Ph.D. The 10% indicates $230 million is ten percent of the record-setting $2.3 billion Congress recently gave NIH for this year of Alzheimers research. Based on past patterns, little would be spent investigating the role of bacteria, viruses and other infectious agents. In the past twelve months many top scientists have told me the hottest new leads are that Alzheimers is triggered by infectious agents. But investigators are stalled because the NIH wont fund this research to a significant extent, he says. This is a roadblock because the NIH has a virtual monopoly on big dollars for Alzheimers research. Its budget this year is $2.3 billion, while the runner-up, the Alzheimers Association, awards only $40 million. That NIH research money is 57.5 times greater and is 98.3 percent of their combined total. Dr. Norins says another problem is a judging mismatch. He offers a baking analogy. Experts on judging ryebreads are not expert at judging wedding cakes. He explains, Until now, most scientists on NIHs Alzheimers grant judging panels have been experts on the old suspects, the brain proteins amyloid and tau. Lets call those ryebreads. Few have expertise in judging infectious agents, which Ill call wedding cakes. So, of course excellent wedding cake proposals have not been awarded grants, because theyre not ryebreads. He says NIH must promptly assemble an Alzheimers judging panel expert in evaluating wedding cakes, i.e., grant proposals to investigate infectious agents. Disburse $230 million, ten percent of the $2.3 billion budget, to meritorious ones. That still leaves NIH 90 percent, a comfortable $2.1 billion, for research on the traditional subjects it has favored. Change must come from the top, Dr. Norins says, pointing to Congress and the NIH director. He says, At lower levels the cult of amyloid/tau is entrenched, and it will not add infectious agents research without insistence from the higher-ups. Dr. Norins urges concerned citizens and patients families to email their Congressperson and the NIH director, Dr. Francis Collins (francis.collins@nih.gov), to demand allocating the $230 million. An explanatory video and a national advertisement have also been released. Alzheimers afflicts an estimated five million Americans, and 303 die from it every day. Its cause is unknown and there is still no cure, 112 years after Dr. Alois Alzheimer first described it. Alzheimers Germ Quest, Inc. is a public benefit corporation headquartered in Naples, Florida. It sponsors the $1 million Challenge Award for the scientist who provides proof a germ triggers Alzheimers disease. Donations are neither solicited nor accepted. Smart Packaging Solutions (SPS) While contactless and dual interface cards meet a growing adoption worldwide, some users are still reluctant to adopt them as they fear card skimming schemes that would threaten their banking card data. Even if the whole payment industry has repeatedly demonstrated that card skimming is not an issue thanks to the built-in security features in the EMV specifications, some users are still concerned about this issue. To reassure them, SPS introduces Press & Pay, a system that ensures the card contactless communication is only activated when the card is touched by the users finger on a given target, and not while it is stored in a wallet or in pants pockets. The method, patented by SPS, consists in detuning the antenna while the card is at rest and only retuning it when the card is touched by the users finger. Actually, the system is triggered just by touching and is not including any biometrics, keeping its cost in line with all issuer requirements for contactless and dual interface banking cards. Already in 2018, for the first time in history, contactless payment card issuance is likely to reach 1.5 billion units, accounting for more than 50% of all payment card shipments globally,. This move is especially triggered by leading card schemes mandates, that drive the migration to contactless cards in Europe, Asia, Latin America and North America. Jean-Baptiste Leos, Banking Product Manager at SPS declares: In the card industry we all know contactless cards are secure, but with Press & Pay, we bring a solution to card issuers who need to reassure their most fearful customers and prove them their card will only be functional when they are willing to pay. This performance can only be achieved thanks to SPS inductive coupling technology. As the antenna is not physically connected to the micromodule, it can be detuned and retuned according to the position of a switch, etched at the same time as the antenna. SPS has already delivered over 500 million eBoost inductive coupling platforms for diverse markets segments worldwide. Press & Pay technology will be the object of a presentation titled Press & Pay, the latest SPS innovation at 15:30, on Wednesday November 28, 2018, during Trustech, a major event for digital trust technologies taking place in Cannes, France, on November 27-29, 2018. Press & Pay will also be demonstrated on SPS booth: RIV F 020. About Smart Packaging Solutions: Smart Packaging Solutions is specialized in the design, manufacturing and sale of contactless solutions dedicated to ID cards, e-passport and dual interface banking cards. With the SPS brand, IN Groupe opens its secure components technology to all card and document manufacturers. Located in Rousset, France, with a subsidiary in Singapore, Smart Packaging Solutions employs 180 people. Part of the French IN Groupe, the company specializes in contactless and dual-interface products, with a recognized micro packaging expertise. SPS has filed over 120 patents supporting its exclusive technologies. More information at http://www.s-p-s.com SPS is part of the IN Groupe. About IN Groupe: A partner of the French government for close to 500 years, IN Groupe offers identity solutions and secure digital services, at the leading edge of technology and integrating electronics and biometrics. From components to services and from documents to interoperable systems, IN Groupe is a global specialist in identity and secure digital services. The institution plays a daily role in facilitating everyone's life: helping states exercise their sovereignty, citizens protect their identity and businesses preserve their integrity. Whatever the issue, IN Groupe, a company for digital sovereignty, contributes to asserting a fundamental right for everyone: the right to be you. Based in Paris, the IN Groupe has two production centers and employs more than 1000 employees, of which over a third is dedicated to technology development. Follow us on: https://www.ingroupe.com We have found that the combination engages the patients in understanding their procedure, gives them much greater confidence in their doctors, enhances procedural planning of the optimal approach, and adds efficiency as well as overall significant value to performing complex operations Surgical Theater will be demonstrating its innovative 360 Virtual Reality platform at the Radiology Society of North Americas Annual (RSNA) Conference in Chicago, IL, from November 25-30. Surgical Theater will be debuting Precision VR Explore a new addition to the Precision VR platform empowering radiologists with a tool that aides surgeons in planning complex operations. Surgical theater is excited to introduce Precision VR Explore. Through Surgical Theaters partnership with NordicNeuroLab, Precision VR Explore will offer radiologists and surgeons a comprehensive fly-through of a patients specific anatomy and pathology; allowing them to examine and explore imaging that is much more intuitive than traditional black and white Dicom and even 3-D images. 360 VR renders a " surgeons-eye-view, and more", which is literally viewing the pathology from any orientation and flying, for example, within the space between the white matter tracks and the pathology. This allows for an intuitive and immersive sense of the possible surgical approach and risks, margins etc. Surgical Theater is very proud to develop an offering that speaks directly to the work flow of radiologists. says Moty Avisar, CEO and Co-Founder of Surgical Theater. We see the 360 VR fly-through as a novel, complimentary option to traditional image analysis, which radiologist will utilize in communicating with surgeons and other physicians. Precision VR Explore will provide significantly more value in communicating the information within medical images and in the ways radiologists are connecting to their surgeon counterparts. The 360 fly-through will be created from comprehensive combined modalities of CT, MRI and advanced post processed images such as NordicNeuroLabs, nordicBrainEx Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) and Blood Oxygeneration Level Dependent Imaging (BOLD). Attendees at the Radiology Society of North America (RSNA) who want to learn more about Precision VR Explore, are encouraged to visit the NordicNeuroLab booth (#4760), where Surgical Theater will be providing live demonstrations in virtual reality. "Surgeons and Interventionalists at the Pickup Family Neuroscience Institute at Hoag Hospital have been utilizing Nordic Neurolab BrainEx DTI with Surgical Theater Virtual Reality for several years. Said Michael Brant-Zawadzki, M.D, Senior Physician Executive at Hoag and Executive Medical Director of Ron and Sandi Simon Endowed Chair at the Pickup Family Neurosciences Institute. We have found that the combination engages the patients in understanding their procedure, gives them much greater confidence in their doctors, enhances procedural planning of the optimal approach, and adds efficiency as well as overall significant value to performing complex operations" About Surgical Theater Surgical Theater, the market leader in virtual and augmented reality healthcare services, is the first to combine cutting-edge fighter jet flight simulation technology with a patients own anatomy scans. Rendered from comprehensive combined modalities of CT, MRI as well as advanced post processing images such as DTI and BOLD, the 360 virtual reality fly-through is designed to allow surgeons to walk and fly-through a reconstruction of the patients own anatomy and pathology. Surgeons literally walk in the space between the white matter tracks and the tumor, being fully immersed, gaining unprecedented situational awareness and clarity of assessment. By simply turning their head, the surgeon can further explore the anatomy and plan the craniotomy, surgical path, trajectory, corridor, and the entire surgical strategy. Find out more at http://www.SurgicalTheater.net and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/SurgicalTheater @SurgicalTheater Instagram @surgicaltheater LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/surgical-theater/ About NordicNeuroLab With over 15 years of experience, NordicNeuroLab (NNL) provides products and solutions that define the field of functional MR imaging. We understand the growing need for reliable and innovative tools in this growing field. As a result, we closely collaborate with research and clinical teams from both academic and medical centers, MR system manufacturers, and third party vendors to develop and manufacture hardware and software solutions that meet the needs of very experienced centers while developing training programs to make fMRI easy to adopt for more novice users. From state of the art post-processing and visualization software for BOLD, Diffusion/DTI, and Perfusion/DCE imaging to fMRI hardware for audio and visual stimulation, eye tracking, and patient response collection, NNL's products are used around the world by researchers and clinicians alike. Ultimately, we are dedicated to bringing the most advanced neuroimaging tools to market while making functional MRI programs easy to implement. Find out more about NordicNeuroLab at http://www.nordicneurolab.com/ and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/nordicneurolab-as Swords, Plowshares, and the Great Deception: An Analysis of the Modern Boaz and Jachin: a startling reinvestigation of 9/11. Swords, Plowshares, and the Great Deception is the creation of published author Thomas James Klancee, an engineer who learnt about the WTC demolition scheme in the 1970s. Klancee writes, From JFK to 9/11 to our daily ration of fake news, we are bombarded with untruths on a constant basis. No other event rivals 9/11 in its complexity, depth, and breadth in such regard. An understanding thereof defines the perpetrators of the great deception and the extent to which they will go to achieve their aims. An understanding of 9/11 is a huge step toward reaching a point where the truth becomes intuitively obvious despite inundation with false narratives. We seek truth as instructed. Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free (John 8:32). This book is a step in that direction. Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Thomas James Klancees new book is an eye-opening, even-keeled discussion on the mechanics of how the World Trade Centers were collapsed, the insidious political shockwaves that came after the fact, and the chilling observation of who benefits from it all. As Klancee reveals the what, who, how, and why of 9/11, readers will come away with the staggering truths that may not reverse history but will shed much-needed light on it. View a synopsis of Swords, Plowshares, and the Great Deception: An Analysis of the Modern Boaz and Jachin on YouTube. Consumers can purchase Swords, Plowshares, and the Great Deception: An Analysis of the Modern Boaz and Jachin at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble. For additional information or inquiries about Swords, Plowshares, and the Great Deception: An Analysis of the Modern Boaz and Jachin, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919. "With the award of AFEC PMEL II, Yulista is honored to be selected and will pursue further expansion within the PMEL market."- Steve DiNome, General Manager ulista Support Services, LLC (YSS), a wholly owned 8(a) subsidiary of Yulista Holding, LLC, was awarded the firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, and multiple-award contract for Air Force Enterprise Contracted (AFEC) Precision Measurement Equipment Laboratories (PMEL) II with a contract ceiling of $473M. The U.S. Air Force awarded the IDIQ contract to five companies including YSS. Over the next 10 years, YSS will compete for task orders for services at more than 32 U.S. Air Force Bases, both CONUS and OCONUS. With the award of AFEC PMEL II, Yulista is honored to be selected and will pursue further expansion within the PMEL market. Our PMEL business is a steady backbone of our company which is necessary for sustaining growth. We will continue to drive our team forward as we provide high quality solutions and services to the greatest Air Force in the World. Steve DiNome, General Manager YSS will provide all management, personnel, equipment, tools, materials, supervision, and other items and services necessary to execute the PMEL services. Additionally, YSS will be providing quality calibration, maintenance, and repair capabilities necessary for the successful accomplishment of the Air Force mission. YSSs sister company Y-Tech currently provides PMEL services under the previous AFEC PMEL contract at Sheppard AFB, Columbus AFB, Maxwell AFB, Wright Patterson AFB, and Malmstrom AFB. Services at Minot AFB, Ellsworth AFB, and FE Warren AFB will begin in October 2019. Yulista Support Services, LLC is an Alaska Native Corporation and SBA Certified Small Disadvantaged 8(a) Business. YSS was founded in 2016 and received its 8(a) certification in 2017. YSS was formed to expand Yulistas expertise in operational first article testing support, metrology, and aviation systems sustainment. YSS supports our customers missions by providing superior quality and services. For more information about Yulista Holding, LLC, and its family of companies, visit http://www.yulista.com. The various malls and shopping centre in the country have discounted their products hoping customers will buy. This is a moment for the shop owners to also put stock that has been in their shops for long on sale in order to restock for Christmas and the new year. ece-auto-gen Some shops have slashed the prices of goods ranging from technology gadgets to underwears. Even though the Black Friday in the USA for this year is only on November 23, 2018, most shops in Ghana have made it a festival for one week. This means that unlike the those in America, Ghanaians can buy what they need for about a week in specific shops. Black Friday began as part of the Xmas shopping package right after Thanksgiving (the fourth Thursday of November) from the 1930s. Dr Siaw Agyepong said this at the launch of an Environmental Care Campaign organised by the Church of Pentecost in partnership with Zoomlion. He argued that the waste management sector will only become beneficial when the government and citizens see waste as a resource to the country, just like oil and gold. READ ALSO: NCA fines all 4 telcos GH34m for poor servicesNCA fines all 4 telcos GH34m for poor services He added that people will invest into waste management only if they see the sector as a resourceful one. In Ghana we have so many resources: like gold, diamond, oil, cocoa and others. Today, God is telling us to add waste as one of the natural resources. And so, I humbly want to plead that government should add waste as one of the natural resources. Waste has a value that we have to look at, and if you look at it in that sense then you will take care of it and campaigns such as this will be beneficial. Waste is cash and a resource, he added. He continued that when you compare waste with oil and gold, you will see that you need so much money to extract and process gold and oil which have a limited number of years to expire whereas with waste you need less resources, and waste will never get exhausted in this world. READ ALSO: Govt to use competitive bidding to stop idle oil blocks ownershipGovt to use competitive bidding to stop idle oil blocks ownership He cited examples of countries that have focused on waste as natural resources. According to him this has changed the fortunes of countries such as Rwanda, Mauritius, and Singapore. The government of Ghana has had challenges developing a sustainable waste management system for the country. Sometimes residents have to keep their refuse at home past the due date of collection since the collectors have to queue at the dumping sites for days. According to Catherine Afeku, the Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, the 5th edition of the music festival and awards scheme will be hosted in Ghana for three years and the government has an amount to pump into it. Catherine told Hitz FM on Friday, November 23, that AFRIMA is an opportunity for Ghana to boost its tourism and creative arts. READ MORE: Fuse ODG asks Nigerians to boycott Blac Chynas visitFuse ODG asks Nigerians to boycott Blac Chynas visit She revealed that Government is supporting the event with $4.5 million for the three years but for this year, we are spending $ 700,000. She also disclosed that apart from AFRIMA, the government is lending support to popular Ghanaian annual arts festival, Chalewote Art Festival. It is baffling what the said robbers would need female panties and urine for, but some people have been speculating that they might be using them for some spiritual sacrifices. The students are calling for protection from security services and the university authorities. Maradeam Osuji, one of the students of the university resorted to Facebook to call for help. She said: Please if you have any female in Delsu(Abraka) drop a prayer for her. A girl was forced to pull off her pant at gun point in Abraka. Its no longer stealing of pants, its now Your pant or your life His sudden demise has drawn condolences from politicians across the divide; with many describing him as a quintessential gentleman. Though reports indicate that he passed on in the United States, details about the cause remained sketchy. However, when a delegation from Parliament visited the family house yesterday to offer their condolences, the family, led by his senior brother Boakye Agyarko, revealed the cause of his death. He said his junior brother died of a maglinant gallbladder, simply referred to as gallbladder cancer. One night, we had to take him to the Ridge Hospital because it was a bit bad with reflux and pain so around 2:00am, he was rushed to the hospital, to control the reflux", he recounted. There was a problem with his gallbladder he said noting that his condition was stabilized but on Sunday, he became very anxious. I spoke to the doctors, and we decided to have him treated outside the country. VBoakye Agyarko suggested his brother was healthy when he emplaned. On his own feet, he boarded a flight to the US, was processed for admission at Yale University Hospital where my older sister works. ece-auto-gen One thing led to the other, and quickly the situation started unraveling, and within a matter of three minutes the healthy, bubbly individual has been reduced to a cold body, they tried as far as they could, and God knows how everybody tried, Mr. Agyarko narrated. READ ALSO: Health Ministry Auditor wants Ghanaians to pay for ambulance serviceHealth Ministry Auditor wants Ghanaians to pay for ambulance service This has sparked concerns of a possible return to days of rationed power supply, popularly referred to as dumsor. Responding to these concerns, the Energy Minister said the recent power outages is not as a result of low generation capacity, but rather due to some technical challenges. Mr. Amewu admits that there are challenges with supplying gas to the Karpower plant at Tema in Accra, but said the Ministry is working to move the plant from Tema to Takoradi where constant gas supply is guaranteed. ece-auto-gen He further assured that the situation is nowhere near a crisis, insisting dumsor is a thing of the past. Number one is to get some light crude oil as a substitute for some of the plants that are dualized. Like the gas is not available, we should be able to use the light crude oil as a substitute. We are working day in and day out to make sure that we relocate the Karpower plant from Tema to Takoradi, Mr. Amewu said. "When that is done, there is going to be sustainable gas supply directly to the power. We are not yet at all near the era of dumsor. Dumsor is a thing of the past and we need to work to make sure that we dont come back to the era any longer. READ ALSO: Ministry of Health bans codeine cough syrupsMinistry of Health bans codeine cough syrups His comments come after the Minority in Parliament called on the government to come clear on the state of power supply in the country. Minority Spokesperson on Mines and Energy, Adam Mutawakilu, had suggested in an earlier interview that dumsor is returning. Ibrah is known for usually flaunting his luxury cars, apartments and other glittering things on his social media handles. READ ALSO: Speak less about corruption, fight it Catholic Bishops to Nana AddoSpeak less about corruption, fight it Catholic Bishops to Nana Addo However, early this year, he came under the spotlight after he was accused of defrauding a businessman Ahmed Nurudeem of an amount of GHc543, 380. The prosecutor, DSP Nanegbe told the court that on September 17, 2017 Nurudeen wanted to transfer 100, 000 to a company in Germany and gave an Ecobank cheque with face value of GHc543, 380.00 equivalent to 100,000.00, to Ibrah to do it on his behalf. ece-auto-gen But checks later revealed that the accused did not transfer the money into the companys account in Germany. The complainant was then forced to petition Director General of the Criminal Investigations Department for investigation, which led to the arrest of Ibrah One. READ ALSO: Ministry of Health bans codeine cough syrupsMinistry of Health bans codeine cough syrups The young millionaire was subsequently charged on three counts defrauding by false pretense and two counts of altering forged documents. According to a report by the Daily Heritage, Ibrah One has now been granted bail to the tune of GHc550,000 with two sureties, one to be justified. Addressing a durbar of all ranks of the contingent at their operational headquarters at Al-Qawzah, Lebanon, Vice President Bawumia urged members of the contingent not to rest on their oars but continue to maintain the high standards of discipline which has earned them commendation from all stakeholders. Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia was in Lebanon to witness the award of United Nations Medals to Ghanas contingent attached to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). The 850 Officers and men of the GHANBATT 85, under the direct command of Lt Col Fiifi Deegbe, have been deployed with UNIFIL for the past 5 months, and have been engaged in promoting peace and security in the troubled Middle Eastern country, especially on its southern border with Israel. I congratulate the Commanding Officer, Officers, Men and Women of UNIFIL GHANBATT 85 for the impressive performance over the period. Your performance is a true reflection of the high standard of professionalism, diligence and discipline of all Ghanaian soldiers, Vice President Bawumia stated. ece-auto-gen From the briefings we have been given, I am pleased to note that your effective and continuous domination of GHANBATT 85 Area of Responsibility as well as timely reaction to incidents have been highly commended by key stakeholders, notable among them, the Sector West Commander and indeed the UNIFIL Force Commander." He said with the NDC electing 'old' leaders like Nketia, the 2020 general elections will be easy for his party. "The likes of Asiedu Nketia whose utterances and poor decisions has caused NDC in so many ways and this prove to the fact that he [Asiedu Nketia] together with other members of the NDC are suffering from menopause and therefore lacks the capacity to function effectively. NPP is not perturbed about the new crop of NDC leadership and cannot wait for election 2020, he said. Speaking on Okay Fm's "Ade Akye Abia", he outlined some of the poor decisions Nketia has taken as the General Secretary of the NDC. READ ALSO: Here are all the newly elected NDC national executives "During our conference to elect new national leaders for our party, we sent a letter to the NDC to join us which they failed. Asiedu Nketia, trying to explain why they didnt show up, said he met the Vice president at a funeral and told him they are busy so they cant make it knowing very well that administratively the Vice President wasnt the right person to have channeled that information to but rather officials of the party", he said. ece-auto-gen The vociferous Chairman also said The errors he keeps committing are not once or twice. That is why I'm saying the NDC, looking at people like Inusah Fuseini, Asiedu Nketia, Kofi Adams and some of their MPs in Parliament now, I can say they have all reached menopause and they cant come back". He said the NDC needs a leader that will be able to serve two-terms. If we dont want to serve for only one term once we take over from the NPP in 2020, then you have to vote for a candidate like me who can serve two terms", he said. He said delegates of the party shouldn't lose sight of the long terms plans of the party and that voting for a candidate that can't serve two terms will be bad. "If you vote for me, Im qualified to serve two terms as President. So, think about this before you decide on who to vote for. We cant fight and unseat the NPP after one term and come to power only to also serve for one term also. So, lets choose a candidate who can serve two terms, he said. ece-auto-gen The former Minister of Trade and Industry said these while addressing delegates of the party at Anyaa Sowutuom in the Greater Accra. Ayokunle made the call in Abuja on Friday when he paid a courtesy visit to the Executive Secretary of NCPC, Rev. Tor Uja. He said that the high cost of undertaking pilgrimages had limited the number of Christians willing to go for pilgrimages. Ayokunle appealed to the Federal Government to sponsor more Christians to go for pilgrimages to enhance their religious obligations and pray for the country. The government cannot completely hands off funding of Christian pilgrimage. Government must fund Christian pilgrimage to encourage Nigerian Christians to go and pray for the nation, he said. In his remark, Uja said that with the state of the economy it was no longer realistic for the Federal Government to solely sponsor pilgrimages. He said there was need for the church in Nigeria to build an economy to support global activities. The church can contribute in building Nigerias economy. There has been a revolution in the church in the last three decades, he said. The secretary urged CAN to source for sponsorship of 1,000 Christians to pilgrimages yearly. According to Daily Trust, the exam body awarded 18-year-old, Isabella Gelegu from Esan North LGA of Delta State of Oritamefa Baptist Model School Ibadan the 1st prize National Distinction/Merit Award 2017. The Council also reportedly awarded two other girls, Favour Ngozi Etuonuma of Eucharistic Heart of Jesus Model a college Ilorin and Adenike Temitope Adedara of Louisville Girls High School Ijebu Itele Ogun State as 2nd and 3rd prizes of the same National Distinction Merit Award respectively. ece-auto-gen The award ceremony is one of the highlights of the WAEC's 56th Annual General Meeting of the Nigeria National Committee (NNC) 3-day meeting in Calabar, Daily Trust reports. The NNC Chairman, Dr Lami Amodu who presented the awards alongside other dignitaries, said the awards were a result intense scrutiny by WAEC officials. Meanwhile, the exam body has announced that candidates whose results have been fully processed would get their results three months after their examinations. Today, news has broken that a student of Godfrey Okoye University, Enugu attempted to hang himself because a girl dumped him. As if the drama at Delta State University (DELSU), Abraka was not enough, someone had to go through this. In the comments from various students in his school Pulse gathers that the incident happened at A.D Gentes Hostel, in the school. ALSO READ: Sexy lady goes naked and turns herself into thanksgiving turkey (video) The most infamous story, however, is the case of 22-year-old Elozino Joshualia Ogege, a first-class Mass Communications student, found dead at Ekrejeta road in Abraka Community, Ethiope-East Local Government Area of Delta State on November 18, 2018, after she was reported missing three days earlier her tongue and breasts were cut off. Today, Instablog9ja reports that suspects have been arrested in connection with her death. They are two reported yahoo boys and a security guard whom the Police suspect to be ritual killers. ALSO READ: 3 days after DELSU student was declared missing, she is found dead with tongue and breast missing The Delta State Commissioner of Police, Muhammad Mustafa said, Some of the major suspects connected to the crime had been arrested and currently assisting the police with their investigation. Efforts are ongoing to arrest other actors in the crime. As Pulse reported for Ogeges death, Chairman of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) Comrade Prince Kehinde-Taiga used the Daily Post to call for the redeployment of the state Commissioner of Police, CP Muhammad Mustafa whom he says has been sleeping on duty while atrocities have continued raging. ALSO READ: On Facebook, DELSU student narrates how gunmen forced her panties off her Taiga says, The perpetrators must be brought to book without any form of compromise. The CP must wake up from his slumber because justice must be served. ece-auto-gen The knowledge packed event witnessed a large number turn out of youths from several communities who participated in the information sharing and business focused activities throughout the three days. Also in attendance where dignitaries including government officials, key stakeholders in the state education sector, non-governmental organizations, renowned mentors, youth leaders amongst others. ece-auto-gen Delivering the opening remarks at the 3-day Programme held between 12th -15th of November 2018, The Executive Governor of Enugu State, Mr. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi commended the management of Nigerian Bottling Company (NBC) Limited, for its commitment to the socio-economic well-being of the nation particularly in the areas of youth empowerment aimed at reducing the growing level of unemployment in the country. ece-auto-gen The governor who was represented by his Deputy Governor, Mrs. Cecilia Ezeilo expressed delight in the initiative noting that it would complement the governments effort towards addressing the challenges of unemployment and underemployment confronting the youths in the state. ece-auto-gen According to her, this initiative is another laudable effort by the private sector to support the state government in achieving its target for youth development and empowerment. We are particularly pleased to learn that by 2020 this initiative would have supported over 100,000 young unemployed persons between the ages of 18-30 years to build life skills, business skills and long-lasting networks to facilitate their transition to employment she said. ece-auto-gen Ezeilo charged other concerned corporate entities to follow in NBCs footsteps and make their own contribution towards addressing this important and urgent necessity. Also speaking during the workshop, Country CSR Manager, Nigerian Bottling Company Ltd, Mr. Ekuma Eze described the companys investment in the Youth Empowered Programme as a further demonstration of the its faith in the youth of Nigeria. Eze explained that the initiative was designed to empower Nigerian youths to realize their full potential. ece-auto-gen He said, The future of this country belongs to the youth. If we do not give them the opportunity to develop, many years down the line it would tell on the progress of the entire nation. With Enugu being the 7th state to be reached with the workshop, the NBC Youth Empowered Program remains committed to support the government in the actualizing of its goal to prepare young people to win in the business environment and be globally competitive. ece-auto-gen Eze therefore urged the participants to avail themselves of the unique benefits of the workshop and its comprehensive curriculum covering project and time management, business planning, financial literacy, negotiation, sales skills and a variety of self-development life skills. He revealed that the team with the best business pitching ideas would enjoy 5 weeks training from a global organization - UNIDO as well as empowerment support after the conclusion of the training. ece-auto-gen In his own remarks, the Commissioner for Youths and Sports, Enugu state, Mr. Joseph Udedi tasked the youths to make the best use of opportunities by acquiring the skills that would guarantee a better future for them, especially at a time when white collars jobs may not be readily available. Youve heard the story before. A highly-personable young woman enters an environment, say a block of apartments, where men have subtly yet firmly asserted their dominance. At first, she minds her business and avoids unnecessary interactions that, as she knows, may be presumptuous or downright nasty. After a couple of tenant meetings and a chance run-in, she begins to feel like one of the crowd. She goes out for lunch with the boys (where shes always careful to cover her bill). She laughs over silly jokes and shuts them down when theyre insensitive. One day, a neighbour tries to shoot a sleazy shot at her and emphatically, she turns it down. The next day, she schools the more eloquent of them during a conversation about gender politics. The next day, she returns from an outing and her previously-loving neighbours decide she isnt worth their time. After a couple of days, she hears a sorry excuse for an explanation; shes being disrespectful. In Nigeria, even though weve only recently begun to talk about it, gender politics has determined the very structure of our society. Patriarchy and other stories Nigerian culture has given literal context to the biblical impression that a man is the head. Nigerian men are raised and expected to be patriarchs. We are the embodiment of the King complex; the belief that the world must revolve around us at the benevolent, all-powerful being at its centre. Fierceness and aggression are extolled as important values, and where he feels threatened, the Nigerian man is not afraid to suppress any signs of disrespect, especially when it comes from the fairer sex. Back to gender politics, this subtle culture has also defined the relations between men and women and what each party expects from members of the opposite sex. Women are seen as secondary to the male gender. To put it as simply, they are expected to be subordinate. It reflects in every facet of our society. We expect men to be ambitious and the young girl child with dreams as lofty as her male peers is an exception, not the norm. Women are expected to willingly relegate themselves to the background; a big personality, or strong principles, are not exactly seen as a strength. It seems enough to explain why Nigerian men are intimidated by strong women because they are not raised to expect them that way. The African woman is the nurturer, one whose mind is a blank slate ready to take on the whatever the men in her life wish to imprint on it. A woman is not supposed to blaze trails that men and women alike follow. But while we acknowledge these truths, it is also important to recognise what a strong woman is. Between being strong and toxic The neo-feminist movements of the 2000s build most of their principles on the view that gender is a social construct. For them, the ideal world is one where being a woman is essentially the same as being a man and no gender is given roles or preferences because of biological or other peculiarities. It does not celebrate the woman as the mother, instead it wants her to be seen as just a person first, and hopefully, for all. Its a far distance from celebrating the compassion, nurturing the spirit and everything weve defined as the motherly instinct, which is what most traditional forms of feminism are. Neo-feminists are perhaps the greatest and most culturally impactful of their kind which also means they are the most derided by just about anyone who does not agree with what they think. One of the most common retorts to their crusading claims is that feminists really just want to do the same thing that men can do and get away with. For the most part, its easy to see how they might think this to be true. As an offshoot of the attempts to create fix gender inequality, more people are using feminist ideology as a fallback for their attempts to justify certain indiscretions and toxic behaviours. The perception of a strong feminist in popular culture is now being replaced by one who indulges in casual misogyny and chooses to rationalise certain levels of imprudence as individualism. It takes much away from women who have challenged traditional gender roles and set their footprints for generations of young girls to follow. 1. Calabar, Nigeria ece-auto-gen The city of Calabar in Nigeria is one city that comes alive in December. The contrast in visiting this time and any other time in the year is very clear. This is because this is the time when the Calabar Carnival happens. This is the peak of tourism in Cross River state, and perhaps the whole of Nigeria. For the whole of December, tourists from all over the world gather for the procession and display of culture and Heritage from Cross River and different parts of Nigeria. 2. Indian Ocean Islands: Seychelles, Mauritius, Mozambique ece-auto-gen Though a bit pricey, the best time to visit these islands Seychelles, Mauritius and Mozambique is now. Temperatures are at their hottest during November and December; plus, theres an almost guaranteed 6 to 8 hours of sunshine a day. You can switch up your boring Christmas for days in the sun, sand and under the whispering palms. If you are keen on adventures in the water or up the mountains, that can also be arranged. 3. Cape Town, South Africa ece-auto-gen The weather in Cape Town is warm and sunny, so this guarantees countless days on the beach. A lot of people are also thinking this, so you better book ASAP. However, don't expect an exciting safari experience as there are not a lot of animals out at this time of the year in South Africa. 4. Namibia ece-auto-gen Namibia is an exotic paradise, mostly overlooked by Africans. However, because of the rainy seasons, Northern Namibia is the place for you. Head straight up to Serra Cafema in Kaokoland and boat along the Kunene River (a surreal experience in the heart of the dry, wind-blown landscape), before seeking out desert-adapted elephant in the hills around Haonib Valley Camp, and you can even get a flying safari experience. 5. Kenya ece-auto-gen The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Dan-Ali had on Thursday briefed President Buhari on security development across the country. He also briefed him about the recent killings of some Nigerian soldiers by the Islamic West Africa Province, a breakaway Boko Haram sect, operating along Nigeria Chad border. AFP had quoted security sources on Nov. 21, saying no less than 44 soldiers were killed during the attacks, which occurred at Metele, a remote village bordering Nigeria and Chad. Diplomatic sources, however, told NAN that the Minister of Defence would also be meeting his Chadian counterpart during his mission to Chad, to identify what had led to the recent increase in Boko Haram terrorism in the area. The sources, who preferred not to be named, said: Nigeria has a Chad problem in the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) put together to secure the Lake Chad Basin area and repeal the Boko Haram terrorism attacks against all the countries neighbouring the lake. According to the sources, Chad is believed to have its own internal security challenges and this has reportedly led to their pulling away their troops manning their own border around Lake Chad. That lacuna is being exploited by the Boko Haram terrorists, who go in and out of Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon to launch terrorist acts. This is a clear illustration of the fact that terrorism is beyond national borders, the sources added. The News Agency of Nigeria, (NAN) reports that, Datti-Babawo represents Sabongari federal constituency of Kaduna State on the platform of All Progressives Congress (APC) from 2003 to date. Muhammad-Alangade in his suit prayed the court to order the lawmaker to explain how he used the N1.5 billion constituency allowance between 2011 and 2015. In his submission, counsel to the defendant, Aminu A. D. argued that the court has no jurisdiction to hear the case considering the amount of money involved. Responding to the submission, Muhammad-Alangade requested for time to prepare and counter the submission of the defendants counsel. The judge, Mohammed Ibrahim-Inuwa, adjourned the case until Dec. 6 for further hearing. Briefing Journalists shortly after the sitting, Muhammad-Alangade said: we want Rep. Mohammed Datti Babawo to explain to us what he did with N1.5 billion he received for his consituents from 2011 to 2015." Also speaking, counsel to the defendant, Aminu A. D. said : you cant drag a federal lawmaker or a governor to Sharia court. the court has no jurisdiction over this matter. Under Nigerian laws, State Governors, the President and his Deputy are shielded from prosecution while in office. Ganduje has starred in a series of videos first published by Daily Nigerian boss, Jafaar Jafaar in October. In the videos, receiving wads of dollar notes as kickbacks from contractors, before stuffing them into his Babaringa (a traditional outfit worn by men of northern extraction). The Daily Nigerian says the first stash of $230,000 received by Ganduje was part of a series of cash advancement to the governor in a total bribery deal of $5million. The governor has slammed the videosas cloned and doctored. Ganduje has also dragged Jafaar to court for defamation. Here's what EFCC said about Ganduje bribery allegation During a Twitter interactive session organised by Tap Nitiative for Citizens Development, a public accountability think-tank, the EFCC posted the following on its official account: The governor is still serving and constitutionally is covered by immunity. Being that as it may, the matter is in the instance sub judice. 'Sub judice' here means that the EFCC would not publicly comment on the Ganduje bribery allegation because the case is currently in a court of competent jurisdiction. ece-auto-gen Investigation of anyone for an alleged fraud remains a covert process, the EFCC added. A court has stoppedthe Kano State House of Assembly from proceeding with its probe of the videos. Dismissing the Ganduje question On Monday, November 12, 2018, acting EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Magu,dismissed a question on Ganduje as posed by a journalist during a press briefing. Next question please, Magu bellowed into the room. President Muhammadu Buhari who won the 2015 election partly on the back of a promise to crack down on endemic graft in Africas most populous nation, has also not publicly commented on the Ganduje videos. Jonathan lost an opportunity to retain power at the 2015 presidential poll after losing to the incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari who blames him for mismanagement and a declining economy. Buhari makes his thoughts known in a statement released through Mr Garba Shehu, his Senior Special Assistant on Media & Publicity. On Tuesday, November 20, 2018, President Jonathan launches a book "My Transition Hours" which mirrors his past exploits in government. "As evidenced from a fleeting look at the book, the former President had nothing to say about his own achievements. If there was a recession, and yes we had a moment in it, was it due to one year of President Buharis government? "In his efforts to blame everyone but himself for his failures, Dr Jonathan heaped the blame for the predictable economic recession on President Buhari, ignoring the seeds sown under him through mismanagement and the process set in firm roots for the decline of the economy. Evidently, he did nothing to avert the situation," says Shehu in a report by Punch News. Earlier, Buhari's Personal Assistant on New Media, Bashir Ahmad, described Jonathan's text "My Transition Hours" as one filled with hate speech. Ahmad took to Twitter on Friday, November 23, to express his disappointment with the content of the book. The 61-year-old made this disclosure in his new book, titled "My Transition Hours", which he launched on Tuesday, November 20, 2018. He said the group used Islam to achieve their own personal and group goals which he described as "not only heinous and dastardly but also political". "At this juncture, it may be prudent to state that one of their demands was that I abandon my Christian faith and accept Islam. In other words, they wanted a Muslim President for Nigeria amongst others," he wrote. While he never specified when this demand was made, he wrote about it in the fourth chapter of the book titled "The Chibok School Girls Affair" where he wrote about the events surrounding the kidnapping of 278 girls from Government Secondary School in the town of Chibok, Borno State, in 2014. While further describing the activities of Boko Haram during his tenure, Jonathan said the group is well-funded by wealthy individuals who "wholly or in part support their Jihadi intentions". Jonathan's loss in the 2015 presidential election is partly blamed on his inability to properly deal with the terrorist group, a situation made worse by the abduction of the Chibok Girls which gained global attention. Nigeria is home to an estimated 6,900 terrorist fighters, report indicates Since Boko Haram's insurgency escalated in 2009, the group has killed tens of thousands of Nigerians as well as displaced millions who are scattered in internally displaced person's camps. ece-auto-gen Even though President Muhammadu Buhari declared in 2015 that Boko Haram had been technically defeated, the group has carried out several deadly attacks since then, with an increase in the number of attacks on troops happening in 2018. According to a report by a United States-based think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Nigeria belongs in the group of countries experiencing a significantly high amount of violence due to terrorist activities, most notably from Boko Haram and its faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). The report constructed a data set of terrorist groups and fighters from 1980 to 2018 and estimated Nigeria's number of terrorist fighters to be between 3,450 and 6,900. The report noted that most countries, including Nigeria, who are most impacted by terrorist activities are at or near the bottom 10% of countries worldwide in terms of government effectiveness. "Most are also in the bottom 10% of countries worldwide in other governance indicators, such as control of corruption," the report read. NAN reports that Rep Ezenwa Onyewuchi, Chairman, House Committee on Labour, Employment and Productivity, had earlier corroborated NaAllahs statement. President Muhammadu Buhari had on Nov. 27, 2017, set up a 30-man National Minimum Wage Committee headed by former Head of Service of the Federation, Ms Amal Pepple. The committee had recommended a N30, 000 minimum wage for workers but the governors, who argued that they were not carried along, insisted it would be impossible for them to implement without reducing their workforce. The senator told NAN that the National Assembly would protect the interest of the Nigerian workers by giving the minimum wage bill quick passage when President Buhari forwarded it. The disposition of the National Assembly is to do what the Nigerian public wants and what is in conformity with the acceptable standard. I assure you it (the bill) will receive expeditious hearing, he said In a letter dated November 22, 2018 and signed by the First Secretary and Head of Chancery, Helen Nzeako, on behalf of the Mission, the decision was due to directives from Headquarters to restructure its operations for efficiency and productivity. She explained that the decision to reduce staff strength is an act of compliance with the approved ceilings in Nigeria's Missions abroad. While the date of termination was noted to have been effected from January 1, 2018, the termination date was set at December 21, 2018. "I am directed to inform that the High Commission in its efforts to restructure its operations for efficiency and productivity, taking into consideration the budgetary constraints, as well as Headquarters directives to reduce the staff strength and comply with the approved ceilings in our Missions abroad, has decided to terminate your appointment notionally with effect from 1st January, 2018," the letter read. Nzeako assured in the letter that necessary arrangements have been made to pay entitlements, including the one month's notice during which the affected staff members are expected to work. "I am also to emphasise that this letter hereby supercedes any other letter of contract appointments or renewal of appointment issued earlier by the High Commission," the letter affirmed. Nzeako also noted in the letter that any member of staff who is interested in continuing to serve the Mission beyond December may wish to apply for a contract appointment. Dismissal generates discontent According to a report by Vanguard, the termination was a reaction to relentless outcry from the staff members who have not been paid their salaries for most of the year. Nine police officers and 24 others lost their lives when a group of around 30 armed robbers attacked Union Bank, Eco Bank, Guaranty Trust Bank, First Bank, Zenith Bank and Ibolo Micro Finance Bank, as well as the Owode Police Station in Offa, Kwara State on April 5, 2018. Even though Adikwu was arrested in Kwara in May, he was never paraded to the media like all the other suspects arrested in connection with the robbery, fueling speculation that he had been killed, speculations dismissed by the Police. However, Police authorities confirmed this week that Adikwu has died in custody, leading to public outcry as to the circumstances of his death. To clear the air on what happened, the Force Public Relations Officer, Jimoh Moshood, disclosed in a statement on Thursday, November 22, 2018, that the suspect died after slumping in detention. "Michael Adikwu was not murdered but slumped and died in detention while investigation into the Offa Bank Robbery was ongoing," he said. "There is a post-mortem examination result in respect of the death of Michael Adikwu," he added. Adikwu was attached to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Kwara State Police Command before he was dismissed in 2012 for aiding the escape of some robbery suspects. He was arraigned in court and spent about three years in prison before he made his way out in unclear circumstances. Why Adikwu killed police officers, others Adikwu allegedly confessed to killing 22 people during the bloody robbery incident because he was bitter over how he was dismissed from the police force. According to confessions from other suspects, Adikwu led the attack on the police station to kill police officers. Fellow suspect, Ibikunle Ogunleye, aka Arrow, had previously told police officers that Adikwu led a team of four to the station and single-handedly killed all the nine officers that were victims of the attack. Ogunleyeis quoted to have said, "I was among the three people that entered the police station with Adikwu, but I didn't shoot or kill anyone. It was Adikwu that shot and killed all the policemen. He went from one office to the other, killing everyone. We only gave him cover." When he was paraded by the police on June 3, 2018, Ogunleye said Adikwu was loudly proclaiming his resentment for the force while the Offa robbery operation was going on. He said, "The dismissed police officer, Michael (Adikwu), was shouting that day that the Nigerian police dismissed him, that they collect job from his hand, that he'll do them shege. That was the language he used." ALSO READ: Offa robber killed 5 people because they threw stones at him and called him a thief Adikwu supplied guns for Offa robbery 37-year-old Ayoade Akinnibosun, who has been identified to be the man that coordinated the operation, also confessed that Adikwu provided the gang some of the firearms used for the robbery. ece-auto-gen He said, "That fateful day, it was me, this man sitting beside me here (Ogunleye), Adex, Stand Well Well, and Niyi; it was the five of us. I came to join them at Ajase then we took off with a Mercedes Benz to Offa. "On getting there I now positioned everybody; me I stood at that junction, that Total filling station there. On getting to that filling station, we now met that Michael, that dismissed police officer. On getting to meet Michael, Michael came down from one Audi, there was a Nissan parked in front of us, he now came out of that Audi and threw his hands we now saw him and parked at the back of that Nissan. He now came out and brought guns out of that Nissan, five AK-47s, and gave it to us. Then I shared it between the five of us inside our Benz." ALSO READ: Watch footage of Offa bank robbery that claimed over 30 lives Nine police officers and at least 24 others lost their lives when a group of around 30 armed robbers attacked Union Bank, Eco Bank, Guaranty Trust Bank, First Bank, Zenith Bank and Ibolo Micro Finance Bank,as well as the Owode Police Station in Offa, Kwara State, on April 5, 2018. After 22 suspects were arrested in connection to the robbery, Police authorities had paraded the main gang leaders as Ayoade Akinnibosun (aka, AY), Ibikunle Ogunleye (aka Arrow), Adeola Abraham, Salawudeen Azeez, and Niyi Ogundiran. ece-auto-gen During the course of investigations, the main gang leader, Akinnibosun, named Saraki and incumbent Kwara governor, Abdulfatah Ahmed, as his gang's political sponsors. Days after the first parade of the suspects in Abuja, the police paraded the gang leaders again and disclosed that two more suspects had implicated the senate president as a sponsor of political thuggery. Saraki was involved in a public spat with the Police in July after he was invited for questioining over the allegations. That spat has now resurfaced after the revelation this week that one of the prime suspects in the case died in Police detention while undergoing questioning. Police authorities had revealed that Michael Adikwu, a former police officer who killed 22 people during the Offa robbery attack, slumped and died in custody, leading to public outcry as to the circumstances of his death. ece-auto-gen In a statement by Saraki's spokesperson, Yusuph Olaniyonu, the senate president called for an inquiry into the circumstances of Adikwu's death. He also said his mysterious death proves that the authorities are simply using the robbery incident to politically sabotage him. "We believe the answer to these questions will help the country to address the issue of human rights abuse, extra-judicial killing, manipulation of criminal investigation to achieve political end, deliberate attempt to cover up some facts and how skewed investigation of crime can impact on successful prosecution of suspects," the statement read. Police say Saraki still on the hook In reaction to Saraki's statement, Force Public Relations Officer, Jimoh Moshood, said Adikwu's death does not vindicate Saraki in any way. The Police explained that Adikwu is not linked to the case it is building against the Saraki; therefore, his death does not change the status of his probe. Moshood said the five gang leaders who have indicted Saraki are alive and already arraigned before an Ilorin High Court in Kwara. ece-auto-gen Moshood also assured the public that the probe against Saraki is not politically-motivated but a "purely criminal case". The statement partly read, "Consequent on all the above, a thorough and discreet investigation was concluded by the Police into the matter and all the Five (5) gang leaders namely; Ayoade Akinnibosun, Ibikunle Ogunleye, Adeola Abraham, Salawudeen Azeez, Niyi Ogundiran arrested for direct involvement and active participation in the Offa Bank Robbery that indicted and implicated Senator Bukola Saraki, Senate President Federal Republic of Nigeria in the Offa Bank Robbery are alive and now in Court. "The indictment of the Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki from the confessions of the Five (5) gang leaders namely; Ayoade Akinnibosun, Ibikunle Ogunleye, Adeola Abraham, Salawudeen Azeez, Niyi Ogundiran arrested for direct involvement and active participation in the Offa Bank Robbery was not politically motivated as alleged by Mr. Yusuf Olaniyonu, Special Adviser (Media and Publicity) to the Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki to the media, but purely criminal case. "It should be of serious concern to all, that human life is sacrosanct and where investigation has been concluded and suspects arraigned in Court, judicial process must be exhausted and not hindered for the law to take its course in ensuring justice for the families of more than Thirty Three (33) innocent persons including pregnant women that were gruesomely murdered in cold blood by Michael Adikwu and the Five (5) gang leaders Ayoade Akinnibosun, Ibikunle Ogunleye, Adeola Abraham, Salawudeen Azeez, Niyi Ogundiran arrested, investigated and currently standing trial for direct involvement and active participation in the Offa Bank Robbery, than for any individual(s) or any group to attempt futile efforts and desperate distractions to pervert the end of justice is most unfair to the families of the deceased, the State and the society at large." Saraki's alleged connection to the gang includes a Lexus jeep GX-300, which was used during the robbery, which Akinnibosun claimed was a gift from the senate president which he received through Ahmed's Chief of Staff, Yusuf Abdulwahab, who was also arrested in connection to the robbery. ece-auto-gen Furthermore, the Police alleged that all the five gang leaders that confessed to having a direct connection to Saraki were also at his daughter's wedding ceremony in Abuja. Moshood also claimed that Akinnibosun, Ogunleye and Abraham followed the senate president to the Olofa of Offa's palace when he paid a condolence visit to the town after the bank robbery.The Police Force has also claimed that the gang leaders confessed to have been sponsored by Saraki and Governor Ahmed with firearms, money and operational vehicles. Following the death of the gang leader, Michael Adikwu, who died in police custody, the public relations officer of the force, Jimoh Moshood, said Adikwu's death does not vindicate Saraki in any way. The Police explained that Adikwu is not linked to the case it is building against the Saraki; therefore, his death does not change the status of his probe. Moshood said the five gang leaders who have indicted Saraki are alive and already arraigned before an Ilorin High Court in Kwara. Saraki reacts to police claim Reacting to police claim Saraki said the response of the police to his call for an inquiry into how the suspect died was a mere diversionary tactic aimed at evading the serious issues of human rights abuse, extra-judicial killing and politicisation of criminal investigations. In a statement released by his special adviser on media and publicity, Yusuph Olaniyonu, Saraki alleged that the Police in a cover up of its mishandling of the investigations and their politicization of the process, have continued to make inconsistent statements and commit more blunders. "The Police while reacting to our disclosure that the prime suspect had died in custody, caused their spokesman, Moshood Jimoh, to respond that: 'Michael Adikwu is in police custody in one of the South-west states...helping in the investigation'. The same Police has equally documented the claim that the suspect died during arrest. What a contradiction! "It is surprising that the Police which initially allowed the said Adikwu to grant interviews to several national newspapers while in custody refused to inform the public that the suspect had died until the Attorney General of Kwara State mentioned it on November 21, 2018 in the course of his address to the High Court in Ilorin while applying to amend the charge sheet", he stated. The senate president called on President Muhammadu Buhari on the need to institute inquiry on the the death of Adikwu adding that it has several implications for the country's legal system and its engagement with the international community which has consistently cited the issues of human rights abuse and extra-judicial killing by security forces as major reasons for their reluctance to sell arms to Nigeria in the fight against Boko Haram. The Comptroller-General of Customs, Retired Col. Hameed Ali, told journalists in Lagos the seizure had a Duty Paid Value (DPV) of N3,13 billion. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Fridays seizure came barely 24 hours after the customs said it impounded 40 containers with Tramadol with Duty Paid Value of N7.3 billion at Apapa port. According to him, 10 of the 40ft containers contained tramadol, Ciprofloxacin capsules, Diclofenac Sodium tablets, Soffeathe, IV Cannula, Sidenfil Citrate tablets; one 40ft container had bleaching soaps; and two other containers of second-hand clothes. Ali was represented by the Deputy Comptroller-General in charge of Enforcement, Mr Austin Chidi. It is pertinent to note that two of the containers had earlier been handed over to National Agency for Food Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) on Oct. 11 and Oct. 20. A container of tramadol was also handed over to National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) on the Nov. 2. The service wishes to reiterate its concern for the health and security of Nigerians and would better imagine the devastating effect on the lives of our youths if this quantity of unwholesome drugs had found their way into the markets. Such goods could not only lead to increased insecurity but will impact negative on health of our youths. We want to re-assure the nation that Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) will not renege on its mandate irrespective of its circumstances, Ali said. He said Tin-Can Island command remained a trail-blazer in the introduction and application of Time Release Studies (TRS) for evaluation of officers to ensure that needless delays were identified and regularised to achieve 48-hour cargo clearance. Ali commended the Area Controller, Comptroller Musa Mohammed and all officers and men of the command for their commitment which reflected in the revenue records. Ali disclosed this while addressing newsmen in Lagos on intercepted pharmaceutical products, including tramadol. According to him, the service is able to achieve the feat through vigilance and intelligence gathering within the system as well as information from the National Agency for Foods, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), a strong ally of the NCS. "I commend the Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye and her management team for their collaboration in the attainment of the interception. "It is indeed worrisome to note that there are Nigerians who are ready to make money at the expense of human lives by bringing in such quantity of drugs that have grave consequences on health and national security. "In the criminal desperation, importers of these items offered bribes to the tune of N150 million to my officers to effect the release of just one 40ft container with promises of even bigger sums to follow in the event that their attempt succeeds. "The officers played along and eventually arrested three suspects with the money," Ali said. He reiterated that the ongoing interception of Tramadol and other pharmaceutical products with the bribe and the three suspects would be thoroughly investigated, to bring all those remotely connected to justice. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) recently uncovered 340 million Tramadol tablets in 12 containers at the Apapa Port in Lagos. The tablets, which were in various dosages, ranged from 120 milligrammes to 250 milligrammes, were recovered from 12 containers at the Port. The Comptroller-General said officers of the Apapa command and the Federal Operations Unit (FOU), Zone A, turned down $412,000 worth of bribe money offered them. Ali said that Apapa command, within the same period, had also seized two aircraft, a helicopter with Registration number SN-BLI which was intended for export, in container number PONU7789246. He said that it was falsely declared as 388 barges of cashew nuts, adding that the action violated section 36 of the Customs and Excise Management Act (CEMA), Cap C45, LFN 2004 and investigation was ongoing to fish out the owner. He explained that the second aircraft, a Cesena 182A imported from the U.S. was declared through SGD NO. C130308. He said it was seized because of the failure of the owners to present End User Certificate from the office of the National Security Officer and approval from the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority. According to him, this is a contravention of Section 46 of CEMA, Cap C45, LPN 2004. Ali expressed concern about the importation of tramadol and other illicit items which posed great risk to the security and health of Nigerians. "We are all aware of the dangers that the deliberate non-compliance with import and export procedures pose to our nation as importers bring in all manner of items which put the security and health of the nation at great risk. "Terrorists, kidnappers and other criminal elements get hold of these uncustoms goods such as controlled drugs to perpetrate their heinous activities. "It is worrisome to note that there are Nigerians who are ready to make money at the expense of human lives by bringing in such quantity of drugs that have grave consequences on health and national security. "The Service is making concerted efforts to ensure that maximum revenue is collected and also to safeguard the security and well-being of the citizenry," he said. While the seizures of dangerous drugs and aircraft demonstrate NCS crucial contributions to national economy, security and well-being of Nigerians, the rejection of N150 million bribe, presents a picture of a reformed NCS whose operatives are increasingly putting national interest above selves. He gave an assurance that investigation was ongoing to bring all those remotely connected to justice. Ali also commended the Commander, NNS Beecroft Naval Base Apapa, Commodore Eyo as well as Commissioner of Police, Western Marine Command and his men for providing enabling environment. He, however, commended the Customs Area Controllers of Apapa and the Federal Operation Units Zone 'A' as well as officers and men of the commands for their exemplary commitment to duty. The event was a town hall meeting/presidential debate organised by the Osasu Show Symposium in Abuja. Daily Post reports that President Buhari, who was invited as one of the debaters, shunned the event and sent no representative as well. Amaechi, a member of the audience, got up to speak. This was what got the crowd worked up apparently. They didnt want Amaechi speaking for Buhari. They wanted Buhari in here to speak for himself. But Amaechi would not be stopped. Again, lets lean on Daily Posts account of events for a moment: The Minister, who was not part of the debaters, took to the stage to mock the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, over his plan to privatize the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC. He alleged that Atikus plan of privatizing the state-owned oil company was laced with corrupt intentions. Afterwards, he went further to attempt a reel out of President Buharis achievements in office but was met with the resistance of the audience. The audience booed him and shouted sit down! sit down! for as long as Amaechi tried to speak in praise of the government. Overwhelmed by the apparent anti-Buhari chants, the Minister caved into the pressure and took his seat. Oh well. Theres actually another presidential debate slated for the dates in this link Hopefully, the president finds the time to attend this one. Uja made the call while addressing newsmen on Friday in Abuja on the commissions Areopagus Pilgrimage Open House billed for Tuesday in the federal capital. He said that politicians should bear in mind that it was only God that gave power and He would be the ultimate decider in the polls. He appealed to every Nigerian of voting age to go out and vote, pointing out that it was a civic irresponsibility for eligible Nigerians not to vote. Uja stressed that the 2019 elections should be issues-based and devoid of foul language. He advised politicians to do their campaigns with integrity and show respect for other candidates. He said, Nobody should intimidate anybody or the voting community. Politicians should know that no election ends and that every election is a preparation for another election, therefore, nobody should kill others in the course of the 2019 elections. All those who mean well for Nigeria should pray for 2019 elections. The executive secretary noted that the commission would organise pilgrimage prayers in Jerusalem and in Nigeria in January, for the 2019 general elections. He stated that NCPC was working to ensure a more effective Christian pilgrimage, adding that the trip should go beyond visiting sites and shopping to transferring into Nigerians the right spirit to build the country. "They came and took away all our grain," Ostapenko told AFP. Officers also took away her father, who was sentenced to five years in a northern Russian prison camp because he was a landowner. Ostapenko's mother was left to raise five children as authorities confiscated supplies to meet centralised targets. Her mother saw no option but to send Ostapenko to live with a family in a village near their native Kozliv, some 60 kilometres (40 miles) southeast of Kiev. They hoped that the daughter would return once the famine was over. But weeks after the girl left, her mother and youngest brother died of starvation. Her mother "came to see how I was... then returned to her village, and later I was told she had passed away," Ostapenko remembers as she sits in the Kiev flat she now shares with own daughter. 'Genocide' The death toll of the famine -- known as the "Holodomor" in Ukrainian -- remains debated among historians. But Kiev authorities estimate the number of those who died at around four million, or 13 percent of the total population at the time. Kiev has recognised this as a genocide against the Ukrainian people by Stalin's regime, specifically aimed at eradicating the country's peasantry. More than 15 countries recognise that view of events. AFP Now dozens of stories like Ostapenko's have been gathered in a book published to coincide with the 85th anniversary of the Holodomor. The national day of remembrance of the famine is on Saturday. The book, "Humanity in an Inhumane Time", focuses on the people who saved others from dying of hunger. It brings together testimonies from teachers, collective farm chairmen and ordinary villages who used sparse resources to help others survive. Jailed for feeding children Ostapenko's saviour was Yegor Kryvenko, whose work as a mechanic at a local mill allowed him to secure some extra flour for his family. "I just met kind people," Ostapenko said of the father-of-two who offered to take her in when her own mother could no longer support her. "He divided everything that was stored equally, down to the last gramme," she said. "It has to be shared," she recalled Kryvenko saying as he divided up a few dozen small potatoes between her and his own children. This would be almost all the food they would see for several weeks. "And when the (requisitioned) grain was being loaded onto the wagons, it would scatter and I'd go pick it up to bring it home," she said. "There were very difficult years. Let them no longer return to our people." AFP Volodymyr Tylischak, one of the authors of the book to mark the anniversary, said many of those who helped others were sentenced to long jail terms. Some of them dared to gather crops and hand them out to peasants, while others secretly organised meals for children in schools. "Even in the most dire conditions there were those who had the courage to resist," Tylischak said. "They saved lives. One, several or the whole community -- depending on what opportunities they had," said Viktoriya Yaremenko, a historian who also worked on the book. "The ideas he professes display a massive break" with diplomacy, said Fernanda Magnotta, a specialist in international relations at FAAP, one of the top higher education institutions in Sao Paulo. Once his surprise appointment was announced last week, analysts gorged on Araujo's Metapolitica 17 blog that raged "against globalization." Lauded as "a brilliant intellectual" by Bolsonaro, Araujo has been bold in his radical stances: chauvinism allied to the virulent rejection of multilateralism and "cultural Marxism" that has "influenced the scientific dogma of global warming." Brazil has "given up being a great power" due to its "obedience to the world order," Araujo says on his blog. "The ultimate aim of globalization is to break the link between God and man." 'Trump can save the West' Just like Bolsonaro, Araujo is a fervent admirer of US President Donald Trump, whom he believes can "save the West." He's even gone so far as to adapt Trump's "America First" slogan into "Brazil First." AFP Such close ties between the two countries would allow Washington to further isolate its socialist foes Cuba and Venezuela, which enjoyed better relationships under Brazil's 13-year reign of the Workers Party (PT) or "Project Totalitarianism" as Araujo renamed it. And the closer ties to China that were encouraged under the PT's iconic but now-jailed leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will likely be reeled in unceremoniously. Araujo believes Brazil must resist a China "that will dominate the world." Bolsonaro had already alienated China by accusing the world's second biggest economy of "buying Brazil," and then turning his attentions to Taiwan, which he visited in February. Beijing considers Taiwan a renegade province. By burning bridges built under the Lula government, "we're going to see a very close alignment with the American regime," said Monica Herz, a professor of international relations at Rio de Janeiro's PUC Catholic university. "The relationships with Latin America could suffer. The biggest worry is China but also Europe," which Araujo has branded as "culturally empty." Bolsonaro, advised by Araujo, will be playing a dangerous game. "To ignore the importance of China or the Arab world could be devastating not just in diplomatic terms but also for the Brazilian economy," said Magnotta. AFP Brazil is the largest exporter of halal meat and the pledged transfer of its Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is a deeply unpopular move -- one already taken by Trump -- amongst majority-Muslim Arab countries. Likewise, China's importance to Brazil's production industry is unquestionable. "In 2017, China was the first market for Brazilian exports with $47 billion in revenue, from soy to iron," said Magnotta. Alienating China would likely be an unpopular move in Brazil's Congress. Bolsonaro's controversial measures could face "strong resistance, in particular from his economic team and the agrobusiness lobby" whose support in Congress he needs to be able to govern. Similarly Araujo's own views face "strong opposition" in the foreign office where there is a "tradition based on the principles of multilateralism." 'Criminalizing everything' AFP Araujo is unlikely to promote bilateral domestic political harmony either, as his hatred of the PT is rivaled only by Bolsonaro's. On his blog, he has accused the PT of "criminalizing everything that is good and pure: family, private property, heterosexual sex, belief in God and patriotism... even red meat, air conditioning, oil and all efficient and cheap energy" in the name of global warming. Bolsonaro, who pledged to quit the Paris Climate Accord, now has a powerful fellow global warming skeptic at his side. For Herz, Araujo was picked because he "clearly expresses the world vision" that Bolsonaro espouses. "They were looking for someone who speaks to their foundation, with ultra-conservative values and strong interaction between religion and politics." He died on Wednesday after a "long and serious illness," the ministry said. Korobov's 57-year-old first deputy, Vice Admiral Igor Kostyukov, has been appointed acting GRU chief and is likely become his successor, state news agency TASS said, citing a military source. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu expressed his condolences. "The dear memory of this great man, a faithful Russian son and a patriot of the Motherland... will remain forever in our hearts," the defence ministry said in a statement. The West has accused the powerful agency of carrying out a number of attacks on foreign soil, including the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with a Soviet-designed nerve agent in Britain in March. Washington has said the GRU was directly involved in interfering in the 2016 US election through "cyber-enabled activities", while the Netherlands has said they had thwarted a GRU attack on the OPCW global chemical weapons watchdog. Russia has denied the charges. First seaman as chief? Korobov did not participate in a gala marking the centenary of the service in early November when Russian President Vladimir Putin heaped praise on the GRU. Korobov's first deputy Kostyukov, who is thought to be in charge of Russia's Syria operations at the GRU, reportedly presided over the ceremony. "If he is appointed, then he will be the first naval seaman in the history of the GRU to become a military intelligence chief," TASS quoted its source as saying. Korobov, who joined military intelligence in 1985, received the Hero of Russia decoration for his service. Independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer described Korobov as an "intellectual" who spoke several foreign languages. He was hard-pressed to say whether his successor would usher in any changes, saying the GRU reported to Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov, Shoigu and Putin. "It looks like there are no any major changes on the horizon," he told AFP. Korobov's predecessor, Igor Sergun, died unexpectedly in January 2016. Some reports said he was killed in Lebanon while on a mission. Many analysts have derided the GRU for a series of recent blunders including the attack on the Skripals in Salisbury that also killed a British woman and poisoned her partner. London identified the suspected attackers as GRU agents. After Putin publicly urged them to appear on television, they told state-funded RT channel they travelled to the British city as tourists to admire its famous cathedral. The same month Korobov was reportedly summoned by Putin and felt unwell afterwards. 'Professionalism and bravery' But at the November gala, Putin praised the agency's "unique capabilities," saying Russian military spies helped turn around the war in Syria. AFP "I am sure of your professionalism, personal bravery and decisiveness. That each of you will do everything for Russia and our people," he told the GRU staff. The GRU is one of Moscow's three spy agencies, along with the SVR foreign intelligence agency and the FSB security service. Established in 1918, the GRU was considered a rival to the KGB in the Soviet era. It has an extensive spy network abroad and its highly trained "spetsnaz" special forces have fought in various conflicts, including in Afghanistan and Chechnya. It is also believed to be active in Ukraine and elsewhere. Very little is known about the agency. Its structure, staff numbers and finances are a state secret. Its emblem is a black bat flying above a globe. Demirtas, 45, one of two former co-leaders of the leftist Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), was arrested in November 2016 over alleged links to Kurdish militants. The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday urged Ankara to release Demirtas -- who hailed the move as "legal acknowledgement of my status as a political hostage". The court accepted Demirtas had been arrested on "reasonable suspicion" of having committed a crime, but said the reasons given for keeping him behind bars were not "sufficient". At a press conference with Cavusoglu in Ankara, Mogherini said on Thursday: "We hope he will be released shortly." Demirtas denies all the charges and claims the case against him is politically motivated. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejected the European court's finding. "The decisions delivered by the ECHR do not bind us," he said. Demirtas on Friday accused the government of putting "political pressure" on the Turkish appeals court to uphold his "completely unlawful" sentence, in a statement released by his party. "We are witnessing a clear political intervention," he said. "The aim here is to sentence me with another contrived political decision to keep me imprisoned, before the ECHR implements its decision." But he remained defiant, saying: "We will never bow down, and we will stand tall with determination, our spirits high." WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. Helping Indiana become the countrys biggest brain gain state is the goal of an initiative being launched by President Mitch Daniels and Purdue University. Daniels reported positive results from a pilot of the Purdue Brain Gain Initiative during remarks Tuesday (Nov. 13) in Indianapolis, where he received the Indiana Chamber of Commerce 2018 Business Leader of the Year Award. The Purdue Brain Gain Initiative seeks to invite some of the best talent from around the country Purdue alumni to move back to Indiana, where there is a critical need for qualified, experienced talent. A few years ago, Indiana reached the top tier in every ranking of good business climates, but the one category where we lag, as our governor points out at every opportunity, is in having sufficient human capital, Daniels said. A strong initial response to a pilot outreach program brought more than 220 individuals interested in finding professional opportunities in Indiana. Serious conversations now are under way, Daniels said, with a number of expatriate Boilermakers, including scientists, a legal counsel, a marketing executive and a research physician, for next steps in presenting high-priority candidates to partner companies. The Initiative is partnering with TMAP, an Indiana startup founded by Purdue alumnus and former trustee Bill Oesterle to connect interested job candidates with appropriate business opportunities. Last week, Daniels sent a letter to 278 companies in Indiana inviting them to join the program. The initiative is ready to scale up. Next, Daniels will invite other universities statewide to participate and will recruit more companies to the effort. Fifteen years ago, many of us adopted as our central goal, the reversal of the states brain drain, Daniels said. Since that time, Indianas population has begun outgrowing our neighbors, including a net in-migration of college graduates, but its not nearly enough. This initiative, if we do it right, will be the next great step in strengthening our Indiana community and economy. Media Contact: Jim Bush, 765-494-2077, jsbush@purdue.edu Source: Mitch Daniels, president@purdue.edu Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway did not get legal advice before making his decision to grant Karel Sroubek residency in New Zealand. On Thursday, Mr Lees-Galloway confirmed that the residency decision took 45 minutes. He told Parliament that his secretary and one INZ staffer attended the meeting. National's immigration spokesman Michael Woodhouse argues that the complicated residency application needed a much deeper dive than 45 minutes and additional experts. The more we find out about this case, the worse it gets for Mr Lees-Galloway, Mr Woodhouse told RadioLIVE. Sroubek came to New Zealand in 2003 on a false passport, and told officials that he had to flee his country after witnessing a murder. He was jailed in June 2016 for five years and nine months after a jury found him guilty of bringing Class-B MDMA powder into the country. His residency application was reviewed and granted on September 19. Mr Woodhouse, whos publicly condemned the decision since October, says the residency application contained elements that shouldve been reviewed by a lawyer. I wouldve thought the minister may have wanted some sort of expertise in the room, said Mr Woodhouse. Mr Lees-Galloway did not respond to questions on Thursday. Listen to the full interview with Michael Woodhouse above. The Long Lunch with Lynda Hallinan, 12pm - 3pm on RadioLIVE and streaming live to the rova app on Android and iPhone. RadioLIVE. Roman Quaedvlieg, former head of Australia's Border Force, shares why the Morrison government should block right-wing US provocateur Gavin McInnes from entering Australia next month because of the strong risk he will incite violence during his visit. Acting Defence Minister Andrew Little is seeking advice on how to ensure that the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) doesnt pursue costs against a sexual assault victim. The High Court ruled it's highly likely Mariya Taylor suffered assault and abuse at the hands of former Air Force (RNZAF) sergeant Robert Roper in the 1980s, including being locked in a tyre cage, prodded with an iron bar, and rubbed against and groped during car rides. But her case can't be heard because the statute of limitations has run out, and now the NZDF and Roper are seeking court costs of more than $200,000 from her. There is clearly something unfair and unjust about this, Mr Little told RadioLIVE on Friday. The minister says the pursuing of legal costs likely came down to lawyers deferring to legal technicalities of losing a High Court case. I think what happens sometimes is that the legal technicalities take over, Mr Little said. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Stuff that her "personal expectation" was that the NZDF would not collect the court fees from Ms Taylor. The NZDF refuses to comment while the matter is before the courts. If you have witnessed or experienced sexual harassment or assault and would like to speak to someone, you could call the HELP support service. Auckland: (09) 623 1700 or visit helpauckland.org.nz Wellington: (04) 801 6655 or visit wellingtonhelp.org.nz Other places to find help and support: Need to Talk? - Call or text 1737 Lifeline - 0800 543 354 or (09) 5222 999 within Auckland Youthline - 0800 376 633, text 234, email talk@youthline.co.nz or online chat Samaritans - 0800 726 666 Depression Helpline - 0800 111 757 Suicide Crisis Helpline - 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO) Listen to the full interview with Andrew Little above. Morning Talk with Mark Sainsbury, 9am - 12pm Weekdays and streaming live on 'rova' channel 9 - available on Android and iPhone. RadioLIVE. Woody Woodpecker, the beloved cartoon avian known for his distinct and infectious laughter, is making a comeback after a 16-year hiatus. New animated episodes of the Woody Woodpecker show are slated to air on three dedicated YouTube channels which are in Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish and English. These adventures are being developed 46 years after the last classic cartoons were released, and 16 years after the last modern Woody Woodpecker season. Each of the ten episodes will be five minutes long and will be available in December.The YouTube channels launched a year ago as the home of the long-beloved character, which was developed by Walter Lantz Productions and who is now owned by NBCUniversals Global Distribution division.When we launched Woody Woodpecker on YouTube in 2017, the channels immediately resonated, and the dedicated Portuguese channel for Brazil was a breakout hit; we knew there was a unique opportunity to do more with this favourite, classic character," said Rob Bell, EVP, International New Media, NBCUniversal Global Distribution. "With the Brazilian channel organically attracting over 2 million subscribers and the Spanish channel over 700,00 subscribers, coupled with extremely high engagement and watch time it was clear there was an appetite to build upon the strength of the existing intellectual property, and a strategic opportunity for us to create original content.Viewers of the Woody Woodpecker YouTube channels can access hundreds of videos, including the classic Woody adventures created from 1940-1972 and the modern seasons created after 1999. They also feature other favourite classic characters from Lantz, including Winnie, Buzz Buzzard, Wally Walrus, Andy Panda, Chilly Willy, Splinter and Knothead all of whom will also feature in the ten new episodes."Woody Woodpecker is my favourite impish trickster, said Zamm. It was an incredible honour to take a legacy character like this and create a whole new series of cartoons for him to star in. And it was also great to be able to include many of Walter Lantzs other beloved characters. It felt like we were getting the band back together."As part of the new series, Woody will travel to Brazil for two adventures. Also, a new, short documentary was created to complement the new cartoons.Bird Gone Wild: The Woody Woodpecker Story goes behind the scenes with the makers of the new cartoons and takes a look back at the origins of the beloved crazy bird. The 13-minute documentary will also be available on the YouTube channels in December. These rules, set by the UK Parliament, are intended to promote media plurality and prevent undue influence by any one, or certain types of, media owner.They include the national cross-media ownership rule, which (broadly) prevents large newspaper groups from owning a Channel 3 licence; the Channel 3 appointed news provider rule, which requires the regional Channel 3 licensees to appoint a single news provider; the Media Public Interest Test, which allows the Secretary of State to intervene in media mergers to determine whether the merger might result in harm to the public interest; and the Disqualified Persons Restrictions, which prevent certain bodies or persons from holding broadcast licences.Ofcom has a statutory duty to review the operation of these rules and report to the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport at least every three years and is required periodically to review whether the rules are operating effectively such as in the protracted case of the sale of Sky to Comcast. Looking at the framework in general, Ofcom says that the growth in online news and the consequent increase in the range of providers has the potential to strengthen plurality and reduce the influence of any one media owner. This it says raises the question as to whether the media ownership rules need to change because the public policy aim behind them - promoting plurality - might be less of a concern now.Ofcom says that given a climate of what it calls policy and regulatory uncertainty it does believe that now is the right time to recommend significant changes to the media ownership rules so as to extend regulation to cover online news providers. It adds in its judgement that it is important that any changes recommended as a result of its reviews provide clarity and predictability for the long term, and are targeted and proportionate to the risks identified. The regulators overall view is that its media ownership regime will need to be fundamentally reviewed once the shape of any Government intervention in this area is clearer. Even though it recognises the potential for an evolving online news market to bring about significant changes in the consumption and impact of different news providers, at the present time, Ofcom does not consider that the media ownership rules should be relaxed due to plurality being less of a concern. 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 , We're sorry, this article is not currently available John Barrow is a former congressman and Athens native running for Georgia Secretary of State. His race is one of two on the ballot in the Dec. 4 runoff due to no candidate winning more than 50 percent of the vote on Nov. 6. From Stranger Things to the comeback of mom jeans and films like Ready Player One, it seems like the 80s are making a comeback. Where the so-called tech poster boy slipped up badly was in gauging the level of transparency and governance that is expected by a global strategic investor, says Indrajit Gupta. Less than six months after their momentous deal with Walmart, both co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal are out of Flipkart. It is a sad commentary on the hubris and the immaturity thats gripped Indias high-flying tech entrepreneurs. Binny Bansals sudden, unceremonious exit has raised eyebrows across the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India, particularly in the tech heartland in Bengaluru. While he may have been the lesser known of the two Bansals, yet when Walmart bought 77 per cent stake in Flipkart, Indias biggest unicorn, earlier this year, they picked Binny as group CEO, and not Sachin. Sachin ran the firm with an iron hand and was known to rub people the wrong way. Binny, on the other hand, was affable and the hands-on operations leader. And between them, they became the poster boys of the Indian tech start-up world. And while the $16 billion deal with Walmart ought to have catapulted them into iconic status, yet, less than six months later, both find themselves out of the company they co-founded back in 2007. Since the full details werent in the public domain, there have been three kinds of public reactions to Binnys exit. One, the needle of suspicion pointed towards Walmart. That it always had plans to take full control of Flipkart - and that Binny became a necessary roadkill in that journey. Two, the board didnt see him as a leader who could help them turnaround the operations - and stem the mounting losses - and therefore there was an insidious plot to push him out of the company on trumped up charges. Three, a few strident swadeshi activists view this as some kind of a multinational vs desi tussle, however, misguided the thinking might sound. So which of these versions does one believe? First, here are the facts, based on what we know so far and my own research. Two years ago, Binny had an extra marital affair with a former employee. The relationship went sour and there were allegations of extortion and blackmail. Binny tried to manage the situation on his own by employing a security firm. He chose not to keep the company informed, perhaps because he believed this matter was in the personal domain. But thats not the serious personal misconduct that the Walmart alludes to. Well come to that in a bit. In July this year, the complainant sent a letter directly to Doug McMillion, the global CEO of Walmarts HQ in Bentonville, Arkansas, making allegations of sexual assault against Binny. That prompted Walmart to ask Gibson Dunn, a global law firm to do a thorough and detailed investigation. The investigation found that the allegations of sexual assault against Binny were unsubstantiated and that the relationship was consensual. But it found a serious lapse: An investigator from the security firm employed by Binny had called the woman for a meeting and had tried to physically assault her, but she escaped. When the lady informed him about the assault incident on email, in order to deal with a potential criminal case, instead of responding to her, Binny employed yet another security firm to put a lid on the matter. The second security firm tried to hammer out a monetary compensation. But it seems the lady demanded a much higher compensation. Why this matter resurfaced again in July this year, nearly two years after the event, remains a mystery, especially the decision to write to the Walmart global CEO. Interestingly, a copy of the complaint was also marked to Sachin Bansal, who was apparently among the handful of people who knew about the entire chain of events. After the Walmart takeover, the two Bansals were no longer on talking terms. When the full report of the detailed investigation was presented to him, Binny perhaps knew the die was cast for him. The biggest issue was that he had shown poor judgement by not disclosing the matter during the due diligence, which is usually a standard clause during such negotiations. And for a global firm such as Walmart, this posed a grave reputational risk. And it typically treated such matters strictly by the book. And so Binny had no option but to resign. As it is wont to do, Walmart had to put out a statement to the stock exchanges, to prevent any class action suits in future. (Later, the same day, however, Binny issued a statement expressing surprise at the allegations, claiming they were unfounded.) At the same time, Binny appears to have been given a soft landing. Despite his so-called serious lapse of judgement, he still gets to keep his board seat. Perhaps partly because he is legally entitled to one, commensurate with his 4 per cent stake. Now, lets step back and consider the bigger picture. In May this year, when Walmart made its move, there was plenty of hoopla and hype around the biggest exit in Indias start up ecosystem. Even before that, the Bansals were already seen as rockstars with numerous start up awards being conferred on them by media like confetti. Sachins fate was sealed immediately after the Walmart deal was signed. He assumed that he would be given a larger role in managing the company - and also demanded that his stake, which had been significantly diluted, be restored to a higher level. Tiger Global and the other investors responded by easing him out. Binny, however, didnt exhibit the same kind of hubris. But where he slipped up badly was in gauging the level of transparency and governance that is expected by a global strategic investor. The circumstances under which the so-called tech poster boys have been eased out of the company is clearly an embarrassment that Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem could have done without. Indrajit Gupta is co-founder, Founding Fuel Photograph: Abhishek N Chinnappa/Reuters The Ministry of Home Affairs amended its guidelines on October 12 to include the chairman, managing director or chief executive officer of each public sector bank on the list of authorities who can issue requests for opening look-out circulars against whom an FIR is yet to be filed. Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com The Union government has empowered chief executives of public sector banks (PSBs) to request a look-out circular (LoC) against wilful defaulters of loans in an effort to prevent them from fleeing the country, senior finance ministry officials said on Thursday. This is a significant step, given it will enable PSBs to alert authorities to stop wilful defaulters from escaping even before an FIR is registered against them by enforcement agencies. Big businessmen have fled the country in recent times, to avoid prosecution, thus leaving the government red-faced. Government officials said investigative agencies often took time to register an FIR, following a complaint against wilful defaulters from banks. We dont want to leave any window for defaulters to leave the country, said a finance ministry official. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) amended its guidelines on October 12 to include the chairman, managing director or chief executive officer of each public sector bank on the list of authorities who can issue requests for opening look-out circulars against whom an FIR is yet to be filed. Earlier, MHA guidelines empowered only the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Research and Analysis Wing, designated officers of Interpol and the Enforcement Directorate (ED), among others, to place a request for issuance of LOC. The MHA would then issue the LOC to all immigration check points of airports across the country. The guidelines, issued in December 2017, had in the larger public interest allowed immigration authorities to deny departure to a person seen as detrimental to the economic interests of India. The decision follows recommendations by a committee headed by Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar in a meeting held earlier this year. The committee was formed to suggest steps to prevent wilful loan defaulters from fleeing. The panel had recommended changes to the Passport Act, 1967, to ensure borrowers are stopped from fleeing and asked to participate in the resolution of a default loan account over a reasonably prescribed limit. The Minister of State for External Affairs, V K Singh, had informed Lok Sabha earlier this year that 28 people involved in financial irregularities and facing criminal investigation had either fled the country or were living abroad. The minister cited data that the CBI and ED had shared. The Centre has been making attempts to bring them back by issuing LOCs or making extradition requests to the country where they allegedly fled. The government has been attempting to bring back diamond traders Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi for their involvement in the Rs 14,300-crore Punjab National Bank fraud, which surfaced in February. While Choksi has been traced in Antigua, Nirav is believed to be in the UK. Apart from Nirav and Choksi, several industrialists including Vijay Mallya, founder of the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines, have fled the country before being declared wilful defaulters. The ED had moved court recently for declaring Sterling group promoters Nitin Sandesara, Chetan Sandesara, Dipti Sandesara and Hitesh Patel as fugitives in a money-laundering case, involving a bank fraud of Rs 8,100 crore. While the Sandesara family is believed to be in Nigeria, Patel has been traced in the US. As a precautionary measure, the Ministry of Finance had earlier this year directed state-owned banks to obtain passport details of borrowers who have availed of more than Rs 50 crore in loans. Congress President Rahul Gandhi has accused the government of helping Mallya, Nirav and Choksi escape the country. The Centre has countered the criticism by saying these loans were provided during the previous governments tenure, without following due diligence. 'This chief minister is so obstinate that he is ready to use the police to attain his goal.' 'Had he been more mature rather than obstinate, Kerala would not have reached a boiling point.' All you hear when you travel in south Kerala are discussions on what is happening in Sabarimala. While the number of devotees, especially those coming from neighbouring states, has reduced, Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party leaders make trips to the temple almost every day. Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com spoke to former Kerala home minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, below, who had returned from Sabarimala, to find out what is going on at the shrine. How does the Congress party in Kerala, and you personally, perceive the current situation in Sabarimala? If you look at the affidavit we had given in 2016 to the Supreme Court, you will know the Congress party's stand on allowing women in the age group of 10 to 50 at Sabarimala. Our stand is still the same; we said in the affidavit that we supported the high court judgment given by Justice Paripoornan of 1991 which was, women in the age group of 10 to 50 were not allowed to go to the temple. We still maintain that the ban on the entry of this group should continue. The Constitution says that 'reasonable restriction' can be done in cases like this. As per Article 26, religious places of all religions are given the right to maintain certain rituals. As Sabarimala comes under such religious places, it is possible to put certain restrictions like these, and this cannot be construed as going against rituals. That's why we in the Congress are very clear in our opinion. You have just returned from Sabarimala. Many say Sabarimala has become a war zone. Is it true? The biggest problem the state face right now is because of the obstinate decisions taken by (Chief Minister) Pinarayi Vijayan. I doubt whether there were any discussions on this issue within the (Chief Minister Vijayan's Communist Party of India-Marxist) party. If there was a discussion, the Devaswom Board would not have taken a different stance earlier. Also, some ministers within his ministry, like Kadakampally Surendran and A K Balan, also had a different opinion earlier, but they were forced to change their stand as Pinarayi Vijayan had only one opinion then and now: That women of all ages should be allowed to go to Sabarimala. But the issue is not that right now. When he said his government would support the entry of women of all ages, nobody expected women devotees of Kerala to oppose this. When they said they were ready to wait, he decided to bring women from somewhere to Sabarimala. The worrying aspect is he used the police to take these women there. There were 1,000 policemen protecting a woman called Rehana Fatima who was charged with 15 cases. In fact, the situation became uncontrollable after this incident. This chief minister is so obstinate that he is ready to use the police to attain his goal. That was when the women of Kerala descended onto the streets in lakhs chanting 'Swamiye Ayyappa'. Had the chief minister been a little more mature in his approach rather than obstinate, Kerala would not have reached a boiling point like this. My question is: If Pinarayi Vijayan had taken such arbitrary decisions against other communities, would they have accepted them? Has he ever tried doing so? No, he won't even try. The fact is every community has its own rituals and traditions which the members have been following for centuries. Why is Pinarayi Vijayan so stubborn about breaking the age-old traditions of the Hindu community? He says he wants reformation here. What kind of reformation is he talking about? There was a time in Kerala when reformation was needed and at that time, there was no Communist party. The Communist party had its birth in Kerala in 1939 and the Marxist party came into existence in Kerala in 1964. The temple entry declaration happened in Kerala in 1936 and the Vaikkom Satyagraham happened in 1924. What I want to say is the Communist party has absolutely no role in the reformation movement in Kerala. Thinking that people have forgotten what the reformation movement was, the Communist Party is trying hard to rewrite history. What is happening in Kerala right now is one person trying to wreck everything people believe in and the entire state has risen against these atrocities. Has it resulted in a political war of sorts? Yes, when we criticise the Marxist party, he says we are supporting the BJP. If the BJP is the party that is criticising them, he says the BJP is hand in hand with the Congress. What he is playing is the kind of tea shop politics you see in villages. A disintegration of Kerala is going to happen because of the kind of politics the Marxist party is playing. Ever since the Sabarimala issue started, not a single family in Kerala has slept peacefully. I myself received phone calls from hundreds of elderly women in my constituency asking me not to support the government on the Sabarimala issue. Were you surprised by the reaction from women? More than it surprising us, it surprised those who perceived this decision as part of a women's liberation movement. They might never have expected such opposition from the women of Kerala whom they wanted to liberate. Look at what Sreemathy teacher (P K Sreemathy, the CPI-M MP from Kannur in north Kerala) said at Pathanamthitta. She said, 'We gave a golden opportunity for you women to come out of chains, but you don't want to. I am sad that women of Kerala do not have the awareness or understanding'. What does it show? They (the Marxists) did not expect such a spontaneous reaction from the women of Kerala. It might really have shocked them. You were Kerala's home minister when the UDF was in power. Now, we see the police outnumbering devotees in Sabarimala. They are reportedly at the Sannidhanam (temple premises) wearing shoes which had never happened in its history. The police were there earlier too, not to attack or suppress the devotees, but to help them. The speciality of Sabarimala is all the people who go there are called Ayyappa devotees. They address each other as Swami whether he is an ordinary person or a policeman of any rank. In the police force also, they never called each other by names or Sir. They never used to wear shoes or caps, they never to insert their shirts, they never saluted senior officers. That has been the practice all along. That was because everybody who was there was a Swami Ayyappan. The new circular to the police on duty says everybody should wear shoes and a cap at the Sannidhanam and call their superiors Sir and not Swami. If the police were Ayyappa-friendly earlier, today, they are anti-Ayyappa. In place like these where millions of devotees assemble, the duty of the police is not to look after law and order, they are there to help the devotees. Instead of being pilgrim friendly, today the Kerala police look at the Ayyappa devotees with irumudi kettu as criminals. We can never accept this kind of attitude. Can you declare Section 144 in a religious place where lakhs of devotees assemble during the Makara Vilakku season? Sabarimala is a tiger reserve and the Sannidhanam occupies only 12 acres of land. It is here that they have deployed 15,500 policemen. The rest of the huge reserve is full of wild animals. This is the first government in the entire world that has declared Section 144 in a wildlife sanctuary. Do they think a tiger knows what Section 144 is? It shows the blind hatred they have for the issue. The Sabarimala temple will be open for two months during the Makara Vilakku season. Do you think this tension will continue for two months? There will be peace only if Pinarayi Vijayan shows some understanding. He should have waited till the interim period from the date of verdict to the date of review petition hearing (January 22) is over. Why didn't he? Because for him, the verdict was like a weapon with which he could attack people. Why do you feel the chief minister wanted to implement the verdict? I see two reasons. In the recent floods, 600,000 people lost their homes. Not a single person has received any monetary help from the government. Those who were affected in the floods were promised Rs 10,000, but only a few got some money and that too, only those who are connected to their party. Rehabilitation has become a farce. Suddenly, with the Sabarimala issue taking centre-stage, nobody is talking about what the government has not done after the floods. He (Vijayan) is trying to escape the ineptitude of the government through this. After walking 138 kilometres along with other Congress leaders and meeting a lot of people on the way, I will say that I don't think any popular political leader will hold onto such an unpopular decision. Why is there a difference in the way the Congress leaders in the state and at the Centre look at the issue? Some people feel it is discriminatory, but it is not so. That's why I quoted Article 26 which talks about reasonable restrictions in religious places. You have to look at this issue as part of 'reasonable restriction'. There is only reasonable restriction and there is no gender discrimination as the gender of a person after the age of 10 or 50 does not change! People from both genders can go there and there is only reasonable restriction. The Centre says law and order is a state subject and it cannot interfere... Religion is not a state subject, it comes under the residuary powers of the central government and the concurrent list. As per our Constitution, under Article 248 in List One under Entry 97, the Indian government can interfere in this matter using residuary powers and the concurrent list. So, based on the high court judgment, they can come out with an ordinance and protect the temple and the devotees from the current problem. It can be made into a law when Parliament is in session. If the central government will not do anything right now, we have no option but go on strike. But when our government comes to power in Kerala, we will do it. It is not that the Communists are going to rule Kerala till the end of the world. 'Today, the situation in the country is bad.' 'The distance between Hindus and Muslims is increasing.' 'If an out-of-court settlement is reached, then a cordial atmosphere will prevail in the country.' IMAGE: A poster in Lucknow says 'Muslims want the Ram temple' in Ayodhya. Photograph: Sandeep Pal Syed Ghayorul Hasan Rizvi, chairman of the National Commission for Minorities, wants an out-of-court settlement in the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute and wants the Muslim community to be "large-hearted". Rizvi is making attempts to meet members of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board in Lucknow as well as Hindu leaders and find a way for an out-of-court settlement in the vexatious issue that is currently before the Supreme Court of India for a final settlement. The apex court last month posted the matter for heading for the first week of January before an "appropriate bench" whose composition will be decided later. Speaking to Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf, Rizvi stated that the Muslim community is willing to give up its claim on the Babri Masjid site, but community leaders are blocking the way for a settlement. You have been saying that there must be an out-of-court settlement in the Ayodhya case. How is it possible given the hardened positions on all sides? I am saying an out-of-court settlement is necessary because whenever the verdict comes, one party will win and another will lose. Moreover, it is not necessary that even the Supreme Court's verdict will be accepted by everybody, just like what is happening in the case of Sabarimala. Therefore, I am saying the Ram mandir issue must be settled out of court. But... (Interrupts) Muslims have this apprehension that 'What after Ram mandir?' They are wondering what is the guarantee that tomorrow they (the Hindus) will not target other masjids like the ones in Mathura and Kashi (Varanasi) too. This is a problem. And, therefore, I am saying that any solution that has to come on this issue has to come out of peaceful talks. Who will take the decision on behalf of the Muslims, that it is okay to build a Ram temple at the Babri Masjid site? The All India Muslim Personal Law Board from one side and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and the Bharatiya Janata Party from the other side will take the decision. Hashim Ansari's son (Iqbal Ansari) could have been fighting his case on an individual basis, but the decision from the Muslim side will have to be taken by Muslim Personal Law Board as the Sunni Waqf Board has the backing of the Personal Law Board. (Note: The late Hashim Ansari was the original litigant in the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid case. Right now the case is being fought in the Supreme Court by three main parties -- the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and the Hindu Mahasabha.) Did you speak to anyone from the Muslim Personal Law Board about this? I have spoken to one or two people from the Muslim Personal Law Board. I am in Lucknow right now. If some further development takes place, then I will inform you later. Talks of an out-of-court settlement have taken place earlier too, but no concrete result emerged. Several times this issue came almost to the verge of a solution, but something or the other came in the way of an out-of-court settlement. This time the situation is different. Today, the (communal) situation in the country is bad. The distance between Hindus and Muslims is increasing. This will stop only when good atmosphere will prevail in the country. Now, if an out-of-court settlement is reached in the Ram mandir issue, then there will be a cordial atmosphere in the country. Do you think the Ram mandir issue is causing a rift between Hindus and Muslims? Ram mandir is such an issue that distances one community from another. The message that goes is that the Muslim community is fighting against the Ram mandir in Ayodhya. And it is only when the Muslim community withdraws from the case that the Ram mandir can be built. But the case is in the final stage of hearing in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court too had said when Justice J S Khehar was the Chief Justice of India that they would like to have an out-of-court settlement and they are ready for it. But that did not work out then. Many learned people sat and tried to resolve this issue, but a solution did not come about. Now as time passes, things change and, therefore, I feel everyone has to change, be it Hindus or Muslims. And, therefore, I am saying again that an out-of-court settlement is necessary in this case. Do you feel the Muslim community is ready for a Ram mandir in Ayodhya? The Muslim community wants this issue to be resolved peacefully and they want to live peacefully. Do you believe the Muslim community wants to give up its claim on the Babri masjid? The Muslim community is ready to give up the Babri masjid claim, but their leaders are not. You do a survey and find out the answer. Muslim leaders are not ready. 'The big fish are still out there and people will continue to die till they are brought to justice.' IMAGE: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who has been dogged by the Vyapam scam for the last five years, files his nomination papers from the Budhni assembly constituency. Photograph: PTI Photo With Madhya Pradesh about to face an assembly election, one in which the opposition Congress party is making a determined effort to eject the Bharatiya Janata Party from power after 15 years in office, the Vyapam scam has once again been revived. 'Vyapam' is the Hindi acronym for the Madhya Pradesh professional examination board, and scam involved getting professionals to appear for examinations while the real candidates sat at home. Not exactly a novel idea, if you realise that Bollywood director Rajkumar Hirani made a blockbuster out of the idea with Munnabhai MBBS, in which a qualified doctor appears for the thuggish Sanjay Dutt character. The Vyapam scam involved officials and politicians on a large scale to facilitate the fraud, in return for bribes. The Vyapam scam surfaced in July 2013 when the police arrested 20 impersonators who were appearing for the exams. Since then, officially 16 persons linked to this scam have died, causing eyebrows to be raised; unofficially, according to whistle-blowers, more than 60 people involved in this scam have died. The Central Bureau of Investigation, which took over the case two years ago, has booked more than 1,000 people in the scam, taking the total number to 3,800 in 170 different cases. The scandal has been around for more than five years, and shows no signs of going away. The Congress has linked Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to the scam, but he has refused to rise to the bait so far in his election speeches. Congress leader Digvijaya Singh recently upped the ante when he filed a case against Chouhan and others, accusing them of tampering with a hard disk which contained information that incriminated the chief minister. "Neither the CBI nor a single journalist can uncover the entire mess called the Vyapam scam," Dr Anand Rai, who works for the MP government and is one of the whistle-blowers in the scam, tells Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar. What is this about some hard disk that is supposed to have been erased to protect the chief minister? Nitin Mahendra was a programmer in Vyapam. His computer and hard disk were seized by the CBI. This hard disk had various Excel sheets with names and amounts of money paid. One of the sheets allegedly had the chief minister's name. This data was copied by a policeman, Prashant Pande. The CBI transferred the data from this hard disk to another hard disk and the original hard disk was destroyed. (But) In the new hard disk the particular Excel sheet with the name of the CM was erased. Prashant Pande is now in Delhi. He has turned whistle-blower and said he had a copy of the original hard disk data with the CM's name on it. Digvijaya Singh went to the Supreme Court with this, but his petition was dismissed as the authenticity of the data was suspect. It was a technical issue and people can keep arguing till eternity about the authenticity of any data found in the cyber world. My petition is also pending in the Supreme Court, let's see what happens. What about students who say they are victims of conmen and that they are innocent? That is all nonsense. The students tried to enter medical college without appearing for the entrance exams. It is a crime and they have to pay for it. The CBI says that the 16 Vyapam related deaths that they have investigated, all are natural deaths and there is nothing suspicious about them. That is humbug, more than 60 people have died and they must investigate all of them, they are going slow. The Vyapam matrix has taken numerous lives and thousands of students are now under the scanner. This includes those who have passed and are now working as doctors. When will we know the truth behind the Vyapam scam? Neither the CBI nor a single journalist can uncover the entire mess called the Vyapam scam. It requires years of investigation by an honest team of cops and only then will the kingpins be caught. Now they have arrested the small fry and also charge-sheeted them. The big fish are still out there and people will continue to die till they are brought to justice. Congress leader Raj Babbar dragged Prime Minister Narendra Modi's mother into the shrill assembly poll campaign comparing the rupee's falling value against the United States dollar with her age, sparking demands by the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday for an apology from him and also his party chief Rahul Gandhi. Condemning the remark, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said it was 'repulsive'. The rupee has seen a continued fall against the US dollar this year, hovering a little over the 70-mark on Friday. Modi's mother Hiraba is a nonagenarian. Kicking up a controversy, Babbar made the remark while addressing a rally in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh's Indore city on Thursday. MP goes to polls on November 28. "(Before becoming the prime minister) Modi used to say that compared to the (US) dollar, the value of the rupee has fallen to a level where it is almost the same as the age of the then Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh)," Babbar, the Uttar Pradesh Congress chief, said. "Mr Prime Minister, at that time, you had not taken his (Manmohan Singh) name out of respect. Although our tradition does not allow this, we wish to say that now the value of the rupee has fallen to the age of your respected mother," he added. BJP's national spokesperson Sambit Patra said it was not proper to use unparliamentary words or drag any person's mother into politics. "But the Congress' attitude against the prime minister's mother has been improper from the beginning and such language was used even against the prime minister," he claimed. "Rahul Gandhi should apologise and he should clarify whether he endorses such controversial statements," Patra told reporters in Indore. Rupani said Babbar's comments were a result of the Congress' frustration as it was losing public support and polls. "Congress leaders are stooping very low and making such repulsive comments. In politics, people need to behave responsibly. I condemn Raj Babbar's remark," he told reporters in Ahmedabad. "Comparing the value of the rupee against the (US) dollar with Modiji's mother (age) shows his (Babbar) cheap mentality. Since the Congress is losing people's support and losing elections, their leaders are making such comments out of frustration." "He (Babbar) must apologise to the prime minister," he added. IMAGE: Shiv Sena members boarding a train to Ayodhya to attend Vishwa Hindu Parishad Dharma Sabha, at Thane Railway Station, on Thursday. Photograph: PTI Photo A day before Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray arrives in Ayodhya, the party raised the pitch over the demand for an ordinance on Ram temple, with its leader Sanjay Raut saying 'Ram bhakts' took '17 minutes to demolish' Babri mosque, then how long will the government take to bring in a law for construction of temple at the site. Questioning the 'delay' in promulgating such an ordinance, he said the government has been unable to build the temple in Ayodhya despite promising people and getting a majority in the 2014 general elections. "The Babri mosque was demolished in 17 minutes... in about half an hour what needed to be done was done by the Ram bhakts (devotees of Ram)...the blot which was there since years was brought down ," Raut told reporters on Friday, referring to the demolition of the mosque in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. "How long does it take to prepare papers... to bring ordinance... from the Rashtrapati Bhawan to Uttar Pradesh Assembly. They are all BJP governments," the Shiv Sena leader said. Earlier on Friday, the Sena, which is part of the National Democratic Alliance but has had strained ties with ally Bharatiya Janata Party, demanded that the central government come out with an ordinance and declare a date for the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya. Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray will visit Ayodhya on Saturday amid a clamour among Hindu outfits for bringing an ordinance to build Ram Temple. Shiv Sena, which is the part of the BJP-led governments in both Maharashtra and the Centre, has been aggressively pushing for the construction of Ram temple since the party's annual Dussehra rally. The party has often taunted its ally BJP over the latter's 'failure' to construct the temple in the last four years despite coming to power. Asked about Sena raising the issue, Raut said, "We have always put at stake our reputation for Hindutva, for temple.... We have promised people that we will construct the temple if we form the government but it has not happened." "Despite the huge majority in 2014, if our government does not get the temple constructed, and again in 2019, we raise the temple slogan and go to the people, it is unacceptable to Uddhavji," Raut said. IMAGE: Shiv Sena's Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut addresses a press conference ahead of party chief Uddhav Thackeray's visit, in Lucknow. Photograph: Nand Kumar/PTI Photo Demanding that the government bring in a bill in Parliament over the issue, he said, "We will support it. I assure you if a bill is brought on the issue, 400 MPs, across party lines, will support it" Raut also reiterated Thackeray's slogan of "Mandir pehle, phir sarkar (first the temple, then the government). In an editorial in party mouthpiece Saamana, the Sena said it neither moves around with a begging bowl asking for votes in the name of Lord Ram nor does it indulge in 'jumlebaazi' (rhetoric) during polls. "Why did those, who call themselves pro-Hindutva, start getting a stomach ache when we announced our plans of going to Ayodhya? We are not going there for political purposes," it said. While slamming the BJP, the Sena said those in power should be proud of Shiv Sainiks who had 'destroyed Babur's raj in Ram Janmabhoomi'. The Babri Masjid was built in Ayodhya on the orders of Mughal emperor Babur. It claimed the party had not given the slogan 'Chalo Ayodhya', but Shiv Sainiks were going there for Lord Ram's darshan and also because Ayodhya is 'nobody's private place'. "There is no Ram raj there now, but the raj of the Supreme Court. However, in 1992, Balasaheb's Shiv Sainiks had destroyed Babur's raj in Ram Janmabhoomi. Instead of being scared and jealous of such Sainiks, those in power should be proud of them," the Sena editorial claimed. It said that instead of casting aspersions on the motive of Sainiks going to Ayodhya, the government should declare a date for the construction of the temple and put all suspicions to rest. Vishwa Hindu Parishad's 'dharam sabha' (religious conclave) on the Ram temple issue is also slated to be held here on Sunday, which, the outfit claims, is likely to be attended by about one lakh people. In fresh strain in bilateral ties, India on Friday lodged a strong protest with Pakistan over the alleged harassment of Indian High Commission officials in Islamabad and the denial of access to Indian Sikh pilgrims visiting that country. India also expressed grave concern over reports of attempts during the pilgrims ongoing visit to incite communal disharmony and promote secessionist tendencies with an aim to undermine Indias sovereignty and territorial integrity, the external affairs ministry said. India has today lodged a strong protest with the government of Pakistan that despite having been granted prior travel permission by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan, the Consular officials of the High Commission of India in Islamabad were harassed and denied access on November 21 and 22 at Gurudwara Nankana Sahib and Gurudwara Sacha Sauda, the ministry said in a statement. Indias protest came a day after the two countries agreed to develop a corridor on their respective side of the border to link a historic Sikh shrine in Kartarpur in Pakistan. There were reports that pro-Khalistani banners were shown to the Indian pilgrims while they were on their way to the two Sikh shrines. Pakistan has been called upon to take all measures to not allow its territory to be used for any hostile propaganda and support for secessionist tendencies against India in keeping with the commitments made under the Simla Agreement, 1972 and endorsed in the Lahore Declaration, 1999, the MEA said in a statement. The Indian pilgrims are visiting Pakistan under a bilateral protocol. Pakistan has been reminded that such actions are not in consonance with the stated intentions of Pakistan to facilitate the visits of Indian Sikh pilgrims, especially as we commemorate the 550th Birth Anniversary of Guru Nanak Devji, the MEA said. According to the MEA, the access was denied despite the Pakistan Foreign Ministry granting them prior travel permission. As a result of the harassment, the officials were compelled to return to Islamabad without performing their diplomatic and consular duties vis-a-vis Indian pilgrims, it added. Indian officials said this is the third consecutive visit of Indian Sikh pilgrims when Pakistan has prevented the Indian High Commission officials from meeting the Indian nationals on the pretext of security. The MEA called the denial of access an attempt to deflect attention from Pakistans violation of international legal instruments and conventions like the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Pakistan has been reminded that this is in contrast to the treatment meted out to their High Commissioner and the Consular officials in New Delhi who have been provided full access to meet the Pakistani pilgrims who are currently in India on pilgrimage to Kalyar Sharif, the MEA said. United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday attacked Telangana Rashtra Samiti chief and caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao for running a 'family rule' in Telangana and 'failing' to respond to the aspirations of people of the state. Glimpses of the rally. Sonia, on her maiden visit to Telangana after the formation of the state in June 2014, recalled the problems the Congress party faced due to its decision to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh. Sonia said she was 'very sad' that development which was expected after the state's formation had not happened under the TRS dispensation which disappointed youth by its failure to provide them jobs. Photograph: PTI Photo Sonia said despite being aware of adverse political consequences, the Congress went ahead and created Telangana, and paid the price in the elections that followed. "It (carving out Telangana) was not an easy task. It was no small decision. But former prime minister Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party decided to form Telangana state," she told the rally. The Congress intends to use its role in the creation of Telangana as a major election plank to blunt Rao's claim that a protracted agitation led by him forced the Centre's hand. Photograph: SnapsIndia Congress chief Rahul Gandhi attacked Chandrasekhar Rao, saying 'only one man ran Telangana for the last five years. He did whatever came to his mind for his family'. "I am asking what did the TRS government do for Dalits, tribals, backward classes...what promises were fulifilled?" he said and predicted that the TRS rule was all set to end. Photograph: SnapsIndia The decision to field Sonia Gandhi, who has hardly addressed an election meeting in a long time, apparently stemmed from the Congress's desire to appeal to the pro-Telangana sentiments of the voters. "Chief Minister Rao has cared only for himself and his own people leaving the child (Telangana) to suffer. Dalits, adivasis, minorities, backward classes, women and students were all neglected. The chief minister should tell us what promises he made to them and he kept," she said. Photograph: SnapsIndia The UPA chairperson said farmer suicides were taking place and agriculturists were still facing water scarcity. "The TRS government failed to fulfil the aspirations of the people of the state," she said, adding it did not implement the land acquisition law enacted by the UPA government. Photograph: SnapsIndia In her speech, Sonia assailed Rao for trying to perpetuate family rule. "What did the TRS government do for women and youth of Telangana in the past four years? If at all there was any development, it was only of one family (of KCR)." "Through this meeting I appeal to you to vote for the Congress and allied parties, and ensure their victory. Extend your support for the development of Telangana," she said even as she reaffirmed the Congress party's commitment to special category status for Andhra Pradesh. Photograph: PTI Photo In a show of strength by the Congress-led opposition alliance, leaders of its constituents -- the Telugu Desam Party, Telangana Jana Samiti and Communist Party of India -- shared the dais with them at an election rally at Medchal on the outskirts of Hyderabad. Lok Sabha member Konda Vishweshwar Reddy, who quit the TRS a few days ago citing 'disappointment' with the party leadership, formally joined the Congress at the rally. Though TDP president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu was not present at the rally, the party was represented by its Telangana unit chief L Ramana. CPI state secretary Chada Venkat Reddy and TJS chief M Kodandaram besides Ramana addressed the rally. Photograph: SnapsIndia The Congress president said it was to provide jobs to the unemployed youth and to address the problems of farmers that the Congress had formed an alliance with the TDP, CPI and the TJS. "The alliance government will work for the people and not for one person. The dreams for which you fought (for creation of Telangana) the CM did not fulfil. This alliance with fulfil them," he said. Photograph: SnapsIndia Comparing Telangana to a newborn baby, the UPA chairperson said every mother wishes her children to grow up well. "But I feel sad when I see the people of Telangana (suffer) and the state of affairs here," she said, seeking to strike an emotional chord with the people of the state. Photograph: SnapsIndia Earlier, Sonia was received by Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president N Uttam Kumar Reddy in Hyderabad. Photograph: PTI Photo Photograph: Fayaz Aziz/Reuters At least 32 people including three Sikhs were killed and more than 40 others injured when a powerful bomb blast ripped through a busy market outside a religious seminary in Pakistan's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Friday, officials said. According to initial investigation, an improvised explosive device was planted in a bike that was used for transporting vegetables to the popular Friday Market (Juma Bazar) near an imambargah, a Shia religious place, in Orakzai tribal district's Kalaya area, bordering Afghanistan. "This is a Friday bazaar, where hundreds of people had gathered for groceries," Deputy Commissioner Khalid Iqbal said. "The ground is then used for Friday prayers as well," he added. At least 32 people were killed while more than 40 others injured, Dawn news quoted district administration officials as saying. "Three Sikh traders and three children were also among the dead in the Orakzai blast," Deputy Commissioner of Orakzai Tribal district Khalid Iqbal told PTI. The minority Sikh community in the area was previously displaced by the Taliban that controlled the region prior to the military operation in 2010, Samaa TV reported. Officials said that most of the victims were minority Shia Muslims, who in the past were also targeted in the area. "Three children were among those killed. The remote-controlled bomb was attached to a motorcycle," officials said. "I was buying vegetables at a distance from bomb site," Karam Khan, who accompanied an injured person to the hospital in Kohat, said. "There was a huge explosion and I woke up with blood splashed all over the place and there were body parts everywhere," he said about the gory scene. The area has been cordoned off and investigation into the incident is under way. An emergency has been declared in the region's hospitals to handle the situation. Prime Minister Imran Khan strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Orakzai tribal area and said: 'My prayers go to the victims & their families'. 'Let there be no doubt in anyone's mind that we will crush the terrorists, whatever it takes,' he said in a tweet. Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari blamed the US failure in Afghanistan for the attack and warned Pakistan to be prepared for more such incidents. She condemned the horrific terror attack. 'As the US fails in Afghanistan, Pakistan should be prepared for fallout and we must ensure greater security for our tribal areas especially protection of our people,' she tweeted. No group claimed responsibility of the attack but the Taliban militants often carry out such attacks. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police are on high alert following the Orakzai blast and a separate attack on the Chinese Consulate in Karachi on Friday morning. "Our enemies are not happy with peace in the province," provincial Chief Minister Mehmood Khan said after the attack. It was the second attack on Friday as security forces foiled a bid by militants to enter the Chinese consulate in Karachi and killed three attackers. In 2011, 30 people including 10 cops, were killed and over 50 injured when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden van into the building of the Communication and Works Department. Orakzai, a terror hotbed, is one of the seven semi-autonomous tribal regions of Pakistan which has a porous border with Afghanistan. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has net assets worth Rs 2.99 crore while his three-year-old grandson Nara Devaansh is richer with assets worth Rs 18.71 crore in his name. Naidus son and state Information Technology Minister Nara Lokesh declared the familys assets on Wednesday. Lokeshs assets shot up to Rs 21.40 crore from Rs 15.21 crore last year. Value of Naidus assets rose by just Rs 46 lakh compared to last year while his debt burden reduced from Rs 5.64 crore to Rs 5.31 crore on a housing loan. (Click on the image to see a comparison of the wealth the Naidu family) The new house he built in Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad, has been valued at Rs 8.96 crore against Rs 7.75 crore last year. Naidus wife Bhuvaneswari is the richest member of the family with net assets worth Rs 31.01 crore, which rose from Rs 25.41 crore last year. Her liabilities too increased from Rs 20.90 crore to Rs 22.35 crore during the year. Lokeshs wife Brahmani saw her assets decline by half to Rs 7.72 crore from Rs 15.01 crore last year. Her liabilities shot up from 36.14 lakh to Rs 5.66 crore. Their son Devaansh, however, grew richer by over Rs 7 crore this year with his assets touching Rs 18.71 crore compared to Rs 11.54 crore last year, as per the figures released by Lokesh. This is the eighth consecutive year that we have declared our familys assets and liabilities, said Lokesh, who is also the Telugu Desam Partys general secretary. Photo: Kirk Penton Worker shortages in the Okanagan are forcing local companies to look for employees outside of Canadas borders, but its a process that can be complicated and time-consuming. In an effort to streamline those efforts, Accelerate Okanagan this week hosted a symposium called Global Talent Strategies. Provincial specialists offered insight on the topic through presentations, and the Innovation Centres theatre was full of employers trying to learn everything they could to make international hiring easier. Gina Wells, operations manager for Kelownas Silver Springs Concrete Services, found the event helpful. Lots of connections and straight lines to answers and resources that actually even for me, doing this application process twice, I wasnt aware of, Wells said. So I found it very helpful. Wells has hired one temporary foreign worker and is looking to hire more to do concrete work. She noted how the application form started at 18 pages and ended up being 43. The government informed her she would be approved to hire a worker at the end of April, but it didnt happen until the end of June. Being in concrete construction, our season was half over almost, Wells said. And now trying to recruit workers, because our (labour market impact assessment) is only good for six months after approval day, now were in low season and I still have three positions open that I paid $1,000 each for. Im trying not to waste our companys money. For more on this story, visit Okanagan Edge. Photo: Contributed The battle to have interprovincial alcohol trade across the country continues, but it appears the end may be near. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Tuesday that the issue of alcohol trade within Canada will be discussed at the First Ministers' Meeting on Dec. 7 in Montreal. The topic was on the agenda at the premiers meeting in July, too, but this time it sounds as though it will be given more attention. It appears to be that interprovincial wine trade is actually going to be discussed. So were quite excited, B.C. Wine Institute chairperson Christa-Lee McWatters Bond said Thursday. Does it mean its happened? No, but at least theyre making it a priority. We continue to push forward, and it seems to be that it is a priority and is now on the agenda for their meeting, which is exciting for us. For more on this story, visit Okanagan Edge. Although the number of youth in Connecticut who have committed suicide has fluctuated in recent years, making it difficult to identify a trend, mental health professionals who work with teenagers say that depression and anxiety - the typical reasons for suicide - are definitely on the rise. Between 2012 and 2017, there was an 11 percent increase in the number of mental health visits at school-based health centers, according to the Department of Public Health (DPH). Mental health visits now make up 41 percent of total visits to the school-based centers. In the last five to six years there has been a very strong increase in the number of visits that students make to the school-based health centers for mental health reasons, said Jesse White-Frese, the executive director of the Connecticut Association of School-Based Health Centers, Inc. Students are just feeling a lot more stress and pressure, and having a lot more difficulty managing it. There are more than 100 school-based health centers now operating in Connecticut schools, 93 of which are funded in-part by DPH, comprising a $10.7 million line item in the state budget. These programs have helped the state and local communities provide resources to teens in a familiar environment, White-Frese said. Despite this growing resource, the number of teenagers who report they are not connected with effective treatment when it is needed has increased, according to the most recent Youth Risk Behavior survey. Only one in four students reported actually getting the help they needed when feeling sad, empty, hopeless, angry or anxious. I have already had to call 2-1-1 (the crisis hotline) this year more than once for female middle school students who were having active suicidal thoughts with a plan, said Tamara Bojarski, a social worker in the Windham school-based health center program. In Stratford last year, a survey of 7th through 12th graders showed that 16 percent of students had attempted suicide. This year they (Stratford public schools) have been addressing it by doing all of these forums for parents and for kids to talk about it, White-Frese said. They are getting people to talk about suicide and depression and getting the resources out there to the community. They wanted to get in front of the problem. According to experts, getting health care providers, teachers and parents to ask the right questions is essential to effectively treating mental illnesses, including suicidal ideation. That kids arent getting connected to the treatment that they need is the most concerning to us (DMHAS), said Andrea Duarte, behavioral health program manager for the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) and co-chair of the states suicide advisory board. Instead of immediately sending a child who mentions suicide to the emergency room, Duarte said evaluating the true risks is important to avoid over- or under-reacting. People are having a knee jerk reaction and getting kids to the emergency room and causing a worse problem, Duarte said. If they are not in imminent risk, they need to work with a provider. Going through the stress and trauma of an emergency room visit only to be sent home without the appropriate supports teaches children not to ask for help because their problems were not deemed bad enough, she added. School-based health centers across the state are now using the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale on students who present with depression or suicidal ideation. Actual suicides In 2017, 14 children between the ages of 12 and 17 committed suicide in Connecticut, the highest number of youth suicides since 2001, according to the office of the Child Advocate. But this year - at least so far - the numbers look a little better. In the first nine months of 2018, Duarte said, there were four suicides - and the beginning and end of a school year has already passed, which is statistically the most common time for suicides. In 2016, there were eight suicides in this age group; in 2015, there were 12 suicides; and, in 2014, six children killed themselves. If you look at youth [suicide], our numbers go up and down routinely. You are seeing a very slight uptick,said Tim Marshall, the director of community mental health for the Department of Children and Families (DCF) and co-chair of the suicide advisory board. One suicide is too much. But to talk about a concrete increase is hard to do. According to the Youth Risk Behavior survey, Connecticut ranks well below the national average when it comes to students who have attempted suicide or seriously considered it. Connecticut has taken a variety of steps to prevent suicide, such as implementing suicide prevention programs and stringent gun control laws, that may have contributed to Connecticuts suicide rate being one of the lowest in the country. But they have not staved off a worrisome trend the steady increase of suicide deaths across all ages, both in Connecticut and nationwide, particularly among middle-aged people. Connecticuts suicide rate rose 19.2 percent between 1999 and 2016, according to a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. Nationally, half of all states experienced at least 30 percent increases in suicide rates, according to the CDC. The CDC places suicide as the 11th leading cause of death in Connecticut and the second leading cause of death for 15 to 34 year olds in both Connecticut and the U.S. State ups its efforts In addition to the work done through school-based health centers, DMHAS, DCF and DPH have worked together to build up the suicide prevention infrastructure across the state. Over the past decade, DCF has grown the 2-1-1 Mobile Crisis - a service available to all children and families free of charge - to include 14 locations across the state. During fiscal year 2018, the program received 14,485 calls, 44 percent of which were for depression or youth who were at risk of self-harm. Unlike a trip to the emergency room, Mobile Crisis meets with families for six weeks after the call to help locate outpatient treatment providers to ensure continued care, said Jeff Vanderploeg, the president and CEO of both the Child Health and Development Institute of Connecticut and its parent organization, the Childrens Fund of Connecticut. The childrens mobile crisis system has been recognized nationally as a model system that other states are working to emulate, Durate said. Vanderploeg and his organization - with funding from DCF - have developed training, called Educating Practice Program, for pediatricians throughout Connecticut. It trains pediatricians in suicide risk factors, as well as school-based health centers, Vanderploeg said. In 2015, DMHAS received a five-year grant for youth suicide prevention efforts from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), its third since 2006. The grant funds are being used to establish regional coalitions to coordinate prevention efforts at the local level and tighten up programs and protocols in school systems and communities across the state. The state initially began work with Community Health Resources in Manchester. It is the hub of community-based effort. They work with the school system, police department, hospitals and college campuses, Duarte said. They are tightening up the safety net in the community so that whatever door a person is going through, there is communication between these parties so that there is support to get the resources they need and that there is follow up. In the last year, similar suicide prevention initiatives have spread to 20 school districts. The grant projects have built off efforts begun in 2011 at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU), an awareness campaign called One Word, One Voice, One Life. For a campaign to be successful it needs to be action-oriented, and thats what we liked about the work at CCSU, Duarte said. The messaging was you can do something about this, be the one to start conversations with others and actively connect people with resources. DMHAS is not the only recipient of a SAMHSA grant to address suicide. Federal grant dollars are also going to CCSU and the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation, making Connecticut one of the few states to receive a grant in all three domains. The increase in children diagnosed with and receiving treatment for depression and anxiety is not simply the result of a more stressful environment or poor coping mechanisms. It is also because there is more importance being placed on mental health, White-Frese said. The issue has always been there, White Frese said. But school-based health center staff wouldnt hear about it. Now many students are learning that we are always a resource [that is] here for them. In the 1990s, a survey of high school and middle school principals around Connecticut reported that, on average, they believed at least 75% of the students in their schools could benefit from mental health services. Its not a new problem, but one that school-based health centers are finally able to address, White-Frese said. There are ways in which things are improving for our students, said Emily Segal, a social worker for Family Centers in Stamfords school-based health center program. There is a level of tolerance that there didnt used to be. But in terms of coping mechanisms, students have certainly not improved. Segal said texting as a primary form of communication instead of making phone calls has taken away a useful outlet for many students. They dont have that go-to talking, pour it all out, freedom, Segal said. Now a lot of kids dont have those skills to keep conversations going. I dont know that life is more anxiety provoking today, but I do know the coping skills are just that much less developed, that much less mature in part because of technology. Especially for children who are anxiety-prone, receiving constant alerts - especially those about severe weather - makes it incredibly difficult not to feel panicked and stressed the majority of the time, she said. For many students, going off the grid seems impossible, making escape impossible. Kids come rushing in, out of breath about hurricane warnings, Segal said. They have no buffer, they all have access 24-hours a day. They dont turn off their phones even at night. They will answer the phone Peking University graduate Wang Xiangyi, a founder of the Qingying Social Work Center who was detained on Nov. 9, in undated photo. Chinese authorities are holding dozens of former workers and activists who took part in a nascent labor movement in the southern city of Shenzhen, continuing a nationwide crackdown begun in July, an activist group said. "The workers formed a trade union according to law, but they were illegally fired by their employer and beaten up by the local police, the Jasic Workers' Solidarity Group (JWSG) said in a statement posted to Github. "The dark forces are crazy and violent, and have been brutally suppressing workers, students and concerned people who believe in Marxism-Leninism," it said in a statement dated Nov. 22, before listing 32 names of workers and activists. The JWSG listed a total of 18 people detained in a string of coordinated nationwide arrests on Nov. 9 -- including former Jasic worker Tang Xiangwei and 12 university graduates. The JWSG listed several alumni of the prestigious Peking University (Beida), where the authorities recently shut down a student Marxist study group. A Beida alumnus who declined to be named told RFA on Friday that the Nov. 9 crackdown was far more severe than any that had come before, and confirmed the names of those detained. Beida alumni Zhang Shengye, Sun Min, Zong Yang, He Pengchao and Wang Xiangyi were all detained in different cities on the same day, according to the list, which was also verified to RFA by a second anonymous source. Sensitive rights surveys A classmate of Wang Xiangyi's who declined to be named said she had founded the Qingying Social Work Center to help local migrant workers along with boyfriend He Pengchao. "They were providing services to young migrant workers in Shenzhen," the classmate said. "He Pengchao joined the [Beida] Marxist study group later, and they started putting on movies for the university support staff, and teaching them English." "They carried out some sensitive surveys of the rights of the support workers," the classmate said. Sources told RFA that alumni and their families have also been targeted for warnings by police and college officials. An employee who answered the phone at the Beida committee of the ruling Chinese Communist Party referred inquiries to the international cooperation department, which referred media inquiries to the college press office. However, calls to the press office rang unanswered during office hours on Friday. A university official denied any knowledge of the arrests and refused to comment on the closure of the Marxism study group when contacted recently by a concerned parent of a current Beida student, according to an audio recording obtained by RFA. The JWSG said on Friday that the authorities had "banned" its Twitter account, without detailing how. Twitter is blocked to Chinese internet users in the absence of circumvention tools to get around government censorship, but activists have recently reported that the authorities are forcing them delete their accounts on the platform. "The #jasic Workers' Solidarity Group's original Twitter account @jasicworkers has been banned, so please follow ... @jasicworker," the group tweeted on Friday. "[They] won't silence us! We will fight to the end to free our compatriots! Activist roughed up Meanwhile, authorities in Shenzhen detained Jian Weiwei, a graduate of Beijing's Renmin University, which recently saw the termination of its academic exchange programs with Cornell University, which cited the "punishment" of students for supporting the labor movement. Shenzhen police also raided the city's Qingying Social Work Center on Nov. 9, detaining support workers Kang Wei, Hou Changshan, Wang Xiaomei, He Xiumei. Jasic labor union officials Zou Liping and Li Ao were also detained, according to the JWSG's list. Activists detained during earlier police raids on July 27, Aug. 24 and Sept. 9 also remain incommunicado, the group said, including Beida graduate and former #MeToo campaigner Yue Xin, Shang Kai, editor of the Maoist website Red Reference and Maoist youth campaigner Yang Shaoqiang. Migrant workers' rights campaigner Fu Changguo and former Jasic employees Hu Pingping and Wu Haiyu have been in the Shenzhen No. 2 Detention Center since Aug. 24, the group said, while labor rights activist Huang Qingnan has been released on "bail." Meanwhile, former Jasic workers Yu Lingcong, Mi Jiuping, Liu Penghua, and Li Zhan were all placed under formal arrest by police in the city on Sept. 3, following their initial detention at the factory on July 27, it said. In a video posted to the JWSG Github page on Friday, Guangzhou worker Li Yuanzhu detailed his detention at the hands of three "unofficial" police officers, who pinned him to the ground in a room at his workplace, tied him up with his own belt and carried him off to the local police station. "What is the difference between their behavior and that of a criminal gang? ... They subjected me to a 24-hour attempt to force a confession," he said. "They wanted me to smear the name of Shen Mengyu." Maoist campaigner Shen Mengyu, who briefly emerged as the leader of the Jasic supporters' group, has been under house arrest at her home in Yongzhou city, in the central province of Hunan since the Aug. 24 police raid on student supporters of the Jasic labor movement. In his video, Li breaks down, reporting that he told police what they wanted to hear under the pressure of the ordeal. "I'm so sorry," he says. Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. Photo: Colin Dacre A Penticton man has been sentenced to a little more than 3.5 years in prison for a violent machete-armed robbery that saw him urinate on a victim being held to the floor by accomplices. Brandon Lavortao-Doran, 28, pleaded guilty to one count of robbery Thursday in Penticton court in a deal cut with prosecutors that dropped charges of aggravated assault and uttering threats. Ive been at this business a long time, but the circumstances here are pretty egregious, Judge Gregory Koturbash said, hinting some frustration he was being constrained by the plea deal in sentencing. Court heard the victim told police he was approached by an acquaintance and two strangers while arriving home on June 26, 2017. He invited the trio, including Lavortao-Doran, into his basement suite where they all smoked marijuana. The host snorted methamphetamine while his guests used intravenous drugs. Crown prosecutor Ann Lerchs said the conversation turned to how Lavortao-Doran and his female friend overdosed last week and made the paper. As the party wound down, the victim loaned Lavortao-Doran a pair of socks and shoes, telling police he suspected the accused stole his house keys on his way out the door. The following day, after the victim requested his keys, shoes and socks be returned, the three showed up back at the basement suite. Lavortao-Doran then rushed into the residence, swinging twice with a machete, causing the victim to block one of the blows with his forearm and sustain a 3-4 inch gash. He was then forced to lie down on his living room floor while being kicked by Lavortao-Doran. He watched as the three individuals rummaged through his belongings and ate food and drank from his fridge, Lerchs said. He then says Lavortao-Doran stood over him and urinated on his face. Lavortao-Doran threw what is believed to be mouthwash on the victims face and stole money from his wallet, threatening to kill him if he did not disclose his debit card pin. The three left the home and the victim fled to the hospital. Court heard it took some convincing by RCMP officers to get the victim to talk. Lavortao-Doran was identified because he checked his Facebook account on the victims computer the night prior, while the other two left fingerprints at the scene. The Crown and defence came to a deal for another 22 months in prison, with Lavortao-Doran already with credit for 647 days served. Defence lawyer Tiffany Zanatta explained that her client had a difficult upbringing, and spent most of his adolescence in group homes. He suffered from a meth and heroin addiction and was homeless at the time of the incident. I appreciate that you had a disadvantaged upbringing, Judge Koturbash said. Your counsel told me you were picked on and bullied, but youd think that you more than anybody would know not to do that to someone else. Koturbash noted his hands are essentially tied to the joint-submission proposed by Crown and defence, but said he trusted Lerchs' opinion in determining that the case would not have been a sure thing at trial. I understand that with victims in cases like this, sometimes that can be generated by fear and the reluctance to testify, reluctance of it coming back on them, he said. But nonetheless, thats what the Crown is faced with. Lavortao-Doran also received 12 months probation upon release. A rally on the even Taiwan's Nov. 24 local elections, where some 19 million voters will be voting for more than 11,000 local officials. Taiwan voters go to the polls on Saturday in local elections that will likely indicate the level of popular support for President Tsai Ing-wen and for any move towards independence, after two years of growing tension with Beijing. Some 19 million voters will be voting for more than 11,000 local officials, including mayoral races in the capital Taipei and the southern port city of Kaohsiung, amid concerns over growing interference in the island's democracy by the Chinese Communist Party. "Tomorrow is polling day, and once more I call on the people of Kaohsiung to help us fight a wonderful campaign," mayoral candidate for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Han Kuo-yu told a political rally on Friday. "Whether or not I am re-elected, I think the sun will shine on this election, and that it will prove to be model election that will go down in Taiwan's history," Han said. "We can all study it and see." But strategic analyst and political commentator Wang Li, identified on his Facebook page a bewildering network of money and political influence through which Beijing exerts influence through campaign funding, and even to the point of fielding its own, puppet candidates. "There are all kinds of tricks and channels," Wang wrote, adding that some of the funding flowing in from Beijing's overseas United Front operation is hidden "three layers thick," so its origins will be hard to spot as "red." "I just wanted everyone to know that this is an extremely complete network, and not one that can easily be beaten by a team of online volunteers from Taiwan," Wang wrote of his funding "map" detailing the financing of candidates who favor rapprochement and eventual "reunification" with the People's Republic of China, which has never ruled the island. Wang's map, translated by East Asia analyst Paul Huang, details funding routed from the Chinese Communist Party's network of United Front organizations, via state-owned enterprises and laundering operations and crowdfunding overseas, to pro-unification politicians and organized crime. The laundered funding also finances a huge wave of disinformation targeting Taiwan ahead of the elections, according to Wang. Taiwan's voters will also cast ballots on 10 referendums, including one on whether to amend the civil code to include same-sex marriage which was legalized last year and on whether they would like to enter the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as "Taiwan" instead of the moniker "Chinese Taipei" insisted on by Beijing. China mobilizes cyber operatives The IOC has warned that no name change will be possible, but a vote for "Taiwan" could test the level of support for formal statehood for the island. Taiwan's national security director Peng Sheng-chu told lawmakers earlier this month that his agency is now monitoring comments on social media platforms including Facebook, and that one of the key topics monitored was President Tsai Ing-wen. National security sources have told local media that China has mobilized some 300,000 cyber operatives to target the island's internet users ahead of Saturday's polls, spreading disinformation through social media, including Weibo, Facebook and YouTube, as well as targeting its mainstream print and broadcast media. The elections are being used as a "testing ground" for Beijing's plan to influence the 2020 presidential election in its favor, away from the DPP, which has declined to play along with Beijing's demands that it acknowledge that Taiwan is part of China. Former mainland Chinese blogger Zhou Shuguang, who recently immigrated to Taiwan, said the reports of Beijing's United Front operations are entirely credible to him. "Of course they would do that," Zhou said. "As someone who has come here from mainland China as an immigrant, and a blogger experiencing a democratic society for the first time ... I would like to see this society become even more democratic, and for this democracy to become even more transparent." "But China isn't democratic, and has been doing everything it can in recent years to extend its influence, which includes trying to influence the democratic process in other countries," he said. Illegal funds from mainland Tsai's administration in September approved plans to raise fines for illegal funds flowing in from mainland China, as part of a package of new rules aimed at tightening national security in the face of growing tensions with Beijing. Her cabinet approved a plan to raise the maximum fine for unauthorized Chinese investments to more than U.S.$800,000, in a bid to target funding that may be political in origin with sanctions against companies that "evade, refuse, or try to block" government inspections of their situation. Chinese national Xu Qihong, a former county-level deputy to the People's Congress in the eastern province of Zhejiang, said he had come to the island to witness "the political carnival" of a democratic election. "I thought we'd come here to see it, given that we wouldn't be able to watch it in mainland China," Xu told RFA. "It really is ordinary people who are in charge here," he said, adding that Beijing is very concerned about the growth of pro-independence sentiment in Taiwan. China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) is gradually preparing for a possible invasion of Taiwan, according to a military analysis published by the Pentagon in Washington earlier this year. Armed forces under the Chinese Communist Party "continued to develop and deploy increasingly advanced military capabilities intended to coerce Taiwan, signal Chinese resolve, and gradually improve capabilities for an invasion," the U.S. Department of Defense said in an annual report on China's military capabilities. Taiwan was ruled as a Japanese colony in the 50 years prior to the end of World War II, but was handed back to the 1911 Republic of China under the nationalist Kuomintang government as part of Tokyo's post-war reparation deal. When the 1911 regime fled to Taiwan in 1947 after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong's communist troops, the Republic of China government ceased to control most of China, though it continues to be the official name of the Taiwan government. The island began a transition to democracy following the death of Chiang's son, President Chiang Ching-kuo, in January 1988, starting with direct elections to the legislature in the early 1990s and culminating in the first direct election of a president, Lee Teng-hui, in 1996. Recent opinion polls indicate that there is broad political support for self-rule in Taiwan, where the majority of voters identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese. But Beijing regards the island as part of China, and has threatened to invade if Taiwan seeks formal independence. Beijing has meanwhile succeeded in isolating Taiwan diplomatically by insisting that its diplomatic partners break off ties with Taipei under the "One China" policy. Reported by Mai Hsiao-tien for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Chung Kuang-cheng for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. A powerful blast has torn through a packed mosque inside an Afghan army base in the eastern Khost Province as Friday Prayers were drawing to a close, killing at least 12 people, a local official said. Talib Mangal, a Khost governor spokesman told RFE/RL on November 23 that "according to initial estimates" another 33 people were wounded in the explosion. Some news agencies put the deaths toll at 26, citing Afghan officials who said more than 50 others were wounded in the attack. No group claimed responsibility for the assault that targeted soldiers offering prayers. "There were soldiers lying everywhere and the smoke was so thick, it was difficult to see," Abdullah, a spokesman at the base, told the Associated Press news agency. It wasn't immediately clear whether the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attack, calling it "anti-Islamic and inhumane." In a statement, Ghani urged a swift investigation into the bombing and said he wanted to know how security at the army base was breached, calling for those responsible to be punished. The attack comes just days after a suicide bomber targeted a gathering of religious scholars in the capital, Kabul, killing at least 50 people and wounding more than 80 others. In another development in Afghanistan on November 23, hundreds of protesters blocked a key highway, denouncing the deaths of three local residents, including a child, in an operation against militants. Parwan police chief Muhammad Mahfuz Walizada told RFE/RL that the operation overnight by Afghan and international forces in Jebul Siraj district targeted a local warlord, but killed the other people by mistake. Carrying the bodies of the dead, the protesters blocked the Kabul-Salang highway for several hours. With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP Police in Britain have released more video of the two suspects they believe poisoned former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in March. Two men -- know by the aliases Aleksandr Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov -- were charged in absentia for the attack in September. Investigative website Bellingcat has named them as Aleksandr Yevgenyevich Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga, both of whom work for Russia's GRU intelligence service. On November 22, police released footage appearing to show the two arriving and walking around Salisbury on March 4, the day the Skripals were found unconscious on a park bench in the English city. A man and a woman were poisoned in the nearby town of Amesbury on June 30 after police believe they handled a perfume bottle that contained Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union used in the Skripal poisoning. The woman, Dawn Sturgess, died. Police said they were appealing for more information from anybody who may have seen the two men in Britain between March 2-4 or had seen the counterfeit Nina Ricci perfume box or bottle. The poisoning has added tension to already severely strained ties between Russia and the West, leading to additional U.S. and European Union sanctions on Moscow and to diplomatic expulsions of Russian and Western officials. Based on reporting by TASS and Reuters When bogus parliamentary election results in Georgia prompted a wave of protesters led by the countrys youth to flood central Tbilisi on November 3, 2003, no one knew what to expect. Twenty days later, the thousands who had gathered daily got what they had quickly come to feel they deserved -- the resignation of President Eduard Shevardnadze. Natia Zambakhidze, a journalist at private Rustavi TV, found herself in the middle of one of the most dramatic events to shake the world emerging from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Fifteen years later, the woman who coined the phrase "Rose Revolution" recalls how quickly the protests grew, even in the cold and drizzle of Tbilisi in late autumn. This revolution was about corruption, kleptocracy, autocracy, power outages, economic hardship. There was no perspective, Zambakhidze, now the director of RFE/RL's Georgian Service, says. "The younger generation wanted to steer where the country was going. There had been no hope, no sense of direction, everything was kind of gloomy. But there was that feeling, that people have power, they can change something, and that those who are in power must listen." Georgia, located strategically in the heart of Eurasia and crisscrossed with pipelines carrying Caspian oil and gas to Europe, pulled itself out from under the umbrella of the Soviet Union in 1991. A military coup in January 1992 toppled President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a dissident scholar and writer, replacing him with former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevarnadze in an acting capacity until he was formally elected in 1995. Shevardnadzes administration was almost immediately wracked by defeat to Russian-backed separatists in Abkhazia, in western Georgia, and ethnic conflict in South Ossetia, in the country's north. Adding to the instability, the economy stagnated, infrastructure decayed, and allegations circulated of widespread state corruption. Zambakhidze says Georgians dared to hope for change with the November 2, 2003, parliamentary elections, only to have it pulled out from under them after results raised suspicions of widespread vote rigging. It started right after the elections. Exit polls showed that the opposition had a lot of the vote, but the results that were released were different. But it wasnt just the exit polls, it was also the mood of the people and the electorate, Zambakhidze says. "Our impressions were far from the reality the government was telling the people." While many were on edge, the protesters stepped up the pressure. Their choice of weapon on the front lines? Flowers, which they passed out to soldiers confronting the crowds. Three ethnic Serbs, including two police officers, were arrested in Kosovo early on November 23 in connection with the murder of a leading Serb politician in the north of the country. The three men were arrested in the Serb-dominated town of Mitrovica, 40 kilometers north of the capital, Pristina, as suspects in the killing of Oliver Ivanovic in January, police said in a statement. A fourth ethnic Serb was arrested for resisting police. During the raids -- which took place in four locations -- police seized evidence for the investigation into the murder, a prosecutor's statement said, adding that illegal weapons and other material had been found. The arrests sparked protests by groups of ethnic Serbs on Mitrovica's main square. The Kosovar government of Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj called for calm, adding that the operation had no connection to politics. "I assure all citizens of the Kosovo state and the public order institutions that [the police operation] will be never be oriented against any ethnic or political grouping," Haradinaj wrote on his Facebook page. Tensions are on the rise after Kosovo failed earlier this week to become a member of the international police organization, Interpol. Meanwhile, Kosovo introduced a 100 percent tax on goods imported from Serbia. The Serbian government is to hold an emergency session to discuss the crisis, while President Aleksandar Vucic has called a meeting with the commanders of Serbian army, police, and security services. Ivanovic, a moderate Serb politician, was shot dead in front of his office in northern Mitrovica on January 16. His killers have never been identified. He was considered one of a few ethnic Serb politicians capable of building bridges between his community and Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority. Russia's Foreign Ministry condemned the arrests of the ethnic Serbs, calling it a "provocation...[in] the Serbian-populated part" of Kosovo. Russia has refused to recognize Kosovo as an independent country, something that more than 110 other countries around the world have done. "Pristina's course for ethnic cleansing and unleashing a trade war in the Balkans is apparent," it said in a statement. KYIV -- Samples of ersatz bread from the Stalin-era famine that Ukrainians call the Holodomor have been discovered among criminal records in Kyiv, shedding new light on the 1932-33 calamity that killed millions of Ukrainians. The discovery of the records by an employee at Ukraine's Central State Archives of Public Organizations also includes two notes written to "future generations" by a Kyiv church choir conductor who ultimately was sent to the gulag in Siberia for saving the scraps as evidence of what Soviet authorities were calling "bread" in the midst of "terrible hunger." Oleksiy Sorokin was a 55-year-old music teacher and choir conductor at a church in Kyiv in 1932 when he wrapped one of the scraps in a note and hid it in his home. "Here is a sample of bread that was consumed by farmers in the spring of 1932," Sorokin wrote in Russian that year. "In Kyiv, we still have some bread and are not yet dying of hunger. But we don't have enough to eat. The hunger is terrible." "The sample of the farmers' bread is attached. I don't know the ingredients of this bread. This sample is for you to know," Sorokin wrote in his note. In a second note, dated March 15, 1933, Sorokin described more details about the Holodomor and included another scrap of ersatz bread. "In the spring of 1933, hunger hit all the Kyiv residents so hard that we used anything we could find for food," he wrote in the 1933 note. "Instead of bread, we baked flatbread from acorns and potato peels with other additions. I've left that kind of bread for future generations so they would know. How terrible this hunger is! Horrible!!!" 'Liquidating Kulaks'? Ukrainians and historians widely view the Holodomor as a man-made famine intentionally caused by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and his central planners as an act of genocide aimed at wiping out a class of Ukrainian peasant farmers. It stemmed from the forced collectivization of agriculture and grain procurements under Stalin's first five-year economic plan from 1928 to 1932. Some historians say the main cause of the famine in Ukraine, one of the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union, was the seizure of crops by Soviet authorities who sent the food to other Soviet republics. Evidence uncovered by researchers like British-American historian Robert Conquest shows that Stalin and other Communist Party members had ordered land-owning farmers across the Soviet Union, known as kulaks, "to be liquidated as a class." Famine also struck Kazakhstan, the North Caucasus, the Volga region, the South Urals, and Western Siberia in 1932 and 1933. WATCH: Eighty years ago, in 1932-33, Soviet authorities took all the grain from Ukrainian villagers and left them with nothing. More than 3 million people died in the resulting famine. Ukraine and at least 15 other countries officially recognize the Holodomor as an act of "genocide." The United States has labeled it as a "criminal act of the Stalinist regime" against the people of Ukraine. The U.S. Senate in 2017 also adopted a resolution declaring that "Stalin and those around him committed genocide against the Ukrainians in 1932-1933." But most Russian historians, noting that other ethnic groups also suffered from the famine, have stopped short of saying the Holodomor was engineered to kill Ukrainians. Tickets To The Gulag Olha Bazhan, director of Central State Archives of Public Organizations of Ukraine, says the scraps and Sorokin's notes were found last week. She says the discovery was made by an archivist who was analyzing declassified records from 35,000 criminal cases during Stalin's rule that involved residents of Kyiv and the surrounding region. "Samples of that kind of bread have never been discovered," Bazhan says. "These are absolutely original samples of bread that have been dated precisely." In fact, the scraps were nearly a decade old when they became evidence in a criminal case that resulted in Sorokin being "exiled" to the Soviet gulag system in Siberia. Sorokin was arrested on suspicion of "disloyalty to Soviet society" on June 26, 1941 -- just days after Nazi Germany launched its invasion of the Soviet Union under the code name Operation Barbarossa. Soviet Interior Ministry officers found the notes and ersatz bread during a search of Sorokin's home in Kyiv, filing it away as proof of what they called his "crimes against the Soviet government." Sorokin was 64 years old when he was sent to Siberia. He never returned, and there are no known records about his fate in Siberia. However, his name is listed in the archives as one of the hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens exonerated during the 1980s when their convictions during the Stalin era were overturned as illegal. "Neither his relatives nor researchers have come forward to ask for information about him," Bazhan said. Bazhan says further research into Sorokin's background reveals that his only child, a daughter, died about a year before his arrest -- leaving him no successors. "We will try to find indirect successors because we know that he had a sister and a brother," Bazhan said. "But it's clear that this find is Sorokin's message to all of us." Meanwhile, Bazhan said Sorokin's ersatz bread scraps will be studied by scientists to determine their exact ingredients. Written by Ron Synovitz, with reporting by Anastasia Mahazova of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service in Kyiv The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. Thousands marched in Osh, southern Kyrgyzstan, at an official demonstration against terrorism. Osh is regarded as one of the most acute hot zones for militant recruitment in Central Asia. The investigative group Bellingcat and Russian website The Insider say they have identified a second Russian GRU military intelligence officer allegedly involved in a 2016 coup attempt in Montenegro. Authorities in Montenegro have accused two Russian GRU officers of organizing the failed coup plot to prevent the small Balkan country from joining NATO. Moscow, which opposed Montenegros bid to join the military alliance, denied the allegations. Montenegro joined NATO in June. Bellingcat and The Insider had previously named the first GRU suspect as Eduard Shishmakov. On November 22, Bellingcat and The Insider said they had determined the name of the second suspect, naming him as Vladimir Moiseyev. He had been known to Montenegro prosecutors under his cover identity, Vladimir Popov. According to Bellingcat and The Insider, Moiseyev was recruited by the GRU sometime after studying in the mid-2000s at an academy in Tyumen, Siberia that is known for producing military engineers specializing in anything from radio-signal encryption to remote bomb detonation. Later, he is believed to have served in a GRU airborne Spetsnaz unit that took part in operations during the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia in the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. While operating under the cover identity of "Vladimir Popov" from 2012 to 2016, Moiseyev reportedly traveled around Europe posing as a "photo correspondent" and "journalist" working for a publication focused on the insurance industry. Montenegro last year became the 29th member of NATO, a step that was bitterly criticized by Russia and opposed by some Montenegrins who advocate closer ties with Moscow. Authorities in Montenegro say Serbian and Russian nationalists plotted to occupy parliament during October 2016 parliamentary elections, assassinate then-Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, and install a pro-Russian leadership to halt Montenegro's bid to join NATO. With reporting by AP Pakistani authorities have arrested a radical Islamic cleric whose followers held violent rallies against the acquittal of a Christian woman in a blasphemy case. Khadim Hussain Rizvi, the leader of the hard-line Tehrik-e Labaik party was arrested late on November 23 in the eastern city of Lahore, the party said in a statement. Police said that Rizvi's supporters clashed with police soon after he was taken away, with at least five people wounded. Scores of the clerics supporters were detained by police, the party statement said. Earlier this month, Rizvi led three days of violent protests in several cities over the Supreme Court's acquittal and release of Asia Bibi on October 31. Asia Bibi had spent eight years on death row on a blasphemy conviction. The protesters blocked roads and threatened the judges who acquitted Asia Bibi. Rizvi ended the protests after the authorities said Asia Bibi would not leave the country until a petition against her acquittal was reviewed. Rizvis detention appeared to set up a new confrontation, with the cleric urging his supporters earlier in the day to take to the streets if he was arrested. Based on reporting by Reuters and AP Pakistani security forces raced to seal off the Chinese consulate in Karachi after a suicide attack on the building on November 23. The bombers failed to gain access to the building. Initial reports said three suicide bombers and at least two policemen were killed in a gunbattle. Photo: The Canadian Press People wait in line to buy televisions as they shop during an early Black Friday sale at a Best Buy store on Thanksgiving Day Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018, in Overland Park, Kan.NEW YORK - Retailers aren't just ushering the official start of the holiday season with the usual expanded hours and fat discounts on big TVs and toys. They're offering new ways for shoppers to get deals online and in the store easier and faster in the age of instant gratification. Walmart introduced a digital map on its mobile app to make it easier for shoppers to find an item's exact location in the store. Kohl's has a new feature on its mobile app that lets customers take photos of products anywhere and find similar items at the department store. And customers, frustrated with long checkout lines, can check out at Walmart and other stores with a salesperson right on the spot. Shoppers are also facing new free shipping options. Target leapt in front of Walmart and Amazon to offer two-day free shipping for the holidays without any minimum purchases. Online leader Amazon followed, dropping its $25 minimum. Walmart is still sticking with its $35 threshold. "Retailers are pulling out all the stops to get shoppers earlier with online deals and using online to push shoppers in the store," said Marshal Cohen, chief industry adviser at the NPD Group, a market research group. "I think overall spending will be decent." Macy's was pushing such door buster deals as 70 per cent discounts on cookware and 40 per cent off of boots. As of early morning Friday, Macy's Herald Square, which opened all night, had a steady stream of shoppers, mostly tourists. "We got here at 4:30 a.m. We couldn't go to sleep so we went shopping," said Shane Wilson, who arrived in Manhattan from London on Wednesday. She was buying shoes and boots at 40 per cent off. She said her next stop was Bloomingdale's. Nicole Battini, from Bologna, Italy showed up with a friend at Macy's at 5 a.m. after a night of clubbing. Battini, who arrived in New York earlier this week, was looking for shoes, a handbag and a coat. Then she said she was going to sleep. "Tomorrow, we go back to clubbing," she said. Still, Black Friday isn't what it used to be. It has morphed from a single day when people got up early to score door busters into a whole month of deals. Many major stores, including Walmart, Best Buy and Macy's, start their blockbuster deals on Thanksgiving evening, which has consequently thinned out the crowds. Black Friday is nonetheless expected to be the biggest shopping day of the year, according to ShopperTrak, a technology company. And analysts say Black Friday sales should be even bigger than a year ago. They are expected to hit $23 billion on Friday, up from $21 billion during the same year-ago period, according to MasterCard SpendingPulse, which tracks all forms of payment, including cash. With the jobless rate at a five-decade low of 3.7 per cent and consumer confidence at an 18-year high, analysts project healthy sales increases for November and December. The National Retail Federation, the nation's largest retail trade group, is expecting holiday retail sales in November and December excluding automobiles, gasoline and restaurants to increase as much as 4.8 per cent over 2017 for a total of $720.89 billion. The sales growth marks a slowdown from last year's 5.3 per cent, which was the largest gain since 2010. But the figure is still healthy. Pakistani police have killed three suspected suicide bombers who attacked the Chinese Consulate in Karachi before they were able to enter the facility, an incident which Pakistan's government has called a "conspiracy" against the strategic cooperation between Islamabad and Beijing. Separately, at least 35 people were killed and more than 50 wounded in a bomb attack on a crowded market in a town in Pakistan's northwest. In the Karachi attack, which was claimed by the separatist Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) insurgent group, two police officers and two Pakistani visa applicants were also killed. "The situation is under control now, there were three attackers and all three have been killed.... They could not even get in the compound. They tried to get into the visa section," police chief Amir Shaikh told reporters. The consulate building that is located in Clifton, a heavily guarded part of the city. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan ordered an inquiry into the attack, calling it a "conspiracy" against the strategic cooperation between China and Pakistan. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular press briefing in Beijing, "China strongly condemns any violent attacks against diplomatic agencies and requests that Pakistan takes practical measures to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens and institutions in the country." Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said all 21 Chinese staff inside the consulate were safe. A BLA spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack. "There were three suicide attackers," Jiand Baloch told Reuters by telephone. "They stormed the Chinese Embassy in Karachi. China is exploiting our resources." A different spokesman, Geand Baloch, told AFP by telephone, "We have carried out this attack and our action is continuing." China, a close ally of Pakistan, has invested billions of dollars into the South Asian country in recent years as part of a massive infrastructure project, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), that seeks to connect its western province Xinjiang with the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar. Balochistan is Pakistan's largest and poorest province, and it is confronted with ethnic, sectarian, and separatist insurgencies. Participating in the CPEC presents an enormous challenge for Pakistan, a country plagued by weak institutions, endemic corruption, and insurgencies in the regions that would host the corridor. The future distribution of economic dividends from CPEC is extremely sensitive, particularly in resource-rich Balochistan, and various militant groups have repeatedly attacked construction sites and targeted Chinese workers. Karachi, Pakistan's largest city and financial center, has been marred for a long time by political, sectarian, and ethnic militancy. Meanwhile, at least 35 people were killed and more than 50 wounded when a bomb hidden in a carton of vegetables ripped through a crowded marketplace in Pakistan's northwest. Local police official Tahir Ali said the attack took place in the town of Klaya, in the Orakzai region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, which borders Afghanistan. He said most of the victims were minority Shi'ite Muslims. No militant group has claimed responsibility for the blast, but Orakzai has been the scene of militant attacks in recent years, mostly claimed by Pakistani Sunni militants. With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP A Russian court has sentenced popular rapper Husky to 12 days in prison for performing on a car after prosecutors banned his act. Husky, whose real name is Dmitry Kuznetsov, has a wide following on YouTube, with his videos registering up to 6 million views on YouTube. A court in the southern city of Krasnodar sentenced 25-year-old Husky, known for his songs mocking the authorities and police brutality, on charges of hooliganism after he was arrested on November 21. He was due to perform in Krasnodar when prosecutors warned the club hosting the event that his act had elements of what they termed "extremism," and the show was moved to another location. But the authorities shut off the power and Husky's fans poured outside the venue. Videos posted online showed the rapper performing on top of a car with the fans chanting the lyrics along before police detained him. A crowd blocked the police vehicle, demanding Husky's release. Police eventually persuaded them to disperse. Russian authorities have in recent years used a vaguely worded law on extremism to pursue government critics. Krasnodar police said that the owner of the vehicle on which Husky performed filed a complaint for property damage, a charge that may carry a longer jail term. Husky said he was willing to pay compensation for any damage to the vehicle. "I acted in such a way because I faced a situation when I felt an obligation to talk to the people who had bought tickets," he told the court. A new wave of Russian rappers is widely credited for channeling young Russians' frustration with the political system and lack of economic prospects. Based on reporting by AP and The Guardian Russia is working to subvert free speech both at home and abroad, and is stepping up pressure on its independent media, the United States has warned at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Washington also called for the release of both Russian and foreign journalists detained in Russia and in the area controlled by Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, and voiced deep concern over reports of intimidation and threats against the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta. "Both domestically and abroad, the Russian Federation seeks to undermine freedom of expression, and independent journalism is increasingly under pressure in Russia," U.S. Charge d'Affaires Harry Kamian told the Permanent Council meeting of the OSCE in Vienna on November 22. Kamian called for the release of Ukrainian National News Agency journalist Roman Sushchenko and Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov, "just two of the more than 70 Ukrainians unjustly imprisoned in occupied Crimea and Russia," the U.S. mission to the OSCE said in a statement. On June 4, the Moscow City Court found Sushchenko guilty of espionage and sentenced him to 12 years in a strict-regime prison. Sushchenko maintains his innocence, saying the case against him is politically motivated. 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, rights groups, and Western governments contend was politically motivated. He ended a nearly five-month hunger strike in a Russian prison in early October. "We also call on the Russian Federation to secure the release of Stanislav Aseyev, a journalist for Radio Liberty, who has been held captive in the so-called 'Donetsk People's Republic' since June 2017," the U.S. statement said. Aseyev, who has reported for various Ukrainian media outlets, also contributes to RFE/RL's Ukraine Service and writes under the name Stanislav Vasin. He disappeared in Donetsk on June 2, 2017, and weeks later, Amnesty International said it had received information that Aseyev was being held by the self-styled security agents of the separatists. The statement said that the United States was "also troubled" by the November 7 court decision to keep Zhalaudi Geriyev, an independent journalist from the Chechnya region, behind bars on "baseless drug charges." Geriyev was sentenced to three years in prison in 2016 for illegal drug possession, a charge he has denied from the very beginning. The Moscow-based human rights center Memorial has recognized Geriyev as a political prisoner and New York-based Human Rights Watch has said he was being "punished" for his work as a journalist. The United States also expressed "deep concern by the reports of intimidation and death threats directed at Novaya Gazeta journalists, who have recently received, among other menacing messages, a funeral wreath and a severed goat's head." Nine live sheep were left outside the independent newspaper's Moscow offices on October 29, after it published allegations that Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman with Kremlin ties, was involved in attacks on his opponents, including at least one killing. Earlier in October, unknown people left a basket containing a severed ram's head and red carnations at the newspaper's office, followed days later by a funeral wreath sent to the home of one of its journalists, with a note calling him "a traitor to his country." Novaya Gazeta has had five of its reporters killed since 2000 for their work. Washington also shares the OSCE's "concerns over the high fines imposed on [the independent] The New Times [online news outlet] for its alleged 'violations' of Russia's so-called Foreign Agents law," the statement said. On October 22, a Moscow court imposed fines of 22,250,000 rubles ($339,000) against The New Times and 30,000 rubles ($457) against the website's editor, Yevgenia Albats, for allegedly failing to comply with financial-reporting obligations under Russia's controversial "foreign agents" law. The U.S. mission to the OSCE delivered the statement in response to a report by the OSCE representative on media freedom, Harlem Desir Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said changing the country's constitution to state Kyivs aim of joining NATO and the European Union as strategic state goals will send a strong "message" to Moscow that "we are parting completely and irrevocably." Addressing lawmakers in the Ukrainian parliament on November 22, Poroshenko said Russia, "being an aggressor state," will not have a "veto" on whether Ukraine joins the two Western organizations. Relations between Moscow and Kyiv have deteriorated after Russia seized Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and shortly thereafter began supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine in a conflict that has left more than 10,300 people dead since April 2014. Poroshenko was speaking before lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill in its first reading to alter Ukraine's constitution to include as the countrys strategic goal membership in the EU and NATO. "By fixing in the constitution the obligatory course toward joining NATO and the European Union, we are sending a message to Moscow: we are parting completely and irrevocably," Poroshenko said, according to the UNIAN news agency. "Russia, being an aggressor state, does not have and will not have a veto on our accession to either NATO or the European Union." Poroshenko stressed that this is the sovereign right of Ukraine as a country, "which confidently walks its own path." The first vote on the bill comes days after Ukraine marked the fifth anniversary of the start of the Euromaidan protests, which began a series of events that tilted Ukraine's geopolitical orientation toward the West. Poroshenko took part in a ceremony on Kyiv's Independence Square on November 21 to commemorate the activists killed during the three months of peaceful protests on the square in 2013-14 that forced Moscow-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych to flee to Russia. In the weeks following Yanukovych's February 21, 2014, ouster, Russia illegally occupied Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula before annexing it, and also supported separatist forces as they fought for control of parts of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions. November 21 is officially known as Prosperity and Freedom Day in Ukraine to mark the start of the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2013-14 Euromaidan uprising. The day was known as Freedom Day from 2005 to 2011 but canceled while Yanukovych was president. Poroshenko reinstated it after becoming president in 2014. With reporting by Current Time, UNIAN, and Interfax Taking part in the ceremonial first pour of the new Block Island quarter at the Kettle Pond Visitor Center in Charlestown were, from left, Margaret Everson, principal deputy director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service; Jim Kurth, deputy director of the service; Janet Coit, director of the state Department of Environmental Management; and David Ryder, director of the United States Mint. Photo: CTV Two men have been arrested in separate cases of internet child exploitation in the Victoria area. The first involves potential luring of a West Shore child on social media by a 61-year-old Esquimalt man. Police began investigating the man's online activity Nov. 14. Charges have been recommended including luring a child under 16, making child pornography, luring a child under 14, making sexually explicit material available to a child, agreement or arrangement for sexual offence against a child, distribution of child pornography and counselling sexual interference that was not committed. "He was looking for a child to sexually abuse as well as a relationship with the mother of the child," Det. Mark MacPhail told CTV. The man has since been released on conditions with a promise to appear in court,. The second investigation began Nov. 1, in which a 28-year-old man expressed that he wanted to sexually abuse a child. Police set up a meeting Nov. 8, and the man was arrested. Gurpreet Singh, who was found to be living illegally in Canada, faces one charge of luring a child under 16. Police are working with Canada Border Services Agency on the file. with files from CTV Vancouver Island Photo: Castanet Staff The direct supervisor of a social worker accused of stealing from youth in his care is facing allegations of her own, while she remains employed at the Ministry of Children and Family Development. Three aboriginal women that were formerly youth in the care of Kelowna social worker Robert Saunders alleged in lawsuits this week that his supervisor, Siobhan Stynes, had direct knowledge of the theft of money from joint bank accounts they were encouraged to set up with Saunders. Stynes also directly inflicted emotional and psychological abuse on the plaintiff[s], the lawsuits allege. Castanet News has learned that shortly after Saunders was dismissed as a social worker in January, Stynes was removed as team leader and shuffled into a new role within the Okanagan-branch of the Ministry of Children and Family Development. But as recently as last month, she was managing the the hiring of social workers and social worker's assistants in Penticton and Kelowna, according to online job postings. In a brief statement, the Ministry confirmed her continuing employment. While we cannot comment on matters that are before the courts, in a situation where there are serious allegations facing a staff member an employee investigation would be guided by the BC Public Service Standards of Conduct, the statement continued. Stynes could not be reached for comment. A total of five civil lawsuits, one of them a proposed class-action, have alleged Saunders abused or stole money from high-risk aboriginal youth in his care. The lawsuits claim he coerced youth to open joint bank accounts that he used to fund personal expenses. One client alone is alleging $47,000 was stolen from him. The lawsuits allege negligence right up to Victoria at the office of the Director of Child Welfare for failing to properly supervise Saunders and Stynes. Lawyers say more civil claims are likely. The Office of the Representative of Children and Youth says they have 14 advocacy files opened on the case, and there could be more victims. An RCMP investigation is underway, but questions remain unanswered about when the police were called in. The ministry has said it informed the Public Guardian and Trustee who initiated the class-action lawsuit in March 2018. The Childs Representative was informed of the allegations in June. Both the RCMP and provincial government are refusing to comment on when police got involved. Saunders is now working in adult special education at Okanagan College in Kelowna. None of the above allegations have been proven in court, and responses have not been filed by defendants in any of the cases. Group from migrant caravan receive first work paychecks Mexico City, Mexico The Ministry of the Interior of Mexico says that the first group from the migrant caravan who were given work permits, have received payment. To date, 546 people from the migrant caravan who signed up for the Estas en Tu Casa program received their first paycheck. The program, Estas en Tu Casa, was set up by several branches of the federal government to help those entering the country illegally become legitimate. For those who chose Mexico as their new home, they were provided with work permits while immigration officers moved forward with their paperwork. Through a communique, the Ministry explained that the migrants were hired to rehabilitate the Tapachula Fairgrounds where they were sheltered while their applications for refugee status was being processed. They report that this group is part of the 2,697 who entered the country in a non-aggressive, non-violent manner, requesting refuge status in Mexico. The National Institute of Migration (INM), along with the Mexican Commission for the Support of Refugees, ensured that those who entered the country were provided with the proper legal documents to live and work in the state of Chiapas while their legal status is processed. Nine mega-projects outlined by federal government for state in 2019 Cancun, Q.R. At least nine mega-projects are set for the state of Quintana Roo for 2019 according to Proyectos Mexico. In the document Mexico Projects Hub, the government outlines several investment projects that are set to take place next year around the state. The outline includes projects such as the construction of the bridge over the Nichupte lagoon, the first stage of the Maya Train between Cancun and Tulum, the expansion of the Tulum-Bacalar highway to four lanes and the recovery of beaches in Riviera Maya, Cozumel, Playa del Carmen and Cancun. One of the listed projects is the much-needed expansion of lanes along the federal highway where the government says the 1.8 billion-peso-project would see the function of the highway improved. In their project description, they say the project will include the Extension to 4 lanes and maintenance of the federal highway 307 in the Bacalar-Tulum section, with a total length of 207.84 kms from km 17 + 000 to km 225 + 000. They also report work for Cancun roadways, describing the project as the Extension, maintenance and conservation of different sections of the Tulum-Cancun highway. The project is under review by the Secretaria de Comunicaciones y Transportes. Currently, permits are being processed by the corresponding federal agencies and no allocation of federal resources is expected. Photo: proyectosmexico Other projects such as the 4 billion peso lagoon bridge is also in the mix, Design, construction, equipment, operation and maintenance of a 7.4 km bridge over the Nichupte Lagoon to join Boulevard Colosio with Boulevard Kukulkan, which is formed by the Kabah road distributor, to improve mobility between the hotel zone and the city. Beach recovery for the region also made the list with the government explaining, The projects source of payment is under review. This may include budgetary resources as well as charges collected for the use of the Federal Terrestrial Maritime Zone (ZOFEMAT), among others. According to the federal government, the state of Quintana Roo will begin at least nine investment projects next year, some of which will conclude in 2019 while others are scheduled for completion in 2022. These listed projects are in addition to other state investments such as the announcement of the mega-hotel project north of Playa del Carmen and the recent approval of the Amikoo Theme Park and Resort for Riviera Maya. Photo: The Canadian Press Japan's Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko celebrates Expo announcement. The Japanese city of Osaka will host the World Expo in 2025, after beating out cities in Russia and Azerbaijan in the race to host an event expected to draw millions of visitors and showcase the local economy and culture. Shouts of joy in Japanese erupted in the Paris auditorium when the 170 member states of the Bureau International des Expositions voted Friday in favour of Osaka's bid. Dark-suited officials hugged and jumped up and down, and Japan's economy and trade minister, Hiroshige Seko, said he felt "Excellent! I'm excited! I also feel a heavy responsibility to make Expo 2025 successful." Back in Tokyo, Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said in a statement that the country will make an utmost effort to "achieve a magnificent expo in Osaka that would give dreams and surprises to everyone in the world." Hosting a world expo in Japan would be "a golden opportunity to promote fascinating charms of Japan to the rest of the world," Abe said. Past world's fairs introduced such wonders as the Eiffel Tower, the Ferris Wheel and Seattle's Space Needle. Today's version is aimed at finding solutions to challenges facing humanity. Osaka proposed an expo on a man-made island on the theme of "Society 5.0" and how to leverage robotics and artificial intelligence for the public good. World Expos, which are held every five years, can last up to six months and cost millions of dollars to host, but can help put a city on the global map by bringing in international visitors and attention. Milan hosted the last one in 2015, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is set to host the next one in 2020. No U.S. city has hosted a world's fair since the 1980s. The Russian city of Yekaterinburg was runner-up the second loss this week for Russia at an international organization, after the Russian candidate to be president of global police agency Interpol lost out to a South Korean rival. The capital of the oil-rich former Soviet country of Azerbaijan, Baku, came in third in Friday's expo vote. Osaka pitched itself as the safe, reliable choice notably because it already held the 1970 Expo, while the other cities are lesser known and would have been first-time hosts. Leaders in Osaka, Japan's third-largest city and the largest in western Japan, are hoping the expo will revitalize a city that has lost much of its lustre to Tokyo, the nation's political and economic capital. They have plans to transform the site into a casino resort after the expo, though there is opposition from residents to bringing casino gambling to town. THE anti-Islamist known as Tommy Robinson filmed a rant in Rotherham this week sparking a huge social media reaction and an active response from the police. Uniformed officers turned out to confront the public speaker (pictured) whose real name is Stephen Yaxley Lennon as he filmed himself discussing the towns child sexual abuse scandal outside Riverside House. Two videos posted on Facebook attracted tens of thousands of views and provoked more than 4,000 comments. Many were supportive, with one social media user hailing him as the new Churchill, but others were more critical, accusing the former English Defence League leader of spreading fake news. Robinson, who made the video in Rotherham as part of what he claims will be a documentary called The Rape of Britain, referred to Daily Mail reports that 426 (he quoted 490) muslim males in the town were being investigated in relation to CSE. He described this as the biggest issue in the UK today and incorrectly (his figures do not add up) commented: Nearly 20 per cent of the Muslim population of Rotherham....in one small town....have been raping kids. In other, larger towns, it must be worse, he said. Robinson said reporting restrictions were being imposed in court cases, which meant the public did not hear the true details of what had happened and added: If you want to get a transcript it costs you 1,000 a day. These trials take 50 days. Thats 50,000. He added the whole worlds going to know what has been going on. Robinson also complained that he had been in town for five minutes when the police turned up to speak to him and posted a shorter video entitled Rotherham Police, anything to hide? Rotherham Advertiser editor Andrew Mosley said: To say that the details of the trials have not been reported due to restrictions and that the public do not know what is going on is both offensive and wrong. Yes, there are restrictions in place, but these are generally to protect the victims of the abuse and involve names, relationships and addresses. Contempt of Court law prevents us from reporting certain details before or during a trial and if we chose to ignore the law we could be at risk of collapsing the trial, and were sure Tommy wouldnt want that. Equally, by law you cannot call a defendant a rapist when they have pleaded not guilty until if and when they have been convicted of the crime. Anything we have left out of our reporting has been due to either the legal reasons mentioned or public decency. The Advertiser has made sure the people of Rotherham knows as much as possible about what is happening in the Stovewood trials. Since March 2016 we have covered 32 weeks of crown court CSE trials, in addition to the many days we have attended magistrates hearings. Robinson is also wrong, and probably knows it, to say that 20 per cent of Muslim males in this town are rapists. Being investigated does not make you a rapist for a start. These comments are deliberately inflammatory and designed to attract publicity. It works. More than 970,000 people like his Facebook page, his Rotherham video has had almost 4,000 shares, has attracted around the same amount of comments many in support and been viewed 155,000 times. That is why we have chosen to report on his visit to Rotherham. To ignore it would simply be to seem to be in an imagined media cover-up and also to ignore those people who agree with his comments. His message is timed to take advantage of a difficult time in this countrys history, with much of the population suffering from a decade of austerity, poverty, low self-esteem and looking for someone to blame as well as someone who appears to back their cause. Wrongly, they believe he is that man. The former British National Party member, who has convictions for contempt of court, breach of the peace and fraud among other offences, should do us all including the victims of child sexual exploitation a favour and keep away from Rotherham. Asked about the police response, Supt Steve Chapman said: As the country remains on the heightened threat level of severe, we would be negligent in our duties if we did not approach someone photographing a public building in darkness to make enquiries with them about their intentions. After speaking to the individual, officers were reassured that there was no cause for concern and continued their patrol. A FORMER British Army sergeant who has spent five years helping fellow brain injury survivors is in line for an award. John Dougan (57, pictured) was involved in a car crash in 1995, while driving from his base at Kirton-in-Lindsey to his home in Maltby. His broken leg was obvious to doctors - but they could not see his brain injury and for years he struggled silently with a hidden disability. After retraining as a teacher, John began helping other brain injury survivors to rebuild their lives with the charity Headway Rotherham. He founded the Peer Support Group, which helps those isolated by brain injuries to reconnect with the world. Johns dedication has seen him shortlisted for a Stephen McAleese Outstanding Contribution to Headway Award. Im pleased Ive been able to help people, he said. For me, its all about seeing people being happy and able to cope with their new life after brain injury. Johns injury left him struggling with fatigue, memory loss and severe headaches \_- but doctors insisted he would be fine once he went home. I was alone all day while my former wife was at work, but when shed ask me what I had done, I couldnt remember, he said. I forgot to take my medication for my leg. I lay awake at night, then I couldnt stay awake in the day \_ my life was in constant turmoil. John struggled in silence for years before a doctor diagnosed him with a diffuse axonal injury, a widespread tearing of nerve fibres across the brain. Having discovered a passion for teaching in the army, John enrolled to study technology teaching at Sheffield Hallam University \_ but his injury made learning difficult. I was one of the quickest in the workshop because I had more experience, but the theory side of the work took me much longer, he said. It takes me a long time to read, write and organise my thoughts because of my brain injury and I was spending countless hours a week on my studies. In my second year, I was taking on school placements, completing assignments and doing days at university. I was permanently fatigued. Towards the end of his studies, John discovered brain trauma charity Headway Rotherham. For the first time, he could talk to other people going through the same struggles as him. Up until that point, I had felt alone, said John. Then I suddenly discovered there was a whole community of people in Rotherham living with brain injury \_ it was enlightening. There were a lot of people who had it worse than me, who would never be able to return to work, with more physical limitations. John, who now lives in Kimberworth, realised he could support other survivors thanks to his teacher training and life experience \_- and the Peer Support Group was born. Some people had been living with the effects of their injury for 20 years, and they were still struggling to reintegrate into society, said John. Some were afraid even to attend Headway Rotherham and I realised they probably werent socialising with anyone else at all. He added: Weve had some real success stories. Some people were effectively housebound when they first came, because they were so reluctant to go outside. But as theyve grown in confidence they have totally changed. Award-winners will be announced at a ceremony in The Dorchester Hotel in London on December 7. Left to right: Rawmarsh Community Schools Helen OBrien, John Healey MP, Kilnhurst Primarys Ryan Cousins and Rotherham Aspires Leanne Camaish. A CAMPAIGNING MP was joined by three headteachers to demand action from a government minister about the mental health crisis sweeping Rotherham schools. John Healey met schools minister Nick Gibb in London on Monday, with support from Rawmarsh Community Schools Helen OBrien, Kilnhurst Primarys Ryan Cousins and Rotherham Aspires Leanne Camaish. The meeting came about after Mr Healey published a report, based on a survey of primary and secondary schools in the Wentworth and Dearne constituency, which highlighted a mental health crisis. It revealed a frequency and severity of emotional issues amongst both teachers and students far higher than five years ago. The findings also prompted the Advertisers Class Action campaign, which is highlighting the problem and amplifying calls for improved access to school counsellors. The week after its launch, bosses at NHS Rotherham Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust (RDaSH) announced a 1.6 million bid to make Rotherham a childrens mental health pioneer. A decision on the bid was expected by mid-November\!q at the Monday meeting, Mr Gibb said it was now imminent. Mr Healey said: It was good to get the ministers ear and our Rotherham heads really took him to task on the mental health crisis in our schools. He listened carefully as the heads talked about the complexity of problems faced by pupils, the need for a counsellor in every secondary school and for similar access to counsellors in primary schools. In the autumn budget, Chancellor Philip Hammond announced a 2 billion increase in funding for the UK mental health sector over the next six years. Mr Healey added: I told [Mr Gibb] theres no better place to pilot the Governments plans for education mental health support teams [than here]. We left feeling hopeful but still with our fingers crossed. Its clear the minister shares our concerns about mental health support in schools but the Government has to step up its action, which is too slow and too small-scale. Ms OBrien said: This was a great opportunity to discuss such an important issue at the top level of government. We were able to put across a real view of what its like in schools when it comes to dealing with mental health concerns and the challenges that we and many other head teachers across the country face on a daily basis. Mr Cousins added: We were able to tell the minister about the urgent help that young people with mental health concerns require. The services that we work with are brilliant, but theyre under pressure, which results in longer waiting times and it was vital to tell those in power about the real life experiences we encounter. Ms Camaish welcome the opportunity to raise concerns over the mental health demands which arise in schools daily. School budgets have been cut and are tight right now, so it is clear that more funding is needed to help deal with the ever increasing concerns around student mental health, she said. Mr Healey also met representatives of Rotherham Borough Council, Rotherham CCG, Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber health trust and other headteachers last week, securing pledges to work more closely on improving schools mental health. Photo: Contributed CUPW unions representatives at MP Stephen Fuhr's office. Members of the Kelowna Local of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) ramped up their efforts to put pressure on the Federal government today. Two union representatives went to the constituency office of Member of Parliament Stephen Fuhr Friday over the lunch hour. Matthew Aitken and Jessica McDonald wanted to express the union's concerns directly to Fuhr. The union is protesting the Liberal governments announcement of back-to-work legislation for postal workers. Aitken tells Castanet unlike some other protests around the country the Kelowna occupation was cordial. "I've been communicating with Stephen for a few months and we're all quite cordial with one another. The union trains on what do if we get arrested but that is not the type of relationship that we have here." Aitken says occupations were planned across the country at various liberal MP's offices, "the union is calling on MP's across the country to respect workers rights to free and fair collective bargaining and to reject this draconian legislation." Aitken says they spoke with Stephen via teleconference and came away very pleased with the meeting. "Stephen talked to us about the various votes this bill has to go through and says the process is quite complex and he is voting for some of the procedural motions but not for the bill as a whole. We feel great about the support Stephen is willing to show working class people in the Okanagan." Postal workers have been holding rotating strikes over the last five weeks as CUPW continues to try and reach a negotiated settlement with Canada Post that ensures workers safety, equal pay for women and more full-time jobs. Punjab CM also announces other projects of rs. 3312 cr, release & remission of prisoners to mark historic occasion SPOKESMAN NEWS SERVICE: SULTANPUR LODHI, NOVEMBER 23: Former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, Punjab Governor VP Singh Badnore and Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Friday laid the foundation stones for 26 development projects worth Rs 150 crore, including upgradation of infrastructure in the three historic towns of Sultanpur Lodhi, Dera Baba Nanak and Batala, to mark the launch of the year-long celebrations of the 550th anniversary of Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji. Captain Amarinder, who further announced projects and welfare schemes to the tune of Rs 3312 crore to facilitate pilgrims and to commemorate the historic occasion, also launched a tree plantation drive to plant 550 trees in every village throughout the state in the next one year at a total cost of Rs. 10.5 crore. The cost shall be met through greening Punjab Mission and maintenance shall be done through MNREGA. Indigenous variety of trees shall be planted at appropriate places in consultation with Gram Panchayats, said the Chief Minister, appealing to all Punjabis to plant at least one fruit tree each in their homes. Advertisement The Chief Minister announced the release of 32 prisoners and remission of the term for another 2952 to mark the occasion. The Government of Punjab has decided to set up a Committee under ACS (Home), with Principal Secretary (Jails), DG Intelligence & ADGP (Jails) as members, to review all cases of prisoners who have had good conduct and can be considered for early release. The Committee shall submit its report in 60 days. It is also proposed to build a Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji Marg, to be finalized by the Group of Experts from Department of Religious Studies, which has been assigned the task to study and propose alignment for the same. The foundation stones laid today relate to 3 High-Level bridges and 2 Foot Over Bridges (Rs. 24 crore), High Level bridge on creek of river Beas (Rs 13 crore), New Rest House at Sultanpur Lodhi (Rs. 5 crore), Widening of Plan Roads (Rs. 42 crores), Special Repair of Plan Roads (Rs 38 crores). All these works shall be completed by July 2019. Advertisement The others are development projects being undertaken by Department of Local Government for Upgradation of Civic Infrastructure in Municipal Council, New Bus Stand and Sewerage Treatment Plant (STP) & other sewerage works in Sultanpur Lodhi, besides Upgradation of Civic Infrastructure in Municipal Council in Batala & Dera Baba Nanak. All three towns are associated with the first Sikh Guru. The Chief Minister has also announced a Sarbat Sehat Bima Yojana, under which 43 Lakh families would be brought under insurance cover of Rs 5 Lakh at a cost of Rs 371 Crores, w.e.f January 1, 2019. The State Government has also embarked upon an ambitious programme to spruce up the village infrastructure under Smart Village Campaign (SVC) in a phased manner, across the state, at a cost of Rs. 1000 crore in the first phase. Wide variety of developmental works (like sewerage system, paving of streets, gym, parks, CCTV, village Secretariat etc.) shall be taken up in these villages over the next 3.5 years. Advertisement The projects aim, said the Chief Minister, is to make the villages self- sustaining by creating an environment to enable the local communities to achieve their capabilities through contextually appropriate technologies, systems, structures and processes. Besides, 36 villages and 11 Nagar Panchayats visited by Shri Guru Nanak Dev Ji have been identified for development at Rs. 150 crore, announced the Chief Minister. An Institute of Inter-faith Studies will be set up at GNDU, Amritsar (Rs. 510 crore), while Pind Babe Nanak Da museum will be established at Sultanpur Lodhi to commemorate the historic occasion, said the Chief Minister. Captain Amarinder also announced Bebe Nanki College for Girls in Village Mahablipur, 5 KM from Sultanpur Lodhi, in addition to a project for lining and cleaning of Kali Bein, to be undertaken in Sultanpur Lodhi in association with Sant Baba Balbir Singh Seechewal Ji of "Ek Onkar Charitable Trust" through Kar Seva. A sum of Rs 180 crore has been allocated for upgradation of roads and bridges to improve connectivity to Sultanpur Lodhi with Majha, Doaba and Malwa areas, in order to cater to huge rush of Sangat expected to converge here during the celebrations. These works in and around Sultanpur Lodhi Kapurthala shall be completed by 30.09.2019. Advertisement A Government Medical College and Super-Speciality Hospital will be established at Village Kotli Nangal in District Gurdaspur for Rs. 400 crore, in PPP mode (to be completed by 2021), and Sri Guru Nanak Devji Centre for Invention, Innovation, Incubation & Training (CIIIT) will be established as a Hub in Main Campus of PTU at Kapurthala, with a Spoke to be developed in Village Jabbowal, Sultanpur Lodhi (total Rs 739 crore). A Guru Nanak Dev Ji Auditorium in PTU Kapurthala and a Bio-diversity Park and Village Kanjli, District Kapurthala are among the other projects announced by the Chief Minister. The Chief Minister said the railway station at Sultanpur Lodhi would also be upgraded, as announced by the Ministry of Railways, GoI, which had acceded to the state governments request on the issue. He also welcomed the Centres decision to release commemorative coins and stamp to mark the commemoration. Congress president Rahul Gandhi Friday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of bringing ignominy to all chowkidars (watchmen) in the country. Addressing campaign rallies for the November 28 Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Gandhi said the situation now is such that whenever the word chowkidar is uttered, people say "chor hai" (is a thief). "Wherever you go, as you pronounce the word "chowkidar" comes a reply "chor hai". I want to apologise to the chowkidars of the country. It is not your mistake, you all are not thieves, you all are honest. Only one person has brought ignominy to you. The country's prime minister has defamed all its chowkidars," he said. Before coming to power in 2014, Modi used to talk about combating corruption, unemployment and farmers' welfare but is now mum on these issues, Gandhi said. The sentiment across the country is that he broke their trust, Gandhi added. When Modi gave the "acche din" (good days) slogan ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, people would respond to the catch-phrase, saying "aayenge" (will come), he said. The promised "Acche Din" were not meant for the people but for some top industrialists, Gandhi said. Good days have come for industrialists like Nirav Modi, Anil Ambani and Vijay Mallya, he added. Modi, in his election campaign in 2014, had said he wanted to be the country's chowkidar, not the prime minister. "People had then reposed faith in him. The youth were assured two crore jobs, farmers were assured minimum support price for their produce, the entire India was assured that Rs 15 lakh would be deposited in the bank account of each citizen. People believed this then," Gandhi said. "Why has this changed? In four years, people found that these (promises) were false. Narendra Modi speaks lies. This is the sentiment in the country, because he has broken the (people's) trust," Gandhi said. A "Congress wave" would sweep Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram and Telangana, he said. The BJP-led government waived of Rs 3.5 lakh crore loans of the rich, but did not write off debts of farmers, he said. The previous Congress-led UPA government, on the recommendation of the Indian Air Force, decided to purchase 126 Rafale fighters at a cost of Rs 526 crore per plane with the stipulation that the state-owned aerospace company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) would make them in India, Gandhi said. "But Modi went to France and conveyed to the French government that each Rafale jet will be purchased for Rs 1600 crore. He told them to give the contract to (Anil) Ambani instead of giving it to HAL," Gandhi said. There was no immediate reaction from the BJP on the allegations. The ruling party has dismissed the charges in the past. The Congress president asked his party men to stand at polling booths and not back off "even an inch" to convey a message to the BJP that people of Madhya Pradesh are now with the principal opposition party. Gandhi, who faces a defamation suit for claiming that Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's son was named in the 'Panama Papers', said, "I spoke mistakenly that Shivraj ji's son was named in Panama Papers, actually it was Chhattisgarh CM's son. Shivraj ji threatened me of filing defamation suit." "But when I talk about scams like e-tendering, Vyapam, illegal mining and mid-day meal scam, he (Shivraj) doesn't speak a word, he doesn't threaten to file defamation. What does it mean," he said. Chouhan "stole" people's money in Vyapam, the entrance examination, admission and recruitment scam unearthed in Madhya Pradesh in 2013, he said. -PTI This article was supported by The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center. This past summer, the EU launched an initiative to track migration in real time using big data the masses of machine-readable data each one of us leaves behind every time we use an electronic device. The language around this is that it will help refugees, says Linnet Taylor, a professor and researcher working on data justice. Yet, theres also a threat. Being able to distinguish whether people are Ghanaian, Pakistani or Syrian, for instance, is likely to work against Ghanaians and Pakistanis who may have a perfectly valid claim to asylum, but will be shut out in a world of big data, says Taylor, hinting at the continents migration crisis unfolding in recent years. The refugee crisis is now one of the biggest worries in rights-based discussions about big data, according to Alexa Koenig, executive director of the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in the United States. Koenig, who is part of the Bellagio Science for Development residency taking place throughout November, says the concern is about the potential of such data to endanger or violate privacy. Theres a lot of thinking going on, looking into how we make sure that the big data that is being collected around vulnerable groups like refugees are being used to help them, as opposed to potentially being used against them. On the cusp Ever since big data entered the mainstream a few years ago, opinion has been divided some see gold-dust for new analytical insights and social benefit, others see a human rights disaster waiting to happen. Its still early to see concrete benefits for global development. The reason is that there is no way right now to access big data at scale, says Emmanuel Letouze, director and co-founder of the Data-Pop Alliance, a global coalition that promotes the use of big data in global development. So we're stuck in a low equilibrium where we do pilots, case studies, proofs of concept, little things here and there. For example, big data has been used in pilot programmes to track people in humanitarian situations, model the spread of disease, develop early warnings for extreme weather in Lake Victoria, and even improve bus routes in Cote dIvoire. If concrete benefits are rare, so too are examples of harm. Yet, the Facebook data breach scandal aside, early signs of danger can be seen in how social media has been used to crack down on dissent in countries such as China and Pakistan. Latching on to problems and blowing them out of proportion can also deprive society of the many benefits of technology, argues Jan Piotrowski, environment correspondent at the Economist and a Bellagio resident. Technologies will be put to good use, but could also be used for ill purposes, and this has been true since man picked up a stick. The fast pace of technological change also adds a twist to the age-old challenge of societies struggling to keep up with scientific advances, immortalised exactly two hundred years ago in Mary Shelleys novel Frankenstein. And data researcher Taylor sees this issue in big data, continuing a development policy pattern that goes back to World War II, with Northern countries attempting to create technology transfer and economic models in the South. What I see in this [EU] big data for migration statistics initiative is that statistics agencies who are having to collaborate with start-ups on, for instance, analysing satellite data in combination with social media postings from people coming out of refugee camps on the Turkish border they can't do any kind of meaningful analysis because they don't have the cultural and linguistic capacity to understand what they're seeing, she explains. There are also many cases of well-meaning but problematic development of apps that collect information about vulnerable people to help them access services, according to Koenig. She cites the example of electronic devices used to document sexual violence crimes without considering that some people or countries might find sharing certain images inappropriate. The imbalance extends to the development of big data analytics capacity, and some worry about a new digital divide. I do think there is a risk of developing countries listening to what they are told [and] making big investments in systems that are not built for their needs, says Maria deArteaga, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States. What are the customizable parts? What are the embedded assumptions? Being able to distinguish whether people are Ghanaian, Pakistani or Syrian, for instance, is likely to work against Ghanaians and Pakistanis who may have a perfectly valid claim to asylum. Linnet Taylor, Tilburg University Its not for lack of expertise, according to Justin Arenstein, founder and chief executive of Code for Africa African data scientists simply need a stronger voice to help shape policy. There is a growing and vibrant data science ecosystem across Africa, with some really curious data 'explorers' who are using open source data to ask important developmental questions. Local context culture, politics, infrastructure etc. will always influence how digital tools and technologies are rolled out, says Tariq Khokhar, managing director and senior data scientist at The Rockefeller Foundation. The most important local context is the data itself. Reinventing the system As long as the technological infrastructure in the global South remains weak, governments will keep shifting their data to clouds managed by international companies, adds Bright Simons, president of the mPedigree network in Ghana. And this puts corporations in the driving seat. Ongoing Big Data initiatives in Africa are heavily dominated by the telecom industry. Orange, for instance, has experimented with multiple concepts in Francophone West Africa, especially in Senegal. Davis Adieno, regional director for Africa at the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data in Kenya, sees the same pattern. They [organisations and agencies] simply cant afford to invest in massive databases and expensive licenses. This kind of dynamic really is transferring power to corporations, says Taylor. They can produce solutions and they can determine what gets done. But Letouze believes companies are a much better option than governments when it comes to safeguarding sensitive data. Can you imagine Trump, can you imagine Erdogan, can you imagine Putin, having by law! control?, he says. Most companies have tight security protocols in place to protect data. Everyday any big company thwarts hundreds of more breaching attempts. Its not just companies or states sweeping up the digital breadcrumbs we leave behind, according to Koenig researchers and civil society are in on it too. One of the really interesting things right now is that there are so many groups collecting information, she says. The question is how to manage it over what is a long life cycle. Some argue for better citizen education, a public interest framework not entirely led by states or corporations, or carving out a true digital commons that balances civic with state and commercial interests.Koenig says moves to come up with a framework to manage big data responsibly are in the very early stages. The legal and regulatory framework is currently aimed at states, historically the custodians of data about their citizens but the shift to corporations over the last decade means regulators are on unfamiliar ground. How do we begin to build a new framework for the 21century that acknowledges those realities? Europes GDPR regulations and Microsoft calling for a 4th Geneva Convention are signs of an evolving conversation, says Koenig. But efforts to understand and manage the role of corporations, beyond commerce, have only just begun. This article was supported by The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center. For nearly 60 years the Bellagio Center has supported individuals working to improve the lives of poor and vulnerable people globally through its conference and residency programs, and has served as a catalyst for transformative ideas, initiatives, and collaborations. From November 5 December 3, 2018, the Bellagio Center hosted a special thematic residency on Science for Development, with a cohort of up to 15 scholars, practitioners, and artists whose work is advancing, informing, communicating, or is inspired by the use or design of science and technology to address social and environmental challenges around the world. Behind the rotating bookshelf that leads to the steep wood staircase to the top - from liberty to bondage, from light to Dark. In the attic of the back house at Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam, the eight Jews lived in hiding from the German Nazis for almost two years until 4. August 1944. Here is the Jewish girl Anne Frank wrote her world famous diary. As a result, the Jews got tracking for many young people worldwide face of the girl from Amsterdam. behind the house is a Monument and Museum at the same time. Now, almost 75 years after the end of the Second world war, it has been transformed. "We tell Anne's story," says the Director of the Anne Frank Foundation, Ronald Leopold. "The young visitors to be able to understand today." every Year, more than 1.2 million people visit the Anne Frank house, most of them are younger than 30 years old. "Many of their grandparents did not experience the war," says Leopold. "The interest is large, but many of them know hardly anything from the world war." Now, the Museum tells the story of the Frank family chronologically and explained to her the example of the history of the persecution of Jews in Europe. "The hiding place itself is virtually unchanged," stresses Leopold. The front of the house, in which, during the war, the trading company, Opekta Anne's father, Otto, is now the backdrop for the story of the family. She emigrated after Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 in Frankfurt am Main. Almost seven years the Franks lead a relatively carefree life until the German the Netherlands in 1940, the Wehrmacht occupied. Now the persecution of the Jews starts there as well. When Anne's sister, Margot, 1942, the threat of Deportation under the family. Anne is 13 years old. The stairs behind the bookcase leads to the hideout. While in the lower rooms, natural light, top of the window is sealed - no one was allowed in the submerged see or hear. The creaking of the wooden floorboards or the toilet would have you can tell. The narrow bottom chambers are simple Goldenbahis and empty, just as in 1944, after the RAID of the Nazis. The walls of Anne star photos had been glued to the faded Wallpaper: Greta Garbo, Heinz Ruhmann. On a wall you can still see the pencil marks, with father Otto Frank had, how much his daughters Margot and Anne, were grown. Only photos on the walls show how it there are times Annes looked. Quotes from the diary let the visitors to the threat, feel the fear, the tensions but also the hopes. Up to the last. The hiding place is betrayed in 1944 and deported to the eight people in hiding - with the last Transport from the Dutch camp Westerbork to Auschwitz. Anne is mountains, as well as her sister, Margot, in the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen die, only a few weeks before the liberation. Anne was 15 years old. Only her father Otto survived. He returned after the war to Amsterdam. Helpers rescued Anne's diaries. Otto published it in 1947. The tour ends in the diary room. Here, too, the light is attenuated. Anne smiles in the photo on the wall - curious and full of life. In the showcase, the red-and-white checkered small booklet, her first diary as a precious and very vulnerable treasure. The rooms are very sparsely equipped with only a few photos, and documents. The last postcard written by the family to relatives. A Box with marbles, the, Anne of a friend shortly before the dive to the Store. The report of the death of Anne's. The story is told mainly from eye-witnesses, with audio recordings of Otto Frank, the helpers, previous Girlfriends. And, of course, Anne with quotes from her diary. The economical setup is a conscious decision. "The Empty Symbol," says Director of the Leopold. "It reminds us that Anne is there, she reminds us of the 70,000 inhabitants of the lost city of Amsterdam." Anne also stand for the millions of Jews murdered by the Nazis, says Leopold. "Anne's story is to touch us and to Think about moving." Updated Date: 23 November 2018, 08:01 dpa The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and other municipal power providers are challenging a controversial decision by state energy regulators to raise the fees customers pay when they switch from investor-owned utilities like Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to programs like CleanPowerSF. Last month, the California Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously to tinker with an arcane but important formula that determines the size of so-called exit fees permanent charges that show up on electricity bills of customers who enroll in government-run energy services. After that decision, the SFPUC estimated that CleanPowerSFs monthly costs could rise by around $5 per customer, but the agency stressed that cost predictions will remain highly uncertain until PG&E finalizes its rates next month. However, the SFPUC, which runs CleanPowerSF, has said it will absorb the impact from the fee increase, so customers electric bills wont actually rise as a result of the CPUCs decision. But that still means the agency would be on the hook for an extra $11 million in exit-fee payments to PG&E between Jan. 1 and July 1 next year unless, of course, the decision gets reversed. Barbara Hale, SFPUC assistant general manager for power operations, said the agency believes regulators misapplied and overlooked portions of state law in ways that artificially inflate the exit fees for government-run energy programs. The CPUC has until mid-February to decide whether it will grant the requests for another hearing. If the state board denies it, the SFPUC and other municipalities could take their case to court. Hale said the agency and its attorneys are waiting to make any decisions about taking legal action. Is it worth the investment? Well have to figure that out, Hale said. The CPUC did not respond to requests for comment Friday. San Franciscos utility agency contends that the added costs could seriously imperil its ability to grow CleanPowerSF over time. The agency is gradually enrolling the city in CleanPowerSF automatically, but customers can choose to opt out. About 43 percent of the energy mix in the programs baseline comes from renewable sources, and theres also a 100 percent renewable option. A planned mass enrollment push next year aimed at signing up 280,000 new business and residential customers is still on track, despite the CPUC decision. The fees that the CPUC voted to raise last month are meant to offset the costs that utility companies incurred to purchase long-term energy contracts and other investments. PG&E, for instance, has spent billions of dollars buying and generating renewable energy since the early 2000s. As government-run programs like CleanPowerSF continue to mushroom across the state, PG&E and other utilities say the rate increases are essential to ensure that the costs of those prior investments dont fall unfairly upon customers who choose to stay, or have no energy alternatives to turn to. 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. But the SFPUC as well as CalCCA (CalCommunity Choice Aggregation), which lobbies on behalf of the states community choice aggregation local energy programs contends that state regulators are mistakenly factoring costs into the fee formula that make PG&Es and other utilities expenses seem greater than they really are. We have to say what theyre doing isnt consistent with the law, Hale said. The SFPUC made similar arguments prior to the regulators vote last month, so their petition for a rehearing could be a long shot. Many of us members of the Legislature, mayors of large cities, environmental groups we all asked the CPUC to take a more balanced approach, and the CPUC essentially ignored our concerns, said state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, a longtime proponent of CleanPowerSF and similar programs. Wiener said he and a sizable group of senators and Assembly members are in the early stages of discussions about a legislative strategy in 2019 aimed at ensuring that CCAs can exist and function and grow and thrive. I hope the CPUC takes this petition for a rehearing seriously, he said. Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa Alfred Douglas spent his working life at a dry cleaner, a cannery and in food service. Hes now 67, with a bad back, pains in his knees and ankles and Social Security as his main source of income. So three or four days a week, Douglas hobbles a few blocks from his home to Glide Memorial Church in the Tenderloin for a free meal. On Thanksgiving, he was one of about 5,000 who took part in the annual feast of turkey, ham and trimmings. When youre struggling to pay the rent, it means a lot, Douglas said at a table in the bustling dining room. At another table sat Sarah McDay, 64, who comes to Glide each day for food and spiritual comfort. She worked for many years as a nurses assistant in Ohio and San Francisco, retired in 2016 and looks forward to her next birthday, when she said her benefits will increase and she can move into senior housing. She comes for the prayer, the help as well as the food, McDay said. You feel protected. I thank the Lord for a good meal and at Glide, the food is not too salty, just right. The lines outside the church on Ellis Street were longer than usual, but Thursday was far from unique for the Glide Foundation, which serves about 750,000 meals for the needy each year, every day except New Years, and has been doing it for 50 years. Thanksgiving supplies included 1,200 pounds of turkey, 2,899 pounds of ham and 300 pounds of sweet potatoes. Were here to share a meal and for nourishing the soul its about more than turkey, said Karen Hanrahan, the churchs president and chief executive officer of the Glide Foundation. She said people come for food and often stay for services that include mental health care, drug treatment and job training. Most of the people we serve are in some kind of crisis, Hanrahan said. Thats equally true several blocks away at the kitchen run by St. Anthony Foundation, which has been providing free meals since 1950. Waiting in line Thursday was Michael Carrera, 48, who comes every day for food and works as a volunteer for St. Anthonys homeless program. Hes been homeless for 10 years and lives at a camp in the Mission District. Its too hard to find a place, said Carrera, who did construction work in Texas for about 20 years and now gets by on minimal income as a day laborer. Sunny after Wednesdays cloudburst, the low-income neighborhood radiated a mellow mood on the holiday, with streets closed to host church-sponsored programs offering food, recreation and even haircuts. More quietly, alongside other streets, homeless people lay under their blankets. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. The view outside Glide included some shiny motorcycles, courtesy of Kings of Cali, a club that volunteers at the church on Thanksgiving. At least 30 members showed up Thursday to prepare and serve meals, said Jason Ross, who has been doing it for 13 or 14 years. Im an attorney by day and a community member 24 hours, said Ross, accompanied by his son, his daughter and his mother. Some years ago, he said, the Kings of Cali awarded an honorary membership to the Rev. Cecil Williams, who served as Glides pastor from 1963 until his retirement in 2000 and presided over its efforts at community outreach. The 500-plus volunteers at the church also included Sean Johnson, 36, who first worked there when his father brought him more than 20 years ago. About a dozen family members came with him Thursday. Its a good feeling, said Johnson, who lives in Belmont and works in retirement planning. Youve got an opportunity to give back to those who arent as blessed. Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko San Franciscans are good at many things. Just ask us. Voting, it seems, is at the top of the list. An eye-popping 74.4 percent of registered San Francisco voters cast a ballot in the midterm elections, the highest percentage for a midterm election here in modern history. Nationwide, 49.3 percent of registered voters turned out for the midterms, the highest percentage since 1914. A solid showing, but still, we trounced it. (Of course, the San Francisco Department of Elections actually encourages voting rather than attempting to quash it, so that might have something to do with it.) Our 74.4 percent figure is far higher than the usual San Francisco turnout for midterm elections. Back in 2014, those pleasant, low-pressure days when Donald Trumps most significant decision was whom to fire from The Apprentice, our voter turnout was a blase 53 percent. (I just refreshed my memory by looking at what was on the ballot that year and nearly fell asleep in the process. Bonus points if you remember the name of the Republican Gov. Jerry Brown beat for a second term. It was Neel Kashkari, and if you came up with that off the top of your head, you should appear on Jeopardy! Unless, of course, your name is Neel Kashkari.) Anyway, that 74.4 percent figure rivals our turnout in presidential elections. When Trump went from reality show host to leader of the free world, 80.7 percent turned out to vote. That was just shy of the 81.25 percent turnout in 2008, when the nation elected Barack Obama president, and San Franciscans literally danced in the streets. My, how times have changed. Of course, San Francisco isnt monolithic, despite what Trump believes, and turnout within the city varied significantly. Leah Dorazio, a math teacher at University High School, made some nifty maps breaking down turnout neighborhood by neighborhood and even precinct by precinct. The Castro had the best showing at 85.1 percent, followed by Noe Valley (84.9 percent) and Diamond Heights (82.8 percent.) Visitacion Valley had the lowest turnout at 55.2 percent, and Bayview-Hunters Point was second from the bottom at 57.3 percent. Dorazio said she has made data visualizations for the math textbook she co-wrote, Advanced High School Statistics, as well as for other projects related to her work, but had never mapped voter turnout before. Once she learned the Department of Elections makes all its data public, she gave it a shot. She said she was most struck by how voters from the the citys wealthier, whiter neighborhoods turned out in much bigger numbers than voters from poorer neighborhoods with more people of color. I am reminded how important it is to spread the get-out-the-vote message so that people can have their voices heard and their interests represented, she said. I noticed that in Chinatown, one of the poorest, least-white neighborhoods in the city, 70.6 percent of voters cast ballots. The get-out-the-vote effort was strong there, particularly for Proposition C, which would tax big businesses to raise money for homeless services, and it seems to have paid off. In any case, San Franciscans were so motivated by this months midterms, 602 out of 604 precincts saw a higher percentage of voters go to the polls than in the 2014 midterm elections. The two holdouts were the precinct on the Embarcadero immediately south of the Bay Bridge and one in Chinatown. The biggest change from 2014 to 2018 came in the precinct that includes San Francisco State University, where just 11.3 percent of voters bothered to cast ballots four years ago, but 60.1 percent voted this time around. Good job, Gators! Drug traffic gridlock: I told you last month about drug dealers swarming the Tenderloin and South of Market to prey on homeless addicts because they know theres little consequence for their actions. Included in the column were complaints from the Tenderloin Housing Clinic at 472 Turk St., which said formerly homeless people needing to get to its offices to make rent payments were reluctant because of the dealers swarming outside. In a perfect world, media attention on such an obvious problem would solve it. San Francisco is not a perfect world. That little swath of Turk Street was supposed to get markedly better with construction on the city-owned 440 Turk St. next door. Formerly the headquarters for the San Francisco Housing Authority, it is being remodeled to serve as the main office for the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. The city pledged that a security guard would be stationed outside during construction to keep sidewalks clear and safe. But Tenderloin Housing Clinic staff members say theyve seen no security guard. Emails traded among Tenderloin Housing Clinic staff and shared with me describe some scary sights. 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. We now have people literally blocking the doorway into the building to sell and/or use drugs, read one email. The drug traffic in front of our building has increased significantly, and the violence that comes with these behaviors has also increased. In the past month, the staff has had to close and secure the doors four times because of fighting in front of the door or bodies slamming into the front windows. Randy Quezada, spokesman for the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said a security guard is on-site from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. We want to be good neighbors, he said. Everyone knows how to get in touch with us. Quezada said construction should be done by June, and the staff will move in over the summer. This is a challenging block, and certainly we want to contribute to any and all of the safety efforts there, he said. The city has promised the department a permanent office space for 2 years it will be a total of three years or more by the time its a reality. San Francisco, the city that cant rid its streets of drug dealers or complete a construction project in a reasonable amount of time. No wonder its residents are motivated to vote. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf If youve noticed a flood of ads on TV and social media for DNA test kits featuring smiling families gathered around a dinner table, youre not alone. Consumer genetic testing companies like Burlingames Color Genomics and Mountain Views 23andMe are trying their hand at Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions, adopting marketing tactics of more traditional retailers and playing up a familiar theme that resonates with many during this time of year. Thanksgiving and the holidays are all about families, said Linda Jiang, head of consumer marketing at Color. We think this creates an opening to start a dialogue about health and things that run in the family. DNA testing has been making national and local headlines. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren recently touted the results of a DNA test to back up her claim of Native American ancestry, and California investigators famously used the open-source genealogy site GEDmatch to catch the Golden State Killer suspect. Limited data from DNA testing companies and market researchers indicate that interest in home DNA kits is growing. But regulators and medical ethicists have cautioned people to use the information carefully, and perhaps think twice before sharing their genetic data with private companies. Color, which sells a hereditary cancer test and a test on heart, cancer and medication response, is offering $50 to $100 off its $249 kit on Amazon through Dec. 2; 23andMe is promoting Thanksgiving family offers on its Instagram and Facebook channels, including $50 off its $99 ancestry kits when you buy two or more. The company declined to comment for this story, but its holiday ads feature testimonials from customers who have used their results to locate long-lost family members or biological parents. Like most retailers, we saw a real surge in activity on Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year, and we expect to see the same this year, Jiang said of Color, which is privately held and does not share sales figures. Paul Kuroda / Special to The Chronicle 23andMe and Ancestry.com, two of the largest sellers of DNA ancestry kits, are also privately held and do not disclose financial information. But Ancestry said it sold 1.6 million million kits over the four-day Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend last year breaking a sales record and tripling the number of kits it sold during the same weekend in 2016. And 23andMe DNA kits were a top seller on Amazon Prime Day, the retailers mid-July promotion, said Deborah Weinswig of Coresight Research, which tracks e-commerce trends. Color Genomics began selling its tests on Amazon last year and offered discounts for the first time on Prime Day. Executives were so pleased with the outcome they decided to introduce similar deals on the site for what they hope will be an even busier shopping season during the holidays. Retailers generate as much as 30 percent of their annual sales during the holiday season, the National Retail Federation estimates. We thought, wow, theres so much interest in genetic testing for health on Amazon, we want to do it again for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, because we know our customers are going to Amazon to buy these items they may have been eyeing all year, Jiang said. She said the company is prepared for a busy Black Friday. Color employees will be working over the holiday weekend to answer customers questions on its Amazon product pages and on Colors own website and social media channels. Jiang acknowledged that selling genetic tests is different than selling clothes or home electronics. Customers have many more questions about what their results mean, how to interpret them and whether they should consider taking medical action. They must get a doctors approval either their own physician or one in Colors network before viewing their results. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes The move to reach a broader customer base through Amazon, particularly during a retail tradition like Black Friday, is a sign that consumer health companies are trying to meet the demand for lower prices and accessible tools to help people manage or detect diseases. Even some traditional health providers like hospitals are offering Black Friday-style price rollbacks for outpatient services. And drug companies are promoting new at-home products that historically have been used in a medical setting, like Abbotts continuous glucose-monitoring device for diabetics and Exact Sciences home colon cancer screening product. There is a growing need for health care companies to try and get a bigger share of the consumer minds for how they will spend their health care dollars, especially as health care costs are continuing to rise, said Brian Weinstein, an analyst at the financial services firm William Blair & Co. Federal regulators have warned that the results of direct-to-consumer genetic tests should not be treated as a diagnosis or as medical advice. The day after 23andMe announced it had received FDA authorization to sell a new pharmacogenetic test, which offers insight into how someone may respond to commonly prescribed drugs, the agency issued a statement saying tests that make such claims have not been evaluated by the FDA, may not be supported by scientific evidence and may not be accurate. And medical ethicists worry that private companies amassing vast databases of genetic information are not doing enough to protect users data from being accessed by drug companies and law enforcement agencies. That said ... the demand for these products should continue to grow nicely, as the price point is reasonable and because people want to learn more about who they are, how theyre connected and how they can live healthier lives, Weinstein said. Catherine Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Cat_Ho Trade wars may be heating up, but the Port of Oakland is seeing a cool opportunity to ship more meat. The port, a major shipping hub for agricultural products, is expecting to boost beef, pork and poultry exports with a massive refrigerated storage facility called Cool Port Oakland. The $91 million depot is expected to lower costs and thereby draw more shippers. The Port of Oakland saw a 43 percent increase in meat exports to Asia from October 2015 to October 2018. In the first 10 months of 2018, the port shipped 47,300 20-foot containers of meat to Asia, with Japan the top market, followed by South Korea and Taiwan. The increase reflects what U.S. Meat Export Federation CEO Dan Halstrom calls a meat boom in those countries. You see a lot of different concepts catching on, Halstrom said. Smoked meat, barbecue, a lot of U.S. fast food, fast casual, white-tablecloth concepts. Photos by Paul Chinn / The Chronicle Last year, Halstrom said, the United States exported record amounts of meat: $7.3 billion in beef and about $6.6 billion in pork. Much of those exports are variety meats internal organs like stomachs and livers that many Americans dont eat in large quantities but are popular abroad. (Japan, for example, is the largest buyer of U.S. beef tongue, according to the Cattlemens Beef Board.) The reputation of the U.S. (agricultural) products, beef and pork in particular, really are the gold standard, Halstrom said. If you see something in a USDA golden box overseas, it really carries a lot of clout. Geography helps as well: The Port of Oakland is often the last stop on the way to Asia for container ships working their way up the West Coast, so its better suited than rival ports to ship perishable products. China imposed punitive tariffs on U.S. meat this year as part of an escalating trade war. But Californias exports of livestock and livestock products to China are relatively small, according to government data, limiting the impact of those sanctions on the prospects for Oaklands meat exports. At this stage, I dont see a major impact of the tariffs on those kinds of products, Port of Oakland Maritime Director John Driscoll said, adding that meat processed through the port has primarily been going to non-Chinese destinations. The port ships about 4,700 containers of meat to Asia a month, or about 80,000 freight tons. With the Cool Port facility, which had its grand opening Nov. 1 after being in the works for nearly five years, the port has the capacity for an additional 1 million tons of cargo per year. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes The Cool Port can handle 36 railcars, moving products from trains or trucks to ships without any changes in temperature. The city of Oakland spent $11 million on a rail spur to the facility. This by far is the most technologically advanced type of facility, by how it manages the products, Driscoll said. The 280,000-square-foot depot is located on land owned by the Port of Oakland. The facility is owned by Lineage Logistics and Dreisbach Enterprises. Dreisbach, an Oakland logistics business, operates the facility, and Lineage is expected to hire an additional 150 workers to staff the Cool Port, bringing employment there to 200, Driscoll said. Editors note: An earlier version of this story misstated the geographical scope of U.S. beef and pork shipments. The figures cited are for worldwide exports. Sophia Kunthara is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sophia.kunthara@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SophiaKunthara Long ago, when I asked my mother the date of her birthday, she replied, I was born in a year with two Augusts. How odd her answer seemed to me at the time. Why couldnt she tell me the date listed on her drivers license? I would come to learn that the Chinese lunar calendar has occasional leap years such as the year she was born which adds a month to align the calendar. Converting her birthday from the Chinese to Western calendar was complicated, no matter how simple the question might have initially seemed to me. In the same way that Asian Lunar New Year sometimes floats from mid-January to mid-February, so too her birthday moved from date to date in the autumn and winter by Western reckonings. She couldnt easily name a date; her real birthday was not the one shed used on official forms ever since she arrived in this country as a grad student in 1961, the one that marked this week as her 80th trip around the sun. Her birthday was lost somewhere over the International Date Line or perhaps at the moment she bought a chocolate bar the real stuff and not the ersatz imitation shed tasted in subtropical Taiwan the first time she encountered a vending machine at an airfield in Oakland. When I used to ask my father where he was born, sometimes hed say Wuhan, and sometimes hed say Wuchang. Much later, after reading about Chinese history, I realized his city of birth had disappeared, absorbed into the metropolis of Wuhan, which merged Wuchang, Hanyang and Hankou along the Han and Yangtze rivers. A place of origin, lost to history and regime change. Yet upstanding Americans are supposed to have a fixed name, a fixed date and birthplace, so goes the thinking behind controversial voter ID laws. Their proponents act as if aliases are the realm of spies and criminals: assassin Jason Bourne with his sheaf of passports, or a check forger with a string of also-known-as on her police rap sheet. And yet, like the questions of birthday and birthplace, asking immigrants their name can lead to more than one answer. It depends: an Americanized name at the office, to prevent customers and co-workers from mangling the syllables. A pet name, a nickname, used by family and within their community. And a name for official documents, which may get chewed up in the maw of standardized forms designed for Western names. Surnames turned into first names, hyphens added or deleted, syllables chopped off or turned into middle initials. Recently, my mother needed to update her curriculum vitae and she had me proofread it a familiar task from back when I was a teenager, typing up her papers on our familys word processor, proofreading as I went along, my fingers stumbling over the scientific terms. Its a common task for the children of immigrants, providing help to parents who are nonnative speakers of English to act as a go-between, looking over paperwork, sorting through a bill or another official document. I know that my mothers research is complicated and vital, even if I dont get into the particulars. People often ask if my mother reads my books. Not really. Not often. Im not offended, though. I dont read her every research paper, either, but we have a mutual respect for each others work shes always encouraged my ambitions and shes served as a role model with her boundless curiosity and determination. On her CV, the long list of conferences where shes presented her agricultural research reminded me of the times our family tagged along to Oregon, Wyoming and Hawaii, among other destinations. What kind of bean is not a bean? my brother, sister, and I used to joke, inspired by what we knew of her research. A rhizobium. Bacteria that fix nitrogen in the nodules of legumes. A human bean! In another section I found deeply moving, my mother mentioned the scores of undergraduate and high school students she has mentored or who have interned in her laboratory over the decades, who have since gone on to become medical doctors, pharmacists, semiconductor or aging researchers, technicians, and more. First and foremost to me, shell be my mother, just as I am first and foremost to Didi and Gege. Yet after having children of my own and living three generations under one roof, I can understand who she is beyond our family sphere. Why not celebrate her as much as possible, this week and next month, when the date rolls around on the lunar calendar? Happy birthday, Mom. Vanessa Hua is a Bay Area author. Her columns appear Fridays in Datebook. Email: datebook@sfchronicle.com Editors note: This story was updated to correct the medium used for the controversial advertisement by the Black Americans for the Presidents Agenda. It was a radio commercial. Charles B. Johnson, the retired investment-company billionaire believed to hold one of the largest stakes in the San Francisco Giants, is attracting attention for the second time in two months over a political campaign contribution. According to a federal election filing Wednesday, Johnson and his wife, Ann, each donated the maximum $2,700 to the campaign of Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Republican U.S. Senator from Mississippi who faces Democrat and former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy in a runoff Tuesday for the final Senate seat to be decided in the 2018 midterm elections. Hyde-Smith has been under fire from opponents since Nov. 11, when a video at a campaign rally in Tupelo surfaced that showed her expressing her regards for a local rancher by saying, If he invited me to a public hanging, Id be on the front row. Her comments have become a major campaign issue because of Mississippis notorious history of African Americans being lynched. Although Hyde-Smith apologized in a statement and during a Tuesday debate with Espy, who is African American, she also said her comments were in jest and being twisted by political opponents. Since the video surfaced, Hyde-Smith also was captured on video saying it would be a good idea to make it harder for some college students to vote. A 2014 photo of Hyde-Smith donning a Confederate hat has created controversy in Mississippi as well. According to the election filing, Charles B. Johnson and Ann L. Johnson of Palm Beach, Fla., donated the combined $5,400 to the Hyde-Smith campaign Tuesday, nine days after her public hanging comment surfaced. Several corporations, including Walmart, AT&T and Pfizer, publicly renounced their support for Hyde-Smith and asked that she return contributions they made before her comments became public. Sen. Hyde-Smiths comments clearly do not reflect the values of our company and associates, Walmart said in a statement on Twitter. As a result we are withdrawing our support and requesting a refund of all campaign donations. Last month, filings showed Charles B. Johnson donated $1,000 to a Super PAC called Black Americans for the Presidents Agenda, which created a racist radio ad that aired during an Arkansas congressional election before the midterms. Johnson, who does not give interviews and keeps a very low profile, issued a rare statement through the Giants on Oct. 19 renouncing the group. I had absolutely no knowledge that this donation would be used in this manner and I, like the Giants organization, strongly condemn any form of racism and in no way condone the advertisement that was created by this entity, said Johnson, retired chairman of Franklin-Templeton Investments, in the statement. Some Giants fans expressed outrage on social media that Johnson had donated to this group. Several did so again Thursday after Judd Legum, a political writer, publicized Johnsons donations to the Hyde-Smith campaign on his Popular Information newsletter. Giants officials, some of whom are away for the holiday weekend, did not immediately respond to a request for comments on Johnsons latest contribution. Henry Schulman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: hschulman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hankschulman Californias 2008 effort to take the politics out of redistricting is the hit of the land. On election day, voters in four states Colorado, Michigan, Missouri and Utah decided they wanted to be more like the Golden State, passing ballot measures to cut legislators out of the very political business of drawing the lines for their districts after the 2020 census. In May, Ohio voters overwhelmingly backed a measure requiring bipartisan support when making the lines for House seats. For years, redistricting fell beneath the radar, but now its one of the hottest and sexiest topics in politics, said David Daley, a senior fellow with FairVote, a nonpartisan election reform group. Voters hate the idea of politicians choosing their voters. Nonpartisan redistricting hasnt always been a popular cause, especially with politicians, who were happy drawing their own district lines with no actual voters involved. When Proposition 11, the 2008 initiative that established Californias citizens redistricting commission, made it to the ballot, Democrats were outraged, arguing that it wasnt right to have unelected voters make such important political decisions. More to the point, Democrats suggested quietly, having a nonpartisan commission drawing the lines could make it tougher to squeeze out Republicans. In a June 2008 email, then-state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, described Prop. 11 to Democratic leaders as the last best chance to prevent us from protecting and expanding our majorities in the Legislature in the decade to come. Perata had plenty of company in those concerns. Prop. 11, for example, called for the new commission to redraw only state Senate and Assembly districts. Congressional seats were left out after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco threatened to raise millions of dollars to defeat the initiative if her members were included. Two years later, when Proposition 20 gave the commission authority over Californias congressional seats, Pelosi, joined by almost every other Democrat in the delegation, put $10,000 into the unsuccessful effort to block the measure. In 2010, as a Democratic state senator from Los Angeles, Alex Padilla spent $39,000 in campaign funds on Proposition 27, an unsuccessful effort to give redistricting back to the Legislature. But now, as secretary of state, Padilla touts the commission as an example of the states commitment to election reform, along with innovations such as a growing reliance on mail ballots, a willingness to take more time to accept and count ballots, and voting machines with a guaranteed paper trail. Were getting calls from other states all the time about what were doing in California, Padilla said. Californias move to nonpartisan redistricting was a major victory for election reform, said Michael Li, a senior counsel and redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. The commission drew the maps in 2011, and it wasnt the end of the world, he said. If a really large and really demographically complicated state like California could succeed, why not other states? The idea of nonpartisan commissions also got a boost when voters in states across the nation saw the alternative. The districts drawn by politicians in 2011 were the worst in history, Li said. In states like Michigan, Maryland and North Carolina, the party in charge drew lines that not only gave them an advantage, but ensured that there was almost nothing (the opposing party) could do to move through it. An example of the power of partisanship showed up in Pennsylvania, where Republicans controlled the 2011 redistricting. Reapportionment gave Republicans overwhelming control of both legislative houses in the 2016 elections and a 13-5 edge in the congressional delegation, even as Donald Trump barely won the states presidential vote. But in January, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the congressional map, saying it clearly, plainly, and palpably violated the states Constitution and that the GOP plan was aimed at achieving unfair partisan gain. The court appointed Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford University election law professor, to redraw the lines for the midterm elections. When the votes were counted, the Pennsylvania delegation was evenly split, nine to nine. That 50-50 split represented the preference of the voters in the state, said Daley of FairVote. But there wasnt a change in the legislature lines, where Democrats still won more votes and Republicans won more seats. The seeming unfairness has both Democrats and Republicans looking for changes, said Li of the Brennan center. Besides the states that voted to make changes this year, GOP-leaning states, including Arkansas and Oklahoma, have citizens groups looking to qualify redistricting initiatives, and Virginia activists are working to push a constitutional amendment through the Legislature. Theres definitely grassroots momentum, and these efforts are popping up in strange places, Li said. When conservative states like Utah are willing to make a switch an independent redistricting commission, theres something happening nationwide. Its causing people to say, Maybe we should do it like California, Li said. John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth The critters hiding in the rocks lit up like tiny ghosts when Lauren Esposito pointed her ultraviolet light at an outcropping during a recent nighttime walk along a trail on Mount Tamalpais, in Marin County. There, in incandescent blue along the walkway, were dozens of scorpions, their claws out, tail stingers at the ready, waiting in the dark for potential mates or unsuspecting prey. The venomous arachnids were standing guard in the crevices and cracks at Bootjack Camp, but they were no match for Esposito, one of the countrys foremost experts on the creepy crawlers. One of my favorite party tricks is to guarantee I can go out and find a scorpion in 10 minutes, said Esposito, a biologist at San Franciscos California Academy of Sciences, before reaching into a hole with a pair of forceps and nonchalantly plucking out one of the squirming, stinger-jabbing creatures. California, it turns out, has one of the highest numbers of scorpion species in the world. The Bay Area alone has as many as five species four known species and a fifth recorded but not yet confirmed and none of them are particularly harmful, she said. A lot is still unknown about the Earths oldest terrestrial arthropods, and Esposito, one of the worlds only female scorpion experts, is determined to unlock their mysteries by understanding their chemistry and evolution. She has traveled extensively in her quest for knowledge. That has included visits to almost every island in the Caribbean as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, where she studied the genetic code of the largest, smallest and most poisonous scorpions. Esposito has tested the proteins in scorpion venom, documented how some arachnids hiss before striking and collaborated on studies of venom for use in cancer research. The scorpions on Mount Tamalpais are a brown species known as the Pacific Forest scorpion. They grow to about 2 inches long and are believed to live about 10 years on average, a long time for an arthropod. Now Playing: Lauren Esposito, a scorpion biologist with the California Academy of Sciences, hunts for the stinging arachnids. Video: San Francisco Chronicle The eight-legged species, sometimes called redwood scorpions because they are also found in the forests up north, generally hide in rock crevices or under logs and come out only at night. Its actually the only scorpion Ive ever been stung by, said Esposito, holding the specimen shed extracted in the palm of her gloved hand. Her UV light shining on it revealed, with glowing clarity, its outstretched claws and stinger poised to strike. It feels like a very mild bee sting, she said. Scientists have not quite figured out why scorpions are luminescent in ultraviolet, or black, light, but it was an extremely important discovery. A century ago, only 283 species of scorpions had been discovered. Thanks in large part to fluorescent light, 2,405 species have now been discovered. Esposito has used their incandescence to good effect, discovering during her nighttime jaunts dozens of new scorpion species and documenting their many other remarkable characteristics. Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Scorpions actually carry genes in their DNA for more than 200 distinct venoms, a kind of protein cocktail that the arachnids can selectively use on mammals, insects or even crustaceans, she said. Scorpions eject venoms with different compositions depending on the scenario, she said. If they encounter a predator, theyll eject one combination, and if they encounter prey, a different one. The complex, prey-specific concoctions are a primary part of her research specifically how they might be used as medication. Scientists, for instance, have discovered that peptides in the lethal deathstalker scorpion, found in North Africa and the Middle East, bind to certain malignant tumors called gliomas. Researchers are now conducting clinical trials on a procedure in which dye is injected into deathstalker venom and used to make the tumors glow, allowing surgeons to more precisely excise the growths. There are, in fact, 100,000 bio-active compounds in scorpions that could potentially be used to develop medications, Esposito said. Other studies have found that using substances in scorpion venom has decreased instances of rheumatoid arthritis and cured antibiotic-resistant MRSA infections in mice. Esposito said fewer than 1 percent of spiders and scorpions are dangerous to humans, but, as one might expect of an aficionado, she is drawn to the most dangerous type in North America, the striped bark scorpion. The yellowish species, which is common in Mexico and the southwestern United States, has venom that is extremely painful and can, under rare circumstances, kill a human. Esposito extracts bark scorpion venom and studies the DNA to figure out how the poisonous concoctions evolved. It all began, she said, about 450 million years ago, when the ancestors of scorpions became the first arthropods to leave the sea. At the time, they were monsters, up to 6 feet long, with stingers to match. It is believed that these human-sized beasts originally left the sea to follow spawning fish upriver and eventually learned to skitter about on land, where they could stab and eat land-bound victims. Scorpions, which are now found in every ecosystem on the planet, have gill-like lungs, which Esposito said limits their size. They simply dont have the lung capacity to support the hulking frames they lugged around during the Paleozoic era. The largest scorpion in the world today is about 12 inches long, she said. Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle 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. Although smaller, the species has made some extraordinary adaptations, including developing the ability to illuminate in fluorescent light. Esposito believes the characteristic evolved over millions of years as a warning signal to predators. She said the striped bark and other poisonous scorpions also increased the toxicity of their venom over time to fight off predators. Her studies of the bark scorpion, for instance, point to a kind of arms race with the grasshopper mouse, which has developed an immunity to the venom. Bark scorpions that live in the same area as the mice have more copies of the gene that produces toxicity, which means they are able to increase the toxicity as the mice develop more resistance. Esposito said the electric-shock-type pain that scorpion stings can cause is essentially a chemical trick. The venom, she said, is a protein cocktail that activates pain neurons but doesnt actually cause any tissue damage. Those who die from scorpion stings generally succumb to what appears to be a heart attack. She believes studies of the pain-pathway properties might help scientists develop pain medications that do not contain opioids. Through millions of years of evolution, venom has been revised to be a perfect pain-causing agent, she said. If we can harness the ability of nature to produce that agent, then we can harness it for our own good. She also found this same kind of evolutionary resourcefulness in club-tailed scorpions, a species from Central and South America that makes an audible hissing sound when in danger. Esposito said one of her goals is to reduce peoples innate fear of the species. She recently spent a considerable amount of time convincing the stage manager at Herbst Theater, on Van Ness Avenue, that it was safe for her to bring a small scorpion she recently discovered to the podium during a TEDx talk titled Saving human kind, one scorpion at a time. By all accounts, the talk went well, but when she left the stage, she realized the nonvenemous scorpion she held in her hand had somehow slipped out undetected. She had visions of a scream and then a panicked mass scramble for the exits, until a bug-eyed stagehand spotted the harmless but scary-looking arachnid on her back. I told them not to worry, that this individual was a friendly ambassador, she said. Alas, she had to spend almost as much time coaxing the stagehand to scoop the scorpion off her back into a container as she spent mollifying the stage director before the show. The scorpion had a bit of stage fright and needed a helping hand. Peter Fimrite is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @pfimrite The Chronicle has launched a new weekly Travel newsletter! Sign up here. Volleys of cannon fire echoed through the adobes of Monterey, followed by a group of privateers storming the city from the sea with cannon, muskets and pikes. Eventually they pulled down the Spanish flag before hoisting up the blue-and-white stripes of Argentina under a Californian sky. The scene played out in November 1818, when a Franco-Argentine privateer named Hipolito Bouchard and 200 of his men sacked Monterey, the royal Spanish capital of Alta California, in the name of revolution and booty. Two hundred years later, on Nov. 17, a group of men and women re-enacted the battle at Custom House Plaza in Monterey. While both quaint and kitschy, the depiction sought to recast California lores most notable pirate as a brash captain fighting for Mexican rule of California, and to commemorate an often-misunderstood event in the states early history. The Spanish at the time had seen him as a pirate, and people have piggybacked onto that idea since, says Michael Melzer, a writer in Pasadena whose 2016 book The Patriot Pirate details the life and times of Bouchard. If anything, Bouchard represents the movement for Latin American independence. Patrick Tehan / Special to The Chronicle In 1818, revolutionary fervor in Spains American colonies was upending the kings rule from Argentina to Mexico. Yet at the same time, Alta California was a near-feudal backwater loyal to the royal order, says Monterey County naval historian John Middleton-Tidwell. Bouchard, born in southeast France in 1780, made his way to Buenos Aires by 1810, where he quickly joined the Argentine war for independence, fighting on both land and water, Melzer said. At age 37, after seven years of fame and infamy in service to the revolution, he received his letters of marque in 1817, giving him permission to raid ports and ships loyal to the Spanish crown across the globe, spread revolutionary ideals and reap the spoils. The captain and his crew limped into the Hawaiian Islands in mid-1818 empty-handed after only inflicting minor damage on the Spanish in the Philippines, Middleton-Tidwell said. There Bouchard acquired a second ship, the Santa Rosa, and heard of the vulnerable provincial capital, Monterey. The two ships under Bouchards command were spotted by the Spanish off Point Pinos in present-day Pacific Grove on Nov. 20, 1818. At that time, the captains letters of marque from the Argentine government had expired, so while the Spanish would have considered him a pirate regardless, under the letter of the law any attack would be an act of piracy. The larger ship La Argentina stayed farther out, and the Santa Rosa sailed near shore in an attempt to fool the Spanish into believing they were American merchant vessels, but the Spanish had been already tipped off by an American captain who had caught wind of Bouchards plans in Hawaii, and they had reinforced their defenses, Middleton-Tidwell said. The next day Santa Rosa sustained a number of direct hits from two directions, forcing the outgunned ship to raise the white flag in surrender as a furious Bouchard looked on from a distance. Three men went ashore under threat and were arrested; others rowed to the Argentina, while the wounded were left to wait for an unknown fate aboard the Santa Rosa. On Nov. 22, Bouchard landed 200 men and four cannons around what is now Lovers Point. His crew far exceeded the number of men of fighting age in Monterey. In preparation for the attack, Pablo Vicente de Sola, the royal governor of Alta California, had ordered the town to evacuate to Rancho del Rey, near modern-day Salinas, and take any valuables with them. Bouchards men quickly overtook a cannon emplacement and replaced a Spanish flag there with Argentinas. Leading the charge was a group of naked Hawaiian islanders who had joined Bouchard in Oahu. The sight of the unclothed Hawaiians scared the Spanish and might have hastened their retreat, Middleton-Tidwell says. The privateers went onto the former site of the presidio around the present-day San Carlos Cathedral and again overran the Spanish. Sola and his remaining men then fled to Rancho del Rey. For two days, Bouchard and his men celebrated their victory and began to repair the damaged Santa Rosa. On the third day, Bouchard sent a message to Sola saying if he didnt return the three prisoners, he would lay waste to the town. The governor didnt respond, so the captain burned Spanish property, killed the remaining livestock and torched the orchards, while sparing Catholic churches and non-Spanish homes. But the small provincial capital didnt yield Bouchard and his men much booty or revolutionary sympathizers. Sola would later claim that the main losses incurred by Spanish forces were of ham, butter and blankets. Middleton-Tidwell notes that the Hawaiian fighters left wearing Spanish clothing, some pieces of which were from Solas own wardrobe. Bouchard and his men sailed south from Monterey around Nov. 27 and made three more destructive stops along the Alta California coast, looking for supplies and booty. He never returned to California but continued his revolutionary fight in South America. The story of his North American exploits was left to be told by those who survived his attacks. Alta California became Mexican territory in 1821 and then came under U.S. authority after the Mexican-American War in 1848. Since then Bouchard has come to be viewed by some as a pirate more than a patriot. First-person interviews of people who survived the attack, chronicled in early histories of California, refer to Bouchard that way, Middleton-Tidwell says. The 200th anniversary re-enactment is aimed at dispelling those early impressions. While the attack on the California coast 200 years ago might be a footnote in state history, Bouchard is known as a national hero in Argentina, Melzer said. Bouchard was a revolutionary who grew up in revolutionary France, Middleton-Tidwell says. It has taken nearly two centuries to correct the story. The Battle of Monterey was really about wars of independence. Nick Rahaim is a freelance writer in Monterey County. Email: travel@sfchronicle.com The Chronicle has launched a new weekly Travel newsletter! Sign up here. We got sharks, boys! Eric Mailander hollers as he guides his fishing boat out of Santa Cruz Harbor. Boat down there says he saw some, but just lost them. Well find em, though. Mailander, a firefighter with San Jose Fire Department and an avid waterman, turns his 22-foot RadonCraft Cortez south, towards Aptos, and throttles it. White speed! his bronzed compatriot Giancarlo Thomae shouts over the wind and chop, grinning. As the waters calm south of Pleasure Point and wetsuit pioneer Jack ONeills famous cliffside home fades into the distance, Mailander leaves the boat in gear and hops up onto the starboard railing. You got polarized sunglasses on? he asks, leaning out over the sea to scan the horizon as he steers with his sandaled left foot. Look for dark shadows that look like kelp except theyre moving. Suddenly, a tip comes in from the Sea Spirit, a whale-watching boat a quarter mile off Aptos (Santa Cruz County), north of the wreck of the mothballed cement ship at Seacliff Beach. The captain has seen at least four great whites in the waters nearby, he reports. As the radio crackles, Thomae scurries aft and starts untethering two kayaks at the stern; Mailander ducks into his crafts small cabin and preps a drone to scout from above. Were up on CPR, but if you get bit, make a tourniquet out of the tow line, Thomae says, laughing, as he pushes his single-seater neon kayak into the water. It sounds like Im joking, but Im not. Aptos, the sleepy unincorporated town at the northern end of the Monterey Bay, isnt famous for much. With charming beach-side rental houses and a few miles of sandy beaches, its an ideal place for weekend paddling, a morning surf session or brisk beach picnics. But three years ago, on the eve of the NorCal Regional Lifeguard competition, Seacliff State Park employees spied a 12-foot white shark in the small cove beneath Aptos tall cliffs. The competition was hastily canceled, and researchers in boats and helicopters flocked to the area around the wreck of the S.S. Palo Alto the cement ship, to locals to try to ID the lone predator. Great whites have always called Monterey Bay home, but instead of one wayward shark, Thomae and a local helicopter pilot spied at least 15 great whites. In my 20-plus years at sea, I have never seen anything like this, Thomae said at the time. Gregory Thomas Scientists and experts figured the cluster of sharks was a fluke or maybe a product of El Nino, telling The Chronicle in 2015 that they were treating the unprecedented numbers as a local anomaly. But El Nino gave way to La Nina, and still the dorsal fins kept appearing. People are seeing more and more white sharks there, Chris Lowe of California State University Long Beachs Shark Lab says today. Three years on, and its clear that the placid waters off the coast here have become the home of one of Californias newest and most active populations of great white sharks. Todd Trumbull Although no one can say for certain why the sharks have made Soquel Cove home, most of the sharks are juveniles under 12 feet long and Lowe says this corner of the Monterey Bay appears to be an ideal nursery habitat for young white sharks. For one, juveniles are temperature-sensitive, he says, and the waters here are warmer than the rest of the bay. Plus the nearby sunken cement ship has become an artificial reef that is home to scores of easy prey. These juveniles are not eating marine mammals yet. Seals and sea lions are too big for them to capture just yet, Lowe says. So theyre feeding primarily on sting rays and bat rays there. Michael Domeier, president of the Marine Conservation Science Institute, hypothesizes that the white shark population may treat their nurseries the way salmon treat hatcheries. Aptos has become a nursery area, and that means it will remain a nursery area as sharks that were born there will return when they have matured and are ready to pup, Domeier says. In other words, the sharks are here to stay. As news of the new white shark rookery off Aptos travels Aptos kayaker falls into water with great white shark, announced KSBW-TV; Large great white cruising Capitola waters bites boat, the San Jose Mercury News reported two years ago it has spawned something else entirely: great white shark tourism. More and more the words been out and people are looking to see the sharks, says Jenny OLeary of Santa Cruz Whale Watching. After the outfits boats chug out to sea to spot whales, they now often detour through the cove to catch a few shots of whitey, she says. Theyre beautiful. Trudie Ransom, owner of the SUP Shack kayak and paddleboard rental shop, says her customers normally want to stand-up paddleboard near whales, but white sharks are the newest local attraction, so shes spending more time near Seacliff Beach, too. We do a lot of paddling for whales, but there are people who are fascinated by sharks, so I want to embrace them, she says. I dont want to be afraid, I want to learn. And Brian Sack, co-owner of Sanctuary Cruises, a whale-watching charter out of Moss Landing, says his outfit has started organizing white shark tours, offering three or four a year, and plans to do more. Im telling you, they sell out like crazy, he says. We put the word out at night on Facebook, and the next morning theyre sold out. Back on the water with Mailander and Thomae, the Sea Spirit, has led the pair to a cluster of white sharks. We got one, boys! Mailander yells, spying the shark from above with his quadcopter drone. You see em? Oh thats a beauty maybe 10 feet. Hes heading toward the boat. Youll run right into him, Giancarlo. Just keep paddling. Hes 20 yards in front of you, coming right toward you! Courtesy Eric Mailander Above, on the Sea Spirit, tourists gawk and point elevated 20 feet above the water, they have a much better vantage point than those trawling the murky waters in small kayaks. Oh my God, a woman mutters as more passengers scurry to the railing. At sea level, you often cant see white sharks until its too late. Thomae relies on Mailander for guidance, calling out for directions. Then, without warning, a fin glides up from the depths, a few yards away from his kayak. A form appears through the dark water, shockingly wide and maybe 14 feet long; it dwarfs the kayaks, suddenly silly little open-top platters on a big sea. The shark continues toward the kayaks until, a few feet away, the fin submerges and the dark mass glides underneath. Although juvenile sharks arent interested in eating human-sized prey, the physical response to a great white shark, any great white shark, is distinct. Your pulse elevates, your breathing quickens and a distinct part of your gut somewhere between your lower intestines and your colon recoils and shrinks inward. Thomae loves it. A local waterman who does everything from captaining whale watching cruises to selling shark photos to media companies to aiding researchers, Thomae was one of the first to identify and popularize the new rookery in 2015, when he captured footage of a white shark swimming under his kayak. Although hes been out on the water with sharks dozens of times, the interactions still bring out an almost childlike joy. I just want to show that these are not Jaws, he says. Im 100 times more nervous about getting T-boned on the way to the beach than I am about the sharks. As the research and commercial prospects of the new Monterey Bay rookery become apparent, Thomae and Mailander find themselves in the middle of it all. Mailander works with local researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium to help take census counts of sharks in the water on any particular day and tries to identify regulars. The pair also work with the whale-watching operators, who cant promise shark tours if they cant find any sharks. On the water, Thomae thrusts a Go-Pro at the end of a long stick underwater to try to get a clean shot of one of the four sharks nearby. From the air, Mailanders drone is circling a dorsal fin, capturing photos of each side to identify the shark. This is a new shark to me. I know most of em out here, he says, snapping photos. Knowing a white shark is a difficult thing, however. Great whites are among the most enigmatic creatures of the sea. They are notoriously difficult to track, and even if you do manage to capture one, they dont respond well to captivity. More often than not, white sharks confined to aquariums die quickly. The ones that last any amount of time tend to maul their tank-mates or ram their noses against the glass until they kill themselves. This much we do know, however: Carcharodon carcharias, feared since the time of Pericles but not formally classified until the 16th century, is the largest predatory fish on Earth; it can grow to 15 to 20 feet and weigh up to 5,000 pounds, and comes loaded with around 300 serrated teeth; its powerful tail propels it 15 mph through the water, about three times faster than Michael Phelps; and although it is found in cool coastal waters around the globe, scientists really have no idea how many white sharks are in the wild. Off California, however, its become clear that there are many more white sharks are in the water than previously understood. Sightings and interactions are on the rise, from San Diego and the Santa Monica Bay to Point Conception in Santa Barbara County and Pismo Beach in San Luis Obispo County, although genuine attacks remain rare. Lowe, the CSU Long Beach researcher, says the shark population is on the rise thanks to conservation efforts. We think the white shark population is recovering partially because theyve been protected in California waters and federal waters for the last 15 to 20 years, he says. If you prevent people from deliberately killing them, lo and behold, things come back. But its not just efforts to protect sharks that have helped. As the local apex predators, white sharks are a key part of the near-shore ecosystem in California. For decades, as seal and sea lion numbers declined, white sharks suffered. But the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act changed that, Lowe says. The thing thats really stoked the recovery of white sharks hasnt been protection of babies from being caught in fisheries; its been recovery of the adult food source, Lowe says. Its one thing that I dont think the public recognizes. When you think that pretty much every marine mammal we have in U.S. waters was on the verge of extinction and many recovered so well since 1972, its really truly remarkable. More white sharks in water-sport paradises like Monterey Bay mean more run-ins with humans, however, and researchers are concerned that regular folks need to be aware. Researchers and policy makers need to shift the mind-set from we must save and protect them to we must find a way to co-exist with them, the Marine Conservation Science Institutes Domeier says. The white shark population will continue to grow off our coast, and there will be more human-shark interactions. Lowe suggests surfing and swimming in popular, populated areas, since sharks often avoid large numbers of people in the water. And though it sounds like common sense, splashing around near wounded animals or in spots where regular feeding takes place isnt advised either. Mailander and Thomae say thats part of the reason theyre out there on the water, too. The more sharks get accustomed to boats and to us, the more we hope we wont have more shark human interactions in the future, Thomae says. Mailander, though, savors his regular shark interactions. Hes spent all day with his eyes peeled for a 12-foot female who often comes up to his boat. I see her most times. Very friendly, very curious. She might circle, but she wont harass us. After hours in the cove, as the sun gets heavy, Mailander takes the drone up high to take a survey of sharks in the water. Before he gets to counting, though hell eventually tally at least 18 one shark catches his eye. Here she is, boys heres who Ive been looking for, he says. A fin, discolored and nicked with scars, appears near the boat. Ive seen her all summer. She knows me. She knows my boat. Twelve feet long and thick as a barrel, she is not skittish like most of the sharks out today. Mailander clearly relishes the sighting, as well as the idea of sharing the sea with an apex predator, who becomes a little more familiar and a little less mysterious with each day on the water. This is the shark we want, Mailander says to himself, before turning the boat around and heading back to harbor. David Ferry is a freelance writer in Los Angeles. Email: travel@sfchronicle.com LONDON In the battle for online privacy, Google is a U.S. Goliath facing a handful of European Davids. The backlash over Big Techs collection of personal data offers new hope to a number of little-known search engines that promise to protect user privacy. Sites like Britains Mojeek, Frances Qwant, Unbubble in Germany and Swisscows dont track user data, filter results or show behavioral ads. These sites are growing amid the rollout of new European privacy regulations and numerous corporate data scandals, which have raised public awareness about the mountains of personal information companies stealthily gather and sell to advertisers. Widespread suspicion in Europe about Googles stranglehold on internet searches has also helped make the continent a spawning ground for secure searching. Europe is particularly sensitive to privacy issues because spying by the Nazi-era Gestapo and the secret services in the Soviet Union is still within living memory. For us, its all about citizens and citizens have the right to privacy, said Eric Leandri, chairman of Qwant, based in Paris. He said that view contrasts with the mind-set across the Atlantic, where internet users are seen as consumers whose rights are dictated by the terms of their agreements with tech companies. Traffic numbers show interest is rising. Qwants queries tripled to 10 billion in 2017. On a monthly basis, its getting 80 million visits while requests are growing 20 percent. Leandri says the site now accounts for 6 percent of search engine market share in France, its biggest market. Qwant is even getting official support. Last month the French army and parliament both said they would drop Google and use Qwant as their default search engine, as part of efforts to reclaim European digital sovereignty. The site doesnt use tracking cookies or profile users, allowing it to give two different users the exact same result. It has built its own index of 20 billion pages covering French, German and Italian and plans to expand it to about two dozen other languages, for which results currently come from Microsofts Bing. To be sure, Googles in no danger of toppling. The Mountain View company accounts for three-quarters or more of global market share, depending on whom you ask, and rules the mobile market with its Android operating system. Mojeek, based in Brighton, England, operates on similar principles and has so far cataloged 2 billion web pages. The company says it gets 200,000 unique visitors a month and search queries have quintupled over the past year. Another British startup, Oscobo, does anonymous searches for users with results licensed from Yahoo/Bing. Startpage of the Netherlands anonymizes Google search results, stripping out ads and tracking. Pat Walshe, a British privacy consultant, has been using Startpage and Qwant for years and says he has never felt their services were inferior to Googles. Walshe likes Startpages new anonymous view feature, which goes a step further by letting users browse a copy of a website from its search results, not the actual site. Germanys Unbubble is a meta-search site, sending encrypted queries to more than 30 other search engines. It promises neutral search results rather than ones filtered by an algorithm catering to personal biases. Outside Europe, theres also U.S. site DuckDuckGo. Some privacy search operators say its equally important to help users avoid filter bubbles, in which content is selected by the likes of Google and Facebook based on previous searches and other data. The main idea is to provide neutral information and allow people to depend less on machine learning-based filters, said Unbubble founder Tobias Sasse. If you are using Google today, perhaps youll notice that there is always the same mainstream information, preventing people from seeing the great diversity online, he said. Some sites rely on donations, others from affiliate advertising links from shopping sites that pay a commission but dont target or track users. Thats different from Google, where behavioral ads come up based on a users search history, which many find creepy and invasive. In Switzerland, a country whose banking sector became a byword for secrecy, Swisscows has thrived, with monthly search queries jumping by nearly half to 20 million from a year ago, said founder Andreas Wiebe, who also runs software company Hulbee. Kelvin Chan is an Associated Press writer. Few countries have been moving toward a cashless society as fast as Sweden. But cash is being squeezed out so quickly with half the nations retailers predicting they will stop accepting bills before 2025 that the government is recalculating the societal costs of a cash-free future. The financial authorities, who once embraced the trend, are asking banks to keep peddling notes and coins until the government can figure out what going cash-free means for young and old consumers. The central bank, which predicts cash may fade from Sweden, is testing a digital currency an e-krona to keep firm control of the money supply. Lawmakers are exploring the fate of online payments and bank accounts if an electrical grid fails or servers are thwarted by power failures, hackers or even war. When you are where we are, it would be wrong to sit back with our arms crossed, doing nothing, and then just take note of the fact that cash has disappeared, said Stefan Ingves, governor of Swedens central bank, known as the Riksbank. You cant turn back time, but you do have to find a way to deal with change. Ask most people in Sweden how often they pay with cash and the answer is almost never. A fifth of Swedes, in a country of 10 million people, do not use automated teller machines anymore. More than 4,000 Swedes have implanted microchips in their hands, allowing them to pay for rail travel and food, or enter keyless offices, with a wave. Restaurants, buses, parking lots and even pay toilets depend on clicks rather than cash. Consumer groups say the shift leaves many retirees a third of all Swedes are 55 or older as well as some immigrants and people with disabilities at a disadvantage. They cannot easily gain access to electronic means for some goods and transactions, and rely on banks and their customer service. And the progress toward a cashless society could upend the states centuries-old role as sovereign guarantor. If cash disappears, commercial banks would wield greater control. We need to pause and think about whether this is good or bad, and not just sit back and let it happen, said Mats Dillen, the head of a Swedish Parliament committee studying the matter. If cash disappears, that would be a big change, with major implications for society and the economy. Urban consumers worldwide are increasingly paying with apps and plastic. In China and in other Asian countries rife with young smartphone users, mobile payments are routine. In Europe, about 1 in 5 people say they rarely carry money. In Belgium, Denmark and Norway, debit and credit card use has hit record highs. But Sweden and particularly its young people is at the vanguard. Bills and coins represent just 1 percent of the economy, compared with 10 percent in Europe and 8 percent in the United States. About 1 in 10 people paid for something in cash this year, down from 40 percent in 2010. Most merchants in Sweden still accept notes and coins, but their ranks are thinning. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, the numbers are startling: Up to 95 percent of their purchases are with a debit card or a smartphone app called Swish, a payment system set up by Swedens biggest banks. Ikea, whose flat-box furniture is a staple of young households, has been experimenting to gauge the allure and effect of cashless commerce. In Gavle, about 100 miles north of Stockholm, managers decided to go cashless temporarily last month after they realized that fewer than 1 percent of shoppers used cash and Ikea employees were spending about 15 percent of their time handling, counting and storing money. Patric Burstein, a senior manager, said the cashless test had freed employees to work on the sales floor. So far, around 1.2 of every 1,000 customers have been unable to pay with anything but cash and mainly in the cafeteria where people tend to spend change. Rather than bother with bills, Ikea has been offering those customers freebies. We said, If you want a 50-cent hot dog, be my guest, take it. But next time maybe you can bring a card, said Burstein, 38. The test so far suggests that cash is not essential and, instead, may be costly, he said. Were spending a lot of resources on a very small percentage that actually need the service, he said. The nearby branch of the Swedish National Pensioners Organization has led protests against the experiment, in part, because many retirees like to go to the Gavle Ikea for a bite to eat. We have around 1 million people who arent comfortable using the computer, iPads or iPhones for banking, said Christina Tallberg, 75, the groups national president. We arent against the digital movement, but we think its going a bit too fast. The organization has been raising money to teach retirees how to pay electronically, but, paradoxically, that good effort has been tripped up by an abundance of cash. When collections for training are taken in rural areas and the seniors donate in cash the pensioner in charge must drive miles to find a bank that will actually take the money, Tallberg said. About half of Swedens 1,400 bank branches no longer accept cash deposits. Its more or less impossible, because the banks refuse to take cash, she said. Banks have propelled the cashless revolution by encouraging consumers and retailers to use debit and credit cards, which yields banks and credit card companies lucrative fees. That includes the bank-developed Swish smartphone app. Swedens banks have cut back on cash in part for safety reasons after a rash of violent robberies in the mid-2000s. The national psyche is marked by an infamous helicopter heist in Vastberga in 2009, when thieves landed on the roof of a G4S cash service depot and stole millions a drama now being turned into a Netflix film. Last year, only two banks were robbed compared with 210 in 2008. In recent years, banks have dismantled cash machines by the hundreds. So little cash is used now that it has become expensive to track and maintain, said Leif Trogen, an official at the Swedish Bankers Association. There are two proposals by Swedish authorities to keep cash at hand. Parliament wants just the biggest banks to handle cash. The central bank is holding out for all banks to keep money flowing. Swedbank, SEB and other big Swedish financial institutions are fighting the lawmakers demands, saying it would place an undue burden on them to provide greater access. The demand for cash is decreasing at an ever faster pace, Trogen said. Therefore, it is fundamentally wrong to legislate to influence the demand for cash. The central bank has plans to roll out a pilot version next year of a new type of Riksbank money the digital krona, or e-krona that could replace physical cash or at least help calm the current cash conundrum. An e-krona would mean that the functions of a currency backed by the state would remain, even in an all-digital world that is fast approaching. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, noted recently that several central banks are seriously considering digital currencies. While the case for digital currency is not universal, we should investigate it further seriously, carefully and creatively, she said. Liz Alderman is a New York Times writer. Ian Siegel is CEO of ZipRecruiter, the Santa Monica company he co-founded in 2010 to disrupt the recruitment and hiring industry. Since then, more than 1.5 million businesses and more than 430 million job seekers have used the online employment marketplace, according to the company. ZipRecruiter has nearly 1,000 employees, a quarter of whom are engineers. Studying sociology, psychology and English at Oberlin College wasnt the waste of time that Siegel feared it might be once he started a career in business. If you think of psychology as the individual, sociology as society and social psychology as the study of small group dynamics, I was already identifying the opinion leader, the emotional leader, early on in my career. I was breaking down every group into the categories I studied while I was in college, and it actually was really helpful, Siegel said. The Los Angeles native held executive-level positions at six different companies over 15 years. In hindsight, he sees the connective tissue that inspired ZipRecruiter. I had to do my own recruiting, he said, posting positions to different job boards, each with a different mechanism. For years I was saying, This is crazy. Why isnt there a magic button I can push and send the same job to all the different job boards and bring all the candidates onto one list, just make it easy and efficient to hire somebody? Siegel was feeling guilty at one of those early jobs, managing a technology team on an interim basis for a West Hollywood firm called Citysearch from 1996 to 1998. He apologized to his team for being so unqualified, having studied only non-tech subjects in college. They told me I was the best manager they ever had, because I listened, he said. People didnt need me to be an engineer. They needed me to be clear about the problem I wanted solved, and they needed the autonomy and the resources to go do it the way they wanted to do it. Listen more than you talk, Siegel, 45, said of his approach. Describe the problem were trying to solve, describe what success looks like, and then keep listening, because your job is not to do all the work, your job is not to figure out the optimal solution, your job is to create space for all the smart people that youve hired to go work on that problem. Siegel and three friends two them engineers, one a designer worked at his kitchen table nights and weekends to build the first version of ZipRecruiter, and they knew from the start they were on to something. Siegels co-founders were essential in the beginning, he said. Ward Poulos had worked with Siegel at three different companies. When I was mulling on this idea, he was the first person I talked to. Will Redd was an engineer that we had both worked with at companies in the past. Software wizard Joe Edmonds rounded out the group. We were really aligned in terms of approach and personality, so it was very easy to work together, Siegel said. All three are still with the company. ZipRecruiter found that fast growth creates its own problems, Siegel said. Theres this cliche saying that the person thats right for a 10-person company isnt right for a 100-person company, the person thats right for a 100-person company isnt right for a 1,000-person company, and its absolutely true. As the company grew, We literally cherry-picked the top 5 percent of talent that we had worked with across multiple businesses, Siegel said, and then we got all their No. 1 referenced friends as well. We have a development office in Israel staffed with some of the best data scientists in the world. Its high-level algorithmic work. Were just applying it to the job category. Many companies are stumbling as they attempt to embrace artificial intelligence. Siegel said AI has given his company a built-in advantage by more quickly extracting data from resumes and more efficiently generating likely matches. He added that his company has used ZipRecruiter to find most of the people who work there. Siegel and his wife, Rochelle, have a 15-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son. Siegel prefers running to meditation, and he loves to read. Im fascinated by entrepreneurs telling their true truths, not the gilded PR-ready, We were awesome from the beginning stories. I love the stories from the trenches. The ugly way that soup got made. I just find it reassuring, and it reminds me that its not easy for anyone. Ronald D. White is a Los Angeles Times writer. The Bay Area may not be full of evergreen forests dusted with snow, but there are plenty of options for residents who want to cut down their own holiday tree. For those looking to get your home looking extra festive as soon as possible, most of the farms open the weekend after Thanksgiving. We've put together a list of places you can cut down your own Christmas tree this year. All of these cut-your-own-tree farms are located between a 30 minute and hour-long drive from San Francisco. Take note that many of the farms are clustered together, which may come in handy for indecisive families in search of the perfect tree. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, make sure to bring your mask and hand sanitizer along with you. It's also a good idea to double-check the hours of business and ensure that you don't need a reservation before you go. Yelp / Sherille S. Santa's Tree Farm & Village, Half Moon Bay Santa's Tree Farm and Village is a family-owned and -operated tree farm opened in 1972. It all began in 1969, when Dan Sare decided to plant Monterey pine Christmas tree seedlings for a high school project, which turned into a business three years later when the pines were ready to harvest. There's no complimentary hot apple cider this year due to COVID-19, but Santa is still supposed to make regular appearances. This third generation family-owned tree farm and Christmas barn has cut-your-own trees and holiday decorations. They also offer pre-cut trees. For the kiddos, there's also a Christmas village with a train. Yelp / Teresa T Castro Valley Christmas Tree Farm, Castro Valley This East Bay tree farm offers cut-your-own Monterey pine, Douglas fir, Sierra redwood, white fir, Monterey cypress and incense cedar. They also have pre-cut noble firs fresh cut from Oregon. Due to COVID-19 precautions and limited capacity, they're asking that people make their tree selections as quickly as possible. Little Hills Christmas Tree Farm, Petaluma Carol and Kriss Mungle transformed this former poultry ranch in 1988 into a cut-your-own Christmas tree farm. They offer Monterey pine, Carolina Sapphire and Leyland cypress trees, and also have a variety of firs that are pre-cut from Oregon. Santa won't be stopping by this year, and the ornament shop and snack shack are also closed this year. Yelp Rancho Siempre Verde, Pescadero This tree farm is open every Friday, Saturday and Sunday through Dec. 20 with new COVID-19 protocols in place. There will be plenty of trees to cut, but the farm will also have pre-cut noble fir and silver tip. There are even tractor rides for kids. Reindeer Ridge Christmas Tree Farm, Sebastopol Running since 1985, Reindeer Ridge has Douglas fir, white fir, grand fir, sequoia, Monterey pine, Scotch pine, incense cedar and Leyland cypress trees intermixed and growing side by side throughout the property. Pre-cut trees will also be available, as will train rides for kids. Yelp / Parker S. Garlock Christmas Tree Farm, Sebastopol This family-run farm since 1966 has appointments available this year, as well as lots of COVID-19 precautions in place. There are a variety of choose-and-cut trees at the 10-acre farm, as well as pre-cut noble firs. Santa won't be in attendance, but the farm animals are still open to visitors. Frosty Mountain Tree Farm, Sebastopol Choose from Douglas fir, Scotch pine, sequoia redwood, Leyland cypress and pre-cut noble fir on this family-owned farm established in 1985. There are also hayrides to enjoy. Jessica Mullins contributed to this report. WASHINGTON Senate Republicans are working to fill the nations longest judicial vacancy with a North Carolina lawyer whose nomination has raised objections from lawmakers and civil rights groups concerned about his work defending state laws found to have discriminated against African Americans. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has helped push 84 of President Trumps nominees over the finish line and is itching for more. With just a few more weeks to go before Congress adjourns for the year, he has set up a vote on the nomination of Thomas Farr, 64, to serve as a district court judge in North Carolina. Senators tend to save their biggest fights in the judicial arena for Supreme Court and appeals court nominees, but Farrs nomination has proved an exception. Its hard to believe President Trump nominated him, and its even harder to believe the Senate Republicans are considering it again, said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer in one of about 20 tweets he has sent out in recent days concerning Farr. Farr has the backing of home-state Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis, both Republicans. They note Farr was also nominated to the same position by former President George W. Bush and has a well qualified rating from the American Bar Association. They reject the implication that Farr is racially insensitive or biased. In introducing Farr last year, Burr said the judiciary needs good people and he fills every piece of the word good. But Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., described Farr as probably the worst of the litter when it comes to Trumps judicial nominees. Could this administration have picked an individual who is more hostile to the rights of minorities than this man? It is hard to imagine, said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. GOP leaders in charge of the North Carolina Legislature hired Farr and others at his firm to defend congressional and legislative boundaries that the Legislature approved in 2011. A federal court eventually invalidated some boundaries as racial gerrymanders and the Supreme Court affirmed the decision. Farr also helped defend a 2013 law that required photo identification to vote, reduced the number of early voting days and eliminated same-day registration during that period. The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law targeted black voters with almost surgical precision. Farr told lawmakers that, as an advocate, he vehemently disagreed with the argument that the North Carolina Legislature sought to curtail the voting rights of people of color or any other voter. But, said, I am obligated to follow the decision by the Fourth Circuit and pledge that I will do so. Kevin Freking is an Associated Press writer. A conservative writer and associate of Trump confidant Roger Stone said Friday that he is in plea talks with special counsel Robert Muellers team. Jerome Corsi told the Associated Press he has been negotiating a potential plea but declined to comment further. He said on a YouTube show earlier this month that he expected to be charged with lying to federal investigators, though he said at the time that he was innocent of wrongdoing. Muellers team questioned Corsi as part of an investigation into Stones connections with WikiLeaks. American intelligence agencies have assessed that Russia was the source of hacked material released by WikiLeaks during the 2016 election that damaged Hillary Clintons campaign. Muellers office is trying to determine whether Stone and other associates of President Trump had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks plans. The confirmation of plea talks first reported by the Washington Post comes as Muellers team has just received fresh information from Trump personally and as federal prosecutors in Virginia recently inadvertently disclosed the existence of sealed charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Its unclear if the charges against Assange are related to Muellers investigation, but WikiLeaks was singled out in an indictment last summer against a group of Russian intelligence officers accused of carrying out the wide-ranging hack of Clintons campaign and other Democratic organizations. Corsi, the former Washington bureau chief of the conspiracy theory outlet InfoWars, has said he cooperated with the probe for about two months after he received a subpoena in August. As part of that cooperation, he turned over two computers and a cell phone and providing the FBI access to his email accounts and tweets. But he said earlier this month that talks with investigators recently had blown up. I fully anticipate that in the next few days, I will be indicted by Mueller, he said then. Stone has denied being a conduit for WikiLeaks, which published thousands of emails stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta in the weeks before the election. Stone said this month he had no advanced notice of the source or content or the exact timing of the release of the WikiLeaks disclosures. He told AP in a separate statement Friday, It is clear from his recent videos and his recent interviews that my friend Dr. Corsi has been under a tremendous amount of pressure and it is beginning to affect him profoundly. He has stated publicly that he is being asked over and over to say things he simply does not believe occurred. Chad Day is an Associated Press writer. WASHINGTON Incensed by a ruling against his migrant asylum policy, President Trump on Thursday demanded some common sense from Americas judges and directed his ire at a liberal-leaning appeals court. He professed respect for Chief Justice John Roberts, with whom he is engaged in a startling public dispute over the independence of the judiciary, yet shrugged off the Republican appointee as someone who can say what he wants. Trump, still seething over Mondays decision by a President Barack Obama-nominated judge, began his Thanksgiving Day by asserting on Twitter that courts should defer to his administration and law enforcement on border security because judges know nothing about it and are making our Country unsafe. The president, spending the holiday in Florida, later said that law enforcers and military service members he has sent to the U.S.-Mexico border cant believe the decisions that are being made by these judges. Trump has gone after federal judges before who have ruled against him, but the current dustup is the first time that Roberts, the leader of the federal judiciary, has offered even a hint of criticism of the president. Roberts issued a strongly worded statement Wednesday defending judicial independence and contradicting Trumps claim that judges are partisans allied with the party of the president who nominated them. It is highly unusual for a president to single out judges for personal criticism, and a chief justices challenge to a presidents comments is unprecedented in modern times. In challenging a co-equal branch of government, Trump complains that his opponents file lawsuits in courts that are part of the liberal-leaning 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Thats where an appeal of the recent asylum ruling would normally go. Its not unusual for those challenging a presidents policies to sue in courts they consider likely to back their claims. Everybody files in the Ninth Circuit, he said with exaggeration. I think were going to have stop that somehow. The judges are going to have to get together or Congress is going to have to get together and stop it because theyre taking advantage of our country. Trump did not elaborate. Conservative groups tended to bring challenges to Obama-era policies in Texas, part of the conservative-leaning Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. Mark Sherman and Jill Colvin are Associated Press writers. OAKLAND (BCN) An Oakland man was sentenced Wednesday to 121 months in prison for human trafficking of a minor, Alex Tse, U.S. Attorney General for Northern California said. Kaybaun Rodgers, 26, whose last known address was in Oakland, pleaded guilty to the charge on Sept. 5. Between Aug. 28, 2016 and Feb. 19, 2017, Rodgers used a website to advertise a minor for sex in exchange for money. He posted at least 46 advertisements and collected the proceeds from the minor. He also filmed the minor performing sex acts on himself and others. In addition to the prison term, Rodgers was sentenced to a 20-year period of supervised release and ordered to register as a sex offender. He has been in custody since April and will begin serving his sentence immediately. 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. RICHMOND (BCN) Police are investigating two fatal crashes that occurred on Nov. 17 and 18, the Richmond Police Department said today. Three people died and two others suffered moderate injuries in the collisions. On Nov. 17, at 10:25 p.m. officers responded to a hit-and-run at the Richmond Parkway south of West Macdonald Ave. A car was stopped for the railroad crossing arms when the suspect rear-ended the car at a high speed. A 45-year-old woman, one of the three people in the car suffered critical injuries and died hours later in the hospital. The suspect, 42-year-old Hayward resident, Marcus Wolfe, has been arrested in connection with murder, a felony DUI and a felony hit-and-run. The following day at 1:25 a.m. officers responded to another call at the Richmond Parkway west of Goodrick Ave. The driver of the car, a 28-year-old Antioch man had crashed into a tree in the center median of the Richmond Parkway. He died at the scene. Based on a preliminary investigation, officers believe the crash to be alcohol-related. No other information is available at this time. 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) The Oakland Raiders donated a total of $250,000 to the North Valley Community Foundation and the American Red Cross to assist in relief and recovery efforts resulting from the Northern California fires. The donation was made up of $200,000 to the North Valley Community Foundation and $50,000 worth of supplied including gift cards, non-perishable food, hygiene products, clothing and water. The players along with front office staff and Raiderettes gathered to box the supplies into over 300 care packages being delivered this week. 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. Real Madrid denied on Friday allegations their captain Sergio Ramos breached anti-doping regulations on the night of the 2017 Champions League final. According to the German magazine Der Spiegel Ramos failed to declare he had taken dexamethasone ahead of the match at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, in which Real beat Juventus 4-1. In a statement the European champions said that Ramos "has never breached the anti-doping control regulations" and that UEFA "closed the matter immediately", following the "verification of experts from the World Anti-Doping Agency, AMA, and UEFA itself". The club continued: "Regarding the rest of the content from the aforementioned publication, the club will not pronounce on evidence that is so insubstantial." Dexamethasone is a glucocorticoid on the banned list of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The substance can have anti-inflammatory effects and increase concentration. WADA does not prohibit players taking dexamethasone before games, as long as it is declared during a doping test. Der Spiegel claims Ramos and the Real Madrid team doctor instead registered betamethasone, another glucocorticoid on WADAs banned list. However the magazine also reports that UEFA were satisfied the mistake was an administrative error and took no disciplinary action. MATAMOROS, Mexico Asylum-seekers funneled to bridge crossings at the Texas border are being blocked from approaching the U.S. side, forced on waiting lists overseen by Mexican officials. The asylum-seekers and immigrant advocates say that has put them at risk of extortion, discrimination and deportation. Many of them have told of Mexican officials demanding money to let them pass and of watching others, further down the list, cross ahead of them. In Matamoros, a city across from Brownsville, Texas, the list is kept on a clipboard in a plastic case on the newer of two border bridges. Though Mexican officials maintain the list, U.S. officers decide how many asylum-seekers cross. An individual familiar with the Mexican immigration system ,who spoke on the condition of anonymity for safety reasons, said U.S. officials choose who crosses based on nationality and other characteristics. Last week, Mexican immigration officials notified four asylum-seekers camped at the foot of the bridge for more than a month that it was their turn to cross. They had been near the top of the waiting list for days but had watched others jump ahead of them. Mexican officials escorted the four a pregnant woman, her boyfriend, a mother and her 16-year-old son to a U.S. customs officers station at the center of the covered bridge. How many are you, and from what countries? one of the U.S. officials asked in Spanish. The migrants identified themselves, and the U.S. officials counted aloud: two Cubans, two Guatemalans. Mexican officials nodded. Then they allowed the four to enter the U.S. U.S. law says immigrants can present themselves to request asylum at border crossings or inside the country after entering illegally. But as thousands of Central Americans approached the border this month, President Trump announced that those crossing illegally would be denied asylum. This week, a federal judge in San Francisco blocked that ban. But the judges ruling didnt address the administrations efforts to stop asylum-seekers at southern border bridges. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say they have run out of space to process them at border holding areas, most of which they said house fewer than a hundred people. The agency has stationed officers at bridge midpoints to prevent asylum-seekers from entering the U.S. The migrants must add their names to waiting lists in Mexico, a process U.S. officials call queue management. A list was first used two years ago in Tijuana, prompting immigrant advocates to sue in California federal court, arguing that the process illegally blocked asylum-seekers. With the lawsuit pending, U.S. immigration officials expanded the system to busy crossings in Arizona and Texas. Molly Hennessy-Fiske is a Los Angeles Times writer. KARACHI, Pakistan In the most significant strike against Chinese interests in Pakistan in years, three militants assaulted the Chinese Consulate in the southern port city of Karachi on Friday morning, killing two policemen and two civilians at a checkpoint before being gunned down by the security forces. On a day of violence that included a bombing that killed at least 35 people in northwestern Pakistan, the near-miss attack on the consulate in Karachi was a rare moment of upheaval for a tightening economic and strategic partnership between Pakistan and China. A Twitter account associated with the Baluchistan Liberation Army, a separatist group in the sprawling and violent province of Baluchistan, said that three of its members had embraced martyrdom in an attack on the Chinese Consulate. And a spokesman for the group was quoted by Reuters as accusing China of exploiting our resources. Pakistan has been a showcase for Chinas huge international development program, the Belt and Road Initiative, in recent years. China is estimated to have spent some $62 billion on those projects in Pakistan, mostly to build a transportation corridor through Baluchistan to a new, Chinese-operated deepwater port in the Pakistani town of Gwadar. The road corridor being built through Baluchistan, which is also rich in natural resources, is one of the most strategic projects associated with the Belt and Road Initiative. Its stated purpose is to greatly reduce shipping costs and time for Chinese goods, but it would also give China an important alternative if faced with naval blockades by the United States or its Asian allies. Baluchistan has also been the center of two resilient insurgencies, making it one of the most sensitive areas for Pakistans powerful military establishment: Ethnic Baluch separatists there have been pursued by a stifling Pakistani security presence, and part of the leadership of the Afghan Taliban also continues to take shelter there, in the city of Quetta. Prime Minister Imran Khan issued a statement on Twitter insisting that such attacks could not shake the relationship between China and Pakistan. He said the strike had clearly been intended to scare Chinese investors and came as a result of trade agreements announced during his trip to China this month. After the attack in Karachi, another bombing this one in the Orakzai region of northwestern Pakistan showed the continuing threat posed by militants on a separate front. At least 35 people were killed and 40 or more wounded when a bomb blast ripped through a fruit and vegetable market in the Hangu district there, officials said. The market was near a seminary for Shiite Muslims, a minority in Pakistan that is frequently targeted by extremist Sunni groups. But the dead included a mix of Pakistanis. The dead include Sunnis, Shiites and a couple of Sikh community members, said a local official, Mutahir Zeb Khan. We are identifying the dead. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, which ended a brief lull in violence in the restive northwestern region, where the Pakistani Taliban were once active. Khan, the prime minister, implicitly linked the two attacks Friday, saying they represented a planned campaign to create unrest in the country by those who do not want Pakistan to prosper. Pakistan has tightened its economic ties to China in recent years, with Beijing recently giving Pakistan a $2 billion loan to help shore up its finances. That followed $1 billion received from Chinese banks in April. But even that substantial aid is far outstripped by the scale of Belt and Road spending in Pakistan. Meher Ahmad and Salman Masood are New York Times writers. COLUMBUS, N.M. A small New Mexico border town once attacked by Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa is rejecting talk of a wall and troops while embracing its legacy to draw tourists. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has cited Villas 1916 raid of Columbus as an example of why President Trump was deploying active-duty troops along the U.S.-Mexico border. The deployment comes as thousands of migrants fleeing gang violence and poverty in Central America head toward the U.S. Residents of Columbus say those living on both sides of the border in the area have co-existed peacefully since the Villa invasion. They say the raid was a phenomenon of a different era, and that using it to justify tighter border security ignores more pressing needs such as economic development and better roads. Its just an excuse, said Roberto Gutierrez, 63, who owns a grocery store in Columbus. Ever since then, people on both sides go back and forth (between the U.S. and Mexico) with no problem. In fact, the town is using the Villa assault to generate historical interest and try to pull in visitors rather than as a cautionary tale. Columbus is set to launch a campaign called Where Old Mexico Meets New Mexico that spotlights Pancho Villa State Park as a place where visitors can explore the scene of the attack. Villas forces attacked Columbus on March 6, 1916, looting and burning homes and businesses. Around a dozen residents and eight U.S. soldiers were killed. Historians have long debated the reason for Villas attack. University of Houston history professor Jose Angel Hernandez believes the revolutionary felt betrayed by President Woodrow Wilson, who didnt recognize his rebel government. Wilson then ordered Gen. John J. Pershing to capture or kill Villa. He didnt catch Villa and withdrew from Mexico amid diplomatic pressure. Russell Contreras is an Associated Press writer. Visitors to a park in Vietnam pay $2 to watch an "instructor" encourage ducks to go down a water slide at a lake. In the video, the large group of ducks split into two as they go up a ride. Some dive off a board and into the lake, while others proceed to a higher point and then go down the slide, to the delight of onlookers. The ducks are being marshaled by an instructor wielding a long stick. They perform all day for visitors who pay $2 ticket to enter the park and watch the show. The clip was captured in Vinh Long Province, southern Vietnam. But a number of big states, including California, Texas, New York and Florida, do not yet have similar collection requirements in place. As a result, consumers shopping online from those states and others that have yet to act may not be charged sales tax on some websites for a little longer. Online shoppers in those states particularly those making expensive holiday purchases like televisions, computers and luxury goods may be motivated to try to purchase from a website that isn't charging them sales tax. While that may look like a sweet tax savings, shoppers are generally supposed to pay the tax to the state themselves, but few do. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. Authorities in New Jersey continue their investigation into a suspected quadruple homicide involving a family with ties to Staten Islands South Shore. Here is the latest information on the case: Family was targeted Authorities have identified the victims as four members of the Caneiro family: Keith, 50; his wife, Jennifer, 45; and their children, Jesse, 11, and Sophia, 8. Authorities found the bodies while responded to a fire Tuesday afternoon at their Willow Brook Road home in Colts Neck, N.J. The medical examiner has concluded Keith Caneiros death to be a homicide, caused by multiple gunshot wounds. The formal cause of death for the other family members, whose bodies were burned in the blaze, is still under review pending toxicology, according to a statement on the Monmouth County prosecutors office Facebook page. However, Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni said law enforcement officials are investigating this matter as a multiple homicide and arson case. At least one of the children had stab wounds, law enforcement sources told NJ.com, the Advances sister website. Keith Caneiro reportedly grew up in Brooklyn, but public records indicate he has had addresses in Tottenville, Rossville, Huguenot, Arden Heights and Bulls Head before moving to Colts Neck. His wife, whose maiden name was Kardis, reportedly grew up on Staten Island and public records associate her with the same address in Arden Heights as her husband. Brother charged in separate fire Paul J. Caneiro, Keiths brother and himself a former Tottenville resident, has been arrested and charged with purposefully setting fire to his own home on Tinton Avenue in Ocean Township, N.J., while his wife and two daughters were inside. All three women escaped safely. That fire was reported about 5 a.m. on Tuesday, several hours before the Caneiros bodies were discovered. Paul Caneiro is charged with second-degree aggravated arson in connection with the Ocean Township blaze, but has not been charged in connection with the Colts Neck fire or deaths at this time. He is scheduled for an initial court appearance next Wednesday. Lawyer maintains innocence Robert Honecker, Paul Caneiros lawyer, released the following statement to CNN: My client maintains his innocence on this charge and any other potential charges. His family fully support his defense of this charge. No evidence has been produced that suggests a reason why he would engage in such conduct. He fully expects to be vindicated when this case finally resolves. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - Storage is not only about closets anymore. With the evolving trends taking over the building industry, there's one in particular that seems to be growing beyond the use of attics and basements unlimited storage space. For some, organizing comes easy, especially when there are large enough closets or there is adequate space for shelves, bins and decorative storage units. For others organizing is difficult as space and creativity can be limited. Recently, closet organization has become a home improvement project. More and more homeowners are recreating their closets into dressing rooms with built in shelving and carefully placed bars for hanging gowns, dresses and pants. They are adding storage islands in larger closets, and customizing smaller ones to maximize every inch of space. They are using second hand dressers and building them into walls to provide a built-in look, then painting the drawer faces to match trim or other decorative items in their bedrooms. As children move out, homeowners are using spare rooms to create master closets with dressing rooms. In new construction, built-ins are becoming more popular, providing additional storage anywhere there is available wall space, in any room of the house. With the range of storage and organization options, consumers are more readily able to fully realize the concept of a place for everything and everything in its place. With the upswing in popularity of home renovation shows, do it yourself magazines and websites like Houzz and Pinterest, homeowners are learning that they can customize their homes to make it personal. In more cases than in the past, they are turning to designers, architects, craftsmen, and landscape organizers to identify how to make use of every inch of every room in their home. Consumers are becoming more aware that if properly organized, their home can be more functional. For many that are making the transition to working from home, it is important they have an office space that functions well, which includes having a place for files, computer equipment and supplies. When there is room for a separate office, it is easy to set one up, but when space is limited a built-in desk and small shelving unit can help you get organized and create a better work environment. Bookcases throughout the house have become more popular, and can be used with decorative slide in storage bins to store wires, game controls, DVDs, spare pillows and even blankets. Whether in a family room, living room or dining room, bookcases can be modified for the storage of almost anything, including decorative art, platters or family heirlooms. Smaller bookcases with a bench combination could also be tucked away in a nook of any room in the house to add a quiet space for reading. Mudrooms have grown in popularity in recent years, creating an organized space for coats, shoes, hats, and winter gear. A mudroom can be furnished with cool lockers or with cabinetry to create a room that blends with the rest of the house. If you dont have a separate room to spare, consider a piece of furniture for an entryway that is a combo storage bench, with or without room to hang jackets. Hidden storage can be interesting and fun, like placed under a staircase, or placed behind a wall which pops open when you push it in so you are the only one that knows it exists. With the onslaught of creative storage containers, bins can be placed under beds to store winter/summer clothes during off seasons or placed in hard to reach areas that would otherwise go unused. Over the years, kitchens have become the most important room of the house, providing a space for entertaining, working, cooking, and homework. Cabinet manufacturers have reacted positively to the needs of homeowners when it comes to creative storage. Corner cabinets are no longer wasted space. Creative and movable shelving with offsetting hardware provides use of every inch of space in cabinets. More options are available for the storage of small appliances, pantry items and spices. Keeping with the clean and uncluttered trend, more contractors are working with homeowners to include these solutions into the design of their kitchen, including thoughtfully placed electrical outlets. Wall and base filler cabinets can be strategically placed to maximize storage in the kitchen. Pull out cabinets provide a space for garbage cans so they are tucked away nicely. Large drawers can be used to store oversized platters and bowls. Don't forget about the pantry, as storage space is also needed for dry goods and cans. Many homeowners have chosen to use a nearby closet off the kitchen or build a small walk in closet for this purpose, as it is less expensive than custom cabinetry. A pantry can also provide space for mixers, juicers, toasters and large kitchen gadgets instead of using up prime cabinet space. Keeping the garage organized and capable of storing more than just the household vehicles is what it's all about today. The garage has become another room of the home, and the space is looked at differently than in years past. Research has shown within the past three or four years that creating ample garage storage is on the rise. Whether you add hooks to hang larger items on the wall, add shelving or place modular storage units on the floor on wheels, everything can have a place, no matter what the size. In the past, people did not place a lot of emphasis on organization, feeling that there was no real solution to smaller homes or older homes designed without closets. However, educated consumers are now realizing that there are options and are reaching out for assistance from the professionals. As the amount of our material possessions grow, it's only a matter of time before homeowners will find it more difficult to thoughtfully store their items. In todays busy world being organized provides a more effective way to manage time and will not only declutter the appearance of your home, but will also declutter your mind. Alex Filis, president, A.F. Signature Home Renovations Corp., afsignaturerenovations.com All our experts are licensed, bonded and insured members of the Home Improvement Contractors of Staten Island (HIC of Staten Island). Homeowners should always consult with licensed professionals, check a contractor's license through the NYC Department of Consumer Affairs (call 311 for information) and ensure that their project complies with NYC DOB regulations before embarking on any home improvement project. For more information contact us at (718) 356-2323 or visit www.hicofsi.org. To ask your home improvement questions contact: questionsfortheexpert@gmail.com 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! Lady Luminada isnt just a visual tease; it toys with the other senses too. The aroma is unmistakable: rich chocolate (the same one used in the hot chocolate at Xoco, which is owned by Cruz Blanca partner Rick Bayless), tinged lightly with berry tartness. Yet it doesnt quite taste the way it smells. Corporate regulator boss James Shipton has admitted to several mistakes in its handling of misconduct by the big banks while revealing it has only recently started investigating wrongdoing exposed during the royal commission hearings in March. In a gruelling, two-day appearance at the hearings, Mr Shipton was also forced to defend other commissioners including Cathie Armour who was described as showing a lack of professionalism in her dealings with NAB and botching an investigation. ASIC chairman James Shipton had a rough time at the royal commission defending the corporate regulator. Credit:AAP Mr Shipton spent all of Friday explaining ASIC's lack of action over the past 10 years against the big banks while giving evidence for the second day in a row. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has come under fire at the commission and in earlier inquiries for not taking enough enforcement action and being too close to the companies it regulates, particularly the big four banks. "It was clear from our recent discussions, that the board is understandably weighing the public reaction to the potential appointment of me as CEO," Mr Comyn wrote. "I understand that there will no doubt be criticism, but I also believe that there will be strength from the rigour of the process that the Board has undertaken. I understand that there will no doubt be criticism, but I also believe that there will be strength from the rigour of the process that the Board has undertaken Matt Comyn's letter to Catherine Livingstone "Having reflected on our discussion, my instinct is that an announcement around a week prior to half-year results would allow a week of reaction, with the expected strong result to then refocus on our strong performance, with the Retail Bank again underpinning the result." Mr Comyn also told Ms Livingstone there would be a "detailed plan" to manage the media and investor reaction after the announcement, and he would aim to make it clear the bank had a "change agenda." "Building an effective and transparent relationship with the Board to rebuild trust in CBA together is my highest priority, and is essential to being able to get through the next few years," he said. Loading Since he formally became chief executive in April, he has announced a series of asset sales, including selling off most of its wealth management businesses, as part of a plan to simplify the bank, and re-ordered its management ranks. On the royal commission, Mr Comyn outlined various possible topics that may come up, including "questions regarding the appropriateness of lending standards pre 2012," and he said there was a risk of CBA paying compensation over its term deposit pricing from before 2011. Mr Comyn correctly anticipated the commission might look at "issues that we have been aware of and debated, and for one reason or another, have not acted on," such as consumer credit insurance, which he was grilled about this week. Mr Comyn's email also touched on how he planned to handle the pressure of leading a bank during the next few years, he said would be "particularly challenging." "The experience of the last six months has given me confidence that I can work through difficult issues, keep things in perspective, support my family, energise my team, and scale my leadership to get things done across the organisation," he wrote. I would ensure that I leave substantial free time in my diary to deal with unexpected issues and to remain fit and healthy so that I am in the best possible shape to deal with the stresses of the role. Matt Comyn in his letter "I would ensure that I leave substantial free time in my diary to deal with unexpected issues and to remain fit and healthy so that I am in the best possible shape to deal with the stresses of the role." Another issue dealt with in his email was his perspective on the board, and Mr Comyn told Ms Livingstone he believed CBA directors had a "very tough job in the current context," promising transparency. "As CEO, I would absolutely see it as my role to be provide transparency and the right level of detail, and to bring issues to the board's attention that you need to be across with my recommended course of action for discussion and debate," he wrote. "It will never be up to the board to follow through on open actions and issues." The email was tendered as evidence at the royal commission on Monday this week, when Mr Comyn told the commission it followed a three-hour meeting with Ms Livingstone on the 29th of December. Mr Comyn had just arrived in Utah when he sent the note, which also said: "As per our discussion, I will make sure that I ski even more carefully than usual, which means I may not be able to keep up with my daughter in the moguls!" Food-anchored neighbourhood shopping centres with less focus on discretionary retail spending are being snapped up by investors across the county, offering solid yields for the buyers. In the past calendar year close to $300 million worth of retail assets have changed hands and agents in the market expect demand to remain high as the centres are internet-proof and offer recurring income from long-term tenants. The attraction is they are mainly food-based leases with only a smattering of non-food specialty stores. The Penrith shopping centre, Cranebrook Village, has sold to a private investor for $48.1 million. It comes as larger malls owned by Scentre, Stockland, Vicinity and GPT, are bracing for a tough year ahead with a slump in the housing market flowing through to homewares and general retail sales. Food-based centres are less impacted by this trend. After being shuttered for three years the Valmorbida family is set to reopen iconic deli King & Godfree as part of a new multi-level food, drink, retail and office precinct. "King & Godfree is the missing piece of the Lygon street puzzle," say 36-year-old Luca Sbardella and 33-year-old Jamie Valmorbida. Cousins Jamie Valmorbida and Luca Sbardella at the roof top bar at King & Godfree. Credit:Joe Armao King & Godfree first opened its doors in 1884 and the Valmorbida family has owned it since 1955 with cousins Sbardella and Valmorbida the third generation of their family to be entrusted with running the business. It is reopening as a food precinct or Italian market over three levels including K&G Gastronomia Deli & Espresso Bar, Agostino & Cellar Bar, roof top bar Johnnys Green Room and Pidapipo Gelateria. Canine star Rin Tin Tin, the world taxidermy championships, origami mastery, ice skater Tonya Harding's fall from grace, the pros and cons of treadmill desks, how America spends Saturday night, ghost orchids. These are just some of the topics that Susan Orlean has covered, either as a staff writer on The New Yorker, or as the author of bestselling books that dissect in forensic detail a subject that the reader might, at first glance, dismiss as of limited or no interest. Except that Orlean has the Midas touch. Her bestselling book, The Orchid Thief, became the basis for Spike Jonze's film Adaptation, in which Meryl Streep played a character loosely based on Orlean herself (the actor has remained a friend). And while her article on Harding is not acknowledged as such, it certainly appears to have been a primary source for the version of events related in the film I, Tonya. Now her latest, The Library Book, which centres on the fire that gutted the Los Angeles Central Library on April 29, 1986, is to be turned into a TV drama series. Author Susan Orlean. Her timing is tragically impeccable, with fire uppermost in the minds of all Californians and most Americans. "It is heartbreaking that fires are such a fact of life in California and that LA is a highly flammable city." During the course of her research, Orlean discovered that there is even a fire museum in LA, testimony to its presence in the psyche of citizens. A blaze in a municipal library may not sound like the stuff of gripping intrigue except that this one was started deliberately, and the main suspect, Harry Peak, was the kind of ducking and weaving shapeshifter who could easily be the subject of a podcast series in these days of insatiable appetite for true-crime stories. He and Robin first meet as enemies on the battlefield during the Crusades, which have been "reimagined" to resemble episodes from the current war in Syria. Snipers use repeating cross-bows and something that the film's designers are calling an "arrow-firing RPG [rocket-propelled grenade]". Arrows don't twang, whir or hum in the old-fashioned way. They crack like pistol shots. It's an approach fervently embraced by Otto Bathurst, director of the latest Robin Hood, which is set to spawn a new franchise. There's no Lincoln green on show here. This Robin (British actor Taron Egerton) looks as if he's been outfitted by Armani, while Little John (Jamie Foxx) favours leisurewear in shades of indigo in keeping with his Moorish origins. Tuck (Tim Minchin) and Robin (Taron Egerton) in Robin Hood. Credit:Attila Szvacsek The story's salient features remain. Robin is still Lord Loxley (only the spelling has changed) and he's still dedicated to overthrowing the Sheriff of Nottingham, played by Ben Mendelsohn, whose steely looks are enhanced by a menacing snarl and a long leather coat in metallic grey. But in a further bid for contemporary relevance, the script has supplied a reason for the Sheriff's evil disposition. As an orphan child, he was abused by the churchmen who were supposed to be taking care of him. He is at his most venomous in his scenes with a fiendish F. Murray Abraham, cast as a Cardinal visiting from Rome. Their mutual hatred doesn't stop these two from collaborating to extract criminally high taxes from the people of Nottingham, which is in the grip of its own premature Industrial Revolution. The peasants have all become miners and Robin's love, Marian (Eve Hewson) runs the soup kitchen while organising protest meetings. Believing that Robin has been killed in the Crusades, she also has a husband, Will (Jamie Dornan), another anti-establishment activist. By this point, the anachronisms are piling up so fast that even the arrival of Tim Minchin as a slimmed-down Friar Tuck fails to astonish. He's in charge of merriment, which is otherwise in short supply. It isn't supposed to be. The bromance that turns Robin and Little John into allies has been touted as a reliable source of robust humour but it doesn't really deliver, despite the considerable amount of effort they both put into it. On their arrival in Nottingham, they hang out at Robin's derelict manor house, which has been ransacked by the Sheriff in one of his tax grabs, and set about turning themselves into medieval gym bunnies with a gruelling regimen based on hauling wagon wheels uphill. At least, Robin does the hauling while John makes condescending remarks about his performance. Robin also learns that he'll have to improve his archery skills. At the moment, his arrows fly through the air so slowly that John can catch them in one hand. Better equipment will help, John acknowledges, giving him a new, speedier model that doubles as a bayonet. Some readers might be forgiven for sighing and turning the page when they read that Opposition leader Bill Shorten has just launched yet another climate change policy to take to the next election. Australian climate policies have a lower survival rate than newly hatched deep sea turtles flippering across the beach for the safety of the ocean. It is true that the vicious politics of energy and climate change have forced the ALP to adopt a suite of policies which are very far away from the first-best, market-friendly options to reduce carbon emissions which were being contemplated a decade ago. Still, on balance, it is hard not to agree with Mr Shorten's basic point: after a decade of climate wars it would be better to have a national climate change policy, even a compromised one, rather than none at all, which is what the Coalition is proposing. Experts say married people much more so than de facto and single people have access to so-called marital resources, that is, the economic, social and psychological advantages that come with being married, as well as relationship stability. The deputy director of the Melbourne Institute and the HILDA Survey program, Professor Roger Wilkins, says men benefit the most from marriage. Men seem to obtain their happiness, health and have higher rates of wellbeing when they are married, he says. The research shows married men tend to have much better social supports than single counterparts. Poor social supports have been strongly linked to higher rates of depression, loneliness and isolation, which are associated with poorer health outcomes (although it could just be that happier people tend to get married, and sadder, sicker ones dont, something that Professor Wilkins refers to as the selection bias). So will getting married make me healthier, then? Marriage; good for your health, according to some data. Credit:Fairfax Media One study, which examined the difference marital status makes to perceived social wellbeing, found that de facto couples reported lower social wellbeing than their married counterparts. According to the authors, one reason for this is that de facto relationships represent an incomplete institution, an informal arrangement that exposes couples to social stigma. Another reason is that despite the perception that de factors have the same rights as married couples, the reality is quite different: de facto couples are often forced to jump through many legal hoops (at significant financial expense) just to prove what a single piece of paper (aka, marriage certificate) symbolises: love and commitment. This constant need to reaffirm love and commitment to gain social approval can undermine happiness and health, causing undue stress both health-wise and financially for unwed couples. Jessica*, 33, who married her husband almost eight years ago, says most people respond to boundaries and rules. Marriage puts commitment out there formally in a way that would be more difficult for people who are not married, she says. On the other hand, being in a [de facto relationship] means you have to create your own mental rules, different from societys, that say you're committed to that person for life. You will also probably have to keep explaining at least to other people why you aren't married. Not many people are good at that. Loading Will getting married make my relationship stronger? Data shows that de facto couples are three to five times more likely to split up within five years than married couples. Moreover, for the majority of de facto couples, marriage is the end goal anyway. Professor Roger Wilkins says that 80 per cent of married couples tend to still be together after 10 years. The number drops to 60 per cent for those in de facto relationships. Part of this is that it's easier to get out of a de facto relationship than a marriage; its less messier legally, he said. While its true that not having a marriage certificate doesn't necessarily mean you're less likely to last, the very public nature of a marriage, which requires making a public statement of commitment, can be harder to go back on. During her eight years of marriage, Jessica and her husband have been through ups and downs, some quite significant. During that period, I think being married actually helped us get through, she told me over coffee. Its the idea that there is something bigger than the two of you that youre accountable to. And yes, that could also be mortgage and kids, but that intangible emotional idea that you love someone so much that you stood up and told all the people to know about it while wearing the most expensive dress you'll ever own has a lasting impact. Some studies suggest de facto partnerships benefit women ... they seem more progressive and have a more equal distribution of gender roles. Its a bit cliched, but sometimes you just need a bit of hope to get you through a dark time. Defacto: a better option for women? While marriage is still the preferred relationship choice, Professor Wilkins says de facto relationships are growing. In 2001, there were only 9 per cent of couples in de facto partnerships now we have nearly 12 per cent. While marriage rates have been declining, its very slowly; its still very fashionable, he says. Some studies suggest de facto partnerships benefit women in particular; they seem to be more progressive and have a more equal distribution of gender roles, especially when it comes to household labour. However, University of Melbournes social scientist and feminist lecturer Dr Lauren Rosewarne says there is not enough research to definitely show whether women are better or worse off as de facto versus married. The only difference I can see is in terms of cognition, so the perception that de facto is different to marriage, somehow less binding, less symbolically problematic, she tells me. However, in reality, and legally speaking, there is not a huge amount of difference between the two. I suspect, and certainly have seen it from my own friendship group, that a lot of people who are in long-term de facto relationships consider themselves married anyway. Dr Rosewarne says that its probably the cohabitation factor, rather than the marriage certificate, that makes the difference. If youre living in the same house, your relationship becomes marriage-like, and traditional gender roles become more important. Interestingly, Dr Rosewarne says that its actually single women who score the highest on happiness and psychological health. All metrics indicate that its the single woman who is happiest. The only area they fare worse in is financially, she says. However, this can also be attributed to the selection effect, which says that more progressive people tend to live in de facto partnerships and more traditional people tend to marry. More traditional types of people get married and favour more traditional gender roles, which on average are more to the advantage of men, and less to the benefit of womens wellbeing, Professor Wilkins says. Sarah*, who has been with her partner Greg* for nine years, says feminism, as well as the irrelevancy of marriage today are the main reasons she doesnt plan to ever get married. If youre a feminist, theres no fight without sacrifice, and marriage is worth sacrificing for me. Ive never pictured myself walking down the aisle and seeing people look at me anyway. Why do I need to confess my love and commitment in front of everyone? We've lived together for six years; weve moved countries three times; we have a dog. What more confirmation do people need? she says. The ACT's parole board operated for more than a decade without a formal policy governing board members' potential conflicts of interest or bias, with the board only formally endorsing a policy last month. The lack of a policy governing the territory's Sentence Administration Board was raised during a Legislative Assembly committee hearing last week. The issue of bias on the ACT's Sentence Administration Board was the subject of a recent court case. Credit:Louise Douvis Chairwoman Laura Beacroft revealed it was not until she was appointed as chair early last year that the board set about drafting a formal policy to govern members' potential conflicts of interest and bias. The revelation came after an associate judge recently ruled two board members, former federal integrity commissioner Philip Moss and Janine Bromwich, were biased in refusing a convicted sex offender bail in a hearing earlier this year. While the rest of the family stayed closer to home, Stephenson was always drawn to the big city. She has said that her parents emphasized the value of hard work and education and that she chose to pursue a career in law particularly criminal law because it was what interested her the most. Tree removal flawed The chief planner is allowing the removal of a Manuka plane tree, even though community sentiment plainly favours its retention. Ben Ponton, chief planner, is allowing the plane tree's departure as it could compromise broader strategic objectives of the Territory Plan. It's no wonder Western civilisation is overseeing the most significant environmental destruction in human history, with these sorts of strategies. Matt Ford, Crookwell, NSW Wasp here to stay The article about European wasps ("Keep your eyes peeled for wasps to help take sting out of summer", November 20, p8) referred to this invasive species of wasp being brought to Australia by settlers. This is not correct. The very first European wasp nests in Australia were discovered in Hobart, Tasmania, in 1959, probably as a result of hibernating queens being delivered in cargo from New Zealand where the wasp was widespread since its accidental introduction from Europe in 1945. The European wasp was subsequently found nesting in Sydney and Melbourne in 1977-78 and the first nests were reported in West Australia, South Australia and Canberra in 1983-84. Thanks to an intensive program of "search and destroy", the authorities in Perth have managed to contain the outbreak and the wasp is not officially established in this part of Australia. Since 1984, the European wasp in Canberra has spread to all suburbs and adjacent national parks as well as the alpine regions of the Snowy Mountains. It is here to stay! Dr Philip Spradbery, Yarralumla Our reliance on cars Bob Bennett (Letters, November 20) observes the reluctance of Canberrans to reduce their reliance on cars. Such a reduction is essential to reduce greenhouse emissions. A range of land-use/transport strategies need to be investigated including a) abandoning light rail stage two to fund an increased frequency and coverage of the bus network; b) the feasibility of the potentially more cost-effective high-capacity electric buses on the high-volume inter-town bus routes; c) increasing long-stay parking charges and reducing long-stay parking supply at major employment centres; d) directing employment to town centres and locations well-served by public transport and discouraging employment at locations difficult to serve by public transport and e) providing additional housing near employment. Send your opinions to letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au. The government is not seriously pursing an integrated land-use/transport strategy with the current review "analysis light" and not comprehensively addressing key challenges including determining and delivering an optimum distribution of population and employment to reduce overall travel and greenhouse emissions, improve housing affordability and best use limited funds. This failure, in part, is a consequence of the government's irresponsible, ego-driven focus on the superficially attractive, horrendously costly and soon to be outdated light rail. Mr Barr a "Big ACT" requires the effective management of population growth based on an evidenced-based strategy accompanied by an infrastructure plan indicating where and when development (including housing, schools, shops, roads, public transport) is to occur and its cost. Mike Quirk, Garran Thought bubble fail The PM's thought bubble about moving Australia's embassy in Israel to Jerusalem was politically ridiculous, as the move would be against the wishes of most countries, especially Indonesia. More importantly, it was extremely unethical as the proposed action would accede to the wishes of Israel, against the wishes of the victim state, Palestine, which Israel currently occupies. My recommendation is that the PM instead close the embassy in Israel, and Israel's embassy in Australia, until Palestine has been granted full membership of the UN and Israel has withdrawn all its citizens from Palestine with borders defined as in the UN decision of 1947. Such a demand on Israel would be a clearly ethical one which almost all countries in the world would support. Some countries might even follow suit; if they did, sanctions against Israel might begin, and these could lead to a just peace in the area. The US would probably not support Australia's action, but it is time for Australia to assert its independence on a major issue of conscience. Also, the time for Australia to show some leadership is well overdue. Domestically, such a decision by the PM would probably enhance his reputation. Overseas, some countries might even regard him as a statesman. Bill Shorten could attain similar credit by supporting the decision. R. Salmond, Melba It is a strong and honest man who can admit to a mistake and who will be seen to be so. Prime Minister Morrison's thoughts on moving Australia's embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv was just a ploy to help the Wentworth election and is seen so by all thinking Australians. So, "Scomo", pull back from that notion because religion being what it is could easily involve us in another war. You will be better thought of by all Aussies for having the common sense in doing so. Don Davey, Launceston, Tas Costly and unfair episode I imagine many will be relieved by the finding that David Eastman did not commit the murder of Colin Winchester. Anecdotally most Canberrans believed the crime was ordered by the Mafia. The first trial of David was a farce. We had a defendant who had been seeing a psychiatrist for many years. He was stressed and behaved at times in a way that did not help his case. The presiding judge was supplied with an opinion that he was not fit to conduct his own defence but either did not realise it was there or ignored it. To add to his woes he foolishly called a character witness. That opened the door for the prosecution to call scores of witnesses who attested to the fact that he could behave very badly when he thought he was wronged. The fact that he had not left a trail of bodies of people he disliked behind him was ignored. In fact he had not had a criminal conviction recorded against him. The judge allowed the prosecution to have the last say before his summing up. That provision was strictly for cases where there were multiple defendants. In any case it had been inherited from England where it removed on the grounds that it was unfair to the defendant(s). The forensic evidence, particularly regarding gunpowder residue was hopelessly flawed. I could go on but to put it bluntly that trial was blatantly unfair. Which brings up another fact. Not only was it unfair to David. It was also unfair to Colin Winchester. He was a very respected person and to have his killers escape was a scathing indictment of the investigating police. The DPP's office cannot escape blame. Every attempt that David made to clear his name was fought tooth and nail by them. This present trial was mounted on the premise that the DPP had new and compelling evidence of David's guilt. If that was the case it was certainly not evident to the jury and the trial judge in his summing up. Our community has a right to expect that we get a more efficient police force and prosecution resources out of this very expensive, very prejudiced episode. Howard Carew, Isaacs David Eastman not guilty. It has taken more than 30 years (19 of which were spent in prison) for this man to receive a fair trial. How cruel and unfair this experience has been. I hope the ACT government accepts this decision willingly and negotiates with Mr Eastman a fair and just compensation and not put him through a judicial process arguing the case. He deserves all our empathy and support for what we as a community have allowed him to be put through. Where does this now leave the AFP? It, too, must accept this unanimous verdict and immediately reconstitute an investigation into the murder of the most senior police officer to be killed in Australia. Those responsible are still out there. They must also, with fresh eyes, conduct an inquiry into their own practices to determine how and why such a flawed case (as also determined by the Martin Inquiry) was progressed with such vigour against Mr Eastman. I feel though only a royal commission, with all its powers, will satisfy this goal. Chris Harris, Kambah The acquittal of David Eastman reflects very poorly on the ACT justice system that has squandered millions of taxpayer dollars in its nearly 30 years' pursuit of an innocent man. Chris Smith, Kingston Bank behaviour In a recent speech, the Reserve Bank's governor, Philip Lowe, criticised the banks for chasing short-term profits rather than improving customer service, thus eroding trust in our financial institutions. I understand his carefully chosen words given his role, but I do not have the same constraint. In my view, he should have taken a more robust approach given the enormity of what the public has heard in the commission. The governor's use of "short-term profits" seems inapt. As a general comment, the banks and other financial institutions have been ripping off Australian consumers for years. Staggeringly, the financial industry does not seem to recognise that urgent, fundamental changes in culture, policies and practices are required to win back customer trust. "Clever" face-saving and smug appearances of CEOs and others at the hearings will not cut it. Cutting bonuses and sacking a few will not cut it. What seems lacking is a genuine mea culpa in the industry. A more significant clean-out of boards, management and staff should take place along with greater financial penalties and criminal penalties where appropriate. And then there is the question of the regulators; do they deserve any penalty? We are talking about the Reserve Bank, the Australian Prudential and Regulatory Authority , the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Treasury. Where were they? Vigilant or duped confreres. Geoff Clark, Narrabundah Petrol market flaw In an article ("There's just not a lot of competition", November 22, p3) Shane Oliver is reported to have said petrol prices in Canberra do not reduce to the extent of reductions in other capital cities because the market is just too small and so there is not much competition. Well, how come that I regularly can get petrol in towns on the south coast and some other country towns at prices lower than in Canberra? Nick Stuparich, Bruce Seeing wood and trees Passing through a small East Gippsland town in Victoria last week, I was struck by the large mounds of firewood that had been assembled at its timber mill. Given the quantity, it seems likely that the wood may be trucked to other areas for commercial sale, rather than all used locally. The beautiful old-growth forests of East Gippsland, which sadly are still being logged, are just under four hours away from Canberra, so I was wondering if some of that wood, might be finding its way here. Dedicated activists and communities are working incredibly hard to save those forests. Trees in forests in Victoria and NSW are also still falling, reducing threatened species habitat, and that wood may also be in danger of ending up as firewood to be burnt here. The ACT government is rightly proud of the ACT's efforts to avert climate change. Logging is certainly adding to that problem, and though this logging is out of sight from Canberrans and across our borders, perhaps the ACT government could at least legislate for suppliers to say where their wood was sourced from. Some consumers may not mind and choose wood on price alone, but others may well choose to source firewood from sources that don't have the same environmental impact as taking wood from native forests. If no wood from threatened old-growth forests is in fact coming to Canberra, that would be excellent, but at the moment as far as I can see, the consumer has no way of knowing the history of the wood they are purchasing. Winter is coming (after our long hot summer) so now would be the time to investigate this. Judith Deland-Morton, Spence New endangered species Forget the eastern betong, the golden sun moth and the grassland earless dragon as critically endangered species in the ACT. A portion of the mafia evidence during the re-trial was heard in a closed court. Loading In a series of tweets, Mr Quaedvlieg said, as ACT police chief, he had spent many spellbound weeks reading the old reports. The case [against Mr Eastman] was always circumstantial, however some of the avenues of inquiry were fascinating, especially the theory that two Calabrian hit men had travelled to Australia to undertake a mafia assassination on Winchester as retaliation for ratting them out, he said. When I read the evidence as presented at the 1st trial, my leaning was [Mr Eastman] was guilty but knew it was hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. The retrial verdict reflects that view. Mr Quaedvlieg said that, when he read all material, he thought other avenues needed to exhausted to negate them fully. For the record, while I dont think that avenue of investigation was exhausted to the point of negation, I dont believe Winchester was a dirty cop. The evidence points to the contrary, but the Italian organised crime entities involved may have wrongly believed otherwise. Prosecutors during the retrial had dismissed the mafia theory, saying the murder was the work of an amateur and that Mr Winchester's death served the organisation no purpose. Meanwhile, there have been no wild celebrations by Mr Eastman - who is truly free for the first-time in almost 30 years. Loading Mr Eastman became an immediate suspect after the murder, and was questioned by detectives the following day. Although he was released from prison in 2014, he had been subject to bail conditions since then. The former Treasury official did not front the waiting media for a jubilant press conference outside the court after the verdict, instead preferring to quietly slip away through a backdoor. Mr Eastman spoke privately to a number of close supporters immediately afterwards, although those conversations have not been made public. Through lawyers he politely declined a request for comment by The Canberra Times shortly after the acquittal. It is unknown how Mr Eastman spent his first full day of freedom in three decades, other than he has kept his head down in preparation for the litigation of a civil claim. The fallout of the verdict on Friday centred on the decision to pursue the re-trial, with a peak ACT legal body saying it was a waste of taxpayers' money and did not serve justice. The ACT Bar Association criticised ACT Director of Public Prosecutions Jon White SC's decision to mount the retrial despite an inquiry's recommendation a new trial would "not [be] feasible and would not be fair". Mr White declined to respond to the association's criticisms. The full bench of the ACT Supreme Court in 2014 quashed Mr Eastman's 1995 conviction for the murder and ordered he face a re-trial over the assassination. Loading The court, comprised of Justices Steven Rares, Michael Wigney and acting Justice Dennis Cowdroy, found Mr Eastman did not receive a trial according to law. The judges said it had not been convinced that a new trial would be unfair and had even been necessary as a strong circumstantial case of murder of a senior police officer existed against Eastman. The court heard he should not "escape having a jury decide whether or not he is guilty of that crime". "Weighing all the relevant factors and considerations, we have concluded that the interests of justice require that we order a retrial," Justice Rares told the court in August 2014. Despite the court's orders, the ultimate decision on whether to conduct a retrial fell to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Jon White, SC. Mr White, in November 2014, decided Mr Eastman would be re-tried for the 1989 murder. Bar president Steven Whybrow said there had been little justification in pursuing Mr Eastman the second time. "A judicial inquiry had raised real questions about the fragile forensic evidence and the effluxion of time had further undermined the prosecution case and the accuseds capacity to challenge it," Mr Whybrow said. The saga is over. Twelve of David Eastman's peers have judged him. After a six-month trial, six days of deliberation and, at least initially, an inability to agree, the jurors found him not guilty of murdering ACT police chief Colin Winchester in 1989. Mr Eastman is a free man. Yet his extraordinary legal battle is not quite finished. Mr Eastman spent more than 19 years in jail for the killing and is expected to pursue compensation for that imprisonment, worth potentially tens of millions of dollars. The costs of this crime, and of the botched investigation and prosecution that ensued, continue to mount. Meanwhile, Mr Winchester's family and friends will likely never see justice served on the police chief's killer. This is no happy ending. The injustice began with Mr Winchester's murder almost 30 years ago. The federal police, no doubt affected by their comrade's death and craving a conviction, made poor decisions. Confirmation biases undermined their work. Justice Brian Martin, who, years later, inquired into that original investigation, prosecution and trial, called Mr Eastman's conviction a "substantial miscarriage of justice". His decision in 2014 summarised the flaws: "The issue of guilt was determined on the basis of deeply flawed forensic evidence in circumstances where the applicant was denied procedural fairness in respect of a fundamental feature of the trial process concerned with disclosure by the prosecution of all relevant material. In addition, evidence of inadequacies and flaws in the case file and case work of the key forensic scientists were unknown to everyone involved in the investigation and trial." Despite his classic Italian mannerisms, Papp was born and raised in Canberra to an Italian mother and Hungarian father, both migrants seeking a new life after fleeing a blighted post-war Europe. He remembers an ordinary suburban childhood, attending Downer Primary School and learning to play the accordion. Louis Papp chats with The Canberra Times at Tilley's. Credit:Jamila Toderas. When his parents split up in 1972, his mother took him and his two siblings back to Italy, where they settled in Rome. Twelve-year-old Loui found himself swept up immediately in the revolutionary, left-wing politics that were gripping young people. It couldnt have been more different to Canberra. Were sitting in Tilleys, one of Papps regular haunts, and Papp is sipping coffee while he tells the story - with full Italian gesticulation - of his downfall and redemption. While he's spry and bright-eyed, he looks older than his 59 years. It's not surprising when you hear of where he's been, and while his eyes shine at the memories of his formative years in Rome, hes not proud of where his journey took him. Back in Italy, Papp discovered jazz, travelled the country to attend demonstrations, and took plenty of drugs. My drug abuse wasn't necessarily because I wanted the experience - I was expanding my mind. It wasn't about lying on the couch and becoming a vegetable. That serves no purpose," he says. "It was all about getting high and listening to some really good music. Papp behind the counter of Loui's Cafe at the civic bus interchange. Credit:Lannon Harley After seven years, he decided to return to Canberra, to take a break and visit his father. He arrived in all his long-haired hippiedom and promptly met the woman who would become his wife, Trish, another migrant from Burma. He got a job at the National Gallery of Australia, first as a cleaner and later managing the gallerys bookshop, where he would work for seven years. He has fond memories of helping hang Blue Poles when the gallery first acquired it. He and Trish decided to start a family, but their first child, Josh, was born with fatal disabilities and lived for just 12 hours. Papps eyes still brim with tears at the memory, although he and Trish would have two more sons, now aged 23 and 27 and both living in Melbourne. In 1998, he opened Louis in the Civic bus interchange, running it for 17 years. And in all that time, he never stopped taking drugs. I was taking drugs, always. I functioned really well, he says - adding that he never got into dealing. He said if the police were ever to search his house, they would find nothing - he consumed the lot himself. He admits this kind of behaviour is common in the hospitality industry, especially among those of his generation, but has noticed in recent years that younger people don't seem to be as enamoured of the drug scene. Papp has fond memories of hanging 'Blue Poles' in the National Gallery. Credit:Jamila Toderas. It's for the best, he says. I tried heroin once and didn't like it. I just didn't see the point. And I was scared of needles," he says. If I wasn't scared of needles I would have been dead. I wanted energy, discovery, talking. But he tried just about everything else. By the end, when everything had fallen to pieces, he had narrowed it down to just cocaine and - worst of all - ice. I was such an arsehole on ice, he says, simply. Of all the drugs I've ever used, ice cripples you, it destroys you. He remembers snorting prodigious amounts of cocaine on a regular basis, often being awake for days. Meanwhile, he was burning through money, losing his friends and driving away his family. Trish - who, he says, has never touched drugs in her life - eventually left him, along with his now-grown sons. We sat down with our two boys, who were almost 23 and 20 at the time, and I fell to pieces and said 'There's no way to salvage?' And she said, 'No. I don't want to', he says. The cafe was still operating, she would come and help me, but I was abusing her, I was calling her everything under the sun, taking ice and coke in great abundance. I was intoxicated, polluted, body and soul, and still functioning. Worst of all, he says, he was losing the respect of his boys - the two people whose trust in him should have been paramount. They walked away in disgust. I sent them running, he says. Papp says he and his brother "made Cheech & Chong look like the Wiggles" on their return to Europe. Credit:Jamila Toderas. But it didnt end there; he shut his restaurant and travelled to Europe for one last hurrah with his brother, who is based in Budapest. There I should have died, it was even more ridiculous than it was here, he says. We made Cheech & Chong look like the Wiggles, it was amazing. Tons of coke. Back in Canberra, with no business, family or home, he moved in with his mother for several months. She would say to me, Son, I hate you so much, but you know what hurts me most? I think of your two sons and what you did to them and how they have to live the rest of their lives with the pain and the anguish and the confusion in their minds, he says. He decided to get clean, and did it, he says, by going cold turkey and finding God. How could he not, he says, having come out on the other side of such destruction? I was told by a health worker that I was a miracle, because I took ice for about seven years, he says. But I was taking so many vitamins. I would pump myself with multi-vitamins and drink lots of water, I ate very little and I would stay awake for days on end, and I would go to work. When I look back, I think, how the f*** did I do it? Three years down the track, his once-large group of friends has mostly disappeared, and Papp says he can hardly blame them. In the meantime, he has reconciled with Trish and sought forgiveness from his sons; the family will be spending their first Christmas together in many years. He is managing Molto, a restaurant on the Kingston Foreshore. After declaring himself bankrupt, neither he nor Trish can afford to retire. But, he says, he has found a kind of peace, and a newly restored place in the world. A Canberra man claims he was bullied and intimidated by staff at Commonwealth Bank, less than three hours after he told them he had submitted evidence of his dealings with the bank to the royal commission. As top executives appeared before the commission this week to stress how the bank is overhauling its policies, business owner Neil Hermes said its staff had pressured him to drop his complaint only this month. Canberra business owner and political advisor Neil Hermes said CBA bullied and questioned him following his submission to the banking royal commission. Credit:Karleen Minney The bank has denied the allegation of bullying, saying all customers are free to give evidence to the commission, but has acknowledged a call was made in early November to Mr Hermes shortly after receiving a copy of his submission. During that conversation, which lasted about an hour, Mr Hermes alleges a staff member berated him about why he was bringing his complaint forward and repeatedly asked him to reveal the names of bank officials who had disclosed information mentioned in his submission. Three people have made accusations about actor Craig McLachlan relating to his time on the television show The Doctor Blake Mysteries, including claims of an unwanted kiss and "inappropriate touching", a court has been told. McLachlan, 53, is suing the ABC and Fairfax Media for defamation after an investigation published in January aired allegations of harassment and sexual misconduct made against him by female performers in the 2014 stage production of the Rocky Horror Show. Craig McLachlan in character on the ABC's The Doctor Blake Mysteries. Credit:Jessica Dale The actor is also suing Christie Whelan Browne, who performed alongside him in the production and spoke to journalists for the stories. In a preliminary hearing in the NSW Supreme Court on Friday afternoon, McLachlan's barrister Matthew Richardson said all three parties being sued were trying to amend their defences to add details about three new complainants from Doctor Blake. I suggest your correspondent also calculates his own debt in these fields, pay up, then remake his suggestion. - Ian Usman Lewis, Kentucky PM plays terrorism card again I am outraged that the Prime Minister is proposing to deport convicted terrorists if they have or could get dual citizenship. Abhorrent as they are, these people are Australians by birth or by choice and Australia has the same responsibilities for them as any other criminal who does not have and is not eligible for dual citizenship. This is yet another example of the discriminatory attitude of the Prime Minister. - Cherylle Stone, Soldiers Point There must be an election on the horizon. The only approach the Coalition has had in the last two decades, to be elected or re-elected, has been to play the illegal immigrant or terrorism card. No policies, just throw some fear into the community. This merely another attempt. - Robin Humphrey, Springwood The reality is that such deprivation of citizenship is of little practical effect, given that usually no other country will accept people under those circumstances anyway. The removal of Australian citizenship just means they have no travel document to enable them to go anywhere, even if they wanted to. Perhaps the government should disclose how many of those deprived of citizenship to date have actually left our shores. - Peter Wilson, Quorrobolong Prime Minister, you will find the genuine Australian people will back you to the hilt. The security and safety of this country and the people are paramount. - Norman Timms, Bungundarra (Qld) The federal government is seeking urgent laws to enable it to strip citizenship from convicted terrorists and expel them from Australia, and yet it confiscates the passports of those whom it suspects are going to Syria to join the Jihadists. Am I missing something here? - Matt Kaarma, North Nowra We're part of the problem It's well to remember that if we're stuck in traffic, we are the traffic (Letters, November 23). - Meredith Williams, Dee Why New rule: anyone who owns a car isn't allowed to talk about how to fix congestion in Sydney. - Peter Fyfe, Enmore Bluthal's memorable moment I have just read the lovely tribute to the late John Bluthal, an Aussie actor whose quiet achievements, here and overseas, are remembered with affection ("Vicar's Pickle was Milligan's mate", November 23). One notable part, however, was omitted from the list of roles played during his long career. The list was compiled in Britain so the omission is understandable but there are many of us in Australia who remember John's memorable "Oils ain't oils, Sol", words from an ad. An utterance that entered the vernacular, at least for a short time. Vale John. - Christine Glen, Lisarow Any excuse for a sale Just what has Black Friday to do with Australia? he day after Thanksgiving in the United States, when hysterical shoppers storm department stores in search of bargains, has somehow made its way here, where there is no connection. Never mind, any excuse for a sale. - Joan Brown, Orange To all merchants: please stop the Black Friday nonsense, my inbox is inundated with unwanted offers. - Michael Winnick, Wollombi The scourge of domestic violence The epic scourge of domestic violence perpetrated by men against women can be singled out as the most destructive force in the lives of far too many Australian families ("We need to talk about violence - to men and boys", November 23). This trail of needless destruction can only end when we as a society address the underlying and pernicious sense of entitlement wrongfully given to men in relation to women. - Vincent Zankin,Rivett. ACT Michael Salter's summary on how various men react to being told they need to take responsibility for ending violence against women did sadly omit one substantial sub grouping. He failed to mention that large collection of blokes who have never, and would never act violently towards anybody. - Andrew Stark, East Gosford Appalling behaviour The behaviour of some sections of the media at the arrival of Renae Lawrence was nothing short of appalling ("Lawrence home to face next charges", November 23). The media will argue they are merely delivering what the public wants, but the public they reference are the same small coterie of rubberneckers who stand around at car accidents, with mobile phones in the air recording the misery. I feel confident in believing the overwhelming majority of Australians accept Lawrence has served a very severe sentence for her very serious crime, and should now be left to pick up the pieces of her life. The understanding and sober comments by NSW Police Commissioner, Mick Fuller, shine a refreshing and humanitarian light onto this whole sorry business - and for that I thank him. - Bill Young, Greenwich Small but tuneful If my piano playing ability is anything to go by, my Endorestiform Nucleus must be pretty small ("Australian scientist discovers unknown region of brain", November 23). - John de Bres, Rose Bay Method in the madness Perhaps there was a method in the somewhat extravagant financial madness of the Sydney Roosters NRL grand final winning team's trip to the US ("Rivals raise questions over Roosters bankrolling premiers' US celebrations", November 23). Were the players told in a Santa Claus-like way they'd only get the trip if they behaved themselves beforehand? - Col Shephard, Yamba Stop the foot-stamping Oh please, David Leyonhjelm: your pool has to be registered ("Sexism at play in pool fight with council, says Senator", November 23). It's the law. It applies to all of us - equally. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's some kind of personal attack on you. So stop the foot-stamping, and just do it. - Adrian Connelly, Springwood Where are mental health services? It is with immense relief that I read your editorial today ("African race politics taint Victorian poll" , November 23). We have heard ad nauseam about so-called terrorists in Melbourne wreaking havoc on the daily lives of innocent citizens when in fact they are often mentally ill and are clearly from disturbing and traumatic backgrounds; all of which is confirmed in the editorial. These young men need assessment and support and compassion, education and an Aussie "fair g'' instead of being used and exploited for cheap political gain, all of which will likely build further resentment and alienation and illness. Where are the mental health services? Do they work alongside the police and offer assessment and treatment or even containment as needed to these troubled souls? If we take in refugees, the duty of care for their future health and wellbeing is in our hands well beyond just being given entry to the country. - Jill Ellen, Ashfield Transport planning Your correspondent implies that "government transport planning is a joke" (Letters, November 23). I would go a step further: it's non-existent in my neck of the woods. The government's development arm, Urban Growth, has unveiled plans for the new Sydney Fish Markets which have won general approval but there are no plans to sort out the inevitable increased traffic congestion, especially around the notorious Pyrmont Interchange, adjacent to the site. It is proposed to double the number of visitors to the facility, but there are no plans for additional public transport. To compound the problem, WestConnex will bring many more cars to the area, including the Anzac Bridge. At a recent meeting I raised the question of additional congestion on the bridge, to be given the cheery response by the Department of Transport spokesperson that there would be no additional congestion because the bridge has already reached its full capacity. If you build more roads to the city, you will get more congestion. Simple really. - Elizabeth Elenius, Pyrmont Intellectual benefits There is a lot of scientific research which shows the intellectual benefits gained through music (Letters, November 23). The same can be said of learning languages, another area which, sadly, is almost dead in public schools. Foreign language study, like music, activates parts of the brain that other subject areas do not. The benefits of studying languages and music extend well beyond the purely academic. It is no accident that even though barely 8 per cent of HSC students study a language, 25 per cent of those listed as high achievers have studied a language for their HSC.- Ryszard Linkiewicz, Caringbah South New gallery on Cockatoo Why not stop this park-grabbing monument of the NSW Art Gallery expansion and have a new Art Gallery on Cockatoo Island. Its huge spaces are built for modern art and a ferry ride up the harbour would be popular with everyone and not a tree would be felled (Letters, November 23). - Joy Goodsell Leura Using your correspondent's logic for locating art galleries, performance spaces don't need windows either, because attendees need only to look at the stage. So why not bury them underground too? All drama theatres, starting perhaps with the Opera House? - Sarita Chand, Turramurra Land clearing's dusty legacy Dust storm engulfs the city of Sydney ("Bureau forecasts more dust to blow in", November 23). Gotta love massive land clearing. Top soil anyone? - Wayne Stinson, Merimbula Some of the red dust that has blanketed Sydney will have come from the 6000 hectares of mallee forest I recently saw cleared from marginal agricultural land west of Lake Mungo in the state's far south-west. Mallee forest is a complex and sensitive environment containing a great diversity of organisms, many of which are under threat. The trees were totally uprooted and burnt, making it unlikely the forest will ever be able to regenerate. All that was left was bare red earth under the baking sun. - Margaret Vautin, North Rocks Annoying oversight Your correspondent forgot to add the very annoying and patronising comment "that's a good question" in his list of annoying bits of conversation the talking heads on television constantly use (Letters, November 23). - Maureen King, Lane Cove And let's not forget; "We'll be back at the top of the hour". - Terry O'Brien, Mollymook Beach Welcome clarity Thanks, John Swanton (Letters, November 23). I had always thought that manspreading and mansplaining were one and the same. - Dorothy Gliksman, Cedar Brush Creek Postscript "I am sure I speak for the many contributors to this page in offering congratulations to former Letters editor Helen Pitt on being awarded the Walkley Book Award for her highly acclaimed book The House," writes Allan Gibson, Cherrybrook. Hear, hear, says your correspondent. Helen's book brings alive the personalities and politics of mid-century Sydney and is a work worthy of this city's most treasured architectural achievement. Your correspondent? Col Nicholson, of Hawks Nest, wonders why we now sometimes substitute this term for a writer's name in letters responding to a published letter. This is best described as setting a tone, and will sometimes be employed when it is felt that it is the argument, not the writer's name, that matters. In response to last week's Postscript, some contributors expressed some anxiety that reminiscences are out of favour on these pages. And while trips down memory lane do exasperate some readers, they are greatly appreciated by we editors on days when the events that demand our attention leave us agog at humanity's capacity for awfulness. There is a strong public perception that congestion across the citys transport networks has worsened. But Marion Terrill, manager of the Grattan Institutes transport and cities program, says the data doesnt support the conclusion that migration has brought the city to a standstill. She delved into figures on commuting times and distances across Sydney over the past decade and found things hadnt shifted much. What I found is that Sydney and Melbourne are coping remarkably well, she says. The overwhelming picture is that commute times and distances have changed very little at this time of very rapid population growth. So the idea that Sydney is full and the city cant cope with any more people just isnt borne out of the facts. The institute's research showed half of Sydneys commuters spend less than 30 minutes getting to work and that share has not changed over time. Three-quarters of Sydneys commuters spent an hour or less getting to work, the same share as in 2008. Sydneys median commute in 2016 was 7.7 kilometres, which was up only 3 per cent compared with five years earlier - and lower than Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Darwin. One reason for this is the citys capacity to adapt to population growth. Many workers have changed their time of travel to work or switched to a different form of transport. Theres also a clear trend for more people to work from home. Some people move house or change jobs when they become unhappy with their commute. People seem to think things are fixed and just get worse but thats not the case, says Terrill. Things are changing all the time in cities ... were not stuck - we are very adaptive and, as history has shown, surprisingly so. James Hulme, from business group the Committee for Sydney, says the fact that so many skilled and talented people want to live and work in Sydney is sign of the citys global appeal. We must be careful not to convey an impression that Sydneys is not open for business, he says. Despite some understandable concerns raised about Sydneys growing pains, the city has actually managed its sizeable population increase effectively and efficiently. Its also important that we dont debate immigration purely from a negative standpoint. Many cities with declining populations would love to have the kind of growth that Sydney is experiencing. Hulme says the population squeeze is likely to be alleviated as major new transport infrastructure, including the Metro Northwest rail line and WestConnex come online. Terry Rawnsley, a regional economics specialist with consultancy SGS Economics and Planning, says Sydneys population, which crossed the 5 million mark about two years ago, has reached a significant new threshold. If you look around the world, cities of 3 or 4 million run pretty differently to those of 5, 6 or 7 million, he says. It is as if Sydney is going though a painful puberty at the moment. It hasnt yet built up the bone and muscle in its rail or metro system to get people around, but theres this growth surge happening. Theres one key statistic often overlooked in the migration debate the very low rate of unemployment. In the past, opposition to migration has often been driven by a fear that outsiders will undermine the job prospects of locals. But there is little evidence of that in Sydney. Despite strong migration the unemployment rate in NSW is at a decade low of 4.4 per cent and the rate is far lower than that in many parts of Sydney. Also, migrant workers are playing an increasingly important role in many of the citys essential services, especially caring for the elderly and the disabled. Data from the 2016 census shows 37 per cent of Australias frontline workers in aged and disabled care were born overseas, up from 33 per cent in 2011. It is a similar story in the childcare sector where more than a third of workers in 2016 were overseas-born. Rawnsley says it could get pretty hard to fill those jobs if Australia reduces its migration intake, especially as the population ages. Heres a more detailed look at how Sydney is faring amid the population boom. When she became premier, Gladys Berejiklian famously cited housing affordability as her foremost priority. Credit:James Alcock Housing Whether the NSW housing development market suggests the states population growth is going too far depends on your perspective. When she became premier, Gladys Berejiklian famously cited housing affordability as her foremost priority, and said that increasing housing supply was the best way to make housing affordable. In the 22 months since, the slump in prices means that housing has become more affordable. But rather than simply claim credit for this, Berejiklian has instead sympathised with local community concerns that there has been too much housing supply in some areas. Official figures show a mixed picture on residential development. On the one hand, it is true that there have never been so many homes recently built more than 44,000 homes completed in the year to September. But the slumping market has also prompted a more recent drop in the number of homes being approved for development dropping from a recent high of more than 6000 homes approved per month in mid 2016, to around 3500 per month recently. Another element is the uneven spread of housing development across the city. In areas such as Blacktown (13,000), Parramatta (10,500), the City of Sydney (10,200), Liverpool (9600) the Hills (9500), Camden (8300), Canterbury-Bankstown (8000), and Bayside (7700), large numbers of dwellings have been approved since the start of 2016. In contrast, there are pockets of Sydney largely in the northern suburbs and east where there has been relatively little activity: for instance in Mosman (67), Hunters Hill (108), Woollahra (811), and even in the Premiers own Willoughby (896). - Jacob Saulwick A comparison of reports from 2012 with 2018 shows that on most routes average speeds have slowed, and in some cases significantly. Credit:Michele Mossop Traffic congestion Comparative figures show that, yes, the traffic is getting worse. Roads and Maritime Services publishes an occasional document the Key Roads Performance Report which captures average speeds and travel times across 100 or so roads in Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong. A comparison of the reports from September 2012 with October 2018 (reports were not released in the equivalent months) shows that on most routes average speeds have slowed, and in some cases significantly. For instance, a motorist driving along Alison Road in the eastern suburbs on a weekday morning would have driven at around 20 km/h; this year, they could have driven at only 13 km/h. Someone driving into the city on Anzac Bridge would have driven at 41 km/h in 2012; now they could drive only at 34 km/h. It is a similar story across many routes. For a motorist driving towards the city on the M5 and M5 East (where peak hour is now measured from 5.15am), the average speed has dropped from 52 km/h to 43 km/h in the past six years. Another indication of changed road conditions is the phenomenon of weekend traffic. On Syd Einfeld Drive, at Bondi Junction, counts of weekend traffic have been steadily increasing from about 17,000 vehicles a day in one direction in 2012 to 22,000 vehicles a day in 2018. Or in south-west Sydney, on Camden Valley Way, one-way weekend traffic has similarly risen from about 5000 vehicles a day to 7500 thousand. - Jacob Saulwick Patronage started to surge on both buses and trains in Sydney about five years ago. Credit:AAP Public transport If it feels like peak hour buses and trains have become strikingly crowded in recent years that might be because, well, they have. Patronage started to surge on both buses and trains in Sydney about five years ago. As recently as 2012-13, the number of trips taken on Sydneys train network sat at about 306 million per year. But that number has since climbed to 404 million in the most recent financial year an increase of about a third. The rate of increase is even more stunning on the citys bus system. Five years ago, about 220 million annual trips were taken on the citys buses. By 2017-18, more than 332 million trips were taken on Sydneys buses a 50 per cent increase, according to previously unreleased Transport for NSW figures provided to the Herald. The rate of increase is likely caused by multiple factors, population growth being one. But extra services are also likely to have contributed to the change. (On the rail system, only the South West Rail Link has opened recently, but the government is often putting on new bus services and routes). And generational shifts in travelling habits young people tend to be more likely to opt for public transport over the car as well as the convenience of the Opal payment card are also likely to be factors. Although the metro rail line to the north-west suburbs is due to open next year, for most rail commuters real relief is unlikely to emerge until about 2023, when a new line through the city is to open. - Jacob Saulwick Hospitals Blacktown Hospital, along with Liverpool, Westmead and Nepean, is one of the busiest in the country. Credit:Fairfax Media Health services in Sydney's west and south-west contend with the complex medical needs of the swelling migrant populations predominantly from south and south-east Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Some migrant groups are used to presenting at a hospital as their first port of call when they need medical attention, rather than a GP, which compounds the workload at emergency departments already under strain. Liverpool, Westmead, Blacktown and Nepean Hospitals are some of the busiest in the country, treating rising numbers of ageing patients with multiple conditions. Australian Medical Association NSW president and Mount Druitt GP Dr Kean Seng Lim says new immigrants from war-torn, oppressive or low socio-economic countries can arrive with underlying health issues, a distrust of health services, low health literacy and a genetic predisposition to chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and some cancers. It a triple whammy and a confluence of events which means they will have an increased need for health services, Dr Lim says. At Blacktown Hospital, the number of patients presenting with diabetes (often one of multiple conditions) is rising by about one per cent each year. The cost of an admission for a patient with diabetes is roughly 20 per cent more than other patients on average, Dr Lim says. West and South West Sydney were also some of the most rewarding areas to work for medical professionals, with the population booms supporting the creation of blockbuster health precincts at Westmead and Liverpool. - Kate Aubusson Schools and higher education A factor in Sydneys strong population growth has been a boom in foreign student numbers. Credit:Louise Kennerley In parts of Sydney - primary schools in the eastern suburbs and north shore, for example - many schools are at capacity, and there is a massive building program underway to cater for that demand. In some cases, the crowding is due to housing development; in others, it's due to a failure by departmental planners to predict population growth. But in other areas with a high proportion of migrants, such as the inner south-west, many of the schools have spare capacity. But there are positives, too. Modern schools are cradles of diversity, and students from different nationalities have different skills to offer such as bilingualism, or cultural attitudes to learning, or resilience developed during a difficult childhood. But in a world gripped by a 'war on terror' and with conflict bubbling away in Sudan, Central America, Myanmar, and North Korea, Evatt is not in that camp that believes it's time to give up on the human rights project. ''Sometimes we go backwards, sometimes we go forwards,'' she shrugs. Evatt cheered the vote for marriage equality but that fundamental right to seek asylum in another country, a central pillar of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is honoured in Australia ''more in the breach than in the fulfillment''. ''I believe you can treat people decently and still stop the boats.'' It's not the only area where Evatt feels Australia has fallen down. ''Every week a woman is killed by her partner in Australia. So what are we doing to change that? Indigenous deaths in custody are still going on and, in some cases, the result of negligence or ill-treatment.'' Evatt flips through the clipboard menu and orders a chicken, celery, fennel salad dressed with a herb mayonnaise and a long black coffee, and asks: ''Do you get to eat?'' She admires my plate of zucchini fritters and tangy roasted tomato sauce when it arrives. Not a ''great luncher'' she tends to take her coffee at home. Chicken, celery, fennel and herb and mayonnaise salad at Zinc, Potts Point. Credit:Steven Siewert Evatt's career is remarkable for the gender barriers she broke: first woman to win the University Medal for law at the University of Sydney, a barrister at just 21 years of age, the first female Deputy President of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, the first Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia and first Australian to be elected to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. ''[It's all] such a long time ago,'' she protests when I ask about her legacy. ''I've been involved in many, many different things in my time, and I can't keep up with them all.'' When the questions veer to the personal, Evatt stares into the far distance or diverts. When the atmosphere turns chilly, I return to the safe ground of her work. A cause close to her heart is The Miranda Project, a pilot program to divert vulnerable women from the prison system. Evatt sits on the advisory body and says early results have been encouraging. ''You can't ever say that it will be 100 percent effective, obviously not, but the idea of providing community support for people with appropriate programs rather than being in prison seems to be a very good one because sending people to prison for short sentences doesn't do any good to anyone because they are not there long enough to undertake any effective programs even if they are available, and they aren't always available for women. Abolishing prison except for serious crime - I know it's not a popular concept; you get no votes for it.'' Researching her father's public service recently Evatt found they shared a common mission. ''He wanted to take the locks off the child welfare establishments which was run like prisons in those days. He was much criticised for that. But he found the Parramatta Girls home absolutely disgraceful.'' Clive Evatt was a performer, Evatt recalls, commanding attention every time he entered a room. Her brother, Clive Junior, the flamboyant defamation barrister who died in August, was a chip off the same block. Elizabeth Evatt is quite the opposite. Triggs is accurate when she summed Evatt up in a 2016 tribute as modest, measured and firm-minded. Growing up in leafy Wahroonga, Evatt remembers her father as a hands-on dad taking her and brother Clive on bike rides around the block and to the beach on Sundays. Younger sister Penelope was still a baby. ''He used to make up stories - when I was about five, I suppose it was - and he made you be part of it, and he'd say a bit and you would say a bit and so it would become much the same story. Educated at the Presbyterian Ladies' College in Pymble, Evatt studied law at the University of Sydney, the youngest law student ever accepted. Law was her father's preference and with brother Clive wanting to complete an honors degree in economics, the patriarch was impatient that an Evatt enter his alma mater. ''I guess I didn't have any other great goals so I did law. It could have been different, that's the way it worked out. No use worrying about that when you are 85.'' From Harvard Law School, Evatt went to England where she met and married fellow barrister Robert Southan. The juggle of motherhood prompted her to join the Law Reform Commission of England and Wales, where work was underway to give overdue credit to women in financial divorce settlements. Change was afoot. It was the time of the women's liberation movement and Gough Whitlam's Labor Government had been swept to power after two decades in the political wilderness. A profile in the Australian Women's Weekly in 1973 to mark Evatt's appointment as the first female deputy president of the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission shows the 39 lawyer on the floor of her London home with son Richard, 9, and daughter Anne, 3. Whitlam had phoned her in London to offer the post, giving her 24 hours to accept. Architect Harry Seidler, by now married to sister Penelope, offered up one of the first houses he designed to the relocating family. When I raise this time in her life, she studies the dessert menu. We select cake without icing: ricotta for Evatt, and pistachio for me. The cake will fortify her for an evening briefing at the International Commission of Jury Australia about the state of political affairs in Malaysia. Evatt was an official observer at the sodomy trials of Malaysia's new deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim. In the early '70s, Evatt chaired the Royal Commission on Human Relationships, taking positions on contraception, domestic violence, rape, abortion, child abuse and sexual discrimination considered taboo at the time but less controversial today, and spent 12 years as chief justice of the Family Court steering reforms to fault-based divorce. She left in 1988, due in part due to a string of deadly Sydney bombings and shootings that targeted judges and other people, associated with the Family Court of Australia, ''It was a terrible time,'' she remembers. ''We had police in our homes in Sydney. We were concerned, of course, but they did identify this person as a person of interest and he declined to give evidence at the inquest into Pearl Watson.'' Evatt set up a foundation in the name of Judge Ray Watson's wife, to ''try and get something positive out of the whole thing''. Leonard John Warwick was arrested in 2015 for the seven attacks, has pleaded not guilty to all charges at the trial now underway. ''I go now and then to see how [the trial's] going along. He's been in custody since he was arrested. Watch this space.'' It's a source of personal disappointment that the Family Court and the Federal Circuit Court is to be combined. ''When we set it up the Family Court was provided with internal counseling and mediation services. It was meant to be a place where you would get your issues resolved without having to resort to litigation but all those services have been reduced and, as they say, privatised. That's the name of the day.'' Having observed the women's liberation movement up close, I wonder what she thought of the #MeToo movement. ''I don't know where it's headed,'' she says. ''It seems to get out of hand at times. Certainly, it has put sexual harassment back on the agenda. It's brought to light the real difficulties women have in making complaints.'' Evatt's pragmatic brain is plotting some institutional response. While feminists like Germaine Greer agitated for social change from without, Evatt has always worked from within. Police have launched a critical incident investigation after man died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Sydney's south. Emergency services were called to Ridge Road in Engadine about 7am on Friday to reports of a domestic situation and shots being fired. Two people have been injured in a shooting in Engadine on Friday morning. Credit:Seven News Police believe at least one shot was fired at the front door of a home on the street. A 56-year-old man from that home suffered a minor gunshot wound to his forehead and was treated by paramedics. A police spokeswoman said officers from Sutherland Police Area Command found an 81-year-old man nearby, carrying a firearm and trying to leave the area in a vehicle. Police said the man pointed the weapon at police officers when they challenged him, before shooting himself in the neck. The man was treated by paramedics, but he was unable to be revived and died at the scene. A critical investigation team from Eastern Beaches Police Area Command has taken over investigations. The investigation will be subject to an independent review and monitored by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission. All information will be provided to the coroner. The incident began when the the wounded officer and his partner both patrolling in plainclothes but wearing bulletproof vests with the words Police on them were stopped at a red light at the intersection of 87th Street and Ashland Avenue around 11 a.m. They noticed a man crossing the street with his right hand holding an unknown object inside his right jacket pocket, prosecutors said in court. Philip Scahills double life has come to an end with the Parramatta accountant jailed for a minimum of 8 years for money laundering his clients drug profits. Because of the amounts of money he was laundering, Scahill must have known his client, a Sydney airport maintenance worker, was committing drug offences, a judge has found. Meanwhile, another of his clients is an alleged mastermind behind the misappropriation of $150 million owed to the Australian Tax Office. Accountant Philip Scahill has been jailed for money laundering a client's drug profits. Credit:Dom Lorrimer In sentencing Scahill, 50, on Friday, District Court Judge Michael King found the accountant was more morally culpable than his drug-importing client, Anthony Robert Parker, because he was the architect of the scheme to legitimise Parkers drug proceeds by washing it through real estate deals. An unremorseful Islamic State supporter who helped a teenage terrorist kill NSW Police accountant Curtis Cheng has been jailed for at least 28 years. Milad Atai was sentenced on Friday for assisting and encouraging 15-year-old Farhad Jabar to shoot Mr Cheng at the state police headquarters at Parramatta on October 2, 2015 and helping the boy's sister reach Islamic State in Syria. In jailing the 22-year-old for a total of 38 years, NSW Supreme Court Justice Peter Johnson said Atai was a supporter of extreme jihad for many months before the terrorist attack and appeared still to hold radical views. As he was led away from court, Atai raised his index finger in the direction of the judge and shouted in a foreign language. Newington joins schools such as Shore, Tara Anglican School for Girls and Deniliquin High School, a public school in the Riverina, in banning phones. But bans remain divisive, with both the NSW P&C and teachers union telling a NSW government review into smartphones in schools that they were useful for learning and educators should help students use them constructively. The inner west school told students to keep phones in their lockers from the beginning of term four after an attempt to encourage boys to use them responsibly failed. Newington College has joined a growing number of schools banning mobile phones, saying they lead to lower concentration, higher stress and "warped views on reality". Until mid-October, Newington's policy was that students could carry their phones on them but that they should be neither seen nor heard during the school day. Some students made "good and autonomous decisions ... many have had difficulty in this regard," the notification to parents read. So from term four, phones were to be left in lockers, and messages could be checked briefly at lunch and recess. Parents were told to contact their sons through the college's reception office. The decision was based on research showing that when people carried phones with them, they could display lower concentration due to constant interruptions, increased fear of missing out, reduced memory, warped views on reality and increased stress. "The college believes that students will gain greater academic and social benefits from not having their mobile phone on their person during the school day," the notice said. The policy would be reviewed during the term, and might be extended to smart watches. Tara has required devices to be left at home or in lockers since the beginning of the year. "We have been very pleased with the increased physical activities and the broadening of the lunchtime clubs the girls are participating in," said principal Susan Middlebrook. Police are searching for two people who may have been witnessed the deaths of a Chinese man and boy in Queensland's Whitsundays while swimming at Airlie Beach lagoon. The fresh call for witnesses came on Friday to seek anyone who may have seen a 30-year-old man and five-year-old boy who drowned in the lagoon last month. Investigators are looking for two people pictured in CCTV footage who are believed to have been in the lagoon at the time of the incident in Queensland's Whitsundays. Credit:Queensland Police Media Police said the incident happened just before 4pm on October 28, when the pair drowned. Investigators believed two people pictured in CCTV footage may have been in the lagoon at the time of the incident. An audit of breath tests in WA has found outdated software systems are being used by booze bus officers which pose an ongoing risk to the force. A total of 660,832 breath tests were examined as part of the audit done this year. Credit:Aaron Sawall And there is a further risk some faulty breathalysers are being used by officers, particularly in regional WA. However, WA Police traffic bosses insist the small number of faulty breathalysers are not giving false readings, and are merely faulty in their ability to have data downloaded from them. In the wake of the audit, checks and improvements are now in the pipeline to rectify these issues. The Australian writer Xavier Herbert so hated semi-colons that he sawed the relevant key off his typewriter. I don't understand his point of view; I think they can be quite useful. The story was quoted recently in the Australian Book Review. Apparently, George Robertson, the founder of Angus and Robertson, was so horrified he attacked Herbert for having a "blockage of the colon". Xavier Herbert sawed the semi-colon key off his typewriter. Credit:Alan Purcell It reminded me of a joke I made at The Sydney Morning Herald Christmas Party in the early 1990s, following a year of fierce funding cuts. Things were so bad, I observed in my end-of-year speech, management had repossessed all the letters on Peter FitzSimons' key-board. They'd only left the letter "I". Happily, he was yet to notice. Peter who, as you might know, is very large luckily found this amusing. Up to 50 jobs at the Australian Maritime Safety Authority will move to Coffs Harbour under the government's latest decentralisation push, but it is yet to be decided how many will be relocated from Canberra. Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack and Decentralisation Minister Bridget McKenzie made the announcement in the coastal NSW town on Friday, with 69 jobs in total to be created in regional areas, including a new office in Airlie Beach. Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack and Decentralisation Minister Bridget McKenzie made the announcement in Coffs Harbour today. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen "AMSA provides a frontline service for Australias maritime industry. Last time I looked there werent too many boats or ships in Canberra, so it makes it sense to have services such as this based in the regions, where they are needed most," Mr McCormack said. A departmental spokesman said the jobs in the Coffs Harbour office would not all come from one particular division, and would include a mix of front-line service employees as well as maritime specialists, technical professionals and senior staff. The authority took responsibility for domestic commercial vessels in July, allowing it to increase its average staffing level cap. The roles in Coffs Harbour will be a mix of new and existing roles. "If Australia wants to be a nation that makes things bricks, glass, cement, steel and aluminium in particular youve got to have internationally affordable and reliable energy." Solar Panels on a home in Hoppers Crossing. Credit:Justin McManus Labors climate change and energy spokesman Mark Butler told Fairfax Media the Australian Aluminium Council, of which Tomago Aluminium is a member, "was one of the many business organisations that urged this government not to walk away from the National Energy Guarantee" and more recently urged the government not to divorce emissions from national energy policy. "Weve had an energy crisis under the Liberal government and they still can't offer anything besides three-word slogans, empty promises and scare campaigns," he said. Frontier Economics managing director Danny Price was commissioned to conduct official modelling for the Coalitions energy guarantee, and in recent days updated the work to compare scenarios with a 45 per cent and 26 per cent cut in emissions. He found that "reliability issues are no different at all" under each scenario, nor were there differences in prices. Mr Price said in the absence of strong Coalition policies and assuming emissions reductions of about 26 per cent, Labor-led jurisdictions of Victoria, Queensland and the ACT would fill the void by pursuing their own stronger renewable energy targets. Loading This could lead to the "disorderly exit of the coal generators" and drive power prices up, Mr Price said. While not criticising those schemes, Mr Price said they were "not the most efficient way of transitioning the power system ... Its much better if you do it on a national basis and use a broad range of technologies not just renewables". Under Labors policy, states may not need to run their own schemes or could be brought in line with a national policy, making the renewable transition more efficient, he said. Respected energy economist Bruce Mountain, director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre, has advised government departments and regulators. He said analysis his organisation is due to release next month would show "the expansion of wind and solar capacity is likely to bring [electricity] prices down far more quickly than would be the case if it didnt expand". He disputed claims that state-based renewables schemes led to coal plant closures, saying the closures occurred when coal mines were exhausted and coal plants reached the end of their lives. On the question of reliability, Dr Mountain cited a report by the Australian Energy Market Operator released in July that modelled various rates of transition to renewables. "AEMO has not given us any reason to imagine there is a crisis [if renewables take a 50 per cent share of the mix] ... they arent saying should wind and solar expand to that level, there is a problem," he said. While it was not yet known exactly how the market would evolve to ensure supplies remained reliable under a much greater clean energy share, "there are many states and regions of countries which have wind and solar at that level already". Labor says AEMO's report, known as its integrated system plan, confirms that new coal power is more expensive than renewables "firmed" or backed up by storage such as pumped hydro or batteries. Labor's energy spokesman Mark Butler. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Mr Taylor was unable to produce modelling on Thursday to support claims Labor's energy plan represented an economic wrecking ball, saying the conclusion was "just straight maths". "If you want to halve the emissions out of the electricity grid ... you've got to take out activity that emits. And that activity ... is agriculture, it is the industry, it is transport and it is smelters like this one," he said. Labor is yet to reveal plans for how it will cut emissions across other sectors to meet its 45 per cent economy-wide target. It has not committed to a price on carbon. But Mr Butler this week said there would be "an emissions-trading type scheme" for high-polluting industries, which is likely to include manufacturing and liquefied natural gas among others. This means the carbon emissions of companies in those sectors would be restricted and they would be required to buy permits for pollution they emit over that level. The transport sector is also reportedly expected to be held to a 45 per cent emissions reduction target under a Labor government, partly through emissions standards, and land clearing in the agriculture sector is likely to be curbed. The Australian Industry Group welcomed the potential move but said it must be structured so trade-exposed industries were not made uncompetitive. On the final day of campaigning, Matthew Guy and his wife Renae were at Cranbourne train station. Credit:AAP When asked if he would stay on as Liberal leader if the polls were correct and Labor was returned to government, he said it was too soon to respond. At Cranbourne railway station, Mr Guy promised to invest $70 million to create dozens of new bus routes. He said about 40 new routes would be created in Melbourne, and a dozen more in regional centres including Ballarat and the Latrobe Valley. Melbourne is growing at 2700 people every week and we need to do more to have coordinated public transport system, Mr Guy said. Buses have been neglected while attention is lavished on the state's trains and trams, he said. "Bus patronage has fallen over the last few years, despite booming population growth. Thats because not enough money has been put into it," he said. Victorias Bus Association, which represents most of the states operators, campaigned against Labor after it announced plans to shift the industry onto new contracts in which their bus fleets, depots, staff and intellectual property rights would be handed to the government within 10 years. Matthew Guy visited a cafe in Pakenham on Friday. Credit:AAP Buses branded Dont Trust Labor toured marginal seats earlier in the year, until the Andrews government backtracked on its plans. Mr Andrews also paid a visit to Cranbourne on Friday. Flanked by wife Cath, a familiar face late in the campaign, the Labor leader seemed relaxed in the company of happy children as he made another school- related promise. If re-elected, he would double the amount of schools taking part in a free breakfast scheme plus throw in lunch too as part of a $58 million promise. "We will not only double the number of schools that are part of the breakfast club program from 500 to 1000, we're going to include lunch club, a second meal each and every school day, for those kids who without this program, would go hungry," Mr Andrews told reporters at Cranbourne West Primary School. The incumbent premier said about 10 per cent of children being served breakfasts through the program also do not have lunch and the participating schools would be selected according to need. With Friday being White Ribbon Day, Mr Andrews also promised to continue working on the recommendations of the family violence royal commission. In a separate announcement, Labor has promised to invest $4.6 million to provide another 10 full-time financial counsellors to help family violence victims negotiate with creditors and debt collectors, protect assets from repossession and access financial hardship programs. Mr Andrews and his wife Catherine served food at the Cranbourne West Primary School while announcing funding for school breakfast clubs. Credit:AAP Mr Andrews was in a calm and reflective mood on Friday, so much so that he even paid respect to Mr Guy and the role of the press during the campaign. "The leader of the opposition and I, we are away from our families like many people across Victoria. This can be a bruising business," he said. "Anyone who stands up in politics or in any other way for the things that they believe in, I have nothing but praise for them and all of us are involved in a process." "I would ask Victorians to vote for a local Labor candidate so we can continue to keep delivering for all Victorians," said Mr Andrews, recommitting to a full term if voted back in to power. "A handful of votes in a handful of seats can make the difference between getting things done or returning to a time when hospitals and services were cut." Mr Guy also popped into a cafe in nearby Pakenham to chat with the owner about rising power bills. He had time for one more attack on the government, warning voters that Labor could hike taxes to pay for major projects. "The treasurer is not ruling out new taxes on the eve of an election," he said. "There is either going to be more tax or no new taxes I think we know the answer. If Labor is elected, there will be more taxes." "The Chinese have been doing huge infrastructure projects since building the Great Wall and the Grand Canal," says Mark Pesce, host of The Next Billion Seconds podcast. In September, it opened the super-sleek West Kowloon railway station in Hong Kong, connecting the semi-autonomous former British colony to China's bullet train network and no doubt deeper integration into the mainland's ways. These mega projects are part of the government's plan to shift 250 million people roughly the population of Indonesia into the country's rapidly growing megalopolises over the next decade (China already has 22 cities bigger than Sydney or Melbourne). In October, it opened the world's longest sea-crossing bridge , linking Hong Kong to Macau and the mainland city of Zhuhai via a 55-kilometre bridge-tunnel system incorporating two man-made islands. But last month's announcement of another audacious project the launch of three artificial moons into space over the next four years to illuminate cities at night and reduce the need for street lights has been greeted with some scepticism. The first moon, made of a reflective material that will shine eight times brighter than the real moon on an 80-square-kilometre area over the southwestern city of Chengdu, will be launched in 2020. "How will the orbital mechanics work?" asks Pesce. "How will it maintain a permanent, stationary position? What happens when the mirror degrades, or gets struck by a meteoroid?" Others have questioned whether the artificial moons might disturb wildlife and plant life, although their developers claim the reflective discs will produce only a harmless, dusk-like glow. While China's centrally planned economy ensures massive infrastructure projects like this not only get the green light but are built at world-beating speed, the environmental costs can be enormous. Already the Three Gorges Dam has led to a decline in local plant, fish and animal populations. The construction of the Hong KongZhuhaiMacau Bridge saw local numbers of endangered Chinese white dolphins plummet by 40 per cent. "The rate of infrastructure development is staggering," says Pesce, who has just returned from a trip to China. To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times. Soil samples collected by the Chicago Department of Public Health and the EPA revealed some of the highest manganese levels were found in yards close to S.H. Bell. But for now, the EPA says, it doesnt have enough evidence to prove the company is the only source of the toxic metal. Jakarta: Indonesian presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto says Indonesia should respect Australia's sovereign right to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem - while expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people and indicating disagreement with the potential shift. Indonesian presidential Prabowo Subianto. Credit:James Massola In his first public comments on the matter, which has become a source of much tension between Canberra and Jakarta and delayed the signing of a new free trade deal, Prabowo took a different line to Indonesian President Joko Widodo. Prabowo's comments are significant because he is Joko's direct opponent in the April 2019 election and they signal that he is less likely to use the embassy move as a political wedge against the President. Four Lebanese soldiers and two relief workers have been killed in fierce fighting on Monday between the Lebanese army and al Qaeda-inspired militants at a Palestinian refugee camp. A Palestinian cleric trying to mediate an end to the fighting between the army and the Fatah al-Islam group was also wounded at the Nahr al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon. Security sources said two members of the Lebanese Red Cross were killed and a third was wounded when they were hit by a shell. A military source said four soldiers were also killed in the fighting. At least 136 people have been killed, including 60 soldiers, in three weeks of fighting, the worst internal clashes since Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war. Eleven soldiers died and more than 100 were wounded in battles at the weekend alone. The fighting has further undermined stability in Lebanon, already paralysed by a seven-month-old political crisis. Loading China just shrugs and keeps on going. It would be foolish to think that Trump can do to China what President Ronald Reagan claimed to do to the Soviet Union: confront and out-spend militarily until it collapses. The present US-China confrontation is nothing like the US-Soviet confrontation during the Cold War. The idea that a Soviet-led communist empire would replace the US as the worlds dominant economic and military power was never a serious proposition except in the minds of a few paranoid US military figures. The Soviet Union was never a huge trading nation, unlike China, so it had no real sway over the West. During the Cold War security issues could be separated from economic and trade issues. There was simply so little trade with the communist bloc that it could be ignored. Besides, the Soviet system would have collapsed even without Reagans pressure. China, on the other hand, has emerged as an economic powerhouse and the West is now dependent on it, not just for economic prosperity and economic growth, but utterly dependent on Chinese production and export of vital goods. For example, the US no longer produces penicillin and, indeed, a raft of generic medicines upon which many American lives depend. They are made in China and to a lesser extent India. In this environment, Trumps tariff actions and threats are extremely dangerous and economically destructive. The US is a capitalist democracy under the rule of law. China is not. Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward. Credit:AP Legally, Trump could only impose his steel tariff without congressional approval if national security was an issue. There are legal constraints on restricting US exports to China. Private companies can export against presidential wishes. China, on the other hand, could without notice or legal nicety, cut off the supply of vital drugs to the US. It could impose tariffs on US imports in a politically motivated way to hurt producers of products in places that voted heavily for Trump such as soya beans. Trump accepting bad advice on national security not taking good advice on trade has done exactly the opposite of what is needed. As revealed in Bob Woodward's Fear. Trump in the White House, Trump ignored advice that he should aggressively take on China under the World Trade Organisation for theft of intellectual property. Most of the developed world would have joined in. It would have bolstered the rules-based order. But Trump worried about his illusory good relationship with President Xi. He ignored advice to stay in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris Climate Accord. He ignored advice not to impose the steel tariff. The advice was that it would harm US industry that consumed steel especially cars, boats and pipelines while not creating any steel jobs. Loading On the other hand, some of his instincts on national security were dead right, but he allowed the military-industrial complex, the Washington elites and swamp to deter him from acting on them. During the campaign publicly and afterwards privately, Trump railed against Europe and South Korea for not pulling their weight on security and he said the US should just pull out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and the Middle East generally and should never have gone there in the first place. Quite right. But his advisers said that if the US withdrew from Afghanistan, it would enable terrorists in Afghanistan to launch an attack on US soil for which he would be blamed for. Trump capitulated, agreeing to stay the course and increase troop numbers in an unwinnable 16-year-old war. Brasilia: The first of thousands of Cuban doctors have begun leaving Brazil after criticism by the country's far-right president-elect Jair Bolsonaro prompted Cuba's government to sever a cooperation agreement, leaving millions of Brazilians without medical care. A Cuban doctor holding Brazilian and Cuban flags takes a selfie before she and other Cuban physicians return home at the airport in Brasilia. Credit:AP Bolsonaro last week said the Cuban doctors were being used as "slave labour" because Havana took 75 per cent of their salaries. He said the program that began in 2013 could only continue if doctors got full pay and were allowed to bring their families from Cuba. Bolsonaro, an admirer of US President Donald Trump, was elected last month by Brazilians fed up with rising crime and rampant corruption that reached new highs during almost a decade and a half of leftist governments with close ties to Cuba. CAYHILL:--- St. Maarten Medical Center (SMMC) will be hosting a series of academic lectures. The lectures will be held on two separate dates, Saturday, November 24th, and Saturday, December 1st, 2018. The lectures were developed by the medical specialists of the hospital to further educate persons in the community. The medical specialists of SMMC wanted to reach out to the public to promote health awareness within our communities and thus making the first steps toward disease prevention, explains Dr. A. Jurgensen, secretary of the Medical Staff Board. Collectively, the medical specialists decided the best way do so is through educational lectures where the general public can attend. The lectures will be held at the hospital, within the courtyard, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Six specialists will each deliver a presentation through individual 45-minute intervals. On Saturday, November 24th the lectures will cover the following topics: Too much noise by Dr. M. Vaartjes, Otolaryngologist (E.N.T.). "Family Matters" by Dr. C. Ferero, Psychiatrist. Painless labour by Dr. Y. George, Anesthesiologist. "Why do I not get pregnant," by Dr. P. Roumans, Obstetrician & Gynecologist. Asthma, myths and facts by Dr. T. Morvan, Pediatrician. "Eczema" by Dr. F. Valverde, Dermatologist. On Saturday, December 1st the lectures will cover the following topics: Enlarged heart by Dr. E. Bird, Cardiologist. "Can we prevent strokes" by Dr. G. van Essen, Internist. The diabetic foot in St. Maarten by Dr. l. Mercelina, General Surgeon. "A large prostate" by Dr. D. Ramos, Urologist. Disturbed vision, common causes by Dr. J. Pawiroredjo, Ophthalmologist. "Breast imaging," by Dr. A. Brice, Radiologist. For more information about the lectures please visit the SMMC Facebook page: www.facebook.com/StMaartenMedicalCenter. PHILIPSBURG:--- Its about that time again where new has postulated themselves to run the SDHSs Student Government Organization (SGO). This year, the SGO celebrates 23 years and the 2017 2018 board wanted to introduce digital. The motion was laid on the table to have an electronic election this year. The board members approached the members of ICTE/BYOD team to collaborate. The board members of the ICTE/BYOD team and past SGO board went to work and smoothed out all possible challenges for this memorable event. Everything went as clock work. The official election procedure started at 08:00. Following the election, an explanation was given to the student body that this years elections would be done differently. The student body cheered the candidates on, some with their signs. From 08: 05 to 08:25, the candidates distinguished who they were and why they were the best candidate for their designated board position. 08:20 marked the time when polling officers went to the polling station. At 08:30, students were assigned by classes to go to one of the 5 stations to vote and every 3 to 5 minutes they rotated. By 08:55 the entire staff and student body of SDHS casted their vote. All candidates were great on the podium but only few will be victorious. Genmed posts revenues of ?38.6 million demonstrating continued uptake of vendor neutral managed services in the NHS November 23, 2018 ? Genmed, a specialist provider of vendor neutral managed services to the NHS, today announces continued strong business performance for its financial year ending March 31, 2018. Business highlights ? Revenues increased 19% year on year from ?32.4 million to ?38.6 million with EBITDA of ?240,000 ? profits a reflection of the increased investment in the business from a staff, systems and infrastructure perspective. Since 2014, Genmed?s revenues have grown 275% demonstrating the ever increasing popularity and adoption of managed services in the NHS. ? Appointment of Jonathan Wedgbury as chairman and Geoff Baker as non-executive director. Genmed is strengthening its board with individuals with extensive business and healthcare expertise to support the development of the company from a strategic and operational perspective. This will help Genmed meet the significant growth opportunities within the NHS along with healthcare markets internationally. ? Listed as one of London Stock Exchange Group?s 1000 Companies to Inspire Britain. Now in its fifth edition, the report is a celebration of the UK?s fastest-growing and most dynamic small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) across the UK. ? Hiring of 11 staff in the past financial year in both field sales and back office functions to develop new business opportunities, manage contract fulfilment and provide responsive customer service. The Genmed team now totals 33 split between its headquarters in Cwmbran, Wales, and its office in Weybridge, Surrey. ? Industry recognition with Genmed awarded ?Managed services company of the year 2018? by Corporate Livewire and Health Tech Newspaper [HTN] rating a project with South West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre [SWLEOC] as ?Highly Commended.? SWLEOC is a partnership organisation established in 2003 by four South West London Acute Trusts[1] to reduce waiting lists and deliver strategic change in how planned orthopaedic care is provided in the area. All orthopaedic work from the four Trusts is now delivered by SWLEOC with over 5,000 procedures performed each year. Customer highlights ? Key project wins over the course of the year with numerous NHS organisations including: Cardiff & Vale University Health Board, Nottingham University Hospitals, Wirral University Teaching Hospital, Countess of Chester Hospital, Chester and Wirral Microbiology Service and the Eastern Pathology Alliance Network (EPA) a joint venture established in 2012 between Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital, the James Paget University Hospital and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Kings Lynn. The EPA runs laboratories on each of the three hospital sites providing laboratory medicine in the Norfolk and Waveney a catchment area of around 1 million patients. ? Introduction of hTrak, a healthcare information management system, at SWLEOC to track the usage of consumables and equipment using barcodes to enable a forensic analysis at what is being bought. This will enable SWLEOC to review, for example, the differences between consultants and what one person spends versus another, with improvements made if there is wide variability. This also means SWLEOC will be GS1 compliant well before Government?s target date. Genmed is actively looking at implementing hTrak elsewhere within its NHS customer base. ? Genmed now works for over 40 NHS Trusts and Health Boards throughout the United Kingdom managing over 220 contracts worth in excess of ?510 million. Genmed has developed from its early focus primarily delivering pathology contracts to now manage contracts which encompass surgery, digital pathology, flexible endoscopy, IT, radiology, IVF, electronic data management and renal and pharmacy. It is able to provide buildings contracts including finance and facilities. Keith Davis, Genmed?s chief operating officer, says, ?It is encouraging to see that the NHS has a tremendous appetite for managed services as a way to improve performance through economic and operational efficiencies. The increase in our revenues for our financial year ending March 31, 2018 reflects this.? Offering a consultative and holistic approach which takes into account patient pathways and how specific initiatives, data analytics and procurement can impact the care provided and the associated costs, Genmed creates bespoke HMRC compliant managed service agreements which meet the needs of each Trust. This helps to reduce costs, rationalise pricing, improve efficiency, enhance clinical productivity, speed up purchasing and minimise administration and invoice processing. Importantly, Genmed is not tied to any third-party supplier and selects consumables and equipment based on close collaboration and input from NHS managers and clinicians. Genmed is therefore unique in the market to offer flexible vendor neutral managed services. It works hard to benchmark costs from OEMs and negotiate prices over time so Trusts get the best value for money. Genmed is not a managed equipment provider or a finance house. Its scope of operation, depth and scale is much wider. It works with Trusts to ascertain the challenges they face financially and operationally and is an integral partner helping them to improve quality standards. Genmed reviews what clinical facilities or technology Trusts need in the context of their workload issues. Genmed then finds and selects suppliers through competitions, drives costs down, puts together the asset funding, oversees the contracts, manages and pays subcontractors and takes all the risk upfront itself. Robin Modak, Genmed?s chief executive officer, says, ?I am pleased to report another successful year for the company. Moving forward, our objective is to not only solidify our position as a leading managed service provider to the NHS by adding more value for our client Trusts, but to also develop and extend our expertise to address new opportunities for the business internationally given increasing pressure on Governments for healthcare provision in Europe and beyond.? [1] St George?s University Hospitals, Croydon Health Services, Kingston Hospital and Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals "There is no urgency here and no reason for the court to weigh in at this juncture," said Jennifer Levi, transgender rights project director for the gay rights group GLAAD. "The injunctions preserve the status quo of the open service policy that was thoroughly vetted by the military itself and has been in place now for more than two years. This is simply one more attempt by a reckless Trump administration to push through a discriminatory policy." Why face recognition as a credential is the ideal choice for access control? In the field of access control, face recognition has come a long way. Once considered too slow to authenticate people's identities and credentials in high traffic conditions, face recognition technology has evolved to become one of the quickest, most effective access control identity authentication solutions across all industries. Advancements in artificial intelligence and advanced neural network (ANN) technology from industry leaders like Intel have improved the accuracy and efficiency of face recognition. However, another reason the technology is gaining traction is due to the swiftly rising demand for touchless access control solutions that can help mitigate the spread of disease in public spaces. Effective for high volumes Face recognition eliminates security risks and is also virtually impossible to counterfeit Modern face recognition technology meets all the criteria for becoming the go-to solution for frictionless access control. It provides an accurate, non-invasive means of authenticating people's identities in high-traffic areas, including multi-tenant office buildings, industrial sites, and factories where multiple shifts per day are common. Typical electronic access control systems rely on people providing physical credentials, such as proximity cards, key fobs, or Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones, all of which can be misplaced, lost, or stolen. Face recognition eliminates these security risks and is also virtually impossible to counterfeit. Affordable biometric option Although there are other biometric tools available, face recognition offers significant advantages. Some technologies use hand geometry or iris scans, for example, but these options are generally slower and more expensive. This makes face recognition a natural application for day-to-day access control activities, including chronicling time and attendance for large workforces at construction sites, warehouses, and agricultural and mining operations. In addition to verifying personal credentials, face recognition can also identify whether an individual is wearing a facial covering in compliance with government or corporate mandates regarding health safety protocols. Beyond securing physical locations, face recognition can also be used to manage access to computers, as well as specialised equipment and devices. Overcoming challenges with AI So how did face recognition become so reliable when the technology was once dogged by many challenges, including difficulties with camera angles, certain types of facial expressions, and diverse lighting conditions? Thanks to the emergence of so-called "convolutional" neural network-based algorithms, engineers have been able to overcome these roadblocks. SecurOS FaceX face recognition solution FaceX is powered by neural networks and machine learning which makes it capable of authenticating a wide range of faces One joint effort between New Jersey-based Intelligent Security Systems (ISS) and tech giant Intel has created the SecurOS FaceX face recognition solution. FaceX is powered by neural networks and machine learning which makes it capable of authenticating a wide range of faces and facial expressions, including those captured under changing light, at different resolution levels, and varying distances from the video camera. Secure video management system A common face recognition system deployment begins with IP video cameras that feed footage into a secure video management system connected to a video archive. When the software initially enrolls a persons face, it creates a "digital descriptor" that is stored as a numeric code that will forever be associated with one identity. The system encrypts and stores these numeric codes in a SQL database. For the sake of convenience and cost savings, the video server CPU performs all neural network processes without requiring any special GPU cards. Unique digital identifiers The next step involves correlating faces captured in a video recording with their unique digital descriptors on file. The system can compare newly captured images against large databases of known individuals or faces captured from video streams. Face recognition technology can provide multi-factor authentication, searching watchlists for specific types of features, such as age, hair colour, gender, ethnicity, facial hair, glasses, headwear, and other identifying characteristics including bald spots. Robust encryption SED-compatible drives rely on dedicated chips that encrypt data with AES-128 or AES-256 To support privacy concerns, the entire system features an encrypted and secure login process that prevents unauthorized access to both the database and the archive. An additional layer of encryption is available through the use of Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs) that hold video recordings and metadata. SED-compatible drives rely on dedicated chips that encrypt data with AES-128 or AES-256 (short for Advanced Encryption Standard). Anti-spoofing safeguards How do face recognition systems handle people who try to trick the system by wearing a costume mask or holding up a picture to hide their faces? FaceX from ISS, for example, includes anti-spoofing capabilities that essentially check for the "liveliness" of a given face. The algorithm can easily flag the flat, two-dimensional nature of a face mask, printed photo, or image on a mobile phone and issue a "spoof" alarm. Increased speed of entry Incorporating facial recognition into existing access control systems is straightforward and cost-effective Incorporating facial recognition into existing access control systems is straightforward and cost-effective. Systems can operate with off-the-shelf security cameras and computers. Users can also leverage existing infrastructure to maintain building aesthetics. A face recognition system can complete the process of detection and recognition in an instant, opening a door or turnstile in less than 500ms. Such efficiency can eliminate hours associated with security personnel checking and managing credentials manually. A vital tool Modern face recognition solutions are infinitely scalable to accommodate global enterprises. As a result, face recognition as a credential is increasingly being implemented for a wide range of applications that transcend traditional access control and physical security to include health safety and workforce management. All these capabilities make face recognition a natural, frictionless solution for managing access control, both in terms of performance and cost. The Andromeda Galaxy, also known as Messier 31 (or M31), is one of the most distant objects visible to unaided human eyes. This spiral galaxy, located 2.5 million light-years away from our sun, is considered to be a "twin sister" to our own galaxy in appearance. Look for it as a faint and elongated fuzzy patch sitting a palm's width above the bright star Mirach, or use the top three stars of Cassiopeia as a pointer. The inset image, taken by Ron Brecher of Guelph, Ontario, reveals the pink star-forming regions and dark dust lanes contained in the enveloping spiral arms. Two elliptical galaxies designated M110 and M32 are positioned just above and below the central core, respectively. The most distant object in space that we can see with our unaided eyes, the Andromeda Galaxy, is located more than 2 million light-years away but you can see it in the early evening night sky this autumn. Step outside this week and look high overhead at around 8:30 p.m. local time, and you'll be able to sight what is without a doubt the most famous galaxy in all of our sky, M31, in the constellation Andromeda an object that nearly a century ago helped extend our perspective of the cosmos as nothing else has ever done. As recently as the early 1900s, astronomers quarreled about whether this and other spiral "nebulas" were part of our own system of stars, which we call the Milky Way, or if they were "island universes" that is, independent stellar systems of their own. [Seeing the Best Night-Sky Sights of Autumn Using Mobile Apps] Tremendous controversy In an attempt to settle this issue once and for all, on April 26, 1920, two leading astronomers of the day, Harlow Shapley and Heber D. Curtis, squared off at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., in what has since become known as "The Great Debate." At the time, Shapley who ultimately went on to become one of the 20th century's greatest extragalactic experts incorrectly argued that these spiral "nebulas" were part of our own stellar system. He was led astray by Adriaan Van Maanen, an astronomer working at the Mount Wilson Observatory, who measured the distances of stellar objects using parallax. For example, when we measure the position of a star from two diametrically opposite locations along our orbit, the apparent difference in the star's position however slight can provide us with a fairly accurate value that reveals how far away the star is from us. You can try this for yourself by holding one hand out at arm's length; look with one eye and use your thumb to cover a distant object. Now close that eye and open the other, and you'll see that your thumb no longer covers the object; its position has apparently shifted. When using parallax to determine stellar distances, your thumb would represent the star, while your eyes would represent the diametrically opposite points on Earth's orbit. This method works quite well if the star in question is relatively close to us. But not so for stars located at much greater distances. Evidently, Maanen sold Shapley on the idea that he could measure these diminutive annual shifts for practically anything, regardless of how far away they were! Curtis, on the other hand, was firm in the opinion that these spirals were not clouds of gas embedded within our own galaxy, but, rather, galaxies themselves. Indisputable confirmation The piece of evidence that proved Curtis correct came in 1923 ironically, courtesy of another Mount Wilson astronomer, Edwin Hubble. Hubble actually killed two birds with one stone by using the 100-inch Hooker Telescope, which was the largest in the world at the time. First, Hubble resolved the outer portions of M31 into individual stars, thus proving that it was indeed a stellar system and not, as Shapley had assumed, a gaseous nebula. Then, he discovered that some of those stars were Cepheid variables. In 1912, Henrietta Leavitt, a researcher at Harvard College Observatory, made the awesome discovery that Cepheids fell into a special category of variable stars. Within this special group, the periods of the stars were directly related to their true (absolute) brightnesses. That discovery, known as the period-luminosity relationship, demonstrates the difference between a Cepheid's absolute and apparent brightness and accurately establishes its distance, whether it's in our own galaxy or in another far out in space. And by finding Cepheid variables within M31, Hubble now had hard evidence of the galaxy's great distance, and soon the concept of individual galaxies separated by enormous distances became widely accepted. ['The Glass Universe': How Women 'Computers' Measured the Stars] Astonishing data and how to find it M31 which from here on I'll refer to as the Andromeda Galaxy is the most distant object that can be seen with the naked eye. I'll provide some tips on how to find it in just a moment, but first, here are a few "gee-whiz" statistics: To the eye, the Andromeda Galaxy appears as a dim and indistinct patch of light, like a faint star veiled behind a small cloud. When you see it, you will be doing something that no one else in the world except a stargazer can do: You will be looking into the distant past. In this case, it is (or was) in the very remote past as we count our chronology here on Earth, for tonight's light left Andromeda 2.5 million years ago, during the Paleolithic period (also known as the Stone Age), when hominids began developing tools made out of stone. In that dim and indistinct patch, we have the combined light of an estimated one trillion stars. Compare that to our own Milky Way Galaxy, which contains "only" 200 billion to 400 billion stars. And from one end to the other, the Andromeda Galaxy measures some 220,000 light-years across, which makes it more than twice as large as our own. You need good eyesight and a clear, dark night, far from any bright lights, to actually see it for yourself. If you have binoculars, they will prove to be a great help. First, locate the Great Square of Pegasus. Then, concentrate on the bright star Alpheratz, which is located in the upper-left corner of the Square. To the upper left of Alpheratz are two stars: First comes Mirach, which appears somewhat dimmer than Alpheratz; and then a similar distance to the upper left is a brighter star, Almach. Now, from this star, shift above and to the right about the same distance, and you'll see three faint stars forming a triangle. Except one of those stars looks like a fuzzy or blurred patch of light. Congratulations! You've found the Andromeda Galaxy. [Andromeda Galaxy Photos: Amazing Pictures of M31] With binoculars and telescopes The galaxy is impressive when viewed through small telescopes, although you'll probably be disappointed that you can't see the details that appear in photographs. What you are likely to see is the galaxy's bright central hub and its much fainter, outer extensions. Photographs reveal the galaxy's spiral arms, separated by dark lanes of obscuring dust. On an exceptionally clear night at the annual Stellafane conference near Springfield, Vermont, in 1975, I had the opportunity to view Andromeda through a 6-inch, "rich field" telescope and was able to fully see its distinct oval shape as well as two dark dust lanes. But probably the most amazing observation was by French astronomer Robert Jonckheere in 1953, who used special 2-inch binoculars with all optical surfaces coated and with the oculars centered so he fully used both of his pupils Jonckheere also made sure to give his eyes a full 10 minutes of dark adaptation and excluded all light except from the galaxy itself. He claimed to have seen the galaxy stretching for more than 5 degrees in width longer than the distance that separates the two Pointer stars (Dubhe and Merak) in the bowl of the Big Dipper! The very first sighting Who was the first person to see the Andromeda Galaxy? Most astronomy texts give the same answer: the Persian astronomer al-Sufi, who left the first written record of it in the 10th century. But perhaps the first sighting actually came many centuries earlier. In the middle of the fourth century, a Roman nobleman, Rufus Festus Avienus, wrote an astronomical poem based on a famous Greek poem, "Phaenomena." Most old star atlases and allegorical pictures portray Andromeda's wrists in ropes or chains as she awaited her death by the sea monster Cetus. And yet, Avienus writes of Andromeda: "Clouds tie her arms with twisted knots." Some, like classical scholar Roger Ceragioli of Harvard University, believe that Avienus was making an indirect reference to the galaxy. "Avienus' description of the ropes as clouds makes a bizarre image, until you realize that he is alluding to M31. Then it makes perfect sense," Ceragioli wrote in a September 1989 article in Sky & Telescope. So, as you look out at the soft glow of the Andromeda galaxy on these late November evenings, remember that this is where we took our first step in understanding how truly vast the universe is. Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmers' Almanac and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for Verizon FiOS1 News in New York's Lower Hudson Valley. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. Original article on Space.com. A free panel on media and paranoia moderated will be held at the Ferguson Library on Sunday, Dec. 2, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. The panel will be moderated by Jeff Ostergren and will include artist Alexandra Bell, scholar Jack Bratich, Ph.D., and journalist Alexandria Neason. Franklin Street Works will present the event, which will explore media studies topics that connect to some of the themes of False Flag: The Space Between Paranoia and Reason, an exhibit currently on display the art gallery, located at 41 Franklin St. Bell, a Brooklyn-based artist, has exhibited at PS1 and often explores media in her work. Bratich is an associate professor in the department of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University and wrote the book Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture. Journalist Alexandria Neason is a Columbia Journalism Review staff writer and was formerly a reporter for the Village Voice. Ostergren, a Connecticut-based artist, will connect larger themes to his curation of False Flag and will discuss how contemporary art can provide alternate perspectives to dominant narratives. Part of my interest in this panel is exploring the way in which the media - in its various iterations of television news, talk radio, and social media - foster and in many cases actively create paranoia, Ostergren said. This is of particular interest to me in that the media, despite all indications of the opposite, still is often understood as objective. No matter the format, news is filtered through corporate agendas, personal perspectives, and latent or overt biases. To reserve a spot, send an email to info@franklinstreetworks.org. Daniel Runde, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says much of the violence comes from gangs that metastasized after the U.S. deported tens of thousands of hardened gang members to the region. It would make more sense going forward to put such criminals in U.S. prisons, where they would present no threat to their own countries or ours. Id rather have them here and throw away the key, he says. You won't find this gorgeous Spanish Revival home in Los Angeles on many lists of Marilyn Monroe's known residences. However, those who've lived in the neighborhood for decades have tales to tell of America's most glamorous movie star and her second husband, New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio. The celebrity couple were seen in the home before and during their brief marriage in 1954. The scoop comes from listing agent Neal Baddin of Coldwell Banker, who's been selling real estate for decades in the Outpost Estates area, which is known for old Hollywood glamour. According to Baddin, one neighbor says she remembers the star couple living in the home, which is now on the market for $2.7 million. Confirming these stories is an authenticated check, written by Monroe herself, for a $237.82 rental payment on the property. That check was auctioned off for $1,000 in 2015 with the following description: "Marilyn Monroe signed this check in blue ballpoint pen. The check pertained to her lease at 2393 Castilian Drive, a home she shared with Joe DiMaggio. Marilyn moved into the house on December 15, 1952, when she was seeing Joe DiMaggio and he was still married. He became a permanent feature there inviting friends over for meals while Marilyn was beginning to learn to cook, trying to show Joe how she was settling down." Monroe and DiMaggio married in 1954, but rumors of relationship problems plagued them before they finished their honeymoon in Japan. They divorced in October of that same year, just 274 days after tying the knot. The kitchen has been remodeled a number of times since Monroe learned to cook there, but the room's stunning views the couple enjoyed still remain. "You feel like you're living in the Italian Riviera, with vistas of the canyons and hills that are reminiscent of the beautiful Amalfi Coast," says Baddin. Original features include the vaulted wood-beam ceilings, a tile roof, plaster walls with arched doorways, tile floors, and balconies and terraces. All of those elements contribute to the Mediterranean aesthetic, according to the agent. The house measures 3,335 square feet and has four bedrooms and 4.5 baths. It sits on almost an acre of land, which is quite sizable for this historic neighborhood in the hills north of Hollywood Boulevard. Baddin says in the 1970s a grotto-style pool and spa were added out back, positioned to appear wedged into the cliff side , another detail reminiscent of the hills of Italy. "You won't find a better value for a home in this neighborhood," says Baddin. The sellers, who bought the home in July for $2.2 million, were planning a major renovation, but changed their minds. "It's quite an enchanting home," says Baddin, who adds that many of the same features that attracted Monroe and DiMaggio in the '50s can still be appreciated by a buyer today. The post Storied Love Nest of Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio Is Listed for $2.7M appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com. WESTPORT Bob Weingarten has driven past the house at 27 Long Lots Road many times, over the past few years. The Westport Historical Society house historian always knew the home was well preserved but he could never fully see it because foliage blocked the front and sides. After it was purchased last year, the new owners restored its visibility by cutting back vegetation and trees, Weingarten said. It is now an outstanding model of the historic character of Westports past, he said. Longtime Westporter Susan Adam purchased the four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom colonial last year. It has wide plank floors, exposed beams, three original fireplaces an old bread oven, its original fixtures, a private cottage and a library room. It was built in 1812 after William Nash purchased the land, according to town records, and housed at least nine other families. Adam said although a preserved house comes with maintenance tasks, it was that factor that enticed her and her husband. When we moved in we thought we had to take out like three trees because they were very old and dangerous, she said. But once we got into it, we thought, it all has to come out. In the 1950s, the owners renovated and added four rooms and the kitchen. When Adam moved in last year, she renovated one of the upstairs bathrooms, painted the walls, re-finished the floors and landscaped the front of the house after removing the vegetation. Other than that, its just been maintenance, she said. Shes recently refocused her efforts to landscaping the backyard, which was affected when a tree fell after a recent storm. Adam and her husband have lived in Westport 21 years, and were looking to stay in an area familiar to them. For her efforts to restore the house, the Westport Historic District Commission presented Adam with a renovation and site rehabilitation award on Oct. 15 at Westport Town Hall. We realize its the owners who are really the ultimate shepherds of their own properties in Westport, said Randy Henkels, chairman of the commission. Thats why we give them preservation awards because theyre the real preservationists. We commend them for their efforts and willingness to take on a historic house. Adam said that every year, antique homes dwindle in number because of maintenance issues and modernization. She said shes committed to maintaining her home. Ive always just been drawn to them. I just find them very interesting, she said. You sit in a house and think, how many babies were born here, how many people died here? She and a relative were preparing an everythings homemade Thanksgiving meal on Tuesday afternoon. It will included 13 side dishes and seven pies. It was to be her familys second Thanksgiving in the home. B lack Friday shoppers preparing to spend billions online were on Friday warned not to fall prey to cyber-crime, in a rare intervention from the secretive GCHQ intelligence agency. In an unusual move for the shadowy organisation, its cybersecurity arm was offering advice to shoppers on how to avoid malicious threats as they rush to pick up potential bargains. The National Cyber Security Centre has told shoppers to install the latest software updates, avoid email links and study their bank accounts as the shopping bonanza puts a strain on online infrastructure. The NCSCs technical director Ian Levy said: Its vital that knowledge is shared. Retail bosses were hoping the weekend Black Friday followed by Cyber Monday will keep the tills ringing as shops on the High Street continue to struggle. Most retailers have joined the event except Marks & Spencer and some independents that cant afford to slash margins by not selling items at full price. Argos chief executive John Rogers, who began preparing for the event nine months ago, told the Standard: Theres a lot of uncertainty, so shoppers are looking for a bargain. Black Friday will be as big this year as its ever been. Rogers, who opened a 2.5 million distribution centre in Croydon today and 14 new Argos stores in Sainsbury's to cope with demand, defended the deals amid suggestions retailers are simply trying to clear out old stock and that the discounts arent that advantageous. Some customers are sceptical on the pricing but this is where we are really confident, said Rogers. You wont have been able to buy these items cheaper at any other time in our business. That involves tough negotiation [with suppliers] but thats what were good at. Mothercare chief executive Mark Newton-Jones said: This period is embedded in the psyche of the British consumer, and Im convinced they wait for it now. Its a great opportunity for us to clear stock before the end of season. Fashion chain Bonmarches boss Helen Connolly said: I have never seen consumer appetite for discounts as defined as this year. Im a believer in focusing on full-price sales, but you cant ignore the current climate. F ormer Goldman Sachs chairman and chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, was on Friday dragged into the ever-growing storm over the 1MDB fund as it emerged he had a meeting with one of the main alleged protagonists. US authorities claim $4.5 billion was laundered from 1MDB, a Malaysian government state fund, set up with the aim of improving the economy. Instead, it has become the centre of a widespread probe. An Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund this week sued Goldman, alleging a conspiracy between the bank and other partners to defraud investors. A spokesperson for Goldman said: We are in the process of assessing the details of allegations and fully expect to contest the claim vigorously. The bank has admitted Blankfein had a meeting in 2012 at which Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, the man at the centre of the probe, was present. Goldman says this was not a one-on-one with Taek Jho as reports had suggested, but with a client called Aabar, also defendants in lawsuits. The investment bank helped Malaysia raise money for the fund. US prosecutors allege officials moved some of those monies into personal accounts. D etained Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn on Friday faced new allegations he went on a $18 million property spending spree with company funds as the future of the Renault alliance looked in doubt. The executive, who is in jail in Tokyo, is alleged have used a Dutch-based subsidiary company to make a string of purchases of properties and pay his sister consulting fees, according to leaks from the Nissan investigation reported by the Wall Street Journal. Ghosn was ousted on Thursday as chairman having been accused publicly of misusing company assets for personal use and under-reporting his earnings. The decision has still to be approved by shareholders. Ghosn has hired veteran Tokyo lawyer, Motonari Otsuru, to defend him. He remains in the Tokyo Detention Centre after his arrest on Monday. The 64-year-old is yet to be charged with a crime, and under Japanese law can be kept without charge for 23 days. The crisis has put in jeopardy the alliance between Renault and Nissan, which has been held together since 1999 by Ghosn, who also heads Renault. Renault is a 43% shareholder in the Japanese car giant but the ties may unravel, with stock markets expecting the fall-out from the saga to tip the balance of power back towards Nissan. Renault shares rose by 4.3% today over hopes tilting the alliance towards Nissan may free up cash for Renault to go on a spending spree. Jefferies analyst Philippe Houchois said Renault could cut its stake to as low as 15%, creating a 6 billion to 9 billion war chest for M&A activity. Tensions within the alliance are not new, with Nissan feeling put upon for years, Houchois told clients, adding the French governments position on capping Nissans influence had not helped. Nissan boss Hiroto Saikawa has also reportedly been at odds with Ghosn over plans for the French carmaker to take more control of Nissan. D eveloper Derwent London marked the end of an era on Friday as its founder and chief executive John Burns revealed plans to step down after 35 years at the helm. Burns is one of the longest-serving bosses of a listed company in the UK. He first bought the Derwent Valley Light Railway Company, the owner of some disused railway stations worth just 1.5 million, as a shell to manage his property interests in 1984, five years after Margaret Thatcher took power. The company, behind several major schemes including Paddingtons Brunel Building, is now worth 3.4 billion. By the time he steps down next May he will have served 35 years, putting him ahead of WPP founder Sir Martin Sorrell and fellow property titan Sir John Ritblat as one of the UKs longest-serving chief executives. Morrisons boss Sir Ken Morrison holds the record, stepping down after 50 years in 2006. The 74-year-old, who will stay on to chair the firm for another two years, said: It was time to call it a day. Weve got a great bench here. I dont micromanage, and I just thought it was about time. Burns could also serve on other boards, adding: If situations came up that I thought were interesting, Id have a look at them. He hands over to property director Paul Williams, who joined Derwent in 1987. Jefferies property analyst Mike Prew said Burns crowning glory at Derwent was the 2007 merger with rival London Merchant Securities which transformed the scale of the business. A Rohingya mother gang-raped after being forced to watch soldiers kill her baby girl and husband. An elderly South Sudanese woman raped by soldiers. A Syrian man kept naked in a cell for 30 days by government forces, hung up by his hands in the dark at night and raped using a stick. A 10-year old Syrian boy, waiting in line at a bakery, kidnapped by Islamic State, imprisoned and sexually abused. What connects these terrible human stories, documented by the UN, is that they involve the deliberate use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war: To terrorise communities and fracture families by the violation of taboos, in the words of the UN Secretary-General, signifying that nothing is sacred and no one is safe. It affects hundreds and thousands of women and girls, as well as men and boys, worldwide. The horror of these war crimes, crimes against humanity, even acts of genocide are compounded by the stigma endured by survivors who are often made to feel ashamed, rejected by their families and who suffer physical injuries and emotional trauma that can last a lifetime. Because of stigma, conflict-related sexual violence is one of the least reported crimes in the world. It is intolerable that we effectively punish survivors more than perpetrators, simply by our collective failure to provide justice or change cultures that blame the survivor or minimise their suffering. For six years the UK has led the way internationally in calling for this to be regarded as a critical issue of international peace and security. A Global Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict has been endorsed by 156 countries. A number of significant prosecutions have started and led to guilty judgments for suspects, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Guatemala. Militaries including those within Nato are taking this issue more seriously and working to reform their doctrine, training and operations. Angelina Jolie is the co-founder of the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative / Chelsea Lauren/REX/Shutterstock This weekend the UK is hosting a film festival to promote understanding of the injustice of stigma and to back filmmakers from Myanmar to Yemen who use art to change laws and attitudes. It will be followed by a conference a year from now, bringing together governments from around the world. In my view, five steps are urgently needed. First, there is a desperate need to establish a permanent, independent international investigatory body that can take swift action to determine whether sexual violence is taking place within a conflict, deploy investigators to gather and preserve evidence, and enable rapid and effective local, regional or international prosecutions. A model is the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which can deploy investigators to the scene of a chemical attack within days. The crime of rape in conflict affects far greater numbers of people than chemical attacks today. If you doubt the need, consider that not one member of IS or Boko Haram or the armed forces in Myanmar has yet been prosecuted for crimes of sexual violence. Second, countries should be urged to change laws that punish survivors not perpetrators. According to the UN, in 37 countries rapists are exempt from prosecution if they are married to, or subsequently marry, victims; more than 60 nations dont include male victims within sexual violence legislation; and laws in 70 countries criminalise men who report sexual victimisation due to homophobic laws or policies. Third, there is a chronic shortage of funding to support survivors, whether with emergency assistance to keep them safe in refugee or IDP camps, funding for trauma counselling, access to justice, or livelihood support. A UK mission to Coxs Bazar in Bangladesh last year found a lack of adequate lighting to keep Rohingya women and girls safe at night. Even committing just one per cent of annual aid budgets would transform support for survivors Rather than the current scramble for funding, major humanitarian donors like the UK could make a huge difference by dedicating a fixed or minimum percentage of their development budgets to ending sexual and gender-based violence. Even committing just one per cent of annual aid budgets would transform support for survivors across the world. As part of this approach, I hope nations such as the UK could consider establishing a new global fund for survivors of sexual violence in conflict. Currently, the only available reparations for survivors available comes from the International Criminal Court Trust Fund for Victims, which can only assist victims after a successful criminal conviction. Fourth, the UK has taken a lead in including the prevention of sexual violence in conflict, and the protection of women in conflict and post-conflict situations, in their training, doctrine and military operations. I hope many more countries will follow suit. This is particularly urgent in cases where military personnel or peacekeepers have been involved in these crimes. But all countries can do much more. Finally, mass rape in conflict is a reflection of the subordinate status of women and girls in many countries. The UN has found that the majority of survivors of conflict-related sexual violence are politically and economically marginalised. Even in peaceful societies, entrenched attitudes minimise violence against women and make it hard for survivors of domestic or sexual violence to receive a fair hearing, support, and legal redress. We rightly encourage survivors to speak out about their experiences, but for that to happen they must have the confidence that they will be supported in their quest for justice and not be abandoned to stigma or reprisal. Full economic, political and social equality for women worldwide is the ultimate antidote to violence against women. Often we face problems so vast we dont know where to start. Sexual violence in conflict is not one of them. We know the work that needs to be done and we have the means necessary. We need political and social will. The immense stigma around sexual violence benefits perpetrators who count on survivors being too ashamed or vulnerable to seek justice. It is time we turned the tables upon them. A s a Holocaust survivor and passionate Anglophile, my grandfather had a sort of shrug-in-the-face-of-adversity approach to everything. This wasnt just part of his Jewish DNA, it was forged out of his passion for this country. He understood that a nations ability to laugh at politicians and each other is a weapon against tyranny. Jewish catastrophe over the centuries has always been met with self-deprecating humour: They tried to kill us, we survived, lets eat! The English version of this Yiddish maxim is strikingly similar: The country is in crisis, who can come up with the best gag? Brexit (probably the most divisive political issue since the English Civil War) has not been met with violent clashes but, so far, with reassuring irony. Social media has been ablaze with onwards-and-upwards jokes since the PMs latest bid to secure a deal. Only five Brexit secretaries until Christmas, tweeted one person. And then the one that really got me: My wifes just switched the news off, exclaiming this is too complicated, and resumed writing her aeronautical engineering thesis on Improving the Performance of Thermoplastic Composite Structural Joints. I have the same Brexit fatigue as any sane individual right now. It has reached the stage where the only logical sentiment is hardline indifference and Ive been refusing to talk about it with anyone (especially if I care about them). The only thing thats keeping my Brexit- acquired misery at bay is humour. Wit in the face of national crisis is a powerful survival tool, and it helps us keep things in perspective. The best part is we just get funnier as it gets worse. In London last month 700,000 people took part in the Peoples Vote march and there wasnt a single significant arrest. Ladies in Louis Vuitton walked alongside communists, and the array of hilarious signs set the tone for the day. My two favourites: This is like when Geri Halliwell overestimated her viability as a solo artist and left The Spice Girls and the pithy Ikea have better cabinets. It is not denial or stiff-upper-lip-ery that keeps our violent impulses in check, it is our wit. This has been Britains secret recipe for keeping power out of the hands of extremists. When we find ourselves in upheaval we understand that its not the end of the world. Theresa May tapped into a brilliant reserve of this understated amusement in her interview last week. Asked about how she copes with such turbulent times, she revealed that her Brexit stress kit comprises her husband, baked beans and a glass of Scotch. The idea of Mr May approaching his wifes hour of prime ministerial need with beans on toast strikes is almost too perfect to be true. "Asked about how she copes, May said her stress kit comprises her husband, baked beans and Scotch" For many this is the death of the UK as we know it, while for others it marks the start of a new era. Truth be told, we have no idea whats going to happen and despite this turbulence we co-exist peacefully. Brexit may have highlighted the huge divisions in our country but it is continually revealing our commitment to democracy at the same time. We may be snapping at each other on Twitter or in the television studios but the hilarious and civilised nature of our public debate will see us through these trying times and it lets us laugh while were at it. Cheryl should be praised not pilloried Cheryl Cole / PA I was never a great fan of Cheryl Cole or Cheryl Fernandez-Versini or Cheryl One Direction. My antipathy towards her stemmed from the ugly facts of the violent assault she was prosecuted for in 2003, which were deeply unpleasant. Even though the jury were not convinced that her attack on a defenceless bathroom attendant was racially motivated, it was a grim offence nevertheless, committed by an insecure, angry 19-year-old. I have, however, recently changed my mind. In the past 15 years she has been through one checkout counter spectacle after another. She has been pilloried and made the subject of the types of personal attack only meted out against women in the public eye who dare to live authentically. Despite everything, she has survived and seemingly grown in confidence and strength. She is far from the girl who committed a nasty crime. She has grown up and, like other young people who have made significant positive life changes, we ought to applaud her successes rather than delight at her failure. * For years I hoped that a member of the royal family would come out of the closet. Not the British lot (although I wouldnt have minded), rather the most beautiful royal by far, Prince Carl Philip of Sweden. He is a matchless blue-blooded dreamboat. Recently he gave a public speech and stumbled over his words. He explained afterwards that he has grown up with severe dyslexia and that, despite his status, he had experienced years of bullying. For children who like it or not are often obsessed with fairytales of kings and queens, having a real-life prince talk about something that roughly 10 per cent of them will struggle with is a real inspiration. Air Vanuatu says it will resume flights to Craig Cove in west Ambrym once the airport meets the requirements for its service to recommence Theyre required to be trained on equipment they dont have. They dont get enough practice with firearms. Recruits come out of the academy unprepared to work the streets and are assigned to field training officers who are poorly equipped to mentor them. After that, they get little hands-on training, mostly available only on the day shift, and they cant be spared for training anyway because of manpower shortages. Supervisors dont supervise because theyre afraid of making mistakes that will keep them from being promoted. I n the past two weeks Ive been through seven different airports, taken three long-haul flights and four short hops. Farewell tarmac, hello sky, and bump theres the tarmac again. Ive racked up so many air miles that I think I might be in the running for the job of UN environment chief. Its previous incumbent, Erik Solheim, has just resigned after spending 390,000 on flights over two years. At least mine were all economy class. But the irony of my travels, like Solheims, were that they were motivated by the same cause: Saving the planet. In Seattle, I was being shown around ocean monitoring facilities and trying out the next generation of electric boats. In Italy I was inspecting trees on the Alpine snow line. In the Balkans, I was talking about the problems of the great migration. So much hot air from those jet engines to discuss how much harm we are doing. Hypocrite moi? Well of course, as many of us are. If there is a battle to stop global warming, it is a battle with the status weve accorded to being globalised, open and curious. The expansion of ones horizons has become less a metaphor, more a way of life. Holidays and business trips to far away places are a mark of our cosmopolitanism. The opposite is being grounded in a parochial life. This is going to be tough to win. Id like to promise I wont get on a plane again in the next six months but Id break it. How about you? If there is one note for hope, it was from another flight I took recently, to Oslo, where I saw an experimental battery-powered two-seater take off. Give it a decade or so and it will be to a commercial standard. The trouble is that weve reportedly only got 12 years to avoid the 1.5 degrees tipping point of global warming. Boris chooses some unlikely bedfellows Im intrigued that Boris Johnson, the former Foreign Secretary or FFS as he is known by friends, is going to the Democratic Unionist Party conference this weekend. Obviously they have common cause in disrupting the current withdrawal agreement, which they are both in a grouch about. But what then for small talk? Boris is a cosmopolitan man, a believer in building bridges unfortunately often of the physical rather than metaphorical kind and free speech. The DUP meanwhile is anti-LGBT rights and anti-abortion, and resisted updating Northern Irelands punishing libel laws. Brexit acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. A story of friendship that crosses cultures Lenu and Lila in Elena Ferrantes My Brilliant Friend on Sky Atlantic / Freemantlemedia Many a person with a foreign surname will tell you this: when something cultural comes out of your country, they assume you will be shimmering with pride. For me, a Sicilian, it is anything about the poor south of Italy, as though the scent of poverty and olives will send me into a Mascagni aria. The expectation comes again with the new Sky Atlantic TV series of Elena Ferrantes My Brilliant Friend, the first of her series on the lives of two girls, Lenu and Lila, starting in 1950s Naples and following their lives over six decades. Did I fall in love with the books? Not quite. When youve grown up with your familys hinterland of stories of impoverished towns after the war, you dont go pie-eyed at Neapolitan street scenes, Cinema Paradisos Sicilian town squares or The Godfathers hard men. But I will be watching, not for a romanticised old Italy, but for this exquisite story of female friendship. Just dont ask me about it afterwards. We saw, we heard and we remember Jordan Peterson was an invited speaker at a conference I was at last week. The Chatham House rule forbids me from repeating what this controversial Canadian academic life guru said, and spares you his tosh. But I can report the reaction of the audience as one line was spoken. Most of the men didnt flinch, not recognising the misogyny in it. could teach us no end of a lesson about the UK and where we stand in the world. But only if we learn it. Remainers are belatedly beginning to think about how to win another referendum campaign. We have to engage positively with Leave voters and make them an offer that meets their needs so that they would vote Remain with enthusiasm in any second vote. That means learning the lesson that many people had a rough time of it before 2016 and domestic policies need to change to pay more attention to their needs. Brexiteers, however, are just getting their betrayal narrative in. To learn a lesson, and to ensure that their followers can see it too, they must fail even more obviously than they have already done. My suggestion is that we should say no-deal should be a choice in a second referendum but only if the Brexiteers can come up with a concrete plan that is as defined as the Governments deal. One that is based on facts and analysis, not just dreams and the triumph of the will. Michael Romberg Matthew dAncona says the 350 million a week Britain would regain on leaving the European Union is an illusion. But it is the truth that British taxpayers hand over astronomical amounts to Brussels. This is shameful. Alan Carmichael Matthew d'Ancona replies Dear Michael and Alan Michael, your elegant reference to Rudyard Kipling no end of a lesson puts me in mind of another of the poets best-known lines: And the burnt Fools bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire. Remainers are emphatically not trying to rerun the 2016 EU referendum: in spite of the lies, illegality, Russian interference and a decidedly marginal outcome, that vote is history. Instead, they seek a quite separate, freshly-informed public vote on the catastrophic failure of the subsequent negotiations to yield a deal that justifies the risks and upheaval of leaving the EU. The electorate deserves a final say. As for Brexiteers, you are right that they are getting their betrayal narrative in. But then it was one of the few certainties of this process that they would do so. In their eyes, Brexit has to be a moment of epiphany, of national liberation and ideological purity. Its necessary complexity infuriates them, as it was always going to. Their bandaged finger is thrust back into the flame with the twist that all of us may yet feel the pain. Matthew Not easy to push rail tech UK-wide It is unfair to say that the rail system has failed entirely to fully implement contactless and smartphone technology into the nationwide railway system [Contactless on the rails , November 21]. It is already in place on the railways within the London zonal area and most rail operators are adopting, or have adopted, Oyster-type and mobile phone tickets. It is far more difficult, given the wide geographical area in question, to roll out the required contactless technology nationwide than simply confined to a large town or city. Ian Roberts In theory, it is a very good idea to extend contactless payment to the entire transport network nationally. Review at a glance I f you thought Claire Foy had problems with resentful sisters as a television queen, her debut as a movie action hero puts them in perspective. In Wolf Hall, Foys Anne Boleyn had to cope with the envious disapproval of Mary, the discarded previous occupant of Henry VIIIs bed. In The Crown, her Elizabeth IIs patience was stretched by Princess Margarets spirited social life and disdain for courtly convention. But vexing as both were, credit them for this. One thing neither did in sibling rivalrys name was attempt to steal the codes to every nuclear missile on earth with a view to incinerating the planet. Such is the grittily realistic premise of The Girl In The Spiders Web. In this fifth film based on Stieg Larssons Millennium series (from a novel written after his death by David Lagercrantz), Foy succeeds Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara to become Lisbeth Salander III. If you loved the original Swedish language trilogy, and/ or David Finchers oddly underrated remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (co-starring Daniel Craig as Lisbeths journo buddy Mikael Blomkvist), leave the preconceptions at home. Brooding slow-burn: Claire Foy as the eternally scowling Lisbeth Salander Replacing the brooding, slow-burn Scandi-noir psychological suspensers is a fast-paced, high-octane espionage action flick with superhero flourishes. Director Fede Alvarez wastes no time in launching the rebrand. After a strikingly Bondish pre-title opening sequence, lesbian autistic superhacker Lisbeth is reborn as the product of a cross between 007, Jason Bourne (motorbike chases, tech wizardry, blazing with wounded intensity) and Batman (black helmet, a car door that opens vertically, as smiley as an undertaker with impacted piles). Most of the story is set in Stockholm. But as an eternally scowling Lisbeth slips through the night, trying to lay her ghosts by avenging fellow victims of sexually abusive men, its heart actually belongs to the Swedish second city of Gothenburg. Why so serious? Previously, Lisbeths pervasive misery and vengefulness was sourced to multiple rapes in her youth. Here she is retrofitted with an even more gruesome back story. In a flashback to their childhood home in the mountains, their father beckons Lisbeth and kid sister Camilla to join him on the bed. His creepiness leaves no doubt that he means to do more than read them Pippi Longstocking. Lisbeth jumps out of the window, landing in the snow several hundred feet below unharmed, and sprints away never to return. Camilla never forgives her for leaving her behind. A quarter of a century later, the sisters are reunited by an existential battle one fluffy white cat away from Bond villain pastiche though with Lisbeth all in black and Camilla (Sylvia Hoeks) wearing only red, it looks more like homage to a Marvel mash-up between Black Widow and The Scarlet Witch. The Girl In The Spider's Web Featurette - This Is Lisbeth Salander Responsibility for this threat to humanity rests in the unlikely hands of Stephen Merchant, whose techie skills have come on amazingly since he worked at Carphone Warehouse in Extras. Merchant is quietly impressive as Frans Balder, the peacenik developer of a software programme, Firefall, that is capable of seizing control over the entire global nuclear stockpile in a tenth of the time it takes me to order an online pizza. If that detail stretches credulity, it isnt alone. It makes no sense that Balder has entrusted the line of code that activates Firefall solely to his small son, August, when that so obviously places the boy in mortal danger. He isnt the worst father in this film. But he wont be winning any Parenting Magazine awards. He wont be doing much at all, in fact, after being killed by a gang of shady Russians, the Spiders, aiding Camilla in her mission to edge out Donald Trump as the most terrifying possessor of nuke codes. When Ed Needham from the US National Security Agency (Lakeith Stanfield) arrives to lend Lisbeth a hand, the Swedish security services have no idea who he is and try to bang him up. He really should have called first. What does survive from the previous quartet, along with Blomkvist (Icelander Sverrir Gudnason, with a much smaller role than Craigs in Dragon Tattoo) is the blanket of bleakness. Columbia Pictures The colour palette runs the gamut from snowy white, via dirty grey, to jet black. Unless you count Lisbeths early appearance in her impossibly cool loft in a Give Me Head Till I Die! T-shirt, its a 40-minute wait for the first and last crack at a gag. And her grimace of unfathomable world-weariness only softens into a half-smile with a gun held to her head. But the disconnect between the noirishly grim and the luridly outlandish makes the gloom feel superimposed rather than organic. What rescues the film is a vibrant stylishness that masks the lack of substance, a relentless urgency to dim the disbelief, a clutch of inventive action sequences that dilute the prosthetic melancholia, and Claire Foy in the lead. Although she seems less comfortable with the Batman helmet on her head than a tiara, she squeezes every last drop of juice from a character shrunken in emotional range, nuance and depth. Playing chess with August hours after his fathers death, she needs no words to transmit the realisation, from the boys inability to grieve, that he too may have Aspergers. One touchingly empathetic flicker of recognition in the eyes is enough. The Supremes Any number of girl groups on the Motown label in the 60s could have made the list, not least Martha and the Vandellas and The Marvelettes, but The Supremes are certainly one of the most influential groups of all time and thoroughly deserve to be recognised as such. The group enjoyed 12 number ones between and 1964 and 1969, becoming the most popular Motowns most successful act of the decade. Songs like Baby Love, Stop! In the Name In Love and You keep Me Hanging On are pop at its purest, and while Diana Ross went on to leave the group and become a huge star in her own right, theres a timeless nature to the music of The Supremes that will endure for decades to come. B ack in October, Taco Bell announced it would be bringing its Mexican comfort food to London, with plans to open three new restaurants before Christmas. The first London restaurant in Hammersmith opened its doors today at 10.30am and was the first Taco Bell to launch in London since the two original sites closed in the 1990s. Bespoke Taco Bell t-shirts were given to the first 100 customers through the doors this morning, each adorned with a number 1 to 100, depending on the space they held in the queue. Whats on the Taco Bell menu in London? The UK menu offers tex-mex foods from tacos and burritos to nachos and features popular US dishes such as the Crunchwrap Supreme a tortilla stuffed with either beef, chicken or refried beans, served in a tostada shell and the Crunchy Taco. The hefty Big Bell Box which combines a burrito, taco, nachos, churros and a soft drink into one box is also available along with the Ultimate Mate Date deal which boasts a quesadilla, two grillers, two burritos, nachos or fully-loaded fries and four drinks. On Taco Tuesdays, diners can get a taco and a Sol beer for 2. A first look at Taco Bell Hammersmith in pictures 1 /5 A first look at Taco Bell Hammersmith in pictures A first look at Taco Bell Hammersmith in pictures A first look at Taco Bell Hammersmith in pictures A first look at Taco Bell Hammersmith in pictures A first look at Taco Bell Hammersmith in pictures A first look at Taco Bell Hammersmith in pictures Where else will Taco Bell open in London? The Mexican restaurant chain will launch its new venues in Holborn next week on November 30 and in Fulham Broadway shortly after, with plans to expand across the UK. Where did Taco Bell come from? Founded in 1962 in California, the American chain is named after founder Glen Bell and presently has more than 7,000 restaurants internationally, with 27 in the UK. Celebrities including Madonna, Kate Hudson, Kendall Jenner and Chrissy Teigen have all shared pictures and videos from their Thanksgiving celebrations. Teigen, who can always be relied on for a no-frills cooking demo, shared an image of a charred Thanksgiving pie (the hot chocolate she was drinking looked good through), while Madonna and her six children flew to Malawi - where her adopted son David Banda was born - to celebrate the day in his county of origin. Madonna's family portrait, taken in Malawi: Meanwhile, Kendall Jenner filmed her family gathering for a portrait around the minimalist fire pit at the house of her sister Kim and her husband Kanye West. Over on the east coast, Nicki Minaj returned to Queens in New York - where she was raised - to hand out 500 turkeys in the neighbourhood of South Jamaica. Some of the food preparations looked pretty elaborate. Reese Witherspoon shared a shot of her getting the Thanksgiving table ready - as well as a 'glad I wore stretch pants' pie. Reese's very relatable pie: Kate Hudson, who gave birth to her daughter Rani in early October, also shared a humorous picture of her breast pump machine with the caption 'Thanksgiving day food prep.' But special mention should go to Blake Lively for her 'expectation vs reality' Thanksgiving post: a picture of her at the Met Gala next to one of her au naturel eating a burger in the back of a car. Now that's how you do it. B udget Irish airline, Ryanair, are known for their massive sales but this year they may have outdone themselves. In honour of Black Friday a day of sales which takes place annually on the Friday following the American Thanksgiving holiday Ryanair have been running a different sale on flights every day this week, and they will continue to run a new deal every day until next week too. The first offer was on Monday November 19 and the final day of sales will be Monday November 26 - a day also known as Cyber Monday. Today, Black Friday, they are offering a whopping 25 per cent off over 1 million flights from the UK across Europe. From Londons Stansted, you can fly to Germany for just 5.86 and to Spain for 7.82. They are also offering flights from Edinburgh and Newcastle to various destinations around Europe. The flights are for travel between January and April 2019 and need to be booked by midnight tonight, November 23. However, if you do miss out on flights today, know the airline still has three more days of great deals to go. Ryanair aren't the only airline offering great travel deals this Black Friday. Air New Zealand are offering return flights to LA for 175 return and return flights to New Zealand for 799 return. Norwegian are offering 30 per cent off flights to Europe and 15 per cent off long-haul flights and easyJet are offering 50 off city breaks. Emirates, Cathay Pacific, British Airways and Thomas Cook Airlines are all offering great deals too. T he father of Damilola Taylor today hit out at Sadiq Khan for saying it will take 10 years to end Londons knife crime epidemic. Richard Taylor branded the Mayors claim defeatist and said it would result in more young people dying. In an interview to mark his 70th birthday, he told the Standard it was unacceptable for the Mayor to say that tackling the scourge could take so long. Ten years? That means the black young people will all die if this continues in London, he said. A generation of 13 to 25-year-olds will not be there in 10 years if we wait to fix it. Richard Taylor, father of murdered schoolboy Damilola / Lucy Young Twenty-two teenagers are among 126 homicide victims in the capital so far this year. Damilola was 10 when he bled to death in a stairwell on a Peckham estate in 2000 after being stabbed in the leg with a broken bottle. His father said: We must treat knife crime as an act of terror, unleashing every available resource to prevent further loss of life just like we do when theres a London Bridge or Westminster Bridge attack. Its not a question of 10 years like the Mayor was saying. It is a defeatist reaction. We have to nip the bud. All of us, our hands have to be on deck. I want to share time I have with my family Richard Taylor says he is spending more time at home in Nigeria to be with relatives from his extended family. He lost his wife Gloria in 2008 when she was aged 57. The couple had dedicated themselves to combating gang violence. Mr Taylor said: I have to show grace to the Almighty God that I have attended this age of 70. After Damilola died, I did not believe I would have lasted this long. I thought I would have died from a broken heart. Its an opportunity for me to believe in the future. I want to share the joy of what I have left of my life with my extended family in Lagos. Its good to get away and spend time with the children of my brothers and sisters. They want to know the story of Damilola and Richard Taylor. Damilola would be 30 next year, a fine young man with a family of his own. He dreamt of becoming a doctor. He added: The police are doing their best. But young people are carrying knives because they are angry, or for their own protection. This postcode war, the volume of drugs fuelling gang battles, together with less police funding. Its a deadly mix. Most of these young people have mental health issues. Theyre on cannabis and cocaine. Mr Khan has launched an initiative to cut violent crime based on the public health approach pioneered in Glasgow, which the Evening Standard called for But after five fatal stabbings in a week from October 31, the Mayor said to really make significant progress can take up to 10 years, a generation. The Mayor also blamed police cuts, saying they had cost the Met 6,000 officers. Mr Taylor supports the police using stop and search more although the tactic is controversial as black people are nine times more likely to be stopped than white people. He said: Stop and search should be increased. It should be done humanely, not the way we have witnessed the police doing it in the past. It can be done with dignity to make us all safer and repair the relationship between the police and young people. Latest figures show black males under 25 are disproportionately the victims and offenders in London knife crime. Mr Taylor also called on Mr Khan to close or reform Londons 58 pupil referral units, attended by 3,206 children excluded from mainstream schools. A recent Home Office report warned that drug gangs often prey on the units to groom youngsters as dealers. Mr Taylor said: Ive been to see a number of pupil referral units. They are a waste of resources. The pupils lives are made worse in the units. The very people they are running away from are there waiting. At the end of the day, they go out and try to kill themselves or end up in prison. In response to Mr Taylors comments, a spokesman for the Mayor said the reasons violent crime was rising are complex and years in the making. He added: That is why Sadiq has set up a Violence Reduction Unit, building on the work already started at City Hall on a London-wide public health approach to tackling all forms of violence. "But we need to be honest with Londoners - this approach will not deliver results overnight. It is a long-term strategy which took a decade to reduce violent crime in Scotland. We have to be clear that we could go much further and much faster with greater national investment. The Met Police alone have endured unforgiving Government cuts forcing them to make 1bn of savings, whilst Londons council youth services have lost at least 39m from their budgets. What we are seeing now is the devastating consequences of those cuts. Mr Taylor, who was given an OBE, leads the Damilola Taylor Trust, which seeks to steer young people away from crime. The trusts offshoot in Lagos, Nigeria, the Damilola Taylor Foundation, continues its work in Africa. Damilola arrived in Britain three months before he died. He came with his mother, elder sister Gbemi and brother Tunde to get treatment for Gbemis epilepsy. Mr Taylor remained in Lagos, where he worked, but dashed to the UK after his sons death and was seen by TV viewers collapsing in grief at the scene. He spoke to the Standard after an event organised by London churches at Southwark Cathedral last week to discuss blade violence. Next year, Tunde will marry at the cathedral. P olice are spraying criminals with DNA spray in a bid to crackdown on scooter gangs in the capital. Officers in London have been handed 6,000 bottles of an invisible liquid which can be seen under UV light which are now being used to link suspects to mopeds used in crimes. One man who was caught out by the new tactic is Mohammad Khaleghi, from Camden, who is now serving a 10-month sentence after being convicted at Southwark Crown Court. The 22-year-old was seen riding in an erratic manner along Adelaide Road in Camden by officers from Operation Venice, which tackles moped crime in the capital. He was then seen driving through several red lights and swerving into a bike lane, at which point a marked police car overtook Khaleghi and asked for him to pull over. Met Police are using invisible DNA spray to link suspects to crimes / Met Police Instead, the 22-year-old accelerated away from police, leaving his helmet behind as he did. He then rode against oncoming traffic before riding on the pavement, police said. The spokesman added: Another police vehicle safely ended the pursuit by pulling in front of Khaleghi and making tactical contact with his motorcycle to stop it going any further. After being taken off his vehicle, Khaleghi tried to run away before a police officer managed to spray him with DNA spray, which would assist in proving he was the suspect if he managed to escape. Shortly after he was caught and arrested by officers on suspicion of dangerous driving, failing to stop for police and driving without insurance, Scotland Yard said. He pleaded guilty at Highbury Magistrates Court on October 3. Motorcycle brought to a stop by a police car / Met Police Chief Inspector Jim Corbett, Operation Venice, said Khaleghi not only failed to stop for police but rode at speed through several red traffic lights. "He took off his helmet and he continued to ride through bollards onto a cycle path and then on a pavement being used by pedestrians. His riding was extremely dangerous and he endangered other motorists and people as well as himself. Khaleghi thought that if he removed his helmet we would not continue to pursue. He was wrong. We continued in the pursuit and he was caught and has been jailed. Pictures show Khaleghi under a UV light revealing the spray, which is being used to tag a suspect or suspicious moped without putting the police officer in harms way. UV scanners at police stations can pick up whether the offender has been sprayed. T hese dramatic images today reveal Scotland Yards new hardline war on Londons violent moped gangs. Extraordinary dashcam footage shows police pursuit drivers ramming fleeing moped thugs, sending them sprawling in the road. Police said the new strategy of ending pursuits with what the Met calls tactical contact was now in common use across London. The Met say the tactics are being used by specially trained Skorpion drivers and are designed to quickly end pursuits before riders or the public are injured. Scotland Yard released the footage today with a warning to moped thugs that officers will pursue them even if they discard their helmets or ride dangerously. In the past police have abandoned chases in some cases because officers feared they could be prosecuted if riders are injured or die. Todays dashcam images show fleeing moped riders being hit from behind by police drivers and sent tumbling over the bonnet of police cars or into the road. Some are clearly shocked by what has happened. Tactical contact: dashcam footage shows a thug sent tumbling over the bonnet of a police car Senior officers admit some riders have been injured in the incidents and these cases have been referred to the police watchdog. Police say it is just one of a range of new measures, called Operation Venice, to tackle gangs who steal mopeds and use them to rob pedestrians of phones and other valuables. Victims have included money expert Martin Lewis and comedian Michael McIntyre, robbed by two men on a moped while parked outside his childrens school. A suspect is knocked into the road There have been 2,000 swoops in Operation Venice so far, leading to 736 arrests. Figures this year showed the number of offences by criminals on mopeds had increased 30-fold in five years in London. Some riders have stolen up to 30 phones in an hour. In May two teenage robbers dubbed 21st century highwaymen were each jailed for more than 20 years after stabbing charity worker Abdul Samad to death in Paddington to get his iPhone. Officers close in on fleeing moped robbers Police say a combination of tactics which also include using scrambler bikes, DNA sprays and stinger devices to deflate tyres is reducing moped crime. Figures show 12,419 moped-related offences from January to October, compared with 19,455 in the same period last year, down 44 per cent. A handyman who discovered two suspected bombs while clearing out a London flat has told of the terrifying experience, telling friends I could have been a goner. John Brooks, 55, said he initially thought the devices were fireworks when he found them in a kitchen cupboard at a home in Harlesden, north-west London. It comes after Scotland Yard launched a terror probe when suspected pipe bombs were recovered from an unoccupied property in Craven Park, on Wednesday morning. A friend of Mr Brooks told the Sun: He was just tidying up, cleaning and giving the place a lick of paint for the next tenant. At first he thought they were bangers, so thought nothing much of it. Once he realised who had built them, he felt very uneasy and realised that if they had gone off he'd have been killed. He said Mr Brooks told him: "I could've been a goner." A forensics tent outside the house in Harlesden on Wednesday afternoon Met Police yesterday said a 48-year-old man was arrested in connection to the devices at a residential address in north London on Thursday morning. He was further arrested for possession of Class A and Class B drugs drugs, and was bailed to a date in late December. Detectives do not believe he has links to any terrorist organisations or that there are any ongoing public safety issues, Scotland Yard said. A spokesman said: "At this early stage of the investigation, detectives do not believe that the arrested man has links to any terrorist organisations, or that there are any ongoing public safety issues." A forensics tent set up in the driveway of the house in Harlesden The IEDs were removed from the flat by police on Wednesday and are now undergoing forensic examination. P olice have launched a manhunt after a Nando's waitress was shot in the head with a pellet gun by a teenage customer in central London. Officers were called to the popular chicken chain in Cardinal Walk, Victoria, at around 12.10pm on Tuesday, November 13 to reports of an altercation between the worker and a group of customers. A young man, believed to be 16, who was part of the group pointed a BB gun at the woman's head as they were leaving. He shot a pellet at close range, hitting her forehead. The waitress was not seriously injured. The suspect and the group he was with fled the scene. He is described as being a black male, aged around 16, and wearing a black puffer-style jacket with a furry hood. He was also wearing a hooded jumper with Adidas tracksuit bottoms, a black backpack with a Nike logo and glasses. There have been no arrests and enquiries continue. Detective Constable Kathryn Waite, of Westminster CID, said: "Those involved may have thought this to be a prank and found it funny, but it left the victim shaken and upset. "We would urge anybody who was in the restaurant or around the local area at that time, who saw what happened or recalls seeing this group to get in touch." A diamond-encrusted tiara said to be worth millions has been stolen by thieves who smashed through an armoured glass display case during a heist in Nottinghamshire. Burglars forced their way into the Portland Collection Gallery in Worksop on Tuesday night and shattered the glass display holding one of Britains greatest tiaras and a diamond brooch. The Portland Tiara was commissioned by the Duke of Portland for his wife Winifred to wear to the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902 and experts say it could be worth millions. According to Richard Edgcumbe, Curator of Jewellery at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the tiara is recognised as a jewel of the supreme importance. The Portland Tiara is one of the great historic tiaras of Great Britain," Mr Edgcumbe added. Thieves also stole a brooch during the heist / Nottinghamshire Police The centre-piece of the tiara is the Portland Diamond, which dates from the 19th century. It is flanked by two diamond drops and other pendant diamonds, all set in gold and silver. The burglars also stole a diamond brooch, composed of diamond clusters, which the Duchess of Portland wore when she was one of four pall-bearers at Queen Alexandras anointing. Nottinghamshire Police say they believe a silver Audi S5 was involved in the heist. Officers say the car was found abandoned and burnt out in Cross Lane, Blidworth, about an hour and a half after the jewels were stolen from The Welbeck Estate. The gallery is thought to have been broken into between 9.45pm and 10pm on Friday. "We're pursuing a number of lines of enquiry but we believe there are people out there who may have crucial information that could help with our investigation, a police spokesman said. James Lewis from Bamford auctioneers in Derby told the BBC that the tiara has been designed in a period when money was no object. He said: It could be worth millions, but it is such a well-known piece it cant come up for public sale. The most horrendous thought is it could be something called a breaker, where the diamonds are taken out and sold individually. A spokesman for The Welbeck Estate said: We are deeply saddened about the robbery which took place Tuesday 20th November 2018 on the Welbeck Estate. The Estate continues to support Nottinghamshire Police with their enquiries and until further notice The Portland Collection will remain closed. C hilling footage shows the Salisbury nerve agent suspects walking near Sergei Skripals home just prior to when poison was placed on his door handle, police have said. The CCTV, one of three videos released by detectives, shows the two men walking past a petrol station in the vicinity of the ex-spys address in Salisbury on March 4. In separate footage, the pair can be seen smiling and taking photos as they walk around the city before they return to the train station later that night. Dean Haydon, senior national co-ordinator for counter-terrorism policing, said the footage showed the pair smiling and "looking pleased with themselves". CCTV shows the suspects near Mr Skripal's home just prior to when police believe the nerve agent was placed on the ex-spy's door handle / Metropolitan Police Detectives released the footage as part of their appeal and shared images of a model of the counterfeit Nina Ricci perfume bottle that contained the nerve agent. It comes as the police officer poisoned with Novichok after the attack on Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia told how he was left petrified by the incident. Suspects: The pair walk around the city smiling and taking photos / PA In his first interview since the incident, Det Sgt Nick Bailey told the BBC: "Everything the kids owned, we lost all that, the cars, we lost everything." DS Bailey was left seriously ill in hospital after being one of the first on the scene on the night of the attack in Wiltshire. He came into contact with the nerve agent after being sent to the Skripals' home. A model of the counterfeit Nina Ricci perfume bottle / PA The officer said he knew shortly afterwards that something was very wrong when his "pupils were like pin pricks" and he became "quite sweaty and hot," he told the programme. He said: "I didn't understand how it had happened, scared because it's the fear of the unknown because it's such a dangerous thing to have in your system. Knowing how the other two (the Skripals) were or how badly they'd been affected by it, I was petrified. TODO: define component type brightcove Dawn Sturgess, 44, who was later exposed to the same nerve agent after handling a contaminated perfume dispenser, died in July. Her partner Charlie Rowley was discharged from hospital, three weeks after being exposed to the nerve agent. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Dean Haydon told Panorama that "a significant amount" of Novichok was found. Novichok suspects Alexander Petrov (left) and Ruslan Boshirov / PA When asked how many people it could have killed, he said: "It's difficult to say, you know, possibly into the thousands. The amount that was in the bottle and the way it was applied to the Skripals' home address was completely reckless." Prime Minister Theresa May told MPs on September 5 that two Russian nationals were suspected of travelling to the UK to try and murder Mr Skripal with Novichok. Evidence gathered by intelligence agencies led the Government to conclude the men were officers from the Russian military intelligence service, also known as the GRU. T his is the terrifying moment a gunman leapt from a car and opened fire in a north London street leaving two innocent bystanders injured. Shocking footage released by the Met shows two men pulling up in a car on the Peabody Estate, Islington, before one of them jumps out and fires a gun. The CCTV footage appears to show a nearby bystander, a man in shorts, falling to the floor in terror as the gunman chased after another man, who was his intended target. A female bystander was also injured in the melee. Two innocent bystanders were injured after a gunman opened fire in a north London street Scotland Yard said a 34-year-old woman and a 40-year-old man were found with minor injuries after the gunman left the car and fired several shots at another man on Greenman Road. Officers with firearms were called to Essex Road earlier this year, on September 20, at about 9.30pm, and found two members of the public injured. The shocking attack happened in September, police said / Metropolitan Police Police said the target escaped unharmed but two bystanders were injured. The CCTV footage showed the suspect run back to the car before the vehicle races off towards Popham Street. No arrests have been made in connection with the shooting, police said. Detective Constable Kerry Cooper, of the Trident and Area Crime Command, is leading the investigation. She said: "We need anyone who may have information about the gunman or driver of this vehicle to contact us as soon as possible." Anyone with information should contact police on 101 quoting CAD 8010/20 Sept, or tweet @MetCC. L ondon pupils mingled with Hollywood stars at a party to celebrate the success of our Learn to Live campaign. Children from the four schools at the heart of the campaign spent time with actresses Carey Mulligan and Vanessa Kirby before Evening Standard and Independent owner Evgeny Lebedev invited them on a tour of the newsrooms. Through Learn to Live, run with the charity War Child, the youngsters have spent months corresponding with children affected by war in Jordan, Iraq and the Central African Republic. Some fled Syria, others are living in camps after enduring life under so-called Islamic State or through civil war. All the children struggle to get a full education or receive the mental health support they need. Thanks to our twinning programme the children in London and abroad have exchanged homemade games, video messages, letters and details of their lives to form firm friendships. They have also affected real change by writing more than 700 letters to the Prime Minister to demand increased funding to support their new friends. This week the Government announced an 11 million boost for mental health support for children affected by war around the world. More than 500 British schools have joined the campaign to link with schools in war zones and deprived areas. Mr Lebedev said: Newspapers can be a great force for good, and I am so proud to see how the Learn to Live campaign has demonstrated that. Not only has it successfully made the Government focus on the issue of children in combat zones and helped the work of a great charity in War Child but it has also linked children across London, like the ones here today, with kids the same age abroad who have experienced the realities of war first hand. The way they have embraced each other, and learned that they are all the same but just living in different circumstances, is extremely moving. Proud: actresses Carey Mulligan, left, and Vanessa Kirby, and Evening Standard proprietor Evgeny Lebedev hold up images of children affected by war as they meet pupils from the schools at the heart of our campaign / Jeremy Selwyn War Child Global Ambassador Mulligan said yesterday: The campaign has had tangible results, which is incredible. The UK government has given us extra funding, but its more than that. "Its put these stories into peoples lives, particularly forgotten conflicts They have come back to the fore by people reading about them on the Tube every day. My favourite part of today was speaking to the girls from Hornsey [School for Girls]. "One girl, Harriet, said, These girls in Syria are just like us, and that was the point of this whole campaign. Honey Hargreaves, 13, a pupil at Hornsey, said: I think we have achieved so much and we are going to carry on sending them videos. Classmate Lola Langham, 13, added: When we started off the project none of us really knew what to expect, and we have learned how far the girls [Syrian refugees living in Zaatari camp in Jordan] have come. A rising star of Londons urban music scene has urged young people not to follow the crowd into violence, warning: You die by yourself. Ms Banks, 24, delivered the hard-hitting message as she led an anti-bullying workshop aimed at guiding young people away from the clutches of gangs. The rapper, who grew up on the Brandon estate in Camberwell, said music had helped her avoid the wrong path. She now counts stars such as Nicki Minaj among her fans. She told the Evening Standard: Music saved me. I was caught up on a rough estate, with loads of guys and other not so nice things happening. I could have definitely gone down that wrong path. It could have been anything from the people I was with, to the drugs. The Brandon Estate has been blighted by violent crime. This year alone, three young drill rappers Latwaan Griffiths, 18, Sidique Kamara, 23, and Rhyhiem Barton, 17 were killed in the area around the estate. Ms Banks warned teenager: Dont follow the crowd because when you die, its sad, but you die by yourself, she said. Really value your life because youre important. Realise that you have a lot to lose. So instead, go for your goals and make your life worth living. She was speaking at the Hear My Voice workshop at a Fashion Meets Music pop-up in Croydons Centrale shopping centre with schoolchildren from across south and east London. Pop star Ed Sheerans cousin Jethro Alonestar Sheeran warned of the dangers teenagers face as they are under pressure and influence from older people grooming them. He said: When you have someone older telling you what to do, its tough to get out. What are you going to say? Say no? You would get dissed or beaten. Its scary. The event was supported by the A-Star Foundation, a charity connecting young people with industry professionals and mentors. F rustrated commuters blasted environmental activists after "swarming" protests by the climate change action group Extinction Rebellion stretched into a third straight day. A small group of protestors once again blocked rush-hour traffic for seven minutes at West Cromwell Road, Tower Hill, Elephant and Castle and Victoria Street. The activists, who have been turning out every day since Wednesday, wrote on their Twitter feed: "We sincerely apologise to anyone whose journey is affected by #ExtinctionRebellion #climateaction. "Were trying to prevent a far greater harm to all our childrens futures... Please switch off your engines while stationary." The group said it has no choice but to hold the demonstrations to draw attention to Government inaction on pollution levels and climate change. It tweeted links to data showing rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in 2017. Up to 6,000 people turned out last Saturday to support a previous Extinction Rebellion climate protest / EPA Transport for London warned motorists of "short traffic holds" around the protest spots as the activists stand in the road. Some commuters took the news well, with one writing: "I think we can live on with that." However others were furious at the inconvenience, venting their anger on Twitter. "The police need to be more proactive with these pests," said one man. Another wrote that the protestors were "numpties", asking: "So, holding & annoying up the general public as they go about their daily business is the way to bring change?" Other views on social media were mixed. "I support #ExtinctionRebellion but wish theyd mix up the protest location," said one man. "I live on the Walworth Road - its a transport black hole - the only way we can get out of Camberwell is by bus, which has been impossible two days on the trot." Another person called it "well planned" with a strong police presence to "make sure everyone stays safe". The blockades follow protests last Saturday that saw 82 people arrested when demonstrators shut Southwark, Blackfriars, Waterloo, Westminster and Lambeth bridges. Most of them were detained for breaches of the Highways Act and all of those arrested have been released under investigation. Organisers said as many as 6,000 people joined the march. This is the second round of the protests, with "non-violent" actions set to culminate on Saturday with a "Rebellion 2" demonstration. Activists protest Government inaction on climate change last Saturday / EPA The campaign group warns that the planet is facing an "ecological emergency" and wants government action to reduce carbon emissions. I mages of cheeseburgers, sugary drinks, chocolate bars and salted nuts are to be banned from the Tube and bus stops in a crackdown on junk food advertising. Mayor Sadiq Khan said adverts promoting unhealthy food aimed at children would not be allowed across the Transport for London network from February 25. The move was welcomed by anti-obesity campaigners including TV chefs Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall . But critics said a paternalistic ban was unlikely to work. Almost 38 per cent of London children aged 10 and 11 are overweight or obese more than any other European city. Almost 7,000 UK children and young adults have type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity. Adverts promoting unhealthy food aimed at children will be banned across the Transport for London network from February 25 / Alamy Stock Photo Mr Khan said: Child obesity is putting the lives of young Londoners at risk and placing huge pressure on our already strained health service. Advertising plays a huge part in the choices we make, whether we realise it or not, and Londoners have shown overwhelming support for a ban on adverts for junk food and drink on our transport network. City Hall said 82 per cent of the 1,500 responses to its consultation supported a ban. A YouGov poll of 1,000 Londoners found 80 per cent supportive or neutral. About 20 million of TfLs 147 million annual advertising income is from food and drink adverts. Of this, 13 million of adverts would fall foul of the new rules. The Mayor hopes the income will be replaced by different kinds of adverts. Professor Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer for England, said the ban was an important step in the right direction. Jamie Oliver called it an amazing move, while Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall said he was delighted, adding: This is a real victory for veg. A dog walker was rescued from the Thames after she was trapped trying to save her four-month-old puppy. Sam Swinscoe, 46, was stranded in waist-high water after climbing in to reach her pet, Monty, who had fallen from the riverside path in Hammersmith. The Jack Russell mix, rescued two months ago from Battersea Dogs Home, was chasing a seagull when he tumbled over a low wall. The mother-of-two, who had been walking Monty with a friend, told the Standard: He fell probably about 12ft straight into the Thames. I was in sheer disbelief. Luckily the tide was half in, so he fell into water. He was just swimming around in the Thames, still trying to get to the seagull. I didnt really have a choice. I didnt really think about it. I took my jumper off, I took my jacket off, and climbed over. Ms Swinscoe descended a ladder before jumping the last metre into the water and finding her footing on a submerged concrete platform. Puppy Monty who fell in the river After swimming back towards his owner, Monty was beautifully airlifted onto the river bank by onlookers with the help of a passing dog walkers extendable lead, Ms Swinscoe said. But she was trapped because she could not reach the ladder. A lifeboat crew from Chiswick RNLI then pulled her to safety as a crowd looked on cheering. A witness said the first words she uttered as she was helped into the boat were: This is going to make my friend late for yoga. Ms Swinscoe believes she was in the water for up to 20 minutes, but added: I have no recollection, I had so much adrenaline going through my veins. I dont remember being cold in the water at all. At the time I jumped in, the only thing I was thinking about was my dog. She praised the RNLI rescuers as beyond fantastic. As for Monty she said: He had a great time, he didnt notice anything. Her rescue on Monday morning came just over a week after the RNLI saved another dog this time a Chihuahua along with its owner from the rising tide again in Hammersmith. The pair got stuck after the owner climbed 15ft down the muddy bank to get the dog. The latest incident was the ninth dog-related rescue the Chiswick RNLI crew has been called to this year. Helmsman Glen Monroe said: We learnt that the womans friend had immediately called London coastguard on 999. Her swift action significantly reduced the time it took for us to reach the casualty. Brandon Johnson was pronounced dead at 6:50 p.m. after being struck by two vehicles near mile marker 125 in Troy Township, police said. F ormer Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab struck a blow to Theresa Mays Brexit blueprint today by branding it worse than staying in the European Union. If you just presented me terms, this deal or EU membership... yes, I think this would be even worse than that, he told Radio 4s Today programme. His attack came as the Prime Minister embarked on a campaign to reach out to voters beyond Westminster in the hope of rescuing a deal that is under fire from MPs on all sides of the Commons. No 10 sources said she would travel to all parts of the country setting out the benefits of a deal that takes back control of our money, borders and laws and is good for jobs and security. Dominic Raab (Will Oliver/EPA) / EPA Mr Raab, a committed Brexiteer who led the department responsible for exiting the EU until his resignation last week, stressed that he was not advocating staying in the EU. But he said global trade opportunities had been traded away for a short term gain of a deal in which we would effectively be bound by the same rules but without the control or voice over them. The PM sips water during a press conference in Downing Street / AP Tory Eurosceptics were concerned that the political declaration agreed yesterday did not contain any commitment to frictionless trade, which was a key plank of Mrs Mays original proposals at Chequers. Defending the deal, Education Secretary Damian Hinds admitted the term had been rejected from the deal by the EU but it contained a clear aim of reducing border delays to a minimum. A simple word search is not going to find that word frictionless, he said. What it does say is that we want trade to be as close as possible. TODO: define component type apester Mr Hinds predicted support for Mrs Mays plans would grow in Parliament as MPs considered alternatives such as cancelling Brexit or crashing out with no deal. If we werent to pass this deal, I think it becomes rather unpredictable what happens next. There is a risk on the one hand beyond that of no Brexit at all and there are people trying to thwart Brexit and there is also a risk of no deal. Neither of those two things are attractive. This is why I believe this deal, which is a strong deal, will gain more and more traction. Labour MP Anna Turley seized on Mr Raabs verdict and called for another referendum, saying: Even Dominic Raab, the guy who negotiated this half-baked deal, admits it isnt as good as the one weve already got inside the EU. The 585-page, legally-binding withdrawal deal, which includes a 39 billion divorce payment to the EU, and a non-binding political declaration setting out future trade and co-operation aims, is due to be formally adopted by the 27 other EU states on Sunday. Spanish premier Pedro Sanchez has demanded changes to give Spain a veto over anything affecting Gibraltar but is likely to be outvoted by other EU states. Treasury minister Mel Stride told Newsnight: We are not going to compromise on the sovereignty issue. A nyone expecting 11th-hour fireworks at the big Brexit summit on Sunday is in for disappointment. There might be declarations, but the legal text is sealed, said a senior EU diplomat. Reopening the text, the bloc fears, would risk renewing demands from Spain on Gibraltar, France on fisheries and east European countries on migration. Sure, we can open it again, but then we would have to put in Gibraltar. I mean, I dont give a shit about Gibraltar, but Spain is not backing down, said the diplomat. The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier and EU Council President Donald Tusk / AP The biggest EU concession was agreeing to end unfettered migration, but the bloc has made sure that there will be consequences for UK access to EU markets. Clearly, there will be no frictionless trade, an EU official said. For goods, youre just a third country. TODO: define component type apester And EU deputy chief negotiator Sabine Weyand tweeted: We need an EU-UK fisheries agreement that covers both access to waters and market access, despite Theresa May insisting in the Commons that UK waters will not be part of any market access trade-off. Mrs May will meet Jean-Claude Juncker again tomorrow, but a Commission spokesman warned reporters: Do not expect any apocalyptic things to happen. The only alternative the bloc is offering to the 585-page exit treaty, and the 26-page political declaration on future EU-UK ties, is no-deal. S pain's Prime Minister has threatened to try to derail and "veto Brexit" if last-minute changes are not made to Theresa May's deal over Gibraltar. EU officials are meeting to finalise details of the Brexit treaty on Friday but Pedro Sanchez called for changes to Britain's deal. Mr Sanchezs intervention over the disputed territory of Gibraltar remains a major obstacle to Mrs Mays deal being rubber-stamped at Sundays special summit of EU leaders. Mrs May said she spoke to Mr Sanchez on Wednesday night and was "confident that we'll be able to agree a deal that delivers for the whole UK family, including Gibraltar". Opposition: Pedro Sanchez / Desmond Boylan/AP But in a late-night tweet on Thursday, Mr Sanchez said: "After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away. Theresa May is facing a further obstacle to her Brexit deal as Spain protested on the future of Gibraltar / Will Oliver/EPA "My government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit." A refusal to co-operate will sour the atmosphere at Sundays vital summit where leaders of the 27 remaining EU members were aiming for consensus. Theresa May makes a statement outside 10, Downing Street on Thursday / Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP Mr Sanchez cannot "veto Brexit" or the Withdrawal Agreement, but a refusal to co-operate will sour the atmosphere at a summit where leaders of the 27 remaining EU members were aiming for consensus. Spain maintains a claim to Gibraltar, which was ceded to Britain under the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. Spanish ministers want to ensure future EU talks with the UK do not cover Gibraltar. However, Mrs May has remained resolute and told MPs, in response to a backbench question, that "Gibraltar is covered by our exit negotiations". Countdown to Brexit: 127 days until Britain leaves the EU Mrs May declared that the final agreement on Brexit is "within our grasp" after a draft political declaration on the future relationship between the UK and EU was agreed in principle on Thursday. But she endured a bruising session in the House of Commons as critics lined up to condemn both the divorce deal contained in the Withdrawal Agreement, as well as the aspirations for a close future relationship in the Political Declaration. The scale of the challenge Mrs May faces at Westminster was underlined in response to the latest move towards a final deal. Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson urged her to "junk" her backstop plan for keeping the Irish border open, which he said "makes a nonsense of Brexit". Brexit-backing ex-Cabinet minister Priti Patel branded the deal "a costly surrender by the UK Government". Home Secretary Sajid Javid acknowledged the Government had to work harder to sell the deal to Brexiteer MPs such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has led a so-far ineffective campaign to oust Mrs May. TODO: define component type apester "We've all got a job to do over the coming days and weeks, to do a better job of communicating to colleagues - whether it's Jacob or anyone else - what the deal is and what it isn't, and try to listen to their concerns and see what can be done to allay some of them," Mr Javid told The House magazine. Mrs May was also left in little doubt that she will not be able to count on the votes of the 10 DUP MPs. "The Government needs to recognise that there is no enthusiasm for the withdrawal agreement across all sides of the House of Commons," the party's Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson said, adding it was "time to work for a better deal". Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told the Commons that Mrs May had returned from Brussels with "26 pages of waffle". Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer indicated Labour would vote down Mrs May's deal but could back a compromise involving a permanent customs union - something she has rejected. Asked what would be required to secure Labour support, Sir Keir told BBC's Newsnight: "A comprehensive, permanent customs union that protects manufacturing and gives us a say in trade policy with the EU. " He said Mrs May had repeatedly ruled out such an approach but "if she reflects between now and the vote we will look at what she brings back" however the customs concession "wouldn't be the only thing" sought by Labour. The Prime Minister said the joint UK/EU declaration on the future relationship is "the right plan for the UK". The text calls for an "ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership" between the EU and the UK in areas like trade, security and defence, possibly in the form of a Ukraine-style Association Agreement. It confirms the UK's right to develop an independent trade policy and end the free movement of EU nationals and leaves open the possibility of using technological solutions to keep the Irish border open after Brexit. But elements which infuriated Brexiteers included: Plans for a "free trade area, combining deep regulatory and customs co-operation", building and improving on the "single customs territory" provided for in the withdrawal agreement; Provisions to ensure a "level playing field" on business competition, which could cover areas including state aid, workplace and environmental protections, climate change laws and tax; A role for the European Court of Justice in providing "binding" rulings on the interpretation of EU law in any disputes between the two sides. Aides said that Mrs May received "strong support" from Cabinet ministers in a conference before addressing the Commons. Andrea Leadsom, the Commons leader, has also urged MPs to back Mrs May's deal - as the EU wouldn't be willing to "start all over again". She said: "Once the deal is agreed it will be put to Parliament and MPs will have the decision on whether to back it or reject it. "But people should not be under any illusion the EU would be prepared to start all over again and negotiate a different deal. A Brexit shop has opened in south-east London to highlight alleged post-EU price rises in a Black Friday stunt. The Costupper store in Peckham High Street has been opened by the Peoples Vote campaign, which claims the average household will be paying 546 more per year for goods due to a fall in sterling. Shelves have been stacked with parody items including Green Giant Prices sweetcorn and I Cant Believe the Price of this Butter. The campaigners also claim products will be of a poorer quality post-Brexit, meaning it has "stocked" items such as hormone injected beef and wilted flowers. Activists welcome shoppers to the 'Costupper Brexit Minimart' in Peckham on Friday / AFP/Getty Images Peoples Vote campaigner John Stalliday, who is running the pop-up shop on Friday and Saturday, told the Standard: Things like hormone injected beef, wilted flowers because of long customs queues and empty drug shelves are all things we may find in our shops after Brexit. Over-priced and scarce produce is seen in the 'Costupper Brexit Minimart' / AFP/Getty Images On Black Friday, people are getting really good deals. We aim to highlight how Brexit is going to be a really bad deal for this country. This shop shows how Brexit is going to hit people. Activists perform a mock opening of the post-Brexit inspired pop-up shop on Friday / AFP/Getty Images He clarified: We are not selling anything. Its something for people to come and have a look at. Lots of people have walked in thinking its a real shop, before having a laugh as they walk around. The Peoples Vote campaign continues to push for a second referendum on Brexit as Theresa May heads to Brussels for key talks with EU leaders this weekend. A nimal rights activists have been mocked for asking the 1,000-year-old village of Wool to change its name to Vegan Wool. The Dorset village, the name of which derives from the ancient word for well, has faced calls from PETA to change its name in an animal friendly update. The vegan organisation wrote to Wools parish council asking for the change to be made. Elisa Allen, director of PETA, said the change would put Wool in the spotlight and promote kindness to sheep. She said wool stolen from a sheep is a product of extreme cruelty and if it is done incorrectly it can leave sheep with large, bloody wounds. She wrote: With a simple name change, your village can take a stand against this cruelty and remind everyone that its easy to stay warm and be warm-hearted to sheep by choosing vegan wool and other animal-free materials. The letter was posted by the parish council on Facebook to get feedback from residents and has been ridiculed. Mags Snook wrote: I wonder whether Woolston, a suburb in Southampton has also had this hassleor Lambeth, or Woolwich. Jayne Merchant wrote: The name wool should remain as it is, the idea of renaming the village is utterly ridiculous. The most idiotic idea I have come across in a long time. And Samantha Peters wrote: Im vegan, but thats bonkers. The parish council said it would share peoples comments with councillors, who will make a decision and respond to the letter. In a statement, Dorset County Council said: In light of the Wool they wont they debate..... A rlene Foster has warned that the DUP may revisit the confidence and supply deal propping up the Tory administration if Theresa Mays Brexit deal has passed. The DUP leader reiterated the partys opposition to the Brexit deal as it currently stands, telling Mrs May to stop wasting time and seek a better one, while warning of the consequences if she did not. Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster, Ms Foster said: "If she is successful in parliament, and there is no evidence she is going to be, then of course we are going to revisit the confidence and supply agreement. That agreement was about giving national stability and delivering on Brexit. "But we're not there yet, and we're not going to jump ahead until we see what happens in parliament." The draft withdrawal treaty contains a 'backstop' provision that could ultimately align Northern Ireland more closely with the EU than the rest of the United Kingdom. Theresa May is heading back to Brussels this weekend for a summit / Reuters Ms Foster urged the government to ditch the backstop. Under the terms of a 1998 agreement that largely ended years of violence between Irish republicans and pro-British unionists, border posts were removed and the province was given a power-sharing structure where both communities were represented. Ms Foster's pro-British unionist party fears that the backstop provision, if implemented, could one day threaten the province's place in the UK altogether. She had already urged Mrs May to ditch the 'backstop', which negotiators had grappled with for months. She added that the draft political declaration that followed, on future relations, had not changed the DUP's opposition. Mrs May has responded by telling her critics that Britain will not get a better deal with the EU if it does not take this one. But Foster disagreed, saying the DUP did not accept that the current choice was a binary one between May's deal and a 'no deal' where Britain would leave the bloc on March 29 without an agreement to mitigate economic and legal disruption. Mrs May's finance minister Philip Hammond, who met Ms Foster in Northern Ireland on Friday, said May had gone a long way in the Brexit negotiations to gain assurances that the deal would in no way threaten Northern Ireland's place in the UK. A n asylum seeker who claimed to be a 15-year-old schoolboy is almost certainly an adult, an official inquiry has concluded. The 6ft 1in pupil, who studied for six weeks at Stoke High School in Ipswich, has been assessed as being aged over 18 and faces being deported if his asylum claim is refused. The man was suspended after pupils and parents threatened a boycott when images appeared online showing him with a beard and swigging a beer. One student posted a picture of him in uniform with the message: Hows there a 30-year-old man in our maths class? Another claimed he confessed to being a married father-of-two. A Home Office spokesman said: We are fully committed to safeguarding children and are looking into the circumstances of this case to understand how it was handled. Lewis Forte, whose step-daughter goes to the school, had previously told the BBC he had raised concerns but was shut down by a teacher. He said: "I went to the school to raise concerns about it and the teacher tried to shut me down by saying all his documents were present and correct which they probably were." He said he is "very sorry" if the pupil is a child but added "this is something else". Another worried parent, who did not want to be named, told the East Anglican Daily Times: This is extremely concerning. "He has told students he has had to lie to get into high school to complete his GCSEs. A spokeswoman for the school has said it was a matter for the Home Office and that it could not comment further on individual cases. The Home Office said that when there is doubt about an individuals claim to be a child, the person is referred to a local authoritys social services department for a case law-compliant age assessment. There are three ways a person could be officially deemed an adult. Firstly, two authorised officers would need to separately determine that their physical appearance very strongly suggests they are significantly over 18. Alternatively, if there is credible documentary evidence of their adulthood, they would be judged similarly. Local authorities can also complete a special assessment known as Merton-compliant and which is then adopted by the Home Office. E ight suspected Iranian migrants in a dinghy have been rescued off the coast near Dover this morning. The Border Force confirmed was called at about 7.15am by the coastguard to deal with the boat after it was spotted in the English Channel. The eight men are now in the custody of immigration officials. It comes after 14 people also claiming to be Iranian were intercepted in two dinghies off the Kent coast in the early hours of Thursday. Dover MP Charlie Elphicke said it was "very concerning that yet more suspected migrants have been picked up". "The French and UK Home Office must do more to put a stop to these dangerous crossings," he added. More than 100 suspected Iranian migrants have reportedly now crossed the Channel so far this month. A Home Office spokesman said: Border Force was contacted by HM Coastguard, Friday November 23 at around 7.15am. A Border Force coastal patrol vessel was deployed and intercepted a dinghy off the Kent coast with eight people on board. The dinghy and those on board were brought into Dover where they were met by Border Force officers. The group consisted of eight men all of whom presented themselves as Iranian. On arrival all eight individuals were checked by ambulance staff but were found to be medically well. P rince Charles has hinted that the name of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's first child could be Kylie or Shane. The Prince of Wales joked that the names Kylie and Shane were on the table for the Duke and Duchess of Sussexs first child who is due in the spring. Speaking at a reception celebrating the centenary of Australia House, in London, Charles said: Incidentally ladies and gentlemen my son Harry tells me that during their recent tour of Australia, he and his wife were offered countless thoughtful suggestions for the naming of their forthcoming baby. "Just between us, I suspect that Kylie and Shane may possibly make the shortlist," he said. "But ladies and gentlemen I would not hold your breath for Edna or Les." Prince Charles speaks to guests as he visits Australia House / AP Comedian Barry Humphries, who is known for his stage and television alter egos of Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson, was among the guests. Harry and Meghan are expecting their first child in the spring with anticipation building over the gender of the child and the name that will be chosen. Charles, who recently turned 70, was accompanied to the event with his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall Camilla, and praised Australia during his speech. Harry and Meghan at the Sydney Opera House: In pictures 1 /60 Harry and Meghan at the Sydney Opera House: In pictures The Duke and Duchess of Sussex arrive at the Sydney Opera House Getty Images The Duchess of Sussex stands in the grounds of Admiralty House in Sydney, with a view of the Sydney Opera House PA The couple were met by scores of people EPA Meghan greets crowds Getty Images Members of the public gathered PA The couple watched a performance in the Sydney Opera House PA It is the couple's first public appearance since announcing they were expecting a baby PA Their tour will be 16 days long Getty Images Prince Harry hugs 98-year old war widow Daphne Dunn AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry gestures to members of the public outside the Opera House in Sydney AP The couple met members of the public Getty Images Royal fans were caught wearing face masks EPA Prince Harry and Meghan shake hands with the public EPA Meghan meets with people outside the Opera House in Sydney AFP/Getty Images Prince Harryand Meghan meet members of the public outside the Opera House AP The couple waved at the large crowd who gathered to see them EPA Getty Images Well-wishers wait to greet Britain's Prince Harry and his wife Meghan AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry is photographed with a member of the public outside the Opera House AP Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, smiles as she meets with people outside the Sydneys iconic Opera House AFP/Getty Images Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex attend a rehearsal by the Bangarra Dance Company inside the Sydney Opera House Reuters Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex meet members of the public AP Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex meet 98 year old Daphne Dunne Getty Images Harry and Meghan will take part in 76 engagements in Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand PA AP Members of the public try and catch a glimpse of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex PA PA Australia's New South Wale premier Gladys Berejiklian receives Britain's Prince Harry and his wife Meghan AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex walk down the steps at the Sydney Opera House Getty Images Prince Harry and Meghan have made their first appearances since announcing they are expecting a baby AFP/Getty Images Getty Images Getty Images Getty Images EPA Getty Images Getty Images Getty Images AFP/Getty Images EPA EPA AP AP AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images AP AP AP AP AP Prince Harry and wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex walk during a visit at the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, REUTERS AFP/Getty Images AP AFP/Getty Images Police snipers are seen on the Sydney Opera House as they prepare for the arrival of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan Getty Images PA AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images PA PA He said he had a deep and abiding" affection for Australia and spoke of his "pride in seeing it go from strength to strength" both at home and on the world stage. The Prince of Wales praised Australia for its self-deprecating sense of humour and as a nation which he said stands by friends and strangers in times of trouble. Activist Matt Harrington said Friday that protestors want the police officer, whose name has not been released, to be fired and charged and for the mayor and police chief of Midlothian to step down for allegedly trying to cover-up the incident. A gunman was shot dead by police after opening fire on terrified Black Friday shoppers and injuring two people at an Alabama shopping centre. Shoppers, who were making the most of the early Black Friday sales, fled in terror after a gunman fired shots at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover on Thursday night. Police said a fight broke out between the gunman and an 18-year-old in the mall. The gunman then opened fire, shooting the teen and an innocent 12-year-old girl who was caught up in the crossfire. Police at the scene of a shooting at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, Alabama / WBRC An officer then confronted the gunman and shot him dead, police said. The mall, which was open late because of Thanksgiving, was packed with shoppers making the most of the early Black Friday sales. The 18-year-old was taken to hospital in a serious condition. The 12-year-old girl was also taken to hospital and her condition is not immediately known, although it has been confirmed she is "alert and talking". A spokesman for the mall said: "We are devastated by the incident that happened tonight in our shopping center. We are working closely with the Hoover Police Department. While there is no current danger to our community, we will remain closed until further notice." Speaking to local reporters, an officer said: "It's a sad day in Hoover tonight. Obviously, everybody has been enjoying their Thanksgiving meals during the day [and] shoppers have come out to have a good time and spend time out here." Extra officers were on duty for Black Friday / 6WBRC He added: "Unfortunately this took place tonight, here. I'm very, very proud of the Hoover Police officers who were on the scene. Thank God we had the officers very, very close." Extra police officers were working in the mall, he confirmed, in anticipation of big crowds for Black Friday. Witnesses to the shooting reported hearing two separate rings of gunfire in the shopping centre. Speaking to local news channel, 6WBRC, one witness said: "Right as I was about to pay, I heard this bang, and you think 'OK, it's probably not', and then I heard bang bang and then it was terrifying. "Everybody started screaming and running as far away as they could. I ran towards the servant's exit to get in the car with a friend of mine and it was just gridlock. "It was very scary." T he New Zealand All Blacks team will wear rainbow laces during this weekends match in solidarity with former Wales International Gareth Thomas, who was the victim of a homophobic attack. The former Wales captain, who came out as gay in 2009, was physically attacked in Cardiff city centre by a 16-year-old in what police have confirmed as a hate-crime. The 44-year-old revealed he was attacked in a video posted to social media the following day, thanking police and the local community for their support. The All Blacks team announced on their social media that they would be wearing rainbow laces during their test against Italy on Saturday. A tweet from the team said: We stand with Gareth Thomas. Rugby is a sport for all and we will show our solidarity by wearing rainbow laces in our clash with Italy this weekend. Thomas replied to the team saying: I wish I could put into words what this means. Serge Simon, vice president of the French Rugby association said: All of French Rugby is with you regarding the homophobic molestation youve been a victim of. To show our support, the French rugby players will wear a rainbow lace during the France Fiji game on Saturday night. Were all with this with you no matter. The rainbow laces campaign was launched by gay rights group Stonewall in 2013. Thomas spoke about his sexuality in 2009, after saying he had hidden the fact he was gay for years. A man who bought a storage unit for 390 opened it to find it had a safe stuffed with 5.8million inside. TV auctioneer Dan Dotson, who owns American Auctioneers and features on reality show Storage Wars, said a woman came up to him at a charity auction event in California to tell him the story. In a video on Facebook, he claimed he woman told him: "My husband works for a guy and he bought a unit from you for $500 (390) and it had a safe in it." The man is then said to have called a locksmith to open the safe, according to the account told to website Blast. "The first person that they called to open the safe couldn't, or didn't," said Mr Dotson on Facebook. "They called a second person and when that person opened it up... inside the safe they're normally empty, but this time it wasn't empty. "It had $7.5million (5.8million) cash inside." Mr Dotson told Blast the woman said a lawyer representing the original owners of the furniture then got in touch. They offered the new owner 465,000 ($600,000) but he turned it down before finally negotiating a reward of 930,000 ($1.2 million). The man who bought the storage unit handed the safe and cash back, pocketing his cut. The identity of the lucky finder and location he bought it is not clear. A cademic Matthew Hedges was today given hope of a presidential pardon after being jailed for life in the UAE for alleged spying. His family have made a plea for clemency which is now being considered by the UAE government, its ambassador to London said this morning. Sulaiman Almazroui stressed that his government wanted an amicable re-solution to the case, which has sparked a diplomatic bust-up with Britain. The academics wife said today that Mr Hedges, 31, was absolutely terrified at spending the rest of his life in jail. Matthew Hedges was detained at Dubai airport five months ago / AFP/Getty Images Daniela Tejada told how her husband is suffering panic attacks following the shock life sentence handed down by a court during a five-minute hearing in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday. She spoke to the Durham University PhD student for five minutes last night. Hes just absolutely terrified at the idea of having to spend the rest of his life behind bars for an offence he hasnt committed, she told BBC Breakfast. He is not well. He mentioned his panic attacks have become worse than they were before. He did say that he has access to a doctor. I wasnt allowed to know where he is, so still dont know anything about his whereabouts. She told her husband he now had an international army of advocates calling for his freedom. But she added: His hopes have been shattered on many occasions. Hes very sceptical about what may happen to him. Mr Hedges was arrested at Dubai airport in May and held in solitary confinement for several months. He had been in the United Arab Emirates to do research on the federations post-Arab spring security policy for his thesis. In a statement, Mr Almazroui denied that Mr Hedges, originally from Exeter, was convicted after a five-minute show trial. He said: Over the course of one month, three judges evaluated compelling evidence in three hearings. They reached their conclusions after a full and proper process. This was an extremely serious case. We live in a dangerous neighbourhood and national security must be a top priority. He added: Mr Hedges family have made a request for clemency and the government is studying that request. British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt had a good conversation yesterday with our foreign minister. Stressing the two nations have close ties, he added: Because of the strength of that relationship we are hopeful that an amicable solution can be reached. Yesterday Mr Hunt said he had a constructive conversation with his opposite number, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed, tweeting: I believe & trust hes working hard to resolve the situation asap. Earlier, he had had a very frank conversation with the UAEs ambassador in London. B eauty addicts everywhere are on the hunt for the best UK deals for Cyber Monday 2018. But where to start? If you are on the hunt for a special beauty gadget, Cult Beauty and Amazon have some of the most competitive bargains out there. In this Back Friday Beauty Guide we will take you through the best websites to shop your favourite products or stock up on Christmas gifts. Big discounts on makeup, skincare, haircare, fragrance and beauty tech are offered across many brands but will have varying prices on Amazon, Boots and Debenhams - but don't worry, we've sorted through the fuss to bring you the best real deals to shop today. There's no better time for bit of self-indulgence to stock up on your every day essentials as well as invest in gifts ahead of the festive season without putting too much of a strain on your bank account. We've rounded up the top bargains and on sale gems to make the shopping process that extra bit easier. Best Websites If you don't know exactly what you're looking for but still want to save big, shop the best deals directly from online retailers Cyber Monday pages. Full of discounts on skincare. makeup, hair care and styling tools, everything you could want will be housed under one of these beauty-best offers. Cult Beauty Easily one of the best beauty deal Cyber Monday destinations for 2018, Cult Beauty is offering a massive saving across the website with even bigger discounts on select products. Amazon The online retailing giant is offering an extensive range of products all discounted in honour of the mega deals day. With a whole host of beauty must-haves given the Cyber Monday treatment, from tools, to skincare, you can shop the best of the deals from brands like Yankee Candle, Foreo and many more from November 16-25. Shop the full Amazon Cyber Monday Beauty page here. John Lewis In line with the department store's 'Never Knowingly Undersold' motto, John Lewis will even respond to Cyber Monday offers at other retailers to find you the best price. Beauty Bay The online beauty retailer is kicking off its Cyber Monday mega sales extravaganza a bit early this year with savings of up to 30% off the entire site, including the brand new Beauty Bay Going Out Out Palette as well as its extensive offering of skincare, serums and sparkles. Glossybox The beauty box site offers five products each month to its subscribers filled with makeup and skincare must-haves. For Cyber Monday, Glossybox is unveiling a mystery box with 90 worth of products for only 10. But it doesn't stop there, the site also has a Cyber Monday deal in the form of the 'All I Want' Box at 25 for subscribers and 30 for non-subscribers. This limited edition box is filled with 11 products; four full sized and six minis worth 140 plus a 35 makeup voucher from Kat Von D worth 25. Look Fantastic Exclusive to Cyber Monday, Look Fantastic has gathered beauty deals so you can stock up on your Christmas gifts - or just treat yourself. The online beauty retailer has deals in all sectors, from skincare, to makeup and for every price bracket with an additional 25% off the entire site. You can also expect savings of up to 50% of your favourite brands and 3 for 2 across brands such as Elemis, REN, Christophe Robin & Elizabeth Arden. Feel Unique Feel Unique has dropped exclusive beauty deals at purse-friendly prices so you can shop the best beauty deals on a range of brands and products without breaking the bank. Expect the likes of 15% off fragrances and some of your favourite labels like Bioderma, La Roche-Posay and Rimmel offering reductions. Debenhams Your favourite brands are being heavily discounted over at Debenhams, but it's the beauty offering where we are paying particular attention. From November 20, you can shop real bargains on the retailer's whole range in the lead up to Cyber Monday and on the day itself. Boots Treat yourself on Cyber Monday to a beauty deal extravaganza at Boots with fragrances, gadgets, aftershave and gifts as well as staples like skincare all on sale. The retailer is offering exclusive discounts on must-have brands like Soap & Glory, Liz Earle, Isle of Paradise and CYO that begin on November 17 till Cyber Monday on November 26. Boots is also offering the chance for customers to earn 10 worth of Advantage Card points when spending 60 online on November 22. Space NK From haircare, to skin via makeup and bath and body essentials, Space NK promises a plethora of beauty offers to indulge in ahead of the party season. Superdrug Avoid the crowds with a stress-free shopping spree at Superdrug. Prepare to save on makeup, perfume, grooming must-haves and styling tools. And this year is set to be bigger than ever before for both Health & Beautycard members and all customers. The former are able to shop the Cyber Monday deals a week early, from November 13, on a range of products from brands like Braun, Tresemme, Babyliss, Oral-B and Phillips as well as Revolution, Pinky Goat, Real Techniques and I Heart Revolution. Escentual The online beauty retailer has revealed its Cyber Monday deals where the premium range of skincare, fragrance and beauty for both men and women will be offered with deals of 50% and over. Think Michael Kors fragrance discounts as well as box sets from the likes of Benefit. Brands Foreo The Swedish beauty-tech brand is offering up to 30% off its range of skincare and oral. Including the brand's latest UFO, the Luna and its mini variations as well as the Issa electric toothbrush. These will all be discounted from November 23-30. GHD Specialising in all stylish tools, the brand are offering 30% off its original styler, 20% off the curve range and 15% off the gold style during the Cyber Monday deals. Tweezerman Is it time to invest in new tweezers? Stock up this Cyber Monday with 30% off the entire Tweezerman range at Beauty Bay. Makeup Fenty Beauty Morphe From the must-have palettes to the coveted brushes, the Cyber Monday Morphe sale is on and for a limited time you can get 25% off with the code GIFTPARTAY. Fenty Beauty Shop the entirety of Rihanna's Fenty Beauty range at 10% from November 23-26. Available exclusively at Harvey Nichols, Cyber Monday is the ideal time to stock up on the highly coveted Christmas range as well as some of the hero and best-selling products. Bare Minerals The skincare label that specialises in skin-friendly mineral makeup is offering up to 25% off its range at Look Fantastic. Bobbi Brown The make up and skincare label has announced its Cyber Monday deals and fans of the brand are going to be very excited. From November 23-26, Black Friday to Cyber Monday, Bobbi Brown will have 20% off everything with the added bonus of a free full-sized Smokey Eye Mascara when you spend 65 online. Eyeko Specialising in all things eye, you will be able to shop London-born brand Eyeko's entire range of mascaras, liners, shadows, brows and kits including the best-selling Lash Alert and Skinny Liquid Eyeliner with a 30% discount across the entire site. Illamasqua The Cyber Weekend is the gift that keeps on giving at over at Illamasqua. The brand is offering savings of up to 50% on the site with some lines even up to 70%. Included in the offer is the label's new limited edition Reign of Rock collection that includes must-have products for eyes, lips and face. Zoeva In honour of the mega savings day, Zoeva will be offering 25 per cent across its entire website with permanent free shipping launching on Cyber Monday. Diego dalla Palma The Milan label is participating in the Cyber Monday sales with a 20 per cent discount off its range of high-performance products to shop exclusively at M&S. Sleek MakeUP Beauty lovers everywhere, Sleek is offering an impressive Cyber Monday discount so you can stock up on your Christmas goodies. On Feel Unique, you can shop the brand for 1/3 off on November 23, while on Amazon, there will be a 30 per cent discount on the label's hero products from November 16-23. Glo Skin Beauty The makeup and skincare label Glo Skin Beauty is composed of products with active ingredients and nourishing minerals to leave you with healthy and glowing skin. The brand is offering 25% off every order with the code 'BlackFriday' from November 23-26. Beauty BLVD Step up your party look with Beauty BLVD's face and body glitter that is offered at more than 50% off this Cyber Monday. The best-selling Stardust kit in Supernova and Drops of Jupiter, as well as the On The Rocks jewels will be available at 15 instead of 33. Nails Inc. Stock up on your favourite nail shades this Cyber Monday with up to 20% off the range of Nails Inc products at Look Fantastic. Skincare Elemis Renowned for its range of expert products, Elemis will be offering a 25 per cent discount on its full-sized body and skincare from November 22-26. Gallinee The probiotic skincare label is offering 20 per cent on its entire website from Black Friday to Cyber Monday in honour of the mega sales event. But it doesn't stop there. The brand is also offering a free hand cream when you spend 30. Elizabeth Arden Over the Cyber Weekend, Elizabeth Arden will be available to shop with a 3 for 2 offer, so you can put the brand's range of innovative and quality skincare, makeup and fragrance to the test. Omorovicza Save up to 30% off your favourite skincare from Budapest-born label Omorovicza with the code BLACK and revolutionise your skincare regime. Glamglow Ensure your skin is primed, prepped and ready for the party season with up to 25% off Glamglow and its range of best-selling masks, mud and more. Yes To The Yes To range of face, hair, body and lip that contain almost all natural ingredients will be available to shop with a 3 for 2 across the range. Aveeno The intensely moisturising skin and haircare brand has been hit with the Black Friday treatment and will be available to shop with a 20% discount. Crabtree & Evelyn The skincare label kicked the Black Friday sales off a touch early this year with 70 per cent off its Outlet section. But from November 21, the brand is offering up to 30% off across its body care essentials with an extra 10% off on the discount day itself, November 23. Even the retro Christmas gifting collection has been given the BF treatment with 20% off selected products and there is even free delivery on Cyber Monday. Green People Green People are bringing its all-natural and organic skincare range to the Black Friday mega deals table with a 3 for 2 offer on the entire range. Shop its extensive range of products, from the baby collection, to its skincare and haircare offering from November 19-26 inclusive. La Roche-Posay The French Pharmacy skincare brand designed for sensitive skin is offering its cult range including the hero La Roche-Posay Effaclar Duo[+] with a 1/3 reduction. Shop the entire range from November 19-26 with the impressive discount. Mio Skincare With its range of skincare designed specifically for pregnancy and beyond, Mama Mio has become a firm favourite for new mothers and for Black Friday, the label is offering 30% off its site with 25% off single SKUs, 30% off bundles and an extra 10% saving on kits. Tisserand Aromatherapy Tisserand Aromatherapy has announced a Black Friday flash sale where the brand is offering 25% off on November 23. But it doesn't stop there, one in every 20 orders will get their baskets completely free of charge on Cyber Monday on November 26. The label is composed of hero products that use 100% natural and pure essential oils at the heart of its products as part of its holistic approach to beauty. Jurlique From November 22-26, the Aussie-born label Jurlique is offering 30% off selected lines. Using organic ingredients, the brand offers luxurious formulas to create at-home spa treatments for your face and body. L'Occitane The French label is offering 20% off all full priced items as part of its Black Friday sale that has been redefined as Yellow Friday. Shop its best-selling and hero items from November 22-25, including its Shea Butter Hand Cream, Immortelle Diving Cream and the Almond Milk Concentrate. Colorescience UK Offering post-procedure focused skincare and makeup, Colorescience, the leading dermatologist-trusted brand from the US has recently launched here in the UK. The collection is designed to treat, correct and protect skin and has 25% off the entire order with the code 'BlackFriday' from November 23-26. Clarks Botanicals Created without any toxins, Clarks Botanicals was designed to heal, restore and rebalance skin using the power of nature and science. The brand is offering a 30% discount on all purchases on its website from November 23-29. Tanning It might be November but you can still look all the bit July with one of Cyber Monday's best tanning offers. Isle of Paradise The vegan tanning label Isle of Paradise is offering 50% off its entire collection from November 23-26 with the code BLACKFRIDAY. Tanologist Step up your tanning game this Black Friday thanks to Tanologist who is offering up to 75% off its must-have Insta Glow Instant Tan Illuminator, plus 50% site wide from November 23-27. Vita Liberata Organic tanning brand Vita Liberata will be available to shop this Black Friday with up to 25% off. Bondi Sands Not going on holiday this winter? No problem! Bondi Sands is offering 30% off its entire website so you can get your glow on. Sienna X Rarely putting its tanning offering on sale, make the most of Black Friday with 50% off the 1 Hour Mist, 1 Hour Mousse and Deep tanning Lotion at Sienna X. Haircare Kerluxe Born on the belief that your hair and scalp should be treated with the same care and quality as skincare, Kerluxe is a premium haircare label that is offering 30% off in its Black Friday sale that last from November 19-26. Grow Gorgeous This Christmas, treat that someone special - even if it is yourself - to healthy, shiny and smooth locks with Grow Gorgeous and the impressive Black Friday deal where you can shop the haircare range with 25% off single SKUs, 30% off bundles and 50% off Mini Bundles. Individual Beauty Deals Makeup Lip Save at least 15% on selected Revlon Up to 50% off Real Techniques, Foreo, Olay and more beauty bestsellers Nails Seche Vite Professional Top Coat 14ml now: 4.28, was: 7.65 available until November 23 Foundation and Concealer Hair Up to 50% off Toni & Guy, Lynx and VO5 Up to 50% off Real Techniques, Foreo, Olay and more beauty bestsellers Skincare Up to 30% off Bomb Gift Sets Up to 50% off Real Techniques, Foreo, Olay and more beauty bestsellers Fragrance Up to 50% off on best selling fragrances including Calvin Klein,Hugo Boss and Paul Smit Brow Up to 50% off Real Techniques, Foreo, Olay and more beauty bestsellers WUNDER2 WUNDERBROW Long Lasting Eyebrow Gel for Waterproof Eyebrow Makeup, Brunette Color now: 9.98, was: 19.95 available until November 23 Tools Up to 50% off Real Techniques, Foreo, Olay and more beauty bestsellers 25% off the ghd Gifting Bundle and BaByliss Grooming Up to 50% off Toni & Guy, Lynx and VO5 L'Oreal deals E ager online shoppers have been left frustrated after websites crashed as thousands scrambled to bag bargains overnight on Black Friday. Popular retailers websites were showing an error message as spenders attempted to get an early look dramatically reduced prices before shops opened this morning. Frustrated customers described being locked out of websites as they hunted for sale items online to avoid the expected mad rush in stores. One shopper trying to access GAMEs website overnight shared a screenshot on Twitter showing that he was behind more than 10,000 others trying to access the site. Another shared her frustration as it appeared she was shown a holding page as she tried to use department store Debenhams site. The message told her she was placed in a queue as the website was experiencing a high amount of visitors. Ciara, who was trying to access the same site and shared an image of the same error message, wrote on the social media: and the Black Friday madness has started. A queue to get onto a website. Another wrote: I cant believe I have to queue online!, with another saying: "I thought the point of online shopping was to avoid the queues." The Standard has approached GAME and Debenhams for comment. More than two fifths of shoppers in the UK are planning to spend in the Black Friday sales today amid warnings not to "get carried away by the hype". Black Friday 2017 in the United Kingdom - In pictures 1 /12 Black Friday 2017 in the United Kingdom - In pictures Shoppers on Oxford Street on Black Friday Rex Oxford Street on the morning of Black Friday Rex Oxford Street on the morning of Black Friday Rex Oxford Street on the morning of Black Friday Rex An empty House of Fraser on Oxford Street during the morning of Black Friday John Mercer via PA John Lewis at Brent Cross on the morning of Black Friday Shoppers carry their new Black Friday TV purchase at Tesco Extra in Neasdon on Black Friday Jeremy Selwyn Shoppers wait outside the entrance to leading games retailer GAME in Westfield shopping centre in Stratford ahead of a Black Friday event PA Shoppers on Oxford Street in London for Black Friday REUTERS Stickers used for sale prices await to be used PA Shoppers pack into games retailer GAME in Westfield shopping centre in Stratford for a Black Friday event. PA Shoppers wait outside the entrance to leading games retailer GAME in Westfield shopping centre in Stratford ahead of a Black Friday PA Some 42 per cent of Britons are looking forward to the event, and 22 per cent are specifically looking to buy Christmas presents - while 25 per cent are intending to shop on Cyber Monday, a survey by KPMG suggests. Paul Martin, UK head of retail at KPMG, said: "Retail performance throughout the year has been dreary to say the least, and we've certainly had a shaky start to the all-important 'golden quarter'. "Retailers will naturally be keen to make the most of these events, and our survey would certainly suggest that consumers are gearing up for it." However, consumer group Which? said its over-arching message to shoppers this year was to not feel pressured into spending after finding that nine in 10 Black Friday deals last year were the same price or even cheaper at other times of the year. It has urged consumers to be careful not to buy on impulse and instead research products and prices before spending in the sale. Black Friday 2017 around the world - In pictures 1 /16 Black Friday 2017 around the world - In pictures Shoppers reach out for television sets as they compete to purchase retail items on Black Friday at a store in Sao Paulo, Brazi Paulo Whitaker/Reuters Shoppers reach for retail items on Black Friday at a store in Sao Paulo, Brazil Reuters Shoppers leave with television sets at Best Buy in Connecticut AFP/Getty Images Bargain hunters: Shoppers went in line for a store to open in Kansas AP AP Shoppers struggle to get their hands on televisions in Sao Paulo, Brazil Reuters People wait in line outside of Best Buy in Norwalk Connecticut AFP/Getty Images A sales attendant works in the Apple concession at Macy's Herald Square during early opening for the Black Friday sales in Manhattan, New York Reuters Black Friday deals began early in Brazil and the US EPA Shoppers reach out for television sets as they compete to purchase retail items on Black Friday at a store in Sao Paulo, Brazil Reuters A customer navigates through the aisles during the Black Friday sales event on Thanksgiving Day at Target in Chicago, Illinoi Reuters Shoppers leave with television sets at Best Buy in Norwalk, Connecticut AFP/Getty Images Shoppers reach out for television sets as they compete to purchase retail items on Black Friday at a store in Sao Paulo, Brazil Reuters Thanksgiving holiday shoppers wait in a check out line at the JCPenny store in Glendale, California AP People shop at Macy's department store on Black Friday Getty Images People shop at Macy's department store on Black Friday Getty Images Alex Neill, Which? managing director of home products and services, said: "While retailers are bombarding us with promises of great discounts and time-limited sales, it's clear that not all deals are as good as they might appear. "To bag a bargain, do your research and don't get carried away by the hype when shopping in the upcoming sales." Early indications suggest that Black Friday spending will dip for the first time this year since its arrival in the UK. Consumers will spend 2.4 billion on deals in stores and online, down from last year's 2.6 billion, according to the predictions from the Centre for Retail Research (CRR) and VoucherCodes.co.uk. Analyst Springboard has also said footfall and spending activity over this year's Black Friday period is likely to be affected by economic pressures such as high debt levels and significant living costs, compounded by the event taking place a week earlier this year - before many consumers are paid for the month. B lack Friday might officially start on November 23 but that hasn't stopped retailers from kicking things off early with a huge range of brilliant bargains. This year the US-inspired discount event, which traditionally follows the day after Thanksgiving, is more popular than ever in the UK, with more retailers taking part each year and more customers trying to bag the best deals. Research suggests that the Black Friday 2018 sales will exceed all previous years, with a lot of this predicted growth expected to come from Amazon, which has been a leader of the pack over the years. In 2017, the online giant reportedly seized nearly 50 per cent of all online sales. So what is Black Friday and where can you find the best deals? If you want to get great discounts on your favourite products, heres everything you need to know about the biggest shopping weekend of the year. When is Black Friday? Black Friday is an annual shopping event that first started in America and takes place on the Friday straight after Thanksgiving, when retailers would reveal major discounts on products ahead of the Christmas period. This year, it will fall on November 23 but many retailers will be offering deals and discounts in the run-up to the big day itself. Cyber Monday, however, is an online-only sale that falls on the Monday after Black Friday and is this year on November 26. What deals to expect on Black Friday 2018 Amazon has long been at the forefront of the Black Friday sales, along with retailers like John Lewis and Argos. Here are some of the deals to expect. Black Friday quick links Jump straight to the Black Friday pages for each retailer using the links below or read on for more offers: Best Black Friday deals of 2018 Black Friday officially starts on Nov 23 but many retailers are getting a head start this year with early deals ahead of the big event, in fact there are plenty of great deals to take advantage of right now. Here we've listed some of the best across various categories. To make things easier, we've also split up the deals into different sections like TV, Gaming and Phone and Beauty. Beauty Fragrance Deals Just in time for Christmas, Amazon is offering up to 50% off on best selling fragrances including Calvin Klein,Hugo Boss and Paul Smith. Black Friday offers the ideal opportunity to invest in large kitchen appliances like fridges and ovens at a reduced price tag. Revamp your kitchen with options from the likes of John Lewis, Argos, Currys and AO who are all offering top of the range and sought-after labels at more purse friendly prices. Philips AC288960 Connected Purifier with Real Time Air Quality Feedback Best air purifier *Deal ends at midnight Philips AC288960 Connected Purifier with Real Time Air Quality Feedback - now 249.99, was:400 Best fridges Best fridge freezers Best ovens Best tumble dryers Best washing machines You don't have to spend big to make the most out of Black Friday, small home appliances such as kettles, fridges, microwaves and coffee machines have been reduced greatly and make for a practical home upgrade . Keep your eyes peeled for the best deals at Currys, AO and John Lewis . MORPHY RICHARDS Accents 162011 Filter Coffee Machine - Black & Rose Gold Best coffee machines Best blenders and juicers Best pressure cookers Best vacuum cleaners Miele Complete C3 Boost Vacuum Cleaner, 900 W, Graphite Grey Best kettles Best microwaves In 2017, 4K TVs were a hit on Black Friday and are set to be heavily discounted this year. Hisense , Sony and Phillips are among the brands to look out for. We've gathered the best TV deals that you should have on your radar for this year. Hitachi 43" Best TVs under 500 Best TVs under 1000 Best 4K TVs Best projectors Laptops are going to be majorly reduced, with stores such as Currys PC World and AO taking part. Some of the types of laptops to expect in the sale are Chromebooks, MacBooks and Windows computers. Apple didn't directly participate in discounts last year but there are a whole host of different retailers offering massive saving on their devices. Best laptops Best laptops under 1,000 Best MacBook deals Best iMac deals Those in need of a new mobile phone will be pleased to hear that prices are going to be slashed on hundreds of handsets. Rumour has it that the Samsung Galaxy S9 will be among the offers. Expect Carphone Warehouse and AO to be getting in on the action. The iPhone X / EPA Best smartphone deals Best iPhone deals Best Samsung Galaxy deals Best Nokia deals Best EE deals Best Vodafone deals Best Carphone Warehouse deals Apple iPhone 8 64GB Gold, 30GB data, 38 monthly + 29.99 Apple iPhone 6S Rose Gold 32GB, 4GB data, 23 monthly + 29.99 Shop all Carphone Warehouse deals here Best Tesco Mobile deals iPhone XS Max 64GB, 40GB, 57.49 monthly Samsung S8, 1GB data, 25.49 monthly See all Tesco mobile deals here Black Friday is always hotly anticipated by gaming fans, too, with retailers like GAME slashing prices on consoles including the PS4 Pro and Xbox One. Last year saw a slew of great value bundles that allowed shoppers to save money on new games. The Xbox One X / Christian Petersen/Getty Best console deals Best Xbox One deals Best PS4 deals Fujifilm Instax Mini 9 Smokey White Instant Camera Best instant cameras Best cheap cameras Best action cameras Best DSLR cameras Best digital cameras Libratone Q Adapt Wireless Bluetooth Noise Cancelling Headphones Best headphones Best wireless headphones Best running headphones Best speakers Best portable speakers Sat nav and dash cams deals Printer deals Best Playmobil toys Best LEGO toys Best Barbie toys Best Fisher Price toys Hamleys One of the world's oldest and largest toy shops is offering up to 50% off hundreds of its toys and games ahead of Black Friday, from November 15-26, with savings on some of the biggest brands like LEGO, Barbie, Playmobil, Superwings, Paddington, Fisher Price, Vtech, Thomas & Friends and Ravensburger. For fashion and beauty lovers, there will be clothing and deals aplenty across major UK retailers including ASOS , Boots , Superdrug and Debenhams . Topshop Health Five tips on how to be prepared A manda Holden proved she would be competition for Nick Knowles in the Im A Celebrity jungle shower after she posted a snap of herself in the Maldives. Holden looked radiant as she relaxed in a tiny green bikini while holidaying in celebration of her 10th wedding anniversary. The Britains Got Talent judge showed off her figure as she lay floating on water while enjoying her second honeymoon in the idyllic location. Holden, 47, tied the knot with her second husband, producer Chris Hughes, at Babington House in Somerset in December 2008. She captioned the post: And #breathe #theplacetobeMaldives #secondhoneymoon #love. Fans hailed the snap flawless, praising her insane body as others deemed her a goddess. One wrote: That body is insane and youre wearing my fave. Mother and daughter: Amanda Holden and her girl Lexie / PA While another said: WOW absolutely stunning. Another posted: Thought it was an advert?! Serious bikini bod envies again.. Good God. Beauitful Mermaids do exist. Stunning Amanda, wrote a third. Holden and Hughes wed two years after welcoming their first daughter, now 12, Lexi. They also share six-year-old Hollie. 8. Ratatouille In the immortal words of UB40, 'There's a rat in mi kitchen, what am I gonna do?' Like so many Disney Pixar movies Ratatouille teaches the importance of following our dreams no matter what the limitations. The film follows Remy the rat, who teams up with hapless kitchen assistant Alfredo to act on his passion for cooking. Its one of the most evocative films Pixar have produced and viewers can almost feel the warmth and smells of the French kitchens featured in the movie. Interestingly, Pixar achieved the realistic look of the food by creating over 270 dishes from scratch and photographing each piece individually. The incredible eye for detail that helps make this one of the most engaging Pixar has produced to date, while the heart-warming story also makes it one of the most rewarding. Jacobs sought an enhancement to the sales tax-sharing agreement and the village responded by raising the limit on the total sales tax it would rebate from $2.3 million to $4.5 million. The cap is raised in $175,000 increments a year to hedge against the dealership getting all the benefits and closing or relocating before the 15 years are up. Bailey, a college student, said she was thrilled to find a $99 Calvin Klein jacket that originally sold for nearly $300. She and Zoot also landed bargains at Target and Walmart, where they bought board games for $5 and leggings at two packs for $7, they said. And Old Navy had 15 to 50 percent off everything, Bailey said. During his tenure, he supported the creation of the new police station and two new fire stations as well as the acquisition of a new public works building, the release said. He oversaw the citys westward expansion, improvements to the riverfront and downtown revitalization efforts. Among the public amenities he helped support was the The Centre of Elgin recreation facility. 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 President Klaus Iohannis has postponed his official visit to France scheduled for Monday and Tuesday to be able to participate in the solemn sitting of Parliament dedicated to the celebration of the Greater Union Centennial, according to the Presidential Administration. "Taking into account that on Wednesday, November 23, the solemn joint sitting of the Deputies' Chamber and the Senate will be held, which is dedicated to the celebration of the Greater Union Centennial, the Romanian President changed the programme of his official visit he was going to pay to the French Republic on the occasion of the inauguration of the Romania-France season. The visit that was initially scheduled for 27-28 November will be carried out between 26-27 November," The Presidential Administration specified in a release on Friday sent to AGERPRES. On Wednesday, the Presidential Administration announced that the head of state will be paying an official visit to the French Republic on the occasion of the inauguration of the Romania-France cultural season, which marks the 10th anniversary since the signing of the Strategic Partnership Declaration, as well as the celebration of the Greater Union Centennial of 1918. AGERPRES . Greenberg started to watch Indian films voraciously, both on Netflix and in cinemas around the Chicago area. She asked her neighbor, who comes from South India, for recommendations and now they often go to the cinema together. She admits shes often the only Western woman in the audience, but shes able to follow the story thanks to subtitles. The United States continues to brandish its military power all round the globe and has recently been concentrating on confronting Russia and China. Its policy and deployments were explained by the US Air Force Secretary in September when she declared that Washington felt threatened because Less than a week ago Russia began the largest exercise on Russian soil in four decades with more than 300,000 troops and 1000 aircraft. On the other side of the world, Chinas first aircraft carrier was declared combat ready this year, and promptly sailed into the Pacific to conduct flight operations. The absurdity of that statement escaped fitting comment by the Wests mainstream media, which also considers it astonishing that Russia should carry out a military exercise in its own territory following the massive build-up by the US-NATO military alliance along its borders. As pointed out on November 15 by Russias Foreign Ministry, this expansion can be seen along the entire stretch of land connecting the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. Since October, vast operational resources have been concentrated in the Baltic Region and the north of Europe, due to a series of major international exercises. They are being deployed in addition to NATO regiments already present in the countries of the eastern flank. Those regions have never seen such a military presence since the end of the World War II. And it is growing. Foreign Policy in Focus observes that In all NATO countries in Eastern Europe, the US Air Force is investing multimillion-dollar sums in the expansion of its air bases, with more than $50 million pouring into a base in Hungary, more than $60 million allocated to the modernization of two air force bases in Romania, and two bases in Slovakia that will be upgraded with more than $100 million, besides various base upgrades in other countries in the region. In October President Putin said that Russia doesnt threaten anyone and has strictly adhered to its obligations in the sphere of international security and arms control, but made it clear there would be decisive action if an attack takes place, and the aggressor should know that retaliation is inevitable, and he will be destroyed. Russia has precision hypersonic weapons exemplified by the Kinzhal missile and a new system, the Avangard, that will enter service in the next few months. His outlook and approach are echoed by Chinas leader, President Xi Jinping, who reminded those attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Papua New Guinea on November 17 that History has shown that confrontation, whether in the form of a cold war, a hot war or a trade war, produces no winners. In early 2018 President Xi said plainly that China will forge a powerful military that is ready to respond to the call, to fight and to win a war, and in October, following Washingtons increasing military activity in and around the South China Sea, the President told his armed forces to concentrate preparations for fighting a war, which is as blunt a warning to Washington as might be expected in the circumstances, in which the US is deliberately provoking China by its widely-publicised support for Taiwan. This has gone so far as for the Defence Minister Wei Fenghe to announce that Beijing would never give up one single piece of its territory. He warned that repeated challenges to Chinas stance on Taiwan would lead to military action. What China and Russia are saying is plain, blunt and unambiguous : stay out of our territory; stop prodding our borders and cease your coat-trailing provocation. Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is an unpleasant person, but on November 17 he put things in perspective in his region. When questioned about US Navy operations in the South China Sea he asked in turn Why do you have to create frictions that will prompt a response from China? One of the more ridiculous observations by the US Air Force Secretary concerned the commissioning of Chinas first aircraft carrier. In tones of hushed horror she revealed that it was declared combat ready this year, and promptly sailed into the Pacific to conduct flight operations. What upsets the US military is the fact that China now has an aircraft carrier that can defend the country from beyond its shores, unlike Americas eleven enormous aircraft carriers which sail round the worlds oceans in order to impose Washingtons will. At the moment there are two carrier groups in the Philippines Sea, ready to move into the South China Sea to conduct more provocative operations. The Air Force Secretary added to absurdity by declaring that now all of Southeast Asia is within reach of Chinas long-range bombers presumably considering it irrelevant that in October, in the latest of a series of provocative operations, two nuclear-capable USAF B-52 bombers from Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, overflew the South China Sea. As reported in the Air Force Times the flights were in support of US Indo-Pacific Commands Continuous Bomber Presence, a mission focused on deterring regional challengers. Regional challengers? Just who is challenging whom with a continuous bomber presence? Like Russia, China has had to develop advanced weapons to counter the menace patrolling and probing its borders, and these could be employed effectively in the event of US confrontation getting out of hand. A CNN headline in October was US Navy proposing major show of force to warn China and it indicated that the Pacific Fleet has drawn up a classified proposal to carry out a global show of force as a warning to China and to demonstrate the US is prepared to deter and counter their military actions . . . The plan suggests sailing ships and flying aircraft near Chinas territorial waters in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait in freedom of navigation operations to demonstrate the right of free passage in international waters. The proposal means US ships and aircraft would operate close to Chinese forces. If Washington is insane enough to go ahead with this deliberately confrontational fandango, there could be serious consequences. Chinese warships could manoeuvre to bar US Navy vessels from coming with 12 nautical miles of one of its islands in the South China Sea, and if there were attempts by the US to penetrate that barrier, there could well be a serious incident. Should this involve damage to a Chinese ship, Beijing would not stand idly by and would respond appropriately. Given its inventory of weapons, especially its advanced torpedoes, this could involve destruction of one of the US Navys carriers. There are similar possibilities in the north. CNN noted that Currently the aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman is taking the unexpected step of operating in the North Sea sending a signal to Russia that US military forces can extend their reach to that area. But if US warships behave aggressively it can be expected that Russia will counter such behaviour most forcefully. In October the Commander of US Naval Forces Europe, Admiral James Foggo, told the US Naval Institute that it would be important to have a greater naval presence in Europe than the US has had in the last two or three decades, and that this years presence by the Harry S Truman Carrier Strike Group and the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group were part of the effort to boost presence to reassure allies and to keep an eye on Russian activity. With the Truman Strike Group now back in the region spending time in Iceland and the North Sea ahead of Trident Juncture [the November 2018 anti-Russia US-NATO exercise based on Norway] that sends a very strong message that the United States will operate anywhere, either unilaterally or in collaboration with our NATO partners and allies. And like I said, nobody in the world can come close to a US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in terms of firepower, dwell and endurance, he said. Foggos diatribe ended with the juvenile but still dangerous pronouncement that And those guys and gals out on that carrier and the Marines are doing a fantastic job. So were keeping the adversaries back on their heels. They dont know where were going next and thats a good thing. And were working more with allies and partners because we have that additional capability. Right now I have I think, at last count 495,000 tons of grey-hulled shipping operating in the theatre. And thats great. I love it. This type of trigger-happy immature belligerence is official warning of US policy as regards Russia and China, and it is not surprising that both nations are countering Washingtons confrontation. The situation in Syria is that of a frozen conflict, following the agreements made between Russia, Turkey and Syria on the demilitarized zone created around Idlib. Except for some sporadic terrorist attacks, the truce seems to be holding up over the last few weeks, even though it has become clear to everyone what the next step is for the province. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has been busy eradicating Daesh in the southern part of Syria in recent weeks, concentrating its efforts on securing all areas that have been liberated from terrorist control but which still remain vulnerable to sporadic attacks, as occurred in Sweida at the end of July 2018. In that incident, there were dozens of victims and numerous abductees who remained in the hands of Daesh for months. This caused the Syrian population in neighbouring areas to clamor for protection, forcing the SAA to undertake an anti-terrorist campaign that has been ongoing since August. This effort by the SAA has slowed down in part due to subsequent events, with an agreement reached between Erdogan and Putin to create a demilitarized zone in the province of Idlib. From October 15, an area spanning 20 kilometres and guarded by Turkish and Russian troops guarantees a separation between the SAA and terrorist groups in the province. Russian and Syrian efforts have been moving in two very specific directions over the last few weeks. While Moscow supplies Damascus with new equipment in preparation for the future advance on Idlib, Putin and his entourage continue diplomatic efforts to draw more of Syrias enemies closer to the Russia-Iran-Syria axis. The meeting that brought about the demilitarized zone included Macron and Merkel, the Europeans having evidently come to terms with the impossibility of overthrowing the legitimate government of Syria. Macron and Merkel were offered a way out of the Syrian conflict, decoupling themselves from the belligerent stance of the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The intention is to usher Paris and Berlin towards the same direction Qatar, Turkey and Jordan have been progressively gravitating. Certainly, these are not countries to be considered friends of Damascus. Rather, they are parties with whom a constructive dialogue needs to be entered into in order to advance common diplomatic interests. Moscow has often found it possible to reach an agreement or start unpublicized negotiations with each of these parties. Erdogan seems to have preferred an agreement with Putin rather than waiting for the liberation of Idlib by the SAA, thus being able to postpone the natural conclusion of the war that will find him sitting at the table defeated. At the same time, Erdogan wants to concentrate on the Kurds in order to secure the border between Syria and Turkey controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and to prevent any partition of Syrian territory that would favor other parties. Jordan has even reopened the border crossings with Syria, appearing to be the first country in opposition to Damascus that is now taking practical steps to mend fences. The case of the participation of the two European countries at the summit with Erdogan and Putin is more complex. The rift between Washington and the other European capitals is wide and well documented, even more so after the events in Paris commemorating the end of the First World War. Macron and Trump seem to be diverging further in terms of policy and ideology, while Trump and Merkel have always had their differences. Trumps choices in the Middle East, in the wake of the destructive actions of Israel and Saudi Arabia, marked a profound point of difference and mistrust with the European allies. Macron and Merkel have a huge problem dealing with refugees flowing from areas in North Africa and the Middle East destroyed by US-led wars. The prospect of working with Erdogan, and indirectly with Damascus, to bring back hundreds of thousands of refugees currently in France and especially Germany, seems to have been Putins winning argument during the talks in Istanbul. This slow diplomatic approach has been accelerated as a result of Israels downing of a Russian electronic-surveillance aircraft. The need to avoid a direct conflict between Moscow and Tel Aviv allowed the Russian missile forces to deploy to Syria an advanced model of the S-300 in addition to the existing S-300/400 systems on the ground. The presence of these advanced systems, and Moscows threats to use them, together with American concerns over the possibility of an F-35 being shot down by Soviet systems dating from the 1970s, forced the Zionist entity to halt its attacks on Syria. This situation has helped to create a frozen conflict in the country. Together with the agreement of Idlib, this gives the SAA plenty of time to rest, regroup, and receive supplies needed for future campaigns. The current truce is a strategic pause that has all the appearance of what has happened in the past in the provinces of Homs and Aleppo. The need to free Idlib from terrorists goes hand in hand with the promise of Assad and the government of Damascus to liberate every inch of Syria from terrorists. The diplomatic efforts of Moscow serve to prepare the ground for what will happen in the coming months, with the SAA set to advance on Idlib. In this sense, the deployment of advanced systems in Syria serves as a deterrent against possible responses from countries like Israel and the United States, anxious to defend their jihadists, but continuing to have minimal influence on the ground. Russia and Syrias moves therefore seem to be in preparation for the battle for Idlib, to be the longest and most difficult yet. The liberation of the province is inevitable but requires all the necessary political, diplomatic and military preparation in order to ensure success and limit potential escalation. As is often the case, Moscow and her allies approach complex issues with simple and pragmatic solutions, even offering exit strategies to their (geo)political opponents, which contrasts with their demonstrated tendency to rush heedlessly towards war. Russia has won a $1.5-billion military contract to supply India with the 9K388 Igla-S man-portable air-defense system (MANPADS). The Indian Army will soon be operating over 5,000 of them, with 600 produced domestically, in keeping with Prime Minister Narendra Modis Made in India program. The European companies SAAB and MBDA also took part in the tender. The deal is expected to be signed at the next meeting of the Indian-Russian Intergovernmental Commission on Military-Technical cooperation, which will take place in the Russian capital. The export version of the Igla-S with fire-and-forget capability that will be shipped to India can hit targets at a maximum range of 6 km and at an altitude of 3.5 km. The jamming-resistant, all-weather weapon boasts a hit probability of 0.80.9. Of the 5,175 missiles and associated equipment sought under the very short-range air defense (VSHORAD) program, 2,315 missiles are to be purchased fully assembled, 1,260 missiles in semi knocked-down form, 1,000 missiles in completely knocked-down form, and another 600 missiles that will be manufactured by the state-owned Bharat Dynamics Ltd. The VSHORAD will be employed in varied terrains and installed on light utility vehicles and ships. In Russia, the legendary Igla-S is being replaced by the new, interference-immune Verba MANPADS. The system has a heat-seeking, multispectral, optical heating-seeking head (GOS) able to distinguish a locked-on target from decoys and dummies. The all-weather, day-and-night operational MANPADS can hit targets at ranges of 0.5 to 6.5 km and at altitudes of 10 m to 4.5 km. They boast a speed of 500 m per second and can hit approaching targets traveling at 400 m per second or 320 m per second when shooting in pursuit. Eight maneuvering targets can be engaged simultaneously. A high-explosive, 1.5kg fragmentation warhead increases the probability of kill. Compared to the Igla-S, the Verba enjoys an engagement envelope that is 150% larger, plus ten times the protection from high-power flares. India, Algeria, and Egypt are included on the list of potential buyers. The Igla-S and Verba offer proof that Russia is the global leader in portable MANPADS technology. Its no wonder it won the Indian tender. In October, Moscow and New Delhi signed a $5.2 billion deal to purchase the Russian-made S-400 Triumf air-defense system. Over a dozen nations have expressed interest in buying the Triumf, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Morocco, Egypt, Vietnam, and Iraq. China is one of the latest recipients and Turkey has already signed a contract. Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tried to talk India out of the S-400 deal during the 2+2 talks. That didnt fly. Also in October, India signed a $950-million deal to purchase two Admiral Grigorovich-class (Project 11356) stealth frigates from Russia. Negotiations over price and transfer of technology are underway for two more ships of this class that will be built in the Goa Shipyard. The warships will be outfitted with the BrahMos supersonic cruise-missile system, a joint project between Russia and India. The production of Russian -226 helicopters is also on their agenda. About 60% of the defense equipment used by the Indian defense forces is of Russian origin. The Russian weapons and equipment in Indias inventory must be either maintained with purchased spare parts or modernized with Russias help. The Indian army badly needs light tanks that can be used in mountainous terrain. Russia can offer its 2S25 Sprut-SD self-propelled tank destroyer, which is classed as a light tank and can operate in the mountains. Defying the US sanctions, all these deals further strengthen their Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership, making India Russias leading partner in military cooperation. It has been announced that payments under the S-400 deal will be made in the national currencies, not US dollars. The countries might use the Singapore dollar or the currency of some other third country for their transactions. More defense deals will be announced when the Russian and Indian leaders meet in November 2018 on the sidelines of the G20 in Argentina (Nov. 30-Dec. 1). Promising new avenues exist for bilateral cooperation that go beyond arms deals. During President Vladimir Putins latest visit to New Delhi in October, both sides pledged to cooperate on oil and gas projects in Russia, including on Russias Arctic shelf and the shores of the Pechora and Okhotsk seas. Their bilateral energy deals are already worth $23 billion. India is expected to make substantial investments in Arctic and other energy holdings. Last summer a large Indian delegation visited Russias Far East to study the potential for economic projects there. India and Russia can augment their economic partnership through the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). Those two partners can also discuss issues of mutual interest within the framework of groups like RIC (Russia-India-China) and BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa), as well as SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), without pressure from the West, which cannot change the fact that Russia remains Indias long-standing strategic partner pursuing the shared goal of encouraging a multipolar world. Those countries have an almost 60-year history of military cooperation that ensures that Russia will be an indispensable supplier of defense equipment and weaponry for the foreseeable future. There was something grotesque and repugnant about US President Donald Trump conducting the ritual pardoning of a plump turkey for the annual American Thanksgiving holiday this weekend. In the same week, a British charity reported 85,000 children under the age of five have died from malnutrition in the war in Yemen. The juxtaposition of images is nauseating and shockingly offensive to any sense of human morality. Trump is off to his luxury mansion in Florida this weekend to stuff his face with fine food, while children in Yemen are dying from starvation as a direct result of his countrys war policies in supporting Saudi aggression. Britains Save The Children estimates that millions more Yemeni children are on the brink of starvation as a result of the war in the Arabian peninsula country. These innocent casualties of conflict are in addition to the estimated tens of thousands of children who have been killed or maimed by air strikes carried out on Yemen over the past nearly four years by Saudi warplanes. Lets be absolutely clear. This horrendous death toll is a direct result of Washingtons military support for the Saudi and other Arab coalition forces that have been attacking Yemen without relent since March 2015. Britain and France have also been key military suppliers and are therefore equally complicit. The Western-backed blockade of Yemens sea, air and land routes has created a hellish situation for a whole population some 28 million cut off from basic humanitarian supplies of food, water and medicines. It is difficult to not see how the war on Yemen is a monumental war crime involving a deliberate policy of genocide. A genocide in which Washington, London and Paris are fully inculpated. The Western corporate news media bear a heavy responsibility too. For the most part of the war in Yemen, the media have given scant coverage, nor have they delved into the complicity of their governments. Western media refer to Yemen as the forgotten war. Its only forgotten because these media have shamefully ignored it. Recently, the three Western powers have begun pushing for a ceasefire and peace talks between a Saudi-backed Yemeni faction and the Houthi rebels who took over the country in late 2014. But the proper response is for the war to end immediately from the Western powers halting their military support to the Saudis. There was never any justification for the war. It was launched by the Western-backed Saudi coalition in an attempt to reinstall an exiled puppet leader, Mansour Hadi, who fled the country in early 2015. He was kicked out by a Houthi-led popular uprising because he refused to hand over power in a negotiated transition. The US and Saudis tried to keep Mansour Hadi in power in contravention of the negotiated deal arising from the Arab Spring revolt in the country that started in 2011. Western governments and media have sought to justify the conflict by describing it as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. There is very little evidence, if at all, of Iran being involved in Yemen on the side of the Houthi rebels. More accurately, the war has simply been one of blatant aggression by Saudi Arabia against its southern neighbor with the support of the US, Britain and France. The objective being to overthrow the popular Houthi revolution and to reinstall the puppet president Mansour Hadi. A cynical view of belated Western calls for a ceasefire is that such a development would lend the Saudi regime some badly needed public relations credit in the aftermath of the brutal murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. This week President Trump effectively pardoned the Saudi regime from any sanctions over that killing, and said that it would be business-as-usual of selling huge arms deals to the oil-rich kingdom. A public outcry in the US and Europe is demanding that Washington take punitive action against the Saudi rulers, both over the Khashoggi affair and the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen. The Trump administrations push for a ceasefire in Yemen seems to be its way of placating the public outcry. US Secretary of State James Mattis said this week that to end the war in Yemen then we have to deal with Saudi [Arabia]. Mattis is using the Yemeni conflict as a way to justify Washington maintaining normal relations with the Saudi regime. However, Mattis is setting up a false framework for peace in Yemen. A peaceful solution does not really require negotiations with the Saudis or their exiled puppet. Ending the war should be achieved by the US-backed aggression on Yemen being halted, and for foreign interference in the countrys internal affairs to cease forthwith. Yemen and its skeletal children are an indelible stain on Washington, London and Paris. Their pious pretenses of human rights and rule of law are shown for what they are bankrupt. So too for the Western news media. Recall the Western hysteria and histrionics over Syria, when the Syrian army and allied Russian forces were liberating towns and cities from the control of terror groups. Western governments and media were condemning Russia for crimes against humanity while Russian and Syrian forces were routing terror groups covertly backed by Washington and its NATO allies. Fortunately, Syria is returning to peaceful normality, thanks to Russias principled intervention. Yet the truly horrific scale of suffering in Yemen has been largely ignored by Western governments and media. Of course, thats because they are complicit in the crimes against the country, the poorest and most vulnerable in the Middle East region. The rank hypocrisy of Western accusations against Russia for alleged violations in Syrias war is staggering in the face of Western complicity in the appalling aggression and genocide in Yemen. The next time an American, British or French politician begins to pontificate about alleged Russian criminality or malfeasance, the appropriate response is to silently hold up a photograph of a Yemeni child. Photo: Twitter Mosul quickly fell to ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) in 2014 when the more numerous, but poorly led army and police defenders fled or surrendered. The poor leadership and low morale of the security forces was no secret in 2014 and it is no secret now. Mosul residents fear that the conditions that made that possible are returning. Critics, including recently elected reformist members of parliament, are demanding that new military and administrative leaders be installed in Mosul. This is needed to prevent ISIL from reviving its presence in Mosul. That revival is made possible by the poor leadership of security forces in Mosul as well as the chaos on the border as Iran backed Iraqi PMF (Peoples Mobilization Forces) militias cross the border into Syria despite being forbidden to by the Iraqi government. Much of the activity on the Syrian border is to prevent ISIL members from moving back into Iraq but in some cases, Iran appears to be ordering PMF militias to cross the border and help out Iranian mercenary forces in Syria. Efforts to find the remaining ISIL fighters in Iraq has also uncovered much else. Over 200 mass graves (containing the remains of over 12,000 victims) have been found in Iraqi territory formerly controlled by ISIL. It is now estimated that ISIL killed at least 33,000 Iraqis during the three years it ruled much of Iraq. Many of these graves were near Mosul where a number of mass killings (of civilians and soldiers who had surrendered) were captured on video and used for propaganda. Most of the victims were civilians who would not cooperate. As territory was recaptured from ISIL more than dead bodies were discovered. ISIL also deliberately left behind thousands of landmines and explosive traps. The extent of this problem was discovered in the last year as EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) teams began finding and disposing of all the unexploded shells, grenades and bombs that are always found in the aftermath of major fighting. EOD teams have dandled 16,000 explosive items so far in 2018 and project a much larger number of items still out there, many of them stuff ISIL deliberate left behind and rigged to detonate if disturbed. Iran Has A Plan The anti-Iran election results created some initial confusion among Iranian leaders but that is gone now and Iran is pushing Iraq hard to ignore the American sanctions and help Iran evade them. Iraq is cooperating, but not out of sympathy for or fear of Iran but because there is money to be made helping Iran out. This is a dangerous game because the Americans can respond by going after the Iraqi corruption in addition to invoking banking and other financial restrictions. At the moment most Iraqis see the Americans as the good guys and the Iranians as the bully next door, and often just down the street because pro-Iran PMF commanders are being more aggressive with the army and any Iraqis who openly oppose Iran. This risks civil war in a country that has a minority of the population willing to use violence to support Iran. Pro-Iran PMF militias take orders from Iran and that is increasingly unpopular with most Iraqis. Iraqi leaders have been subjected to a lot of pressure from Iran to ignore the American sanctions. Iran pointed out that complying with the sanctions would hurt the Iraqi economy. That pressure caused Iraqi leaders to comply with the more immediate threat (Iran) even though 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. No American response yet but Iraqi economists and financial experts have made it clear that the Americans have a lot of options and many of them involve going after individual pro-Iran Iraqi leaders, especially those who are the most corrupt. Sanctions on individuals have proved very effective and Iraq has a lot of eligible targets. The Kurdish Collapse The collapse in oil prices, the Arab dominated offensive in late 2017 to take Kirkuk province and continued refusal by the government to share oil revenue with the Kurds has torn the Kurdish political unity apart. The Kurds were always split into two clan-based factions but now there are more factions, most of them demanding less corruption and more unity. There is some satisfaction in noting that the Arab forces that took control of Kirkuk are unable to suppress the Islamic terrorist activity. The Kurds were able to handle that, but only when they controlled the province and for the Arab central government that is too high a price to pay to achieve peace in Kirkuk. November 22, 2018: In Baghdad, the concrete blast walls surrounding the Green Zone were taken down, a process that may take weeks but in doing this the new government is keeping a campaign promise to open up the Green Zone. That means through traffic will be allowed (to eliminate a major cause of traffic jams since 2003). By the end of the year, the zone will be opened to the public even though security will still be maintained at high levels. Many Iraqi government operations are being moved outside the Green Zone. Iraqi soldiers and police took over all security for the Green Zone back in 2010. Before that, it was handled by Americans and American contractors since the zone was established in 2003. This ten square kilometer (four square mile) sanctuary in downtown Iraq was long a safe zone for Americans and senior Iraqis. Most Baghdad residents wanted the Green Zone and the way it disrupted major traffic patterns, eliminated after the Americans left in 2011. But rich and powerful Iraqis wanted to live in the Green Zone, as protection from criminals and terrorists (both of whom murder, kidnap and rob the rich). So the Green Zone lived on, under Iraqi management. By 2016 the Green Zone also became the target of increasingly frequent and well-attended demonstrations protesting the inept and corrupt government. There were no casualties during the first incursion into the zone but that eventually changed when protestors got in and the guards used force to eject them. Most of the demonstrators who made the first incursions of the Green Zone were followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, a prominent and well connected Shia cleric. But after that many, more demonstrators joined the weekly anti-corruption protests and the continued efforts to do so in the Green Zone. These anti-Green Zone demonstrations were a very visible symbol of the changing attitudes of Iraqis that led to the new parliament and all its anti-corruption and anti-Iran members. November 20, 2018: Iraqi F-16s again hit ISIL targets in Syria, destroying an ISIL base and a warehouse used for storing weapons and ammo in two separate attacks. At least 40 ISIL members were killed. Iraqi artillery units also fire across the border at ISIL forces spotted approaching the border. November 19, 2018: America sanctioned four companies and many individuals involved in smuggling Iranian oil to Syria. This announcement was a warning to Iran that their illegal dealings with Iraq were also not as secret as the Iranians and Iraqis had hoped. Sanctions on Iraqi companies and individuals can be very effective and costly to the Iraqis involved. November 17, 2018: In the south (Basra), another prominent local Shia cleric, Sheikh Wissam al Ghrawi, was assassinated outside his home. Ghrawi had recently called for Basra demonstrators to take up arms against the corrupt government because of continued failure to provide clean water and electrical power. This is the second such assassination since September when a local protest leader openly accused Iran of interfering in Iraq and was later killed by what were believed to be Iranian gunmen. November 16, 2018: Israel is warning Lebanon and Iraq that Iranian use of their territory to upgrade unguided rockets with GPS guidance kits will result in Israeli airstrikes to destroy those operations unless local governments act. Lebanon is more of a problem because of its relationship with Iran and Syria. Hezbollah, a 1980s creation of Iran, is an autonomous military force in Lebanon and dominates local politics via terror and threats of violence against those who resist. Hezbollah, like its patron Iran, is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Iran is currently trying to turn Syria and Iraq into subject states similar to Lebanon. Most Syrians and Iraqis want to avoid this but it isnt easy because Iran is clever, determined and fanatic about the destroy Israel thing. What complicates the situation in Syria is that there a lot of major players. November 10, 2018: The United States granted Iraq a 45-day sanctions waiver so that Iraq can seek alternatives for the natural gas and electricity it currently imports from Iran. November 9, 2018: In the far north (Duhok Province), Turkish F-16s bombed three PKK (Turkish Kurdish separatists) targets just across the border in Kurdish Iraq. Turkey claimed that fifteen PKK members were killed. Turkish troops will still briefly cross 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. November 7, 2018: ISIL released a recruiting/morale building video on the Internet that detailed their operations for the last six weeks. The numbers seemed inflated, which isnt unusual for Islamic terrorist press releases. Yet some of what the video claimed did correspond to reality. Thus ISIL reported that 80 percent of their attacks were occurring in Syria and Iraq. Nearly half of ISIL activity was in Iraq (and a few provinces at that) while nearly a third were in Syria (mainly in the east). Nearly all the attacks reported can be classified as terrorism. This reflects a known trend that began in early 2018 as ISIL increased its guerilla-type attacks and that decision has an impact, especially in the area north of Baghdad (Kirkuk, Diyala, and Salahuddin provinces). These attacks rarely involve bombings of populated areas (to kill civilians). ISIL has fewer bomb builders and suicide bombers (as well as the people who recruit, train and supervise suicide bombers carrying out their attack). Bombs are now used primarily against security forces. The guerilla tactics can be seen by the growing number of attacks, especial along the main roads north from Baghdad to Kirkuk and the border with the Kurdish controlled north. Attacks involving kidnapping and murder (mainly to terrorize the population into not interfering with or reporting on ISIL activity) are more frequent. In March there were seven of these attacks. That increased to 30 during May and 83 in June and, according to the ISIL video, about 200 in October. Most of these attacks did not involve violence but all involved threats. ISIL was counting kidnapping and extortion activities (which sometimes involved non-lethal violence). These operations are important because they raise money and keep locals in line. This increase in activity shows how effectively ISIL has established base areas to operate from. Most of the bases are in the Hemrin Mountains, which extend from Diyala province through northern Salahuddin province and into southern Kirkuk province. In early 2018 it was believed that there were 5000-1,000 armed ISIL members operating in the Hemrins and about the same in desert areas near the Syrian border from west of Mosul south to include Anbar province. ISIL is also trying to reestablish itself in Mosul and that can be seen by the continued arrests of known ISIL members in Mosul and surrounding areas. The main point of this is that ISIL is defeated but not destroyed. The main reason for that is the nature of ISIL which, alone of all major religions, demands extreme measures for those who try to leave Islam (death), Moslems or non-Moslems who criticize Islam (death) and trying to convert a Moslem to another faith (death). The list is very long and Islamic scripture also preaches justice and honesty but it also justifies being violent when defending Islam against real or imagined threats. All this is a problem that many prominent Moslems are now openly recognizing and seeking a solution for. That in itself is a brave and unusual act. Yet it is deemed necessary because many of the worst aspects of Islamic not only encourage terrorism but also limit academic, economic and social progress. Meanwhile, Islamic terrorism continues to mainly kill other Moslems. While Islamic terror groups preach the importance of killing non-Moslems it is also noticed that nations that are mainly non-Moslem tend to be better run, wealthier and more capable of halting of limiting Islamic terror activity. But in many Moslem nations, like Iraq, a large minority of the population continues to support Islamic terrorism as a cure for all problems real or imagined. So the Islamic terrorists tend to go where they are least unwelcome. November 5, 2018: Adil Abdul Mahdi, the new (since October 25th) prime minister said that the PMF militias wound not be disbanded but would remain part of the security forces and on the government payroll. The government is currently spending $158 million a year on the PMF. The PMF reports to the prime minister, not the Minister of Defense. There are about 150,000 PMF militiamen organized into about 70 brigade-sized units. At least half the PMF have a degree of allegiance to Iran. The allegiance varies depending on how unpopular Iran is in Iraq. November 2, 2018: In October 69 civilians died due to Islamic terrorist violence. Thats a record low not seen since 2012. That is part of a trend this year because there were 75 deaths in September and 90 in August. 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. In October about half the deaths occurred in Baghdad or Nineveh province (including Mosul). 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. Other, more traditional, forms of violence have increased. One of the more visible is tribal feuds, especially in the south (Basra) and west (Anbar). This year casualties from these conflicts have averaged over a hundred a month. The tribesmen have plenty of weapons and increasingly use them when negotiations fail to solve disagreement ancient and recent. October 31, 2018: In the west, on the Syrian border and Deir Ezzor province SDF (Syrian Kurds) forces halted their offensive against an ISIL stronghold near Hajin city and the Iraqi border. In response, Iraq sent over 20,000 more soldiers and militiamen to the Syrian border, especially the area near Hajin. The Iraqi reinforcements included artillery units that, using UAVs or helicopters as spotters, could hit ISIL targets in Syria that are 10 kilometers or more from the border. This is to discourage the ISIL forces from trying to establish themselves too close to the Iraqi border. The ISIL forces near Hajin are the last organized group of ISIL fighters in Syria and have been putting up stubborn resistance to the SDF. Further north Turkey has been firing on SDF forces near the Turkish border. In the north, near where the Turkish and Iranian borders meet, Turkish F-16s carried out airstrikes against at several PKK camps leaving 23 PKK members dead. The Iraqi government and local Kurds tolerate these Turkish airstrikes as long as they concentrate on PKK personnel hiding out in remote areas near the border. The Turks regularly launch airstrikes on PKK camps or concentrations they have identified in northern Iraq. Most of these occur near Mt Qandil, a remote area near the Turkish and Iranian borders that has long harbored PKK hideouts. October 30, 2018: In the north Iraqi and American ground and air operations killed at least 35 ISIL members in the mountains of Salahuddin province. The ISIL base attacked, and later seized, was an ISIL headquarters and five of the ISIL dead were known leaders with experience building bombs as well as organizing and carrying out bombing and other attacks. This base supported those operations in Salahuddin, Kirkuk and Nineveh provinces (including Mosul). Operations in northern Anbar were also supported from this base. This situation kind of highlights the disconnect sometimes between market demand and what wed like to appear in given areas, Trustee Dan Moroney said. You hear a lot of Why cant we get businesses, and wed like to, but sometimes youre at the will of what the market will bring to you. We put this to request for proposals. We got a great response from 2 Fools, and that was a great effort. The reality is something happened on 2 Fools end where they couldnt proceed with it. There was nothing nefarious behind that. It just didnt work out. Clayton Mitchell New Zealand First MP The pace of residential and commercial development in Tauranga is outstripping both Auckland and Christchurch, with ongoing demand that needs to be met. A vast farmland not so many years ago, The Lakes residential development in Tauriko and nearby retail and business hubs are now almost at capacity. As we need to look at other areas of the Bay for expansion, mooted projects such as Rangiuru Business Park are a great option for accommodating the increasing demand for commercial hubs. Nestled between the rail and the Eastern Link, the proposed location is ideal as a key industrial hub as it can be utilised by Tauranga Port and as a base for the horticultural processing cluster. The development would bring an estimated 3000-4000 jobs into the area. Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones travelled to Tauranga last week to meet with key representatives from local councils, NZTA, Quayside, Priority One and KiwiRail to discuss the benefits of such a development. While more work needs to be done on the project, there is clearly an increasing need for developments like this. The regions are the powerhouse of the countrys economy, and NZ First believes that developments such as Rangiuru are essential to continued, regional economic growth and prosperity. I hope to see more plans like this come to fruition, boosting the local economy. Straight from city council A personal view, by Councillor Steve Morris Last summer was the first time Tauranga saw water restrictions in 17 years. While common in other districts, they were unheard of here during this century. The ample supply and pressure weve enjoyed has been due to one factor alone water meters. The reduction in demand that followed the 1999 decision to install meters (which cost some councillors their jobs) saved ratepayers from building a new water plant for 10 years and is forecast to save us $83m by 2032. Filling our 10,000-litre pool this summer costs us $20. It doesnt cost you, and thats the way it should be. Thats the beauty of user-pays. However, its almost certain that I wont be able to top off the pool whenever I want with the best drinking water in New Zealand this summer. Its almost certain there will be water restrictions again this year, as we have record-breaking demand. This is due to population growth, more visitors to the region over the summer months and the obvious dry weather at this time of year. What are we doing about it? As well as new reservoirs, construction is underway of the citys third water plant in the hills behind Te Puke. Its an enormous project costing $113m. Well be taking beautiful water from the sparkling Waiari Stream, treating it to the best standard in New Zealand, and piping it 22km to Papamoa and the Mount, which will take the pressure off our two existing water treatment plants in Oropi/Pyes Pa. Brian Rogers Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz Due to the popularity of the last Auntie Roger, weve got some more pearlers for our readers this week. If you have a burning question that can only be extinguished by the smothering love of Auntie, write to her via her nephew, brian@thesun.co.nz, and all your troubles will be over. Dear Auntie Roger, I was minding the garden for my lovely grandson with that awful Rastafarian hairdo - dreadnoughts, I think he calls it. He left me in charge of his tomato plants to water while he was away at a music festival. Well, they didnt seem to be fruiting so well, despite plenty of leaf and the nice big lights to brighten up the attic room. I couldnt see any sign of tomatoes growing so I decided to thin the buds for him. He wasnt too pleased when he got home. Im no horticulture expert, but I think theres something up with his plants. Any suggestions? Green Granny, Greerton. Dear Green Granny, Those are probably the sort of tomato plants that are useful in cooking. If you still have the buds, pop them in the blender with a bit of butter and make some nice cookies to take to your knitting group. Send me a couple to share with my Home Bake group too. Auntie Roger. Dear Auntie Roger, Ive been living rough, sleeping in my car and begging in the streets, but now the council is banning it. Where can I live now? Lexus, Avenues. Dear Lexus, Make yourself at home at the addresses of councillors Robson, Brown, Morris, Stewart or Curach. They havent seen through your bludging and scamming yet. Auntie Roger. Dear Auntie Roger, I love my cat dearly, but she just doesnt respond well in return. Is it possible for animals to convey love to humans? I dont see it with my cat. Shes cold and unresponsive to me. I hardly see her in the daytime, she only comes out at night and, instead of purring on my lap, shes running around outside climbing trees. I bought her from a man in Mamaku who said he was a breeder and she came from hardy stock. Perhaps I should get a goldfish? Your thoughts please Auntie. Puss Lover, Westridge. Heres my cat, photographed with infrared night vision as he doesnt come out in the daytime. Dear Puss Lover, It is normal for some pets to seem resentful of their owners. Give it time, and perhaps a slice of apple, and maybe love will blossom, possum. I had a similar problem with my horse. It didnt like wearing horseshoes. I got tired of having to tie its laces every morning. Auntie Roger. Dear Auntie Roger, Every time myself and Mr Rust travel, we have difficulties at the border. What can we do to assist our travels? Myrtle, The Mount. Dear Myrtle, You are probably on some sort of customs and immigration watch list. Try changing your name to M. Bovis and see how that goes. Auntie Roger. Dear Auntie Roger, If a skunk, a deer and a duck go out to lunch, who should pay? Troubled, Te Puna. Dear Troubled, Well the skunk only has a scent, the deer is only a buck and theres no doe, so it should go on the ducks bill. Auntie Roger. Dear Auntie Roger, Whats black and white and read all over? The Joker. Dear Joker, That joke isnt funny anymore. Newspapers have been colour now for at least 30 years, you dipstick. Auntie Roger. Dear Auntie Roger, Im driving through Athenree and the traffic is really slow. Im at a standstill, so Im texting you while I wait. Im heading to my 18th birthday party in Tauranga, but Im concerned about the traffic congestion on SH2 and worried I wont make it on time for my own party in three hours. Should I be concerned? Beach Girl, Waihi Beach. Dear Beach Girl, You have to get through Katikati yet. At the rate the road funding is being slashed and bypass schemes canned, youll be lucky to get to Tauranga for your 21st. Auntie Roger. Dear Auntie Roger, I hear the train a comin, its rolling round the bend, and I ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when. Im stuck in Folsom prison, and time keeps draggin on. Johnny, Matua. Dear Johnny, Maybe you shouldnt have shot that man in Reno, just to watch him die? Right now, however, you need to get freed from prison, buy the railroad train, move it on a little farther down the line, thats where you want to stay. Let that lonesome whistle blow your blues away. Auntie Roger Dear Auntie Roger, My life is lacking purpose. Everything I do seems pointless and worthless. At work I have no job satisfaction. I feel useless. Pointless, Pillans Point. Dear Pointless, Dont be so hard on yourself. Remember that somewhere, someones job is installing indicator systems on cars that are driven around Tauranga and never used. Theres always someone performing a more meaningless role than yourself. Cheer up. Auntie Roger. Tiny Mighty customers in the Eastern Bay of Plenty are some of many who may be noticing changes to the name of their electricity provider on their latest monthly bill. The company, which is owned by Mercury New Zealand Limited, has closed its services throughout the country with all customers being transitioned to its parent company, Mercury. Mercury and Tiny Mighty head of operations Andrew Peckham says the transition is about improving services for customers. This is about bringing more competition and better deals for Bay of Plenty locals and all the regions where we operate. We havent had any physical branches for over a year now. We changed this to focus on better digital and phone service which is what most customers prefer. Were making this change in all areas, but were certainly not leaving town. In the lead up to the transition, Tiny Mighty power has supplied electricity to eight provinces including the Eastern Bay of Plenty, Far North, North Canterbury, Marlborough, Taupo and Rotorua, Thames Valley and Matamata/Piako, Waipa and Wairarapa. Andrew says a lot of work has gone into making the transition smooth. Weve been focused on communicating openly with our customers, which is why weve written to them a month in advance with all the information they need. Customers receive that letter with their final Tiny Mighty bill, as well as a notification on the actual bill itself in case they missed the letter. We tested this approach with a small group first to make sure it was a smooth and transparent experience. We also have a team on the phones who are dedicated to helping customers through the transition. Theres a handful who havent received their letter yet, because the timing depends on when their last bill falls. This group will be getting their letter in the next couple of weeks. He says most customers wont need to do a thing. We want our Tiny Mighty customers to enjoy the same benefits that all Mercury customers get. Weve invested a lot in our Mercury brand so it makes sense that all our customers benefit from this. Were really happy that the vast majority of customers have chosen to stay with us through the transition, which is a great reflection of the fact that every Tiny Mighty customer will be getting a better deal with Mercury. The prices are all the same, or lower, and there are other added benefits. Some of these include Airpoints rewards, free power days and eBike and eScooter discounts. The main change is that customers who arent on direct debit will need to use new payment details when paying Mercury for the first time, but weve made sure all the information they need is in their Mercury bill for them. Wed really just like to tell customers that were excited to have them with Mercury and are looking forward to demonstrating our commitment to making things easy, rewarding and inspiring. The jury in the trial of a teenager charged with the murder of a homeless man has retired to consider its verdict. The 14-year-old is accused of fatally stabbing 40-year-old Kelly Donner, after getting into a fight with him in the Hastings suburb of Flaxmere on 4 March. In closing statements, the Crown prosecutor told the High Court in Napier that CCTV footage showing the accused holding a knife shortly before the attack, and images of him holding a bloodied knife after the attack, were enough evidence to infer he stabbed Mr Donner. But the teenager's lawyer argued that 33 seconds of missing footage during which Mr Donner was stabbed was critical as there was no evidence who actually stabbed him. Crown prosecutor Steve Manning urged the jury to consider the facts and not base their verdict on "emotion". "We know when Kelly turned to run and turned his back he did not have his carotid artery stabbed at that point. "We know that when he turned his back to run away, the defendant was right behind him and had a knife in his hand. "We know that 33 seconds later the defendant comes back into view but this time the knife has blood on it. "Just on those facts alone you can draw an inference that the defendant stabbed Kelly Donner. That is the sort of logic and reasoning you are entitled to follow in your reasoning. The accused's lawyer Eric Forster told the jury those 33 seconds were "crucial". "They are 33 seconds of uncertainty," he said, because they were not captured on camera. Mr Forster told the jury that a lot could happen in the 33 seconds not seen on camera. "There is no evidence he stabbed Kelly. The Crown is asking you to fill in the gaps and if you have to fill in the gaps you can't return a verdict beyond reasonable doubt," he told the jury. He also said one of the Crown's witnesses only saw the alleged offender punch Mr Donner, and two other witnesses gave contradictory or unreliable evidence. Secondary teachers have rejected a pay offer from the government and authorised strike action in the first term of next year. The Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) had asked for a single increase of 15 per cent and in response the government offered its members a three percent pay increase for three consecutive years. PPTA president Jack Boyle says teachers voted overwhelmingly to reject the current offer. He says the sector faces unprecedented, growing teacher shortages and it was becoming harder to attract people into teaching. "The key part of why we asked for 15 per cent is to re-establish relativity with the median wage, such as it was the last time we were able to overcome significant shortages, so fewer people coming in - more of them going, so that number then was 1.74 times on average the median wage. "That's what we are asking for with that 15 percent, whether its overnight, whether that's over a period of time, that's up to the negotiators. "We are passionate about our work and feel a responsibility to our students and their families, we have made this decision because the government has given us no other options." Boyle says a complete correction is needed as the sector has been neglected for a decade. "We know it's not Jacinda Ardern's government's fault we are in this position - a decade of neglect and underfunding has brought us here, but it is their responsibility to remedy it. "We need urgent action if we are to recruit, support and retain a home-grown teaching workforce for now and into the future." Secondary teachers plan to take a one day strike in the first term of 2019. Education Minister Chris Hipkins says bargaining with the secondary teachers union was not as advanced as the primary teacher union. "We welcome PPTA back to the negotiating table, which is scheduled to happen next week." Earlier today, the final two of 35 paid union meetings for members were held and the Wellington and West Coast branches cast their votes. Aotea College science and chemistry teacher Anna Greaney said the revised offer was pitiful. She teaches two classes, with 29 and 30 students, and said they were too big. "In a practical science subject that's not okay," Ms Greaney said. "It's about not having enough equipment and having eyes on 30 different kids doing 30 different experiments all at the same time. "Practically, for health and safety, it has got to be an issue." English and media studies teacher Jordan Murray said the offer was a joke. "They're not addressing the things that we feel are important: class sizes, the time that we need to be able to do our job properly," says Murray. "We can get paid as much as they want, but if we don't have the time, we can't do the job properly." The Ministry of Education made its initial offer to the PPTA in late September. A new offer was made in November, but it was slammed as being "almost identical" to the first. The latest offer is worth $405 million and would see all trained secondary teachers' base salaries increase by 3 percent every year for three years. PPTA president Jack Boyle says it was "a moral failure" and recommended that members voted against it. "We see that it was last minute, half-hearted and disrespectful," says Boyle. "Much of what was in the offer - many of the items - lacked enough detail to put it in front of you for genuine consideration." Wellington regional union chairperson Ahmad Osama agreed, but did not want to pre-empt the vote. "We've got a shortage of teachers, we've got big class sizes, we do not have enough relievers in the relief pool, and there are many other issues that we are trying to deal with," says Boyle. -RNZ A nationwide roadshow coming to Tauranga this month is aiming to increase New Zealands productivity and business success. The roadshow, which is coming to the region November 29, aims to do this by focusing on the small businesses and their trusted advisors - accountants and bookkeepers. Latest data from Xero Small Business Insights shows Tauranga is among the highest performing regions in the country for small business cashflow. About 57.66 per cent of businesses in the Bay of Plenty are cashflow positive, which is about 3 per cent above the national average of 54 per cent. Craig Hudson, Xeros Managing Director for New Zealand and Pacific Islands, says with the right advice and support small businesses in could do even better. Small businesses make up 97 per cent of all enterprises in New Zealand and currently contribute around 28 per cent of GDP. He says theres no reason why this couldnt one day be 50 per cent of GDP. As a country we need to foster growth and innovation. We know that Kiwis are exceptionally hard workers, but we struggle with low productivity levels. We believe that, by working together, this can change. Accountants and bookkeepers have a huge opportunity here to provide support and advice that enables small businesses to be successful. Imagine if every one of our Kiwi small businesses hired even half a new employee - what that would do to economic growth and GDP contribution? The potential is here and Im challenging every accountant and bookkeeper to review how they operate and explore new ways to support their clients - whether thats leveraging data from Xero Small Business Insights to inform decisions or branching into app advisory services. The Xero Roadshow is an annual event for Xeros partners, connecting them with product experts and partner consultants and, for the first time this year, it will also be open to small businesses. It will provide attendees with key strategy updates and deliver breakout content sessions - sharing valuable information about how to increase productivity, grow their business and best use the technology tools at their disposal. Odele Welsh, an accountant at Tauranga-based business consultancy, Office Angels, says its positive to see businesses in the Bay of Plenty embracing technology. We really encourage small businesses to pick up the right software. It saves time, makes them more efficient and there are less chances of error. In turn, this can boost their productivity and make their lives much easier. Its critical that businesses invest in training to make sure they know how to make the most of tools and get what they need out of the technology. Were looking forward to learning more about the latest tech at this years Roadshow, so we can pass this on to our clients in our training and work with them. The Xero Roadshow launched on 16 October and runs until 6 December. It will visit 14 regions; Whangarei, Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Rotorua, New Plymouth, Napier, Palmerston North, Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch, Dunedin, Invercargill and Queenstown. To register, go to: https://www.xero.com/nz/events/roadshow-2018/ Sidney United Methodist Church is hosting a Community Blood Drive 7:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 30. Please use the North entrance for handicap access to the basement. West Nebraska Blood Center believes that the blood needs of our region can best be met by the generosity of its area residents. We invite you to Give the Gift of Life by donating blood. The donation of a pint of blood can help save three lives. A blood donor must be at least 17 years old and weigh at least 115 pounds. The donor must be in good physical health and feeling well at the time of the donation; no col... Videos Sorry, there are no recent results for popular videos. The drive was to begin Nov. 26, and will run through Dec. 9. New toys and/or new or gently used coats can be dropped off to one of three certified institutions. Items can be dropped off at EAU Methodist Church, 405 S. Euclid Ave.; Oak Park Temple, 1235 Harlem Ave.; or the OPRF High School student activities center, 201 N. Scoville Ave. Cheyenne County Commissioner Philip Sanders explains the job of county commissioner to area high school students during Government Day Monday. High School students met at the District Courtroom to hear from county and elected officials on their duties and expectations. The Village of Potter will be receiving $10,000 in assistance toward improvement of the Potter Community Hall. The Cheyenne County Commissioners approved a request by the Cheyenne County Tourism Committee to provide funding for the Potter project. The project involves restoration of the former American Legion Hall. The work includes updating the building with handicap accessibility. "It won't by any means cover all of it (cost of the project)," said Judy Harris of the Tourism Board. "From our viewpoint, it (the project) is strictly a heads and beds." Cheyenne County Tourism Director Kevin... Pictured from left are the Dornbier family Liam, Zoey (with Buster), Leasa and Mike. They are opening a new dog boarding facility, "Ruff House." Sometimes an enterprise, an opportunity, presents itself in unexpected ways, including assets on purchased real estate. Mike and Leasa Dornbier purchased the kind of estate that inspires western novels. The prairie valley is long and sloping to the south and west with the sun gently resting on the distant hills. The almost Kentucky-green yards separate the home from the guest house, accented to the east by a pond and to the west by a 10-kennel outbuilding. The surrounding four acres are as if a fantasy land for children and for dogs. That is where the concept of a kennel came about. The ou... Turkish members of an excavation team led by Nebraska art history professor Michael Hoff sweep dirt away from a new mosaic discovered in August 2018. LINCOLN A rare, second-century figural floor mosaic has been unearthed in the ancient Roman city of Antiochia ad Cragum on the southern coast of Turkey. The newly discovered mosaic features unusual composition and risque subject matter - essentially ancient dirty jokes about the mythological characters Narcissus and Ganymede. The mosaics adorned the floor of a marble-lined public latrine that apparently served patrons of the adjacent Great Roman Bath Complex and those attending events at a nearby bouleuterion, or council house. Michael Hoff, a University of NebraskaLincoln art hist... She may be small in stature, but the enthusiasm Cheyenne County's new extension assistant holds for 4-H and its programs is 10 feet tall. Growing up in Omaha, 4-H wasn't a part of Lisa Schumacher's life. But she began to learn about a part of it as she watched her nephew compete in the local Lego Robotic League. During Lego League Schumacher met Cheyenne County 4-H Extension Educator Cynthia Gill, and the two got to visiting about what 4-H is, and what its programs have to offer, and found herself very interested in the program. She later learned that Gill was leaving the area and began vis... At one conference, Freeman-Wilson said she talked with the CEO of ESRI, a GIS firm, who had noticed the work Gary was doing to use the software. She said the CEO offered to send someone to Gary to help increase the citys capabilities and talk about setting up GIS programs in the schools. SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A driver fled after crashing into a utility pole in Syracuse and sparking a fire that destroyed a West Side home on Thanksgiving. And now, the Syracuse Police Department is searching for the unknown driver. A vehicle hit a pole at 1:43 a.m. Thursday at Liberty Street and West Belden Avenue. Power lines toppled by the accident started to spark. Both the vehicle and a nearby home -- 417 Liberty St. -- caught on fire, said Lt. David Brown, a police spokesman. The driver walked away from the crash, heading south on Liberty Street, Brown said. The Syracuse Fire Department rushed to Liberty Street and helped residents escape the burning home. As the wind chill dipped to minus 2 degrees, firefighters worked to put out the blaze. The fire destroyed the Liberty Street home and the vehicle involved in the crash, Brown said. A parked car, a utility pole, a stop sign and a transformer were damaged. Hundreds of customers in the area lost power. Three people -- including two firefighters -- were injured, said Lt. Eric Yetman, a fire department spokesman. The American Red Cross is helping six people. It appears speed caused the crash, Brown said. The fallen, sparking power lines then sparked the blaze, Yetman said. After the accident, the registered owner of the vehicle involved in the crash called 911 and reported the vehicle as stolen, Brown said. But officers could not find the owner, he said. The driver of the vehicle was described as a black man in his mid 20s wearing a black, hooded sweatshirt with white lettering, Brown said. Police asked anyone with information to call (315) 422-5130 or submit tips anonymously through the Syracuse PD app. AUBURN, N.Y. -- A man tried to stop a teenager from arguing with his girlfriend on Thanksgiving in Auburn. The teen responded by pushing the man off a porch, police said. Then, the teenager forced his girlfriend to leave the home against her will, police said. Jack C. Whitmore, 19, was arrested Thursday by the Auburn Police Department after a domestic violence incident. He was charged with second-degree assault, a felony; unlawful imprisonment, a misdemeanor; and second-degree harassment, a violation. The assault happened at 8:26 p.m. at 78 Wall St., police said. A 67-year-old man suffered a head injury when Whitmore pushed him off the porch, police said. Whitmore's girlfriend -- who police said was forced to leave the Wall Street home -- was found safe shortly after. Auburn police were assisted by the New York State Police. Whitmore remains in the Cayuga County Jail. SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Hundreds of Central New Yorkers and visitors headed to Destiny USA on Thanksgiving evening to shop. But for one group of family and friends, the tradition of shopping on Thanksgiving is about more than just bargain hunting, it's about having fun. "We want to put the joy back in the day," said Lisa Wildrick, of Oswego County. Wildrick and her shopping buddies dressed in "ugly Christmas" pajamas. "We're here to shop, but we're also here to have fun," she said. Tom and Jodi Tarry, of North Syracuse, said the group went to Walmart before heading to the Syracuse mall. He said people ask to take photos with them. "It's also about making other people happy," said Mattison Peet, of Oswego County. The group joined hundreds of others looking for sales at Destiny USA. Some stores opened as early at 2 p.m., while several others opened in the evening. Best Buy, which opened at 5 p.m., drew the largest crowd of the day. Hundreds lined up to enter the store. Many had been waiting hours to secure a chance to buy discounted electronics. Many stores at Destiny USA will be open until 1 a.m. and many will reopen for Black Friday sales as early as 6 a.m. For more information, visit the mall's website. Early Black Friday shopping erupted in violence on Thanksgiving night at an Alabama mall. CNN reports a shooting at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, Ala., left two people wounded, including a 12-year-old girl, and a gunman dead. Authorities say the incident started with a physical altercation between an 18-year-old male and the 21-year-old shooter inside the mall, near the Footaction and JC Penney stores. According to AL.com, the 18-year-old male was rushed to UAB Hospital's Trauma Center and listed in serious condition. The girl was said to be alert and conscious at Children's of Alabama. The gunman, whose name has not been released, was shot and killed inside the mall by Hoover police. Hoover Police Capt. Gregg Rectors told AL.com the shooting happened at 9:52 p.m. (10:52 p.m. ET) Thursday. Multiple cops were already on the scene for traffic control and police presence inside; one uniformed officer was nearby when the shooting began. "The Hoover police officer actually was running to the scene, he heard gunshots, he was obviously very near the scene, he actually shot and killed the person who injured the other person," Rector said. Police said they're still unclear of what sparked the initial fight. Social media posts show shoppers fleeing the scene; several shoppers appeared to have weapons drawn. A graphic photo circulating online allegedly shows the dead gunman. NBC reports the mall was closed until further notice. The Riverchase Galleria was scheduled to be open until midnight, with many stores opening early the next morning for Black Friday. Someone posted this shooting in the mall at river riverchase Galleria in Hoover Alabama on Thanksgiving pic.twitter.com/3WczyXqu7A NIKKI (@braxtonthings) November 23, 2018 #BREAKING Shopper Debby Woods talks about what she heard at the scene of a shooting in the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, Alabama, pic.twitter.com/wGEVHXnwJt WPEC CBS12 News (@CBS12) November 23, 2018 We are devastated by the incident that happened tonight in our shopping center. We are working closely with the Hoover Police Department. While there is no current danger to our community, we will remain closed until further notice. Riverchase Galleria (@ShopRiverchase) November 23, 2018 The rankings are based on the number of reported violent crimes, such as aggravated assault, murder, rape and robbery, from the FBIs 2016 crime report statistics per 1,000 people in each city. If there was a tie, property crimes, such as burglary, arson, larceny and motor vehicle theft, were factored in. Brexit Withdrawal Agreement Put To UK Lawmakers by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London 23 November 2018 An agreement has been reached between the European Union and the United Kingdom on Brexit, which, if approved by UK lawmakers, would establish a transition period, until the end of 2020, during which EU law would continue to apply to the UK. A potential transition period would support businesses in allowing them more time to come to terms with the changes of the UK no longer being an EU member state. Controversially the deal includes a provision that would allow the UK Government to seek EU approval for an extended transition period, beyond 2020. During this proposed transition period, the entire EU acquis its accumulated legislation, legal acts, and court decisions will continue to apply to and in the UK as if it were a member state. This means that the UK will continue to participate in the EU Customs Union and the Single Market (with all four freedoms) and all Union policies. Any changes to the Union acquis will automatically apply to and in the UK. The direct effect and primacy of Union law will be preserved. All existing Union regulatory, budgetary, supervisory, judiciary, and enforcement instruments and structures will apply, including the competence of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The Withdrawal Agreement covers all issues concerning the UK's exit from the European Union. Notable statements on tax matters include confirmation that EU case law must be adhered to by the UK during the transition period, the UK would continue to be covered by EU trade deals until the date it leaves the EU and would not be allowed to negotiate its own bilateral deals, UK and EU persons would retain benefits they receive under the current social security framework, and goods shipped prior to the end of the transition period that are in transit after the end of the transition period would continue to be covered by the EU laws they were subject to when dispatched. The Agreement also includes a Protocol on Gibraltar, which provides for close cooperation between Spain and the UK in respect of Gibraltar on the implementation of citizen's rights provisions within the Withdrawal Agreement and concerns administrative cooperation between competent authorities in a number of policy areas. On rulings from the European Court of Justice, an explanatory memorandum from the European Union explains: "[...] Both Parties should ensure in their respective legal orders primacy and direct effect, as well as consistent interpretation with the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) handed down until the end of the transition. Direct effect is mentioned explicitly with reference to all provisions of the Withdrawal Agreement which meet the conditions of direct effect under Union law. This basically means that concerned parties can invoke the Withdrawal Agreement directly before national courts both in the UK, as well as in the EU member states." It adds: "Furthermore, UK courts must abide by the principle of consistent interpretation with the CJEU case law handed down until the end of the transition period and pay due regard to CJEU case law handed down after that date. The Agreement specifically requires the UK to ensure compliance with the above through primary domestic legislation, specifically empowering UK judicial and administrative authorities to disapply inconsistent or incompatible national law." On tax issues, it states: "For customs, VAT, and excise purposes, the Withdrawal Agreement ensures that movements of goods which commence before the UK's withdrawal from the EU Customs Union should be allowed to complete their movement under the Union rules which were in place at the start of the movement. After the end of the transition period, the EU rules will continue to apply for cross-border transactions that started before the transaction period in terms of VAT rights and obligations for taxable persons, such as reporting obligations, payment, and refund of VAT. The same approach applies for ongoing administrative cooperation, which, together with exchanges of information that started before withdrawal, should be completed under the applicable EU rules." A UK Government guidance note on the Withdrawal Agreement goes into further detail, stating: "VAT and excise treatments for goods that are midway through an intra-EU customs movement that begins before the end of the implementation period and finishes afterwards will continue to be treated as though they are under EU law." "Goods moving from the UK to an EU member state, and vice versa, which commenced their journey before the end of the implementation period, will continue to be treated under the rules on intra-EU movements of goods set out in the VAT Directive and the EU rules on intra-EU movements of excise goods." "The UK will continue to have access to a number of EU networks including information databases to allow the UK to share information on VAT and excise and to fulfil the obligations listed in the Withdrawal Agreement." Switzerland To Adopt Global Forum's Tax Recommendations by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels 23 November 2018 The Swiss Government is to press ahead with its plans to implement the recommendations made by the OECD's Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes, despite domestic opposition. On November 21, the Federal Council adopted the dispatch on a bill that provides for the conversion of bearer shares into registered shares and introduces a sanction system for breaches of the duty to report beneficial ownership. The OECD's Global Forum conducts peer reviews of member countries in two phases. Phase 1 covers the legal and regulatory framework of the country concerned. Phase 2, to which Switzerland was admitted in 2015, assesses the efficiency of the exchange of information in practice. In 2016, the Global Forum rated Switzerland "largely compliant" with international standards for tax transparency and the exchange of information. Under the proposals, the issue of bearer shares would only be permitted if the company has equity securities listed on a stock exchange or if the shares are structured as intermediated securities. A breach of the duty to report beneficial ownership or to maintain the share register and list of beneficial owners will be a punishable offence. The bill also contains provisions on the exchange of information. It sets out requirements on the confidentiality of administrative assistance requests and on the capacity to be a party to and to take legal action pertaining to parties about whom information is requested in administrative assistance proceedings. In addition, the legislation clarifies the procedures for dealing with administrative assistance requests that are based on stolen data. A consultation on the proposals was held earlier this year. The Federal Council said that although the cantons were generally in favor, a range of negative views were expressed by other participants. The Federal Council however intends to push ahead with the main elements of the proposal the conversion of bearer shares into registered shares and the sanction system for breaches of duty because they are "indispensable for implementing the Global Forum's recommendations." It explained that if these steps are not taken, Switzerland will receive an insufficient overall rating in the next peer review, which is due to begin at the end of the year. The Council warned that a negative review would "not only damage Switzerland's reputation considerably, Switzerland would also run the risk of other states placing it on a list of non-cooperative jurisdictions." The Federal Department of Finance will now publish instructions on the conversion of bearer shares into registered shares and on structuring them as intermediated securities. Parliament will discuss the proposals in spring 2019. What just happened? Its no secret that the US government doesnt trust Huawei. Devices from both it and fellow Chinese firm ZTE are banned from American agencies and contractors, but a new report claims the Trump administration doesnt want to stop thereits trying to persuade telecom companies in allied countries to avoid using the firms equipment. According to the Wall Street Journal, US officials have reached out to their counterparts in countries where Huaweis telecom equipment is in widespread use to warn them about what the US has long seen as a cybersecurity risk. These include Germany, Italy, and Japan, which are home to American military bases. The US government has been issuing warnings about the perceived security threats posed by Huawei since 2012. Back in February, bosses from six US intelligence agencies said using a telecoms device from the company could put you at risk of having personal data accessed or stolena result of its alleged close ties with the Chinese government. In August, President Trump signed the Defense Authorization Act, which bans US government agencies and contractors from using certain tech from Huawei and other Chinese companies. Citing anonymous people familiar with the matter, the WSJ said the US might offer countries an incentive to shun Huawei by boosting their financial aid for telecoms development. Huawei, which was founded by former People's Liberation Army engineer Ren Zhengfei, recently moved past Apple to become the worlds second-largest smartphone sellerits already the worlds largest producer of telecoms equipment. Despite these distinctions, US officials have constantly warned Americans not to use its products, Australia has banned the company from supplying parts for a 5G mobile network, and it has faced criticism in the UK over potential threats to national security. The big picture: Black Friday once marked the start of the holiday shopping season but as online shopping grew in popularity, consumer spending habits shifted. With the ability to shop from home (and now, virtually anywhere thanks to mobile devices), eager buyers no longer have to wait for brick-and-mortar stores to open their doors to start spending. According to the latest data from Adobe, consumers in the US spent a record $3.7 billion online on Thanksgiving Day an increase of 27.9 percent year-over-year. As of 7 a.m. PST on Black Friday (the latest data available as of writing), online spending was at $643 million, a 27.8 percent increase compared to the same period in 2017. Through the first 22 days in November, smartphones have driven 49 percent of retail traffic and been responsible for 29 percent of purchases. Desktops still hold a commanding lead, however, with 62 percent of purchases made via traditional computing devices. Nine percent of online spending was conducted on tablets. Adobes statistics, which measure transactions at 80 of the top 100 retailers on the web in the US, analyze more than a trillion visits to over 4,500 retail websites and 55 million SKUs. According to its data, the top-selling product on Thanksgiving was the Nintendo Switch followed by Beats headphones, Hot Wheels toys, Red Dead Redemption 2 and HatchiBabies, in that order. Image courtesy Akira Kaelyn, Shutterstock Spraying aerosols into the atmosphere to reduce global warming is possible, but it will be very costly with current technology. With reports that the Earth is heading rapidly to a hothouse state, researchers looked at the capabilities and costs of various methods proposed to inject sulfates into the lower atmosphere to reflect sunlight back into space. The strategy could offset the negative effects of global warming of the world fails to control the emission of greenhouse gases. Stratospheric Aerosol Injection: Will It Work? The idea of injecting sulfates into the atmosphere was inspired by major volcano eruptions. In 1991, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted, sending about 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide aerosols into the stratosphere. As a result, the temperature in the lower atmosphere dropped by 1 degree Fahrenheit. Eventually, the effect wore off when the sulfates dropped back to the ground a few years later. Cost Of Offsetting Global Warming With Sulfates In The Atmosphere "While we don't make any judgment about the desirability of SAI [stratospheric aerosol injection], we do show that a hypothetical deployment program starting 15 years from now, while both highly uncertain and ambitious, would be technically possible strictly from an engineering perspective," revealed Gernot Wagner from Harvard University and co-author of the study. "It would also be remarkably inexpensive, at an average of around $2 billion to 2.5 billion per year over the first 15 years." However, Wake Smith of Yale University, the co-author of the study, warned that the project would need an entirely new kind of plane to deliver the sulfates to the lower atmosphere. He stated that currently, no existing aircraft has the capacity to reach the altitude required and carry the payload. The researchers investigated how much it would cost to develop a new aircraft specifically to inject the sulfate into the atmosphere. They dubbed it SAIL or SAI Lofter, which has equal the weight of a large but narrow passenger aircraft and can sustain a level flight at 20 kilometers per second. In addition, the SAI Lofter should have a wing area twice the size of a regular airliner, double the thrust, and four engines. They estimated that it would cost $2 billion to develop the airframe and then $350 million to modify an existing aircraft. Doubts and concerns have previously been expressed over the impact of injecting the atmosphere with millions of tons of sulfate every year. The sulfates in the atmosphere could impact the ozone layer or turn the sky white. The study was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A rogue misfolded prion protein that destroys the brain was discovered in the eyes of 11 infected patients, a new study reveals. Researchers hope that the discovery could lead to early diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or CJD, the most common prion disease. The findings were discussed in the journal mBio. Prion Proteins Found In Patients' Eyes Researchers from the National Institute of Health along with the scientists from the University of California, San Diego and the University of California, San Franciso examined the eyes of deceased patients who were diagnosed with CJD. Using the RT-QuIC, a method also use in diagnosing prion disease, they checked for the presence of misfolded prion proteins from eye tissue of 11 patients. They found that the retina has the highest level of prions in all 11 patients. Moreover, the researchers also found traces of prions throughout the cornea, lens, and muscles in and around the eye. This is the first study to detect prions in these parts of the eye. Fear Of Prion Disease Infection The findings also raised concerns over the possibility of patients being infected with prion disease. The illness shows up spontaneously most of the time when a prion protein suddenly changes into a misfolded form, affecting other proteins around it. For some, it is genetic. However, it can also be infectious. Prion disease can be passed from person to person or animal to person. The concern over the new findings comes from the possibility that eye exam equipment, which is designed for repeated use, has been contaminated. About 40 percent of people who have sporadic CJD develop eye problems and, therefore, go through regular eye exams. In addition, people who have prion disease but have not been diagnosed might be spreading CJD to another person through cadaveric corneal transplants. The study revealed that there are already two to three possible cases of disease transmission. CJD is fatal. The disease can also be difficult to diagnose because its symptoms are similar to those of other, more common diseases. The researchers said that they will continue evaluating ways to use accessible eye components and fluids to diagnose CJD. They also hope that the method used in the study could be applied to other neurodegenerative diseases "If the RT-QuIC method can be used to amplify other aggregated proteins, this might lead to advances in diagnosis for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and related diseases," stated Michael Geschwind, co-author of the study. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The hidden homeless arent so hidden if youre looking for them, often doubling up for a night here or there with family, friends and anyone wholl take them in for a night. They can be found in every community, typically inside abandoned buildings, loaded-down vehicles, 24-hour businesses and public venues, where they find brief refuge from their stormy lives. Most people go home to their family for Thanksgiving. Others, however, simply cannot attend gatherings because they are in their line of duty, including the International Space Station astronauts. It has become a tradition to celebrate this important holiday with the most important people in one's life, and that entails taking the time off work to share with them the things to be thankful for. However, for particular professions, specifically astronauts, they have no other choice but to stay and revel in their special ways. Expedition 57 Team Three astronauts were not able to spend the holidays with their loved ones but that does not mean they're not preparing for it in space. In a video shared by the ISS on Nov. 21 via Twitter, Expedition 57 Commander Alexander Gerst and NASA flight engineer Serena Aunon-Chancellor made it a point to greet everyone on Earth a "Happy Thanksgiving." The duo, along with Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev, were to share a sumptuous meal that was sent in advanced, which consists of yams, pound cake, and of course, the traditional turkey, even though it was only Aunon-Chancellor who had observed Thanksgiving in the past. Gerst, a German, said it was not the first time he is celebrating this special day. "Thanksgiving is a time to spend with those whom you love, whoever that might be, and so we'll be enjoying this meal together but then also calling our loved ones back on planet Earth," Aunon-Chancellor shared. Both Aunon-Chancellor and Gerst had their days-off, which left Prokopyev the only one working during the holiday. Regular programming will be back on Friday, and it means the three will have a lax time, a chance they can grab to catch up with their families and friends. Perks One of the perks about celebrating Thanksgiving in space? There will be more food for everyone. The best part? There are no dishes to wash. As much as these things sound exciting for everyone on earth, there is a reason why there were only three ISS astronauts onboard. NASA's flight engineer Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin should have been in orbit by now, but a malfunction in the space rocket forced them to land back to Earth just minutes after they had lifted off on Oct. 11. In an interview, Aunon-Chancellor admitted that as much as the team wanted the two astronauts in space, knowing that they were safe is what is paramount. Are you thawing out your turkey? The space station crew is preparing for Thanksgiving, too! Tomorrow, an American, European and Russian will celebrate together in space with their own special meal. Happy Thanksgiving from the International Space Station! pic.twitter.com/VVW5QEEvKY Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) November 21, 2018 Photo: NASA Johnson | Flickr 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Trending Tech Services With the world in a constant advance on the business side, the time is now to open your mind frame as a company. With freight processing and shipping standards reaching new highs, investing in state-to-state shipping becomes the best course of action. Reducing your footprint to allow for smoother transactions and low-cost buy-ins open the door for adding new infrastructures to your company. This allows for exploration into fields such as artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), and cloud-based computing. Below are some of the top trending technologies companies need to distance themselves from the competition and build on a progressive level. Shipping Reductions The cost of sending goods from one place to another sees no sign of decrease when considering future outlooks. Most of the costs associated with shipping goods come down to the companies that are handling and processing these goods. Weight distributions and other intangible factors cannot be controlled for, calling for companies to heighten their research in controlled environments. Adapting to in-house storage facilities and keeping products in a place that come with low storage fees is a good starting point. Routing your items via the use of a company can be a promising way to lower your total overhead costs. Keeping these companies within the state also creates an ease of access in terms of communication and smoothing the transitional period. Companies can reduce their costs by hiring local and researching in-state options before outsourcing to other areas on the map. Need for Safety As sales and business terms climb to new heights, it is always important to secure your company in the marketplace. Credit card fraud and data leaks continue to be the leading force in harming a company infrastructure. Hiring a PCI QSA company to sift through this information and create a lock-down on data is a good step towards securing your future. Qualified Security Assessors (QSA) work as parts of independent teams that hold recognition from the Payment Card Industry (PCI). They can successfully tap into your data streams creating long blockchains of coding that is difficult for hackers to decode or crack. Their servers provide an excellent amount of intrigue in terms of complex coding, reducing the need to place heavy investment in other security types. Credit and debit transactions are the number one form of money exchange in today's market, so securing this area to abide by future business standards is a small token for company-wide protection. Advancements With data streams and information becoming more widely tested and monitored, it becomes time to crunch this raw data into platforms for business usage. Artificial intelligence is the leading stint at making this possible. AI is helping to read consumer interactions, business-to-business functions, and other such data streams to draw conclusions. Companies like Facebook utilize this technology. It helps weed through the noise to create useful information for exploring new marketing techniques and helps businesses recreate their approach. Augmented reality is leading the tech industry in terms of telecommunication. Increasing cloud storage and revamping the speeds of your devices allows for smoother transactions and communications. This advancement will call for data increases for companies, allowing them to outsource their services to telecommunication service providers that they see fit. It is no longer a question of paying too much for unused support as it is a dumbed-down way of increasing your speed for lower cost considerations. Our state is graced with a remarkable natural heritage. From the mighty American alligator to the rarest snake in North America, the Louisiana pine snake, Louisiana residents are stewards for our reptilian diversity. Aside from the obvious value in preserving native wildlife, many of these animals are integral to maintaining a healthy ecosystem. So it is understandable that I was deeply disappointed to learn that the Lake Providence Snake Rodeo has been revived. This event, wherein participants engage in the indiscriminate slaughter of native species, not only runs contrary to any understanding of environmental sustainability but it is antithetical to the values of conservation and respect for nature that our state upholds. Mom: Student complaining of snake bite waited 4 hours before Dutchtown Primary sought treatment GEISMAR An Ascension Parish mom says Dutchtown Primary officials inexplicably waited four hours before alerting her that her daughter needed Organizers claim that the event is to control the population of moccasins in Lake Providence. However, the count from 2016 indicates that 167 nonvenomous diamondback water snakes were killed, opposed to only 85 cottonmouths, meaning that participants butchered about 100 percent more nonvenomous snakes of just one species than their claimed target. In 2018 this ratio was even worse, with about 470 percent more diamondback water snakes killed than cottonmouths. Ironically, the destruction of the nonvenomous water snake species in Lake Providence only creates less competition for cottonmouths. In this way, the snake rodeo is working against its own stated interest. Even if the rodeo was able to achieve a 100 percent success rate targeting venomous species, these animals still play an important role in our environment. According to Louisianas state herpetologist, Jeff Boundy: the snakes eat diseased fish, and the baby water snakes are a vital food source. These animals are integral to maintaining healthy fisheries and rookeries in our state. In short, this event has a negative impact on the local environment and doesnt even achieve its own stated goals. And to top it off, this year the organizers did not promote the event at all to avoid public exposure. It speaks volumes that the organizers felt the need to keep this event a secret. I ask the organizers to follow the example set by Claxton, Georgia, where they replaced a similar event with a wildlife festival which generates revenue for the local area without a wanton waste of native fauna. Replaced or not, it is clear that this blemish on our state must not be allowed to continue. Sean Krieg student Baton Rouge A counter protestor yells at Take 'Em Down NOLA protestors in front of Jackson Square in New Orleans, Thursday, Aug. 23, 2018. Purchases made via links on our site may earn us an affiliate commission The University of Oxford on Thursday launched its first overseas center for physical science and engineering research, in east China's Jiangsu Province. The Oxford-Suzhou Centre for Advanced Research (OSCAR) opened in the Suzhou Industrial Park in Suzhou City. The center was established initially with a grant from the park, according to Oxford University website. Initial research programs will be led by groups from the Oxford departments of Engineering, Physics, Chemistry and Materials, with applications ranging from health informatics, tissue engineering and biomedical imaging techniques to environmental remediation, advanced materials and electronic devices. A total of 12 scholars from Oxford have been chosen to lead projects at the center. The scholars will work in Suzhou for two months every year. Oxford vice-chancellor Louise Richardson said that cooperation with China provided an exciting opportunity, and that she looked forward to more achievements in innovative and new areas. A proposal voters will consider next month to restore a City Council representative to the Sewerage & Water Board's governing board has rustled up a familiar opponent: the Bureau of Governmental Research. The nonpartisan watchdog group said adding any politicians to the board would create conflicts of interest and inject politics into the agency's decisions. Its concerns, however, are being rejected by the proposal's primary author, who says the board is already political and that its partial restructuring would ensure greater accountability. Voters will consider the move Dec. 8, after the Legislature agreed this spring to put it on the ballot. "Direct participation on the board by a council member would create a conflict of interest with the councils regulatory oversight role and potentially increase political decision making at the board level," BGR said in a Nov. 15 report. But state Sen. J.P. Morrell of New Orleans, the plan's chief sponsor, called BGRs objections a non-argument. They ignore the fact that the S&WB is chaired by the mayor, and the entire board is appointed by the mayor, he said. The nature of it is already political. The restoration of a council member would be a partial return to a structure voters ended five years ago, in which three council members served on the agencys board along with the mayor and other appointed members. Morrell also co-sponsored that 2013 measure, which was backed by then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu and even members of the sitting council. The change left the board with the mayor as its president, and with its 12 other members appointed by the mayor with the councils consent. The mayor chooses those appointees from nominations made by a supposedly independent selection committee. All are supposed to have various professional or other qualifications, including two "consumer advocates." But the revelation of failures of the agencys personnel and equipment during flooding after a rainstorm in August 2017 raised questions about whether the restructured board was keeping close enough tabs on the agency's operations. 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 Morrell and other lawmakers agreed this spring to ask voters to return one council representative to the board. Under the proposal, that representative could be the chair of the councils Public Works Committee, a committee member or a civil engineer appointed by the chair. In addition, the ballot measure would require one of the mayors appointees to be a retired civil engineer and would reset the staggering of board members terms. It would also establish a deadline for the agency to give the council quarterly reports, require detailed information on agency projects and require the agencys executive director and the mayor or the city's chief administrative officer to present those reports to the council. But the BGR analysis said there is no way to ensure the council would actually appoint an engineer, and not one of its own members, to the seat. Having a politician on the board who might voice opposition to tax increases or other moves likely to be unpopular among voters could dissuade the board's other members from supporting those measures, the report said. BGR said such has been the case historically. Because the council oversees the S&WB, the appointed council member "would be responsible for overseeing actions personally taken as a board member," the report said. "Thus, the members fiduciary duty to the board could run contrary to that members regulatory responsibility on the council." BGR also noted that retaining the mayor on the board in 2013 did not jibe with the recommendation it made at the time to remove all politicians. A better tack would be for the council to continue to strongly regulate the agency, rather than worrying about having a representative on it, the group said. Morrell, however, shot back that the current structure has been a failure. They think the board is plenty accountable enough right now," he said of BGR. "I would say that the average voter probably disagrees with that. Chairman and founder of property and car distributor behemoth Perron Group Stan Perron died at his home in Perth on Friday morning aged 96. Mr Perron was born in Perth on November 2, 1922 but grew up in Western Australias goldfields region. Stan Perron died on Friday morning. Credit:Bohdan Warchomij He was one of the oldest members on Australian rich lists with an estimated worth of more than $3 billion, earned mostly through the Perron Group, which has one of the largest property portfolios in Australia. The group has ownership of 12 major shopping centres across Australia and two office towers including the famous Central Park building in Perth. Morgan Stanley held firm in its valuation on Mineral Resources after the company announced it had reached a deal to sell a half-share in its Wodgina lithium project to battery metals giant Albemarle for $US1.15 billion ($1.58 billion). It also provided earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation guidance for 2018-19 of $280 million to $320 million, above what the broker had been expecting. "The deal enhances the credibility of Wodgina as a world relevant lithium ore body and supports the continued relevance of hard rock into the future," said analyst Rahul Anand. The broker implied it saw the announced deal and guidance as supportive of its current price target of $20, a 26.9 per cent premium to its Thursday closing price of $15.76. Morgan Stanley retained its overweight rating on the stock. Steel margins have come off heavily in China in the past few weeks, largely on the back of lower steel prices. Margins are currently sitting at their lowest level since May 2017 when the price spiked dramatically. The flow on effect for the iron ore market will be felt soon as steelmakers look to buy cheaper, lower grade iron ore products or demand discounts on higher grades. "Subdued steel margins will eventually mean weaker iron ore and coking coal prices as mills struggle to stay afloat," said CBA mining and energy commodities analyst Vivek Dhar. Iron ore prices are down 5.8 per cent in the past month. Oil Oil prices fell again on Thursday after Saudi Arabia's Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said the kingdom was pumping oil at record levels. He said on Thursday the country's current oil production was above the roughly 10.7 million barrels a day it had been in October, which had already been a record for the kingdom. Its previous record had been 10.72 million barrels per day, which it produced in November 2016, just before OPEC and its allies agreed to sideline 1.8 per cent of global supply. Brent crude slipped 1.6 per cent on Thursday while WTI crude fell 1.4 per cent. Pound The British pound lifted as high as 1 per cent against the US dollar on Thursday after it was announced UK Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker agreed on the final details of the Withdrawal Agreement. The pair also generated a draft Political Declaration which sets out the terms of the relationship between the two parties when the UK withdraws from the European Union. There is still a long path ahead for both parties however, with May yet to gather a majority to pass the Brexit deal in UK Parliament. November 24-25: Comedian Tim Ferguson will conduct a two-day comedy writing masterclass at the Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre. 9am to 5pm both days. canberratheatre.com.au November 24: Head to Paperchain for the launch of The Ruby Red Slippers by Tianqing Fan. This book was awarded first place in the Year 3-4 Picture Book Award of the Make Your Own Book competition organised by the Children's Book Council of Australia (ACT Branch). Paper and pencils will be provided so that you too can make your own book. Paperchain, Manuka, 1.30pm. paperchainbookstore.com.au Eric Idle will be appearing in Canberra on November 28. November 25: Social affairs writer Rick Morton will discuss his autobiography, One Hundred Years of Dirt. A story of social mobility, class, childhood trauma, homophobia, mental illness and drug addiction. It is the story of Australias fringes: social and geographical. At Muse with Gabrielle Chan at 3pm. $12 includes a drink. musecanberra.com.au. November 25: Final Brush with Poetry for 2018. Enjoy coffee, cake and conversation sprinkled with metaphors and sometimes music. Hear contemporary and traditional voices. Relax in the ambience of Cafe on Queen, on the banks of the Balgalal Creek, 15 Queen St, Binalong. MCs Lizz Murphy and Gregory Piko. Free open mike event. 1.30pm for 2pm. Details: 0401 289 178. When I got shot, I was looking down at my foot. I had my favourite red sandals on and suddenly noticed the strap was missing. I was thinking, "I'm going to die," but then thought, "How am I going to get these fixed?!" Then pain came, an unbelievably sharp, nasty pain. The most pressing thing for me was Mum. In my head I thought, "This is it, I'm going to die today," but there was deep peace. Then logic would kick back in: "You're not going to be okay because he's got a gun." When [some of] the others ran out of the cafe, I made the decision to stay for Mum. LOUISA: I was living with Mum in the Blue Mountains, as her partner hadn't long passed. She had an appointment with her lawyer in the Lindt building in Sydney's CBD, so we'd decided to stay at the nearby Hilton. We were debating whether to have breakfast at the hotel or go to the Lindt Cafe and decided on the latter, but after we'd had our breakfast we stayed a bit longer and just stayed that little bit too long. You make little nothing decisions every day then it was all on. After she was shot during Sydney's Lindt Cafe siege in 2014, Louisa Hope (left), 56, recovered at Prince of Wales Hospital, where she met the CEO of its foundation, Leanne "Lulu" Zalapa, 66. The pair developed an instant bond. I could see a hole in my foot the size of my fist. When I was in the ambulance and once I knew Mum was safe, I asked to go to Prince of Wales [POW] because I go to the multiple sclerosis clinic there [Louisa has had MS since 2002]. When I arrived, I asked the emergency nurse, "What do you think?" She said, "I've seen worse." That brought me unbelievable comfort. I've had three surgeries: orthopaedic to remove the shrapnel from my foot, plastic for the skin graft, and general surgery, as I also have shrapnel in my belly. I spent six weeks at POW, followed by rehabilitation in a private hospital. When I found out [fellow hostages] Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson had died during the siege, I thought we had to get something good out of this situation. It quickly became obvious our nurses deserve far more attention than they get, so I decided to do a fundraiser and give the money to them. When we spoke to 60 Minutes, they offered us $25,000 for the nurses' fund. Then NSW premier Mike Baird matched it, so I had $50,000. I didn't know what to do with it and was told to speak to Lulu, the founding CEO of the Prince of Wales Hospital Foundation. I wanted to be sure it wouldn't end up in the hospital's general coffers, that it would go directly to the nurses. Lulu was politely listening to me, then said, "Actually, I used to be a nurse." The second she said that it was like, bang! She knew exactly what I wanted. Lulu suggested I call it The Louisa Hope Fund for Nurses. I didn't want to use my name but then I thought, "This woman's got it under control." I've come to understand the good I was looking for will come from the nurses themselves. It's inspired me to go on. I trust Lulu. The foundation was her baby and she's made it what it is today. She's a very vivacious woman, friendly and outgoing, and sincere. Even though she's a CEO and managing all this money, at her heart she's a nurse and that means caring. We've met each other's families and she's been very kind, very supportive. We've crossed that line into friendship. On Tuesday evening at Bondi the swell had come up and there was barely a breath of wind. After spying the waves on the Bondi webcam dozens of surfers raced home from work to make the most of the conditions. The waves were good and even if it was a little busy in the water, it seemed almost too perfect as a rainbow arched the length of the beach about 7pm. Then, as the crowd waited for a wave and stared up at the spectacular bending colours, the dreamy ambience was shattered by the cry of Shark! Suddenly about 100 or so boardriders were scrambling towards shore in a panic. I was one of them. The 4.6m great white shark found tangled in mesh netting off Maroubra on Monday. In the space of a week there have been multiple shark sightings at Bondi and Tamarama. Bondi Beach was closed on Thursday last week after two separate sightings on a single day. There were further reports of sirens sounding on the Central Coast at Avoca and Umina. Then on Monday a 4.6-metre Great White was caught in the nets at Maroubra. Images of the enormous creature started a WhatsApp wildfire as they were shared between groups of eastern suburbs beachgoers. As we reach the official start of summer its the sort of news that makes everyone a little uneasy. Ocean swimmers and surfers get a little twitchy and begin to think twice about their early-morning rituals. Meanwhile, beachside business owners are well aware that "the men in grey suits" can bite into their much-needed summer profits more severely than the taxman. If it was a response they wanted it was a response they got when Hedda opened at Queensland Theatre Companys Bille Brown Theatre this week. In theatre when you get laughs or any immediate response, its an aphrodisiac for us, Cormack said. We keep playing for the response for the laugh. Its not often an Ibsen production includes a steak on the barbecue says Danielle Cormack who plays Hedda (right) with Bridie Carter as Thea Elvsted. Credit:Dylan Evans Yet the Rake and Wentworth star admits there is nothing quite like the buzz and energy you receive from an engaged theatre audience. Cormack is stunning as Henrik Ibsens dangerous and feisty heroine in a re-imagined version that has moved the action of the 1890 classic to the Gold Coast mansion of a bogan drug pusher. Amid the over-stuffed couches and blingy chandeliers of Garblers monstrous new home with husband George Tesman is a version of Hedda that is in equal measure everything and nothing like original. Its not often that you can be in an Ibsen play where within the space of two minutes youve had a shot of vodka, a line of cocaine and cooked a steak on a barbecue, Cormack says. The Melissa Budnic adaptation is Ibsen but not as we know it. Its this which drew Cormack to the role as she admits she found the Broadway revival of the classic starring Mary-Louise Parker in the title role quite stale. She was convinced to make this her first Queensland stage performance by director Paige Rattray who directed Cormack in the 2015 Budnic work Boys will be Boys for Sydney Theatre Company. The mother of a murdered nine-month-old believed a tribal elder was caring for her daughter, only to find out her partner had thrown their baby into the Tweed River, New South Wales police will allege. Court documents reveal the family of four had been in a Tweed Heads shopping centre, seeking shelter from a storm about 6.30pm on Saturday. A surf lifesaving crew drives past the scene at Surfers Paradise where a baby's body was found. Credit:AAP CCTV footage shows the family walking through the shopping mall, their children wearing only nappies and the nine-month-old riding in a shopping trolley. The family huddled in a rear car park when the father took the baby, telling his partner he was going to "give the child to an elder". A woman has died after being hit by a truck on Brisbane's southside, closing several lanes on the Ipswich Motorway for several hours on Friday morning. A Queensland Ambulance Service spokeswoman said the patient was assessed at the scene for critical head injuries but was not transported to hospital. A woman died after she was struck by a truck on the Ipswich Motorway on Friday morning. Credit:7 News/Twitter Emergency services were called to the Ipswich Motorway at Wacol just after 9am. The crash site was cleared about 11.20am with reports of delays were easing in the area. Lebanese students were excited to take part in the Ambassador's Cup on Sunday, a Chinese singing contest and show off their skills to the audience. Around 40 students, aged from 6 to 25, participated in the contest, showing the growing interest of the Lebanese people in the Chinese language. "I have always wanted to learn Chinese, which is a very important language," 18-year-old Martine Mardini says. "I have always had a great interest in the Asian culture," she adds. Mardini, who won the first place in the contest for students of her age, studies Chinese language at the Lebanese University. The language is not easy, but with practice it becomes easier, she says, adding that she participated in the contest with encouragement from her teacher. "It is a challenge I wanted to take. I worked a lot to memorize the song, but I am very happy about it," Mardini says. Likewise, 25-year-old Elsa Maria Karam says she felt very excited about the singing contest. "I participated to get to know other people interested in the Chinese culture," says Karam, who has been learning Chinese for four years. "I am applying for jobs in different parts of China," she says, adding that she is interested in working in management consultancy in China. Gina Dagher says she participated in the contest because she loves to "sing in Chinese and to see others singing as well". Dagher, who started learning Chinese at a younger age, does not find the language as difficult as others. "I find it very easy to learn Chinese. I am planning to continue learning this language," the 9-year-old says. Eliana Ibrahim, managing director at the International Union of Chambers and Associations, highlights the fun and interest of the contest. The contest allowed children and students to sing happily while practicing the Chinese language, she says, adding that such competitions are more valuable than insisting students continuously write essays. Chinese Ambassador to Lebanon, Wang Kejian, agrees that such an event encourages Lebanese students to learn the Chinese language and increases their interest in the Chinese culture. The Lebanese students, whether university, middle or primary school age, have shown great enthusiasm for learning Chinese in recent years, Wang says. "We think this is a very good step to enhance cultural exchanges and to strengthen the friendship between our two countries," he notes. In addition, businessmen in Lebanon are also showing interest in the Chinese language, according to Ibrahim. She attributes Lebanese interest in the Chinese language to the increasing number of business events involving the two countries in the past few years. "When you learn the Chinese language, you also learn the culture which helps you in better dealing with Chinese people on the business level," says Ibrahim. Advertising is one of the ways we can sift out people who want to see us or dont want to see us. Its a really basic thing that any workplace wouldnt even give a second thought to, yet this [can] attract the attention of police. Were not allowed to describe our massage skills in our ads. That can attract a criminal penalty. We cant describe if were young, or if someone is well endowed. If you were a hairdresser or an accountant you would describe your area of expertise but for us, thats illegal. Even though people do it, it means [they] are open to arrest and fines. Queensland sex workers can be charged for describing their services, or even their physical attributes in an ad, advocacy groups say. Credit:Angela Wylie Police arent forthcoming about what part of their ad theyre being fined for so they can avoid it in the future. Theres no victim in this crime, were not criminals. Ms Jeffreys said people outside the sex trade had little awareness of the two-tier system operating in the state. In Queensland, massage parlours are illegal, Ms Jeffreys said. They cant get a license because anything to do with massage is excluded from the licensing system. [Its] very unfortunate because they offer an environment where full service is not mainly what people are going to a massage parlour for. Theyre going for maybe a nude massage, topless massage or a hand job, or something in that realm, and none of that is legal. I think the idea was if we make it illegal it will just go away. If youre not a sex worker, you probably wouldnt realise how screwy it is. Despite the suspicion and tension that exists between sex workers and police, Ms Jeffreys says she counts police officers among her clientele. They usually dont talk about their job, they dont want to be known as a police officer because I guess that would make them vulnerable too, she said. So, they are worried about their privacy and protections just as much as the workers are. I do think most people are quite confused about the laws. Unless youre a sex worker, even most police wouldnt have a reason to be 100 per cent across the laws. Despite this, Ms Jeffreys was scathing about the tactics police can deploy to arrest prostitutes working in the industry. Loading They dont have to have a sexual encounter they can arrest the person for engaging in discussion around things like oral sex without a condom, Ms Jeffreys said. Even if the act hasnt taken place, the person can be charged for offering it. We dont believe that is warranted. Ms Jeffreys highlighted a recent case in which police booked a hotel room and contacted a sex worker to come in and do the booking. They observed the persons partner dropping them off, she said. They then arrest the sex worker and the partner, if the partner doesnt have a special licence to drive, or if the driver is someone who is used by another sex worker. If you share a driver this is [deemed] a petty crime, but theyre not even really crimes. And the only benefit we get out of it is safety. Sex worker Kayla Rose, who is a member of DecrimQld, said there was a need for more brothels to service the demand between the Sunshine Coast and Cairns, but pointed to significant barriers to operating a licensing brothel. There are barriers to opening a brothel if you have a past conviction, including a conviction for being a sex worker, Ms Rose said. You also need hundreds of thousands of dollars to fit out premises. It has to be in a properly zoned area and the ongoing costs are prohibitive. Ms Rose said the existing laws made it legal for police in Queensland to pretend to be clients, to ask for illegal services, make bookings with them and then arrest them. Queensland sex workers have called for legal reform. Credit:Tamara Voninski They arrest us for things like working in pairs, sharing a workspace, sharing overheads and our phones, making a referral for a booking to another worker, hiring a receptionist or using a driver that another sex worker has used and recommended to us, Ms Rose said. Our basic safety strategies are illegal. Police pose as clients to identify if were implementing these safety strategies, and then sex workers are charged. Sex workers have to choose between working legally, or working safely. Meanwhile, Asian sex workers claim they have a much tougher time staying on the right side of the law because of language barriers. Sex worker Vicki said the advertising laws were very complex for those whose first language was not English. The police have the power, we dont have any, she said. Its very difficult for any Asian sex worker to convince the police we are there [consensually.] The attitude of the police is, they dont trust us and they dont like us and they say things like were going to send you home. The police dont believe that we have the ability to work independently. They believe we are controlled. A spokeswoman for the Queensland Police Service said the organisation "commits to targeting all forms of illegal prostitution activity through the Prostitution Enforcement Taskforce". "This taskforce has forged and maintains solid relationships with government and non-government agencies with the view to police and enforce laws concerning Queenslands prostitution industry," she said. "The QPS does not comment on lawful strategies employed to investigate this type of criminal activity. Cairns Labor MP Michael Healy, whose city has only one licensed brothel, said exploitation was rife and the case for decriminalisation was not cut and dried. I think the decriminalisation of prostitution is a very complex issue, Mr Healy said. Its not as simple as it might appear. The state has to make sure that women are doing this consensually. Sex trafficking is a huge industry around the world and theres enormous concern. While I appreciate that those who do it and conduct that line of work might be immune to some of the concerns, when you talk to agencies like police or immigration, prostitution unfortunately has a significant criminal element to it. Congested roads in the marginal south-east, including the Mornington Peninsula Freeway, will be choked with thousands more cars by 2031 if the Mordialloc Freeway is built as planned, figures show. The $375 million, nine-kilometre freeway would cut through the seat of Mordialloc held by Labor on a 2.1 per cent margin and might also sway the intentions of swing voters in Carrum and Frankston. Both Labor and the Coalition intend to build the freeway if elected this Saturday. But government figures show that it would significantly drive up the number of cars on 13 local roads. "Im pretty undecided and if nothing jumps out at me, Ill most likely vote Greens." Ripon, held by the Liberals on a margin of 0.8% Murray Walker, Ripon Credit:Angela Wylie Murray Walker, 81, artist Mr Walker, an artist, anthropologist and writer based in the small town of Beaufort, says he will most likely decide how to vote on the day - like a lot of people in his town. Beaufort, 160km north-west of Melbourne on the Western Highway, is used to tight contests. Its a marvellously interesting seat, but its been a bit of a non-campaign, said Mr Walker. He is on a committee fighting to save the towns historical primary school from being sold off by the Department of Education. After it had served the local community for 150 years, students were moved out of the school in 2014. Mr Walker said he and many of the towns residents would like to see the site preserved and turned into a community hub with artists in residence. He is disappointed neither of the major-party candidates have made any promises to save the school. The plan to save the school has been overwhelmingly endorsed by locals, but neither the local council nor the government seem prepared to help. Neither candidate, he says, has addressed what would happen to the town once a planned bypass is built. The current member [Louise Staley] has not performed in a way that has benefited the seat. Like a lot of people, Ill probably decide on the day. But Im leaning towards (Labor candidate Sarah) DeSantis. Cranbourne, held by Labor on 2.3% Barinder Singh, Cranbourne Credit:Sean Walker Barinder Singh, 34, taxi driver Mr Singh lives in Cranbourne West with his wife and two young children. He has not decided how to vote yet but he predicts a tight race in Cranbourne. There is tough competition around here, he said. Cranbourne, 50km south-east of Melbourne, is Victorias fastest-growing electorate, enrolments jumping 35 per cent since 2014. Mr Singh trained as a lawyer in India before he moved to Australia in 2008. He is disillusioned with the major parties at both the state and federal levels and would like to see a greater voice for the local Punjabi community in Cranbourne. For this reason, he said he and his friends were considering voting for Tarlochan Singh (no relation) the Indian veterinarian who is contesting the seat for Transport Matters. I want one of our representatives to be from our community... [someone] who looks like us, who thinks like us, who raises a voice about what we feel, said Mr Singh. As a taxi driver, Mr Singh also said it was very appealing that Transport Matters policies aimed at levelling the playing field between taxis and ride-sharing companies like Uber. Mr Singh is also concerned about the cost of living at a time when he said taxi drivers' wages were decreasing. He said the cost of energy, water bills and council rates were all a concern. He agreed that law and order were also an important election issue. His friends car had been broken into recently and the police had not been able to do anything about it. Mr Singh is a member of the Casey Cultural Club, which hosts events for the local Indian community. He said the club members were frustrated by red tape and the sums they had to pay to rent facilities, despite paying large sums in rates to the local council. Support for the Greens among women has collapsed, according to the latest opinion polling, as the party reels from a series of scandals including allegations of misogyny, sexism and rape. The Greens still hope to achieve balance-of-power status after Saturday's state election, but conceded on Friday that Labor's onslaught against them had been damaging, while accusing the ALP of a dirty "smear campaign". Victorian Greens leader Samantha Ratnam at the early election centre in Brunswick. Credit:Justin McManus Daniel Andrews Labor government is in a strong position to be re-elected over the Matthew Guy-led Liberal-National Coalition on Saturday. But the five inner-city seats being bitterly contested by Labor and the Greens could be vital to the election result, with the womens vote crucial to both sides hopes of success. Washington: An associate of Roger Stone, a longtime ally of US President Donald Trump, on Friday said he was talking with the US special counsel probing Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election about a possible plea deal. "There are plea negotiations going on. I cant elaborate any more than that," Jerome Corsi, a right-wing commentator who has promoted political conspiracy theories, told Reuters. It was not immediately clear what charges Corsi may face. Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel, declined to comment on the talks. David Gray, Corsi's attorney, could not be immediately reached for comment. Sandra Parks knew too much about death, even at a young age. "We are in a state of chaos. In a city in which I live, I hear and see examples of chaos almost everyday. Little children are victims of senseless gun violence," Sandra wrote two years ago about gun violence in her Milwaukee neighborhood. Sandra called her essay Our Truth - a sobering reminder that, as she said, people's poor choices and hatred have led to so much violence. She wrote about trying to escape from the chaos, from the "black on black crime" that depressed her. Sometimes she would put on her headphones, she wrote, and let the music take her away. But she couldn't escape from it. AUTO LAB RADIO Saturday November 24, 2018; WNYM Radio AM 970 7-9 AM - Helping You Enjoy The Drive Auto Lab Talk Radio on New York City's WNYM Radio AM 970 Is Streamed Worldwide On TheAutoChannel.Com Car Question or Concern? Automotive Career Opportunity, Call Toll Free 888-692-7234 To Speak With An Auto Lab Expert Auto Lab is a 28 year old interactive automotive-focused New York City radio call-in show hosted by Professor Harold Wolchok. Featuring an in-studio panel of experienced hands-on automotive experts sharing accurate, honest, practical and street-smart car repair, automotive career opportunities and vehicle and repair buying advice. Auto Lab is also about the automotive industry, its history, and its culture, presenting the ideas and advice of leading college faculty, authors, and automotive practitioners in a relaxed, conversational interactive format. Listeners can find audio recordings of the past 20 years of archived Auto Lab shows as simulcast on The Auto Channel; The Auto Lab Index Page includes; Audio-on-Demand Archives, Community College Auto Program Database, Guests Pictures This Weeks Show: November 24, 2018 In - Studio Harold Bendell- Major Auto Tim Cacace- Master Mechanix Joseph Guarino- Joe Guarino's Auto Repairs Jerry Pastore- D & J Diagnostics Johanna Pastore- D & J Diagnostics Joanne Porcelli, Esq. Michael Porcelli- Bronx Community College Automotive Technology Department, City University of New York Nicholas Prague- MTA Interviews Robert Erskine, Senir European Correspondent , Suffolk England "EURO LIGHT COMMERCIAL VEHICLES SPARKING" Russ Rader , Senior Vice Preside Insurance Institute for Highway Safety "IIHS REMINDS DRIVERS THAT IT IS PEAK DEER STRIKE SEASON" Robert Sinclair AAA NORTHEAST "RECORD COLD COULD COMPLICATE THANKSGIVING TRAVEL" John Russell, Senior correspondent "2019 MINI COOPER SE COUNTRYMAN ALL4 PHEV" Tim Arfons, The Akron Turbine Group Inc "DRIVING JETS ON WHEELS, WHAT COULD GO WRONG" Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana (D&G) founders apologized to Chinese people on Friday after facing a serious crisis as Chinese celebrities, collaborators and the public formed a boycott against the brand for the controversial racist remarks allegedly made by its co-founder Stefano Gabbana. "Our family education taught us to respect the different cultures of the world. Here, in the face of our cultural misunderstanding, I hope to get your forgiveness," said Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce in a recorded video apology in Italian released Friday afternoon. They added, "Our love for China is always there. Countless visits have made us more in love with Chinese culture. Of course, we still have a lot to learn. We will never forget this experience and lessons, and such incidents will never happen again. At the same time, we will do our utmost to understand and respect Chinese culture more," before they said "sorry" again in Chinese to end the video. Previously, a series of seemingly weird and arrogant promotional videos to teach an Asian model how to eat Italian food using chopsticks were released to promote a huge fashion show, which was supposed to happen on Wednesday night, made many Chinese and Asian people uncomfortable. But the controversy escalated as the exposure of the alleged intensive exchanges on Instagram between Stefano Gabbana and an Asian student who questioned if the videos were racist, during which Gabbana called China "the country of sh*t." The remarks angered Chinese people. Celebrities and models, including Zhang Ziyi and Chen Kun, who were supposed to attend the D&G event announced that they would not be attending. Although the brand and Gabbana urgently put out statements saying their Instagram accounts were hacked, no one bought it, and the fashion show was abruptly cancelled, costing millions of dollars for the fashion brand. On Nov. 21, overseas Chinese people even went to D&G's flagship store in Milan, Italy to protest. However, the bad news didn't stop there. D&G suffered another huge blow as Chinese e-commerce portals such as Taobao.com, JD.com, Alibaba's Tmall, Suning.com, Ymatou.com, VIP.com and Kaola all removed D&G products as searches on these sites produced no results, just before the Black Friday online shopping bonanza was about to begin in China. At the same time, Chinese D&G customers came back to its stores, quite empty after the scandal, to return goods they had bought. "After I saw the news on WeChat, I decided to return the D&G shoes I bought. I felt bad when wearing them, as if I'm not loving my country," a woman surnamed He told Beijing News on Thursday. She had bought a pair of shoes worth about 6,000 yuan (US$865) a few days ago. "Only when D&G sincerely apologizes to Chinese people, I will consider buying this brand again. Otherwise I will opt for others, there are so many fashion brands in China," she added. So far, the brand has not apologized for Gabbana's "sh*t country" remarks as the co-founder insisted his account was hacked. In a statement released Thursday by Gabbana and co-founder Domenico Dolce, they said what happened that day was "very unfortunate not only for us, but also for all the people who worked day and night to bring this event to life." They added "from the bottom of our hearts, we would like to express our gratitude to our friends and guests." Geng Shuang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, was also asked about the controversy on Thursday, saying he hoped the scandal would not become a "diplomatic" one. "This incident is not a diplomatic issue and the Chinese side does not wish to escalate it into one," Geng said, "Instead of asking the foreign ministry spokesperson, it is better to ask the ordinary people in China to see how they view this issue." Chinese model Estelle Chen who walked in this month's Victoria's Secret runway show, posted on Instagram, writing, "China is rich in its values, its culture and its people and they won't spend a penny on a brand that does not respect that." D&G entered the Chinese market in 2006 and opened its first store in Shanghai. Now it has 58 stores in Chinese mainland as well as Hong Kong and Macao and is trying to expand its market share and online platforms in China, which has great potential for luxury sales. According to a report from the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company published in August last year, Chinese consumers will account for a majority of the growth of the global luxury-goods market, and by 2025 will account for 44 percent of the total global market. Aside from the controversy, D&G's Chinese joint venture in Shanghai was punished and fined more than 400,000 yuan (US$57,650) in total by the local government twice between 2016 and 2017, as it sold fake, inferior-quality and unqualified products. You are here: China A resident in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province has unearthed a shell believed to be from World War II, local authorities said Thursday. The man, surnamed Zhang, found the shell when he was digging up tap water pipes at the back of his house Tuesday, and reported it to the local police. The rusty shell measured 58 cm long and 15 cm in diameter. It has been well preserved and still poses a high risk. Police moved it to a safe place for investigation. The police also launched a thorough check of the site to ensure the safety of local residents. Japanese troops invaded northeast China in September 1931 and occupied the region until they surrendered in August 1945. After the Japanese retreated, large number of bombs, shells and mines were left behind. Undiscovered explosives still impose threat to local residents. We're no strangers to KFC collaborating with literally EVERYTHING, but we actually kinda dig their latest release. Everyone's favourite fried chicken has teamed up with Japanese fashion designer Nigo this time to release a range of streetwear fashion. Nigo collaborated with global creative studio Hypemaker to create a Human Made x KFC Capsule Collection, featuring tees, hoodies, hats and jackets inspired by the 70s. The logo of Airbnb is displayed at an Airbnb event in Tokyo, Japan, on June 14, 2018. (Issei Kato/Reuters) Airbnb Faces Israeli Class-Action Lawsuit for Delisting Settlements JERUSALEMLawyers launched a class action lawsuit in Israel on Nov. 22, against Airbnb, accusing the company of outrageous discrimination and demanding monetary damages after it withdrew listings of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The San Francisco-based company said this week it was removing listings of around 200 homes in settlements after hearing criticism from people who believe companies should not profit on lands where people have been displaced. Through her attorneys, Maanit Rabinovich from the West Bank settlement of Kida, who offers guest room rentals, said the move represents especially grave, offensive and outrageous discrimination. Rabinovich claimed 15,000 shekels ($2,573) in personal damages. The class action lawsuit would seek an as yet unspecified sum on behalf of others in the same situation, according to court papers presented at Jerusalem District Court. The companys decision is in effect directed solely against Israeli citizens living in the settlements, the petitioner claims, and this is severe, especially outrageous discrimination, Rabinovichs lawyers said in a statement. [It is] part of the long war being conducted by organizations [of which a clear majority are anti-Semitic] against the State of Israel in its entirety, and against Israelis living in settlements in particular. An Airbnb spokesman declined to comment on the filing of the lawsuit. In a statement emailed to Reuters on Tuesday, Chris Lehane, Airbnbs global head of policy and communications, said: Israel is a special place and our over 22,000 hosts are special people who have welcomed hundreds of thousands of guests to Israel. We understand that this is a hard and complicated issue and we appreciate everyones perspective. Airbnbs delisting applies only to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, where Palestinians have limited self-rule under Israeli military occupation. It does not apply to Israel itself, or East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, territories Israel has annexed without international recognition. Israel withdrew settlers from another Palestinian territory, the Gaza Strip, more than a decade ago. Israel strongly objects to international boycotts, including boycotts of the settlements, which it views as discriminatory. A 2017 Israeli law empowers courts to award cash compensation to claimants who prove they have been denied goods or services because of where they live. By Ori Lewis Americas Northernmost Town Wont See Daylight for 60 More Days Residents of Americas northernmost town will not see sunshine for another 60 days as of Friday, Nov. 23, gripped since last Sundays final sunset in the throes of a long polar night. The people of Utqiagvik, Alaska, saw their last sunrise of the year at 12:40 p.m. local time on Sunday, with the short day drawing to a close about an hour later, with a 1:44 p.m. sunset. Utqiagvik used to be called Barrow until residents decided on a name change. Changing the name of the city to Utqiagvik will promote pride in the identity of the Inupiaq people as well as perpetuate healing and growth and help promote awareness of the Inupiaq language, reads an ordinance signed into law on Oct. 10, 2016, or Indigenous Peoples Day, by Mayor Bob Harcharek. Scientists said the Inupiaq, which translates into the real people, have been in the region for about 4,000 years. The people of Utqiagvik wont have to wait nearly that long before the sun makes an appearance again. The next sunrise is expected on Jan. 23 at 1:04 p.m. Alaska Standard Time (AKST), according to The Weather Channel. Sun has set today in (Barrow) Utqiagvik, Alaska. Its now 65 consecutive days without a sunrise! The next sunrise happens on January 23rd at 1:04 PM Alaska time. Webcam here: https://t.co/K59BqfP72L #AKwx pic.twitter.com/q2v2H4JgzS Mark Tarello (@mark_tarello) November 19, 2018 But the experience of polar night in areas north of the Arctic Circle, like Utqiagvik, does not mean residents are cast into jet-black darkness. These regions will enjoy something called civil twilight for between three and six hours a day, and during these windows there is enough light seeping in over the horizon for objects to be visible. In the heart of the polar night just before Christmas, there will be enough light to see by for about three hours of the day. The opposite effect takes place during the summer in areas north of the Arctic Circle, where for about two months, the sun doesnt set. The people of Utqiagvik will be sunset-free for over 80 days in 2019, with the last sunrise expected to occur on May 12 at 2:34 a.m. AKDT until a sunset occurs again on Aug. 2 at 2:08 a.m. AKDT. Sunset occurs tonight in Utqiagvik (Barrow) at 1:57 a.m. AKST. The first sunset in 84 days. #SunsetIsComing @AlaskaWx pic.twitter.com/ZSUG5qCWM0 Brian Brettschneider (@Climatologist49) August 2, 2017 Indigenous Peoples Day Utqiagvik made headlines last year as the place where Alaskas Gov. Bill Walker signed legislation on June 24, 2017, recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day in the state, which falls on the second Monday of October. Walker, who spoke to Alaska Public Media reporters in Utqiagvik on the day of the signing, said, This official recognition is just one way we as a state can acknowledge and celebrate the contributions made by First Peoples throughout the history of this land. The signing was held during Utqiagviks annual Nalukataq whaling festival. They take the whales; theyve been fermenting them, they, you know, obviously they harvested them back in April, and this is where they divvy up the whale parts to literally the entire community, said former Rep. Zach Fansler. Fansler said the festival was an Inupiaq tradition where much of the town comes out to celebrate a successful whale hunt. Bowhead whale hunting continues to be an important part of the Inupiaq culture, both for the food it provides, and for the sense of community. Alaska Standard Time is four hours behind Eastern Standard Time (EST). A sheep is shorn in the Lake District National Park, northern England on July 20, 2018. (Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images) Animal Rights Activists PETA Demand British Village Called Wool Change Its Name LONDONA cozy British village nestled in the rolling hills of Dorset has been asked by animal rights activists to add the word vegan to its name. The village of Wool, which takes its name from an old English word meaning well or water spring, received a letter from animal rights charity PETA asking it to change the villages name to Vegan Wool. Elisa Allen, director of PETA, wrote to Wool Parish Council suggesting the change to promote kindness to sheep. Allen said in the letter that the request was a creative and fun way to reach the public with the facts and offered to give a cruelty-free woollen blanket to each of the 2,000 homes in the village if they change the name. The local parish will now debate the issue at its next meeting. Cherry Brooks, a member of Dorset County Council, told the Telegraph, It is a ridiculous request and its caused quite a stir in the village. A few people are quite offended but most people seem to find it amusing. After PETAs letter was posted to the villages Facebook page, Allens suggestion was met with ridicule. Jayne Merchant from nearby military base Bovington Camp said, The name Wool should remain as it is, the idea of renaming the village is utterly ridiculous. The most idiotic idea I have come across in a long time. Im guessing she doesnt actually live in the village!! She just wants everyone else to live in a ridiculously named village, wrote Sharon Horler. Jo Holloway wrote, Methinks this is a publicity stunt that is going to seriously backfire on PETA. A Beautiful Stream of Water Other commentators noted that the village name is derived from wyllon, the Saxon word for spring and means a beautiful stream of water, which rises or wells up. In her letter to the parish council, Allen wrote: Im writing on behalf of PETA with a suggestion that would put Wool in the spotlight and promote kindness to sheep: renaming the village Vegan Wool. Why make this animal-friendly update? Unlike wool that is stolen from sheep, vegan wool is good for animals and the environment. Sheeps wool, on the other hand, has been shown to be a product of extreme cruelty, wrote Allen. With a simple name change, your village can take a stand against this cruelty and remind everyone that its easy to stay warm and be warm-hearted to sheep by choosing vegan wool, she continued. The letter comes on the back of two PETA videos purporting to reveal cruelty in the British wool industry. The videos claimed that sheep shearers punched sheep in the face, stamped on their heads, and jabbed them with electric clippers. Responding to the PETA Asia investigation, which was broadcast by Channel 4 in the UK, British Wool said in a statement, We are shocked and saddened by the behavior of the contractors filmed secretly. We would like to point out that the vast majority of the thousands of shearers in the UK operate to the highest standards of animal welfare. Wool has a population of 5,310 and is situated alongside the River Frome, which runs through Dorset. Arizona grandmother Wanda Dench accidentally invited teen Jamal Hinton for Thanksgiving dinner 2016, and she invited him back for Thanksgiving 2018. (Jamal Hinton / Twitter) Arizona Grandma Reunites with Stranger She Accidentally Invited for Thanksgiving Years Ago Arizona grandmother Wanda Dench accidentally invited teen Jamal Hinton for Thanksgiving dinner 2016, and she invited him back for Thanksgiving 2018. She also had him over for Thanksgiving 2017, according to AZCentral. Jamal is so awesome, Dench told website Arizona Family this week. It started two years ago when Dench mistakenly invited him over after she thought she was texting her grandson, who had changed his number, she said. 2016, 20172018, Hinton wrote, according to People magazine. It was so unexpected, but she was just so sweet about it, Hinton told People. It was a reminder that there are still some good people left in this world. She sent me a couple gifts cards for Christmas, Hinton said, saying theyve kept in touch. She also talked to me around my high school graduation, and weve been keeping in touch here and there. Somebody grandma is coming in clutch this year!! Ayee!!! pic.twitter.com/QGrx83nHLl Jamal Hinton (@kingjamal08) November 15, 2016 Hinton shared a screenshot of the conversation on Twitter and it got over 40,000 retweets and 100,000 likes at the time of this publication. Hinton expressed confusion about the invite. He then sent over a picture of himself after expressing confusion on Twitter. She didnt rescind her offer. Can I still get a plate tho? Hinton asked her, jokingly. Of course you can, Dench responded. Thats what grandmas do feed everyone. I just clicked when I met him and first talked to him, Dench told NBC News in 2016. I thought, Oh my gosh, I want to get to know this guy, she said. It gives me faith, a lot, in humanity because so many people have been kind. For him to continue with the relationship, Im just really pleasantly surprised, Dench told USA Today. Were more of extended family and, best of all, friends. Theyre already thinking about Thanksgiving 2019, and she told AZFamily that she hopes Hinton can host Thanksgiving at his place. Dench had offered Hinton a standing invitation for Thanksgiving dinner after the first invite. The world is becoming a better place than it used to be, Hinton said Saturday. Im loving it. I love that you dont have to know someone or know their background to be nice to them. Gaining a new grandma, he told AZFamily. I thought maybe Id gain one getting married, but as a friend, its great. He said in 2017, there was less attention due to the lack of a viral tweet. It was nice to have dinner, very quiet but not weird quiet or awkward quiet, it was a good quiet. The food was good and we got to talk this time, Hinton was quoted by the Miami Herald as saying at the time. It went great, and my new grandma seemed to love my girlfriend, so that was good. I reached out to him about a month before and said, Thanksgiving is at my house again, Id really love it if you would come.' Dench said in 2017, CNN reported. He has family thats close by, and I understood if he couldnt. But he did spend half of Thanksgiving with them and the other half with us. British authorities have assessed an alleged asylum-seeker who claimed to be a 15-year-old schoolboy, is in fact an adult. A photograph of the man was taken by a student at Stoke High School Ormiston Academy in Ipswich, UK, and shared on Snapchat. (Screengrab via Facebook) Asylum-Seeker Posing as 15-Year-Old Schoolboy Found to Be Adult The face of an asylum-seeker who posed as a 15-year-old schoolboy but was accused of being 30 years old has been revealed for the first time. An official probe concluded he is almost certainly an adult. The unnamed individual spent six weeks as a grade 11 student at a British school, with his presence among young pupils sparking an outcry. Parents and students at Stoke High School in Ipswich, Suffolk, believed the man was older than the claimed 15 years of age, pressed for an investigation, and threatened a boycott. Victoria Newby, who has a child at the school, told the BBC, My girls will not be attending until I know for sure hes been removed. Extremely Concerning The East Anglian Daily Times reported that some parents claimed the man had admitted to fellow students he had lied about his age in order to obtain a General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), a British academic qualification. The qualifications in his country of origin were not recognised in England. This is extremely concerning, a parent wishing to remain anonymous told The East Anglian Daily Times. He has told students he has had to lie to go get into high school to complete his GCSEs. In a statement cited by the BBC, the school said, This is a matter for the Home Office. They are looking into this after we contacted them. We do not comment on individual cases but we have followed government and local authority policies and guidance, as we do for any asylum admissions matter. It added the pupil was not attending the school at this time. Official Investigation The British Home Office investigated the matter and on Nov. 23 the Daily Mail reported that officials concluded that the man is most likely over 18. The man is now being treated as an adult asylum-seeker, meaning that if his claim for refugee status in the UK is rejected, he could face deportation. One Ipswich resident said on Facebook today, Clearly the children can do a better job of guessing an age than the officials. The student was suspended earlier in November after a fellow student posted a Snapchat picture of him in uniform in a classroom with the caption, Hows there a 30-year-old man in our maths class? That photograph was shared on social media, and extensively reported on in British media, with the individuals face blurred out to protect his identity, under the supposition that he might be underage. Government sources have now reportedly confirmed investigators believe the individual is over 18. Over 60 Per Cent of Children Seeking Asylum in the UK Are Adults The man is thought to have presented himself as an unaccompanied child when he arrived in the UK from the Middle East, over the summer. Adult asylum-seekers are known to have, on occasion, misrepresented their true age in order to increase the likelihood of qualifying for refugee status and reduce the probability of deportation. The Home Office is currently investigating how the mans claim to be aged 15 came to be believed. A Home Office spokesman told The Daily Mail, We are fully committed to safeguarding children and are looking into the circumstances of this case to understand how it was handled. Age-disputed cases remain a challenging area of work in which no single assessment technique, or combination of techniques, is likely to determine an individuals age with precision, he said. A British government report published earlier in 2017 revealed that 65 per cent of asylum-seekers assessed after claiming to be unaccompanied juveniles were found to be adults. The Home Office figure for all assessed children found to be adults in 2016 (the last year for which the total number of children seeking asylum is known) is similar, at 61 per cent. A worker in a residential home for children in care located in the British city of Kent told The Spectator that half of the children there are unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, estimated that over half of them were not children, but in their twenties. They can be quite frightening at times, she said, according to the report. They are aggressive and have an attitude problem. Many have no respect for women because of their culture. No one is giving consideration to the risks they pose, not just to staff but to the other children in the home. Because they are older, they have a lot of influence on the youngsters, who are very vulnerable. They introduce the children to alcohol and get them into crime like street robberies. It is a serious problem, which those in authority are not tackling. Colin Drummond, 4, pushes luggage from behind as he walks with family members to check-in a relative for an Alaska Airlines flight at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in SeaTac, Wash., on March 24, 2015. (Elaine Thompson/AP Photo) Baby Born in Public Restroom at Sea-Tac International Airport The parents of a baby born on Nov. 19, have quite a story to tell. Wyatt Dale Gibbs was born in a public restroom at Sea-Tac International Airport near Seattle, Washington, local news outlet KIRO-7 reported. It started when Heather and Billy Gibbs, his parents, were about to get on a plane from SeaTac to Kentucky. Heather began feeling intense cramps and believed she could go into labor. Wyatt Dale was born in the toilet of a public restroom at Sea-Tac International Airport.On KIRO 7 at 11, what two KIRO 7 News The expectant mother then went into the airports restroom and sat on the toilet. I hadnt felt anything all day and all of sudden out of nowhere he came, said Gibbs. Firefighters were called to the scene. I heard a splash in the bathroom followed by some frantic shouting of Someone grab my baby, said firefighter Steven Barberie, who responded to the call. The father, Billy, said he looked inside the bathroom and was in disbelief. I looked inside and I saw the firefighter EMT pulling him out of the toilet and I was in utter shock, he said. The child was transported to a nearby hospital and his parents said hes doing fine. The boy was born 11 weeks early. My doctor said it was divine intervention, said Gibbs. Because within minutes we would have been on a plane in the air, coming right back down. According to a GoFundMe set up by a family member, Heather Gibbs was six months pregnant. At 6 months pregnant, it was a complete and utter shock to find herself in labor, at the airport. Wyatt Dale Gibbs was born in the restroom of the Sea-Tac Airport, 3 months early. At this time, Baby Sea-Tac is the second baby born in the airport in over 40 years. Thankfully, both mother and baby are as healthy as anyone could hope for, the GoFundMe page says. They were going back home to Kentucky along with their 18-month-old son. The family member said the family has to stay in Seattle for the next three months while the child remains in the hospitals NICU ward. Currently, they do not have living arrangements, clothing for their son, Beau (their luggage left the state without them!), diapers, and other necessities. Any and all funds collected will go to the family to get through the next few months, it says. Tuscon, Arizona, Airport Birth Earlier this year, a woman left a newborn infant in the bathroom of an airport in Tuscon, Arizona, according to The Associated Press. AP released a photo of a woman holding the baby. An airport employee in January found the child abandoned in the restroom near the rental car section. The infant was lying on the changing table. Please help me. My mom had no idea she was pregnant. She is unable and unfit to take care of me. Please get me to the authorities so they can find a good home, a note read. The baby was handed over to the Arizona Department of Child Safety. Officials believe the woman gave birth in the Concourse B bathroom of the airport. You are here: China A former vice governor of northeast China's Liaoning Province stood trial Thursday for taking bribes and disrupting elections at the Third Intermediate People's Court of Beijing. Liu Qiang was charged with accepting money and property worth more than 10.63 million yuan (about 1.53 million U.S. dollars) personally or through others between 2000 and 2017. He took advantage of his different posts to help others on issues such as business operation, project contracts and job promotion. The prosecutors also accused Liu of bribery and illegally canvassing for himself during the local election. Between 2011 and January 2013, Liu disrupted the election with the power and influence of his position as secretary of the Communist Party of China Fushun Municipal Committee, in an attempt to be elected as vice governor of Liaoning Province, according to the prosecutors. Prosecutors, the defendant and his lawyers cross-examined evidence and gave full testimonies, according to the court's statement. Liu made his final statement, confessing and expressing remorse in court. The trial was attended by 70 people, including legislators and political advisors. The court will announce the verdict at a later date. Border Agent Who Shot Rock Throwing Mexican Teenager Acquitted A Border Patrol agent was found not guilty in the death of a Mexican teenager who was pelting him with rocks. The jury found Lonnie Swartz not guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Swartz was in Arizona when he shot through the border fence in Nogales and killed Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, 16, in 2012. Swartz said he was under attack when he fired. The Border Patrol considers rocks deadly weapons that justify a lethal response, reported the Arizona Republic, and Swartz said Rodriguez was hurling rocks at him when he fired. It was the first known case of an agent to be charged by the Justice Department for firing across the border and killing someone in Mexico. During the trial, Swartz testified that he heard a police dog was hit by rocks and that another agent was hit by a rock and he feared for his life in addition to the lives of his fellow officers. He gave vivid details of the events before and after the shooting but said that his memory of the shooting itself had been wiped away, reported the Republic. He said he doesnt remember firing 16 shots at Rodriguez. Swartz attorney, Sean Chapman, said that Swartz was justified in using deadly force because Rodriguez and others with him were hurling rocks at border agents. Assistant U.S. Attorney Wallace Kleindienst, who led prosecutors in the case, argued that Swartz committed second-degree murder because the agent fired at the teen even when the threat had passed. Prosecutors also acknowledged that Rodriguez was lobbing rocks across the border during a drug smuggling attempt. Were very pleased so far with the not guilty verdict. I think justice was pretty much served, said Art Del Cueto, a union president for the Border Patrol. People were committing a crime, and while they were committing a crime, they attacked a federal agent. What did the federal agent do? He defended himself and he defended other agents. The acquittal comes after a mistrial was declared in April over a second-degree murder charge in the case against Swartz. The jury also deadlocked on manslaughter, reported the Associated Press. From his first day in the Border Patrol, it had been ingrained in him that rocks were dangerous, Chapman said after the mistrial. Kleindienst claimed that Swartz was angry, prompting him to shoot, but showed no evidence to support the claim. A civil case against Swartz is still pending and officials said there could be another retrial. U.S. District Judge Raner C. Collins set a status hearing for May 11 and Kleindienst said he hopes to have more information about where the jury split by then, helping him decide whether to press for a re-trial, he told the Republic. Its too soon to tell, he added. From NTD News Boy, 6, Dies in Road-Rage Related Crash on Thanksgiving: Reports Officials say a 6-year-old boy died after his car crashed into a tree on Thanksgiving night in an apparent road rage incident. The Maryland State Police stated that three vehicles were heading south on Route 13 in Salisbury at around 9:30 p.m. before the crash. The vehicles were going above the 65 mph speed limit, police said, according to Delmarva Now. A white Toyota pickup truck carrying Kaleb Chatmon, 6, lost control and left the roadway before entering the median. The operator of the truck then swerved back into both lanes of the southbound section of the freeway, police said. Thats when the truck crashed into a tree on the passengers side. Kaleb Chatmon and the driver, 55-year-old Kenneth Chatmon, were taken to the Peninsula Region Medical Center. The boy was pronounced dead at the scene, the report said. Kenneth Chatmon was treated for critical injuries, the report added. Its not clear why the crash was described as a road rage incident. Maryland State Police said that alcohol and drugs are being considered in their investigation of the crash. Officials also said the two other vehicles involved in the incident are being sought. If anyone has knowledge of the crash or additional information the two other vehicles involved in the incident, they should call the trooper investigating at 410-749-3101 or the Maryland State Police at (410) 749-3101. Salisbury, located on the Delmarva Peninsula, is about 15 miles west of the Atlantic Ocean and just south of Delaware. Other details about the crash are not clear. Traffic Deaths Down in 2018 U.S. traffic deaths fell 3.1 percent in the first six months of 2018, according to preliminary figures released in October, Reuters reported. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also reported that for all of 2017 traffic deaths fell by 1.8 percent to 37,133 after traffic deaths rose sharply in the previous two years, according to final figures. The U.S. traffic fatality rate fell to 1.08 deaths per 100 million miles traveled for the first half of 2018. The fatality rate in 2017 was 1.16 million deaths per 100 million miles traveledthe second highest rate since 2008. The Governors Highway Safety Association noted that a strong economy usually correlates with an increase in traffic deaths so this drop, while small, is encouraging news. NHTSA Deputy Administrator Heidi King said the agency is looking at a variety of factors to explain the reduction. Automakers are adding more crash avoidance features to vehicles to help warn motorists of a potential crash or slow a vehicle and were very hopeful that will continue to be part of a trend, King said. The agency said over the last four decades the general downward trend in vehicle deaths is attributed to a variety of factors including increased seat belt use, reduced impaired driving, and features like airbags and electronic stability control. The only increase in traffic death categories in 2017 was a 9 percent jump in deaths involving large trucks, including tractor-trailers. Deaths among truck drivers increased 16 percent. Officials noted that a growing U.S. economy means more freight is traveling on U.S. roads, one factor in the increase. Deaths involving the largest trucks above 26,000 pounds rose by 3.8 percent in 2017. Reuters contributed to this report. Brexit: European Union and Britain Agree Draft Deal on Future Relations BRUSSELS/LONDONBritain and the European Union have agreed a draft text setting out a close post-Brexit relationship, though wrangling with Spain over control of Gibraltar must still be settled before EU leaders meet on Sunday, Nov. 25 in order to rubber-stamp the pact. Thursdays news sent the pound nearly 1 percent higher on relief among investors that 18 months of tense and tortuous negotiation were bearing fruit, keeping Britain close to its biggest market and ensuring nothing much will change during a transition period due to last until at least the end of 2020. The British people want Brexit to be settled. They want a good deal that sets us on a course for a brighter future, British Prime Minister Theresa May told parliament. The deal that will enable us to do this is now within our grasp. In these crucial 72 hours ahead, I will do everything possible to deliver it for the British people. Her spokesman said she believed she could win a critical vote in parliament on the deal, expected next month, but many of those she needs to persuade appeared unconvinced. Some fellow Conservatives seeking a cleaner break from the EU accused her of betraying Brexit while opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called the outcome of the negotiations the worst of all worlds for keeping Britain linked to the vast EU market but without a say in its rules. After a draft treaty last week set the terms for Britains departure in March, May had met EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker on Nov. 21, hoping to finalize an ambitious declaration on future ties that could help her secure backing at home for the entire Brexit package. But the deal faces a rocky ride once it reaches a deeply divided British parliament, with hardline euroskeptic and staunch pro-EU factions, and various shades of gray in-between. If There Are No Changes, We Will Veto Brexit The main question mark is whether Spain, seeing Brexit as an opportunity to swing the EUs weight behind its 300-year campaign to reclaim Gibraltar from Britain, can be persuaded to remain patient. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez tweeted on Thursday night, After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away. My government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit. While the withdrawal agreement only requires a qualified majority not unanimity, the EU always seeks consensus on such sensitive matters. EU sources told Reuters that French calls for access to British fishing grounds and insistence that post-Brexit Britain follow EU environment, tax, labor, and industrial rules are largely drafted, leaving a gap for Spains concerns that Madrid be given an effective veto over applying any future deal to Gibraltar. EU diplomats said they hoped Spain could accept a statement, similar to one made before the withdrawal negotiations, that nothing in a future EU-UK treaty would apply to Gibraltar unless Madrid consented to that after bilateral talks with London. The main text of the political declaration said the EU and Britain agree to develop an ambitious, wide-ranging, and balanced economic partnership. This partnership will be comprehensive, encompassing a free trade area as well as wider sectoral cooperation will be underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field. Crucially for May, it commits the EU to looking for ways to avoid triggering a backstop clause intended to ensure the Irish border remains free of customs checks. Those include, it says, technical and administrative means favored by Mays Brexiteer allies that could limit Britains need to keep its broader economic and trade rules in line with the continent. By Gabriela Baczynska and Kylie MacLellan Chautauqua: Americas Newest Destination for Comedy Lovers Come stand next to me! My first comedy act ran almost five years. Id beckon my little sister over and try to maintain a straight face as she stepped in something unsavory (think slugs or dog poo), then stagger off, a suppressed giggle giving way to my signature cackle. The look on her face! Id laugh till I cried and shed just cry. I still revel in my brilliant tomfoolery. She stopped listening to me years ago. More recently, I performed my first stand-up act in an attempt at using humor as a coping mechanism. Id been diagnosed with a neurological thing that has no cure, secondary to traumatic brain injury Id spent over a year rehabbing. Id gotten very good at making light of brains and brain rehab but this news upped the ante. And so I had to choose again: Laugh or cry. After a decent amount of crying, I settled on laughter and decided others should share in my anti-revelry? People laughed and I felt a bit better. Another source of solace during this rough patchspectacular views. Views from mountains (I seriously took up mountaineering to help cope with the brain rehab) or across sandy beaches into wide expanses of sea. Sunrises and sunsets. Vistas I need to leave New York City for. Because I need them now more than ever, Id do almost anything for those views or laughs, including renting a car and driving six hours across the state to Lucille Balls old stomping grounds for a fitting package deal: The Chautauqua Harbor Hotels Hilarious Getaway Package. Heres what you can expect. Honoring Lucys Wish Lucy enthusiasts cant miss neighboring Jamestowns annual Comedy Festival and also need to visit the Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum, exploring the life stories of Lucille Ball and real and onscreen husband Desi Arnaz with an audio tour through a vast collection of the First Couple of Comedys personal belongings. Exact re-creations of the television studio sets, from Tropicana Room to the Ricardos New York City apartment living room will have you saying, Lucy, Im home! Truly, you are. This museum is the very house she grew up in. The true homage to Lucille Ball is the National Comedy Center itself, embodying her vision that her hometown become a destination for the celebration of the comedic arts. While the vision started to become a reality with the museum and festival, the Center fulfills Lucys wish for the regionan ongoing legacy of laughter. Inside the National Comedy Center I spent an entire day exploring more than 50 immersive exhibits on an interactive journey through comedic history and genres, from mimes to memes gone viral. Setting the experience apart from any museum Ive visited is the cutting-edge personalization technology that made the experience unique to me and my tastes. After creating a humor profile with a microchipped wristband, I explored content tailored to me as an individual, from broad slapstick to edgy satire, all the while up-voting what resonated most to further hone my experience. Along with educational games, I virtually stepped into some legendary late-night studios, tried my hand at cartooning, created my own meme (it didnt go viral because the world isnt ready) and replaced Ron Burgundy on the Anchorman set. I even hit the stage for some live stand-up. The hallway leading to an elevator that takes guests down to the Blue Room (more on that in a bit) showcased several displays in a more serious tone, the history of the military USO, political humor, and what resonated with me most, healing power. The placard reads, Its an intuitive belief: Laughter makes us feel better. But there is also tangible evidence that comedy can, in a very real way, heal our wounds. Humor has the power to provide an emotional catharsis, build empathy, unite communities, and even boost the immune system. I watched as Tig Notaro discussed, on stage, the back-to-back whammy of losing her mother then being diagnosed with breast cancer. Patton Oswalt addressed the passing of his wife in stand-up. I felt in good company; they just do it better and for money. The aforementioned Blue Room acknowledges that some people find boundary-pushing material refreshing and hilarious while others do not. This separate space, not suitable for children, celebrates raw and uncensored comedy. After learning everything I never knew about Lenny Brucehis exhibit is extensive and impressiveI got comfortable with one of my favorite forms of comedy, the roast, where people are poked fun at for being who they are. I sat there in a set of headphones laughing for over an hour, keeping in mind its what I do with each joke I poke at myself. At the end of the day I scanned out and immediately received an email summary of my humor preferences. I left with a more profound appreciation for comedy icons and innovators. While Id ruminated plenty on the power of comedy, the National Comedy Center gave me a deeper understanding of the tremendous influence of humor on how we think and live. As I was walking out, a gentleman Id seen in the Blue Room caught up with me and said, You have a great laugh. Its like an evil cackle. Dont I know it. Didnt my sister know it first! Heading back to the Chautauqua Harbor Hotel to take in one more sunset, I thought about the dichotomy of extremes Ive attempted to set up for myself, flipping between the two extremes of utter wonderment and sheer amusement. The reality is, the bulk of my time is spent somewhere in between, dealing with the grind. Though life is no joke, laughter is the best medicine. Amanda Burrill sees through an adventurous lens, typically focused on culinary and travel. Her education includes a bachelors in archaeology, a masters in journalism, a culinary degree from Le Cordon Bleu, and wine and spirits credentials earned while living in Paris. She is a U.S. Navy veteran, Ironman triathlete, high-alpine mountaineer, and injury connoisseur who ruminates on UnchartedLifestyleMag.com A business jet takes off as others are parked at the Hong Kong Airport on Feb. 17, 2012. (Bobby Yip/Reuters) Chinas Private Jet Brokers Brace for Chill as Market Stalls BEIJING/SHANGHAIChinas private jet market faces a protracted lull as the economy continues to slow down, salesmen and aviation lawyers said at forum in Beijing this week, predicting the countrys uber-rich will sell off jets in droves next year. Whether it is as a manufacturer, a leasing company or an operator, we all feel a chill, Xu Lidong, chairman of HNA Group Co Ltds private jet division Deer Jet, said at the Beijing event, citing the broader economic malaise. Chinas economy expanded in the last quarter at the weakest pace since the global financial crisis, with economists forecasting more headwind to come amid a years-long campaign to tackle debt risk and spiraling trade war with the United States. Dealers and brokers at the 2018 China Business Aviation Development Forum echoed the sentiment. For the past 10 years, its been all about Chinese business owners buying; but this year, we have so far handled 3-5 cases where jet owners wanted to sell to overseas markets, Wang Shu, a partner at Han Kun Law Offices. Deer Jets Xu said there are currently over 30 aircraft up for sale from Greater China, with used private plans from China being snapped up by U.S. buyers. The U.S. market is having its best run in a few years, said Wang Fuhou, president of the aircraft leasing division at Minsheng Financial Leasing. He said that contrasted sharply with the situation in China. I wouldnt say (this year) is the worst, though. The next year or the year after will be the worst. Some speakers at the event forecast a pickupbut not until around 2020. For Lily Jet, a charter company operating in China for the past decade, the golden days when the charter market recorded annual growth of 30 percent are well gone. Profit is drastically down this year, said Ding Lili, general manager for business, adding the firm had cut prices by about a quarter for one of its most luxurious jets. Against such a backdrop, I understand why jet operators are reducing their fleets significantly. By Stella Qiu & Adam Jourdan Young black conservative leaders from across the country cheer as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks as part of the 2018 Young Black Leadership Summit in the East Room of the White House on Oct. 26, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Pete Marovich/Getty Images) David Harris Jr. Couldnt Stay Silent Reaction to ClintonTrump debate was 'trigger' toward 'Blexit' movement I first glimpsed David Harris Jr. outside the White House a few weeks ago, among several hundred young, black conservatives who were taking part in the Young Black Leadership Summit. His confidence in front of a crowd and a video camera is enviable; viewed at close range, he dominates from the head. The political/social activist, broadcaster, and author is one of a number of influencers who Candace Owens, the communications director for Turning Point USA, envisages will help wake black America up from its blindand misguidedallegiance to the Democratic Party. Were going live, right now. Its history in the making, friends, he intones, while looking straight into the camera. Harris has his arm around the shoulder of Brandon Tatum. Its history in the making! Yes, it is, says Tatum, a former Tucson, Arizona, police officer, and SWAT team member, who is the director of urban outreach for Turning Point. Yes, it is. Harris begins his broadcast. We are here with about 400-plus young black Americans that love our country, that love our president, that support him, that stand in the face of all the ignorants out there that suggest that hes a racist and a sexist. How do you feel my brother? he asks. Tatum beams under his MAGA cap. Actually, there are so many red caps around that it looks like a poppy field. Its a blessing from God. He orchestrated this. He put this together. It is a pivotal moment in history. We are defying all the odds! Tatum responds. Harris emerged onto the radar with one video. The first video that went viral was one that I did after the third debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Harris tells me. As an American, as a father, as a Christian, and as a husband, I just had to hop on Facebook and share what I thought was at stake for our country. The video went to 400,000 views. The messages all said, There is no way I can support Hillary and her stance on abortion! It was the trigger for me when I saw the debate. Science knows information now that it didnt have when Roe v. Wade happened. A baby has a heartbeat at eight weeks. To cause any baby, innocent and helpless, pain, is torture. Its barbaric. You can go to jail for destroying an egg of a bald eagle. If a woman is pregnant and someone kills her, he can be charged with a double-homicide. If a pregnant woman is hit by a drunk driver and she loses the baby, he can go to jail for manslaughter. But if a woman willingly walks into an abortion clinic and has her baby dismembered, she can walk out free and clear. It is insane. In November 2016, he started a page on Facebook. He writes and broadcasts a live daily show and shares news that the mainstream media doesnt. Its unswitchoffable. Harris has a huge presence and isnt reluctant to share his thoughts, Christian guidance, and laughter at the Democrats. They are mobsters, left-wing fascists, he says. During this past summer, he was invited by Tatum and Owens to a retreat for black influencers, hosted by Turning Point. The student activist group, founded by Charlie Kirk, is one of the largest and most strategic organizations designed to support conservative awareness on campuses. It strives to challenge the ideologies that seek to strip away our freedoms. It was here that Harris heard about the Young Black Leadership Summit. And it was here that Owens shared her vision for reaching the black community through a movement called Blexita twinning of black and exit that some see as the new civil rights movement in America. For decades, the black community has been in an emotionally abusive relationship with the Democratic Party, she said. Few black people know that the Ku Klux Klan, founded by Nathan Bedford Forrest, was a military-style arm of the Democratic Party. Their sole aim was to keep black Americans immiserated and dependent on them. The Democrats used the KKK to enforce Jim Crow Laws, to manipulate, segregate and torture. By the 1960s, the Democrats had reframed themselves as the party fighting for black Americans, which is both preposterous and devious in the extreme. The Democrats have simply swapped plantations for inner-city slums. Harriss mother was a strong Christian. At the age of 7, he had a Bible verse memorized for every letter of the alphabet, and would stand on a shoebox and recite them. He went to a Christian school. When he was 9, his parents divorced, and everything changed. They moved to Reading, California, a white neighborhood. His grandfather was the first African-American chaplain for the Shasta County Sheriffs Dept. We were brought up with a strong understanding that abortion is murder. I never wavered from that, he says. I slipped under the radar. My personal story is one of epic successes, to walking away from God, almost overdosing. He kept me alive. He was preparing me. I believe He elected Donald J. Trump to lead this country out of disaster and ruin. Hes a man that cant be bought or controlled. He is a modern-day Cyrus. I have a coin with Cyruss head on the one side and Trumps on the other. Blexit leadership has a strong belief in God. But we must invite Him into everything that we do. It is a romantic journey of faith. Hes just published a book called Why I Couldnt Stay Silent, and gave a copy to the president. There is a chapter in it titled When America Elected, Obama I Cried I didnt believe that he had our countrys best interests at heart, Harris says. When he said he wanted to fundamentally transform the foundation of our country, I heard something completely different than most people did. There are 4 million black people that are in poverty. There are veterans that are in poverty. America First is the right thing to do. Obama signed one of the worst deals with Iran that America has ever penned. It granted Iran billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Videos of Iranian leaders chanting death to America are continually being shared all over social media, yet Obama was caught sending billions of dollars in cash to Iran, on pallets, in the middle of the night! That sounds like something a mob boss would do. Jani Allan is a South African journalist, columnist, writer, and broadcaster. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Dont Fall for the CDCs Outlandish Lies About Thimerosal Propaganda experts have long admitted that the big lie is an important tool for molding public opinion. A psychological profile of Hitler carried out by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services noted that one of the German leaders primary rules was that people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it. Big Lie: CDC Fact Sheet Says Thimerosal Is Not a Toxin The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) appears to agree that a big and oft-repeated lie is a powerful public relations tool, because in August, its Immunization Safety Office posted a fact sheet that once again insists that thimerosal in vaccines is not harmful to children, despite ample evidence to the contrary. The fact sheet trots out the same handful of thimerosal-related studies (conducted by the CDC or with the CDCs involvement) that it has used for years to silence thimerosal critics. Fortunately, multiple resource pages on the Childrens Health Defense website make it easy to rebut the CDCs regurgitated falsehoods. Our website provides a thimerosal FAQ, information dispelling myths about thimerosals use in vaccines and countering false vaccine safety claims (including claims about thimerosal), analysis of the flawed studies that the CDC relies on to exonerate thimerosal from any role in the childhood epidemics of neurodevelopmental disordersand more. Below, we summarize three of the most obvious reasons to ignore the CDCs latest attempt to pull the wool over the publics eyes. Still Dangerous and Neurotoxic The CDC says the evidence is clear that thimerosal is merely a preservative and not a neurotoxin. However, no one who actually takes the time to examine the scientific literature can rationally conclude that mercury in any formincluding the mercury in thimerosalis safe for humans. The handful of CDC-funded or CDC-approved studies listed in the thimerosal fact sheet stand in sharp contrast to research conducted by independent researchers over the past 75-plus years that have consistently found thimerosal to be harmful. This independent research has linked thimerosal to neurodevelopmental disorders, tics, speech delay, language delay, attention deficit disorder, and autism. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.s book, Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak, describes hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific publications and the broad consensus among research scientists that thimerosal is a dangerous neurotoxin. The CDC falsely claims that thimerosal was taken out of childhood vaccines in the United States in 2001. However, 25 micrograms of thimerosal remain in many of the influenza vaccines administered in the U.S., including to pregnant women and infants. In fact, thimerosal wasnt so much removed as it was moved around. Fraudulent Authors All eight studies included in the CDC fact sheet involve lead or co-authors accused of fraud or known to have been involved in behind-closed-doors data manipulation or weighed down by serious conflicts of interest. Dr. William Thompson, who authored three of the studies in his former capacity as a senior CDC vaccine safety scientist, made a whistleblower deposition to Congressman William Posey and issued statements through his personal attorney about fraud and destruction of data at the CDC. In one of his most egregious examples, Thompson reported that his bosses, including branch chief, Frank DeStefano (an author on three of the studies included in the fact sheet), ordered Thompson and other CDC scientists to get rid of data demonstrating vaccine-induced autism. As described previously by Childrens Health Defense: DeStefano called his four co-authors into a room and ordered them to dump the damning datasets into a giant garbage can. The published study omitted those datasets. The bulk of Thompsons whistleblowing revelations occurred in 40-plus phone conversations and over 10,000 pages of documents shared with Dr. Brian Hooker. In those conversations, Thompson also stated that CDC officials worked hard to dilute Dr. Thompsons strong and statistically significant findingthat thimerosal exposure via infant vaccines causes tics in boys. In fact, Thompson asked Hooker to start a campaign to publicize the fact that multiple CDC-sanctioned publications show that thimerosal causes tics. In addition to the studies authored by Thompson and DeStefano, two of the papers held out by the CDC as definitive proof of thimerosals innocence are 2003 studies authored by Thomas Verstraeten and Paul Stehr-Greentwo participants at the infamous secret meeting held in Simpsonwood in 2000 to discuss the relationship between exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines and neurological damage in children. Both Verstraeten and Stehr-Green were heavily involved in trying to make a clear association between thimerosal and neurodevelopmental effects seem unimportant. Although the Verstraeten study nonetheless went on to report statistically significant associations between thimerosal and language delays and tics, the CDC fact sheet dismisses the associations as weak and not consistent. Massaged Data As outlined previously by Childrens Health Defense and others, and as indicated in the preceding sections, there are a variety of reasons not to trust the results of the eight studies included in the CDC fact sheetincluding CDC funding and other conflicts of interest as well as erroneous and fraudulent reporting of data. The table below summarizes the studies major problems. http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9926486 The CDC fact sheet includes the Stehr-Green study twice, formatting the study slightly differently in each of the two rows; although the duplication is immediately apparent to the attentive reader, a casual reader might conclude that the CDC had nine rather than eight studies at its disposal. Lacking Credibility At this juncture, with over 80 studies connecting the dots between thimerosal and autism alone, and new studies appearing every day that link other vaccine ingredients such as aluminum to the chronic illness epidemics beleaguering todays children, the CDC has lost all credibility when it makes poorly substantiated claims about thimerosal or vaccine safety. An agency that buys and sells well over $4 billion in vaccines annually clearly has a vested interest in tamping down any discussion of vaccine risks. Fortunately, the public increasingly recognizes that the CDCs fact sheets lies must be read with a large grain of salt. Childrens Health Defense, (formerly the World Mercury Project) is an organization dedicated to exposing and eliminating harmful exposures to children. ChildrensHealthDefense.org Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Federal police officers stand guard near Ethiopian national flags along the street in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Nov. 15, 2018. (Tiksa Negeri/Reuters) Ethiopia Chooses Dissident to Head Vote Board as PM Presses Reforms ADDIS ABABAEthiopia chose a former exiled dissident to head its election board on Nov. 22part of a dizzying shake-up by the new prime minister that has brought rebels back into the political mainstream and curbed the establishment. The job went to Birtukan Mideksa just weeks after she returned from the United States under an amnesty announced by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and 13 years after she was jailed in the violent aftermath of contested 2005 elections. Birtukan, once one of Ethiopias most high profile prisoners, will now lead efforts to organize the next vote scheduled for 2020the latest top position to go to a woman after SahleWork Zewde was named president and Abiy chose women to fill half his cabinet posts last month. We are appointing her considering her knowledge of the constitution and the law of the nation, Abiy told parliament. She might have her own opinions and sayings like anyone, but we believe she will act according to the constitution, he said after several MPs raised concerns about her impartiality given her role in opposition politics. Birtukan, who founded the opposition UDJ party, promised to make the election boards work transparent and trustworthy. What Ethiopians endured have prepared us to ask the right questions including through the ballot box, she told the state-affiliated Fana news agency. Prison, Pardons The former judge was convicted of trying to overthrow the state after crowds took to the streets accusing the government of rigging the 2005 vote. Security forces opened fire, killing dozens of protesters. She was pardoned in 2007 after Amnesty International, other rights groups, and some Western powers pressed for her release. But the pardon was revoked and her life sentence resumed a year later, until another pardon in 2010. Abiy came to power in April and quickly turned national and regional politics on its head by making peace with neighboring Eritrea and reining in the powerful security services. He allowed members of outlawed opposition and separatist groups to return and promised to promote multi-party democracyall of the seats in parliament are held by his EPRDF coalition. After parliament overwhelmingly approved the nomination, Birtukan was sworn in by Meaza Ashenafi, a womens rights activist who was appointed president of the Supreme Court three weeks ago. [Birtukan is] overseeing not only an election but a transition, from an authoritarian state to a democratic one, a transition to an accountable government, Addis Ababa-based political analyst Hallelujah Lulie said. Exploring the Old Medina in Fez, Morocco From the moment I arrived in Fez , Moroccos second-largest city after Casablanca, I felt I had entered into a completely different history and culture. Fez largely consists of two old medina quarters, Fes el Bali and Fes Jdid, and the modern section of Ville Nouvelle with its palm-tree-lined boulevards, built in the French colonial era. The walled medina, with its bustling souks and old-world ambience, is the jewel of the city. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the best-preserved medinas in the world. There are many riadsold houses and palacesconverted to modern guesthouses in the medina. We stayed at the Fes Marriott Hotel Jnan Palace, and when we checked in, two ladies standing by the entrance welcomed us and a man dressed in traditional Moroccan garb poured us a glass of mint tea from a silver pot. This is just one example of the hospitality one encounters in Morocco. Getting Lost is Part of the Fun The next morning, we took a taxi to the medina. We entered via the Bab Rcif gate where a large plaza led us to another smaller gate, through which we finally entered the souk (marketplace). Like many souks, it was like being in a maze, so we tried to keep going straight ahead to avoid getting lost. We passed many small shops selling everything from textiles, to clothing, to footwear, to groceries and household materials. As we strolled deeper into the heart of the souk, the passage narrowed and we often had to give way to a donkey carrying a load of materials or a shopkeeper pulling a trolley. We continued walking until we reached the part of the souk known as the Andalusia neighborhood, home to the Al Andalous Mosque. The mosque was closed for refurbishment so we couldnt go in, but standing in front of it we got a good view of the medina and beyond it the city wall, all silhouetted against the dramatic backdrop of the Atlas Mountains. Despite our efforts, it wasnt long before we lost our way, but this part of the charm and fun of the medina! Would we have found the shop dedicated to a variety of exotic herbs and spices or the vegetable and fish market otherwise? Eventually, we had to ask for directions. I knew not to ask the men or boys about the streets though, for if I did they would stick to me like glue, demanding money. These unofficial guides can be a real pain, so if you get lost in one of Moroccos souks I recommend asking a shopkeeper for directions. Bab Boujloud Next, we headed through narrow alleyways that took us to a residential neighborhood where there were only a few shops. We thought we were heading in one direction but discovered we were actually walking in a circle. After getting directions once again, we headed off to Bab Boujloud which was crammed with shops overflowing with leather bags, jackets, and shoes. This time we followed a student we had met, Yassin, and his friends. Along the way, we passed the Shrine of Moulay Idriss and El Quaraouiyine Mosque and University. What struck me most as we navigated the maze of streets in the medina was the vibrant energy in the ancient city. Watching the interactions between the shop owners and locals, I could see that they were like one big family, very friendly and familiar to each other. Yassin invited us to his home, which was near the ruins of the Merenid Tombs built in the 14th century on a hill overlooking the medina. When we got there it was nearly sunset, and the panoramic view of the medina, Ville Nouvelle, and the mountains was magnificent. At Yassins house, which was in a new, middle-class neighborhood, we were warmly welcomed by his parents and offered tea and dates. Before we left, his mother insisted that we have a bowl of harira, a classic Morroccan soup. My short time in Fez gave me a glimpse of the mystery of this ancient city. I plan to return for the World Festival of Sacred Music next June, an annual week-long gathering of composers of classical and spiritual music from all over the world. That experience, Im sure, will present a different side to Fez. More about Morocco: http://www.muchmorocco.com More of images of Fez: http://www.amirinia.com/morocco/ Mohammad Reza Amirinia is a freelance writer and journalist who has a passion for documentary photography, social photography, and photojournalism. www.amirinia.com Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari arrives to attend a visit and a dinner at the Orsay Museum on the eve of the commemoration ceremony for Armistice Day, in Paris, France, on Nov. 10, 2018. (Benoit/Reuters) ISIS Claims Attacks in West Africa Caused 118 Casualties CAIROThe ISIS terrorist group claimed responsibility for five attacks in an area it calls the State of West Africa that it said resulted in 118 casualties in the past week, according to a video posted on its account on the messaging website Telegram late on Nov. 22. The terrorist group, which typically uses the State of West Africa to refer to Nigeria, made the claim in a video presentation of attacks it says it carried out between Nov. 16 and 22. It did not specify the number of people killed in the attacks, referring only to 118 casualties. Five security sources told Reuters more than 100 soldiers had been killed in attacks in Nigeria in recent days, one of the highest death tolls since President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015. It could raise pressure on him ahead of an election in February since he has claimed victory over the nine-year insurgency. The sources said the insurgents attacked a military base in the village of Metele in northeastern Borno state, the epicenter of a revolt by Boko Haram and splinter ISIS group in West Africa. ISIS, in a statement released on Nov. 19, said it attacked an army base on Nov. 18, in Metele and killed at least 40 Nigerian soldiers. The group said it burned down the base after the attack finished. A Nigerian presidency spokesman on Thursday said the military would issue a statement and military spokesmen did not respond to requests for comment. The government and military often decline to acknowledge the scale of losses in the northeast. By Hesham Hajali Police have placed a car-ramming attacker under criminal detention on charge of endangering public security, after he drove a car into a group of pupils crossing a road, leaving 5 children dead and 19 others injured on Thursday in northeast China's Liaoning Province. Police in Jianchang County, Liaoning, have identified the man as a local resident surnamed Han, who is 29 years old and unemployed. According to police investigation, when he was driving Thursday, he was considering suicide due to quarrels with his wife, and that he chose his victims at random. Accompanied by teachers, the group of children were crossing the road after leaving the No. 2 Primary School in the county at 12:15 p.m. Three of the injured are still in critical condition. According to police, in the attack, Han's car made a sudden turn to the opposite direction of the road to run into children. He fled the scene but was caught by police later in the afternoon. Jewelry Store Employees Use Swords to Fight Off Robbers Employees at a jewelry store in the Canadian province of Ontario used swords to fend off armed robbers, including one intruder wielding a handgun. Four assailants were caught on several security cameras shortly after noon on Wednesday, Nov. 21, as they pulled up to Ashok Jewellers in Mississauga, according to Peel Regional Police. Four suspects attempted to gain entry to the store by breaking a window at which point the employees were able to fend off the suspects who then fled the area, the police said. The would-be robbers, wearing disguises, were captured on external security cameras exiting a vehicle before approaching the store. Video from inside the store showed one of the intruders breaking a window with what appears to be a large hammer. Stunning video. Owners of Ashok Jewellers in Mississauga sent me this surveillance footage three people using swords to fend off a daylight robbery attempt on Wednesday. @globalnewsto pic.twitter.com/UjDb1kn2w7 Kamil Karamali (@KamilKaramali) November 22, 2018 An employee and a customer were standing just several feet away, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), as the assailants proceeded to shatter the glass and try to force their way inside. As one of the suspects tried to climb in through the broken window, three people inside the store charged toward the intruder, swinging sabre-style swords. When we saw them coming in, thats when we really took action and we rushed them, said Arjun Kumar, the son of the stores owner, according to the CBC. Seemingly startled by the swinging swords, the intruder can be seen in the video leaping back through the broken window, while another masked figure approaches the hole in the window and points what appears to be a handgun. Kumar told CBC reporters that the suspect tried to fire the weapon, but the gun jammed. They had a gun but my main concern was, I wanted them to not get into my store, he explained. I was willing to do anything to keep them out. Even if it meant me getting shot, not a problem. The four men fled the scene in a dark-coloured SUV, said Peel Police Constable Danny Marttini. Investigators have reached out to the public with a request for help in identifying the suspects. Kumar told reporters that the swords were gifts from a family friend, and that he was lucky that they were on hand. It was good luck for us, he said. Police, however, said staff should mind their safety and avoid violently confronting armed robbers. I think a lot of people want to naturally defend whats theirs. At the same time, we dont want people doing things that would cause any harm to themselves, Marttini said, according to the CBC. Safety is first and foremost. At the end of the day, property is property,he said. Falling Crime Rates Canadian officials point out that despite headline-grabbing incidents like the would-be jewelry store robbery, the overall police-reported crime rate in Canada has seen a steady decline for more than 20 years. According to Statistics Canada, an official government data service, the falling trend is most notable for property crime. Violent crime, including homicides and attempted murders, has also seen a substantial drop. Murder rates, in particular, are at near historic lows. Experts cited by Statistics Canada have not reached a consensus on declining crime rates, but several factors are believed to be possible explanations. These factors include an aging population, changing policing practices and strategies, the rise of technology, shifts in unemployment, variations in alcohol consumption, neighbourhood characteristics, or changing attitudes toward illegal and risky behaviour. Man Arrested After Pregnant 14-Year-Old Killed in Atlanta: Police A 20-year-old man was arrested in the shooting death of a 14-year-old who was pregnant, Atlanta police said. Souleymane Diallo was booked into the Fulton County Jail on charges of second-degree murder in the case of Sonja Star Harrisons death. He faces charges for her murder as well as charges in the death of her unborn child, police told the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. He has been in and out of jail since at least 2015 for a number of previous crimes. AJC Diallo was arrested on Thanksgiving Day, three days after the shooting. Both Sonja Star and her child died Monday, Nov. 19. Sonja Star was expected to give birth next month, her family members said, reported The Associated Press. Officials told AP the bullet that killed Sonja Star went through the floor of an upstairs apartment before striking her in the head. Diallo has been in and out of jail since at least 2015 for a number of crimes, according to Fulton County jail records. They include shoplifting, disorderly conduct, cruelty to children, willful obstruction of law enforcement, public drunkenness, public indecency, possession of controlled substances, and violation of probation, the Journal Constitution reported. He was most recently released from jail on Oct. 18 after a shoplifting charge. They took her lifeand my grandbabys life, the 14-year-old girls mother, Sonja Denise Harrison, told the publication. They took away two lives from me. She was pregnant, but she had a future. She was going to finish school and she was talking about joining the Army, for her and her baby. And they took that away from her. They took my babys future. And they didnt have no right doing that, the mother said, Fox5 reported. Several people were in the upstairs apartment where the shots were fired, said police. Early on, investigators told the Fox affiliate that it was an accidental shooting. She liked to dance, she liked to sing, said Janiyah Copelin, 14, a friend of the girls. I was going to be a part of her family, she said. I miss her. Sonja Denise Harrison said allegations that Diallo was the father of the unborn child are not true. Folks saying hes the babys father, she told the paper. He is not the father. He is not the father. Violent Crime Down in 2017 In September 2018, the FBI said Americans committed fewer violent and property crimes in 2017, according to statistics. The violent crime rateincluding offenses such as murder, robbery, and aggravated assaultdropped by almost one percent and is still about 4 percent above the 2014 rate. The murder rate dropped by 0.7 percent. After historic increases in violent crime in 2015 and 2016, we are beginning to see encouraging signs, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement at the time. But our work is not done. While we have made progress, violent crime and drug trafficking continue to plague our communities and destroy the lives of innocent, law-abiding Americans. Of the estimated 17,284 murders in 2017, more than half occurred in larger citieswith populations of more than 100,000. There are fewer than 300 such cities in the United States, and while they account for less than 30 percent of the countrys population, many of them contribute far beyond their share to national crime rates and have done so for years, even decades. While the national murder rate inched down to 5.3 per 100,000 residents, it spiked by 15 percent in Philadelphia, to a rate of more than 20 per 100,000 residents. Columbus, Ohio, saw a massive 54 percent murder rate increase, reaching nearly 16.3 per 100,000 residents. Petr Svab contributed to this report. Then Congressman Mike Espy accepts his nomination for Secretary of Agriculture on Dec. 24 1992 in Arkansas as then president-elect Bill Clinton listens. (HERB SWANSON/AFP/Getty Images) Maoist Network Backing Espys Mississippi Senate Race Operates Under the Radar Commentary Mega-wealthy, far-left attorney Steve Phillips, through his political action committee PowerPAC+, is throwing huge sums of money and resources under the radar to back Democratic candidate Mike Espy in the tight Mississippi U.S. Senate race that will be decided on Nov. 27. While Espy paints himself as a relatively moderate Democrat, Phillipswho is based in San Fransciscois intent on winning another Senate seat, both to counter President Donald Trump and to help re-build a permanent Democratic Party majority, based on his strategy laid out in his Obama-endorsed 2016 book Brown Is the New White. Phillips was heavily involved in Democrat Doug Joness shock win against Roy Moore in last years Alabama Senate race. He was also the mastermind behind Stacey Abramss and Andrew Gillums near-victories in the recently resolved Georgia and Florida gubernatorial contests. All three races relied on the same strategy: Phillips and his mega-wealthy leftist friends financed Maoist-leaning socialist networks in each state. These groups organized mass voter-registration drives and get out the vote efforts among their respective states Democratic-leaning, but low propensity voting, black and Latino citizenry. This approach, coupled with smear campaigns and overt accusations of racism against Republican opponents, carried the day in Alabama, and came within a whisker of succeeding in Florida and Georgia. All three states saw record Democratic turnout, particularly among black women voters. It was only an unexpectedly high Republican turnout, inspired by fiercely conservative candidates Brian Kemp (Georgia) and Rick DeSantis (Florida), that saved the day for the GOP. New American Majority As a Stanford University law student in the 1980s, Phillips was involved with the League of Revolutionary Struggle, a pro-China communist organization. Along with his Maoist comrades, Phillips played a leading role in Jesse Jacksons Rainbow Coalition of the 1984 and 1988 presidential election cycles. Jacksons race-obsessed Rainbow Coalition was all about organizing minorities (colors of the rainbow) into one large progressive electoral coalition to achieve a socialist America. In Jacksons day, minorities made up 12 percent of the population. Today, they make up 38 percent, and Phillips wants to finish the job Jackson started. Phillips revealed his hard-left background in a 2012 pitch for progressives to support his old Stanford comrade Cory Booker, then running for the U.S. Senate from New Jersey (with millions of dollars from Phillips). Phillips wrote, in an article for the PowerPAC+ publication Political Intelligence: Every progressive person in America should support Cory Bookers campaign for U.S. Senate. Lest there be any confusion on the Left, allow me to make the case for why this needs to be a priority for all progressive-minded people. First, let me make clear that I come out of the Left. Ive studied Marx, Mao, and Lenin. In college, I organized solidarity efforts for freedom struggles in South Africa and Nicaragua, and I palled around with folks who considered themselves communists and revolutionaries and I did my research paper on the Black Panther Party. My political baptism was the Jesse Jackson 1984 presidential campaign, and Ive drawn my inspiration from Malcolm, Martin, and Mandela rather than Democratic Party triumvirate of Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton. After college, Phillips married his Stanford sweetheart, Susan Sandler, the daughter of savings and loan multi-billionaires Herb and Marion Sandler. Through his organization PowerPAC+, Phillips uses Sandlers money to back candidates of color, particularly in the Southern states. Phillipss goal, outlined in Brown Is the New White, is to build an electoral alliance of progressive whites and Americas growing numbers of minority voters to build a new American majority. According to Phillips, the left already has a majority in America: 23 percent of the electorate are progressive people of color and 28 percent are progressive whites. Get them all to the polls, the theory goes, and America will face an unbeatable Democrat-led coalition: a new Rainbow Coalition that will be in power indefinitely. We can work to win at the ballot box in 2016 only if Democrats and progressives actually invest in and speak to the New American Majority. #BrownistheNewWhite is in bookstores Feb 2, 2016. PowerPAC+ Espy Campaign Support Flipping a Mississippi Senate seat to Democrat from Republican would be a huge boost to Phillipss plans. PowerPAC+ endorsed three candidates this election cycle: Espy and two in California (Gil Cisneros and Ammar Campa-Najjar). In a recent podcast on his website Democracy in Color, Phillips boasted that the PowerPAC+ team worked with in-state voter mobilization groups to target 200,000 black voters under the radar. According to Mississippi-based website Yall Politics: Over the last two weeks, a PAC called POWERPACPLUS has, according to FEC reports, quietly launched nearly a $400,000 spend in the US Senate race in Mississippi. Five separate independent expenditures totaling $392,200.16 have been made by the San Francisco based PAC in the last two weeks. Banking billionaire Herbert Sandler of California dropped $600K into the PAC on 8/24/18, and the PAC is closely associated with the Sandler family. POWERPACPLUS starting with the October 2018 quarterly filing was almost entirely bankrolled for the most immediate spend by Herbert Sandler. Of the $392K, about $99K is going to radio ads. About $71,000 has gone to a company called Onyx Communications for phone banking they were listed as one of the companies that POWERPAC.org used for the Doug Jones effort in Alabama. Those transactions through the affiliated PowerPAC.org were largely funded by Sandlers son in law Steve. According to The Associated Press, PowerPAC+ has put at least $1.8 million into the Espy campaign. After a video surfaced of Espys Republican challenger, Cindy Hyde-Smith, complimenting a friend and supporter by saying, I would fight a circular saw for him. If he invited me to a public hanging, Id be on the front row, PowerPAC+ swung into action. The PAC released an ad featuring Hyde-Smith and a group of white people at a lynching with graphic depictions of the victims. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant responded angrily to the ad. The use of these horrific images to sow the seeds of racial division, strictly for political purposes, is reprehensible. Mike Espy should immediately call for the removal of this despicable political ad and condemn its use in his campaign, he said, according to Yall Politics. The first week in November, Mississippians started receiving undisclosed political direct mail accusing Hyde-Smith of having voted for Hillary Clinton in 2008 (which she adamantly denies). The mailers came bearing the postal slug TBW, which stands for Terris, Barnes and Walters, a leftist consultancy firm based, like PowerPAC+, in San Francisco. According to Yall Politics, on Oct. 26, PowerPAC+ paid TBW $312,000 for doorhangers and direct mails to support Espy. Phillips protege Booker came to Mississippi to support Espy, just as he went to Alabama for Doug Jones, to Georgia for Stacey Abrams, and to Florida for Andrew Gillum. During a conference at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Booker stressed the importance of the states upcoming Senate elections: I could be in a lot of places, he told the media, but Im here because I think that of all the races that are going on right now, none will be more of a gamechanger than this Senate race right here. While Espy isnt regarded as particularly progressive, Mississippis most radical politician, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, came out strongly for the Democrat. Lumumba was quoted as saying: We need leadership in the United States Senate who represents the ideas that will move Mississippi forward. That is why Im supporting Mike Espy. Freedom Road Socialist Organization Like his namesake father and a Jackson mayor before him, Lumumba was elected to office through the support of the pro-China group Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). Freedom Road Socialist Organization fully supports the campaign to elect Chokwe Antar Lumumba, stated an article posted on May 2, 2017, by FRSO national organizer Cazembe Jackson. In 2013, the late Chokwe Lumumba, father of Chokwe Antar Lumumba, wowed the entire country when he became mayor of Jackson. We know that a second peoples victory is challenging because those in power have already seen a glimpse of what a peoples platform looks like in practice. Today, the vision will be restored. FRSO/OSCL stands with the oppressed and working people of Jackson and the candidate that they have chosen, Chokwe Antar Lumumba. Were here today driving folks to the polls, phone banking and poll watching! Dare to struggle! Dare to win! The FRSO supported its friend Lumumba because the Maoist revolutionary strategy is to build solid bases in the countryside and smaller towns, before attempting to conquer larger population centers. The FRSO is intent on destroying what they call The New Confederacyconservatisms Southern stronghold. This dovetails perfectly with Phillipss plan to use minority voting power to permanently destroy the Republican Partys dominance in the South. Many FRSO members have come out of Phillipss former League of Revolutionary Struggle. In 2013, Phillips even helped fund a major new FRSO front group called LeftRoots. By supporting Espy, Lumumba is helping the friend of a friend. One of Espys key new campaign hires, LaTosha Brown, also has FRSO connections. Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mike Espy announced what he called the most modern headquarters that I think any Democrat has had in Mississippis history at a ceremony for the opening of his new Jackson campaign office Saturday, Aug. 25, according to the Jackson Free Press. One of Espys guests, LaTosha Brown, served an instrumental role in that victory [of Doug Jones]. In Alabamas special election for U.S. Senate last year, Brown led the Alabama Grassroots Mobilization Project, which put boots on the ground in 18 counties, helped pay for about 400 organizers, and provided voter transportation services. For the first time since 1986, Alabama sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate. Yes, Doug Jones is in the Senate, Espy said. But I know, because I studied that race, if it were not for Latosha Brown, Doug Jones would not be in the Senate today. In 1998, the FRSO gathered 2,000 black socialists and communists in Chicago to form an ongoing Black Radical Congress. During the Congress, a panel was convened on Organizing the South, to discuss the historic role of the Black South in the larger history of Black exploitation and the struggle for Black freedom. Panelists were Ashaki Binta, a leader of the FRSO front group Black Workers for Justice; Lumumba, the future Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi; Ajamu Dillahunt of Black Workers for Justice and FRSO; Gary Grant, an affiliate of the FRSO-linked Missouri Rural Crisis Center; and Brown. At the Jackson campaign office opening, Espy explicitly criticized the presidents tariffs on China. Espy said the tariffs are hurting Mississippis farmers because China retaliated by imposing tariffs on agricultural goods in the U.S. like soybeans, according to the Jackson Free Press. Its worth remembering that Phillipss League of Revolutionary Struggle was pro-China, and that the FRSO more discretely carries on that tradition. Maybe Espy really was looking out for Mississippis hardworking farmers? Or maybe he was just pandering to his Maoist base? Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Local residents express outrage against the cannabis industry during the city council weekly meeting at Milpitas City Hall, in Milpitas, Calif. on Nov. 20, 2018. (Nathan Su/The Epoch Times) California Citys Residents Win Commercial Marijuana Ban City of Milpitas bans marijuana stores MILPITAS, CaliforniaWith hundreds of protesters jammed into City Hall, the city council of Milpitas, California, unanimously approved a complete ban on commercial marijuana. The original agenda for the Nov. 20 council meeting was for city staff to present their findings and proposals for commercial operations of marijuana business in the city, but the meeting turned into a rally by local residents who expressed their moral outrage against the cannabis industry. Many protesters came after learning that one of the current council members, Anthony Phan, is also the principal of Pinnacle Strategy, a local consulting firm that helps the cannabis industry navigate governmental affairs and public relations. Phan has been a vocal leader in the council, influencing the city government to allow commercial marijuana business in the city. Milpitas previously decided to allow commercial marijuana stores to operate in the city, but hadnt completed its study for the needed regulations. The activists who participated in the discussion at the council meeting brought and distributed evidence of Phans connection to Pinnacle Strategy. Phan participated in the first half of the meeting, but recused himself from discussing and voting on the issue due to his possible conflict of interest, as he was still consulting with the city attorney and CFPPC. Many protesters at the meeting talked about mounting a recall against Phan. The council chambers were packed to capacity to host the large number of participants who tried to join the meeting. Protesters stood outside the chamber on two floors in the hallways and in the lobby, watching a TV monitor that was showing a live broadcast of the meeting. More than 400 protesters were in attendance, according to a press release issued after the meeting by the three organizations leading the opposition: California Coalition Against Drugs, Better Milpitas, and Silicon Valley Foundation for a Better Environment. A long line of speakers waited to speak outside of the chamber all the way into the adjacent hallways on the second floor. More than 100 people spoke during the council meeting, with the majority of commenters opposed to allowing the marijuana businesses. Loud cheers and claps by the protesters could be heard from time to time after each speaker took a stand opposing recreational marijuana. The 40 vote (with council member Phan recusing himself) reflects an urgency to bar marijuana in the city until the council can draft a permanent ban. We started a petition against the proposed ordinance for marijuana and obtained over 4,000 signatures in just eight days. Mobilizing fellow citizens efficiently to stand up against drugs is important to our success, said Jennifer Strohfus, chair of the Silicon Valley Foundation for a Better Environment. This great result reflects that unity and hard work are vital. Citizens should stay alert of the development of lawmaking and public-policy formulation at least for your own city, in an attempt to protect your families and future generations, said Frank Lee, Bay Area director of California Coalition Against Drugs. Under Proposition 64, approved by California voters in 2016, each municipality can decide whether to allow recreational marijuana. Prop 64 passed with 57 percent approval.. However, in cities with a large Asian-American population such as Milpitas, marijuana has met with strong resistance. Many people who spoke at the meeting expressed serious concerns about the safety of their communities and their children. Michael Lindell, the inventor of My Pillow, said hes investing $1 million into pro-life film "Unplanned." (Lindell Foundation) MyPillow Inventor Invests $1 Million in Pro-Life Movie: Report Michael Lindell, the inventor of My Pillow, said hes investing $1 million into the pro-life film Unplanned. I dont get into things for the money; I get into them if the message is right, Lindell told The Hollywood Reporter on Nov. 23. The movie Unplanned is a critical take on Planned Parenthood. The $1 million investment is one-sixth of the entire production budget of Unplanned, which is being made by the same people who created Gods Not Dead and I Can Only Imagine. Im pro-life and Im happy to do it, he was quoted by the Reporter as saying. Lindell previously was criticized after he didnt join other advertisers in pulling his ads from Laura Ingrahams show on Fox News after she made controversial comments after the Parkland, Florida, school shooting. I did not take my advertising down from @IngrahamAngle and @FoxNews, nor do I intend to, he tweeted in April of this year. When they tell me to back down, I double down, and my sales go up, Lindell added to the Hollywood Reporter, adding that he handed out 10,000 MyPillows to victims of Hurricane Michael in Florida several weeks ago. In early November, he told CNN that he had a dream shortly before Donald Trump declared his presidency. I actually had a dream that I would meet Donald Trump in an office, and then all of a sudden he ran for president, Lindell told the network. I didnt know why and then he came down that (escalator), hes running for president. About a year later, he met with Trump and spoke about made-in-America products. I just believed in Donald Trump so much after that meeting with him He has a heart that cares. And maybe people dont see that out there when hes on TV and stuff, because hes such a fighter and wants to win and wants to help this country so bad and help people, Lindell was quoted by CNN as saying. They went out and bought their own pillows, Lindell told CNN. Trump also told him he recently went out and bought some more pillows, according to him. Trump also said he and First Lady Melania Trump sleep on his pillows. You ever see this guy with the pillows on Fox? MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell, where is Mike? He is the greatest, Trump said. First of all, he does make a great product, great pillows. I actually use them. Hes been a supporter from Day 1. The CNN report noted hes been to a number of Trump rallies, including in Texas, North Dakota, Missouri, Minnesota, and other places. In Rochester, Minnesota, he spoke to the crowd on stage. Because they trust me. I do my due diligence, he added. When I put my credibility behind someone, or anythingeven if its a product, he said. To me, it has to help people. I would ruin my credibility if I put my stamp of approval of anything I didnt do my due diligence on. North Korea Blows Up Military Posts, Connects Road at Border With South Korea in Peace Efforts North Korea exploded 10 of its own military guard posts on the demilitarized zone (DMZ) bordering South Korea as part of the peace process between the two countries. The two Koreas are also being reconnected by a road across the border for the first time in 14 years. The South Korean Defense Ministry announced the demolition on social media and released accompanying photos and footage. The two Koreas began destroying 22 posts along their heavily-fortified frontier under a plan to reduce tensions on the border. There are a total of 220 guard posts along the DMZ160 of which are operated by North Korea, and 60 which are operated by South Korea. Both Koreas later agreed to preserve one post on each side, out of the 22 posts, for historic value. The new cross-border road is entirely within the DMZ, the South Korean Defense Ministry said on Nov. 22, and is intended to be used for joint operations in 2019 to recover remains of soldiers and from the Korean War. Recent footage and photos of North and South Korean soldiers shaking hands and working on the last stages of the new connecting road has also been released. The new road is 3 kilometers (1.8 mile) long and 12 meters (39 feet) wide, and is located at Arrowhead Ridge in Cheorwon Countya site of fierce battles in the Korean War. It is historically significant for the North and the South to open a new passage and jointly engage in operations to recover remains of war dead at the place which saw the worst battles during the war, the ministry said, AFP reported. History of Hostility North and South Korea have been divided since the Korean War ended in a ceasefire in 1953. The DMZ was established following the war. It is 160-mile (260-km) long and 2.5-mile (4-km) wide. The strip of land served as a buffer between the North and South. Despite its name, the DMZ is a heavily fortified border. On Sept. 18, at an inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the defence ministers of both countries agreed on a framework to reduce their military tensions. The destruction of several guard posts and the building of the connecting road followed. The two countries also pledged as part of the agreement to create a maritime peace zone in the West Sea (Yellow Sea). As of Nov. 1, both sides have also stopped artillery and military drills close to the DMZ, and have established no-fly zones along the border. They will also remove bunkers and weapons from the border truce village of Panmunjom, AFP reported. This followed earlier reconciliation efforts in a historic move by the two Korean leaders on April 27 when they met on the dividing line between the two countries, agreeing to work on a peace deal and the complete denuclearization of the North. Leaders Praise Trump South Korean President Moon Jae-in had said late April that President Donald Trump should win a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to resolve the North Korean crisis. President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize. What we need is only peace, Moon told a meeting of senior secretaries, a South Korean official who briefed media said on April 30. Both South Korean and Japanese officials have also credited Trump for the progress. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Trump should be credited for advancing North Koreas denuclearization. Were glad that the Korean Peninsula issue is starting to get resolved. To a great extent it was possible thanks to the personal engagement of President Trump, who opted for dialog instead of confrontation, Putin said during a joint press conference on July 16 after his first one-on-one summit with Trump. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Nov. 20 that South Korea should not improve ties with North Korea faster than North Koreas efforts to give up its nuclear weapons. We have made clear to the Republic of Korea that we do want to make sure that peace on the peninsula and the denuclearisation of North Korea arent lagging behind the increase in the amount of inter-relationship between the two Koreas, he told a news briefing. We view them as tandem, as moving forward together, Pompeo added. We view them as important parallel processes, and that working group is designed to make sure they continue to remain that way. Reuters contributed to this article From NTD News Report: President Trump Spared Exposure to Tainted Romaine Lettuce, White House Says A report says that President Donald Trump and his family were not served any romaine lettuce during their Thanksgiving dinner. U.S. health officials have warned that romaine has been linked to an outbreak of E. coli that has left about three dozen people sickened in several states. The White House told NBC News that the menu at Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, included Caesar salad, but it had no romaine. Romaine is the typical base of Caesar salad. The rest of the holiday menu is a full salad bar to include Caesar, wedge, tomato/mozzarella and Greek salads, deviled eggs and duck prosciutto & melon chilled seafood display with Florida stone crab, oysters, jumbo shrimp and clams a carving station with turkey and all the trimmings, beef tenderloin, lamb, and salmon, according to the report. Also sea bass, snapper, short ribs, potatoes, and traditional stuffing were served as well as a number of desserts. The NBC report suggested that if Trump and his family were served romaine, his U.S. Secret Service agents would first have to test it. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said on Nov. 22 that his agency is still working to figure out the source of the outbreak, which has left 32 people sickened, including 13 who have been hospitalized. FDA continues to investigate [the] source of e.coli outbreak traced to Romaine. We believe its related to lettuce harvested from California, Gottlieb tweeted. We hope to have more information by Monday isolating the growing region. New crop will soon [be] harvest[ed] from other regions. It comes two days after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sent out a warning, saying that all romaine lettuce is suspect and shouldnt be eaten. Officials said any romaine should be thrown out until further notice.Consumers who have any type of romaine lettuce in their home should not eat it and should throw it away, even if some of it was eaten and no one has gotten sick, the CDC wrote in a notice on its website on Nov. 20. This advice includes all types or uses of romaine lettuce, such as whole heads of romaine, hearts of romaine, and bags and boxes of precut lettuce and salad mixes that contain romaine, including baby romaine, spring mix, and Caesar salad, the CDC noted. If you do not know if the lettuce is romaine or whether a salad mix contains romaine, do not eat it and throw it away. Illnesses have been reported in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin, the CDC reported. In Canada, 18 people have been sickened with the same strain of E. coli in Quebec and Ontario, officials said. But the FDA, meanwhile, has said it is working to trace the source of the E. coli-tainted lettuce. At this stage in the investigation, the most efficient way to ensure that contaminated romaine [lettuce] is off the market would be for [the] industry to voluntarily withdraw product from the market, and to withhold distribution of romaine until public health authorities can ensure the outbreak is over and/or until FDA can identify a specific source of contamination, the FDA stated. Small Business Saturday Turns 9 This Year WASHINGTONSmall businesses make up 99.9 percent of U.S. businesses and employ almost half of all U.S. workers. But theyre struggling to compete with their bigger counterpartsfor sales, jobs, and real estate. Nine years ago, Small Business Saturday was created to promote small, mostly local, businesses that dont get the attention big box stores do on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving when many stores offer double-digit discounts. The day was started in 2010 for the more than 30.2 million small businesses to help them get back on their feet after the 2008 housing crisis, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. It wasnt started by a small business, though. American Express, which Forbes placed 28th in its list of most valuable brands, started the now annual sale day. In smart business fashion, it has also trademarked it. In 2011, the Senate passed a resolution marking Nov. 26, 2011, as Small Business Saturday. The next year, all 50 states participated in it. American Express estimates the event has generated $85 billion for small businesses since its inception. Last year alone, $12 billion was spent at independent neighborhood retailers and restaurants, estimates the Small Business Administration. Of that, about two-thirds, or $0.67 per dollar, stays in the local community, according to American Expresss Small Business Economic Impact Study. This year, New Mexico has gone a step further with the day by passing a law exempting businesses with 10 employees or fewer from paying taxes on a number of goods, as long as the purchase does not go above $500. The day doesnt just promote local businesses, though. E-commerce site Etsy, which specializes in handmade and vintage goods, is hosting pop-up markets in 13 cities in eight states and the District of Columbia on Nov. 24. Some of its online retailers are also observing the day by offering discounts through their Etsy stores. Small Business Saturday is just part of American Expresss Shop Small Movement, a 365-day initiative to promote its brand, its credit cards, and its customerssmall businesses. Its map, for example, shows the local businesses where American Express cards are accepted. William Jones, the owner of Allegory Gallery in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, told the Tribune-Review that all the marketing for the day has paid off. Last year, we saw almost a tenfold jump in business on one day over the prior year, he said. And the previous year was up already. This could be in part due to a surge in consumer spending that pushed the GDP growth rate up to almost 4.2 percent in the second quarter this year, the highest since 2014. But for small businesses, the rapid growth also presents a challenge, according to Linda McMahon, the head of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). We have a workforce shortage because unemployment is so low, so small businesses are competing for that, she said on USA Today. Part of her mission at the SBA, she said, is to ensure that workers have the training they need to fill that gap, an initiative that dovetails with the White Houses push to provide more training for felons so they can join the workforce once they get out of prison. A previous version of this article misidentified the location of Allegory Gallery, which is in Ligonier, Pennsylvania. The Epoch Times regrets the error. Texas Man Kills Woman in Front of Children Before Turning Gun on Himself on Thanksgiving: Police A Texas man shot and killed his wife in front of their three children on Thanksgiving Day morning before shooting himself in an apparent attempted murder-suicide, said police. Daryl Stegall, 32, went to the home of Kishana Jeffers, 30, in Lewisville and kicked in the door, the Dallas Morning News reported. He then allegedly shot Jeffers before walking into another area and then turned the gun on himself, said the Lewisville Police Department. He did not die and was later hospitalized in unknown condition, officials said. The children, who are aged 7, 9, and 10, apparently saw the incident. They were not harmed, reported the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The children were then handed over to Child Protective Services workers. Officials said the man did not live in the apartment, and he kicked in the door when the woman wouldnt let him inside, according to reports. CBS Dallas reported that Stegall and Jeffers were previously married. As of Nov. 23 at 7:30 a.m. local time, Stegall was still alive at Medical City of Plano. No charges have been filed against him, and police said theres a chance he might not survive. Other details about the case are not clear. Violent Crime Up in Texas in 2017 In Texas, according to the FBI, the violent crime rate rose in 2017, reported the Texas Tribune. The agency noted that there were only 1.5 officers for every 1,000 Texas residents last year, which is down from two Texas officers for every 1,000 residents in 2016. In September 2018, the FBI said Americans committed fewer violent and property crimes across the United States in 2017, according to statistics. The violent crime rateincluding offenses such as murder, robbery, and aggravated assaultdropped by almost 1 percent and is still about 4 percent above the 2014 rate. The murder rate dropped by 0.7 percent. There were more than 1.2 million violent crimes reported to [the FBI] nationwide in 2017. There was a 0.7 percent decrease in murders and a 4 percent decrease in robberies from 2016 to 2017. Aggravated assaults increased 1 percent in 2017. The FBI began collecting data solely on an updated rape definition last year, and 135,755 rapes were reported to law enforcement in 2017, the agency said. Of the estimated 17,284 murders in 2017, more than half occurred in larger citieswith populations of more than 100,000. There are fewer than 300 such cities in the United States, and while they account for less than 30 percent of the countrys population, many of them contribute far beyond their share to national crime rates and have done so for years, even decades. While the national murder rate inched down to 5.3 per 100,000 residents, it spiked by 15 percent in Philadelphia, to a rate of more than 20 per 100,000 residents. Columbus, Ohio, saw a massive 54 percent murder rate increase, reaching nearly 16.3 per 100,000 residents. The murder rate in St. Louis rose by more than 10 percent and reached 66 per 100,000 residentsthe highest among larger cities. Baltimores murder rate rose by nearly 8.5 percent, reaching some 56 per 100,000 residents. In the United States, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 1-800-273-8255. Young people can call the Kids Help Phone on 1-800-668-6868. In Australia, the crisis support service hotline is 13 11 14 (Lifeline). Other worldwide suicide hotlines can be found at www.befrienders.org. Petr Swab contributed to this report. Three Choral Albums Commemorating World War I 'For The Fallen,' 'Lest We Forget,' and 'In Remembrance' The centenary of the Armistice has inevitably called forth musical responses, and the centenary of Hubert Parrys death has meant that that composers work features heavily. Some choirs have moved away from recordings of Parrys Songs of Farewell and given some interestingly imaginative ideas on disc. In Remembrance William Vann and the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea bring two secret weapons into play on their disc In Remembrance. Firstly, they are joined by a choir of Chelsea Pensioners (residents of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, a retirement/nursing home in London for former members of the British Army) for three hymnsalbeit ones of distinguished pedigree: Parrys Jerusalem, Charles Harriss O Valiant Hearts, and I Vow to Thee, My Country, which is adapted from a melody by Gustav Holst (who hated the hymn!). This gives the music a real presence that simply having it sung by a regular choir never would and does lift the program. The other secret weapon is British pianist, organist, composer, and arranger Iain Farrington who has arranged new versions of Gustav Holsts Ode to Death, which is a setting of Walt Whitmans poem, and Faures Requiem. Holsts setting of the poem was very much his response to the First War (in which he served), and it is good to see this large-scale and sophisticated work performed. And Farringtons imaginative reworking of the orchestral score should win it many devotees, especially in this fine performance. Why another new version of Faure? Well, Farrington has arranged Faures orchestral score for organ, rather than simply relying on the hack piano reduction from the vocal score. Vann and his forces take advantage of the smaller scale to give a reading of concentrated intimacy. Lest We Forget Over at Chichester, Charles Harrison and his choir give us a program of music by British composers who lived through the war, with the addition of an anthem by Peter Aston (19382013). The disc commemorates the choristers who died in World War I. The whole disc is released in support of the charity Combat Stress, which was set up at the end of the World War I to support the mental health of those who were affected by conflict. The disc opens with a terrific account of Charles Villiers Stanfords For Lo! I Raise Up, a remarkably direct response to the war with a setting of a vivid text from Habakkuk, which receives a virtuoso performance. Later on the disc, Harrison gives us a movement from Stanfords Sonata No. 2 Eroica, which was dedicated to the French composer Charles-Marie Widor. Also on the disc is Parrys Tennyson setting, Crossing the Bar, and There is an old belief, with words by J. G. Lockhart, from Songs of Farewell. The issue with Stanford and Parry was, of course, that their music was rooted in the culture of Germany, and the war hit them in multiple ways, both culturally as well as with the loss of so many of their students. It says much for Parrys and Stanfords teaching that they raised generations of composers who clearly identified as British without the link to German culture. On the disc, we have Edgar Bainton, John Ireland, and Gustav Holst, alongside the older generation, Clement C. Scholefield and Edward Elgar. The program mixes the well-known and the lesser-known, anthems, hymns, and more, and ends with Herbert Howellss Te Deum from his service Collegium Regale. For the Fallen Under conductor Matthew Altham, Pegasus choir eschews the nationalist route in For the Fallen and also avoids hymns, instead giving us a thoughtful program of music from across the Continent by composers who lived through World War I, with the exception of Gustav Mahler. The disc opens with a profoundly concentrated and intimate performance of For the Fallen by Douglas Guest (19161996), and throughout the program, it is the sense of intimacy and concentration that strikes one. The discs material is largely unusual, taking in Max Regers surprisingly simple Nachtlied, Ravels strikingly austere and elegant Trois beaux oiseau du Paradis, and Sir Henry Walford Daviess A Short Requiem, which was published in 1915. The movements from Rachmaninoffs All-Night Vigil are the best-known pieces on the disc, and these too date from 1915. There are two Ivor Bertie Gurney pieces, choral music from a composer best known for his songs, and again Stanfords For Lo! I Raise Up, and an anthem by George Dyson, who served in the war and was sent home with shell shock. The last item is one of Clytus Gottwalds virtuoso arrangements, of Mahlers Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen. Robert Hugill is a composer, lecturer, journalist, and classical music blogger. He runs the classical music blog Planet Hugill, writes for the Opera Today website, and Opera Today and Opera magazines. He lectures and gives pre-concert talks on opera and classical music in London. As a composer, his disc of songs Quickening was issued by Navona Records in 2017. This article, slightly edited, is reprinted with permission from Planet Hugill. Song Tao, head of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee (IDCPC), delivers a speech at a briefing on the theme of "Promoting high-quality development" held in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province on Nov. 23, 2018. [Photo/People.cn] The local government in Zhejiang province has made unremitting efforts to promote high-quality development serving people's interests and improving their wellbeing, said Che Jun, secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), while addressing a briefing with the theme of "Promoting high-quality development" held in Hangzhou, the provincial capital, on Friday. In order to promote high-quality development, Zhejiang has made great efforts to promote reforms in the current digital era, such as "One-stop government service reform" offering greater convenience to the public, he said. As a pioneering role, Che said, Zhejiang is actively involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, promoting industrial transformation and upgrading, developing various types of high-technology in a spirit of openness and win-win cooperation and advancing ecological progress. It has witnessed great economic and social development, a vivid reflection of the achievements of reform and opening-up across China. Song Tao, head of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee (IDCPC), delivered a speech at the meeting, saying it was necessary to respect people-centered and all-round development. He called on international political parties to play a leading role and work together to make contributions to building a community with a shared future for mankind. Shen Mingquan, secretary of CPC Committee of Anji County in northwestern Zhejiang, shared a topic with foreign guests on how primary-level Party organizations were playing an important role in promoting development. He cited the examples of Yucun, Lujia and Huangdu villages, explained how villagers had achieved great success in protecting the environment while developing a scale economy and promoting common wealth. Gao Hongbing, vice president of Alibaba Group, shared his company's story of innovation in the digital economy. He said that as a private company, Alibaba was a beneficiary and practitioner of China's reform and opening-up and was willing to share its experiences with the world. During the briefing, Elsayed Mahmoud, deputy speaker of House of Representatives of Egypt; Arshad Dad, secretary-general of Tehreek-e-Insaf of Pakistan and Peter Goodfellow, president of the National Party of New Zealand shared their impressions of the astonishing achievements of China, including Zhejiang, in recent times under the leadership of the CPC, and called for international cooperation to promote high-quality and innovation-driven development. This was the second edition of the series initiated by the IDCPC this year marking the 40th anniversary of reform and opening-up, showing how regional CPC committees implemented the major strategic decisions of the CPC Central Committee and the achievements made. Another aim is to present real and vivid CPC stories to the world, enabling the international community to better understand China's development. Almost 400 representatives of over 80 political parties from 35 countries attended the briefing co-hosted by the IDCPC and the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the CPC. The previous edition, with the theme "Reform and opening-up holds the key to the destiny of contemporary China," was held in Shenzhen,a city known for pioneering China's reform and opening-up efforts, on May 27. Trump Calls Troops to Wish Happy Thanksgiving, Give Thanks President Donald Trump sent his thanks to the American military in a Thanksgiving Day conference call with troops from all the five military branches. He expressed his and the American peoples appreciation for the troops and their ensuring the nations security. Trump called from his Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida, sharing a conversation with representatives of the individual branches, the Air Force, Coast Guard, Navy, Army, and Marine Corps. Air Force The first one he addressed during the 27-minute call was Air Force Brig. Gen. David Lyons, who oversees the Bagram and Kandahar airfields in Afghanistan as well as detachments throughout the country. Both the Taliban and ISIS [terrorist groups] are resilient adversaries, but I think that were doing well. We get after him every single day, Lyons said, describing the situation. Our objective here is to fight the away game. And so what I mean by that is we never want this adversary to reach our shores again. So every airman here is dedicated to keeping this fight away from our shores. A stable Afghanistan is good for Afghanistan, but we do what we do for America, sir. You said it better than anybody could have said, Trump replied, segueing into his sending troops to back Border Patrol at the southern border to prevent the illegal entry of criminals hiding among migrant caravans from Central America that are trying to enter the United States. Keep them away from our shores, Trump said. Thats why were doing the strong borders. Coast Guard Trump next spoke with Lt. Nicholas Hartmann, commander of Coast Guard cutter Aquidneck operating in Southwest Asia and currently in Bahrain. A lot of our work is partnering and building relationships with the Gulf Coast countries so that we have a good standing and resolve here in the Arabian Gulf, Hartmann said. Things, in my opinion, Mr. President, are going very well for us. Trump went on to ask about the situation in the region: How are they feeling about trade? Aquidneck patrols the Strait of Hormuz, a 21-mile wide trade choke point between the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. About 30 percent of the worlds seaborne oil shipments have to make their way through the strait. In July, Iran threatened to block it. We dont see any issues in terms of trade right now, Hartmann said. Ok. Well, youll keep it that way, Trump said. The president then thanked the Coast Guard for helping with the federal response to a slew of hurricanes that hit the southeast of the country earlier in the year. You guys went out there and you did, like, just a day in the office and I really appreciate it, we all really appreciate it, Trump said. Army He then spoke to Army Col. Stephanie Barton, commander of the Resolute Support Sustainment Brigade, which provides logistical support to troops in Afghanistan. If it comes in the theater, we get it in the warfighters hands, Barton said. Trump didnt forget to mention his achievement of boosting the military budget to $716 billion in fiscal year 2019. You see a big difference, an awfully big difference from what we had before, he said. Marine Corps Next in line was Marine Corps Lt. Col. Samuel Howie stationed in Kuwait. There are Marines stationed throughout the Middle East ensuring that those who do us harm pay for it, he said. Do they treat you good? Trump asked. They treat us like gold, Howie said, adding that the Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base had prepared a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner for the troops. Navy Last was Navy Capt. Pat Hannifin, who answered from the Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong on behalf of the more than 4,800 sailors and airmen aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, USS Ronald Reagan. Trump questioned the captain about the new electromagnetic catapult technology helping launch fighter jets on the USS Gerald Ford. The military had some problems getting the catapults to work properly, but Hannifin said he had no doubt theyll work through that. Regarding safety in the region, where China has been flexing its military muscles for years, Hannifin said they felt safe, though there have been a couple of close calls. Trump concluded the call with a few more words of appreciation and well wishes. Happy Thanksgiving and we will see you soon! he said. US President Donald Trump speaks to members of the military via teleconference from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 22, 2018. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) Trump Says Government Shutdown Possible Over Border Security He sees the wall as 'the most important part' of securing the border President Donald Trump told reporters that he wouldnt rule out shutting down the federal government over border security, primarily to fund a wall on the southern border, echoing statements hes made in the past to urge Congress to act. Congress still has to fund part of the federal government before the New Year, and Trump said on Nov. 22 that there certainly could be a shutdown if Congress doesnt act on border security, which the wall is part of. The wall is just a part of border security: a very important part, the most important part, he said. The president added that stopping the caravans of migrants from Central America is another top priority. Trump said he authorized the closing of part of the border two days ago. Now, caravan members have to wait in line on the Mexican side for their asylum claims to be processed. While they wait, the migrants are using up local resources for the needy in Tijuana, Mexico. Some 300 Tijuana residents took to the streets on Nov. 18 to protest the migrants presence. The protesters told The Epoch Times they didnt begrudge the immigrants wanting a better life, but wished they would come legally. Trump also authorized the use of lethal force at the border, citing serious criminals inside the caravans that pose a threat to U.S. law enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security estimates there are some 500 criminals traveling with the caravans, the members of which number in the thousands. Do I want that to happen? Absolutely not, he said. [But] Im not going to let the military be taken advantage of. Earlier this week, a judge ruled that a Trump executive order couldnt prevent those illegally crossing the border from applying for asylum. The White House is appealing the ruling. Trump believes the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court is seeking to legislate from the bench and says hes confident that the ruling will be overturned by the Supreme Court. Its hurting our law enforcement tremendously and now that the military is on the border, its really hurting our military, the president said. An employee watches over cranes as he talks on his interphone at a port in Qingdao, east China's Shandong province on November 8, 2018. (STR/AFP/Getty Images) Xi Under Pressure for Agreement With US at G-20 Meeting, Experts Say Despite resistance by Beijing, the Trump administration has communist regime in a bind China experts say that in the face of crippling tariffs and other restrictions that the Trump administration has imposed on Beijing, its communist leadership is under immense pressure to give in to some demands. Even so, a former professor at a Beijing university, who now lives in Washington, cited a high-ranking Chinese official as saying that Chinese leader Xi Jinping wont back down in the trade war. Qiao Mu emigrated to the United States with his family after resigning from his position at the Foreign Studies University in March 2017, in response to criticism over writing a politically sensitive article. In a recent tweet, he said that Xi wouldnt bow to U.S. demands, even if Washington imposed more economic punishment. We werent afraid of the comprehensive embargo and the sanctions after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, why should we worry about the tariffs now? In the past, relations with the United States were our first priority, but now we have the Belt and Road project, as well as markets around the world in Africa and Latin America, Qiao cited the official as saying. However, U.S.-based commentator Xia Xiaoqiang says that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is in crisis and that the blow to Chinas economy is fatal for the CCP. The only legitimacy that the CCP has in controlling China that it ensures economic growth. [As long as this continues,] it isnt afraid of criticism on human rights or other issues, Xia wrote in a Nov. 21 article run in the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times. Once it loses control over the Chinese economy, the CCPs rule is over, Xia wrote. According to Xia, Trumps tariffs on Chinese export goods entering the United States have weighed on Beijing, with consequences that include foreign companies shifting production and capital out of China, rising unemployment, and social unrest. Tang Jingyuan, another China watcher, said that Xi and other CCP leaders are working very hard to make a deal with the United States. Xis administration is trying negotiate with Trump, but with several pre-conditions, Tang said. He believes that Xi wants to protect its Made in China 2025 plan, designed to give it a leg up in high-tech manufacturing. It [the CCP] isnt mentioning the plan now, but the CCPs fate hinges on whether it can implement the Made in China 2025 plan. Tang said that there are some rumors that CCP is preparing for a worst-case scenario in that it would cut off relations with the United States entirelyas Qiao suggested in his Twitter postclosing off the country would prove easier said than done. Chinas society is totally different from the one that existed in 1989, Tang said. How can the CCP use the same model to control people? Some say that the CCP may expand the methods it uses on the Uighurs of Xinjiang to cover the entire Chinese population if negotiations go badly, but I dont think its possible. Seven hundred million Chinese have internet access. Information spreads too quickly, and it will be hard to bring everyone under control like this. Tang noted that the Chinese regime relies on U.S. dollar reserves for its international trade. If Beijing sells off its U.S. Treasury bonds, its central banks will lose a large portion of their assets and the Chinese regimes global influence will shrink dramatically. The CCP cant survive without the U.S. dollar, Tang said. While both Xia and Tang agree that the Chinese authorities are eager to reach an agreement with the United States to end the trade war, the actual process would be fraught with difficulty. The United States wants the CCP to implement a comprehensive trade reform, but the CCPs fundamental condition for survival is that it has to break international rules and steal intellectual property. Should the CCP agree to genuine reform, China would develop a market economy, that means that the CCP would lose its economic dominance, Xia said. The CCP may apply a delaying strategy mixed with underhanded tricks by agreeing to some demands but then reneging on them. President Trumps presidency is limited by the length of his term in office. He has six more years [starting now] if he wins the election in 2020, Tang said. The CCP may use [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Uns strategy in Trump-Kim Summit, which was to agree to apply reforms in stages, and then fail to act on the promise or only implement it slowly. Watch Next: Chinese Subversion & Corruption of U.S.A is Deep and Far Reaching In China, the Communist Party is using subversion, espionage and corruption against the United States, and is actively infiltrating and undermining key institutions to damage the United States and advance the interests of the Chinese regime. Its easy to be cynical these days. The 24/7 news cycle brings us images and extreme headlines about tragedies almost as soon as they occur. If you listen to the rhetoric, its easy to believe violence, sexism, ageism, xenophobia and prejudice are winning the day. However, there is another -- more positive -- way to look at this. Access to information from around the globe gives us opportunities to consider the needs of others and to respond with compassionate action. Yes, playing to our emotions is the cable news and social media business model. But what we choose to do with our emotions is up to us. So, why not choose empathy? We all know empathy is the right thing to do, but empathy is not just good for the world (and our own sanity). It can also bring a competitive advantage in business. Our ability to see the world from the perspective of others is one of the most crucial tools in our business toolbox. So, lets walk through the business benefits of empathy and acting with compassion. Related: The Dangers of Being an Empathetic Leader 1. Increased sales, loyalty and referrals. Every skilled salesperson knows that the key to closing sales is anticipating your customers needs and demonstrating how your product or service will suit their needs best. Truly understanding your customers needs means reflecting on their fears, desires, pain points and whatever keeps them up at night. If your sales team doesnt intimately understand your customers lives, how can you expect them to explain how your products or services fit their lives? This is the power of empathy in business. Going beyond increased sales though, whats even more valuable are loyal customers and strong referrals. To see repeat customers and customers transformed into super fans, make sure this empathy mindset enlivens the culture of your entire organization from customer service to the accounting department. One industry where empathy clearly counts is in the ultra-competitive airline industry. Any company that can make flying more convenient and pleasant scores points with perpetually frustrated passengers. By now, were all familiar with this string of PR blunders from United Airlines demonstrating the failure of empathy on a corporate level. But you may be less familiar with Ryanairs empathy success. After implementing their Always Getting Better program, which many customer annoyances like hidden charges,un-allocated seating and carry-on baggage restrictions, Ryanair saw a net profit increase from 867 million to 1.24 billion (US$1.39 billion). CEO Michael OLeary famously remarked, If Id only known being nice to customers was going to work so well, Id have started many years ago. Who knew being nice could be so profitable? Related: United Airlines Passenger Dragged Off Plane by Airport Employees 2. Accelerated productivity and innovation When customers perceive your company as empathetic, you will see sales increase, but wait...theres more. Employees with strong empathy skills are also more productive and innovative. This means if you want to increase efficiency and expand the number of problems you can solve for customers, you want to hire employees with strong soft skills. Google knows this well. Since the company began in 1998, Google focused on hiring the best computer scientists, software engineers, analysts and highly skilled STEM professionals. But when it comes to putting together successful teams, it turns out that soft skills rule. Project Aristotle, a study released by Google in 2017, showed that the companys most important new ideas came from B-teams comprised of employees exhibiting a wide range of skills including: equality, generosity, curiosity toward others ideas, empathy and emotional intelligence. These teams may not have had the top scientists, but when team members feel confident speaking up and know they are being heard, great ideas are born. Related: United Airlines Passenger Dragged Off Plane by Airport Employees 3. Greater competitive advantage and market value. The highest performing companies also top the list of the Most Empathetic Companies. This might seem surprising at first: Dont you have to be cutthroat and willing to win at any cost to be competitive in this global, capitalist economy? Well, if youve been paying attention, the answer will be obvious. In fact, statistics show that empathy is more important to business success than it has ever been. According to the 2016 Empathy Index, a report published by UK consulting firm The Empathy Business that seeks to analyze the internal culture of 170 companies on major financial indexes, The top 10 companies (on the 2015 list)...increased in value more than twice as much as the bottom 10 and generated 50 percent more earnings (defined by market capitalization). Hows that for competitive advantage? Related: 4 Ways to Turn Happiness into a Competitive Advantage 4. Expanded engagement and collaboration. So if the best managers and team members express empathy and a willingness to act compassionately toward others, it stands to reason that companies with cultures that encourage empathy would attract highly engaged individuals. And thats just what the data show. Empathetic companies also have better retention and higher morale among employees. This makes a lot of sense when you consider what todays workers value. Good, high-performing individuals have lots of employment choices. Among other things, the gig economy and access to technology have created opportunities beyond traditional corporate work. So, its time to think beyond traditional corporate benefits. Additionally, according to a Gallup poll, 60 percent of Millennials are open to new job opportunities, while only 29 percent of them report feeling engaged at work. This means less than a third of workers born between 1980 and 1996 feel connected to their companies. Studies by the Queens School of Business and by the Gallup Organization show that this lack of connection can result in higher absenteeism, lower productivity...and lower profitability and share price for the company over time. What skilled workers are demanding is a different kind of working experience: they want their voices -- and their workplace requirements -- to be heard. Thats bad news for companies that arent considering company culture as they look toward future growth. Fortunately, making small, subtle shifts toward improving empathy in the culture can make a big difference. Related: Take Responsibility for Your Company's Culture to Boost Productivity Small changes can yield big results. All of these business benefits sound great, but none of them are likely to make any company empathetic. To really make a change, the first step is to WANT to understand where others are coming from. When you focus on wanting to understand your colleagues, you can cultivate empathy in your own sphere of influence, which can have a big impact on your team, brand and the world. Here are some key areas to consider as you plan ahead for 2019: Employee of the month awards do not constitute an empathetic environment. When we feel that others value our contributions, we feel respected. While trying to create an empathetic environment from the top down is unlikely to work, letting workers know, through word and deed, their work is valuable should be a daily focus. Respect makes workers more engaged. There is an intangible value to feeling respected by ones colleagues and superiors. Were more likely to take personal responsibility and our desire not to lose the respect of others means well be more engaged. Listen closely to how employees talk about their work. Ask them what would make their jobs easier and make them feel heard. Motivate based on individual needs. In Daniel Pinks bestselling book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, he points out that financial rewards are not universally enticing. Consider how your company rewards colleagues. How much better would things be if we asked our team members what they would like? Use empathy to see things from their point of view and act accordingly. Consider ways to flip the Golden Rule: Do unto others as they want done unto them. This rule goes for every stakeholder involved in your organization from investors to board members to customer service representatives to clients. This is the mantra of the empathy mindset. Get out of your own head. Engage in more active listening and curious conversation to unlock what matters most to them. As you reflect on the business benefits of creating a more empathetic company, you may have noticed the irony of compelling you to set aside your interests by showing that its actually in your interest to do so. Of course, in an ideal world, the drive to do the right thing would be motivation enough. But because motivation is unique to each individual -- and organization -- presenting a menu of reasons to embrace empathy is a good idea. In my own career, I have personally witnessed leaders and marketers who have embraced empathy purely for PR motives, but found themselves personally transformed -- and left with a desire to do more good for the right reasons. Sometimes, initially speaking to selfish motives can help people and organizations transform from the outside in, and end up making the world a more empathetic place. Related: 4 Reasons Why Empathy Is Good for Business This Is How to Be Present for Your Employees in Times of Change 10 Science-Backed Strategies Used by Corporate Leaders to Gain Easy-Wins Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved A political stalemate in Fairfax County has left several local court seats vacant, delaying criminal cases and child-custody disputes in Virginia's largest judicial circuit. At the center of the controversy is Del. Tim Hugo, R, whose mostly western Fairfax district became an island of red in northern Virginia after a wave of Democratic victories in 2017 that left Republicans with only slim majorities in the state Senate and House of Delegates. Early this year, Hugo - the sole and, therefore, ranking Republican among Fairfax delegates - ended a bipartisan approach to selecting judges in the 19th Judicial Circuit and began nominating his own candidates, cutting out Democrats in a dispute where each side accuses the other of politicizing what should be a sober process of filling empty seats. The battle will pick up again in January, when the General Assembly begins a new legislative session with three judicial vacancies in Fairfax and a fourth expected after Circuit Court Judge Jan Brodie retires at the start of the year. Political analysts say the dispute could hurt Hugo politically heading into next fall's elections, with Democrats eager to seize control of one or both chambers. "This is the first year that there's ever been controversy surrounding this process," said Del. Vivian Watts, D-Fairfax, who has served two stints in the House of Delegates, from 1982 to 1986 and again since 1996. Watts accused Hugo of returning to "an old boys' club" approach. In Virginia, local judges are approved by both the Senate and House of Delegates. Each chamber typically defers to the lawmakers who represent the area in deciding the best candidates for seats in the circuit, general district and juvenile and family courts. Most local delegations in the state allow whichever party is in the majority in Richmond to determine who gets approved, a process that has led to complaints about political cronyism. In the late 1970s, when Democrats controlled the General Assembly, Fairfax's delegation adopted a bipartisan approach that allowed each member a vote, regardless of party, after lawmakers interviewed candidates and reviewed their bar association ratings. That practice continued after Republicans took control of the General Assembly in 2000, when Del. Dave Albo, R-Fairfax, became the ranking delegation member. In 2015, the Commission on Integrity and Public Confidence in State Government appointed by then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe, D, called the Fairfax approach a model for eliminating politics from local courts. Then came the 2017 state elections. Del. Kathy Tran, D, won Albo's seat after he announced his retirement, while Del. Karrie Delaney, D-Fairfax, defeated incumbent Republican James LeMunyon. Hugo reinstated the majority-party-rules method, arguing that the bipartisan approach was broken. He said Democratic lawmakers were not asking judicial candidates appropriate questions - a characterization that Democrats strongly dispute. "They're not talking about judicial temperament; they're not talking about issues of the judiciary," Hugo said. "Sometimes, they'll come in and talk about political issues. This isn't about me picking judges. This is about picking good judges." No judges are being seated now, because Democratic state senators in Fairfax have refused to endorse Hugo's choices, while calling on him to reinstate the bipartisan model. "We don't treat judgeships like political lollipops," said Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax. "They may do that in other jurisdictions, but that's not how we do it here. These are very important positions that, among other things, decide who children are going to live with." Two of eight seats are vacant in the Fairfax County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, along with one of 11 in the General District Court. One of the 15 county Circuit Court judgeships will open up in January when Brodie retires, and the Fairfax Bar Association says there are more vacancies on the horizon. The association called on lawmakers from both parties to find a solution to the standoff, saying the vacancies have "crippled" productivity as sitting judges take on more cases and legal disputes get delayed. "The problem will only compound itself as additional vacancies continue to open," the bar association's president, Christie Leary, said in a statement. Hugo, who won his 2017 election by 106 votes, appears vulnerable next fall, when he is being challenged by Democrat Dan Helmer. Sen. Tim Kaine, D, won the legislative district by 18 points this month, and Gov. Ralph Northam, D, won by 11 points last year. "This is part of a consistent pattern," Helmer said. "He is playing politics with the lives of our families and children." Hugo also said he offered to allow Surovell and state Sen. J. Chapman "Chap" Petersen, D-Fairfax City - both practicing attorneys in Fairfax - to determine the best candidates. Both declined the offer, saying it would leave other delegation members disenfranchised. "I told him I was uncomfortable with that," Petersen said. "I'm just one of 25 members in the delegation. I don't want to be in a position to select judges." Quentin Kidd, director of Christopher Newport University's Wason Center for Public Policy in Newport News, said Hugo needs to do away with such controversies and focus more on constituent services to keep his seat in November. "The legal community spans across the political spectrum," Kidd said. "If you cross the legal community, you're probably going to cross your base in the district." Albo agreed that Hugo is in a tough position but said he understands why the legislator would want to try to ensure that there is still a strong Republican voice in judicial appointments. "I liked the system where we all had one vote," said Albo, adding that he kept it intact out of a sense of fairness and gratitude to Democrats who included him when his party was in the minority. But "it's a different world now," he added. "Because Tim is the only Republican left." Norwalk Police Dept. NORWALK A Norwalk man spent his Thanksgiving behind bars after being accused of threatening to kill his ex-girlfriend, police said. Police first learned of the alleged threats Nov. 11 when a woman came to the police department. She told detectives that her ex-boyfriend, Christopher Iannacone, 22, of Palm Bay, Florida, had been harassing her and her friends since October. The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is largely recognized by countries along the route, according to a report released Friday. "The Report on the Conception of China in Major BRI Participating Countries" is based on an online survey of 8,500 respondents from 17 countries including Russia, Kazakhstan, Poland, Serbia, the Philippines, Kenya, and Egypt. Yu Yunquan, deputy director general of the Academy of Contemporary China and World Studies which released the report, said, "72.5 percent of respondents think that the Belt and Road Initiative is a global public project with excellent prospects." Moreover, 69.3 percent of the respondents say they wish that their governments will further participate in the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative. The initiative was first proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, and it aims to link Asia with Europe and Africa along and beyond the ancient Silk Road routes through enhanced infrastructure, trade, financial and people-to-people connectivity under the principle of "extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits." More than 100 countries and international organizations signed Belt and Road cooperation documents with China, extending the initiative's scope from the Eurasian continent to Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the South Pacific region. Eiichi Shindo, president of the International Academic Society for Asian Community and director general of the Belt and Road Initiative Japan Research Center, said the BRI is anything but a Marshal Plan as some had criticized. He said the initiative has been formed by the socio-economic partnership systems based on win-win relations rather than by the traditional politico-military alliance systems based on win-lose relations. "It has covered multi-dimensional fields from infrastructural investment and development, trade, transportation and energy, to socio-cultural intercourses," Shindo said. He said the plan is to create sustainability and inclusiveness for eliminating poverty, terror and deprivation in developing countries, and its facilitation on interconnectivity will maximize the "bonus" of space and population in the Eurasian region. Yuri Tavrovsky, professor of Russian Friendship University in Moscow, said the BRI is different from the Marshal Plan or the former Soviet Union's aid program to developing countries. "It distinctly lacks any ideology strings attached and emphasizes extensive consultations, joint efforts and shared benefits." Tavrovsky said China should make efforts to clear the doubts and make some adjustments in their discourse to ensure that the international community can better apprehend the "positive agenda," which can bring win-win outcomes. Around 150 years ago, before the advent of womens suffrage and when women were often seen as intellectually inferior to men, a literary club was formed in Jacksonville then a 43-year-old city by five women in search of intelligent discussion. Sorosis, one of the oldest continuously meeting literary societies in the nation, was formed by Josephine Milligan in November 1868 and continues to meet in Jacksonville to this day. A few weeks ago the group met at the home of Connie Charlesworth in Jacksonville, who was playing host. The nights presentation was given by Samantha Boston, of Alexander, who had written a thorough and well-researched paper about 19th century womens authors, although specifically it honed in on the works of Louisa May Alcott. (Alcott) was living at a time of great change in the United States, Boston said. She wrote on the topics of abolitionism and slavery, the beginnings of women rights. She was a particularly interesting authoress at the time, that she was able to live through all of that and write about it. Bostons paper ties in with the theme for the year: American Womens Impact in a Changing World: Breaking the Glass Ceiling. Although this topic was focused primarily on women due to the impending anniversary, there has been a multitude of topics discussed over the clubs 150-year history. Sorosis the Greek word for aggregation was adapted from a New York-based womens literary society that formed in New York, just months before the Jacksonville club was formed. According to Illinois College archives, Milligan formed the club after reading about the New York Sorosis, which faced harsh criticism. The idea was that women could exercise its members mental and moral strengths while engaging in historical and contemporary discussion. Sorosis is one of several literary clubs in existence in Jacksonville, with many, including Sorosis itself, having been formed by Illinois College or by those with close relation to Illinois College, such as Milligan who did work for the college at the time. Jacksonville, partly because of Illinois College, has a long history with literary societies, Charlesworth said. The Greek-lettered societies at Illinois College are actually literary societies, men and women, and there are seven of them there Jacksonville is overrun with literary societies and some of us that belong to the adult versions actually came from (those college societies). In the book Historic Morgan and Classic Jacksonville, compiled by Charles M. Eames, it is noted that there were no other literary society for women in Jacksonville and Eames writes that its organization was responded to with eagerness and enthusiasm. Sixteen fruitful years bear witness to the interests and vitality of this society, Eames writes. May it long live to be an honor and benefit to Jacksonville. However, not all were as accepting of the formation of the club. Women would sneak through backyards on their way to meetings to avoid being seen by neighbors and the club was referred to as ladies of blue-stocking proclivities by the local newspaper. The attitude toward women at the time surely drove many topics of discussion throughout Sorosis existence. In 1870, Milligan gave an essay where it was noted, according to Illinois College archives, Girls are educated too superficially, were hurried on to graduation and diplomas, and next to getting husbands, as the only available occupation girls should be educated for some trade or profession and should be self-sustaining instead of parasitic and dependent. Over the years, Sorosis has had a membership of over 200 women from the Jacksonville area. At the heart of the club are the essays written by its members which have spanned topics from racism to religion in schools to transcendentalism. However, unlike other clubs, the topics are tied into an over-arching theme that ties each essay together. When we do a paper, we have a program committee that comes up with the theme for the year and then offer selections on that theme, explained Sorosis Club President Darlene Nelson. Some of the womens groups they have a general topic and they pick what they want to do Were a little more structured. When a topic is given out to a member, that member then can spend days, weeks, to months researching and compiling the essay. The result is a well-researched paper that can then spark discussion following the presentation. These papers arent written to be submitted anywhere, the group explained, although some are archived at Illinois College. Instead, these papers are written strictly for the members of Sorosis, strictly for intellectual stimulation. Tradition is also very much integral to the club. Meetings are held at 3 p.m. on Wednesdays as they have been since 1927 and the year closes with an informal spring outing. One change over the years has been the inclusion of tea and refreshments. Although this wasnt practiced at the early meetings, according to Illinois College archives, the practice continued after one meetings minutes read The hostess requested that we remain for a cup of tea. Tiffany Warmowski, an archivist for the group and one of its youngest members, explained that being in the group has been a valuable learning experience. Ive learned things by being in this group by being in this atmosphere that I didnt learn as a young lady, necessarily, Warmowski said. More polite society types of things that I wouldnt necessarily have learned. That and the collective knowledge of years and years of listening to each others papers. It just gives you a depth you might not have had otherwise. The collective experience and knowledge play a large role in keeping the group engaged and learning as well, Vice President Martha Varble said. However, the group doesnt cycle members often, Charlesworth said, which can also add to a feeling of togetherness. Some of the members, in the past, having looked at the history, its not unusual for them to be a member for 65 years, Charlesworth said. Once you come in, you dont come out. The group will celebrate its 150th anniversary Wednesday with an invitation-only dinner and presentation by astronomer Pamela Gay. Nick Draper can be reached at 217-245-6121, ext. 1223, or on Twitter @nick_draper. Ad Investing Trends New this week - 208 interested Biden Warns: China Could "Eat Our Lunch" When it Comes to Lithium Pres. Biden recently warned about China's dominance when it comes to lithium demand, stating, "if we don't get moving, they're going to eat our lunch." One junior mining company in South America is looking to become a strong link in the lithium supply chain due to a monster acquisition. NLA passes stipends for judge meets BANGKOK: The National Legislative Assembly (NLA) yesterday (Nov 22) passed by an overwhelming majority a bill allowing court judges to receive meeting allowances totalling B207 million per year. Friday 23 November 2018, 09:16AM The National Legislative Assembly passed the bill granting meeting allowances for judges and legal staff without a vote against. Photo: via Bangkok Post The bill will be royally endorsed before it is published in the Royal Gazette and takes effect. Currently, the allowances are being paid under another regulation. The so-called regulations on judicial civil service administration draft bill sailed through its third and final reading with 145 votes in favour, none against and six abstentions. Prior to the vote on the bill, none of the NLA members filed a motion to debate the content of the legislation to the floor or propose changes to the draft. The highlight of the draft bill rests with the Judicial Administration Commission, which is permitted to disburse the meeting allowance payments to the judges who attend the plenary meetings of the Appeal Court and the Supreme Court. The commission is also authorised under the law to issue new rules governing meeting allowance payments for the plenary meetings as well as the general meetings of the criminal divisions of the Appeal Court and the Supreme Court. According to the draft bill, the judge who presides as chairman of a meeting will receive B10,000 per meeting. Each member of an executive panel who is required to be present at the meeting will receive B8,000 per meeting. The secretary, assistant secretaries and all other attendees of the meeting will receive B6,000 each in meeting allowances. Each year, the Appeal Court and the Supreme Court normally host 24 meetings, or two a month. In the first five years after the law takes effect, close to B1.1 billion in meeting allowances will be earmarked by the government. The cited reason for holding the plenary meetings is to assure the public that the judges and civil servants can effectively deliberate matters for the sake of ensuring justice. Read original story here. Phuket road resurfacing sees at least 20 injured, nine in one night PHUKET: Local residents in Thalang are calling for the Phuket office of the Highways Department to speed up the resurfacing of a busy section of Thepkrasattri Rd after nine people were injured in falls from motorbikes last night, and another person injured this morning (Nov 23). transportaccidentsSafety By Eakkapop Thongtub Friday 23 November 2018, 02:34PM At least 20 people have been injured in motorbike accidents since the resurfacing of the road began last week. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub At least 20 people have been injured in motorbike accidents since the resurfacing of the road began last week. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub At least 20 people have been injured in motorbike accidents since the resurfacing of the road began last week. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub At least 20 people have been injured in motorbike accidents sice the resurfacing of the road began last week. Photo: Eakkapop ThongtubAt least 20 people have been injured in motorbike accidents since the resurfacing of the road began last week. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub At least 20 people have been injured in motorbike accidents since the resurfacing of the road began last week. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub At least 20 people have been injured in motorbike accidents since the resurfacing of the road began last week. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub At least 20 people have been injured in motorbike accidents since the resurfacing of the road began last week. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub At least 20 people have been injured in motorbike accidents since the resurfacing of the road began last week. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub At least 20 people have been injured in motorbike accidents since the resurfacing of the road began last week. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub The section of road under repairs is the northbound lane is from near the U-turn near Thalang office of the Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA) to the main Makro store in Thalang. At least 20 people have been injured in accidents on the busy stretch of road as the road surface is steeply uneven while the roadworks are being carried out, local residents told reports last night. As the works continue, the locations where the road surface changes, and there are no warning signs, some of the local residents pointed out. A staffer at Thalang Hospital confirmed to The Phuket News that many people had brought themselves to the hospital for treatment of minor injuries because of falls from motorbikes along the section of road. Local residents pointed out that the busy road is one of Phukets main arteries, serving all motorists heading to Phuket International Airport and all traffic heading north from Phuket Town and the main tourist beaches, and those heading northbound off-island. The local residents themselves have to use the road every day. An officer from Phuket Highways office explained that a contractor was hired to resurface the road, with works starting last Tuesday (Nov 13), and scheduled to take about one month to complete. Phuket Highways Chief Somwang Lohamut told The Phuket News today that the uneven surfaces are expected to continue for about one more week. After then, the road surface should not be so dangerous, he said. Mr Somwang admitted that the road surface could be dangerous, but noted, Motorbike drivers tend to drive through the roadworks too fast. The road surface will be uneven while the road is being repaved, and the surface will be slippery after workers spray water to reduce the amount of dust created by traffic passing through the area. We asked the workers to spray water on the surface after local residents complained about the dust, he explained. Mr Somwang also pointed out, We do have warning signs marking roadworks along the four kilometres that is being resurfaced. The road will be uneven for about another week while the resurfacing continues. In the meantime, I urge motorbike riders to slow down while riding through the area. I recommend that they do not drive faster than 40km/h, he said. Additional reporting by Tanyaluk Sakoot Phuket Tourist Police warn of cash on delivery scam PHUKET: The Phuket Tourist Police are warning people to beware a scam in which deliveries are made to people who did not order them so that the fraudsters can get the cash on delivery paid for receiving the parcels. By The Phuket News Friday 23 November 2018, 05:36PM The raid in Pathum Thani saw more than B15 million in fake goods seized. Photo: Immigration Bureau The raid in Pathum Thani saw more than B15 million in fake goods seized. Photo: Immigration Bureau The raid in Pathum Thani saw more than B15 million in fake goods seized. Photo: Immigration Bureau The raid in Pathum Thani saw more than B15 million in fake goods seized. Photo: Immigration Bureau The raid saw more than B15 million in fake goods seized. Photo: Immigration BureauThe raid in Pathum Thani saw more than B15 million in fake goods seized. Photo: Immigration Bureau The raid in Pathum Thani saw more than B15 million in fake goods seized. Photo: Immigration Bureau The raid in Pathum Thani saw more than B15 million in fake goods seized. Photo: Immigration Bureau The raid in Pathum Thani saw more than B15 million in fake goods seized. Photo: Immigration Bureau The warning follows Immigration Chief Lt Gen Surachate Hakparn* leading a raid on a warehouse in Pathum Thani where three Chinese national were arrested with more than B15 million in items, mostly pirated goods, seized. The three men arrested were named as Chen Junqin, Dingnan Wang and Li Hongjing, and found in possession of 5,026 makeup kits, 1,202 electronic devices, 545 items of shoes and clothes and 614 other miscellaneous items as well as 714 parcels already packed awaiting delivery. Dont become a victim by paying for an unknown delivery! Gen Surachate posted yesterday (Nov 22). Gen Surchate specifically warned people not to sign for any deliveries they had not ordered. If it is not your order, dont sign for the delivery! And dont pay money for the delivery, he wrote. Col Eakkachai Siri of teh Phuket Tourist Police confirmed that the warning stands for Phuket "Gen Surachate issued this warning at a national level, which of course includes Phuket, he said. Anyone who has been caught out by a case like this, please call the Tourist Police hotline 1155, he added. Even if it is small parcel and you are being asked to pay the cost of the delivery. Please dont accept it, he warned. One man in Phuket (who asked not to be named) who nearly became a victim told The Phuket News that he was home alone when a delivery arrived addressed to his brother. The bill for receiving the parcel was almost B1,000, he noted. The man called his brother, who said that he did not order the delivery. His brother also said that there many deliveries started arriving at their home about two to three months ago, but added that he had sent them all back. In this latest delivery, the man said that he had noticed that the sender was a Chinese name. After his experience, he posted his story to warn his friends on Facebook. * Surachate Hakparn was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General (Lt Gen) and his transfer to the position of Chief of the immigration Bureau were published in the Royal Gazette yesterday. Why Jesus? He is the way and the truth and the life worth living NORRISTOWN A former Hatfield man, most recently of Lower Merion, faces time behind bars and sex offender treatment for possessing child pornography on his computer and cellphone. George Andrew De-La-Garza, 23, formerly of the 2000 block of Maple Avenue, Hatfield, was sentenced in Montgomery County Court to 111/2 to 23 months in the county jail, to be followed by 10 years of probation, after he pleaded guilty to felony charges of possessing child pornography in connection with incidents that occurred between September 2017 and June 2018. The sentence means De-La-Garza will be under court supervision for about 12 years. Judge Risa Vetri Ferman, who accepted a plea agreement in the case, said De-La-Garza can be released from jail after serving 10 months behind bars but only if hes placed in an inpatient sex offender treatment facility. The judge said De-La-Garza is prohibited from having contact with minors during his supervision. De-La-Garza also faces a 15-year requirement to report his address to police in order to comply with Pennsylvanias Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act. The charges stemmed from incidents that occurred while De-La-Garza was residing in Hatfield between September and December 2017 and at his most recent address in the 1000 block of County Line Road in the Bryn Mawr section of Lower Merion. Court documents indicate an investigation of De-La-Garza began in January 2018, when county detectives received a tip that originated from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children regarding someone using a video sharing social media site in September 2017 to upload suspected images of child pornography. The Internet subscriber information was traced to a Hatfield address where De-La-Garza was living at the time, court papers indicate. In May 2018, investigators received a second tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children indicating an Internet account, which eventually was linked to De-La-Garza, uploaded a video depicting child pornography, according to the criminal complaint. That Internet account was traced to De-La-Garzas Lower Merion address at the time. On June 8, detectives, armed with a search warrant, went to De-La-Garzas Lower Merion residence and found him there with his cellphone and desktop computer. A review of the computer by detectives uncovered at least 40 images of child pornography, according to the arrest affidavit. De-La-Garza admitted he was responsible for the child pornography found on his computer, detectives alleged, adding the defendant also admitted he was responsible for the child porn videos uploaded to the video sharing site in 2017. He said he also used the found cellphone to view child pornography after he uploaded it from his computer to his cellphone. The longstanding ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia have been the lynchpin of security in a volatile region. This has based on unflinching support of successive administrations for the House of Saud in return for uninterrupted oil supplies and support for Washington's regional polices. The question now is whether that policy can continue with all the controversy over the murder of the Saudi exile Jamal Kashoggi. American leaders have often looked the other way when questions are raised by human rights groups about the oil kingdom's alleged violations, showing Saudi wealth, along with its role in regional politics, takes preference over any other consideration. President Donald Trump's rise to power was warmly welcomed by the Saudi leadership despite worldwide concerns about his views on minorities and other related issues. Trump acknowledged this support by choosing Riyadh as the first overseas destination after becoming president. Under Trump's watch the Saudi monarchy paved way for a peaceful transfer of power to the next generation of the House of Saud by appointing Mohammad Bin Salman (aka MBS), as Crown Prince. This had been seen as a delicate issue to ensure a peaceful succession to one of the many grandsons of King Abdul Aziz, founder of Saudi Arabia. It was hailed as beginning of a new dawn, as the prince launched a wave of reforms for modernizing both the economy and society. He even lifted the longstanding ban on the women drivers or being allowed to attend sporting events. The patronage extended by Trump towards the new leadership was rewarded with deals ranging from US$110 to 450 billion according to varying estimates. Trump once described this as creating a million jobs and playing a role in the revival of the American economy. Then, the unthinkable happened, as Jamal Kashoggi was brutally murdered in mysterious circumstance inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on October 2. The crime was crudely handled by the Saudi authorities until it blew up into a mega issue. Kashoggi, living in America and writing columns for the Washington Post, was among the critics of MBS. His death sparked a wave of anger and pressure steadily built up in America in support of punitive action against those responsible. The central question in the sad episode is whether Crown Prince Mohammad is in any way linked to the crime. The Saudi authorities have vehemently rejected the idea and vowed to bring the real perpetrators to justice. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir has said that any effort to link the royal family with the murder will be resisted as his country regards that as a "red line." However, such statements have not helped and the U.S. Senate Foreign Relation Committee has sought from Trump a determination within 120 days of what, if any, was the role of the Crown Prince in the Kashoggi affair. President Trump is walking a careful line. He is trying to address the legal and moral aspects of the murder without hurting the economic and strategic relations with Saudi Arabia. He has been reluctant to point the finger at anyone in the royal family, and continues to show willingness to work with the current Saudi ruling hierarchy. Hence, he has not gone beyond the official Saudi version insisting the Crown Prince is innocent. Nevertheless, he still has to fulfill certain obligations, and, at some point, will have to come up with a clear stance on the issue. He cannot ignore domestic concerns, especially in Congress, indefinitely. Any determination by the U.S. to implicate the Crown Prince would surely be a blow to the traditional relationship, as it could result in imposition of sanctions against the person implicated and a further demand to put him on trial. Such an eventuality may not only jeopardize agreements worth billions of dollars and negatively hit the U.S. economy but also threaten the delicate security arrangement in the Middle East. The cost will be too high and not in the interests of anyone. I don't think that the issue will be allowed to go that far, but will somehow be sorted out. A lot depends on the kind of support MBS gets from the extended royal family. A divided house may not be good when the monarch and his successor needs firm support. A phrase reportedly coined in the British embassy in the 1960s about Saudi Arabia is as good as it was then. It says that "the greatest threat to the House of Saud is the House of Saud itself." Sajjad Malik is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SajjadMalik.htm Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. The head of Chinas consulate in Calgary says her country would like to see the Trans Mountain crude oil pipeline expansion, conceived to ship more Canadian crude to Asia, to be completed. While the amount of oil that the pipeline would help bring to China would probably not be very large, the project will help the Chinese companies invested in Canada, said Lu Xu, consul general of the Peoples Republic of China in Calgary. The line also would be a symbol of how the two countries can collaborate and benefit from each other, she said, and she hopes to see the countries increase trade in other areas, such as technology and manufacturing. She said she has been following the pipeline saga since she arrived in Calgary in September 2017 and is learning to be patient as she watches it progress toward construction. I see progress gradually, she said in an interview at the Bennett Jones Lake Louise World Cup Business Forum. Probably I have to get used to it because in China everything is fast, and the decision-making is fast, and the actions taken by the companies are fast, but here you have to be patient. Read more about: Dolce & Gabbanas Chinese marketing scandal is fashions biggest faux pas since former Christian Dior designer John Gallianos anti-Semitic rant in 2011, and its potentially far more costly. Dior got out of that mess by swiftly dismissing Galliano. D&Gs owners initially offered few explanations even as a boycott movement spread through luxurys biggest growth market. The Milan-based brand had posted an ad showing a Chinese model struggling to eat Italian food with chopsticks, which consumers deemed condescending. Even after Fridays apology, damage control will be trickier as the firm is still owned and operated by the designers with their names on the door. Consumers dont just buy a product. They buy an idea, an image that has values embedded in it, luxury consultant Mario Ortelli said. With Chinas shoppers making up around two-thirds of the industrys growth, everyone needs Chinese trust. Almost all major Chinese e-commerce sites, including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.s Tmall and JD.com Inc., have suspended the sale of D&G products in China. The boycott spread to foreign sites, with Richemonts Yoox Net-A-Porter removing the brands items from its Chinese and Hong Kong portals. The scandal intensified after degrading remarks about Chinese people were sent from co-owner Stefano Gabbanas Instagram account. On Friday, the founders apologized in Mandarin in a video clip, apologizing to Chinese people worldwide. We will not forget this lesson and this will never happen again, Gabbana said in the video. And we must try harder to understand and respect Chinese culture. Finally, we ask from the bottom of our hearts for your forgiveness. The fallout also spread offline to bricks-and-mortar retailers on Friday, with Lane Crawford removing D&G items from its department stores in China and Hong Kong. The marketing videos were taken down between Thursday evening and Friday morning. In their apology clip, the designers didnt repeat an earlier allegation that their Instagram accounts were hacked. They had earlier said that was the reason for the derogatory comments about Chinese people on Gabbanas account. Providing evidence the account was hacked could help regain Chinese trust, said Luca Solca, analyst at Exane BNP Paribas. The crisis shows the need for a multinational, multicultural, diverse leadership organization, able to perceive and integrate different sensitivities, Solca said. Dior, controlled by luxury conglomerate LVMH, wasted no time in showing Galliano the door after he hurled anti-Jewish insults at a couple in a Paris bar, and the designer later apologized. The challenge for D&G is that its not a multinational giant but a closely held Italian business run by its two founders Gabbana and Domenico Dolce. A tongue-in-cheek, cartoonish characterization of Italian identity with ad campaigns showing large families touching each other and yelling in public has been a staple of D&Gs marketing. That pitch helped expand the companys sales to $1.54 billion (U.S.) last year, according to Business Insider. D&G is bigger and more profitable than rival Gianni Versace, which Michael Kors Holdings Ltd. is buying for $2.2 billion. But trying to export its ironic marketing tone to China may have been a step too far. The two founders, who created the brand in 1985, have resisted the trend among family owners of luxury firms to sell to giants like LVMH and Kering SA, the owner of Gucci. As demand for acquisition opportunities among both fashion conglomerates and private equity funds has pushed luxury valuations skyward, Gabbana and Dolce have consistently said theyd never consider selling. Once were dead, were dead, Gabbana said in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera last spring. I dont want a Japanese designer to start designing Dolce & Gabbana. The brand was able to weather online criticism of that remark. But the latest storm is far more intense. Some Chinese consumers went so far as to post videos of themselves destroying their D&G wares following his remarks. Ryan Meng, a Paris-based fashion buyer for Chinese boutiques, was one of many to joke online that D&G now stood for dead and gone following the incident. Its extremely unfortunate for all the Chinese team helping to handle the operation while working for someone like that, he said. Cheap Alberta oil is giving economists second thoughts about the next Bank of Canada rate increase. Considered a sure thing only a couple of weeks, doubts are beginning to emerge about whether the central bank will hike in January without a rebound in slumping prices for Canadian heavy crude. In reports over the past 24 hours, Toronto-Dominion Bank and Bank of Montreal have put asterisks on their calls for a move, while swaps trading suggests investors are also paring bets. Should weakness persist, we would expect the Bank of Canada to hold off on raising its policy interest rate until there is further stabilization in oil prices, Toronto-Dominion Bank economists Omar Abdelrahman and Brian DePratto wrote in a research note Friday. Western Canada Select crude the main blend sold by the nations oilsands closed at $13.46 a barrel on Nov. 15, the lowest in Bloomberg data stretching back to 2008. Its discount to U.S. benchmark crude exploded to as much as $52.40 a barrel last month, also a record. All but one of 14 economists recently surveyed by Bloomberg expect a rate increase in the first three months of next year. Odds for a hike by January have fallen to about three-quarters, from being fully priced in earlier this month, swaps trading suggests. Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz has increased the policy rate five times since mid-2017, most recently with an October move, amid a strong economy. Oil Recovery DePratto said by phone that Poloz will have to acknowledge the strains on the industry at the central banks next rate decision on Dec. 5, which will be followed by a speech from the governor the next day in Toronto. Despite the caution, TD is anticipating oil prices will recover and the Bank of Canada will raise rates in January. Canadas heavy crude discount could narrow to around $20 a barrel over the next few quarters as temporary supply problems fade, DePratto said in his note. That would allow the Bank of Canada to focus on strength outside the energy industry that has pushed inflation above its 2 per cent target. Bank of Montreals chief economist, Doug Porter, said he would consider cancelling a call for a January hike if Canadian oil discounts persist, adding some investors are underestimating the risks. The spread is so extreme, the cries of pain from Alberta are so loud, I dont think they can just put blinders on and carry on as if no things changed, Porter said by phone from Toronto on Thursday. Others remain confident there is a strong case for tighter policy in January even with the weakness in oil prices. Energy is a smaller share of the economy than in 2015 when a bigger crash led to rate cuts, and the central banks favoured survey of business conditions signals healthy growth, according to Josh Nye, an economist at Royal Bank of Canada. The focus is going to remain on the national picture, but its a tough balancing act when some provinces arent doing as well, Nye said Thursday by phone. Read more about: One of the biggest perks of being a high-level executive is a flush expense account. But allegations of misusing it can quickly undo a career. Auto-industry titan Carlos Ghosn this week became the latest in a line of corporate chieftains accused of mismanaging their expenses when Nissan Motor Co. said that he had understated his compensation as well as improperly filed expenses and misused company assets. Mr. Ghosn, who presided over an alliance of car makers Nissan, Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and Renault SA, was arrested in Japan on Monday for alleged financial misconduct. A person familiar with Nissans investigation into Mr. Ghosn said the company found he used a subsidiary in the Netherlands to spend some $18 million (U.S.) buying and renovating personal homes. Mr. Ghosn, who hasnt been charged with any crime, couldnt be reached for comment. Mr. Ghosns family believes that the residences were corporate housing, and that their purchase went through the normal channels for approval at Nissan, said a person familiar with the Ghosn family. Executives at companies including Mercedes-Benz, WPP PLC and the former Hewlett-Packard Co. have exited their posts in recent years following questions about their use of company money. Expected to devote themselves to their companies, top executives often get to expense perks that elude rank-and-file employees, such as concierge health exams, leases on homes and sometimes even personal use of the corporate jet. But such expense accounts can leave plenty of room for interpretation or temptation, say corporate-governance and accounting experts. A CEO argues that I operate 24/7, so everything I do is business-related, says Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. Hence the blurring. Rules from the Internal Revenue Service and Securities and Exchange Commission spell out the separation of personal and business expenses, but some situations arent so clear-cut. Take the scenario of an executive traveling on the corporate jet to attend a business meeting but bringing along the spouse to participate in activities outside of work. That can be fuzzy, says Lisa D. Holt, an attorney at Cooling & Herbers PC, which specializes in aviation law. Rarely are trips solely business or solely personal. Yet some issues stem from executives feeling entitled and above reproach, says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a management professor at Yale University. Theres a heroic aura that sets in for some. It starts to get confusing to them where their pockets stop and ours start, he says. As the nature and pressures of being CEO at a large company have evolved, so have their expense accounts, lawyers say. Luxury skyboxes at sporting events and country-club memberships are often less of a priority than benefits that help executives do their jobs more efficiently and comfortably, such as security detail and private-jet travel that includes family members. If youre asking them to be in five different capitals in the world in a week and visit all the company plants the week after, thats going to require more than just first-class airfare, says Michael Peregrine, a partner at law firm McDermott Will & Emery LLP, who specializes in corporate governance. Apple Inc. in December said it would require CEO Tim Cook to use private aircraft for both business and personal travel as a safety and security measure for Mr. Cook. In its shareholder proxy statement, the tech giant said the cost of the flights for personal use is considered extra compensation on which Mr. Cook pays taxes and that Apple doesnt consider security measures to be a personal benefit for its executives. While executive contracts typically spell out what sort of discretionary expenses are permissible, Mr. Peregrine advises that corporate boards at least periodically review CEO expenses, even if they are first approved by an internal auditor, and provide an avenue for those processing the reports to disclose any irregularities to the boarda practice to which he says more large companies have shifted over the past decade. If you dont, thats where temptation creeps in, Mr. Peregrine says. Executives have tripped up over expense-account improprieties in the past. In April, WPP CEO Martin Sorrell stepped down after the ad companys probe into an allegation of improper personal behavior and whether he had misused company assets. The Wall Street Journal reported that WPPs board investigated whether Mr. Sorrell used company money for a prostitutean allegation Mr. Sorrell denied. It is unclear what the probe determined. A spokesman for Mr. Sorrell noted the board granted him good leaver status upon his departure. Mark Hurd resigned as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co. in 2010 after a company investigation found he had submitted inaccurate expense accounts that H-P said concealed his personal relationship with a contractor. A spokesperson for Mr. Hurd, now the co-CEO of Oracle Corp., said that he didnt do his own expenses, never falsified expense reports and that the company didnt share expense reports it believed were inaccurate. Daimler AG fired Ernst Lieb, the head of its U.S. Mercedes-Benz operations, in 2011 over allegations that he paid for personal expenditures with company money. The alleged incidents, the Journal reported at the time, included work done at his home near Mercedess former U.S. headquarters in Montvale, N.J. Mr. Liebs ousting coincided with a stepped-up ethics push at the company after it settled an SEC investigation over bribery. Mr. Lieb, who at the time denied misusing company funds and unsuccessfully sued the car maker for wrongful dismissal, couldnt be reached for comment. There is evidence companies are curtailing perks. Over the past year, the median value of perks of C-suite executives in the Fortune 100 have fallen 0.6% to $109,702, an analysis by research firm Equilar found. Greater scrutiny from shareholders has led to a decline in such benefits, says David Larcker, a professor of accounting at Stanfords Graduate School of Business. Many compensation committees also now benchmark perks against peer companies, says John Roe, head of ISS Analytics, the data-intelligence arm of Institutional Shareholder Services, a proxy-advisory firm. Mining companies operating in Mexico extended a sell-off, with Southern Copper Corp. falling the most since 2011, even as a Mexican lawmaker attempted to calm market worries over the prospect of tougher regulation under incoming President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Large Mexico-based mining companies have slipped almost 8 per cent on average over the past two days, according to analysts at Raymond James. Lima-based Southern Copper fell 11 per cent in New York, and Toronto-based Torex Gold Resources Inc. was down as much as 14 per cent, the biggest intraday decline since July. Miners operating in the country started sliding earlier this week after Angelica Garcia Arrieta, a senator in Lopez Obradors Morena party, called for tougher regulations that included increased project surveillance and giving more powers to communities and government. Morgan Stanley downgraded some stocks this week on concern that the new congress is considering as many as 11 bills or resolutions that could have a material impact. While the reaction certainly may be overdone in some cases, we expect there could be increased share price volatility on Mexican exposed stocks until there is more clarity, Brian MacArthur, head of mining research at Raymond James, said in a research note. The suggestion that concession permits could be withheld for new projects, or revoked for existing ones due to environmental and social impact, has raised concern. Proposals relating to the need for social and environmental impact studies on mining projects appear similar to regulation already applying to the mining sector in Mexico, according to the Raymond James report. But the language raising the most concern is the potential to revoke mining concessions on environmental and social grounds, it said. The losses continued Friday even as a Morena party senator tried to tone down the rhetoric. We need anxious deputies and senators to think once, twice, three times what they will bring up because they impact the countrys economic activity and Mexican and foreign investments, said Armando Guadiana, a Morena party Senator, according to a report in El Sol de Mexico. We cant be changing laws and regulations just for the sake of it. Industrias Penoles SAB fell for a fourth day. London-listed silver and gold miner Fresnillo Plc fell 14 per cent this week, its biggest weekly decline since 2015. Grupo Mexico SAB was an exception, rising 1.9 per cent as of 1:21 p.m. local time on Friday after three straight declines. Read more about: There are moments when you can tell that a political party has won an election well ahead of voting day, as when Stephen Harper promised in 2006 to reduce the GST. The Liberals have come close to achieving that feat in their Wednesday mini-budget, which steals from the Conservatives their only compelling message a year ahead of the next federal election. Andrew Scheer, the Tory leader, has accused the Trudeau government of running a country that is no longer open for business, that chases away business investment and thereby puts at risk Canadians standard of living. And its true that the Trudeau government has acted only intermittently, and without much conviction, in stimulating business investment. At times the Liberals have seemed downright hostile to business, never more so than in their botched attempt to tax idle funds accumulating in privately held firms. But in addressing that electoral deficiency in this weeks mini-budget, the federal Liberals have again demonstrated the tactical finesse that long ago earned them the status of Canadas natural governing party. Decry it as shape-shifting if you will, but the Liberals did a remarkable job of reinventing themselves this week. For three years, federal Finance Minister Bill Morneaus budgets and economic statements have emphasized social-justice issues, notably gender inequality and the gap between rich and poor. Wednesdays mini-budget, by sharp contrast, was all business. The Trudeau government will invest a staggering $14 billion over the next five and a half years to enable business to write off its investments at unprecedented speed. Business has always been favoured with writeoffs on new investment. But now it will get tax breaks on new investments as much as three times faster than at present. New factories, warehouses, machinery, computers and so on can now be largely or completely written off in the first year of investment, rather than over several years. That might be the most powerful government boost to business investment in modern Canadian history. And its a smart thing to do. It powerfully encourages Canadian manufacturers, laggards in modernization and thus productivity, to spend big money, and immediately, on 21st-century technology and facilities, making Canadian industry more globally competitive. It will stimulate job creation and again, quickly as business invests heavily in expansion and improvements to its productivity and R&D and export prowess. Most of that outsized government investment $9 billion will be made upfront, over the next three years, with the states cost of modernizing Canadian business sharply declining thereafter. The business payoff in higher profits will also result in a sizeable increase in corporate tax revenues. In the next decade, taxpayers will get their money back and then some, and the country will be endowed with a much more competitive business sector. Corporate Canada has whined about Ottawas stubborn refusal to follow the U.S. example of massive corporate tax cuts that went into effect in January, in what economists would call a race to the bottom. And never mind that Canada already has one of worlds lowest corporate tax rates, at 15 per cent compared with Americas 21 per cent after U.S. President Donald Trumps tax cuts. And that Trumps tax breaks will debauch the U.S. Treasury, costing as much as $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Scheers complaint about lax Ottawa fiscal probity isnt borne out by the numbers. The Liberals deficit is manageable at less than 1 per cent of GDP. And Canadas debt-to-GDP ratio, at about 90 per cent, is lower than that of most G-7 economies, including the U.S., at 105 per cent, and Japan, at 253 per cent. The Liberals have co-opted a business community that until Wednesday was somewhat yoked to the Conservatives. Andrew Scheers most effective criticism of the Liberals has been to fault them for insufficient commitment to stimulating business investment. And its not as though the Tories have hammered away at that compelling issue. To the contrary, Scheer has preoccupied himself with odd concerns. Scheer has endorsed Brexit. He agrees with Trump that Israeli embassies should be relocated to Jerusalem. He wants taxpayer-subsidized home-schooling. Scheer is obsessed with illegal border crossers. He has proposed a gun-control regime that doesnt include handguns, which is no regime at all. And Scheer is exercised about the new swing-set at Harrington Lake, the PMs second official residence. Those positions put Scheer on the wrong side of history, and most are irrelevant to everyday Canadians. Scheer has also failed to gain traction because he has a weakness for exploding cigars. Soon after excoriating Justin Trudeau for his many vacations visits to China and India that most Canadians recognize to be business trips a witless Scheer himself spent a week in India, in August. Not long after Scheer piled on in the criticisms of Morneaus personal tax-shelter issues it was revealed that Scheer himself has ownership stakes in three real estate limited partnerships with the same tax breaks unavailable to everyday Canadians. And while $7,500 is a handsome price for a swing-set, Justin Trudeau paid for it out of pocket. Writing in another newspaper, former Harper communications director Andrew MacDougall credited Scheer with trying to depict the Liberals as anti-populist, but added: Do the Conservatives have to be so stupid about these things? [MacDougalls emphasis.] By election time, the Tories are sure to have a constructive blueprint for improved economic performance. But for now, the Tory platform is a 161-word anodyne statement of purpose on the partys website that is too thin to be called meagre. Scheers difficulties arise not from accusing the Liberals of reckless spending, when his own Tories boosted program spending in the Harper years by 37 per cent. Scheers personal challenge is that he appears weak, allowing dynamic premiers like Doug Ford and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe to carry the high-profile Tory fight against Trudeaus carbon-pricing policy. Scheer lashes out at the news media, a reminder that Trudeau doesnt, and that Trump does. He also shoots from the lip, with this description last weekend of Canadians who disagree with the PM: To Justin Trudeau, you are the enemy, Scheer said. The PM has his own weakness for funny socks, and his brain was operating in low gear when he charged taxpayers $215,000 for a private-island sojourn. But even those Canadians most fiercely opposed to the Liberals know that their PM regards not one of them as an enemy. Thats Trump rhetoric, and Harper learned the hard way that it doesnt work in this precinct. The Tories are fortunate in having a year before the next election to develop well-thought-out policies on issues that matter, and to put their leader through charm school. Read more about: You know the parable about the chicken, the pig and the breakfast? Boise lawyer Norman Semanko is on the phone for what may be an eleventh-hour conversation about the proposed takeover of Avista Corp. by Hydro One. And I have no idea what hes talking about. It seems there was once a pig and a chicken and they were chatting about the idea of contributing to a breakfast for a kindly farmer and the chicken offered eggs, of course, and thence pressured the pig to provide bacon. Have I got that right? Anyway, the punchline rests with the pig: For you its a contribution. For me its a commitment. Perhaps its more a fable. Or a cautionary business tale. Were the pig, Semanko says, which is his take on the Idaho ratepayers who await the final word from the states public utilities commission on the proposed $5.3-billion (U.S.) deal. On Monday, Semanko, lawyer for the Avista customer group that opposes the merger, gets his last chance to cross-examine commission staff as well as Hydro One and Avista executives as to the merits of a mammoth deal upon which Hydro One has staked its plan for cross-border expansion. Read more: Hydro One given six months to trim executive pay Hydro One names new board of directors after en masse resignation Opinion | Jennifer Wells: Who will benefit from Hydro One merger with Avista Corp.? Mondays technical hearing had been scheduled for July. But the governance blowup at Hydro One caused regulators to vacate that hearing, triggering a delay of the hoped for September approval of the merger, pushed now to, maybe, mid-December in Idaho and Avistas home state of Washington. A second round of due diligence was carried out. Mondays hearing is expected to take at least a full day, and will address staff testimony submitted earlier this month. Heres what stands out for me: the testimony of Terri Carlock, an administrator with the regulators utilities division. It was the job of staff to analyze the proposed arrangement, and it fell to Carlock to summarize that analysis and outline unresolved concerns. The way I read it, Carlock had a great deal more material to work with than she would have had if Premier Doug Ford had kept his mitts off the company. The premiers level of interference goes well beyond the normal role of any shareholder, Carlock stated. And this: There does not appear to be a limit on the Province of Ontarios authority over Hydro One. And this, in reference to new guidelines around executive compensation at the provinces utility: Such far-reaching authority especially around the determination of employee wages from a single shareholder demonstrates significant managerial oversight of Hydro One. Political interference remains a real risk. Of course all of this contrasts with the prior testimony of ousted CEO Mayo Schmidt, who testified before the commission that the government of Ontario does not hold or exercise any managerial oversight over Hydro One. Were not splitting hairs here. It is the obligation of the commission to determine whether the merger is in the public interest. A factor in that is whether the corporate alliance, which would result in Avista becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Hydro One, breaches a state statute (61-327) that restricts utility ownership by a foreign government or quasi-governmental organization. I called Semanko up because a point made by Terri Carlock caught my eye. With regard to foreign ownership in particular, Staff believes Idaho Code 61-327 may provide a total bar to the proposed merger, Carlock testified. We believe the Commission should analyze this possibility prior to making a final determination. Whats a controlling interest when someone has over 40 per cent and is statutorily guaranteed to have over 40 per cent and no one is allowed statutorily to have over 10 per cent? asks Semanko. There are some of us down here in the States who are looking at this, saying this is still really a Crown corporation. Its just that they sold some of the stock so they could build roads and infrastructure. They still very much exercise control over Hydro One. Avista CEO Scott Morris had previously testified that such a foreign takeover would not be unique. Carlocks response: A foreign company owning an American utility is very different from a foreign company whose controlling shareholder is a foreign government buying an American utility, which is the circumstance in the proposed Avista and Hydro One merger. Last Wednesday, Semanko filed his latest submission with the commission, opposing the merger both on the grounds just discussed and on the grounds that the deal is not in the public interest. Ill be asking questions of every witness, he said of Mondays proceeding. Is the deal in the public interest? Carlocks testimony indicates that staff is satisfied when it comes to service rates and assurances that there will be no rate increases as a result of the merger and that rate credits will benefit consumers. The $5-million energy efficiency fund to be created post-merger is also seen as a plus. That message may not be getting through to customers. On Wednesday, the utilities commission put out a press release about Mondays hearing, noting that more than 600 written comments had been received from the public. The vast majority of public comments oppose the merger, the commission said. Norman Semankos Avista customer group, in other words, a powerful gathering of ratepayers who, like the pig, do not want to make the ultimate sacrifice. Clarification - November 28, 2018: This article was edited from a previous version to include that Norman Semanko will also be conducting a cross-examination of Hydro One and Avista executives. It looks as if you appreciate our journalism. Our reporting changes lives, connects communities and effects change. But good journalism is expensive to produce, and advertiser revenue throughout the media industry is falling and unable to carry the cost. That means we need you, our readers. We need your help. If you appreciate deep local reporting, powerful investigations and reliable, responsible information, we hope you will support us through a subscription. Please click here to subscribe. Read more about: Simplicity is supposed to be a selling point for Apple Inc.s iPhone. It may be a problem at the U.S. Supreme Court. The court will hear arguments Monday on accusations that Apple is using its market dominance to jack up prices for iPhone apps. A ruling against Apple, letting a lawsuit go forward, could add to pressure the company already faces to cut the 30 per cent commission it charges on app sales. The case turns on what happens when iPhone users buy something at the Apple App Store. In allowing the suit, a federal appeals court said the transaction is a simple one in which consumers buy directly from Apple. Apple says its more complicated, with the company serving as a middleman connecting app developers with users. The distinction is critical because of a 1977 Supreme Court ruling that says only direct purchasers of a product can collect damages for overpricing under federal antitrust law. That decision was designed in part to ensure companies dont have to pay twice for the same misconduct. Apple is part of an app economy that will grow from $82 billion (U.S.) last year to $157 billion in 2022, according to App Annie projections. Apple and its tech-industry allies say a decision allowing the consumer lawsuit could open other companies that run online marketplaces and platforms to expensive antitrust claims. A broad ruling could affect Alphabet Inc.s Google, Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc., Etsy Inc. and DoorDash Inc., Apple and its supporters say. Read more: How Facebooks PR firm brought political trickery to tech Not so big in Japan: Apple cuts price of iPhone XR to boost sales DoorDash to Etsy Any matchmaking service that operates on the internet from DoorDash to Etsy is going to be subject to duplicative damages, said Marianela Lopez-Galdos, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which backs Apple in the case. But Apples critics say its control over the App Store makes it unlike other internet marketplaces. Apple decides what apps can be sold, gives developers a limited number of prices they can charge and tells users the App Store is the only place they can get apps, lawyers pressing the suit say. When a user buys an app, Apple collects the money, keeps the 30 per cent commission and gives the rest to the developer. The company told the high court it passed $26.5 billion on to developers last year. The app store is really unique, said Mark Rifkin, one of the lawyers pressing the suit. Apple has put itself in the distribution chain, and it makes us deal with Apple in a way no one else does. Apple says the focus of the lawsuit is the 30 per cent commission, something it says is paid by the developers, not the app purchasers. Although the consumers say they pay for the commissions through higher app prices, Apple says those are the type of pass-through damages barred under the Supreme Courts 1977 Illinois Brick v. Illinois ruling. Hundreds of Millions The party first and directly injured by an alleged overcharge has the entire damages claim, Apple argued in court papers. The companys lead Supreme Court lawyer, Dan Wall, declined to discuss the case in advance of the argument. The suit, filed in federal court in Oakland, California, seeks class-action status and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. Apples supporters include ACT/The App Association, a developer trade group whose sponsors include Apple, Microsoft and eBay. The group says the appeals court ruling threatens to disrupt what has been an innovation-friendly system for developers and platforms. App Association President Morgan Reed said the appeals court misunderstood the relationship between developers and platforms, improperly looking at platforms as distributors that buy from vendors and resell to customers, rather than as conduits that simply connect the two. That distinction sounds small but is at the core of a multitrillion-dollar global industry, Reed said. Intangible Rights Thirty-one states support the consumers, urging the Supreme Court to allow the lawsuit and also to eliminate the direct-purchaser requirement altogether by overturning the Illinois Brick decision. Illinois Bricks rule is increasingly difficult to apply in the modern world, with its growing commerce in intangible rights through new platforms, the states argued. This case is a prime example. Most states already allow downstream purchasers to collect damages, and the group says courts have been able to ensure that companies dont have to double-pay. The states are led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, and Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, a Democrat. Antitrust cases sometimes, but not always, divide the Supreme Court along ideological lines. In its most recent term, the court voted 5-4 to throw out a lawsuit that accused American Express Co. of thwarting competition by prohibiting merchants from steering customers to cards with lower fees. The court will rule by June in the latest case, Apple v. Pepper, 17-204. Read more about: Toronto is a comics town. With many high profile creators living here, the annual Toronto Comic Arts Festival and other comic conventions, and great comics stores like The Beguiling, the power of storytelling between the gutters is a vibrant part of Torontos creative and arts communities. With hopes to add to that, a group of librarians and comics enthusiasts wants to establish a new permanent space that celebrates sequential art, the Canada Comics Open Library. We also noticed the way comics are showcased and catalogued in libraries doesnt showcase the true diversity of comics, so we wanted to address that in a new system where, in the physical library space, people will be able to see visually how diverse comics are, says Rotem Diamant, president and founder of the Canada Comics Open Library. We have a stickering system for queer comics, and for comics created by Black, Indigenous, people of colour; for comics that deal with mental health and for comics that deal with physical health. Were trying to make comics more accessible and expose more people to the medium, because people tend to think of comics as an all-encompassing genre that are tied to childhood comics and we believe there is so much more than that. The group has a collection and has built a database of Canadian cartoonists, as well as other resources on its website, www.canadacomicsol.org. The group is also hosting pop-up events at community spaces to drum up support for the initiative and showcase what they would like to do. There is one running Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at The 519 (519 Church St.), which will include a panel discussion on storytelling in comics featuring several local creators including Ryan North, Hana Shafi, Stephanie Cooke and others, comics workshops and an all-day pop-up library showcasing the groups current collection. Diamant believes that the Toronto Public Library does a good job with comics beyond the regular collection, digital comics fans should check out Hoopla, an affiliated app that has a solid collection but thinks there a few things this new space could add. We think the public libraries are doing a good job of getting comics narratives out there, but there is no existing yearlong community space for cartoonists and there are some shortcomings with the standard cataloguing taxonomy that has been inherited in the public library system, so were trying to adjust that, she says. We dont want to compete with the public library system, or spaces like TCAF or The Beguiling, we want to boost comics and get more people into community comics spaces. To that end, on Saturday, the Canada Comics Open Library is launching an Indiegogo campaign to raise $85,000 for its first year, estimating about $60,000 will go to rent. The comics in the library will be part of a non-circulating collection and the group plans to charge an annual $5 membership fee in hopes of making the service sustainable. Flash The next 72 hours are crucial in Brexit negotiations between Britain and the European Union (EU), Prime Minister Theresa May told the House of Commons Thursday. May updated politicians on talks she has held in Brussels on the withdrawal agreement and a political statement outlining the new working arrangements for Britain's departure from EU membership. The UK-EU deal will create a free trade area with the EU unlike any other, May told politicians, adding the next 72 hours are crucial. She said that Britain would be able to negotiate new trade deals around the world, ready to introduce them when an implementation period with the EU ended. May also added that the sovereignty of British-territory Gibraltar would be protected. Specific proposals are also included over the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland to ensure a future so-called backstop arrangement is not needed by either Britain or the EU. The prime minister told MPs the future relationship document is a good deal for Britain, ending free movement once and for all and introducing skills-based immigration. She said the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in Britain will end, and future decisions will be made in Westminster, Edinburgh, Cardiff and London. She concluded: "The British people want Brexit to be settled. They want politicians to move on, and focus on other issues like the National Health Service. A deal is now in grasp." May came under attack from the main opposition leader, Labour's Jeremy Corbyn, who said nothing has changed, describing the political statement as "waffle". The documents are now being studied by the 27 member states of the EU ahead of a meeting on Sunday when the aim is to approve the proposals. HALIFAX Jury dismissals in two high-profile Atlantic Canada court cases this week raise issues around jury vetting in the digital age, according to some legal experts. A judge declared a mistrial Tuesday in the Dennis Oland murder case when he learned a Saint John police officer tracked all interactions would-be jurors had with police, and passed some of that information to the Crown. Just two days later, a Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge dismissed the jury in the criminal negligence causing death trial of Halifax-area body shop owner Elie Hoyeck, after a juror questioned why a Crown prosecutor searched her LinkedIn profile. Both trials resumed by judge alone. Nicole OByrne, an associate law professor at the University of New Brunswick, believes both cases point to issues currently confronting the legal system. I think the deeper issue is the fact in this era of social media that its easier to get information than ever before and that if the temptation is there people will want to get hold of that information and this is what weve seen in both cases, said OByrne. She said the problem is that information can be accessed without those in the legal system thinking about the bigger issues involved. One of the bigger issues is: to what extent can the state use its tools of surveillance in the trial process, and that was the issue in Oland. Wayne MacKay, a professor emeritus at Dalhousie Universitys Schulich School of Law, said its rare but not unprecedented for juries to be dismissed. MacKay said with two high-profile cases in succession, it suggests to him that people arent clear about what is acceptable and what is not, especially in an era marked by such easy access to digital information and social media. Thats despite a 2012 Supreme Court of Canada decision that restricted police to checking only for criminal convictions, which is an automatic disqualification for jury duty. In its ruling, the Supreme Court decided that prosecutors and police had acted improperly in three cases when they went beyond checking for convictions. I think both the ability to get that kind of information and check out jurors is greater, but also the footprint that we leave in the digital world allows other people to discover that and they can then use that as a basis to challenge the fairness of the jury process, MacKay said. He said it raises questions about how many other cases have had similar issues that just havent come to light. You would almost wonder in the second (case) whether it came to light in part as a result of the high-profile Oland mistrial. I would be surprised if these were the only two cases in Canada where this kind of activity occurred. OByrne agrees, and says more training is required for police and lawyers on the current laws, including a 1991 ruling that stipulates the Crown must share all information with the defence. She said another problem is that police powers of investigation are not laid out in statute, and instead appear piecemeal in common law. So police really do push the limits, OByrne said. If we had legislation that clearly set out the parameters of the information police can access, we would have less of these situations. On Friday the New Brunswick Police Commission said it would investigate the police jury vetting that briefly derailed the Oland trial, after a request from the Saint John Board of Police Commissioners. In a news release, the commission confirmed it would investigate but not until all criminal proceedings in this matter are completed. Olands defence lawyer Alan Gold said in an interview Friday he is disappointed the commission is going to wait. There is no reason to wait until after the case is finished, Gold said. The people of Saint John are entitled to know if there are issues regarding training, practice, and improprieties or deficiencies in the education of their police officers. They are entitled to know and have shortcomings remedied as soon as possible. Read more about: Legions of social media users are holding virtual vigil for Harry Leslie Smith, a veteran who channels his experiences with poverty and persecution into a call for justice echoing across generations, as the 95-year-old battles critical illness in an eastern Ontario hospital. Online tributes have been pouring in for Smith, a survivor of the Great Depression and veteran of the Second World War, as he receives treatment in an intensive care unit in Belleville after a fall, according to his family. Notables including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, actress Mia Farrow and British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn are among the supporters extending their digital well wishes, with Twitter users proclaiming #IStandWithHarry more than 18,000 times since Tuesday. Smiths son, who has been issuing regular medical updates to the famed activists nearly quarter-million Twitter followers, posted Thursday that doctors said his father is very sick but they are beginning to right the ship. But even as a tube pumps oxygen into his lungs to fight off pneumonia, Smiths concerns still lie with the disenfranchised, whispering solidarity with the thousands of migrants from Central America heading toward the U.S.-Mexico border, his son said. I am the worlds oldest rebel, Smith told UNHCR Magazine in October. I think there are many things we can do if we put our minds to it, and we shouldnt be leaving anyone out. Read more: Harry Leslie Smith, worlds oldest rebel, hospitalized in Belleville. I did something that mattered, didnt I? Why millennials are lapping up every tweet and podcast from 94-year-old agitator Harry Leslie Smith 91-year-old Belleville author galvanizes Toronto youth with his get-political message Smith, who splits his time living between England and Canada, rose to online prominence as a nonagenarian for his progressive polemics rooted in personal strife. Having witnessed the perils of financial collapse, social unrest and global conflict, he earned a reputation as a prophet of the cyclical nature of the calamities of civilization. Born in Yorkshire, England, Smiths four-year-old sister died of tuberculosis in 1926, his family too poor to afford proper medical care before the formation of the National Health Service. When the Great Depression took hold, Smith learned the price of survival, his youth punctuated by hunger and homelessness as the working class bore the brunt of corporate excess. In his teens, he and his friends would laugh at news footage of Adolf Hitler, but it wasnt long before he was sent to fight fascism as a member of the British air force. In several books and essays, Smith draws parallels between his own brushes with global crises of the past and current turmoil that affects the marginalized. He is particularly critical of the dismantling of social-welfare systems, the inequities of unchecked capitalism and the rising threat of nationalism. Smith told UNHCR he is troubled by the fear-mongering rhetoric about refugees, whose plight reminds him of the suffering he witnessed during the Second World War. I can still see them, he said, his mouth quivering as he stammered out the words. Absolutely pitiful, hungry, starving. When it was possible, we would stop and give them whatever excess food supplies we had on our trucks and reassure them that now they were safe. Last year, Smith launched a crowdfunding campaign raising more than $70,000 for his Harrys Last Stand Tour, dedicating his remaining years to touring refugee hotspots to shine a spotlight on the crisis. As Smith took to online modes of communication like social media and podcasting, his message has found particular resonance among millennials, a cross-generational kinship of feeling like one has come of age at a nadir in history. But Smith is determined to make sure that his past is not the next generations future. Despite the deja vu of human tragedy, an unwavering optimism shines through his rousing calls to action. We have to live together, he told UNHCR. Its our only hope of survival. Read more about: For the past decade, Kathryn Reilander would stand at the front of her classroom and survey her newest crop of students, struggling to find a female face in the crowd. Reilander is a professor at Algonquin College in Ottawa and every year in her electrical engineering technician program, she only sees an average of eight women in a class of roughly 200. But for the programs next incoming class, shes hoping for a dramatic spike in the percentage of women perhaps as high as 30 per cent, if all goes according to plan. On Friday, Algonquin College is announcing a bold and controversial new approach for increasing the number of women in some of its male-dominated programs: a pilot project that will reserve 30 per cent of classroom seats for female applicants. The three-year pilot, called We Saved You a Seat, guarantees admission to women who meet the minimum admission standards for four of the colleges most popular technology programs: electrical engineering technician, mechanical engineering technology, electro-mechanical engineering technician and computer systems technician. The initiative is part of a broader push by post-secondary institutions to close the gender gap in so-called STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and math), where women are woefully under-represented. But the strategy of earmarking seats for female students is something schools have largely avoided. Some say this is due to fears over potential backlash a particularly acute concern in todays fraught political climate, where debates around gender and equity issues are increasingly polarized. While other post-secondary schools are taking more indirect approaches to encourage female enrolment, Algonquin appears to be the first in Canada to actually reserve spots for women in STEM classrooms or, at least, the first to advertise that theyre doing so. Whats really important to know is that were absolutely not lowering standards, said Sarah Gauen, Algonquin Colleges inclusion and diversity specialist, who spearheaded the pilot. We are just making sure that the women who are interested, qualified and applying are entering into our program; that theyre not getting screened out due to any other barriers. One of those barriers is the oft-cited problem of women who exclude themselves from consideration, perhaps due to lack of confidence, a reluctance to study in a male-dominated environment, or the assumption that certain disciplines are better-suited for men. The pilot hopes to mitigate such concerns and encourage women who are feeling hesitant to at least consider these programs and apply, Gauen said. If youre qualified, and youre a woman, youre in, she said. Applicants still need to meet or exceed the basic requirements, which often include specific high school courses in math or science. On average, each of the four programs register between 79 and 277 students a year and fewer than 10 per cent are women, according to the schools statistics though the female students graduate at higher rates than their male counterparts. Have your say If Algonquin College doesnt receive enough female applicants to meet the 30 per cent goal, the school will reopen admissions to male applicants to ensure there are no empty seats, Gauen said. But she says early numbers from the current application process are already showing high demand; for the computer systems technician program, the college has already started making offers to qualified female applicants and if they all accept, women will already account for 23 per cent of the classroom when the semester starts in May. Gauen said the pilot will include parallel initiatives to support female students, including new bursaries, mentorship programs, and training for faculty to give them tools for creating truly supportive and gender-inclusive classrooms. Its not quite so simple that if you build it they will come, she said. So were going to get (women) in the door and were going to wrap our arms around them. Gauen said the school chose 30 per cent as its target because research has shown this percentage to represent a critical mass, a tipping point where minority groups can meaningfully shift the culture of a classroom, workplace or industry. Other schools and industry leaders are also setting targets for increasing women in STEM, though most are basing their strategies on awareness campaigns, mentorship networks or outreach work with high schools. Engineers Canada has a 30 by 30 campaign aimed at raising the percentage of newly licensed female engineers to 30 per cent by 2030 (currently, the figure is at 17.4 per cent). The University of British Columbia has a goal of reaching 50 per cent female enrolment in engineering by 2020 and York Universitys engineering school is pushing to become the first in Canada to achieve gender parity amongst its student population. But Algonquin Colleges approach is particularly aggressive, said Kim Jones, chair of the Ontario Network of Women in Engineering. And with that comes the risk of backfire. It is, I think, a controversial approach, she said. (Other) approaches have typically not been as aggressive, partly because there have been concerns about backlash effects. One potential consequence is that male students will resent their female counterparts and perceive them as being less qualified or receiving special treatment, Jones said. This could foster a classroom environment that ultimately proves more unwelcoming or hostile thus exacerbating the chilly climate problem often blamed for driving women out of STEM disciplines. I absolutely wish them good luck in their initiative and Im very interested to see what the results are like, Jones said. But I think its not new to see backlash, and that backlash can be very damaging for the students who experience it. Jones said Algonquin College will need to work very hard to ensure a welcoming and inclusive environment for female students. This is especially true given the current social climate where identity issues have become so fraught, said Liette Vasseur, past president of the Canadian Coalition of Women in Engineering, Science, Trades and Technology. She said Algonquin College will also have to work hard to ensure the pilot gets buy-in from professors and instructors, not just students. I hope that they already have a high level of social acceptability from the faculty members, she said. Im sorry to say this, but I know many faculty members in universities who do not care (about this issue) and in many cases, its not only the men. In some cases its women. Gauen recognizes the potential for backlash but doesnt believe a fear of changing the status quo is a good enough reason to shy away from creating more space for women. She believes technology programs offer great career options for women; electrical engineering technologists, for example, enjoy a lot of autonomy and offer starting salaries of at least $50,000, with the potential to hit six figures not long after graduating, according to Reilander. Gauen pointed to research that gender-diverse classrooms also have positive impacts on male students, teaching them the soft skills they need to interact with women in the workplace, or making them more attractive to employers who care about job candidates with diversity skills. We are still saving 70 per cent of the seats for men. So this is still in the vast majority, she said. This isnt a win-lose scenario; this is gender equity making things better for everybody. Algonquin College student Violet Charbonneau thinks the pilot project will go a long way towards encouraging other women to apply. As a technician student who aspires to get her electrical engineering technology diploma, the 27-year-old sometimes feels lonely in her classrooms, where shes often either the only woman or just one of two. Charbonneau sometimes refrains from speaking up or asking questions in class, for fear of drawing even more attention to herself when she already sticks out like a sore thumb. The guys in the classroom currently have each other and they get all the support they could want, she said. I think its going to be really great for women to feel the same way. It looks as if you appreciate our journalism. Our reporting changes lives, connects communities and effects change. But good journalism is expensive to produce, and advertiser revenue throughout the media industry is falling and unable to carry the cost. That means we need you, our readers. We need your help. If you appreciate deep local reporting, powerful investigations and reliable, responsible information, we hope you will support us through a subscription. Please click here to subscribe. MONTREALSupporters of a Quebec man who has been in legal limbo in Cuba since the death of a fellow Canadian tourist nearly 16 months ago are taking their case for his freedom to the Cuban embassy in Ottawa. Toufik Benhamiche was prevented from leaving Cuba despite having a conviction on charges related to a fatal boating accident overturned this year by Cubas highest court. And now he faces fresh charges stemming from the incident, which occurred while he was on a tourist excursion in Cayo Coco in July 2017. Kahina Bensaadi, Benhamiches wife, said dozens of supporters and friends will head to Ottawa Saturday to deliver a letter to Cuban officials urging them to let him come home. Bensaadi said in an interview Friday that after going through the legal process once, her husband sees no end to his ordeal. Meanwhile, the couples two young daughters are anxious to have him return. He has lost his engineering job in Quebec, and Bensaadi is working and taking care of the family. The message I want to send is that its enough: We dont have confidence in the Cuban justice system anymore and its time for them to let my husband go, Bensaadi said. Benhamiche, of Mascouche, Que., had just taken the controls of a small boat when it veered off course and fatally struck Jennifer Ann Marie Innis, an Ontario mother of three. A criminal negligence conviction, which had resulted in a four-year sentence, was overturned last April by Cubas supreme court. The court cited violations of the penal code by the prosecution and infractions committed by employees of the company that provided the boat. It ordered a more thorough investigation. Benhamiche learned this month he is facing the prospect of a second trial, with prosecutors seeking a five-year sentence. As in the first case, the prosecutor declined to pursue charges against Cuban employees working for the boat excursion company, Marlin SA. Benhamiches lawyer in Cuba also discovered that a Marlin employee who was originally accused has fled the country. In a lengthy letter published Wednesday on Facebook, Benhamiche, 48, expressed his sympathies to Innis while laying out his Cuban legal woes and maintaining the death was an accident. Benhamiche has argued he received little instruction on how to operate the craft and was assured it was easy to use and by no means dangerous. He has alleged he wasnt briefed on safety or legal obligations. This excursion, which was to be a pleasurable experience, became in addition to the shock of the event itself, the worst nightmare that a family can live through, Benhamiche wrote. He added that while he isnt currently detained, that could change at any time. He is prevented from leaving Cuba because officials wont give him an exit visa. No new trial date has been set. In Canada, the Benhamiche family has filed a $340,000 lawsuit against Sunwing Vacations, the tour operator with which they had booked the vacation package. The travel operator has previously said it will contest the lawsuit. The family also filed a Federal Court motion last summer seeking to have the Canadian government come to the aid of Benhamiche. Bensaadi said the federal government has become more involved recently, and Global Affairs Canada says they are working on his case. Canadian consular officials will continue to be in regular contact with local authorities in Cuba, as well as Cuban representatives in Canada, Richard Walker, a Global Affairs spokesman, wrote in an email. Benhamiches Montreal-based attorney, Julius Grey, called his clients case unique. He said it appears the local prosecutor is most interested in protecting the local tour company which is owned by the state. Yes, there was a decision favourable to us from the Cuban supreme court, and nothing has changed, Grey said. He (Benhamiche) goes from office to office, to the prosecutors, to internal affairs, and he cant get an exit visa. Bensaadi said theyre hoping Saturdays sit-in will get the attention of Cuban officials in Canada. Weve followed the legal process, we followed the judiciary process, we followed and respected all of their rules and laws, but they dont want to hear it, Bensaadi said. They want him take the rap regardless. Jah-Reign Taylor knows what it feels like to feel not good enough. The 24-year-old now speaks humbly and openly about his experiences growing up with depression and PTSD, being known to police and coming from a marginalized community. A new-found confidence and passion to help others is due in part to an opportunity from the city to teach and uplift youth. But it is also a result of his own desire to seek help. I felt like society wasnt really giving me a chance. I would try to apply for jobs, I was getting denied. I wasnt really focusing on school because at that time I still had charges pending and I was worried about trial, so there was just so much stress going on for me, Taylor says now, years after he said he made mistakes and ended up in trouble with the law. I bottled it up to the point where, I think it was the beginning of last year I finally said enough was enough and I took the initiative to go get help for myself. It was his therapist that first recommended a project hed never heard of. City staff, with help from community organizations, have been trying to address the roots of youth violence since a request from council in 2014. Staff created the Toronto Youth Equity Strategy, an action plan that is today severely underfunded. Read more: A four-pronged approach to combat youth violence Opinion | Lets empower young people to step up and speak out Expand after-school spaces for youth to stem violence, Toronto councillor urges As violence continues with gun violence in particular trending upward in Toronto there was a realization that the trauma experienced by youth after the gunfire also needed to be addressed, and that mentors were needed to talk about mental health in hopes of building stronger communities. Thats where people like Taylor come in. The Community Healing Project, which began in 2014 in partnership with the youth mental health organization Stellas Place, trains and empowers young adults to facilitate workshops in communities where there is a need. The healers themselves may have experienced violence and the hope is that understanding where other youth are coming from can get them over the trust hump blocking others from reaching youth on a personal level to discuss mental health. In July, the project was one of several the city put forward for federal and provincial funding, requesting $160,000 annually to expand to eight more neighbourhoods. It has not yet been announced whether funding has been secured. What wasnt clear when staff first started the program is how much of an impact it would have on the facilitators themselves. Ive always been told no for things, so this opportunity was just amazing, Taylor says. It ultimately changed my life for the better. In so many ways so many doors have opened. When he was picked for the program with a dozen others to become a healer he says it made him feel good. That first Saturday morning of a months-long training program held at George Brown was intimidating at first, he says. Hearing where other people had come from that they had college or university degrees made him feel like maybe he wasnt right for the job. On top of that, the day before, a friend had committed suicide. I felt like I wanted to give up, he says. But he soon learned others had struggled and doubted themselves. In the end, the bonds they formed with each other inspired them to get out of bed and make, for some, the long trek to campus each week. Taylor is grateful he stuck it out, making it to a graduation ceremony where the newly-minted healers donned traditional black gowns. As the familiar sounds of Pomp and Circumstance played they received certificates for their efforts in front of friends, family and peer mentors. Taylor literally danced up to get his certificate. When the other names were called, he was always the loudest to praise his friends achievements. He and his partner from the training program were then assigned the Rexdale and Jane and Finch areas and set up weekly workshops with help from a peer mentor who supervised. At first just two people showed up, but word about the project spread and soon they were in front of a room of about a dozen youth. I felt that was like mission accomplished, Taylor says now. His time as a healer is over, but hes recently applied for an opportunity to be a peer support worker. Abdul Nur, 23, another healer who went through the training program, says a friend recommended the project to him. Mental illness is spoken about in some communities, he says in his own experience and counselling the youth, as a lack of spirituality rather than a health concern. Finally opening up himself in training sessions, he says, was a great experience. He helped run workshops that wrapped up earlier this year in Scarlett Manor where they saw youth ranging in age from just 8 years old to high school graduates. Training only prepares you for so much, Nur says. At that point I had to try to manoeuvre a bit and figure out different ways to go about the workshop, he says. So that the younger children would be able to figure out what mental health means but at the same time dont be so formal about it. He says the time he spent with the youth was powerful for all involved. If they would share something with me I would always try to share something back to try to tie that into what were going over and tie that into their story as well just to make sure theyre comfortable and that theres someone here whos going through a similar situation or whos going through something that you might be going through, that theres always a way out of it. It created a safe space every Friday for those youth, he says. When it ended, the youth kept asking if he would be back the following week or the next. Within certain communities you need constant leadership, he says. With programs like this, it would be beneficial if they were longer. Another healer, Claudia Appiateng heard about the project by email and signed up for training. It makes you think about your own trauma and how you can better deal with it. So it was really powerful, those weeks in there, she says. She was surprised to see how desensitized some youth she worked with in the Jane and Finch area are to shootings. Ive lost a lot of people, she says, noting she herself grew up in a marginalized community in Rexdale. They dont understand that its not normal to hear as many gunshots as you do. Now, some of the youth she worked with want to sign up to be facilitators themselves, a cycle that can grow with more funding. Her role with the project has also come to an end for now, but she considers herself a youth worker and is continuing her mission in Scarborough. When the project began, it served just two communities. Now it has expanded to 25 trained facilitators dispatched to 10 communities. The workshops include food and activities meant to pull youth in. Appiateng designed a talent show for her workshop, for example, that the youth worked together on. The hope is to expand to 50 healers and extend the workshops through the fall months instead of concluding at the end of summer. The healers too are getting more opportunities. A pilot project placed some of the trained healers in a clinic for mental health services where they help guide patients signing up in the waiting room and even accompany them into their visits with clinicians. Taylor says with the violence seen in the city right now, theres a need for more programs like the community healing project to engage youth. To be in a position where I can help others and especially youth that dont really have that guidance or dont really know what to do, that are suffering from mental illnesses ... trauma, or have criminal records, just to be that leader to be that voice for them, its such an amazing experience. Toronto police have cleared an area near Ryerson University after an investigation over a suspicious package briefly closed stretches of Bond and Gould Sts. Friday morning. Police responded to a call shortly before 8:30 a.m., about a suspicious package found in a concrete garbage bin on Bond St. north of Dundas St. E. Officers with the chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive team responded. Police deployed a bomb-disposal robot and found a bag containing a personal alarm that was emitting a beeping noise, Insp. Peter Moreira told reporters at the scene. The item was an alarm for a bicycle, police said. Ryerson evacuated several nearby buildings while police investigated. Both Bond St. and Gould St. reopened shortly before noon. Marjan Asadullah is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Stars radio room in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @marjanasadullah Read more about: FORT MCMURRAY, ALTA.The toxic waste of the Canadian oilpatch has been quietly spreading in the boreal forest since bitumen mining began here in the 1960s. The yogurt-like mix of clay, water, toxic acids, metals and leftover bitumen has sprawled in artificial ponds to cover an area twice the size of the city of Vancouver. More than one trillion litres of the goop, called tailings, fill these man-made waste lakes that can be seen from space. An equivalent amount of water would take five days to tumble over Niagara Falls. The contaminated tailings ponds attract and kill migrating birds. They emit methane and other greenhouse gases. Despite years of public promises from officials that the tailings ponds would shrink and go away, they are growing. And in the meantime, troubling gaps are opening in the oversight system meant to ensure the oilpatch cleans up its mess. Alberta has collected only $1 billion from companies to help remediate tailings a problem that is now estimated to cost about 100 times that. Decades and billions have been spent on research and still there is no sure solution to a problem that is getting attention beyond Alberta. In August, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation a NAFTA organization composed of officials from the U.S., Mexico and Canada announced it would investigate and produce a report on tailings ponds and the threat they pose to surrounding groundwater and rivers. While the world watches, the mining companies operating here have been allowed by regulators to pursue a clean-up technique called water capping. Its supposed to work like this: put the tailings into a mined-out pit, then cover it with fresh water from a nearby river or reservoir. The idea, according to oil producer Syncrude, is that the tailings will settle to the bottom and over time the lake will turn into a healthy ecosystem supporting fish, animals and aquatic plants. Its biologically and chemically an impossible fantasy, said David Schindler, a former University of Alberta professor and renowned freshwater scientist and officer of the Order of Canada. Other scientists say the water-capped ponds may become effective in storing tailings even if they do not one day support aquatic life, though it will take years to be sure. What is clear is that the technique is unproven, and by conditionally approving industry plans that include it, Alberta officials are signalling they still have no idea how theyre going to clean up the waste of the oilpatch. Read more from The Price of Oil series What would it cost to clean up Albertas oilpatch? $260 billion, a top official warns This oilpatch town was overcome by a mystery gas. Now its residents are asking, what made us sick? Toxic gas nearly killed this oil worker. His employer never told the province The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) can approve tailings management plans that rely on unproven technologies, the agency said. Water capping requires more research, assessment and policy direction. The ponds, meanwhile, are polluting the air and leaking out the bottom, possibly reaching surrounding groundwater and the nearby Athabasca River. One day, because of the environmental impacts, my people will become environmental refugees, said Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam. The ponds have just grown and grown for five decades, said Jodi McNeill, policy analyst for environmental think tank Pembina Institute. If we just continue kicking the can down the road, we could be leaving a legacy of at least tens of billions in cleanup costs ... to future generations. Syncrude which operates two bitumen mines in the oilsands and has nine tailings ponds has been studying water capping since the 1980s, and says on its website that decades of company research shows it will work. That research includes the industrys first full-size water-capped tailings pond, Base Mine Lake, which was filled in 2013. A Syncrude report about Base Mine Lake, one of two obtained by the Star, shows that after its first year, 2014, the lake was toxic and inhospitable to most aquatic life. Schindler says the report shows high levels of methane in the overlying freshwater as well as oxygen levels that no fish and few invertebrates could tolerate. The levels of ammonia were toxic to most aquatic life and the dark water severely limiting to photosynthesis. After reading the other report detailing improving conditions in the lake two years later, in 2016 another freshwater scientist, Neil Hutchinson, said the cap may not be deep enough to prevent wind gusts from stirring up and resuspending solids from the tailings waste about 10 metres below the surface. Its a promising approach. Its far from proven, he said. It might (end up becoming) a safe way to store tailings, but the jury is out on whether youre going to end up with a nice self-sustaining system. Slicks of bitumen can occasionally float to the surface, the reports show. Schindler calls Syncrudes claim that the water-capped waste lakes will become healthy ecosystems hubristic, and the regulator gullible for approving several companies plans without evidence that even one can be restored as claimed. Nearby First Nations dont want water capping. A consultant to Mikisew Cree First Nation says approving more water-capped lakes is risky and irresponsible, while the Fort McKay First Nation has called the idea a major concern that has never been endorsed by its community. Syncrude spokesperson Will Gibson said the water quality is improving and the tailings are consolidating, adding that the company has spent $3 billion developing technologies to treat tailings. We are confident this technology will prove to be successful. Oil companies are required to return the lands they develop to a natural state. But in August, after a bankrupt company simply left the province without decommissioning and cleaning up 4,000 wells, pipelines and other facilities, the CEO of the Alberta Energy Regulator took the unusual step of publicly addressing a gap in the system an admission that showed the regulator is struggling to police the oilpatch. The CEO said that the incident has prompted the AER to look at ways to fix both the AERs processes and its governing legislation. The AER publicly says the province is protected from abandonment of tailings ponds because Suncor, Imperial, Syncrude, CNRL and other companies are required to put money into a fund called the Mine Financial Security Program. The fund has collected more than $1 billion from companies. The cost to clean up the oilsands mining operations facilities? An estimated $130 billion, according to internal AER calculations revealed in a recent joint investigation by the Star, Global News and National Observer. Thats $100 billion more than the public had been told before. The tailings ponds make up the largest but unknown portion of this AER estimate. To put this staggering amount into perspective, cleaning up after the 2013 Calgary flood cost $6 billion, and recovery from the Fort McMurray fire, $9 billion. If there were just a bucket of tailings in your kitchen, you could put the waste in the oven and dry it out in a few hours. Industrial-size amounts can be dried using centrifuges and additives. Drying tailings makes them easier to contain and less likely to contaminate the landscape. At least it doesnt flow We know its there. Its a salty piece of dirt or junk, said Dan Stuckless, industry relations manager with the Mikisew Cree First Nation, located downstream of the oilsands along the Athabasca River. Companies have also treated tailings with gypsum or polymers, which speed up the water separation process. Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. is researching a way to eliminate the need for tailings ponds altogether. Syncrude uses a $1.9-billion centrifuge, though it uses a lot of electricity. Wapisiw Lookout is a former tailings pond that Suncor dried out with a water-separating polymer and covered with soil, trees and native grasses in 2010, transforming it into a 220-hectare watershed that supports wildlife, including the occasional bear. At one point, the AER ordered companies to solidify and bury the waste, an expensive process. Industry didnt expect it would be so difficult to remove the water from the clay and other components of tailings, said Suncor spokesperson Sneh Seetal. Industry didnt comply. The government backed off. Water capping is relatively cheap. During a 2012 hearing into a proposed oilsands expansion, a Syncrude company lawyer suggested it would cost less money and energy and require less land disturbance than centrifuging and another method called thin-lift drying. Since 2016, four companies have told the AER they intend to use water capping despite the fact that the regulator hasnt approved the technology. Though the regulator required the companies to submit plans for alternatives in case water capping fails, only one, Suncor, submitted a plan the regulator found sufficient. The companies have proposed a total of eight water-capped lakes that would store tailings. The regulator has issued conditional approvals requiring companies to research the technology further and allowing extra time in some cases, years to come up with alternatives. For example, Imperial Oils Kearl mine must present its alternative by 2027. While AER waits, the waste is increasing, projected to reach 1.5 trillion litres by late 2030. The volume wont begin to shrink until 2037, according to company filings and the Pembina Institute. In 2009, embarrassed by international media coverage when 1,600 ducks died after landing on a Syncrude tailings pond leading to an Alberta-record $3-million fine provincial officials introduced the directive requiring companies to dry out and bury tailings. A government spokesperson said Albertans will have certainty on when and how (tailings ponds) are going to be closed This has teeth. Two premiers have since told Albertans the ponds would soon disappear from the landscape. But the ponds are growing, and theyre right along the migratory pathways for millions of birds that use the freshwater Peace-Athabasca delta for breeding or as a stopover as they move farther north to breed. Every spring and fall the ducks, loons, herons, raptors, songbirds and other birds, some of them rare, congregate. Those seasons are stormy, sending the birds in a hurry to find a safe spot to land. Mining companies are required to place bird deterrents on and around their ponds. The result is eerie: near-constant booms of bird cannons, nightmarish shrieks of radar-activated mechanical falcons and faceless scarecrows perched above the surface. The ruses dont always work. Every year an estimated 200,000 birds land on the oilsands industrial water bodies, including tailings ponds, according to a 2013 report by the University of Albertas Oil Sands Bird Monitoring Program. It only takes a dime-size drop of oil to kill a bird, said Sarah Hechtenthal, a wildlife biologist. A spot of bitumen is difficult to get out before it puts a hole in the waterproof shell of a birds feathers. Theyre so focused on the little spot of oil, they wont eat, they wont evade predators, they get so focused on preening. The oil could trouble the birds ability to fly or stay warm. Oil from a birds feathers could also clog the little holes on the surface of its eggs. The ponds also leak. While companies are required to build dikes, wells and ditches to detect tailings, collect them and divert them back to their source, some appears to be trickling to groundwater. Seepage may take decades to reach surface waters, said an internal 2009 memo, written by an associate deputy minister at Environment Canada, adding that in their environmental assessments, many oil sands companies acknowledge that this may occur. Findings from a 2014 study by Environment Canada researcher Richard Frank and a team of Canadian and British scientists indicated oilsands-tainted groundwater was likely reaching the Athabasca River, the government has said. Environment Canada called the study seminal but stopped its proactive inspections around this time. A spokesperson told the Star it is not clear this seepage is harmful to the environment, and there is no definitive way to differentiate between groundwater that has been tainted by industry waste water and groundwater that has been impacted by naturally occurring bitumen deposits. We used to eat fish all the time as an important staple, said Cleo Desjarlais Reece, a member of Fort McMurray First Nation. But nobody does that anymore. Trappers are afraid to eat the animals they catch, fearing that the wildlife may have drunk contaminated water. Am I safe? Am I keeping my family safe by eating this? said Jean LHommecourt of Fort McKay First Nation, located 54 kilometres north of Fort McMurray and surrounded by mining operations. Tailings ponds are also a source of air pollutants: Smog-forming volatile organic compounds, methane (a greenhouse gas) and benzene (a toxic, carcinogenic volatile organic compound) accounting for more than 70 per cent of a facilitys total, according to the 2009 memo to the federal environment minister. There is shockingly poor regulatory oversight and lack of ambition on tailings management progress in Alberta, the Pembina Institute told the AER in a February letter. Base Mine Lake is about 50 metres deep, most of it tailings. The water ripples in the breeze. A herd of wood bison grazes nearby, a fence separating the animals from the waves lapping at the grassy shore. Mechanical falcons screech from platforms above the surface and the cannons boom. Steam rises from the Syncrude plant on the horizon. Below the surface, there is low oxygen, high salinity and naphthenic acids byproducts of oil production that are toxic to fish and may be harmful to mammals as well as chloride much above provincial guideline, said Schindler after reviewing the companys latest internal report. Megan Thompson, a freshwater scientist working as a consultant to Indigenous groups in the region, also reviewed the Syncrude test-lake reports and also noted high salinity, harmful to some freshwater life and persistently high concentration of naphthenic acids. While Schindler noted some water-quality improvements and areas with a handful of organisms, natural lakes in the region would have hundreds to a few thousand species. I still see no convincing evidence that these are going to be productive, viable lakes. Nothing yet that would indicate that these will be the nice lakes in their promotional fantasies, said Schindler, who has testified for intervenors in resource development hearings. Before capping the Base Mine tailings, Syncrude built smaller test ponds in 1989, each holding 2,000 cubic metres of tailings and water. In the first year, the water quality improved to support aquatic life, said Gibson, the company spokesperson. Syncrude scaled up to four test ponds of 140,000 cubic metres in the 90s, then finished filling Base Mine Lake with water in 2013. What we found in our test ponds was that the technology works Were hoping to show itll do that on this scale, Gibson said. But it isnt there yet. Canadas Oil Sands Innovation Alliance, an industry group, said water-capped or end pit lakes are a best practice in the global mining industry. In the Lusatia region of Germany, former coal mines have been transformed into a glimmering recreational lake district. Alberta has had success with mostly former coal mines, including Quarry Lake in Canmore. Water-capped Berkeley Lake in Montana, a former copper mine pit that was allowed to flood in the 1980s, is now filled with reddish-brown acidic waters that threaten to contaminate a nearby towns water supply. Story Behind the Story delivers insights into how the Star investigates, reports, and produces stories. Base Mine Lake was approved and filled under stricter regulations and after years of research and modelling, said Jerry Vandenberg, a pit lake expert who is sometimes contracted to work in the oilsands. Vandenberg noted, though, that typical metal mine waste is often sand-like and separates from water very rapidly, while bitumen tailings contain clay particles that repel each other and stay suspended in the water. Water capping is an understandable pursuit, says freshwater scientist Neil Hutchinson, who worked as a lake scientist for the Ontario environment ministry and has advised industry and government on resource development projects across Canada since becoming a consultant. All the tailings are out there. Those (mined-out) pits are out there, too. If you could put the two of them together to find safe, long-term storage, thats a good idea if it works as planned. The Alberta Energy Regulator says that a company must have a plan to return the land back to how it looked and how it was used (or similarly) before development took place. Safe tailings storage was the main consideration for Base Mine Lake, said Vandenberg, and therefore, it is following the right trajectories. ... Were seeing faster detoxification than what we predicted. He also said its reasonable to anticipate the experimental lake could able to host fish in 10 to 20 years. Greg Lawrence, an expert in rehabilitating polluted lakes and a former Canada Research Chair involved with monitoring Base Mine Lake, noted improving dissolved oxygen levels and said the tailings are settling as planned but it is too early to make any judgments. The 2009 internal memo to the environment minister warned that after 15 to 20 years the sediments could generate methane gas bubbles that could resuspend tailings and prevent settling and potentially mix fine tailings into this proposed water cap. Starting in 2021, the AER will begin getting the additional water-capping information it requested from companies, plus their backup plans. One thing about a lake is the bottom sediments is an important part of the productivity, Schindler said. If the whole deep part of the lake is just toxic gunk that nothing can live in, and you have this little bathtub ring around the edge where the clean water cap is, theyre not going to support fish and life. There is never going to be a situation where these lakes will be rimmed with cottages. It looks as if you appreciate our journalism. Our reporting changes lives, connects communities and effects change. But good journalism is expensive to produce, and advertiser revenue throughout the media industry is falling and unable to carry the cost. That means we need you, our readers. We need your help. If you appreciate deep local reporting, powerful investigations and reliable, responsible information, we hope you will support us through a subscription. Please click here to subscribe. With files from Mike De Souza, National Observer. The Price of Oil series is the result of the largest ever collaboration of journalists in Canada, from the Toronto Star, Global News, the National Observer and journalism schools at Concordia, Ryerson, Regina and UBC. Emma McIntosh is an environment, justice and investigative reporter with StarMetro Calgary. Follow her on Twitter at @EmmaMci Read more about: Vilma Carrillo was one of a group of migrant women flown to Texas in July from a detention center in Georgia to be reunited with their children, who had been separated from them as part of the Trump administrations clampdown at the border. Over the next several days, she watched as immigration officials paged one mother after another and took them to meet their children. I was never called, Carrillo said. Her heart in tatters, the 28-year-old Guatemalan woman was sent back to the Georgia detention center without her daughter, Yeisvi, 11. The others got their children back, she said, I was left with my despair. She hasnt seen her daughter since they were separated in May, but they talk on the phone twice a week. Carrillo has been caught at the intersection of several Trump administration policies intended to make it harder for Central American migrants to settle in the United States. Her case is more serious than what thousands of other migrant families have faced: Because her daughter is a U.S. citizen, Carrillo has been told that she could lose custody. One cause of her dilemma, ironically, is the very reason Carrillo undertook the hazardous trip to bring her daughter back to the United States. Carrillo sought to re-enter the country with a claim of asylum, citing years of beatings she had suffered at the hands of her husband in Guatemala. Read more: Trump administration had no plan for migrant children who ended up separated from families, reports finds Hundreds of migrant children quietly moved to a tent camp in Texas desert Caravan migrants try to stay in touch with the families they left behind Her asylum claim was denied after the Trump administration early this year ruled out domestic abuse as legal grounds for granting refuge. Even if Carrillo agreed to go home to Guatemala, immigration lawyers said, her daughters status as a U.S. citizen could prompt authorities in the United States to decide that the reports of domestic violence in the family make it too risky to allow her to return. The fact that Yeisvi is a U.S. citizen creates another problem: While migrant families can be placed together in family detention centers in cases where the courts rule against allowing them to go free with a bond or other restrictions, it is against the law to hold a U.S. citizen in one of the facilities. Now, more than six months since they were separated, Yeisvi remains in foster care, and Carrillo is still in detention, appealing a deportation order. Vilma presumed the fact that her daughter is an American citizen would protect them. Instead, she is in a gray zone that could result in her losing Yeisvi, said Shana Tabak, executive director of the Tahirih Justice Center, a nonprofit in Atlanta that provides legal services to immigrant survivors of gender-based violence. Tabak is one of the lawyers representing Carrillo. Some 2,500 children have been returned to their parents since a federal judge ordered the government to reunify families that had been split up at the southwest border under a zero-tolerance policy. But as the year draws to a close, nearly 100 migrant children remain apart from their parents. About half remain in shelters or foster care because the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit over the separations, and the government disagree over whether reunification should occur. Some parents have committed crimes, like driving under the influence, that the government contends make them ineligible to have custody of their children. Yeisvi is in another category entirely: She is one of several American children separated at the border who arrived with a parent who was not a citizen. The federal government does not know how many such cases exist because it does not track them as a separate group. Immigrant advocates estimate there are 50 or more. The children were transferred to state child protective services rather than to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the federal agency responsible for housing migrant minors. It could take new lawsuits and many months to reunite them with their parents. Yeisvi was born in 2006 in Vidalia, Georgia, three years after her parents illegally crossed the border and settled in the onion capital, where they toiled in the fields and warehouses. In 2007, they returned to their village in Huehuetanango, Guatemala, to be with Carrillos ailing mother. A few years later, Carrillo said, her husband, Juan Bernardo, began to physically abuse her. The beating, biting and other violence intensified, she said. On one occasion, he flung hot coals at her, prompting her daughter to beg him, Please dont kill my mom, she recalled. He knocked out four of her front teeth, and she now wears dentures. In May, mother and daughter fled north with the goal of returning to Vidalia, where Carrillo has a brother. She said that she had expected that coming with her daughter would protect them from being placed in detention. The pair arrived on May 10 at the Arizona border, where Customs and Border Protection officials reviewed their documents and noticed that the girl was a U.S. citizen. They said that Yeisvi could not stay with me, the mother recalled. Hours later, when a man and woman came to take the girl away, Yeisvi clung to me, crying and screaming. They took her by force, Carrillo said. In response to questions, Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that, When a removable foreign national arrives in the United States with a U.S. citizen minor, the minor must be permitted to enter while the foreign national is processed. If there is no relative with legal status to care for the child, the agency said, CBP will contact state or local child welfare services to assist with appropriate placement. Yeisvi was transferred to Arizonas Department of Child Safety and placed with a foster parent in Yuma, near where she and her mother had entered the country. Carrillo was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and eventually sent to the detention facility in Georgia. Carrillos brother, Gregorio, has been fighting for her release, but cannot take in his niece because he is not legally eligible. It makes no sense that a girl born in this country has to suffer an extended separation, he said. Mother and child spoke for the first time, on the phone, in June. Rosa Fernandez, who is fostering Yeisvi in her home, said the child talked frequently of her mothers plight. It touches me how much she wants to be with her mother and protect her mother from the pain, Fernandez said. She described Yeisvi as poised and positive. She is attending school, eating well and generally thriving, Fernandez said. During her six months in foster care, however, the girl has wondered aloud why her father hits her mother, Fernandez said. Yeisvi also has shared that he beat her when she tried to intervene to stop him from harming her mother, according to Fernandez. Carrillo has said it would be impossible to avoid her husband if she had to return to Guatemala. In a phone interview, Yeisvi said she was happy to be in beautiful America, where she reported her favorite food is Quaker oatmeal and her favorite toy is a Barbie doll. She said that she had made friends, and she spoke several sentences in English, which she is quickly acquiring. Her mood darkened when asked whether she would like to stay in the United States. I dont want me and my mommy to return to Guatemala. Its that my daddy hurts, she began, before bursting into tears. Carrillo appeared before an immigration judge, Earle Wilson, for an asylum hearing on Aug. 16. The interpreter spoke a different indigenous dialect than hers, compromising her ability to properly make her case. Further complicating things, Carrillo was unable to give the judge her asylum declaration and the documents detailing her abuse: They were in a backpack taken from her by federal immigration authorities when she was processed into the Georgia facility. Her claim for asylum faced a formidable obstacle with a directive by then Attorney General Jeff Sessions in June that rendered it all but impossible for those fleeing domestic abuse, gang brutality and other violence to get protection. The American Civil Liberties Union has challenged the directive in federal court, but in the meantime, it applies; Wilson denied Carrillos asylum claim and ordered her removed from the country. Her lawyers appealed, a process that could take months or even years, and petitioned to allow her to be freed on humanitarian grounds in the meantime. But on Nov. 5, that request was also denied. Two days later, in Arizona, a judge in juvenile court held an initial hearing on Yeisvis dependency case, proceedings that immigration lawyers say could ultimately result in the termination of Carrillos parental rights. In that case, Yeisvi would be taken out of foster care and put up for adoption. It is entirely possible that the court could terminate parental rights should the mother be deported or not released from detention, said Michelle Brane, director of migrant rights and justice at the Womens Refugee Commission. If there is a history of domestic abuse, they could decide it is not safe to send that child back, she said. At her foster home, Fernandez said Yeisvis eyes fill with tears when she asks: Do you think I will get to stay with my mommy? I tell her to pray to God, Fernandez said, and to keep her mother in her prayers. ISLAMABADA suicide bomber killed 25 people at a market in northern Pakistan just hours after gunmen assaulted the Chinese Consulate in the southern city of Karachi, killing four. The two attacks on opposite sides of the country were likely unconnected, but they underline the myriad security challenges Pakistan faces, including those from separatists as well as from Pakistani Taliban based in the northern border regions. The attacker in the northern Orakzai district drove a motorcycle into the heart of a weekly market in the town of Kalaya and then blew himself up, according to Reuters. Pakistani authorities have long battled militants in these remote regions near the Afghan border. The region has also been marked by tension between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and the blast was near a Shiite mosque that may have been the target. Video images from the scene show volunteers and rescue officials gathering dead bodies up from the weekly Friday market where people had been buying vegetables, household items and warm clothes when the blast took place. There was a big bang that rocked the whole town. Nothing was clear in the smoke, and there cries and screams from the market, said Ashraf Ullah, 42, a local merchant. Many bodies were unrecognizable from damage by the blast. There were dead bodies all around. Read more: Militants seize 14 Iranian security forces near Pakistan Trump criticizes war hero for not capturing bin Laden sooner Pakistan PM fires back after criticism from Trump The blast came hours after police in Karachi foiled a morning assault by three gunmen against the Chinese Consulate, which left two policemen, two civilians and the gunmen dead. The assault took place at about 9 a.m., when the gunmen tried to enter the consulate located in the citys upscale Clifton area but were stopped by policemen and security guards at the checkpoint, local police officials said. In addition to the exchange of gunfire, eyewitnesses told Pakistans Dawn news channel they heard an explosion. The footage broadcast on TV showed smoke rising from the Chinese consulate building. Three attackers have been killed in the exchange of fire with our forces. All the Chinese diplomats and other staff at the consulate are safe, and they remained unharmed during the attack, Amir Shaikh, senior police official, told journalists on the scene. Because of the quick response of police and guards, the terrorists couldnt reach the diplomats, he said, adding that the operation has been completed, but a search was still underway to see if there were any other suspects. According to Pakistani news channels, a separatist group, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility for the attack. The group opposes Chinas projects in the province and has previously attacked Chinese workers in Baluchistan, a Pakistani province at the heart of the mega project, the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The $62 billion port and transportation corridor would connect far western China with the Indian Ocean via Kashmirs lofty mountain passes. Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the assault. The incident is part of conspiracy against Pakistan and China economic and strategic co-operation, said a statement from his office. However, such incidents will never be able to undermine Pak-China relationship that is mightier than Himalaya and deeper than Arabian Sea. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang condemned the attack and demanded that the Pakistani side take practical measures to protect the safety of Chinese institutions in Pakistan. The embassy in Islamabad, meanwhile, stressed the countries close ties, saying any attempt to undermine the China-Pakistan relationship is doomed to fail. Hassan Askari Rizvi, a Lahore-based security analyst, said the attack was aimed at just that, undermining ties between the two countries, noting that Chinese nationals had been attacked in the past. The terrorists want to create panic and fear, and an attack on a diplomatic mission creates international headlines, he said. Such attacks show the threat of terror is still very much there and its far from over. Read more about: WASHINGTONA major scientific report issued by 13 federal agencies Friday presents the starkest warnings to date of the consequences of climate change for the United States, predicting that if significant steps are not taken to rein in global warming, the damage will knock as much as 10 per cent off the size of the U.S. economy by centurys end. The report, which was mandated by Congress and made public by the White House, is notable not only for the precision of its calculations and bluntness of its conclusions, but also because its findings are directly at odds with U.S. President Donald Trumps agenda of environmental deregulation, which he asserts will spur economic growth. Trump has taken aggressive steps to allow more planet-warming pollution from vehicle tailpipes and power plant smokestacks, and has vowed to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, under which nearly every country in the world pledged to cut carbon emissions. But in direct language, the 1,656-page assessment lays out the devastating effects of a changing climate on the economy, health and environment, including record wildfires in California, crop failures in the Midwest and crumbling infrastructure in the South. Going forward, American exports and supply chains could be disrupted, agricultural yields could fall to 1980s levels by midcentury and fire season could spread to the Southeast, the report finds. There is a bizarre contrast between this report, which is being released by this administration, and this administrations own policies, said Philip B. Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Research Center. All told, the report says, climate change could slash up to a tenth of gross domestic product by 2100, more than double the losses of the Great Recession a decade ago. The report could become a powerful legal tool for opponents of Trumps efforts to dismantle climate change policy, experts said. The report puts the most precise price tags to date on the cost to the U.S. economy of projected climate impacts: $141 billion (U.S.) from heat-related deaths, $118 billion from sea level rise and $32 billion from infrastructure damage by the end of the century, among others. The authors put forth three main solutions: putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions, establishing government regulations on how much greenhouse pollution can be emitted and spending public money on clean-energy research. Read more about: You are here: World Flash President Xi Jinping on Thursday met with Kazakh Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev in Beijing, and suggested that both sides focus on policy synergizing and well implement the alignment of China-proposed Silk Road Economic Belt and Kazakhstan's Nurly Zhol (Bright Path) economic program. Xi asked Sagintayev to give his cordial greetings to Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan. With close contact, Xi said his important consensus with Nazarbayev on many issues had guided the development of bilateral ties. "The consensus is being implemented by solid steps with the two sides' concerted efforts," he said. "As a friendly neighbour and comprehensive strategic partner, China places high importance on developing ties with Kazakhstan." He voiced his appreciation of Kazakhstan's people-centric development principle, and stressed that China firmly supported the Kazakh people in following a development path suited to national conditions. This year marks the fifth anniversary of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative. "Over the past five years, cooperation under the initiative has delivered tangible benefits to the people along the route, and injected new impetus to the world economy," Xi said. "China appreciates Kazakhstan's firm support and active participation in the Belt and Road cooperation. The two countries enjoy a solid basis and promising prospect for jointly building the Belt and Road." Looking into future cooperation, Xi called on both sides to step up policy coordination, further synergize the Silk Road Economic Belt construction with Kazakhstan's Bright Path economic policy, and map out exchanges in various fields. Sagintayev conveyed Nazarbayev's cordial greetings to Xi. Calling China a friendly neighbor, close friend and strategic partner of Kazakhstan, Sagintayev said his country highly valued the Silk Road Economic Belt Initiative proposed by Xi in Kazakhstan five years ago. "The initiative is of great significance to strengthening regional connectivity, combating global challenges, maintaining world security and stability, and promoting common growth and prosperity," he said. The Kazakh prime minister recalled Xi's keynote speech delivered at the opening ceremony of the first China International Import Expo earlier this month, when he compared the Chinese economy to the ocean. "Kazakhstan hopes the ship of Kazakhstan-China cooperation will keep sailing in the ocean of China's economy," Sagintayev said. DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATESSaudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was in the United Arab Emirates on Friday, on his first tour abroad since the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdoms consulate in Istanbul. The prince, who arrived in Abu Dhabi late on Thursday, is also due to visit other Mideast countries, where he will be warmly received by Arab leaders who have stood firmly by his side amid international outrage over Khashoggis horrific slaying. The crown prince will round off his tour with a stop in Argentina where hell come face-to-face with world leaders on Nov. 30 for the two-day Group of 20 summit. Among those expected to attend that summit are President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has kept international pressure mounting on the kingdom in the wake of Khashoggis killing. His tour abroad underscores the strong support the crown prince continues to have from his 82-year-old father, King Salman, and signals that he faces no immediate threats to his grip on power at home. Upon arrival to the UAE, Prince Mohammed was warmly embraced by Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. The two crown princes who also command their countries armed forces are known to be close, with the more experienced Abu Dhabi crown prince reportedly offering his insights to the 33-year-old Saudi prince on past occasions. The UAEs state-run news agency, WAM, reported Friday that the two discussed brotherly and strategic ties in their talks, which were attended by a wide-range of Emirati officials, as well as a number of senior Saudi officials, including the head of general intelligence, the interior minister and key advisers. Read more: Trump contradicts CIA assessment that Saudi crown prince ordered Khashoggi killing Trump thanks Saudis after defying calls to punish prince after Khashoggi murder CIA concludes Saudi crown prince ordered Khashoggis assassination Saudi Arabia and the UAE, at war in Yemen against Shiite Houthi rebels there since 2015, are also expected to take part in U.N.-led peace talks in Sweden next month. The two sides likely discussed Yemen, with the WAM news agency reporting that among those present for the bilateral talks was an Emirati official in charge of liaising with families of UAE soldiers killed in battle. Prince Mohammed is scheduled to visit Bahrain and Egypt next on his tour. He has faced intense criticism since the Oct. 2 killing of Khashoggi by Saudi agents inside the kingdoms consulate in Istanbul. Khashoggis body was dismembered, and his remains have yet to be found. Intelligence officials and analysts say the operation to kill Khashoggi, who wrote critically of the crown prince for The Washington Post, could not have happened without Prince Mohammeds knowledge. The kingdom denies the crown prince had any involvement. Trump insists theres not enough evidence to blame the crown prince for Khashoggis killing, despite a U.S. intelligence reports assessment to the contrary. Trump says the kingdom is an important ally that has helped to lower oil prices. Saudi Arabia initially said Khashoggi had walked out of the consulate before shifting its account of what happened amid Turkish intelligence leaks. Saudi Arabia is now seeking the death penalty for five of those accused in the killing. The U.S. has sanctioned 17 Saudis involved in the incident, including one of the crown princes closest advisers who was fired from his post after fallout from the killing. On Friday, Turkeys Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the Saudi crown prince has requested to meet Erdogan on the sidelines of the G-20 summit. Turkey sees no obstacle for the meeting, Cavusoglu told Turkeys CNN-Turk television, but added that Erdogan would make the final decision. It would be the first meeting between the prince and Erdogan since the killing, though the two have spoken by phone once since then. Cavusoglu also criticized Trump, saying the U.S. leader appears to want to turn a blind eye to the killing. Trumps statements amount to him saying Ill turn a blind eye no matter what, he said. Money isnt everything. We must not move away from human values. Read more about: The Ford governments cuts to services for Franco-Ontarians are more than just a profound disservice to the provinces 620,000 francophones. They are an attack on our Canadian commitment to official languages and the hundreds of thousands of English-speaking families who have embraced French in immersion and other programs in Ontario and across Canada. Throughout our country, anglophone kids are learning French in unprecedented numbers. According to the most recent numbers from the government of Ontario, on any given day there are more than 280,000 Ontario students doing more French than is required in English school boards everything from after-school learning to full French immersion. Across the country, add in another 200,000 plus. Thats half a million English kids intensively learning Canadas other official language every weekday. But there is a lot more at play than that. These kids and their families are also expressing a strong commitment to the fabric our country. They have to make an active choice. Its often inconvenient and challenging especially given the many additional demands we often place on students today. In many parts of the province and country, students and their families have to overcome significant structural barriers to get the amount of French second-language education they want and need. But year after year these students and their parent sign up in record numbers. The growing interest in French immersion from newcomers to Canada shows us that our willingness to share and to compromise and to support our francophone minorities is known far and wide. Across Ontario, one of the most popular areas for French immersion is Peel Region where immigrants account for 80 per cent of the population growth. And in Premier Doug Fords own community, Etobicoke, new opportunities for French immersion was a major issue in this falls school trustee elections. These families know theres something a lot more important than language learning or credit accumulation going on. Something called nation building. And it doesnt happen in a vacuum. The support for French learning is directly tied to the health and growth of Canadas French-speaking population including the million-plus francophones who live outside Quebec. Its a sensitive eco-system. Thats why the cuts to minority language services in Ontario are so wrong-headed and destructive. The prevailing attitude towards Franco-Ontarians contributes to our national identity and our international credibility. It impacts our unity as a nation. It enhances our reputation as a good place to live and a good place to do business. It is who we are and what we aspire to be. Official languages are supported by 80 per cent of Ontarians. But we anglos can be complacent. We are rather used to our provincial government acting for us, supporting, promoting and protecting French as a first and as a second language. The willingness to cut the French Language Services Commissioner who intervenes when we are offside in supporting our French minority is bit of a shock. Just five years ago, the position was made an Officer of the Legislature with the unanimous support of Progressive Conservatives, Liberals and NDP. The innovative plans for 21st-century learning in French at the Universite de lOntario francais are another blow, not only to Franco-Ontarians but also to our French immersion grads and the City of Toronto. It is another affront to investment in post-secondary opportunities in the GTA. And it reduces post-secondary to just a cost without the benefit analysis that a solid business employs. In 2017 the legislation was adopted with the PCs declaring their long-standing support for the French university in both official languages while also asking that the project be expanded to include more programs. The quibble was not with cost but with scope. Clearly that support was not strong enough to ward off this new assault on reasonable services for Franco-Ontarians. The legislation to do this disservice is called Taking action to put Ontarios fiscal house in order. It should be known as Making Ontario penny-wise and pound-foolish while also alienating French-Canadians coast-to-coast-to coast, causing an unnecessary language crisis, ignoring the anglophone majority in Ontario that supports official language bilingualism, and threatening Canadian unity. Mary Cruden is a volunteer member of the French as a Second Language Advisory Committee of the Toronto District School Board and a recipient of the Ontario Prix de la Francophonie. Read more about: House of Cards was a U.K. series that ran from 1990 to 1995. Twenty years later it was made bigger and, some would argue better, by Netflix. The current administration in the U.S. upped the stakes by turning House of Cards into a reality show in which we are all part of a new episode almost every day by reacting to the latest tweet or offensive speech by the president. But the U.K. has taken back the political spectacle with the Brexit train-wreck. In the U.K., the ins and outs of the Brexit negotiations, the infighting in the Conservative Party and the undermining of Theresa May have taken centre stage away from the U.S. It is a national preoccupation. When you are in a Netflix binge, you can lose track of time. It seems, however, during the Brexit binge the U.K. lost track of the country. And what is worse, it seems that is not newsworthy. Last week is a case in point. I was in the U.K. when Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on poverty and human rights from Australia, delivered a stinging assessment. He said that the U.K. government had inflicted great misery on its people and its austerity policies had been punitive, mean spirited and often callous. He added this was not because of economic necessity but because of a political desire to change society. He was concerned the U.K. was unravelling the human rights that have been the fabric of progress over the past six decades. They are in breach of four UN human rights agreements relating to women, children, disabled people and economic and social rights, according to Alston. Alston demonstrated how hard the austerity policies were hitting with U.K. child poverty rates set to reach 40 per cent, one in five adults in the U.K. living in poverty and huge cuts of 50 per cent to local council budgets. He concluded that his child poverty findings were not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and economic disaster. But this news did not lead to public outcry. It was given few column inches in most papers and little screen time on the news compared to Brexit. On the same day, the whole night of programming on the BBC was devoted to their charity extravaganza Children in Need. This raised a stunning 50 million for disadvantaged children and youth. It demonstrated the generosity of a nation. But it was devoid of any analysis of why the next generation of the fifth biggest economy in the world should have to rely on charity rather than their government. Spend time in London as a tourist and you will be amazed at the high-end stores, spectacular buildings, fabulous galleries and shows and, of course, how expensive it all is. Spend time with people who live in London day in and day out you will see the soaring homeless population, the increased use of food banks and the decaying social safety net and public services. The National Health Service I left 11 years ago is a pale shadow of its former self. With the U.K. governments 2018 tax cuts overwhelmingly benefitting the rich, poverty spiralling out of control, public services being cut and underlying currents of xenophobia and racism in the Brexit negotiations it was difficult not to feel that U.K. is entering a neo-Dickensian age. I had a visceral reaction to what I saw. Maybe the U.K.s deterioration is more shocking to outsiders like me or Alston most Brits I spoke to were strangely accepting of the U.K. as it is. Or maybe, the soap opera politics have lulled people into a Netflix binge haze. Economic development in a knowledge economy is built on human and social capital. High income counties are the envy of the world because of human rights, functional democracy, progressive taxation, education, workers rights, a good safety net, and investment in social development. These should be the focus of any government and its people. If it feels like we are developing our own version of House of Cards provincially or federally I just hope that we and the media reject it and refocus on what matters. If we start discussing personalities rather than policies and get caught in rhetoric rather than reasoned argument, if we descend to vilification rather than proving the validity of the approach then we have truly lost our focus. A good drama and reality politics may be entertaining but we do not want to sleepwalk toward decay like the U.K. Dr. Kwame McKenzie is the CEO of the Wellesley Institute. Read more about: As political tactics go, its not a bad one. Drum up fears that the social assistance program than sustains nearly 1 million Ontarians might be gutted. Do this by talking about how it costs taxpayers $10 billion a year, isnt sustainable, and doesnt encourage people to work. In short, terrify the people who can barely survive on what theyre getting now that something much worse is coming their way. Then deliver a series of changes that, at first glance anyway, arent as bad as expected, and even include the potential for improvements down the line. To be sure, Ontarios social assistance system does not work as well as it should for anybody. But where the rubber always meets the proverbial road is figuring out how to fix it. Doug Fords government unveiled its plan this week to restore dignity, independence and empowerment to those on social assistance. The biggest change is redefining disability to more closely align with federal guidelines. Lisa MacLeod, the minister of children, community and social services, says this will provide clarity. Perhaps it will. But the government isnt doing this to make paper-pushing easier. This change will make it harder for new people to qualify for the Ontario Disability Support Program. And the obvious underlying suggestion is that there are people on the program now who shouldnt be. People with severe disabilities who cant work will be treated with compassion and dignity in our new system, MacLeod promised. Those who can work will also be treated with dignity and better supported to find jobs, she went on. If you can work, or if you cant, we have a plan to help you. But part of the plan, clearly, is to move people from one group to another by ruling more injured workers or those suffering mental issues ineligible for disability support. That leaves them with no option but the Ontario Works program, which provides substantially less support. The monthly maximum for a single person on disability is $1,169 compared to just $733 on welfare. Those already on disability benefits will be grandfathered. But once the changes take effect, every person who can be ruled ineligible for disability amounts to hundreds of dollars in monthly savings to the government or in Ford-speak, efficiencies. The other major change is an increase to the earnings exemption to encourage people on social assistance to get a foothold in the workforce with part-time or occasional jobs. Its a change that countless system reviews and reports have called for. And it was one of a series of changes approved by the former Wynne Liberal government that were scheduled to take effect next month, until they were put on hold last summer. What the Ford government has come out with now is worse than what was planned. The earning exemption for someone on welfare will increase from $200 a month to $300, instead of $400 as the Liberals had planned. And those on welfare will see their benefits reduced by 75 cents for every additional dollar they earn instead of the current 50 cents. That means people will hit the point that theyre no longer eligible for welfare sooner; ultimately, that may reduce the incentive to seek more work. The governments reforms also include improving employment services that so far have not had much success in moving people on welfare into the workforce permanently. It also promises to cut red tape and have case workers focus on the individual needs of social assistance recipients rather than slotting them into the rule-bound system. MacLeod spoke of empowering people rather than policing them. Those are sorely needed changes. But the devil is in the details and MacLeod provided too few of those to know what all this will really mean. The Ford government has not earned the benefit of the doubt on this file. MacLeod called the government compassionate when it slashed a planned increase in social assistance payments, leaving people living in abject poverty. And it has a track record of saying policies will be good for the lowest income earners when they are clearly not. The best example of that is the tax credit for low-income workers, which MacLeod pointed to again on Thursday. Given how little tax the lowest income workers in this province pay now, this measure puts far less money in their pockets than they would have had if Ford hadnt cancelled a planned raise in the minimum wage to $15. The PCs also rolled back labour reforms designed to benefit workers in low-paid, precarious jobs, claiming this would help people find jobs. If the best social program is a job, as MacLeod likes to say, why is the Ford government so keen to make it even harder to get a decent entry-level job? Earlier this week, MacLeod stood in the legislature and stated emphatically how unacceptable it is that one in seven people in Ontario live in poverty. We are a wealthy province and we can be doing better, she said. Shes right about that. But its far from clear that her plans will do much to improve the situation of those on welfare. And for those on disability the days ahead look even worse. Read more about: No one wants to get a letter from the tax man questioning their tax return. But what happens after that letter arrives, it turns out, depends quite a lot on the number of zeroes in your bank account. The wealthier you are, the more lenient the Canada Revenue Agency tends to be. The latest finding of that depressing double standard comes courtesy of federal auditor general Michael Ferguson. His report released this week found that the CRA gave large businesses and taxpayers with offshore transactions more time to respond and produce documents than average Canadians. And they were more likely to waive interest and penalties for those same higher earners, sometimes doing so without even being asked. Since the Panama Papers were made public in 2016, shedding light on the tax havens of the wealthy, the Trudeau government has increased the CRAs budget by more than $1 billion so it could crack down on tax cheats who use complex offshore schemes to avoid paying their fair share of Canadian taxes. The CRA says it has recouped that extra funding 20 times over with stepped-up audits and compliance activities, but the auditors report suggests it still has a ways to go to ensure all Canadians are treated equally by the agency. Tax evasion is not a victimless crime. Indeed, the Conference Board of Canada estimated last year that the federal government is missing out on $16 billion a year of uncollected taxes and possibly as much as $47.8 billion. Ideally, everyone should want to pay their fair share of the taxes that provide the services and programs that make Canada a great place to live. But when they dont, Canadians should be able to feel confident that the revenue agency will try to run everyone to ground fairly and equally. Read more about: LONDONBritains Theresa May can huff and puff as much as she wants about the historic draft Brexit agreement worked out in recent days with the European negotiators. But a simple fact remains: Due to her ineptitude and that of her Conservative government, there is now, incredibly, a realistic possibility that Brexit aptly described a year ago by billionaire Michael Bloomberg as the single stupidest thing any country has ever done apart from the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president may soon be undone. In Britain, step-by-step, the momentum in this direction is building. For the first time since the stunning vote in 2016 51.9 per cent in favour of leaving the EU vs. 48.1 per cent who wanted to remain there is actually now a road ahead that could lead to another referendum. Of course, there is no certainty about this. The country is still bitterly divided. And even though the ruling political and business class shows every sign of being overwhelmed, the fact is that the 2016 vote still stands, at least for the time being. Read more: U.K.s May faces more criticism for post-Brexit ties text British PM hails Brexit progress, but still no breakthrough Allies threaten to pull support from May in Brexit dispute But the Brexit fever seems to be abating. To more and more Britons a clear majority, according to recent polls what appears to be on offer seems less appealing than the status quo. Not only are the harsh economic realities of Britain-outside-Europe intruding, and anti-immigrant sentiments easing, but many people are discovering that divorcing from Europe seems like a never-ending, lifetime process. (How familiar to a Canadian!) And, most significantly, that it isnt what they signed up for. But even though there may be a direct route to a second referendum visible beyond the potholes, the road ahead is still treacherous. On Nov. 14, Prime Minister May presented to her cabinet a draft Brexit agreement worked out between U.K. and EU negotiators. She claimed it lived up to the spirit of the 2016 referendum, but many in her party disagreed. On key points, it fell far short of what she promised that a Brexit Britain outside of the EU would deliver. Several cabinet ministers resigned, and there were bitter attacks from within her Conservative family. Jacob Rees-Mogg, a leading Euro-skeptic Tory MP, said the deal would make the U.K. a slave state. Boris Johnson, who earlier resigned as foreign secretary over Mays handling of the issue, warned of a vassal-state. But Tory efforts to oust May as prime minister failed, at least for now. The draft agreement is expected to be presented to leaders of the other 27 EU countries in an emergency summit scheduled for Sunday. Much of Europe loathes the prospect of losing the United Kingdom from the European Union for fear that other countries, such as Italy, could follow suit. This has shaped their approach. The strategy has been to turn the screws on U.K. negotiators, and to make it as unappealing as possible to the rest of Europe to abandon the EU. To many people not only in Britains opposition parties but also to many Conservatives they may have succeeded. It is difficult to make the case that the United Kingdom would be better off with this draft agreement than with its current membership within the EU. Worries about Brexit have rocked Britains economy. Immigration levels have dropped, making the fears of being overrun by refugees less urgent. And evidence keeps emerging that similar to the U.S. and other European elections there was tampering by Russian intelligence agencies conspiring with Britons to tilt the 2016 vote in the direction of the Leave campaign. There is also the fact that young people in particular who largely abstained during the 2016 referendum have roared back in their opposition to Brexit. The headline from last years British election, which narrowly elected Mays Tories as a minority government, was the overwhelming opposition of young people toward the Conservatives as a form of buyers remorse after ignoring the Brexit referendum. Assuming the draft agreement is approved by other EU leaders, the challenge for the prime minister will be to get approval from the House of Commons sometime in December. That is regarded as unlikely. May presides over a minority government, and she is certain to be opposed by several MPs in the Tory caucus. The opposition parties, led by Jeremy Corbyns Labour, have said they will vote against the agreement. An irony here is that Corbyn himself a fierce critic of the EU for all of his life is still trying to straddle a confused middle ground without revealing what, in the end, Labour will do apart from voting against the agreement. If the Brexit agreement is voted down by parliament, the prime minister will have to make a choice. Will she insist that the government goes ahead with Brexit without any deal with the EU? She claims that she will not do that, since most economists predict catastrophe for Britain in that scenario. Will she resign as Tory leader and prime minister? Given her dogged stubbornness to see this agreement through, that seems unlikely. Will she regard a parliamentary vote against the agreement as a vote of non-confidence in her government, and call for a new election? Also unlikely, since polls suggest the Tories would lose. That leaves this tantalizing possibility: That she would describe this agreement as the best for Britain, and call for another referendum that puts it to the people to choose between this vision of a post-Brexit Britain versus the status quo within the European Union. If that happens, May would have every reason to worry because recent polling suggests that voters are becoming less enamoured with the notion of leaving the EU. That was evident a few weeks ago when an estimated 700,000 from all over the U.K. marched peacefully on parliament to demand a second referendum. They called for a peoples vote in the biggest protest against government policy in the U.K. since the Iraq War in 2003. A recent poll by Britains Channel 4 indicated that 54 per cent of U.K. voters would vote to remain in the EU. It was described as the largest independent poll in the U.K. since the 2016 referendum. Mays draft agreement received a low level of support, even among those who voted to leave in 2016. There appears to be a growing number of people who, however reluctantly, are concluding that the terms of exiting the EU now appear less attractive than the status quo. If this trend holds, it would be a potentially mortal threat to the Leave forces in any second referendum. For the European Union itself, it would be like dodging a bullet. It is not hard to imagine that the rest of Europe would work overtime to suggest that, if the U.K. remained within the EU, it would receive concessions on some of the major issues that led to the 2016 vote. This issue is coming to a head at a crucial time in Europe. Within the U.K. itself, it is seen as a pivotal moment in the countrys history. By withdrawing from Europe, the future points Britain in the direction of a Little England that would likely result in less government, less regulation and more doctrinaire conservative policies. But inside of the EU, the United Kingdom would be aligned with the broader, social democratic ideals of todays Europe, however flawed. As for Europe itself, the struggle is to contain the growing populist and nationalist forces that seem on the ascendancy. With a strong Britain within the EU, that battle seems winnable. Without Britain, it is less so. In that sense, this latest battle over Brexit is a global concern that has meaning well beyond Britains borders. BREXIT: A timeline Nov. 14: Prime Minister Theresa May presented a draft Brexit deal to her cabinet. It fell short of what she had promised, triggering several cabinet resignations. But efforts by Euro-skeptic Tory MPs to oust her failed, at least initially. Nov. 25: Leaders of 27 European nations are expected at a special Brexit summit to formally ratify the deal. It needs to be backed by a supermajority of leaders. December: After five days of scheduled debate, the agreement would be put to the House of Commons for approval. Its passage is doubtful, since the Conservative Party lacks a majority and it will be opposed by the opposition Labour party. Many Tory MPs may oppose it as well. If it is defeated, May could proceed with a hard Brexit one with no deal with the European Union but that is regarded as potentially catastrophic to the U.K. economy. Or May could resign, forcing a Conservative leadership contest or a general election, but the Tories would likely lose any election. An alternative scenario is a second referendum on whether U.K. voters want the current agreement on offer or to remain in the European Union. January-February, 2019: If some form of agreement is passed by the Commons, it would have to enact the necessary legislation. March 29: The historic Brexit Day when Britains exit from the EU would be declared. If a second referendum is planned, the EU would be required to extend the March 29 deadline, but this would be a formality. April and beyond: If Brexit is proceeding, a 21-month transition period would begin so that trade relations can be negotiated. Many aspects of U.K. membership in the EU would remain in place, including free movement across borders, but Britain would no longer have an EU vote. Dec. 31, 2020: The transition period is scheduled to end. But it is expected this period would need to be extended, perhaps for several years. Tony Burman , formerly head of CBC News and Al Jazeera English, is a freelance contributor for the Star. He is based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyBurman Read more about: OTTAWA MPs across party lines are raising alarms about Interpols credibility and integrity after the head of the international policing organization disappeared in China and a Russian general was nearly elected this week to replace him in the top job. Liberal MP John McKay, chair of the Commons public safety committee which called a special meeting Thursday to probe MPs concerns, said the fact that a veteran of Russias interior ministry, Alexander Prokopchuk, won the votes of more than 60 of Interpols member countries to replace the Interpol president who disappeared in China, is worrying. I think you have to be alert to the political machinations of two states that do not share basic democratic values, McKay said in an interview with the Star. Interpol was kind of conceived as an organization that would be a mutually co-operative organization in tracking down international criminals, and its being turned into a political witch hunt organization that tracks down political, religious, military dissidents. The public safety committee heard testimony Thursday from Bill Browder, the London-based financier and target of Russian anger, who is now pushing for Interpol to suspend Russias membership over its serial abuse of Interpol warrants against critics. Browder spearheaded an international move to enact laws that could sanction Vladimir Putin and others for human rights violations after Sergei Magnitsky, Browders lawyer and business partner, was beaten to death in a Russian jail. He had exposed a $230 million tax rebate fraud within Russia. Browder, who was the driving force behind Canadas Magnitsky Act, said Russia has seven times asked Interpol to issue various notices to arrest him, the latest just this week as the European Union began to consider its own EU Magnitsky Act. He said there are hundreds if not thousands of other human rights activists, lawyers and politicians who are being chased down and do not have his legal and financial resources to fight back against Russia. However, the RCMP insists Interpol is still a valuable partner in tracking cross-border criminals. The Mounties pointed to the election Wednesday of a senior RCMP deputy commissioner, Gilles Michaud, to the Interpols nine-member executive as an encouraging sign Canadian values will be promoted at the top. Michaud, en route back to Canada, told the Star he looked forward to bringing member countries of Interpol working closer together in fighting crime globally. Much work is required to address the gaps in capabilities and capacities that exist amongst member countries. These gaps have a direct impact on the safety of Canadians at home and abroad, Michaud said in a written response to the Star. He declined to comment on concerns raised by MPs and witnesses at the committee about Russias interference, other than to suggest checks and balances are built into Interpols systems. It is the executive committee which provides the direction to the secretary general who oversees day to day operations, not the president alone. There are rules and regulations in place that drive the decision making, Michaud said. The committee also heard from Marcus Kolga, and Garry Kasparov, the chess grandmaster and Putin critic, who said via video conference that Russia and China are taking advantage of the Wests desire to engage with dictators in the hope of advancing liberal reforms that are doomed to failure. He warned of the danger of countries like Russia having so much influence in international bodies like Interpol. Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj called Russia a gangster state. Conservative MP Glen Motz said Russias use of red notices are a blatant obvious political interference and questioned Interpols ability to stop member states from using using a policing purpose to advance their own political agendas. Does that not call the integrity and credibility of Interpol into question? Motz asked RCMP chief superintendent Scott Doran. Doran, like Michaud, suggested while there will always be parties who try to skirt the rules, Interpols constitution, rules, and executive representatives of all the geopolitical realities around the globe are strong enough to ensure the integrity of Interpol. On Wednesday, the 194 countries who voted for Interpols new president elected a South Korean, Kim Jong Yang, to complete the mandate of Chinas Men Hongwei. Men has not been seen since he returned to China in September and was arrested on unspecified allegations of corruption. His reportedly unsigned letter of resignation was sent to Interpol in October. At the hearing Thursday, Liberal MP Ruby Sahota asked a senior RCMP official what is happening? How can the head of Interpol go to China, be detained without any warning, not be allowed to communicate with his family, and then his letter apparently of resignation is sent and basically the world is remaining quiet and we havent heard much from Canada or the RCMP? Doran, director general of the RCMPs Intelligence and International Policing Branch, told MPs, I dont think it would be appropriate for me to talk about a Chinese investigation into one of their own police officers. I can say that the person was detained, was arrested in China, and really thats a Chinese national issue to deal with, notwithstanding the person was the president for Interpol if they deemed criminal or other malfeasance occurred, its for them to deal with. Canada sent Michaud and RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki to Interpols meeting this week in Dubai, with Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland telling reporters Ottawa was watching very closely what is happening with Interpol. Canada of course is very aware of the ways in which Russia as a country has acted in clear and flagrant violation of international law, whether it is the invasion and annexation of Crimea or the attacks in Salisbury, she said. It is always going to be Canada and not the Kremlin who decides who comes into our Canada, said Freeland, who herself has been declared persona non grata by the Russians. Read more about: OTTAWAFinance Minister Bill Morneau is defending his governments big tax breaks to corporate Canada, saying that Ottawa had to act or risk losing business investment to the U.S. Confronting criticism that Wednesdays economic update was too focussed on business priorities, Morneau said that ensuring Canada remains competitive in the face of big corporate tax cuts south of the border is critical to the countrys economy and job creation. But he said that the Liberal government is mindful that it has more work to do to address the needs of low-income and middle-class Canadians. We know there is always more to do in that regard, but we cant forget that, for a significant number of people, weve got to find the right jobs for the future, Morneau told the Star. The federal Liberals used this weeks economic update to deliver tax changes to allow companies that invest in manufacturing and clean energy to write off their spending on new equipment right away. Other businesses will be able to write off more quickly a greater portion, but not the full amount, of their capital spending. Those measures, which won praise from business groups, tally $14.4 billion. Other initiatives, such as regulatory reforms and a strategic innovation fund, to help companies find new markets, bring the total cost of business-focused initiatives to $16.5 billion. Read more: Ottawa unveils $14B in tax savings for businesses Fiscal update to lay out competitiveness plan, close loop on some Liberal vows Editorial | Why is the Ford government afraid of independent oversight? Morneau says that Ottawa had to act in some way to ease the tax burden on Canadian corporations because of Washingtons sharp cuts to corporate taxes, which had eliminated Canadas tax advantage. The cost of not acting would be losing businesses that were already here and making Canada less attractive to foreign investors, he said, during an interview in his office in the Finance Department building. We recognized that as our reality, so we wanted to make sure that that next investment can be made in Canada, Morneau said. Not only are we assuring that investment, but we are assuring the newest technology will be here in Canada, which means the more exciting jobs, he said. Morneau, who is scheduled to talk to a Toronto audience Friday about the update, said that based on very positive feedback from corporate leaders, hes confident that businesses will take advantage of the measures to make job-creating investments. Were making a decision for the long-term health of our economy and the exciting jobs of tomorrow. We need to do that at the same time as we think about how we assure that people who are really challenged are helped out along the way, he said. Morneau, who has served as Justin Trudeaus only finance minister, has one budget left before the next election in October, 2019. Looking ahead, Morneau said that income equality, skills training to meet the changing economy and helping the less fortunate will be priorities for the final months in office. Morneau said the measures taken so far by the government notably the child benefit, the Canada Workers Benefit and increases to the guaranteed income supplement will lift 652,000 people out of poverty. Thats an enormous impact, he said. We dont think our job is done at all. We think we have to be continually focusing on how we ensure that middle class Canadians have optimism about the future and we need to continually be focusing on how people who are the most challenged in our society move into a better situation, he said. NDP MP Peter Julian (New Westminster-Burnaby) said the priorities laid out in the economic update were completely inappropriate and would do little to help the pocketbooks of everyday Canadians, many of whom are struggling with record levels of household debt. The announcements of massive corporate write-offs is unbelievable. It just shows how out of touch this government is, given the size and scope of what Canadians are struggling through, said Julian, the partys finance critic. He said the government should have moved on other initiatives, such as accelerating investments in affordable housing. They are not doing the things that they need to do to support Canadians, Julian said in an interview. On Parliament Hill Thursday, Conservative MPs Pierre Poilievre and Michelle Rempel criticized Liberal plans, laid out in the economic update, to help Canadian media outlets to the tune of $595 million over five years. The measures, which include a tax break for subscribers of digital news and tax credits to news organizations for a portion of their labour costs, are meant to assist media outlets left struggling by the downturn in ad revenues. The government said it will let an independent panel drawn from the journalism industry define eligibility for some of the measures. But Poilievre and Rempel condemned the move, saying the government shouldnt be underwriting media organizations. A lot of the mainstream media outlets are not profitable. Theyre not thriving and is it the role of taxpayers to bail them out? Rempel said. Morneau said that some details of the aid have to be confirmed in the budget, but he wanted to get the ball rolling on establishing the independent panel. We see it as critically important that we have confidence in the independence, he said. In his update, Morneau laid out a rosy economic picture with unemployment at a 40-year low, rising wages and corporate profits and continued growth. That has helped boost government revenues, but the new spending means that a return to balanced books remains out of reach for the foreseeable future. In fact, Ottawa is now projecting higher deficit spending about $5 billion more over the next five years than it did in its February budget. But Morneau says that even with the measures in the update, the debt-to-GDP ratio continues to decline and that Canadas debt position is more favourable than other G7 countries. The one storm cloud is the sharp drop in oil prices which hurts not just Alberta, but Ottawas bottom line, too. Morneau concedes there is no easy fix to depressed oil prices in Alberta, as there are roadblocks to getting oil to markets other than the U.S. The federal government took the unusual step earlier this year of buying the Trans-Mountain pipeline in hopes of speeding construction of a second pipeline along the route, a project held up as further consultations take place. This is an enormous challenge. Its a long-term challenge, Morneau said. We dont have any magic solutions. We think the biggest single thing we can do is stay focused on what were trying to achieve, he said. VANCOUVERNew reports indicate that a former University of British Columbia student and womens rights activist who was detained in Saudi Arabia could be undergoing torture and harassment while imprisoned. Loujain Al-Hathloul, known for her outspoken criticism of the Saudi ban on women driving, was arrested by the Saudi Arabian government alongside several other womens rights activists in the spring of 2018 when she was in the country. Now, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both report that the group of women are undergoing torture and harassment in custody. According to Human Rights Watch, informed sources have reported that at least three of the women have undergone electric shocks, whipping and forcible hugging and kissing. Another report from Amnesty International alleges they were repeatedly tortured by electrocution and flogging, leaving some unable to walk or stand properly and subjected to sexual harassment. The reports found that Al-Hathloul was being held in the Dhahban Prison alongside six other activists, including Samar Badawi, sister of imprisoned blogger Raif Bawai. We are very alarmed and concerned about having to report this, said Jackie Hansen, womens rights campaigner for Amnesty International Canada. None of the women have been charged, so we dont know what happens next. Read more: She is in danger: Lawyers, activists call for action to free Loujain al-Hathloul Hansen said the detainment of the women without charges and subsequent torture are in contravention of international law, such as the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The reports of torture follow the CIAs conclusion that the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi earlier this year. Hansen said that continued violence on behalf of the Saudi Arabian regime is an indication that Canada should end its policy centred on human rights. While a spokesperson for Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland reported that the minister brought the issue of human-rights violations to the attention of Saudi officials, the federal government has not made any moves to end the contract. Former classmates and friends of Al-Hathloul in Vancouver have been impacted by the news and inspired to take action. Atiya Jaffar, who attended UBC with Al-Hathloul, said that reading the reports has been extremely difficult. We were friends and we were part of some cultural clubs together and we participated in events together, Jaffar said. Its really hard ... its difficult to read and very upsetting. Jaffar is part of a group of people known as Friends of Loujain who have planned to come up with ways they can raise awareness and push Canada to end the arms deal. We are really interested in pointing to the hypocrisy that Canada is complicit ... and has a hand in this because of the arms deals, she said. That is incredibly important. Jaffar said that while she had found it hard to stay hopeful she has drawn inspiration from her friend to continue working for her release. We know Loujain is not one to back down in the face in injustice, Jaffar said. We are inspired by her courage and activism. Read more about: VANCOUVERMore than one in five babies born in Metro Vancouvers Richmond Hospital could be so-called anchor babies children born to non-residents in order to gain Canadian citizenship according to a new study. The study, authored by the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) and published Thursday in Policy Options magazine, suggests 21.9 per cent of the children delivered in Richmond Hospital are born to non-resident mothers more than double the percentage born in any other Canadian hospital. The IRPP study also shows the number of such children born in Canada is far higher than previously estimated. While a Statistics Canada report found roughly 312 babies are born in the country each year to mothers whose place of residence is officially listed as outside of Canada, IRPPs study put that number at closer to 1,500 or 2,000 children annually. The data shows the number of births to non-resident mothers including all provinces but Quebec, which refused to release the data skyrocketed to 3,628 last year from just 1,354 in 2010. The issue of birth tourism when pregnant women fly to Canada to give birth is divisive because children born under such circumstances are automatically granted Canadian citizenship. They therefore enjoy all the attendant rights and privileges, such as access to domestic university fees as well as subsidized education and health care, even though their parents arent taxpayers and the children themselves will not necessarily be raised in Canada. Joe Peschisolido, Liberal MP for Steveston-Richmond East, believes the revelation provided by the study has some troubling implications. Read more: Number of women coming to Canada to give birth far greater than previously estimated, study shows Even though I believe the (birth tourism) epicentre is in Richmond and at the hospital in Richmond I think youre starting to see birth tourism as an institution, Peschisolido told StarMetro in a Thursday phone interview. There are individuals that are profiting from this. And I think thats the most heinous thing. Youre getting individuals that are abusing the immigration and citizenship system and are profiting off of an illegitimate and the government has said unethical system. A Thursday statement from Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) confirmed the numbers in the IRPP study, though slightly more children were actually born to non-resident mothers in Richmond Hospital than the IRPP study accounted for. While the IRPP study showed 469 non-resident births occurred in Richmond Hospital in 2017-18, VCHs figures show 474 children were born to 469 resident mothers. The disparity, the statement explained, comes from the number of twins born in that time period. And while the number of babies born to non-resident mothers has been increasing over the past several years from 15.4 per cent of the total in 2014-15 to 22.1 per cent of the total in 2017-18 the total number of babies born to all mothers decreased slightly this year, according to VCH. The health authority also noted that non-residents are required to pay all hospital and medical-care costs for the mother and baby, including a prepayment deposit of $8,200 for a vaginal birth and $13,300 for a caesarean birth. In March, Peschisolido sponsored a petition spearheaded by Richmond resident Kerry Starchuk calling on the federal government to condemn the abusive and exploitative practice of birth tourism. Birth tourism, the petition said, fundamentally debases the value of Canadian citizenship; costs taxpayers money, since children of non-residents have access to services such as health care and subsidized education; and displaces residents from local hospital beds. On Monday, the federal government tabled its response to Peschisolidos petition, saying Canada does not currently collect information on whether a woman is pregnant when she enters Canada. A person is not inadmissible nor can they be denied a visa solely on the grounds that they are pregnant or that they may give birth in Canada, the response reads. And while misrepresenting the purpose of a visit to Canada to a federal officer carries significant consequences, the statement points out citizenship acquired through birth on Canadian soil has been policy since 1947. Ottawas response, however, refers back to 2016 data from Statistics Canada, saying only about 300 of the 385,000 children born in Canada each year are born to non-resident mothers. This constitutes less than 0.1 per cent of the total number of births in Canada, the response says, adding these numbers show the practice is not widespread but that the government has nevertheless commissioned research from the Canadian Institute for Health Information to look into the issue. It also committed to developing measures to address the institutes findings. Peschisolido said he was satisfied with the response. He said he hopes to participate in the review process once more granular data has been collected and responsible decisions can be made about the extent of birth tourism and what can be done to stop it. But Will Tao, a Vancouver immigration lawyer, said he worries that focusing purely on statistics risks unnecessarily casting aspersions on all non-resident mothers. I dont think (birth tourism) is the problem itself, so much as a symptom of the problem, Tao told StarMetro. I think the real problem is the unregulated nature of immigration advice. There are most certainly practitioners abroad who advise mothers to come to Canada to give birth as a kind of backdoor to citizenship, he said. And the federal government could do a better job providing a narrative much in the way it has for individuals seeking refugee status that would discourage abuses of the birthright policy, he said. But there are countless non-residents who have children while in Canada for many other reasons. Those people, he said, should not be painted with the same brush as those who wilfully exploit the path to Canadian citizenship. The IRPP study reflects that concern, noting its figures are not exact because they dont express how many children were delivered by mothers with temporary status in Canada a bracket that includes Canadian expatriates returning to give birth, corporate transferees and international students. But researcher Andrew Griffith told The Star that a conservative estimate would suggest roughly 40 or 50 per cent of the non-resident mothers were birth tourists. The study mined the Canadian Institute for Health Information discharge database, and according to Griffith, the IRPPs figures based on hospital financial data that codes services provided to non-residents under other country resident self-pay more accurately reflect the number of non-resident births in Canada. The IRPP study offered several options to address the problem of birth tourism, including: Amending immigration laws to make it an offence if a woman fails to disclose the delivery of a child as the purpose of a visit to Canada and make that childs citizenship fraudulent due to its procurement through misrepresentation Adopting a qualified birthright approach by which a child is granted citizenship only when at least one parent is either a Canadian citizen or permanent resident and the child resides in Canada for at least 10 years after birth Tao, the immigration lawyer, said he understood why people are shocked by how far above the national average the number of children born to non-resident mothers in Richmond Hospital are. But through his interactions with clients, he said, he has encountered many families who could technically be called birth tourists, were that definition applied loosely enough. He said he was concerned that forthcoming regulations could encompass non-resident families or individuals whose children were born in Canada for legitimate reasons. Tao also suggested a policy requiring immigration officials to question the motives of pregnant women as a matter of course could be a very slippery slope into prejudice and background checking of other types. Griffiths, the researcher, agreed that birth tourism at the national level, currently accounting for roughly 0.5 per cent of the total annual live births in Canada according to the IRPP, is not a huge problem but suggested it should be monitored closely. Using this as a starting point, if we see any further increase or a trend line, then we need to take another fresh look at it, he said. But Peschisolido said that in a city like Richmond, where birth tourism appears to be a far more pervasive trend, every level of government has a responsibility to investigate how it can be slowed or stopped and what, exactly, may be driving it. It looks as if you appreciate our journalism. Our reporting changes lives, connects communities and effects change. But good journalism is expensive to produce, and advertiser revenue throughout the media industry is falling and unable to carry the cost. That means we need you, our readers. We need your help. If you appreciate deep local reporting, powerful investigations and reliable, responsible information, we hope you will support us through a subscription. Please click here to subscribe. With files from Nicholas Keung Read more about: Flash Saudi Arabia has warned criticism of its Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a "red line", after U.S. President Donald Trump praised the kingdom in defiance of concerns that he was giving Riyadh a pass on a writer's murder. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Wednesday that calls for the crown prince to be held accountable for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi would not be tolerated. His comments came as the U.S. president praised Saudi Arabia for keeping oil prices low - one strand of his argument against punishing Riyadh even though the CIA reportedly found strong evidence that the crown prince was involved in the murder. "In Saudi Arabia our leadership is a red line. The custodian of the two holy mosques (King Salman) and the crown prince are a red line," Jubeir told the BBC. "They represent every Saudi citizen and every Saudi citizen represents them. And we will not tolerate any discussion of anything that is disparaging toward our monarch or our crown prince." Khashoggi, a U.S. resident who wrote for The Washington Post and had been critical of Riyadh, was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, killed and reportedly dismembered. After lengthy denials, Saudi authorities admitted responsibility and said 21 people had been taken into custody. However, a CIA analysis leaked to the U.S. media went further, reportedly pointing the finger at the crown prince. But Trump, on holiday at his Florida Mar-a-Lago Club on Wednesday, doubled down on a statement from Tuesday that he was essentially ignoring the killing of Khashoggi because of what he said were more important U.S. strategic and commercial interests. "Oil prices getting lower. Great! Like a big Tax Cut for America and the World. Enjoy! $54, was just $82," he tweeted. "Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let's go lower!" Jubeir insisted that the crown prince had not been involved in the killing. "We have made that very clear. We have investigations ongoing and we will punish the individuals who are responsible for this," he said. He called on Turkey to come forward with all its evidence about the slaying and stop leaking information. The foreign minister said the murder was a "rogue operation" by intelligence officers. Jubeir also said any possible US sanctions on Saudi Arabia would be short-sighted. Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may meet with Saudi crown prince during a visit to Argentina for the G20 summit, his spokesman said on Thursday. VANCOUVERLaird Cronk is having a busy week. On top of his day job at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), hes gearing up for an election one thats almost certain to put him at the helm of the labour movement and make him the loudest voice in the ear of the provincial government. The election for president of the B.C. Federation of Labour was all but decided weeks ago, behind closed doors, by the provinces 15 most powerful union leaders. The move sends a message to the B.C. NDP that the often-divided labour movement is standing together to see the government follow through on major reforms affecting workers, from paid leaves and job-security measures to rules aimed at increasing union membership. Heres what puts a fire in my belly, Cronk said in an interview this week. Its really encouraging to see, where weve had traditional disagreements, by and large the affiliates have said we want to work together for the betterment of our memberships. Cronk, an electrician-turned-labour-activist, usually works out of his basement in Burnaby organizing for IBEW, a member of the Building Trades. Builders are currently at the centre of the provinces most attention-grabbing decisions relating to unions: the approval of Kitimats LNG Canada project, the Site C Dam and, closer to home for Cronk, the replacement of the Pattullo Bridge under a new Community Benefits Agreement model, which stands to serve the Building Trades many more union members. With such high-stakes projects on the front burner, the labour movement has enlisted Cronk to be a different kind of bridge builder. The election will officially be decided at the federations biennial convention next week. Any of the 2,000 delegates in attendance can throw their name in the ring ahead of next Thursdays vote, but Cronk is expected to get endorsements from all 15 of the biggest players, which together account for the vast majority of delegates. Its a big job, at a crucial moment for both the labour movement and the government. The federation and its affiliated unions played an instrumental role getting NDP MLAs elected across the province in 2016. Now they have big asks aimed at reversing 16 years of policies crafted by the labour-unfriendly BC Liberals and overhauling the outdated Labour Code and Employment Standards Act. The NDP, whose thin hold on power depends on the co-operation of Andrew Weavers Green party, need all the support they can get. Multiple officers of the federations executive committee, as well as Cronk and his running-mate Sussanne Skidmore of the British Columbia Government and Service Employees Union, confirmed conversations took place behind closed doors to come to a consensus on who should replace current federation president Irene Lanzinger. They all said the closed-door process wasnt driven by secrecy but by a desire to avoid divisiveness that has sometimes seeped into union politics in B.C. That meant a change of tone for some large unions, including CUPE B.C., the public-sector union with more members in its locals than any other union in the province. Though the 2016 B.C. Federation of Labour convention saw wide support for incumbent president Lanzinger, the 2012 and 2014 conventions were hotly contested, with CUPE locals forming a large part of the opposition. CUPE B.C.s president described the shift in perspective as not wanting to let a golden opportunity slide. Before the current government, which were obviously very supportive of, the BC Liberals devastated the labour movement, said Paul Faoro, president of CUPE B.C. The Horgan government has shown an opportunity to work together, and I see this as an opportunity to really get stuff done. In Faoros view, getting into a fight on the convention floor could detract from the opportunity for collaboration at hand. In 2012, IBEW executive Michelle Laurie challenged then-incumbent Jim Sinclair for the top job, making the case to delegates that the federation wasnt taking enough of a political stance. In 2014, Amber Hockin challenged Lanzinger for the top job with the support of CUPE. At that time, Lanzinger had the support of Sinclair and was seen as the big tent candidate compared to Hockins more activist pitch. Hockin lost by 57 votes (2,000 delegates attended) and went on to became deputy chief of staff to Premier John Horgan earlier this year. Cronk and Skidmore will still have to contend with disagreements within the labour movement but Cronk has already indicated the federation under his leadership would veer away from pushing agendas that would alienate some of its members. The classic example of a dividing line within the B.C. labour movment is the environment. The movement includes some of the staunchest oponents to energy projects in the province, whod like to see the federation denounce Site C and the LNG Canada project in Kitimat. But it also includes people whose livelihoods depend on such projects. So the role of the federation has typically been to stay out of the debate around whether or not these projects should go forward, while advocating for the use of union workers whenever they do. The NDP governments decisions in its first two years in power have fallen in line with this view. It approved both Site C and LNG Canada, and on top of that committed to implementing Community Benefits Agreements for public-sector infrastructure projects. For now, Cronk is looking to deliver on the key issues that unite B.C.s unions. It is a significant moment in the labour movement right now, he said. The unity between the affiliates thats significant, its humbling. I got to tell you, its a humbling obligation, and I take it very seriously. THREE BIG ASKS B.C. labour leaders tend to disagree on some provincial decisions, like whether the government should approve energy projects. In presenting a united front at this years convention, theyre agreeing to focus on the asks that have broad support among all workers, from teachers to welders. Here are the big ones: Making it easier for unions to unionize Labour leaders want a larger proportion of the workforce to belong to a union. They have internal recruitment strategies to make that happen, but they also want the government to remove barriers to unionization in the Labour Code especially the two-stage certification process. Better employment standards for all workers The Employment Standards Act, which governs rules employers must follow like minimum wage, scheduling notice and paid leaves, hasnt been updated in more than two decades. Labour leaders are adamant it needs to be updated to reflect the reality of the gig economy and increasingly precarious work. More rigorous safety protections B.C.s work-related death toll, according to WorkSafe B.C., was 158 last year. Labour leaders think the consequences for workplace safety violations should be much harsher than they currently are to stop workplace deaths and injuries altogether. Read more about: COTTAGE HILLS As volunteers waited in the halls of Community Hope Center in Cottage Hills, another group of volunteers waited in the kitchen and cafeteria to begin what would be, for about 270 people this year, their Thanksgiving dinner. The center has been delivering meals to shut-ins, the elderly, and local first responders as part of a long-standing tradition, Assistant Executive Director Denise Ukena said Thursday morning before things got going. She said those receiving meals range from the elderly who may not have family, or be separated from family, to people with health problems that make it difficult for them to go out on Thanksgiving. Preparations took much of the morning, with the food actually arriving shortly after 10 a.m. Barb Kyro, of Mothers Catering in Wood River, has prepared the food for the past five years. This year she said 18 turkeys were cooked. Kyro also noted that the organization gets easier every year, but its still a lot of hard work and takes several months of preparation. Once the food arrived everything was placed in trays with volunteer servers, many of them members of the Greater Alton Junior League, behind them. Another group of volunteers used to-go containers and repeatedly got in line to fill the containers with green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, dressing, turkey and ham, then sent the meals to other volunteers for bagging and final preparation. Then the drivers would load up and be on their way. Ukena said the Thanksgiving dinner program is very helpful, because people can take a few hours to help, then decide they like it and come back in many cases after they retire. The center has a number of Christmas programs coming up and is still looking for volunteers. For information call 618-259-0959 or visit www.communityhopecenteril.org. Reach reporter Scott Cousins at 618-208-6447. ALTON While still controversial for some people, others took advantage of open stores on Thursday to get a head start on the traditional Christmas shopping season. According to the National Retail Federation, an estimated 34 million people were planning to shop Thanksgiving Day, often referred to as Gray Thursday, and many of the big box retailers remained open or had special hours to accommodate them. At the Alton Target, customers started lining up at about 2 p.m. for the 5 p.m. opening, according to Store Team Leader Kenya Davis. Doors open, hopefully theyll be able to find what theyre looking for, she said. The big item everybody is wanting is that ticketed TV. We have the big TV super cheap. She said everything was very calm. The guests are all happy and they can get what they want, she said. Its a beautiful day, thank goodness, they can just hang out and get what they want. While they started lining up at about 2 p.m., some had been there a lot longer than that. Roosevelt Robinson, of Alton, was second in line, but had been sitting in his vehicle since about 6:30 a.m. I wanted a TV, he said. I remodeled my bedroom, so its time to put a big TV on the wall. Despite a limited number of the bargain televisions, Robinson said he felt confident he would get one. Im second in line, he said. He added that it was also fun sitting and talking with people. Its fun to sit out and meet new people and have conversations, he said. He and several others in the front of the line had chairs. Its a good group of people to sit around and have a conversation with, and get our TVs, Robinson added. At Kohls, Melessa Herzberg was first in line. She had been there since about 3:30 p.m. and wanted one item, a PS4, and was not planning on shopping for anything else. Shortly before the doors opened, the store manager and several employees came out and gave out line tickets for the door-buster items, including the PS4. Once the doors opened at 5 p.m., customers streamed in and started searching and shopping. Not everybody was just there Christmas shopping. Barbara Loy, of Alton, was picking up a number of pillows that were on sale. My mom is coming home from the hospital, so shell need some extra pillows, she said, adding she might do a little Christmas shopping too. Its just the fun of it, the hustle and bustle, Loy added, saying she plans to look for some bargains in clothing. At times it was hectic, and that was causing an issue for Donna Robinson, of Alton. She was there with some of her children and grandchildren, but everybody was calling for mom and she kept thinking it was them. Id be standing there, everybody says mom or grandma, and I turn around and theyve got me, she said, laughing it off. She came out for the excitement and challenge. Ive got my Christmas bought already, she said. But if I see something for the kids Ill grab it. Trezel Brown, of Alton, was looking at and buying several items. I actually came out to pick up a camera for my granddaughter, but I was looking at an air fryer, she said. I have a good friend that works here. I actually came here to look at a bedspread, but saw the camera in an ad. The shopping frenzy will continue with the traditional Black Friday, so-named because thats when many retailers finally start to show a profit for the year. It will continue with Small Business Saturday. Alton, Grafton, Wood River, Bethalto, East Alton and Godfrey are coordinating efforts through the RiverBend Growth Association to promote Small Business Saturday. Small businesses employ approximately 47.5 percent of the current workforce in the United States, according to information provided by the Association. Ninety percent of consumers say Small Business Saturday has had a positive impact on their community, with sales growing at a rate of about 10.8 percent. In conjunction with Small Business Saturday, Alton Main Street is again sponsoring the Green Gifts Bazaar from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Alton YWCA, 304 E. Third St., Alton. The shopping weekend traditionally ends with Cyber Monday. Overall, the NRF predicts holiday spending will be up 4.1 percent from last year, to $1,007.24 per person from $967.13 last year. Consumers are ready to shop, NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said. Confidence is near an all-time high, unemployment is the lowest weve seen in decades and take-home wages are up. All of that is reflected in consumers buying plans. Retailers expect strong demand this year, and are prepared with a wide array of merchandise while offering strong deals and promotions during the busiest and most competitive shopping season of the year. Reach reporter Scott Cousins at 618-208-6447. EDWARDSVILLE Santa finds himself in court this year when the Edwardsville High School Drama Club presents Parkers No Present Problem at 2 p.m. on Dec. 8 in the EHS auditorium. The high schools annual Christmas show is unique in that each year it is written, produced, directed and performed entirely by the EHS drama students. EHS Drama Director Ashley Melton, who is in her second year leading the program, explained that the Christmas show is a long-time tradition at EHS. I think that weve concluded that its been going on about 25 years, she said. The students write the show, they direct it, they do all the producing, the lights, the sets. So the kids get a big taste of what adult leaders do for the main stage production. The EHS students perform the Christmas show for elementary school kids throughout the district. We perform for kindergarten through fourth-grade students Dec. 6 and Dec. 7 and then our public performance will be on Dec. 8 at 2 p.m., Melton explained.The Christmas show quickly follows the fall play which the EHS Drama Club just performed Nov. 9 and Nov. 10. So its about a three-week turnaround which is early and fast, but its about in that amount of space every single year. What we do is we hold auditions for the Christmas show about a couple weeks after we start the fall show. So while the fall show, the main stage production as weve been calling it, is rehearsing every day, the Christmas show meets one day a week to rehearse. So, they have been meeting one day a week since school has started. We have two shows going at once essentially, she said. We took two-and-a-half weeks on pause so we could focus on the fall show and then as soon as the fall show is over we jump right back into the Christmas show full force. The EHS Christmas show typically follows a formula each year, where the play opens at the North Pole and a child is whisked away on an adventure. But this year I think we have a different approach to that formula which is that a kiddo on Christmas morning opens his gift and it is empty, Melton explained. He gets his parents involved and they are taking Santa to court. Essentially, its this lawsuit case thats really clever and funny. So the adults get a good taste of some humor and the kids, of course, get to see their favorite characters. Theres always a reindeer and Santa Claus and theres a snowman this year so lots of characters that they recognize. EHS seniors Leta DeBardeleben and Baileigh Duvall wrote this years play and are serving as co-directors. DeBardeleben reminisced about going to the EHS Christmas play as a young girl. I just remember as a kid that it was my favorite part of the year, she said. I was so excited to go every single year. It was one of the biggest reasons I actually joined the EHS program here along with a show I saw in fourth grade that Baileigh actually brought me to. We came and saw Starmites in fourth grade. It was a big reason why I wanted to be apart of the club so bad. DeBardeleben stressed that being able to write the Christmas play was a huge honor. It was so great being a part of it last year because I acted in it last year and my brother got to come and see it last year. Its just really cool being with all the kids and seeing the expression on their face when we do chase scenes and things like that or when they understand a joke and they all start laughing. Its just a really cool experience. DeBardeleben enjoys theater performance so much that she is considering possibly pursuing a minor in theater when she attends SIUE next year. I actually just went to see their (SIUE) performance of Chicago this past week and it was phenomenal. It just really made me want to continue doing it because Ive been kind of skeptical on whether I wanted to follow it or not, she noted. But I think I do want to minor in it because there are so many benefits that come out of theater programs. Its such a great experience being able to put on shows for people. Even if youre not necessarily in it but if youre apart of it, its a great thing to be a part of. River Johnson, a junior, is serving as the student technical director for the Christmas play. Im working really closely with Leta and Baleigh helping them design a set for the show, and then Im also going to be helping with lighting and sound during the show. Ill just be with them creating and turning it into their actual vision, Johnson said. He explained that his task is to create a set that is a courtroom, with a jury, yet fun. The whole show is about a trial, Johnson said. So its like a North Pole courtroom. Its going to be very festive, and what were going to try to do is get everybody in the (holiday) spirit. Ive done it (EHS Christmas play) since freshman year, but this year Im able to lead it which is exciting. Johnson plans to major in technical direction in college. Anna Bruss, an EHS junior, is one of the actors in the play. I am playing one of the elves and my name is Nancy Nutmeg, she said. My character is a very sassy elf. She kind of wants what she wants when she wants it and thats all there is to it. She also attended the EHS Christmas plays as a young girl and especially remembered how happy the EHS students were who participated in it. The elves at the beginning of the show get to come out and interact with the kids, Bruss noted. Thats one of the best parts about being apart of the show, definitely. Its very fun. Seeing all those kids come out (as a child) was really inspiring. They just wanted to make sure you had the best time ever. Bruss would also like to continue along the theater and musical theater path in college. And then maybe try to get to Broadway, she said. Ive also thought about doing early childhood education and trying to incorporate theater within my job with children. The EHS Christmas production of Parkers No Present Problem takes place at 2 p.m. on Dec. 8, and it is free to the public. Flash At least five people including two policemen were killed on Friday morning in a terrorist attack in the diplomatic area in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi, police and hospital officials said. Deputy Inspector General of Police of Karachi South Region Javed Alam confirmed that two policemen and three other unknown persons were killed when a group of terrorists opened fire at them in the diplomatic zone where several foreign missions are located in Clifton area of Karachi. Around three to four terrorists riding on a vehicle reached the area and started firing and hurled a couple of hand grenades at the police personnel deployed for security of the area. Director of the Jinnah Hospital Karachi Seemi Jamali told media that overall five bodies and one injured have been shifted to the hospital. Two of the deceased are recognized as the police personnel, but others are not recognized yet, said the hospital director. Soon after the gunfire, police, security forces and commandos of Pakistan army rushed to the site, cordoned off the area and launched an operation against the terrorists. Karachi's police chief Amir Sheikh said at least three terrorists have been killed in the encounter with the security forces. Two suicide jackets were also found from the killed terrorists, the police chief said. Exchange of fire has been stopped and security forces and police are conducting search operation, the police chief said. The bomb disposal squad is clearing the area and is diffusing the explosive devices planted by the terrorists, police said. All roads leading to the diplomatic area have been closed for public and media. A state of emergency has been declared in all the hospitals in the city. A separatist group, Balochistan Liberation Army, reportedly claimed the attack but there is no official confirmation on it. The British HighCommission is the diplomatic liaison office that aims to develop and maintainclose bilateral relations with Uganda, in accordance with British governmentpolicies. The British High Commission is responsible for the politicalrelationship between the UK and Uganda, and we provide advice and guidance onpolitical and governance issues. BHC provides assistance and documentaryservices to British nationals in Uganda. The UK Trade and Investment Sectionprovides assistance to both British and Ugandan businesses. The Government ofUganda is implementing Public Financial Management (PFM) reforms through theThird Financial Management and Accountability Programme (FINMAP III) with theprimary purpose to strengthen Public Financial Management (PFM) at all levelsof government and ensure efficient, effective and accountable use of publicresources as a basis for improved service delivery. The programme is supportedby Development Partners including DFID, Norway, EU, KFW, and DANIDA. Theoverall objective of FINMAP is derived from the GoU PFM reform strategy for theperiod from July 2014 to June 2019. Theres no denying that the rise of technology and social media platforms such as Instagram have changed the way we travel. Even if you dont use these platforms yourself, youre almost guaranteed to encounter people striking a pose or framing a shot for the purpose of social media. So those that do not partake in or even go so far as to abhor such activity may rejoice in the news that the Ayana Resort and Spa in Bali has made a bold move. It has banned the use of phones and gadgets around one of their pools. Between the hours of 9am and 5pm, guests will no longer have to endure the endless, carefully choreographed poses staged right in front of their sun loungers, and can enjoy a peaceful digital detox instead. On the resorts website, Ayana claims: The ethos of River Pool is to create a place of tranquillity, where our guests can truly relax and be in the moment. To ensure River Pool remains a haven for guests we limit the use of mobile phones, cameras, iPads, and any other electronic equipment between 9am-5pm. So during your time at River Pool we promise there will be no calls, no text, no pictures, and no social media just you, River Pool and this moment! Which means that there will be less of this shot (which is currently rather prolific) all over Instagram. Located near the resorts private villas, the two-tiered pool is surrounded by double sun loungers and canvas shades. Guests can store their digital devices in nearby lockers and switch off from the outside world. Traditional games such as chess, cards, sudoku and jenga are available on request instead. If you are really eager to capture the spot on camera, phone or tablet, do not fear. Devices are permitted at the pool between the hours of 79am and 57pm. Video of the Day Read More Leslie Patrick Moore, who reviewed the hotel for Telegraph Travel said: "When I was last at the Ayana, everyone around the pool had a phone in hand. Couples sitting next to each other were each staring at screens, and not talking to each other or looking at the gorgeous scenery right in front of them. "It does seem sad that people spend thousands of pounds to go on vacation, and then sit and stare at their phones instead of living in the moment and making memories. I think Ayana's electronic device ban is a great idea, and will make the whole poolside experience more peaceful and authentic." Read More Talking to Telegraph Travel last month, Futurist Richard Watson predicted the end of social media: Theres something going on where we say a destination is Instagrammable. Im not quite sure it'll last - maybe it will even appear old fashioned one day? he said. I think social media will feel rather quaint in the future. But until that time, it seems that destinations and hotels are taking matters into their own hands. Vienna also has a vendetta against social media. If you spy a poster promoting the Austrian capital around London in the coming weeks, you may notice the slogan: See Vienna not #Vienna. Enjoy the city behind your pics! In Vienna, the campaign was launched at the beginning of the month with a bold statement. One of the citys most famous (and most photographed) painting, Klimts Kiss in the Upper Belvedere gallery was replaced with a replica and branded with a large red hashtag. The tagline read: See Klimt. Not #Klimt. Stella Rollig, the director of the gallery, said: We decided to take part in the campaign because as a museum we find ourselves right at the heart of this tug of war between digital communications and art. We still want to create an environment where our visitors can experience the artworks in peace. Striking the right balance is a challenge we face every day. Commenting on the campaign, the Managing Director of the Vienna Tourist Board, Norbert Kettner, told the press that the aim was to encourage visitors to take a more mindful approach when experiencing the city. Our campaign shouldn't be seen as us railing against social media, said Kettner. And you can see why when the tourist boards own account has almost 100,000 followers. What we are trying to do is use a healthy dose of humour to draw attention to Vienna's relationship with social media, while putting the focus on experiences and moments of enjoyment." And it seems that it is not just the industry that is striving for greater authenticity. Yesterday, Instagram itself declared war on fakers, sending its bots crawling around the platform to remove spam, inauthentic (paid for) follows, likes and comments that violate its policies. While Instagram may not be going anywhere soon, the new campaigns springing up around the world are a nice reminder to be more mindful when we travel and put the phone away from time to time. Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021] A documentary crew embarks on a journey to the Amazon rainforest region in search of an elusive tribe, stuck in the stone age, that indulges in cannibalism. During their course of filming, the controversial crew rapes a tribal woman. In the next frame, the same woman is killed and stuck on a pole wherein the crew laments about the barbarity of the tribal people. Later on, the crew is attacked and killed by the tribals with the woman in their crew violated in the most brutal manner. Ruggero Deodatos masterpiece Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is a divisive cinematic treat, nevertheless a social commentary on the urge to civilise the uncivilised. A gripping story of violence created by the so-called primitive and modern man. On November 17, there was an incident that can fit the frames of Deodatos cinematic grammar. According to The Guardian, in his quest to declare Jesus to an isolated tribe in the remote Sentinel Island, John Allen Chau was killed. During an earlier attempt, an arrow stuck on his Bible and saved his life, still he persisted to make contact. Should we condemn the murder or the intrusion? Anthropologists in the quest for knowing the unknown, missionaries in the quest of mainstreaming the deviants and capitalists in the quest for new resources and markets are continuing their journeys to the most remote and isolated parts of our world. In this context, the question that we should ask is what purpose these pockets of isolated tribals serve in our world. Are they reminders of who we should not be? Or are they reminders of who we could be? Obviously, one is not endorsing practices like cannibalism and headhunting. In my own forays into the tribal regions in Central India, I have seen the uneasy co-existence of the modern and tribal world. With varying degrees of modernity, the tribal landscape is under transition. A movement from the past to the so-called future. It is the material conditions and capabilities or the empowerment of the individual and community that determines where we are located in the scale of modernity. Interestingly, the tribal landscape is a self-sustaining universe without the moral panics and worries of the modern world. The absence of competition for resources prevents them from worrying about tomorrow, the future. The forest provides them with whatever they need and since their needs are met by the forest and nature, they are not worried about what is next in their life. They seem to be happy or satisfied in their own world. During the weekly market, even today, most of them sell their forest products only to buy the provisions they need and do not carry back any surplus cash. However, this seemingly happy world where they enjoy their traditional ways of life do not ensure that they can enjoy or have a material life equivalent to their capabilities and resources available to them as members of the larger society. So, should we empower them to enjoy and access the resources and services that we all have? The flip side of this empowerment or mainstreaming process is the transportation of the worries of the mainstream into their world. Today there is anxiety and worries infused by the aspirations that are embedded in the mainstream worldworries about the type of education, employment, acceptance by the non-tribals, matching the standards of living expected by the society, feelings of inferiority with respect to the traditional mode of living. In their desire to be accepted, they no longer take resort to traditional modes of health, healing, cultivation and life. This predicament is a price of the transition from the happy traditional and self-sustained world to a complex, dynamic and modern world with better educational, medical and legal facilities. Is the price of transition too heavy or justified? Tribals who have been exposed to society and its culture have started adopting the outside culture. For instance, it is reported that the tribals who are employed in the government services have been giving dowry during marriage whereas, in the traditional arrangements there is no dowry system. Increasing alcoholism among tribal youth is attributed to two factors: primarily, the negative consequence of their interaction with the non-tribals at the local level in the attempt by the tribal youth to get acceptance among various social groups and secondly, the tribal youngsters who go out of the region for education purposes and find alcohol as the only medium to socialise with other students. As Milton Friedman had famously said, there are no free lunches; the civilising missions either by state or non-state factors are exacting a price. By embedding the self-sustaining worlds of tribals in our economy and society, we are depriving them of their freedom and autonomy. Indigenous knowledge is also lost in this transition since it is seen as an undesirable element, objects of scorn, by the more advanced population. However, the amorality of the modern world, bereft of fraternity and solidarity, is sapping the human in them. We are all being reduced to mere statistics in the global world of commerce and trade. What we have lost is the sense of communitarian life. More significantly, Mother Nature is no longer the provider but the supplier of our market-induced needs and demands. In doing so, we have violated her in the most brutal manner and the planet is rapidly descending into an uninhabitable place. Sentinel Islands and other similar places are stark reminders of how we can have a society without the trappings of modernity. It is a reminder that we can all still live in a community with minimum needs and still find peace. As far as the question of the killing is considered, it will be pertinent to recall George Bernard Shaw: When a man wants to murder a tiger, he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him, he calls it ferocity. Rakesh M. Krishnan is a historical sociologist based in Hyderabad Months after committing a line of credit amounting to 150 million euros for 15 years to fund solar energy and solar solutions in the country, the European Investment Bank (EIB) now seeks to extend four times the credit to expand offshore wind initiatives in India. A fund of close to EUR 600 million has been earmarked by the European funding agency for this purpose. In India, the EIB would be joining hands with State Bank of India and YES Bank. EIB, the largest funding agency on renewable energy globally, said in a statement on Friday that it will increase the support for onshore wind investment through expansion of an existing lending programme with the State Bank of India, has approved a new credit line with Yes Bank to accelerate private investment in wind and solar projects, and expects to work closely with Indian partners to support offshore wind projects. The clean energy financing was confirmed by EIB officials at the inaugural of an offshore energy investment conference, organised by the agency, in New Delhi. "We look forward to broadening cooperation with Indian partners to support new renewable energy projects in the months ahead and enabling offshore wind to contribute to clean power generation in the country," said Andrew McDowell, vice president of the EIB. "India has huge renewable energy resources and harnessing Indias abundant natural resources is crucial for sustainable development. Supporting energy investment is a key focus of the European Unions India strategy announced this week and my colleagues are working closely with Indian partners to further develop Indias offshore wind sector," he said. With this EIB line of credit, technical support, too, would be available for India from the European Union, Bank of Europe and other European agencies, said Tomasz Kozlowski, European Union Ambassador to India. Europe has the most advanced technologies in renewable energy harnessing and is a large seller of renewable energy equipment globally. The EIB has a project portfolio of more than 7 billion euros invested in renewable energy sector across the globe. Sharing from this huge global experience, it now seeks to unlock investment in Indian offshore wind sector. During its conference in the capital, EIB would be engaging with government officials, policy experts, business leaders, project promoters and finance professionals engaged with the renewable energy sector in India. Technical experts from the EIB highlighted how the public sector can accelerate the deployment of innovative renewable energy technology. They identified infrastructure, skills and financial mechanisms that have enabled offshore wind to become a key source of clean energy in a number of European countries. Under the agreement signed on Friday between the EIB and the two banks, promoters of onshore wind projects will be able to benefit from long-term low-cost financing under a dedicated EUR 600 million renewable energy financing programme. The EIB said that in preliminary discussion with promoters of renewable power projects, it has already identified several beneficiaries who can avail their scheme in several Indian states. Last year, the EIB and the Yes Bank had identified solar power projects and wind farms across India that will benefit from a dedicated renewable energy credit line, backed with EUR 80 million of EIB financing. This year, a second round of financing for a renewable energy credit line is currently being finalised and expected to be rolled out in the coming months. Earlier, the government's attempts to auction for hybrid solar-wind power plants onshore had yielded limited participation from project developers, with only one developer participating in the auction conducted by the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI). Existing onshore wind projects in the country, in several states like Karnataka and others, are also facing problems as cheap solar power availability has forced them to sell power to state discoms at a reduced rate. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's initiative to form the International Solar Alliance (ISA) was also appreciated at the EIB conference. Vishal Bhardwaj on Wednesday said he considers himself a "gangster at heart", a signature that reflects in his filmography. The director-music composer was asked how he was able to deviously score melodious songs and yet show violence in his films. To this he replied, "I think I'm a gangster at heart. And the violence is more captivating on screen. If two movies are been released side-by-side, say one of Vivekananda and Dawood Ibrahim, everyone will go and see Dawood Ibrahim." He said that like all people, his past experiences have moulded him but now the violence that had seeped into his being has "subsided". "But I try to find poetry in violence and there are many factors which had happened with me and which happen with everyone. Everyone goes through so many experiences in life. I think violence has now subsided within me. What I have experienced as a child that has taken shape of some violence within me. The best way was to take it out on screen rather than in life... To unburden myself, to clean myself." The filmmaker was in conversation with documentary filmmaker-writer Nasreen Munni Kabir for NDFC's Film Bazaar Knowledge Series session titled Badlands & the Gender. Bhardwaj said he finds that women characters are more interesting to explore. The director has made films such as Makdee, Maqbool, Ishqiya, 7 Khoon Maaf and recently Pataakha that had fleshed out female parts. "I have seen in my family that women have more strength. Men can look very strong physically from outside but in interiority they are weaker than the females. I've seen when the time of crisis comes, women come out stronger. "Also in our cinema, in those days in the late '80s and '90s, we were using the female characters as props and even in early 2000s. Now female protagonists are at power with the male stars but otherwise whenever you go to a financier, even till 7 Khoon Maaf, if you have a female protagonist, they would ask to cut down the budget by 30-40 per cent. We have not explored female characters in our cinema." He also talked about his frequent collaborator, actor Tabu and how they have been lucky for each other since the time he composed music for her film Maachis. "She's such a fantastic actor and she doesn't make a big fuss about it that I'm doing some great homework or research. She actually makes fun of it (the process). I have seen her so that many times. She is emotionally so correct in whatever she plays and she was the first person to say yes to Maqbool. She was initially scared thinking if she would be able to pull it off." Bhardwaj said Tabu is the perfect "combination of spontaneity and not taking it seriously". "That's why her performances come out so good. She doesn't burden herself with the weight of something," he added. The duo later also worked together in Haider. Students of SRM University at Kattankulathur area in the outskirts of Chennai staged a demonstration inside the campus on Thursday night, alleging inaction by the administration on a sexual harassment complaint by a woman student of the varsity. SRM University Vice Chancellor Sandeep Sancheti, however, denied the allegations of inaction and said the administration would look into the complaint. "Students are discussing with us. Whatever the matter is, it will be taken care of. If there is a matter, it will be inquired," said Sancheti. According to a third year software engineering student who took part in the protest, a second year undergraduate student of the university was allegedly sexually harassed by a male sanitation worker inside a women's hostel lift on Thursday afternoon around 3 pm. "The man masturbated in front of the woman student in the hostel lift, following which she reported the issue to the authorities," the student said. According to another protester, the hostel warden, with whom the student had raised the issue, allegedly delayed access to the CCTV footage of the elevator and the registering of a complaint by over two hours. "The employee was identified by the student in the CCTV footage. However she was asked to stay mum about the incident by the authorities," the protester said, adding that the hostel authorities allegedly blamed the victim. Local police officials who reached the protest spot said the protesters dispersed after assurances from the university administration to look into the matter. However, they added that no complaint had been registered yet. Flash Attendees of the second NEXT Summit (Hangzhou 2018) called for multilateral cooperation and against protectionism in Hangzhou on Thursday. Peter Goodfellow, president of the New Zealand National Party and the Oceania Silk Road Network's honorary chairman, said at the summit that protectionism is not conducive to the development of the world economy, and it is even less in the national interest of New Zealand. He pointed out that China and New Zealand need to work harder to promote international cooperation and reduce trade barriers, praising China for becoming a leader in supporting and promoting free trade in the past few years as well as China's determination to adhere to reform and opening up. The second NEXT Summit kicked off in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, on Nov. 22, with a focus on optimal practices among some 400 delegates from New Zealand, China and around the world to seek a new pathway for global cooperation, and is jointly hosted by China Economic Information Service, the Oceania Silk Road Network (OSRN), and Zhejiang University. Liu Zhenmin, under-secretary-general for the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), sent a congratulatory letter to the summit, writing "International cooperation is a timely topic. In the past year, we have witnessed some major challenges in the world economy, particularly the rise of protectionism. These challenges, however, are unlikely to stop international cooperation. Instead, they have highlighted the importance of international cooperation." Ban Ki-moon, the former secretary-general of the United Nations, also attended the summit as a guest of honor. He addressed the summit by saying that both large and small countries should strive for the development of multilateralism and further promote international cooperation. "The world needs interconnections in the fields of infrastructure and finance. It is necessary to establish multilateral mechanisms to promote joint development." added Essam Sharaf, former Egyptian prime minister and chief of the Sharaf Foundation for Sustainable Development. Zhang Yipeng, vice president of Yili Group, believed deepening global cooperation has become a common way for various industries, including the dairy industry, to seek further development. "The complementary resources of all countries can strengthen the quality foundation of enterprise products; the coordinated innovation of countries can enhance the core competitiveness of enterprises in various countries; countries can achieve opening and win-win results and share development results with the world," He said. The summit later held five parallel subforums on five industry areas: public service, energy and infrastructure; robotics, artificial intelligence and blockchain; food, health and husbandry; education, tourism and cultural creativity; innovation and transformation of scientific & technological research. The Hurricane Lamp Award was also set up at the event to award enterprises and promote optimal practices in international cooperation. China Economic Information Service also released its 2018 Report on China-New Zealand Cooperation Prospects under the Belt and Road Initiative at the summit. The inaugural Next Summit was held in November last year in Auckland under the theme of innovation, cooperation and development, to which United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sent a congratulatory message. Even as the protests against the recent Supreme Court verdict allowing entry of women of all ages into the Sabarimala temple continue across Kerala, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said on Friday that the issue required a Constitutional solution. There has never been popular demand for women's entry into Sabarimala. Not even 50 women have marched for entry, the Thiruvananthapuram MP said at The Town Hall, hosted by THE WEEKs Contributing Editor Barkha Dutt, in Kochi. Organised by THE WEEK and Mojo, The Town Hall is a series of conversations held across India. Presented by Federal Bank, this edition had additional support from Audi India. A five-judge Constitution bench of the top court on September 28 struck down a custom at the hill shrine which barred women of menstrual age from entering the temple. The verdict has sparked off widespread protests across the state. Tharoor said his party wanted a Constitutional solution to the Sabarimala crisis, not violent protests. You cannot equate entry into a temple with entry into a club. When religion is involved, there is a sense of violation of sanctity, he said. He said the Congress party had filed a review petition in the case. If that does not work, the Parliament can legislate, he added. When Barkha pointed out that the rule banning entry of women into Sabarimala was recent, the MP said: "Yes, but the practice predates the rule. My initial stand was supportive of women's entry. But, now I am convinced that it is not a simple question of equal access, he said. The Congress party in Kerala has rallied behind the protesting devoteesthough national party president Rahul Gandhi said he was in favour of allowing women of all ages to enter the Lord Ayyappa temple in Sabarimalamaintaining that the traditions at Sabarimala temple must be protected. Tharoor said the issue required much deliberation, but the Kerala government tried to implement it hastily. He also attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party for allegedly using the Sabarimala issue for political gains. For many of us in the Congress party, our religion was private. There were devout Hindus in the Congress party. But we never advertised it. The BJP projected themselves as the sole custodians of Hindu religion. We had to prove that was not so, he said. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Friday lashed out at a section of media for reporting things without checking facts, in an apparent reference to the alleged sensationalisation of the death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar. I am bitter about a section of media reporting things without checking. One BJP leader said that I poisoned Sunanda. Where is the evidence? No journalist asked that leader, Tharoor said at The Town Hall, hosted by THE WEEKs Contributing Editor Barkha Dutt, in Kochi. Organised by THE WEEK and Mojo, The Town Hall is a series of conversations held across India. Presented by Federal Bank, this edition had additional support from Audi India. Lies that they know to be false are taken as a premise of a discussion, and it brings contempt to those who claim to practice journalism, said the Thiruvananthapuram MP. Tharoor had earlier filed a civil defamation suit against Republic TV editor Arnab Goswami and his channel seeking damages and compensation of Rs 2 crore for allegedly making defamatory remarks against him while airing news relating to the death of Sunanda Pushkar. The Congress leader also trained his guns at his political opponents and said: Politicians cross political divide to condole death. But a bereavement, in my case, was used as a weapon against me. That was painful. Tharoor recently sent a legal notice to Union Minister for Law and Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad for allegedly calling him a murder accused. In the notice, his lawyer claimed that the MP is neither charge-sheeted for the offence nor is he an accused in a case of murder. Tharoor revealed that he fell ill many times after the death of his wife. I had to take seven courses of antibiotics. My personal staff intervened and put me in an Ayurveda treatment for 3-4 days. That was a much-needed break, he said. Sunanda Pushkar was found dead in room number 345 of the Leela Palace hotel in Chanakyapuri, New Delhi on January 17, 2014. The Delhi police are still probing the case. Touched by the compassion of the nurses who tended to her... (Eds: Disclaimer: The following press release comes to you under an arrangement with NewsVoir. PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same.) Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India (NewsVoir) Srinivasan Services Trust (SST), the social arm of TVS Motor Company Ltd. has engaged in the relief and restoration activities to the Gaja cyclone affected people in the Nagapattinam district by distributing the required relief materials through public administration. The wing is assisted by Community Development Officers, Engineers, Agronomist, retired RDOs and Security in the distribution of relief materials. The distribution is to continue for a week starting today and comprises Rs. 1 Crore worth materials of 15440 sleeping mats, 6000 bedsheets, 10000 tarpaulin sheets, 1000 lungis, and 1000 sarees. 20000 families covering 80000 members in Vedaranyam, Velankanni and Thalaignayiru areas will be benefitted through this distribution. It is significant to note that TVS Motor Company Ltd. have already contributed Rs. 2 Crore to the Chief Minister Relief Fund. In a meeting held at the residence of Honourable Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, EdapadiThiru K Palaniswamy on 20thNovember 2018, ThiruVenu Srinivasan, Chairman and Managing Director of the Company handed over a cheque for Rs. 2 Crore towards relief and restoration works in the Gaja cyclone affected areas of Nagapattinam district. The Srinivasan Services Trust (SST) has been working for the well-being of the people and communities and works in over 5000 villages in India, across 5 states, for inclusive development. Among the various trust areas, healthcare is occupying an important place in its agenda. Mr. Swaran Singh, former IAS officer is the Chief Executive Officer of Srinivasan Services Trust. Image: Srinivasan Services Trust Extends Relief to Gaja Cyclone Affected People PWR PWR Flash Dialogue with Ambassadors Forum was held at Tsinghua University in Beijing on Nov. 22, 2018. Ambassador of Pakistan Masood Khalid was the guest speaker on the occasion. Professor Li Xiguang, director of the Pakistan Culture and Communications Centre, Tsinghua University, welcomed the Ambassador and briefed the audience about the historical perspective of Pakistan-China relations. Ambassador in his speech termed the university as a seat of higher learning since 1911. He commended the organizers for providing a platform for continuous exchanges with scholars and the youth. He said that the recent visit to China by the Prime Minister of Pakistan was an unparalleled success and has ushered in the Pakistan-China all weather strategic cooperative partnership to new heights, which shall benefit the future generations of the two nations. Ambassador shed light on Pakistan's history, geography, economy, environmental diversity, civilization, culture, foreign policy, Kashmir dispute and Pakistan-China relationship in a comprehensive manner. He said that the foreign policy of Pakistan is primarily directed to the pursuit of national goals of seeking peace and stability through international cooperation. Ambassador termed the advent of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as a catalyst for further strengthening the unique relationship between Pakistan and China. A Q&A session followed where international students had an opportunity to interact with the Ambassador and quench their queries about Pakistan. The forum was attended by scholars, students and officers from the Embassy of Pakistan. (Eds: Disclaimer: The following press release comes to you under an arrangement with PR Newswire. PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same.) MUMBAI, November 23, 2018/PRNewswire/ -- The ASCENT Conclave is the flagship event of the ASCENT Foundation, bringing together a confluence of thought leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs ASCENT Foundation, a not-for-profit, peer-to-peer learning platform for entrepreneurs, hosted its 3rd edition of the ASCENT Conclave, on Thursday, November 22, 2018, at St. Regis, Mumbai. The full-day event brought together some of India's most inspiring and recognized leaders who shared their entrepreneurial journey over the years, failure and success stories. Themed 'Beyond the Conversation', the Conclave hosted several insightful discussions that addressed the growing need for entrepreneurs to focus not on only on the business aspects, but also on the emphasizing the importance of physical and mental well-being aspects. The event commenced with a welcome note by Harsh Mariwala (Founder, ASCENT Foundation and Chairman, Marico Ltd.). Rajiv Bajaj (Managing Director, Bajaj Auto) was the keynote speaker. Mr. Bajaj through his inspiring discussions, delved on the how can entrepreneurs keep reinventing themselves by keeping them constantly motivated and inspired. He also elucidated on his lessons learnt from past business challenges and how being mentally and physically fit has helped him build a world-class organisation. PC Musthafa (iD Fresh Food Pvt. Ltd.) engaged in a compelling discussion moderated by Govindraj Ethiraj (BOOM and IndiaSpend) on the opportunities and pitfalls in the perishable mass-food products sector and PC Musthafa's journey as an entrepreneur. The Conclave also hosted a highly riveting exchange of thoughts and ideologies by Kishore Biyani (CEO - Future Group and Managing Director - Pantaloon Retail) and Falguni Nayar (Founder & CEO - Nykaa) on the future of the Retail Sector with the advent of newer multi-dimensional avenues. This session was moderated by Menaka Doshi (Managing Editor - BloombergQuint). The Conclave hosted two unique panel discussions, the first being on the importance of employee re-branding with the changing employee value proposition. This session was moderated by Prabir Jha (President and Global Chief People Officer - Cipla Inc.) and had Lavanya Nalli (Vice-Chairperson - Nalli Silk Sarees Pvt. Ltd.), Nicolas Dumoulin (Managing Director - Michael Page India) and Sunit Sinha (Accenture Solutions) share their approaches towards employee and talent management. The second panel discussion shared 4 distinct stories of 4 trailblazers from different walks of life and how each story highlights a strong quality which drives them. Hosted by Tanvi Dubey (Editor, YourStory), the panel saw the participation of Gauri Sawant (Director, Sakshi Char Chowghi), Harshwardhan Zala (CEO, Aerobotics 7), Gauranga Das (Director, Govardhan Ecovillage) and Milind Soman (Director, Maximus MICE & Media Solutions) with each speaker inspiring takeaways based on their journeys. Audiences were left inspired by the entrepreneurial growth stories of Gauri Devidayal (Food Matters India Pvt. Ltd.) and Pankit Desai (CEO, Sequretek), both members of ASCENT Foundation. Gauri discussed on how collaborating with competition could prove to be advantageous for business growth, while Pankit elaborated on how companies can overcome digital and cyber security related challenges. Sangita Reddy (Joint Managing Director - Apollo Hospitals Group) gave the closing address and shared her views on approaches that can help 'Bridge the Innovation Gap' in Healthcare in India. IIFL Wealth Management Ltd. has collaborated with ASCENT Foundation as the Lead Partner for ASCENT Conclave 2018. Harsh Mariwala, Founder, ASCENT Foundation and Chairman, Marico Ltd. Commented, "I am thrilled to share that the ASCENT Conclave 2018 has been able to achieve the goal that we had set for ourselves - to constantly improve the learning opportunities for growth-ready entrepreneurs. The Conclave provides a lot of take-home value for entrepreneurs that can help their businesses scale further. My thanks and appreciation to all the speakers and our partners who have helped make the ASCENT Conclave a one-of-its-kind experiential learning platform." About ASCENT Foundation: ASCENT Foundation is a not-for-profit expression of Harsh Mariwala (Founder, ASCENT Foundation and Chairman, Marico Ltd.) and his passion to identify high-potential growth-ready entrepreneurs and enable them to grow their enterprise. Launched in 2012, ASCENT is designed as a unique, powerful peer-to-peer platform that leverages the 'power of collective' through self-facilitated Trust Groups and enables entrepreneurs to share and exchange experiences, ideas, insights and create a healthy ecosystem to learn from each other. Additionally, ASCENT provides peripheral access to relevant growth enablers like service providers, investors and banks, industry role models and domain experts. ASCENT is 400 member entrepreneur ecosystem strong and present in Mumbai and Chennai. For more details please visit: http://www.ascentfoundation.in/ Source: ASCENT Foundation PWR PWR (Eds: Disclaimer: The following press release comes to you under an arrangement with PR Newswire. PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same.) PUNE, India, November 23, 2018/PRNewswire/ -- Both organs transplanted one above the other Pune city's Sahyadri Hospital recently conducted an extremely complex and critical simultaneous kidney-pancreas transplantation at Sahyadri Super Specialty Hospital Deccan Gymkhana. Before this case, four kidney and pancreas transplants were conducted at Sahyadri Super Speciality Hospital Deccan. For the first time in Western India, a single centre has performed five complex simultaneous kidney and pancreas transplant. (Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/591161/1463896SahyadriLogo.jpg ) Elaborating on this complex case, Dr. Bipin Vibhute, Liver & Multivisceral Transplant Surgeon, said, "Our last case of simultaneous kidney and pancreas was unique and were transplanted to a 52-year-old Mr. Kunal Pandit from Mumbai who was suffering from renal failure since seven years and severe diabetes since 25 years, which had damaged his kidney and even his both lower limbs were weak due to diabetes. He had to depend on dialysis twice a week and heavy doses of insulin. He was completely dependent on his retired father and wife." Prof. Dr Anil Vaidya, Multivisceral transplant Surgeon, added, "Mr. Kunal Pandit's diabetes complications were not limited to his kidney but his heart was also weak and not good enough or fit for transplantation. When we started his surgery he had lot of fat on his belly and the main blood vessels which carry oxygenated blood from the heart to the abdomen and the lower limbs were completely calcified (calcium deposition in the blood vessels due to diabetes and hypertension) and there was no place on that blood vessel to suture or to give blood supply to the new pancreas and kidney. Hence, for a moment we thought we will not carry out the transplantation for him but after a lot of discussion, we decided to explore more options because this was his best chance and without it he wouldn't have survived for a longer time. Hence, we dissected his lower limbs blood vessels to find out whether we can get sufficient blood supply and fortunately we got 1 cm patch from where we got cadaveric conduit (blood vessel) from which we could give blood supply to both, the new pancreas and kidney, and they were transplanted one above the other otherwise both organs would have been transplanted at different locations. Transplant went well and the patient was discharged from the hospital on the seventh day after transplantation." In addition, what made this transplant a complex one is that the blood supply to the pancreas and kidney had to be derived from a single unconventional source because the conventional vessels were rigid with calcium deposits, making it impossible to use without risking the blood supply to the lower limbs. Innovative approaches to complex pancreas transplantation should be attempted by a mature team with years of experience. These cases should not be done by a young inexperienced team. Dr. Dinesh Babu, Senior Anaesthetist, said, "He never required dialysis since transplantation though he was on very small doses of insulin immediately after surgery but now he is off insulin or for that matter any diabetes medicines. We claim this type of surgery not only gives a new life to end stage kidney transplant recipient but also it is amongst world's rare cases. Now, the patient is doing well after the transplant and is completely relieved of his insulin intake and dialysis." Diabetes is one of the most common problems in India and can affect various organs. Replacing kidney and pancreas is one of the most useful solution, however, pancreas transplant is still rare in India. Simultaneous Kidney-Pancreas transplant is an operation to replace kidney and pancreas at the same time in a patient who has kidney failure and also suffers from diabetes, needing very high insulin dose to control sugars. This surgery eliminates problems by optimally controlling sugar levels and by protecting the transplanted kidney from the adverse effects of diabetes. Additionally, it will also help reverse the effects of diabetes on other systems including peripheral neuropathy thus, protecting the limbs. Kunal Pandit said, "Those who suffer from heavy diabetes will relate to what I must have gone through. Life was a challenge because of the chronic illness I was suffering and not only me but my entire family was extremely disturbed. Thanks to the doctors and the transplant team, I got a new life which I will cherish. Transplant is no less than a miracle and for me this life without the tensions of taking insulin and dialysis is no less than a dream come true. My goal now will be to spread the noble cause of organ donation, which changes lives of so many patients like me and gives enormous happiness to their families." Dr. Ketan Apte, Head Sahyadri Hospitals Deccan, Nagar Road and Hadapsar, said, "I would like to congratulate the entire team of doctors and staff for their path-breaking work. This success again highlights our mission 'All About Possibilities' where doctors and staff try to push their boundaries to create new possibilities for our patients and bring happiness to their families even in the most difficult situations." The complex transplant surgeries took place under the guidance of doctors including multi-organ transplant surgeons - Dr. Bipin Vibhute, Dr. Anil Vaidya, Dr. Dinesh Zirpe, Dr. Senthil Kumar and Dr. Abhijeet Mane; Transplant Anaesthetists - Dr. Dinesh Babu, Dr. Manish Phatak, Dr. Nivas; Nephrologist - Dr. Sachin Patil; Coordinators - Mr. Arun Ashokan, Mr. Aman and Mr. Rahul Tambe and Medical Social Worker Ms. Sharmila Padhye were also part of this team. About Sahyadri Hospitals: Sahyadri Hospitals is the largest chain of hospitals in Maharashtra with 8 hospitals across three cities of Pune, Nashik and Karad. The hospital chain has over 900 Beds, 1200 Clinicians and 2300 Support Staff providing round the clock healthcare. To know more: http:ahyadrihospital.com/ Source: Sahyadri Hospitals Limited PWR PWR (Eds: Disclaimer: The following press release comes to you under an arrangement with PR Newswire. PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same.) HYDERABAD, India, November 23, 2018/PRNewswire/ -- New center to add 1,000 technology associates by end of 2019 UST Global, a leading digital transformation solutions company, today announced its new delivery center in Hyderabad, Telangana. The company plans to add 1,000 technology associates by end of 2019 at its new location. Present at the center inauguration were Mr. Jayesh Ranjan, IAS, Principal Secretary to Government of Telangana, along with the leaders from UST Global. (Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/540539/USTGlobalLogo.jpg ) (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/788825/USTGlobalteamJayeshRanjan.jpg ) The key focus of the company's Hyderabad delivery center is to support its global banking, financial and insurance services, healthcare, retail, technology, media, telecom and semiconductor clients. The new center is located in Cyber Pearl, Hi-Tech City, Hyderabad. Mr. K T Rama Rao, Minister for IT, MAUD, Textiles and NRI affairs, Government of Telangana, welcomed UST Global to Hyderabad and extended his wishes for the growth of the organisation. Speaking at the inauguration, Mr. Jayesh Ranjan, IAS, Principal Secretary to Government of Telangana, said, "Telangana is well positioned in terms of infrastructure and talent to host organisations focused on digital and high technology like UST Global. We welcome UST Global to Hyderabad and are confident they will do well and find best of the talent here." Mr. Alexander Varghese, Chief Administrative Officer & Country Head, UST Global, added, "Hyderabad is a key market for us with existing portfolio of clients, vast business opportunities and promising talent. We are very excited to inaugurate and add Hyderabad office to our growing portfolio of delivery centers. We are also looking to hire associates who are aligned to our vision of Transforming Lives using new-age digital technologies. We are grateful to the Government of Telangana for the support and believing in our vision." The company's Hyderabad center will be led by Harilal Neelakantan, Center Head - Hyderabad, UST Global. With regional headquarters in California, Singapore and London, and over 35 offices across the world, UST Global uses its global presence to partner closely with its multinational clients, which includes over 50 Fortune 500 clients. The company's current global footprint spans USA, India, Mexico, Spain, Denmark, UK, Germany, Poland, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, China, and Australia. It has large dedicated Information Technology delivery centers in India, USA, Mexico, Spain, and Philippines. About UST Global UST Global is a leading digital technology solutions company that provides advanced computing and digital services to large private and public enterprises around the world. Its clients include Fortune 500 companies in banking and financial services, healthcare, insurance, retail, technology, manufacturing, shipping, and telecom. UST Global believes in building long-lasting, strategic business relationships through agile and client-centric global engagement models that combine local experts and resources with cost, scale, and quality advantages of global operations. For more information, please visit: http://www.ust-global.com. Source: UST Global PWR PWR Aurangabad (Maha), Nov 23 (PTI) A Muslim organisation in Maharashtra has opposed the release of a Hindi film on the Ayodhya issue and urged the Censor Board to withhold clearance, saying it is intended to create hatred in the society. The film, "Ram Janmbhoomi", has been written and produced by Shia Waqf Board chairman Syed Waseem Rizvi. Rizvi had released the trailer of the film, which chronicles the events during the Ram Temple movement since October 30, 1990. The Maharashtra Muslim Awami Committee (MMCA) has taken strong objection to the release of the trailer, saying the film deals with a subject which is sub-judice (the Ram Janmbhoomi-Babri Masjid case is in the Supreme Court). Committee president Iliyas Kirmani claimed the film is intended to create hatred in the society. "We have given a memorandum to the Censor Board. The film contains controversial issues of Islam like Halala and triple talaq, besides the demolition of (Babri) masjid (in Ayodhya in 1992)," he told PTI Friday. "We oppose this as we have seen the trailer and foresee possibilities of unrest in the society if the film is released. We demand that the release of the film be cancelled as it may lead to breach of peace and create law and order problem in the country," Kirmani said. He said the Censor Board or the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) should stall the movie's release in national interest and to preserve peace and harmony. A copy of the memorandum has also been sent to Chief Minister of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis, he said. Rizvi, a strong votary of Ram Temple in Ayodhya, had said in Lucknow a few days ago that no particular community has been targeted in the film. The film, directed by Sanoj Misra, is slated to release in December-end. PTI COR RSY SMN SMN Mumbai, Nov 23 (PTI) Indian Film & Television Directors Association (IFTDA), along with its mother body, Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE) saidthey will take a decision regarding the sexual harassment charges made against Sajid Khan and Alok Nath within a week. "We cannot handle the case as both Tanushree Dutta and Nana Patekar are a member of CINTAA. One of the parties should be our member. We have cases of Sajid Khan and Vinta Nanda and we have taken there cases. "As far as Sajid's case is concerned we have heard both the parties, Sajid and the girls. ICC will sit in a week's time and take a call on the judgment and the federation will be there, along with the lawyers," Ashoke Pandit, President of IFTDA, told PTI. He further said, decision in case of Nath too would happen within a week's time. "We heard Vinta day before yesterday, ICC heard her. Alok Nath has not come, we have informed him thrice. His lawyer has send a letter saying, he will not attend. If he wants to, he will attend the office bearer meeting of IFTDA, which is not possible. ICC will take a call, both the decisions will be made within a week," Pandit said. Pandit said both FWICE and IFTDA are aggressively working towards in building an atmosphere in the industry which is clean and workable. "We are creating awareness and that arrogance of power will not be allowed. We have women in lot of departments, not just acting. We are entering into mass media and education institutions that are related to our industry. We want to make next generation aware about these things. The workplace has to be safe, formal, and dignified. We know the mission will take time," he added. PTI KKP BK BK Karachi, Nov 23 (PTI) A fearless woman officer of Karachi Police, who was once abandoned by relatives in her village for joining a private school, on Friday saved the lives of many Chinese diplomatic staff when heavily-armed terrorists stormed the mission in the Pakistani city. Senior Superintendent Police Suhai Aziz Talpur led the security operation that foiled the brazen attack by members of the Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, in Karachi. She ensured the terrorists, armed with nine hand-grenades, assault rifles, magazines and explosives, did not reach the diplomatic staff inside the consulate building. Police said the terrorists were carrying food supplies and medicines, suggesting they had planned to take hostages. But as as soon as they reached the gates of the consulate, the police team took positions and retaliated. Two police officials were killed in the gunfight in which all the attackers were also neutralised. Suhai hails from a lower middle-class family of Bhai Khan Talpur village in Tando Muhammad Khan district of Sindh province. She joined the police force after clearing elite Central Superior Services exam in 2013, The Express Tribune reported. "When my parents decided to enrol me at a school, most of our relatives started taunting my family. So much so, that my family had to leave our village and move to a nearby town," she told the daily. Her father Aziz Talpur, a political activist and writer, always dreamt big for his daughter. "My relatives cut off ties with me because I wanted Suhai to study as they were only in favour of religious education," Aziz told the daily. "But I vowed to provide my daughter quality education." Suhai started her primary education at a private school in Tando Muhammad Khan and joined Bahria Foundation for her intermediate studies. Her educational path then led her to pursue B.Com from the Zubaida Girls College, Hyderabad in Sindh province. "My family wanted me to become a chartered accountant but I found the job to be very dull as it had no social value," she said. "That is when I appeared for CSS and cleared it in the first attempt." She credited her success to hard work and her upbringing. "My parents are nationalists. As a child, they used to emphasise that I memorise Sindhi poetry. This developed my interest in literature and history, leading me to secure top marks in both the subjects in the CSS (Central Superior Services) exams." PTI SH ABH AKJ ABH ABH Islamabad, Nov 23 (PTI) Pakistan said on Friday that the decision to open the Kartarpur Sahib corridor could be a step forward in the right direction from conflict to cooperation, animosity to peace and enmity to friendship. The Foreign Office said in a statement that Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi while briefing the National Assembly said that Pakistan has decided to open the Kartarpur Corridor for the 550th Birth Anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev in 2019. "The Pakistani proposal to initiate the corridor has also been concurred by India, he said. He said the initiative will further facilitate Sikhs, especially from India. "Pakistans Kartarpur Spirit can be a step forward in the right direction from conflict to cooperation, animosity to peace and enmity to friendship," he said. He said that Prime Minister Imran Khan will inaugurate the groundbreaking ceremony of the facilities at the crossing on the Pakistan side on November 28. Kartarpur is a small town in Pakistan's Narowal, four km from the Pakistan- India border, where the founder of the Sikh religion Guru Nanak Dev spent the last 18 years of his life. Subsequently, Gurdwara Darbar Sahab was built at the site on the Pakistan side and Gurdwara Dera Baba Nanak in India, which are visited by thousands of Sikhs every year. The statement said that the opening the corridor will allow Sikh Yatrees ease of access for their most reverential place of worship which has been their longstanding demand. "This is also reflective of the importance and primacy that Pakistan gives to all minorities," the Foreign Office said. PTI SH NSA NSA (Eds: Updating toll, adding reax from China, PM Imran) Karachi, Nov 23 (PTI) Three heavily-armed suicide bombers on Friday stormed the Chinese consulate in Pakistan's largest city Karachi, killing four people including two policemen before being shot dead by security forces which foiled the daring attack in the high-security zone, authorities said. The attack was claimed by the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) which said it would not tolerate "any Chinese military expansionist endeavours on Baloch soil". The consulate, located in the posh Clifton area, came under attack early morning. Three suspected suicide bombers were killed before they were able to enter the facility as forces successfully foiled the attack, Karachi Police Chief Amir Shaikh said. Nine hand grenades, Kalashnikov bullets, magazines and explosives were recovered from the possession of the terrorists, Geo news quoted police officials as saying. "Food supplies and medicines were also recovered from their possession," officials said. "We have received two dead bodies of policemen and an injured Chinese security guard who is under treatment," said Seemi Jamali, the executive director at Jinnah Hospital. Two civilians, a father and his son were also killed, officials said. The Sindh government and the Pakistan Army confirmed that three terrorists were killed in the operation. The heavily-guarded E-Street neighbourhood, which is considered a red zone, is home to a number of upscale restaurants, diplomatic missions and schools. The Bilawal House of Pakistan People's Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is also in the area. Schools and eateries have been locked down until a clearance operation is concluded. Residents said they first heard firing and explosions around 9.30 AM (local time). "The terrorists first attacked the checkpost outside the consulate and detonated a hand grenade in the area," Shaikh said. Shaikh said the attackers had parked their vehicle at some distance from the consulate before moving towards it. Defence analyst and security contractor Ikram Sehgal, whose company's guards have been posted at the consulate, said that the attackers had first engaged in an exchange of fire with policemen. After the policemen and civilians were killed, he said, the attackers proceeded towards the gate of the consulate. However, the guards were quick to usher civilians with consular business into the building and shut the gates behind them. The paramilitary rangers then reached the spot and engaged the attackers, he said. Sheikh said that all Chinese staffers "are safe and secure". The separatist group BLA shared the photographs of the attackers. "Karachi: Fidayeen of BLA attacked the Chinese embassy in Karachi," it said in a tweet. BLA has been designated as a terrorist entity by Pakistan. The Foreign Office spokesman said that Islamabad is "in touch with the relevant agencies and will react quickly" to ascertain the facts. Prime Minister Imran Khan took to Twitter to condemn the attack. "Strongly condemn the terrorist attacks against Chinese Consulate in Karachi & in Orakzai tribal area. My prayers go to the victims & their families. Salute the brave security/police personnel who gave their lives & denied success to terrorists in the mission against Chinese Consulate," he said. "The failed attack against the Chinese Consulate was clearly a reaction to the unprecedented trade agreements that resulted from our trip to China. The attack was intended to scare Chinese investors and undermine CPEC. These terrorists will not succeed," Khan said. Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah contacted the Chinese consul general and assured him that the situation will be taken under control. Governor of Sindh Imran Ismail has sought a report on the attack from the Sindh inspector general of police. In Beijing, the China's foreign ministry strongly condemned the attack on its consulate and urged its all-weather ally to take "practical measures" to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens in the country, mostly on projects linked to the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Hundreds of Chinese nationals are presently working in Pakistan specially in Karachi and the restive Balochistan province on projects of the CPEC and on other business ventures. Chinese nationals in Karachi generally consider it a safe city to move around, carrying out their day-to-day business. In February, a senior Chinese shipping executive was killed when unknown assailants opened fire on his vehicle near Zamzama park also in the Clifton area. Sindh police chief Kaleem Imam said that security has been beefed up for the Chinese nationals and a comprehensive security plan would be drawn up to ensure they are under a security cover round the clock. It is the first major terror strike in Karachi since March, 2016 when 45 Ismaili Muslims were killed in a targeted attack. Since then, there had been calm in the country's financial hub as police and the paramilitary rangers have kept up a constant operation against militants, killing dozens of them in different parts of Karachi. Friday's attack will leave the government and security forces concerned as the Chinese mission is located in a densely populated area. PTI SH/CORR CPS AKJ CPS Flash The Chinese Embassy in Pakistan confirmed on Friday an attack against the Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi in south Pakistan, and strongly condemned the terrorist attack, adding that all Chinese nationals in the diplomatic compound are safe. The embassy also expressed the condolence to the two policemen killed during the attack, according to a statement from the embassy. Police and security forces said they have completed the operation in the site, where also several foreign missions are located in. All three terrorists involved in the attack were killed, according the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of Pakistan army. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has condemned the attack and ordered a complete inquiry into the incident and has desired that elements behind the incident must be unearthed. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi condemned the attack and said police and security forces responded promptly and eliminated all the militants involved in the attack. At least seven people, including two policemen, two civilians and three terrorists, were killed in the attack, police said. Javed Alam, deputy inspector general of police of karachi south region, said that three terrorists armed with automatic guns, hand grenades, suicide jackets and explosive devices reached the area in a white colored vehicle and opened fire at the police personnel deployed for security in the Chinese diplomatic compound in the Clifton area of Karachi. The heavily-guarded area is considered a red zone, and it is home to a number of upscale restaurants and schools. Director of the Jinnah Hospital Karachi Seemi Jamali told media that overall five bodies and one injured have been shifted to the hospital so far. Soon after the attack, police and security forces rushed to the site and cordoned off the area and launched an operation against the terrorists. All roads leading to the diplomatic area were blocked for public and media. Following the gunshots and blasts of hand grenades, heavy smoke was rising from the site. According to the reports, the terrorists also torched three vehicles present at the site. An eyewitness said that three terrorists reached the area and started firing and also hurled hand grenades at the police personnel. Police, security forces and the bomb disposal squad have cleared the area after search operation and diffusing the explosive devices planted by the terrorists, police said. A heavy cache of explosive material, weapons, bullets, dry fruits, first aid medicines and some electronic gadgets were also recovered from the possessions of the militants. An outlawed militant organization, the Balochistan Liberation Army, has claimed the attack. However, there is no official confirmation about the claim yet. Khost (Afghanistan), Nov 23 (AFP) An explosion rocked a mosque on an Afghan army base during Friday prayers, killing or wounding a number of soldiers, officials said, in the latest violence to hit the war-torn country. Khost provincial governor spokesman Taliban Mangal said at least nine people had been killed and 22 wounded, but that could not be immediately verified by military officials. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast in the eastern province, which defence ministry spokesman Ghafoor Ahmad Jawed would only confirm had caused casualties. Some of the wounded had been transported to a hospital in the provincial capital Khost while four helicopters also had been dispatched to bring others to Kabul, Jawed said. It is not clear how many worshippers were inside the mosque at the time of the explosion or the nature of the blast. Khost is located on the border with Pakistan's tribal areas.(AFP) RUP RUP New Delhi, Nov 23 (PTI) Following are the top foreign stories at 2000 hours: FGN39 PAK-CHINA-CONSULATE-LDALL FIRING Major terror attack on Chinese consulate in Karachi foiled; 7 killed Karachi: Three heavily-armed suicide bombers on Friday stormed the Chinese consulate in Pakistan's largest city of Karachi, killing four people including two policemen before being shot dead by security forces which foiled the daring attack in the high-security zone, police said. FGN37 PAK-LDALL BLAST Sikhs among 32 killed in powerful blast in Pakistan's restive northwest Peshawar: At least 32 people, including three Pakistani-Sikhs, were killed and more than 40 others injured on Friday when a suicide bomber triggered a powerful bomb blast at a busy market outside a religious seminary in the country's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, police said. FGN35 CHINA-INDIA-BORDER TALKS Doval in China for border talks with Wang Beijing: National Security Advisor Ajit Doval arrived in China on Friday for the 21st round of border talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during which they would also review the progress in bilateral ties since the Wuhan Summit in April. By K J M Varma FGN24 CHINA-PAK-ATTACK-LD REAX China asks Pakistan to step up security of its missions, CPEC after Karachi attack Beijing: A concerned China on Friday asked Pakistan to step up security for thousands of Chinese working on CPEC projects after three heavily-armed gunmen stormed its consulate in Karachi, but said it "highly appreciated" Islamabad's quick response to thwart the attack. By K J M Varma FGN17 LANKA-PARLIAMENT Rajapaksa's opponents win control of key panel in Lankan Parliament Colombo: Ousted Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickeremesinghe's alliance on Friday won control of a powerful panel in Parliament, dealing a major blow to President Maithripala Sirisena and his prime ministerial appointee Mahinda Rajapaksa. FGN18 LAOS-INDIA-LD SWARAJ Swaraj, Laotian PM Sisoulith discuss bilateral ties Vientiane: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday met Laotian Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith here and discussed bilateral relations and areas of mutual interest and cooperation as they resolved to strengthen ties through political dialogue and increased trade and investment. FGN40 PAK-CHINA-CONSULATE-ASSURANCE Pak will provide 'robust security' to Chinese nationals, Qureshi assures China Islamabad: Pakistan assured China on Friday of "robust security" to Chinese nationals in the country and thoroughly probe the terror attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi that killed four people. By Sajjad Hussain FGN12 INDONESIA-JET-IDENTIFICATION Indonesia wraps up Lion Air crash victim identification Jakarta:Indonesia on Friday wrapped up the grim task of identifying Lion Air jet crash victims from recovered body parts, with a preliminary report on the cause of the accident that killed 189 people due next week. (AFP) FGN36 AFGHAN-BLAST-3RDLD CASUALTIES Afghan official says death toll in mosque blast climbs to 27 Kabul: An explosion ripped through a mosque inside an Afghan army base in the country's volatile eastern Khost province as Friday prayers were drawing to a close, killing 27 soldiers and wounding 57, the military said. (AP) ABH ABH Jaitapur nuclear project: Land acquisition process completed, says minister Mumbai, Nov 23 (PTI) The land acquisition process for the 9900 MW nuclear power plant in Jaitapur, about 600 kilometres from here, has been completed, Maharashtra Energy Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule said. In a written reply to a question by Congress MLC Anant Gadgil in the Maharashtra Legislative Council Thursday, Bawankule added the state government was assisting the Centre to acquire land for the project. "The land acquisition process is complete," Bawankule stated in his written reply. Responding to the Congress MLC's query on whether the project faced opposition from local residents, Bawankule answered in the affirmative. Local residents as well as parties like the Shiv Sena have been opposing the project citing safety concerns. The project is being undertaken by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) and the Electricite de France (EDF), a French power utility firm. The Jaitapur nuclear power plant comprises six reactors with a combined capacity of 9900 MW. An Industrial Way Forward Agreement for the implementation of the project was signed on March 10 this year between NPCIL and Electricite de France. PTI MM BNM BNM Ahmedabad, Nov 23 (PTI) The Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad Friday nabbed a "hardcore naxal" who was involved in the killing 10 CRPF commandos in Aurangabad district of Bihar in 2016 and was now working as a factory labourer in Valsad district by concealing his identity, police said. The 33-year-old Rajesh Ravidas, who was declared 'wanted' by the Bihar government, was arrested from Vapi town in Valsad district, the Gujarat ATS said. Among other crimes, Ravidas, a key member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) outfit, was involved in the killing of 10 commandos of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in a Naxal ambush in the Aurangabad forests in 2016, the anti-terror squad said in a statement. Based on a specific tip-off, an ATS team nabbed him from the industrial town of Vapi in South Gujarat, where he was working as a labourer in a factory by concealing his real identity, said police officials. According to the ATS, Ravidas, also known as Uttamji, is a "hardcore naxal" involved in over 50 crimes, including attacks on security forces, and the Bihar government had declared a reward of Rs 50,000 for information on him. Ravidas was considered the 'right hand' for Pradyuman Sharma, the head of 'special area committee' of the CPI (Maoist), Bihar and Jharkhand, the agency said. The ATS claimed Sharma had appointed Ravidas as the 'Zonal Commander' of Rajgir area of Bihar. Ravidas, a native of Bahorma village in Gaya district of Bihar, fled to Gujarat earlier this year, said the statement. As per the ATS, Ravidas came in contact with Naxals at the age of 17 in 2002 following a land dispute among his family members. After resolving the land row with the help of Naxals, he became an active member of the banned outfit and started engaging in anti-national activities, the statement said. In March 2017, Ravidas was injured in a retaliatory fire by CRPF commandos in the forests of Gaya district. In that operation, four Maoists were gunned down. However, he managed to flee with injuries, the ATS said. He changed is name to 'Gopal Prasad' and started working as a security guard at a factory in the Union Territory of Daman near Gujarat in the beginning of 2018. Later, he came to Vapi, which is close to Daman, and started working at a factory, the statement said. Before handing him over to the Bihar police, the ATS is questioning him to find out more about his works in Gujarat and whether he was in contact with Sharma during his stay in the state, it added. PTI PJT PD RSY TIR TIR Modi has defamed all 'chowkidars' in India: Rahul Gandhi (Eds: adding fresh inputs) Vidisha/Mandideep, Nov 23 (PTI) Congress president Rahul Gandhi Friday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of bringing ignominy to all chowkidars (watchmen) in the country. Addressing campaign rallies for the November 28 Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Gandhi said the situation now is such that whenever the word chowkidar is uttered, people say "chor hai" (is a thief). "Wherever you go, as you pronounce the word "chowkidar" comes a reply "chor hai". I want to apologise to the chowkidars of the country. It is not your mistake, you all are not thieves, you all are honest. Only one person has brought ignominy to you. The country's prime minister has defamed all its chowkidars," he said. Before coming to power in 2014, Modi used to talk about combating corruption, unemployment and farmers' welfare but is now mum on these issues, Gandhi said. The sentiment across the country is that he broke their trust, Gandhi added. When Modi gave the "acche din" (good days) slogan ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, people would respond to the catch-phrase, saying "aayenge" (will come), he said. The promised "Acche Din" were not meant for the people but for some top industrialists, Gandhi said. Good days have come for industrialists like Nirav Modi, Anil Ambani and Vijay Mallya, he added. Modi, in his election campaign in 2014, had said he wanted to be the country's chowkidar, not the prime minister. "People had then reposed faith in him. The youth were assured two crore jobs, farmers were assured minimum support price for their produce, the entire India was assured that Rs 15 lakh would be deposited in the bank account of each citizen. People believed this then," Gandhi said. "Why has this changed? In four years, people found that these (promises) were false. Narendra Modi speaks lies. This is the sentiment in the country, because he has broken the (people's) trust," Gandhi said. A "Congress wave" would sweep Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram and Telangana, he said. The BJP-led government waived of Rs 3.5 lakh crore loans of the rich, but did not write off debts of farmers, he said. The previous Congress-led UPA government, on the recommendation of the Indian Air Force, decided to purchase 126 Rafale fighters at a cost of Rs 526 crore per plane with the stipulation that the state-owned aerospace company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) would make them in India, Gandhi said. "But Modi went to France and conveyed to the French government that each Rafale jet will be purchased for Rs 1600 crore. He told them to give the contract to (Anil) Ambani instead of giving it to HAL," Gandhi said. There was no immediate reaction from the BJP on the allegations. The ruling party has dismissed the charges in the past. The Congress president asked his party men to stand at polling booths and not back off "even an inch" to convey a message to the BJP that people of Madhya Pradesh are now with the principal opposition party. Gandhi, who faces a defamation suit for claiming that Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's son was named in the 'Panama Papers', said, "I spoke mistakenly that Shivraj ji's son was named in Panama Papers, actually it was Chhattisgarh CM's son. Shivraj ji threatened me of filing defamation suit." "But when I talk about scams like e-tendering, Vyapam, illegal mining and mid-day meal scam, he (Shivraj) doesn't speak a word, he doesn't threaten to file defamation. What does it mean," he said. Chouhan "stole" people's money in Vyapam, the entrance examination, admission and recruitment scam unearthed in Madhya Pradesh in 2013, he said. PTI ADU LAL MAS MR ENM VT VT VT Jammu, Nov 23 (PTI) The Indian and Pakistan armies Friday held a brigade commander level meeting at a border crossing in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch sector to adhere to ceasefire, a defence official said. The flag meeting comes in the wake of several ceasefire violations by the Pakistan army in the past over one month, during which five Indian security personnel were killed and seven others injured. The Indian delegation was led by Brigadier V S Sekhon and Brigadier Qaiser led the Pakistani side. They met at the Poonch-Rawlakote Crossing Point on the Line of Control (LoC), Public Relation Officer (PRO), Defence, Jammu, Lieutenant Colonel Devender Anand, said. The delegation had discussions on augmenting confidence building measures, maintaining peace along the LoC and preventing infiltration from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, he said. The meeting came on a day when security forces shot dead six Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militants during an encounter in a forested area in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district. "The brigade commander level flag meeting was held between the Indian Army and the Pakistan Army at 1100 hours at the Poonch-Rawlakote Crossing Point," Anand said. The meeting was held in a cordial and friendly atmosphere, and ended with both sides assuring to adhere to norms of the 2003 Ceasefire agreement and the Director-General of Military Operations (DGMO) level talks of May 29, he said. The armies also decided to work towards improving the situation along the LoC, the PRO said. PTI AB ANB ANB ANB (Eds: Updating BJP Sambit Patra's reaction) New Delhi/Jaipur, Nov 23 (PTI) Senior Congress leader from Rajasthan C P Joshi Friday apologised for his casteist remarks after party chief Rahul Gandhi disapproved his comments and asked him to express regret. Gandhi also asked other party leaders to refrain from making such statements which hurt any segment of society. The BJP, however, rejected Joshi's apology, saying the remarks "insulted" Indian culture and the Hindu religion, and dared Gandhi to expel him from the Congress. Addressing a poll meeting in poll-bound Rajasthan on Thursday, Joshi had reportedly said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP MP Uma Bharti and Hindu activist Sadhvi Ritambhara are from "lower castes" and know nothing of Hinduism. He had said it is the Brahmins who are learned and know of Hinduism. "Respecting the principles of the Congress party and the sentiments of party workers, I feel sorry if my statement has hurt the feelings of any section of society," Joshi said in a tweet in Hindi. Thursday night, he had posted his speech on Twitter and Facebook, saying, "I strongly condemn the fabricated use of my statement by BJP. To put all the speculation to rest, here is enclosed the clipping of the speech." Gandhi disapproved the Congress leader's comments in a tweet, saying Joshi's remarks do not reflect, and are contrary, to the ideals of the Congress party, and urged party leaders to refrain from making such statements. "C P Joshi's remark is contrary to the Congress party's ideals. Party leaders should not give such statement that hurts any segment of the society, he said. "While respecting the Congress party's principles and the sentiments of party workers, I am sure Joshiji will realise his mistake. He should express regret over his remarks," the Congress chief said on Twitter. Joshi's remarks come ahead of Assembly elections in Rajasthan on December 7 and Madhya Pradesh on November 28, and have the potential of alienating lower caste voters from the party. He has launched his poll campaign in Nathdrawa on Friday, where he is contesting as a Congress candidate. The BJP rejected Joshi's apology and said Gandhi must take responsibility and express regret. Stressing that Joshi had "insulted the Indian culture as well as the Hindu religion", Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi accused the Congress of "dividing every religion for power". "The statement of Congress leader (Joshi) is baseless, wrong and condemnable. It reflects that the Congress doesn't know the history of Indian culture and Hindu religion," Trivedi said at a press conference in Jaipur. Earlier, BJP leader and spokesperson Sambit Patra said, "What CP Joshi has done is target the prime minister based on his caste. It is not acceptable. If Rahul (Gandhi) ji has the guts, then remove CP Joshi now.... CP Joshi insulted Hindus while pretending to be one." "Shocking statement by Congress leader CP Joshi....He even goes ahead to say that they belong to lowly castes who should not be speaking about Hinduism Appalling," he said on Twitter. Patra also said Congress leaders discuss things behind closed doors and it gets recorded, but when they get exposed, they ask people to apologise. "Rahul Gandhi ji you have been caught red-handed. You should immediately sack CP Joshi, sack him within one hour," he demanded Thursday night. PTI SKC AG SKC ANB ANB New Delhi, Nov 23 (PTI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday attended Gurpurab celebrations at the residence of Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal here. "Today, on the auspicious occasion of Shri Guru Nanak Dev Ji' Jayanti, attended a programme at my colleague, Smt. @HarsimratBadal_ Ji's residence," he tweeted. Sharing pictures of the ceremony, he said, over kirtans( devotional songs), we all remembered the noble ideals and message of Guru Nanak Dev. PTI NAB RCJ New Delhi, Nov 23 (PTI) Two Tanzanian women were rescued after a hostile crowd gathered outside their homes in Dwarka following rumours that they were cannibals and were abducting children, police said Friday. Later, a police patrol party, while conducting searches in the area, found that two Nigerian men were locked inside a room and rescued them as well, they said, adding, there were rumours about them also being cannibals. There were allegations about the foreign nationals being assaulted by the locals, but police dismissed the reports as baseless, saying the four were rescued safely. They said the women were rescued Thursday evening after police received a series of calls informing them that they had an altercation with the locals. Five phone calls were received at the police control room within a span of 41 minutes -- between 6.57 pm to 7.38 -- pm Thursday informing them about the altercation involving the two Tanzanian women in Kakrola area of Dwarka, police said. When police teams reached there, they found that a crowd had gathered in front of the women's house and allegations were floating around that they had killed a child and eaten his flesh. Police rescued the two women, said a senior police officer. Subsequently, a sixth call was received at 7.40 pm by a woman who alleged that her 16-year-old son had been kidnapped by the Nigerian men, he said. However, investigations showed that it was a false charge and the caller's phone was also switched off, he added. While searching the area during the night time, police found the Nigerian nationals locked inside a room, police said. They said they were sleeping when some people came and locked their room from outside. One of them does not possess Indian visa, and will be deported, they added. PTI SLB AMP SLB MIN TIR TIR You are here: World Flash At least nine people have been confirmed dead and 25 others sustained injuries in a blast that rocked a mosque of national army in Afghanistan's eastern Khost province on Friday, an army officer in the province Captain Abdullah said. "The blast took place in a mosque of an army battalion when people gathered to offer Friday congregation, leaving nine persons dead and injuring 25 others," Abdullah said. Without providing more details, the official added that investigation is underway. Confirming the incident, spokesman for provincial government, Talib Mangal also said that nine people had been killed and 25 others injured. The security forces have cordoned off the area and do not allow journalists to get access to the site of the incident. However, locals believe that the blast might be suicide bombing and the casualties could be higher than reported. Anti-government militants have increased activities mostly in the shape of deadly suicide bombings. A suicide attack against a meeting of clerics in a hotel in Kabul last week had left more than 50 people dead and injured over 90 others. New Delhi, Nov 23 (PTI) A new technology has been developed to assess the rise of water level in rivers and reservoirs by rain and can help state governments to minutely monitor the impact of rainfall, IMD chief K J Ramesh said, in the aftermath of the deadliest deluge in Kerala. The technology called the 'Impact Based Forecasting Approach' which shows "pre-event scenario" can help authorities in taking real-time decisions, he said. "We should be able to generate a scenario where we can take decisions to release water or not release it. It will be helpful for every state authority to take decision. We can run this system in pre-event scenario. We are now in a position to use to this technology into service," Ramesh said at an event organised by the Centre for Science and Environment. The heavy downpour that ravaged Kerala for a fortnight ending August 21 caused death of around 500 people and economic damages worth over Rs 40,000 crore. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had said in the state assembly that there were "lapses" on the part of the IMD's rain forecast. The IMD had forecast an estimated 98.5 mm rain in the state between 9 and 15 August, but Kerala received was 352.2 mm of rainfall, Vijayan said. The IMD director general admitted that excessive rainfall that led to floods in Kerala were a result of climate change and in terms of rainfall it was very heavy. "The number of cyclones have increased from 10 to 18 every year as reported in Nature magazine and secondly quantum of precipitation which was 13 days has come down to 10 days," he said. There is another technology which would help in identifying warm ocean segments that are contributing to the rapid intensification of the systems. Cyclone Ockhi's unpredictability was due to such warm ocean segments, following which the technology was developed in October, Ramesh said. Ockhi is the first severe cyclonic storm in almost 40 years to have travelled about 2,400 kilometres from the Bay of Bengal to as far as the Gujarat coast, a senior Met Department official said. Ockhi, which formed as a depression over southwest Bay of Bengal on November 29 last year, intensified into a cyclone off the Kanyakumari coast in Tamil Nadu on November 30 and travelled up to the Gujarat coast before it dissipated on December 6 after weakening into a low pressure area. CSE Director General Sunita Narain stressed on the need to plan "deliberately for drainage" to prevent disasters like Kerala floods. "Every river, pond, paddy field and city should be mapped and protected at all costs," Narain said. "Every home, institution, village and city must be required to do rainwater harvesting so that rain can be channelised and recharged," she said. PTI UZM UZM SNE SNE Srinagar, Nov 23 (PTI) A civilian was injured in firing near a security forces camp in Budgam district of Jammu and Kashmir on Friday, officials said. Ishfaq Ahmad Ganaie was injured in the firing near the camp of the Army's 50 Rashtriya Rifles in the Chattergam area, a police official said. Residents alleged that the Army opened unprovoked fire, injuring Ganaie. An Army official, however, denied the allegation and said troops did not open fire. The civilian might have been a victim of militancy-related violence, the Army official added. The injured civilian has been rushed to a hospital here in critical condition, the police official said. PTI MIJ SMN SMN Chandigarh, Nov 23 (PTI) Punjab cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu wrote to Union minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday and hailed the Centre's decision to develop the Kartarpur Sahib corridor. The Centre Thursday said it will develop and build the corridor from Punjab's Gurdaspur district to the International Border to facilitate Indian pilgrims to visit Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur in Pakistan. Hailing the Centre, Sidhu in the letter said, "As we move down this road, and write a new chapter of faith and love for the region, I pray and hope that this enterprise will yield undeniable and implicit change and thaw in the relations, that it will build bridges, burn animosity and will act like a soothing balm for two neighbouring countries." He said he was extremely grateful and indebted for the steps initiated as a Sikh devotee and as a man committed to the cause of Punjab and its people. This has been a long standing demand of the Sikh community across the globe and a step in this direction has brought a new ray of hope among pilgrims who anxiously await to pay obeisance at the historic Gurdwara Sahib across the border, he said. "A few months ago, I had met you to express my concern that the Government of India must take up this initiative by formally writing to your Pakistan counterparts as this would be a great service to the community," he said in the letter. These positive steps by both the nations are a great respite for the followers of guru's timeless teachings and for the people of Punjab, he said. "I wish that the Government of India writes formally to Pakistan on visa and other related issues for easy passage for pilgrims once the corridor is complete," he said. PTI VSD DPB Jaipur, Nov 23 (PTI) Rejecting Congress leader C P Joshi's apology for his casteist remarks, the BJP on Friday said party president Rahul Gandhi must take responsibility and express regret. Stressing that Joshi had "insulted the Indian culture as well as the Hindu religion", Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi accused the Congress of "dividing every religion for power". "The statement of Congress leader (Joshi) is baseless, wrong and condemnable. It reflects that the Congress doesn't know the history of Indian culture and Hindu religion," Trivedi said at a press conference here. Congress talks about politics of development but divides the society on the basis of caste and religion... The party has divided every religion for power and such negative outlook has no place in politics, he added. Addressing a poll meeting in Rajasthan on Thursday, Joshi had reportedly said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP MP Uma Bharti and Hindu activist Sadhvi Ritambhara were from "lower castes" and therefore, know nothing of Hinduism. He said it is the Brahmins who were learned and know of Hinduism. As the statement caused a political furore, Rahul Gandhi on Friday clarified that the Congress leader's statement did not reflect the ideals of the party, and urged the senior leader to apologise. Joshi, a candidate in the December 7 assembly polls in Rajasthan, duly apologised in a tweet. "Respecting the Congress principles and feelings of party workers, I regret for my statement if it had hurt any section of the society," Joshi tweeted. However, an unimpressed BJP asked the Gandhi scion to apologise. "We don't want his (Joshi) apology... Rahul Gandhi should take responsibility and apologise for the remarks," Trivedi said. The BJP leader further accused the Congress of not only dividing the society but also the resources of the country. "The Congress leader's statement has not only insulted Indian society but Hindu culture as well," Trivedi said. PTI AG RHL New Delhi, Nov 23 (PTI) There will be no space left for Muslim burials in the national capital after a year, a Delhi Minorities Commission (DMC) report has warned, seeking remedial measures like allocation of land and provision of temporary graves. The report was released by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday. Quoting a study conducted by the commission, it pointed out that against an average of 13,000 Muslim funerals every year in the city, there were 29,370 vacancies in existing graveyards till 2017. "This means that at the present pace, there will be no space left after one year from now unless some remedial strategies are adopted," the report said. As per records, there are 704 Muslim graveyards in various parts of Delhi, out of which only 131 are functional. "Out of the functioning 131 graveyards, 16 are not operational due to litigation while 43 others have been encroached upon by different entities," the report said. Most graveyards in the city are small, measuring 10 bighas or less and 46 percent of them measure five bighas or less, it added. "Very few graveyards were developed in the recent past despite the growing need due to the increase in population as a result of natural growth and immigration from other parts of the country," the report said. The study on 'Problems and Status of Muslim Graveyards in Delhi' was conducted by the commission through Human Development Society in 2017. According to the report, the findings of the study have been presented to the Delhi government, various departments and organisations to plan a remedy. The study recommended 'kutcha' (temporary) graves, which allow re-burial in the same space after a few years, and development of new graveyards by removing encroachments. It also called for allocation of new land for graveyards, as well as taking steps like building boundary walls and having guards to prevent encroachment of the existing graveyards. PTI VIT VIT DIV DIV Hyderabad, Nov 23 (PTI) TDP President and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu would campaign for the Telangana Assembly polls along with Congress President Rahul Gandhi next week, TDP sources said. Naidu would take part in the electioneering along with Gandhi on November 28 and 29, the sources said. TDP and Congress are contesting the December seven polls in Telangana as part of the "grand alliance" which also comprises the CPI and Telangana Jana Samiti (TJS). Naidu, who has been making efforts to put together an anti-BJP front, had met Gandhi earlier this month. Meanwhile, the Congress has invited TDP and other alliance partners to attend the UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi's public meeting at Medchal here on Friday. The Telangana Legislative Assembly was prematurely dissolved on September six as per a recommendation made by the state cabinet. The Assembly polls were originally scheduled to be held along with Lok Sabha elections next year. Elections would be held on December 7 and the counting on December 11. PTI SJR SS DV DV Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 23 (PTI) Janata Dal (Secular), a key partner in the ruling LDF in Kerala, Friday decided to replace its nominee and Water Resources Minister Mathew T Thomas with senior MLA K Krishnankutty in the state dispensation. The decision in this regard was announced by the JD(S) national secretary general Danish Ali in Bengaluru. The party, headed by former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, has three MLAs in the Kerala assembly. Senior JD(S) leaders from the state including Krishnankutty and C K Nanu, the other MLA, met Gowda and held discussions in Bengaluru in the morning. However, Thomas kept away from the crucial meet, citing inconvenience. The two factions led by Thomas and Krishnankutty have been at loggerheads for quite some time over the party's lone ministerial berth in the CPI(M)-led LDF government. Announcing the decision, Ali told reporters that Thomas has been informed about the party's new stand. He also lavished praise on the incumbent minister, saying Thomas was "one of the best performing ministers" in the Kerala Cabinet. "Thomas has done a tremendous job. In the last two-and-half years of the present government in Kerala, our nominee Mathew T Thomas, has done a tremendous job," he said. Ali said during the formation of the new government in 2016 it had been decided that there would be rotation of its representative in the state Cabinet. "This was the understanding among the leaders. Thomas has agreed to the leadership's decision," he said. Describing Chittur MLA Krishnankutty as a "hardworking" leader, Ali said he is a "fighter" and throughout his life he had fought for farmers' causes. The two factions led by Thomas and Krishnankutty have been at loggerheads for quite some time over the party's lone ministerial berth in the CPI(M)-led LDF government. Entering politics through Indian National Congress, Krishnankutty, hailing from Palakkkad, had served as KPCC member in 1969. He joined Janata party at its inception. PTI LGK UD RRT SS RCJ Tigri (Amroha), Nov 23 (PTI) More than 10 lakh devotees took a dip in the Ganga river on the occasion of Kartik Purnima on Friday. The people had started gathering for the week-long Ganga Mela on November 18, Amroha District Magistrate Hemant Kumar said. District officials said more than 10 lakh devotees took a dip in the river this morning and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath took an aerial survey of the area. This was the first time that the fair was organised by the administration as earlier the panchayat would organise it, he said. Uttar Pradesh Cabinet minister Chetan Chouhan, who inaugurated the fair, said next time the government will try to establish a centre for yoga, traditional games and rural activities. No untoward incident occurred at the fair this time due to extra care of the district administration and the police, Superintendent of Police Vipin Tada said. District railway manager A K Singhal said due to huge gathering, railways operated some special trains to Moradabad. It also announced stoppage of many express trains at Kankather and Garh stations, he said. PTI CORR DPB DPB Muzaffarnagar, Nov 23 (PTI) A 50-year-old farmer was electrocuted to death after coming into contact with a high tension electrical wire, police said Friday. Ramesh was riding a buffalo cart when the accident occurred at Ghari Bahadurpur village in the district on Thursday, they added. He was taken to the hospital but was declared brought dead. The body was later sent for postmortem examination, police said. PTI CORR RHL New Delhi, Nov 23 (PTI) A man, in his 30s, allegedly committed suicide on Friday after jumping from the fourth floor of Janakpuri District Centre, police said. According to the police, they received a call at around 10.15 am about the incident. The deceased is yet to be identified. He was aged around 35, police said. Prime facie, it seems a case of suicide, Deputy Commissioner of Police (West) Monika Bhardwaj said. He landed in front of a tea shop whose owner called the police and informed about the incident, police said. The man's skull was broken in the incident. Further investigation is on, the officer said. PTI NIT SLB DPB Flash Iranian Foreign Ministry on Friday dismissed the recent U.S. accusations that Iran has breached the Chemical Weapons Convention. "During the Fourth Review Conference of the Chemical Weapons Convention in The Hague on Thursday, the U.S. mission to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) once again leveled groundless accusations against the Islamic republic, which we strongly reject," the Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi said in a statement on Friday. "The crystal-clear point here is that the U.S. is the only OPCW member state with chemical weapon arsenals, which has so far failed to fulfill its commitment to destroy them," Qasemi said. Besides, the United States sides with Israel's chemical weapon program and levels such "wrong and false accusations" against Iran, he added. The Iranian mission to the OPCW will give an appropriate response to these baseless accusations at the end of the general debates in The Hague, he added. (Eds: Updating with death of kidnapped SPO) Srinagar, Nov 23 (PTI) A former special police officer (SPO) was killed by suspected militants on Friday after they kidnapped him in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir, police said. The bullet-riddled body of former SPO Basharat Ahmad Wagay was recovered, hours after he was kidnapped, a police official said. Besides the former SPO, two other persons were also kidnapped by unidentified gunmen. The police official said that the two other kidnapped persons -- Zahid Ahmad Wagay and Reyaz Ahmad Wagay -- were released by the suspected militants. Militants killed two persons -- one shot dead and another terminated in ISIS-style execution -- in South Kashmir last week on the charge of being informers of security forces. PTI MIJ CK Launched in 1909, Scottish Mortgage is the only investment trust on the FTSE 100 What does it do? The trust aims to invest savers money in strong global companies and grow their cash over the long term rather than focusing on income from dividends. Launched in 1909, Scottish Mortgage is the only investment trust on the FTSE 100. What does the manager invest in? Amazon and Netflix are both in the trusts top ten holdings, along with Chinese online shopping giant Alibaba and car makers Tesla and Ferrari. Faangs account for around 17 per cent of its holdings. What do the experts say? Darius McDermott of Chelsea Financial Services says: The trust is a big believer in not just the Faangs but the Chinese equivalents too. What do the experts like? The trust is cheap in terms of its fees and has an ongoing charge of just 0.37 per cent. Because of its heavy exposure to US tech stocks, its share price is down 14.5 per cent since October. For anyone who really believes in the Faang companies, McDermott adds, this makes the fund look attractive. Are there any downsides? It is very exposed to technology and the internet, McDermott concedes. If the market starts favouring reliable companies which are producing steady dividends now, and risker high-growth companies which are promising a return for the future go out of favour, Scottish Mortgage could suffer. Struggling government contractor Interserve has launched a search for fresh investment as it seeks to urgently tackle spiralling debts. The firm, whose share price has tumbled in recent years, admitted that it is working with advisers to explore ways of bringing cash in to put it on a more secure financial footing. Shares in the firm have fallen another 6.5 per cent today to 32.7p. Troubled outsourcer Interserve has blamed the blockade against Qatar for some of its woes Interserve said its debt level will be between 625million and 650million by the end of the financial year - higher than previous forecasts of 575million to 600million. But the firm promised to deliver a detailed deleveraging plan in early 2019 and has begun the process of hiving off non-core assets. 'The board is working with its advisers to look at all options to deliver the optimum capital structure for the business to support its long-term, sustainable development,' Interserve said. 'This process includes options to bring new capital into the business and, as previously announced, progressing the disposal of non-core businesses.' Interserve also insisted that its 'Fit for Growth' transformation programme is on track, and signalled there will be a 'significant' improvement in full-year profit. In a third-quarter trading update, the firm said the strategy will deliver 15million in cost savings in 2018. Boss Debbie White said: 'The board remains focused on positioning the group for long-term, sustainable success. This means continuing the operational progress we are making to put legacy issues behind us.' Interserve boss Debbie White (above) said the firm is putting its legacy issues behind it Concerns about Interserve's finances have raised speculation that the group could go the way of rival Carillion, which collapsed into liquidation in January. In August, Interserve said it swung to a 6million half-year loss, down from profits of 24.6million a year earlier, as it scrambled to reduce costs. 'Debbie White and her team are clearly doing their best to steady the ship at Interserve,' said AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould, 'but the admission that net debt will end the year higher than expected means the company has yet to reassure shareholders and potential investors about the key issues that face it.' Mould pointed out that Interserve's shares are at their lowest level since the mid-1980s. He adds: 'The lower the share price goes, the more shares Interserve will have to issue, and the more dilution shareholders may suffer, should management decide that an equity raising is required to buffer the company's finances.' Shock departure: Sacha Romanovitch, 41, said she was disappointed by comments from colleagues at Grant Thornton Grant Thornton's ousted boss has lashed out at internal critics following her shock decision to quit. Sacha Romanovitch, 41, said she was disappointed by comments from colleagues at the auditing business after being branded a socialist in a poison pen letter. Romanovitch, who was the only female boss of a large British accountant, last month revealed she was stepping down just days after initially vowing to stay on. She had been at the centre of a power struggle in the partnership, which saw colleagues leak her annual performance review. She angered them with an effort to turn the firm into a shared enterprise in which all 4,500 staff had a stake. An anonymous note sent to newspapers accused her of pursuing a 'socialist agenda' and 'having a high social purpose' ahead of the business's financial performance. Speaking at an event in London, she said: 'I feel disappointed that a small group well, one individual behaved in the way that they did.' But she added: 'Having said that, the world often moves in mysterious ways and I think I've been through enough of life that, actually, it sometimes just gives you a prompt to say, 'Right, where can I make the biggest difference now?'.' Oil prices last night crashed below $60 a barrel for the first time in more than a year amid growing fears of a global economic slowdown. Brent crude hit its lowest levels since October 2017, dropping 6 per cent to $58.80 in frantic trading across the world, and is headed for its worst month since 2014. The value of a barrel of oil has fallen by about 20 per cent so far this month and has lost ground for seven straight weeks. Brent crude hit its lowest levels since October 2017, dropping 6 per cent to $58.80 in frantic trading across the world, and is headed for its worst month since 2014 It peaked above $86 a barrel in early October, a four-year high. The fall is good news for motorists, after supermarkets Asda, Sainsburys and Morrisons all passed on the drop by cutting prices at the petrol pumps. But it also reflects growing concerns about the world economy, and an increasingly heated trade war between the US and China. Traders also fretted about a slump in the eurozone, after the closely monitored IHS Markit survey showed that business growth had been much weaker than expected this month, slowing to a four-year low. Activity in Germany Europes largest economy and France also lagged. A strong dollar is also weighing on oil prices as there are concerns investors will pull their money out of developing countries and put it in America, damaging growth. The latest sell-off was partly triggered by a forecast from the Opec cartel of producers saying that the amount of oil supplied into the market will be higher than expected. At the same time, Opec said demand is likely to fall. The organisation hiked its estimate of non-Opec supply growth by 90,000 barrels per day from its last report, to 2.3m barrels a day in 2018, and up by 120,000 barrels a day next year. Opec has been trying to stabilise the market since November 2016, but these efforts have also come alongside a surge in production in non-member countries, namely the US, Russia and China, which risk flooding the market and damaging prices. It was also thought that US sanctions on Iran could stop it exporting to major customers, holding back supply, but most of the countrys key clients have been allowed to maintain their access. If suppliers produce more oil than is needed, they are forced to cut their costs. Cailin Birch, global commodities analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said: Oil prices recent slide primarily reflects the weakening outlook for global oil demand. The USs decision to issue waivers for major importers of Iranian oil has erased earlier fears that US sanctions would create a supply crunch. Against that backdrop, the slowing pace of Chinese growth, and therefore energy demand growth, is a concern. Emerging economies in Asia, primarily China, will be responsible for much of the new oil consumption in the coming years, so oil prices will remain very sensitive to the regions economic performance, Birch said. The weeks-long drop in oil comes after two years of rising prices which led to a jump in the cost of fuel has had knock-on effects for airlines and travellers. Morgan Stanley commodities strategists, Martijn Rats and Amy Sergeant, said in a note to clients that they expect Opec to gain control of the market in 2019, meaning Brent crude would rise back above $70. Analysts are now waiting to see if Opec will try to cut output when the organisation meets next month. In the US, President Trump is strongly opposed to any production cuts. Earlier this week, he said in a tweet: Oil prices getting lower. Great! Like a big tax cut for America and the world. Lets go lower! Trumps opposition to higher oil prices is particularly important because he has so far refused to take action against Saudi Arabia over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. It is thought the Saudis do not want to upset the President at such a sensitive time and are therefore less likely to support production cuts than usual. Olivier Jakob, of analysis firm Petromatrix, said Trump has provided strong political support to Saudi Arabia, but against that he wants lower prices. He added: The President is pushing to keep prices lower for longer, and now he has some political leverage against Saudi Arabia. Debenhams boss Sergio Sergio Bucher said the department store is transforming its product range DEBS VOW Sergio Bucher, the boss of Debenhams, has insisted his company is here to stay amid mounting concerns over its future. Bucher, 55, said the department store is transforming its product range as it prepares to close a third of its 166 shops. PUB PROFITS Profits at brewer Fullers plunged 12 per cent to 20.8million after a major renovation investment in its pubs. Revenues increased by 6 per cent to 222.1million in the 26 weeks to September 29. CREDITORS HIT The administrator of newspaper group Johnston Press has warned creditors of a significant shortfall in cash needed to pay off money it owes. Flying high London airport Gatwick has welcomed 46m passengers over the past year, which is a record high. PENSION PLAN Outsourcer Capita has agreed a plan to plug its 185million pension black hole. It will pay 176million into the pension scheme over the next four years. The outsourcing sector has come under pressure to prevent more failures after Carillion went bust in January. STAKE SALE Israeli tech billionaire Teddy Sagi has completely sold his stake in Playtech, the gambling firm he founded in 1999, pocketing around 69million. It comes on top of the 23million which the 47-year-old made last week, when he reduced his stake. VOTER REVOLT More than a fifth of shareholders at miner Petra Diamonds voted against the re-election of the companys founder to his role as non-executive chairman yesterday. Investor advisory group Pirc had recommended a vote against Adonis Pouroulis, saying he was not independent enough. ITALY FEARS Credit rating agency Moodys has warned that escalating tensions between Italy and the EU are likely to increase risks to the countrys economy. Troubled outsourcer Interserve was back in the doghouse after admitting debt for the year will be higher than expected, and earnings from its waste-to-energy business will be lower than hoped. The firm, which works for the likes of the Metropolitan Police and Edinburgh Zoo, had previously said its debt pile would end the year somewhere between 575million and 600million. But it has warned this will be more like 625million to 650million, reawakening worries in the City that Interserve will be unable to pay off the debt. Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said: 'It is encouraging to see management stick to its cost-reduction forecast for the year of 15million and continue to predict a strong increase in earnings.' Interserve, which works for the likes of the Metropolitan Police and Edinburgh Zoo, has warned its debt pile will be 625m to 650m There are a number of factors weighing on the support services sector in general. These include complex company structures, a reliance on big contracts which can become very expensive if anything goes wrong, thin profit margins as contract prices are pushed lower, and high debt levels after long periods of pursuing growth. Debbie White, an outsourcing veteran who was brought in to turn Interserve around last year, has already embarked on a plan to cut costs and sell parts of the business to pay off the debt burden. She has said that the company will reveal a plan to further reduce the debt in 2019. But Mould added: 'Some shareholders and potential investors may be wondering why a new plan designed to reduce debt is only being unveiled in 2019, when the share price slide suggests the company's situation remains acute.' Stock Watch - Amerisur Resources Investors in Amerisur Resources are hoping oil will soon be flowing at its sites in Colombia, as the South America-focused firm signed a deal with a major oil group to pay for the appraisal of its sites. Occidental Petroleum Corporation will acquire 50 per cent of Amerisur's sites, and in return will fund a 72.7million exploration and appraisal programme. This will include a seismic scan of the sites and a drilling programme of five exploration wells. Shares jumped 20 per cent, or 2p, to 12p. One of the problems for Interserve has been delays in the waste-to-energy plant it is building in Derby for Renewi. Because the project will not be finished on time, it has had to pay penalties to Renewi. Interserve's shares dropped 5.6 per cent, or 1.96p, to 33.04p yesterday, meaning 100million has been wiped off its market value since the beginning of the year. The FTSE 100 briefly fell below 6930, the level it was at the start of the century before the dotcom bubble burst. But it clawed back some of the losses to end the day down 0.11 per cent, or 7.46 points, at 6952.86. The index was weighed down by heavyweight oil companies, as concerns that supply is set to outstrip global demand caused a commodities sell-off. On the FTSE 250, brick-maker Ibstock built up gains after announcing it would sell its US manufacturer Glen-Gery. Brickworks Limited is buying the division for 86million, more than eight times its earnings in the 12 months to June. Ibstock said it will use the money to pay down its debt, which should end 2018 at about 50million. It has also sold off some spare land, bringing in another 3.7million. The firm is still worried about uncertainty surrounding Brexit, but building work will not stop. Shares climbed by 8.2 per cent, or 18p, to 236.8p. Shares in media company Future, which owns titles such as Real Homes and the official Playstation magazine, climbed 6.4 per cent, or 31p, to 514p as revenue soared. In its media division, which includes online adverts, shopping and events, revenue shot up 88 per cent to 64.2million. Even its magazine revenues rose, up 20 per cent at 60.4million, though this was mainly driven by buying five titles from Haymarket for 14million earlier this year. Meanwhile, Record a business which helps pension funds and other major investors iron out foreign currency risks climbed 2.5 per cent, or 0.75p, to 31p on the back of higher client demand. Graphene producer Directa Plus jumped 7.4 per cent, or 3.5p, to 51p, as it clinched a 177,000 contract with oil services firm GSP Group. The younger generation believe they are best at saving for retirement but risk a false sense of security by overestimating their pensions, according to a new report. BlackRocks new DC Pulse survey revealed that 39 per cent of savers between the ages of 25 and 34 believe they are saving enough for their retirement. This is opposed to just 18 per cent of 45 to 54-year-olds and 31 per cent of 55 to 64-year-olds, with the introduction of auto-enrolment for pensions being thanked for the increase in the younger generation putting away money each month. However, the research also discovered that many believed they had better pensions than they actually did - thinking income would be guaranteed by employers rather than dependent on the stock market. Younger generation are saving more than other age groups but still not as much as they think The survey spoke to 1,000 UK residents, aged 25 to 69 years old, who are earning 10,000 or more and who have, or are, contributing to a defined contribution workplace scheme. Over a third (35 per cent) of young savers believe that they have a defined benefit pension scheme with their current employer, but the latest Office for National Statistics figures reveal the number is much closer to 20 per cent for under 29 year olds. The survey also found that 45 per cent of 25-34 year olds believe there should ideally be a contribution of 15 per cent or more into their pension, paid in between them and their employer. But, in reality, just 29 per cent are currently doing so. A defined benefit pension scheme is where an employer takes responsibility for providing an income in retirement, with the amount someone receives based on how many years they have worked for their employer and the salary they have earned. An employer has to make sure that there is enough money at the time of your retirement to pay your pension income. Employees can also be asked to contribute. In contrast, defined contribution schemes see workers and their employers contribute to a pension, which is invested to deliver a pot that they must use for retirement income. The eventual size of that pot depends on what goes in and how investments perform, while the income from can fluctuate. The introduction of auto-enrolment for pensions has helped young people save for their future Savers in their thirties put more of their income away A report by Charter Savings Bank has reinforced the fact that the younger generation are working harder at saving. It discovered that savers in their 30s are putting away 58 per cent of their disposable income a month, which comes out at 280 a month - much higher than the national average of 42 per cent, which averages out at 190 a month. UK AGE GROUPS AND HOW MUCH THEY SAVE Age Group Monthly disposable income Average saved each month Average saved each year % of disposable income saved each month Average total savings 20's 361 191 2,290 53% 5,440 30's 486 280 3,364 58% 10,212 40's 488 213 2,557 44% 20,675 50's 389 136 1,634 35% 30,105 60's 457 159 1,904 35% 39,968 70's 506 145 1,735 29% 44,542 UK 452 190 2,291 42% 23,629 Source: Charter Savings Bank Most people said that the main reason for saving was in case of needing money for emergencies. However, having enough cash for holidays was the second most common reason given. Paul Whitlock, director of savings at Charter Savings Bank, said: 'Everyone will have different priorities for how much they can afford to save and what they are saving for, depending on what stage of life they're at. 'The important thing is to try and save as much as you can afford to, from as early an age as possible, and seek out the best rates possible. It may not seem worth putting a small sum away each month, but it's a brilliant habit to get into, plus that money soon grows.' Claire Felgate, head of UK defined contribution at BlackRock said: 'According to the ONS, more than 9.5 million people have now been enrolled into a pension scheme, but we worry that for younger savers, it's given them a false sense of security. 'While they are the most likely age group to feel confident their retirement savings are on track, they need to factor in a much longer life than previous generations.' Although many young savers are optimistic about saving, they admitted that they were more likely to prioritise saving for a 'rainy day' fund (71 per cent) as opposed to paying into their nest egg (52 per cent). A further 44 per cent also admit to putting off saving or investing for their long term plans as they believe it is 'silly to focus on something so far away'. More worryingly, just 14 per cent of those surveyed knew how much was in their defined contribution pension. BlackRock said it believes that those in the younger generation should be saving more towards their retirement, with an ideal minimum contribution of 15 per cent of their earnings, whereas the limit will be at 8 per cent from April 2019. However, only 2 per cent said, that should they have an extra 200 month, they would pay it into their pension. Felgate added: 'Given the level of trust people generally place with their workplace, employers can play a massive role in helping young savers to contribute more to their pension and help bridge the gap between what they are actually putting away and what they would ideally like to put away.' By Agustinus Beo Da Costa JAKARTA, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Police in Muslim-majority Indonesia have questioned the head of one of its newest and most progressive parties, who is battling accusations of "Islamophobia" from rival politicians, after she said her party opposed the growth of bylaws based on religion. Indonesia is officially secular and has a tradition of pluralism but Islam has increasingly crept into politics in a country home to significant Christian, Hindu and other religious minorities. Grace Natalie set up the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), often dubbed the "millennials party", in 2014 to offer an alternative for young voters disillusioned by traditional parties often run by an entrenched elite. In a speech this week attended by President Joko Widodo, Natalie, who is ethnic Chinese, spoke out against intolerance, saying PSI would not support local regulations based on Islamic law or Christian scripture. "We want to return back to the constitution so that there is a guarantee for all citizens, whatever their background, or religion they believe, or faith they have," said Natalie, whose party is part of a coalition backing Widodo's bid for a second term in 2019 elections. Police questioned Natalie following a complaint filed by Eggi Sudjana, a lawyer and politician of an Islamic party, who told Reuters her comments breached laws on hate speech and attacked religion. He urged her to apologise. Some rival politicians also accused her of "Islamophobia", while defending the adoption of bylaws based on sharia or religious values. Jakarta police are still investigating to determine if any law was broken, said spokesman Argo Yuwono. In a party statement, Natalie said that during six hours of questioning she had told police her speech referred to "a willingness to implement equality and justice for all citizens before the law". She also said it was based on an academic study showing how religion-based rules could affect women and minority groups. The only province in Indonesia allowed to enforce Islamic law is Aceh, but other regions have adopted bylaws enforcing elements of sharia. Such bylaws were divisive, said Muhammad Abdullah Darraz, director of the Maarif Institute, which promotes religious and cultural harmony, who defended Natalie. "We have witnessed identity politics recently emerging and it has the potential to divide the unity of the nation," he said. Indonesia's state ideology includes national unity, social justice and democracy alongside belief in God, and enshrines religious diversity in a secular system of government. But religious and political tension has spiralled in the last few years after Islamists led hundreds of thousands in Jakarta protests against the capitals then governor, an ethnic Chinese Christian charged with insulting the Koran. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a Widodo ally, lost his bid for re-election in 2017 to a Muslim rival after a radical group, the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) agitated against him for months. He was jailed for two years over blasphemy. (Writing by Ed Davies Editing by Clarence Fernandez) Vila North students join together to say no to violence on World Childrens Day The following companies are subsidiares of Carnival Co. &: 1972 Productions Inc., 6348 Equipment LLC, A.C.N. 098 290 834 Pty. Ltd., A.J. Juneau Dock LLC, AIDA Kundencenter GmbH, Adventure Island Ltd., Air-Sea Holiday GmbH, Alaska Hotel Properties LLC, Barcelona Cruise Terminal SLU, Bay Island Cruise Port S.A., Belize Cruise Terminal Limited, CC U.S. Ventures Inc., CCL Gifts LLC, CSSC Carnival Italy Cruise Investment S.r.L, Carnival (UK) Limited, Carnival Bahamas FC Limited, Carnival Bahamas Holdings Limited, Carnival Corporation & plc Asia Pte. 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Inc., Ibero Cruzeiros Ltda., Iberocruceros SLU, Information Assistance Corporation, International Cruise Services S.A. de C.V., International Leisure Travel Inc., International Maritime Recruitment Agency S.A. de C.V., Milestone N.V., Navitrans S.R.L., Ocean Bahamas Innovation Ltd., Ocean Medallion Fulfillment Ltd., Operadora Catalina S.r.L., P&O Princess American Holdings, P&O Princess Cruises International Limited, P&O Princess Cruises Pension Trustee Limited, P&O Properties (California) Inc., P&O Travel Limited, Prestige Cruises Management S.A.M., Prestige Cruises N.V., Princess Bermuda Holdings Ltd., Princess Cays Ltd., Princess Cruise Corporation Inc., Princess Cruise Lines Ltd., Princess Cruises and Tours Inc., Princess U.S. Holdings Inc., RCT Maintenance & Related Services S.A., RCT Pilots & Related Services S.A., RCT Security & Related Services S.A., Roatan Cruise Terminal S.A. de C.V., Royal Hyway Tours Inc., Santa Cruz Terminal S.L., SeaVacations Limited, SeaVacations UK Limited, Seabourn Cruise Line Limited, Shanghai Coast Cruise Consulting Co. Lda, Ship Care (Bahamas) Limited, Sitmar Cruises Inc., Spanish Cruise Services N.V., Sunshine Shipping Corporation Ltd., T&T International Inc., Tour Alaska LLC, Transnational Services Corporation, Trident Insurance Company Ltd., Westmark Hotels Inc., Westmark Hotels of Canada Ltd., Westours Motor Coaches LLC, Wind Surf Limited, and World Leading Cruise Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd.. First BanCorp (Puerto Rico) is a holding company, which engages in the provision of personal, commercial, and corporate banking services through its subsidiaries. It operates through the following segments: Commercial and Corporate Banking, Consumer (Retail) Banking, Mortgage Banking, Treasury and Investments, United States Operations, and Virgin Islands Operations. The Commercial and Corporate Banking segment consists of the company's lending and other services for large customers represented by specialized and middle-market clients and the public sector. The Consumer (Retail) Banking segment includes consumer lending and deposit-taking activities conducted mainly through FirstBank's branch network in Puerto Rico. The Mortgage Banking segment focuses on the origination, sale, and servicing of a variety of residential mortgage loan products and related hedging activities. The Treasury and Investments segment deals with treasury and investment management functions. The United States Operations segment represents all banking activities conducted by FirstBank on the United States mainland. The Virgin Islands Operations segment includes all banking activities conducted by FirstBank in Read More TalkTalk Telecom Group PLC provides telecommunications services to consumers and business to business customers in the United Kingdom. It offers fiber, broadband, landline, TV, and mobile services under the TalkTalk and TalkTalk Business brands. Its products include HomeSafe, a home filtering service for residential customers; WorkSafe that provides protection for internet devices to business customers; SuperSafe, which offers protection from viruses and malwares; CallSafe, a security feature that screens inbound calls; and TalkSafe, a way of identifying a customer when they call using their voice. TalkTalk Telecom Group PLC was founded in 2002 and is based in Salford, the United Kingdom. Read More Intermap Technologies Corporation, a geospatial intelligence company, provides various geospatial solutions and analytics in the United States, the Asia Pacific, and Europe. It offers Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) solutions, such as InsitePro, a configurable insurance underwriting software; and NEXTView, a configurable data solution that delivers terrain and obstacle awareness that enhance airborne safety. The company also provides geospatial data acquisition and production services; value-added data licensing; and software solutions and services. Its geospatial solutions are used in a range of applications, including location-based information, risk assessment, geographic information systems, engineering, utilities, global positioning systems maps, oil and gas, renewable energy, hydrology, environmental planning, land management, wireless communications, transportation, outdoor advertising, and 3D visualization. The company was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Englewood, Colorado. Read More Countryside Properties PLC operates as a home builder and urban regeneration partner in the United Kingdom. It operates through two segments, Partnerships and Housebuilding. The Partnerships segment specializes in the urban regeneration of public sector land that delivers private, affordable, and private rented sector homes in partnership with local authorities and housing associations. This segment also develops brownfield land in the Midlands, the North West of England, and Yorkshire. The Housebuilding segment delivers homes to local owner occupiers; and develops primarily private and affordable homes located in outer London and the home counties. The company also offers estate management services. It has a total land bank of 42,000 plots. The company was formerly known as Hackplimco (No. 121) plc and changed its name to Countryside Properties PLC in January 2016. Countryside Properties PLC was founded in 1958 and is headquartered in Brentwood, the United Kingdom. Read More NORRISTOWN A Lower Pottsgrove woman is behind bars after she admitted to conspiring with several others in the cooking of methamphetamine at her township residence. Melissa Ann Meehan, 26, of the 2100 block of Buchert Road, was sentenced in Montgomery County Court to 6-to-23-months in the county jail after she pleaded guilty to a felony charge of conspiracy to engage in the operation of a methamphetamine lab in connection with a June 2018 incident at the residence in the Rolling Hills Apartments complex in the township. Judge William R. Carpenter, who accepted a plea agreement in the case, also ordered Meehan to complete three years probation following parole, meaning Meehan will be under court supervision for about five years. As a condition of the plea agreement, Meehan, according to court papers, must testify truthfully against three others who are still awaiting court action for their various alleged roles in the meth lab cooking operation. An investigation began when Lower Pottsgrove police responded to the apartment about 3 a.m. June 20 to investigate a tip that people were cooking meth inside the apartment, according to the criminal complaint filed by Lower Pottsgrove Police Officer David Slothower. The tipster reported seeing Facebook videos posted by someone that depicted the meth cooking operation. According to court documents, the videos depicted a clear bag which appeared to be filled with chemicals and a plate containing what appeared to be methamphetamine and the voice of someone indicating he was making Christina, which is a slang term for crystal meth. When police knocked on the door of the residence, Meehan opened the door. There was a smoke condition coming from inside the apartment, Slothower alleged, adding Meehan admitted there were several other people inside the apartment and gave permission for police to enter the residence. Inside the home there continued to be this smoke condition. Two other females and a male were found inside the home, court papers indicate. When she was questioned by police, Meehan admitted to contributing items for the manufacture of methamphetamine, according to the arrest affidavit. Members of the Pennsylvania State Police Clandestine Laboratory Team arrived at the apartment and a search recovered numerous items used in the manufacture of methamphetamine including, coffee filters, lithium, ammonium nitrate, handwritten notes with recipes and instructions for cooking methamphetamine and plastic bottles that contained chemicals used to produce the drug, according to the arrest affidavit. A state police forensic scientist subsequently determined that methamphetamine was being manufactured inside the Rolling Hills apartment. Lower Pottsgrove Police were assisted at the scene by the Pennsylvania State Police Clandestine Lab unit, Montgomery County Detectives, Upper Pottsgrove Township Police, Limerick Township Police and Royersford Borough Police. NORRISTOWN A Philadelphia man was sent to jail after he admitted to stealing the purse of a woman shopping at an Abington store. Michael L. McClary, 58, of the 1100 block of West Indiana Avenue, was sentenced in Montgomery County Court to 111/2 to 23 months in the county jail, to be followed by five years probation, after he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of theft by unlawful taking in connection with the January 2018 incident at the Burlington Coat Factory store on Old York Pike in Abington. Judge Steven T. ONeill, who accepted a plea agreement in the case, said McClary can be paroled early but only if its to a forensic intensive recovery program. The sentence means McClary will be under court supervision for seven years. Court documents indicate Abington police responded to the store on Jan. 10 to investigate a report of a stolen purse. The victim stated she was shopping in the store and left her purse briefly unattended in a shopping cart. The victim returned to find that her purse was missing from the cart. The victims purse was later found in the womens bathroom of the store, Abington Police Officer Robert Hill Jr. alleged in the criminal complaint. Most of the contents of the purse had been removed including jewelry, cash, credit cards and an Apple iPhone. The victim later discovered that one of her credit cards was used to make a successful purchase with a cellular telephone company and that there were four additional unsuccessful attempts to use the card at businesses in Philadelphia, according to the arrest affidavit. Investigators reviewed store video surveillance footage that recorded the theft and security video from a gas station in Philadelphia where the victims stolen credit card was used. Police subsequently developed McClary as a suspect as the person responsible for the theft of the purse. NORRISTOWN A Philadelphia man pleaded guilty to a drug-related charge and was sent to prison in connection with a multi-state methamphetamine and marijuana trafficking ring that targeted Montgomery, Bucks and Philadelphia counties. Richard Michael Willmes, 68, of the 4700 block of Worth Street, was sentenced in Montgomery County Court to 21/2 to five years in a state correctional facility after he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of possession with intent to deliver methamphetamine. The sentence was imposed by Judge William R. Carpenter as part of a plea agreement. Other charges of conspiracy to engage in illegal drug activity and criminal use of a communication facility were dismissed against Willmes as part of the plea agreement. Willmes was one of about a dozen people arrested earlier this year during the investigation of a corrupt organization that authorities alleged used the U.S. Postal Service to carry out drug crimes. Brian Justin Holt, 42, who listed addresses in the 600 block of North Redwood Court and in the 100 block of Drayton Circle, Montgomery Township, and Lorraine Yvonne Zeno, 36, of the 600 block of Ardross Avenue, Upper Dublin, are accused of being the leaders of the organization. Zeno and Holt, authorities alleged, were part of The Big Five allegedly involved in the trafficking ring. Three men from California also were charged in connection with the drug ring, according to court documents. Holt previously pleaded guilty to charges of corrupt organizations, possession with intent to deliver methamphetamine and ketamine, dealing in proceeds of unlawful acts and criminal use of a communication facility in connection with incidents that occurred between April 2016 and November 2018. Zeno is still awaiting trial on drug-related charges. At the time of the arrests last January, District Attorney Kevin R. Steele alleged members of the drug trafficking organization mailed packages of crystal methamphetamine and marijuana, using the U.S. Postal Service, from California to Zeno and Holt in Montgomery County since at least April 2016. During the joint investigation that involved law enforcement from Pennsylvania, California and New Jersey, authorities identified more than 350 pounds of crystal methamphetamine and marijuana that was sent in multiple shipments, according to court documents. Investigators shut down the organization operating in Pennsylvania and worked their way back to the alleged suppliers in California, according to Steele. The investigation began in 2016 when the U.S. Postal Inspection Service identified and intercepted a suspicious parcel being shipped from California to Montgomery County, according to court documents. Investigators alleged the parcel contained about one pound of crystal meth. Investigators subsequently uncovered cross-country shipments of alleged bulk quantities of methamphetamine and marijuana to members of the Zeno and Holt drug trafficking organization. Authorities alleged the shipments received were then sold to other drug dealers and individuals in Montgomery and Bucks counties and Philadelphia. The corrupt organization allegedly headed by Zeno and Holt then sent the illegal proceeds for the drugs to those allegedly involved in California, according to the criminal complaint. The investigation involved the use of court-authorized wiretaps on the phones of Zeno and Holt, which helped identify the alleged California suppliers. Investigators also learned the identities of Zeno and Holts methamphetamine customers, some of whom also distributed the drug and assisted Zeno and Holt with receiving the drugs at locations referred to as work sites, according to the arrest affidavit. Bethlehem It seems like history in the hamlet of Slingerlands is under siege these days. A recent plan by a developer to build apartments on the site where William Slingerland's large home once sat caused an uproar at a recent Bethlehem planning board meeting. And a group trying to preserve the Slingerland family burial vault next door to the proposed site are doing their best to try and raise $102,200 needed to restore the site so that the historic structure can be preserved. So far, slightly more than $31,184 has been raised. A stone's throw away from the Slingerland family land is an old, worn down bridge that crosses New Scotland Road. The bridge might not look like much, but to people in Slingerlands, and others who appreciate history in the town of Bethlehem, the bridge is very important, despite its age. The bridge used to be part of the old Albany & Susquehanna and later the Delaware & Hudson rail road line, and it is just as iconic as any structure in the Slingerlands Historic District. The bridge is no longer used by the rail road and instead is now part of the Albany County rail trail. But the pedestrian walkway and wall under the bridge is crumbling. Back in September, the Albany County Legislature voted to approve a $95,000 engineering study that would look at replacing the bridge. MJ Engineering & Land Surveying is doing the engineering study. The company competed against eight other companies for the contract. Although the study would appear to be a good thing, not everyone is happy with the way that the process has unfolded, including members of the Bethlehem Alliance for Historic and Community Preservation, which wrote county and town officials back in October that they were unaware that there was talk of tearing the bridge down. The group would like to know about options for saving and restoring the bridge in addition to demolishing it and replacing it with a new footbridge. In an Oct. 26 letter to Albany County Executive Dan McCoy, the Bethlehem Alliance for Historic and Community Preservation wrote it was "astonished" to learn that the county was already considering tearing down the historic railroad bridge. "This is an alarming concern since bridge demolition was not included as a priority for review," the group wrote. "We question why, suddenly this is under consideration, why there has been no notification to residents who live near this area, and why potential demolition has not been shared publicly since local taxpayers are subsidizing this project." Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. However, county officials said that the most important thing in all of this is making sure that the bridge is safe. "The safety and well-being of Albany County residents is our top priority and this study which began recently will give us a better understanding of what the future of the bridge will be," McCoy said. Bethlehem Town Supervisor David VanLuven says that while the future of the bridge ultimately lies in the hands of Albany County, county officials recently met with town officials and the Preservation League of New York state, and a public forum will likely be held on the issue. "The county has been a wonderful leader and partner on the rail trail, whether working with the town on wheelchair-friendly access points, partnering with the community on murals or taking the lead on paving the trail and improving the parking area in Slingerlands," VanLuven said. "From the town's perspective, we want to maintain the historic values of the neighborhood with a bridge that retains the look and feel of the current bridge," VanLuven added. "Whether this is done by restoring the existing bridge or replacing it with a new bridge that is visually consistent is currently under discussion." Last week, Forbes released its list of 30 people under 30 in art and style, all of them hot young taste-shapers "creating and designing the future of fashion and the arts." Among the select snug at the top in the upper left-hand corner is a 20-year-old fashion designer from Albany. "Nigerian immigrant Taofeek Abijako started his luxe men's streetwear brand when he was a teenager at Albany High School," the spread declares, unspooling his origin story. "To fund his first capsule collection, he painted designs on $45 Vans sneakers and sold them for $200." On the horn Tuesday afternoon, Abijako called the Forbes imprimatur "cool" and "very exciting," expressing hope that other young designers will take his cue and follow their muse: "Just do you, and eventually validation comes along the way." He sees it, too, as yet more validation that immigrants have something to give. "This country was built on the backs of immigrants," said Abijako, the youngest designer ever to show at New York Men's Fashion Week. "There's this long history of immigrants adding value to American society ... It's just always been that way." He is, in fact, just one in a recent trio of fresh creative visionaries with Albany connections and diverse voices to bubble up into national cultural prominence. A few weeks ago, the writer Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah a UAlbany graduate and former Times Union arts intern blasted onto the literary scene with rave reviews of "Friday Black," his debut collection of rivetingly dark short stories satirizing race and consumerism in American life. Earlier this year, actor-rapper-comedian-YouTube star Awkwafina also a UAlbany graduate and former Times Union arts intern launched into the mainstream pop-cultural psyche with the films "Ocean's Eight" and "Crazy Rich Asians." As we say in journalism, three is a trend. And right now, with a caravan of Central American refugees inspiring xenophobic talk in the highest reaches of government, the work of all three embodies the character of a nation made from the spirit and elbow grease of newcomers. Abijako arrived in the States with his family in 2010. Adjei-Brenyah is a son of Ghanaian immigrants. Awkwafina's late mother was a South Korean immigrant; her father is Chinese-American. Abijako's vibrantly colored line of urban streetwear Head of State, which is now being carried in the United States, Canada and Japan through the Japanese chain United Arrows speaks to the cultural influences of post-colonial Africa. Awkwafina's furiously vulgar, furiously funny rap songs speak to the role of women and Asian-Americans in pop culture: "Yo, and I bring that yellow to the rap game." And Adjei-Brenyah's startlingly brutal, startlingly human stories speak to the core of systemic racism: In one, white suburbanites pretend to slay black "intruders" at an amusement park staffed with people of color. Appearing at the New York State Writers Institute on Oct. 30, Adjei-Brenyah talked about growing up with immigrant parents and the pressure to excel; he finally learned how to make them happy, he joked, when he was interviewed by The New York Times. Added Abijako: "It's never enough. It's never enough trust me," he said. His parents "just don't believe the sky's a limit. There's no limit whatsoever." The need to achieve "was instilled in me from a young age," Abijako said. His parents never told him to go off, work hard and pursue the American dream. All that was simply expected of him. "It wasn't, 'Oh, I'm American, I have to do this, I have to do that.' It was just subconscious. It was fulfilling my potential." Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. In July, Teen Vogue ran a story hailing his designs, vision and "blueprint for how young designers can bypass the fashion industry's hierarchy" by pursuing their own work. "Making Fashion Week great again," proclaimed the subhead, and while he grimaces at the rush to anoint him "It was like, 'Oh, my God, this is a lot of pressure!'" he appreciates the unspoken subtext. In the era of Make America Great Again, an immigrant kid is attributed with doing exactly that for the New York fashion scene. "That's so funny. That's so funny," he said. "There's so much, like, irony." But Abijako, for one, sees a potential upside to all the negativity: It's inspired waves of others to focus on the positive, affirm the contributions of new Americans and reassert their own immigrant roots. "I think the more we keep shining the light on situations like that, the more the negativity is overlooked. If we can shine at least 1 percent of that attention to the negative onto the positive side of things," he said, "I just think that we, as a society, will see progress." abiancolli@timesunion.com 518-454-5439 @AmyBiancolli Maurice River Township, N.J. Rising seas and erosion are threatening lighthouses around the U.S. and the world. Volunteers and cash-strapped governments are doing what they can, but the level of concern, like the water, is rising. New Jersey's East Point Lighthouse has been lighting up Delaware Bay for the better part of two centuries. But those same waters that the lighthouse helped illuminate might bring about its demise. With even a moderate-term fix likely to cost $3 million or more, New Jersey officials are considering what to do to save the lighthouse. Nancy Patterson, president of the Maurice River Historical Society, says something needs to be done now. State and local governments routinely shore up the perimeter of the lighthouse property with 3,000-pound sand bags and hastily bulldozed earthen walls. During normal conditions, the bay is about 40 yards from the lighthouse; aerial photos from 1940 show at least four times as much beach between the lighthouse and the bay as there is now. And during storms, the surf pounds against an earthen wall just 10 yards from the lighthouse's front steps. "This lighthouse is in incredible danger; it's getting worse and worse and worse," Patterson said. "The water is right there, often within feet of the lighthouse." She recently led a save-the-lighthouse rally to call attention to its plight and push the state Department of Environmental Protection to do something to save it before it falls into the bay. It's a threat affecting lighthouses around the country and the world, including those in low-lying areas being inundated by water, as well as those on bluffs or cliffs being eroded by storms and rising sea levels. "It's happening faster than anybody had predicted," said Jeff Gales, executive director of the U.S. Lighthouse Society in Hansville, Washington. While some of the lighthouses continue to be relied upon for navigation, others have been supplanted by more modern technology, and are treasured more for historical and tourism purposes. Climate change hastened by manmade greenhouse gases is not only melting polar ice, adding to sea levels, but the warmer waters are expanding and some land formations sinking. Globally, sea levels have been rising over the past century, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the rate has increased in recent decades. In New Jersey, seas have risen by 1.3 feet (0.4 meters) over the past 100 years, said Benjamin Horton, a Rutgers University professor and leading expert on climate change and sea level rise. That is a faster pace than for the past 2,000 years combined, he said. Horton and other Rutgers researchers project that by 2050, seas off New Jersey will rise by an additional 1.4 feet. Tim Harrison is the editor of Lighthouse Digest, a Maine-based publication that maintains a "Doomsday List" of 53 lighthouses around the U.S. deemed to be in danger of being lost due to storms, erosion or other causes. "Lighthouses were built for one purpose: to save lives," he said. "Now it's our turn to step up save these lighthouses." Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Rising seas have already forced the relocation of several lighthouses. In 1999, the National Park Service moved the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in Buxton, N.C., 2,900 feet inland, at a cost of $11.8 million. In 1993, the Southeast Lighthouse on Block Island, Rhode Island, was moved 300 feet inland. In 2014 the Cape San Blas Lighthouse was moved from the edge of a storm-prone peninsula on Florida's Gulf Coast to a park in Port St. Joe. A year later, the Gay Head Lighthouse on Massachusetts' Martha's Vineyard was moved 129 feet back from an eroding cliff. Others were not so lucky. The Galveston Jetty Lighthouse in Texas and the Sabine Bank Lighthouse in Louisiana were lost to storms or rising seas, and the Kauhola Point Lighthouse on Hawaii's Big Island was demolished after erosion nearby was deemed too severe to save it, Harrison said. Lighthouses around the country considered to be in danger from rising seas include the Sand Island Lighthouse at the mouth of Mobile Bay in Alabama, the Morris Island Lighthouse near Charleston, S.C., and the New Point Comfort Lighthouse in Virginia. Around the world, encroaching seas are drawing nearer to the Orfordness Lighthouse in Suffolk, England; the Troubridge Island Lighthouse in South Australia; and the Kiipsaar Lighthouse in Estonia. In 2010, the Half Moon Caye Lighthouse in Belize was destroyed by a storm. There are few easy answers, financially or scientifically. The East Point Lighthouse is already on the highest spit of land around, which is only a few inches above sea level, so moving it is not an option. Nor is constantly dumping and plowing more sand in front of it. Patterson wants some sort of bulkhead or barrier erected between the bay and the lighthouse to blunt the force of the waves. Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, acknowledges the lighthouse has been "very vulnerable to storms due to erosion" for years. And he realizes the sandbags the state and local governments keep plopping on the shoreline are a stop-gap measure at best. ALBANY Arthur King's best hope for his oldest child is a sad one. Perhaps she was alone and overdosed somewhere, and just hasn't been found yet. Or maybe she was found, but authorities haven't been able to identify her. Yes, he thinks, that would be better. Better than the alternatives. "I don't want to think of the other possibilities," he said, his eyes fixed on a far-away spot as he spoke to the Times Union this week from his living room in Albany. It's been five years since anyone has seen or heard from his daughter, Amanda A. King. Arthur last saw her in October 2013. She was 27 and addicted to heroin. He picked her up from what he now believes was a drug house in Albany, drove her to Conifer Park in Glenville for court-ordered drug treatment and wished her well. It was the latest in a string of attempts to beat back her addiction, which began when she was a student at Bethlehem Central High School. About 10 days later, on Oct. 16, 2013, he got a phone call from Conifer Park. Amanda had left treatment early, against their recommendation. They just wanted to let him know. As far as he and police are concerned, that's the last anyone can be sure Amanda was alive. Someone picked her up from the facility, but they aren't sure who. Later sightings of her, around early November, were reported in the Watervliet Avenue area of Albany, where she was known to frequent a motel and sell sex. Amanda had turned to sex work, her father said, in order to maintain a regular supply of heroin for her addiction. Albany Police Detective John Coleman said Tuesday he wasn't sure the Albany sightings of her were reliable. "They came from other heroin addicts," he said. "They can't tell you what happened yesterday, let alone a few months ago. It's a huge problem, to rely on those kind of accounts, when going about an investigation." At first, when Arthur didn't hear from his daughter, he was relieved. "I'll be perfectly frank I was comfortable not hearing from her because whenever I did it was always a problem, it was always a police report, it was always a 'Pick me up on the corner somewhere' in whatever condition she might happen to be in, and some of those conditions were deplorable," he said. "So I guess I let it go longer than I should have. But then I started to miss her." That was after three weeks of no contact. By week four Amanda always checked in once or twice a month he was sufficiently concerned to call police. He called police in Albany because that's the city where he believed his daughter might be staying, but they referred him to Glenville, the place she was last seen. The investigation didn't get far. Amanda had no cell phone, car or credit card, leaving little opportunity to trace her movements. Police tried to get video of the person who picked her up from Conifer Park, but the facility's surveillance video had been taped over by then. Her father called around to hospitals. He tried to remember the names of Amanda's friends. He knew ones from high school, but she no longer associated with them. A recent friend, a woman who had also struggled with drug addiction, helped him make and circulate fliers. She later died of a drug overdose. Arthur told police about all the places he had ever picked up Amanda in Albany, when she would call him desperate and crying. In a flier circulated at the time, police say Amanda was also known to frequent areas around Central Avenue, Quail Street, Livingston and Clinton avenues. "It was horrifying," Arthur said. "It was terrible. I came in contact with people that I would never have met, gladly never have met. There were some very, very sad people wandering around Albany with drug problems." Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Nothing ever panned out. Coleman, the detective on her case, said Amanda was involved with a rough crowd whose criminal histories made it difficult to get reliable information. A Facebook page, Missing Person-Amanda King, was set up to solicit tips into her whereabouts. The moderator, an acquaintance of Amanda's who wishes to remain anonymous, said they have received many messages over the years, mostly from people convinced a former client of Amanda's must have killed her. Coleman said he has investigated this angle and indicated it's within the realm of possibility. Police don't know, though, if she went missing somewhere in the Capital Region or elsewhere. Her father said she once traveled down to Virginia for sex work and was left stranded in a motel with no ride home. He bought her a plane ticket to fly home. Amanda's DNA has been checked three times over the years after bodies were discovered in Virginia, Ohio and Illinois, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. She is white, 5 foot 3 or 4 inches tall, 100 to 120 pounds with blue eyes and blond/brown hair that was long at the time, though she had worn it bobbed in the past. She wore glasses, but had lost them. Her birthday is Nov. 17. She would be 33 today. Looking back, Arthur said he was naive about the extent of his daughter's problems. "I thought it was her fault," he said. "I thought she could stop if she really tried. She tried. She really did. But the addiction was just too strong." Sometimes, Arthur dares to hope she's alive. But even if she's not, his goal remains the same. "I want to find her and bring her home." Arthur King is offering a $5,000 reward for anyone with information that could help find Amanda. All information will remain confidential and should be provided to Albany Police Detective John Coleman at 518-462-8039 or Glenville Police at 518-384-3444. ALBANY Companies handling more than $2 billion in student loans for New Yorkers could soon be forced to play by new rules, including stricter scrutiny from state regulators. The loan industry in New York is largely overseen by the state Department of Financial Services, which has authority to police banks and credit unions. But the agency is powerless when it comes to student loan servicers because they're not licensed by the state. Their unique status in New York allows the companies, which are responsible for overseeing loan repayments, to avoid meeting any minimum standards of service or act as honest brokers for customers, according to consumer advocates. Between Sept. 1, 2016 and Aug. 31, 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau received nearly 23,000 complaints regarding student loans, according to the agency's annual report. Some of the complaints include allegations that the companies failed to provide borrowers with information about different payment options or produced inaccurate loan records, said Mobilization for Justice staff attorney Evan Denerstein. "We receive a lot of calls from student loan borrowers who are needlessly in default," he said. The need for state oversight has increased, Denerstein said, after the recent rollback of federal protections by President Donald J. Trump's administration. "There is a real vacuum at the federal level," he said. Century Foundation fellow Yan Cao said the goal of any regulations is to ensure servicers "do their jobs in a way that better fits the needs of student loan borrowers." She said the state's regulations of the mortgage service industry could serve as a model for the student loan industry. Legislation that would allow state regulators to police student loan servicers has been championed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the Democratic-controlled State Assembly in the past. Its chance of becoming law in the near future increased on Election Day, when Republicans lost control of the state Senate. Sen. James Sanders, a Queens Democrat who could potentially lead the Senate Banks Committee, said he will "be a champion" on the issue in the upcoming legislative session. "Anything that we can do to protect the most vulnerable of us is a priority," Sanders said. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Licensing student loan servicers would be the first step the state could take toward establishing baseline rules and procedures. The bill kicking around the Legislature would, in addition to requiring a license to operate in New York, require student loan servicers to accurately report a borrowers' payment performance; give borrowers control of whether their payments go to draw down accrued interest or their principal balance; establish standards for timely responses to inquiries; and increase industry transparency. Speaking at a budget hearing last week, DFS Superintendent Maria Vullo said licensing authority is the best tool for ensuring compliance with state standards. In 2016, Connecticut was the first state to impose its own requirements on student loan servicers. The companies initially balked at the attempt to require a state license, but eventually complied with the requirement. David.Lombardo@timesunion.com 518-454-5427 @poozer87 Warning: The following content may be graphic for some audiences. "All of us have lived through seven days that none of us will ever forget," newly sworn-in President Lyndon B. Johnson told Americans on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, 1963. A week earlier, John F. Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas while campaigning. While Nov. 22 is mainly marked by Kennedy's death, the 24-hour period following his assassination may be equally important to history. Less than an hour and a half after the president's death, Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn into office aboard Air Force One. Attending the short ceremony was a widowed Jacqueline Kennedy, whom Johnson insisted be present to establish his legitimacy as president. EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY: Only a few people remain from the motorcade in which JFK was assassinated 54 years ago Around the same time, police were arresting Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of the president. Two days later, Oswald would be shot and killed while being relocated to a more secure county jail. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. The same day as Kennedy's death, his body was moved from the White House to the Capitol Rotunda, drawn by six grey horses and a riderless black horse. From there, hundreds of thousands of Americans would visit Kennedy's body, which lay at the rotunda for roughly 21 hours until it would be moved to its final resting place. Above: See rare photos of the hours leading up to and following the death of JFK. Fernando Ramirez is a reporter for Chron.com and the Houston Chronicle. You can read more of his stories here and follow him on Twitter at @fernramirez93. [November 22, 2018] North America Mobile / Portable Printers Market 2013-2018 & 2023: Increasing Deployment of Connected Mobile Printers and Increasing Investments by Leading Vendors DUBLIN, Nov 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The "North America Mobile / Portable Printers Market By Technology (Thermal, Inkjet and Impact), By Output (Barcode Label, Receipt and Paper Document), By Country (United States, Canada and Mexico), Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2013-2023" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. North America mobile/portable printers market is projected to surpass $3 billion by 2023 Anticipated growth in the market can be attributed to increasing deployment of connected mobile printers and increasing investments by leading vendors in machine learning models for cybersecurity to protect their devices against cyberattacks. Moreover, increasing demand for mobility solutions is being witnessed across various sectors, such as retail, hospitality, healthcare, etc., which is likely to positively influence North America mobile/portable printers market in the coming years. By Output type, the market is segmented into Barcode Labels, Receipts and Paper Documents, of which, Barcode Labels segment dominates the market on account of growing use of barcode and label printing for commercial and logistic purposes. North America Mobile/Portable Printers Market, 2013-2023 discusses the following aspects of Mobile/Portable Printers market in North America: Mobile/Portable Printers Market Size, Share & Forecast Segmental Analysis - By Technology (Thermal, Inkjet & Impact, By Output (Barcode Label, Receipt & Paper Document), By Country ( China , Japan , India , Australia & Others) , , , & Others) Competitive Analysis Changing Market Trends & Emerging Opportunities North America mobile/portable printers market is controlled by the following major players Seiko Epson Corporation Brother Industries Ltd. Zebra Technologies, Inc TOSHIBA TEC CORPORATION BIXOLON Co., Ltd Hewlett-Packard Inc. Honeywell International Inc. Canon Inc. Xerox Corporation Cognitive TPG Key Topics Covered: 1. Product Overview 2. Research Methodology 3. Analyst View 4. North America Mobile/Portable Printers Market Outlook 4.1. Market Size & Forecast 4.1.1. By Value & Volume 4.2. Market Share & Forecast 4.2.1. By Technology (Thermal, Inkjet and Impact) 4.2.2. By Output (Barcode Labels, Receipts and Paper Document) 4.2.3. By Country 4.2.3.1. USA Mobile/Portable Printers Market Outlook 4.2.3.1.1. Market Size & Forecast 4.2.3.1.1.1. By Value & Volume 4.2.3.1.2. Market Share & Forecast 4.2.3.1.2.1. By Technology 4.2.3.2. Canada Mobile/Portable Printers Market Outlook 4.2.3.2.1. Market Size & Forecast 4.2.3.2.1.1. By Value & Volume 4.2.3.2.2. Market Share & Forecast 4.2.3.2.2.1. By Technology 4.2.3.3. Mexico Mobile/Portable Printers Market Outlook 4.2.3.3.1. Market Size & Forecast 4.2.3.3.1.1. By Value & Volume 4.2.3.3.2. Market Share & Forecast 4.2.3.3.2.1. By Technology 4.3. List of Major Distributors/Suppliers of Mobile/Portable Printers 4.4. Pricing Analysis 5. Market Dynamics 5.1. Drivers 5.2. Challenges 6. Supply Chain Analysis 7. Market Trends & Developments 8. Competitive Landscape 8.1. Company Profiles 9. Strategic Recommendations For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/3r58vm/north_america?w=5 Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. 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 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/north-america-mobile--portable-printers-market-2013-2018--2023-increasing-deployment-of-connected-mobile-printers-and-increasing-investments-by-leading-vendors-300754694.html SOURCE Research and Markets [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 22, 2018] Vineti to Partner With Tessa Therapeutics to Advance and Scale Cancer Immunotherapies World-Wide Vineti, Inc., the leading digital "platform of record" for personalized therapies, today announced a new partnership with Tessa Therapeutics to advance and scale personalized cell therapies for solid tumors in Asia and world-wide. Tessa Therapeutics (Tessa), an international clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focusing on cellular immunotherapy treatments for cancer, is a leading developer of personalized T cell therapies for solid tumors, including head and neck cancers and cervical cancer. Vineti provides the leading digital software platform to align and manage the complex personalized cell therapy process, safely and efficiently. The goal of the partnership is to scale Tessa's therapies world-wide in a safe and efficient manner, supporting both late clinical stage therapies approaching commercialization and early-phase therapies progressing through various clinical stages. Tessa, headquartered in Singapore, brings international expertise through both its Asia operations and its global treatment network. Tessa's Virus-Specific T cell (VST) technology is showing compelling results and an excellent safety profile in the treatment of cancer. The company is currently conducting a multi-center Phase III trial targeting nasopharyngeal cancer, and a Phase I trial targeting cervical cancer and oropharyngeal cancer, set to move into Phase II in 2019. In addition, Tessa is developing a broad pipeline of pre-clinical therapies targeting major cancers such as liver and lung using its VST platform. "As a team of industry experts who care deeply about patient care, Tessa understands the current challenges in cell therapy and is addressing them proactively by partnering with Vineti," said Tessa Chief Business Officer Jennifer Butler. "By running our therapies on the Vineti platform, we are taking an important step towards global commercial readiness." Vineti's platform will support Tessa as it builds its pipeline of therapies and prepares for commercialization, with a focus on providing a digital orchestration platform to track, trace, align, and simplify the complex journey that underlies each therapy's personalized operations and logistics chain. Vineti is now supporting patients and clinicians in more than 65 leading medical centers, and is rapidly expanding to Asia-Pacific and Europe. "Vineti is honored to support Tessa in its work to develop transformative, critically-needed therapies," said Vineti CEO Amy DuRoss. "The Vineti platform is designed to support innovative therapies as they evolve and scale. Therapeutic advances against solid tumors will make a real difference for even more patients, and we are very excited to help Tessa scale their treatments globally." Vineti isthe first cloud-based software platform to safely and efficiently move patient-based personalized therapies into mainstream medicine at scale. The Vineti platform - configurable, cloud-based, secure and scalable - brings the best of enterprise software to next-generation pharmaceutical science. Vineti's solution aligns, manages, integrates and simplifies all the major steps and stakeholders in the inherently complex cell and gene therapy process, helping everyone from health care providers to biopharma and manufacturers exert efficiency and control to optimize the patient's therapy journey. This announcement follows Tessa's recent research collaboration with St. Jude, and Vineti's strategic teaming agreement with Deloitte (News - Alert). About Tessa Therapeutics Tessa Therapeutics is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company with the scientific vision of revolutionizing the treatment of cancer by redirecting the body's potent anti-viral immune response to recognize and kill cancer cells. Tessa's virus-specific T cell (VST) platform has shown compelling results in the treatment of solid tumors, and the Company is building a portfolio of therapies addressing a wide range of tumors by combining the qualities of its T cell platform with complementary technologies. Tessa's lead Phase III trial for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is the world's largest Phase III T cell immunotherapy trial for any cancer indication. The Company is also conducting a Phase I trial targeting cervical cancer and oropharyngeal cancer which is expected to move into Phase II in 2019. In addition, Tessa is developing a broad pipeline of pre-clinical programs targeting major cancers such as liver and lung cancer. The Company has built up robust operational and supply chain capabilities to successfully deliver T cell therapy treatments to a large patient pool across five countries. The combination of technologies from its academic, clinical, and commercial research partners have enabled Tessa to create a fully-integrated approach to the treatment of cancer with immunotherapy. For more information on Tessa, please visit www.tessatherapeutics.com. About Vineti, Inc. Vineti is the first commercial, configurable cloud-based platform to expand patient access to life-saving cell and gene therapies. Vineti was co-founded by GE and the Mayo Clinic to solve the key challenges patients, medical providers, biopharmaceutical companies and regulators face in the delivery and commercialization of individualized therapies. The Vineti "platform of record" integrates logistics, manufacturing and clinical data for individualized therapies to align and orchestrate the cell and gene therapy process and improve product performance overall. Caregivers and pharmaceutical pioneers are empowered to help more patients more effectively and safely, treatments are better understood and improved over time, and most importantly, there's an opportunity to provide greater health outcomes-and cures-to patients in need. The company is expanding rapidly, and the Vineti platform is now in use in more than 65 leading medical centers and growing. For more information, please visit www.vineti.com. Sign up to follow @vinetiworks on https://twitter.com/vinetiworks. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181122005003/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 22, 2018] Speedcast Aids Digital TV Switchover in Malaysia KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Speedcast International Limited (ASX: SDA), the world's most trusted provider of remote communication and IT solutions, today announced it will play a key role in Malaysia's effort to switch from analogue TV to digital TV through a Direct To Home (DTH) solution. Speedcast has partnered on the three-year project with MYTV Broadcasting Sdn Bhd (MYTV), the common integrated infrastructure provider providing free digital terrestrial television in Malaysia. MYTV will be responsible for operating the infrastructure and network facilities for Digital Terrestrial TV (DTT) services throughout the country and will work with Speedcast to extend its coverage via DTH satellite services. Speedcast expects this contract to contribute to its Enterprise & Emerging Markets Division revenue from mid-November 2018. The shift from analogue to digital in Malaysia is in line with a larger digital shift in the ASEAN region to bring the latest digital content to people around the region. The Malaysian Ministry of Communications and Multimedia commissioned the project, which will be supervised by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission. "Migrating an entire country from analogue to digital TV is no smal task," says Pierre-Jean Beylier, CEO, Speedcast. "We're looking forward to working with MYTV on this project to bring high-quality digital TV services to Malaysians throughout the country. For this project Speedcast will use technology from the partnership with In Aria Networks announced in September. Speedcast sees significant growth potential in the media business globally and the project with MYTV is another proof point of our increasing relevance in this fast-growing market segment." "We look forward to the partnership with Speedcast to deliver this key national Digital TV project," says Michael Chan, CEO, MYTV Broadcast Sdn Bhd. "Now that DTH is switched on, MYTV's service is available to 100% of the Malaysian population." About Speedcast International Limited Speedcast International Ltd (ASX: SDA) is the largest provider of remote communications and IT services in the world. Speedcast's fully-managed service is delivered via a leading global, multi-access technology, multi-band and multi-orbit network of 70+ satellites and an interconnecting global terrestrial network, bolstered by extensive on-the-ground local support from 40+ countries. This global "network of networks" allows customers to fully rely on the most robust, integrated infrastructure available in the market for their mission critical applications. Speedcast is uniquely positioned as a strategic business partner, tailoring communications, IT and digital solutions to meet unique customer needs and enable business transformation. Speedcast extends its managed services through differentiated technology offerings including cyber-security, crew welfare, content solutions, data and voice applications, and network systems integration services. With a passionate customer focus and a strong safety culture, Speedcast serves more than 2,000 customers in more than 140 countries in sectors such as Maritime, Energy, Mining, Enterprise, Media, Cruise, NGOs and Government. Learn more at www.speedcast.com. Speedcast is a trademark and registered trademark of Speedcast International Limited. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective owners. 2017 Speedcast International Limited. All rights reserved. Contact Information: Toni Lee Rudnicki Vice President, Global Marketing Speedcast International Ltd [email protected] +1-832-668-2634 View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/speedcast-aids-digital-tv-switchover-in-malaysia-300754722.html SOURCE Speedcast International Limited [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 22, 2018] Realme Smartphones Now Available in 500 Authorized Stores Across Malaysia Realme presents its fast, stylish and pocket-friendly phones first-hand to customer s beginning 24 November 2018 v ia 500 authorized stores situated around Malaysia Continuously successful online sales results spurred Realme's next business step in Malaysia KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov. 23, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Realme, the young smartphone brand that has been making waves since its launch in Malaysia earlier this month, today announced the availability of its smartphones at various dealers in the country. Beginning 24 November 2018, eager fans will be able to check out Realme phones at selected distributors such as Direct D, Mobile To Go, Seven Mobile, One digital store, Fix Express and many other retailers. These are part of the 500 retailers who will be offering the smartphones in-store across Malaysia. Speaking about Realme's success that naturally led to the much-anticipated offline sale, Tiffany Teh, Brand Manager of Realme Malaysia, said, "We are thrilled to finally be able to expand our reach in Malaysia through collaborations with these dealers. Besides providing best-in-class smartphones, we're elevating the user experience by providing Malaysians the chance to touch and feel our products before making a purchase decision. This is in line with our aim to provide smartphones that the youth need that help them in their daily lives." According to McKinsey and Nielsen, the digital shopping revolution is offering new opportunities for physical stores and retailers.[1] Realme understands that there needs to be a balance of both and that is why the brand has decided to take an integrated approach to drive sales on both platforms while providing engaging experiences for consumers regardless of whether they buy in-store or online. "Partnering with Malaysia's leading e-commerce giants Shopee and Lazada has allowed us to evolve and set a firm footprint in the country, and our achievements to date is a clear indication of this. We are happy to provide the experience for consumers to test our products offline. Online and offline sales platforms are just channels. What's most important is the best-quality products which we are able to provide to customers. Realme aims to constantly provide the youth of Malaysia with smartphones that combine strong performance and trendy designs," added Tiffany. As of last Sunday, pre-orders of Realme products have reached more than 1,000 units. This is a clear indication of the interest in Realme smartphones. The following Realme smartphones will be available at 500 authorized stores across Malaysia, at the following prices: Realme 2 Pro : 4GB RAM + 64GB ROM RM 849 6GB RAM + 64GB ROM RM 949 8GB RAM + 128GB ROM RM 1,099 Realme 2 3GB RAM + 32GB ROM RM 599 4GB RAM + 64GB ROM RM 699 Realme C1 : 2GB RAM + 16GB ROM RM 449 To find out more about Realme and their ground-breaking smartphones, please visit https://www.realme.com/my/ Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20181123/2308030-1-a Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20181123/2308030-1-b Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20181123/2308030-1-c [1] http://www.theborneopost.com/2017/12/17/a-shift-in-malaysias-retail-culture SOURCE Realme [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 23, 2018] Akinwumi Adesina, Spearheading Good Governance by Leading Agricultural Innovation and Economic Growth of Africa As an agricultural economist, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina has been a leader in agricultural innovation for over 30 years. He has contributed greatly to food security in Africa, aimed at improving the lives of millions currently living in poverty, throughout the African continent. The Sunhak Committee acknowledges Dr. Akinwumi Adesina's achievements in promoting Good Governance of Africa, which boosts Africa's capacity to feed itself and transform its total economies for generating wealth for millions of rural and poor African farmers. At the Cape Town International Convention Center, the Sunhak Peace Prize Committee announced that the 2019 Laureates for the Sunhak Peace Prize would be Waris Dirie, 53 year-old world-class supermodel and anti-FGM activist, and Dr. Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina, 58 year-old president of the African Development Bank Group. Dr. Akinwumi Adesina has been a leader in agricultural innovation in Africa for over 30 years, bringing great improvement to Africa's food security. contributing to Africa's dynamic growth. His leadership is building stepping-stones for Africa's dynamic growth. Dr. Akinwumi Adesina pioneered major transformations in the agricultural field, including expanding rice production by introducing high yielding technologies, designing and implementing policies to support farmers' access to technologies at scale, increasing the availability of credit for millions of smallholder farmers, attracting private investments for the agricultural sector, rooting out the corrupt elements in the fertilizer industry, and assisting in establishment of major agricultural policies for Africa's green revolution. The "Africa Fertilizer Summit," which he organized in 2006, was one of the largest high-level meetings in Africa's history that had a focus on solving Africa's food issues. During this Summit, Dr. Adesina was instrumental in developing the "Abuja Declaration on Fertilizer for the African Green Revolution (News - Alert)," whereby the participants stated their commitment to the "eradication of hunger in Africa, by 2030." Dr. Adesina worked with various banks and international NGOs in order to create an innovative financing system, providing loans to small farmers, providing a way for them to rise out of poverty. This move leveraged $100 million in loans and provided opportunities for small farmers to increase their agricultural productivity, and their income. Dr. Akinwumi Adesina currently serves as the president of the African Development Bank Group which plays a central role in Africa's development. As an "economic commander" of Africa, he promotes the "High 5 Strategy" that include: light up and power Africa, feed Africa, industrialize Africa, integrate Africa and improve the quality of life for the people of Africa. As a result of his work, the lives of millions of people throughout Africa have been improved. Chairman of the Sunhak Peace Prize Committee, Dr. Il Sik Hong, stated that "the Sunhak Peace Prize was established based upon the vision of "One Family Under God." The 2019 Sunhak Peace Prize gives special attention to peace and human development in Africa." Dr. Hong added "in order for us to build an era of peace and coexistence in the 21st century, we want to encourage continuous development in Africa. Africa is a rising star and its growth will contribute global progress and development throughout the 21st century." The Sunhak Peace Prize honors individuals and organizations who have made significant contributions to the peace and the welfare of the future generations. The Sunhak Peace Prize includes a cash prize totaling one million dollars. The 2019 Sunhak Peace Prize Award Ceremony will take place in February, 2019 in Seoul, Korea. About the African Development Bank Group The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) is Africa's premier development finance institution. It comprises three distinct entities: the African Development Bank (AfDB), the African Development Fund (ADF) and the Nigeria Trust Fund (NTF). On the ground in 37 African countries with an external office in Japan, the AfDB contributes to the economic development and the social progress of its 54 regional member states. For more information: j.mp/AfDB_Media View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181123005051/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 23, 2018] FPInnovations applauds federal government's initiative to strengthen and accelerate innovation in the forest sector MONTREAL, Nov. 23, 2018 /CNW Telbec/ - FPInnovations applauds the federal government's Fall Economic Statement tabled Wednesday in the House of Commons by Bill Morneau, Minister of Finance. The sweeping Statement pledges to accelerate support for business innovation, invest in clean technology, increase exports, invest in middle-class jobs and remove trade barriers within Canada. Notably, $100 million will focus on providing support to the forest sector. The federal government's continued support of fostering innovation in the forest sector is vital to the industry's future proserity and capacity to develop new technology and markets to strengthen our industry nationally and internationally. Quotes "The Economic Statement sends a clear message to Canadians that our forest industry, our workers, and the contribution we make to the economy are important to this country. We will continue working with the federal government and other public and private partners to improve the competitiveness and diversification of the Canadian forest industry." Stephane Renou, President and Chief Executive Officer, FPInnovations Associated Links FPInnovations: https://fpinnovations.ca About FPInnovations FPInnovations is a not-for-profit world leader that specializes in the creation of scientific solutions in support of the Canadian forest sector's global competitiveness and responds to the priority needs of its industry members and government partners. It is ideally positioned to perform research, innovate, and deliver state-of-the-art solutions for every area of the sector's value chain, from forest operations to consumer and industrial products. Its R&D laboratories are located in Quebec, Montreal, and Vancouver, and it has technology transfer offices across Canada. For more information about FPInnovations, visit: www.fpinnovations.ca . SOURCE FPInnovations [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Black Friday deals are off to an epic start. And with Thanksgiving Day just hours away, we expect sales will only get better. From PS5 restocks and mattresses to 4K TVs and laptops, the entire Tom's Guide team is here to help you save time and money as we curate the best Black Friday deals multiple times per day. Consoles have been hard to find all year, but we've been seeing a noticeable increase in PS5 restocks from the likes of Walmart, Sony Direct, and Best Buy. There's likely to be more restocks as we inch closer to Thanksgiving and Black Friday. (GameStop has hinted of a possible restock later this week). Meanwhile, we're seeing plenty of Black Friday deals on 4K TVs. Big-screen 50-inch TVs are on sale for as little as $199, whereas the price of OLED TVs has plummeted to $896 at Amazon. While we've yet to see 55-inch 4K TVs hit the $199 mark as they did last year, those sales should be coming soon. In the meantime, Amazon has a wide range of smart TVs on sale from $99. Likewise, home and furniture deals are also increasing. Black Friday mattress deals from the likes of Nectar, Avocado, and Casper can save you close to $500. The annual Herman Miller sale is also underway, knocking 15% off sitewide. The sale includes the excellent Aeron chair. Finally, Black Friday deals on Apple devices are finally heating up! The MacBook Air hit $799 at Amazon and Walmart has the Apple Watch 3 for just $109, which is the lowest price ever for Apple's budget smartwatch. Even the new Apple Watch 7 received a price cut at Amazon. The Tom's Guide team is working 24/7 this season to bring you the best deals of the season. So bookmark this page and check back often as we track all of the best Black Friday deals of 2021. Top 25 Black Friday deals today Top 25 Apple AirPods Pro AirPods Pro w/ MagSafe Case (2021): was $249 now $159 @ Walmart All-time low price! The 2021 AirPods Pro come with Apple's new MagSafe Charging case. Otherwise, they're the same as the regular AirPods Pro. In our review, the Editor's Choice buds provided excellent active noise cancellation, clean/balanced audio, and good call quality. They offer about 24-hours of battery life via the Charging Case. Plus, we like that they're sweat and water-resistant for working out. Magic Bullet: was $39 now $15 @ Walmart Magic Bullet: was $39 now $15 @ Walmart Editor's Choice deal: A $15 Magic Bullet is an insane Black Friday deal. Not only is this blender dirt cheap, but the Magic Bullet holds a spot in our list of best blenders. This is an especially great deal for athletes because you can make a ton of different health shakes and smoothies. Just add your protein powder of choice and you're set! It can also be used to make pasta sauces and guac. Sony Playstation Plus 12 month subscription PlayStation Plus 1-year: was $59 now $39 @ Walmart Black Friday is one of the best times to renew your PS Plus membership because that's when we see the best deals. For example, right now you can buy a full year's membership for just $39. You can even buy two cards and stack them so you won't have to worry about renewing for another 2 years. Chromebook sale: deals from $99 @ Best Buy Chromebook sale: deals from $99 @ Best Buy Black Friday deals have landed at Best Buy. The retailer is offering a variety of Chromebooks on sale from $99. The sale includes popular models like the Galaxy Chromebook 2 QLED Laptop on sale for $399 (its lowest price ever). The Galaxy Chromebook 2 sits at the very top of our best Chromebooks list. Android phone sale: up to $1,200 off w/ trade-in + unlimited @ Verizon Android phone sale: up to $1,200 off w/ trade-in + unlimited @ Verizon Ending soon! Black Friday deals have started at Verizon. The carrier is knocking up to $1,200 off select Android phones when you trade-in your old phone and sign up for an unlimited plan. Plus, switch to Verizon and you'll get up to $800 to help cover the cost of switching. The sale includes the Pixel 6, Galaxy S21, Moto G Power, and more. Oculus Quest 2 Oculus Quest 2: free $50 gift card @ Amazon Purchase an Oculus Quest 2 at full price ($299/128GB or $399/256GB) and you'll get a free $50 Amazon gift card. (Use coupon "OCULUS50" at checkout to get the gift card). In our review, we called the Oculus Quest 2 the best VR headset you can buy. It has an impressive game library, intuitive controls, and good built-in audio, all of which makes this one of the best overall virtual reality headsets to date. Apple Watch SE Apple Watch SE (GPS/40mm): was $279 now $219 @ Amazon Lowest price ever! The Apple Watch SE is Apple's mid-tier smartwatch. In our review, we called the Editor's Choice watch one of the most well-rounded smartwatches you can buy. It features the same chip found in the Apple Watch 5, but sports a bigger screen than the Apple Watch 3. It supports Emergency SOS calling, fall detection, and features a built-in compass and always-on altimeter. (Note: If you don't see this sale price, try clicking on a different color watch). Aicok Centrifugal Juicer: was $89 now $44 @ Walmart Aicok Centrifugal Juicer: was $89 now $44 @ Walmart Editor's Choice deal: The Aicok Juicer holds a spot in our list of best juicers you can buy. We love it for its compact size and large feed chute, which lets you throw in whole fruits. It's also very easy to use, which makes it great for first-time or casual juicers. Nintendo Switch Nintendo Switch w/ Mario Kart 8: $299 @ Best Buy Free Switch Online membership: Switch deals are very rare, so we're big fans of this bundle. It includes the Editor's Choice Switch console, a free download of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and a free 3-month Switch Online membership. In our review, we called the Switch a fantastic console for all kinds of gamers and Mario Kart 8 is the perfect game for just about anyone. Bowflex SelectTech Kettlebell: was $179 now $149 @ Best Buy Bowflex SelectTech Kettlebell: was $179 now $149 @ Best Buy The Bowflex SelectTech Kettlebell can be adjusted from 8 pounds to a maximum of 40 pounds with the click of a dial. Its compact design can also help you save space in your home gym. Weight settings include 8, 12, 20, 25, 35 and 40 pounds. It hit $119 on Labor Day, but this Black Friday deal knocks it down to an all-time price low of $99! Amazon Fire HD 10 (2021) Fire HD 10 tablet: was $149 now $74 @ Amazon Over thirteen hours of battery life, more RAM, and a smaller design made the 2021 Fire HD 10 an interesting update to the 2019 model. You'll also be surprised to see USB-C now comes standard. In our review, we deemed it ideal for anyone who wants to browse the internet, read e-books, and watch video. RCA RWOSU7049 4K 2160P UHD HDR10 Smart Television RCA 70" 4K TV: was $549 now $448 @ Walmart A 70-inch 4K TV for $448 is unheard of. However, this Black Friday deal at Walmart knocks the price of RCA's 70 incher to just $448. (That's cheaper than an iPad Air!) This TV features HDR10 support and webOS TV software, which lets you stream all your favorite apps like Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, and more. Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max Fire TV Stick 4K Max: was $54 now $34 @ Amazon Amazon's new Fire TV Stick 4K Max is on sale for the first time. In our review, we named it the best Fire TV device Amazon's ever made. It has a new quad-core CPU and a 750MHz GPU that help speed the load time of apps like Netflix and Disney Plus. The remote also sports a new Live TV button, which is a perk for cord cutters. YnM Weighted Blanket YnM Weighted Blanket: was $79 now $54 @ Amazon The YnM weighted blanket is the best-selling weighted blanket on Amazon. It also holds a spot in our list of best weighted blankets. It comes with inner compartments that distribute its weight and it also includes ties to connect the blanket to your duvet. A number of colors, sizes, and weights are on sale, with many variants at 20% off. Ring Video Doorbell Wired + Echo Dot: was $99 now $41 @ Amazon Ring Video Doorbell Wired + Echo Dot: was $99 now $41 @ Amazon Ring's cheapest video doorbell is even cheaper in this deal that takes $18 off its regular price and throws in a free Amazon Echo Dot (3rd gen) to go with it. You get a 1080p camera and two-way talk, while the Echo Dot can act as your doorbell chime. Fitbit Charge 4 Fitbit Charge 4: was $149 now $69 @ Walmart Editor's Choice deal: The Fitbit Charge 4 is the perfect fitness tracker for anyone that wants a reliable tracker, but doesn't want to spend big bucks on a wearable that offers functionality you don't need. In our review, we called the Fitbit Charge 4 the best fitness tracker for most people. It has built-in GPS and a great design. It's now at its lowest price to date. Harmati Electric Standing Desk Harmati Electric Standing Desk: was $299 now $199 @ Amazon For under $200, this is a brilliant option for anyone looking for a standing desk. It comes in three different colorways and has a quiet, motorized system for raising and lowering the desk. The wood desktop measures 47 inches by 24 inches, and reviewers loved how neatly it fits into most home offices. The best part? You can currently save big on this desk. Xterra Fitness TR150 Folding Treadmill XTerra TR150 Folding Treadmill: was $499 now $375 @ Amazon This folding treadmill is super-handy if you live in an apartment or if you're tight on floor space. It's got a five-inch LED display that shows all your running stats, plus a top speed of 10MPH, which is a running speed of 6.00 minute/miles. It holds a spot in our best treadmills guide as the best budget treadmill you can buy. This Black Friday deal makes it even more affordable. Mint Mobile sale: get 3 free months @ Mint Mobile Mint Mobile sale: get 3 free months @ Mint Mobile Mint Mobile is offering one of the best Black Friday deals we've seen from a carrier. For a limited time, purchase any 3-month data plan at Mint Mobile and you'll get 3 additional months for free. For instance, Mint Mobile's unlimited plan is $30/month. Buy 3 months ($90 total) and you'll get an extra 3 months (6 months total) for the same price. Lego sets: up to 40% off @ Amazon Lego sets: up to 40% off @ Amazon As part of its Black Friday deals Amazon is taking up to 40% off select toys. After discount, Lego sets start as low as $14. The sale includes Lego Star Wars, Lego Harry Potter, Lego Marvel, and more. Bose QuietComfort 45 Bose QuietComfort 45: was $329 now $279 @ Amazon First time on sale! The Bose QuietComfort 45 offer enhanced active noise cancellation, better sound, and longer battery life than its predecessor. In our review, we called them a no brainer for Bose fans who want to swap out their older QC headphones for something more modern, or shoppers who want first-class Bose noise cancellation at a cheaper price than the premium Bose 700. Best Buy offers the same price. Adidas winter apparel: up to 40% off @ Amazon Adidas winter apparel: up to 40% off @ Amazon Sweater weather is finally here! Stock up on hoodies, fleece sweatshirts, jackets, and more during Amazon's Adidas sale. The retailer is knocking up to 40% off Adidas apparel. (You'll need to click through each product page to see the discounts). Fire TV sale: smart TVs from $99 @ Amazon Fire TV sale: smart TVs from $99 @ Amazon Smart TVs give you easy access to Prime Video, Netflix, Disney Plus, and more. Many also come with a voice remote, which lets you operate your TV via voice commands. Currently, smart TVs start at Amazon start at just $99. While some of the cheaper models are 720p sets (suitable for home offices or children's rooms), there are plenty of solid bargains as part of the retailer's Black Friday deals preview. Nectar Memory Foam Mattress Nectar Mattress: was $798 now $499 + $399 in free gifts @ Nectar Save up to $499: The Nectar Memory Foam Mattress is our number one mattress pick. The Editor's Choice mattress offers tremendous value for the money. In our review, we found that it's very comfortable (thanks to its five layers of memory foam) and it offers excellent pressure relief around your shoulders, hips, and back. Bonus points for offering an impressive 365-night trial and a forever guarantee. As part of its current sale you can get the twin mattress for $499 (was $798) or the queen for $799 (was $1,298). You also get a $399 gift set for free. KEURIG K-Mini Keurig K-Mini Coffee Maker: was $79 now $49 @ Amazon The tiny Keurig K-Mini coffee maker lets you get single-serving coffee in any of Keurig's 100+ pod varieties, making 6-12 ounce quickly and efficiently. It even works with My K-Cup universal reusable pods, letting you enjoy your favorite blend without adding to the landfill. Only select colors are on sale at this price. Black Friday deals live now TVs Fire TV sale: smart TVs from $99 @ Amazon Fire TV sale: smart TVs from $99 @ Amazon Black Friday is almost here and Amazon is slashing the price of multiple smart TVs. These TVs give you easy access to Prime Video, Netflix, Disney Plus, and more. Many also come with a voice remote, which lets you operate your TV via voice commands. Currently, smart TVs start at just $99 at Amazon. While some of the cheaper models are 720p sets (suitable for home offices or children's rooms), there are plenty of solid bargains to be had. Insignia F30 Fire TV Edition Insignia 55" F30 4K Fire TV: was $379 now $299 @ Amazon If you want a big-screen TV on the cheap, Amazon has the Insignia 55-inch F30 4K Fire TV on sale. The TV offers HDR10 support, DTS Studio Sound, and it comes with a voice remote, which lets you control it with the sound of your voice. Best Buy offers the same price. Pioneer 50" 4K Fire TV: was $469 now $339 @ Amazon Pioneer 50" 4K Fire TV: was $469 now $339 @ Amazon Pioneer is back! After halting TV production back in 2010, the Japanese giant is back with a new line of Amazon Fire TVs. The new TVs feature HDR10/Dolby Vision support, multi-room music capability, and DTS Virtual X Audio. The 43-inch model is also on sale for $259 ($110 off). Hisense 58" 4K Roku TV: was $426 now $338 @ Walmart Hisense 58" 4K Roku TV: was $426 now $338 @ Walmart This Hisense R6-Series TV is one of the cheapest Black Friday deals we've seen for a big-screen TV. We especially like this TV because it doesn't skimp on features. This 2020 TV features Dolby Vision/HDR10 support, a 120Hz refresh rate, built-in gaming mode that reduces lag, and Roku's excellent streaming platform. TCL 4K TCL Roku TV TCL 55" 4K Roku Smart TV: was $499 now $379 @ Walmart Upgrade your TV with this 55-inch TCL 4 Series set, complete with 4K resolution, HDR support, Roku smart TV software, and voice control. It's now $120 off at Walmart and a great Black Friday deal. TCL 5-Series Roku TV 55S535 TCL 55" 4K QLED Roku TV: was $699 now $398 @ Walmart Editor's Choice TV: This killer deal saves you a little more than $200 on one of the best 55-inch 4K TVs on the market. (Earlier, Walmart had marked down the price even more.) In our review, we said this TV is an excellent pick for anyone on a budget. It delivers solid, quantum-dot 4K picture quality and Roku's smart TV software at an unbeatable price. This model features a bright and vibrant 55-inch 4K LED UHD QLED display, Dolby Vision/HDR10 support, and compatibility with AI voice assistants. Televisions Insignia 55" QLED 4K Fire TV: was $649 now $399 @ Amazon Ultra-affordable QLED: This 55-inch Insignia QLED TV offers impressive image quality no matter what you're watching. With Fire TV features you can also stream all your favorite shows and movies and control them all with your voice thanks to full Alexa support. This 2021 TV is one of the most affordable QLEDs we've ever seen and one of the best early Black Friday deals around. Insignia 65" F30 4K Fire TV: was $699 now $449 @ Best Buy Insignia 65" F30 4K Fire TV: was $699 now $449 @ Best Buy If you're looking for a 65-inch TV that won't break your budget, you'll want to check out this Insignia 4K Fire TV. It's currently one of the cheapest big-screen 4K smart TVs we've seen. It provides easy access to a variety of streaming services and comes with a voice remote featuring Alexa. TCL 55" 6-Series QLED 4K TV: was $949 now $699 @ Best Buy TCL 55" 6-Series QLED 4K TV: was $949 now $699 @ Best Buy The TCL 6-Series is one of our favorite TVs. We especially like the mini-LED backlighting and QLED enhancement. The result is impressive color and brightness, with some of the best HDR performance we've seen on anything this side of an OLED display. Features include Dolby Vision/HDR10/HLG support, full array local dimming, THX Certified Game Mode, Siri/Alexa/Google Assistant support, and a 120Hz refresh rate. Samsung 65Q60A Samsung 65" Q60A QLED 4K TV: was $1,099 now $847 @ Amazon Amazon is coming out swinging with this epic Black Friday deal on a 65-inch Samsung QLED TV. You get a fantastic 4K picture for just $847, which is a massive $252 off. Be quick, as this sale likely won't stick around for long. LG A1 OLED TV: was $1,199 now $896 @ Amazon 48" LG A1 OLED TV: was $1,199 now $896 @ Amazon Free $100 Amazon credit: The LG A1 is one of the best OLED TVs on the market, packing LG's powerful Alpha 7 Gen 4 processor, a rich 48-inch 4K OLED display, and support for AI voice assistants. This is the most affordable OLED TV we've ever seen. Even better, use coupon "HBQ5KMZKGRRP" at final checkout and you'll get a free $100 Amazon credit added to your account. Vizio OLED 55-inch Vizio 55" OLED 4K TV: was $1,299 now $999 @ Best Buy Editor's Choice deal: Vizio's 55-inch 4K OLED TV is back on sale. The TV uses Vizio's new IQ Ultra CPU and ProGaming Engine, which is designed for Xbox and PS5 gameplay. It supports Dolby Vision HDR, DTS Virtual X, Vizio SmartCast, and a host of digital assistants for hands-free control of your TV. This TV hit an all-time low of $899 last Black Friday. We predict it could hit that price point again this year, but even at $999 it's still a solid deal. The 65-inch model is also $300 off. LG OLED48C1 LG 48" C1 OLED: was $1,299 now $1,096 @ Amazon LG's smallest C1 OLED packs in everything we love, like Dolby Vision IQ, Dolby Atmos sound, HDMI 2.1, and Nvidia G-Sync. It all adds up to a great TV and a killer gaming display. It's now selling for the lowest price we've seen. Best Buy offers a similar price. LG C1 OLED 55" LG C1 OLED TV: was $1,499 now $1,296 @ Amazon This Amazon deal takes a generous $200 off the original price. The LG C1 is one of the best OLED TVs on the market, packing a powerful 9 4th-gen AI processor, a rich 55-inch 4K OLED display and support for AI voice assistants. (You can get a similar deal at Best Buy.) Samsung 65 The Frame Samsung 65" The Frame 4K TV: was $1,999 now $1,497 @ Newegg The 65-inch version of Samsung's The Frame 4K QLED TV drops $500 to $1,497 at NewEgg, which also includes free shipping. You'll appreciate Samsung's Wide Viewing Angle technology for off-angle viewing, the improved picture contrast courtesy of Samsung's Dual LED backlight and the better color accuracy and shadow detail powered by the set's Quantum Processor 4K. Sony XR-75X90J Sony 75-inch X90J: was $2,099 now $1,598 @ Amazon The X90J is a 75-inch 4K LED TV with full-array backlighting, a 120Hz refresh rate, Google TV built in, and support for Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple AirPlay. It's $500 off now for a great big-screen Black Friday TV deal. LG OLED55G1 LG G1 OLED TV: was $1,999 now $1,696 @ Amazon The LG G1 OLED 4K TV offers evo technology for consistently stunning images no matter what you're watching. With Smart TV and ThinQ smart home features, it'll quickly become the center of your entertainment setup. Plus, gamers will love it thanks to its 120Hz refresh rate and Game Optimizer menu. The 55-inch model is currently $300 off. Samsung QN84A QLED TV: was $2,799 now $1,899 @ Best Buy Samsung QN84A QLED TV: was $2,799 now $1,899 @ Best Buy This deal takes a whopping $900 off this TV's original price, making it one of the best TV deals we've seen so far. Featuring a massive 75-inch 4K QLED display, this TV delivers great image quality with superb brightness and contrast levels. LG C1 OLED LG 83" C1 OLED: was $5,999 now $4,996 @ Walmart Go big for less with the 83-inch LG C1 OLED, selling now for $1,000 off the regular price. Sure, that's still a pricey 5 grand, but premium OLED displays aren't known for being cheap, especially at this giant size. Packed with features, like HDR, HDMI 2.1 and both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, it's a fantastic TV, now at a slightly more reasonable price. Mattresses Nectar Memory Foam Mattress Nectar Memory Foam Mattress: was $798 now $499 + $399 free gifts @ Nectar Editor's Choice: The Nectar Memory Foam Mattress is our top mattress pick. The Editor's Choice mattress offers tremendous value for the money. In our review, we found it to be very comfortable (thanks to its five layers of memory foam). It also offers excellent pressure relief around your shoulders, hips, and back. Bonus points for offering an impressive 365-night trial and a forever guarantee. As part of its current sale, the twin costs $499 (was $798), whereas the queen costs $799 (was $1,298). Plus, you get freebies like pillows, a sheet set, and a mattress protector ($399 value) with any mattress purchase. Saatva Classic mattress Saatva Classic Mattress: was $1,098 now $848 @ Saatva Exclusive $250 savings: The Saatva Classic is the best luxury hybrid mattress you can buy. This high-end innerspring mattress combines eco-friendly foams and a cushioning Euro pillow top with a super-durable dual steel coil support system. In our review, we found it fantastic to sleep on. The Saatva Classic comes in three different comfort levels (soft, medium firm, or firm) and two heights (11.5 or 14.5 inches). Plus, it includes free white glove delivery as standard. After our exclusive discount, the twin XL costs $848 (was $1,098), whereas the queen costs $1,345 (was $1,595). Tuft & Needle Mattress Tuft & Needle Original Mattress: was $645 now $451 @ T&N Editor's Choice deal: The Tuft & Needle Original Mattress is a great mattress for anyone on a tight budget. It has a soft, plushy feel, but it's also designed to provide good pressure relief, whether you're a side sleeper, stomach sleeper, or sleep on your back. After discount, you can get the T&N Original Mattress twin for $451.50 (was $645), whereas the queen size is $626.50 (was $895). Use coupon "OG30" to get these prices. The coupon is valid on the Original Mattress only. Tempur Cloud Mattress Tempur Cloud mattress: was $1,699 now $1,189 @ Tempur-Pedic The Tempur-Cloud Mattress is Tempur-Pedic's budget friendly mattress. It adapts to your weight, shape, and temperature for personalized comfort and support. Rarely on sale, all mattress sizes are now 30% off. After discount, the twin is $1,189.30 ($510 off), whereas the queen is $1,399 ($600 off). Avocado Green Mattress Avocado Green Mattress: was $1,099 now $949 @ Avocado Best organic mattress: Early Black Friday deals have kicked off at Avocado. The mattress brand is offering an excellent $150 discount on its all-natural mattresses via coupon code "ORGANIC". The company's green mattresses are 100% organic certified, non-toxic, and biodegradable. It's also the firmest of Avocado's organic mattresses with a 7.5 out of 10 rating on Avocado's firmness scale. After discount, you can get the twin for $949 (was $1,099) or the queen for $1,449 (was $1,599). Allswell mattress Allswell Mattress: was $265 now $225 @ Allswell The Allswell Mattress is a hybrid mattress, which means it's made from both memory foam and individually wrapped coils. Backed by Walmart, it delivers comfort at an affordable price. Use coupon "FUTURE15" to take 15% off all mattresses. After discount, you can get the Allswell Mattress (twin) for $225.25 (was $265), whereas the queen costs $318.75 (was $375). This mattress tends to sell out fast, so we recommend buying it now that multiple sizes are in stock. Dreamcloud Luxury Hybrid Mattress DreamCloud Hybrid Mattress: was $1,198 now $699 @ DreamCloud Free $399 gift set: This 14-inch mattress is one of the tallest we've reviewed and it features five layers that offer firm, responsive support as well as soft cushioning. As part of its official Black Friday sale you can get the DreamCloud Hybrid mattress twin for $699 (was $1,198) or the queen for $999 (was $1,598). The mattress comes with free shipping, free returns, and a 365-night home trial. Plus, you get a free mattress protector, sheet set, and pillows. Purple Plus Mattress: was $1,099 now $999 @ Purple Purple Plus Mattress: was $1,099 now $999 @ Purple Save $100: Purple's new mattress is already $100 off. In our review, we found the Purple Plus suits those who prefer the comfort and support of foam, but need a breathable model to avoid overheating during sleep. Like its siblings, it comes on a 100-night trial and has a 10-year warranty. After discount, the twin is on sale for $999 (was $1,099) and the queen is on sale for $1,599 (was $1,699). Weighted blankets Nectar Weighted Blanket: was $149 now $99 @ Nectar Nectar Weighted Blanket: was $149 now $99 @ Nectar The Nectar Weighted Blanket offers either 15 or 20 pounds of weight creating the perfect night's sleep. It features a glass bead filling that evenly distributes weight across your body. Plus, it has a removable cover with antimicrobial protection. This is one of the best Black Friday deals we've seen on a weighted blanket. YnM Weighted Blanket YnM Weighted Blanket: was $79 now $38 @ Amazon The YnM weighted blanket is the best-selling weighted blanket on Amazon. It also holds a spot in our list of best weighted blankets. It comes with inner compartments that distribute its weight and it also includes ties to connect the blanket to your duvet. A number of colors, sizes, and weights are on sale, with many variants at 20% off. Bear Weighted Blanket: was $150 now $113 @ Bear Bear Weighted Blanket: was $150 now $113 @ Bear The Bear Weighted Blanket offers 15 lbs. of cozy comfort to help you relax, reduce stress levels, and get a better night's sleep. Its plush microfiber cover keeps you snug while the blanket's quilted channels evenly distribute the glass beads across the entire blanket. Use coupon "EARLYBIRD" to get this Black Friday deal. layla weighted blanket Layla weighted blanket: was $169 now $109 @ Layla Black Friday deals have landed at Layla, which is taking $60 off its entire line of weighted blankets. The blanket has been specifically designed to improve sleep and reduce stress levels, and it's available in three different sizes: twin (15 lbs.), queen (20 lbs.), and king (25 lbs.). Prices now start from just $109. Chromebooks Samsung Galaxy Book Go Galaxy Book Go: was $349 now $59 w/ trade-in @ Samsung The Galaxy Book Go packs a 14-inch display, Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD. Ideal for students, this Chromebook packs a battery that's rated to last up to 18 hours. After trade-in, the laptop costs just $59. You can trade-in a tablet, laptop or phone. Chromebook sale: deals from $99 @ Best Buy Chromebook sale: deals from $99 @ Best Buy Best Buy is currently offering a fire sale on Chromebooks. As part of its early Black Friday deals it has select Chromebooks on sale from $99. The sale includes Asus, HP, Samsung, and more. Samsung Chromebook 4 Samsung Chromebook 4: was $199 now $129 @ Walmart Need an inexpensive laptop for basic work? Walmart has the Samsung Chromebook 4 on sale for just $129. It runs on an Intel Celeron CPU with 4GB of RAM and a 32GB SSD. This 11.6-inch Chromebook is great for casual usage or for kids. Not only has it earned a spot in our best Chromebooks page, but it delivers faster multitasking than you'd expect from such an inexpensive laptop. Samsung Chromebook 4+ Samsung Chromebook 4 15.6": was $319 now $209 @ Walmart The Samsung Chromebook 4 delivers a big 15.6-inch full HD display along with a Celeron processor, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. Plus, it's rated for 10.5 hours of battery life and has Google Assistant built in. It's now on sale for just $209. Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2: was $449 now $399 @ Amazon The Galaxy Chromebook 2 is the best overall Chromebook you can buy. It's also the first to pack a QLED display, which makes the panel bright and vibrant enough for just about any use. It features a 13.3-inch QLED 1080p LCD, 2.1GHz Core i3-10110U CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB eMMC. It's now on sale at its lowest price ever. Laptops $379 @ Walmart HP 15 laptop: $379 @ Walmart This 15-inch laptop is a steal for $379. It features a 15.6-inch 1080p display, Core i5-1135G7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. It's one of the least expensive Windows 11 laptops we've seen on sale from any retailer. Asus VivoBook 14 Pro OLED Laptop: was $749 now $649 @ Walmart Asus VivoBook 14 Pro OLED Laptop: was $749 now $649 @ Walmart With its beautiful 14-inch 2880 x 1800 (2.8K) OLED display, thin bezels, and svelte profile, the VivoBook 14 Pro looks like a $1,000 laptop. In our review, we said this laptop is great for day-to-day office work, but also ideal for entertainment. It sports a Core i5-11300H CPU, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD. It's now on sale for just $649. Dell XPS 13 9305 Dell XPS 13: was $783 now $734 @ Dell The Dell XPS 13 is one of the best laptops you can buy. You can get this sleek machine for just $734 with this killer Black Friday deal. This configuration packs a 13.3-inch 1080p InfinityEdge display, 11th Gen Intel Core i5-1135G7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage. Dell XPS 15: was $2,199 now $1,616 @ Dell Dell XPS 15: was $2,199 now $1,616 @ Dell With an Intel Core i7-10750H processor, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and GeForce GTX 1650 Ti, this XPS 15 config has plenty of power on tap, all clad in an attractive frame. As we found in our review, it's a high-end laptop with few compromises. Use coupon "50OFF699" during checkout to drop its price to $1,616. Dell Inspiron 7000: was $949 now $699 @ Best Buy Dell Inspiron 7000: was $949 now $699 @ Best Buy This 13-inch 2-in-1 is on sale at Best Buy for a great price. With a 13.3-inch 1080p display, Core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD, it's more than powerful enough to tackle your daily tasks. It can even manage a bit of light gaming. Plus, it ships with Windows 11 Home pre-installed. Dell gaming PC sale: up to $300 off @ Dell Dell gaming PC sale: up to $300 off @ Dell Dell is starting the month with an epic sale on all gaming rigs. The PC manufacturer is taking up to $300 off select gaming rigs. The sale includes G-series laptops and Alienware laptops/desktops. After discounts, prices start at $685. HP 15z: was $479 now $329 @ HP HP 15z: was $479 now $329 @ HP The HP 15z is a solid mid-range laptop that can be used by students or anyone looking to perform everyday tasks. It packs a 15.6-inch 1366 x 768 LCD, 2.4GHz AMD Athlon Gold 3150U CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD. Recommended upgrades include a 1080p LCD (+$60) or a Ryzen 3 CPU (+$20). Microsoft Surface Laptop Go Surface Laptop Go: was $699 now $549 @ Best Buy This deal is taking $150 off the original price. The Surface Laptop Go is one of the best affordable laptops available, packing a 12.4-inch touch-screen, a 10th Gen Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of SSD storage. Apple Macbook Air (M1 2020) MacBook Air (M1): was $999 now $799 @ Amazon Save $149 at checkout! The M1 MacBook Air offers fantastic performance thanks to its new Apple Silicon. In our review, the Editor's Choice machine reached over 14 hours on our battery test. It features a 13.3-inch Retina display, Apple M1 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. It's on sale for $949, but you get an extra $149 off at checkout for a final price of $799! If you want an even bigger bargain, the 512GB model is also on sale for $1,099 ($150 off). If you don't see these prices, try different color machines/models. Apple Macbook Pro 13" (M1 2020) MacBook Pro 13 (Intel/2020/1TB): was $1,999 now $1,499 @ Amazon It's no longer Apple's flagship, but this souped up 13-inch MacBook Pro is a solid deal a $499 off. It features an 8th-generation Intel Core i5 processor, 16GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, and Intel Iris Plus Graphics 645. We very rarely see last generation MacBooks get this level of discount. It's easily one of the best early Black Friday deals we've seen so far this year. Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch (2021) MacBook Pro 14" (M1 Pro/512GB): $1,999 @ Amazon The 2021 MacBook Pro sports Apple's new M1 Pro CPU, which delivers 8 more GPU cores, a better Media Engine, and more memory bandwidth than the already incredible M1 chip. It's also Apple's first 14-inch MacBook Pro featuring a 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR mini-LED display with 3024 x 1984 resolution. Others specs include 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. You also get three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI port, SDXC card slot, and a MagSafe 3 port. It's already suffering from shipping delays, so get yours ordered soon to avoid disappointment. Asus TUF Gaming F17 with RTX 3050 Ti GPU: was $899 now $679 @ Best Buy Asus TUF Gaming F17 with RTX 3050 Ti GPU: was $899 now $679 @ Best Buy If you want a solid gaming laptop that won't break the bank, the Asus TUF F17 fits the bill nicely. It sports an Intel Core i5 CPU, Nvidia RTX 3050 GPU, 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for storage. Its 17.3-inch LED screen is another highlight of this excellent gaming rig. MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop: was $2,199 now $1,999 @ Best Buy MSI GS76 Gaming Laptop: was $2,199 now $1,999 @ Best Buy This MSI gaming laptop packs a 17.3-inch FHD display with a killer 360hz refresh rate, Intel Core i9 processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, 32GB of RAM, and a hefty 1TB SSD. Best Buy is offering $200 off this beastly gaming machine. Lenovo Legion 5 Pro Legion 5 Pro: was $2,079 now $1,639 @ Lenovo Black Friday deals have landed at Lenovo, which is offering its Legion 5 Pro for $1,639 via coupon code "LEGIONDEALS20". (Add the coupon code at final checkout to get this price). The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is a powerful gaming laptop sporting a 16" (2560 x 1600 pixels) IPS display with a 165Hz refresh rate. With an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 2TB SSD, it's a beast that should serve you well for years to come. Tablets Amazon Fire 7 (2019) Amazon Fire 7 Tablet: was $49 now just $34 @ Amazon The Fire 7 tablet is the best affordable tablet around. It lets you access your favorite entertainment apps and call on Alexa for hands-free functionality. It's now on sale for just $34. Amazon Fire HD 8 (2020) Fire HD 8 (2020): was $89 now $44 @ Amazon The 2020 Fire HD 8 brings better battery life (almost 14 hours) and USB-C charging to Amazon's family of tablets. For casual TV watching and music listening, the Fire HD 8 is a solid device, even more so if you're a Prime subscriber. It's now at its lowest price ever. Amazon Fire HD 8 Plus Fire HD 8 Plus: was $109 now $54 @ Amazon The new Fire HD 8 Plus packs all the same features of the Fire HD 8, but houses 3GB of RAM (instead of 2GB), which means you'll get much snappier performance. It also supports wireless charging. This tablet is now at its lowest price ever, which makes this Black Friday deal extra tempting. Lenovo 10e Lenovo 10e Chrome Tablet: was $334 now $119 @ Lenovo Perfect for young students, the Lenovo 10e Chrome is an affordable tablet that won't break the bank. It features a 10.1-inch 1920 x 1200 IPS touch display, MediaTek MT8183 CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 32GB eMMC. Use coupon "THINK10ECHROME" at checkout to drop its price to $119. The keyboard is not included. Walmart offers the same price without the coupon. Apple iPad Air (2020) 10.9" iPad Air (64GB/2020): was $599 now $569 @ Amazon The iPad Air sports a larger 10.9-inch display, speedy A14 Bionic CPU, and support for USB-C charging. Plus, with Magic Keyboard support, it's as close to a laptop replacement as you can get. Right now it's at its on sale for $569, but history shows this deal won't last long. (If you don't see the sale price, try choosing different color models). Apple iPad 10.2 (2021) 10.2" iPad 2021: was $329 now $299 @ Amazon Coming in and out of stock: The new 2021 iPad features Apple's A13 Bionic CPU, a new 12MP front camera, and 64GB of storage (instead of 32GB like its predecessor). You also get support for Center Stage, which uses machine learning to adjust the front-facing camera during FaceTime video calls. 8.3" iPad mini 2021: up to $460 off w/ trade-in @ Best Buy 8.3" iPad mini 2021: up to $460 off w/ trade-in @ Best Buy If you have an old iPad you want to get rid of, Best Buy is the way to go. The retailer will give you up to a $460 credit (via Best Buy gift card) if you trade-in your old iPad for the new iPad mini. For instance, the previous-gen iPad mini would fetch you a $175 credit. Surface Pro 7 w/ Type Cover: was $959 now $599 @ Best Buy Surface Pro 7 w/ Type Cover: was $959 now $599 @ Best Buy The Surface Pro 7 is one of the best tablets on the market. With Windows 10, a great 12.3-inch display and its Type Cover included, this Surface Pro 7 package is a steal for anyone wanting a premium 2-in-1 laptop at an affordable price. It's now $360 off and multiple configurations are also on sale. Apple iPad Pro 12.9 (2021) 12.9" iPad Pro 2021: was $1,199 now $1,099 @ Amazon The latest iPad Pro takes full advantage of Apple's M1 chip for seriously impressive performance. This 12.9-inch configuration also comes with an XDR display, 12MP wide camera and 10MP ultra-wide camera plus 256GB of storage. It's $100 off at Amazon in this early Black Friday deal. Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 (128GB) Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 (11"/128GB): was $649 now $499 @ Amazon This Black Friday deal offers the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 for just $499 that's $150 off. This iPad Pro alternative offers nearly 14-hour battery life, a beautiful 120Hz display, and a lightweight design. It also comes with an S-Pen as standard, which is a seriously big advantage compared to Apple devices. Streaming Onn Streaming Device: was $24 now $14 @ Walmart Onn Streaming Device: was $24 now $14 @ Walmart The Onn Streaming Device is Walmart's 1080p streaming stick. It plugs into your TV's HDMI port and lets you stream from your favorite apps like Netflix, HBO Max, YouTube, and Disney Plus. It has built-in Chromecast and offers Dolby Audio support. Google Chromecast 3 Google Chromecast 3rd Gen: was $29 now $19 @ Walmart Google's 3rd Generation Chromecast is a small, portable way to stream movies from your phone, laptop or other device to your TV. It's an absolute steal at just $19. It even comes with a 30-day free trial of HBO Max. Amazon Fire Stick Lite Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite: was $29 now $21 @ Amazon The Fire TV Stick Lite is a cheaper version of the Fire TV 4K Stick. This 1080p streamer supports HDR, HDR 10, HDR10+, and HLG, but it lacks Dolby Atmos Audio and dedicated volume/power buttons. Otherwise, this streamer is your best pick if you're looking for a cheap option. Roku Streaming Stick Roku Streaming Stick 4K (2021): was $49 now $29 @ Amazon The new Roku Streaming Stick 4K offers streaming at a bargain price. This Amazon deal takes a healthy 40% off one of our favorite streaming devices around. Whether it's your first or fourth Roku device, it's a great buy. The new stick adds HDR support and a faster processor for snappier performance. Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Fire TV Stick 4K: was $49 now $24 @ Amazon For 4K resolution, HDR color palettes, and speedy navigation, the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K is the streamer to get. You can stream videos, listen to music, interact with Alexa and play games for just $24.99, which is the price it normally hits during the holidays. Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max Fire TV Stick 4K Max: was $54 now $34 @ Amazon Amazon's new Fire TV Stick 4K Max is on sale for the first time. In our review, we named it the best Fire TV device Amazon's ever made. Why? For starters, it has a new quad-core CPU and a 750MHz GPU that helps speed the load time of apps like Netflix and Disney Plus. The remote also sports a new Live TV button, which is a nice perk for cord cutters. Amazon Fire TV Cube Amazon Fire TV Cube: was $119 now $79 @ Amazon Access today's most popular streaming content with Amazon's Fire TV Cube. From Netflix to Disney Plus to Sling TV, this Alexa smart device brings the convenience hands-free control of your favorite programs and movies to your living room. Apple TV 4K (2021) Apple TV 4K (2021): was $179 now $169 @ Amazon The new Apple TV supports high-frame rate HDR streaming as well as support for multiple users. Apple has added a speedy A12 Bionic chip for snappy performance, but it's the new remote, which we like the most. It retains touch and gestures, but adds actual buttons as well as an intuitive jog wheel that recalls the old iPods of yore. Kitchen Drinkworks Drinkmaker Keurig Drinkworks Home Bar: was $249 now $349 @ Best Buy Create delicious cocktails, brews, and mixtures at just the push of a button with the Keurig Drinkworks Home Bar. Just insert a Drinkworks pod and your order will be made consistently each time. Pods are available in a wide range of classic and specialty cocktail flavors. KEURIG K-Mini Keurig K-Mini Coffee Maker: was $79 now $49 @ Amazon The tiny Keurig K-Mini coffee maker lets you get single-serving coffee in any of Keurig's 100+ pod varieties, making 6-12 ounce quickly and efficiently. It even works with My K-Cup universal reusable pods, letting you enjoy your favorite blend without adding to the landfill. It's available in a variety of colors. Keurig K-Slim Keurig K-Slim Coffee Maker: was $119 now $99 @ Best Buy This compact coffee machine can serve up to 12 ounces of coffee at a time using one of Keurig's pods. However it's still large enough to fit a travel cup underneath if you need to make your drink to go. It's on sale for a limited time only, so make sure to grab yours while the deals is still active. Nespresso EN80B: was $149 now $131 @ Amazon Nespresso EN80B: was $149 now $131 @ Amazon The compact Nespresso EN80B offers barista-level espresso. It can brew 1.35-ounce or 5-ounce cups of espresso. It's one of the least expensive Nespresso machines you can buy ahead of the holiday season. Nespresso Vertuo Coffee/Espresso Machine: was $199 now $157 @ Amazon Nespresso Vertuo Coffee/Espresso Machine: was $199 now $157 @ Amazon The Nespresso BNV220BKM Vertuo Coffee/Espresso Machine can brew 4 different cup sizes at the touch of a button. It lets you brew cups of espresso (1.35 oz), double espresso (2.7 oz), gran lungo (5 oz), and coffee (7.7 oz). It includes a 40-oz. removable water tank for no hassle refilling. Ninja AF100 Air Fryer Ninja 4qt Air Fryer: was $89 now $69 @ Walmart This Ninja air fryer lets you fry and dehydrate foods to create quick snacks. The 4qt air fryer may not have a huge capacity, but it's extremely powerful. It's currently on sale at Walmart. Best of all, it's $10 cheaper than it was last week. PowerXL 5qt Single Basket Air Fryer: was $119, now $59 @ Target PowerXL 5qt Single Basket Air Fryer: was $119, now $59 @ Target This air fryer's Rapid Air Technology surrounds food with a whirlwind of turbo cyclonic air heated up to 400 degrees. The basket holds up to 16 ounces of French fries, while the digital panel offers easy controls. After offering a $40 discount, Target has dropped the price by another $20 to just $59. Bella Pro Series 8qt Air Fryer: was $129 now $49 @ Best Buy Bella Pro Series 8qt Air Fryer: was $129 now $49 @ Best Buy The Bella Pro Series Air Fryer not only comes with a sizeable 8qts capacity to cook for plenty of guests at once but also a built-in touchscreen for quick control and a durable stainless steel construction. It's currently a massive $80 off at Best Buy. Bella Pro Series 6-Slice Toaster Oven Bella Pro Series Toaster Oven: was $99 now $69 The Bella Pro Series Toaster Oven is a useful small kitchen appliance that can help you prepare plenty of food in a short time. It's big enough to fit a 12-inch pizza or six slices of bread. Plus, its 1800W of power makes it ideal for fast heating. Le Creuset Cast Iron Sauteuse Oven: was $300 now $199 @ Amazon Le Creuset Cast Iron Sauteuse Oven: was $300 now $199 @ Amazon This Le Creuset sauteuse pan is ideal for searing and frying as you cook and can easily be transferred from the stove to the oven. It has a 3.5-quart capacity, meaning it can serve two to four people, and it's dishwasher-safe too. It works on ceramic, electric, gas, halogen and induction stove-tops. Refrigerator sale: up to $1,000 off refrigerators @ Lowe's Refrigerator sale: up to $1,000 off refrigerators @ Lowe's Lowe's is taking up to $1,000 off select refrigerators as part of its latest sale. The sale includes Samsung, LG, Whirlpool, Frigidaire, and more. After discount, sale prices start as low as $779. Standing desks Hassen Adjustable Standing Desk: was $249 now $152 @ Wayfair Hassen Adjustable Standing Desk: was $249 now $152 @ Wayfair Looking for an affordable standing desk? Wayfair has the Hassen Adjustable Standing Desk on sale for $152. The desk features a lever that lets you manually adjust its height. It also has built-in coasters, which make it easy to move from room to room. It has received a 4.5/5 rating by 331 customers at Wayfair. VIVO Stand Up Height Adjustable 32 inch Desk Riser Vivo Standing Desk Converter: was $149 now $109 @ Amazon Turn any desk into a standing desk with the Vivo Standing Desk Converter. The height adjustable riser can hold dual monitors and a laptop. It features a 31.5-inch surface and requires very minimal assembly. The built-in keyboard tray raises in sync with the top surface to create the most comfortable standing work space. At $109, it's one of the best Black Friday deals around for standing desk converters. FlexiSpot EP4 Standing Desk: was $399 now $299 @ Amazon FlexiSpot EP4 Standing Desk: was $399 now $299 @ Amazon The FlexiSpot EP4 Electric Standing Desk is the perfect addition to any home office. Its dual motors feature three different height stages and it also has built-in USB charging ports. It comes in various sizes and all sizes are on sale via the on-page coupon. The 48" x 24" model costs $399, but falls to $299.99 after discount. UpLift V2 Desk: from $599 @ UpLift UpLift V2 Desk: from $599 @ UpLift Editor's Choice: The UpLift V2 Standing Desk is one of the best home office purchases you'll ever make. The desk is fully customizable and can be purchased with a variety of accessories that range from standing boards to mouse pads. The base model measures 42" x 30" and provides a 25.3-inch to 50.9-inch height range, which accommodates users who measure 4'9" to 6'7". I own this desk and absolutely love it. Use coupon "GOBBLE100" to take $100 of $999, or "GOBBLE150" to take $150 off $1,499, or "GOBBLE200" to take $200 off $1,999. Headphones Amazon Echo Buds (2nd Gen) Amazon Echo Buds 2 (Wired Case): was $119 now $69 @ Amazon The Echo Buds offer solid sound quality, active noise cancellation, and great integration with Alexa. They're on sale for $69.99, which is their lowest price ever. In our review, we found the buds are not only cheaper than the AirPods, but they offer extensive functionality at an unbeatable value. Plus, having Alexa at your beck and call beats Siri hands down. Amazon Echo Buds 2 (Wireless Case): was $139 now $89 @ Amazon Amazon Echo Buds 2 (Wireless Case): was $139 now $89 @ Amazon These Echo Buds 2 include a wireless case, which allows them to be charged wirelessly. They offer the same battery life as the wired model. They're also at their lowest price ever. Bose QuietComfort 45 Bose QuietComfort 45: was $329 now $279 @ Amazon First time on sale! The Bose QuietComfort 45 offer enhanced active noise cancellation, better sound, and longer battery life than its predecessor. They're a no brainer for Bose fans who want to swap out their older QC headphones for something more modern, or shoppers who want first-class Bose noise cancellation at a cheaper price than the premium Bose 700. Bose 700: was $379 now $299 @ Amazon Bose 700: was $379 now $299 @ Amazon The Bose 700 headphones are one of the best noise-cancelling headphones you can buy now. They're stylish, comfortable to wear, and deliver the best noise-cancelling experience you can find. Even better, they're now $80 off (Triple Black only) and at their lowest price ever. Apple Airpods (2019) AirPods: was $159 now $119 @ Amazon The base AirPods are on sale for $119. They include a standard Apple charging case and Apple's H1 chip for fast wireless connectivity with Apple devices. Keep in mind they hit $89 a few days ago and will likely hit that price again in the coming days. JBL Tune 120TWS: was $99 now $56 @ Amazon JBL Tune 120TWS: was $99 now $56 @ Amazon This deal takes a whole 50% off the original price. JBL's wireless earbuds pack a punch with a 5.8mm driver for solid bass performance. With 16 hours of battery life shared between the headphones and their charging case, you'll be able to rock out all day long. Jabra Elite 85t Jabra Elite 85t: was $229 now $149 @ Best Buy The Jabra Elite 85t are among the best wireless earbuds we've tested. Their relatively huge 12mm drivers can pump out some of the best sound you'll hear and their active noise cancellation is equally impressive. Credit is also due to the Jabra Sound+ app, which is packed with personalization features. Amazon offers the same price. Bose QuietComfort 35 II: was $349 now $199 @ Amazon Bose QuietComfort 35 II: was $349 now $199 @ Amazon Save big on these phenomenal noise-cancelling headphones from Bose. The Bose QuietComfort 35 II have a sturdy, fold-away design, and deliver crystal clear sound with great range. And dont worry, theyve got that bass, too. This is the cheapest they've ever been. Walmart offers the same price. Beats Powerbeats Pro Powerbeats Pro: was $249 now $149 @ Amazon This deal takes 40% off the original price, saving you almost $100 in total. The Powerbeats Pro is one of the best wireless earbuds on the market, featuring a 9-hour battery life (more than 24 hours with the charging case), water resistance and a comfortable yet stylish design. New Apple AirPods Pro: was $249 now $189 @ Best Buy New Apple AirPods Pro: was $249 now $189 @ Best Buy The New Apple AirPods Pro add MagSafe Charging. It also sports active noise canceling, a transparency mode, spatial audio support and 24-hours of battery life via the Charging Case. And they're sweat and water-resistant for working out. Sony WH-1000XM4 Sony WH-1000XM4 Headphones: was $349 now $248 @ Amazon The Sony WH-1000XM4 are among the best wireless headphones on the market. Offering remarkable noise-cancelling, superior sound quality, and a lengthy 30 hours of battery life (38 hours with ANC disabled), they easily justify a full-price purchase. At $101 off, there's no reason not to pick up a pair. Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Samsung Galaxy Buds 2: was $149 now $99 @ Woot This deal takes a whole 33% off the original price, making it one of the best offers we've seen. The Galaxy Buds 2 are one of the best wireless earbuds, featuring a battery life of up to 7.5 hours (with ANC off), Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity and colorful options. Sony WH-XB910N Headphone: was $249 now $148 @ Best Buy Sony WH-XB910N Headphone: was $249 now $148 @ Best Buy These Sony cans are exclusive to Best Buy and the retailer has slashed them by $101 just in time for Black Friday. They sport noise canceling, 30-hours of battery on a single charge and solid bass performance. This is one of the best Black Friday headphone deals running right now. Gaming Nintendo Ring Fit Adventure Ring Fit Adventure: was $79 now $54 @ Amazon Hurry! The Ring Fit Adventure is now on sale at Amazon for just $54.99, it's lowest price ever. The Ring Fit Adventure is a fun peripheral for Switch owners who want to burn some calories while playing games. We've seen it on sale for as low as $69, but this Black Friday deal is its lowest price to date. Best Buy offers the same price. Sony Playstation Plus 12 month subscription PlayStation Plus 1-year: was $59 now $39 @ Walmart Black Friday is one of the best times to renew your PS Plus membership because that's when we see the best deals. For example, right now you can buy a full year's membership for just $39. You can even buy two cards and stack them so you won't have to worry about renewing for another 2 years. Samsung 49-Inch Odyssey G9 Gaming Monitor Samsung 49" Odyssey G9 Gaming Monitor: was $1,399 now $999 @ Amazon This curved QLED gaming monitor has a dual QHD resolution (5120 x 1440), 240Hz refresh rate, and support for NVIDIA G-SYNC and FreeSync Premium Pro. It's down to just $999 at Amazon. Xbox Series S: $299 @ Best Buy Xbox Series S: $299 @ Best Buy (check stock) The Xbox Series S is back in stock! The more affordable next-gen Xbox Series S is limited to 1440p output, but still delivers fast loading, ray tracing, and high frame rates. It sports a GPU with up to 4 teraflops of output, 10GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD for storage. (There's no disc drive). PS5: $499 @ Amazon PS5: $499 @ Amazon (check stock) Sony's flagship gaming machine, the PS5 is one of the most in-demand tech products currently available. For good reason: this powerful console boasts 4K visuals, an innovative DualSense controller, and a 4K Blu-ray drive. It's out of stock at the moment. Xbox Series X: $399 @ Amazon Xbox Series X: $399 @ Amazon (check stock) The Xbox Series X is Microsoft's new flagship console. It features 12 teraflops of graphics power, 16GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, and Blu-ray drive. It runs games at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second with a max of 8K at 120 fps. The Editor's Choice console represents the pinnacle of Microsoft's gaming efforts. It's currently out of stock. $549 @ Amazon Xbox Series X Halo Infinite Limited Edition: $549 @ Amazon (check stock) The new Xbox Series X Halo Infinite Limited Edition console celebrates 20 years of Halo. Walmart took pre-orders shortly after its announcement but is now sold out. It's been coming in and out of stock this past week. Switch OLED: $349 @ Amazon Switch OLED: $349 @ Amazon (check stock) The Nintendo Switch OLED is a refreshed version of the popular handheld/home console. It offers a gorgeous 7-inch OLED display, a wide adjustable stand, a wired LAN port in the dock, and a larger 64GB of internal storage. It's out of stock today. Razer Basilisk X Hyperspeed Razer Basilisk X Hyperspeed Wireless Optical Gaming Mouse: was $59 now $34 @ Best Buy The Razer Basilisk X Hyperspeed is a good wireless gaming mouse for the price. For those getting started out in PC gaming or esports, it brings wireless gaming precision to the sub-$100 category. Per our review, it's not the best wireless gaming mouse around, but can be sufficient for the right buyer. Microsoft Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 Xbox Elite Series 2 Wireless Controller: was $179 now $169 @ Walmart The Xbox Elite Series 2 Wireless Controller is one of the best pads for Xbox and PC gaming. With a premium design, interchangeable thumbstick and paddles, plus a 40-hour battery life, it's perfect for taking your gaming up a gear. If Walmart sells out, Amazon also offers the pad for $10 off. Blue Yeti Blue Yeti USB Mic: was $129 now $99 @ Amazon The Blue Yeti is our favorite mic for everything from podcasting to recording. It features four pickup patterns, which produce clear, powerful, broadcast-quality sound. The unique design allows you to pivot and position the mic to optimize recording. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: was $59 now $26 @ GameStop The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: was $59 now $26 @ GameStop The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a must-have Nintendo Switch game. Not only is the open-world the most robust in the series, the world is a game in it of itself, with robust opportunities for fun is mischief. Nintendo knocked it out of the park, and is one of the best games ever made. Control Ultimate Edition: was $39 now $18 @ Amazon Control Ultimate Edition: was $39 now $18 @ Amazon Control Ultimate Edition bundles together the base game with its two DLC expansions, "The Foundation" and "AWE", for the complete Control experience. Play as a superpowered heroine on a mission to uncover the secrets of The Old House and her connection to the mysterious Federal Bureau of Control. Microsoft Flight Simulator: was $59 now $50 @ Amazon Microsoft Flight Simulator: was $59 now $50 @ Amazon Take to the skies in Microsoft Flight Simulator for the Xbox Series X. Pilot a range of aircraft from single-engine planes to commercial jets and explore more than two million real-world locations. Sony Playstation Plus 12 month subscription PlayStation Plus 12 Month Membership: was $59 now $39 @ Amazon If you're planning on taking your PlayStation console online you'll need a PlayStation Plus subscription. For Black Friday, a 12-month membership is $20 off. Alongside access to online play, you'll also get a monthly selection of games, exclusive discounts and cloud storage capabilities. Assassin's Creed Valhalla Assassin's Creed Valhalla: was $59 now $19 @ Amazon Become a medieval Viking and conquer all of England in the massive open-world RPG. With hundreds of hours of content in the base game alone you'll probably still be playing this one by Black Friday 2022. Far Cry 6 Far Cry 6: was $59 now $39 @ Amazon As freedom fighter Dani Rojas you must lead a modern-day guerrilla revolution to liberate the island of Yara from the oppression of ruthless dictator Anton Castillo. Far Cry 6 is another bombastic instalment in the beloved series and it's currently $20 off at Amazon. Marvel's Avengers Marvel's Avengers: was $39 now $14 @ Amazon Marvel's Avengers has dropped to just $14 at Amazon. Now is the perfect time to buy as the PlayStation exclusive Spider-Man DLC is dropping on November 30 as a free download. This sale is on the PS4 version but comes with a free upgrade to the PS5 version. The Last of Us Part II: was $39 now $19 @ Walmart The Last of Us Part II: was $39 now $19 @ Walmart Return to the harsh and unforgiving world of The Last of Us in this sequel to one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time. As Ellie, you'll seek revenge against those who have wronged you in a brutal story of revenge. Charging Station for DualSense Controllers: was $54 now $29 @ Target Charging Station for DualSense Controllers: was $54 now $29 @ Target Ensure your DualSense controllers always have juice when you need them with this third-party charging dock. It can charge two controllers at once and has built-in safety features to prevent your pads from overcharging or overheating. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: was $59 now $50 @ Best Buy Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is one of the most popular Switch games available. This means any form of discount is rare, but courtesy of Amazon you can currently get this must-have family-friendly hit at a slight reduction. Just Dance 2022 Just Dance 2022: was $49 now $28 @ Amazon Just Dance is back for another year to get the party started in style. Work up a sweat dancing along to 40 hit tracks including tunes from Taylor Swift, Camila Cabello, Billie Eilish and The Weekend. Wearables Apple Watch Series 3 Apple Watch 3 (GPS/38mm): was $199 now $109 @ Walmart The Apple Watch 3 is a great fitness tracker and smartwatch for those on a budget. The waterproof watch offers heart rate notifications, workout detection, Apple Music, and Siri support for a low price. It has sold for $169 all year (Apple sells it for $199), but Walmart now has it on sale for $109. That's $10 cheaper than last year's Black Friday price and the best deal of all time for this watch. Fitbit Charge 4 Fitbit Charge 4: was $149 now $69 @ Walmart Editor's Choice deal: The Fitbit Charge 4 is the perfect fitness tracker for anyone that wants a reliable tracker, but doesn't want to spend big bucks on a wearable that offers functionality you don't need. In our review, we called the Fitbit Charge 4 the best fitness tracker for most people. It has built-in GPS and a great design. It's now at its lowest price to date. Apple Watch SE (GPS/40mm): was $279 now $219 @ Amazon Apple Watch SE (GPS/40mm): was $279 now $219 @ Amazon Lowest price ever! The Apple Watch SE is Apple's mid-tier smartwatch. In our review, we called the Editor's Choice watch one of the most well-rounded smartwatches you can buy. It features the same chip found in the Apple Watch 5, but sports a bigger screen than the Apple Watch 3. It supports Emergency SOS calling, fall detection, and features a built-in compass and always-on altimeter. This is one of the best Black Friday deals we've seen. Fitbit sales: up to 40% off @ Amazon Fitbit sales: up to 40% off @ Amazon Amazon is knocking up to 40% off select Fitbit trackers and smartwatches. For instance, you can get the Fitbit Versa 2 for $119 ($60 off). The midrange smartwatch has a beautiful always-on OLED display and Alexa built in, which makes it a more useful smartwatch. Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 Galaxy Watch Active 2: was $269 now $199 @ Amazon As Samsung's fitness-first smartwatch, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 is excellent for Android phone owners who enjoy a wide range of activities. It's slim and sleek-looking, making it an awesome fashion statement, too. Apple Watch 6 Apple Watch 6 (GPS/40mm): was $399 now $349 @ Amazon Amazon has the Apple Watch Series 6 (GPS/40mm) on sale for $349. That's one of the lowest prices we've ever seen for the Series 6. Unlike the Series 5, the newer model features blood oxygen sensors, which allow users to monitor their health more closely. The Apple Watch Series 6 also comes with a bright, always-on Retina display. Fitbit Inspire 2 Fitbit Inspire 2: was $99 now $59 @ Amazon Quick! Amazon has a Black Friday sale on Fitbit devices. Save $40 on this easy-to-use fitness tracker, which is one of the best fitness trackers on the market for under $100. It's affordable, comfortable and the lightweight design is perfect for 24/7 tracking. It's a brilliant option for first-time fitness tracker users, plus, it comes with a free year of Fitbit Premium bargain! Apple Watch 7: buy two, get $200 off @ AT&T Apple Watch 7: buy two, get $200 off @ AT&T Purchase any two Apple Watch 7 devices at AT&T and you'll get $200 off your total purchase. The new watch comes in 41mm and 45mm sizes. It features a larger/brighter display, better durability (IPX6 certification), and up to 33% faster charging. Fitness Peloton Tread Essentials bundle: was $2,765 now $2,515 @ Peloton Peloton Tread Essentials bundle: was $2,765 now $2,515 @ Peloton The Tread Essentials bundle includes the Peloton Tread and its delivery and assembly, but also two sets of dumbbells (you can select the weights), a set of resistance bands, a reversible workout mat, and a heart rate monitor you can connect to the Peloton to get a more accurate idea of your training. Hardly ever on sale, it's one of the best Black Friday deals we've seen if you can want a premium treadmill. Peloton Bike+: $350 off all packages @ One Peloton Peloton Bike+: $350 off all packages @ One Peloton The Bike+ has everything Peloton users love about the original model and adds even more great features. It has a 360 rotating screen, so you can easily move between cardio and strength workouts. Peloton Bike: $150 off select packages @ One Peloton Peloton Bike: $150 off select packages @ One Peloton The original Peloton Bike is also on sale in this Black Friday exercise bike deal. Get one of the packages that comes with accessories (Bike Essentials, Bike Works or Bike Family) and save $150. Sunny Health & Fitness Magnetic Rowing Machine Sunny Health & Fitness Magnetic Rowing Machine: was $399 now $249 at Amazon Save $150 on the Sunny Health & Fitness Magnetic Rowing Machine in this Amazon Black Friday deal. Featuring a digital LCD monitor for stat tracking, an extra-long 48-inch slide rail and easy-to-adjust magnetic resistance, this piece of fitness equipment is perfect for a home gym setup. Xterra Fitness TR150 Folding Treadmill Xterra Fitness TR150 Folding Treadmill: was $499 now $365 @ Amazon This Xterra Fitness treadmill is ideal for those low on space with its folding functionality. The TR150 treadmill can reach speeds of 10 mph and includes a large 5-inch LCD display for keeping track of your distance and calories burnt. It's currently $134 off at Amazon. ProForm Carbon Elliptical: was $999 now $599 @ Best Buy ProForm Carbon Elliptical: was $999 now $599 @ Best Buy This carbon-frame elliptical from ProForm includes built-in dual speakers, front-mounted wheels for easy transportation, heart rate sensors built into the handlebars, a 19-inch adjustable stride and oversize cushion pedals. It's now $400 off at Best Buy in this epic Black Friday fitness deal. Bowflex Treadmill 10: was $2,799 now $1,699 @ Best Buy Bowflex Treadmill 10: was $2,799 now $1,699 @ Best Buy Offering the ability to watch streamed content from platforms like Disney Plus, Netflix and Prime Video while you run, the Blowflex Treadmill 10 is a machine for those who find running a chore. You'll get two months of Blowflex JRNY membership as well, which gives you personalized programs and coaching. At a massive $1,100 discount, this is one of the best treadmill deals around. Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 37 Nike Pegasus 37 running shoes: was $120, now $89 @ Nike The Nike Pegasus 37 is your do-everything running shoe. Its a great buy for runners who want one shoe that can handle easy, long runs as well as faster speed sessions. The discount is across a number of sizes and colors on the Nike Pegasus 37. Adidas Ultraboost 21 Adidas Ultraboost 21: was $180 now $67 @ Amazon The Ultraboost 21 is Adidas' newest Ultraboost, so it's surprising to see it on such a good discount. It's another brilliant do-everything shoe the bouncy Boost foam is extremely comfortable and plush underfoot on easy runs, but is reactive enough to also cope with faster sessions. Pricing varies based on size and color, but almost all are heavily discounted. Nike ZoomX Invincible Run Flyknit: was $180 now $135 @ Nike Nike ZoomX Invincible Run Flyknit: was $180 now $135 @ Nike Tom's Guide's fitness editor says these are among her favorite shoes of all time and they're on sale right now. They're super-plush, super-comfortable, and absolutely perfect for easy miles. The men's ZoomX Invincible Run is also on sale for $153.97. Phones Galaxy S20 FE: was $699 now $249 @ Walmart Galaxy S20 FE: was $699 now $249 @ Walmart The Galaxy S20 FE is one of the best budget flagships you can buy. In our review, we were impressed with the phone's big 6.5-inch AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate, powerful 30x Space Zoom (digital), and solid overall performance. This prepaid model is tied to Straight Talk and an excellent buy for anyone who wants flagship performance sans the flagship price. iPhone 13: free w/ trade-in + unlimited @ AT&T iPhone 13: free w/ trade-in + unlimited @ AT&T AT&T is offering new and existing customers the iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini, or the iPhone 13 Pro for free after an eligible trade-in. You'll need to purchase your phone via a monthly installment plan and you'll also need to sign up for an unlimited data plan. Galaxy Note 20 Ultra: was $1,199 now $824 w/ trade-in @ Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra: was $1,199 now $824 w/ trade-in @ Samsung Free Chromebook! Samsung is knocking the price of its Galaxy Note 20 Ultra to just $824. Plus, you'll get a free Samsung Chromebook 4 with the purchase of any Note 20 Ultra. The Editor's Choice Galaxy Note 20 Ultra features a pro-level camera with a 108MP sensor and 50x zoom, the ability to stream Xbox games, and a huge 6.9-inch OLED screen with a dynamic 120Hz refresh rate. The Chromebook 4 is our pick for best overall Chromebook for students. Galaxy Z Fold 3: was $1,799 now $1,549 @ Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3: was $1,799 now $1,549 @ Samsung Samsung has taken $250 off the price of its most expensive phone for Black Friday. In addition, you'll get a pair of Galaxy Buds 2 earbuds for free, a $149 value that saves you $400 total. If you've got a phone to trade-in, you can reduce your cost even further. Google Pixel 6: up to $700 off @ Verizon Google Pixel 6: up to $700 off @ Verizon Verizon has stock of all Pixel 6 models. Plus, it's taking $700 off the Pixel 6 if you switch to Verizon, trade in an eligible phone, and sign up for an Unlimited plan. (You'll get an extra $1,000 if you switch from a competing carrier). Alternatively, existing customers can get up to $350 off with trade-in and eligible Unlimited plan. Galaxy S20/S21 phones: from $0 w/ trade-in + Unlimited @ Verizon Galaxy S20/S21 phones: from $0 w/ trade-in + Unlimited @ Verizon Verizon is offering select Samsung Galaxy S20 and S21 phones for free when you switch, trade-in your old phone, or open a new line. For instance, you can get the Galaxy S20 FE for free when you open a new line. (No trade-in required). Meanwhile, the Galaxy S21 is up to $800 off when you trade-in your old/damaged phone. Plus, you'll get an extra $1,000 when you switch to Verizon. iPhone SE: free w/ new line + Unlimited @ Verizon iPhone SE: free w/ new line + Unlimited @ Verizon Open a new line of service with an unlimited plan at Verizon and you'll get an iPhone SE for free. It's one of the best iPhone deals you can get right now. Plus, make your purchase online and you'll get 50% off your activation fee. Unlocked 32GB Motorola Moto G Power (2021): was $199 now $169 @ Motorola Unlocked 32GB Motorola Moto G Power (2021): was $199 now $169 @ Motorola This is one of the best phone deals we've seen yet for Black Friday. The Moto G Power (2021) lasts a really long time on a charge, better than any other phone we've tested. The 64GB model is just $10 more. iPhone 13: up to $1,300 w/ trade-in + unlimited @ Verizon iPhone 13: up to $1,300 w/ trade-in + unlimited @ Verizon New Verizon customers can get up to $1,300 off any new iPhone 13 model. You'll get up to $800 off with select trade-in. Plus, new members will be able to get an extra $500 to help cover the cost of switching for a total of up to $1,300 off. Existing members can get up to $800 off with trade-in. Meanwhile, the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max are up to $1,500 off. Furniture Herman Miller sale: 15% off sitewide @ Herman Miller Herman Miller sale: 15% off sitewide @ Herman Miller The annual Herman Miller sale is on. For a limited time, you can take 15% off various Herman Miller furniture including its iconic Aeron chairs. Most Aeron chairs are sold out at other retailers, but after discount you can get an Aeron chair from $930, which is $165 off and its lowest prices ever. Sand & Stable Laguna Coffee Table with Storage: was $434 now $186 @ Wayfair Sand & Stable Laguna Coffee Table with Storage: was $434 now $186 @ Wayfair If your living room needs a new coffee table, then look no further. This Laguna Coffee Table is currently 57% off and features an attractive distressed wood finish. It's made from pine and measures 18 x 48 x 24 inches. There's a useful lower shelf for storage too. Leni 33.5'' Wide Recliner: was $359 now $225 @ Wayfair Leni 33.5'' Wide Recliner: was $359 now $225 @ Wayfair With 37 colors to choose from, both plain and patterned, this manual recliner will fit in with any living room color scheme. Its currently 37% off with a savings of $134. It has a weight capacity of 300 pounds and a wooden frame made from Pine. Home office furniture: deals from $89 @ Office Depot Home office furniture: deals from $89 @ Office Depot As part of its Black Friday deals, Office Depot is knocking over 40% off home office furniture including desks, cabinets, and chairs. After discount, deals start as low as $89. Smart home Amazon Echo Auto: was $49 now $14 @ Amazon Amazon Echo Auto: was $49 now $14 @ Amazon Put Alexa in your car with this Black Friday deal from Amazon. While far from a perfect device, as we noted in our review, the Echo Auto is one of the few ways to easily access Alexa on the road. And with $35 off the normal price, you can easily overlook those flaws. Ring Video Doorbell Wired + Echo Dot: was $99 now $41 @ Amazon Ring Video Doorbell Wired + Echo Dot: was $99 now $41 @ Amazon Ring's cheapest video doorbell is even cheaper in this deal that takes $18 off its regular price and throws in a free Amazon Echo Dot (3rd gen) to go with it. You get a 1080p camera and two-way talk, while the Echo Dot can act as your doorbell chime. Google Nest Mini Nest Mini (2nd gen): was $49 now $24 @ Best Buy Get one of the best smart speakers for 50% off! The Nest Mini lets you talk to Google Assistant to control your smart home devices, listen to music, get the weather and more. It's an essential device for anyone looking to set up a smart home. You can get it in one of four colors. Levoit Core 300: was $99 now $84 @Amazon Levoit Core 300: was $99 now $84 @Amazon It's not a huge markdown, but you won't find any better bang for the buck than with this reliable, attractive Levoit air purifier. It's got a HEPA filter for tiny particles, a carbon filter for odors and a prefilter for hairs and fibers, and specialized filters are available for different environments. Handles rooms up to 220 sq. ft. Amazon Echo Show 5 (2nd gen) Echo Show 5 (2nd gen, 2021): was $84 now $44 @ Amazon As we say in our review, the new Echo Show 5 builds on the original version with a better camera, while its compact 5.5-inch smart display and full Alexa support are still present. It's a worthy addition to your smart home setup. This deal cuts its price by $40. TP-Link Deco S4 Mesh WiFi System: was $149 now $109 @ Amazon TP-Link Deco S4 Mesh WiFi System: was $149 now $109 @ Amazon If spotty WiFi in the far corners of your home is a frequent issue, then the TP-link Deco S4 Mesh WiFi System is the essential smart device you need. Able to boost your internet coverage to up to 5,500 sq.ft, laggy connections will quickly become a thing of the past. Google Nest Wi-Fi 3-pack: was $349 now $249 @ Best Buy Google Nest Wi-Fi 3-pack: was $349 now $249 @ Best Buy Editor's Choice deal: Get the best mesh Wi-Fi system we've reviewed with the Google Nest Wifi 2-pack, now on sale for $90off at Amazon. In addition to excellent 802.11ac performance and coverage for 4,400 square feet, the Nest Wifi boasts a killer feature each point has a built-in Google Home smart speaker. (Don't need a 3-pack? Amazon has the 2-pack for $90 off!) Vacuums Shark Ion Robot 750 Shark ION Robot Vacuum: was $199 now $144 @ Walmart If you want an entry-level robot vacuum at an affordable price, this Shark ION deal offers a generous discount. It comes with a tri-brush system that offers a multi-brush cleaning performance, and can easily maneuver around stairs or ledges. The SharkClean app lets you schedule and control your robot vac at the touch of a button and is compatible with Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. iRobot Roomba 692 iRobot Roomba 692: was $299 now $199 @ Amazon Designed to clean smarter, the iRobot Roomba 692 offers a three stage cleaning system with dual multi-surface brushes and edge-sweeping abilities. Plus, adaptive navigation features to prevent it getting stuck or bumping into your furniture. It's also a breeze to setup and simple to control thanks to the supplied companion app. iRobot Braava m6134 iRobot Braava jet m6: was $449 now $349 @ Best Buy If you're after a device that sweeps and mops the floor, this iRobot robot mop is a great deal. Saving $100, it can navigate around the home with its smart mapping tools. Plus, you can customize cleaning schedules. Dyson V10 Allergy Cordfree Vacuum Cleaner: was $479 now $379 @Walmart Dyson V10 Allergy Cordfree Vacuum Cleaner: was $479 now $379 @Walmart If you want a premium cordless vac at a great price, this Dyson V10 is a bargain. With up to 60 minutes of cleaning power, the Dyson V10 is lightweight and turns into a handheld to tackle smaller jobs. The adjustable height and telescopic handle can tackle hard-to-reach places. Accessories include a soft roller cleaning head, mini dusting brush, crevice tool and more. was $1,849 now $1,424 @ iRobot Roomba bundle: was $1,849 now $1,424 @ iRobot The ultimate smart home package, iRobot currently has its Roomba s9+ bundled with its Braava jet m6 and H1 handheld vac on sale for $1,424.97. That's $425 off and one of the best Black Friday deals we've seen from iRobot. Both robots won our Editor's Choice award and represent the very best iRobot has to offer. Holiday decor Holiday decor: deals from $3 @ Lowe's Holiday decor: deals from $3 @ Lowe's Lowe's is slashing the price of select holiday decor. After discount, holiday lights start at $3, outdoor inflatables from $14, and artificial trees start at just $26. It's one of the best holiday sales we've seen from Lowe's. Pictured is the Star Wars Child 3.5-foot Inflatable for $29. Artificial Christmas Trees: deals from $8 @ Amazon Artificial Christmas Trees: deals from $8 @ Amazon Amazon has a wide range of Christmas trees on sale from $8. The sale includes small pre-lit trees (a la Charlie Brown) as well as taller fully decorated trees. It's one of the biggest Christmas tree sales we've seen from any retailer. New Year's decor: deals from $24 @ Wayfair New Year's decor: deals from $24 @ Wayfair Yes, we know Thanksgiving comes first, but if you want to get a jump start on your New Year's Eve decorations, Wayfar is offering Black Friday deals on all of its NYE decor. The sale includes cocktail napkins, pillows, disposable dinnerware and more. Holiday dinnerware: 20% off @ Overstock Holiday dinnerware: 20% off @ Overstock Decorate your table with festive, holiday tableware and decor. Black Friday deals at Overstock are taking 20% off select decor. After discount, holiday decor starts at just $19. Bedding Tempur-Adjustable Support Pillow: 2-pack for $79 @ Tempur-Pedic Tempur-Adjustable Support Pillow: 2-pack for $79 @ Tempur-Pedic Editor's Choice: Normally priced at $59 each, Tempur-Pedic has its Adjustable Support Pillows on sale. Currently, you can get two pillows for just $79. That's $39 off and one of the best Black Friday sales we've seen on Tempur-Pedic pillows. The pillow uses the Tempur's proprietary blend of materials to offer pressure relief and comfort. (Editor's Note: I've been using these pillows since the summer and find that they offer the perfect balance between firm and soft). Allswell Mattress Topper: was $68 now $54 @ Allswell Allswell Mattress Topper: was $68 now $54 @ Allswell The Allswell Mattress Topper offers 2 inches of breathable foam between you and your mattress to promote better airflow and moisture wicking. Use coupon code "THANKFUL" to drop its price to $54.40 (twin) or $78.40 (queen). ViscoSoft 4-Inch Active Cooling Memory Foam Mattress Topper ViscoSoft Active Cooling Copper Topper: was $334 now $249 @ ViscoSoft The Active Cooling Copper Topper is designed to keep you from overheating at night. As part of its Black Friday deals all toppers are 25% off. After discount, the twin costs $249 (was $334), whereas the queen costs $349 (was $469). The topper features a removable and washable fabric cover that deflects moisture. Inside you'll find two inches of antimicrobial copper-infused foam help transfer heat away from your body. Nectar 5-Piece Bedroom Set: was $1,698 now $1,049 @ Nectar Nectar 5-Piece Bedroom Set: was $1,698 now $1,049 @ Nectar Furnish your entire bedroom with this epic set. The Nectar 5-piece bedroom set includes a Nectar mattress, foundation, two cooling pillows, sheet set, and mattress protector. For a limited time, Nectar is taking $649 off its full price, which makes this one of the best Black Friday deals we've seen. Cameras Sony ZV-1 Sony ZV-1 was $749 now $648 @ Amazon The Sony ZV-1 is aimed squarely at vloggers and YouTubers, and does a very good job of serving them. That's thanks to features such as a flip-out 3-inch touchscreen, directional 3-capsule mic and the clever Product Showcase Setting, which expertly switches focus from face to product. Best Buy also has the same deal. GoPro Hero10 Black + accessories + subscription: was $549 now $349 @ GoPro GoPro Hero10 Black + accessories + subscription: was $549 now $349 @ GoPro The Hero10 Black is GoPro's new action camera, adding a new processor, higher resolution and improved image stabilization into an already compelling package. We awarded it 4.5 stars in our review, and it's even better value right now. This deal direct from GoPro is not only $100 cheaper than we've seen it elsewhere, but also throws in a 1-year GoPro subscription and accessories pack. Canon EOS M50 Mark II Canon EOS M50 Mk II Content Creator Kit: was $899, now $799 @ Amazon The Canon M50 II is itself a very capable mirrorless camera, with a 24.1MP sensor, 4K video, EVF and vari-angle LCD screen. It also packs a bunch of features to make it better for content creators, including direct-to-YouTube livestreaming and vertical video. This kit bundles it with a tripod grip, stereo mic and 14-45mm lens and drops the overall price by $100. Nikon Z5 Nikon Z5 (body only): was $1,399 now $996 @ Amazon The Z5 is one of Nikon's best mirrorless cameras, offering a 24.3MP full-frame sensor plus built-in image stabilization and a fast and accurate 273-point autofocus system. There's (cropped) 4K video, too, plus handy features such as dual SD card slots and full weather sealing. This is now the lowest price we've ever seen for it, saving you around $400 on the list price. Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark IV Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark IV + 14-42mm Lens: was $799, now $699 @ B&H Photo The Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mk IV is a great little mirrorless camera and this deal slashes $100 off the list price at B&H Photo. The 14-42mm lens is a 28-84mm full-frame equivalent, giving you a medium-wide to medium range that should cover most subjects including landscapes and portraits. It's not the lowest we've ever seen it, but given everything you get here, including built-in image stabilization and 4K video, it's definitely worth checking out. Home audio UE Wonderboom Ultimate Ears Wonderboom: was $99 now $82 @ Amazon Ultimate Ears' Wonderboom Bluetooth speakers have an IP67 waterproof rating, which means you can totally submerge one water for up to a minute and a half and it should still work. These are good speakers for taking to the beach or the pool, and right now Amazon has them on an 18% discount. JBL Charge 4 Bluetooth speaker: was $179 now $129 @ Amazon JBL Charge 4 Bluetooth speaker: was $179 now $129 @ Amazon Amazon has one of the best early deals we've seen on a Bluetooth speaker. Reviewers say this model delivers good sound quality and great battery life, lasting up to 20 hours on a single charge. However, it might last a little less if you take advantage of the built-in USB charging port to charge your smartphone or tablet. LG XBOOM Go Bluetooth speaker: was $129 now $69 @ Walmart LG XBOOM Go Bluetooth speaker: was $129 now $69 @ Walmart Walmart has a good Black Friday deal on the LG XBOOM GO, an IPX5 water resistant Bluetooth speaker with LED lights that pulse in time to your music. And with up to 18 hours of advertised battery life, your listening party can go on all night long. Roku Streambar Roku Streambar: was $129 now $79 @ Amazon Stream in vivid, sharp high-definition 4K and listen to four internal speakers that fill the room with clean, pure sound featuring Dolby Audio. Control both your television and volume with one remote. Polk React Polk Audio React: was $249, now $189 @ Amazon We're big fans of Polk Audio soundbars, and the React is no exception. It's small and offers good sound for the price, with our review singling our its surprisingly weighty bass. Built-in Alexa voice control is another bonus and this Amazon deal equals the lowest price we've seen for it. Vizio M-Series M512a-H6: was $499, now $349 @ Amazon Vizio M-Series M512a-H6: was $499, now $349 @ Amazon The Vizio M512a-H6 makes it into our list of the best soundbars, thanks to being an affordable way to add Dolby Atmos to your system. In our review, we praised its strong audio performance given the price and it's even more affordable with this Amazon deal, which cuts it by $150. Restocks PS5: $499 @ Walmart PS5: $499 @ Walmart The flagship PS5 console includes a 4K UDH Blu-ray disc drive. As a result, the design is slightly fuller than the all-digital model. It sells for $499 and includes a PS5 DualSense controller. PS5 Digital: $399 @ Walmart PS5 Digital: $399 @ Walmart The PS5 Digital console lacks a 4K UDH Blu-ray disc drive. As a result, it's slightly thinner than its counterpart. It also sells for $399 ($100 less) and includes a PS5 DualSense controller. Xbox Series X: $499 @ Walmart Xbox Series X: $499 @ Walmart The Xbox Series X is Microsoft's new flagship console. It features 12 teraflops of graphics power, 16GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, and Blu-ray drive. It runs games at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second with a max of 8K at 120 fps. The Editor's Choice console represents the pinnacle of Microsoft's gaming efforts. Toys Melissa & Doug Double-Sided Art Easel: was $43 now $20 @ Walmart Melissa & Doug Double-Sided Art Easel: was $43 now $20 @ Walmart This double-sided art easel is the perfect way to let kids get creative. It lets them draw with a marker/felt eraser on one side and chalk on the other. It also comes with a 70-foot paper roll, so children can draw on paper. As part of its Black Friday deals Walmart has it on sale for over 50% off. Amazon Echo Dot (4th Gen) Kids Echo Dot for Kids (4th gen): was $59 now $34 @Amazon Little ones are becoming more tech savvy every day, and it's never too early to treat your kid with an adorable Echo Dot disguised as either a panda or a tiger. Not only will this make a great addition to your child's bedroom, it's also designed to read bedtime stories from Disney, Warner Bros., DreamWorks, and others (with parental controls, of course). Barbie Sweet Orchard Farm Doll & Vehicle: was $34 now $29 @ Walmart Barbie Sweet Orchard Farm Doll & Vehicle: was $34 now $29 @ Walmart This Barbie Sweet Orchard Farm set comes with a doll and a purple four-seater vehicle. The farm theming is fun, and should inspire imaginative play it even comes with a painted-on mud splatter up the side. This would be a great gift for the budding agriculturist (or anyone else) in your family. Ematic PBS Kids Playtime Pad PBS Kids Playtime Pad+: was $49 now $39 @ Amazon This mini 7" tablet is a fun way for kids to play and learn. It comes pre-installed with several PBS Kids apps, and can stream live TV over Wifi. You can also use the Google Play store to download more games and books, and set parental controls to manage what little ones can access. Tamagotchi Pix Tamagotchi Pix (Floral Pink): was $59 now $39 @ Amazon If you haven't played with a Tamagotchi since they first came out in the late '90s, you might be surprised to know that new versions are still being made and that they're getting bigger and better with new features and updates every time. This version comes with a camera, allowing you to take pictures with your virtual friend. If the original is more your style, you're in luck, as they're also on sale at the moment. You can get the original Tamagotchi starting from just $16. Lego Star Wars Yoda: was $99 now $79 @ Amazon Lego Star Wars Yoda: was $99 now $79 @ Amazon The world may be in love with his baby counterpart, but Yoda is still around and kicking in Lego form. It comes complete with Yoda himself, his lightsaber, and his minifigure board. It can be yours for 20% off the normal price. Lego Harry Potter 4 Privet Drive: was $69 now $55 @ Walmart Lego Harry Potter 4 Privet Drive: was $69 now $55 @ Walmart Recreate the magic of Harry Potter with this Lego set that recreates an iconic scene from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. There are several Wizarding World sets on sale at Walmart, so now is the perfect time to grow your collection. Personal grooming Oral-B Water Flosser Advanced: was $89 now $68 @ Amazon Oral-B Water Flosser Advanced: was $89 now $68 @ Amazon Keep your gums clean and plaque-free with the Oral-B Water Flosser Advanced. The cordless irrigator offers 3 flossing modes that range from sensitive to intense. It offers multi-jet for all-around cleaning, focused for targeted cleaning, and rotational for gum massage. XSOUL IPL Hair Removal Device: was $109 now $78 @ Amazon XSOUL IPL Hair Removal Device: was $109 now $78 @ Amazon Best Seller on Amazon: The XSOUL IPL Hair Removal Device (for men/women) uses high-heat lights or intense pulsed lights (IPLs) to dissolve unwanted hair and temporarily disable hair follicles. It can be used on your face, armpit, bikini line, and legs. Waterpik Cordless Water Flosser: was $39 now $35 @ Amazon Waterpik Cordless Water Flosser: was $39 now $35 @ Amazon It's a modest price cut, but the Waterpik Cordless Water Flosser is one of the least-expensive water flossers around. It also has a near-perfect rating with 20K user reviews. The battery-operated (3 AA batteries included) flosser is designed for travel, but can be used at home as well. Braun IPL Hair Removal: was $249 now $219 @ Amazon Braun IPL Hair Removal: was $249 now $219 @ Amazon Lowest price ever: Ditch those hair removal appointments at the salon. The Braun IPL Hair Removal device can be used across your body to permanently remove hair. It features a precision head that makes it easy to tackle hard-to-reach areas like the face, bikini line, and underarms. It's now at its lowest price ever. Black Friday deals to expect in 2021 Black Friday is traditionally the best time of year to make any major purchase. From TVs to mattresses, retailers save their best deals for the holidays with the majority of sales starting the first week of November. However, 2021 will be slightly different in that the pandemic is causing shortages of labor and essential material/parts. PS5 restock, for instance, is still near impossible to find. Numerous furniture companies are also backed up with delivery dates that are taking months instead of just a few days. New outbreaks in countries like Vietnam are causing factory closures, which in turn means less inventory for shoppers. You can expect these shortages and delays to last through the end of the year, which means Black Friday deals may be in large demand, but low supply this year. So we recommend consumers get their shopping done earlier than usual this year. Black Friday deals and Apple iPhone 13: The iPhone 13 will be on many people's shopping list this year. This Black Friday, expect retailers to offer Apple's new phone for next to nothing. Already, carriers like Verizon and AT&T are offering iPhone 13 freebie deals. As we approach Black Friday, you can expect to see better trade-in deals, wherein you'll get a better/higher credit for your older phone. We also expect to see Apple's older phones get steeper price cuts. iPhone 12 deals, for instance, continue to plummet in light of Apple's new phones. MacBook Air M1: The Editor's Choice MacBook Air dropped to an all-time price low of $749 this past summer. However, it was a students-only deal at Best Buy. (Non-students paid $849). Amazon didn't match Best Buy's price, but they did drop the base model to $849. Sadly, we may not see that $749 price point again. Instead, the base model will crash to $799 at both Best Buy and Amazon. This time, the deal will not require a valid edu e-mail. AirPods: $89 AirPods anyone? Last year the AirPods dropped to $99. This year they already hit $89 thanks to an epic Black Friday deal from Walmart. Meanwhile, the AirPods Pro hit $169 last holiday season. They were on sale for $179 on Labor Day, and once again Walmart has confirmed it will have them for $159 on November 22. Any new AirPods 3 that may come out this year will likely see modest discounts of $20 to $30 off. Black Friday deals and next-gen consoles Let's be honest: There will be no Black Friday deals on next-gen consoles. Sure, we'll see plenty of deals on PS5 and Xbox Series X games/accessories, but the PS5 and Xbox Series X will not see any price cuts. That said, we do expect to see Black Friday restocks. Retailers like Best Buy and GameStop are already experimenting with in-store only restocks and we expect these in-store events to pick up as we get closer to Thanksgiving. If you prefer to shop online, no need to worry. We expect to see online restocks as well. Just be prepared for fierce competition as the PS5 and Xbox Series X will be high on many shoppers' holiday lists. In the meantime, you can still register for invite-only Sony Direct PS5 restocks planned for this month. When is Black Friday 2021? Black Friday 2021 is on Friday, November 26. However, Black Friday deals are available now, well before the official Black Friday 2021 date. Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart are just a handful of the major retailers currently offering Black Friday deals even though Thanksgiving is still a few days out. Who has the best Black Friday deals in 2021? Every retailer has Black Friday deals available in November. However, if you're wondering who has the best Black Friday deals the answer is based on what you want to buy. For instance, Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart tend to dominate when it comes to deals on 4K TVs, laptops, and smartwatches. For deals on apparel and home goods, we recommend turning to stores like Macy's, Wayfair, and Bed Bath & Beyond. Home goods is a broad topic and also includes mattresses. If you're shopping for the latter, mattress manufacturers tend to offer the best and biggest discounts, oftentimes undercutting box retailers like Macy's and Amazon. Does Apple offer Black Friday deals? The Apple Store is renown for not offering deals. However, every November it offers its annual Apple Black Friday sale. The sale varies each year offering free Beats headphones with the purchase of select devices or discounts of up to 10% off on select Mac purchases. Last year, Apple offered a free Apple Store gift card with the purchase of select devices. For instance, buy an Apple Watch 3 and you'll get a $25 Apple gift card. To maximize the gift card value, Apple wants you to spend more. So to get the biggest gift card a $150 Apple gift card required that you purchase an iMac or a MacBook Pro. This year, iPhone 13 deals will play a big role on Black Friday. Expect to see epic Black Friday deals on Apple's latest iPhones and iPads. (The best deals will come from retailers and not from Apple). Are stores doing Black Friday 2021? (Image credit: Shutterstock) Due to the pandemic, the majority of brick-and-mortar stores skipped their traditional Thanksgiving Day in-store events last year. Walmart, for instance, did not open its stores on Thanksgiving and instead released a new batch of Black Friday deals online. Other stores offered curbside pickup to avoid having customers congregate outside their stories. This year things are different. We've seen monthly Best Buy RTX 3080 restock nationwide this summer and there's even a rumor we may see in-store Best Buy PS5 restock soon. As a result, in-store shopping could make a comeback this year, as could early bird deals that requires shoppers to line up outside stores. Black Friday deals and what to expect Black Friday deals are in full force now and the National Retail Federation, the world's largest retail trade association, projects that the average consumer will spend $997.73 on holiday gifts for themselves and their families. This is on par with what consumers spent last year. Over half (57%) will shop online in 2021, which is slightly down from the 60% who shopped online during the pandemic in 2020. That said, 47% of holiday shoppers are worried they'll have difficulty finding the items they want. The top items consumers are worried about are electronics (44%), clothes (40%), and toys (28%). Why is it called Black Friday? The use of the term "Black Friday" to describe the retail holiday dates back to 1961 in Philadelphia. It was used to describe the crowded pedestrian and vehicle traffic that resulted the day after Thanksgiving. By 1975, the term had gained traction and was being used outside of Philadelphia. These days, retailers have a different explanation for the term. For many companies, Black Friday marks the point in the calendar year when companies go "in the black," or finally begin to turn a profit for the year. The profit they make is due to the surge in shoppers looking for holiday deals. An 18-year-old German teenager found out first-hand that just because you get your drivers license, it doesnt mean you can lord over the open road with impunity. Less than an hour after receiving his license 49 minutes, to be exact the teenager was flagged by a laser speed gun while traveling at almost twice the speed limit. The teenager was caught in the town of Hemer driving at speeds of 60 mph. That doesnt sound too fast, especially in a place like Germany, but unfortunately for the young colt, the speed limit on the road he was driving on was 30 mph. You probably shouldnt be reckless with your driving when you just get your license Let this be a lesson to all of you fresh drivers out there. When you get your drivers license for the first time, its not the best idea to think that you can get behind the wheel of a car and plant your foot on the gas pedal while completely ignoring everything else. Do that, and youre going to suffer the same fate as this 18-year-old German teenager. According to the BBC, the teenager had four friends in the car with him when he decided to do his best Need for Speed impersonation. Thats led to speculation by the police that he was trying to impress his mates with his driving chops. As it turned out, it wasnt the best decision for the young man. It took 49 minutes for him to lose his license after getting flagged by a speed gun driving 60 mph in a 30-mph zone. As expected, the teenager received a hefty punishment for his swashbuckling driving. Local police slapped a four-week ban on him driving anywhere. Worse, hes also facing a 200 fine, which amounts to about $228 based on current exchange rates. If those arent enough, he also got docked two points on his license once hes allowed to drive again and is on the hook for a lengthened probationary period that could last anywhere from two to four years. Oh, hell only get his license after he undergoes expensive restraining, which sounds incredibly inconvenient, even by just writing it. Hopefully, the young teen has learned his lesson. Its never smart to think that you can get away with something like this, whether youre a seasoned driver or, at least in this case, one who barely got his drivers license warm inside his wallet. If this young man thinks that he can get away with it again, he only needs to go to the Internet to see how much coverage his first dalliance with the law got him. If that doesnt work, maybe he can look at what the German police wrote in its statement of the incident. Some things last forever others not for an hour. Source: BBC The interior is also littered with plenty of high-end tech, including two high-definition touchscreen displays, refined infotainment software, and artificial intelligence. Powertrain options include a range of diesel and gasoline engines. The entry-level model (the D150 trim) is the only model available with a six-speed manual and is the only model available without Land Rovers mild hybrid technology. Towing capacity ranges anywhere between 3,527 and 4,409 pounds depending on trim and equipment level. Land Rover chose Thanksgiving day to debut the new Range Rover Evoque and here we are looking at a model that, at a glance, received a very mild, even somewhat Audi-like, facelift. Below this mildly changed skin, however, Land Rover claims it has spent nearly 1 Billion to refine the architecture underneath with the goal of making it suitable for electrification. Official unveiling The New Range Rover Evoque Changed Very Little Outside The time for the Range Rover Evoque to debut was nearly upon me, yet here I am in the kitchen trying to snake a little piece of the turkey that mom just pulled out of the oven. Beep, beep, beep. That was my watch going off, and Land Rover goes live in two minutes flat. I rush to my computer to find out that I just missed all of the boring celebrity crap that seems to be commonplace these days and Land Rover was already tooting its own horn a bit by bragging about its range. Finally, here comes the Range Rover Evoque. What the hell is this? This isnt new! I said loudly as I did that classic Picard palm to face move. Of course, mom wasnt happy about my language (okay, maybe I said a little something more than hell, but well leave that for another time.) The point is, I swore I was looking at the same old thing. And, I kind of was. The new Evoque hasnt changed much on the outside at all. The same silhouette remains, and the fascia has simply been stretched to the sides a bit to position those fake intakes a little further to the outside. You see the same grille, almost the same headlight design, and the hood isnt far off from last years model either. But, it is a little bit bigger. Not by much, mind you, but a slightly longer wheelbase provides a little more room inside (20 mm of knee rook and a few extra liters of luggage space), and Land Rover was nice enough to give us new, 21-inch wheels on the higher trim levels, anyway. Base models come with the traditional LED headlights, but the higher trim levels come complete with premium LED headlights. The range-topper has the new jewel-like Matrix LED headlights that are pretty nice if you ask me. Other standard exterior features include a lot of what youre already used to: Auto headlights Rear foglights Flush, deployable door handles Heated glass, mirrors, and washer jets As you move up the line, you get better equipment like high-beam assist and directional indicators, but again this is nothing new. What really matters is what lies under the skin and what youll find inside thats where the real changes are. Range Rover Evoque Exterior Dimensions Overall length (mm) 4,371 Overall height (mm) 1,649 Overall width (mirrors out) (mm) 2,100 Wheelbase (mm) 2,681 Front overhang (mm) 880 Rear overhang (mm) 810 Front track (mm) 1,625.9 Rear track (mm) 1,631.7 The New Range Rover Evoque Has a Mild Hybrid System Lets cut to the chase maximum power output for the Evoque hasnt really changed. The base diesel model still pumps out 150 ps even when equipped with AWD and the mild hybrid tech. The same diesel engine can be had with 180 PS or 240 PS, all of which is likely derived from the mild hybrid system and some minor software tuning. Gasoline-powered models follow the same routine with the entry-level P200 trim pumping out just 200 PS while the P250 has 249 PS and the P300 has you guessed it 300 PS. If you opt for the bargain basement model, the D150 2WD, youll get to row your own with a nice six-speed manual but everything else is AWD out of the box, and youll have to deal with a nine-gear auto. What really matters here is that mild hybrid system. This is, obviously, where all of Land Rovers money went. This thing works like all other systems with the same name and has a starter-generator that pumps energy into the battery hidden in the floorboard. This happens only at speeds below 11 mph (17 kph) and while the brakes are being pressed as youre coming to a stop. When it happens, the engine shuts off. When its time to go again, the engine fires up, but the energy stored in the battery is then used to help turn the engine and, ultimately improves fuel economy. Theres no word as to how much yet, but this technology has shown to be pretty efficient in the past for other automakers and Land Rover has quoted 50.4 mpg. If this isnt good enough for you, though, sometime in the next year, Land Rover will introduce a plug-in hybrid model that has a three-cylinder engine and some sort of all-electric range probably around 40 miles or so. All told, the Range Rover Evoque can sprint to 60 mph in anywhere between 6.3 and 10.4 seconds, and its best top speed is 150 mph. But, thats not why youre here, and performance isnt why the Evoque exists. This thing is designed to be the perfect city car.. uhem SUV. You know all that urban mobility crap. Oh, by the way, all the power output figures you see here, those are for European models. Land Rover didnt feel it was appropriate to offer up U.S. specs yet. But, the Evoque will come to the Chicago Auto Show in 2019, so well learn more about the U.S.-spec model in a few months. Range Rover Evoque Performance Specs - UK 2.0l D150 2WD Manual 2.0l D150 AWD Automatic MHEV 2.0l D180 AWD Automatic MHEV 2.0l D240 AWD Automatic MHEV 2.0l P200 AWD Automatic MHEV 2.0l P250 AWD Automatic MHEV 2.0l P300 AWD Automatic MHEV Engine type Inline-4 common rail diesel, 16 valves; DOHC; variable intake cam timing, variable geometry turbo Inline-4 common rail diesel, 16 valves; DOHC; variable intake cam timing, variable geometry turbo Inline-4 common rail diesel, 16 valves; DOHC; variable intake cam timing, variable geometry turbo Inline-4 common rail diesel, 16 valves; DOHC; variable intake cam timing, variable geometry turbo Inline-4 gasoline, 16 valve; DOHC, variable intake and exhaust cam timing; variable intake valve lift, twin-scroll turbo Inline-4 gasoline, 16 valve; DOHC, variable intake and exhaust cam timing; variable intake valve lift, twin-scroll turbo Inline-4 gasoline, 16 valve; DOHC, variable intake and exhaust cam timing; variable intake valve lift, twin-scroll turbo Electric Motor - Synchronus reluctance motor Synchronus reluctance motor Synchronus reluctance motor Synchronus reluctance motor Synchronous claw pole rotor Synchronous claw pole rotor Max Power 150PS (110kW) @ 2400rpm 150PS (110kW) @ 2400rpm 180PS (132kW) @ 2400rpm 240PS (177kW) @ 2400rpm 200PS (147kW) @ 5500rpm 249PS (183 kW) @ 5500rpm 300PS (221kW) @ 5500rpm Max Torque 380Nm (280lb ft) @ 1750-2500rpm 380Nm (280lb ft) @ 1750-2500rpm 430Nm (317lb ft) @ 1750-2500 rpm 500Nm (369lb ft) @ 1500-2500 rpm 340 Nm (251lb ft) @ 1300-4500rpm 365Nm (269lb ft) @ 1300-4500rpm 400Nm (295lb ft) @ 1500-4500 rpm Transmission Six-speed (manual) Nine-speed (automatic) Nine-speed (automatic) Nine-speed (automatic) Nine-speed (automatic) Nine-speed (automatic) Nine-speed (automatic) 0-60mph (0-96km/h) (secs) 9.9 10.4 8.8 7.2 8 7 6.3 Top speed (km/h / mph) 201 / 125 196 / 122 205 / 128 225 / 140 216 / 134 230 / 143 242 / 150 Range Rover Evoque Off-Road Capability If youre really into going off-road, the Evoque does have some decent credentials. Land Rover even went so far as to drive it through a pool of cold water during the short debut presentation. Well go more into this information in the coming weeks as we compare it to its main rivals, but heres the basic info youre looking for: Approach Angle: 25.0 deg (20.8 with R-Dynamic package) Departure Angle: 30.6 deg Ramp Breakover Angle: 20.7 deg Wading Depth: 600 mm Ground Clearance: 212 mm Max Ascent\Descent: 45 deg Max Side Slope\Traverse: 35 deg The New Range Rover Evoque Has Tons of Tech Inside I have to admit; I was pretty disappointed with Land Rover at first. After seeing that oh-so-familiar exterior design, I said, there better be something fresh inside. And, well, there is. Kind of. The interior is clearly an evolution of the previous-gen model. The dash sits a little more upright, and the center console is a little more refined. The HVAC vents are even shorter, wider, and more recessed, but nobody that has been in an Evoque before would ever mistake this thing for anything but. The good news is that Land Rover went all out with the tech here. First off, this baby has two high-definition infotainment screens. Its very Honda-like in that regard as Land Rover has positioned the screens on top of each other as opposed to side-by-side as we see with the Mercedes MBUX infotainment system. Its refreshing, sure, but its been done before. The good news is that those screens are put to good use. They arent the only screens, either. One of the coolest features here is that you can press a button and have a clear view of whats behind you on the mirror its a high-definition screen too and a perfect solution for when your oversized cousin, Daryl, insists on riding in the center of the back seat. Jesus, you just cant see anything when he does that. Anyway, back to those two 10-inch screens in the dash. The top one serves as home for Land Rovers new Ground View system. Basically, this system shows you whats happening under the nose of the vehicle. Its like looking through the windshield and not having the hood or anything below it there. Its a perfect solution for parking close to tall curbs those who have driven in Europe and deal with tight parking spots will appreciate the hell out of this. The base model comes with the usual equipment things like an analog instrument cluster, 180-Watt sound system, and DAB radio. Moving up the line, however, will get you navigation, wi-fi hotspot, and support for Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. Oh, those duo infotainment displays wont be found on the base models, either. Sorry to burst your bubble, but youll need at least the SE trim for that. On the plus side, that does come with the interactive driver display, so you get something else with it. The higher trim levels come with a 380-Watt sound system for better tunes. Range Rover Evoque Interior Dimensions Headroom (mm) Row 1: 989; Row 2: 973 Shoulderroom (mm) Row 1: 1,438; Row 2: 1,407 Legroom (mm) Row 1: 1016; Row 2: 859 Luggage capacity (litres) Behind Row 1: 1,383; Behind Row 2: 591 Loadspace length (mm) Behind Row 1: 1,576; Behind Row 2: 798 Loadspace height (mm) 700 Loadspace width (mm) 1,301 Conclusion In the end, I have to say that Im not very impressed with Land Rovers presentation. It was short, rather boring, and they didnt say much of anything outside of how much went into designing it. In hindsight, I guess they kind of had to mention that part. We didnt get a look at the interior during the presentation, and without information about what was going on under the skin, it was pretty easy to assume that Land Rover did very little. On the other hand, now that we know the finer details, Land Rover went all in on the mild hybrid tech and the refreshed cabin is exactly that refreshing. However, Land Rover has taken up enough of my Thanksgiving dinner time so if you want to know more about the new Evoque, keep your eyes peeled for our in-depth review that will be coming very soon. Further reading Read our full speculative review on the 2020 Range Rover Evoque. Read our full review on the 2015 - 2017 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque. Read our full review on the 2008 Land Rover LXR Concept. However, some owners, whove paid in excess of $325,000 to get their hands on one, seem not to be entirely convinced of the test that was organized for the press by Rolls-Royce to showcase the Cullinans capacity off the beaten path. This owner, for instance, decided itd be a good idea to take his SUV to a field and just do doughnuts to the sheer enjoyment of those who happen to film the whole thing. Launched this year, the Cullinan, named after the largest flawless diamond ever found, is Rolls-Royces first high-sided car. Its the perfect Alpha to Bentley Bentayga s Omega and, as weve discussed just a couple of days ago, its also good when taken off-road. The Rolls-Royce Cullinan is the first ever utility vehicle offered by the British luxury car manufacturer but, beyond being able to carry the super-rich down the worlds highways and busy metropolitan streets, it can also go off-road like no BMW ever could. This was further showcased when someone decided to do doughnuts in one. In a field. Wed do it too if we were given the opportunity Whats next? A Gymkhana-style video with a Cullinan The Cullinan, a car that seems to have been tailor-made for the worlds richest individuals who were just not quite happy with the amenities of a Bentayga or a Porsche Cayenne, has already been seen riding on harsher terrain. Rolls-Royce themselves summoned the press to test the Cullinan in Wyoming back in October. But some owners are keen to see for themselves just how good this 210-inch-long behemoth is on gravel and other loose surfaces. Such an owner is this one seen in the Instagram video below who bravely attacks a dusty path at high speed before decidedly kicking-off a series of doughnuts in a green field. The video was posted by a Russian Instagram page, but its unclear where precisely did this on-the-spot test took place. What we can see, is that the Cullinan effortlessly slides about and roars as the driver does spin after spin. After all, when you put the SUV in all-terrain mode, it raises by almost 1.6 inches. The Cullinan, which is the first vehicle of its kind in the 114-year history of Rolls-Royce, is the most luxurious interpretation of how an SUV should be. Its destined to sit pretty in the multi-car garage of one of the many young millionaires around the world that want to flaunt with their increasing net worth. It sits on the modular "Architecture of Luxury" platform made out of aluminum. The engine is a massive 6.57-liter twin-turbocharged V-12 which develops 563 horsepower at 5,000 rpm and 627 pound-feet of torque at just 1,600 rpm. Due to the engine size, buyers must pay a $5,000 gas-guzzler surtax. But once, they do, they can freely enjoy their Cullinan just about everywhere: on mountain roads, out in a field or on the highway. Further Reading 2019 Rolls-Royce Cullinan Read our full review on the 2019 Rolls-Royce Cullinan. The Rolls Royce Cullinan Really Can Go Off-Road Read our full review on the 2018 Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII. Source: BMW Blog I think that one of the most interesting cars made in the last decade was the Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet. I love the risk and the absurdity of it, but ultimately it was a sales failure. The car was ugly, and the awkward soft top killed most of the space and utility. But this failure doesnt seem to have deterred the fine folks at Land Rover, because a Cabrio version of the stylish Range Rover Evoque has been spotted out in the wild by the kids at Auto Express. When the Evoque debuted a few years ago, the world swooned over its sleek and dynamic styling, and more than a few people thought it would look great without a roof. Not long after Land Rover gave the world a glimpse of what such a machine would look like when it revealed a convertible concept at Geneva. That was 2012 though, and since then there had been no real word about an open-top Evoque and the world assumed the project dead in the water. Now Auto Express is saying the production version could debut as soon as Goodwood in June. Based on the spy shots, the production version looks nearly identical to the concept, but it gets rid of the finicky clip-on top for a more traditional electric fabric roof. If you are one of the few that really likes to test your Evoques off-road chops, Land Rover didnt forget about you. Word has it that Land Rover has been hard at work creating a very advanced Roll Over Protection System that wont inadvertently deploy when tackling a particularly rough trail. The New convertible Evoque may bring more to the table than just a new body style. Considering the current Evoque is four years old, Auto Express speculates that the Cabrio may bring with it a design refresh for the entire family of Evoque models. With the rumors we have of the high performance Evoque SVR coupled with this news of a convertible model, the Evoque family is quickly becoming one of the most exciting models in the storied British brands portfolio. As always, we will keep our eyes and ears open for more news on this developing story. Keep it locked to TopSpeed.com for all the latest as we get it. Click past the jump to read more about the Range Rover Evoque Convertible. The AUC Department of Trade and Industry organised the inaugural Africa Industrialisation Week (AIW) from 19-23 November 2018 at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa. The event was hosted in conjunction with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and other key stakeholders including a consortium of Development Cooperating Partners (DCPs) under the theme, Promoting Regional Value Chains in Africa: A Pathway for Accelerating Africas Structural Transformation, Industrialization and Pharmaceutical Production. The principal objective of the Africa Industrialization Week was to raise global awareness regarding the industrialization challenges faced by the continent. The AIW2018 aimed to mobilize both African leaders and international organisations to advocate for the accelerated and sustainable as well as inclusive industrialisation of Africa. It also provided, among others, a public-private engagement dialogue platform to enhance the interface between the industrial policy makers, the private sector, civic society, and development cooperating partners. While welcoming participants, Mrs. Aurelia Patrizia Calabro, the UNIDO Representative and Director of the Regional Hub in Ethiopia, pointed out that supporting local pharmaceutical production was recognised as a unique pathway that contributes to both improved health and the broader industrialisation agenda, with direct impact on inclusive and sustainable development. She also indicated that the development of regional value chains in Africa constitutes an invaluable means to improve local access to medicines and strong regional benefits. She revealed that UNIDO will support Africa to address critical issues such as harmonizing local and regional regulations, integrating markets and creating a conducive business environment that will anchor the conditions for attraction of investment. Addressing the meeting, the Executive Director of the United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), Mr. Michel Sidibe indicated that access to quality medicines is at the heart of the right to health for all and insisted that it is a prerequisite for universal health coverage. According to him, strengthening local pharmaceutical capabilities is essential for a healthier, stronger and richer Africa. He mentioned that 80% of the antiretroviral medicines to treat HIV are imported from outside Africa and underscored the risks inherent to this high dependency. However, Africa he said, is projected to be the fastest growing pharmaceutical market globally from $14 billion in 2017 to $22 billion by 2025. He urged participants including Regional Economic Communities (RECs) to consider development of a regional pharmaceutical production capacity. In his statement, the Minister of Industry of Niger, H.E. Mr. Melam Zaneidou Amirou, stressed that industrialization has always been a major preoccupation of development policy and the authorities of Niger have always realized that it is as important as agricultural development to achieve the country's economic and social progress. The Honorable Minister underlined the fact that on the economic front, the Government of Niger has implemented a series of reforms aiming at stabilizing the macroeconomic framework and improving the legislative and regulatory framework for investment and private entrepreneurship. He recognized that previous efforts to promote sustainable economic transformation in Africa have had mixed results, and suggested that a new approach is of necessary. He stated that it is crucial to establish a broad, country-specific process that leverages financial and non-financial resources, promotes regional integration and mobilizes cooperation among development partners in Africa. During her intervention, the Minister of Trade, Industry and Tourism of Mauritania, H.E. Mrs. Khadidjetou MBareck Fall mentioned that industrialization is an indispensable vector of the diversification process and contributes to economic growth. According to her, without the structural transformation of African economies, Africa will not be able to achieve the expected sustainable development. She insisted that Africa must industrialize in a way that guarantees social integration and preserves the environment. She defined the challenges that the government of Mauritania face in terms of industrialization and emphasized that industrialization requires collaboration between private sector and financial institutions. She informed the forum that the government of Mauritania has now elaborated a programme that will support existing economic platforms including the development of economic zones and new industrial parks. In her high level statement, the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Ethiopia, H.E. Mrs. Fetlework Gebre-Egziabher indicated that the growing private sector in Africa, comprising innovators, producers and employers, presents the greatest opportunity for tackling poverty and unemployment. She recalled the theme of the forum and stated that it is not only timely but also highly pertinent as it holds the key for accelerated growth in the continent. According to the Honorable Minister, the establishment of regional value chains is critical taking into account the low level of trade and productive integration that has the continent. Once regional value chains are established, she said, end products can be exported globally particularly to other developing markets and lay foundations for access to global value chains. Before she concluded, she informed the forum that Ethiopia is currently investing on more industrial parks and specialized industrial clusters. She assured the Meeting that Ethiopia stands ready to share its experience on the path to building Inclusive and Sustainable Industrial Development. In his opening remarks, the Commissioner for Trade and Industry of the African Union Commission, H.E. Amb. Albert M. Muchanga, indicated that the commemoration of the Africa Industrialization Week is an economic activity that is key to Africas economic diversification and structural transformation. He pointed out that one key reason why the early efforts at promoting industrialization just after the independence of most African countries failed, was that there was more focus on import substitution industrialization anchored on importation of raw materials in many countries instead of export led industrialization. The Commissioner recalled the theme of the forum and explained that the paradigm is shifting as Africa is now focused on the development of regional value chains that will supply a larger market space under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), in addition to using the regional value chains to more competitively link Africa to global value chains. He echoed the fact that through the development of regional value chains, industrialists will engage in cross border production of final and intermediate products to exploit large economies of scale offered by the AfCFTA. Before he concluded, Commissioner Muchanga announced the organisation of the first Intra-African Trade Fair (IATF) from 11-17 December, 2018 in collaboration with Afreximbank and the Government of Egypt. He was delighted that preparations are going well and acknowledged that the IATF will bring together exhibitors from 43 countries from both Africa and the rest of the world. Eastin Residences Vadodara presents Awadhi Food Festival at The Glass House - 24 Hour Multi Cuisine Restaurant. (TRAVPR.COM) INDIA - November 22nd, 2018 - Eastin Residences Vadodara presents Awadhi Food Festival at The Glass House - 24 Hour Multi Cuisine Restaurant. Vadodara, November 2018: Eastin Residences Vadodara - A Premium Boutique Serviced Residences in Alkapuri is all set to treat you, your friends and family to timeless flavours of Historic Nawabi Cuisines starting today, 22nd November to 30th November 2018 from 07.00 pm - 10:30 pm at The Glass House - 24 Hour Multi Cuisine Restaurant. Enjoy the enticing aroma and flavors across vegetarian and non-vegetarian menu at the Awadhi Food Festival, offering welcome drink, soup, chaat, starters & kebabs, main course and mouthwatering desserts. Get ready to relish a royal treat! Available at only INR 550 + taxes per person, with inclusions of: Welcome Drink Sharbat-E-Gulab Soups Subz Bahar Shorba Murgh Badam Aur Ellaichi Shorba Chaat Counter Starters Tunda Ke Kebab Murgh-E-Kalmi Kebab Macchi Kaali Mirch Tikka Kebab-E-Shahjahani Main Course Nihari Gosht Murgh Awadhi Korma Gobi Musallam Paneer Kundan Kaliyan Baingan Mirch Ka Salan Dal Saat Salaam Subz-E-Tehri Murgh Yakhni Pulao Accompaniments Tandoori Chaat / Green Salad / Pappad / Pickle / Dum Masala Raita Assorted Bread Basket Khameeri Roti / Warqi Paratha / Roti / Naan Desserts Jalebi with Ice Cream Zauk e Shahi What: Awadhi Food Festival @ Eastin Residences - Vadodara Date: 22nd November to 30th November 2018 Time: 07.00 pm - 10:30 pm Where: The Glass House, Eastin Residences, 78, Sampatrao Colony, Off RC Dutt Road, Alkapuri, Vadodara, Gujarat 390007 For Reservations: Call+91 265 6707777 / 99, +91 7211124630 or email on afbm@eastinvadodara.com About Eastin Residences Vadodara www.eastinvadodara.com Eastin Residences Vadodara is A Premium Boutique Serviced Residences located in the central Alkapuri, with convenient access to downtown shopping, family attractions and commercial center. It is the 1st International Brand to introduce the concept of serviced residences in Vadodara. The hotel residence is conveniently located just 15 minutes away from the airport and 5 mins from the railway station. All the 44 residences have contemporary and stylish decor with kitchenette facilities, which is a unique feature of the property. Facilities and services provide value, as well as flexibility to both business and leisure travelers. These include a gym, reasonably priced mini bar in each room and an all- day dining restaurant serving local, regional and international favorites. About Eastin Hotels & Residences www.eastinhotelsresidences.com Eastin Hotels & Residences is a deluxe commercial hotel brand created to base on relevance to market and the needs of targeted customers. We provide you hotels throughout Asia. The brand provides value and consistency through flexible venues and services with added value to serve the needs of business and leisure travelers. If you're travelling to South East Asia or Middle East, seek for Eastin Hotels & Residences or Eastin Easy, our budget brand hotel. The whole purpose of our being is for you to fully enjoy your stay with us anywhere anytime. Locations: Thailand I Vietnam I Indonesia I Oman I India #eastin #eastinvadodara#dinneroffer #Buffetmeals #Awadhifoodfestival #nawaabicuisine#specialoffer #luxuryhotel #comfortfood #24hoursrestaurant ### Usually stale bread is turned into different things, but GAIL's Bakery has figured out a way to transform it into delicious loaves. What to do with old bread? This question has plagued people for time immemorial and has driven the invention of delectable dishes like panzanella in Italy, fattoush in the Middle East, skordalia in Greece, and bread pudding in Britain, among many others. But never before had I heard of old bread being turned into new bread, which is precisely what GAIL's Bakery in London is now doing in an effort to cut down on food waste. 'Waste bread,' as its rather unpoetic and self-explanatory name suggests, is a loaf of freshly baked bread whose raw ingredients include, in part, leftover stale loaves. If you've ever baked a loaf of bread before, you're probably scratching your head. How exactly would one do that? The process is quite interesting. Roz Bado, development baker at GAIL's, makes her dough with the usual Canadian wheat flour, malt, and sourdough starter, then adds something called 'bread porridge' "a brownish, flecked mush of fresh breadcrumbs from leftover loaves which have been blitzed into tiny pieces." The final result is a hearty 750g loaf that is one-third old bread. Another baker at GAIL's, Roy Levy, told the Guardian, editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Chandigarh, November 23 The Congress today demanded the arrest of city MP Kirron Khers adviser Sahdev Salaria in the F Bar firing case. Former Union Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal, while addressing mediapersons, said pressure was being mounted on the police to save the main suspect. Accusing the police of holding a tardy investigation into the case, he demanded that Salarias name be included in the FIR as he was the organiser of the party, where the firing incident took place. Bansal further said under the BJP rule, the law and order situation in the city had deteriorated. Conforming to Bansals suspicion, city Congress president Pradeep Chhabra said they would stage a protest tomorrow. He vowed to continue the stir till Salarias arrest. The city Congress chief said the BJP inducted people from the criminal background into the party, for which Kher and city BJP president Sanjay Tandon were responsible. Upneet Lalli Upneet Lalli Dy Director, Institute of Correctional Administration, Chandigarh Prisons embody the power of the state over the liberty of the individual. Society may feel safe with incarcerating offenders, while shutting and forgetting what happens inside this opaque institute. The last wing of the criminal justice system comes into focus only when there is an escape or disturbance. More than 95 per cent of the offenders will be released back into society, so it is important to understand and reform the system which holds people who have broken the law as well as those who haven't. Prison reform is an attempt to improve the system of legal punishment and conditions inside the prison. It also connotes establishing a more effective penal system and implementing alternatives to imprisonment. While the problems in prisons have been discussed for the last 120 years, changes have been slow and staggered. Numerous committees have been established to suggest changes, the seeds scattered have led to blooming of other committees. The All-India Jail Committee in 1920 had emphasised that reformation and rehabilitation of offenders should be the ultimate objective of prison administration. Indian prisons continue to be governed by the Prison Act of 1894, largely based on deterrent principles with main focus on prison security and enforcement of discipline in prisons. This law did not have any focus on correction, reformation and rehabilitation of prisoners. The Act continues to remain the main law governing the management and administration of prisons in most states. One of the most comprehensive works on prison reforms was done by the All-India Committee on Jail Reforms (1980-1983). It made 658 recommendations relating to not only prison living conditions but also legislation, system of classification, work programmes, organisational structure of prisons, etc. The latest committee to be set up as a result of the PIL regarding inhuman conditions in 1,382 prisons, wherein the Supreme Court has also passed various decisions dealing with four main problem areas prison overcrowding, unnatural deaths, staff shortage and inadequate training of staff. India has a prison population of around 4.20 lakh with around 67.2 per cent being undertrials. The problem of overcrowding exists in many states. Some other main problems relate to delay in trial, health and hygiene issues, poor living conditions, lack of education, vocational training and work programmes, staff shortage, lack of constructive time management, and no focus on reintegration. Under the modernisation of prisons scheme, more than 100 new prisons were constructed in the country. The problem has been both with the design and location of the prisons. When design inculcates a carceral identity, it will not encourage positive change. Seeing the Bathinda Jail, having an authorised capacity of 2,100 constructed at a cost of nearly Rs 175 crore, I was shocked at the number of grills and bars placed even in the educational centre. Prisons for women do not present a threat to prison security and hence really do not require such high security prison architecture. Discussions with prison staff and inmates are also essential to know their needs and requirements. Green, sustainable prison model is being adopted in many countries. The experience of countries, like the USA, has shown the failure of huge prison complexes. Prisons which are distant from the city result in problems for the visitors. The Central Jail at Kapurthala, with an authorised capacity of 3,000 was built at a cost of Rs 190 crore, faced a riot in the very first year of its opening. One of the factors for the riot was the fact that it was located far from the city and the visitors faced problems in meeting the inmates. The visiting rooms should promote human contact of inmates and their families. The selection of where new prisons should come up should also be based on crime projections and types of crimes in a particular area. In many instances, newly constructed prisons were kept vacant for more than a year due to lack of vision and planning as no new staff were recruited to manage them. Technology upgradation, security surveillance, CCTVs and jammers, prison software management systems all are coming up, but without trained manpower, their maintenance become dysfunctional. Structural reforms which relate to the Prison Act and the Rules and the Manual are another set of reforms that are much needed. Having contributed to framing the Punjab Prison Act in 2010 and then revising in 2015, I was most disappointed with the lack of political will and initiative to pass and implement the legislation which had spelled a new vision for prisons. The Model Prison Manual was made in 2000 and in 2016 following the Supreme Court directions. However, implementing the policy changes has been tardy. The judiciary in the country has played an important role in ushering changes in prisons. Justice Krishna Iyer had in the landmark judgment of Sunil Batra emphasised on the humanitarian outlook of prisoners. The International Framework for Prisons has undergone many changes. The Mandella Rules of 2015 replaced the UN Standard Minimum Rules, 1955 while the Bangkok Rules of 2010 deal with issues of women prisoners and provide a blueprint of reforms. The invisibility of women in prisons (mere 4.3 per cent in India) leads to neglect of their issues. Prison reforms need a gender perspective as well. However, no reform can be pushed from outside. There has been little discussion with the major stakeholders the prisoners and the staff. Criminologist Gresham Sykes had warned against ignoring the "social system" inside prisons when attempting any kind of reform. Questions on the legitimacy of certain prison practices and regimes also arise. Without scientific classification, no-risk assessment prisoners are lodged on alphabetic system. The prison environment may be more criminogenic than reformative. Prison regime should be built upon giving second chances and not just be warehouses with no social and purposive input. Time is the most difficult thing to manage in prisons. Less than 25 per cent of the convicts are involved in work programmes. Young offenders are the largest percentage of the prison population. Enforced idleness results in loss of skill and also deprives the prisoners the opportunity of earning for their families and contributing towards society. Successful re-entry requires pre-release planning, transitional services and community-based programmes. Re-entry has to be desistance focused and social support and social capital are critical factors for reintegration. Partnerships need to be developed. It is also time that we make the prison walls 'permeable', by allowing the community to come and to participate in work and also allow prisoners to go out and do constructive work in the community. Restorative practices need to be used to promote ties between prisons and communities. Research indicates that prisons are inherently damaging and do not serve the deterrence goal. An effective penal system should implement alternatives to imprisonment. Prison reforms are ultimately tied up with the reforms in the criminal justice system. Radical thinking is required along with future vision and planning, keeping in mind the present realities. This is an edited extract of a presentation made at PDNS. Views are personal. vinaymishra188@gmail.com Within a few months of its reconstitution, the Special Task Force (STF) of the Haryana Police again finds itself in an embarrassing spot. It is more squirming for the force since in 2010, the STF had had to be disbanded following a similar shameful episode. Ten members of the police unit, including an additional SP, were arrested after having been caught on camera extorting money from a jeweller in Panipat. In deja vu, three cops have now been suspended following incriminating footage on the camera showing them in plain clothes abducting at gunpoint a businessman and extorting Rs 19 lakh from him. Considering that the STF has been specially set up with the mandate to check organised crimes in the national capital region (NCR) and for which it has been given men picked on the basis of their service records and competence, the incident is disgraceful. It smashes to smithereens the proud proclamations made by the authorities in January this year that the new STF would net drug dealers, illegal weapons suppliers and inter-state criminal gangs. Stung by the earlier experience, the new force was fortified with a notified standard operating procedure (SOP), mandating proper documentation of its every action. Alas! Bad eggs remain, putting the STF in a tight spot, yet again. Zero tolerance for the protectors of law who turn into outlaws is warranted. If not the police, who can you trust? Incidentally, Haryanas Police Complaints Authority, a statutory body formed eight years ago to look into complaints of serious misconduct by police personnel, has been lying defunct for the past four years. The only official posted there, a constable, is helpless as he can do little other than record the complaints. Hundreds of hassled victims knock at the door of the authority every year. Of course, these are minus the many transgressions that are taken as par for course. For example, bribing of cops to get legitimate works done no longer raises any eyebrows, unless involving epic cases. Apparently, there is much to review. Much to rein in. Much trust to win over. pardeepdhull@gmail.com Ravi S. Singh Tribune News Service New Delhi, November 23 Chief Minister ML Khattar on Friday announced that the annual International Gita Mahotsav will be organised from December 7 to December 22 in Kurukshetra, and while Mauritius will be partner country, Gujarat will be partner state. The Mahotsav will be kicked off with the inauguration of International Crafts and Saras Mela on December 7. This is for the first time that the mela, which has been part of the Mahotsav, has been upgraded to international scale. Khattar said the state government will soon bring an ordinance to accord statutory status to the Kurukshetra Development Board (KDB) so as to enable it to work independently and make the Mahotsav a regular feature. The state government organises the event in collaboration with the Kurukshetra Development Board. BJP president Amit Shah will be the chief guest on December 13, which will mark the rolling out of the stretch of Mahotsavs main event which will conclude on December 18. Former President Pranab Mukherjee and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will take part on the concluding day of the main event. For the first time, Gita Mahotsav will be organised in Mauritus in February next year, Khattar said. In another first, the Mahotsav and an exhibition on Srimad Bhagavad Gita will be organised at Red Fort in the National Capital, Khattar added. Besides the Art and Culture Minister of Mauritius Art and Culture, the event would be attended by diplomats of 15 different countries. Khattar said that a committee headed by Swami Gyananand will be constituted which will oversee the conduct of the event. The other first edition to the event will be a Gita Sansad, which will be orgainsed in more than 30 colleges of the state to discuss on the scripture. Ashtadashi Shaloki Gita would be recited by 18,000 students simultaneously in Kurukshetra at 12 noon on December 18. The celebratory activities include organsing a Sant Sammelan on December 16 which will be attended by saints from country and abroad. editorial@tribune.com Parveen Arora Tribune News Service Karnal, November 23 With the announcement of December 16 as the date for the Municipal Corporation (MC) election, all political parties here seem to be in top gear. The ruling BJP has shortlisted six names for the post of the Mayor (reserved for women candidates), while the INLD and the Congress have started the process to shortlist their candidates. Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar is likely to hold a meeting of the party workers on Saturday in Karnal to take a feedback about the probable candidates. The names of the candidates are expected to be announced on Sunday by his party. Sources in the BJP say the party district unit has shortlisted six names, former Mayor Renu Bala Gupta, former Senior Deputy Mayor Krishan Gargs daughter-in-law Monika Garg, former district president Ashok Sukhijas daughter-in-law Dipti Sukhija, district president Jagmohan Anands wife Rekha Anand, former councillor Sujata Arora and Sonia Pandit. Besides, the party has sent five to six names in each ward for the post of councillor. Jagmohan Anand, district president, BJP, said they had shortlisted the names and had sent these to the state party chief Subhash Barala for the final declaration. The party leadership would announce the final names in a couple of days. He maintained that the CM would come to Karnal on Saturday to hold an important meeting with the party workers about the corporation elections. Karnal is the constituency of the CM, so all workers will make their full efforts to win all 20 seats of councillors and also that of the Mayor, the district president maintained. Meanwhile, former Deputy Mayor Manoj Wadhwas wife Asha Wadhwa has also started campaigning as an Independent candidate. However, Manoj is associated with the INLD and had contested the last Assembly elections against the Chief Minister on the INLD ticket, but so far, his wife is seeking votes as an independent candidate. INLD district president Yashvir Rana said they would hold a meeting of the party workers in a couple of days to finalise the names of the Mayor as well as the councillors. We will contest the election on the party symbol, he said. Former district youth Congress president Pankaj Gabas wife Shikha Gaba, former Congress district working president Ashok Khuranas-daughter-in-law Priyanka Khurana, women Congress state general secretary Navneet Kaur Bedi, former councillor Usha Tuli, are among the ticket aspirants for the post of the Mayor from the Congress. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Faridabad, November 23 The police have arrested a 24-year-old youth in connection with the stabbing of a 26-year-old married woman in Dabua colony here after 10 days of the incident. The arrest came after intervention by a local social activist who not only put pressure on the police for the arrest, but also took care of the victim and her family as she remained hospitalised for 10 days. The victim, who is employed with a private bank here, was assaulted with a knife by Sagar Satija while she was on her way back home after work at Ghazipur road at around 7.30 pm on November 12. The victim, who was stabbed several times, got seriously injured and had to be referred to Safdurjang Hospital after being taken to civil hospital here. Both the accused and victim are employed in the same organisation and know each other. According to the victim, the accused had reportedly developed an infatuation towards her and had even attempted to outrage her modesty before attacking her as she continued to resist his moves. As she was in hospital till November 22, her family remained in constant fear as the accused was absconding. Her kin approached Varun Sheokand, a social activist, for help. Sheokand not only offered financial help to the family, but also kept on pressuring the police for Sagars arrest. It is being alleged that the police did not arrest him earlier as one of the investigating officers (IO) was interested in getting the issue resolved through an agreement without legal action. I visited the police station concerned several times and opposed their delaying, said Varun. Admitting that the victim had been stabbed several times, Inspector Sushila, SHO, women police station, NIT, said that while a case has been registered under Sections 324 (causing hurt by stabbing), 376 (attempt to rape), 511 (punishment to commit offence punishable with imprisonment for life), Section 307 (attempt to murder) might be added after getting the medical report. The accused has been remanded to one-day police custody. editorial@tribune.com Our Correspondent Palampur, November 23 Postgraduate teachers (PGT) in schools will now be called lecturers and the posts of vice-principal will be created in government senior secondary schools in the state. Addressing the state-level education conference on Universal, Free and Quality Education for All at Chaudhary Sarwan Kumar Agriculture University in Palampur of Kangra district on Friday, on Friday Jai Ram Thakur said that the promotion quota for school lecturers would be increased from 50 to 60 per cent. Teachers showing poor results would be given one-time relaxation and their annual increment would not be withheld. Thakur said recruitment of thousands of trained teachers was in pipeline to overcome the problem of inadequate staff. The conference was organised by the Himachal Pradesh School Lecturers Association (HPSLA). The CM said value-based education was essential for a strong and vibrant society. Moral education and yoga would be made the integral part of educational curriculum in the state. He said the teachers should help curb drug abuse among the students. Thakur said the state government had introduced several schemes for making Himachal Pradesh an education hub of the country. The Chief Minister said Atal Adarsh Vidya Kendras would be opened in the state for imparting quality education to students. While nostalgically remembering his school days, the Chief Minister said that he had to travel about 18 km daily to attend his classes, but today there were educational institutions at almost every three km in the state. The Chief Minister also released a souvenir on Universal, Free and Quality Education on the occasion. Education Minister Suresh Bhardwaj said the Himachal had been awarded the Best State among the big states of the country in the State of the State Survey conducted by a reputed weekly of the country. vinaymishra188@gmail.com Tribune News Service Anantnag/Jammu, November 23 A top Lashkar commander, accused of killing Rising Kashmir editor Shujaat Bukhari in June, and a district commander of the Hizb were among six militants killed in a fierce gunfight in Bijbehara area of Anantnag district, 52 km south of Srinagar, today. Security agencies termed it as one of the most successful operations of the year. The police identified the dead as Lashkar commander Azad Malik, alias Daada, of Arwini Bijbehara; Unais Shafi Bhat of Takia Bal, Hizbs Bijbehara district commander; Firdaus Ahmad Mir, Lashkars Pulwama district commander; Basit Ahmad Mir of Khannabal, Lashkars Anantnag operative; Shahid Ahmad Malik of Sangam, Anantnag, and Hizbs Atif Hassan Najar of Waghama, Bijbehara. Malik alias Daada was a confidant of Pakistani Lashkar commander Naveed Jatt. He had joined militancy in December 2016. It is believed Daada and Jatt killed editor Bukhari and his two guards in Srinagars Press Enclave on June 14. Sources said the police received inputs regarding a meeting of Lashkar and Hizb operatives in Bijbehara area. An orchard was cordoned off at 2 am. The militants were hiding in a shed raised on the orchard premises, a police official said. The militants opened fire. In the gunfight, that lasted a few hours, all six militants were eliminated, the official said, adding that there was no collateral damage. The bodies of the militants were handed over to the families after medico-legal formalities. Soon after, restrictions were imposed in parts of Anantnag. Also, mobile Internet services were snapped in most parts of south Kashmir. Despite the restrictions, thousands of people gathered for the funeral prayers. Clashes erupted in some parts of the district. Security personnel resorted to tear gas and aerial firing to disperse the protesters. Nobody was injured. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Srinagar, November 23 A civilian was critically injured in a shooting incident in central Kashmirs Budgam district on Friday evening. While the locals blamed the Army for firing at a motorcyclist, Ishfaq Ganai of Magraypora, Budgam, the latter blamed the militants for the shooting, which left him critically injured. The incident took place around 7 pm on the Gowharpora-Chatergam road. The police said they were ascertaining the details. The Army told us that a patrol party was moving in the area when they heard some noise. As they went to the spot, they saw a civilian lying injured. They took him to the Chadoora hospital, Deputy Inspector General of Police, central Kashmir Range, VK Birdi said. We are verifying the details. Meanwhile, Srinagar-based defence spokesman Col Rajesh Kalia said Ganie was shot at by militants, some 500-600 m away from the Army camp at Chhatargam. When the Army troops heard the shots, a quick-reaction team immediately rushed towards the spot to find out what was happening. When the party reached the spot, they saw Ishfaq lying in a pool of blood. He had bullet injuries, one in head andthe other in leg, and was immediately taken to a hospital, the spokesman said. However, the locals in the area claimed that Ganai, a carpenter, was injured in the Army firing. The Army had laid an ambush in the area when they fired at him, wounding him critically, a local said. His condition is stated to be critical. gspannu7@gmail.com Vibha Sharma Tribune News Service New Delhi, November 23 The self goals may help political rivals appear as martyrs and the BJP as a party which is jittery and uncertain of itself in a sensitive state it claims to be in control of, say political observers closely following the political developments in Jammu and Kashmir. They see the sensational Pakistan connection claim by BJP general secretary Ram Madhav and its retraction after National Conference leader Omar Abdullah publicly dared him to prove it as yet another embarrassment for the ruling BJP after Governor Satya Pal Maliks abrupt dissolution of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly on Wednesday evening. Madhav alleged that Abdullahs NC and Mehbooba Mufti-led Peoples Democratic Party had joined hands to form a government at the behest of Pakistan. The observation earned him criticism not just from rivals but also the social media where many wondered if it was on instruction and direction from Pakistan that the BJP joined hands with the PDP in 2015 and earlier with the NC. Madhav may have taken back his comment with a laughing emoticon but for the political observers it proved that the BJP went so wrong in its assessment of the situation. Now that you deny any external pressure I take back my comment, but now that you proved it was genuine love between NC and PDP that prompted a failed government formation attempt, you should fight the next elections together, Madhav told a furious Abdullah. Mind you its a political comment, not personal, Madhav added with a laughing emoticon, trying to make light of Abdullahs anger. But for many, the string of events projected the BJP as a party that was jittery and uncertain of its future in the state it claimed to know well. The decision to dissolve the Assembly had turned the PDP, the NC and the Congress into martyrs, making their position stronger and of the BJP weaker. And Madhavs defence of the decision and the claim that the two regional parties also boycotted the local body polls last month on instructions from across the border was a self goal that could have been so easily avoided, they said. Rather the BJP should have allowed the rivals to form the government and called it a confirmation of their worries over its success in the state after the split with the PDP. This, they could have said, was the reason why parties, with contrary ideologies, contradictions within and divergent cadres, were coming together, they added. Notably, some recent developments in the state, like PDP leader Muzaffar Hussain Baig throwing weight behind BJP ally Sajad Lone and NC leader Junaid Azim Mattu, who quit the party to contest the local body polls, getting elected as the Mayor of the Srinagar Municipal Corporation with support from the BJP and the Peoples Conference showed that the BJP was in control of the situation. Dissolving the Assembly is such a bad idea. It will not help the BJP politically but may send a wrong message to the electorate. Rather the coming together of ideologically divergent groups could have helped the electorate polarise to its advantage, they said. editorial@tribune.com Separatists discuss K-issue with ex-Norway PM Tribune News Service Srinagar, November 23 Former Prime Minister of Norway Kjell Magne Bondevik, who is currently on a visit to Kashmir, held a meeting with separatist leaders Syed Ali Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq in Srinagar on Friday. The meeting with the visiting delegation, led by Bondevik, was held at the Hyderpora residence of the hardline Hurriyat Conference chairman Syed Ali Geelani, a spokesman for the joint resistance leadership (JRL) said. Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Yasin Malik, who is under detention, could not attend the meeting, the spokesman said. After the meeting, chairman of the moderate faction of the Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umar Farooq wrote on Twitter: Norway is known to play a constructive role in conflict resolutions. Fruitful meeting of the JRL with Mr Kjell Magne Bondevik, Ex-Prime Minister of Norway. As Norway is known to play a constructive role in conflict resolution across the globe, urged Mr Bondevik to help in ending the daily killings and urgent resolution of the festering Kashmir dispute, Mirwaiz tweeted. The delegation, according to a JRL statement, was briefed on the Kashmir issue pending for the past seven decades and the continued repression and human rights violations in Kashmir. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Jammu, November 23 After being dubbed by the BJP leadership as the parties working at the behest of Pakistan in Kashmir, the mainstream parties on Friday came under fire from the separatists who questioned them what have they achieved by being loyal to Delhi for 70 years. This stinging remark against the NC and PDP was made by All Parties Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on Twitter: NC, PDP despite doing New Delhis biddings at the cost of betraying their own people, have not been able to earn New Delhis trust. He was referring to the political ridicule to which the NC and PDP were subjected to by the BJP immediately after the two parties joined hands. The BJP leader was pointing towards Pakistan and implied that they were taking instructions from Islamabad for all their political moves as he had also mentioned that the PDP and NC boycotted local bodies election last month because they had instructions from across the border. He went on to add, Probably, they had fresh instructions from across the border to come together and form a government. What they did prompted the Governor to look into the whole issue. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Srinagar, November 22 The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) has expressed concern over the shifting of prisoners from Jammu and Kashmir to jails outside the state. The APHC, headed by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, has termed the move not only against the principles of democracy but also a blatant violation of the Supreme Court guidelines. In a statement on Thursday, the Hurriyat said shifting Kashmiri prisoners to various prisons across the country was sans justification and the step had cleared that the rule of law did not exist here as Kashmir was directly ruled by lakhs of security forces. The mass shifting of Kashmiri prisoners to outside prisons is being done clandestinely without informing their families. This has added to the miseries of the parents whose loved ones have been languishing in jails for their only crime of demanding Kashmir resolution, it said. The statement said the figures collected by the Hurriyat revealed that in the past two months, 10 Pakistani prisoners in J&K had been shifted to New Delhis Tihar Jail, while 23 political prisoners had been shifted to the Haryana prison against the violation of the Supreme Court ruling. The Hurriyat statement said 2,200 political prisoners were lodged in various jails of the state. It said they had been booked for demanding right to self-determination. The APHC urged all world forums to take a serious note of the ultimate repression being unleashed in Kashmir and the worst-ever human rights violations and build a pressure on New Delhi to put an end to the rights abuses in the Valley. shriaya.dutta@tribuneindia.com Tribune Web Desk Chandigarh, November 23 The Bajirao-Mastani couple, Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone, recently got married at a 800-year-old villa facing Lake Como in Italy with two ceremoniesa Konkani-style wedding on November 14 and a traditional Anand Karaj on November 15. After completing their wedding festivities, the couple flew down to Deepikas hometown, Bengaluru, and had their first wedding reception at The Leela on November 21. The adorable couple didnt let the guests go empty-handed. The husband and wife thought of presenting their guests silver-plated photo frames. A few pictures have surfaced on social media thanking the couple for the thoughtful gifts. Ranveer and Deepika are going to host two more wedding receptions on November 28, which is solely for family and friends. The second wedding reception is going to be held on December 1, which is for their friends in the industry. Its a Black Tie event. monicakchauhan@gmail.com New Delhi, November 23 Four Tanzanian women were rescued after a hostile crowd gathered outside their homes in Dwarka following rumours that they were cannibals and were abducting children, police said on Friday. Later, a police patrol party, while conducting searches in the area, found that two Nigerian men were locked inside a room and rescued them as well, they said, adding, there were rumours about them also being cannibals. There were allegations about the foreign nationals being assaulted by the locals, but police dismissed the reports as baseless, saying the four were rescued safely. They said the women were rescued on Thursday evening after police received a series of calls informing them that they had an altercation with the locals. Five phone calls were received at the police control room within a span of 41 minutesbetween 6.57 pm to 7.38 pm on Thursday informing them about the altercation involving the two Tanzanian women in Kakrola area of Dwarka, police said. When police teams reached there, they found that a crowd had gathered in front of the womens house and allegations were floating around that they had killed a child and eaten his flesh. Police rescued the two women, said a senior police officer. Subsequently, a sixth call was received at 7.40 pm by a woman who alleged that her 16-year-old son had been kidnapped by the Nigerian men, he said. However, investigations showed that it was a false charge and the callers phone was also switched off, he added. While searching the area during the night time, police found the Nigerian nationals locked inside a room, police said. They said they were sleeping when some people came and locked their room from outside. One of them does not possess Indian visa, and will be deported, they added. PTI vinaymishra188@gmail.com New Delhi, November 23 Scott Moe, the Premier of Saskatchewan province in Canada, is on over a week-long visit to India from November 23 to December 1. During the visit, he will be visiting Delhi and Mumbai and hold meeting with key political and business leaders, senior officials and students, a statement said. India is already one of Saskatchewans most important trading partners and we look forward to strengthening our commercial relationship and deepening our friendship, said Moe. Located in western Canada and bordering US to its south, Saskatchewan province is Canadas leading exporter to India. The Premier has potash, uranium and pulse tariffs among items on the trade agenda, according to local media reports. Earlier this year, India slapped import tariffs on Canadian pulse crops, including peas, lentils and chickpeas, of which Saskatchewan is the largest producer in the country. Moe was critical of the outcome of PM Justin Trudeaus maiden visit to India. TNS monicakchauhan@gmail.com Hyderabad, November 23 Akula Hanumanth, an Independent candidate from Koratla, Telangana, has found an unique way to woo his voters. Hanumanth, who is on a door-to-door campaigning, was seen handing out slippers to voters and asking them to hit him if he failed to deliver on promises if he was elected. Akula Hanumanth, an Independent candidate from Koratla, Telangana hands out slippers to voters, asking them to hit him if he fails to deliver on promises if he is elected. #TelanganaElections2018 pic.twitter.com/cBTXaZwC2R ANI (@ANI) November 23, 2018 Elections to the 119-member assembly will be held on December 7 and the counting would be on December 11. Campaigning for the polls are hitting top gear with top leaders from different parties scheduled to address public meetings in the state. UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi are scheduled to address a public meeting here on Friday. Sonia Gandhi is visiting Telangana for the first time after the state's formation in 2014. Prime Minister Narendra Modi would visit Telangana on November 27 and December 3 to address rallies for the assembly elections. The ruling TRS is already into hectic campaigning with its president and caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and other leaders addressing a series of rallies. Agencies pardeepdhull@gmail.com New Delhi, November 23 With the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) data revealing the BJP to be the number one on television in the run-up to Assembly elections, the Congress on Friday demanded that the Election Commission take cognisance of the data and assess the impact of BJPs advertisement spending on the ongoing polls in five states. As per the BARC data, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) topped the rankings of advertisers across all TV channels for the week ended November 16, prompting the Congress to question its electoral funding. These advertisement spends by the BJP reflect a clear nexus between big businesses and big politicians... This is crony capitalism personified, this is the quintessential suit-boot ki sarkar, Congress leader Manish Tewari told the media here citing the BARC data. Flaying the Narendra Modi government for turning electoral funding far more opaque through the electoral bond schemes, the Congress demanded that the EC intervene, especially in view of the Assembly polls in the five statesChhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Telangana and Rajasthanthe results of which will be declared on December 11. The EC must summon this BARC data and need to find out how much money Indias top advertiser (BJP) has spent on these advertisements. We demand the EC take suo motu cognisance of the BARC data, translate it into monetary spends and see what is the impact on electoral process. The EC must take serious cognisance of its impact on the probity transparency and integrity of the electoral process, said the former Minister of Information and Broadcasting. He also said the electoral bonds scheme has made political funding very opaque giving rise to crony capitalism. The ruling dispensation has access to source and final destination of the bonds which acts as deterrence for any company to try and fund an opposition party, especially when this government has unleashed central agencies on opposition parties and leaders, media houses or anyone who dares to oppose them, added Tewari. IANS vinaymishra188@gmail.com Aditi Tandon Tribune News Service New Delhi, November 23 The Congress found itself in a familiar, but uncomfortable, territory again today. In a rerun of the 2017 Gujarat election eve developments that witnessed party leader Mani Shankar Aiyar call Prime Minister Narendra Modi a neech kism kaa aadmi, another Congress veteran CP Joshi today repeated the act only to apologise later on the orders of his livid chief Rahul Gandhi. In keeping with the tradition of the Congress and in deference to the sentiment of party workers, I am sorry if my statement has hurt the feelings of any section of the society, said Joshi, former minister and an AICC general secretary until recently. Joshis remarks were disparaging to lower castes and challenged their right and ability to speak on Hindu religion. He said at an election rally in Nathdwara (from where he is contesting the December 7 Assembly poll and from where he had lost by one vote in 2008), Do you know the caste of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP member Uma Bharti and Sadhvi Rithambara? They are all lower caste. These days everyone and anyone is talking about Hindu religion. What do these people know? Only we the Brahmins know about the Hindu religion. The comments, made in context of the ongoing BJP-RSS momentum for a Ram Temple, put the Congress on the defensive on the issue. In the first public condemnation of any leader of his party, Gandhi said on Twitter that he disapproved of what Joshi had said and he should apologise. Joshi said sorry a while later. CP Joshis comment is against the values of the Congress. No party leader should say anything that hurts the sentiments of any section of society. I am sure keeping in mind party principles and the feelings of party workers, CP Joshi will realise his mistake. He should regret his remark, Congress chiefs tweet read. Joshis regret notwithstanding, Congress strategists are worried over the potential impact his castiest slur can have the eve of elections in MP, Rajasthan and Telangana. An anti-OBC statement from a veteran like Joshi was the last thing the Congress wanted at this moment. Although Gandhi had suspended Mani Shankar Aiyar from the Congress after he mocked the PM in December 2017, no such action is expected against Joshi, a powerful Rajasthan Congress figure and once a CM hopeful. Asked why a distinction was being made between the two, a Congress leader said, CP Joshi has already apologised and this should rest the matter. But the BJP, led by spokesman Sudhanshu Trivedi, has demanded an apology from Rahul Gandhi and attacked the Congress anti-OBC mindset referring to a range of past slurs on the PM and his lower caste statusincluding Aiyars chai wallah remarks, then Aiyars neech kism kaa aadmi jibe and now Joshis what do lower castes know take. The Congress is hoping for victories in Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh. What Cong leader said Do you know the caste of PM Narendra Modi, BJP member Uma Bharti and Sadhvi Rithambara? They are all lower caste. These days everyone and anyone is talking about Hindu religion. What do these people know? Only we the Brahmins know about the Hindu religion. CP Joshi TWEET: Against Partys values CP Joshis comment is against the values of the Congress. No party leader should say anything that hurts the sentiments of any section of society. I am sure keeping in mind party principles and the feelings of party workers, CP Joshi will realise his mistake. He should regret his remark. Rahul Gandhi, Cong Chief gspannu7@gmail.com Vibha Sharma Tribune News Service New Delhi, November 23 With just four days to go for elections in Madhya Pradesh, the ruling BJP is keeping up the pressure against the Congress, pulling out an almost 10-year-old Nirra Radia tape controversy to level corruption charges against state unit chief Kamal Nath and slamming it for the casteist and derogatory remarks by its top leaders against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This is the real face of the Congress, BJP leaders GVL Narsimha Rao and Sambit Patra said in the poll-bound state, launching a concentrated attack against Nath while accusing Congress chief Rahul Gandhi of shielding him and others. Claiming him to be the main face of multi-crore rice exports scam of 2008-09, they also alleged that in the Radia tapes, Naths name appeared prominently, exposing his true identity as a minister of 15 per cent commission. He was not removed (from the council of ministers) because he is very close to Rahul Gandhi, they claimed. They referred to the casteist and derogatory remarks against Prime Minister Modi by senior Congress leaders such as CP Joshi, Raj Babbar and Navjot Sidhu as the true self of grand old party. This is what they (Congress leaders) discuss behind closed doors. When they get exposed, they ask people to apologise, they said referring to senior Congress leader CP Joshi comments while canvassing in Rajasthan that also prompted Gandhi to launch a quick damage control. However, Congress leader Raj Babbars comment, likening the falling rupee to Prime Minister Modis mothers age at a rally in Madhya Pradesh, does not seem to have elicited a similar response from the grand old party. Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said such nasty comments showed Babbars mentality and asked him to immediately apologise. Punjab minister Sidhu also told the poll-bound Madhya Pradesh that the wave in favour of Narendra Modi in 2014 elections had turned out to be poisonous for the common man. He also alleged that the prime minister had been reduced to acting as a puppet in the hands of the moneybags. The 2014 Modi wave has turned out to be poisonous for the common people. Modi saheb has been reduced to act as puppet in the hands of the money bags (2014 ki Modi leher ab aam aadmi ke liye qahar ban gayi hai, zehar ban gayi hai. Modi Sahab sirf poonjipatiyon ki katputhli ban ke reh gaye hain), he was quoted as saying. Earlier, using a video clip to corner Nath, the BJP had accused him of seeking votes on religious grounds and urged the Election Commission (EC) to take action against him and his party. rchopra@tribunemail.com Tribune News Service New Delhi, November 23 Amid the Kartarpur corridor bonhomie, the Ministry of External Affairs on Friday lodged a strong protest with Pakistan for denying the formers diplomats access to the visiting Sikh pilgrims from India. The MEA claimed that despite having been granted prior travel permission by the Pakistan Foreign Ministry, Consular officials of the High Commission of India in Islamabad were harassed and denied access on November 21 and 22 at Gurdwara Nankana Sahib and Gurdwara Sacha Sauda to the Indian pilgrims visiting Pakistan under the Bilateral Protocol. Two senior Indian officials were expected to fulfil their diplomatic and consular duties vis-a-vis Indian pilgrims. We have shared our grave concern that this is the third consecutive visit of the Indian Sikh pilgrims when Pakistan has prevented the Indian High Commission officials from meeting the visiting Indian nationals on the pretext of security in order to deflect attention from Pakistans violation of the international legal instruments and conventions, said a formal Indian statement. India also called it a breach of the letter and spirit of the 1974 Bilateral Protocol on visit to religious shrines and the code of conduct for the treatment of diplomatic/consular personnel in India and Pakistan. Pakistan has been reminded that this is in contrast to the treatment met out to their High Commissioner and the consular officials in New Delhi, who have been provided full access to meet the Pakistani pilgrims who are currently in India on a pilgrimage to Kalyar Sharif, added the Indian statement. India also expressed grave concern at the reports of attempts being made during the ongoing visit of the Indian pilgrims for Guru Nanak Jayanti celebrations to Pakistan to incite communal disharmony and intolerance and promote secessionist tendencies with the objective of undermining Indias sovereignty and territorial integrity. Pakistan has been called upon to take all measures not to allow its territory to be used for any hostile propaganda and support for secessionist tendencies against India in keeping with the commitments made under the Simla Agreement, and endorsed in the Lahore Declaration, 1999, said the MEA. Referendum 2020 campaign posters, banners and flags have reportedly been put up at Gurdwara Nankana Sahib Parikrama by Pakistan Evacuee Trust Board. The administrative control of Sikh holy places like gurdwaras is with the Sikh community. We do not interfere in their internal matters, said Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mohammad Faisal dismissing the Indian allegations earlier on Thursday. The Pakistan High Commission in Delhi has issued visas to some 3,800 Sikh devotees from India to attend the Guru Nanak Jayanti celebrations along with Sikh pilgrims from across the globe from November 21 to 30. rchopra@tribunemail.com Vidisha, November 23 Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday said Indians had realised that there is no substance in what Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke, adding that the latter is mum on the issues he spoke about before the 2014 elections. Addressing a campaign rally here for the November 28 Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls, Gandhi said Modis speeches used to be about corruption, farmers and unemployment. Today, he doesnt say anything on these issues. People have realised that there is no substance in what Modi speaks. All his assurances are false, Gandhi said. Before 2014, Modi promised loan waiver, bonus and better price for farmers produce. I want to ask him why the assurances were not fulfilled, he said. When the Congress formed the next government in Madhya Pradesh, the chief minister would work for 18 hours a day to provide employment to the youth, Gandhi said. Unemployment and farm crisis are rampant in all poll-bound states, he said, adding that the government had told Parliament that only 450 youth got jobs per day in India, as against 50,000 in China in the same period. Gandhi promised loan waiver to farmers within 10 days of coming to power in Madhya Pradesh and making the state an agriculture hub. The Congress leader said the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government in the state had destroyed the education sector with Vyapam, the entrance examination, admission and recruitment scam unearthed in Madhya Pradesh in 2013. On the Rafale deal, Gandhi alleged that Modi gave Rs 30,000 crore benefit to industrialist Anil Ambani by taking away the contract from the state-owned aerospace company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). Even BJP leaders Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie have said due processes were not followed in the Rafale deal. The CBI director was about to start a probe into the Rafale scam but he was removed from his post at 2 am, Gandhi said. PTI pardeepdhull@gmail.com Port Blair, November 23 Few hours before he was killed by members of a protected tribe in the Andamans, American national John Allen Chau survived an arrow attack by a short-statured tribesman as it hit the Bible he was carrying, his diary noting has revealed. The hand-written notes of Chau, who was killed when he tried to enter the prohibited North Sentinel Island, also mention that he wanted to acquaint the tribesmen with the message of Jesus Christ. Director-General of Police, Andaman and Nicobar, Dependra Pathak, told PTI on Friday that Chau appeared to be a staunch believer (of Christianity). The 13-page notes of Chau, handed over to the police by his local contact Alexander who has been arrested in connection with his killing, have details of his trip to the island without permission. The notes written in incongruent sentences in English throw light on his misadventure. The DGP said that as part of the probe, a police team on Friday made a trip towards the Sentinel island with Alexander, whom they have taken on remand. Chau was killed possibly with arrows. But Andaman Police PRO Jatin Narwal had said on Wednesday that it was a subject of probe. He had maintained that the death was caused by traditional weapons, adding that it cannot be specifically said whether he was killed by arrows or spears. The DGP said that on November 17 the fishermen, who had taken Chau near the island, saw a dead person being buried at the shore which from the silhouette of the body, clothing and circumstances appeared to be the body of the American national. The access to North Sentinel Island and its buffer zone is strictly restricted under the Protection of Aboriginal Tribe (Regulation), 1956, and Regulations under Indian Forest Act, 1927. The US national, who according to the DGP, had paid around Rs 25,000 to local fishermen to take him to the island, wrote that god sheltered him from the Coast Guards and the Navy. Chau in his notes dated November 16 narrated that around 4.30 am, standing near the shore of the Sentinel island, he saw two persons as the sun rose. He told them that he too has two legs. He further recounted that he was inches from an unusual guy about 5 ft 5 and as they got bunched together he gave them some gifts. But, the short-statured man shot me with an arrow that directly hit the Bible which I was holding near my chest, he wrote. The Sentinelese people are among the tribes that survived the tsunami of 2004 without any help from the outside world. For the 2011 Census, enumerators could locate only 15 Sentinelese people - 12 men and three women. However, their numbers could be anything between 40 and 400, according to experts. The natives of the Sentinel island have past record of attacking visitors to their island. In 2006, two Indian fishermen, who had moored their boat near North Sentinel to sleep after poaching in the waters around the island, were killed when their boat broke loose and drifted onto the shore. PTI vinaymishra188@gmail.com Vibha Sharma Tribune News Service New Delhi, November 23 It not only the Congress that is trying to hijack the long-held saffron plank, the RSS-affiliate VHP is also braving division within the Sant Samaj on the issue of building a Ram Temple at Ayodhya. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is all set to take the temple issue to another level with dharma sabhas in Ayodhya, Bengaluru and Nagpur on November 25. These will be followed by congregations in Mumbai on December 2 and Delhi on December 9. Sources say the RSS and its political armthe BJPare working overtime behind the scenes to mobilise crowds for what the VHP says is the last-ditch effort to make people opposing the temple construction realise the facts. The RSS and its affiliates are all out to ensure that the Ayodhya event is a big show of strength, they say. Ahead of the event in Ayodhya, the right wing Hindu organisation also accused the Congress, its chief Rahul Gandhi, and rival parties of playing to the gallery. But not everyone wanting a Ram Temple in Ayodhya is on board the VHPs event. The apex body of seers in India the All India Akhada Parishad is not expected to join the three-day dharma sansad (November 25, 26 and 27). Spearheaded by the Shankaracharya of Dwarkapeeth Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati, all issues related to Sanatan Dharma, including Ram Temple, will be discussed there, followed by a dharmadesh. Swaroopanand has been critical of the BJP and the RSS. In an interview, he had accused them of having caused the biggest damage to the ideals of Hinduism in recent years. A row also erupted after Swaroopanand recently asked the BJP-led government not to meddle in the issue and leave the construction of the temple to saints. Thackeray visit: Ayodhya turns into fortress vinaymishra188@gmail.com Ravi S Singh Tribune News Service New Delhi, November 23 Underscoring the need to maintain balance of power between various institutions as envisaged by the Constitution, former President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday suggested that correctives had to come from within to restore their trust among the people. There is widespread cynicism and disillusionment with the governance and functioning of these institutions. To restore this credibility, the correctives have to come from within. Institutions are a mirror of national character. To save our democracy, these institutions must win back the trust of the people, without delay, Mukherjee said while inaugurating a two-day national conference on Toward Peace, Harmony and Happiness; Transition to Transformation here. Elaborating on balance of power, he said people needed a Parliament that debated, discussed and decided; a judiciary that gave justice without delay and leadership that was committed to the nation and those values that made them a great civilisation. We need a state that inspires confidence among people in its ability to surmount challenges before us. We need a media and citizens who, even as they claim their rights, are equally committed to their responsibilities. BJP veteran Murli Manohar Joshi, in his keynote address, said fragmentary world view and techo-economy, among others, had disintegrated the soul and psychology of individuals. The conference, organised by the Pranab Mukherjee Foundation and Chandigarh-based Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, would see former PM Manmohan Singh delivering the valedictory address on Saturday. monicakchauhan@gmail.com Naveen S Garewal Tribune News Service Hyderabad, November 23 The Congress manifesto for the Telangana State Assembly elections, termed as People's manifesto, will be formally released by the UPA Chairperson and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi at an election rally at Medchal here on Friday. The manifesto that would contain issues agreed upon by all the alliance partners under the grand alliance promises several incentives to benefit farmers and women, besides promising one lakh jobs in the first year itself. The Congress is hoping that the rally to be addressed by Sonia Gandhi would prove to be a game changer as it is Sonia Gandhi that acceded to the demand of a separate Telangana State in 2004 and is considered to be the Mother of Telangana, Congress general secretary in-charge of Telangana affairs R C Khuntia said. She has not addressed any election rallies so far in the poll-bound states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. The fact that she has agreed to address a rally in Telangana itself shows how she is sentimentally attached to the state, he added. She will formally release the manifesto that promises farm loan waiver of up to Rs 2 lakh, increase of retirement age of the state government employees from 58 to 60, besides many other decisions taken by the alliance partners. According to Congress sources, Sonia Gandhi, who will be accompanied her son and Congress president Rahul Gandhi at the Begumpet airport by a special flight at 5 pm, will travel to Medchal on the city outskirts by road to address the public meeting at 6 pm and fly back to Delhi by 8 pm. Top Congress leaders, including Ahmed Patel, Veerappa Moily and Jairam Ramesh, besides Karnataka minister D K Shiva Kumar are in Hyderabad to oversee arrangements for the meeting at Medchal and to pacify the dissident Congress leaders who have been denied the party ticket. It is expected that leaders from all four alliance partners of Maha Kutami that includes Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS), TDP and CPI will be seen on the dais with the Congress leaders. However, Andhra Pradesh chief minister and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief N Chandrababu Naidu will not attend the rally. It is felt that his presence may negate the pro-Telangana sentiment Sonia Gandhi evokes as Naidu was against the split of Andhra Pradesh. Later this month, Rahul Gandhi is also expected to addressing more rallies in different parts of Telangana on November 28, 29 and December 3. gspannu7@gmail.com Naveen S Grewal Tribune News Service Hyderabad, November 23 Congress leader Sonia Gandhi on Friday addressed her first political rally in Telangana and trained her guns on the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and Chief Minister KC Rao. She said she was disappointed with the state of affairs in the TRS government as it neglected minorities, women and students. Chief Minister KC Rao worked for himself and those close to him, the former Congress president said. Development expected after Telanganas formation has not happened under the TRS, she said. The TRS has failed to do anything for people. It has pursued self interest and disappointed those who struggled for the formation of the state. Use your vote to teach a lesson to the TRS who failed you, she said. The Congress is committed to special category status for Andhra Pradesh, Gandhi said. In her 13 minute speech, Sonia Gandhi sought votes for the Congress and its alliance partners. She said as a mother it pains her heart to see that dreams for which Telangana was created have not been realised. She was accompanied by her son and Congress president Rahul Gandhi. Telangana Congress president Uttam Reddy appealed to Congress leaders and workers to cooperate with the alliance partners that are TDP, TJS and CPI. Telengana Assembly elections are scheduled for December 7. vinaymishra188@gmail.com Shubhadeep Choudhury Tribune News Service Kolkata, November 23 The iconic Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata is to put on display a famous painting of Guru Teg Bahadur, whose martyrdom day falls on Saturday. Jayanta Sengupta, curator of Victoria Memorial Hall, said they were hoping that by this February, the maintenance work at the galleries would be over following which the painting of the Ninth Sikh Guru would be put up for permanent display. Besides Guru Teg Bahadur, we also have two paintings of Guru Nanak Dev and Guru Gobind Singh. We are going to bring out a folio with reproduction of the paintings of the three Gurus. The paintings could be framed and mounted on a wall. Once the folio is ready, we will get in touch with major gurdwaras in the country, the SGPC authorities and all those who will be interested in the paintings, Sengupta said. The portrait of Guru Teg Bahadur, which is now in the storeroom of Victoria Memorial Hall, is of special interest to devotees. Guru Teg Bahadur went to Dhaka (now in Bangladesh) in the latter half of the 17th century. A reputed painter was assigned the job of making a portrait of the Guru. The painter accurately drew his clothed body, but failed to draw his radiant face. Sensing his predicament, the Guru himself drew the face and completed the painting, said Bachan Singh Saral, general secretary of the Kolkata-based Bangladesh Gurdwara Management Board. The painting, which was in Sangat Tola Gurdwara in Dhaka, was brought to India and handed over to the Victoria Memorial Hall after the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971. The Victoria Memorial Hall also has a collection of other Sikh paintings. It also has many paintings by Emily Eden (Governor General Lord Auckland's sister), including painting of Maharaja Ranjit Singh for which the Maharaja was reported to have agreed to give her sittings. vinaymishra188@gmail.com Ruchika M Khanna Tribune News Service Chandigarh, November 22 The Punjab Police are investigating the links of Amritsar grenade attack accused Bikramjit Singh (arrested on Wednesday) and Avtar Singh with a Sikh radical leader who was appointed parallel Jathedar of Takht Kesgarh Sahib by the Sarbat Khalsa called by radical Sikhs in November 2015. Official sources in the Punjab Police have told The Tribune that the father of Avtar Singh, who is a dharma fauji (those who quit the Army in wake of Operation Bluestar), was close to parallel Jathedar Amrik Singh Ajnala. The latter is learnt to have not just baptised the Avtars father a few years ago but has been a major religious influencer for the entire family, said a senior police officer. Though Ajnala had quit as parallel Jathedar of Takht Kesgarh Sahib last year, he is still regarded as the Jathedar by radical leaders. Since the arrest of Bikramjit Singh, Ajnala has not been seen on stage at the site of protest by Sikh radical leaders at Bargari. He is believed to be out of state as of now, said a senior police officer. Police sources said accused Bikramjit Singh and Avtar Singh were radicalised after they were befriended by Harmeet Singh Happy, alias PHD. He even imparted them training in using grenades through video calls. PHD knew an Australia-based relative of Avtar and it was through him that he got in touch with Avtar. The accused was running an ayurvedic centre and Bikramjit used to visit him, said a senior police officer. vinaymishra188@gmail.com Deepkamal Kaur Tribune News Service Sultanpur Lodhi, November 23 Sending across a message of communal harmony will be a befitting tribute to Guru Nanak Dev, stressed former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, who visited Gurdwara Ber Sahib, along with his wife Gursharan Kaur, for the 550th birth anniversary celebrations of the founder of the Sikh faith, organised by the Punjab Government. Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh laid the foundation stone of 26 projects worth Rs 150 crore as part of the year-long celebrations, including the upgrading of infrastructure in the historic towns of Sultanpur Lodhi, Dera Baba Nanak and Batala. Dr Singh expressed concern over the growing menace of terrorism the world over. He said the path shown by the Guru alone could help tackle it. Punjab hi nahi, poori kayanat terrorism naal jhoojh rahi hai (not just Punjab, the entire world is grappling with terrorism). Only Guru Nanaks teachings can help us in these trying times, he said, reciting a verse, Jagat jalanda rakh le, apni kirpa dhar (protect the burning world through your divine grace). Emphasising that people must not be divided on religion and caste lines, he said an apt tribute to Guru Nanak would be to spread his message of peace and harmony. Underlining the Sikh tenets of equality, as institutionalised by langar (community kitchen), and sharing one's earnings with those less privileged, he expressed concern over the widening gap between the rich and the poor across the globe. In pipeline to mark historic occasion vinaymishra188@gmail.com Gurinder Singh Mann Guru Nanak was born in Talwandi (present-day Nankana Sahib, Pakistan) at a time when religious intolerance and idolatry were rife. The Gurus beliefs emphasise the importance of leading a spiritual life without embracing monasticism. The Gurus Sikh would be a householder who would become a spiritual being during Kalyug (age of confusion and strife). He exhorted his followers to escape the clutches of ordinary human traits lust, rage, greed, attachment and conceit (collectively known as the five thieves or Panj Chor). Sikh philosophy believes that God is shapeless, timeless and invisible. It also teaches the concepts of worldly illusion (Maya), Karma and liberation. Some of the key practices include meditation and recitation of the name of God Naam japo and to live under Gods will or hukum. Guru Nanaks religion advocates justice and equality and urges its followers to serve mankind through sewa (selfless service). The Gurus langar (community kitchen) was a revolutionary change in mankinds thought process that ensured that the principle of equality between people regardless of religion, caste, colour, creed, age, gender or social status could be upheld. This flourished under the second Guru, Angad, and was institutionalised by the third, Guru Amar Das. In this day where the world is undernourished and impoverished and some places still dont have adequate drinking water, Guru ka langar is an integral part of gurdwaras around the globe. The Guru embarked on various tours, not just in the Indian subcontinent, but further afield to the Middle East, with some saying that he reached parts of Europe. These tours or Udasis were to impart spiritual wisdom in a cauldron of religious confusion. Guru Nanak is one of the most important religious figures to have contributed to womens empowerment in the East. In the West, there has been a renaissance of sorts, with women reclaiming their individuality and sexuality through the #MeToo movement. This shows how important the Gurus message was then and how it can show all cultures the way forward. Unfortunately, the world is still lagging in giving women the rights and respect they deserve. The Gurus teachings are resolute on this matter. Through his teachings, Guru Nanak had become extremely popular among Hindus and Muslims. Both communities found his concepts ideal. They both claimed the Guru as one of their own. His ardent followers and disciples would be known as Sikhs (learners), who came from different denominations and religions. His closest followers, Bhai Mardana (Muslim), player of the rebab (stringed musical instrument) and Bhai Bala (Hindu), accompanied him on his journeys and imbibed the spiritual vision with their musical accomplishments. In recent years, Sikh musicology has seen a rebirth and the original instruments of the Sikhs are meticulously used in the recitation of Gurbani. The Guru created a pothi (breviary) of his verses which would become the guiding instructions for the Sikhs under the 10th Guru, Gobind Singh. Guru Granth Sahib continues to be worshipped as a living Guru. This universal scripture has set the precedent of tolerance and inter-faith harmony which still stands the test of time. In the present day, where religious intolerance is rife and extremist views of many take centre stage across the world, the Gurus words are prophetic. As countries and religions hark back to old traditions and practices, the rise of once-thought philosophies such as fascism and radicalism are rearing their ugly head once more. The Gurus concept, There is no Hindu, there is no Musalman, still shows the way forward for all humans to live as one family under the umbrella of One God. UK-based writer editorial@tribune.com Ruchika M Khanna Tribune News Service| Chandigarh, November 23 The wide publicity given to the Referendum 2020 campaign of Sikhs For Justice (SFJ), at the birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Nanak at Nankana Sahib in Pakistan carries a clear imprint of Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), feel intelligence sources. Pakistan, they say, is propagating the secessionist agenda as part of its objective to support Referendum 2020, codenamed Operation Express. Till date, the ISI footprint was restricted to terrorist activities in India. Security agencies say though some Khalistan and Referendum 2020 posters were found during the visit of Sikh jathas to Nankana Sahib and Gurdwara Panja Sahib during Baisakhi this year, this is the first time they are propagating a full-scale secessionist movement. Activists of Sikhs For Justice have reportedly set up a small office near the shrine, besides being allowed to open an office in Lahore. Intelligence agencies claim that Referendum 2020 banners completely envelop the surroundings of the gurdwara. Indias immediate concern is that considering the surge in ISI-sponsored terror attacks in Punjab here over the past few months, including the Amritsar grenade attack this week, the ISI and SFJ are scouting for talent or agents of interest to be radicalised from among the youth who are part of the Sikh jatha visiting Pakistan. Thousands of Sikh pilgrims, who have gone to Nankana Sahib to pay obeisance at the Sikh shrine on the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, are greeted with posters of Referendum 2020, calling for establishing Khalistan. Posters pasted all over the venue, accessed by Indian security agencies, also rake up Sikh sentiments by asking the pilgrims Never to forget 1984. Though Indian security agencies have been crying hoarse over the Referendum 2020 campaign being lapped up by ISI from the beginning, the space given to the campaigners near the shrine at Nankana Sahib, managed by the Evacuee Trust Properties Board of Pakistan (ETPB), is a direct proof of ISI support, they claim. All terror modules busted by Punjab Police and intelligence agencies this year have been linked to ISI. vinaymishra188@gmail.com New Delhi, November 23 Amid the Kartarpur corridor bonhomie, the Ministry of External Affairs has lodged a strong protest with Pakistan for denying its diplomats access to Sikh pilgrims. India also expressed grave concern at reports of attempts during the visit of pilgrims for Guru Nanak Dev Jayanti celebrations to incite communal disharmony and intolerance and promote secessionist tendencies with the objective of undermining Indias sovereignty. The MEA claimed consular officials were harassed and denied access to the pilgrims at Gurdwara Nankana Sahib and Gurdwara Sacha Sauda. We have shared our grave concern that this is the third consecutive visit of the Sikh pilgrims when Pakistan has prevented the High Commission officials from meeting Indian nationals on the pretext of security to deflect attention from Pakistans violation of the international legal instruments, it said. TNS gspannu7@gmail.com New Delhi, November 23 The Jallianwala Bagh memorial will be given a facelift as part of governments plans to mark the centenary year of the 1919 massacre, Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma said on Friday. The government has prepared a blueprint for the year-long commemoration of the massacre that took place on April 13, 1919, as part of its efforts to mark the lives of eminent personalities and events of historical importance, said Sharma who visited the site on Friday. The Tourism Ministry along with the Culture Ministry will renovate this historical site by creating suitable infrastructure for providing basic amenities for tourists, he said. We will also have an interpretation centre, a musical fountain and a light and sound show telling the story of what happened here. We will also develop the site around the well where people gave up their lives, the minister said. While the Tourism Ministry has already earmarked Rs eight crore for the project, the Culture Ministry will provide additional funds. On the harvest festival of Baisakhi, about 15,000 civilians had gathered at Jallianwala Bagh near the Golden Temple for a peaceful protest against the arrest and deportation of two national leaders, Satya Pal and Saifuddin Kitchlew. Around 50 troops of the British Indian Army, under the command of Colonel Reginald Dyer, fired on the crowd. A number of people had jumped into a well on the premises to save themselves from the firing. Later, 120 bodies were recovered from the well. The government is also planning to issue commemorative coins, postage stamps and will organise kavi sammelans, exhibition, seminars around the Jallianwala Bagh memorial. As we prepare for remembrance of the 100 years of Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in 2019, it shall undergo necessary redevelopment and upgradation. Jallianwala Bagh shall continue to remind the young generation about the sacrifices made in freedom struggle, Sharma tweeted. The National Implementation Committee headed by Home Minister Rajnath Singh has formed a three-member panel comprising former Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal, ex-chairman of the National Commission for Minorities Tarlochan Singh and Rajya Sabha MP Shwait Malik, for five years to oversee the commemoration. The government is currently commemorating the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, the first Sikh Guru. PTI vinaymishra188@gmail.com Varinder Singh Tribune News Service Jalandhar, November 23 In a setback to the Punjabi diaspora in Canadas Ontario province, Liberal MP from Brampton East Raj Grewal has put in his papers all of a sudden citing personal and medical reasons. Grewal, who had assumed office on October 19, 2015, made the announcement via a Facebook post on Thursday evening. At the same time, he also said he was hopeful of being able to again represent his constituency sometimes in the future. The resignation was nothing short of a surprise for many since Grewal had already been re-nominated by the Liberal Party as the party candidate for the 2019 federal polls. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will have no choice but to call for a by-election prior to the 2019 poll due to the timing of the resignation. Grewal, it is learnt, was being investigated by the Federal Ethics Commissioner for certain allegations levelled by New Democratic Party MP Charles Joseph. The Liberal MP had courted a controversy after allegedly helping secure invitations for his own business associate to attend official events in India during Trudeaus visit, apparently without clearance from the ethics commissioner. Born on September 11, 1985, Grewal, the son of an airport cab driver, attended the Wilfrid Laurier University from where he earned his bachelors degree in business. He completed his MBA at York Universitys Schulich School of Business and a degree in law at Osgoode Hall Law School. As an MP, he had been highlighting issues like the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and problems related to immigration, refugees and citizenship. editorial@tribune.com Deepkamal Kaur Tribune News Service Sultanpur Lodhi, November 23 Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Friday announced that his government was ready to contribute towards setting up the Kartarpur corridor. The CM made the announcement during the launch of year-long celebrations to mark the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev here. A long-pending demand of Punjab will be on the verge of fulfillment on November 26, when I will join the President in laying the foundation stone for the corridor, he said. He also thanked the Government of Pakistan for reciprocating on the issue. Former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Punjab Governor VP Singh Badnore joined Capt Amarinder in laying foundation stones for 26 development projects worth Rs 150 crore on Friday. The projects, initiated by him, include upgrade of infrastructure in three historic towns associated with the Guru Sultanpur Lodhi, Dera Baba Nanak and Batala. The CM said money would be no constraint for various development and welfare projects announced by him to ensure a befitting commemoration of the historic event. He also announced projects to the tune of Rs 3,312 crore to facilitate pilgrims. Release of 32 prisoners and remission of term for another 2,952 was also announced. Launching a drive to plant 550 trees in every village, the CM also proposed to build a Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji Marg, to be finalised by a group of experts. The foundation stones laid on the occasion are that of three bridges and two footover bridges (Rs 24 crore), a permanent bridge to replace pontoon bridge across Beas (Rs 13 crore), a new rest house (Rs 5 crore), widening of planned roads (Rs 42 crore) and repair of roads (Rs 38 crore). The CM said all these works would be completed by July 2019. Capt Amarinder also announced Sarbat Sehat Bima Yojana, under which 43 lakh families would be brought under insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh at a cost of Rs 371 crore from January 1, 2019. An institute of inter-faith studies would be set up at Guru Nanak Dev University (GNDU), Amritsar (Rs 510 crore), while Pind Babe Nanak Da museum would be established at Sultanpur Lodhi, said the CM. He also announced Bebe Nanki College for Girls in Mahablipur village, 5 km from Sultanpur Lodhi. A government medical college and super-specialty hospital would be established at Kotli Nangal village in Gurdaspur for Rs 400 crore in PPP mode (to be completed by 2021), and Sri Guru Nanak Dev ji Centre for Invention, Innovation, Incubation and Training would be established as a hub on the main campus of Indra Kumar Gujral Punjab Technical University at Kapurthala, the CM said. editorial@tribune.com Islamabad, November 23 Pakistans Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry on Friday said Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu would visit the country to attend the ground-breaking ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor, according to a media report on Friday. Prime Minister Imran Khan will do the ground-breaking ceremony of the facilities at the crossing on the Pakistan side on November 28. Chaudhry confirmed that the former Indian cricketer would visit the country. This will be Sidhus second visit to Pakistan this year. Sidhu told Roznama Express that he has gladly accepted the invitation, sent by Khan for the November 28 event. He said the Pakistani premier was his friend and he would visit the country whenever he was invited by him. I dont have words to express my joy, he said. A long-pending demand of the Sikh community to build a religious corridor linking Indias border district of Gurdaspur with a historic gurudwara in Pakistan may finally be fulfilled with the two countries announcing that stretches would be developed in their respective areas. PTI Writes to Sushma Chandigarh: Local Bodies Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu has written to Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj, saying, I wish that the Government of India writes formally to Pakistan on visa and other related issues for easy travel of pilgrims once the corridor (Kartarpur) is complete. TNS editorial@tribune.com Ravi Dhaliwal Tribune News Service Kot Dhandhal (Gurdaspur), November 22 Nearly 300 students and their parents today locked the Government Adarsh Senior Secondary School at Kot Dhandhal village, 25 km from Gurdaspur, in protest against the shortage of teachers. The school was functioning with just 10 teachers against the sanctioned strength of 40. Nearly 20 activists of the Punjab Students Union (PSU), led by its state executive member Amar Kranti, accompanied the protesting students. This has been going on for the past several years. The students finally decided to act today as the authorities concerned were not taking any action, said Amarjit Shastri, a Sanjha Adhaypak Morcha leader. Deputy Commissioner Vipul Ujwal asked Deputy District Education Officer Gurnam Singh, DSP (rural) Manjit Singh and Qadian SHO Surinderpal Singh to rush to the spot and resolve the issue. The students had lodged a similar protest on November 17 after which the DC and Education Department officials had assured to look into the issue within four days. However, when the deadline expired today and no action was taken, they locked the schools main gate in protest. In an attempt to diffuse the situation, the Education Department shifted to the school two teachers from nearby schools. It was also announced that four of the five teachers who had opted for regularisation recently following which they were shifted to stations near their respective hometowns would also be asked to join back here. However, students called the action a farce. We feel that the officials are again befooling us. They had promised to give us more teachers on November 17 but later backtracked. This time we wont fall into their trap so we locked the gate. The protest will go on till sufficient staff is recruited, said Amar Kranti. Similar situation prevailed in another Adarsh school located in Gurdaspur district at Bhikhariwal. On November 18, the students had submitted a memorandum to the DC when he visited the school to preside over a function. The Bhikhariwal school, too, is grossly understaffed with just one-fourth of the total sanctioned staff being on duty. shriaya.dutta@tribuneindia.com Washington NASA is concerned over the strains of the bacterium Enterobacter, identified on the toilets of the International Space Station's (ISS), which can raise potential health implications for future missions, say Indian-origin scientists at the US space agency. Five strains of 'Enterobacter' bacterium isolated from the space toilet and the exercise platform on the ISS in March 2015 were investigated in a study led by a team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and California Institute of Technology (Caltech), US. Genome sequencing of the samples revealed that all five strains belonged to a single species, Enterobacter bugandensis (E.bugandensis). While these were not pathogenic to humans, E.bugandensis was linked to disease in neonates and a compromised patient, who were admitted to three different hospitals (in east Africa, Washington state and Colorado), the researchers said. "Given the multi-drug resistance results for these ISS E.bugandensis genomes and the increased chance of pathogenicity we have identified, these species potentially pose important health considerations for future missions," said lead author Nitin Singh from NASA-JPL Caltech. "However, it is important to understand that the strains found on the ISS were not virulent, which means they are not an active threat to human health, but something to be monitored," he added. For the study, published in the journal BMC Microbiology, the team compared the ISS strains to all publicly available genomes of 1,291 Enterobacter strains collected on Earth. They found that the ISS isolates had similar antimicrobial resistance patterns to the three clinical strains found on Earth and that they included 112 genes involved in virulence, disease and defence. Using computer analyses, they predicted a 79 per cent probability that they may potentially cause disease. "Whether or not an opportunistic pathogen like E.bugandensis causes disease and how much of a threat it is, depends on a variety of factors, including environmental ones," said Kasthuri Venkateswaran, Senior Research Scientist at the JPL. "Further in vivo studies are needed to discern the impact that conditions on the ISS, such as microgravity, other space, and spacecraft-related factors, may have on pathogenicity and virulence," he noted. IANS vinaymishra188@gmail.com In this connection it is interesting to recall that a writer in the Manchester Guardian writing a few weeks ago on the Presidents suggested visit to Europe pointed out the constitutional difficulties that he thought made the visit improbable. There was, he admitted, nothing either in the American Constitution or in the statute law of the United States to prohibit a President from going abroad, and he quoted more than one instance in which an American President had technically gone abroad. The real difficulties were that it would not be possible for the President to carry out the duties that the constitution vests in him if he went abroad to such a long distance. Even in normal times, he said, there is probably no man in the world who has such a complexity of business to attend to. The White House Mail runs from 500 to 2,000 letters a day, of which it is estimated that at least 100 demand his personal attention. ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM Neha Kirpal A lot has been said and written about the textile museums of India. Now, it is time to turn the spotlight on the countrys first museum solely dedicated to costumes. Moda Goa Museum and Research Centre, the brainchild of designer Wendell Rodricks, is set to open at the designers ancestral home. Aimed at documenting the centuries-old history of Goan costume, the museum, Casa Dona Maria, houses 800 artefacts comprising statues, objects, furniture, photographs, costumes, jewellery and accessories from 7th century AD till date. The objects have all been selected based on their rare and unique characteristics, and the stories they tell. The museum would be a meeting place for art and craft aficionados and would host social and cultural activities too. It all started when the museums founding member and managing trustee, Wendell Rodricks artist friend, the late Mario Miranda, requested him to research and write about a garment called the pano bhaju, worn by Goan women. At the start of his research, Wendell had no idea about the garment, but by the end of it, he decided to go deeper into the history of Goan costume, a topic hitherto unexplored. The next 10 years were spent skimming through history. It all culminated in his first book, Moda Goa: History and Style, published by Harper Collins in 2012. After the book and two internships at the Museum at FIT in New York and the National Museum of Costume in Lisbon Rodricks realised he could open a museum with the objects he had collected during his research. So, we moved out of my ancestral home in the village of Colvale two years ago. We thought it was the perfect heritage space for the Moda Goa Museum and Research Centre, says Rodricks. The 450-year-old building had been the designers home for 20 years. The museum will have 15 galleries in the restored heritage property that has a floor area of 750 square metres. A research centre will provide learning spaces with a scholars residence and a library. The library will have a collection of books that Rodricks has gathered over three decades. Every conceivable book on Goa and fashion is in the library. Each week, we add to the collection. In our visual gallery space, we will display every Indian textile, weave, sari, print, dye and clothing technique related to Goa and India. We will have a scholars residence on the premises as we want scholars and researchers from India and the overseas to add to the museum archive with new dimensions based on their research and expertise, says Rodricks. There now is also a temporary exhibition space that will change every three months. At the moment, Rodricks is awaiting approval from the International Committee of Museums. Once it attains that, the museum will be able to loan objects from international museums and vice-versa. Rodricks says the Moda Goa Museum and Research Centre will be a huge learning curve on Goa, India, Goan costumes, history, Indian textiles, weaves and embroideries. It showcases some interesting facts and trivia about the history of Goan costumes. For instance, one of the galleries explores the influence of the freedom movement on the Konkan coast and is replete with anecdotes related to the Ranes, the Bhonsles, the Cuncolim Revolution, the Pinto Revolution and the Tunica of Barino Monteiro. Talking about the many challenges along the way, Rodricks says that when he got museum consultant Deepthi Sasidharan from Eka on board for this project, he realised that to create a world-class museum, it would have to be in line with international standards in all areas, including display, storage, conservation and research. He says they have not left any stone unturned to ensure it matches global standards. Rodricks says the support has been positive so far. Several people, including corporates, trusts and foundations have donated to the galleries. He is also seeking the help and approval of the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Textiles for the Moda Goa Museum and Research Centre. Both the ministries have been very encouraging in their response. We are looking at government support because this is a pioneering museum for the country and their support will mean a lot to the trustees and the professionals involved, he adds. A soft launch of the museum will happen as part of the Serendipity Arts Festival in mid-December and would open to the public in March next. shalender@tribune.com Kabul, November 23 An explosion ripped through a mosque inside an Afghan army base in the countrys volatile eastern Khost province as Friday prayers were drawing to a close, killing 27 soldiers and wounding 57, the military said. The blast may have been set off by a suicide bomber or a remotely detonated bomb but nothing was officially confirmed and details were sketchy. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the explosion. It was the latest in a relentless, near-daily onslaughts in Afghanistan, where the Taliban regularly target Afghan military and police forces throughout the country. There were soldiers lying everywhere and the smoke was so thick, it was difficult to see, said Abdullah, a spokesman at the base. Like most Afghans, he uses only one name. He spoke to AP over the phone from the base. The dead and wounded were rushed to a clinic within the army base, while the more seriously wounded were taken to a nearby hospital. Sakhi Sardar, head of the hospital in Khost said most of the wounded were being treated for devastating shrapnel wounds. The blast came just days after a suicide bomber killed 55 religious scholars gathered in the Afghan capital, Kabul, to celebrate the holiday marking the birth of Prophet Muhammad. AFP monicakchauhan@gmail.com Peshawar, November 23 At least 32 people, including three Pakistani-Sikhs, were killed and more than 40 others injured on Friday when a suicide bomber triggered a powerful bomb blast at a busy market outside a religious seminary in the countrys restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, police said. According to initial investigation, an improvised explosive device was planted in a bike that was used for transporting vegetables to the popular Friday Market (Juma Bazar) near an imambargah, a Shia religious place, in Orakzai tribal districts Kalaya area, bordering Afghanistan. This is a Friday bazaar, where hundreds of people had gathered for groceries, Deputy Commissioner Khalid Iqbal said. The ground is then used for Friday prayers as well, he added. At least 32 people were killed while more than 40 others injured, Dawn news quoted district administration officials as saying. Three Sikh traders and three children were also among the dead in the Orakzai blast, Iqbal told PTI. The minority Sikh community in the area was previously displaced by the Taliban that controlled the region prior to the military operation in 2010, Samaa TV reported. Officials said that most of the victims were minority Shia Muslims, who in the past were also targeted in the area. Three children were among those killed. The remote-controlled bomb was attached to a motorcycle, officials said. I was buying vegetables at a distance from bomb site, Karam Khan, who accompanied an injured person to the hospital in Kohat, said. There was a huge explosion and I woke up with blood splashed all over the place and there were body parts everywhere, he said about the gory scene. The area has been cordoned off and investigation into the incident is under way. An emergency has been declared in the regions hospitals to handle the situation. The explosion in lower Orakzai is the second terror attack in Pakistan on Friday. Earlier this morning, an attack targeting the Chinese consulate in Karachis Clifton area was foiled by security forces. Four people, including two security personnel and two civilians were killed in the attack. Three terrorists were also gunned down. Prime Minister Imran Khan strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Orakzai tribal area and said: My prayers go to the victims & their families. Let there be no doubt in anyones mind that we will crush the terrorists, whatever it takes, he said in a tweet. Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari blamed the US failure in Afghanistan for the attack and warned Pakistan to be prepared for more such incidents. She condemned the horrific terror attack. As the US fails in Afghanistan, Pakistan should be prepared for fallout and we must ensure greater security for our tribal areas especially protection of our people, she tweeted. No group claimed responsibility of the attack so far but the Taliban militants often carry out such attacks. Our enemies are not happy with peace in the province, provincial Chief Minister Mehmood Khan said while condemning the attack. In 2011, 30 people including 10 cops, were killed and over 50 injured when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden van into the building of the Communication and Works Department. Orakzai, a terror hotbed, is one of the seven semi-autonomous tribal regions of Pakistan which has a porus border with Afghanistan. PTI shalender@tribune.com Karachi, November 23 Three heavily-armed suicide bombers on Friday stormed the Chinese consulate in Pakistans largest city of Karachi, killing four people including two policemen before being shot dead by security forces which foiled the daring attack in the high-security zone, police said. Three suspected suicide bombers were killed by security forces before they could enter the consulate, located in the posh Clifton area, Karachi Police Chief Amir Shaikh said. Nine hand grenades, Kalashnikov assault rifles, magazines and explosives were recovered from the possession of the terrorists, Geo News reported. Food supplies and medicines were also recovered from their possession, officials said. We have received two dead bodies of policemen and an injured Chinese security guard who is under treatment, said Seemi Jamali, the executive director at the Jinnah Hospital. Two civilians, a father and his son were also killed, officials said. The Sindh government and the Pakistan Army confirmed that three terrorists were killed in the operation. The heavily-guarded E-Street neighbourhood, which is considered a red zone, is home to a number of upscale restaurants, diplomatic missions and schools. The Bilawal House of Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is also in the area. Schools and eateries have been locked down. The terrorists first attacked the checkpost outside the consulate and detonated a hand grenade in the area, Shaikh said. Shaikh said the attackers had parked their vehicle at some distance from the consulate before moving towards it. Prime Minister Imran Khan took to Twitter to condemn the attack. Strongly condemn the terrorist attacks against Chinese Consulate in Karachi & in Orakzai tribal area. My prayers go to the victims & their families. Salute the brave security/police personnel who gave their lives & denied success to terrorists in the mission against Chinese Consulate, he said. PTI Woman officer leads from the front A fearless woman officer of Karachi Police, who was once abandoned by relatives in her village for joining a private school, on Friday saved the lives of many Chinese diplomatic staff when heavily-armed terrorists stormed the mission SSP Suhai Aziz Talpur led the operation that foiled the brazen attack by members of the BLA. She ensured the terrorists did not reach the diplomatic staff inside the consulate building Suhai hails from a lower middle-class family of Bhai Khan Talpur village in Sindh. She joined the police force after clearing elite Central Superior Services exam in 2013 Beijing wants top security monicakchauhan@gmail.com Karachi, November 23 A fearless woman officer of the Karachi Police, who was once abandoned by relatives in her village for joining a private school, on Friday saved the lives of many Chinese diplomatic staff when heavily-armed terrorists stormed the mission in the Pakistani city. Senior Superintendent Police Suhai Aziz Talpur led the security operation that foiled the brazen attack by members of the Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, in Karachi. She ensured the terrorists, armed with nine hand-grenades, assault rifles, magazines and explosives, did not reach the diplomatic staff inside the consulate building. Police said the terrorists were carrying food supplies and medicines, suggesting they had planned to take hostages. But as soon as they reached the gates of the consulate, the police team took positions and retaliated. Two police officials were killed in the gunfight in which all the attackers were also neutralised. Suhai hails from a lower middle-class family of Bhai Khan Talpur village in Tando Muhammad Khan district of Sindh province. She joined the police force after clearing elite Central Superior Services exam in 2013, The Express Tribune reported. "When my parents decided to enrol me at a school, most of our relatives started taunting my family. So much so, that my family had to leave our village and move to a nearby town," she told the daily. Her father Aziz Talpur, a political activist and writer, always dreamt big for his daughter. "My relatives cut off ties with me because I wanted Suhai to study as they were only in favour of religious education," Aziz told the daily. "But I vowed to provide my daughter quality education." Suhai started her primary education at a private school in Tando Muhammad Khan and joined Bahria Foundation for her intermediate studies. Her educational path then led her to pursue B.Com from the Zubaida Girls College, Hyderabad in Sindh province. "My family wanted me to become a chartered accountant but I found the job to be very dull as it had no social value," she said. "That is when I appeared for CSS and cleared it in the first attempt." She credited her success to hard work and her upbringing. "My parents are nationalists. As a child, they used to emphasise that I memorise Sindhi poetry. This developed my interest in literature and history, leading me to secure top marks in both the subjects in the CSS (Central Superior Services) exams." PTI Our forefathers in their wisdom gave us watchwords to ensure the nations success. They are Discipline, Tolerance and Production. The first of the three Discipline lags behind in our progression towards the future. Hi, Suppose it depends on where in Laos you are coming from. But my first thought would be to cross at Sop Hun / Tay Trang. It appears that e-visa's are not accepted at Tay Trang, it is certainly not on the e-visa list. It's very easy to get a Vietnamese tourist visa in Laos, from Luang Prabang for example. One possible route could be: crossing at Tay Trang, on and to Dien Bien Phu. From DBP you can take a bus to Sa Pa (8-10 hrs) and then on to Ha Giang City (7hrs). Might be useful to tell us about your travel plans for Laos. Safe travels :) Edited: 3 years ago First time in Australia. Land Melbourne and fly home from Brisbane ( we dont plan to do Great Barrier Reef) mid Feb to mid March 2019 Original plan was land Melbourne 3 nights there( long journey from Uk) train to Adelaide pick up car and commence road trip ending at Brisbane taking in beaches, national parks etc. Not city people. After everyones kind feed back we have realised we dont have enough time to do it all by road, therefore we have to skip one leg and fly between one bit. My question is which bit do we fly rather than drive. They all look wonderful. I know I am going to sound extremely ill prepared. That's because I kind of am, which was sort of the plan, to just be super relaxed about the whole trip. Pura Vida. So I just arrived today from SJO and I'm staying in a b&b in Alajuela just for the night. After that is totally up in the air. So any info would be great. I would like to get out of Alajuela/San Jose area as quickly as possible. Just a break down of my restrictions: For one I am not old enough to rent a car, so buses and taxis (ferries depending) are my main plan of transportation. I traveled here solo (not adverse to making friends) Sticking to as much of a backpackers budget as possible (mostly so I can splurge on one or two things) My spanish is next to zero. I'm vegan (will mostly be making my own meals, or living off gallo pinto and fruit) Plan to stay mostly in hostels or accommodations under $20 usd. Looking for mostly hiking and wildlife observation, possibly with some beach or hot spring downtime. Maybe an adventure tour or two (ziplining, canyoning, caving, kayaking, bungee jumping are all things I'm down for, to name a few). I'd love to do something more off the beaten path like Oso, but that doesn't sound easy without a 4x4, am I wrong? I have thought about flying to Puerto Jiminez if I knew I could get around once there. Though I wouldn't mind spending 3-4 days in just a couple really good spots and minimalising the travel all together, any recommendations for that? And how to get from one spot to the other. I'm finding figuring out the bus system an adventure in and of itself, mostly attributing bus stop locations with routes and schedules. I fly home on the morning of December 4th. Any and all info is appreciated, gracias! Viettel the largest mobile phone carrier is sending out typhoon warning for HCMC. Typhoon is the Asian equivalent to a cyclone or hurricane so yes it's serious. It's the first time I have received a text message warning from the national carrier in 9 years. Laos and Cambodia will also be affected by the typhoon as Cambodia is less than 100klm from HCMC. Edited: 3 years ago I have been researching if I should drive from Tokyo city to Hakone (for convenience) or I should just take the romance car and then rent a car from Hakone-Yumoto station. Most people said no to driving out from the city due to the jam, which is my major concern too. So I had initially decided the second option, that is to rent a car from our destination until I realized Toyota Car Rental is right across the hotel where I stayed (Hotel Plaza Sunroute Shinjuku) after I checked in. I changed my plan. Due to the last minute change, we couldn't pick up the car earlier and were only able to do so at 9am, which is the peak hours of the traffic. There was jam along the way but to us, it was normal. We reached our first stop (Hakone Yumoto Station area) 2 hours after departing from Shinjuku, which didn't take long either. Our plan was to head to the Pola Art Museum and then the Little Prince Museum before heading to our Ryokan in that area. Stopping at Hakone Yumoto area wasn't in the plan but we decided to stop there for lunch when the English-guided GPS brought us through that route. It was a perfect choice as we had some really good pictures there. I love it the flexibility for driving during holidays. The next day, we left the Ryokan in the morning and started our drive to our next destination, the Kawaguchiko area. We stopped a lot during the way and when we had to drive through mountains, we spent more time there as there was many nice scenic photo stops. The route came with a lot of sharp curves but there was no danger at all even at 5 pm when the sky was already all dark and the road pitch black. Driving in these areas gave us absolute freedom to stop at any designated points and cafes we want and we absolutely love it! On our last day in the area (we spent 3 days there), we left Kawaguchiko at around 3pm and headed back to Shinjuku. This time round, we chose to stop at 2 rest stops along the highway for coffee/food to chill so we took a longer time to reach our hotel. Driving into the city was equally smooth for us (with traffic as well) and after topping up the petrol, we returned the car at 7pm sharp and were back in the same hotel across the road minutes after. The jam in the city is certainly present but that happens in every city. But it is not what I had imagined. Having read so much I seriously thought that the jam will stretch longer (like Thailand). Maybe we were lucky. We also chose to drive during the weekday instead of weekends. And the Japanese are good and polite drivers, it was a stress-free drive for us even in the city. This first time driving experience has given us a very different vibes in and I guess traveling to Japan will never be the same for us anymore :) Hi billz415 - have stayed at Bedarra several times, next door at Crow's Nest several times. This area is great for getting out and about. Directly below the Outrigger resort. From Bedarra short walk along the Old Suva Road (right on beachfront) towards Sigatoka way to Fiji Hot Glass company - join in the free displays of glass blowing which are amazing. The items on display are for sale but although very beautiful.... can be expensive. From memory open 10am - 4pm daily (maybe shut on a Sunday). Further along is Flying Finn pizza restaurant. Great food, very popular, open lunchtime through to evening. Guests are welcome to visit Crow's Nest next door for food options, happy hour. Along the other way (towards Suva direction) is the Casablanca Hotel/restaurant. Nice for a change, with pizzas and cheap drinks. As E&CinReno advises up above, you are able to book tours from Bedarra. Rental cars are also available for hire from here. Regarding the school visits - quite recently the Government issued a new directive/rule that visits to schools were actively discouraged during school hours, lunch breaks etc. The schools get so many visits they considered this to be detrimental to the children's learning time. Investigate travelling to an inland/off the beaten track school which may not have many visitors. Further towards Sigatoka (will require a tour or organised trip) are the Sigatoka sand dunes (where the Fiji rugby teams 'train') the Momi battery fortress on the hill, fascinating history of WWII built by the 30th battalion of the NZ Expeditonary Forces (from memory $8-00 entry per person) and the Sigatoka Pottery place. Get a local bus into Sigatoka (from outside Outrigger Resort) takes around 10 minutes and costs $2-00) for a look at the markets, stock up on supplies, shopping, plenty of areas to explore. Remember that all bus travel now is via e-ticket means - i.e. visitors/tourists can hand over cash in exchange for a disposable e-ticket for their travel. Drivers are not allowed to take cash in exchange for a bus ride - they must issue an e-ticket. You will love Bedarra, great staff, wonderful food, accommodation is great (no TV) and large rooms. Hi, My husband and I with our two kids (8 year old and 1 year old) are looking at travelling to Fiji for a week holiday in July. We are looking for a resort which has two bedrooms or connected rooms. Can anyone recommend a resort which has this style of room? Kids club and facilities for babies? We only have stayed previously at Tokoriki Island resort... the days are gone of adult only resorts! We loved the fijian style and intimacy of Tokoriki! - The visa waiver is expected to improve people-to-people interactions and bilateral trade between the two countries - The deal was sealed during Mozambique's President Filipe Jacinto Nyusi's state visit to Kenya on Wednesday -The two heads of state also talked extensively about mutual cooperation in areas such as tourism, energy and aviation - South Africa had also days earlier scrapped off short-term visa requirement for Kenyans President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Mozambique counterpart, Filipe Jacinto Nyusi, have waived visa for citizens and investors traveling between the two countries. The deal signed between the two presidents on Wednesday, November 21, means one can now travel from Kenya to Mozambique and vice versa without the document. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens READ ALSO: South Africa Kenya visa: requirements and application form President Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya, his Mozambique counterpart Filipe Jacinto Nyusi who arrived in the country on Wednesday, November 21, for an official state visit. Photo: Uhuru Kenyatta. Source: Facebook READ ALSO: Easier travel as South Africa scraps short-term visa requirement for Kenyans Addressing the nation shortly after signing the visa agreement, Uhuru said the deal would go a long way in boosting trade between the two countries. "I am delighted that today Kenya and Mozambique have finally agreed and signed an appropriate visa waiver framework. This is the right step towards facilitating people to people contact, as well as enhancing trade between our two nations," the president said. READ ALSO: Raila Odinga bows out of 2022 succession politics following African Union appointment He added a number of other efforts were being made to bolster trade between Kenya and Mozambique and to build capacity in developing the blue economy so as to unlock the great potential in maritime resources in the two nations. Kenya, Uhuru said, had also made good progress in the growth of gas, oil and coal exploration in the southern Africa nation. However, the country is still seeking to learn from Mozambiques best practices, especially in the area of transfer of technology, to help it develop its own extractive industry. READ ALSO: List of prominent Kenyan personalities on radar of FBI for drug trafficking Nyusi, on his part, expressed gratitude to Uhuru for inviting him to Kenya and assured him of his government's commitment to facilitate the bilateral trade relations between the two economies. Kenya is a model economy. Under President Kenyatta's administration, we have seen a lot of progress. It is therefore befitting for us to work with a government that sets such a model, Nyusi, who was in the country for a state visit, said. The visa deal comes less than a month after Kenya and South Africa entered in a related but different deal. Under the agreement, Kenyans traveling to South Africa for studies, business and government duties will now enjoy longer stay in the country after the country scrapped short-term visas. Those traveling for studies and business will be issued with multiple entry visas valid for up to 10 years while government officials on official business will be granted free, three-months visas. 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. King Kaka blames Kenya's media for Tanzania-Nigeria music invasion - On Tuko TV Source: Tuko Breaking News Latest - One of the suspects, a Tanzanian, produced 47 substances from his rectum - The banned narcotics were destined for illicit markets in India and China - The suspects are being observed and sleuths hope to recover more pellets from them Detectives have arrested three foreigners for allegedly transporting narcotics in their bodies. The trio was arrested on Thursday, November 22, at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) during a security screening. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens. READ ALSO: Nakuru man kills wife after finding her in bed with lover Msafiri Musa, a Tanzanian, had concealed 47 pellets of the illegal substance in his rectum. Photo: DCI's Twitter Source: Twitter READ ALSO: Binti mrembo ashangaza wengi baada ya kutangaza anaishi na virusi vya HIV Through a brief statement, the DCI said one of the suspects, Msafiri Musa, a Tanzanian, had concealed 47 pellets of the illegal substance in his rectum. According to detectives, the drugs were destined for India and China and that the suspects had since been put under examination. READ ALSO: Bomet man gets KDF job after elderly mum's support wins recruiters' hearts. READ ALSO: A view of Nyali estate's tallest high-end residential building that is the talk of town The arrest came one week after detectives and Anti-Narcotics Unit impounded a parcel which had heroin and methamphetamine concealed in it. In a Thursday, November 15, statement, the DCI said the substances were disguised in wood carvings, rolls of thread and an atlas. They were destined for markets in Greece and China. On Wednesday, November 12, another package of heroin worth millions of shillings was intercepted at the same airport. The substances were concealed in a box containing makeup kits and according to sleuths, the were en route to China and NewZealand. Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news. Kenyans Mixed Reactions Over The 2/3 Gender Rule Bill| Tuko TV. Source: Tuko.co.ke - Sonko hinted the building would be destroyed on Friday morning - He said those involved in approving the structure would be sent home Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko has vowed to send home county officials who allowed construction of a dangerous house in Kayole. Sonko said the officials will be shown the door on the morning of Friday, November 23, adding that he had nothing to negotiate with them. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens. READ ALSO: Nairobi County orders for demolition of shaky Kayole building after public outrage Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko has vowed to send home county officials who facilitated construction of a dangerous house in Kayole. Photo:UGC Source: UGC READ ALSO: Binti mrembo ashangaza wengi baada ya kutangaza anaishi na virusi vya HIV In a Facebook post, he also hinted that the seven storey building located on Spine Road in Embakasi, would be pulled down Friday morning. READ ALSO: 3 foreigners arrested at JKIA with drugs concealed in their rectums In a separate story, TUKO.co.ke reported that City Hall had ordered for the building to be destroyed after the owner failed to do. The owner, Peter Wairagu Muya, was on Friday, November 9, also given a seven-day notice to submit construction plans and a structural integrity reports but he did not comply. According to documents shared by Sonko, two people were on Tuesday, November 20, charged with offenses linked to the shaky building. Muya, according to the suit papers, was charged with erecting the building without approved plans. The other accused person, James Macharia, was accused of illegally changing the user profile of the plot from residential to commercial. Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news. Kenyans Mixed Reactions Over The 2/3 Gender Rule Bill| Tuko TV. Source: Tuko - Busienei stopped Maina and demanded to be given the car he was driving back to police station - Busienei taunted the DCI officer to shoot him while advancing towards him - Police confirmed Bursienei sustained four gun shot wounds which pierced through his neck and chin - The body was moved to Kenyatta University Mortuary pending autopsy as police launched investigations A bitter exchange over a government vehicle between two police officers at Thindigua area in Kiambu county has left one officer dead. Police constable Evanson Kipngetich Busienei was shot dead at 10 minutes past midnight of Friday, November 23, by Chief Inspector Dancun Maina who is attached at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations(DCI) headquarters. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens. READ ALSO: Binti mrembo ashangaza wengi baada ya kutangaza anaishi na virusi vya HIV Dancun Maina is attached at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations(DCI) headquarters. Photo: DCI Kenya/Facebook. Source: Facebook READ ALSO: Police shoot dead woman at City Park in case of mistaken identity In a police report seen by TUKO.co.ke, Maina alleged the deceased while being followed by another man stopped him and demanded to be given Toyota Corolla car he was driving. After warning he would shoot him, Busienei taunted him to do so while advancing towards him prompting Maina to stop the vehicle and drew his pistol and shot at him at close range. The suspect then alighted and shot continuously at the said deceased. During the melee, Maina shot towards the other man accompanying the victim but missed his target . "He further shot towards the short chase Land-Rover registration KBY 037Z where four other men were standing forcing them to escape. He went and reported at Thindigua Police Post vide OB 2/23/11/2018 at 0032 hours," said police report. Police confirmed Busienei sustained four gun shot wounds which pierced through his neck and chin. The said Land Rover was shot at once and the rear screen smashed as its driver drove off to report at Kiambu Police Station. The body was moved to Kenyatta University Mortuary pending autopsy as police launched investigations. 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: Top Girl in KCPE 2018 | Tuko TV Source: Kenya Breaking News Today - Tom Murgor is a veteran farmers, Orange Democratic Movement politician and engineer - Murgor contested for Uasin Gishu senatorial seat in 2017 on an ODM ticket and came third - The independent minded senior citizen has been consistently on the front line of advocating for farmers' plight - He hit out at Kapseret MP Oscar Sudi for overlooking farmers' cries saying he was intellectually challenged - Murgor said the MP's thinking capacity could not logically process issues raised by farmers hence his incessant opposition Kapseret MP Oscar Sudi found himself staring from the wrong side of the farmers' barrel after he poured cold water on comments by three North Rift MPs who stood in solidarity with maize producers over their plight. An angry veteran farmer and Uasin Gishu Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) politician Tom Murgor could not mince his words in correcting Sudi's remarks, prevailing on the MP to maintain his wit lanes. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens READ ALSO: Police unmask 8 Ambira High School students captured in viral video insulting CS Matiang'i and Amina Veteran Uasin Gishu farmer and ODM politician Tom Murgor (right), Kenya Farmers Association Director Kipkorir Menjo (centre) and Uasin Gishu ODM Chairman David Songok. Photo:The Star. Source: UGC READ ALSO: Binti mrembo ashangaza wengi baada ya kutangaza anaishi na virusi vya HIV Speaking to journalists in Eldoret on Wednesday, November 21, Murgor dismissed Sudi's move to insult Cherangany MP Joshua Kutuny, Alfred Keter of Nandi Hills and Moiben's Sila Tiren for asking government to offer better prices for maize farmers. The agitated farmer who contested for the Uasin Gishu senatorial position in the 2017 General Election and emerged third behind winner Margaret Kamar and Robert Kemei critically questioned the MP's intellectual capacity to sustain discussion on maize production. He argued when Kutuny and team spoke, they said corruption at National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) was crippling farmers and challenged Deputy President William Ruto to break his silence on these issues. "It was premature for legislators affiliated to Ruto to respond before he could give his side of the story. I am perturbed by my friend Kapseret MP Oscar Sudi. This man is an intellectually challenged person and self proclaimed mtu wa deals (wheeler-dealer)," said Murgor. Kapseret MP has faced a court suit in which his constituent challenged his academic qualifications, alleging he had forged academic certificates. Photo: UGC. Source: UGC READ ALSO: KDF recruiters alarmed at high number of aspiring recruits testing positive for STDs The engineer observed Sudi was ignorant to farmers' issues in his response which went viral on social media sites. "He is very ignorant about farmers' rights. I am sure issues being canvassed by farmers are beyond his comprehension," added Murgor. The eloquent politician with an au fait of farmer's issues said Sudi was a perfect illustration of the Pavlovian conditioning theory programmed to speak about 2022 succession politics. The Kapsaret MP was in the spot for hitting out at his three counterparts defending the farmers' interests saying they had been paid by Ruto's detractors to portray him in negative light. 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 Faces of Kenya: Meet Kenyan Student Who Writes, Reads Upside Down - On Tuko TV Source: Tuko German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman will open the 3d German-Ukrainian Economic Forum in Berlin. On Thursday, November 29, the Chancellor will take part in the 3d German-Ukrainian Economic Forum in Berlin, German Government Spokesman Steffen Seiber stated today. Merkel and Groysman will hold bilateral talks, the spokesman added. The forum will be attended by Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Peter Altmaier, Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister - Regional Development Minister Hennadiy Zubko, Finance Minister Oksana Markarova, Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers Oleksandr Sayenko, other heads of ministries and departments of the two countries, businessmen. ish On November 23, Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Rozenko held a bilateral meeting with Minister of Environment, Water and Agriculture of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Abdulrahman bin Abdulmohsen Al-Fadley. "Over the past years, a dialogue between Ukraine and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been intensified at all levels, which certainly contributes to the development of cooperation between our friendly states in all areas of mutual interest. Saudi Arabia is the leading country in the Middle East and we consider this country to be our important and promising partner," Rozenko said, the Government portal reported. During the meeting, the parties discussed a number of issues related to the development of trade and economic partnership between the two states. According to Rozenko, the establishment of a political dialogue between Ukraine and Saudi Arabia, as well as the regular holding of joint meetings of the Intergovernmental Ukrainian-Saudi Arabian Commission for Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation in 2017-2018, created favorable conditions for deepening trade and economic cooperation. "In particular, this concerns the realization of existing potential in such areas as investment, energy, construction, aerospace, agriculture, commerce, medicine, education, research and tourism. In our opinion, these sectors are the most promising ones for development of cooperation," the Ukrainian vice prime minister stressed. "I am pleased to note that according to the results of nine months of this year, the trade turnover between our countries increased by 12.3%," he emphasized. Rozenko also noted that Ukraine was interested in deepening interaction in such areas of humanitarian cooperation as education, medicine and tourism. ish The decision to approve a tomos of autocephaly for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church will be made at a meeting of the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on November 27-29, President Petro Poroshenko said. He said this at a meeting with students of the Kyiv National Trade and Economic University on Friday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. "On November 27-29, [presidential advisor] Rostyslav Pavlenko is going to Istanbul (Constantinople) to attend a historic Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, where the decision on the approval of a tomos will be made," Poroshenko said. He also recalled that the council of a new, autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church would be held in December. On October 11, the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate decided to grant a tomos (ordinance) of autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Kyiv now has to convene a council involving the bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, who turned to the Ecumenical Patriarch with the request to grant the tomos. The council will carry out church unification, form a single local Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and elect its primate. After that, the head of the single local autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church will receive the tomos as a document (letter). President Petro Poroshenko and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew signed an agreement on cooperation between Ukraine and the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul on November 3. op Experts from the EU "Pravo-Justice" Project say that Ukraine has minimized political influence on the judiciary, and judges are now appointed only on the basis of a complex competitive selection procedure. This is stated in a report "Selection and Evaluation of Judges," which was presented in Kyiv on November 23, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. According to the report, thanks to the work of the Judicial Reform Council, for the first time in Ukrainian history, a practical transition was made from individual initiatives to a more systematic approach to justice reforms. In most countries, the new approach used by Ukraine to the selection and qualification assessment of current judges has never been applied to the public sector as a whole, not to mention judicial authorities. Experts point out that the Ukrainian evaluation procedure for the selection or determination of the skills of judges is unique in its scope and content in the world and has specific features. In particular, they include complexity of procedures and methods of evaluation of candidates, participation of civil society, a high level of technocracy during the evaluation of candidates, during which not only legal knowledge is assessed, but also judges' social competence and psychological abilities on the basis of established criteria. Psychological tests, according to experts, deserve special attention because they help examine the general knowledge and skills (IQ) of judges and candidates, ethics and integrity, social competencies, propensity to psycho-pathological risks, and other social and managerial skills. According to the report, psychological tests have already positively influenced the overall process, acting as an important procedural safeguard, which limits discretion in assessing the social and psychological characteristics of a candidate for a judicial position. The importance of the psychological testing method, which can be compared with those already used, though on a smaller scale, in some EU countries, is a good base for obtaining a detailed expert assessment of a candidate's personality. Experts also admit that not only judges, lawyers and scholars with relevant professional experience can now apply for a judicial position in the Supreme Court, appellate and specialized courts. In 2016, Ukraine began a process of systematic re-loading of the judiciary by introducing a compulsory qualification assessment of all active judges in order to confirm their ability to administer justice. The reboot of the judiciary also involves the selection of new judges and the creation of new courts. More than 6,000 judges and candidates for judicial positions will pass through the procedures developed by the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine (HQCJ). op Britain should support Ukraine and recognize the Holodomor as genocide against the Ukrainian people. British journalist and publishing editor Gary Cartwright wrote this in an article for independent media platform EU Today on the eve of the 85th anniversary of the Holodomor of 1932-1933. "It is, therefore important, if we are to learn the lessons of history, and to avoid repeating them, that Holodomor is recognized as an act of genocide in the same way that we acknowledge Holocaust as such. Whilst many nations have taken this decision, one stands out for its lack of action: the United Kingdom," says Cartwright, who is the author of a petition to the British Government and Parliament on recognizing the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. According to him, there have been efforts in this area, and in 2016, British Labor Member of Parliament for Ealing Central and Acton (West London) Rupa Huq called on the UK Government to give support to the Ukrainian people by acknowledging Holodomor as genocide. "They need our solidarity, because they are now under attack - again [] Can we get urgent explanation why we still haven't done that, unlike other countries?" the British parliamentarian said. Cartwright said that whilst there are still survivors of Holodomor, albeit small in numbers and advanced in years, it is now more important that the UK recognize Holodomor as genocide. "We owe at least this to the memory of the millions of innocent victims of this heinous political crime," the British journalist said. op A Rohingya refugee carries a gas stove home from a UNHCR distribution centre in Kutupalong refugee settlement in Bangladesh. UNHCR/Roger Arnold UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, kicked-off this week a large-scale distribution of energy-efficient Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) to Rohingya refugees sheltered in Kutupalong and the other refugee settlements in Bangladeshs Coxs Bazar district. This game-changing project, in support of Bangladeshs overall humanitarian response, aims to provide more than 200,000 refugee households as well as a significant number of vulnerable Bangladeshi host families with clean, healthy, safe and reliable source of energy for cooking and heating. It will also help to tackle and reverse the environmental impact of the refugee situation in southern Bangladesh. Until now, Rohingya refugees and many of the host communities in Bangladesh have been almost entirely reliant on firewood for cooking. Refugee families spend much of their day either collecting firewood or using what few resources they have to buy it. A pilot distribution of the new fuel earlier this autumn to 6,000 refugee families demonstrated how use of LPG can gradually end these practices. The switch will also aid the protection of refugees because most of those collecting the firewood are women and children who can be at risk taking long and dangerous daily treks. Using LPG should also improve air quality and peoples health, as refugees will no longer have to cook on open fires using wood or other material they find. According to the health workers in the vast and densely populated Rohingya refugee settlements, respiratory illnesses attributed to the smoke are the most common health problems among refugees. The alternative fuel initiative is being supported by the Bangladesh government, including the Refugee Repatriation and Relief Commissioner (RRRC) and the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief (MoDMR), as well as other UN agencies, including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), IOM and the World Food Programme (WFP). The environmental impact of the refugee influx since August 2017 has been significant. More than 730,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar since then joining tens of thousands of others already in Bangladesh. The estimated 900,000 Rohingya refugees in the Coxs Bazar area have needed 700 metric tons of wood every day for cooking alone. To tackle this, and in parallel with the LPG distribution, UNHCR with its partners, including IUCN (the International Union for Conservation of Nature) and BRAC, is also providing tens of thousands of saplings in the refugee settlements to help reforest the area and improve the environment. So far, in an effort to help mitigate the environmental impact of the refugee crisis UNHCR had been providing monthly distributions of Compressed Rice Husks (CRH) to 95,000 refugee families as fuel, but it has been insufficient for all their cooking needs. As part of the distribution, refugees receive a mandatory, hands-on training on how to safely and responsibly use the LPG cylinders and stoves. The cylinders contain 12.5 kilograms of LPG, enough to meet all cooking needs of a family of five for a month. Refugees will also be entitled to regular refills at monthly periods. Most of the stoves are being produced locally, creating jobs in the local Bangladeshi economy. In addition to assisting refugees, every sixth stove and gas cylinder will be delivered to the vulnerable Bangladeshi families in local communities hosting Rohingya refugees. For Broadcasters B-Roll available here. For more information on this topic, please contact: Abraham, his wife and newborn baby were among 132 refugees and asylum-seekers evacuated to Niger on Thursday. UNHCR/Farah Harwida TRIPOLI, Libya On Thursday, a smiling Abdul Karim was unable to hide his excitement as he clutched his boarding pass, ready to join 131 other refugees on a flight out of Tripoli to Nigers capital Niamey. My life starts today, said the Somali refugee, his hopes of a better future suddenly reawakened. I want to study hard and make a difference in the world. I want to be a good member of the community. A year after UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, began life-saving evacuations for vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers out of Libya, almost 2,500 people who have been held in detention in Libya have now been evacuated to Niger, Italy and Romania. One year of UNHCR evacuations from Libya (Paula Barrachina Esteban, producer / Sufyan Ararah, camera-edit) In the latest evacuation yesterday, 132 refugees and asylum-seekers, including women and children, were flown from Tripoli to Niger. In Niger, they will be hosted at a UNHCR Emergency Transit Mechanism while longer-term solutions in third countries are sought for them. Abdul Karim and the other evacuees were previously held in Triq Al Sikka and Abu Salim detention facilities in Libya. Forty-one of those evacuated yesterday were unaccompanied children. Most were detained after being intercepted or rescued at sea during attempted crossings from Libya to Europe. Refugees in Libya are faced with a nightmarish scenario. They have fled their homes in search of safety and protection only to end up incarcerated, languishing indefinitely in squalid conditions, said Roberto Mignone, UNHCRs Chief of Mission in Libya. "Refugees in Libya are faced with a nightmarish scenario." Despite significant security challenges and restrictions on movement to complete these evacuations, UNHCR has undertaken 23 of evacuations from Libya since November 2017. Despite ongoing instability, Libya remains a major transit country for people fleeing conflict and instability in other parts of Africa and the Middle East. Refugees and asylum-seekers, women and children among them, wait to be flown to Niger. UNHCR/Farah Harwida An Eritrean man proudly cradles his daughter while waiting to be evacuated to Niger. UNHCR/Farah Harwida A UNHCR worker supervises the evacuation process at Tripoli airport. UNHCR/Farah Harwida Children were among the 132 refugees and asylum-seekers flown to Niger on Thursday. UNHCR/Farah Harwida When he fled insecurity in his native Somalia more than a year ago, Abdul Karim dreamt of reaching Europe and enrolling in university. But his life soon turned into a waking nightmare when he found himself trapped in Libya, initially in the hands of unscrupulous smugglers and then in a detention centre in the capital Tripoli. Despite his ordeal, Abdul Karim insisted that leaving Somalia in search of a better life was the only option left to him. It was the only way to be safe and to eventually help my family, he explained. Also on Thursdays flight was 28-year-old Marharit, a refugee from Eritrea who spent two years in Libya with her three-year-old daughter, in detention and with smugglers. She said her only goal was to find refuge in a safe country where she could raise her daughter in peace. Today I am changing my life and that of my daughter. I am very happy. One year since UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, began life-saving evacuations from Libya for the most vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers, almost 2,500 people previously in detention in Libya have now been flown out to Niger, Italy and Romania. In the latest evacuation, 132 refugees and asylum seekers, including women and children, were flown from Tripoli to Niger yesterday where they are being hosted at a UNHCR Emergency Transit Mechanism while longer-term solutions in third countries are being sought for them. All the evacuees were previously detained in Triq Al Sikka and Abu Salim detention facilities in Tripoli. Forty-one of them are unaccompanied children. Most were detained after being intercepted or rescued at sea during attempted crossings from Libya to Europe. In light of the dangers for refugees and migrants in Libya, UNHCR does not consider it to be a safe place for disembarkation and also has advised against returns to Libya following search and rescues at sea. Refugees in Libya are faced with a nightmarish scenario. They have fled their homes in search of safety and protection only to end up incarcerated, languishing indefinitely in squalid conditions, said Roberto Mignone, UNHCRs Chief of Mission in Libya. It is reprehensible that they are detained instead of protected. This is despite the fact that viable alternatives to detention within Libya can be found, including through a Gathering and Departure Facility that we have been waiting to open since July, which could offer immediate protection and safety for those most vulnerable. When opened, the Gathering and Departure Facility would be the first of its kind in the country, sheltering vulnerable refugees until they can be got out of Libya. Though the facility is ready for use, UNHCR is still advocating with Libyan authorities for it to be opened. In light of the difficult circumstances facing refugees and asylum seekers trapped in Libya, UNHCR continues to advocate for alternatives to detention and for more support for evacuations, which remain a crucial lifeline for the most vulnerable. Despite significant security challenges and restrictions on movements UNHCR has undertaken 23 evacuations from Libya since November 2017. 2,476 vulnerable refugees and asylum-seekers have since been released from detention and evacuated from Libya to Niger (2,069), Italy (312) and Romania (95). Those evacuated include single mothers, families, people with medical conditions and more than 300 unaccompanied and separated children. With many refugees remaining in Libya and many in need of urgent evacuation, UNHCR urges more countries to come forward with additional resettlement places. For further information, please contact: Romanenko, former Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said Ukraine will not "sit idle" and will "defend their positions" if necessary. A shipping dispute between Ukraine and Russia is at risk of escalating into a "great war" as Western nations seek to face down aggression from Vladimir Putin, a former Ukrainian general has warned. Ukraine has accused Russia of harassing of ships and increasing its military presence in the Sea of Azov, a strategic ocean route linked to the Black Sea by the narrow Strait of Kerch, according to the Daily Star. A dispute over access to the sea, shared by Ukraine and Russia, has provoked an acrimonious war of words, with both sides accusing each other of illegally detaining their ships. Tensions over the thorny issue of access to the sea have escalated since Russia built a bridge, known as the Kerch Strait Bridge, linking the annexed Crimean Peninsula with the mainland. Former Ukrainian lieutenant-general Igor Romanenko said the blocking of ships could prompt the West to impose further sanctions on Russia, which could have devastating consequences. He said a "large-scale war" is possible if Russia continues to "aggravate the situation" in the Sea of Azov by conducting invasive inspections and seizing fishing ships. Read alsoUkraine's defense minister responds to Russian threats to "shut down" Sea of Azov Romanenko, former Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said Ukraine will not "sit idle" and will "defend their positions" if necessary. However, he said Ukraine should be wary about resorting to military action because Russia has a superior army and "we will not be able to answer," he said according to various Russian and Ukrainian news outlets. "In this case, you need to focus and translate the situation in a large-scale war, which is currently impractical for Ukraine," he said. The tense situation in the Sea of Azov comes amid the backdrop of armed conflict between the Kyiv government and the Russia-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine. As tensions simmer, Russia's foreign ministry issued a statement warning that "responsibility for possible further deterioration of the situation in the Azov-Kerch Strait area is with Ukraine and other states supporting its provocative actions." In the statement, the ministry denied Russia was militarizing the Sea of Azov saying forces have been deployed for "guarding the Crimean Bridge." Inspections of ships in the waters are legitimate and not discriminatory, the ministry added. Russian lawmaker Frants Klintsevich, who sits on the defense committee in the upper house of parliament, said on November 16 that Russia could "cut off" the Sea of Azov "in minutes" in response to the detention of Russian ships. "It doesn't matter if we are talking about the detention of Russian ships or ships of foreign states," he said. "By such actions, Ukraine itself really breaks the agreement on the Sea of Azov, from which only it will suffer." Meanwhile, UK defence secretary Gavin Williamson announced a series of military exercises and the deployment of more troops and a Royal Navy ship to Ukraine. In a meeting with the visiting Ukrainian defence minister Stepan Poltorak, Williamson said the deployment would strengthen their military ties "in the face of intensifying threats and aggression" from Russia. An unspecified number of British forces would be sent to train Ukrainian special forces and marines early next year, The Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed. The HMS Echo, a hydrographic survey ship, will be deployed to the Black Sea region, complete with its crew of 72, the MoD said. Williamson said: "As long as Ukraine faces Russian hostilities, it will find a steadfast partner in the United Kingdom." "By continuing to work together, whether through training programmes or military exercises, we help Ukraine to stand up for our shared values. "Those values of freedom and democracy cannot be traded." "I have witnessed on the frontline the effects of the conflict in the East and this has completely reinforced my support for Ukraine's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity." Klimkin says this and many other important issues will be discussed at the Ukrainian-Hungarian consular consultations in Kyiv on November 28. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin says Ukraine will not discuss with Hungary how to interpret Ukrainian laws on the Ukrainian territory. "We are not discussing with the Hungarian side how to interpret Ukrainian laws on the Ukrainian territory. This and many other important issues will be discussed at the Ukrainian-Hungarian consular consultations in Kyiv on November 28, as well as during my next meetings with [Hungarian FM] Peter Szijjarto," Klimkin wrote on Twitter on November 23, 2018. Read alsoHungary to continue blocking Ukraine-NATO Commission As UNIAN reported earlier, Hungary has been blocking the holding of meetings of the Ukraine-NATO Commission, claiming the alleged violation of rights of Hungarians living in Ukraine over the provision of the new education law making Ukrainian language the language of instruction in the education process. In particular, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary, Peter Szijjarto, demanded that Ukraine amend the law on education and postpone its implementation until 2023, otherwise Budapest will block important meetings for Ukraine at the level of the European Union and NATO. In addition, after the situation with the secret distribution of Hungarian passports to Ukrainians in Zakarpattia region, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said that Ukraine could expel the Hungarian Consul in Berehove and would continue implementing the pro-Ukrainian policy in the region. In turn, Szijjarto threatened to resort to new measures to hinder the European and Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine. On October 4, the Hungarian Consul in the town of Berehove was declared persona non grata. He had to leave the territory of Ukraine within the following 72 hours. In a retaliation move, Hungary announced the expulsion of the Ukrainian Consul in Budapest. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on November 15 echoed Vladimir Putin in claiming that it was impossible to reach an agreement with today's leadership of Ukraine. He expressed hope that following presidential elections scheduled for 2019, it will be easier for Budapest to come to terms with Ukraine leaders. Crimea is Ukraine, the head of state emphasized. President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko said that the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the occupied Crimea is a gross violation of international law. Of course, we view the actions of the Russian president as a gross violation of international law. I'd like to emphasize separately that these visits and I hope they hear this in Russia won't make Crimea Russian. Crimea is Ukraine it was and it will always be, Poroshenko said during a joint press conference with Slovak President Andrej Kiska in Kyiv Friday. Read alsoPutin set to visit illegally annexed Crimea As UNIAN reported earlier, on November 23, a Russian delegation headed by President Putin arrived in the occupied Crimea to discuss the future of Russia. According to Putins press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, the Russian president was to hold in the occupied Crimea an extensive meeting of the State Duma presidium on the major activities of the executive authorities of the Russian Federation. The meeting was held at the U.S.-sanctioned Mriya Hotel. The approved amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine on the strategic course of the state to acquire full membership in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have won the constitutional number of votes, 311. But it is still a long way to go until the final decision is made. President Petro Poroshenko says the final adoption is scheduled for February 2019. This is quite realistic, as the final changes shall be made at the next session of the Verkhovna Rada, which begins on February 5, 2019. The path to legislative changes is shorter, while will have to wait much longer for Ukraine actually joining the EU and NATO. Everyone realizes that today, it's just a slogan and Poroshenko's advantage in his race for the second presidential term. It is also a political marker showing that Ukraine (albeit only in words) is parting with Russia. The outcome of the vote for the Constitutional amendments was not surprising. The Opposition Bloc in its entirety said no to the bill a move which is another litmus test for them. It is obvious that the direction they choose is toward Russia. Twenty-one deputies from the faction voted against the decision setting the country's course toward the EU and NATO. Among them are deputies from both "halves" of the "bloc." This situation clearly demonstrates that there are no ideological differences in these political shards, but only different curators from a single center, which certainly does not want to see Ukraine either in the EU or in NATO. After the adoption of the next year's budget, where everyone will get something, it will be hard to gather deputies for the session However, it should be noted that in this issue, everything was done a bit awkwardly, as it often happens. The presidential administration had for several days "stormed" the Constitutional Court to have ASAP a positive conclusion on the bill because there had been different approaches to the matter, in particular, regarding the legal wording of the changes introduced. For several days, unsuccessful meetings were held until Thursday a decision was made in a rush, which was quickly voted in the Rada. Such a rush might seem to be weird, after all, weekly sessions in December are still ahead. One of the deputies joked: "It must be understood that after the adoption of the next year's budget, where everyone will get something, it will be hard to gather deputies for the session." That is, parliamentarians will be immersed in Christmas and New Year preparations, and there will be no time for work. At the same time, the situation has shown that it is the independence of the Constitutional Court could be questioned. It was also interesting to observe Poroshenko's address in the Verkhovna Rada and the reaction of the people's deputies. The guarantor of the Constitution was accusing opponents of having sympathies toward Russia, while those "accused" were shouting out from their places that the president should remember on whose team he had been in some of Ukraine's hard times, hinting at Poroshenko once being part of the Yanukovych team. Despite the fact that the Verkhovna Rada, in the end, supported the presidential bill, there were disputes in the session hall ahead of the vote. For example, pro-Russian deputies, when discussing the changes to the Constitution, once again insisted that a referendum on such issues is necessary, since Ukraine's accession to NATO is supported by less than half of the population, while just over half of Ukrainians support the idea of the country joining the EU. However, how can these people even talk about things like that, while having without any referendums given up on Ukraine's independence in Russia's favor, in particular, through supporting agreements on the deployment of the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea? Also, the expediency was discussed of removing from the "Transitional Provisions" of the Constitution a clause saying that the use of existing military bases on the territory of Ukraine for the temporary stay of foreign military formations is possible on terms of lease in accordance with the procedure established by the international treaties of Ukraine, ratified by the Verkhovna Rada. In essence, this is a refusal to accommodate the Black Sea Fleet of Russia. Hanna Hopko, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Foreign Affairs Committee, said that that the Committee had proposed the following wording: "Ukraine's accession to the North Atlantic Treaty, signed in Washington on April 4, 1949, cooperation between Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will be determined by international agreements and arrangements, according to which Ukraine's territory may host military formations of NATO member states as well as the Alliance's infrastructure facilities, under the conditions determined by the contracting parties." "That is, until the moment of Ukraine's accession to NATO, we allow this deployment of bases without spelling it out in the amendments to the Constitution," said Hopko. Since the prospect of Ukraine's accession to NATO remains distant, this would have enabled the deployment of NATO bases in Ukraine, which would have in turn become a military backbone for Ukraine. However, according to Hopko, it was impossible to convince anybody. Nothing's strange here. After all, there is no time for such revisions as the elections are knocking at the door, and the electorate must be shown a nice picture of the "reform." All the rest is just details... Nadia Pryshliak The number of veterans is expected to be increasing. Civil volunteer, Donbas war veteran, head of the Mir & Co charity fund Myroslav Hai has said that by creating the Ministry of Veterans, Ukraine is following suit of the United States, where a similar department has existed for a very long time. The creation of such a ministry will also be funded by the United States together with NATO countries. The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs ranks second in terms of funding after the U.S. Department of Defense. Read alsoGroysman nominates Markarova for finance minister, Friz for veterans' affairs minister "America respects its military, they are national heroes, they still have echoes of the Vietnam War, and there were also Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Ukraine has been at war for five years. This war is longer than World War II. We have more and more veterans. And these are not only servicemen these are the National Guard, the SBU Security Service of Ukraine, etc.," Hai said, according to the Ukrainian news outlet Obozrevatel. In his opinion, the number of veterans will be increasing for many more years ahead. After all, apart from the conflict in Donbas, Ukraine is going to join NATO, and, accordingly, more actively and more often will take part in peacekeeping operations. "This ministry requires the money Ukraine does not have. We already have a gap in the budget. Therefore, as far as I know, we have long been in talks with the United States and NATO countries about creating trust funds to assist in opening and managing the ministry. Believe me if there were no clear understanding that this ministry would be effective, they would not have created it," Hai said. GRETA encourages Ukraine to ratify the Council of Europe's Convention against Trafficking in Human Organs. The Council of Europe's Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) has urged Ukraine to continue fighting against human trafficking. "GRETA once again urges the Ukrainian authorities to develop and maintain a comprehensive and coherent statistical system on trafficking in human beings by compiling reliable statistical data on presumed and identified victims of trafficking and measures to protect and promote their rights, on compensation claimed and awarded to victims, as well as on the investigation, prosecution and adjudication of human trafficking cases," according to a new report of November 22 on the implementation of the Council of Europe's Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (THB) by Ukraine. Read alsoUkrainians fall into labor slavery mostly in Russia, Poland IOM The experts advise that statistics regarding victims should be collected from all main actors and allow disaggregation concerning sex, age, type of exploitation, country of origin and/or destination. This should be accompanied by all the necessary measures to ensure the right of data subjects to personal data protection, including when NGOs working with victims of trafficking are asked to provide information for the national database. GRETA also urges the Ukrainian authorities to strengthen their efforts to prevent trafficking for the purpose of labor exploitation, as well as to strengthen their efforts to ensure that THB cases for different forms of exploitation are investigated and prosecuted proactively and lead to effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions. In addition, GRETA encourages Ukraine to ratify the Council of Europe's Convention against Trafficking in Human Organs, which would contribute to the prevention of trafficking for the purpose of organ removal. The latest report was designed to assess developments since the publication of GRETA's first evaluation report on Ukraine in 2014. The experts note that the positive steps taken by Ukraine since the first evaluation report include further developing the legal and institutional framework for combating human trafficking, setting up of specialized police units, and designating specialized prosecutors to investigate human trafficking cases, which has led to a to a threefold increase in investigations initiated into criminal offences relating to trafficking in human beings between 2016 and 2017. Efforts to raise awareness and provide training to relevant professionals, including on identifying victims of human trafficking, have resulted in an increased number of persons granted the status of victims. Another positive development is the increase of the number of victims of trafficking who have received a one-time financial grant. Head of the regional council is a witness in the murder case, not a suspect, the administration stresses. Chairman of the Kherson Regional Council, Vladyslav Munger, is now on vacation, as reported by the press service of the Kherson regional council which refuted media reports claiming Mr Manger had "fled from Ukraine." The chairman of the Kherson Regional Council is on vacation from Nov 19 to Dec 3. Due to professional considerations, Manger intends to interrupt his vacation and start work from Nov 26, the statement reads. Read alsoUkraine's parliament sets up commission to probe into attacks on Handziuk, other activists The press service added that the reports claiming Vladyslav Manger is a suspect in the Handziuk murder case are false. "The chairman of the Kherson regional council, together with other leaders of regional bodies, was questioned by the investigating authorities as a witness," the department said. On Nov 23, Newsroom Telegram channel reported that one of the persons involved in the case of the murder of local municipal official and activist Kateryna Handziuk, chairman of the Kherson Regional Council and the regional branch of the Batkivshchyna Party, Vladyslav Manger, on Nov 20 flew from Kyiv to Paris. As UNIAN reported earlier, Kherson activist, advisor to the Mayor of Kherson and acting manager of affairs at Kherson City Council's executive committee Kateryna Handziuk on July 31 was attacked with sulphuric acid. Over 30% of Handziuk's body was affected. Read alsoEU on Handziuk's murder: Tangible steps needed to reverse attacks against activists She was transferred to a Kyiv hospital, where she died on November 4 after a long treatment. Police originally qualified the attack on the official as an attempted murder committed with extreme cruelty, then its status was changed to completed murder. Seven suspects were detained, one of whom, Mykola Novikov, was later released from custody as charges against him were dropped. Three suspects Vyacheslav Vishnevsky, Volodymyr Vasyanovych, and Viktor Horbunov are now under house arrest. Two suspects Serhiy Torbin and Mykyta Hrabchuk remain in custody, as well as Ihor Pavlovsky, another suspect in the case who is ex-aide to MP Mykola Palamarchuk. Previously, human rights and NGOs made public an open letter demanding a public report on the investigation of the Handziuk case. They demand the resignation of Prosecutor General Lutsenko and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov. There have been no Ukrainian army casualties in the past day. Russian-led forces mounted four attacks on Ukrainian troops in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, in the last 24 hours. "No casualties among Ukrainian troops have been reported in the past day. According to intelligence reports, two occupiers were wounded," the press center of Ukraine's Joint Forces Operation said in an update on Facebook as of 07:00 Kyiv time on November 23, 2018. Read alsoDonbas conflict "in active phase" Ukraine's defense minister Russian occupation forces opened aimed fire from grenade launchers of various types, heavy machine guns, and small arms at the defenders of the villages of Stanytsia Luhanska, Vilniy, Luhanske, and Pavlopil. The enemy also employed weapons of infantry fighting vehicles near Vilniy, as well as anti-tank guided missiles near Luhanske. "Since Friday midnight, Russian-led forces haven't attacked the Ukrainian positions yet," the report said. November 23 2018 Aberdeen Art Gallery is to benefit from a public realm package brought forward by the city council which calls for an improvement to the setting of the listed landmark through new paving and street furniture ahead of its reopening in August. Currently undergoing a program of extension and refurbishment the gallery is being lined up to serve as a new arts destination by improving the galleries setting and enhancing accessibility. A streetscape application filed by Aberdeen City Council calls for a narrowing of the roadway at the junction of Blackfriars Street and Schoolhill together with the removal of the current main entrance to form a new public plaza. Consisting of Corrennie pink granite steps, Blackhills grey granite paving and a whinstone footway with bronze handrails this arrival space will also include totem display boards advertising upcoming events. In a statement the Council wrote: The proposed steps will run parallel with the Art Gallery facade and are restrained and angular in keeping with the Art Gallery facades detailing and will rise no higher than the facades existing pink granite base-course tying in with the finished floor level of the Art Gallery. The proposed new level and step arrangement will abut the Art Gallery facade with no intervention to the stonework with the gap between filled, between the Aberdeen Art Gallery facade and the proposed works, with a heavy gauge DMP and fine mortar joint to the top slab abutting the Art Gallery walls. It is also proposed to replace a concrete slab terrace of the Aberdeen War memorial with Kemnay granite to be more in keeping with its surroundings. (@FahadShabbir) ST. PETERSBURG (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) Brussels is unlikely to impose sanctions on Italy over its draft 2019 budget, rejected for the second time by the European Commission, because of the complexity of the excessive deficit procedure (EDP), Paolo Grimoldi, a secretary for the right-wing Lega party in the northern Italian region of Lombardy, told Sputnik on Friday. European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici warned Italy on Wednesday that its refusal to change the draft budget warranted an excessive debt procedure, which could lead to fines. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said Thursday his government would not change the budget plan. "Which sanctions or fines are we talking about? The procedures of imposing them are extremely long and Brussels at this point is not sure what fines should be placed on our country," Grimoldi said. The Italian politician emphasized that the Italian government had no plans to make any adjustments to the document and stressed that Rome could re-evaluate the country's yearly contributions to the EU institutions over the budget standoff. "We lose every year 5-6 billion of Euros in yearly contributions to the European Union. I am paying the lawyer to protect me and to help me. No one will pay for the lawyer who files a lawsuit against him every day. We may reconsider our contributions amid these developments," Grimoldi said. The European Commission has criticized Italy's budget, with its deficit projected to reach 2.4 percent of gross domestic product, over high public spending, while Rome has defended its right to invest in growth. Italy's debt has reached around 131 percent of its GDP, the second highest in the European Union. According to the European Commission, Rome's draft budget will not help the country move toward reducing its debt load, which is one of the key rules for countries with debt higher than 60 percent of their GDP. Once the EDP has been launched, a member state has between three and six months to comply with the requirements of Brussels. The commission then reviews the progress made, and if it believes that nothing has been done the council will set new targets. The member state is then given another three to six months to correct its behavior. If the action has been taken, but the set targets have not been met, Brussels may give new recommendations and another deadline to comply. If a country has failed to take action, it may be fined 0.2 percent of its GDP or have EU assistance temporary suspended. The whole process may go on for months or years, with steps repeated again and again, until the EU authorities are satisfied. In 2018, the European Commission recommended closing the EDP procedure against France that started in 2009. (@rukhshanmir) PARIS, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 23rd Nov, 2018) The United Arab Emirates and France have emphasised the importance to further strengthen bilateral partnership in all fields of cooperation. This came in a joint statement issued on the occasion of the visit to France of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces. Following is the statement: "At the invitation of the President of the French Republic Emmanuel Macron, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces conducted an official visit to Paris on 21st November 2018. This visit, which took place on the occasion of the Year of Zayed, commemorating the centennial of the birth of Sheikh Zayed, founding father and first President of the United Arab Emirates, was a new testimony of the strength of the historic partnership and ties between France and the UAE. President Macron and His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan held in-depth discussions on regional and international issues of common interest and priority, in particular the fight against terrorism and countering extremism. The official visit enabled the French Republic and the UAE to take stock of the implementation of the bilateral roadmap agreed upon during the visit of President Macron to the UAE on November 2017 and to draw new prospects with a view of further enhancing the bilateral cooperation in the fields of education and francophonie (I), culture and heritage (II), economy and investment (III), energy, environment and the fight against climate change (IV), space (V), regional peace and security, defense cooperation and the fight against terrorism and countering extremism and their supporters (VI) and political consultations (VII). *I. In the field of education and francophonie: - Both parties welcome the appointment of a new Board of Trustees of Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi (SUAD). - Both parties welcome the adoption of the new strategic plan 2019-2023, which was agreed upon during the Board of Trustees of SUAD meeting, held in Abu Dhabi on 28 September 2018, with a view of fully realising the potential of SUAD as a regional center of excellence. - Both parties welcome the upgrade of UAEs membership status at the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, from observer to associated member, which was unanimously agreed upon by all Member States at the Summit of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie held in Erevan on 11-12 October 2018. - Both parties welcome, in this context, the signature of the bilateral agreement in Abu Dhabi on 26 July 2018 on the reintroduction of French language teaching in 10 public schools in the UAE in its initial phase and the nomination of a French expert to coordinate with the UAE Ministry of Education on the implementation of this program. Both parties praise the launching of the works for the extension of the French Lycee Theodore Monod on the Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi. - Both parties welcome the upcoming project of launching a francophone radio in order to further promote French and francophone culture and the French language in the UAE. - France praise the decision of the UAE to contribute to the rehabilitation of the Royal Castle of Villers-Cotterets, which will host the future "Cite de la Francophonie" in 2022. - Paris Hospital Foundations and the American Hospital of Paris each signed agreements with the Department of Health of the UAE to set the conditions under which the French party shall provide medical services to Emirati patients. - France welcome the perspective of the Special Olympics in Abu Dhabi in 2019, in which France intends to participate with a delegation of more than one hundred athletes. - H.H. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan met with the Emirati students (64) studying in France at the Louvre Museum. *II. In the field of culture and heritage: - Both parties welcome the opening of the exhibition "Age Old Cities: a virtual journey from Palmyra to Mossoul" at the Arab World Institute on 16 October 2018. They welcome on this occasion the announcement of the first projects funded by "ALIPH", the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas, co-created by the United Arab Emirates and the French Republic and announced on 2 December 2016 in Abu Dhabi during the ALIPH first conference, and the recent designation of Valery Freland as the new Executive Director of ALIPH. Both parties reiterated their commitment to contribute for an amount of 30 million Dollars for France and 15 million dollars for the UAE, and invited all the parties interested in this initiative to further contribute to the Fund. - H.H. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan visited the Sheikh Zayed Center at the Louvre. On this occasion, both parties praised the success of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, one year after its opening, and the ongoing cooperation for the programming of new temporary exhibitions and coordination of loans from French collections. The recent meeting of the board of Agence France-Museums held in Abu Dhabi on 9 November 2018 along with the visit of the French Minister of Culture underlined the importance of this bilateral cooperation. Both parties welcomed the recent designation of Sandra Lagumina as the new chair of Agence France-Museums. - The Republic of France and the United Arab Emirates welcome the French-UAE cultural dialogue 2018-2019, which aims to reinforce the cultural partnership between the two countries, in accordance with the Agreement on Cultural Cooperation signed on 9 November 2017 in Abu Dhabi between the French Ministry of Culture and the UAE Ministry of Culture and Knowledge Development. Both praised the success of the UAE Cultural Week in Paris, which was held from 11 to 14 October 2018, and of the exhibition of the Emirati painter Abdulqader Al Rais at the Arab World Institute, which was held in Paris from 25 September 2018 to 21 October 2018. - Both countries jointly reaffirm their commitment to intercultural dialogue and their willingness to promote values of tolerance through cultural, artistic and institutional cooperation. To that end, both parties have decided to organise a French-UAE crossed season in 2021, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary, Golden Jubilee of the UAE through a series of events in France and in the UAE all along the year. *III. In the field of economy and investment: - Following the success of the first edition of the French-Emirati Forum, which was held in Dubai on 9 November 2017 on the occasion of the official visit of President Macron to the UAE, the UAE-France business Forum held its second edition in Paris on 17 October 2018. Co-chaired by Frederic Sanchez, President of MEDEF International on the French side, and Majid Saif Al Ghureir, Chairman of the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry from the UAE side, the Forum was inaugurated by the two Chairs along with Reem bint Ibrahim Al Hashemy, Minister of State for International Cooperation, from UAE side, and Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, Secretary General of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and gathered over 200 participants. - President Emmanuel Macron and His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan praise the success of the second edition of the UAE-France Business Forum and the success it gathered in fostering exchanges between French and Emirati companies, in particular small and medium-sized enterprises. - An agreement between Mubadala Investment Company and Bpifrance was signed on by Nicolas Dufourcq, Chairman of Bpifrance, and Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Chairman of the Executive Affairs Authority, Abu Dhabi, creating a new joint co-investment program for an amount of 300 million euros, dedicated to the French VC, technology and innovation space. - Both entities are also in the process of agreeing the extension of the existing co-investment program (Franco Emirati Fund) with additional 700 million euros. The co-investment programme was created in 2014 and has already committed more than 300 million Euros to support the development of French companies with a proven growth potential through long-term investments in healthcare, education, elderly care, real estate and affinity insurance. - Both parties welcome the recent developments in regards to the French participation at the Dubai World Expo in 2020, in accordance with the contract signed on 9 November 2017 by Reem bint Ibrahim Al Hashemy, Minister of State for International Cooperation, and Director-General of Expo 2020 DubaiBureau, and Erik Linquier, Frances Commissary General for Expo 2020 Dubai. - His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan also held a working session with French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and several CEOs of French companies, in view of exploring the ways to enhance economic cooperation, strengthen bilateral trade and encourage joint-investment projects, both in France and in the UAE. - Both parties have agreed to continue to cooperate in the field of intellectual property (IP), in order to improve the competitiveness of SMEs and to strengthen IP awareness and IP education further to the Memorandum of Understanding signed on 22 June 2018, between the French National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) and the International Center of Patent Registration of the Ministry of Economy of the UAE. *IV. In the field of energy, environment, climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals: - Both parties praise the results of the One Planet Summit held in New York on 26 September 2018, in the wake of the first Summit held in Paris on 12 December 2017, and the active participation of the Republic of France and the UAE in New Delhi, on 3 October 2018, in the first General Assembly of the International Solar Alliance. - Both countries jointly reaffirm their support to energy transition and green economy initiatives and agreed to develop joint projects in the field of renewable energies and climate change adaptation and mitigation, in particular on the potential applications of Artificial Intelligence and satellite observation in these fields. - Both parties welcome the upcoming 10th World Urban Forum (WUF10) to be held in Abu Dhabi in February 2020, and agreed to reinforce their cooperation in the field of smart and sustainable cities. - Both countries share a common understanding of the importance of international development and solidarity, with the Primary objective being to contribute to the global effort of eradicating poverty around the world. In a world marked by the acceleration of climate change and increased instability, our responsibility to lead on identifying solutions to our common global challenges is more necessary than ever. - The UAE and France place the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 at the heart of their individual and joint actions. As the global community moves forward towards 2030, the UAE and France commit to addressing challenges and collaborating in solution driven initiatives. - Both parties agree to support jointly the UNITLIFE initiative, under the umbrella of the United Nations, to counter climate change and chronic malnutrition. - In the field of nuclear energy, both parties welcome the signature, in the margins of the IAEA general conference in Vienna, of two agreements between the UAE Federal Authority of Nuclear Regulation (FANR) and the French Institute for Radiological protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) on 18 September 2018, and between FANR and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) on 19 September 2018. *V. In the field of space cooperation: - France congratulates the United Arab Emirates on the successful launch, on 29 October 2018, of Khalifasat, the first high resolution Earth Observation satellite entirely manufactured in the UAE by Emirati engineers. - France and the United Arab Emirates welcome the substantial progress of their space cooperation and, in particular, between the Centre National dEtudes Spatiales (CNES) and the United Arab Emirates Space Agency (UAESA). In this framework, both parties praised the ongoing work on a first joint Earth Observation satellite, which will lead to a preliminary definition of the mission before the end of 2018, targeting capacity building, societal applications and providing a significant joint contribution to the Space Climate Observatory. - Both parties praise the ongoing cooperation in training and education and the perspective of the organisation of a dedicated seminar on space technology early 2019 in the UAE. - Both parties welcome the establishment, in September 2018, of the representation office of CNES at the French Embassy in Abu Dhabi, in order to foster the bilateral cooperation in the framework of the Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2015 between CNES and UAESA and as a follow-up to the contacts established by the CNES with the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC). *VI. In the fields of regional peace and security, defense cooperation and the fight against terrorism and countering extremism: - At a time when the region is confronted to increased instability, both parties renew their commitment to strengthen the strategic partnership between France and the UAE which aims at building a prosperous and stable environment. In that context, both parties maintain close and constant consultations regarding the crisis in the region. - Regarding Yemen, they reaffirm their support to the efforts of UNSG Special Envoy Martin Griffiths especially his efforts to hold the next round of discussions in Stockholm later this year. They reiterate their support for a sustained political solution for Yemen and re-emphasise the importance of all relevant Security Council resolutions, including UNSC 2216, the GCC Initiative, and the Yemeni Dialogue. On the humanitarian side, they underline the urgency of the situation and praised the launch of the Imdad initiative by Saudi Arabia and the UAE; which will provide $500 million of additional support towards humanitarian needs in the food and nutrition sectors in Yemen and will be carried out through the United Nations, the international, regional, and local organisations. Both sides also highlight the importance for increased international assistance and improved humanitarian access throughout Yemen - Both parties praise their common work on Libya especially on the fight against terrorism and the pursuit of a political solution. In this regard, they renew their support to the efforts of the UNSG Special Envoy and to the constitutional process leading to elections by Spring 2019. - Regarding Syria, both parties reaffirm their shared objectives: fight against terrorism, humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people and working towards a political solution. They underline the necessity to respect a ceasefire, in Idlib. They call for the gathering of the constitutional committee by the end of the year. They recall that international assistance to the reconstruction of Syria depends on the existence of a credible political process. - France presented current European efforts to uphold the JCPOA. Both parties shared concerns regarding nuclear, ballistic and regional issues involving Iran. - Both parties reaffirm their support for a fair, lasting and comprehensive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Their express their concerns towards the evolution of the situation on the ground, in particular tensions in the Gaza strip and development of the settlements which undermine the two-state solution. They recall that the only way to reach a lasting peace was through a negotiated solution leading to two states, Israel and Palestine, leaving side by side, in peace and security with Jerusalem as a capital. They recall the importance of the Arab peace initiative. - Both parties praise the ongoing intense and fruitful cooperation in the field of security and defense on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the French Air Force base in Al Dhafra on 1st October 2008, and in the perspective of the upcoming 10th anniversary of the establishment of the French naval base in Abu Dhabi on 26 May 2009. - Both parties recall that the fight against terrorism is a common priority in the framework of the strategic partnership between France and the United Arab Emirates. Both countries also reaffirm their commitment to counter radicalisation and extremism. - In this context, France and the United Arab Emirates confirm their strong will to act in support of peace and stability in Africa in particular by supporting the operationalisation of the G5 Sahel joint force. The United Arab Emirates allocated a financial contribution to this process, as announced during the conference at La Celle SaintCloud on 13 December 2017. France has agreed to share with the United Arab Emirates its operational experience in that geographic area in order to help identify further ways of contributing to the operationalization of the joint force G5 Sahel. - Both parties also praise the close partnership in the field of security and homeland protection, through sharing experience and expertise, and confirm to continue the close cooperation in this field in accordance with the bilateral cooperation agreement signed in 2009 between France and the UAE. - Both parties recall their joint and determined commitment to fight against modern and traditional threats, openly brutal or more insidious, such as terrorism and radicalization, cross border traffics and transnational criminal networks, cybercrime and money laundering, all of which jeopardising the public order and the wellbeing within our national communities. - France praise the participation of the UAE, as a strategic partner and at the highest level, to the "No money for terror" conference, held in Paris in April 2018. In this context, France and the UAE both agree that the fight against terrorism is an international endeavor and holds to account any country or entity or person responsible for any type of support. - Both parties praise, in an increasingly multilateral environment, the work undertaken since the foundation of the "Alliance" working group, which gathers now 8 countries and has offered, since its inception in February 2017 on the basis of a French-UAE initiative, numerous occasions for its members, including at a ministerial level, to share their best practices in combating transnational organised crime, terrorism and radicalisation. The latest of these meetings took place in Lyon on 10 October 2018, after a large scale live scenario international demonstration on the French National Intervention Plan for countering massive terrorist attacks, which was attended by an important delegation from the UAE. *VII. In the field of political dialogue: - Both parties welcome the participation of the UAE, represented by Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Tolerance, to the Paris Peace Forum on 11 November 2018, for which 5 projects presented by the UAE have been selected. - Both parties welcome the recent visit of the France-UAE Group of Friendship of the French National Assembly to the UAE, from 10 to 17 November 2018, and the perspective of the strengthening of ties between French and Emirati parliamentary institutions. - Both parties emphasise the importance to further strengthen bilateral partnership in all fields of cooperation. In that regard, they welcome the conclusions of the 10th session of the bilateral Strategic Dialogue, held in Abu Dhabi on 18 April 2018, and the prospect of a next meeting in France in spring 2019." (@FahadShabbir) BEIJING, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) :Terming the advent of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as a catalyst, Pakistan Ambassador to China, Masood Khalid Friday said the flagship project would further strengthen the unique and all-weather relationship between Pakistan and China. Addressing the participant as chief guest at "Dialogue with Ambassadors" Forum held at the prestigious Tsinghua University here, he said the recent visit to China by the Prime Minister of Pakistan was an unparalleled success and has ushered in the Pakistan-China all-weather strategic co-operative partnership to new heights, which shall benefit the future generations of the two nations. The ambassador shed light on Pakistan's history, geography, economy, environmental diversity, civilization, culture, foreign policy, Kashmir dispute and Pakistan China relationship in a comprehensive manner. He said the foreign policy of Pakistan is primarily directed to the pursuit of national goals of seeking peace and stability through international cooperation. The ambassador in his speech termed the University as a seat of higher learning since 1911. He commended the organizers for providing a platform for continuous exchanges with scholars and the youth. Director of the Pakistan Culture and Communications Centre, Tsinghua University Professor Li Xiguang welcomed the ambassador and briefed the audience about the historical perspective of Pakistan China relations. A question answer session followed where International students had an opportunity to interact with the ambassador and quench their queries about Pakistan. The forum was attended by scholars, students, and officers from the Embassy of Pakistan. (@ChaudhryMAli88) ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) :Prime Minister Imran Khan Friday strongly condemned terrorist attacks against Chinese Consulate in Karachi and another in Orakzai tribal area terming them part of a conspiracy to create unrest in the country and vowed to crush such elements. "Let there be no doubt in anyone's mind that we will crush the terrorists, whatever it takes," the Prime Minister said in reaction to an attack on the Consulate building in Karachi in the morning and another at a Friday Market in Orakzai District in which around two dozen people were killed while 30 other injured in a bomb blast. The Prime Minister said the attacks were being carried out by those who do not want Pakistan to prosper. "My prayers go to the victims and their families," the Prime Minister said in a message on the micro blogging site twitter. Police guards and security personnel at the Consulate thwarted the attack and killed three attackers. "Salute the brave security/police personnel who gave their lives & denied [access] to terrorists in the mission at Chinese Consulate. " Imran Khan said "the failed attack against the Chinese Consulate was clearly a reaction to the unprecedented trade agreements that resulted from our trip to China." "The attack was intended to scare Chinese investors and undermine CPEC. These terrorists will not succeed. A statement from the PM Office said the Prime Minister has ordered a thorough inquiry into the incident and directed that the elements behind this incident must be unearthed. The statement described the incident as part of conspiracy against Pakistan and China economic and strategic cooperation. The Prime Minister reiterated that such incidents could never undermine their bilateral relationship. He said Karachi police and Rangers have shown exceptional courage and the nation salutes the martyrs and their colleagues for acting so valiantly. "We are proud of their gallantry," the statement said. (@FahadShabbir) ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) :Minister of State for Interior Shehryar Khan Afridi on Friday said that anti-Pakistan forces working against China Pakistan Economic Corridor and Pak-China friendship, were spreading unrest in the region. Talking to a private news channel, the state minister said this was the biggest land war in the world, being fought here in Pakistan against terrorism. Pakistan had suffered a lot in terms of precious lives and economy, while fighting war on terror, he added. Commenting on attacks on Chinese consulate and Aurakzai Public area, he said some four local persons lost their lives in Karachi incident while some 33 were martyred in Hangu area incident. He said that inquiry was being conducted to ascertain the cause of tragic mishap that had held at Chinese Consulate and Orakzai shopping area. Shehryar Khan Afridi appreciated the security agencies and law enforcement institutions for foiling the nefarious designs of the enemy targeting the peace of Pakistan. To a question, he said high security alert is the prove that entire nation was united on the war against terror. To another question he said foreign intelligence agencies like RAW and other agencies were engaged in destabilizing this region. He, however said that investigation was underway to probe the matter of attacks on Aurakzai and Consulate. He was of the view, the forces or elements behind CPEC, Pak-China friendship, and Afghan peace, were responsible in creating unrest here. He, however said such incidents could not diminish the moral of this nation. In reply to a question about Aslam Choto, he said matter regarding him was being investigated and no final decision could be made at this stage. Uzma Bukhari of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N), while appreciating the security and law enforcement agencies said that due to their efforts, the Consulate had avoided the big disaster. She said that Pakistan had given a lot of sacrifices in war against terror and we have overcome in controlling the menace of terrorism in a befitting manner. Latif Khosa of Pakistan People's Party lauding the role of security and law enforcement agencies said they had performed best security work in the past with Rangers. Commenting on today's attack in which, several persons had lost their lives and injured, he said that India had been involved in sabotaging peace in Balochistan. (@rukhshanmir) SUKKUR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) :Mayor of Sukkur, Arslan Shaikh and Deputy Mayor Tariq Chuhan on Friday condemned the attack on Chinese Consulate in Karachi and praised that the attack was foiled by the law enforcement agencies. In a joint statement, they expressed their sympathies for the police officers, who lost their lives and said that they strongly condemn the attack. The Pakistan and China would together defeat the forces that wish to halt development in the country, they added. KARACHI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) :Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah Friday directed the law enforcement agencies (LEAs) to speed up intelligence-based targeted operations against terrorists in the metropolis. Presiding over a law and order meeting at the CM House here, he said "The attempt to attack Chinese consulate shows that still there are abettors of the terrorists in the city and we have to eliminate them." The meeting was attended by CM Advisor Murtaza Wahab, Chief Secretary Mumtaz Shah, IG Police Dr kaleem Imam, Home Secretary Kazi Kabir, Commissioner Karachi Iftikhar Shahelwani, Adl IG Karachi Dr Ameer Shaikh, representatives of Pakistan Rangers, Provincial head of intelligence agencies and representative of 5-Corp, said a statement. The chief minister said that the after Landhi bomb blast it was second incident in the city. He questioned that these terrorists equipped with weapons and explosive must have stayed somewhere in the city and have travelled in the city from the place of their stay to Clifton but they were not checked anywhere. "This shows that our road checking system needs to be more effective and strict," he said and directed Additional Inspector General of Police (AIGP) Karachi to enhance snap checking in the city. IGP Dr Syed Kaleem Imam in briefing the chief minister on the incident said that at about 9:30 am unidentified armed terrorists attacked with heavy and explosive grenades on Chinese Consulate situated near shrine of Hazrat Abdullah Shah Ghazi, Block-4 Clifton. Sindh Police Special Security Unit and Pakistan Rangers Sindh reached the spot of the incident. During the counter operation all three terrorists were killed, while two other civilians died and one private security guard sustained injuries. All shifted to JPMC. He added that identification process of terrorists was underway. Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah directed the IGP to get the incident investigated properly. "This must be worked out as the police have investigated high profile cases like Safoora Chowrangi and others," he said. The chief minister was told that the Clifton police and CTD would investigate the case. Those who killed in the incident include ASI Ashraf Dawood and constable Mohammad Amir. Civilians Niaz Mohammad son of Abdul Karim and Zaheer Shah son of Niaz Mohammad. The victims belonged to Quetta. Private Security guard Mohammad Juman also sustained serious injuries. The chief minister directed the police chief to look after the families of the policemen who valiantly laid their lives in the line of their duty and also make necessary arrangements for shifting of the bodies of both the civilians to Balochistan. AIGP Karachi Dr Ameer Shaikh giving details of the ammunition recovered from the site said those include slabs of C4, two explosive materials, batteries, chemical, two bottles of grenades RGD-I, seven grenades RGD-5, two SMGs and rounds which would be counted. All the ammunition have been defused, he said. Syed Murad Ali Shah directed the IGP to conduct audit of all the diplomatic missions/consulates and install most sensitive CCTV cameras in the localities of the consulates. ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) :Minister of Finance and Revenue Asad Umar Friday said the government would sign such an agreement with International Monetary Fund (IMF) that would be in the national interest. Speaking in the National Assembly, he said the government was not under pressure or in hurry for signing an accord with IMF as alternative arrangements had been made to address immediate economic needs of the country. The minister said the government would not make such a decision which would increase worries of the people. He made it clear that the government would only sign such an IMF package which would be in the larger interest of the country's economy and the people. He said Pakistan had already signed an economic assistance package with Saudi Arabia while talks with other friendly countries were underway. Asad Umar said 15. 50 percent increase had been witnessed in the remittances during the first month of the present government while 20 percent in the second. He said the overseas Pakistanis had sent additional one billion Dollars to Pakistan during three months period. About the prices of petroleum, the finance minister said they had, substantially, reduced taxes on the diesel (five times lower) as compared to the previous government. He urged the opposition not to do politics on China Pakistan Economic Corridor as it would not augur well for the country. He said the government was taking steps for strengthening the economy of the country and making efforts to reduce current account and budget deficit. The minister said the budget deficit was 4.1 percent during last year but after general election, the deficitof the budget was now 6.6 percent which was Rs900 billion. (@rukhshanmir) MUZAFFARABAD, Nov23(UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) ::Kohala Hydro Company Private Limited awarded fifteen Engineering scholarships to students from projects affected area at a ceremony held here on Friday. Director General Environment Protection Agency Raja Razaq, Secretary board of Revenue Sohail Azam were the guests of the event who distributed scholarship awards to students selected. Addressing the audience, Zhang Jun CEO Kohala Hydro Company observed that the project was facing constraints as the CTG headquarter was reluctant to make any investment until the smooth progress of the project. Zhang Jun CEO said that, similarly last year during 2017 the company had already given 18 scholarships to the potential students from project affected families and they are currently studying at University of Punjab. As a matter of fact, the CTG scholarship program was the sole initiative of the Kohala Hydropower project started on voluntarily basis to extend maximum benefits to communities in the project corridor to contribute in the social development and strengthening of Pak-China everlasting friendship Mr. Zhang added. "This should be noted that Kohala Hydropower Project has yet not started, still the company is offering best for the communities in the project area". Mr. Zhang Jun further highlighted that if the project activities are moved smoothly then CTG will consider to award similar scholarships to 70 to 80 more students from project affected areas during forthcoming four to five years. He emphasized that Kohala Hydro Company will continue to present program for social uplift and welfare with passage of time but to achieve goal of common interest and there is dire need of cooperation from all stakeholders of the project. He felicitated all scholarship holders who have been selected after a lengthy selection process. Zhang Jun opined that Kohala Hydro Power Project which is under construction will greatly improve the status quo of energy shortage in Pakistan and further drive the economic and social development in the region. He said due to construction of Kohala hydropower project, the local families will be relocated. Under this scholarship program the students from affected families will study 2+ 2 Co-educational Electrical Engineering at faculty of engineering and technology at University of Punjab for two years and two year at Jiangxi University of Science and Technology at China, Mr. Zhang concluded. Raja Razaque Director General EPA and Sohail Azam Secretary Board of Revenue expressed their gratitude and appreciated the initiative taken by the project companies to provide outstanding education opportunities to the project affected families in AJK. They stressed the students selected to work hard and prove themselves in the field of engineering so that after completing their education from China they may become able to play pivotal role in development of their state especially in the field of energy development. The students and the parents also expressed sentiments narrating that they were quite happy with the steps taken by the company to secure their future for investing in education is the real and long lasting investment. Overall such initiatives are well appreciated by the all stakeholders in AJK. (@FahadShabbir) ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) :Minister for Law and Justice Barrister Muhammad Farogh Naseem on Friday said law ministry was examining the laws governing the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) as directed by Supreme Court of Pakistan. Speaking in the National Assembly in response to opposition member Khwaaja Saad Rafique, he said government was determined to comply with the contentions of Justice Asif Saeed Khosa to rectify anomalies in NAB laws. He said the current NAB ordinance was in continuity of Accountability Ordinance 1997 and Accountability Act, both approved by PML-N government. The opposition did not bother to amend NAB laws in last ten years and expecting from PTI government to amendment NAB law in only 90 day's rule. According to section 16 of NAB ordinance, no discussion could be held on inquiries pending in NAB. Appreciating the performance of NAB, the minister said corruption in the country has decreased according to various surveys. Regarding opposition's demand of constituting a committee to visit prisons to analyze the plight of NAB prisoners, he urged opposition to inform about their complaints in writing. He said according to a nab report submitted last day, the perception that only politicians are being targeted by NAB is not correct. Only 4.5 percent ongoing NAB inquiries are relating to politicians, likewise in investigations the ratio of politicians is only two percent and in references' politicians ratio is only 1.1 percent. Earlier, Khawaja Saad Rafique severely criticized NAB for what he said NAB act has become obsolete. NAB is targeting the opposition. He urged the House to take notice of the plight of NAB prisoners as they were being treated like animals. He said a fact finding committee of parliamentarians should be constituted to analyseplight of NAB prisoners, incarcerated in different jails of Lahore, Karachi andQuetta. KARACHI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) :Ambassador of Sweden, Ms Ingrid Johansson Friday said that bilateral relations of both Pakistan and Sweden could be strengthened through bilateral cooperation in various sectors. During her visit to the Sindh board of Investment (SBI), she said that she would fully cooperate for strengthening the bilateral relations. Ingrid Johansson on the occasion was briefed in detail about the investment opportunities available in the province and the facilities being provided to the investors by the Sindh government. Swedish Ambassador was informed about vast investment opportunities in the province particularly in power, agriculture, education, technical training, transport, skill development, livestock, fisheries and other sectors and assured full fledge cooperation to the investors from the government. Earlier, Swedish Ambassador Ingrid Johansson was received by Director Special Projects SBI Abdul Azeem Uqaili, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sindh Enterprise Development Fund Mehbub and otherofficers of SBI. (@ChaudhryMAli88) LAHORE, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) :Pakistan Railways has retrieved 22.5-marla land worth Rs 111.65 million from land grabbers after an operation in the area of Tajpura, here on Friday. According to the PR sources, the Railway teams conducted a successful raid under the supervision of Assistant Engineer Khalid Mehmood on the direction of Divisional Superintendent Lahore Sufyan Dogar at level crossing No A-5 and retrieved the costly land of the railways. The DS said that the anti-encroachment campaign against land grabbers would continue under the vision of PR MinisterSheikh Rashid Ahmad. (@FahadShabbir) LAHORE, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) :Somalia's Deputy Commercial Attache Abdifitah Abdul Kadir Osman has said that his country has very strong and historical relations with Pakistan which must be reflected in mutual trade and economic ties. Talking to Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry (LCCI) Vice President Fahim-ur-Rehman Saigal, he called for making visa process easy and business friendly. He invited Pakistani businessmen to step into joint ventures with their counterparts in pharmaceutical and various other sectors in his country. He said that all sectors of economy in Somalia were open for Pakistani investors. He said that exchange of trade delegations could help strengthen mutual trade and economic relations. He said that first-ever 'Made in Pakistan' exhibition will be held in Somalia next year. Speaking on the occasion, LCCI Vice President Fahim-ur-Rehman Saigal said that private sectors of the two countries should explore ways which should be beneficial for the two countries. He said that Somalia is a member state of African Union and also part of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. He said that Lahore Chamber had been advocating the idea that Pakistan must explore African market for enhancing its exports. Saigal said that bilateral trade between Pakistan and Somalia was witnessing an increasing trend. From 2015 to 2017, the level of bilateral trade had gone up from $31 million to $50 million. He said that imports from Somalia average around $7 million; however, Pakistan's exports to Somalia have almost doubled in three years closing in at $43 million in 2017. Pakistan's exports to Somalia consist of rice, sugar and pharmaceutical products, etc. "We have the capacity to meet the demand of Somalia for home appliances, electrical items, motorbikes, articles of apparel and plastics etc," the LCCI vice president said and added that Lahore Chamber and the Embassy of Somalia should maintain good liaison so that both could work together to find ways for increasing trade and economic relations. He said that the LCCI was ready to respond any initiative taken by the Embassy of Somalia. (@ChaudhryMAli88) ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Nov, 2018 ) :President Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians (PPP) Asif Ali Zardari Thursday expressed his immense grief and sorrow over the death of renowned poetess and human rights activist Fehmida Riaz who passed away last night in Lahore. Former President Zardari in his condolence message said that Fehmida Riaz started her struggle for freedom of expression and democracy in the days of dictator General Ayub Khan as a student leader. He said that she was a strong independent voice against conservatism and dictatorship, adding she was also a great feminist who fought all her life for equality. "Her struggle will remain a beacon of light for all the progressives in the country and the region," he saidZardari said that she was the epitome of bravery and resistance and her contributions in the field of urdu poetry and prose will always be remembered. He prayed for the departed soul and fortitude to family members and friends to bear this irreparable loss with equanimity. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Thursday said that 174 illegal Nigerian migrants have been voluntarily deported from Libya to Nigeria. TRIPOLI, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) :The International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Thursday said that 174 illegal Nigerian migrants have been voluntarily deported from Libya to Nigeria. "Today, 174 migrants returned home to Nigeria via IOM's Voluntary Humanitarian Return and Reintegration Assistance Program," the IOM said in a statement on Thursday. "So far this year, more than 15,000 migrants were able to return home to 32 countries across Africa and Asia, with support from the European Union Trust Fund," the statement said. The IOM deported more than 19,000 illegal migrants from Libya to their home countries in 2017. The voluntary return program is carried out by the IOM, with an aim to arrange the return of illegal migrants stranded in Libya to their countries of origin. Shelters in Libya are crowded with thousands of migrants who have been rescued at sea or arrested by the Libyan security services. Libya has become a preferred departure point for illegal migrants hoping to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe due to insecurity and chaos in the North African country following the 2011 uprising that toppled former leader Muammar Gaddafi. (@FahadShabbir) QUITO (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) Ecuador's decision to change its ambassador in the United Kingdom might be a part of a strategy aimed at annulling the asylum of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, the whistleblower's lawyer, Carlos Poveda told Sputnik. Media reported on Thursday that Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno had signed a decree dismissing Ambassador Carlos Abad, known for his role in talks with London on settling Assange's situation. "There has been a series of systematic actions. This dismissal may fit in the politics aimed at rescinding Julian Assange's asylum," Poveda said. Sources in the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry told Sputnik that Francisco Javier Llorca will work as the acting ambassador in the United Kingdom until the new head of the diplomatic mission is appointed. Last week, Poveda suggested that Ecuador might have reached a deal with the United Kingdom and the United States under which Quito might extradite Assange. The whistleblower has been remaining in the Ecuadorian embassy in the UK capital despite Sweden dropped charges against him. Assange has repeatedly suggested he might be apprehended outside the embassy and extradited to the United States. Earlier in November, WikiLeaks suggested that the US authorities might have brought sealed charges against Assange, citing a filing in an unrelated case that used Assange's name in an "apparent cut-and-paste error." Chilean Agriculture Minister Antonio Walker on Thursday officially kicked off the country's 2018-2019 export season by placing the final crate of cherries in a container bound for China. REQUINOA, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) :Chilean Agriculture Minister Antonio Walker on Thursday officially kicked off the country's 2018-2019 export season by placing the final crate of cherries in a container bound for China. "It's very exciting to seal off the first container that is going to China on a 35-day journey. For us, as a ministry, it's very exciting to signal the starting point, the initial kickoff, of this fruit season," Walker told reporters in Requinoa, some 100 km south of the capital Santiago. Chile expects to export 18 billion U. S. Dollars worth of agricultural products in this season, the minister said. The South American country exports its agricultural products to more than 140 countries, with China as its leading trade partner and one of its top markets for its fresh fruits. President of the Chilean Fruit Export Association Ronald Bown told Xinhua that the country earns about 1 billion dollars from exports to China alone. Walker said his country intended to double agricultural exports over the next 10 years which would promote its development. (@ChaudhryMAli88) China's President Xi Jinping will in December make his first visit to Panama since the Central American country switched diplomatic ties last year from Taiwan Panama City, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) :China's President Xi Jinping will in December make his first visit to Panama since the Central American country switched diplomatic ties last year from Taiwan. President Juan Carlos Varela said on Twitter that his government has received official confirmation from Beijing about Xi's visit. Xi is to meet Varela on December 3, and the two leaders will witness the signing of about 20 agreements in a range of sectors from science to infrastructure, the statement said. Varela already met Xi in Beijing late last year after the change in diplomatic recognition. In August, El Salvador also switched diplomatic allegiance to Taiwan, as did the Dominican Republic in May under a campaign by Beijing to split democratic Taiwan from its few remaining diplomatic allies. China and Taiwan have been governed separately since the end of a civil war on the mainland in 1949, but Beijing sees the island as part of its territory to be brought back into the fold. Beijing has tried to depict the changes in diplomatic allegiance as economic and not motivated by any desire to undermine Taiwan. Only 17 countries remain in Taiwan's diplomatic circle as the island struggles to fend off Beijing's growing influence around the globe. Central America has been a bastion for Taiwan, with Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua still recognizing Taipei rather than Beijing, which has used its economic muscle and promises of investment to entice governments. China is the second major user of the Panama Canal behind the United States. ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 23 (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) :Chinese investments in Ethiopia over the past two decades have created job opportunities for many Ethiopians, said Ethiopian State Minister of Foreign Affairs Aklilu Hailemichael on Friday. He made the remarks at China Zhejiang-Ethiopia Trade and Investment Symposium, co-hosted by the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Chinese Council for the Promotion of International Trade Zhejiang Provincial Committee (CCPIT Zhejiang) in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa. The government of China and companies from China have over the past two decades "invested significantly in Ethiopia, creating job opportunities for a large number of Ethiopians," Hailemichael said. "My country also expects even more through the Belt and Road initiative that China launched with a focus on economic cooperation and connectivity among nations," he said. He noted that the growing investment and trade ties between "the two sisterly countries" are part of Ethiopia's "historic relations with China covering a range of areas including but not limited to trade, culture, education and development cooperation." "The relations between the two sisterly nations have been based upon diplomatic adherence, mutual respect, win-win formulation, shared development and mutual understanding," he said. The state minister added that the diplomatic and investment importance Ethiopia attached to China can be best explained in terms of the largest number of representations the East African country has in China as compared to any other country in the world. According to the ministry, the Chinese government and companies from China have over the past two decades been heavily involved in various development projects in Ethiopia, including the operational Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway and the Addis Ababa Light-Railway, roads, hydro-electric power, telecommunication, airports expansion, water development, manufacturing and various other development areas. Liu Yu, Economic and Commercial Counselor at the Chinese Embassy to Ethiopia, said that the investment and trade opportunities presented by the Chinese companies from Zhejiang province are in line with the eight major initiatives announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping, together with African leaders, during the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which include industrial promotion, infrastructure connectivity, trade facilitation and people to people exchange. Zhang Qingshan, Vice Chairman of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Zhejiang Provincial Committee (CCPIT Zhejiang), noted that China is the biggest trading partner of Ethiopia, adding that "our business trip here has become an example of the broader China-Africa cooperation." MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) Claims that Russia has not answered any US question on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty are groundless, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told reporters on Friday. When Ryabkov was asked when Russia would provide an answer to the US list of claims concerning the INF Treaty, he said that the two sides were engaged in regular dialogue. "There is currently no ground to say that we have not answered any US question," Ryabkov said. He added that questions related to "such a sore issue involving one side's accusations toward the other side" needed consideration. "All the specialized bodies are engaged in this consideration. We don't turn the computer on, write answers and provide them at once, upon receiving any questions. This is not like that. So there is no exact schedule of who, when and how answers certain questions," Ryabkov said. He added that his side faced difficulties with formulating its stance on certain issues related to the INF Treaty, as different bodies needed to coordinate their positions. "There is also such a thing as political reasonability, schedule and timing," he said, adding that Russia was taking all these aspects into consideration when elaborating its stance. "We are engaged in this process. And the main thing is that we are interested in continuation of this dialogue," Ryabkov stressed. He emphasized that Russian accusations of the United States were much more feasible, and that Russia had never announced that it would withdraw from the INF Treaty. MEXICO CITY (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno decided to change the country's ambassador in London where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been residing in the Ecuadorian diplomatic mission, media reported. Moreno had signed a decree dismissing Carlos Abad, who had worked as the ambassador since June 2015, the Comercio news outlet reported on Thursday. The outlet, however, has not revealed reasons behind the move and the name of the new ambassador. Abad is known for his role in the talks with the United Kingdom on the resolution of the Assange's situation. However, these negotiations have not yielded any results. Assange, who had been prosecuted by Sweden on sexual assault charges, has received asylum in Ecuador and has been living in the country's embassy in the United Kingdom since 2012. Sweden dropped the charges in 2017, but the whistleblower has not left the embassy, citing fears that he might be caught and extradited to the United States, where he might face charges over leaking thousands of classified documents. Earlier in November, WikiLeaks said that the US authorities might have brought sealed charges against Assange, citing a filing in an unrelated case that used Assange's name in an "apparent cut-and-paste error." Carlos Poveda, Assange's lawyer, has told Sputnik that Ecuador might extradite his client, suggesting Quito might have reached an agreement on this with London and Washington. Niamey, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) :Seven local employees of a French drilling firm and a government official were killed in southeast Niger Thursday when suspected gunmen stormed the compound where they were sleeping. The attack shattered months of relative calm in the Diffa region near the Lake Chad basin, a strategic area where the borders of four countries converge. The victims, all Nigerien, were shot dead at a site in Toumour, a village near the border with Nigeria, where they had been drilling two deep-water wells to improve conditions for displaced people at a local refugee camp. Seven of them were employees of Foraco, a French firm which specialises in drilling for mining and water projects. The eighth victim was an official from Niger's ministry of hydraulics. "A group of terrorists attacked the building where a team of Foraco drillers and technicians were resting in the village of Toumour," a company statement said. "The assailants opened fire on the sleeping personnel and killed eight people."Another five people were wounded, two seriously, it said. The injured were transported to hospital in Diffa, capital of the region of the same name which flanks Nigeria and Chad. The attackers also made off with two of the company's pickup trucks. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Thursday called the Astana-based peace talks the only format that brought tangible results in Syria. ROME (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd November, 2018) Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Thursday called the Astana-based peace talks the only format that brought tangible results in Syria "I think the only policy that has worked in Syria is the Astana process ... The only countries that could prevent a disaster in Idlib were Iran, Turkey and Russia," he said at the Mediterranean Dialogues (MED) forum in Rome. Iran has been working closely with Russia and recently with Turkey, Zarif added. As three guarantor states of Syrian ceasefire, their focus should be on maintaining Syria's territorial integrity, fighting terrorism and seeking to end the war, he noted. "If the political process in Syria is intended to reverse the outcome on the ground it will fail ... The political process needs to bring inclusion to the process on the ground," the diplomat stressed. Iran, Russia and Turkey, he said, will help Syria finalize that process both within the Astana format and in cooperation with the United Nation. Zarif said he hoped the international community will assist them in these efforts. BRUSSELS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 24th November, 2018) Syria's armed opposition will be present at the next Astana peace talks in Kazakhstan's capital, Kazakh Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov confirmed to Sputnik on Friday. Astana will host the eleventh round of the so-called Astana process next Wednesday and Thursday. The opposition has been expected to join the talks. "The participants will be, as usual, the guarantor states - Russia, Turkey and Iran - UN monitors and Jordan, the Syrian government and the Syrian armed opposition," Abdrakhmanov said. The negotiators will seek to reaffirm the warring parties' commitment to ceasefire in areas across Syria. A working group on prisoner exchanges will meet for a regular, sixth session, the diplomat added. (@ChaudhryMAli88) MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) Juan Manuel Gastelum, the mayor of the Mexican city of Tijuana, located in the northwest of the country and bordering on the United States, said on Friday that he would not have the city residents bear the burden of sustaining asylum seekers arriving from Central American countries with migrant caravans, adding that Tijuana was already suffering from a humanitarian crisis. "Tijuana residents will not pay for the migrants' stay, I will not place this burden on Tijuana the same way I have not done this over the past two years. We are in a state of a humanitarian crisis, and the Federal government must take on the responsibility," the mayor said in a video statement posted via his official Facebook page. On Tuesday, the Mexican Interior Ministry said around 5,600 migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador were staying near Tijuana and another Mexican city of Mexicali, which is also located in the vicinity of the US border. According to the official figures, about 2,600 of these migrants have settled near Tijuana. The initial caravan of illegal migrants set out from Honduras in the direction of Mexico and the United States on October 13, hoping to get asylum in these countries. According to the UN estimates, the caravan included more than 7,000 migrants. Another caravan of around 3,000 asylum seekers followed suit later in October. (@ChaudhryMAli88) MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) Humanitarian organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders) anticipates an upsurge of violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) due to the upcoming election in the country and will take preventive action, stocking up on medical supplies and limiting the MSF staff's in-country travel, MSF Senior Humanitarian Specialist Michiel Hofman told Sputnik on Friday. "The only thing we know is that there is likely to be more violence around the election period. We have no reason to think that this time will be different. In that sense we are reasonably well prepared to deal with that. That means we usually reduce the number of movements inside the country because that's when you're most exposed to violence and necessarily we would make sure that we have prepositioned medical supplies," Hofman said. Hofman added that despite the fact that the MSF, being a humanitarian organization, was not involved in the political process in the country, it welcomed the DRC election as a possible peaceful solution to the situation in the country. He added, however, that the MSF prioritized addressing the humanitarian situation in DRC. "Elections or not, we would always encourage international donors, whether it is the United Nations or European countries, or Russia. We know [we need] to make sure that nobody forgets the humanitarian needs," Hofman summarized. The DRC presidential election is currently scheduled for December 23. The country has been led by President Joseph Kabila since 2001. The president's second term expired in 2016, however, the authorities had been putting off the presidential election since then, which prompted protests against Kabila in the country. The rallies have been suppressed by the government with the use of force. (@ChaudhryMAli88) ROME (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) It is impossible to make any significant decision on issues concerning Libya, Syria and the so-called Greater Mediterranean as a whole without Russia, the European Parliament's Vice-President, Fabio Massimo Castaldo, told Sputnik. "Over the past years, Russia has been convincing in proving its role of the forefront international player in the 'Greater Mediterranean' area. Not a single significant or important decision on Syria, Libya or other issues related to peace and well-being of the region, can be made without Russia," Castaldo, who is a member of the Italian 5 Star Movement, which is part of the ruling coalition, said on the sidelines of the Mediterranean Dialogues (MED) forum in Rome. Russia should be considered not as a part of some problem, but as a part of s solution to problems, Castaldo continued. The politician expressed confidence that the development of EU-Russian relations was important for future progress in various areas, including security. The fourth edition of the MED forum is held in Rome between Thursday and Saturday. Russia has been an active player in the settlement of the Syrian conflict. It is one of the ceasefire guarantor states, alongside Iran and Turkey. Moreover, it has been supporting Damascus in its fight against terrorism. Moscow has also been backing the peace process in Libya. (@ChaudhryMAli88) MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) More than 800 Syrian refugees have returned to their home country from Jordan and Lebanon over the past 24 hours, the Russian Defense Ministry's Center for the Reception, Allocation and Accommodation of Refugees said on Friday. "Over the past day, a total of 801 people returned to the Syrian Arab Republic from the territory of foreign states: 215 people (64 women and 111 children) left Lebanon for Syria via the Jaydet-Yabus and Talkalakh CPs [checkpoints], and 586 people (176 women and 299 children) from Jordan via the Nasib CP," the center said in its daily bulletin. The center added that over 224 internally displaced Syrians had returned to their homes in Eastern Ghouta, Deir ez-Zor and Damascus provinces over the period. According to the bulletin, the Syrian engineering units also defused 42 explosive devices, including two improvised explosive devices, in the country. As the Syrian government has regained control over most of the country's territories that were seized by terrorists, it is now focused on creating favorable conditions for repatriating refugees. Moscow is assisting Damascus in this process, along with providing humanitarian aid to civilians and being a guarantor of the ceasefire. Russian President Vladimir Putin holds regular meetings with Viktor Medvedchuk, Kiev's representative in the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group for the Donbas settlement, but details of what they discuss are unknown, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) Russian President Vladimir Putin holds regular meetings with Viktor Medvedchuk, Kiev's representative in the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group for the Donbas settlement, but details of what they discuss are unknown, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. "I do not know how often, but such meetings [between Putin and Medvedchuk] do take place .. I am not aware of a detailed agenda of these meetings but I know that in this case Medvedchuk acts as the head of the group on humanitarian issues," Peskov told reporters after being asked about the meetings and their frequency. The Kremlin spokesman also praised Medvedchuk's efforts in arranging the exchange of prisoners between Kiev and Donbas. The conflict in Donbas started 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 what they considered to be a coup. In February 2015, the warring parties signed the Minsk peace accords to end the hostilities in the region, but the situation remained tense, with both parties accusing each other of ceasefire violations. (@ChaudhryMAli88) BUCHAREST, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) :Romanian and Moldovan ministers on Thursday signed an agreement to vigorously promote cooperation in tourism during a joint governmental meeting attended by the two prime ministers. "At this point, the cooperation between the two governments is more intense than ever," said Romanian Tourism Minister Bogdan Trif who signed the document with visiting Moldovan Minister of Economy and Infrastructure Chiril Gaburici. "We share the same history and the same values. That's why this collaboration agreement was born out of the belief that we can also share a common future," he said, noting that "Romania is willing to make all the efforts to support the Republic of Moldova in maintaining its European track and tourism is a field that can accelerate this." The new agreement stipulated the strengthening of cooperation in investment projects of common interest in tourism, through the development of projects that can benefit from the financial support of the European Union, as well as a sustained exchange of information regarding investments and facilities in this field. According to official Agerpres news agency, Romania already drafted some common cultural route with Moldova. "Stephen the Great Route" for one includes many cities and places associated with Stephen the Great, ruler of Moldova (1457-1504) who was renowned in Europe for his long resistance to the Ottoman Turks. "The Wine Road" is another bilateral project which will include many wine cellars in Romania and the Republic of Moldova, to promote the two countries as a destination for foreign tourists, especially those from the Asian market. ROME (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) Russia and Italy agree that a nationwide dialogue is the only way out of the drawn-out conflict in Libya, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday. "We are convinced that a commonly-acceptable approach needs to be found that will allow Libyans to shape the future of their country through a national dialogue," he said. The top Russian diplomat came to Rome for a two-day visit on Thursday and met with Italian Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi on Friday. Lavrov said the Libyan war was high on the agenda. "We agreed to continue supporting efforts to create conditions for ending this crisis, as well as other crises in the region," Lavrov told reporters at a press briefing. The minister praised last week's conference in Palermo, which saw key Libyan players convene for two days of talks on how to bring peace to the North African country. Libya has been in turmoil since a NATO-led invasion deposed its longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. (@rukhshanmir) MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) Russia's embassy in Vilnius on Friday accused Lithuanian authorities of escalating tensions over Russian war graves dating back to two world wars. Lithuanian authorities for cultural heritage ordered in September to remove tombstones on two mass graves of Russian Empire and Soviet soldiers who were recently identified and buried in the Antakalnis cemetery near Vilnius. "It appears that instead of working this out through a negotiated deal on burial sites of soldiers and victims of civil wars and repressions . .. Vilnius tries to artificially escalate the situation," the embassy said. It accused the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Department of attempts to dictate what the memorial plaques should say, arguing the text "distorts the Soviet Army's liberating role and the results of World War II." Russia expects Lithuanian authorities to take "concrete, depoliticized steps toward ending the impasse that they themselves created," the diplomatic mission said. MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) Claims about detentions of foreign vessels by Russia in the Sea of Azov, allegedly lasting for multiple days, is blatant lies made up by Kiev, Washington and Brussels, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said, adding that the Russian border authorities were working to ensure smooth traffic in the sea. On Monday, London said following an EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting, that Russia allegedly disrupted the passage of ships in the Sea of Azov by carrying out stop and search operations for vessels arriving at and leaving from Ukrainian ports in the area. "Claims about hours-long or even multiple-day detentions of vessels is blatant lies ... Our border guards are working to ensure that the channel works smoothly and without disruption both from the Black Sea side and from the side of the Sea of Azov ... There is no talk about any deliberate detentions. All this has been made up in Kiev, Washington and Brussels," Karasin said in an interview with Russia's Kommersant newspaper published on Thursday. The required checks by the Russian border guards in the Sea of Azov are held only at the entrance to the Kerch Strait and do not usually exceed three hours, according to Karasin. Longer checks could only be caused by weather conditions or specific security requirements, the official added. The diplomat noted that he had discussed the situation around the Sea of Azov with Helga Schmid, the secretary general of the European External Action Service (EEAS), noting that it was "strange" that this topic was further pursued by Brussels. The crisis around the Sea of Azov erupted this year after Ukraine detained a Russian vessel there prompting Moscow to boost controls in the area. The tensions further escalated in October when the Ukrainian parliament passed a draft law authorizing Kiev to expand maritime controls by 12 nautical miles off its southern coast, allegedly in an effort to counter smuggling in the Black Sea. The dispute has been brought to attention of the European Union. The EU neighborhood policy commissioner, Johannes Hahn, said during a trip to Kiev that the issue was high on the agenda. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) would like to see African troops more involved in solving regional issues and would welcome "material resources" assistance from the international community, South African Foreign Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said at a press conference in Moscow on Thursday. MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd November, 2018) The Southern African Development Community (SADC) would like to see African troops more involved in solving regional issues and would welcome "material resources" assistance from the international community, South African Foreign Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said at a press conference in Moscow on Thursday. "The position of our part of Africa, which is SADC, is that we would like to see more involvement of African troops in solving African problems. We would like the world, if they would like to assist us in any way, to assist us with material resources to do that," Sisulu said. The foreign minister said that the future withdrawal of hundreds of US troops from Africa, as reported by US media in August, was not likely to have a significant effect on the work of the African troops. "We would like to make sure that the African brigade which has been established under the AU [African Union] is given the necessary space to do its work, so if the withdrawal of American troops gives us that space, it would not have any effect on the work that we do," Sisulu told reporters. The SADC Standby Brigade, the regional contingent of the African Standby Force, became operational in 2007. The African Standby Force is a peacekeeping force with military, police and civilian components, guided by the African Union. The force's task is to interfere in times of crisis. MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin and Kuwaiti Ambassador to Russia Abdulaziz Adwani discussed on Friday the situation in the middle East region, including the developments in Syria and Yemen, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "During the conversation, the diplomats have exchanged opinions on the situation in Syria, Yemen as well as other topical issues of the regional and global agenda, also in the context of bilateral cooperation on the UN Security Council platform," the ministry said, noting that Kuwait is currently a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. Yemen has been gripped by the civil war with the government headed by President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi fighting the Shia Houthi movement. The Yemeni government is backed by the Saudi-led coalition that has been carrying out airstrikes targeting the areas controlled by the Houthis since March 2015. Syria has been engulfed in an armed conflict since 2011. At the moment, the Syrian government forces continue military operations in several areas of the country to clear them from terrorists. The political resolution, rebuilding of the country and return of the refugees have come to the forefront in Syria. (@rukhshanmir) Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Prime Minister Ana Brnabic will meet with the ambassadors of Russia and China on Friday amid escalation of tensions between Belgrade and Pristina, the presidential press service said on Friday BELGRADE (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Prime Minister Ana Brnabic will meet with the ambassadors of Russia and China on Friday amid escalation of tensions between Belgrade and Pristina, the presidential press service said on Friday. Earlier in the day, police of the self-proclaimed Kosovo detained four Serbs in the town of Kosovska Mitrovica, saying that three of them were detained within investigation into the killing of Kosovo Serb leader Oliver Ivanovic in January of this year, and the fourth person "resisted the police." The authorities of the Serb-populated municipality of Zubin Potok in northern Kosovo decided to block the highway and checkpoints on the way to central Serbia in the afternoon in protest against Pristina's actions. Vucic also conducted a meeting of the National Security Council on the issue. "The meeting of President Vucic and Prime Minister Brnabic with the Ambassador of the People's Republic of China Li Manchang will be held at 10:00 [09:00 GMT], with Russia's Ambassador Alexander Chepurin at 11:00 [10:00 GMT]", - the statement said. Last week, Kosovo imposed a 10-percent tax on Serbian imports and raised it to 100 percent on Wednesday after accusing Belgrade of campaigning against its Interpol membership. Vucic called the move a "de facto trade ban" but vowed not to retaliate. He warned the unrecognized republic could face goods shortages and price hikes further down the road. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the tariffs were not in the spirit of the EU-Kosovo association agreement and demanded that Kosovo immediately revoke its decision. In 2008, Kosovo unilaterally proclaimed independence from Serbia. Even though over 100 UN member states have officially recognized Kosovo, Serbia, alongside Russia, China, Israel and several other countries, have not recognized the move. (@ChaudhryMAli88) The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has sent 20 trucks with humanitarian aid to Ukraine's eastern region of Donbas, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine said on Friday. KIEV (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has sent 20 trucks with humanitarian aid to Ukraine's eastern region of Donbas, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine said on Friday. "Twenty trucks with more than 208 tonnes (over 450,000 Pounds) of humanitarian cargo provided by the UNHCR have proceeded through Novotroitske checkpoint," the border service said in a statement. International organizations regularly send humanitarian aid to Donbas. The conflict in Donbas started 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 what they considered to be a coup. In February 2015, the warring parties signed the Minsk peace accords to end the hostilities in the region, but the situation has remained tense, with both parties accusing each other of ceasefire violations. GENEVA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has begun the redeployment of the foreign personnel to Yemen, but still relies primarily on the local contingent, Carlos Batallas, the head of the ICRC mission to Aden, told Sputnik on Thursday. In June, the ICRC withdrew 71 foreign personnel from Yemen over security concerns. "The situation is getting worse, and humanitarian aid is even more needed ... We are now bit by bit bringing back people to Yemen since last 2-3 months to various specific positions. It is not back to normal, because I do not think that we will be able to go back to normal in few months, if not years," Batallas said. According to Batallas, a total of 557 ICRC employees are currently working in Yemen, with 516 accounting for local specialists. "The good thing is that we work a lot with our local staff, with our colleagues from Yemen. And they have quite a good level of professionalism," Batallas stated, adding that local staff were enough to carry out humanitarian operations. He stressed that in the absence of a political solution, Yemen's humanitarian needs can hardly be addressed. "Even if all humanitarian organizations will start to work today in Yemen, we will not be able to meet all the needs, it is simply not possible ... So what we need here is that there is a political solution," Batallas indicated. He also recalled the need to ensure a lasting ceasefire in the country and the passage of humanitarian cargo through the embattled Yemeni port city of Al Hudaydah, controlled by the Houthi militants. Yemen has been gripped by a civil war between the government and the Shiite Houthi movement since 2015. The government backed by the Saudi-led coalition has been carrying out airstrikes that target areas controlled by the Houthis since March 2015. The almost four-year war has become the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with half of the Yemeni population assessed by the UN as being on the brink of starvation. ROME (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) It is impossible to make any significant decision on issues concerning Libya, Syria and the so-called Greater Mediterranean as a whole without Russia, the European Parliament's Vice-President, Fabio Massimo Castaldo, told Sputnik. "Over the past years, Russia has been convincing in proving its role of the forefront international player in the 'Greater Mediterranean' area. Not a single significant or important decision on Syria, Libya or other issues related to peace and well-being of the region, can be made without Russia," Castaldo, who is a member of the Italian 5 Star Movement, which is part of the ruling coalition, said on the sidelines of the Mediterranean Dialogues (MED) forum in Rome. Russia should be considered not as a part of some problem, but as a part of s solution to problems, Castaldo continued. The politician expressed confidence that the development of EU-Russian relations was important for future progress in various areas, including security. The participation of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the MED conference makes a big difference for achieving the balance of powers in the region, according to the Italian politician. Castaldo also underlined that Lavrov's current visit to Rome showed the strength of friendly ties between Rome and Moscow. During his trip to Italy, the Russian top diplomat held talks with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on Thursday. The foreign minister is also expected to meet with his Italian counterpart Enzo Moavero Milanesi on Friday. Castaldo recalled that the recent visit of Conte to Moscow for negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin further helped strengthen bilateral ties. The official noted that Italy sought dialogue with Russia and wanted to develop mutually favorable trade, economic and political cooperation. The fourth edition of the MED forum is held in Rome between Thursday and Saturday. Russia has been an active player in the settlement of the Syrian conflict. It is one of the ceasefire guarantor states, alongside Iran and Turkey. Moreover, it has been supporting Damascus in its fight against terrorism. Moscow has also been backing the peace process in Libya. KIEV (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) Ukrainian ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who heads the pro-European party Batkivshchyna (Fatherland), has promised lower gas prices for Ukrainians by half in the event of her victory in next year's presidential election. Ukrainians will go to the polls in spring to elect a new president, the race for which will officially start in late December. Tymoshenko has been leading in the polls for several months. "Reduction of gas prices is not populism, but simply a restoration of justice ... I firmly guarantee that the price for Ukrainian gas for people in the first weeks after the inauguration of the new president will be reduced twofold," Tymoshenko said presenting a new doctrine of her party. Tymoshenko said citing financial reports of UkrGasVydobuvannya gas production company that the cost of Ukrainian gas, including taxes, transportation and a 30-percent profit, amounts to about $75.5 per 1,000 cubic meters. According to the politician, profitability at the current price of $307.9 per 1,000 cubic meters is 400 percent. On October 19, Ukrainian government approved the increase of gas prices for households by 23.5 percent starting November 1 in line with the requirements of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under its financial support scheme. The new price is 8,500 hryvnias (over $300) per cubic meter. Kiev has been receiving loans as part of the IMF's $17.5 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) assistance package. The loans, which are part of a four-year program aimed at reviving the Ukrainian economy, were approved by the IMF back in 2015 and are conditioned on Kiev implementing reforms aimed at improving the economy and the rule of law in the country. The IMF announced in October it had agreed with Ukraine on a $3.9 billion stand-by agreement (SBA) for 2019. Tymoshenko also promised to change the country's pension system and establish a special pension bank. "We will completely change the common pension system for a personalized one. For each person, regardless of whether he is retired, in the course of seniority or at the very beginning, a private bank account will be created, guaranteed by the state," Tymoshenko said. According to the politician, her team is preparing such a model and making the necessary calculations. "After the elections, we will be ready to introduce a new pension system, which will be associated not with an increase in the retirement age and not with a decrease in the pension accrual rate for work experience, but with correct calculations," she said. The law on pension reform came into force in Ukraine on October 11, 2017. Pension reform does not imply an increase in the retirement age. The reform prescribes the increase in the period of work necessary for retirement from 15 to 25 years and its subsequent annual increase by one year staring from January 1, 2018. Six al-Shabab fighters have been killed in a US airstrike in Somalia as part of a government-backed operation to degrade the Islamist militant group, the US African Command said Thursday. MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd November, 2018) Six al-Shabab fighters have been killed in a US airstrike in Somalia as part of a government-backed operation to degrade the Islamist militant group, the US African Command said Thursday. "We currently assess the first airstrike killed six al-Shabaab militants and the second airstrike destroyed a weapons cache," AFRICOM said in a statement. The precision airstrikes were conducted Wednesday near the town of Harardhere. The US military said no civilians appeared to have been killed or injured. The militant group emerged in Somalia in 2006 and has been responsible for numerous terror attacks throughout the region. They are known for enforcing strict Muslims laws in territories under their control. (@ChaudhryMAli88) The United States hopes the United Nations' role in the Syrian crisis settlement will increase if the Syrian Constitutional Committee is not created, US State Department's Special Representative for Syria Engagement James Jeffrey said in an interview with RIA Novosti news agency and Kommersant newspaper. WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) The United States hopes the United Nations' role in the Syrian crisis settlement will increase if the Syrian Constitutional Committee is not created, US State Department's Special Representative for Syria Engagement James Jeffrey said in an interview with RIA Novosti news agency and Kommersant newspaper. "Now, if we are terribly disappointed and the Constitutional Committees is not stood up, then ... the United States certainly, and I think many of those countries that are closely aligned with us will expect a very different and much more central role played by the UN [United Nations] in fixing this crisis if the efforts by [UN Special Envoy for Syria] Mr. de Mistura to work with the Russians, to work with the Iranians, to work with the Turks, and to work to some degree with the Syrian government proves to be not successful," Jeffrey said. (@ChaudhryMAli88) The United States will never have good relations with Syrian President Bashar Assad, but only Syrians get to decide who will lead them, US Special Representative for Syria Engagement James Jeffrey said. WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2018) The United States will never have good relations with Syrian President Bashar Assad, but only Syrians get to decide who will lead them, US Special Representative for Syria Engagement James Jeffrey said. "We are committed to a political process that is with and by the Syrian people. The Syrian people get to decide who will lead them and what kind of a government they will have. We are not committed to any kind of regime change. We are committed to a change in the behavior of that regime," he said in an interview with RIA Novosti and the Kommersant newspaper. (@FahadShabbir) BEIJING, Nov. 23 (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Nov, 2018 ) :Chinese President Xi Jinping's upcoming visits to Spain, Argentina, Panama and Portugal will intensify respective bilateral ties and G20 cooperation, senior Chinese officials said Friday. Xi will pay state visits to the four countries from Nov. 27 to Dec. 5, and attend the 13th Group of 20 (G20) summit from Nov. 30 to Dec. 1 in Buenos Aires. During his state visit to Spain from Nov. 27 to 29, Xi is scheduled to meet with Spanish King Felipe VI, hold talks with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, collectively meet with President of the Senate Pio Garcia Escudero and President of the Parliament Ana Pastor Julian, and address the two houses, said Vice Foreign Minister Wang Chao. According to Wang, China and Spain will publish a joint statement and sign documents on their cooperation in the third-party markets, service trade, taxation, culture, science and technology, and finance. During Xi's state visit to Portugal, scheduled for Dec. 4 to 5, he will hold talks with his Portuguese counterpart Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, meet with President of the Parliament Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues and Prime Minister Antonio Costa, Wang said. According to Wang, the two sides are expected to publish a joint statement and sign documents to boost cooperation in such areas as infrastructure, culture, education, science and technology, water conservancy, quality inspection, energy, and finance. Vice Foreign Minister Qin Gang said Xi's state visits to Argentina and Panama will take place from Dec. 2 to 3. Hailing the rapid development of China-Argentina relations, Qin said the two countries have set a good example of common development among emerging economies and developing countries. Xi will hold talks with Argentine President Mauricio Macri to facilitate bilateral ties, Qin said, adding the two heads of state will also have an in-depth exchange of views on international and regional issues. The two sides are scheduled to publish a joint statement, sign a joint action plan for the two governments in the next five years and cooperation documents on economy and trade, finance, and public security, according to Qin. Xi's state visit to Panama is aimed at enhancing mutual understanding between the two countries' people and speed up mutually beneficial cooperation to consolidate the foundation for long-term development of bilateral ties, Qin said. China and Panama forged diplomatic relations last year based on the one China principle. Saying Panama is a new partner of China in the Latin American region, Qin stressed that bilateral ties have started strong, featuring rapid progress and high efficiency. "During the one and half years since the establishment of diplomatic ties, the two countries have witnessed cooperation outcomes on trade, investment, maritime affairs, finance, infrastructure, and human resources," Qin said. Xi will hold talks with Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela to exchange views on issues of common concern and map out future cooperation, Qin said. The two sides will sign cooperation documents on e-commerce, service trade, infrastructure, economic and trade exhibition, maritime transport, financing, quality inspection, culture and education, Qin added. The 13th G20 summit will be Xi's sixth time to attend or preside over the summit, which shows China attaches great importance to the G20 mechanism and has a strong will to contribute to the improvement of global economic governance, Assistant Foreign Minister Zhang Jun said. According to Zhang, the summit will include three sessions and a closed-door meeting, where topics on world economy, trade and investment, digital economy, sustainable development, infrastructure, and climate change will be discussed. Xi will expound on China's position on these issues and exchange views with other leaders. He will also attend an informal meeting of leaders of BRICS countries. Zhang emphasized that the upcoming summit, themed "building consensus for fair and sustainable development", is conducive to gathering efforts to oppose protectionism, support multilateral trading regime, and push forward the construction of an open world economy. Talking about policy preparations for the upcoming G20 summit, Vice Minister of Finance Zou Jiayi said a series of meetings among G20 financial and economic leaders earlier this year resulted in prominent consensus and outcomes. The meetings witnessed discussions on major financial and economic issues, including the global macroeconomic situation and risks, international financial architecture, cooperation on taxation, and sustainable finance, Zou added. As an important G20 member, China has played a constructive role in facilitating consensus on issues of common concern, such as responding to opportunities and challenges brought by the technological revolution, forging ahead infrastructure financing and taxation on the digital economy, Zou said. As for China's expectation for business and trade cooperation at the upcoming summit, Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen said it is hoped new drivers of growth will be tapped through closer cooperation on trade and investment. Stressing the importance of jointly promoting inclusive and sustainable development, Wang said China hopes all parties will advocate the multilateral trading regime. "China supports the WTO to facilitate necessary reforms, to make it more authoritative and effective," Wang added. China expects the G20 will help advance macroeconomic policy coordination, improve international financial architecture, and promote economic growth in a green, sustainable and inclusive way, said Chen Yulu, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China. "China stands ready to share its experience in improving financial supervision to match FinTech innovation and infrastructure financing," Chen said, adding that pragmatic outcomes in financial and economic sectors are expected to be produced at the summit. The nations largest drive-through light show spectacular is celebrating our nations service men and women. Glittering Lights invites all military people to experience the millions of holiday themed lights at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, free of charge (Photo credit: Gabe Ginsberg). This gift to our service men and women is courtesy of Aliante Hotel & Casino who underwrote the cost of allowing this special night to take place as a thank you for their sacrifice. WHAT: Glittering Lights and Aliante Hotel & Casino, a devoted supporter of our service men and women, is inviting all military people to Glittering Lights on Monday, November 26 to enter the lights show, free. WHEN: Monday, November 26 from dusk through 9 p.m. WHERE: Las Vegas Motor Speedway I-15 North, Exit 54, turn right. Entrance is 12 mile on the right. PLEASE NOTE A large number of visitors are getting lost on their way to the attraction. There is NO access from Las Vegas Blvd., due to construction. Please do not follow GPS. The only entrance is from the I-15 N. HOW: The entrance is per carload, doesnt matter how many people are in the car. Free entry with any ID card that shows your military status. For many Ukrainians, the presence of the fried-chicken joint KFC in the building that once served as a makeshift hospital in the uprising in 2014 disgraced the memory of the dozens of people killed by snipers and police in the unrest AFP/JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER The US-branded fast-food restaurant opened on Wednesday (Nov 21) - the day Ukrainians marked the fifth anniversary of the revolution's start. It is located at an address on Kiev's Maidan square that served as a makeshift hospital in the bloody final days of the uprising in February 2014 which resulted in the toppling of the pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, and during which the building was gutted by fire. For many Ukrainians, the presence of the fried-chicken joint in the building disgraced the memory of the dozens of people killed by snipers and police in the unrest. Far-right protesters demonstrated in front of the outlet on Wednesday, and six of them arrested. On Thursday, public anger swelled as internet users posted scathing messages on the Facebook page of KFC Ukraine. "How can you open your restaurant in a place where people died fighting for a free Ukraine?" read one message. "The people won't tolerate such an outrage," warned another. Faced with such fury, the outlet closed late Thursday, putting up a sign stating it was a "temporary" measure. "We are provisionally closed until Monday at least," an employee said without giving his name. The Ukraine branch of the American chain declined to comment on the uproar, saying in a statement that the restaurant was opened by a franchise licensee, not the US company itself. Ukraine's revolution kicked off on Nov 21, 2013 when Yanukovych suspended negotiations on closer ties with the European Union. It came to a climax in February 2014 with the deaths of a hundred protesters and about 20 police officers. Yanukovych escaped to Russia and was removed from office. Ukraine has since turned firmly pro-West - but Russia backed an insurgency in its eastern region and annexed its Crimean peninsula. Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam visited the hi-tech booth at the WTA held in October in Binh Duong Founded in 1976, Investment and Industrial Development Corporation (Becamex IDC) has created a chain for manufacturing and business co-operation, attracting further foreign direct investment (FDI) to the province which in turn has seen improvements in transport and industrial parks. Among key infrastructure projects are the upgrading and expanding of National Highway 13, the Bau Bang-My Phuoc-Tan Van routes, and roads DT743 and DT744. These routes have helped both transport and industrial development, connecting industrial parks (IPs) in Binh Duong with seaports in the southern key economic zone. At the same time, they have stimulated the economic restructuring of the southern parts of Binh Duong. As of October 31, Binh Duong had a total of 3,420 foreign-invested projects with the total registered capital of $31.75 billion. With this, Binh Duong ranks third (after Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi) in FDI attraction. Meanwhile, Becamexs IPs in Binh Duong have attracted 970 foreign-invested projects with the total registered capital of over $14 billion. DECADES OF EXPERIENCE Last month at the government conference on reviewing Vietnams 30-year FDI attraction held in Hanoi, ministries, local authorities, and investors shared their experiences and lessons on attracting FDI and the contribution of this source to the Vietnamese economy. Many of the lessons shared at the conference have been implemented by Becamex IDC for many years in Binh Duong, contributing to the provinces high rank in FDI attraction. Becamex IDC co-operated with Sembcorp Group in Singapore to invest in the first Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP) in Binh Duong. VSIP has infrastructure facilities, such as transportation, electricity, water supply, power supply, and environmental treatment, which fully meet international standards. Moreover, VSIP has established its own management board to support investors, especially dealing with issues with government and the local authorities. The management board has supported foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) with fast and convenient services in preparing and processing investment in the park, and connecting with customs to ensure that the import and export goods of FIEs in the park can be cleared soon and reduce costs. The board helps connect with the tax authorities to timely solve any difficulties of tenants. These issues are often considered as a major barrier for FIEs to invest in Vietnam. According to Kelvin Teo, co-chairman of VSIPs Board of Directors, Becamex IDC has deep knowledge of local issues and therefore has been well placed to solve difficulties for foreign investors. This is the reason that apart from Binh Duong, VSIPs have spread to many other locations in Vietnam and have so far attracted over $9 billion in the total investment capital from more than 700 companies from 60 countries and territories, said Teo. In investment attraction, infrastructure development is considered a red carpet on which Binh Duong authorities and Becamex IDC are wooing their tenants. One of the advantages of Binh Duong, according to provincial leaders, is the huge investment capital reserved for infrastructure development. This capital source is not allocated from the state budget, but comes mainly from the private sector. This makes Binh Duong different from other localities because thanks to this, many infrastructure projects have been built in a speedy manner and with good quality in just a short time. Many FIEs in Binh Duong apply hi-tech in production Students of Eastern International University practice new technologies PARTNER TO MANY GLOBAL BRANDS According to Nguyen Van Hung, chairman of Becamex IDC, the corporation has contributed to Dinh Duongs success by connecting large-scale international groups with Vietnam. For example, Tokyu Group from Japan has co-operated with Becamex IDC to set up a joint venture to invest in a range of projects with the registered capital of $1.2 billion. In addition to implementing infrastructure projects in Binh Duong New City, the Japanese group has implemented the Smart Bus Project, and many other plans are in the pipeline to confirm its long-term commitment to the southern province. Recently, Becamex IDC has also been involved in two major collaborative projects. One was BW Industrial to develop intelligent logistics in Vietnam, made by a joint venture between Becamex IDC and Warburg Pincus, a global private equity firm headquartered in the US. The other project was the co-operation in information technology and telecommunications with NTT Corporation from Japan. Fukuyama Masafumi, chief representative of NTT Group, the fourth largest telecom corporation in the world, said, The co-operation with Becamex IDC in this project is just the first step of NTT Group in Binh Duong. In the time to come, the two sides will co-operate on a range of projects, such as studying the feasibility to develop Binh Duong Smart City. Implementing the project to transform Binh Duong into a smart city, from 2015 Becamex IDC has co-operated with Dutch-based Brainport Group to build a model combining state, schools, and enterprises to convert Binh Duong into a high-tech and advanced manufacturing economy. Recently, Becamex IDC entered into a comprehensive partnership with Industrial Technology Research Institute the largest and most important scientific research institute in Taiwan to collaborate in the fields of technology and human resource exchange, and to strengthen and apply science and technology to industrial and smart city development. At the moment, the total value of Becamex IDCs assets amounts to hundreds of millions of US dollars, becoming one of the top companies in infrastructure development in Vietnam. The company is also working with strategic partners to invest in a range of large scale projects. Among those is the scheme to build a smart logistics corridor with a modern railway network linking industrial zones in Binh Duong with seaports in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region, the public transport project connecting Binh Duong with Ho Chi Minh City, and a science and technology complex with three components: scientific and technological IP, university village, and urban development universities. Tran Thanh Liem, Chairman of the Binh Duong Peoples Committee, said that Becamex IDC is a key investor in IP infrastructure in the province. The corporations overseas marketing and partnership programmes as well as achievements in infrastructure construction and social housing projects in the province have contributed to ensuring a better economy and improving the life of the people in the province. Becamex chairman Hung added that with its tradition of continuous innovation, the group will continue to develop transport infrastructure in accordance with green, clean, and beautiful criteria, creating trust and inspiration for potential investors to attract them towards Binh Duong. In the time to come, Becamex IDC will work with experts and partners to study the feasibility of sub-projects and connection ventures to realise the purpose of transforming Binh Duong into a smart city and help it become a first-class urban city before 2020. Binh Duong rolls out red carpet for FDI, source: binhduong.gov.vn After 30 years of attracting FDI, foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) have grown into an integral part of the national economy. They have become more dynamic, and making an increasing contribution to both the countrys socioeconomic development and to the development of Binh Duong. Nguyen Thanh Truc, Director, Binh Duong Department of Planning and Investment As of October 31, the province was home to 3,472 foreign-invested projects with a total value of over $31.75 billion in committed capital, lagging only behind Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. FIEs account for 46 per cent of the provinces economic structure, over 82.8 per cent of the export value, and provide employment to 62 per cent of all labourers in the province. FIEs also dominate production of several major industrial products in the province, such as electrical and electronic products (99 per cent), bicycles (99 per cent), automobiles (100 per cent), footwear (88 per cent), and animal feed (over 65 per cent). FIEs also provide nearly half of the total capital volume for investment development within the province, and 80 per cent of all foreign-invested projects focus on industrial production. This is one of the crucial development resources, helping to facilitate the transformation of the provincial economic structure, gearing it towards both industrialisation and modernisation. FIEs have played an important part in introducing technology, developing major industries, as well as helping local companies from a diverse range of economic sectors to engage more deeply in the industrial production value chain, and make contributions to the provincial budget. As for investment partners, at present, more than 64 economies have investments in Binh Duong. Taiwan tops the list with 817 projects worth of $5.23 billion in registered investment capital. Binh Duong has received an increasing number of large-scale foreign-invested projects, including a $1 billion paper production project by Taiwans Cheng Loong Binh Duong Paper Limited at Protrade International Industrial Park (IP), and the development of a $760 million apparel and textile production complex belonging to Taiwans Polytex Far Eastern Limited at Bau Bang IP. Important projects in the trade and services fields have also been lured to Binh Duong, particularly in urban and industrial infrastructure development. Ventures such as the Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP) I, II, and III worth a total $3.5 billion in the joint venture format have been set up in the province, whilst Japan-backed Becamex Tokyu Limited has invested in a $1.2 billion real estate trading and restaurant service. Trusted with attracting FDI in the province, the Binh Duong Department of Planning and Investment has been proactive in advising provincial leaders about how to devise programmes, plans and projects in this field. Some major documents include the programme and project on investment attraction reform during 2016-2020, the programme and project on mobilising and availing of diverse resources for provincial socioeconomic infrastructure development during 2016-2020. The decision to supersede Decision No.49/2011/QD-UBND of the Binh Duong Peoples Committee has also aided to streamline production projects in the province. In addition, the department has engaged in hosting a chain of events that aim to promote the potential of Binh Duong to international investors. The department has also hosted events such as the Binh Duong Smart City Conference, the 2018 World Technopolis Association Summit, and the 2018 Horasis Asia Meeting. These occasions have contributed to enhancing the status of Binh Duong on the world stage, as well as providing valuable opportunities to meet and share experiences with top CEOs from global companies. In order to implement Programme 34-CTr/TU of the Binh Duong Party Committee on investment attraction, the Binh Duong Peoples Committee has presented a plan involving making investment more attractive in industrial, service, and hi-tech agriculture development, as well as concentrating resources towards the smart city project in Binh Duong. With an abundance of potential and a firm commitment from the provinces leaders, Binh Duong is proving to be an alluring venue to both domestic and international investors. As a rising member of the global smart community, Binh Duong is seeing strengthening FDI inflows OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS, BINH DUONGS GROWTH RATE HAS ALWAYS BEEN HIGHER THAN THE COUNTRYS AVERAGE AND THE PROVINCE HAS BEEN RANKING AS ONE OF THE TOP DESTINATIONS FOR FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT. DO YOU THINK THE PROVINCE CAN MAINTAIN THIS PACE IN THE YEARS AHEAD? Tran Thanh Liem, Chairman of the Binh Duong Peoples Committee In 2018, the province will continue to achieve positive and comprehensive results in almost all fields. Gross regional domestic product (GRDP) is estimated to increase by 8.5 per cent against 2017. The proportions of industry-service-agriculture-import tax will be at 63.8-24.41-3.49-8.3 per cent, respectively. The index for industrial production is estimated to rise by 9.8 per cent on-year. The production value of the agro-forestry-fishery sector climbed by 3.8 per cent, while that of value added services ascended by 10.3 per cent. Similarly, total retail sales of goods and services went up by 20.1 per cent, and export turnover is estimated to expand by 15.5 per cent. The total investment capital of the whole province is estimated to rise by 12 per cent, and the estimated budgetary revenue for the whole year of 2018 is estimated at VND50 trillion ($2.17 billion), equal to 95 per cent of the figure assigned by the Binh Duong Peoples Council, VND36 trillion ($1.57 billion) of which came from domestic revenue, and VND14 trillion ($608.7 million) was collected from import and export taxes. Meanwhile, the entire provinces budgetary expenditure was estimated at VND17.5 trillion ($760.87 million), VND7.06 trillion ($306.96 million) of which was spent on development investment. According to our report, more than $1.6 billion of foreign direct investment was registered in the province, while social welfare and other social spending are guaranteed, ensuring the stable lives of residents. COULD YOU OUTLINE BINH DUONGS NEW STANDING IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY? In October this year, Binh Duong successfully organised the World Technopolis Association (WTA). Prior to that, the province became the 106th member of the WTA, and was honoured to host a series of events commemorating the 20th anniversary of the WTA. Based on the knowledge gained and utilising its membership of the WTA, Binh Duong will actively participate in exchanges and co-operation activities in various fields with other cities in the world, further strengthening the solidarity and friendship that lies behind the peace and prosperity of humanity. Recently, the Global Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) has published the list of 21 cities honoured as Intelligent Communities. Binh Duong is proud to be one of these 21 cities. Binh Duong is also the first province in Vietnam to have become a member of the ICF. This helps establish stronger international relations with the worlds smart community to exchange information, experience, and attract more talent to work in the province. Additionally, the Asian Economic Co-operation Forum 2018 (Horasis) will take place on November 25-27 in Binh Duong. The event will be co-chaired by the Binh Duong Peoples Committee, Horasis, Becamex IDC, and Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park Ltd. (VSIP) in co-operation with local departments and relevant government agencies. HORASIS IS OF GREAT CONCERN TO THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY, PARTICULARLY BECAUSE THIS WILL BE THE FIRST TIME THE EVENT IS HELD IN VIETNAM. WHAT OUTCOMES DO YOU EXPECT FROM THE EVENT? It is expected that at this years forum there will be about 400 domestic guests, including leaders of the government, ministries and agencies, other cities and provinces, as well as senior leaders from a number of large enterprises. There will also be about 400 international guests who are top executives from countries, and international organisations, as well as from hundreds of large-scale companies from more than 60 countries and territories. The main events of the forum will be held on November 25-26 in the form of a world economic forum, with four plenary sessions and 35 discussion sessions in parallel, with about 100 people per session. Dialogues will take place at smaller halls in each thematic category with presentations and speeches by leading speakers. The hosting of Horasis 2018 will be a very good opportunity for Binh Duong and all businesses to exchange views and connect with a network of senior leaders, especially the founders, presidents, and general directors of leading companies in Asia and the globe. This important event will likely help create new investment opportunities and partners, jointly developing management capacity and science and technology, promote trade, attract more investment, and expand co-operation between Vietnam, Asia, and the world. At the same time, Horasis will also create an important foundation to continuously contribute to the socioeconomic development of the province and turn Binh Duong into a smart city. FrieslandCampina Vietnam always takes the lead in social responsibility activities At FrieslandCampina Vietnam, raw fresh milk must pass strict quality tests. Before going into production, it must go through control checks from grass, food, water safety and living environment, to the health of the cows and the farming method. Thanks to this, FrieslandCampina Vietnam produces milk in Vietnam that satisfies European standards. Once arriving at the factory, raw materials are processed by the latest technology in accordance with the standards of the Netherlands as well as the Council of Europe on good hygiene in production. Therefore, the freshness and the nutrients in milk are best preserved. PIONEERING SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ACTIVITIES Fully aware of the importance of nutrition and physical activities towards the healthy development of children, FrieslandCampina Vietnam pioneered collaboration with the Red Cross for a campaign called Drink. Move. Be Strong. It offers nutrition and physical development education for Vietnamese children to promote and encourage them towards a healthy lifestyle. This includes reducing the rate of malnutrition, controlling obesity, and improving habits of daily nutrition, thereby improving childrens health and physical strength. In the last two years, the programme has been promoted in more than 400 schools and reached 500,000 children nation-wide. When it comes to social activities, Den Dom Dom Study Encouragement programme a signature programme initiated by FrieslandCampina Vietnam in 2002 cannot go unmentioned. The programme was launched to prevent poor children from dropping out of school and to support the construction of new schools in rural areas to provide children and teachers a better learning and teaching environment. To date, the Den Dom Dom programme has disbursed more than VND30 billion ($1.3 million) to build 22 schools nationwide and grant 25,000 scholarships to needy school children in rural areas. In 2013, the prime minister awarded a certificate of merit to FrieslandCampina Vietnam in recognition of its significant contributions to education through the programme. Alongside this, FrieslandCampina Vietnam is highly appreciated for its business strategies that integrate environmental protection activities. The company was awarded a certificate of merit by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE) for its excellent achievements. In 2018, FrieslandCampina Vietnam was listed in the Green Book of the southern province of Binh Duong for its excellent performance in environmental protection activities. This past August, FrieslandCampina Vietnam and the MoNRE signed a memorandum of understanding to co-operate in 2018-2021. The programme called For the Green Environment of Vietnam is a result of a shared sense of responsibility to protect and improve the living environment and create a greener and cleaner Vietnam. Harmonising economic growth, environmental protection, and corporate social responsibility, FrieslandCampinas sustainable business activities have been highly appreciated by many domestic and foreign institutions, resulting in a landfall of awards and titles, including the first-grade Labour Medal of Vietnam. HEINEKEN Vietnam was crowned as the most sustainable company in Vietnam once again On November 23, 2018, HEINEKEN Vietnam has been recognised as the most sustainable company in Vietnam (in the manufacturing sector) for the second consecutive year. This honour, presented at the Awarding Ceremony in Hanoi of the Programme on Benchmarking and Announcing Sustainable Companies in Vietnam 2018, marks the third year HEINEKEN Vietnam has been named in the top three since the programmes launch in 2016. The ceremony was attended by Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue, chairman of Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) Vu Tien Loc, and other government officials from the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA), the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE), the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL), other government agencies, and nearly 400 representatives from national and international organisations, the business community, and the media. This highly-anticipated event is part of the Programme on Benchmarking and Ranking Sustainable Companies in Vietnam, initiated by the Vietnam Business Council for Sustainable Development (VBCSD), under the guidance of VCCI, since 2016. To promote sustainable development within the Vietnamese business community, the programme uses the Corporate Sustainability Index (CSI) as a base criteria for ranking and celebrating the most sustainable companies in Vietnam. These are the organisations with the most significant contribution to supporting the National Sustainability Agenda and the United Nations SDGs in Vietnam. Winners of the awards ceremony for sustainable companies in Vietnam in 2018 This year, the CSI was further aligned with Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards and other international practices. The CSI can be applied by any member of the business community, regardless of their scale or sector, and is a form of sustainability reporting. The Programme on Benchmarking and Ranking Sustainable Companies in Vietnam and the CSI stems from Resolution No. 19-2018/NQ-CP which is aimed at continuously improving business climate and enhancing national productivity and competitiveness. This years programme received almost 500 applications from the business community. Despite the significantly higher number of applications this year, HEINEKEN Vietnam maintained its position as the most sustainable manufacturing company in Vietnam. HEINEKEN was also recognised on stage as one of the few organisations awarded in the top ten for three consecutive years of the CSI since its launch in 2016. Matt Wilson, corporate affairs director of HEINEKEN Vietnam, said: Being awarded as the most sustainable manufacturing company in Vietnam for the second consecutive year is such a wonderful honour for everyone at HEINEKEN Vietnam. It is also a great challenge for us to uphold this high standard and raise the bar further, but we are up for the challenge. We want to continue to push ourselves and inspire other businesses in Vietnam to create more sustainable value in Vietnam. We believe that with the significant support of the Vietnamese government and increasing dedication by members of the business community, together we can build a better future for Vietnam. HEINEKEN Vietnam has been in the top 10 in all three years since the CSI was launched Both HEINEKENs global and local Vietnamese sustainability strategy are designed to support the United Nations SDGs. HEINEKENs approach covers their entire value chain from manufacturing to distribution to consumption. HEINEKEN Vietnams sustainability strategy focuses on six key areas and supports the implementation of eight out of 17 SDGs, where the company believes it can have the greatest impact in Vietnam: Advocating Responsible Consumption, Promoting Health and Safety, Protecting Water Resources, Reducing CO2 Emissions, Growing with Communities, and Sourcing Sustainably. One of HEINEKEN Vietnams major focuses in Vietnam has been to promote responsible consumption through its major brands. Last year HEINEKEN Vietnam invested VND16 billion ($695,700) and reached more than 10 million Heineken & Tiger fans with responsible drinking initiatives. HEINEKEN Vietnam contributed to protecting the planet by using renewable energy, reducing water consumption, and moving towards zero waste to landfill in production. HEINEKEN Vietnams breweries are the most water efficient across HEINEKEN Asia-Pacific Region. 99 per cent of its waste and by-products from production are reused or recycled creating virtually zero waste from production. In terms of economic impact, HEINEKEN Vietnam contributed 0.88 per cent of Vietnams total GDP and supported 158,000 jobs in 2017, both directly through its operations and indirectly through its value chain in Vietnam. HEINEKEN Vietnam is also committed to working with both the Vietnamese government and other members of the business community in Vietnam to further encourage sustainable development. At the National Conference on Sustainable Development 2018 held earlier this year in Hanoi and chaired by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, with the participation of Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam, HEINEKEN Vietnam was recognised by representatives from the government and the business community as an excellent example of implementing innovative sustainability initiatives, enhancing competitiveness and providing long-term socio-economic benefits in Vietnam. HEINEKEN Vietnam is a subsidiary of HEINEKEN, one of the worlds leading international brewers. Originated in the Netherlands, this family-owned business with a history of over 150 years, brews and distributes over 250 beer and cider brands in more than 180 countries. In Vietnam, HEINEKEN produces and distributes Heineken, Tiger, Amstel, Larue, BIVINA, Desperados, Affligem, and Strongbow cider. HEINEKEN has six breweries across Vietnam, in Hanoi, Danang, Quang Nam, Ho Chi Minh City, Vung Tau, and Tien Giang. Thousands of Central American migrants hoping to reach the United States in search of a better life have been camping at a makeshift shelter at the Mexico-US border. (AFP/PEDRO PARDO) With US helicopters hovering overhead, a group made up mostly of men headed just after midday from the shelter they have been staying at since last week to the El Chaparral bridge around a kilometre away in Tijuana, just across the border from San Diego, California. Trump on Thursday threatened to close the border altogether, having previously deployed nearly 6,000 troops to erect concrete barriers and razor-wire fences to deter what he has called an "invasion." "If we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control," Trump told reporters, before firing a warning to Mexico. "The whole border. I mean the whole border," he said, adding that "Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the United States." Tensions rose at the border when a local official and a human rights activist tried to convince the migrants both of the benefits of remaining in Mexico, and to submit their US asylum requests through official channels. "We don't want to!" shouted the migrants before continuing on to the bridge. "Let us cross now, we're already desperate, we've left family in Honduras, we need to work," said a man called Wilson. Authorities in Tijuana set up a job fair in an attempt to recruit skilled workers amongst the migrants for the benefit of local companies, while Mexico's migration agency has offered them temporary residency papers. Some have taken advantage of the offers but others are simply determined to reach the US. Since setting out more than a month ago, mostly from from Honduras, thousands of migrants - including many women and children - have covered about 4,400 kilometres, either walking or hitchhiking, before the first groups began reaching Tijuana at the end of last week. But there have been tensions since they started arriving at the border town, particularly in the shelter housing around 4,500 Central Americans. The migrants are mostly fleeing poverty and unrest in Central America's "Northern Triangle" - El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, where gang violence has fueled some of the highest murder rates in the world. A Doosan Vina Hai Phong plant, an affiliate of South Korean Doosan Group in the northern port city of Hai Phong. - Photo tietkiemnangluong.com.vn Vietnam made up 17.7 per cent of South Korean manufacturing companies total direct overseas investment in 2017, surging sharply from 3.7 per cent in 1990, Yonhap quoted the Federation of Korean Industries as saying. In contrast, the comparable figure for China declined to 27.6 per cent last year from 44.5 per cent in the 2000s. In particular, South Koreas small and midsize manufacturers rushed to the Southeast Asian nation for direct investment, moving away from the worlds second-largest economy. The report said Viet Nams rise as a major destination for South Korean manufacturers investment is attributable to changes in business climates and policies in both countries. A different report from the Ministry of Planning and Investments Foreign Investment Agency showed that South Korean investors pumped more than US$6.5 billion into Vietnam over the past 10 months, accounting for 23.4 per cent of the nations total foreign direct investment (FDI). As of October 2018, South Korea retained its crown as Vietnams leading source of FDI with more than 7,300 valid projects, worth a combined $62.1 billion. Carlos Ghosn poses during a photo session at the Renault headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt. (Photo: AFP/Joel Saget) Ghosn, in jail since Monday, stands accused of under-reporting his income by millions of dollars and a host of other financial irregularities after an internal Nissan probe following a whistleblower report. His ouster is an astonishing turnaround for a titan of the auto sector who revived the Japanese brand and forged an alliance with France's Renault as well as domestic rival Mitsubishi Motors, which sold a combined 10.6 million cars last year - more than any other firm. It also throws the future of the alliance into doubt as Ghosn was the architect of the far-flung partnership - which employs 450,000 people globally - and the glue holding it together. "After reviewing a detailed report of the internal investigation, the board voted unanimously ... to discharge Carlos Ghosn as Chairman of the Board," Nissan said in a statement after the four-hour meeting, which did not name a replacement. But it reiterated that its "partnership with Renault remains unchanged" and that "the mission is to minimise the potential impact and confusion on the day-to-day cooperation" between the firms. 'WINNING COOPERATION' The French and Japanese finance ministers also reiterated their "strong support" after discussing Ghosn's case at a meeting in Paris on Thursday. In a joint statement, Bruno Le Maire and Hiroshige Seko said they both wanted "to maintain this winning cooperation." Renault's board has so far stood by Ghosn - naming his deputy Thierry Bollore to handle day-to-day business. Bollore on Thursday pledged "to stay focused on our mission to preserve the interests of Renault and the sustainability of the alliance". "You can count on my full commitment," he said in a statement on Twitter. The board of Mitsubishi Motors was reportedly set to meet on Monday to discuss Ghosn's future. Prosecutors intercepted the Brazil-born tycoon on Monday as he landed in Tokyo on a private jet, accusing him and another executive Greg Kelly of understating the chairman's income by around US$44 million between June 2011 and June 2015. His fate as Nissan chairman appeared sealed just hours later as his hand-picked successor as CEO, Hiroto Saikawa launched an impassioned broadside at his former mentor, muttering about a "dark side" to the Ghosn era and urging his sacking. Even after being jettisoned as chairman, Ghosn remains technically a member of the board as a full shareholders' meeting is required to remove him. Nissan said it would study the creation of a "special committee" to take advice from a third party on improving its internal governance and executive pay. 'GOOD HEALTH' Ghosn is being held custody in a Tokyo detention centre and has not been seen in public nor made any comments since his arrest. He received a visit from Brazilian consul Joao de Mendonca on Thursday who told AFP that Ghosn "sounded very well, in good health". But his conditions are likely to be a far cry from what the millionaire businessman is used to. Inmates at the centre are typically allowed 30 minutes exercise per day and only two baths a week. Ties and strings are removed to prevent suicide attempts and former guards and lawyers said Ghosn was almost certain to be held in a cramped cell on his own. On Wednesday, prosecutors successfully applied to extend his custody for an additional 10 days as they step up their questioning. Deputy chief prosecutor Shin Kukimoto said the type of crime Ghosn is accused of is "one of the most serious types of crime" under Japan's Financial Instruments Act, and Ghosn could face a fine of 10 million yen (US$89,000) and a 10-year prison sentence. Under the law, companies themselves can also be held accountable for the falsified documents, Kukimoto said, following reports that prosecutors believe Nissan also has a case to answer. The Kyodo news agency in Japan also reported Thursday that Nissan had paid US$100,000 a year since 2002 to Ghosn's sister who had no record of doing advisory work for the group. Public broadcaster NHK has reported that Nissan paid "huge sums" to provide Ghosn with luxury homes in Rio de Janeiro, Beirut, Paris and Amsterdam "without any legitimate business reason". 'COUPLE DIVORCING' According to the Financial Times, Ghosn's fall from grace came as he was working on a full-blown merger of Nissan and Renault. This was opposed by executives in the Japanese firm that has ended up being the most profitable player in the partnership and the FT said Ghosn's departure could be used as a pretext to rebalance the alliance in Nissan's favour. Analysts said that despite clear tensions between the two firms headquartered 10,000 kilometres apart, neither company has the financial might alone to make the heavy investments in electric vehicles considered to be the industry's future. "It would be like a couple divorcing after 20 years - it would be complicated, very expensive and not easy to do," said Gaetan Toulemonde, an analyst at Deutsche Bank. "Honestly, I don't know if it's even possible." Many foreigners including expats and tourists went to Quest Festival 2017.-Photo pouchnation.com The three-day festival will bring music, arts and workshops to Vietnamese and expat youths in Son Tinh Camp, in ong Mo, west central of Hanoi. The event runs from 12pm Friday to Sunday, featuring hundreds of international artists, including vocal and dance-reggae-dub-jungle MC Eva Lazarus. "This will be my first time in Viet Nam. Im so excited, I cant wait," said Lazarus. "Im looking forward to sharing my music in such a beautiful setting, plus I always find it interesting to see what type of energy different festivals can give. Ive watched a few videos, it looks great but I cant wait to experience it for myself." Lazarus has played UK festivals like Glastonbury and Boomtown and with her reputation for live shows, Quest should be treated to one hell of a performance. The festival is set against a backdrop of beautiful mountains and surrounded by a lake perfect for swimming in Son Tinh camp. With six stages, the festival will deliver a wealth of different delights, from techno and house through to funk, soul, mental and reggae with music bands and artists from Viet Nam, Indonesia, India, the US, United Kingdom, France, Hong Kong, Japan and Denmark. The organisers said at every corner at the festival artists have found ways to provide colour, texture, movement and sound to festival-goers. Their creations and installations tie all the elements of the festival together. Workshops at the festival include Hanoi Philosopohy Forum; East Meets West Calligraphy, Ukulele for Beginners, African Dance and many others. Over the years, Quest Festival has been described as one of the most scenic festivals on Earth. Please go to ticketbox.vn for ticket information. Shim Won Hwan, general director of Samsung Vietnam, visited M1 Communication One Member Limited Liability Company under Viettel Group in Hanoi. - VNS Photo Vu Hoa Speaking during a visit to evaluate consulting results for 3 enterprises operating in the field of supporting industries in the north on Thursday, Hwan said Samsungs investment into Viet Nam is not just a short-term vision or for immediate benefit, but with long-term goals. These companies are M1 Communication One Member Limited Liability Company under Viettel Group in Hanoi, Viet Applied Investment For Packing Production Company Limited (VIPACO) in Hung Yen Province, and DM Vina Company Limited in Vinh Phuc Province. Samsung Vietnam is part of the Vietnamese economy and we want to contribute to the long-term development of Vietnam, he added. This vendor visit was part of a 12-week Samsung Advisory Programme, aiming to strengthen Vietnamese enterprises capacity to participate in Samsungs supply chain. Accordingly, South Korean experts surveyed and evaluated Vietnamese enterprises for 2 weeks, then will directly consult and work with the businesses for 10 weeks. After 3 months, the enterprises have recorded positive results in improving production processes and completing standards in supplying products and components for Samsung factories in Vietnam. He pointed out that improvements take small steps to deliver big benefits. The innovative approach and process must be completed to get the perfect product for the partner, he said. The small improvements have brought remarkable results to the companies in question. For example, during the implementation of the assembly of electronic components on circuit boards, after three months of consultation, the productivity of M1 increased by 32 per cent and the defect rate decreased by 56 per cent. This achievement was reached thanks to a reduction of up to 80 per cent in travel distance in the manufacturing chain (from 250m to 50m), thereby optimising manpower, eliminating backward movement and solving congestion points, helping to stabilise product quality. Luu Quang Truong, M1s director said Samsungs consultancy changed their staff members mindsets. We determined to change and regularly improve our production toward Samsungs consultancy to be eligible to join Samsungs supply chain, Truong added. Nguyen Xuan Thanh, director of VIPACO said the consultancy has helped them increase productivity by 58 per cent and reduce the defect rate by 57 per cent. These achievements have come thanks to the support of South Korean experts as well as VIPACOs efforts to improve performance loss and operating time of the machinery. DM Vina Company Limited is a newly established firm operating in the field of repairing telephone screens. The Samsung Innovation Consultancy Programme has helped the company stabilise its production and quality system by applying an optimised production line layout; operating indicators to improve productivity; analysing problems and building a response plan for every single part; and conducting activities to improve the production environment. Prior to implementing these consultancy programmes, Samsung had worked closely with the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Governmental agencies and related associations in searching, evaluating and selecting potential Vietnamese enterprises to take part in this programme. This process has been conducted strictly, from receiving and studying profiles of Vietnamese enterprises to organising field trips to evaluate their activities in order to select potential and appropriate enterprises. We are constantly looking for potential Vietnamese enterprises to participate in our business consulting programmes with South Korean experts. This programme is considered to be a crucial step for Vietnamese enterprises to strengthen their capacity to compete and join in the global supply chain of Samsung. The programme was launched in 2015, and after each session, there is significant increase recorded in the productivity of the enterprises taking part. Productivity has increased by over 30 per cent on average. We will continue to promote this programme on a larger scale in Vietnam. From April 2018, Samsung launched a programme to train 200 Vietnamese consultants in cooperation with the Ministry of Industry and Trade. This will be conducted for 2 years in both northern and southern regions. After finishing the training course, in parallel with participating in consultancy with South Korean experts, 200 Vietnamese consultants will directly implement various programmes of improving production activities for Vietnamese enterprises, which helps the project multiply and works towards the common development of the supporting industry in Vietnam. Compared to 35 per cent in 2014, Samsungs current localisation rate is 58 per cent. Correspondingly, the number of Vietnamese enterprises which are Samsungs Tier 1 suppliers has increased greatly. From four enterprises in 2014, the number has increased to 35 enterprises at present, with the expectation of 50 enterprises by 2020. This target is gradually being realised via Samsungs continuous efforts to comply with the Government of Vietnam in the development of the supporting industry. On November 15, Samsung also conducted an assessment of three enterprises in the South participating in the programme, including Minh Nguyen Industry Support Joint Stock Company, Hai Ha Machinery and Trading Company Limited and Sacom Wires and Cables Joint Stock Company. These are 6 enterprises among 38 Vietnamese enterprises that have received support and consultancy from South Korean experts from Samsung since 2015. A steel production line at the Thai Nguyen Iron and Steel JSC Co.-VNA/VNS Photo Hoang Nguyen According to the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), of the 78 anti-dumping investigations Vietnam has encountered in the past two years, 37 cases were related to iron and steel, accounting for about 50 per cent of the goods in question. From mid-July to early August 2018, there were eight trade defence cases initiated by other countries towards steel products imported from Viet Nam. The Viet Nam Steel Association (VSA) warned that, as trade protectionism rises around the world, the domestic steel industry could be targeted by several markets. These lawsuits will directly affect the exportability of Vietnamese steel. Moreover, China is restructuring its steel industry by decreasing steel output and shutting down its small, outdated and unsustainable facilities. Therefore, Chinese steel enterprises are investing in foreign countries, especially Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia and Vietnam. In order to deal with foreign steel, MoIT continues to maintain anti-dumping duties on H-shaped and coated steel products imported from China and the Republic of Korea to protect the domestic steel industry. Accordingly, H-shaped steel imported from China is subject to a tax rate of 20.48 to 29.4 per cent. For galvanised steel products, Chinese coated steel exporters are subject to a tax rate of 3.17-38.34 per cent and the Republic of Korea 7.02-19 per cent. Potential domestic market The MoIT said that the domestic construction steel market in October was quiet due to unfavourable weather. In addition, steel consumption for projects is also slow as most projects are in their completion phase, with few new projects breaking ground. Due to the slow consumption, a number of steel producers in the north have introduced discount programmes. As a result, prices in the northern market decreased by VND100,000-VND150,000 (US$4.27-$6.41) per tonne compared to the previous month, depending on the product category. Meanwhile, prices in the southern market are relatively stable and supply is guaranteed. Nguyen Van Sua, vice chairman and secretary of the VSA, estimated that in the domestic market, the production and sale of steel still has a high rate of growth and is expected to maintain an upward trend towards the end of the year. Despite the heavy rain in October affecting the construction of buildings, steel consumption in the country is still strong. This proves that Vietnamese steel products are very competitive in the domestic market," he said. In the first 10 months of 2018, Vietnam produced over 20 million tonnes of steel, up 17.7 per cent over the same period in 2017. The sale of steel reached over 18 million tonnes, a year-on-year increase of 27.7 per cent; of which, exports reached over 3.9 million tonnes, up 31.6 per cent against the same period last year. Making recommendations for the domestic steel industry, Sua suggested that enterprises need to analyse the market needs to choose an investment plan. First of all, enterprises have to choose the types of steel which are most commonly used. As well as supporting enterprises in anti-dumping investigations, the MoIT also recommends that steel companies improve their competitiveness and control of domestic raw materials. Vietnamese consumers are becoming more aware of food safety risks Nguyen Ha Chi, a loyal customer of organic food stores, shared that instead of squandering money on top brand goods or dining at costly restaurants, she has spent several years trimming unnecessary expenses to buy safer food. Consumers like Chi, however, often find it difficult to uncover which products are totally safe, and often all they can do is to put their trust in producers. Organic food stores now have a strong presence in the market with different price tags. I got lost in a matrix of information and have changed several producers before deciding on a specific brand. Every shop can show off its quality certificate, but the quality of their food needs to be checked by the customers, Chi said. Chis concerns are common to thousands of Vietnamese consumers who face the growing threat of unsafe food, and many of whom spare no expense on the items being branded as organic food. Although concrete guiding regulations are in place, to save costs, some businesses have claimed that their products are organic without having any certification from a third party. Elsewhere, some companies have acquired certification for one product, and subsequently claim that all their products have met the same organic standards, thus misleading consumers. Their abuses have led to customers turning their back on organic products and triggered questions about the true quality of organic Vietnamese items. According to the Department of Crop Production under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the country is now home to 26 organic production units across 15 cities and provinces. As of February 2017 various agricultural products, mostly fresh vegetables, from 50 Vietnamese companies were certified for reaching organic standards. The products were awarded the certification after undergoing strict checking and assessment processes from prestigious foreign organisations such as the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Australian Certified Organic (ACO), and EM Green of EMRO (Japan). The difficulties in regaining customer trust and competing with foreign-imported organic items in price have been the cause of premature death to many local organic food businesses. More than two years ago, a company producing vegetarian fish sauce from mushrooms happily informed of investing in local material-growing areas to reduce the need for material import. The company recently announced the temporary halting of the programme due to the difficulties in finding an output market for their products. Bui Bich Lien, owner of organic food production and distribution chain under the ORFARM brand, recalled that during 2012-2013 when ORFARM was first launched, it faced mounting hardships because at that time organic food was quite a new concept to local consumers. The ORFARM system now consists of four outlets and is supplying organic pork and chicken meat to Organica, Ls Place, and Hi-food shop chains as well as to Japan-backed AEON Mall venues in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. The hardships have not defeated Lien and many other local organic food businesses, but helped them instead to foresee a multitude of development opportunities and motivated them to strive for product perfection. Since food is necessary for our survival, it is a vital part of our lives. For me and many others, our health is the reflection of our daily intake. So why should we not invest in our health or our quality of life by choosing good quality food? Lien said. Lien and her colleagues have often organised trips to their Thuy Thien Nhu EM Green farm site in Lac Thuy district, Hoa Binh province, about 80km from Hanoi. There, customers can learn more about preliminary food processing and the farms totally enclosed process from production to distribution following Japans EMRO EM Green certificate. After six years in operation, the ORFARM system has gradually secured customer trust and reported a steadily growing customer base. Yet we have a great belief that the market of organic food can grow in the near future, as more consumers are paying higher attention to the quality of the food they consume each day, Lien said. A telemedicine system that helps connect doctors in different hospitals.-VNA/VNS Photo According to the Ministry of Healths Information and Technology Department, telemedicine networks have been developed and expanded in the country. For example, Bach Mai Hospital offers medical examination, consultation and treatment to provincial general hospitals in Bac Giang, Vinh Phuc, Thai Binh, Thanh Hoa, Ha Tinh, Lao Cai, Ninh Binh, Hoa Binh, Phu Tho, Quang Ninh and Saint Paul Hospital in Hanoi. While, Vietnam-Germany Hospital is connected to general hospitals in Ha Giang, Quang Ninh, Ninh Binh, Thai Binh, Dien Bien, Lao Cai and Bac Giang. Doctor Nguyen Duc Tien from Vietnam-Germany Hospital said the hospital has organised training courses for doctors of satellite hospitals and offered telemedicine for the hospitals. Telemedicine helps doctors in operating surgeries and diagnosis rooms connect regardless of geographic distance, thus speeding up treatment and helping to save patients, he said. The Vietnam-Germany Hospital uses telemedicine to connect with hospitals in 18 cities and provinces across the country so that patients receive proper medical examination and treatment at their local hospital instead of traveling to the central hospital. Patients received prompt medical treatment, which helped them save time and costs, while the central hospital like Vietnam-Germany Hospital reduced overcrowding, Tien said. A few months ago, Tien said doctors from Vietnam-Germany Hospital and Dien Bien General Hospital in the northern mountainous province collaborated to save a 31-year-old male patient suffering from serious brain damage. Poor weather conditions and the long distance, in addition to the urgency of the situation, prevented doctors from transferring the patient to Vietnam-Germany Hospital. Meanwhile, it would take too long for doctors to travel from Hanoi to Dien Bien. Tien said that telemedicine proved its advantages and effectiveness in that case because top surgeons from Viet Nam-Germany Hospital directed the surgery for the patient. The surgery, which is usually beyond the ability of provincial-level hospital, was performed successfully. In another case, Bac Giang General Hospital in the northern province of Bac Giang, and E Hospital in Hanoi, collaborated on saving a 35-year-old female patient suffering from a heart defect. The woman was taken to Bac Giang General Hospital with broken ribs, pale skin and doctors were unable to measure her blood pressure. Thanks to co-operation between the two hospitals, the female patient underwent surgery and survived. Earlier this month, Ca Mau Obstetrics and Pediatrics Hospital in the southernmost province of Ca Mau sent their colleagues in HCM Citys Children Hospital 1 videos and test results of a 2-year-old boy who had hand-foot-mouth disease. During the night, doctors of the two hospitals held a consultation and decided to transport the boy to HCM City as soon as possible. Head of HCM Citys Children Hospital 1 Pham Van Quang said that the boy was in such a critical condition that he needed a complicated technique Hemodialysis that was not available at Ca Mau Hospital. Quang said that doctors at Ca Mau Hospital was instructed to provide a breathing machine, medicine, equipment and update the boys condition for Childrens Hospital 1 during the 300km trip from Ca Mau to HCM City. The boy arrived in HCM City safely and then received proper medical treatment, Quang said. These three cases are among hundreds in which telemedicine helped doctors from different hospitals work together to save patients. An official from the health ministrys Information and Technology Department, Tran Van Tuyen, told baogiaothong.vn that next year the ministry would provide telemedicine systems at 26 health centres at the communal and ward level under a pilot programme. The commune and ward healthcare centres would connect with hospitals at higher levels including district, provincial and national hospitals. As a result, the healthcare centres could receive professional medical consultations quickly with available equipment and internet connections. This connection is expected to improve the service quality of commune/ward healthcare centres and reduce overcrowding at central hospitals. According to the ministry, 35.4 per cent of patients who go to central hospitals should be treated at province-level hospitals and 20 per cent of them should be treated at district-level hospitals. Over 41 per cent of patients who go to province-level hospital should be treated at district-level hospital and 11 per cent of them should be treated at commune/ward healthcare centres. TNG pays special attention to making products that are green as well as stylish In October 2018, TNG recorded stronger financial performance than in the same period last year. The company achieved a revenue of VND313.8 billion ($13.49 million), up 39 per cent on-year. Gross profit totalled approximately VND54 billion ($2.32 million), an on-year increase of 43 per cent, while gross profit margin expanded to 17.1 from 16.2 per cent. In the first 10 months of 2018, TNG recorded VND3.04 trillion ($130.72 million) in revenue and VND147 billion ($6.32 million) in gross profit, up 50 per cent compared to the corresponding period last year. After 10 months, TNG is on track to achieve its full-year earnings targets, surpassing its revenue target by 10.5 per cent and its after-tax profit target by 16 per cent. TNG is well-prepared to seize new opportunities next year, capitalising on the wide range of free trade agreements Vietnam has signed like the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA). TNG has implemented highly innovative heat pressing technology to produce the shirts with elegant and exquisite designs. The technology employs heat to knit garments rather than using the conventional techniques of sewing and seams. With the fully automatic production line from Europe, it can directly produce finished products and shorten the production process by eliminating the fabric laying, cutting, and sewing process. TNG is the first in Vietnam to use heat pressing technology to produce shirts. Furthermore, the garments are made of eco-friendly natural fabrics, such as modal and bamboo yarns. While modal yarns were made from ancient oak trees in northern Europe, bamboo yarns were produced from fast-growing bamboo sourced from Asian countries. The materials treated with nanotechnology provide natural anti-bacterial protection and excellent moisture-wicking properties, which makes them eight times more absorbent than cotton. Additionally, the clothes are not wrinkled and ruffled by use. The materials are cool to wear and great for businessmen and office workers with busy schedules. They can save a great deal of time and effort on ironing. The materials are treated with advanced UV-resistance technology to protect the skin from harmful UV rays as well as assure long-lasting outdoor weathering. TNG places an emphasis on green fashion to promote sustainable development as well as meet customers sophisticated demand in the increasingly competitive market. Vietnam is becoming a magnet to more international fashion brands due to the countrys large population of 100 million people and rising disposable income. Nguyen Van Thoi, TNG chairman, said that most of the companys revenue comes from outsourcing for foreign fashion brands under the free-on-board method. Going forward, TNG has been switching to the original design manufacturer production method to increase the value of its products. As a result, TNG has recorded robust performance for its fashion business with double-digit revenue growth in the first 10 months of this year. Unlike other local garment manufacturers, TNG adopts a different approach to drive growth by making significant investments with a professional and long-term vision. TNG has successfully implemented this philosophy for its outsourcing activities for foreign partners. As a result, it not only boosts the performance and efficiency of the company, but also brings fruitful achievements. During the first 10 months, the company has surpassed its full-year growth targets. TNGs competitive edges do not lie only in its extensive experience and quality export products, but also in its strong support resources. TNGs clothing range, including shirts, pants, T-shirts, office dresses, suits, and winter coats, are becoming more appealing to customers due to trendy and versatile designs with quality materials and affordable prices. The company has been nurturing the ambition to bring the TNG brand to Asia, Europe, and the US over the next 10 years. Thus, TNG Investment and Trading has been making serious efforts to achieve its sustainable development goals in order to break into these markets in the future. In 2017, the uniforms of the Emirates cabin crew were voted as the most beautiful flight attendant wardrobe on the world. Having a distinctly Middle Eastern design with soothing light brown tones, complemented by the signature red hat and scarf, it is one of the most recognisable airline outfit US President Donald Trump speaks to members of the military via teleconference from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Thanksgiving Day. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP) In a teleconference with US troops, comments to reporters at his Florida estate and early morning tweets, Trump resumed a fight begun on Wednesday after Chief Justice John Roberts defended the independence of federal judges. Trump threatened to close the border with Mexico if the situation gets out of control, claiming that criminals and "bad people" were in a migrant caravan trying to gain entry as candidates for asylum. In another matter that has set off rule-of-law alarms, Trump also doubled down on his decision to accept Saudi Arabia's denial that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the Oct 2 assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi - and insisted that contrary to reports the CIA has not concluded otherwise. "We have a very strong ally in Saudi Arabia. We have an ally that said they did not commit at the top level the crown prince, the king, they did not commit this atrocity," he said. The president had issued a proclamation earlier in the week ordering that only people entering the country at designated border points be permitted to apply for asylum, a rule that would automatically reject anyone caught trying to cross elsewhere. But a federal judge in San Francisco, Jon Tigar, temporarily blocked the measure, raising Trump's ire who denounced him as an "Obama judge." That triggered an extraordinary rebuke on Wednesday from Roberts, the high court's conservative chief justice. "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges," Roberts said in a statement to the Associated Press on Wednesday. "What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them," he said. The issue clearly was uppermost on Trump's mind during a Thanksgiving teleconference with US service members around the world. It was the kind of forum that previous presidents would have reserved to thank troops for their service, steering well clear of politics. But Trump lost little time in raising the border. "It's a terrible thing when judges take over your protective services, when they tell you how to protect your border. It's a disgrace," he told the troops, denouncing the San Francisco appellate court that oversees Tigar as "a big thorn in our side." He praised the deployment of US troops in the border area, and compared his administration's border battles to US military operations against Islamic militants overseas. BORDER TENSIONS "We took an old broken wall and we wrapped it with barb wire plus. I guess you could really call it barb wire plus. This is the ultimate. Nobody is getting through these walls," he told the troops. Later, in comments to reporters, Trump said troops on the border were authorized to use lethal force if necessary. "If they have to, they have to use lethal force. I hope they don't have to, but you're dealing with a minimum of 500 serious criminals. So I'm not going to let the military be taken advantage of," he said. US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said earlier this week the troops would be armed only with batons. More than 4,300 migrants - most of them from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala -- have massed in Tijuana, Mexico across the border from San Diego, California after a weeks-long trek from Central America. Mexican police say 57 Central Americans have been detained and tensions have been growing between the local authorities and the new arrivals. "If we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control," Trump said. "The whole border. I mean the whole border. Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the united states where they make so many cars," he said. CHIEF JUSTICE Over the course of the day, Trump alluded several times to Roberts, the chief justice. "Justice Roberts can say what he wants, but the 9th Circuit is a complete & total disaster. It is out of control, has a horrible reputation, is overturned more than any Circuit in the Country," he said in his opening Twitter salvo of the day. "Judges must not Legislate Security ... and Safety at the Border, or anywhere else," Trump tweeted. "They know nothing about it and are making our Country unsafe." The latest figures show the 9th Circuit had the fourth highest reversal rate during the October 2017 term. US President Donald Trump hailed his "great relationship" with his Chinese counterpart. (AFP/Fred DUFOUR) The president will meet Xi on the sidelines of the summit, which is taking place from Nov 30 to Dec 1 in Buenos Aires. "I have been preparing for it all my life," he told journalists at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, where he gave a lengthy press conference after a Thanksgiving day telephone address to US troops deployed overseas. "I know every ingredient, every stat. I know it better than everybody knows it. My gut is always right," he said of his preparations. Beijing and Washington have been locked in a trade war since this summer, with the US imposing punitive tariffs on Chinese goods worth US$250 billion per year. In retaliation, China imposed tariffs on US$110 billion of US goods. Washington has threatened to toughen measures even further if the issue is not resolved before January. "China wants to make a deal. If we can make a deal, we will," Trump said. He also hailed his "great relationship" with Xi. "I like him a lot. I think he likes me. Probably likes me less now than he did before we did what we're doing," he quipped. Vietnam Airlines will give a 30 per cent discount to customers on routes linking Hanoi-Vientiane and Hanoi-Luang Pra Bang in Laos at the event.- Photo courtesy of Vietnam Airlines The event is held every two months within the framework of the tourism, culture and social cooperation programme between Vietnam Airlines and the capital city Peoples Committee. At the event, Vietnam Airlines will cooperate with the tourism departments of Ha Noi, HCM City, Khanh Hoa, strategic partners and member units to bring a number of special activities and attractive promotions to the capital citys residents. Accordingly, Vietnam Airlines will give a 30 per cent discount to customers for routes linking Ha Noi-Vientiane and Ha Noi-Luang Pra Bang in Laos. Attractive gifts will also be presented to those buying tickets along domestic routes, especially children. At the same time, other firms, including Jetstar Pacific Airlines, Coca Cola, Vinpearl, Nasco and Viags will also attend the event with promotion programmes. Visitors to the Vietnam Airline Festa will also have a chance to join exchange programmes and lucky draws to win free air tickers and vouchers at Vinpearl Resorts and Vinpearl Discovery. Furthermore, there will be a classical music performance by the Viet Nam Symphony Orchestra, dancing and games for all to enjoy. On November 25, the national carrier and Ha Nois Department of Education and Training will hold an awards ceremony for winners of a painting contest for primary school students. A hundred outstanding paintings will also be displayed at the exhibition. Shoppers snap up deals on Black Friday. - VNA/VNS Photo Thanh Dat The excitement could be felt at shopping centres like Vincom and Aeon, as well as stores along shopping streets like Chua Boc, Ba Trieu, Bach Mai, Luong Ngoc Quyen and Pham Ngoc Thach. Online stores were also seeing a wave of customers. According to Pham Minh Duc, in charge of sales at M2 Fashion which was offering Black Friday discounts of up to 50 per cent at its stores nationwide, the number of shoppers rose by 20-70 per cent on Friday compared to normal days. The number of shoppers was expected to rise even more in the late afternoon to evening after people finished work. The deals will continue this weekend. Le Thi Ly, who lives on Bach Mai Street in Hanoi, said that compared to several years ago, Black Friday was now more popular among Vietnamese retailers and consumers. Discounts were now more attractive and shoppers could buy good products at good prices on this occasion, she said. However, before buying a product, shoppers should check its quality carefully, she said. Online shoppers were also hunting attractive deals on e-commerce websites like Lazada, Tiki, Shopee and Sendo and even from foreign websites like Amazon. According to estimates of Black Friday Global, Black Friday shopping contributed to boost revenues of stores and websites by around 145 per cent on average. Data from Google showed that internet users searching for Black Friday have doubled every five years. A survey found that half of Vietnamese citizens would shop on Black Friday this year, up 16 per cent over last year. Around 36 per cent said they would shop at physical stores, 27 per cent would go online and 36 per cent would do both. Market researcher Doan Dinh Hung said that sales revenue on Black Friday was a test for the health of the retail sector. According to the Vietnam Competition Authority, recently Vietnamese retailers and consumers were showing growing interest in Black Friday promotional sales and it had become a popular shopping day. The authority, however, warned that consumers should choose products carefully, with a focus on quality and after-sales services rather than just low prices. Vietnamese consumers will also have the chance to shop for discounts on Online Friday 2018 which takes place on December 17. Retailers are targeting revenue of VND1.5 trillion in 24 hours, up by VND300 billion compared to Online Friday 2017. Black Friday is the day following Thanksgiving Day in the US, the fourth Thursday of November, which is regarded as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. A suicide attack inside on a mosque at a military base in Khost province in Afghanistan killed at least 26 people and wounded 50 others, the military said. Captain Abdullah, a spokesman for the Afghan National Army, said the explosion happened during Friday prayers when attendance is higher than usual. The Afghan news channel Tolo said those killed were all from the 2nd Regiment of Afghan National Army in Mandozai district. Investigations continued to determine the type of explosion. The attack happened two days after a suicide blast killed dozens in Kabul during a religious ceremony. Security in Afghanistan has steadily deteriorated, with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) recording the highest number of civilians killed and wounded, almost 1700, between January and June this year. This month, President Ashraf Ghani revealed that nearly 30,000 Afghan security personnel have been killed since the beginning of 2015, when Afghans took over the responsibility of securing the country from NATO. The United States is trying to jump-start negotiations with the Taliban to help find a road map to peace. U.S. Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad was in the region for more than a week this month. He met Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar, as well as various factions of Afghan society. Talking to media, Khalilzad said he was "cautiously optimistic" about the chances of progress. "I think there is an opportunity for reconciliation and peace," he said. President Donald Trump said that his administration was involved in "very strong" peace negotiations in Afghanistan. However, he did not indicate whether he was hopeful of their success. A suicide bomb attack on a crowded festival and market in northwest Pakistans northwest killed at least 25 people Friday and wounded 20, a government official said. The blast occurred around the same time that three attackers tried to storm the Chinese consulate in the southern city of Karachi. Two policemen and the three attackers were killed. The Karachi attack was claimed by a separatist insurgent group called the Baluchistan Liberation Army, and did not appear to be connected to the attack on the market in the northwestern region of Orakzai. In Orakzai, a suicide bomber drove a motorcycle into a crowd attending a festival and market that attracts people from different religious communities, before detonating his explosives. No group claimed responsibility. It was a suicide blast at the festival that takes place every Friday, said Abbas Khan, the assistant commissioner of the district, told Reuters. Khan said that among the 25 dead were three members of the minority Sikh community and two security officials. The Geo television channel showed footage of military officials cordoning off the bomb site. Orakzai was formerly a semi-autonomous part of Pakistans ethnic Pashtun tribal area along the Afghan border. The region was for decades a refuge for Islamist militants fighting in Afghanistan, and more recently against the Pakistani state. The Pakistani military stepped up operations along the border in 2009 and has managed to clear some areas of militants. The tribal areas were incorporated into the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in May. Separate attacks by armed insurgents in Pakistan killed at least 34 people and wounded dozens of others. Authorities in the southern port city of Karachi say at least four people were killed when a group of three armed men carrying suicide vests attacked the Chinese consulate. A spokesman for the paramilitary force, known as Rangers, told reporters the early morning attack began with one of the assailants blowing himself up near the entrance to the visa section of the diplomatic mission to try to make way for his other partners. The blast and ensuing hourlong firefight with Pakistani forces guarding the facility killed the other two assailants, said Colonel Faisal. He refuted earlier reports that the attackers had managed to enter the Chinese consulate. Police officials and doctors confirmed two policemen and two Pakistani visa seekers were among those killed. The Baluch Liberation Army, a separatist group based in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, claimed responsibility it plotted the attack and released photos of the three bombers. Pakistani authorities said the attackers parked their car at a distance and marched toward the Chinese consulate before security forces intercepted them. Police later found explosive materials and weapons inside the car as well. Market attack Within few hours of the Karachi attack, a powerful bomb ripped through a crowd of people in the northwestern Orakzai region, killing at least 30 people and wounding more than 40 others. Local officials and witnesses anticipated the casualty toll to rise. Prime Minister Imran Khan strongly condemned both the attacks in separate statements. He ordered a complete inquiry into the violence against the Chinese consulate, saying the attack was part of (a) conspiracy against Pakistans economic and strategic cooperation with China. The Chinese embassy denounced the terrorist attack on its consulate-general in Karachi, saying no Chinese citizens were killed or injured in it. We appreciate the Pakistani army and police for their timely and proper action against the attack. We extend our deep condolences to the two Pakistani policemen martyred in the attack. Any attempt to undermine China-Pakistan relationship is doomed to fail, vowed the mission in a statement. Khan praised the Pakistani security forces for swiftly neutralizing the attackers and preventing harm to Chinese diplomats. China investing billions China is Pakistans neighbor and a strong ally. Beijing is investing tens of billions of dollars in the country in what is known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC. It is part of Chinas global Belt and Road initiative. The corridor is a collection of roads, railway lines and infrastructure projects designed to connect Western China to Pakistans port city Gwadar, significantly cutting transport times for Chinese goods shipped to Middle East or Europe. Pakistan accuses rival India of funding BLA and other militant groups in its bid to undermine CPEC-related Chinese investment in the country, charges New Delhi denies. Interior Minister Shahryar Afridi repeated those allegations on Thursday, saying India plots subversive acts against his country in war-ravaged Afghanistan, which shares more than 2,600-kilometer largely porous border with Pakistan. A leader of an al-Qaida-linked extremist group in central Mali may have been among the 30 militants killed by French soldiers in an overnight attack, France's ministry of armed forces said Friday. Minister Florence Parly said in a tweet that Hamadoun Kouffa might have been killed in the operation, which started Thursday in the Mopti region and included airstrikes, helicopter assaults and French soldiers on the ground. Kouffa, a radical cleric, is head of the Katibat Macina, which is part of a larger group of al-Qaida-linked militants known by the acronym JNIM. "At this stage of the evaluation of the operation, it appears that about 30 terrorists were put out of action," the army said in its statement. Kouffa, as well as other top militants, were likely among the dead, the statement said. France has more than 3,000 troops conducting a counterterrorism effort called Operation Barkhane against Islamist militants in the Sahel region, which includes Mali. A Georgian appeals court has upheld a ruling that sentenced former President Mikheil Saakashvili to prison for abuse of power over a 2005 incident. The Tbilisi City Court had sentenced Saakashvili in absentia in July to six years in prison on charges of ordering members of his special forces to beat up lawmaker Valery Gelashvili in central Tbilisi in 2005. The court of appeals on Nov. 22 upheld the ruling but rejected the prosecutors' request to toughen the sentence, prosecutor Archil Tkeshelashvili told reporters that day. The court found that Saakashvili, who was president of Georgia from 2004 to 2013, ordered the attack in retaliation for Gelashvili's public criticism of him in 2005. Gelashvili had accused Saakashvili, among other things, of misappropriating property. In January, Saakahsvili was sentenced in absentia to three years in prison after being convicted of trying to cover up evidence about the 2006 killing of Georgian banker Sandro Girgvliani. The former president, who now lives in the Netherlands, has rejected all the charges, calling them politically motivated. A few blocks from a shelter housing members of a Central American migrant caravan sits the first Haitian restaurant to open in Tijuana, a bustling eatery that has come to symbolize an immigrant success story in this Mexican border city where Haitians are now a part of the fabric, landing jobs, studying and marrying locals. Tijuana welcomed thousands of Haitians to pursue a scaled-down American dream south of the border after the U.S. closed its doors on them more than two years ago. But it has not shown the same tolerance so far toward the Central Americans, who have met with official complaints and anti-caravan protests even though most of the people in this city are migrants or the offspring of migrants. That's raising questions about how the newest group will integrate if it doesn't don't get into the U.S. or return home. Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum has made a point of saying the city is not happy with the caravan migrants who began arriving last week, and he compared the Central American group unfavorably to the roughly 3,000 Haitians who ended up staying after their bid to reach the U.S. failed. "The Haitians arrived with their papers, with a clear vision,'' Gastelum said in an interview posted on the city's Facebook page. They came "in an orderly way, they never asked us for food or shelter,'' renting apartments and making their own food. He said the Haitians found jobs and "inserted themselves in the city's economy'' and had not been involved in any disturbances. By contrast, Gastelum said, the caravan of Central Americans "had arrived all of sudden, with a lot of people not all ... but a lot were aggressive and cocky.'' Victor Clark-Alfaro, a professor of Latin American studies at San Diego State University who lives in Tijuana, attributes the backlash to the way the caravan arrived suddenly, with thousands pouring in. Others point to social media and the hostile rhetoric of U.S. President Donald Trump, who said the caravan harbored criminals and gang members and was planning an "invasion.'' Many also say the actions of a few are tarnishing the image of the roughly 4,000 migrants who are camped in Tijuana. In the past week, city officials have arrested three dozen caravan members for drug possession, public intoxication, disturbing the peace and resisting police, and said they would be deported to their home countries. It's also only been months since an earlier caravan of Central Americans arrived, and some of them are still in the city, waiting to get asylum in the U.S. That has added to fears here that it could be the start of a never-ending deluge. U.S. border inspectors are processing only about 100 asylum claims a day at Tijuana's main crossing to San Diego, and there was already a waiting list of 3,000 when the new migrants arrived, so most will have to wait months to even be considered for asylum. Tijuana has a long history as a kind of Ellis Island for U.S.-bound migrants. It receives up to 80,000 a year from across Mexico, Latin America and more recently as far away as India and Africa. The city has large pockets of Chinese and Korean immigrants. Central Americans have been coming to the city since the civil wars of the 80s in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala. Many in the newly arrived caravan, however, are destitute people who left their homelands on the spur of the moment and have been utterly dependent on handouts along their journey. Many of the Haitians, meanwhile, arrived with at least some resources after working in Brazil, though despite what the mayor said they also stayed at shelters after taking an accidental route to Tijuana from their impoverished Caribbean homeland. The last group of Haitians moved out of the Padre Chava shelter in April. Brazil and its neighbors took in the Haitians after that country's 2010 earthquake. As construction jobs for the 2016 Summer Olympics ended and Brazil's economy slumped, they crossed 10 countries by plane, boat and bus and on foot to San Diego, where U.S. authorities initially let them in on humanitarian grounds. Then President Barack Obama shifted course in 2016 and started deporting Haitian arrivals. Many decided to stay in Mexico after the government gave them temporary transit permits and have since applied for Mexican residency. The majority in the Central American caravan so far have refused Mexico's repeated offers of residency or asylum and vowed to cross the border. Many of the Haitians also have college degrees and have been recruited to work for factories that export to the U.S. Some can be found waiting tables and worshipping at congregations that have even added services in Creole. They opened beauty parlors, shops and restaurants, like Kriskapab Baborijinal, a bright blue-and-red cafe that is busy serving Mexicans and Haitians daily dishes of coconut rice, mashed plantains and goat stew. In the window is a sign for the Association of the Defense of Haitian Migrants. Philocles Julda, 44, is one of 11 Haitian immigrants who started the group a year ago to give the community a place to help itself with everything from Spanish lessons to paying medical bills. Julda said he, too, wanted to get to the U.S. when he first arrived to Tijuana and still wishes he were earning dollars, but said he has been able to make a life here. He works at a factory. "I feel for the migrants who are arriving from other countries just like we did,'' he said. "But you do adapt.'' And work is plentiful in Tijuana, whose economy has been growing and whose factories have thousands of openings. "We have been looking for workers for quite a while,'' said Alejandrina Yanez, who works in human resources at a factory that makes warehouse storage racks for Costco, Home Depot and other international companies. Yanez went to the Padre Chava shelter Wednesday to see whether any migrants were interested in jobs that pay about $100 a week. Omin Velasquez, 26, of Tocoa, Honduras, was intrigued. Velasquez came with the caravan but decided not to continue to the U.S. after seeing the border wall topped with new rows of razor wire. He said it took him some days to decide, but he now feels that there are enough opportunities in Tijuana and support from locals that it's not worth the risk of crossing into the U.S. He has started his paperwork to get a Mexican visa to stay. "There is so much work here,'' he said. "I no longer feel the need to go to the U.S.'' 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, border, border As members of a migrant caravan arrive at the U.S. border in Tijuana, Mexico, the Trump administration is mindful of their presence. On Wednesday, the White House issued an order approving the use of force by U.S. troops at the border. On Thursday, President Donald Trump threatened to shut down the border. On Friday, he tweeted for Congressional action on the border evoking, if not reiterating, previous threats to shut down the government over border wall funding. Meanwhile, on the border Some 7,000 active and reserve troops celebrated one of America's signature holidays, Thanksgiving, away from their homes and loved ones. The mobilization of troops began in early April. Active troops are due to be sent home in mid-December unless their orders are changed. And still they come In Tijuana, migrants are still hopeful, lining up for their chance to request asylum at the port of entry there. Some, who are not part of the caravan, have been waiting for weeks and anticipate the wait to continue. Meanwhile, the city's mayor has declared a humanitarian crisis. The law and the president A U.S. federal judge blocked the Trump administration from carrying out a presidential proclamation that denies asylum status to people who enter the U.S. illegally rather than at a designated port of entry. The block is temporary until the constitutionality of the proclamation can be tried in court. Fascinated with destruction Looking into artist Mohamed Hafez's three-dimensional miniature depicting a war-torn streetscape of his native Syria is a little like spying. The building is completely exposed to the elements. The staircases are dangling. But clothes hanging on a line are reminders that people most now refugees one lived in the real life places his art depicts. Hafez calls his exhibition, "Collateral Damage." Iran's Revolutionary Guards have detained a Saudi Arabian fishing boat and arrested its crew, the Iranian judiciary's website Mizan reported Friday. A local official at the Iranian port city of Bushehr told Mizan that the reason for the detention was under investigation. He did not elaborate on the nationality or the number of the detained crew. Iran and its regional rival Saudi Arabia have been involved in proxy wars for decades in the Middle East, where each supports opposite sides in conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Iranian media reported last year that Saudi border guards had opened fire on Iranian fishing boats in the Gulf, killing a fisherman and arresting three others. Saudi Arabia said the vessel was carrying explosives, an allegation Iran denied. Lawmakers opposed to disputed Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa won control of a key committee setting Parliaments agenda during a crucial vote Friday that dealt a severe blow to his government. Sri Lanka has been in political crisis since Oct. 26 when the president abruptly fired Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and appointed Rajapaksa. Both claim to be the legitimate officeholder with Wickremesinghe saying he has majority support in Parliament and his firing was invalid. Last week, Speaker Karu Jayasuriya announced Sri Lanka had no prime minister or government after Parliament passed a no-confidence motion against Rajapaksa. Both President Maithripala Sirisena and Rajapaksa have refused to accept the results of the no-confidence motion, saying proper procedures were not followed. When parliament was convened Friday, Jayasuriya announced the members of the Parliament Selection Committee as seven Rajapaksa opponents and five of Rajapaksas supporters. Lawmakers supporting Rajapaksa refused to accept the list, arguing that they run the government and therefore should have the majority on the committee according to the parliamentary traditions. Opponents of Rajapaksa said they should control the committee because they have the majority in Parliament and they requested a vote. Before the vote was taken, Wimal Weerawansa, a lawmaker supporting Rajapaksa, accused Jayasuriya of violating the parliamentary traditions and also being partial to Wickremesinghe. Jayasuriya was elected to parliament from Wickremesinghes United National Party. If you dont accept the prime minister and the Cabinet of ministers, we also dont accept you as the speaker of this Parliament, Weerawansa said, before walking out with others supporting Rajapaksa. Thereafter, a vote was taken by name through the electronic voting system and the opposition secured the control of the committee with 121 voting for and none against. The results also showed that Rajapaksa does not hold the majority of the 225-member parliament, which is a setback for his loyalists who had claimed they did. Fridays vote was very peaceful compared to previous two votes which were taken amid severe disturbances. Parliament turned violent when the no-confidence motions were taken up last week, with rival lawmakers exchanging blows while lawmakers supporting Rajapaksa threw books, chairs and chili powder mixed with water to try to block the proceedings. Jayasuriya resorted to vote by voice last week. Rajapaksa rejected to accept the results of the voice vote, saying such an important vote should not have been done by voice. He also insisted the speaker had no authority to remove him and said he is continuing to work as prime minister. Lawmakers opposed to Rajapaksa have said his government is illegal. Jehan Perera, head of the local analyst group National Peace Council, previously said that the government appointed by the president cant be called legal because Sirisena had not sought a parliamentary vote when he dismissed Wickremesinghe. Rajapaksa is considered a hero by some in the ethnic Sinhalese majority for ending a long civil war by crushing ethnic Tamil Tiger rebels. However, his time in power was marred by allegations of wartime atrocities, corruption and nepotism. A small group of Central American migrants marched peacefully to a border crossing in Tijuana Thursday to demand better conditions and push to enter the U.S. Mexican police watched closely as authorities from the National Human Rights Commission and the Grupo Beta migrant support agency told the migrants their needs would be addressed. They urged them to apply for humanitarian visas in Mexico and seek work in Tijuana, where they said thousands of jobs were available. But Oscar Rodriguez, 22, of Colon, Honduras, said he was still set on convincing "the United States to open its doors to us.'' Several thousand Central American migrants arrived in Tijuana last week more than a month after leaving Honduras in a caravan. The U.S. government only processes about 100 asylum applications per day at Tijuana's main crossing to San Diego and there were already several thousand migrants on a waiting list. Some outspoken Tijuana residents have given the migrants a cold reception leaving them stuck between the city, whose mayor said they aren't wanted, and a U.S. president who is trying to keep them out. Rodriguez said U.S. meddling in Honduran politics had created conditions that made it impossible to him to live there. "Thousands more people are going to continue coming because the United States is a government that sticks its hands into Central American governments,'' Rodriguez said. He said Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was re-elected in a disputed result last year, is the United States-chosen president. The U.S. government was quick to recognize Hernandez's victory despite widespread allegations of irregularities. Rodriguez, who works in private security, blamed Hernandez for violently repressing demonstrations against his government. Official figures show more than 1.8 million people have applied for asylum in Germany in the past five years. The figures, first reported Friday by German daily Bild, show a sharp rise in asylum requests from 123,581 in 2013 to 723,938 in 2015. This year to date, figure has returned to about 2013 levels. In a response to a question from opposition Free Democratic Party lawmakers, the government said almost a third of asylum-seekers about 573,000 originated from Syria. The second and third most numerous groups were Afghans and Iraqis, with about 203,000 and 176,000 applicants respectively since 2013. Germany's interior minister, Horst Seehofer, told weekly Der Spiegel that Syrian asylum-seekers convicted of crimes aren't currently being deported to their home country, as demanded by some German politicians. The leader of the Northern Irish party propping up Britain's government warned British Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday that it could abandon her if she got her Brexit divorce deal through Parliament. With four months left until Britain leaves the EU, the divorce treaty and accompanying political declaration are due to be rubber-stamped in Brussels on Sunday by May and the other 27 EU leaders so they can go to the respective parliaments. The biggest obstacle to the accord is the vehement opposition in the British Parliament from within May's party and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which agreed to a confidence and supply deal last year to back her minority government after a snap election. 'Stop wasting time' The party's leader, Arlene Foster, flatly reiterated the DUP's opposition to the deal "as it currently stands," telling May to "stop wasting time" and seek a better one, while also warning of the consequences if she did not. "If she is successful in Parliament, and there is no evidence she is going to be, then of course we are going to revisit the confidence and supply agreement. That agreement was about giving national stability and delivering on Brexit," Foster told BBC Radio Ulster. "But we're not there yet, and we're not going to jump ahead until we see what happens in Parliament." The draft withdrawal treaty contains a backstop provision that could ultimately align Northern Ireland more closely with the EU than the rest of the United Kingdom. Under the terms of a 1998 agreement that largely ended years of violence between Irish republicans and pro-British unionists, border posts were removed and the province was given a power-sharing structure where both communities were represented. Foster's pro-British unionist party fears that the backstop provision, if implemented, could one day threaten the province's place in the UK altogether. She had already urged May to ditch the backstop, which negotiators had grappled with for months. She added that the draft political declaration that followed, on future relations, had not changed the DUP's opposition. No better deal seen May has responded by telling her critics that Britain will not get a better deal with the EU if it does not take this one. But Foster disagreed, saying the DUP did not accept that the current choice was a binary one between May's deal and a no deal in which Britain would leave the bloc on March 29 without an agreement to mitigate economic and legal disruption. May's finance minister Philip Hammond, who met Foster in Northern Ireland on Friday, said May had gone a long way in the Brexit negotiations to gain assurances that the deal would in no way threaten Northern Ireland's place in the UK. Three armed assailants carrying suicide jackets attacked the Chinese consulate in Pakistans biggest city, Karachi, Friday morning. They managed to enter the diplomatic compound and took positions before Pakistani security forces engaged them in an intense gunfight. Police sources confirmed that at least two policemen were killed in the exchange of fire. There have been no casualties among the Chinese, or our guards, or among the visa applicants, since they managed to get inside, said Ikram Sehgal, whose company, Security Management Services, guards the consulate. All of the consulate staff are safe, Chinas foreign ministry said Friday. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told a local TV channel ARY that a suicide bomber blew himself up to try to make way for two more attackers, but security forces engaged and killed them. He also said 21 Chinese were inside the consulate at the time of the attack. Security officials cordoned off the area and carried out a clearing operation. The Baluchistan Liberation Army, a separatist group based in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, claimed responsibility for the attack and released photos of the three attackers. The BLA is an ethnic insurgent group opposed to what it calls Chinese exploitation of natural resources in the country's southwest. Karachi, the capital of neighboring Sindh province, has a militant presence, including Baluch separatists. Syed Murad Ali Shah, the chief minister of Sindh province, ordered extra security for the area, which was already heavily guarded. He also called the Chinese consul general to reassure him of adequate security. Inspector General Ameer Sheikh told journalists the attackers had parked their car at a distance and entered the area on foot. Police found explosive materials inside the car as well. China is Pakistans neighbor and is investing tens of billions of dollars in the country in what is known as the China Pakistan Economic Corridor. It is part of Chinas One Belt, One Road initiative. The corridor is a collection of roads, railway lines and infrastructure projects designed to connect Western China to Pakistans port city Gwadar, significantly cutting transport times for Chinese goods shipped to Middle East or Europe. Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrived in the United Arab Emirates on Thursday at the start of a tour of several Arab countries, his first trip abroad since the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi that caused a global outcry. The prince, the country's de facto ruler, is also expected to participate in a Group of 20 (G-20) meeting in Buenos Aires at the end of the month which will be attended by leaders from the United States, Turkey and European countries. The killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and a critic of the crown prince, at Riyadh's consulate in Istanbul six weeks ago has strained Saudi Arabia's ties with the West and battered Prince Mohammed's image abroad. King Salman asked his chosen heir, known in the West as MbS, to conduct the tour "based on his keenness to deepen the kingdom's ties regionally and internationally," the Saudi Press Agency reported. Prince Mohammed was greeted upon his arrival in the neighbouring UAE by Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nayhan, a close ally of MbS. "We're proud of our deep-rooted ties. Close cooperation and a fruitful partnership lies in store for our countries. The UAE will always be a loving and supportive home for our brothers in Saudi Arabia," Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed said in a Twitter post. Tunisian newspaper, Business News, said he is expected to visit Tunisia on Tuesday. Saudi Arabia has said the prince had no prior knowledge of the murder of the prominent Saudi journalist. After offering numerous contradictory explanations, Riyadh said last week Khashoggi had been killed and his body dismembered when negotiations to persuade him to return to Saudi Arabia failed. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the killing was ordered by the highest level of Saudi leadership but probably not from King Salman, putting the spotlight instead on the 33-year-old crown prince. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday Washington would remain a "steadfast partner" of Saudi Arabia despite saying that Prince Mohammed may have known about the plan to murder Khashoggi. Looking into this three-dimensional miniature streetscape by artist Mohamed Hafez is a little like spying. The building is completely exposed to the elements. The staircases are dangling. But clothes hanging on the line attest that people once lived here. "I think the human eye is fascinated by the detail of destruction," he explains. "There is something that lures us into that complexity of something falling apart. We are always curious to find out what happened." This streetscape, like most of Hafez's work depicts the damage caused by the seven-year civil war in his native Syria. "There's nothing glamorous about destruction," Hafez says, "but I use it as a therapeutic way for me to heal and creatively weep over the destruction." Hafez is an architect who designs towering skyscrapers, a fact that adds to the intrigue of his miniature artworks. "Collateral Damage," an ongoing exhibition of his work at the Fairfield University Museum in Fairfield, Connecticut has artwork representing Syria before the war, Syria during the war, the experience of refugees and his most recent project, examining the Syrian identity in the diaspora. WATCH: Art in a Suitcase Depicts War-Torn Syria Refugee baggage Hafez has won recognition in the past few years for his miniatures that illustrate the refugee experience. One reason for that is that the tiny scenes showing the houses and places that refugees were forced to abandon are built inside suitcases and not just any suitcase, but ones carried by real refugees as they fled. "A lot of people came to me with their parents' and grandparents' suitcases. I'm talking about Jewish communities, Irish communities, German communities, Indian communities that really felt and resonated with the push back against today's immigrants and reminded them of what their ancestors and their grandparents have been through in this country." Some of the suitcases go back to the 1800's and, as the "belongings of yesterday's immigrants" they play a role in telling "the story of today's immigrants to remind us collectively that history could repeat itself," Hafez says. As an immigrant, himself, Hafez brings a special understanding to the refugee experience. Born in Damascus, Syria, he grew up in Saudi Arabia and came to the U.S.15 years ago as an architecture student. He came on a single-entry only visa, which meant he could not go home for the first eight years. "This has caused a lot of homesickness and longing to the beautiful country that I have left. I started using scrap materials and leftover materials from architectural model making. And I started remodeling old Damascus and old Aleppo in miniature form." All the while "contributing to the American skylines," Hafez - a Syrian and a Muslim - is "proudly a member of (American) society and I call America my home." And like any proud American, Hafez is fighting for his America. "I am not building art to cater to my echo chambers but I'd like to cater to somebody that might have, what I call, spicy opinions against refugees, Muslim Americans, and immigrants." Restoring humanity "the vasesthe little flower pots the hanging laundry the lights. And all the little chairs," Melissa Demartin lists components of Hafez's work that have resonated with her. "The artist really captures that even in chaos and as bad as things can be, you can find some beauty," she says. Studying Hafez' work at the Fairfield University Museum, Demartin came away with her own perspective. So did Krissy Ponden. "When we see pictures of destruction on the news, we're really seeing just the aftermath," she observed. "When the artist talked about how the faces of the buildings get sheared off by bombs and give a little glimpse of what their life was like. When we see this destruction, this is actually the interruption of people's lives." And Tre Kayumba, originally from the Congo by way of an orphanage in South Africa: The artwork "speaks to the human condition," he says, and how disagreements "can result in total destruction." On a sunny day in a park in Taipei, photographer Austin Haung advises a same-sex couple on how to pose for a pre-wedding photo shoot. For him, Taiwan's reputation as a beacon of liberalism in the region means a thriving business. "Our clients are mostly same-sex couples from overseas, including Hong Kong, Singapore, China and Malaysia," said 32-year-old Haung, who hopes to turn his side job into a full-time business targeting homosexual newlyweds from across the region. "They said Taiwan is a reassuring place to do the shoot...If they do this in their own country, they worry about being identified or people raising eyebrows," he said. In Asia's first such ruling, Taiwan's constitutional court declared in May last year that same-sex couples had the right to legally marry, and set a two-year deadline for legalization. On Saturday, Taiwan will hold a series of public votes on whether its civil law should now recognize same-sex marriage, after its election authority approved contradicting referendum petitions from both conservative and rights groups. The issue has divided Taiwan, at family dining room tables, online and on the streets, with large-scale rallies. Haung, who is gay, plans to vote for same-sex marriage, but his mother Zeng, in her early 60s, staunchly objects. In fact, she has rallied relatives and friends to support the opposing referendum that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. "There's no need to protect gay marriage. If so, there will be more homosexuals in society," she said. "The younger generation has their own ideas, but I disagree regardless of what they say." Rights activists say the conservative referendum is "discriminatory" as it goes against a 2017 court ruling that current laws violate the right to freedom of marriage and equality. The heated debate over whether to legalize same-sex marriage presents a challenge to President Tsai Ing-wen, who rights activists say has backed away from her promise of marriage equality in the run-up to elections in 2016. The same-sex marriage votes coincides with Taiwan's mayoral and magisterial elections, a test of confidence for Tsai's government grappling with domestic reforms as well as rising pressure from China, which considers the island its own. "I hope Tsai Ing-wen could undertake the leadership responsibility. The issue has been delayed for so long due to a lack of policy direction from the ruling party," said Jennifer Lu, coordinator of the Marriage Equality Coalition Taiwan. "The government should protect the rights of marriage for all Taiwanese." Taiwan's capital Taipei has a celebrated annual gay pride parade that showcases the vibrancy of its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. The one-week celebration in October, largest in the region, contributed more than $3.3 million to the economy, according to daily Taipei Times. LGBT-related businesses are thriving in Taiwan where liberal attitude has earned it a reputation as Asia's "gay capital." A hub for LGBT rights activists is the Gin Gin bookshop, which was raided by police in 2003 and 500 magazines seized. "We have fought a long fight and now have loyal customers coming to our shop at least once a year from all over the world," said Yang Pingjing, one of the bookshop's owners. Located in an alley at the heart of Taipei with rainbow flags leading up to the staircases, the owner of a decades-old bathhouse for men said his business is now often packed and receives many customers from overseas. "I'm not too worried about my business," said Yu Nanxian, owner of 24-hour Hans Men's Sauna. "Once a gay man, you will always be a gay man, no matter the result of the referendum." Taiwanese voters will decide three ballot initiatives Saturday, among them two asking whether they support the legalization of same-sex marriage. A show of opposition would turn back last years tide of official support that LGBT activists called a first for Asia. The tersely worded ballot measures asks whether voters believe the civil code should let men marry men and women marry women, or whether their unions should be protected by a different process. LGBT couples support the civil code change so they can share assets, legal custody over children and insurance benefits as other married couples do. Supporters gained ground in May 2017 when Taiwans Constitutional Court ordered that parliament change laws within two years to legalize same-sex marriage. People in the vibrant Taiwanese LGBT community celebrated that ruling as a first for Asia, where religion and social mores normally limit marriage to one man and one woman. Advisory vote An initiative passes in Taiwan if at least 25 percent of eligible voters cast ballots and most of them are in favor. About 19.1 million people qualify to vote. Taiwans legislators should use the referendum results as a direction when they consider how to change laws, a justice ministry spokesman told Voice of America. But lawmakers are not legally bound to honor them. Courts will consider local marriage licensing offices in violation of the law by May 2019 if they refuse same-sex couples, he said. Many in the ruling party-dominated legislature already advocate same-sex marriage and members of opposition parties have indicated qualified support. My view of this referendum, its more about a survey or a poll that tries to understand (how) the regular Taiwanese public sees this issue, said Shiau Hong-chi, professor of gender studies and communications management at Shih-Hsin University in Taiwan. Regardless of the outcome Saturday, he said, one way or another, in the end, you have to go back to the supreme court. Rise of Taiwans opposition Opposition became obvious after the May 2017 ruling. Churches and NGOs that advocate traditional family values argue that same-sex marriages would hurt the development of those couples children. Others worry it would strain social welfare when one partner in a childless couple dies. Adult children often care for their aging parents in Taiwan. Those groups, including a faith-based minor political party, have held public demonstrations or campaigned online to urge a show of opposition. Men should marry women, according to Catholic tenets, but young voters dont always agree, said Chen Ke, a pastor in the 300,000-strong Catholic group Taiwan Regional Bishops Conference. I can believe most young people might be liberal and support this special law, but some truths you cant use a majority to decide, Chen said. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, 99 people cant come out and say we oppose it, most of us voted that it rises in the west and sets in the east. Opponents support a ballot measure that says a process should protect same-sex couples who live together permanently. This proposal is considered an alternative to changing the civil code. Youth vote Proponents of same-sex marriage are pushing young people to the polls because they are likely to be sympathetic but may not know they have the right to vote, said Chang Ming-hsu, project manager with the Taipei-based advocacy group Gender Equity Education Coalition. We hope that segment of voters will come out to vote, Chang said. Quite a few younger people understand gender equality and gender equality education. Two other measures on Saturdays ballot ask whether LGBT education should be taught in Taiwans elementary and middle schools, where its optional now. Religious and traditional family-value organizations are urging voters to say no. U.S. President Donald Trump addressed members of all military branches deployed overseas to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving and thank them for their service. But when asked when he will visit any of them in person, he did not have a clear answer. The president paid a holiday visit to the Coast Guard near his home in Palm Beach, Florida, Thursday. VOA's Zlatica Hoke reports. A United Nations envoy met Yemen's rebel chief Thursday to nail down details of peace talks expected in December, a day before a planned visit to the battleground port city of Hodeida. Martin Griffiths, who arrived in the rebel-held capital, Sanaa, on Wednesday, is pushing for negotiations early next month in Sweden to help end years of conflict that have left Yemen facing famine. The diplomat's visit to Hodeida on Friday is aimed at encouraging Iran-aligned Houthi rebels and government forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition to keep a lid on hostilities ahead of the talks in Stockholm, a U.N. source said. The conflict in Yemen, which escalated when the Saudi-led alliance intervened in 2015, has killed thousands and left up to 14 million Yemenis at risk of starvation, according to U.N. agencies. Both sides have in the past week expressed support for the envoy's mission to hold discussions, and violence in Hodeida has diminished despite intermittent clashes. The port city has a crucial role as the entry point for nearly all of the country's imports and humanitarian aid. Griffiths and Yemeni rebel chief Abdulmalik al-Houthi during their meeting addressed "what can facilitate new discussions in December," rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdelsalam said on Twitter. Abdelsalam said that included "procedures needed to transport injured and sick for treatment abroad and bring them back," a key sticking point during a previous failed attempt at talks in September. Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, head of the rebels' Higher Revolutionary Committee and an influential political figure, said the rebels were ready for peace. "We support peace. We are ready for peace if that is what they [the Saudi-led coalition] want," he said after also meeting Griffiths. Humanitarian organizations are desperate to see the current peace push translate into a more permanent halt to the bloodshed. The heads of the U.N.'s humanitarian and children's agencies said the "recent de-escalation in fighting in Hodeida is providing a desperately needed respite to hundreds of thousands of civilians." "We urge all parties to maintain it," a statement by Mark Lowcock and Henrietta Fore said. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis confirmed on Wednesday that peace discussions between the Houthis and the internationally recognized government look set for "very, very early" in December. He said Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates which is also a key member of the military coalition supporting the loyalists were "fully on board." Kuwait's Deputy Foreign Minister Khalid al-Jarallah said that the talks might happen on Dec. 3. He added that his country which is currently a nonpermanent U.N. Security Council member would offer "logistical support" at Sweden's request, without elaborating. Mattis last month made a surprise call for a cease-fire in Yemen and urged warring parties to enter negotiations within 30 days. The U.S. has been providing bombs and other weapons, as well as intelligence support, to the Saudi-led coalition backing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, but recently ended its refueling support for Saudi warplanes. The killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia's Istanbul consulate has increased scrutiny of Western support for the coalition and ramped up pressure on Riyadh. On Monday, Britain presented to the U.N. Security Council a draft resolution urging an immediate truce in Hodeida. The draft, circulated to the 14 other council members, and seen by AFP, sets a two-week deadline for the warring sides to remove all barriers to humanitarian aid. The current peace push by Griffiths is the biggest effort in two years to end the war. In September, a previous round of U.N.-led peace talks faltered when the Houthis refused to travel to Geneva, accusing the world body of failing to guarantee their delegation's return to Sanaa or secure the evacuation of wounded rebels to Oman. Previous talks broke down in 2016, when 108 days of negotiations in Kuwait failed to yield a deal and left rebel delegates stranded in Oman for three months. A U.N. panel of experts has accused both the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition of acts that could amount to war crimes. According to the World Health Organization, nearly 10,000 people have been killed in the conflict, though some rights groups estimate the toll could be five times higher. Iran has not declared all its chemical weapons capabilities to the global chemical warfare watchdog in The Hague, in breach of international agreements, the U.S. ambassador to the organization said Thursday. Ambassador Kenneth Ward told the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that Iran has failed to declare a production facility for the filling of aerial bombs and maintains a program to obtain banned toxic munitions. "The United States has had long-standing concerns that Iran maintains a chemical-weapons program that it failed to declare to the OPCW," Ward said. "The United States is also concerned that Iran is pursuing central nervous system-acting chemicals for offensive purposes," he added. There was no immediate reaction from Iran to Wards remarks, which add to tensions with Washington over Iran's nuclear program, terrorism and the war in Syria. Ward said Iran had failed to declare the transfer of chemical weapons to Libya in the 1980s, even after Libya declared them to the OPCW in 2011. He cited the discovery of chemical-filled artillery projectiles, mortars and aerial bombs of Iranian origin as proof that Iran did not fully disclose its capabilities. Wards allegations come amid growing pressure on Iran from President Donald Trump, who has withdrawn from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and introduced several rounds of unilateral U.S. sanctions. In a separate development Thursday, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Iran is implementing its side of the deal with major powers. Germany, France and Britain have been trying to prevent a collapse of the deal, under which international sanctions against Tehran were lifted in exchange for strict limits being placed on Iran's nuclear activities. When some college students look at their more than 363, 341 Chinese classmates on American campuses, they think they see internationals who don't have to worry about money. Viral stories showing international students from China driving high-end cars and waving off concerns about tuition add to the stereotype. But many Chinese students who comprise one-third of the more than 1 million international students in the U.S. say their families saved for years to support an education at expensive American colleges and universities. "I prepare the tuition and fees by scrimping and saving," said Yeming Zhang, a Chinese parent who spends about $90,000 a year to send her daughter to Boston University in Massachusetts. She said she sold construction industry equipment for 10 years to save for her daughter's schooling. To lessen the burden on her family, Linda Zhou said she worked 15 hours a week as a receptionist in the English language center and international student center. (Visa restrictions limit where and how much international students can work.) Many other Chinese students also work to earn money for expenses like food and clothing. Xuemeng Zhao at Hampshire College in Massachusetts works four jobs and sleeps only six hours a day, he said. Vivi Zou from University of California-Davis works as barista for eight hours a week. About 65 percent of the more than one million international students in the U.S. pay tuition and fees out of pocket, meaning from parents, personal business, or scholarships from their home governments. Among undergraduates, more than 80 percent pay their school costs from personal or family sources, according to the Institute for International Education (IIE) in Washington. Many are from middle-class or upper middle-class families paying tuition that can range from about $27,000 to more than $70,000 per year for non-Americans. When they apply for student visas, they must show proof that they can afford their annual expenses, not just the airplane ticket to the U.S. "International students with F-1, F-2, J-1, J-2, and G-series [diplomatic] visas are required to show proof of enough resources to meet their expenses while attending University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and federal regulations limit financial assistance," explained Rick Fitzgerald, spokesperson for the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Despite the price, many Chinese families prepared for their children's college educations for years and consider their children worthy of a good education. "I think attending U.S. college provides my son a more extensive platform to expand his horizons and social circles," said Mingjun Chao, whose child attends the University of Southern California. "We paid the bill from our savings." Likewise, said Yeming Zhang, "I sent my kid to U.S. colleges to get exposed to diverse culture, and to adjust to the diverse society." WATCH: International Students in America But when Chinese students arrive in the U.S., they learn they are paying much more than most domestic students, and some question the disparity. "It's understandable for domestic students to have lower tuition than international students," said Tianze Liu, a Chinese student at the University of California-Irvine. "They deserve the public service of their own country. "However, sometimes our tuition is 10 times more than theirs." Dan Mann, associate provost for enrollment management from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, explained that "rates are often higher for international students because they do not pay federal or state taxes that help to fund the university operations and research enterprise." For example, a student from Massachusetts will pay in-state tuition at the University of Massachusetts, but out-of-state rates to a public university in California, like an international student. At the University of California system in 2016-2017, tuition and fees for in-state residents was $15,397, and $43,411 for out-state residents. And over the past 30 years, costs increased 213 percent at U.S. public institutions and 130 percent at private U.S. institutions, said Rajika Bhandari, research and strategy senior adviser at IIE. This continued climb in tuition and fees is intersecting with a decrease in public funding for colleges and universities. State funding for public two- and four-year colleges last year was nearly $9 billion below its 2008 level, reports the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy institute in Washington, on its website. "A decade since the Great Recession hit, state spending on public colleges and universities remains well below historic levels, despite recent increases," the CBPP wrote. International students contributed $42 billion to the U.S. economy in 2017-2018, according to the Institute for International Education, in the sectors of higher education, accommodations, dining, retail, telecommunications, transportation and health insurance. And they help support more than 455,000 jobs in the U.S., which means every seven international students create three jobs in the U.S. Sandy Baum, an expert on higher-education finance at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organization, said Chinese students "are not paying more than the full sticker price." "And they are not paying more than the education is worth to them. At most private colleges, all students are being subsidized including the Chinese students. It's just that the full-pay students are getting smaller subsidies than those on financial aid." A few Chinese students reported receiving financial aid from U.S. colleges. Alex Kong, a rising senior from University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism, said he received $7,600 over three years, including scholarships and financial aid. "It's very encouraging to me. It pushes to me devote more time into my academics," he said. "I applied for financial aid and scholarship to relieve my family's burden. It is also the first step for me to be financially independent." Kong searched Google to learn how to get aid from his college and followed the steps to complete forms. However, "many of my friends don't seem to know about the aid and the scholarship. If you yourself don't ask about it, nobody will tell you," Kong said. Chinese students say they feel compelled to earn the tuition back through well-paying jobs after graduation. "I would be happier and feel less pressure if it is not my parents paying for my full tuition. I feel guilty to make them do so," said Linda Zhou, a Chinese senior at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. "The tuition is like my parents' investment in me, and I have to make it reward and paid back. I will be disappointed in myself if I fail to do so. It's important." Zhou said she prioritized college rankings over financial aid when she decided on colleges. "I didn't know enough about financial aid and scholarship when I applied for U.S. colleges. But if I could choose again, I would apply for financial aid and scholarship, and attend the one who gives me money even though it might be ranked lower," she said. The United States has accused Iran of failing to declare chemical weapon-related activities in violation of commitments to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Speaking to an annual meeting of the intergovernmental organization in The Hague on Thursday, U.S. envoy Kenneth Ward said Washington is concerned that Iran is developing central nervous system-acting chemicals for offensive military purposes. He did not cite the source of the allegation. Three examples Ward also gave three examples of what he said were Iranian declaration failures under OPCW rules. Iran is a signatory to the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention administered by OPCW. Ward said Iran failed to declare a capability to fill weapons with chemicals, its transfer of chemical-filled shells to Libya in the 1980s, and its marketing of CR gas at defense expos as a riot control agent. A 2011 Washington Post report quoted U.S. officials as saying chemical munitions uncovered that year by rebels in Libyas civil war appeared to have originated in Iran. U.S. media had quoted Trump administration officials last week as saying Washington would use the OPCW conference, which began Wednesday, to raise the issue of Irans alleged chemical weapons program. Since May, Washington has been increasing economic and diplomatic pressure on Iran to stop a range of perceived malign activities, including a suspected nuclear weapons program and its development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. Iran says its nuclear activities are peaceful. Iran rejects assertions On the first day of the OPCW meeting, Iranian delegate Gholamhossein Dehghani said Tehran always has had a clear position against weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons. Dehghani also criticized what he called hypocritical behavior by some OPCW members, whom he said were enabling terrorist groups to use chemical weapons against civilians. He did not elaborate. In an interview for the Wednesday edition of VOA Persians News at Nine show Iran analyst Behnam Ben Taleblu of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies said Washington is worried about Iranian possession of chemical weapons because Tehran is reported to have used such munitions before. Taleblu cited a 1988 U.S. interagency intelligence memo, declassified in 2004, on the impact of chemical weapons use in the 1980 to 1988 Iran-Iraq war. Iraq killed thousands of people in chemical attacks on Iranian troops and civilians during the conflict. We believe that, as Irans chemical weapons stockpile increases and Iraqi chemical attacks continue, Tehran will selectively increase its use of chemicals in retaliation, and possibly as a pre-emptive weapon, the U.S. intelligence memo said. It listed three instances of Iranian chemical attacks on Iraqi targets: a phosgene attack on the Iraqi city of Basra in April 1987, mustard attacks on Iraqi forces in the Iranian border towns of Soomar and Mehran in October 1987, and a cyanogen chloride attack on the Iraqi town of Halabja in March 1988. Iran the victim Iran has long portrayed itself as the victim of chemical attacks by Iraqs then-dictator Saddam Hussein in the eight-year-long war. In a report published Sunday, Irans state-run Press TV said Tehran never retaliated against Iraqs chemical weapons attacks on troops and civilians. The Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a Washington-based research group advocating against weapons of mass destruction, has said some reports suggest Iran may have employed chemical weapons on a small scale in the 1980s war with Iraq. However, an intensive review of the open literature (including U.N. reports based on field investigations from that era) provides insufficient evidence to support this conclusion, NTI said in an online report about Iran updated in July 2017. Taleblu said NTI likely discounted U.S. intelligence reporting because it cannot be verified through open sources. The fact that this archival U.S. intelligence material exists and is not engaged with or dismissed is part of a larger problem, because it leads analysts to take Irans war account at face value, Taleblu said. While I will be the first to say that Irans chemical weapons experience in the war was horrific, the fact that Iran learned the lessons of deterrence the hard way is what made it so active in (developing) weapons of mass destruction and missiles after the war. This article originated in VOAs Persian Service. Katherine Ahn of VOA Persian contributed. Climate-vulnerable Vanuatu is considering legal action against the industries and countries that have benefited the most from pollution-causing fossil fuels, Foreign Minister Ralph Regenvanu said Thursday at a virtual climate summit being held online. "Vanuatu is on the front lines of climate change and yet we have benefited least from the exploitation of fossil fuels that has caused it," Regenvanu said. "I am therefore today putting the fossil fuel industry, and the states that sponsor it, on notice that the climate loss and damages ravaging Vanuatu will not go unchallenged." He said the fossil fuel companies, which make billions of dollars in profit each year, should pay for environmental and economic damages caused in countries like Vanuatu, which is already suffering severe effects of climate change, including rising sea levels. Vanuatu is home to more than 260,000 people who live on more than 82 islands -- many of which sit less than a meter above sea level -- stretched across 1,300 kilometers in the South Pacific Ocean. "The injustice of climate change is that the impacts are felt first and hardest by those with the least responsibility for its causes," Regenvanu said. He made the comments at the opening of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), an international summit being held entirely online and focused on those most at risk to the destructive effects of climate change. CVF organizers are urging the world's governments to go beyond the climate targets set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, which sought to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to keep global temperature increase well below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. Regenvanu said it was one of the legal options Vanuatu is considering. "My government is now exploring all avenues to utilize the judicial system in various jurisdictions, including under international law, to shift the costs of climate protection back on to fossil fuel companies, the financial institutions and the governments that actively and knowingly created this existential threat to my country," he said. Climate change lawsuits against corporations and governments are on the rise, according to a Reuters report. The city of Baltimore, in the eastern U.S. state of Maryland, filed a lawsuit in June against 26 oil and gas companies and entities, including BP Plc., Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp., for knowingly contributing to what the city called the catastrophic consequences of climate change, Reuters reported. On Friday, a U.S. federal climate change assessment report, using information from such agencies as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Department of Energy (DOE), will be released. "It's very interesting, what you will see tomorrow," Pavel Kabat, World Meteorological Organization chief scientist, told the Associated Press on Thursday. "That is a major report coming supported by all agencies ... under the administration of President Trump ranging from NOAA to NASA, from NASA to DOE, showing the fundamental impacts of climate change on the U.S. continent." The report comes ahead of December's annual global climate summit, to be held in Katowice, Poland. Venezuela is seeking the extradition of a former national treasurer days after U.S. prosecutors said hed pleaded guilty of accepting over $1 billion in bribes in a far-reaching corruption probe, officials announced Thursday. Venezuela's chief prosecutor, Tarek William Saab, said his office had launched a case against Alejandro Andrade, a former bodyguard for the late President Hugo Chavez who ascended the ranks to become Venezuela's treasurer. After leaving office, Andrade, 54, moved to the exclusive South Florida enclave of Wellington, known for its lavish horse ranches. This person lives in the United States,'' said Saab, whose office is asking Interpol to issue an order for Andrade's detention. We expect that the United States of America will hand him over to Venezuela.'' Miami prosecutors said that Andrade had pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering in an indictment unsealed this week. U.S. officials also this week revealed they had indicted Raul Gorrin, a Venezuelan media tycoon close to President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government who is accused of paying millions in bribes to Andrade and other officials in exchange for lucrative foreign currency deals. Graft problem Rigid currency controls in place in Venezuela for over a decade have been a major driver of graft, allowing a privileged few to purchase hard currency from the government at the overvalued official exchange rate and resell on the black market for huge profits. A Miami resident, Gorrin helped purchase Globovision in 2013 and softened anti-government coverage after becoming president of the popular TV network. Saab didn't say whether he's investigating Gorrin, 50. Authorities in the U.S. have said that Andrade will forfeit property, horses, vehicles and aircraft. The far-reaching corruption case also netted Gabriel Arturo Jimenez, 50, a Venezuelan who is the former owner of a bank in the Dominican Republic. He lives in Chicago. Jimenez admitted in court to conspiring with Gorrin and others to buy the bank for the purpose of laundering money obtained through bribery, U.S. prosecutors said. Opposition Movement for Democratic Change lawmakers, who were assaulted by the police Thursday for allegedly disrespecting President Emmerson Mnangagwa by not standing for him when he walked into the House of Assembly in Harare for Zimbabwes 2019 budget presentation, say their actions were justified as they dont recognize Mnangagwa as a legitimately-elected president. Some of the legislators, who sustained some injuries in the scuffle, claimed that members of the Central Intelligence Organization beat them up, promising to crash the MDC led by Nelson Chamisa, which has rejected Mnangagwas election following disputed polls in July this year. The Constitutional Court ruled that Mnangagwa was the legitimately-elected president after Chamisa filed an appeal for the nullification of the presidential election results. Mnangagwa won the election with 50.8 percent of the vote -- just enough to meet the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a run-off against Chamisa, who scored 44.3 percent. That percentage was eventually reduced to 50.6 percent by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission before the Constitutional Court hearing. Thabitha Khumalo, MDC chairperson and leader of the opposition in parliament, says there are no standing rules and regulations compelling Members of Parliament to stand up for the president when he walks into the House of Assembly. She says apart from that, the legislator and executive are equal and therefore the removal of lawmakers from parliament is illegal. But Zanu PFs Believe Gaule, a member of the partys Central Committee, says MDC parliamentarians should respect the president of Zimbabwe as Emmerson Mnangagwa is the legitimately-elected leader of the southern African nation following what Gaule calls free, fair and credible elections in July this year. Rachel Weisz. Photo: Getty Images Some spoilers below for The Favourite. When I meet Rachel Weisz at an upscale hotel in midtown to talk about her latest movie, Yorgos Lanthimoss The Favourite, she looks regal. Intimidatingly so. Shes wearing black, her hair gently curled, her makeup immaculate, sitting ramrod straight at a glossy table in an absurdly fancy room in which every single thing is blue. When I sit down across from her, both of us say, Hi, Rachel, and I laugh like it is the funniest thing anyone has ever said in the history of language. Weisz, meanwhile, is the very picture of devastatingly chic British restraint and intelligence. It quickly becomes clear to me that this cool, deeply held confidence extends to her conversation, as well. Rachel Weisz suffers no fools. If she disagrees with your interpretation of her character, shell tell you. If she thinks your question is dumb, shell stare at you for what feels like many hours before answering it very calmly, without malice, and yet deep down, you know you have failed on such an elemental level that you will take it to your grave. Its perhaps why shes so convincing as The Favourites Lady Sarah Churchill, razor-sharp political adviser (and hot-and-cold lover) to Olivia Colmans literally and figuratively crumbling Queen Anne. As Sarah, Weisz has to keep several plates spinning at once: making sure the Queen is emotionally and sexually satisfied; determining the very fate of England; and edging out her competition, which comes in the form of Emma Stones Abigail, an equally cunning young cousin of Sarahs whos gunning for her esteemed position. The movie is a pitch-black delight from start to finish; Weisz, Stone, and Colman appear to be having a total blast while slapping one another across the face, choking each other against walls, having sex with each other, and poisoning each other. I asked Weisz how they pulled it all off, why shes lately been drawn to queer storytelling, and what it was like to get dragged through the mud by a horse while puking. The tone for a Yorgos Lanthimos movie is so specific. How does he get you guys all on the same page, tonally this sort of deadpan, ridiculous He doesnt. Theres absolutely no discussion. I dont know how he does it. I think The Lobster was more deadpan. Did you find this deadpan? Id say it was more wacky and satirical than The Lobster, with deadpan moments. Yeah. Thats just his direction. Somehow or other I dont know how he does it. Im not sure he knows how he does it. He doesnt ever say, Say it deadpan, or, Say it flat. He might say, Say it quicker. He almost doesnt really direct at all. And yet hes directing very meticulously. Its a very hard thing to explain. Theres never any discussion. Zero. Nobody ever talks about anything in relationship to what the character is, what the story is, why the characters doing this, what the motivation is, the psychology. Really? Zero. So how does he communicate what he wants from you, if not verbally? [Long pause.] I really dont know! I really dont know. Somehow he just its like putting a needle on vinyl. He just makes you do it again and again and again until he finally gets you in his groove. What sort of preparation do you do with him? Are there exercises, rehearsals? We do a three-week rehearsal. We did horse-riding, we did excuse me, Im eating a mint gun-shooting, costume-fittings. We also played games together. So wed do things like trust exercises. We got to say all the lines, say each others lines, say it quickly, say it while doing handstands, cartwheels, while making a human pretzel. We got to the point where wed done everything so ridiculously that we could never be inhibited in front of each other again. Thats great. What was the weirdest game he had you play? Oh God, they were all so weird. Wed make a human pretzel, join hands and have to move inside each others somebodys butt is in your face, your face is in their butt, and youre saying the lines for a really serious, dramatic scene while doing that. Is that unique to his sets? Ive done that in theater, but never on a movie. Your character in this movie is so fascinating because shes pretty impossible to read. How do you play somebody whos essentially playing somebody at all times? What was your read on her was she ever being genuine, or always sort of playing political chess? What do you mean by playing somebody whos playing somebody? Well, shes always trying to get what she wants from the queen, and from the country so shes playing everybody a little bit at all times. Huh. Is that not how you saw it? No. But thats an interesting interpretation. How did you see their relationship? Oh, I think she loves the queen. But she also loves England. But the queen is England, and England is the queen, which is handy. Theyve been friends and lovers since childhood. I didnt see her putting on a face; I saw her taking charge of the queen because she doesnt think the queen is much of a leader and that England would fall apart without her. Shes protecting the queen from embarrassing herself in front of Parliament because the queen doesnt know whats going on. So much of that relationship and this movie is so dependent on really strong chemistry, between you and Olivia, between you and Emma. Youre alternatively in love, slapping each other across the face, choking each other. What sort of work did you do to develop those specific relationships, outside of those rehearsals? Outside of the rehearsals, nothing. You cant really do anything to build chemistry. You either have it with someone or you dont. All those really weird trust exercises that we did, they built chemistry. It was the three women, and then it was Nicholas Hoult, Joe Alwyn, and Godolphin, James [Smith]. So it was like, the court of Queen Anne, and we spent three weeks together, getting to know each other. So I guess we all built chemistry together at that time. I built chemistry with Nicholas Hoult, even though the characters hated each other. But thats a form of chemistry. I dont know if you can exactly work on it, its a sort of alchemy. But you can build trust, though. And trust is really important. Even if its adversarial, and the characters dont get along; its good to have trust there. Were all of you hanging out off set? We didnt really hang out at all. I think everyone was just tired. It was a long, really fun shoot. Olivia had us over to her house in London for dinner, where her husband cooked a really complicated meal for us, which was delicious. That was really sweet, that one really nice dinner. But it was very intense during the day, so it was nice to get home to your real life. Can you walk me through the incredible dragged through the woods unconscious on a horse while puking scene? What was that like for you to film? Well, they made a rig where it was sort of like, I dont know what youd call it, a thing that I lay on and it dragged me, so I had something between me and the ground. But my arm was still dragging. And it was a car that was pulling me, not a horse, because it was a close-up by then. The riding scene before that, I did lots of galloping, coming to a stop, then puking. So Id have something in my mouth oatmeal or something and then have to puke it up, when the poison starts to take hold. So youd have to keep holding the oatmeal in your mouth while being dragged? I think she pukes right before she falls off the horse, so it was cantering, coming to a stop, then puke, then I fell off, then I was dragged. It was quite fun. Did you see The Lobster? Yeah. In The Lobster I was all covered in mud, and I very much enjoyed that. Its quite fun getting mucky. This is one of a few dark comedies youve done; for the most part, youre thought of as a pretty serious actress. Do you see yourself that way? I like this kind of comedy absurd, ridiculous. And that comes quite naturally to me. Very broad [comedy] doesnt Yorgoss style of comedy comes very naturally to me. But Im not a natural comedian, in Saturday Night Live terms. Why do you think it comes naturally to you? I understand the tone of the absurd, an absurdist funniness is something that life feels like that to me. Its my sense of reality. I think life is pretty absurd. People behave very absurdly, even when theyre trying to be very serious. The human condition is pretty absurd. Speaking of which, can you talk me through the process of learning the choreography for your incredible dance scene with Joe Alwyn? It was choreographed by an Argentine choreographer called Constanza [Macras], who has an avant-garde dance company in Berlin. Early on, she cooked up the gestures, and Yorgos would watch some of the dances moves and say, I like that, but not that, that, but not that. Wed try it again; it was always a work in progress. Then we had to do it with the costumes on the headdress, corset, the long train. And some of the moves became physically impossible, like, I cant do that with this dress on. Yorgos said, Okay, then, try something else. So it was pretty scary. Neither Joe or I have ever danced professionally. So we had a crash course in avant-garde period dance. But it was fun. It was exhilarating. And kind of a relief to stop talking. Thats why I like watching dance its a physical vocabulary. It was lovely to spend so many days not speaking. Its good, isnt it? I loved that scene. This is your second movie, after Disobedience, with queer overtones that youve made this year. Im curious if thats a subject matter youre choosing to focus on, or if it was more of a coincidence. Yeah, I made Disobedience right before The Favourite. It wasnt on purpose well, Disobedience was more on purpose because I produced it, because I chose to tell that story. But this was just a story that came my way. It was really refreshing to get to play opposite a woman, two women, having played opposite probably always just men. Im really interested to play films with female friendships, not necessarily being queer. I think there are so many movies about male friendship and male bonding, and men get to do extraordinary things as a group onscreen the good, the bad, and the ugly. So its really refreshing. Whats particularly refreshing about it? Throughout history, men have owned women. Women have been chattel to men. So youre just free of the history of ownership. Women have never owned each other; men have owned women. The history of that is always there. When women are together, theres a lot of freedom. Along those lines, Im curious how youve experienced the #MeToo movement, on a personal level. Have you seen things change over the course of the year? What feels different for you, if anything? I havent actually worked in the past year, so I cant speak to it personally. Its not just the movie industry, its gymnastics. I was reading the paper this morning, the gymnasts are very upset about whos been appointed as the new Im not sure what the job was. Im sure things are heading in the right direction, but its baby steps. I know you were busy having a baby, but what else did you do over the past year when you werent working? Well, thats it. That takes a year. Nine months to get one going, and then you have to look after them 24/7. [Laughs.] So whats next for you? Are you looking exclusively for stories about women relating to each other? I dont know, actually. I dont have a job! Im just looking for a good female role. If theres more than one woman, thats wonderful. This interview has been edited and condensed. Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures When compared to his previous work, Yorgos Lanthimoss outstanding new film The Favourite seems almost straightforward. That might sound like a strange thing to say about a movie depicting the sexual rivalry between two women in the early 18th century as they battle for the affection of an increasingly ill Queen Anne while surrounded by scheming lords, fish-eye lenses, and 17 symbolic rabbits 1 for each of the queens dead children but unlike its predecessors, which include a feral family drama from hell (Dogtooth), a dating satire in which people are turned into animals if they cant find a mate (The Lobster), and a restaging of Greek tragedy in upper-class Cincinnati (The Killing of a Sacred Deer), The Favourite takes place in a world that we might recognize. This isnt to say that Lanthimoss other films dont have a great deal to say about our current situation; they do, disturbingly so. But their approach tends toward the metaphorical, and the acting style that Lanthimos favored before The Favourite was aggressively deadpan, encouraging a certain distance that, one might argue, went a long way toward making the horror go down. The Favourite is the first of his movies to be scripted by someone other than himself, and the first since his debut, Kinetta, not to include co-writer Efthymis Filippou. It also sheds the deliberately affectless acting for a more naturalistic style, no small risk when youre five features in and have found an approach that works. Whats so shocking, then, about The Favourite is the success of his new direction, and just how vibrantly alive it is if Lanthimos up to this point had been a sort of necromancer, descending into Hades to show why the dead were damned, then The Favourite reveals him to be just as vital when working with the painfully living. But we should know better than to expect this filmmaker to deliver a simple story, and in the last shots of the movie, he characteristically complicates the narrative. Where are we, then, at the end? After a film-long struggle between Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz), lifelong friend and adviser to Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), and her upstart cousin Abigail (Emma Stone), newly arrived at court and wily as a fox, a decisive victory has been won. Abigails poisoning of Sarahs tea sent her riding off into the woods, where she passed out and was taken in by the madam of a brothel, then retrieved by her ally Godolphin. Upon returning to court, she tries to force Anne to send Abigail away, and she even threatens to reveal secret letters scandalous letters, of course to that old thorn Jonathan Swift. This is the last straw for Anne, who bans her from her bedroom and eventually has her removed from the palace. Meanwhile, Abigail has, by wedding a colonel, nimbly ascended from maid to lady, and installed herself in the palace, as well as in Queen Annes bed. In a moment of great significance, Sarah warns Anne that, while she may be cruel and harsh and sometimes manipulative, she is trustworthy and thats exactly what Abigail is not. But Anne brushes her off, and Sarah heads to her estate, where Godolphin advises her to write to the queen and apologize. Sure enough, Sarahs words come true when Abigail attempts to suggest that Sarah had been cooking the books, stealing money from the crown for her and her husband. This is going too far: Anne knows that Sarah, despite her faults and ambition, would never stoop to that, and she tells Abigail so; Abigail leaves her bedroom chanting fuck like its a mantra. But the critical moment is still to come. Anne waits on the letter that she expects from Sarah, the letter that would allow her to forgive; Sarah finally deigns to write said letter; and Abigail dutifully screens the mail until it arrives, at which point, sealing the fate of all three, she casts it into the fire. A chain reaction follows: Hurt and furious at what she perceives as Sarahs silence, Anne uses Abigails lie to have Sarah and her husband banished, and Abigail is victorious but at a cost. Throughout the film, Abigail insists that she wont betray her morals. By the end, she has clearly done so, and that renders her victory meaningless. Lanthimos has gone to great lengths to show that the ecosystem of the palace is a fragile one, and that its balance was finely maintained by Sarah through a remarkable mixture of statesmanship, affection, and clarity of sight. Sarah might not be a perfect person, but she is honest, and there are few things more valuable to a queen than honesty, particularly when it can be delivered in the proper way. Abigail, on the other hand, becomes a figure who would fit in beautifully in our own contemporary politics, and, probably, at any other time since man started walking upright. She knows how to gain power, but she has no idea how to wield it: Shes all appetite. Even though the queen sees Abigail for what she is the moment she lies about Sarahs alleged theft, Annes vanity and fragility, well-documented by now, are crippling: She believes that Sarah has forsaken her, and shed rather hurt Sarah with Abigail than send Abigail away. In the final scene, Anne forces a defiant Abigail to rub her legs, taking hold of her hair and forcing her down. The message is clear: The scales have fallen from Annes eyes. She knows Abigails a liar, but shes too weak and human to send her away. And Abigail might be a lady, but her existence is dependent on the queen. Her victory is Pyrrhic, coming at the cost of the illusion, long believed by Anne, that Abigail was a nice person, an innocent person, a sweet person all in contrast to Sarah. Ironically, the winner might be Sarah, who is, at least, free. As Anne digs her hand into Abigails hair, Lanthimos performs a magic trick. The image warps and distends, and the two womens faces are superimposed over one another: Theyre caged together in a hell of their own making, one wrought through deceit and greed. And then, terrifyingly, Lanthimos adds the rabbits to this collage, and it grows trippier and more addled until we fade to black. If The Favourite has been set somewhat apart from Lanthimoss filmography up to that moment, this shot provides a bridge, stamping the movie with his signature brand of psychological terror that conveys a deeper meaning. The rabbits, of course, represent the queens dead children, 1 for each of the 17 lost, but they mean even more than that. Sarah criticized the rabbits as sentimental and macabre; Abigail, on the other hand, used them to ingratiate herself with the queen. In a sense, Abigail appeared to be a rabbit herself, beautiful and cuddly and harmless. But with that final shot, Lanthimos conveys a different message. Abigails act has taken on a bastardized truth: Shes a pet, caged and helpless. And the queens desperate desire for unconditional love, the love of the children she doesnt have, has led her to cast off the one person who truly cared about her. All shes left with are rabbits. The IT Crowd. Photo: NBC Last spring, Anglophiles got word of TV news that likely elicited eye rolls and a bit of head-scratching: Freeform announced its adaptation of the popular British sci-fi dramedy Misfits. Despite a swift pilot order and subsequent casting announcements, nothing has been uttered about the project in about a year, and its unclear how the family-friendly network plans to adapt Misfits delightfully signature lewdness to its new audience. But the big question is already obvious: Will the show eventually join the graveyard of British comedies and dramedies that couldnt thrive stateside? Over the past decade or so, American TV has made numerous attempts to adapt uniquely British source material, but the vast majority have met cancellation almost immediately if they even managed to go beyond the pilot stage. (Dramas have been a bit more successful, as evidenced by the longevity of House of Cards and Shameless.) Read up about 13 of these instances below, and remember: Not everything can be The Office. Absolutely Fabulous The U.S. has tried to adapt AbFab twice since the early 90s, both times with excellent pairings for the leading roles of Edina and Patsy: Carrie Fisher and Roseanne Barrs ABC iteration never actually made it to the pilot stage, while Fox ended up shooting a pilot in 2009 with Kathryn Hahn and Kristen Johnston, with Zosia Mamet as Saffron. Set in Los Angeles, writers from Arrested Development and Saturday Night Live were onboard to write that version. I think [the pilot was] at a time where maybe this country was not quite ready to talk about conspicuous consumption in a light way, Hahn later revealed. But it was a ball, it was crazy. The IT Crowd Joel McHale and Jessica St. Clair joined The IT Crowds original cast member Richard Ayoade to film this NBC adaptation, with several scripts written and a pilot filmed. It never got a series order, though, with NBCs chairman at the time admitting it didnt quite spark as much as the network had hoped. (The pilot, which can be viewed in full here, has a palpably odd energy to it.) I was the only one dumb enough to do it. It was deeply weird, Ayoade later confessed. It was a bit like a play where everyone else had left. It was very odd. In 2014, NBC was trying to adapt it once again and not to be outdone, as of late 2017 the network was still hard at work at re-imagining the show for more modern times. Skins Despite actually lasting for ten episodes on MTV with the same showrunners as the U.K. version, Skins was doomed from the start. It immediately angered American advertisers and parenting groups with its rampant sexual content and drug use, with companies pulling their ads after the first episode and outraged parents petitioning to get the show off the air. (MTV executives even worried the series might violate child pornography and exploitation laws, as most of the actors were under the age of 18.) Despite canceling Skins, MTV stood by the series until the final episode aired, saying that it addressed real-world issues confronting teens in a frank way. The Inbetweeners Just like Skins, MTV adapted The Inbetweeners for one season before it was canceled, and it also brought in the original showrunners to lead the U.S. version. (ABC tried and failed to adapt the series years prior.) The adaptation proved to be a failure in both ratings and acclaim: less because of teenage lewdness a la Skins, but rather because of an incredibly poor reception of the general narrative, the tone of which MTV dumbed down from the U.K. weirdo-lads-in-suburbia version. (How would they translate bus wankers, anyway?) A critical essay in the Independent sums this dissonance up perfectly: The failure of the U.S. remake is nothing to do with Yanks not getting irony. Its just British teenage life is much dirtier than the American imagination can bear. Peep Show You gotta respect resiliency, even if that resiliency ultimately lead to the David Mitchell and Robert Webb-fronted Peep Show being rejected from American television an astounding three times. The shows journey began when it failed to be picked up after filming a pilot for Fox in 2005, when Johnny Galecki, who later found astronomical success as one of the leads in The Big Bang Theory, played one of the lead roles alongside Josh Meyers. (Seths brother!) Spike TV came calling in 2007, but that didnt even make it to the pilot stage. As a last hoorah, Starz placed an order for yet another remake in 2016, which prompted the shows creators Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong to talk about why the network turned it down in the end. I think adaptations to America are really hard, Bain explained. The exceptions the ones that work, like The Office are much more rare, because youre trying to change a show and keep it the same at the same time, which is quite weird. They vowed to never try to get it adapted again. Spaced Spaced the truly inimitable sitcom created by Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes, and directed in full by Edgar Wright was brought overseas by Charlies Angels director McG, where it landed a pilot order for Fox in 2008. The original trio was never consulted about the across-the-pond move, with Pegg going so far to condemn the sheer lack of respect that the network and production company have displayed in respectively selling out and appropriating our ideas without even letting us know. Due to the vast backlash from fans of the original series after Peggs statement, as well as vicious statements from Hynes and Wright, Fox pulled the plug on the adaptation and hasnt pursued it since. Us & Them Foxs adaptation of the cute rom-com situational comedy Gavin & Stacey which featured a solid cast of Alexis Bledel, Jason Ritter, Michael Ian Black, and Jane Kaczmarek originally got a 13-episode order for the 20132014 television season, but the tally was unexpectedly cut to seven and then eventually didnt air at all. (The show followed the long-distance relationship of a young-and-in-love couple.) The network never gave an official statement as to why it was canceled, despite this particular adaptation not getting terrible reviews. The Thick of It Consider this a blessing in disguise, as Armando Iannucci ended up wowing American audiences with Veep a few years after this failed The Thick of It adaptation. Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz spearheaded the ABC project alongside Iannucci, trading in a U.K. government minister for a low-level U.S. congressman and his staff. A pilot was shot and directed by Christopher Guest with a cast including John Michael Higgins, Oliver Platt, and Alex Borstein, but ABC chose to not pursue future episodes. Years later, Iannucci blasted the failed attempt, saying, It was terrible conventionally shot and there was no improvisation or swearing there were just scores of people working on it, all called vice president this and that, and a lot of them were buffoons. Coupling Looking for a group-dynamic sitcom to fill the impending void of Friends, NBC decided to pick up an adaptation of Steven Moffats provocative Coupling for a season order in 2003. It lasted only four episodes before being pulled by the network, after receiving an onslaught of complaints that the near-identical scripts from the U.K version were far too sexually explicit for U.S. television. NBC chief Jeff Zucker later admitted that the adaptation just sucked, while Moffat said that the network fucked it up because they intervened endlessly. If you really want a job to work, dont get Jeff Zuckers team to come help you because theyre not funny. The cast was criticized for their stilted performances as well. Free Agents Kathryn Hahn and Hank Azaria only got four episodes into this pitch-black romantic-comedy adaptation for NBC, which follows two colleagues as they navigate their feelings for each other following a drunken one-night stand and their respective romantic heartbreaks. (Catastrophes Sharon Horgan stars in the original.) The series fizzled out because people didnt tune in, although it received decent critical response. Viva Laughlin With a solid cast including Hugh Jackman and Melanie Griffith, plus a hefty budget, the CBS musical-dramedy casino extravaganza Viva Laughlin had all of the fundamental tenets for success. But as always, thats no guarantee: The Blackpool adaptation was mercilessly criticized for its acting, narrative, and duds of songs. Canceled after a mere two episodes, it was too ambitious and misguided for its own good and dubbed by the New York Times as potentially the worst show in the history of television. Outnumbered On paper, the family-friendly premise of Outnumbered suburban parents being outnumbered by their three rambunctious children on a daily basis is universally translatable. But for whatever reason, Fox wasnt able to get its adaptation up and running on two separate occasions, for reasons were not privy to. In fact, neither attempt made it to the pilot stage. The Minister of Divine Dawn Frenchs beloved religious sitcom The Vicar of Dibley tried to find a second life in America with Kirstie Alley fronting the adaptation for Fox. The premise changed slightly, though, with the log line teasing a series that centers on a woman, known for her rebellious younger days, who returns to her small hometown to be a minister. A pilot was shot in 2007, but Fox never picked it up for a season order. A community is grieving for a family who lost a loved one only one day before Thanksgiving. According to Athens Police, Sean Sutton is accused of killing his elderly mother, Emma Sutton. Her body was found inside her home at Roberts Apartments on Malone Street. WAAY 31 went out to the neighborhood and talked with those living nearby about what this means for the community and for Suttons family this holiday season. Neighbors of the murdered woman told WAAY 31 the incident made them more grateful for the time they got to spend with their family on this holiday. I cant imagine how you could hurt your parents," said Danielle Edmondson. That was Edmondsons reaction when she learned one of her neighbors was murdered, and that the neighbors son was the main suspect. For someone to do that to their mother, I think no one can really explain why they would do that to their biological mother," said another neighbor, Joseph Campbell. "Someone that cared for you and brought you into this world. I really have no explanation for that. According to Athens Police, the body of 79-year-old Emma Sutton was found inside her home the day before Thanksgiving. Her son, Sean Sutton, was arrested shortly after. Many neighbors said its hard to believe the crime happened in their neighborhood, and so close to the holidays. They say theyre keeping the affected family in their thoughts and prayers. I know its going to be rough for them, being the holiday season," Campbell said. "People dont expect this and they dont deserve this, not right before the holidays. Its awful what the family must be going through, because it was right before Thanksgiving," Edmondson added. "All of our prayers and love go out to them. In the meantime, Campbell says hes going to be more aware of his surroundings. It just lets you know that youve just always got to keep your guard up, as far as having children and being a family man, being in a situation and a neighborhood where anythings liable to happen at any given time," he said. "Protect your kids, protect yourself. Its unclear at this time what the motive was behind the murder, but this is an ongoing investigation and well be sure to keep you updated as soon as we learn more. Sean Sutton is currently being held in the Limestone County jail. Right now thousands of people are in lines at stores across the country to kick off the start of the holiday shopping season, and with an increase of holiday shipments heading to your home there are also thieves looking to take them. "Porch pirates would have to be very sharp to get a package from us," online shopper Joni Boulet said. Boulet has never been hit by a porch pirate, but knows people who have. "That happens a lot in our neighborhood," Boulet said. According to a 2017 study by Shorr Packaging Corporation, 31% of people surveyed said they had experienced package theft. The study also shows 53% of people surveyed said they changed their plans to make sure they were home to receive their package even though they didn't have to sign for it. "Especially picking up after Thanksgiving there will be thieves that will follow delivery vehicles, whether its FedEx, UPS, or the United States mail delivery service. They'll follow them and these delivery services will leave a package on the front porch, and not knowing what it is the thieves will go victimize the people living at the home," Madison County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Donny Shaw said. Shaw said there are a few ways you can protect yourself and your stuff. If you know you won't be home when your package is being delivered he suggests having it shipped to a neighbor or asking your boss if you can have it sent to work. "I actually have things delivered to my job. There are people who can sign for it or just put it in the back," online shopper Dante Moss said. You could also request the package be left at the freight center and pick it up from there. "Fortunately I'm home most of the time, and we also check to see when our packages are arriving," Boulet said. That's another practice Shaw recommends: watch your package tracker. If the company you ordered from says your order was delivered but it's not at your front door call law enforcement. According to Shaw, if a package thief is caught the person could face misdemeanor or felony charges depending on the value of the package. Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and Thomas Jefferson University sign ground-breaking medical degree agreement Rome's Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and the Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia have created a pioneering international medical degree programme, hailed as the first of its kind in the world. The agreement will give medical students at Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore the chance to earn a Bachelor of Science degree from Jefferson University and Doctor of Medicine degrees from the Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University and Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, all within six years. Current medical education requirements differ vastly between the US and Europe. Medical students in the US must earn a four-year undergraduate degree and then a four-year medical degree in order to practice medicine in America. However medical students in Europe have no undergraduate degree requirement and can earn a degree, direct from high school, within six years. Under the agreement, which was also signed by Rome's Policlino Gemelli Hospital where medical school rotations occur, students of Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore will have the opportunity to travel to Thomas Jefferson University to meet the US undergraduate requirements needed to pursue a medical degree. Dr Steven K. Klasko, president of Thomas Jefferson University and CEO of Jefferson Health, said that students selected for the programme "will experience two unique academic environments and will study, train and treat patients alongside their US medical peers giving both groups a broad understanding and appreciation for very distinct healthcare ecosystems." Dr Mark Tykocinski, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Jefferson and dean of the Sidney Kimmel Medical College, said the agreement would "allow European and US medical students to work side-by-side while expanding their physician-peer network across Europe. Thomas Jefferson University is already known to many Romans as the workplace of transplant surgeon and former Rome mayor Ignazio Marino. The way we first hit it off in our dorm was less about apps solving problems and more about old-time virtues, like having neighbors, having long conversations and meeting people in the real world, said Davis, who concentrates on the marketing side of the company; while chief executive Staff focuses on finance and operations. Quality time instead of just packing everything into time. Asked last month whether there would be a shake-up at the Ministry of Defense in the aftermath of the Skripal affair, the Kremlin said the low quality of the allegations leveled at the GRU did not justify such changes. Compared with that travesty, this new Grinch is Citizen Kane. (In fact, the movie references Orson Welless 1941 masterpiece when we see the Grinch sharing a meal with Max, each of them at opposite ends of a long banquet table.) This endearing update of a holiday classic reminds us that the Christmas season can be hard for the lonely. It offers up an optimistic message that the Grinches of the world might melt their hard hearts if we meet them face to face not with rancor, but with love. Not too many years ago, Spanish wineries would typically hold their roses, or rosados, until two years after the vintage, believing the extra time in bottle enhanced their flavor. Today, the market demand for rose emphasizes freshness, and we tend to think (wrongly) that any rose more than a year old is over the hill. The makers of Evaia seem to have tried to play both ways, releasing their 2017 only in the fall, without rushing it to market. Its terrific, with racy flavors of melon and strawberry, braced with a hint of exotic spice. ABV: 13 percent. The magnum edition is an expanded version of the original, and its beautiful. Puckette and Hammack are masters of infographics, and they present the essential information anyone needs to know about grape varieties, wine regions and those indecipherable terms on wine labels in a simple and visually appealing way. Best of all, they dont dumb it down. As they say in the introduction, in a brief section under the subhead, Why Love Wine?: There is so much to know, including how wine is made and the science behind its tastes and flavors. Not to mention the health benefits, cultural traditions, and how wine fits into our history and evolution. In short, wine is interesting because it is complex. He finally said he wanted to be able to smoke freely. I agreed to this, and then I was shocked. He smoked in the morning, at night, on walks, on the porch after dinner and on dates. It began to make me feel as though he needed to be high to get through our life together. Out of the blue one day, he told me he wanted to quit. I was thrilled, but then he struggled mightily to quit. He finally did quit for 10 months. I am a devout Jew myself, with friends from all walks of life, he said in an email. Ive been a major supporter of a childrens orphanage in Israel, charities that aid Africa & Southeast Asia and many other humanitarian causes. My hundreds of reviews online consistently point out my kind and caring nature. The story was invented by a passenger who was sitting to the right of me... The only charges that I faced were resistance to arrest and obstruction of a police officer... These charges were dropped, with a pre-trial diversion. No tirade ever took place upon this plane and I believe this is fairly obvious, as someone wouldve surely gotten it on camera. The counterprotester who was killed, Heather D. Heyer, 32, worked for a local law firm and was remembered by friends as a committed advocate of social justice. Fields, who drove to the rally from his apartment in Maumee, Ohio, near Toledo, was described by acquaintances as being deeply fascinated by Nazi Germany, often espousing admiration for the militarism and racial-purity dogma of the Third Reich. 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 Its insulting to think that I wouldnt want to put my child in a safe space, said Mari-Scarlett Hirte, one of the parents in the play group. She said she has met many of her close friends in the group, which includes several stay-at-home parents like herself. It builds community. To want to stifle that? It just doesnt seem right. E.U. officials said there was a solid consensus that remaining quibbles should not hold up a final deal for Sunday, as the other 27 governments go through the new paperwork. The main question mark is whether Spain, seeing Brexit as an opportunity to swing the E.U.s weight behind its 300-year campaign to reclaim Gibraltar from Britain, can be persuaded to remain patient. Suspected Islamic State gunmen kill 6 in Libya: Gunmen raided a town deep in Libya's southern desert Friday, killing six, the town said, adding that it thinks the Islamic State was responsible. A military source said the attackers occupied a police station in the oasis town of Tazerbo until residents expelled them. The source also said the attackers were believed to belong to the Islamic State. The town listed six residents on its website as having been killed. The group has staged several such attacks since withdrawing into the desert after losing the coastal city of Sirte in 2016. The goal of the war on drugs, which began during the Nixon administration, was to educate the public about their dangers and to do everything possible to make them difficult to obtain to attack them on the supply side. However, as became apparent long ago, when there is a big, profitable demand for drugs in the United States, there will be a supply, and that supply has come predominantly from south of the U.S. border. The profits are used by drug cartels and gangs to buy weapons, use them to create an atmosphere of violence and, in many cases, to pay off local authorities. Retail stores and online shopping drew much of the attention on Black Friday. But the most important event of the day may have taken place away from the world of commerce and within the domain of the National Black Leadership Alliance and National Congress of Black Women. The two organizations, which serve as an umbrella for a host of other black groups and individuals, have launched a Black Friday Respect Us campaign that calls for ending support for broadcasts from urban radio stations that feature music they say demeans, denigrates and promotes violence against women, with Black women as the primary target. For a number of years, I have sensed a rise in the threat of white-supremacist ideology and violence. The peddlers of hate have become bolder and more unapologetic about spreading their twisted ideology while becoming less afraid of the consequences of their actions and words. Once hidden in the shadows, they have moved their organizing and indoctrination from the Internet to the streets, and they have become more visible and sophisticated in their recruitment efforts. And where they should have been met with swift consequences and clear condemnation from political and community leaders, they instead have heard indifference, equivocation, tacit approval or worse, which has emboldened them. This is, by now, a familiar story. But its details emerge at a critical moment for the Catholic Church in the United States. The Pennsylvania report and the summers horrific revelations regarding a pattern of credible sexual abuse allegations against former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick spanning decades have brought the churchs ongoing mishandling of the scandal back to the fore. Catholics experienced one crisis of confidence when they realized they could not necessarily trust the clergy to whom they entrusted their spiritual care and daily lives. We are now undergoing another, as it becomes clearer and clearer that high-ranking prelates have neglected their duties to hold abusers and their enablers accountable. At this point, preserving Catholics trust in their spiritual shepherds is paramount for the survival of the American ecclesial establishment. Yet some prelates are still holding back still trying to outrun a crisis that has already enveloped them, one that enveloped the lay faithful long ago. In the statement which is headlined America First! Trump emphasizes what he calls the record amount of money that Saudi Arabia is supposedly prepared to spend in the United States. Trump goes on to make a series of false claims. No, there is no agreement for the Saudis to spend $450 billion on U.S. goods, despite Trumps assertion. No, there is no firm agreement for $110 billion in arms sales; the actual figure is $14.5 billion. No, what Trump reckons as hundreds of thousands of jobs are not at stake. And no, the Saudis could not simply decide to buy Chinese or Russian arms, instead. Give the president credit where due: He tells it like it is, which is that were going to pretend the CIA report is wrong and continue as before. Maybe MBS knew about the murder, maybe he didnt, says Trump. Sure, and maybe some Mexicans are nice people, maybe not. Yes, sure, sure, that awful slaughter and dismemberment thing was bad, really bad, but lets not allow an over-there thing to interfere with arms sales and, who knows, perhaps some future Trump developments. The main adversary in the trade war, of course, has been China. In July, Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on $34 billion in products, and then in September added $200 billion after threatening tariffs on all Chinese products. What the administration hadnt considered carefully enough was the blowback of these tariffs felt by U.S. manufacturers that use Chinese products. A similar misunderstanding about global supply chains undermined the campaigns against Mexico and Canada. To be blunt, this is a trade-focused administration that doesnt seem to understand how global trade really works. With his latest deference, this time to Saudi Arabia, despite what every intelligence agency and every astute national leader knows, President Trump has for the third time gone into kowtow mode. He has absolved the Saudi crown prince, who all others acknowledge directed the ghastly murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. This after the kowtow to Kim Jong Un, the sad man who heads the absolutely inconsequential North Korea, and the earlier kowtow to Russian President Vladimir Putin, a man with a visceral hatred of the United States, and who for his entire adult life has done everything in his power to disrupt our democracy. Meanwhile, the number of gas leaks and repairs since 2016 continues to climb: 64 and counting. In October, a record may have been set with at least five and as many as eight new gas leaks on the same day around the corner from each other. Some streets and intersections have been the site of multiple incidents within a short period. I have started documenting incidents on my website, GeorgetownGasLeaks.com. Pence and Putin had three short conversations in Singapore. First, they exchanged pleasantries at the ASEAN gala dinner. (Putin arrived late.) The following day, before the plenary, Putin tapped Pence on the shoulder as he walked to his seat. The press, still in the room, caught Pence looking sternly at Putin for the minute or so they talked. Putin offered Russian help to fight the California wildfires. Pence confirmed to Putin that Trump would meet him at the upcoming Group of 20 meeting in Argentina. Hyde-Smith grew up in the southern part of Mississippi, in an area where some of the darkest chapters of racism played out. Several years before she was born, a black man who had been trying to get voters to cast absentee ballots in a special election was shot to death at 10 a.m. in front of the county courthouse in Brookhaven, about 20 miles north of where Hyde-Smith grew up and where she and her husband now live. No one was convicted of the killing. There is no urgency here and no reason for the court to weigh in at this juncture, said Jennifer Levi, transgender rights project director for the gay rights group GLAD. The injunctions preserve the status quo of the open service policy that was thoroughly vetted by the military itself and has been in place now for more than two years. This is simply one more attempt by a reckless Trump administration to push through a discriminatory policy. Stone told the House Intelligence Committee in September 2017 that his Podesta tweet was based on a comprehensive, early August opposition research briefing provided to me by investigative journalist, Dr. Jerome Corsi, which I then asked him to memorialize in a memo that he sent me on August 31st, all of which was culled from public records. There was no need to have John Podestas email to learn that he and his presidential candidate were in bed with the clique around Putin. Amid the escalating assaults, Taliban officials have held several rounds of talks with U.S. diplomats in recent months as Washington looks for a way to end an insurgency that began after the Taliban was ousted from power in Kabul by U.S. airstrikes and Afghan resistance forces in late 2001. The U.S. intervention followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which were ordered from Afghan soil by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. We believe that brands need to be aware of the cultural implications of their actions and understand the potential backlash when customers feel their values have been disrespected, Andrew Keith, the president of Lane Crawford, said in a statement Friday. Customers have been returning Dolce & Gabbana products to our stores. With respect to our customers, we have taken the decision to remove the brand from all stores in mainland China, online and in Hong Kong. For this, he had become a hunted man. Writing in The Washington Post earlier this year, Fares said he had survived at least one assassination attempt. He had also been abducted by al-Qaedas Syrian affiliate on multiple occasions. But we havent given up. Were still broadcasting our independent coverage of the Syrian revolution, countering terrorism and advocating tolerance, he wrote. By Kane Wu, Julie Zhu, Reuters | Nov. 22, 2018 Chinese conglomerate HNA Group has turned to state-owned China Cinda Asset Management Co, among the country's largest bad debt managers, for advice on asset disposals, people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. HNA Group's vice president, Dennis Chen, the nephew of its chairman Chen Feng, met with Cinda President Chen Xiaozhou on Tuesday to discuss cooperation, according to the people, who declined to be named as the information is confidential. It was not immediately clear what role Beijing-based Cinda is playing in HNA's asset disposals, but at the meeting, Cinda told HNA it stood ready to help, according to an internal memo sent to HNA staff and reviewed by Reuters. "Cinda will continue to support HNA's strategic transformation and its asset disposals in core and auxiliary businesses," Cinda's president said, according to the memo. "Especially when HNA is in a relatively difficult time, there is all the more reason for us to increase our support," the president added. HNA has attracted much scrutiny for its US$50 billion worth of deals in recent years that included hotels in the United States and left it the largest shareholder in Deutsche Bank. Faced with soaring debts and China's crackdown on aggressive dealmaking firms, the airlines-to-finance conglomerate has been pushing ahead with a series of asset sales that have so far included real estate and stakes in hotel groups. It has also offered up its much-hyped luxury US$300-milliom-plus corporate "Dream Jet". This week, HNA-controlled Hainan Airlines announced the sale of a 40 percent stake in Urumqi Air to a local government entity for an undisclosed amount. The conglomerate has also offloaded a 25 percent holding in asset manager BrightSphere, worth about US$343 million, to U.S. hedge fund manager John Paulson. Last week, chairman Chen told domestic business magazine Caijing that HNA had sold almost 300 billion yuan (US$43 billion) in assets this year and would continue the disposals. Ingram Plans Cinda has already been involved in talks with potential buyers for Ingram Micro, the U.S. IT parts distributor that HNA bought for US$6 billion in 2016, three people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. The bad debt manager could also provide capital for a potential deal, according to one of the people. An HNA spokesman declined to comment on this week's meeting with Cinda, but added that neither HNA nor any of its affiliates or subsidiaries was working with Cinda to sell Ingram Micro and that "any suggestion to the contrary is patently false". Cinda did not respond to requests for comment. Ingram did not respond to a request for comment outside of office hours. Any sale of Ingram Micro could be complicated by stepped-up powers recently awarded to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which scrutinizes foreign purchases of the country's assets. In 2016, CFIUS approved the HNA-Ingram deal so long as the U.S. company operated as a stand-alone entity. But earlier this month, new rules aimed at curbing Chinese investment in 27 sensitive sectors gave the committee additional oversight of those sectors, which include telecommunications and semiconductors. Several Chinese groups, including Cinda's counterpart China Huarong Asset Management, have held discussions with HNA regarding Ingram, Reuters reported in May. Huarong ended discussions on concerns over whether it could pass U.S. regulatory approvals. HNA Technology Co, which owns Ingram, said in September it had US$3.55 billion of debt outstanding from the purchase of the firm, of which US$350 million was due this year. Macquarie Group chief executive Nicholas Moore was warned against a ban on home loan broker commissions saying it could lead to unintended consequences. Mr Moore issued the warning while giving evidence at the banking royal commission in Sydney on Thursday, reflecting serious concerns among smaller lenders about any moves by the commission to radically reshape how mortgage brokers are paid. Macquarie Group's outgoing CEO Nicholas Moore arrives at the banking royal commission. Credit:AAP Whether mortgage brokers should receive commissions for arranging home loans, or if they should receive a flat fee has been a hot issue at the hearings amid concerns commissions were driving irresponsible lending and poor customer outcomes. This week it emerged the Commonwealth Bank was only a week away from announcing it was moving to a fee-based model in 2017 before walking away from the issue due to concerns it would suffer first-mover disadvantage. CBA boss Matt Comyn also told the commission he hoped it would fix the issue. An oil leak off the coast of WA in July has prompted a warning from the nation's offshore safety regulator to the oil and gas industry to check monitoring systems on unmanned rigs. On July 24, severe weather damaged Triangle Energy's Cliff Head Alpha offshore platform 25 kilometres south west of Dongara, resulting in a low-level seven-hour leak of five per cent crude oil and 95 per cent water. Triangle Energy's Cliff Head rig off WA's northern coast. Inspectors found the source of the leak was a fracture in the discharge line of a fluid flow meter. Production was halted and the regulator NOPSEMA ordered the company not to restart until it demonstrated the issue was resolved. Energy groups say the government's proposed powers to force generators to sell off assets won't help reduce electricity prices and could be unconstitutional. The proposed draft law will allow the Treasurer to issue divestiture orders forcing companies who carry out "prohibitive actions" to dispose of some of their assets and restrict who can buy the assets. The proposed rules would allow governments to force energy companies to divest their generating assets such as power stations. Credit:Dan Himbrechts It is the latest 'big stick' by the government, which includes new electricity contract default prices, to try and lower power prices and improve behaviour in the energy industry. The Australian Energy Council (AEC) said the draft law would fail to achieve anything at all and could be unconstitutional. While Toronto may have lost out on the Amazon HQ2 decision, there is more than it and other Canadian cities can do to become more attractive to the global tech sector. A report from CBRE says that, despite being popular tech locations, Canadian cities are lagging when it comes to the development and promotion of tech clusters. Torontos inclusion on Amazons HQ2 shortlist thrust Canadas tech market into the spotlight. While our market is growing and is dynamic, our analysis suggests that tax incentives arent the only thing holding our cities back when competing for global tech investment, commented Paul Morassutti, Vice Chairman at CBRE Canada. He added that tech clusters are essential to attracting large investments from global tech leaders, but they dont happen overnight, or without collaboration between stakeholders. Concerted effort, policy and infrastructure from all levels of government, business leaders, venture capitalists, and research and academic centres is required to attract and retain high-tech firms and support connectivity between them, said Morassutti. The cities that are performing well Many Canadian cities are performing well in attracting the tech sector. The top five Canadian tech talent markets in 2018 are Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver and Waterloo-Region, with Montreal replacing Vancouver in the top three. This is due to Montreals overall tech talent and high-tech concentration outpacing that of Vancouvers for a second consecutive year. CBREs scorecard includes 20 cities and shows that new entrants performed well, with Quebec City, Hamilton and Victoria surprisingly rounding out the top 10. Quebec City has a strong concentration of tech talent thats above the national average, while Victoria and Hamilton feature high quality, well-educated labour forces at a moderate cost to employers. Canadian cities added 178,800 tech jobs between 2012 and 2017, an increase of 27.3%, 57,600 of which were added in 2017 alone. Oshawa was the fastest-growing city with a 71.4% growth over the 5-year period. No matter the size of the market, there are advantages to operating in Canada. Large markets tend to have a deeper pool of talent, while smaller markets attract talent with more competitive business and living costs, commented Morassutti. Tech, which now accounts for 23% of all office space demand in Canada, has driven rents up and vacancy down. Costs may be rising, but we are relatively affordable compared to other global cities and paying to be close to quality talent is a small trade-off for well-resourced tech companies. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) recently announced the construction and funding of 95 new rental housing units in Winnipeg, in an effort to provide more affordable homes to middle-class families. "Through the National Housing Strategy, more middle-class Canadians - and those working hard to join it - will find safe, accessible and affordable homes in communities where their families can thrive and children learn and grow. This investment is wonderful news for the Winnipeg middle-income families that will move into these new affordable rental housing units, said The Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Children, Families and Social Development. The federal government is pouring over $18 million into the construction of Park City Commons, through CMHC's Rental Construction Financing initiative (RCFi). Park City Commons is a 6-storey building envisioned to provide safe and affordable homes to 95 families. All units will have rents at or lower than 30% of median household income in the area. To rise in the former City of Winnipeg Public Works Yard, the project will provide affordable housing options that are close to public transit, schools and services for modest and middle-income households. As such, more Canadians can enjoy better social outcomes and contribute to vibrant and socially inclusive neighborhoods. The RCFi, a National Housing Strategy initiative delivered by CMHC, supports affordable rental housing construction projects to encourage a stable supply of affordable rental housing across the country for middle-class families struggling in expensive housing markets. Photo shows handwriting that an FBI analyst was asked to examine after three explosive packages were mailed within Winnipeg in July 2015. This weeks throne speech got the attention of the mining industry with mentions of specific activity that shows how seriously the provincial government is supporting the development of the industry. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/11/2018 (1097 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Opinion This weeks throne speech got the attention of the mining industry with mentions of specific activity that shows how seriously the provincial government is supporting the development of the industry. Yes, mining and mineral exploration in Manitoba have had a few rough years, but the entire global industry is struggling. But for the past couple of years, it seemed like just about everything that could go wrong in the sector was happening. At the same time that Manitoba mines and processing plants were closing, the province undertook a restructuring of its own minerals branch earlier this year, reducing its budget and even cutting, among other things, its sponsorship of the annual industry convention. On Thursday, the provincial department was a guest, as it were, at this years version of the mining conference, called the Central Canada Mineral Exploration Convention, an industry-run event co-sponsored by the Manitoba Prospectors and Developers Association. "The convention is a terrific success," Trade Minister Blaine Pedersen said. "And people in the industry are quite bullish." Pedersen pointed out the development of electric vehicles as an example of the kind of potential that exists in this province because the batteries that run electric vehicles need nickel and lithium. Theres obviously lots of nickel in Manitoba, and now theres also ongoing lithium exploration that is promising. Industry suppliers dominated the exhibition space at the convention and while there was not any obvious presence from the mining or exploration companies themselves, many of the 300 people attending expressed the sentiment that there was excitement in the room. Its not that there were any new mine developments announced or even a meaningful increase in exploration, but more of a general sense that theres now a co-ordinated approach toward industry development with support across the board. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Growth, Enterprise and Trade Minister Blaine Pedersen: "People in the industry are quite bullish. Tuesdays throne speech announced the creation of a liaison committee on mining and exploration, which will get industry experts, community leaders including First Nations and government officials talking together about developments. There was also further mention of the provinces commitment to the Look North task force and specific talk of a new partnership between the Red Sucker Lake First Nation and Yamana Gold Inc. on the Monument Bay gold-tungsten project which was reached earlier this fall. It coincided with the completion of an of engagement process with First Nations that has provided the province with solid direction for a mineral development protocol between Manitoba and First Nations, which has been glaringly absent for the past few years. Red Sucker Lake First Nation chief Samuel Knott was at Thursdays conference. He said there is an understanding of the potential for a mine to be developed there, but that it will be a long process before the community can hope to achieve any financial benefit from the project. Community members are now employed at the exploration site and Knott said they are well aware of the environmental risks involved and will remain vigilant that the community is protected. "It is a positive step for our First Nation," he said about the partnership, which now includes a direct line of communication between the chief and the president of the company. The Mining Association of Manitoba which represents companies that have producing mines, such as Vale and HudBay Minerals says that as a whole, there is some optimism in the industry. Vale and HudBay may be paring back their operations, but the Mining Associations executive director Andrea McLandress said they remain busy and the mineral resource is still there to develop. And now, she said, there is focused attention being paid to economic development in the north. "We are seeing the same recommendations from all these different committees and consultations and round tables that are all saying we need to encourage and support investment in the north." martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca A proposed sewer bylaw would allow the city to take quick action against polluters and add cannabis production to the industries covered. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/11/2018 (1097 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A proposed sewer bylaw would allow the city to take quick action against polluters and add cannabis production to the industries covered. Currently, the city goes through the provincial court system to take action against a polluter, water and waste department director Moira Geer said Thursday when she appeared before the committee on water and waste, riverbank management and the environment. The proposed bylaw, which would take effect next year, includes amendments to the Municipal By-law Enforcement Act. Geer said the department would enforce violations with a simple and cost-effective administrative penalty scheme. "We can issue a ticket and a fine and it's much quicker," Geer told the committee. "It's much more expedient because it's handled by the municipality itself." It would allow the department to issue penalties immediately as a ticket penalty notice, similar to the penalty structure in place with the parking bylaw and other city bylaws, including the water bylaw. "The change we're asking for in the sewer bylaw enables us to act quickly," Geer told reporters after the committee voted in favour of the revised sewer bylaw. "Part of it is it's punitive, but it's also to correct the action, to correct the behaviour. If you're in a court system, and it takes months and a lengthy time delay to enforce the bylaw, then you lose the effectiveness. This really gives us more immediacy to deal with an issue that needs to get corrected." The amended bylaw doesn't propose new fees or charges and won't result in the need for increasing staffing levels within the department. It would add cannabis growth and manufacturing to its sections covering pollution-prevention planning. "Within our sewer bylaw, there's a provision for pollution-prevention planning for different industry sectors," Geer said. "We have inspectors that work with those facilities and we test discharge coming from their facilities and if required, if they exceed the limits within our bylaw, they need to put in pretreatment planning so they come into compliance with our bylaw." On Oct. 17, the recreational use of cannabis was legalized in Canada. As part of the regulation of cannabis in the City of Winnipeg, the public service included the necessary clauses and waste discharge requirements for cannabis growth and manufacturing industries within the sewer bylaw revision. A minimum one year notice is required to inform industries that their waste streams will be monitored to conform to the sewer bylaw. Adding cannabis production to the bylaw would allow for future environmental regulation of cannabis growth and manufacturing in Winnipeg. "We check to see what they're discharging into our sewer system," said Geer. Council must approve the changes. Winnipeg's three legal cannabis production facilities two of which are operational and a third is under construction are located in industrial-zoned areas. Delta 9 has an 80,000-square-foot production facility in east Winnipeg that employs 150 workers. It expects to expand, with the purchase of 47 contiguous acres of land adjacent to its facility. Delta 9 did not respond to a request for comment about its sewer discharge. with file from Solomon Israel carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca For 99 years, the Christmas Cheer Board has been working hard to ensure everyone has a happy holiday, and for 49 of those years, Kai Madsen, the charity's executive director, has been a part of making that miracle happen. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 23/11/2018 (1096 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. For 99 years, the Christmas Cheer Board has been working hard to ensure everyone has a happy holiday, and for 49 of those years, Kai Madsen, the charity's executive director, has been a part of making that miracle happen. "I thought about retiring, but making it to 50 and 100 would be really neat," he says from the Cheer Board's new location on St. James Street, acknowledging the dual significance of 2019. Madsen's work is not easy, but it's rewarding, and it's made lighter by the generosity of Winnipeggers who help put food on tables and presents under trees by volunteering both their time and money. Making a donation to the Christmas Cheer Board has become a holiday tradition for many people. Supporting the Christmas Cheer Board is a holiday tradition for us here at the Winnipeg Free Press, too. Today, we're kicking off our fifth annual Miracle on Mountain fundraising campaign that collects monetary donations for the Christmas Cheer Board to pay for food and other items packed into hampers. "The tradition of our readers stepping up to help the Christmas Cheer Board is part of what makes the holiday season so special in our city," says Free Press editor Paul Samyn. "We are delighted to once again ask our audience to make a Miracle On Mountain so we can make a difference for so many at Christmas." The Christmas Cheer Board looks after all hamper requests, even if it means running a deficit. (Joe Bryksa / Winnipeg Free Press files) To help kickstart our 2018 campaign, the good folks at Canadian Tire and Paul England Sales Ltd. have come through with donations of $4000 and $6000 respectively. Last year, Miracle on Mountain raised $100,134.80 to help make those hampers happen, but more is always needed. "We have an open-ended policy that says regardless of how many hampers we're requested to fill, we will look after them," Madsen explains. "All of the turkeys we buy, half the toys we buy, half the groceries we buy. If we don't raise enough money for those things, we have to go in the hole." The Christmas Cheer Board is working with a deficit of $45,000 from last year, and is looking to raise $900,000 to pay the bills and make up the shortfall. Unfortunately, the amount of money people are donating is on the decline, Madsen says. "This is not to knock the technology world, but we don't have the same personal contact we used to have," he says. "People used to come in here and I got to know a whole bunch of them, but now they can do it online. You'd think perhaps if you make it easier (to donate) there will be more money, but that's not the case because that personal sense of being part of something is not as strong." Bury the Lede Live: A Holiday Podcast Spectacular is happening Sunday, Dec. 16 at the West End Cultural Centre. It's a different world than it was nearly a century ago when the Christmas Cheer Board began, and when the city's newspapers became its de facto fundraising arm sometime in the 1940s. As newspaper people, we're always looking for new ways to engage our readers, and Madsen is hoping to reinvigorate the Miracle on Mountain campaign. Us too. When we were thinking about this year's campaign, my Bury the Lede podcast co-host Erin Lebar and I had an idea: what if we put on a holiday variety show to raise funds for Miracle on Mountain and bring people together for a celebration? And so we're doing just that. Please join us for Bury the Lede Live: A Holiday Podcast Spectacular! on Sunday, Dec. 16 at 2 p.m. at the West End Cultural Centre. It's a live recording of the podcast/holiday concert/variety show featuring a ton of local talent, including Sandy Taronno (Quinzy, Indicator Indicator), Rusty Matyas (Imaginary Cities, Middle of Nowhere), indie-pop group Mise en Scene, ukulele comedy duo Bunny, and sketch comedy group HUNKS, along with some special guests. Possibly even a Free Press exclusive with Santa. Games will be played! Festive songs will be sung! Merriment will be had! Tickets are $20 and went on sale Saturday, Nov. 24 at Ticketfly.com. All proceeds from the show will go to Miracle on Mountain. Help us start a new holiday tradition. jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @JenZoratti OTTAWA The Governor General will touch down in Winnipeg on Monday and visit military, Indigenous and francophone groups as she checks the last province off her list. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/11/2018 (1097 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA The Governor General will touch down in Winnipeg on Monday and visit military, Indigenous and francophone groups as she checks the last province off her list. Rideau Hall released Julie Payettes two-day itinerary for the keystone province Thursday, laying out a whirlwind schedule months after her provincial counterparts suggested a visit this year would not be possible. THE CANADIAN PRESS/SEAN KILPATRICK Governor General Julie Payette will be arriving in Winnipeg for a visit on Monday. Lt.-Gov. Janice Filmon and Premier Brian Pallister will receive Payette at the legislature with a 21-gun salute by 17 Wing members Monday morning. After two hours, shell head to Universite de Saint-Boniface to celebrate its 200th anniversary and meet with nursing students. Shell also give a speech and take in some fiddling at the francophone cultural celebration at Fort Gibraltar. After lunch, shell visit to the University of Manitoba to look at food and Arctic research. That evening, Filmon will host a reception at Government House "to meet and speak with key provincial leaders and with people who have contributed to their communities." Payette will also take a walk in the North End with Bear Clan patrol volunteers. Tuesday morning, Payette will tour the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and meet with crew members at 17 Wing, with a focus on their transport and rescue missions. Payette will likely head home in the afternoon. There are no plans for Payette, a former scientist, to visit the National Microbiology Laboratory, hailed for its role in developing an Ebola vaccine. Rideau Hall said they attempted to arrange a visit but it was not possible. Pallister broke the news of Payettes visit on Oct. 18, on Twitter, writing that the vice-regal will would visit Manitoba on Nov. 25 to 27; the itinerary released Thursday says the visit only starts on Nov. 26. Payettes announced visit will be an about-face, following sustained media scrutiny over her work ethic, such as shirking some of the ceremonial duties that make up a gruelling schedule for the vice-regal, and resisting weekend duties. Tradition holds that most governors general visit all provinces and territories within roughly their first 12 months; Payette reached that milestone in early October, and visited Saskatchewan shortly thereafter. Manitoba is her last province to visit, while she has not made plans to visit the Yukon. An Angus-Reid poll earlier this month found Manitobans had diverging opinions about Payette, with 28 per cent deeming her "poorly suited" for the job, and 22 per cent saying she "will eventually settle" into it. dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca Drownings don't necessarily involve boats and victims often had no intention of being in the water, concludes a new report that looks at the geography of drownings in Manitoba. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 23/11/2018 (1096 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Drownings don't necessarily involve boats and victims often had no intention of being in the water, concludes a new report that looks at the geography of drownings in Manitoba. The Lifesaving Society issued its findings Friday, and for the first time, the organization linked up drownings with not only location but what the victims were doing at the time of their deaths. Indigenous communities were identified as the most common location where drownings occurred, accounting for 56 (24 per cent) of all deaths from 2006-15. The next most common location was private residences, the society noted, pointing to drownings in backyard pools and inside homes (described as bathing drownings). Drownings at home accounted for 29 (13 per cent) of deaths over the 10-year period. The organization looked at 231 water-related deaths in the province between 2005 and 2015. Some 71 per cent (163) deaths happened in rural areas, drawing on data collected by the province's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Its report was issued in a series of charts Friday. By activity, it was the drownings due to unintentional entry into water, however, that stood out. "When we looked at the activities that lead to drownings over the last 10 years, it was shocking to note transportation-related drownings, originating in a vehicle other than a boat, was the leading activity involved. This is from vehicles going through the ice, or off the road into water," the society concluded. "I can't claim it was a huge surprise," water smart co-ordinator Christopher Love said Friday in phone interview. "Our No. 1 activity for deaths was land, air or ice transportation... We've known for the last three to four years that we're the ditch-drowning capitol of Canada," he said. "We have the the highest number of drowning deaths that occur in ditches across the country. That edged out boating." Boating was responsible for 46 (23 per cent) of drowning deaths over the same period of time. By activity, land, ice or air transportation accounted for 54 drowning deaths in Manitoba over the 10-year period; 46 involved people out hiking or walking. Love said none of those victims intended to go into the water, and some incidents involved snowmobiles that went through the ice or cars that ventured too near flood waters. "Ditch drowning is people drowning in water-filled ditches and so the exact cause varies year to year, but we're seen it multiple times. There have been cars that have gone off highways into water-filled ditches and occupants have been trapped and, unfortunately, perished as a result," Love said. The lifesaving society used the report to issue a couple of warnings: take a buddy if you're headed out for an afternoon, always keep your children within arm's-length, and never consume alcohol when you're behind the wheel, no matter what kind of vehicle. The report also highlighted tragedies involving children, Love noted. On April 20, 2016, a 11-year-old girl drowned at the Woodland Hutterite Colony after a fall during spring runoff. Jodi Hofer was crossing a partially submerged bridge with another youngster, when the pair was knocked into the frigid water, approximately 30 kilometres northeast of Portage la Prairie. The report found most drownings occur outside cities, even though they typically claim the lives of urban dwellers. "We see over 70 per cent of drownings in rural areas when our province's density is almost the opposite, with nearly 70 per cent living in urban areas," Lifesaving Society acting chief executive officer Kevin Tordiffe said in a statement. That was reflected in the census data the society broke down when it looked at where the individuals who drown had resided: Winnipeg had the highest number of drownings (33), approximately 20 per cent; Thompson and north central Manitoba had 29, while eastern Manitoba recorded 18 deaths. Download alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca The Salvation Army kettles have gotten the boot from Liquor Marts across Manitoba. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/11/2018 (1097 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The Salvation Army kettles have gotten the boot from Liquor Marts across Manitoba. The charitable organization's Winnipeg-based Prairie division found out in recent weeks it will no longer be welcome in any stores operated by the Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries Corp. For the past decade, the local arm had been allowed to station a volunteer in various stores to collect monetary donations for its Christmas Kettle campaign. "We got the response that they've had a change this year, and that we wouldn't be able to have the manned kettles (by volunteers) in the stores. Essentially saying that they have a policy that does not allow for that and we've been an exception to that for a few years, and now they're applying that to everybody," Maj. Rob Kerr of the Salvation Army said Thursday in a telephone interview. The Crown corporation is "working on corporate guidelines" around solicitation by charitable groups in its stores and it will "not allow any exceptions" at this time, MLL communications officer Susan Harrison said in an email statement. "Over the years, we have received some complaints from customers that they generally did not like being solicited for donations at Liquor Marts. For this reason, we have eliminated face-to-face customer asks and in-store fundraisers," Harrison said. "To clarify: the complaints were not directed at just one charitable organization, but rather general complaints about being solicited for a donation within our stores." Being banned is a major blow to the annual Christmas Kettle campaign, Kerr said, as about 10 per cent of its donations were collected at Liquor Mart locations. "We understand MLL's decision and we respect that, and we appreciate the support they've given us over the years. For us, going forward, we are trying to figure out how we will manage this," Kerr said. "Across Manitoba, we raised about $60,000 in the MLL stores last year at Christmas, so we're concerned about how we make that up." Kerr said the kettle campaign usually operated in about six Winnipeg stores, as well as Liquor Marts in Neepawa, Thompson, Brandon and Portage la Prairie. During the Christmas 2017 season, the program raised about $530,000 across the province -- money which is used to fund community-based programs such as children's summer camps, after-school programs, food banks and seniors programming, Kerr said. Harrison said the MLL policy seeks to create a fair playing field for all charitable organizations. "Each year, Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries is proud to support more than 350 charitable, non-profit and community organizations," she said in an email. "Currently, there is no program that allows other groups the same access the Salvation Army has had to our customers for fundraising purposes." However, the Salvation Army has been selected in December as the recipient of the MLL's coin box program -- unstaffed donation boxes on Liquor Mart counters. "The coin box program is an initiative with an application process in place which allows all charitable organizations the same opportunity to apply for inclusion in the program," Harrison said. "As for next season, were currently in the process of reviewing all our fundraising requests from external organizations." Kerr said the Christmas Kettle campaign is still welcome in major retail outlets such as Superstore, Safeway, Sobeys, Walmart and Canadian Tire. "We hope that our supporters and donors out there will find us wherever we are and will continue to support us as they have in the past." The campaign's fundraising goal is $370,000 in Manitoba, $21 million nationally. ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca A new bill brought forth by the government of Manitoba will create basic codes of conduct for municipalities, mandate respectful workplace training, and impose sanctions on councillors who break the rules. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/11/2018 (1097 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A new bill brought forth by the government of Manitoba will create basic codes of conduct for municipalities, mandate respectful workplace training, and impose sanctions on councillors who break the rules. "Three years later, its been a long time coming, and its a good day," said Joy Sul, mayor of the Rural Municipality of St. Andrews and one of the voices who had called on the province to enact stricter legislation. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Municipal relations minister Jeff Wharton scrums with the media at the Manitoba Municipal Administrators Association Conference in Winnipeg on Monday, April 23, 2018. Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press 2018. "We hear about all the bullying in schools. At our level, at our age, this is not acceptable," she said, thanking Municipal Relations Minister Jeff Wharton for introducing Bill 2, the Municipal Amendment Act (Strengthening Codes of Conduct for Council Members). "Were impressed," agreed Cheryl Christian, mayor of West St. Paul. "The mandatory training will be excellent if we all start off on the same page. Hopefully, the key focus is then on prevention." However, Christian and Sul said they would still like to see an independent integrity commissioner appointed to advise rural communities, similar to the City of Winnipeg position. In 2017, the city hired lawyer Sherri Walsh to investigate complaints about council members and offer advice on conflicts of interest. Whartons office and the Association of Manitoba Municipalities have been conducting consultations on ways the province can legislate better behaviour -- if thats indeed possible -- without overstepping its bounds. The minister said there are still discussions to come, but Bill 2 provides the first steps forward. "Over the next weeks... were going to continue to collaborate with our mayors and reeves and councils to ensure that we get this right. This is a serious issue we have," Wharton said. "As you know with our no-wrong-door policy here in the legislature, certainly we wanted to carry that off and into our municipal partners as we move forward." Under the new legislation, all municipal officials would be required to take respectful workplace training within 90 days of being elected or re-elected, or possibly face suspension from council. Bill 2 prescribes a basic code of conduct for all municipalities, except the cities of Winnipeg and Brandon, where Wharton said more talks are underway about possible amendments to their respective charters. It also insists municipalities codes of conduct be established by bylaw, "which would strengthen the provisions of the code and enhance accountability and transparency," the province said in a prepared statement. The bill would allow the minister to set additional sanctions for those who breach codes of conduct, including fines and suspensions of members for up to 90 days. The amendments in Bill 2 would come into force 180 days after the legislation receives royal assent, which would likely happen in June. Christian said the sanctions proposed thus far -- fines and suspensions -- are fine by her, even if they mean reprimanded officials arent at work for extended periods. "It has to send a message. Were elected to represent residents, were in a very unique position. We had asked for protection (from the province) under Workplace Health and Safety, but were not employees and were not employers. And so how do you address that?" she said. "Whats coming forward is ways to address misconduct Were newly-elected mayors and the residents in our communities have sent a message that they dont want misconduct on council. They want that to be dealt with. So if their councillors or their mayors are needing to be sanctioned, we hope the community is supportive," Christian said. "Everyone deserves to work in a safe work environment." Manitoba Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont expressed initial support for the bill, but wants to see its scope widened. "Its great that it covers municipal councillors in rural areas, but theres still nothing for MLAs. So we still dont have an adequate code of conduct that applies to this building, to members of the legislature. And that would be a welcome addition to this legislation," he said. He thanked his colleague, Liberal MLA Judy Klassen, for bringing forward a private member's bill last spring also aimed at curbing bad behaviour on municipal councils. "This is very similar to the legislation that we put forward and it was voted down two or three weeks ago. I thank Judy for putting it on the governments radar and well certainly look very seriously at supporting (Bill 2). Lets hope they can make a few amendments and maybe make it even tougher." jessica.botelho@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @_jessbu Premier Brian Pallister says he is concerned Ottawas decision to subsidize news media outlets will undermine their independence and their effectiveness in reporting on national issues. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 23/11/2018 (1096 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Premier Brian Pallister says he is concerned Ottawas decision to subsidize news media outlets will undermine their independence and their effectiveness in reporting on national issues. Pallister said he is not arguing against short-term help for an industry facing transitional challenges, but noted there are possible pitfalls to any prolonged financial aid. "I think there needs to be some reflection and some consideration given to the potential dangers of such practices if they are long-term," he told reporters after question period at the legislature on Friday. "Transitional challenges are real and I respect that, and I understand that the media face those challenges, but so do many other sectors in our society." Pallister said long-term media funding by Ottawa would raise concerns about the potential for perceptions of bias. He said he was not speaking about bias towards the federal Liberals, who are offering the aid, but towards the federal government in general. "How easy will it be for the media to criticize anyone else, any other group that is in receipt of federal funding in years ahead? That would be difficult. It would seem that there would be a crisis of principle at that point in time. I think there might be a natural reluctance to criticize the hand that is feeding ones organization," Pallister said. Free Press publisher Bob Cox does not buy Pallisters argument. "The federal program is going to have no effect whatsoever on journalistic independence or the ability of journalists to comment on any and all government actions, or on the actions of other recipients of government support," said Cox, chairman of News Media Canada, which has lobbied for newspaper subsidies. "If you think otherwise, you dont know much about the history of federal support for journalism. It started prior to 1867 with a postal subsidy to publications so they could be sent to readers in isolated outposts like Manitoba settlers. That program still exists and funds magazines, community newspapers and farm, business, ethnic and Indigenous publications. Then there is the CBC, federally funded for the past 92 years, with a strong tradition of independent journalism. "The new program simply recognizes that newspapers and other non-regulated news outlets need help to transition in the digital age, and its important to preserve their newsrooms in the interim. Its important and welcome support, and it will not compromise what we do." This week, the federal government announced it would start subsidizing Canadians subscriptions and donations to news media as well as newsroom salaries. A panel of journalists would decide which agencies would qualify for support. Ottawa has earmarked $595 million in subsidies over five years, ending in March 2024. Pallister said the subject needs a public airing, and hes seen little debate on the issue so far. "I think the sounds of silence can be most unhelpful at times," he said. NDP Leader Wab Kinew said the Progressive Conservatives are trying to use Ottawas proposed subsidies for legacy media outlets as a wedge issue in the run-up to the 2019 federal election. He said he doesnt believe news organizations who accept the funding would allow that to bias their coverage. "Its pretty clear that this premier doesnt have much respect for a free press," Kinew said, referring to threats to sue the Free Press for its coverage and to legislation passed last session that would no longer require certain government advertising in newspapers. (The government says it will delay proclamation of the advertising provision.) with files from Jessica Botelho-Urbanski larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca OTTAWA The federal government has opted to keep military pilot training in Portage la Prairie, the Free Press has learned. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/11/2018 (1097 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA The federal government has opted to keep military pilot training in Portage la Prairie, the Free Press has learned. Southport Airports 350 jobs are safe, after lobbying by Premier Brian Pallister and Conservative MPs, following months of concerns officials would consolidate training in Saskatchewan. As the Free Press reported in 2017, Lt.-Gen. Michael Hood, who was head of the Royal Canadian Air Force, had expressed a preference for consolidating pilot-training operations at CFB Moose Jaw. At an industry conference, Hood had privately suggested that would save money, and he preferred to keep the training at a military base. His comment sparked months of rumours in high-ranking military and political circles that the Liberals would shut down the Portage facility, which was established to replace CFB Portage when it closed in 1992. On Wednesday, Public Services and Procurement Canada quietly updated its information webpage on the militarys Future Aircrew Training (FAcT) program: "Following a review, the government of Canada has determined the new training services will continue to be provided at the existing locations," the website reads. Maj. Scott Spurr confirmed that means Southport will continue "at contract award," meaning whoever wins the contract for 2027 will have to operate at the facility. The military was caught off-guard by the revelation, as it normally informs local mayors before publicly disclosing the future of a large facility. Without seeing an official statement, the areas MP, Candice Bergen, was cautiously optimistic, saying it was a "heartening" development after a year of consternation for her constituents. "Id like to get a little bit more information info before I start doing too much of a celebratory dance," the Conservative MP said Thursday. "If that is indeed accurate, and thats the way its carried out, thats indeed good for Southport, and now the devil will be in the details." Bergen said shed remain vigilant in seeing through that the military holds a fair procurement process, ideally with the Southport facility -- located on the south edge of Portage la Prairie, some 70 kilometres west of Winnipeg -- and its current amount of local staff. Governments face a delicate balance in military procurement between operational effectiveness and spreading the forces economic heft across various regions. An October 2017 briefing note for Hood, obtained through an access-to-information request, reveals the military confidentially surveyed industry partners about whether to maintain the two-location training system. Five of 10 responding companies said "centralizing flying training in one location is supported or in some cases, preferred," the briefing note reads. In August 2016, the Department of National Defence told industry "considerations will be given to amalgamation to one site depending on viability and industry input. Alternative locations may be considered for viability if offered by industry." Industry hadnt proposed a location to replace Southport, Brig.-Gen. Michel Lalumiere recently told the Free Press. "We're not sensing there's an appetite in industry right now to look at another location than the (ones) we're very familiar with," Lalumiere said in a Nov. 13 interview, on the sidelines of another aerospace industry conference. He said analysts were still looking over industry proposals, but changing the existing arrangement "would definitely be leading-edge" and academics or allied nations would have to provide supporting evidence to companies proposing a change. "For (those companies), it was also a lot more comfortable to describe the current structure that we have today," Lalumiere said. A week later, PSPC updated its webpage on the FAcT program. Bill Ryan, business development manager for KF Aerospace, which runs the training at Southport, said his firm heard rumours for a month the military would be retain the facility. "We think the campaign from the premier, to the MPs and all that, should have worked in terms of common sense and rationale, for continuing to use Moose Jaw and Portage for training bases," Ryan said Thursday. Ryan said his colleagues have been making the case the current two-location systems allows the air force to save costs and risks by split its housing needs and airspace between two locations. When a snowstorm or fuel contamination grounds all the planes at one base, the other can step up to keep pilots largely on their training schedules, he argued. Just this week, the federal auditor general tabled a report finding the RCAF doesnt have enough pilots trained to operate its current fighter fleet, nevermind the used jets its about to inherit. Lalumiere said his officials aim to have a former request for tenders posted by the spring, and a contract awarded by 2021. Thats breakneck speed by military-procurement standards, because existing contracts will start expiring in 2023. "Industry's ready. They told us they're ready but there's not much time to lose. And we're moving forward." dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca OTTAWA Premier Brian Pallister is hailing Ottawas decision to keep using the air force training facility in his hometown, which the federal Liberals say is key to reducing a pilot shortage. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 23/11/2018 (1096 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Premier Brian Pallister is hailing Ottawas decision to keep using the air force training facility in his hometown, which the federal Liberals say is key to reducing a pilot shortage. "Theres a lot of emotion here on the part of a lot of people around central Manitoba on keeping that flight-training facility going and expanding it, because it does a tremendous job," Pallister told reporters Friday, after news Ottawa would retain the non-profit Southport Airport for military pilot training. He spoke to media after the Free Press revealed this week Ottawa had opted to keep a two-base model that has the Royal Canadian Air Force train most of its pilots at both Southport in Portage la Prairie and CFB Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan. "Im excited about the initial comments, but I await the details," he said, after posting on Twitter: "Thanks to Ottawas support, Southport will remain a pillar of the community." The facility employs 350 people. In August 2017, air force Lt.-Gen. Michael Hood had privately expressed a preference for consolidating pilot training at the south Saskatchewan military base. His comment sparked months of rumours in high-ranking military and political circles that the Liberals would shut down Southport, which was established to replace CFB Portage la Prairie when it closed in 1992. On Wednesday, Public Services and Procurement Canada updated one of its web pages to state the new training services will continue to be provided at the existing locations under the next contract starting in 2027. On Friday, RCAF Maj. Scott Spurr wrote that the military opted to retain the two-based model after consultation with industry, which made it apparent that would be "the most prudent course of action." Spurr did not say what date the decision was made, but wrote it was "the natural evolution of the latest engagement with industry, consideration of ongoing and future training requirements and a pragmatic assessment of capacity." Jim Carr, Manitobas sole federal cabinet minister, said he was delighted by the news. "Its got a long and distinguished history of training; and thats been acknowledged," Carr said Friday. "Ive had many conversations with my colleagues over the last number of months about the importance of Southport. Were very happy that the jobs have been maintained." Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said Southport will be part of a strategy to hire more pilots, after the federal auditor general reported this week there arent enough for the current fighter jet fleet, which is set to expand. "This is about how we invest into our defence, making sure that we have the right number of personnel to meet all our needs," Sajjan said, adding the military is weighing not only the number of pilots needed, but making sure they can receive the proper training. Pallister and others are eager to see what the military outlines in its request for proposals, which it plans to publish by spring 2019. That would likely outline the number of jobs involved, the duration of the contract and whether foreign companies can apply. KF Aerospace co-ordinates training at Southport, while a similar firm (CAE) does the same in Saskatchewan. They formed a joint subsidiary this year called SkyAlyne in the hopes of boosting their chances of landing the contract. dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca The Progressive Conservative government says it will implement its planned social responsibility fee on retail cannabis sales beginning in January. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 23/11/2018 (1097 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The Progressive Conservative government says it will implement its planned "social responsibility fee" on retail cannabis sales beginning in January. Justice Minister Cliff Cullen introduced amendments to the Liquor, Gaming and Cannabis Control Act on Thursday to establish the six per cent levy. "Our government recognizes that the legalization of recreational cannabis will bring with it significant social costs," Cullen said while introducing the bill. He said the government would use the funds generated by the fee for public education, safety initiatives and health and addictions programming. The fee will be paid by cannabis retail stores directly. Their first payment to government would be due in June 2020. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Manitoba Justice Minister Cliff Cullen introduced amendments to the Liquor, Gaming and Cannabis Control Act on Thursday to establish a six per cent levy on retail cannabis. Cullen said the province will monitor its costs due to cannabis and can adjust the fee as the situation dictates. He said various government departments are being asked to keep tabs of any costs associated with the legalization of recreational marijuana. The province is asking municipalities to track expenses. Meanwhile, the justice minister said it appears the introduction of legalized pot has been largely uneventful in Manitoba. Its been legal for Canadians to purchase recreational pot since Oct. 17. "I think the rollout has gone fairly well, as smoothly as we could expect," he said. Cullen said he has been receiving police reports on ticketing due to cannabis-related infractions, but he did not provide specifics. "I wouldnt say its out of the ordinary. I dont think its that high, not exceptionally high at all," he said of the number of infractions. "It appears that in Manitoba, people are paying attention to the rules." larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca Its the middle of the night, and your little one has woken up and is now crying inconsolably. You find theyre running a mild fever, and tugging on one of their ears. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 23/11/2018 (1097 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Opinion Its the middle of the night, and your little one has woken up and is now crying inconsolably. You find theyre running a mild fever, and tugging on one of their ears. The cause could be an ear infection. An ear infection (also known as acute otitis media) is an infection inside the childs middle ear caused by a virus or bacteria. They are very common in children between six months and three years of age. They often occur after a child has had a cold for a few days. We know that 75 per cent of children will experience at least one ear infection by the time they reach school age. The good news is that ear infections are usually not serious and they arent contagious. But that doesnt stop parents from worrying about whether they should make a trip to an emergency department, often in the middle of the night. To help parents and guardians cope, Translating Emergency Knowledge for Kids (TREKK) has partnered with Drs. Shannon Scott (ECHO) and Lisa Hartling (ARCHE) from the University of Alberta, to produce a short video on ear infections. The video, which can be viewed at www.trekk.ca or at YouTube, outlines how to identify the signs of an ear infection, what you can do to comfort your child, and when to see a doctor or go to an emergency department. The video lists the symptoms of an ear infection, including: A mild fever of less than 39 C (less than 102.2 F); Fussiness; Difficulty eating or sleeping; Tugging or pulling on an ear. Doctors diagnose ear infections by looking at the ear drum with an otoscope. They look for fluid in the middle ear, at the colour and position of the ear drum, and monitor the pressure in the middle ear. The majority of ear infections will go away on their own between two to three days after symptoms first appear, and do not require antibiotics. However, if you see fluid leaking from your childs ear, or if they have a fever above 39 C (102.2 F), or if they dont get better within two days, take him or her to your family doctor or a primary-care provider. The doctor may prescribe antibiotics if your child is moderately to severely ill with a high fever over 39 C, and hasnt improved in 48 hours. While it used to be standard practice a decade ago to give a child a decongestant or a cold medication, that is no longer done as it has been shown these medications do not work in children. We recommend that parents administer pain medication for comfort and to help their child get a good nights sleep. Even when a childs ear infection requires antibiotics, it can still take a day or two for the pain to improve, so pain relief measures are still important. Heres how to manage your childs pain and discomfort at home: Give them Childrens Tylenol or Advil (or generic alternatives) as per instructions on the bottle to help with fever and pain. Do not give your child aspirin as it may cause Reyes Syndrome. Put extra pillows under the childs head, to prop them up in bed. Put a warm compress on the ear to ease the pain. Make sure to check that this isnt too hot, especially in infants who cannot remove the compress by themselves. Put them in a warm shower to allow the steam to unclog nasal passages and the middle ear. Along with head colds, children may also be at risk for an ear infection if they live in a house with a smoker, are bottle fed while on their back, and use a soother for a prolonged period of time. Children who attend daycare may have more ear infections because they catch more colds. Prevention is key to avoiding frequent ear infections. Breast milk has antibodies that help fight infections, so breast feeding rather than bottle feeding can make a difference. If your infant is bottle-fed, hold them upright while feeding. When they are old enough to hold their own bottle, they should be taught to drink from a regular cup (not a "sippy cup"). Teaching young children to wash their hands does lessen the chance of them catching a cold, which can lead to ear infections. Getting a flu shot can also help protect your family against influenza. Dr. Darcy Beer is a pediatric emergency physician at Health Sciences Centre Winnipeg, Childrens Hospital, and the Manitoba lead for TREKK. Survivors of a 20th-century genocide faced a stiff wind on the grounds of the Manitoba legislature, using their bodies to shield candles in memory of a Stalinist-era famine inflicted on Ukraine. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/11/2018 (1097 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Survivors of a 20th-century genocide faced a stiff wind on the grounds of the Manitoba legislature, using their bodies to shield candles in memory of a Stalinist-era famine inflicted on Ukraine. The outdoor commemoration was among three events the Manitoba government hosted on Thursday in Winnipeg to mark the eve of the 85th anniversary of the Holodomor. About 75 people, including around a dozen MLAs representing three political parties, marked the event in the rotunda. During question period, the legislature observed a moment of silence, as members of the Winnipeg Ukrainian-Canadian community watched from the public gallery. Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox religious leaders opened the legislatures commemoration outside, under a skiff of grainy snow. They offered prayers for the souls of the millions who perished in 1932 and 1933, and a Ukrainian-language hymn was picked up in a moving chorus in front of the Bitter Memories of Childhood monument. The monument depicts a skeletal girl in a long, thin dress and bare feet, holding five stalks of wheat. The wheat symbolizes the Soviet law that imposed death or imprisonment for anyone caught picking grain from collective farms. The result was mass arrests and executions. As the priests prayed, a gust of wind whipped around the feet of the statue, throwing to the ground a sheaf of wheat laid there as part of the ceremony. Two slender candles stuck into bread buns stayed in place by the little bronze statue, untouched by the wind. The wheat was quickly put back, and four elderly women approached the statue. With friends and family shielding them, they lit the candles and an eternal flame sheltered by a hurricane lamp. Eighty-five years ago, the four were small children who starved, but survived that brutal winter. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Survivors Luba Semaniuk, left, and Sonia Kushliak gather to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the end of the Holodomor at the Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg on Thursday. "My name is Luba Semaniuk. I am a survivor of the Holodomor," one of the women told the group after they reconvened in the legislatures rotunda for a series of speeches. "My memories of this time in my childhood were horrible. I will never forget the sights and sounds of people crying because they had nothing to eat... painfully watching family and friends dying of starvation," Semaniuk said. The observances continued with a series of speeches by Transcona PC MLA Blair Yakimoski and Sport, Culture and Heritage Minister Cathy Cox. Four Bernie Wolfe Junior High students sang a cultural anthem of the famine in the Ukrainian language, before offering yellow roses of friendship to the Holodomor survivors. "We must continue to honour the memories of the lives so senselessly lost and keep shining a light on this very dark chapter in human history," Cox said. "It is only by remembering the past that we can ensure atrocities such as this are never repeated." Semaniuk was chosen among the four Holodomor survivors to share a first-hand memory from that winter: "I remember my mother grinding up dried corn cobs and husks (for) soup... and even though that was all she had, my mother told me to take some soup over to our neighbours, only to find the mother and her two young sons dead of starvation. "These are things that should not be seen or experienced by anyone, especially not a six-year-old girl. I will always remember and never forget," Semaniuk said. The engineered famine was concealed by the Soviet Union for decades. "After many years of suppression and even denial, the truth surrounding the Holodomor is finally being publicly recognized," Ukrainian Canadian Congress Manitoba council president Joanne Lewandosky said. "Ukraine remembers and the world acknowledges." Many of the 100,000 Ukrainian Canadians who live in Manitoba are descendants of Holodomor survivors, Lewandosky said. alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca For trying to kill his ex-wife, mailing three bombs within the city, and causing an explosion that cost a local lawyer her hand, a former Winnipeg autobody mechanic has been sentenced to life in prison and will not be eligible for parole for at least 17 years. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/11/2018 (1097 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. For trying to kill his ex-wife, mailing three bombs within the city, and causing an explosion that cost a local lawyer her hand, a former Winnipeg autobody mechanic has been sentenced to life in prison and will not be eligible for parole for at least 17 years. Guido Amsel, 52, was silent as he was led out of a full courtroom after hearing the judge's decision Thursday afternoon. Guido Amsel In a decision that called out Amsel's "extremely calculated" plan to create and mail out potentially lethal explosives, his repeated attempts to kill his ex-wife, and his conspiracy theories against the justice system, provincial court Judge Tracey Lord also recognized the "strength and resilience" of Maria Mitousis, who lost her hand in an explosion after she opened a package Amsel sent her. "Mr. Amsel is not remorseful. He has not taken responsibility for his actions and continues to deny involvement in the offences," Lord said in her decision, which was broadcast live from the courtroom by Global TV. "He has attempted to place responsibility on others for these offences and alleges corruption at all levels of the justice system as an explanation for his present circumstances. RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Maria Mitousis "His rehabilitation is questionable at best." Lord imposed a life sentence Amsel can only begin serving once he's spent the next seven years in prison, and she decided he won't be allowed to apply for parole until he's served 10 years of his life sentence. In the meantime, Amsel will serve what's left of a 12-year sentence for causing an explosion in front of the home he once shared with his ex-wife on Dec. 13, 2013, in the Rural Municipality of St. Clements. No one was hurt, and the incident went unsolved until Amsel mailed a series of bombs in Winnipeg, 2 1/2 years later. Provincial court Judge Tracey Lord "His rehabilitation is questionable at best." Provincial court Judge Tracey Lord Amsel was convicted on four counts of attempted murder for twice targeting his ex-wife and two lawyers with homemade explosives designed to spew shrapnel. He believed his ex-wife, who was also his business partner, was stealing from him and he developed a "personal vendetta" against her and the civil lawyers who were representing them, Lord ruled. RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES The scene on River Avenue on July 3, 2015 was chaotic after a bomb sent by Guido Amsel to the Petersen and King Law Office. As a result, lawyer Maria Mitousis lost her hand. The lawyers were targeted "simply for doing their jobs," Lord said. "The proper discharge of their professional responsibilities within the justice system was taken and distorted by Mr. Amsel to fit neatly into the conspiracy he already believed about his ex-wife," she said. He was given credit for slightly more than five years' worth of pretrial time in custody since his arrest in July 2015, a day after the explosion at the River Avenue law office alerted city police to two other explosive packages waiting to be opened by Iris Amsel and George Orle, a senior lawyer at the firm that represented Guido Amsel in a civil dispute with his ex-wife. Amsel's family is adamant he was framed and an innocent man is being sent to prison. Outside the courtroom, his current wife was tearful as she contemplated what to tell the couple's two young sons. She said she didn't want her name published out of a desire to protect the children. The family is considering launching an appeal, she said, but doesn't know if they'll be able to afford legal costs. JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Following the bomb blast that claimed Mitousis' hand, city police responded to a string of bomb threats with a bomb robot, including a one on St. Anne's Road and Bank Avenue on July 8. "We're very devastated by the result," she said, surrounded by supporters. "I hope for the best. It's hard." During Amsel's lengthy trial last year, the judge was told the timing of the bombs in 2013 and in 2015 matched up with the timing of court disputes between the former couple. Timeline July 2, 2015: A Canada Post letter carrier delivers a bubble-wrapped package addressed to Winnipeg lawyer Maria Mitousis at the Petersen King office at 252 River Ave. The package remains unopened until the next day. It is placed on Mitousis's desk until her return to the office. July 3, 2015: An explosion severely injures Mitousis and shatters windows at the law office after the package is opened. Mitousis loses her right hand. The bomb was disguised inside a voice recorder that purported to contain audio that would help with her "defence." click to read more July 2, 2015: A Canada Post letter carrier delivers a bubble-wrapped package addressed to Winnipeg lawyer Maria Mitousis at the Petersen King office at 252 River Ave. The package remains unopened until the next day. It is placed on Mitousis's desk until her return to the office. July 3, 2015: An explosion severely injures Mitousis and shatters windows at the law office after the package is opened. Mitousis loses her right hand. The bomb was disguised inside a voice recorder that purported to contain audio that would help with her "defence." July 4, 2015: A package addressed to Guido Amsel's ex-wife, Iris Amsel, explodes after being shot with a police bomb robot's water cannon at 597 Washington Ave. The explosive device appeared to be within a notebook. Guido Amsel is arrested as a suspect. July 5, 2015: A package addressed to lawyer George Orle at 280 Stradbrook Ave. is also detonated by a police bomb squad robot. That explosive was hidden within an electronic greeting card. July 6, 2015: Amsel is charged with the three explosions. He would later be charged with a fourth explosion that happened Dec. 13, 2013 at his ex-wife's home in the Rural Municipality of St. Clements. Summer 2015: WPS continues to investigate several reports of suspicious packages in the city, one of which turns out to be a chocolate Easter bunny. No other explosive packages are found. Sept. 9, 2015: Amsel is denied bail. Feb. 25, 2016: Amsel's request for an out-of-province judge to hear his case is denied in Manitoba's Court of Queen's Bench. May 12, 2016: Amsel is denied bail for a second time. He remains in custody awaiting trial. September 2017: Amsel's provincial court trial begins. He pleads not guilty to 19 criminal charges, including five counts of attempted murder stemming from the bombings. The trial continues intermittently over the next four months, hearing from more than 40 witnesses. Dec. 19, 2017: Provincial court Judge Tracey Lord hears closing arguments from lawyers and reserves her decision. April 6, 2018: A decision date is arranged for May 17 for Lord to deliver her verdict. May 17: The guilty verdict is handed down. June 6: After he was found guilty, Amsel fired his defence lawyers and announced in court he was getting new legal representation and planned to appeal the judges decision. Oct. 3: The Crown seeks a life sentence plus an additional 15 years for Amsel, while his new defence lawyer argues it would be crushing for Amsel if he gets no chance of parole for 25 years. Defence asks for a 20- to 25-year sentence. Nov. 22: Amsel is sentenced to life in prison, and is not expected to be eligible for parole until at least 2035. Close Their civil suit was on the verge of being resolved in Iris Amsel's favour in July 2015. She had taken Guido Amsel to court in 2010 over $40,000 he owed her after their business partnership was dissolved. He launched a counterclaim, accusing Iris of stealing almost $4 million from the business they co-owned, Euro Tech Autobody. At trial, Guido Amsel accused his ex-wife of framing him for the explosions -- a baseless accusation, the judge decided. Iris Amsel took the stand last year to testify and denied her ex-husband's allegations. Their business, she said, was never as profitable as he claimed. She wasn't present in court Thursday, and didn't submit a statement to court about how Guido Amsel's crimes affected her. "One can only imagine the impact of knowing that a former spouse has tried to kill you not once, but twice," Lord said, describing the domestic-violence roots of the case as an aggravating factor. Among those in the full courtroom Thursday were Mitousis, police officers and lawyers, marking the end of a three-year case that raised alarm about safety concerns in the legal community and sparked widespread public panic over suspicious packages in the city. Download Full decision Theres been a lot of talk about getting rid of birthright citizenship in Canada and the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump announced that hell issue an executive order to do so, and the Conservative Party of Canada passed a motion that, should they form the next federal government, birthright citizenship will be no more. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 23/11/2018 (1097 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Opinion Theres been a lot of talk about getting rid of birthright citizenship in Canada and the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump announced that hell issue an executive order to do so, and the Conservative Party of Canada passed a motion that, should they form the next federal government, birthright citizenship will be no more. In the U.S., the president will have to contend with the fact that he cant just unilaterally eliminate a right granted in the 14th Amendment of their constitution. In Canada, birthright citizenship can be eliminated simply by amending or repealing parts of the Citizenship Act. In both countries, the preoccupation with ending birthright citizenship is tied to the argument that migrants are engaging in "birth tourism" and challenging the integrity of citizenship. But the facts say otherwise. As Andrew Griffith, former director general at Citizenship and Immigration Canada, points out, fewer than 0.1 per cent of total births in Canada in the past 10 years (except 2012) involved births of children to foreign mothers. Griffiths concludes, "An impartial observer would conclude that there is currently no business case for changing Canadas birth policy." Aside from the business case, whats not talked about is how the elimination of birthright citizenship would affect not just migrants, but all of us. Undoubtedly, such a policy would increase the number of stateless persons in Canada. Every person born in Canada to non-citizen parents would have to apply for citizenship. More tax dollars would be needed to process the applications. Clerks would suddenly have the power to make substantive and legal determinations about the status of every person who applies for citizenship. Like any administrative system, mistakes would be made. Bad or wrong decisions would be challenged in the courts at great expense to both the state and people affected. People would struggle with the fact that they are stateless in the interim. Being stateless has serious implications. Stateless persons have difficulty accessing education, employment, health care, social services and freedom of movement. Simple things such as getting a bank account, cellphone account or registering birth, marriage or death are complicated, if not impossible. Stateless persons would be subject to arrest, detention and potential removal to places they may never have been to. The elimination of birthright citizenship would have the greatest effect on the most vulnerable: the indigent, the less educated, those with mental illness, children in precarious family situations or wards of the state. These are the people who may not have the appropriate paperwork or proof that they do qualify for citizenship or they wont have support for obtaining citizenship. This one policy would create an expensive social problem for the state. The elimination of birthright citizenship is, then, not an act to preserve or protect the integrity of citizenship. The policy is a dividing tool that fuels discrimination against those of different races and socioeconomic classes. Its a tool to delegitimize persons who have a genuine and effective link to Canada. It would create barriers to important rights that come with citizenship, including the right to vote. We only need to look at how stripping citizenship and the denial of citizenship in other places of the world have encouraged discrimination, persecution and violence against stateless persons. For example, the oppression of and the genocide against Rohingya people was precipitated by denial of their citizenship in Myanmar, a country they called home for generations. Canadians should be cautious when considering the idea to get rid of birthright citizenship. It wouldnt stop migrants from coming. Instead of making it harder to get citizenship, we should trust our well-oiled immigration system to deal with the entry of persons within our country. Such a policy would not build confidence in the integrity of Canadian citizenship. Instead, citizenship would be more precarious than ever before. Canadians should also be mindful that Canada has signed onto the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, both of which obligate Canada not to create situations of statelessness. My father was born stateless because the state he was born into didnt confer birthright citizenship. It affected his opportunity for education, employment and his mental health. Being a child of a previously stateless person, Im proof enough that welcoming stateless persons to Canada with the conferral of citizenship is the best way to build a nation. Jamie Liew is an immigration lawyer and an associate professor at the University of Ottawa faculty of law and a contributor with EvidenceNetwork.ca, which is based at the University of Winnipeg. Troy Media November is an important month for Ukrainians in Canada, the diaspora and in Ukraine. Eighty-five years ago, Communist rulers brutally annihilated millions of men, women and children by engineering an artificial famine in Ukraine. From 1932 to 33, millions of people died, a tragedy that took place in a country known as the breadbasket of Eastern Europe. Thus began the Holodomor, a combination of the Ukrainian words for hunger (holod) and extermination (mor). Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 23/11/2018 (1097 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Opinion November is an important month for Ukrainians in Canada, the diaspora and in Ukraine. Eighty-five years ago, Communist rulers brutally annihilated millions of men, women and children by engineering an artificial famine in Ukraine. From 1932 to 33, millions of people died, a tragedy that took place in a country known as the breadbasket of Eastern Europe. Thus began the Holodomor, a combination of the Ukrainian words for hunger (holod) and extermination (mor). The Holodomor was not caused by a natural disaster such as a flood or drought, nor by a historic cataclysm such as a war. The catastrophe happened not in some remote, little-known part of the world, but in a European country. Today, the world recognizes the Holodomor as one of the saddest and most tragic events in the history of the Ukrainian nation, and one of the horrific genocides during the 20th century. The artificially created Holodomor of 1932-33 is but one of the piercing manifestations of the struggle that had been in progress for several centuries between Ukraine and Russia. The strategic aim was to destroy the separate individuality of the Ukrainian nation, its spiritual and intellectual culture, the resistance of the peasantry and free individual farming. By 1932, Ukraines grain harvest had plummeted to 15 million tonnes from 23 million tonnes, the result of Josef Stalin imposing draconian grain quotas on Ukraine, leaving the average peasant family with far less grain for consumption and declaring all food the property of Russia. As a result, signs of the Holodomor were evident in the autumn of 1932. Ukraine became desolate. In the spring of 1933, there were many villages in which the entire population had perished, and almost one-third of the houses in other places were empty. There was no one to bury the dead; bodies were hauled away on carts or thrown into ravines and allowed to lie as they fell, for no one had the strength to dig the graves. Historians estimate that in this genocidal famine, Ukraine lost from four million to seven million people during a period from 1929 to 1939. Journalists, eyewitnesses and survivors provided many gruesome accounts of the desperate conditions they observed as farming came to a stop. Special armed Russian brigades were authorized to enter homes, to pillage, to confiscate every morsel of food and destroy what could not be carried away. Travel was restricted, censorship imposed and an entire nation began to die; swollen from hunger, on streets, on country roads, in fields and in homes in one of the most bountiful countries on Earth. This was a war for bread, perhaps the most gruesome war ever fought in which the only weapon of defence was passive resistance. Ukraine had rich and fertile land, but in a matter of months in the early 1930s, it was reduced to a melancholy wasteland. The Holodomor occurred 85 years ago. Ukraines borders and people have shifted and changed, but the Ukrainian people continue to show strength, courage and spirituality despite the devastation of the past. Today, this horror is only a painful and everlasting remembrance in the minds of eyewitnesses and survivors. The Holodomor is a memory whose agony has long since been dulled by many years of obsessive remembering. For many Ukrainians, considering the current reality is disturbing and frightening once we start reflecting on the facts. Now, 85 years later, our awareness focuses on the fact that an atrocity such as the Holodomor must never be allowed to happen again, in any part of the world. Canadians of Ukrainian descent honour those who sacrificed their lives during 1932-33 in the struggle for personal freedom or the freedom of their country. It is with utmost sorrow and grief that we commemorate those who fell victim to brutal repression and genocide those four million to seven million Ukrainian fathers and mothers, young men and women, children and infants, robbed of their last morsels of food by Stalins savage ideology and his evil master plan. What can be done now, 85 years later? What can Canadians of Ukrainian descent do to commemorate this sacrifice, to somehow give meaning and dignity to those millions who suffered and died? We can focus on the stories being shared by those who survived. Such an atrocity must never be allowed to happen again. We must keep constant vigil and remind ourselves of this tragedy at every opportunity. We must teach future generations the truth of this tragedy at every opportunity. We must never fail to speak openly about the Holodomor. Eighty-five years ago, the Ukrainian nation became a victim of a conscious and deliberate holocaust, the magnitude of which had no precedent in the history of mankind. The Holodomor must not be forgotten. Peter J. Manastyrsky is a member of the Ukrainian community of Winnipeg. With the difficult renegotiation of the trade agreement with Canadas largest trading partner now resolved, its time for Canada to get serious about trade diversification. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 23/11/2018 (1097 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Opinion With the difficult renegotiation of the trade agreement with Canadas largest trading partner now resolved, its time for Canada to get serious about trade diversification. The experience of renegotiating NAFTA or USMCA, as it is now called has highlighted Canadas vulnerability to one dominant trading partner that buys roughly 75 per cent of our exports. As a country, we should not be in this position. We need to diversify our trade beyond the United States and increase our links to rapidly growing emerging market economies, particularly in Asia, despite the "anti-China" clause in the USMCA. Given that growth has pivoted to these emerging markets in the last 15 years, the first question is: why has this not happened already? The answer is straightforward. For a long time, being right beside the United States the biggest, richest market in the world has been a great ride for Canada. Whats more, were very comfortable and good at doing business with Americans. Fewer benefits of living next to U.S. So why diversify? The short answer is being right next door to the United States is not the ride it used to be. Part of this is the alarmingly protectionist sentiment of U.S. President Donald Trumps administration, but the root of the answer pre-dates Trump. In the last 15 to 20 years, the United States has not been the engine of global growth that it was in the past. The U.S. share of global growth has been almost cut in half in the last two decades, falling from about 32 per cent in the 1990s to about 17 per cent in this decade. Over the same period, Asias share has risen from 32 per cent to just over 50 per cent, according to our analysis of World Bank trade data from the Institute for Competitiveness & Prosperity. This has created a double challenge for Canada. First, we are significantly underexposed to emerging market economies, so we are getting little upside from their acceleration in growth. Too engaged with sluggish economies In addition to the 75 per cent of our trade that goes to the U.S., another 10 per cent goes to other slow-growth advanced economies, largely in Europe. Only about nine per cent of our trade is with faster-growing emerging economies like China, India, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil. This is much lower than our peers. In Germany, the share of exports to emerging markets and other developing countries is in the 20s; for Japan and the U.S., its in the 30s; and in Australia, its in the 40s. Second, these rapidly growing economies are providing increasingly fierce competition for our products in the U.S. market. In 2000, Canada was the leading source of American imports. Today, China has the largest share of U.S. imports at 22 per cent, up from only eight per cent in 2000. In the same period, Canadas share has declined from just over 18 per cent to about 13 per cent. We should have developed a diversification strategy a decade ago. But without a crisis, there has been little imperative. Call it lack of vision, risk-taking or leadership. Asian markets seen as risky Emerging markets and Asian markets, in particular, are often seen as distant and less familiar. They are seen as risky and more expensive to penetrate. The consequences have been stark. In the last 15 years, Canadas share of the world export market has slipped from about 4.5 per cent to about two per cent. Part of this trend was inevitable as large emerging market economies joined the global trade and investment network, but Canadas slide has been particularly precipitous. Across the worlds Top 20 exporting countries, Canadas performance since 2000 has been the second-worst only Japan has seen a bigger decline in its trade share than Canada. Canada is losing share in the U.S. market that itself is losing share globally. We should instead be focused on gaining share in markets that are gaining share. This means diversifying our trade towards emerging market economies, particularly in Asia. The place to start is with Asias two biggest economies, India and China. The new USMCA contains provisions that allow signatories to pull out of the deal if one country pursues a separate free-trade agreement with a "nonmarket country" namely, China. But that should not be a barrier to this pivot. India is a thriving democracy with strong ties to Canada. And as highlighted in a recent report on trade diversification from the Public Policy Forum, there is much that can be done with China short of a comprehensive free-trade agreement through sectoral agreements that offer "the best means for realizing quick and significant gains." Instead of waiting for a crisis, lets make trade diversification the priority it should have been for at least the last decade. Tiff Macklem dean and a professor of finance at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. This article was first published at The Conversation Canada: theconversation.com/ca. On April 15, 2010, in a ceremony in Halifax, the late Viola Desmond received an apology and a posthumous free pardon, which recognized her innocence. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/11/2018 (1097 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Editorial On April 15, 2010, in a ceremony in Halifax, the late Viola Desmond received an apology and a posthumous free pardon, which recognized her innocence. On Nov. 19, 2018, in a ceremony at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) in Winnipeg, the Bank of Canada formally put into circulation a new $10 bill featuring a portrait of the civil rights icon, who died in 1965 at age 50. It is arguably that second event that should most gladden the hearts of Canadians, because while Viola Desmond does not need our apologies, Canadians most definitely need to celebrate her courage and ensure that her story of defiance in the face of injustice is never forgotten. Making Ms. Desmond the first Canadian woman commemorated on a banknote a vertically oriented bill that features the CMHR on the other side will allow Canadians to literally carry this remarkable womans story with them wherever they go. "Banknotes are not only a secure means of payment that Canadians can use with confidence they also tell the stories that have shaped our country," Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz said in Winnipeg. "Now, each time this new vertical $10 bill changes hands, it will remind us of our continued pursuit of human rights and social justice in Canada." A black Halifax beautician, Ms. Desmond became a champion in the fight against racial injustice on Nov. 8, 1946, when she was jailed and fined for refusing to leave the whites-only section of a New Glasgow, N.S., movie theatre. The ensuing legal battle became one of the most high-profile cases of racial discrimination in Canadian history, and her simple act of defiance inspired the struggle against racial segregation in this country. A map of the historic North End of Halifax, where she lived and worked, is also shown on the new note. The saga began when Ms. Desmond made an unplanned stop in the small community of New Glasgow after her car broke down en route to a meeting in Sydney, N.S. Told the repair would take hours, Ms. Desmond, 32 at the time, decided to watch a screening of the thriller The Dark Mirror at the Roseland Theatre. When she refused to leave her seat in the downstairs section, which was reserved for whites people, a police officer dragged her out and took her to jail. Under theatre policy, black people were only permitted to sit in the balcony. For her "crime," Desmond was jailed 12 hours. According to a Halifax newspaper, the Chronicle, the next morning in court the successful businesswoman was convicted of defrauding the province of a penny the difference in sales tax on a 40-cent ticket to sit downstairs versus a 20-cent ticket for upstairs. During her trial, it was clear Desmond had offered to pay the extra money for a downstairs ticket, but theatre staff would not accept it. She was ordered to pay a $20 fine, plus $6 for the theatres court costs. She fought the case to the provinces Supreme Court, which ruled against her. But it was never about tax fraud; it was always about using a legal technicality to enforce racial segregation. As currency, Canadas new banknote is worth precisely $10. As a way to pay tribute to a Canadian woman who took a stand against racial injustice nine years before Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat for a white passenger on a city bus in Montgomery, Ala., it is priceless. The following companies are subsidiares of Valero Energy: AIR BP-PBF DEL PERU SAC, BELFAST STORAGE LTD, CANADIAN ULTRAMAR COMPANY, COLONNADE TEXAS INSURANCE COMPANY LLC, COLONNADE VERMONT INSURANCE COMPANY, DIAMOND ALTERNATIVE ENERGY LLC, DIAMOND ALTERNATIVE ENERGY OF CANADA INC., DIAMOND GREEN DIESEL HOLDINGS LLC, DIAMOND GREEN DIESEL LLC, DIAMOND K RANCH LLC, DIAMOND OMEGA COMPANY L.L.C., DIAMOND SHAMROCK REFINING COMPANY L.P., DIAMOND UNIT INVESTMENTS L.L.C., DSRM NATIONAL BANK, ENTERPRISE CLAIMS MANAGEMENT INC., GCP LOGISTICS COMPANY LLC, GOLDEN EAGLE ASSURANCE LIMITED, HAMMOND MAINLINE PIPELINE LLC, HUNTWAY REFINING COMPANY, MAINLINE PIPELINES LIMITED, MAPLE ETHANOL LTD., MICHIGAN REDEVELOPMENT GP LLC, MICHIGAN REDEVELOPMENT L.P., MRP PROPERTIES COMPANY LLC, NECHES RIVER HOLDING CORP., NORCO METHANOL LLC, OCEANIC TANKERS AGENCY LIMITED, PARKWAY PIPELINE LLC, PENTA TANKS TERMINALS S.A., PI DOCK FACILITIES LLC, PICKARD PLACE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION, PORT ARTHUR COKER COMPANY L.P., PREMCOR USA INC., PROPERTY RESTORATION L.P., PURE BIOFUELS DEL PERU S.A.C., PURE BIOFUELS HOLDINGS L.P., Parkway Pipeline, Premcor, Pure Biofuels Del Peru, SABINE RIVER HOLDING CORP., SABINE RIVER LLC, SAINT BERNARD PROPERTIES COMPANY LLC, SUNBELT REFINING COMPANY L.P., THE PREMCOR PIPELINE CO., THE PREMCOR REFINING GROUP INC., THE SHAMROCK PIPE LINE CORPORATION, TRANSPORT MARITIME ST. LAURENT INC., ULTRAMAR ACCEPTANCE INC., ULTRAMAR ENERGY INC., ULTRAMAR INC., Ultramar Diamond Shamrock, V-TEX LOGISTICS LLC, VALERO (BARBADOS) SRL, VALERO (PERU) HOLDINGS GP LLC, VALERO (PERU) HOLDINGS LIMITED, VALERO ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO ARUBA ACQUISITION COMPANY I LTD., VALERO ARUBA FINANCE INTERNATIONAL LTD., VALERO ARUBA HOLDING COMPANY N.V., VALERO ARUBA HOLDINGS INTERNATIONAL LTD., VALERO ARUBA MAINTENANCE/OPERATIONS COMPANY N.V., VALERO BROWNSVILLE TERMINAL LLC, VALERO CANADA FINANCE INC., VALERO CANADA L.P., VALERO CAPITAL CORPORATION, VALERO CARIBBEAN SERVICES COMPANY, VALERO COKER CORPORATION ARUBA N.V., VALERO CUSTOMS & TRADE SERVICES INC., VALERO EAST BAY LLC, VALERO ENERGY (IRELAND) LIMITED, VALERO ENERGY ARUBA II COMPANY, VALERO ENERGY INC., VALERO ENERGY LTD, VALERO ENERGY PARTNERS GP LLC, VALERO ENERGY PARTNERS LP, VALERO ENERGY UK LTD, VALERO ENTERPRISES INC., VALERO EQUITY SERVICES LTD, VALERO FINANCE L.P. I, VALERO FINANCE L.P. II, VALERO FINANCE L.P. III, VALERO FOREST CONTRIBUTION LLC, VALERO GRAIN MARKETING LLC, VALERO H2 PIPELINE COMPANY LLC, VALERO HOLDCO UK LTD, VALERO HOLDINGS INC., VALERO INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS INC., VALERO LIVE OAK LLC, VALERO LOGISTICS UK LTD, VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY (PANAMA) LLC, VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY COMPANY, VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPY INTERNATIONAL LTD., VALERO MARKETING IRELAND LIMITED, VALERO MKS LOGISTICS L.L.C., VALERO NEDERLAND COOPERATIEF U.A., VALERO NEDERLAND COOPERATIEF U.A., VALERO NEW AMSTERDAM B.V., VALERO OMEGA COMPANY L.L.C., VALERO OPERATIONAL SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO OPERATIONAL SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO OPERATIONS SUPPORT LTD, VALERO PARTNERS CCTS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS CORPUS EAST LLC, VALERO PARTNERS CORPUS WEST LLC, VALERO PARTNERS EP LLC, VALERO PARTNERS HOUSTON LLC, VALERO PARTNERS LOUISIANA LLC, VALERO PARTNERS LUCAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS MCKEE LLC, VALERO PARTNERS MEMPHIS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS MERAUX LLC, VALERO PARTNERS NORTH TEXAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS OPERATING CO. LLC, VALERO PARTNERS PAPS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS PORT ARTHUR LLC, VALERO PARTNERS SOUTH TEXAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS TEXAS CITY LLC, VALERO PARTNERS THREE RIVERS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS WEST MEMPHIS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS WEST TEXAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS WYNNEWOOD LLC, VALERO PAYMENT SERVICES COMPANY, VALERO PEMBROKESHIRE LLC, VALERO PEMBROKESHIRE OIL TERMINAL LTD, VALERO PLAINS COMPANY LLC, VALERO POWER MARKETING LLC, VALERO RAIL OPERATIONS DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO RAIL OPERATIONS DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO RAIL PARTNERS LLC, VALERO REFINING AND MARKETING COMPANY, VALERO REFINING COMPANY-ARUBA N.V., VALERO REFINING COMPANY-CALIFORNIA, VALERO REFINING COMPANY-OKLAHOMA, VALERO REFINING COMPANY-TENNESSEE L.L.C., VALERO REFINING-MERAUX LLC, VALERO REFINING-NEW ORLEANS L.L.C., VALERO REFINING-TEXAS L.P., VALERO RENEWABLE FUELS COMPANY LLC, VALERO SECURITY SYSTEMS INC., VALERO SERVICES INC., VALERO SKELLYTOWN PIPELINE LLC, VALERO TEJAS COMPANY LLC, VALERO TERMINAL HOLDCO LTD, VALERO TERMINALING AND DISTRIBUTION COMPANY, VALERO TERMINALING AND DISTRIBUTION DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO TEXAS POWER MARKETING INC., VALERO ULTRAMAR HOLDINGS INC., VALERO UNIT INVESTMENTS L.L.C., VALERO WEST WALES LLC, VRG PROPERTIES COMPANY, VTD PROPERTIES COMPANY, WARSHALL COMPANY LLC, and ZELIG COMMERCIAL INC.. The following companies are subsidiares of Textron: AAI Corporation, AAI Services Corporation, ALSTOM Gears, Able Aerospace, Able Aerospace Services Inc., Able Engineering & Component Services, Aeronautical Accessories LLC, Airborne Tactical Advantage Company LLC, Arctic Cat, Arctic Cat ACE Holding GmbH, Arctic Cat France SARL, Arctic Cat GmbH, Arctic Cat Inc., Arctic Cat Production LLC, Arctic Cat Production Support LLC, Arctic Cat Sales Inc., Arctic Cat Shared Services LLC, Arctic Cat UK Ltd., Arkansas Aerospace Inc., Avco Corporation, Aviation Service servis letal doo Ljubljana, Aylesbury Automation, B/K Navigational Equipment sro, Beech Aircraft Corporation, Beech Holdings, Beechcraft Defense Support Holding LLC, Beechcraft Domestic Service Company, Beechcraft Germany GmbH, Beechcraft International Holding LLC, Beechcraft International Service Company, Beechcraft New Zealand, Beechcraft Service Company UK Limited, Bell Helicopter GK, Bell Helicopter KK, Bell Textron Asia (Pte.) Ltd., Bell Textron Canada International Inc., Bell Textron Canada Limited/Limitee, Bell Textron Inc., Bell Textron Korea Inc., Bell Textron Miami Inc, Bell Textron Prague a.s., Bell Textron Rhode Island Inc., Bell Textron Services Inc, Bell Textron Supply Center BV, Bell Textron Technical Services Inc., Benzlers, Brazaco Mapri Industrias, Burkland, Cessna Aircraft Company, Cessna Citation European Service Center SAS, Cessna Dusseldorf Citation Service Center GmbH, Cessna Finance Corporation, Cessna Finance Export Corporation, Cessna Mexico S de RL de CV, Cessna Spanish Citation Service Center SLU, Cessna Zurich Citation Service Center GmbH, Citation Parts Distribution International Inc., Cushman Inc., Datacom Technologies, David Brown Group, Doncaster Citation Service Centre Limited, E-Z-GO Canada Limited, Energy Manufacturing, Flexalloy, HBC LLC, Hawker Beech de Mexico S de RL de CV, Hawker Beechcraft Argentina SA, Howe & Howe Inc., Howe and Howe Technologies, Industrial Technology Inc., InteSys Technologies, International Product Support Inc., KSB Annecy SAS, Kautex (Changchun) Plastics Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Chongqing) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Guangzhou) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Pinghu) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Shanghai) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Wuhan) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex Corporation, Kautex Craiova srl, Kautex Germany Holding GmbH, Kautex Inc., Kautex Japan KK, Kautex Shanghai GmbH, Kautex Textron (UK) Limited, Kautex Textron Benelux BVBA, Kautex Textron Bohemia spol sro, Kautex Textron CVS Limited, Kautex Textron GmbH & Co. KG, Kautex Textron Iberica SL, Kautex Textron Italia Srl, Kautex Textron Management Services Company de Puebla S. de RL de CV, Kautex Textron Portugal Produtos Plasticos Sociedade Unipessoal Lda., Kautex Textron de Mexico S de RL de CV, Kautex Textron do Brasil Ltda., Kautex of Georgia Inc., Kaywood Products Corp., Klauke, LCI Corporation International, LLC Textron RUS, Maag, McCord Corporation, Mechtronix, Medical Numerics Inc., Midland Industrial Plastics, MillenWorks, MillenWorks Themed Technologies, MotorFist LLC, OPINICUS Simulation and Training Services LLC, OmniQuip International, Opinicus, Optical Boring Co., Opto-Electronics, Opto-Electronics Inc., Overwatch Systems Ltd., PEINER Umformtechnik, Pirelli Tyres - General Rubber Goods (GRG) division, Premiair Aviation Maintenance Pty Ltd, Progressive Electronics, Ransomes, Ransomes Inc., Ransomes Investment LLC, Ransomes Jacobsen France SAS, Ransomes Jacobsen Limited, Ransomes Limited, Ransomes Pensions Trustee Company Limited, Replacement Part Solutions LLC, Response Technologies LLC, Rotor Blades Limited, Sukosim Verbindungselemente, TRU Simulation & Training Spain SL, TRU Simulation + Training Inc., TRU Simulation + Training LLC, TekGPS Engineering Srl, Textron Airland LLC, Textron Atlantic LLC, Textron Aviation Australia Pty. Ltd., Textron Aviation Canada Ltd., Textron Aviation Defense LLC, Textron Aviation Finance Corporation, Textron Aviation Inc., Textron Aviation Prague Service Center sro, Textron Aviation Rhode Island Inc., Textron Aviation Services de Mexico S de RL de CV, Textron Capital BV, Textron Communications Inc., Textron Far East Pte. Ltd., Textron Finance Holding Company, Textron Financial Corporation, Textron Financial Corporation Receivables Trust 2002-CP-2, Textron Fluid and Power Inc., Textron France Holding SAS, Textron France SAS, Textron Global Services Inc., Textron Ground Support Equipment Inc., Textron Ground Support Equipment UK Limited, Textron IPMP Inc., Textron India Private Limited, Textron Innovations Inc., Textron International Inc., Textron International Mexico S de RL de CV, Textron Limited, Textron Management Services Inc., Textron Motors GmbH, Textron Motors North America Inc., Textron Outdoor Power Equipment Inc., Textron Realty Corporation, Textron Shared Service Centre (Canada) Inc., Textron Specialized Vehicles Inc., Textron Sweden AB, Textron Systems Australia Holding Pty Ltd, Textron Systems Australia Pty Ltd, Textron Systems Canada Inc., Textron Systems Corporation, Textron Systems Electronic Systems UK (Holdings) Limited, Textron Systems Electronic Systems UK Limited, Textron Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Textron UK Pension Trustee Limited, Textron Verwaltungs-GmbH, Turbine Engine Components Textron (Newington Operations) Inc., United Industrial Corporation, Westminster Insurance Company, Williams Machine & Tool, Wuxi Textron Specialized Vehicles Co. Ltd., and Zhenjiang Bell Textron Aviation Services Limited. 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.. 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.. iShares MSCI Brazil ETF's stock was trading at $29.68 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, EWZ shares have increased by 0.5% and is now trading at $29.83. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. American Consumer News, LLC dba MarketBeat 2010-2021. 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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. BTG plc acquires, develops, manufactures, and commercializes pharmaceutical products in the United States, Europe, and internationally. It operates through three segments: Interventional Medicine, Pharmaceuticals, and Licensing. The Interventional Medicine segment offers interventional oncology products and systems, such as beads and TheraSphere for treatment of liver cancer; and GALIL medical system, a cryoablation technology for use in kidney cancer and other indications. This segment also provides interventional vascular products consisting of EKOS system, an ultrasonic catheter drug delivery device used in the treatment of blood clots; Varithena for the treatment of varicose veins; and PneumRx Coil for the treatment of emphysema, a debilitating lung disease. The Pharmaceuticals segment offers antidote products, such as CroFab for the treatment of crotalid snake envenomations; DigiFab for the treatment of digoxin toxicity; and Voraxaze for high-dose methotrexate toxicity. The Licensing segment provides Zytiga for treatment of prostate cancer; Two-Part Hip Cup; and Lemtrada. The company also manufactures and commercializes therapeutic ultrasound devices, and roxwood systems, as well as develops venous thrombus management devices. The company was formerly known as British Technology Group International plc and changed its name to BTG plc in March 1995. BTG plc was founded in 1948 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom. Read More 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. License for publishing multimedia online 0108263 Registration Number: 130349 11010502032503 [2011]0283-097 ICP13028878-6 Praxair, Inc. produces and distributes industrial gases. It operates through five segments: North America, Europe, South America, Asia, and Surface Technologies. The company offers atmospheric gases, including oxygen, nitrogen, argon, and rare gases; and process gases, such as carbon dioxide, helium, hydrogen, electronic gases, specialty gases, and acetylene. It also supplies wear-resistant and high-temperature corrosion-resistant metallic and ceramic coatings and powders to the aircraft, energy, printing, primary metals, petrochemical, textile, and other industries. In addition, the company offers electric arc, plasma and wire spray, and high-velocity oxy-fuel equipment; and distributes hardgoods and welding equipment purchased from independent manufacturers. It serves various industries, such as healthcare, petroleum refining, manufacturing, food, beverage carbonation, fiber-optics, steel making, aerospace, chemicals, and water treatment. Praxair, Inc. was founded in 1907 and is headquartered in Danbury, Connecticut. Read More There is not enough analysis data for Nuveen Intermediate Duration Municipal Term Fund. 4.0 Community Rank Outperform Votes Nuveen Intermediate Duration Municipal Term Fund has received 59 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.) Underperform Votes Nuveen Intermediate Duration Municipal Term Fund has received 38 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.) Community Sentiment Nuveen Intermediate Duration Municipal Term Fund has received 60.82% outperform votes from our community. MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about Nuveen Intermediate Duration Municipal Term Fund and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe NID will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe NID will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days. Previous Next USG Corporation, through its subsidiaries, manufactures and sells building materials worldwide. The company's Gypsum division manufactures and markets gypsum and related products to construct walls and ceilings of residential, nonresidential, and institutional buildings; and agricultural and industrial customers. This segment offers gypsum wallboards and compound portfolios, as well as corner beads, joint tapes, and plasters under the USG Sheetrock brand; glass mat sheathing portfolios under the Securock brand; construction plaster products under the Red Top, Imperial, Diamond, and Supremo brands; and lightweight gypsum panels under the USG Sheetrock brand, as well as ultralight panels, USG Sheetrock brand ecosmart panels, and industrial gypsum. Its Performance Materials division manufactures and markets products for interior and exterior building applications of residential and nonresidential buildings, as well as industrial applications. This segment provides cement boards, backer boards, shower systems, performance floorings, air barrier systems, roof board portfolios, and structural panels under the USG Durock, Fiberock, Levelrock, Securock, ExoAir, Securock, and USG brands. The company's Ceilings division manufactures and markets ceiling tiles under the Radar, Eclipse, Mars, and Halcyon brands; ceiling grids under the Donn, DX, Fineline, Centricitee, and Identitee DXI brands; specialty ceilings under the Curvatura, Compasso, Radians, Illusions, Multiples, Runways, Barz, Planx, Mirra, Corniche, Wallforms, and Parti brands; and acoustical drywall ceilings under the Ensemble brand. Its USG Boral Building Products division manufactures, distributes, and sells building products, mines raw gypsum, and sells natural and synthetic gypsum under the USG Boral Sheetrock, USG Boral NextGen, Elephant, Jayaboard, Durock, and Donn DX brands. The company was founded in 1902 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of ABB: A88 for Electrical Industries (ABB ARAB) S.A.E., AABB Business Services Sp. z o.o., ABB (China) Investment Limited, ABB (China) Ltd., ABB 0y, ABB A/S, ABB AB, ABB AG, ABB AS, ABB Asea Brown Boveri Ltd, ABB Australia Pty Limited, ABB Automacao Ltda., ABB Automation GmbH, ABB Automation Products GmbH, ABB B.V., ABB Beijing Drive Systems Co. Ltd., ABB Beijing Switchgear Limited, ABB Beteiligungs- und Verwaltungsges. MbH, ABB Bulgaria EOOD, ABB Canada EL Holding GmbH, ABB Capital AG, ABB Electrical Control Systems S. de R.L. de C.V., ABB Electrical Industries Co. Ltd., ABB Electrical Machines Ltd., ABB Electrification Canada ULC, ABB Electrification Norway AS, ABB Elektrik Sanayi A.S., ABB Eletrificacao Ltda., ABB Engineering (Shanghai) Ltd., ABB Engineering Trading and Service Ltd., ABB Finance (USA) Inc., ABB Finance B.V., ABB France, ABB Global Industries and Services Private Limited, ABB Group Investment Management Pty. Ltd., ABB Holding AS, ABB Holdings (Pty) Ltd., ABB Holdings B.V., ABB Holdings Inc., ABB Holdings Limited, ABB Inc., ABB Inc., ABB India Limited, ABB Industrial Solutions (Bielsko-Biala) Sp. z o.o., ABB Industrial Solutions (Klodzko) Sp.z o.o., ABB Industries (L.L.C.), ABB Information Systems Ltd., ABB Installation Products Inc, ABB Installation Products International LLC., ABB Investment Holding 2 GmbH, ABB K.K., ABB Limited, ABB Ltd., ABB Management Services Ltd., ABB Mexico SA. de C.V., ABB Motors and Mechanical Inc, ABB N.V., ABB Norden Holding AB, ABB Pte. Ltd., ABB S.A., ABB S.p.A., ABB SAS, ABB Schweiz AG, ABB Shanghai Free Trade Zone Industrial Co. Ltd., ABB Shanghai Motors Co. Ltd., ABB South Africa (Pty) Ltd., ABB Sp. z o.o., ABB Stotz-Kontakt GmbH, ABB Treasury Center (USA) Inc., ABB Xiamen Low Voltage Equipment Co. Ltd., ABB Xiamen Switchgear Co. Ltd., ABB Xinhui Low Voltage Switchgear Co. Ltd., ABB s.r.o., APS Technology Group, ASTI Mobile Robotics, Asea Brown Boveri S.A., Asea Brown Boveri S.A.E., Asea Brown Boveri SA. de C.V., B + R Industrie-Elektronik GmbH, B&R Holding GmbH, B&R Industrial Automation, B&R Industrial Automation GmbH, Baldor Electric Company, Busch-Jaeger Elektro GmbH, Chargedot, Codian Robotics, Cylon Controls, DynaMotive Ltd., ELBI Elektrik, Edison Holding Corporation, Envitech Energy, Epyon, GE Industrial Solutions, Gomtec, Gresin Grupo Estudios Industriales, Industrial C&S Hungary Kft., Industrial C&S of RR. LLC, Industrial Connections & Solutions LLC, KEYMILE - Business, Kuhlman Electric Corp., Lorentzen & Wettre, Los Gatos Research, Mincom, NUB3D S.L., Newave Energy Holding, Newron System, Power-One, Powercorp, RGM - Rail vehicle power business, SVIA, Spirit IT, Thomas & Betts, Trasfor, Tropos Networks, Validus DC Systems, Vectek Electronics, and Ventyx. Conagra Brands, Inc. engages in the manufacture and sale of processed and packaged foods. It operates through the following segments: Grocery and Snacks; Refrigerated and Frozen; International; and Foodservice. The Grocery and Snacks segment includes branded, shelf stable food products sold in various retail channels in the United States. The Refrigerated and Frozen segment comprises branded, temperature controlled food products sold in various retail channels in the United States. The International segment consists branded food products, in various temperature states, sold in various retail and foodservice channels outside of the United States. The Foodservice segment focuses in the branded and customized food products, including meals, entrees, sauces, and a variety of custom-manufactured culinary products packaged for sale to restaurants and other foodservice establishments in the United States. The company was founded by Alva Kinney and Frank Little in 1919 and is headquartered in Chicago, IL. Read More There is not enough analysis data for Eaton Vance California Municipal Bond Fund. 4.4 Community Rank Outperform Votes Eaton Vance California Municipal Bond Fund has received 78 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.) Underperform Votes Eaton Vance California Municipal Bond Fund has received 41 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.) Community Sentiment Eaton Vance California Municipal Bond Fund has received 65.55% outperform votes from our community. MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about Eaton Vance California Municipal Bond Fund and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe EVM will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe EVM will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days. Previous Next Agilent Technologies, Inc. engages in the provision of application focused solutions for life sciences, diagnostics, and applied chemical markets. It operates through the following segments: Life Sciences and Applied Markets; Diagnostics and Genomics; and Agilent CrossLab. The Life Sciences and Applied Markets segment offers application-focused solutions that include instruments and software that enable to identify, quantify, and analyze the physical and biological properties of substances and products, as well as the clinical and life sciences research areas to interrogate samples at the molecular and cellular level. The Diagnostics and Genomics segment consists of activity providing active pharmaceutical ingredients for oligo-based therapeutics, as well as solutions that include reagents, instruments, software and consumables. The Agilent CrossLab segment includes startup, operational, training and compliance support, software as a service, and asset management and consultative services. The company was founded in May 1999 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA. Read More Students from De Montfort University are attempting to solve one of the worlds most dangerous world conflicts at an international conference in Cyprus this week. The eight students have been at the FredMUN 2018 Model United Nations conference with 200 fellow delegates from across Europe at Frederick University, in the countrys capital Nicosia. The Republic of Cyprus Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr Nikos Christodoulides took time out ahead of Sundays major Brexit conference in Brussels to address the students at the opening ceremony this week in the Presidential Palace in Nicosia. DMU is represented by Kalem Todd, Connall Pugh, Emily Fox, Jo Lingard, Zeinab Al-Ahmar, Estelle Max, Naaila Tariq and Joao Madeira at the four-day event. The group are sitting on the Security Council of the Model UN, which aims to replicate exactly the work of the United Nations itself, and are discussing the international flashpoint of the South China Seas. The territorial dispute in seas off China and bordering Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam has provoked a series of clashes and is the subject of numerous arguments over the sovereignty of neighbouring islands. It is further complicated by the US carrying out military manoeuvres in the disputed seas that have prompted diplomatic clashes with China. The eight students are ambassadors for the countries involved in the dispute and have been tasked with coming up with a solution as a series of mock crises are thrown out them during their 10 committee sessions. RELATED NEWS Students discuss refugee crisis with government ministers in Cyprus DMU students visit university in Cyprus to discuss new ways of helping refugees University visits Cyprus to explore why more EU students than ever are attending DMU The conference opened with a lavish ceremony at the Presidential Palace attended by government ministers, including the Foreign Minister and Attorney General, ambassadors, diplomats and the leaders of Cyprus main political parties. In a major keynote speech, Minister of Foreign Affairs Christodoulides talked of the importance of multilateralism before he travels to Brussels for the meeting of the 27 EU countries deciding on whether to ratify the Brexit deal. Mr Christodoulides said that recent events in Europe, especially the migration crisis, had shaken the EU to the core, but the answers are in multi-lateralism and not in countries isolating themselves. One of DMUs delegates Kalem Todd, co-chair of the DMU Model UN Society and ambassador for Malaysia at the conference, said: It has been really challenging, with all the UNs procedures and methods replicated exactly. But weve learnt a lot in such a short space of time, it has been extremely valuable. We have learnt a lot from FredMUN 2018 and it is something that as a Model UN Society we now want to emulate, build on and hopefully improve on. DMUs Model UN co-chair Connall Pugh, the ambassador for Indonesia, added: It has been an amazing learning experience and the detail we have had to grasp in such a short space of time has been substantial. Everyone from DMU has acquitted themselves really well dealing with extremely complex procedures and scenarios. The opening ceremony was also incredibly grand and very prestigious. It was also very interesting to hear from the Cyprus Foreign Affairs Minister ahead of such an important weekend for Britain on Brexit. There is not enough analysis data for Imperial Ginseng Products. 4.1 Community Rank Outperform Votes Imperial Ginseng Products has received 60 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.) Underperform Votes Imperial Ginseng Products has received 36 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.) Community Sentiment Imperial Ginseng Products has received 62.50% outperform votes from our community. MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about Imperial Ginseng Products and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe IGP will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe IGP 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 Kroger: 84.51 HQ Building Company LLC, 84.51 LLC, Alpha Beta Company, Ansonborough Square Investors I LLC, Ansonborough Square Retail LLC, Ardrey Kell Investments LLC, Bay Area Warehouse Stores Inc., Beech Tree Holdings LLC, Bell Markets Inc., Bleecker Ventures LLC, Bluefield Beverage Company, Box Cutter Inc., Brier Creek Arbors Drive Retail LLC, CB&S Advertising Agency Inc., Cala Co., Cala Foods Inc., Cheeses of All Nations Inc., Country Oven Inc., Crawford Stores Inc., Creedmoor Retail LLC, Dillon Companies LLC, Dillon Real Estate Co. Inc., Dillons, Distribution Trucking Company, Dotto Inc., Edgewood Plaza Holdings LLC, Embassy International Inc., FM Inc., FMJ Inc., Farmacia Doral Inc., Food 4 Less GM Inc., Food 4 Less Holdings Inc., Food 4 Less Merchandising Inc., Food 4 Less of California Inc., Food 4 Less of Southern California Inc., Fred Meyer, Fred Meyer Inc., Fred Meyer Jewelers Inc., Fred Meyer Stores Inc., Glasswing Labs LLC, Glendale/Goodwin Realty I LLC, Grubstake Investments LLC, HT Fuel DE LLC, HT Fuel NC LLC, HT Fuel SC LLC, HT Fuel VA LLC, HTGBD LLC, HTP Bluffton LLC, HTP Plaza LLC, HTP Relo LLC, HTPS LLC, HTTAH LLC, Harris Teeter, Harris Teeter LLC, Henpil Inc., Home Chef, Hood-Clayton Logistics LLC, Hughes Markets Inc., Hughes Realty Inc., I.T.A. Inc., IRP LLC, ITAC 119 LLC, ITAC 265 LLC, Inter-American Foods Inc., Inter-American Products Inc., J.V. Distributing Inc., Jondex Corp., Jubilee Carolina LLC, KCDE 2012 LLC, KCDE 2013 LLC, KCDE-2 LLC, KCDE-3 LLC, KCDE-4 LLC, KCDE-5 LLC, KGO LLC, KPF LLC, KPS LLC, KRGP LLC, KRLP Inc., KV Anderson LLC, Kee Trans Inc., Kessel FP, Kiosk Medicine Kentucky LLC, Kirkpatrick West Retail LLC, Kroger Community Development Entity LLC, Kroger Dedicated Logistics Co., Kroger Fulfillment Network LLC, Kroger G.O. LLC, Kroger LM Real Estate Holdings LLC, Kroger Limited Partnership I, Kroger Limited Partnership II, Kroger MC Holdings LLC, Kroger MTL Management LLC, Kroger Management Co., Kroger Management Corryville LLC, Kroger Management NMTC Athens I LLC, Kroger Management NMTC Champaign I LLC, Kroger Management NMTC Champaign II LLC, Kroger Management NMTC Cincinnati I LLC, Kroger Management NMTC Dallas I LLC, Kroger Management NMTC Danville I LLC, Kroger Management NMTC Logansport I LLC, Kroger Management NMTC Missouri I LLC, Kroger Management NMTC Oak Ridge I LLC, Kroger Management NMTC Olney I LLC, Kroger Management NMTC Omaha I LLC, Kroger Management NMTC Portsmouth I LLC, Kroger Management NMTC Starkville I LLC, Kroger Management NMTC Topeka I LLC, Kroger Management NMTC Warrenton I LLC, Kroger NMTC Fremont I LLC, Kroger OZ1 Inc., Kroger OZ1 LLC, Kroger OZ2 Inc., Kroger OZ2 LLC, Kroger OZ3 Inc., Kroger OZ3 LLC, Kroger Opportunity Fund I Inc., Kroger Prescription Plans Inc., Kroger Specialty Infusion AL LLC, Kroger Specialty Infusion CA LLC, Kroger Specialty Infusion Holdings Inc., Kroger Specialty Infusion TX LLC, Kroger Specialty Pharmacy CA 2 LLC, Kroger Specialty Pharmacy CA LLC, Kroger Specialty Pharmacy FL 2 LLC, Kroger Specialty Pharmacy Holdings 2 Inc., Kroger Specialty Pharmacy Holdings 3 Inc., Kroger Specialty Pharmacy Holdings I Inc., Kroger Specialty Pharmacy Holdings Inc., Kroger Specialty Pharmacy Inc., Kroger Specialty Pharmacy LA LLC, Kroger Texas L.P., LCGP3 Home Cooking Inc., Latta Village LLC, Local Mkt LLC, Main & Vine LLC, Matthews Property 1 LLC, Mega Marts LLC, Michigan Dairy L.L.C., ModernHealth LTC, Murrays Cheese LLC, Murrays LIC LLC, Murrays Table LLC, Pace Dairy Foods Company, Paramount Logistics LLC, Pay Less Super Markets Inc., Peyton's-Southeastern Inc., Plum Labs LLC, Pontiac Foods Inc., Queen City Assurance Inc., RBF LLC, RGC Southeast Properties LLC, Ralphs Grocery Company, Relish Labs LLC, Rocket Newco Inc., Roundy's, Roundys Acquisition Corp., Roundys Illinois LLC, Roundys Inc., Roundys Supermarkets Inc., Second Story Inc., Shop-Rite LLC, Smiths Beverage of Wyoming Inc., Smiths Food & Drug Centers Inc., Southern Ice Cream Specialties Inc., Stallings Investors I LLC, Sunrise R&D Holdings LLC, Sunrise Technology LLC, TLC Corporate Services LLC, TLC Immunization Clinic LLC, TLC of Georgia LLC, The Kroger Co. of Michigan, The Little Clinic LLC, The Little Clinic Management Services LLC, The Little Clinic of Arizona LLC, The Little Clinic of Colorado LLC, The Little Clinic of IN LLC, The Little Clinic of Kansas LLC, The Little Clinic of Mississippi LLC, The Little Clinic of Ohio LLC, The Little Clinic of TX LLC, The Little Clinic of Tennessee LLC, The Little Clinic of VA LLC, Topvalco Inc., Ultimate Mart LLC, Ultra Mart Foods LLC, Vine Court Assurance Incorporated, Vitacost, Vitacost.com Inc., Woodmont Holdings LLC, and YOU Technology. iShares China Large-Cap ETF's stock was trading at $38.80 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, FXI shares have increased by 2.4% and is now trading at $39.75. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. iShares Core MSCI EAFE ETF's stock was trading at $52.50 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus (COVID-19) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, IEFA stock has increased by 44.1% and is now trading at $75.66. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. iShares Global Financials ETF's stock was trading at $51.93 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus (COVID-19) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, IXG shares have increased by 57.6% and is now trading at $81.82. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. Anadarko Petroleum Corporation engages in the exploration, development, production, and marketing of oil and gas properties. It operates through three segments: Exploration and Production, WES Midstream, and Other Midstream. The company explores for and produces oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids (NGLs). It is also involved in gathering, processing, treating, and transporting oil, natural-gas, and NGLs production, as well as the gathering and disposal of produced water. The company's oil and natural gas properties are located in the United States onshore and deepwater Gulf of Mexico; and Algeria, Ghana, Mozambique, Colombia, Peru, and other countries. As of December 31, 2018, it had approximately 1.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent of proved reserves. The company was founded in 1959 and is headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas. Read More Morgan Stanley China A Share Fund, Inc. is a closed-end management investment company. Its investment objective is to seek capital growth. The firm invests its assets in A-shares of Chinese companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges, either by investing directly in A-shares through a licensed qualified foreign institutional investor or by gaining exposure to the A-share market through the use of derivatives. The company was founded on July 6, 2006 and is headquartered in New York, NY. Read More Nevada Copper has only been the subject of 1 research reports in the past 90 days. According to analysts' consensus price target of C$0.56, Nevada Copper has a forecasted downside of 21.1% from its current price of C$0.71. Nevada Copper 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. 5.0 Community Rank Outperform Votes Nevada Copper has received 340 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.) Underperform Votes Nevada Copper has received 88 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.) Community Sentiment Nevada Copper has received 79.44% outperform votes from our community. MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about Nevada Copper and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe NCU will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe NCU 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 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. 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 Wynnstay Group Plc manufactures and supplies agricultural products in the United Kingdom. It operates through Agriculture and Specialist Agricultural Merchanting segments. The Agriculture segment offers animal nutrition products to the agricultural market; and seeds, fertilizers, and agro-chemicals to arable and grassland farmers, as well as markets grains. The Specialist Agricultural Merchanting segment provides specialist products to farmers, smallholders, and pet owners. This segment offers its products through 54 depots; and specialist catalogues and online channels. It also manufactures and acts as a distributor of equine and small animal feeds through wholesalers and retailers. The company was founded in 1917 and is headquartered in Llansantffraid-ym-Mechain, the United Kingdom. Read More Xcel Energy, Inc. operates as a holding company, which engages in the generation, purchase, transmission, distribution and sale of electricity. It operates through the following three segments: Regulated Electric Utility, Regulated Natural Gas Utility and All Others. The Regulated Electric Utility segment generates, transmits and distributes electricity primarily in portions of generates, transmits and distributes electricity in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, Colorado, Texas and New Mexico. In addition, this segment includes sales for resale and provides wholesale transmission service to various entities in the United States. It also includes commodity trading operations. The Regulated Natural Gas Utility segment transports, stores, and distributes natural gas primarily in portions of Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Michigan and Colorado. The All Others segment engages in steam, appliance repair services, nonutility real estate activities, processing solid waste into refuse-derived fuel and investments in rental housing projects that qualify for low-income housing tax credits. The company was founded in 1909 and is headquartered in Minneapolis, MN. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Tesco: Adminstore Limited, Adsega Limited, Alfred Preedy & Sons (Trustees) Limited, Alfred Preedy & Sons Limited, Anthony Heagney Limited, Arena (Jersey) Management Limited, Armitage Finance Unlimited, Armitage Luxembourg s.? r.l., BLT Holdings 2010 Limited, Bath Upper Bristol Road Management, Bedminster Estates Limited, Beehythe Estates limited, Berry Lane Management Company Limited, Blinkbox Books Limited, BlinxBox, Booker Group, Brian Fords Discount Store Limited, Broadfields Management Limited, Brookmaker (GP) Limited, Broughton Retail Park Nominee 1 Limited, Broughton Retail Park Nominee 2 Limited, Broughton Retail Park Nominee 3 Limited, Broughton Retail Park Nominee 4 Limited, Buckingham Road (Bletchley) Management Company Limited, Bugden Ltd, Buttoncable Limited, Buttoncase Limited, Canterbury Road Management Limited, Cardiff Cathays Terrace Management Company Limited, Careneed News Limited, Cheshunt Finance Unlimited, Cheshunt Holdings Guernsey Limited, Cheshunt Hungary Servicing Limited Liability Company, Cheshunt Luxembourg S.? r.l., Cheshunt Overseas LLP, China Property Holdings (HK) Limited, Chirac Limited, Cirrus Finance (2009) Limited, Cirrus Finance Limited, Cirrus Luxembourg s.? r.l., Clarepharm Limited, Clondalkin Properties Limited, Comar Limited, Commercial Investments Limited, Crazy Prices, Crest Ostrava a.s, Cullens Holdings Limited, Cullens Stores Limited, Daily Wrap Produce Limited, Day And Nite Stores Limited, Delamare Cards Holdco Limited, Delamare Cards MTN Issuer plc, Delamare Finance PLC, Delamare Group Holdings Limited, Delamare Holdings BV Netherlands, Delamare Luxembourg s.? r.l. Luxembourg, Delamare One Limited, Dunnhumby Ventures LLC, ELH Insurance Limited, Edinburgh Butterfly Farm Limited, Edson Investments Limited, Edson Properties Limited, Ek-Chai Distribution System Co. Ltd., Euphorium (London) Limited, Euphorium (North London) Limited, Euphorium Group Limited, Euphorium IP Limited, Europa Foods Limited, Faraday Properties Limited, Flitwick Pharmacies Limited, Food & Wine Lovers Limited, Forum Liberec s.r.o, Freds Food Construction Limited, Freehold and Leasehold Property Fund, Gain Land Limited, Genesis sp. z o.o., Gibbs News Limited, Gibbs Newsagents Limited, Gida Sanayi A.S., Giraffe, Giraffe Cafe Limited, Giraffe Concepts Limited, Golden Island Management Services Limited, HIT hypermarket Sp. z o. o., Halesworth SPV Limited, Harris and Hoole Holdings Limited, Harris and Hoole Limited, Harris and Hoole Nominees Limited, Homeplus, Hymall Co. Ltd., J E Properties Holdings Limited, Jasper Sp. z o. o. Poland, KSS Retail Limited, Kabaty Investments Tesco (Polska) Sp. z o. o. Sp.k, Kingsway Fresh Foods Ltd, Koxka Hungary Refrigeration LLC, Launchgrain Limited, Launchtable Limited, Laws Stores Limited, Lazada Group S.A., Lee (Southern) Limited, Lek?ren? Tesco Bansk? Bystrica k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Dunajsk? Streda k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Ko?ice k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Lama k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Nitra k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Petr?alka k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Pie?tany k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Pre?ov Vukov k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Senec k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Spi?sk? Nov? Ves k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Trenc??n s.r.o. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Zlat? Piesky k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Zvolen k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Linebush III Holdings Limited, Linebush III Limited, Linebush IV Limited, Linebush Limited, Linebush V Limited, London and Home Counties Superstores Limited, Lowfoods Limited, M & W Limited, Merrion Shopping Centre Ltd, Mills (East Midlands) Limited, Mills (West Midlands) Limited, Mills Group Holdings Limited, Mills Group Limited, Mobcast Services, Monread Developments Limited, Morgam Holdings Limited, Morgam News Limited, Motorcause Limited, NPL (Hardgate) Limited, Nabola Development Limited, NutriCentre Limited, OC FORUM Liberec Ltd., Oakwood Distribution Limited, Obchodn? dom Bratislava s.ro, Obchodn? dom Ko?ice s.ro., Obchodn? dom Nitra s.ro., Obchodn? dom Pre?ov s.ro., Old FEHC Inc., Old FEPC LLC, One Stop Community Stores Ltd, One Stop Convenience Stores Limited, One Stop Stores Limited, One Stop Stores Trustee Services Limited, Orpingford, Orpington (Station Road) Limited, Oxford Fox and Hounds Management Company Limited, PEJ Property Developments Limited, Paper Chain (East Anglia) Limited, Pharaway Properties Limited, Power Supermarkets Limited, Premier Garage (Worthing) Limited, Pulford Foods Limited, R.J.D. Holdings, Retail Property Co. Ltd, S Bottomley & Bros Limited, Sanders Supermarkets Limited, Sandtable Limited, Sarcon (No. 239) Limited, Seacroft Green Nominee 1 Limited, Seacroft Green Nominee 2 Limited, Shire Park Limited, Shuke Advertising (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Snowman Retail 1 Limited, Snowman Retail 2 Limited, Sociomantic AB, Sociomantic Labs B.V, Sociomantic Labs Inc, Sociomantic Labs Internet Hizmetleri Limited ?ireketi, Sociomantic Labs LLC, Sociomantic Labs Limited, Sociomantic Labs Private Limited, Sociomantic Labs Pte Ltd, Sociomantic Labs S.r.l, Sociomantic Labs SARL, Sociomantic Labs Servicos Web Ltda, Sociomantic Labs Sp.z.o.o., Sociomantic Labs s.r.o., Sociomantic S.L.U., Sociomantic labs GmbH, Spen Hill Developments (Holdings) Ltd, Spen Hill Developments (Portishead) Ltd, Spen Hill Developments (Tonbridge) Limited, Spen Hill Developments Limited, Spen Hill Management Limited, Spen Hill Properties (Holdings) plc, Spen Hill Properties (Southend) Limited, Spen Hill Regeneration Limited, Spen Hill Residential No 1 Limited, Spen Hill Residential No 2 Limited, Station House Welling Management Limited, Statusfloat Limited, Stewarts Supermarkets Limited, Streatham Management Company Limited, T & S Management Services Limited, T & S Properties Limited, T & S Stores Limited, TESCO (POLSKA) sp. z o.o., TESCO Akad?mia K?pz?si ?s Fejleszt?si Kor?tolt Felelss?g T?rsas?g, TESCO MOBILE POLSKA SP. Z O.O., TESCO STORES SR a.s., Tapesilver Limited, Teesport (GP) Limited, Teesport (Nominee) Limited, Telegraph Properties (Kirkby) Limited, Tesco (Foxtrot 1) Limited, Tesco (Foxtrot 2) Limited, Tesco (Fujian) Industry Limited, Tesco (Jersey) Limited, Tesco (Overseas) Ltd, Tesco (Yorkshire) Limited, Tesco Aqua (1LP) Limited, Tesco Aqua (3LP) Limited, Tesco Aqua (FinCo1) Limited, Tesco Aqua (FinCo2) Limited, Tesco Aqua (GP) Limited, Tesco Aqua (Nominee 1) Limited, Tesco Aqua (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Aqua (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Atrato (1LP) Limited, Tesco Atrato (GP) Limited, Tesco Barbers Wood Limited, Tesco Bengaluru Private Limited, Tesco Blue (1LP) Limited, Tesco Blue (FinCo2) Limited, Tesco Blue (GP) Limited, Tesco Blue (Nominee 1) Limited, Tesco Blue (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Blue (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Capital No. 1 Limited, Tesco Capital No. 2 Limited, Tesco Card Services Limited, Tesco Card Services Limited, Tesco Card Services Ltd., Tesco Chile Sourcing Limitada, Tesco Coral (GP) Limited, Tesco Corporate Treasury Services PLC, Tesco Depot Propco Limited, Tesco Distribution Holdings Limited, Tesco Distribution Limited, Tesco Dorney (1LP) Limited, Tesco Dorney (GP) Limited, Tesco Dystrybucja Sp. z.o.o., Tesco EU IT Services s.r.o., Tesco Employees Share Scheme Trustees Limited, Tesco Estates Limited, Tesco Europe B.V. Netherlands, Tesco Family Dining Limited, Tesco Food Sourcing Brazil Representa??o De Servi?os Ltda., Tesco Food Sourcing Limited, Tesco Foundation (Nadacia Tesco), Tesco Freetime Limited, Tesco Fuchsia (1LP) Limited, Tesco Fuel Limited, Tesco Global Employment Company Limited, Tesco Guangdong (HK) Co. Limited, Tesco High Beech Limited, Tesco Holdings BV, Tesco Holdings Limited, Tesco Home Shopping Limited, Tesco Hungary (Holdings) Limited, Tesco International Franchising s.r.o., Tesco International Internet Retailing Limited, Tesco International Services Limited, Tesco International Sourcing Limited, Tesco Ireland Holdings Limited, Tesco Ireland Limited, Tesco Ireland Pension Trustees Limited, Tesco Jade (GP) Limited, Tesco Joint Buying Service (Shanghai) Co Limited, Tesco Kipa Kitle Pazarlama Ticaret Lojistik ve, Tesco Kirkby (General Partner) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (LP) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (Nominee 1) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (Unitholder 1) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (Unitholder2) Limited, Tesco Lagoon GP Limited, Tesco Licences Limited, Tesco Lotus Retail Growth, Tesco Lotus Retail Growth Freehold and Leasehold Property Fund, Tesco Maintenance Limited, Tesco Mauritius Holdings Limited, Tesco Mobile (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Tesco Mobile CR s.r.o., Tesco Mobile Communications Limited, Tesco Mobile Ireland Limited, Tesco Mobile Ireland Limited, Tesco Mobile Limited, Tesco Mobile Services Limited, Tesco Mobile Slovakia s.r.o, Tesco Mobile Slovakia s.r.o., Tesco Mobile CR, Tesco Nanjing Zhongshan, Tesco Nanjing Zhongshan (HK) Co. Limited, Tesco Navona (1LP) Limited, Tesco Navona (GP) Limited, Tesco Navona (Nominee 1) Limited, Tesco Navona (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Navona (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Navona PL Propco Limited, Tesco Opticians Limited, Tesco Overseas (Holdings) Limited, Tesco Overseas Investments Limited, Tesco Overseas ULC, Tesco Passaic (1LP) Limited, Tesco Passaic (GP) Limited, Tesco Passaic (Nominee 1) Limited, Tesco Passaic (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Passaic (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Passaic PL Propco Limited, Tesco Pension (Jade) Limited, Tesco Pension Investment Limited, Tesco Pension Trustees Limited, Tesco Personal Finance, Tesco Personal Finance Compare Limited, Tesco Personal Finance Group Limited, Tesco Property (No.1) Limited, Tesco Property (Nominees) (No.1) Limited, Tesco Property (Nominees) (No.2) Limited, Tesco Property (Nominees) Limited, Tesco Property A.S., Tesco Property Finance 1 Holdco Limited, Tesco Property Finance 1 PLC, Tesco Property Holdings (No. 2) Limited, Tesco Property Holdings Limited, Tesco Property Limited, Tesco Property Nominees (No.5) Limited, Tesco Property Nominees (No.6) Limited, Tesco Property Partner (GP No.2) Limited, Tesco Property Partner (GP) Limited, Tesco Property Partner (No.1) Limited, Tesco Property Partner (No.2) Limited, Tesco Red (1LP) Limited, Tesco Red (GP) Limited, Tesco Red (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Red (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Sarum (1LP) Limited, Tesco Sarum (GP) Limited, Tesco Seacroft Limited, Tesco Secretaries Limited, Tesco Services Limited, Tesco Sourcing India Private Limited, Tesco Stores (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Tesco Stores (Thailand) Ltd, Tesco Stores CR a.s., Tesco Stores Limited, Tesco Technology Services HK Limited, Tesco Treasury Services PLC, Tesco Trustee Company of Ireland Limited, Tesco Underwriting Limited, Tesco Vin Plus SA, Tesco Worldwide Limited, Tesco for Thais Foundation, Tesco-Global Stores Privately Held Co. Ltd, Tesco.Com Limited, The Brookmaker Limited Partnership, The Teesport Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Aqua Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Atrato Limited Partnership, The Tesco Blue Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Coral Limited Partnership, The Tesco Dorney Limited Partnership, The Tesco Kirkby Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Navona Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Passaic Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Property (No.2) Limited Partnership, The Tesco Red Limited Partnership, The Tesco Sarum Limited Partnership, Trent Hypermarket Private Limited, Trigger Retail Ltd, Valiant Insurance Company DAC, Value House Properties Limited, Variable Preference, Ventnor High Street Management Company Limited, Verulam Properties (2001) Limited, Verulam Properties Limited, Victoria BB Sp z.o.o., WE7, WSC Properties Limited, Wanze Properties (Dundalk) Limited, Weymouth Avenue (Dorchester) Limited, Whitecastle Properties Limited, Wm. Low Supermarkets Limited, Woolwich Central Residents Management Company Limited, Worple Road Plc, Xiamen Firste Property Limited, Xiamen Firste Property Limited, aAcklam Management Company Limited, dunnhumby (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, dunnhumby (Thailand) Limited, dunnhumby Canada Limited, dunnhumby Consulting Services India Private Limited, dunnhumby Czech s.r.o., dunnhumby Employment Company Limited, dunnhumby Holding Limited, dunnhumby Hungary Kft, dunnhumby IT Services India Private Limited, dunnhumby Inc, dunnhumby International Limited, dunnhumby Ireland Limited, dunnhumby Italia Srl., dunnhumby Limited, dunnhumby Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., dunnhumby Netherlands B.V., dunnhumby Norge A.S., dunnhumby Overseas Limited, dunnhumby Poland Sp z.o.o, dunnhumby Slovakia s.r.o., dunnhumby South Africa (Pty) Ltd, dunnhumby Trustees Limited, and dunnuhumby. The state Department of Labor, and local municipalities are encouraging shoppers to head out to stores and shop local for Small Business Saturday. A large portion of the small business here in our region are farming and food and beverage industries with an array of products made in our backyard. The small business sector is a major contributor to the foundation of New Yorks economy, accounting for 98 percent of all businesses in the state and employing nearly 40 percent of New Yorks private sector workforce. The state has more than 530,000 small business proprietors, employing more than 3 million people. As we celebrate small business, Empire State Development wants to ensure people looking to start a small business know about resources available through the state. Head to their website for more information on resources for minorities and women. NEW HARTFORD, N.Y. -- If you picked up an extra toy this year, why not donate it to a good cause? Our "Stuff the Bus" toy drive was parked outside the Adirondack Bank on Commercial Drive Friday. Drop off locations are spread out throughout the Mohawk Valley. Collections will go from now until December 15 and they are still in need of donations. WKTV once again teamed up with Roser Communications. Tomorrow is a huge day for stuff the bus, were going to be at Boscovs at the mall for four hours from noon to 4 [p.m.] We're going to go right from there to the Adirondack Bank Center and we're going to be out in front of the venue before the Comets game from 5 to 7 [p.m.] So six hours for people to get out and catch the bus for people to give us some numbers here, said Kiss FMs Roscoe Red. Saturday the bus will stop at Boscovs at Sangertown Square Mall. Don Shipman will be there will Jill Reale and Listen it's Liz at 2 p.m. A total of 37 charities receive the Stuff the Bus toys and ensure they're distributed to area girls and boys.. Two men are facing multiple charges for alleged illegal hunting and trespassing in Otsego County. After an investigation, Otsego County Sheriffs Office says Dylan Kingsley, 22 of Rome, and Nathaniel Smoot, 23 of North Carolina, were found hunting on private property in the town of Middlefield. They were called to the area, along with the state Environmental Conservation Police, after a hunting complaint. Deputies say Kingsley illegally shot a deer, and Smoot was hunting without a license. A loaded rifle was also found in the vehicle that Smoot was driving, and officials say his driving license had been suspended in New York. They also say Kingsley was in possession of marijuana. Both men were arrested November 20, and arraigned in Middlefield Court. Area rescue missions celebrated Thanksgiving with volunteers and those in need. The Utica Rescue Mission provided a nice, warm meal to several people. Dozens of community members came out to help serve the food. Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente was also there serving up mashed potatoes, stuffing and turkey to those who need it. People with the Utica Rescue Mission say the turn out couldn't be better. We live in a community where many of us know that a third of our community lives below the poverty line. But thanks to the generosity of our community and the rescue mission, we are able to put on a Thanksgiving feast for people in our community who are less fortunate than ourselves, Jim Haid said. The rescue mission served more than 14,000 meals up until Thanksgiving. And the Rome Rescue Mission did the same. They served a continental breakfast. There was a prayer after that, and of course the Thanksgiving feast. There were lots of happy faces, and people from the rescue mission say they get a lot of satisfaction by helping the community. We do this every year for the community because there is a need for it. Obviously with the kind of numbers that we have today, serving over two meals and baskets and when we have it all totaled out it was about 2,500 meals, Maryjoe Timpano said. The rescue mission gave out Thanksgiving baskets filled with food items too. WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) Indiana State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jennifer McCormick knows her ask is going to be a tough one come January. The start of the next Indiana General Assembly begins Jan. 3, and 2019 is a budget year. That means more departments will by vying for more dollars in what's expected to be a difficult session. McCormick said in an interview with News 18 that she is prepared to ask for a 3-percent increase over both fiscal years in the Indiana Department of Education. "We get a lot of attention because we are very expensive," said McCormick. "Our budget is about $8 billion from the State of Indiana." McCormick said that's on top of another $1 billion from the federal government. However, they would like to add dollars to schools safety, flexibility for teacher licenses, and for students who are the most at-risk. "When you're over half of the state's budget, they're looking carefully at what that revenue looks like," said McCormick. "But you have other agencies that want a piece of the pie." They're competing with the Department of Child Services, Higher Education, the Department of Corrections, etc. "There will be winners and there will be losers," said McCormick. "But it's about going to the table to discuss and prioritize as a state." McCormick is willing to fight to be one of those winners. "I really think watching where those dollars go will really show a commitment and really the role that the governor is going to play into this to show his priorities as well." McCormick announced in October that she will not seek another term in 2020. Though a Republican, she has at times been at odds with GOP Statehouse leaders when it comes to education policy. That includes her support for increased scrutiny of charter and voucher schools that receive state money. McCormick is in her first term after ousting Democrat Glenda Ritz in 2016. Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb spoke to McCormick back in October and released the following: "I reminded her that we have more time left in this term than we've been here, and there's still plenty to be accomplished," he said in a statement. "... We'll take the steps necessary to ensure Indiana has the best team working together to provide the highest quality education for children." LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) Cases of a polio-like illness are on the rise in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 106 cases of acute flaccid myelitis have been confirmed in 29 states. That includes one in Indiana. News 18 spoke with a local school district to see how it would handle it if one of its students were diagnosed. The thought of the illness can be scary for school officials like the Lafayette School Corporation's Director of Health Services, Helen Sunkel. "I'm concerned for families and the fear that is caused by things that are unknown," said Sunkel. At this time, it's not known what causes AFM. IU Health Arnett Lafayette Pediatrician Dr. James Bien said most cases start with viral symptoms, like a cold. "Science is suggesting that it's a viral caused illness, but it typically presents as a bad cold or even a stomach infection," Bien said. But it gets worse from there. "Muscle weakness in arms and legs, facial droop, swallowing challenges or speech difficulties that can progressively get worse," he added. Bien said treating it can be difficult. "There's not a specific drug to give or treatment to give to turn this off or to make it get better faster," Bien said. Recovery is not always easy. "Some children have had gradual recovery with therapy and support and some children have had persistent weakness," he added. If it is a viral illness, Bien said the best way to prevent it is good hygiene. He encourages the same methods used to prevent the spread of cold and flu bugs. Sunkel said schools are always sanitizing and encouraging good hygiene. "They are sending children to the nurse and home if they are having signs of symptoms of any kind of an illness," Sunkel said. If a student were diagnosed with AFM, Sunkel said parents would be notified. Since there's a less than one in a million chance of getting it, Sunkel said she's not too concerned. "I'm not anymore frightened of this than any other childhood illness," she said. Both Bien and Sunkel said all vaccinations including the flu shot are also encouraged. Alaska is one of the two non-contiguous US states. It is located in the northwestern region of North America bordering Canada. In the past, the United States and the United Kingdom (which had control of Canada) had a dispute about the boundary of the state. The dispute began back in 1821 during the time of the Russian Empire and was not resolved until later in 1903 through arbitration. Initially, the dispute existed between the UK and the Russian Empire. However, the United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867 thus inheriting the dispute with the UK. The final resolution clearly favored the US, which is why Alaska is part of the US today. Background Back in 1825, Britain and Russia signed the Anglo-Russian Convention, which was aimed at marking out the border between the territories. However, the wording of the convention at that time was more of an agreement in principle than an actual border demarcation. The two major groups that were involved in the agreement were the Hudson's Bay Company of Canada and the Russian-American Company of Russia. In 1867, the US bought Alaska from Russia during a period when the border had not yet been properly demarcated. After the unity of British Columbia under the new Canadian Confederation in 1871, the Canadian government wanted to start a survey to mark the border. The US government denied the request citing high costs for surveying an area that was sparsely populated. However, the area became of importance following the Klondike gold rush that happened between 1897 and 1898. The area became crucial after the discovery of gold and the ensuing surge in population. Consequently, the need for a clear border became crucial. Using the wording from the 1825 definition of the boundary, Canada sent a detachment to occupy it for Canada. However, people from the American side quickly evicted the Canadian police detachment. After this, Canada ended up sending a unit of 200 soldiers to the territory, which further aggravated the dispute. Negotiations Serious negotiations that began in 1898 ended up in failure. One of the biggest issues with the 1825 treaty that posed a challenge was that it was written in French. As such, agreeing on a translation for a document that was already vague severely hampered arbitration efforts. Eventually, both parties agreed to assemble a tribunal of six people in 1903. The tribunal was composed of three Americans (the Secretary of War, a Senator, and an ex-senator), two Canadians (a Lieutenant Governor of Quebec and a lawyer), and a Briton as the sixth member. The six-person tribunal had six agendas to consider. The agendas included the starting point of the boundary, the meaning of the phrase Portland Channel (including how the boundary would be drawn in it), and whether there were existing mountain ranges. Two of the remaining three agendas also revolved around the Portland Channel while the last one was about the lisiere (border) stated in the 1825 treaty. Eventually, the tribunal agreed on the current plan that ended up giving most of the territory to the US. These concessions by the UK were aimed towards getting favor from the US as well as a way of resolving issues between the two countries. Belgium is a country on the North Sea Coast. The low-lying nation is one-third of the Benelux, an economic block comprising of itself, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The Belgian capital, Brussels, is found within 622 miles of the capitals of several Western European nations a fact that effectively puts Belgium at the intersection of Western Europe as a region. As is the case of most countries in Europe, Belgium has a relatively high population thus having to deal with the challenges of increasing urbanization, developing a robust transport system, and industrialization. Addressing these challenges is necessary to maximize commercial agricultural production. Belgium imports large quantities of raw materials and exports manufactured goods on the same scale to its neighboring countries. The Netherlands, Germany, and France are the most important export partners of Belgium. Belgium's Top Import Partners Netherlands The Netherlands is the top import partner of Belgium in addition to being a fellow nation in the Benelux. It accounts for at least 17.3% of Belgian imports. Belgium imports an array of commodities from the Netherlands including mineral fuels which makes up the highest volume. Other imports include machinery, electronic equipment, industrial iron, and steel. Pharmaceuticals and food items such as honey and eggs are also included. Netherlands and Belgium are bound by strong cultural ties, for instance, Dutch is the most spoken language in both countries, and these ties have significantly boosted trade between the two countries. Germany Germany is the second largest exporter to Belgium. It makes up 13.8% of the volume of imports by Belgium. The main goods imported from Germany by Belgium are vehicles which amount to $13.9 billion effectively topping the list of imports. Machinery, plastics, organic chemicals, iron, and steel, as well as pharmaceuticals, also constitute the list of goods that Belgium imports from Germany. Besides, Germany is the top importer of Belgian goods effectively making it one of Belgiums most important overall trade partners. France France comes in third place by import share at 9.5%. The cooperation the two countries go back to the formation of the European Union and NATO agreement of which Belgium was a major proponent. Belgium and France signed a trade agreement in 1934. The top Belgian imports from France are vehicles valued at $6 billion, pharmaceuticals, machinery, beverages, iron and steel, and plastics. Other chemical goods are valued at $1 billion. Belgium also imports cereals from France whose value is about $947 million. Outside the European Union Fellow member countries within the EU make the largest import partners of Belgium, about 75% over the years. The main imports are vehicles, machinery and iron and steel. Outside the EU other major import partners include the United States at 7.1%, the United Kingdom holds 4.9%. The case for imports and exports is greatly hinged on the Belgian system of importation of raw materials to be used in the manufacture of goods for export. The difference between imports and exports is known as the balance of trade which Belgium focuses on keeping positive. Bolivia is an independent country located in the Western part of South America. It is officially known as the Plurinational State of Bolivia. Bolivia is listed as South Americas fifth largest state. It is home to an estimated 11 million residents. The country is landlocked, and it occupies an area of 424,164 square miles. It has diverse geographic features ranging from the Andes mountain ranges to the lowlands. Bolivia is among the poorest countries of South America. Bolivias borders five countries: Peru, Paraguay, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. The country maintains strong relations with its neighbors as well as other foreign nations. Peru Bolivias border with Peru is on the Northwestern side of Bolivia. It is approximately 668 miles long. The two countries share Lake Titicaca, which is South Americas second largest lake. There are some crossing border points along the Bolivia-Peru border. At these border stations, customs officials on both sides of the border check travelers documents before allowing them entry into Bolivia or Peru. In the late 19th century, Bolivia and Peru were engaged in the Pacific war that saw Bolivia lose its coastline to Chile. In 2010, Peru signed an agreement with Bolivia that gave the landlocked country of Bolivia a piece of land along the Pacific coast of Peru. The generous act was welcomed by the Bolivian government which established plans to build a port and a beach resort on the piece of land. Brazil Bolivia shares an expansive border with Brazil on the Eastern side of Bolivia. The Bolivia-Brazil border is approximately 2,127 miles long. The borderline between the two countries passes through diverse terrain ranging from developed urban centers to harsh desert terrain and through thick tropical forests. Bolivia and Brazil have had strained relations in the past. At the start of the 20th century, the two Latin American neighbors fought over a piece of fertile land on the Amazon basin. The matter was settled in 1903 after Bolivia sold the land to Brazil. More recently in 2006, Bolivia and Brazil were engaged in a serious dispute over Bolivias plan to nationalize its energy sector. Brazilian authorities were concerned that Petrobras a Brazilian energy company operating in Bolivia would not be adequately compensated in the nationalization plans. In an attempt to enhance regional integration, Brazil and Bolivia settled the dispute in February 2007. Paraguay Bolivia and Paraguay are landlocked nations in South America. The Bolivia-Paraguay border is situated on the Southern part of Bolivia. The border runs through the lowlands area referred to as the Chaco region. Bolivia and Paraguay have had some conflicts in the past. Between 1932 and 1935, the two South American countries were involved in the deeply fought Chaco War. The Chaco War was classified as the toughest war in Latin America in the 20th century. The source of conflict was Bolivia's and Paraguay's fight over the Gran Chaco area said to have rich oil deposits. Foreign nations took sides and supported either Bolivia or Paraguay in the war. The two countries suffered severe economic decline from the war. A ceasefire agreement between the two nations was reached in June 1935. Paraguay emerged as the winner in the dispute and took a larger portion of the disputed area. The final report with a marked borderline between Bolivia and Paraguay was given to the Presidents of the two countries in 2009. Chile Bolivia and Chile share a border on the South Western side of Bolivia. The two nations have had difficult relations since the early 19th century. The major source of conflict was a fight for land by the two countries. The fight started shortly after the two nations attained independence from Spain. Bolivia and Chile claimed a piece of land along the Pacific coast. Bolivia and Chile heavily fought during the War of the Pacific which lasted for five years. At the end of the war, Chile emerged the winner and secured a significant part of Bolivias and Perus Pacific coast. Consequently, Bolivia was left without a coastline which resulted in the country being a landlocked nation. The hostile action by Chile led to strained relations between Bolivia and Chile. Chile established a rail link between Bolivia and the Pacific coast and gave favorable terms to Bolivia to access the Coastline through Chile. Bolivias attempts to acquire its coastline back from Chile in October 2018 failed after the International Court of Justice ruled in favor of Chile. Argentina Bolivia shares a border with its South American neighbor Argentina. The border is on the Southern part of Bolivia. The two nations were once united under the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata. To date, Bolivia and Argentina have maintained amicable relations. The two share close economic and cultural ties. In 2016, Bolivia exported goods and services worth $708 million to Argentina. Additionally, millions of Bolivian citizens live and work in Argentina. There are three official border stations along the Bolivia-Argentina Border which are operated by customs officials from Bolivia and Argentina. Concurs de granturi adresat COMUNITATILOR (APL) pentru sporirea rezilientei lor la schimbarile climatice si FEMEILOR ANTREPRENOARE in vederea dezvoltarii unor afaceri prietenoase mediului The Central African Republic (CAR) is an African nation that is situated in the central part of the continent. The nation is landlocked, and it encompasses an area of about 240,535 square miles making it one of the largest landlocked countries globally. The country shares its land boundaries with six nations, which include the DRC, Sudan, South Sudan, the Republic of the Congo, Chad, and Cameroon. Sudan The CAR and Sudan are separated by a border that is approximately 108 miles long and is situated in the northeastern region of the Central African Republic. The boundary between the two nations was negotiated during the colonial era by the French, who at the time had control of the Central African Republic, and the British who at the time had control of Sudan. In the past, the border between South Sudan and the Central African Republic was significantly longer but after South Sudan gained its independence, the length reduced by roughly 655 miles. The Democratic Republic Of The Congo CAR and the DRC are separated by a border that is approximately 1085 miles long and is located on the southern edge of the Central African Republic. Several major rivers cross the border between the two nations with some of the most famous being the Oubangui, and Mbomou. There are several major cities located on the CAR side of the border such as Bangassou and Bangui. Chad The Central African Republic and Chad share a border that is roughly 966 miles long located in the northern edge of the country. One of the significant towns located on the Central African side of the border is Ndele. Cameroon The Central African Republic and Cameroon are separated by a border that is roughly 560 miles long and is located on the western edge of the country. There are several towns on the CAR side of the border with some of the most famous being Carnot, Bouar, and Nola. On the southern edge of the border, it traces the same path as the Sangha River. Mount Ngaoui is also situated on the border between the two countries. The Republic Of The Congo The border which is roughly 302 miles long separates the CAR and the Republic of Congo. The border is situated in the southwestern edge of the CAR and was determined during the colonial period. Some of the towns located on the Central African side of the border include Mbaiki, Boda, and Zinga. South Sudan South Sudan and the Central African Republic are separated by a border that is roughly 655 miles long located on the eastern edge of the Central African Republic. The border previously formed part of the boundary that separated the CAR from Sudan. The CAR established official diplomatic ties with South Sudan in 2012 more than a year after recognizing it as an independent nation. With the crisis over Brexit wracking Britains ruling elite, Jeremy Corbyn is offering the Labour Party under his leadership as a safe pair of hands that can be trusted with the reins of power. Once denied access to critical intelligence briefings on the basis that he was deemed by many in ruling circles as a threat to national security, Corbyn has met with both the UKs main intelligence agencies in recent weeks. After first meeting the domestic agency, MI5, for a briefing on the struggle against extremism, he then met with Alex Younger, the head of the foreign intelligence service, MI6, reportedly to discuss possible preparations for a snap general election in the event of the failure of Brexit negotiations. Corbyn has not said a word about the content of his meetings, but days later the head of the Armed Forces, General Sir Nick Carter, confirmed the existence of sensible contingency plans Whether its a terrorist attack or whether its a tanker drivers dispute, industrial action or whatever else it might be. Corbyn appeared before the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) on Monday to deliver what was billed as his main policy speech on Brexit. The event was the third successive year he has addressed the CBIs annual conference in the heart of Londons Canary Wharf financial district. He spoke immediately after Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May, who received a lukewarm reception. Corbyn insisted a Labour government was a better option for business than the Tories, telling his audience that Labours Brexit policy was framed around their requirements. Labour will not countenance a no deal Brexit because I fully understand why business, which knows how disastrous no deal would be, is so concerned at the prospect, and why some might feel under pressure to support any deal, no matter how botched and half-baked, to avoid a worse outcome. Were talking about 10,000 lorries a day arriving at Dover handling 17 percent of the countrys entire trade in goods, worth an estimated 122 billion last year, he continued. Businesses and workers need certainty, so Labour insisted on a new comprehensive and permanent customs union with a British say in future trade deals that would ensure no hard border in Northern Ireland and avoid the need for the governments half-baked backstop deal. Second, a sensible deal must guarantee a strong single market relationship. All he was asking in return for delivering on these key issues was that, The largest businesses that can afford it will pay a bit more towards the common good. To facilitate delivering on businesses demands, Corbyn proposes legislation for trade union officials to have places on the boards of larger firms. He assured his audience, Despite the frenzied reactions in certain sections of the press this certainly isnt about any kind of war on business, rather the opposite. Labour recognises the vast and vital contribution businesses make to our economy and our society. At the centre of this proposal is developing the competitivity of British capital based on policies of intensified collaboration between management and employee representatives who have an interest in the long-term success of your companytheir company. They have in-depth knowledge of its day to day workings. They have so much to contribute and giving them a real voice will strengthen, not weaken, the business. Asked his views on those who became rich through business in the CBI Q&A session, Corbyn replied, I dont have a problem with people doing well at all. Indeed, I know many in my own community and other places that do set up and establish small businesses, and sometimes they grow to be considerably bigger. He declared, And if they do become incredibly rich, then I invite them to be happy with their wealth, but also to share it a bit by paying their taxes as appropriately so that our public services are there for them, just as much as they are there for everybody else, so that we dont have this horribly divided society. There is precious little to distinguish such statements from the infamous words of Tony Blairs leading advisor Peter Mandelson that New Labour was intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich. All Corbyn wants is for the financial oligarchs to leave a few crumbs for everyone else. Corbyn authored an article in the pro-Labour Daily Mirror to coincide with his CBI appearance that confirmed his evolution from a non-descript backbench Labour MP, prone to registering a protest at his partys rotten policies, to an imperialist statesman in waiting. He denounced Mays EU deal as an unparalleled and unacceptable loss of sovereignty, which Labour will not accept on behalf of our country. Corbyn speaks often of the gravity of the social situation facing the working class and the worsening threat to the wages, conditions and livelihoods of millions. He even suggests that there may be the need for a general election, but only if Mays deal proves unacceptable to parliament and she does not agree for a minority Labour government to restart negotiations with the European Union. His tortured formulations are necessitated by his not wishing to do anything that suggested to the super-rich that he would genuinely put the interests of the working class above theirs. He doesnt want Labour to come to office as the result of an ignominious fall of the Tories, with millions of workers demanding an end to policies of austerity and militarism, but with as smooth a transition as possible. This was demonstrated just two hours after his CBI speech, when he ensured that the May government could continue in office unhindered. Monday evening saw Corbyn and 30 other Labour MPs absent themselves, without explanation, from crucial votes on the governments budget. One of the amendments to the bill, on child poverty, was put by Corbyn himself. With Mays coalition partners, the Democratic Unionist Party, refusing to back the government as a protest over a backstop arrangement in the EU deal that keeps the UK and Northern Ireland in the Customs Union, the government won by just five votes. Commenting on the debacle, Scottish National Party MP Neil Gray said, Labour had the chance to defeat the government, they apparently knew the DUP were voting with us, and they still contrived to let the Tories off the hook. In 2013, two years prior to becoming prime minister, the leader of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, went to the United States to speak before the Brookings Institution to allay any fears that he was serious about opposing austerity or threating imperialist interests in the Mediterranean. Is there really a reason for somebody to be afraid of the left in Greece today? he asked. But how are we really radical? Tsipras passed his audition and went on to impose far more brutal austerity than even his right-wing predecessors after coming to power in 2015. Corbyns own audition has been ongoing for over three years, as he has conspired with the trade unions in suppressing all struggles of the working class and made one retreat after another before his Blairite opponents. He hopes that his staunch defence of national sovereignty and the essential concerns of the CBI will finally convince the ruling elite that he is someone they can trust as British capitalism enters its most turbulent period since World War II. The author also recommends: UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn hails Alexis Tsipras of Syriza [4 July 2018] Last week, newly-elected Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released a proposal for an addendum to the rules of the US House of Representatives, to create a new congressional committee that would draft legislation for a Green New Deal. Nine Democrats have already put their names to the proposal, including Rashida Tlaib, who like Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. The document includes the call for a transition to 100 percent renewable energy within 10 years, and actions to virtually eliminate poverty in the United States and to make prosperity, wealth and economic security available to everyone. It calls for a job guarantee program to assure a living wage to every person who wants one; massive investment in the drawdown of greenhouse gases, and upgrading every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety. The document, as with Ocasio-Cortezs politics, is characterized by a massive political fraud. It includes various left-sounding rhetoric, but is entirely directed to and dependent upon the Democratic Party. In particular, the members of the committee would be selected by the Speaker of the House, who is likely to be Nancy Pelosi, the stalwart of the Democratic Party establishment who has received the support of Ocasio-Cortez herself. Any serious measures to stop global warming, let alone assure a job and livable wage to everyone, would require a massive redistribution of wealth and the reallocation of trillions currently spent on US imperialisms neo-colonial wars abroad. Ocasio-Cortezs document, however, excludes any encroachment on the fortunes of the ruling class. It calls instead for innovative public and other financing structures, including a new public bank, or system of banks, or public venture funds, which in concrete terms means nothing more than new avenues for providing cheap credit to private corporations. Everything is phrased as part of consultation with business leaders. Several of her proposals are explicitly aimed at promoting the interests of different sections of capital, including the call to promote opportunities for entrepreneurship, and promote economic security, labor market flexibility and entrepreneurism. Labor market flexibilitythat is, the ability of corporations to fire and hire at will. Such is the character of Ocasio-Cortezs great left-wing reform! The original New Deal, which included massive public works infrastructure projects, was introduced by Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s amid the Great Depression. Its purpose was to stave off a socialist revolution in America. It was a response to a militant upsurge of strikes and violent class battles, led by socialists who were inspired by the 1917 Russian Revolution that had occurred less than two decades before. American capitalism could afford to make such concessions because of its economic dominance. The past forty years have been characterized by the continued decline of American capitalism on a world stage relative to its major rivals. The ruling class has responded to this crisis with a social counterrevolution to claw back all gains won by workers. This has been carried out under both Democratic and Republican administrations and with the assistance of the trade unions. Since the 2008 crash, first under Bush and Obama, and now Trump, the ruling elites have pursued a single-minded policy of enriching the wealthy, through free credit, corporate bailouts and tax cuts, while slashing spending on social services. To claim as does Ocasio-Cortez that American capitalism can provide a new New Deal, of a green or any other variety, is to promote an obvious political fiction. None of the signatories to the bill believes that any of its proposalsexcept those directly tailored to corporate interestswill ever be implemented. Its purpose is rather to promote illusions that the Democratic Party, a party of the corporate and financial elite no less than the Republicans, can be transformed into an agency of social progress. The document states that the newly-formed committee would be required to complete its plan by January 2020 and publish its draft legislation by March 2020, immediately prior to the next presidential elections. Any such documents would be wholly aimed at providing some popular appeal to the Democrats election campaign. They would be permanently shelved immediately after the election, regardless of the outcome. Ocasio-Cortezs promotion of the Green New Deal is also aimed at distracting attention from her own rapid rightward shift after her primary victory. She has backtracked on her earlier criticisms of Israeli slaughters of Gaza protesters; hailed the late Republican Senator and war criminal John McCain as an unparalleled example of human decency and American service; called for securing US borders, dropped her previous calls to Abolish ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], and declared that this slogan does not mean abolish deportations of immigrants. Over the weekend, she declared her support for Nancy Pelosi as the speaker of the House. The Green New Deal is another example of the political function of Ocasio-Cortez and the DSA in seeking to provide a left political veneer for the capitalist politics of the Democratic Party. The latter is campaigning against the billionaire demagogue Trump on a right-wing basis, attacking him not for his militarist threats, fascistic rants, attacks on immigrants and efforts to build up an extra-parliamentary extreme-right movement, but for being insufficiently deferential toward the American intelligence agencies and aggressive toward Russia. A socialist response to climate change cannot take place through the Democratic Party or within the framework of capitalism. It requires the organization of production according to a rational, scientific plan on a global scale. This requirement is fundamentally incompatible with both the private ownership of humanitys productive forces (and the subordination of production according to the profit interests of the capitalist class), and the continued division of the world into rival national states, who compete on behalf of their own capitalist class for markets, profits and geostrategic control. What is needed is not empty promises of a new New Deal bestowed from above by the capitalist classwhich in any case is impossiblebut socialist revolution by the working class and a fundamental transformation of society. Canadas Liberal government is outlawing the campaign of rotating strikes 50,000 Canada Post workers have mounted since Oct. 22. Like the previous Harper Conservative government, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberals stand four-square behind government-owned Canada Post and its drive to perpetuate and intensify a brutal, profit-driven work regimen. Postal workers must endure forced overtime, speed-up, and an accident rate more than five times the norm in federally regulated industries. Their real wages have been eroded by a succession of concessionary contracts. In addition, young and other low-seniority workers face multi-tier wages and precarious employment. Yesterday, the government presented to parliament an Act to provide for the resumption and continuation of postal services or Bill C-89, and initiated steps to suspend normal legislative rules, so as to ensure its speedy passage. In tabling Bill C-89, Labour Minister Patty Hajdu claimed the Liberal government is a strong supporter of collective bargaining and worker rights, and was only resorting to strikebreaking legislation because it had exhausted every other option." She went on to say that the government was holding off on immediately mounting a full-court press to ram its emergency legislation into law, because we still believe that Canada Post and CUPW (the Canadian Union of Postal Workers) can get a deal." This is all hogwash. The Liberals are a government of and for big business. Behind a bilge of phony progressive rhetoric, they have pursued the same pro-austerity, pro-war agenda as their Conservative predecessors. This includes cutting tens of billions from health care, hiking military spending by more than 70 percent by 2026, and expanding Canadas role in Washingtons military-strategic offensives against Russia and China and in the oil-rich Middle East. In Wednesdays fall fiscal update, the Liberals rewarded big business with a further $16.5 billion in tax cuts and subsidies in the name of boosting the countrys international competitiveness. As for Hajdus claim that the government wants to give collective bargaining one more chance even as it bludgeons postal workers back to work, this was a feeble attempt to obscure the Liberals role as handmaidens for big business. Corporate Canada considers postal workers fight for secure, safe jobs and a decent living for themselves and their families an intolerable infringement on profits and a dangerous example for the rest of the working class. Letting slip the governments true motivations, the Labour Minister told parliament that the rotating walkouts have had significant negative impacts on businesses, international commerce (and) Canada Post. CUPW has signaled that it will comply with the legislation and order postal workers to call off all job action, just as soon as it receives royal assent. The union has been armed with a massive rank-and-file mandate for an all-out strike since September. Yet in response to the government strikebreaking, no one in the CUPW leadership has so much as suggested that postal workers should transform their rotating walkouts into a national strike, let alone appealed to the working class to come to postal workers defence. Rather CUPW President Mike Palecekuntil recently a leader of the pseudo-left Fightback grouprushed to announce that the union will challenge the constitutionality of any back-to-work law in the courts. Workers, including postal workers, have lived this scenario many times before. Time and again, union bureaucrats have enforced anti-strike laws, arguing that workers whose struggles have been criminalized should not defend themselves through class struggle, but rather seek redress through the courts. That is, by relying on appeals to a key part of the repressive state machine that enforces the dictatorship of big business. One moreover, that has played a key role in the offensive against the working class, upholding the constitutionality of numerous anti-strike and anti-worker laws. In an attempt to willfully deceive workers, the CUPW bureaucrats are trumpeting an Ontario Superior Court decision that found the Harper Conservative governments law suppressing the 2011 strike unconstitutional. What they omit to mention is that this ruling had effectively no material impact. The massive rollbacks, including pension cuts and a huge expansion of two-tier and precarious employment, imposed on postal workers in the contracts dictated by the Conservative government-appointed arbitrator, remain in force. In a no less unmistakable sign that CUPW is preparing to call off all job action, Palecek issued a joint statement with Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) President Hassan Yussuff condemning the governments actions. The CLC, with Palecek and the CUPWs strong support, played a critical role in propelling the Liberals to power in the 2015 election through their Anybody but Conservative campaigna get-out-the-vote initiative that painted Trudeau and the Liberals, long Canadian big businesss preferred party of government, in progressive hues. Yussuff regularly boasts about the access he and other top union bureaucrats enjoy to the Liberal government, and served on the governments NAFTA Advisory Council along with leading representatives of big business. In the joint CUPW-CLC press release, Palecek used fiery rhetoric. The CUPW president charged Trudeau with showing his true colours and sharing Harpers anti-worker agenda. But all this was hot air, since Palecek went on to cravenly accept the imposition of a concessionary contract as a foregone conclusion. Back-to-work legislation, he declared, has serious long-term impacts on the work environment and on labour relations. Once contracts are imposed that dont address our core concerns around unsafe working conditions, equality for rural carriers, and access to secure full-time middle-class jobs, thats just more ground well continue to struggle to regain. With the full support of the rightwing CLC leadership, Palecek and the CUPW apparatus will point to the threat of $1,000-a-day fines for workers should they defy the Liberals strikebreaking legislation to claim that there is no viable alternative to submission. But it has been obvious from the outset of the negotiations that a back-to-work law was the pivot of Canada Posts strategy and that the Liberals, if need be, would do its and big businesss biddingjust as they did in 1978, when Trudeaus father, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, threatened to fire postal workers en masse, after they defied a back-to-work law; and in 1997 under Jean Chretien, when the Liberals again stripped postal workers of their rights to strike and bargain collectively. Yet rather than prepare for a political struggle against the government, by fighting to make the postal workers struggle the spearhead of a working-class counteroffensive against the dismantling of public services and the shredding of workers social rights, the CUPW leadership has done everything to demobilize and isolate them. Not only did CUPW restrict job action to one- and two-day regional strikes. It breathed not a word about the threat of government intervention and it persisted in this silence even as the government, starting with Trudeaus November 8 statement about Ottawa being ready to use all options to get the mail moving, openly brandished the threat of a strikebreaking law. This week, after the government served the requisite 48-hour notice that it would be introducing a bill to outlaw the postal workers job action, Palecek suddenly blurted out that Canada Post is up to their same old game, which is to try to provoke back-to-work legislation... They create a crisis, in this case a fictional (backlog of undelivered mail), and then wait for the government to bail them out. Paleceks words stand as an indictment of his own and the CUPW leaderships complicity. If workers have been ambushed by the government, it is because the union that purports to represent them has deliberately sought to blind them to the threat they face, while preventing them from mobilizing their strength to shut down Canada Post and appeal to the working class for support. If postal workers are not to suffer a further reversal, they must seize the leadership of their struggle from the hands of the CUPW apparatus by forming rank-and-file committees at every workplace to immediately initiate a national strike and prepare defiance of Bill C-89. To defeat the government assault will require a working-class political struggle. Postal workers must link their struggle to the broader mass, but as of yet inchoate, opposition to the relentless big-business assault on working peoples social and democratic rights and rampant social inequality. The World Socialist Web Site recognizes defiance of Bill C-89 will make postal workers the target of a savage counterattack from big business, its political hirelings in the Liberal government, and the capitalist courts and police. But if postal workers face powerful enemies, their potential allies among workers across Canada and around the world are even stronger. Riot police stormed the Northern Territorys Don Dale youth prison on November 6, after two of the imprisoned children allegedly took a key from a guard and unlocked the cells of other inmates. Some of the youth allegedly set fire to the centres school building and attempted to escape by cutting through the prison fences with angle grinders. After an eight-hour standoff, police fired tear gas before forcibly removing the children to the watch house of Darwin police station. Parents of the Don Dale detainees, who heard about the incident on social media, watched in fear as the Territory Response Grouppart of the national counter-terrorism taskforcestormed the burning prison. One parent posted to social media: They want to surrender but theyre scared because theres people running around with guns, pointing them at them. Another relative stated: Weve made this institutionalised decision to jail kids. That aint right. Its wrong. Even Northern Territory (NT) government representatives have been forced to acknowledge the appalling conditions at the facility. Brent Warren, the NT governments general manager for youth justice, described Don Dale as a retired and broken adult prison. The government, however, has made clear that it will press ahead with a law-and-order agenda that includes persecuting the most vulnerable youths and forcing them into dangerous prisons for minor offences. In 2014, inmates in the original Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre were transferred to Berrimah Prison, a maximum-security facility previously used to house adult inmates. They were later returned to the asbestos-riddled new Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre after minor renovations. A report on the Australian Broadcasting Corporations Four Corners program in 2016 exposed the inhumane and illegal treatment of children held at the Don Dale facility. Children, as young as 12, were frequently assaulted over a number of years by guards trained in mixed martial arts. The program documented a 2014 incident, in which heavily armed riot police stormed the facility after minor unrest, indiscriminately using capsicum spray against prone children. It documented one inmate, then 17-year-old Dylan Voller, being immobilised for hours on end in a hooded restraint chair, akin to those used in the US militarys torture programs at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. The federal Liberal-National Coalition government announced a royal commission in a bid to defuse international outrage over the incident. The royal commission called for Don Dale to be closed, finding that youth detention centres in the NT were not fit for accommodating, let alone rehabilitating, children and young people. Like every other royal commission, it was a whitewash, which held nobody to account for the institutional abuse of young people, and did nothing to alter the conditions of those who remained imprisoned. The state Labor government, in office since 2016, has ensured that the inhumane facility remains open. For decades, Labor and Country-Liberal-led NT governments have pursued punitive law and order policies aimed at criminalising the poor. With roughly twice the per-capita staffing level of any other Australian state, NT police are notorious for harassing and demeaning treatment of ordinary people, especially of an indigenous background. Armed with paperless arrest powers, which allow them to take people into custody without making any written record, Territory police routinely detain citizens on suspicion of minor offences. On an average day in the Northern Territory, there are around 1,750 people in full-time prison custody. This represents almost 1 percent of the population, more than four times the national average. The situation is much worse for indigenous people, with 2.4 percent of the NTs Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander residents incarcerated. Overall, indigenous people make up 85 percent of the NT adult prison population. In June of this year, every youth in detention in the NT was Aboriginal. These draconian measures have created record levels of overcrowding in NT correctional facilities. With prisons overflowing and grossly under-resourced, rehabilitation programs aimed at addressing anger management, domestic violence, and drug and alcohol addiction, as well as education and work experience programs, have been cut. Nothing has been done to address the profound social problems facing indigenous people in the Northern Territory. More than a quarter of Aboriginal people are unemployed, and the figure is higher for young people and those living in rural areas. Federal and state governments have responded to the social crisis, with welfare quarantining, police and military deployments and degrading work for the dole programs. As one relative of the Don Dale inmates told reporters at the perimeter fence, Most of these kids here that are causing trouble now are from communities. Guess what? Were born poor, we die poor. These kids are institutionalised from birth We need industry out there, we need jobs and opportunities for these young kids. We dont need to be locking them away here. We should be building TAFE centres and things like that so kids can get educated. And what are we doing? Nothing. Because the CLP [Country Liberal Party], the ALP [Australian Labor Party], and every other political party are just the same. Anti-democratic attacks on vulnerable working class youths are not confined to the Northern Territory. After Victorias Parkville Youth Justice Centre was damaged by inmates during unrest in 2016, some of the teenage detainees were moved to Barwon Prison, a maximum-security adult jail. There they were capsicum-sprayed and faced extended periods of solitary confinement. Due to the lack of adequate educational facilities, the youth were unable to continue working towards their high school or TAFE certificates. The Victorian Labor government, which carried out this illegal transfer of children to an adult prison, later announced in 2017 that it was constructing the the highest-security youth justice facility that Victoria has ever seen. This would have six-metre perimeter fencing and many of the same design features as a maximum-security adult prison. The increasingly repressive measures directed against youth by governments across the country are part of a broader police-state build-up, supported by the entire political establishment. This is aimed at preparing for the violent repression of the social and political struggles that will inevitably emerge as a result of the social crisis created by Labor and Liberal-National governments alike. The author also recommends: Systemic abuses in Australias juvenile prisons: The class issues [4 August 2016] On October 2021, a Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) Congress voted for the party to take part in the European elections of 26 May 2019 and elected candidates for the national electoral list. The following resolution, adopted unanimously by the Congress, explains the objectives and tasks of the SGP. In May 2019, the Socialist Equality Party (SGP) will run in the European elections with a nationwide electoral list to oppose the rise of the far right, growing militarism, the building of a police state and increasing social inequality. Together with the other sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), we are fighting for a socialist program to unify the European working class in struggle against capitalism. This is the only way to prevent the continent from relapsing into fascist barbarism and war. 1. The fight against the right-wing danger World War II ended less than 75 years ago. At that time, in 1945, all of Europe lay in ruins. More than 60 million people had been killed on the battlefields, in the Nazis gas chambers and in bombing raids. It was said at the time that such crimes should never happen again. But today it is becoming ever more apparent that capitalism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity or peace. Fascism and war are returning. At the head of the United States, the most powerful capitalist country, stands an ultra-right president who threatens North Korea, Iran and nuclear-armed Russia and China with war. Far-right parties are on the rise across Europe. In nine countriesItaly, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Finland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Greecethey sit in government; in France, they are the second strongest party. Even in Germany, which committed the greatest crimes in world history under Hitler, the Nazis are back. The AfD, whose leader Alexander Gauland glossed over the Nazis barbarism as a bird dropping in a thousand years of successful German history, is the first right-wing extremist party to sit in the Bundestag (Parliament). At the end of September, a neo-Nazi mob of several thousand rampaged through Chemnitz, chanting xenophobic slogans, performing the Hitler salute, and attacking a Jewish restaurant. Unlike the Nazis in the 1930s, todays fascists are not a mass movement. But this does not make them any less dangerous. Hitlers movement had several hundred thousand armed members when, in January 1933, a conspiracy around President von Hindenburg appointed him Reich Chancellor; behind him stood the capitalists, large landowners and the military. These forces needed the Nazis to smash the organized working class and to prepare the Second World War. Todays right-wing extremists draw their strength primarily from the support they receive from abovefrom the state apparatus, the intelligence services and the police, but also from the government and the established parties. The rise of the AfD is the result of a veritable conspiracy in the state and political establishment. One of the most important pillars of the AfD is the state security apparatus. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer and then-President of the Verfassungsschutz (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the domestic intelligence agency) Hans-Georg Maaen, openly defended the neo-Nazi march in Chemnitz. The Verfassungsschutz is closely intertwined with the neo-Nazi scene, which it controls and finances through informers. Many AfD MPs and officials have a military or police background. Support for the AfD extends deeper, however. The media, the universities and every party in the Bundestag have paved the way for its rise, both ideologically and politically. These other parties have welcomed the AfD with open arms. They have entrusted it with the leadership of three important committees: Legal Affairs, Budget and Tourism. The Grand Coalition has adopted the AfDs program in refugee policy and internal security. Although the AfD received only 12.6 percent of the vote, it now sets the tone in federal politics. Resistance is growing. The demonstration on October 13 in Berlin expressed the mass opposition that exists to the return of German fascism and militarism. It was the biggest demonstration since the protests against the Iraq War, 15 years ago. Nearly a quarter of a million people marched in Berlin to protest racism, the rise of the AfD, and the right-wing policies of the federal government and the established parties. In other German cities, tens of thousands have repeatedly taken to the streets in recent weeks. These events confirm the analyses and perspectives of the Socialist Equality Party (SGP). The AfD is not the expression of a widespread right-wing mood among the population; it is being consciously promoted by the ruling class. This is what the right-wing extremist party needs in order to enforce its anti-social and militaristic policies against widespread opposition. Political outrage and mass protests are important. However, they are not sufficient to prevent the ruling class from pursuing its reactionary goals once again, as in the 1930s, with fascist methods. The ruling class is reacting to the massive opposition among workers and youth with growing aggressiveness: it is closing ranks, suppressing democratic opposition, and stepping up its political conspiracy against the population. The police and secret services are being strengthened and their surveillance powers massively extended. The Network Enforcement Act forces social media to censor content or face stiff penalties. During the European election campaign, the EU intends to impose draconian fines on parties that spread fake newsthat is, facts that contradict official NewSpeak. This censorship is primarily directed against leftist and socialist criticism. The World Socialist Web Site is the most affected by Googles censorship, and Julian Assange faces extradition to the United States, and possibly the death penalty, because WikiLeaks uncovered war crimes committed by the US government. Behind the scenes, influential circles in politics, the media, the secret service and the military are working to bring an openly right-wing extremist government to power in Berlin. With the AfDs entry into the Bundestag, something has also changed for the better, Bundestag President Wolfgang Schauble told the Bild am Sonntag. And Spiegel columnist Jakob Augstein demanded: The AfD must have a say in government. The SGP bases its struggle against the return of fascism, militarism and war on the upsurge of the class struggle. As the ruling class worldwide moves sharply to the right, the vast majority of the working class is moving to the left and is beginning to shake off the political shackles imposed on it by the social-democratic parties and trade unions. This is reflected in an increasing number of strikes and protests, and a growing interest in socialism. In the United States, strikes by teachers, UPS workers and other workers rebelling against their right-wing union leaders, are increasing. In Europe last year there were numerous strikes at Ryanair, Lufthansa, Air France and Amazon, against the labour market reform in France, against austerity in Greece, and in the German metal industry and public sector, to name but a few. The intensification of the class struggle imposes enormous responsibilities on the SGP. The same factors that drive the ruling class to war also create the objective conditions for socialist revolution, the SGP declared in its September 2014 resolution on The return of German militarism and the tasks of the Socialist Equality Party. It stressed: But the socialist revolution is not an automatic process. The decisions on its pace and success are made in the political sphere. As Trotsky wrote on the eve of the Second World War, the historical crisis of humanity amounts to the crisis of revolutionary leadership. The solution to this crisis depends on the decisions, actions and construction of our party. 2. The Bankruptcy of Capitalism The SGP fights to raise the political consciousness of the working class to the level of its historical tasks. This requires, first of all, a clear understanding of the historical experiences of the class struggle and the current objective crisis. The return to militarism and the rise of far-right parties are international phenomena. They are the reaction of the ruling class to the world crisis of capitalism. None of the problems that made the first half of the twentieth century the most conflict-ridden and violent epoch in human history has been solved. Temporarily held in abeyance, they now return with redoubled force. The First and Second World Wars followed inexorably from the contradictions of international capitalism. With the present level of technology and skill of the workers, it is quite possible to create adequate conditions for the material and spiritual development of all mankind, the Fourth International declared in its 1940 Manifesto on the Imperialist War. It would be necessary only to organize the economic life within each country and over our entire planet correctly, scientifically, and rationally, according to a general plan. So long, however, as the main productive forces of society are held by trusts, i.e., isolated capitalist cliques, and so long as the national state remains a pliant tool in the hands of these cliques, the struggle for markets, for sources of raw materials, for domination of the world, must inevitably assume a more and more destructive character. Hitlers plans for world conquest were not the subjective product of a deranged mind, but the expression of the objective interests of German capital, which had to subjugate Europe and conquer living space in the East, in order to expand and to suppress the explosive class tensions within. The German bourgeoisie therefore supported Hitler and installed him in power. Now they and the ruling classes of the other imperialist powers are returning to the same methods. After the Second World War, German capitalism was temporarily able to expand Europe-wide and worldwide without itself waging dirty wars, as the United States did in Korea and Vietnam. Washington calculated that its own interests required that it put its German war opponent back on its feet to pacify Western Europe, serve as a bulwark against the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and offer a market for its own exports. At the same time, the US hesitated to rearm Germany. Although Germany maintained a large territorial defence army, it had no nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers, or long-range bombers of its ownweapons that are indispensable to functioning as a world military power. The situation changed with German reunification and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This did not inaugurate a new era of democracy and peace, but destroyed the internal balance of Europe and ushered in a new era of imperialist conflicts and wars. The United States saw the end of the Soviet Union as an opportunity to halt the erosion of its global dominance through the unrestrained deployment of its military. It has waged criminal wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen and threatened Iran with war in pursuit of this goal. These conflicts are imperialist wars over raw materials, markets and world domination. The new US National Security Strategy (NSS) bluntly declares that preparation for war between the major powers is at the center of US military planning. At the heart of US national security is not terrorism, but competition between major powers, said Secretary of Defense James Mattis as he presented the NSS in December 2017. This is directed not only against China and Russia, but also against former allies such as Germany and Japan. 3. For the United Socialist States of Europe The European Union does not embody the unity of Europe. It is the arena in which the battle for supremacy over Europe takes place. Claims that the introduction of a single market, a common currency and a gigantic bureaucracy in Brussels would overcome the division of the continent into 50 competing nation states, equalize living conditions and secure peace, have proven to be a political fraud. The EU strengthens the centrifugal forces it claims to overcome. Since the 2008 financial crisis, the EUs role as a tool of the most powerful capitalist interests has become increasingly naked. To secure the profits of the international banks, it dictated an austerity program to Greece that plunged the population into bitter poverty. Spending on pensions, education, health and public investment was slashed, and public debt raised to 180 percent of GDP, in order to satisfy Greeces creditors. It will take Greece at least 42 years to pay off these debts. Brussels committed Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and other countries to similar austerity programs. Germany, which benefited economically, like no other country, from the introduction of the euro and the EUs expansion to the east, is forcing its financial and austerity policies on other EU member states. Herfried Munkler, who advises the Federal Government on foreign policy issues, openly calls for Germany to become Europes hegemon and disciplinarian. With this, the ruling class is returning to the German-European power politics of the German Kaiser and of Hitler. The national interest of Germany has a name: Europe is the slogan of the SPD-led Foreign Office. With social-democratic, Green and pseudo-left parties across Europe supporting the EU, right-wing nationalist parties have profited from rising popular opposition to Brussels. In Britain, a majority voted for Brexit. A bitter struggle is now raging in the ruling class between two reactionary camps: pro-EU supporters of Brussels austerity policies in the Remain camp, and right-wing, anti-EU nationalists of the Leave camp. The British Socialist Equality Party refused to support either of these reactionary camps in the Brexit referendum, calling instead for an active boycott. The Remain and Leave campaigns are both headed by Thatcherite forces that stand for greater austerity, brutal anti-immigrant measures and the destruction of workers rights, it declared. Their differences are over how best to defend the interests of British capitalism against its European and international rivals, under conditions of economic slump and the escalation of militarism and war. A boycott prepares the ground for the development of an independent political struggle of the British working class against these forces. Such a movement must develop as part of a continent-wide counteroffensive by the working class, which will expose the referendum as only an episode in the deepening existential crisis of the British and European bourgeoisie. In the meantime, the EUs disintegration is progressing rapidly. Conflicts between the EU and nationalist governments in Italy, Poland and Hungary are escalating. The EU agrees entirely, however, with sealing off borders, building a police state and suppressing social struggles and political opposition. Brussels plays a leading role in transforming all of Europe into a police and surveillance state and censoring the internet. Thousands of refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean because the EU denies them any help and prosecutes rescue ships crews as criminals. It pays dictators and criminal gangs to lock up refugees in camps, where they are enslaved, tortured and killed. Plans to transform the EU into a military alliance that, unlike NATO, can operate independently of and against the United States, are well advanced. Berlin and Paris, in particular, are working closely together on this. Practical implementation, however, has repeatedly come to a standstill because the strategic interests of German and French imperialism conflict. Brexit has exacerbated the existential crisis of the EU and the tensions between the European powers. The EU and all governing parties in Europefrom the pseudo-left Syriza party in Greece to the Grand Coalition in Germany and openly right-wing extremist governments in Italy, Austria and Eastern Europeare all pushing forward austerity, militarism and anti-refugee terror. This underscores the fact that workers and youth are confronted with revolutionary tasks. European capitalism cannot be tamed. It must be overthrown and replaced by the United Socialist States of Europe. The SGP rejects the European Union as well as all efforts to strengthen the European nation states. Together with the Socialist Equality Party in Britain and the Parti de legalite socialiste in France, it fights for the unification of the European working class on the basis of an international socialist program. This is the only way to prevent a relapse into nationalism and war, and to unite the continent in the interests of the vast majority of its population. 4. The return of German militarism In Berlin, the decision was taken long ago to dominate Europe politically and militarily and to rebuild Germany into an aggressive great power capable of confronting other great powers. This question was at the heart of government coalition negotiations that lasted for months after the federal elections in 2013 and 2017. In 2013, the CDU, CSU and SPD agreed on an end to military restraint, and put this into practice in governmentstationing German troops at the Russian border, prolonging the German mission in Afghanistan and launching new army operations in Iraq, Mali and beyond. In 2018, they decided to take further steps towards an army of Europeans and announced a massive increase in military spending. With the NATO target of 2 percent met, this spending will be doubled to 70 billion euros. Every second euro in spending cuts to other areas will flow into the military. The Ministry of Defences new conception of the Bundeswehr makes clear that the German military, despite catastrophic defeats in two world wars, is again preparing large-scale war operations. The Bundeswehr should be prepared to operate in a hybrid conflict as it develops and escalates across the full spectrum of its effects, in all its dimensions, in a joint, multi-national armed force, and in all types of operations. Blitzkrieg and mass casualties are being planned. At the beginning of a very large, high-intensity operation, a huge deployment of readily available forces and equipment is necessary, the paper declares. Provisions to regenerate the personnel and material must be undertaken. In a country where more than ten million people born before 1945 are still alive and remember the horrors of war, and in which the slogan No war ever again was long an integral part of school lessons, the return to militarism is provoking massive opposition. That is why official policy takes on the form of a conspiracy, why the AfD is promoted, and why history is being falsified. The growth of militarism and the advanced preparations for war require the restriction of democratic rights and further attacks on the working class, which will be made to bear the cost of militarism. The collapse of bourgeois democracy makes itself felt internationally. In Germany, security authorities are preparing to suppress opposition to militarism and to capitalism. This is the conclusion of the latest report of the Verfassungsschutz (Office for the Protection of the Constitution) domestic intelligence agency, which was drawn up in close cooperation with the AfD. It denounces as left-wing extremist anyone who rejects capitalism and holds it responsible, in the words of the report, for social and political grievances such as social injustice, destruction of housing, wars, right-wing extremism and racism as well as environmental disasters. In particular, the Verfassungsschutz explicitly lists the SGP as a left-wing extremist party, although it admits that the SGP pursues its aims by legal means and does not carry out violent or illegal activities. The Grand Coalition government, the security authorities and their right-wing radical allies are taking action against the SGP because it is the only party that is systematically fighting against the falsification of history and the return of militarism, and is not part of the capitalist establishment. It is under observation, the Verfassungsschutz writes, because it advances a socialist program against the existing state and social order, which is sweepingly denigrated as capitalism, against the EU, against supposed nationalism, imperialism and militarism, as well as against social democracy, the trade unions and also against the Left Party. The ruling class fears that the historical and political perspectives of the SGP and the ICFI will find a broad response in the working class and, in Marxs words, become a material force. Four years ago, the media launched a campaign denouncing the SGP because it opposed the revision of history and the rehabilitation of the Nazis, and criticized far-right historian Jorg Baberowski. Baberowski had defended Nazi apologist Ernst Nolte in Spiegel and publicly certified that Hitler wasnt vicious. The SGP linked this position to the return of German militarism. Germany could not return to militarism, the SGP declared, without developing a new narrative of the twentieth century a falsification of history that trivializes and justifies the crimes of German imperialism. The criticism of Baberowski and other right-wing professors found powerful support among students and workers. Ruling circles were alarmed. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung accused the SGP of mobbing and complained about its effectiveness. The presidium of Humboldt University backed Baberowski and declared criticism of the right-wing extremist professor inadmissible. For one and a half years now, Google has been censoring left-wing and progressive websites, including the World Socialist Web Site, in close cooperation with German government circles. The book Warum sind sie wieder da? (Why are they back?) documents the SGPs struggle against the return of fascism, militarism and authoritarianism in Germany and develops it further. The book is not written from the point of view of a neutral observer, but as a contribution to the struggle against the return of militarism and fascism. It should help to ensure that the Nuremberg Trials are held, this time, before a catastrophe occurs and not after, explains Christoph Vandreier, Deputy Chairman of the SGP and author of the book, in the foreword. 5. The role of the SPD, Left Party, Greens and trade unions The return of German militarism and the strengthening of the extreme right would not be possible without the active support of the SPD, the Left Party, the Greens and the trade unions. One hundred years ago, the SPD, under Friedrich Ebert, Philipp Scheidemann and Gustav Noske, allied with the most reactionary forces in the army to defeat the November Revolution of 191819 and assassinate the revolutionary socialists, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Today, the social democracy is continuing this policy. Unlike 100 years ago, however, it no longer has any connection with the working class. It is a right-wing state party which exclusively represents the interests of the banks, large corporations, secret services and the Bundeswehr (army). It is hated by workers and young people due to its war policy and its anti-social Agenda 2010, which has plunged millions into poverty and created the largest low wage sector in Europe. The SPD has reacted to its recent election debacles by continuing the Grand Coalition government alliance with Chancellor Angela Merkels Christian-Democratic Union (CDU), and cutting deals with far-right forces behind the scenes. AfD politician Stephan Brandner, for example, owes his office as Chairman of the Bundestags Legal Affairs Committee to the Social Democratic Vice-President of the Bundestag, Thomas Oppermann, who proposed Brandner for the post. At Humboldt University (HU) in Berlin, President Sabine Kunst (SPD) is implementing the Verfassungsschutzs policy in cooperation with the AfD. After an inquiry into Berlin AfD delegate Martin Trefzer, Kunst sued the HUs student government at the end of July in order to obtain the full names of the speakers and deputies in the student parliament. The lists would allow far-right circles to identify, intimidate and attack left-wing students. Kunsts main goal is to defend the right-wing extremist Professor Baberowski against growing opposition among the student body. The Greens have been some of the most enthusiastic supporters of German military operations for the past twenty years. They pushed through the Bundeswehrs first war mission in Yugoslavia two decades ago over bitter popular opposition. They are also far to the right on domestic and refugee policy. Each time they govern a German statewith the SPD, CDU, FDP or the Left Partythey rearm the security forces and brutally deport refugees. Their preferred coalition partner is now the CDU. Even after the Bavarian state elections, they declared themselves willing to form a coalition with the CSU, whose chairman Horst Seehofer openly backed the neo-Nazi marches in Chemnitz. Like the Greens, the Left Party represents the interests not of workers, but of the state and the affluent middle class, standing with both feet in the camp of German imperialism. It emerged from East Germanys Stalinist state party, which suppressed the working class and supported the restoration of capitalism in the east. In 2007, this party merged with the WASG (Labour and Social JusticeThe Electoral Alternative)which consisted of old SPD bureaucrats, trade unionists and members of pseudo-left groupsto form the Left Party. In 2013, the Left Party helped draw up a foreign policy report, titled New PowerNew Responsibility, of the Stiftung fur Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP, Foundation for Science and Politics) think tank. It was thus involved in the return of German militarism from the outset. Since then, it has loyally supported Berlins foreign policy offensive. Wherever it governs at the state level, it sets new standards for the viciousness of its social cuts. The Left Party has made Berlin the proverbial capital of poverty. In Greece, its sister party Syriza is shattering the lives of millions, with its ruthless austerity program. Sections of the Left Party are now openly in the camp of the right. The leader of the partys parliamentary group, Sahra Wagenknecht, has come out against the anti-far-right protest in Berlin and ridiculed the demand for open borders as unreal and totally otherworldly. It is only a matter of time before Wagenknecht openly makes an alliance with the far right. AfD boss Alexander Gauland regularly praises her as a courageous voice of reason, hailing her attacks on refugees (Whoever abuses hospitality forfeits hospitality) as very well to the point. 6. Put an end to poverty and exploitationfor social equality! The social-democrats assertion that class antagonisms between the working class and the bourgeoisie can be overcome by social market economy and social partnership has proven to be a lie. Since at least as far back as the 1980s, the gap between rich and poor has grown rapidly; it has now reached a level that defies imagination. Worldwide, the eight richest individuals possess the same wealth as the poorer half of humanity, i.e., 3.6 billion people. This social gulf runs through every country and all of Europe. The average wage in Bulgaria, an EU member state, is eight times lower than in Germany. In Germany itself, one of Europes richest countries, 12.9 million people live in poverty and 3.2 million work several jobs, because otherwise their low wages would not be enough to live on. Even those who earn more normal wages face existential problems: unaffordable rents, long commutes to work, increasing job stress and insecurity. The trade unions and their company delegates have become co-managers in the service of the capitalists, organising social counterrevolution. There is hardly a dismissal or wage cut that does not bear their signature. They react with bitter enmity to every sign of militancy and try to either stop industrial action altogether or lead it into an impotent dead-end. To the extent that right-wing extremist parties have managed to find support among workers, it is due to outrage at the reactionary role of social democracy, the pseudo-lefts and the trade unions. The SGP firmly rejects the capitalist system and its political henchmen. We fight for a society in which peoples needs outweigh private profit interests. Great fortunes, the banks and the major corporations must be expropriated and placed under democratic control. Only in this way can the social rights of all be secured. These include the right to an adequately paid job, quality education, affordable housing, secure pensions, excellent medical care and access to culture. 7. Eighty years of the Fourth International The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is today the only socialist tendency representing the social interests and historical perspective of the working class. This is the result of its decades-long struggle for Marxist principles and the independence of the working class. In the history, program and political line of the ICFI, the lessons and experiences of more than 150 years of class struggles, both victories and defeats, are concentrated. The founding of the Fourth International 80 years ago by Leon Trotsky and the International Left Opposition was the culmination of their 15-year struggle against the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union and the Communist International (Comintern). Against the nationalist program of socialism in one country, which expressed the interests of the bureaucracy within the Soviet Union, they defended the internationalist strategy that had led the October Revolution to victory in 1917. The subordination of the Comintern to the national interests of the Soviet bureaucracy led to devastating defeats of the international working class, culminating in the German catastrophe of 1933. Under the influence of Moscow, the KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands) had played down the danger of fascism and prevented a joint struggle of the German working class against the Nazis. Instead of forming a united front with the SPD, which at that time still organized millions of socialist workers, it described them as social fascists, who were no different to the Nazis. The Cominterns refusal to learn the lessons of the German catastrophe prompted Trotsky to break with it and to call for the founding of the Fourth International. Against the openly counterrevolutionary role of Stalinism, the disastrous policies of the Popular Front, and the mass murder of communists in the Soviet Union, it defended the socialist principles of internationalism and workers power. The outcome of the Second World War and the counterrevolutionary role of Stalinism gave capitalism a breathing space. An economic upswing developed in the post-war period, supported, above all, by the resources of American capitalism. The discredited social democratic parties and trade unions regained influence. The national liberation struggles were led by bourgeois leaders who sought a compromise with imperialism. This did not remain without its influence on the Fourth International. For decades, the International Committee had to fight against the political currents of Pabloism and state capitalism, which adapted to the Stalinist, reformist and national movements and ascribed to them a revolutionary role. Not the working class, led by the Fourth International, would lead the fight for socialism in a revolution, they all claimed in one form or another, but a progressive wing of the Stalinist bureaucracy, Maoist peasant armies, leftist social democrats and trade unionists or bourgeois nationalists like Ben Bella, Yasser Arafat and Fidel Castro would bring about a gradual transition to socialism. In 1982 to 1986, with its split from the British Workers Revolutionary Party, which had increasingly adapted to such Pabloite positions, the orthodox Trotskyists regained control of the International Committee and were able to carry out an unprecedented theoretical and political development based on the historical legacy of the Fourth International. Its analyses of globalization, of capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union, of the bankruptcy of reformism and the trade unions, have brought the party in line with the objective development of the class struggle and prepared it for the coming revolutionary struggles. This was expressed in the transformation of the sections of the ICFI from leagues into parties and the foundation of the World Socialist Web Site as the international online daily publication of the ICFI. Today the perspectives of the ICFI have been confirmed. The Stalinist bureaucracy liquidated the Soviet Union and introduced capitalist property relations to secure its privileges against the working class. The Maoists turned China into a paradise of capitalist exploitation. The national movements degenerated into lackeys of the imperialist powers. And the reformist parties are in freefall because of their right-wing policies. The capitalist world has no way out, unless a prolonged death agony is so considered, Trotsky wrote in 1940, shortly before his assassination by a Stalinist agent. It is necessary to prepare for long years, if not decades, of war, uprisings, brief interludes of truce, new wars, and new uprisings. A young revolutionary party must base itself on this perspective. Events have confirmed this historical perspective. The Fourth International, under the leadership of the International Committee, has gathered extensive experience over the ensuing decades and clarified the central theoretical questions. Now the conditions exist to build it as the mass world party of socialist revolution. 8. The tasks of the SGP The SGP and its sister parties in the ICFI fight for the same goal and face the same basic tasks. The resolution of the Fifth Party Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (USA) states: The basic task of the SEP is to build a revolutionary vanguard and impart an ever-greater level of understanding to the working class of its aims, and clarify the nature of the movement that is developing. The SEP must fight to connect the growth of struggle in the working class to a socialist, internationalist and anti-imperialist political movement to take state power and reorganize economic life on the basis of social need instead of private profit. To the ruling class policy of war and social counterrevolution, the working class must advance a program of socialist revolution. The following tasks flow from this perspective for the SGPs European election campaign: a) A Europe-wide campaign for the perspective of the United Socialist States of Europe, conducted jointly with the Socialist Equality Party in the UK and the Parti de legalite socialiste in France. The struggle for the United Socialist States of Europe is the only way to prevent a relapse into fascism and war and to unite the continent in the interests of the vast majority of its population. b) Systematic political work in the working class. Like the SEP in the United States, the SGP fights to build rank-and-file committees in factories and neighborhoods, independent of the trade unions, combining this with the political mobilization of the working class against the capitalist system. c) Building an anti-war movement based on the working class, on the principles set out in the ICFI statement Socialism and the fight against war. d) The defence of refugees and migrants, victims of the imperialist policies of exploitation and war. The SGP defends the right to asylum and rejects all forms of nationalism and xenophobia. Attacks on refugees are aimed at the entire working class. What is necessary is a common struggle by workers of all nationalities against capitalism. Every worker has the right to live and work in the country of their choice. e) The development of the campaign against the return of German militarism, the attack on the SGP by the Verfassungsschutz, and the conspiracy of the ruling elites. The SGP will not be intimidated. The Grand Coalition and its secret service are despised and rejected by broad sections of the population and have no legitimacy. The SGP will take legal action against its surveillance by Verfassungsschutz and demand new elections. It will use the election campaign to advocate a socialist alternative to capitalism, war and authoritarianism and expand its influence among workers, youth and students. f) The dissemination of the book Why are they back? The book is not only a result of the struggle of the SGP over the past five years, but develops that struggle and explains the need for a socialist perspective to oppose the right-wing danger. g) An ambitious national and Europe-wide campaign to build the IYSSE in universities, vocational schools and schools. This requires a systematic theoretical and political struggle against the dominant forms of bourgeois ideology, especially against the irrationalist conceptions of postmodernism and against identity politics. There is massive resistance among students and youth to the rise of the AfD and the transformation of its learning sites into cadre schools of German imperialism. This opposition must be oriented towards the working class and requires a socialist perspective. h) The development and dissemination of the WSWS. The basis for an effective election campaign and for strong political work carried out by the candidates and the entire party, is the ongoing analysis and coverage of political, social and cultural developments through the World Socialist Web Site, constant polemics against the ideologues of the bourgeoisie, and the political and theoretical separation of the revolutionary party from all pseudo-left tendencies. i) The study of history. In order to fulfill their responsibilities in the election campaign and beyond, party members must be familiar with the history of the Marxist movement. In particular, an understanding of the rich, 80-year history of the Fourth International must be developed in the working class. Everything will depend on what develops more rapidly: the socialist consciousness of the working class, or the drive of the ruling class towards war and dictatorship. This is not a question of passive speculation. The intervention of the revolutionary party will be decisive. What can and cannot be achieved is decided in struggle. The relationship between the crisis of the capitalist system and the class consciousness of the working class is not static but dynamic. Explosive events will undermine old beliefs and radicalize social consciousness. But only a party based on the historical lessons of the class struggle, and with a Marxist understanding of the current crisis, can raise the political consciousness of the working class to the level necessary for the overthrow of capitalism. A statewide rainstorm which began Tuesday night has brought an end to the wildfire season in California and almost fully extinguished the Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in state history. The rainstorm comes as a mixed blessing, as it both ends the wildfires and air pollution plaguing the state, while preparing the conditions for debris flows that could compound the dire situation facing homeless evacuees. Further, the rain will make it far more difficult to find the remains of those that died in the Camp Fire and will likely cause significant environmental damage throughout the region. The most recent press release Thursday morning listed the Camp Fire at 153,336 acres and 90 percent contained. It noted: Precipitation has minimized fire activity and all fire lines continue to hold. As of this writing, there have been 83 confirmed deaths, while 563 people are still listed as missing, a number that is constantly changing due to the haphazard character of the evacuation. Over 18,000 buildings were destroyed by the fire, including 13,631 single residence buildings. As of Thursday, dozens of evacuees remain camped in tents outside the Chico Walmart, where they have faced near-freezing temperatures at night and are now at risk of flooding from the rains. Hundreds more remain at evacuation centers across Butte County, where an outbreak of the non-fatal norovirus has infected at least 145 people and hospitalized dozens. Also on Thursday, an estimated 15,000 evacuees were served Thanksgiving dinner by more than 50 volunteers, mostly at Chico State University. In the aftermath of the Camp Fire, conditions in Paradise and across Butte County are ripe for devastating debris flows in the coming period, possibly as early as Friday. Weather forecasts predicted four to six inches of rain between Wednesday and Saturday, with the majority coming between Thursday and Friday afternoon. This prompted the National Weather Service to issue a flash flood watch throughout north central California, alerting nearly one million residents to the danger of flash floods. Current weather forecasts predicted as much as five inches of rain and winds exceeding 45 miles per hour would hit Paradise overnight Thursday. Paradise was the epicenter of the Camp Fire, and is situated in the Sierra Nevada foothills at an elevation of 1,778 feet. Similar to the rainstorm that hit southern California last January after the Thomas Fire, which led to debris flows that killed at least 21, there is the potential for further devastation throughout the Butte County region. During a wildfire, burning vegetation releases gases that permeate into the soil, causing the roots to weaken. The gas then cools and solidifies, forming a waxy, water-repellent layer on the surface of the ground. If rain arrives at a sufficient intensity, the water rushes downhill and causes the topsoil to break loose, sending rocks, trees and mud downhill, at times exceeding speeds of 35 miles per hour. After the storm, a thick, hydrophobic layer is left behind, which can last for years based on the intensity of the fire. Thus, the danger of debris flows now exists throughout California, including in Mendocino and Redding in northern California, and in the regions hit by the Woolsey, Thomas and other wildfires in southern California. In the coming years, all it will take are rainstorms of sufficient intensity to provoke debris flows, and devastation will once again hit these areas. Current forecasts by the Cal Fire Watershed Emergency Response Team (WERT) predict that debris flows will mostly be confined to areas east of Paradise, and will not impact the larger cities of Chico and Oroville, where most Camp Fire evacuees have fled for shelter. Nevertheless, weather phenomena are difficult to predict, and the danger exists that these cities could be impacted. Beyond the immediate risk of debris flows, there is the potential for devastating long-term environmental impacts from the runoff of ash into the surrounding ecosystem, including the nearby Feather River and its tributaries, which are a key breeding ground for chinook salmon, an endangered keystone species in the state. The ash from burned structures, which is laden with toxic heavy metals, will also seep into the regions aquifers, with untold health ramifications for future generations. In addition, the rainfall will compound the difficulties faced by the search and rescue workers combing through the areas hit by the Camp Fire to look for those that were killed by the fire. Already, this process has been extremely difficult given the intensity of the fire, with over 500 volunteers gradually finding remains of those that died. At a recent press conference, Brian Ferreira, rescue squad officer for California Task Force 4, spoke on the impact the rain will have on their search operations: Its going to consolidate the material and make it more dense. And its going to present much more like soil. So anything we find or hope to find thats still there, its going to make a difficult task [] that much more difficult. Although the exact number of homes searched prior to the rain has not been made public, there were still many neighborhoods that had not been searched, raising the possibility that many victims remains could be washed away. On this, Ferreira commented: Its out of our hands at that point. Were going to go as hard as we can, as long as we can, until we cant go anymore. While the total number of fatalities may never be known, the Camp Fire already ranks as the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the states history. In every respect, it is a product of corporate negligence and government malfeasance. The initial starting point for the fire is suspected to be a downed PG&E power line at the Poe Dam outside Paradise, which rapidly spread westward due to the high winds and drought conditions in the region, itself a product of corporate-induced climate change. There was no citywide fire warning system in place, with most residents learning of the fire by phone call from a relative or friend, or witnessing the fire approach firsthand. If PG&E is indeed found to be responsible for the Camp Fire, it will be the latest in a long line of catastrophic wildfires for which the company is guilty of producing through cost-cutting measures. Placing investor profits above public safety, PG&E and all the major utility companies utilize hazardous wooden above-ground electrical infrastructure, and have continually cut maintenance and repair costs for decades. Meanwhile, the Democratic-controlled state government in California passed a bill in September designed to prevent the bankruptcy of utility companies found responsible for starting deadly wildfires. Speaking on the France Inter radio station last Thursday, French government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux quoted monarchist anti-Semite and Petainist ideologue Charles Maurras, falsely attributing the latters statement, the legal nation meets the real nation to the historian and resistance fighter, Marc Bloch. The medias explanation, that Griveaux had committed a gaffe out of historical ignorance, is not tenable. It is remarkable that a close aide to President Emmanuel Macron utilized a formulation directly inspired by Petains fascist program under the Nazi occupation. The writings of Maurras have long been relegated to the exclusive province of the French extreme-right. In the interview, Griveaux declared that it is the legal nation that meets the real nation to explain the insistence by Macron, now facing record-low poll ratings, that his ministers travel out to regions of the country. Responding to mocking criticisms by media commentators, Griveaux gave the absurd excuse that he had still not woken up at the time of the interview, and, without retracting his earlier quotation, recommended rereading Strange Defeat, Blochs 1940 work. He did not explain how he came to quote Maurras, or what Blochs 1940 book had to do with it. Strange Defeat is Blochs account of his experience in the defeat of the French army in 1940, and a scathing critique of the policies of the French military command and government. It has nothing remotely to do with the theme of Griveauxs interviewunlike Maurras. The most likely explanation for Griveauxs error is that Maurras is intensively read and discussed within the government. Unlike Blochs book, the quote from Maurras corresponded closely to the issues that Griveaux was discussing. He had just noted that Macron asked that ministers go out every week into the regions but to bring there our directors of our central administration, who sometimes have a somewhat Jacobinist view of what happens in the country. The Jacobin state is the legal state denounced by Maurras as being dominated by Jews, foreigners, Protestants and Freemasons. He opposed to it the real country, that is, the monarchism of rural and Catholic regions of the country. For Griveaux, the real country that had to be listened to were elected officials, associations, companies, those who live in the country and find concrete solutions to the problems of the people. He made this statement just before citing the controversial quote, demonstrating at the same time his contempt for the working class. The falsely attributed quote is part of a series of similar episodes, the last and most provocative of which was Macrons celebration of the collaborationist dictator Phillippe Petain as a great general, prior to the World War I centenary commemorations on November 11. Maurras was the dominant ideologue of the French bourgeoisie from the time of the Dreyfus affair to the Second World War. He is the founder of the anti-Semitic, anti-Dreyfusard and antidemocratic party, Action Francaise. Its program of a total nationalism advocates the abolition of the Republic in favour of a monarchy, where the real nation asserts itself against the legal nation. Maurras hailed the military collapse of the Third French Republic in 1940 in the face of a Nazi invasion, calling it a divine surprise. Throughout the Nazi occupation, he was one of Petains close supporters, dining with him regularly. The French militia, which hunted down resisters and delivered them to the Gestapo, was founded by followers of Maurras, many of whom swore an oath to Hitler and rallied to the SS. Maurras called for the execution of resistance members and their families. In 1945, he was condemned to the forfeiture of his civil rights and sentenced to death, later reduced to life in prison, for high treason and providing intelligence to the enemy. The fact that high government officials in France adopt the conceptions of such a figure, and publicly cite them, underscores the crisis of capitalism in France and Europe. Facing US President Trump and ever-more intense economic and strategic rivalries over world markets, the French ruling class, like its German counterparts, wants to construct a European army capable of securing European hegemony against its American and Asian rivals. To rehabilitate militarism and justify the gutting of what remains of the social gains won following French liberation and the defeat of fascismpensions, social security, etc.the bourgeoisie is compelled to rehabilitate the fascist intellectuals and leaders of the 20th century. Before the French military brass had proposed to celebrate Petain in Octobera proposal repeated by Macron the following monththe minister of culture had already approved an official celebration of Maurras in January, before backpedaling in the face of protests by Jewish and anti-racism associations. While Maurras name was removed from the commemoration, Jacques Chardonne, a pro-Nazi and ardent supporter of Petain, was kept on. At a dinner with the Representative Council of Jewish French Institutions (CRIF) at the start of March, Macron insisted upon honouring Maurras the author. We must see [the figure of Maurras] as part of the history of France, he declared, without provoking any outrage from this organization. Under the leadership of Jean-Christophe Buisson, the joint director of Figaro Magazine, the Robert Lafont publishers re-edited the works of Maurras in April. In 2016, Macron, then the economy minister in the Socialist Party (PS) government of Francois Hollande, provided an apology for the monarchy. In French politics, this absence is the figure of the king, whom I fundamentally believe the French people did not want to see killed. The Great Terror created an emotional, imaginative and collective vacuumthe king is no longer here! he said, before adding: We have since tried to fill this vacuum, to put other figures in its place: such were the Napoleonic and Gaullist periods in particular. The rest of the time, French democracy has not filled the space. The transfer of power to Macron in May 2017 resembled more the enthroning of a king than the installation of an elected representative. The corporate media were seized by a militarist and monarchist fever, comparing Macron to a king who would heal the sickmade, wrote Le Monde, of another metal. This extreme-right folly, which seized the entire ruling class, underscores the correctness of the position taken by the Socialist Equality Party (PES) in the last presidential elections. In 2017, Macron and Le Pen were two rival candidates representing the same politics of the financial aristocracy: to establish a police state and impose war and austerity on the working class. Macron won because he had the support of the banks, the European Union and the trade union bureaucracies. In the second round of presidential elections, the PES explained that there was no fundamental difference between Le Pen and Macron. We called for an active boycott of the second round of the elections, to provide the working class with an independent perspective from all factions of the bourgeoisie. In contrast, the New Anticapitalist Party, Jean-luc Melenchons Unsubmissive France, Workers Struggle and the trade unions, with whom they collaborate directly in imposing the governments attacks, aligned themselves more or less openly behind Macron, supporting the blackmail aggressively promoted by the media for an anti-Le Pen vote. The reactionary, militarist and anti-working class character of the government that these parties have helped place in power is underscored by its sympathy for fascist chiefs and anti-Semites. At a press conference last Thursday the German Interior, Minister Horst Seehofer, (Christian Social Union, CSU) presented Thomas Haldenwang (Christian Democratic Union), the new president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). The change of personnel at the top of the German domestic intelligence service is aimed at strengthening the agency after the turbulence of the past few weeks, as Haldenwang put it, and increase surveillance of the population. Haldenwangs predecessor, Hans-Georg Maassen, was retired by Seehofer at the beginning of November after publicly backing demonstrations and pogroms by radical right-wingers in the city of Chemnitz. Maassen described violent attacks on immigrants, leftists and a Jewish restaurant as fake news. Speaking at a meeting of heads of European domestic intelligence services on January 18 in Warsaw, Maassen went so far as to accuse leftist radical forces in the SPD of forcing him out of office. Haldenwang was the longtime vice president of the BfV, and his appointment as Maassens successor confirms that Germanys ruling grand coalition (CDU, CSU and Social Democratic Party, SPD) will continue to back the right-wing extremist course of the agency. Even more clearly than Maassen, Haldenwang embodies the fascist traditions of the BfV. He was already working for the agency when the far-right NSU terror gang was exposed at the end of 2011 when dozens of BfV undercover agents were revealed to have been active in the neo-Nazi circles surrounding the NSU. At the time Haldenwang headed the BfVs central department until he was appointed BfV vice president under Maassen in August 2013. At Thursdays press conference Seehofer stated he was convinced that Mr. Haldenwang will continue the successful work of the Federal Office and with him we can return to objective and trustworthy work. Haldenwang has for years been in close and trusting dialogue with the different state offices for the protection of the constitution, and he is confident that the Federal Office with him as leader will intensively continue the important exchange in this connection with the states. The new BfV president left no doubt what is meant by objective and trustworthy work. Asked by a journalist what links him to his predecessor Hans-Georg Maassen, he explained: I am linked to my predecessor in that we worked together in a spirit of trust for five years and had a high degree of agreement on the key technical issues of our office. When asked what set him apart from Maassen, he answered provocatively: What makes me different? I have red glasses and I do not wear a waistcoat. The conclusion is obvious. In the past few years Maassen has transformed the BfV into a political instrument that colluded openly with the far right and classified any left-wing critique of capitalism and the right-wing politics of the established parties as left-wing extremism and anti-constitutional. The clearest example is the current BfV annual report. While the Alternative for Germany, AfD, and its right-wing extremist milieu are referred to merely as victims of alleged left-wing extremists, the Socialist Equality Party (SGP) is listed as a left-wing extremist party and subject for surveillance. Haldenwang has been appointed BfV president by the grand coalition to continue this course, without identifying himself so openly with the far right as Maassen didat least to the outside world. In a public hearing of the presidents of the intelligence services in the Parliamentary Oversight Panel (PKGr) last Friday, Haldenwang even announced the expansion of the area of combating and dealing with right-wing extremism. However his remarks made clear that this means above all the massive expansion of the censorship of the internet. Social media plays a special role in the development of extremism, Haldenwang said. The BfV must therefore keep its eye on social media, which can act both as a stimulant and as a crime scene. It has never been so easy to celebrate hate and violent fantasies while remaining anonymous. It was therefore important to remind social media operators of their social responsibility and demand better cooperation with the security authorities. Such censorship measures are directed primarily at leftist web sites and organisations that are already massively repressed. Ladies and gentlemen, left-wing extremists are also increasing their organisational and campaigning potential through social networks and digital platforms, Haldenwang told the assembled representatives of all Bundestag parties. The BfV had observed the clear strategy of taking up real and imagined social grievances, and seeking out democratic forms of protest to then influence them in an extremist manner. Anyone who takes up real social ills, participates in democratic protests and fights for a socialist perspective is therefore, according to Haldenwang, a left-wing extremist and must be censored! The fight against left-wing extremism goes hand in hand with xenophobia and racism. In the sphere of extremism of foreigners he could in principle report the same, Halderwang said. Here too the relevant groups used digital means of communication for organizing, mobilizing and propaganda. The conclusion could only be that there can be no understanding or tolerance for any extremist group in Germany. In order to perfect mass surveillance, Haldenwang called for further centralization of the various intelligence services. He wanted to emphasize that we must also develop organisationally and not lose sight of the strong central function of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Together with the state offices for protection of the constitution he would push for a more intensive coordination by the BfV based on respective potentials. What was needed were effective and well-established security agencies. What Haldenwang is striving for is total monitoring of the internet, including encrypted communication. We need to meet the technological challenges of the digital age and be technologically up to date, he said. This requires not only further recruitment of qualified IT staff and sufficient financial resources, but also social acceptance of legal rights corresponding to the current life world. For example, in the case of telecommunications surveillance, he wants to get a grip on the problem of going dark. Despite increasing amounts of data as a result of digitization, intelligence agencies now gained less information about a person than they did in previous analog times because the bulk of information can no longer be captured and evaluated, he complained. Encryption and methods of preserving anonymity have had a positive effect on security and data protection, but have also led to a massive loss of intelligence for intelligence services. In the course of the PKGr hearing the intelligence chiefs sought to outdo one another with demands for rearmament and surveillance. If the preparation, planning and execution of extremist activities are increasingly carried out with digital media and transferred to cyberspace, we must also ensure that we can also adequately investigate anti-constitutional activities there, Haldenwang warned. The president of the foreign intelligence service (BND), Bruno Kahl, openly advocated so-called hack-backs, i.e. offensive cyber-war measures, in order to preemptively render tools for attack harmless in any way whatsoever. The German secret services can only operate so aggressively and draw from the traditions of the Nazis and Gestapo because no one in official politics opposes them. Under conditions of the deepest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, the German ruling class is closing ranks and, as was the case in the past, installing a right-wing, authoritarian regime to enforce its policy of militarism and social counterrevolution in the face of growing opposition. The so-called left-wing opposition parties, in particular, are coming forward as submissive stooges of the state police and intelligence apparatus. The Green MEP Konstantin von Notz praised Haldenwang in the highest tones even before his appointment was announced. Im looking forward to working with you, he said. I wish the new president a good hand to tackle things with determination and restore lost confidence. On behalf of the leadership of the Left Party and representing it in the PKGr, Andre Hahn wished Haldenwang a happy hand in your work. You will certainly be more open and open-minded to Parliament than your predecessor, he added. In fact, the Left Party had also supported Maassen from the start. Shortly after he took office in 2013, the party invited him to a public meeting to discuss measures to strengthen the agency. Indian supporters of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) held a public meeting in Chennai last Sunday to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Fourth International and 50 years since the founding of its Sri Lankan section, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP). The meeting, held at the Madras Reporters Guild in Chepauk, was attended by about 30 workers, young people, housewives and intellectuals. Some participants travelled several hundred kilometres from the cities of Hyderabad, Bangalore and Coimbatore. During the campaign for the meeting, ICFI supporters spoke with autoworkers in the industrial areas of Sriperumbudur and Oragadam near Chennai, transport workers in the city and students at several universities. A section of the meeting in Chennai Chairing the event, Moses Rajkumar warmly welcomed the main speaker, Deepal Jayasekera, the assistant secretary of the Sri Lankan SEP. Rajkumar stated: In marking these anniversaries, we are paying tribute to the ICFIs uncompromising struggle for more than sixty years to defend the principles and program of the Fourth International against all forms political opportunism. Arun Kumar, of the Indian ICFI supporters group, said that the ICFI was the only party fighting to unite the working class of the world on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program directed against the growing danger of imperialist world war and the drive by ruling classes everywhere towards authoritarian and fascistic forms of rule. Kumar noted that the meeting was being held in the context of mounting geo-political tensions globally and in the South Asian region, stemming from the breakdown of world capitalism and the attempts of American imperialism to offset its economic decline through the use of military force. Kumar explained: In this situation, Indian foreign policy has been increasingly tilted towards the US. Successive Indian governments, whether led by Congress or the BJP, have deepened the country's military and strategic partnership with the US. The current BJP government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has placed India on the front lines of the US plans for war against China. Kumar said that the deepening world crisis was also propelling the working class into social and political struggles. He reviewed strikes by around 3,000 auto workers from the Yamaha India, Royal Enfield and Myoung Shin India Automotive plants, located in the Oragadam industrial hub 55 kilometres from Chennai. The Stalinists and trade unions, he warned, were doing everything they could to suppress the emerging movement and prevent it from developing into a political confrontation with the bourgeois parties. To that end, the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), led by the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist), held an all party meeting on October 30,with the opposition bourgeois parties, including Congress, under the fraudulent pretext of gaining their support for the strike. This was part of the attempts of the Stalinists to derail the autoworkers strikes by subordinating them to the pro-business parties of the Indian ruling elite, Kumar said. Jayasekera spoke at length on the historical lessons of the struggle waged by Leon Trotsky and the Fourth International against Stalinism, Social Democracy, bourgeois nationalism and all other forms of national-opportunism. The speaker stressed the contemporary relevance of studying the historical experiences of the 20th century. The greatest event of the 20th century was the 1917 October Russian Revolution, which brought the working class to power for the first time in the history, Jayasekera said. The October Revolution emerged out of the breakdown of world capitalism, expressed in the catastrophe of World War One. The revolution was not a national development, but a world event. It emerged, not because conditions in Russia were ripe for socialist revolution, but because conditions internationally necessitated the overthrow of world capitalism. Jayasekera explained that only by studying the history of the Fourth International could workers and young people, who are increasingly attracted to socialism, be politically oriented and equipped to fight for the abolition of capitalism today. He outlined the history of the Trotskyist movement in South Asia in the initial years of the Fourth International, including the struggles waged by the pioneer Sri Lankan Trotskyists who founded the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) in 1935. Above all, he stressed the enduring significance of the establishment of the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India (BLPI) in 1942, as the all-India section of the FI, aimed at unifying the working class throughout South Asia against the British colonialists and the local ruling elites throughout the region. Jayasekera explained that the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL), the forerunner of the SEP, was founded in 1968 in a struggle against the LSSP, which had betrayed the program of socialist internationalism and entered into a coalition government with the bourgeois Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) in 1964. The speaker said: At the centre of the RCL/SEPs struggle over the past 50 years has been the fight for Trotskys theory of Permanent Revolution. This insists that only the working class is capable of leading the struggle for social and democratic rights in countries of a belated capitalist development like India and Sri Lanka. The working class will fulfill these democratic tasks, only by establishing workers and peasants governments as part of the world socialist revolution. Following the reports, several questions were raised on the history of the Fourth International and the current political situation. A young worker requested clarification on the Trotskyists opposition to the 1947 partition of India, which led to a Muslim-majority Pakistan and a Hindu-dominated India. In reply, Jayasekera quoted from a resolution passed at the 1944 BLPI conference. It characterised the call for a Pakistani nation as politically reactionary and theoretically false, and warned: It constitutes an effort through an appeal to communal sentiments to divert the rising discontent of the Muslim masses away from its true enemy, namely, British imperialism and its native allies, against the Hindus. Jayasekera added: Partition was carried out to divide the working class, which was entering into struggles throughout India that cut across ethnic and religious lines. The BLPI fought against partition as part of its struggle for the unity of the working class. It warned that partition would lead to future military conflicts. That warning has been tragically vindicated by three wars, which have already erupted between India and Pakistan, and ongoing tensions threatening an even more catastrophic conflict. Many participants expressed interest in further discussion on the internationalist perspective of the ICFI. Attendees donated 550 rupees and purchased 800 rupees worth of literature. For the third time since 2000, with virtually no public debate, Australias parliament is set to hand governments sweeping, additional new powers to mobilise the armed forces to put down domestic unrest. The Labor Party joined the Liberal-National Coalition government in pushing the Defence Amendment (Call Out of the Australian Defence Force) Bill through the House of Representatives late last month. The upper house, the Senate, is likely to rubberstamp it before the end of the year. The adoption of expanded military call-out powers, on top of a barrage of anti-foreign interference and other laws to increase the powers of the police and intelligence agencies, is another warning of plans to suppress growing discontent and political disaffection amid worsening social inequality and the rising danger of trade war and war. Introduced, like every other police-state measure, under the pretence of protecting the population against terrorist attacks, the bill will allow government ministers to call out the military on a far wider basis than combating terrorism. Former Special Air Service (SAS) commander Andrew Hastie, now a leading figure in the Coalition government, told parliament last month he was very pleased that the bill would unlock the capabilities of the countrys two Special Forces unitsthe SAS Regiment in Perth and the 2nd Commando Regiment in Sydney. Theyre constantly training for a number of contingencies, Hastie said. They benchmark against Five Eyes special operations and law enforcement units, so they have worlds best practice at their fingertips. They also have significant combat experience acquired through ADF [Australian Defence Force] operations in Afghanistan over the past decade or so. Hastie added: They are surgical in the application of lethal force. Culturallythis is a key point between our police and militarytheyre ruthlessly mission-focused, particularly when it comes to resolving these sorts of situations. I mentioned the combat experience that is resident in both of those units. While Hastie couched his remarks in terms of countering terrorism, his references to Afghanistan, the US-led Five Eyes operations and surgical use of lethal force are chilling. Australias Special Forces, including soldiers commanded by Hastie, have been accused of war crimes against civilians during the ongoing neo-colonial war in Afghanistan, and the Five Eyes network conducts global mass surveillance targeting people deemed a threat to the major capitalist powers. Under the new laws, government ministers can issue call-out orders if they consider there is a threat of undefined domestic violence, even if the relevant state or territory government objects. Military personnel will have unprecedented peacetime powers, including to use lethal force, detain civilians, issue directives, search people and premises and seize property. As with the previous bills to deploy the military on home soilin 2000 and 2008the Coalition and the Labor Party have worked closely together to limit parliamentary debate and ride roughshod over alarms raised by lawyers and civil liberties groups about the overturning of fundamental civil and democratic rights. The bill further repudiates a centuries-old principlederived from overthrowing the absolute monarchy in Britainof barring those in power from unleashing the military against the people. Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull originally foreshadowed the latest measures in mid-2017, supposedly in response to a coroners report on the December 2014 Sydney cafe siege, conducted by lone gunman Man Haron Monis. The government and the media falsely labelled the event a terrorist emergency and claimed it demonstrated the need for the Special Forces regiments to intervene with lethal force. In reality, like similar incidents around the world, the cafe hostage-taking was perpetrated by a mentally-disturbed individual who had been under close surveillance by police and intelligence agencies. Moreover, the legislation is not at all confined to dealing with terrorism. In specific circumstancesanother undefined termthe government can order the military to respond to any threat to public safety or vaguely-defined Commonwealth interests, that is, anything that imperils the existing capitalist order. Backed by Labor, the government refused to amend the bill to define specific circumstances. Instead, it changed the bills explanatory memorandum to declare: What constitutes specified circumstances will depend on the situation in question. The memorandum was revised to claim: Peaceful protests, industrial action or civil disobedience would not fall within the definition of domestic violence. However, this proviso, contained in section 39 of the bill, does not apply if there is a reasonable likelihood of serious damage to property. In other words, alleged danger to property can be cited to set troops against strikers or demonstrators. Domestic violence is a term contained in the 1901 Australian constitution, referring to serious civil unrest that endangers the ruling establishment. At present, because the constitution left police powers in the hands of the states, the ADF is supposed to be called out only if states and territories are not, or are unlikely to be, able to protect themselves or Commonwealth interests against domestic violence. This limit will be junked. The prime minister or two authorising ministersnow including the home affairs ministerwill have the power to mobilise the ADF support if they decide it would be likely to enhance the state or territorys ability to protect itself or Commonwealth interests. In effect, the military can take control of entire urban areas, overriding state and territory governments and police forces. According to the bills memorandum, the ADF will be required to consult with every state and territory affected by a call-out, to the extent possible in the circumstances and act in accord with the relevant police force as far as is reasonably practicable [italics in the original]. Alternatively, ministers can order a contingency call out that pre-authorises the ADF chief to deploy troops. Currently that power is limited to aviation and the protection of Commonwealth interests. The bill will extend it to cover state and territory interests, whether in the land, air, or maritime domain. In a Senate committee submission, the Attorney-Generals department revealed that: Such orders have been regularly made as part of security measures to protect major Commonwealth events (for example, the G20, Commonwealth Games, and the ASEAN summit) from circumstances involving air threats. Although no call-out orders have been issued since the power was first formalised in 2000, these contingency callouts have been dress rehearsals for military mobilisations, designed also to accustom the population to ADF operations in major cities. The bill expands the militarys powers, including to kill people, far beyond situations where commanders claim it is necessary to protect a life. Lethal force can be used to protect designated infrastructure or stop someone escaping from military custody, or end threats to public health or public safety. In addition, military personnel will be further protected from legal liability by adding a new blanket defence of acting in good faith. For all the talk of combating terrorism, when the bill was first tabled in June, Attorney-General Christian Porter told journalists the military could be used to restore order in case of widespread rioting. Greens MP Adam Bandt nervously told parliament last month: Allowing this wide-ranging ability to bring the Defence Force out onto our streets is something that most people in this country would not agree with if they knew it was happening. But the Greens have no basic opposition to the domestic use of troops, instead issuing a dissenting Senate committee report calling for token modifications to the bill. Together with the media, the government and Labor, they have done nothing to alert the public to the real purpose of the expanded powers: preparations by the entire ruling establishment for convulsive struggles against austerity and war. Amid mass protests against its austerity policies, the bitterly unpopular government of French President Emmanuel Macron announced Monday a plan to introduce military conscription. The first draftees are to serve starting in seven months, in a program that, no later than 2026, will draft all 800,000 French citizens then aged 16 into the military. The press all but admitted that this initiative aims to suppress working class opposition via an appeal to nationalism and a military build-up. At a time when France is torn apart by divisions that threaten its unity, Le Parisien wrote, the idea of bringing back national service seems a timely initiative. Two days later, on Wednesday night, Macron announced that military forces would deploy to Frances Reunion island to suppress protests. Across the European Union (EU), ruling elites are preparing to bring back conscription. After the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of the Cold War, France ended conscription in 1997, followed by Spain (2001), Italy (2005), Poland (2008) and Germany (2010). This proved only a brief interlude, however. After Sweden last year and France this year announced a return to military service, other major EU powers including Germany are all debating whether to do likewise. After two horrendous world wars, deep, historically-rooted opposition exists in the European working class to a return to conscription. A 2015 Gallup poll found that only 29 percent of French people would agree to fight for their country; in the 2017 Generation What survey of EU youth, 60 percent refused to do so. With an approval rating of only 20 percent, the Macron government is careful not to admit that it is resurrecting the draft. Its officials advance absurd pretexts: next years program will only last a month and involve 16-year-olds; not every youth will serve in combat units; Education Ministry officials will be involved; the army will teach teenagers crisis management and sustainable development. Europes plunge into fascism and then world war in the 1930s teaches one unforgettable lesson, however: the bourgeoisies resort to nationalism and militarism to try to suppress the class struggle has a devastating objective dynamic. The implications of the return to universal military service cannot be understood based on official euphemisms and obfuscations. They flow from the mounting objective crisis of the world capitalist system, that has seen more than a quarter century of unbroken imperialist wars since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The claim that the end of the USSR marked the End of History lies in tatters. Rather, the dissolution of the Soviet Union signaled the return of all the historical conflicts that twice plunged the world into world war. For those who do not want to fight and dieor see their children diein wars like those in Afghanistan, Syria and Mali, or while pacifying cities at home, the decisive question is building an anti-war movement in the working class. The escalation of wars and underlying inter-imperialist rivalries in the last 25 years has produced a qualitatively new stage in the capitalist crisis. Faced with the collapse of its world hegemony, Washington adopted last year a National Security Strategy downplaying the war on terror, and declaring that US foreign policy is based on great power conflict. And as US-EU trade wars erupt, Berlin and Paris are stepping up calls for an EU army to compete with America. Inside the US military, calls are growing for the draft. US forces spent $5.6 trillion waging war in at least 76 countries since 2001, Military.com wrote, which begs the question: Can an all-volunteer force stand ready to answer the call? It cited retired Major General Dennis Laich, a supporter of the draft: If you do the math, only three out of 10 Americans meet the criteria to serve, and only 15 percent of those able have the propensity to serve. This is unsustainable ... Touring the killing fields of World War I before the centenary of the wars end two weeks ago, Macron said the EU needed an army capable of confronting not only Russia and China, but also the United States. As they try to band together to rival US military power while confronting workers at home, the EU imperialists are impelled to also return to fascistic nationalism. Debating a return to military service, Germanys Grand Coalition government is promoting the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD); Interior Minister Horst Seehofer applauded the participants in a neo-Nazi riot in Chemnitz in which a Jewish restaurant was attacked. In France, Macron hailed Nazi-collaborationist dictator and anti-Semite Philippe Petain as a war hero, citing his World War I record. As mass opposition to austerity and social inequality erupts across Europe, the decisive question is raising the consciousness of the working class to the level of its historic tasks. A new anti-war movement must be based on an internationalist and socialist perspective, led by a political vanguard in the working class fighting for this perspective. This means building the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), the world Trotskyist movement, and the ICFIs French section, the Parti de legalite socialiste (PES). The PES makes the sharpest possible warnings about the reactionary European middle class left groups that emerged from the post-1968 student movement: they support war and nationalism. Swedens Left Party voted for the draft, deputies of Jean-Luc Melenchons Unsubmissive France (LFI) party are planning the draft from the French National Assemblys military committee. And top Left Party officials sit, sworn to secrecy, on the German parliaments military commission. The political alternative is the ICFI. The PES reaffirms the principles laid out in the ICFIs 2016 statement, Socialism and the Fight Against War: * The struggle against war must be based on the working class, the great revolutionary force in society, uniting behind it all progressive elements in the population. * The new anti-war movement must be anti-capitalist and socialist, since there can be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and the economic system that is the fundamental cause of militarism and war. * The new anti-war movement must therefore, of necessity, be completely and unequivocally independent of, and hostile to, all political parties and organizations of the capitalist class. * The new anti-war movement must, above all, be international, mobilizing the vast power of the working class in a unified global struggle against imperialism. The permanent war of the bourgeoisie must be answered with the perspective of permanent revolution by the working class, the strategic goal of which is the abolition of the nation-state system and the establishment of a world socialist federation. This will make possible the rational, planned development of global resources and, on this basis, the eradication of poverty and the raising of human culture to new heights. Teachers in Scotland have overwhelmingly rejected a 3 percent pay offer from the Scottish government and local authorities. Teachers, some 30,000 of whom marched through Glasgow last month, are demanding a 10 percent pay increase to redress some of their huge income losses over the last decade. Ballot results from teacher members of the Educational Institute for Scotland (EIS), the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association (SSTA) and the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) unions, all showed huge majorities against the pay offer. 98 percent of EIS members rejected the offer on a turnout of 74 percent of its 48,000 members. 97 percent of the 73 percent of SSTA members who voted rejected the offer, while a survey of 1,000 NASUWT members found that 54 percent were willing to strike against the offer. EIS general secretary, Larry Flanagan, warned this is the biggest ballot turnout in 40 years and the biggest single rejection of a pay offer. It shows there is deep discontent about pay, but also workload, the cuts to additional support needs staff and the general impact of rising class sizes and resources reducing. The threat of industrial action has never been more real in living memory. Teachers were immediately denounced by employers group, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA). Resources spokeswoman Gail Macgregor complained If we could give more to teachers we would, but as budgets reduce we have to think about what we would have to cut if we were to pay teachers more. Cosla has a policy of parity and it is incredibly unhelpful if one part of the workforce ends up receiving more than another part of the workforce. It creates a sense of them and us and creates a morale issue. The teachers vote came shortly after members of Unite, Unison and GMB unions voted to reject similar offers made to local government workers. According to Unison, 79 percent of voters rejected the offer while 67 percent supported industrial action in pursuit of a pay claim. In all, some 244,000 workers are employed by Scottish local authorities. The Scottish government, local authorities, teaching and local government unions are desperate to avoid strikes, and above all to prevent a united offensive by teachers and council workers. While the local government unions claim to be organising statutory industrial action ballots, they wrote to Derek Mackay, Scottish Finance Secretary urging him to come up with a better offer they could then attempt to sell to their members. A new estimate by the aid agency Save the Children that 85,000 children have died of hunger in Yemen since Saudi Arabias US-backed bombings of the country began in 2015 underscores the criminal character of Washingtons sponsorship of this horrific slaughter. The charity said 85,000 was a conservative estimate of how many children under the age of five had starved between April 2015, when the Saudi regime began its air war, and October this year. It is difficult to get an exact number of deaths. According to aid workers, many go unreported because only half of Yemens health facilities are functioning and many people are too poor to access the ones that remain open. Backed by the Obama administration, Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemens civil war in 2015 to fight Shiite rebels allegedly backed by the Saudi ruling elites regional rival, Iran. The brutal offensive has become a virtual proxy war by the US against Iran. The Pentagon has supplied aerial refuelling for Saudi bombers, naval support for a blockade of the port city of Hodeidah and intelligence assistance for selecting targets. Save the Children said it based its figures on mortality rates for untreated cases of Severe Acute Malnutrition in infant children from data compiled by the UN. The charity warned that, based on historical studies, if acute malnutrition is left untreated, around 2030 percent of children will die each year. For every child killed by bombs and bullets, dozens are starving to deathand its entirely preventable, Tamer Kirolos, Save the Childrens country director in Yemen said. Children who die in this way suffer immensely as their vital organ functions slow down and eventually stop. Their immune systems are so weak they are more prone to infections with some too frail to even cry. Parents are having to witness their children wasting away, unable to do anything about it. The Red Sea port of Hodeidah, the entry point for some 80 percent of urgently needed food supplies, medicines and aid into Yemen, has been under blockade since last year. Save the Children said it had been forced to bring aid for the north of the country through the southern port of Aden, significantly slowing deliveries. Despite supposed US-supported ceasefire offers from the Saudi monarchy, the charity also reported a dramatic increase in air strikes. In the past few weeks there have been hundreds of air strikes in and around Hodeidah, endangering the lives of an estimated 150,000 children still trapped in the city. Kirolos stated. Save the Children is calling for an immediate end to the fighting so no more lives are lost. Far from ending the slaughter, the US-backed forces are taking it to an horrific new level. Earlier this month, the Saudi-led coalition reported that it had mobilised some 30,000 troops to surround Hodeidah. The troops include Emirati and Sudanese regulars, Al Qaeda militiamen and Yemeni mercenaries. The port city is being subjected to non-stop bombardment from both the air and sea. Save the Children earlier reported that its staff counted some 100 airstrikes during one weekend, a five-fold increase compared to the first week in October. In addition, Saudi Arabia has imposed economic sanctions and blockades on Yemen, contributing to the worlds gravest humanitarian crisis. The UN warned recently that 14 million people could soon be on the brink of starvation. The World Health Organisation recently said nearly 10,000 people, mostly civilians, had been killed in the war. Aid groups believe the death toll may be five times higher. According to the UN, the fighting and blockades had also left 22 million people in need of humanitarian aid, and led to a cholera outbreak that has affected 1.2 million people. In a statement on Tuesday, President Trump blatantly defended Saudi Arabias bloody onslaught, accusing Iran of being responsible for a bloody proxy war against Saudi Arabia in Yemen, while Saudi Arabia would gladly withdraw from Yemen if the Iranians would agree to leave. These comments point to the fraud of an announcement the next day by US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis that peace talks to end the war would begin next month in Sweden. Mattis could provide no dates or details. If the proposed meeting proceeds, the real purpose will be to blame Iran for the bloodbath, demand an immediate end to Iranian support for the Houthi rebels and create a pretext to continue the siege of Hodeidah. This week, Trump reinforced Washingtons partnership with the Saudi regime by touting a huge Saudi arms purchase and dismissing the evidence that the kingdoms de facto ruler, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the killing of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. On Wednesday, Trump lauded the Saudis, crediting the regime for a drop in oil prices. He wrote on Twitter: Oil prices getting lower. Great! Like a big Tax Cut for America and the World. Enjoy! $54, was just $82. Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but lets go lower! Earlier, Trump brushed aside Prince Mohammeds involvement in Khashoggis murder, writing: [I]t could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic eventmaybe he did and maybe he didnt! In line with his belligerent America First program, he declared that the Saudi regime, had agreed to spend and invest $450 billion in the US, including $110 billion in military equipment purchases, rather than possibly obtain arms from Russia or China. Trumps statements are not a personal aberration. They crudely lay bare the underlying interests that American imperialism has pursued in the Middle East for decades. Washingtons lucrative economic relations with the Saudi monarchy and Saudi support for US aggression in the Middle East, particularly against Syria and Iran, are part of an increasingly frenzied drive to assert US dominance over the oil-rich and strategically-critical region. The escalation of the siege of Hodeidah coincides with the imposition of unilateral and illegal US sanctions against Iran that are tantamount to an act of war. Whatever differences exist with the European powers over the Yemen offensive and the confrontation with Iran, Washington is intent on proceeding, regardless of the terrible human cost. Likewise, while there may be tactical disagreements within and between the Republican and Democrat leaderships in the US over the naked character of the White House agenda, both capitalist parties and the entire political, military and intelligence establishment regard Saudi Arabia as a bastion of reaction against the working class across the Middle East, and a key ally in the conflict with Iran, Russia and China. Gunmen kill 4 in shootout at Chinese consulate in Pakistan's commercial hub originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Gunmen stormed the Chinese consulate in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi on Friday morning, killing four people, authorities said. The three assailants, who were armed with automatic rifles, hand grenades and suicide vests, killed two police officers and wounded a private security guard during a shootout at the consulate, Karachi police said. Two Pakistani civilians, a father and son who had come to collect their visas to China, were also killed, according to police. The attackers were ultimately gunned down by security forces, according to Karachi police. PHOTO: Pakistani troops move in the compound of Chinese Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, Nov. 23, 2018. (Shakil Adil/AP) All Chinese diplomats and staff inside the consulate were believed to be safe and unharmed, police said. (MORE: Trump continues squabble with commander of raid that killed Bin Laden) The Balochistan Liberation Army, a separatist movement from the southwestern province of Balochistan, claimed responsibility via Twitter for the brazen attack in Karachi, the country's largest city and commercial hub. ABC News could not independently confirm the group's involvement. PHOTO: Pakistani security personnel stand next to burned out vehicles in front of the Chinese consulate after an attack in Karachi, Pakistan, Nov.23, 2018. (Shazaib Akber/EPA via Shutterstock) Attacks by Pakistani separatists over the past year have targeted Chinese nationals as well as personnel and projects linked to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Beijing's multi-billion dollar investment into a collection of infrastructure ventures throughout Pakistan. Resource-rich but impoverished Balochistan is at the heart of the mega-project, and separatists there claim the province's resources are being exploited with no benefit for the local population. (MORE: Inside Pakistan's fight for zero polio cases, where women are on the frontlines) PHOTO: People put the body of a police officer killed during a shootout at the Chinese Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, Nov. 23, 2018. (Shakil Adil/AP) Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned Friday's attack, describing it as a "planned campaign to create unrest in the country by those who do not want Pakistan to prosper." "The failed attack against the Chinese Consulate was clearly a reaction to the unprecedented trade agreements that resulted from our trip to China," Khan said in a statement via Twitter Friday. "The attack was intended to scare Chinese investors and undermine CPEC. These terrorists will not succeed." Last night, French President Emmanuel Macron and First Lady Brigitte Macron continued on their official state visit to Belgium, where they attended a dinner with King Philippe of Belgium and Queen Mathilde of Belgium at the Royal Castle in Laeken. Given the formal nature of the evening, both Brigitte and Queen Mathilde chose classic black gowns that lent a certain quiet elegance to the soireebut this isnt a case of fashion deja vu. Both of them maintained distinctive takes on the everlasting piece, choosing finishing touches that spoke to their individual style codes. For the dinner, Macron wore a custom long-sleeved gown by Louis Vuitton, the French fashion label she so often wears. With its sequinned collar and waistband, the evening style had just the right amount of glitz while remaining appropriate for the setting. She accessorized with a simple black clutch and pointy pumps. Meanwhile, Queen Mathilde opted for an off-the-shoulder silhouette that was nipped at the waist, her long-sleeved gown overlaid by a royal red sash pinned at the side. She finished the ensemble with a satin clutch in burgundy, as well as a sparkling tiaraalso one of her signaturesand earrings that were indeed fit for royalty. Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - At least 14 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli gunfire Friday during protests along the Gaza border, the enclave's health ministry said, as a lull in deadly violence held after a truce deal last week. Thousands of demonstrators turned out for the protests but largely kept their distance from the fortified frontier. Health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said 14 people were injured by Israeli army fire along the border, including "a child shot in the chest east of the Al-Bureij refugee camp" in the central Gaza Strip. An AFP correspondent said protesters held back from launching burning tyres or balloons carrying flaming material towards Israel -- tactics they have frequently employed since the border protests began in March. Demonstrators were directed "to keep back from the separation fence and to maintain peaceful protests... to give a chance to Egyptian efforts to calm things down", an organiser told AFP. It marked the second straight Friday of lighter protests since an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire on November 13 ended the worst flare-up between Israel and Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas since a 2014 war. Efforts to reach a more lasting truce have angered Israeli right-wing rivals of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It brought the government to the brink of collapse when the defence minister resigned last week and took his party out of the ruling coalition. Netanyahu was able to avoid snap elections when another key minister pledged on Monday to stay on board, despite sharp disagreements with the premier. Gaza border tensions have soared since the March 30 start of what the Palestinians call the "Great March of Return", a mass protest movement demanding the right for Palestinians to return to homes they fled or were expelled from during the war surrounding Israel's creation. Protesters have often moved right up to the border fence every Friday and occasionally breached it. Story continues At least 235 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly by Israeli fire during border clashes but also by air strikes. Two Israeli soldiers have been killed over the same period. A senior Hamas official said a delegation headed by the Islamist group had arrived in Cairo on Wednesday to meet with Egyptian officials on efforts to "stabilise the truce" with Israel. The meeting was also expected to address reconciliation between Hamas and its rival party Fatah, headed by Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas. The Telegraph Teachers have always had to expect a certain amount of stick from their pupils. Its part of the job; normally we dont grumble too much about it. Over my 14 years in the profession Ive worked across nine secondary schools, teaching history in Wales, Blackpool, and Liverpool. Rabat (AFP) - A leader of an umbrella group of local governments from across Africa insisted Friday that "sustainable development" is needed to cope with the challenges of rapid urbanisation on the continent. Thousands of delegates are meeting for the Africities Summit that brings together local leaders, civil society, governments and international donors every three years. This year's gathering in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh is focusing on the "transition to sustainable cities and territories" and the role of local governments in Africa. "Sustainable development is the only alternative for African cities," said Jean Pierre Elong Mbassi, the secretary general of umbrella group United Cities and Local Governments of Africa. He called for African local authorities to learn lessons and "not repeat the errors of European cities" and other developing nations as they look to cope with rapid rises in populations. Cities across Africa are already struggling to cope with overcrowding and are predicted to grow to over 1 billion people by 2040, meaning that one in two people on the continent will live in urban areas. With cities and towns swelling, African governments are facing up to a raft of issues. Land disputes, pollution, increased poverty and the risk of infectious diseases are all increasing headaches as urban areas boom. "The demographic challenge is the main challenge in Africa because we are on an upwards curve," said Mbassi. "It is only from 2060 that we will begin to see a decline in the population." After a 15-year career in banking and marketing, Nigerian Mike Dada was looking for a platform to "communicate the strength of Africa to the rest of the world". He decided to set up Afrima -- the All Africa Music Awards -- Africa's equivalent of the Grammys, whose fourth edition takes place this weekend in Ghana's capital, Accra. In 2014, penniless but passionate about music, he worked with private sponsors in Nigeria and a partner in Kenya. Together, they organised the awards ceremony to "create jobs" and "make Africans proud", he told local media, earning the backing of the African Union. In four years, Afrima has managed to carve out a space as a platform to showcase the bubbling, innovative and prolific African music industry that has exploded in the past decade. In Accra, it's not World Music the continent is going to celebrate. Instead, it's Afropop, the Nigerian-born style which mixes Congolese soukous, Ivorian coupe-decale, Ghanaian Highlife and Jamaican dancehall that has got Africa's youth dancing. "Music is a bridge," said Olivier Laouchez, chief executive of Trace TV, a French music channel popular on the continent. "In Senegal, we listen to Nigerian hits in nightclubs and South Africa's kwaito (afro-house) is exported to all radio stations on the continent. "Today, what is bringing Africa together... is sport and music." - Diaspora - One category has been dedicated to artists from the vast diaspora. This year, the contenders include Franco-Malian Aya Nakamura and the surprising Afrotronix, an artist of Chadian origin who dresses like Daft Punk and makes house music with Sahelian rhythms and lyrics in Spanish. Maitre Gims, who comes from Democratic Republic of Congo and is repeatedly played on French radio, has racked up more than 200 million views on YouTube with "J'me Tire" ("I'm outta here") and is Afrima's most nominated artist this year. Story continues The rapper is as much of an unknown to English-speaking Africa as Nigeria's Davido is to French audiences, despite his 100 million-plus views on YouTube. "Thanks to Afrima we get to know musicians from all over the continent," Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, a journalist with the Music in Africa website, told AFP. Take, for example, Diamond Platnumz, a Tanzanian who hit the spotlight after winning three Afrima awards two years ago. "Love you Die", his duet with Nigeria's Patoranking, is now being played around the world. "Ghana has always been good (in terms of music) and countries like Sierra Leone or even Gambia are coming up," said Aigbokhaevbolo, who in 2015 was named the continent's best music journalist. "It makes us feel that we are not the only country producing music on the continent", said the Nigerian. - Nigeria v South Africa - Still, despite efforts to create regional "best artist" categories, Nigeria and South Africa will dominate the evening. The big names are regular features from one year to the next: Nigeria's Davido, Wizkid and Tiwa Savage are fixtures, while South Africa's Cassper Nyovest and Nasty-C have made repeat appearances. The two countries, sub-Saharan Africa's biggest economies, have gone head-to-head for years. Today, they are virtually the only countries on the continent to have sophisticated music industries, with professional production facilities, agents and copyright lawyers. Even though South Africa may have a more modern industry, Nigerian artists benefit from a local market of 190 million people, boosting audience numbers. "We had to limit Nigerian songs for our new ranking show of African hits," Laouchez said. "Otherwise they would have outshone the entire continent!" Nigeria has been a clear leader of the Afropop revolution for 10 years. But it remains to be seen if they will maintain their edge on Saturday night against a continent that wants to be finally heard. Kiev (AFP) - Oksana Ostapenko was 12 years old and facing death from hunger when a stranger saved her life by taking the girl into his family and sharing the last of their food. Today, aged 97, the Ukrainian's voice trembles when she recalls the terrible famine that hit her country in the 1930s due to policies enforced by Joseph Stalin's police. "They came and took away all our grain," Ostapenko told AFP. Officers also took away her father, who was sentenced to five years in a northern Russian prison camp because he was a landowner. Ostapenko's mother was left to raise five children as authorities confiscated supplies to meet centralised targets. Her mother saw no option but to send Ostapenko to live with a family in a village near their native Kozliv, some 60 kilometres (40 miles) southeast of Kiev. They hoped that the daughter would return once the famine was over. But weeks after the girl left, her mother and youngest brother died of starvation. Her mother "came to see how I was... then returned to her village, and later I was told she had passed away," Ostapenko remembers as she sits in the Kiev flat she now shares with own daughter. - 'Genocide' - The death toll of the famine -- known as the "Holodomor" in Ukrainian -- remains debated among historians. But Kiev authorities estimate the number of those who died at around four million, or 13 percent of the total population at the time. Kiev has recognised this as a genocide against the Ukrainian people by Stalin's regime, specifically aimed at eradicating the country's peasantry. More than 15 countries recognise that view of events. Now dozens of stories like Ostapenko's have been gathered in a book published to coincide with the 85th anniversary of the Holodomor. The national day of remembrance of the famine is on Saturday. The book, "Humanity in an Inhumane Time", focuses on the people who saved others from dying of hunger. Story continues It brings together testimonies from teachers, collective farm chairmen and ordinary villages who used sparse resources to help others survive. - Jailed for feeding children - Ostapenko's saviour was Yegor Kryvenko, whose work as a mechanic at a local mill allowed him to secure some extra flour for his family. "I just met kind people," Ostapenko said of the father-of-two who offered to take her in when her own mother could no longer support her. "He divided everything that was stored equally, down to the last gramme," she said. "It has to be shared," she recalled Kryvenko saying as he divided up a few dozen small potatoes between her and his own children. This would be almost all the food they would see for several weeks. "And when the (requisitioned) grain was being loaded onto the wagons, it would scatter and I'd go pick it up to bring it home," she said. "There were very difficult years. Let them no longer return to our people." Volodymyr Tylischak, one of the authors of the book to mark the anniversary, said many of those who helped others were sentenced to long jail terms. Some of them dared to gather crops and hand them out to peasants, while others secretly organised meals for children in schools. "Even in the most dire conditions there were those who had the courage to resist," Tylischak said. "They saved lives. One, several or the whole community -- depending on what opportunities they had," said Viktoriya Yaremenko, a historian who also worked on the book. "Each story is a feat, and you understand that only after immersing yourself in those terrible years." Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, founder of space venture Blue Origin and owner of 'The Washington Post,' participates in an event hosted by the Air Force Association September 19, 2018 in National Harbor, Maryland. Not everyone is excited about the Black Friday madness. About 620 Amazon workers in Germany, as well as others in Spain and the U.K., staged walkouts and strikes on November 23. Their demands? Better pay and working conditions, Yahoo! Finance reports. At its centers in Bad Hersfeld and Rheinberg in Germany, 620 workers walked out for 24 hours after Germanys Verdi services union called for a strike. Workers at Spains biggest warehouse, located in San Fernando de Henares, also walked out on Friday and plan to strike Saturday. We are entering the end of year spurt, the most stressful time for employees, said Mechthild Middeke, a spokesperson for Verdi. Especially on a day like Black Friday, employees should be the central focus. Click here to continue and read more... Dubai (AFP) - Amnesty International said Friday it was "gravely concerned" by Bahrain's suppression of political opposition, a day ahead of the parliamentary election. "Over the past two years, the crackdown in Bahrain has seen the political opposition detained, intimidated and silenced," said Devin Kenney, the rights group's Bahrain researcher, in a statement. "We call on the authorities to stop this ongoing and escalating repression and to allow free expression of dissenting voices, including those who oppose the monarchy. "Bahrain's international partners and allies cannot remain silent, and must use their influence to pressure the Bahraini authorities to adhere to the international standards they have committed to," Kenney said. The Sunni-ruled Gulf kingdom has been hit by waves of unrest since 2011, when security forces crushed Shiite-led protests demanding a constitutional monarchy and an elected prime minister. Opposition movements have been outlawed and hundreds of dissidents have been imprisoned -- with many stripped of their nationality. Bahrain's two main opposition groups -- the Shiite Al-Wefaq and secular Waad -- are prohibited from submitting parliamentary candidates. Sheikh Ali Salman, who headed the Al-Wefaq group, was sentenced to life in prison on November 4 for spying for rival Gulf state Qatar, in a ruling rights groups have called a travesty. Bahraini authorities accuse Shiite Iran of provoking unrest in the kingdom. Tehran denies the allegation. Human rights groups have frequently said cases against activists in Bahrain -- men and women, religious and secular -- fail to meet the basic standards of fair trials. Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump renewed his attacks on the judiciary on Thanksgiving Day Thursday, accusing judges of making the country unsafe as he fanned a bitter row over asylum seekers on the US-Mexico border. In a teleconference with US troops, comments to reporters at his Florida estate and early morning tweets, Trump resumed a fight begun Wednesday after Chief Justice John Roberts defended the independence of federal judges. Trump threatened to close the border with Mexico if the situation gets out of control, claiming that criminals and "bad people" were in a migrant caravan trying to gain entry as candidates for asylum. In another matter that has set off rule-of-law alarms, Trump also doubled down on his decision to accept Saudi Arabia's denial that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the October 2 assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi -- and insisted that contrary to reports the CIA has not concluded otherwise. "We have a very strong ally in Saudi Arabia. We have an ally that said they did not commit at the top level the crown prince, the king, they did not commit this atrocity," he said. The president had issued a proclamation earlier in the week ordering that only people entering the country at designated border points be permitted to apply for asylum, a rule that would automatically reject anyone caught trying to cross elsewhere. But a federal judge in San Francisco, Jon Tigar, temporarily blocked the measure, raising Trump's ire who denounced him as an "Obama judge." That triggered an extraordinary rebuke on Wednesday from Roberts, the high court's conservative chief justice. "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges," Roberts said in a statement to the Associated Press on Wednesday. "What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them," he said. Story continues The issue clearly was uppermost on Trump's mind during a Thanksgiving teleconference with US servicemembers around the world. It was the kind of forum that previous presidents would have reserved to thank troops for their service, steering well clear of politics. But Trump lost little time in raising the border. "It's a terrible thing when judges take over your protective services, when they tell you how to protect your border. It's a disgrace," he told the troops, denouncing the San Francisco appellate court that oversees Tigar as "a big thorn in our side." He praised the deployment of US troops in the border area, and compared his administration's border battles to US military operations against Islamic militants overseas. - Border tensions - "We took an old broken wall and we wrapped it with barb wire plus. I guess you could really call it barb wire plus. This is the ultimate. Nobody is getting through these walls," he told the troops. Later, in comments to reporters, Trump said troops on the border were authorized to use lethal force if necessary. "If they have to, they have to use lethal force. I hope they don't have to, but you're dealing with a minimum of 500 serious criminals. So I'm not going to let the military be taken advantage of," he said. US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said earlier this week the troops would be armed only with batons. More than 4,300 migrants -- most of them from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala -- have massed in Tijuana, Mexico across the border from San Diego, California after a weeks-long trek from Central America. Mexican police say 57 Central Americans have been detained and tensions have been growing between the local authorities and the new arrivals. "If we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control," Trump said. "The whole border. I mean the whole border. Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the united states where they make so many cars," he said. - Chief justice - Over the course of the day, Trump alluded several times to Roberts, the chief justice. "Justice Roberts can say what he wants, but the 9th Circuit is a complete & total disaster. It is out of control, has a horrible reputation, is overturned more than any Circuit in the Country," he said in his opening Twitter salvo of the day. "Judges must not Legislate Security ... and Safety at the Border, or anywhere else," Trump tweeted. "They know nothing about it and are making our Country unsafe." The latest figures show the 9th Circuit had the fourth highest reversal rate during the October 2017 term. When it comes to Cyber Mondays onslaught of online sales, waiting might seem like unconventional advice. But if youre looking for travel deals, thats exactly what you should do at least according to travel app Hopper. Youre seeing a lot of sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but weve actually seen over the past few years theyve consistently been selling more of these cheaper fares on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving instead of Monday, Hopper travel expert Liana Corwin tells Yahoo Finance. Hopper has coined its own shopping day based on the trend: Travel Deal Tuesday. It has really emerged in recent years as the best day for consumers to find deals on travel in the post-Thanksgiving holiday period, she says, noting that in 2017 the app sent twice as many deal notifications to users on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving than on Friday and Monday combined. One reason airlines might be leaning more toward Tuesday rather than Monday or even Black Friday is those days are really known for physical good purchases, like you know that mattress or TV that youve been eyeing, Corwin says. So airlines are trying to stay out of the fray of that day and create their own holiday. What to expect on Travel Deal Tuesday Expect about 20% of domestic and international routes to be on sale on Tuesday, Corwin says, so theres a good chance some of the popular travel destinations will be discounted. Buyers will get the most value on international routes. Airlines like Cathay Pacific, Qatar Airways, Philippine Airlines and Avianca are offering sales of up to 40% off to destinations like Hong Kong, Singapore and Johannesburg. Hawaiian Airlines will be offering deals on nonstop flights to Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan. For example, one-way fares from Honolulu to Japan starting at $299. It pays to be flexible To maximize travel deals, flexibility is key, Corwin says. Many sales are restricted to certain date ranges. Thats the best way to be able to tick off those bucket list destinations youve always wanted to go to, she says. Story continues In addition to flexibility, shoppers should also be prepared to get an early start. If you have an airline that youre particularly loyal to, I recommend going to their website early in the morning. Fare sales tend to start early, she says. On a high-demand day like Travel Deal Tuesday, its likely that theyre going to sell out pretty quickly. The Tuesday myth The deal-hunting season that has grown up around Black Friday is great and all, but consumers need to be book travel other times, too. When its not holiday deal season, conventional wisdom suggests that Tuesdays are the best day year-round to look for good prices on flights, but Corwin says thats outdated thinking. The Tuesday thing is actually kind of a myth, she says. What we actually found at Hopper is that Thursday is the best day of the week for airfare sales, only by a very small percentage. Hopper has found that during the rest of the year, there isnt actually a best day to book travel. But there is a worst. Deals tend to start being discounted in the beginning of the week. So you dont necessarily want to be booking on the weekend, Corwin says. Thats kind of the worst time to buy. Follow Ned Ehrbar on Twitter. By Syed Raza Hassan KARACHI (Reuters) - Three suicide attackers stormed the Chinese consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi amid a series of gunshots and an explosion on Friday, but were killed before they could force their way in with a car packed with explosives, police said. The attack, claimed by separatist insurgents from the impoverished southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, killed four people, including two police officers, but it was far from the most deadly on a particularly violent day across the region. A suicide attacker on a motorbike set off explosives in a crowded festival and market in northwest Pakistan's Orakzai region, killing at least 25 people at around the same time as the Karachi bloodshed. Over the border in eastern Afghanistan, a suicide blast at a mosque on an army base killed at least 26 people and wounded 50, security officials said. Earlier in the week, a suicide bomber killed 55 people in the capital, Kabul. The bloodletting comes as faint hopes for peace in Afghanistan have been stirred by two meetings between U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and the Taliban in Qatar. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday the United States was "in very strong" peace negotiations in Afghanistan but he did not know whether they would be successful. The attack on China's consulate in Karachi was claimed by the separatist Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) insurgent group that opposes Chinese projects linked to its Belt and Road initiative in resource-rich Baluchistan. Two policemen and two people waiting in a queue outside the consulate were killed in the attack, along with the three gunmen. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan called it "part of conspiracy" against Pakistani and Chinese economic and strategic cooperation and ordered an inquiry, his office said. Pakistan has long accused its old rival, India, of supporting the nationalist insurgents in Baluchistan, while India accused Pakistan of nurturing Islamist militants throughout the region. India denies helping the Baluchistan insurgents and was quick to condemn the violence. "The perpetrators of this heinous attack should be brought to justice expeditiously," India's foreign ministry said in a statement. India has for decades accused Pakistan of supporting Islamists fighting Indian security forces in the Indian part of the Himalayan region of Kashmir, where increasing violence flared again on Friday with Indian forces killing six militants in a clash. India and the United States also accuse Pakistan of supporting the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan denies that. In a statement from State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert, the United States condemned the attack and commended "the Pakistani security forces quick and brave response ... that prevented further loss of life." The United States "will continue to seek opportunities to cooperate with the Pakistani government to combat these threats in the region," Nauert said. 'EXPLOITING RESOURCES' As the Karachi attack unfolded, an explosion and gunshots rang out in its affluent Clifton neighborhood and a plume of smoke rose over the area. City police chief Amir Shaikh said the three attackers came in a car filled with explosives but failed to get inside the heavily fortified compound. It was not clear if the car had exploded. "They tried to get inside, but the Rangers and police killed one of the terrorists," Shaikh said. A gun battle broke out with the two other attackers trying to enter the visa section, but they were also killed, he said. A spokesman for the BLA confirmed there were three attackers. "China is exploiting our resources," spokesman Jiand Baloch told Reuters by telephone. China has funded development of a deepwater port at Gwadar in south Baluchistan, and is also investing in other projects on a China Pakistan Economic Corridor. Baluchistan, which is on the borders of Afghanistan and Iran, has rich mineral and natural gas reserves but is Pakistan's poorest province. Separatists have for decades campaigned against what they see as the unfair exploitation of resources, in particular natural gas and minerals. The Chinese government's top diplomat, Wang Yi, said he was "shocked" by the attack and urged Pakistan to prevent any more such incidents. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said China would "continue unswervingly" to work with Pakistan to develop economic projects. The suicide bomb attack in the Afghan border province of Khost came as people gathered for Friday prayers at the mosque on the army base. The Taliban, who are waging a war to oust the Western-backed Afghan government and expel foreign forces, have launched a series of high-profile attacks against Afghan security forces in recent weeks. The blast in Pakistan's Orakzai region was also at a Friday festive gathering. There was no claim of responsibility for either of those blasts. (Additional reporting by by Kay Johnson and Drazen Jorgic in ISLAMABAD, Rupam Jain in KABUL, Philip Wen in Beijing; Editing by Robert Birsel, Nick Macfie and Jonathan Oatis) Lagos (AFP) - Nigeria's main opposition party has called the government to account for its record on tackling Boko Haram, after at least 44 soldiers were killed at the weekend. Dozens more were suspected to have lost their lives in the attack on the base in Metele village, in Borno state near the border with Niger, although numbers have not been confirmed. President Muhammadu Buhari made defeating the Islamist insurgents a key plank of his 2015 election campaign and has said the jihadists were "technically defeated". But that claim has been called into question by repeated attacks, including suicide bombings and raids targeting civilians and the military. Neither the government nor the military has commented on the latest deaths, which were claimed by the IS-backed Boko Haram faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). But Buhari's main challenger at next February's election, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), sent a condolence message to the families of those who were killed. He was also reported as saying on Friday that the losses were "a clear sign that our troops need to be better funded and better equipped". On Thursday night, Senate leader Bukola Saraki, a Buhari critic who defected from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to the PDP earlier this year, also spoke out about the deaths. He also announced that a delegation of senators would travel to the northeast to visit frontline troops, as others in the party questioned the effectiveness of the counter-insurgency. "It is time that we face the reality that Boko Haram is not technically defeated," said Peter Ayodele Fayose, a former state governor and leading PDP figure. More than 27,000 people have been killed in nine years of fighting and 1.8 million others are still homeless, as aid agencies tackle the humanitarian fall-out from the conflict. Amaechi Nwokolo, a security analyst at the Roman Institute of Security Studies in Abuja, told AFP: "The whole thing (the insurgency) has been politicised. Story continues "Now, as election season and Christmas approach, we are likely to see an upsurge in attacks. These terrorists are not dumb. They will certainly want to create chaos around the election." Political analyst Chris Ngwodo said the PDP would likely want to make capital out of the current situation but added it had not translated into a loss of support for Buhari or the APC. "I can't see that these attacks have shifted public opinion here," he said from the Borno state capital, Maiduguri. "Borno still feels like Buhari territory. "The opposition will look for chinks in the armour of the ruling party but I don't know if they can generate the kind of traction from these kinds of incidents." Peshawar (Pakistan) (AFP) - At least 31 people were killed and 50 wounded when a suicide blast ripped through a crowded marketplace in Pakistan's restive northwestern tribal region Friday, officials said. The attack took place during the regular Friday bazaar in Kalaya, a town in a Shiite-dominated area of Orakzai tribal district, senior local official Khalid Iqbal told AFP. Initial investigations showed it was an improvised explosive device hidden in a carton of vegetables, but officials later said it had been a suicide blast. "It's not clear whether the bomber was on foot or riding a motorcycle," senior official Ameen Ullah told AFP. Shahbaz Ali, a resident who was buying food in the market, said he had seen a boy with his face covered ride up on a motorcycle. "Suddenly a blast took place and then I was unconscious," he told AFP. Ullah said 31 people had been killed, including 22 Shiite Muslims. More than 50 people were wounded, with 17 of them in critical condition, he said. Tribal police confirmed the toll. Many of the wounded were taken to a hospital in Kohat, a city in neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where doctors said all staff had been summoned to the trauma centre. Ambulances could be seen outside the hospital, where relatives were awaiting news of their loved ones. One man was searching people before they entered the building, a precaution against a secondary bombing targeting hospital staff. "We have received one dead body and 28 injured, three of them were serious and taken to Peshawar," Fazl Ur Reham, deputy medical superintendent at the hospital, told AFP by telephone. Six other wounded were undergoing surgery, he said. Most of the injured had been hit by ball bearings and fragments of the bomb. "We expect more injured from the site," he added. - On the fringe - Amnesty International condemned the attack, saying in a statement that it showed an "utter contempt for human life". Story continues Orakzai is one of seven restive semi-autonomous tribal regions on the Afghan border, an area that has long been a focal point in the global war on terror and was famously described by Barack Obama as "the most dangerous place in the world". Washington has said that the mountainous region provides safe havens to militants including the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda -- an allegation that Islamabad denies. Pakistan, which joined the US war on terror in 2001, says it has paid the price for the alliance. It has been battling Islamist groups in the tribal belt since 2004, after its army entered the region to search for Al-Qaeda fighters who had fled across the border following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. Multiple bloody military operations have been carried out in the area, officially known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and home to around five million ethnic Pashtuns. Security has improved in the region in recent years, though lower-level attacks are still carried out with devastating regularity, often targeting Shiites in the area. But it remains notorious for the availability of cheap guns, drugs and smuggled goods. Residents also complain of undue harassment by security forces, citing disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Earlier this year Pakistan passed legislation which paves the way for the tribal areas to be merged into neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, bringing them into the political mainstream. The move will impose the Pakistani judicial system on a region still loosely governed by British colonial-era laws and the tribal system of honour, and which has always existed on the fringes of the state. The Hague (AFP) - A former militia leader from Central African Republic known as "Colonel Rambo" will for the first time face judges in The Hague Friday on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Alfred Yekatom, 43, was arrested late last month in the volatile African country and extradited on Saturday to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. Yekatom faces 14 charges for his role in the CAR's bloody unrest, which has pitted Christian and Muslim groups against each other since 2013. An elected MP since 2016, Yekatom was arrested after he drew his gun and fired into the air in the parliament in Bangui, the capital, during an altercation late last month. At Friday's hearing, scheduled for 1000 GMT, judges will "verify the identity of the suspect and the language in which he is able to follow the proceedings," the ICC said earlier this week. "He will be informed of the charges against him," it said in a statement. The charges include murder, mutilation, torture, cruel treatment and recruiting child soldiers into his so-called anti-Balaka militia group, responsible for attacks on Muslims between December 2013 and August 2014, prosecutors said. - 'Violent acts' - Yekatom was wanted in particular for leading an attack in Bangui on December 5, 2013, when his group armed with guns, grenades and machetes, attacked Muslims in Boeing district, killing between six to 13 civilians. The group then moved to another location where four Muslims were killed, prosecutors said. Yekatom had been in prosecutors' sights since 2015 for "engaging in or providing support for acts that undermine the peace, stability or security in the CAR", his ICC arrest warrant said. But it said the shooting incident in parliament showed "that he resorts to violent acts" and that his arrest was necessary "to prevent him from committing further crimes within the jurisdiction of the court." Story continues Yekatom's transfer is the first since the ICC's chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda opened a probe in 2014 into the deadly violence that has left thousands dead and forced more than a quarter of the population out of their homes, according to UN figures. One of the world's poorest nations despite a rich supply of diamonds and uranium, CAR has struggled to recover from a 2013 civil war that erupted when President Francois Bozize, a Christian, was overthrown by mainly Muslim Seleka rebels. In response, Christians, who account for about 80 percent of the population, organised vigilante units dubbed "anti-Balaka" in reference to the balaka machetes used by Seleka rebels. The Hague (AFP) - A former militia leader from the Central African Republic known as "Colonel Rambo" was tortured in detention before his transfer to The Hague on war crimes charges, his lawyer said Friday. The arrest of Alfred Yekatom, who made his first appearance at the International Criminal Court since his extradition, was "brutal" and he was later beaten with rifle butts, his defence said. Yekatom, 43, was arrested in October in Bangui and sent on Saturday to the Netherlands for his role in bloody unrest in the CAR pitting Christian and Muslim groups against each other since 2013. "The arrest was, according to him, brutal," lawyer Xavier-Jean Keita told the court. "He was tortured, he says, he was beaten with Kalashnikovs and rifle butts, and he still has visible signs of the beating," the lawyer added. "The medical team at the ICC detention centre has observed this." An elected MP since 2016, Yekatom was arrested after he drew his gun and fired into the air in the parliament in Bangui, the capital, during an altercation late last month. He faces 14 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, mutilation, torture, cruel treatment and recruiting child soldiers into his so-called anti-Balaka militia group. The group is accused of attacks on Muslims between December 2013 and August 2014. Yekatom said the first he had known about the war crimes charges was when he arrived in The Hague. "No one said anything to me, I was at parliament and there was a bit of trouble there. Then they arrested me and sent me here," the ex-fighter, wearing a suit and listening to a translation of the proceedings on headphones, told the court. "When I got here on Sunday I was given some documents and I read the charges. No one said anything to me there, it was only here that I was told." - 'Violent acts' - Yekatom's lawyer added that his "fundamental rights had been violated" because he had been denied access to a judge in the CAR, and the first time he had seen a lawyer was on Monday at the ICC. Story continues The court will hold an official hearing to confirm the charges on April 30 2019, Judge Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua said. The judge said he could not immediately deal with the allegations of torture. "You have raised a very important problem and we cannot deal with it orally. We have to have written submissions, at this stage we cannot discuss this question, nor resolve it." Yekatom's transfer is the first since the ICC's chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda opened a probe in 2014 into the deadly violence that has left thousands dead and forced more than a quarter of the population out of their homes, according to UN figures. One of the world's poorest nations despite a rich supply of diamonds and uranium, CAR has struggled to recover from a 2013 civil war that erupted when President Francois Bozize, a Christian, was overthrown by mainly Muslim Seleka rebels. In response, Christians, who account for about 80 percent of the population, organised vigilante units dubbed "anti-Balaka" in reference to the balaka machetes used by Seleka rebels. Yekatom had been in prosecutors' sights since 2015 for "engaging in or providing support for acts that undermine the peace, stability or security in the CAR", his ICC arrest warrant said. Yekatom was wanted in particular for leading an attack in Bangui on December 5, 2013, when his group armed with guns, grenades and machetes, attacked Muslims in Boeing district, killing between six to 13 civilians. The group then moved to another location where four Muslims were killed, prosecutors said. The arrest warrant said the shooting incident in parliament showed "that he resorts to violent acts" and that his arrest was necessary "to prevent him from committing further crimes within the jurisdiction of the court." Police are deliberately ramming into moped thieves even when they are not wearing helmets in a bid to tackle crimes committed on two wheels. The tactic was revealed in a video released by the Met Police showing the full range of tactics used by officers dealing with criminals riding mopeds. The move is a bid to quash the misconception that officers will end their pursuit if the suspect drives dangerously or removes their helmet. Two British brothers who are wanted in the UK over drug allegations have been arrested in Thailand. Joseph Mulhare, 43, and Gregory Mulhare, 38, were arrested in a hotel room in Chon Buri, south east of Bangkok, by armed Thai officers earlier this week over what are thought to be drug offences. Merseyside Police has confirmed the Mulhares had been arrested and are being deported to the UK but did not detail the allegations against them. A 30-year-old asylum seeker almost certainly attended a school by posing as a 15-year-old pupil, it has been confirmed. An investigation was launched after a pupil at Stoke High School in Ipswich posted a photo of him in a classroom on Snapchat with the caption: Hows there a 30-year-old man in our maths class? The Home Office removed the man from the school after some parents refused to let their children attend classes with him. Dexter the springer spaniel has been dubbed Britains luckiest dog after leaping of a 230ft cliff. Dexter was being taken for a walk by owner Mark Harris when he chased a bird and went straight over a cliff edge. But, after a daring rescue by coastguard volunteers, they found not only that Dexter had survived but he hadnt even broken any bones. U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts has clashed with Donald Trump in a rare intervention - REUTERS Donald Trump has been reprimanded by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president. Mr Trump on Tuesday described a federal judge in California an "Obama judge", criticising his decisions. Mr Roberts, breaking with tradition dictating that the Supreme Court refrain from reacting to politics, hit back and defended the judge. He said that America does not have "Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges." "What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them," he said, in a statement responding to an inquiry from the Associated Press. "That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for." U.S. President Trump greets Justice Roberts after delivering his State of the Union address in Washington Credit: Reuters Mr Trump then hit back at the Chief Justice's remarks, escalating the unprecedented row and tweeting: "Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have 'Obama judges,' and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country." He continued: "It would be great if the 9th Circuit was indeed an independent judiciary, but if it is why are so many opposing view (on Border and Safety) cases filed there, and why are a vast number of those cases overturned. Please study the numbers, they are shocking. "We need protection and security - these rulings are making our country unsafe! "Very dangerous and unwise!" There are a lot of CRIMINALS in the Caravan. We will stop them. Catch and Detain! Judicial Activism, by people who know nothing about security and the safety of our citizens, is putting our country in great danger. Not good! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 21, 2018 Mr Trump's assessment of Jon Tigar came after the judge issued a forceful ruling on Monday night blocking the president's attempt to bar entry to the US to migrants who arrive between ports of entry. Story continues "This was an Obama judge," said Mr Trump. "And I'll tell you what, it's not going to happen like this anymore." The president also repeated his attacks on the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has dealt his administration a number of legal setbacks. And it came shortly before The New York Times published a startling story claiming that Mr Trump wanted this spring to order the justice department to prosecute his political rivals Hillary Clinton and James Comey, for unspecified crimes. Mr Trump had to be dissuaded by the then-White House counsel, Don McGahn, who pointed out that pursing such a political prosecution would spark an immediate backlash that could harm his presidency. The US president has never been reticent about criticising the judiciary. Last year, the president scorned the "so-called judge" who made the first federal ruling against his travel ban. During the presidential campaign, he criticised Roberts himself for the chief justice's decisive vote in 2012 to preserve President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. Mr Trump also referred to an Indiana-born judge of Mexican descent, who was presiding over a fraud lawsuit against Trump University, as a Mexican who would be unable to rule fairly because of Mr Trump's proposal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. Geoffrey Bran (right) has been charged with murdering wife Mavis (left), who was killed by boiling fat (Picture: Wales News) A chip shop owner has been charged with murdering his wife who died after suffering horrific burns from boiling fat. Mavis Bran, 69, died after suffering burns at the village chip shop she ran with husband Geoffrey Bran, 70. The former pub landlady suffered severe burns to 46 per cent of her body from the 160C oil and was rushed to a specialist unit at hospital but died six days later. The couple came out of retirement to start their roadside cafe in Hermon, near Carmarthen. (Pictures: Wales News) Mr Bran, of Hermon, near Carmarthen in west Wales, has been charged with murder. He appeared in magistrates court in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire. He was originally arrested on suspicion of assault after telling neighbours she had slipped and fell next to the fryer and her death was an accident. He was rearrested for murder a few weeks later. Mr Barn said nothing when he appeared in court and was remanded in custody to appear at Swansea Crown Court on Monday, November 26. A spokeswoman for Dyfed Powys Police said: Dyfed-Powys Police has re-arrested a 70-year-old man, in connection with the death of a 69-year-old woman from Hermon. The man has been arrested on suspicion of murder and remains in police custody at this time. The chip shop has been closed since Mavis death and a sign outside said the business was closed due to illness. Police investigating her death are still appealing for lunchtime customers from the day she was injured to come forward. The couple came out of retirement in January to start their roadside cafe called the Chipoteria in the sleepy country village of Hermon. The incident in which Mavis suffered the burns happened on Tuesday, October 23. Watch the latest videos from Yahoo UK Yaounde (Cameroon) (AFP) - The Roman Catholic Church in Cameroon's restive Anglophone region, where separatists are waging an armed insurgency, said Friday it suspected the army of killing a Kenyan priest two days ago. Cosmos Omboto Ondari, a 33-year-old cleric, was shot dead on Wednesday at a church in Kembong parish in the Southwest region. "Eyewitnesses said that he was killed by government soldiers who were firing at random from their vehicle," said a statement from the bishop of Mamfe, Andrew Nkea, whose diocese covers Kembong. "A certain Mr Johnson Ndip Nchot was also gunned down in front of his house, a few metres (yards) from the church building," he said. "We ardently wish that these murders cease in our diocese and the Anglophone regions of Cameroon," the bishop said, urging "all people involved in the killing of innocent civilians to abstain from these inhuman and monstrous acts". In Yaounde, defence ministry spokesman Colonel Didier Badjeck dismissed allegations that the army had acted lawlessly. "We shall have the first elements of an inquiry and we shall communicate them as soon as possible," Badjeck said on social media. Speaking to AFP on Thursday, a local source said there were "no 'Amba Boys' in Kembong" at the time of the murder, referring to the armed separatists, but confirmed that Cameroonian troops were there. The Kenyan priest had only been ordained in March 2017 and a month later, he was put in charge of Kembong parish, working with those displaced by the conflict. Clashes between the armed forces and separatists take place almost daily in the two Anglophone regions on the western flank of Cameroon, where resentment at perceived neglect and arrogance by the French-speaking majority has led to an uprising. Separatists in scattered groups in the equatorial forest attack troops, who are in turn accused of atrocities against civilians. An American Catholic missionary was killed at the beginning of November in the Northwest region. The government blamed separatists but Washington said he died in crossfire. The UN recently warned of worsening violence in Cameroon. The conflict has displaced more than 437,000 people, according to UN data released in October. Jamal Khashoggi speaks during a news conference in Manama, Bahrain in 2014 - AP The CIA has a recording of a phonecall in which Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gave instructions to "silence Jamal Khashoggi as soon as possible", a Turkish news website has reported. Gina Haspel, CIA director, is said to have revealed the existence of a wiretapped call between Prince Mohammed and his brother Khaled bin Salman, who is Saudis ambassador to the US, to Turkish officials during a visit to Ankara last month, according to Hurriyet. It is said that the crown prince gave an instruction to silence JamalKhashoggi as soon as possible and this instruction was captured during the CIA wiretapping, Hurriyet columnist Abdulkadir Selvi wrote on Thursday. The subsequent murder is the ultimate confirmation of this instruction. The brothers are reportedly heard talking about the "discomfort" caused by the Washington Post columnist's criticism of the kingdom's administration. A Turkish official contacted by Reuters said he had no information about such a recording. Khashoggi, a prominent critic of Prince Mohammed, was killed on Oct. 2 inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi's fiancee, talks to Haberturk TV about the day he went missing Credit: AP If confirmed, the wiretap could call into question Washingtons official claim that they have found no evidence to support accusations the murder was ordered by the prince, Riyadh's de-facto leader, himself. The leak comes days after President Donald Trump signalled his support for Prince Mohammed, in a statement which declared he would not further punish Saudi for the murder. In an extraordinary statement subtitled "America First!" Mr Trump said on Tuesday that "our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event -- maybe he did and maybe he didn't!" Speaking to reporters at his Florida resort on Thursday, President Trump doubled down, saying the CIA had not come to a conclusion over whether the order came from the top. I hate the crimeI hate the coverup. I will tell you this: The crown prince hates it more than I do, he said. Story continues The president has since faced calls from members of his own party to re-evaluate ties with the ultraconservative kingdom, but Mr Trump has said the benefits of a good relationship outweigh the possibility its own prince ordered the killing. President Donald Trump speaks to the media about Khashoggi's murder Credit: Getty The Turkish media has published a drip-drip of leaks of information since the news of the Khashoggis death in early October, designed to put pressure on both Riyadh and the US to respond. Riyadh initially remained silent about the 59-year-old columnists disappearance, before claiming that he left the consulate after a short meeting with officials. They then changed their story several times, later claiming that Khashoggi was killed by mistake in a fistfight gone wrong. They admitted earlier this month that he was killed and dismembered after attempts to persuade him to come home failed. Saudi today warned criticism of the prince was a "red line". Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told the BBC that calls for MBS, as he is nicknamed, to be held accountable for the killing, "would not be tolerated", nor would discussion of "anything disparaging". Federica Mogherini, the EU's top diplomat, said on Thursday all those "really responsible" for the murder of journalist Khashoggi have to be held accountable. "Those responsible, really responsible for this terrible murder have to be accountable," she told a news conference in Ankara. Paris (AFP) - On November 1, AFP joined news outlets around the world in covering the release of a major academic paper warning that our oceans were warming dramatically quicker than previously thought. The study was undertaken by some of the world's most pre-eminent climate scientists, using state-of-the-art modelling systems reviewed by their peers, and appeared in one of the most prestigious academic journals. There was just one problem: it was wrong. Published in Nature, the paper by researchers from the University of California San Diego and Princeton found that ocean temperatures had warmed 60 percent more than current estimates. They concluded, with no small sense of alarm, that even the most ambitious emissions cuts laid out in the global plan to prevent climate disaster would need to be slashed again by another 25 percent. Soon after publication, an independent climate scientist -- one who has repeatedly voiced scepticism of the consensus that human behaviour is causing global warming -- spotted an error in the Nature paper's maths. "After correction, the... results do not suggest a larger increase in ocean heat content than previously thought," Nicolas Lewis wrote on his Climate Science blog. "Just a few hours of analysis and calculations was sufficient to uncover apparently serious (but surely inadvertent) errors in the underlying calculations. "It is very important that the media outlets that unquestioningly trumpeted the paper's findings now correct the record too. But perhaps that is too much to hope for," he added. With the rectified calculation, the authors quickly realised they had made a mistake. The new results had a far larger range of possibilities in ocean temperature increases -- between 10 and 70 percent: still warmer, but rendering the study vague even for the sometimes unknowable science of climate modelling. "We quickly realised that our calculations incorrectly treated systematic errors in the O2 measurements as if they were random errors in the error propagation," author Ralph Keeling wrote on climatehome.org. Story continues "We really muffed the error margins," he told the San Diego Tribune. - 'Climate hoax' - The correction prompted some climate deniers to wheel out the conspiracy theory that manmade global warming is made up. Some Twitter users suggested the study was funded by the Democrats, that human-induced planetary warming was invented by former presidential hopeful Al Gore so he could buy a house, and that decades of evidence-based research into the phenomenon constituted "pseudoscience". But scientists rallied round the authors, pointing out that the process surrounding the Nature paper's publication and correction was, really, how scientific research is supposed to work. "Science is a human endeavour and it's therefore imperfect. What's important is that results are scrutinised and replicated by others so that we can assess what is robust and what isn't," Gavin A. Schmidt, director at the Goddard Institute for Space Sciences at NASA, told AFP. "Current climate change has been looked at by thousands of scientists (and other interested people) and our understanding of it is pretty solid," he said. AFP has since corrected its coverage of the study so its updated findings are on the record for future stories on warming oceans. Peter Frumhoff, chief climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the ocean study correction was "a beautiful thing". "The rapid, transparent acknowledgement and correction of inadvertent errors in scientific papers... is at the heart of what separates science from dogma," he told AFP. "It underscores our confidence in the robustness of consensus scientific findings, based on thousands of independent studies, regarding human-caused climate change." Adam Coard was taken seriously ill on holiday. [Photo: Tash Coard] An Australian couples dream anniversary trip turned into a nightmare after a man fell seriously ill and was left paralysed in an interstate hospital. The father-of-two was diagnosed with a rare nerve illness and now his family are desperately raising the $65,000 (36,631) needed to fly him home. Adam and Kate Coard, from Brisbane in Australia, were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary with a relaxing week-long trip to Perth, when tragedy struck. Only three days into their trip, 47-year-old Mr Coard was rushed to the Royal Perth Hospital with cellulitis in his leg and two bacterial infections on October 11. Just two weeks later, Mr Coard was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare nerve condition which left him paralysed. It was heartbreaking to see, his daughter Tash Coard told Yahoo7. Adam Coard (pictured) was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome on a dream holiday. Source: Supplied by Tash Coard My mother had to leave after a week, she needed to go back to work because we needed the money to pay for bills. When Mr Coard was released from the Intensive Care Unit, the hospital decided against sending him home to Brisbane, as the flight would have cost $65,000 (36,631), Ms Coard said. Mr Coard remains in the Royal Perth Hospital, is unable to walk and has only 60 per cent use of his left arm. Desperate to see her father, Ms Coard started a GoFundMe page to raise money to fly her Dad home to Brisbane. We all felt very useless because he was so far away and there was nothing we could do, Ms Coard said. We couldnt even be there for him in company. My mum misses her husband so much, and shes one of the strongest people Ive ever met. Mr Coard remains in a Perth hospital, as his family raise money to fly him home to Brisbane. Source: Supplied by Tash Coard I can tell she just either wants to crumble or wants to be there the entire time and she cant. Ms Coard said doing the fundraiser and contacting people about the familys situation had helped her to feel a bit better. Until a couple of days ago, I was honestly a wreck, but the last couple of days Ive picked up, she said. Ms Coard hopes that the family can raise enough money to fly Adam home. Story continues It would be a miracle, she said. It would change everything. The GoFundMe page has raised over $10,000 of the $65,000 goal. 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: Newlywed paralysed after coming down with cold on honeymoon Woman takes emotional photos in wedding dress after fiance is killed 102-year-old British twins celebrate big day with photoshoot, say plenty of iron and drinking daily keeps them healthy Havana (AFP) - Cuba President Miguel Diaz-Canel personally welcomed back doctors at Havana airport, a local newspaper reported, as 200 returned from Brazil following a spat between the two Latin American countries' leaders. Cuba announced last week it was pulling its doctors out of a medical aid program to Brazil following criticism of the island-nation by the South American giant's new far-right president-elect Jair Bolsonaro. "Early on Friday, the apostles of Cuban health returned home," wrote Diaz-Canel on Twitter, paying "tribute to the men and women who made history in Brazil." The first of more than 8,000 doctors working in Brazil started returning last week to be welcomed at Havana airport by Cuba's deputy health minister, Regla Angulo. The doctors are due to return to their homeland by December 10. The program was started five years ago when Brazil was in the hands of leftist president Dilma Rousseff. Those returning on Friday held flags from the two countries. "We're returning today as our colleagues will, with all the honor and dignity of the world," one doctor told the Juventud Rebelde newspaper. "We will never allow threats nor that anyone questions the humanity and professionalism with which we attended to our Brazilian patients." The feud erupted after Bolsonaro, who is due to assume office on January 1, accused Cuba of keeping most of the money Brazil was paying for the doctors' salaries. He also said he would make changes to the program to include a competency test for Cuban medical personnel wanting to work in Brazil. He has offered to directly hire those doctors wishing to remain in Brazil. Cuba pays its foreign-based doctors 30 percent of what it receives for their services but says it puts the rest into the state coffers that provide free and universal health care for all its citizens. The export of skilled workers is Cuba's primary resource generator and used to be worth $10 billion a year to the impoverished country, although that number has dropped considerably over the last few years due to the economic crisis in Venezuela, which employs thousands of Cuban doctors. Cuba's "white coat diplomacy" was introduced under late ruler Fidel Castro and spread to 67 countries. A Brazilian diplomatic source told AFP last week that 2,000 Cuban doctors were expected to remain in the country. Six thousand families in need across Delaware this Thanksgiving are in luck thanks to one generous man. For decades, Norman Oliver of Wilmington, Delaware, has been handing out turkeys to families who cant afford to buy one for their Thanksgiving meal. In 1981, I gave out four turkeys. I was feeding four homeless people, Oliver tells AOL. And this year, hell be giving out 6,000 throughout the state. Whenever youre doing something good, something good is going to come out of it, Oliver, the president of Nor Enterprises, told the news outlet. Oliver doesnt take all the credit, saying his endeavor has grown each year because of people and because of his 600 to 700 volunteers. Its a production, he adds. Now we hit every Boys & Girls Club. We do all the senior high rises in the city of Wilmington. Around Delaware, Norman is known as Stormin Norman, according to Hanifa Shabazz, the president of Wilmington City Council, because he does everything with a storm. J.J. Farnan, a volunteer truck driver, told AOL that all the volunteers come out every year because its all driven by Norman. Everybody comes together for this turkey drive, its kind of incredible, added Farnan. Linda Richardson, a social service coordinator, said that her goal on Thanksgiving is to collect the donated turkeys and distribute them to 78 seniors in the Sacred Heart Village. Its become so big that they now have police escorts take them through counties. Councilman Zanitha Oliver said that last year he noticed quite a few families that really needed a turkey and were in line waiting. This is a real big impact throughout the whole state, he added. One woman, who didnt give her name, told AOL that its a great blessing to me. Without this I probably wouldnt have Thanksgiving. Oliver says that people are working, but they may not have the extra funds to get a turkey. Its something that you take for granted, he said. To be able to do this kind of stuff is humbling. Kinshasa (AFP) - As the son of DR Congo's veteran opposition leader, Felix Tshisekedi is hoping that the December 23 elections will hand him the prize that eluded his late father -- the presidency. He goes into the election as head of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), a party founded by his father Etienne who spent decades as the country's main opposition leader but died in February last year. Taking over his role at the head of the country's oldest and largest opposition party, Tshisekedi junior is now hoping to make the great leap from political opponent to president. Known to his friends as "Fatshi", the portly 55-year-old is hoping to win enough support to replace President Joseph Kabila, who has ruled the volatile, poverty-stricken nation with an iron fist since 2001. But for a while, it looked like he wouldn't even to be on the ballot. - Pentecostal rivals - On November 11, Tshisekedi joined six other opposition leaders to rally behind a single unity candidate, Martin Fayulu, to take on Kabila's handpicked successor, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary. But the deal drew a furious response from his supporters, prompting him and fellow opposition leader Vital Kamerhe to abandon the deal and run on a joint ticket, effectively weakening and splitting the opposition. If they succeed, Tshisekedi will become president with Kamerhe as his prime minister. Since his father founded the UDPS in 1982, the party has served as an opposition mainstay in the former Belgian colony -- first under dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, then under Kabila's father Laurent-Desire Kabila, who ruled from 1997 until his death in 2001. A father of five, Tshisekedi goes to the same Pentecostal church as Fayulu in Kinshasa, the capital. Though rivals, both men are now fighting to see off Shadary, a Catholic, at the polls. Although Tshisekedi does not enjoy the same degree of popularity as his father, he has risen steadily through the party ranks. Story continues "Etienne was stubborn and proud," said one keen observer of the country's opposition. "Felix is more diplomatic, more conciliatory, more ready to listen to others." - Rooting out corruption - In 2008, he became national secretary for external relations and was elected to the national assembly in 2011 as representative for Mbuji-Mayi, the country's third city. However, he never took up his seat as he did not formally recognise his father's 2011 election defeat to Kabila. A month after his father's death, Tshisekedi was elected as party head. Although he holds a Belgian diploma in marketing and communication, his opponents point out that he has never held high office or had managerial experience. And some detractors have even suggested his diploma is not valid. After announcing his bid to run for the presidency, Tshisekedi promised a return to the rule of law, to fight the "gangrene" of corruption and to bring peace to the east of the country. Last year, he told AFP that if he won, he would set up a "truth and reconciliation commission" to call Kabila to account, but would allow him to stay in the country. Mbabane (eSwatini) (AFP) - The newly-appointed prime minister of the tiny kingdom of eSwatini on Friday banned first class air travel for top government officials as part of a slew of measures to control spending. Prime Minister Ambrose Dlamini, who took office a month ago, also announced that he will not buy a new car for himself but inherit the old one used by his predecessor as the economy battles slowing growth. "Following the current economic challenges facing the kingdom, cabinet has decided to implement major interim fiscal decisions to enhance financial prudence and controls so as to spend as little money as possible," he said in a statement. Dlamini said all senior officials including himself and ministers "will no longer travel first class but in business class when flying on national duties". "All other public servants will fly in economy class". All foreign trips by government officials would be vetted to ensure they were of national importance. A former banker and national executive of Africa's leading mobile operator MTN, Dlamini was last month named prime minister by King Mswati III, to replace Sibusiso Barnabas Dlamini who died in September. Dlamini said he was preparing an "economic recovery" plan for the country which suffers dire poverty and has struggled to lift its economy. The World bank says that eSwatini's GDP is projected to contract by -0.6 percent this year mainly as a result of "worsening fiscal challenges and governments fiscal consolidation efforts". Declining government revenue and high expenditure have resulted in high fiscal deficit and cash flow problems. The king, Mswati, one of the world's last absolute rulers, who has 14 wives and more than 25 children, has a reputation for lavish spending on private planes and royal palaces while 63 percent of his subjects live in poverty. Without warning in April, Mswati III marked 50 years since his country's independence from British colonial rule by announcing that it would now be known as eSwatini ("land of the Swazis"). The landlocked kingdom, which has close economic ties with South Africa, faces international criticism that the government stifles dissent, jails its opponents and denies workers' rights. Theresa May with her Spanish counterpart Pedro Sanchez (Getty) If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez vowed after a phone call with Theresa May over Gibraltar on Thursday night. If Sanchez were to veto Brexit, that would go down well in Gibraltar where 96% of people voted to remain in the EU. But, of course, he actually meant he would veto the Brexit deal that will be put before him and 26 other European heads of government at a summit in Brussels on Sunday. Spains issue with the deal is that it doesnt include a veto for them on the future of Gibraltar. The negotiating guidelines given by European leaders to its chief negotiator Michel Barnier last April state that: After the United Kingdom leaves the Union, no agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without the agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom. MORE: Spain threatens to veto Brexit deal over Gibraltar Spanish objections were sparked when there was no mention of this in the withdrawal agreement published last week. First, they proposed an addition to the deal, which was not accepted by the UK. Now, theyre threatening to bring down the whole thing. Under EU rules, the deal only needs the backing a majority of countries rather than unanimity. Spains own foreign minister, Josep Borrell, admitted as much in an interview earlier this week. He said Spain will not be able to say OK to the deal without changes, but added: They could go over [us] because consensus is not unanimity. MORE: Spanish foreign minister fears UK will split apart over Brexit However, the votes are extremely rare at the European Council, which prefers to take decisions by consensus. The last time a vote took place was in 2014. Then prime minister David Cameron forced a vote over the nomination of Jean-Claude Juncker as commission president but lost by 26 votes to 2. Its more likely that a fudge will be found in behind closed doors deal making before Sunday, allowing leaders to rubber stamp the deal at a highly choreographed summit. Story continues As Spains Europe minister, Marco Aguiriano, told the BBC: As everybody knows in European affairs, you can find solutions at the last minute in different forms. Flybe shares soared on Friday. Photo: Matt Cardy/Getty Images Shares in Britains Flybe were flying high up about 50% in afternoon trading after the company confirmed Virgin Atlantic Airways is considering buying the regional airline. Flybe (FLYB.L) said in a statement: Virgin Atlantic Airways Limited is one of the parties [Flybe] is in discussions with as part of the formal sale process announced on 14 November 2018. There can be no certainty that an offer will be made, nor as to the terms on which any offer will be made. Sky News first reported on the potential takeover, noting that a tie-up could direct more passengers to Virgin Atlantics long-haul network. Additionally, the company is reportedly interested in Flybes coveted take-off and landing slots at Londons Heathrow airport. A spokesperson at Virgin Atlantic said the British airline is reviewing its options in respect of Flybe, which range from enhanced commercial arrangements to a possible offer for Flybe. The airline alreadyhas a trading and codeshare relationship with Flybe. PARIS (Reuters) - France said on Thursday it had imposed sanctions, including travel bans, on 18 Saudi citizens linked to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and said more could follow depending on results of an investigation. The foreign ministry did not name the individuals but said in a statement that the move was in coordination with European partners, notably Germany. Berlin on Monday also banned 18 Saudis and moved to halt all arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The bans bind all members of the European Union's passport-free Schengen zone, it said. "The murder of Mr Khashoggi is a crime of extreme gravity, which moreover goes against freedom of the press and the most fundamental rights," the ministry statement said. France expected a transparent, detailed and exhaustive response from Saudi authorities, it said. "These are interim measures that may be reviewed or extended depending on the progress of ongoing investigations," it said. French reaction has been relatively guarded given it is keen to retain its influence with Riyadh and protect commercial relations spanning energy, finance and weapons sales. Saudi's deputy public prosecutor said on Nov. 15 that Riyadh was seeking the death penalty for five of the 11 suspects charged with Khashoggi's killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last month. "It (France) recalls its opposition, in all places and in all circumstances, to the death penalty," the ministry said. (Reporting by John Irish, Editing by Leigh Thomas) Paris (AFP) - France's President Emmanuel Macron agreed Friday to return 26 artworks to Benin "without delay," his office said. The decision came as Macron received the findings of a study he had commissioned on returning African treasures held by French museums, a radical policy shift that could put pressure on other former colonial powers. He proposed gathering African and European partners in Paris next year to define a framework for an "exchange policy" for African artworks. Macron agreed to return 26 royal statues from the Palaces of Abomey -- formerly the capital of the kingdom of Dahomey -- that were taken by the French army in 1892 and are now housed at Paris' Quai Branly museum. Benin had requested their restitution, and earlier this week welcomed that France had followed the process through to the end. But Macron's office said this should not be an isolated or symbolic case. The president "hopes that all possible circulation of these works are considered: returns but also exhibitions, loans, further cooperation", the Elysee palace said. The report he received on Friday proposed legislation be developed to return thousands of African artworks taken during the country's colonial period, now in French museums, to nations that request them. There are conditions, however, including a request from the relevant country, precise information about the works' origins, and the existence of proper facilities such as museums to house the works back in their home country. Macron also wants "museums to play an essential role in this process", his office said. They will be invited to "identify African partners and organise possible returns". Museums should quickly establish "an online inventory of their African collections" to allow for searching an item's provenance, the statement said. Macron also called for "in-depth work with other European states that retain collections of the same nature acquired in comparable circumstances". Story continues Calls have been growing in Africa for restitution of artworks, but French law strictly forbids the government from ceding state property, even in well-documented cases of pillaging. Macron raised hopes in a speech last year in Burkina Faso, saying "Africa's heritage cannot just be in European private collections and museums." He later asked French art historian Benedicte Savoy and Senegalese writer Felwine Sarr to study the matter. Their report has been welcomed by advocates of the restitution of works which were bought, bartered, or in some cases simply stolen. Paris (AFP) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday agreed to return 26 cultural artefacts to Benin "without delay", a move that could put pressure on other former colonial powers to return African artworks to their countries of origin. The decision -- which Macron said should not be seen as an isolated or symbolic case -- came as the president received the findings of a study he commissioned on repatriating African treasures held by French museums. Macron agreed to return the 26 works, mainly royal statues from the Palaces of Abomey -- formerly the capital of the kingdom of Dahomey -- taken by the French army during a war in 1892 and now in Paris' Quai Branly museum. In addition, he proposed gathering African and European partners in Paris next year to define a framework for an "exchange policy" for African artworks. The president "hopes that all possible circulation of these works are considered: returns but also exhibitions, loans, further cooperation", the Elysee palace said. Ousmane Aledji, director of the Benin cultural centre Artisttik Africa, said he was pleased to see "a new form of cultural exchange" with France. Britain has also faced calls to return artefacts, including the Elgin Marbles to Greece and the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, while museums in Belgium and Austria house tens of thousands of African pieces. - Legislation to return art? - Calls have been growing in Africa for restitution of artworks, but French law strictly forbids the government from ceding state property, even in well-documented cases of pillaging. In 2016 Benin demanded France return items including statues, artworks, carvings, sceptres and sacred doors. While that request was initially denied, in November 2016 Macron raised hopes in a speech in Burkina Faso, pledging to "return African heritage to Africa". Following his speech, Macron asked French art historian Benedicte Savoy and Senegalese writer Felwine Sarr to study the matter. Story continues Their report, a copy of which has been seen by AFP, has been welcomed by advocates of the restitution of works which were bought, bartered, or in some cases simply stolen. It proposes legislation be developed to return thousands of African artefacts taken during the colonial period to nations that request them. There are conditions, however, including a request from the relevant country, precise information about the works' origins, and the existence of proper facilities such as museums to house the works back in their home country. Macron's office said that museums will be invited to "identify African partners and organise possible returns" and should quickly establish "an online inventory of their African collections". The president also called for "in-depth work with other European states that retain collections of the same nature acquired in comparable circumstances". - Museums fear losing artefacts - A UNESCO convention against the export of illicit cultural goods adopted in 1970 called for the return of cultural property taken from a country but it did not address historic cases, including from the colonial era. With museums fearing they could be forced to return artefacts, former colonial powers have been slow to ratify the convention: France only did so 1997, Britain in 2002, Germany in 2007 and Belgium in 2009. On Tuesday, the governor of Easter Island in the Pacific tearfully begged the British Museum to return one of its famous statues. The London museum has held the Hoa Hakananai'a, one of the most spiritually important of the Chilean island's stone monoliths, for 150 years. Of the estimated 90,000 African artworks in French museums, around 70,000 are at the Quai Branly museum, created by ex-president Jacques Chirac, a keen admirer of African and Asian art. Elsewhere in Europe, 37,000 objects from Sub-Saharan Africa were at Vienna's Weltmuseum and 180,000 were at Belgium's Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren. The report commissioned by Macron said such collections were effectively depriving Africans of their artistic and cultural heritage. "On a continent where 60 percent of the population is under the age of 20 years old, what is first and foremost of a great importance is for young people to have access to their own culture, creativity, and spirituality from other eras," it said. Mulhouse in France, where a boy was reportedly beaten to death for not doing his homework (Picture: Getty) A nine-year-old boy was beaten to death in France after refusing to do his homework, according to reports. Four members of the same family have reportedly been arrested after the boys death at his home in Mulhouse. According to the BBC, local media reported that the boy was hit with a broom handle after refusing to do his homework. It is thought his elder brother, sister and stepsister were all present at the time but his mother, who was also reportedly arrested, was away on a business trip. Four members of the same family have reportedly been arrested by police (Picture: Getty) Police are reported as saying the boy had been hit by blunt objects which left bruises on his body. The four members of the family are expected to appear before a local prosecutor. MORE: Police in Doncaster hunt for sex attacker after man raped in town centre MORE: Rubbernecking drivers who took pictures of lorry crash criticised by police People in Mulhouse held a vigil following the boys death, which reportedly happened in September. The boys death comes as Frances National Assembly is considering a ban on smacking. An illustration of the concept of AI. Back in May at Google I/O, there was a big stir about one new feature Google was planning to roll out. That feature was Duplex, an augmentation of Google Assistant. The demonstration was so good, it inspired some pundits to decry it as fake. They said that it couldnt be done at the consumer level. Google is now in the process of proving them wrong, or right, depending on your perspective. Engadget has what few details there are. court house pillars Nine men haven been cleared of murder in the July 2017 brutal slaying of Bakari Henderson, an American who was on a working vacation in Greece, according to CBS News. A Greek court handed down sentencing today to nine men convicted of assault in the Henderson case. Sentencing ranged from five to 15 years in prison. Henderson, 22, of Austin, Texas, was in Greece working on a photo shoot for a clothing line he was launching. The attack took place outside of a bar in Lagana. Investigators stated a Serbian woman claimed a fight began when she asked the Americans to take a selfie with her. Allegedly, another man asked her why she would take a picture with a black man when there were so many Serbs in the bar. Click here to continue and read more... An American tourist had much to be thankful for this thanksgiving after he was rescued from his capsized catamaran off the central Queensland coast on Thursday, November 22, after a long night drifting in the ocean. A RACQ CQ Rescue helicopter winched the 29-year-old from the hull of his overturned catamaran at about 7:45 am Thursday, after the Australian Maritime Safety Authority alerted them that an emergency beacon had been activated off the coast. Levi Verwoest, from Hawaii, said he had been sailing along the Queensland coast when he noticed the 23-foot boat slowing and taking on water around sunset on Wednesday. Within minutes his boat capsized and he was forced to spend a long, cold and lonely night sitting on the hull of his boat before activating his locator beacon at dawn. The rescue chopper was able to locate Verwoest by honing in on his distress signal and found him about 40 km south of Mackay in the waters between Cape Palmerston and Knight Island. He was taken back to Mackay Airport and thoroughly examined by a doctor and paramedic but was uninjured and incredibly calm, according to rescuers. Rescuers appealed for help to assist Verwoest in getting to Sydney as he lost all his possessions, including his passport, during the incident. Credit: RACQ CQ Rescue via Storyful Hillary Clinton said she thinks Europe needs to get a handle on reforming immigration laws in order to fend off another Brexit. Migration is what lit the flame of such nationalist movements, the former U.S. secretary of state told The Guardian for an upcoming series examining the rise of the populist right in the U.S. and Europe. Conservatism and nationalist ideology have gotten a boost since Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency in 2016 and the U.K. voted earlier that year to exit the European Union. Although Clinton ran on a progressive immigration platform as Trumps challenger, she essentially called for a retrenchment of those policies in The Guardian interview. I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken, particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, she said, praising the German chancellor for her open-door immigration policy. But Clinton added, I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message We are not going to be able to continue to provide refuge and support because if we dont deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic. Amid criticism of her comments, the former presidential candidate defended her statements in a series of tweets on Friday, saying she has always been ... a staunch advocate of comprehensive immigration reform. In a recent interview, I talked about how Europe must reject right-wing nationalism and authoritarianism, including by addressing migration with courage and compassion, Clinton wrote on Twitter. On both sides of the Atlantic, we need reform. Not open borders, but immigration laws enforced with fairness and respect for human rights. The EU needs a more comprehensive policy that builds societies that are both secure and welcoming, she added. In The Guardian, Clinton condemned the fearmongering rhetoric often used by Trump when he discusses immigration in the U.S. The use of immigrants as a political device and as a symbol of government gone wrong, of attacks on ones heritage, ones identity, ones national unity has been very much exploited by the current administration here, she said. Story continues There are solutions to migration that do not require clamping down on the press, on your political opponents and trying to suborn the judiciary, or seeking financial and political help from Russia to support your political parties and movements, Clinton added. Head over to The Guardian to read the full interview. This story has been updated with Clintons statement on Twitter on Friday. Related Content I Had To Change My Foreign Name To Get A Job Post-Brexit Donald Trump Lashes Out At Chief Justice John Roberts Over Immigration Rulings Trump Rants About Khashoggi, Judges, Borders In Thanksgiving Call With Troops Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. There are a lot of reasons to think that the Democrats new House majority will prove as unstable over the medium-to-long term as their last one, which they built up in 2006 and 2008 only to see it annihilated in 2010. A lot of the shift to the Democrats, especially in traditionally Republican suburbs, was driven by personal disapproval of President Trump, and many blue-state suburbanites were still upset about the Republican tax bill capping the state-and-local-tax (SALT) deduction: Democrats swept four Republican-held districts in Orange County, Calif., where at least 40 percent of taxpayers claim the SALT tax break, defeating a pair of Republican incumbents and winning seats vacated by Representatives Ed Royce and Darrell Issa. Those districts include longtime Republican strongholds, like Newport Beach, and rank among the countrys largest users of the state and local tax break. Representative Barbara Comstock lost a seat in Northern Virginia, where more than half of taxpayers claim the SALT deduction, by nearly 13 points. Representative Erik Paulsen of Minnesota, a huge champion of the tax bill, lost by about the same margin in a district where 40 percent of taxpayers claim the deduction. In addition, a number of new House members ran as moderates and pledged not to back Nancy Pelosi for speaker. Democrats may tell themselves that they rode a blue wave of progressivism to victory, but New Jersey suburbanites who voted for Chris Christie twice are not exactly the vanguard of the proletariat. These voters may well prove less willing to sign on to a long-term relationship with the Democrats as the partys economic and tax agenda gains power. Moreover, the House map will be redrawn after the 2020 census in time for the 2022 midterms, with seats migrating out of the Northeast and into places like Texas, Florida, Arizona, and Montana. But regardless of the specific causes of the Democratic takeover of the House, history is against the Republicans regaining control as long as Trump is president. The House has changed party control 29 times in U.S. history. Lets take a look at the circumstances: Story continues For simplicity here, Im grouping the non-Democratic parties (the Federalists, the Whigs, and John Quincy Adamss National Republicans) under the same banner as the Republicans. Thats admittedly a bit artificial in two cases, those of John Quincy Adams and John Tyler. John Quincy Adams was a former Federalist, and the faction that coalesced behind him in 1824 would grow into the Whigs, while the faction of his opponent (Andrew Jackson) would become the Democrats, but the Democrats loss of the House in 1824 is hard to pin on outgoing incumbent James Monroe, given that John Quincy Adams was Monroes secretary of state and the election was waged as a contest of factions nominally within the same party. (The Democrats would take the House back in 1826, as voters rebelled against what they saw as a corrupt deal that gave John Quincy Adams the presidency.) The Whigs also lost the House in the 1842 midterm under Tyler; while elected on a Whig ticket, Tyler was never actually a Whig. Anyway, with those caveats, 24 of the 29 changes in party control have seen the party that held the White House lose the House. Seventeen of those were midterm losses. Six saw the presidents party lose both the House and the White House in a presidential-election year. In the other case, in 1792, President George Washington was reelected unanimously, but the nascent opposition took over the House (the first time the House changed control). The trend has been even more pronounced since the 1856 emergence of the Republican party. Since 1858, 16 out of 18 changes in House control have gone against the party in the White House. The only exceptions have been Harry Truman winning back the House, in the year of his reelection in 1948, and James Garfield (the last president elected directly from the House) reclaiming the House for Republicans in 1880. In Garfields case, however, the incumbent Republican president (Rutherford B. Hayes) was leaving after just one term, having been elected by a dubious backroom deal with the Democrats to end Reconstruction. Hayes had lost the House in the 1878 midterm, again thanks in part to voter anger at the legitimacy of the circumstances of his election, but his retirement gave the Republicans a fresh start. The other three examples of the sitting presidents party winning the House all involved a new president. In 1856, James Buchanan replaced another one-term president of his own party, Franklin Pierce, and won back the House from the ad hoc Opposition party, which in 1856 was for the first time known as the Republican party. In 1848, the Whigs took over the presidency from James K. Polk, who retired after one term (having lost the House in his midterm), but the Democrats won back the House. The split decision suggests the extent to which the new Whig president, Zachary Taylor, had been elected on the basis of his personal popularity as a hero of the Polk-led Mexican War. And in 1796, the Federalists retook the House behind the election of John Adams to succeed Washington not a reflection on the revered Washington so much as the first general election to feature an openly partisan system. Some of the exceptions involved very narrow majorities, sometimes when the two-party system was in flux. The anti-administration faction went from a 5451 majority to a 5947 Federalist majority in 1796. The Whigs went from a 116110 majority to a 113108 Democratic majority in 1848. The Opposition party had just 100 out of 234 House members in a chaotic chamber entering 1856, and came out with 94. But at the end of the day, if you are looking for examples of regaining control of the House without jettisoning an incumbent president, either in a presidential or midterm year, there is only one time in U.S. history its been done: 1948. Its a complicated parallel. When Harry Truman became president in April 1945, just three months into his tenure as vice president, he inherited a once-massive Democratic coalition that had been decaying for almost a decade by the time Franklin D. Roosevelt won his fourth consecutive presidential election. The coalitions internal tensions, and public demand for an opposition-party check, had been suppressed during the war but exploded in a midterm wave in 1946 that saw Republicans capture the House and Senate, both for the first time since 1931. Republicans flipped 13 Senate seats and 57 House seats. But Republicans overplayed their hand in Congress, pushing conservative legislation on a country that hadnt seen any such thing in two decades, while underplaying their hand in the presidential election, nominating the same colorless moderate (Tom Dewey) who had lost to FDR in 1944. Trumans party split three ways in the presidential race (Strom Thurmond won four states as the Dixiecrat candidate, while Henry Wallace ran as the Progressive-party candidate), but while Trumans popular-vote victory was somewhat modest, his party gained 75 House seats and nine Senate seats. In his own reelection campaign, Trump may do well to study how the feisty, populist Truman not only overcame historic trends of his own favoring his defeat, but even won five states (Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, and Wyoming) that Dewey had won in 1944. But when you have only one example in all of American history and its tied to the long FDR majority, its hard to generalize lessons. Undoubtedly, congressional Democrats were helped by carrying Thurmond and Wallace voters down-ticket, as they won 52.6 percent of the popular vote compared with Trumans 49.6 percent. Also, Trump cant count on comparable Democratic policy overreach, since unlike the Republicans after 1946, todays Democrats dont control the Senate. Its also unlikely that the Democrats will renominate Hillary Clinton, as Republicans did with Dewey. Voters who left the Republican party in 2018 may not be Democrats, but they are not happy with Trump, and they are unlikely to return until he is gone from the scene. Breaking down the modern history by number of House seats flipped rather than changes in the majority, Robert Romano takes a less grim view: In presidential election years dating back to 1900, the White House incumbent party picks up seats in the House 57 percent of the time, with gains averaging 18.7 seats. . . . If Republicans were to pick up seats and win the average number of seats gained in 2020 it looks like theyll have about 200 seats in the next Congress theyd be well within striking distance. President Donald Trump and GOP could take back the House. Its not impossible. I agree that its not impossible, but the odds are not great. Romanos examples of the presidents party gaining 20 or more House seats in a presidential election are Republicans in 1904, 1924, 1928, and 1960, and Democrats in 1944, 1948, and 1964. In all but one of those examples (1960), the presidents party also retained the White House, in most cases by lopsided margins. Interestingly, none of them involved a president trying to win his second election: FDR was running for his fourth term in 1944; Teddy Roosevelt in 1904, Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Truman in 1948, and Lyndon Johnson in 1964 were all running for their first election after becoming president from the vice presidency; and 1928 and 1960 were elections at the end of eight-year runs of Republican control of the White House. Also, only 1924, 1948, and 1960 involved recoveries from a major incumbent-party midterm wipeout in the House. (Democrats in 1922 recovered 76 seats from a 300132 majority Republicans had rolled up in the landslide 1920 election, but Republicans kept the majority.) In short, none of these races look much like those we now expect in 2020: a president who was elected alongside a strong House majority, had it collapse in his first midterm, and is trying to win it back while running for reelection. Other than Truman, four presidents have run for reelection after losing the House in their first midterm: Barack Obama in 2012, Bill Clinton in 1996, Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, and John Quincy Adams in 1828. The first three got reelected, but none of their parties got the House back until they were safely in retirement. The 2016 and 2018 elections generally followed historical trends in a number of ways, but history is never an ironclad guide; for example, it was unprecedented in recent history for Democrats riding a midterm wave in the House this year to nonetheless lose four incumbent senators. The number of general elections where the presidents party has picked up 20 or more House seats does, in fact, suggest that Republicans should not be too quick to completely abandon hope. But the rarity of anything like what Republicans will be trying to do in 2020 suggests that Kevin McCarthy should get his caucus used to being the minority, because they will most likely be in that position as long as Donald Trump is the president. For thousands of years, the people of North Sentinel island have been isolated from the rest of the world. They use spears and bows and arrows to hunt the animals that roam the small, heavily forested island, and gather plants to eat and to fashion into homes. Their closest neighbours live more than 50km away. Deeply suspicious of outsiders, they attack anyone who comes through the surf and onto their beaches. Police say that is what happened last week when a young American, John Allen Chau, was killed by islanders after paying fishermen to take him to the island. Kayaking to a remote island in Andaman proved an adventure too far for John Allen Chau. Image: Instagram/John Allen Chau The Sentinelese want to be left alone, anthropologist Anup Kapur said. Scholars believe the Sentinelese migrated from Africa roughly 50,000 years ago, but most details of their lives remain completely unknown. John Allen Chau was shot dead with bow and arrows after paying fishermen to ferry him out to the remote island. Image: Instagram/John Allen Chau We do not even know how many of them are there, Anvita Abbi, who has spent decades studying the tribal languages of Indias Andaman and Nicobar islands, said. North Sentinel is an outpost of the island chain, which is far closer to Myanmar and Thailand than to mainland India. Estimates on the groups size range from a few dozen to a few hundred. What language they speak, how old it is, its anybodys guess, Abbi said. Nobody has access to these people. And, she said, that is how it should be. Just for our curiosity, why should we disturb a tribe that has sustained itself for tens of thousands of years? she asked. So much is lost: People are lost, language is lost, their peace is lost. For generations, Indian officials have heavily restricted visits to North Sentinel, with contact limited to rare gift-giving encounters, with small teams of officials and scientists leaving coconuts and bananas for the islanders. Any contact with such isolated people can be dangerous, scholars say, with islanders having no resistance to diseases outsiders carry. The 27-year-old was killed by members of a protected and reclusive tribe in the Andamans known as Sentinelese tribe. Image: Instagram/John Allen Chau We have become a very dangerous people, P.C. Joshi, an anthropology professor at Delhi University, said. Even minor influences can kill them. Story continues Because of this, Abbi said scholars who visit isolated peoples are careful to limit their visits to a few hours a day and to stay away even if they have minor coughs or colds. Many of the island chains other tribes have been decimated over the past century, lost to disease, intermarriage and migration. Survival International, an organisation that works for the rights of tribal people, said Chau may have been encouraged by recent changes to Indian rules about visiting isolated islands in the Andamans. While special permissions are still required, visits are now theoretically allowed in some parts of the Andamans where they used to be entirely forbidden. The authorities lifted one of the restrictions that had been protecting the Sentinelese tribes island from foreign tourists, which sent exactly the wrong message, and may have contributed to this terrible event, the group said in a statement. Meanwhile, Indian authorities say they are now struggling to recover Mr Chaus body, given the sensitivity of the group and the legal requirements In a statement issued on his Instagram account, Mr Chaus family said they forgive those reportedly responsible for his death. Latest videos from Yahoo UK The Stoke High School in Ipswich, Suffolk. (SWNS) A probe is underway at a high school into claims a 30-year-old asylum seeker is posing as a teenage pupil after lying to British authorities about his age. GCSE students at Stoke High School in Ipswich, Suffolk, say the student is actually a man twice their age who fooled Home Office officials to get an education. Its alleged his previous qualifications were not recognised in the UK and he was offered a place at the school after claiming to be a teenager. One concerned parent, who did not want to be named, said: This is extremely concerning. He has told students he has had to lie to go get into high school to complete his GCSEs. Another parent, who wished to remain anonymous, said: My son goes to the school and it is not a nice thought that this man is around children and sitting with them at lunch. GCSE students at the school say the man was twice their age (SWNS) An image taken on Snapchat by one pupil is believed to show the man dressed in uniform in a year 11 maths class. The text across the image reads: How is there a 30 year old man in our maths class. It is understood the student in question would have gone through an age test, where they are asked questions about their past. The Home Office is now looking into the claims to establish the individual and how he became enrolled at the school. A spokesperson said: We do not routinely comment on individual cases. A statement from Stoke High School spokesman said: This is a matter for the Home Office. They are looking into this after we contacted them. We do not comment on individual cases but we have followed government and local authority policies and guidance, as we do for any asylum admissions matter. The school takes on asylum seekers as required. Tehran (AFP) - Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Friday said that US accusations that Tehran has a chemical weapons programme were "obscene and dangerous". The US allegations are the latest salvo against Iran from the administration of President Donald Trump, who earlier this year pulled out of a landmark 2015 nuclear deal between major powers and Tehran and reimposed crippling unilateral sanctions. "(The) US wants to resort to international conventions to make allegations against Iran when it's made a policy of violating them itself," Zarif said in a tweet. He said that allegations about weapons of mass destruction "by a country that supported Iraq's use of CW (chemical weapons) against Iran, then invaded Iraq to allegedly rid it of them is not just obscene, it's dangerous". Earlier on Friday the Iranian foreign ministry said Tehran "strongly rejects" the US accusations. "The United States... has made, as is its habit, baseless accusations against the Islamic republic which we strongly reject," the foreign ministry said in a statement. "Such incorrect and false accusations are due solely to enmity towards the Iranian nation and are intended to deflect international attention from its own broken commitments and continued support for the Zionist regime's chemical arsenal and for terrorist groups." The US accused Iran on Thursday of failing to declare a chemical weapons programme to the global watchdog in breach of international agreements. US envoy Kenneth Ward told the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague that Tehran was also seeking deadly nerve agents for offensive purposes. Iran has accused the US of being the "only member state that has a chemical weapons arsenal and has, until now, not acted on its obligations to destroy it". Iran is one of the few countries that has been attacked with chemical weapons since the end of World War I in 1918. Story continues Chemical weapons used by Saddam Hussein's Iraq during its 1980-88 war with Iran killed and wounded tens of thousands of Iranian soldiers and civilians. Iran has expressed strong opposition ever since to the use or possession of chemical weapons by any country. Zarif, who is in Italy for a conference, on Friday also expressed his frustration with the European Union's delay to come up with means of allowing EU trade with Tehran despite US sanctions . "(The) EU needs to make a decision: does it want the US to dictate its relations with others...?" he asked in a tweet. The nuclear deal "was in the interest of the security of Europe (which) now needs to invest in that security." he added. Although the European Union has vowed to create a "special purpose vehicle" (SPV) to protect companies buying oil, analysts see little chance that firms will risk US penalties by using it. ROME (Reuters) - Italy's EU Affairs Minister Paolo Savona denied on Friday a press report that he was considering resigning over the government's decision to challenge European Union budget rules. Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported earlier that Savona had threatened to quit over the budget standoff, citing an unnamed League minister as its source. "That is the dream of Corriere della Sera, which has been asking me to resign from the moment I was sworn in," Savona said in a statement to Reuters via WhatsApp. (Reporting by Stefano Bernabei, writing by Giselda Vagnoni; Editing by Crispian Balmer) Former FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch received subpoenas on Wednesday from House Republicans investigating the role of the FBI in the 2016 presidential election, and Comey responded to his with a Thanksgiving tweet. Happy Thanksgiving. Got a subpoena from House Republicans. Im still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a closed door thing because Ive seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion. Lets have a hearing and invite everyone to see, Comey wrote. Happy Thanksgiving. Got a subpoena from House Republicans. Im still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a closed door thing because Ive seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion. Lets have a hearing and invite everyone to see. James Comey (@Comey) November 22, 2018 Lynch hasnt publicly responded to hers. Outgoing House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) is requesting that Comey and Lynch testify at depositions held Dec. 3 and 4, respectively, according to documents shared by Politico reporter Kyle Cheney. House Republicans probe into the FBIs actions in 2016 will come to an end when Democrats take over the House in January. Republicans have alleged FBI bias against President Donald Trump has led to the bureau focusing on whether there were any Trump campaign ties to Russia instead of investigating Hillary Clintons use of a private email server for official business while she was secretary of state. Democrats say that its all a distraction from special counsel Robert Muellers Russia probe, which Trump has repeatedly described as a witch hunt. Comeys attorney David Kelley said his client would fight the subpoena in court. While the authority for congressional subpoenas is broad, it does not cover the right to misuse closed hearings as a political stunt to promote political as opposed to legislative agendas, Kelley said. Story continues Related Content House Republicans Have Reportedly Called James Comey, Loretta Lynch And Sally Yates To Testify Even The FBI Cant Find Photos Of Comey And Mueller Hugging And Kissing Trump Wanted DOJ To Prosecute James Comey And Hillary Clinton: Report Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Kupang (Indonesia) (AFP) - Tourists keen for a close-up look at komodo dragons in their natural habitat could be hit with an alarming bill, if one Indonesian politician gets his way. The governor of East Nusa Tenggara province -- home to the world's biggest lizard -- has proposed charging visitors $500 to see the endangered species, about 50 times the current entrance fee for foreign tourists at Komodo National Park. And if Viktor Bungtilu Laiskodat prevails, the park would be off limits to all but "extraordinary" visitors with cash to burn. "(Komodo dragons) are very unique, but sadly they come cheap," the governor said this week, during a speech to university administrators. "Only people with deep pockets are allowed to (see the komodo dragons). Those who don't have the money shouldn't visit the park since it specifically caters to extraordinary people," he added. The governor -- who also suggested recreational boats should be charged a $50,000 entrance fee -- said he would talk with the central government, which administers the national park. The provincial government and federal environment ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the proposed fee hike. Indonesian politicians have a long history of announcing plans that rarely come to pass, including the former drug czar's proposal to build a prison surrounded by moats filled with piranhas and crocodiles to tighten security. Thousands of tourists annually descend on the cluster of islands in eastern Indonesia that are the only place in the world where komodo dragons can be seen in their natural habitat. Previously, the government planned to limit the number of tourists over concerns that the influx was putting pressure on the environment and endangering the giant lizard's habitat. The slavering carnivores, which can grow to around three metres (10 feet) in length and weigh up to 70 kilograms (154 pounds), can be dangerous to humans although deadly attacks are rare. Riyadh (AFP) - US President Donald Trump has doubled down on his partnership with Saudi Arabia, calling it an indispensable ally after a journalist's grisly murder, but critics say his position ignores Washington's enormous leverage over Riyadh. Trump on Tuesday gave Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a pass on Jamal Khashoggi's murder, glossing over the Central Intelligence Agency's reported conclusion that the kingdom's de facto ruler had authorised the killing. "Maybe he did and maybe he didn't!" Trump said, implying Prince Mohammed's culpability in Khashoggi's killing in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 hardly matters. What does, he asserted, is the Gulf kingdom's role as a bulwark against rival Iran, its multi-billion dollar investments in the United States -- including several arms deals -- and its perceived stranglehold on global oil prices. Trump was widely pilloried for what critics called his mercantile priorities that made him appear more like a lobbyist for the oil-rich kingdom, raising the prospect of strong congressional action against Saudi Arabia. But Trump's firm backing of the kingdom in the face of global outrage reinforced what officials in Riyadh often say: the US-Saudi relationship is too big to fail. "Structural ties -- intelligence, counterterrorism cooperation and energy -- really are too big not only to fail but to place at risk," said Hussein Ibish, a scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. "But transactional aspects of the relationship -- weapons sales, investments that are valued by Trump -- shouldn't become an excuse to make a Faustian pact and turn a blind eye to justice." - 'Substantial leverage' - Trump's stance ignores what the Washington-based Center for International Policy says is America's "substantial leverage over Saudi behaviour". "The Saudis need US weapons and equipment more than we need to sell them," former US Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller wrote for CNN's website. Story continues "It would be very difficult and expensive for the Saudis to make good on their periodic threats to 'buy foreign' if they can't get what they want from the United States." Experts say Riyadh is more susceptible to American pressure than Trump asserts, as its economy is intertwined with that of the US. Seeking to diversify its oil-reliant economy, the kingdom's vast Public Investment Fund has multi-billion dollar stakes in a host of US firms -- from global ridesharing giant Uber to virtual reality start-up Magic Leap. Largely lacking business expertise outside of its oil and petrochemical industries, Riyadh has poured millions of dollars into consultancy firms such as McKinsey and the Boston Consulting Group. US fact-checking website PolitiFact disputes Trump's claim that Saudi Arabia has agreed to invest $450 billion -- including $110 billion worth of arms deals -- in the United States. Many of the investments exist only on paper, it says. And US arms sales to Saudi Arabia have accounted for fewer than 20,000 American jobs a year, a far cry from the hundreds of thousands of jobs claimed by Trump, according to the Center for International Policy. - 'We can buy the world' - Prince Mohammed is likely to weather the crisis over the killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist critical of the de-facto ruler, and could rule Saudi Arabia for the next half century. The kingdom appears emboldened by Trump's support. Its top diplomat said the fate of the crown prince is a "red line" and that calls for him to be held accountable would not be tolerated. "In Saudi Arabia our leadership is a red line," Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told the BBC. "We will not tolerate any discussion of anything that is disparaging towards our monarch or our crown prince." Trump has won strong backing in Saudi Arabia for his stand. Dozens of what appear to be Saudi bot accounts have lionised the US president with messages of gratitude peppered with heart emojis. "There's a feeling that we can buy anything, that we can buy the world," a Saudi analyst in Riyadh told AFP following Trump's statement. Shrugging off the global pressure, Prince Mohammed is expected to attend the Group of 20 summit this month, raising the electrifying prospect of face-to-face encounters with world leaders who have strongly condemned the murder. "I think in some ways this typifies the crown prince's approach, which is... to say 'no, we're going to double down'," said Jon Alterman, from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "If you're going to deal with Saudi Arabia, you will be dealing with the crown prince." But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who says the orders for Khashoggi's killing came from "the highest levels" of the Saudi government, appears unlikely to follow Trump's lead. The same for the CIA. In leaking its assessment that Prince Mohammed authorised the murder, the CIA showed it was willing to "take on Trump", said James Dorsey, a fellow at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. The move also suggested "the agency does not believe Prince Mohammed's survival as king-in-waiting is crucial to US national security or the stability of the kingdom," he added. Eric Trump and his wife Lara attend the opening Trump Turnberry's new golf course the King Robert The Bruce course on June 28, 2017 in Turnberry, Scotland. The first family has headed off to South Florida for their Thanksgiving reunion, and Lara Trump is going to soak up as much sunshine as she possibly can. Lara Trump was spotted walking around Mar-a-Lago in a red bikini on Wednesday after flying into West Palm Beach the night before, as the Daily Mail reported. In the snap, Trump is also wearing a matching red hat, though it is unclear whether it was one of her father-in-laws, President Donald Trump, MAGA hats. The photos show the 36-year-old hanging out in front of heavily armed security staff, which included the U.S. Coast Guard in boats, the images shared by the publication show. In the shot, Lara Trump appears to be alone, except for the familys beloved dog Charlie, according to the Daily Mail report. Thats because her husband Eric Trump had taken their son Luke for a stroll, giving mom some alone time to enjoy the sunshine, the report continued. Click here to continue and read more... WASHINGTON (AP) The Latest on Chief Justice John Roberts and President Donald Trump (all times local): 7:50 p.m. President Donald Trump and Chief Justice John Roberts are clashing over the independence of America's judiciary, with Roberts bluntly rebuking the president for denouncing a judge who rejected his migrant asylum policy as an "Obama judge." Roberts has issued a strongly worded statement says there's no such thing. Trump is defending his own comment, tweeting defiantly, "Sorry Justice Roberts." The pre-Thanksgiving dustup is the first time Roberts, the Republican-appointed leader of the federal judiciary, has offered even a hint of criticism of Trump, who has several times blasted federal judges who have ruled against him. Before now, it has been highly unusual for a president to single out judges for personal criticism. And a chief justice's challenge to a president's comments is downright unprecedented. __ 4:15 p.m. President Donald Trump and Chief Justice John Roberts are engaged in an extraordinary public back-and-forth over Trump's description of a judge who ruled against his administration as an "Obama judge." Trump tweeted Wednesday: "Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have 'Obama judges,' and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country." Roberts, in a statement to The Associated Press earlier Wednesday, had pushed back against Trump's description, saying the country doesn't have "Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges." Roberts said an "independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for." Trump says it would "be great if the 9th Circuit was indeed an 'independent judiciary,'" but says their rulings are "Very dangerous and unwise!" __ 12:35 p.m. Chief Justice John Roberts is pushing back against President Donald Trump for his description of a judge who ruled against Trump's migrant asylum policy as an "Obama judge." Story continues It's the first time the Republican-appointed leader of the federal judiciary has offered even a hint of criticism of Trump, who has previously blasted federal judges who ruled against him. Roberts said Wednesday the U.S. doesn't have "Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges." He commented in a statement released by the Supreme Court after a query by The Associated Press. Roberts said on the day before Thanksgiving that an "independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for." Kafr Nabal (Syria) (AFP) - A prominent Syrian activist was gunned down Friday with a colleague in the country's last rebel bastion, in another blow to the dwindling civilian society that helped spark the 2011 uprising. Raed Fares and Hamod Jnaid were "shot dead by unknown assailants riding in a van in the town of Kafr Nabal" in the northwestern province of Idlib, their radio station Fresh FM said on its Facebook page. Fares -- who founded the broadcaster -- was an influential figure known for his often humorous signs in English and Arabic criticising President Bashar al-Assad's regime during weekly protests at the start of the revolt. Radio station colleague Ali Dandush, who was in the backseat of the car carrying the two activists when it was ambushed, said three men got out of a van and unleashed a deadly volley of gunfire. "I would have preferred to die with them," Dandush told AFP. "They meant everything to me." The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the two men died of their wounds from the attack, for which there was no immediate claim of responsibility. "They were famous for their criticism of rebels committing violations or arresting civilians, especially when it came to jihadist groups," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said. More than half of Idlib and the surrounding region is controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an alliance led by jihadists of Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate, while most of the rest is held by pro-Turkey rebels. The Islamic State (IS) group also has a presence in the province. Targeted killings and kidnappings have for months plagued Idlib, with angry residents blaming all sides. - 'Voice of Kafr Nabal' - Both men had been detained "several times" by HTS in the past, the Observatory said. Fares, a 46-year-old father of three children, had been repeatedly targeted since he founded Fresh FM in 2013 to counter what he called "fundamentalist narratives" in Idlib. Story continues IS fighters raided the radio's offices on several occasions, but regime forces also bombarded it, he said. "In 2014, I almost lost my life when two armed men opened fire at me and shot me in the chest," Fares wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post in June, after US funding to Fresh FM was cut. "I was abducted four times by Al-Qaeda militants and released a few days later after being tortured." Jnaid, who also worked at the radio, was an advocate for freedom of expression and the rule of law. "I want freedom of opinion. I want to be able to speak and not be scared," he said in a video posted on Facebook earlier this year. Born in 1980, Jnaid had five children, including a disabled girl, according to his friends. Several hundred people attended funerals for the slain activists in their hometown of Kafr Nabal on Friday afternoon. Bilal Bayush, a friend and fellow activist, rushed to the hospital as soon as he heard about the shooting. He and others waited anxiously as Fares fought for his life in the operating room, until the doctor emerged to give them his condolences. "They had been the voice of Kafr Nabal since the beginning" of the uprising, Bayush told AFP. "We buried them, but we still don't fully realise" that they have died, he said. A September deal between regime ally Russia and rebel backer Turkey held off a major regime assault to retake Idlib. But a buffer zone has yet to be implemented around the region, as stipulated by the deal, after jihadists refused to withdraw from a planned demilitarised area by mid-October. Syria's civil war has killed more than 360,000 people and sent millions fleeing from their homes since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-regime protests. It has since evolved into a complex conflict involving world powers and jihadists. One Mandeville, LA, couple now has 1.8 million reasons to be thankful during this holiday season. For Tina and Harold Ehrenberg, Thanksgiving and Christmas just got a little better and they have quite a bit to look forward to for the new year. According to ABC News, the couple had only planned to clean the home for the holidays, but their plans took an interesting, positive turn when they came across Louisiana Lotto lottery ticket theyd purchased months prior. Apparently, the ticket had been sitting on their nightstand for quite some time, but they hadnt checked the numbers. Instead of tossing the old lottery ticket in a trash can, they decided to take a look at the winning numbers for the date on the ticket. Click here to continue and read more... Theresa May is to tour the UK to win over MPs and convince them to vote for her Brexit deal. Photo: Getty UK prime minister Theresa May refused to answer the question of whether Britain would be better off with her Brexit deal or staying as a member of the European Union. In an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live on Friday, May just said she had never said the sky would fall in if Brexit happens and that I think we will be better off in a situation which well have outside the European Union, where we have control of all those things, and are able to trade around the rest of the world. You say: Are we better off? actually its a different sort of environment, and a different approach that well be taking to things, she added. Last week, May announced that she had secured a draft Brexit deal with the EU. This week, both the bloc and Britain said they have also agreed on a draft deal on their future relationship and May told members of parliament that Brexit is within our grasp. While the document is not legally binding, it is a starting point for actual negotiations. The UK prime minister will meet European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker again on Saturday and then take part in the main EU summit on Sunday. At the Sunday summit, both parties hope to sign off on both the 585-page Brexit withdrawal agreement and the updated political declaration. However, the biggest hurdle is still ahead getting the deal through UK parliament. Her draft deal has already led to a raft of resignations and criticism from within her own party as well as from the opposition. She is currently facing the prospect of a vote of no confidence. In the radio interview today, May urged MPs to approve the Brexit deal agreement the summit on Sunday. She said that there would be more division and uncertainty if parliament rejected the agreement next month. From my point of view, personally, there is no question of no Brexit because the government needs to deliver on what people voted on in the referendum in 2016, said May, adding that she plans to tour the UK to explain the agreement to people. Earlier on Radio 4 former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab said the declaration was inferior to having an EU membership, and would leave the UK bound by the exact same rules but without any control over them. MEXICO CITY (AP) The mayor of Mexico's quaint colonial city of Guanajuato has taken a drubbing after he criticized low-spending tourists, saying, "We want the type of visitor who spends more." Mayor Alejandro Navarro said this week that tourists from nearby Mexican cities often arrive in cheap bus tour packages, bringing their own food. He blamed them for creating trash and traffic problems. Social media users quickly mocked Navarro, posting fake road signs reading "Welcome to Guanajuato, no food or beverage allowed." By Wednesday, Navarro was forced to post a taped apology on his Twitter account, saying, "Everyone is welcome ... it is not my intention to offend anyone." The old colonial mining town is known for its narrow, twisting streets, imposing stone buildings and a yearly arts festival. Democrats are set to pull off the largest midterm elections victory in history, according to a breakdown of the popular vote in races for the House of Representatives. The party leads the Republicans by more than 8.9 million votes across the US, raw data compiled by the Cook Political Report, an independent, non-partisan political analysis website. Previously, the largest margin of victory was 8.7 million, which came in the 1974 midterm elections after the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixons resignation. Only one House result remains undeclared. Democrats trail by fewer than 500 votes in California's 23rd congressional district, where there are 15,000 votes left to be counted. It means the party is on the brink of flipping 40 seats in the House, reaffirming the emerging assessment that this months midterms amounted to a blue wave. Utahs Mia Love became the latest Republican incumbent to fall as Ben McAdams, the Democratic mayor of Salt Lake County, defeated her by fewer than 700 votes in a knife-edge race for the state's fourth congressional district. She had been billed as one her party's stars when she became its first black congresswoman in 2014. As of Thursday, Democratic candidates had polled 59,351,147 votes in House seats across the country in the 2018 midterms, compared to Republicans 50,438,143, according to the Cook Political Report. Democrats are on course for more than 60.5 million ballots in total, the closest an opposition party has come in midterm elections to matching the presidents popular vote two years earlier. Turnout across the country the highest since 1914, with Mr Trumps divisive presidency and rancorous debates over immigration, healthcare and taxes thought to have driven voters to the ballot box. At least 49.2 per cent of eligible voters cast ballots, the United States Elections Project estimates, compared to 36.4 per cent in 2014. A federal judge on Tuesday struck down Mississippis recently passed 15-week abortion ban and insinuated in his written opinion that male judges should be excluded from ruling on abortion laws. Judge Carlton Reeves, a district judge for the Southern District of Mississippi, found that the Gestational Age Act, which was signed into law by Governor Phil Bryant in March, unequivocally infringes upon a womans due-process rights under the 14th Amendment. The fact that men, myself included, are determining how women may choose to manage their reproductive health is a sad irony not lost on the court, Reeves wrote. As a man, who cannot get pregnant or seek an abortion, I can only imagine the anxiety and turmoil a woman might experience when she decides whether to terminate her pregnancy through an abortion. Respecting her autonomy demands that this statute be enjoined. Reeves, an Obama appointee, also called the states professed concern for the health of mothers pure gaslighting, citing its high rates of infant and maternal mortality. Its leaders are proud to challenge Roe but choose not to lift a finger to address the tragedies lurking on the other side of the delivery room, such as high infant and maternal mortality rates, he wrote in a footnote. The Jackson Womens Health Center, the states only abortion provider, filed suit the day after the bill was signed into law, initiating a series of temporary blocks to the law that were set to expire on Monday. The Center for Reproductive Rights, which sued on behalf of the abortion provider, celebrated the courts ruling as an affirmation of previous decisions that held bans on abortion prior to fetal viability unconstitutional. Our victory today means that women in Mississippi will maintain the ability to make their own decisions about whether and when to terminate a pregnancy, said Nancy Northup, the groups president and CEO. Tripoli (AFP) - More than 15,000 migrants have returned home from Libya through a voluntary programme since the beginning of 2018, the International Organization for Migration said on Friday. "So far this year, more than 15,000 migrants were able to return home to 32 countries across Africa and Asia with support from the European Union Trust Fund," IOM said on its Libya Facebook page. IOM has a "voluntary return hotline" number on its Facebook and Twitter accounts "for migrants stranded in Libya who wish to return to their countries of origin". The IOM accelerated the pace of departures at the end of last year, after CNN television aired footage of African markets being sold as slaves in Libya. In 2017, IOM repatriated about 20,000 migrants through its voluntary return programme and the UN agency was hoping to increase the number to 30,000 by the end of this year. Abuse of migrants is widespread in Libya, where they have been taken advantage of in the chaos which has reigned since the 2011 ousting of dictator Moamer Kadhafi. People smugglers have taken advantage of the turmoil, putting African migrants seeking to reach Europe at greater risk. Many migrants, intercepted or rescued at sea, find themselves held in detention centres where they face dire conditions. Photo credit: 23andMe From Delish For the bulk of my adult life, I've figured this about human saliva: It can help Jerry Springer identify baby daddies, it can help Hollywood detectives solve cold case murders, and too much of it makes for a horrible kiss. All of that's true, but - as I discovered recently when I took a 23andme test - a little bit of spit can do so much more. After hocking a loogie into a tube, then waiting a few weeks for some mad scientists to analyze my DNA, 84 genetic reports were emailed to me. Five of them had to do with my ancestry, and the other 79 covered things related to my health, wellness, and food intolerances. And guess what? It. Was. Fascinating. Right now, 23andme kits are $60 off, and the sale lasts through Father's Day - hint, hint. Here's what you - or, um, dad - stand to learn. (An important note: When you purchase a kit from 23andme, you have two options - an ancestry version and a health and ancestry one. You'll need to purchase the latter to discover things about food and weight. And keep in mind, 23andme's genetic reports aren't diagnoses - but they might help you get one. You should still consult a doctor.) If you can smell "asparagus pee." Photo credit: Max2611 / Allie Folino - Getty Images Everyone's urine takes on a specific scent after eating asparagus, but only some people can smell it. There's a marker on Chromosome 1 - specifically, a protein that detects odor molecules - that determines this, and 23andme's researchers were the first people to discover it. To those who get an unpleasant whiff: You're not alone. Seventy-five percent of people can smell it, while the other 25 percent live in odorless bliss. Why Brussels sprouts are your enemy. Photo credit: ilietus / Allie Folino - Getty Images Some people find veggies like raw Brussels sprouts and broccoli completely inedible, and the reason is typically because they taste too bitter. A little more than half of 23andme participants are likely to detect the flavor - something that's indicated on Chromosome 7. Scientists believe this sense first developed to help animals catch toxins or poisons in their food. Story continues The reason you sneeze when you look at the sun. Photo credit: stuartbur / Allie Folino - Getty Images Staring at a light source has never encouraged a sneeze to pass my lips. But it could work for you - if you're part of the 32 percent of people who have a photic sneeze reflex. To figure it out, researchers take a look at the effect of genetic variants in 54 different places, plus factors like your age and sex. Why you prefer salty to sweet - or vice versa. Photo credit: Maren Caruso / Akepong Srichaichana / Allie Folino - Getty Images Taste preferences come down to a mix of genetics and environment. Your tongue picks up on flavors, and it sends signals to your brain. A whopping 43 markers dictate if you like salty foods more than sweet ones. I've got 18 that point to salty and 14 that point to sweet, and 11 that just DGAF - so I guess my signature indecision runs deep. The best ways to lose weight. Photo credit: Michael Burrell / Allie Folino - Getty Images A total of 746 variants indicate whether you're predisposed to weigh more or less than average. Once 23andme researchers know the results, they can tell you what lifestyle changes make the biggest weight differences in people with your body type. My test indicates that things like limiting red meat and getting a healthy amount of sleep are two important factors. Others include eating less fast food, exercising, and eating more vegetables. BUY NOW Slim Chicken! Guide to Weight Loss, $20 Your risk of developing celiac disease. Photo credit: Getty Images Two genes that 23andme tests - which are linked to two haplotypes (a group of neighboring genes) - can indicate whether or not you're predisposed to developing celiac disease. Celiac is an extreme form of gluten intolerance, where the consumption of gluten actually damages your small intestine. The disease can run in your family. Why your face turns red after one drink. Photo credit: Nick Purser / Allie Folino - Getty Images A legit alcohol flush reaction happens after just one drink - sometimes even less. It'll make your face turn bright red and can come with other unpleasant symptoms like headaches, nausea, and sleepiness. The variant that causes the reaction is most commonly found in people from Asia. A toxic substance in booze stays in their system, causing the blood vessels in their faces to expand. The science behind your coffee obsession. Photo credit: Acharaporn Kamornboonyarush / Allie Folino - Getty Images Two genes (one on Chromosome 7 and one on Chromosome 15) play a role in how your body handles caffeine. To 23andme's scientists, they also indicate how your caffeine consumption might compare to the rest of the population's - if you choose to drink the stuff at all. How likely you are to be lactose intolerant. Photo credit: Yevgen Romanenko / Allie Folino - Getty Images The LCT gene on Chromosome 2 contains instructions for creating an enzyme called lactase, which helps break down lactose. As most people age, their lactase levels decrease, making it more difficult to digest milk products. Severe lactose intolerance can make you feel uncomfortable after just one bite of cheese. Follow Delish on Instagram. ('You Might Also Like',) Kabul (AFP) - After losing countless comrades to better-equipped Taliban fighters and having his salary stolen by superiors, Afghan soldier Beg is fed up and plans to quit the army. He is not alone. Afghanistan's beleaguered security forces have long seen high rates of attrition. But now, as the Taliban maintain the upper hand in the 17-year conflict, casualties are reaching what experts warn are unsustainable levels. Since the start of 2015, when local forces took over from US-led NATO combat troops to secure the country, nearly 30,000 Afghan soldiers and police have been killed, President Ashraf Ghani revealed this month -- a figure far higher than anything previously acknowledged. That is an average of around 20 soldiers killed per day. "If the casualty rate continues like this, the day will come when we will have no one left to recruit," warned military analyst Atiqullah Amarkhail. The shocking mortality rate has sent already shaky morale to new lows, with many soldiers questioning how much further they should push their luck. In the third quarter of 2018 the number of soldiers and police deployed across the war-torn country fell to 312,328 -- nearly 9,000 fewer than just one year ago, and the lowest level for any comparable period since 2012, a US watchdog said in October. Reasons for attrition included fatalities, and soldiers going AWOL or declining to re-enlist, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said, citing the US defence department. Beg is one who has no intention of going back. "There have been days when I have lost five to 10 colleagues in fighting," said the 26-year-old, who is based in the northern province of Jowzjan. As with other military sources in this story, AFP is using only his surname to protect his identity. "I have survived two Taliban sieges of our unit and God helped me escape," he continued. "I will not re-enlist. I will go and do labour work if I survive." Story continues It's an increasingly big "if", as the number of security forces killed in action appears to be accelerating. Estimated figures for 2015 show 5,000 killed that year, with the remainder of the 28,529 casualties revealed by President Ghani dying since then. Casualty figures for Afghan forces have been kept under wraps since 2017 at the request of Kabul, but NATO's Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan recently told SIGAR that this summer's toll was worse than ever. That would come as no surprise to Ashiqullah, a police officer in the eastern province of Nangarhar, an IS stronghold that also has a heavy Taliban presence. "Every day we are seeing our comrades being killed," Ashiqullah, 24, said. "We don't have proper equipment and most of our friends have been killed or quit the service." - No choice but to fight - The growing number of dead and wounded has made it harder to recruit police in some areas, interior ministry recruitment chief Mohammad Daud admitted. A police recruitment centre in the northern province of Balkh has seen a near 80 percent drop in the number of recruits this year, an official told AFP on the condition of anonymity. But a centre in the Nangarhar provincial capital of Jalalabad said the number of people registering to fight remained high. Defence ministry spokesman Jawed Ahmad Ghafor said the number of people signing up to the army "has not decreased at all". Fazlullah, 24, said it had been his dream "to protect and defend my country", as he signed up in Nangarhar. "I am not joining the police force to have a peaceful life," he said. "I go to sacrifice myself for my country." Others say that in a country with rampant unemployment, they have no other options if they want to support their families. "I joined the security forces... to provide food and a salary for my family," said Sapai, 27, a soldier in Nangarhar. Salman, 27, a police officer in the northwestern province of Faryab, said he had not been paid in three months and air support during attacks by the Taliban "were not effective". "But we don't have any choice except to keep fighting," he said. - 'Never rejoin' - The bleak figures come as the Taliban intensify attacks on Afghan forces, scoring significant battlefield wins and maintaining control or influence over swathes of the countryside. Afghan and US forces say the militants are suffering heavy casualties too. But the losses do not appear to have eroded their desire to fight, even as international efforts to engage them in peace talks gather pace. "They attack us every night," said Enayatullah, a 29-year-old police officer in the southeastern province of Ghazni, who has been wounded twice by landmines. "My service in the police will finish in a few days and I will never rejoin." strs-mam-us/amj/st/amu/tom/jah Benghazi (Libya) (AFP) - At least nine security service members were killed in a suspected Islamic State group attack in the southeastern Libyan town of Tazerbo on Friday, a senior security official said. Eleven other people including civilians and a security chief were also "kidnapped" by members of the extremist group, which attacked a police station in the oasis town, added the official. The Tazerbo desert region is controlled by the forces of strongman Khalifa Haftar, who heads the self-styled National Libyan Army (ANL). The capital Tripoli is the seat of a rival administration -- the internationally-backed government led by Fayez al-Sarraj. The attack, which has not yet been claimed, is the second in less than a month targeting forces loyal to Haftar. The first, claimed by IS, killed at least five people in October in the central Kufra region. Another attack in August claimed by IS killed 11 people including nine members of the ANL. Torn apart by power struggles and undermined by chronic insecurity, Libya has become a haven for jihadists since the ouster and killing of Moamer Kadhafi in 2011. IS took advantage of the chaos to gain a foothold in the city of Sirte in 2015 but forces loyal to a UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) resumed control of the city in December 2016 after eight months of deadly fighting. Since then, some jihadists have returned to the desert in an attempt to regroup and reorganise. In September, IS claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on the headquarters of the Libya's National Oil Company (NOC) in the heart of Tripoli which left two dead and 10 wounded. Four months earlier, it also claimed an attack on the electoral commission headquarters which left 14 dead. Rome (AFP) - Russia does not want any "artificial deadlines" for the Syrian peace process, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday, saying those who do want to sabotage Russian-backed peace efforts. "I don't believe in artificial deadlines," Lavrov told the MED Dialogues conference in Rome. "Those who insist on (UN envoy) Staffan (de Mistura) setting a deadline, they want only one thing, to ruin the Astana process and come back to some regime change logic." The next round of talks on Syria's conflict is to held in the Kazakh capital Astana on November 28-29 as part of a peace process set up in early 2017 by Russia and Iran, who support President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, and opposition backer Turkey. The Astana process was launched after Russia's military intervention in Syria tipped the balance in the regime's favour. It has gradually eclipsed an earlier UN-sponsored negotiations framework known as the Geneva process. More than 360,000 people have been killed in the war, which began in March 2011 as an uprising against Assad but has morphed into a complex conflict with myriad armed groups, many of whom are foreign-backed. Asked about Moscow's support for Assad's authoritarian regime which "massacres" its own people, Lavrov insisted Russia does not back any individual and that it is up to the Syrian people to change regime or not, via elections. Lavrov said it was necessary to protect human rights and that the right to life is also fundamental, pointing to civilian deaths from Western military interventions in Libya or Iraq. "If you don't give a damn about stability or life, then I am afraid you are one-sided," he said. "Ask the Libyans how they used to live" before the NATO-backed toppling of strongman Moamer Kadhafi in 2011, Lavrov said. As deadline looms, Florida Senate race moves to a manual recount originally appeared on abcnews.go.com As Florida continues to count and recount votes, a key deadline loomed Thursday afternoon and one key county, Palm Beach, missed it as the state's Senate race now moves into a manual recount. Florida counties had until 3 p.m. on Thursday to complete their initial recount of votes in the state's hotly contested Senate, governor, and agriculture-commissioner races. Palm Beach a key Democratic county in South Florida that has been the subject of lawsuits and criticism by Senate candidate and Republican Gov. Rick Scott missed the deadline, its top election official said. We gave it a heroic effort, Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher told reporters adding that her county did not finish. (MORE: Experts say vote recounts like Florida's are rare and reversals even rarer) Palm Beachs counting machines had overheated and stopped functioning at least twice this week. PHOTO: Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., exits the Senate subway en route to a vote on Capitol Hill, June 20, 2018. Florida Gov. Rick Scott, center, speaks during a news conference, Aug. 22, 2018, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP) Recount deadlines are being contested in court, although a federal judge on Thursday denied Sen. Bill Nelson's request to extend them across the state. What's Next Two Florida races have drawn national attention the Senate contest between Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and the governor's contest, between Mayor Andrew Gillum and Rep. Ron DeSantis. The Senate race and agriculture commissioner races will move to manual recounts. A manual recount is solely a hand recount of overvotes and undervotes in the affected races. An overvote is when a voter designated more choices than allowable in the recounted race and an undervote is when a voter made no choice or less than the allowable number of choices in the recounted race. The results of the manual recount will be reflected in the official returns due to the Department of State no later than noon on Sunday. The governor's race is less likely to meet the threshold for a manual recount. Story continues In the Senate race, Scott leads Nelson by .15 percentage points, according to current totals. In the governor's race, DeSantis leads Gillum by .41 percentage points. Gillum has urged Florida to count every vote. An unknown number of overseas and military ballots are still coming in they can arrive until Friday, under state law. Counties will have until Sunday to count them, and official results are not expected to be known in either race until after that happens. Latest in Court A federal judge on Thursday denied Nelson's request to extend recount deadlines. But Nelson did score a win, in his bid to allow provisional and by-mail ballots where signatures did not match those on voter-registration books, as required by state law. A federal judge gave voters whose ballots had been rejected until Saturday to correct the issue with election officials. The ruling will affect an unknown number of ballots. Just under 4,000 ballots are known to have been rejected, but that total does not encompass all counties and lacks totals from some key ones, like Duval and Miami-Dade. Nelson is also challenging Florida's laws over what ballots count, seeking to expand considerations of when a voter intended to select a specific candidate with a ballot mark. ABC News' Adam Kelsey, John Verhovek, Stephanie Wash, and Karen DUva contributed to this report. The crusade to cure peanut allergies has been in the spotlight this week as new research showed a treatment from an American company was helping kids reduce their severe allergic reactions. But the California-based biopharmaceutical firm Aimmune Therapeutics (AIMT) and its drug AR101 isnt the only game in town. Another European company is striving to get its treatment out into the market as early as 2019. French firm DBV Technologies, which is traded in New York (DBVT) and Paris (DBV.PA), is testing a drug designed to desensitise people with peanut allergies. Unlike the Aimmune treatment, which is consumed orally, the DBV treatment is applied to the skin like a nicotine patch. Its called Viaskin Peanut. There is an urgent need for new treatments that provide a long-term [solution], DBVs chairman and CEO, Pierre-Henri Benhamou told Yahoo Finance UK. Viaskin Peanut aims to safeguard children against allergic reactions from accidental peanut exposure, offering sustainable protection for active families without the need to ingest peanuts. Unlike Aimmune, DBV has already submitted paperwork to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hoping that the agency might approve the treatment next year. Its planning to seek approval in Europe as well. We are closer obviously than [weve] ever been to getting Viaskin Peanut onto the market, said Todd Green, a vice-president of medical affairs at DBV, in an interview. The goal is not to allow free consumption of a peanut butter sandwich, he said. The goal is to try to achieve a buffer, or safety margin, where people [can handle exposure to] higher doses than they were before they began therapy. Green said the last study demonstrated that 63% of test subjects showed improvements over a year to handling exposure to a higher dose of peanut extract. Peanut allergies have been a growing problem in western nations, affecting about 2% of children in the US. Peanuts are blamed for the majority of food allergy deaths. Story continues Both companies have tested their drugs on hundreds of children, with DBV focusing on treatment for those between the ages of four to 11 while Aimmune has been focusing on the four to 17 age group. Aimmune is hoping to file its paperwork with the FDA in December and get approval next year. It expects to file its application with the European Medicines Agency in the first half of 2019. Based on the phase 3 [test] results, nearly eight of 10 patients who start treatment could expect to achieve a high level of desensitisation with the certainty and convenience of a once-a-day oral dose, said Dr Daniel Adelman, an allergist, immunologist and chief medical officer at Aimmune. Adelman said he believes Aimmunes solution is superior to the competition. Research shows high levels of desensitisation can be achieved with oral immunotherapy that may not be possible with other routes, such as through the skin, he said. Investors looking to bet on the success of these companies must still beware of the risks. Shares in Aimmune are down 35% in 2018. Shares in DBV are down 37%. Aimmune stock dropped roughly 18% over three consecutive days this week after research published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed some children suffered severe reactions to the treatment. Side effects such as abdominal pain and vomiting prompted a significant number of test subjects to withdraw from the study, and 14% needed epinephrine or EpiPens to halt severe allergic reactions. A spokesperson at Aimmune told Yahoo Finance UK that the children tended to be especially sensitive because they werent allowed to be on any other drugs on antihistamines during the trial. We expect that in practice, allergists will utilise other medications, such as antihistamines, to help patients through any of the typical minor or moderate side effects early in the process and make them even more manageable than they were in the trial, said Adelman, who contributed to the New England Journal report. With files from Reuters WASHINGTON (AP) Rep. Nancy Pelosi appears to be having some success shrinking the ranks of Democratic lawmakers opposing her bid to serve a second stint as speaker of the House. Rep. Brian Higgins of western New York announced Wednesday he will now support Pelosi after earlier signing on to a letter opposing her bid. One day earlier, Marcia Fudge of Ohio announced she would back Pelosi after earlier flirting with the idea of running for the position herself. Pelosi still has a daunting challenge ahead to secure 218 votes, but she is growing closer to that threshold with an aggressive behind-the-scenes campaign focused on addressing some of her skeptics' top concerns. In Higgins case, he said he had several productive discussions with Pelosi and other party leaders. He said they will work with him to expand Medicare as an option for those between the ages of 50 and 65. He also said that one of the people he hoped would run for speaker, Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., told him she would be focusing on her bid to lead the Congressional Black Caucus. Earlier in the year, Higgins had described Pelosi to the Buffalo News as "aloof, frenetic and misguided." Higgins said Wednesday he had taken a "principled stand" in opposing Pelosi. "A principled stand, however, often requires a pragmatic outlook in order to meet with success," he said. The change comes shortly after Fudge announced her support for Pelosi, just a few days after telling reporters she was seriously considering a run and that she needed to talk with her family about it during the Thanksgiving break. Fudge said she was assured by Pelosi that black women, in particular, "will have a seat at the decision-making table." She was also named as incoming chairwoman of a panel that will delve into voting rights access, a top priority of the new Democratic majority. Her decision also came the same day Fudge faced questions over her past support for a man now suspected of stabbing his ex-wife. Story continues Pelosi also got a boost Wednesday from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, the youngest woman elected to Congress. She said all the challenges to Pelosi are coming from people to her right, which would make the party "even more conservative and bent toward corporate interests." "So long as Leader Pelosi remains the most progressive candidate for Speaker, she can count on my support," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. Pelosi seems certain to have enough support to become her party's nominee for speaker when House Democrats vote by secret ballot on Nov. 28. She will need only a majority of Democrats in that contest. But when the full House elects its new leaders Jan. 3, the speaker will need a majority 218 votes, assuming that no one votes "present" or misses the vote and Republicans oppose her en masse, as seems likely. While the large majority of Democrats support Pelosi, others are concerned that she is hurting Democratic prospects in key swing districts where she is unpopular with a broad swath of voters. The critics contend the 78-year-old Pelosi needs to step aside and make way for a new generation of leaders. Pelosi was the first woman to become speaker and served from 2007 to 2011. ____ Reach Kevin Freking at https://twitter.com/APKFreking Shah Cutler. Image via Instagram/SuperShah. Words: Elizabeth Di Filippo A personal trainer has been suspended from work after publicly fat shaming a woman on social media. In an Instagram story that has since been deleted, Shah Cutler, an employee of Fitness First Singapore, shared a photo of an unknown woman ordering ice cream with the caption, Wtf so fat still wanna ice cream? Disgusting. Cutlers post received criticism online and was brought to the attention of his employer, who issued a statement to Facebook condemning his actions. Cutlers Instagram Story. Image via Instagram/SuperShah. It has been brought to our attention that a recent post by a FF trainer on social media was found to have used insensitive statements towards a member of the public and we would like to apologise for any distress caused, the statement reads. We have undertaken an internal investigation and suspended his duties until further notice. He has since publicly apologised for his behaviour through an Instagram post and understands the sensitivity of his comment. The gym continued by assuring the public that they do not agree with the comment made by our employee nor condone such behaviour. Cutler also made a formal apology on Instagram. I would like to sincerely apologise for my recent IG story post. I was too rash and understand the insensitive statement is uncalled for and offensive, he wrote. As a trainer, Im deeply committed to my duty to help people achieve their health and fitness goals and Ill continue to do so in more appropriate ways from now on. The public apology in question was short-lived, as Cutler has since deleted all of his social media accounts and his official website. Image via Instagram/Supershah. The incident has raised mixed reactions online, with some people calling for Cutlers dismissal. Story continues One prospective client said she was debating a membership, but is now afraid to join. I will be wondering if fitness trainers in your gym will be like this insensitive trainer and make fat-shaming comments like that amongst themselves on my body size or shape, she wrote. Others suggested alternative measures to rectify the issue, such as having Cutler give free personal training sessions to clients. This isnt the first time Cutlers remarks towards women have been called into question. Last month the trainer shared his Facebook status from 2015 that read, Fat guys have to deal with rejection from women but fat women think that men should accept them for who they are. What?! LOL. Image via Facebook. The gym recently shared a follow-up statement to their patrons stating that they were now viewing the issue as an internal matter. Fitness First has investigated the incident and has taken the appropriate disciplinary actions, the follow-up statement read. This is now an internal matter and we kindly ask the public to respect the privacy of those involved. We urge members of the public to refrain from engaging in any further aggression towards the trainer and his close ones, and instead, join us in cultivating a safe and welcoming environment for positive conversations, both online and offline. This isnt the first time a person has been fired over a fat shaming row. Earlier this year, an intern who was allegedly posting from an LA-based magazine editors account was fired for making fat-shaming comments about plus size models who featured in an Australian tanning companys advertisement. Watch the latest videos from Yahoo 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: Theres a scientific reason why exercising in the winter can be tough Experts warn health wearables could fuel rise in tech-driven hypochondria Your 10,000 steps a day goal appears to be built on bad science A gunman opened fire at a Chicago hospital this week before killing himself. The gunman, Juan Lopez, fatally shot his ex-fiancee outside Mercy Hospital on the city's South Side before killing two people inside the building. The victims were Dr. Tamara O'Neal, Chicago police officer Samuel Jimenez and Dayna Less, a first-year pharmacy resident. Dr. O'Neal had recently called off her engagement to the suspect. Other major headlines of the week included an E. coli outbreak linked to romaine lettuce, President Trump standing by Saudi Arabia amid the investigation into journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder and Chris Watts being sentenced to life in prison for murdering his pregnant wife, two daughters. Click through the slideshow above to see photos from all of these events and more, and be sure to check back next weekend for our selection of the best photography from the week. President Donald Trumps recent public spat with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is unprecedented in contemporary political history rarely has a sitting president criticized the judiciary so directly. However, its hardly the first time that tensions between a President and the judiciary have boiled over into the public eye. Roberts responded to Trumps public disparagement of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday, with a statement saying, We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. Trump responded on Twitter saying, Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have Obama judges,' before continuing to criticize the Ninth Circuit. Trumps public derision of federal courts and the rare rebuke it prompted from a sitting Chief Justice are certainly outside the scope of Washington politics-as-usual. Yet it is certainly not the first time a President has publicly clashed with a Supreme Court, or even with justices who were appointed by members of the Presidents own political party. (Chief Justice Roberts was appointed by President George W. Bush.) Early in American history, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were incised when their appointed justices did not vote in the way they wished on cases that defined the relative strength of the federal and state governments. Decades later, Andrew Jackson attempted to use a Supreme Court appointment as a play to contain one of his political rivals, nominating John McLean in 1829 after McLean promised not to run for President. McLean subsequently went back on his word, running for President four times, including a 1832 challenge against Jackson. More recently, President Harry S. Truman declared, Whenever you put a man on the Supreme Court, he ceases to be your friend, after two of his judicial appointees sided against him on an important case. Story continues In 1974, the Supreme Court sided against President Richard Nixon. The 8-0 decision, which included three of Nixons appointees, forced him to turn over the Watergate tapes to a special prosecutor and led to the Presidents resignation. William H. Rehnquist, a fourth Nixon appointee, did not vote in the decision. Perhaps most famous was President Franklin D. Roosevelts public feud with the Supreme Court. After a Democrat landslide in the 1936 elections, Roosevelt, stymied by a Supreme Court that had struck down major elements of his New Deal economic recovery plan, proposed legislation that would allow him to appoint up to six additional Supreme Court justices. This would have allowed him to effectively pack the court with judges he believed would be more sympathetic to his economic programs. After a major political backlash, the proposal was ultimately shelved. President Trumps recent criticisms may seem outlandish in the modern political climate, but its another footnote in a history of a taught relationships between branches of government. As Roberts said in his statement on the day before Thanksgiving, an independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for. Watch the full episode 12 of Yahoo UKs show The Royal Box, here from Friday 23 November. The Queen will never step down as Monarch because of her own bitter memories from the last time it caused upheaval for the royal family. Elizabeths uncle, Edward VIII, abdicated the throne in December 1936, less than a year into his reign. The constitutional crisis was sparked when Edward proposed to Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee he had fallen in love with. After Edward stood down, the Queens father, King George VI, became king despite having never anticipated that he would be monarch and making the then Princess Elizabeth heir to the throne at the age of 10. As a result, the Queen has long decided this upheaval will not happen under her reign and, as a result, abdication is now seen as a dirty word in the royal household. Thats according to an award-winning royal producer Nick Bullen, who says it will never happen under her watch. Bullen, who has worked closely with the royal household for many years, tells Yahoo UKsThe Royal Box: The Queen saw what happened when her uncle abdicated. Many people say becoming the king, for her father, is what ultimately killed him. Bullen says the Queen is dedicated to her role. He adds: Look at that broadcast she made when she was 21, in South Africa. And she said, whether my life is long or short, I am now dedicated to this. Shes there for the long run. The Queen will never abdicate, says royal producer Nick Bullen (PA) George VIs hard-working and conscientious manner eventually brought him hero status in his battered country during the First World War but that, and the stress of being an unexpected King was said to have left him physically exhausted. He developed lung cancer, among other ailments, and Elizabeth took on more of his duties as his health deteriorated. He died on 6 February 1952. Her Majesty, who is 93 next year, will have attended over 125 functions this year and shows no signs of slowing down. Bullen, founder of TrueRoyalty.TV, says that while the Queen is likely to reduce her engagements, she wont give up the crown. Story continues I think stepping back a little is fine, I think well see that happen, she wont do the foreign tours, she wont be going overseas. The then Princess Elizabeth on her 21st birthday, in South Africa (Rex) Theres been some debate over whether the Queen, 92, will step down to make room for Charles, 70, who is the longest serving heir apparent in British history. The claim comes in the wake of Prince Charles comments about refusing to meddle when he becomes king. Charles recently spoke about his future as king on the BBC documentary Prince, Son & Heir: Charles at 70 saying that he wont speak out on issues he feels strongly about, such as the environment. When asked whether his public campaigning would continue, he said : No, it wont. Im not that stupid. I do realise that it is a separate exercise being sovereign. So of course I understand entirely how that should operate. The Prince of Wales has been dubbed as meddling by some critics for his views on issues, such as plastic pollution and climate change. But he doesnt see it that way. The Prince of Wales has spoken about his future as king in a new BBC documentary (PA) Charles said: But I always wonder what meddling is, I mean I always thought it was motivating but Ive always been intrigued, if its meddling to worry about the inner cities as I did 40 years ago and what was happening or not happening there. The conditions in which people were living. If thats meddling Im very proud of it. In the hour long programme, he also said he has always tried to remain non-party political. He added: I think its vital to remember theres only room for one sovereign at a time, not two. So, you cant be the same as the sovereign if youre the Prince of Wales or the heir. But the idea somehow that Im going to go on in exactly the same way, if I have to succeed, is complete nonsense because the two the two situations are completely different. 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: Duchess of Cambridge views moving family letters at Imperial War Museum Prince Charles fears for grandchildren over plastic-polluted planet Prince William jokes his hip flask was switched with Jagermeister at Submariners Remembrance Service Jerome Corsi has said he's met with the special counsel's team for 40 hours of interview sessions. (Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS) Jerome Corsi, a conservative conspiracy theorist associated with Roger Stone, is negotiating a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller, The Washington Post reported Friday citing an unnamed person with knowledge of the talks. NBC News confirmed that negotiations are in progress. The talks could help Mueller and his team determine whether President Donald Trump or anyone working on his campaign coordinated with WikiLeaks in the 2016 hack on Democratic National Committee emails to boost the Trump campaign. No deal has been finalized, however, and talks could still fall apart. Corsi has previously said that he met with Muellers team for 40 hours worth of interview sessions and expects an indictment that could land him in prison for the rest of his life. The 2016 email hack has become a central part of the investigation into Russias alleged campaign interference. Twelve Russian nationals were charged in connection with the hack over the summer and the Justice Department is reportedly preparing to prosecute the controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Mueller has also been investigating Stone, a Republican operative and longtime Trump adviser. Corsi provided Stone with opposition research on Democrats during the 2016 campaign. The special counsel is reportedly examining the role Corsi may have had in disseminating the hacked emails and asking whether he knows of any Trump campaign staffers potential involvement, as well. Stone told CNN on Friday that it would be news to me if Corsi was proved to have advance knowledge of the hacked emails and said he was unaware of any plea bargain. This idea that Jerry Corsi could implicate me theres simply no evidence whatsoever, Stone said. Although Corsis relation to Trump is not clear, the two share a conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, an idea Trump has brazenly flaunted for years. A prolific author, Corsi published in 2011 a book about the conspiracy theory titled, Wheres the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama is Not Eligible to Be President. According to a New York Times report, Trump sought Corsis input on the subject in 2011, along with that of Joseph Farah, who founded the far-right website WorldNetDaily. Story continues In the past, Corsi has written for WorldNetDaily and InfoWars, a conspiracy website founded by the right-wing fringe figure Alex Jones. Trump recently submitted his written answers to questions from Mueller on key topics of scrutiny, his lawyers said Tuesday, marking a significant milestone in the probe that has stretched over a year and a half. This article has been updated with comment from Roger Stone. Related Coverage Justice Department Preparing To Prosecute WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange: WSJ Inside Trumps Refusal To Testify In The Mueller Probe Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Robert S. Mueller III speaks during a memorial service. Its true. Your story is accurate, Roger Stone associate, conservative conspiracy theorist, and prominent birther Jerome Corsi told the Washington Post, confirming speculation that he is negotiating a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller. Corsi is now reportedly willing to cooperate and plead guilty in exchange for leniency. For Muellers Russia probe, Corsis cooperation could be a game-changer. Roger Stone and Jerome Corsis cooperation and Corsis apparent willingness to strike a plea deal could shed light on Muellers claim that the Trump campaign was linked to WikiLeaks release of hacked Democratic emails during the 2016 presidential election. Stone and WikiLeaks have denied coordination, but in August 2016 before WikiLeaks published the emails the Republican operative tweeted, It will soon the Podestas time in the barrel, referring to former counselor to President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Click here to continue and read more... By Marwa Rashad TURAIF, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Thursday that he sees weak oil demand in January and said the kingdom would respond accordingly to cool the global markets anxiety. The worlds top oil exporters crude output in November is above October levels, he said, adding that it was in no ones interest to create a supply glut. "The waivers as to the Iranian sanctions as you know ... So January demand for Saudi Arabia would be lower," Falih said, referring to U.S. offers to Iran to keep more Iranian crude on the market. His comments come one day after U.S. President Donald Trump called on Saudi Arabia to help bring down oil prices. Falih said the kigdom's policy has not changed and it will work towards balanced market. "We will not sell oil that customers don't need," he told reporters in the northern town of Turaif, at the inauguration of a new mining project. "We will not make the market get anxious ... in the way it did in May or June, but at the same time we make it clear that it is not in anybodys interest to create a glut similar to what we saw few years ago." "Everybodys interest is in our mind, and we do it with a lot of care, we do it with responsibility, with balance," the minister said. Saudi Arabia is discussing a proposal to cut oil output by as much as 1.4 million barrels per day by OPEC and its allies, sources close to the discussions told Reuters earlier this month. The minister also said he hoped a Saudi new mining law would be applicable in the first half of 2019, which is expected to boost mining and exploration. (Reporting by Marwa Rashad; writing by Aziz El Yaakoubi; editing by Jason Neely and Jane Merriman) Dubai (AFP) - Saudi Arabia dismissed Friday as "baseless" reports that detained activists, including women, faced sexual harassment and torture during interrogation. "These recent reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are baseless," the kingdom said in a statement. The government said that it "strongly denies" the accusations that are "simply wrong". The activists, held since May in Dhahban prison on the western Red Sea coast, have faced repeated electrocution and flogging, leaving some of them unable to stand or walk, Amnesty International said on Tuesday, citing three separate testimonies. At least one activist was made to hang from a ceiling, Amnesty added. In addition to the torture, at least three women activists also endured "forcible kissing and hugging", Human Rights Watch said in a separate statement also on Tuesday. The reports came as Saudi Arabia faces intense global criticism over the killing of insider-turned-critic Jamal Khashoggi in its Istanbul consulate on October 2, which tipped the kingdom into one of its worst crises. More than a dozen activists were arrested in May -- just before the historic lifting of a decades-long ban on women drivers the following month. Many of them were accused of undermining security and aiding enemies of the state. Some were subsequently released. DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said on Wednesday the kingdom is united around its leadership, dismissing as "ridiculous" reports that members of the Saudi royal family want to see a change in the line of succession. Asked in an interview by CNBC about a Reuters report that members of the royal family are discussing the possibility of changing the line of succession, but not while King Salman is alive, Adel al-Jubeir said: "These are outrageous comments that are being made and are totally unacceptable." In a statement Reuters said: We stand by our story. Reuters had quoted three sources close to the royal court as saying that amid international uproar over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, some members of Saudi Arabia's ruling family are agitating to prevent Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from becoming king. "The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is unified on this issue, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is committed to its leadership, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is committed to the vision that our leaders have put forth for us in terms of Vision 2030 and in terms of moving along the path of reform," Jubeir said. The killing of Khashoggi, a prominent critic of the crown prince, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last month has drawn global condemnation, including from many politicians and officials in the United States, a key Saudi ally. The CIA believes the crown prince ordered the killing, according to U.S. sources familiar with the assessment. President Donald Trump vowed on Tuesday to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia despite saying that Prince Mohammed may have known about the plan to murder Khashoggi. "We have made it very clear that Saudi Arabia's government is not involved in this (Khashoggi's murder) and the crown prince is not involved in this, at all," Jubeir told CNBC. (Editing by Robin Pomeroy) WASHINGTON (AP) She's cooked bean soup live and done laundry in public. She narrated much of what she calls "Congress camp" on Capitol Hill. We know what's in her bank account less than $7,000 and what she thinks of reviews of her clothing. Such intimate details have kept Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's star on the rise since she upset Democratic veteran Joe Crowley in New York's June primary. By the time she takes her seat in the House on Jan. 3 as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, the 29-year-old Ocasio-Cortez will have blazed a new, more public trail to Washington and literally shed light on the maze of Capitol Hill. "Guys there are secret underground tunnels between all of these government buildings," she mock-whispers in one social media post. The passageways are hardly secret, as she notes everyone from tourists to reporters and lawmakers jostle through them. But they can be hard to follow, much like the twists and turns of congressional business. So Ocasio-Cortez is posting not just about mundane tasks at home, but also about her life as a congresswoman-elect. And even though her Instagram stories don't stay online for long, she intends to keep up the posts in an effort to "humanize our government." "A lot of times we'll tune in to cable news or watch what's going on on TV and all we're reading about is bills and all we're reading about is legislation or the political dynamics," she said Monday night on MSNBC. "But I think it's really important that we actually show people that government is a real thing, that it's something that you can be a part of." In her first week, Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist, did give a glimpse inside the power games of Congress when she appeared with protesters in the office of the woman fighting to become House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California. Pelosi, who had not yet won Ocasio-Cortez's support in the leadership fight, permitted the demonstration. Video of the event was posted to social media. Over the weekend, Ocasio-Cortez signaled she would vote for Pelosi for speaker. Story continues That episode and others offered clues to how Ocasio-Cortez and her social media practices fit into a national legislature that's slowly becoming younger, less male and more diverse. The approach Ocasio-Cortez is modeling and the political world is studying gives her a measure of control by communicating directly with constituents and responding to critics in close to real time. "She knows how to navigate this space in a way that others don't," said Yvette Simpson, incoming CEO of Democracy for America, a progressive political action committee. Also, Simpson pointed out, "She's not accountable to that power structure" in Congress. "She's accountable to the group that put her there." The Ocasio-Cortez approach carries risks. Every word she utters and writes will be scrutinized in the big arena of Congress and the 2020 re-election campaigns that have effectively already begun. She's already gotten a taste of that scrutiny on policy, to which she is a newcomer compared to some in her class who were state legislators or staffers in previous administrations. Asked on PBS on July 13 about her views on capitalism considering the strong economy and the low unemployment rate, Ocasio-Cortez responded: "We look at these figures and we say, oh, unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs." Fact checkers pounced. Employed people are only counted once when the unemployment rate is determined no matter how many jobs they hold. And the percentage of people working multiple jobs has fallen slightly since the mid-2000s, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There have been other tangles. "People keep giving me directions to the spouse and intern events instead of the ones for members of Congress," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Nov. 14. Questioned about that claim on Twitter, she reiterated that she'd been sent to an intern lunch and added: "Next time try believing women + people of color when they talk about their experiences being a woman or person of color." Her high profile has come with criticism. "If I walked into Congress wearing a sack, they would laugh & take a picture of my backside," she posted on Nov. 15, after a reporter posted just such a photo and questioned whether her clothing choice was that of a "girl who struggles." ''If I walk in with my best sale-rack clothes, they laugh & take a picture of my backside." Conservatives, too, questioned her claim that she can't pay rent in pricey Washington. A spokesman for Ocasio-Cortez said Tuesday that she has less than $7,000 in her bank account to get her through the first congressional payday in January. She and each rank-and-file member will make $174,000 a year. Another spat ensued when Ocasio-Cortez misspoke and referred to "three chambers of government," rather than three branches. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a Republican not immune to gaffes herself as John McCain's 2008 vice presidential running mate, tweeted that the congresswoman-elect had fumbled basic civics. For now, Ocasio-Cortez posted that her appearance Monday night will be the last "before we go dark" to set up two congressional offices one in New York and one in Washington. But even that announcement raised questions among her followers. "Don't worry, I'll still be on insta, twitter, etc.," she reassured them. ___ Associated Press writer Josh Boak contributed to this report. ___ Follow Kellman and Mascaro on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/APLaurieKellman and http://www.twitter.com/LisaMascaro Paris (AFP) - The blue glowing jets of science fiction spacecraft came a step closer to reality on Wednesday as US physicists unveiled the world's first solid-state aeroplane powered in flight by supercharged air molecules. More than a century on from the Wright brothers' first artificial flight, scientists hailed the "historic" test of the new technology, which could eventually slash greenhouse-gas emissions from aviation. Ever since Orville and Wilbur Wright's momentous glide in the winter of 1903, aircraft have been driven by propellers or jets that must burn fuel to create the thrust and lift needed for sustained flight. A team of experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology managed to unlock a process known as electroaerodynamics, previously never seen as a plausible way to power an aircraft. They were able to fly the new plane, with a wingspan of five metres (16 feet), a distance of 55 metres at a speed of 4.8 metres-per-second. That's hardly supersonic, but the implications of this unprecedented mode of flight could be stratospheric. "The future of flight shouldn't be things like propellers and turbines," said Steven Barrett, who designed the prototype. "It should be more like what you see in Star Trek with a kind of blue glow and something that silently glides through the air." At first glance, the plane itself doesn't look lightyears away from other renewable aircraft, such as the Solar Impact II craft that in 2015-16 used energy from the Sun to fly around the world. Unlike Solar Impact, Barrett's plane doesn't have any propellers or solar panels -- or any moveable parts whatsoever. Instead of engines, it is powered by a system comprising two main sections. At the front of the plane sit a series of parallel electrodes made up of lightweight wires that produce an enormous voltage -- +20,000v -- supercharging the air around it and splitting away negatively charged nitrogen molecules known as ions. Story continues At the plane's rear are rows of aerofoils set to -20,000v. The ions automatically move from a positive to negative charge, dragging with them air particles that create the so-called "ionic wind" to provide the aircraft with lift. - 'Something we never knew possible' - The technology to create ionic wind has been around since the 1960s, but it was previously thought nowhere near efficient enough to prove useful to aeronautics. The team not only showed that it was possible for ion-driven craft to fly but also -- due to the relative lack of drag created by the electrodes -- predicted that efficiency would increase in lockstep with speed, potentially opening the way for bigger, faster planes in future. "It's clearly very early days: but the team at MIT have done something we never previously knew was possible, in using accelerated ionised gas to propel an aircraft," said Guy Gratton, aerospace engineer and visiting professor at Cranfield University, who was not involved in the study. Barrett said he believed the current prototype could be scaled up "a significant amount" but cautioned that their may be a limit to how much propulsion the technique can produce. "We don't yet know if there is such a limit and we will certainly try to scale up as much as possible," he said. "I don't yet know if you'll see our vehicle carrying people any time soon but obviously I'd be very excited if that was the case." - Commercial applications - He told AFP that the technology could be used on the skin of commercial aircraft, reducing drag and therefore the energy needed to power modern passenger jets. "This would be much more efficient than the current situation where you have concentrated engines that generate thrust, which have to fight against a large passive airframe that generates drag," he said. In an editorial, the journal Nature, which published the study, said its success would encourage other sectors to re-visit technology that was long thought to be confined to sci-fi films. It listed possible military applications including the development of silent drones and aircraft, and engines with no infrared signal and thus impossible to detect. The prototype flight "will stimulate both awe and anxiety," it said. A hundred and fifteen years ago, Nature published a short news item on the Wright brothers' "first successful achievement of artificial flight." Barrett and the team noted a pleasing parallel with their revolutionary test and the one that sparked the aerial age: both flights lasted all of 12 seconds. By Josh Smith and Haejin Choi DAEGU, South Korea (Reuters) - When 17-year-old Lee Yong-soo returned home to South Korea in 1945 after years as a child sex slave for Japanese troops, her family, having given her up for dead, thought she was a ghost. "When I returned, I had a deep wound," Lee told Reuters, holding a black and white photo of herself in a traditional Korean dress, taken in her first year back home. She still remembers the blue and purple fabric of that dress, but other memories from those years are more traumatic. "I thought I was going to die," Lee said of the abuse and torture she endured in a brothel at an airfield in Taiwan used by Japanese kamikaze pilots in the final years of World War Two. Now 90 years old, Lee says she feels like a sincere apology from Japanese authorities for the wartime exploitation of so-called comfort women is no nearer now than when she returned home more than 70 years ago. Japan says the claims have been settled by past agreements and apologies, and that the continued controversy threatens relations between the two countries. Some historians estimate 30,000 to 200,000 Korean women were forced into sex slavery during Japan's occupation from 1910 to 1945, in some cases under the pretext of employment or to pay off a relative's debt. Now with only 27 registered South Korean survivors still alive, there is a sense of urgency behind efforts by the women to receive a formal apology as well as legal compensation from Japan while their voices can still be heard. Just days before Reuters interviewed Lee at her one-room apartment in the southern city of Daegu, a fellow victim had died, one of six so far in 2018. Another survivor, Kim Bok-dong, said she wanted to share her story, but suffering from cancer and expected to live only a few more months, she was unable to find time to speak. "SINCERE APOLOGY" Under the 1965 treaty, Japan reached a deal with South Korea to provide an $800 million aid-and-loan package in exchange for Seoul considering all wartime compensation issues settled. A South Korean panel late last year concluded a separate 2015 deal between South Korea and Japan had failed to meet the needs of former "comfort women". Acting on that conclusion, the South Korean government this week shut down a fund created under the 2015 deal and vowed to pursue a more "victim-oriented" approach, a move Japan said threatened the two countries' relations. A sense of shame and secrecy meant most tales of abuse and coercion at the brothels for Japanese troops were never discussed publicly, until Kim Hak-sun, one of the South Korean victims, came forward in 1991. She and two other former comfort women joined a class action lawsuit against Japan, which prompted the Japanese government to acknowledge its role for the first time in 1993. The case was eventually dismissed by Japan's highest courts in 2004. Lee was one of the survivors emboldened by Kim's move, and has since worked to raise awareness, including meeting the Pope and traveling to North Korea to meet other victims. "Since 1992, I had been asking Japan to make sincere apology, that is what I want," Lee said. "I have been doing this for 27 years, it doesnt matter whether it was raining or snowing, or the weather was cold or hot." UNRESOLVED DISPUTE From 1995 to 2007, Japan created a fund from donations to make payments to women throughout Asia, budgeted money for their welfare support and sent letters of apology from successive premiers. While a number of survivors have accepted compensation over the years, many South Koreans see the issue as unresolved because of what they consider a lack of sincerity from the Japanese government. Despite apologies from Japan, for example, the first comfort women fund was criticized in South Korea for not being direct compensation from the state, and the 2015 deal was faulted for failing to include a clear statement of the Japanese governments legal responsibility. Japan says South Korea had waived all claims in the 1965 pact, and that under the 2015 deal, Japan agreed to provide the funds to help the women heal "psychological wounds". Critics of South Korea have also accused it of ignoring the complicity of some Koreans in the sex trade at the time. Shutting the Japan-funded foundation is one of the most significant steps President Moon Jae-in's administration has taken as it revisits the comfort women controversy. In the past year, South Korea has also opened a new research center aimed at consolidating academic study of comfort women, named the first Comfort Women Day and unveiled a new memorial in Cheonan, a city south of Seoul. "We cannot ignore the truth just because it hurts," Moon said this week. "For the sake of sustainable and solid Korea-Japan relations, we must face up to the truth. Lee said she thinks Moon is "trying his best," and in a statement released from her hospital bed this week, Kim said the move to close the foundation restored her trust in the South Korean president. Moon's efforts, however, have faced pushback from Japanese officials, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Earlier this year, Japan formally complained after South Koreas foreign minister raised the issue in a speech at the United Nations. Japanese officials have expressed frustration at what they see as the South Korean government's changing positions and efforts to revisit settled agreements. For survivors like Lee, Japan's protests ring hollow. "The survivors of the heinous crimes the Japanese committed are dying day by day, and I bet Abe is dancing for joy," Lee said, becoming animated as she described her frustration. "They should apologize, tell the truth, and pay the legal compensation." (Reporting by Josh Smith and Haejin Choi.; Additional reporting by Linda Sieg in Tokyo.; Editing by Lincoln Feast.) Director Whitney Sudler-Smith (R) and his mother Patricia Altschul attend the film premiere of 'Ultrasuede Nobody can say that Southern Charm star Patricia Altschul doesnt have a sense of humor. This year to wish her fans a Happy Thanksgiving, she presented cast member Cameran Eubanks baby, Palmer Wimberly, as the turkey on a platter for her holiday Instagram post. And what would a Patricia post be without dropping some knowledge for your edification? Altschul blew some minds on Twitter when she explained to people that the Thanksgiving feast in Massachusetts was not the first Thanksgiving. Berkeley Plantation in Virginia was the site of the First Thanksgiving in 1619..also where I had a deb party a few years later! Some of her Twitter followers argued that no, they are from New England, and that is where the Pilgrims sat down with the Native Americans and broke bread for the first time to give thanks. Click here to continue and read more... Former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab (PA) The former Brexit Secretary, Dominic Raab has claimed that Theresa Mays deal with Brussels is worse than staying in the European Union. Raab, who was the minister responsible for negotiating the deal with the Prime Minister and is a leading Brexiteer, told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: Im not going to advocate staying in the EU. But, if you just presented me terms, this deal or EU membership, because we would effectively be bound by the same rules but without the control or voice over them, yes, I think this would be even worse than that. Raab, who quit the Cabinet earlier this month, also said the current deal is unlikely to be passed by the House of Commons, where many MPs remain opposed. Theresa May claims she has the best deal available for the country (PA) He said that could increase the likelihood of a no-deal Brexit. Asked about reports that some Cabinet ministers were plotting a negotiated no-deal, Raab responded: I would certainly be up for making a best final offer and then considering no-deal deals like, but that is not the course the prime minister has taken. The reality is the deal we have got on the table. He added: I think, inevitably see Parliament vote this deal down. And then I think some of those other alternatives will need to come into play. 126 days to Brexit (PA) His comments were immediately seized upon by political opponents, such as Labours David Lammy, as well as MPs in the Tory Party, including Phillip Lee and Heidi Allen, who are arguing for a second referendum. Raab spoke as Theresa May said a deal is within our grasp. At the EU level, a major obstacle remains in the form of Madrids continued concerns about Gibraltar, with Mr Sanchez vowing to defend the interests of Spain. Just over a week ago Dominic Raab was in charge of negotiating May's Brexit deal. This morning on #r4today he conceded it is worse than our continued EU membership. If MPs are allowed to change their minds, the public must be given the same opportunity. David Lammy (@DavidLammy) November 23, 2018 Mrs May said she spoke to Mr Sanchez on Wednesday night and was confident on Sunday that well be able to agree a deal that delivers for the whole UK family, including Gibraltar. Story continues But in a late-night tweet on Thursday Mr Sanchez said: After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away. My Government will always defend the interests of Spain. If there are no changes, we will veto Brexit. Credit to @DominicRaab for publicly saying hed rather remain in the EU than accept the governments #Brexit deal. If its unacceptable to him how do we know that its acceptable to the 17.4m people who voted Leave in 2016? We need to ask the British public to know #PeoplesVote Dr Phillip Lee MP (@DrPhillipLeeMP) November 23, 2018 Mr Sanchez cannot veto Brexit or the Withdrawal Agreement, but a refusal to co-operate will sour the atmosphere at a summit where leaders of the 27 remaining EU members were aiming for consensus. Marco Aguiriano, Spains state secretary for European affairs, said Madrid needs guarantees we can go on with this model. We are asking for an article that is put on the table to be included in the political declaration on the future relations, he told the BBC. Sticking point? Spain has threatened to reject the draft Brexit deal vote over the future status of Gibraltar (PA) Chief Minister of Gibraltar Fabian Picardo criticised Spains stance. He told the BBC: Spain doesnt need an article in the treaties, the future declaration, or indeed the withdrawal agreement, to bring Gibraltar to the table. Gibraltar has demonstrated that we actually want a direct engagement with Spain on issues. Spain is the physical and geographical gateway to Europe for Gibraltar. We recognise that and there is absolutely no need for us to be vetoed into being brought to the table. Education Secretary Damian Hinds though said he believed support for the Prime Ministers Brexit deal would grow in Parliament as MPs considered the alternatives. He told the BBC: If we werent to pass this deal, I think it becomes rather unpredictable what happens next. There is a risk on the one hand beyond that of no Brexit at all and there are people trying to thwart Brexit and there is also a risk of no deal. EU leaders are meeting to discuss the legally-binding withdrawal agreement setting out the terms for the UKs departure from Brussels. They also have to determine the a declaration on the future relationship between London and Brussels. By Omar Mohammed and Maggie Fick NAIROBI (Reuters) - The soldiers started fanning out in the cashew nut growing regions of southern Tanzania - a jolting sight for traders and, campaigners say, a watershed moment for a country once held up as a darling of development groups. The government said the troops were there last week to make sure growers and markets were obeying new orders by President John Magufuli, known to his supporters as "the bulldozer". His forceful interventions on everything from commerce to sexual morality have placed him on a collision course with donors. On Monday, soldiers were out again further north in the tourist hub of Arusha, this time to crack down on street black market currency dealers. "We as Tanzanians are not accustomed to this ... Since independence, we have not seen the army on the streets like this," said lawyer Fatma Karume who has represented opposition lawmakers in a series of lawsuits. "There's a climate of fear. To suggest that Magufuli's policies are populist or popular is not understanding the mood among the average person. These policies are not popular, they're authoritarian." Magufuli, 59, has said his interventions protect the economy. He appeals to nationalism - railing against foreign interference and telling women not to use birth control because Tanzania needs more people. "Some countries are now facing declining population growth. They are short on manpower ... I see no reason to control births in Tanzania," the president said in a speech in September. But donors and investors have looked on with increasing alarm, wondering at the speed of the decline of Tanzania's international standing. They say the economic and social interventions have been accompanied by increasing restrictions on the opposition, the press, even bloggers. "Respect for human rights and the rule of law has been repeatedly undermined," the EU mission in the country announced last week after saying government pressure had led to the "forced departure" of its ambassador. Foreign Affairs Minister Augustine Mahiga told Reuters that the government had had a number of unspecified issues with the ambassador, without elaborating. "TIPPING POINT" Denmark suspended $10 million in planned aid last week over "unacceptable homophobic comments" by the governor of commercial capital Dar es Salaam, after he said a new security squad would start rounding up LGBT people. The foreign ministry later said his statement did not reflect official policy. "What we are now seeing is a tipping point where (the government) has gone after so many different groups that international donors are saying 'Enough is enough'," said Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy at Britain's Birmingham University. "The question is whether donors are going to continue to pull out," he said. "Tanzania is not a country that can survive without this support, even though it has significant natural resources." The government has for years received more than a billion dollars annually in foreign grants, putting it among the five biggest aid recipients in Africa, according to the World Bank. Such grants are expected to account for more than 8 percent of spending, according to this year's budget. The government response to criticism has ranged from a defiant defense of its record to quieter retreats on individual disputes. Mahiga, the minister, dismissed pressure from aid groups as "intimidation". "They are using the words 'You will suffer the consequences'", the minister told Reuters, declining to name the government he had been speaking to. "If these are the consequences we are ready to suffer," he said. "We cannot kneel down and be blackmailed, because they have money and we are poor. I think this is not how international behavior should be between neighbors." "DIRECTION OF TRAVEL" Other responses have been less confrontational. The World Bank this month put a planned $300 million loan for an education project on hold, partly in response to a law preventing pregnant girls from returning to school. World Bank Vice President Hafez Ghanem flew into the country to discuss the issue, then said a cautious agreement had been reached to get the loan process back on track after Tanzania agreed to reconsider the legislation. It is a world away from Magufuli early days, when he came to power in 2015, and won international praise for his promises to crack down on corruption. He courted popularity with surprise visits at government departments, at one point walking into the country's main public hospital and sacking senior managers, saying they were not delivering. But for Murithi Mutiga of the International Crisis Group, the populist alarm bells were already there. "The world has only begun to pay attention to the situation after Magufuli weighed in on social wedge issues that typically attract media coverage, " he said. "But the direction of travel in which he was taking Tanzania was clear from the start." (Reporting by Omar Mohammed and Maggie Fick; Editing by Andrew Heavens) Nairobi (AFP) - The head of Tanzania's main opposition party was arrested Friday in Dar es Salaam, after twice failing to appear in court to face charges of illegal protest, a party official said. Chadema leader Freeman Mbowe was arrested at Kisutu court alongside fellow opposition MP Esther Matiko, where they and seven others were attending a trial hearing for their participation in a February protest. "They were immediately taken to prison. That is to say, they are no longer free defendants. The judge cancelled their release on bail," said Chadema secretary-general Vincent Mashinji, who is also an accused in the case. The magistrate ordered Mbowe's detention after he failed to appear before the court twice, on November 1 and 8. Mashinji said Mbowe had been ill on both occasions while Matiko, he said, had missed a hearing because she was "on an official mission to Burundi". Mbowe and his fellow defendants are being tried for their role in a protest march on February 16, during which a 22-year-old student was killed by a stray bullet fired by police. Six policemen were arrested but were subsequently released with prosecutors saying blame lay with protest organisers, rather than security forces. Peter Dinklage as Del and Elle Fanning as Grace in I Think Were Alone Now (The Movie Partnership) After wowing the indie crowd at Sundance Film Festival in January this year, Reed Moranos off-beat dystopian drama I Think Were Alone Now is finally available to watch in the U.K. on digital download. After a mysterious event wipes out the worlds population in one day, last man standing Del (Game of Thrones Peter Dinklage) takes it upon himself to clean up his home town, house by house, burying the town folk in a makeshift cemetery, mainly to alleviate the boredom, but also to clear up the bad smell. One day Grace, a mysterious stranger played by Elle Fanning, arrives shattering Dels peaceful solitude, but the pair begin to forge an unlikely friendship in the most unusual of settings. Its a post-apocalyptic tale, unlike any other film in the genre, with the emphasis being on the post, rather than the cataclysmic event itself that is only ever hinted at in the film. This is one of the key things that attracted director Reed Morano to the project, as she told Yahoo earlier this week. The acclaimed cinematographer-turned director, who also serves as executive producer on The Handmaids Tale after directing the hit dramas first three episodes, took time out of editing her next film, Eons spy thriller Blake Lively-led The Rhythm Section, to talk to us about her low-key take on the apocalypse and fulfilling her dream of working with Peter Dinklage. Yahoo Movies UK: How did I Think Were Alone Now come to be and how did you first get involved? Actress Elle Fanning, left, director Reed Morano and Peter Dinklage attend the I Think Were Alone Now cast party at Chase Sapphire on Main on Sunday, Jan. 21, 2018, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision for Chase Sapphire/AP Images) Reed Morano: It came up really fast, and was probably the fastest project Ive had that came together. Basically it started off when my agent said they had something that had come from producer Fred Berger and Peter Dinklage, and Michael Makowsky, the writer. They had something they wanted to get to me and my agent sent it on as something they hoped I would want to do, something a little different. It was such a small project, in terms of budget size, its very intimate. My agents were like we know youre going to love this one, so we had to set a deal. It was really good. As soon as I heard Peter was involved, I was like whatever it is, I want to do it. Story continues Theres a lot of people I want to work with and he was at the top of that list. I just remember how weird and unapologetic it was, and how it did things that were unconventional. I liked what it did in terms of I didnt see it coming, it was unexpected. I read so many scripts and you always know whats going to happen, and then you feel more or less let down because it does exactly what you imagined it would do, before it happens. I Think Were Alone Now UK poster (The Movie Partnership) So what I loved about Mikes script is that it didnt go where I thought it would go, and I appreciated his off-branch humour. He has a very interesting way that his mind works and I just thought, well this is a really fun, interesting take on the apocalypse. I also just appreciated that all the movies that deal with the apocalypse typically do, which is focus on what its like when the apocalypse happens, finding other survivors, and things like that. Mikes post-apocalyptic vision didnt do that. I thought its interesting, its a challenge, its different and I really appreciated it. I love anything first and foremost that gives you an opportunity to do a character study and this is like the ultimate character study, not only of Peters character, but also an opportunity for Elles character too. Its two people trapped, and you cant get more intimate than that. Was it written with Peter in mind? Elle Fanning as Grace and Peter Dinklage as Del in I Think Were Alone Now (The Movie Partnership) No. What happened was it came to Peter the same way. He was looking for something to produce, and I think initially it came to Peter as something he could possibly produce, maybe star in, but I think maybe not, but when Peter read it, I dont want to speak for him, but Ive heard this story a few times, he read it and he felt like, yeah, I want to make this about this, theres something interesting about it, it breaks rules and conventions. And then he kind of fell in love with the main character, and he was like you know what, Im going to play this guy. And course, Mike was a bit moved by that. He didnt actually write it for Peter, but Peter was kinda perfect for that character. So thats how it ended up being that. I think that Peters trying to produce more. I know the projects hes keeping for himself to do, are producing projects that he will usually have a role in. We have some other stuff were hoping to do together, and he wants to keep producing. And I tell you what, its very nice having him on as a producer. And Im glad hes doing that, because that means hes doing the things he wants to do, the way he wants to do them. If it came together quickly, does that mean you didnt have much time to rehearse? I Think Were Alone Now filmed on location in New York State. (The Movie Partnership) I dont do a lot of rehearsals, particularly on a project thats so small. It depends actually, Im kind of accommodate it towards the subject matter, and the actors. Certain actors like to rehearse. For example one of my projects coming up I have Jeff Bridges, and I dont want to rehearse too much, unless the actor wants to, and Jeff really wants to rehearse. He wants to have the opportunity to riff, before hes on set, so he knows how far he can take it on set. On the movie that I just did The Rhythm Section we happened to have set rehearsals, which is a different thing. And the thing that I do the most probably, which is what I did on I Think Were Alone Now, which is we rehearsed in the sense of we meet and talk about the project. Actress Elle Fanning, left, director Reed Morano and Peter Dinklage attend the I Think Were Alone Now cast party at Chase Sapphire on Main on Sunday, Jan. 21, 2018, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision for Chase Sapphire/AP Images) And we go through the scenes, but were not necessarily theyre not acting out the scenes. And thats probably the most common thing I do on movies with the actors I work with. We just get together, we analyse the script and the scenes, and we make sure that everything thats happening has motivations, and the dialogue all feels in line with the characters full stop, and feel honest for the characters. What their needs are in that moment. Thats really the main thing. And I Think Were Alone Now, Peter and I got to meet a lot, and Elle and I were able to Skype a bunch because she was off in different places, and we all started texting, just keeping checking in, talking about important stuff. Typical rehearsal time is not really something we had on this movie, but it came together quick. It didnt need a lot of money to get made, and it didnt have a huge cast to get together, so it was like what came together was that everybody was like OK, we have all the elements and then there was a window. And when Pete has a window, youve got to take it, and I had a window and so we were just like lets do it now and we went for it. Talking of windows, and seizing opportunities, I imagine you only had narrow windows to shoot the shots of the big empty towns? Oh yeah, that was like a very big challenge. Huge credit to my crew and my assistant director Matt [McLoota], and his team, because we have credit the people in the AD department, because they were responsible for creating that look in the sense of locking up the towns and make sure no-one walks into the shot and breaks it. Peter Dinklages Del uses the library as his base. I Think Were Alone Now (The Movie Partnership) Its very hard to get people to listen! But we had a lot of cooperation from the towns that we shot in. And what helps was that we actually broke the town that Del lives in, its actually made up of five different towns, and thats what you have to do. You have to like wing it with you expect as little time as you can in each town, because they can cope with a couple of days of this, but theyre going to get tired of you. Theyre like get these people out of here! I want to be able to get to the train station in the morning to get to work!. So the towns were really patient, and how they cooperated with us was really cool, particularly Hastings-on-Hudson and Haverstraw in New York, which are two places. But Hastings was where the library was, it has this amazing library, and they never theyre werent big on having people actually shoot in their library, but somehow they hooked us up and let us do it, and I think they were fans of Petes and they thought the script was interesting, so that was a very key location. I Think Were Alone Now is available on digital download now. Read more Dinklage: Game of Thrones will end beautifully Dinklage responds to whitewashing claims Everything we know about the Thrones finale Brussels (AFP) - Three doctors will face a criminal trial in Belgium accused of failing to comply with the legal conditions for euthanasia, the first such case since it was decriminalised in 2002. "This is the first time that there has been a decision to refer such a case to a court of law," lawyer Jacqueline Herremans told AFP on Friday, confirming information from Belgian media. "There have already been legal cases involving doctors, but they have always resulted in dismissals before going to court," added Herremans, who chairs the Belgian Association for the Right to Die with Dignity. The case follows the announcement that Dutch authorities are prosecuting a doctor for euthanising an elderly woman with dementia in the first case of its kind in neighbouring the Netherlands. Belgium and the Netherlands became the first countries in the world to legalise so-called mercy killing, but it can only be carried out by doctors and under very strict conditions. The decision in Belgium, taken on Thursday by the Court of Appeal in Ghent, stems from a civil action brought by a sister of an autistic woman, Tine Nys, who was euthanised in 2010 at the age of 38. The sister accused the doctors of not having properly prepared the case and of taking a rushed decision when the woman had not been treated for mental issues for years. The diagnosis of autism had only been made two months before her death, according to the Belgian media. In Belgium, euthanasia has been allowed since 2002 for patients suffering from an incurable disease who have made their request "voluntarily, thoughtfully and repeatedly". This right for adults was extended in 2014 to minors, within an equally strict legal framework. Mitrovica (Kosovo) (AFP) - Three Kosovo Serbs were arrested Friday over the murder of prominent Serb politician Oliver Ivanovic who was shot dead in January, Kosovo authorities said. The early morning arrests were a rare intervention by Kosovo's special police forces into the northern half of Mitrovica, an ethnically divided city with Serbs in the north and Albanians in the south. The move comes amid tensions between Pristina and Belgrade, where President Aleksandar Vucic denounced the arrests as "the strongest attempt so far to threaten the continued presence of Serbs in Kosovo". Kosovo police spokesman Baki Kelani said three people were arrested "in connection with the case of the murder of Oliver Ivanovic." Authorities are still searching for an additional suspect who was not at home, while a fourth man was detained for trying to interfere, he added. Two of those arrested were police officers, Kosovo police said in a statement. Ivanovic, a moderate Serb politician in a deeply polarised city, was killed by gunmen in front of his office in northern Mitrovica on 16 January 2018. His killers have never been identified. The 64-year-old was considered a rare Serb politician capable of building bridges between his community and Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority. But associates of Ivanovic, who was tough on crime, have said they believe the murder was more likely a mafia hit than related to communal relations. The arrests come during an already rocky week between Pristina and Belgrade, who are locked in a diplomatic feud. Serbia refuses to recognise the independence of Kosovo, a former southern province that broke away in a war two decades ago. In the latest provocation, Kosovo slapped Serbian imports with a 100 tariff this week in retaliation for Belgrade's efforts to thwart global recognition of its statehood. Several protests against the measure were held Friday in predominantly Serb parts of Kosovo. Story continues In response to Friday's arrests, KFOR, the NATO-led international forces that have been tasked ensuring Kosovo's safety, said in a statement that "the situation remains stable" despite "increasing tensions at the political level." "KFOR continues monitoring the situation and maintains its presence on the ground, hopefully with no need to intervene," it added. In Belgrade Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic called a meeting with his defence and interior ministers and other top security officials. Beijing (AFP) - The Chinese Communist Party has faced and crushed a myriad of dissidents over its decades-long rule, from pro-democracy reformers to human rights advocates and outspoken religious leaders. But Chinese authorities are now facing an unlikely challenge spawned from their own efforts to indoctrinate the population with the ideology of the party: young Marxists. "After I started university, I became very sensitive to the treatment, rights and interests of workers," a student activist at Peking University told AFP, requesting anonymity. As the son of migrant farm workers, the 21-year-old had a sense of social responsibility for China's underclass, he said. In exploring ways to help them, he read the work of Karl Marx. His story is not unique. Reacting against the increasing consumerism in Chinese society and the growing inequality between the rich and poor, students at elite universities are turning to Marxism - the ideological bedrock of any Communist Party. On campus, students organised movie nights and socials for the school's janitorial and cafeteria staff. They gathered to sing socialist anthems. But when students tried to apply theory to practise by joining efforts to organise a labour union for factory workers in southern Guangdong province, Chinese authorities flew into action. In August, a police raid swept up the student activists, beating several of them and confiscating their phones, according to the Jasic Workers Solidarity group, a labour rights organisation that the students joined. Several of them, including Yue Xin, a Peking University graduate who became known after co-authoring a petition demanding details of a sexual abuse case at the school, have not been heard from since. "We, the academics, are really concerned about the students' freedom and their safety," said Jenny Chan, an assistant professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University who studies labour movements. Story continues - A violent past - The crackdown continued this month, with around five graduates detained in various cities, according to activists. Among them was a Peking University graduate who was beaten and taken by men in dark clothing on campus, an eyewitness told AFP. The school issued a statement on the university's internal online forum, calling the Peking University alumnus a "suspected criminal". At one university, students who participated in Jasic Workers Solidarity activities are tightly monitored by teachers and are questioned if they leave campus for an extended period of time, according to an activist who asked that her school not be named for fear of retribution. Students say their Marxist societies have struggled to register with their universities. "These incidents will only make me feel more angry and further arouse my will to fight," a Nanjing University student involved in the Jasic group told AFP, requesting anonymity. "It will not make me yield." Though the activists make up a small portion of the student body, Chinese authorities are taking no chances. In 1989, thousands of university students joined workers in pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square that eventually provoked a bloody crackdown. Since those protests, authorities have moved "swiftly and harshly against anything that seems capable of linking people in different occupations and different places," explained Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a Chinese history professor at the University of California, Irvine. In one sense, it is certainly ironic to find a government that claims to adhere to Marxism cracking down on a Marxism group," he said. With the upcoming 100th anniversary of the May 4th movement, another historical mass demonstration led by students in Beijing, the Chinese Communist Party will be on "high alert," he told AFP. - Divided campus? - So far, police and school authorities seem to have succeeded in containing the burst of activism. Online censors have scrubbed posts about police detentions and Jasic workers. Chat groups circulating information about student activists have also been shut down. At Peking University student views on the school's Marxist society and the activism of their fellow classmates run the gamut. Some were sympathetic, while others criticised the group as militant and extremist. "I strongly support them because they dare to put others before themselves," wrote one student on Peking University's internal online forum. "Forget it," scoffed another. "I'm a left-leaning Maoist and I don't even like them." The ideological clash also comes as Chinese leader Xi Jinping calls for a refocusing on Communist roots -- including a May speech which called for Marxism to be promoted in campuses and classrooms. For most students, many of whom are liberal-minded or influenced by Western ideas, Maoism and worker rights are very distant concepts, explained Li, a fourth-year Peking University student who only gave his surname. "As a political science student, I'm not very leftist in how I view labour," he told AFP. He criticised the activists for their lack of "objectiveness and impartiality", but said that doesn't mean they should be suppressed. Even if the government tries to clamp down on students, the labour disputes that sparked the protests in the first place won't vanish, added Chan. "It is the government now who has to come up and resolve the problems," she said. Otherwise, "all these grievances and discontent" will simply increase. "Obviously," she added, "the students are not going to be silent." President Donald Trump went off-script in a Thanksgiving Day call with members of the military, tearing into the federal judiciary, the caravan of migrants approaching the southern U.S. border and the controversy surrounding the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump continued to rail against Mondays decision by U.S. District Court Judge Jon S. Tigar blocking his ban on refugees seeking asylum outside legal points of entry along the U.S. border. He called the ruling terrible and reiterated his attack on the judges serving in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A vast number of their decisions get overturned and its a shame, its a disgrace frankly, he said. He called the appeals court a big thorn in our side. He criticized Tigar as some judge sitting in some location very far away. Tigar is based in San Francisco. An appeal of his ruling will be heard by the 9th circuit. Trump broke with the practice of past presidents by using the traditional holiday teleconference call to troops in various parts of the world to vent on political issues. He claimed a vast amount of fighting at the border taking place in Mexico stemming from the migrant caravan. And he repeated his oft-used trope about a large number of criminals being part of the caravan. In many cases, theyre not good people. Theyre bad people, he said. Theyre not coming through, were not letting criminals into our country. Speaking about the fortifications being built by the thousands of troops he sent to patrol the border, he mispronounced concertina wire. Earlier this week, he insisted the newly stationed military personnel dont mind missing Thanksgiving with their families. Dont worry about Thanksgiving, Trump said. These are tough people. They know what theyre doing and theyre great. And theyve done a great job. Youre so worried about the Thanksgiving holiday for them. They are so proud to be representing our country on the border. Story continues In his comments in Thursdays call on Khashoggi, the U.S.-based Saudi Arabian writer who was killed last month upon entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Trump said, Maybe the world should be held accountable for his death because the world is a vicious place. Trump has been widely criticized, including by several fellow Republican leaders, for soft-pedaling the role of Saudi officials in Khashoggis murder, even in the wake of CIA findings tying Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the killing. Trump has instead stressed the importance of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, as well as the economic benefits of Saudi purchases of U.S. weapons. Earlier this week, he said, It could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event maybe he did and maybe he didnt! CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Judge Jon Tigar. He is a U.S. district judge for the northern district of California. Related... Donald Trump Says Troops At Border Are Tough Enough To Miss Thanksgiving Senate Demands Answers On Khashoggi Murder After Trump Stands By Saudis Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a signing of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act in the Oval Office of the White House on November 16, 2018 in Washington, DC. The President also took questions from reporters. On Thanksgiving Day, President Donald Trump continued to receive criticism for the White Houses statement earlier this week on the death of Jamal Khashoggi, where he chose not to lay blame on Saudi Arabia for the journalists alleged murder in October. This time, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson referred to the president as a preening, clueless clown whose decision to maintain ties with Saudi Arabia had some of the worlds perceived dictators and tyrants laughing at how easy it is to manipulate him into condoning atrocities. Trumps reaction or non-reaction to the Saudi regimes brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a holiday-season gift to autocrats around the globe, Robinson wrote on Thursday. Donald Trump has threatened to close the whole border with Mexico if illegal immigration gets uncontrollable. If we find that it gets to a level where were going to lose control or people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control, Mr Trump said after a Thanksgiving phone call with the US military at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Were either going to have a border or were not, the president said after stationing nearly 6,000 US troops on the border to combat migrants crossing the border without proper documentation. Mr Trump has been railing against a caravan of approximately 7,000 people slowly making their way towards the US-Mexico border as they flee rampant gang violence and poverty in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. While answering questions from journalists, Mr Trump claimed he had already closed the border before and would do so again - even if meant Mexico could not sell automobiles to American customers. The US recently signed a new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, known as the USMCA, to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and included provisions about automobile sales, but the president did not address in that moment. Two days ago, we closed the border. We actually just closed it. We said, Nobodys coming in. Because its out of control, the president said. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said a few traffic lanes in the port of San Ysidro near San Diego, California, had been shut down because a group of migrants were planning to rush the border. The lanes were, however, opened again later that day. Mr Trump said on Thanksgiving: "You're dealing with a minimum of 500 serious criminals [among the migrants], so I'm not going to let the military be taken of advantage of. I have no choice. Do I want that to happen? Absolutely not. You're dealing with rough people. Story continues No evidence has been made public that any of the migrants attempting to enter the US are actually criminals. Some of these migrants are seeking asylum in the US and, per US law, must set foot on US soil in order to do so. Mr Trump also took the opportunity at Mar-a-Lago to continue his Twitter rant about the federal appeals court in San Francisco, which ruled against his asylum policy and said the administration must allow all those seeking the protected status to apply regardless of where they came from or how they entered the country. The court in question has blocked a number of border and immigration orders from Mr Trump during his presidency and the president had previously tweeted that "judges must not legislate security ...They nothing about it and are making our country unsafe." He said that such decisions would only lead to "bedlam, chaos, injury and death". He later called the ninth circuit court "a big thorn in our side" and said "judges or Congress need to do something to stop it". Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu criticized President Donald Trump for reinforcing the strength of the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia despite the kingdoms direct role in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In a way, Mr. Trumps statement means Come what may, I will turn a blind eye on this. This approach is wrong. Money is not everything. We should not distance ourselves from human values, Cavusoglu told CNN Turk. Trump faced backlash this week for offering a bizarre defense of Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS) despite CIA findings tying him to the death directly: It could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event maybe he did and maybe he didnt! Trump said. The president has also repeatedly stressed the importance of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, as well as the economic benefits of Saudi promises to purchase U.S. weapons. Senators on both sides of the aisle blasted Trump for the soft-pedaling, demanding answers on the crown princes involvement. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), soon to be the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, also told The Washington Post that the committee plans to examine the murder of the U.S. resident as well as Trumps response. We will certainly want to examine what the intelligence community knows about the murder, Schiff said. Then it will be quite clear whether the president is relying on the intelligence community and our best source of information or whether the president is representing something very different. Khashoggi, a Saudi-born writer for The Washington Post who had been living in Virginia, was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. The Saudi government has offered several explanations, first claiming hed disappeared and later admitting he had been slain. The CIA has determined that Khashoggi was tortured and killed by a team directed by the crown prince soon after he arrived at the consulate to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage. Story continues Related Coverage Senate Demands Answers On Khashoggi Murder After Trump Stands By Saudis Trump Thanks Saudi Arabia For Low Gas Prices After Jamal Khashoggi's Killing Trump Rants About Khashoggi, Judges, Borders In Thanksgiving Call With Troops Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Ankara (AFP) - A Turkish prosecutor on Friday charged 28 suspects including US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, blamed by Ankara for a 2016 failed coup, over the murder of the Russian ambassador later in the same year. The indictment by the Ankara public prosecutor came nearly two years after Andrei Karlov was shot dead in December 2016, state-run news agency Anadolu reported. Turkey accuses Gulen of ordering the July 15, 2016 attempted putsch, a claim he strongly denies. Karlov was shot dead by an off-duty Turkish policeman Mevlut Mert Altintas, 22, while inaugurating a photo exhibition in Ankara. Altintas was killed shortly after the murder by members of Turkey's special forces. The 28 suspects are charged with "violating the constitutional order", "being a member of a terror organisation", "premeditated murder with the intention of causing terror", and "seeking to create terror or panic", Anadolu reported. The prosecutor sought varying terms including aggravated life sentences, which have replaced the death penalty in Turkey and carry harsher conditions than normal life imprisonment convictions. Turkish authorities have repeatedly pointed the finger at Gulen and his "Hizmet" (Service) in Turkish over the killing, and said the murder was plotted by the group. In April this year, a Turkish court issued arrest warrants for eight people including Gulen over the murder. Among those sought by Ankara and also named in Friday's indictment was Serif Ali Tekalan, who headed a university linked to Gulen in Istanbul and now heads the Texas-based North American University (NAU). Ankara refers to the Gulen movement as the "Fethullah Terrorist Organisation" (FETO) and in the indictment, the prosecutor said the group was a spy and intelligence organisation that wanted to cause a "provocation" between Turkey and Russia with the murder. Moscow and Ankara had improved ties in mid-2016 after relations were damaged following the shooting down of a Russian plane by a Turkish military jet in November 2015 over the Turkey-Syria border. Although Turkey has issued multiple arrest warrants for Gulen, the United States' failure to extradite the Pennsylvania resident has been a source of tension between NATO allies Ankara and Washington. Ankara (AFP) - Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Friday accused the European Union's top diplomat of overstepping her brief by calling for the release of jailed Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas. "She exceeded her limits a little," Cavusoglu told CNN-Turk television a day after Federica Mogherini expressed hope that Demirtas, who has been held in Turkey for two years on terror charges, would be freed soon. Demirtas, 45, one of two former co-leaders of the leftist Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), was arrested in November 2016 over alleged links to Kurdish militants. The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday urged Ankara to release Demirtas -- who hailed the move as "legal acknowledgement of my status as a political hostage". The court accepted Demirtas had been arrested on "reasonable suspicion" of having committed a crime, but said the reasons given for keeping him behind bars were not "sufficient". At a press conference with Cavusoglu in Ankara, Mogherini said on Thursday: "We hope he will be released shortly." Demirtas denies all the charges and claims the case against him is politically motivated. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejected the European court's finding. "The decisions delivered by the ECHR do not bind us," he said. Demirtas on Friday accused the government of putting "political pressure" on the Turkish appeals court to uphold his "completely unlawful" sentence, in a statement released by his party. "We are witnessing a clear political intervention," he said. "The aim here is to sentence me with another contrived political decision to keep me imprisoned, before the ECHR implements its decision." But he remained defiant, saying: "We will never bow down, and we will stand tall with determination, our spirits high." He added: "We will, soon or later, emerge victorious in our struggle for law, justice, freedom and democracy." Ankara (AFP) - Turkey on Friday said US President Donald Trump intended to turn a "blind eye" to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder after he said it would not affect Washington's ties with Riyadh. Trump's backing of Saudi Arabia, his key ally against Iran, comes despite global outrage over the grisly October 2 killing that has tarnished the image of both the kingdom and its de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. "In one sense, Trump is saying 'I will turn a blind eye' no matter what happens," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with CNN Turk broadcaster. "This is not the right approach. Money doesn't mean everything," Cavusoglu said, referring to Trump's continued support for Saudi Arabia, which has committed billions of dollars in US weapons contracts. Trump on Tuesday glossed over the Central Intelligence Agency's reported conclusion that the crown prince had authorised the killing. "Maybe he did and maybe he didn't!" Trump said, implying Prince Mohammed's culpability in Khashoggi's killing in the Saudi mission in Istanbul. Trump was widely pilloried for what critics called his mercantile priorities that made him appear more like a lobbyist for Riyadh. A former Saudi royal insider who became a critic of the crown prince, Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in what Riyadh -- after weeks of denial -- said was a "rogue" operation. The 59-year-old had gone there for documents he needed to marry his Turkish fiancee. Saudi Arabia has held 21 people in custody over the murder but shielded the powerful crown prince. Washington earlier this month placed sanctions on 17 Saudis, which also targeted the two top aides to the crown prince by freezing assets under US jurisdiction and forbidding US companies from doing business with them. The killing and Riyadh's explanations have angered its Western partners. Story continues Germany on Monday said Berlin would bar 18 Saudis from entering its territory and Europe's Schengen passport-free zone over their alleged links to the murder. In October, Germany called for EU countries to follow its lead and suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, prompting a dismissive response from France, the kingdom's second-biggest customer after India. But Denmark on Thursday followed suit, freezing all sales of weapons and military equipment to Riyadh. Cavusoglu said "artificial measures" would not help solve the crisis. "They (Europe) say they don't want to upset ties with Saudi Arabia. We do not want to upset our relations either," he said, but added Ankara would do anything to shed light on the murder. - 'No obstacle'- Turkey insists the murder was premeditated, sharing evidence with Riyadh as well as with the US and Western allies but stops short of pointing the finger of blame at the prince. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the order came from "the highest levels" but not from King Salman. Ankara has not ruled out the possibility of a meeting between Erdogan and Prince Mohammed on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Argentina next week. "We don't see any obstacle to a meeting with the crown prince," Cavusoglu said. "If there is a request, there could be a meeting but our president will decide." The two men spoke on the phone in late October but that would be the first face-to-face encounter since the murder. Prince Salman on Thursday embarked on a regional tour starting with Riyadh's close ally United Arab Emirates, his first official trip since the killing. The prince is also set to travel to the Tunisian capital on Tuesday. Turkish pro-government media, which has often provided gruesome details of what happened to Khashoggi in a series of leaks maintaining pressure against Riyadh, speculated further on what happened to Khashoggi's body. Sabah newspaper reported Khashoggi was first strangled using a bag over his head before Salah Muhammed Al-Tubaigy, a lieutenant-colonel in the Saudi forensic department, drained his blood in the bathtub before dismembering him. Beirut (AFP) - Gunmen killed two prominent Syrian activists critical of both the regime and jihadists Friday in the country's last major rebel bastion, their radio station and a monitor said. Raed Fares and Hamod Jnaid were "shot dead by unknown assailants riding in a van in the town of Kafr Nabel" in the northwestern province of Idlib, Fresh FM said on its Facebook page. Fares was an influential figure known for his often humorous signs in English and Arabic criticising President Bashar al-Assad's regime during weekly protests. Their killings delt yet another blow to the dwindling civil society movement that first sparked Syria's uprising in 2011. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the two men died of their wounds from the attack, for which there was no immediate claim of responsibility. "They were famous for their criticism of rebels committing violations or arresting civilians, especially when it came to jihadist groups," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said. More than half of Idlib and the surrounding region is controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an alliance led by jihadists of Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate, while most of the rest is held by pro-Turkey rebels. The Islamic State (IS) group also has a presence in the province. Targeted killings and kidnappings have for months plagued Idlib, with angry residents blaming all sides. Both men had been detained "several times" by HTS in the past, the Observatory said. Several hundred people attended funerals for the slain activists in their hometown of Kafr Nabel on Friday afternoon. Born in 1972 and the father of three children, Fares had been repeatedly targeted since he founded Fresh FM in 2013 to counter what he called "fundamentalist narratives" in Idlib. IS fighters raided the radio's offices on several occasions, but regime forces also bombarded it, he said. - 'Voice of Kafr Nabel' - Story continues "In 2014, I almost lost my life when two armed men opened fire at me and shot me in the chest," he wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Times in June, after US funding to Fresh FM was cut. "I was abducted four times by Al-Qaeda militants and released a few days later after being tortured." Jnaid, who also worked at the radio, was an advocate for freedom of expression and the rule of law. "I want freedom of opinion. I want to be able to speak and not be scared," he said in a video posted on Facebook earlier this year. Born in 1980, Jnaid had five children, including a disabled girl, according to his friends. Bilal Bayush, a friend and fellow activist, rushed to the hospital as soon as he heard about the shooting. He and others waited anxiously as Fares fought for his life in the operating room, until the doctor emerged to give them his condolences. "They had been the voice of Kafr Nabel since the beginning" of the uprising, Bayush told an AFP contributor. "We buried them, but we still don't fully realise" that they have died, he said. A September deal between regime ally Russia and rebel backer Turkey held off a major regime assault to retake Idlib. But a buffer zone has yet to be implemented around the region, as stipulated by the deal, after jihadists refused to withdraw from a planned demilitarised area by mid-October. Syria's civil war has killed more than 360,000 people and sent millions fleeing from their homes since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-regime protests. It has since evolved into a complex conflict involving world powers and jihadists. Karachi (Pakistan) (AFP) - Four people were killed on Friday when gunmen armed with hand grenades and a suicide vest stormed the Chinese consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi, officials said, with the attack claimed by a separatist group which branded Beijing "an oppressor". Pakistani authorities said that security forces had secured the area after the attack, the latest assault on Chinese nationals in the country, where Beijing has poured billions of dollars into one of the largest projects in its massive Belt and Road programme. China "strongly condemned" the attack and asked Pakistan to take measures to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens and institutions in the country, as well as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) mega-project. Three gunmen tried to enter the consulate in the southern port city, but were intercepted by guards at a checkpoint, Karachi police chief Ameer Sheikh told AFP. "They were holding Kalashnikovs. First, they hurled a small (grenade) and then started firing," said Allah Bakhsh, a guard at a nearby house who witnessed the attack. Police officials said two of their personnel were killed, along with a father and son from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, who were seeking Chinese visas and were caught in the crossfire. At least one of the attackers was wearing a suicide vest which did not detonate, another senior police official said. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told reporters in Islamabad that "all the terrorists have been eliminated", and that all 21 staff at the consulate during the attack had been taken to a safe location. - China is an 'oppressor' - The attack was claimed by a separatist militant group from Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan, which is at the centre of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the major Chinese project in the country. "We have been seeing the Chinese as an oppressor, along with Pakistani forces," the spokesman for the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), Geand Baloch, told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location, adding they were "destroying the future of Balochistan". Story continues The BLA later emailed a statement to media in which it said the attack was "aimed at making it clear that China's military expansionism on Baloch soil will not be tolerated". It warned the Chinese to leave or "be prepared for continued attacks". The group is just one of the militant outfits operating in Balochistan, Pakistan's largest and poorest province, which is rife with ethnic, sectarian and separatist insurgencies. Many are active on social media. After Friday's attack Twitter suspended an account that the BLA had also used to issue its claim. Residents of the resource-rich province, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, have long complained that it does not receive a fair share of the profits made from its mineral wealth. Prime Minister Imran Khan said Friday's attack would not undermine the Pakistan-China relationship, which he described as "mightier than Himalayas and deeper than Arabian Sea". Also on Friday a bomb hidden in a carton of vegetables killed at least 31 people at a marketplace in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region. Dozens more people were wounded, with fears the toll could rise. - Chinese investment - China, one of Pakistan's closest allies, has poured billions into the South Asian country in recent years as part of CPEC, a massive infrastructure project that seeks to connect its western province Xinjiang with the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar in Balochistan. The project is one of the largest in Beijing's "One Belt One Road" initiative, comprising a network of roads and sea routes involving 65 countries. Pakistan sees the project as a "gamechanger", but it presents an enormous challenge in a country plagued by weak institutions, endemic corruption and a range of insurgencies in areas slated to host the corridor. The subject of economic dividends from CPEC is extremely sensitive in some of those areas -- particularly in Balochistan. Since the beginning of the project militants have repeatedly attacked construction sites, blowing up numerous gas pipelines and trains, and targeted Chinese workers. In August this year three Chinese nationals were among six wounded in a suicide attack on a bus transporting Chinese engineers working in Balochistan, in an attack that was also claimed by the BLA. The Pakistani military has been targeting insurgencies in the province since 2004, and has been repeatedly accused by international rights groups of abuses there. Islamabad regularly accuses its eastern neighbour India of funding and arming Baloch separatists, and of targeting development projects in the province, particularly CPEC. Delhi, which has denied the claims, swiftly condemned Friday's attack. London (AFP) - The United Arab Emirates is reviewing a request for clemency from the family of a British researcher sentenced to life in prison on espionage charges this week, the country's ambassador to London said on Friday. Matthew Hedges's family "have made a request for clemency and the government is studying that request," Ambassador Sulaiman Hamid al-Mazroui said in a televised statement shown on BBC and Sky News in which he also defended the UAE's judiciary. "The government does not dictate verdicts to the courts," Mazroui said, dismissing criticism of the judicial process in the UAE from Hedges's family and insisting that genuine researchers were able to visit his country "freely". "Matthew Hedges was not convicted after a five-minute trial as some have reported. This was an extremely serious case. We live in a dangerous neighbourhood and national security must be our top priority," he said. A UAE court on Wednesday sentenced 31-year-old Hedges, who was studying for a doctorate on the UAE's foreign and security policies at Durham University in northern England. He had been arrested at Dubai airport on May 5. British Prime Minister Theresa May said earlier she was "deeply disappointed and concerned" at the verdict in what is a key ally for Britain in the Gulf region. The UAE foreign ministry also responded saying it hoped for "amicable solution to the Matthew Hedges case". Hedges's wife Daniela Tejada has criticised British officials for their handling of the case, saying they had refused to defend her husband for fear of upsetting Dubai. London (AFP) - British police have released CCTV footage of two suspected Russian intelligence agents walking toward Sergei Skripal's home on the day of the former spy's poisoning with a nerve agent. The clips show the Russians -- known by the aliases Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov -- appearing to take photographs on their arrival in the English city of Salisbury on March 4. Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found slumped unconscious on a park bench that same afternoon. British police believe they were poisoned by a Soviet-era nerve agent called Novichok designed by Moscow specifically to conduct assassinations abroad. Russia denies that the two men are members of its GRU military intelligence service. It also says the Novichok could have come from a nearby British or some other laboratory. Nick Bailey, a British police officer who searched Skripal's home after the father and daughter were found, was also exposed to the nerve agent and spent weeks in hospital. In an interview with the BBC Panorama programme on Thursday, Bailey said he knew something was wrong when his "pupils were like pin pricks" and he became "quite sweaty and hot". "Knowing how the other two (the Skripals) were or how badly they'd been affected by it, I was petrified," said Bailey. He said the substance could have killed "thousands" of people. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday repeated Russia's denials and said Britain had refused Moscow's offer to assist in the investigation. "We have no information on what exactly this substance was, we do not have information on the quantity, on the person who poisoned, on what happened to him, on what happened in general," Peskov told reporters. The Skripals survived but a local woman named Dawn Sturgess died after picking up a discarded perfume bottle that police think was used to carry out the attack. Senior counterterrorism coordinator Dean Haydon said investigators were trying to determine what happened to the perfume bottle between March 4 and June 27, the day it was found. Story continues "We remain as determined as ever to identify and bring to justice all those responsible for the reckless acts that left four people critically ill and, tragically, saw Dawn Sturgess lose her life," Haydon said in a statement late Thursday. Police said one of the new CCTV clips shows the two suspects walking in the vicinity of Skripal's home address "just prior to when detectives believe the nerve agent was placed on the door handle". Detectives released the footage as part of an appeal for witnesses. Investigators think the two sprayed the handle of the main door of Skripal's home with Novichok before tossing the perfume bottle on the street. Sick paedo Vanessa George was jailed in 2009, though could be released from prison in the New Year (Police Handout) The UKs most notorious woman paedophile has changed her identity ahead of her release from jail., it has emerged. Convicted child molester Vanessa George was locked up in 2009 after she was caught taking at least 64 pictures of herself harming babies and toddlers. Sick George, a mum-of-two, was jailed alongside four others for child abuse, but she is now eligible for parole. The child abuser, from Plymouth, in Devon, has changed her name in prison. George has kept her first name, though she has reverted to her maiden name of Vanessa Sylvia Marks. Her name change follows a divorce from husband Andrew, who claimed he would jump for joy if she took her own life after her despicable crimes. It is probable she will take on yet another identity when she is released from her Surrey prison, for her own protection. George has been eligible for parole since December 2016. A hearing is expected in the New Year, so George could be back on the streets in early 2019. The mother-of-two told her internet lover Colin Blanchard she was a paedo whore mum. George worked at a nursery in Plymouth, until her arrest on June 9, 2009 on suspicion of sexually assaulting a number of pre-school children in her care. She was also suspected of taking indecent photographs of them, before sharing them with her online lover. George admitted to seven sexual assaults of young children and another six counts of distributing and making indecent images of children. She was sentenced alongside Blanchard and his other online-lover, Angela Allen of Nottingham, at Bristol Crown Court on December 15, 2009. Some shocked colleagues described George as the life and soul of the party, while others described her as horrible. During her sentencing, Judge Mr Justice Royce said the disturbing case had caused widespread revulsion and incredulity and had rocked the city of Plymouth. Bangui (Central African Republic) (AFP) - The UN Special Representative for the Central African Republic on Friday conceded the "inability" of the mission he heads to prevent attacks after at least 60 people were killed in the centre of the violence-wracked country. "We are making all possible efforts to prevent outbreaks of violence of this nature" but "we find these efforts are not enough," Parfait Onanga-Anyanga said following last week's clashes between Christian and Muslim-dominated militias in the central town of Alindao. An internal UN report said the death toll from the bloodshed was at least 60 after violence flared on November 15 between Christian militiamen, known as anti-Balaka, and the Union for Peace in CAR (UPC) Muslim militia. Unconfirmed sources said the toll was higher, with national assembly president Laurent Ngon Baba indicating Friday that "at least 100" people died. Onanga-Anyanga said the UN's MINUSCA mission wants to broker a dialogue between both sides. But he admitted the UN presence's "inability to prevent violence of this nature" as it was not a "sufficient deterrent" with barely 40 peacekeepers stationed in a town of some 30,000. Ngon Baba slammed "the indifference of certain contingents in the face of aggression against the population," a comment appearing to allude to persistent rumours that the sympathies of some MINUSCA members lie with certain armed groups. The sectarian violence in Alindao saw the local church, a convent and a camp for displaced people torched. Pictures seen by AFP showed charred bodies. The town, which saw more than 100 deaths in clashes in May last year, lies on a critical route traversing the south and east of the country in the heart of a region with numerous gold and diamond mines that have helped fuel conflict. Some 20,000 people affected by the fighting have fled to the south of the city, according to the UN report. Story continues UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said last Saturday the latest attack was attributed to the UPC. Alindao has long been the base of UPC, one of the main groups in the former Seleka coalition which overthrew the regime of Francois Bozize, a Christian, in 2013. The CAR is one of the world's poorest nations despite a rich supply of diamonds and uranium. Ngon Baba also demanded the lifting of a UN arms embargo imposed on the CAR in 2013, saying it was counter-productive when militia groups were "constantly stocking up on arms and munitions." In contrast, "confronted by the consequences of the embargo, CAR forces cannot adequately fulfil their missions." The embargo forbids the CAR from procuring arms and munitions, although Russia won an exemption last year while France recently announced a delivery "strictly within the terms" of UN limitations. China has requested an exemption but has yet to be granted one. CAR authorities have been calling for the embargo to be lifted since Faustin-Archange Touadera assumed the presidency in 2016. Dubai (AFP) - UN envoy Martin Griffiths arrived in the battleground Yemeni port city of Hodeida on Friday to encourage the warring sides to exercise restraint ahead of planned peace talks in December. Griffiths's visit is intended to send a message to the rebels, who control the Red Sea city, and the government forces, who have been attacking it with support from a Saudi-led coalition, to keep a lid on hostilities in the runup to the talks in Sweden, a UN source told AFP. Griffiths, who arrived in the rebel-held capital Sanaa on Wednesday, met rebel chief Abdulmalik al-Huthi and addressed "what can facilitate new discussions in December", rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdelsalam said. The conflict in Yemen, which escalated when the Saudi-led coalition intervened in 2015, has killed thousands of people and left up to 14 million at risk of famine, according to UN agencies. In the past week, both sides have expressed support for the UN envoy's mission to relaunch peace talks, and the fighting in Hodeida has diminished despite intermittent clashes. bur-sy-dm-faw/kir Hodeida (Yemen) (AFP) - The UN envoy to Yemen on Friday urged warring sides to "keep the peace" in Hodeida, saying the rebels agreed to talks on the UN taking a leading role in running the lifeline port. Griffiths, who started a Yemen peace mission in rebel-held Sanaa on Wednesday, said he has discussed with Huthi rebel officials "how the UN could contribute to keeping the peace" in the key port city of Hodeida. "I am here to tell you today that we have agreed that the UN should now pursue actively and urgently detailed negotiations for a leading UN role in the port and more broadly," he told reporters during his first visit to Hodeida. "We believe that such a role will preserve the essential humanitarian pipeline that starts here and serves the people of Yemen." Griffiths urged Yemen's warring parties to "keep the peace" in the rebel-held Red Sea port city, which serves as the entry point of nearly all imports and humanitarian aid into the impoverished country. "The attention of the world is on Hodeida. Leaders from every country have called for us all to keep the peace in Hodeida," he said. Griffiths was in the country ahead of planned peace talks in Sweden in December between the Iran-aligned Huthi rebels and pro-government forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition. According to an AFP correspondent, clashes could be heard in the distance as the envoy visited the lifeline port. Griffiths met rebel chief Abdulmalik al-Huthi and addressed "what can facilitate new discussions in December", rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdelsalam said on Thursday. Abdelsalam said that included "procedures needed to transport injured and sick for treatment abroad and bring them back", a key sticking point during a previous failed attempt at talks in September. Both warring sides have expressed support for the envoy's mission to hold discussions. - 'Committed' to peace talks - Story continues The UAE state minister for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, whose country is a key player in the Saudi-led coalition, reiterated Friday that the United Arab Emirates was "committed" to peace talks. "The best way forward towards a sustainable political process is to support the Sweden talks and the work of the UN Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffith without prejudging these negotiations," he said on Twitter. Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi -- whose UN-recognised government was pushed out of Sanaa by the rebels in 2014 -- has also said he supports the talks while vowing to "liberate" the city of Hodeida. Despite a lull in fighting, Hodeida residents reached by telephone said on Friday that Huthi rebels have been bringing in reinforcements. Dozens of families have fled Hodeida, as the rebels stationed snipers on top of peoples' homes, according to residents and pro-government military officials. The conflict in Yemen, which escalated when the Saudi-led alliance intervened in 2015, has killed thousands and left up to 22 million Yemenis in need of humanitarian assistance, according to UN agencies. - 'Bursts of fighting' - Under heavy international pressure, the loyalists and their Saudi-led military backers have largely suspended a five-month offensive on Hodeida. Humanitarian organisations are desperate to see the current peace push translate into a more permanent halt to the four-year war. The UN's World Food Programme said Friday it had distributed 30,000 food baskets -- each containing enough to feed a family of six for one month -- in Hodeida city. "In a city that has been enduring on and off bursts of fighting, these food baskets have an added benefit of helping families to avoid travelling more than necessary to find food, limiting their own security risks," WFP said in a statement. "Despite the difficult situation, WFP is currently assisting eight million Yemenis every month with food or food vouchers." UN agencies say 14 million Yemenis are at risk of starvation and the closure of Hodeida port would further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis. The heads of the UN's humanitarian and children's agencies said the "recent de-escalation in fighting in Hodeida is providing a desperately needed respite to hundreds of thousands of civilians". The current peace push by Griffiths is the biggest effort in two years. In September, a previous round of UN-led peace talks faltered when the Huthis refused to travel to Geneva, accusing the world body of failing to guarantee their delegation's return to Sanaa or secure the evacuation of wounded rebels to Oman. Previous talks broke down in 2016, when 108 days of negotiations in Kuwait failed to yield a deal and left rebel delegates stranded in Oman for three months. According to the World Health Organization, nearly 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen's conflict, though some rights groups estimate the toll could be five times higher. Port Harcourt (Nigeria) (AFP) - Fears are growing about a rise in political violence in Nigeria's oil-rich Rivers State as general elections approach next year after a series of incidents targeting parties and voters. Nigerians go to the polls to elect a new president and parliament on February 16, with a vote for state governors and assemblies taking place two weeks later. The populous southern state of Rivers and its capital Port Harcourt are at the centre of Nigeria's multi-billion-dollar oil and gas industry and as such are seen as a key prize. But too often political ambition spills over into violence, earning the state the title "Rivers of Blood" -- and with next year's vote being seen as close-run, few expect that to change. "There's a lot of violence going on already and it's under-reported," security analyst Don Okereke told AFP. "We will likely see more of it." In September, an explosive device blew up near the Port Harcourt headquarters of the All Progressives Congress (APC), which is in power nationally but in opposition locally. The following month there was sporadic shooting as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) held local primaries. Shots were also fired as the PDP held a rally last week. The incidents came against a backdrop of violent crime, including kidnappings for ransom and armed robbery, which have stoked local concerns about security. State police commissioner Zaki Ahmed has said 12 of his officers and two soldiers were killed in July and August. Security sources said even more have lost their lives since. Dozens of weapons have been seized, including assault rifles, pump-action shotguns and locally-made pistols and guns, as part of a crackdown on illegal firearms. - 'Miscreants and hoodlums' - The last presidential and parliamentary vote in 2015 saw protests in Rivers from APC supporters over claims of massive fraud, calls for the result to be cancelled and the vote re-run. Story continues There was bloodshed even before any ballots were cast, when explosions and gunfire at an APC rally killed a police officer and injured several others. The National Human Rights Commission said nearly 100 people were killed in the run-up to the last election, as well as hundreds of acts of violence, including vandalism and arson. There is no love lost between the PDP governor Nyesom Wike and his predecessor Rotimi Amaechi, who is transport minister and also head of President Muhammadu Buhari's re-election campaign. Much of the fear about violence has been prompted by events at a by-election for a state assembly constituency in Port Harcourt in August. Nigeria's Independent National Election Commission (INEC) suspended the vote, with the tactics seen locally as a "dry run" for the general election. "Miscreants and hoodlums, accompanied by security personnel, stormed the various polling units and registration areas," said resident electoral commissioner, Obo Efangha. "They carted away election materials, including smart card readers and ballot boxes. In addition, many electoral officials were manhandled, injured and held hostage," he added. Both parties blame the other. Locals see the situation as a taste of what is to come. Albert Alobari, who lives in the Choba area of Port Harcourt, said there was widespread uncertainty, just days into the start of the official election campaign. "The violence that rocked the recent by-election is a clear indication that everyone should be security conscious," he added. - Gang violence - Port Harcourt has a longstanding reputation for gangs -- or "cults" as they are known locally. They are blamed for kidnapping, armed robbery and a string of other crimes, which typically increase ahead of Christmas and New Year in Nigeria. Gangs straddle the line between crime and politics, and their members are frequently hired by unscrupulous politicians as enforcers around election time. "They go hand-in-hand," said Okereke, who predicted a "massive" influx of security personnel between now and polling day. Dennis Des-Dokubo, a retired army officer, blamed the recent kidnappings and killings of police on thugs hired by politicians. Politicians "need more weapons to gather enough money for Christmas and perpetrate their evil deeds during the 2019 elections hence the easiest targets for them are the police," he said. Leroy Animaka, a political science lecturer at the state-run Rivers State University of Science and Technology, said the problem was only likely to get worse. "Port Harcourt is the capital of the state and a battle ground for the two major political parties... so more of this violence would be experienced," he said. Black Friday is a consumers saving grace. Many attribute the term Black Friday to retailers who would turn a profit, or get in the black for the year, with holiday sales. But historians believe the term actually originated in Philadelphia, with an entirely different meaning. In the 1950s, shoppers would swarm the city after Thanksgiving and before the big Army-Navy game to prepare for the holidays. Police, cab drivers and anyone affected by purchasers taking over their city called the chaotic day Black Friday to show their disdain. It wasnt until the late 1980s that retailers latched onto the phrase as a way of encouraging people to shop early. Today, Black Friday is more than just a singular day. Its a four-day shopping extravaganza, including Small Business Saturday/Sunday and Cyber Monday. Last year, online shopping on Thanksgiving and Black Friday itself totaled $7.9 billion. Adobe estimates that this year the five-day holiday will account for one-fifth of all online holiday revenue. But for those heading to brick-and-mortar locations, be careful. According to the Daily Mail, 10 people died shopping on Black Friday in the last 10 years, with many more injured. A 2014 letter from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration advised business owners to take safety precautions to protect workers who may be injured. With Black Friday causing all this damage, maybe 1950s Philadelphians were right about the name after all. The Israeli governments calculated obfuscation of the line between anti-Semitism and opposition to its policies, or even opposition to the concept of a Jewish state, should be of concern to Jews worldwide. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter This worrisome phenomenon was highlighted at a conference convened in Brussels earlier this month in an attempt to get European MPs to sign a text based on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, prior to European elections scheduled for May of next year. This constitutes nothing short of political blackmail, as anyone who exhibits reluctance to sign will likely face accusations of anti-Semitism at a time when they are particularly vulnerable to disinformation aimed at their electorate. The problem lies not with the IHRAs definition itself, which basically speaks of hatred toward Jews. Its the illustrative examples that give one pause. Among them are targeting the state of Israel and denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination. With these phrases, the IHRA statement blurs the distinction between hatred of the Jewish people and opposition to Israeli government policies, the notion of Israel as a Jewish state, or even to the very establishment of the State of Israel. Anti-Semitic graffiti in Spain While one can understand the Netanyahus government attempt to get Europe on board with this broad definition, which validates its attempts to quell the voices of opposition at home and abroad, the fact is that these three examples represent legitimate political worldviews. There are countless Jewish Israelis who support the notion of a state for all its citizens versus a Jewish state, and there are many Jews around the world who object to the establishment of the State of Israel as they perceive it as an injustice to the indigenous Palestinians who were living here at the time. Being post- or anti-Zionist, however, does not make them anti-Semitic or, as the right-wing likes to call them, "self-hating Jews." If one accepts the IHRA definition, the most anti-Semitic group of all would be Neturei Karta, which rejects the central heresy of Zionism and declares that its only loyalty is to God and His revelation. The absurdity of labeling these devout ultra-Orthodox Jews as anti-Semitic speaks for itself. Another example cited by the IHRA is accusing Jews of being more loyal to Israel than to the interests of their own nations. This brings to mind the case of Jonathan Pollard, an American Jew who worked as a naval analyst and was caught spying for Israel. The Israeli right-wing paints him as a hero for putting Israels security interests above his loyalty to the United States, and successive Israeli prime ministers, beginning with Yitzhak Rabin, worked for his release. Pollard was granted Israeli citizenship in 1995, and after his release from prison, two US Representatives wrote to the Justice Department saying he would be ready to renounce his US citizenship to be allowed to immigrate to Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu has appealed to President Trump on Pollards behalf, and Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz said that allowing Pollard to make aliyah would be a gift to Israel. According to the IHRA, however, stating the obviousthat Pollard put Israels interests before those of the United Statesconstitutes anti-Semitism. The text presented to the EU member states also includes a call to reject BDS activities as fundamentally anti-Semitic. While there are undoubtedly those within the BDS movement who have no love lost for the Jews, these three activitiesboycott, divestment, and sanctionsare legitimate forms of protest and constitute a tool sometimes used by the international community to achieve policy changes in countries that violate international norms. Israels ongoing settlement enterprise and its creeping annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories is in direct violation of UNSC Resolution 2334, which calls for differentiation between the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967. Appeals to boycott settlement products or apply sanctions to force Israel into compliance with the resolution cannot be deemed anti-Semitic by any stretch of the imagination. Israeli government meeting (Photo: AP) There is no question that the current wave of global nationalism is contributing to a rise in anti-Semitism around the world, and a commitment by European politicians to fight this scourge would certainly be welcome; however, a clear line must be drawn between hate-mongering against Jews and political views regarding the State of Israel. Thus, there are no grounds for the accusation leveled against US Representative Ilhan Omar by Dani Dayan, the Israeli consul-general in New York, after she tweeted that Israel has hypnotized the world. Substitute Jews for Israel, and he would have a point. Similarly, the parallel drawn by Naftali Bennett, the Israeli minister of diaspora affairs, between Hamas and Pittsburgh shooter Robert Bowers is groundless. In the amended version of its charter published in 2017, Hamas clearly states that it does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. This declaration obviously does not turn Hamas into a friendly neighbor, but firing rockets at civilian targets in southern Israel constitutes terrorism, not anti-Semitism. The Hamas charter goes on to say that it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with Israel and Zionism. The rhetoric of Bennett and Dayan prove them right. The encyclopedia of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum defines anti-Semitism simply and clearly as prejudice against or hatred of Jews. European politicians who balk at signing on to this unambivalent definition may well be accused of anti-Semitic leanings, but if Israeli officials continue to cry Wolf, international Jewry may find that valid cries of anti-Semitism end up falling on deaf ears. Is it only me, or is Moshe "Chico" Edri's appointment as the new police commissioner a farce, a circus with no beginning and no end, a parade of those covering their backsides, which accompanies the process of selecting senior officials in our country? Repulsive acrobatics in which the right hand, even while knowing what the left hand is doing, refuses to confirm its actions until it is completely clear both hands are clean. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter There is no need to be an obsessive law abiding citizen to agree that the senior official appointment process should ensure the promotion of people who are worthy to hold key positions, and save us from disturbing revelations a minute after those senior officials get comfortable in their new offices. Moshe 'Chico' Edri (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg) And yet, the saga of the police commissioner appointment is not just one of many on a long list. It is persistently climbing to the top of the list. At the beginning of December, the outgoing Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh will conclude his three-year tenurewhich he tried to extend by another year through a high-profile campaignduring which he embarrassingly emphasized that he will not renounce his values for a fourth year that he was never offered to begin with. And so, at the beginning of September, as opposed to standard procedure, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan gave the Advisory Committee for the Appointment of Senior Officials in the Civil Service, also known as the Goldberg Committee, the names of three deputy commissioners as possible candidate to replace AlsheikhYoram Halevy, David Bitan, and Moshe "Chico" Edri. The Public Security Ministry explained the reason that three names were given instead of one, is to prevent what had happened with Gal Hirsch (who was set to be the next police commissioner in 2017) from reoccurring. As one of the ministry's officials told me off the record back then, "(three names were given) to deceive the enemy, since it is harder to direct the fire when three candidates are being considered, instead of one." However, two months after the Goldberg Committee had received the candidates' names, even though Erdan was asked to give only one name, Alsheikh sent Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit a document, which according to the media, contained slandering information and embarrassing details on all three possible candidates for the police commissioner position. According to the document, each and every one of the candidates had its own Pandora's box. In response, the police said they do not deal with gossip, but a satisfying explanation was hardly provided, concerning this strange, not to mention disturbing timing chosen by Alsheikh to send the document. The timing was particularly disturbing in relation to Edri, who retired from the police force with a written summary of his service, in which Alshich did nothing but praise him. Moshe Edri, right, with Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, center, and outgoing Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh (file photo) (Photo: Motti Kimchi) The outgoing police commissioner described Edri as "inquisitive," adding he "desires to learn," and is "open to revolutions," as well as stating that "his achievement in the Tel Aviv District are superior to all others in all the fields of police work." There was no trace of any suspicions against him that might prevent his appointment as the police commissioner. Mandeblit having examined the document, ruled there is no legal reason preventing any of the three candidates from getting the appointment. The attorney general's decision could have ended all the insanity and terminated the process. However, in Israel, like always, a minute before Alsheikh's retirement, the Goldberg Committee decides Edri must undergo a lie detector test, which the two additional candidates underwent as part of their police service in accordance with the new policy the outgoing police commissioner set after Edri had already retired from the force. Edri has already agreed to take the test. Moshe Edri, the newly appointed police commissioner (Photo: Yariv Katz) Regardless of Edri's willingness, all that is left is to summarize by stressing three things, the first of which is that past experience teaches us that it is better to ignoreas much as possiblethe opinions of those concluding their tenure about their successors, who will never be worthy enough in their eyes. The second thing is that the questionable, in my opinion, assumption that a lie detector test is a must for all candidates up for senior positionsshould be implemented on everyone, including the incoming chief of staff or the Bank of Israel governor, two posts that were manned recently without performing the test. The third issue concerns the Goldberg Committee's crooked conduct. The committee is not an alternative police to investigating emotions. Its latest decision regarding Edri is a surrender to the populist demand, the hidden message of whichis that not all those who appoint are corrupt, but those appointed as well. Therefore, the filtration process has to be absurdly stricter. This is a bad message, which stems from endless righteousness, reducing the chances to appoint good people to senior positions. An extensive secret project has led to the publication of 28,000 historical photos from pre-state Israel on Wikimedia Commons. Led by Wikimedia Israel, the Israeli branch of the non-profit Wikimedia platform whose goal is to freely distribute media content online, the newly released images had been scattered in various archives and were not readily accessible until now. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter The treasure trove of pictures all date to the end of the Ottoman Empire and British Mandatory Palestine, and features snapshots of life in the Holy Land in the early 20th century before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Various communities are depicted, such as early Jewish settlements and Druze villages. Jewish refugees arriving at Haifa port from Europe, 1944 According to Israeli law, these images taken from 1900-1946 are public domain and thus belong to the public, Michal Lester, executive director at Wikimedia Israel, told The Media Line. Israeli archives have not generally made these images available to the public in such a way that they are easy to find. According to Israeli law, images are under copyright for a period of 50 years following their creation. According to Lester, the project was kept under wraps as the method developed to cull the images that had not been tested before. Palmach training in Caesarea in 1944 We used a new technological tool that took pictures from all these different archives, all while ensuring that they are copyright-free, Lester stated. We believe that these photos are an integral part of the history of those living here and around the globe. Its very important for us that they be free for the public to use so thats why we uploaded them to Wikimedia Commons. Only once we were certain that the materials were credible and high-quality (did we announce this campaign), she continued, stressing that the scope of the project should lead to greater interest in Israeli archives and drive more traffic to their own websites. Wikimedia Commons, which describes itself as a global movement whose mission is to bring free educational content to the world, has a collection of over 50 million free-use media files available. The 28,000 images from Wikimedia Israel are available through Wikimedia Commons and can also be accessed through the Wikimedia Israel site (only in Hebrew for now). Poster of the Jewish National Fund Australia campaign, 1947 Aside from the technical difficulties of locating materials and preparing them for publication, the organization faced several challenges with regard to working with the archives themselves. Some of these bodies were suspicious that if we make these materials available on Wikimedia, they will no longer receive any online visitors to their own websites, Lester explained. Because of this, it was very difficult to collaborate on this project. Wikimedia Israel claimed that a few archives refused to join the project, including the Israel State Archives and the Central Zionist Archives (CZA). Unfortunately, the CZA did something we believe to be terriblethey added watermarks to their pictures. This is not something thats done to old photos, which are public property, Lester concluded. The CZA refuted Wikimedias claims about not making materials accessible, without however addressing the watermarks on public domain materials. 8-year old Yisrael Meir Lau leaving Buchenwald concentration camp after its liberation. At CZA, we do our utmost in order to preserve archival materials at optimal conditions, by using the most advanced technologies, Dror Morag, Chair of Zionist Enterprises Department at the World Zionist Organization, which manages the Central Zionist Archives in Israel, wrote in a statement to The Media Line. The doors of CZA are open to the general public, who are welcome to come view and use various materials. Whatever is not available online has not yet been digitized, a process that we are regularly working on at the archive to enable all documents to be digitally accessible, while respecting copyright when necessary. When contacted by The Media Line, the Israel State Archives said that it welcomes any fair use of the archive materials available on its website, including photographs. The Archives encourages the general public to continue to make wide use of the materials with proper attribution. Ultimately, Wikimedia hopes institutions will be more willing to collaborate in the future and that any lingering distrust towards the distribution of historical materials online will dissipate. Bedouin family passing through Tel Aviv The National Library of Israelwhich houses millions of manuscripts, ancient maps, books, photographs and other archival materialshas already joined forced with Wikimedia and is working to digitize 11,000 photographs. The images in question were mostly taken in 1940-1960 from a collection donated by Dan Hadani, who ran a photographic news agency for several decades. The National Library of Israel and Wikimedia have a long record of partnership, Yaron Deutscher, head of the Digital Access Division at the National Library, affirmed to The Media Line. In fact, every month we host a special course for Wikipedia editors, and part of our cooperation is also uploading copyright-free materials onto different Wikipedia websites. The first part of the Dan Hadani project is expected to be complete in the coming months, after which another batch of images will also be made available. This initiative is part of the librarys policy of open data and expand knowledge. Our final goal is to make as many materials as possible free for the public to use in any way that they want, Deutscher concluded. Article written by Maya Margit "We found a lot of CDs there, what should we do with them? Should we bring them with us?" Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter In the middle of the last night of January 2018, Mossad agents broke into a secret vault on the outskirts of Tehran, while their commanders watched from afar. The agents encountered an unexpected problem, a "rich people problems," according to a person familiar with the details of the operation. The large room contained 32 huge Iranian-made safes, each 2.7 meters in height. The safes were loaded onto heavy container-like installations, on wheels that can carry massive weight. The documents were secreted behind two different doorsa heavy iron door inside the facility and another iron door equipped with an alarm system and cameras at the facility's exterior wall. This is where the Iranian Ministry of Defense decided to keep one of the greatest secrets of the Islamic Republic. In fact, only a handful of people in Iran even knew that the Iranian nuclear archive was inside this warehouse, in the heart of a sleepy suburb in the capital. Prime Minister Netanyahu revealing the location of the nuclear archive (Photo: Orel Cohen) But it did not remain a secret. The agents knew how to disable the alarm system and break through the iron doors, but they also knew they did not have time to break into all the safes. They would have to make do with less than ten, and look for three types of folders: those containing Iran's correspondence with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); those detailing the construction of nuclear sites and acquisition of nuclear equipment; and most importantly, those detailing the design and production of the nuclear warhead (which has never been completed). The safes in the Iranian nuclear archive But then, inside the safes' room, agents found something else, besides folders: CDs, piles of thema massive amount of DVDs and computer discs, most of them unmarked. So what the hell were they going to do now? Should they ignore the potential secrets these CDs may hold? Or take a calculated risk with a new variable that might complicate the operation? The agents received an explicit order from the command room: take everything, including the CDs. At one minute to five in the morning, the agents left the warehouse. When the break-in was discovered, about 12,000 Iranian security personnel went on the pursuit in an attempt to figure out who stole the nuclear archive from under their noses. In the end, despite the unexpected piles of CDs, all of the material was extracted from Iran, and no one got caught. The Iranians could only guess who was behind the heist, but until Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's famous press conference on April 30, they didn't know for sure what really happened to "the filthy secrets of the Iranian regime," as dubbed by Mossad director Yossi Cohen. A few weeks later, when the material arrived in Israel, dozens of translators, experts and analystsassisted by Persian speakers from Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate's (MID) Unit 8200started digging through the piles of material. It was then that it became clear how important was the decision to risk everything and take the CDs. CDs seized by Mossad from Iran's nuclear archive The written material comprises of 114 folders, containing more than 55,000 pages, of which 8,500 were handwritten documents, many of them authored by senior government officials, and some by nuclear personnel who died in operations attributed to the Mossad. But the biggest surprise was the massive amount of information stored in the 182 disks. A Mossad case officer told me he would have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for one CD like this. The Iranians documented everything: the equipment, the construction of secret plants and sites, the experiments, detailed presentations on the project's progress, goals and stages, and even themselves, during nuclear experiments. The bottom line is clear: it was a mega-scam, a state-level deception, in which senior Iranian officials and hundreds of others have taken part for years. For two decades, Iran denied having a military nuclear program. But the contents of the safes tell a different story, a completely different and undeniable account: for years, Iran has been engaged in a covert nuclear project aimed at producing five nuclear bombs, with a yield of 10 kilotons each. And this was only stage one. Prime Minister Netanyahu revealing documents from Iran's nuclear archive (Photo: AP) According to a Western intelligence source, "over the years, we have seen all sorts of programs, but we have not always understood their overall context. Until we saw these documents, we didn't really understand how projects that were part of AMAD (the secret project's code nameRB) were translated into secret projects under the Ministry of Defense, or open projects with a hidden agenda within SPAND (the later, public name, of the projectRB). The material Israel had obtained solved these mysteries." "The sweeping Iranian denial "is really comical at this point," the source added. The documents don't just expose the Iranians' deceit. It also demonstrates the weakness of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which Iran signed and the IAEA failed to enforce. The archives show that under the UN agency's nosedespite repeat warnings, the information obtained by the Mossad and other espionage agencies, and media exposesIran has succeeded in conducting a secret military nuclear program over a long period of time (and Israel claims Tehran continues to do so even today). Iran continues to deny everything even now; claiming the entire story of the seized archive is fabricated and serves an Israeli-American agenda aimed at canceling the nuclear agreement. This response was to be expected. What might have been less predictable is the lukewarm international response to the material uncovered in the Israeli operation. The reactions ranged from claims the material was "old news" to assertions it does not uncover any "smoking guns" to prove Iran is currently violating the nuclear agreement. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presenting Iran's nuclear archive to the world (Photo: AP) But if the Islamic Republic is not violating or planning to violate the agreement, why keep such a detailed archive allowing Iran to resume its nuclear effort from where it left off (assuming they actually stopped)? For many years Israel, the United States, France, Britain and Germany have been collecting intelligence about the Iranian nuclear project. Some of this material has been handed to the IAEA over time in the hopes it would provoke an appropriate response. The intelligence gathered was classified by the IAEA into 12 different topics referred to as "the PMD," the acronym for "Possible Military Dimensions" each depicting research, production or other experiments related to the bomb. Over the years, Iran has vehemently denied dealing with any of these topics. The condition for signing the nuclear agreement was that Iran would make a full disclosure of its progress in each of the 12 PMD issues. Before signing the agreement, Yukiya Amano, the Japanese diplomat who heads the IAEA, promised senior Israeli officials, according to their testimony, that "he will never sign the deal" before receiving satisfactory answers on all 12 topics. At the end of 2015, Amano published a report practically accepting the Iranian denial of ever having a military nuclear project. Now, in light of the material discovered by the Mossad, it appears his report was based on false information. The intelligence uncovered in the operation was revealed to the Americans, the Chinese, the Russians, the French, the British, the Germans, and of course to IAEA officials. With the exception of the US (and, of course, Israel), it seems the world wasnt floored by the discoveries, and Amano himself has kept quiet. This is despite the fact that the sensitive material includes documentation of advanced stages of practical field research, experiments and timetables for the production of an atomic bomb and its adaptation to the warhead of the long-range Shahab ballistic missile. Core for a nuclear warhead Holger Stark, the deputy editor of the German Die Zeit newspaper, contacted the IAEA in Vienna for a response. The agency refused to comment. Quite a lot has been written about the Mossad operation. However, media reports in Israel and abroad dealt less with the archive itself, and more with the difficult questions it poses. Here is a glimpse into the secret intelligence gathered from Iran's safes room. These are the facts; the questions they raise are for the world to answer. The scientists So what is this "Iranian nuclear archive" that Mossad agents managed to transport thousands of kilometers, all the way to Israel? Iran's secret military nuclear program began to take shape in 1992 or 1993, when the Iranians became interested in acquiring technologies for the production and operation of centrifuges for uranium enrichment. Tehran acquired much of its knowledge from Pakistan's nuclear project director, Abdul Qadeer Khan, and later from other elements, some of them Chinese. The first centrifuges were designed at a site called Damawand. Israel warned the international community about the construction of the nuclear enrichment facility, so Iran decided to dismantle it and build another one in its stead. This was the site that would later become well known, the Natanz nuclear facility. In internal Iranian documents, the site was called "Kashan," and it houses an increasing number of centrifuges. At first, Israel was alone in its intelligence campaign against Iran. The intelligence it brought to the attention of IAEA and Western countries was greeted with indifference. Even the United States failed to act at first, and didn't recognize the authenticity or the importance of the material the Mossad collected on Iran. Only at a later stage, when intelligence ties with Israel strengthened and additional information about Kashan was brought to their attention did the Americans start to act. A sketch of the Fordow nuclear facility Meanwhile, the Iranians secretly set up their military program to produce an atomic bomb, entitled "The AMAD Project." Who gave the orders? This is one question the archive answers unequivocally: the Iranian leadership. The material does not include direct instructions from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who, after strongly denying that Iran has a nuclear program, apparently made sure his name will not be tied to the project. Nevertheless, the archive contains, without doubt, documents signed by the defense minister at the time and current Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani. And he's not alone. "The plan was approved by the Cognitive Sciences and Technologies Council," the header of one document states. This is a codename for the senior group of executives who manage Project AMAD, which included the president at the time, Mohammad Khatami; then-head of the Supreme National Security Council, Hassan Rouhani (the current Iranian president); then-Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani; and the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) at the time, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh. So what is the purpose of the AMAD Project? The answer to this question too can be found in the archive. According to the material obtained in the Mossad operation, the Iranian plan is to produce five warheads with a yield of 10 kilotons each, and develop the ability to assemble these warheads on the Iranian-made Shahab 3 missile. Diagrams from Iran's nuclear archive Incidentally, nuclear experts who examined the documents say that the Iranian leaders' plan lays out far more extensive infrastructure than what is needed to produce "only" five bombs. The making of a nuclear bomb and the ability to launch it is a very complex project that requires a state effort and coordination between all Iranian army and intelligence forces. One particularly colorful presentation, which was discovered in one of the CDs, shows the complexity of the Iranian nuclear project. According to the presentation, the plan is based on a joint effort of various Iranian bodies: the Intelligence Ministry, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (including its Aerospace Force), and the Quds Forcethe Guards' secret unit, which is currently waging war with Israel at the Syrian border. The documents mention time and again the person who is both the manager and the brains behind the nuclear programProf. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. The nuclear archive includes countless documents with Fakhrizadeh's signature, including documents addressed to him, or approved by him. For example, one letter addressed to Fakhrizadeh, dated January 19, 2001, and written by the director of the explosive mechanism developing team, delineates a long list of features needed to fit the mechanism to the rest of the nuclear bomb (which is comprised of numerous parts). Fakhrizadeh thanked the director at the bottom of his letter and gave him further instructions. Images from Iran's nuclear archive According to foreign media reports, Israel considered Fakhrizadeh as a preferred target for intelligence gathering, and even seriously considered harming him, especially during the tenure of former prime minister Ehud Olmert and the late Mossad director Meir Dagan. Since Fakhrizadeh is still alive, the assassination plan has yet to materialize. It appears Olmert decided to halt the operation, and so Fakhrizadeh's life was spared. If the former prime minister is indeed behind such a decision, there are those who to this day believe it was a mistake. However, someoneIranian intelligence sure it was the Mossadwas able to reach various Iranian nuclear scientists whose names appear in the seized documents. In his handwriting, Dr. Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, a senior nuclear program official, inscribes a long technical document to Fakhrizadeh, who replied at length. Dr. Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani (Photo: Reuters) Dr. Abbasi-Davani is the Chair of the physics department at Tehran's Imam Hossein University and a key figure in Iran's nuclear program. On November 29, 2010, his colleague Majid Shahriari was assassinated. An assassin on a motorbike tried to kill Davani as well by attaching a bomb to his car window while he was driving, but Davani managed to escape at the last minute and survived. Iran's president at the time, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, appointed Davani as his deputy to show his appreciation for the doctor's "contribution to the Islamic Republic and for his courage." One may feel some discomfort when diving into the piles of Iranian documents, since there's something eerie about them. For example, the radical state's dream of creating weapons of mass destruction becomes an orderly and meticulous timeline in Microsoft Project, including information on the program's budgets, personnel, experiments, and more. At times, the nuclear documents receive a more personal flair. For instance, in one of the archive's CDs, agents found "selfie" photos of an Iranian nuclear expert, the heavyset Dr. Mahdi Tranchi, wearing protective goggles and posing for the camera at the "Taleqan 1" nuclear test site. What happened to all this effort? All those people, information, and experience gathered? Did they all just disappear? The nuclear sites It was not only the people who worked on the Iranian nuclear project that the documents expose. They also expose the places and sites where the nuclear plot was devised, some of which were new discoveries for the Israeli intelligence community ("I wish I had this information in real time," said a former Israeli intelligence chief when exposed to the material), including nuclear experiment sites, uranium mines located across the country, tunnels (dug to cover up their real purpose), and more. According to the material, the Iranians were looking for an underground nuclear testing site. It goes without saying that to conduct such an experiment, they needed to first build a bomb, which the Iranians have not yet done. Images from Iran's nuclear archive Furthermore, a nuclear experiment does not depend solely on scientific ability, but mostly on the decision of the political leadership. An underground experiment would have certainly been detected by the West. Such a test would essentially constitute a declaration by Tehran that it had indeed developed a bomb. In the meantime, until the Iranians develop a nuclear bomb, the Iranians are getting ready, and according to the documents they have already examined various possible sites and even attempted to detonate small explosives deep underground to test the ground, its durability and their own ability to record the measurements of the explosion at that location. The Israeli intelligence community also discovered new information about some known nuclear sites. For example, the site in Fordow, near the city of Qom, is well hidden at the heart of the mountain, and is extremely resistant to bombs. Aerial images of the Fordow facility The Israeli, French, and American intelligence communities exposed it in 2010, but the archive's documents established its importance as part of the Ghadir Project (another code name for the Iranian secret nuclear program). The entrance to the Fordow facility Another example of the scale of the Iranian fraud can be found in the Taleqan testing facility, located in an area called Parchin. IAEA reports raised serious suspicions about the site, but Iran's denials made it difficult to substantiate these suspicions. Parchin nuclear facility The IAEA demanded that its inspectors be allowed to visit the site, but the agency's requests have been repeatedly denied. When the IAEA threatened to accuse Iran of violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, its inspectors were allowed to enter Parchin months later, only to discover that the site had been cleared, and everything in it was carefully removed from the area. Aerial photo of the facility in Parchin What was there before? One of the crucial steps to building a nuclear bomb is the development of an explosion mechanism that will create critical mass. In the past, Western intelligence agencies circulated sketches of the experiment sites used to build the explosion mechanism. Photos of the site taken by the Iranian scientists look exactly like the sketches. The Iranian nuclear archive proved how much these sketches were in line with reality: it was an accurate record of the sites, bunkers, test tanks, and equipment that Iran has denied, and still denies using in Parchin / Taleqan, or anywhere else in Iran for that matter. The experiments The archive material contains many drawings, presentations, written documents, and photographs. Not just technical images, but also photographs of the nuclear scientists themselves. The scientists must have felt they were a part of Iranian history. Most probably none of them imagined that his pictures would ever find their way to Israel. Many of these photographs record the nuclear experiments. Iran has denied for years that it is conducting experiments on all PMD topics. For instance, Iran has claimed it did not have any neutron detection equipment, but an archive presentation shows otherwise (with colorful text explaining its uses). Apparently the equipment is located next to the Parchin explosives test site. The Parchin nuclear facility In the next slide, dated February 2002, there is a description of the nuclear experiment with an exact record of the DU3, the scientific term for the neutrons' source, whose collision with nuclear fuel atoms creates a chain reaction that ends with an atomic explosion. The archive's documents also reveal that at a nearby site, the Iranians built another tank for testing high explosives; this time with flash X-ray equipment surrounding it. This equipment made up of a sophisticated camera of sorts that can record, with a precision of nanoseconds, the moment of detonation to guarantee that all explosives go off at the same time. This is critical for making explosive lens: a simultaneous explosion of several charges around the fissile materialfor example, enriched uranium at a level of 90%will start a nuclear fission chain reaction. Tank for testing high explosives, with flash X-ray equipment A special contract signed by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and Tehran's Defense Ministry lays out the transfer of part of the enrichment project from the organization to the ministry, in order to produce highly-enriched uranium at a military level of 90%. The cover-up: the Dark Side of SPND In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, and Tehran feared they were next in line; at the same time, the "National Council of Resistance of Iran," an Iranian opposition group, published material on the Natanz nuclear facility that led to harsh criticism and sanctions against Iran. The Iranians were worried and so the Scientific Council decided to make some changes and close the AMAD Project, only to reopen it under a different name. This development was interpreted differently by Israel and the United States. The latter determined that closing the AMAD Project brought the nuclear program to a halt. Israel, on the other hand, claimed that it's an Iranian scam, and that the two projects are one and the same. The documents from the archive show that Israel was right. These documents record how the general decision to close one project and reopen another became a complex bureaucratic process in August and September 2003. The purpose of all this was to deceive the world and develop a project that will continue where the AMAD Project left off. The new project was titled "the SPND Project," and unlike its father, AMAD, which was entirely secret, SPND has two sides: the overt and public side, which allows the Iranians to claim the nuclear program is meant for peaceful purposes (medicine, etc.), and the covert side, which allows Iran to continue developing nuclear weapons. SPND, by the way, is still active today. "Following new instruction by the honorable Minister of Defense (Ali ShamkhaniRB), intensive meetings of Project 110 technical committee (one of the main projects of AMADRB) were held in order to accommodate the activities to the instructions. In the new outline, the work would be divided in two: covert (secret structure and goals) and overt (regular structure)," reads one Iranian document. Document determining the new plan, SPND, will have an overt aspect and a covert one What would the covert part include? For example, the documents show that the secret SPND project will include the nuclear testing facility Sareb-1, the warhead integration facility Sareb-2, and Sareb-3, the facility for the production of a nuclear warhead for Shahab 3 missiles. According to the documents, all management personnel and 70% of the entire workforce are to transfer from "AMAD" to "SPND." The scheme was meticulously planned: the documents include a letter written by Abbasi-Davani, to the project's chief, Fakhrizadeh, on March 3, 2003: "We must make a distinction between overt and covert activities." One of their colleagues wrote on January 9, 2003: "Overt activities are those that can be explained as part of something else, and not as part of the project (to produce an atomic bomb) itself, so we have an excuse to do them." Dr. Masoud wrote in March 2003: "Neutron research cannot be considered 'overt' and must be covert. We have no way of rationalizing this activity (neutron research) as related to defensive measures. Neutron operations are very sensitive and we cannot explain them." The construction of a core for a nuclear warhead Dr. Mahdi Tranchi, the 'selfie' enthusiast, wrote: "Let there be no mistakethe manpower of the overt and covert parts will not be reduced. The whole operation will not be reduced, and every sub-project will oversee both the overt and covert parts." And so the Iranian project continued from 2004, under SPND, until the signing of the nuclear agreement in the summer of 2015. At some point, a senior American source told Yedioth Ahronoth, the countries negotiating the nuclear agreement with Tehran decided to "let the past go, even though everyone knew very well that the Iranians were lying, and focus on the future. It was clear to everyone that after the spiritual leader said there was no military project, he would never take it back and admit he lied. The risk was losing the entire deal because insisting on the 12 PMD topics would have led to the collapse of the negotiations." After the nuclear agreement was signed, two parallel axes were in play. In one, Iran submitted some material, which led to an IAEA report on the PMD in December 2015. This report, which in effect ignores the questions left open, enables implementation of the nuclear agreement. In the other, Tehran began to do everything in its power to hide everything it had on its nuclear program. This was unlike other cases of complete nuclear disarmament. Both South Africa and Libya, for example, truly ended their nuclear programs: they either destroyed all the information, so there was nothing left of their archives, or deposited everything they hadtheir knowledge, documents, and experience, to IAEA inspectors. The Iranians did the exact opposite: they collected information from countless sites, including private archives and all the material of the AMAD Project, and gathered it it in the Defense Ministry's archive. Since the agreement gives the IAEA the right to visit any suspicious site (Tehran currently denies that they have agreed to visits at military sites), the Iranians feared the Defense Ministry archive might also be a target for inspection. So in February 2016, the Iranians moved the archive to an obscure site in a remote suburb of Tehran. The facility is almost entirely unguarded, and therefore does not attract attention. Even the people guarding the facility don't know what it is that they are protecting. The break-in Israeli intelligence had been tracked the "AMAD archive" closely, and had been meticulously planning the operation since early 2017. One Mossad agent responsible for planning the operation said it was "Ocean's Eleven Style." In most Mossad operations of this type, the agents usually infiltrate a building, photograph the material inside, and leave unnoticed. This time, Mossad Director Yossi Cohen decided the material must be physically seized. The reason is twofold: to limit the time agents had to spend inside the building, and to prevent Iran from spreading disinformation and claiming the documents are forged. In this manner, Israel could expose the documents to the scrutiny of the international community. Some of the folders with documents from Iran's nuclear archive Over the course of two years, hundreds of people from all branches of the Mossad participated in the operation, and fewer than two dozen agents took part in the break-in itself. The operation team in Israel did not sleep for several nights, during which the agents gathered inside Iran to prepare the equipment and scope out the area. Then, on the evening of January 31, the agents entered the vault. When the operation ended and all agents were out of danger, Cohen called Netanyahu and informed him of the operation's success. The entrance to the Iranian nuclear archive And it was, indeed, a success: The agents retrieved about half a ton of intelligence material that is worth its weight in gold. There has been very few times in the history of intelligence services since World War II when one agency has been able to obtain so much of the enemy's secret intelligence material at once. "Israel didn't sign the JCPOA. The Mossad didn't sign the nuclear agreement," Mossad Director Cohen said in a closed forum. "I have one agreement, with the people of Israel, in which I commit not to allow the Iranians to have a nuclear bomb. That's it." But like everything else, politics got in the way here as well. Since the operation, various claims were made in Israel and abroad against the way the material was presented. Some believe the documents from the archive justify Netanyahu's claim that the nuclear agreement is a bad deal based on lies. A Western intelligence source that was exposed to the material summed it up thus: "The nuclear archive is in fact an effort made by the Iranian Ministry of Defense to preserve the knowledge achieved in the 'AMAD Project' from 1998 to 2003, and to hide it from the international community, especially from the IAEA, for possible future use." Others, on the other hand, claim these documents prove how close Iran was to producing a nuclear bomb, and so the existence of an agreement that freezes the program and puts the SPND Project under close supervision is a good idea. The agreed roadmap between the United States and Turkey on Syria's Manbij needs to be completed before the end of the year, Turkey's foreign minister said on Friday. Mevlut Cavusoglu also said in an interview with CNN Turk that the implementation of the roadmap east of the Euphrates river would see the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia removed from cities there. Turkey on Friday criticised the European Union's foreign policy chief for her comments on the rule of law in Turkey, a day after she and another official rebuked Ankara over arrests of journalists and the detention of a Kurdish politician. In an interview with broadcaster CNN Turk, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu criticised the comments from Federica Mogherini as "out of line" after she took Turkey to task at a news conference on Thursday over detentions of journalists and academics and said she hoped that politician Selahattin Demirtas would be released soon. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled this week that Turkey should swiftly process Demirtas' case, saying his pre-trial detention had gone on longer than could be justified. The wife of a British academic jailed by a UAE court on spying charges said on Friday that she had asked for clemency and that she was now waiting to see what happened. The United Arab Emirates signalled on Friday that Matthew Hedges, who was sentenced on Wednesday on charges of spying for the British government, could be freed. "We have asked for clemency, we will wait to see what happens," Hedges' wife Daniela Tejada, told Reuters. Iran denied on Friday it had violated an international convention by not fully declaring its chemical weapons capabilities to the UN, describing a US allegation to that effect as groundless, state TV reported. In a meeting of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague on Thursday, ambassador Kenneth Ward reiterated US concerns that Iran maintained a chemical weapons program that it has failed to declare to the agency. Former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman said during his visit to Sderot on Friday, "Yesterday we witnessed the absurdity of our situationthe Shin Bet thwarted an attempt by the heads of Hamas in Gaza to establish terror infrastructure in the West Bank, while Qatari fuel is transferred into the strip. "They (Hamas) are carrying out terror attacks in the west Bank, which are not included in the arrangement with Israel," he quipped. "We cannot succumb to terror. I'll continue visiting Sderot every week," he asserted. Iran's Revolutionary Guards have detained a Saudi Arabian fishing boat and arrested its crew, the Iranian Mizan news agency, which covers the judiciary, said on Friday. A local official at the Iranian port city of Bushehr told Mizan that the reason for the detention was under investigation. He did not elaborate on the nationality or the number of the detained crew. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki urged Friday the international community to implement the two-state solution. Speaking at a conference in Rome, Maliki added that "The Palestinians are still waiting for the international community to solve the problem it created with the establishment of the State of Israel." A 95-year-old man has been charged with more than 36,000 counts of being an accessory to murder on allegations that he served as a guard at the Nazis' Mauthausen concentration camp, Berlin prosecutors said Friday. Hans Werner H., whose last name wasn't released because of privacy regulations, is accused of serving as an SS guard in the camp in northern Austria from mid-1944 to early 1945. During that time, 36,223 people were killed at Mauthausen, primarily by gassing, but also by lethal injection, shootings, starvation or exposure, prosecutor Martin Steltner said. The suspect isn't accused of a specific killing, but prosecutors argue that as a guard he helped the camp function. Overall, about 95,000 people are believed to have died in the Mauthausen camp system including 14,000 Jews, but also Soviet prisoners of war, Spaniards who had fought against Gen. Francisco Franco, and others. STUDENTS AND teachers in Ironwood's Great Start Readiness Program stand in front of the George N. Sleight School last Friday on the last day of classes there before the program moved to the Luther L. Wright K-12 School. Those commemorating the last day included, first row: Ivy Bromley, Kadey Gallo, Buliwyf Anderson, Lily Statman, Oscar Golebiowski, William Stanke, Brycen Ruppel, Leyna Gerlach, Audrina Watkins and Josslynn Schwartz; second row: Kanon Blaszak, Wyatt Choronzy, Elizabeth Ross, Sydney Kolesar, Evelynn Hembree, Bentley Luedtke, Sommer Casey, Charlotte Spaniel and Gianna Richards; third row: Natalie Sackman, Easton Oja, Tyson Madison, Connor Kauppi, Carter Kennedy, Maggie Kusz, Cally Aho, Chase Richards, Nante Niemi and Thurman Baldwin; fourth row: staff members Laura Ahonen, Amy Lahti, Jackie Rowe and Becky Anderson. By RICHARD JENKINS [email protected] Ironwood - The 4-year-olds in Ironwood's Great Start Readiness Program will have a new home next week when they return to classes Monday as the program completes its transition from the George N. Sleight School to Luther L. Wright K-12 School. "We have green lights from the state, this is a go. Monday is for real," Superintendent Travis Powell said Wednesday. "The children will be dropped off in our bus lane like the rest of our students." Those parents dropping their students off can park in the school parking lot and take their kids to the building's Pabst Street entrance. The need to move the program arose in September when electrical issues with Sleight's fire alarm system were discovered. The district had planned to stop using the building at the end of the year due to the cost of other building repairs, but sped up its timeline due to the fire alarm problems. Policies were put in place to allow GSRP classes to temporarily resume at Sleight to allow the necessary renovations be completed to the wing of Luther L. Wright that formerly housed several Gogebic-Ontonagon Intermediate School District programs and will now be the program's new home. "We canceled classes Monday and Tuesday of this week to allow the program staff to relocate everything and we had an open house last evening that had really good turnout. All the early indicators are the parents and students are pleased with the new space, and the children are excited to join us on Monday," Powell said. Powell credited both the GSRP staff and those at Luther L. Wright for helping with the transition from one building to another. He said the program staff's wealth of experience certainly helped as they knew many of the changes needed to bring the new classrooms into compliance with state regulations. "Since our staff know all of those things, they're able to implement them all without having someone come in and look over their shoulder," Powell said. While the move to the new building is a big change for the students in the program, Powell said the rest of the district's students will also experience some changes due to the move. The primary change is the hallway the program is in will no longer be accessible to the rest of the school, which Powell explained was not only due to state security regulations but also because the program will be actively using the hallway space more. "It's just easier to meet all of those requirements - the security, the ease of access to the program - it's just easier to close that space off," Powell said. "It is going to be an inconvenience, I know there are staff members who have some questions about that, and we're in the process of addressing those." He said the building's design means the hallway is easy to contain as it doesn't block access to any other parts of the school. While the transition's timeline may not have been ideal, the GSRP teachers said the change is a positive not only because many parents have older students but also because it should make the transition into kindergarten easier. "When you talk about transitioning, before it was from the small school to big school," said Jackie Rowe, the program's head teacher. "Now we're all at the big school, so I think the transitioning part will be easier. There can be, there should be, more collaboration with the kindergarten teachers to prepare our kids for that move." She said the students are excited for the change and will probably handle the move a bit better than some of the adults. Along with the GSRP program, Sleight housed the district's alternative school and some GOISD programs. Powell said the alternative school continues to use the Ironwood Memorial Building while the district finds a permanent location for it. The GOISD programs that used both Sleight and the rooms in Luther L. Wright now being used for the GSRP program have been moved to the Bessemer Schools. News Washington, DC - On Tuesday, November 20, 2018, the President signed into law: H.R. 2615, the Gulf Islands National Seashore Land Exchange Act, which authorizes the exchange of Federal land within the Gulf Islands National Seashore in Jackson County, Mississippi, for non-Federal land adjacent to the National Seashore. News Phoenix, Arizona - Thanksgiving is a time of celebration for families across the country. Thanksgiving also marks a time of year when charitable organizations experience greater need. This Thanksgiving, as numerous groups and organizations seek to meet increased seasonal demands, theyre also working to provide relief to victims of natural disasters, including the devastating wildfires in California. These circumstances have charitable organizations stretching every resource thinner than years past. Arizonans routinely rise to the occasion to help their neighbors -- and this Thanksgiving, organizations across our state can really use the help. Here are ways you can give back this season: Midwest Food Bank Midwest Food Banks Arizona Division is partnering with the Salvation Army in expediting relief efforts to those affected by severe wildfire damage in California. Midwest Food Bank has trucks and drivers in-place to provide aid to Californians but does not have enough supplies to both provide California aid and continue to supply food centers in Arizona. Midwest Food Bank seeking donations for hygiene kits, nonperishable foods, and other supplies. Monetary donations can also be made online or by text message. Midwest Food Bank, Arizona Division positively impacts the lives of 250,000 people in Arizona as part of their mission to alleviate hunger and provide disaster relief to those in need locally and across the globe. Items Needed: Hygiene Supplies: Hand Sanitizer, Toothbrush, Toothpaste, Sunscreen, Lip Balm, Deodorant, Shampoo/Conditioner, Soap, Personal Cleaning Wipes, First Aid Kit (all items should fit in a 1-gallon zip lock bag). Non-Refrigerated Food Items: Prepared Meals (Mac & Cheese, Ramen, canned stew), Fruit Cups, Milk (12oz or smaller, shelf-stable), Canned Vegetables, Canned Meats, Peanut Butter, Hard Candy, Coffee (instant or small bags ground), Juice Bottles (12oz or smaller). Other: Midwest Food Bank is also accepting donations for other items such as diapers, feminine hygiene items, new socks, and new underwear. For location and more information about how to help Midwest Food Bank, click HERE. Vitalant Blood Donation Blood banks across Arizona are in short supply. Vitalant, formerly United Blood Services, needs blood and plasma donations to provide life-saving transfusions to those in need. Donating blood is one of the easiest and most rewarding ways to give back. While blood banks are always looking for donations, incidents of disaster, like the Camp Fire in California, drastically increase the need for blood and plasma donations. Before you donate, Vitalant reminds you to: Eat a healthy meal within two hours prior to your donation. Eat a salty snack the day before. Hydrate by drinking 8 to 16 ounces of water one hour before you donate. Avoid caffeine on the day of donation. Find a donation location in your area HERE, or host a blood drive for your organization. St. Vincent de Paul St. Vincent de Paul is looking for volunteers to help provide meals to those in need. Their industrial kitchen and five dining rooms serve over 1.2 million guests across the Phoenix Valley. The success of St. Vincent de Paul is made possible by Arizonans volunteering to prep, cook, set-up and serve the members of their community. This Thanksgiving, St. Vincent de Paul needs volunteers to help prepare and serve meals. Monday - Thursday 7:30 - 11 AM & 12:30 - 6:30 PM Learn more and find the dining room closest to you HERE. St. Marys Food Bank Alliance St. Marys Food Bank is 2,000 turkeys short of the 12,000 turkey goal for their annual holiday meal distribution. St. Marys Food Bank Alliance works hard to provide Arizona families with Holiday Food Boxes, hoping to provide each family with a turkey and traditional Thanksgiving foods for the holiday. St. Marys Food Bank Alliance is a community-based organization that works to alleviate hunger while encouraging self-sufficiency, collaboration, advocacy and education across Arizona. Turkey donations for Holiday Food Boxes will be accepted through Wednesday 8 AM- 4 PM. Those wishing to pick up a turkey can do so through Wednesday from 8 AM - 12 PM. Donations and distribution will be at both locations: 303 West Thomas in Phoenix and 13050 West Elm Street in Surprise. Donate and volunteer with St. Marys Food Bank. Salvation Army The Salvation Army helped more than 276,000 Arizonans last year, providing social services to citizens through youth, family, senior, and homelessness programs, along with disaster services and more. Each donation made to the Salvation Army helps provide opportunities to those both in your local community and around the world. Donating Goods: Drop off your items at a location near you, schedule a free pick up of oversized items, or donate your vehicles HERE. Volunteer Your Time: organize a food or toy drive, sort and pack donated items, build furniture for Salvation Army locations, and moreHERE. Donate Financially: Give directly to the Salvation Army HERE. Phoenix Rescue Mission Phoenix Rescue Mission needs volunteers to aid in serving the communitys vulnerable members. This community-based organization works to end homelessness and hunger while transforming the lives of those in need. As the holidays approach, several of their volunteer positions remain to be filled. Phoenix Rescue Mission is looking for volunteers to help serve the community at food banks and kitchens across Phoenix, provide hygiene supplies for the homeless, host toy drives, and more. Sign up to volunteer HERE. News Phoenix, Arizona - The holidays are just around the corner and consumers are looking for deals in stores and online. To ensure safe shopping, Attorney General Mark Brnovich is offering the following tips for consumers to consider this season. As Arizonans look for the perfect gift for family and friends, we want to ensure they dont overlook simple ways to keep their purchases and their personal information safe, said Attorney General Mark Brnovich. By researching purchases ahead of time, shopping in a secure manner and ensuring safe delivery of gifts, the holiday season can be filled with joyous moments instead of fraudulent experiences. Holiday Shopping Tips: Research: Before making a purchase, ask what the return policy is, as return policies vary from store to store and website to website. Also ask if the store charges a restocking fee, and, if so, how much. Read reviews, watch product videos on third-party sites, and comparison shop products before making an online purchase. Use a business/retailer that you know or trust. Avoid the pressure to purchase on Black Friday and Cyber Monday unless youve been able to verify it really is a great deal. When checking out, watch the display to be sure prices match the posted price, and check your receipt for accuracy before you leave the store or website. Keep your sales receipts. Shop Secure: Make sure your computer and mobile devices have updated anti-virus and anti-spyware software, updated spam filters, and a secure firewall. Shop using secure Wi-Fi or cellphone data rather than free Wi-Fi at a mall or coffee shop. Also, always use trusted websites with reliable track records. Beware of phishing attempts. If an email or pop-up message appears asking for financial information while youre browsing, do not reply or click a link. This is likely an illegitimate company. Legitimate businesses do not send emails claiming problems with an order or an account to lure the consumer into revealing financial information. If you do receive such an email, call the business directly by using the number on your receipt or invoice, or by searching online for the businesss website and using the number listed there. Credit vs Debit: Use credit cards and secure payment services instead of debit cards as an added layer of shopping security. Many credit cards come with zero-fraud liability, which makes getting a refund easier. Buying on credit also offers increased federal protection under the Fair Credit Billing Act, which allows you to dispute charges you did not authorize and more options if you need to dispute a charge. Ensure Safe Delivery: Make every attempt to have purchases delivered at a time someone is home or arrange to have it held at a USPS/FedEx/UPS facility until the parcel can be picked up. Many delivery services offer a live map to track deliveries. Some consumers even install webcams that send text alerts if activity is detected and provide video proof of the theft. Digital lock-boxes are also an option. If an issue arises, try to work it out with the seller or site operator. If that doesnt work, file a complaint with the Arizona Attorney Generals Office and/or the Federal Trade Commission. Stolen parcels can be reported to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service if sent via US Mail. The other parcel carriers have investigative units as well. News New York - A federal court in Central Islip, New York entered a temporary injunction Tuesday against individuals and corporations allegedly responsible for operating three international mail fraud schemes, the Department of Justice announced. These cases are part of the Department of Justices Elder Justice Initiative. In a complaint filed today, the United States alleged that the 15 defendants mailed, or facilitated the mailing of, fraudulent solicitations related to three mail fraud schemes that primarily victimized the elderly or vulnerable. The solicitations purported to be personalized notices informing recipients that they had won a large cash prize but needed urgently to pay a fee to claim their winnings. The solicitations targeted victims throughout the world, and victims returned their payments to mailboxes located in the United States. Although victims sent in the requested fees by cash, check, or credit card, they did not receive large cash prizes in return. The complaint further alleges that the defendants were aware that the mailings deceived consumers into paying a fee and believing they had already won a valuable prize. The complaint alleges that victims sent thousands of dollars each week in response to the defendants fraudulent solicitations. The complaint alleged that in the last year, the three mail fraud schemes collectively mailed over half a million fraudulent letters, grossing an estimated $4.8 million in fraudulent proceeds. Along with the complaint, the United States sought a temporary restraining order against the defendants to prevent them from continuing to send fraudulent solicitations during the pendency of the action. The district court found probable cause to believe that those defendants are engaged in mail fraud and entered the order. A preliminary injunction hearing is scheduled for December 3, 2018. We will not tolerate fraud, and we will not allow the U.S. Mail to be used as a conduit for fraudulent conduct, said Assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt for the Department of Justices Civil Division. Illegal schemes that prey on peoples hopes are reprehensible, and we will continue to vigorously pursue the operators of such schemes. These fraudulent solicitation schemes target elderly and vulnerable residents in our district, around the country and around the world with a promise of cash prizes that never arrive, stated Richard P. Donoghue, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. We are committed to protecting our residents, and victims everywhere, from these cruel schemes. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service has been at the forefront of protecting consumers from fraud schemes for many years, said Inspector in Charge Delany De Leon-Colon for the U.S. Postal Inspection Services Criminal Investigations Group. Deceptive solicitations take advantage of the American public with promises of easy money, when in reality, the scammers are the only ones making money. Investigations like this one let the American public especially our vulnerable population know that Postal Inspectors are working hard to protect them and ensure their confidence in the U.S. Mail. The complaint alleged that defendants Charles Kafeiti of Phoenix, Arizona; Anthony Kafeiti of Port Jefferson, New York; and Steven Diaz of Mt. Sinai, New York, operate fraud schemes that lead victims to believe a large cash awards awaits them. The three schemes were assisted by Drew Wilson, a resident of Vancouver, Canada, who provided logistical support. Other named defendants, Dennis Hunsaker, a resident of Las Vegas Nevada, and his company, Digital Matrix International Inc., assisted the direct mailers with online tools to manage their mailings, lists of recipients, lists of respondents, and fulfillments. Carmine Maietta and Elizabeth Maietta, residents of Westbury, New York, opened and processed victim returns. The suit also named a German corporation that processed victim payments for the scheme, SixEvolution GmbH, and its operator, David Anthony. Since President Trump signed the bipartisan Elder Abuse Prevention and Prosecution Act (EAPPA) into law, The Department of Justice has participated in hundreds of enforcement actions in criminal and civil cases that targeted or disproportionately affected seniors. In particular, this past February the Attorney General announced the largest elder fraud enforcement action in American history, charging more than 200 defendants in a nationwide elder fraud sweep. The Department has likewise conducted hundreds of trainings and outreach sessions across the country since the passage of the Act. Last week, the Department of Justice and the Department of Agriculture hosted an inaugural Rural and Tribal Elder Justice Summit in Des Moines, Iowa. The Summit focused on supporting the efforts of elder justice professionals to combat elder abuse and financial exploitation in rural and tribal communities, and included remarks from Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker. In the matter filed today, the government is represented by Trial Attorney Jacqueline Blaesi-Freed of the Civil Divisions Consumer Protection Branch and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Seth Eichenholtz and John Vagelatos of the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of New York. The United States Postal Inspection Service provided investigative support. A complaint is merely a set of allegations that, if the case were to proceed to trial, the government must prove to receive a determination of liability. News New Orleans, Louisiana - A senior leader of the Aryan Circle (AC) and a gang member were sentenced Tuesday for being accessories-after-the-fact to racketeering murder, announced Assistant Attorney General Bryan A. Benczkowski of the Justice Departments Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney David C. Joseph of the Western District of Louisiana. David Wayne Williams, 38, of Sulphur, Louisiana, a senior leader in the gang, was sentenced to serve 157 months in prison and four years of supervised release and Richard Alan Smith, 47, of Little Rock, Arkansas was sentenced to serve 150 months in prison to be served consecutive to his current state charges and three years of supervised release by U.S. District Court Judge Dee D. Drell in the Western District of Louisiana. On Aug. 22, 2018, Williams pleaded guilty to the charge of accessory-after-the-fact to racketeering murder of Clifton Hallmark, drug trafficking and weapons possession. On July 25, 2018, Smith pleaded guilty to the accessory-after-the-fact charge. According to the plea agreement, the AC is a race-based, multi-state organization that operates inside and outside of state and federal prisons throughout Texas, Louisiana, and the United States. The AC was established in the mid-1980s within the Texas prison system (TDCJ). Recently, the ACs structure and influence expanded to rural and suburban areas throughout Texas, Louisiana, and Missouri. The AC emerged as an independent organization during a period of turmoil within the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas (ABT). The AC was relatively small in comparison to other prison-based gangs, but grew in stature and influence within TDCJ in the 1990s, largely through violent conflict with other gangs, white and non-white alike. The plea agreement further alleges that the AC enforces its rules and promotes discipline among its members, prospects and associates through murder, attempted murder, assault, robbery and threats against those who violate the rules or pose a threat to the organization. Members, and oftentimes associates, are required to follow the orders of higher-ranking members without question. In pleading guilty to the accessory charge, Williams and Smith admitted to being accessories to the murder of Hallmark on or around July 1, 2016, when a fellow AC member shot Hallmark in the side of his head at point blank range at an AC church meeting in Turkey Creek, Louisiana. Williams and Smith both admitted to being members of the AC criminal enterprise. Williams admitted to being a senior leader of the gang. This case is being investigated by an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force consisting of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Drug Enforcement Administration; Federal Bureau of Prisons; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements Homeland Security Investigations; Louisiana State Police; Evangeline Parish, (LA) Sheriffs Office; Evangeline Parish District Attorneys Office; Texas Department of Public Safety; Houston Police Department-Gang Division; Texas Department of Criminal Justice; New Jersey Department of Corrections-Special Investigations Division; Arnold (MO) Police Department; Jefferson County (MO) Sheriffs Department; St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department; St. Louis County (MO) Police Department; Montgomery County (TX) Precinct 1 Constables Office; Indiana State Police; Indiana Department of Corrections; Carrollton (TX) Police Department; Waller (TX) Police Department; Montgomery County (TX) Sheriffs Office; Travis County (TX) Sheriffs Office and the Tarrant County (TX) Sheriffs Office. The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney David Karpel of the Criminal Divisions Organized Crime and Gang Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Dominic Rossetti of the Western District of Louisiana. Arizona News Phoenix, Arizona - Governor Doug Ducey Monday announced the appointment of business and community leader Fred DuVal, a former Chairman of the Arizona Board of Regents and the 2014 Democratic nominee for Arizona governor, to fill a vacancy on the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR). "In Arizona, we know how to work together, across party lines, put aside our differences and get positive things done for the people we serve. Few individuals have a better record and history of doing that than Fred DuVal, said Governor Ducey. Fred is a remarkable leader who brings with him immeasurable higher education experience and knowledge through his long-standing involvement with the University of Arizona. As a champion of both business and community leadership, Fred knows first-hand how to work in a collaborative spirit to increase high-quality affordable postsecondary opportunities and prepare students for our states 21st-century workforce." Born and raised in Tucson, Fred attended the University of Arizona, where his father, Dr. Merlin K. DuVal, was the founding Dean of the College of Medicine and the Vice President for Health Sciences. In 1987, the Arizona Health Sciences Center auditorium was named in Dr. DuVals honor. Fred continues his fathers legacy and passion for the University of Arizona, serving on the Arizona National Leadership Council. Previously, Fred served on the University of Arizona Hospital Board and the National Advisory Board for the University of Arizona Foundation. He also founded the University of Arizona Institute for Civil Discourse following the tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in Tucson in 2011. Fred previously served as the Chairman of the Arizona Board of Regents in 2011 and led the campaign to increase postsecondary attainment in our public higher education systems through a delivery model redesign that yielded the highly successful 2+2 pathways programs between Arizona community colleges and public universities. Fred was the Democratic nominee for Arizona governor in 2014 against then-Treasurer Doug Ducey. In 2017, Governor Ducey credited Fred for presenting the original concept of the Arizona Teachers Academy during a debate in which they were both candidates for governor and applauded him for his energy and advocacy for public education. In his speech, Governor Ducey stated, the fact is no political party has a monopoly on good ideas, especially when it comes to education. It was Freds good idea that ignited this effort and brought us here today." I want to thank Governor Ducey for his spirit of bipartisanship, Fred DuVal stated. I look forward to using my previous policy experience as a Regent to make a significant impact on our states workforce needs and economic development and to make college more affordable for all students. And as I take on this important role again, I look forward to collaborating with Governor Ducey on the full-scale expansion of the Teachers Academy at our three public universities. Fred will fill the seat previously held by Rick Myers, a Tucsonan appointed by former Governor Jan Brewer in 2010. Id also like to express my sincere appreciation to Regent Rick Myers for his years of service, said Governor Ducey. His wealth of knowledge and insight as a businessman and as a community leader was an asset to the Arizona Board of Regents during the most crippling economic downturn of our states history. His innovative approach to transformational change led the public university system into a period of unprecedented growth in postsecondary attainment and productivity. Arizona News Tucson, Arizona - Attorney General Mark Brnovich Tuesday announced a $451,000 judgment against a Texas-based travel company, EB Worldwide, LLC, and its CEO, George Barragan. The Arizona Attorney General filed a consumer fraud lawsuit back in July after receiving complaints EB Worldwide, operating under the name Senior Grad Trips, had accepted thousands of dollars in payments from Arizona consumers for a group vacation that was canceled without notice or refund. In its lawsuit, the Attorney Generals Office alleged EB Worldwide and Barragan collected $40,000 from Cienega High School students and chaperones for a Disneyland senior class trip. Barragan and EB Worldwide never provided transportation to Disneyland as promised and then refused to refund consumers who paid in advance. Parents of students were not notified of the cancellation until after the scheduled departure date, and dozens of students were left stranded in the Cienega High School parking lot well into the night, waiting for a tour bus that never arrived. On Wednesday, the Arizona Attorney Generals Office obtained a default judgment against EB Worldwide and George Barragan after they refused to respond to the States lawsuit. The judgment awards $40,000 in restitution to consumers who paid for the Cienega High School trip, a combined total of $400,000 in civil penalties against EB Worldwide and Barragan, and approximately $11,000 in attorney fees to the Arizona Attorney Generals Office. The judgment also bans EB Worldwide and Barragan from selling, advertising, or otherwise marketing any vacation packages or group vacations in Arizona. The Attorney Generals Office will seek to collect on the judgment. Scams of this magnitude are particularly despicable, said Attorney General Mark Brnovich. Consumers who are looking forward to a vacation can be highly susceptible to deceptive business practices because they may not know what signs to look for or what questions to ask. This case was handled by Assistant Attorney General Mitchell Allee. natural hair braidsIt is always a good idea to think of having natural hair braids. Not just any kind of braids, but cool braids like those elaborate styles that make people stop and ask for your stylist's info. so they can get the same ones done. It's time to level-up your braid game! With the warm special months right around the corner, heat-protective styles like cornrow styles for natural hair, goddess braids, crochet braids on natural hair, and Bantu knots on natural hair are perfect for protecting your natural hair. In addition, the upkeep is super-minimal, and convenient if you're not into doing much to your hair every day. READ ALSO: Romance: Sweet words to make her fall in love with you In this article, we will teach you exactly what are the best natural hair braids hairstyles, how to grow natural hair under braids and styles for natural hair. Styles for natural hair When looking at the best protective styles for natural hair, you would most likely want something thatll actually do the trick. This article comes into play, the best protective braids with natural hair. Also, African hair braiding styles of wearing your hair just as the name suggests, in Ghana, there are braids that are long-lasting, which offer a way for you to have a wonderful hair when you just don't have time on your side. There are a lot of styles for natural hair which are less expensive, affordable, time-saving and heat protective. Here, we collected the best styles for natural hair which you can try : Cornrow styles for natural hair Cornrow styles for natural hair have been in existence for many years and have since been known as one of the best protective styles among African women especially Ghanaian. Therefore, if you are looking for a fun way to wear braids with natural hair, then cornrow styles for natural hair is what you need to grow your hair, looking smart and beautiful. Natural hairstyles cornrow also guard your hair from damage and breakages that are popular with other styling methods. When we put on African hair braiding styles, we strengthen our friendship and also express our cultural. From goddess braids natural hair, crochet braids on natural hair, twisted to braided, thin to thick, and in an array of colours, here are collections of the best cornrow hairstyles for natural hair. Types of natural hairstyles cornrows Cornrow natural hair braids updo hairstyles If you are looking for easy weaving styles for natural hair, cornrow natural hair braids updo hairstyles are the best because they are very easy to maintain and also give you a long lasting look when seeking to be formal to suit a lovely event. To add up, thicker cornrow braids updo add more sizzle whereas the simple top bun brings in a touch of sophistication. Cornrow hairstyles for short and long hair Most people don't know the difference between long and short cornrow hairstyles so, for this reason, we like to clear your doubt. Cornrow braid hairstyles that give a fresh look, which do not take too much time to braid are short. But big long cornrow braid hairstyles need careful and detailed attention when braiding. They are also time-consuming and require much money to make. Cornrows top bun If you are looking for cornrow hairstyles for athletes, cornrow top bun is one of the best braids. This type of cornrow styles begin at the hairline and move toward the crown and are woven specifically with a top bun that appears chic and effortless. Cornrow small braid hairstyles Small cornrow braids can be designed as half cornrow braid hairstyles with the braids covering one side of the head. The other half is sometimes left with loose hair to achieve the desired uniqueness which you can make into any attractive style of your choice. Cornrows feed in beaded braids These cornrows are braided with a single cornrow running down the centre of the head where we have the remaining of the cornrows shooting out. With this type of cornrow braid hairstyle, hair extensions are fed into the cornrows and decorated with beads in different colours and shapes to make the look excellent for a princess like you. For this style, one does not need to be too complex since you will be adding a little touch to the long cornrow braid hairstyles with beads placed in between them. Bantu knot on natural hair Bantu knots are traditionally flirty styles mostly used by African women of some part of our tribes and ethnic groups. Most are very small, coiled buns which are secure against each side of the head. We normally see these types in the village settings of movies. But you rock the knots like an African queen by simply twisting your hair into small matuta-like buns. Another interesting thing is you can, later on, unravel them if you want to rock your hair in a curly afro. Below are the steps required in getting your Bantu knots done all by yourself or with the help of a friend: Using a skinny, rat-tail comb, part the back of your hair into a heart shape (or whichever shape you want). Section the heart-shaped hair into two smaller sections by parting it down the middle. Cornrow your hair into tiny braids that create the shape of a heart. When you're finished with your tiny cornrows, create one slightly bigger braid that connects both sides and outlines the shape of the heart. To create Bantu knots, section your hair into small-to-medium-size sections. Then, sub-section each section into two parts and start making twists. Next, wrap your twist around in a circular motion to create a tight coil. You can secure the coil with a small bobby pin for an even tighter hold. Repeat this step on all sections of your hair. Add another element of fun by adding beads to your Bantu knots. Holding the tip of the braid, use a beadier to insert each bed onto your hair. Box Braids These are hair braids which are made in "boxy" or square-shaped hair divisions. This hairstyle is a way of protecting hair follicles from damage and promotes hair growth. You can twist them over to one side, wear them loose, throw them back in a ponytail or weave them into a bun. Box braids is a very demanding hairstyle where strands of hair have some synthetic braids added onto it either in three fold or are been twisted unto the hair for box braids twist hairstyles. Crochet braids on natural hair These are very different from the box braids or twists because crochet braids are hair extensions that are crocheted into your natural hair using a latch hook and in so doing, your natural hair will have to be braided into cornrows. The interesting and fun thing about this natural hair braid is that it's less time-consuming. In Ghana, crochet braids are one of the trendiest hairstyles for women of all ages which can be gotten in many beauty shops. Crochet braids come in various lengths, textures, and colours. Most students and workers in Ghana are familiar with the braids because it gives them a sophisticated look which suits work and schooling. Natural hair braids updo hairstyle Above are examples of natural hair braids updo hairstyles we can do for any occasion be it church, wedding, or parties. How to grow natural hair under braids Growing natural hair under braids is very important because its prevents the hair from breakage and keeps hair growth well-retained, longer and thicker. Also, braids help you grow your natural hair faster. If you want your natural to be thicker and longer as said earlier, you need these steps below: First, moisturize your hair daily with an oil by spraying the oil into the braids. It's advisable to moisturize braids twice a day in the morning and at night. The next step is to massage the scalp with olive oil while you are in the shower. You can also use your finger tips to massage your scalp with the olive oil; this helps to moisturize the scalp and clean the pores to allow new hair to grow. Massaging your scalp helps stimulate the scalp and increase blood circulation which leads to faster hair growth because oxygen and nutrients are carried to the hair roots. Another step is to drink enough water which is very essential for hair growth. Drink at least, eight glasses of water a day. Take foods containing vitamin B-complex which helps hair grow with the necessary nutrients being supplied to the body. Again, you need to exercise always. This stimulates the thyroid gland and releases hormones that will generate hair growth. Exercising for about 30 minutes each day will help grow your natural hair. Finally, you need to eat foods containing plenty of lean protein. Our hair is made up of three different types of proteins which are bound together in order to keep our hair strong and prevent any form of breakage. Examples of foods containing protein that you should eat are eggs, vegetables, fish and meat. READ ALSO: Inspirational prayer quotes and sayings Conclusion Hope you love these natural hair braids and want to have them on. Remember that you need healthy hair to be able to rock them. Don't forget to subscribe to our website and leave your comment. Source: Yen - The ex-husband of Nigerian actress Tonto Dike, Churchill Olakunle, said she has gone mad - He said the actress has been on drugs and many attempts by him to help her out have proven futile - Churchill said Tontos madness is what is making her attack him constantly The former husband of Nigerian actress Tonto Dike, Dr. Olakunle Churchill, has revealed that she has gone mad. According to Churchill, Tontos madness is what is making him heap loads of unprovoked attacks on him. This is contained in a report sighted by YEN.com.gh on Mynewsgh.com. READ ALSO: Ghanaians reveal what they like and admire about Shatta Wale Churchill reportedly said that Tonto was on drug which was gradually turning her into a mad person. He was reacting to the many verbal attacks that his former wife Tonto has subjected him to in recent times. According to him, he does not have any idea of all Tonto has been saying about him, and he suspects that the drugs were affecting her. Though he refused to mention what particular drugs Tonto was addicted to, Churchill revealed further that he wanted to help her to a rehab, but Tonto did not allow him to. READ ALSO: Kalybos reveals his encounter with Sakawa job Mad girl.She writes her script herself and act the drama. I dont even know or have any idea of what she is talking about. Yes that she makes up stories to bring me down. she is mad. I wanted to help her to a rehab but she is on drugs, he said. Tonto had described her ex-husband and father of her son as a fraudster, gay, murderer and others. But Churchill said Tonto was simply on a desperate course to ruin his reputation. According to him Tonto has still not gotten over him and cannot move on with her life. She wants to ruin me by force. She has called me several names to ruin my personality; ritualist rug dealer, fraudster, gay , murderer , she is pained and she is finding it very hard to move on , she is on drugs. She is insulting my mum lying up and downshe cant get over me and she is mad. She started from domestic violence but when I showed prove that she was the violent one she kept changing from one allegation to another, he revealed. READ ALSO: Akufo-Addo must go; my husband cant sleep with me well anymore Woman cries in new video Yenkasa: Some Musicians Share Thoughts on Kuami Eugene's 'Rockstar' Album| #Yencomgh READ ALSO: 'Idibala dance craze goes to school as students fall over each other in latest video 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 Former president Jerry John Rawlings says he is a little disturbed that no aspirant from the Volta region was voted as part of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) frontline executives. According to him, the newly-elected leadership of the party can best be described as a combination of the good, bad and ugly. He said for a region that is deemed the World Bank of the NDC, it is disturbing that no Votarian was voted among its decision makers. Former president Rawlings and wife, Nana Konadu Agyemang. Source: Supplied. Source: UGC READ ALSO: The things you cant do without a TIN His comments come after the partys First National Vice Chair, Anita De-Soso, also lamented the situation. The NDC held its 9th Annual Delegates Congress last Saturday at the Fantasy Dome inside the Accra Trade Fair Center. However, all the aspirants from the Volta region seeking to be elected into frontline positions lost out. Mrs. De-Soso, who contested the position of National Organiser eventually lost out to Joshua Akamba. Meanwhile, Koku Anyidoho was also handed a heavy defeat when he challenged incumbent General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, for the position. Mr. Rawlings refused to comment on the individually elected executives, but said it is a mixed bag of good and bad. He was, however, quick to add that he was not impressed with the overall organisation of the NDCs delegates congress. In an interview with the Ghanaian Times newspaper, the former president said the entire congress was not too bad, not too good. READ ALSO: Ibukun Awosika denies granting interview that claims she kneels to greet husband He said he observed that money was used to corrupt the sanctity of the right of choice at the various elections in the party adding that; the misuse of money has undermined the force of our conviction. The use of money to corrupt the sanctity of the right of choice is one of the worst mistakes we could have ever made, Mr. Rawlings added. On his one-sentence message delivered during the NDC congress, Mr. Rawlings believes his point was clear. They were expecting me to blast them instead I put the burden of free will on them and their conscience. We are not listening to our inner voice, our conscience - that godly voice in our nature. If we were, we would not be making the terrible mistakes we have been making, he clarified. Nuru Deen Story - The Miraculous Xylophone Manufacturer: Faces of Ghana | Yen.com.gh READ ALSO: 4 reasons why the Ghana Police Service needs serious reforms Your stories and photos are always welcome. Send us a message via YEN's official Facebook page. Source: Yen - President Akufo-Addo has cautioned the NDC against peddling falsehood against the government - According to him, the NDC will stay in opposition for a long time if it continues to do so - His comments were in reaction to rumours of a possible relocation of the University of Environment and Sustainable Development (UESD) from Somanya to Bunso. President Akufo-Addo has stated that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) will stay in opposition for a long time if they continue to peddle falsehoods. As part of his official visit to the Eastern Region, he stated that attempts to make his government unpopular through deceit will not work. He added that the current administration has no plans to relocate the University of Environment and Sustainable Development (UESD) from Somanya to Bunso. Sammy Gyamfi, NDC's Communications Officer Source: Supplied Source: UGC READ ALSO: Wild reactions from Ghanaians as MP's family reveal the cause of his death This act of misinformation, according to the president, is an agenda of the NDC in order to re-capture power from his party. He however added that these are people who are looking at a long period in opposition. President Akufo-Addo went on to say that the more desperate the NDC gets, the more fabrications they will engage in. The basis for President Akufo-Addos claims are yet to be established, as the NDC have revealed that at no point did they make such a claim. According to the partys National Communications Officer, Sammy Gyamfi, the NDC instead expressed concern about a possible move of the Donkorkrom campus of the university to Bunso. He added that it is therefore wrong for the president to insinuate the NDC is fighting to ensure that the university isnt moved to Bunso. READ ALSO: 10 things you cannot do without a TIN Nuru Deen Story - The Miraculous Xylophone Manufacturer: Faces of Ghana | Yen.com.gh Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish on YEN.com.gh? Please contact us on Facebook or Instagram now! Source: Yen The Deputy Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Microfinance and Small Loans Company (MASLOC), Hajia Abibata Shanni, has been named in fraudulent act that has hit the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP). YEN.com.gh understands that some New Patriotic Party (NPP) women groups are accusing her of deceiving them with fake appointment letters. Many of the letters allegedly given to the women have no code, dates and reference numbers. One of the letters allegedly given to the women Source:ModernGhana.com Source: UGC READ ALSO: NDC will remain in opposition for telling lies - Akufo-Addo One of the affected women, narrating her plight on North Star Radio in Tamale said Shani invited them to the Yendi Community Center in November 2018, and gave them appointment letters. She indicated that, in the letters they received many of them were posted to schools at Nakpali in the Zabzugu district, Saboba, Tatali and the Mion districts of the Northern Region. Some of the women were however chased away when they reported to their various schools to commence work. She disclosed that, on the third day after receiving the letters, they were informed by some people that the letters were fake and therefore, they were coming to pick them back. The response from the GSFP Source: ModernGhana.com Source: UGC The victims are therefore protesting Shannis conduct as a public officer and demand a full investigation into the matter by the police and Bureau of National Investigations (BNI). Meanwhile Shanni is yet to respond to this development. She earlier declined to comment but has now declared her intention to respond in due course. READ ALSO: Wild reactions from Ghanaians as late MP's family reveal the cause of his death Yenkasa: Some Musicians Share Thoughts on Kuami Eugene's 'Rockstar' Album| #Yencomgh Use the comments section below to share your views on this story. Do you have a story to share or you have information for us? Get featured on YEN.com.gh. Message us on Facebook or Instagram Source: Yen A Member of Parliament (MP) with the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has said the media is more effective in keeping the government on its toes than the Minority. Thomas Nyarko Ampem, who is MP for Asuogyaman constituency in the Eastern Region, believes the media deserves praise for its efforts in keeping the government accountable. According to him, there have been many occasions where pressure from the media has managed to get the government to act. Thomas Nyarko Ampem. Source: Myjoyonline.com Source: UGC READ ALSO: Ibukun Awosika denies granting interview that claims she kneels to greet husband He pointed to the cancellation of a plan to line up school children to greet the President on his tour of the Eastern region as a perfect case. Mr. Ampem, therefore, believes that the media is doing a better job at keeping the government in check than the Minority. so I am grateful to the mediayou are doing wonderfully well. I feel that the media is putting the government on its toes more than the Minority..., he told Accra-based Joy FM. Earlier this week, a notice from the District Education Director, Mavis Yirenkyi, ordered teachers in some 11 basic schools and a senior high school within the district make sure their pupils are available to greet the President on his arrival in the region. However, the directive was later cancelled after it was widely criticised by a large section of the public. Explaining why the sudden U-turn, the PRO of the Education Ministry, Ekow Vincent Assafuah, said the directive was not sanctioned by the Ghana Education Service. But Mr. Ampem believes it was pressure from the media that got the government to overturn this decision. READ ALSO: No Voltarian in frontline NDC leadership 'disturbing' - Rawlings This, he said, is very laudable, adding that actions that are unproductive to national development must not be condoned. I am happy that they [headmasters] are calling me back this morning that the Education Director says they should cancel the programme, the Asuogyaman MP said. I dont see what students lining up waving at the President will add to his visit, he added. Yenkasa: Some Musicians Share Thoughts on Kuami Eugene's 'Rockstar' Album| #Yencomgh READ ALSO: 4 reasons why the Ghana Police Service needs serious reforms Your stories and photos are always welcome. Send us a message via YEN's official Facebook page. Source: Yen Two key suspects in the murder of a final-year student of the Effiduase Senior High Commercial School [EFFISCO] in the Ashanti Region have been arrested by the police. According to Myjoyonline.com report sighted by YEN.com.gh, the duo, who were arrested disclosed to the police that they had sleepless nights after committing the crime two months ago. The suspects are 22-year old Emmanuel Otu, aka Linking, and 20 year old Emmanuel Agyekum, also known as Essien. 'Ghost' of murdered student 'leads' suspects to police (Photo credit: Myjoyonline.com) Source: UGC READ ALSO: Investigator narrates how she unmasked Nigerian scammer who posed as a US soldier They revealed how they planned to travel outside the country but failed to do so as they were restrained by the alleged ghost of the student they killed. Effiduase District Commander, Superintendent Asare Bediako told Nhyira FM the two in their caution statement to police indicated they were being haunted by ghost of the of the former Business student of EFFISCO they allegedly killed. "We [police] don't believe in spiritualism but according to them, they were always haunted by the ghost of the young man [ Derrick Agyei]. They wanted to go out of the country but the man was asking them to come back and hand themselves to the police. That's what we had from them," Supt. Asare Bediako said. READ ALSO: Man catches wife red-handed in bed with student (Video) He added that, the two suspects narrations cant be considered in court admitting that the victims ghost played a role in their arrest. Meanwhile, YEN.com.gh reported a story of how residents of Ablekuma in Accra claimed that the ghost of a woman who was murdered by her husband at Ablekuma in Accra has written a letter to him. READ ALSO: Sister Derby allegedly mocks Fella Makafui after her ex-boyfriend seized her cars (Video) Two months ago, the remains of the said ghost was found at Ablekuma-Block factory after her husband allegedly butchered her due to an alleged cheating in their marriage. The husband, Yaw Mensah, was arrested and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment. After the death of the woman, tenants in the house in which the incident took place have been complaining of some scary events happening ever since the lady passed on. Street Quiz Ghana: What Would Be Your Message to the President Should You Meet Him? | Yen.com.gh: Your stories and photos are always welcome. Send us a message via YEN's official Facebook page. Source: Yen Pastor Emmanuel Nana Appiah, a junior pastor of Badu-Kobi's Glorious Wave Chapel International who was seen in a trending video believed to have been taken after he was caught with a married woman has spoken. The preacher indicated that the issue was a set up be a woman he named as Deborah who lured him into her house under the pretext of being very ill. According to Appiah, Deborah, the lady who set him up was from Kumasi. He added that he arranged for someone from the UK to marry her but they had to cancel because she was not honest to the man who intended to marry her and his mother. Pastor Appiah. Credit: Ghpage.com Source: UGC READ ALSO: Video: Nigel Gaisie reportedly predicted death of Kyeremanteng Agyarko He narrated that he was called last Friday by Deborah to come and check up on her because she was sick. Appiah however turned down the invitation and went ahead to send money to Deborah from his wifes phone. Deborah however kept begging him to come and see here so he (Appiah) gave in and went to see after she called him on a video call and she was captured groaning on the floor. The story continued that he went to visit her on Monday, November 19, 2018 only to meet her sweating profusely. Deborah requested to take her bath before they prayed together. She returned from the bathroom with just a towel covering her and before he (Appiah) got the chance to send her to go and change, another woman from the kitchen and some men pounced on him and started attacking him. Not long ago, YEN.com.gh reported a story after the picture of the supposed married woman who was 'caught' with Appiah went viral on social media. READ ALSO: Popular prophet allegedly paid woman to set up Badu Kobi's junior Pastor - Woman reveals Reports that made rounds on social media, indicated that Pastor Appiah, popularly known as Biblical, was caught on a Sunday after church service in the home of a supposed married woman. In the video sighted by YEN.com.gh, the junior pastor who was in a white singlet and white pair of boxer shorts was seen being manhandled by some men. The story accompanying the video indicated that Appiah was caught while he was trying to sleep with a lady in her room. The young lady's sister who came to meet them got angry and Appiah struck her in the face. So she started screaming and some guys in the area heard and came to her rescue. It was after the guys realized that Appiah was a pastor that they started manhandling him to the point of trying to remove his clothes. In his defence, Appiah could be heard saying that he was innocent and that the lady had plotted with others to get him killed. READ ALSO: Late MPs family reveals the cause of his death Watch: Yenkasa: Some Musicians Share Thoughts on Kuami Eugene's 'Rockstar' Album| #Yencomgh Click here to get the latest exciting English Premier League news. Get match highlights, reports, photos & videos all in one place. Source: Yen A medical doctor based in Ho in the Volta region has taken to taxi driving after being denied a practicing licence for years. Richard Abrahamani Seidu says he was trained as a neurosurgeon in China but has found it difficult to practice in Ghana due to the refusal of the Medical and Dental Council (MDC) to grant him a practicing license. The aggrieved doctor has, therefore, petitioned the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to look into the matter. Dr. Richard Abrahamani Seidu (in taxi) returned to Ghana in June 2018 after completing his PhD programme. Source: UGC READ ALSO: No Voltarian in frontline NDC leadership 'disturbing' - Rawlings According to him, he applied for the license in 2015 but has since received no feedback from the MDC. Dr. Seidu said he has taken up a job as a taxi driver in Ho as he awaits a response from the Council. Accra-based Joy FM reports that he converted his vehicle, a Nissan Almera, into a taxi cab. The back screen has the inscription Only God. Explaining why he has that inscription at the back of his car, he said: In fact, the human beings I am fighting are stronger than me so I have to rely on God to fight this battle. He narrated that he has also applied to several universities but was denied on each occasion because he doesnt have clearance from the MDC. Its not enough [what I make from driving] but I cant do anything; I needed to make a living. I have come back [from abroad] and I need to make a living and I cant go and steal too, Dr. Seidu lamented. He maintains that the MDC has violated his fundamental human rights and freedoms by not allowing him to participate in the certification examination. He has also accused the MDC of abusing the powers vested in it as a council and wants CHRAJ to rectify the situation. READ ALSO: 4 things you didn't know about the late Ayawaso West Wuogon NPP MP According to him, he wants to practice in Ghana as a neurosurgeon since he has no intentions of leaving the country. I therefore, would be grateful if the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) via the National Human Right Institution couldcompel the MDC to all my letters detailing me the way forward with my certification, compel the MDC to organise the special examination for me since they have delayed me for 3 years now, he added. Responding to this, the Registrar at the Medical and Dental Council, Dr. Eli Atikpui, said the Council is not satisfied with Dr. Seidus training and will therefore not be pressured into granting him certification. In his case the answer is no. The training does not satisfy our standard and we cannot certify him, he is quoted as saying by Myjoyonline. Ghana News Today: Madina-Adenta Footbridge Demo | Yen.com.gh READ ALSO: 4 reasons why the Ghana Police Service needs serious reforms Click here to get the latest exciting English Premier League news. Get match highlights, reports, photos & videos all in one place. Source: Yen.com.gh The Ashanti Regional chairman of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Bernard Antwi Boasiako, has described the General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia as a man in his menopause with regards to politics. Antwi Boasiako, a man popularly known as Chairman Wontumi, is quite famous for fiery comments against political opponents. Peacefmonline.com reports that Wontumi was speaking on Okay Fm's "Ade Akye Abia" with host Kwame Tikese. The regional chairman boasted that those who won at the recent NDC party elections are those he hoped would. An outcome he says was the best for the NPP's chances in 2020. READ ALSO: Tourism Ministers black dress causes stir on social media Chairman Wontumi has a penchant for making fiery comments about political opponents. Photo credit: Google Photos Source: UGC Wontumi is quooted as saying: "The likes of Asiedu Nketia whose utterances and poor decisions has caused NDC in so many ways and this prove to the fact that he [Asiedu Nketia] together with other members of the NDC are suffering from menopause ". He continued that they lack the capacity to function effectively and that the NPP is not perturbed about the new crop of NDC leadership. Explaining what he meant by Asiedu Nketia's menopause, Wontumi noted that the NDC scribe has been taking decisions that expose his party to public ridicule. READ ALSO: Video of NPP MP Kyeremateng Agyarko dancing to Ebony's 'Sponsor' song pops up Watch: Yenkasa: Some Musicians Share Thoughts on Kuami Eugene's 'Rockstar' Album| #Yencomgh Click here to get the latest exciting English Premier League news. Get match highlights, reports, photos & videos all in one place. Source: Yen.com.gh The Ghana Educational Service (GES) has sacked Robert Seppey who was the headmaster at Adumanu D/A Basic School in the Asikuma Odoben Brakwa District in the Ashanti Region. Seppey was sacked after he was captured in a leaked video that went viral in January 2018, having sex with a 19-year old student. Seppey was dismissed alongside nine other teachers after they were found to have engaged in various forms of sexual misconduct and stealing. Robert Seppey (Photo credit: Citinewsroom.com) Source: UGC According to a statement by GES, Seppeys actions breached aspects of the Code of Professional Conduct of the Ghana Education Service. READ ALSO: Photos: 5 schoolgirls killed by articulator truck at Assin Atobease buried In January 2018, the video Seppey engaged in the sexual act with a female student went viral on social media. The video drew lots of reactions as many creating a new craze out of it, known as the kitchen stool challenge. It was reported that Sepey allegedly recorded the video himself, and went into hiding after the incident that generated public attention and dominated social media platforms as well as the traditional media. READ ALSO: Only PhD holders to teach in universities - Education Minister Due to his action, Seppey was subsequently suspended in absentia as the headmaster of the school and several appeals by the GES for him to return proved futile until he returned later to face a committee that was investigating the matter. However, the committees investigating the outcome didnt favour Seppey as he has officially been sacked by the GES. Per the committees report, the student completed junior high school (JHS) at Adumanu D/A Basic School where Seppey was the headmaster until his suspension. READ ALSO: 5 reasons why exporting teachers is not a good idea The reports also stressed that the two were in a relationship and the sex was consensual and not rape as was earlier reported. The video was recorded at Adumanu in the head teachers room almost a year ago, the report revealed, adding that, Both of them agreed to record the video while they were having the sex so that they will watch later. The report indicates that, the video was on the students memory chip when her brother took her phone transfer songs. The report said when Seppey was confronted, he confirmed that he is the one in the video and he apologized for the incident. Street Quiz Ghana: What Would Be Your Message to the President Should You Meet Him? | Yen.com.gh: Click here to get the latest exciting English Premier League news. Get match highlights, reports, photos & videos all in one place. Source: Yen The Electoral Commission has this Friday evening cancelled the candidature of two candidates for the by-election of District Chairperson, Busia District. NRMs Boniface Paul Oguttu has been disqualified from the race on grounds that the names in the nomination papers he presented during nominations do not match the names on the requisite academic documents accompanying his nomination papers. The candidature of Democratic Partys Deogratius Hasubi Njoki has been cancelled because the names under which he was nominated are not in the National Voters Register. Stories Continues after ad The race now has only independent candidate candidates; Chrispus Bwire, Tony Ojambo and Geoffrey Wandera. The cancellation of the two strong candidates is a result of counter accusation by each other in petitions presented to the electoral commiasion. Today the NRM Secretary General, Justine Kasule Lumumba, her deputy, Richard Tadwong, party chief communications officer, Rogers Mulindwa and several other bigwigs had pitched camp in Busia to drum up support for their flag bearer, Oguttu. Busia goes yo polls on Novermber, 2018. The seat fell vacant in May this year after the Court of Appeal nullified the election of the incumbent, Friends of the Deputy Speaker of parliament, Jacob Oulanyah, have contributed a total of Shs 10 million towards mothers of children affected by the nodding disease syndrome in Omoro district. Led by the Chairperson National Drug Authority, Dr Medard Bitekyerezo, they handed over their contribution to the Deputy Speaker at his office in Parliament Building on Thursday, 22 November 2018. Dr Bitekyerezo was accompanied by Dr Moses Kamabare, the General Manager National Medical Stores (NMS). Bitekyerezo, who is also the former MP Mbarara Municipality, said that they were prompted to make the contribution following their visit to Omoro district where they found that the women lacked domestic requirements and other needs to care for the children affected by the disease. Stories Continues after ad This money will go into their SACCO and help the women look after themselves and their children. We pray that the children get healed, said Bitekyerezo. The funds will go to Odek Sub County in Omoro district. Oulanyah represents Omoro County in Parliament, and has led a campaign to help communities affected by the nodding disease syndrome in northern Uganda. Several groups have provided various items including mattresses, blankets and food supplements. The contribution follows a visit by the Deputy Speaker to the National Medical Stores (NMS), who in turn visited Omoro and gave food supplements to children suffering from the disease. The supplements containing over 90 nutrients from the Moringa were developed by NMS in conjunction with the Joint Medical Stores (JMS) and Doctors Choice, a non-governmental organization. It was launched in Omoro at the start of November. Oulanyah was grateful that individuals were coming up to support the communities affected by the disease and appealed to government and partners to come to the rescue of the children in the area. He said that the women caring for the sick children cannot take part in any activities as they have to attend and care for the sick children. He said that Doctors Choice would return to Omoro to ascertain the effectiveness of the food supplements after three months. We are looking forward to a positive impact [of the supplements]. Our hope is that they can recover, said Oulanyah adding that With proper nutrition and medication, the children will recover, A company with plans to drill for oil and gas underneath the long-shuttered Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, which prompted a loud outcry from Superior residents worried about the potential disturbance of buried plutonium, said Thursday it will drop all efforts to develop minerals on the edge of the 6,200-acre site northwest of Denver. Highlands Natural Resources Corp., registered in the United Kingdom, issued a statement Thursday afternoon saying the best course of action is to withdraw all of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission spacing and permit applications related to Rocky Flats. This determination comes after extensive discussions with communities and other stakeholders, including people who live in the project area, mineral owners, county, state and federal representatives, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, COGCC and others, the company said. Highlands appreciates the concerns and debate raised by its Jefferson County development plans and is taking the conscious step back from its development plans to affirm its commitment to being a responsible and transparent operator within the state of Colorado. The company already had announced this week that it would withdraw applications it had submitted to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission for 31 wells inside Superior at the corner of Colorado 128 and McCaslin Boulevard, but Highlands hung on to plans for a multi-well pad along Colorado 93 that would rely on horizontal drilling to reach hundreds of feet underground into the refuge. Plans for that remaining pad were put on ice Thursday. The companys Rocky Flats drilling proposal, first revealed in late October, triggered a fierce reaction from nearby Superior residents, who packed town hall on Monday night to condemn the plan. Superior Mayor Clint Folsom told The Denver Post that he had never seen a crowd of that size in town hall before. Theres a great amount of concern among our residents about any type of use at Rocky Flats, the mayor said. In terms of severity of concern, the prospect of drilling in an area with possible plutonium contamination was unprecedented. Highlands proposal came to light just days before the Nov. 6 election, in which voters rejected a highly controversial ballot measure that would have dramatically increased the distance new oil and gas wells would have to be situated from homes, schools, lakes and rivers. Mondays meeting in Superior occurred less than a week after Highlands withdrew applications to drill for oil and gas under Standley Lake and a popular dog park in Westminster. Superior, with a population of 13,000 on Boulder Countys southern border, long has had concerns about any activity be it construction of the Jefferson Parkway or the public opening of the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge that might disturb the soil at Rocky Flats, where triggers for nuclear warheads were manufactured for four decades starting in the early 1950s. The plant, notorious for fires and ground contamination from leaking barrels of plutonium-laced waste stored on site, had to undergo a $7 billion, decade-long cleanup before it could open to the public. A core 1,350-acre area in the middle of the refuge where weapons production occurred is still an active Superfund site that is off-limits to visitors. Officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Department of Energy, which oversees the core central operable unit at Rocky Flats, repeatedly have pointed to testing over the last couple of decades that they say shows that levels of any contaminants at the sprawling site north of Arvada are well within health and safety limits. But allowing drilling and hydraulic fracturing in which a mixture of water, sand and chemicals are injected under high pressure underground to fracture rock and loosen oil and gas deposits to flow back up to the surface so close to where plutonium-contaminated sections of buildings remain buried in place was a red flag too far for many. Even though those building slabs are buried a dozen or so feet deep, and while drilling typically goes down thousands of feet, David Abelson, executive director of the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council, said not enough is known about how intensive industrial activity like drilling might affect the refuges wider hydrology and whether it might increase chances for exposure to contaminants. Any proposal to conduct oil and gas operations that either are on or under the Rocky Flats refuge merit a discussion of what is legal and what the potential risks are, Abelson said. A quick reading of closure documents published after the plant cleanup makes it clear that excavation, drilling, and other intrusive activities below a depth of three feet are prohibited, without prior regulatory review and approval pursuant to the Soil Disturbance Review Plan. But Abelson said those regulations were put into place before horizontal drilling where wells can extend underground laterally for a mile or two from where the well was drilled at the surface became widespread. What about a plan, like the one Highlands put forward, where drilling takes place outside refuge boundaries and reaches back into the refuge thousands of feet below the surface? There is a clear prohibition on drilling inside the old production area, but the new element of horizontal drilling raises questions about how that prohibition might be interpreted, Abelson said. Highlands likely faced rigorous vetting by multiple agencies before it would have been able to proceed with drilling and fracking. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment told The Post that the agencys Hazardous Materials and Waste Management Division would likely have gotten involved with a regulatory review of any proposal involving drilling under the central operable unit. And a spokeswoman with the Denver office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees Superfund sites in the United States, said it was ready to coordinate closely with CDPHE in reviewing proposed activities, technical information, and potential impacts or concerns before any oil and gas operations commence. Jeremy Jackson, a 3-year resident of Superior who helped spearhead citizen opposition to Highlands plans, said people were concerned not only about soil disturbance at the surface but also about possible seismic activity well above the drilling depths. Asking residents to have faith that no accidents can possibly occur when the repercussions of an accident happening on a site like that are life-and-death is a hard pill to swallow, he said. Also, its not necessary. Were not experiencing an energy shortage. There are other sites to drill that arent through a national Superfund site. E-Learning Corgi focuses on distance training and education, from instructional design to e-learning and mobile solutions, and pays attention to psychological, social, and cultural factors. The edublog emphasizes real-world e-learning issues and appropriate uses of emerging technologies. Susan Smith Nash is the Corgi's assistant. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. Recently, according to be able to news from a United states iPhone user Rocky Mohamadali, during the upgrade associated with iPhone X to iOS 12. 1, the telephone suddenly overheated and after that exploded. After posting typically the news of the i phone X explosion on Tweets, it caused a whole lot of attention. iPhone 7 explode An individual mentioned that his iPhone Times has been used regarding 10 months, and it has always been very good. Also, the charging accessories(charger and USB cable) usually are original. For this situation, Apple has responded about Twitter: This's definitely not necessarily expected behavior. There is not any required connection with iOS twelve. 1. And I desire that users will send out this iPhone X back to investigate the main cause of the particular explosion. Since the exploding market of the Samsung Universe Note 7, we are extremely sensitive to mobile telephone security issues, so exactly how to use our cell phone effectively and safely? Here we have compiled several small but very crucial suggestions: one Don't use it while the phone will be charging, especially you are generating a phone call. 2. Use Apple's original battery charger and data cable, or even choose MFi-certified charging accessories. 3. Don't leave your device in an too hot place, for instance a car inside summer. 4. In common, there is no trouble with the iPhone's battery pack consumption for just two years. Nevertheless, based on the individual's make use of, the length of battery-life is different. If your current iPhone battery has been used for more as compared to 2 yrs, it is recommended to check it on a regular basis to avoid serious battery pack aging and cause issues. You can go to be able to the Apple Store to be able to replace a pioneering battery. a few. Don't charge the apple iphone for a long time, overcharging can simply result in typically the battery bulge. If typically the battery has a stick out, do not continue in order to use it. You should substitute a new battery in the Apple Store or repair shop immediately. After charging is usually complete, unplug the phone chrgr and cable. 6. When charging your iPhone through the night, you should let the device stay away from the person and do not charge it on the bed. Recharging your phone in your bed can roll it directly into the bedding, making a protection hazard. 7. When you sense that your phone is hot, please do not occurs phone. 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Held under the theme of Innovative and Alternative Finance for Business and Infrastructure Development in India, the Chennai Roundtable was inaugurated by Shri. O. Panneerselvam, the Hon. Deputy Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu along with the patronage of Chairman WIEF Foundation and Former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia Tun Musa Hitam. The conference key note address was delivered byShri. M.C. Sampath, the Hon. Minister for Industries, Tamil Nadu.The event was hosted by United Economic Forum (UEF) Chamber of Commerce, which is an apex body in Tamil Nadu promoting trade and commerce, entrepreneurship, FDI and infrastructure development. The forum which was attended by over 600 delegates, witnessed more than 20 speakers representing 12 countries, presenting a cross section of topics on the Alternative Finance model. Sharing the Sri Lankan success story and its journey in to Islamic Finance, Amana Bank CEO Mohamed Azmeer contributed as a panelist to the session on Islamic Finance: Learnings from Abroad along with other panelists representing India, Malaysia, Australia and Italy. At the panel discussion Azmeerhighlighted that Sri Lanka is globally ranked 13thin the Islamic Finance Development Index published by Thomson Reuters and ICD studying 131 countries involved in Islamic Finance, while also being the highest ranked non-Muslim nation in the index. Azmeer also went on to note that out of the 131 countries studied, 84 countries were non-Muslim majority countries, showcasing evidence to the attraction and demand for Islamic Finance crossing the platform of Faith Based Appeal and reaching out to a higher platform of Economic Appeal across the world. Further presenting the case for alternative finance, Azmeer shared how the universal value proposition of Islamic finance can help economic growth as it always stands integrated with either the real sector, external sector or fiscal sector of the economy, ushering in financial discipline, unlike a conventional system where excessive financial sector growth in isolation could lead to a debt trap. Providing evidence of the economic impact it has created in Sri Lanka, Azmeer mentioned that Islamic Finance has spanned across multiple industries ranging from Infrastructure, Manufacturing, Agriculture, Fisheries, Trading, Shipping & Logistics, Aviation & Transport and Services. Commenting on his participation Amana Bank CEO Mohamed Azmeer said I am indeedhonoured and pleased to have showcased the Sri Lankan success story on Islamic Finance on a global platform at the WIEF Chennai Roundtable. Listening to the various thought provoking sessions,we see great potential for the development of non-interest based participatory financing across the region. 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. Fitch Ratings, in June 2018, affirmed Amana Banks National Long Term Rating of BB(lka) while revising its outlook to Positive from Stable. Amana Bank does not have any subsidiaries, associates or affiliated institutions representing the Bank. HONG KONG (AFP) - Fresh fears over headwinds facing the global economy saw Asian stocks plunge into the red yesterday, in light holiday trading after US markets were closed for Thanksgiving. Chinese shares led the downward charge as Shanghai slumped by more than two percent, with the tech sector hit hard by a Wall Street Journal report that Washington is urging its allies to avoid using equipment from Chinese telecoms giant Huawei. Worsening tensions between the US and China have shattered confidence on global trading floors, and investors were sceptical of new claims from Donald Trump he was hopeful of resolving the bitter trade dispute between the two countries. China wants to make a deal. If we can make a deal, we will, Trump said, ahead of crunch talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the G20 in Argentina next week. Beijing yesterday also signalled its willingness to make progress, with vice minister of commerce Wang Shouwen telling a press briefing he hoped the two economic heavyweights could finally find a solution to solve the problem. But the fractious recent APEC summit - which for the first time ever failed to issue a joint statement after US-China trade tensions boiled over has set an ominous tone for the high-stakes summit in Buenos Aires. The worlds top two economies have been locked in a trade war since the summer, with the US imposing punitive tariffs on Chinese goods worth US$ 250 billion per year. In retaliation, China imposed tariffs on US$ 110 billion of US goods. Washington has threatened to toughen measures even further if the issue is not resolved before January. Investors are waiting for either a conclusion to the trade war or for Xi to present some meaningful stimulus, James Soutter, head of global equities at K2 Asset Management in Melbourne, told Bloomberg News. Chinese companies are actually more sanguine than investors, and in many cases still seeing growth, although not at the levels of last year. Speculation is growing that the Peoples Bank of China will again cut the level of cash that banks must hold in reserve, in a fresh bid to lower financing costs and blunt the economic impact of the trade dispute with the US. The (Chinese) central bank is worried about external shocks in the wake of the cantankerous APEC summit which highlighted a considerable political divide, said Stephen Innes, head of Asia-Pacific trade at trading group Oanda. But moves are unlikely to be substantial given the local markets are effectively in holiday mode. With markets in Japan and India closed for holidays, Hong Kong, Taipei and Seoul all chalked up losses yesterday, as Asian stocks headed for a third week in the red. Sydney, which saw gains of 0.4 percent, was a rare bright spot. European stocks steadied at the start of trading on Friday following another volatile week for markets. London and Paris were flat, while Frankfurt gained 0.1 percent. US markets will open for a partial day Friday. The pound fell yesterday, erasing its gains the previous day after Britain and the European Union struck a crucial draft deal on post-Brexit ties, as uncertainty again triggered unease. But analysts said many forex traders were biding their time. Currencies are also likely to stay within current ranges ahead of the Trump-Xi meeting next week, which could provide a deeper move depending on the outcome, Khoon Goh, head of Asia research at ANZ in Singapore, told Bloomberg News. The bearish mood was exacerbated by fresh falls in crude prices as traders took fright over risks of oversupply, after US authorities announced stockpiles had climbed for the eighth week in a row. The overhang from swelling US inventories which remain freshly minted in trader minds suggests the massive crude glut continues to outweigh OPEC output cut, Innes said. A couple from China (R) looks at another tourist praying at the Erawan shrine in central Bangkok BANGKOK (AFP) - A ferry disaster that killed dozens of Chinese tourists in Thailand earlier this year has sent visitor numbers plunging from the kingdoms single largest market. The Chinese make up about a quarter of Thailands 35 million annual visitors who are drawn by cheap beach vacations, renowned food and Bangkok nightlife. But in July a ferry carrying mostly Chinese tourists back to the resort island of Phuket sank killing 47. August recorded an immediate dip of 12 percent and September brought 15 percent fewer Chinese tourists than the same months last year. October was the hardest hit, with the tourism ministry reporting Wednesday a same-period decrease of about 20 percent or 160,000 people from 2017. About US$ 476 million was lost in spending over the three-month period, statistics showed. Thailand has seen tourism slowdowns following a bombing in 2015 in central Bangkok and a military coup in 2014. But the prolonged slump of the past few months has been a wake-up call for Thailands tourism operators, Paul Pruangkarn of the Pacific Asia Travel Association said, as it has pushed the sector to mull its overreliance on one country. Too many people have always been focusing too much on getting Chinese tourists, said Pruangkarn, whose association represents hundreds of businesses around the region. He predicted tourist numbers will ultimately bounce back. Since the Phuket tragedy the government has rolled out inducements aimed at regaining trust and making travel easier. The immigration bureau exempted Chinese tourists from paying a US$ 60 visa-on-arrival fee from November to mid-January. Last month four immigration officials were demoted from their position following a probe that found they were demanding tips from Chinese tourists to fast track their entry. Assures all lenders prompt settlement of next year dues Says loan payments can be charged on the Consolidated Fund Says working closely with CB for ISB payments, building a buffer The Finance and Economic Affairs Ministry has assured lenders that Sri Lanka will honour its dues during the financial year beginning from January 1, 2019, despite the current political impasse triggered by the sacking of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe by President Maithripala Sirisena on October 26. The situation worsened by the subsequent dissolution of the Parliament by President Sirisena, which is now being challenged at the countrys highest court of law. The Parliament is in-charge of Sri Lankas finances and the current administration headed by Sirisena and former President Mahinda Rajapaksa as the Prime Ministerwho replaced Wickremesingheis yet to present a budget for year 2019. The Finance and Economic Affairs Ministry however in a statement on Wednesday said loans raised under specific laws can be settled with the funds at the Consolidated Fund. The Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) has raised loans in terms of the provisions of specific laws including the Registered Stock and Securities Ordinance, No. 7 of 1937, Local Treasury Bills Ordinance, No. 8 of 1923 and the Foreign Loans Act, No. 29 of 1957. As such, any dues on such loans that may arise, in accordance with the respective terms and conditions attributed to such borrowings, can validly be charged on the Consolidated Fund as provided for, in the Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, and such specific laws as noted, the Finance and Economic Affairs Ministry statement noted. Therefore, the GOSL wishes to assure all lenders that all such dues will be met on the due dates as has been the time honoured tradition of the country where we have maintained an unblemished track record of debt payments, it added. The ministry further said they are working closely with the Central Bank to ensure that adequate buffers are created and maintained in view of the dues that will arise in 2019, specially the repayment of the International Sovereign Bonds (ISB). Sri Lanka has to settle US$ 1 billion sovereign bond maturing on January 15, 2019 and another US$ 500 million sovereign bond maturing in April. While asserting that Sri Lankas current level of gross official reserves amounting to US$ 7.2 billion is sufficient for the country to meet its external debt obligations in the period ahead, the Central Bank said as a precautionary measure, they have lined up various sources of funding to settle the countrys debt obligations. Central Bank Governor Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy last week said three State-run banksBank of Ceylon (BOC), National Savings Bank (NSB) and Peoples Bank (PB) would together raise US$ 750 million to US$ 1 billion from the Middle East before end of this year. He said the monies raised would be invested in Sri Lanka Development Bonds. Dr. Coomaraswamy also said the government has now decided to upscale the term loan arrangement with China Development Bank by US$ 500 million. He further said the Central Bank is now in consultation with the central banks of Qatar and Oman for swap arrangements. With all these inflows the Central Bank expects to mobilize US$ 2 billion by February 2019 and hopes to further build up the buffer through US$ 600 million expected as disbursements from bilateral and multilateral agencies next year. The Parliament last month passed a resolution to raise Rs.310 billion (approximately Rs.1.75 billion) by way of loans in or outside Sri Lanka for Active Liability Management by the Government of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka will have to keep on raising funds from various sources at least for the next few years, as the country has to settle US$ 4 billion on average for five years, starting from next year. SL arranges funds to repay US$ 1bn eurobond (Colombo) REUTERS: Sri Lanka has arranged funds to repay US$1 billion for a sovereign bond maturing in January, a finance ministry official said on Wednesday, seeking to assure investors that the islands political crisis will not hurt its ability to service debt. The officials comments came a day after Moodys downgraded Sri Lankas credit rating for the first time in eight years, blaming the crisis for aggravating already problematic finances. A bitter row over President Maithripala Sirisenas sacking of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe last month and the competing influences of China and India have shattered the islands fragile ruling coalition. There is no problem in servicing the debt. Under the constitutional provisions, the debt servicing comes under special laws and not under the parliament appropriation bill. We have already arranged US$ 1 billion for the debt repayment in January, the official told Reuters. The official didnt want to be named as he was not authorised to speak to reporters. Sri Lanka is scheduled to repay over a total of US$ 5.8 billion including US$1.54 billion in interest payments in the next 12 months, the Central Banks latest data showed. Foreign reserves were at US$7.2 billion. The Central Bank in a statement said it had initiated negotiations with central banks of friendly nations to obtain foreign currency swap facilities of sizable amounts. These measures will further strengthen the countrys foreign reserve adequacy, and would enable timely servicing of external obligations while intervening cautiously in the foreign exchange market to prevent a disorderly adjustment of the exchange rate, the Central Bank said. Since the removal of Wickremesinghe, Sirisena has dissolved parliament and called for a fresh election, but the Supreme Court last week ordered a suspension of that decree until it had heard petitions challenging the move as unconstitutional. The political instability has raised fears it will hurt the economy and impact the countrys ability to service its large external debt taken to finance reconstruction following the end the civil war in 2009. Moodys cut Sri Lanka to B2 from B1 and, though there is likely to be relief in Colombo that it put a stable outlook on the new rating, the credit agency underscored ongoing risks. The Finance Ministry said the downgrade would raise the costs of external borrowing, although the country did not have any plans to raise more funds overseas this year. The Chinese Consulate in Karachchi came under attack yestarday (Daily Mail) Four people were killed on Friday when gunmen armed with hand grenades and a suicide vest stormed the Chinese consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi, officials said. The attack was claimed by a separatist group which branded Beijing an oppressor. Pakistani authorities said that security forces had secured the area after the attack, the latest assault on Chinese nationals in the country, where Beijing has poured billions of dollars into one of the largest projects in its massive Belt and Road programme. China strongly condemned the attack and asked Pakistan to take measures to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens and institutions in the country, as well as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) mega-project. Three gunmen tried to enter the consulate in the southern port city, but were intercepted by guards at a checkpoint, Karachi police chief Ameer Sheikh told AFP. They were carrying Kalashnikovs. First, they hurled a small (grenade) and then started firing, said a guard at a nearby house who witnessed the attack. Police said two of their personnel were killed, along with a father and son from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, who were seeking Chinese visas and were caught in the crossfire. At least one of the attackers was wearing a suicide vest which did not detonate, another senior police official said. Islamabad accuses its eastern neighbour India of funding and arming Baloch separatists, and of targeting development projects in the province, particularly CPEC.Delhi, which has denied the claims, swiftly condemned Fridays attack. KARACHI AFP Nov23, 2018 Pakistan PM orders inquiry into attack ISLAMABAD REUTERS, Nov 23 2018 - Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday ordered an inquiry into the attack on Chinas consulate in the coastal city of Karachi in which two policemen were killed. Such incidents will never be able to undermine Pak-China relationship, the statement added. By D.B.S. Jeyaraj The Parliamentary proceedings of Sri Lanka, known formerly as Ceylon, have been the focus of my interest from a fairly early age. It began when I was in the Upper-fourth D class (Grade Seven) at S. Thomas College, Mt.Lavinia in 1966. Our English teacher Mrs. Fernando advised us at the beginning of the year to regularly read and comprehend the Parliamentary proceedings published in newspapers. She said by reading the views expressed and exchanged during Parliamentary debates and discussion, we as students could improve our English and enhance our general knowledge about important contemporary issues. I dutifully followed her advice. In those days, the Daily News would publish pages and pages of Parliamentary proceedings. Parliamentary speeches delivered mainly in English by the Parliamentarians of yore would appear in full in the paper. So too would English translations of speeches made in Sinhala and Tamil. I started reading those pages of speeches (some were dreary and dull) with the aid of a Chambers school dictionary presented by my parents. In the beginning, I did not understand a lot of what was said and I would ask my father for further explanations. As time went on and I too grew in years, I began understanding and even relishing those speeches fully. It is the outrageously anti-democratic power grab -- aided and abetted by Maithripala -- of Mahinda Rajapaksa that has impelled Karu to enter the fray and spearhead opposition to the illegal attempts. Karu Jayasuriya by his courageous defiance of Maithripala and Mahinda has demonstrated that he is no pushover as envisaged by his political adversaries As Mrs. Fernando had said those Parliamentary speeches did enhance my vocabulary. They also delighted me with clever phrases and insightful idioms. Above all, they provided multi-faceted knowledge on the many subjects discussed in Parliament. Each issue was approached and analysed from refreshingly different and often contradictory perspectives by an impressive array of political leaders like Dudley Senanayake, J.R. Jayawardene, C.P. de Silva, I.M.R.A. Iriyagolla, W. Dahanayake, Philip Gunawardena, Dr. S.A. Wickramasinghe, Pieter Keuneman, Dr. N.M. Perera, Dr. Colvin R. de Silva, Leslie Gunawardena, Bernard Soysa, Maithripala Senanayake, T.B. Ilangaratne, G.G. Ponnambalam, S.J.V. Chelvanayagam, Dr. E.M.V. Naganathan, A. Amirthalingam, S. Rasamanickam, M. Sivasithamparam, V. Navaratnam, V.N. Navaratnam, V. Dharmalingam, M.H. Naina Marikkar, A.C.S. Hameed, Bakeer Markar and S. Thondaman during the 1965-70 period. One learnt a lot about issues from those Parliamentarians and enjoyed the process of learning too. Sadly, as the years progressed, the quantity of MPs increased while there was a qualitative drop. Many of the giants got defeated at the polls at each election. Meanwhile, Parliament too shifted from the vintage colonial structure at Galle Face to a brand new, modern edifice at Duwa in Kotte. The old order of MPs gave way to a newer breed. Some erudite Parliamentarians certainly entered the House from time to time. There were occasional flashes of brilliance in arguments and repartee. Some MPs did make excellent speeches that continued to enlighten people such as me. But these were few and far between. An overall decline of Parliamentary speeches was visible and audible. I am not referring to the fact that speeches were being delivered less in English and more in Sinhala and Tamil. What I mean by a drop in standards was the substance and style, the content and tone in speeches. There was a conspicuous contrast between past and present in Parliamentary speeches. This was reflected in the newspapers too. With the price of newsprint rising, newspapers could no longer publish Parliament speeches in full as they had done earlier. More importantly, there were few speeches that were worthy of being published in full. So, Parliament reports became reduced in size. Even then, they were generally insipid. Very few of those speeches were interesting or informative. By the time I entered journalism and did an occasional stint of Parliament reporting -- I was never a Parliamentary correspondent -- coverage of Parliament had become sheer drudgery. Still we went to Parliament because we were assigned to do so by our Editors. As for me, Parliament was a place where you could eat superb food, socialise with fellow scribes and engage in conversations with MPs when pursuing a news story. Senior Parliamentary reporters would frequently take a nostalgic trip to the past and regale us younger journalists with anecdotes about the giant Parliamentarians of the past. Some could even quote passages from old speeches or extracts from the verbal duels between the by gone titans. They would yearn nostalgically for the glorious past and we would sigh for those long gone days. Veteran Parliamentary interpreters too would share their experiences. Some Tamil -English interpreters like Sellappa Nadarajah and Thambippillai would tell me what an intellectual challenge and aesthetic pleasure it was to interpret those speeches from one language to another. AJITH SAMARANAYAKE This was in the latter part of the eighties in the twentieth century. I relocated to Canada and am now following Sri Lankan Parliamentary proceedings mainly on the internet because it is necessary to keep track of what is happening there to understand contemporary Lankan politics. One is able to discern that Parliamentary reporters are struggling to write good copy out of not-so-good speeches. The lobby column which was the jewel in Parliamentary reporting crown seems non-existent. I see only Chandani Kirinde of Sunday Times trying valiantly to keep the flag flying every week. I am reminded of my departed friend and colleague Ajith Samaranayake whose lobby columns in the Daily Observer were avidly read by me before I had become a journalist. I once told Ajith that I did not enjoy his lobby columns as I had done earlier. The gentle Ajith who seldom spoke derogatorily of anyone said, That is because nowadays I have nothing much to write about no men? This then encapsuled the decline in Parliamentary speeches and by extension the Parliamentary standards. This slow and steady deterioration of Parliamentary standards was explosively exposed to the world at large by the recent happenings in the House by Diyawanna Oya. While the rowdyism displayed by some MPs was deplorable the cardinal sin was the premeditated organised attempt to attack the Speaker physically. The sordid events that took place on Black Friday in the House by the Diyawanna Oya reveal very clearly that a group of Parliamentarians engaged in a pre-planned conspiracy to humiliate and physically attack Speaker Karunarathne Jayasuriya, known generally as Karu Jayasuriya. So serious was the situation that for the first time in Lankas legislative history, the Honourable Speaker had to be escorted into the chamber and later outside by the police. The threat posed was not from external elements but by so-called representatives of the people ensconced within the portals of Parliament itself. Not all the waters of Diyawanna Oya will be sufficient to wash off the black mark imposed on November 16, 2018. What makes the attack on the Speaker most terrible is the symbolic impact of that dastardly act. In recent times, some of the words and deeds of Speaker Karu Jayasuriya have been termed controversial. As is the rule in most disputes there is one school of thought which supports the Speaker while another is critical of him. The crux of the matter however is that even if -- and that is a very big IF -- Karu was wrong and had acted incorrectly, there was no justification for an organised attack on him. The Speaker symbolises Parliamentary democracy and an attack on the Speaker can only be construed as an assault on Parliamentary democracy. CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS The chain of events ensuing from the time President Maithripala Sirisena arbitrarily removed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and replaced him with ex-President Mahinda Rajapaksa is now well-known. So too are the details of the Constitutional crisis that Parliament in general and the Speaker in particular are currently embroiled in. What this writer intends at this juncture is to focus on the historic importance of the Speaker in a Parliamentary democracy and provide an overview of the Speakers who have held such office in Ceylon/Sri Lanka from Sir A.F. Molamure to Karu Jayasuriya. An interesting aspect of the roles played by various Speakers in the past is that several of them irked the powers that be through their sturdy independence and firm adherence to the powers and privileges of Parliament. In that context, Karu Jayasuriya is not the first Speaker to speak truth to power and hopefully he wont be the last either. The office or institution of Speaker is of crucial importance occupying a pivotal position in a Parliamentary democracy. So respected is the position that MPs refer to him or her as Honourable Speaker or Mr/Madam Speaker. It has been said of the office of the Speaker that while the Members of Parliament represent the individual constituencies, the Speaker represents the full authority of the House itself. He or she symbolises the dignity and power of the House over which he or she is presiding. There have been occasions when the Speaker has acted as Head of State. In terms of protocol, the Speaker ranks as the fourth highest in the land. Indias first Premier Jawaharlal Nehru summed up the position and role of the Speaker best when he observed: The Speaker represents the House. He/she represents the dignity of the House, the freedom of the House and because the House represents the nation, in a particular way, the Speaker becomes a symbol of nations freedom and liberty. Therefore, that should be an honoured position, a free position and should be occupied always by persons of outstanding ability and impartiality. Viewed against the backdrop of Nehrus comment extolling the symbolic importance of the Speaker the attack on Sri Lankas Speaker Karu Jayasuriya could be construed as an affront to the dignity and freedom of Parliament and also a symbolic insult to a nations freedom and liberty. The Speaker of a legislative body is its chair or the presiding officer. Contrary to what the title of Speaker suggests, the Speaker does not speak or participate in a debate. The term Speaker was first used in England in 1377. The Speakers role has evolved over the centuries in the mother of all Parliaments. Although the monarchs servants in the earlier stages, the role of the Speaker got transformed as a result of the power struggle between sovereign and legislature. The defining moment came in 1642 during Charles the firsts reign. WILLIAm LENTHALL King Charles entered Parliament demanding the arrest of five Parliamentarians opposing him. Speaker William Lenthall knelt before the monarch respectfully but firmly refused to hand them over. He said he was only the Houses servant and would only follow its direction. Todays Speakers face no danger as in those times. Their role has changed too. They remain at the centre of debate between opposing sides but are more like umpires. Their chief role is to enforce the rules of Parliamentary procedure and oversee Parliamentary administration. Speakers are also guardians and defenders of Parliamentary privileges and the rights of Parliamentarians. The sanctity and supremacy of Parliament cannot be maintained by written law or procedure alone. It also depends on the behavioural norms of legislators. Constitutional conventions have contributed greatly to enhance and preserve the dignity of the Speakers office. One such tradition being followed even now is that of the proposer and seconder of the winner escorting the newly-elected Speaker to his chair. The Speaker is in a sense the official Parliamentary spokesperson. The custom of electing a Speaker began in the British Parliament during the 14th century. The earlier Speakers were those who conveyed the monarchs commands to Parliament and Parliaments wishes to the sovereign. The Speakers role was hazardous in those days. Six Speakers lost their lives in the early days because of the emerging conflict between monarch and Parliament. Some Speakers were beheaded for bringing bad news from Parliament to the monarch. Thus, many Speakers had to be forced in taking office. Nowadays, there is no such danger but newly-elected Speakers in some Western legislatures commemorate this tragic yet proud aspect of institutional history by pretending to struggle as they are led reluctantly to the Speakers chair . In Sri Lanka, we still maintain the tradition of proposer and seconder escorting the new Speaker. But he does not pretend to struggle. Thus, we saw the current Speaker Karu Jayasuriya being escorted to the chair by the proposer Ranil Wickremesinghe and the seconder Nimal Siripala de Silva. However, after the hazardous experiences encountered by Karu Jayasuriya, future Speakers may really be reluctant and would have to be forced to take office. STATE COUNCIL Sri Lanka or Ceylon as it was known earlier has had Speakers from the time we got universal franchise and territorial representation in 1931 under British rule. The Donoughmore Commission ushered in the right to vote for all men and women above 21 years of age. It abolished the system of communal representation in favour of territorial representation and introduced electorates. Fifty electorates were demarcated and elections were held in 1931 for the legislature known then as the State Council. Another eight seats were set up for Europeans in the council. The party system had not taken root then and candidates contested as individuals. Following British tradition elections to the office of Speaker was set up to preside over sessions of the State Council the first Speaker of which in colonial Ceylon was Sir Alexander Francis Molamure. He was the first Speaker of independent Ceylon too. Elections were held for the post of first Speaker of the State Council on July 31, 1931. Incidentally, four seats from the Northern Province were vacant at that time due to the boycott of elections in Jaffna. The Ceylonese A.F. Molamure defeated the European Sir Stewart Schneider by 35 votes to 18. Later, Molamure was conferred the knighthood by King George. A fresh breeze blew in the musty corridors of power in 1994 when the 17- year long UNP rule was terminated in 1994 by a Peoples Alliance (PA) Government led by Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. In 1994 it was the turn of Rajaratas K.B. Ratnayake to be Speaker Sir Francis Molamure was a dashing personality who was first elected uncontested to Dedigama constituency in 1931. It is said that he captivated many a damsels and dames heart through his delightfully witty conversation. Sir Francis Molamure was reported to have inquired once from the British Governors wife thus; May I light my cigarette with the light in the eye of my lady? The Governor, His Excellency Sir Reginald Stubbs was not amused and banned Molamure from all governor functions thereafter. This incident and certain other personal matters of a financial nature created a situation where Sir Francis Molamure opted to quit. He absented himself from State Council proceedings for three months and then resigned as Speaker on personal grounds. Sir Molamure did not contest Dedigama in 1936. Dudley Senanayake contested and won in Dedigama at the 1936 State Council elections. Sir Francis Molamure re-entered the State Council in 1943 through the by-election at Balangoda where he defeated Sirimavo Bandaranaikes father Barnes Ratwatte Dissawe by a majority of over 17,000 votes. Sir Francis Molamure was succeeded as Speaker in December 1934 by Forrester A. Obeysekera who was then the Deputy Speaker. He served as Speaker from December 1934 to December 1935. The State Council member for Avissawella was later knighted and became Sir Forrester Obeysekera. The incumbent Speaker however was defeated in the March 1936 State Council elections by the firebrand Philip Gunawardena who was renowned later as the Father of Marxism in Ceylon/Sri Lanka. SIR WAITHILINGAM DURAISWAMY The new State Council elected in March 1936 saw Waithilingam Duraiswamy representing Kayts in the north becoming Speaker. Subsequently, he too was knighted and became Sir Waithilingam Duraiswamy. Duraiswamys election had an ulterior purpose. It was in 1936 that D.S. Senanayake and Sir Baron Jayatilleke mathematically manipulated the executive committee election system through a permutation -- combination formula and got a board of ministers elected comprising only Sinhalese. Since Duraiswamys stature entitled him to a ministry appointing him Speaker was the only way to keep him out of the seven member Pan Sinhala board of ministers. Sir Waithilingam Duraiswamy served as Speaker of the second State Council throughout its duration from March 1936 to July 1947. He served as Speaker for a record number of eleven years as the duration of the council was extended due to World War II. He is the only Tamil to have served as speaker before or after independence. Ceylon gained dominion status in 1947 and elections were held for the first time to the House of Representatives or Parliament. Sir A.F. Molamure who re-entered the State Council in 1943 through Balangoda won the same electorate contesting on the UNP ticket in the 1947 elections. While the UNP proposed Sir Francis Molamure as Speaker, the opposition consisting of leftists, independents and MPs from the All-Ceylon Tamil Congress and Ceylon Indian Congress nominated the independent member from Kurunegala, H. Sri Nissanka for the post of Speaker. Molamure beat Sri Nissanka by 58 votes to 41 and became the first Speaker of Independent Ceylon. Unfortunately, Sir Francis Molamure died in harness in January 1951. Actually he collapsed while being seated in the Speakers chair. He was hospitalised and passed away two days later. Deputy Speaker Albert Peiris representing Nattandiya succeeded him. Subsequently, he too was knighted and became Sir Albert Peiris. Ceylons first Prime Minister D.S. Senanayake died in March 1952 and his son Dudley became premier. Dudley Senanayake dissolved Parliament in April and went to the polls the same year. There has been a tradition in the UK of an incumbent Speaker being uncontested in a Parliamentary election. Newly-independent Ceylon tried to emulate Britain in this practice in 1952. When Albert Peiris contested again in Nattandiya in 1952, no registered political party fielded a candidate against him. However, an independent candidate W.I. Hugh Fernando not only challenged Albert Peiris but also gave him a huge fright. Albert Peiris squeaked to victory over Hugh Fernando with a meagre majority of only 306 votes in a straight fight. HAMEED HUSSAIN SHEIKH ISMAIL Sir Albert Peiris was elected Speaker again and the UNP member of Puttalam, Hameed Hussain Sheikh Ismail became the Deputy Speaker. When elections were held again in 1956, Sir Albert Peiris contested again on the UNP ticket from Nattandiya. All political parties refrained from pitting candidates against him. Hugh Fernando however contested again as an independent and defeated Albert Peiris by 3,097 votes. Deputy Speaker H.S.S. Ismail had contested as an independent candidate in Puttalam and won. The new premier, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike opted to have Ismail as Speaker. Thus, the country got its first Muslim Speaker. Ismail served from March 1956 to December 1959. He did not contest the elections in 1960. The March 1960 elections saw the UNP get 50 and SLFP 46 in a 157-member Parliament of 151 elected and 6 appointed MPs. Dudley Senanayake formed a minority government in a hung Parliament. The first trial of strength was the Speaker election. The UNP proposed Nattandiya MP Sir Albert Peiris. The opposition nominated T.B. Subasinghe the left leaning independent MP from Katugampola. Sir Albert got only 60 votes while Subasinghe obtained 93 and became Speaker. When the new governments throne speech was presented, it was defeated by 85 votes to 61. Parliament was dissolved and fresh elections were held in July 1960. T.B. Subasinghe contested again as incumbent Speaker after being in office for a short period of four weeks. All political parties followed the British tradition again and did not field a candidate against Subasinghe who contested as an independent. However, the SLFP candidate at the March 1960 polls Leelananda Weerasinghe defied party diktat and contested in Katugampola as an independent in July 1960. He defeated Subasinghe by 707 votes. The SLFP formed the government in July 1960 and Sirimavo Bandaranaike became the worlds first woman Prime Minister. Kandyan stalwart and Nawalapitiya MP Pelpola became Speaker. R.S. Pelpola resigned as Speaker in 1964 and was appointed Minister of Posts and Telecommunications in Mrs. Bandaranaikes Cabinet. He was succeeded by Deputy Speaker Hugh Fernando who was now representing Wennappuwa in Parliament. The liberal Hugh Fernando who crossed over later to the UNP aroused the ire of the Bandaranaike Government during the last days of that coalition government. An issue arose when the Speaker had to rule whether the sponsorship of a particular bill sent down to Parliament from the Senate was procedurally correct. After adjourning House on account of its unruliness Hugh Fernando reconvened Parliament and ruled that it was correct. Mrs. Bandaranaikes Government was irritated and proceeded to move a resolution that the Speakers ruling was wrong. Dr. N.M. Perera, then finance minister, even threatened Hugh Fernando with a potential no-confidence motion. Ministers Michael Siriwardene and D.S. Goonesekera invaded the Speakers chambers and tried to intimidate Fernando. When opposition leader Dudley Senanayake raised a point of order, the Speaker ruled that a Speakers decision cannot be questioned. Later, Hugh Fernando was to say that this crisis period made him subject to the severest strain in his life. Hugh Fernando later crossed over to the UNP and contested the Nattandiya by-election after Albert Peiris died. Fernando won and became a minister in a UNP government. SIR ALBERT F. PEIRIS The UNP formed a seven-party national government in 1965 and Dudley Senanayake became Prime Minister for the fourth time. Sir Albert F. Peiris was elected Speaker but could not complete the entire duration of his term. He died in September 1967 and Deputy Speaker and Chilaw MP Shirley Corea succeeded him. Tamil Congress MP for Uduppiddy Murugesu Sivasithamparam became Deputy Speaker. Sivasithamparam spoke all three languages. Once when T.B.M. Herath was behaving in an unruly manner, Sivasithamparam pacified the Walapane MP and made him sit down meekly by appealing to him in chaste Sinhala. The 1970 United Front (UF) Government saw Stanley Tillekaratne representing Kotte become Speaker. It was rather ironic because Stanley though in the SLFP then had earlier been a Communist Party MP with a reputation for persistent heckling in Parliament. Now he had to maintain decorum in the House. Stanley Tillekaratne too was subjected to government bullying in 1973 when Cabinet minister Dr. Colvin R. de. Silva warned him publicly during the press takeover issue that Parliament could remove the Speaker for some reason, any reason or no reason at all prior to the Speakers ruling. Regardless of Colvins threat, Stanley too remained firm and gave his independent ruling on the matter. However, to the credit of Colvin, he told Stanley afterwards, Mr. Speaker, we completely disagree with the ruling you have given but since it was from the Chair, we bow to it. Those were the salubrious days of Parliament. Stanley Tillekeratne also achieved special kudos as being the only one to chair a constituent assembly. The UF Government converted Parliament into a constituent assembly (Different from todays Constitutional Assembly) in order to draft the Republican Constitution. As Speaker, Tillekaratne also headed the assembly to draft a new Constitution. Following the adoption of the new Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, the legislature was renamed National State Assembly. Stanley Tillekaratne became Speaker of the first National State Assembly (NSA) in May 1972 and remained so till the fresh elections in July 1977. The UNP led by Junius Richard Jayewardene swept the polls in July 1977 winning 141 of 168 seats in Parliament and once again the MP for Kotte was elected Speaker. Only this time it was not Stanley Tillekaratne but Anandatissa de Alwis of the UNP. This was another first time achievement as Anandatissa de Alwis had never been elected to the legislature before. Earlier in 1965, he had become the first non-civil servant to be permanent secretary of a ministry under then Minister of State J.R. Jayewardene. Now he had become Speaker in his maiden stint as MP. NATIONAL STATE ASSEMBLY Anandatissa de Alwis served as Speaker of the then National State Assembly (NSA) until September 1978 when the new Constitution of Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka came into force. This saw the NSA revert to Parliamentary status. Anandatissa de Alwis remained as Speaker of the new Parliament for a week and then resigned to become Minister of State in the J.R. Jayewardene Government. The Minister of State portfolio was a full fledged Cabinet minister post and is not to be confused with the State Minister posts currently in vogue. Thus, Anandatissa de Alwis like his predecessor Stanley Tillekaratne became one of two who functioned as Speakers of both the National State Assembly as well as Parliament. Likewise, Sir AF Molamure is the only person who was Speaker of both the State Council and Parliament. Being a former journalist himself, Anandatissa Alwis was the darling of the media but it was during his period as Speaker that the Parliamentary Powers and Privileges Act was given new teeth. To demonstrate the power of the law, two senior editors of Lake House were summoned to the House over a mix up of a photo caption allegedly affecting then Foreign Minister A.C.S. Hameed. They were grilled exhaustively by government Parliamentarians and fined. With Anandatissa de Alwis becoming a Cabinet minister, he was succeeded as Speaker by Beruwala MP Bakeer Markar in September 1978. It was during Bakeers tenure that the no-confidence motion against opposition leader of the time, Appapillai Amirthalingam was moved by government MPs in 1981. Such a development was unheard of in Parliamentary history. Government MPs dont bring votes of no-confidence against the leader of the opposition. Not only did Bakeer allow the motion but also failed to restrain the criminal remarks made by MPs against an absent Amirthalingam during the one-sided debate. The lone communist MP Sarath Muttetuwegama walked out of Parliament after criticising Bakeer Markar for letting government backbenchers run Parliament instead of asserting order in the House as Speaker. Bakeer Markar also failed to check the vituperatively racist outpourings of Cyril Mathew in Parliament on more than one occasion. In spite of appeasing hawkish elements in government ranks and disgracing the office of Speaker in the process, Bakeer Markar was unable to continue as Speaker for his full term. After the anti-Tamil pogrom of July 1983, sections of the Buddhist clergy exerted pressure on JR that a Sinhala Buddhist, E.L. Senanayake of Kandy, should replace Bakeer Markar, the Muslim Speaker. This was acceded to and the old trooper EL served as Speaker from 1983 to 1988. Bakeer was made a Cabinet minister. The 1989 to 1994 Parliament saw the veteran Muslim leader from Colombo, M. Haniffa Mohamed function as Speaker. M.H. Mohameds crisis hour came during the impeachment motion moves against Ranasinghe Premadasa by the trio comprising Lalith Athulathmudali, Gamini Dissanayake and G.M. Premachandra. After being initially favourable to the rebels, Mohamed changed track swiftly and switched loyalties in favour of President Premadasa. RAJARATAS K.B. RATNAYAKE A fresh breeze blew in the musty corridors of power in 1994 when the 17- year long UNP rule was terminated in 1994 by a Peoples Alliance (PA) Government led by Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. In 1994 it was the turn of Rajaratas K.B. Ratnayake to be Speaker. The former Anuradhapura MP was an old student of HartleyCollege, Point Pedro and spoke Tamil well. KB was perhaps the first Sinhala Speaker to speak all three languages fluently in the House. The Muslim speakers too were trilingual. The new millennium in 2000 witnessed what was then the rare spectacle of both government and opposition electing a consensus candidate as Speaker. That singular honour went to Chandrika Kumaratungas brother and Ranil Wickremesinghes old school chum Anura Bandaranaike. The PA government had won the elections with a slender majority. Although Anura was then in the UNP and therefore in the opposition, Chandrika and Ranil agreed to make Anura the Speaker, much against the wishes of party stalwarts on both sides. A crisis arose when Kumaratunga prorogued Parliament after she lost her majority. Efforts were on to impeach her and the then Chief Justice Sarath Silva. Sarath Silva tried to restrain the Speaker from accepting the impeachment motion. Although initially hesitant, Anura Bandaranaike ruled later that Parliament was supreme. He said the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to issue interim orders restraining the Speaker in respect of the steps he was empowered to take under Standing Order 78. As stated earlier, the ruling was prompted by the issue of a restraining order on Speaker Anura Bandaranaike by then Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva because there were moves for an impeachment motion against him (Silva) in Parliament. By then, no motion was placed on the Order Paper and only signatures were being collected. The restraining order was based on two fundamental rights petitions heard by a Supreme Court bench presided by then Chief Justice Silva himself. However, the motion did not materialise since the then President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga later dissolved Parliament. Summarising his decision, Speaker Anura Bandaranaike declared that: 1. The Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to issue the interim orders restraining the Speaker of Parliament in respect of the steps he is empowered to take under Standing Order 78 (a). 2. The interim orders dated June 6, 2001are not binding on the Speaker of Parliament. 3. There are no legal obligations to comply with the said orders. Later Anura crossed over to the PA after Parliament was dissolved. JOSEPH MICHAEL PERERA December 2001 elections saw the UNP-led UNF win. Ranil Wickremesinghe became premier while Chandrika Kumaratunga remained executive President while Gampaha District MP Joseph Michael Perera was elected Speaker. During his term of office, Joseph Michael Perera made a controversial ruling where he emphasised that the President could not unilaterally prorogue Parliament. The Speakers ruling reiterated the position that the executive power of the people was vested in the President and Article 70 of the Constitution conferred on the President the power to summon, prorogue and dissolve Parliament. However, Article 70 of the Constitution, Perera ruled cannot contravene Articles 3 and 4 of the Constitution. Parliament has been elected by the people in whom the sovereign power is vested under Article 3 of the Constitution. Under Article 4, this sovereignty is divided and exercised by the executive President, Parliament and the judiciary. In addition, under Article 4, Parliament also exercises the judicial power of the people through the courts and tribunals established by the Constitution or created and established by law. The Speaker J.M. Perera pointed out in his order that an examination of the scheme of the Constitution showed that Article 70 appeared in Chapter XI titled, The legislative procedure and power. This makes it clear that this aspect of the Presidents power is not an attributive of his executive power set out in article VII, but rather an administrative function vis-a-vis Parliament. The exercise of the power to summon, dissolve and prorogue must therefore always be exercised in consultation with Parliament and this function must be accepted at all times as being subordinate to the legislative power of the people conferred on Parliament by Article 4 (a). Joseph Michael Perera therefore determined that were it not so, it would lead to a situation where one arm of government is able to completely suppress another equal, but separate arm. Interestingly, Joseph Michael Pereras ruling features prominently in the current situation where President Sirisena arbitrarily prorogued Parliament without consulting the Speaker. Political cohabitation came to an end in 2004 and Parliament was dissolved by the then President Kumaratunga. Elections were held and the SLFP led United Peoples Freedom Alliance(UPFA) came to power. The communist partys D.E.W. Gunasekeras name was proposed as Speaker by the UPFA. However, the opposition nominated UNPs Badulla District MP W.J.M. Lokubandara instead of the incumbent Speaker Joseph Michael Perera. Although Perera could have been fielded as a Speaker candidate, a change was necessitated due to political exigencies. W.J.M. LOKUBANDARA Joseph Michael Perera was a Catholic. Given the rising tide of anti-Christian feeling among sections of the Buddhist clergy and laity prevailing at the time, a man like Lokubandara with impeccable Sinhala-Buddhist credentials was seen as more suitable. The phenomenon of nine Buddhist priest MPs of the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) holding the power balance in a hung Parliament saw the need for an avowed Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist like Lokubandara as opposition candidate for Speaker. It was hoped that Lokubandara could win Jathika Hela Urumaya support or at least ensure their neutrality. The election results indicated that the stratagem succeeded to a great extent. W.J.M. Lokubandara became Speaker after a bitter and closely contested election. He won with one vote (110-109) in a tussle that went down as a shameful episode in the Parliamentary history of this country. In a fracas occurring while Parliament was in session, a Buddhist monk MP was manhandled by a group of MPs. The chief culprit in this instance was the infamous Mervyn Silva. The previous Parliament saw Hambantota District MP Chamal Rajapaksa become Speaker. It was a time when the Rajapaksas of Ruhunu were riding high with Chamals younger brothers Mahinda, Basil and Gotabaya being the President, Cabinet Minister and Defence Secretary respectively. It was during Chamal Rajapaksas tenure as that Parliament impeached Chief Justice Shiranee Bandaranayake. Chamal Rajapaksa completed his full term as Speaker from April 2010 to June 2015. Mahinda Rajapaksa was defeated by Maithripala Sirisena in the Presidential poll of January 2015. Parliamentary polls in August 2015 saw the UNF forming the government. Karu Jayasuriya became Speaker in August 2015 as the latest in a long line of illustrious Speakers who have served the legislatures, people and country for nearly a century. Fate seems to have decreed that Karu Jayasuriya should don the mantle of Speaker when Parliamentary democracy was facing danger. Karu Jayasuriya in his capacity as Speaker has given courageous leadership to those resisting unconstitutional moves by the Maithripala-Mahinda duo to seize de jure and de facto control of Parliament! He has even risked physical danger to himself in doing so. Karu has refused to be cowed down by the terror tactics of pro-Mahinda MPs. HEROIC SPEAKER Karu Jayasuriyas strength and courage to stand firm in this exercise in the face of violent hostility from the Maithripala-Mahinda forces is derived from his belief of being morally and legally correct. Karu Jayasuriya is fighting this political battle with the noble aim of safeguarding parliamentary democracy. His courageous defiance of Mahinda Rajapaksas MPs in Parliament is a key element of this fight. It is the outrageously anti-democratic power grab -- aided and abetted by Maithripala -- of Mahinda Rajapaksa that has impelled Karu to enter the fray and spearhead opposition to the illegal attempts. Karu Jayasuriya by his courageous defiance of Maithripala and Mahinda has demonstrated that he is no pushover as envisaged by his political adversaries. Moreover, his brave conduct in these dark times may result in posterity acknowledging Karu Jayasuriya as the most heroic Speaker in Sri Lankas Parliamentary history. D.B.S. Jeyaraj can be reached at dbsjeyaraj@yahoo.com President Maithripala Sirisena told the Commonwealth Secretary General, Baroness Patricia Scotland that he has acted in accordance with the Constitution of Sri Lanka and would continue to stand for democratic practices. Presidents media disivion said that "a telephone conversation with Baroness Patricia Scotland, he explained that he has very clearly asked the Speaker of parliament to follow the Parliamentary Standing Orders and conventions and take any vote on a No Confidence Motion using the electronic voting system or by name." Baroness Patricia said that the Commonwealth values Sri Lankas adherence to democracy as one of the oldest democracies in Asia and as a long-standing member of the Commonwealth. She assured that the Commonwealth would continue to work in close cooperation with Sri Lanka. She expressed confidence that Sri Lanka would solve the current political crisis amicably. NEW DELHI AFP Nov22, 2018-Some 300,000 Indians are expected to rally this weekend to press for a Hindu temple to be built at a disputed site where a mosque was destroyed in 1992, organisers said Thursday. The demolition by mobs of the mosque at Ayodhya in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh sparked nationwide riots in which thousands were killed, most of them Muslims. Many Hindus believe the Babri Mosque was only built after the destruction of a temple on the same spot that marks the birthplace of their god Ram, and the issue remains hugely divisive. With legal wranglings dragging on for years, the right-wing nationalist group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) wants parliament to pass a law for the construction of the temple. On Sunday it expects 300,000 people to attend three rallies -- in Ayodhya, in Nagpur in central India and in Bangalore in the south, a spokesman said. The new government will sign Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with other countries only after the adoption of a national trade policy, International Trade Minister Bandula Gunawardane said yesterday. He told Daily Mirror that he submitted a Cabinet memorandum seeking approval to appoint a committee to study this matter and make recommendations to formulate a national trade policy. FTAs will be signed only after the national trade policy frame is approved. It is a requirement stipulated by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to be considered by any country in striking a bilateral trade agreement. The policy will apply to the Economic and Technology Cooperation (ETCA) agreement to be signed with India. When signing a bilateral trade agreement, it has to be a win-win situation. The previous government had adopted a trade policy detrimental to the interests of local industries. It appeases foreigners only, he said. When asked about the FTA with Singapore, he said the commission, appointed by President Maithripala Sirisena to evaluate it, would submit its full report later. Once that is done, we will move forward, he said. (Kelum Bandara) Lahiru Madhushanka, who languished in prison in the Maldives for three years accused of involvement in a plot to assassinate a Maldivian President and had been acquitted and released by a court, arrived at the Bandaranaike International Airport last night and was reunited with his family and loved ones. The driver, Madhushanka arrived in the Maldives to seek a business opportunity in 2015 and suddenly found himself accused of being a highly trained sniper trying to kill President Abdulla Yameen. On 23 October 2015, while waiting for a flight back to Sri Lanka, he was arrested at the airport by plainclothes police who accused him of being involved in a plot to assassinate President Abdulla Yameen. His family and lawyer said he had since been repeatedly denied access to legal representation, and while in custody had been subject to ill-treatment including prolonged solitary confinement and beatings with cables that caused him to temporarily lose hearing in one ear. Earlier, the Amnesty International condemned the Cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of a Sri Lankan detained in the Maldives, saying he had been beaten and tortured. Theresa May secured a breakthrough in the negotiations over a political declaration (Daily Mail) Theresa May said she had honoured the referendum today after dramatically sealing her Brexit deal with Brussels. The Prime Minister hailed the outcome after negotiators reached agreement on the final element of the package - covering future trade. In a statement outside Downing Street, Mrs May said: This is the right deal for the UK. It delivers on the result of the referendum. In a stark message to MPs as an historic Commons showdown looms, Mrs May added: The British people want this to be settled. They want to get a deal that sets us on a course for a brighter future. That deal is within our grasp and I am determined to deliver it. The rallying call came after EU Council President Donald Tusk said the future framework outlining terms of a trade deal had been agreed by negotiators. It has now been sent to EU capitals ahead of a summit in Brussels on Sunday - which could yet be derailed by last-minute wrangling from Spain over Gibraltar. In possible concessions to help Mrs May get the deal through the Commons, the 26-page document makes clear that Britain will have an independent trade policy. And it stresses both sides determination to replace the backstop for the Irish border with alternative plans in future -potentially reviving the Max Fac solution favoured by Brexiteers. The pact confirms that free movement will end, which could be seen as a win for the PM - but also states that the UK will not discriminate between nationals from different EU countries. UK, (Daily Mail), 22 November 2018 It is the show of shows and the greatest show on earth. On Wednesday, November 21, the United Nations marked World Television Day. In a statement, the world body says that news footage direct from the latest humanitarian crisis; documentaries putting a human face to crucial issues of our time human rights, peace, security and development; live coverage of the UN Security Council as it responds to global crises, and of the annual General Assembly when world leaders gather there. The UNs video producers report from locations around the globe from peacekeeping missions such as Mali and South Sudan; from political missions in countries like Colombia and Afghanistan; and from the UNs vast network of operations worldwide. Launched in 1947, UN Video is produced in the six official languages of the UN -- French, Spanish, English, Chinese, Arabic and Russian. Highlights include an Oscar-winning short documentary on people with disabilities; an unprecedented Virtual Reality film on UN peacekeeping; and an urgent call for action on climate-change by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the UN says. In recognition of the increasing impact television has on decision-making by bringing world attention to conflicts and threats to peace and security and its potential role in sharpening the focus on other major issues, including economic and social issues, the UN General Assembly in 1996 proclaimed November 21 as World Television Day. World Television Day is not so much a celebration of the tool, but rather the philosophy which it represents. Television represents a symbol for communication and globalization in the contemporary world. On November 21 and 22, 1996, the UN held the first World Television Forum, where leading media figures met under the auspices of the UN to discuss the growing significance of television in todays changing world and to consider how they might enhance their mutual cooperation. Television was thus acknowledged as a major tool in informing, channelling and shaping public opinion. Its impact and presence and its influence on world politics could not be denied, the UN says. The history of television starts long before screens and broadcast signals, and its end is nowhere in sight. To fully understand TVs history, we need to understand a bit of its etymology, which happens to be interconnected with its invention, according to a website. The Russian scientist and inventor Constantin Perskyl is credited with coining the word television in 1900. The prefix, tele-, meaning at a distance combined with the root, vision, perfectly described what he and several other inventors had created: a way to mechanically transmit and project images. The next two decades brought iteration after iteration of this groundbreaking technology. By 1928, the worlds first television station was launched in New York. Electronic TV quickly took over mechanical methods, and by the late 1930s, live broadcast had become a reality. Since those early years, the word television has applied to the entire inventionthe transmission medium (or broadcast technology), the programme to be viewed, and the projecting/viewing device. The ubiquity of television and an influx of engaging, critically-acclaimed programming earns this decade the moniker, The Golden Age of Television. Advertisers begin marketing products directly to consumers through TV programme sponsorship opportunities -- e.g. soap operas sponsored by cleaning products directed at women watching TV during the day. In Sri Lanka, Television was first launched in 1979, and the first station was the Independent Television Network (ITN). Later the government set up the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation. Today we have 38 channels telecasting a variety of programmes in Sinhala, Tamil and English. Unfortunately, some of the channels do not live up to the values and principles outlined by the UN. Some even use the channels in a biased way relating to current news in support of different political parties. Another negative in Sri Lanka is the prime time given to melodramatic teledramas while important educational programmes for instance are seldom given prime time coverage. Also today, Sri Lanka has smart TVs while hundreds of thousands of people watch TV programmes on their smart phones. So switch your TV on to be well informed, educated and entertained. Presidents economic advisors admit Moodys downgrade will result in higher borrowing costs for SL (Colombo) AFP: Sri Lanka has abandoned plans to raise money through sovereign bonds and will pursue badly-needed revenue elsewhere after Moodys downgraded its credit rating amid political turmoil, an official said yesterday. President Maithripala Sirisenas economic advisor said alternative finance raised locally would service much of Sri Lankas US$ 4.5 billion in foreign debt repayments in 2019. Lalith Samarakoon said the credit downgrade by Moodys on Tuesday would result in higher borrowing costs for Sri Lanka in the international markets. He said Sri Lanka would seek to extend a US$ 1 billion loan from China by an additional US$ 500 million, but would only turn to international markets for cash as a last resort. We have arranged certain other financing options such as raising US$ 1 billion through State banks, he said. Moodys said its decision was exacerbated most recently by a political crisis which seems likely to have a lasting impact on policy even if ostensibly resolved quickly. The South Asian nation has been gripped by an unprecedented political crisis since Sirisena sacked his Prime Minister on October 26 and appointed former strongman Mahinda Rajapakse in his place. Sirisena dissolved parliament and called snap elections on January 5 but the legislature, restored by court order, voted twice to topple Rajapakse. He has refused to step down, leaving Sri Lanka without a government since November 15. The unrest also prompted the International Monetary Fund to suspend a tranche of a US$1.5-billion bailout loan agreed to in 2016. Sri Lankas three State banks will borrow up to US$1 billion from foreign sources before the end of 2018 and use the money to pay off maturing foreign loans, Finance Ministry Secretary S.R. Attygalle said on Thursday. The move comes as Sri Lanka faces a worsening political crisis with a newly appointed government refusing to resign despite losing two confidence votes in parliament. The government is now trying to shore up a badly shaken investor confidence which is reflected in the decision by Moodys Investors Service to downgrade its rating deeper into junk territory on Tuesday. The Sri Lankan rupee has fallen to record lows in recent days and its dollar bond yields have spiked. The island nation is scheduled to repay more than US$ 5.8 billion, including US$ 1.54 billion in interest payments, in the next 12 months, the Central Banks latest data showed. The State banks will borrow through 1- to 3-year maturity bonds and money can be used to repay foreign loans next year. We expect there could be a slight increase in borrowing costs due to Moodys rating downgrade, Attygalle told Reuters. The State banks can borrow on their own balance sheets but if the government gives a sovereign guarantee the loans may require parliamentary approval. That would be difficult to get as Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa does not have majority support in parliament. President Maithripala Sirisenas sacking of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and his replacement by Rajapaksa last month, amid the competing influences of China and India, have shattered the islands fragile ruling coalition. Bank of Ceylon, Peoples Bank, and National Savings Bank will conduct the borrowing through syndicated loans. Eran Wickramaratne, who was a junior finance minister in the government of the deposed Prime Minister Wickremesinghe said the previous administration had not planned to use the State banks for borrowing overseas this year. It was concerned that such borrowings would weaken the State banks, he said. The previous Rajapaksa-led government did give sovereign guarantees for State bank loans in 2013. National Savings Bank had borrowed US$750 million through an international five-year bond in 2013. Analysts say Sri Lanka will have to borrow at very expensive rates on international markets because of the political uncertainty. (Colombo) REUTERS By Sayed Salahuddin (c) 2018, The Washington Post Nov 23, 2018 - KABUL, Afghanistan - A suicide bomber detonated explosives during Friday prayers in a mosque packed with army troops in Afghanistans southeastern Khost province, killing at least 10 of them, a government spokesman said. But a security official said the toll could be at least twice that with another 30 wounded in the attack which happened in the Mandozai district near the border with Pakistan. The initial report we have suggest that 10 have been killed, it happened during Friday prayers, Talib Mangal, a spokesman for the governor of Khost said. The attack comes days after 55 Islamic clerics were killed in a hotel in Kabul while marking the birth of Islams Prophet Muhammad. Turkey, (Daily Mail), 23 November 2018 - President Donald Trumps refusal to point the finger at the Saudi crown prince over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has infuriated Turkey who say he is turning a blind eye. On Tuesday, Trump said he would remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia despite the CIA reportedly assessing Mohammad Bin Salman (MbS) had ordered the hit at the Saudi consulate in Instanbul, Turkey, last month. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu surmised in an an interview with CNNTurk, In one sense, Trump is saying I will turn a blind eye. Trump doubled down on Thanksgiving Day by saying: I hate the crime. I hate what was done. I hate the cover up. I will tell you this - the crown prince hates it more than I do. Cavusoglu also said the US had not told them of an audio recording regarding Khashoggis killing. Trump continues to back the Saudis who he said were investing hundreds of billions of dollars in our country and keeping oil prices down. All United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) MPs of the government walked out of Parliament Chamber in protest against the composition of MPs allocated from each party to the Parliament Select Committee. The Government today said it will not accept Karu Jayasuriya as the Speaker of Parliament. Minister Wimal Weerawansa told in parliament that they will not accept the parliament or Mr.Jayasuriya as the Speaker. Afterwards, Minister Udaya Gammanpila also said they would not accept Karu Jayasuriya as the Speaker. UK, (Daily Mail), 23 November 2018 - Theresa May today vowed she will not quit if MPs vote down her Brexit deal - as she dismissed Tory rebel claims that her package is worse than staying in the EU. The Prime Minister mounted another staunch defence of the settlement she has thrashed out with Brussels, saying it is the right one for the country. In a BBC phone in, Mrs May warned that EU is not going to give us a better deal if MPs vote down her settlement. Torpedoing the plan will just lead to more division and uncertainty, she said. Asked repeatedly whether she will resign if she loses in the Commons - as seems inevitable - Mrs May replied: No. Im focusing on ensuring that we get this deal through Parliament. More than half of Tory back-benchers have declared that they will vote against the deal. Six years and eight months in prison for the theft of the Kunsthal The theft of the Kunsthal Rotterdam 'Head Clown', a Picasso painting stolen along with six other boxes six years ago from a museum in the Netherlands, during a spectacular heist, it could have been found in Romania, informed the prosecutor of Bucharest, this Sunday. Seven masterpieces by Picasso, Monet, Gauguin, Meyer de Haan, Matisse, and Lucien Freud were stolen from the Museum Kunsthal of Rotterdam in 2012, in a robbery that lasted only three minutes and that the Dutch media called "the theft of the century". The prosecutor Augustin Lazar confirmed to Afp that the Romanian authorities had in their possession a box that "could be" one of the stolen from the Museum Kunsthal, and added that should be examined more thoroughly. experts are now checking whether the canvas is the "Head of Harlequin" by Picasso, " said a source to the Afp. A spokesman for the Dutch ministry of Foreign Affairs said that now "should be established" the authenticity of the box. Four romanians were jailed for the robbery in 2014, and were asked to pay 18 million euros (20.5 million us dollars at the current exchange rate)to the insurers of the canvases. One of the members of the group, Olga Dogaru, said the researchers have burned the paintings in her stove in the village of Carcaliu, in eastern Romania, in an attempt to protect her son, Radu, when he could not sell them. More later retracted the statement. The investigators had previously said that the paintings had been destroyed after the thieves did not find the buyer. The paintings had been loaned to the museum for an exhibition in the framework of its twentieth anniversary, sponsored by the Foundation Newt, created to take care of the art collection accumulated by the investor, Willem Cordia, who died in 2011. According to the criteria of Updated Date: 23 November 2018, 20:00 Learn more Finland Bans Military Sales to Saudi and UAE 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 annual prestigious program on benchmarking and ranking sustainable businesses honors 100 names which are pioneers and gain outstanding achievements in the field of sustainable development. To be selected into the rankings, around 500 registering entries have been evaluated based on Corporate Sustainability Index (CSI), which built as an effective benchmark tool for the sustainability development of business based on three main elements: economic indicators, social indicators and the influences to the environment. Speaking at the event, the Deputy Prime Minister highly valued the VCCI's initiative, in coordination with the Ministries of Natural Resources and Environment, Labor, War-Invalids and Social Affairs, to build and announce the index of sustainable development with 131 indicators in order to praise typical firms with sustainable development. Photo: Hong Tham He expressed his hope that the Vietnamese business community, regardless of their scale and nationality, should strive together for the sustainable economic development target. Several companies head the list include NovaLand, Thu Duc Housing Development Corporation, Swiss Post Solution Ltd, Tin Nghia Corporation, Sai Gon Thuong Tin -Sacombank, Loscom Vietnam, among others. AkzoNobel Vietnam, for the second consecutive year, received the award which demonstrates its great efforts on materializing the 17 targets on sustainable development sustainability, both doing business and environmental/social impact index as well. It is the pioneer in promoting the green architecture trend in Vietnam by not only introducing and providing customers with eco-friendly solutions but also aiming at partnering with multiple parties towards building sustainable future. Some most remarkable activities include organizing Smart City - Sustainable City seminars in June 2018; sponsoring for Sustainable Real Estate Development Conference in Ho Chi Minh city in July 2018 and organizing for Vietnamese architects on joining the Green Building Week in September 2018 This year, the company has so far sponsored more than 30,000 liters of paints and over 3,500 volunteer hours on major projects such as AkzoNobel accompanies you to school towards repainting 100 schools in three years, bringing spacious and inspiring learning environment to Vietnamese young students; sponsoring for Green Summer on recoating hundreds of old apartments and alleys in Ho Chi Minh city; cooperating with International Union for Conservation of Nature on supporting the marine natural resources preservation for Central province of Quang Ngais Ly Son island with mural painting program themed no plastic./. CHESTER >> While Great Britain was in the middle of its imperial century, Methodist minister William Booth found the expansion of wealth from the British Empire did little to elevate the poverty in the East End of its capital, London. One hundred fifty-three years later in the East Side of Chester, the Salvation Army Chester Corps is grappling with the same challenges as the organizations founder. The economy is doing quite well as far as people in need, that hasnt changed, said Maj. Ervin McKoy of the Chester Corps. An upswing in the economy has historically met an upswing in the Salvation Armys holiday Kettle Drive, according to McKoy, and he hopes that trend extends to the 2018 Merry Christmas Fund. A $50,000 goal has been set for the 47th year of the charitable partnership between the Times and the Chester Corps to distribute food baskets and toys to those in need in the city and Delaware County during the week of Christmas. Befitting the Victorian origins of the Salvation Army, the Times presented readers a Dickensian turn of phrase on the front page of the Nov. 25, 1971, edition when it asked readers Wont you help less fortunate? McKoy hopes readers will accept the call to help the array of challenges the Chester Corps faces on a daily basis. We still have over 200 families that were going to be feeding and giving Christmas gifts to, McKoy said. Id like to do something special this year for our homeless population that comes to our center. Merry Christmas Fund donations help the Chester Corps stretch its regular operating budget during the holiday season and beyond. With a loss of funding for a major food sponsor, the corps food pantry is operating a bare minimum going into the holiday season. Along with donations to the fund and food donations, the corps is also accepting toy donations at its 151 W. 15th St. headquarters. A lot of times we dont have enough stuff for older children, McKoy said. We can use extra money to get bikes or they can donate a new bike. While the corps has faced challenges with the food pantry, McKoy still sees regular acts of Christian charity that exemplify the mission of the Salvation Army. An unexpected example came from a local child recently honored by the corps womens group. There was a young lady, shes 7 years old she has the heart of a salvationist. The girl (whose name was withheld for privacy), has been purchasing food for the homeless around the city. Her mother drives her around to feed homeless people. Our ladys group heard about it their hearts were so touched by what she was doing. Those who wish to contribute to the $50,000 goal can send donations via check or money order made payable and mailed to Chester Salvation Army, P.O. Box 1032, Brookhaven, PA 19015. Please do not mail donations to the Daily Times. Contributors who wish to be recognized should include a very brief, legible holiday message with their donations. Donations of toys, food and clothing can be dropped them off at the Salvation Army Headquarter at 151 W. 15th St., Chester. For information on donation drop offs or Kettle Worker openings, call the Chester Corps at 610-874-4266. Alien Fresh Jerky robot sign Jan Wagner Do you believe that aliens are here? Recently I had an alien encounter of the first kind in the California desert, as I drove back towards San Diego from Las Vegas, after covering the SEMA Show. Id pulled off the highway to rest in a town called Baker (California) when I came across the most amazing sight. There, in the middle of nowhere, in the dark of a Sunday night, was a towering, brightly colored and lit, alien robot sign. Next to it was a large, alien-looking land vehicle. In the window above its entrance, three aliens were standing, looking out. One appeared to be motioning towards me, so I ventured inside. Inside the large shop were alien- and space-themed souvenirs, as well as a large display of Alien Fresh Jerky, along with specialty sodas and other tasty treats. Seated on a bench was another alien, compelling me to sit for a photograph. Alien Fresh Jerky vehicle and store. Jan Wagner A gentleman approached me, expressing curiosity about why I was taking pictures. I explained that I am a journalist and that I wanted to share this incredible discovery with you, my audience. His introduced himself as Luis Ramallo. He is the creative visionary and proprietor along with his family, including son Martin of this fascinating establishment. Luis showed me a professionally rendered book of concepts, revealing that this will be a fully immersive, alien-themed, major tourist attraction. Its centerpiece will be the alien-themed U.F.O. Hotel, with a much larger hotel to follow. Outside, it will look like a spaceship. Inside, each of the 30 guest rooms will be a unique, custom designed space from floor to ceiling to contribute to the hotels aliens and space theme, with a reactor room, deep space room, weapons room, cargo bay room, landing party room and more. Luis 2002 U.F.O. Hotel sketch and the current rendering. Jan Wagner There will be a ticketed tour through the spaceship, time traveling experiences, marriages in virtual space, a gift shop, a restaurant and much more all themed, with viewing ports (video screens) in the hallways, aliens and special effects. This place will absolutely blow you away. There is more property available for future development, and it is conveniently located freeway close to the I-15, just south of the Nevada border. 50-60 million tourists and business travelers drive by every year, between the major metropolitan centers of Southern California and Las Vegas. Almost one million per year already stop at Alien Fresh Jerky. With the hotel, expect that to double. This is brilliant, and it will really put Baker on the map. This began almost 20 years ago, with a small shack selling jerky on the side of the road near Area 51, yet the name Alien Fresh Jerky did not originate from Area 51. Luis had been stopped by a traffic officer who asked him for his drivers license and green card. Luis realization that he was a registered alien is what gave him the idea for the name Alien Fresh Jerky. U.F.O. Hotel room rendering. Jan Wagner Even though it was popular, Luis roadside jerky business near Area 51 only lasted for four months before they kicked him out. That was fortuitous because, in 2002, that led to him stopping for gas in Baker, California. He noticed a sign on an old building that read For Sale or Lease, so I just turned around, and stopped my truck right there it was all dirt, you know. The minute I stopped I had a vision. I saw the hotel and I saw the business. I just saw it. I drew a picture of what I saw, and then I talked to my wife. I said I found a place. She said are you sure? Basically she was telling me Im crazy! People probably thought Walt Disneys vision of Disneyland was crazy too, and we know how that turned out. Jan Wagner in the store with a friendly alien. Jan Wagner At first they rented, and the next year they purchased the property. With limited financial resources, theyve done much of the work themselves. Now, 16 years later, here they are (visit www.AlienJerky.com). Have no doubt, this alien theme park is for real. Luis hired experienced amusement park professionals to help make his vision a reality. Plans have been approved and building permits issued. The site is cleared and several alien-themed support buildings are already built. Hotel construction should begin in January 2019. See a video at www.ufohotel.com, and for more photos and video, enter AutoMatters & More #566 or the title in the search bar at DriveTribe.com. As always, send your questions, comments and suggestions to AutoMatters@gmail.com. Performing their solo work to an audience of 10,000 was an unbelievable experience for two Dance graduates from De Montfort University Leicester (DMU). Emma and Hatti at Studfestas with Associate Professor in Dance Sally Doughty Hatti Dawson and Emma McBain represented DMU at Studfestas in Lithuania, a popular conference with a festival feel, aimed at students considering their higher education and career options. The opportunity - part of the #LoveInternational campaign to grow DMUs global outlook, celebrate its diversity and ensure it remains a welcoming place for international study - gave the two graduates a new platform for their choreography. Hatti performed her contemporary hip hop piece called The Fragility of Power, an exploration of how strength and power can reveal both fragility and risk, which recently won the International Young Choreographer award in the Ukraine. The 22-year-old from Wiltshire said: It was a flying two-day trip, but the experience we gained from it was unbelievable. Performing my own choreography internationally to 10,000 people was honestly everything Ive ever dreamed of. Once I finished my performance I looked around the audience and hearing the applause and watching phone lights swaying was incredible. I will never forget it and Im immensely appreciative of this opportunity and what it has taught me. The packed Studfestas arena Performing her hip hop and contemporary fusion called Elements, Emmas focus was on the shift in dynamic quality from slow to faster movements, ensuring they rippled out to the audience. I dont think it fully sunk in until just before I went on stage. Its just one of those feelings you cant put into words, said the 21-year-old from Lincolnshire. It was kind of life-changing too, helping me to put into perspective what Ive already achieved and what I could achieve in the future. Im so grateful to DMU and humbled. RELATED NEWS DMU dancers take centre stage at international festival Discover Dance at DMU - book your place on our next Open Day Students from DMU will be dancing in the streets for Commonwealth Games finale The two graduates also had the chance to perform at a local high school in front of a smaller, more intimate audience. Hatti said: It was eye-opening as their schools work very differently to the UK. I got a huge reception and it was both humbling and interesting to hear why the students enjoyed it, given that the hip hop scene in Lithuania is so different to ours. Hatti on stage at Studefestas Since graduating with a First this summer, Hatti has set up Panthera Dance Company in Wiltshire, teaching around 120 students a week. She is also auditioning for various shows and creating her own touring company to showcase her choreography. I hope to get more opportunities like the trip to Lithuania in the future. DMU helped me get to the fortunate position that Im in now, so Im more than happy to continue to represent the university throughout my career, she said. Also graduating with a First this summer, Emma is in the early stages of setting up her Interference Dance Company in Leicester, while teaching in secondary schools across Lincolnshire. She said: Im trying to put dance back into the school system. Its such an important medium for self-expression. Its a way of letting go of losing and finding yourself at the same time. Ministry of Foreign Affairs Vice Spokesperson Nguyen Phuong Tra (Source: VNA) Tra made the statement at the ministrys regular press conference in Hanoi on November 22nd in response to reporters questions regarding the information that China had installed a new structure in Bong Bay (Bombay) reef of Vietnams Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago. Vietnam has sufficient legal grounds and historical evidence testifying its sovereignty over the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagoes in conformity with international law, she said. The vice spokesperson stressed that Chinas continuous conducting of activities in the Hoang Sa archipelago is a serious violation of Vietnams sovereignty over the islands, going against the common perspectives reached by senior leaders of the two countries; infringing upon the agreement on basic principles guiding the settlement of sea issues between Vietnam and China, as well as the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea signed in 2002 between ASEAN and China; and making the situation in the East Sea more complicated and tense. Vietnam requests China to respect Vietnams sovereignty and international law, and to take practical actions to contribute to the development of the Vietnam-China cooperation and friendship, as well as the maintenance of peace and stability in the East Sea./. The Old Timer Free Access Somebody wrote a letter to the editor of the Endeavor News last week about all of the kids who are... The Old Timer Free Access If you folks back in the Land of the Endless Mountains get some snow cover, Im sure everyone will be... The Old Timer Free Access Who says Friday the 13th is a silly superstition? It came a few days early for me when I did... The Old Timer Free Access The giant aircraft carriers that our Navy has today would look like rowboats when compared to Noahs Ark. Can you... Time to bust the last great Brexit myth THE BRITISH body politic is again convulsing. Theresa May has appointed new ministers, including her third Brexit secretary and counting, following another round of cabinet resignations. The prime ministers own backbenchers are feverishly (if ineptly) plotting to bring her down. The Labour oppositions position is hopelessly unclear. The cause of this chaos is that those with long-standing delusions about what Brexit would mean have been forced to swallow a dose of reality. With negotiating time almost up, Britain has the imperfect deal that it was always going to get. Promises of having cake and eating it have given way to a less appetising offering. Yet among Brexiteers, one hopeful fantasy lives on: the idea that, if all else fails, Britain can prosper outside the European Union without signing a deal at all. The ideas proponents tout a no-deal Brexit as a way to avoid giving ground, or money, to Brussels. They dismiss objections as another round of the alarmist Project Fear that Remainers deployed before the referendum. :www.economist.gr The trade war between the Washington and Beijing is pushing many global companies to rethink the manufacturing and fabrication work they now do in China and a bloc of Southeast Asian countries stands to benefit tremendously, according to a senior partner at consulting firm Bain & Co. In the short term, there will be an adverse effect on the region as an exporting base for the world, and for the U.S. in particular, Satish Shankar, managing partner for Southeast Asia, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Friday. "Certain intermediate exports that go into China, and then onto the U.S., are going to be impacted in industries such as textiles and electronics," he said. "However, in the long term, we feel pretty confident that ASEAN is a very attractive alternative supply chain base for companies looking to diversify away from China." The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is made up of 10 countries in the region including Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Bain predicted that as companies consider moving their supply chains into Southeast Asia, small and medium enterprises in the region will adopt more technologies into their daily operations that could potentially create a $1 trillion opportunity. "It is the fifth-largest economic bloc, comparable in size to the U.K. and India." The U.S. has levied additional tariffs on an extensive list of Chinese products since July. Beijing responded with duties on U.S. imports, even as President President Xi Jinping himself denounced protectionism. Investors are now closely monitoring a much-anticipated meeting between the two countries when Xi meets President Donald Trumpat the upcoming G-20 summit on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 as they look for clues on whether there may be a breakthrough in the impasse. Even if trade tensions eventually simmer, companies would still try and shift some of their supply chains to Southeast Asia, Shankar said. "For two reasons," he said. "One is that the process is already underway and the experience companies are having in places like Vietnam and Thailand have been positive. Second is, it's just good business practice to ensure that you are diversified and you don't have concentration risk with things like your supply chain." He explained that in the future, companies would shift to "distributed supply chains," where they would have multiple sources of supply for a particular product. 'Fifth-largest economic bloc' Maike Elan | Bloomberg | Getty Images Motorcyclists pass vendors selling food in a market at night in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on Wednesday, June 20, 2018. Southeast Asia's growth prospects and demographics have caught the interest of many investors who have steadily poured money into the region. A recent update to a highly-cited study on the region's internet economy predicted it will exceed $240 billion by 2025 due to affordable mobile connection to the world wide web. The trade war between the Washington and Beijing is pushing many global companies to rethink the manufacturing and fabrication work they now do in China and a bloc of Southeast Asian countries stands to benefit tremendously, according to a senior partner at consulting firm Bain & Co. In the short term, there will be an adverse effect on the region as an exporting base for the world, and for the U.S. in particular, Satish Shankar, managing partner for Southeast Asia, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Friday. "Certain intermediate exports that go into China, and then onto the U.S., are going to be impacted in industries such as textiles and electronics," he said. "However, in the long term, we feel pretty confident that ASEAN is a very attractive alternative supply chain base for companies looking to diversify away from China." The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is made up of 10 countries in the region including Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Bain predicted that as companies consider moving their supply chains into Southeast Asia, small and medium enterprises in the region will adopt more technologies into their daily operations that could potentially create a $1 trillion opportunity. The U.S. has levied additional tariffs on an extensive list of Chinese products since July. Beijing responded with duties on U.S. imports, even as President President Xi Jinping himself denounced protectionism. Investors are now closely monitoring a much-anticipated meeting between the two countries when Xi meets President Donald Trumpat the upcoming G-20 summit on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 as they look for clues on whether there may be a breakthrough in the impasse. Even if trade tensions eventually simmer, companies would still try and shift some of their supply chains to Southeast Asia, Shankar said. "For two reasons," he said. "One is that the process is already underway and the experience companies are having in places like Vietnam and Thailand have been positive. Second is, it's just good business practice to ensure that you are diversified and you don't have concentration risk with things like your supply chain." He explained that in the future, companies would shift to "distributed supply chains," where they would have multiple sources of supply for a particular product. Southeast Asia's growth prospects and demographics have caught the interest of many investors who have steadily poured money into the region. A recent update to a highly-cited study on the region's internet economy predicted it will exceed $240 billion by 2025 due to affordable mobile connection to the world wide web. "It is the fifth-largest economic bloc, comparable in size to the U.K. and India. It has been growing at 4.5 to 5 percent, there's a lot of (foreign direct investments) coming into the region," Shankar said, adding that the presence of dynamic companies make ASEAN a "very legitimate supply chain base." He explained that each country in the region had a different specialty. For example, Thailand has a strong automotive ector that can become an alternative supply base for companies in that space. Meanwhile, Vietnam is strong in areas such as textiles and electronic components. Companies would also stand to benefit from a "strong domestic demand in the region," Shankar added. :www.cnbc.com The official presentation of a "Program" respecting People's choices voted in the June 7, 2009 EU Elections, to be debated in EU Council and EU Parliament during its 1st Session on July in Strasbourg, is the No 1 Priority, according to Democratic principles, for the Franco-German axis, said the main winners at the ballot box, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angie Merkel. They stressed that the New EU Commission's President must have a "Program" in favor of an EU which "protects" its Citizens, regulates financial markets and aims at a "Political" Europe" : a wording they have used as incompatible with Turkey's controversial EU bid. They also declared ready for a "political" endorsment of "Mr. Barroso's candidacy" in June's EU Council, considering that an official decision would have to be made after EU Parliament's debates and votes, possibly from next month (July), with the legally necessary final acceptance shortly after Lisbon Treaty's entry into force, hoped for September or October. - "A Program, and Mr. Barroso" : This resumes, in substance, the anouncements made by Sarkozy and Merkel, on the question of current EU Commission's President, Barroso's declared wish to succeed to himself for a second mandate, to be extended during the following 5 years. In their 1st meeting after EU Elections, they observed that "the Franco-German axis counted in European Elections' campaign... But, we both keep a realistic view : We saw the number of those who abstained, and we must absolutely give them an answer. We also see the disilusionment of an important number of Europeans vis a vis Europe, and we are aware of the responsibilities we have". - The "Duty" of the new EU Commission's President, after June 7, 2009 EU Elections' result, "is to act for a Europe which protects the Europeans, to commit himself into working for a better Regulation of Financial transactions, ... and to have a Political will for Europe", underlined Sarkozy. Therefore, "we have asked M. Barroso... to clarify, to officialy present the intentions he has", he anounced. - "We want to speak also about the Programme", explained Merkel. - "It's important that for the next EU Parliament's mandate (2009-2014) we take the right Decisions for Europe. Obviously on Persons, but mainly Decisions on Issues", she stressed. - "It's not simply a question of a Person, it's also a question of a Programme". We are "really asking Mr. Barroso to commit himself on a Program, and on Principles, on Values", Sarkozy added. EU President-in-office, Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer, accepted the Franco-German stance : - "Barroso must present his Programme. The Czech Presidency agrees with that", Fischer reportedly said later, after meeting Sarkozy. But Press reports from Brussels claimed that Barroso had preferred to be officially appointed by EU Council since June, (i.e. next week), "because this was implied by the current Treaty of Nice, according to him", and considered any delay until the possible ratification of the new, Lisbon Treaty on September/October, as "undemocratic". - "At any case, independently of what Germany and France ask, it's also EU Parliament's wish". "We shall propose Mr Barroso's candidacy... But even in the framework of Nice Treaty, EU Parliament has to be associated in this Decision", the French President observed. If this is correctly done, then "we support Mr. Barroso's candidature", and "if the (EU) Parliament agrees, we might ratify this decision since July", (i.e. next month), they both said. - "France and Germany support Baroso's candidacy, But we want to speak also on the Program. We believe that this Program should be established in close cooperation with EU Parliament, and that's why we have followed an appropriate way", said Merkel. - If EU Parliament wants, this election can take place on July, but this must be done in full agreement. - "We shall support Mr. Barroso's candidacy, without doubt", said Sarkozy. "But we have asked from Mr. Barroso, as I told him yesterday, to put into detail.. his intentions, at the eve of his 2nd mandate, if the situation avails itself. France and Germany "don't want to take an Official Legal Decision by writting" during "the next (EU) Council" (on June 18-19), declared Sarkozy. Because they prefer, at this stage, only "a Political decision" on June, "so that we (EU Council) can work together with EU Parliament", which starts to meet only Next Month, since July in Srasbourg, "leaving a Legal decision by writting for later". - "If the Conditions are fuillfiled in EU Parliament, we (EU Council) are ready to give the agreement and make it offficial", said Merkel - "But, now we are working in the base of Nice Treaty. If tommorow we want to work in the spirit of Lisbon Treaty, we have to find a proper way", she added. - "Of course it's Legally complicated, because we are going to make a Political proposal to the forthcoming Council, for an EU Commission's President, on the basis of Nice Treaty : So, we (EU Council) will not appoint the Commissioners. Only the President. If EU Parliament agrees, it could endorse this position on July", explained Sarkozy. But, on Autumn, "if Ireland ratifies Lisbon Treaty, there will be, at any case, a 2nd Decision, to appoint the Commission's President, this time on the basis of Lisbon treaty, and then, we, the EU Member States, would have to appoint (also) the EU Commissioners", he added. As for the precise Timing : - "Everything is suspended until the Irish vote... Now, we must all make everything possible to help Ireland to say "Yes"" to Lisbon Treaty... The Irish Referendum, ..will take place either on September or on October. It's a Question which depends on the Irish. And, then, we shall have the Choice of the Candidates for the permanent Institutions of Europe". However, "if Ireland says No, we, French and Germans, have to assume our responsibilities, and we'll do so", he concluded. But British and Swedish governments were reportedly eager to have a final EU Council decision on Barroso since this month, on June's European Council. While the other EU Member Countries are divided, several of them preferring to wait until EU Parliament pronounces itself, on July, and/or until Lisbon Treaty might be ratified by Ireland at the beginning of the Autumn. Barroso's current mandate ends on November. There are also various, contradictory and/or unpredictable reactions inside EU Parliament vis a vis Barroso's wish to continue a 2nd mandate, because many MEPs are openly or secretly opposed, reluctant, or hesitating. In the biggest EU Countries, as France and Germany, EU Citizens voted on June 2009 EU Elections for a renovated, non-technocratic but Political Europe which cares for its Citizens, with an Identity, Values and Borders, declared incompatible with Turkey's controversial EU bid, by mainstream, pro-European Governing Parties. Similar choices were also supported in several other small or medium EU Countries. On the contrary, whenever, in other Countries, Governing and other mainstream Parties didn't make these choices or eluded them, EU Citizens massively voted for euro-Sceptics whenever they were the only ones to to promise anti-bureacratic change and oppose Turkey's demand to enter into the EU, (f.ex. in the UK, Netherlands, etc). It's seems to be an Open Question whether Sarkozy and Merkel's conditions will be really accepted by Barroso, who was appointed on 2004 in a different political context, (with Socialist Prime Ministers in Germany, France, etc), had rejected in the Past the idea of EU becoming "equal to the USA" as "ridiculous", and pushed for Turkey's contoversial EU bid, trying to "soften" or contain the changes desired by the People who voted for Merkel and Sarkozy with another policy vis a vis Turkey on 2005 in Germany and on 2007 in France, as they did all over Europe on 2009. In addition to many EPP Governments, it's 3 remaining Socialist Prime Ministers : Gordon Brown in the UK, Zapatero in Spain, and Socrates in Prortugal, who support Barroso, as well as Liberal Swedish Prime Minister Reinfeldt. But their Parties lost the June 2009 EU Elections. Questioned whether there was still "Time" for "other" possible "Candidates", Sarkozy and Merkel did not deny, nor made any comment on that, but simply said that "it's not for us to make publicity for any candidates. We anounced our choice ("A Program, and Mr. Barroso"). But we respect any other candidate". Among various other names cited are former Belgian Prime Minister Verhofstadt, former UNO's Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson of Ireland, Italian former EU Commission's vice-President Monti, etc. Meanwhile, Luxembourg's PM Juncker, (who had been unanimously accepted by EU Council for EU Commission's Presidency on 2004, but refused), announced his intention to resign from "EuroGroup"'s Chair. Thus, he might be available for another Top EU job. As "EuroFora"'s "opinion" said (See publication dated 9/6/09) : - "If the current candidates (i.e. Barroso, etc) to the Top EU jobs promise and guarantee to respect People's democratic choices, then, it's OK". "Otherwise, Europe must find new candidates, really motivated and able to implement these democratic choices of the People." Because, "in Democracy, the forthcoming choices for EU's Top Jobs,...should be made according to EU Citizens' Votes in June 7, 2009 European Elections, and main EU Governments' strategic policies". *** People present costumes of Miao ethnic group in Rongshui Miao Autonomous County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Dec. 1, 2012. Guangxi is a multi-ethnic region and people like to wear ethnic costumes to attend their traditional festivals. The costumes with unique pattern and style reflect diversified ethnic cultures. (Xinhua/Zhang Ailin) 10 1 [ Editor: Zhang Zhou ] Farkhad Akhmedov is a Russian billionaire who made his fortune from the countrys oil and gas reserves. Among his claims to fame are the acquisition of a 337 foot, $492 million yacht, the Luna complete with a missile detection system which he purchased from fellow oligarch Roman Abramovich in 2014. However, it would appear that Akhmedovs estranged wife, Tatyana, has loaded and fired asset-seeking divorce missiles of her own, which are in danger of sinking a significant part of her husbands wealth, despite his defense system. When an extremely wealthy couple split, and the divorce becomes acrimonious, it very quickly becomes a sideshow enthralling a great many people, particularly those who have experienced the bitterness of divorce themselves. Some divorces are amicable, and each party goes their separate ways on good terms, and others well others can become battlefields where no quarter is asked, and none is given. Divorces like those of the Akhmedovs take on a different perspective. There is little doubt that the money available is more than enough for both parties to continue living their luxurious lifestyles. The family property sum awarded to Tatyana by the London High Court is reported to be $430 million. Many might ask how much money does she need: why not settle for a meagre $100 million? But this is not the point. If half of the couples wealth is $430 million, then that is what she is entitled to under the law. The court has looked at the facts and arrived at its decision. Enforcing the judgment is where the challenge starts. As a specialist asset recovery lawyer who works on cross-border investigations, a case like this is very interesting. An international game of cat and mouse has begun to unfurl. The investigation is challenging: Mr. Akhmedovs lawyers are top-notch and deserving adversaries for the equally expert legal team retained by Tatyana Akhmedov (with the assistance of a third party litigation funder). In this instance, the two protagonists are extremely wealthy. Neither is going to find themselves seeking out a hostel for the night, regardless of the eventual outcome. The first shots have already been fired by Mr. Akhmedov in stating that the yacht in question, which is currently subject of a freezing order in the UK backed by an extraordinary ancillary freezing order in Dubai, where the Luna has been dry-docked; and is held by a Liechenstein anstalt, and therefore purportedly beyond his wifes reach will not be surrendered. Mr. Akhmedov insists that the Luna is held by a family trust and that the case against him is political and stems from a British campaign to separate wealthy Russians from their money. He has said he regards the British ruling to be worth as much as toilet paper. This is where top-notch international asset recovery lawyers come into their own. One side is insisting that the yacht is safely berthed in the UAE, the other insisting it is up for grabs. An English judge has found the husband in contempt of court and concluded that documents purporting to show an earlier divorce judgment ruling in Moscow 16 years ago were at all material times, forged. In response, the 63-year-old plutocrat said that the chances of his wife collecting on her English award were zero. As mentioned, Tatyana Akhmedov has enlisted the financial support of third-party litigation funders in order to support her international asset recovery case. This is an ever-developing route to justice, available to assist those who might otherwise be precluded from recovering what is rightly theirs. Third-party funders provide financial support in return for a large slice of any successful recoveries. I am familiar with this process, having used such funding options on behalf of clients who would otherwise have had to walk away. Securing such funding is complicated but possible. Former UK Justice Minister, Lord Faulks, has warned that such funding is in danger of skewing the dynamic of the justice system. However, why should a person devoid of assets be forced to walk away from litigation when they are the victim of a wrongdoing, simply because they are broke? Arguably, justice is served when the victim secures at least some recompense, even if it means they have to share it with those prepared to fund them. ____ Martin Kenney, pictured above, is Managing Partner of Martin Kenney & Co., Solicitors, a specialist investigative and asset recovery practice based in the BVI, focused on multi-jurisdictional fraud and grand corruption cases www.martinkenney.com |@MKSolicitors. In 2014 he was the recipient of the ACFEs highest honor: the Cressey Award for life-time achievement in the detection and deterrence of fraud. He was selected as one of the Top Thought Leaders of the Legal Profession in 2018 by Whos Who Legal International and as the number one offshore lawyer for asset recovery in 2017. Didi Chuxing, a mobile transportation platform, officially launched its DiDi Labs in Toronto, Canada. This marks the second major research facility founded by DiDi in North America, following the establishment of DiDi Labs in Mountain View, California, in March 2017. Since its inception, DiDi Labs in Mountain View has invested in product development and safety technology for DiDis international operations in Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Japan and Greater China. The new DiDi Labs in Toronto, which will focus on research into intelligent driving and artificial intelligence, will be led by Jun YU, Senior Vice President of DiDi and chair of DiDis Product & Design Committee. DiDi also reached a strategic partnership with the University of Toronto to explore collaborative projects in areas ranging from vehicle connectivity and autonomy, to artificial intelligence and smart transportation. Didi Chuxing 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. The company partners with Grab, Lyft, Ola, Uber, 99, Taxify and Careem in a global ride-hailing network that reaches over 80% of the worlds population across over 1,000 cities. Currently, DiDi provides ride-hailing services in Brazil under the 99 brand, operates DiDi-branded mobility services in Mexico and Australia, and provides taxi-hailing service in Japan through a joint venture. FinSMEs 23/11/2018 Tourists visit the underground courtyard in Shanzhou District of Sanmenxia City, central China's Henan Province, Nov. 21, 2018. Underground courtyard in Shanzhou, a unique kind of residence in mountainous areas of western Henan, was listed as the national intangible cultural heritage in 2011. In recent years, local government has been making efforts in protecting and promoting this folk housing style, and plans to turn some places into tourist attractions. (Xinhua/Zhu Xiang) 10 1 [ Editor: Zhang Zhou ] Exclusive: Uganda Responds to Rwanda on 'Complicated' Relations The government of Uganda has urged Rwanda to always communicate its "concerns through the rightful diplomatic channels", Chimp Corps report. The Permanent Secretary at Uganda's Foreign Affairs ... https://chimpreports.com/exclusive-uganda-responds-to-rwanda-on-complicated-relations/ Lerch, who served 12 years with the U.S. Coast Guard and another 30 in the reserves, died on Sunday evening of cancer. Worries about fine dust pollution : Man from Cologne wants fireworks at New Year to be banned Cologne/Bonn Bonn and Cologne are preparing for driving bans to improve air quality, but New Years Eve fireworks are still allowed. This is something one man from Cologne disagrees with and he has complained to the city. No such complaints are known about in Bonn. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken Von Laszlo Scheuch For many people, setting off fireworks in a private setting is an integral part of New Years Eve. But there are also opponents of fireworks, which not only cause discomfort to people but also to animals year after year. In times of driving bans due to too high dust pollution, the topic is gaining more relevance in cities such as Bonn and Cologne. In the cathedral city, one citizen has now submitted an application to the citys complaints committee. He is demanding a ban on public fireworks for health reasons. A look at data from previous New Years Eves, assessed by the Federal Environment Ministry, shows a clear increase in air pollution in both Cologne and Bonn. In several places throughout Germany, the permissible limit of 50 micrograms per cubic metre as a daily average is exceeded however, this is allowed on 35 days in the calendar year. The Federal Environment Ministry talks about around 5000 tonnes of fine dust being released by Germans because of fireworks on New Years Eve. According to the Ministry, this is the equivalent of about 17 per cent of the amount of fine dust emitted annually by traffic. Minute particles of fine dust can irritate the respiratory tract and disrupt lung function in the long term, which is particularly dangerous for asthmatics. How quickly the pollution in the air due to fine dust subsides again after the New Year depends mainly on the weather conditions. A strong wind helps to disperse the pollutants quickly. In windless weather conditions with limited vertical air exchange, the pollutants remain in the air for many hours and accumulate in the lower atmospheric levels, says the Environment Ministry. Similar complaints to the current one in Cologne are not currently known about in Bonn. A look at the measurements for New Years Eves in previous years sometimes shows noticeable differences, but often there are only small changes. The differences could be to do with the weather situation, wind direction or fireworks close to the measuring station, said the city of Bonns Environment Office. The city of Colognes complaints committee will decide on the citizens current application this coming Tuesday but it is very unlikely he will be successful. The basis for setting off pyrotechnics at New Year is the Explosives Act. According to paragraph 23, section 2 of the First Regulation to the Explosives Act, fireworks may be set off on 31 December and 1 January by all persons who have reached the age of 18, states the citys draft resolution. Only the federal government has the power to legislate on the desired ban. For all firework fans, this means evil spirits can again be banished loudly and colourfully this year. The cities of Bonn and Cologne cannot forbid fireworks on their own. The 100 companies were selected from nearly 500 companies in the areas of production, trade and services which meet the Corporate Sustainability Index (CSI) developed by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI). Several companies head the list of sustainable companies in 2018 including the real estate company NovaLand, Thu Duc Housing Development Corporation, Swiss Post Solution Ltd, Tin Nghia Corporation, Sai Gon Thuong Tin, Bao Viet Security, Loscom Vietnam, among others. Deputy PM Vuong Dinh Hue spoke highly of the VCCI's initiative, in coordination with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, to build and announce the index of sustainable development with 131 indicators in order to praise typical firms with sustainable development. He expressed his wish that the Vietnamese business community, regardless of their scale and nationality,should strive together for the sustainable economic development target. VCCI Chairman Vu Tien Loc said that over the past three years, the awards honouring sustainable firms have motivated and encouraged the Vietnamese business community to materialise the 17 targets on sustainable development. Chairman Loc emphasised that VCCI hopes the business community will change their mindsregarding doing business towards sustainable development, which is an inevitable requirement of development. Description GIS 23 November 2018: The importance of education as a key tool to empower children and enable them to achieve success in life was highlighted, yesterday, by the Minister of Ocean Economy, Marine Resources, Fisheries and Shipping, Mr Premdut Koonjoo, at the Mauritius Maritime Training Academy in Pointe aux Sables. He was speaking at a ceremony to reward 34 children of the fishing community with scholarships and the handing over 20 of Automatic Identification System (AIS) Transceivers to some fishermen and relevant authorities. This initiative of the Fishermen Welfare Fund aimed at promoting the welfare of registered fishermen and their families both in Mauritius and Rodrigues. In his address, Minister Koonjoo emphasised that children should be inculcated with essential values so that they do not fall prey to social scourges. The scholarships, he said, will provide financial assistance to children with good academic performance adding that it is an initiative to democratise access to education for children of fishermen. On this score, the Minister appealed to all children to put on hardwork, determination and concerted efforts in their educational pursuits. As regards the use of the AIS transceivers, he pointed out that they are lifesaving devices which will help improve safety and security for small scale fishers. He further highlighted that these transceivers will be used during search and rescue (SAR) operations in lost cases at sea and will allow national maritime agencies to track small vessels anywhere in seawaters. He encouraged the fishermen and relevant authorities to make proper use of these technological devices which will ease their daily lives. Scholarships Sixteen scholarships have been awarded to students who have completed the Primary School Achievement Certificate (PSAC) and will pursue their secondary education. They will receive an allowance of Rs 375 per month during their Grade 7 to 9 years. In addition, a monthly allowance of Rs 750 will be allocated to eleven students of Grades 12 and 13. As for students of Post Higher School Certificate, seven of them will benefit from Rs 1,500 per month so as to continue their tertiary studies. AIS Transceivers Twenty AIS transceivers were allocated to the Republic of Mauritius by the South African Maritime Safety Authority. These transceivers are intended to be used in a trial project involving fishing vessels/canoes in SAR area of the Republic of Mauritius. The trial project, starting in 26 November 2018, will make use of the 20 AIS transceivers and the exactEarth web accounts for the monitoring of vessels/canoes of selected fishermen who are at sea and will help SAR authorities to respond promptly when they are in distress at sea. It is expected to be completed by end of February 2019. Team managers have met with FIA race director Charlie Whiting in Abu Dhabi to talk about tyres. The meeting follows the Grand Prix Drivers' Association meeting recently in Brazil, when the drivers complained directly to Pirelli that the current tyres do not allow them to attack in the races. And so, according to Auto Motor und Sport, the teams meeting with Whiting was about the possibility of rule changes for 2019 designed specifically to address the tyre problems. One proposal is that drivers should be free to choose whatever tyres they want for the race. But a voice at a small team objected: "The races will be even more boring if the top teams have the freedom to choose the most robust tyres on offer." Another idea is for at least two compulsory pitstops per driver. A further suggestion is that a 'points system' for the tyres be introduced. Each compound would be assigned a certain number of points, with drivers needing to meet a minimum points score per race in order to comply. "Too complicated," one team manager said. Another voice, from inside the Mercedes camp, said the tyre regulations talk is premature. "We will have new cars and new tyres next year," he said. "Let's see how that affects the racing before we introduce more new things." (GMM) Haas has lodged an official protest against the Force India team. According to Auto Motor und Sport, the dispute is all about money -- and up to a whopping $60 million. Haas, the small American outfit, is pointing out that when Lawrence Stroll bought the Force India assets earlier this year, a whole new team entry had to be created. However, Stroll and Liberty Media agreed that the team would still be eligible for its official prize money, even though that normally would not be granted to a 'new' team. So the Haas protest is the allegation that 'Racing Point Force India' has broken the F1 rules by not actually building the pink-coloured cars it races. Haas boss Gunther Steiner met with Liberty's Chase Carey in Abu Dhabi, saying afterwards: "We talked about many things, but I can't tell you exactly what." But he admitted to Ekstra Bladet newspaper that the issue of prize money and Force India has not yet been resolved. "No, unfortunately not," he said. "We are not making any progress at the moment." (GMM) Sergey Sirotkin's sponsor is driving away from formula one for now. The Russian driver is gutted that Williams has decided to sign up Robert Kubica instead of him for 2019. Sirotkin is backed by Russian banker Boris Rotenberg's SMP programme. "We have decided not to continue our involvement in formula one," Rotenberg said on Thursday. "We were very unpleasantly surprised by Williams' level of competitiveness and the development of the car this season," he added. "In these conditions, Sergey did everything he could and we are pleased with his work, so now we'll think about how his career will continue." Sirotkin did not hide his disappointment. "It's hard for me to believe what has happened," he said. "I was told by the team on Wednesday night, but clearly there were meetings with SMP before that. And it was clear that they probably did not want to continue. "So I already knew the direction it would go in so I could prepare for this step by Williams, but it's still a difficult moment for me," Sirotkin, 23, added. "I always believed that we can turn things around and that I may be able to keep my place, but nothing changed in the team and so my place is gone," he said. (GMM) UN Supports Efforts To Return Displaced People Back To Their Homes In South Sudan Thousands of South Sudanese children are growing up in United Nations protection sites around the country after their parents sought sanctuary from the violent civil war that erupted more than five years ago. David Shearer, Special Representative of the Secretary-General [File photo] JUBA, 23 November 2018 [Gurtong]-Some have lived their entire short lives in the camps. They were born there. They live in tents, surviving on food rations and are now starting their primary schooling at educational facilities provided by humanitarian agencies. The camps next to UN bases were set up to protect vulnerable people facing imminent threat of physical violence at a time of crisis. There is no doubt that many lives have been saved as a result. However, as relative calm has begun to descend on many parts of the country, refugees and displaced people are beginning to return. In recent months, 95% of those arriving at UN camps in the capital Juba say they are not in immediate fear for their lives or seeking protection. Rather, they are looking to access basic services and reunite with family. PoCs (Protection of Civilians sites) are a last resort, not a long-term solution, said David Shearer, the Head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). They are certainly not a place where children should grow up if we want them to reach their full potential. David Shearer, who is also the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, said the priority is to support communities and provide services in the areas outside the camps that people want to return to. We will work in full cooperation with our humanitarian partners to re-establish services in communities over time rather than continuing to use PoC sites as convenient hubs for delivering aid or because of a lack of housing, he said. There is also a fairness issue. We need to ensure that those who go home are not disadvantaged because they dont receive education and healthcare while those living in the protection sites do. One of the greatest challenges is finding land for the internally displaced persons to return to. This is the responsibility of the government both national and local, said David Shearer. The homes of some people living in PoC sites have also been illegally occupied by others. That is also the responsibility of the government, to ensure these are vacated for families to move back to. David Shearer said the Mission will do all it can to ensure the safety of those who choose to return home. It will also continue to work closely with humanitarian agencies and the government on this process. Sudan To Uncap Oil Production At Block 5A The Government of Sudan will uncap oil production at Block 5A of Unity areas allowing oil producing companies to increase their production from the 5,000 barrels per day. Minister of Petroleum, Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth [Photo by Ojwe Lumara] By Ojwe Lumara JUBA,23 November 2018 [Gurtong]-The Minister of Petroleum, Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth told oil companies, investors and experts on Thursday at the closing ceremony of the 2018 Oil and Power Conference in Juba that South Sudan and Sudan have agreed to uncap the bottleneck. One month since the signing of a peace agreement, South Sudan has stepped up efforts to cooperate with African countries in the energy industry. Sudan played a prominent role in supporting the South Sudan peace agreement and was instrumental in the resumption of oil production at the Toma South field this year. Minister Ezekiel said production of Suud Petroleum Operating Company (SPOC) at 5A will start uncapped. We have agreed with Sudan to uncap because of the acidity that we have and it is very wealthy and heavy crude and the fact that we were capped by Sudan to produce only 10 percent, Ezekiel said. We were producing around 5,000 barrels per day and we have a capacity to produce over 40,000 barrels per day. Because it will comingle with other block of Nile blend, we were capped. But we have agreed that we are going to uncap and we can produce more at Block 5A, he added. The petroleum Minister said the country plans to increase oil production to the level it was before the conflict. Block 3 and 7 used to produce 270, 000 barrels per day but due to the conflict, it was cut down to 130,000 barrels per day. In Gpoc we used to produce 80,000 barrels per day but currently the production at Toma south is 20,000 barrels a day, he revealed. The petroleum minister further revealed that they agreed to start production at Unity oilfield by next month, saying he will lead a delegation of experts to Unity oil fields to ensure that the technicians on the ground are working so as to start producing in December. Minister Ezekiel said South Sudan has more than five blocks available for investors. PETRONAS one of the oil investors in South Sudan oil industry hopes to increase its oil production to 200,000 barrels per day at block 5A if its proposal is accepted by Khartoum refinery this Saturday. Meanwhile, the chairman of Petronas in South Sudan, Mazlan Bin Tamyis in an interview on Thursday said that since 2016, they had proposed for increase in production at Block 5A but their proposal was not approved by Khartoum Refinery. He revealed that on Saturday 24th of November, PETRONAS, South Sudan Ministry of Petroleum and Khartoum Refinery will have talks where they would possibly sign deals allowing them to produce at a minimum of 20,000 barrels per day. According to the PETRONAS boss, increasing production is a lifeline for South Sudans economic recovery. At this moment if we are allowed to produce at a certain level, we can do it. I already mentioned to minister Ezekiel and our partner in Sudan that minimum production at this moment is at 20,000 barrels per day, Mr Tamyis said. The problem with this for the last five years that the production is being uncapped at only 5% from the total fluid that flows to the Sudan crude oil transportation system, he said. He worries that if they are not allowed to produce at minimum 20,000 barrels per day; their investment of 850 million USD cannot be recovered. We cannot recover our investment if we keep producing at 5,000 barrels. In each barrel we produce we are losing money. We are not making money not only to the Government of Sudan; we cannot even make the minimum economic value. The minimum we can produce to from block 5A is 20,000 barrels for the next twenty years, he said. In his opening remarks, HCMC Chairman, Nguyen Thanh Phong, stated that as the leading Vietnamese economic engine, HCMC is striving for rapid and sustainable growth by creating a conducive business environment and encouraging business start-ups and innovations. HEF 2018 aims to discuss the role of businesses in building innovative urban areas and collect ideas on connecting different stakeholders in order to enhance the innovation capacity and efficiency of enterprises. Through the forum, the city wishes to seek effective measures to mobilise resources and promote the strength of 372,000 enterprises based in HCMC, in building an innovative district in the eastern part of the city. Phong emphasised that the municipal government pledges to do its utmost so that enterprises become the true drivers of an innovative city, with measures including bold administrative reform and a transparent legal framework to support enterprises. As part of HEF 2018, the HCMC government introduced its plan to build the eastern part of the city into an innovative city and attract investment in accordance with this intention. The initiatives and expertise presented at the forum are expected to help Ho Chi Minh City to promptly realise its goal of becoming a smart and innovative city on the global map. Accordingly, the two sides will promote collaboration in industrial development, agriculture, transport, the environment, the fourth Industrial Revolution, healthcare, education, tourism, culture and Francophone issues. Among the 25 projects there are 13 new ones, including a project on enhancing professional and French language skills for journalists of the Vietnam News Agency. The 10th meeting of the Vietnam Wallonie-Bruxelles Joint Committee took place from November 20-21 under the chair of Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Vu Dai Thang and General Director of Wallonie-Bruxelles International (WBI) Pascale Delcomminette. At the meeting, Pascale Delcomminette highlighted the close cooperation between Vietnam and Wallonie-Bruxelles over the past 25 years with many useful projects. Wallonie-Bruxelles will coordinate with the Wallonie Export-Investment Agency (AWEX) in Vietnam and competent agencies to seek cooperation opportunities and to serve the implementation of joint projects. For his part, Thang applauded the support of the Belgian Government and people in general and the Wallonie-Bruzelles region in particular for Vietnams development. The freshly-inked projects will contribute to materialising commitments made by Governments of the two countries in the spirit of the Vietnam-Belgium joint statement issued during the official visit to Belgium by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc last October, he said. During the two-day meeting, the two sides reviewed outcomes of cooperation between Vietnam and Wallonie-Bruxelles in the 2016-2018 period and also discussed the building of action plans and cooperation programmes over the next three years. They said projects deployed over the past three years have brought about benefits to both sides and agreed to pay more attention to applied research towards a cooperation programme on industrial and economic development, in the context of the Vietnamese Government striving to turn the country into a startup nation. On April Fools Day 1868 cattleman M.A. Withers rode north out of Lockhart, Texas, with a herd of 600 Longhorn steers, eight hands and a cook. They were bound for the railhead at Abilene, Kansas, which had opened the previous summer. Just south of a trading post on the site of present-day Wichita, Kansas, Withers rode several miles ahead of the herd and stopped at a lake to water his horse and slake his own thirst. His horse suddenly jerked to attention, and the cattleman looked up to see seven mounted Osages galloping straight at him. As the lake hemmed him in, he had no choice but to face them. The Indians, all well armed, raced right up to Withers and reined to a stop. After an uncomfortably long pause the leader held out his hand and asked for tobacco. Withers, thinking perhaps his time on earth was about to expire, handed over all the tobacco he had. Much to his relief, the Indians abruptly whirled and raced away. Withers rejoined the herd and continued the slow trek north. A little farther up the trail toward Abilene he came across a human skull with a bullet hole in the forehead. The events that led to its appearance on the Kansas plains were just as mysterious as the identity of the skulls previous owner, but there was no doubt about his fate. Withers took the events in characteristic stride. His matter-of-fact recollections and those of fellow cattlemen are recorded in the 1924 book The Trail Drivers of Texas. Over the last 20 years or so attention has again shifted to the Chisholm Trail, a route that purportedly originated somewhere in Texas and ran north to central Kansas Over the decades misconceptions about the cattle drive era have wormed their way into the historical narrative. More sensational writers have glamorized trail life, embellishing factual accounts to elevate drovers to mythical status. Fiction and hearsay have forever altered public perceptions of the cowboy, the West and the cattle trails. Over the last 20 years or so attention has again shifted to the Chisholm Trail, a route that purportedly originated somewhere in Texas and ran north to central Kansas. Many Plains communities marked the sesquicentennial of the trail in 2017. But questions remain. For one, was the northbound cattle trail known as the Chisholm in its heyday, or did the name come into use well after the drives had ended? Historians and everyday folk, especially in Texas, have debated the name and route of the Chisholm Trail since its founding. According to popular accounts, it began somewhere in south Texas and led generally north across Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) to Abilene. As waves of new settlers arrived and railroad construction continued, the trail branched out to new railheads in central Kansas. Eventually, herd traffic shifted west along the Western Trail (aka Fort Griffin Trail or Dodge City Trail) to Dodge City, Kan., and Ogallala, Neb. The name Chisholm Trail, though applied periodically to other routes, is most commonly associated with a trail leading from around San Antonio north through Austin, Waco and Fort Worth before crossing the Red River at Red River Station in Montague County, then roughly paralleling present-day U.S. Highway 81 through Oklahoma and onward to Abilene. Ask north of the Red River why the trail is known as the Chisholm, and the answers will likely refer to Jesse Chisholm, a guide and interpreter who operated several trading posts in Indian Territory and southern Kansas. Tennessee-born Chisholm, whose mother was Cherokee, was well established in Indian Territory by the time he opened a trading post near the mouth of the Little Arkansas River (the site of present-day Wichita) sometime in 1864. His route from the Little Arkansas south to his trading post on the North Canadian River at Council Grove (a timbered site just west of present-day Oklahoma City) was known informally as Chisholms wagon road, or Chisholms trail. When the railhead opened at Abilene a few years later, drovers followed part of Chisholms wagon road to reach the new cattle market at Abilene. As the story goes, they later applied his name to the entire route. Ask the same question south of the Red River, however, and the answers will vary wildly. Some will affirm the trail is named for Jesse Chisholm, others will say it is named for cattleman John Simpson Chisum, while still others might mention cattleman Thornton Chisholm (no known relation to Jesse) as its namesake. Some will tell you the Chisholm Trail was struck north of the Red River and never entered Texas, use of the name south of the river arising from phonetic similarity and the marketability of the Chisholm moniker. One oft-related claim credits Texas cowboys with the Chisholm Trail appellation, but only when it fell into common parlance after decades of trail herding. Some Texans will insist either folklorist J. Frank Dobie or San Angelo trail driver C.H. Rust had said the cattle trail northbound out of Texas was the Chisholm, thus it is so. Of course, such diehards will downplay or omit from the conversation that Dobie had also claimed the original Chisholm Trail did not extend south of the Red River, and that contemporary trail drivers such as George Washington Saunders had contradicted Rusts statements. The sources for many such claims trace back to the 1920s and 30s, when writers were conducting interviews and dashing off stories as aging drovers were reaching the ends of their own trails. While their firsthand accounts are accurate with regard to certain details, readers should consider how much of the narratives represent the sentimental recollections of a vanished lifestyle. Thankfully, it is possible to crosscheck period recollections with documentation from the cattle drive era (generally 186787), cursory examination of which often reveals inconsistencies. For example, several stories relate John Chisums alleged involvement in blazing the trail to Kansas. In one version Chisum supposedly drove a herd to Abilene in 1866, while others claim he drove his herd to a spot farther west along the Smoky Hill River. Complicating matters, some writers spelled the cattlemans surname Chis-holmperhaps seeking to reconcile his name with the Chisholm Trail, or maybe simply misspelling it. First and foremost, John Chisum wouldnt have driven a herd to Abilene in 1866, as the railhead wasnt established until the summer of 1867. No railhead, no cattle market at that lonely site on the Kansas plains. Furthermore, during the Civil War the cattleman had moved his herds southwest from Denton County, Texas, to Coleman County and by 1866 was extending his ranching operation farther west to Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory. No one has offered supporting documentation or explained how the cattleman might have managed to blaze a trail hundreds of miles north through Indian Territory to Kansas at the same time he was establishing a ranch several hundred miles west in New Mexico Territory. In the spring of 1866 enterprising Texas cattleman Thornton Chisholm rode north from DeWitt County, east of San Antonio, with 1,800 head of cattle bound for St. Joseph, Mo. Texas cowboys had driven cattle to Missouri along the well-established route for at least 20 years, and the drive should have taken about two months. Instead of making a beeline toward Grayson County, however, Chisholm followed the Brazos River northwest. After crossing the Red River near its North Fork in Wilbarger County, he angled back northeast across Indian Territory and Kansas to St. Joseph. His roundabout route took nearly seven months. According to a letter from Chisholms son cited in the 1959 book Memoirs of (the Late) Daniel Fore (Jim) Chisholm and the Chisholm Trail, No one knew for sure just where to go, only that they must head north and east, hoping eventually to reach the railroad, which they had heard about. Thornton Chisholms circuitous route to St. Joseph did not pass anywhere near the endpoints of what came to be called the Chisholm Trail. Those central Kansas railheads didnt even exist at the time of his 1866 drive. The cattleman himself was killed two years later in a freight wagon accident in Burnet County. While his name could be applied to the course of his monthslong ramble from DeWitt County to Wilbarger County past the site of present-day Parsons, Kan., and on into St. Joseph, the route and timing of his drive preclude any connection with the recognized Chisholm Trail due north to central Kansas. The wagon trail Jesse Chisholm blazed was a means of travel between his trading posts and not intended as a cattle trail Between 1847 and 64 Jesse Chisholm established several trading posts, ranging across the region from the site of present-day Asher, Okla., to the site of present-day Wichita. While he likely traded in livestock to an extent, there is no evidence he drove cattle anywhere in any significant numbers. According to his adopted son Vincente George Chisholm, the wagon trail Jesse blazed was a means of travel between his trading posts and not intended as a cattle trail. When trail outfits left Cooke County, Texas, driving herds north across Indian Territory in 1867, the most direct route took them past Fort Arbuckle and the site of present-day Pauls Valley. The onward route across the North Canadian and Cimarron rivers toward Kansas happened to pick up the wagon road to Chisholms trading post at Council Grove. The cattle market in Abilene, some 240 miles farther north, opened in late summer 1867. Chisholm died on March 4, 1868, before the spring drives ventured north and before his wagon road became a known cattle trail. Sometime around 1871 the trail shifted slightly west, as drovers took to crossing the Red into Indian Territory at Red River Station. The shift upriver was likely due to a tax passed by the Chickasaw Indians in 1869 on all livestock that entered the Chickasaw Nation east of Walnut Bayou, as well as the closing of Fort Arbuckle in 1870. The realigned route led north past Monument Hill into Kansas, more or less paralleling present-day U.S. Highway 81. Drovers used it primarily until 1876, when the trail again shifted west, this time bound for Dodge City. Military and Interior Department maps of Indian Territory rendered between 1872 and 87 refer to the trail north from Red River Station as the Abilene Cattle Trail, while the trail north of Fort Arbuckle and between the North Canadian and Cimarron rivers is labeled Chisholms Trail or Chisholms Cattle Trailnames that remain consistent throughout the era. Not until 1901 did maps label the trail past Monument Hill the Chisholm Trail. Someone, it seems, had extended the trail. The Chisholm Trail appeared sporadically in headlines between 1911 and 38, usually amid news related to the construction of the Meridian Highway from the Canadian border to the Gulf Coast of Texas. In the mid-1920s Oklahoman P.P. Ackley, an aging former drover, announced his intention to turn the old Chisholm Trail into a highway and install commemorative markers along the route. As a result, by 1930 the length and course of the Chisholm Trail had changed to largely match those of the Meridian Highway. That year the Texas Highway Commission approved a motion to allow the Chisholm Trail Association to map a course and install markers, pending approval of the route and marker design by the commission or state engineer. After the project fell by the wayside due to disagreements and the Great Depression, Ackley began his own private project and installed an unknown number of Chisholm Trail markers from Texas north to the Canadian border. Some of his markers, which bear a distinctive Texas Longhorn insignia, still remain, while others have been replaced or removed. Given Ackleys meandering route far beyond the parameters of the original trail, his markers remain controversial. For clues to the original route, one must scour the record a half-century earlier. Published between 1874 and 1905, the books Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest, by Joseph G. McCoy; Report in Regard to the Range and Ranch Cattle Business of the United States, by Joseph Nimmo Jr.; Historical and Biographical Record of the Cattle Industry and the Cattlemen of Texas and Adjacent Territory, by James Cox; and Prose and Poetry of the Live Stock Industry of the United States, compiled by the National Livestock Association, are invaluable resources, containing more than 400 biographical sketches of cattlemen and other information regarding the cattle business. Given the claim the Chisholm Trail name had come into common usage during the period, one would expect to find mentions of it throughout these accounts. Just the opposite is true, with scarcely a mention of the Chisholm or any other trail by name. It seems cattlemen of the era tended to name a trail according to its point of origin or destination, if they named it at all. It appears the Chisholm Trail name only fell into common usage after 1911, well after the cattle drive era and in keeping with the name change on period maps It appears the Chisholm Trail name only fell into common usage after 1911, well after the cattle drive era and in keeping with the name change on period maps. Whether use of the name in news stories based on old-timers recollections also had an effect is uncertain. While some old drovers certainly used the term to describe the trail through Texas, as many if not more disavowed the Chisholm label on the Lone Star section of the trail. Regardless, use of the term during the early 1900s is at odds with the period tradition of naming a trail for its origin or destination. Again, the aforementioned 187287 military and Interior Department maps of Indian Territory refer to the trail north of Red River Station as the Abilene Cattle Trail and that between Council Grove on the North Canadian to the Cimarron as Chisholms Cattle Trail. But surveyors and cartographers did not extend either name to interconnecting trails during the era. Although many popular maps show the Chisholm Trail stretching unbroken from some vague point in Texas to some point in Kansas, all were produced post-1920 and are subject to opinion and changing perceptions. On no known period map does a route in Texas bear the legend Chisholm Trail or Abilene Cattle Trail, nor do any depict the Chisholm extending north of the Cimarron River. The only known period map on which a cattle trail crosses the Red at Montague County is Map of Texas Showing Routes of Transportation of Cattle, 1881, published by the Interior Department for possible inclusion in an 1880 census report. It labels that section as the Eastern, or Fort Worth, Trail. Turns out, a surprising amount of what we know about the old Chisholm Trail draws on information from the post-1920 period of reminiscence. While many interesting interviews and tales originated in those years, they were rife with inconsistencies and contradictions, especially concerning the name and route of the Chisholm Trail. One old trail driver said one thing, another something completely different. A reader often gravitated toward the account favoring his own opinion, swallowing it for no other reason than simply because an old cowboy said so. Thus the debate has dragged on for decades. Although contemporary maps and other sources might have slipped the notice of past researchers and authors, recently rediscovered documents from the era bring new and relevant information to the discussion. Researchers can now reference such documents, rather than rely on imperfect recollections transcribed decades after the actual events, a surprising number of which are unsupported by period sources. Fortunately, maps from the 1870s and 80s are remarkably consistent with regard to the location of Chisholms Trail. If a story is unsupported, by definition it is folklore. There is certainly a place for folklore and legend; everyone loves a good yarn. In the myriad stories about the Chisholm Trail shared over the intervening decades, it pops up alternately as the TexasKansas Trail, Eastern Trail, Texas Trail, Kansas Trail, Abilene Trail, Ellsworth Trail, Beef Trail or just the trail. But as Texas rancher and historian Tom B. Saunders IV used to say, What is more important than the trail name are the people that actually did all the work. The drovers who faced the dangers, took the risks and got the job done deserve more than just a good story; they deserve to have their history recorded as faithfully as possible. WW Fort Worth author Wayne Ludwig started researching the Chisholm Trail in 2011. His recently published book The Old Chisholm Trail: From Cow Path to Tourist Stop includes citations and a bibliography for this adapted article. For further reading he suggests The Shawnee-Arbuckle Cattle Trail, 18671870: The Predecessor of the Chisholm Trail to Abilene, Kansas, by Gary and Margaret Kraisinger; The Trail Drivers of Texas, edited by J. Marvin Hunter; The Chisholm Trail, by Wayne Gard; and The Chisholm Trail: Joseph McCoys Great Gamble, by James E. Sherow. Tra made the statement at the ministrys regular press conference in Hanoi on November 22 in response to reporters questions regarding the information that China had installed a new structure in Bong Bay (Bombay) Reef of Vietnams Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago. Vietnam has sufficient legal grounds and historical evidence testifying its sovereignty over the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagos in conformity with international law, she said. The vice spokesperson stressed that Chinas continuous conducting of activities in the Hoang Sa archipelago is a serious violation of Vietnams sovereignty over the islands, going against the common perspectives reached by senior leaders of the two countries; infringing upon the agreement on basic principles guiding the settlement of sea issues between Vietnam and China, as well as the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea signed in 2002 between ASEAN and China; and making the situation in the East Sea more complicated and tense. Vietnam requests China to respect Vietnams sovereignty and international law, and to take practical actions to contribute to the development of the Vietnam-China cooperation and friendship, as well as the maintenance of peace and stability in the East Sea. * Concerning Taiwan (China)s live-fire drills around Ba Binh (Itu Aba) island in Vietnams Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago, the Foreign Ministrys Vice Spokesperson Nguyen Phuong Tra stated that Vietnam once again resolutely opposes Taiwans action and demands that it refrain from such actions in the future. She added that Vietnam has sufficient legal basis and historic evidence affirming its sovereignty over Hoang Sa and Truong Sa archipelagos in accordance with international law. Taiwans continuation of live-fire drills in the waters around Ba Binh island in Vietnams Truong Sa archipelago despite Vietnams opposition is a serious violation of Vietnams territorial sovereignty over the archipelago, posing a threat to peace, stability, maritime security and safety, as well as causing tension and complicating the situation in the East Sea, she stressed. * In response to reporters queries about Vietnams stance on a memorandum of understanding on oil and gas exploitation signed between the Philippines and China on November 20, the Foreign Ministrys Vice Spokesperson Nguyen Phuong Tra stated that oil and gas cooperation between the Philippines and China can only be conducted in waters that both sides hold sovereignty and sovereignty rights over, in line with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). She stated that Vietnams stance on the East Sea issue, including sovereignty, sovereignty rights, and legitimate rights at sea, is clear and consistent, and has been declared multiple times. As a responsible member of the international community and an East Sea bordering country, Vietnam highly values international cooperation, including cooperation at sea on the basis of respecting the sovereignty and legitimate rights of parties concerned in line with international law, especially the 1982 UNCLOS, for the sake of peace, stability, and development in the region, as well as for the friendship and collaboration amongst surrounding countries. * In response to reporters queries regarding Chinas remark of completing the negotiations on the Code of Conduct (COC) in the East Sea within the next three years, the Foreign Ministrys Vice Spokesperson Nguyen Phuong Tra stated that maintaining peace, security and stability in the East Sea is the mutual benefit and shared responsibility of all the countries, including the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China. Accordingly and in face of the complicated developments in the recent past, ASEAN has repeatedly urged for the early finalisation of the COC in the East Sea. It is most important to achieve an effective, substantive, and binding COC in line with international law especially the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) thus making real contributions to peace, stability and security in the region in general and the East Sea in particular, Tra continued. Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print. Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition. If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create. The National External Information Service Awards 2018 aims to honour outstanding authors, press works and books in the external information sector. The VNA has been selected to act as the standing agency of this years awards. Speaking at the press conference, Bui Truong Giang, deputy head of the Party Central Committees Commission for Information and Education, and deputy head of the Steering Committee on External Information Work, affirmed that over the years, the external information service has reaped positive results, contributing to maintaining political stability, serving socio-economic development, ensuring national defence-security and promoting international integration. It has also helped raise the prestige of Vietnam in the international arena and introduce the country to international friends. Notably, in 2018, Vietnam impressed the global community with the successful hosting of several diplomatic events such as the World Economic Forum on ASEAN, the sixth Greater Mekong Sub-region Summit (GMS-6) and the 10th Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam Development Triangle Summit (CLV-10), the 26th Annual Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum (APPF-26) and the sixth Assembly of the Global Environment Fund. The annual National External Information Service Awards, launched in 2014, have been participated in by many journalists from both domestic and international publications. In 2017, the organising board received 970 entries in forms ranging from print newspaper articles, online articles, radio broadcasts, television broadcasts, press photos, landscape photos and books. The works were published in 15 languages including Vietnamese, English, French, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Lao, Khmer, Thai and Bulgarian. Submissions can be in any language and must be published in the forms of an article of printed newspaper, online newspaper and website (licensed by competent agencies), radio broadcast, television broadcast, press photo, landscape photo or book. They must have been broadcast via licensed mass media in Vietnam or in a foreign country from January 1 to December 31, 2018. The awards will be announced and presented in May 2019. Entries must be sent to the Standing Agency of the National External Information Service Awards 2018 before March 31, 2019. As an existing print subscriber it is easy to get FREE access to all our online content. When you click get started below it will walk you through creating an online account to attach your print subscription number to. After your account is created it will ask you to either add a subscription for online access or click on the print subscriber button. Click the print subscriber button header and it will open a dropdown, now click on get started. The page will reload and you will be prompted to enter an account number and a zip code. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO USE THE NUMBER OFF OF THE MOST RECENT ISSUE OR ANYTHING AFTER JANUARY 28, 2019 TO GAIN ACCESS! OLD ACCOUNT NUMBERS WILL NOT WORK The account number and zip code are easily available on your most recent issue of the High Plains Journal or Midwest Ag Journal in the address fields as is shown here. Sometimes the account number has extra zero's in front of it, just ignore those. Send to Email Address Your Name Your Email Address Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Email check failed, please try again Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. A British mum-of-nine who dumped her husband of 23 years for a young Gambian man she met online has converted to Islam so they can get married. Heidi Hepworth, 45, now wears a hijab and prays to Allah every day as she prepares for her wedding with her taxi driver boyfriend, Mamadou Salieu Jallow, 31. Heidi said she proposed to her Gambian boyfriend and he accepted. They are planning to have the wedding in a mosque in Gambia, a nation that is predominantly Muslim and which Heidi says is a happier and more caring place than Britain. She plans to move there after they marry next year once her divorce is finalised. Speaking on her relationship with Mamadou and their coming nuptials, she said: No-one imagined this would last but we love each other and are making plans to marry. Ive never been happier. Speaking of the proposal, Heidi said: I think its fine to take the initiative. I have wasted enough time in my life in an unhappy marriage. Heidi split with her husband of 23 years last year and began dating Mamadou. She even left her kids at home in Britain and went to Gambia to be with him. People figured it was a phase that would pass soon, but they were wrong. At the time, Heidis husband Andy, 45, said: Its a mid-life crisis. Shes been brainwashed. Andy also criticised Heidi for leaving her kids, saying: A caring mum wouldnt go off gallivanting around Africa with her new boyfriend. But Heidi defended her actions, telling The Sun last year: I dont have a single regret. Im not a terrible parent. It was really hard for me to leave my kids, but they couldnt come with me so I had no choice. I was shocked at the anger that was directed at me for supposedly abandoning my children. That just didnt happen. Heidi has two sons and a daughter aged 25 to 30 from a previous relationship. She and Andy have three daughters aged 7, 10, and 24 and three sons aged 12, 18 and 19. Heidi revealed that when she left, her eldest daughter moved into her house to stay with the three youngest children so that their life wasnt disrupted greatly. Although, the federal government has insisted for a long time now, that the deadly Boko Haram insurgency has been technically defeated, there are many reasons to doubt this. Many reports in time past, have given Nigerians reasons to question the extent of the technicality of the defeat of the dreaded group, and the latest being a video which emerged online recently. In the video, believed to have been released by ISWAP, a faction of the Boko Haram, many men of the Nigerian army were seen to be rounded up and over-powered by members of Boko Haram fighters. The traumatizing video shows these Boko haram fighters, covering their faces with black hood, holding very sophisticated ammunitions, firing shots at Nigerian soldiers and killing them in their numbers. It is seen also in the five minutes and 32 seconds video, where those insurgents go close to the fallen heroes to ascertain if they were truly dead, then fire more lethal shots to complete the deed, then cart away the fallen soldiers rifle, also searching their pockets to find anything of worth. The video has since sparked a hot discussion on social media, as many Nigerians are calling on the present government to do all in its power, to protect the soldiers, and end insurgency in the Northeast. While some have asked the questions, that have been begging for answers for quite a long time. What does Boko Haram want? Who funds them? Who suppliers their ammunition? Why is the technically defeated Boko Haram, still killing our soldiers? Although Ahmad Salkida, a journalist, who is very close to the Boko Haram sect has said the video, currently making waves is an old one from September It doesnt take away the fact that this group is far from being defeated. https://twitter.com/A_Salkida/status/1065938307912278016 However, Nigerians are certain that the war against insurgency is far from over and are calling on the government of the day to do the needful. Some of the reactions For 2 years I have raised my voice against President Buharis practice of releasing repentant Boko Haram members and the @OfficialAPCNg attacked me. Now in just 3 days, Boko Haram has killed over 100 Nigerian soldiers. Are these repentant terrorists not involved? #RenosDarts Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) November 22, 2018 The @MBuhari administration missed it when it declared Boko Haram technically defeated. Whatever that meant, it gave the psychological advantage to the thoughtless murderers. The government must take responsibility for the recent losses JJ. Omojuwa (@Omojuwa) November 23, 2018 This is indeed very sad, to watch our soldiers being executed by Boko haram lives a bitter taste. President @MBuhari must do everything within his power to turn this tide. The service chiefs have explanations and be accountable. It isn't right that our soldiers are humiliated. Kayode Ogundamisi (@ogundamisi) November 23, 2018 Common Sense Senator, Ben Murray Bruce has also reacted to the recent deaths of over 40 soldiers, after their base in Metele village, in Borno state near the border with Niger was attacked by Boko Haram. A video of the deadly assault on the soldiers was believed to have been released by the IS-backed Boko Haram faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). Neither the presidency nor the army chief has released a statement regarding the attack, and the saddening loss of lives of those gallant men. The Senator from Bayelsa state in his reaction said the lack of acknowledgement by the authorities that should, will go a long way in demoralising the soldiers Asking, how the soldiers are expected to continue to fight, knowing that their colleagues were treated shabbily. He wrote: How can so many soldiers die in just one day and we go on as a nation as if nothing happens and expect others soldiers watching how shabbily we have treated their colleagues to fight for us? See tweet Vanguard ABUJAHouse of Representatives, yesterday, resolved to probe the sudden death of Michael Adikwu, the principal suspect in Offa robbery incident in Kwara State, mandating the Committee on Police Affairs to commence investigation into the matter and report back in four weeks. The Sun GOVERNOR of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi, has said his comments in Paris on the ongoing strike action by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) was never meant to denigrate lecturers but rather to engage in constructive debate over issues bordering on the academic sector of the nation. The Guardian Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State yesterday presented the 2019 budget estimate of N402.63 billion to the House of Assembly. This represents 17 per cent increase of last years estimate, which was N345.4 billion. Daily Times The presidential candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, has cautioned Nigerians on voting for candidates that have failed Nigeria in the past or lacked innovation and creativity to move the country forward. This Day In this exclusive interview with THISDAY, the Young Progressive Party Presidential Candidate, Professor Kingsley Moghalu, speaks about his upbringing, professional sojourn and why he decided to run for the number one job in Nigeria. Sunday Ehigiator brings excepts Tribune Former President Goodluck Jonathan has revealed why he feared that then-incoming President Muhammadu Buhari would go after his supporters, saying that even if that was not the intention of the new president, those around him could have pressed for it for their own interests. Leadership The Presidency has rejected former President Goodluck Jonathans claim that there is more corruption in the country now than when he was in office. The Nation FORMER President Olusegun Obasanjo has asked the African Independent Television (AIT) to retract with apology, the airing of a photo on its social media segment, Kakaki Social, where a purported tweeter account belonging to him, depicted a picture of his alleged meeting with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN). Binh welcomes Koichi Miyatas visit amid the growing ties between Vietnam and Japan, especially in economic cooperation. He lauded the effective operation of the SMBC in Vietnam with all branches enjoying profits and having no bad loans. Koichi Miyata said that the SMBC is implementing a new strategy with the focus on Asia, adding that Vietnam is the most important country in the strategy. Many foreign investors have shown their interests in Vietnam, especially those from Japan, he said, pledging that the SMBC will support their investments. Binh noted that Vietnam is a highly open economy, targeting to record rapid and sustainable growth based on the stable macro-economy and resilient banking system against outside shocks. Vietnam will also continue improving its business-investment environment, creating more favourable conditions for domestic and foreign investors, including the SMBC, he said. He expressed his hope that the SMBC will continue its long-term operation in Vietnam, while expanding cooperation and experience sharing with Vietnamese banks and the Vietnamese economy in general. The same day, Binh also had a meeting with Ioanis E. Raptakis, Greek Ambassador to Vietnam, during which Binh highlighted the need for closer coordination between the two countries in raising two-way trade to match potential of both sides. He proposed that Greece supports Vietnam to promote partnership with the European Union, as well as the signing and implementation of a free trade agreement between Vietnam and the EU, thus expanding economic and trade cooperation space between the two sides. Binh vowed that Vietnam always creates all favourable conditions for enterprises and investors from Greece, and welcomes them to seek investment opportunities in Vietnam. Pakistan Railways Concrete er Factories Muawan Jobs Latest Pakistan Railways Labor Posts Sukkur 2021 Muawan, Chowkidar, Mali, Store Issuer and SS Khalasi required for Pakistan Railways, Concrete er Factories in Sukkur and Khanewal. Candidates should have middle to apply for these posts. How to Apply on Pakistan Railways Job Advertisement Apply as per details in job advertisement. In some cases, you may apply online at vacancies after registering at https://www.jobz.pk online. Note: Beware of Fraudulent Recruiting Activities. If an employer asks to pay money for any purpose, do not pay at all and report us at contact us form. Apply as per instuctions & dates mentioned in official job ad. Govt jobs may not be applied online here. Human typing error possible. Error & omissions excepted. Pyramids International School & College AJK Teachers Jobs Latest Pyramids International School & College Education Posts Muzaffarabad 2021 Pyramids International School & College Muzaffarabad, Pakistan are requires applications from experienced candidates to fill the posts of Teacher, English Teacher, Chemistry Teacher, Physics Teacher, Biology Teacher, Maths Teacher, Economics Teacher. Skills Required Education & Tutoring How to Apply on Pyramids International School & College Job Advertisement Apply as per details in job advertisement. In some cases, you may apply online at vacancies after registering at https://www.jobz.pk online. Note: Beware of Fraudulent Recruiting Activities. If an employer asks to pay money for any purpose, do not pay at all and report us at contact us form. Apply as per instuctions & dates mentioned in official job ad. Govt jobs may not be applied online here. Human typing error possible. Error & omissions excepted. Nicholas Hamilton, centre, is roughed up by a burly character before being rescued by DeRon Horton, approaching from right, during a scene for the movie Endless being shot Thursday morning in downtown Kelowna. Speaking at an international workshop in Hanoi on November 23, Kamal Malhotra pledged that the UNDP will also assist Vietnam in mobilising resources from international and national development partners, and provide the country with consultations on a long-term strategy in the sphere. He encouraged other UN member countries supporting Vietnam in peacekeeping activities to work more closely with the UNDP representative in Vietnam so to provide the country with consistent, comprehensive and efficient coordination and assistance. Deputy Defence Minister Sen. Lieut. Gen. Nguyen Chi Vinh, head of the Vietnam Inter-sectoral Working Group for Participation in the UN Peacekeeping Operations and the Defence Ministrys Steering Committee for Participation in UN Peacekeeping Operations, stressed that joining UN peacekeeping operations is the sustainable and long-term political resolve of the Vietnamese Party, State and army. The move signals the countrys responsibility for the international community and its aim to contribute to the global peace and consolidate national peace and stability, he said. Vietnam wishes to receive support in training and equipment from such countries as the US, Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Canada, the UK and France, among others. Besides, Vietnam stands ready to share its experience and resources with other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in this area, the officer noted. Colonel Hoang Kim Phung, head of the Vietnam Peacekeeping Department, said Vietnam has sent 29 officers to UN peacekeeping missions, including a female, since 2014. In October, 2018, the country deployed a level-2 field hospital to South Sudan to take over a field hospital of the UK. Vietnam is working to consolidate the legal foundation and institutional capacity for its participation in UN peacekeeping operations, and prepare competent resources for the missions, he said. Delegates at the workshop looked into Vietnams plans and priorities in UN peacekeeping operations, challenges facing the country in this field, and how to improve capacity for the training centre of the Vietnam Peacekeeping Department. Experts in ICT and the digital content sector gathered at an international seminar in Hanoi on November 22 to discuss practice guides for local digital content development and support in ASEAN countries. The event was held by the National Institute of Information and Communications Strategy (NIICS), under the Vietnam Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC). Reports by NIICS at the seminar showed that the ASEAN community of more than 400 million people is a huge ecosystem for the development of digital content. The annual revenue of the ASEAN digital content industry currently stands at US$150 billion, of which US$5-7 billion is from copyright and US$55-65 billion from digital content services. Vietnam is not out of the trend as the country ranks first in the top 10 countries with e-learning growth, surpassing both Thailand and China. By the end of 2016 Vietnam had 309 projects investing in online education and training with a total registered capital of over US$767 million. By 2017, Vietnam had 32.8 million gamers, accounting for 35% the population. The gaming sectors revenue in 2018 is forecast to reach US$145 million and could be up US$208 million by 2022. The country also leads the region with 92% of online video watchers per week, followed by the Philippines (85%), Indonesia (81%), Thailand (76%) and Malaysia (74%). Meanwhile, mobile advertising revenue in 2017 reached US$78 million and the figure is forecast to reach more than US$200 million by 2020. However, challenges remain ahead as there are many ASEAN people who are still not connected to the network, said Trieu Minh Long, Deputy General Director of the MICs International Cooperation Department. In order to increase the number of people connecting to the network, one of the best solutions is to promote local digital content, but this work is still weak as a lack of local content is a challenge for increasing network connectivity, Long added. According to Assoc Prof., Dr. Tran Minh Tuan, Vice President of NIICS, in order to create a breakthrough in this area, it is necessary to address barriers to creativity, promote the development of mobile financial services and e-commerce, and build broadband networks, accompanied with increasing awareness on digital content services and promoting local digital ecosystems. Effective models in digital content development from the Republic of Korea and other ASEAN nations were shared at the event. (Photo: NDO/Trung Hung) Experts at the seminar discussed solutions for digital content development in ASEAN, especially in competition with data sources and digital content from tech giants such as Netflix, Spotify, Google and YouTube, as well as copyright and digital content management issues. They also surveyed effective models in promoting digital content in ASEAN countries for their digital content development strategy in each nation, in line with the traditional cultures, as well as towards new technologies around the world whilst still retaining the identity of ASEAN nations. For Vietnam, Dr. Tuan said that the MIC aims to secure the infrastructure, the internet and server systems to ensure that digital content is accessible to the public, while boosting the development of data centres in Vietnam to facilitate operators of digital content and suppliers in not having to store data outside of the country. In order to develop digital content in a healthy manner, the MIC is also aiming to build local social networks developed by Viettel and VCCorp, as well as continuing to promote social networks on the Zalo platform and facilitating development of search systems in Vietnam. Actress Song Hye-kyo, right, and Park Bo-gum make thier much anticipated returns in tvN's forthcoming TV series "Encounter." Courtesy of CJENM By Kang Aa-young The late American artist and activist Keith Haring's 175 works will be showcased at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in Seoul for four months starting Saturday. The exhibition will run until Mar. 17 next year. Haring, well-known for his street art, died of AIDS-related complications in 1990. "Haring is one of the greatest artists of all time. He tried to deliver crucial messages about life and death and universal love through his artworks," an official from Seoul Design Foundation (SDF) said asking for anonymity. "During his time, Haring tried to show a variety of artworks, as his artistic experimentations continued all during his life." The 175 works to be displayed include "Icons," "Barking Dog," and "The Radiant Baby." According to the SDF, Haring elevated graffiti to the field of art and tried to break the notion of "art for the sake of artists" which was prevalent among artists of his time. Through his subway drawings, poster and album designs, the foundation said Haring strove to create artworks for the public. Haring was close to Andy Warhol and their encounter had a significant impact on Haring's works. Some of his work carried political messages. In 1989, the year after he was diagnosed with AIDS, Haring established the Keith Haring Foundation to provide funding and imagery to AIDS organizations and children's programs, and to expand the audience for his work through exhibitions, publications and the licensing of his images. Kazuo Nakamura, left, art collector and founder of Nakamura Keith Haring Collection museum in Yamanashi Prefecture of Japan, speaks during a news conference for the late American artist Keith Haring's exhibition at Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul, Friday/ Courtesy of Seoul Design Foundation. A Shinhan Bank worker demonstrates the bank's new digital foreign exchange system at its head office in central Seoul, Friday. The bank official said the system will enhance not only customer experience but also the lender's work efficiency in foreign exchange. / Courtesy of Shinhan Bank Financial Services Commission Chairman Choi Jong-ku, left, speaks during a conference with the nation's credit card company CEOs at the government complex in central Seoul, Friday. Financial authorities and card issuers are in talks over reducing card transaction fees. / Courtesy of Financial Services Commission By Yi Whan-woo The two Koreas had a working-level dialogue on modernizing underground cables in the border village of Panmunjeom, Friday. "The two sides discussed ways to replace copper cables with fiber-optic ones," an official at the Ministry of Unification said. Chung Chang-rim, a director at the Ministry of Science and ICT, led the five-member South Korean delegation for the meeting at the liaison office in the inter-Korean industrial park in Gaeseong, North Korea. Ri Yong-min, a senior official on communication affairs, led the Pyongyang delegates. The meeting came in line with Pyongyang's offer, Nov. 15, to hold talks on modernizing the communication network at Panmunjeom, according to the unification ministry. There are about 30 communication lines including phone and fax across Panmunjeom. They are used for daily communications, inter-Korean talks, air traffic issues, maritime issues and joint economic cooperation. An analyst said Pyongyang was believed to have made the offer as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un seeks to boost the country's economy through advanced science and technology. "Friday's dialogue is significant for cross-border cooperation considering Kim's goal is to make his nation an IT powerhouse," said Park Won-gon, an international relations professor at Handong Global University, referring to Kim's vision announced during the plenary meeting of the Workers' Party in April. "Setting up fiber-optic cables will give the regime a glimpse into Seoul's advanced technology and Pyongyang can later consider expanding its cable networks with South Korean technology," Park said. The unification ministry said modernizing the cross-border communication lines is not in violation of the U.N. sanctions on the Kim regime. It pointed out the U.N. Security Council Sanctions Committee allowed the South to provide the North with fiber-optic cables and other supplies in July, when the two Koreas restored military communication lines the across the border at the west coast. "We will comply with U.N. sanctions in our talks with Pyongyang on improving the communication channels," a ministry official said. Park still expressed concerns the possible cable project could stir up controversy, saying "It inevitably requires South Korean spending on the North." The two Koreas have communication lines at Panmunjeom and the west and east coasts. Friday's dialogue is a part of cross-border cooperation on a wide range of issues, including rail and road infrastructure and forestry. By Kim Bo-eun The U.N. Security Council (UNSC) sanctions on North Korea are set to be exempted to enable inspections of North Korean railways to take place. The government requested the exemptions to the UNSC Sanctions Committee on North Korea earlier this week, and a process is underway on the matter, according to the foreign ministry. While the ministry declined to comment on details, it is likely the government has requested an exemption on Resolution 2397, which bans the entry of petroleum into North Korea. This was seen to be the resolution that prevented the U.N. Command (UNC) from granting approval for the plan to inspect the North's railways, because it involves a South Korean train carrying personnel and supplies including oil going to the North. For the exemption to be approved, a consensus needs to be reached among 15 UNSC member states taking part in the sanctions committee on North Korea. Key states such as China and Russia are in support of granting exemptions. The U.S. up until recently had been against the idea, but at a recent meeting with South Korea expressed its "full and strong" support for the rail inspection plan. With U.S. support, the exemptions are bound to be approved. If the exemption is granted in the coming days, as expected, inspections on the North's railway sections may begin this month, and enable a groundbreaking ceremony on connecting the rail networks of the South and North to be held within the year as planned. The leaders of the two Koreas agreed at their third summit in September to hold the groundbreaking ceremony within the year, and it was agreed at a high-level meeting the following month to hold the ceremony in late November or early December. The plan for the railway inspections had been delayed for months, however, due to a stall in negotiations over North Korea's denuclearization. It has been the U.S. stance that progress in Pyongyang's denuclearization and inter-Korean affairs should go hand-in-hand. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo affirmed this stance recently. While the first exemption on sanctions on North Korea is set to be made for an inter-Korean economic project, further progress on inter-Korean economic projects may be difficult if North Korea fails to make progress on denuclearization. Pyongyang and Washington have yet to hold a postponed high-level meeting to discuss denuclearization and corresponding measures, which would set grounds for a second summit between its leaders. Environmental activists urge lawmakers to stop using diesel cars, calling on them to fight fine dust, during a press conference in front of the National Assembly on Yeouido in Seoul, Thursday. They requested lawmakers change their vehicles to eco-friendly cars to set an example in the efforts to tackle environmental issues. / Yonhap Lee Hee-ja, co-president of the Korean Council for Compensation for the Victims of World War II, poses at her office in Yongsan, central Seoul. / Korea Times photo by Lee Suh-yoon By Lee Suh-yoon When Lee Hee-ja first set off on the search for her father's records 30 years ago, she did not expect it to turn into a lifelong project. It started with a newspaper ad in 1989 looking for family members of Koreans who were mobilized for Japan's war efforts during World War II. "I had time, having just finished raising my three children," Lee said in an interview at her office in Seoul last week. "I also wanted to prove myself to my father. Growing up, I was always blamed for my father's ill fate just for being an unlucky daughter, and not a son." In the group, Lee found a community of others who had also grown up without a father just like her. With help, Lee gradually tracked down what happened to her father. "In 1992, I found a military log of his death," Lee said. "It made me so mad that the Japanese government had not even bothered to inform family members of his death. Each new record led to another one and I just had to keep going." Lee's father was forcibly drafted into Japanese military in February 1944. She was 13 months old. He tried to avoid the draft in every way: first by toiling away in road construction sites in a "national service group," and when that failed, he went into hiding sneaking back into the house every few days. "When the war reached its peak in 1943, it became almost impossible for him to refuse the draft order," Lee said. "He was also afraid his younger sister might be taken away to a Japanese military brothel if he did not comply." Lee points out her traces of her father left in a Japanese military record. / Korea Times photo by Lee Suh-yoon